《The Martial Unity》


 Chapter ?1 Rebirth

    The doctor moved his stethoscope away from the child''s chest while ncing at the test reports before him. The data was very clear.


    "Unfortunately, it''s a Non-Type-2 Inmmation type of severe asthma."


    "What does that mean for him?" The child''s mother asked, as she gripped the child''s hand harder.


    "It''s a chronic type of Asthma that doesn''t respond well to drugs or steroids. Unfortunately, it seems to be particrly severe in his case. His lungs are crippled and he''ll need to take regr nebulizations just to lead a semblence of a normal life."


    She shook when she heard that. As for the boy, he didn''t understand a word of what was being said, but his mother''s somber anxiety had trickled into him. He felt his throat choking up, as tears welled up , threatening to spill despite his furious endurance. His breathing grew more agitated andboured as the conversation progressed, and his mother''s despair grew more palpable, he felt like he was trekking a mountain. He felt like he was being snuffed by a pillow. He felt as though the air was growing thinner.


    "Mom.." He desperately gasped as he began crying.


    "John!" She held his face in her hands. He could feel her fear through her quivering palms.


    "I need five milligrams of albuterol stat." The doctor immediately paged.


    "Calm down, son." The doctor calmly coaxed, immediately after. "Take a deep breath, everything is ok."


    He was lying. The boy didn''t know how he knew, but he knew in his heart that the man was lying. His vision grew red as he felt his mind blurring


    "M..om.." He whispered as he struggled to hold onto her.


    Thest thing he heard before he lost consciousness was his mother screaming his name.


    **********


    John woke up with a jerk, breathing heavily and coursely, drenched in sweat. It took him only a moment to remember.


    "¡­Tsk, the same nightmare shback.." The worst kind of nightmares were the realest ones. He''d rather have the stereotypical free-falling off a building nightmare, but nope! He would relive the worst day of his life. The day he was diagnosed with severe chronic asthama, a curse that crippled his dreams and passions, shackling his body.


    "The things I would have aplished if it wasn''t for this goddamn disease¡­" He managed to choke out, while still gasping for air. Sports, exercise, travel, treks and of course, what he yearned for most;


    Martial arts.


    John Falken was a lover of martial arts. Ever since heid his eyes on Enter the Dragon, the first martial arts movie he had ever watched, he could never get over how amazing they were, how could he? The way they moved enraptured him, their stances, their checks, their footwork, grapples and of course, their strikes. He''d spent his entire life dedicated to them, albeit not in a way that one would expect a lover of martial arts would.


    He was born with severe asthma, preventing him from ever engaging in any physically intensive activities, martial arts included. So instead of practicing them, he''d decided to dedicate his life to learning about them. If he could not study martial arts as a practitioner, he would do so as a scientist.


    By the age of twenty-five, he had obtained a bachelor''s degree in Physics and a diploma in human anatomy, and a minor degree in statistics and probability. Armed with the knowledge of these three fields as his foundation, he spent all his time performing research on martial arts andbat sports. He would perform surveys, studies and experiments on different martial arts and gather data on several variables and attributes on them and draw conclusions as well as hypotheses based on them before publishing them in respected peer-reviewed journals.


    As the advent of MMA and UFC truly arose as a major industry with arge market forbat sports entertainment at the birth of the twenty-first century, his work became the foundation for modern MMA. The sudden rise in the significance of martial arts in the twenty-first century was a dreame true to John. He built upon to publish research that would be the bread and butter ofbat sports.


    And then, he died. At the age of fifty-nine, his alreadypromised lungs copsed, and he passed away a peaceful death. He''d spent his entire life dedicating his heart and soul to the one thing he loved, and died loving it, while still cursing the shackles that prevented him from truly embodying it.


    Yet, this was not the end.


    (''Hm?'') John stirred as he felt a strange sensation enveloping him.


    (''Didn''t I... die?'')


    John wasn''t sure what was happening, but he was rtively certain he was to die when hest felt his consciousness slipping in the hospital, hisst sight being that of hastened doctors injecting him with something or the other.<sub> </sub>


    (''I guess not? But what the fuck did they wrap me in? A jelly coated condom?'')


    He could barely move, yet could feel that he was in a fetal position though.


    (''I''m going to sue these motherfuckers so hard, there is no way this falls within ethical practice. Can''t they just let me chill in peace for fuck''s sake?'') He cursed.


    Just then, he felt a force pushing onto him, it seemingly pushed down on his butt attempting to push him through what seemed to be an opening of some sorts. At this point he was positive that something was definitely off, he was just far too bewildered and frightened to even attempt making heads or tails of this situation. A few secondster, he felt his body being forced out of an opening, and that''s when he panicked, calling for help.


    "waaaaaaaaaa!" Was what actually escaped his mouth.


    (''Eh...? Did I just... cry?'')This belongs to N?velDrama.Org - ?.


    He opened his eyes, only to behold a giant woman holding him.


    (''No, she''s not giant... I''m the one who''s small!'') He barely managed to nce with his stubbornly half-closed eyes, at his clenched folded tiny arms, horrified.


    "Quick, treat her! Her breathing is dangerously shallow and pupils are dted."


    What ensued was a long session of attempting to stabilize his biological mother''s condition. The presumed-doctors and nurses all diligently performed variety of actions with great determination, but s, to no avail. Slowly but surely, her eyes lost their light, yet they never once turned away from John.


    "Time of death, 17:42."


    John didn''t understand thenguage they spoke, but he understood what had happened. Although he still half-believed this was some hallucination, he felt a pang of grief even as his consciousness drifted away.


    (''Fuck me... Please let this be a drea...'')


    s, fate deigned to ignore his wish, yet again.


    **********


    He woke upter that evening in a daze, yet he needed only one moment to know that that was no hallucination. He really was reborn as a baby, despite how absurd the notion seemed to him. He was in a rather small medical room, waddled in a thick towel in a wooden cradle, the room had windows on opposite sides of the room, one leading outside and the other to the corridor where he could see nurses and doctors walking through asionally through the gaps in cradle. He nced around only to realize he was not alone, there were several other babies just like him in their own cradles.


    (''An incubation room.'')


    He sighed. He hadn''t the faintest idea where he was, but judging from the foreignnguage they spoke in, as well as the difference in clothing and even architecture, he was far, far away from the US.


    (''It''s not just that, the technological level of this ce is really low. Incubation rooms like this are filled with devices that monitor babies'' vitals, furthermore, there was no electronic technology when they delivered me either. Even this room doesn''t have any lights, justmps.'')


    That being said, themps were strange, the source of light was not fire, which flickered whereas the themp''s light did not waver, it most certainly wasn''t electricity. In fact, as far as he could tell there was no electricity in the room at all. It really was a bewildering notion to someone from the 21st century, was there really a nation with such primitive technology? John wasn''t sure.


    (''This is insane, this shouldn''t be fucking possible. What the fuck is happening?'')


    Assuming he was reborn, he didn''t know if he was even reborn in the 21st century. What if he was reborn in a dystopian future? Or the past?


    (''No wait... Is this even Earth?'')


    He didn''t know yet, but he would find out sooner orter, assuming he had anything resembling a life he used to have. These experiences had shattered his subjective worldview of reality, only time would tell what his new one would end up looking like. He braced himself, in fear and partially with a tinge of excitement, for his future to unfold.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2 Exploration

    It had been nearly a month since John had been reborn, and not much had changed since then. His days were spent mostly in his cradle, which drove him mad with boredom, the novelty of being reborn had long passed. Hospital personnel would feed him, bathe and change his diaper, thetter of which was humiliating for a grown old man. Still, he enjoyed this feeling of youth. The feeling of inhaling massive amounts of air, envigorating every single cell in his body was truly addictive.


    He felt as if he was overflowing with limitless energy that he urged to expend, his mind felt fresh, and his body feltfortable. He would often spend his days trying to move around as much as he could within his cradle, but his body was far too weak to do much at this stage. He would often spend time contemting his future and gathering as much information about anything he could.


    He''d even learnt his own name in the process, the nurse always addressed him with ''Rui''. A strange name, but one he was beginning to get used to. As for his surroundings, he''d already noted several oddities about this ce. For starters, the race of the humans he''de across was unclear, there was no skin color that seemed to be the norm, both men and women ranged from light skinned to dark. But this wasn''t the strange part, the strange part was their hair.


    (''Are they coloring it? Does this country have a fad or something?'')


    He had seen hair of almost every primary and even secondary color. Red, blue, yellow, green, purple, blonde, silver, pink etc. This was a rather shocking sight to a man from a world of mostly ck, blonde and little red hair. In fact, he hade across only one person with ck hair, himself, he was ustomed to this since he had ck hair in his previous life as well, yet it seems ck hair was not only not the norm, but also exceedingly rare. Of all the countless people that had walked past the corridor in the past month, he hadn''t seen a single person with ck hair.


    The second equally strange thing he had noticed were the eyes. People''s eyes'' color was all over the ce. Just like with hair, he found a spectrum of every single color except, yet again, his own eye color: ck. Both his eyes, and hair were pitch ck, something that was strange too, as if they sucked the light out of the world. He suspected that these traits were rare, perhaps even ominous based on the fearful, perhaps even disdainful nces that some people would throw at him.


    (''I hope that isn''t the case.'') He sighed.


    (''In any case, this world definitely isn''t Earth, there were no races with such hair and eyes.'')


    Just then, the door opened and he nced at the nurse who was assigned to him. She was apanied by a blonde-haired woman who looked to be in herte thirties wearing something that resembled a fusion between a gown and a traditional yukata. The nurse lifted and passed him to her as they conversed, though he wasn''t sure he understood what they were conversing about. The blonde-haired woman yed with and smiled at him while asionally asking the nurse questions. Ten minutester, after she seemed to sign some paperwork, she left the hospital with him.


    (''Figured this day woulde, one month in a hospital is way too much.'') He mused to himself, but he weed the change. Finally, he could learn more about this world. He nced around and took in the environment. The first thing he noticed was that technology was most strange, it was primitivepared to the twenty-first century on Earth, but it was esoteric and didn''t seem to match the historical technological progression of humanity on Earth.


    Their lighting sources were still a mystery to him, their medicine was also strange, they used strange concoctions, and apparatuses while tending to him. He had no frame of reference for them because he couldn''t recall any such equivalent in Earth''s history.


    (''There''s something very different about this world, that''s for sure.'')


    A minority of people carried belongings in makeshift bags made from cloth, it seemed only arger majority used handbags, or other carrying articles. The sense of fashion was strange, it was a mix of middle age western and eastern clothing, it seemed both men and women wore clothing that generally enveloped their entire body. This was generally a trend that existed prior to the Industrial Revolution that allowed for the production of clothing articles with a more sophisticated and difficult production process.


    This would suggest that their technology was low, but the architecture of buildings was rather pristine considering most of them were residences or small-time shops, not something he would expect from medieval Earth. These oddities threw him off, he wasn''t sure what how to evaluate their technological prowess.


    The weather was beautiful, the sun shone bright, yet the presence of adequate number of clouds shielded the surface from much of its wrath.


    Cool winds blew, rustling the leaves and cherry blossoms of trees and grass that popted the sidewalks, it was truly a picturesque sight to Rui, a sight that could seldom be found on modern Earth.<sub> </sub>


    The stone roads were popted with bustling citizens buzzing between what seemed to be a flea market of domestic goods and services set up in small stalls or shops.


    Just as he was admiring and absorbing his surroundings, the blonde-haired woman waved her hand and called out to a man pulling a rickshaw. She quickly got on with Rui after exchanging a few words with the rickshaw puller, before he started pulling them away at a brisk walking pace.


    (''Hm, an economical upation with a low barrier of entry.'') He noted, there were plenty of travelling rickshaws he spotted as they crisscrossed through the town. They travelled further and further away from the bustling popted markets, before soon, they reached a house with a huge fence, before they got off. Rui noticed that the blonde-haired woman paid him off with what looked to be a bronze coin.All rights ? N?velDrama.Org.


    (''The coins are remarkably intricate; how can their mostmon and universal currency be so sophisticated without electricity? maybe I really have underestimated this ce.'')


    The house was a little worn down. The paint had significantly worn off and the building was chipped and cracked at multiple areas, albeit small enough to not be dangerous. Still, the garden was surrounding the house seemed well maintained and all in all it painted a homely image. The blonde-haired woman carried Rui to the entrance before knocking.


    "Yes?" A young red-haired woman opened the door slightly, only to beam in joy, as her eyes fell on the woman holding him.


    "Mother Lashara!"


    (''Lashara is her name?'') Rui wondered.


    "Alice." Lashara smiled back.


    "Wee back." Alice replied before turning to Rui with a curious expression. "So this is him? The ck-haired, ck-eyed baby that no orphanage epted for a whole month?"


    "Yes, the poor child has been alone during the most tender moments of his life, I couldn''t help myself after seeing how cute he was."


    Alice cooed and cuddled at him before taking him in and showing him off to the others.


    (''So this is where I''ll be living from now on eh?'') Rui pondered.


    (''This... I can get used to this.'')


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 3 Shocking Revelation

    "Say ''aaaaan''." Alice smiled at Rui holding a spoon of porridge near his mouth. It had been eleven months since Rui had been born. He had grown ustomed to the mundane albeit pleasant life that he hade to be living for the past ten months. Still, although he had very few tribtions as an eleven-month-old, he would notice that the state of the orphanage was not what hisfortable life would lead him to think it was.


    Life was hard. the 21st century had the highest quality of life in the history of Earth and only got better and better every year due to growth in technology. But this was a world in its Middle Ages, even basic necessities that he took for granted on Earth such as easy ess to food, shelter and security were difficult to obtain, and even harder to maintain for the lowest of the middle ss and lower, the risks and consequences of failing were much harsher too.


    He could tell that the financial state of the orphanage was poor, the condition of the orphanage left some to be desired. He wasn''t sure where the orphanage managed to scrape the necessary money to sustain itself, but he was sure it was far from easy, orphanages were a non-profit organization, they usually made their ends meet by donations or in rare cases subsidies.


    Though clearly this orphanage struggled with those. The sisters would often forgo eating meals so that the children of the orphanage could eat fully, he could sense the anxiety hidden behind their smiling facades when they fed the hungry children.


    (''Sigh, to feed a helpless worthless baby like me, they sacrifice much, they endure much.'') He couldn''t help but feel guilty.


    (''When I''m older, maybe I can use my knowledge to earn arge amount of money. I''ll support them myself. They already think I''m a genius after all.'')


    As an adult mentally, Rui was able to learnnguages much quicker through active learning. He quickly remembered everybody''s names first, followed by basic greetings, words he came across most, such as ''food'' and ''eat'', before making his way across arge portion of themonnguage. He could form basic coherent sentences by ten months, and had grown morefortable and fluent with them by eleven months. The orphanage considered him a genius, after all, what baby could speak so well before it even turned one year old?


    The rate of growth of his speech was more than thrice of than that of the average child. Of course, as an adult, Rui didn''t feel very smart, ten months of non-stop practice only to be able to speak as well as a four-year-old was actually rather embarrassing, even, but of course that was without any active help or learning resources, and purely from observation and deduction. But he could use this rate of growth to get a well-paying upation to support his new family in the future.


    For now, he indulged himself in the food his body needed to grow up strong.


    "How''s the porridge Rui? Is it tasty? I added extra pepper just as you wanted." Alice smiled as she fed him another spoon.


    "It''s really tasty sister." Rui replied with as much sincerity as he could fake. In truth, he hated porridge, as someone from the middle ss of a first-world country, he was ustomed to much better food than porridge, but this was something Alice had personally made for him, with a lot of love and care, he did not dare hurt her feelings out of his privileged lifestyle.


    Besides, he did need to eat, nutrition was most important for a child his age and malnutrition could screw him forever in the worst-case scenario. This was not something he could tolerate, as someone who suffered from poor health for a lifetime. As a former chronic asthma patient, the feeling of air gushing into his lungs and invigorating every cell in his body was addictively satisfying.


    (''That also means I can practice martial arts in this world!'') He reminded himself excitedly. Ever since he was reborn, he realized that the fact that his body did not seem to be hindered by any health ailments meant he could do all sorts of things he never could before, with the number one activity on his list being martial arts.


    (''Fuck YES! This is by far the most exciting part of being reborn!'') He couldn''t wait until he was old enough to start practicing martial arts.


    "Alice, the Squire you called to clear the fallen tree trunk blocking the back exit is here." Karin, another caretaker of the orphanage, informed,


    "...Squire?" Rui inquisitively inquired, he''d never heard anyone mention that phrase so far.<sub> </sub>


    "Ah, you don''t know yet. Well, would you like toe and see?" Alice put down the bowl of porridge and gestured at him to follow, which he did out of curiosity.


    The man waiting outside the house was extremely tall, and ridiculously buff. He wore a what looked to be a Gi, something that resembled training uniforms, but his muscles could not be hidden despite his loose baggy clothing. His head was partially clean shaved, while his remaining hair was neatly braided in a single long pony tail.


    (''Wait a second.'') Rui''s eyes lit up.


    (''Is this a martial artis-'')


    "Ah, it''s over there." Alice guided him to the back where a huge tree trunk had fallen and blocked the gate.


    "I see, then please take several steps away." The man nodded at the sight, before taking a martial arts stance. He''d stood before the fallen tree before putting his left foot forward, and his right leg back. He folded and brought his left arm forward, with his forearm perpendicr to the ground and his fist pointing to the sky. It was amon stance forunching a straight right in most martial arts. Yet it seemed as though the man intended to use it to... clear the tree?


    Rui''s eyes flew wide open at this sight.


    "What is he tryi-"


    "Floating Tiger Fist style: Roaring Impact." The man whispered.


    What followed next shocked Rui from head to toe. Every cell in his body froze as if they each wished to witness the miracle that had followed. He didn''t think anything could surprise him anymore, but he was wrong. This was merely the beginning.


    The man''s body disappeared, Rui could only see a haze as he began his movements, and itpletely vanished in his vision as the man twisted his core to generate enough torque while driving all that momentum into his fist.


    The next thing Rui heard was a huge shockwave that hit him with a mild force even at a distance of more than ten meters away, and arge thud followed by the sound of crumbling wood. The shockwave had lifted up dust and sawdust, that prevented him from seeing the immediate consequences of the strike. Yet once it settled, his shock escted.


    The tree trunk was reduced to bits! The man damn near pulverized that huge tree trunk with a single punch!


    The man turned and nced at Rui and Alice, unperturbed.All rights ? N?velDrama.Org.


    "Anything else?"


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 4 Orphanage

    Lashara sighed as she finished working on the ounts of the Quarrier Orphanage, money was tough this month. An orphanage had many expenditures, the most taxing of them being food. It wasn''t easy to obtain enough money to feed sixteen children and six adults. Although five of the six adults earned money, they barely made enough for everybody, this was despite the tax waivers that orphanages received from the government, and the few donations that the orphanage asionally received from benevolent rich patrons.


    Their monthly expenditure included food, clothes as children were constantly growing and with sixteen of them something or the other was always outgrown every month, sanitation supplies, the discounted tax, maintenance and several other individually small needs and indulgences that culminated in a daunting monthly expenditure.


    The Quarrier orphanage had been founded by her twenty-three years ago, back then she was the only caretaker, and she had taken in five children back then. Generally, families looking to adopt went torger and more famous orphanages rather than smaller ones like her own, so the five children she took in had never been adopted, she raised them like her own children.


    Those five children Alice, Karin, Depp, Myra and Kenta grew up and decided to support the orphanage and their mother, together they constituted the six adult caretakers that ran the Quarrier Orphanage.


    Lashara spent all her time at the orphanage, whereas the five caretakers had part-times that allowed them to sustain the orphanage. Usually they had anywhere between fourteen-sixteen children, this was their utmost limit given the orphanage''s amodation and financial capacity, as well as the caretaker to child ratio. Though, families preferred to adopt younger children, below the age of one normally, so most of the older kids remained in the orphanage.


    They would be home-tutored in their early years by Lashara mainly, she would teach them basicw, geography, history, mathematics and the absolute bare basics of economics and politics. She did her best to instill the foundational knowledge that all were expected to have as well as the things all adults ought to know. Although she was no learned academic, over the span of twenty-three years she had be a master of teaching the basics.


    Thedies Alice, Myra and Karin worked part time in kitchens, restaurants, at wealthier residences as cooks, waitresses, maids, baby-sitters and jobs of those sorts. The men Depp and Kenta worked in manualbor jobs, rickshaw pullers most of the time, albeit in winter they preferred to get into mining. Together the five earned a majority of the monthly ie the orphanage received.


    Lashara loved each one of them from the bottom of her heart, without them, she would have to shut down the orphanage, the mere thought of which made her heart ache. Things were hard, but because she had such loving children, she could ovee these tribtions.


    Things had gotten even harder since the orphanage took Rui in, a newborn infant required constant attention and supervision, this put an even greater burden on them, but Lashara did not regret her decision. She felt a great amount of heartbroken pity when her sister, who worked as a nurse in the hospital, informed her of a ck-haired, ck-eyes orphaned baby who had not been epted by even a single orphanage.


    ck hair and eyes were exceedingly rare and were ominous and it is said that those born with these traits could bring great ruin or fortune to the entire world, thankfully Lashara never bought into that nonsense, and neither did most people, but the superstitious fear of bad omens still remained. To Lashara it was just a bunch of made-up nonsense that had no doubt made the otherwise perfectly normal and ordinary children born with these traits go through a harder life.


    Of course, Lashara was not blind to the fact that Rui was far from a normal child. In her eyes, he was a prodigious genius beyond fathoming. He spoke his first word at the age of two months, shocking all the adults around him, and his vocabry and speech increased dramatically until he could speak like a four-year-old even before he hit the age of one. Furthermore, his temperament was truly unbelievable, he very rarely cried, and even then, only shedding a few tears reluctantly when he got hurt badly. He was calm and patient, something Lashara thought to be impossible in an infant.<sub> </sub>


    It would be quite intimidating to her if it wasn''t for the fact that Rui was a truly wonderful baby, he was kind, affectionate and above all else truly adorable, she was sure he would be a heartbreaker when he grew up.


    She sighed as she shut the ounts book and put aside her abacus when-


    BOOM!


    A sudden loud noise startled her. She walked down the corridor towards the back of the orphanage where the noise hade from.


    "Ah the squire, I see." She peered through a window at the crumbled wood and sawdust rubble.


    (''Yet another expense, but we didn''t have much of a choice. Chopping it down ourselves would take too much time and energy and the back exit is regrly used for receiving supplies because the storage room is closest to it.'')


    A storm had knocked down a brittle dead tree, leading to all theseplications. Fortunately, Martial Squires were quick, making their services worth every bronze coin of their service. A Martial Squire was one of six realms, or ranks, of Martial Artists, who were part of a Union known as the Martial Union, which offered any and all services that employed Martial Art. The Orphanage hadmissioned manualbour from a Martial Squire, through the Union, though only in rare asions.


    She noticed Rui by Alice''s side as she paid the Squire the fees for hisbor, particrly she noticed the gaping awe and admiration he expressed at the Squire. It was almost impossible to miss anyway, especiallying from a childlike Rui, who was generally quite reserved and passive in his emotional expression.


    "Fu fu fu... I wonder if he''ll strive to be a Martial Artist..."


    asionally missing content, please report errors in time.This belongs to N?velDrama.Org - ?.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 5 Martial Art

    Rui spent the rest of the day pestering each and every single adult about what he had just seen, after eight hours of incessant interrogation. He tucked himself into his bed for the night, yet he was far too excited to ever fall asleep. It had taken him a while to understand enough to just barely satisfy his foremostyer of burning curiosity, after all, his vocabry was still quite imperfect.


    He pestered the adults until he was able toprehend their nuanced answers, it was quite tiring, but he managed to obtain answers for his most burning questions. After the rigorous interrogation, he''d spent time assimting and organizing everything he''d learnt.


    Martial arts, or Martial Art as they called it, was real. It was not only real, but it was extremely powerful too. Martial Artists were extremely powerful, capable of extremely superhuman feats, like the one he had witnessed. Across the country, and perhaps even the continent, Martial Artists were divided into six Realms, which were basically ranks:


    Martial Apprentice, Martial Squire, Martial Senior, Martial Master, Martial Sage and finally; Martial Transcendent. Each realm was far more powerful than thest, but none of the adults knew anything more specific than that.


    (''If a Martial Squire, who was only the second strongest of six realms was this strong, then how much stronger were the higher ranks?'') He wondered with giddy excitement. This revtion was truly by far the most soul staggering experience he had ever made. Even the shock of being reborn was tame and rather boring inparison. He quickly dismissed these thoughts before revising the rest of what he learnt.


    Martial Art could apparently be traced to a little over five hundred years ago. Martial Artists grew stronger and stronger in every country, furthermore their numbers increased as time passed, until the Martial Artist poption grewrge enough for associations known as Martial Unions formed in every country. Martial Unions were basically liaisons between customers of Martial Art services and the Martial Artists themselves.


    It served as a connection between the demand in the consumer market for services like bodyguarding, assaults, manualbor as well as more covert operations like sabotage, infiltration, espionage, surveince, assassinations etc. Even niche upations like tutge were within the purview of the Union ording to Kenta who once was an aspiring Martial Artist.


    The Martial Union was an organization with a vested interest in the propagation of Martial Artists, so it had taken measures to ensure there would be a healthy influx of fresh blood martial artists, such as the Martial Academy. The Martial Academies apparently were meritocratic institutions founded, managed and staffed by the Martial Union, not to mention these institutions trained aspiring Martial Artist till the Martial Squire stage primarily.


    Furthermore, ording to Depp, the Academies had a hefty yearly tuition fee, after all, tutge from Martial Seniors was a privilege to aspiring Martial Artists that would otherwise be difficult to obtain. Yet the high tuition fees were not a barrier, thankfully the Martial Union was cognizant enough to recognize that arge majority of talents would simply be buried due to their low economic ss.


    Thus, the Martial Academies offered a schrship program that allowed aspiring Martial Candidates to incur the fees as debt and repay the debt after they graduate from the Academy. The schrship program was essentially an investment with no guaranteed returns, after all if a schrship student failed to graduate, then the debt would never be repaid.


    But ultimately this policy allowed the Martial Academies and by extension the Martial Union to maximize the number of Martial Artists, their highest interest and goal, the financial losses were rather trivial inparison to the economic might of an international Union, furthermore the schrships were given based on merit, so the losses were minimized.


    The moment Rui learned about the Martial Academies he had already made up his mind about his future, his motivation for it was extremely high, he couldn''t wait. He would get into an Academy, one way or another, schrship or not. He had already formted potential solutions, but hecked far too much information to flesh them out.


    "What are you thinking about?" A child''s voice called out to him. Rui nced in the direction it came from.<sub> </sub>


    "Not much, Farion." Rui responded. Farion was one of the boys at the orphanage.


    "Hehe, Rui is thinking about Martial Art, isn''t he?" A girl beside himself smirked mischievously. "He spent the whole day asking all the adults about Martial Art."


    This was Nina, one of the older girls at the orphanage. In the past 10 months, Rui had familiarized himself with all the children in the orphanage, although due to the age gap, both mental and physical, he had a harder time bonding with them as much as he would have liked to, but he did spend time with them nheless.


    Children like Farion and Nina would take more time to spend time with Rui and babysit him whenever the adults were busy to make their lives easier.


    "Do you want be a Martial Artist, Rui?" A thirteen-year-old boy reading a book asked him.


    Rui''s eyes sparkled.


    "I''m going to be the best!" Rui dered.


    "Then you''ll have trained hard." The boy smiled, closing his book. "Martial Artists train very hard to get their hands on superhuman power. Are you willing to do what it takes?"


    "I was born for it, Julian" Rui replied, without a shadow of doubt or hesitation. It wasn''t literal though, for he had no idea why or even how he was reborn, but he suspected that there was some reason. If there was a reason, what other reason could there be?


    "Then we''ll support you to the best of our ability, Rui." Julian walked over and lifted Rui into a hug.


    "Mmmm, thanks." Rui replied. Julian was a bright child, although he wasn''t freakishly prodigious like Rui, he was a quiet and intelligent child who spent his time absorbed in books of all sorts, anything he could get his hands on. Rui was impressed by his maturity despite his age, among other things.


    The children chatted more until Depp told them all to put out the lights and go to sleep. To Rui''s surprise he fell asleep quickly, he was quite exhausted after a whole day of excitement.All rights ? N?velDrama.Org.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 6 Foundations

    "Alright, let''s begin." Farion said, ncing at Rui.


    Rui nodded.


    It had been seven years since Rui had been reborn in this world. Ever since he learnt about Martial Art and the Academy, he''d already begun preparing for them, doing everything he possible could. The minimum age necessary to enroll into the academy was thirteen; adolescence. As for his preparation, he had been unable to gather much specific information, The Martial Academies kept a bit of a tight lid on the nature of the entrance exam. However, there were simple deductions to be made based on the avable information at hand.


    For starters, the entrance exam being open to only ages between thirteen and eighteen implied that the Martial Art skill level requirements of the exam were not too onerous. Thirteen-eighteen was a very young age group, it was simply impossible for an overwhelming majority of adolescents of this age group to be proficient in Martial Art.


    After all, hiring a long-term tutor from the Union was very expensive, something only the rich could afford, and even then, they would not be able to master any more than the foundations. However, considering the age limit being eighteen, it could be inferred that the exam would not be centered around martial proficiency.


    That left only a few possibilities.


    Thankfully, Rui was a former martial art andbat sport researcher, he was well aware of the predictors and determinant variables of a sessful fighting career. It wasn''t even that difficult to figure out really. The two biggest predicters of sess were talent, and drive.


    Talent in the context of Martial Art would mean the measure of innate, natural physical and performance attributes. This would include health, physical attributes like raw strength, speed, agility, reflexes, durability, flexibility and stamina, as well as performative capabilities like bnce, analysis and judgement, body-eye coordination, alertness etc.


    While these could most certainly be trained even within the window of thirteen and eighteen, he was certain the impact of training would not be to the degree that experienced Martial Art trainers of academy would be unable to evaluate raw talent. Rui was rtively certain he was not talented, unfortunately.


    His health and physical attributes were just barely average, he wasn''t gifted with a godly body with unparalleled physical prowess, but he wasn''t crippled with a severe chronic disease either like in hisst life, he was just average in terms of talent. The problem was his performative attributes, he was rather bad in this area. And there was mainly one reason for this.


    For starters, there was the mismatch between his mind and body, his mind had grown extremely ustomed to his former body on Earth, he was lean, thin and quite tall with a weak physique. The physical attributes/mass distribution of his previous body were drastically different from that of his current body, his mind constantly treated his body like it was his old one and not his new one, this was because of muscle memory.


    Furthermore, his mind was that of an adult and despite, the developing brain of his young body, it was extremely difficult topletely erase fifty-nine years of engrained muscle memory in order to make way for new muscle memory for his new body, certainly wouldn''t happen any time soon.


    That was why he had been training his performative attributes as much as possible so that they could from go bad to, at the very least, average, ideally as high as possible. He had begun training his bnce and body-eye coordination, alertness as much as possible outside of basic physical training.<sub> </sub>


    It was the middle of the winter, Rui had gathered Farion, Horatio and Mika; three adults to the frozenke to help him with bnce training. He was standing on the frozen river one meter away from the bank, the training was simple; ying catch. The three boys would stand onnd and y catch with Rui. They would throw balls at him one at a time, Rui was to catch the ball perfectly on slippery ice and toss it back, all without slipping or falling.


    There was almost no friction between his boot and the ice, meaning if his center of gravity was not directly under the support of his legs, he would slip and fall. Initially, Rui''s sense of bnce was so bad that he could barely stand in one ce without falling, and most certainly couldn''t think about moving around on the ice.


    It was only after two years of training that his sense of bnce improved enough that he could begin ying catch, which required far greater bnce, since Rui would need to catch the ball and stop its momentum without ever losing bnce, and throw it back without shifting his center of gravity.


    "Yeah, I''m ready." Rui responded to Farion. Farion nodded before throwing a ball at him, before Rui got caught and returned it. Horatio and Mica followed one after the another, throwing balls at Rui from different directions. It was a whole one minute of rapid back-and-forths before Rui slipped and fell on his ass.


    "That was your longest record so far." Mica noted.


    Rui nodded. "Alright, let''s continue."


    Horatio sighed. "Are you sure this is worth all the effort? You''re not cut out for Martial Art you know. It''s especially a waste of your genius level intellect, you could be a schr like Julian did you know?"


    "I already told you, I''m not interested in bing a schr, I''ll be a Martial Artist, or nothing at all."


    "Yes yes." He sighed. Not everyone thought Rui''s ambition was a good idea, of course. It was not easy to be a Martial Artist, although a great many people aspired to be one, ultimately a whopping ny-nine percent of them fail to be Martial Squires. It was an extremely difficult ambition to fulfill.All rights ? N?velDrama.Org.


    Rui breathed deeply, readying himself. He couldn''t do it in his previous life, but this time, this time for sure he would be a Martial Artist!


    "Continue."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 7 World

    Rui burped, putting down his bowl and patting his inted stomach.


    "That''s bad manners, Rui." Lashara gently reprimanded him.


    "My bad, I''m justpletely full." He apologized, before getting up. He washed his used utensils and vessels and put it in the cupboard.


    "Thanks for the delicious dinner, I love steak."


    "Hehe..." Myra smirked from across the kitchen. "I knew you would be absolutely famished after that ice bnce training you always do in the winters, today we managed to get some good steak at a low price!" Myra was the head cook of the orphanage; she was in charge of all matter rted to the kitchen.


    "Sweet, do you need help with the rest of the utensils?" Rui sked.


    "Nah, there isn''t much left. You must be tired, so why don''t you get some sleep?"


    "Alright, thanks, good night."


    "Good night."


    He headed towards the study before picking up a book. The study had numerous books on various subjects that Lashara would refer to while teaching. From these books Rui had managed to learn about the world he was reborn in, thankfully he''d spent thest six year learning the script to read and write and he had be very proficient withnguage, far more so than a normal seven-year-old. He''d read up on history, geography and civics with some guidance from Lashara to answer some of the questions he had had for a long time.


    p The country he was born in was known as the Kandria Empire, named after the Royal Kandrian Family whose ancestor founded the Empire. The country bordered the Namgung Ocean, it was long and narrow in shape, extending from north to south, with nearly half of the borders facing the ocean. The other half was partially bordered by the three closest countries; The Sekigahara Confederate to its south, Republic of Gorteau to its North, and Britannia Empire to its west andrge forests that upied the gaps between the countries.</anda>


    Another important piece of information he had had gotten his hands on was that the Kandrian Empire paid annual tributes to all three of its neighboring nations, for some reason, unfortunately the exact details of the international deliberations was not exactly well known. All four nations were part of the Panama Continent, the one and only known continent on Gaea.


    The Panama Continent was gigantic, littered with nearly a hundred countries of all sorts, with various cultures, socio-economic structures and governments. Strangely enough, although each country had its ownnguage, there was an internationalmonnguage known as Sanskrit, created and propagated by the countries to facilitate greater international trade in ordance to the Panama Linguistic Treaty ratified eighty years ago. The treaty was highly effective, as thenguage barrier was the greatest barrier between connections and exchanges.<sub> </sub>All rights ? N?velDrama.Org.


    (''I''ve only learnt the Kandrian dialect, though.'') Rui noted.


    Another curious piece of information he learned about was that the fauna and flora of the Panama Continent was, frankly, ridiculous. There were nts with all kinds of exotic substances that served as raw materials and ingredients in various types of products, the most prominent application being potions. Potions granted incredible effects such as healing, stamina recovery, temporary mental and physical augmentation of various sorts.


    These potions allowed ordinary humans to match the superhuman prowess of even Martial Artists, this was something Rui found absurd when he learnt, but that wasn''t even everything.


    The fauna was even more bizarre. For one, there were intelligent species outside of humanity. This came as a shock to someone from Earth, where only one known intelligent species existed.


    The fauna was much less restrained and resembled the pre-historic age of dinosaurs. Despite nearly a hundred nations established on the Panama Continent, roughly thirty-five percent of the continent''snd was uncolonized natural habitats that was upied by incredible species with immense power. One of the reasons Humanity had not yetpletely colonized the Panama, was because they simply could not, the animal species were no pushovers, they were able to easily match the human''s paltry applications of gunpowder, potions andrge-scale siege weapons, it could be said that they would have long hunted Humanity to oblivion if not for the existence of Martial Artists.


    A significant portion of themissions that the Martial Unions of the Panama Continent was rted to the beasts, one way or another. Rui was incredibly intrigued by these strange and fantastical species, but they weren''t immediately relevant to him at the moment. He was more concerned with things that affected him more immediately.


    Within the Kandrian Empire, Rui lived in the northern most region with the harshest winters; Mantia.


    (''Sigh, tond into the region of the harshest weather of all the eleven states.'') Rui shook his head. He shouldn''t think this way, he was blessed with a loving family in the Quarrier Orphanage in this region.


    Kandria had a capitalistic free market, and as expected there was a great economic divide between people.


    its governmental system was a monarchy, as he would expect from nations in this age of development. The Kandrian Emperor had many wives, and even more children, each one of them was a potential heir to the throne. Apparently, it was Kandrian protocol for the emperor to test all the princes and princesses in a manner of his own discretion, before dering one of them as the Emperor or Empress when his life wasing to an end.


    Apparently, the current Emperor Rael Vi Kandria was already quite old, and the Royal Selection would most certainly ur sooner orter. Rui wasn''t well aware of the nuances of Kandrian politics and, frankly, he would rather not be involved at all if he could avoid it. The Royal Selections sounded like a chaotic mess of a phenomenon. Even on Earth he merely kept himself informed on the state of affairs in a superficial manner, and for the most part ignored politics. He would probably care even less once he became Martial Artist, not getting involved at all, directly or indirectly.


    Or atleast, so he hoped.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 8 Kidnapped

    The information he was most concerned about was that of the Kandrian Martial Academies, it turned out there were sixteen Academies in the country. One of them was located in Mantia, Rui intended to aim for the Mantian branch. In the past six years he had deigned to do a more thorough investigation into the entrance exam. However, the Martial Academy was quite secretive about its entrance exams, the Union did not want every applicant to be able to prepare targeted solutions that made their job of evaluating their talent and drive more difficult.


    They went so far as to almostpletely change the exam every year so as to diminish the impact of the leaked information from recalcitrant failed applicants every year. The only thing Rui learnt was that there were multiple rounds each year and the exam invigtors changed each year as well. The difficulty of the exams was exceedingly high, furthermore it was said that a small number of applicants died, every year, while a greater proportion were greatly hurt.


    (''This was unexpected when I''d learnt about it, I was hoping to make targeted training regimes that could allow me to ovee these tests.'') Rui sighed.


    Having dedicated his life to research into Martial Arts andbat sports, Rui was an expert in evaluating the physical and performative attributes necessary for any particr activity, and setting up targeted training regimes that would most efficiently facilitate the growth of the athlete''s ability toplete said physical activity.


    (''I''ll just have to stick to what I''m already doing, I guess.'') He mused.


    "Rui, it''s time to sleep." Lashara said, standing at the doorway.


    "Alright Mom." Rui replied. All the children treated Lashara as their mother, Rui was no different, all of them had been raised by her, she was indeed a mother-like figure to all of them, the adults included. Later on, having changed into the medieval equivalent of pajamas, hey in bed contemting what he ought to do tomorrow.


    (''Cardio early in the mornings; one hour. Then twenty reps of squats, crunches, pushups, pull-ups and chest dips, three reps of nk variations all until lunch. Rest, followed by bnce training at theke till evening, followed by basic body conditioning and tempering.'')


    This was actually a rtively simple and mild training regime, but that was because he was only seven years old. His body was still growing, especially his bones, stressing them too much would be quite detrimental in the long run. He nned increase his exercise load as he got older.


    (''I should be decently well built by the time I''m done.'')


    **********


    The next day, he followed through with his early morning jog. He would generally begin at the orphanage jog to the city ande back before the rush hour begins, but today he was a bitte, so he was navigating through the earliest bustle of the day. In one hand he had a carry-bag with the milk that Myra had requested him to purchase from the market.


    (''Tsk, it''s already so busy.'') Rui tutted, as he was forced to slow down. He couldn''t really just jog past a crowd of adults twice asrge as him. He was forced to take a detour through an alley and skip through the crowd.


    (''I didn''t want to break my run, maybe I should jog a little extra, but Myra did say she wanted the milk so I gue-!'')


    He suddenly felt two arms grabbing around him, one to prevent him from screaming and the other to carry him away.


    "Heh, ck hair and ck eyes? That''s rare, this one can sell for a fortune." He heard a burly voice.


    "Oh? He even has some change, good bonus!" He said as he scoured through Rui''s pocket.


    (''Fuck! I''m actually being kidnapped.'') Rui began to panic. He wasn''t sure what he was supposed to do as the man began carrying him away.


    (''I need get away, but his grip is too strong.'') Rui began to brainstorm. Brute force was out of the question, he needed the man to loosen his grip, otherwise he would have no chance of escaping.<sub> </sub>


    (''Think! How do I create an opportunity to escape?'') He wasn''t sure. The man''s burly hand was wrapped tightly over his mouth and nose to prevent him from making noise. But that gave him an idea. He decided to let his body go ck, acting as if he''d suffocated.


    "Tsk." The man put Rui down for a second to take a good look to ensure his goods was alright. Yet just as he did, Rui jammed his thumb into his kidnapper''s eyes and got up to run away as far as he could, even as the man screamed in pain, cradling his eye. The pain of having his eye jabbed brought the man to a halt, buying Rui only a few seconds of time, the man got up quickly and chased after Rui with a closed eye.


    (''I just need to reach a popted area, he won''t get away with a public child crime.'') Unfortunately, he couldn''t get back to the market the way he came, the burly man was in the way and he most certainly would have been caught. He just needed to reach people, but unfortunately, he''d reached a dead-end instead.


    (''Fuck, I need to go ano-'')


    "Hehehe... too bad you couldn''t get away eh little boy?" The man threw Rui a disgusting smile. In that moment Rui felt despair and true fear. He legs began to shake, and he almost peed himself. Rui forced himself to take a fighting stance, but the man walked over and, ignoring Rui''s meagre struggles, grabbed Rui by the neck forcing him down. Rui thought about screaming, but when he opened his mouth, nothing came out.


    "Let''s have you choke for real." He whispered even as his grin grew wider.


    Rui froze in terror.


    (''He''s going to kill me'') Rui panicked. His heart was beating hard and fast, struggling to give Rui the power he needed, but Rui was too afraid to use it.


    (''It''s no use, I''m too weak.'') He knew this, giving up.


    (''I''m not just weak, I''m pathetic.'')


    Just as his vision was turning red-


    THUDPublished by N?v''elD/rama.Org.


    The man''s grip cked and his arms let go of his neck, and Rui''s body contorted as he gasped and inhaled for air, before turning around.


    (''What the fuck just happened?'')


    What he saw shocked him. The man was dead, lying on the ground. What was even more shocking was the cause of death, the top of his head was dented and broken in. There was another man standing behind him, with a fist midair.


    "To attempt to snuff the life of an innocent child, is the greatest of sins one canmit." The man said scorning at the corpse. His eyes turned to Rui.


    "Are you alright my child?"


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 9 Na?ve

    He was na?ve. He had underestimated what it meant to be a warrior. This wasn''t a movie, or an anime, this was real life. He would have died on the spot if his saviour was toote. Rui thought he could just train and be a warrior, but he had severely underestimated the temperament and resolve needed to fight with his life on the line. How could he, a former denizen of the twenty-first century understand? He had never fought in his life, ever. He didn''t understand just how strong the primal fear of death was ingrained into one''s soul.


    Martial Artists weren''t decorative and aesthetical artists whose jobs were to look cool. They were warriors, assassins, protectors, hunters, pioneers, they were people who fought everyday with their lives on the line. They tread up the Martial path knowing that every step could very easily be theirst.


    Did he possess such resolve?


    That day had made the answer clear.


    He did not. He was unworthy of being a warrior, a Martial Artist.


    "You''re wrong."


    Said the man who saved him. He walked over and sat beside him, patting his head. His gesture was warm and gentle, but his hand was heavy and rough, like a boulder.


    "Kid, you wanna be a Martial Artist, correct?"


    Rui nodded; he was still choked with emotions.


    "Mm, of course you do. There is no other reason a kid your age would put yourself through the training that you have." He noted.


    "Do you think yourself unworthy of being a Warrior because of the fear and despair you felt?"


    It was as if the man could read Rui''s heart. Rui nodded, reluctantly. The man smiled in response.


    "Indeed, you were quite pathetic, not gonna lie. You quivered in fear and despair as you were pushed into the ground..."


    The words tore a hole in Rui''s heart.


    "... But whether or not you''re worthy of being a Warrior, my child, depends on what you do from here on out."


    He turned to Rui, who met his gaze in return.


    "There isn''t a single soul who hasn''t felt crippling fear and despair. Even the strongest of Martial Artists who can split the Earth with a finger have experienced what you have. What separates the strong from the weak, is whether or not one ovees that fear and strives forward."


    Rui clenched his fists and gritted his teeth.


    "Tell me, boy, will you sumb to your fear?"


    "Never... Never again!" Rui swore even as tears of frustration, shame and anger poured out of his eyes. Every muscle in his body went taught, he felt as if every cell in his body stood united as he engrained his oath into each and every single one of them.<sub> </sub>


    "I will never let fear and despair get the best of me again!"


    The man he smiled as he nced at the fire in the young boy''s eyes.


    Rui got up and bowed deeply to the man. "Thank you for saving my life."


    "I''m just doing my duty." the man got up, patted Rui''s head onest time and walked away.


    "Stay safe boy. I''d like to see you be a Warrior, you have what it takes."


    Rui nodded, before bowing down onest time. He made his way to the market, before returning down the path home.


    "Ah, I forgot to ask his name."


    **********


    He ran into Farion on the way back home, exining what had happened, leaving Farion in shock. Things only got worse when he reached back home. All the adult caretakers would not stop fawning over him, and constantly patting and hugging him, partially to reaffirm his well-being and also to soothe their anxiety. Lashara went so far as to almost ban him from leaving the Orphanage out of paranoia, but he managed to get her to change her mind about that, albeit notpletely. Rui had to stay within the vicinity of the orphanage, or be under supervision if he wanted to go further.All rights ? N?velDrama.Org.


    He had no choice but to acquiesce with great reluctance.


    He''d decided to skip the training for the rest of the day, and hang out with his brothers and sisters, he wanted a change of pace.


    "Heh you''ve finally decided to join us in ying Cards eh Rui?" Horatio asked as he made space for Rui.


    In the past seven years he''d forged unbreakable bonds with each of the Orphanage members. He enjoyed spending time with the grumpy Farion, the mischievous Nina, the pragmatic Horatio, the reserved Mica, and the intelligent Julian. When Rui first joined the orphanage, the adults ignored the silly superstition surrounding his hair and eyes, and children quickly followed suitrgely due to their ignorance, expressing adoration about how cute he was.


    The past seven years had caused him to develop a great amount of affection for each of them, and the Orphanage as a whole. Almost to the point he''d rather stay with them than leave to be a Martial Artist.


    (''Almost, but still not enough.'') He mused.


    His renewed will and determination after that morning''s incident would not allow him to not be a Martial Artist, he just felt a tinge of sadness that it would eventually drive him away from his family. The Academy not only took care of housing and food, but mandated its students to stay in the Academy dormitories. The Martial Path was one that required discipline, which could only be fully enforced if the Academy regted the students'' lives from dawn to dusk. Even once he graduated, he suspected he would have to spend long hours, days and maybe even weeks away from his family.


    He would most certainly grow a little distant from them, it was inevitable. Although he would always love them, prolonged periods of separation would likely dampen his emotions. He was not a very social person, even in his previous life, his parents died early, and since then he had never forged a single significant rtionship or even friendship.


    (''I''ll make the most of these times, then, for the next six years... Then I''ll have to leave them.'') It was a shame to Rui. He quickly shook away these thoughts before getting invested in the game.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 10 Martial Exam

    "Have you taken your identification."All rights ? N?velDrama.Org.


    "Yes."


    "Have you taken some energy drinks?"


    "Yes."


    "Have you double checked the timings?"


    "Yes."


    "Have you-


    "Enough mom! I have everything in ce, don''t worry." Rui reprimanded exasperatedly. Lashara was notoriously overprotective. The Martial Entrance Exam was notoriously difficult and dangerous, Lashara had warned Rui over and over that it could be disastrous, but she knew Rui had been preparing for this day for a long time. His resolve was quite unshakeable, she knew her words would have no effect. Rather than antagonizing him and earn his ire, she decided to give him her blessings.


    Six years had passed since the kidnapping incident, Rui was now thirteen-years-old. The time for the Martial Arts entrance exam hade. It was quite unnerving to Rui, even though he had been mentally preparing himself for this day for a long time. No, it was because he''d been preparing for this day for a long time that he was nervous.


    He breathed deeply, trying to calm his racing heart down as he prepared his pouch with some basic essentials.


    "Let me travel with you there, Rui." Julian smiled. He had managed to graduate from the Kandrian Institute of Sciences, and was epted into the Institute as an apprentice schr under a prestigious Schr in the research and development department.


    "Thanks." Rui nodded. Julian had always been a calming influence, he was a true genius too, unlike Rui.


    Lashara hugged him onest time and kissed him on the head.


    "Be safe, don''t push yourself too far, okay?" She told him, a tinge of anxiety rippled across her face.


    "Yeah, don''t worry mom. I''ll be fine."


    After receiving well-wishes from the whole of the Quarrier Orphanage, he bid them farewell and set out with Julian on a rickshaw.


    "Nervous?"


    "Surprisingly not as much as just a while ago. Being supported by my family puts me at ease, even though the significance or difficulty of the exam hasn''t changed at all."


    "I''m d to hear that." Julian smiled.


    "I''m going to be honest with you. I truly never did expect that your drive to be a Martial Artist would be this strong..."


    Rui didn''t know how to respond.


    "Children undergo a lot of phases as they grow, this is universally true for almost everybody. I say almost true, because I''ve only evere across one exception."


    Julian turned to Rui with scrutinizing eyes.


    "Born with hitherto unheard of prodigious, genius-level intelligence, having mastered twonguages, mathematics and sciences at an extraordinarily young age, yet you''ve never changed, at all Rui." Julian continued. "It''s pretty absurd, your temperament was also unchanging and mature well beyond your age. Your cognitive capabilities only grew exponentially sharper as you grew older."


    Rui knew what he was talking about, a human being''s brain stopped developing at the age of twenty-five, this was the age at which their cognitive capabilities reached a peak. Rui, however, inherited the cognitive capabilities of his previous brain stacked on top of the growing cognition of his adolescent brain. It was as if he possessed the sum of the IQs of both John Falken and Rui Quarrier. This was one of the biggest advantages of being reborn with your mind intact; His already grown mind received the advantage of growing even more for a second time.


    "All of this data points to the conclusion that you''re an adult in a child''s body..." Julian continued.<sub> </sub>


    Rui turned his head and met his gaze, before smirking.


    "You don''t actually believe that do you?"


    "No." Julian shrugged, smiling. "It''s not impossible, nothing is, but it''s too absurd."


    "Heh."


    Inwardly Rui sweating. He had no idea why he was reincarnated, though he suspected there was a reason behind it. He was pretty scared that his secret woulde out when Julian began talking about Rui. To think that this guy had been scrutinizing and analyzing Rui for the past thirteen years and correctly hypothesized the actual truth, as expected of an actual genius.


    They bantered for a long time until the rickshaw had reached its destination.


    "Well then, good luck Rui. I''ll be heading to the KIS from here."


    "Thanks Julian, goodbye."


    "Ah onest thing"


    Rui turned to face Julian as he got off.


    "Even if you were someone else reborn in a child''s body, I would still love you as my brother." Julian smiled warmly. "Go on Rui, fulfill your dream."


    Rui smiled back. "I sure as hell will." And with that, the two brothers split paths.


    Rui turned to face the Mantian branch of the Kandrian Martial Academy. There many rickshaws, and even many chariots littered outside the Academy, there were many thousands of adolescent boys and even a decent proportion of girls umting inside the gigantic facility. Gigantic was an understatement, the only reason he wasn''t too shocked was because he had demanded to see the Academy atleast once before. Still, it was an incredible sight. Just the mere sight of it forcefully inspired ambition from within one''s heart.


    "This is it."


    The Kandrian Martial Academy was a multi-sectioned set of facilities that revolved around one primary facility that served as the main facility for training. It was fortified by a huge wall made from stones and cement, that circled around the Academy for many kilometers on end.


    The sheer prestige of this Academy alone drove more than a million aspiring Martial Artists to apply for the entrance exam.


    As Rui entered the Academy, having passed the huge gates after showing his ID to the Gate security, he took a good look at thepetitors, who were heading towards the designated exam center.


    (''They''re almost all older than me.'') Rui noted.


    Most of the adolescents taking the exam seemed to be sixteen and above.


    (''I guess it''s somewhat rare for a thirteen-year-old to participate.'') Rui said, as he received a numbered tag upon reaching the facility, serving as his applicant ID.


    The exam center was even bigger than one would think from afar, within the facility was a huge crowd of applicants. The mood was tense, although there were Martial Artists serving as assistant invigtors to prevent the outbreak of violence, just standing in the room with thousands of others put faint pressure on Rui. A cursory nce at the crowd revealed a lot of information about hispetition.


    (''Most of them have trained their body, though not as much as I have. Yet a lot of them are inherently physically superior to I am. I''m only making up for ack of talentpared to the strongest applicants. The age gap definitely favours them significantly too.'')


    Rui smiled.


    (''Not that I give a fuck, I''m going to crack this exam no matter what.'')


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 11 First Round

    Just then, a strong, loud voice echoed across the facility from atop the stage near the opposite end of the room to the entrance.


    "Wee to the 106th annual entrance exam of the Martial Academy..." A man who looked to be in his fifties spoke. He had a long salt-and-pepper beard, and a bald head. He wore luxurious robes over a simple Martial Art uniform that spoke to his position within the Academy. The most distinctive feature about him was the most intangible one; the weight of his presence. Rui could feel it. Every single applicant could feel it. They all even realized they experienced the same pressure, when everyone began stiffening up or showing other signs of anxiety, fear and difort.


    (''He''s not even doing anything special.'') Rui smiled nervously as he began sweating. (''He just gave the most generic and simple wee.'')This belongs to N?velDrama.Org - ?.


    "... I am Master Aronian, a Martial Master and the Headmaster of the Kandrian Martial Academy, I will also be serving as your head examiner and invigter." He continued, ignoring the applicants'' reactions.


    (''So this is a Martial Master... Incredible... This is fucking amazing.'') Rui grew more and more excited. How could he not? The man was more hundreds of meters away and his lungs were powerful enough to talk loudly enough without any aid. He was that far away, yet his presence alone was so heavy that Rui felt as if he was staring a bloodthirsty, man-eating tiger in the eyes point nk.


    (''He could kill us all in under a second, if he wanted.'') Rui''s instincts told him.


    "The exam will have three rounds. Each of the three rounds will require you toplete one or more tasks. The exact conditions and stiptions of passing and failure maybe left to the discretion of the individual invigtors evaluating your performance for the third round particrly. The first round and second round however, are objective."


    (''So, the criteria for passing the third round is not objective, that may make things tricky. Different invigtors may measure your capabilities differently, but why is the first and second round different?'')


    "We will begin the first round shortly." Master Aronian said, raising his hand. Immediately, thousands of Martial Artists entered the facility and got onto the stage with boxes, followed by a hundred distinguished looking Martial Artists.


    (''They have a heavy presence, though not as severe as that of Master Aronian. Martial Seniors maybe. It makes sense, Master Aronian isn''t going to administer the test personally. We applicants are not worth his time.'')


    Once the hundred Seniors had finished spreading out on the gigantic stage and their assistants finished setting up a simple looking table with boxes behind them and railing leading down the steps from them. Master Aronian continued.


    "The test will now begin. Within each of therge boxes ced on the table, are the passes for the second round of the Exam. Your objective is very simple; You must walk over to the Martial Senior standing in front of each box, shake their hand... and request them for a pass, all rapidly within ten seconds."


    Master Aronian paused for a second, indulging himself in a smile. "Those who canplete the aforementioned objective will receive a pass to the second round, those who cannot, will irrevocably fail the first round as well as the exam altogether. Good luck."


    He walked away, havingpleted his duty.


    (''Huh...?'') Rui was gob smacked. He could sense that each and every single applicant save a small minority were just as confused as he was. He, like a lot of others, decided to wait it out and see what happened. There was obviously more to this than met the eye.


    Rui watched with great scrutiny as the first applicant walked up the stairs to the stage, through the railings. But just as he reached the stage, he froze.


    (''Hm? Why did he stop?'') Rui nced at the Martial Senior that the applicant was facing before realizing what had happened.<sub> </sub>


    (''Bloodlust.'') Rui sensed the emotion the powerful Senior was practically radiating. In fact, all the Seniors had begun doing just that. The applicants at the front of the queue had frozen in fear, unable to approach the Martial Senior. Ten secondster, The Martial Squires assisting the Martial Senior began dering applicants'' failures.


    "Applicant 00504; failed."


    "Applicant 10756; failed."


    "Applicant 65784; failed."


    "Applicant 45786; failed."


    ¡­


    "Applicant 00037; failed."


    (''I see. I get it now.'') Rui realized. The first round was a test of fortitude and resolve. Martial Seniors were exploiting evolutionary neurology and psychology to evaluate the applicants.


    All sentient life had evolved to evaluate danger, risks and threat. This was an evolutionary psycho-gic trait that allowed for species in ecosystems to survive, it was a well-documented phenomenon of evolutionary biology in his previous life.


    This included even the smallest of animals like insects to the most powerful of dragons and phoenixes that existed in this world. All of them were able to evaluate danger subconsciously from observation and intuition. Based on how high the danger was evaluated to be subconsciously, their minds would experience a proportional amount of fear.


    The first round of the exam utilized this neuro-psychological phenomenon in testing the applicants. The Seniors were not literally radiating some magical energy field that induced fear, they were merely exploiting the candidate''s instinctual, sub-conscious danger evaluation to induce crippling fear in the applicants. This was a piece of cake for the Martial Seniors, considering the applicants were basically kids. In fact, they even held back their bloodlust and didn''t seem to go overboard. They needed to see how far each applicant could be pushed.


    (''Specifically, they''re testing our resolve and our determination.'')


    A million applicants applied every year, each of them was driven by different motivations. Glory, money, prestige, ambition, power, duty etc. The first round tested the strength of the applicant''s determination to be a Martial Artist. The Martial Journey was an incredibly arduous and dangerous journey, if the applicants could not ovee this simple obstacle, they were wholly unfit to be Martial Artists. They would fail to reach even the Martial Squire stage.


    (''This test... I''ve undergone this test before.'') Rui remembered.


    The kidnapping incident was somewhat simr to this test, and he failed that test miserably. He''d sworn he never would fail ever again.


    (''This time... This time for sure!'')


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 12 I Will

    "Applicant 11234; Kane Arrancar, pass!"


    Rui heard, as he took a good look at the first applicant to pass the test and head out the exit with a pass. To his surprise, the kid was short, about as short as him.


    (''Woah, to think a kid my age would pass this test.'') Rui noted, impressed. He decided to wait his turn until the queue shortened and most of the applicants failed.


    (''To think the first round alone would be this cutthroat.'') Rui mused. Though it was to be expected to some degree. More than a million applicants applied to the entrance exam every year on average, there were only sixteen institutes with what should be around a carrying and training capacity of no more than a thousand or two each.


    If the already existing students were factored in, that would yield an eptance rate of around one-percent. Meaning the three rounds of the exam had to somehow whittle away ny-nine-percent of all applicants. With that stiption in mind, this brutal filtering made a lot of sense.


    (''That also means that each Martial Artist was effectively the most talented as well as the most determine and resolved of their generation.'') Rui''s respect and admiration for Martial Artists went up. He quietly observed the ongoing ordeal for quite a while, specifically observing those who passed the test. He was quite a distance so he wasn''t able to discern their characteristics, but in general they had an air of solidity in them, they were people who had enough determination to ovee their primal fear of death.


    (''the question is whether I''ll join them or not.'') Rui wondered. Yet for some strange reason he wasn''t as nervous as he was when he''d woken up that morning.


    (''Weird, I was nervous back at the orphanage, but I feel serene now, shouldn''t it be the other way around?'')


    "The first round will be ending soon, we urge those who haven''t attempted the round yet to do so before the time limit ends, you will not be allowed to appear for the round once the time is up."


    That prompted Rui forward. He saw multiple empty queues as all the riff-raff left with deted spirits.


    (''...Maybe it''s because I know?'')


    He walked forward nonchntly, climbing the stairs step by step. Maintaining eye-contact with the Senior who would be evaluating his performance. Once he reached the top of the stairs, he stopped. He felt as if the air was prickling his skin, urging him to stop. He felt as if the ground had begun to incline upwards, denying him entry. He felt as if the world itself barricaded his path forward while instinctual fear shackled him back.


    (''What a horrifying feeling, so this is the bloodlust of a Senior. It''s millions, if not billions of times scarier than the man who nearly choked me to death...'') He looked down at his quivering fingers. It was almost as if his body had begun fearing it of its own volition. He clenched his fists, as if to forcefully imbue courage in them, before walking forward at a steady pace.


    (''Maybe it''s because I know...'')


    He reached the Senior.


    (''...that this isn''t enough to curb me!'')


    He red at the Senior with defiance, even as his jaw ttered. His legs felt like they were turning to jelly. His limbs felt like an electric current ran through them. But he pushed forward, going so far as to crush his tongue tobat the fear.


    (''I WILL be a Martial Artist.'')<sub> </sub>


    Before bowing to show respect, defiance could be tolerated, but disrespect would not.


    Rising back up, he calmed down as his expression returned to neutral.


    "Senior, may I have a pass to the second round?"


    The man stared deeply into Rui''s pitch-ck eyes, before breaking into a smile.


    "Of course." He acquiesced, handing Rui a piece of paper that, written on it was a deration of his right to appear for the second round of the 106th Kandrian Martial Academy entrance exam.


    "Applicant 30947; Rui Quarrier, pass!"


    With that, Rui made his way to the exit at the end of the stage heading down the path indicated by signs until he reached a facility. Within it, of course, were the applicants who passed the first round.


    (''There''s still like a few thousand of ''em.'') Rui inwardly tutted. He''d hoped there would be fewer, resulting in lesserpetition. He knew that the realpetition would start from here, all the people who made it to the second round were built different from the wannabes. Everyone in the room eyed each other, knowing exactly this. Rui drew a fair bit of attention himself because of his youth and his pitch-ck hair and eyes, though he didn''t care too much, it was something he had long grown used to.


    The training room they were in was rather strange, it was basically a giant hemisphere. There were also several panels located all across the hemisphere as if they were meant to serve as hatches from which things could be dropped into the training facility.


    (''Hm, that''s eerie.'')


    The training hall confused him because he couldn''t understand why it had such strange architecture. It couldn''t be easy to engineer and construct a facility with such a strange shape. It was also rather inconvenient in a variety of ways since it covered a lot of area on the ground but the volume pf the building was rather low inparison to other conventional multi-story buildings. So why on Earth would the Academy bother going out of its way to construct something of this sort?


    (''It probably has something to with the exam.'') Rui suspected, though he wasn''t entirely sure. If this was the case though, there were multiple possible reasons for architecture he coulde up with.


    Suddenly Rui felt a familiar pressure interrupting his thoughts, he knew who it was before even confirming with his own eyes.


    "Congrattions on passing the first round of the Entrance Exam." Master Aronian said, walking towards the applicants... "The fact that you stand here before me is proof that within each one of you lies a burning desire to be a Martial Artist, yet that is not enough. Will cannot alter your fate all by itself... It needs power. You, need power... The only question I have for each one of you is..." His eyes sharpened.This belongs to N?velDrama.Org - ?.


    <o>,m "Do you have power?"</o>


    His tone weighed on them, the answer to that question would decide the oue of the exam.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 13 Bouncing Slimes

    "The second round will soon begin..." Even as he said that Rui could see assistants bringing out thousands of boxes.


    (''Something to do with the second round no doubt.") Rui noted as they finished bringing everything they needed seemingly.


    "Your performance in the second round will be graded by points." Master Aroanian continued. "Those of you whose number of points are lower than that of the average will fail this round. As for the actual test itself, all of you will be locked in this training hall with bouncing slimes. Bouncing slimes are a species of slimes that hunt animals, humans included, in dungeons by mming into them repeatedly by bouncing in enclosed spaces. These slimes will be released in here with all of you, and they will hunt to kill you. Blocking or parrying a slime while incurring minimal damage will earn you one point, dodging a slime will earn you two points and killing a slime will earn you five points."


    (''Hmmm. This is not what I expected, I pictured a more straightforward testing of physical and performative attributes.'')


    "There is more important information and rules, so please pay attention. Firstly, the number of slimes in the training room at any point in time will be maintained at one hundred."


    (''That''s a fuck ton.'')


    "Secondly, you are prohibited from entering a two-meter radius of your fellow applicants, every vition of this rule will cost you five points."


    (''Makes sense, it prohibits uncontrolled violence between the applicants.'')


    "Thirdly, you will be required to wear a special weighted suit at all times." Master Aronian exined as the assistants took out said suits from the boxes and began offering them to the applicants.


    "These suits are quite heavy and will strain and hinder your body, allowing us to evaluate your capability more objectively. The weight in these suitse from an extremely dense and heavy liquid present in the outeryer of the suit. You will not be allowed to remove these suits during the exam." Master Aronian warned.


    (''Wait, so we have to block and dodge a hundred bouncing slimes that hunt humans, while wearing these heavy suits??'') Rui was stunned. Yet even as fear crept into his heart, a nervous smile broke onto his face.


    "Fourthly, you may not be within ten meters of the walls of this exam center."


    (''Tsk, that kills an obvious strategy.'')


    "And the final and most important rule: Once the second round begins, it will stop only after the first applicant among you dies..."


    All the applicants in the room froze; Rui included. Master Aronian just increased the stakes. Even though the probability of them being the one to die was low, just knowing that one of them would inevitably die made the air macabre.


    "All of you will be required to sign a consent form in order to appear for this round and the next. You will be unable to withdraw from the exam once it has begun, so please make up your minds carefully. Good luck. The second round will begin in half an hour."<sub> </sub>


    (''So this is why the exam is known to kill a few applicants every year.'') Rui realized. (''This year, atleast sixteen applicants will die because each of the sixteen branches of the Kandrian Martial Academy is holding the exam. I''m going to have to give this round my absolute best.'')


    As Rui put on his suit, he noted how strange the fabric was.


    (''Extremely stic, yet it doesn''t exert a high restorative spring force despiterge amounts of strain and its thickness, I don''t think even Earth had such a remarkable material.'') Every substance had something called a Young''s Modulus, it was a property that described how much stress was needed to strain a certain material or substance. The suits that were provided had an exceptionally low modulus, allowing to be stretched with great ease.


    After he and many other applicants put the suit on, one of the assistant invigtors inserted something into the suit from an opening in the back that instantly added great weight to the suit while simultaneously began shifting its center of mass. The drastic shifts in center of mass and gravity made both Rui and most other contestants fall, losing their bnce.


    (''I see! This isn''t just meant to hinder our movements; it''s meant to hinder our bnce as well. Master Aronian had mentioned that the extra weight came from an extremely dense liquid in the outeryer of the suit.'')


    Liquids did not have a defined shape allowing them to flow within the suit, every time Rui tilted it, furthermore Rui''s movements were hindered by the inertia of the liquid, reducing his agility.


    (''This is no joke, this will be quite difficult to handle.'') Rui gritted.


    His bnce wasn''t bad, but with a dense liquid flowing around inside the suit, he had a hard time getting his bearing. He spent the remaining twenty minutes testing how much the suit hindered his movements.


    (''It deviates my movements roughly twenty-percent.'') Looking around, he noticed that the other applicants didn''t have an easy time adapting to the suit, most of them had to perform every movement with caution.


    (''It seems they''re doing their best to get used to its feel as quickly as possible before the exam begins... How crude.'') He tutted.


    Rui had already prepared a set of tactics to make the most efficient use of his body under the current circumstances. He''d made use of the rotational and fluid dynamics he''d learnt thoroughly in hisst life.Content rights by N?velDr//ama.Org.


    (''Because of the extra torque caused by uneven distribution of the liquid every time I bend, I need to reduce the degree to which I tilt or bend my body. I''ve already determined that my legs can''t handle full-body motions due to the pre-existing torque of my body in addition to the extra torque caused by the liquid, I need to reduce the torque acting on my body by ensuring I don''t tilt or bend as much as I normally do. Doing this will keep the bnce and distribution of liquid in the suit even and uniform.'')


    This was a very fancy and technical way of saying; ''I''ll trip if I bend too much, so I should stay steady'', this might sound likemon sense, but the difference was that Rui had determined at exactly what angle of tilting and bending did the torque be too much. Due to his physics background he could clearly estimate and extrapte whether or not a certain maneuver was safe and what the likelihood of losing his bnce was.


    (''I''m not talented... I wasn''t born with great strength, speed or durability, or exceptional bnce and flexibility or body-eye coordination... But I have the wealth of knowledge of a lifetime and a mind growing past its ordinary limits... I won''t sumb to this challenge!'')


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 14 Pandemonium

    The assistant invigtors quickly vacated the room, leaving the applicants alone. All of them had been informed the exam would begin the moment the doors shut closed. They''d maintained several meters distance from each other with their guards up and their alertness at max, eyeing the gigantic dome sealings and its many closed hatches. The tension was palpable, everyone knew that the carelessness could end up meaning a slow and painful death.Published by N?v''elD/rama.Org.


    With the doors closed, they could rely on nobody but themselves to survive and pass this round.


    Suddenly, a squeaking sound shook everyone as they directed their gaze to its source. The hatch at the top of the dome in the center had opened. Yet nothing came out.


    (''This is unnerving, I''d rather they just begin.'') Ruiined.


    A transparent blob appeared through the hole.


    (''Here it-'')


    His thoughts were interrupted as ny-nine other hatches opened simultaneously, and a bouncing slime appeared out of each one of them.


    (''Oh fuck me.'') It was difficult to fully appreciate the difficulty of tasks you''ve never attempted. Only after the hundred bouncing slimes appeared did Rui understand the gravity of the second round.


    Yet despite all that, he had the audacity to smile. No, not just smile, but grin like a madman.


    All one hundred bouncing slimes dashed off towards the unwitting applicants, and what followed was the most chaotic experience Rui has ever undergone.


    Bouncing slimes doing as promised; bouncing, and applicants doing as expected; getting bounced at.


    Rui had already been hit multiple times.


    (''Damn, this fucking hurts!'') Rui cursed a slime rammed into his ribs. They were asrge as ser balls, meaning their force somewhat concentrated. He shook it off and concentrated. He had already made several ns, he just wanted as few of hispetitors to catch on


    (''The biggest obstacle here is the fact that the attacks are omnidirectional, they cane from anywhere. With our limited field of vision, it is impossible see them all. In that case...'')


    He turned to the closest applicant to him, who was also thirteen. This was by no ident; Rui had already known that the AoE nature of the ordeal would make it difficult to avoid getting hit.


    He had decided to team up with an applicant and watch each other''s backs, and call every attack heading their way that they saw. He intentionally chose to be near a young applicant like himself, the odds of them agreeing to team up was much higher with a younger applicant, who would also be disadvantaged against older applicants.


    But before he could say a word to the applicant, he spoke to Rui of his own volition.


    "Hey, wanna team up?"<sub> </sub>


    Rui was taken aback.


    (''Not bad, the fact that he was able to realize the merits in this alone means he''s worth teaming up with.'')


    Rui nodded, before they both faced their backs to each other. And the effect was noticeable quickly, although they didn''t dodge all the attacks from their blind spots, they did so at a higher rate than when they were relying on themselves.


    Still, Rui was getting hit more often that he didn''t.


    (''Thank God getting hit doesn''t give you negative points otherwise probably not a single person here would score above zero... But this isn''t enough.'')


    Right now, his performance wasn''t really exceptionalpared to the others. He needed to ensure he passed this round, in order to that he needed to dodge more. Though he didn''t have a concrete n yet, he had already made several astute observations.


    (''I had only suspected it initially, but these slimes are cannot seem to control their trajectories.'') Their trajectories were too random and inefficient; they really did bounce around like a non-living super-bouncy ball.


    (''Specifically, their bounces obey thews of motion and reflection far too much. This implies that the only thing determining their trajectories are the initialunch and thews of physics, if they were manipting their directions, their bouncing would most certainly not be consistent with kinematical predictions of their trajectories.'')


    Rui grinned.


    (''It''s one thing if they could control their motion after the initialunch... But if their trajectories are driven by physics, then they can be predicted it.'')


    Of course, this was not a perfect solution, first of all predicting all the slimes was absolutely impossible, he couldn''t even see more than half of them because the rest was in his blind spot. Furthermore, predicting arge number of slimes, even if not all required an extreme amount of focus which would almos certainly tire him out. He wasn''t sure he would be able to predict the ones he could clearly see, but he had to try.


    (''Don''t react after they bounce in your direction, react before they bounce. Thews of reflection are extremely simple. The reflected trajectory and incident trajectory will be in the same ne, and the angle of incidence will be equal to the angle of reflection, it''s extremely simple to verify whether or not a ball will bounce in your direction. The problem is the number, I need to maintain realistic goal, I can forget about those in my periphery vision, but I should be able to manage the balls in my primary perifoveal vision.'')


    He decided to ignore the slimes in the extremes of his vision, clenching his body and protecting the sides of his heads with his hands, focusing only on the slimes he could clearly see. But unlike the other applicants, he wasn''t looking at the balls that had already bounced off the dome sealing. He was looking at the ones that had yet to. Quickly confirming or denying their future trajectories, he also reduced his movements to a minimum to make his task of observation easier. Suddenly-


    "Duck!" Rui warned his partner.


    His partner crouched, but the slime came a split secondter than he had expected. He was surprised Rui had managed to give him such an early warning. The same thing happened over and over, until he realized Rui hadn''t fallen down or grimaced in pain in the past twenty-minutes. He was dodging all the slimes from that came from the front and back, while permanently using his arms as shields to minimize damage from attacks from the side.


    (''Interesting, his physical capability doesn''t seem to be too high. But he''s dodging them almost as good as I am. Furthermore, that hair and eyes of his... Could he also be a genius?'') The boy wondered.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 15 Outcome

    An hour and twelve minutes had passed since the second round had begun. Rui had grown more and morefortable in his task of dodging, although it was still very taxing on him, the dys in reaction time, wastage in movements had decreased, albeit not by much. The real problem was no longer how to dodge, but how long he could dodge. His stamina had been well-honed in the past thirteen years. But ultimately, he was thirteen years old. His body was not blessed with great amounts of energy, and there was a limit to how much he could have trained as a pre-pubescent child, and a limit to the impact that the training would have prior to puberty.


    "Huff.. Huff.." He wiped sweat from his forehead, he was sweating so much that it was starting to hinder his vision.


    "Can you keep going?" His partner asked nonchntly.


    (''Tsk, this brat. How on Earth is he not tired? Furthermore, he rarely gets hit, he calls out slimes impably. He''s aplishing this through sheer field of vision, agility, reflexes and crazy maneuvering. This kid is a fucking genius.'')


    "Are you rubbing your stamina in my face?" Rui barely managed to spit out a retort, narrowly avoiding a slime.


    "Heh, maybe... Duck!" He warned. Unfortunately, Rui couldn''t do so in time, and the slime grazed his shoulder.


    "Fuck!" He grimaced. Yet the worst part is that the hit had diverted his attention, preventing him from reacting in time to another slime that was about to hit is head.


    He braced himself, waiting for the impact. And he waited, waited, yet it never came.


    Opening his eyes only revealed a Martial Squire standing in front of him. The slime nowhere to be seen.


    (''He.. protected me? But why?'') He wondered, dazed.


    (''Wait, is the exam...?) He knitted his eyebrows. Looking around, he saw a simr sight in all directions. The Martial Artists had intervened with their remarkable physical prowess.


    "The second round is nowplete, your results will be tallied, and ranked within an hour." Master Aronian''s voice echoed through the facility.


    (''That means, someone just died...'') Rui searched the facility before his eyes caught the sight of a young boy''s corpse being covered and carried away.


    (''Sigh, that could have been me.'') He thought, before dismissing the thought.


    "In the meantime, the assistant invigtors will provide you with stamina, nutritional and healing potions and any other medical aid you may need. The third round will begin only after the results of the second round are published..." Master Aronian continued, rattling of a few more instructions.


    "You okay?" Rui''s partner walked over to him, giving him a hand.


    "Okay enough, thanks." Rui epted, getting up.


    "I''m Kane, by the way, Kane Arrancar."


    "Rui Quarrier." Rui replied nonchntly.


    Kane threw him an odd, curious look.


    "Something on my face?" Rui raised an eyebrow.


    "Well... That''s just not the reaction I get when I tell people my name. It''s a bit refreshing actually." Kane chuckled wryly.


    "You''re from a famous family?"<sub> </sub>


    "Yeah, my dad is a Martial Sage. And my family has produced many renowned Martial Sages and Masters in the past."


    "Hmm, that sounds cool. No wonder you aced the exam, you''re practically born to be a Martial Artist." Ruiplimented, only to receive mncholic, helpless sigh in response. He could tell he''d touched a nerve, but he wasn''t sure what.


    "I think you''re pretty good too."


    They chatted lightly as they consumed several potions that healed their wounds and bruises while restoring their stamina. Rui had never actually consumed a potion in his life, though he had long learnt of them. Potions were not something that the lower economic sses could afford, especially not an Orphanage trying to fund itself, he''d never had the opportunity to try one. What surprised him the most was that potions were merely stored in liquid form, in order to be effectively consumed, they needed to be inhaled.


    (''That... makes sense. I guess it''s just a little counter-intuitive to me since potions, in fiction, are always drunk. However, it would be impossible for potions that are drunk to be effective immediately, of course. Digestion is a long process. Whereaspounds directly inhaled reach cells extremely quickly because they''re diffused into blood that carries them to every cell in the body, allowing them to be effective immediately. Furthermore, potions being drunk would be subjected to a number of chemical reactions that cannot be predicted, controlled and ounted for. It''s a poorly constrained means of administration of aplexpound, especially if organic in nature... Interesting, I wonder how these potions work.'')


    Did they have such high technology that they had synthesized nanobots that could enter the blood through the airway allowing it to perform all kinds of operations on the entirety of the human body on a cellr level?


    It was practically impossible, nanotechnology was the absolute pinnacle of material science and engineering. How could a world have mastered such technology when they hadn''t even discovered electricity?


    (''Their scientific progression is low, and their engineering clearly leaves much to be desired, yet they can do things that even cutting-edge tech from Earth can''t... This indicates that their technical prowess and understanding of this world isn''t high, however what is special is the world itself. The capabiltiies of their technologyes from the supernatural but powerful resources that can be obtained the powerful flora, fauna and the bizarre nature of this world. This exins the oddities I''ve noticed throughout my second life. The lighting technology that relies on nts that glow, themunication technology that relies on supernatural creatures and phenomena, the remarkably intricate architecture and engineering that no doubt relies on something simr, and the medical technology the relies on a vast variety of supernatural phenomena and life forms. Most fascinating indeed.'')


    Kane noticed Rui''s engrossed interest in the potions they were delivered.


    "Have you never consumed a potion before?" He asked, tilting his head with a surprised expression.


    "Yes, this is my first time. It''s fascinating."This belongs to N?velDrama.Org - ?.


    "Howe you''ve never had a potion before?" He continued, confusion creeping into his expression.


    Rui turned his head, throwing him a puzzled nce.


    (''I thought he was intelligent based on how quickly he decided to team up, but is this kid actually an airhead?'')


    "...Because they cost three silvers?"


    "...And?"


    Rui looked at him with disbelief.


    "... And I can''t afford to spend that much money on a product that can only be used once."


    "...Oh" Kane responded, feeling embarrassed and even guilty. He was used to drinking several potions of several kinds provided to him every day.


    (''He wasn''t even making fun of me. He just seems to be so rich he has no frame of reference what normal looks like. This kid muste from serious money.'') Rui sighed. He decided to ignore it, continuing to banter with the kid. Just then, the assistant invigtors had appeared pushing a tall rolling board with a sheet of paper.


    (''It''s here... the results of the second round!'') Rui tensed.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 16 Battle Royale

    The results had arrived, and immediately a crowd had formed around the board. Fortunately, the notice board tall, and the rankings were boldened so that the crowd would not be able to block others from reading them. Rui and Kane had already gone closer to get a better look.


    (''So the results are ranked in ascending order of points, those with the highest points at the top. Each ranking has name, ID, points and whether they passed or failed.'') Rui noted. The board had also mentioned the average number of points per applicant, which in this case was 347 points.


    He began searching for his name rigorously, there were thousands of names, so this would take a while. The problem was he was reaching the end of the ''passed'' section. He still hadn''t found his name.


    (''Dammit, did I fai-'')


    "Hey, found your name. You passed." Kane told him.


    Rui jerked. "Where is it?!"


    "Woah chill, it''s right there, see?" Kane pointed towards at the top of the first section.


    "See, you got ranked ninth." He told Rui nkly.


    "..." Rui stood there gaping as he beheld his ranking. He thought Kane was trolling him when he said ninth, but unless his eyes were also trolling him, it was the truth!


    "What...?" He mumbled in disbelief. He''d scored 706 points. Putting him above ny-nine percent of hispetitors.


    "But how...?" Rui was confused, even after he teamed up with Kane, and even after he applied his tactics, he still got hit more than half the time. Less than fifty-percent was generally a horrible score ording to his academic sensibilities, but apparently the exam was so difficult for everybody that even this low score was quite remarkable.


    Rui sighed, trying to reign in his shock.


    "Hey man, don''t feel bad, ninth isn''t a bad rank." Kaneforted him with him consoling smile. "Cheer up, okay?"


    Rui stared at him with a ck jaw. This kid...


    "What''s your rank?" Rui took the precaution of asking before he decided how to retort.


    "Fourth." Kane replied with a relieved tone.


    "...!" Rui threw him a shocked look, before quickly verifying his rank.


    (''Amazing, this kid is something special alright. But...'')<sub> </sub>


    "But why don''t you look happier though?"


    "Father said that if I didn''t get into the top five, my y time would be be reced with more training. So I just barely made the cut." He replied with a tinge of relief and defiance.All rights ? N?velDrama.Org.


    (''Seems being part of a famous martial familyes with its own fair share of tribtions. I trained out of my own free will. How could someone force a child to train so rigorously?'') Rui wondered. Another thing he noted was that Kane implied his father already knew what the test was, as well as about the evaluation method and passing criteria.


    "I see. Sounds rough." Rui offered.


    "It''s a pain in the ass."


    Rui turned back to the board once more. From what he could see, roughly sixty to seventy-percent of the applicants had failed. All around him applicants seemed to be either relieved or disappointed. Large droves of applicants exited the facility until a much smaller poption remained, having their wounds tended to or simply waiting for the third and final round.


    Rui nced around at those who had passed and remained in the facility. These applicants were both determined and resolved enough to pass the first round, as well as talented and skillful enough to pass the second round.


    (''These guys are the real deal. They possess both the drive and qualifications to be Martial Artists.'')


    Everyone in the room could sense that too, each one of them could see that everybody else was not ordinary. Rui once more drew eyes towards him than usual, not just because of his odd hair and eyes, but more so due to his ID, which belonged to the top ten. There were many who had looked for those applicants that managed to get into the top ten, after all, depending on what the third round ended up being, it could be of great help remembering the most dangerous applicants in here.


    "Congrattions on passing the second round of the Martial Entrance Exam. Before I divulge details of the third round, each of you will be provided with a badge with your score from the second round, you may not cover or store the badge. The third-round is simr to the second round in that in that your objective is to obtain as many points as possible. The means by which you acquire points however, will be different. It''s very simple. The number of points you possess by the end of the round will be equal to the sum of the points of all badges in your possession."


    A spark of understanding shed through the applicants.


    "You may umte points by obtaining the badges of your fellow applicants, through any means whatsoever. Once again; your goal is to umte points. Only half of you will pass the exam. You will be evaluated on your performance."


    (''So basically, the final round will be a Battle Royale.'')


    Rui quickly realized this was bad for him.


    (''The people who scored the highest will be the biggest targets, obviously. They''re the ones with badges of the highest score. Among the top ten, I''m almost certainly the weakest in actualbat. I have no formal training in Martial Art whatsoever, my experience inbat is negligible, my physical prowess is inferior to all other applicants, Kane included.'')


    The onlybat training Rui had done in the past three years was basic kickboxing practice. For punching and jabbing he would put himself through standard boxing training from Earth; Bag work, slip bad, pad work etc. These weremon boxing training exercises. Of course, he didn''t have actual equipment, he had to be a little clever and resourceful. He''d used rice bags in ce bag equipment, cloth wrapped think nks of wood nailed to trees etc. But he did this only so that he could familiar himself with the sensation of striking. It was by no means actual experience, or even substitute for sparring.


    (''This is going to be genuinely rough. I''m going to be aplete target. I can forget about trying get other applicants'' badges, I don''t need them anyway with my high score. I need to everything I can to ensure that my badge doesn''t get stolen.'')


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 17 Discovering The Path

    Rui could already feel the attention of hispetitors on him.


    "Man they''re gonnae after us." Kane said, nonchntly.


    Rui had forgotten about his acquaintance; he had been too absorbed in the eminent ordeal awaiting him. Kane was also his age, furthermore, he had more points than Rui so he was a more attractive target, but having more points meant he would be harder to beat. Ultimately both their young ages meant they would be more alluring as targets.


    "You sound confident." Rui noted.


    "Yeah, the low rankers should be easy enough, but the high rankers are strong... I don''t know if I can take their badges easily."


    (''... The fact that that was what was on his mind means he''s not worried about losing his badge at all.'') Rui sighed helplessly. He wasn''t as confident as Kane; hisck of experience was not something that could be ovee easily.


    "The most important rule of the third round is that the round will end when half the number of applicants lose a badge. With that, the exnation of the third round is over, we will begin the third round soon, good luck."


    Rui narrowed his eyes.


    (''That rule is good and bad news. The bad news is that my attackers will be more aggressive now that there is a limit to the number of times a badge can be stolen. The good news is that I just need to hold out until the half the applicants lose a badge. Which will likely happen quicker, because I probably willst longer than the lower ranked applicants.'') Rui concluded.


    (''My attackers will probably be mid or low ranked applicants. The higher ranked applicants have no need to target each other at all. Retaining their high scores alone will ensure they pass the exam. If they do bother stealing badges, they will likely target low-mid rankers who they will easily be able to defeat.'') Rui continued analyzing.


    (''Another important thing to note is that the fact that the goal is retain and obtain badges, means that physical prowess isn''t the only variable. Everyone has blind spots, regardless of how strong you are, and how strongly the badge seems to stick to your body, you could lose it simply by being a little careless.'')


    Kane nonchntly hummed as Rui furiously evaluated his predicament and what course of action he ought to take.


    "What makes you so confident you''ll be able to retain your badge by the end?" Rui asked.


    "Ahhh, that''s because I''m already a Martial Apprentice" Kane responded.


    "..!"


    (''To think this guy is already a Martial Artist, no wonder he managed to secure rank four despite being much younger than the top three rankers. I don''tpare to him.'')


    "What exactly does it mean to be a Martial Apprentice?" Rui asked out of curiosity.


    "Well, dad said a Martial Apprentice is someone who has mastered the foundations of the fields of Martial Arts and discovered their Martial Path, and manifested their Soul."


    "Fields? Martial Path? Manifesting the Soul??" Rui asked, confused.


    "Fields are like the fundamental different aspects of Martial Arts; Offense, defense, supplementary and maneuvering. These are the four primary fields that every single Martial Art must possess. Without offense you can never win, without defense you will always lose. And without maneuvering and supplementation you will not be able to use offense and defense in harmony. All Martial Arts need varying degrees of all four, no matter how little."<sub> </sub>


    "Hmmmm."


    "And the Martial Path is basically the journey of cultivating and creating your own Martial Art."


    "Wait, what do you mean by ''your own Martial Art''?" Rui inquired, puzzled.


    Kane threw him a confused look at that question.


    "Literally that, your own Martial Art."


    "Wait, you''re telling me every Martial Artist has their own Martial Art that no other Martial Artist in the world has?"


    Kane nodded in response.


    "Yep, father said that Martial Art is a reflection of people''s very core, their very souls. Since every single human being in the world is different, every single person will end up having a unique Martial Art. That''s also what I meant by Manifesting the Soul, it means you''ve discovered your Martial Art. It''s a metaphorical thing my father kept telling me, it''s a pretty confusing way of saying it if you ask me." kane shrugged.


    This was shocking to Rui. The notion that Martial Art was entirely personal and subjective and unique to every single Martial Artist was shocking. On Earth, there were a small number of martial arts that people learnt andbined, but to think that on Gaea, every single Martial Artist developed their own unique Martial Art was shocking.


    And also, incredibly exciting. Rui fell in love with the concept of personal unique Martial Art that were metaphorical manifestations of one''s soul. It was just so romantic!


    (''I wonder how my Martial Art will end up looking... A manifestation of my soul eh? I''ve always enjoyed all martial arts on Earth, they were all fun and interesting, putting aside their effectivity. I also enjoy striking and grapplingbat equally. I can''t really picture how my Martial Art will end up looking.'')


    "So what is your Martial Art like, thus far?" Rui asked curiously.


    "I only reached the Martial Apprentice stage a little over a year ago, so I haven''t developed it too much. But it will end up being a maneuvering centric Martial Art."


    "I see... So that''s why you were avoiding the bouncing slimes that well..."


    Kane nodded in response


    Just before Rui could continue asking more questions. Master Aronian dered the third-round begun:Published by N?v''elD/rama.Org.


    "The third-round will begin the moment the doors shut close after I exit the facility. Good luck." The moment he said the applicants immediately put distance between each other and took a stance, waiting for the round to begin.


    And with that, Master Aronian sauntered out of the room withvish dignity, and as soon as the door shut close, chaos wreaked havoc.


    (''This is the final round! I''ll hold onto this badge even if it kills me!'')


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 18 Round Three

    Rui and Kane leapt back as several applicants immediately began targeting them.


    "Tsk, fucking scavengers." Rui cursed, still, he wasn''t able to suppress a grin. This was the first time he would be fighting!


    The first one to throw a punch looked to be around fifteen years old, male. His form was terrible and his strike was practically telegraphed, Rui managed to dodge it while throwing a strike to his opponent''s nose, aiming his middle knuckle at the tip.


    THWACK


    (''Tsk, it was slightly off-target.'')


    But it was close enough, the nose was a particrly vulnerable spot. Getting struck there extremely hard caused pain and disorientation. Rui was resolved tond another strike while his opponent had openings. He threw a fully winded kick straight to his opponent''s testicles, leaving him in agonizing pain.


    Rui on the other hand was ecstatic!


    (''Yes! My firstbat victory!'') He celebrated before-


    BAM


    A powerful kick assailed him from the side, mming into his arm.


    "Aargh!"


    The ambusher rushed forward to grab his badge. When suddenly-


    "Not so quickly." Kane intercepted with a high kick thatnded precisely on the applicant''s chin, cleanly knocking him out.


    "You okay?" He asked Rui, helping him up.


    "Yeah..." Rui groaned.


    (''Tsk, I was too careless. I need to be more alert. I would have lost my badge if not for Kane.'') Rui scolded himself.


    "Thanks for saving me... But you didn''t have to."


    "I know, it''s just that it would be a shame if you didn''t enter the Academy. It hasn''t been long, but you''re fun to spend time with."


    He threw Rui an awkward smile, Rui snorted mirthfully in response.


    "I owe you one."


    "Don''t worry about it, but don''t get the wrong idea though. I can''t help you much, back then I was in a really sweet spot to knock him out so it was easy, but this round will be hard, I can protect myself, but not you."


    "Yeah, I know. I did not join this exam hoping someone would protect me." Rui steeled his gaze at the applicants that had begun to approach them.


    (''Their goal is my badge, but they need to reach within arm''s length in order to take it. The key is to not let them get that close to me. I''ll need to rely on kicks.'') Rui decided. It was also a conclusion that Kane himself came to.


    Kick


    Kick


    Parry


    Block<sub> </sub>


    Retreat


    Kick


    Kick


    Check


    Kick


    Retreat


    Block


    Dodge, this was a close one. He almost touched the badge.


    Kick


    Rui had absolutely no sense of time, he had absolutely no idea how much time had passed at all. It could have been a few minutes, an hour, a few hours. Heck, maybe it had been a few days.


    (''Certainly feels like it has.'')


    He panted, arms on his knees trying to catch his breath. He''d gotten a moment''s rest thanks to the fact that his targetters had been attacked by a few low-ranking applicants. Buying him a brief but crucial reprieve.


    His tactics were not as effective as he had hoped they would be.


    (''For one, although kicks can be used to maintain distance, that''s because their range exceeds that of punches or jabs. But I''m only thirteen-years-old, my legs aren''t really much bigger than the arms of my targetters due to the age gap.'')


    This was a problem because they could potentially rob his badge while avoiding a kick, they hade close multiple times, far too close forfort.


    (''Secondly, kicks have range and power, but lower flexibility and greater demand for bnce than punches, because you''re bncing on one leg while shifting your center of mass greatly as a consequence of generating greater force. If someone gets super close while avoiding a kick, it''s extremely difficult tobat effectively because it''s difficult to stop the ongoing momentum and motion of your body in the middle of a kick, and also because your body is bncing on one leg, it takes much more effort not to lose bnce in such a scenario.'')


    This meant that if someone dodged a full-powered, max range kick while moving closer to the person kicking, then the person performing the kick was practically screwed. At the very least, this was true at the Martial Apprentice or below level of skill.


    This further implied that Rui had to throw very light kicks, he could not afford to throw kicks that made it difficult to counter any misses. But lighter kicks generally had shorter range and power, thus it did not deter the targeters from attempting to close the distance.


    <o>,m Rui had, of course, attempted to alleviate the problem. He attempted to do so by ensuring the burden of his weight was being supported and maintained by only one of his two legs at any point in time. This allowed him to throw kicks quicker. The reason was because, normally, every time he chose to kick with a certain leg, he had to remove all of his body weight from that leg, the kicking leg, and shift onto the other leg, the supporting leg.</o>


    This had to be done and only then after could heunch a kick without losing bnce. However, by permanently keeping his weight on one leg, he did not have to waste time shifting his weight every time. Thus, he had reduced the time period needed to throw light kicks, furthermore he had reduced the recovery time needed to defend properly should one of his kicks fail.


    These tactics and solutions were not revolutionary, nor were they extremely effective. But together they were able to allow Rui to barely hang on to his badge without losing it.


    (''Kane is doing much better than I am.'')All rights ? N?velDrama.Org.


    Kane''s maneuvering was truly amazing to Rui. Watching him move gave Rui the impression that his body was weightless.


    (''He has an extremely high muscle mass to body mass ratio. He''s able to move his with great easy because that.'')


    He was able to narrowly avoid jabs and grabs, while simultaneously setting up attacks that exploited his targetter''s openings. This seemed to be relevant what Kane mentioned to Rui about his Martial Art prior to the start of the round.


    "So, this is a Martial Art, it''s still in the earliest stage, but it''s still amazing!"


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 19 Gamble

    From what Rui could see, Kane''s maneuvering prowess came from both his exceptional muscle mass to body mass ratio, but also because of how light his body was, these two factorsbined gave him extremely high agility and speed.


    (''But that isn''t the only cause.'')


    Rui could see that his dodges were extremely efficient. He moved as little as he could to avoid, or atleast mitigate the effectivity of the strike while setting up strikes of his own with his dodging motion. For example, if someone aimed a strike as his head, he would bend backward while simultaneouslyunching a straight high kick, while increasing its power and range by torque generated by bending backwards, he''d cleanly knocked out one of his targeters this way, and even took his badge.


    Just as Rui was admiring Kane''s prowess, he heard a female voice call out to him.


    "You''re an interesting one aren''t you, Rui Quarrier?"


    Rui nced at the person who called out to him as his eyes widened in shock. The silver-haired girl had many badges pinned all over her body, he couldn''t even count all of them.


    (''Just how many people did she defeat??'')


    "It''s not too much of a surprise that the direct disciple of Sage Arrancar made it to the third-round with a high rank while still performing well at the age of thirteen, although still very impressive." She smiled while throwing a gaze at Kane.


    "But it''s odd some no-namemoner thirteen-year-old boysted this long, and even flourish."


    Rui heightened his alertness, he recognized her. Fae Duhan, she seemed to be sixteen-years-old. She was rank number two in the previous round, he''d memorized her face when she collected her badge.


    "You tter me, I just barely made it here all this way, even now I almost lost my badge many times."


    "Hmmm..." She gazed into his sharp eyes, taking note off his ominous hair and eyes.


    Suddenly;


    BAM.


    Rui barely managed to block a heavy palm attack with a guard.


    (''She''s fast! And more importantly what the fuck was with that power?") His arms were throbbing with pain.


    "Not bad, you blocked that well." She noted as she continued attacking him.


    "I don''t see why someone like yourself would need my badge." Rui managed to squeeze out.


    "Oh I don''t care for your badge, you can keep it." She responded innocently even as she pummeled him.


    Kane had noticed had predicament but was too pre-upied. Furthermore he did not think he could defeat Fae, she was too strong, it was too risky. She was the direct disciple of Sage Duhan, her grandmother, who was an acquaintance of his father.


    (''Damn, hang in there Rui, the round should be close to over!'') Kane pleaded. It had been nearly half an hour since the round had begun and many applicants had lost their badges. He just hoped Rui would be able to avoid losing his badge before the round was over.


    Rui was bruised immensely. In a short time, she had inflicted more damage on him than even an hour of the second-round had.


    (''Her speed is lower than Kane''s but not by much, but her power is far greater.'')


    Rui had observed that she was only striking him by the base of her palms, reinforced by the Radius and Ulna bones which constituted the forearm.


    (''It makes sense, her hands are small, palming would be more effective than punching.'')


    She wasn''t particrly muscr but her strikes delivered great force. From Rui could see, there were multiple reasons.


    (''Her arm is tough and rough. She''s conditioned her entire arm.'') Rui grimaced as he endured her onught.


    Conditioning, broadly speaking, was a set of procedures or action performed by a martial artist in order to increase durability, toughness, hardness and pain endurance of the parts of the body the conditioning was performed on, usually over a long period of time.<sub> </sub>


    (''Harder and tougher strikes inflicted more damage because they made the collision between the strike and the target increasingly instic.'')


    This was a scientific way of saying harder and tougher strikes hurt more than softer and weaker strikes. If one were to get hit by a beach ball thrown very hard, one would not get hurt, but what if one were to get hit by a steel ball that weighs the same as the beach ball, and was thrown at the same speed? One would most certainly get hurt. The reason was because of the difference in their collision. The beach ball hit was an stic collision where the energy of the ball did not get converted into damage, whereas the steel ball hit was an instic collision, where the kic energy of the ball would get converted into damage, damage inflicted onto the target.This belongs to N?velDrama.Org - ?.


    (''That''s not the only reason this hurts though. She''s using her power efficiently, and every power uses her body weight.'') Rui noted, even though it hurt a lot. The sheer brilliance of herbat made him, a martial artsbat sport junkie, extremely excited.


    Fae continued her onught with an intrigued expression. She noticed something strange.


    (''He''s... smiling?'')


    It was faint, furthermore it was hard to discern under through his grimaces, but she could just barely detect excitement under all of it.


    (''Haha, he''s enjoying this. He''s an interesting ki-'')


    THWACK.


    She froze in surprise. Rui had just dropped his guard, crouched and rushed into her strike, allowing her palm attack to strike the top of his head hard, the sheer force by she had thrown the palm as well as conditioned toughness had caused a wound at the top of his head that had begun bleeding. However, he''d ignored the wound and dashed towards her waist grabbing onto her thighs.


    "I have you now!" He screamed as he pushed her upper half while pulling her lower half.


    A takedown. This was what Rui had aimed for.


    He had not made this decision lightly.


    Prior, Rui made several astute observations


    (''She''s throwing straight palms and nothing else, it''s likely because while palms are good at delivering impacts, they have very little inherent variation because other types of trajectories require too much flexibility to be used regrly. It''s also because she''s holding back against me a bit. Another thing is that every strike she throws is close to max power from what I can tell, she twisting her body, drawing power from her core and her legs. This delivers great power but it must be difficult for her to counter if someone avoids it.'')


    Problem was, Rui didn''t know how to avoid her strikes fully.


    (''She has too much speed, furthermore, palms have a wider range of effect than fists. Dodging a fast wide strike like that requires preparation that she will definitely notice, I cannot take her by surprise if she notices, thus dodging and then closing the range is impossible. That leaves only one strategy but it''s a gamble.'')


    Dodging fast and wide strike required pre-mediated movements that would tip her off on his intentions. But allowing her to hit him did not. If he could simply rush in, endure the strike, not get knocked out by it, then he could attempt a takedown and grapple with her.


    (''But what are my chances of not getting seriously wounded by her attack without a guard?'')


    Non-existent, he would definitely get hurt, worst case scenario he would just get knocked out. But he didn''t really have any other choice.


    (''If I continue taking these palms, I''m doomed. This is risky, but it''s better than certain defeat.'')


    He waited for a strike that had been aimed high. When it came, he dropped his guard and dashed to her legs, pretending the strike aimed at him did not exist. But it did, and it grazed a streak of skin and a little flesh off the top of his head, causing bleeding instantly


    ("FUCK THAT HURTS.") But, he endured. Rui rushed in grabbing her legs.


    He had fullfilled the n, the question is whether the n was good or not.


    He had few options in the first ce. He could continue taking her attacks as she pummeled him to oblivion.


    He could run away even though she was faster than him and could attack his back and head.


    Or he could take a gamble that was risky and still very difficult, even if it seeded


    He had to choose the lesser of three evils, did he choose correctly?


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 20 Outer Convergence

    Abandoning a guard and haphazardly dashing for a takedown mid-strike was a very dangerous thing to. He could have easily been knocked out, or he could havepletely avoided the strike if he was skilled and experienced, the only reason the strike didn''t knock him out was because Fae had been caught off-guard, thus her reaction time was a little greater than normal, she wasn''t able to adjust the trajectory to strike him in time.


    (''Yes! Now I can grapple her. This way her body conditioning won''t really be too much of a deal, furthermore the mechanism by which her strikes were so powerful also cannot be applied to wrestling. I could potentially beat h-'')


    BAM


    Rui spat out blood and immediately fell unconscious at her feet.


    "Fuuu... To think he managed to almost get me. If it wasn''t for One-Inch Palm I might have had some difficulty." Fae mumbled, her palm facing upside down at waist level.


    Fae''s One-Inch Palm was an attack that allowed her to strike with maximum power in extremely close ranges. This was abnormal because it was difficult to leverage the power of the core and legs in such a position, usually, greater power required greater space. However, what Fae used was a principle that was known simply known as Outer Convergence. Outer Convergence allowed the user to use their full raw power in any position by stacking, summing and converging the torque generated by all primary muscle groups to increase the power of a strike.


    There was a popr analogy used to understand what this meant, in the Martial Academy. A child throwing ball at an adult would likely not hurt the adult. But what if the child was sitting on a horse that was running at top-speed? Then the ball would possess the speed generated by the child and the horse, it would be moving very fast and would hurt an adult.


    But what if the horse was running on top of a giant dragon that itself was moving at ten times the speed of the horse? Then the ball thrown would possess the sum of the speeds given to it by the child, the horse as well as the dragon stacked together, the thrown ball would be extremely powerful. This was because the power generated by three sources had been constructively umted and stacked together into one attack.


    This was exactly what the principle Outer Convergence was about. The different muscle groups in the body were like the dragon, the horse and the child. The fist, or palm in this case was like the ball being thrown. Outer Convergence allowed the user to transfer the power to the strike in exactly this manner, umting and summing torque and force from all across the body additively and converging it into the strike. It was theoretically possible to do so in any position, but Fae had not mastered Outer Convergence to that degree yet. Still, being able to use Flow umtion at all in the form of the One-Inch Palm was what allowed her to crush Rui''s gamble instantly.


    Rui had failed, miserably. He chose wrong.


    "Still, if it had been 99.9% of the applicants here, they would have probably lost..." Fae mused.


    "Rui Quarrier, how interesting. I hope you pass the exam. You do seem worthy of being a Martial Artist." She bade him, before leaving.


    His badge was stolen the moment she walked away.


    **********


    Rui opened eyes in a daze, unsure where he was.


    (''An unfamiliar ceiling'')


    Only then did his memories kick in.


    (''Wait what happened to the third-round? I remember I was fighting Fae-'')


    "Ah applicant Rui Quarrier, you''re awake." A voice called out to him.


    "You''re currently in the medical wing of the Martial Academy, you fell unconscious during the third-round of the Entrance Exam. Your wounds have beenpletely treated, so you may leave after gathering your belongings."


    (''A nurse of the Academy...?'') He noted her medical uniform.


    (''Damn, so it''s over? Fae must have done something to me, I can''t really recall what happened after I dashed for a takedown.'') He cursed.


    "What about the results of the exam?"<sub> </sub>


    "You will be notified by the Martial Academy of the results of your Exam within a few days."


    Rui sharpened his eyes.


    (''A few days...? It shouldn''t take that long since the criteria for passing or failing was simple. I probably had zero points by the time the round ended and zero is most certainly below the average number of points'')This belongs to N?velDrama.Org - ?.


    "Is there a badge among my belongings?" Rui asked nervously, just to verify.


    The nurse turned to face him.


    "No, there was no badge on your person when the third-round ended."


    "...I see."


    Deep grief and frustration assailed his mind. He''d spent practically his entire life preparing for this exam, he''d given the exam his everything. All for aplete failure.


    "How long has it been since I was knocked out?"


    "Around five hours."


    Rui jerked his head towards her.


    (''Damn, I need to get back home soon or everyone will be worried.'') He changed back into his clothes from the medical garb he woke up wearing, before bidding the nurse gratitude and leaving.


    On the way back home he had a lot to think about.


    (''Fae... She was at a Martial Apprentice level too probably, just like Kane.'')


    She was the reason he failed. She attacked him on a whim and beat the living shit out of him for amusement. Yet, Rui felt no resentment towards her.


    Instead he felt a tinge of excitement and anticipation building up.


    "When will I be that strong? I can''t wait."


    He would have been much more excited on any other day, but he found it hard to get excited right after failing the exam.


    Twelve years. That''s how long he''d invested. He''d spent those years doing his absolute best. It was not an exaggeration to say that Rui had done absolutely everything humanly possible to pass the exam. If it was anybody else, they would have likely not aplished as much as he did with what he had, this was because of the sheer expertise, knowledge and experience surrounding martial arts andbat sport. There were very few people with as much unadultered raw love for martial arts andbat sports as much as Rui had.


    But it wasn''t enough.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 21 Home

    The sky was dark, the edges of the sunset were dipping below the horizon. He''d spent nearly half the day away from home. Yet Rui was in no hurry, he was walking home peacefully in a nonchnt manner, contemting what had urred throughout the entire day.


    (''The first round weeded out a majority of the applicants, around ny-percent or so, the second round got rid of seventy percent and the third round got rid of precisely half.'')


    That left only left around a little over one percent of the applications, such was the tiny proportion of applicants that managed to pass the exam.


    (''Furthermore, even among the applicants who pass the exam, only a small proportion of them reach the Martial Squire stage.'')


    It was a brutal ordeal, one Rui had almost ovee.


    "Sigh... I wonder if Kane passed... He probably did."


    He hoped so, atleast. Although he hadn''t even known the kid for even a day, he was cool. Furthermore, he helped Rui out. A debt Rui promised he would pay back.


    "Fae definitely passed too."


    There was no doubt about this either, he was pretty sure she was either extremely rich, or she was family of an extremely powerful Martial Artist, or both. He sighed. He didn''t regret being born in the Quarrier Orphanage, but there were undeniably benefits that he missed being born in a lower ss of the economy.


    (''Still... I''d stick to the orphanage if given a choice.'') He smiled warmly as he thought about his family in the orphanage. The pain of being separated from them was not something he wanted to voluntarily put himself through.


    As his mind wandered, he kept trudging through. He was in a very dull mood, but he didn''t feel regret, at the very least.


    (''I gave it my all.'') He shrugged. What more could a person do? Besides although he was almost certainly done for, the official judgement had not been released yet, so who knew? Anything was possible.


    Rui stopped walking as he reached the gate to the orphanage. He almost didn''t want to go inside, he didn''t want to be in the center of attention while he was still saturated with shame and frustration.


    (''The problem is with me, not them. They''ll console and encourage me.'')


    Rui sighed before entering. The door opened before he reached it, and Farion could already tell what had happened based on Rui''s expression.


    "Don''t worry about it,e in, dinner''s ready." He said before gesturing Rui inside. Rui smirked slightly, it was a very Farion-way of consoling people. He was not someone who would bare his thoughts and emotions directly, but would still convey what he wanted to. His words just then roughly tranted to:


    ''I know you didn''t achieve what you wanted to, I know it sucks, but for nowe and spend time with the family you love, we''re here for you.''This belongs to N?velDrama.Org - ?.


    "Yeah... I''ll do that."


    He scratched his head walking in.<sub> </sub>


    "I''m back."


    Lashara looked to be full of pure relief. Out of all those in the Quarrier Orphanage, she cared more for his well-being and life than his first attempt at the Martial Entrance Exam. She''d scanned his body top to bottom, an embarrassing ordeal for a thirteen-year-old, but even more so for a seventy-two-year-old. But he allowed her to do it, he owed her that much atleast, after ignoring years of overprotectiveness to eventually attempt the Martial Entrance Exam.


    Of course, his wounds had all been treated by the Medical Department, so there was nothing to fear, but did that deter Lashara?


    "Heh, looks like Mom might even force you to sleep beside her out of anxiety." Nina smirked.


    "Anything but that! I haven''t done that in six years!" Ruiined.


    "Well? How did it go?" Julian asked, despite already knowing the answer.


    "I failed in the final round." Rui sighed in response.


    "Shame, don''t worry, you can try again next year. The fact that you made it to the final round in itself is actually quite remarkable. But how do you know you failed if the official announcement isn''t out yet?"


    He was aware that the Martial Academies sent official letters stamped with the seal of the Kandrian Martial Union dering admission of the candidates who were epted as students while setting up an appointment with the candidate and/or with the Guardian.


    "The objective of the round was specified, and I perfectly failed to meet it. There''s no way I passed."


    "Hmm.. I see. Well, don''t worry about it. Let''s start eating."


    And so they did. They discussed boisterously about a variety of topics rapidly, forcing Rui to take his mind off the exam, which he was grateful for.


    **********


    Master Aronian had just finished grading the final round of the Entrance Exam. Only 567 applicants had passed the Entrance Exam in the Kandrian branch, this year. As the appointed head invigtor of this year, he was given full discretion regarding the Exam, and as long as he didn''t go overboard, he could do whatever he wanted. Normally, he considered this duty a dull chore, but this year''s applicants were interesting, to say the least.


    (''The top-level talent in this year''s batch is impressive... There''s Kane Arrancar. Son of Sage Damian Arrancar. Based on his performances, his overall skill andbat capability was at the Martial Apprentice level. Extremely impressive that he managed to discover his Martial Path at the age of thirteen, a genius with unknown potential. What is interesting is how vastly different his Martial Art seems to be from that of Sage Arrancar. Sage Arrancar''s Devil Fury Fist is a striking Martial Art that heavily emphasized on raw power and durability at the cost of speed and maneuvering, although I didn''t particrly expect Kane to go down the exact same path, it''s a little strange he chose the exact opposite.'')


    Kane had chosen a Martial Art with a strong focus on speed, agility and evasive maneuvering, at the cost of a powerful body.


    (''Martial Arts are manifestations of the Soul, in a sense. For Kane to have focused on evasiveness and chosen apletely different path from the Arrancar family tradition. I wonder how this bodes for Arrancar Household...'')


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 22 Interested

    Although there was nothing concrete, Master Aronian could a smell friction between Kane and Sage Arrancar.


    "Well, it''s none of my business."


    Another applicant he was interested in was Fae Duhan, yet another descendent of a Sage.


    (''Two of them in a single year is quite rare.'')


    She also was worthy of her status in his eyes. She consistently dominated the rankings with ease. What particrly impressed Master Aronian was the fact that she managed to learn how to use Outer Convergence. Although he could tell she hadn''t mastered yet, the fact that she managed to use a high-end Apprentice level technique was rather impressive. He couldn''t wait to see where her Martial Journey would take her.


    "Then, of course, is him..." Master Aronian said, looking at a sheer with a picture of a fifteen-year-old boy on it. The boy had long, messy white hair and unnervingly wide blood-red eyes, with a wild grin on his face.


    "Rank number one... Nel."


    He wasn''t even amoner; he was below that. From what the admissions department of the Martial Academy had learnt about him from their background check was that he was a child who was raised by animals till the age of three, when he was discovered and rescued by humans. Although he eventually adjusted to living like a human by the age of fifteen, he still retained the savagery and ferocity he had obtained living with beasts. He was territorial, cruel to the weak and seemed to have obtained a strong urge for physical conflict. Master Aronian even suspected he got off of it, considering he actually killed several applicants in the Entrance Exam with expressions of unadulterated, almost innocent joy and pleasure.


    He hadn''t studied Martial Arts even a little bit, but he signed up for the Martial Academy anyway.


    And he was monstrously strong. In the second-round, he was the one and contestant who didn''t get hit by a slime at all; he sessfully dodged or destroyed every slime. Fae had challenged him towards the end of the third round, but unfortunately for Master Aronian, the round ended before the fight could reach a conclusion.


    "I regret making the third round so short." He sighed. He wasn''t entirely sure which one would have definitely won, had the fight continued. But he knew it would be extremely close, the two contestants were nigh equal.


    What particr impressed Master Aronian about Nel was his ferocity and tenacity. Nel grew up in the lowest strata of society in the poorest and most dangerous of districts, he had a lifetime of experience of not just sparring or training, but fighting for his life, every day. He had a shockingly unpredictable, unconventional fighting style stacked atop a body blessed with high physical attributes, and powerful senses and instincts. He was an outlier, a beast. Using his unparalleled senses and reflexes, he was able to dodge or destroy all slimes from all angles. This was something Fae, despite her age and pedigree could not replicate.


    "And finally... there is him." Master Aronian nced at Rui''s profile.


    Rui was much of a deviant as Nel was, in Master Aronian''s eyes.<sub> </sub>


    "Thirteen-years-old. No formal Martial Arts training, well above average physical attributes as a result of training, considering his age, but not too much of note by itself, average physical performative attributes too, slightly above average skill, but again, nothing special. Though the fact that an untalented child like him fact that he reached this level without formal training speaks of great determination and hard work.


    Still, this was not the most shocking part about Rui. What is truly impressive was his mind.


    "He''s an unparalleled genius."


    He did not make that statement lightly, no Martial Master would.Published by N?v''elD/rama.Org.


    "Despite possessing unremarkable physical and physical performative attributes at the age of thirteen. He managed to score above 700 in the second round and secured rank number nine. Furthermore, he did this purely tactically with absolutely no other attribute contributing majorly. He observed the slimes, drew hypotheses and conclusions regarding the slimes and the exam itself, tested the hypotheses to confirm or deny them before devising a set of tactics aimed at fulfilling the objective to the highest degree possible, centered around predicting the trajectory of the slimes rather than reacting to them."


    This was an instance of analytical and tactical ingenuity as well as sheer processing capacity absolutely unheard of in an applicant, let alone one as young as Rui, ording to the Martial Exam library. Usually only highly experienced Martial Artists who were also inherently intelligent could aplish such feats.


    "Unfortunately, he lost his badge to Fae, but he still held out longer and acted better than likely anybody else would have with what he had. Not even Nel pushed Fae far enough to hastily use her One-Inch Palm against her will."


    Master Aronian thought quite highly of Rui, on par with the aforementioned geniuses even though Rui would have undoubtedly lost to them in a fight. None of the other applicants had held Master Aronian''s interests. Although they were all mildly different and some even unusual, it was nothing that Master Aronian, an experienced invigtor and teacher, had not seen many times.


    He set aside the profiles in his hand and had begun stamping on the letters of eptance and rejection with the official Kandrian Martial Academy''s stamp. The seal pattern on the stamp was extremely intricate and even the materials it was crafted from were from high-grade esoteric bestial matter obtain from powerful beasts, forging a counterfeit was actually extremely difficult. Furthermore, the ink itself was apound derived from esoteric flora, it absorbed light of all colours and thus was an absolute pitch ck that did not shine or reflect any light. These were means by which credibility and reliability were ensured.


    Just then, he came across Rui''s letter.


    "Hmm¡­"


    The decision of course had already been made, it could not be changed now. He just wondered if it was too hasty.


    "Well, what''s done is done. I''m interested to see what you do from here, Rui Quarrier."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 23 Letter

    Rui was lying on his bed, the next morning. He had been contemting about his path forward from here on out.


    (''The official announcement hasn''te yet, but I should forget about it. What I ought to do is eradicate the cause of my failure.'')


    He was doing fine until he fought Fae. But what caused that loss? Well, he was outssed physically and technically; in skill. She was on a whole other level. He still didn''t even know what she did to him in their fight. Thest thing he recalled was dashing towards the lower half of her body for a takedown, grabbing her and then the lights went out for him and he woke in a medical facilityter on.


    (''She knocked me out, obviously. The question is how.'')


    He wasn''t sure how. He was especially confused on how she managed to generate such raw power when caught off-guard, mid-strike with her whole body still in motion in the failed strike, at point nk range. Was such a thing even possible?


    (''With Earth''s martial arts, that was impossible. No MMA or UFC fighter would ever be able to generate such absurd amount of power, enough to instantly knock someone out like that at point nk range. But she did, how?'')


    This served as a little reminded that he knew too little about the Martial Art in this world. On Earth, both humans and martial arts had hard limits. But as he had witnessed twelve years ago, neither humans nor Martial Art had hard limits like this. Thews of physics were somehow still the same, as he''d noticed. This world obeyed the threews of motion, Newton''sw of gravitation, Rotational mechanics, kinematics, Euclid''s Axioms etc. Yet, somehow, the limits that the universe and Gaea had ced on humans seemed to simply not exist. He wasn''t sure if this was something could ever be investigated through scientific induction; the scientific method. But did he care?


    (''No, not really. I''m grateful for it, of course. It allows me to live in a world of my dreams, and live a life of my dreams. But I don''t really care why this reality is so different, I''m not a cosmologist or a theoretical physicist. I will simply exploit the opportunity this reality has presented me with, and fulfill the dream I couldn''t fulfill in my previous life.'')


    Still, it begged the question he hadn''t answered yet, how did she knock him out so quickly? He didn''t know, and it didn''t seem like he could figure out either.


    (''Some day¡­ I''ll reach that level, I''ll reach it and far surpass it.'')


    He leapt up from his bed with renewed vigour.


    "I''ll work even harder and definitely pass the Exam next yea-"


    "RUI YOU PASSED THE EXAM!"


    "¡­?" Rui tilted his head towards a boisterous Alice running towards him.


    "YOU. PASSED. THE. EXAM." She screamed, shaking him back and forth.


    Rui couldn''t understand.


    (''Is this her way of cheering me up? Alice''s cheeriness was always abnormal, but this is something else even for her.'')


    "Your letter came!" She shoved a paper into his chest.


    "It says you passed the exam!"


    "Huh?" Rui squinted his eyes in skepticism as he looked at the letter. "There no wa-¡­!!"


    He choked when he read the letter;


    (''Greetings, Mr Quarrier.


    We are pleased to inform and congratte you have passed the Kandrian Martial Entrance Exam, and have been epted into the Kandrian Martial Academy. We have evaluated you as a student candidate of our Academy thoroughly, and you have indeed demonstrated that you are more deserving of a seat in our Academy than your peers.


    We write to you to do more than just congratte you, we invite you to the official Induction in the Kandrian Martial Academy on the thirty-sixth Autumn at 14:00. There, important matters such as the rules and regtions, fees structure, payment method and structure, schrships, housing and food amenities, schedules and academic year structure and other facilities and amenities will be presented in great detail, you may consult with our staff on any enquiries you have after. You will also receive your student identification and uniform. It is an extremely important and necessary meeting, so please make sure to attend it. If you cannot, then please make sure to book an appointment with our staff prior to the start of the Academic year on the sixty-sixth Autumn.


    Andstly, this letter serves as the official invitation to the Induction, please bring it with you along with identification...'')


    ...


    Rui memorized the relevant information as he read every single word with great scrutiny.


    (''...We look forward to meeting you.<sub> </sub>


    With sincere regards,


    ~The Admission Department of the Kandrian Martial Academy.'')


    The letter ended after rambling on for a while about details. But the important part had already been conveyed.


    "...I''m epted..."


    "I''m epted...?"


    "I''m epted." He asserted, chuckling.


    "I''M ACCEPTED." The realization had finally struck his core.


    He began guffawing uncontrobly, until he grew embarrassed enough to stop.


    (''But how did I pass? I lost my badge, and the objective was to retain and umte badges and points. I objectively failed that task.'')


    "..r¡­"


    (''I''m definitely going to find out how I didn''t fail in the Induction.'')


    "r¡­i.."


    (''But still, I got in after all! YES!)


    "¡­Ru.."Published by N?v''elD/rama.Org.


    (''I can''t wait to begin!'')


    "RUI."


    "Hm?"


    "Sigh, you were so engrossed you didn''t even hear us." Alice said with tired helplessness.


    "Oh, I didn''t notice you guys here, sorry." Rui said as he realized a lot of people had gathered around him. He was scolded by the adults for being so self-absorbed, but ultimately everyone congratted him. It was a well-known fact within the Orphanage that Rui dreamt of bing a Martial Artist.


    "Congrattions Rui, you made it." Julian smiled at him.


    "Thanks."


    "I have to say, I am extremely surprised. I thought the chances of you passing the exam at the age of thirteen were practically negligible."


    "Ha, thanks for the vote of confidence." Rui snorted.


    "Still, the fact that you made it through despite your low odds is the strongest testament to your sheer determination and perseverance. If it''s you, you''ll be able to tread the Martial Path to the very end." Julian smiled warmly.


    "¡­Hindsight is 20/20 they say." Rui retorted yfully.


    "That''s a mean thing to say in response."


    Rui smirked "Thanks."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 24 Induction

    A week rolled by and the Induction Ceremony of the Kandrian Academy had arrived. The event was held in the morning on the thirty-sixth Winter, which would be the sixth of October on Earth. There were multiple Calendar systems used on the panama continent, but the most universal one was the Calendar of systems. The year was divided into 365 days, just like on Earth, but the days were not grouped into months, instead, they were grouped into seasons. The thirty-sixth Winter referred to the thirty-sixth day of the Winter season. This was one of the many differences in the cultures between Earth and Gaea, it had taken Rui a while before he got used to thempletely.


    "Come on Julian, we might bete!" Rui urged


    Julian threw him a helpless sigh.


    "We already resolved to leave a whopping half an hour early in anticipation of traffic., leaving any earlier would be silly." He told Rui.


    (''It''s rare to see such a childish side of him.'')


    "Alright fine, but don''t waste anymore time." Rui relented.


    "Yes yes."All rights ? N?velDrama.Org.


    The reason Julian apanied him was because all applicants below the age of adulthood of sixteen needed to be apanied by a Guardian, or an adult who would serve as an acting Guardian. Lashara had requested Julian to apany Rui as the acting Guardian, and in order to aid Rui in the Induction.


    By the time they reached, they were, as perfectly predicted, half an hour early.


    "See? We''re this early and you wanted to be even earlier." Julian poked at Rui.


    "Hey man, better safe than sorry." Rui yawned.


    "Sleepy?"


    "Not at all."


    "You stayed awake all night excited about the Induction, didn''t you?"


    "¡­"


    Julian sighed, he really did think Rui''s childishness manifested when it came to his passion and love for Martial Art. They followed the directions to the Induction Hall after showing their ID and invites to the Guards at the gate.


    The Induction Hall was arge facility that seemed to be explicitly designed for presentations of this sort. On the outside, it wasrge and ostentatious in its architecture, clearly designed to grab attention and demand admiration from its beholders.


    On the inside, there was arge stage with a podium upon it at the opposite end of the Hall. The Hall actually descended downwards as one moved forward, with the stage being the lowest in elevation, it had a wide carrying capacity, clearly designed to amodate therge number of new students and guardians that attended the Induction every year.


    "Truly, an extravagant hall that does the prestige of the Martial Arts Academy justice." Julian sighed in admiration.


    What held Rui''s attention, however was not the Hall itself but its inhabitants.


    "So these guys are my batch mates, eh?"


    "Indeed, I hope you make a lot friends."


    "I didn''te here to make friends." Rui shrugged.


    "Yes, but it doesn''t hurt to make a few. Good friends can have overall positive impact on your life, maybe even on your Martial Art."


    It was possible, Rui supposed.


    "Speaking of which, didn''t you make a friend in the exam?"


    "I knew him for a few hours at most, he''s an acquaintance at most." Rui said, before feeling guilty. Kane had saved him in the third round


    (''Does that make us friends?'')<sub> </sub>


    Rui wasn''t sure. In his past life, he had never made any friends, his disease and the nature of his career simply prevented him from making any, he''d also developed a rtively asocial attitude due to that.


    "True enough, I suppose."


    The epted students were all strong, Rui could feel it. He wasn''t sure he could beat most of them in a fight. Even though he was in the top-ten of the second-round, he didn''t let it get to his head and bloat his ego. His sess in that round was a rather niche oue and wasn''t something that spoke to his overallbat ability. Ultimately, he was younger, weaker and less experienced than pretty much every single other student in his batch.


    (''The only other kid my age was Kane, and he was a fucking genius who was personally trained by a Martial fucking Sage. I''d have to have my head deep up my ass in order to think I''mparable to him just because our ranks were somewhat close in the second-round.'')


    Rui clenched his fist.


    (''It doesn''t matter how strong I am currently; I have a lifetime ahead of me. This is what the Martial Academy is for, after all.'')


    He couldn''t wait for the academic year begin. He intended to grind and train like a madman under the tutge of the Martial Seniors of the Academy.


    Just then, Rui saw a figure board the podium.


    Master Aronian surveyed his audience, sweeping his gaze across them.


    "Students of the Martial Academy. This time, allow me to wee you all to the Kandrian Martial Academy not as aspirants, but as members. Each and every single one of you belongs within the walls of this Academy. You have ovee tribtions as well as your peers and proved without a shadow of a doubt that you belong here. Be proud of how far you''vee, yet be cognizant of how much you have left to traverse."


    He spoke calmly with sagely dignity.


    "Today, we aim to inform you about the everything you need to know, and ought to know about the Martial Academy. Without further ado, I invite our Honorable Chancellor Callux Haine to begin the presentation."


    A strapping younger man walked onto the stage as an apuse ensued. Master Aronian shook his hand before deferring the podium to him and walking off the stage. He smiled before cutting straight to the chase.


    "The purview of this presentation is to provide you with an overall understanding of how the Academy functions. I shall broadly be going over several categories of topics. The educational services the Martial Academy offers to its students. The responsibilities and entitlements that students possess. The fees structure and means of payment. And finally, the future that lies beyond the Academy."


    "The primary service that the Academy provides to its students is, simply speaking, the tools necessary to allow students to reach the Martial Squire Realm. The curriculum is not set in stone universally, beyond the bare foundations. The Martial Path is a deeply personal journey that cannot be universalized, yet the conditions necessary to be a Martial Apprentice and then a Martial Squire are defined. The Martial Academy possesses a vast library of techniques and skills that can freely be explored by students in order to discover their Martial Path, before pursuing it.


    The Martial Academy offers the tutge of highly qualified and experienced Martial Seniors, who have all guided countless students into discovering their Martial Path, and aided them in their Journey down it. We offer a variety of highly refined training regimes and facilities for all physical and performative attributes relevant to Martial Art.


    Simply put... The Kandrian Martial Academy is a paradise for those who strive to be Martial Artists!"


    As he began rattling about the details, Rui pondered about his words.


    (''I see, so in order to reach the Martial Apprentice stage and discover your Martial Path, one must explore different types of Martial Art techniques, skills and forms, eh? That makes sense. After all, how else can one figure out what kind of Martial Art they wanna pursue? In that case, having a library of techniques and skills definitely makes life far easier. Hell, is it even possible to be a Martial Apprentice without such resources?'')


    Regardless, just based off this alone the Academy was already worth every ounce of his time, he probably wouldn''t be able to reach the Martial Apprentice stage any other way.


    (''I''m not like Kane, after all. Without the Academy I''ll never be able to obtain these learning resources.'')


    The sheer amount of resources the Academy dedicated giving its students the most optimal education possible was mind-boggling to Rui. His astonishment only escted as every time the Chancellor presented yet another ostentatious facility that targetedly trained one particr physical or performative attribute or a foundational skill of some kind.


    (''Is it really worth it to spend so much on us students? I''ve heard that only ten-percent of students reach the Martial Squire stage, is it really worth it to spend such arge amount of capital into nurturing less than a hundred Martial Squires every year?'')


    He wasn''t sure. Hecked too much information on the interests and decisions of the Union. Perhaps there were several concrete economic and political incentives to increasing the number of Martial Artists than just money. Perhaps he would learn of these reasons once he jumped up the totem pole of the Martial Union.


    (''I should stop focusing on abstract irrelevant matters and focus on things have a more direct impact on me.'') Rui shook his head.


    "¡­ In addition to the facilities, amenities and services I''ve just gone over there exists the possibility of being tutored by a Martial Master. Of course, this is a decision that is entirely of their own discretion and volition. There are no guarantees, promises or stiptions regarding this. There have been several years back to back where not a single student was chosen by the Martial Masters of the Academy, and conversely, there have been years where a plethora of students were epted by various Masters. On average, a few students are epted every year. The benefits, of course, cannot be overstated. In addition to extremely high-quality tutge, Martial Masters can allow disciples to obtain opportunities that other students cannot, with the vast authority they possess they can easily circumvent the restrictions and barriers blockading resources, knowledge, events etc."


    Rui grew excited when he heard that. The prospects of being tutored by a Martial Master was incredibly exciting. Their prowess was known to be extraordinarily high, and unless one was their direct descendent, the prospect of one being epted as a disciple by one was extremely low, Martial Masters were very powerful, influential and naturally wealthy. It was difficult to earn their tutge services even with a small fortune.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 25 Disciple

    (''Ideally, a Master ends up offering me tutge once I be a Martial Apprentice. The problem is the low probability, as well as the difference in criterias that Master evaluate potential disciples with. Every Master must be looking for something different in the students. The only thing that can be inferred is that they are likely looking for unique traits. After all it wouldn''t make sense if what they were looking for could be abundantly found in every student, if that were the case, being epted as a student would be a trivial and easy matter.'')


    Thus it could be inferred that the likelihood of being epted as a disciple of a Master was greater the more unique one was.


    (''So now, the question is whether I''m unique enough.'') Rui scratched his head.


    (''Well, I''m reincarnated, that''s something I''m rtively certain no other student can im to be. But revealing that is asking to be burned to the stake as an alien. Even if they didn''t believe me they''d atleast conclude I have screws loose in my head. Nothing about this option is a desirable oue.'')


    The problem was that Rui wasn''t sure he was all that unique in practice. The Martial Entrance Exam had shown him that.


    (''Sure, my scientific background and research experience in martial arts andbat sports allows me to pull a few tricks like I did in the second-round of the Martial Exam, but that''s it. That''s not too big a deal. It allowed me to cope with the difference in prowess between me and the other applicants. But is that something that would warrant the attention of a Martial Master?)


    Rui didn''t think so.


    (''Another things that likely influences their criterion ispatibility of Martial Arts. I highly doubt a Martial Master with a defensive Martial Art would take in a student with an offensive or maneuvering-oriented Martial Art, no matter how brilliant that student was.'')


    That made sense. Why would a Martial Master bother with things that weren''t their specialty?


    (''That also implies that the students that do get chosen are probably are Martial Apprentices. Assuming they choose students withpatible and simr Martial Arts, then only those who have discovered and chosen their Martial Art are eligible to be chosen.'')


    That meant that the best thing Rui could do to be eligible was to reach Martial Apprentice. He highly doubted whether or not Martial Masters bothered with students below that rank. Students who hadn''t broken into the Martial Apprentice rank weren''t even Martial Artists, they simply weren''t worth the time and attention of such august figures.


    (''So ultimately, neither my goal, nor my decisions have changed. I just need to be a Martial Artist worthy of their attention.'')


    Far easier said than done, Rui realized, but he wasn''t going to let that stop him.


    "...And that about wraps up the first segment of our presentation." Chanceller Callux concluded, smiling.


    "I''ll be moving onto the rights and privileges and responsibilities of students. As an introduction, allow me to inform you about the goal and interest we sought to achieve when the Academy framed the current iteration of rules and regtions, as well as rights and privileges of students. We wish to create an environment where students can dedicate their time and energy into developing and pursuing their Martial Art without unnecessary burdens, hindrances or restrictions."


    "The framework of rules and regtions is centred around the goal of preventing students from hindering and obstructing themselves or other students through undesirable practises. The guidelines we present are aimed at helping the students adopt the right mind-set and temperament needed to be sessful Martial Artists. We have a rigorous student evaluation system that measures misdemeanours as defined the by the penal code of the Kandrian Martial Academy''s rules and regtions."


    "The consequences for too many misdemeanours will be straightforwardly be expulsion. The Academy seeks to retain only those students that have the drive to be Martial Artists. Another thing that I will go into is..."


    Of course, most of the students who managed to crack the exams were usually all those who strongly wished to be Martial Artists, otherwise they would not have passed even the first round. Yet there was a smaller proportion of students who managed to pass the exam without possessing a purer drive to be a Martial Artist. The strong penalties for misdemeanours and vitions were amended into the rules and regtions of the Academy for this very reason.


    "... etc. All of this is, of course, merely the philosophy and principle driving the rules and privileges students possess, not the actual rules and privileges themselves, you will all be provided with a rulebook when you leave. I strongly encourage all students and all guardians to read them thoroughly." He said, as he held up a copy of the rule book.<sub> </sub>


    (''That book is thick as fuck.'') Rui groaned inwardly.


    "Heh, looks like you''ll have a lot of reading to do when we get back home Rui." Julian chuckled mirthfully.


    "Tell me about it. Can I ask you to read it and then give me an abridged version of it?"


    <o>,m "Don''t load your work off of others, young man." Julian said, while yfully karate chopping Rui. "This is part of the process."</o>


    Rui sighed, still, he was d to see that the rules were taken seriously, and were seriously enforced. Back on Earth, bullying was rampant because schools simplycked the faculties by which it could enforce them. Teachers couldn''t be bothered with bullying unless it was too far; they simply weren''t paid enough. A lot of kids suffered from antagonisation, particrly amongst the teenagers, they couldn''t rely on the teachers.


    And if they decided to take matters into their own hands, the situation would escte and the conflict would be intense enough for the school to be involved, in such cases victims almost always were punished for escting, while bullies recieved punishment to a lesser degree or in some cases none at all.


    (''I have no fucking interest in dealing with that nonsense for a second time.'') Rui clenched his fist in anger. He had been bullied in middle school and high school, he was a weak and scrawny kid who would start gasping for air every time he grew tense, after all. One of the major driving forces for his motivation for martial arts back on Earth was because he admired the strength that martial artists possessed.


    They could fight for themselves, no matter who, no matter what. ''That''s so cool!'' Rui recalled thinking as a child in his previous life. Of course, as he grew up, so did his love and passion for martial arts andbat sports. What was once a childish infatuation for the aesthetics and exaggerated strength, matured into an intellectual passion, causing him to go down the path of bing a researcher of martial arts andbat sports.


    (''I guess, in some way, I ought to be grateful to my bullies?'') Rui shook his head, the mere thought if that was repulsive.


    (''Putting that aside, it seems I won''t be re-experiencing that one more time in this Academy. Assuming this Chancellor isn''t talking out of his ass.'') Rui threw skeptical nce at him.


    It was the Induction Ceremony of the Academy, after all. What chancellor would talk shit about their Academy on this day? If anything, it was possible he was just covering up the true state of the Academy with vague, flowery lies that were merely meant to dress up the Academy. This wasn''t an umon phenomenon in his previous life either.Published by N?v''elD/rama.Org.


    (''Well, to be fair, he did just describe an intricate student evaluation system. It would be one hell fo a lie if he tantly fabricated all of that. Usually when representatives of institutions lie about thebstate of affairs, they''re vague and ambiguous, but he''s been nothing but detailed, borate and orecise, even now.'') Rui noted while listening to Chancellor Callux''s words carefully.


    (''Well the only thing I can do either way is wait and see.'')


    He would find out what the Academy was like himself, soon enough. He took careful mental notes of the extensive presentation on the rules and regtions, the rights and privileges and the means by which they were enforced.


    "This brings us to the final segment. The future that lies beyond the Academy." Chancellor Callux continued. "The Academy, as you all know, is owned and funded by the Kandrian Martial Union. The Union invests in students in order to maintain a fresh supply of Martial Artists. Part of the reason for this is of course topensate for the Martial Artists that perish in missions..."


    ('' ''Part of it'' eh? It seems there''s more to it, just as I suspected.'')


    "Once you graduate, you can immediately register with the Kandrian Martial Union. The Union has a flexible contract system. Graduates with higher capabilities as measured by the Academy will receive more favourable contracts, in regards to themission cost cut you receive. Your performance in the Academy will impact the contract you negotiate with the Union." Chancellor Callux smiled.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 26 Provocation

    (''Interesting. I guess the contract you negotiate revolves around how much utility you provide to the Union, the higher the utility you provide, the more lucrative the contract you can negotiate. Martial Squires probably can''t negotiate that lucrative a contract with the Union, and would probably have to settle with lowermission-cuts.'')Published by N?v''elD/rama.Org.


    From this it could be inferred that higher realms of Martial Artists would easily be able to negotiate highermission-cut rates; higher proportions of the money paid for the mission.


    (''Martial Squires probably receive fifty-percent of the money paid for a mission that theypleted, or something in that range. It''s likely that the higher you go, the greater the cut/percentage of the money paid for the mission you get.'')


    "...and these are the means and ways by which your time in the Academy can influence your contract in the Union." Chancellor Callux concluded.


    "This brings us to an end to the primary presentation of the Induction Ceremony. As I''m sure you''ve realized, the goal of this short presentation was not to cover every shred of information that is relevant in any way to your studentship at our Academy. But to give you a broad understanding of our system, norms, policies and regtions. The details are far too many to be able to possibly fit within a single presentation, nor are they worth diving into rigorously in a single presentation. Of course, that doesn''t mean they are not important, nor does it mean we won''t address them, our Admission Department is fully equipped to address your inquiries and doubts of any kind once the Induction Ceremony is over." Chancellor Callux smiled.


    "And with that, the presentation hase to an end. I thank you all for your patience, and I would like you all to join me in weing the Honour''s Student in giving his speech. Please wee Student Nel." He said, ushering a round of apuse.


    (''Honour''s student, eh? That must be the student that ranked number one in the entire Exam.'') Rui mused curiously. He was indeed curious about what the number one student was like. Especially so since this student was evaluated to be higher than Kane and Fae by the examiners.


    Messy silvery white hair, shockingly red eyes, an undignified and a carelessly nonchnt saunter. These were the traits that stood out from the Honour''s student Nel. The apuse even died down with how remarkablycking the adolescent boy seemed to be in the mostmon etiquette that epassed all human interaction. Apathy and disdain oozed out from his demeanour, he had the bearing and mien of a wild animal.


    (''This is the kid that beat all of us?'') Rui wanted tough. It was too amusing.


    The bright light illuminating the stage only intensified his scowl. By the time he reached the stage, Chancellor Callux was sweating.


    "Wee, Nel, I look forward to your speech." He courteously said, despite himself away from the megaphone. "Hm, where is your speech copy? "


    "Don''t have it."


    "Eh?"


    "Don''t have it."


    "S-Surely you jest."


    Nel ignored the man and took his ce in front of the megaphone-like device.


    "Listen closely motherfuckers." He instructed. "He said something about no violence, but I don''t give a fuck."


    "..."


    "Imma fuck y''all up."


    "..."


    "I ain''t ying. I''m boutta fuck all y''all motherfucking asses up." He grinned.


    The crowd was unamused.


    "Who the fuck you think you are kid?"<sub> </sub>


    "Let''s take this outside little brat."


    "Acting all tough just cus you won number one."


    The crowd heckled him. What was once a dignified gathering was beginning to disintegrate into a chaotic mess.


    Nel grinned even wider. This was what he wanted to see. The peaceful, calm and dignified atmosphere was terribly dull. Conflict was his mantra. If this little provocation could spark even a single fight, he would be grateful.


    "There''s no need to go outside old man, I''m right fucking here." Nel spread his arms. "What? You scared? You a lil bitch? Huh? HUH??" He taunted putting a foot atop the megaphone stand.


    "The name''s Nel! And I''m here to let you all know that each of you so-called students ain''t fucking shit. Y''all lil pussies who ain''t got the balls to beat me. I''ll dominate each and every single one of you, anytime, anywhere, anyhow and anywho. I''ll spank your asses like the little children you are. Come at me, motherfucking wusses." He said with a disgustingly smug, wide grin. He walked away flipping the bird at the audience.


    Yet, despite how crude the provocation attempt was, it didn''t failpletely. Rui get sense hostility emanating from his fellow batch-mates.


    (''... Is that even allowed?'') Heughed. He wasn''t sure. But it was a breath of fresh air to him in all honesty. The kid was interesting. Still, what Rui was more interested in than his antics was hisbat prowess.


    (''He ranked number one in the second-round too from what I remember. It would be cool to see him fight and check out what he''s made of. I wonder who''d win in a fight between him and Fae.'') He couldn''t know until he saw Nel fight seriously, and Fae too. He was positive she''d held back against him, and he still had no idea how she knocked him out.


    (''All in good time.'')


    **********


    "Are you sure we shouldn''t intervene, Headmaster?" Chancellor Callux wanted to puke. He felt his lifespan reducing every time Nel tried to provoke a fight.


    "He hasn''t vited any rules thus far." Master Aronion sipped some tea peacefully. His calm and serene demeanor despite Nel''s disruption boggled Chancellor Callux. It gave him almost as much anxiety as Nel himself did.


    (''That''s because not insulting your fellow batch-mates is basicmon sense! It''s not in the rules because it''s an obvious norm.'') He facepalmed himself.


    Master Aronian chuckled at Callux''s expense, amused by the turn of events. He threw a nce at Nel. Where others might have seen a dangerous, savage beast in human skin with a maniacal temperament, he only saw an excited little chick throwing tantrums, eager to pick fights.


    "This year''s batch will be interesting.." He stroked his beard in a sagely manner, while observing Nel''s antics.


    "He''s finally done! That felt like forever." Callux eximed as he saw Nel walking down the podium flipping the middle finger to the audience. Relief sparked across his face only to be reced with anxiety as he realized it was his turn next to follow up after that catastrophe of an honour''s student speech.


    "Can I resign?" He mirthfully asked.


    "Sure, go give that speech first."


    "Sigh" Callux steeled himself while putting on his standard diplomatic courteous smile, before walking down the stage, leaving Master Aronion chuckling at his expense.


    As Calluxmenced the closing speech of the Induction ceremony, Master Aronian threw a nce at the crowd from the guest chambers, spotting several students he was looking for. Nel, Fae, Kane and Rui, among others.


    (''This year''s batch will definitely be interesting.'')


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 27 Friction

    (''What a wild card...'') Rui thought to himself as he exited the Presentation Hall with Julian.


    "It''s a little worrisome that you''re going to be attending the Martial Academy in the same batch as him. Be wary of the boy." Julian advised.


    "Will do. I doubt he''d go out of his way to bully a thirteen-year-old child, though."


    "You never know."


    Rui didn''t think the probability of him running into Nel was high. The training and grouping system were not like they were on Earth, where batchmates were of the same age and entered the schooling system in the same year. Since the Martial Path varied drastically from person to person, it made little sense to just thoughtlessly toss people of the same age into the same category.


    People developed their Martial Art at different rates, people like Kane were far ahead of other students despite being much younger, it made little sense to treat them the same, and train them the same. Furthermore, since Martial Art was so drastically unique and personal, different people required different trainings. It made little sense for one to be tossed into the same training regime. Arge portion of their Academic time would also be exploration of one''s volition. Self- training and self-learning were part of the journey.


    Just as Rui was contemting about the nuances of his Academic curriculum-


    "Rui! I''m d you made it."


    Kane called out to him. His green eyes wide with delight, he jogged over to Rui.


    "Hey man, it''s been a while." Rui offered in return, smiling.


    "Yeah, it has."


    Rui nced at his guardian escort. A middle-aged man, with neatlybed hair and a well-groomed attire. He worevish clothes which, while not enough to draw a lot of attention, indicated he wasn''t just some small assistant. Rui noted a crest like symbol embroidered onto his formal clothing, one identical to that of Kane''s.


    (''A family crest, eh?'')


    "Tell me, how did you pass?" Kane inquired curiously. "I know I saw someone taking your badge."


    "I have no idea, I was just as surprised as your when I received the letter of admission."


    "That''s strange, but still, who cares? You passed, we can hang together now." Kane grinned.


    "Yeah, thankfully I was lucky enough to have passed."


    Suddenly a voice called out to him.


    "It wasn''t luck, Rui Quarrier."


    Rui didn''t even need to turn around to see who called out. He recognized her voice instantly.


    "Fae..." He said. She was alone, as an adult, she did not need a Guardian. She wore what Rui could swear was a fake smile. It was a perfect inscrutable mask that hid her emotions remarkably well, preventing those around her from getting a read on her.


    Rui narrowed his eyes, clenching his fist as his expression turned stern. He was not a vindictive person, rather than pursuing something as dumb as revenge for getting knocked out by her, he would rather make the best out of that experience and grow strong enough to never let it happen again. As long as he didn''t suffer an immoral injustice, he was used to looking forward. Still, he could not look fondly at a person who basically bullied others for fun.


    "What do you want?"


    "My, you sound a little hostile."Published by N?v''elD/rama.Org.


    "Tends to happen when people knock me out for amusement. It would be one thing if you attacked me for my badge, it''s another thing to torment others for fun. I don''t like people like that."


    "Technically that self-defense, I didn''t intend to knock you out, merely spar with you till Nel was free, but you were strong enough to force me to go all-out." She shrugged.<sub> </sub>


    "That''s sophistry, you know." Rui sighed in exasperation.


    Fae''s eyes twinkled. "Regardless, you passed of your own merit. The Martial Academy''s Admission department is not ipetent."


    "I lost my badge, that''s zero points for me, clearly below the average. I failed in the criteria for passing."


    Fae giggled softly.


    "Who said the points had anything to do with the criterion?"


    Rui threw her a confused look. "Master Aronian said so."


    "Master Aronian..." She continued. "..Said that the criterion was up to their discretion. He never said the fulfillment of the objective was a guaranteed pass. Nor did he said failing the objective was a fail."


    Rui nced at her, unamused. Technically, she was right. Master Aronian''s phrasing did indeed match what she said, from what he remenbered. Still, if an objective is provided with the goal of evaluating the applicants, wasn''t it obvious that the oue of your attempt would be relevant to your evaluation?


    "You''re splitting hairs again." He retorted.


    "The oue of the badges was frankly irrelevant from the very start. The examiners merely wished to throw the applicants into conflict with each other and evaluate their performance given their circumstances." She exined. "You were a target for applicants from the very start. Yet you managed to retain your badge almost till the very end despite being younger, and thus weaker than most other applicants, you aplished this through resourceful tactics. Although, you did lose your badge, you lost your badge to me, the strongest applicant. And even then, your performance against me was quite impressive, all things considered. All these data-points factored into the admission department''s evaluation of you."


    Rui threw a skeptical expression at her. So she attacked him knowing his performance against her would do him good rather than bad? Seemed convenient. "You seem awfully informed about matters that should be ssified within the Academy. How could you possibly know all this?"


    "She has a Martial Sage for a grandmother." Kane interjected. "there''s nothing the Academy can keep hidden from a Martial Sage. She must have gotten a ton of information and used that to her advantage."


    Rui could hear a bit of spite in his tone. Fae threw him a courteous smile in response.


    "My, it''s been a while, young master Kane."


    "Wish it had been a bit longer, not gonna lie." Kane scowled.


    "Is it just me or do I hear a bit of resentment in your voice. Ah, are you perhaps jealous that I yed with Rui here instead of you in the Exam, you must be at that age, after all."


    Kane, being the teenager that he was, took her bait.


    "You-!" Rui put a hand on his shoulder, pulling him back.


    "Calm down, Kane." He advised, before throwing an exasperated nce at Fae.


    (''She''s egging him on and she enjoys it.'') Rui mused helplessly. (''These two clearly have some history. There''s no way such passive hostility springs out of nowhere. Is it because of their prides as descendants of Martial Sages? Kane never struck me as the proud type, and Fae seems to be half-trolling, though I can''t make out a damn thing about her under that mask.'')


    Still, the conversation had confirmed his suspicions that she was from a Martial family, that partly exined her greatbat prowess, she didn''t strike him as a genius like Kane was.


    (''Kane has raw talent and limitless potential, but her prowess strikes me more as the product of maddening training and willpower, and sheer experience.'')


    Even if he wasn''t particrly fond of her fa?ade of a temperament, he had to acknowledge and respect the sheer drive with which she reached her current level of power.


    "Let''s chill guys." He tried alleviating the prickly atmosphere. He wasn''t sure what the deal between these two was, but he''d rather it didn''t escte.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 28 Limitless

    Rui was still pondering about Fae''s words earlier. They made more and more sense in hindsight.


    (''I do recall Master Aronian saying the criteria was left to their discretion. But I didn''t think the criteria would be so independent of the oue of the objective.'')


    Rui didn''t think the decision to ept it could have been too easy, the oue likely still mattered to some extent. Maybe there was some degree of a controversy within the Union.


    He shrugged, he couldn''t possibly know and probably never would. And frankly, he had no interest either. He nced at Fae before asking her something that had been bugging him for a while.


    "How did you knock me out?" He really wanted to know what she''d done.


    "I struck you with my palm." She smiled at him.


    "How did you strike me hard enough to knock me out in that position and range?" He squinted his eyes in confusion.


    "I can''t go around revealing my trump cards so easily, now can I?" Fae threw a mischievous smile at him


    "It''s a technique called Outer Convergence, it''s a technique that allows you to gather power from all over your body into a single strike. It allows you to strike with a great amount of power, above your weight ss, from practically any position if fully mastered." Kane exined.


    Rui''s eyes flew wide open, while Fae''s eyes narrowed, throwing a subtle, yet sharp re at Kane, who basked in her hostility with a smug grin. It sparked another bout of bickering provoked by Fae. But Rui couldn''t be bothered by their tantrums.


    (''Gathering power from all across the body into a single strike. That''s normally impossible except in a perfectly-suited position allowing you to leverage torque from all muscle groups. It''s interesting she could umte and summate torque from muscle groups all across the body in that position. It seems like a much more advanced version of the One-Inch Punch back on Earth.'')


    The One-Inch Punch was an iconic strike that worked simrly to how Kane described Outer Convergence. Obviously, Rui knew absolutely everything fathomable there was to fathom about the One-Inch Punch. The reason he failed to realize that Fae had hit him with a One-Inch Punch was because it made no sense to him, a person from Earth. It was true that the One-Inch Punch was a good demomstration of the channeling and convergence of power, it was also shy and cool.


    Except the One-Inch Punch was useless in actual fights; it waspletely unpractical and worthless tounch strikes from one inch away, which is why no MMA/UFC fighter did that. Whereas Outer Convergence allowed Fae to perform feats that would be physically impossible on Earth.


    (''Martial Art, techniques and skills in this universe and world are not limited the way they were on Earth.'')This belongs to N?velDrama.Org - ?.


    Well, duh. Rui had known this ever since he saw a Martial Artist destroy a massive tree trunk with a single punch. But back then, it was all veiled in mystery, seeing exactly how they defied thews of physics was shocking to him.


    (''It''s almost as if the world is warping in and of itself, conspiring to allow techniques and skills such as this to surpass their limits. Thews of physics seemed to be just so ever slightly different such that his scientific background was relevant, while still different enough to allow such phenomena to ur.'')


    That was, of course, still spection. He didn''t dive deeper into the profound ontological gripes to be had between the differences of this world and his own. Frankly, he didn''t care to, it wasn''t his main interest. He put the issue at rest, for now.<sub> </sub>


    "How do you know about the technique Kane? Have you also learnt it?" Rui asked.


    "I haven''t, it''s not particrly relevant to the direction in which I''m developing my Martial Art. I know of it because it''s a somewhatmon technique in offensive striking oriented Martial Arts, I''vee across it before several times, it''s hard to deal with."


    It made sense, Outer Convergence certainly seemed to be a technique that was aimed at maximizing offense at the cost of maneuvering, this would run contrary to what Rui knew about Kane''s Martial Art.


    "So the fact that you use Outer Convergence means your Martial Art is probably centered around offense, right?" He asked Fae.


    "My Martial Art is indeed a short-range striking-oriented offensive Martial Art."


    "Short-range because of the palm-centric offensive style, right?"


    Fae nodded in return, smiling.


    Within the domain of close-quartersbat, kicking length was treated long-range, punching length was treated as mid-range, and elbowing/kneeing range was treated as short range. Fae''s striking style fell just short of mid-range CQC(close-quartersbat), thus being short range.


    "Speaking of personal Martial Art, I wonder what yours will end up looking like." Fae told him with a hint of curiosity on her face.


    "I''d observed you for quite a while during the third-round, you never particrly demonstrated an affinity for any one particr domain, range, or technique" She continued. "From what I can see, you''ve been dedicating at least arge portion of your life to preparing for your Martial Path. It''s rather odd you haven''t developed affinities. Usually, signs of one''s Martial Art can be seen to atleast some degree even prior to the Martial Apprentice stage."


    Rui shrugged. "I''m not particrly drawn into any one particr style of fighting. I might be an all-rounder."


    "...Interesting, all-rounder styles are obviously more flexible than specialized styles, so that is a good choice." Kane pointed out.


    "Indeed, but there are also downsides to all-rounder styles. All-rounder styles have a greater variety of types of approaches in a fight, however, this means that the analysis and judgement needed to urately choose the most efficient and effective choice, is much more difficult. The greater the variety of choices, the harder it is to choose correctly. Furthermore, the longer it takes to choose. This is the downside to all-rounder styles." Rui continued.


    On Earth, of course, the benefits that all-rounder styles, like the generic MMA fighting style, brought to the table surpassed the benefits bought by specialized styles. The empirical data was clear, fighters who hyper-specialized lost in a UFC/MMA setting, which was the closest thing to realbat.


    Pure strikers were unable to deal with grapplers once the grapplers closed in point-nk, pure grapplers were unable to cope with ranged nature of striking that prevented pure grapplers from reaching point-nk, not without getting severely hurt or knocked out.


    However, this was not Earth. This was Gaea. The Martial Art in this world was vastly different from that of the martial arts on Earth. This meant that things that shackled the fighters of Earth did not exist in this world!


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 29 Clueless Expert

    Fae and Kane threw him an odd look.


    "Hm? Do you disagree with what I said?" Rui raised an eyebrow to their reaction.


    "No.." Kane mumbled.


    "I agree with it, I think it''s a nuanced take, but it''s something I heard from my grandmother, it''s odd to hear that from someone with no formal training." She stared at him with a hint of puzzlement


    "It''s just weird because sometimes you seem clueless about basic Martial Art, but the next second turn into an expert." Kaneughed awkwardly.


    Rui shrugged. He, of course, knew the truth. He appeared clueless sometimes because he genuinely was clueless, Martial Art was greatly different from martial arts in many ways. Yet they shared many underlying traits on a broader scale for arge portion of his expertise to be relevant. Things that werepletely alien to Earth such as techniques like Outer Convergence, he was ignorant about. But the general advantages and disadvantages of styles and the determinant variables that determined the oue between two different styles and approaches did not change, here he was an unparalleled theoretical expert on these topics, the likes of which he doubted anybody but the most experiences Masters and Sages could rival.


    Still, he didn''t let it get to his head. Fact of the matter was that he was ignorant, he had a lot of learning to do before he could hold himself as an expert on the field like he did in his previous life. And that would take a long time. Not that he minded, the journey was half the destination. Every time he entertained thought of his Martial Path, he would grow excited from the bottom of his heart


    "Well, as long as you know." Kane shrugged.


    "For what it''s worth, I do think an all-rounder style would suit you more than a hyper-specialized style especially because of your resourceful and tactical approach. But that means you''ll have to be a jack of all trades, but a master of none."


    "I''m fine with that. The greater versatility and flexibility are worth the trade." Rui replied. This he was sure of.


    Rui often likenedbat sports with artistry. There were several parallels between them. A good painting was born of three things; The necessary tools, the artist''s proficiency with those tools and the manner in which the artist applied his tools and proficiency to paint the vision he sought after. Another analogy that Rui had conceived was that of a surgery.


    A perfect surgery most certainly needed the appropriate tools and instruments, as well as a surgeon who was proficient in using those tools and also; a surgeon who knew what operations needed to be performed in order to obtain the desired oue.


    Combat and Martial Art were no different, in a way. The tools of a fighter were that of his body, his limbs, his torso, his head and every cell in his body. The higher the quality of the tools, the more that could be aplished with them. Obtaining high quality tools was the foundation of Martial Art. A powerful, capable body was fundamental to the framework ofbat in both Gaea and Earth. Next; the proficiency of those tools was analogous to the techniques employed inbat.<sub> </sub>


    These techniques were nothing more than means and ways to operate the body in order to efficiently and effectively aplish a set of tasks and actions, this epassed both uracy and precision of movements


    And finally, the application of the tools and techniques. Using the right move at the right time.


    An extremely important aspect ofbat. What did it matter if one possessed the body of a god, and the movements of a machine if one used the absolute worst move at any given time? It didn''t, such a person would lose to another with bad tools and techniques, but great application.


    Currently, Rui was closer to thetter. A lifetime of research into midbat analysis and judgement, a lifetime of research into probability of sess of tactics applied in various scenarios with carefully constrained and controlled variables.


    This was something of immense utility in Gaea and Rui possessed it in spades.


    This was why he was likely to pick an all-rounder Martial Art. They were more versatile and flexiblepared to other Martial Art, their only downside was that they were very tactically intensive, meaning, of the three aspects ofbat mentioned prior; tools, proficiency and application. All-rounder styles required much higher quality of applicationpared to other styles.This belongs to N?velDrama.Org - ?.


    Thus, it was very suited to Rui, whose strongest advantage was his tactical application.


    p The reasoning behind his decision was certainly a bizarre outlier. There was no way to train tactical application the same way one''s body and technique could be trained. Tactical application was something that usually came with a vast amount of experience, real experience. It required fighting, and more fighting, and even more fighting.</anda>


    The quality of one''s application of techniques was mostlybination of intelligence and experience. This was why Rui was suited to it. His brain was still developing, and would continue to do so until the age of twenty-five, meaning his mind would be growing sharper and sharper for a second time. And although hecked practical experience which would no doubt hinder him in the short run, his theoretical foundations and knowledge were simply out of this world.


    Rui suspected that whatever his Martial Art would end up looking like, he would probably be unlike any other all-rounder in the world. Though he still wasn''t able to urately extrapte what this would look like, exactly.


    "Rui." Julian interrupted his train of thought while approaching the trio. He had distanced himself from them when they approached Rui, not wanting to awkwardly be part of a conversation he clearly had no ce in. He''d instead given them space and taken the liberty to read up on the Academy information booklet the Admission Department had been providing to students and their guardians at free of cost. Ideally, he''d want to allow Rui to spent time with fellow students for as long as possible, but;


    "You really ought to read up and rify any doubts you have sooner thanter Rui, you won''t get another chance until the Academic year begins."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 30 Debt

    "...True." Rui concurred, before facing Kane and Fae.


    "Sorry guys, but I really ought to visit the admission department support staff. That is one of the reasons I came here today, after all."


    "Sure, no problem, see yater. We should hang out iny my ce sometime." Kane replied, earning a nod from Rui.


    "I''ll be looking forward to meeting you once our academic year begins." Fae bade courteously.


    The two of them waved Rui off before setting out in the opposite directions, as though they did not want to spend any extra time with each other.


    (''What''s with those two?'') Rui couldn''t help but wonder at this point.


    "You have some interesting friends." Julian noted, throwing Rui a wry smile. "But they don''t seem to get along with each other for some reason."


    "Yeah, it''s strange. They''re acquaintances, probably because they both are direct family of Martial Sages." Rui shrugged. "They must have some history together."


    "Hm, anyway, let''s go now." Julian said as he led the way to down a long,rge and ostentatious corridor. The d¨¦cor was so extravagant that Rui couldn''t help but wonder whether he was in at a school or the Royal Pce. Gold, tinum, silver streaked across the d¨¦cor. The architecture was so unnecessarily extra, it made Rui wonder about the actual purpose.


    (''It''s almost like the Martial Academy, no, the Martial Union is making a statement to all students who traverse its Academy.'')


    It was one thing to rub in its prestige with facilities and amenities that had actual utility, it was another to spend resources on something so vain.


    (''It''s almost like they''re purposelypeting with Royal standards.'')


    He''d once seen what Royal extravagance looked like when he saw the Mantian Royal premises from afar a few years back.


    (''Maybe they arepeting with the Royal Family.'') This was random pure spection on Rui''s part. But he didn''t think that two separate entities with vast amounts of economic and militaristic power within a single nation would get along with each other.


    (''Not that I know anything about politics.'') He knew the bare basics back on Earth, and only the bare basis because he didn''t bother with politics, ever. He''d never voted even a single time in his entire life. Democratic or Republican government, what practical day-to-day impact did it have on his life?


    Ultimately, ambitious rich power-mongers engaged in a squabble for more power and more money, most of which came at the cost of the poorest and most disenfranchised ss of people of society. Back on Earth, he hadn''t even wanted to even dip his toes in this quagmire of modern society.


    Fortunately, he made enough money to not be affected much regardless of how much the politicalndscape changed. His ie was upper-middle ss, and he led a frugal and liability-less life, with that much money, he did not need to give a shit and could engage in the things he cared about most,bat research.


    (''Though, maybe I should care for the politics in this world, to some degree.'')


    The reason was simple:


    The existence, as well as the impact of Martial Art.All rights ? N?velDrama.Org.


    One did not need to be a political pundit to see that Martial Art made a huge impact on political considerations, just the very existence of Martial Art was enough proof. It was highly likely the world would look extremely different if it weren''t for Martial Art.<sub> </sub>


    As an aspiring Martial Artist and a lover of Martial Art. The impact of politics in Gaea would likely have a much greater impact on him, should he seed in bing a Martial Artist, than it did back on Earth. After all, back on Earth, he was nobody. Just another cog among another 320,000,000 or so Americans. But as a Martial Artist, he would be part of militaristically ''elite'' one-percent.


    Rui was not arrogant, but Martial Artists impacted politics much more so than other citizens, they were walking fully-autonomous armies. There was no way such power would not get mixed up in a political muck with or without their consent, as long as they lived in a society.


    (''If that is the case, I should be careful. I should also be more informed on the current political climate. In the future.'')


    Rui shrugged. Making vague and generic precautious ns was the best he could do. Hecked too much information and too much power to even bother with anything more.


    "Looks like we''re here." Julian told him. They''d arrived at arge reception hall looking room.


    "Fancy as always." Rui noted. The room was filled with an array of counters with staff on one side and students on the other side, rifying their doubts.


    "There''s an empty spot there, let''s go." Julian gestured. The upied the seas opposite to an empty counter as a staff member greeted them.


    "How may I help you."


    "There several things I''d like to learn more about, but specifically, I was hoping you could tell me more about the schrship program." Rui replied. This was the most important matter to him presently. He needed to qualify to get a schrship, in order to that he needed to learn more about it.


    The staff member nodded in response before replying.


    "Absolutely. The schrship program was set up to help students who are unable to afford the hefty tuition, housing and other fees that end up umting to a rather hefty amount per Academic background. You can incur the fees as debt and repay it back when you be a Martial Artist."


    "The information booklet provided specifies a specific mode of payment, correct? Can you tell us more about it?"


    "Indeed. Let me give you a brief overview about the contracting system of the Martial Union before I speak about schrship debt repayment. Once you graduate from the Academy as a Martial Squire, you will be negotiating a contract with the Martial Union that describes the payment structure/rates you will receive your payment with, in exchange forpleting missionsmissioned to the Martial Union by customers. So, for example, onemon contract offered by the Union is themission-cut contract, moremonly known as the Royalty Contract. You will receive a specific proportion of themission fees paid by customers for a mission. Something like, say, forty-percent. So, if a customermissions a bodyguard mission for a hundred silvers, for example, then you''ll receive forty silvers, and the remaining sixty go to the Martial Union."


    "In this case, if you have schrship debt, then you may repay that debt by taking a twenty-percent lower Royalty Contract." He continued.


    "The Royalty Contract is only one type of contract that the Union offers, but going in depth into the contracting system is not necessary. The point is; no matter what kind of contract structure you negotiate with the Martial Union when you register, your debt will be ounted for in the contract and you''ll sign a contract that effectively reduced your ie until your debt is paid."


    (''Interesting...'')


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 31 Overview

    The schrship-debt was repaid directly to the Martial Union. This made sense, since the Martial Academy was owned, staffed and even funded by the Martial Union. What interested Rui was how sophisticated the economic framework seemed to be. It wasn''t something he would have expected, but it was remarkably realistic, grounded and pragmatic.This belongs to N?velDrama.Org - ?.


    The functioning of the Union, the Academies and Martial Artists in rtion to each other was quite rational, and not of the vague, ambiguous system one would normally encounter in fictional fantasy settings.


    "What happens to these debt-contracts once it''s been fully paid?" This was an important matter to Rui.


    "The debt contracts include a condition and agreement of termination of the contract once the debt has been fully paid, of course. No need to worry about anything on that front."


    "What is the typical time period needed for a Martial Squire to repay their incurred debt through these debt-contracts? The information booklet does not mention anything about the interest rate." Julian inquired.


    It was quite possible that the debt incurred would be so high, and the interest would be so overwhelming that it would take Martial Squires half their life to pay back their debt. Signing an exploitative contract that would haunt you for decades was a truly horrific possibility that Julian was determined to not allow happen to Rui.


    "The reason the information booklet does not mention an interest rate is because we do not charge an interest rate. The interest to be paid is the principle amount incurred as debt."


    Rui narrowed his eyes. This meant that the schrships weren''t a system meant to farmrger amounts of money through snowballed debt of hapless victims. On first nce it seemed like in phnthropy, but Rui was certain that this wasn''t the case.


    (''It seems the Martial Union''s interest in maintaining a constant fresh influx of new Martial Artists was stronger than I''d suspected.'')


    This was quite the sweet deal for students like himself, if true. The Martial Academy was basically willing to make losses in order to ensure a greater number of Martial Artists sessfully graduate.


    "As for the first question you asked me.." The man continued. "It generally takes graduates several years of work with the general debt contract to fully repay their debt and re-negotiate a standard contract with the Union. Though there are some who manage to repay it within six months while those who fail to repay it for one reason or the other. Typically, due to low rates of missionpletion, crippling injuries or death. It all depends on what kind of upation you take, and what kind ofpetences you possess."


    "I also noticed that coterals are not a necessary condition for being eligible to schrship-debt." Julian pointed out.


    "Indeed, the kind of students who usually need a schrship never have any coteral in our experience." The man replied.


    "So, the Academy just readily offers schrships to all students who are unable to pay the fees?" Rui asked with a confused expression. This was honestly too good to be true.


    "Yes, However you will need to provide a financial statement. We do not permit students who possess the financial security to pay the fees to enter based on a schrship."<sub> </sub>


    This was easy enough. Rui had already verified that there was absolutely no way in hell the Orphanage had the funds necessary to foot the bill of the fees.


    "Then from what you have rified as well as the information avable in the guidebook, Rui here is fully eligible to apply for and receive a schrship." Julian noted.


    The support staff member nodded his head as he flipped through Rui''s profile.


    "There are no problems, as long as you have the documents at hand, you can submit an application for a schrship for student Rui Quarrier."


    While Julian began the process. Rui was left to his own thoughts.


    (''Part of the reason the Martial Entrance Exam was this difficult was probably because they wanted to a high degree of certainty that the students that end up passing and applying for a schrship are worth the money invested.'')


    Rui suspected that part of the reason the Martial Union was so liberal with their schrship policy is because the fact that the students applying managed to pass the exam meant there was already a somewhat high degree of confidence that a decentlyrge enough proportion of students who passed the exam and applied for a schrship would likely graduate.


    Otherwise, such liberalism didn''t make sense. Some financial losses were fine as long as the yield of Martial Artists were high enough. These were likely long-term investments into the growth and development of the Martial Union.


    Thus it made sense that the Martial Exam was served as not just a test for whether people were worthy of bing a Martial Artist, but also as a filter that weeded out as many ipetent applicants that would be no more than bad investments and money drains that would sap away the funds of the Martial Union.


    (''Especially the first round, people whock the resolve and determination, the type of people who least deserve a schrship, would have been filtered out.'')


    Regardless, Rui was grateful for the schrship program. The odds of him sessfully bing a sessful Martial Artist without schrship was truly bleak. He''d have to engage in manualbour for extensive periods of time, decades probably, before he had enough money to pay the fees. By the time he was a full-fledged adult, it was probably far toote to begin his Martial Path. He suspected there was a real reason why the Entrance Exam capped of at the age of eighteen.


    They wouldn''t reduce the pool of potential Martial Artists pointlessly unless the detriments of doing so drastically outweighed the incentives. Unless he found himself a Master Martial Artist independently of the Martial Academy, he had no hope. And the notion of Rui being epted as a Martial Artist outside of the Martial Academy was absurdly ridiculous.


    (''I have a higher chance of bing a Martial Artist by myself.'')


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 32 Foundation And Exploration

    Rui yawned as he faced the azure sky.


    "Tired?" Julian asked.


    "Yeah... That took fucking hours." Rui replied.


    "Indeed, still, it was interesting."


    Rui couldn''t argue with that, no, it was a severe understatement. After they''d applied for a schrship, they''d gone onto rify their doubts regarding the curriculum of the Academy.


    The Academy first began with a more thorough and in-depth evaluation of the student''s martial proficiency in various fields, much more so than even the Martial Entrance Exam, apparentlyThis belongs to N?velDrama.Org - ?.


    (''Makes sense, given that the Entrance Exam did not specifically test for martial proficiency. It tested resolve in the first round and general physical capability in the next two rounds.'')


    The Evaluation Exam was different. It performed detailed measurements of a student''s capabilities in various fields, and the results of the Evaluation Exam would decide the curriculum for each student. The student would then undergo that curriculum until they reach a satisfactory level of generalbat proficiency. This was the first step needed to reach the Martial Apprentice Realm. This stage was also known as the Foundation stage, it was allegedly the most important stage without which the Martial Path could not be tread upon.


    After the Foundation Stage, followed the Exploration Stage. ording to the guidebook provided by the Academy as well as the support staff, the Exploration Stage was a less-controlled, self-paced stage of the curriculum. The Exploration Stage was the final stage necessary to reach the Apprentice Realm. From what Rui had learnt, this stage was a freely independent period where students could freely ess the Academy''s Martial Library, a library of Martial Art techniques, and learn and train any of those techniques that they wished to. However, there would be mandatory sparring days every nine days where students would spend the entire day engaging in spars with others.


    This was to allow both; the Senior instructors and students to measure their progress at asional intervals. It also gave a lot of students sparring experience that arge proportioncked. It was not easy to get controlled and monitored sparring experience unless you were rich.


    Unlike in the previous Stage, the Senior instructors would take less of a teacher role, and more of an aid/mentor role in the Exploration Stage. They were mandated to not be overbearing on students of this Stage, but rather encourage them to be open-minded and inquisitive. To help them explore the length and breadth of Martial Art, and help them take the very final step needed to be a Martial Apprentice; Discovering their Martial Path.


    (''Seems freedom is necessary for the Exploration Stage.'') Rui mused.


    The Exploration Stage required to students to freely explore a variety of techniques above the bare basics mastered in the Foundation Stage. The idea was that with enough exploration and introspection, the students would discover the direction they wanted to develop their Martial Path in: The Martial Path.


    Once the Martial Path was discovered, the Exploration Stage would end. The Foundation and Exploration Stages were the two stages aimed at getting students to enter the Apprentice Realm.


    Rui was equally for excited both stages. The Entrance Exam had exposed his ring ws and shorings. His Martial proficiency was subpar, he had a lot to learn; far too much. He barely managed to pass the Exam relying on tactics, but that was not a sustainable strategy. He needed to get strong if he wanted to be a legit Martial Artist. He wanted to be strong.<sub> </sub>


    The Foundation and Exploration Stage sounded like absolutely perfect to Rui who looked forward to simply immersing himself in his love for Martial Art without any other considerations of any kind. He had been starving for exactly this for the past twelve years!


    (''It''s a shame I wasn''t able to learn whates after.'')


    That was the extent to which support staff were willing to disclose. And any and all information regarding the Martial Union as a whole, higher realms of Martial Artist etc, merely earned him a courteous refusal. ''It isn''t within the purview of our role in this ceremony.'' they said.


    (''It''s a bit strange they''re being this secretive when I''m already guaranteed to be a student.'')


    The only answer was that they did not want to give out unnecessary information prematurely. Perhaps the answers to his questions were partially confidential, sensitive or dangerous to their interests. It wasn''t imusible. Higher-realm Martial Artists were practically considered National treasures. It would make sense that the Union and Academy would take a hard stance on all information regarding these assets. Anything that could diminish their safety or contribute to their harm was strongly regted by the Union by the looks of it.


    (''That''s one hell of a VIP treatment they got going on there.'')


    This one of the secondary aspects of being a Martial Artist, particrly a high-realm one, that Rui was looking forward to one day. Who didn''t like to be held in high esteem? In his previous life, he was just a researcher. And although his work did have an impact on an entire industry, ultimately, he himself was not that prominent outside of certain academic circles. Inparison, a high realm Martial Artist could impact an entire nation.


    "The path to reaching a high realm as a Martial Artist is extremely difficult." Julian reminded. It took him only a nce at Rui''s dreamy expression to more or less gauge his thoughts.


    "Let a man dream." Rui shook his head.


    "What ''man''?" Julian shrugged mirthfully. "I only see a child who needed an adult to apany him on his first day to school."


    It was a provocation.


    And it worked.


    The two bantered as they rode a rickshaw back home.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 33 Home

    "So, what''s the Martial Academy like?" A young girl asked with curiosity.


    "How many times have you asked that question Rita?" Rui sighed helplessly


    "Ohe on, just tell!" Rita insisted.


    p "After dinner. Focus on your food, I see you''ve barely eaten anything." Myra interjected.</anda>


    "A..." Rita pouted.


    All of them had gathered in the dining room. Lashara had made it a point to ensure everybody eats together. Every day, dinner would begin only after everybody was in the dining room, ready at their tables.


    (''Probably to strengthen the sense of kinship between us.'') Rui mused.


    And it worked. Blood-rted or not, eating together always conveyed a sense of togetherness like no other group activity, it really hammered in the idea that they actually were family. This was one of the many reasons Rui had grown deeply fond of the Quarrier Orphanage.


    Rui nced around. In the past thirteen years the Quarrier Orphanage had grown tremendously. As many of the adolescents from thirteen-years ago had grown up and decided to remain with the Orphanage. Even those who had gotten married and shifted away from Orphanage among the second generation, still supported it when they could afford to.


    Farion, Horatio and Mica were now full-fledged adults that had gotten into manualbour, while women like Nina worked in restaurants and bars. Together along with the first generation of adults of the Orphanage, Lashara was able to adopt and care for children with a much lesser burden.


    One source of ie that truly helped the Quarrier Orphanage was that of Julian''s. Despite obtaining a prestigious position in the Kandrian Institute of Sciences as an apprentice schr in the Research and Development department, he never forgot his roots. He still resided with the home he grew up with, and aided the family that had put a roof over his head, and food in his belly and given him love and care when he was alone in this world.


    He had obtained a middle-ss upation, allowing him to pay back everything he believed he owed to the Orphanage.


    Rui intended to do the same. He had no intention of living elsewhere. What was the point? He had a loving family, there was no need of going through the extra expenses of getting his own ce, only to live a lonely life.


    (''Once I start working as a Martial Squire, I''ll give all the ie I don''t need to the Quarrier Orphanage.'')


    Even on Earth, Rui had led a frugal life. He didn''t even bother owning his own ce, he lived in an apartment. He tossed all his ie into the bank where it rotted for several decades until his health deteriorated drastically near the end.


    Still, this life was different. He still hadn''t learnt as much as he''d like about Martial Artist upations. He wasn''t sure how much of his ie would be needed to for his upation. Maybe Martial Artists used gear like armour, knives, swords?


    Or maybe, they needed arge amount of funds for the learning and training resources needed to grow stronger. After all, he highly doubted that the Martial Union was unable to provide any aid to lower ranked Martial Artists. It''s possible they even had a monopoly on the learning resources, and exchanged them for particr services, thus incentivizing Martial Artists to always remain loyal and associated with the Union.


    (''Well, all of this isn''t relevant at the moment.'')


    He had to first be a Martial Squire and graduate from the Academy before he could even think about the details of working as a Martial Artist.


    "You said the Academy would begin in thirty days right?" Nina inquired.


    "Yeah."<sub> </sub>


    "You''ll be staying in the academy the entire time?"


    Rui nodded.


    "That''s a shame." Nina shrugged.


    "Don''t worry." Rui reassured. "They have breaks in between. I''ll definitelye back during the breaks."


    "How often are they?" Lashara asked, hoping they a frequent as possible.


    "Seasonally. The first break after the start of the academic year will be the Spring break, right around the Spring Festival, ording to the information guidebook." Rui exined.


    "I see." Lashara sighed. It wasn''t as much as she''d hoped, but still better than the worst-case scenario.


    "How long will the breaks be?"


    "Around five days or so." He responded.


    "That''s it?" Horatio grumbled.


    Rui shrugged. "That''s it, yeah. Can''t do anything about the rules."


    The reason for the shorter break was due probably to ensure the students'' discipline wasn''t broken due to extensively long breaks.


    "On the other hand, it''s nice they''re letting you out during the Spring Festival, meeting you after so long, and having you with us to celebrate it will make the festival even more special.


    "That''s true." Rui smiled mncholically.All rights ? N?velDrama.Org.


    Now he that he had gotten his hands on the Academic Calendar, he knew that he would see his family much less frequently. A meagre four times his year.


    (''It''s a shame I can''t live here once the Academic year begins.'') Rui sighed inwardly.


    Ideally, he would have liked to stay at home andmute to school daily. This was a norm for students his age in most schooling systems on Earth. He wasn''t fond of being ripped apart from his family. Though the significance of the Martial Academies was admittedly higher than schooling systems back on Earth.


    "Still, you''ll be leaving in a week." Alice muttered, on the verge of tears.


    "Don''t worry Alice, I''ll alwayse back. You''re my precious big sister after all." Rui assured, with a smile.


    "Oh you...!" She rushed to hug him, overwhelmed with emotion. The gesture triggered yet another round of affection and fawning, which Rui duly received and reciprocated. As the sole cause for their emotion, he did not darein about this. It wasn''t as though people hadn''t left the orphanage before, but this was indeed the first time that someone as young as him was leaving the Orphanage for as long as he was. On one hand they were happy for him, on the other they would miss him dearly.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 34 Play

    "Alright, I''m headed out." Rui said as he jogged out the main door of the Orphanage.


    "Be careful, don''t get lost!" Lashara warned.


    Rui stuck a thumbs up even as he put distance between the himself and the Orphanage.


    (''I wonder what his ce looks like.'')


    Kane had invited him over to his house, before they''d left the Academy in the Induction Ceremony. This was a new experience to Rui, even though he albeit knew that this was a regr phenomenon on Earth. His disease had prevented him from rendezvous in his previous life back on Earth. Severe chronic Asthma was a disease that made even simple rtively light tasks like travelling to a friend''s house pretty difficult, not that he''s had any friends back in his childhood anyway.This belongs to N?velDrama.Org - ?.


    (''It''s probably an ostentatious mansion.'') Rui spected.


    Kane''s home was pretty much in the center of town of Hajin, the town of which the Quarrier Orphanage was more-or-less in the outskirts of. Rui nned to jog a portion of the way where he was supposed to rendezvous with a servant of the Arrancar family who would escort him to the Arrancar houshold.


    As he travelled, his surroundings grew increasingly popted and developed. The Quarrier Orphanage was situated in a somewhat more remote location closer to the open fields where crops were grown, however as he travelled further into the town, the poption density and infrastructure of the town grew immensely.


    The presence of a Martial Academy was a blessing to the town. It drew in a lot of people from all over the Empire, specifically amongst the youth every year.


    The Martial Academies were a boost to economic prosperity, after all. Each Academy needed a huge amount ofbour and resources for maintenance alone. There was arge number of suppliers and manufacturers who had set shop in the town, who supplied the Academy with the needed goods and supplies. There were many people who migrated to the town and ended up being employed by the Academy, and many a youth who migrated to the town looking to attempt and hopefully pass the annual Martial Entrance Exam, the Martial Entrance Exam was held during winter, during which travelling between states would be much harder, after all. Many non-native applicants would travel to the town much in advance.


    In this way, the Martial Academy empowered both the supplier and consumer market. It was far from an exaggeration to that the economy of the town of Hajin would copse overnight without the Academy. The disappearance of the Academy would mean arge portion of the demand for goods and supplies would decrease drastically, causing excess supply of goods in the local market, reducing the prices of goods significantly, smaller suppliers, business and retailers would be unable to stay afloat and would be forced to migrate to other parts of the Empire.


    Arge proportion of the locals who were employed by the Academy or aiming for it would also be instantly unemployed, and would likely migrate. After a brief period of chaotic flux, the GDP of the town would most be reduced by a significant portion, without a doubt.


    (''This must be one of the ways the Martial Union maintains political and economic power. Putting aside the direct authority and capital they possess, the sheer passive impact and necessity of the Academies aka The Union has on society is immense.'') Rui mused as he reached his rendezvous point.


    "Master Quarrier, I presume?" A voice behind him enquired.


    Rui turned to meet the man. He wore simple butvish clothing with a crest of the Arrancar Family embroidered over the left chest area.


    "Yeah, Rui Quarrier." He responded in affirmation. "Are you here to pick me up?"


    "Indeed, pleasee this way." He gestured to a horse-pulled carriage.<sub> </sub>


    (''A carriage, huh? My first time.'')


    It was indeed his first time, in either of his lives. He wasn''t particrly excited though. As someone who''d spent a lifetime in a world of cars, bikes, subways, nes etc. A carriage wasn''t that big a deal, it was, frankly, nothing note.


    Still, Rui yed the part of a poor orphan and got all excited at the prospect of the privilege of riding a horse carriage.


    "Wooooow! A horse carriage!" He cooed as convincingly as he could, suppressing the embarrassment that arose within him.


    "Please make yourselffortable." He said, opening the door and gesturing inside at the posh, luxurious seats within.


    "How long will it take us to get there?" Rui enquired.


    "No more than twenty minutes." He replied.


    (''Longer than I expected.'') Rui noted. (''Well, if it was any shorter than sending a carriage would be kinda pointless, although there is the matter of verification of my identity.'')


    Kane had exined that invited guests were usually provided with a letter of invitation to enter the premises, but he didn''t have any at hand since Kane had invited him on the spot without any prior nning.


    (''Well, he didn''t know whether I''d even passed or not. The invitation was quite spontaneous after all.'') Rui mused as he felt a sense of anticipation.


    Normal kids invited each other to y games.


    Kane had invited Rui for sparring.


    And Rui epted in a heartbeat.


    In fact, had Kane invited Rui over to y cards, Rui would definitely refuse the invitation with some excuse or the other. Travelling all this way and spending a whole day at someone''s ce for cards? Just the mere thought of wasting time like that with only one month for the Academy to start made Ruiugh.


    But sparring was a different thing. Rui had very little experience, at this stage, he was thirsty for experience. This was the one thing that he could not use his expertise in martial arts andbat sport training. Combat experience was irreceable, it was supreme. He looked forward to gaining as much as he could. Furthermore, from someone like Kane, who was a far superior fighter than Rui was.


    (''How exciting!'')


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 35 His Home

    "Rui, d you''re here." Kaned waved as Rui took in the majesty of the Arrancar Household. Kane''s home somewhat resembled a western pce of sorts from the Middle Ages. It wasvish and luxurious yet the d¨¦cor and aesthetics were not ostentatious. It was as if the owner did not care for superficial beauty.


    "Thanks for having me." Rui replied.


    "Come on in." Kane told him.


    Rui followed him as he took in the visage of the Mansion.


    (''Yeah, this kid is loaded.'') Rui affirmed.


    There were servants of all kinds scattered across the premises, all engaged in one task or another. Gardeners meticulously maintaining the beautiful garden, maids and butlers tending to one task or another.


    (''That''s a huge door. What''s the point of having a door this big?'') Rui wondered. One could walk on stilts and stillfortably enter.


    "You have a big ce man." Rui told him.


    "Yeah, too big if you ask me." Kane shrugged.


    "Is your family around?" Rui asked.


    "Some of my siblings, my mom, my step-moms."


    "Your mom and your step-moms?" Rui tilted his head.


    "My dad is polygamous." Kane briefly replied, it didn''t seem like a pleasant topic for him.


    "...I see." Rui dropped the topic. He regretted asking. But he was caught off-guard. He didn''t know about other countries, but, at the very least, the Kandrian Empire had a culture of monogamy. Even on Earth, most nations and cultures were strongly monogamous, at least in the twenty-first century.All rights ? N?velDrama.Org.


    Kane had expressed hostility towards his father prior, maybe this had something to do with it.


    "My father isn''t around, that''s why I invited you around this time." Kane told him. "Let''s go. You don''t mind starting immediately, right?"


    "No problem." Rui smirked. It was a silly question. Rui would, in fact, mind had they sat around sipping tea making small talk.


    "Alright, this way."


    Just then;


    "Kane." A mature female voice called out to him.


    Kane paused, turning towards the direction of the voice reluctantly.


    "Yes mother?"


    "I was told you called over a peasant of a boy, it seems I was told correctly. Are you going to waste time ying around?" She reprimanded him sternly and coldly.


    (''...Did she just call me a plebeian to my face?'') Rui mused. He was a little caught off-guard by the woman''s unrepenting rudeness.


    (''Kane''s life must suck with a mom like her. I''m starting to see why he doesn''t seem to like this ce.'')


    "He''s a friend." Kane sternly told her off. "We''re not ying around, we''re going to be training."


    "Train with the instructors your father has hired."


    "I train with them every day, sparring with others will give me a wider range of experience, which will ultimately help me grow stronger in the long run." He retorted.


    His mother begrudgingly epted that exnation, after instructing Kane to work hard.


    "Hey man." Kane turned to Rui, bowing his head in shame and guilt. "I''m sorry she insulted you."


    "You don''t need to apologize for other people''s actions and words. I appreciate the sentiment, but it''s not your fault."


    "This is why I wanted to begin our sparring session with you as soon as you arrived." He muttered in frustration. "She never interrupts sparring and training sessions. This way I could have avoided running into her."<sub> </sub>


    "Why not train and spar away from your house?"


    Kane sighed as his expression soured.


    "I''m not allowed to leave the household unless permitted." Kane told him.


    Rui jerked his head back in a double-take as he nced at Kane in shock.


    "You can''t leave the household for anything? Like, at all?"


    Kane shook his head. "Nope, not at all."


    "ying?"


    "Nope."


    "Walks?"


    "No way."


    "Fresh air?"


    "We have huge open training areas and tons of balconies and even a gigantic terrace."


    Rui gazed at Kane with a visible difort.


    "Damn..." he managed squeeze out.


    "Yeah.." Kane sighed. "This is why I can''t wait for the Academy to begin."


    "I''m surprised your family allowed you to go in the first ce."


    "They didn''t, it took me literal fucking years of lobbying to be allowed. Ultimately my dad, who was also an Academy graduate reluctantly relented."


    "I see..."


    "The Academy is something the Martial Union has invested heavily in a huge amount of resources and funds over a long period of time, making it an absolutely ideal and optimal ce for nurturing Martial Squires. Even for a Martial Sage like my father, it''s not easy topensate for everything it provides by himself. This was the key point that convinced him. But he set a bunch of conditions."


    "Conditions?"


    "I had one chance, and that was when I turned thirteen. And I had to make it into the top five overall."


    "I see..." Rui recalled Kane telling him thetter during the second-round of the Entrance Exam.


    "We''re here." Kane told him, opening a door to a gigantic facility.


    Inside was one of the most aesthetically pleasing sights that a martial artsbat sports junkie like Rui had seen in the entirety of his second life.


    A huge wide area, divided inti several sections. In one section, there were what appeared to be a vast variety of body-building and exercise equipment. Rui could see the equivalent of bench-presses, treadmills, a variety of weights like dumb-bells and tes, squat-racks, barbells, cables and pulleys, pull-up and callisthenic bars etc.


    In another section was martial arts training equipment of a huge assortment; boards, arge amount of dummies for various striking maneuvers andbos as well as throws and holds. There were punching bags of various sizes each meant for different purposes. Further off there were many sections of area that seemed to be each dedicated to training specific attributes or skills; awareness, sensory capabilities, endurance, bnce, dynamic flexibility. One that particrly caught his eyes was a circr section with a bunch of bags attached to ropes to the ceiling above, the bags themselves were attached to the ceiling. From what Rui could tell, this was dynamic evasive maneuvering practice. One was supposed to stand in the center while dodging the released bags.


    "That reminds an awful lot of the second round." Rui gestured towards that area.


    Kane smirked. "That''s my favourite training."


    "No wonder you aced the second round." Ruiughed.


    He looked forward to spending time here.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 36 Warm Up

    Kane shrugged. "It''s really fun. I often get scolded because I ignore other forms of training in favour of doing this. Anyways, let''s warm up."


    "Start with cardio?"


    "Sure." Kane nodded.


    They head over to a set of machines that resembled treadmills.


    "How does this work? Do we have to run on our own?" Rui inquired.


    "The treadmill is powered by a slime." Kane exined.


    "A slime?" Rui tilted his head in confusion.


    "Yeah, within the cylindrical panel there is a species of slime that rotates when pressure is applied to it." Kane pointed. "You can adjust the pressure the slime experiences by adjusting this knob." He said, twisting a knob in front of him."


    (''I see, it''s a dial that can control how much pressure is exerted on the slim.'') Rui mused as he adjusted the speed to afortable jog.


    This was yet another example of technology in this world mimicking that of the technology in the twenty-first century of Earth, not through excellent engineering, or highly sophisticated applications of science, but through the remarkable features exclusive to this reality.


    The extraordinary inorganic resources that could be mined and extracted from thend, the variety of the supernatural flora and fauna and the esoteric phenomena they offered together allowed this world to achieve things that would otherwise be well beyond their capabilities.


    Furthermore, in several areas, it even allowed them to surpass Earth.


    The potions he had consumed in the Academy after the second round of the Entrance Exam healed his woundspletely while also restoring his stamina entirely in a short period of time. This was something no technology on Earth could replicate.


    "This is pretty amazing." Rui said.Published by N?v''elD/rama.Org.


    "It''s pretty normal though." Kane threw him a confused look.


    "Anyways, that''s enough cardio, my muscles have warmed up. Let''s stretch for a round before we begin."


    It was a well-known fact, on Earth and on Gaea, that stretching before heavy exercise or any physically intensive activity was a must. There were several benefits it provided, and several detriments that were associated with not stretching.


    The most basic benefit was, of course, maintaining and increasing range of motion. Muscles were bound together by web-like sticky tissue called fasciae, this connective tissue bound muscles and restricted their sticity. Regr stretching was needed to prevent them from building up.


    Range of motion was not the only benefit, of course. Flexibility was highly relevant to multiple physical attributes; power and speed.


    The amount of kic energy the body could generate depended on the physical eleration due to muscr power, and the distance over which that eleration could be maintained. Low flexibility inevitably meant the effective distance over which muscles could elerate was limited, because low flexibility meant muscles could not stretch. If they could not stretch, then the energy they generate was very limited.<sub> </sub>


    Stretching exercise also prevented loss of muscr tissue, during exercise. Muscr tissue copsed at much lower rates when stretched before being put through intensive workouts. It also increased blood cirction which ultimately increased the output of the human body. Reducing fatigue, stress, tension and risk of injury were also some of the more prominent benefits among others.


    (''Furthermore, static flexibility exercises are not energy intensive. You can obtain a lot of benefits with very little physical effort.'')


    So much so that even as asthmatic patient like himself could manage to stretch daily as long as it was slowly paced. Flexibility exercises were an absolute must in the field of martial arts andbat sports, Rui himself had published several papers demonstrating the corrtion between the probability of a KO victory and flexibility.


    "Alright, that should be enough." Kane said.


    Rui nodded in affirmation as he lifted himself from a split. Splits were the pinnacle of flexibility when it came tobat sports. They were at the perfect level where flexibility was optimal, not too little to smother and suppress one''s own power and eleration, but not too little to prevent dislocation of joints.


    It had taken Rui two years to achieve a split after he began a tad earnest rigorous exercise at the age of five. Normally splits could be achieved earlier, but given the delicate and fragile bones and muscles his body had at the time, stressing them too much for an earlier result, would be more detrimental in the long run.


    "We can spar there." Kane pointed to a matted section. "No leaving the area. We can start slow and light rolling, after moving onto light half-contact sparring. Once we''ve gottenfortable, we can move onto full-contact geared sparring and maybe some conditional or free form sparring. Whatever works for you. Ah, let me know if you don''t entirely know the differences between some of them." Kane exin patiently.


    Rolling was the primary form of wrestling practice and sparring in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, it was a good of breaking the ice in regards to jiu-jitsu maneuvers and honing them. Back on Earth, half-contact and full-contact sparring were two popr and distinct types of sparring introduced by the ITF, the International Federation of Taekwondo. Concepts such as conditional sparring and free-form sparring were well-established forms of sparring used in all MMA gyms in the twenty-first century of Earth. He was not just familiar with them but an irrevocable expert. Rui was d some of the more colloquial knowledge he possessed was of use on Gaea.


    "We can start with some light rolling sure, but I''d rather move onto some heavy positional-grappling, if you don''t mind. My experience in full-contact grappling is paltrypared to my striking practice. It''s a lot harder to practice grappling by yourself than striking. After that I don''t mind half-contact and full-contact sparring either, though free-form is my preference you see."


    "..." Kane stared at him.


    p "Hm?" Rui tilted his head under his stare.</anda>


    "Uh nothing. I''m just surprised because you seem to be extremely familiar with different sparring forms and their purposes."


    (''Familiar? I probably know more about them than you ever will.'') Rui mused. This was not an exageration.


    "Ahhh, well I read about them in a book about Martial Art when I was a kid."


    "I see. Well, that''s all the more better."


    Kane took his position on the mat.


    "Let''s begin."


    Rui crouched a little, aligning his right foot behind his left foot. He brought balled his fists and brought them up in a guard.


    "Yeah." He grinned. "Let''s get this show on the road!"


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 37 Spar

    The two shifted around the mat, maintaining distance. This was amon practice even on Earth, by constantly shifting your bnce and weight across both your legs, it became more difficult to predict your opponent''s movements. It was a simple but an extremely practical tactic.


    (''He''s noting...'') Rui noted. (''...Well, his Martial Art is centered around evasive maneuvering.'')


    Rui thought for a moment before making up his mind.


    (''If he''s noting, I''ll go for him!'')


    He dashed towards Kane, throwing light jabs at him. The strikes had very little torque and weight behind them, making it easier tounch more of them in rapid session.


    Kane grinned, swerving and bobbing his head to avoid the higher strikes. For him, avoiding strikes to the head was more practical, the neck was a flexible juncture and evasiveness was his forte.


    (''How about a body strike, then?'')


    Rui shot a mid-range straight right punch at Kane''s abdomen.


    BAM


    Kane had blocked it with a solid guard.


    The two put some distance between each other.


    "Thought your Martial Art was centered around evasiveness." Rui huffed.


    "It''s not practical to dodge every single attack, in some cases, blocking is just irrefutably the only correct choice." Kane shrugged.


    That made sense. One could not win a fight purely through evasiveness.


    This time, Rui closed the distance slowly. They both shifted around, feeling each other out, testing and gauging each other''s reactions.


    Once Rui reached kicking range, he threw a light roundhouse kick at Kane''s abdomen, only to cleanly miss as Kane effortlessly dodged the attack.


    (''Figured, roundhouse kicks take too much time tond, it''s easy for someone with his mobility to avoid them.'') Rui mused as he threw a few light jabs, most of which were dodged.


    He attempted to throw a straight kick to Kane''s chin, only for Kane to dodge while simultaneously closing the distance;


    BAM


    Kanended a jab to Rui''s abdomen.


    "Tsk." Rui grimaced.


    It was very difficult for Rui tond a clean strike on him, Kane was not only extremely slippery, but was very good at exploiting slim openings to squiggle his way in andnd some strikes.


    (''He''s strong.'') Rui huffed. But he wasn''t done yet. He closed the gap between him and Kane, but this time he didn''t bother trying tond a strike at the earliest opportunity. Instead, he kept his left arm up as a guard while preparing his right arm for a strong jab.


    Kane, thus far, hadn''t aggressed a single attack of his own volition, his only strike was a counter.


    (''His n is to let me initiate an offense andnd attacks while or after evading my own.'')


    This was Kane''s element. He dodged attacks while simultaneously setting up counters. But it was not without ws.


    (''Such a strategy requires a lot of space.'')


    Evasive maneuvering, in general, required space. Much more so than most other fields of Martial Art. The lesser the space, the lesser the evasion.<sub> </sub>


    (''Thankfully, leaving the ring is not allowed.'')


    Rui nned to exploit this. By cornering Kane, while simultaneously reaching extremely close-range, His odds ofnding a strike were much higher. The reasons were simple; Reaching the edge would mean Kane wouldn''t be able to evade strikes easily due to theck of space, and the closer Rui was to him, the harder it was to avoid a strike. Avoiding a fast super-close-range strike with very little space seemed to be difficult even for Kane, he could have no choice but tounch a strike in order to avoid this.


    Kane nced backward as he realized the boundary was at his heel. Rui had been making a few sweeping attacksunched in such a way that the ideal way to avoid them was simply to step back, but in a closed area, there was a limit to the number of times this could be performed before reaching the boundary.


    Rui rushed forward swinging his fist abruptly, prompting Kane bent backwards whileunching a sharp straight high kick, in the heat of the moment.


    WHOOSH.


    Where Rui''s head should have been, there was naught but nothing.


    Kane''s eyes widened in surprise.


    (''I''ve seen that before, Kane.'') Rui grinned cleanly avoiding that strike, a simple push was all it took to throw Kane out of the ring. In that bent position with a kick mid-air and the boundary but an inch away, not even Kane could seem to muster the power or the bnce to avoid a ring-out.All rights ? N?velDrama.Org.


    "First round goes to me." Rui grinned smugly, offering Kane a hand.


    Kane smiled wryly. "Sure, but that''s the only round you''re winning today."


    "Ha!" Ruiughed. "You... weren''t using a single technique, were you?"


    "Heh. So, you noticed."


    "Of course, you were moving like a freaking viper in the Exam, I had trouble keeping my eyes on you. Inparison, you were moving like azy cat just now." Rui retorted.


    Kane threw apetitive smile at Rui in response. They quickly took their positions, shuffling and shifting. Rui was more than happy to rehash the same tactic again.


    (''If it ain''t broke, don''t fix it.'') Rui chanted.


    Just as he cornered Kane andunched a strike¡­ Kane vanished!


    (''???'') Just as Rui gathered his bearings;


    BAM


    A brutal impactnded on the back of his head, pushing him past the boundary that he had cornered Kane with prior.


    "Fuck!" Rui grimaced in pain, turning around in confusion. What he saw shocked him. Kane upside-down on a handstand, and hadunched a kick down on Rui''s head with his leg.


    Kane flipped back over to his feet with a smug grin.


    "Did you really think I would fall for the same tactic again? Evasion isn''t limited to two-dimensional maneuvering you know."


    Rui grinned in awe. (''Did he really flip into a handstand to avoid my strike while simultaneouslyunching a kick to the back of my head to push me over the boundary I had cornered him into?'')


    Rui had underestimated him. Kane was far nimbler and more mobile than he had imagined. Such acrobatic maneuvering made his evasion that much more formidable.


    "You''re really something else, y''know?" Ruiplimented, getting back into the ring.


    "Hehehe, you haven''t seen anything just yet, I was barely using half my full power." Kane cracked his knuckles, boasting a smiling with a hint of sadism in it.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 38 Apprentice Level

    The third bout began, and this time, Kane made the first move.


    (''He''sing.'') Rui tensed in alertness.


    Kane exhaled and suddenly, taking his first step, he blurred. In an instant he elerated to top speed, moving so fast that he crossed the distance in a moment.


    BAM.


    Rui barely managed to intercept Kane''s punch with hastily cobbled guard.


    (''Fast! His speed before was basically child''s y!'')


    Rui haphazardly threw a punch at him, hoping to catch him off-guard, but Kane attacked in such a way that the strike would naturally be avoided by the attacking motion. Attacking in a manner that naturally avoids the attack of your opponent, this was Kane was doing.


    BAM


    Kane managed to slip an attack through Rui''s guard.


    (''Damn, this is different from before. Before he was evading first while countering a slip secondter. But right now, he''s perfectly choosing an attack such that the attacking motion naturally avoided Rui''s attack.'') Rui realized.


    For example, a jump kick naturally avoided a leg sweep. A leg sweep naturally dodged a jump kick. Kicks possessed greater range than punches thus, if well timed, they could be used to avoid punches by hitting the opponent first.


    "Hehe, dealing with Anti-Cadence is difficult, isn''t it? Especially considering you''re a newbie."This belongs to N?velDrama.Org - ?.


    Rui got up, taking up another stance. "You haven''t mastered it yet, right?" He could feel Kane''s choices weren''t entirely optimal.


    Kane shrugged. "I learnt it a few months ago. It''s also one of those foundational techniques in counter-offensive maneuvering that doesn''t have an upper limit, you just get better and better at it with experience."


    That made sense to Rui. Anti-Cadence was a technique that relied on judgement, which grew with experience. Analysis and judgement were Rui''s strong suits. Among all the techniques he had seen, he was most interested in Anti-Cadence. It had a lot of synergy with Rui''s affinities and interests.


    "How''d you cross the distance between us so quickly?" Kane was moving at a speed that should be way above what someone of his physical stature should be capable of moving like.


    "Oh, that''s another Apprentice level maneuvering technique called Parallel Walk."<sub> </sub>


    "Parallel Walk?"


    "Yeah, normally people walk and run by twisting their upper body and swinging their arms in the opposite direction to the legs, right?"


    This was true, at a young age, humans naturally developed the habit of walking with their arms swinging opposite to that of their legs. This was because it was the most natural way to maintain bnce by countering the torque generated by the legs.


    "Parallel Walk is a technique where you run with your arms and upper body swinging in-line with and parallel to your legs. It''s a technique that allows you to run faster."


    Rui''s eyes widened. This made sense, twisting your upper body and swinging your arms required a lot of energy, all of that energy was being wasted in maintaining bnce. Parallel Walk seemed to be a technique where one moved with their arms moving in the same direction as their legs. This avoided the immense waste of energy that urred with the twisting of the upper half of the body. All the energy that would otherwise be wasted with twisting the upper half would now be directed into the legs and be converted into speed, thus allowing the user to run at significantly higher speeds.


    "It feels really weird when you learn it, bnce is maintained in a totally different way after all, so it takes a while to get used to it. But once you do get used it, you move at wayyy faster speeds way easier. I''m telling you, it was a blessing to my Martial Art." Kane exined.


    Rui nodded, it made sense. In truth, this wasn''t the first he''d heard of this concept. Back on Earth there was a Japanese form of walking and running known as Namba Aruki or Namba Walking. Namba Walking was the running style of the express runners, during the Edo Period, whose job it was to run messages quickly and efficiently between Edo and the other provinces. Usually they would travel in pairs, one having a pole with a box or package on the end, and another that had a pole with antern on it inscribed with the characters official business.


    Needless to say,munication was key to an effective government, so these express runners had to be very, well, express. They would regrly run from Edo to Kyoto in six-eight days, a distance of approximately 480 kilometers on foot. They were highly efficient and wasted lesser energy that could otherwise be used for more speed or stamina, thanks to this form of maneuvering.


    (''I just didn''t think it was legit. But it seems that, at the very least, it''s legit in this world.'')


    "Can you teach it to me?" Rui asked.


    "I''m not qualified to. The training process isn''t as straightforward as it seems. I had a Martial Senior monitoring my training, and he put me through a ton of training that I didn''t really understand. Half-assed erroneous training is worse than no training, trust me." Kane replied, earning a downcast expression from Rui.


    "Don''t worry though." He consoled. "I told you this is an Apprentice level technique for maneuvering, right? That means you absolutely can learn this in the Academy as long as you reach Apprentice level."


    Rui''s expression lit up. Yet another reason to look forward to the Academy. He strongly looked forward to the day he learnt this technique in the academy.


    "How many Apprentice maneuvering techniques are there?"


    "Oh, there are tons of Apprentice level techniques. That being said, each field has a set of basic Apprentice level techniques, these are the easiest techniques to learn that help a brand-new Martial Apprentice grow ustomed to Apprentice level techniques. After all, the transition from Foundational techniques to Apprentice level techniques can be tough, it took me a whole month before I could even get used to it." Kane sighed, recalling a painful memory.


    "To, answer your question though, as far as pure maneuvering goes, there''s four. Parallel Walk is one of them, meant for physical travel, there''s one forbat speed,bat agility, travel agility etc." Kane exined.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 39 Shackle

    "Are each of the Apprentice level techniques as effective and as powerful as the techniques you showed me?" Rui asked.


    "Just around, yeah." Kane replied.


    "Alright then." Rui stood up, taking a position within the ring. "Can you show me the rest?"


    "Sure thing." Kane grinned, taking up a stance.


    They shed with each other for a few hours after, round after round. Kane demonstrated the prowess of a Martial Apprentice, mopping the floor with Rui over and over. Not only did he overwhelmingly pummel Rui, but he also defeated Rui in many different ways.


    (''So, this what happens when he uses his Foundational and Apprentice level skill, huh? It''s overwhelming.'') Rui though as Kane floored him yet another time. Kane had beaten him many a time by now, but Rui only grew more and more ecstatic, much to Kane''s confusion.


    "Let''s stop here for today." Kane told Rui, earning a nod of affirmation in response.


    "Yeah, no need to push ourselves too far in a single session." They were both extraordinarily exhausted.


    "You know, you seem like you enjoy losing." Kane told him.


    "What makes you say that?"


    "Well, I beat you a lot, yet if anybody were to look at us, they''d assume you were the winner given how much more satisfied you seem."


    "That''s because I am satisfied. I learnt and experienced a ton of new things. The losses are trivial inparison." Rui exined.


    "Hmmm... I felt this before, but your passion for Martial Art is... How do I say it? Pure?"


    "Pure?" Rui echoed.


    "Yeah, of all the Martial Artists I''ve known, all of them had one reason or the other to be a Martial Artist. Power, glory, prestige, status, money and stuff like that, you know? But your joy for Martial Art feels... clean."


    "..." He seemed to have trouble articting his impression, but Rui didn''t press him despite that. Ultimately, he was merely a thirteen-year-old child, urately and precisely enunciating his feelings was not something Rui expected of him.


    "You really enjoy Martial Art, don''t you?" Kane asked.


    "Yes." Rui replied unhesitatingly.


    "That sounds amazing. I''ve never enjoyed Martial Art. It''s always been... How do I say it? A shackle...? But it''s also my only tool to break through that shackle... I don''t know if that makes sense." Kane exined ufortably, Rui could tell he was being candid.


    "I think it does." He replied. From what little Rui had seen of Kane''s life, it seemed as though Martial Art shackled Kane, but was indeed also his only hope breaking through those shackles. Being born as the son of a Martial Sage, as well gifted with prodigious talent for Martial Art probably put a huge burden on him. From what Rui had seen of Kane''s mother, it was likely that the entirety of Kane''s family had massive expectations of him.


    These expectations seemed to be a shackle, his family probably put him through rigorous Martial Art training from a young age, so much so that he reached the Martial Apprentice Realm even before entering the Academy, they didn''t allow him to even leave his damn house of his own free will. His life was basically a prison. Freedom must be something of his wildest dreams.


    "Hm... But you know..." Kane turned to Rui with a mirthful grin. "When I''m with you, Martial Art doesn''t seem all that bad."


    Rui smirked. "Well, then why don''t Ie hang out more often if that''s ok with you?"


    "That sounds great! Maybe we can spar and train every day."


    That sounded perfect to Rui. He desperately wanted some realbat practice and training, so far training with Kane was probably the most fruitful thing he had done in his second life.


    "Sure, sounds great." Rui replied.


    "Though some days it''s best if you don''t."


    "Oh? Why so?" Rui enquired.


    "Because my father will be around." Kane exined. "You saw how my mother was, my father is far more overbearing and unpleasant."


    "I see... You sure have it rough man."


    Kane sighed.This belongs to N?velDrama.Org - ?.


    "You must be excited for the Martial Academy eh?"


    "Oh man, you have no idea. I can''t wait to live in a different ce. How excited are you.?"


    "Extremely, I''ve been waiting nearly twelve years for this."<sub> </sub>


    Kane threw him an odd look.


    "What?" Rui responded to his reaction.


    "You''re the same age as me right?"


    "Yeah."


    "Then how have you been waiting for twelve years?"


    "Uhhh..." Rui scratched his head awkwardly. "I probably miscounted, haha."


    "Hmm.."


    "Anyways, I should probably head home. I''m fucking exhausted and bruised up." Rui changed the topic.


    "Wait, have some potions before you go." Kane offered.


    "Oh yeah, it makes sense you have them, but no thanks." Rui declined.


    "Wait why not?" Kane furrowed his brows in confusion.


    "Potions are valuable one-time products man, they''re not cups of tea that you offer to guests." Ruiughed. "They''re far too expensive for me to ept them."


    "Don''t worry about stuff like that. We have more potions than we know what to do with."


    "Seriously I''m good."


    "No you have to!" Kane insisted.


    Rui threw him a helpless nce.


    "...Fine."


    Kane rattled off some instructions to a servant as they exited a facility.


    "You wanna take a shower?" Kane offered.


    (''They have showers here?'') Rui pondered.


    "Nah, I''m good. If I leave anyter, I''ll worry the folks back home."


    They bantered until a servant returned with four vials. Two of them were red, while the other two were blue.


    "A healing potion for your bruises, and an energy potion for your stamina." Kane offered.


    Rui grasped them, taking a closer look at them.


    "it''s always boggled me how amazing potions are. To think they can heal and rejuvenate you in such a short period of time, truly amazing."


    "That''s pretty average for potions, you know?" Kane told him.


    "Average?" Rui asked, perplexed.


    "Yeah, these potions aren''t even the best of their types. These are just standard post-training potions around here. Though they are far better than what you had at the Academy."


    "Damn, so there''s even better stuff huh."


    "Yeah, I don''t know the details but I heard the highest -grade healing potions can heal extremely lethal injuries, even if the patient is on the verge of death."


    "On the verge of death?? That''s insane!"


    "That''s not all they can do though.. There are potions that can give permanent enhancements to your body significantly in many ways, albeit rare. There also potions that can significantly increase your lifespan!"


    "What??"


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 40 Potions

    Potions that could bring you back from the brink of death, enhance your abilities permanently, increase your lifespan. These were all truly unfathomable phenomena to Rui. It really broadened his perspective on the limits of the esoteric materialistic nature of this world that seemed to have no limits whatsoever!


    "None of those aremon though. They are extremely rare, so much so that they would be considered National Treasures. My father said that even life-prolonging potions were extremely difficult to obtain even for him, apparently." Kane told him.


    (''No, regardless of rarity. A potion that can prolong life should be impossible. Aging is an inevitable process that urs due to processes urring on a molecr level within our body.'')


    Aging was primarily caused by the faulty DNA replication during cellr division and recement. Every time a new cell in the body is born, the DNA it inherited from its parent cell contained tiny new ws and new gaps, this happened every time cells divided and were replicated. Over a lifetime, these ws and gaps umte in the DNA across the body before one thing or the other eventually leads to a fatal cause of death.


    (''The fact that a potion can stall this inevitable process means that some esotericpound within the potion is influencing our body universally on a molecr level!'')


    He had to once again re-evaluate the esoteric technology of this world. Basic healing and stamina recovery were one thing. Healing from the brink of death, augmentation and longevity were whole other ball-games. He still found Kane''s words incredibly difficult to process.


    "That isn''t it, potions are used a lot in medicine too you know..." Kane added, oblivious of the fact that the impact of such an unremarkable statement was rather paltry inparison to the thundering revtions he had unleashed upon Rui prior.


    "...Are the permanent body augmenting potions you mentioned prior, avable on the market?"


    "Probably not? Otherwise, I would have definitely gotten my hands on them. But I haven''t unfortunately, only temporary-enhancement ones exist. Don''t quote me on that though, I just know general stuff." Kane replied.N?velDrama.Org owns this text.


    "I see, that''s a shame." Rui could gain a huge boost if he had one of those.


    "Well, potions can help you grow stronger otherwise too, you know?"


    "Oh yeah? How so?" Rui asked curiously.


    "Well, just the rejuvenation potion and healing potions alone increase your ability to train like crazy, honestly I can''t imagine training without them, I wouldn''t be as strong as I am today." Kane exined.


    "True, you could train for far longer, far more intensively with these potions than without."


    "Yeah, you can be damn well sure a major proportion of the freshmen in our batch also relied on them for training, so that they could grow much stronger and more skilled than if they didn''t."


    "No wonder I felt outpowered among them." Rui mused.<sub> </sub>


    "It''s also why your performance was quite impressive, when you told me you''ve never consumed one, I was genuinely surprised. You must have done an absurd amount of training from an extremely young age."


    (''I can''t tell him I''ve basically been training my entire life.'') Rui mused. Every physically intensive activity tranted into training as long as it was measured, structured and disciplined. Even though he began actually training exercises at the age of five, he still carefully exercised his body in various physical and performative attributes, he went from barely average in terms of physical talent to well above average in regards to physical attributes such as strength, speed and agility, durability, flexibility etc.


    The biggest problem was his performative attributes such as bnce and body-eye coordination. The mismatch between the muscle memory of his previous life and his new body significantly hindered him. Overwriting fifty-nine years of muscle memory took him an immense amount of time, until he had finally reached an average standard.


    <o>,m "It''s probably also why Fae was particrly impressed and interested in you, you managed to aplish a lot despite possessing none of the learning, training and growing resources that almost all other freshmen had, at the age of thirteen no less.</o>


    "I wonder how strong I would be if I had ess to rejuvenation and recovery potions my entire life." Rui sighed. He wasn''t one to grow overtly jealous and envious. As severely diseased person in his previous life, he had long learnt that it was toxic and unproductive, but even he had to sigh when he realized what he had missed out on.


    "You''d be a monster. Honestly, it''s pretty impressive you are where you are, your body is honed incredibly well all things considered. Your performative attributes are pretty meh though. I''d suggest ramping up on training them. We have tons of training equipment meant specifically for those so feel free to use them."


    It was a truly tempting offer, as resourceful Rui was, actual targeted-training equipment was far more effective and efficient.


    "Thanks, I''ll consider that. Will we have ess to these potions in the Academy?"


    "Yep, you get a supply of them during your stay at the Academy."


    "Sweet, I was worried I''d be missing out then."


    "Don''t underestimate the Academies, they have huge funding, a lot of that goes into training resources which inevitably include potions. Of course, they won''t be as good as the ones we have here."


    "True... d to hear that."


    Rui looked forward to begin training with the resources of the Academy even more. He could scarcely imagine how much his rate of growth would skyrocket once he began training with these resources. He anticipated within a year his physical body would be honed and refined unlike anything else. He was just entering puberty too; his body would also be naturally growing to an incredibly high degree, thanks to testosterone. Muscle mass and bone density specifically.


    "You also get potions that rejuvenate your mind like a good night''s sleep, that''s one of the things I regrly use in my training regime." Kane casually dropped yet another bombshell


    "You..! How many hours have you trained daily across your entire life?"


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 41 Rejuvenation

    Rui wanted to smack Kane over the head, abstaining only because Kane would probably dodge. Such a shame.


    "On average I train for seventeen hours a day." Kan replied.


    "You... what??" Rui questioned him with palpable disbelief.


    "I mean it''s not that hard with the three potions I mentioned earlier; healing, physical rejuvenation and mental rejuvenation."


    "Physical and mental-rejuvenation potions?"


    "Yeah, physical rejuvenation invigorates the body, mental rejuvenation invigorates the brain so that you don''t need sleep. These are the two types of rejuvenation potions."


    "Does that mean if you had limitless mental rejuvenation, you would never need to sleep?" Rui asked with wonder.This belongs to N?velDrama.Org - ?.


    "Yeah right." Kane scoffed. "The potion''s effectivity drops with each consecutive usage. Its effectivity returns to one-hundred percent once I sleep naturally."


    "I see, that''s still extremely useful though. It''s like buying more time!"


    "True."


    "How many potions do you take before the potion''s effectivity reduces to zero?"


    "Usually, I can go about three to four days before I need to sleep naturally."


    That was lower than Rui hoped.


    "Don''t get carried away, there''s known risks to consuming mental rejuvenation potions on a regr basis."


    "Oh?"


    "It rejuvenates the brain. But psychologically, staying awake for much longer periods is detrimental to the mind. Your mind is not designed nor used to receiving suchrge amounts of information for so long continuously without a break. Your brain maybe fine, but your psyche will be strained. There runs the risk of losing your sanity if you push it, atleast that''s what my supervisors told me." Kane shrugged.


    "Damn..." That makes sense. Just like every other part of the body, the mind had also evolved through natural selection in a particr way. In order for it to maintain its optimal state, it needed to be carefully subjected to only what it was evolved to handle, and not beyond that.


    "Do you monitor yourself with the mental-rejuvenation potions?


    "Heck no." Kane grumbled. "My training-supervisors carefully regte my mental-rejuvenation potion intake. They do some check-ups before giving me the potions I''m allowing to consume while also giving me a schedule for their consumption."


    "Huh, sounds like it may be dangerous to do that stuff by yourself."


    "I dunno, but probably yeah. Don''t worry though, the Academy also has a capable and established medical department that handles this kind of stuff. There are supervisors there that ensure students don''t push themselves beyond their limits. This alsoes from the funding I mentioned before."


    "I see. You sure know a lot about the Academy huh?"


    "Of course, I do!" Kane replied emphatically. "I''ve been eying the Academy for almost five years now. You have no idea how badly I''m looking forward to it. I''ve done a fuck ton of research on it."


    Rui chuckled in response. He could sense Kane''s enthusiasm was just as strong as his, though their motivations differed immensely. He was d they shared a strong interest.


    "I''m looking forward to training with you in the Academy."


    "Same but we probably won''t be able to hang out as much initially." Kane sighed mncholically.


    "Why not?"<sub> </sub>


    "Well, I''m already a Martial Apprentice. I''ll be directly heading into the training stages they have nned out for Martial Apprentices to help them reach Martial Squire. I haven''t even been told the criteria needed to be a Martial Squire. Even Father said it was far too early for that, apparently."


    "I see, well, we can hang out in our free times and breaks then." Rui consoled.


    "Sigh, we''ll have to stick to that, I guess."


    "By the way, the fact that you''re a Martial Apprentice Stage means you''ve alreadypleted the Foundation and Exploration Stages right?"


    "Yeah."


    "What''s the name of the Stage after one bes a Martial Apprentice?" Rui asked out of curiosity.


    "It''s called the Expansion Stage."


    "Hmmm... I see, that''s a cool name. What exactly do you do in this stage?"


    "Well, once you discover your Martial Path, the only thing left to do is tread down it. You have to begin expanding your Martial Art, or so I was told."


    "Expanding? As in adding more techniques and skills to your Martial Art?"


    "Yeah, you gain ess to Apprentice-level techniques, from where you can explore, learn and add those techniques to your Martia Art repository."


    "Hmm... Interesting. So, this when the actual construction of your Martial Art begins, huh? That sounds incredibly fun."


    Rui was dying to be able to get his hands on the Apprentice-level techniques that Kane mentioned. Techniques like Outer Convergence, Parallel Step, Anti-Cadence were all extremely exciting techniques that were incredibly effective. It would be a while before he could learn them though, unfortunately.


    "How long did it take for you toplete the Foundation Stage?" Rui asked, out curiosity.


    "Half a year, or so." Kane replied.


    "How does thatpare to the average?" Rui asked, scratching his head. He figured it was likely well below average, considering Kane was a genius.


    "...I dunno."


    "..."


    "Hey don''t look at me like that!" He reprimanded embarrassedly, as Rui gave him a nk stare. One moment he sounded extremely knowledgeable, the next he sounded clueless.


    "Is the Foundation Stage difficult?"


    "Well, I had to train a fuck ton, it was quite tiring. The foundational techniques I learnt in the Foundation and Exploration Stage were really easy though."


    "Hmm..." Rui pondered. Were the Foundational techniques actually easy or was Kane just being too much of a genius here? He wasn''t sure. They chatted for a while after consuming their potions, before Rui decided to take his leave.


    "You sure you don''t want to have you dropped off?" Kane asked once more.


    "Yeah, I''m good. I''m full of energy anyway, I don''t mind getting back home on foot." Rui reassured. He didn''t want to indulge in Kane''s hospitality anymore, although he was growing to really liking the kid, they had only met thrice. Rui wasn''tfortable feeling so indebted to someone he had met recently, and only a handful of times.


    Rui fell into a deep thought walking back, having bade Kane goodbye. He had a lot to think about, having learnt and experienced many things. The Martial Academy, the prowess of potions and most importantly; the prowess of Apprentice level Martial Art techniques.


    "Such a fruitful visit, perhaps I should hang around him more..."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 42 Final Supper

    Rui folded thest of his clothes into arge cloth bag. He had checked and re-checked making sure he had all the sets of clothes he needed. Five sets of undergarments, as well as general purpose clothes. He packed in all of his necessities and belongings carefully, ensuring they would all fit in once he folded and tied the cloth down. This world did have the equivalent of suit-cases, but they were a bit on the expensive side.


    Rui had declined the offer of being bought one by the Orphanage, he wasn''t profligate by any stretch, what was the point of wasting precious money when there was a perfectly apt and cheap alternative? Thankfully, for the same reason, he had few belongings. His luggage ended up being conveniently light and small.


    "The day has finallye..." Rui mused to himself.


    Nearly a month had passed since the Induction Ceremony, the long-awaited and sought start of the Rui''s first Academic year was the very next day. Tomorrow, Rui would leave the Quarrier Orphanage and head to the Mantian branch of the Kandrian Martial Academy where he would stay until he became a Martial Squire, or, God forbid, was expelled. Not that Rui had any intention of getting expelled. In the past month, he had memorized the rules of the Academy quite well, he was determined to not give them even the tiniest hole that could be conceived as a vition of the rules.


    "Rui, it''s dinner time!" Myra called out.


    "Yeah, I''ll be there in a second." He replied, having tied up his make-shift cloth bag and put it on his bed. He sauntered into the dining room pausing, everyone had already gathered at the tables, even the utensils and food was in ce, yet they all waited for Rui to take his ce. There were eighteen children and fourteen adults, far more than usual.


    Many former members of the Orphanage during Rui''s time, who had moved out and started their own family, were also present. These were people who had formed strong bonds with Rui as he''d grown up, having known Rui practically his entire life. They''d taken time away from their families to be present to send Rui off.


    The sight evoked emotion. It made his inevitable departure much more painful.


    "Oh? Looks like the star of tonight''s celebration is here." Nina smirked, offering him the seat at the head of the table.


    "He sure kept us waiting." Farion grumbled, putting on a grumpy fa?ade.


    "Now now, he has a big day tomorrow with plenty of preparation, cut him some ck, will you?" Alice chided.


    "Come on Rui." Julian smiled, coaxing Rui. "Let''s eat."


    The entire room conveyed their love for him in their own way, weing him. He smiled and took his seat without a word; he was choked with emotion. He didn''t trust himself to not burst down sobbing if he opened his mouth. He didn''t want to ruin the mood with sorrow.


    The adults began serving, which in itself took a while. Myra had nned a feast for this day; thest day Rui would live with them for quite a while.


    He indulged himself with food and love as dinner proceeded with boisterous energy. There was many a reunion, the mood was extremely high.


    Watching everyone hit him hard. This was what he was forgoing. Was it really worth it? It wasn''t as if he hadn''t thought about this before. The answer was always the same too. Yet, today, of all days, he found it hard to reaffirm it.<sub> </sub>


    "Don''t look so sad Rui." Julian consoled with a serene smile. "I know exactly how you feel. After all, I felt the same way when I left for the Kandrian Institute of Sciences."


    Julian had spent two years in the Kandrian Institute of Sciences for a higher education at the age of sixteen, before graduating and being epted as an apprentice schr.


    "It''s painful to be separated from your family. But your life is your life, Rui. You need to live it, you owe that to yourself."


    "Yeah..."


    "Don''t worry, we''ll be seeing you during the season breaks, and to congratte when you graduate sessfully graduate as a Martial Artist." Julian consoled.


    "Yeah..."


    "Cheer up Rui, don''t look so down!" Alice refilled his te with anotherrge serving.


    He obliged, as much as he could. Alice really did serve him far too much. He looked down at therge pile of meat and rice that upied his te, sighing in resignation.


    (''I hope eating this much won''t make me ill on the first day of the Academy.'')


    He hoped the Academy had some potions that could instantly fix indigestion. It wasn''t too much to ask considering the miracles that potions were capable of.


    Still, he appreciated it, even if it were ill-advised on the stomach. The food was truly extravagant. The Orphanage had pulled all stops for this celebration and farewell party of his. He ate his food as he engaged with various people who came to speak with him. As the star of the dinner and the focus of the night, many people, children and adult alike were interested in conversing with him.


    After a while he excused himself for some fresh air, heading out into the balcony. He wasn''t ustomed to dealing with this much food or people, certainly not simultaneously.


    (''It''s like they''re trying to cram all the home-cooked food and family I''ll be missing in my time in the Academy in one night.'') He mused, burping a bit to free up some space in his bloated belly.N?velDrama.Org owns this text.


    (''We haven''t even gotten to desert yet...'') Thankfully, Rui believed in the saying that desert went to the heart. He rarely had multiple course meals. It was something that Orphanage could not afford to do, at least, on even an asional basis.


    (''Well, all said and done, I ought to enjoy it while itsts.'') Rui relented. He returned to the dining room.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 43 Freshman

    "Alright mom... I think it''s time to let me go, or I''ll bete." Rui advised.


    Lashara ignored him, hugging him tightly, swaying him in her arms. Rui had an awkward expression on his face, unsure of when he would be released from her smothering bear hug of motherly love.


    She released him before patting his head, apparently satisfied, yet mncholic.


    "Don''t push yourself too hard, okay? Make sure you get as much sleep and food needed to be healthy." She advised. Rui nodded in response, her bidding was different from the others, who told him they were proud of him, and told him to work hard. Although Lashara was most certainly proud of him, at this moment her overprotectiveness was much more dominant. In her eyes, although Rui was very intelligent, he was still a tender thirteen-year-old with no experience, living by himself for the first time, being seperated from his family.


    "Don''t worry mom, I''ll be fine." He reassured. He nced at all the people behind her, the adults and children of the Orphanage, bidding all of them goodbye, before heading towards the town of Hajin.


    His nerves were angsty and on-edge. This was much more nerve-wracking than the Martial Entrance Exam. He inhaled deeply, exhaling slowly in order to calm his prickly racing heart.


    The Orphanage was far from the core of the town, it was quite far away from the establishment and poption of the town. Thus, the journey to the Martial Academy was close to two hours away, on foot.


    Considering he was carrying luggage, travelling there on foot was not something he wanted to do. He instead opted to walk to the closest district while catching a rickshaw there to the Martial Academy. Although rickshaws were not unheard of in the region of the Orphanage, they were exceedingly rare. What was the point of offering transportation to people in a ce with very few people? No rickshaw-puller was stupid enough to bother going away from the town''s hearnd.


    "Ah there we are." Rui spotted the district. Even as he entered it, he already spotted a few rickshaws. He quickly boarded one, after haggling a price. It wasn''t cheap considering the distance, so he ended up shortening the trip a bit, resolving to walk the remaining distance.


    Having boarded the rickshaw, he immersed himself in his thoughts, thinking about his course of action.


    The information guide he received when at the Investiture Ceremony had alreadyid out instructions for freshmen in the Academy. Once he reached the Academy, he was to join the other freshmen in a designated hall. Once all the freshmen had gathered, the Academy would conduct the Evaluation Exam. Which would then serve as the basis upon which the individualized curriculum of the Foundation Stage.


    Once that was concluded, the freshmen would be given the rest of the day off. They would be shown to their dorm rooms where they could spend the rest of the day as they wished. They could rx and recuperate or mingle with the other freshmen, they could even train, or visit the Academy Library. There was even a tour offered by the Academy that day for students who wanted to explore the Academy.<sub> </sub>Published by N?v''elD/rama.Org.


    All in all, it was an extremely exciting day for Rui. Time passed as he grew absorbed in his day-dreams about what the Academy would be like, until the rickshaw finally stopped, having reached the destination. Rui broke out of his stupor, ncing around, realizing where he was.


    "We''ve finally reached huh?" Rui asked, reaching for his coin pouch. He got off after paying the rickshaw-puller the agreed sum of ten copper coins. Before heading towards the Martial Academy. He nced at his timepiece, thankfully, he wouldn''t bete. He would actually be quite early. He had left well before the Academic day began out of paranoia of beingte.


    This was the central district of the town of Hajin, it was also adjacent to the Martial Academy, which was its own huge district, basically. The Martial Academy was enormous, even its fort walls could be seen from kilometers away. All Rui had to do was walk in its direction.


    The town of Hajin was far busier that than any other. The reason, of course, was without a doubt the opening of the Martial Academy and themencement of a new academic year.


    This was a national phenomenon annually. The Martial Academies were one of a kind. There were only sixteen of them, and all of them were owned by the Martial Union. It was simply impossible for any other private organization to set up even semi-decent learning institute of its own. The Martial Academies were bastions of the knowledge inherited from countless Martial Artists of the past and the present. How could anybody rival that?


    The only entity that could perhaps rival that was Royal Family. As the rulers of the nation, they had ess to wealth and resources surpassing even the mighty Martial Union. Yet there were no such Royal institutes, for reasons Rui waspletely unaware of. Maybe creating an Academy was detrimental to their interests?


    Rui shook his head, casting away pointless thoughts. He often would find himself drifting away into all of the supernatural things rted to this world, especially things rted to Martial Art. Just as he centered and focused himself, the gates of the Martial Academy hade into view.


    The crowd and traffic in the vicinity of the Martial Academy was extremely dense and chaotic. This was not unexpected; the huge influx of applicants and their family/guardians would inevitably escte the already densely popted area and district as a whole.


    Rui pushed through the crowd reaching for the gates. The security seemed to be beefed up, with several more guards on patrol. He quickly procured his student ID provided to him in the Investiture Ceremony, he would not be able to enter the Academy without it. When the guards halted him as he approached them;


    "Rui Quarrier." He identified himself, holding his ID Card. "I''m a student of the Martial Academy."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 44 Evaluation

    N?velDrama.Org owns this text.


    He stuffed his ID card back into his pouch walking past the gates. If it weren''t for the signs ced at the side of the path, guiding freshmen to the hall, he wouldn''t know where to go. He nced around looking at his fellow freshmen. Most of them were carrying rolling suitcases that resembled the kind that were predominantly used on Earth.


    (''Rich kids.'') Rui mused. There was very few who carried around a simple cloth makeshift carrybag like he did.


    (''This must have something to do with the fact that the richer you are, the more training and growth resources you have ess to.'') Back on Earth, your talent and work ethic mattered more than how much money you had when it came to thebat sports industry. Although funds and resources were no doubt relevant, above a certain point, they began mattering less and less. As long as one had good trainers and even a basic gym, there really wasn''t too much money could do beyond that without an exorbitant amount. Your drive and hard work paid off much more than fancy equipment.


    But that wasn''t the case in this world, as Kane had enlightened him.


    He soon arrived at the designated waiting hall, where other freshmen had gathered. It took him a less than a minute to find Kane.


    "Hey man." Kane greeted.


    "Sup." Rui nodded.


    <o>,m In the past month Rui had spent nearly every day hanging out with Kane. They had quickly grown closer to each other.</o>


    Rui nced around as they noticed a ton of eyes on them. The freshmen around them were clearly wary and conscious of the two of them. It wasn''t until Rui caught one of them stealing a nce at the Arrancar emblem on Kane''s clothes that Rui understood.


    (''The Arrancar household holds a lot of weight for sure.'')


    "Ignore em, it''s pretty normal." Kane nkly said.


    "It is?"


    "Yeah, once they realize where I''m from, they either stay away from me or start kissing my ass." kane helplessly replied.


    "Sounds rough."


    "It is. You''re one of the few people I''ve met who didn''t care. I appreciate that."


    Rui shrugged. "I appreciate you not caring about my eyes and hair." He replied as he caught someone eying his hair. This was another thing they had inmon. They didn''t have to worry about such nonsense when they hung out with each other.


    As they waited, for whatever it is that was supposed to happen after everyone arrived. Rui took a closer at his surroundings. Firstly, he noticed that most of the freshmen seemed to be around sixteen to eighteen-years-old. In fact, as far as he could see, there wasn''t a single freshman as young as them. This was probably another reason for the attention they were drawing.


    There were a few guards situated along the perimeter of the hall, likely to prevent any conflicts that could possibly arise between the freshmen.


    "Well hello you two, we meet again." A feminine voice called out to them.


    Rui didn''t even need to turn around to know who it was.


    "Fae." He looked at her with aplicated expression. He wasn''t a vindictive person. He part-took in the second-round knowing full well that there was a great chance he might have gotten hurt and knocked out, he was young and he was an attractive, yet weak target. He still took part in the second-round despite all these risks, he consented to all of this, naturally he would not lose his mind in resentment and anger if he lost.


    What fool participates in a fightingpetition fully aware of the risks only to grow extremely resentful and angry when those risks ur? She did not vite the rules, furthermore she attacked countless other applicants too, Rui wasn''t unique.


    Furthermore, she had revealed that she attacked him knowing he would likely pass because of how well he did, even if he got knocked out, she wasn''t trying to ruin his chances, or so she imed.


    However, he wasn''t fond of her personality. From what little he interacted with her, she seemed like an unpleasant person. She seemed like a fickle shit-stirrer whose words and earnestness he couldn''t trust, talking to her was a tiring exercise and he''d rather just avoid it all together.


    "Tsk. Go away. Who asked you to go out of your way to bother us?" Kane had much fewerpunctions with rudeness than Rui did. His background probably had something to do with that. While Rui was still wary of people with a lot of power, Kane had just as much as she did.


    Rui noticed that they had thoroughly be the center of attention.


    "Can I not just greet my fellow freshmen? We''re part of the same batch, are we not? Besides, I didn''t necessarilye to speak with you, Kane." She smiled innocently. "I came despite you, if it weren''t for Rui here, who would bother talking to you? Ah were you hoping I came here for you? You must be at that age, after all."


    Kane gritted his teeth. "You-"<sub> </sub>


    "Alright let''s chill guys." Rui interrupted with exasperation. If he did not stop it here, it would probably be toote. He red at Fae, he didn''t like her temperament. Just he was about retort, a voice interrupted them.


    "Do you enjoy picking on a bunch of brats so much, Fae?" A monotonous voice called out to her.


    A girl called out. She had short blue hair and red eyes, and an expression thatcked energy.


    "My, I''m not picking on-Wah!" The blue hair girl grabbed her by the cor and pulled her away, interrupting what she knew would be a tiring word sd of an excuse.


    "Sorry for the disturbance." She called out, meeting Rui''s eyes for a split second.


    "..." Rui vaguely recognized her. She ranked five in the second round, right after Kane.


    "Good riddance." Kane spat.


    "She''s annoying, but your dislike for her seems to go beyond irritation." Rui replied, remembering the investiture ceremony.


    "My mother loves her, she''s constantlyparing me to her and rubbing everything she does in my face for literally years now." Kane''s eyebrows knitted in anger. " ''Oh look how dedicated to her family''s prestige Fae is'' or ''Oh look how responsible and proactive she is to the family, you should be more like her'' and shit like that."


    "...I see." That exined it.


    Just as Kane recounted his grievances, the doors on the other end of the room opened and a Martial Senior walked through. Rui could instantly tell what realm he was in through the weight of his presence.


    "Freshmen, I wee you to the Martial Academy. I am a Martial Senior Tarrokov, and I will be conducting your evaluation exam. Please leave your belongings with the support staff, with a name tag that we''ll be providing to you and follow me to the evaluation exam hall."


    The students immediately took of their belongings while receiving name tags.


    "It''s a bit weird that they''re doing the evaluation exam as the first thing on the first day of the Academy." Rui murmured with a confused expression.


    "There''s a reason for it." Kane replied back with a soft voice.


    "Oh? Do tell."


    "It''s rted to our dormitory segregation."


    Rui threw him a curious look.


    "The Academy has different dormitory sections across the campus." Kane exined. "We''re not all going to be put in the same dormitory just because we''re in the same academic batch. One dormitory section is near the Apprentice training section of facilities and Apprentice Martial libraries."


    "I see." Rui understood. "So those of us at the Martial Apprentice level will be put in the Apprentice dormitories while those below, like me, will be put together elsewhere." He said glumly.


    They quickly tagged their belongings and handed it over to the support staff, who duly put them in trolly carriers. Before shifting them away.


    "Hm." Senior Tarrokov nodded. "Now that you''re ready, follow me to the evaluation exam center."


    He led them through a series off corridors until they reached a giant open facility. The facility was riddled with familiar looking training equipment, this was a sight that Rui foundforting.


    (''Right, this is how a physical evaluation exam should be. The Martial Entrance Exam was obtuse.'') He coaxed himself.


    "The evaluation exam has two stages; physical evaluation and performative evaluation." The Senior informed. "The first stage will begin now. This exam will impact your curriculum as well as the rest of your time in the Academy." He stated with a stern voice. "Give it your absolute best."


    Rui grinned. He was ready!


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 45 Monster

    The physical evaluation began shortly. Senior Tarrokov began with basic stamina evaluation. Stamina was not only the foundation of Martial Art but all physically intensive activities. He gathered up all the freshmen and assigned them to a treadmill and had them all begin simultaneously at an identical speed. The freshmen were even provided with potions at the start to eliminate the variable of fatigue from travel and other preparation for the Martial Academy''s first day.


    Rui tried minimize his movements and energy expenditure while inhaling and exhaling at measure intervals, maintaining a constant but low consumption of energy allowed one tost longer than a higher consumption of energy, this also minimized the build-up and umtion ofctic acid in the muscles which was the cause of muscle pain and soreness that one experienced from over-stressing.


    Behind each freshman was an evaluator that made notes, carefully observing and scrutinizing the freshmen they were assigned to. The data they provided would impact the freshmen significantly so they were very careful about their documentation.


    In ny minutes, most of the freshmen had stepped off due to overwhelming exhaustion. The pace of the treadmill was not low, it was set at a medium jogging pace. Soon enough Rui followed suit,ying t on the ground, drenched in sweat. Kane followed as well, thirteen minutester.This belongs to N?velDrama.Org - ?.


    It couldn''t be helped. They were thirteen. The biggest difference between eighteen and thirteen-year-olds olds was stamina. Kanepensated for it with training and growth resources, while Rui hadpensated for it with for a lifetime of training with cutting-edge research on stamina-building. Rui''s performative attributes were hindered initially because of mismatched muscle memories which took him a long time to ovee, his physical attributes were well above average.


    "Huff... huff..." They panted as they were provided with stamina potions, which they immediately inhaled.


    "Phew..." Rui stretched his invigorated limbs. "It never fails to amaze me how useful this is both to us and the evaluaters, now we can move on to the performative stage immediately."


    Kane nodded, before shrugging. "Well, not immediately. There''s still those four."


    It had been a while since both of them dropped off, many had followed suit after them. But there were still four students who were going.


    "Nel and Fae are too be expected..." Kane continued. "Milliana is also pretty unsurprising." He said, pointing at the blue-haired girl they''d met earlier.


    Rui had recognized her from the second round of the Entrance Exam, but he''d forgotten her name.


    "You know her?" He asked Kane.


    "Sure, she''s the daughter of a Martial Master. She''s pretty good." Kane replied.


    "Hmmm..."


    "Dalen is pretty good too." He gestured towards the fourth freshman, another top-ten ranker that Rui vaguely recognized.


    Rui turned to Kane with a hint of dismay.


    "...What?" Kane retorted.


    "How do you know all of the top rankers from the Exam personally?"


    "Through our parents. We generally apany our parents who are part of thismunity-ish group. asionally we spar. I don''t know those two as well as I do Fae, though. Sage Duhan and my father are extremely close."


    "I see..." Rui sighed helplessly. This was the power of connections. Just being the child of a Martial Sage meant Rui would regrly run into bigshots and titans of the Martial World.<sub> </sub>


    (''Then again, his dad is among the biggest of bigshots, maybe Kane even views them as bootlickers." Rui mused.


    Just then, he''d noticed both Fae and Dalen had gotten off too.


    "Damn, Fae actually didn''tst as long as Nel and Milliana, huh?"


    Kane nodded. "It makes sense. Her Martial Art focuses on relentless powerful offense, designed to pummel her opponent down as quickly as possible. It''s not a Martial Art that is conducive to stamina..."


    "She''s probably not as ustomed to maintaining a low output of energy over longer periods of time due to that." Rui agreed.


    "Yeah, on the other hand, Milliana''s also a Martial Apprentice. But her Martial Art is stamina oriented. She drags and prolongs the battle immensely. Her stamina is incredible, the longer the battle goes, the more her opponent is at a disadvantage." Kane exined.


    "Interesting..." Rui''s eyes glinted with curiosity and excitement. "I wonder how she''ll do against Fae in the next stage."


    "Who knows." Kane shrugged.


    "It''s a matter ofpatibility. She did better than Fae here because this test is centered around evaluation. She''ll most certainly do worser than Fae when we reach the performative stage based on their performances, and what you told me." Rui analyzed engrossed in the matter. His background helped him in this matter. He continued.


    "Based on this, it can be hypothesized that Milliana has a low quick-twitch to slow-twitch muscle fiber ratio whereas Fae likely has a high quick-twitch to slow-twitch muscle fiber ratio, that would certainly exin the differences in their metabolisms which wou-"


    "Dude." Kane stared at him with confused expression. "What are you even talking about?"


    That broke Rui out of his reverie. "Ahhh, well, you see, it''s just some some random thoughts that hit me." He fumbled, scratching his head.


    (''Damn I lost awareness of my surroundings thinking about this.'') He had a hard time controlling his curiosity and attention. They were fueled by his immense love and passion for Martial Art, and the mes just grew stronger feeding on any topic they could find, this topic was one such thing.


    "You really are a weirdo." Kanemented, before turning back to them.


    "Haha..." Ruiughed awkwardly.


    Time went on as they bantered and chit-chatted for quite some time after. Until finally, one of the two remaining freshmen jumped off, copsing to her knees.


    "Huff... Huff..." Milliana turned back, looking at Nel. She couldn''t see even a hint of exhaustion on his face. Here she was, a specialist dedicated to stamina, exhausted to the point of visual disoreintation, and this boy was running like it was nothing.


    Unfathomable!


    "You monster...!" A hint of shock coloured her otherwise impassive expression and reserved demeanor.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 46 Shocking Performances

    Fae rushed over to Milliana, with a potion already prepared.


    "You okay?" She asked, with a rarely visible hint of concern for her friend.


    "...Yes." She squeezed out amidst her panting. "Just exhausted."


    Fae turned to Nel who was still jogging, she could see palpable boredom in his demeanor. He hadn''t broken the slightest bit of a sweat. It''s clear this was nowhere near his limit.


    (''Just how many hours has it been?'') Fae wondered. She wasn''t surprised that Nel bested her in stamina, it was not her forte, but she didn''t think the difference would be so drastic. Neither the second nor the third round hadn''t been enough to push either of them to the limits of their stamina, so it hadn''t struck her tenacious he was.


    Rui and Kane were quite shocked at both their performances, but especially Nel''s.


    "Is such a thing even possible? Has he consumed an enhancing potion?" Rui pondered. He turned to Kane;


    "Do you know him? Is he part of a Martial Family?" He asked, looking for a possible exnation.


    Kane shook his head. "Never seen him before the Entrance Exam. He doesn''t seem to be a Martial Apprentice with a stamina-oriented Martial Art either."


    Rui nodded. Although he wasn''t familiar with Apprentice-level techniques yet, it didn''t seem like Nel was using some advanced technique that minimized consumption of energy like Milliana seemed to be, his running form waszy and sloppy. This really seemed to be a matter of raw stamina.


    "He''s probably either consumed an enhancement potion like you suggest or..." Kane murmured.


    "Or he was born with a body that surpasses human limits."


    Rui''s eyes widened. "Is that even possible."


    Kane nodded. "I''ve heard of it, that''s all."


    Rui turned back to Nel, who had now been coaxed by Senior Tarrokov to get off the treadmill. It seems Nel''s tenacity had surpassed the Martial Senior''s patience. Not that it was a big deal, with the absurd stamina he showed.


    Rui observed the Senior''s reaction to Nel''s performance. He seemed more exasperated than surprised or shocked.


    (''Guess even this ridiculous performance isn''t a big deal to Martial Seniors.'')


    There was a small break once the stamina evaluation test ended. Rui and Kane chit-chatted and bantered while the contestants who passed after them recuperated with stamina potions. Once all the freshmen gathered having fully recovered. Senior Tarrokov spoke to them about the uing tests.


    "The next part of the physical evaluation will be centered around muscr power. You''ll have your weight measured before you perform a series of muscle-intensive activities with the training equipment in this facility." He exined. "Your performance will be weighted in regards to your weight, age and sex for the actual evaluation."


    Rui nodded. It made sense to evaluate physical strength in regards to weight, age and sex, rather than measure muscr power in a vacuum. The former was a more reliable onlook into whether their muscr power was optimal or not. Thetter was just worthless. In fact, on Earth the norm for empirical data included far more variables and parameters than just those three.


    Hormonal levels, muscle mass to body mass ratio, bone density and other metabolic variables were ounted for when gathering data. Weight, age and sex were just the bare minimum.


    The following tests went quickly and smoothly. The students were put through rigorous weight lifting exercises, with and without weights giving the evaluators a diverse dataset. The following tests of the Physical evaluation tested a variety of physical parameters and attributes like speed, agility, reaction time and reflexes, as well as flexibility and durability.<sub> </sub>


    Within an hour, the physical evaluation ended.


    "The next stage as mentioned prior, is the performative evaluation." Senior Tarrokov exined. "This stage has multiple tests entered around body-eye coordination, a rtivelyrge attribute with many sub-attributes as well as other parameters like bnce, spatial awareness, analysis and judgement etc."


    Rui performed worser off in this stage than he did in the prior, rtively speaking. It couldn''t be helped. He started out with a huge handicap of mismatched muscle-memory, which took many years to correct. If not for that he would probably have performed as good as Kane did.


    (''Maybe even better.'') He sighed inwardly. All in all, his performance in the performative evaluation was unremarkable, his designated evaluator concluded.


    That was, until they reached the analysis and judgement test.


    ...


    "He''s not even an Apprentice..." Senior Tarrokov murmured to himself with a surprised expression. He looked at Rui with a scrutinizing gaze.


    "Uhm... This is the correct way to do it right?" Rui asked awkwardly.


    The test multi-staged test that began with an IQ test, before moving onto more applied deduction evaluations. The freshmen were put in tests with certain conditions to be fulfilled in order to pass. However, the conditions were such that they could not be aplished by physical or Martial Prowess. Be it capturing species of bats that were too agile be captured unless the limitations and weaknesses of echo-location were appropriately exploited, using the behavioural tendencies of creatures to manipte them in specified ways to fulfill the conditions, or deducing the location of required items from the surroundings.


    All of these tests evaluated different aspects of analysis and judgement. This was a broad performative attribute could not be evaluated with a single test, after all.


    However, Rui aced them all. He even passed the final stage, the only one that did. The final stage was an almost impossible test meant to ascertain the limits of even extremely intelligent students who passed all prior tests. The freshmen were each tossed into a stuffy room with booby traps that wouldunch projectiles on you, furthermore, the triggers for the trap was everything, every step you took triggered the projectiles. That alone was hellishly difficult, but the actual condition for victory was to kill bouncing slimes.


    It was practically impossible.


    "How did you...?" Kane asked, after he witnessed Rui''s performance.


    Rui nced at him and shrugged. "I ignored the slime and tanked its damage initially, it was too difficult to try and brute-force, I instead paid attention to the booby traps. The projectiles of the trap weren''t impossibly fast, I could probably take a step out of the way narrowly before they hit me. Yet I was unable to dodge them initially, they hit me even after I moved, almost as if they knew the direction I was moving in. The question was, how?" Rui asked them. Before exining


    "The possibility of a separate sensory and targeting system could be excluded, the traps were unable to ount for three-dimensional motion, the sess of ducking and jumping was oddly high, albeit not enough. This strongly denied the presence of a separate targeting system, it was much more likely that the targeting system was connected to the triggers." Rui deduced.


    "am''s Razor dictates that the simplest possibility was the likeliest, it was quite likely that the system extrapted the direction of evasion through the direction made by connecting my steps on the ground with a line. Once I verified this, it was easier to avoid the traps, I could simply walk in a direction perpendicr to the direction drawn out by my steps. Once I grewfortable with it, it was time to kill the slime. Using abination of my own attack as well as manipting the traps by stepping in a certain way together, I was able to hit the slime with the instated booby traps, took me a while though." Rui shrugged, ending his exnation.


    Kane and others who were listening to his exnation stared at him with open jaws.


    Kane turned to another student who was close to them with a confused expression.


    "Did you understand?"


    The poor boy shook his head.


    This chapter upload first at  This belongs to N?velDrama.Org - ?.

 Chapter 47 Interesting Developments

    It took a while for the people around him to ovee their incredulity. Most of them had felt hopeless in the face of the final test. Not only were the bouncing slimes of a much higher grade than those of the Entrance Exam because the average freshman was far more capable than the average applicant, but the traps inbination were too overwhelming to be ovee with speed and power, or even technique. It was a test only those at the pinnacle of the Martial Apprentice Realm could ovee, or those with high enough analysis and judgement to deduce the only possible strategy that could help them ovee the test.


    The tactical intelligence test was the final test in the performative evaluation stage. With it, the Evaluation Exam had ended. What surprised Rui was how quickly the results came and their dormitories were set. The freshmen all received a key and directions to their dorm rooms.


    (''Room number 256 huh? And I have a roommate.'') This wasn''t surprise as this was covered by the information booklet. He looked at the name.


    (''Cara Mullion.'')


    He was surprised that the Academy put male and female students together in the same room. Were they not afraid of putting a bunch of hormonal teenagers in the same room as the opposite sex?N?velDrama.Org owns this text.


    (''No, if something that simple can distract them, they probably would not have passed the first stage. And if it does, then what chance do they have to be a Martial Squire?'')


    He even suspected the Academy used this to evaluate the work ethic and motivation of students.


    Once he reached his room, he immediately dropped his bag and dived into a bed. The room was decently spacious. It''svishness and extravagance were purposely reduced significantly. The Martial Academy was not a vacation at a paradise. The rooms were designed modestly to prevent students from developing the wrong mindset.


    Still, the rooms were spacious enough for a decent living standard. Each room was divided into two sections by a wall connected by a spacious opening, each side had a decently big bed, a table with two chairs, a shelf, a cupboard with drawers, and enough windows for healthy air cirction and sunlight. The d¨¦cor was, once again, sparse.


    Just as he scrutinized the room. A girl with short brown hair walked in, dropping a suitcase on her side as she made eye-contact with Rui.


    "You must be Cara." Rui smiled warmly, trying to start off on a good note for his roommate. "I''m Rui Quarrier, nice to meet you."


    She nced at him, curtly nodding before going about her business.


    (''...Not one of many words I see.'') He noted, before minding his own business, if she didn''t want to build a rtionship, he was perfectly fine with that. Heid his belongings in the room before heading to the toilet to take a bath and freshen up. Potions could restore stamina, but they did not get rid of sweat and dust.


    Later that day, he decided to meet up with Kane to explore the Academy, he didn''t bother going with a guide, he''d memorized the generalyout and he was sure Kane remembered every detail. It was much more without a stranger butting in.


    (''I believe it was just around the corner here...'') as he peeked into a corridor, looking for the Apprentice dormitory. When suddenly;


    "What the FUCK did you say?"


    Rui jerked around towards the source of themotion.<sub> </sub>


    He saw a tall burly boy holding, to his surprise, Nel by the cor. The boy was about to throw a punch at Nel when a heavy presence suddenly put pressure on them.


    "Aggressing violence is against the rules." An even bigger man caught the punch with two fingers.


    (''A Martial Squire.'') Rui''s eyes twinkled. This presence wasn''t as heavy as Senior Tarrokov''s, but the Squire expressed cold disregard for the boy. It was more distressing then senior Tarrokov''s who limited his impact on the students to not affect their performance.


    "He insulted my mother!" The boyined despite his fear.


    "Speech is not regted by the rules. You can say anything to each other, however you may not escte conflicts to violence." the Squire insisted, putting even more pressure on the hapless boy.


    Nel on the other hand disregarded the pressure as his entire face warped into a provocative contemptuous sneer at the boy, enraging him even further


    (''Jesus that expression is so nasty, no wonder that boy couldn''t resist the urge to punch him'') Rui mused,ughing inwardly. Nel was over the top but Rui found his antics incredibly amusing.


    (''He''s an even bigger shit-stirrer than Fae is. Good lord I hope those two don''t run into each other. That''s chaos that this world is not ready to withstand.'')


    He could tell Nel had provoked that boy on purpose. Judging from what that boy said, it was likely that Nel said something incredibly nasty about his mother, provoking him to grab him by the cor andunch an attack so that the Martial Squire who was on patrol duty would intervene and reprimand him.


    (''So he isn''t just an idiot. He clearly knows what he''s doing and he''s good at it. That''s scary.'') Rui shook his head helplessly, resolving to stay away from the kid, leaving to look for the Apprentice dormitory.


    "You wanna fight?" Nel asked after the Squire had left, throwing a wide grin at the furious boy. "Then challenge me officially if you have the balls. We can settle whether your cow of a mother should have aborted you or not." He shrugged exaggeratedly.


    Rui stopped as his ears pricked, turning around to look at the scene.


    The Martial Academy penalized violence, but did have a system where students could challenge each other and fight in a more controlled setting. The Martial Academy wasn''t stupid. Gathering students who were resolved to walk the Martial Path in one ce and telling them not to fight was unrealistic. These kids no doubt had strong personalities and egos, it was just unhealthy and unconducive to their interests to repress physical conflictspletely, so they left means by which it could be monitored and controlled so that it didn''t escte.


    "DEAL." The boy screeched, he was so angry he couldn''t even articte anything else.


    (''This is interesting...'') Rui grinned.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 48 Tour

    This belongs to N?velDrama.Org - ?.


    "So you''re telling me Nel provoked a guy into challenging him?" Kane asked curiously.


    "Yeah, I was looking for the Apprentice dormitory and coincidentally ran into them." Rui exined.


    Soon after themotion Nel caused, Rui had managed to find Kane in the Apprentice dormitory. He told Kane about duel he''d heard issued on his way.


    "Do you know who the other guy was? What about the details?" Kane asked.


    "Nah." Rui shook his head. "They left before I could learn any of that."


    "Hm, well we can find out anyway."


    ? "How so?" Rui asked curiously.


    "Official duels need to be registered at least one day prior. If they''ve already registered it, it will be added to the time table of the Apprentice sparring facility." Kane exined.


    "That''s convenient." Rui nodded. As expected of the Academy expert. "Let''s look at it while we visit the sparring facility in our tour."


    "Sure thing."


    They bantered a bit, before setting out.


    The Academy was truly vast. It wasparable to a small town. Rui and Kane could spend the whole day and would still not be able to tour it in its entirety. Still, they intended to cover as much ground as they could.


    They set out with the information guidebooks the Academy had provided them in the investiture ceremony, mapping out a quick touring route.


    The Academy grouped its facilities and other infrastructure in regards to their utility to the students. The outermostyer was dedicated to students in the Foundational and Exploration Stages of the academic curriculum. The inneryer was dedicated to Martial Apprentices.


    Unfortunately, Rui discovered that students like him, colloquially referred to as novices were not allowed into a majority of the facilities of the inner section.


    "They sure are harsh." Rui sighed as a guard denied him ess into a training facility in the inner section. Kane hadn''t been aware of this since the information wasn''t covered in the guidebook for some reason.


    "They have a strong lockdown on information that doesn''t need to be disclosed." Kane said. "I''m already a Martial Apprentice and I still don''t know the conditions needed to be a Martial Squire."


    "Shame. Well, let''s stick to exploring the outer section." Rui resigned.<sub> </sub>


    The outer section was much bigger than the inner section. After all, there a lot of novices like Ves, far more so than the number of Martial Apprentices. Thus, the resources and space dedicated to nurturing them was far greater than the those dedicated to Martial Apprentices.


    Rui and Kane first ran into a physical training wing of the outer section. The physical training wing had a huge number of facilities dedicated to Martial body-building. The sheer variety in the training equipment, regimes and exercises was truly amazing. It surpassed even what Kane had ess to when he was in the Foundational Stage.


    "Woah..." Kane murmured as they inspected the area. "As expected of the Academy."


    Rui nodded. He wouldn''t be surprised if he was told that the facility was had targeted training for every single muscle and bone in the human body. In fact, that probably was the case.


    The wing was partially popted with students working out. What Rui noticed quickly however, was that these students weren''t part of the freshmen batch that he was part of. They were their seniors who had joined at least a year prior, if not more.


    They were engaged in various training regimes or exercises in various small groups. Furthermore, each group was monitored by a supervisor.


    "They''re not Martial Artists though." Kane noted, there presence was that of ordinary humans.


    "The Academy would not bother wasting the time of Martial Squires on novices who haven''t even crossed the foundational stage." Rui shook his head. It didn''t take a genius to figure that out. Martial Squires made the bulk of the Martial force of any nation. They were too precious to be wasted supervising a bunch of brats who hadn''t even mastered the basics of basics. Ultimately, this was a low-skilled, low-output upation that was better done by less important personnel


    "It''s quite likely the Apprentice training facilities will be overseen by Martial Squires and Martial Seniors." Rui mused, a hint of envy colouring his tone.


    Kane shrugged. He merely pointed a curiosity. He had been mentored by a retired Martial Master. Being mentored by Squires or Seniors wasn''t exciting.


    On extremely rare asions, his father had personally overlooked his training. But that wasn''t a pleasant memory for him, instead it was even the driving force for his desire to escape his home and join the Academy.


    They shrugged and moved on to the performative training wing. Which was much bigger inparison to the facility prior. It was also much more interesting to Rui. There were numerous sections dedicated to different performative attributes. A lot of them resembled things he''d see in Chinese martial arts movies.


    "Interesting stuff." Rui murmured as they took in a bnce training facility. Even performative attributes like bnce didn''t seem to have a single facility dedicated to it. Instead, there were multiple facilities dedicated to different aspects of bnce.


    "This one should be rted to kic bnce." Rui mused to himself. There was a difference between maintaining bnce during motion, and maintaining bnce while still. Although corrted, these two were not the same. It was possible to have good static bnce, while having bad dynamic and kic bnce, and vice versa. Thus, it became necessary to treat bnce as a multi-varied equation rather than a singr attribute where training and improvement was concerned.


    Body-eye coordination training was even vaster than bnce, though this was within Rui''s expectations. Atleast bnce could be cleanly divided into only a handful different types. Body-eye coordination, however was much moreplicated. In theory, every muscle''s coordination with the brain could be treated separately, creating a huge number of different subdivisions within body-eye coordination. This reflected in the sheer variety of training regimes and exercises that students were put through!


    "Amazing!" Rui couldn''t contain his excitement. This was what he wanted! This was what he longed for! The sheer amount of resources and funds that the Academy would be investing in Rui far surpassed what he could do by himself. This was why he had joined the Academy.


    "I can''t wait to begin training!" He eximed.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 49 Core Building

    Kane wasn''t nearly as enthusiastic as Rui was about the training facilities. Although his father couldn''t singlehandedly match the Academy, the economic and political capital of a Martial Sage could not be underestimated. Although the scale of the infrastructure and facilities of the Martial Academy was much bigger than what he was ustomed to, the quality of the training was not inferior.


    Instead, what truly excited Kane was the very prospect of living independently from his family. Not being under the shadow of his father, not being under the pressuring gaze of his mother, the hateful envious eyes of his siblings, step-siblings and step-parents was far more invigorating and delightful than he had ever imagined. He was finally free!


    This was in sharp contrast to Rui, who still felt a tinge of sadness leaving his family. Furthermore, Rui himself was not that excited living with a roommate, this was an all-toomon phenomenon in his previous life.


    "Who''s your roommate?" Rui asked as they returned from their tour.


    "Martial Apprentices have their own lodgings." Kane replied. "So I live alone. Not that I''mining. Being truly alone feels better than I ever imagined."


    Rui smiled as he listened to Kane extoll the greatness of the Apprentice dormitories.


    Before long, they bid each other good evening and went their separate ways. The day was long but Rui was truly tired mentally, even if not physically. He bade Cara goodnight only to, once again, receive a curt nod in response, before decking himself into his bed and falling asleep.


    The next day was an exciting one. He excitedly wore the Academy uniform provided to novices like him before heading to the general assembly hall. There were several important things due to happen today. The first was the personalized and customized training curriculum due to be handed out to all novices. This was the main purpose of the Evaluation Exam. To detect the strengths and weaknesses of freshmen and to create a training program for each one of them designed to eliminate their weaknesses and secondarily to bolster their strengths, to create a strong foundation for their Martial Path.


    Rui quickly head to the assembly hall and took his ce among the gathered students, organized in multiple lines. Once the supervisors confirmed that all the students had gathered, they began calling out names of the students gathered one by one, before handing out small booklets to each student. These booklets contained all the details relevant to their training curriculum. Rui gazed at this little book with intense reverence.


    "These will dictate your training regimes of the Foundational Stage of your curriculum. These booklets contain the training regimes you will be subjected to as well as the location and time period for each regime. Coordinate with Academy information guidebook all of you possess and ensure you''re neverte. Tardiness will not be tolerated and will be punished. Furthermore..." The supervisor continued rattling out instructions and guidelines before dismissing the students.


    "...The Foundational Stage is the most important part of your Martial Paths. It serves as the foundation upon which everything else is built. I hope each and every one of you will sincerely dedicate yourselves to it. With that said, you''re dismissed." He nodded before leaving the facility.


    Rui quickly went through his training regime. As much as he wanted to sit down and pour through every detail of his training curriculum guide, he noticed that he had a training session immediately.<sub> </sub>Published by N?v''elD/rama.Org.


    "Core building huh?" Rui nodded. "An important aspect of Martial Art, indeed."


    He quickly scurried over to the physical training section.


    Inside, many freshmen had gathered already. And the chief supervisor was keeping a close eye on the wall clock.


    "Alright, it''s time. Form lines and stand in attention." He instructed.


    They quickly adhered to his instructions as he continued.


    "Core building is an important part of Martial Art. For those who aren''t aware, the ''core'' refers to the set of muscles in you mid and lower abdomen." He exined, patting his gut and lower back. "There isn''t a single Martial Art in existence that can function without the core, it is absolutely vital. Thus, core building is considered to be one of the most important aspects of physical training."


    He provided all the students with small pamphlets that provided more detailed information on the core muscles. Of course, Rui didn''t bother delving much into it. With his background and work, he probably knew more about the core muscles of the human body than anybody else in the entirety of the whole.


    "And with that said, we''ll begin right away. We''ll start with more elementary and static exercises such as nk and bridge variations before moving onto simpler dynamic exercises like deadbugs and sit-ups. Once that''s done, we''ll begin with exercises that require equipment. Pallof Presses,ndmine rotations, Renegate Rows, pikes and ab-rollouts, also..." He rattled out more exercises and details of the sets, durations and methodology.


    Rui immediately began following his instructions diligently. Though inwardly, he had some gripes about the training regime.


    p (''This isn''t the most optimal means of training, though it''s not bad.'') Back on Earth, research had already shown that the relentless ''no pain no gain'' training regimes were not the most optimal and efficient means making gains, it was a somewhat outdated albeit popr means of training. At the very least, serious athletes would never train such a haphazard way. It was much more efficient to first take detailed data of the subject''s metabolic parameters before carefully designing a training regime that would yield the maximum number of gains for a certain amount of effort.</anda>


    He put aside those thoughts while he began his nks. These, like most exercises, needed focus and concentration. It was inefficient to let your mind wander while exercising and training, not to mention dangerous. Furthermore, thinking about whether it was optimal or not was useless. After all, he couldn''t change his training regime. He was merely a novice in the Foundational Stage, he was expected to adhere to all instructions provided by the Academy.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 50 Unfathomable

    The next several hours were filled with grueling effort. With only thirty-second break between exercises, Rui was truly pushed to his limits. Core building required strong perseverance, there was no other field of training that targeted as many muscles simultaneously as core building did.


    Furthermore, the supervisors were unforgivingly relentless and brutal in their pushing, the presence of healing and energy potions destroyed all excuses that students attempted to hide behind. It was hellish.Published by N?v''elD/rama.Org.


    Yet, among all of them, only one of them had a slight tinge of ecstasy on his face.


    (''This is great. Although Ipensated as much as I could with resourcefulness and clever tricks, you can''t really beat the real deal. The potions alone make me vastly more productive than I could have been by myself.'')


    He enthusiastically engaged in the exercises prescribed by the supervisors. His schedule was packed with exercises, he had only a bit of free time for meals, and a few hours to himself by the end of the day.


    He only got to take a good look at his curriculum and evaluation during lunch, he was too busy prior.


    (''As expected, a significant majority of my training is centered around my physical performative attributes.'') He mused to himself.


    His physical attributes were rather impressive, well above average for his age. He was quite close to Kane as far as raw statistics were concerned. Although Kane had far superior training and growing resources. Ruirgelypensated for that with a lifetime of training, and much better training methodology.


    His physical performative attributes like bnce, body-eye coordination and spatial awareness weren''t as good, if it weren''t for his mismatched muscle memory he might have been as good as Kane even in that regard, but s. He couldn''t have his cake and eat it.


    However, his mental performative attributes like analysis, judgement and tactical ingenuity were absurd by the Martial Academy standards. Unbeknownst to him, his performance in this attribute was the single greatest performance in the century long history of the Martial Academy. His IQ score was the highest ever recorded in their database, and he was the only one to have ever passed the final test of the intelligence evaluation test. Furthermore, hepleted ridiculously quickly than the Academy thought possible for a thirteen-year-old novice.


    Geniuses like Nel born with a godly body were truly rare, but not unheard of. Every decade tended to have someone with Nel''s physical prowess. The Academy was quite impressed, but it still fell within their predictions. However, Rui broke their model for the limits of the human mind


    In their eyes, his mind was unfathomable. And it had reflected in his curriculum. He was the only student in the history of the Academy to not be given even the slightest bit of mental performative training. He only had a monthly evaluation of his intelligence, and even this was a bit outside of their general policy. The Academy wanted to gather more data on this unheard-of phenomenon. It had generated a lot of interest and excitement within many wings of the Academy.


    Rui, however, was blissfully unaware of the shock his performance had generated. Hecked context and vital information. Furthermore, hecked an outsider perspective on himself. He was no doubt aware of his performance being high, even highest among the freshmen who had participated. However, that was as far he thought it went. He thought he was just another yearly topper of the mental performative attribute evaluation, every year had one, so not too shocking.


    (''The rest of my day is centered around performative training.'') Rui nodded. He was not dismayed by this. He needed physical performative training badly. Unlike physical training, it was much more difficult to train physical performative attributes without training resources. The training for these parameters were much moreplicated and nuanced.


    He could finally erase his greatest weakness.


    "Hey man." Kane interrupted his reverie. "Sorry for beingte."<sub> </sub>


    "No problem." Rui responded. "Got caught up in exploring the Martial Apprentice library?"


    Unlike him, Kane was not mandated to engage in training. He spent his days browsing the Martial Academy''s techniques looking for techniques study, and potentially add to his Martial Art.


    Kane nodded. "The library of techniques is far, farrger than what my household provided to me when I became a Martial Apprentice. There tons of amazing techniques."


    "That sounds incredible." Rui replied with a hint of envy. He couldn''t wait to be a Martial Apprentice. The more Kane extolled his experience, the stronger Rui''s hunger to experience it himself grew.


    "As much as I''d tell you all about the techniques I came across in detail, I can''t." Kane told him with an apologetic demeanor. "I had to sign an oath that I wouldn''t disclose this knowledge to anybody else during my stay in the Academy."


    Rui sighed; he had anticipated this would be the case after having witnessed the Academy''s propensity to control information. He would never learn anything the Academy deemed unnecessary for him to know.


    "The only way to learn more, is to grow stronger, huh?" Rui murmured to himself.


    "Hm?"


    "Ah, nothing, just thinking about what you told me."


    "Hm, by the way, are you ready for today?" Kane grinned.


    "Today?"


    "Yeah, Nel''s duel with Felix is today."


    Rui had almost forgotten about the duel, he had been so caught up in his own matters, he''d filtered out of everything external away. They had discovered the time and location of the duel during their tour the day before. The boy who''d challenged Nel was Felix Harakel, someone Kane recognized. His mother was a retired Martial Master.


    Learning that had provided more context to the conflict he''de across yesterday. His mother was likely a source of pride to him, whereas her retirement might have been a touchy subject to him. Nel had viciously attacked Felix on his possible insecurities with nasty, but sessfully provocative insults, resulting in that violent bacsh of a reaction.


    "Yeah, I''m definitely looking forward to it." Rui couldn''t wait to see Nel in action.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 51 Rational Or Not

    "Fuuuu...." Rui exhaled as he raised his hands and crouched his body, bending his knees. At a distance there were numerous cylindrical tubes stacked parallelly pointed at him. This was part of the hand-eye coordination training he was subject to.


    BANG BANG BANG


    The machine shot three balls at Rui. He swiftlyunched his hands reaching for the balls, hoping to catch some of them.


    "You missed! Repeat!" His supervisor instructed sternly. Rui crouched into a ready position once again. Heightening his senses and putting his body on edge.


    BANG BANG BANG


    He''d already given up on trying to catch all three of them, it was clearly too much for him. For now, he tried catching just one of them. It was only after diverting his attention on one of the balls, that he finally seeded in catching it, much to his delight.


    "Better." His instructor nodded. "Focus on what you can do, with enough practice and hardwork, you''ll grow to be able to do more."


    "Yes sir." Rui nodded.


    He found the body-eye coordination training the hardest. He was undoubtedly the worst among all the novices. Thebination of him being the youngest and the most challenged in this regard made his performance in contrast to his peers.


    If it had been any other student his age with his performance, this most certainly would have affected them negatively, but Rui took it in stride. He could feel as though he''d grown stronger, this feeling triggered euphoria, which only pushed him to be train even more intensely.


    Of course, this was merely a sensation, not real. It was impossible for a novice to grow that fast. Rui estimated in ny days'' time, he would be able to observe significant improvements.


    "Once again." His instructor instructed. Rui nodded, getting into his stance, he was determined to perform just a bit better than before, slow and steady won the race.


    The rest of the day was a series of training sessions one after another, Rui jumped around different types body-eye coordination training sessions, until he received a break at the end of the day.


    "Phew" Rui sighed as he refreshed himself with a bath washing away the seat and dirt that a whole day worth of training had umted. He quickly dried himself up before putting on some casual clothing. He intended to hang out with Kane and watch the duel between Nel and Felix.


    (''Hm?'') Rui''s eyes spotted Cara fiddling with what looked like an insignia, as he headed to the door, which she promptly hid, with a sharp look directed at Rui.


    Rui ignored her gaze with a mild sigh.


    (''As reserved as ever, I see.'') He shrugged inwardly. He would not bother interacting with someone who clearly had a problem with social interaction.


    He quickly headed to the Apprentice dormitory, and tagged Kane along to the Apprentice sparring center.


    "I''m fortunate to be able to witness this match at all." Rui shook his head.


    "True." Kane nodded. "If both of them were Martial Apprentices, you would likely have not been here for this."


    Martial Apprentices had a lot of freedom in the Academy, meaning they could register duel for any time of the day they wanted. Rui only had a small window of freedom every day where he could travel to the Apprentice sparring facility to witness duels, he would miss all duels that didn''t happen during his break period.


    The reason he was able to catch the duel between Nel and Felix wasn''t because of luck. But because one of the two of them was the same as him; a novice student.


    This wasn''t unusual. What surprised Rui was that that student was not Felix, the novice student was Nel!<sub> </sub>


    "I was really surprised to learn that Nel wasn''t a Martial Apprentice." Rui murmured.


    "Yeah, but the condition to be a Martial Apprentice isn''t rted tobat prowess. It''s rted to your Martial foundation and your Martial Path." Kane exined. "Nel is extremely formidable, but not because of his Martial Prowess; his skill and technique. Rather, his poweres from his ridiculous physical prowess."


    Rui nodded, he''d seen Nel in several performative training sessions, much to his and everyone else''s shock.


    "If he''s this strong without even being a Martial Apprentice..." Rui pondered.


    "Then he''ll probably be the strongest Martial Apprentice when he does be one." Kanepleted.


    "We''ll be able to learn more about hisbat prowess in this duel." Rui noted. "Do you know how strong Felix is?"


    "Yeah, I didn''t know he''d be a Martial Apprentice, to be honest." Kane admitted. "We''d met six months ago, back when I''d just turned into a Martial Apprentice, and he was still in the Exploration Stage back then."


    "So, he must have turned into an Apprentice somewhat recently." Rui concluded. "Furthermore, if you only knew him in his Exploration Stage, then he hadn''t discovered his Martial Path back then, correct?"


    Kane nodded. "Yeah, I''m rather curious about what his Martial Art is about."


    They made their way to the Apprentice sparring center bantering lightly.


    They immediately noticed a huge crowd once they reached the facility.


    Kane whistled "That''s a lot of people."


    "It is the first duel of our batch, after all. Also, it''s a duel with the novice topper, and a Martial Apprentice. It would be weird if it didn''t gather this kind of interest."


    Kane nodded with an intrigued expression. He was quite curious about the fight himself. Just then;


    "My, the two of you are here as well." A voice said to them


    Kane''s enthuse immediately fell, recognizing that voice instantly. Rui sighed as well.


    "Yeah." He responded lightly.


    "Any thoughts on who''s going to win?" Fae asked them both, particrly Kane, since they both were acquaintances of Felix.


    Kane shrugged, resigned that she wasn''t going anywhere soon. "Unless Felix experienced a massive growth spike, he probably can''t win."


    Fae nodded. "But he challenged Nel despite observing his performance in the Entrance Exam and Evaluation Exam, that likely means he''s confident to some degree."


    "It all depends on how rational he was when he challenged Nel." Rui shook his head in response. "I was there when it happened, trust me, the guy looked like he was about burst a vein."This belongs to N?velDrama.Org - ?.


    "Hmm..." Fae turned to the sparring ring. "Then we''ll just have to see how much of his decision was rational and how much was emotional, I guess."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 52 Conflict

    "Heh, you didn''t chicken out." Nel grinned.


    "I''m going to beat you to a pulp." Felix retorted with suppressed anger.


    "Put your money where your mouth is, motherfucker." Nel emphasized the barb.


    Felix gritted his teeth, choosing to remain silent.


    A referee soon had both fighters take their positions, bow and take their stance.


    "Interesting..." Rui murmured as he saw Felix''s stance. Felix had brought his left leg forward and raised hands to shoulder height, squatting low until his head dipped to chest level.


    "He''s a wrestler." Rui immediately concluded. This was a verymon wrestling stance, for good reason too. This stance allowed wrestlers tounch takedowns and shoots to close the distance and turn it into a full-contact grappling match. The squat allowed them to rush at their opponent''s lower abdomen, this was known as a shoot, and the arms were positioned to be able to grab their opponents to prevent them from opening up distance or maintain their bnce.


    Fae nodded. "If he seeds in turning the fight into a full contact fight, then he might win."


    Nel''s stance was a bit strange, he squatted just a bit and left his arms loose, dangling above the ground. His demeanor was rxed, he had an expression ofzy confidence.


    "Ready... And start!" The referee began the match.


    Immediately Felix leapt at Nel, with his arms open; amon shoot maneuver. Just as Felix was about to grab the stationary Nel, he jumped andnded on Felix''s head, bncing on one foot nonchntly, hands in his pocket.


    Felix immediatelyshed at Nel''s legs, hoping to throw him down, but not before Nel effortlessly summersaulted offnding behind him. The force of that maneuver had pushed Felix to his knees, while Nel nced at him withzy boredom.


    "Is that the best you could do?" He yawned.


    Felix snarled in rage throwing all his momentum into a fast, powerful lunge. To his surprise, he actually caught Nel with ease, thetter had not moved. Merely staring him in the eye with boredom.


    (''Letting me get a hold on you? I''ll make you regret your arrogance.'')


    Felix vowed, humiliated. He had decided to go all-out. He''d decided to use the strongest Apprentice level finisher move he''d learnt thus far.


    The Reverse Whip.


    He grabbed Nel from the back, lifted his body and swung him all the way behind his back,nding Nel on his head.


    BOOM


    A huge noise was born from the impact, there was even a gust of wind with the sheer amount of power Felix had generated.


    (''That was clean! I got him!'') Felix was ecstatic.


    The Reverse Whip was a German Suplex, however its power was greatly amplified. The technique directed, umted and converged power from every muscle in the body. It was quite simr to Outer Convergence; the technique that Fae had used against Rui. The same principle, different application.


    Felix got up with an ted expression, he had defended his mother''s honour!


    "Not bad... That hurt way more than I expected, you know." Felix froze as a voice behind said.


    (''There''s no way...'') He turned around with fear in his eyes.


    Nel cracked his neck, getting up.


    "Yeah..." He continued. "You''re way fucking better than I thought you''d be, not gonna lie."


    He got back into his loose squat stance. "Since you showed me that awesome move, it''s only fair that I return that favour" He grinned, growing more excited. "Wouldn''t you agree.?


    <o>,m Felix stared at him with a horrified expression. "You-!"</o>


    BAM<sub> </sub>


    One moment Nel was three meters away from Felix. The next moment his arm had already burrowed itself in Felix''s abdomen, contorting his guts.


    "Fast!" Kane eximed. He could achieve that speed himself, but only afterbining Parallel Walk and a few other Apprentice level techniques. Nel on the other hand just ran to Felix without using any techniques.


    Felix crumbled like a broken puppet, unable to breathe. Nel had struck his diaphragm, momentarily incapacitating him. He gasped for air like a fish out of water, a trail of blood trickling out of his mouth amidst the saliva.


    Nel sighed, his demeanor grew lethargic and he lost all his excitement at the sight. "We were having so much fun. You just had to go and cut it short, oh well."


    He shrugged, before throwing a nce at the dumbstruck referee, who immediately ended the match upon the prompt.


    Nel walked out of the ring, ignoring the crowd that split to make way for him, heading to the door.


    "Ah... You." He recognized Fae. "You''re the one from the Entrance Exam, you were awesome." His eyes lit up through his long messy silvery hair. "You wanna continue what we couldn''t back then?"


    "My, enthusiastic aren''t you?" Fae giggled. "I was free back then. I don''t have the time to y around with yet another cocky brat." she said, yfully rubbing Kane''s green hair, which Kane promptly swatted off, ring at her.


    Nel stared at her listlessly, meeting Kane''s and Rui''s eyes before retorting. "Hmph, you scared bitch?"


    "Bold words from a boy who hasn''t even reached Martial Apprentice." She returned his hostility. "You''re not worth my time anymore, I''m the heir of the Duhan Family, my time is more important than you realize." Her eyes and smile turned icier by the second.


    The tension was high.


    "If you''re that busy, then stop harassing us every time you see us!" Kane grumbled, causing Fae to burst intoughter


    Nel watched the two bickering expressionlessly, before leaving wordlessly. "You and I will fight, whether you like it or not." Before leaving the facility


    Rui had been silent the entire time, staring off into space with an intense expression.


    "He''s a jerk, isn''t he?" Kane poked at him.


    Rui didn''t respond.


    "...You good bro?" Kane jabbed him in the ribs.


    "Ow! What is your problem dude?" Rui jerked out of his reverie, ring at Kane.


    "Are you thinking about what Nel said?" He asked, probing Rui.


    "What did Nel say?"


    "..." Kane stared at him.


    "Wait a second." Rui turned towards the ring in confusion. "Felix and Nel were just on the ring a moment ago! Where did they go?"


    "..."This belongs to N?velDrama.Org - ?.


    "Was that also an Apprentice level technique? The fight was amazing, but this is even moreso!" Rui''s expression intensified.


    "Were you zoned out this whole time thinking about the fight?" Fae asked hesitatingly.


    "Forget about him, he''s a weirdo." Kane shook his head.


    "Hey, that''s mean." Rui protested. "I was just thinking about it for half a second!"


    Kane facepalmed himself while Fae burst outughing.


    "What just happened?" Rui murmured at that scene, scratching his head.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 53 Potion Prodigy

    "Hm...?" The medical supervisor squinted her eyes as she nced at the medical report in front of her.


    "Uh... Is there a problem doctor?" Rui asked with a hint of anxiety, seated on the other side of the table. The doctor''s expression was not reassuring.


    It had been three days since the duel between Nel and Felix. Life had gone about as one were to expect since then. As soon as the duel ended, Rui returned to training neglecting sleep thanks to the effects of the mental rejuvenation potions; potions that rejuvenated the psyche the way eight hours of sleep did.


    The administration of the potion as well as the monitoring of the student''s condition was an extremely important duty that came along with it, and it was a duty that the medical department fulfilled. Overdosing on rejuvenation potions could lead to brain damage and induced mental disorders, it could potentially be fatal, and the Academy had set up an extremely strict protocol system to ensure that it did not inadvertently cripple their students, that would be a catastrophe.


    The medical department was to conduct medical tests to decide whether students were fit to consume rejuvenation potions, as well as the quantity and potency.


    Rui had justpleted one of the daily routine of tests and was currently present before a designated doctor who was evaluating them.


    She ignored Rui''s question and flipped back and forth between the pages in confusion, before finally looking up to Rui.


    "You have consumed three rejuvenation potions, one per day, continuously, correct?"This belongs to N?velDrama.Org - ?.


    "Yes"


    She nced back at the data with even greater confusion, before shaking her head. "I''m afraid there''s an error in the tests. You''ll have to redo the medical tests immediately."


    Rui''s apprehension increased upon hearing that, he asked cautiously. "Is there an issue with my health, doctor?"


    "No not an issue with you, it''s just that the data suggests that you''re fit to consume more potions sessively. However, it is a well-established medical fact that thirteen-year-olds cannot consume three potions to skip sleep three times without detrimental and severe symptoms. The purpose of these daily tests is to verify the limits of each student based on their individual medical results, so that we can ensure they don''t go over these limits."


    She exined as she wrote up the test prescriptions on her prescription bills.


    Rui nodded before repeating himself. "So does it say I''m fine, or not fine?"


    "The results indicate that you can go on without sleep for a few more days with a few more rejuvenation potions, however, this is a medical impossibility." She shook her head. "It''s quite likely that a human error was made somewhere in the medical or documentation process or just a false positive. It would be dangerous to prescribe another rejuvenation potion to you, since this data is clearly false. A thirteen-year-old''s subconscious mind is too underdeveloped and immature to possibly withstand more without severe bacsh."


    Rui''s eyes widened as a realization dawned him. Under normal circumstances, this was a very reasonable analysis on her part. Mistakes and errors were not umon when it came to medical tests even on Earth, it was medical practice to re-prescribe tests when an unlikely and improbable result urred, just to be safe.


    However, he had another exnation.


    (''What if... The reason I can consume more potions than normal thirteen-year-olds is because my subconscious mind is not that of a thirteen-year-old, but that of a seventy-two-year-old?'') He pondered in wonder.


    The implications were massive. It meant that he could train for far longer than his peers. He would have no need for sleep, and could spend most of his life in the Academy training.<sub> </sub>


    His rate of growth would skyrocketpared to his peers!


    He could train day and night for many times longer than they could!


    Rui grew incredibly excited at that thought, but this was just spection, he had no proof, he didn''t want to get too ahead of yourself.


    He enthusiastically urged the doctor to schedule the test to ur as soon as possible, much to her surprise. Thankfully the Academy was quick and efficient, within an hour, the doctor had the results of the new tests in her hands.


    "What..." She ran her eyes over the report, flummoxed, ncing up at Rui once in a while.


    "Are you feeling okay after three days of rejuvenating potions?" She asked him after a while of silence.


    "I''m feeling fine doctor."


    She sighed, putting the documents on her table.


    "Alright then, as per protocol, you''ll be assigned the required amount of dosage."


    "So that means I''m truly able to go on for longer than other my age?"


    She nodded reluctantly.


    "I don''t really understand how, but aberrations are not unheard of though this is new, it seems your subconscious mind is strong beyond its age. Quite odd." She looked at him curiously.


    "Haha, I wonder why."


    Inwardly Rui was joyful beyond words. The greater the number of mental rejuvenation potions he could take implied the greater the number of hours he could train every week. He was almost seven times as old as a thirteen-year-old, if the time period was linearly dependent on mental age, then his night-time training could also be almost seven times as much! He intended to go all-out with training with the help of these potions.


    "Just how much faster am I going to stronger?" He wondered with giddy ecstasy. In the short term, it would not be too impactful, after a longer amount of time, the umted extra time would be substantial!


    Rui''s heart began pumping madly as he thought of catching up to Kane sooner than he had initially hoped to. Maybe even before they graduate the Academy! The head start Kane had on him would naturally grow less and less meaningful and impactful over time. But with the help of the potions, he could elerate the process.


    His heart began pumping wildly as he felt the urge to dedicate every ounce of his time awake to training and growing stronger.


    (''Just you wait...I''m going to grow stronger unlike anything you guys have ever seen!'') He inwardly dered.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 54 Be Water

    Three months had passed since the duel between Nel and Felix. Rui had already mostly transitioned into basic Martial Art practice from physical and performative training. The Martial Path could be likened to building a big tower. A tall tower required extremely strong foundations, otherwise it would crumble. In this case, the tower had not one, but twoyers of foundations. The first was the physical foundation, this was honing and tempering the body so that it became fit to perform Martial Art optimally. This was the training that Rui had undergone since the Academy began.


    The second was the Martial Foundation, every Martial Artist had to learn the basics of all fields. Even a pure striker Martial Artist had to learn the basics of grappling and wrestling, even a pure wrestler had to learn striking. This was to give them basic experience in all forms of conventionalbat. After all, you never get to choose your opponent when you''re in the fieldpleting a Martial mission. The Martial Foundation allowed Martial Artists to gain bare basic proficiency in all fields.


    Only after mastering these two fields could the process of constructing and building one''s own Martial Art begin.


    Normally, reaching this stage would take years, just the physical training alone would take a year. But recently, rumors and tales of a boy who was already into the Martial Foundation stage had spread through the Academy. It was said that the boy was a demon. He would train for many, many days continuously with only shortest of mandatory breaks halting his training.


    This absurd training schedule allowed him to soar through what would otherwise be a long arduous process. Allowing him to aplish progress at close to record-breaking speeds.


    The reasons for Ruipleting the physical training stage were numerous, but the tworgest contributing factors was the foundation he had already built. He had begun honing his body from an extremely young age although with severely lowered intensity. He had already formed a lot of the physical foundation needed, furthermore his growth speed spiked astronomically thanks to rejuvenation and healing potions, putting his productivity at levels he never even imagined possible.


    He had also decided to take the leeway in training in the most efficient way possible in his extra time as much as he could.


    Rui breathed in deeply, taking a stance. He nodded at his opponent, a student he was paired up against. Sparring sessions were a regr for students who had reached the Martial Foundation stage. It was the best way to hone what they had learnt, and know how to apply it. The sparring training system was rather simple, half of the students in the sparring training would enter a ring and would be challenged be assigned to fight other students, they would remain on the mat and constantly fight until they lost, when they would then be reved by the student who just defeated them.


    The boy took a simple guarded stance, shifting about beforeunching himself at Rui, before throwing a kick from mid-range. The kick was rather quick and sharp, which made it harder to exploit. However, to his surprise; Rui closed the distance, and caught his thigh in an arm lock, before driving forward and pushing the boy off-bnce, throwing him off his one leg.


    BAM


    Rui mercilessly threw a full-powered kick to the boy''s chin while he was down, knocking him out.


    In his previous life, this would be dangerous and uneptable for a spar. However, his instructors encouraged them to go all-out; the presence of healing potions eliminated all risks. The Martial Academy wanted its students to experience real, full-on unrestrictedbat. Not some highly safe and restricted exchange. The Martial Academy was grooming its students to one day fight with their lives on the line, with a real possibility of death, when they became Martial Squires. In order to shape up,petent Martial Artists, they would need to get used to the feeling of pain, battering, exhaustion. Only after experiencing things like these that they would regrly experience in the field, would they not falter in the field due to inexperience.


    Rui exhaled as the paramedics of a medical team quickly moved the unconscious boy off the tform, preparing himself for the next match.


    The girl who seeded him, kept her distance from him warily. Rui had already defeated several students quickly.


    (''Noting? Well, something needs to happen.'') He mused as he started shifting, slowly closing the distance.


    When he reached CQC range; close-quartersbat range. She threw a jab at his face, it was quick but light. She was hoping to startle him beforeunching a full-powered punch. But Rui had ducked even as she began the jab, throwing a straight punch to her abdomen, impacting her diaphragm.


    She hunched down, gasping for air, but Rui had alreadyunched his knee to her face.


    BAM


    She fell back t on the ground, rolling as she cradled her bleeding nose. The supervisor signalled the end of the match.


    Rui closed his eyes focusing on his breathing, ignoring the attention of his peers.


    Rui had only recently joined the Martial Foundation Stage, how could he be so good.


    The key was in applying some of the research in his past.


    In theter half of his life, Rui had already begun dedicating himself into creating the most optimal fighting style possible. Although many of the popr styles were all tried and tested, things that had withstoodpetition and proved they were viable, Rui was a bit of an idealist at heart.


    "Be Water, My Friend.


    Empty your mind.


    Be formless, shapeless, like water.


    You put water into a cup, it bes the cup.<sub> </sub>


    You put water into a bottle, it bes the bottle.


    You put it into a teapot, it bes the teapot.


    Now water can flow or it can crash.


    Be water, my friend."


    These words he''d heard in his childhood from his greatest idol, Bruce Lee, were once merely awe-inspiring words, yet feeding upon years of sessful research, they had grown and molded into his life''s ambition. Was it possible to develop a viable fighting style that could adapt to all fighting styles? Was it possible to train someone to use this style? And most importantly, even if creating such a fictious hypothetical martial art was possible, would it, in practice, in the cold real world, seed? Would it surpass the existing mixed martial arts foundation?


    (''I have to try, I want to.'') John Falken had thought to himself. He had already begun the process of gathering a research team and acquiring research funds. He was going to go all-out. It would take a long time to develop such a fighting style.


    But s,e age fifty-seven, his asthama had escted, he was forced into permanent medical supervision and near bed-ridden restrictions. He could not push his lungs any further. He didn''t give up. In the age of 2022,munication technology made it possible for him to engage in research by coordinating with his staff from afar. He pushed himself as much as he could, but that only hastened the inevitable.


    At age fifty-nine he passed away, failing to fulfill his ambition, he was close, there was only one final hurdle left, but fate would not allow it.


    Rui exhaled solemnly as he tapped off, walking out of the arena in exhaustion.


    The final obstacle he had left in his previous life was making the Martial Art viable and practical in real life. Developing a training program that allowed human beings to learn this incredibly difficult fighting style.


    Rui had only applied a handful of principles of the fighting style he''d developed. He had only applied the very foundations of it.


    It was possible to predict what a person would do based on evaluating several parameters, the earliest prototype algorithm he had developed involved reading an opponent''s center of gravity and range to predict what they would do.


    There were several rules that constrained human fighting;Published by N?v''elD/rama.Org.


    Firstly, humans subconsciously maintained bnce at all time. Their weight had to be equally divided otherwise they would fall. It was like removing a card from the bottom of a house of cards, the entire thing would crumble due to unsupported and unbnced weight.


    Secondly, for an attack tond, it had to be within range. No one everunched an attack out of range, this wasmon sense, thus range could be used to judge their intentions.


    This, inbination with the fact that humans had four limbs meant it was possible to predict what they would probably do to some degree.


    Against his earlier opponent; the boy that Rui had knocked out, the boy had rushed in immediately, he had paused at kicking range from Rui. This already told Rui that he was not going to punch, punches were too short to hit him from kicking distance, that left a kick from one of the legs. Secondly, the boy had shifted his weight onto his left leg before the attack. Meaning that leg could not be moved because otherwise bnce would tantly be destroyed and he would fall, viting the first rule.


    This implied he was going tounch a kick with his right leg. Of course, Rui didn''t know whether the kick would be high, mid, low. Or whether it would be a roundhouse or a straight. But that didn''t matter all too much. Knowing that the boy would beunching a right kick was enough. He immediately close the distance as the kick was beingunched.


    Kicks were only dangerous past the knee, they grew much weaker above the knee. Once Rui reached the thigh, the match was already over.


    Against the girl whose nose he''d broken, Rui had noticed that her weight was evenly distributed as he approached her, meaning the likelihood of a kick was low, she would lose bnce. Thus that only left her arms. In this regard, she could only really throw a straight punch with her right fist, which was behind or with her left fist which was the closest. However, in order to throw a punch with her distant right fist she would need to close the distance, by shifting her weight, which she wasn''t doing.


    This left her left fist. But he had no idea what she would do with it. However, statistically, in his previous life, that fighter rarely threw an upper-cut with their guarding forearm, thus he immediately crouched to waist level and dashed while preparing a straight punch to her gut, which ended up allowing him to win easily after. Thus, by evaluating range and bnce, he could act in a way that was remarkably optimal.


    However, this was not a wless method. In fact, it was quite wed and limited. This model could not ount for moreplicated maneuvering, furthermore there were several ways tounch attacks with an unbnced frame. The model had a hard time ounting for higher level fakes and feints. Ultimately it would fail in the long run. It was too wed.


    "But it did serve as a foundation for things that came after." Rui muttered after consuming a physical rejuvenation potion.


    He didn''t know what his Martial Art would end up looking like, but he intended to make use of every ounce of research he had engaged in, in his previous life. Using bits and pieces from his previous life gave him an advantage over other Martial Artists.


    (''I can''t wait to discover my Martial Path.'') He thought for the umpteenth time.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 55 Squire

    Master Aronian went flipped through a document with keen interest, as a retired veteran Martial Master, there was very little he hadn''t seen. It wasn''t easy to genuinely gather his interest these days. The freshmen every year often brought him a few intriguing cases, but ultimately it wasn''t too new.


    Recently though, he''d found something that genuinely elicited surprise from him. How was it possible for a freshman thirteen-year-old novice to consume many mental rejuvenation potions days on end without any adverse effects altogether? He carefully poured through the data on the documents. Rui''s psychological constitution was unreal, he had simply never seen anything quite like it.


    He was truly curious to see how Rui would grow in the future.


    Three months had passed by since Rui and Kane had joined the Academy. Both of them had now turned fourteen-years-old. The former had only justpleted the Foundation Stage in its entirety. Normally, it would take six months, but thanks to the lifelong targeted training he had engaged in, inbination with his exception tolerance of the mental rejuvenation potions, he was able to speed past his peers significantly.


    Rui concentrated on the scene before him, seated in the Apprentice sparring center. There multiple students among the gathered on a ring, and at the center was an older woman who looked to be in her forties. Just gazing at her exerted a heavy presence on him.


    He nced around at those who had surrounded her. Among them were familiar faces; Kane, Fae, Milliana and Felix.


    The Martial Apprentices were engaged in some training with a Martial Squire instructor. She had instructed all of them to attack simultaneously.This belongs to N?velDrama.Org - ?.


    The air was tense, yet the woman was entirely calm andposed. The other students were stiff, inparison.


    "Come." She calmly instructed.


    For a heavy moment nothing happened, yet the very next, the Apprenticesshed at her. Fae was the closest to her, she quickly closed the distance, beforeunching a barrage of palm attacks. Each palm was incredibly swift and heavy, such that sts of air apanied her every movement.


    Rui gaped at the sight. Each attack reminded Rui of the wall breach explosives that SWAT teams used in his previous life to enter targeted building and facilities.


    "She really was holding back immensely against me." Rui murmured. If she had used this against him in the third round, he would have long broken his arms before he ever had a chance to counter her.


    Yet even before the explosive might of her barrage, the Martial Squire was wholly unperturbed. She raised her hands, and cleanly redirected and blocked all of Fae'' attacks with an almost lethargic expression. Before Fae could even muster a reaction, the Martial Squire swiftly threw a light but incredibly fast leg sweep, which cleanly knocked Fae off her feet, and onto her knees.


    Suddenly the Martial Squire was surrounded by three more Apprentices. One of them seemed to have a kicking Martial Art, while the other two seemed to be grapplers. The two grapplers, locked her limbs in order to allow the third one tounch his strongest attack onto her. But she merely lifted the two holding her and used them as a shield to block the kick, before swiftly kicking him in turn, sending him bouncing away like a beach ball.


    Suddenly, a figure swiftly dashed towards her from her blind spot, hoping to slip past her awareness.<sub> </sub>


    (''Kane!'') Rui observed.


    Yet she turned to meet eyes with him just as he got within striking range, sending a shiver down his spine.


    "Agile, aren''t you?" She murmured, almost bored.


    What happened next was so fast that even Kane was almost unable to process it. She grabbed him and flipped him over her shoulder so fast he saw nothing but the world blur, before hitting the ground.


    This made Rui truly gasp.


    (''Kane got outsped? Kane of all people???'')


    She dealt with all their attacks individually and simultaneously with rtive ease. An hourter every single Apprentice was t on the ground. They were all exhausted and bruised. Yet the Martial Squire only looked like she had done some light exercise.


    This sight made Rui feel small. Even a single one of those Martial Apprentices would be able to bully him with ease, yet so many of them together got bullied by a Martial Squire. He had begun to feel just a bit confident in the power that he had rued, but that had already deted entirely.


    Rui sighed.


    (''How long will it take before I reach that level?'') He wondered pensively.


    He had taken the time to take a break to observe the group sparring session between the Apprentices and the Martial Squire that Kane told him was scheduled to take ce. Normally, instructors would not permit novices to take unscheduled breaks, but every instructor knew that Rui was not a cker. The absurd, hellish schedule that Rui put him through left even the strictest and harshest of instructors absolutely dumbfounded. When Rui told them the reason, they immediately permitted it. He had already earned the respect of his instructors; they were confident that someone of his work ethic would not ck off.


    "Hey man, are you okay?" Rui asked Kane after the Squire left the facility, having finished instructing the students on their shorings and ws.


    Kane sighed, stretching his arms. "Yeah, I''m fine." It''s not that he hadn''t sparred with Martial Squire before. It''s just that they were usually gentle and respectful out of consideration of his status as the son of a Martial Sage. The Squire instructors in the Academy didn''t care, the Academy was extremely strict on no tant partiality. The Martial Academies were not institutions that could be bullied by a Martial Sage, after all, they were extensions of the entire Martial Union, and the Grandmaster of all Martial Academies was a position that was currently upied by a renowned Martial Sage.


    "I''m not used to having the shit kicked out of me all that much, especially with my fellow peers." Kane muttered.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 56 The Tale Of Martial Art

    Rui had now entered the Exploration Stage! The Foundation stage had honed his physical, performative and Martial prowess. His body was honed to an incredibly high degree, his muscles were powerful but still flexible and mobile, his bones were dense and hardened, his skin and flesh were tough and rigid. This was in sharp contrast to his leaner, softer and weaker physique prior to entering the Academy.


    He had now obtained a body worthy of taking the first step towards discovering his Martial Path. His performative capabilities, which were previously average, had now reached a more than satisfactory stage. His Martial prowess was quite impressive for a fourteen-year-old who had just reached the Exploration Stage.


    As an Explorer, the colloquial title used to refer to novices of the Exploration Stage, a lot of changes had urred to his curriculum. His training schedule would no longer be mandated by the Academy. He was given ess to the Exploration Martial library for free exploration of novice Martial Art techniques.


    However, what surprised him was that, although physical training was not mandated, the Academy did mandate a handful of theoretical seminars. This was not mentioned in the guidebook, so he was caught off-guard. Apparently, the Academy deemed it necessary to inform and educate the students on various matters while they were still in the Exploration Stage; not yet having discovered their Martial Path.


    He understood their intentions. It was best to have general cognizance and a basic awareness of the Martial Realm; the world and industry of Martial Art, before they chose to join it. This would likely allow them to make more informed decisions.


    Rui skimmed through a textbook on the Martial Union, the information provided in it was more detailed and specific than the general, vague and unreliable rumours he was otherwise used to running into.


    "...Interesting." He murmured as he digested the information.


    The first section the textbook was the history of Martial Artists, as well as the Kandrian Martial Union all the way upto its current iteration and its socio-political and economical footing and role in the current state of affairs of the Kandrian Empire.


    Martial Artists as a distinguishable ss of warriors could be traced to nearly 500 years ago, as far as credible official records went. The current Martial Artist realm ranking system did not exist back then, but historians and anthropologists of the Martial Union estimate that the peak Martial Artists of that era were no more than Martial Apprentices, at the very most. Though, again, this wasn''t entirely clear due to insufficient data.


    What was clear was that the emergence of Martial Artists broke a dent in the long-established age-old mechanics of power dynamics of the human species. Prior to the emergence of Martial Artist, the Panama continent was riddled with strife and war. Large stable countries, as a concept, didn''t exist. There were smaller settlements of humans, typically the size of the average modern town of the Kandrian Empire. These tiny kingdoms were in constant conflict to monopolize territory, resources, capital and manpower.


    The rulers of these tiny sovereign states monopolized and maintained political power very differently than the models that existed back then. The state of technology more than 500 years ago was paltry and rudimentarypared to how far it had progressed today, Martial Artists did not exist back then, thus the power and significance of individual people was negligible.


    Rulers maintained political power externally against their enemy sovereign states by capitalizing greater manpower and raising great armies of great numbers to deter war, and maintained political power inwardly through abination of incentives and detriments.


    "Much like Earth." Rui mused to himself. Back on Earth, the impact of a single person was extremely limited, individual power was inferior to the power of many, as long as the power of the majority was harnessed and capitalized by rulers, individuals did not matter. This had also been the case for most sovereogn states prior to the Age of Martial Art.


    However, that changed with the emergence of Martial Artists. At first, it wasn''t overwhelming, it tilted the scales of power just a bit. Martial Apprentices were powerful, but not enough to take down an entire sovereign state by themselves.


    They weren''t entirely too much of a threat, thus it did not evoke extreme reactions from ruling parties. Instead, rulers grew greedy, and tried to monopolize and capitalize the emergent power of Martial Art.


    Here was a new variable that could change the game and tilt the existing power dynamics in the favour of sovereign states that attempted to try to own Martial Artists, per se.


    They used incentives and disincentives to manipte Martial Artists who, as powerful as they were, in the front of social and economical benefits, were powerless individually.<sub> </sub>


    Nearly a century had passed by as sovereign states perfected the art of handling powerful Martial Artists fully, exploiting and manipting them.


    The Martial Apprentices of this era were too strong to be ignored by rulers and ruling entities, yet too weak to resist them. They could not fully protect their families or even themselves from the full militaristic and economic might of an entire state, they were resigned to being nor more than unofficial ves of their respective states.


    This remained to be the case for almost an entire century; until an incredibly historically significant event one day urred.


    The first Martial Squire was born.


    Martial Squires broke the previously establishedmon sense.


    One-man armies, they were.


    p Although they couldn''t literally annihte a huge army all by themselves effortlessly, their destructive power was fearsome, and rulers could not carelessly earn their ire. Their power was a deterrence.</anda>


    Perhaps in a vacuum, rulers could potentially muster every ounce of militaristic, economic and political power and use every dirty trick in the book to defeat the Martial Squires of their sovereign states, but then what?


    If they did that, their country would be incredibly weakened due to the civil war. Civil wars drained massive funds, resources of all kinds, and worst of all; they weakened militaries.


    The surrounding sovereign states would recognize the opportunity, and immediately dere war on the now weakened nation andpletely annex and dominate it.


    This was even worse!


    It was an uneptable oue for most rulers, thus new socio-political systems had toe into existence, and did indeed do so, to ount for the growing individual singr power of Martial Artists.


    Of course, it wasn''t as straightforward as this. The already chaotic warring era had turned into an even greater maelstrom as each of the countless nations tried all kinds of socio-cultural models and solutions to integrate, dominate or eradicate Martial Artists depending on the culture, the temperament of the ruling party and other circumstances.


    Some seeded in dominating Martial Artists, some failed and instead were ursurped by Martial Artists. Yet most sought to aim for cooperation. Countless nations fell and were consumed by the victors of the Warring Era. This marked the end of the Warring Era, and gave birth to a new era, the Age of Martial Art.


    This was the story of Martial Art.Published by N?v''elD/rama.Org.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 57 Kandrian Power Dynamics

    It was truly a fascinating tale to Rui. Just from this information alone, he realized how wise the Martial Union''s decision to educate students on the context of the state of affairs was.


    (''The best way for history to repeat itself is to have those of the future forget about the past.'') Rui mused. Although he suspected that the rtionship between Martial Artists and the state was likely not pleasant, this made him realize how much he underestimated the issue.


    (''Ruling entities probably fear and disdain Martial Artists because of the tilt in the bnce of power that Martial Artists cause, yet they not only cannot do anything to the Martial Artists because of foreign pressure, but actively need the power of Martial Artists to deter external enemies.'') Rui realized.


    (''On the other hand, the Martial Artists resent sovereign states for their desire to suppress them, but need cooperate for the same reasons the ruling entities do; external pressure.'')


    Of course, Rui was cognizant that the reality of the matter was likely much moreplicated. His understanding was likely an oversimplification of the issue. Furthermore, it was obvious that he had iplete information. There was no way that the Martial Academy would reveal the true state of affairs and political machinations of the Union and Royal Family.


    He would likely learn more about them if he grew stronger, and ascended to higher realms.


    The next few portions and sections of his theoretical curriculum focused more on the Kandrian Empire and Kandrian Martial Union rather than delving deeper into the state of affairs of the Panama Continent.


    The Martial Union was founded almost four hundred years ago, although it had a very different shape and form back then. The Kandrian Empire, like many surviving sovereign states of the Warring Era decided to opt for a state of co-existence and cooperation with the Martial Artists.


    The Martial Union and the Royal Family forged and signed the Kandrian Martial Treaty, a deration of peace, cooperation and an alliance. They also signed the Kandrian Martial Convenant; a contract that specified the terms and condition of cooperation.


    The conditions and stiptions were explored in the textbook. The Convenant contained several uses that meticulously established premises and context for the terms and conditions, before delving into them. This was to ensure there was no legal wiggle room or loopholes that either party could exploit to their advantage at the cost of the other.


    The actual terms and conditions were remarkably simr. The first use was about National defense. The Royal Family paid a huge sum of money as an annualmission to the Martial Union, in exchange for assistance with continuous and routine reinforcement, surveince and patrolling of borders.


    Another use was rted to the terms and conditions the Martial Union and the Royal Family agreed to in the event of a war or an invasion. Although there were actually a lot of conditions and premises, what it essentially boiled down to was that the Martial Union was willing to defend the Kandrian Empire for a vast amount of money and other resources, while still reserving the right to withdraw from the war, under certain conditions.


    If the situation ever escted to mass ruin, then the Martial Union did not want to be dragged down with the Kandrian Empire!<sub> </sub>


    A sovereign state was nothing without a territory, but unions were much more flexible, if the worst were ever toe, moving house was not an impossibility.


    There were several more uses that all basically boiled down to the Martial Union aiding the country in matters of national interest, in exchange for money, resources and other exclusive privileges and benefits.


    It was a veryplex exchange dynamic.


    This Convenant actually provided the Martial Union with a huge portion of its revenue. The sheer wealth that the Royal Family was capable of splurging made even the mighty Martial Union look modest and humble.


    Underneath all this convoluted andplex agreements was a sense of fragility, or atleast so Rui thought. Just looking at the contract gave him the feeling that the two parties were unwilling and reluctant to cooperate, but forced to do so due to numerous circumstances.


    Still, just because they did agree to cooperate, doesn''t mean there was true peace between them, at the very least Rui was absolutely certain there was no way that this could be the case.


    If there ever came a day where either the Royal Family or the Martial Union grew weak or fell for power, he was sure that both parties would have absolutely no problem exploiting and dominating the other for the maximum utility they possibly could.


    Considering this, the existence of the Martial Academies made more sense. The most immediate threat to the Martial Union was all around them. Furthermore, the nature of the Martial Art was such that the Martial Union would inevitably grow weaker with time gradually. Many Martial Artists died every year in the fieldpleting missions, meaning, unless the rate of emergence of new Martial Artists was equal to, or ideally, greater than the rate of death of Martial Artists and the rate of retirement of Martial Artists, then the Martial Union would eventually grow weaker and perhaps even be pushed back by the Kandrian Empire.


    Although Martial Artists were strong, the biggest disadvantage was that they were difficult to produce. Producing even a Martial Squire was very difficult, only those with talent and drive had the potential to be Martial Squires, and even then, only a small fraction of these candidates would end up bing martial Squires. Furthermore, this would only happen several years after the process had initially begun.Published by N?v''elD/rama.Org.


    (''The ranks above Martial Squire must be even more difficult and time consuming.'') Rui realized.


    Inparison to the Kandrian Empire whose military and technological might was something that could much easily be replenished and strengthened with funds and resources.


    Facing such an uphill battle when it came to maintaining and sustaining power, it was no wonder the Martial Union went all out on the Martial Academies! These institutions were a lifeline that allowed the Martial Academy to be able to maintain high militaristic strength.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 58 Additional Nuances

    The textbook soon began talking about more practical, down-to-earth matters. Specifically, the upation of being a licensed Martial Artist. The Martial Union was basically a liaison between customers who wanted to hire Martial Artists, and the Martial Artists themselves. However, not every Martial Artist couldplete every mission.


    Either they were too weak, or their Martial Art and skillset didn''t match with the pre-requisites of the mission, etc.


    Thus, the Martial Union divided missions by type and difficulty.


    There were five ranks to difficulty, and each corresponded with the first five Realms of Martial Art; Apprentice, Squire, Senior, Master, Sage. Interestingly enough, the Martial Union didn''t have Transcendent ranked missions, though the reason for this was not specified.


    A ranked mission of a particr Realm was a mission whose difficulty was such that; one or multiple Martial Artists of that Realm couldplete the mission. An Apprentice-ranked Mission was a mission that one or more Apprentices couldplete.


    This was to ensure that Martial Artists were assigned mission that was within their ability. It made no sense to assign a Martial Apprentice a Senior-ranked Mission, while giving a Senior an Apprentice-ranked mission.


    (''Makes sense.'') Rui nodded.


    Missions were also divided by their type because of this reason. The skillsets needed for different missions all required different skillsets and Martial Art.


    Thus, the Martial Union divided missions into the following four sses;


    Offense; These were missions that usually requiredunching an attack on a person, group of people or location with the goal of capturing, incapacitating or killing their opponents.


    Defense; These were missions that required the protection of a person, group of people or location with the from harm.


    Hunting; Arge portion of the Kandrian Empire was uninhabited nature, furthermore arge portion of the Panama continent was uninhabited and unexplored. Thererge amounts of resources within the fauna, flora and thend of these uninhabited areas. Most mining and resource enterprises hiredmissioned Martial Artists of the Martial Union in procuring high-value high-difficulty resources, before processing and reselling them to manufacturers who required said resources. Furthermore, the uninhabitednds of the Panama Continent contained powerful beast species that often hunted in human habitats. These were all mission ssified within the Hunting ss.


    Covert operations; These missions included any missions that were highly ndestine and furtive in nature. Espionage, reconnaissance, infiltration, extraction, assassination, sabotage etc. were the mostmon kinds of missions within this ss of missions.


    Misceneous; These included somewhat niche missions, or missions with such low difficulty that any martial Artist couldplete them. Things like tutge, manualbour, demonstrations etc fell into them.


    Generally, licensed Martial Artists stuck to usually one, maybe two, sses of missions. Martial Artists who mainly engaged in offense-ss missions were called Assaulters, Martial Artists who mainly engaged in defense-ss missions were called Defenders, Martial Artists who mainlypleted Hunting missions were called Hunters and those whopleted covert missions were called Shadows.<sub> </sub>


    (''Interesting...'') Rui pondered about all this information.


    <o>,m This ssification of missions was quite practical, it allowed for a smoother process of mission assignment/choosing for the Martial Union and Martial Artists.</o>


    Being made aware of all of this before discovering his Martial Path made a lot of sense in hindsight. He could train knowing what he was getting into. For one, the textbook mentioned the system of parties, which altered his image of how missions werepleted.


    The Martial Union graded difficulty of a mission even with the established ranks between low-grade, mid-grade and high-grade difficulty. Many missions had a high difficulty even within the realm they were assigned to, meaning it would be extremely difficult and risk for a single Martial Artist toplete them. Thus, licensed and registered Martial Artists could form officially form groups of usually three to five Martial Artists. All one had to is gather the numbers and sign some paperwork before being officially recognized as a Martial Party. This was quite a popr tendency among Martial Artists, as the burden and risk on individual was greatly minimized and divided between five people, allowing them toplete high-grade missions with safety, as much safety as the Martial World would normally have, that is.


    This meant that hyper-specializing in a certain field of Martial Art didn''t necessarily mean he couldn''t apply for different kinds of missions.


    This was also another piece of information that was useful to Explorers like himself. There was room for all kinds of Martial Art, the Martial Union wanted Explorers to explore Martial Art knowing the kind of role that Martial Art yed in the kinds of missions they would choose.This belongs to N?velDrama.Org - ?.


    Rui suspected that he might be an all-rounder, in fact, he suspected he had already discovered a hint of his Martial Path during all the sparring sessions of the Martial Foundation Stage. Though he needed more time to discover and understand more.


    Rui closed the textbook. A few hours had passed since he had absorbed himself into all the information he had learnt. His worldview had altered considerably. The new information at hand raised all kinds of new questions.


    If Apprentice-level missions existed, and almost all Martial Apprentices were within the Academy, then how did these missions getpleted? Were these missionspleted by students? This was something that the textbook did not go into. He intended to ask Kane about it when he saw him the next day.


    Martial Art could be applied to covert operations in this world? In his previous life, covert operations were performed by state and federal agents trained by the intelligence,w-enforcement and security agencies and bureas of nations. Hand-to-handbat was a must, but there were many, many other skillsets that these agents were required to master before they could be dispatched on these missions.


    Yet it seemed in this world, there existed Martial Art that were singlehandedly suited and capable of performing covert operations.


    Rui scratch his head in confusion, was it really possible for a Martial Artist to be a full-fledged Intelligence agent or a covert operative?


    This was just one of the many things in this world that defied his expectations and sense of normalcy.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 59 New Techniques

    "Yeah, we''re scheduled to begin some Academy supervised Apprentice level missions in a few months." Kane confirmed the next day.


    "What kind of missions?" Rui asked out curiosity.This belongs to N?velDrama.Org - ?.


    Kane shrugged. "Dunno."


    "So they haven''t told you..." Rui muttered. "Though since it is the kind of missions that an Apprentice couldplete, the scale of the missions will be low, I doubt you''d be forced to fight against other Martial Artists."


    Kane nodded. "That stage of our Apprentice curriculum won''t begin any time soon though. Maybe you can join me if you discover your Martial Path and be an apprentice before that."


    Rui nodded in return,pleting mission with Kane and the others sounded extremely fun.


    They bantered a bit before heading down different paths. Rui soon entered the Explorer library. The Explorer library contained techniques in all fields and forms ofbat that were far more advanced than the Foundation techniques.


    The Foundation techniques were all techniques that Rui was familiar with, these were no different from the martial arts on Earth for the most part; things like kickboxing, wrestling, brazillian jiu-jitsu etc.


    The Explorer Stage contained techniques that were more effective; things like special breathing techniques to increase the energy generated by your cells, special offensive, defensive and maneuvering techniques that generated far more force and speed than ordinary techniques.


    The techniques and their details were recorded on scrolls. Each technique was described in a brief manner initially with more detailed exnations following, there were detailed depictions with various measurements and indications in these diagrams, as well as detailed exnations and diagrams on the training method for these techniques.


    However, this alone was rather insufficient for mastering these techniques. Thus, Explorers like Rui could consult the many Apprentice instructors and guiders that existed in the Explorer training facilities for demonstrations and basic instructions as well as guidance upon mastering these techniques.


    These Apprentice instructors would not enforce or mandate any training, of course. The Exploration Stage gave a lot of freedom to students.


    The techniques in the library were broadly divided into five categories; offense, defense, supplementary, maneuvering and misceneous.


    Rui had pick one technique from each section. The offensive technique he had decided to choose after careful consideration was called Collision Optmization-I


    "Sounds like a course in an engineering degree, rather than the name of a Martial Art technique." Rui murmured.


    In the movies, anime, novels he''d read. Martial Art techniques usually had shy names. When he first initially visited the Explorer library, he''d expected shy metaphorical flowery names like ''DiVinE gOdkiLler fiSt'' or ''DeViL DeStrUctiOn AtTacK'', but instead he was greeted with very technical names that perfectly encapsted exactly what the technique wasprised of.


    On one hand, this was very down-to-earth and logical. This was a library meant to organize techniques in a convenient manner, thus such names helped Explorer students like himself sift through techniques with great ease.


    On the other hand, the Martial fanboy in him felt a bit unsatisfied that the techniques did not have such shy names.


    As much as he would deny it to his colleagues back on Earth, these shy names were the best part of Martial Art! He would love tounch a sh attack while shouting its shy name!<sub> </sub>


    Rui shook his head, putting aside such silly thoughts.


    Collision-Optimization was a broad formless technique that taught him how to inflict greater damage with each strike by adjusting the precise location hends his strikes on.


    The human body was neither monolithic nor uniform. Some parts of the body were extremely durable and hard, while others were extremely vulnerable and weak.


    It wasn''t as simple as targeting the throat or the testicles, this technique illustrated which precisely portions of the body were most susceptible to pain and damage.


    This was outside the standard MMA training that prevailed Earth. Mostly because fighters were too uneducated and incapable of learning the information needed to use this technique, they were alsorgely unwilling to engage in such training. It was impractical in many ways.


    But not in this world!


    But this world had potions, allowing students to learn what MMA fighters couldn''t.


    This applied even more so to Rui, because of his great tolerance of mental rejuvenation potions.


    Furthermore, Rui had an extremely high affinity with this technique, which was one of the reasons he picked it. His scientific and academic background was extremely synergetic with this technique, in fact, with his knowledge, he suspected he might even able to improve and optimize the technique to some degree!


    Another reason he picked this technique was that it was very broad and diverse and could universally improve his striking, but the degree of improvement wasn''t high.


    He nced at the remaining three techniques he''d picked.


    The defensive technique was Damage Mitigation-I, it was basically an extremely sophisticated system of rolling and moving with strikes to reduce their impact. It was like baseballers catching baseballs, no sportsman caught a ball in one position, they always moved their hand along with the trajectory of the ball to reduce the impact.


    This technique relied on the same principle.


    The maneuvering technique he picked was called Bnce Direction, it was a technique that allowed him to move faster by almost falling in the direction he wanted to move in, the unbnced weight directed in the direction of motion rather than towards the ground allowed for greater speed.


    The supplementary technique was called Harmonic Respiration, a form of breathing technique that strengthened metabolism in the middle of the fight to increase his output.


    These were the four initial techniques he picked from the Explorer library after browsing through the avable techniques with careful consideration.


    These techniques matched his existing style and also had lower difficultypared to the other techniques. He picked only four, one from each field so that he wouldn''t overburden himself. There was no point biting off more than he could chew, he''d only end up choking. He intended to get a good measure of how many techniques he could simultaneously study so that he could pace himself appropriately, to maximize his productivity.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 60 Bottleneck

    Rui immersed himself into mastering these four techniques. He dedicated his time equally to all four techniques. Thanks to his tolerance of rejuvenation potions, he was able to dedicate a massive amount of time to mastering them.


    Harmonic Respiration was a truly invigorating breathing technique. It flooded Rui''s body with energy and eased his fatigue and stress to some degree.


    Rui had already observed the technique while he performed it. Keenly observing it''s form, mechanics and its effect on him physiologically.


    (''It increases the amount of oxygen being diffused into my blood by timing the respiration intervals with the heart rate at that moment.'')


    This allowed for arger amount of blood toe into contact with the maximum amount of oxygen. Amidstbat, this was quite useful. This was the principle by which supplementary breathing techniques functioned. They aimed to augment metabolism by increasing the amount of oxygen supplied to all the cells in the body through various means and phenomena. Harmonic Breathing was merely one of the foundational techniques.


    It was also the easiest technique out of the four he had picked; he had already mastered it after two weeks of practice. Yet it was the weakest in terms of its impact inbat.


    He hadn''t yet mastered the remaining three techniques, yet even his partial mastery over them resulted in amazing boosts to hisbat prowess.


    Collision Optimization improved the impact of his strikes remarkable, allowing him to inflict much more pain and damage with each attack than he could without applying this technique.


    This technique had a lot of synergy with his superhuman mind and scientific background, so his rate of mastery over it was the highest among the remaining three techniques he had chosen to master.


    He had even begun experimenting with it and had managed to improve certain aspects of theprehensive technique. Optimizing the angling of the strikes within the technique in certain parts of the body to inflict even more damage and pain.


    He frequently tested his capabilities in sparring sessions with other explorers, or instructors, or Kane. Leaving each of them bewildered at his rate of growth.


    "I recall telling you that you''d grow faster with potions, but I never expected it to be this quick!" Kane eximed with a hint of envy. "I can''t believe you''re learning Bnce Direction this quickly!"


    Rui shrugged,ughing.


    He had consulted Kane a lot when it came to learning the maneuvering technique he had picked; Bnce Direction, Kane was the best maneuvering expert who was willing to spend a lot of time with Rui. His rate of mastery had left Kane with mixed feelings. They would regrly spar using primarily Bnce Direction with no other technique, this had allowed to Rui grow faster than he had expected. It was his next best technique after Collision Optimization.


    The hardest technique to learn was Damage Mitigation. He found it really hard to move with the impacts, it required precise timing that he simply was unable to aplish on a regr basis when he initially started out.


    However, as his proficiency with the three techniques improved, so did hisbat prowess. The Explorer techniques weren''t as potent as the Apprentice level techniques that Kane had mastered, but they were still much better than barest of basics he had learnt during the Martial Foundation Stage.


    What astonished him was the sheer variety of techniques. It was far more diverse than what he had known back on Earth.


    Just the breathing techniques alone were vast, their purposes were varied too, not all of them were as straightforward as Harmonic Breathing was. Their purposes were also varied. He did not know breathing could actually be used as part of offense or defense!


    There were several systems and principles that extended beyond just the MMA fighting style back on Earth. Centered around skin, flesh, joints, nails and even hair! Furthermore, they epassed a variety of sub-categories within the four aspects ofbat. Within offenseid different types offense such as incapacitation, killing, paralysis, destruction etc. These sub-categories were quite different from each other in so far as the goal that the techniques tried to achieve. Rui had to spend time understanding the general skeletal structure of the organization of techniques.<sub> </sub>


    Of course, Rui did not have the time to look into each one of them in-depth. Each technique was extremely info dense and heavy. If he let himself get absorbed into reading all of them, he would have no time to train.


    Dedicating an average of twenty-one hours a day to training, Rui made visible progress every day. With his work ethic and dedication, it took a little less than two months for him to have mastered the techniques. Hisbat prowess had fundamentally grown enormously. Having picked a technique in each field had made his fighting style quite bnced.


    Collision Optimization, Damage Mitigation, Bnce Direction and Harmonic Respiration each amplified the four fundamental aspects of a Martial Art andbat.


    However even after he mastered them, he was still growing stronger. This was because his application of the four techniques was still suboptimal.


    It couldn''t be helped, Rui had very little experience in applying these techniques inbat. It helped that these were broad techniques meant to be continuously used, but he still needed a lot of raw experience before his application reached a satisfactory stage.


    He had already begun picking a new set of techniques that he would dive right into soon.Published by N?v''elD/rama.Org.


    Rui sighed. "Shame today''s my rest day."


    Even Rui had to sleep at least once in a while. His tolerance of the potions was not limitless.


    (''The techniques made me much stronger... But I don''t feel any closer to discovering my Martial Path.'') Rui anxiously thought to himself.


    He knew he was being a bit impatient, but his instincts told him just inly learning more techniques would not be conducive to his progress towards his Martial Path.


    Something about them felt mundane. He was certain he was going to be an all-rounder at this stage. But that wasn''t the same as discovering his Martial Path.


    The instructors described it as a soul-shaking epiphany, that once you had it, you know for a fact that you had discovered your Martial Path.


    They were also concerned that Rui did not feel anything special while exploring. Usually, Explorer students were guided by emotions when they chose the techniques they wanted to learn.


    However, Rui didn''t feel stirred at all. He had approached the process in a very rational and logical manner, trying to choose the optimalbination of techniques that would improve hisbat prowess the most.


    He instinctively felt repeating this would not yield him the desired oue.


    Just as he wanted to think more, he felt his eyelids growing heavy and his head strained. His body demanded sleep.


    (''Fuck it... let''s think about this tomorrow.'')


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 61 Epiphany

    "It is unhealthy to spend this much time working, sir." A nurse chided the patientying on the bed, only to receive a careless nod. She sighed at the sickly man with exasperation. His condition was poor, one need only nce at the various monitoring devices, tubes and needles attached to his body. Yet, despite his dismal condition, he was relentless with his work.


    He stared at theptop before him with great intensity, scrolling and typing asionally. His expression grew more and more macabre and anxious every passing second.


    Suddenly, his phone beeped with a message, drawing his attention.


    [John, it''s not working.] It read.


    John scowled at that message, closing his phone and ignoring it, before receiving another message.


    [I''m sorry but we''ve tried everything dude.]


    John snorted at his colleague''s pessimism.


    [You do realize I can see that you''ve read my texts right? Stop ignoring me.]This belongs to N?velDrama.Org - ?.


    ¡­


    [There''s only little under the month before the deadline, our results aren''t good enough and inevitably those funds won''t being through without results.]


    ¡­


    [Listen man, I''m sure Combat Sports Research will cancel the contract entirely.]


    John''s scowled intensified, but he had to admit there was truth to those words. He closed his phone and ignored the beeps, sighing mncholically.


    "Is there nothing that can be done?"


    He nced at the data that his colleague had sent him that morning, the results were indeed despairing.


    It wasn''t pleasant to see a research project he''d been working on for nearly ten years to meet its demise.


    He scrolled down to the report and summary that his colleagues had written almost fearfully, before braving himself to read it.


    [The goal of this study was to verify the viability of the Project Water and the Variable Objective Inverse Deduction algorithm, VOID algorithm, as an applicablebat system. The prevailing hypothesis was that the VOID algorithm was too data intensive for a human to be able to learn and apply to achieve higher rates of sess within a UFC setting. We set out to confirm or deny this hypothesis by gathering empirical data on the rate of growth ofbat prowess as measured by the rate of growth of the mean number of victories(X) of a given normal distribution of 100 matches under UFC rules. We controlled for all metabolic and physical variables and have created a model for the probability of sess of the application of the VOID algorithm in a UFC setting, after a three-year-period of data gathering, we concluded the study,piled and processed the datasets, and have arrived at a conclusion.


    The data is clear. The VOID algorithm is not a viablebat fighting style. We observed that the rate of growth inbat prowess in training with the VOID algorithm is inferior to the rate of growth in the average registered MMA gym, the existing data in the databank of the Combat Sports Research co. Further verifies our results for all parameters under all settings.


    We can safely conclude that Project Water and the VOID algorithm are failures.]


    He already knew what it would say before he even read it, but reading was excruciatingly painful. He felt his heart rip to shreds as his colleagues brutally described why his dreams had failed.


    He shut theptop down, unable to bear it any further. The stress and the despair he felt was triggering his asthma. He gasped for air as he looked at the picture of his idol; Bruce Lee that he had on the cupboard beside his table.


    "I''m sorry... I guess... I couldn''t Be Water after all." He murmured softly.


    Project Water was his dream project of creating a systemized fighting style that embodied Bruce Lee''s martial philosophy. He''d wanted to create a systematic and generalized fighting style that could adapt to any other fighting style. This was Project Water. This was his dream.


    A few years ago, he had even made huge progress and significant breakthroughs. One of them was the VOID algorithm.


    Variable Objective Inverse Deduction algorithm, or VOID algorithm for short. The VOID algorithm was a systemized approach through which a fighter couldpletely adapt to any fighting style and defeat it every time, in theory.


    The algorithm had gone through various iterations and stages. The earliest application was simply having fighters learn to analyze bnce and range to partially predict his opponent''s intentions and moves ahead of time, and then choose a course of action that was best suited to countering said moves.


    This was VOID mark I. A prototype intended to be proof of the concept. The initial algorithm was a sess and was integrated into the UFC and MMA rather quickly. John Falken had gained a vast amount of prestige thanks to this groundbreaking breakthrough.


    Still, it was not perfect, there were many, many holes andpetitors eventually came up with tactics that could exploit its shorings to counter it.


    Yet, the sheer sess of the initial iteration and its high viability that allowed top MMA and UFC fighters to apply it was what gave John the courage and confidence to dedicate the rest of his life to creating aplete VOID algorithm that could viably be used by fighters.


    The following iterations of the VOID algorithm became more and more sophisticated, ounting for more and more variables and parameters each time.


    Mark II ounted for breathing.<sub> </sub>


    Mark III ounted for line of sight


    Mark IV ounted for and muscle twitches.


    By Mark V the algorithm had be extremelyplicated and sophisticated. It even ounted for physiological and movement patterns. It employed heavy pattern recognitions that allowed the VOID algorithm to recognize deep and multiyered patterns to be able to predict the sessive course of actions of the opponent.


    The research was funding-intensive, but thankfully his initial sess allowed him to sign a funding contract with the Combat Sports Research co. A world-renowned UFC and research and data analytics firm.


    Thanks to this rich supply of funds, the research team of Project Water managed to sessfully create a finalized version of the VOID algorithm that truly embodied Bruce Lee''s martial philosophy.


    There was only one final stage left; viability. The end goal was to allow humans to fight and win with this style.


    Meaning humans would need to learn the VOID algorithm and apply it in a UFC setting.


    This was what killed the project in the end.


    The report he''d just read before basically confirmed that his project was doomed. It was not powerful for ordinary humans with their ordinary cognitive capacity to be able to master and apply this algorithm. The human mind was not powerful enough.


    John never gave up on the Project, using every ounce his own personal wealth to sustain the Project until he died two yearster due to his health condition.


    Rui woke up with a jerk, gasping for air wildly.


    He looked around confused, before remembering where he was.


    (''Sigh... To think I''d dream that memory.'')


    It was his second least favourite dream, after the dream of the day he was diagnosed with asthma.


    Thinking back to the ambitions of his previous life made his heart ache. He also feltplicated, he was reborn in a world without the powerful information processing technology that existed back on Earth, furthermore he didn''t have ess to the sea of data his team had collected.


    This meant researching the VOID algorithm the scientific way he did was impossible. Furthermore, he had already developed a new ambition.


    The sight of the Martial Squire destroying a tree trunk with a single strike had etched itself deep in his heart. He was willing to sacrifice almost anything to bing a Martial Artists and walkind down his Martial Path and forging his Martial Art.


    But it didn''t feel good living with the memories of the failure of his past life.


    "What can I do though?" he pessimistically muttered. "it''s not like I can be both a scientist and a Martial Artist in this world. It''s not like I can somehow focus my life on developing the VOID algorithm and developing my own Martial Ar-!!!"


    His eyes flew wide open in shock as a thundering epiphany struck him. In his mind he had always separated research and Martial Art in two far away separate categories. This was themon sense on Earth, after all, it was impossible for a human on Earth to dedicate his life tobat sports and research at the same time.


    "I cannot do both of those separately... But what if they were one and the same?" He murmured with wide-eyed shocked expression.


    What if his research and Martial Art were the same?


    What if the dream of his past life and the dream of his current life were the same?


    What if... his Martial Path was Project Water?


    Rui''s heart shook as he began breathing heavy. The answer was so simple, but the strong divide between research andbat sports that his previous life had created, prevented him from realizing that they could be one and the same.


    What was impossible on Earth may not be so on Gaea!


    Rui nced at his palms, before closing his eyes.


    "It fits." He realized.


    The sensations of certainty matched those that his instructors had told him about!


    "This... is my Martial Path."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 62 Congratulations

    Over the next few days. An unheard-of phenomenon urred. The familiar sight of Rui Quarrier spending almost every ounce of his time training was nowhere to be seen.


    The instructors and the other Explorer students had all grown used to seeing Rui training somewhere or the other. Thus, when he didn''t show up for almost forty-eight hours, they grew curious. What could possibly cause this training junkie of an Explorer to ditch training? It''s not that he had never taken breaks, but never two days straight.


    "He''s just been sitting around with an intense expression, super absorbed into his thoughts, but he seems fine." Cara, his roommate, told them.


    The instructors sighed in relief; they had grown worried that his insane training schedule in the past five months since he joined the Academy had finally taken its toll. Of course, this possibility still existed, but at the very least there was no serious affliction.


    Explorers possessed widetitude in their schedule, so he could not be officially mandated or reprimanded, but two-day breaks were not good signs. Usually, this was a ssic tell-tale sign that students were losing motivation.


    Just as the Academy instructors were wondering how to intervene, the problem solved itself. Rui walked out one day.


    He walked straight to the Explorer sparring arena with his sparring attire on. The Academy didn''t mandate training for Explorers, but it did mandate certainly sparring session against fellow Explorers. Today was one of those days.


    The sparring supervisor immediately noticed something off about him when Rui arrived.


    Previously, Rui was extremely curious by nature. Part of it came from the explorative mindset and the uncertainty about his Martial Path.


    Suddenly, almost all of that was gone.


    The head supervisor sharpened his gaze at the sight. As a Martial Apprentice himself, he knew a phenomenon that could exin the change in Rui''s aura.


    (''Is he...?'') He wasn''t sure, but he suspected Rui had crossed the barrier. Still, the fact that Rui hadn''t said anything meant he was either wrong or...


    (''Or he wants understand how much he''s grown by sparring against the people he''s sparred against for months.'')


    Either way, the head supervisor was content not calling Rui out.


    "Alright, divide yourselves equally into two lines. We''ll begin now." He instructed. The sparring sessions had one half of students serve as defenders and the other half as challengers. The challengers would continuously the defenders until they won and reced them.


    The head supervisor purposely assigned the group that Rui was part of as defenders so that Rui would get to fight continuously.


    He watched Rui taking the ring before facing his first challenger.


    "Begin!" The referee announced.


    the two of them shuffled around a bit, feeling each other out, before his opponent aggressively dashed at Rui.


    Rui waited for him stoically.


    Bam


    Bam


    Bam


    His opponent threw short jabs that Rui casually blocked. The boy threw a powerful roundhouse kick which Rui avoided by stepping out of range.


    FOOM


    The boy quickly dashed towards Rui with the Bnce Direction. The rush of speed allowed him tond a straight punch with his full weight and momentum behind it.


    BAM.


    Rui flew back exaggeratedly. Yet hended on his feet, looking rtively unfazed.


    (''Damage Mitigation.'') The head supervisor noted.


    "What''s up? You''re passive as fuck today." His opponent poked.


    Rui smiled wryly. "Just getting used to this."


    The boy tilted his head in confusion.<sub> </sub>


    "But you''re right, I should stop ying around."


    Those words exerted a faint threat on the boy. It almost reminded him of the Apprentice instructors when they got mad.


    DASH


    Rui leapt at him with great speed using Bnce Direction.


    The boy hurriedly tried to intercept Rui with a punch, only to cleanly miss as Rui shifted out of the way.


    The boy stepped back, wanting to open up the distance when suddenly, the world turned upside-down.


    BAM


    Rui had cleanly caught his wrist and converted his momentum into torque to smoothly execute a hip toss, before throwing a punch just one inch away from the boy''s face.


    "You''re too careless when ites to counterattacks, you should focus on that." Rui calmly advised.


    The boy nodded, shocked. He''d fought Rui before, never had he been overwhelmed so easily.


    The head supervisor was now certain of his suspicion. No one ever became strong enough to casually bully their peers and equals, merely due to a two-day break. If anything, at their level, such a break would make you a bit rusty and thus weaker.


    But Rui had grown far superior to his peers, such that even little effort was enough to dominate the other students. This could only be caused by breakthrough to the Realm of Martial Apprentice. Discovering your Martial Path allowed you to use techniqies in a manner that are part of your Martial Art, these are suited to you and thus you apply these techniques better than you would have without a Path. Your efficiency spiked thanks to the Discovery of your Martial Path.


    One after another, students challenged him.


    And one after another Rui casually defeated them.


    What surprised the head supervisor was that Rui didn''t seem to have a set style. His style ofbat was fluid, he changed it smoothly. It flowed from form to form taking on the shape that was better suited to handling particr opponents.


    "This doesn''t make sense." The head supervisor murmured. This was usually the opposite of what happened when one discovered their Martial Path. Usually, students who discovered their Martial Paths stuck rigidly to a style of fighting. Whether this style of fighting was centered around a particr field or a set of techniques or both, this was always happened. Martial Apprentices were those who discovered their Martial Path, and they stuck to it.


    Yet Rui here defied that pattern.


    Another thing that surprised him was how quickly Rui discovered his Martial Path. It wasn''t about his age, in particr. Although fourteen was undoubtedly impressively young, it was not unheard of. Geniuses like Kane had discovered their Martial Path at the age of eleven!


    What was rather shocking was that he discovered his Martial Path in two months after beginning the Exploration Stage.


    Discovering your Martial path was an borate, time-consuming journey in and of itself. It usually took students at least a year of exploration and introspection for them to understand their heart''s desire. Yet somehow Rui managed to finish it one-sixth the time.


    "How long has this boy been chasing after his Martial Path?" He wondered.


    This was the product of two lifetimes of dedicating his life to martial arts and Martial Art, unbeknownst to him.Published by N?v''elD/rama.Org.


    When the sparring session a few hourster, Rui went straight to the head supervisor to inform him of his breakthrough only to realize that the supervisor was already aware of it.


    "How long do you think I''ve been doing this job, kid?" He chuckled. "I''ve seen countless kids discovering their Martial Path in my career as a sparring supervisor for the Explorer students. Although your case is quite peculiar in many ways, admittedly."


    "So, what now?" Rui asked curiously.


    "The breakthrough to Martial Apprentice is verified by head instructors and supervisors, and we fill in the paperwork with some signatures from your end. Once the due process is over, you''ll receive instructions and a new guidebook, the same ones that the Apprentices got during the Investiture Ceremony, and you''ll be moved to the Apprentice dormitory." He exined. "After that the Martial Squire instructors and supervisors of the Apprentice students will take over."


    "I see..." Rui grew absorbed in his thoughts.


    "Ah, onest thing."


    "Hm?" Rui perked up.


    "Congrattions on bing a Martial Artist. If there''s anyone who deserves it, it''s you." He smiled.


    "Thank you!" Rui smiled back.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 63 Rematch

    "You''re a Martial Apprentice already??" Kane gaped in shock.


    Ruiughed at his reaction. "That''s an exaggerated reaction."


    "No way, you just reached the Exploration Stage in two months! Finding your Martial Path is tough and tiring. You need to dedicate your everything to Martial Art for you to have a chance of discovering it. How did you skip all that?"


    (''Skip?'') Rui mused inwardly. (''I did nothing but that for forty years.'')


    "Maybe I got lucky." Is what Rui actually replied.


    Kane scoffed. "There is no such thing as luck when ites to discovering your Martial Path. You either achieve it or you don''t."


    Rui shrugged. He had no intention of revealing the truth, Kane would have to settle with having unanswered questions.


    "Anyways, I''m happy for you man. I know how much effort and energy you''ve dedicated and invested in Martial Art." Kane smiled. "Congrattions. You''ve begun your journey down your Martial Path."


    "Thanks for that, and also for the help you''ve given me." Rui replied.


    "Don''t worry about it." Kane waved. "Ah, do you wanna spar?"


    "Actually, I was about to ask you just that." Rui informed. "I''m curious about how well I stack up against you."


    Kane nodded. "You free now?"


    "Sure."


    Rui hadn''t yet transferred to the Apprentice dormitory. He had just finished the paperwork and had proceeded to head to straight to Kane.


    "My paperwork is not yet submitted." Rui noted. "I wonder if we can still spar in the Apprentice sparring centre."


    "It shouldn''t be too much of an issue."


    When they inquired the Martial Squire instructor in the facility, she acquiesced.


    "I''ve been notified of your breakthrough, Rui Quarrier." She spoke. "Although it isn''t official, it''s not an issue. You can begin using the Apprentice facilities and resources right away."


    "Thank you instructor Kyrie!" Kane eximed.


    "Thank you, instructor." Rui followed. He recognized her, she was the same instructor the Apprentices fought against the other day.


    She nodded, before walking away.


    Rui and Kane warmed up a bit before entering the ring.


    "Alright, you ready?" Kane asked with a smirk. "I won''t use Apprentice level techniques unless I''m forced to, to be fair."


    Rui nodded, taking his stance. "Let''s begin."


    As soon as the supervisors began the spar, Rui dashed against Kane with Bnce Direction, hoping to close the distance as much as possible. He knew exactly how slippery Kane was. He threw several jabs once he reached striking distance of Kane. Who cleanly avoided them, before throwing a kick of his own.


    To his greatest surprise, Rui cleanly and confidently avoided the kick almost as Kane had evenunched it closing the distance. He was caught off-guard.


    FOOM


    Kane just barely managed to dodge a powerful straight punch from Rui, leaping back a few steps.


    He nced at Rui in surprise.


    "How did you do that?" Kane asked, surprised. "Is this your Martial Path?"


    Rui smirked. He was merely partially applying the range/bnce system of prediction and countering moves. This was the Mark I VOID algorithm.


    "Yeah, this is my Martial Path."


    Rui dashed at Kane again, determined in getting a clean hit. He used both Bnce Direction and Harmonic Breathing to maximize his speed.


    Once he reached striking range, he threw a flurry of jabs with Collision Optimization. Kane dodged all of those with remarkable agility. He had grown wary of how Rui casually avoided his strike and almost managed tond a strike on him. This was a bit of a blow to his pride as an evasive maneuverer. He decided to stop holding back, and used multiple Exploration level maneuvering techniques.


    Each and every single strike Rui threw missed Kane.


    (''He''s going almost all out asides from the Apprentice level techniques'') Rui marveled as he observed Kane. He had even recognized several of those techniques, having run into them as he browsed the Apprentice database.


    In addition to Bnce Direction, Kane was using Feint Shift and Axis Oscition. The former was a maneuvering technique that improved the quality of feints using realistic shifts in center of gravity, while thetter was a technique that allowed the user to avoid strikes without being pushed back by shifting the axis of the center of gravity by as little as could be managed to evade the strike while returning to the original position.<sub> </sub>


    ? These inbination allowed Kane to cleanly avoid every strike while not allowing Rui to push him back and corner him.


    BAM


    Rui grimaced, Kane had managed to exploit an opening in the position andunched a kick to the gut while evading Rui''s strikes


    The limitations of the Mark I VOID algorithm were not small, experienced evaders like Kane could overwhelm his style of fighting by sheer proficiency and utility of even Exploration techniques, let alone Apprentice level techniques. Another important thing was that Rui had only known these techniques for two months, he hadn''t been using the Mark I algorithm for much longer either. He wasn''t used to using either sets of techniques, whereas Kane had been using them for years now. The gap in experience could not be ovee easily. Not even with his potent Martial Path.


    However, the nature of the VOID algorithm was to allow the user adapt and evolve. Although Rui was rough and inexperienced. He was still able to improve his timing as he got more and more used to andfortable against Kane''s fighting style.


    BAM


    FOOM


    THWACK


    WOOSHN?velDrama.Org owns this text.


    A flurry of attacks and maneuvers peppered the ring, many bystanders grew absorbed by the intense eye-drawing battle. The intensity of the fight had escted as an hour passed by. Rui''s timing, coordination and response time was improving, while Kane grew more and more serious, using every ounce of his speed and skill. Neither side was willing to lose.


    Strike


    Dodge


    Kick


    Parry


    Dodge


    For a period of time, it was difficult for onlookers to understand who had the upper hand. Kane''s biggest advantages were his superior speed, agility and maneuvering. Yet, for some strange reason, despite possessing inferior speed and mobility; Rui was somehow vaguely keeping up! The onlookers were unable to put their fingers on it. Even the Martial Squire, Kyrie, frowned at the sight. The cement and timing of Rui''s movements, the uracy of his decision and tactical approach were somehow so well chosen to suit the situation that theyrgely alleviated the advantage Kane inherently possessed.


    (''Kane''s movements are faster... But Rui''s movements are... better ced and better timed.'')


    She focused her eyes on Rui. She could see every time Kane moved, Rui moved almost immediately after Kane moved and moved in manner that correctly dealt with Kane''s movements. If Kane began attack, Rui would begin to dodge almost immediately after Kane began his attack.


    (''He''s not reacting to the attacks as theye... He''s partially predicting them before Kaneunches them, allowing him to react earlier.'') She realized.


    (''But this level of foresight should be impossible in someone who just reached Apprentice level.'') She didn''t understand how Rui was able to execute such high-level decision making.


    Furthermore, she could see that his tactical course of actions was changing, not in sharp intervals, but almost... smoothly. Every minute he would make slight changes to the manner in which he fought; these changes made his course of actions more suited to handling Kane. She could almost see his fighting style smoothly shaping and flowing to a greater and more suited style ofbat to counter Kane.


    (''Almost like... water.'')


    The intensity of the fight had peaked. The tension in the air was so taut, one could almost cut it with a knife. The two boys were intensely focused. Every ounce of their mind was consumed into their fight. Their fight had cast a spell on those who beheld it, enrapturing them, they almost wished it would never end,


    Yet, all good things came to an end in this cosmos.


    BAM


    Kanended a powerful strike against Rui''s diaphragm. He had smoothly ducked right under Rui''s punch andunched his most powerful attack on thetter''s abdomen.


    Rui copsed, gasping for air as his diaphragm froze for a few seconds out of shock, before returning to normal.


    Both of them were sweating and panting. Yet the winner was clear.


    "Let''s...*pant*... call it a day." Rui panted. "As expected, you''re still ridiculously strong even without Apprentice level techniques." Ruiughed shakily, still gathering his breath.


    Kane shook his head. "Your rate of growth is ridiculous, seriously, you''re amazing. I''m gonna be honest with you, I didn''t think you could push me this far man." Kane sincerelyplimented.


    "You didn''t use any Apprentice level techniques though." Rui chuckled.


    "I swear I came damn near close to. I dunno what you did, but you scared the shit out of me at times."


    "Thanks man." Rui valued those words, especially when they came from Kane.


    "Your style of fighting shifted a lot from the start to end... Is this rted to your Martial Path?" Kane asked with great curiosity.


    Rui nodded. "Help me up, I''ll tell you all about it on the way back."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 64 Apprentice Intrigues

    "Adaptive evolution?" Kane tilted his head in confusion.


    "Yeah, my Martial Art adapts and evolves to counter my opponent''s Martial Art." Rui exined.


    "A Martial Art that adapts to all other Martial Art? That sounds difficult as hell, is that even possible?" Kane asked.


    Rui remained silent at that question.


    "Possible or not, it is my path. I will traverse it as far as I can."


    Kane remained silent at those words. He realized how much resolve it must have taken to fully dedicate himself down a path that may end in a dead-end. No wonder Rui took two days to think about his Martial Path and his Martial Art. It was probably the most important decision in his life, and it wasn''t something that could be done lightly.


    "Well, good luck."


    "Hah, thanks."


    They bantered a bit before splitting ways. Rui headed to the administration room to receive a guidebook and his room number and keys.


    "Rui Quarrier? One minute." A staff member reached to grab a box. "Here you go."


    She rattled off some instructions and information before he left. It was only after he reached his room and sat down to go through the guidebook that he realized how different things worked for Apprentices.


    "Damn, we get our own rooms? That''s lit." He''d remarked prior as he looked around. It was definitely morefortable than his previous dormitory room. It wasn''t just the lodgings that worked differently. Apprentices trained differently. For starters, the biggest surprise he received as he went through the Apprentice guidebook, was that Apprentice level techniques weren''t free!


    The foundational techniques of the Foundation stage where the absolute bare basics of basics. To call them techniques was almost an insult. The Exploration Stage had more valuable techniques, but they were still not too significant to the Academy or the Martial Union, apparently.


    However, the Apprentice level techniques were different. They actually held value and utility such that a majority required one to amass merits! These techniques were true Martial Art techniques even if they were of the lowest Martial Realm. The Martial Academy, and the Martial Union by extension, was not willing to give them away for free.


    The only way an Apprentice could earn merits was make contributions orplete Apprentice level missions. There were mandatory missions to give Apprentices experience anyway. However, the mandatory missions did not yield merits, only by voluntary undertaking andpleting missions outside of curricr activity would yield merits that could then be exchanged for techniques. Meaning students had to go out of theirfort zone if they wanted more techniques.


    Of course, the Martial Academy wasn''t stupid. It realized that brand new Apprentices would not be able toplete Apprentice level missions without Apprentice level techniques. Thus, a set of foundational Apprentice level techniques in all fields were given to Apprentices free of cost.


    "These must be the same foundational Apprentice level techniques Kane told me about when we first sparred." Rui recalled.


    ording to the guidebook, higher-ranked techniques above the foundations would require students toplete missions.


    Rui could immediately see the multiple reasons for this system. Asides from Apprentice level techniques being too valuable to give away for free, the Martial Academy could alsoplete the many Apprentice-level missions that it received on a daily basis.


    Furthermore, the end goal of the Martial Academy was to produce Martial Artists that were able topetentlyplete missions.


    Giving the Martial Apprentices of the Academy some real experience and a glimpse of what the career of a Martial Artist was like would ultimately greatly aid in this end goal.


    It was a policy that killed multiple birds with a single stone.


    "Most of these missions are probably going to be really small-scale matters with low risk." Rui inferred.<sub> </sub>


    Published by N?v''elD/rama.Org.


    The Martial Academy would probably not ce students in extremely important or risky missions. This would be counter-productive in the long run. He suspected that the missions would likely be insignificant grunt work type missions.


    Furthermore, these missions would probably be the domestic type, as well. They would likely be missions in the Mantian region.


    There were several other interesting things that the guidebook went in-depth into, as well.


    The Martial Union had developed a system of categorizing Martial Art. There many, many kinds of Martial Art. It was easier to divide Martial Art into categories, this helped in mission assignment. Ensuring missions werepleted by Martial Artists who actually possessed the relevant and necessary tools toplete them. A hunting mission would be better suited to bepleted by a Martial Artist with a lot of stealth and sensory techniques. An offense mission would be better suited to bepleted by Assaulters with an offensive Martial Art. Although it wasn''t impossible for Martial Artists of other types of Martial Art to alsoplete such missions, it wasn''t optimal, and ultimately reduced the probability of sess.


    Thus, the Martial Union had developed a system of categorization for Martial Art;


    Type I Martial Art: All-rounder Martial Art fell into this category.


    Type II Martial Art: Offense-oriented Martial Art fell into this category.


    Type III Martial Art: Defense-oriented Martial Art fell into this category.


    Type IV Martial Art: Maneuvering-oriented Martial Art fell into this category.


    Type V Martial Art: Supplementary techniques-oriented Martial Art fell into this category.


    Type VI Martial Art: Martial Art that werergely centered around a particr physical attribute or parameter like strength, speed, durability, endurance, stamina etc, fell into this category.


    Type VII Martial Art: Martial Art that were centered around one or very few particr techniques or sets of techniques or principles or systems fell into this category.


    Type VIII Martial Art: Martial Art structured and built for covert operations and missions.


    Type IX Martial Art: Martial Art specifically designed for specific environments.


    Type X Martial Art: Irregr Martial Art that cannot be grouped into any of the prior groups due to failing to satisfy the conditions to be grouped into them.


    (''Interesting...'') Rui pondered. (''So my Martial Art would probably be categorized as Type I?'')


    These ssifications were decided by the Academy, andter the Martial Union. Which made sense to Rui, after all, it was only useful as long as the system was used urately by set standards.


    He skimmed a few pages ahead, until he reached something unexpected.


    "An inter-academy Martial Games?" Rui read with curiosity.


    Apparently, the Martial Academy held an annual Martial Art contest at the Apprentice level between all sixteen Academies in the entire Empire. The event held multiple contests for different fields with different structures and systems.


    (''What an exciting event!'')


    Rui grew more and more absorbed into the guidebook and the many intrigues that it offered.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 65 Library

    A day had passed since Rui had moved to a different dormitory; the process was smooth since he had very few belongings in the first ce. He had quickly tried to familiarize himself with his environment and some of his peers to some degree, it didn''t hurt to make some friends who could help him out, like Kane did.


    He tightened his sparring attire. It was a two-piece attire, consisting of a light jacket-like top and a pant that were bound together by a belt.


    The attire was knitted out of a very light, yet durable and flexible fabric, allowing Martial Apprentices to go all-out and fully exert themselves without having to worry about tearing apart their sparring attire to shreds.


    Today would be Rui''s first time entering the Apprentice library, he intended to get his hands on foundational Apprentice level techniques.This belongs to N?velDrama.Org - ?.


    One of the things the guidebook exined to him was how techniques were ssified and categorized. Techniques were categorized in three different ways:


    The first system of categorization was by field. Whether a technique is offensive or defensive, or maneuvering oriented or supplementary. This system of categorization was for the sake of convenience and rity. This was categorization by their function.


    The second system of categorization was by Realm pre-requisite. A technique of a certain Realm meant that it could not be learnt by Martial Artists below that Realm. Apprentice level techniques were techniques that only Martial Apprentices and above could use, they could not be mastered by novices. This was because normal human beings did not possess the focused psyche needed to learn Apprentice level techniques, which required a superhuman level of focus and fortitude to learn. Those who had discovered their Martial Path underwent a subconscious psychological shift, their minds were hyper-focused on their Martial Path, allowing them to learn power and difficult Apprentice level techniques. This was categorization by the necessary pre-requisite condition to even begin to learn these techniques.


    The third system of categorization was efficiency. This was rted to the actual quality of a technique. Techniques were a set of actions that produced a desired physical result. Generally, each technique required physical energy, for the physical movements, and mental energy for executing them urately and precisely. Techniques with greater efficiency produced greater results for the same amount of effort. The efficiency of techniques were indicated by grades. Low-grade techniques had low efficiency, mid-grade techniques had medium efficiency, and high-grade techniques had high efficiency.


    An Apprentice-level offensive high-grade technique was a technique whose utility was offensive in nature, could only be used by Martial Artists of Apprentice Realm or higher, and whose efficiency was high.


    Rui found the categorization to be aptly sophisticated. Back on Earth in his previous life, martial arts techniques did not have such sophistication in their categorization. There many reasons for this, for starters, Martial Artists Realms did not exist. This bluntly cut away the second system of categorization. Another reason was that techniques did not have vastly differing levels of efficiency inherently, their effectivity depended on how they were applied only, as well as a lot of luck.


    Although techniques on Earth could be divided by field, there were no meaningful named techniques for defense or maneuvering. Those were simply considered skills that needed practice and experience. The concept of supplementary techniques; techniques that could supplement, aid, or augment a physical attribute or other techniques, did not exist.


    This was why martial arts techniques were uncategorized, there was simply no point in doing so.


    Rui already knew what kind of techniques he was looking for even before he entered the library.


    His first decision was to once again bnce the techniques he chose evenly among all the fields. In order to adapt to his opponents properly, he needed a good grasp over not just all fields but also all ranges. He also needed diversity of techniques within each field.


    This was a tall task and it would take him a long time before he truly achieved this.<sub> </sub>


    Another decision he made due to this was to choose flexible techniques that could be useful in all situations. His Martial Art was adaptation, it was practically a necessity that at the very least his foundation of techniques needed to be flexible. He was willing to sacrifice efficiency for flexibility. He would rather have a foundation of lower efficiency techniques but with great flexibility and versatility than have a higher efficiency technique but with very low flexibility, something that could only be used in a handful of ways and situations.


    (''I guess I have my work cut out for me.'') Rui thought. He intended to work harder than he ever had in order to build a foundation of Apprentice level techniques. Currently, although he was indeed an Apprentice, hisbat prowess had yet to touch that level. Apprentice level techniques were far superior to Exploration level techniques. He remembered the Apprentice level techniques Kane had showed him, they were truly surpassing the bounds of human limits! Kane would have utterly mopped the floor with him had he used Apprentice-level techniques in their spar.


    Until he built a foundation of Apprentice level techniques he would feel ufortable calling himself an Apprentice.


    What kind of an Apprentice couldn''t hold a candle against any other Apprentice?


    He shook his head, putting aside such thoughts having reached the library.


    The moment he walked in; he could already see the Apprentice library was much vaster than the Explorer library. The section dedicated to each field wererger than those of the Explorer library, further each field section had many, many sub-sections.


    (''As expected of the library dedicated to an actual Martial Art Realm, it''sprehensive and vast.'')


    He looked around, taking in the sheer size.


    (''Where do I even begin?'') He sighed.


    There was just so much. He wasn''t sure how to approach all of this in a time-saving manner.


    (''Thankfully, a decent proportion of the techniques are marked with a price of merits.'') Rui sighed.


    He could avoid these techniques and head straight to the free techniques.


    He grasped the first technique he ran into.


    (''Alright, let''s begin.'')


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 66 Apprentice Foundation

    The process took Rui longer than he had expected. For one, he couldn''t help but browse through arge portion of priced techniques. But for another, the simple variety of techniques was far greater than what he had imagined. They were definitely far greater than anything Earth held.


    On Earth offensive techniques were limited to striking and grappling.


    Here there were was a wide repository of techniques that inflicted damage outside of these elementary principles.


    Force Permeation to target internal organs.


    Vitals targeting based techniques.


    Vibration based techniques.


    Temperature based techniques.


    Nerve striking techniques.


    Even techniques as ridiculous as poison techniques!


    Rui gaped at the sight. He almost wanted tough.


    "Poison? You can poison people through Martial Art? Hahaha!" He mirthfully eximed. He found the whole notion to be simultaneously absurd and yet so fascinating.


    Even defensive techniques were far vaster than anything he had conceptualized. Back on Earth, one merely had to practice learning how to guard against strikes and learning how to get hit to minimize the impact.


    Here, there were whole systems of principles and mechanisms by which techniques amplified defense.


    Higher levels of the Damage Mitigation that used even more potent principles such as impact softening, instic recoil and other mechanism beyond just guarding existed. Rui was surprised by how something that used to be rtively straightforward and mundane was immensely various in this world.


    The same was true for maneuvering and supplementary fields of Martial Art.


    After hours of exploring, Rui finally made a decision in regards to all the techniques he would choose to begin mastering.


    He nced down at the scrolls he had picked. He had picked six of them. The reason he had chosen a total of six different techniques was because four of them were Apprentice level versions of the techniques he had already learnt prior. Harmonic Breathing, Damage Mitigation, Collision Optimization and Bnce Direction each had an Apprentice level version to them, however, he expected to master them quickly after going through the techniques and their training sessions. Thus, he had decided to choose an additional four more technique to begin immediately after.


    "The Apprentice level versions of these techniques are quite impressive." Rui muttered as he went through them, some even had different names


    "The Apprentice level versions of Damage Mitigation and Collision Optimization are stic Shift and Vital Pressure. How fitting."


    Damage Mitigation and stic Shift were techniques that aimed to reduce the impact of strikes by moving with the strikes, this caused the collision to be more stic in nature, a collision where the opponent''s attack power was not converted to damage when the attack struck due to the user moving with the strikes rather than stopping them, was an stic collision. It was the same as when baseball yers caught balls by moving their hands with the ball while catching it to reduce the impact.


    stic Shift encapsted the technique''s functioning quite well.<sub> </sub>


    Vital Pressure and Collision Optimization-I were techniques that worked by administering greater damage by striking vitals


    [Parallel Walk]


    This was the technique Kane had showed him when they sparred together the first time Rui had gone to his home.N?velDrama.Org owns this text.


    It was a technique that eliminated the wasteful torque caused by swinging your arms and also rotating your body opposite to the legs, thereby decreasing the energy wasted and increasing maneuvering speed.


    This allowed his travelling speed to increase dramatically.


    [Acute Edge]


    This was a low-grade defensive technique that focused on mitigating damage by making the angle between the surface of the body that contacts the opponent''s strike and the opponent''s strike to below and acute, turning into a nick and a slip, rather than a full-on collision.


    This allowed the user to avoid enduring the brunt of the force by enduring only a portion of the power, by getting hit at an angle.


    Rui nodded, satisfied with these choices. These were reasonable bnced and flexible choices and options, which was conducive to Adaptive Evolution.


    He intended to grind harder than he ever had. Pushing himself to the limits with potions to master these techniques.


    He wanted to join the other Apprentices inpleting missions, he knew Kane, Fae and the others had already begun doing so, and for good reason.


    He looked around him in the library, there were so many techniques that required merits he could hardly believe it.


    (''How many missions will it take for me to purchase these techniques?'') He wondered solemnly.


    The answer couldn''t possibly be a small number.


    On one hand he was a bit unhappy about the time it would take for him to purchase the techniques. The number of techniques he had now were sorely insufficient for proper adaptive evolution. He needed a vast variety of techniques of all kinds, the more he had, the better he would be able to adapt to all kinds of Martial Art.


    On the other hand, he was looking forward topleting missions. This was what it meant to be a Martial Artist! He looked forward to diving into different kinds of missions and understand what it was like to be a Martial Artist, as well as what kind of Martial Artists he wanted to be.


    He also needed time and techniques to modify expand the VOID algorithm to be able to ount for the Martial Art techniques of this world.


    The VOID algorithm was designed to handle the MMA of Earth, it could not be straightforwardly applied to the Martial Art of the Panama continent. The vastness and potency of the techniques were much greater than that of Earth, there were several new parameters and variables that needed to be ounted for by the Algorithm such as the strange principle and mechanisms of these techniques and also the efficiency of techniques. Only after expanding it to include these factors would it perform as well as it did back on Earth.


    Furthermore, he still had the final obstacle to ovee. The same obstacle he failed to ovee back on Earth.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 67 The Path Ahead

    BAM


    Rui flew back, groaning in pain, just bare managing to stay on his feet.


    "Good, your stic Shift was well timed this time." Fae told him.


    Today was a sparring session between the Apprentices. Rui and Fae had taken it upon themselves to spar with each other.


    "It''s not easy to nail the timing." Rui muttered.


    "It usually takes a lot of experience topletely learn it." Fae reassured. "Actually, it''s a bit intimidating you''re already at this level of proficiency."


    Rui shrugged, before taking his stance. "It''s not fast enough, as far as I''m concerned."


    Fae took an open-palmed stance as well. "My, what''s the hurry?"


    "There is a limited amount of time in this world, I don''t want to waste an ounce of it." He replied, before taking the initiative to dash at her.


    Heunched a powerful front kick, throwing all his bodyweight and momentum behind it while using Vital Pressure to inflict more damage. He wouldn''t fight like this against Kane, Kane was too agile for something as long-winded and slow as full-body kicks, he would effortlessly dodge it and exploit the opening created by the kick and put Rui down. However, Fae was not as agile or mobile as Kane was, furthermore her defense was solid, he would need to use every ounce of his power.


    BAM


    Yet she handily guarded with a double arm guard, before pushing aside his leg whileunching a powerful palm attack to his abdomen.


    Rui just barely managed to evade it with abination of Parallel Walk and Bnce Direction, yet Fae aggressively dashed after him with equally powerful maneuvering techniques, not allowing him to catch a break.


    This was yet another difference between Fae and Kane, Kane fought passively and counter-offensively whereas Fae was aggressively offensive.


    She quickly caught up to him beforeunching barrage of palm attacks, that pummeled him across his upper body.


    Rui held on for dear life behind his guard as only abination of his two defensive techniques; stic Shift and Acute Edge prevented him from losing consciousness.


    But ultimately, they weren''t enough.


    Fae broke past his guard, stopping a palm attack just an inch away from his face.


    "Good fight." She held out an open hand.


    "Yeah, good fight." He grasped her hand standing up.<sub> </sub>


    Published by N?v''elD/rama.Org.


    "It''s really remarkable how far you''vee with these techniques in merely a month and a half, or so." Fae shook her head with a rare hint of surprise shing her facial features.


    "It may be fastpared to others, but my Martial Art has greater needs." Rui shook his head.


    "Your Martial Path is strange, usually, people have somewhat of a defined fighting style that is rigid to some degree, the core never changes." She exined, before turning to Rui. "Yet I couldn''t sense that with your Martial Art, yourbat style did not have an underlying core like every Martial Art normally does, it was constantly changing and strangely had no definition to it. A very odd feeling." She noted, before continuing.


    "Even all-rounder Martial Art aren''t constantly in flux like yours, being an all-rounder simply means you use all fields equally inbat, yet even that was constantly changing for you."


    "That is rted to the nature of my Martial Art." Rui hinted, he hadn''t told her what his Martial Path was, just yet. He didn''t feel the confidence and security to reveal to people what it was just yet, not until he developed it more and gained more proof of its viability as a Martial Art.


    Fae nodded without pushing any deeper, A Martial Artist''s Martial Art was extremely personal, it wasn''t appropriate to push them to open about it.


    "You''ve gotten even stronger." Rui sighed, recalling her fight against the Martial Squire.


    She shrugged. "Everyone has, we''re all working hard to get stronger."


    Rui nodded. "But with how strong you are, you must be close to reaching Martial Squire, no?"


    "I''m not sure, unfortunately. I haven''t been told about the condition to be a Martial Squire by the Academy or my family yet."


    Rui frowned, Kane said something simr too. Both of them were family of Martial Sages. Their families obviously knew exactly what it took to be a Martial Artist. So why were they and the Academy so adamant on not telling the Apprentices about the realms above them?


    "Indeed, it is strange." She remarked, noticing his confusion. "But I have a lot of faith in my grandmother, I do not believe she would withhold such information unless it was truly to my interests that I do not learn it right now."


    "Hmmm..." It was hard not to trust the judgement of a Martial Sage, not just one, but two of them, on all Martial matters. Especially when he was no more than a meagre Apprentice fledgling who had just discovered his Martial Path.


    Martial Sages were among the greatest authorities on Martial Art, barring Martial Transcendents. It was an absurd notion they would be wrong about the matters of the lower Martial Realms.


    He shrugged. He would find out one day, as long as he grew enough and expanded his Martial Art enough. As long as he did this, he had no doubt whatsoever that he would be a mighty Martial Squire!


    Still, he was quite some ways away from that stage. He had only just discovered his Martial Path and had begun the Expansion Stage that all Martial Apprentices underwent in the Martial Academy.


    He clenched his fists when he thought about the sheer number of techniques needed to achieve the versatility that was generally needed for the VOID algorithm.


    In order to be able to adapt to any Martial Art, you had to be able to partially replicate every Martial Art, because every Martial Art was countered by some other Martial Art. Although the truth was a bit moreplex and nuanced, the point still remained. The more building tools and ingredients he had ess to, the easier and better he would be able to build a Martial Art that were adapted to counter his opponent''s Martial Art.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 68 Fae Vs Kane

    The Apprentice sparring session worked the same way the Explorer sparring sessions did. Meaning half the Apprentices were challengers while the remaining half were defenders. Challengers constantly challenged defenders to spars until they won, then they would switch roles, the challenger would be a defender and the defender would be a challenger.


    Rui lost to Fae, so he quickly got off the stage for the next challenger.


    "You got your ass kicked." Kane chuckled lightly, as he entered the ring. "Don''t worry, I''ll avenge you."


    "You''re going up against her next?" Rui asked, surprised.


    "Yep."


    "I see, well, good luck."


    Rui was quite exhausted. He had initially intended to consume a rejuvenation potion before resuming the challenger process. But a fight between Kane and Fae was worth postponing that.


    He watched closely as Kane entered the stage.


    "My, so you''re my next challenger?" Fae smirked. "I was considering consuming a potion, but if it''s just little old you, then there shouldn''t be much of a problem." She mocked.


    "Don''t worry, by the time I''m done with you, you''ll be needing more than a single measly little rejuvenation to get back on your feet." He retorted.


    They both exchanged no more words, quickly taking their stances. Kane''s stance was low, crouched, this allowed him to dash and reach top speed quicker. His hands were open and sharp, his arms were aligned with his legs.N?velDrama.Org owns this text.


    (''That stance allows him to use Parallel Walk without any dy.'') Rui keenly observed. Parallel Walk was a maneuvering technique that relied on arms and upper body swinging inline, rather opposite to the legs. Keeping his arms and legs inline meant, he would not have to waste any time when the match began, and could immediately moving.


    (''He intends to close the distance quickly.'') Rui realized.


    On the other hand, Fae adopted a rather unusual stance. Her left leg was forward, while her right leg was bit further behind, both slightly crouched. Her left arm was straight, pointing at Kane, with her open palm facing him. Her right palm was upside down, tucked at her waist like a coiled serpent waiting tosh out.


    Rui could feel the tension escting as both fighters grew more and more focused on their opponent.


    "Begin!" The supervisor dered, beginning the match.


    Kane moved blurringly fast, his figure even briefly disappeared as Rui''s eyes could barely keep up with the abrupt eleration to Kane''s superhuman top speed.


    In an instant Fae and Kane were face-to-face.


    Kaneunched a blindingly-fast punch, while Faeunched a fearsome palm.


    Just as the strikes were about tounch, Kane suddenly cancelled his attack and avoided Fae''s Palm, leaping back.


    This drew some murmurs from onlookers. "Looks like Fae is stronger."


    Rui shook his head. (''No, he made the right choice.'')


    <o>,m If Kane had continued the mutual attack, he definitely would have suffered more damage. As far as power-per-strike went, Fae was almost unmatched in their batch of Apprentices. On the other hand, Kane''s striking power was not quite as good.</o>


    Meaning if they exchanged blows head-on, Kane would undoubtedly take much more damage.


    Kane realized this in thest moment and avoided this undesirable oue.<sub> </sub>


    (''You''re an evasive maneuverer Kane, you need to exploit that to the absolute maximum if want to win this fight.'') Rui mused.


    Kane dashed at Fae, dodging her attacks narrowly, before leaping back.


    He dashed from another angle, dodged her counter and leapt back.


    He dashed from yet another angle, and dodged her counter, leaping back.


    He dashed, dodged, and leapt back.


    Again.


    And again.


    And again.


    He began repeating this course of action over and over.


    "Tsk, he''s just buzzing around her like a fly. Is he really the son of the legendary Devil?" A Martial Apprentice mocked, disregarding Kane''s status.


    His fighting drew scorn from the onlookers, all except one.


    Rui eyed those around him, before tutting. (''Tsk, clueless fools.'')


    He turned back to the fight with a knowing smile. Although to the casualyman, it may have looked like Kane was too scared to engage Fae, but Rui had realized what Kane was going for a long time ago.


    He nodded. (''It''s a rough n, not the best course of action but it has a solid chance of working.'')


    Kane knew that getting into a frontal exchange of blows with Fae would be bad for him, that was where she was at her strongest. Furthermore, unlike when he fought Rui, Kane couldn''t simply try to squirm past narrow openings tounch strikes on Fae.


    Fae''s body was tough, thanks to body conditioning. She could simply ignore his attack and allow it to hit her. Rather than blocking or dodging, she would simply strike him.


    Although Kane was much faster than her, it was impossible for him to cross one meter,nd a strike and then jump out of range, all before Fae couldunch even a single strike. He would be need to be exponentially faster than her to achieve such a feat. And Fae was not slow by means.


    Thus, Kane decided to try something else.


    (''He intends to force Fae tounch her formidable palm strikes over and over until her stamina is drained. Although Parallel Walk, Bnce Direction and his other maneuvering techniques still consume less energy than Fae''s immense explosive power.'') Rui analyzed.


    The power of Fae''s palm attacks was extremely high. Not only did she regrly use highly power consuming techniques like Outer Convergence, which she used against him in the Entrance Exam, she used several other medium-high-grade techniques that allowed her to exert massive amounts of energy with every strike.


    The power consumption was extremely high. Fae''s Martial Art was an offensive Martial Art that was meant to pummel down her opponents quickly, it was not suited in these kinds of extended battles. She would simply fizz out of energy.


    (''Which is exactly what is slowly happening.'') Rui noted the profuse sweat on Fae''s face.


    Her palm strikes were draining her energy, especially because they all missed Kane cleanly. Kane was still extraordinarily fast, she had no hope of tagging him with ordinary attacks.


    (''At this rate, you''ll win this Kane!'') Rui cheered him on.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 69 Shocking Conclusion

    WHOOSH


    Kane avoided a palm attack, back-flipping out of the way cleanly. He quickly opened the distance before studying Fae immediately.


    "Huff... Huff..." She panted, her sparring attire drenched in sweat.


    (''Heh, this is actually working. Spending time with that Martial nerd has done me good, I don''t know if I would''ve thought of this had I not met him.'') Kane mirthfully mused.


    Sparring and spending time with Rui had taught Kane the importance of tactics and strategy. His personal tutors had always hammered the importance of tactics and strategy, but he had always thought no tactic could ovee a skill or power gap. He had always beaten those weaker than him, and had always lost to those stronger than him. He wasn''t averse to tactics, but he believed techniques and physical prowess mattered far, far more.


    It was only after he had met Rui had he learn how wrong he was. Rui''s mind was beyond unfathomable to him. Every time he sparred with Rui, it became more and more difficult to beat him. Even though Rui''s techniques or body hadn''t grown stronger, every time they sparred, Kane realized he needed to spend more and more effort to beat Rui, every single time.


    This was part of that ''adaptive evolution'' thing Rui told him about; his Martial Path. Rui said it was essentially ''choosing the right move at the right time''. To choose the correct specific course of actions and tactics that best dealt with his opponent.


    Mastering powerful techniques was not nearly enough, tactically using these techniques correctly across the entire battle was just as important!


    DASH


    Kane closed the distance instantly, forcing Fae tounch a palm strike, which he cleanly swerved out of the way of simultaneouslyunching a spinning kick, Fae was forced yet again tounch a palm attack which Kane quickly dodged cleanly yet again.


    She was almost gasping for air at this point, her stance was ck with fatigue.


    (''Close.'') Kane huffed. This strategy was not easy for him. Although this strategy exhausted Fae, it also exhausted him, just to a lesser degree. Even he could not keep up such a power-consuming tactical approach for too long.


    (''It''s time.'')


    Kane exhaled, before taking a new stance. He put both hands on the ground in front of him and stretched out his right leg back, firmly nting it on the ground. He bent his left leg, tucking it under his chest.


    It was an odd stance that resembled the starting crouched position of hundred-meters sprinters back on Earth.


    (''This is the final sh.'') Rui quickly realized. (''This will decide the oue of the fight.'')


    Fae''s defense had grown progressively sloppier and sloppier, her fatigue had umted too much. Not only had Kane drained her stamina almost entirely. She had already spent a decent portion of her stamina even before Kane challenged her.


    (''These two are basically at the same level, even a small gap in stamina will be decisive.'') Rui noted.


    Suddenly, the weight of the atmosphere escted.


    "Fuuuu..." Kane exhaled deeply. Ridding every single superfluous thought from his mind. He sharpened his focus.


    Fae realized what was happening, she mustered as much energy as she could, preparing herself for one final sh.


    Kane''s body grew taught with power, vibrating with sheer amount of potential energy he had gathered.


    For a moment the entire facility was dead silent.


    Every Apprentice, Squire and staff member were frozen silence. Enraptured. Spellbound.


    Suddenly.


    "Now." Rui whispered.


    BOOM<sub> </sub>


    Kane disappeared.


    One moment, there he was.


    The next moment, gone.


    What was once left in his ce was a sonic boom!


    Kane had moved so abysmally fast that he had surpassed the speed of sound!


    What happened next surpassed Rui''s cognition.


    His mind was simply not fast enough to keep up.


    Kane had simple disappeared from Rui''s eyes, and reappeared behind Fae!


    "Argh!" Kane fell to down to one knee, clutching his right shoulder in pain.


    (''Shended a palm strike on him?! In the middle of that blitz?'')


    "You''re a monster alright." Kaneughed, eying Fae behind him.


    (''Damn! Is Fae gonna win?'') Rui cursed.


    THUD


    Rui looked up in shock.


    One moment Fae was standing tall and strong, yet, the very next moment...


    "She copsed..." Rui murmured, shocked.


    Fae had fallen unconscious! Her figure had crumpled to the ground like a puppet whose strings were cut.


    The entire facility froze at that sight. Rui sharpened his eyes, taking a closer look at her.


    (''Hended a knockout blow to her chin!'') He quickly realized, looking at the deep bruise below her mouth.


    "You''re a monster alright..." Kane stood up, smirking. "...But I won."


    "W-Winner; Kane Arrancar." The supervisor dered, after breaking out of his enraptured stupor.


    A paramedic team came along and ced Fae onto a stretcher, carting her away.This belongs to N?velDrama.Org - ?.


    Rui was still stunned. He nced at Kane who smirked at him with a thumbs-up. Rui had to admit, he was truly impressed by Kane''s fight. He didn''t just blindly jump in and rely purely on speed, agility and maneuvering to attack dodge and attack her. He pulled off a clever strategy that allowed him to win in those circumstances. In the past few months, Kane had grown more and more flexible, with his fighting style, fighting smarter and cleverer rather than just banking heavily on his raw speed. Rui approved, of course, he also couldn''t help but feel he was responsible for this change.


    Still, what truly shocked him was the final sh. Kane disyed a level of speed Rui had never seen before. The sheer speed at which moved was incredible! Rui hadn''t known it was physically possible for a human to move that fast. He was also quite impressed that Fae had managed to throw in a palm attack in such a brief period. Although she moving slower than Kane, who moved his entire body across the distance between then in the time sheunched a palm strike, it was still impressive given her condition as well as the fact that speed wasn''t forte.


    Both of them performed incredibly, as far as Rui was concerned.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 70 Resumption

    Rui quickly consumed a rejuvenation potion himself. He had wasted enough time watching Kane''s match against Fae, he needed to engage in sparring others himself. Watching Kane''s sparring match against Fae had inspired him, he felt strongly motivated to reach that level of power himself as soon as possible.This belongs to N?velDrama.Org - ?.


    (''Both Fae and Kane are way ahead of me in so far as the expansion and development of their Martial Art goes.'') Rui reminded himself.


    Unlike him, who had only just barely learnt six Apprentice-level techniques, they had learnt enough number of techniques for their Martial Art to be considered actual Martial Art.


    On the other hand, he was still quite far away from this level. He nced at the nearest ring, looking for a defender to challenge.


    (''Milliana, huh?'') Rui recalled meeting her several times. She was a stamina-oriented Martial Artist, fighting her was truly a test of perseverance. Stamina-oriented Martial Art were a type VI Martial Art; A Martial Art centered around a physical attribute or parameter.


    He immediately chose to challenge her.


    There were several reasons for his decision. Firstly, Stamina-oriented Martial Art did not possess any overwhelming advantage over other Martial Art asides from the longevity it granted the Martial Artist. Meaning it was quite likely that Milliana did not possess any overwhelming advantage over her in regards to any physical attribute or parameter like strength, speed, or durability, she likely did not possess any overwhelming advantage in so far as Martial Art techniques went; Be it offensive, defensive or maneuvering.


    What this ultimately meant that before Rui tired out, there was a high chance they would be roughly equal.


    Furthermore, he was aware that Milliana''s Martial Art was also a Type I Martial Art in addition to being a Type VI Martial Art. She was an all-rounder after she was a stamina-oriented Martial Art. This was a valuable opportunity to Rui, because Rui rarely had a chance to fight a stamina-oriented Martial Artist like Milliana. After Rui became a Martial Artist, he quickly learnt that most Martial Art had strong vor to them that pushed them away from being well-rounded. Usually most Martial Apprentices had strong affinity to some field or physical attribute, making a vast majority of them be of Type II to Type VII Martial Art.


    One reason Rui wanted to find an all-rounder was, of course for the experience, but also because all-rounders were the most challenging to the VOID algorithm.


    The reason was simple; all-rounder Martial Art possessed no obvious weakness.


    The VOID algorithm worked by adapting to the opponent''s fighting style. Naturally, this was easier if the opponent''s fighting style had straightforward and obvious shorings


    Offense-oriented Martial Art generally weren''t as good as good at defense. Defense-oriented Martial Art generallycked strong offense. Grappling Martial Artcked range, and striking-type Martial Art were not good at full-contactbat or grappling etc. These usually couldn''t be considered a great weakness, but they were, without a doubt, shorings and areas of higher vulnerability.


    The VOID algorithm loved these openings and shorings, it made the adaptive evolutionary process much more straightforward and simpler.


    However, all-rounderscked such obvious and straightforward shorings, thus the adaptive evolutionary process of the VOID algorithm for such styles was much moreplex and long-winded.


    This was what Rui wanted. He needed to push his Martial Art to the limit in order to improve it. The VOID algorithm was a system by which one could develop a style of fighting statistically most suited to obtain victory. However, the framework was based on the martial arts of Earth. Martial Art in Gaea was much more convoluted and far more parameters and variables. It was not equipped to deal with the fantastical and supernatural Martial Art techniques of Gaea.


    This was one of the two biggest hurdles of developing his Martial Art and traversing his Martial Path. He could not perform the rigorous empirical research he did in his previous life, so there really was only way topletely expand the VOID algorithm topletely suit Gaea as far as Rui could see;


    Sheer, raw experience!


    (''How much experience will it take for me toplete the upgradation of the VOID algorithm?'') Rui wondered as he got onto the ring.


    He looked up at Milliana, who nodded in response, she was a girl of very few words, she let her Martial Art do the talking.


    (''And boy can it talk.'')


    "Take your stance." The supervisor instructed.


    Milliana balled her fists and brought her arms close to her abdomen in a guarded stance, bncing her weight between both legs equally.


    (''A conservative but ultimately flexible fighting stance.'') Rui noted.


    He adopted a simr stance, but one that was moremitted to attacking. Left arm and left leg forward, right arm and right leg back. He kept his weight mostly on his left leg, freeing up his right leg, allowing him tounch kicks with it.


    In this stance the left arm was able tounch speed jabs in quick session while the right arm was able tounch powerful blows that could knock a person down if wellnded.


    "Begin!" The supervisor dered the match started.


    Rui rapidly shuffled over to Milliana, feeling out her movements and responses to his weight shifts.


    (''She''s always moving with the intent of reducing energy consumption.'') Rui realized. By constantly maintaining as low an energy consumption possible, she could oust her opponent.


    (''Not on my watch.'')


    POW POW POW<sub> </sub>


    Rui threw a few quick jabs that she promptly blocked with a stiff guard. She threw a pushing kick that served as a check, opening up the distance.


    Rui decided to go all out and use Vital Pressure,unching a flurry of strikes to specific points and angles along her joints.


    This was one way by which he could apply pressure on her. The continuous damage which eventually weaken her defense. This was the best utility of Vital Pressure.


    Suddenly, she abruptly shifted her weight to her left leg.


    (''A kic-!'') Rui barely realized, before;


    BAM


    Her right foot mmed into his side. Rui mitigated the damage with both stic Shift and Acute Edge, having foreseen an attack, but just barely. He quickly followed up with a high kick


    WHOOSH


    The powerful attack sweeped through empty air as Milliana crouched to avoid it.


    She attempted a takedown from her position, only to narrowly move out of the way of an axe kick from Rui. He had foreseen the possibility and forced her to abandon the attack with a powerful axe-kick. He immediately rushed in after her.


    POW POW POW


    Launching a flurry of strikes with Vital Pressure, looking for an opening, but he never could find one.


    Milliana was incredibly good at maintaining a stalemate. She never tried to make too much progress with her offense, but she never allowed her opponent to make much progress either.


    Block


    Parry


    Dodge


    Shift


    Check


    These were her mantras.


    Rui backed away, putting some distance between her. The VOID algorithm worked best when there were even the tiniest openings or shorings to exploit. However, when someone turtled up as much as she did, it was hard to exploit any ring openings, those were mostly created by attacks or some offensive maneuver.


    (''This can''t continue.'') Rui established. (''I''ll just tire myself out and she''ll only begin her offense after I''ve burnt my primary stamina reserve.'')


    He needed to find a hole in her stalemating fighting style, but nothing came to mind.


    (''There has to be some effective approach that can work here.'') The problem was, he didn''t know what that was. (''Her greatest strength is that her defense pursues minimalistic energy consumption... Not only does it prolong her stamina, but I''m sure it''s easy for her to maintain this mentally. She probably doesn''t need to think much, since there is usually only one or few ways of movements in any situation to minimize energy-consumpt-!'') Rui paused eyes-wide as an epiphany struck his mind.


    In any given situation, there were was really only a few options that truly minimize energy consumption; the minimum motion needed to block the attack, the minimum motion needed to dodge the attack, the minimum motion needed to parry or redirect the attack.


    (''Since she always aims to minimize energy consumption... that restricts her options to a few solutions! And if her options are restricted...'') Rui directed a measured gaze at her. (''...Then her choices be more predictable, and that is a weakness I can exploit.'')


    It had taken him a while to realize this becausebat sports on Earth didn''t really have the concept of "hyper-minimalistic energy consumption". One either fought hard and won, or fought too passively and got knocked out, those were the only two oues. Milliana''s fighting style would have fallen in thetter back on Earth.


    But in Gaea, Martial Art turned what was a losing strategy in his previous world into a formidable fighting style!


    He hadn''t fully transitioned to from the mindset of his previous life, it was hard to, but he had taken another step in the middle of this match.


    (''I need to move in a manner that creates predictable minimal-energy counters, and then exploit the tiny brief opening when she''s performing the counter tounch a swift but powerful attack.'')


    "Fuuuu..." Rui exhaled, adopting a new stance. A new wave of determination saturated his figure!


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 71 Conclusion

    Rui adopted a new stance. He brought his arms up, but positioned them lower than before, with their fists directed at Milliana. The physical difference between this stance and his previous one was subtle, but made all the difference in the world. His new stance was geared towards offense, whereas his old stance was partially defensive.


    He dashed towards Milliana with Parallel Walk and Bnce Direction, crossing the gap between them as quickly as possible.


    BOOM


    Heunched a flying knee kick amped with Vital Pressure straight into her guard, it was an extremely powerful blow that used the momentum generated by the Apprentice-level maneuvering techniques to increase the impact.


    Milliana managed to mitigate the damage with a few defensive Apprentice level techniques, but only partially, she had retreated reeling from the blow. In truth she didn''t expect Rui to return with such a violently aggressive offensive strategy. She was sure he already realized that he would simply burn his energy with such highly energy-consuming tactics.


    Ruiunched more and more powerful blows, putting his body weight behind each of them uncaring for his defense. If Milliana was a defensive or evasive specialist, she would have been able to deal with the attacks while maintaining her ground. But she was an all-rounder stamina-specialist. Her focus on defense wasn''t as strong as it would have needed to be to not be forced for her to open up distance between them.


    She was also very much capable of an offensive approach too however.


    Sheunched several jabs at Rui, but Rui blocked them briefly before continuing his offense unperturbed to her great surprise.


    Rui on other hand was inwardly ecstatic.


    (''Minimalistic energy consumption reduces both your offensive and defensive options, you cannotunch bombastic offensive attacks like Fae because they are quite energy-consumptive.'') he figured. (''I doubt you can manage such attacks in the first ce.'')


    He was partially right. The lesser number of offensive options made her attacks easier to predict and thus easier to defend against by timing his defense well, but the process was much more taxing and stressful than he had imagined.


    Furthermore, his muscles were starting to sore while Milliana appeared to be pristine condition asides from some bruises that Rui had given her. This was surely the result of stamina-supplementary Apprentice-level techniques.


    (''She can keep this up for a long time while I can''t, I need to win quickly.'')


    He needed to execute his strategy immediately. He kept sting her, while she mitigated the damage with minimal motions, however, while doing so she began reaching the edge of the ring.


    (''Is this his n? A ring-out?'') Milliana pondered, disappointed. (''If so, he underestimated me.'') She adopted a tougher and stiffer stance, determined not back down more. She was not new to this strategy; it was one of the many tactics the other Apprentice students had attempted to defeat her.


    One foot away from the ring, and Rui changed his stance abruptly, he opened his fists into open palms cing them beside him at chest height while crouching.


    (''A wrestling stance.'') Milliana mused.


    His intentions were transparent to her. He intended to shoot; a lunging action in wrestling aimed to performing a takedown, and push her out of the ring.


    This was also not a strategy she had not experienced. But a simple strategy such as this had an equally simple counter-strategy.


    She would merely need to step forward and shift all her weight to the pivotal front leg, and using the back leg as a force driver was the way to deal with shoots, then she would turn the battle into full-contact ground-grappling by shifting both of them off-bnce. This was the least stamina-consumptive way of safely mitigating the risk of a ring out. It was hard to push someone out of boundaries when both of your bodies were on the ground in a taut locked stalemate, it would be possible for a grappling specialist, of course, but she knew Rui was not one. Furthermore, she was certain she had more experience in wrestling than he did.


    Wrestling was inherently a battle of perseverance; it was a very stamina-intensive battle, where stamina was just as important as technique.


    (''Challenging a stamina-oriented specialist in a form ofbat where stamina is king, you are more foolish than I expected, Rui Quarrier.'') She earnestly evaluated, as Rui dashed at her, executing the shoot just like she had predicted.


    p She calmly waited for the perfect moment to step forward. If she stepped forward too early, she would be forced to stop herself once she reached the desire position, if she stepped forward toote, he would push her out of boundary. She wanted to shift all her weight abruptly onto the pivotal leg just as he collided with her so that the momentum of her weight shift would cancel his momentum out.</anda>


    The moment came.


    She raised her left leg and pushed it forward along with her body, intending to firmly nt itself in the ground.


    "Gotcha." Rui whispered, sending a chill down her body.


    SWEEP


    Rui swiftly sent a low sweeping kick the very moment she lifted her left foot from the ground. The kick hooked her foot and swept it away before it could reach the ground<sub> </sub>


    Suddenly, all of Milliana''s weight that was supposed to be supported by that left foot, no longer could be supported.


    Rui grinned as her body inevitably plummeted to the right.


    He had never intended an earnest takedown; he knew it probably wouldn''t work. She had a bit more weight than he did, by virtue of the age gap and she also had more experience with wrestling than he did, who had very little. It would be easy for her to convert the battle into full-contact ground grappling, where he stood almost no chance of victory in a head-to-head contest. Furthermore, it was such an obvious idea that she would not have remained a challenger for as long as she did if she could not deal with such a simple tactic


    It was precisely because this was not a good idea, inbination with her energy-minimalistic approach that he could predict her very first counter; the leg nting and weight shifting was almost guaranteed, any other tactic in her position would go against her style strongly.


    This allowed him tounch a sweeping kick as a counter just in time to knock out her weight support and throw her colossally off bnce.


    As she reflexively braced herself for the ground, Rui immediately whipped his left arm around her neck and pressed her head into the choke-hold.


    A rear choke-hold


    This was the riskiest part, but he had to take a gamble.


    If he failed the maneuver or if she had a technique like Outer Convergence that could allow her to strike him hard in that position, she could break out. But he simply could not optimize his chances of victory any further, not in the middle of a fight anyway.


    Back on Earth, there was a popr saying in thebat sports industry; ''If you get in a rear choke-hold, tap out.''


    This was because there was no realistic way to beat the rear choke-hold back on Earth. It mped down on the arteries and esophagus like an anaconda and exert such high pressure, that fighters described it the sensation as ''I felt my head was going to explode.''


    Rui had to simply pray that this earthly wisdom would hold true in this world.


    He squeezed down on her neck with his left arm and pushed her neck down with his right arm.


    Yet she never tapped.


    He squeezed and squeezed, yet she never resigned.


    (''What is she trying to do?!'')


    "Match over!" The supervisor rushed over. It was only then had Rui realized that she had passed out.


    The rear choke-hold cut off the blood supply to the brain almost entirely, it was not unusual for its targets to pass out. It just hadn''t struck Rui in the heat of the moment, because of his paranoia that she would break out of his rear choke-hold.


    It seems she did not have any techniques that allowed to break out of the hold in a short amount of time.


    Rui immediately released the hold; it would be dangerous to hold her in it any longer. Even as a paramedical team carried her away on a stretcher, Rui couldn''t help but feel ted.


    This was the first time he beat an experienced Martial Apprentice!


    All the Martial Apprentices he had beaten were people like him, people who had recently advanced to the Apprentice Realm. These Apprentices had shaky foundations and hadn''t expanded or developed their Martial Art much and were even morecking in experience than he was.This belongs to N?velDrama.Org - ?.


    But his rationality quickly established itself as he looked back on the fight.


    (''She wouldn''t have lost in a real fight.'') Rui realized.


    There were no ring-outs in a real fight, which was a crucial part of his tactic, Rui did not think he would be able to beat her without this element.


    (''I''ve obtained enough basic experience with the six techniques I''ve already learnt, I can improve faster with developing more techniques and diversifying my Martial Art further yet.'')


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 72 Foundational Concerns

    "Saw you beating Milliana, good job man, she''s strong." Kaneplimented.


    "Thanks." Rui replied, before smirking at Kane. "I heard Fae came back with a fury and kicked your butt." He yfully teased.


    "I was tired!" Kaneined. "I beat her again after I came back having consumed some potions!"


    Ruiughed wholeheartedly. After he left to spar with Milliana, he''d grown absorbed in his own battles, he had wanted to maintain his defender position for as long as possible. He''d heard of and caught glimpses of Kane and Fae sparring with each other for the rest of the sparring session.


    Fae hade back with a fury after the initial loss, rejuvenated and healed, and beat Kane to a pulp. What Rui found amusing was that after Kane came back, also rejuvenated and healed, he repaid the favour, defeating her again. This started a petty cycle of rivalry between them, where they would eache back healed and rejuvenated after a loss and beat the crap out of the fatigued other.


    He shook his head,ughing.(''Teenagers.'')


    He often forgot that the two of them were no more than kids to him, they were in their immature stage, so he supposed this wasn''t unusual, he only found it amusing and interesting. The fact that they were able to exchange wins and losses one after the other clearly implied they were truly at the same level in terms ofbat prowess. The reason they lost was because one usually was more fatigued than the other.


    The same could be said for Fae''s initial loss, she had already defended her position against several Apprentices prior to Kane, Rui included.


    "So who got more wins?" Rui asked, curiously.


    "I had one over her by the end of the session." Kane smirked smugly. "I''m going to rub this in her annoying face when we run into each other next."


    Ruiughed, shaking his head.


    "So, what are you gonna do now?" Kane asked. "Any ns?"


    "Yeah, I do have some." He nodded. "I need to increase and diversify my arsenal. The six techniques I have now barely count as a foundation but it still has gaps. My options inbat are pretty limited. I have only one offensive technique, Vital Pressure. Thisrgely restricts my means and chances of victory. Furthermore, it''s Vital Pressure is not meant to be a finishing move, it''s just meant to increase the damage of your strikes."


    Kan nodded. Vital Pressure was one of the foundational offense-oriented striking techniques he had mastered too. His raw physical prowess was subpar, this was due to him training his body for speed, so techniques that increased the damage he inflicted were truly necessary.


    "An all-rounder does need options all-round." He concurred. "I''m heading to catch some rest. I''m reaching my limit with the rejuvenation potions and we have an academic missioning up apparently. So catch youter."


    "Sure, get some rest, see ya." Rui nodded, before heading to the Apprentice library, thinking about what he just told Kane.


    "I truly dock options, I have two maneuvering techniques, two defensive techniques, one supplementary technique and one offensive technique."


    Furthermore, his offense was limited to striking, meaning he could not grapple against even a half-way decent Apprentice grappler. This was also an undesirable oue, the VOID algorithm''s effectivity depended on how versatile the user was, and how proficient the user was across the board.


    Which is why he resolved to strengthen his full-contact and grapplingbat prowess with the next round of techniques he was going to learn.


    "One offensive grappling technique for sure, one defensive grappling technique too. What else?" He muttered to himself. "A finisher move would be nice too, ideally, it should be flexible as well. I doubt such a thing would be among the free foundational techniques though. The best would be finding a technique whose value highly depends on its utility."


    There were many variables that determined the impact of a Martial Art technique in battle. Efficiency was definitely one important parameter, but there were others as well.


    Compatibility was just as important, if not even more important many a times. Compatibility between the user''s body and mindset and the technique could greatly influence the impact the technique had inbat.


    A technique best meant for a light and agile body like Kane wouldn''t be used optimally in the hands of a bulky heavy-weight with extremely developed muscles, and conversely, techniques constructed for heavy-weights would not do very well in the hands of someone like Kane.


    Flexibility of a technique was also important. Flexibility usually came at the expense of efficiency. The two were inherently at odds with each other to some degree. Part of how what decided how efficient a technique was depended on how well-suited the technique was for the circumstances it was meant to be used it.


    If a technique was, from the very start, constructed to excel in one and only particr situation, then it would most certainly perform extremely well in that one situation; it would have extremely high efficiency. However, that technique would not be able to be used very well in any other circumstance if it was constructed purely for one particr situation; thus, it had low flexibility.<sub> </sub>


    Published by N?v''elD/rama.Org.


    However, if a technique, from the very start, was constructed to be used any number of circumstances; then it would have high flexibility. But since it wasn''t constructed to excel in any particr scenario, it won''t be extremely effective if used in any one particr situation and its effect when used inbat was somewhat limited.


    It was like the difference between a general physician and, say, a cardiologist. For all matters rted the heart, the cardiologist would absolutely perform a better diagnosis and treatment, but for all other medical matters, the general physician would be more equipped to diagnose them, and thus would do a better job, even if not as good as specialists in those fields.


    This was the difference between efficiency and flexibility.


    It was, of course, not impossible for techniques to be extremely efficient and flexible. Just like how it was not impossible for a prodigious genius to specialize in many medical fields. But such techniques were rare, and valuable. It would certainly be difficult to obtain them.


    An overwhelming majority of techniques fell in the middle, having a decent bnce efficiency and flexibility, with a decent majority leaning one way or another


    The Academy did grade techniques in flexibility; however, they arranged techniques via efficiency. After all, the techniques were not stored digitally where it would be easy to sort them by multiple parameters.


    "The VOID algorithm works better with more flexible techniques than more efficient techniques for sure, though." He murmured to himself.


    The VOID algorithm was a manifestation to embody Bruce lee''s philosophy of flexibility. It was definitely morepatible with techniques that were inherently flexible than techniques were extremely rigid.


    ? Did that mean Rui intended to forget about high efficiency and focus purely on flexibility.


    Rui shook his head. "That would be foolish."


    There were scenarios were specialized high-efficiency techniques would aways aplish far, far more than any number of flexible techniques.


    "Ideally, I want a solid foundation of flexible techniques with several high-efficiency specialist techniques in every field, range and form ofbat."


    This was an extremely tall order.


    As of right now, Rui had a half-baked foundation that had more holes than it had substance.


    Reaching his ideal would take a long time especially since it was impossible to aplish his goal with the techniques that the Academy offered free of cost.


    "Meaning I''ll probably have toplete lots of missions before I aplish my goal." Rui mused.


    Rui intended to begin applying for missions after the next round of techniques he learnt. By then his foundation would be solid enough that nobody but the more experienced and talented Apprentices would be able to beat him, once hepletely got used to those techniques.


    This was because his rate of learning was far higher than his peers, while his peers would have to take a lot of rest for as many days as they consumed potions, he could spend those days grinding like a madman, furthermore his recovery was also much faster than them.


    The sustained training allowed him to immerse himself in the learning of techniques. The continuous immersion allowed him to learn techniques faster. This was because the human mind was not a machine that could instantly enter into the top gear learning, it was only after expending a solid amount of mental energy would the mind reach its peak as far as learning speed went. People who spent an hour continuously learning, learnt faster than those who learnt than those who learnt continuously for in two thirty-minute sessions, who learnt better than those would learn continuously for six ten-minute sessions.


    umtion mattered, the only reason it wasn''t rmended to spend too much time on one task was because of fatigue, but with potions and Rui''s great tolerance, this was no longer true.


    He intended to abuse this advantage, after all, he wasn''t confident of fulfilling missions as he was right now.


    "After I round up a bit more, I''ll definitely head toplete more missions.


    Just as he enunciated this thought, he had reached the library.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 73 New Techniques!

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    When Rui entered, he immediately headed over to the grappling wing of the defense-oriented section of the library. He intended to first and foremost strengthen his grappling and full-contactbat. There were a vast variety of techniques in there, but unfortunately, most of them were not free of cost.


    Throws and flips of different forms and principles.


    Locks and holds of different kinds and based on different mechanism.


    A variety of takedown and rolling techniques as well.


    Just browsing through them evoked a strong sense of greed within him. It almost clouded his judgement, but thankfully the prohibitive cost prevented him from acting on his greed.


    "I firstly need a flexible technique that allows me to ensure I won''t be defeated too easily in full-contact grappling." He muttered to himself. "This will serve as my defensive foundation in so far as grappling is concerned, if someone ever sessfully executes a takedown on me, I won''t be helpless."


    With this in mind, he grasped a particr scroll he had been eying for a while.


    "This will do, for now." He nodded.


    [Shifting Silhouette]


    This was a defensive grappling technique aimed at preventing sessful takedowns and throws, it also allowed the user to more effectively disengage and break free from a general full-contact tussle and also to. If used correctly this could allow Rui to stalemate and eventually break free from full-contact grapples while also significantly reducing the probability of simpler grappling offensive techniques from sessfully working.


    It involved foiling takedown attempts and throwing/flipping maneuvers by detecting the change in center of gravity that takedown/throws were causing and cancelling it by reversing the change in the center of gravity in the opposite trajectory using one''s core and legs.


    "Not a shy technique whatsoever, but it''s a decent defense against grappling attacks."


    Of course, like most foundational techniques, it was overall of a somewhat low-grade to mid-grade technique taking into ount both efficiency and flexibility, but it would have to do for now.


    Once made his decision, he continued skimming through them, looking for something that would suit his purposes, before something caught his eye.


    [Bindingsh]


    "A counter-offensive technique, huh?"


    A counter-offensive technique was a technique that was both defensive and offensive in nature.


    Rui began carefully reading through the summary, as well as the more borate description.


    "It''s a technique that intercepts iing strikes with a body hold?" Rui thought aloud. "Interesting..."


    The technique function by having the user withstand the blow by having the user move with the strike in a manner simr to stic Shift before grasping the limb with both arms and legs, and using all four limbs as well as the core to stress the joints and dislocate them.


    Rui whistled. This was quite a good technique!


    It was a technique that allowed him to turn a striking contest into a grappling contest where he had a huge initiative advantage!<sub> </sub>


    Although this technique was also not invincible, and also extremely difficult to nailpletely, it was still quite useful and expanded his approach and options when dealing with an opponent. Even if it failed with the dislocation, it would still give the user an advantage in the grappling battle.


    After he collected the two scrolls from the grappling wing of the defensive section, he quickly scurried over to the offensive section of the library, looking for something that could bolster hiscking offense.


    (''I''ll take one grappling offense-oriented technique and another striking offense-oriented technique.'') Rui thought.


    Vital Pressure was not enough, he needed something that could end a fight. A technique that leaned more towards efficiency than flexibility.


    "Hm?" Rui frowned as he came across an interesting technique.


    [Flowing Canon]


    This was a technique that increased the striking power of the user by having them build up momentum and converting all that built-up momentum into striking power once they reached the target, allowing the user to momentarily strike with raw power far surpassing what he would ordinarily be able to generate.


    Rui''s eyes lit up, this was the kind of technique he was looking for, Vital Pressure was extremely flexible and could work in any situation. But it could not allow him to increase his power-per-strike by much. Flowing Canon on the other hand didn''t have much flexibility, but if he used it in the right time and ce it could be a game finisher.


    (''Alright, that serves as a good offense-oriented striking technique.'') Rui thought (''Time to look for a grappling offensive technique.'')


    This one took him a while, he spent nearly an hour browsing through techniques, looking for one that could benefit him the most. Until;


    [Mirage Dive]


    This was an Apprentice-level takedown technique. It was a technique that began at range, had the user bullrush towards the target and, once they were close-quartersbat range, feint a takedown on the upper body while actually performing a takedown on the lower body. This technique used a sharp feint to trick the opponent into raising his guard to the upper abdomen, creating a weakness on the lower body that could be exploited for a sessful takedown.


    If executed sessfully, it would either knock the opponent out or at the very least give the user a huge advantage in the grappling contest that would ensue.


    Rui nodded, this fit his purposes. This was another low-flexibility technique, but increased his options and means of victory greatly. It could be a killer move if he used it wisely.


    With this, he was satisfied with the variety he added to his previouslycking and empty offense and defense.


    (''Now for just one more technique...'') Rui thought to himself.


    He wanted to get a supplementary technique that could increase aspects of his fighting style the others hadn''t yet.


    "Maybe I should get a stamina-oriented technique and take a page out of Milliana''s book." Rui murmured, pondering the option.


    This was a feasible course of action. Increasing his stamina, would take a weight off his shoulders and fight more cleanly and carefully, taking his time.


    "What to do..." He wondered.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 74 Training Begins!

    Rui had already chosen four techniques. An offensive, defensive and a counter-offensive grappling technique and an offensive striking technique.


    He had already decided to pick five techniques, so that left one more. He was considering a stamina-oriented technique, this was definitely synergetic with the VOID algorithm. After all, the VOID algorithm could not work instantaneously, it needed time.


    Having a stamina-oriented technique would give him more leeway to conduct the VOID algorithm.


    (''Alright.'') He nodded. (''Let''s go with that.'')


    There were several stamina-oriented techniques in the supplementary technique section of the Apprentice library. A lot of them were based on different principle and mechanisms that either focused on increasing the amount of energy stored in the body to increase stamina, or focused on reducing unnecessary nonbat rted energy consumption duringbat.


    He ended with two viable candidates screened after half an hour of browsing.


    [Helical Breathing]


    This technique was an advanced Apprentice-level version of Harmonic Breathing, not only did it boost general metabolic functions, but also reduced the energy-consumption significantly below what Harmonic Breathing could achieve.


    [Bone Bnce]


    This was a bnce-oriented technique that allowed the user to stand up straight purely by positioning their weight under their bones, without help of muscles. The user would be able to avoid consuming energy by standing, increasing his stamina in the long run.


    This was the kind of technique that made Rui do a double-take, reminding him yet again how different from Earth Gaea was, for techniques like this to even exist and be viable and practical.


    Both techniques had an equal level of flexibility and efficiency. This resulted in equal difficulty as well. The greater the sum of efficiency and flexibility, the greater the overall potency of the technique and thus the higher the difficulty.


    There were no such things as potent techniques that were also super easy to master.


    But despite this equality between them, the choice was clear between them, the answer was clear.


    "Helical Breathing is an extension of Harmonic Breathing" Rui muttered. "It''s the Apprentice level version of the technique."


    Harmonic Breathing was not an Apprentice Learning, it was an Exploration technique he had mastered while he was still in the Exploration Stage. Helical Breathing was an Apprentice-level extension of it, meaning he would probably master is quicker than mastering another technique from scratch.


    "Alright, that settles the deal then."


    He took hold of the five techniques he decided to master. With this, he will have mastered a total of ten techniques.


    Vital Pressure, stic Shift, Bnce Direction, Acute Edge, Parallel Walk, Binding Lash, Flowing Canon, Mirage Dive, Shifting Silhouette and Helical Breathing.


    This formed the bare basics of his foundation.


    "No, not entirely, I still don''t have techniques for all ranges ofbat."<sub> </sub>


    Hand-to-handbat could be divided into several ranges even further; kicking-rangebat, jabbing-rangebat, elbow-rangebat and full-contactbat or grappling.


    Each of these ranges, despite being separated by tens of centimeters, were quite different from each other.


    "Still, what I have at least ensures I don''t have a weakness anywhere."


    As far as offense went, Vital Pressure gave him versatility and flexibility at almost all ranges, but its efficiency was low. Flowing Canon gave him offensive options at most striking ranges although it needed umtion of momentum from a distance each time it was to be used. Mirage Dive and Binding Lash gave him offensive and counter-offensive options at full-contact range. Thus, covering the bare basics in most regards.


    His defense was better, he had stic Shift and Acute Edge, as well Binding Lash for defense against striking. He could use one or more of these depending on which was more apt. He also had Shifting Silhouette for full-contact/grappling offense.


    Bnce Direction and Parallel Walk improved his mobility and lotion, but only in regards to travel speed, they didn''t enhance hisbat speed. This was something he aimed to fix in the future.


    And Helical Breathing improved his stamina, allowing him to fight a slower pace and giving him more time to adapt to his opponents.


    "Alright, this will have to do for now."


    He applied for copies of each of the techniques and immediately head to the Apprentice respiratory technique facility of the supplementary wing, the Helical Breathing technique would be the easiest to master, no doubt, the sooner he mastered and improved his stamina, the better the remaining training regimes would work out too. What surprised him was that unlike the Harmonic Breathing technique, the Helical Breathing technique had training methodologies that specified involved actual respiratory training equipment.


    "The Harmonic Breathing technique simply requires you to time inhtion with pulsing of your blood, so that the maximum amount of air cane into contact with your blood" The Apprentice supervisors exined to Rui. "The Helical Breathing technique involves not just maximizing the amount of blooding into contact with your air, but also maximizing the amount of airing in contact with all that blood.


    The lungs inhaled air that would be diffused and mixed into blood, maximizing the amount of blood and maximizing the amount of airing into contact with said blood allowed each cell in the body to obtain more oxygen allowing the user to generate the same amount of power with less effort, ultimately prolonging stamina.


    "Since you''ve already mastered Harmonic Breathing, we can skip the first stage of the training, since it is Harmonic Breathing training. I rmend starting with the next stage." The supervisor exined.


    "Understood." Rui nodded, having already nned that


    "We''ll start by increasing your lung capacity and strengthening your respiratory strength."N?velDrama.Org owns this text.


    "Yes sir."


    Lung capacity and respiration strength were important parameters of respiration even on Earth. Lung capacity referred to how open your trachea, your airway, was and how well your lung could expand. Respiratory strength was dependent on the diaphragm, the sole muscle that was actually responsible for breathing; expanding to suck in air into the lungs and contracting to expel air from the lungs.


    Improving these two would significantly improve the Harmonic Breathing technique in and of themselves.


    However, that wasn''t all there was to it, the Helical technique was an Apprentice level technique, meaning only Apprentices and above could master it, as far as difficulty went. Theter stages involved manners of breathing that further maximized the amount of air that made contact with blood! The end result was a breathing technique that facilitated much greater power and stamina.


    Such was the prowess of an Apprentice-level technique.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 75 The Power Of Deception

    The exercises involved strengthening the diaphragm, in ways that were very simr to exercising the rest of the body. Muscles were generally trained and strengthened by expanding and contracting them against resistance, usually a weight load. One would shift weights by expanding and contracting particr muscle groups across the body, leading to them growing stronger over time.


    The diaphragm was no different in this regard. Rui spent a lot of time inhaling and exhaling through a breathing contraption that severely hindered breathing, this meant the user had to push his diaphragm to the absolute limit if he or she wanted to breathe normally.


    As Rui gasped and wheezed during this exercise, for the very first time in his second life, he came to hate a training regime.


    Up until now he had taken all the different and various training sessions in stride, even though they were difficult and new to him, he truly enjoyed the feeling of his proficiency of a technique growing better and better, it was an addictive feeling.


    Yet this training was truly unpleasant, the reason for that was simple.


    (''This sensation of strained respiration is identical to that of the asthma attacks I used to suffer back on Earth.'') He gasped and wheezed.


    Those moments were the worst of his life, and now he had to experience them continuously for hours.


    Still, he realized this training would ultimately improve his breathing and stamina, so he swallowed the bitter pill and earnestly dedicated himself to the training.


    Once he was done, he quickly bade the supervisor farewell and scurried out of the facility as fast as he could.


    "I can''t wait till I''ve mastered this technique so I don''t ever have to do that training ever again in my life."


    Still, that training made normal breathing feel like a luxury, making him appreciate things he hade to take for granted in his second life.


    He shook his head putting aside such thoughts, before heading to the next training facility to start learning the next of the five new techniques he had procured. He had already decided which technique he wanted to look at next.


    (''I''m quite curious about Mirage Dive.'')


    This was the offensive grappling technique he had decided to learn. It was a technique in which the user feinted an upper takedown only to exploit the opening created by the feint to instead go for a lower takedown.


    It was one of the measures he taken to improve his offense and expand his offensive options inbat.<sub> </sub>


    What surprised him was how different the facility for this, and other simr techniques, was from other facilities. Then again, this was his first time visiting the training facility for an Apprentice-level grappling training facility. He had not learnt any Apprentice-level technique prior, after all.


    The training equipment was quite different from what he was used topared to the other training facilities he had trained in.


    "Mirage Dive eh?" The supervisor mused. "Alright, no problem." He nodded. "Mirage Dive, as a technique, can be divided into three different stages; the feint, the transition and the actual takedown. The training regime for the technique involve working on each separately and then all together."


    Rui nodded, listening closely.


    "The feint is the most difficult part of the technique. In order to create a real opportunity and opening for the real takedown, the feint needs to be convincing, a regr faking motion ain''t gonna cut it, kid."Belongs to ? n0velDrama.Org.


    "I did go through the rmended training regime for the feint, it is a bit strange.


    The supervisor nodded. "The training regime for the feint requires being hooked up to a bodysuit that we can manually freeze at any time we want, its fabric and structure is made from multiple different kinds of esoteric bestial and floral substances, and it operates on strange principles, but that doesn''t matter. We''ll have you practice the perfect upper takedown until you master the form and trajectory, then we''ll have you wear the suit and perform the upper takedowns, except we''ll freeze the suit in the middle of the takedown, we''ll do this over and over and over. This helps your body physically understand what the perfect upper takedown feint looks and physically feels like. The perfect upper takedown feint is an iplete real upper takedown, a real upper takedown cut in half, this way no one call easily tell it''s fake"


    Rui nodded. Doing this would teach his body the timing of the feint and the trajectory of the feint. Mirage Dive was a technique whose feint trajectory and timing is meant to be indistinguishable from the real deal. That''s what made it effective, that''s what made it an Apprentice-level technique. The sheer convincingness would force his targets to subconsciously raise their guard to intercept the upper charge, giving the user a huge opening that could be exploited with a real takedown, but the quality of the feint was made it the technique Apprentice-level, and what made the technique a finisher.


    Furthermore, this technique had a flipside to it. If someone was very familiar with this technique and predicted an upper takedown feint and prepared for a lower takedown, then Rui could simply turn the upper takedown feint into an actual real upper takedown!


    In the Mirage Dive technique, the upper takedown and upper takedown feint were absolutely the same until the halfway point.


    Meaning Rui could choose to feint, or actually perform the takedown if he wanted! Because there was no difference between the feint and the actual takedown, Rui could choose to do either depending on how his opponent responded. He could adapt to his opponent''s response and reaction!


    This was part of the reason he chose this technique, although it had only two possible scenario applications, because of the fact that he could cater and had the ability to make the choice after analyzing his opponent, it had more flexibility than one would expect of a technique with two possibilities.


    "But that''s not all." The supervisor grinned toothily. "Once you truly and fully master this technique, your feint bes so good, that your opponent sees an illusion!"


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 76 Training The Transition

    The training regimes for Mirage Dive were new and alien to him. For almost all the training he had engaged in prior, there were elements of it that paralleled the training on Earth, but the training for the feinting maneuvers of the Mirage Dive technique were truly different, he was no different from a normal Apprentice learning of the technique for the first time.


    On Earth, feints were useful and effective, but the training for them was nothing beyond repetition and practice.


    What truly surprised him was that the supervisor insisted that the feint, when done correctly, could create illusions in the mind of the target.


    Rui frowned "How can a feint technique create illusions like that?"


    "Because of how convincing the feint is, I suppose." The supervisor scratched his head. "If you don''t believe me, I can show it to you."


    Rui was intrigued. He knew the supervisors of a facility had mastered all the techniques of the training facility they were charged to supervise, so he wasn''t surprised.


    "Sure." He nodded. "I''ll take you up on that offer."


    The supervisor nodded, putting some distance between them, taking a standard wrestling stance, Rui in-turn mimicked him.


    The supervisor charged, lunging towards Rui''s upper abdomen and sure enough.


    WHOOSH


    The lunge faded away as Rui tried to intercept it!


    The supervisor had not performed an upper takedown, but somehow Rui saw him doing that.


    "See that?" The supervisor grinned.


    Rui had requested him for a few more demonstrations before he finally deciding to begin the training. Illusion techniques were also not a real thing back on Earth, and it was an incredible experience to actually be subjected to one.


    He also quickly learnt how effective the technique was. He had truly fallen for the illusion even though he knew it was a feint, it had created a huge opening which the supervisors could have easily exploited to execute a powerful real takedown.


    The more Rui learnt about this technique the more he was impressed by it! He could hardly believe that this was a free technique.


    He immediately started training, the first stage of training involved the feint, and he did put on the ck bodysuit that the supervisor told him about. It was remarkably easy to stretch, reminding Rui of the suit the applicants were required to wear in the second round of the Martial Entrance Exam.


    "Ready? Get in position." The supervisor instructed, as he fiddled with a crystal looking object. "I''ll be freezing the suit at the right time so that you can physically feel the right timing."<sub> </sub>


    This was the part that confused Rui. How exactly would he exert control over the suit remotely? Did such technology exist? Was it possible tomunicate remotely via technology too?


    Rui nced at the crystal suspiciously, that crystal was probably esoteric matter with strange exotic effects that allowed for it transmit signals in some form or the other that triggered some mechanism in the suit that caused it to freeze up.


    "Ah make sure your center of gravity remains bnced, otherwise you''ll just fall down unbnced when I do activate the freeze." The supervisor advised.


    "Will do." Rui affirmed.


    "Alright, just execute the normal upper takedown you learnt in your Foundation technique, it''s based on that technique after all."


    Rui nodded, before ncing at a wrestling dummy in front of him. He charged, before lunging at the upper abdomen, before suddenly freezing.


    "You feel that? That particr instance in the trajectory, and that particr moment of body weight shifting? That''s the moment. You need to memorize this timing with your body, otherwise you''ll never nail it. This freezing stage is necessary to only give you a reference point for the right timing and execution of the technique. Once that''s done, you''ll get better at it with repetition of feint, trying to match the timing I showed you." The supervisor exined.N?velDrama.Org content.


    Rui nodded. "I still haven''t memorized the timing and cement yet. But this training definitely helps, I don''t think I would get the hang of the it if I had to only watch you and train by myself."


    "That''s what the Academy is for, now, let''s try it one more time. You''re going to have to repeat this maneuver many times for you topletely remember the timing and cement of the transition."


    Rui acquiesced, resuming the training. Each time he performed a legitimate upper takedown, and each time the supervisor stopped him at the moment Rui was supposed to begin the transition to the real lower takedown.


    The best part about this training was how straightforwardly the supervisor could directly convey to Rui when to stop. Without this strange technology, Rui would have had to spend a far longer time trying to even understand when the optimal timing was.


    But this training allowed him to bypass extensive tedious training. No wonder the Academy was so vaunted. He had trulye to realize just how much for Martial Art and Martial Artists the Academy did.


    The training continued for an hour, until the supervisor halted it.


    "There''s no point in spending all your time engaging in only this stage." He exined. "It''s best if you practice the feint after feeling the timing and cement of the transition, you''ll certainly fail no doubt. But we''ll get you back on the body suit next training session for an hour and then have you try and replicate it again after that hour. We''ll do these over and over until you''vepletely mastered the feint."


    Rui nodded. This certainly made sense. It was probably better to do side-by-sideparisons with his attempted timing in the transition and the urate timing as dictated by the supervisor when he wore the body suit.


    This way he could continuously get an understanding of how far he was each time as well as his rate of growth of uracy over time. These are things that he would otherwise be entirely unable to do.


    This inbination with his fearsome rate of growth, and he suspected he would master this technique much sooner than expected!


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 77 Flowing Canon

    Rui spent quite a while training the feint, unfortunately, he didn''t make as much progress as he''d hoped.


    "It''s to be expected. Usually, this technique takes a long time to fully master." The supervisor reassured.


    Once Rui''s training session ended, he consumed several rejuvenation potions before heading out, gathering his thoughts on the Mirage Dive technique


    (''It''s a powerful technique that is most effective when the target isn''t aware of it.'') Rui thought. (''Still, it can be effective even if it is known about as long as it''s used cleverly. In fact, if my opponent is aware and cautious of it, I can use their caution against them to set traps.'')


    All in all, Rui was quite satisfied by this technique. It served its purpose as bolstering his offense and grappling options quite well, better than he''d initially expected.


    "Alright the next thing I should do is head out to check out the training regimes for the remaining techniques I''ve picked." He estimated.


    The remaining techniques were Shifting Silhouette, Binding Lash and Flowing Canon.


    The technique he was most interested in next was Flowing Canon. This ability would give him more potent striking options, increasing the power of his offense. It also gave him a finisher, something he was sorelycking with Vital Pressure alone.


    "I wouldn''t have had to deal with Milliana the way I did if I had these techniques." His strategy against Milliana was not easy to find or execute, if he had these techniques against then he would have been able to pull off a better and less risky strategy.


    He made his way to the offensive striking technique training facility. This was a more familiar environment to him.


    "Flowing Canon is indeed a good pick, you''vee to the right ce." The supervisor nodded, turning her gaze to Rui. "Alright, let''s begin if you''re ready."


    Rui nodded in affirmation. "Yes mam."


    "I presume you''ve read up andprehended the principle and mechanisms behind the Flowing Canon technique?"


    "I have."


    "Alright, exin it to me in your own words."


    "Flowing Canon requires the user to build up momentum and kic energy by speeding up, then once the user approaches the target, the user converts all the built-up momentum and kic energy into striking power, delivering a blow much greater than the normal physical limits of the user. The amount of power of the technique depends on how proficient the user is at the technique and how much energy and momentum the user built up prior to the usage of technique."


    The supervisor nodded in return. "Good exnation. Before we begin talking about the training regimes and methodologies, I''ll give you a demonstration. Come"N?velDrama.Org owns this text.


    She took him over to arge punching bag, one that was greater than any he had ever seen. She nodded, before taking a distance of three meters away from the bag.


    "I could go further behind to deliver a stronger impact, but this should be enough for a show of effectivity."


    She took a wider stance with both hands balled into fists, pointing towards her target.<sub> </sub>


    "Fuuu..." She exhaled before charging.


    BAM


    Rui''s eyes widened at the sight, the strike was truly powerful.


    Therge punching swung beyond ny degrees and almost did a perfect one-eighty.


    "That''s how it looks." She exined, using one arm to stop the swinging punching bag. "That was close, anymore and I might have broken it." She murmured, ncing at the bag.


    The power of the strike resembled one of Fae''s palm attacks, what made the technique much inferior was that each time it was used required the energy to build-up momentum and energy, whereas Fae could spam this level of attacks thanks to Outer Convergence.


    "That''s impressive." Rui murmured with honesty.


    "It''ll allow you to deliver powerful strikes every time your opponent puts some distance between the two of you." She exined. "Alright, if there''s nothing else, we can begin with the training methodologies."


    Rui nodded. "Please do."


    "The technique is rtively straightforward. Building momentum just requires good old running, so that doesn''t require any training. You even use certain Apprentice-level maneuvering techniques to generate more momentum and energy so that the Flowing Canons trike ends up being more powerful." She exined. "What does require training is converting all that momentum and energy into striking."


    Rui nodded, absorbed into her words.


    "There isn''t a discrete absolute way to learn how to convert travelling momentum into striking power, it''s just something you get better at by repeating. That''s why you''ll have noticed the scroll of the technique doesn''t specify any training regimes with any equipment, we haven''t devised any training equipment or technology that can aid with this technique. There are certain instructions I can give you." She mentioned, before continuing.


    "Firstly, you need to get rid of your instinct of slowing down your travelling speed when you''re about to reach someone. This is a normal human instinct. After all, nobody wants to crash into another person and end up hurting themselves and their incidental victim. But in this case, that instinct is detrimental. Slowing down will only kill and get rid of the power you built."


    Rui nodded, this made sense. There was no point in killing momentum when using a technique that used momentum to function.


    "The first step is to not slow down with your feet when you''re about to hit your opponent. The second step is to slow down by striking your opponent."


    Rui caught onto what she meant. This was a rtively simple matter to someone who had a background in Physics.


    When a person jumped off a wall andnded on their feet, they reduced their momentum to zero by applying force on the ground when theynded. This was essentially the principle behind Flowing Canon, you begin moving very fast, then when you reach your opponent, you apply all the force on them you can and end up slowing down, by doing this you have converted all your momentum into striking power that your opponent will have to withstand.


    Just like how jumping from the top of higher walls resulted in more powerful impacts when you hit the ground, moving faster and striking your opponent with all you have toe to a stop also results in more powerful impacts. This is how Flowing Canon allowed the user to transcend their limits for a brief period of time.


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 Chapter 78 The Remaining Techniques

    "Hmmm... You don''t seem confused." The supervisor noted. "Generally, I have to exin the matter to those learning the technique."


    "Do students even care to learn about the mechanisms and principles behind techniques?" Rui chuckled.


    "Generally, no." She shrugged. "But it''s necessary. Knowing how your techniques work is vital to knowing how to use them adequately. In many a scenario, using a certain technique might not be the right answer in that scenario due to badpatibility, but you would never know why unless you understood your techniques intimately."


    Rui nodded. Techniques were like tools; their application was just as important as their quality and functioning. Even the greatest tools were worthless in the hands of one who did not know how to use them.


    "Alright, now that I''ve exined the technique more thoroughly. Let''s begin training."


    Rui nodded.


    "As I''m sure you already know if you''ve gone through the scroll, the training for this technique is extremely straightforward. You need to simply keep trying until you get the hang of it. Start by using the technique on the punching bag from three meters away. Since you''re just starting out, I''d advise not using any Apprentice-level techniques for the run-up. Also, use a simple and easy attack to begin with, once you get the hang of those you can execute moreplicated attacks."


    Rui nodded. "I''ll start with a straight punch then."


    Using momentum to amplify a straight punch was actually a popr karate technique that was frequently used in MMA, it was known as the blitz-punch. However, the Flowing Canon wasn''t limited to punch, furthermore, its efficiency far exceeded that of the blitz punch technique used in MMA, this was why it was an Apprentice-level technique.


    Rui spent the next few hours performing the same maneuver over and over again.


    "It''s better tond the attack earlier in the maneuver than you normally would." She called out. "Normally, you wouldnd a punch when you''ve fully extended your arm, or just a bit before for maximum power, but in this case,nding a bit before that will prolong the impact allowing you more time and distance to convert all your momentum into striking power."


    Rui nodded, and immediately, his blitz punch Flowing Canon technique was getting more and more powerful.


    "How long will it take me to master?" He asked, once he decided to end his training session.


    She shrugged. "This is one of those techniques that you just keep getting better and better at. There is no clear line where you can dere you''ve mastered the technique like there are for certain other techniques." She continued. "Still, once you reach a stage where you can smoothly convert most of your travelling momentum to striking power easily, I suppose you need not train any longer."


    Once his training with Flowing Canon ended. He moved onto the remaining techniques that he learnt.


    Shifting Silhouette and Binding Lash. These two remaining techniques were grappling oriented techniques Rui had decided to learn to round of his foundation. Shifting Silhouette was the least shy technique of his most recent set of techniques, it was purely defensive that allowed him to be able to cope and handle grappling attacks and disengage with them.


    Binding Lash was another technique lower flexibility but decent efficiency, allowing him to clinch iing strikes and lock them with his entire body, allowing him to potentially dislocate the joints in question or at the very least gain a huge initiative in the grappling battle.


    These two techniques along with Mirage Dive made him quite confident in his grappling solutions. Shifting Silhouette for defense, Mirage Dive for offense and Binding Lash for counter-offense.


    Furthermore, the training methodologies for the remaining two techniques was much simpler than the prior techniques. For one, they weren''t all that different from the grappling training that could be found back on Earth in martial arts like Judo, Brazilian jiu-jitsu and Sambo. Each of these martial arts were heavily, if not entirely, centered around grappling and wrestling.<sub> </sub>


    For Shifting Silhouette, he simply trained his ability to read the change in the center of gravity and how to shift his weight in exactly the correct manner needed to counter the change in the center of gravity.


    "This technique does have shorings." The supervisor warned. "It is limited against people in higher weight sses. Furthermore, this technique cannot counter takedown or throwing Apprentice-level techniques of higher efficiency by itself."


    Rui nodded. He had already grounded his expectations for the effectivity of this technique. If it could singlehandedly counter all grappling offense, it wouldn''t be free in the first ce.


    (''The more powerful defensive grappling techniques are certainly not free of cost.'') He was sure.


    He had already decided to beginpleting missions once he mastered the five techniques he had picked, he was finally confident ofpleting missions with ten Apprentice-level techniques.


    "Don''t get distracted." His supervisor instructed. "Binding Lash is a technique that requires delicate timing, you ain''t gonna nail it if you''re staring off into space like that."


    "Yes, supervisor Fayne." Rui put his aside his thoughts and began focusing on the technique.


    He was currently in the first training session of the fifth and final technique. For the past twenty-four techniques, he had been immersing himself in the training sessions of each technique, he wanted to get a taste of each technique as soon as possible.


    The reason for this was so that he could n the most optimal schedule for himself in the next few months.


    "Ready?" Supervisor Fayne asked. "Here Ie."


    DASHN?velDrama.Org content.


    He blitzed over to Rui, crossing the distance in an instantunching a straightforward punch to Rui''s face.


    POW


    Rui tried intercepting by wrapping his arms and legs around it, but much to his chagrin, he failed.


    "Hahaha!" His supervisorughed. "Nah you got it all wrong. You''re supposed to move with the strike young man, not stand in one ce. It''s pretty much identical to the stic Shift technique in that regard, it''s just now you have to simultaneously cling the attack while executing the stic Shift technique, making it much harder."


    Rui got up, rubbing his bruise before taking another stance.


    "Once again, please."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 79 Squire Sparring

    "You must be hyped for today, eh?" Kane asked Rui, smirking.


    "Well..." Rui smiled wryly. "I would be lying if I said wasn''t."


    "You better not get your ass whooped."


    "Will do."


    Rui and Kane bantered as they walked over to the sparring facility. It had been year since both of them had joined the Academy, both of them had hit their growth spurts in that period, growing several inches taller, their bodies had visibly defined muscle tone, uncharacteristic of normal young adolescents, having long shed a lot of their childish features.


    Rui''s ck hair had grown in the time that he had immersed himself in training, a testament to how he focused and invested he was. A lot of the active energy Rui had, had condensed, as if it had a direction to strive towards. Gone was the Rui that had limitless curious excitement regarding all matters rted to Martial Art, and in its stead was a calm driven young man with a temperament forged by immense perseverance and hard work.


    Kane on the other hand appeared to have grown morefortable and at peace. A year of freedom, exploration and growth alongside friends had done him good. Although he wasn''t absolutely free from the formidable influence of his powerful father, it was still enough for the boy to catch up on a lot of what he missed his entire life. Yet underneath the nonchnt temperament was a desire to grow strong enough to protect this freedom, he did not want to lose his freedom the moment he left the Academy, especially now that he had truly understood just blissful a life without shackles was like.


    "My, look who we have here." A voice called out, instantly earning a sigh from Kane.


    "Fae." He muttered in resigned peace. In the past year, he had given up on trying to shoo her away. He simply epted she would be around to pester them and had moved on.


    "Such lethargy." Fae sighed, shrugging. "Rui, to think you would join us only one year after bing Apprentice, as expected, your growth is fearsome. It took us so long to reach that stage, right Milliana?" Fae turned to the girl apanying him, earning a quiet nod in return.


    "It took me almost two years to reach that point." She murmured softly.


    "It''s because he''s a potion junkie." Kane grumbled.


    They bantered some more until they reached the facility.


    "Well, here we are." Kane announced. "Oof, she looks ready to go." He gestured at a female figure standing in the center of the biggest training ring. Rui stiffened as he felt faint pressure gazing at her.


    (''Martial Squire Kyrie.'')


    Today was a routine sparring session between thebat supervisor Squire Kyrie and the senior Apprentices. The Academy had mandated sparring sessions not only between Apprentices, but also between more developed Apprentices and Squires. Martial Apprentices who had built the foundation of their Martial Art like Rui recently were qualified to spar against Squires. He had just finished polishing up the five techniques he resolved to learn when the next Squire sparring session was announced.


    (''Martial Apprentices who haven''t built the foundation of their Martial Art simply have too little to gain from fighting Martial Squires. They''re better off learning new techniques and developing their foundation like I did rather than getting into fights so above their level they can''t consolidate anything from it.'')


    Today was his first time fighting a Martial Squire, that too one of Squire Kyrie''s caliber. From what he knew of her, she was a veteran all-rounder who served in the field for more than twenty years. Although quantity had its own quality, there was no way a bunch of kids like them were beating her under normal circumstances.


    "What strategy do you guys normally use?" Rui asked.


    "Uh..." Kane threw an awkward look at Rui. "We try basic stuff; you know; dogpiling her, distracting her and stuff, but it never works."


    "If something like that was to work on her, she would have long died in the field."


    "Yeah, but it''s better than nothing." Kane shrugged.<sub> </sub>


    "True." Fae concurred. "At our level, any strategy wee up with is guaranteed to fail."


    "Hm..." This was a fair point. There should be little to no way they should be able to outsmart her. It wasn''t a matter of intelligence, the sheer experience she had was not something young Martial Apprentices like them could outsmart.


    "Still, we should do our best." Rui insisted.


    "You have anything in mind?"


    "First, who and all are taking part?" Rui wondered, looking around. Before he could even conceive of a strategy, he needed to gather all the necessary information at hand."N?velDrama.Org content.


    "There''s Felix." Kane pointed him out.


    "Ah..." Rui remembered him, he was the kid who fought Nel a year ago.


    "And Dalen too." Fae waved at a big burly boy.


    "He was a defense-oriented Apprentice, right?" Rui asked, having sparred with him once.


    "Yeah." Kane affirmed. "He''s pretty good too."


    Rui quickly counted the participating Apprentices, and listed basic information about them in his head.


    "Eleven Martial Apprentices. three speed and maneuvering-oriented Apprentices, four offense-oriented Martial Apprentices, two defense-oriented Apprentices, one stamina-oriented Martial Apprentice and one all-rounder." Rui surmised.


    "Yeah, we don''t stand a chance." Kaneughed. "But that is the point of fighting a Squire, I guess."


    "If we were united, we''d do much better." Rui sighed. "Unfortunately, it''s unlikely we can rally everybody under a leader and fight in a more united way."


    "Martial Apprentices have too much pride and individuality to submit to others." Fae shrugged.


    "Yeah..." Rui nodded. (''Not only that, the coordination needed to execute more sophisticated strategies and tactics is too much. We can''t expect strangers to cooperate with each other well. This group is too incapable of working together.'')


    "It''s almost time." Squire Kyrie called out. "Gather around, we''ll begin soon."


    He nced back at Squire.


    (''The only advantage we have is that she''sx. She''s definitely not in abative state, nor is she going to go all out.'')


    "Hey." Kane threw him a puzzled look. "Are you really trying to win? You know that''s basically impossible right."


    "Extremely impossible." Rui helped. "Still, if you want to make the most of a fight, you better fight with determination to win." He turned back to face the Squire. "It''s not every day we get an opportunity like this, after all."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 80 A Challenge

    Rui could feel the other students weren''t as driven to win as he was. To them this was a routine impossible challenge; one that could not be won, and one that wasn''t meant to be won. Rui understood this perspective, but he still wanted to give it his all.N?velDrama.Org owns this text.


    (''How can you improve if you don''t push yourself to your limit?'') He wondered. (''And what better way to push yourself to the limit by trying to aplish what seems impossible?'')


    In order to have any chance of winning, he needed as much information as he could get. This was one of his bigger problems. He wasn''t sure what was necessary to defeat a Martial Squire. In fact, he didn''t know what made Martial Squires special in the first ce, or what separated them from Martial Apprentices. This was something even people like Fae, Kane and Milliana were not aware of despite their background.


    He had observed Martial Squires in action before. He had seen Squire Kyrie spar against the senior Apprentices before, and it just seemed like she was inhuman. Her speed, power and durability were ridiculous. Martial Apprentices like himself had already surpassed conventional human limits by virtue of having discovered their Martial Paths and having learnt Apprentice-level techniques. But that still paled inparison to Squire Kyrie.


    Rui remembered the Martial Squire he hade across when he was a little toddler. This Martial Artist was powerful enough to entirely destroy a ratherrge tree trunk with a single attack. A feat Rui found unbelievable to this day.


    (''Even with abination of Vital Pressure and Flowing Canon amplified by Bnce Direction and Parallel Walk, I don''t think I could possibly replicate that feat.'') At best, he would be able to inflict cracks, but shattering it to smithereens was out of question.


    "Take your positions." Squire Kyrie calmly ordered. Despite the others taking their stances, she merely stood there unperturbed, tying up her red hair so that it didn''t obstruct her while she was sparring.


    The Apprentices gathered around her, each taking their stance, concentrating on her. The air grew more and more tense, until finally;


    "Begin." she instructed.


    In an instant she was lunged at by three Martial Apprentices.


    WHOOSH


    All three attacks missed her as she gracefully slipped out of their attack trajectories. Her attackers didn''t give up, pursuing her. From the other side, Fae approached, preparing a barrage of palm attacks.


    Squire Kyrie didn''t try to evade this time, with nearly four people upon her, pure evasion was the less optimal choice.


    Instead she sped an iing punch from one of the offense-oriented Martial Apprentice, flipping him over her shoulder and straight into the Fae''s palm attack.


    "Crap." Fae tried stopping but the throw was too swift and well-timed. It was practically impossible to stop a full-powered and sped attack point nk.


    BAM


    The poor boy was blown away by Fae''s attack. Kyrie swiftly threw a roundhouse kick that struck the chins of her two other attackers, while ducking to avoid Fae''s attack. In just a matter of moments, she dismantled three senior Apprentices with ease.


    POW


    She checked Fae with a straight kick, opening up the distance.


    Just as she began pursuing Fae, blurry shadow in the corner of her eye caught her attention. Kane had rushed in the moment he spotted an opening.


    WHOOSH


    Kaneunched a swift jab that Kyrie narrowly, yet cleanly avoided. Kane could normally afford to take bolder risks because he was extremely difficult to hit or catch, but that did not apply when his opponent was a Martial Squire.


    Just as Kyrie turned to punish Kane, Fae, Dalen and Milliana pounced at her forcing her to pay them attention as Kane managed to evade the half-hearted strike. Soon enough every Apprentice joined the battle, picking up the ck when one of their peers was blown away or mmed to the ground by Squire Kyrie.


    All Apprentices except one.


    Rui had not moved since the battle began; he hadn''t even taken a stance. He merely stared at Squire Kyrie, as though she was the only thing he could see.<sub> </sub>


    "Hey! Do you want me to give you a written Martial invitation to join the battle or are you going to actually do something?" Kane snapped as he approached Rui, having retreated from a throw.


    "I''m an all-rounder, rather than haphazardly jumping in and trying to take her down with my jack-of-all trades fighting style, I can provide more utility if I observe her more carefully and adapt to her." he calmly exined, not taking his eye off Kyrie. "My Martial Art works better with more information."


    "Uh huh, sure thing." Kane sarcastically replied. "How''s that working out for you so far? Any insights from your Martial Majesty?"


    "She''s purposely limiting herself, but in very defined manners."


    "Right, that''s very helpful, isn''t it? I feel oh-so confident after hearing you utter those words." Kane threw a contemptuous re at Rui.


    Rui smiled wryly, meeting Kane''s eyes for the first time. "When dealing with single opponents, if the attacker engages in striking, she responds with counter-offensive measures eighty-four percent of the time. When dealing with more than three attackers, she responds with evasive maneuvers ny-two percent of the time. Her counter-offensive measures are almost entirely soft-natured, in that they use her opponent''s energy against them, rather than using her own energy. Her response against kicks are counter-offensive and her response against jabs are defensive seventy-nine percent and ny-three percent of the time, respectively. Her senses are extremely sharp, effectively functioning as irvoyance, being able to avoid attacks outside of her vision extremely well."


    "..."


    It was simple data science. By simply noting and segregating her many responses in specific circumstances, he could identify certain quirks and tendencies. This principle was the foundation for theter iterations of the VOID algorithm.


    "In short, she''s relying on her senses, as well as on precision, uracy, timing and cement instead of her Squire level power. She''s beating us all with Apprentice-level material." Rui sighed. The fact that Squire Kyrie could beat them all without using the shocking physical prowess of Martial Squires, showed just how beyond them she was. A lifetime of real-lifebat with her life on the line had honed her judgement and decision-making.


    "But does any of this help?" Kane wondered, unsure.


    "I guess we''ll find out." Rui replied, before dashing towards Squire Kyrie. The closer he came, the more his heart tingled.


    (''I know.'') He ced his hand over his chest, feeling the excited pounding that reverberated across his entire body. (''We''ve finally reached this stage.'') He thought, as he met eyes with Kyrie.


    "Done ying scarecrow?" She poked at him. Rui responded by throwing his most powerful attack at her.


    BAM


    Abination of Parallel Walk, Bnce Direction amplifying the Flowing Canon technique paired with Vital Pressure. This was what Rui struck her with.


    But s, to no effect. She intercepted the attack with her forearm, and rotated, pushing the attack away from a clean impact.


    (''She redirected the attack, as expected.'') Rui noted, before following up with a barrage of Vital Pressure strikes.


    Kyrie cleanly deflected all of them, beforeunching an incredibly swift jab at Rui''s diaphragm.


    POW


    Rui grimaced. Despite mitigating the damage with stic Shift and Acute Edge, his abdomen still stung, bruising from the blow.


    Before she could follow up to finish the job, she was attacked by three more Apprentices, diverting her attention.


    "Heh, that worked out well indeed." Kane sneered.


    Rui ignored the remark, turning to Kane.


    "I have an idea, but I''m gonna need help. You up for a challenge?"


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 81 Gentle Fury

    "I mean, sure." Kane shrugged.


    "Good, hear me out." Rui moved closer to him and began whispering his n, he knew the Squire had sharp senses, so he took all the precautions he could, to avoid letting her in on the n.


    Meanwhile, Faeunched a flurry of powerful palm attacks, each one with incredible force. Yet Kyrie managed to parry all of them handily.


    WHOOSH


    Felix lunged towards her from the other side, looking for a takedown, but she simply evaded his attack with a summersault, cleanly dodging the shooting maneuver. This resulted in Fae''s and Felix''s attacks heading towards each other.


    "Not this time!" Fae narrowly avoided Felix''s charge while diverting her attack away from Felix.


    "Looks like the same trick won''t work too many times, eh?" Kyrie noted nkly. Yet four Apprentices attempted to dogpile her from four sides, while three more were circling around ready to pounce the moment they failed.


    All eleven of them couldn''t attack her simultaneously. It was almost physically impossible, there was limited space around a person through which they could be attacked. Even if it were physically possible, it could only be achieved through practiced and rehearsed well-timed and well-ced attacks. Such a thing was, of course, impossible in this sparring session, which was why no more than five people ever attacked Squire Kyrie.


    BOOM


    Kyrie blew away thest of her attackers with blitz kick, dusting her attire as the Apprentices recuperated.


    Suddenly amotion of the other side of the ring grabbed her attention.


    "NO NO NO! That''s a stupid n!" Kane shouted at Rui. "That''s not gonna work!"


    "HUH?" Rui snarled. "You think you can do better?!"


    The two of them started bickering loudly, uncaring for their opponent, who simply gazed at them nkly before sighing.


    (''These idiots are arguing in the middle of a fight.'') She facepalmed. (''They''re the type to die young in the field. I''ll beat some sense into them.'')


    "Enough." Shemanded, earning their attention, interrupting their debate. "Seems you the two of you have much to learn. I''m going to beat that attitude right out of you."


    Kane responded by resuming the fight. He dashed at her with multiple Apprentice-level techniques, throwing speedy jabs. She responded by throwing a long straight kick into his gut, literally kicking the air out of his lungs.


    "Rushing straightforwardly towards an opponent with greater range and power than you, is a foolish move." She told him as he dropped to the floor.


    She turned her gaze towards Rui, who nced back at her with a fearful expression, earning her ire.


    (''If you''re afraid of a sparring session, you''re not cut out to be a Martial Artist.'')


    She dashed over to Rui at incredibly high speeds, throwing a barrage of punches and kicks. Rui simply tucked his tail between his legs and ran away from her as fast as he could, nearing the edge of the ring, all while still facing her, using stic Shift and Acute Edge to mitigate the damage, all while trying to open the distance between them.


    This irritated her even more. She forbade tant escapism in her sparring sessions. Her sparring sessions were meant to push the Apprentices beyond their limits, to have them get used to fighting losing battles under extreme pressure and exhaustion, yet Rui was merely running away.


    She chased him with even greater speed, reaching the edge of the ring.


    "End of line." She announced, yet Rui immediately turned around with a grappling stance standing at the very edge of the ring, making his intentions very clear.


    (''He wants to use my own momentum to throw me over the ring.'') She mused. It wasn''t an original idea, but at the very least it was better than running away. She intended to beat him up a bit before throwing him back in the center of the ring.


    ? She twisted her core, generating torque,unching an uppercut to Rui''s sr plexus.


    Just then, the slightest hint of a grin could be seen on Rui''s face. He rushed in for an upper takedown simultaneously. The uppercut reached Rui faster than the takedown reached Squire Kyrie, yet the moment her fist made contact;


    WHOOSH


    The upper takedown was an illusion, and her uppercut hit empty air.<sub> </sub>N?velDrama.Org content.


    This was the Mirage Dive technique.


    Rui grinned like a madman as he rushed in for the lower takedown, yet just as he began the shoot, Kyrie halted her missed uppercut, and swung down her elbow, aiming to crush the lower takedown. The timing was impable, sheunched the elbow almost as if she knew that the upper takedown would be a fake.


    (''Every Martial Squire is well-versed with all the foundational Apprentice-level techniques.'') She mused. This was the orthodox way one countered the Mirage Dive technique; to throw counters that could very easily be diverted to handle real takedown. Yet to her surprise;


    CLASP


    Rui grabbed onto the iing elbow hammer with all four limbs, using the Binding Lash technique, the sudden shifts in center of gravity was dangerous at the edge of the ring. But she was not impressed.


    (''A desperate attempt, the force you''re using is just barely enough to destabilize my center of gravity temporarily.'') She sighed mentally. (''You won''t be able to throw me out with just tha-!'')


    Her thoughts were interrupted as her senses detected an attack moving towards her incredibly fast, in just an instant, it had crossed almost all of the distance and was about to strike her.


    Kane was moving so fast that every Apprentice, including Rui, could not even see him!


    This was the same technique that Kane had used in his fight with Fae! It was an incredibly high-efficiency Apprentice-level technique with extremely low flexibility; it could only be used in one way. But in that one scenario, when used, it was extremely potent, reaching the very pinnacle of what Apprentice-level techniques could offer.


    In the span of several milliseconds, he had crossed the distance.


    Yet Kyrie was able to perceive him, such was the prowess of a Martial Squire. But she had limited herself to peak Apprentice-level speed and power. Furthermore, Rui had brought her to the very edge of the ring, and had destabilized her center of gravity with the Binding Lash technique, Kane had aimed to strike her at that very moment. Under these extenuating circumstances, she could only do so much while holding back almost all of her power and speed.


    Ordinarily, she would have cleanly redirected him back into the ring, but with her center of gravity destabilized towards the edge of the ring, she was remarkably off-bnce. It was almost an incredible coincidence that Kane had chose to strike her at the moment.


    (''Or it was all nned from the very start.'') She realized with a tinge of shock.


    Just as Kane was about to strike her, time slowed down from her perspective, she nced at both the boys, realizing they had coordinated this from the very start.


    From the very start, the arguments between them, and Kane''s defeat at her hands immediately after were to take her attention away from Kane and focus only on Rui. Then Rui went through an borate and convoluted course of actions all with end goal of hampering her defenses by either locker her body partially, or destabilizing her gravity, all so that Kane could use that incredibly potent ability to knock both him and the Squire outside the ring.


    This was the only strategy Rui had been able to think of that wasn''t an utter failure. Kane''s technique was their very best chance, yet it had too many ws. It had low flexibility making it extremely predictable, it required preparatory stances, its rigid linearity meant that Kyrie would normally be able to easily redirect or knock him out or use his own momentum against him with delicate finesse.


    Rui''s one and only goal was to mitigate these shorings to give Kane a better chance ofnding that technique sessfully. He was fully prepared to be knocked out with Kyrie if that was what was needed to win.


    He knew Kyrie wouldn''t knock him out of the ring,l; this was one of her policies after all. He also knew she would chase after him aggressively, just as he needed her to, when she saw him tantly running away. She punished those who tantly ran away from all confrontation with a painful beating, this was to ensure students didn''t do that.


    All of these were quirks and patterns Rui had observed from her in the initial part of the battle, as well as her own instruftions and rules. Allowing to create a n that wasn''t aplete dud.


    (''You did well to push me this far.'') She smiled, closing her eyes. (''Gentle Fury Style: Whirlwind Tempest.'')


    WHOOSH


    All three of them disappeared for a moment, a huge gust of wind washed over the bewildered onlookers. They seldom witnessed such raw speed and power!


    In the very next moment, Kane and Ruinded in the center of the ring, unconscious at Kyrie''s feet. The other Martial Apprentices looked on with awe and shock.


    "These two won''t be getting up any time soon." Kyrie announced. "Let''s put an end to today''s session just a little early this time." She turned and walked away, having ended the sparring session, only confusing everybody even more.


    "Er, what just happened?" Fae couldn''t help but ask.


    Kyrie halted, turning to meet her eyes.


    "...They forced me to use a Squire-level technique from my Martial Art."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 82 Martial Concerns

    "Hm, interesting tale indeed..." Headmaster Aronian stroked his beard, as he skimmed through the report before him. As the headmaster, he had received a variety of reports from the various branches, wings and departments of the Academy. This was one such report he had received from a Squire instructor.


    "To think two fourteen-year-old boys would be able to force you, the vaunted Berserker of Hajin, to use a Squire-level technique..." Headmaster Aronian nced up at the figure standing across the table. "Truly a fascinating tale, isn''t it, Kyrie?"


    "I was quite shocked myself. Those two boys are truly remarkable." Kyrie remarked, concurring.


    "Kane Arrancar, son of the legendary Devil, is a prodigy who reached Apprentice at the age of eleven..." Headmaster Aronian continued. "And Rui Quarrier who became an Apprentice at the age of fourteen... These two have bright futures ahead of them."


    He ced Kyrie''s report down, before looking at their profiles and personal data. Although Kane was quite interesting and promising, Rui was truly fascinating.


    "Explorer in three months and then Martial Apprentice in two months. And then he proceeds to learn ten techniques in the next seven months and is able to fight well enough to force you to use a Squire-level technique..." Headmaster surmised. "Not even his absurd tolerance for mental and physical rejuvenation potions can exin all of this. Even his extremely high IQ cannot exin how he discovered his Martial Path this quickly." He set down the documents.


    Discovering one''s Martial Path was a long explorative and introspective journey. It was regarded as the most important and profound of breakthroughs. It wasn''t a matter of talent, no one should be able to discover their Martial Path as quickly as Rui did. The reason for his breakthrough was because of his past life, something that unbeknownst to the headmaster.


    "Hoho." He chuckled. "These two shine too brightly, the Martial Sects will not let go of them easily. Particrly the Lightning Sect for young master Kane. In fact, I wouldn''t be surprised if Kane Arrancar will be approached by them soon, or perhaps it has happened already..."


    Squire Kyrie''s eyes sharpened at those words. "Headmaster, surely the Martial Sects would not vite the uses set by Grandmaster; His Honour Sage Damian."


    Headmaster Aronian chuckled at her naivette. "Not openly, no, and not within the Academy premises." He continued. "But I would imagine they might take covert measures."


    Squire Kyrie narrowed her eyes at those words.


    "Hm?" Headmaster Aronian caught her reaction. "Do you dislike these matters?"


    "I do." She shook her head. "The students may be Martial Apprentices, but they''re ultimately children. Entreaching them in the politics of the Martial Union is no different from exploitation."


    "Quite the distaste." Headmaster Aronian chuckled. "The Sects would not look kindly upon those words, you might be used of nder if word got out."


    "I merely stated the truth."<sub> </sub>N?velDrama.Org owns this text.


    "Well, you''re fortunate that I''m the only one who heard it." Headmaster smiled. "After all, Martial Masters cannot have been members of a Martial Sect or a Martial Faction within the prior ten years of their candidacy for headmaster. I''ve religiously avoided Martial Sects, which is why I was anointed as the headmaster of the Mantian branch of the Martial Academy by His Honour."


    Squire Kyrie remained silent.


    "However, Kane Arrancar might have a bit of a rough time ahead..." Headmaster Aronian mused. "As the son of His Honour Sage Arrancar, he will feel immense pressure to join the Martial Sect of his father; the Fire Sect, yet as a speed and evasive-maneuvering-oriented Martial Artist, he would most certainly have the most affinity with the Lightning Sect."


    "What about Rui Quarrier, Headmaster?" Kyrie felt the need to ask.


    "Hmmm..." Headmaster Aronian pondered. "As an all-rounder, he doesn''t have any strong affinity to any particr Martial Sect." He paused, before continuing. "Yet, with that prodigious mind and learning speed, as well as the peculiar Type X nature of his style, I''m sure every Martial Sect would mor for him."


    "Considering this, would it not be wise to educate them about these matters immediately so that they can be better prepared?" Kyrie inquired, concerned.


    "His Honour the Grandmaster has forbidden such measures." Headmaster Aronian shook his head. "He is strongly against inculcation of political education within the Martial Academy. These are no more than stains and impurities to the purpose of the Martial Academies in His Honour''s view. The Martial Academy is an institution whose one and only purpose is to produce Martial Apprentices and Martial Squires, nothing more and nothing less."


    Squire Kyrie sighed inwardly, biting back a retort. It was one thing to express distaste to Martial politics. It was another thing to express disrespect to a legendary Martial Sage. Even Headmaster Aronian alone was a Martial Artist two whole realms above her, thankfully his easygoing personality made interactions with himfortable, otherwise he could apply immense pressure on her mind through his concentration alone, if he wanted.


    "Well, I''ve received your report, good work, keep an eye on those two and continue reporting. You may leave." Headmaster Aronian dismissed her.


    "Yes headmaster." She bowed before taking her leave.


    Headmaster Aronian stroked his beard as the door closed, deep in thought. The fact that that two Martial Apprentices could force a Squire to use a Squire-level technique of their Martial Art, particrly a Martial Squire as powerful and experienced as Squire Kyrie, was not a small matter. The Martial Sects hungered and lusted for fresh blood. Although His Honour Grandmaster Sage Damian had forged an ord between the Martial Academies and the Sects that prohibited inculcation and indoctrination of Martial students of the Martial Academy into their Martial Sects, this was not absolute. Although Martial Sage Damian was a powerful and influential Martial Sage, the dominant Martial Sects were led by equally powerful Martial Sages.


    The almost unprecedented incident of two fourteen-year-old Martial Apprentices forcing Kyrie to use a Squire-level technique through abination of powerful techniques and brilliant tactics was sure to reach their ears and direct their attention towards his Academy.


    "Well, nothing bad should happen. But still... I hope they don''t cross any lines."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 83 Awakening

    Rui opened his eyes, groggy and disoriented. As his vision proceeded to unblur itself, a white ceiling came into view.


    "An unfamiliar ceiling." Rui muttered, taking the opportunity to utter amon trope he heard in anime, before chuckling. His head throbbed as he got up, struggling to remember what happened.N?velDrama.Org owns this text.


    (''The spar with Squire Kyrie.'') He realized. (''Thest thing I remember is Kane using his that Apprentice-level technique...'') He closed his eyes, as he struggled to remember.


    (''And then I woke up here... I see. We failed, and miserably too.'') He chuckled self-deprecatingly. Although he knew the chances of sess were low, it still wasn''t a pleasant oue.


    Rui''s eyes caught something to his right, he turned only to be surprised.


    "Kane."


    Kane was still unconscious, however he looked perfectly fine physically, lying in a bed not too far away.


    "They must have healed us up and allowed us to rest and wake up."


    Rui sighed getting back to bed. He immersed himself in his thoughts peacefully as his headache slowly subsided.


    (''I wonder what she did to us.'') To be able to knock both of them out and hospitalize them in the circumstances she was in was truly amazing. He just didn''t know whether it was possible with Apprentice-level prowess.


    Could any Apprentice really replicate her feat in those circumstances?


    (''Probably not.'') He felt. Sure, both Rui and Kane were young. But Kane''s technique was surely somewhat close to the pinnacle of Apprentice-level as far as efficiency went. It has a handful of rather severe shorings in general, which Rui had done a pretty decent job of mitigating. Yet for them to be crushed despite that, Rui wasn''t sure it was possible for an Apprentice to replicate that.


    (''Which means... She must have used Squire-level battle prowess.'') Rui concluded. That would exin how they got crushed instantly. She must have used a Squire-level technique of some sort, allowing to dispel the threat and knock them out.


    In a way, Rui felt a bit happy that they were knocked out. If Kyrie knocked them out, then it must have been necessary for her to do that. She never knocked out the students in these sparring sessions, only pushing them to their physical limits. The fact that she knocked them out, meant they had managed to push her farther than she had in any previous sparring session.


    Although a loss was still a loss, knowing this made the loss much more tolerable. He even felt a measure of pride well up.


    "Ugh..." Kane woke up with a disoriented expression.


    Rui waited a few seconds for him to process himself and his surroundings, before calling out to him.


    "Hey."


    Kane turned towards him with squinted eyes.


    "You look like shit." Rui chuckled. "How are you feeling?"


    "Where are we?" Kane wondered.


    "Medical wing."


    "Huh..."


    "We were knocked out during the fight with Kyrie." He exined. "Do you remember what happened?"


    "I recall using sh Burst at the timing you told me to..." He continued, trying to recall. "...But after that, I dunno."


    "Hmmm... She must have knocked both of us nigh-simultaneously then." Rui surmised. "Definitely a Squire-level technique."<sub> </sub>


    "That''s crazy."


    "Right?" Rui grinned.


    Suddenly, a nurse walked into the medical room they were in, taking note of their awakening.


    "Apprentice Rui Quarrier and Apprentice Kane Arrancar. You''re awake. Both of you were rendered unconscious during a sparring session." She dutifully informed. "You have made almost full recoveries physically, however we''ll be performing a few check-ups and examinations."


    "How long have been unconscious?" Rui asked, he still didn''t know how long it had been since the sparring session ended.


    "It''s been a little over six hours since you were brought to the medical wing." She replied as she prepared some medical instruments and other items.


    She proceeded to wear a stethoscope-like instrument, and ced one end of the instrument on Kane''s chest. "Breathe deeply." She instructed.


    A few more checkups and lines of questioning of various sorts followed until she moved onto Rui, performing them on him as well.


    "Both of you are fit to be discharged." She told them. "The headaches will persist for anywhere between a few hours or a day. Be sure to take rest for a day until you have recovered fully. If the headache persists beyond a day then be sure to revisit the medical wing."


    After a bit of paperwork, Rui and Kane walked together towards the Apprentice dormitory.


    "Next time we see instructor Kyrie, we should ask her about what actually happened." Rui said. "It''s a shame she isn''t always free and avable in the sparring center like the Apprentice Sparring head instructor was."


    "She is a Martial Squire after all, and a particrly powerful one." Kane replied.


    "Heh, hearing that just makes getting knocked out by her all the more worth it." Rui smirked.


    "That''s a weird fetish, you Martial pervert."


    "Shut up." Rui retorted lightly.


    They bantered a bit before Kane remembered something. "Oh yeah, I''ve been meaning to ask. Are you going back home for the winter break?"


    Rui''s ears perked when he heard that. "It''s that time of the year already?" He wondered. He''d begun to lose track of time very easily once he had joined the Academy, especially since rejuvenation potions made it difficult to keep track of the passage of days.


    "Yeah, it''s in three days. You going?"


    "Absolutely, I haven''t seen them in quite a while." Rui had gone back home once after he had be an Explorer, although it was a brief visit. He didn''t want to miss any chance of seeing his family.


    "I thought you intended to get into missions the moment you formed the basic foundation of your Martial Art." Kane noted.


    "Yeah but, missions can be done any time. I can''t see my family any time." He replied. "I can just begin missions when I get back. I won''t be able to see them during the break if I begin doing missions now."


    "I see."


    "What about you?" Rui asked.


    "Psshht, hell no!" Kane eximed. "In fact, I''m going to take a longer mission so I have a good excuse for not going back!" He dered, earning Rui''sughter.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 84 Home

    "Are you sure you don''t wannae with me?" Rui asked. "I''d love to introduce you to my family."


    "Not this time." Kane shook his head. "I''ll be approached and summoned if my family finds out I returned from the Academy."


    "I see, that''s a shame." Rui sighed. "Another time then." Earning a nod from Kane.


    "It''s a shame I have to return to my family too, otherwise I would have epted the offer in his stead." Faemented.


    "He didn''t invite you." Kane grumbled, sparking a round of bickering between them, earning Rui''sughter at the sight.


    "Milliana, you''re headed back to your town as well, right?" Rui turned to her.


    She nodded passively. "It''s four hours away from here, so I intend to leave immediately."


    The four of them chatted for a bit longer until it was time for those returning to disperse.


    "See you guys when I get back." Rui exchanged farewells with everyone before setting out on foot. He didn''t have any money on him, but that wasn''t a problem. Even without techniques, with just the physical training from his foundational stage, the journey was no longer something that could strain his stamina.


    The town of Hajin was a lot less chaotic than he recalled it. One of the reasons for that was thest time he actually travelled around was during the start of the new Academic year. What was a bustling, loud and busy ce in his memories had be a much more rxed environment.


    "Man, it''s been such a long time since I stepped outside the Academy." Rui said in delight, taking in the atmosphere as he made his way home. The Academy had a lot of open space, but it still could not substitute actual society.


    It was a nostalgic feeling, reminding Rui of when his university days. He''d felt simrly back then, although to a greater degree because the universities of sciences back on Earth were nowhere near asrge as the Martial Academies.


    The further Rui walked away from the core of the town, the more scarce grew the poption and infrastructure. Once he exited the districts on the outskirts of the town, the atmosphere grew serene quiet. Gone were the markets, and themercial hubs and the businesses. Instead, he was greeted with farnds and small patches of forests with a handful of small vige-like settlements scattered across. Winters were harsh in the Mantian region, especially since this region was among the northern most regions of the Kandrian Empire, which was a country that was already deep into the northern hemisphere of the, making it quite cold in the very first ce.


    The country had sets of crops that could only be grown during Winter, currently Rui was walking past these farnds and settlements.


    <o>,m He paused, when a familiar path entered his sights, smiling as a rush of nostalgia and excitement creeped into his emotions. He picked up the pace running until a familiar house entered his sights.</o>N?velDrama.Org owns this text.


    "They''ve made a few renovations sincest time" He noted happily. The Quarrier Orphanage benefitted greatly from its adult caretakers, each taking contributing to the ie of the Orphanage that allowed it to sustain itself.


    "This must be courtesy of big brother Julian." He smiled knowingly. Julian had gotten a well-paying upation as an apprentice schr in the research and development department of the Kandrian Institute of Sciences. Knowing him, he must have insisted in using generous portions of his ie for maintenance of orphanage.


    Rui intended to surprise his family, but even before he reached the gate.


    "Rui...?"


    He nced up towards the balcony, recognizing both the voice and the appearance instantly.


    "RUI YOU''RE BACK!" She squealed with joy.


    "Alice!" He chuckled, waving at her vigorously. She ran from the balcony enthusiastically running down the stairs, announcing to the entire orphanage at the top of her voice that Rui had returned. Even as he reached the gate, the front door was already open.


    "RUIIII" She dove at him with such force and energy he felt like he was hit by an Apprentice-level technique!


    "When d-did you master Flowing Canon?" He muttered gasping for air from her bear hug.<sub> </sub>


    "Huh?"


    "Nothing nothing. Forget it. How have you been Alice? I''ve missed you so much." He returned her embrace in earnest.


    "Oh you! We''ve been doing just fine. Come in, everyone''s waiting for you" She let go of him, gesturing him inside, enthusiastically.


    He nced at the door, and several small heads poked through their eyes sparkling with innocent excitement.


    "Big brother Rui!"


    "You''re back!"


    They chirped as they ran towards him with enthuse and excitement, gathering around him for hugs and lifts.


    Rui smiled at the children, trying to return as much affection as he could, struggling to return fifteen arms with of hugs with his own.


    "Alright alright!" Heughed as they swarmed him. "I''ll give all of you lifts, so don''t worry!"


    "Rui." A soft voice called out to him, instantly wringing his attention away, towards itself.


    "Mom..." Rui squeezed out, feeling sentimental. She walked over, cupping his face in her hands, ruffling his hair, before pulling him in for a hug. "You''ve grown so much taller."


    "Yeah..." He replied softly.


    "Wee back home, my child. We''ve missed you so much." She said, squeezing him in her embrace. Rui wanted to respond, but didn''t trust himself to not sob. His throat felt choked with emotion upon seeing his mother after so long.


    "Come in, lunch will be ready soon." She said, pulling him by his hand.


    Everyone gathered to therge living room, hugging him and embracing him, remarking about his growth spurt and his long hair. It took a whole twenty minutes for the excitement to die down, finally allowing him to rx with a soothing cup of tea.


    "Maaan a hot cup of tea in the dead of winter really hits the spot." He rxed as the beverage warmed him.


    "Congrattions on bing a Martial Apprentice Rui." Julian gently congratted. "You''ve achieved the first step of your dream."


    "Thanks Julian, how''s things been going on with you?"


    "Better than I could have hoped, I have a lot to talk to you about." He replied, intriguingly.


    "Oh? Let''s hear it then."


    Julian shook his head. "No no. I''m not the first Martial Artist of the Quarrier Orphanage. If anybody has a story to tell..." He smiled. "It''s you, isn''t it?"


    Instantly, everybody''s eyes turned to Rui, fixating on him like owls.


    "Alright alright." Rui chuckled. "Let''s see... Where do I begin?"


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 85 Insight Into The Path

    N?velDrama.Org owns this text.


    Rui recounted his time at the Academy. Describing the various training regimes and sessions he went through in the physical and Martial foundation stages that overall constituted the Foundational Stage. He went onto narrate his times in the Exploration Stage and ultimately went on to talk about his Martial Apprentice breakthrough and his Martial Path.


    "To think you discovered your Martial Path in a dream." Julianmented, once the excitement died down a bit, leaving them alone. "Quite the fairy tale-like story, isn''t it?"


    "It was a magical moment." Rui affirmed.


    "The discovery of a Martial Path... I''m not unfamiliar with it." Julianmented. "In fact, some of the research projects I''m involved in are actually about the phenomenon of discovering one''s Martial Path."


    "Oh?" Rui''s interest immediately perked. "Are you allowed to tell me that?"


    The Kandrian Institute of Sciences were royal institutes, meaning the research and development that urred was property of the Kandrian Royal Family. He didn''t think that such research was avable in the public domain.


    "The projects I''m involved have extremely low confidentiality grades. As long I don''t tantly sell the actual data collected, I''m not viting my agreement with the Institute. It''s the kind of project that is purely an intellectual pursuit with no real-world applications you see. Talking about it in a general sense isn''t prolematic."


    "I see..." Rui pondered about the information that Julian provided. He certainly wasn''t aware that the research and development department of the Kandrian Institute of Sciences graded research and development projects in regards to confidentiality. "What research have you worked on, generally speaking?"


    "Part of it has to do with the psychological and neurological impacts of the Martial Apprentice breakthrough on the Martial Artist." Julian replied. "This was also the area of research of my thesis paper in my final year you see."


    "Interesting." Ruimented. "So, what exactly did your research yield in so far as the changes and impacts of the discovery of the Martial Path?"


    ? "We discovered that the discovery of one''s Martial Path causes an increase in cognition, reaction speed, kic vision and reflexes, as well as body-eye coordination, to put it simply." Julian exined.


    "Sounds about right." Rui nodded. When he broke through to Martial Apprentice having discovered his Martial Path, he experienced a great overall boost in several mental parameters and attributes. "I did grow much stronger once I became a Martial Apprentice."


    "It''s not as straightforward to that though." Julian replied. "We made some very odd discoveries about these enhancements, you see. For one, the data reveals that the degree of these enhancements is not static and unchanging, but rather variable. The superhuman boosts you gained are constantly changing."


    "Huh?" Rui squinted in confusion when he heard that. The mental boosts he gained from bing a Martial Apprentice were constantly changing? That sounded like an absurd proposition to Rui at first inspection.


    "What do you mean?" He asked, waiting for further rification.


    "We discovered that the superhuman augments provided by the Martial Path are in flux, they''re variables rather than constants." Julian sipped his tea, before proceeding. "In some situations, Martial Apprentices demonstrate superhuman mental attributes and parameters, but in others, they''re perfectly normal human beings."


    This made more sense to Rui, though he wasn''t sure if he observed this in himself. These wereplicated phenomena that were picked up through proper empirical research, it was impossible for him to discover these things by himself through introspection.<sub> </sub>


    "Let us take three scenarios, and this is actually a simplified version of some of the experiments and surveys we conducted." Julian continued. "Let us take scenario A, where a Martial Apprentice is engaged inbat. Scenario B, where a Martial Apprentice is engaging in time-pressure manualbor tasks. Scenario C where a Martial Apprentice is participating in a time-pressure math exam. Do you think the superhuman reaction and processing time of the Martial Apprentice will be the same in all three scenarios and activities?"


    "Hmmm..." Rui pondered. "Shouldn''t it?"


    It seemed intuitively obvious to him that this should be the case. Why would these mental and neurological parameters change? But given what Julian said earlier, he was probably wrong.


    "It does change, that is what our research revealed." Julian answered, meeting Rui''s expectations.


    "Interesting." Ruimented.


    "The mental processing speed of the Martial Apprentice is Scenario A;bat, was quite superhuman.


    The mental processing speed in Scenario B; time-pressure manualbour tasks, was also superhuman but less than scenario A, much lesser, in fact." Julian continued. "As for Scenario C... The time-pressure math exam... We found something quite surprising."


    "Oh?"


    "The mental processing time of a Martial Apprentice in scenario C was not superhuman at all. It was perfectly normal and average. As though these were normal humans and not Martial Apprentices."


    Rui understood the implications of the data immediately, having been an empirical researcher himself. "So basically, the activity that a Martial Apprentice is engaging is the influencing factor of how well a Martial Apprentice performs. Furthermore, it seems that the closer to actualbat that activity is, the more superhuman a Martial Apprentice is. So the mental performance parameters increase the closer tobat the activity is, forming a sort of spectrum, am I right?"


    Julian smiled. "You understood immediately, as expected of my little brother."


    Rui grew absorbed as he pondered about the implications of the data. It was truly fascinating. Martial Apprentices performed best, as far as mental performance parameters went, when they engaged inbat, sub-optimally when they engaged in physical tasks, and least optimally when they performed tasks that had nothing to do withbat.


    "Scenario B was a time-pressure physical scenario. Although it was notbat, it was not too far frombat and probably shared some simrities. Which is why the Martial Apprentice showed sub-optimal results, but not zero results." Rui murmured. "But a math test is too far frombat, hence the Martial Apprentice performed least optimally. This shows a causation between the closeness of the activity tobat, and a Martial Apprentice''s performance parameters, assuming all other feasible variables were controlled for."


    "They were." Julian assured. "I''m impressed by your insights into this, even though you have no experience with empirical research, quite remarkable." He threw Rui an odd look.


    Rui was too absorbed by the prior revtions to try and justify this. The information Julian revealed implied that the neurological phenomenon caused by the discovery of the Martial Path were dormant when Martial Apprentices did things that were further away frombat.


    As for exactly why and how, Rui was able toe up with a few bare-bones hypotheses and theories based on his scientific background!


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 86 Warning

    The rtionship between the brain and the mind was extraordinarilyplicated, andrgely not understood. Back on Earth, it was clear the mind was housed within the brain, and to some degree, the structure of the mind could be mapped over the structure of the brain. However, it was much more difficult to make more progress than that. Centuries of research in the fields of neurology, psychology and philosophy of mind had yet to uncover the depths of the human mind.


    Furthermore, Rui possessed only a shallow understanding of neurology. He was not equipped to fully understand the phenomena associated with the discovery of the Martial Path.


    However, even the shallow knowledge he came to possess allowed him to make some conjectures.


    The brain could be divided into three sections; The cerebrum, the cerebellum and the medu oblongata. The cerebrum could further be divided into the Frontal Lobe, Temporal Lobe, ipital Lobe and Parietal Lobe.


    Each of the sections and sub-sections of the brain were associated with and caused different neurological phenomena.


    The Frontal Lobe was responsible analysis and judgement, morality, personality, social regtion, emotional regtion and motor functions.


    The Temporal Lobe was responsible for cognition,nguage, hearing, speech and memory.


    The Parietal Lobe was responsible for recognizing sensation, body position and objects, sense of time and space, and association between functions of other Lobes.


    The ipital Lobe was responsible for Vision and the processing of visual information.


    The Cerebellum handled bnce and muscr coordination.


    The Medu Oblongata was responsible for the regtion of heartbeat, respiration, body temperature.


    Out of all these functionalities, the Cerebellum, the ipital lobe and parietal lobe were sections of the brain that had the highest relevance tobat! The remaining sections were not involved with the general neurological phenomena associated withbat.


    Thus, Rui strongly suspected that the permanent superhuman boosts provided by discovering the Martial Path must have altered these three portions of the brain.


    A time-pressure math test does not the three lobes as much asbat or a time-pressure physical activity. Therefore, Martial Apprentices were no different from normal humans in this particr.


    <o>,m In conclusion, Rui strongly suspected that only portions of the human brain and mind, relevant tobat, evolved when one discovered one''s Martial Path.</o>


    Any activities that did not involve these portions of the human brain ended up being ordinary, activities relevant to these portions of the human brain ended up being extraordinary performances, depending on how relevant to the threebat-rted portions of the brain.


    This would sinctly exin why the performances of Martial Apprentices were variable and changing!


    "I think it''s possible that the discovery of the Martial Path, enhances only some portions of the brain, those portions that are relevant tobat." Rui conveyed his thoughts to Julian.


    "That''s one of our leading theories." Julian nodded, with a look of surprise. "Unfortunately, it is difficult to estimate which portions of the brain are responsible for which particr mental functions, you see."


    Rui nodded. The knowledge of brain structure that he inherited from Earth was confirmed after countless CT and MRI scans. This was something Rui suspected the medical researchers of the Kandrian Empire might not be able to replicate, a suspicion that Julian more or less confirmed.


    "Another research project revealed that Martial Apprentices performing two tasks simultaneously could have drastically differing quality of performances." Julian informed, continuing. "We performed the equivalent of having Martial Apprentices perform scenario A and scenario C simultaneously. And we found out that even when they''re performed the tasks simultaneously, the performances of the two tasks where heaven and earth apart. This suggests that it is not the brain itself that is changing, just the portions of the brain relevant to each tasks."


    Rui nodded; this further corroborated his theory. It''s a shame he couldn''t divulge the information he knew about the human brain, Julius had once jokinglye very close to discovering Rui''s secret. He was incredibly intelligent. There was no way Rui would be able to fool him.


    "The research you''re working on, is it all centered around Martial Art?" Rui asked, curious.


    "Not all, no, but arge portion of it." Julianmented. "Another field I partially specialize in is esoteric technology. Particrly, I''m interested in potions."


    "Potions are fascinating." Rui offered.


    "They are. I cannot divulge any data in regards these projects, but my focus lies on temporary augmentation." Julian exined.<sub> </sub>


    "Interesting..." Rui murmured.


    "The reason I brought it up, is because I wanted to warn you." Julian''s expression became more solemn. By this time, they had a bit of privacy as their nerdy discussion drove away the bored children and the adults returned to their duties. Julian saw fit to bring up a matter that was clearly touchy, causing the atmosphere to be tense.


    "What do you mean?" Rui asked, expressionless.


    "This is something you''ll learn eventually, I''m sure. But it''s better learnt sooner thanter." Julian continued, turning to look Rui straight in the eyes. "Rui, potions are not to be underestimated."


    "Hm?" Rui threw a confused look at Julian.


    "You are aware of the friction between the Royal Family and Kandrian Martial Union, I presume?" Julian asked, broaching a dangerous topic without hesitation.Belongs to ? n0velDrama.Org.


    "Somewhat, nothing too specific though." Rui narrows his eyes.


    "Have you ever wondered how the Royal Family is able to rival the Martial Union to some degree, despite having nowhere near as many Martial Artists?" Julian asked.


    Rui remained silent. It was a well-known fact that an overwhelming majority of Martial Artists of the Kandrian Empire were part of the Martial Union. If so, how was the Royal Family not inferior to the Martial Union as far as military power was concerned?


    "Numbers... Technology... Other mitigating factors." Rui murmured in response.


    "What technology, specifically?" He asked.


    Rui caught on to his implication. "You mean temporary-augmentation potions?"


    Julian nodded. "These potions temporarily amplify physical and mental abilities to the point of allowing normal humans to fight Martial Apprentices, Martial Squires and even Seniors from what I am aware of."


    Rui''s expression grew shocked! Julian straightforwardly dropped a bombshell.


    "I suspect that higher grade augmentation potions can evenbat Martial Masters, or dare I say; Martial Sages." Julian exined. "Unfortunately, Ick clearance to have ess to these research and development projects, so I cannot confirm this."


    Rui stared at Julian, speechless.


    "This information is partially confidential. Most certainly not public, once you reach a higher status economically and politically, you''ll naturally learn about this." Julian exined, expressionless. "But it would take you far too much time to reach that status."


    Rui realized where Julian was going with this. "You wanted me to be aware and wary of these potions."


    Julian nodded. "These potions are one of the ways the Royal Family is able to stand up shoulder-to-shoulder to the Martial Union. If you choose to join the Martial Union, you''ll inevitably oppose the Royal Family as far as allegiance goes." He exined. "You need to be aware of the tools of your opponents."


    "There is no way you telling me this isn''t in some vition of your position as an apprentice schr." Rui noted, concerned.


    Julian smiled gently. "You''re my brother."


    Rui felt emotions choking his throat. His brother had vited his oath and taken a risk, all for his sake.


    "Thanks... It means a lot." He managed to squeeze out.


    Julian shook his head.


    "You would have done the same."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 87 Winter

    The two conversed some more about lighter topics, as they joined the others for lunch. Julian was particrly interested about the breakthrough.


    "So, what exactly does it actually feel like?" Julian asked out of curiosity.


    "Like the biggest epiphany possible in the human experience." Rui replied. "For a moment you no longer care about anything in this world. You experience true happiness and satisfaction, and your mind has absolute rity."


    "Hmmm..." Julian hummed, engrossed in Rui''s exnation. "Remarkable, really."


    "Hey! Pay attention to your food, you haven''t even touched it yet!" Myra, the head cook of the Orphanage, insisted. She had always been quite strict about all matters regarding food and meals.


    "Yes yes." Ruiughed.


    "You''re as strict as ever." Julian sighed with a resigned smile.


    Rui proceeded to inquire about the Orphanage affairs, wanting to catch up on having missed a whole year of their lives.


    "You must have seen the fully-fixed roof when you came right?" Lashara asked, while showing an affectionate smile to Julian. "Julian was the one who paid for all of that."


    "It wasn''t that big a deal." Julian smiled modestly.


    "Not that big a deal? You''re too humble." Rui chuckled.


    The Orphanage was able to fix the infrastructure that needed the most amount of maintenance, while also able to expand its housing capacity a bit, being able to in more children.


    "There have been far more children out on the streets these days." Lashara sighed with resigned mncholy. "I''ve wanted to do something for these children ever since."


    "How did all these children end up this way?" Rui wondered.


    "Part of it is because there naturally aren''t enough caretakers. Another part of it is..." Lashara''s voice trailed off.


    "...Is?" Rui tilted his head.


    "Another part of it is because of a series of child trafficking busts." She sighed, as an even more macabre expression creeped onto her face.


    Rui''s eyes widened, before sharpening. He recalled when he was almost abducted by a random man who spoke about selling him like he was no more than goods in demand. This was in one of the outer districts of Hajin. Was Hajin home to an underground ck market of trafficking?


    "Huff... Let''s not talk about such matters while eating." Lashara sighed. "I''m d that increased housing capacity has allowed us to take in more children."<sub> </sub>


    Rui nodded. The adolescent children from when he was an infant had all be full-fledged adults, although a lot of them no longer resided in the Quarrier Orphanage, several had chosen to stick with the Orphanage, supporting in whatever way they could. This meant there were hands on deck, allowing for more children to be taken care of.


    The number of children that could be cared for by the orphanage was constrained by the number of caretakers present, the housing capacity and funds at hand. Julian singlehandedly increased thetter two with his high-ie upation.


    "By the way Rui." Nina drew his attention. "Will you be staying for the Winter Festival? It''s day after tomorrow, after all."


    "Ah..." Rui recalled. "I''ll be there for the first day, I''ll have to return unfortunately."


    The Kandrian Winter Festival was a nation-wide festival. It was celebrated in some form or the other across the entirety of the nation,sting three days.


    "Are we going to visit the outer districts this time as well?" Rui asked.


    The Orphanage took the luxury of taking the adolescents to the outer districts where they could visit the festival fares and events.


    "We were nning on going on thest day, as usual..." Lashara paused. "But since you won''t be here for thest day, we''ll go for the first day."


    "Thanks, that works well for me." Rui nodded. "I would hate to miss the outing."


    Going with the family to enjoy the festival was a rare asion, and one that Rui cherished the most. He thought back to his memories of the festival. This was just around the time where the snowfall was at its most pleasant. It was substantial, yet not overwhelming. Just the perfect amount for it to be enjoyed, before the citizens prepared for the iing harsher snowfall and potentially even blizzards if they misfortunate enough.


    "Do we have all out supplies for this winter?" Rui asked, pondering aloud.


    The Orphanage was too disconnected from the hearnd of the town of Hajin. Winters could be absolutely deadly if they were not prepared. Every year for a period of two weeks, roughly, the snowfall peaked, reaching to incredible heights, and extremely low temperatures. Furthermore, there were years where it extended beyond the norm or devolved into full-blown blizzards. In such circumstances, their supply lines would bepletely cut off. It was practically impossible to wade through the snow, the winds and the freezing temperatures and haul back the heavy supplied the Orphanage needed.


    Thus, it had be customary for the Orphanage to stock up on all necessities well in advance. Two weeks'' worth of different grains, pulses and dried meat for food, lots of water, firewood, heavy clothing to endure the freezing-cold temperatures, tools and equipment to clear the massive umtion of snow on and around the orphanage, lest they be trapped within the orphanage!


    "We still haven''t acquired all the firewood we need." Lashara sighed. "The deforestation in the closest sources of firewood has made it so that we need to travel much further to chop it down. This has also inted prices of firewood, making it difficult to pay for."


    "I''ll handle it." Rui reassured.


    "Eh?" Lashara nced at him. "No no, there''s no way we can make you do work that requires eight adults across a week, merely in the span of a few days."


    ? Rui chuckled at her words. They stemmed from simple ignorance of what an actual Martial Apprentice was capable. She likely found it hard to imagine that despite his youth, he was actually extremely strong! Helical Breathing alone would give him power and stamina rivalling several healthy adultsbined, Bnce Direction and Parallel Walking would allow him to make trips many times quicker than normal.


    "Don''t worry about it mom, I''ll handle it."


    This chapter upload first at  Belongs to ? n0velDrama.Org.

 Chapter 88 Kandrian Winter Festival

    "Huff... This should be enough." Rui wiped sweat from his forehead. He nced at the firewood in front of him, making a few mental calctions. He had spent the previous day and today assisting with the winter firewood stockpile of the Orphanage. Making several round trips to bring back arge cloth bag of firewood.


    "This should be myst round..." Rui estimated. He sat down a for a bit, taking some rest. He had been using Helical Breathing continuously, but the Apprentice-level technique was not limitless, even he had begun to feel exhaustion and fatigue creeping into his muscles and bones.


    "It''s a shame I don''t have any rejuvenation potions..." Rui muttered to himself. "Those things were incredibly convenient." Rui had pretty much abused their use since joining the Academy. Only after having left the Academy had he realized how incredibly useful the rejuvenation potions were.


    "Once I leave the Academy, I''m going to have purchase these potions myself." Rui sighed, partially depressed. First, he needed to pay back his debt, until then, he wouldn''t be able to splurge of rejuvenation potions the way he splurged on them in the Academy. He wasn''t even sure he would be able to buy them until his debt was repaid.


    He shook his head, putting away such thoughts. That was still quite some time away, no point in thinking about it too deeply.


    He gathered his firewood and tied it up into his cloth, before tying it to himself.


    "Alright, time to head back." He said before using Parallel Walk, Bnce Direction and Helical Breathing. He moved incredibly fast despite his heavy load.


    Within a short period of time, he had already reached home.Belongs to ? n0velDrama.Org.


    "You really gathered all the firewood we needed all by yourself..." Lashara murmured, dumbfounded as Rui unloaded the firewood.


    "This should be the final pile..." Rui informed, wiping away his sweat.


    "Unbelievable" Farion muttered. "You''re so incredibly strong! So this is what a Martial Apprentice is capable of."


    Rui chuckled, before heading inside. "I''m off to wipe myself down."


    During winters, warm baths were far too much of a luxury. Especially for an Orphanage. During winters, the Orphanage members would heat a small bucket of water with some fragrant herbs. It was a bit of a scale-down from Rui who enjoyed hot water perpetually at the Academy.


    "Be sure to finish quickly." Lashara called out. "We have a festival to get in time to."


    "Yes mom. I''ll be out quickly." He replied.


    Rui quickly gathered his clothes and towel heading in and scrubbing himself down. He knew there were many people who were waiting in line, so he ended up finishing quickly.


    "Ooooo." Nina chuckled as she yfully poked his chiseled abs when he got out. "Someone must be incredibly popr with the girls."


    Rui snorted. "As if. Everybody has abs in the Academy." He said before heading back to his bed to put on a shirt, leaving her dumbfounded.


    "Rui! Can you look after the kids for a while?" Alice called out to him.


    "Sure thing." He obliged.


    The entire Orphanage was busy in chaotic excitement as everyone prepared for the festival. Too many children were too young to make the trip and it was impossible to take the entire orphanage to the outer districts in the middle of snowfall.


    "Big brother Rui!"


    "Can you show us how to fight?"


    "Big brother is a Martial Apprentice!


    "Show us some moves!"


    The boys and girls crowded him, pestering him with questions and requests.


    "Alright alright." Ruiughed mirthfully. "One at a time, okay?"


    The children obediently listened to him.


    Over the next hour, Rui proceeded to show them some shy Martial Art moves. Most of them looked incredibly impressive and bombastic, but weren''t moves he would use in a real fight.


    "OOOOH!"<sub> </sub>


    "WOOAH"


    "That''s so cool!"


    Their eyes sparkled as they cooed every time Rui moved. Heughed at their exaggerated reactions, but felt a small sense of pride well up in his chest. Showing off to his family was more validating than he''d expected.


    Soon enough it was time to leave, the adults had cleaned up and the adolescents were ready as well.


    "Ah, there''s the carriage." Mica announced. "That idiot Farion iste."


    "We have the whole day to ourselves." Julian chided. "No hurry."


    They boarded the carriage, squeezing in as much as they could within a single carriage. They could bare afford a horse-drawn carriage, and that too was a luxury that could be afforded only once in a while, Lashara did not allow Julian to fund the Orphanage any more than he already did out of guilt.


    The outer districts of Hajin weren''t that far, and within a span of twenty of minutes they made it to their location, and boarded off quickly.


    "Waaaah." Alice cooed as she saw the festival fair of the district. "They''ve gone all out this year!"


    "This year the temperature has been quite pleasant, after all." Julian exined. "More opportunity for smaller businesses and shops.


    There were lightings,mps and sparkling ornaments colouring the entire fare. The infrastructure of the entire fare itself was a temporary makeshift, that could be put together quickly and could be dismantled pretty quickly as well. What was otherwise arge open field in the heart of the district was now the most popted and energetic part of the district.


    There were food stalls of various sorts, selling seasonal Kandrian dishes that were customary to the Winter Festival. Shops selling festive clothing articles, ornaments, jewelry, toys and firecrackers were littered around. Many challenge game booths and stalls that offered various prizes for sessful attempts in whatever events they had.


    The Orphanage group toured the fare, getting drawn into the festive excitement. It was hard not to be infected by thepelling enthusiasm. They indulged in some spending, at Julian''s insistence, who leveraged the mood to get his way. Soon enough all the adolescents were scattered into the fare with greedy eyes, as they decided what to spend their allowance on.


    "Here, have some." Rui offered a roasted skewered fish. Seafood was incredibly popr in the Kandrian Empire. Bordering an extremely bountiful and eternally rich portion of the Namgung Ocean made the Kandrian Empire the eye of envy to the surrounding small and especially therge nations; such as the Republic of Gorteau, the Sekigahara Confederate and the Britannian Empire.


    "I''m fine." Julian refused.


    "Have some." Rui insisted. "What''s the point ofing to a festival if you''re not going to indulge yourself?"


    Julian chuckled, epting that rationale on the face. "Being able to facilitate the smiles on those children as well as out older brothers and sisters is good enough for me." He said, before noticing something that caught his eye.


    "Hm? What''s all that you have by your side?" Julian quizzed.


    "Oh this?" Rui nced at the many toys and other items he had in a bag beside him. "Just some stuff I won for the kids and adults back home."


    Julian threw a proud smile at him, before pausing. "Wait. Martial Artists are banned from participating."


    "It''ll be our secret."


    Julian burst out intoughter, he really did enjoy talking to Rui. The two of them ate in silence as they watched the boys and girls of the Orphanage running around ying cheerfully, without a care in the world.


    For a moment, the two of them felt they didn''t need anything else in life.


    "Part of my motivation to get a high-ie job was so I can see this more often." Julian gestured. "Do you feel the same way?"


    Rui nodded in silence. He had already resolved to support the Orphanage when he began earning for himself. He was never a materialistic person, as long as his basic Martial Artists necessities were tended to. He had no qualms about giving away every coin he earned to the Orphanage.


    "Big brother Julian! Big brother Rui!" One of the girls of the Orphanage called out. "Come y with us!"


    Julian chuckled, getting up. "It''s been a while since I yed with the kids like this." He said before turning to Rui. "Come, you wouldn''t want to miss it for the world, would you?"


    Rui smiled. "Not for this world, or any other world out there."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 89 Return

    "Be careful, don''t push yourself too hard, okay?" Lashara asked with a worried expression.N?velDrama.Org owns this text.


    "Don''t worry mom, I''ll be fine." Rui insisted, yet she didn''t appear convinced.


    It was a cold morning, as always. Rui had was standing at the entrance door of the orphanage, facing Lashara and other members of the Orphanage. Three days had gone by and now it was time for Rui to return to the Academy.


    The Academy allowed for short vacations per season for a reason. So that students didn''t lose their disciplined mindset. This was especially true for students at earlier stages. The Foundation and Exploration Stages, in particr. Three days was around the sweet spot where there was just enough time for a break, but not long enough to break the students out of their mindsets. They all knew they were returning to the Academy in three days so they psychologically didn''t rx too much and adapt to their circumstances, knowing they would be returning soon.


    Rui wasn''t too sad either, he loved his family and truly enjoyed catching up with them. However, three days was a lot of time for chit-chat and banter. He had conversed with all of them for hours and the all the standard topics of conversation one would engage in when conversing in family reunions were already over. Rui had satisfied his homesickness and now his urge toplete missions grew even stronger!


    He couldn''t wait to get a taste of what it was like to be a Martial Artist. Furthermore, he couldn''t wait to earn credits so that he could purchase higher-grade techniques. His Martial Art yearned for greater development! His Martial Path yearned for more depth!


    He felt the itch to begin running towards the Academy even in the middle of his farewell! Immediately invoking even stronger feelings of guilt. Which he pressed down, forcefully.


    "Alright mom. Everybody. Goodbye." He said. "I''ll be back sooner than you think, so don''t miss me too much." he grinned.


    He began his journey once he finished exchanging farewells with all those who were there to see him off.


    This time, he focused purely on speed. He didn''t care to conserve stamina by getting a rickshaw like he did when he applied for the Entrance Exam. Back then he had a difficult exam to give, he needed every ounce of his stamina.


    Thinking about that day made him feel nostalgic. More than a year had passed since that day, and he had gotten vastly stronger since then. The bloodlust test in round one, the bouncing slimes, the tag stealing game.


    In hindsight, those trials were trivial. In his current state he wouldfortably ce top five or even top three.


    He was considerably stronger than the Kane from back then, who had scored twice his score and ranked number four.


    The only real problems would be Fae and, of course, Nel.


    Rui suddenly did a double-take as he realized it had been truly a long time since he thought of Nel. He had been so engrossed in his Martial Path that he had long forgotten about the number one freshman of their batch.


    "I don''t think he''s an Apprentice." Rui murmured. He hadn''t seen Nel in the Apprentice sparring sessions, which he would have had he actually discovered his Martial Path.


    "Maybe I should look into him when I get back." Rui shrugged, though he was curious why someone so talented was being stalled so long. Nel was so gifted physically, he was able to defeat an Apprentice while still being a novice. Relyingrgely on brute strength. Only after Rui became a Martial Apprentice did he realize how absurd that feat was, even if Felix was much weaker back then, much weaker than Rui was now.<sub> </sub>


    Rui wasn''t sure why he was taking so long to discover his Martial Path.


    "Then again, one year isn''t abnormal." Rui remembered. He was the freak, not the norm.


    "Once he discovers his Martial Path, he''ll be a menace." Rui concluded. The mental evolutions that discovering the Martial Path provided wouldplement his innate physical gifts remarkably. Rui was a bit curious how strong he would be as a Martial Apprentice, would he able to beat Martial Squires?


    What about Squire Kyrie?


    Rui shook his head. Kyrie would mop the floor with him hard with just a portion of her fullbat power even if he became a Martial Apprentice. She was just ridiculous.


    Rui dispelled such superfluous thoughts as he reached the central districts of Hajin, he could even see therge prominent figure of the Mantian branch of the Martial Academy standing proudly in the distance.


    Thankfully it was still quite early in the morning, since he left well ahead of the already early reporting time, so the traffic and rush were still low.


    He pushed himself to the limit as he used Parallel Walk, Bnce Direction and Helical Breathing to their maximum, zipping through the town as fast as a sprinting horse.


    "Ahhh, we''re finally here." Rui sighed in relief. He smoothly grabbed his student ID, verifying his status as a student of the Academy to the security before rushing towards the Apprentice dorms.


    "Good to be back!" Rui grinned as he opened the room to his dorm. "Maybe I''ll take a rejuvenation potion or two before hitting Kane up and heading to out to check out some missions."


    Just as he knocked on Kane''s room after having put his belongings away, he remembered something important.


    "Oh wait. He''s out on a long mission." Rui recalled, before sighing. He shrugged, looks like he would have to do this by himself, it was a shame Kane wasn''t around to show him the ropes.


    "Maybe I''ll run into Fae and Milliana." He hoped, though he wasn''t sure if they were back yet. He was quite early, after all.


    "No no no." He shook his head. "This is my personal endeavor. I can handle it by myself."


    He headed down to themission department, drawing attention to a staff member boldly.


    "Excuse me. I would like to apply for an Apprentice-level mission please."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 90 Mission Nuances

    Once a staff member heeded Rui''s requests and sat him down, he asked.


    "This is your first time undertaking a mission, correct?"


    "Yes."


    "Are you aware of all the due process and procedures needed to undertake a mission?" She asked.


    "I''m afraid not, mam." Rui was aware of some of the processes associated with undertakingmissions


    "Alright, let me begin by exining some procedures you mustplete. First, every Martial Artist who aims to undertake a mission must be licensed." She exined. "However, for Martial Apprentices who are still students within the Academy, you will be provided with a learner''s license."


    This was something Rui happened to be aware of.


    "A license is proof ofpetence, as well as a deration of the recognized right to undertake missions. All Martial Artists who join the Martial Union obtain one. Along with ite certain exclusive rights and obligations."


    Rui nodded. He had read this when he went through the mandatory theory lessons during the Exploration Stage. The Martial Union obtained several Royally authorized exclusive rights and privileges, such as partial impunity from thew and partial tax cuts and ess to restricted areas among other benefits here and there, all listed in the Kandrian Martial Convenant as well as the employment contract of the Martial Union. The obligations that came with few mandates from the Martial Union such as mandated missions issued by the Martial Union.


    "A learner''s license possesses neither of the many privileges and obligations thate with a full-fledged license, they''re meant to help students like yourself limate to the upation of Martial Artists of the Martial Union." She continued, receiving a nod from Rui.


    "You will have to fill and sign this application form as well as submit a statement from the academics department of the Academy that lists out your Martial Art Type categories, the Martial Art techniques you have learnt, as well as your performances andpetence as a Martial Apprentice." She exined. "Once you do those, the application will be briefly processed and epted as long as you pass the criterias."


    Rui nodded. "Is the statement needed to assign missions that fit my profile? I thought the Academy didn''t mandate specific missions to students." He wondered.


    "No." She shook her head. "The Academy does not mandate specific missions to specific students based on their profile. You may choose missions of your choice, however, as an inexperienced Martial Apprentice we cannot allow you to fulfill missions that are outside your skillset." She exined. "If you do choose certain missions outside your skillset, you will be assigned a mentor who will assist you inpleting the mission. This is a limited option and service and is merely meant to help you gauge different types of missions to help you understand them and make more informed choices on what kinds of missions you would like to apply for in the future."<sub> </sub>


    This was quite the student-friendly policy, something Rui appreciated.


    "There are some missions which have bare minimum skillset requirements, and you will not be allowed to partake in them at all, with or without a mentor." She added. "Please be mindful of that."


    "Understood."


    "Once your applications is epted and your learner''s license is issued, you will initially not be allowed ess to the entire pool ofmissions. Your grade as a Martial Apprentice will be objectively evaluated by our department based on the academic statement and records provided by the academics department of the Academy." She exined. "In short, a learner''s license does not permit a Martial Apprentice student to take on missions above hispetence, as evaluated by us."


    Rui nodded. This made sense and was to be expected. Martial Apprentice students like himself had only just built the foundation of their Martial Art, and had spent most of their time cooped up in training. Theycked the experience, knowledge and perspective to understand the difficulties of missions based on the provided information, and could not be trusted to make informed choices.


    Many of the missions were actual privatemissions made by customers of the Martial Union. The Martial Academy could not afford to allow clueless Apprentice students to foolishly undertake missions above their paygrade and fail the mission!


    "Another matter to discuss, is the renumeration. Each mission has a fixed reward of a certain number of Academy credits instead of Kandrian currency, which can be used to purchase techniques." She exined.


    Rui nodded. He was fine with this arrangement. He didn''t particrly need money whilst he was in the Academy, and money would not allow him to purchase techniques. The ultimate goal for undertaking missions was so that he could purchase more techniques with money and expand develop his Martial Art.


    "Finally, we need to go over the process ofpleting missions, there are a variety of missions, to I will speak generally. Missions aremissions submitted by customers of the Martial Union in exchange forpleting a specified criteria or fulfilling a certain objective as well as other parameters such as specified timeframe and any pre-requisites etc." She established. "Each mission as provided to Martial Apprentices will be encoded in a booklet, known as a mission bill. Within it will be specified all relevant information needed by the Martial Artist toplete said mission. Including the objective as well as all relevant intel that you have clearance too." She paused before taking out a sample mission bill to show him.N?velDrama.Org content.


    "All mission bills are kept within the Mission library and are all organized by different parameters and categories. The first ssification is ss. All techniques are initially divided into the five different sses of missions: Assault missions, defense missions, covert operations, hunting missions and misceneous missions. Then they''re further divided by difficulty grade, then further divided into categories by pre-requisites and locations." She exined.


    Rui nodded. It was a convenient setup that allowed Martial Artists to find what they''re looking for with rtive ease. A Martial Artist or a party of Martial Artists of a certain ss could simply walk over to his ss of missions, further navigate to the difficulty grade of his capability orfort, then choose focus on missions in a location of convenience and a preferred timeframe, and finally pick a mission whose pre-requisites he satisfied. A rtively simple process. If the Martial Academy and Union did not possess this level of user-friendly organization, then it would simply be one hell of a mess for Martial Artists to choose missions conforming to their needs and wants!


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 91 Missions

    "Here''s the application form." She provided him with set of sheets of paper. "Do you possess an Academic statement from the academics department?"


    "I''m afraid not." he shook his head. "Should I go procure one?"


    "Not necessary." She assured. "We can acquire the documents ourselves, it''s just the process can be expedited if provided. Still, it''s not an issue."


    Rui nodded before heading over to a desk reading through the application thoroughly. It had several pages, the first page was all about mundane and basic personal information. Name, age, date of birth, sex and other standard pieces of information needed by most applications and forms of this nature.


    The second page was a bit more interesting. It was centered around his personal affinities as defined by him. He needed to describe his Martial Art, list out his techniques and preferences.


    The third page asked him to list out preferred mission parameters; distance from Academy, mission timeframe, ss etc.


    The final page was a page of certain terms and agreements that he had to agree to in order to receive a license.


    Rui speedily filled out the application form with a provided ink pen before eagerly returning it to the staff member.


    "We''ll get back to you within the day." She informed him.


    Rui nodded, before a thought urred to him. "Can I visit the mission library?" He asked.


    "Sure, you can." She assured.


    Rui nodded, rejoicing inwardly. He immediately asked for directions before heading over to the mission library. The mission library belonged to a part of the Academy that Rui had never been to before, Rui recalled that he wasn''t allowed to enter this portion of the Academy when he initially toured it with Kane, specifically because he wasn''t an Apprentice. Once he had be an Apprentice he hadpletely forgotten about it.


    "So, this ce was the mission library huh?" Rui muttered to himself as he approached therge facility. The guards didn''t bat an eye at him after taking a look at his Apprentice uniform, as he entered the library. He opened therge doors and took his first view of the library.


    "This is not what I pictured..." He murmured.<sub> </sub>


    The mission library reminded of him a corporate office with immense paperwork, from his previous life. There was an immense amount of information squeezed into a tiny ce.


    The structure of the library was pentagonal, split into five sections each dedicated to a different ss of missions. Each mission bill was ced vertically in shelves with its information as well as a brief description of the mission itself.


    Each section representing a ss was divided into tenyers, each representing a grade of difficulty of missions. Grade one missions were the easiest, whereas grade ten missions were the most difficult.


    Each mission was coded with a certain set of coordinates, this corresponded to five copies of arge map of the town of Hajin and surroundingnds. The map was crisscrossed by numberedtitude and longitude in an elementary coordinate system. The coordinates on each mission bill indicated in what region of the map was the mission location, if any, was.


    Each mission was also marked with a date of submission, indicating what date themission from the customer was epted by the Martial Union. This allowed Martial Artists to see whether the mission was recently epted or not.


    Each mission also had estimated timeframe indicated on it. Rui figured this is how Kane picked a mission that wouldst longer than the Winter holidays.


    Another thing Rui noted was that were a lot of empty slots for mission bills in the shelves, in fact, a solid half of all slots were empty at this point in time. This indicated that a lot of Martial Apprentices, inside or outside the Martial Academy were constantly epting missions and that the Martial workforce at the Apprentice-level was able to cope with the demand for Martial services.


    This was a good thing. Rui didn''t think that it would be good for the Martial Union if the supply of these Martial services far exceeded the demand for these services, or if the demand for these services far exceeded the supply.


    Thetter was something he was less certain about. Perhaps Martial Artists were better off living in a world where demand for Martial services were astronomically higher than the supply, thus Martial Art would be a much more coveted skillset, and Martial Artists would enjoy a higher status in society. However, there would have to be extremely high amounts of conflict in a society for this to be the case. Rui wasn''t sure he wanted himself and especially his family to live in such extremely dangerous societies.


    He was satisfied with the current bnce of supply and demand. The demand for Martial Artists was still quite high in reality. There were several markets that provided missions; domestic markets, within the country. International markets from the many much smaller and weaker nations without a strong united Martial group or association like that of the Kandrian Empire. The Royal Family by the terms of the Kandrian Martial Convenant was also a huge regr source of missions that sustained the Martial Unionmercially.Belongs to ? n0velDrama.Org.


    There was no fear of the demand dwindling either. The Panama Continent contained a vast number of countries, nations, states and smaller settlements and groups with an inconceivable amount of conflict of interests that bred a huge amount of the demand for Martial force. Furthermore, significant swathes of the Panama Continent, particrly towards the continent and hearnd held incredibly powerful monster species that would annihte all of human civilization if not for the collective Martial power of humanity.


    Arge number of missions were bred not by conflict but by greed for natural resources. Be it fauna, flora ornd-borne resources within the depths of the continent. Most of these resources were housed in incredibly dangerous environments that only Martial Artists could tread.


    The demand for Martial Art would never die, Rui concluded.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 92 A Closer Look

    Rui shook his head, dismissing the irrelevant thoughts flying through his head. He scanned the library, wondering where to begin.


    "Well, I guess I can just start with whatever." Rui shrugged.


    He walked over the defense ss section, nonchntly sauntering across the shelves as he scanned the basic information disyed, eying each mission as he passed them.


    [Defense ss: Bodyguard mission


    Difficulty grade: 3


    Target of protection: Hi Viona


    Specified/estimated Location/range of mission: Within a radius of 20 kilometers of (28.5, 19.8)


    Time period of mission: 1 week.


    Missionmencement: Immediate


    Sessfulpletion renumeration: 80 silver coins/ 208 Martial Credits


    Skillset pre-requisites: two Apprentice-level defense-oriented techniques.]


    ...


    [Defense ss: Guard mission.


    Difficulty grade: 3


    Target of security: Residential front gate.


    Stated/estimated Location/range of mission: (2.875, 4.978)


    Time period of mission: 1 month


    Missionmencement date: Winter 28th/ 416


    Sessfulpletion renumeration: 192 silver coins/500 Martial credits


    Skillset pre-requisites: one Apprentice-level defense-oriented technique]


    ¡­


    [Defense ss: Transporter mission:


    Difficulty grade: 2


    Target of transportation: Unspecified box with dimensions 5cm x 3cm x 6cm. Fragile


    Starting/ending point and distance of travel: Town of Hajin to Town of Gadak; 120 kilometers.<sub> </sub>


    Mission Commencement date: Winter 42nd/416


    Sessful renumeration: 28 silver coins/72 Martial credits


    Skillset pre-requisites: one Apprentice-level defense-oriented technique and one Apprentice-level maneuvering-oriented technique.]


    ¡­


    "Hmmm..." Rui browsed through each mission one-by-one, taking his time. He was quite fascinated by the organization and structure to the categorization of missions, allowing for remarkable ease of ess of missions that fell into the preference of Martial Artists looking toplete missions.


    The information disyed alongside the mission bills were merely the most basic pertinent pieces of information that allowed for a quick judgement of whether a mission was desirable or not. This allowed for quick assortment and distribution of missions.


    Rui was surprised by the variety of missions within the defense ss. The defense ss of missions always sounded like it would becking in variety and diversity. But he was shown to be wrong. There were many types of defense-oriented missions within the ss. Bodyguarding, guarding, transportation, patrolling and several other types. Even within these types, the difference in mission variables could lead to vastly differing circumstances of each particr mission.


    This seemed to be true even with bodyguarding. The difference in the target profile could be huge, causing huge variations in the mission. Some bodyguard mission had targets who travelled a lot, this usually increased the graded difficulty of the mission from what Rui could observe. Static missions where the target of the missionrgely remained within a smaller area made it easier to avoid variables that could not be ounted for.


    Guarding missions were much more straightforward. The target was either a location or an object, usually not discreet. These jobs were generally of lower difficulty grades as well as lower renumeration.


    What fascinated Rui was the transportation and patrolling missions. These missions were of much higher difficulty grades. Ranging in theyers of the defense ss section that were closer to the center of the pentagon shaped library. Many of these missions were of much higher grades than what a newbie Apprentice like himself would be able to ess. He wasn''t sure how high or low his grade would end up evaluated to be. But surely it would be still be on the lower end.


    These missions were extravagant because they were the kind of missions that only the upper echelons of the economy could afford and would afford. Who the hell would hire a Martial Artist to make deliveries otherwise? The rich had more than enough wealth to splurge on lower-realm martial Artists and were the only ones with enough reason to splurge on such ostentatious services. A lot of the wealthier clients of the Martial Union were in possession of objects or data and information that was extremely important. The transportation of highly valuable goods was also not a trivial matter. The possibility of targeted thefts and robberies were not low in such circumstances.


    Rather thane out more sorry than safe, they reduced the probability of tragedies with Martial Artists.


    Having had his fill with the defense ss, Rui quickly made his way to the offense ss of missions with engrossed eyes. He thought he knew what to expect, but he quickly realized he was wrong!


    "Excuse me..." Rui called out to a support staff. "Why are there so few missions of the offense ss?"


    Most of the slots were empty! What was going on?


    "You must be new here." He calmly replied. "Assault and battery are still felonies, even for Martial Artists. The Martial Union cannot ept civilianmissioned missions of the offense ss that are within the borders of Kandrian Empire."This belongs to N?velDrama.Org - ?.


    "Yet there exists an offense ss categorization of missions despite this..." Rui quickly connected the dots with the other information he knew, beforeing to a conclusion. "Which means all offense-ss aremissioned through Royal authorization, by the Royal Family..."


    He recalled that the one of the uses of the Kandrian Martial Covenant specified the exchange of Martial services, among other things, from the Martial Union to the Royal Family in exchange for funds, resources and privileges.


    The staff member nodded. "That and foreign missions. But you''re still a few realms too low for that option."


    Rui figured as much, he put that aside focusing on the royalmissions. He knew that a lot of thews still applied to Martial Artists, they merely gained partial impunity to the penalties; receiving much more authorized leniency from the judicial systems as far as sentencing went.


    However, this did not necessarily mean that the offense ss missions were lesser in number than the other ss of missions. Running a country was impossible without state-sanctioned violence, the Kandrian Empire likely pawned off a portion of the less fundamental duties that involved assault like perhaps the war on the mafia and the ck market of the nation.


    If this was the case, Rui even thought it was a bit of a smart move on the Kandrian Empire''s end. Both the underworld and the Martial Union were eyesores to the Royal Family. The best thing to do was to let them handle each other.


    The only thing Rui hoped was that the Martial Union was charging the Royal Family a bomb of a price for this particr duty!


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 93 Approved

    Rui moved on to the remaining three sections, and he found interesting quirks about each of them.


    Hunting missions at the Apprentice-level were all exclusively domestic missions, despite the fact that most hunting missions in general were beyond the borders of the Kandrian Empire, since most beast species exist beyond human settlements. However, those were too far above his paygrade.


    The hunting missions he had ess to were all domestic in nature. These included verified sightings of beasts that posed too much of a threat to civilians, or an overpoption of certain beast species in certain parts of the forests and other natural habitats.Belongs to ? n0velDrama.Org.


    The Kandrian Empire hadn''t exterminated every single dangerous beast species, mostly because it was not viable. For better or worse, the beast species of these natural environments were extremely vital to the bnce, health and the maintenance of these environments.


    These species usually yed extremely important roles in the fragile ecosystems and food chains. Haphazardly and carelessly annihting every trace of them would be a foolish blunder that could cause such ecological disasters that could very well bring the entire kingdom to its knees!


    This was a much worse problem than the beast species themselves. Beast species were a much simpler and easier problem to handle than such aplex ecological catastrophe. Martial Art could handle former, it could not handle thetter!


    The Royal Family even authorized the establishment of a Ministry of Ecology and Environment. Among the many tasks and duties this executive entity was responsible for, coordinating with the Martial Union through Royal authorization to regte the poptions and distributions of beast species was one of them.


    <o>,m A lot of hunting missions were centered around extraction of valuable resources. This included flora and fauna resources that were dangerous to obtain, and thus required Martial Artists. However, beyond this, Rui realized that the hunting ss of missions at the Apprentice-level were limited in variety and diversity.</o>


    "There''s a limit to the variety of flora and fauna in the true wild natural environments outside the borders of the Empire, and flora and fauna within the Empire." Rui murmured. He wasn''t sure at what realm would he be qualified to be able to take hunting missions urring outside.


    He dismissed these thoughts, moving onto the two remaining sections once he was satisfied with his exploration of the hunting section.


    The covert operations section fell within his expectations, for once. The missions were centered around ndestine and furtive missions. Shadowing, reconnaissance, tracking, infiltration etc were the kinds of missions that popted this ss of missions.


    He was surprised by the fact that these missions were legal, while the offense ss wasn''t. But it made more sense when he considered the Kandrian Empire wasn''t Earth. On Earth, the right to privacy and physical and intellectual property were protected by the state. However, the Kandrian Empire and most sovereign states he had some awareness about were culturally and politically centuries behind Earth during his lifetime. These rights that were fundamental and extremely important back on Earth were not that important here. Part of it had to do with theck ofmunication technology and information technology, slowing down development and allowing missions like these to be legal.


    Out of the four sses of missions thus far, this was the one ss of missions he was least qualified to undertake. The pre-requisites for these missions required stealth-oriented maneuvering techniques, of which he had none and didn''t intend to get any.


    His interest in this ss of missions was the least, after all, he was a martial arts fanboy, not a spy fanboy!


    Having had his fill, he left the section before heading out to thest section.


    The misceneous ss of missions.


    This was the ss of missions that he was least familiar with, intuitively. He had of course learnt about it in the theory lessons mandated in the Exploration Stage. However, since the missions of this ss did not share anymon trait, asides from not smoothly falling into the other four sses of missions, it was hard to evene up with a picture of what the missions of this ss might look like.


    "Well, this is just chaos." Rui chuckled as he scanned missions, walking around in the section.


    The missions were all across the board with nomon element or pattern unifying the entire ss. The Academy had done its best to lump missions of a simr kind together. Grouping missions that had some degree of raw manualbour together, lumping missions that were required services of Martial Artists that had nothing to with actually using their Martial Art.


    "This one wants an interview with a Martial Apprentice." Ruiughed mirthfully as he skimmed through a particr aisle.<sub> </sub>


    He shook his head. The Martial Union must have created this ss because there were too many weird and strangemissions. Rui wondered why any Martial Artist would evere to this strange ss of missions instead of the primary four.


    This was, until he noticed why.


    "The remuneration proportion of this ss is higher than the others..." He noticed, understanding why Martial Artists ventured into this ss.


    Money.


    Not only was the misceneous ss of missions, by far, the safest, they were also quite remunerative inparison the sses, pound-for-pound.


    This attracted just enough Martial Artists to this ss of missions to ensure that supply of Martial Artists matched the number of missions of that ss.


    Rui was not particrly interested in this ss of missions either.


    "Guess I will be primarily focusing on offense, defense and hunting primarily."


    As he lurked around gathering his thoughts, he realized how he was surprised by how different each ss of missions was. He''d expected each ss to be rtively simr in all aspects asides from the fundamental differences between them, but this was not the case.


    "They were incongruent from each other in many different ways."


    The defense ss was the most normal and diverse ss of missions. It had fairly well-distributed client-base, it had a decent amount of variety and diversity. Furthermore, it was the only ss that was not limited in the Apprentice Realm.


    The offense ss at the Apprentice Realm was entirely Royally authorized, making a very singr source ofmissions. At the Apprentice Realm it was also limited to the town that the Apprentices operated in.


    Hunting missions were also limited to the Kandrian Empire, and their difficulty and variety were alsorgely reduced.


    Covert operations had the most troublesome skill pre-requisites among all of them


    As for the misceneous ss...


    "The less said about the better." Rui shook his head, before a voice called out to him.


    "Apprentice Rui Quarrier." A support staff member called out to him. "Your application has been approved and your learner''s license has been registered." She said, handing him an envelope.


    "You may now ept a mission."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 94 Bodyguard

    "I can pick a mission as of this very moment?"


    "Indeed, as long as the difficulty grade does not exceed our evaluation of your capability toplete missions."


    Rui noted her choice of words. "How does the Academy evaluate our capability toplete missions and how is it measured?"


    "The Academy evaluates missionpletingpetence by looking at academic records,patibility between Martial Artist and mission, experience and mission track record. Your evaluation is indicated on a grade from 1-10, just like missions." She exined.


    Rui nodded. "Am I qualified to jump right into missions even if I have never attempted one before?"


    "Yes, however the Martial Academy strongly rmends beginning with the lowest of difficulty grades of missions for your initial missions, regardless of your Martial skill, it''s best to steadily umte experience with the process of missionpletion before undertaking missions of higher difficulty grade."


    "I see." Rui nodded. "I believe I need only pick a mission bill and have it assigned to me in themission department, correct?"


    "Yes."


    "Alright, thank you."


    "If you have any additional questions, you can read the missionpletion guide created by the Martial Academy to learn more." She said, handing him a small booklet. "Or you can approach the Commissions Department for rification."


    "Got it, thank you." Rui said as he began reading the missionpletion guide.


    Thankfully the missionpletion guide was not an extremely borate read. It mainly focused on basic missionpletion protocol. Premencement protocols, mission protocols and postpletion/failure protocols to ensure smooth management. It was only thanks to ever Martial Artists following these protocols that the Martial Union could smoothly and speedily function as a whole.


    Premencement protocols involved registration as the assigned Martial Artist to themission, it involved recording the time of dispatch, verification with the client, recording the time ofmencement.


    Mid-mission protocols were more norms rather than rules about how to go about different kinds of the mostmon missions among different sses.


    Postpletion/failure protocols were report submissions and remuneration protocols.N?velDrama.Org owns this text.


    "Simple stuff." Rui shut the book, having speedily digested it. "Now time to pick a mission." he muttered to himself excitedly. After a year of training in the Academy, he had finally reached the stage where he couldplete a mission!


    "I''m graded three, huh?" Rui scratched his head. He wasn''t entirely sure what that meant. Hecked the necessary context and experience to discern what it meant. Maybe he could ask Kane, Fae and Milliana their evaluated grades so he can have a frame of reference to understand how much the Academy actually evaluated him to be.


    "Well, I don''t intend to pick a grade three mission right off the bat."


    For his first mission, he decided to pick the most straightforward mission possible. He did not grow arrogant and assume that he would be able to nail the mission because he was oh-so-great.


    "Grade one is the way to go." he concluded. "But what ss?"


    He eyed each section, carefully considering them.


    "Covert ops and misceneous are a definite no-go." Rui had no intention of being a shadow or a weirdo for his very important first mission.


    "Assault is also a no-go." He didn''t want to engage in royally-authorized missions for his very first mission.


    "That leave defense and hunting ss." Rui concluded, before making his decision.


    "Hunting ss missions are much less straightforward and have more sophisticated objectives and conditions and pre-requisites." For his very first mission, he wanted to be down to earth.


    "Defense is the way to go." He decided.<sub> </sub>


    He began scanning through the outer-mostyer of the defense ss section, theyer with grade one missions.


    "Hm?" Rui squinted as he paused upon a mission bill.


    [Defense ss: Bodyguard mission


    Difficulty grade: 1


    Target of protection: Be


    Specified/estimated location/range of mission: within 30 kms radius of (2.5, -1.8)


    Time Period of mission: 3 days


    Missionmencement: immediate


    Sessfulpletion renumeration: 20 silvers / 52 Martial credits


    Skillset pre-requisite: one apprentice-level defense-oriented technique]


    It caught his eye because its remuneration was higher than most other missions of its grade, and it was rtively close to the Academy inparison.


    He picked up the bill from the slot, and flipped through it to learn more.


    *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *


    "We haven''t received any word from the Martial Union as of this yet, miss." A young woman anxiously reported.


    The recipient of the report turned to face her handmaid with a grave expression. "If only I had enough money at hand for the rapid assignment fee."


    There was usually a time period between the submission of themission and the eptance of the mission. This was usually anywhere between zero and three days. Thus, most clients of the Kandrian Martial Union were ustomed to cingmissions well ahead in advance and specifying the date of the missionmencement. Thus, regardless of when it was epted, the missions wouldmence when they wanted.


    However, the Martial Union offered to have missions be epted immediately in exchange for an extremely expensive fee rtive to the mission to the cost.


    "Miss Be..." The handmaid sullenly responded.


    "We even had to undersell the difficulty of the mission just a little to be able to pay the up-front expense." Be sighed, hoping the Martial Union would not notice. "Thankfully we didn''t vite the rules of themission contract explicitly."


    "We will have to wait here until the Martial Artist arrives." She gestured to the small quarters they were in. A toilet and a single bedroom were all they were able to afford in the hotel they were in.


    "Do you intend to dispatch as soon as the Martial Artist bodyguard is dispatched?" Her handmaid asked with a worried expression.


    "We have to." Be nodded. "We will inevitably be discovered if remain here indefinitely. The sooner we leave, the lower our chance of being discovered. We need to get away the Town of Hajin as soon as possible." She nced out the window. "The Lowminers have too much influence in Hajin. We need a Martial Artist who can stall their pursuers when they inevitably discover us."


    She sighed.


    "I hope our bodyguard arrives soon."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 95 Fashionably Late?

    Be Hier was the daughter of a wealthy merchant. Her father had moved to Town of Hajin, decades ago in hopes of making it big, and through many years of sustained effort and clever business, he had managed to achieve immense economic sess.


    The Hier Industries was a premium esoteric material supplier, this tradingpany acquired high-grade esoteric matter and resold them in manufacturers at remarkably high markups, earning huge profits with each exchange. Its journey to the top of Hajin was textbook execution, it established robust supply chains that minimized logistical and inventory burdens while maximizing supply.


    It even managed to grasp retired Martial Artists to permanently join thepany, drastically reducing the cost of acquisition of certain high grade esoteric resources that could only be acquired through Martial Artists, which would be quite expensive if done through the Martial Union.


    The Hier family grew in wealth andmercial prosperity for quite a long time, even until recently.


    Until recently, that was.


    When thepany began expanding into other esoteric resource industries, aggressively encroaching onto the space of more aplishedpanies. It had bitten off more than it could chew, the Lowminers esoteric suppliers was apany that hadpeted against the Hier family. The entirety of the market of the Town of Hajin and the surroundingnds were the battle ground between these two behemoths.


    However, their bitter struggle ended when the Lowminers managed to expand and monopolize certain esoteric markets quicker. The Lowminers managed to eventually to corner and suffocate the Hier familymercially, and eventually had enough capital to buy a huge proportion of the shares of the Hier family through various third-party entities, effectively ripping apart a chunk of its rival from it.


    And that is when Be Hier''s life crumbled.


    Her father passed away.


    (''No, he was murdered.'') Be clenched her fists


    Her father died due to blunt force trauma caused by tripping and falling down staircases, and had died within seconds even before attendants who heard the noise came to help him. However, Be was almost certain that this was staged and that he was assassinated without a doubt. Her father was an extremely careful man. The idea that he would clumsily trip to such a degree that he died on the spot as a result was an absurd notion. She was certain that the Lowminers had a Martial Apprentice, since the Martial Union would never agree to ept such amission.


    What was beyond her expectations was that her father had long prepared a will, in the event he was to die. He had passed on all of his ownership of the Hier Industries to his daughter; Be Hier.


    This was outside the expectation of the Lowminers to some degree. Part of their goal was to cannibalize the remains of the Hier Industries to achieveplete dominion over the esoteric matter market of the Town of Hajin.


    Now, the problem was no closer to being solved, not as long as Be Hier was still alive. She, who had been groomed and raised as the sessor of her father, grew pale when she read her father''s will as she understood the consequences.


    On one hand, her father had passed on his legacy to her.


    On the other, she bore immense responsibility, and risk.


    Especially risk at the current moment. Inheriting her father''s dominant shares of the Hier Industries was effectively putting a target on her back. The Lowminers woulde for her without a doubt.


    She fled her home estate immediately. Her fears were confirmed when she received word that the Lowminers had broken into her estate. She immediately when into survival mode and began nning for her survival first andter her return.


    (''I need to leave Hajin immediately.'') She had immediately concluded. The Lowminers were too powerful within the town of Hajin, if she stayed here, she would simply be too powerless to aplish anything, and she would die quickly.


    She had immediately charted out a n to leave Hajin aiming to use her connections to the best she could, but the problem was that it was not really possible by herself, she would almost certainly be caught. Going tow enforcement wouldn''t help,panies with economic might usually had ears inside thew-enforcement branches and even some degree of influence. Furthermore, without concrete evidence of threat to her life she would not be able to obtain protection, the whole endeavor would be no different from announcing her presence to the Lowminers.<sub> </sub>


    (''That leaves the Martial Union.'') She sighed inwardly. The Martial Union was the strongest private association in the Kandrian Empire, a local behemoth limited to a single town or two had no influence on it. She would be able tomission a Martial Apprentice bodyguard through a third-person, her trusted attendant, and that is exactly what she did.


    But there was a problem.


    (''The bodyguard isn''t here yet.'') Be gulped. She almost considered shifting, because staying in her current location for too long was too risky. Because of her sudden departure, andck of the borate preparation she would have ideally liked, she had been unable to move in a discrete manner. She knew it was only a matter of time before the Lowminers narrowed down her possible locations andpletely shut off any escape.


    KNOCK KNOCK


    Heavy pounding on the door drew her attention. She nced warily as she heard a muffled dispute on the other side.


    "Sir, you cannot barge into our establishment viting our and our customer''s privacy! We will report you tow enforcement!"


    KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK


    "Open the door!" Another gruff voice insisted, ignoring the man''s reprimands.


    "Miss!" Her attendant urgently insisted. "You need to leave! Go!"


    Be did not hesitate as she opened a window and jumped out. She had purposely requested for a room on the ground floor with an unbarred window, so that she would have another escape route. Just as shended, a burly voice called out to her.


    "Going somewhere?" She turned around in terror as the man caught her, effortlessly restraining her.


    "Let go of me!" She struggled


    "Hehe." He chuckled as he dragged her towards the front of the hotel. "You''ve given us quite the trou-"


    THWACK


    p Suddenly, she felt his grip over him loosening, watching as her apprehender wordlessly copsed.</anda>


    "Hm, you''re definitely Be Hier." The voice of a young boy rejoiced. "Thank god, it would be so embarrassing if I lost my client on my very first mission!"


    She turned around in shock, standing face to face with a masked young boy who couldn''t be older than fifteen, wearing the Martial uniform of the Martial Union.


    "I don''t know what kind of mess you''ve gotten yourself into, youngdy." He said. "But we need to get out of here."


    This chapter upload first at  Belongs to ? n0velDrama.Org.

 Chapter 96 Leave

    "So this is the standard gear of the Martial Union, eh?" Rui nced over to the items on the table in the dispatch facility. On the table was a mask, a uniform and a strange looking device.


    ? The mask was optional, but highly rmended by the Academy to all Martial Apprentices. Many a times, the Martial Apprentices inevitably earned the ire and the grudge of powerful third-party organizations during their missions. Although these organizations had no power to do anything to the Martial Union as a whole, that wasn''t necessarily true for individual Martial Artists.


    Martial Artists were scary and untouchable to most people, but this wasn''t truly the case for the more economically powerful. It was possible for these organizations to bully individual Martial Artists, especially the younger and lower Realm Martial Artists.


    Thus, a mask was rmended to younger and weaker Martial Artists. The masks were designed to hide away all facial features without hindering vision or any of the other senses. In Rui''s case, they even provided him a mask with a hair colour-changing function, specifically meant to hide unique or unnatural hair colors that would give away their identity.


    Rui had epted, even if this was a lower-graded mission, he did not want to take the risk. Although he himself might be secure because of hisbat prowess, the same could not be said for his family back in the Orphanage who were vulnerable inparison.


    The uniform was supposed to be resistant to piercing-weapons, meant specifically for Apprentices. Apparently higher Realms were naturally resistant to piercing attacks and generally did not need any aid. The uniform bore the emblem of the Martial Union as well as the color scheme associated with Martial Apprentices.


    Thest object was rather strange. Rui had been told it was a device with which he could record the moment of dispatch, client verification, missionmencement and conclusion as well as mission failure or sess. Rui could apparently record and ry the timing of these events through marked buttons on it. He could even send out SOS signals and request for emergency aid.


    What shocked Rui about this was that this was the first time he had seenmunication technology in this world!


    He did not think it existed because he hadn''t seen any hint of it during his life in the Orphanage or even in the bustling town of Hajin. But he was proven wrong, the fact that this was standard-issue equipment meant that this technology was much more prevalent than he had thought. It was quite likely that this technology was based on some esoteric resource or phenomenon, if the esoteric substances responsible for themunication technology were somewhat scarce, then it could exin why this technology wasn''t ubiquitous.


    The device allowed Rui and other Martial Artists to effectively and easilymunicate with and update the Martial Union on the progress of the mission.


    Once Ruipleted all the procedures, it was time for the dispatch. After recording the timing and signing some paperwork, Rui began jogging to the location of the specifiedmencement destination. A little hotel in one of the outskirt districts of the town of Hajin.


    As Rui made his way to the location of the assigned mission, the infrastructure and poption density of the districts dipped progressively. Within an hour of using Parallel Walk and Bnced Direction tentatively, he could see the hotel.


    (''Such an offbeat and remote location, and yet they still want a bodyguard?'') Rui pondered, before dismissing the thought. He was just grateful to have a mission, he had already made up his mind to make the best out of this mission no matter what!


    He only noticed something strange when he reached the location, pausing at a distance. A gang of men had gotten into a conflict with who seemed to be the hotel owner.


    (''Bandits or robbers maybe?'') Rui tilted his head as the men forced their way in despite the owner''s protests. Rui resumed, sprinting towards the hotel. If these men had bad intentions, then his client was in danger too!


    As he reached the hotel, he saw a young blue-hairedde creep out of the window.


    (''That hair color matches the ount and sketch.'') Rui rejoiced, despite being confused, before panicking as she bumped into one of the men patrolling the parameter. What shocked Rui was that the man apprehended her and dragged her away.


    THWACK


    A Vital Pressure strike to the temple from a blind spot knocked the man out, giving him a concussion. He sighed in relief as he studied her.<sub> </sub>


    "Hm, you''re definitely Be Hier." Rui nodded sighing relief. "Thank god, it would be so embarrassing if I lost my client on my very first mission!"


    Kane and Fae would never let him hear the end of it!


    "I don''t know what kind of mess you''ve gotten yourself into, youngdy." He solemnly added. "But we need to get out of here."


    She stared at him with speechless confusion. "You... are my bodyguard?"


    "Yes." Rui caught her hand. "No time! Let''s g-"


    "HEY! I FOUND HER." A man''s voice loudly announced.


    "Tsk." Rui tutted. "Toote. Guess I''ll have to deal with them."


    Thankfully Rui didn''t sense any Martial Apprentices among them. Martial Apprentices did not possess an imperceivable aura or pressure that was as defined as that of a Martial Squire or Senior. But a Martial Apprentice like Rui could easily distinguish them from normal people.


    "Careful! He has the Martial Apprentice uniform on!" The man warned the others as they huddled banded around.


    Rui didn''t waste any time. He sprinted over to them faster than they could effectively react beforeunching a Flowing Canon and knocking several of them flying away.


    BAM BAM BAM


    Rui weaved around, dodging their crude haymakers while cleanly punishing them Vital Pressure into especially vulnerable and painful areas left them t on the ground or reelingpletely open for swift strikes to the chin, knocking them out.


    In the span of ten seconds, fifteen men had been taken down by a single adolescent boy. Be stared dumbfoundedly at him as he wrapped up and walked back to her.


    She had always been generally aware that Martial Artists were strong, but knowing that and actually witnessing them in live action were two different things. She was surprised that someone who appeared to be so young could already be a Martial Apprentice.


    "Are you okay?" Rui stuck out his hand offering help, breaking her out of her reverie.N?velDrama.Org content rights.


    "I''m okay." She managed squeeze out, pulling herself up.


    "Those men will wake up eventually, we need to get out of here quickly." Rui insisted. "We''ll talk once we''ve reached a better ce."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 97 Considerations

    Be shook herself out of her reverie and nodded seriously. Just then;


    "Miss!" Her attendant called out.


    "Puth, are you okay?" Be asked, concerned, receiving a nod in return. Thankfully the men had merely had her open the door and snooped around looking for their target and left when they couldn''t find her.


    Be nced back at Rui. "We need to leave this district immediately. I''m heading south, towards the outskirts of the town before catching a cargo carriage towards the neighbouring town of Laxus. We need you to apany and protect us within Hajin." She insisted.


    Rui nodded. "We can talkter. Right now, we seriously need to go." he said, before turning to face Puth. "However, you are not under my protection and having more people will only slow us down."


    Be grimaced, slowly nodding before turning to her attendant. "Puth, I cannot have you apany us any further. The journey will be too dangerous, return back home." Not giving her attendant any choice in the matter.


    She turned back to Rui, before nodding. "Let''s leave."


    Rui nodded in return. "You''re too slow, I''m going to need to carry you until we reach find a rickshaw or reach a ce we cany low."


    "Eh?"


    "Time is of the essence."


    He swooped in, lifting her in a princess-carry, before activating Bnced Direction, Parallel Walk and Helical Breathing. Despite the hindrance and burden, he was still able to sprint at a speed beyond the human limit. In the meantime, Be awkwardly held onto him embarrassed as she tried not to let her grip slip at those immense speeds.


    It wasn''t that Rui wasn''t cognizant of her awkwardness, or even his own. But it wasn''t important. Her life and the mission was at stake, only a fool would let something like embarrassment get in the way of sess.


    "Was it okay to not kill those men?" She asked a pertinent question.


    "If this was an ordinary bodyguard mission, it wouldn''t be a problem." Rui stated. "Problem is mass murder is extremely high key and will draw far too much attention. Law enforcement officers will be all over the ce and will be out looking for us and even the Martial Union might be involved, and not in a good way. Killing them will draw even more attention to us and make a clean escape much, much harder. It''s better to just leave them, and do our best to reach your destination."


    Be was young, not a fool. "Furthermore, the policing officers would only take us in, have us make statements before releasing us without protection, since we cannot produce evidence of ill-intent on my life and well-being. You''re right, killing them has more downsides than upsides."


    Rui nodded silently. In truth, there was an even greater reason he had chosen not to kill them.


    He was not prepared to.


    He had never killed a single person in his life, he had never felt the urge to, asides from the instance of kidnapping in his childhood.<sub> </sub>


    He was d that there was solid rationale to leave them alive, he wasn''t sure he would be able to kill them one-by-one.


    He inwardly sighed. (''This is a problem I''ll need to fix. The Martial World is filled with death. There are those who kill, and there are those who will be killed. I need to fall into the former group, not thetter.'')


    Thankfully he still had some time before he would be forced to make that choice. He needed to condition and train a mindset that was willing to kill if needed. It''s not that Rui was an extremely pacifist or kind person, but as a person who spent fifty-nine years in a world where murder was deeply abhorrent, it was not easy to befortable with killing.


    Despite carrying another human, Rui was able to reach the closest district fairly quickly. He even avoided routes where they would inevitable be seen and would draw attention.


    "You need to cut or hide your hair." Rui insisted. "That drastically lowers the chances of someone being able identify and remember us if your pursuers ever investigate in this district."


    She nodded, tying up her hair as tightly as she could before covering it with a cloth garment she had. "You need to get rid of that uniform as well, that will draw attention since Martial Apprentices are rarely spotted in these remote districts."


    Half an hourter they had checked into a cheap inn. Rui had long taken off his mask, wearing clothes that Be had quickly bought from the closest inn, while covering his hair with a tied cloth like Be had. His hair was too attention-drawing and distinct, not to mention the annoying superstitions that would, no doubt, make this mission harder.


    Both of them had ensured that there were no distinct traits that would allow the Lowminer gangs to be able to identify them and recount information should they be questioned.


    "It''s time for us to talk." Rui said, sitting at the other side of the room. "The more you reveal, the better I''ll be able to guarantee your safety."


    Be sighed. "What do you want to know, specifically?"


    "The scope, power, influence and a general threat evaluation of your pursuers." Rui replied. "Your objectives and ns. Remember, the maximum timeframe of the mission is three days, I can''t hang around you forever."


    Be nodded, sighing. "I''m being pursued by arge powerhouse in the esoteric industry of the town of Hajin. Although unclear, they have connections to the mafia and often employ gang violence indirectly. Their objective should ideally be my capture alive, allowing them to coerce me into handing over my shares one way or another."


    Rui nodded, in thought. "That man was definitely trying to apprehend you."


    "As for my ns. My father''spany has branches in towns where the Lowminers haven''t expanded yet. My greatest likelihood of survival would be to reach those branches and consolidate safely." She exined.


    "I have a few questions, if you don''t mind."


    "Go ahead."N?velDrama.Org owns this text.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 98 Answers

    "First, if the Hier family has branches in this town of Hajin as well as outskirt towns, why bother going to those towns instead of your Hajin branch?" He asked, unable to make sense of her decision.


    "I was in my personal penthouse when I received the news, I had immediately fled the estate with as much of my immediate personal savings as I could." Be exined. "I heard that roughly ten-fifteen minutester the estate was that gangs of men had arrived at my personal home. There is no way they would not ount for me going to the Hier Industries branches. Furthermore, with an ownership of decent number of shares of thepany, they have some degree of authority and influence on its executive operations. Because of this, it would be easy for them to trap and capture me if I attempted to visit the Hajin branch."


    Rui nodded, this made sense.


    "Is that why you were only able tomission a single Martial Apprentice?"N?velDrama.Org content rights.


    Be nodded. "I never had ess to the immense amounts of wealth of Hier Industries, I''m only seventeen-years-old after all. My father was always strict because he believed that spoiling me with great personal wealth would prevent me from bing a worthy sessor. The wealth I used tomission a bodyguard from the Martial Union was all wealth of my earning." Be sighed. "If I had much more time, I would have been able to reach the branch and consolidate my position while hiring multiple high-grade Martial Apprentices. But s, it was mostly toote."


    Rui understood why she appeared to be such a pauper despite being the daughter of a bigshot, the information provided by the mission bill as well as what Be had told him had finally given him a fully understanding of the situation. "Alright, what branch are you aiming to head for?"


    "The Laxus town branch." Be replied. "It''s a town where the Lowminer Industries haven''t expanded to yet, mainly because the market doesn''t conform to their established areas. Their power and influence should be considerably hampered. Using gangs haphazardly will not be taken well by the local mafia of Laxus."


    Rui nodded, this was probably her best chance of sess in her circumstances. "There''s just one issue. The mission range is limited to within a thirty kilometers radius. I can''t exceed that, meaning I can only protect you a part of the way."


    Be nodded, expecting this. "I''m aware of that, I was cognizant of it when Imissioned the bodyguard mission. Increasing the range and timeframe of the mission increases the cost of the mission, I had to choose a good bnce between the timeframe and the range of the mission. There would be no point inmissioning a mission with a high range but extremely low timeframe, or a mission with a high timeframe and low radius. Eventually I decided that three days and thirty kilometers was a good bnce. Thirty kilometers is enough to escort me out of Hajin safely, which is the hardest part. Once I''m out the Lowminers are constrained and limited. I have a decently solid chance of seeding as long as I''m careful."


    Rui nodded. "Alright, what route are you nning to take in order to escape Hajin?" Ordinarily, the bodyguard was supposed to make decisions regarding the safety of the client of protection. But in this case Rui digressed and left the decision in her hands, she was clearly much more knowledgeable and quite clever herself.


    <o>,m And hot.</o>


    Rui shook his head, sighing inwardly. (''These dumb hormones are fucking with me.'')


    The amount of testosterone per unit blood escted astronomically in boys between the ages of twelve to twenty-one before gradually reducing over the rest of their life span resulting in an exaggeratedly high libido. Thankfully, Rui''s mind, by virtue of going through a second round of growth had strengthened its fortitude and reduced its susceptibility to influences such as hormones, for the most part. Though he was only resistant, not immune. Boys will be boys.


    Be brought out a map. "I was considering routes that included going through both the most popted and the least popted districts."<sub> </sub>


    Rui frowned. "Doesn''t it make more sense to stick to the least popted districts of Hajin due to how few people there are?"


    Be shook her head. "Not necessarily. If our disguises are even halfway decent. Finding us in high poption-density urban districts will be a nightmare. However, if our identities arepromised then more remote districts are more advantageous, because it is harder to be hidden in more remote locations."


    Rui nodded, this made sense. "In that case, a perfect disguise in urban districts where we blend perfectly into the background masses, as long as we don''t have to verify our identities at any point, they should struggle to find us."


    Be nodded. "Exactly."


    "Alright, what about exiting Hajin and reaching Laxus?" Rui asked. "There''s no way you''re going to make it by foot."


    "I have a strong connection to a local small-scale goods transportationpany, I n to request the director, a close acquaintance of my father and mine, to smuggle me outside Hajin and inside Laxus without detection." Be exined. "After that, I''ll manage myself."


    Rui nodded. This had spelled the end of all the doubts he had. The air grew silent and awkward as they ran out of topics to converse about.


    "We should freshen up and eat up a bit before disguising ourselves for the next journey stretch." Rui said. "I only have three standard low-grade rejuvenation potions and one healing potion for the bodyguard mission, I don''t have any to share with you unfortunately."


    "No need to apologize." Be sighed. "It''s not your fault."


    As Be went to the bathroom to freshen up a little, Rui contemted about the mission. The mission difficulty was definitely not a meagre one, that was for sure. However, this wasn''t much of a grievance to Rui for one main reason; the Martial Unionpensated Martial Artists for underpriced missions!


    This meant that as long as Rui was able to show that the mission''s difficulty exceeded the evalution of the Martial Union, he would receive even more Martial Credits! Allowing him to purchase even better techniques!


    Rui grinned like a shark at the thought.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 99 Danger Standing By

    "Damn it!" A curse echoed through the room.


    Had Feron Lowminer known the Hier girl was as slippery as she was, he would have been much more careful than he already was. But he didn''t, and here he was.


    He had a bad feeling in his gut when he heard that Be Hier was not at her personal home, and that she had hastily departed once she had learnt of her father''s death. It was odd behaviour, what kind of daughter hastily ran away from home without announcing her destination after learning of her father''s death?


    Why wasn''t there a period of mourning? Rather than grief, her behavior indicated fear.


    All this strongly suggested that she had already figured out her predicament, and had taken pre-emptive measures to protect herself.


    And she had surpassed his expectations, she managed to escape immediate capture and had remained hidden well enough and long enough to hire a Martial Apprentice from the Martial Union, remarkably raising the difficulty of her capture.


    Martial Apprentices could not be defeated by ordinary men, not without a huge numeric advantage, and even then, it would require truly remarkable and advantageous circumstances to seed.


    "Only Martial Artists can defeat Martial Artists..." Feron grunted, before ncing at a dark figure at the corner of the room. "Isn''t that right, Azazel?"


    The shadowy figure nodded mildly, not saying a word.


    "Remain on standby, if and when the girl slips up, I expect you to finish the job." Feron coldly stated. "Kill her and the pesky Martial Apprentice."


    * * * * * * * * * *


    Rui tied up his hair tightly, preventing even a strand of his unique hair from slipping and out. Protecting his identity had be an even greater deal now that he knew he was dealing with powerful third parties with whom he had a strong conflict of interest. He was not going to take any chances, a single blunder may very welle back to bite him in the ass.


    His ears pricked as he heard some noisese from the other room.


    (''Be?'') He turned with a puzzled look as he was about to open the bathroom, when he froze.


    (''She''s crying.'') He realized, as he heard her muffled sobs.


    An awkward expression crawled onto his face. He wasn''t sure what to do, he wasn''t close to her, he didn''t know her whatsoever, he was here toplete a job and would leave once his time was up, regardless of her situation.


    Furthermore, he had never consoled anyone before, on anything, especially a teenager. Let alone on something as heavy as their father''s death.


    He shook his head, deciding to avoid it. He made a big fuss as he was about to open the door, making a lot of noise with something or the other, giving her enough of a forewarning that he was about toe out, allowing her to hastily clean herself up.


    "Are you ready?" He asked, pretending as if he knew nothing. She nodded with a steeled expression; an expression Rui inwardly sighed at.


    (''Seems like she''s pulled herself together, that''s a good sign.'')<sub> </sub>


    Rui had left the core of the nning to her, if her emotional state was too unreliable, he might decide to take matters into his own hand.


    "Once we get to the next district, we''ll have to change our clothes once again, just to be safe." She told him.


    Rui nodded. "The next district is district fourteen, I believe?"


    Be nodded. "District fourteen is a disproportionatelymercialpared to other outer districts of Hajin, there''s a huge influx and outflux of traders, merchants, suppliers, transporters and consumers. The two of us won''t stand out in anyway, and as long as we keep our heads low, the Lowminers should find it almost impossible to track us."


    Rui nced at her in thought. "You mentioned your connection to the director of a small-scale goods transportationpany. Where is he situated?"


    "In district twenty-three, a district in the outermostyer of the town of Hajin."


    <o>,m "Can you trust him?" Rui asked cautiously.</o>


    She nodded in response. "I''ve known him my entire life, my father and him went way back having known each other for decades."


    Rui shrugged mildly, if she thought he was trustworthy, then he could only follow her lead.


    "What about our means of transport?"


    "We''ll have to travel by foot until we meet with the director of the I mentioned, after that we can probably get some transportation."


    "You think you can make it that far in a few days?" Rui asked.


    "I have no choice but to." She sighed, putting an end to their conversation. The two of them made some final preparations.


    Rui was actually wearing his Martial Uniform under his disguise for protection, while concealing the mask within his baggy clothes. The disguise hindered his movement just a little, but that little cost of mobility was worth the benefits. It would be much more of a pain if the Lowminers managed to track them because of reports of a travelling Martial Apprentice with a woman with concealed hair.


    Their next goal was two districts away, both of them had agreed to not bother with longer breaks within transit and take shorter breaks and longer stretches in their journey.


    Once they began, it had taken them almost an hour and a half at a brisk walking pace to reach the next district. Be had grown far more exhausted than she had anticipated. Having lived a lifestyle that rarely required her to push herself to her physical limits.


    Eventually she grew so tired that she almost copsed, and required Rui to carry her once more. He then had to take a roundabout route through district fourteen so that they would avoid drawing attention in the densely popted district.


    "Aren''t you exhausted?" She panted lightly as she held on to him. "You came all the way from the Academy on foot prior."N?velDrama.Org content rights.


    Rui nced at her with a slight grin. "That''s the best part of being an Apprentice, it takes a lot of for us to get tired!"


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 100 Pay

    N?velDrama.Org owns this text.


    "Did you take a rejuvenation potion?" She asked, tilting her hair squinting her brown eyes with curiosity. "You did mention you had some."


    Rui shook his head. "Those were for rejuvenating the mind, negating the need to sleep."


    Be nodded, well familiar with mental rejuvenation potions herself. "How do you have so much stamina?"


    "Ites from honing my stamina through strict intense physical training, and also from an Apprentice-level Martial Art technique called Helical Breathing." Rui exined. "It saves increases efficiency of energy consumption, allowing you to aplish the same results with less effort."


    "Hmmm..." Be nodded. "Must be nice to be a Martial Artist. You have so much power, you must feel incredibly secure and confident."


    Rui thought about her words. It was true to some degree, unless his opponent was a Martial Apprentice, there wasn''t much that ordinary humans could do. However, it wasn''t something he really thought of. He never began his voyage down his Martial Path in order to obtain more physical power. His goal was to practice and develop his Martial Art forever, just that alone gave him true tion and fulfillment.


    The physical security was ultimately just a good bonus, it was not his motivation or his goal.


    Furthermore, having spent most of his time in the Academy since he became an Apprentice, he hadn''t experienced much of the sense of increased security. Since as soon as he broke through to Martial Apprentice, he was immediately booted out of the Exploration Stage and shipped to the Apprentice section. He was immediately surrounded by Martial Apprentices who initially all much stronger than him.


    There were, of course, the Martial Apprentices of his batch, who were all stronger than him. Then there were Martial Apprentices of the senior batches who had umted more techniques and experience than the Martial Apprentices of his own batch.


    It was not easy to feel physically secure when all of your peers were stronger than you.


    The only time he had spent outside the Academy was when he went home for the winter break, but that was incredibly brief, he hadn''t really had much time to actually introspect on how the world appeared to him now that he was a Martial Apprentice.


    However, now that he thought more about it, he had be more cognizant of this feeling. He had a decently strong sense of security in this mission. As a Martial Apprentice, realistically only another Martial Apprentice could threaten him, and this mission would be, at the very least, a grade four on the difficulty scale if there were other Martial Apprentices were involved, reaching potentially much higher.


    Of course, there was always the possibility that a Martial Apprentice, but that was extremely unlikely given that this a low-grade mission, so he was alert, but still rxed.


    "The sense of security is good." Rui admitted.


    Be nodded. "I''m a little envious, this catastrophe has shown me how helpless I am."


    "By yourself, you are helpless, like all humans." Rui straightforwardly affirmed. "But once you consolidate your position within the Hier Industries, your power would far exceed mine. There is more than one kind of power, I pursue Martial Art because I love Martial Art, and not because of the power it gives me."


    "Oh?" Be''s eyebrow lifted? "You didn''t strike me as the fiery passionate type."


    Rui chuckled. "That''s because this is a mission, I''m expected to be professional."


    "Then why are you having this little conversation?" Be asked, with just the slightest hint of yfulness creeping onto her face.


    Rui shrugged.


    He had chatted with her to lift her mood up slightly, but he didn''t want to say that out loud. But Be had noticed regardless.<sub> </sub>


    "Thanks, I appreciate it." She rested her chin on his shoulder. "The past few days have been rough."


    "No worries." Rui replied briefly.


    The remaining journey was silent for the most part. Rui traversed through obscure routes and paths through district fourteen, a few hourster they had finally reached district twenty-three.


    "Huff... huff... huff..." Rui panted.


    Even with his stamina, he was tired. After considering his situation, he decided to take one of the rejuvenation potions he had at hand.


    "I thought you were nning on saving those." Be noted.


    "At this rate, the mission won''tst three days." Rui stated. "I think if you had a more nuanced understanding of what Martial Apprentices were capable of, you would have reduced the timeframe of the mission while increasing the difficulty so that you could obtain higher-grade Martial Apprentices, but hey you lucked out."


    "How so?" Be wondered.


    "My evaluation from the Martial Academy was well above the difficulty grade assigned to the mission, you see."


    "Oh?" Be nced at him curiously. "Then why did you ept the mission?"


    "It''s my first mission, so I nned to take it slow." Rui shrugged, before pointedly staring at her. "But thanks to a certain someone underselling the difficulty of the mission, that n is not happening."


    "Well, I didn''t lie." Be shrugged, smirking.


    Rui snorted. "The Martial Union penalizes gross under-reporting, that''s specified in the contract."


    "Yes but they can''t prove I underreported."


    "You think that matters?" Ruiughed. "Your intent doesn''t matter, as long as they evaluate you to bear responsibility for the under-reporting, you''ll be penalized. If the Martial Union allowed people to get away with stuff like this, then everybody would severely undersell the difficulty of all missions, each mission would be much more difficult than evaluated and the Martial Union would be getting scammed left and right."


    "True." Be sighed. "But once I consolidate my position in the Hier Industries, I''ll be able to pay off any mary penalty they impose."


    "That must have been part of your n." Rui chuckled.


    "It was." She admitted. "As long as I can gain full control of all the power and wealth my father has passed down to me, I can fix everything."


    "I can pay for what I did and also..." Be''s voice submerged into rage. "I can make those who caused all of this to pay for what they did!"


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 101 Wern

    Fifteen minutester, Rui and Be had navigated through district twenty-three, and found themselves in front ofmercial building.


    "Is this it?" Rui asked. They''d finally reached the local transportpany that Be had spoken about. Be apparently trusted the director enough to seek help from him despite her vulnerable situation. Rui was quite hopeful about this, if this man was actually reliable as Be alluded, then Be had a pretty good chance of achieving her objective.


    Be nodded. "Let''s go."


    She had not only covered her hair, but also obscured her face under a cap-like garment to ensure no one could possibly identify her features enough to recognize them if inquired by the Lowminers.


    The interior of the reception was hospitable enough, there were seating arrangements on one side of the room, with an array of receptionists engaging with each visitor one-by-one. A little behind them was a several corridors that led to the interior of the building.


    "How do you n to meet the director?" Rui asked. "You''ll need to reveal your identity in order to get an immediate appointment with him, that''s risky."


    "I just need him to see me once." Be replied confidently. "He''ll understand once he sees me. Help me force my way to his office."


    Rui nodded.


    They walked towards one particr corridor that Be was aiming for, hoping they would be able to naturally pass.


    "Excuse me, please take your seat in the visitor''s bay, I''m afraid we cannot allow you enter the building without permission and authorization." A receptionist noticed and insisted.


    Be began running, as Rui followed her example.


    "Hey!" A guard blocked their path, attempting to grab Be.


    Thwack


    A simple jab to the nose from Rui crumpled the man to his knees, leaving him in tears. Rui didn''t even bother using his full raw physical strength, let alone using Vital Pressure, that would be overkill and Rui might identally kill him.


    Be hopped over him as she headed straight to the director''s office.


    "Uncle Wern!" Be cried as she opened the door to the doctor''s office.


    The man inside squinted his small eyes through his rimmed spectacles as he tilted his head, before recognizing her as his eyes adjusted. "Be?"


    "Uncle Wern." Be repeated, ted. "It''s been so long."


    "Sir! I''m sorry for the interruption." the receptionist apologized. "We tried to stop them bu-"


    "Enough, good job." Wern interrupted her. "These people are my guests, please leave us."


    The receptionist was visibly confused, but she nodded before closing the door and returning to her job.Belongs to ? n0velDrama.Org.


    "Be." Wern was visibly overwhelmed. "Where have you been?? You weren''t even present at your father''s funeral!"


    Hearing that, Rui realized Wern was probably not aware of the truth behind her father''s death. If anything, in hindsight, Be took a well-educated guess more than she made a deduction. However, she was paranoid enough to act on it, which was the reason she was alive at the moment.<sub> </sub>


    Be sighed. "I have a lot to tell you, this will take a while."


    Wern raised his hand. "Then let me clear my schedule and finish a quick errand, so that I can listen to your story uninterrupted."


    Be nodded, as he walked out of the room. She sighed as she sunk into thefortable sofas, feeling a sense of safety she hadn''t experienced in the past few days. Rui observed her demeanor, she seemed like she really trusted this person.


    Seeing her relief reminded him that she was just a seventeen-year-old girl, even if quite remarkable. Rui though back to the teenage girls from back on Earth. Which one of them would have survived if they were in her shoes?


    (''Pretty much none of them.'') Rui shook his head. (''The kids from back on Earth in the twenty-first century lead rtively simple teenage lives without too much responsibility and expectations.'')


    Be had been groomed for inheriting thepany from a young age, her acumen was remarkably well ahead of most of her peers.


    Still, she was pretty much just a kid mentally from his perspective. He would even console her andfort her a bit if not for the fact that it would be extremely patronizing for a fourteen-year-old to do that to a seventeen-year-old. Especially when teenage girls tended to mature faster than teenage boys initially.


    Just then, Wern returned, interrupting his thoughts.


    "Alright, now you can tell me everything that happened without interruption." Wern said, eyeing her with concern. "What happened? Why did you leave your home and disappear without a word?"


    Be sighed. "I left because my life is in danger."


    Wern frowned. "What do you mean?"


    "The Lowminers killed my father, uncle Wern." Be solemnly stated.


    His eyes flew wide open. "What?!"


    "Initially, it was just a strong suspicion. The Lowminers wouldn''t be able to take over thepany unless they coerced father into selling them the remaining shares or rescinding them. However, father would rather die than do that, and they know this. At that rate, the conflict would take decades to end and the Lowminers would probably never getplete dominance and monopoly."


    Wern''s eyes sharpened, catching onto her drift. "Unless... Karl were to die." He said, referring to her father by his name.


    "Thews of ownership are formted as such, they would gainplete control of Hier Industries." She said.


    Wern nodded "But since that didn''t happen and you are the owner of the dominant majority of shares, that must have been what Karl''s will was about."


    Be nodded. "Father must have prepared it as a contingency after the Lowminers acquired a portion of Hier Industries, to not allow them to win even if they managed to kill him."


    "I see..." Wern''s eyes wandered across the floor as he processed her words. "But this isn''t proof, Be."


    "No, but my personal estate being raided by known affiliate gangs of the Lowminer Industries is." She formly asserted. "They have tried to kill me twice in my journey here. I wouldn''t have survived if it wasn''t for the Martial Apprentice bodyguard I hired." She said, gesturing to Rui.


    "He saved my life."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 102 Route

    Wern nced at Rui, sizing him up overtly. "A Martial Apprentice from the Martial Union, eh? You''re quite young for a Martial Apprentice."


    Rui didn''t respond, there was nothing he had to say to those words. Furthermore, although he grown a little chummy with Be, he still wanted to maintain bodyguard etiquette. Bodyguards didn''t talk unless absolutely necessary. This conversation was purely one between Be and Wern, his job was to protect Be no matter what.


    Wern eventually turned back to Be with sorrowful eyes. "I''m sorry for everything you''ve been through Be, it must have been hard."


    Be shook her head. "You have nothing apologize for, uncle Wern."


    Wern sighed. "So, what can I help you with Be? I assume you didn''te here to just catch up?"


    "I need to get to Laxus." Be exined.


    Wern understood her intentions. "You want to consolidate your position in a town where the Lowminers have no influence eh? Makes sense."


    Be nodded.


    "But are you sure about this, Be?" Wern asked. "Sure about fighting back?" Hepleted.


    "Of course!" Be retorted, bristled. "They killed my father!"


    Wern sighed. "Yes, but what you''re attempting to do isn''t going to be easy. In fact, you''re going to be risking your life. Even if you take the ultimate precaution and arm yourself with Martial Apprentice bodyguards for the rest of your life, you''ll have to life with immense burden."


    "I ampletely prepared for this." Be retorted sternly. "I have long made up my mind."


    Wern sighed as Rui silently gauged the conversation. Thetter could definitely see where Wern wasing from. Be may have been educated for this all her life, but Rui was highly skeptical of how fit she was to lead and manage the Hier Industries.


    Ultimately, she was merely seventeen-year-old girl. The objectives she aimed toplete even if she survived this predicament weren''t tasks that could be aplished without experience.


    Rui was rtively sure that she wasn''t ready yet. He could sense that Wern felt the same way.


    Wern sighed. "Alright, if that''s what you want, then so be it. You are already an adult. You have the right to take charge of your life and live how you want to life. I just hope you understand what you''re getting yourself into."


    Be shook her head. "Thank you for your concern uncle. But I''m well aware of the gravity of my choices."


    Wern sighed once more. "Alright, if that''s the case, I have nothing more to say on that matter."<sub> </sub>


    "Coming back to the matter of travelling to Laxus..." Be reminded.


    "Yes, I can arrange it for you. There are different routes, however, not all of them are safe, since they pertain supplies of goods and resources relevant to the business affairs of the Lowminers." Wern exined.


    Be nodded, deep in thought.


    Even if the Lowminers didn''t operate in the town of Laxus, didn''t mean Be could merrily hop onto a carriage in any trade or supply route between the towns of Laxus and Hajin.


    Both the Lowminer and Hier Industries were suppliers, they acquired exotic resources from elsewhere and sold them to the esoteric technology sector that would process the supplies and manufacture technological products that would then be sold to the private and corporate markets of the town.


    Meaning both Lowminers and Hier Industries had to import massive supplies from outside Hajin into it. Although they each had their own transit capacities, it was extremely difficult to cover all their shipping needs of their own capabilities.


    Thus, both industries partially relied on smaller transportation and shippingpanies that offered transit services, that took care of the remaining shipping needs.


    The Wern Company was one suchpany. Wern and Karl Hier had initially met when Karl when Hier Industries had first initially taken off in Hajin, they had hit it off immediately on a favourable shipping contract and had grown closer and closer over the years as theirpanies grew.


    Be had to avoid routes between Hajin and Laxus that would put her closer to Lowminer influence. If she chose to get into a carriage on a route that the Lowminers frequently used to transport supplies, then she might get caught.


    On the other hand, if the Lowminers were aware of her intentions to get to Laxus, then they might predict what routes she chooses and intercept her.


    As for whether the aware, Rui was rtively certain they had gauged her general intentions. It was a simple and rtivelymon-sense n from Be, and it didn''t take a genius to figure out what she was doing and why.


    Which is why the details of Be''s n became more and more important. Rui nced at Wern and Be. They had already taken out a map epassing Hajin and Laxus, and had begun having an intense discussion, pointing to different lines of different colours that ran between Hajin and Laxus. Rui hoped they would make the best choice; the sess or failure of the mission was on the line.


    There was a good chance the next time the Lowminers caught them, Rui wouldn''t be able to handle them as easily. The Lowminers must have already long been informed about the Martial Apprentice bodyguard that Be managed tomission from the Martial Union.


    This meant the next time there was a confrontation, they would be much more prepared, the end goal was to capture or kill Be, meaning they didn''t necessarily have to kill Be. Ideally, they would want to kill Be without killing Rui, in order to avoid poking the Martial Union. Meaning they would engage Be and Rui in a manner solely meant to kill Be. This would make Rui''s job much harder. It was much harder to protect and evacuate someone else, than just himself.


    "The Vorefire Horn supply routes are the shortest." Be said. "Furthermore, path hits Laxus closest to the closest Hier branch."


    Wern shook his head. "The Lowminers have begun expanding into the Vorefire Horn market in the past few months, it''s no longer safe. Furthermore, the route ends too closely to other supply routes that the Lowminers use regrly. It''s too risky."


    They had yet toe to a decision.N?velDrama.Org content.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 103 Not Going Anywhere

    After half an hour of back-and-forth, Be and Wern finally decided on the best course of action. They had taken into ount Lowminer presence, proximity to other Lowminer suppliers, travel timeframe and distance.


    "Cardinal Steel supply route it is then." Wern sat back, sighing tiredly.


    Be nodded. "This is definitely the best choice all things considered. How soon we can leave?"


    Wern considered her question for a second. "The next supply dispatch is in an hour so."


    "That''s perfect!" Be''s eyes lit up.


    "I suggest waiting for a bit." Rui interjected. "You can hire a few more Martial Apprentice bodyguards to protect you during the journey." The mission range limit prevented him from joining her anyway, so Rui didn''t have to worry about sharing credit, he would get paid his share regardless.


    Be nodded. "That''s a good idea." She turned to Wern. "Can you help me with the mission funds Uncle? I''ll repay you after I consolidate my position."


    Wern smiled warmly. "Don''t worry about it. You''ll be travelling by yourself after all. I wouldn''t want to repeat you getting almost caught by Lowminer gangs without a bodyguard in a dingy little inn likest time. I care for you too much." He said affectionately.


    Beughed as she dove to hug Wern. "I love you so much uncle! Thank you."


    "Oh careful! I''m an old man you know." Earning moreughter from Be.


    Rui couldn''t help but smile at the warm scene.


    Yet, suddenly, he felt an ominous chill.


    (''Wait a minute.'') His face froze as he shuddered as though he''d seen a ghost.


    "Hm." Be noticed. "What''s wrong?"


    Rui''s face grew pale as he turned to Wern, sizing him up.


    "What''s wrong, young man?" Wern asked with sharp eyes.


    "How do you know...?" Rui gulped before continuing. "How do you know Be was almost caught by the Lowminer gang in an inn before she met me?"


    "Hm? Oh that." Wern replied a little too quickly. "Be mentioned that at the start."


    "Not she did not." Rui firmly denied. "She only mentioned the number of times we''d been attacked. She did not mention any other details."


    Be had already caught on to Rui''s drift. She turned towards Wern, with horror and terror in her eyes.


    "Calm down." Wern raised his hands. "News of the fifteen men beat up by a Martial Artist has spread."


    Rui red at him. "That doesn''t exin how you knew they were Lowminer gangs, and that they were after Be."


    Wern red back, his fa?ade crumbling by the second, before facing her. "Be! He doesn''t know what he''s talking about. I''ve known you since you were an infan-"


    SLAP


    A thundering p resounded through the room as Be swung with everything. Tears streamed down Be''s pained face. "Why?"


    Wern had toppled over from the force. "Why? WHY?" Heughed contemptuously. "Because thispany is EVERYTHING to me. You think I''m going to sacrifice my life''s work for the daughter of the man who caused all this mess?" He spat. "I TOLD Karl to not mess with Lowminers. That he''d die for it. Did he listen to me? NO. Now look at the mess he got me in!"


    Rui''s face scrunched in confusion. "Mess?"


    "He means the Lowminers." Be whispered softly.<sub> </sub>


    "The Wern Company has always associated with Hier Industries. When Karl died, I thought it was toote for me. But they offered me a sweet deal."


    Rui understood. "To cooperate with them for the capture of Be."


    "Among other things."


    As apany that hadrge amount of control over supply routes and chains all over Hajin and between Hajin and Laxus, Wern was in a position that was of great utility to the Lowminers. Even if the Lowminers didn''t predict that Be trusted Wern enough to directly and straightforwardly to him, Wern was still quite useful to them.


    "Do they know we''re here?" Rui asked urgently.


    "..."


    "I said..." Rui grabbed him and used Vital Pressure to inflict excruciating pain.


    "AAAAAAGHH"


    "...Do they know we''re here?"


    "I sent them a message when you arrived via amunication device they gave me, they told me to stall for a bit over half an hour" Wern grinned despite the pain. "That was half an hour ago."


    Rui''s eyes flew wide open. He knocked Wern out with a well-ced chop to the neck. "Fuck!" Rui cursed. He grabbed Be. "We need to go! NOW."


    He lifted her and sprinted out the office, running at top speed.


    "What should we do now! Why haven''t they done anything to us yet if they knew we were here all this time?"


    "Because sending ordinary men after you will likely lead to failure because of me." Rui deduced. "If they send a bunch of untrained gang grunts after you, chances are we''ll escape, all they will have done is alert us and given us a chance to escape and lose track of us yet again. Sending ordinary people is mostly pointless, the reason they haven''tunched an attack yet is because..." Rui gritted his teeth.


    "Because?"


    "Because they''re sending a Martial Artist. That''s the only exnation that makes sense." Rui exined with a pained face. "The Martial Artist must have been a district away if Wern was told to stall us for only half an hour. He or she is already in this town somewhere."N?velDrama.Org owns this text.


    Rui grimaced as he ran away at top speed. He needed to put as much distance as he possibly could between their previous location and them. He took obscure roots and stayed away from crowds where they would draw attention for their speed.


    "The best thing we need to do now is to hide unti-!"


    WHOOSH


    Rui ducked sharply, protectively covering Be from any harm as they skidded away. He had, almost instinctively, sensed and avoided somethinging at them with tremendous force through only the sound of the attack furiously cutting through air.


    He got up just in time to throw up a guard to yet another iing attack.


    THWACK


    Rui grimaced as he muffed the impact with Acute Edge and stic Shift. However, he didn''t stop there. He immediately moved with the strike as he grasped his opponent''s arm with all four limbs, aiming to use Binding Lash to dislocate or even break his opponent''s arm.


    But s, to no avail. The most dangerous part of Binding Lash was well-avoided as his opponent cleanly maneuvered to counter it. However, Rui still managed to drag their attacker to the ground, forcing the battle to enter ground-grappling.


    Rui didn''t even turn to Be, his face pale with effort. "GO. RUN. NOW."


    Be got up and ran away without hesitation as Rui turned to look his opponent in the eye.


    "You''re not going anywhere." He dered.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 104 Woe

    Rui finally got a good look at his aggressor. Not that it helped much because his aggressor was masked. However, there were things that could still be gauged despite this.


    (''Adult male. His bulky physique probably means he''s not a speed or maneuvering oriented Martial Artist, he''s definitely a Martial Apprentice though'') Rui thought as he struggled to restrain him.


    Rui''s goal in this fight was not to win. He had two goals:


    The first was to survive. His survival was the ultimate priority to him. Although he had gotten closer to Be during the mission, he was not going sacrifice his life for her. Rui never fancied himself to be a hero or a saint.


    The second, was to stall, not win. He did not intend to expend any extra energy on killing his opponent or knocking him out, though if he could, that would be great too. But for the most part, Rui was going to do his best to stall for Be.


    Stalling was easier than defeating, in most cases. Thankfully, this was one of those cases.


    This was also how Rui nned topensate for the weight difference. Rui had grown remarkably physically stronger over thest year, much more so than almost anybody else. However, at the end of the day he was still only a fourteen-year-old.


    His opponent seemed to be in his twenties, the prime of his life. An adult Martial Apprentice was stronger than an adolescent Martial Apprentice. Rui had to capitalize on his advantages as much as he could, stalling instead of aiming for a win, was part of the n.


    FOOSH


    The masked Martial Apprentice finally managed to untangle himself from Rui''s ground grappling.


    POW POW POW


    Rui immediately began showering him with a barrage of strikes of Vital Pressure, but his opponent managed to block and redirect almost all of them.


    WHOOSH


    Rui managed to cleanly crouch out of a high kick while simultaneously sweeping his pivot leg with a low kick.


    BAM


    Itnded, but the difference in power prevented Rui from knocking him out of bnce. His opponent returned the favour byunching a barrage of blows.


    BAM BAM BAM


    Rui was pushed back despite mitigating the force with Acute Edge and stic Shift, he leapt back putting some distance between them. They both paused for merely half a second, regaining their bearings. However, Martial Apprentices processedbat so quickly that even half a second inbat was akin half a dozen seconds. In fact, not even half a minute had passed since the Martial Apprentice ambushed Rui!


    (''His Martial Art leans towards power and toughness.'') Rui analyzed, while parsing the data he had collected through the basics of the VOID algorithm. (''The first step is to adapt my fighting approach such that the relevance and significance of power and durability is as minimal as possible.'')


    "Fuuuu..." Rui exhaled as he rxed his muscles, shaking and dangling them, while crouching his knees rxedly. Despite this, Rui dashed towards the masked Martial Apprentice aggressively, much to thetter''s surprise.


    WHOOSH


    Rui abruptly stopped and stepped back avoiding a counter haymaker from his opponent before circling around and entering his striking range tond a quick jab.


    Pow


    WHOOSH


    Rui jumped out of range after avoiding a low kick. The masked Martial Apprentice grimaced in frustration at the abrupt change in fighting styles, Rui had gone from passive defense to maneuvering and evasive offense, bing a much more annoying opponent!


    (''Float like a butterfly...'')


    WHOOSH


    Rui danced out of a straight punch.<sub> </sub>


    (''¡­ Sting like a bee!'')


    POW


    A clean jab to the sr plexus.


    This strategy was not exactly pioneering. It was the strategy that the legendary Muhammad Ali once said he would use if he had to fight Mike Tyson. This strategy was simr to what Kane used against Fae. A light offensebined with evasive maneuvering to avoid his opponent''s counter. Land in jabs wherever you could, avoid all attacks through evasive maneuvering.


    But, there was one key difference. Kane aplished this through speed and agility, something Rui didn''t have.


    Ruipensated for hiscking speed and agility with the predictive and counter-deduction measures of the VOID algorithm.


    Range and bnce of weight. Using this, Rui was able to deduce the general attack that his opponent was aiming for, and the VOID algorithm simply outputted a corresponding move that has the greatest chance for sess. Rui himself had painstakingly worked on the counter-deduction system of the VOID algorithm that constructed through a mind-numbing amount of data science.


    Watching his work allow him to gain an upper hand, even if small, in a disadvantaged battle validated Rui to his very core. The Martial Scientist in him was excited!


    BAM


    Rui almost flew away as his opponentnded a solid strike on him. He got up quickly and propped up his stinging arms into a stance, prepared for the next move.


    (''Come!'') Rui urged. He sharpened his senses awaiting a bullrush, yet a guttural screech from a distance away broke him out of his reverie. He just barely managed to recognize the voice.


    (''Be!'') In a moment of shock, he nced towards the direction the scream for just a second.


    However, when he turned back...


    (''He''s gone!'') Rui cursed. The Martial Apprentice had escaped from the edge of Rui''s vision, and scurried away into background.


    (''He went away in the opposite direction.'') Rui frowned, incredibly confused as he began moving in the direction from where he heard Be. (''Does he not care if I run after her?'')N?velDrama.Org owns this text.


    The only reason he would do that is if his job was cancelled.


    (''Or if his job isplete.'') Rui froze in horror. He immediately strained himself to the absolute maximum, running at a speed that physically hurt his body.


    He sprinted faster than he ever had before, moving at a speed that ordinary people would find difficult to even follow with their eyes!


    (''No no no. There''s no way.'') He tried to calm himself down. (''First I need fucking fin-'')


    His thoughts suddenly froze as something entered his vision.


    What he saw next wiped every ounce of energy and tension in his muscles.


    He just froze without a care, tripping and crashing on the ground hard before looking up.


    And there she was.


    What he saw was a sight that burned itself into his memory, forever.


    Tears streaming down her face, snot trickling down her nose, eyes rolled almost entirely up, and a pool of blood splurting from her slit neck.


    Face-to-face with the corpse of Be Hier.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 105 Aftermath

    Despair.


    Rage.


    Shock.


    Guilt.


    And even grief.


    A maelstrom of emotions swirled within Rui. Emotions he did not understand. He had only known her for a meagre twenty-four hours. They were just barely friends as they had grown a little closer over the duration of their mission. There was a good chance Rui would never even see her again even if the mission seeded.


    So why?N?velDrama.Org content.


    Why did he feel like his soul was being torn apart was he gazed at her corpse?


    Because she was his responsibility? Because he had ended up bing emotionally invested in her well-being and sess?


    Probably both.


    An eternity passed before Rui broke out of his reverie. He pulled out themunication device handed to him by the Martial Union, hitting one of the numerous buttons, the one he was supposed to hit when the mission ended. He hit in a few additional details, indicating the presence of a corpse. The device would convey his location to the Martial Union, and they would send post-mission personnel to take over.


    Murder was still a crime in the Kandrian Empire. The Martial Union would cooperate withw-enforcement and begin the judicial process immediately. He would be required to provide testimony and statements on the matter eventually.


    A hint of determination glinted in his eyes. The Lowminers and that man Wern. Rui was not going to conceal any of the information he possessed. He hoped justice would be served.


    He had the strong desire to serve it himself. At this very moment he could easily sprint back and kill Wern in an instant.


    "Fuuuu..." He exhaled, restraining himself.


    STEP


    Rui turned as he heard the arrival of a group of people in uniforms with the emblem of the Martial Union.


    "Apprentice Rui Quarrier?" A man at the head of the team inquired, noting Rui''s Apprentice uniform. "I''m inspector Gale." He said, showing Rui a badge. "I''m here to take proceed with the post-mission protocols. I encourage you to do the same by returning to the Martial Academy to provide a report and statement."


    Rui nodded listlessly, taking onest look at Be''s corpse even as the sight of it scorched his lifeless eyes.


    He sighed shakily before turning his back on it.


    The journey back to the Academy was a few hours in its totality. Giving Rui enough time to introspect, and sort out his thoughts and emotions.<sub> </sub>


    Why did he fail? How much responsibility did he bear? And most importantly, how was he supposed to deal with his emotions?


    Thest part was the hardest. Rui wasn''t even sure he had an answer, or if he would ever find one.


    The first two were much more objective, allowing him to analyze them more fairly.


    The reason the mission failed was because they had fallen into their enemy''s trap. They were screwed the moment Wern informed the Lowminers of their location. This was the reason Be died.


    In hindsight, Rui realized the Lowminers must have mobilized pretty much all avable manpower at hand even before the masked Martial Apprentice ambushed Rui and Be. This made sense.


    The masked Martial Apprentice was meant to drag Rui away from Be and keep him there while the gangs mobilized by Be must have killed her after, when she was defenseless and vulnerable.


    She must have screamed and struggled in despair as the men held her down and cut open her throat like livestock.


    Just the very thought of that send blood to his head, until he closed his eyes and crushed the feeling, trying to think rationally.


    If Rui had been able to avoid the Martial Apprentice, they would have survived. Rui would have easily disemboweled the grunts with ease.


    In the end, Rui felt like a fool. He had thought that he was the one stalling and restraining the Martial Apprentice. But in the end, it turned out to be the exact opposite. The Martial Apprentice turned out to be stalling him!


    He had so many regrets. If he had been more careful, he would have kept Be hidden and interacted with Wern on her behalf. That would have been a cautious tale that at the very least would have spared Be from her fate.


    But instead, he offloaded all the responsibility of the decision-making to her, freeing himself of the burden.


    As a Martial Artist, this wasn''t exactly wrong. He had a mission toplete and he had very little incentive or duty to undertake any more responsibility outside of themission that Bemissioned to the Martial Union. Bodyguards were supposed to protect no matter what their target of protection did, or where they went, they were not supposed to undertake responsibility of the decision-making capacity of their adult as long as their target of protection was mentally well and an adult. In this regard, Rui was perfectly fine.


    However, bodyguards were supposed to protect.


    If Rui had been strong enough, he would have been able to defeat their opponent Martial Apprentice quickly before proceeding to Be''s side to protect her.


    This was a bit unreasonable from an objective point of view. Defeating an older Martial Apprentice with a huge physique advantage, that too in a short amount of time was rather unreasonable to demand of any Martial Artist. Furthermore, this was his very first mission that was much harder than the Academy evaluation of the mission


    All things considered, there were plenty of reasons that one might evaluate Rui to be free of moral responsibility despite his failure to sessfullyplete the mission.


    But the question was whether Rui was able to forgive himself. Despite the fact that he was cognizant enough to be able to look at the situation from an objective point of view, the memory of Be''s corpse that was deeply etched in his mind reared its head into the equation, and sent Rui''s tumultuous emotions into a tumble again.


    The logic simple didn''t matter anymore.


    How could he possibly forgive himself knowing that his insufficiency allowed her to suffer that fate?


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 106 Apology

    Rui''s dilemma hadn''t been resolved even as he reached the Academy, but at the very least he was finally able to put his thoughts aside for a valid reason as he underwent the post-mission protocol.


    He headed straight to themission department of the Academy, plucked out one of the forms that Martial Artists were required to fill. These involved filling mundane details about himself and the mission. Followed by a detailed report of the proceedings of the mission, in a chronological manner, with time stamps.


    Filling out the report was painful and strangely therapeutic. It was painful revisiting everything, especially with twenty-twenty hindsight. Everything he recounted now felt wed and mistake-riddled and blunder-filled. He kept thinking of how he could have done better.


    On the other hand, he was able to vent as he wrote down his experiences in detail. He felt as though a lot of the frustration, guilt and grief were ebbing out from his stressed heart, flowing out of his body and into the ink of his pen.


    He felt a little calmer and moreposed as the longer he wrote. His burden didn''t grow any lighter, but he felt strong enough to carry it.


    In that moment, he felt his determination will up.


    (''Never again.'') He vowed. (''I''m going to grow strong enough to ensure that this something like this won''t ever happen again.'')


    Once hepleted the procedures he needed to, submitted the report.


    "Mam." He addressed one of the support staff members of themission department. "I''m here to receive the minimum guarantee pay of the mission."


    Every mission gave the Martial Artist a bare minimum amount of remuneration, regardless of sess or failure as long as the rules and protocol of the Martial Union weren''t vited by the Martial Artist. Martial Artists staked their lives on the line with every mission, the minimum guarantee remuneration use of the licensing agreement between the Martial Union and Martial Artist was instated to give Martial Artists some amount of leeway.


    This was to ensure that they didn''t have to starve just because they narrowly failed an extremely difficult mission, after spending an immense amount of time, effort and energy into the mission, undertaking great risks.


    It was also way of ensuring that Martial Artist had less of a reason to be discontent with the Martial Union. After all, the Martial Union was nothing without Martial Artist that staked their lives every day.


    "Just one second." She responded before flipping through some documents, before looking back up. "Your remuneration has been put on hold..."


    Rui frowned. "Excuse me?"N?velDrama.Org owns this text.


    "The issue has been taken up by the headmaster himself, I''m afraid." She shrugged helplessly. "I would suggest you visit him if you wish to inquire about it."


    "...Okay." Rui turned around and headed towards the headmaster''s office, confused.


    Why would the headmaster meddle with his remuneration? Rui didn''t understand at all. As he reached the headmaster''s office, he paused, enraptured by the gate that restricted entry. He wasn''t sure what to do. Wasn''t there supposed to be secretaries or some other personnel that monitored who approached the office?


    Should he knock?


    (''Screw it. Let''s knock.'')


    It opened just as he reached it, allowing him full view of everything inside.


    The office was gigantic, filled with a library of neatly arranged and organized documents and books.<sub> </sub>


    However, what drew his attention was the figure sitting at the center of the office.


    Headmaster Aronian; A mighty Martial Master!


    "Headmaster." Rui bowed deeply, partly because of the great awe and respect he had for vaunted Martial Masters, partly because the sheer weight of headmaster Aronian''s being pushing down on Rui,pelling him to bow.


    Rui was once again reminded how deep the Martial Path extended, the fact that a human being could develop and grow his Martial Art until it became as mighty as a mountain, capable of crushing everything around it, lifted his spirits out of the muddle his emotions were.


    "Enter." Headmaster Aronian spoke softly, yet Rui could hear nothing else, almost as if the world went silent when he opened his mouth.


    Rui walked in immediately.


    On the inside, there were two Martial Squires serving as guards. Under ordinary circumstances, Rui would have been awed by their formidable appearance and presence, but this time he hadn''t even noticed them until they entered his field of vision!


    The weight of the presence of Martial Squires were drowned out entirely by that of headmaster Aronian. Stars could only shine at night, when the sun wasn''t around, otherwise they are invisible.


    "Apprentice Rui Quarrier." He spoke with a casual tone despite the formality of his words. "I''ve been wanting to speak to you face-to-face for a while now. But only today has there been an apt enough opportunity."


    "It''s an honour, headmaster Aronian." He said respectfully.


    Headmaster Aronian chuckled lightly, much to Rui''s surprise. "No need to be too formal with me young man. I appreciate candour."


    "I am being honest, headmaster. All of those words could not be truer." Rui replied earnestly.


    Headmaster Aronian simply smiled. "Well, I suppose you''re here to inquire about your remuneration, yes?"


    "Yes, headmaster." Rui stated.


    "Before I speak about that, I would first like to offer an apology."


    Rui''s eyebrows knitted in confusion. "An... apology?"


    "We have learnt and verified several intel, even outside of your report, that proves that the mission''s difficulty was heinously under-rated on our end." He said, before continuing. "In light of all the information at hand, this mission is at the very least a grade five as far as difficulty goes. However, it may even be raised depending on the results of further investigation from the post-mission intelligence investigation."


    He paused with a hint of sorrow molding into his expression. "There is absolutely no justification on the Academy''s end for a year-old Martial Apprentice epting a grade five mission faultily evaluated to be a grade one mission. This isn''t unheard of, or even particrly rare, but this extreme instance was truly an uneptablepse on our end."


    He paused, before bowing his head lightly. "On behalf of the Academy, I am sorry."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 107 Compensation

    Rui was taken aback. He did not expect the headmaster of the Academy to lower his head so easily. Martial Masters possessed a status that astronomically dwarfed that of any Martial Apprentice. Furthermore, he wasn''t just any ordinary Martial Master, but the headmaster of the Martial Academy. For someone of his stature to lower his head to Rui was too much to take.


    ? "Please raise your head headmaster." Rui quickly replied, raising his hands. "It isn''t your fault."


    "Even so." He raised his head. "I bear the responsibility as the headmaster of the Academy."


    Rui remained silent at that. That line hit a little close he himself was feeling about the mission.


    Except Be was too dead for him to apologize to.


    "One of the reasons I called you was to apologize and take responsibility. I''ve already gone through your report." He said, before continuing. "I sensed the deep regret and guilt you feel in your words. That is why I wanted to be absolutely clear. The mission''s difficulty was extremely high, just another Martial Apprentice being involved alone put the mission''s difficulty grade vastly above what you sought. Thepletion of this mission would require atleast two Martial Apprentices, or an experienced high-grade Martial Apprentice. You do not bear any fault or me, on any level."


    Rui was cognizant enough to realize the logical soundness of the headmaster''s words. From an outsider''s perspective, he himself would not put any me on an inexperienced child Martial Apprentice''s failure inpleting a mission that was faultily severely under-graded by the Academy.


    But he wasn''t an outsider, nor a child. Which is why Martial Master''s words didn''t truly resonate with him at his core.


    "The Martial Union and the Martial Academy possesses a rigorousmission intelligence department." He said. "This department aims to verify the information that clients provide us in theirmissions as well as gain as much information about the mission as possible. This collected information factors into the evaluation of the difficulty-grade of themission."


    He paused before turning to Rui. "However, it is not perfect, in some cases it is truly difficult to urately evaluate the difficulty of the mission of the mission. In this case in particr, it was not possible with our current measures to have urately evaluated the danger of the mission ahead of time. Ah, I''m not trying to dodge responsibility or justify thepse in evaluation uracy, I''m just providing you with greater context."


    Rui nodded, mildly intrigued. "So... regarding the remuneration for the mission..."


    "Ah, I almost forgot." Headmaster Aronian stated. "Normally, we wouldn''t do this, but the failure of the mission is entirely the Martial Academy''s responsibility. Not only is not your fault that the mission failed, but you have even performed much better than a Martial Apprentice of your grade would be expected to. In light of all of this, I have taken the initiative to ensure the Academy remunerates you with not just the minimum guarantee pay, but the full missionpletion reward as well."


    Rui''s eyes widened in surprise, this waspletely unexpected. To get the missionpletion reward anyway even though he hadn''t even sessfullypleted the mission? Furthermore, getting that in addition to the minimum guarantee meant that he was actually getting more remuneration than the maximum for a mission he failed toplete.<sub> </sub>


    "Consider it a token of our apology and admiration of your performance during the mission." Headmaster Aronian. "Furthermore, your Martial Art is unique and unheard-of, we would like to extend a hand in aiding your development of it, normally we do not give credits, and by extension, techniques for free. But you have truly earned them despite not sessfullypleting the mission."


    Rui''s eyes mildly lit up in tion. After his failure, his desire to develop and expand his Martial Art had also grown remarkable stronger. In addition to his inherent love for Martial Art andbat, the desire to obtain power had also germinated within him.


    In this world, power was everything, it underlined everything within human civilization, and human civilization itself. Powerlessness meant suffering.


    Although his desire for power did not surpass his love for his Martial Art and Martial path, he had now be even more cognizant of its value. He had grown just a little content with the remarkable power he had obtained after forming the foundation of his Martial Art, especially after his performance against Squire Kyrie. He had thought he was doing pretty well for his age, and he merrily immersed himself in his boundless love for the purer aspects of Martial Art andbat. But now he had also developed a desire to obtain power for the sake of power.


    His desire to obtain the priced techniques had grown even stronger.


    "With the total amount you will receive from the Martial Academy as remuneration, you can''t purchase any decent technique." Headmaster Aronianmented. "I would suggest stocking up some more. I hope you choose well. I am quite interested in how your Martial Art will shape up to be, and what direction your Martial Path will lead you."


    Rui nodded. "Thank you, headmaster. I am truly grateful to you and the Academy for thepensation, as well as your kind words. I will do my best to live up to your expectations."


    Headmaster Aronian nodded. "You do that, young man. Now then, I suppose that brings this meeting to an end. I look forward to your endeavors, as well as our next meeting."


    "Thank you, headmaster." Rui bowed, before turning to exit the office.


    He heaved a sigh of relief once he left the room and put some distance between them. Headmaster Aronian was truly kind to him, however the sheer passive pressure that Martial Master exerted on all sentient life was not to be underestimated. Rui felt like he had taken off some heavy training weights after a long day of physical exercise.


    (''What to do now?'') Rui wondered. As much as he wanted to dive right into the Apprentice Library, he felt the need to check up on his friends, he hadn''t seen them since they all parted ways for the Winter holidays.


    This chapter upload first at  N?velDrama.Org content rights.

 Chapter 108 Slam Dunk

    "You look rough." Kane noted.N?velDrama.Org content.


    p "I''ve had a rough a day." Rui replied. "My mission was hard, and I failed."</anda>


    Kane nced back at Rui. "Oof, that must be rough. But hey, it happens to everyone. Chin up." He put an arm around Rui''s shoulder. "What mission did you choose?"


    "Bodyguard." Rui replied with a single word.


    Kane''s eyes widened as he realized why Rui had been looking so down, and why the failure had hit him so hard. "...Damn."


    "Yeah, it was rough." Rui sighed. "I had chosen a bodyguard mission of grade one, looking to take things slow with an easy mission to break the ice. Turns out the mission was actually a grade five mission, at the very least." Rui paused.


    Kane jerked his head back in shock. "Grade five?? Those are only for missions that are able to threaten the lives of Martial Apprentices. You and I shouldn''t even be allowed to take missions of that grade."


    "Yeah, the mission''s difficulty was severely underestimated by the Martial Academy, apparently." Rui sighed helplessly. "My target of protection was being hunted down by a huge local behemoth of an esoteric supplier, we were being pursued by gangs and even a Martial Apprentice."


    "That''s actually insane, what the fuck?" Kane was entirely in disbelief. "I''m impressed you survived."


    "I only managed because their prime target wasn''t me, they managed to hold me back with a Martial Apprentice who pulled me away from my target, and my target was killed after she was eperated from me."


    "That''s messed up."


    "Yeah."


    They both sat around in silence, before Rui broke it with a question.


    "What mission did you undertake?" Rui asked. "You were gone for four days."


    "I took a hunting mission." Kane shrugged. "Had to hunt some highly elusive species of deer."


    "Deer?"


    "Yeah, the mission had a high pre-requisite as far as maneuvering techniques went. So I chose the mission because it was right up my alley."


    "What grade mission was it?" Rui asked out of curiosity.


    "Only a grade two. Requires a lot of time and sustained effort, but of no threat to life." Kane replied. "The perfect mission to ensure I didn''t have to go home, you see. That alone was worth the mission, even if there was no remuneration."


    Rui chuckled mirthfully at Kane''s words. Talking with Kane really did put him to ease.


    "So you''re nning to do more missions right?" Kane asked. "Since you must not have gotten any significant amount of Martial Credits from this mission."


    "No, I did."


    "Eh?" Kane tilted his head.


    "The headmaster told me that the Martial Academy took full responsibility for the failure of the mission, and would be remunerating me with the mission-sess reward in addition to the minimum guarantee payroll as a token of apology."<sub> </sub>


    "That''s actually awesome. How many Martial Credits is that in total?" Kane inquired.


    "A total of fifty-seven Martial Credits."


    "Hmmm. That''s not bad, you should be able to purchase a somewhat not-bad technique with that." Kane politely offered.


    "And I wanted to set out to grow stronger immediately too." Rui sighed.


    "I''d suggest not doing that." Kane told Rui. "I''d suggest amassing some more credits as well as mission experience before jumping into a training period."


    "Hmmm..." Rui pondered. Perhaps his desire to develop his Martial Art as well as to grow stronger had made him a tad too impatient. He had really only been a Martial Apprentice for less than half a year, and had joined the Academy only a year ago.


    If he put aside his emotions for a second, he was sure his growth trajectory was extremely optimistic. What he needed was a well-founded, stable growth. Rashly picking some technique with a constrained budget was not the best choice at hand.


    Kane said that fifty-seven Martial Credits were enough to get a ''somewhat not-bad'' technique with that, which was a polite of way of saying a bad technique.


    Although paid techniques were above foundational free techniques, that didn''t mean they were good. In fact, Rui wasrgely as strong as he was not because his techniques were super powerful, but because he used them much better than Martial Apprentices of his age and growth level. Arge portion of his strength came from the predictive and counter-deductive systems of the VOID algorithm and the resourceful tactics he applied inbat.


    What Rui needed not was toprehensively build upon the foundation of his Martial Art in a less constrained way. This meant umting enough martial credits to be able to buy higher grade techniques that were suited to his Martial Art.


    Maybe even spend the next month or two just grinding and speed-running low-grade missions to gather Martial Credits easily and without much pressure and risk.


    "You''re right." Rui muttered. "I do like immersing myself in training with a lot of techniques. I don''t want to jump back and forth between training and missions too frequently either, those abrupt changes in mindsets are annoying."


    Kane nodded. "Also, you do learn techniques way faster than the others, so if you train yourself to learn one technique, you would be out too quick."


    Rui nodded.


    "Also." Kane added. "You should experience some sesses before you close yourself in your little Martial mancave for training."


    "Experience some sesses?" Rui asked.


    "Yeah. Like just the satisfaction ofpleting a tiring mission is good. I don''t think you should go right into training after a devastating failure, you''ll just end up being depressed or cynical." Kane shurgged. "But that''s what I think."


    He brought up a good point, Rui realized. His mental state was far, far from healthy. This was to be expected since it hadn''t even been half a day since Be died. But he realized that Kane was wise to suggest avoiding holing himself up in this mental state.


    Rui had simply not thought of this because he used to hole himself up practically his entire life in hisst life, mostly because of his asthama.


    "You''re right." Rui smiled. "I should go m dunk some missions."


    "What''s a m dunk?"


    "Er, nothing."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 109 No Matter What

    "Hey guys." A voice called out to them. "It has been a while. How''s it going?"


    Kane grumbled while Rui smiled. "Hey Fae, Milliana."


    Milliana nodded, while Fae vigorously waved her hand, thetter had truly begun to be more expressive of her emotions during her time in the Academy.


    "How was your first mission Rui?" Fae asked.


    "Terrible, I failed toplete it." Rui shook his head, straightforwardly answering.


    "My." Fae frowned. "Don''t worry, you''ll get it next time." She patted his shoulder, before continuing. "Speaking of which, l actually have an interesting proposal for all of you."


    "Hm?" Rui looked at her curiously while Kane looked at her with skepticism.


    "A grade six defense-ss party mission with a five-member pre-requisite." Fae exined. "It''s a mission to protect a travelling batch of supply caravans through a shady region known for being an ambush location for a bandit group. Our job is to protect the dispatched batch of supply carriages from potential bandit groups."


    "Hmmm..." Rui was intrigued by the matter. "A grade six mission is going to be risky, since grade five and above can threaten the life of a Martial Apprentice, right?"


    "A single Martial Apprentice, yes. A mission of a certain grade can either be taken on by a Martial Apprentice of an equal grade or even higher. Or multiple Martial Apprentices of a low grade." Fae reminded.


    Rui nodded, recalling that fact. "So that''s why you want to form a party. We fall into thetter category."


    Fae nodded. "Kane, Milliana, Dalen and I are grade four. What grade are you Rui?"


    "Three." He sighed.


    "Don''t look so down, I started out with grade three too." Fae revealed. "Milliana here started with grade two." Earning a nk nod from Milliana.


    "Why do you want to go out of your way to get this mission?" Kane eyed her suspiciously.


    "Ah, that''s because it has a really sweet bonus reward." Fae chuckled.


    Customers had the option to incentivize theirmissions above the standard exchange rate if they wanted to, to make theirmissions more alluring to Martial Artists of higher grades, since the Martial Union usually deferred amission that was being contested over by two different Martial Artists to the higher-grade Martial Artist.


    "What does the total amount to, per person?" Rui asked curiously.


    "Hehe, a total of 500 Martial Credits!" Fae dered.


    Rui''s eyes sparkled with a hint of greed. That was almost ten times what he received from his first bodyguard mission.


    "I''m in." Rui immediately said.


    "No takebacks, ok?" Fae pressed. "You''re definitely going tomit to this right?"


    "Sure thing."


    "Are you absolutely sure?" Fae pressed.


    "It''s a promise." Rui nodded. "Who''s the client?"


    "The Lowminer Industries." Fae answered simply. "Isn''t that great?"


    Rui stared at her with a frozen face. "...I''d like to take that promise back."


    "Toote, you alreadymitted."


    "..."<sub> </sub>


    "What''s the big deal? You get a ton of cash."


    Rui sighed, shaking his head


    "Has Dalen already confirmed?" Kane asked suspiciously.N?velDrama.Org owns this text.


    "Of course he has." Fae said with an inscrutable expression that didn''t crack no matter how sharply Kane tried to peer past it.


    "You nning oning Kane?" Rui turned, asking him.


    Kane sighed. "Fine, let''s go. When does it start?"


    "Next week." Fae replied. "So we still have some time."


    "I can get to squeeze in some missions in between maybe." Rui murmured. "How many martial Credits do I get in order to purchase five high-grade techniques?"


    "Hmmm... You should get around a thousand bare minimum." Fae said, before throwing an odd look at Rui. "You really n to get five techniques at once?"


    "Yeah, what''s wrong with that?" Rui asked, tilting his head.


    "Nothing." Fae replied. "It''s just so strange because most people only get one or two techniques at a time."


    "Huh?" Rui frowned. "That''s so slow."


    "That''s normal dude." Kane shook his head. "You''re the only one walking around learning four to five techniques at once, you potion junkie."


    "Wait how many techniques have you guys learnt since joining the Academy?"


    "Five." Fae replied quickly.


    "Four." Milliana nkly said.


    He had learnt twice as many Apprentice-level techniques in half the time. Even though his amount of training time was not multiple time greater than theirs, the reason he was able to aplish more was because the mental rejuvenation potionplimented his enhanced mind and cognition extremely well.


    Concentration and learning were not linearly dependent on time spent learning. Longer periods of learning were better than multiple shorter periods of learning, as far as learning speed went. The reason people didn''t learn for countless hours straight was because of exhaustion. It was only because of exhaustion that people resolved to shorter timeframes.


    However, with mental rejuvenation potion, that rationale was no longer true. Mental and physical exhaustion could be dispelled. Thus, making Rui''s training remarkably effective. He felt like a gamer who discovered a glitch in the game, using it to grind and level up relentlessly.


    He turned to Kane, who hadn''t responded yet.


    "...Three." He looked away, embarrassed. Rui simply stared at him without a word.


    "Hey don''t look at me that way!" Kaneined. "My third technique was peak grade, ok? It took me forever to learn it!"


    "Peak grade?" Rui asked, curiously. "Which technique was that?"


    "You know." Kane continued. "The one I beat Fae with and the one I used when we fought against Kyrie."


    "Ah..." Rui recalled. That technique was indeed absurdly powerful. He had to admit Kane''s low number of techniques was justified indeed.


    "Alright, good talk." Rui got up. "If we''re doing this in a week then I have even more of a reason to goplete a solid mission before that, so I''ll see you guyster. Bye"


    He left after exchanging farewells with his friends. He couldn''t help feeling a tinge of nervousness as he walked over to the mission library. He exhaled deeply as he reached the mission library, steeling his nerves before walking in.


    He intended toplete a handful of missions over the next week no matter what!


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 110 Just Enough Peace

    "A bodyguard?" A young man nced at the adolescent boy with the unusual hair and eyes with a mocking skeptical grin, before turning back to the scrawny frail man in front of him.


    "Haha, you were so scared you got a boy younger than you as a bodyguard than you??" A rough voice contemptuously spat, sparking a bout ofughter.


    Six young adult men had surrounded a frail-looking man and the boy behind him in a remote part of an outer district of Hajin.


    "I didn''t think it was possible Miguel, but you''ve be even more pathetic, you fucking wimp." One of the men turned to the boy. "Run home your mommy little boy."


    Rui sighed, turning to Miguel. "See, this is why I told you wearing my uniform was a good idea."


    Then six men toying with Miguel were not amused. "Hm? Did you not hear me?" One of them towered over the adolescent boy, trying to intimidate him. "I said scra-"


    "I''ll give you one chance." Rui cut him off. "Leave now and you won''t get hurt."


    The man sighed dramatically. "Kids these days think they''re hot shit." He shoved his hands forward, aiming to push the boy down.


    THUD


    Before the man realized it, he found himself t on his back on the ground.


    "What the fuck?" The others rushed forward towards Miguel and Rui. Rui stepped forward nonchntly as Miguel tripped as he stumbled back.


    THWACK


    BAM


    POW


    THUD


    Over the span of five minutes, Rui pummeled all of them over and over, inflicting immense pain without inflicting permanent damage.


    Significant permanent damage, that was.


    "Pweash Schtawp!" One of the men, with a face more swollen than a melon managed to spit out.


    "You idiots don''t understand." Rui walked over to him, squatting to look him straight in the eyes. "It doesn''t matter how many of you there are. If I ever catch so much as a peep of you grunts scratching so much as a hair on Miguel''s head, I''ll leave your legs intact but break what''s in between them, got it?" He red.<sub> </sub>


    The man shivered as the passive mental pressure and intimidation of a Martial Apprentice weighed on him from. He nodded his head vigorously as tears streamed down his eyes.


    "Good." Rui got up, walking over to Miguel. "Let''s continue. We''ve wasted enough time already."


    They walked side-by-side in silence, until Miguel nervously broke it.


    "You know..." His voice trailed off as he scratched his head awkwardly. "I''m envious of you. You took them down so quickly. Part of me was scared but another part of me wished I could do that. Maybe then they would stop picking on me."


    Rui wasn''t sure what to say to that, he had never been good with pep talks.


    "You tter me." Rui said.


    "No no. I''m being honest here. You''re so young yet you''ve already be a Martial Artist." He insisted. "Compared to you, I feel worthless."


    "You should hold more pride in yourself." Rui stated. "Getting epted into the Kandrian Institute of Sciences, with merit that too, is a remarkable feat. Don''t concern yourself over those low lives. Once the Academic term of the Kandrian Institute begins tomorrow, you''ll move into the dormitory provided by the Academy, far and away from those morons who waste theirs and others'' time tormenting people weaker than them to get an ego boost. You''ll be surrounded by like-minded peers and will be able to engage in the pursuit of science unhindered."


    Miguel was the son of a wealthyndlord, who had been living independently for a year, taking the entrance exam while also preparing for the new Academic term. Recently he had be victim to a local group of troublemakers who would pick on him when they learnt he was loaded, in the end the bullying had gotten so bad that Miguel had decided to hire a Martial Apprentice bodyguard. Only now did he realize how wise a choice he had made.


    Miguel nodded,ughing awkwardly. "You''re four years younger than me, but it doesn''t feel like I''m talking to a child."


    Rui shrugged silently, not knowing what to say to that. Not that he wanted to engage in any further conversation with his client. He had learnt the hard way that getting emotionally invested in your clients and targets could lead to disastrous oues. At the end of the day, this was a job that paid the bills and the techniques.


    He did not want to get invested in each and every client. Detaching his emotions to a certain degree from the mission would do him well, and allow him to remain objective.


    Still, he could empathize with Miguel''s situation quite well. Due to his asthma, he was unable to engage in friendship much at all. By the time he was in high school, he had long turned into a socially awkward loner, albeit bright kid. The type the boys and girls would callme or nerdy. This, of course, led to bullying. Except Rui wasn''t able to hire a Martial Apprentice for a bodyguard back on Earth.


    The rest of the walk back home was a peaceful quiet. That day was thest day of the mission and Rui was practically done. This was what a grade one mission looked like, Rui hade to learn. Only now that he possessed a frame of reference did he realize just how ridiculously under-graded his first mission was.N?velDrama.Org content rights.


    Grade one missions were like walks in the park, but they paid less than his first mission. Be had beefed up the bonus reward to ensure the mission gets picked sooner.


    Rui had to admit, Kane was right. Even if they were insignificantpared to his first mission,pleting missions like these and earning the gratitude of an alive client was worth it.


    After despair and grief being what hest saw on his first client''s face, these missions were like a soothing healing potion, slowly healing his wound.


    Tomorrow was the team party mission, he had had just enough peace in the past week to dip his toes into his second high-grade mission.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 111 Reason

    Rui returned to the Academy once his bodyguard mission with Miguel ended. In the past week he hadpleted three missions, having earned up to a sum of ny-six martial credits. In addition to the reward from his first mission, he had earned up to a total of one hundred and fifty-three martial credits.


    Today was the dispatch andmencement of the party missionmissioned by Lowminer Industries.


    Rui knew that as a service provider, clients were clients. As a Martial Artist, it wasn''t particrly wise to get fixated on who the client was as long as the mission was legal.


    Still, he couldn''t help but feel sour. Working for the Lowminer Industry right after what his first mission was a hard pill to swallow. But it was a pill he had alreadymitted himself to swallow, inadvertently.


    At the very least, he could take sce in the fact that he wasn''t doing this alone. Fae had already officially registered the five of them as a party, allowing them to take missions together. Rui found the whole concept of parties to be interesting.


    For one they allowed lower grade Martial Artists to get a taste of what high-grade missions were like without bearing the full burden and risk. Even if they couldn''tplete the mission by themselves, with the help of many, they were able topensate for their personal weakness.


    Fae taken it upon herself to the name the party ''The Quintuple Martial Apprentices''.


    Rui simply burst outughing while Milliana stared at her with a nk expression, and Kaneined and vehemently refused to be part of a party with such an embarrassing name.


    Eventually, she managed to get them to agree to the name ''Martial Quint''. Only because no one could be bothered toe up with something better.


    But otherwise, the Martial Quint was a well-bnced party. Rui was an all-rounder, while Fae was an offense-oriented Martial Artist, while Kane was speed and maneuverability-oriented, Milliana was stamina-oriented and Dalen was defense-oriented.


    The one Rui was least familiar with was Dalen, who was more of a mutual acquaintance of the other three. They had only sparred a few times, and had barely hung out. However, he had grown quite close to the other three, so all in all, their team dynamics were fine.


    Rui found all of them waiting for him in the dispatch facility.


    "You''re almostte." Kane told him.


    "That''s a dick way of saying I''m on time." Rui retorted.


    They had all worn different colour and style masks. The Martial Union provided a unique mask to every Martial Artist, allowing them to be distinguished in and even out the field while still protecting their identities. This was mainly to protect lower-Realm Martial Artists and in particr: Martial Apprentices.


    Since Martial Apprenticesprised of ny-percent of the Martial Artist poption.


    "Where''s themencement location?" Rui asked


    "At the main branch of the Lowminer Industries." Fae replied. "Apparently the branch manager would like to meet with us once before the missionmences."<sub> </sub>


    "Alright." Rui sighed.


    Once they finished some paperwork and protocol, they set out immediately by foot. All of them activated a one or two maneuvering Martial Apprentice abilities.


    Rui immediately noticed that Dalen and Milliana were the slowest, Rui and Fae were somewhat equal, while Kane had to actively reduce his speed drastically just to ensure he didn''t leave them all behind.


    This made sense, Milliana was a conservative stamina fighter, there wasn''t much of an incentive for her to waste time learning more than one maneuvering-oriented Apprentice-level technique. Dalen on the other hand was a defensive-oriented Martial Artist but also a tank as far as his physique went, he had bulging muscles all over his body. Rui knew that hurting him was extremely difficult, but in turn all that muscle mass made it difficult for him to elerate to higher speeds.


    They''d reached the designated location in half an hour.


    "Alright, we''re here." Fae punched in the button on the record device that recorded the time at which they''d arrived at themencement location.


    Once they arrived, they walked into the huge premises thatprised Lowminer branch, making their way to the main office.


    "Ah, wee team Martial Quint. Allow me to escord you to the branch manager''s office, the official client is present there and has been anticipating your arrival." A receptionist greeted them before guiding them across the gaudy building.


    Rui couldn''t help but feel a bit stuffy as he walked around the ce. He wondered what Be would think of him if she knew that he had inadvertently stumbled into epting a Lowminer mission immediately following his death. Would she get angry? He didn''t know.


    And it didn''t really matter. A remuneration of five hundred martial credits was huge, it was a whopping half of the designated amount of merits he decided he would earn before purchasing new Apprentice-level techniques and devoting himself to training.


    He wanted to take another step down his Martial path, and secondarily, he wanted to grow stronger.


    Compared to these two intense desires, the sentiments of the dead did not matter.


    Once they reached the office, the staff member knocked on the door, walked in as it was opened by guards inside.N?velDrama.Org owns this text.


    "Ah, you''re here." A man in histe forties sat at the center of the ostentatious room. "Wee, Martial Quint, I am the branch manager Savin Felun, the head of this branch of the Lowminer Industries. I''m grateful to you for having epted the request filed by Lowminer Industries."


    Rui took a good long deep look at the man. A salt and pepper hair and beard adorned his face, neatly groomed. He wore a perfectly fit extravagant business attire. He possessed amanding domineering demeanor that erased all doubts about his position.


    "Thank you for your hospitality." Fae responded, with her usual carefully measured tone.


    "The reason I called here was to speak more deeply about the mission." The man responded. "Although I''m sure the Martial Union has done a good job."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 112 True Objective

    He waved his hand and an assistant staff member in the room provided him with a map of Hajin and several surrounding towns.


    "As I''m sure you''re all aware of themission objective; It''s to protect our outgoing supplies dispatch batch enroute the Shadow Trails, a valley in the Basara mountains to the East of Hajin, all the way to the mission destination; the town of Gagar." He said, pointing to a town far east of Hajin past a mountain range.


    Rui nodded, familiar with the mission details. There was a small mountain range in between Hajin and Gagar known as the Basara mountains. Their job was to protect esoteric supplies dispatch travelling from Hajin to Gagar, through the Shadow Trails a valley in the Basara mountain range that was going to be traversed to reach their destination.


    p "This route has been the go-to route for shipping and transport between Hajin and Gagar for nearly all matters, since it is the only practical means of travelling from Hajin to Gagar without inting the time, difficulty or cost."</anda>


    Mountains were extremely unconducive as a topography for regr and reliable means of transport and shipping due to their structure alone. Furthermore, the greater one deviated from known trails and paths in mountain ranges, the more one strayed into wild territory, which housed many best species that were part of an intricate ecosystemrgely uninfluenced by humans. The risks of happening upon predators was not insignificant.


    This is what made the Shadow Trails in the Basara Mountains of such vital importance. It was a lifeline for a lot of markets, industries and sectors in several towns in the geographic vicinity of the Basara Mountains. The Shadow Trails valley was what allowed for a sustainable supply and transit between all these towns.


    Which is why the presence of a new bandit group that threatened safe exchanges was extremely detrimental to several economies. The new bandit had been operating for little under two months, they ughtered their victims before extracting everything of value that could be found.


    Even though this bandit group attacked asionally, this was more than enough cause significant negative impacts. For one, the moment transport and shippingpanies heard about the bandits, the prices of transport and shipping services had been increasing over time, inting well above the norm.


    This was because the risks thesepanies were undertaking was huge. Furthermore, a lot of employees and personnel who managed the travelling process, who were directly at risk, had either quite their jobs or demanded higher pay or a guarantee.


    This was how the bandit group caused several problems beyond just the loss of life and goods.


    "We have been attacked by them once before as well. This time we have decided to hire the five of you as bodyguards to protect this particr dispatch among other dispatches." Savin exined.


    "Why this dispatch among others?" Dalen duly asked.


    "A pertinent question, I was just about getting to that." Savin exined with a smile. "Before I answer that, allow me to talk about the objective of this particr supply dispatch that you''re guarding."<sub> </sub>


    Those words earned a frown from the Martial Artists. There was more to their target of protection than merely shipping esoteric supplies?


    "The objective of the current dispatch is to take down the bandit group, one way or another, simply put. We have noticed that this bandit group has not been indiscriminate in their targeting. Theyrgely aim for higher-grade esoteric material supplies from esoteric suppliers such as ourselves rather than any random travelling group." He exined. "The supply dispatch you will be bodyguarding is quite valuable, furthermore we have subtly caused a minor intel leak regarding the contents of this particr exotic supply dispatch in the right circles. This dramatically increases the probability of you being attacked. However, with your presence, we''ll be able to kill all of them or at the very least highly cripple them."


    This made a lot more sense. Rui finally understood why the Lowminer Industries picked five Martial Artists for a simple routine supply dispatch. It seemed far too extravagant and a highly unsustainable security measure. This could only have meant that the target of their protection was valuable and special.


    "If the bandits are in the Shadow Trails, how will they have ess to this intel?" Rui asked.


    "Most organized bandit groups have sources of intel one way or another, usually through some elementarymunication device that allows them to transmit some basic signals." Savin exined. "Furthermore, a lot of their attacks are too unlikely to be coincidences."


    He paused, before continuing.


    "The five of you are meant to be a guarantee for this operation to seed. This actually a bit of a joint endeavor between several industries, who have aided us with intel spreading and some funding. Furthermore, two of our own personally employed Martial Apprentices will be aiding you in this mission."N?velDrama.Org owns this text.


    A total of seven Martial Apprentices was an extremely solid defense team, at the Martial Apprentice Realm, at the very least.


    "Are such significant measures really necessary?" Fae wondered aloud.


    "For normal bandit groups, no. But this bandit group almost certainly has Martial Apprentices in it. Inspecting the scenes of massacres has allowed us to confirm this." Savin exined. "Furthermore, they implement these attacks deep in the Shadow Trails. Which makes it highly likely they base themselves in the Basara Mountains permanently. Which is extremely dangerous and cannot be done without Martial Apprentices."


    This made sense. Furthermore, there was a lot at stake for the client. Valuable Martial Apprentices, high-value esoteric supplies that was going to be used to bait out the bandits and the stability that the bandits had caused to crumble.


    "The reason I wished to speak to you personally was to inform you of our n so that you would be aware and to ensure you wouldn''t be caught off-guard when the attack happens." Savin exined. "If this operation is aplete sess on our end, I will reward you all with a solid bonus."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 113 Priorities

    The meeting did notst much longer once Savin got across the vital information he was trying to convey. Furthermore, the time for the missionmencement was due as well.


    "If there is nothing else, can you lead us to the target objective?" Fae asked.


    Savin nodded. "The dispatch team is actually situated at a separate facility not too far away from here, the reason I called you here was to speak to you. And also ensure you join the dispatch team carriage in a furtive manner, to ensure that there is no way that intel of your participation in this dispatch can be leaked."


    This made sense. If the bandit group did have ears in Hajin and the Lowminer Industries, then walking over to that particr dispatch would be the same as announcing to the bandits that there were five Martial Apprentices protecting the supplies. It was better to pretend that the Martial Apprentices were called over for entirely unrted matters and then sneak them into the Martial Apprentices.


    "We''ll have the five of you publicly leave this branch and then secretly reroute you back to the dispatch team in a pre-scheduled carriage." Savin exined.


    They were being quite careful.


    Fae simply nodded. "Where do we rendezvous with this carriage?"


    Savin didn''t say a word as his secretary took out a card with the Lowminer stamp on one side and an address specified on the other side of the card, handing it over to Fae.


    Fae nodded. "We''ll take our leave then."


    "Yes, thank you for your services." Savin replied.


    As they left, Rui grew absorbed in his thoughts. There was a lot that happened that he had to think about. For one, his impression of the Lowminers was different than what he had constructed in his mind. But he was cognizant enough to realize that his initial impression of them was, in no way, reflective of their true nature. A little bit of hospitality and respect was not indicative of a good-nature. Just a smart enough nature.


    But he had alsoe to realize that his first mission did indeed colour his impressions of the Lowminer Industries a little too badly.


    Did they do some genuinely reprehensible things? No doubt.


    Were they unique in that regardpared to their peers?


    Probably not.


    Rui wondered about Karl Hier, Be''s father. This man singlehandedly shot to the top of the esoteric material supply industry in a decade and spent the next few decades expanding to other towns. Was that really possible without some genuinely dirty and low measures?


    Probably not. Rui did not think it was possible to shoot to the top of the business game by being a kind-hearted soft angel.


    Karl Hier may have been even worse than the Lowminer Industries.


    ? Ultimately, the world was ruthless, and power and victory were everything. Only a fool would hesitate to step on other to reach the top.<sub> </sub>


    This was true even in the twenty-first century of Earth, why would it not be true in a world that was much harsher and more ruthless?


    Coming to terms with this washed away the final set ofpunctions he had regarding this mission, though it did also make him more cynical in his worldview.


    Fae broke the silence and his reverie once they had moved away from the poption of the town and away from prying ears. "We''ll have to stay on our toes every second of the mission, this actually a matter of life and death."


    Dalen nodded curtly. "We''re guaranteed to be attacked, but atleast this time we were fortunate enough to be informed well in advance. Many Martial Artist die because they''re caught off-guard."


    "We''ll set up a shift rotation for surveince to ensure there''s someone to keep an eye out at some point or the other. We need maximum alertness on this mission." Fae instructed, earning a nod from everyone.


    "Furthermore, it also helps we know that most of their attacks don''t stray too far from the center of the Shadow Trails valley." Rui further added. "Meaning we know which parts of the journey have the highest likelihood of being the moment they choose to ambush us."


    "That is true, that hadn''t hit me yet." Kane said. "This means we can time when we''re most alert as well to ensure we don''t miss anything."


    Fae nodded. "We also shoulde up with a simple set of steps to follow when the attack does ur."


    "The actualmission made to the Martial Union takes priority." Rui stated. "I don''t mind if their little bandit-elimination operation fails as a result. Their operation is not our mission, it''s their voluntary prerogative, we just need to what we came her to do; Protect them. That is the protocol of defense-ss missions."


    "Agreed." Milliana spoke for the first time, as the other nodded. Rui''s words made the most sense.


    "Still." He continued. "It''s likely they have ounted for this. That is why they sent three extra Martial Apprentices. Those three Martial Artists have likely received orders to take ambush, surround and take down as many Martial Apprentice bandits possible."


    "You mean they won''t be focusing on protecting the dispatch like us?" Kane frowned.


    "Probably not." Rui conjectured. "That''s why they hired five Martial Apprentice bodyguards. The reason they sent three extra Martial Apprentices is probably to ensure the enemy Martial Apprentices can''t escape us. They''ll probably try to box them, forcing them to fight all seven of us."


    "Why would the bandits even try to escape immediately after ambushing us though?" Kane pressed.


    "Because they wouldn''t have been aware the dispatch carries eight Martial Artists, assuming these secretive measures work and they don''t find out." Rui replied. "Bandits are driven by gains, attacking a travelling group protected by eight Martial Apprentices is simple not worth it. But since they aren''t aware of that fact, they will attack only to be horrified they see the five of us jump out to protect the men and the goods. Unless they''re unreasonable, they''ll escape, it''s not worth attacking us as I said."


    Kane finally understood. "So the three Martial Apprentices are to ensure they won''t be able to escape once we box them. And then they''ll be forced to fight the eight of us on all sides."


    Rui nodded. "Considering all these factors, if all goes smoothly, this operation of theirs has a decent chance of seeding."N?velDrama.Org content rights.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 114 Clean

    The carriage arranged for them was some ways away from bustling parts of the district within a warehouse.


    "Wee, Martial Artists of the Martial Union." The coachmen of their carriage greeted as he bowed to them. "We apologize for the inconvenience, but this is your designated carriage." He gestured to the carriage behind him.


    The carriage was designed as a storage carriage, it had window panels that were opaque from the outside but transparent from the inside, allowing the Martial Apprentices to eye their surroundings without anybody else from the outside being able to spy or observe them. This was probably done on purpose.


    They quickly boarded the carriage and it dispatched right away. Arriving at the branch that they were just at prior, entering as an inconspicuous import supply. Soon, after some detours and due procedures, it joined the dispatch team that they were hired to protect.


    The mission bill already covered all the details that needed to be covered, the entire team was already aware of everything regarding their target of protection. Including all the details like number of people and carriages, and the important carriages with the esoteric matter supplies that were being coveted by the bandits.


    The Martial Apprentices rxed in the carriage, taking their masks off, asfortable and unrestrictive as they were designed to be, it was still a pain in the ass.


    "Initially, I thought five Martial Artists was overkill." Kane sighed. "But with their little operation at y, it makes sense. But as bodyguards, as long as we focus on pure defense, we''re fulfilling our duties right?"


    "The role of a bodyguard, atleast as defined by the Martial Union, extends beyond purely reactive protective measures." Rui stated. "Proactive measures are also a vital part of our duties, perhaps even more important. For example, if your target of protection was in the way of a canon about to fire, would you move them after the canon was fired or before?"


    "You make a good point." Kane admitted. "So that means as long as enemy bandits are even near our targets, we''re more or less duty-bound to eliminate the threat?"


    Rui nodded. "That''s probably also what that man Savin is banking on. He''s nned this well, I have to say, he''s minimized the risk that he''s imposing on his personally employed Martial Apprentices. Since he cannot hire Martial Artists like us to proactively hunt humans, he''s still managed to work away around this restriction and effectively have us fight to kill the bandits."


    "This will be all of our first time fighting other hostile Martial Apprentices in a life-or-death battle." Dalen noted


    "Not all of ours." Kane corrected. "Rui got the jump on us with in that regard."


    Fae turned to Rui in surprised disbelief. "No way, you''re a grade three Martial Apprentice with only a single mission under your belt."


    Rui sighed as the other two also turned to him in interest at those words. "The mission was under-graded in regards to difficulty. But it wasn''t that big a deal, I only tussled with a Martial Apprentice for a bit before he retreated." He exined with as few words as he could.


    This only caused them to get a bit more excited, pestering Rui with questions.


    "Not now guys, we''re in the middle of a mission remember?" Rui cated. "Don''t let your guards down."


    The carriage quietened down as the supply dispatch made its way. As time passed by, the tension in the air began escting. Sooner orter, it would exit Hajin and make its way to the Shadow Trails in the Basara Mountains where they could be ambushed at any given moment.


    *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *<sub> </sub>


    BEEP BEEP


    A red-haired woman looked down at themunication device tucked in her belt, picking it up and reading it with a bored expression. Yet the contents of the message twitched a smile on her face.N?velDrama.Org content.


    "Boss." She turned her head to the right, facing a short grey-haired man with a demure stature. "Just got word that the Lowminer supply dispatch with the thirteen Sky Crystals was just dispatched. No unusual urences."


    The man simply opened his eyes slowly. "Make preparations, Feilin."


    She nodded in response.


    "Heh!" A rough male voice far to the left grunted. "Those fools keep sending us juicy rewards. You''d think they''d have learnt their lessons by now."


    "They can''t help it, Vale." Feilin shrugged at the man. "They can''t halt their business. That''s what makes this n the best." She grinned.


    "This could be a trap you know~" A voice with azy drawl called out. "Do you really think the Lowminers would send not one, two or even three, but thirteen Sky Crystals?"


    Feilin nced at the man napping on a tree branch with contempt. "Hmph, I knew you weren''t paying attention yesterday Han. We already covered this, our men in Gagar have already confirmed that the supply is a legitimate supply to an order made by several clients in the crystal technology sector of Gagar, there''s no realistic way this could be a trap, not unless multiple towns are literally in active coboration with each other against us."


    Her tone made it clear she did not think this was the case


    "That''s not impossible Feilin." The boss interjected. His words were soft, but theymanded attention. "I wish to take some precautions before wemence the ambush."


    Feilin shrugged with a resigned look. "Alright boss, as you say."


    "Hmph, even if it''s a trap so what?" Vale barked. "We''ve got five Apprentices and hundreds of men to boot. That''s more than the Lowminers have in their entirety as far as Apprentices go. We can just straight up run into their trap, crush it along with them and steal the Sky Crystals they''re kind enough to donate to us and get outta here!"


    "Enough." The boss nced at Vale with just the slightest hint of irritation. "Are you questioning my orders, Vale?"


    "...Tsk okay okay!" He retracted immediately. Vale was an imposing man with a powerful physique, and an aggressive temperament.


    Yet there was a reason the boss was the boss.


    "We''ll proceed carefully." He reiterated himself with a measured tone. "I want this to be clean."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 115 Ominous

    The supply dispatch had exited borders of the town of Hajin just under two hours. The Apprentices in the carriage had already perked up, growing more and more alert. They had decided that at the very least a minimum of three of them ought to keep a lookout at any given point in time.


    Although the dispatch naturally had guards on horses forming something of a perimeter around the dispatch team, surveilling their surroundings, Martial Apprentices were still better. The Foundational Stage of the Academy carefully trained sensory awareness as well as their kic vision well beyond the norm. And the discovery of the Martial Path further raised those attributes and parameters above the conventional limit.


    Three Martial Apprentices keeping an eye from within a carriage were better sources of surveince than all the guards on horses outside.


    Rui was currently off-surveince duty along with Dalen. He used this time to gather his thoughts.


    (''ording to the intel provided by the Martial Union, the bandits likely operate by incapacitating the dispatch convoy by crippling their means of transport.'') Rui mused. (''In most cases that involves damaging the carriages sufficiently enough and ughtering the horses.'')


    The reason the bandits did this was because the chances of survival of any travelling convoy was minimal if they could not maintain a high mode of transport.


    Thus, even in the unlikely situation that a travelling transport or supplies dispatch convoy had the means to counter them, they would not be able to escape their predicament easily at all. The bandits could simply retreat and wait until for the right moment tounch an ambush.


    Of course, thus far not a single travelling convoy had been able to sessfully resist the bandit ambushes.


    (''Yet despite this, they continue with the norms of crippling the means of transportation in their initial strike.'') Rui thought. (''That sounds uncharacteristically careful for bandits.'')


    Bandits were usually chaotic unorganized groups of low lives who banded together to rob travellers. They were not careful and methodic like an organized strike force. Yet all the data that Rui had gone through indicated that this bandit group was more akin to thetter than the former.


    (''That makes them more dangerous.'') Rui did not want to fight with a disciplined group of criminals, that was much scarier than messing with a random group of thugs who simply used a braindead numbers advantage to edge out a victory.


    (''I find it highly unlikely that this bandit group was formed in a normal way.'')


    Rui felt like the probability of the bandit group being involved with some entity in the ck market was much more likely, this would exin the sense of order that Rui got from them. Perhaps they were formed by some behemoth in the ck market, or something to that effect?


    Rui shook his head. It wasn''t relevant. The point was that if they were targeting means of transport then the group would have a hard time.


    Unfortunately for Rui and the others, knowing about their modus operandi did not mean they would be able to counter it. In their current circumstances, knowing this did not particrly allow them to improve their counters.


    The best thing they could do at the end of the day was to defend, protect and eliminate threats. That did not change regardless of what intel they possessed. At most they could fune their measures to be suited to handling their necessities.


    For example, Rui had already concluded it would be extremely difficult to entirely andpletely prevent them from damaging their means of transport at all. Largely because of the nature of an ambush. The element of surprise in the hands of the enemy Martial Apprentices could not be mitigated easily, and some loss of life as well as material loss was inevitable.<sub> </sub>


    The question was what were the measure they could take to mitigate the damage inflicted, thankfully. They had already known the answer.


    p The answer was to abandon the outer ring of the convoy and focus on the most important and vital parts of the dispatch, as specified by the client.</anda>


    The outeryers of the convoy were mostly there to act as a shield for the inner portion of the convoy, where the valuable high-grade esoteric supplies were stored.


    Once the ambushmenced, Rui and the others of the Martial Quint would immediately focus on ensuring the inner circles endured as little harm as possible. The outer circles were pretty much intended to be doomed as a sacrifice.


    An hour passed as they distanced themselves from the town of Hajin, and the mountains that were on the horizon at the distance had grownrger in their field of view.


    "We''ve reached the base, it seems." Dalen noted. "The Shadow Trails is only half an hour away from here I believe."


    "It''s been a long time since I came here." Fae chirped.


    "You''vee here before?" Rui turned in surprise.


    "Hasn''t everyone?" Kane asked.


    "Yeah, it''s a mountain range. The outskirts are pretty safe, and it''s a tourist attraction." Fae agreed.


    Rui did a double-take, remembering that hispanions were a bunch of rich kids with a Martial pedigree.


    Forget touring the mountains, this was the first time that Rui had actually left the town of Hajin. Although the Quarrier Orphanage was technically outside the town of Hajin. That wouldn''t count, would it?


    (''Wait, focus! This is important and dangerous.'') He shook his head, trying to shake away the silly thoughts.N?velDrama.Org content.


    Were it any other asion, Rui would have definitely leisurely enjoyed the sights and taken in the new topography and environment in. It had been a long time since he''d even seen mountains.


    But in this mission, with the information he was aware of, the Basara Mountains had an ominous impression to them. Like the harbinger of danger and risk. Crossing these mountains was estimated to take twelve hours.


    Rui prepared himself mentally. For within the next twelve hours, he would probably be in the most danger he had ever been.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 116 Something Is Wrong

    The Shadow Trails valley was wider than Rui expected, and also not as dark as the name suggested. It had been several hours since they entered the valley. For some reason Rui pictured a super narrow path perpetually bathed in darkness when he heard the name ''Shadow Trails''.


    However, this was not a good thing, ultimately. The valley being very wide allowed for a muchrger area over which the bandits could base and hide in. Especially since the valley was covered in a dense forest, yet the there was enough space for bandits to maneuverfortably. Furthermore, the ground inclined upwards up both sides of the travelling convoy, giving the bandits huge stealth and surveince advantage.


    This was bad news, because ambushers already had the advantage of the element of surprise, even if the Martial Apprentices knew the attack wasing, not knowing when was a significant handicap. Because they were expending a lot of mental energy with their tense alertness over the span of half of a day.


    Thankfully they had rejuvenation potions. Otherwise, they would be exhausted by the time the ambush actuallymenced, fighting against fully prepared Martial Apprentices.


    The only advantage their convoy had was the fact that they had eight Martial Apprentices.


    (''Well, whether that remains to be an advantage or not remains to be seen.'') Rui thought to himself. It entirely depended on how many martial Apprentices the bandits had.


    The best-case scenario was one Martial Apprentice, in which case Rui was absolutely rtively certain they would be able to annihte all the bandits.


    As the numbers grew, the harder it was evaluate as a greater number of variable and parameters all influencing the oue of the conflict arose.


    For example, the grade of the bandit Martial Apprentices, their Martial Art, the synergy between them and their opponents and the quality of teamwork on both sides.


    As Rui grew absorbed into his analysis, his reverie was abruptly broken by Milliana.


    "They''re here." She whispered.


    Rui''s eyebrows knitted in confusion.


    "Already?" He grew more tense and alert as he nced through the unidirectional window. In the distance, he was able to detect many dozens of humans swarming from the forest onto the path ahead of them from a distance, triggering panic in the guard team of the convoy.


    What shocked him was the fact that they weren''t making much of an effort to act stealthily. They weren''t even attacking under the cover of the forest, they were straightforwardly charging against the convoy from the opposite direction of their travel, out in the open.


    He grew even more shocked as the leader of the charging bandits made a war cry.


    "CHARGE! DON''T GIVE THEM TIME TO PREPARE!"


    (''Then why announce your presence to us from that far away?'')


    "They''re here." Dalen got up with a fierce expression. "Let usplete our mission."


    "Wait." Rui raised his hand, causing the others to frown. Protecting the carriage from bandits was literally their job, why was Rui holding them back.


    This did not match the data he had been given.


    The bandits were typically exploited the element of surprise to cleanlyunch a full-on ambush on their hapless and very off-guard victims, using a numeric advantage as well as a Martial Apprentice advantage to crush their opponents swiftly.


    Then why were these bandits doing exactly the opposite thing?


    Rui couldn''t detect the presence of any Martial Apprentice either.N?velDrama.Org content.


    "Something is... wrong." He said to the others, as he analyzed their current situation with the eyes of a hawk.


    "Dude, we need to fight." Kane insisted. "This is what we''re hired for, remember?"


    "The mission bill specified that the actual target of protection were primarily the goods." Rui stated. "We''re not obligated to protect the security team."


    The others frowned at Rui''s logic. They couldn''t argue against it, but that didn''t mean they liked it either.


    "If they manage to break through, then Kane, you can go defend the carriage containing the goods." Rui said.


    He sighed, shrugging. "Alright, if you insist, but you better exin why."


    "Something is wrong."<sub> </sub>


    * * * * * * * * * *


    "Oho, they''re going at it alright." Feiling chuckled as she watched the skirmish from afar.


    "Hmph, this is pointless." Vale grunted, leaning against a tree some distance away. "What''s the point of sending only a half our raid force from afar? That too without us?"


    "Well." Han said, sitting atop a tree. "The boss came up with this." He said before ncing at the golden-haired man, who stood at the forefront of a cliff, eying the battle. "There must be something to it."


    "Boss?" Feilin sighed. "You wanna exin why you sent half our raid-force in without the other half, and without us? Furthermore, what''s the point of having them charge from the front?"


    "Something..." He softly murmured.


    "Hm?" Feilin tilted her head in confusion.


    "...Something is wrong." His golden eyes sharpened as he scanned the battlefield.


    "I dunno boss." Feilin nced at the battlefield away at a distance. "It seems like a normal battle to me."


    "That''s because you''re not looking close enough. Look closer at the security team, what do you see?"


    "Uh, they''re... doing exactly what they''re supposed to do? Defending the inner section of the convoy from our men?" Feilin replied with an exasperated expression.


    "Yes." He said. "Do you think they''re doing a good job?"


    She nced back with knitted eyebrows. "Well, much better than security teams of the Lowminers normally do. Not a single one has abandoned the battle yet despite their numerical disadvantage." She said as she observed how all of them had a rock-solid confidence andposure. They were calm andposed, fought steadily and did not panic, they even dragged the battle on, fighting a little passively.


    This was not the norm. When faced with significant disadvantages, morale and performance both usually plummeted unless the guards were veterans. Atleast a quarter of the security team retreating against orders and protocols was not unusual either, these personnel were not battle-hardened veterans, they were barely more qualified than unskilledbour. Feilin became more cognizant of this odd behaviour the more she observed.


    "I guess the Lowminers have been training their security personnel better? They''re doing a good job I''ll give them that. It''s almost like these men are fighting like they don''t think they can lose."


    At those words, the golden-haired man stirred. "Yes... Exactly. The question is; Why is that?"


    Feilin shrugged, unsure of where he was going with this random tangent.


    "Either they''re brilliant veterans, all of them, or..." He continued. "They have strong reason to believe that they won''t lose...." He paused, before continuing. "...Reasons like the presence of Martial Apprentices."


    Feilin, Vale and Han''s eyes shot wide open, as understanding dawned upon them. Now all of their boss'' antics were startinge full circle.


    "That''s why you sent an ambush-force that was just twenty-percentrger than their security team." Feiling realized. "You wanted to gauge and test the convoy''s general reaction to numerically disadvantaged ambushes."


    He didn''t respond,pletely absorbed in the battle.


    "But why not just ambush them instead of openly charging them, then?" Feilin asked with a hint of confusion. "Wouldn''t it make more sense to push them further?"


    "...An ambush triggers subconscious reflexive and primal fear and panic natural to all humans." He replied softly, never taking his eyes off the battle. "I wanted to test their conscious response after giving them time to evaluate their enemies, that is much more reflective of their sense of security."


    Feilin finally understood the simplicity yet the brilliance of the boss'' n. If all the personnel of the convoy acted exactly how they expected them to, then there was little to be suspicious about. Then they themselves could just join with the remaining men of their bandit group and finish the job quickly.


    But if there was something strange, they would be able to detect it beforehand.


    It was a simple n that cleanly allowed them to evaluate risk with very little cost.


    She sighed inwardly, remembering why the four Martial Apprentices of their group had willingly bowed their head to him. His position was not unearned.


    He ignored her, growing more and more engrossed in the battle.


    "Something is wrong."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 117 Pawns

    The security team of the Lowminer convoy defended well against the iing flux of bandits. Although they were outnumbered, they fought smartly, with remarkable calm andposure.


    Rui, on the other hand, was not quite as calm.


    (''Think.'') Rui urged. (''Why would they discard the element of surprise, attack us head on and that too without the Martial Apprentices?'')


    Rui had thoroughly memorized the intel provided by the Martial Union in the mission bill, the presence of Martial Apprentices as well as their well-executed ambushes that exploited the element of surprise had been the two major reasons they cleanly seeded in their strikes.


    What was to be inferred from their intentions if they did not use either of these two main elements that was responsible for their victories?


    (''It means they have no intention of winning through this particr battle. But then why even send them at all then?'') Rui wondered.N?velDrama.Org content rights.


    All decisions were driven by incentives and disincentives, gains and loss, reward and risk. By simply applying this principle, one could gain insights into the minds of others. As far as Rui could see, there was either something to be gained through this battle, or something they could avoid losing.


    (''Intel.'') Rui quickly realized. (''They''re trying to learn more about the risk associated with attacking us.'')


    This was not only usible, it was the only realistic possibility. Rui knew that the convoy was aware of the hidden operation of the Lowminer Industries as well as their presence, although they had not conveyed this to anyone, this knowledge would be reflected in their demeanor, as well as their responses in times of crises.


    (''They''re not acting like they would if we weren''t there.'')


    Rui''s shot wide open at this. If this was truly the goal of the bandits, to evaluate the risk of attacking the convoy by gauging their response and sense of security. Even if their initial goal to draw out all the security measures set up by the Lowminers, they still gained valuable information about the convoy even if Rui and his friends stayed in their carriage.


    (''This is bad.'') Rui grimaced.


    The bandits were much smarter and sharper than he''d expected. These guys were definitely not ordinary grunts!


    (''More specifically, they must have an incredibly intelligent leader.'') Rui mused. (''Now then, what to do?'')


    * * * * * * * * * * *


    "There''s one thing I don''t understand boss." Feilin said.


    The blonde-haired man continued gazing at the battle.


    "Why aren''t the Martial Apprentices acting, if they''re even there in the first ce?" She asked with a dubious expression.


    "What do you think they normally would do if they were present in the convoy?" He asked. "Commissioned for a regr bodyguard mission, let''s say."


    "Well, they would have joined the battle and defended the convoy from our men, right?" She replied with a confused expression.


    "And if they were there, the fact that they didn''t do this tells us what?"


    "..."


    "...It tells us that this isn''t a regr bodyguardmission, otherwise they would have done exactly what you said earlier." He told her. "But why would it not be a regrmission?"


    "..."


    "Commissions made to the Martial Union are aimed at fulfilling an objective that can be fulfilled via Martial force. Differentmissions fulfill different objectives." He briefly exined. "Thus, from this premise it can be inferred that if theirmission is different from the norm... Then their objective is also different from the norm."<sub> </sub>


    Feilin grew more confused. "A different objective?"


    "An additional objective, to be more precise." He said. "Normally the objective would be to simply protect the convoy, or the important goods, atleast. What additional objective do you think there could be?"


    "..."


    He sighed. "An objective that the Lowminers would logically want. An objective that involves Martial force and conflict. An objective that requires Martial Apprentices. An objective that is to be fulfilled in the Shadow Trails."


    He nced at her, meeting her eyes. "What objective fulfills all those conditions?"


    Realization dawned upon Feilin. "The objective of dealing with us, once and for all."


    "Something to that effect." He turned back to the battlefield. "From the response of the convoy, the probability of Martial Apprentices somewhere within the convoy, or at a distance is not low. It could also be that they have certain powerful esoteric technological solutions at hand as well, though this is unlikely, because the logistical measures needed to for such solutions would be too noticeable."


    He paused before continuing. "Martial Apprentices are equally powerful, but with zero logistical and inventory constraints."


    "So what do we do?" She asked.


    "We wait." He replied. "If they are there, they''ll act sooner orter. One is at their most vulnerable at the moment of victory."


    Down at the battlefield, the bandit force had just shown signs of managing to break through the perimeter and headed straight for the storage carriages.


    "It''s time." Rui stated. "Dalen, Kane and Fae. I suggest the three of you go." Rui instructed. "Milliana and I should stay."


    "You''re just trying to dodge some work, aren''t you? You Martial Shirker." He grumbled, even as he followed Rui''s words


    His instructions didn''t receive much resistance from the remaining Martial Artists either. Rui could be scarily sharp, everybody knew this. His absurd performance on the mental attributes of the evaluation exam a year ago had not been forgotten.


    "Why did you make only the two of us stay?" Milliana asked out of curiosity, once the three of their teammates had left and had begun reinforcing the perimeter.


    "They''re a bnced team." He stated. "Defense, offense and maneuvering. They give the impression that they''re a single team all by themselves."


    "...So what does that have to do with us staying back."


    "I want the hidden bandits to believe that those three are the only Martial Apprentices hired by the Lowminers."


    "Hidden bandits?" Milliana tilted her head in confusion.


    (''Ah I forgot she''s an airhead.'')


    "This mission wouldn''t be graded six if the bandit group was that small and weak. These are merely pawns." He exined. "In Chess, the pawns are the weakest."


    "Chess?"


    "Er, never mind."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 118 Not Unsurprised.

    Fae, Kane and Dalen made a huge impact on the battlefield.


    Fae went berserk, sending bandits flying with every strike, sprinting around the battlefield, infiltrating the ranks of the bandits, and causing general mayhem as she chopped down their numbers. She instantly tripled the rate at which the bandits were falling.


    Dalen and Kane stayed closer to the inner sections of the convoy. Preventing any of the bandits from being able to cripple the means of transport.


    Dalen''s Martial Art defensive in nature, allowing him to ensure not a single bandit or could pass through him. His imposing developed physique easily withstood anything the bandits mustered up with ease, he was like an invulnerable tank.


    Kane on the other hand, zipped around the inner sections of the convoy, taking out the bandits who circled around Dalen and tried avoid him entirely. He bolted faster than most of them could react, cleanly dismantling their attacks and knocking them out.


    The three of them flipped the flow of the battle a perfect one-eighty degrees almost instantly.


    "Oho, look what the cat dragged out." Feilin chuckled as she watched the trio of Fae, Kane and Dalen clean up the battlefield. "Good call boss. If we simply ambushed them like we normally do, we might have been the one to get ambushed instead!"


    "Hm..." The golden-haired man frowned, as his golden eyes sharpened.


    "Hmph!" Vale snorted. "They''re just three brats! We should just jump in and annihte them."


    "They''re decent." Han yawned. "But we have a numeric advantage."


    "What''s wrong boss?" Feilin asked. "They have three Martial Artists, isn''t that the end of the problem?"


    "Just a thought..." He murmured.Original from N?velDrama.Org.


    "Thought?"


    "If you were the Lowminers transporting thirteen Sky Crystals through a dangerous valley with a known bandit group that has a record of targeting Sky Crystals, with a minimum of one Martial Apprentice, possibly more." He paused ncing at Feilin before continuing. "Would you hire only three Martial Apprentices?"


    "The Lowminers are careful and cautious but decisive when they have the means to obtain their objectives. So why hire only three Martial Apprentice bodyguards?" He squinted his eyes in suspicion.


    "You''re overthinking this, boss." She sighed with exasperation.


    "...Possible." He admitted. "It just urred to me that if this was indeed the case... Then Lowminers have hired someone with great intelligence and insight."


    "Regardless, we''ll proceed through immediately." He said. "We have gathered enough information on them. Vale, Feilin and Han, you guys jump in. I''lly in wait and ambush one of them while they''re fighting you, then we crush them four-on-two."


    "Four-on-two. Where''s ''he'' anyway?" Feilin asked.


    "...Late." The man sighed. "Now go."


    The three of them nodded, before leaping off the cliff and sprinting down.


    For a moment, the golden-haired man was alone, before calling out.


    "How long do you n to hide?" He said, to seemingly no one.


    "How rude." A voice from the shadows replied, before walking out. "I was busy, you know."


    "What are you here for?" The golden-haired man asked.


    "Our patron expects you to seed. The thirteen Sky Crystals must be procured at all costs."


    He nced at the masked figure with his sharp golden eyes. "You''re supposed to be of help to this operation and to me. Instead, you''re running around prancing aplishing nothing."


    The masked figure chuckled. "Doesn''t look like you need much help." He replied, gesturing at the three Martial Apprentices from the Martial Union.


    "Don''t worry, I''ll save you if things go sideways... Prince Rajak Di Kandria." The masked man whispered, before melting into the shadows once more.


    Rajak snorted lightly, before turning to the battle.<sub> </sub>


    "One small step at a time... and eventually this country will be mine." He whispered, with a sh of determination across his face.


    * * * * * * * * * *


    Rui watched as his friends cleaned up the battlefield, admiring their prowess. All three of them had gotten stronger.


    (''Good.'') Rui nodded. (''With this, level of power, we should be fin-'')


    Suddenly his senses caught onto something.


    A figure jumped out of the woods mming into Dalen at incredibly high speeds.


    BOOM


    "Dalen!" Rui and Milliana immediately head out, but in that exact moment, two more figure flew out of the forest, attacking Kane and Fae.


    In just a moment, three Martial Artists had attacked his friends!


    Thankfully, the ambush hadn''t resulted in any casualties. Dalen was tough enough to withstand the ambush, Kane narrowly managed to avoid the attack entirely while Fae simply countered with a palm attack.


    "Aw, the ambush failed!" Feilin groaned exaggeratedly, smiling savagely, as she leapt back from Fae. "Guess we''ll have to do this the hard way!"


    Suddenly she sensed something at her back.


    A fourth Martial Artist had appeared out of the blue!


    Rui had charged up at top speed with Flowing Canon,unching his most powerful strike. He had timed the attack perfectly, getting her just as she disengaged from Fae,pletely focused on thetter.


    WHOOSH


    Rui executed the technique perfectly, but where there was supposed to be his target, now was empty air.


    She had disappeared, in a moment.


    "You''re careless Feilin." Rajak said to her as he put her on the ground. "We need to retreat, for now."


    Rui''s eyes shot wide open as a random golden-haired and golden-eyed man appeared out of nowhere, extricating his target to safety.


    (''He''s fast! Only Kane could pull something like that.'')


    Just as Rajak, Vale, Han and Feilin began distancing themselves from their targets.


    BOOM


    They narrowly avoided being stomped as their escape route was cut-off by three huge impacts.


    Feilin, Vale and Han stared on in shock as three more masked Martial Artists almost crushed them to the ground, cutting off their escape routes, even Rajak couldn''t help but feel shocked.


    Rui, Kane, Fae, Dalen and Milliana quickly took their spots around the important carriages of the convoy, forming a wide perimeter protective arc between the inner convoy and the four bandit Martial Artists.


    The three Lowminer bodyguards were on the opposite end, boxing them in.


    And in the center were the four bandit Martial Apprentices.


    In the span of little over ten seconds, the number of Martial Apprentices on the field had risen from three to eleven!


    Not a single one among them was unsurprised.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 119 Final Chance

    There was a moment of silence on the battlefield. All Martial Apprentices focused full on their opponents, sizing them up, evaluating the situation and what course of action to take.


    That moment ended quickly.


    And all hell broke loose.


    FOOM


    The three Martial Apprentices of the Lowminer Industries shot towards the bandits. They fired a storm of attacks forcing the bandits to diver their attention towards them.


    That''s when Fae, Kane and Rui jumped in. The three of them sandwiched the bandits against the Martial Apprentices, punishing them through sheer numbers.


    Dalen and Milliana circled a little further back, attacking and pushing them back any time one of them tried to squiggle their way through. Their Martial Art were not suited to belligerent attacks like the ones their peers were conducting.


    Furthermore, trying to prevent someone from escaping was much harder than trying to not get beaten, which is why the bandits were proving to be a handful.


    Yet, despite six-to-four disadvantage, they somehow were just barely managing to not get instantly overwhelmed.


    (''This blondie is strong.'') Rui had recognized that long ago.


    He was able to fight Rui and Kane at the same time, something Rui didn''t think was possible within the Martial Apprentice Realm, but evidently, he was wrong.


    The man had distractingly golden hair and eyes, almost as if they were emitting light rather than reflecting it. Yet his hair and eyes were only the second most attention drawing trait about him.


    His Martial Art was remarkable, he had a wide wealth of Apprentice-level techniques, even more so than Rui and Kanebined.


    What Rui found interesting was that he was an all-rounder. He had no distinct shoring and he was truly strong in all categories.


    WHOOSH


    He avoided a kick from Rui while blocking an attack from Kane. Rui shifted as he threw a barrage of a Vital Pressure strikes, which the man calmly proceeded to parry with a single arm, swinging his other arm with remarkable speed and power towards Rui.


    WHOOSH


    Rui bent backwards narrowly avoiding the strike, however that left him wide open for a follow up, which the man promptlyunched.


    BAM


    Kane managed to throw him off by sting him with swift kicks, forcing him to divert his attention. What shocked Rui was that he wasn''t much slower than Kane, despite having a well-built frame. He used a variety of Apprentice-level maneuvering and speed techniques allowing him to keep up with Kane despite that.


    Rui came to have more and more admiration for the man. An Apprentice-level technique for everything, a solution for everything.


    This is what Rui strived to obtain. This is what Rui strived to be!


    Why had he gone through the pain of putting himself in such dangerous missions? So that he could obtain techniques of higher grades to develop and expand his Martial Art!


    He grew more and more driven as the fight proceeded, fighting with greater vigour than before.


    BOOM


    Dalen pushed him back as he tried evacuating.


    "Tsk." He tutted before dodging a kick from Rui and blocking jabs from Kane.


    BAM


    He mmed Rui away with a powerful spinning kick technique, Rui felt a huge impact despite having used both stic Shift and Acute Edge.


    (''This battle would have been over long ago if it was just me.'') Rui recognized that. He had been saved by kane multiple times, and he had bailed Kane out multiple times. They both did their best to prevent him from focusing too much on one of them.


    They both knew that if he did manage to focus on them for long enough, they were dead.<sub> </sub>


    Speed just a level below Kane.


    Striking power just a level below Fae.


    Defense just a level below Dalen.


    They both felt insignificant. The pressure he emitted as a result of his power was greater than any Apprentice Rui had ever seen, including the Apprentice instructors at the Academy.


    What made Rui feel worse was that all-rounders were the worst type of style for the VOID algorithm. Because they had no straightforward shorings that could be exploited. The VOID algorithm loved shorings; it loved gobbling these weaknesses.


    Strikers generally had a wrestling shoring.


    Wrestlers generally had a striking shoring.


    Speedsters generally had a power shoring.


    Tankers generally had a mobility shoring.


    But all-rounders had no such thing. Meaning the VOID algorithm had to go through greater pains to develop a counter-style. Furthermore, Rui hadn''t fully adapted the more advanced version of the VOID algorithm to suit the Martial Art of Gaea.


    These were the impediments that stood in Rui''s way this time.N?velDrama.Org content.


    BAM


    The man managed to knock Kane down, and was about to pummel on him when Rui just barely managed to draw his attention with Flowing Canon.


    WHOOSH


    He spun out of the way of the strike, generating enough torque for a powerful strike.


    BOOM


    Rui just barely managed to block, reeling from the impact.


    For a moment there, the man was free of both the pests holding him back. Yet just as he dashed away for an escape.


    BLAM


    Dalen charged into him, pushing him back into the fray where Kane showered him with a flurry of swift strikes.


    And back to step one again he was. His frustration was growing more and more palpable the longer this dragged on.


    He had long given up on the Sky Crystals, they hadn''t even crossed his mind ever since the three Martial Apprentices of the Lowminer Industries popped out.


    He had one, and only one, objective.


    Survive!


    The Sky Crystals, his patron, his subordinates.


    None of those mattered to him at this very moment. He would dly sacrifice all of them on a silver tter if that meant he would be able to escape this predicament.


    (''I will not die a dog''s death on this battlefield.'') He swore in his heart. (''I am destined for much greater things.'')


    He demeanor became more and more desperate as he began fighting far more ferociously. The longer the battle went, the lower his chances of escaping and surviving.


    This was his final chance.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 120 Three-On-One

    The battlefield had escted in violence astronomically. Martial Apprentices were those who were able to exceed the limits of their physicality via their Martial Art and their Martial Path. This meant that the scales of power in a fight with eleven Martial Apprentices would far surpass what ordinary humans could do.


    If someone from Earth heard the battle from afar, they would no doubt assume they were near a live warzone and immediately flee. If they were to see the battleground of the Martial Apprentices, they would assume a rogue demolition vehicle had gone nuts in the area.


    Broken trees, cracked rocks, craterednd, broken carriages, mangled bodies.


    It was not conceivable that mere humans were responsible for such devastation.


    The outer section of the convoy was damn near entirely destroyed and scattered, the men from the security team had huddled at the center of the behind the Martial Apprentices of the Martial Union. Ordinarily they would have long escaped while the bandit Martial Artist were held back, but they were to remain in the battlefield so that the Martial Artists of the Martial Union would be able to remain there to fight the bandit Martial Artists along with their own Martial Artists.


    The remaining security and other nonbat personnel quickly huddled in the carriages and prayed for the best.


    BOOM


    Fae mmed Vale with a flurry of palm attacks, peppering with powerful blows as he guarded against them with furious tenacity.


    The man''s physicality was greater than even that of Dalen, so Fae had adjusted her fighting style just a little. Reducing the number of blows she fired in her barrage in exchange for increasing the power of each blow. This was because, arge number of weaker blows would not do as much damage as lower number of stronger blows.


    Damage did not work like that; it wasn''t linear and additive in nature in that way.


    "RAAAGH." He swung at her with great power.


    FWHAP


    Fae deflected the attack to the side with a powerful palm attack. This was one of thetest techniques she had mastered; Spiral Palm; By twisting her core to generate torque, she could use her palm attacks not just in a linear fashion to attack, but also to deflect all iing linear blows. It had high efficiency, although its flexibility was a little low.


    The reason for that was because it really only worked on linearly iing attacks, and not strikes with a non-linear trajectory.


    BOOM


    She managed tond another strike clean on his abdomen through his guard by altering her trajectory mid-strike with the help of yet another Apprentice-level technique; Curling Convergence. Since her fight Kane, she had done her best to increase her versatility. She had realized she was too limited, limited to throwing straight palms.


    This wasn''t particrly her fault; she had broken through to Martial Apprentice just a little after she turned fourteen. Although three years was not a short time. Learning and mastering Martial Apprentice techniques took an extremely long time, unless you were Rui, it had taken her a long time to develop the basics of her Martial Art.


    The strike she''dnded on Vale had struck his diaphragm much to her fortune disorienting and incapacitating him.


    BAM BAM BAM


    She peppered him with more strikes, trying her best to ensure she didn''t allow him to recover.


    A well-ced impact to the diaphragm hindered breathing significantly, since it was the sole muscle responsible for the process of respiration.


    BAM


    POW


    THWACk


    BOOM


    FWACK


    POW


    As she went on, it became clearer and clearer to everyone that the fight was going worser and worser for Vale. Following his brief mild, yet vital incapacitation, Fae exploited the opening tond a flurry of strikes on his vitals.


    Throat.


    Liver.


    Sr Plexus.<sub> </sub>


    Lower jaw.


    Philtrum.


    be.


    BAM BAM BAM


    p Sheunched a finalbo. A straight palm into the diaphragm, an uppercut palm attack to the jaw, and a final palm strike into his throat.</anda>


    Vale staggered for half a second, before copsing to his knees and then t onto his face.


    What happened next drew the attention of every Martial Artist.


    BAM


    Sheunched a final palm strike pumped up with power straight down onto the skull of the unconscious man.


    CRACK


    Without any Apprentice-level techniques, the human body would simply be crushed by Fae''s sheer raw power.


    For moment, all the fights paused as the Martial Artists nced at Vale''s mangled skull atop a pool of blood and cranial fluid.


    Martial Artists of the Martial Union and the Lowminer Industries inwardly rejoiced, while the bandits felt their heart sinking as cold terror and despair had begun to engulf them.


    Everybody knew that the oue for the first fight would decide the oue of all fights. The reason was rather simple. The victor of that battle would go on to aid theirrades, adding another force that they would have to deal with.


    If Vale had managed to kill Fae, then he would have been able to supplement hisrades. The battle would have gone from eight against four, to seven against four. Making life much easier for the bandits.


    "That idiot...!" Feilin cursed.


    Now that Fae had won, she would being to reinforce one of the three ongoing fights.


    The bandits were already having a hard time fighting their opponents, especially with Milliana and Dalen regrly chipping in to either kill away any brief advantage they gained or put them in a worser position.


    With someone as strong as hering into one of their fights, another one of them was guaranteed to die.


    Feilin, Han and Rajak kept an eye on her, looking to see which fight she would join.


    Her decision was quick.


    STEP


    She leapt towards Rajak at top speed.


    BAM


    She mmed him with her most powerful attack, expecting atleast significant damage.


    s, Rajak was not a trivial man. He mmed her attack while also partially dodging, abination of both ensured her attack missed cleanly.


    BAM


    He struck her with immense force, sending her flying away despite her block.


    She quickly repositioned herself, forming a triangle with Rui and Kane.N?velDrama.Org content.


    It was now three-on-one.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 121 Replaced With Uncertainty

    BAM


    Rajak smacked Rui away with a swift kick. But he was immediately rushed by Fae and Kane. Oneunched an immensely powerful palm attack, the other riddled him with incredibly speedy strikes.


    He turtled up, crouching with his arms in front of him as he retreated trying to put some space between them.


    POW


    "Argh!" He grimaced as Ruinded a kick straight on his head. Just as he turned to swing at Rui;


    BAM


    THWACK


    Fae and Kane resumed their offense forcing him to just barely defend against them. The three of them bombarded him with attacks from three directions, giving him no time or space to consolidate his defense.


    All three of them were menaces for three different reasons.


    Fae had the greatest firepower among three of them, surpassing even his own. Every attack chipped away at his defense, inflicting some amount of damage. She was a relentless canon, who fired with the intention of taking him down with every strike. As far as game-ending attacks went, she was the strongest of the three. He paid an immense of attention to her, because he knew that of the three of his opponents, she was the likeliest to actually take him down if he made a mistake.


    However, the one who truly irritated him was Kane. The boy''s speed and agility were a level above his, furthermore, he was far more nimble, smaller, and mobile than Rajak himself was. He danced around, squiggling his way through narrow spaces andnding a flurry of attacks from everywhere. Landing an attack was practically impossible, especially with the other two. He frustrated Rajak the most.


    However, the one that unsettled Rajak the most was the third one. As far as only Martial Art techniques went, he was the weakest of the three. Rajak could tell he had only barely formed the foundation of his Martial Art.


    Yet for some reason, there was something about the kid that was eerie. As the fight went on, the kid fought better and better, and grew harder and harder fight against. The boy stared at him with pitch-ck eyes, and Rajak felt naked in front of his gaze. He felt transparent, as though the boy could see thought everything. Every though, action, decision.


    There were moments where he fought incredibly smoothly against Rajak, almost as though he knew what Rajak would do before he even did it, and even knew exactly what needed to be done in order to punish Rajak the most.


    In the beginning, the boy struck him as an all-rounder, but his fighting style kept changing and altering growing strangely more and more difficult to deal with.


    WHOOSH


    BAM


    Rui flipped out of the way of a low sweeping kick from Rajak,nding a bicycle kick on his head. Rajak grimaced, stunned. At that moment, Rui had begun the jump even before Rajak began the kick!


    Fae and Kane appeared on the opposite sides of him, sandwiching him ins a storm of attacks; swift and numerous on one side and powerful and devastating on the other.


    Rajak back away, grimacing in pain. His condition was bad, the addition of Fae had contributed to the deterioration of his condition significantly. He was at the stage where he was coughing blood. His mental faculties had taken a hit from the damage and fatigue frombating the constant bombardment from three of them.


    His chances of escape were bing more and more remote.


    (''I still have a chance. If I sacrifice defense to some extent, I''ll be able to use some offensive techniques open up some distance between all of us, I''ll be in a bad condition but I will have a clean chance to escape.'') He began nning. (''Once I hide even for a brief few seconds, I should be able to partially consume a healing potion, escape will be much more feasible.'')


    Just then, arge sound broke him out of his reverie.


    BAM


    "ARGH" Han grimaced as copsed to the ground.<sub> </sub>


    Rajak''s cursed when he saw Han''s leg broken in a horrible manner. The Martial Artists of the Lowminer Industries had managed to cleanly break it.


    Everyone knew in that moment, that he was as good as dead. He would never be able to escape from this scenario alive.


    The only bandits left fighting were Rajak and Feilin.Belongs to ? n0velDrama.Org.


    Rajak nced at his second-inmand with hopelessness. She was bloody, and battered with wounds all over her body. She had even lost her left eye.


    It was over for them, Feilin had already copsed to a knee, she wouldst one exchange and would die immediately after.


    The battle had gone from eight-on-four to now effectively eight-on-one.


    Rajak was strong, but against eight Martial Apprentices, he stood no chance in hell whatsoever. Only the pinnacle of Martial Apprentices had a chance of surviving this predicament.


    BOOM


    Fae managed to cleanlynd a palm attack into his sr plexus. He leapt back, grimacing in pain. He looked around, the Martial Apprentices circled around him like wolves ready to make the final strike.


    He nced at Han and Feilin, they were already dead.


    They attacked, aiming to end this in one go.


    Just as eight Apprentice-level attacks were about to mangle his mangle alive.


    BOOM


    An impact far greater than any on the battlefield blew them away, forcing them to leap back. The impact reverberated through thend, shaking the earth.


    "Hahaha!" A voice pierced through the dust. "What a disagrace, you''ve really fallen."


    As the dust cleared, an unknown masked man, supporting the golden-haired man appeared.


    ? Rajak coughed blood. "Took you... cough cough... long enough."


    The Martial Artists had no idea who this intruder was, but they all leaped at him with determination.


    WHOOSH


    Just as their attacks were about to strike the duo, they cleanly passed through them, as thought they were just an illusion.


    The bandits had disappeared into thin air.


    The Martial Apprentices were shocked. The fact that the man managed to insert himself in the middle of eight hostile Martial Apprentices and evacuate with arade, unharmed, was an unbelievable notion.


    The atmosphere, which was previously filled with assurance and confidence, had been reced with that of uncertainty.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 122 Aftermath

    A strange silence spread through the air, as none of the Martial Apprentices were able to muster up anything to say.


    And they very well couldn''t be med for that. They had the final bandit exactly where they wanted him. And just as they were about to finish the job, a fifth bandit came in stopped the, grabbed the man and jumped out of there.Belongs to ? n0velDrama.Org.


    What could they even say? What were they supposed to say?


    Rui sighed. "Well, atleast the mission seeded." He said, turning around to inspect the inner section of the travelling convoy. Thankfully, the carriages and the horses hadn''t suffered much damage and the loss of life to the nonbat personnel was minimal. Milliana and Dalen staying back to ensure that their primary mission would be fulfilled was a life-saver.


    The outer section was now almost entirely non-existent, however. The battle with the bandit troops andter the battle between eleven Martial Apprentices had wrecked all that battle chariots that carried the security personnel.


    Their primary mission was well fulfilled. All the goods were safe, and the Martial Quint fought with everything they had to ensure the goods would be safe. So, Rui was rtively certain that he would be fully remunerated for his services.


    Furthermore, the covert operation of the Lowminer Industries was also a decent sess. Although two Martial Apprentice bandits managed to escape, they had annihted most of the bandits, including three Martial Apprentices.


    This was a solid aplishment that could not be downyed.


    All in all, Rui felt quite satisfied with what they aplished. The fulfillment of nearly nailing a mission perfectly was quite high, especially when the mission was important and had high stakes. It far surpassed the trivial missions he hadpleted in the past week.


    "Let''s wrap things up and resume our journey." Rui suggested. "I highly doubt those two will be returning any time soon, but I think it''s best if we make haste in our journey and get out of the Shadow Trails as soon as possible."


    No one argued with that. The Martial Apprentices of the Lowminer Industries aided in sorting out the chaotic convoy while the Martial Quint returned to their carriage, exhausted.


    "Man that was actually insane!" Kane eximed. "We fought and killed three Martial Apprentices. I bet our grades are all gonna shift up."


    He was probably correct. Rui did not think his evaluation would remain at three. But what he was most interested in were the martial credits from the mission. Once he received the pay, he would have a total of six hundred and fifty-three martial credits. Furthermore, there was the additional bonus that the branch manager Savin had promised them.


    Rui hoped the man would pay up, after all, it was merely a verbal promise, he wasn''t obligated to pay up.


    Soon, the convoy finally managed to wrap up and pull itself together. The Martial Apprentices had already long revealed themselves so they kept an eye out from the outside where it was easier to conduct surveince.


    Hours passed as the sun started going down, the clouds gathered, barricading its light. At one point, it even began snowing heavily. After all, Kandria was about to enter the most extreme phase of Winter.<sub> </sub>


    And just like that, half a day passed.


    No more ambushes, or attacks, the convoy passed through the Shadow Trails uneventfully. This wasrgely expected, but the Martial Apprentices kept an eye out for the two Martial Artists who escaped, especially the masked one. That one was truly formidable, although they did not think the eight of them would lose. If he chose to fight, there would probably be some casualties.


    No one wanted to die.


    They soon exited the Shadow Trails, and an hourter, had left the Basara Mountain range in the distance on the horizon.


    The convoy finally rxed; they settled down as the town of Gagar was entering their field of view.


    This was Rui''s first time visiting a town aside from that of Hajin, he reveled in the experience. The town of Gagar had a different feel to it than that of Hajin. For one, it was nearly as well-developed ormercial as the town of Hajin was. The infrastructure wasn''t as good as that of Hajin, and the poption was less dense inparison.


    There were a lot more residential areas across the entire town, and even at the hearnd of the town. Unlike in Hajin, where the further you went to the center of the town the moremercial it became.


    Soon they arrived at their destination in Gagar. The convoy stopped as it arrived at a branch of the Lowminer Industries.


    What followed was rtively quick and simple, the convoy was received and adequately handled. It was gettingte, the snowfall had elerated too, so the Martial Quint decided to postpone their journey back to Hajin. The Lowminer Industries graciously offered to take care of their housing and their return trip back to Hajin. Apparently, the actual client, the branch manager of the Lowminer Industries wished to speak to them privately.


    ? "Hopefully for something good too." Kane yawned. "Well, at the very least they''re willing to pay for our inn. We should go the most expensive hotel in town and dump the bill on the Lowminers."


    "Let''s not do that, the branch manager promised us an additional bonus reward, credits are way more important to me than a luxurious night out."


    "Tsk tsk. You need to learn how to live."


    "I agree with Rui." Fae said, throwing a disapproving look at Kane. "You''re the heir of the Arrancar family, show some ss. Rui here has far more grace than you do."


    "Oh shut up, you''re just a little girl who got spoilt by her grandmother." Kane retorted.


    Rui sighed as that sparked the umpteenth bout of conflict between them, he had long given up on trying to mediate it. It was just a fact that those two didn''t get along.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 123 The Next Step

    The five of them treated the rest of the day as a holiday, peacefully rxing after a stressful mission. They''d wandered around the town of Gagar indulging themselves to a little fun.


    "Man, I wonder who that masked dude was." Dalen thought aloud. "He was ridiculously strong."


    "I wonder if he''ll reform the bandit group and continue." Fae wondered.


    "Unlikely." Rui pitched in. "Not any time soon, anyway. His men were ughtered and he lost his Martial Apprentice subordinates, bar the masked Martial Artist. Rebuilding the bandit group to its former size and strength is going to take a while."


    "I doubt he even wants to, in the first ce." Kane said. "He kinda got his ass whooped."


    They headed back to the inn after a while, heading to sleep.


    The next morning, they cleaned up. Taking the opportunity to head to the Lowminer Industries branch of Gagar. They quickly boarded the transport provided by the Lowminers, and headed straight back home. Rui used this time to gather his thoughts on the mission.


    Although he was feeling pretty proud and content with his performance, looking at it more objectively he had to admit that things were pretty stacked in their favour in hindsight. They had eight Martial Apprentices against the five Martial Apprentices. It would be embarrassing if more than two managed to get away.


    Still, this did not take away his sense of achievement.


    Sometimes, things just went your way, and sometimes they didn''t. In his first mission, things were ridiculously stacked against him. This was a bit of apensation, in a way.


    All he could do was be grateful and move on.


    Half a day passed uneventfully, and they reached Hajin, and eventually, the main Lowminer Industries branch in Hajin.


    "Should we really visit him before weplete post-mission protocol?" Rui wondered.


    "Well, he did handle our housing and transport." Fae said. "Let''s just pay him a quick visit before heading back."


    Rui shrugged. He wasn''t particrly in any hurry, and he was a little curious about what the man had to say.


    "Wee!" Savin said once they entered his office. "I''ve already been given a detailed report by the Martial Apprentices of ourpany. Allow me to begin by expressing my gratitude, I am thoroughly grateful for your services and performance. I was quite pleased to hear that all but two bandits were eliminated, this is more than good enough to achieve the desired result."


    "We were justpleting our mission." Fae responded. "We are appreciative of your gratitude."


    She left the floor open to him.<sub> </sub>


    "As a token of our gratitude, we have decided to double the bonus reward." Savin smiled charmingly. "We hope we have not burdened you in an untoward manner during this mission."N?velDrama.Org content.


    Rui immediately understood what was going on. (''He''s currying favour with the Martial Union.'')


    There were several reasons he would do this. Firstly, the Martial Union was an entity that basically ruled the Kandrian Empire after the Royal Family. Kissing its ass was always a good thing to do. Secondly, Rui was cognizant enough to realize that the Lowminer Industries were probably worried they had annoyed the Martial Union.


    They had shed with the Martial Union''s mission very directly during the events of Rui''s first mission, directly causing its failure, that too with a private Martial Apprentice. Although there was no straightforward concrete evidence asides from Wern''s words, the truth was the truth and the Martial Union was not stupid. They knew who was responsible for Be''s death, the Lowminers knew the Martial Union knew, and the Martial Union knew the Lowminers knew.


    Furthermore, this particr mission was somewhat unorthodox as well. It wasn''t deviant as the first mission which was a whole four ranks under-graded. But the Lowminers did in fact exploit the Martial Union to some degree with their hidden operation.


    Although the Martial Union would not directly retaliate over such a trivial matter, it was still in their best interests to mend their shaky rtionship with the Martial Union. Even the tiniest bit of effort from the Martial Union''s end could utterly annihte every trace of the Lowminer Industries from the face of the country.


    The Lowminers were top dogs, however that was limited to a handful of sectors and industries across a handful of towns. They could notpare to nation-widepanies or even region-widepanies.


    This was the only reason Rui could think for the Lowminers to go as far as doubling the bonus reward.


    Not that Rui wasining. Double the reward would result in a total of one thousand martial credits!


    This when summed up with Rui''s existing bnce, resulted in 1153 martial credits!


    This sum was above Rui''s set bar to reach for purchasing new techniques and immersing himself in training.


    Rui was so excited that he could barely control himself from shivering and jumping in ecstasy.


    With such a solid budget, the techniques he could purchase would be just as reliable. The foundational techniques he had obtained for free weren''t too bad, however they were just barely enough to allow Martial Apprentices toplete simple missions. The Martial Academy had carefully made a select set of techniques free so that the Apprentices would just be strong enough to be able to earn credits to purchase more techniques.


    To be honest, the shorings of his techniques were already starting to be apparent. He had begun to feel that during his first mission with Be, but had really noticed this during this mission in the Shadow Trails. He could sense that he was probably the most under-developed Martial Apprentice in that entire battle.


    He was able topensate for this with the predictive and counter-deductive capacity of the VOID algorithm, but this was not a long-term solution. This wasn''t particrly his fault, he had barely been a Martial Apprentice for half a year and was much stronger than any Martial Apprentice that inexperienced.


    But now that would change, once he finished with this round of training, he estimated he would reach a whole new level of capability.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter ?124 Priorities

    <o>,m Author note: Hey priv readers. Yesterday I uploaded the wrong chapters by mistake. I fixed it within an hour of uploading, so you may not have noticed. However I urge you to reread those chapters just in case.</o>


    Sorry for the inconvenience.


    *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *


    Rui stopped listening after the extra bonus was mentioned. He frankly didn''t care all that much about anything else the Lowminers had to say. The rest of the meeting passed in a daze as the branch manager tried to make as good an impression in the limited amount of time they had left.


    Soon enough, Fae promptly excused all of them and left the branch, heading to the Martial Union. Once they arrived at the Martial Union, Rui raced toplete the post-mission protocols as fast as he possible could.


    "What''s he all excited about?" Dalen asked with confusion. "We just got back after a tiring mission."


    Kane and Fae sighed.


    "Forget about it." Fae shook her head.


    "Nerds spend time in the library." Kane said. "That''s exactly what he wants to do."


    Rui couldn''t even be bothered retorting to the barbs. Once he filled up the forms and signed the what needed to be signed. He rushed to the Apprentice library the second his work was finished.


    "See you guyster!" He yelled as the figure of his friends grew smaller in the distance.


    Seeing that Kane got up, stretching. "Well, I should probably train too, I can''t have him surpassing that easily."


    Fae agreed with Kane, as she rarely did. "It would be embarrassing if the runt I smacked in the Entrance Exam one-upped me in just a year."


    Saying this the two of them proceeded to bid Dalen and Milliana goodbye.


    Once Rui entered the Apprentice library, he was so excited he felt jittery. Like a child who had entered a gigantic toy store after saving up his or her allowance for a whole year.


    What techniques should he learn? In what direction should evolve or develop his Martial Art in? There were so many options he simply didn''t know where to begin.


    The foundational techniques were not only limited in grade, they were also limited in variety. The premium techniques consisted of a much more diverse set of types of techniques that relied on different mechanics and principles.


    Before Rui could even dive in. He first calmed himself down, inhaling and exhaling deeply, regaining hisposure. There was no point in getting too excited and making stupid decisions about how to spend his martial credits, these were hard-earned credits. He needed to spend them wisely.


    Firstly, what was he here for?


    To develop and expand his Martial Art.Original from N?velDrama.Org.


    In what manner did he want that to happen? What were the constraints to the development trajectory of his Martial Art?


    This was a bit moreplicated and nuanced. First, he was an all-rounder. This meant he could not allow his Martial Art to develop disproportionately higher in any one field.<sub> </sub>


    Another constraint at this point in time, would be to fill in the holes in his Martial, and avoid filling what is already well-filled.


    What were the rtive strengths and weaknesses of his Martial Art?


    (''My offense is stillcking in general lethality.'') Rui immediately surmised.


    In hisst training session, he had tried to bolster his offensive arsenal with Flowing Canon and Mirage Dive, a striking and grappling offense move respectively. However, both of these techniquescked flexibility. They could only be used in a handful of all the circumstances that Rui normally found himself in.


    Flowing Canon was a technique that required a run-up to umte momentum. This turned out to be much more limiting than Rui had hoped. After all, it wasn''t possible to run back and forth every time you wanted to strike your opponent.


    Most of the times, he was limited to using Vital pressure, a technique system that targeted vitals in the most effective way with every strike by optimizing hand form, location as well as angle of impact.


    However, this was nowhere near a lethally threatening move, all it did was allow his strikes to inflict damage greater than he normally would.


    That wasn''t enough.


    Thus, Rui decided to fundamentally improve his offense on a general level. What else?


    (''Anothercking aspect of mybat isbat speed.'') Rui mused.


    Although he had mastered maneuvering techniques like Parallel Walk and Bnce Direction, those helped only in more lotive speed, allowing him easily increase or shorten the distance between his opponent and him, allowing to engage in gueri tactics well enough. But the fundamental speed of hisbat was still too low.


    Thus, he quickly addedbat speed to the list.


    Those were the two most ring holes in his Martial Art. Everything else didn''t have any overwhelming insufficiency.


    His defense wasn''t all too outdated, surprisingly. Though that was partially due to the fact that the defensive techniques he had mastered; Acute Edge and stic Shift were dependent on timing and cement of the techniques. The better Rui''s timing and cement was, the more effective these techniques were.


    The VOID algorithm loved such techniques, since it provided Rui with as close to the optimal timing and cement of these techniques adapted against specific opponents. Which is why Rui didn''t particrly notice a deficiency.


    (''Still, bolstering my defense with a technique will help regardless.'') Rui mused. Defense was what protected his life. He did not want to be dismissal of it.


    (''I can''t think of any other critical shoring...'') Rui scratched his head. All of the fields of his Martial Art and attributes were not unsatisfactory.


    (''Well, we''ll see.'') He shrugged. He could always decide what to do with the leftover reserve of martial credits once he finished handling the most important aspects of his Martial Art.


    He could add trump cards with high efficiency that would allow him to vanquish his opponents instantly, or he could add more esoteric techniques that are difficult to counter, making him much more of a menace to deal with. Or he could be conservative and add a technique that increased his chances of survival and avoiding severe damage in battle. He wasn''t sure.


    Having decided what exactly he was looking for, he finally dove into the offense section of the Apprentice library.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter ?125 Choices

    In truth, he did not need to spend much time searching for the perfect technique for his Martial Art that fit the criteria he had set. He had already long set his eye on a technique.


    [Outer Convergence]


    This technique was one of the core techniques of Fae''s Martial Art.


    It was a technique that allowed the user to strike with the power of all muscle groups in the body. Normally, this was possible to do in only a handful of positions. But Outer Convergence took it a step further and made it universal.


    The technique was based on the principle of additive torques.


    A bullet shot by a normal gun moved around the speed of sound.N?velDrama.Org content.


    However, what if the man firing the gun was sitting in a bus also moving at the speed of sound?


    Then the speed of the bullet to someone outside would be the speed of the bullet plus the speed of the bus. The total speed of the bullet would be twice the speed of sound.


    However, what if the bus itself was standing on top of a n moving at the speed of sound? Following the same logic, the speed of the bullet would be thrice the speed of sound. The bullet essentially got boosted by the added speeds of the bus and the ne.


    The Outer Convergence was a technique that boosted speed and power equally, that functioned simrly to the bullet analogy.


    The fist was the bullet in this case, and the various muscle groups were akin to the bus and the ne.


    By moving in a manner that ensured the force and eleration generated by each muscle group would cleanly sum up and funnel into the strike ensured that the power of the strike was vastly higher than if the strike was thrown merely with a portion of the muscle groups across the entire body.


    Fae had partially mastered this technique during the Entrance Exam, and had gone on to fully master it once she entered the Academy, allowing for her power and speed to have surged remarkably.


    This was a technique that would kill two birds with one stone, fixing his two biggest shorings.


    He winced when he nced at the price. (''four hundred martial credits, oof.'')


    Thankfully, the technique was justifiably powerful, furthermore, he truly needed the technique to increase the foundational formidability of his Martial Art. So, he put aside hispunctions about the matter


    He also had seven hundred and fifty-three martial credits left.


    He walked over to the defense section of the Apprentice library, skimming through the technique scrolls slotted in the shelves.


    [stic Dispersion]


    A sessor to both Acute Edge and stic Shift. It added muscle rxing techniques that further made collisions stic, dramatically decreasing the damage inflicted on the user.


    (''It effectively makes the user a bouncy ball, hard to actually damage with blunt force.'') Rui mused. This was a solid candidate, furthermore as a sessor to techniques he had already learnt, he would be able to get a hang of it much quicker than other techniques of the same difficulty.<sub> </sub>


    But the price was a deal cutter for Rui.


    (''Four hundred and twenty martial credits.'') He flinched. (''I''m good, for now.'')


    He did not intend to ovepensate for his defense. He nced around, eying the closest techniques with interest.


    [Adamantium Flex]


    The extreme opposite of stic dispersion in principle, it aimed to make the user harder than the opponent''s attack for a brief moment by executing an extreme momentary blood-rushed flex of the muscles, thereby inflicting damage onto the attacker rather than the user. It was effectively like trying to punch a steel wall, no matter how hard you hit, your fist will always break before the steel wall, every time.


    Still, it was an extremely high-grade technique, with immensely high efficiency and flexibility. This meant it was extremely expensive proportionately.


    He moved onto some of the lower-graded techniques which were much less exaggerated in their effectivity and of a lower grade too.


    [Axis Fortress]


    This was a technique that allowed the user to defend against attacks much more effectively by ensuring the impact travels parallel from one end of the bone straight down to the other end.


    Bones were much easier to damage and break if force was applied at the mid-point of the bone from outside, they were much more difficult to damage and break if the force was applied through the bone from one end to the other, by an entire order of magnitude!


    Rui recalled reading research that bones could be sixteen times more durable through the bone end-to-end vs against the bone at the mid-point.


    However, he had never thought that that fact could be applied such a manner!


    [Raging Reforge]


    This was a technique the focused on general all-round body conditioning. Improving the toughness of epithelial tissue; skin and flesh, as well as the durability of the skeletal and the muscle systems using very specific recurring patterns of strenuous micro-damaging and healing procedures.


    [Chain sh]


    This technique was a technique that strengthened the joints through rigorous conditioning. The joints were just as important as the bones. In shes, an immense amount of stress was put on the joints. The one with stronger joints, experienced less damage, ultimately allowing their durability to increase significantly.


    (''Hmmm...'') Rui was quite impressed by these techniques. They were simple and effective, and got the job done.


    He was quite impressed by his creative some of these techniques were. They applied simple biological and physical phenomena and facts of the human body and nature in resourceful ways to achieve significant results. Rui hadn''t even considered many of these, despite being well aware of these facts and phenomena.


    Not that it was due to hisckluster imagination or creativity, but many of these would straightforwardly be entirely impossible for normal humans. It was only due to the cognitive boosts provided by the discovery of the Martial Path that allowed for Martial Apprentices to master such potent techniques.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter ?126 Have It Now

    He had yet to choose a technique, he had grown far too engrossed in the creativity these techniques disyed.


    He wasn''t entirely sure what technique to pick, he didn''t want to go all out on defense and pick an extravagant technique since his defense was sturdy enough. He skimmed through the section a bit more as his eyesnded on something interesting.


    [Inner Divergence]


    This technique was a defensive technique that dispersed the impact of strikes across the entire body by positioning the area of impact as close to the center of the body as possible. By conducting the impact across the entire body and not just the area of impact, the impact would be diluted and not inflict any damage.


    It was simr to how a weight ced on top of a pyramid would be burdened by every block in the pyramid. By dispersing the impact cross the body, it was easier to withstand than if a single portion of the body withstood it.


    The technique was extremely high-grade, however for some reason it was not priced very high, a meagre two hundred martial credits


    As Rui skimmed through the scroll, he quickly realized why.


    (''It has a disproportionately high degree of difficulty of mastery.'')


    The more difficult a technique was to master and execute, the less its value was. Two high grade techniques with different difficulties of mastery had different value.


    It turned out that Inner Convergence was such an obtuse technique that its effectivity of application was one hundred-percent dependent on the timing and judgement of the user, it''s effectivity could potentially be worser than Exploration techniques. It required remarkable judgement, timing and cement, far more so than most other techniques.


    If timed well, it could apparently surpass its grade, but if timed poorly it could even get one killed in the worst-case scenario.


    The technique specifically warned the reader of the high requirements of mental faculties, and advised the reader to not purchase the technique if the reader''s mental attributes were not significantly above average.


    Rui''s twinkled as he felt an uncontrobleugh boil from his stomach. It took superhuman effort to restrain himself, but he did not want to look like a weirdo to the other Martial Artists and staff in the library. Above average mental attributes? That was all Rui had going for him! He put his hand on the scroll without much hesitation.


    Outer Convergence for offense andbat speed.


    Inner Divergence for defense.


    (''With the power of Convergence and Divergence, I will elevate myself to the next level.'') Rui mused to himself.


    He still had a total of five hundred and fifty-three martial credits left. He wanted to expand his Martial Art''s general capability beyond just offense, defense, maneuvering and supplementary measures.


    Thest ten days had taught him that missions were much, much more about just hand-to-handbat. Missions were not official duels where the only thing that mattered was one''sbat prowess. In fact, he hade to realize that pure straightforwardbat prowess was at most half of what was necessary toplete missions more optimally.


    Having additional useful skills that would help him out in the field. They would not only increase the probability of sess, but could also save his life.N?velDrama.Org content rights.


    This was one of the reasons he was reluctant on splurging on defense. His defense wasn''t nearly weak enough for him spend that kind of money.


    He walked over to the misceneous section of the Apprentice library, skimming through the techniques that they offered.


    "Wow." Rui raised his eyebrows. The section was divided further into several sub-sections;


    Stealth


    Sensory<sub> </sub>


    Environment-centric


    Beast-centric


    Labour-centric


    Weapons-mastery


    ¡­


    And several other niche fields. These sub-sections were too small to form their own major sections like offense, defense or maneuvering, but also too big to not be categorized in some way or the other.


    Rui was immediately interested in the sensory sub-section. This sub-section broadly epassed techniques that in one way or another allowed the user to perceive or gain more information about the environment and surroundings or specific phenomena or targets.


    [All-Seeing Eye]


    This technique trained all five senses using techniques that exploited the cognitive boosts of the Martial Path to exponentially increase the range of all senses, allowing the user to cleanly perceive all objects within a range far greater than the normal human limit, allowing the user to form a detailed three-dimensional model of everything within said range. Furthermore, it was more of a technique than a passive state, meaning the user could deactivate it when unnecessary.


    This was the highest graded techniques in the entire section, costing a whopping four hundred martial credits. This technique almost entirely guaranteed that all covert operations within a certain range of the user would not go undetected.


    It was useful in every single scenario.


    Rui was extremely temped to purchase this technique, but he did not need something this extravagant. The sheer prowess of this technique was meant for Martial Artists who routinely performed in extremely dangerous environments and situations rife with immediate risk.


    Rui definitely wanted to purchase a sensory technique, but he wanted to purchase something a little less extravagant that would still serve its purpose.


    [Sixth Sense]


    A technique that trained the danger evaluation intuition of the user, allowing them to subconsciously detect dangerous phenomena within a certain range.


    <o>,m This was also quite the high-grade technique, but a bit more manageable as far pricing went.</o>


    Just as he was about to reach for it, another technique caught his eyes.


    [Seismic mapping]


    This was a systematic training system rather than a technique that put the user through a series of training sessions using highly specialized training facilities in the Martial Academy that allowed the user to map out general topography as well as moving objects in contact with the ground. It did this by sensitizing the user enough to be able to detect vibrations in the ground.


    Different topographies and physical properties of the ground would result in different micro-vibrations, allowing the user to reliably detect their surroundings.


    Rui sighed. If he had had this technique during his first mission, there was a pretty good chance that Be might''ve been alive. He would have detected the gangs being mobilized by the Lowminers in all likelihood, as well as the racing Martial Artist who was sent to separate him from Be.


    s, there was no way he could have gotten his hands on the technique before the mission.


    (''But I have it now.'') He thought, gripping the scroll.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter ?127 Decisions

    Outer Convergence and inner Divergence handled the purebat-oriented aspects of his Martial Art. Seismic Mapping increased hispetence in mission solving.


    He had three hundred and fifty-three martial credits left. He wanted to splurge all of it on one more technique in order to get something that would benefit him all-round.


    He wasn''t sure where to go with this. A condition like that was too vague to allow him to narrow down his search.


    He began by dismissing environmental techniques, that was too specific. Labour-centric techniques were also instantly disqualified.


    Beast-centric techniques were interesting, but he did not intend on deep diving into hunting ss missions just quite yet, he also wanted something a bit more fundamental before expanding to esoteric fields and applications.


    Weapons-mastery was certainly interesting, but he felt it was far too much of an initiative. Mastering even a single weapon was no joke, and usually required many years of hard training.


    He also wasn''t particrly interested or attracted to them. He was a hand-to-hand purist fanboy. Though dealing with weapons was something he would eventually have to do. Upgrading the VOID algorithm to deal with weapon users was part of the long process of adapting the VOID algorithm to the world of Martial Art.


    He also hadn''t seen much of hand-held weapons either, he wasn''t sure why, perhaps he ought to ask one of their squire instructors when he got around to it.


    (''That leaves...'') He nced at the final section he left untouched. (''Stealth.'')


    Stealth techniques were mainly useful for covert operations, but being capable of some degree of stealth was probably generally useful.Belongs to ? n0velDrama.Org.


    (''If I had stealth capabilities, I might have been able to hide Be to safety.'') He thought. But again, there was no way he could have.


    He skimmed through the sub-section, unsure of what to expect. What he saw blew his mind.


    [Void Step]


    A technique that employed the highest degree of misdirection topletely escape the target''s cognition, bypassing all manual surveince and perception. At the highest level of mastery, a user could effectively move around a room filled with Martial Apprentices and not be noticed at all.


    Six hundred and sixty martial credits.


    Grade ten difficulty.


    (''What???'') Rui was bbergasted. He did not think such ridiculous feats were possible via Martial Art techniques. It was truly a ridiculously beyond what he thought would be the norm. He nced through some more techniques, ascertaining their prowess.


    [nk Melt]


    Avoid detection by travelling outside the peripheral vision of observers with abination of light misdirection.


    [Dead Step]


    Avoid the production of noise in the air by manipting air via a coordinating breathing technique that cancels out the sound waves in the air.


    (''You''re kidding me.'') Rui wouldn''t have been surprised if someone told him he was being trolled. (''There''s no way this is possible.)


    But s, it was. Rui set aside his disbelief and skimmed through them. If the previous sections had intrigued him, it was nothingpared to the fascination he felt as he shuffled through the stealth techniques.<sub> </sub>


    He had already decided to pick one of them for his final technique, he just wasn''t entirely sure which one to go with.


    Void Step was the highest graded technique in the entire sub-section, and this was despite the it''s extremely high difficulty of mastery. Rui, for one, did not think it was over-graded or overpriced, the stated capabilities of the techniques professed by the technique summary was utterly nonsensical.


    Rui was almost grateful that the technique extraordinarily difficult to master, he would be scared to leave the house if every Apprentice had mastered that technique!


    Still, he hadn''t yet decided which of them to purchase. Just as he began skimming through, a particr technique caught his eye.


    [Blink]


    This was a rtively simple technique. It was a technique that trained the user to be able to act during an observer''s blink, partially bypassing their vision. It was a technique that could be used to bypass ordinary observers and even had some utility inbat, allowing them to catch their opponents by surprise by initiating attacks during blinks. It was useful in pretty much all fields and sses of missions, including the hunting and assault ss missions.


    It was a beautifully simple technique, that could be incredibly powerful depending on how well it was timed and how the user exploited it. Another technique with goodpatibility with the VOID algorithm.


    Furthermore, it costed three hundred and twenty martial credits, falling well within his budget, unlike the highest-grade techniques.


    And that put an end to his shopping spree.


    Four techniques; Outer Convergence for power and speed, Inner Divergence for defense, Seismic Mapping for sensory and Blink for stealth.


    Rui was satisfied to with his choices. He had only gone for four techniques, prioritizing quality over quantity.


    Once he mastered these four techniques, he was confident he would be able to hold his own even in higher grade techniques.


    Perhaps soloing missions at grade six and above would still end up being too much, but grade five and below would bepletely fair game.


    "Made your choices?" A voice called out to him, breaking him from his reverie. "That was quick."


    Rui didn''t even need to turn around to recognize him. "Kane, what''s up?"


    "Not much, same as you." He said. "Looking to get some techniques to bump up my fluidity in maneuvering."


    He paused, before looking around. "But still, you''re getting a stealth technique huh? That''s a bit unexpected. I thought you weren''t too interested in covert stuff."


    "Not particrly." Rui admitted. "But it''s dawned me that some degree of covert capacity is needed. Have you made your choices?"


    "Not yet." Kane said. "I just arrived. I think I''ll pick two techniques this time."


    Those words earned a wince from Rui. "You better master them quickly my friend, otherwise I''ll be leaving you in the dust when I''m done training." He yfully said in a challenging tone.


    "Heh, don''t get ahead of yourself." Kane smirked. "I''ll run circles around you when I''m done."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter ?128 Excited Yet

    Rui left the Apprentice library, leaving Kane to figure what techniques he wanted to purchase. He wanted to begin the training session immediately. The first training facility he headed over to was the designated training center for the technique.Belongs to ? n0velDrama.Org.


    "Instructor Dylon." Rui greeted the head instructor of the Apprentice facility, a Martial Squire.


    Generally, the Apprentice students were mentored and trained by veteran Martial Squires with deep expertise and experience with whatever field they were assigned to.


    Squire Kyrie was the head instructor ofbat training. Squire Dylon was assigned to offensive striking.


    "Hm?" He nced over, focusing on Rui. Just this gesture alone, generated a bit of mental weight on Rui. "Ahhh, kid. What brings you here today? Here to learn six techniques in one month this time?" He teased with a nonchnt smile.


    "Only four." Rui replied, sincerity.


    "..."


    "I just purchased this technique." Rui said, waving the technique scroll of Outer Divergence. "I wanted to begin the training right away."


    "Ah, that one." He said. "Good technique, I used it all the time in the field even after I became a Squire."


    Rui''s eyes widened at those words. "Wait what? I thought Apprentice-level techniques were too weak for Martial Squires."


    The man made aplicated expression. "Well yes and no. Actually, I''m not supposed to talk muc-"


    He paused as he felt Rui''s intense stare burning holes in him.


    "Alright alright." he made an exasperated sigh. "The Realm of a technique is not rted to the power of the technique. It''s rted to the pre-requisites and thepatibility between technique and Martial Artist."


    Rui tilted his head, confused.


    "There is a very qualitative and fundamental difference between Martial Squires and Martial Apprentices, it''s not just a matter of strength, speed and durability." He exined. "The quintessential foundation of our material bodies is different."


    "Huh??" Rui made an incredibly confused expression at the cryptic nonsense the man spouted. (''Is he for real?'')


    "Because we are fundamentally different, our techniques function mechanically different." he continued, ignoring Rui''s confusion. "An Apprentice-level Martial Art technique simply cannot utilize our full power because it is not meant to handle our power. Squire-level techniques are simply techniques that can handle the power of Martial Squires, and can only be used by Martial Squires."


    p "So, they''re just designed to bepatible with the power of a Martial Squire?" Rui asked, still frowning.</anda>


    "Yes, and it''s harder than it sounds." He directed a pointed look at Rui "The difference between us exceeds your imagination."


    "But... what is this difference? Why can''t you just... use Apprentice level techniques?" He pressed, the man was not telling him the key detail.


    He simply shook his head. "There''s a reason we don''t tell Martial Apprentices about the path to Martial Squires, kid. And it isn''t just to sound mysterious and cool." He chuckled. "There''s a very practical reason for avoiding spilling the secret to every little runt who discovered their Martial Path."


    "And why is that?"<sub> </sub>


    "Because we''ve discovered that revealing the breakthrough to Martial Squire before one''s Martial Art has matured and one''s Martial Path has deepened... reduces their chances of breaking through." He exined. "Kids are too immature; the knowledge simply has an adverse effect on most of you. It''s kind of the same reason we don''t allow children to drink alcohol or have sex. You''re just not ready, it will have an adverse effect on you and end up ruining an entire generation of children if normalized."


    "What?" Rui frowned.


    "And that''s about all I''ll say." He shook his head.


    "Well, then at the very least tell me how you continued using Outer Convergence even after you became a Squire?" Rui asked. This was a valid question, how did Dylon use an Apprentice-level technique as a Squire if Apprentice-level techniques were too inadequate for Martial Squires?


    "Ah, Apprentice-level techniques can be evolved and adapted to suit Martial Squires through training and experience. The moment the user haspletely evolved it to suit his or her body, they''re no longer Apprentice-level, but now Squire level." He said. "The Martial Union has Squire-level versions of all the Apprentice-level techniques which can be purchased in order to hasten up the process."


    "I see..."


    "..."


    "..."


    "You''re here to train right?" He sighed. "Quit tryna learn what you''re not supposed to. Instead focus on learning what you came here to learn."


    Rui was so engrossed in thought that he''d actually forgotten why he had originally even made his way here.


    "Right..." Rui pulled himself together. "I''m here to master the Outer Convergence technique." He said with a hint sullen pout.


    "Don''t look so down." He chuckled as he took a boxing stance. He threw a straight punch, the strike flew with such ferocity and power that it whipped through the air, causing a powerful st of air to m against Rui, pushing him back a little. He looked on at Dylon, shocked at the disy of power.


    "That was Outer Convergence at peak Apprentice-level, I reduced my power to pinnacle Apprentice-level show you what you yourself can eventually achieve." He said, leaving Rui speechless.


    The disy of power was beyond almost anything he had ever seen. The only thing that wasparable was the mysterious masked Martial Apprentice bandit who saved hisrade and evacuated.


    "...And this." He took a stance as his expression grew more serious, and his concentration intensified, his muscles growing taut. "Is what Outer Convergence can do that at the Squire-level..."


    Rui felt every hair on his body stand up as he instinctively leapt back.


    BAM


    Just the very motion caused a huge shockwave far more powerful than before that pushed him back. Dylon disappeared, Rui only saw his starting stance and ending stance. Everything in between was too fast for Rui perceive.


    "See?" He said, exhaling. "Outer Convergence is an incredible technique. It''s saved my life many a time, and reaped those of my adversaries in the Martial World many a time."


    "Well?" He nced at Rui. "Feeling excited to learn it yet?"


    A wild grin crept onto Rui''s face.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter ?129 Training Begins!

    "Let''s begin immediately." Rui said with a determined expression.


    "That''s the spirit." Dylon said, chuckling. "I assume you''ve gone through the scrollpletely, right?"


    Rui nodded. "I remember it perfectly."


    "Good." He said as he gestured Rui to follow him. "Then you know exactly what''s waiting for you in store, correct?"Belongs to ? n0velDrama.Org.


    Rui nodded.


    The devised and rmended training regime for Outer Convergence was quite interesting.


    The first stage was some elementary form training, that had the user go through a set of motions that involved all muscle groups simultaneously. These were intensive dynamic workouts that focused on priming the user''s mind to get used to delicately coordinated muscle group expansion and contraction rhythms.


    This was the very first step to eventually paving the way to converging the power generated by all those muscle groups, the end goal. There was a total of thirteen borate dynamic exercises in total. Which Rui noted was equal to the number of broad muscle groups in the human body.


    The second stage of training was sparring with equipment that restricted the motion of certain muscle groups. The user would have to rely on muscle groups that would normally not be used to a high extent. Rui had instantly realized this was to ensure that the process of regrly and routinely drawing power from each muscle group would be part of muscle memory. The more one rigorously trained each muscle group individually, the more smoothly and timely one would be able to use it.


    The final training stage was actually wearing a suit that heavily resisted the motion of the body. The suit was carefully configured to ensure that the user''s raw strength was not enough. This was done by conducting a series of weight-lifting tests to measure the physical strength of the user, and the suit was configured ordingly. The user was then supposed to utilize the gains made from the previous training stages simultaneously to be able to move past their physical limit.


    Rui immediately realized that the purpose of this training stage was meant to force the user to consolidate the gains made from the previous stages and use them not only simultaneously, but as one. Draw immense amount of power from each muscle group using the muscle memory inherited in the second stage, and then constructively funnel it across the body using the coordinative muscle memory built from the first stage.


    He figured the more and more the user was able to aplish this, the closer the user would be to mastering Outer Convergence. The fact that the user was supposed to be able to move normally despite the suit was an indication that principle of Outer Convergence had been mastered.


    The final step was to get used to applying it to strikes, which could be aplished through rigorous sparring.


    Rui fell in love with the entire training process. It was such a novel means of mastering a powerful technique. He couldn''t help but want to devote all of his time purely to Outer Convergence.


    "Alright, let''s begin." Dylon said. "You''ve memorized all the workouts, you said? Then begin with the first one."


    Rui immediately picked up some training weight bands, wearing them in the specified location. Then he began the strange set of exercising routines, performing what resembled a twisting or a spiralling squat. It may have lookedical from the outside. But Rui''s background in training regimes forbat sports allowed him to realize what was happening.<sub> </sub>


    This training regime forces his mind to coordinate five muscle groups simultaneously and cooperatively in order to perform this exercise under the burden of the heavy training weights on his limbs. If the muscle groups did not cooperate and coordinate, then the body would simply be unable to perform this exercise.


    The exercise was grueling and painful, it reminded him of when he had just started out more than a year ago.


    That thought brought back immense nostalgia. Back then he was a nameless runt among more than a thousand other nameless runts, who had managed to pass the Entrance Exam among a million other nameless runts.


    And now here he was being personally guided by none other than a Martial Squire.


    Truly, it was surreal looking at how far he''de.


    "Focus." Dylon warned. "Your form is crude. Don''t hasten the squat up, and don''t bounce as youe down. This stage is extremely important. If you don''t do this well, you can kiss your chances of mastering this technique goodbye, young man."


    Rui wordlessly nodded, huffing as he felt his muscles burning as he squatted up and down.


    The burn was excruciating yet immensely satisfying. It was a strange experience, to feel such contradictory emotions simultaneously.


    Soon, Dylon had him move on to the other workouts.


    Each of them focused on the coordination of a particr muscles group with other muscle groups.


    The Latissimus Dorsi, Rhomboid, Trapezius, Teres Muscle, erector Spinae muscle groups that constitute the back muscles were all individually coordinated with other the other muscle groups across the body. These exercises often involved the simultaneously bending or twisting back and forth of the spine in conjunction with some other movement that put pressure on the upper skeletal system.


    If the coordination of the muscles weren''t perfect, then there would be damage to the back muscles. This is why such exercises were strongly rmended against on Earth as opposed to safer workouts. But on Gaea, damage in training often meant very little. This allowed Rui to engage in training regimes he would have never even dreamed of rmending, let alone doing himself. And the gains were worth it.


    Each and every muscle group was moving in ways that it seldom did, strengthening those movements and refining them.


    Even though this was his very first day, he could feel that he had made satisfactory progress. These movements that he had never felt the need to focus on would now be the foundation for a new technique that would bolster his Martial Art!


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 130 Inner Divergence

    Rui spent a few hours on the first stage of Outer Convergence training. It was more draining than he''d expected. He had to consume two potions before he was good enough to continue training.


    Though much to Squire Dylon''s surprise, he halted his training and left the facility after biding him farewell.


    Rui had purchased four techniques, not one. He wanted to begin training in all of them. Once he got an idea for how difficult or easy the training regimes for each technique was then he could formte an efficient n and schedule as for how to go about it.


    Dedicating an equal amount of time for techniques that were unequally difficult to master was not an efficient allocation of time.


    "Alright..." Rui stretched as he left the striking training facility. "What to do next?"


    He shrugged before heading over to the defense training facility. He wanted to begin training Inner Divergence as soon as possible.


    "Squire Fare." Rui greeted, bowing to the head instructor of the defense training facility with respect. "I''m here to begin training with the Inner Divergence."


    A muscr women built like a tank turned around, ncing at Rui. "Training a third defensive technique? Acute Edge and stic Shift are falling short already?" A sh of surprise crept onto her chiseled face. "I would have thought you would go longer without purchasing a defensive technique, with how well you mastered them."


    "Me too." Rui shrugged. "But I decided to take a cautionary measure anyway, after having run into two dangerous missions twice in a week."


    She snorted in response. "Good choice, defense is the most important part ofbat, it is literally the only thing that separates you from death. Too many people don''t develop their defense enough, and what happens as a result? They die." She nced at Rui with an approving look. "I''m d you aren''t foolish like them. Come, I''ll train your defense so that it never cracks!"


    Rui smiled wryly as he nodded.


    "Inner Convergence huh?" She nced at the scroll. "Interesting choice. It''s a technique capable of much, but it has high demands of the user. Fail to fulfill them and the technique will fail you. Are you sure you want to learn such a technique?"


    "Well, I''ve already purchased it and refunds aren''t allowed." Rui said. "But also, this technique has a high synergy with my Martial Art."


    "Hmmm... True." she admitted.


    Rui''s strange Martial Art was not a secret within the Apprentice circles in the Academy. A powerful, yet bizarre all-rounder style, but not really because it would change shape depending on the fight and his opponent. All the Martial Squires had long be acquainted with it and its capabilities.


    "Alright, let''s begin." She said. "Inner Divergence is a technique that diverges and dissipates the power of all impacts across the entire body, diluting the effect over a great space thus negating the attack." She reiterated to begin. "The core means by which one does this is by ensuring the attack''s trajectory is aligned to the center of mass of the human body. That inbination with flexing each muscle group to support the area of impact will disperse the impact across all muscle groups."<sub> </sub>


    Rui nodded. The concept was simple in theory. By having each muscle group rigid enough, they would be no different from how the shock absorption springs in vehicles work; each muscle group absorbing the shock of impacts.


    Technically it wasn''t impossible for humans to perform this technique, but the reasons humans couldn''t master it was because the mental faculties required to urately and precisely execute it were superhuman.


    That was why it was an Apprentice-level technique; Only Martial Apprentices could perform it.


    The Inner Divergence had two three training stages. The first training stage was to simply train the user to shift when attacked to ensure all attack trajectories would be aimed at the center of mass of the human body.


    This was because the center of mass was the middle point of the body, the only point that was close enough to all muscle groups to be supported by them like shock absorption springs.


    This was a difficult stage of training, no doubt. Rui was simply unustomed to the thought process and the mindset needed. He was starting to see why the technique warned the user of the potential risks and mishaps.


    If one messed up the initial set up for ensuring the attack lines up at or close enough to the center of mass, then the technique would simple be ineffective. The user will simply be left defenseless in this case.


    Still, if Rui managed to master this part, it would be an extremely valuable tool. One of the reasons for this was that Acute Edge and stic Shift were perfectlypatible with Inner Divergence.


    Each technique operated by entirely different principles and mechanics that were mutually exclusive with each other, meaning there was no friction between them and they cooperated perfectly.


    Acute Edge operated by making the angle extremely sharp instead of direct, this reduced the impact. A bullet that just nicked sharply a wall would do less damage than a bullet that hit a wall straight and head-on.


    stic Shift worked by increasing the distance and timeframe of the impact, making the impact more stic. It was like effectively putting a thick bouncy mattress in between the target and the strike, making the strike hurt less.N?velDrama.Org content.


    And Inner Divergence reduced the impact of the strike from within, by using all the muscle groups as shock absorbers, sharing the dispersed impact.


    Acute Edge and stic Shift mitigated the impact by focus on external factors like angle, distance and time frame of the impact, thus there was no ovep of their focus.


    These three techniques cooperated very well. Rui anticipated he might be extremely sturdy once he mastered Inner Divergence.


    Over the next few months, he intended to burn the Inner Divergence technique into his muscle memory, no matter what it took.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 131 Seismic Mapping

    The Inner Divergence training regime was less borate than the Outer Convergence training session, but it was even more difficult.


    Rui found it quite hard to fundamentally change how he deals with iing attacks; this training required him to get rid of some of his muscle memory and built new muscle memory.


    Furthermore, every time he failed, he would effectively be taking an attack head-on without any defense whatsoever. Since Squire Fare did not allow him to use Acute Edge or stic Shift during the training regime.


    By the time a few hours passed and his first training session with Inner Divergence ended, Rui hadpletely lose count of the number of healing potions he had consumed in that one session alone.


    (''Thank fucking god the Academy doesn''t charge the students for every potion we consume, otherwise I would be bankrupted to hell and back. Even bing a Martial Master would not free me of the sheer amount of debt!'')Belongs to ? n0velDrama.Org.


    This, of course, was an extreme exaggeration and Rui knew it. He didn''t know any details, but he was sure that Martial Masters could earn such ridiculous money that even the amount Rui fretted over was too insignificant to even register in their awareness.


    Rui sighed as he exited the defense training facility, scratching his head.


    (''Two down, two more to go.'') He mused.


    He headed over to the sensory training facility, a facility he had never visited before, since this ws the first time he was taking an Apprentice-level sensory technique.


    <o>,m He was quite curious and he wasn''t sure what to expect. Once he entered the facility, he took a small tour of it before immediately jumping into training.</o>


    The facility was quite different from the others, it wasrger and had many sub-sections and division within it. As he walked around, he would see training rooms with a single Apprentice within. asionally they were blind-folded, yetpletely unperturbed theck of vision. Other times they would have other sense restricted.


    Rui figured these were part and parcel for improving sensory capabilities. After all, the best way to test whether a particr sensory technique was functioning well and as intended was to restrict the other senses and test one''s capabilities despite that handicap.


    The training for Seismic Mapping did include that to an extent. Though Seismic Mapping was meant to detect and sense things that couldn''t be detected and sensed by normal senses in the first ce.


    "Squire Instructor Maxime." Rui greeted with a respectable bow for the third out of an estimated four times. "My name is Rui Quarrier, I''m a Martial Apprentice, here to learn the Seismic Mapping technique."


    The man nced at Rui for a second, then at the scroll in his hands, before nodding quietly.


    "Come." he said quietly.


    He directed Rui to a particr facility. "Do you know to do?"


    "...Yes."


    Seems the instructor wasn''t particrly interactive. He didn''t even bother exining the technique or the training regime to Rui.


    Not that Rui particrly needed them.<sub> </sub>


    Seismic Mapping was a technique that trained the user''s body to be able to interpret seismic vibrations and map a general topography and map of objects in contact with the ground.


    The human brain frequently received a huge influx of information. However, it disposes of most of the information it receives without processing it rigorously. A lot of the time it mainly focused on what the eyes saw and not what the other senses perceived. This was true even for Martial Apprentices like himself.


    After all this was a cognitive bias that was deeply ingrained in humans. Not even martial Apprentices could break apart the shackles of human ws.


    But training could.


    That what the Seismic Mapping training regime aimed to aplish. By restricting different senses in different ways in different circumstances, it aimed to force the brain to dig up the deeply buried information about vibrations that it mildly perceived, but had long subconsciously ignored because of focusing on vision.


    Of course, only Martial Apprentices had the mental faculties to do that, which is why the technique was Apprentice-level; only Apprentices could master it.


    There was only one stage of training. That stage focused on having the mind pay more attention to subconsciously dismissed micro-vibrations and then by sheer experience learn to slowly decipher those techniques.


    There was no other way to learn it, Rui supposed. Only by trial and error and learning to corrte micro-vibrations with phenomena and understand what they meant, would he be able to master this technique.


    This was easily the most difficult technique Rui had ever tried learning. At the very least with the other techniques, the training was rtively straightforward and as long as he persevered, he would be able to make visible progress.


    But this was the first technique he hade across where he got the feeling that no matter how much time he poured into training it, he may very well just never make any progress, let alone fully mastering it.


    It was incredibly challenging, especially when his knowledge and experience withbat sports did not help him whatsoever this time. There was simply no equivalent of this kind of training back on Earth, after all.


    Blinded, initially he couldn''t sense anything. He was just smacked around by dolls.


    The worst part was the uncertainty.


    Atleast when he was training Inner Divergence, he could see when he was going to get hit with perfect rity.


    Here, he couldn''t even know that. He had a paranoia of being struck in the testicles more than anything else, so that also drained away from being purely focused on what he ought to have been focused on.


    For a few hours, he did nothing but get struck in the darkness.


    Never had he been more grateful and enthusiastic leaving a training session before. Never had he felt as depressed leaving a training session before.


    (''This is going to take genuine perseverance.'') He sighed. Once he got back to his room he needed to figure what the heck he was going to about this technique.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 132 Your Turn

    Although Rui had immense difficulty with Seismic Mapping, he was quite excited to eventually master it. The technique had an immense amount of utility. If he had possessed the technique when undertaking missions there was a good chance he would have been able to save Be Hier and a good chance he would have been able to ensure the bandit operation in the Shadow Trails would have gone more smoothly.


    Furthermore, just being able to sense his surroundings to this degree would give him a lot of security and confidence. Only a Martial Artist with incredible stealth techniques and covert capabilities would be able to sneak past his senses once he mastered Seismic Mapping.


    "Alright, enough about that." he said as he stood before the stealth training facility.


    It was finally time for Rui get acquainted with the final technique he had purchased; Blink.


    The stealth training facility was also unexpectedlyrge. Despite the fact that stealth technique was merely a sub-section in the misceneous section of the Apprentice library.


    In many a way the stealth training facility was simr to the sensory training facility. There were specialized environments that he could see Martial Apprentices training in, and specialized forms of training for each technique.


    "Squire Helen." Rui bowed respectfully for the fourth time in a day. "I am Martial Apprentice Rui Quarrier. I''vee here to learn the Blink technique."


    She was a short middle-aged woman with a demure stature, she turned around, ncing at him.


    "Blink huh?" She sized him up. "Good choice." She said. "I hope you understand what the technique is capable of. Most people who purchase this technique have exaggerated ideas of how powerful the technique is."


    "I believe I understand the technique well enough."


    "Do you?" She threw a skeptical expression at him.


    "It''s a technique that exploits the opening created by blinking to achieve more than what they would otherwise."


    "Correct, ''more'', not everything." She replied. "This technique cannot end a fight in most cases. Nor is it something that is meant to be abused in a fight. Most Martial Artists aren''t morons, if you abuse it too much they''ll figure it out and will not only counter it but also use it to set up traps. Inbat, this is a trump card, understand?"


    Rui nodded. He was already aware that this technique would not make him invincible or allow him to end the fight instantly unless his opponent was a human or a careless Martial Artist. After all, the technique was priced at only three hundred and fifty


    She rxed a bit when she saw he didn''t have any fancy considerations about the technique.


    "The technique works best against humans. Humans blink for a longer period of time inbat than Martial Artists because of their slower cognition. Against humans, this technique is extremely effective and can allow you to effectively cross even a hoard of people unnoticed if you time it well." She said. "Against Martial Apprentices, it''s more difficult and limited. Martial Apprentices have enhanced cognition inbat, they blink at a simr rate as you do."


    Rui nodded in response.


    "Against Martial Apprentices, you can only use it as a way to surprise them. In order to understand how this happens, you first need to understand how Martial Artists think inbat."<sub> </sub>


    "Humans in general, but especially Martial Artists don''t identify and react to an attack purely after it has beenunched. In most cases, Martial Artists subconsciously analyze movements to partially gauge and partially predict what the opponent is about to do."


    Rui nodded. This was a well-documented phenomenon in neurology. Even in the twentieth-century, it was well shown that the human brain was constantly in a predictive mode, trying to infer oues from phenomena.


    This could be demonstrated with simple experiments. Why most humans flinch when an object approached them at high speed even at a distance. Because the human brain has already evaluated the motion of the object and plotted out its trajectory and inferred that there is a high chance the object would collide with the body.


    "The brain subconsciously looks at the early signs of an attack and partially makes the decision to avoid the strike based on the early evaluation." She said. "When using Blink inbat, your aim should not be to attack when your Martial Apprentice blinks, but to hide the early signs of attack when your opponent blinks."


    She paused, before continuing. "This way, when your opponent opens their eyes, they will not be able to rely on the partial prediction their mind makes subconsciously. This will hinder their reaction and in most cases you should be able to perform far better with the attack, at least."


    "Hiding the initial signs of the attack during the blink is better than moving during the blink?" Rui asked.


    "It''s not about choosing which is better." She corrected. "You don''t have a choice at all. You cannot begin, move andplete an attack in the middle of a blink of a Martial Apprentice" She said. "Martial Apprentices blink too quickly and you''re not fast enough, as a Martial Apprentice yourself. Only a Martial Squire could do that, and maybe some extraordinary peak Martial Apprentices with a maneuvering style Martial Art."


    "I see..." Rui nodded, engrossed.


    "In the middle ofbat, the technique should be used an opening-creator. Outside ofbat, it is best used as a surveince-escaper. Against a human, the Blink technique, like all Martial Apprentice techniques, is invincible." She said as she put some distance between them.


    "This what a well-executed Blink technique looks like."


    Rui focused as he maximized his alertness. She stared at him for nearly ten seconds, motionless.


    Then it came.


    BLINK


    One moment she was ten meters away, the next moment shended right in front of him.


    The abruptness of it all was so shocking that Rui tripped and fell backwards.


    "Woah..." He murmured in amazement.


    "Now." She said with a serious expression. "Your turn."N?velDrama.Org content.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 133 Momentary Limitlessness

    The feat she aplished was amazing. The idea that Rui would be able to perform that feat on any normal human was great! He would be able to travel without any detection as long as he timed the technique perfectly well.


    He would be able to appear and disappear, just like a ninja!


    Rui did have a soft spot for ninjas, not as much as he did for martial artists, but definitely close.


    He got up with a barely constrained grin.


    "The training for Blink is rather straightforward." She said. "You train until you''ve mastered the execution, timing and cement of the technique. This facility has training resources that significantly make easier what is otherwise a significantly difficult technique to learn at the Martial Apprentice Realm."


    Rui nodded, aware of everything in detail. He still listened to her exnations out of respect, she was far better than Squire Maxime who uttered only a total of five words to Rui across the entirety of five hours of training.


    "Thebat application of Blink is quite different from the stealth application of Blink, so we train those separately in two training stages that you will engage in simultaneously." She exined.


    The first stage of the training was centered around mechanics dolls that blinked for periods longer than that of even an average human being. Rui was effectively supposed to y tag with these mechanical dolls, except he wasn''t allowed to move except for when they blinked.


    This did two things.


    First, it forced him to be more conscious of the timing of the mechanical blinks, and secondly it forced his body to learn how to exploit the blinks properly. Since the training stage required him to not use any Apprentice-level techniques or even any of the techniques from the Exploration Stage, he was only allowed to maneuver using his raw physicality during the Blink.


    The training stage would progress once hepletely mastered the tag game at a certain blinking speed of the dolls. Then the blinking speed would progressively increase, just a tiny bit at a time, no more than a two-percent increase. Once the user adapted to it and managed to perform optimally, the blinking speed would be increased by two percent once more, and it would progress so and so forth.


    It was predicted that in a handful of months of continuous dedicated single-minded training, the user should eventually be able to reach the desired level of mastery over the blink exploitation principle.


    After that the training would drastically spike as the blinking speed surpasses human limits and reaches the Apprentice Realm, at this point the user would be allowed to use Apprentice-level techniques, and fight at his or her strongest.


    This would allow the user to get used to exploiting blink timing in Apprentice level battles, which was the most important and also the ultimate goal. An Apprentice level technique that could not be used in Apprentice levelbat was just a failure of a technique.


    And once the Martial Apprentice got used to exploiting the blink timing optimally in conjunction with Apprentice-level techniques, then the training regime wasplete.


    This was normally supposed to take several months on average.


    Every two-percent boost in blinking speed usually took at the very least a day or two, maybe even longer depending on the mental faculties of the user. This was something Squire Helen knew quite well.


    (''So why...?'') She wondered. (''Why has this boy adapted to a four-percent increase in the matter of two hours???'')<sub> </sub>


    Rui had immediately grown quite interested and excited by the training regime, so he jumped right into it to get a taste of it.


    She stared at Rui with amazement and shocked as he handled the training stage like it was a breeze.


    (''What is going on??'')


    Rui on the other hand was grinning with all the ecstasy he felt missing during the Seismic Mapping training.


    (''If this is how every stealth technique training regime is like, then I might just convert to a stealth-oriented Martial Art!'') Rui thought to himself.


    He had an incredible amount of fun adapting to the timing needed for Blink maneuvers for every increased blinking speeds.


    Arge part of his joy came from the fact that he was incredibly could at it, making for an astonishing growth rate.


    It had taken him a while to realize why he was as good at this as he was. There were two reasons, as far as he could tell.


    Firstly, his enhanced mental faculties due to the inherited mind from his previous life was greatly useful here, allowing his cognition to absorb experience and grow much more from it than any other individual at his biological age would.


    Secondly, the cognitive processes needed to grow and adapt to the timing of the blink maneuvers were extremely simr to the principles and mechanics of the VOID algorithm used. It turns out that adapting to a Martial Art was quite simr to the learning process of adapting to Blink timings.


    In fact, maybe he could expand the VOID algorithm to include blinks and Blink maneuvers in its counter-deduction system!Belongs to ? n0velDrama.Org.


    This was something he hadn''t considered before. On Earth, blinks were inconsequential, thus the VOID algorithm had not been developed to process blinks as a variable. Why would something that could not be used inbat be relevant to the VOID algorithm?


    This epiphany strongly motivated Rui even more.


    He truly immersed himself in training to a degree far, far higher than ever before. Every cell in his body stood together aiding Rui in his pursuit, he could feel himself growing every second.


    What truly shook him was that he felt as if he''d grown not just in regards to the BLink technique, but as a Martial Artist too!


    He felt as if he''d traversed deeper into his Martial Path, exploring parts of his Martial Art and his mind he never had before.


    He was in a state of momentary limitlessness, he felt as if anything could happen as he was now!


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 134 Considerations

    Rui had only intended to break the ice with each of the four techniques on the first day, before returning back to his room and figuring out how he''s going to divide his time and energy. He didn''t intend to extend beyond what was necessary.


    But he hadpletely forgotten about that as he immersed himself into the training regime. He loved the sheer progress as he grew better and better at timing blink maneuvers. In the end, he lost track of timepletely all the way until his stamina was drained.


    "Twelve hours?" Rui couldn''t believe it, it passed so quickly he wouldn''t have been surprised if Squire Helen was pulling his leg.


    She nodded in response. "You just kept going on and on, I thought you were aware of the time." She shrugged. "Apprentice training schedules arergely self-regted, after all."


    Rui nodded, still dazed in disbelief.


    "How did you do it?" She asked out of curiosity. "How did you get so good at the technique so quickly? Your rate of growth is unheard of!"


    Rui scratched his head awkwardly, unsure of what to say.


    "Dunno" He shrugged. "d it''s working out this well though."


    He quickly bade her goodbye before she could inquire any further, and left the stealth-training facility as he headed back to the Apprentice dorms.


    He nonchntly strolled back as he grew absorbed in thought at the training sessions that he had undergone in the past twenty-four hours.


    Just based off of the training sessions alone, he hade to realize that the priced techniques were not overpriced in any way. Each of the techniques he purchased were qualitatively superior to the techniques he procured out of the foundational reserve that the Academy offered to Martial Apprentices.


    He knew that he wouldn''t really be able to go back to learning foundational techniques from this point on. In fact, he nned to rece some of the Foundation techniques with either sessors or superior techniques operating on the same principle in the future to strengthen the quality of his Martial Foundation.


    Still, that was for a distant future.


    His mind delved onto the four techniques he had picked up and the difficulty of their training.


    "The hardest technique was definitely Seismic Mapping." He murmured to himself, sighing. It was quite the unpleasant training session, but he really wanted to master the Seismic Mapping technique, its sheer practical utility was too alluring.


    He decided to maximize the amount of time he dedicated to training the technique. He didn''t want to be held back frompleting missions because he took forever to master Seismic Mapping. Other Apprentices might be used to it but Rui did not want to endure that.


    Furthermore, he felt it was probably to have longer training sessions in one go. The mind retained experience the longer it experienced a particr phenomenon or process, after all.


    Rui even seriously considered dedicating entire days of continuous training to purely Seismic Mapping training. He could simply make every alternate day a Seismic Mapping training day while leaving the other days for the remaining three techniques.


    The easiest technique to train for was Blink. Just the very thought of the training put Rui in a good mood. This was the first technique whose training was so enjoyable that Rui almost wished it never ended.<sub> </sub>


    "Maybe I can continue to train Blink to refine proficiency above just ordinary mastery." He thought aloud. He even thought he could make it a hobby! Just to feel better whenever he was down or maybe bored.


    He shook his head, trying to focus. With how well his Blink training proceeded, he didn''t need to spend too much time to it. Thus, he decided to allot it the least amount of training timing. He suspected that Blink might end up being the first technique he fully mastered despite this allocation.


    That left two techniques.N?velDrama.Org content rights.


    Outer Convergence and Inner Divergence.


    "Of the two, Inner Divergence was definitely harder." He noted. "So, it gets more training timing allocated to it."


    That concluded the initial nning session in a nutshell. Of course, he would have to chink out the details and be more thorough to be as efficient as possible, but the overall trend had been set.


    He was quite grateful that he had chosen to pick only four techniques this time. Had he tried to pick five he would have quickly realized that it was probably too much. Premium techniques were not as light of a burden as the foundational techniques were.


    He didn''t think he would be able toplete five premium techniques as quickly as he would have liked.


    "In fact, from here on out, I might have to purchase fewer and fewer techniques as times goes by and the quality and grade of my techniques grow higher." he realized.


    He recalled thinking about many of the higher-grade techniques he saw in the Apprentice library, many of them had such high grades and difficulty grades that he didn''t think he could learn more than one technique at a time!


    He sighed with a sullen look as he realized his rate of technique learning would probably significantly reduce from here on out.


    Still, quality was worth the sacrifice in quantity.


    He began further thinking about how he could quicken his mastery of these techniques. He couldn''t always hang out with the Squire instructors, they were not exclusive to him and there were many Apprentices they had to mentor, from his batch and batches below.


    In order to train optimally, he thought about sparring with Fae with both of them using only Outer Convergence after he got past the initial training. She''d mastered it a while ago and she was a good enough mentor too.


    Maybe he could gather Apprentices who had already mastered the other three techniques he had learnt.


    (''But that wouldn''t work for Seismic Mapping.'') He realized. Just his luck that the hardest technique to learn would also be one he couldn''t train together with others.


    He sighed.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 135 Leave You Behind

    Kane shuffled through the maneuvering section of the Apprentice library, with a lethargic expression on his face. In the fight against the golden-haired bandit in the mission he had justpleted, he had noticed that he wasn''t able to maintain his top speed while performing non-linear maneuvers or attacks, which hindered his non-linear evasiveness and offense.


    He had already resolved to purchase a high-grade fluidity maneuvering technique that would allow him to maintain his top speed even in really sharp curves or turns for attacks or maneuvering.


    "Sigh..." He huffed arge puff of air as he nonchntly sauntered across the section. All of the techniques that suited his needs had high difficulty grades, his head fell back as he stared at the ceiling, he couldn''t be bothered.


    "Hah. What happened to ''I can''t let him let him surpass me that easily''?" A voice asked him from behind.


    His expression contorted with disdain as he turned to meet Fae''s eyes. "What are you doing here?"


    "I said I was going to train too, no?" She shrugged.


    "What are you doing in this section, the maneuvering section?" He asked. "Go take your muscle-brain Martial Art to the offense section of the library."


    "Hmph, juvenile as always, aren''t you? You could learn a thing or two from Rui, you know?" She said. "If you had his work ethic, you might even grow faster than he does."


    Kane''s sheer raw affinity with Martial Art was unparalleled, it was what had led him to discover his Martial Path at the tender age of eleven, and what allowed him to absorb techniques remarkably quickly.


    "Hmph, he and I aren''t the same. I don''t love Martial Art. It''s a pain in the ass that allows jerks who are good at it to do whatever they want, and the only way to avoid bing a victim is to pursue Martial Art yourself." he spat contemptuously. "It causes immense suffering and many problems whose only solution is itself. Has there ever been a more hateful thing? I pursue Martial Art only so that I can be freed of its shackles."


    He put his hand on a technique scroll just as he finished, having decided which technique he wanted to learn.


    [Axis Earthing]


    It was a technique that allowed the user to maintain top speed during curving maneuvers by shifting the user''s bnce in the direction of the curve at extreme degrees, the eleration due to gravity provided by the lopsided bnce aided in the curve without the user having to sacrifice speed.


    He turned to nce at her. "It''s not like you love Martial Art either. You and I are both in this for Martial Art can do for us." He said with a knowing tone.


    She had a sympathetic expression on her face.


    In many a way, Fae''s circumstances were the exact opposite to that of Kane''s. Despite being born in a Martial family like Kane, she grew up in very different circumstances.


    Her grandmother was Her Honour Martial Sage Le Duhan, her family was extremely prestigious, just like the Arrancar Martial family.


    Unlike Kane, Fae loved her family, and everything it stood for. Her family was not arge polygamous family like his was'' a family that was created by his father''s desire to find a worthy heir. It was a rather normal family inparison. With the love and pride that she had been raised with by her grandparents and parents, her family hade to mean everything to her.


    She desired to bring glorious honour to her Martial family, that had contributed to the sovereignity of the Kandrian Empire for nearly a century, with many historical Martial Artists with immense power.


    Her desire to obtain power was to do her family justice, and to maintain its prestige.


    Because her family was small, she was the only heir to her family. Her mother had turned away from her Martial Path despite being the daughter of a Martial Sage and chose not to be a Martial Artist, and her father was a civilian.


    She had voluntarily epted the burden of being the future pir of the Duhan Martial family.


    Martial Art was everything to her. But she did not love it, to her it was no more than a tool for fulfilling her goal.


    s, not everybody born to Martial families was a Martial prodigy. She had to work like a madman to obtain the power she currently had. Sweating blood and crying tears, she persevered to be worth of her heritage.<sub> </sub>


    She was the exact opposite of Kane in many ways. The differences between them had been the true cause of friction between them.


    Kane, a genius boy longing for freedom whose talent shackled him to the fate of being the Arrancar heir. And Fae, a free yet driven girl longing for the power to be worthy of being the Duhan heir.


    Everything about them was so prized, that they could never stand each other when they met. Their parents were part of the Fire Sect within the Martial Union, and were close informally. Kane and Fae had known each other since they were three.


    Fae sighed. "Love or hate Martial Art. We are born in the circumstances we''re born in, and we can only make the best of them."


    "Hmph." He said. "Spoken like someone born in the right circumstances."


    She threw an irritated look at him. "Don''t act like you''re only growing stronger for the sake of breaking away from the Arrancar family. Do you even remember your own words?"


    Kane eyes lit up. (''I can''t him surpass me too easily.'')


    "You''re just afraid Rui will leave you behind at the rate he''s growing." She said as her expression turned mncholic at her own words.N?velDrama.Org content.


    Kane didn''t respond.


    But that was answer enough.


    He had grown more attached to Rui than he had ever expected he would have when they first met. Rui was his first true friend. Someone he truly enjoyed spending time with. The only other children he knew in his age group were his many half-brothers and half-sisters who hated him with venomous intensity, and other children from other Martial families who either kissed his ass treated him like a stepping stone.


    Then he met Rui. At first, he was ordinary outside of his weird eyes and hair. Kane didn''t think much of him, just hoping he wouldn''t be too annoying when he reached out to Rui.


    It was the first time someone was unaware of his family.


    It was the first time he felt like a normal person.


    When Rui looked at him with those dark eyes of his, he did not see the genius heir of the Arrancar family.


    He saw Kane, his friend.


    "He makes even Martial Art fun." Kane murmured softly. "I didn''t think that was even possible."


    He did not want to be left behind as Rui pursued his Martial Path.


    He turned around and walked away.


    "Where are you going?" Fae asked.


    "Training."


    A hint of determination shed through his eyes.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 136 Martial Matters

    POW POW POW


    Rui threw a flurry of Vital Pressure strikes as they struck Dalen. Yet, the damage they did was minimal. Dalen returned the favour by throwingnding a power kick.


    BOOM


    Rui skidded back, grimacing in pain.N?velDrama.Org content rights.


    Normally, he would have chosen to avoid the kicks rather than block it. Kicks were generally slower than jabs, and travelled along a greater distance and left the user in a bit more vulnerable position which made dodging and charging in the most optimal solution. Furthermore, kicks had far more power than jabs in exchange for its shorings, making blocking them a sub-optimal solution in most cases.


    But Rui had chosen to block the strike anyway. The reason for that was because they weren''t having a normal sparring session, but an Inner Divergence training session.


    They had restricted attacks to Vital Pressure and defense to Inner Divergence. No other Apprentice-level technique and no maneuvering or evasion.


    Rui had approached Dalen a month ago, requesting him for routine training sessions to help Rui improve and refine his rough timing with the Inner Divergence technique.


    Dalen had agreed, and ever since then they had been sparring together.


    Rui had significantly improved in that time, experience had helped burning the movements and motions into his muscle memory bit by bit.


    Still, there was a big gap between him and Dalen. Thetter had mastered Inner Divergence to a solid degree and had a body that was developed for defense. Even if he used only Inner Divergence, he also had a conditioned body that was inherently tougher than Rui''s body.


    BAM


    Rui copsed as Dalen bested him once more, panting as heid t on the ground.


    "Let''s take a break." He suggested, reaching for a bottle of water.


    There was a reason neither of them immediately resorted to rejuvenation potions. Although rejuvenation potions would immediately invigorate and energize them, there was value in fighting while exhausted.


    In the field, in the Martial World, fatigue and exhaustion were inevitable. Sometimes you were in situations where you could not afford to consume potions, such as limited stock or being in the middle of a fight. In these situations, you wouldn''t be able to luxuriously consume multiple potions to reinvigorate yourself.


    It was a policy and a rmendation of the Academy to not consume potions unles extremely exhausted. Learning how to cope with general fatigue was important. If the Martial Apprentices grew too cozy because of their potion abuse, then they would die by the droves once they were thrust into the Martial World.


    Rui more than others understood the importance of coping with fatigue and exhaustion, and the sheer impact it could make onbat prowess so he religiously abided by this norm, not relying on potions until he was truly exhausted to his core.


    "Here." Dalen offered him some water and a towel.


    "Thanks." Rui epted.


    There was a bit of an awkward silence, as Rui realized he didn''t really have much to talk to Dalen. He was a mutual acquaintance initially, as Rui got to know him better in the mission albeit barely.


    "How long ago did you master Inner Divergence?" he asked casually.<sub> </sub>


    "Just a little before I entered the Academy this year." He replied.


    "How long had it taken you to master?"


    "Just a little less than half a year, I think." He said.


    "How long have you been a Martial Apprentice?" Rui asked, surprised.


    "Two years." He said. "I broke through when I was fifteen."


    "That''s pretty good." Rui offered.


    "By Academy standards, maybe. But by the standards of the Martialmunity, it''s not as impressive."


    "Really?" Rui asked, surprised.


    Dalen nodded. "Fifteen is alright, fourteen even more so, which is when Fae broke through." He revealed. "But breaking through at eleven is considered truly special, like Kane did. He''s well-known in the Martialmunity."


    "When you say ''Martialmunity'' you mean the Martial families in Kandria?"


    Dalen nodded. "There are many Martial Artists, many of them end up being wealthy due to their Martial prowess and form families under their name and many a times their descendants end up following in their path. A lot of the prominent Martial families that have a lot of Martial Artists or aspiring Martial Artists were formed by prominent Martial Artists of the past; Legendary Martial Sages and Martial Masters, and even Seniors. The Martialmunity isprised of such families."


    Rui nodded, growing interested. He was aware that Dalen was from a Martial family. "It seems themunity has higher standards of Martial Artist aspirants and Martial Artists."


    "You bet." He sighed. "It''s brutal, familiespete with each other for prestige and glory through their heirs and descendants. They train descendants If you ask me, it''s just a dick-measuring contest."


    Rui nodded, sympathizing. He loved Martial Art, but he would hate if his family treated him like a racing horse that could win for them rather than a family member they loved.


    "That sound rough." He nodded. He often looked at his friends from martial families with envy because of all the resources and training they had ess to their entire life. He often wondered how strong he would be if he was the son of a Martial Sage.


    It was only now that he realized that he realized that he was romanticizing it too much. He knew Kane hated his family with venomous intensity, and having run into his mom had made it very clear as to why. Still, he thought it was worth the payoff.


    Now he wasn''t too sure.


    (''The grass is always greener on the other side.'') He thought, as he mulled over Dalen''s words.


    "You said the familiespete with each other." Rui curiously noted. "What do you mean?"


    "There''s Realm of course." He said. "Having your descendant break through to higher Realms it a big a plus point. There''s grade, mission record and aplishments." He paused before adding; "Also, there is Kandrian Martial Festival."


    Rui''s ears perked at those words.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 137 Kandrian Martial Festival

    Rui was not unfamiliar with the Kandrian Martial Festival. The Kandrian Martial Festival was a month-long festival dedicated to Martial Art. However, this festival was quite unlike normal festivals. For one, there were no celebrations of the normal kind. The festival was a dedicated event to exhibiting and demonstrating the Martial prowess of the entire nation. The festival was characterized by innumerable Martial tournaments of all scales and sizes, making for a bombastic and exciting one month for the Kandrian Empire.


    However, it was a festival that was held once every five years.


    This was a decision that the Royal Family and the Martial union for multiple reasons. Firstly, Martial Artist work force was extremely important to the Royal Family and especially to the Martial Union. Thepletion of missions was an extremely necessary economically and politically. The Martial Artists not just sustained the Martial Union, but contributed to holding the very empire as a whole together.


    It was not possible for the Royal Family and the Martial Union to allow the Martial workforce to stop working for a whole month every year, on many levels.


    The nation as a system would start breaking apart at the seams, and the Martial Union would experience a noticeable plummet in ie.


    Thus, they had chosen to limit it to five years. Five years was just long enough for the benefits to outweigh the detriments.


    The positivity associated with the Kandrian Martial Festival was one of the means by which the Royal Family and the Martial Union ensured that Martial Artists as a ss of society wouldn''t grow too disconnected from the Empire and its people. It was a means by which it aimed to tether Martial Artists not through incentives, or benefits or practicality, but through some degree of patriotic sentiment.


    Of course, this was almost entirely ineffective against mature experiences Martial Artists of the higher Realms. The same, however, could not be said for younger Martial Artists of lower Realm, especially Martial Apprentices.


    Martial Apprentices ounted for close to ny-percent of the Martial Artist poption. Due to howrge a proportion of the Martial Artist theyprised they were the most important Realm of martial Artists in many ways. The Martial Festival was a way just one way of ensuring cultural integration between the more malleable youth of the Martial Artist poption with the Empire.


    It was also a way to reduce any ss conflicts between the civilian poption and the Martial Artists. After all, Martial Artists were undoubtedly privileged and blessed to possess the sheer power that they did. It was not umon or particrly unlikely for anti-Martial sentiment born out of envy, jealousy and resentment to fester.


    It was no different from how the poor felt about the rich.


    By celebrating their aplishments and emphasizing the need for Martial Art, they could keep the friction to a minimum. It did also help that the Martial Union did not ept privatelymissioned offense ss missions within the boundaries of the Kandrian Empire. Meaning that Martial Artists did not run around hurting and killing the citizens of the Kandrian Empire.N?velDrama.Org content rights.


    The ordinary average citizen mostly saw Martial Artists protecting people in defense-ss missions and protecting people via hunting ss missions.


    Or enforcing thew during Royalmissions.


    "The Martial familiespete with each other in the Kandrian Martial Festival?" Rui asked. "That makes sense. It''s just not something that urred to me."


    "It isn''t publicly announced, I wouldn''t expect someone outside the Martialmunity to know about it." Dalen exined. "Martial Families often train their descendants with the goal of performing highly."


    "Huh, that sounds like it sucks." Ruimented. "The Kandrian Martial Festival has always been fun the two times I experienced it, but being trained for it from five years in advance would ruin the experience."<sub> </sub>


    "Kane hates the Martial Festival you know." Dalenughed. "He''s one of the favourites for wins among the current descendants in the Martial Community."


    "I see." Rui murmured. "Kane hasn''t ever told me about all of this."


    "He genuinely hates it, and hates talking about it, more so than most of us." Dalen sighed. "The Festival isn''t that far away too, he would do anything needed to avoid participating."


    Rui, for one, couldn''t wait. The Kandrian Martial Festival had urred only twice in his entire life, once when he was and the other when he was five and the other when he was ten. Both times he had been too young to join the adults and adolescents as they visited Hajin to take part in the local festival.


    He had never expected his first time to experience the Martial Festival would be after he became a Martial Artist himself.


    Just the thought of potentiallypeting with Martial Artists across not just the town, or even the region, but perhaps the entire nation bred an extremely romanticized picture in Rui''s head.


    "The Kandrian Martial Festival is in less than a year, right?" Rui asked, excitedly.


    "Yeah." Dalen turned to nce at him. "Do you intend to participate?"


    "Of course!" Rui strongly affirmed. "Why wouldn''t I?"


    "You don''t strike me as someone who cares for glory." Dalen noted. "Or are you interested in the mary rewards that winning would yield?"


    Rui snorted. He didn''t care if they glorified it to hell and back or not at all or if they made him a millionare or not. The idea of being able topete with the best of the best was simply too alluring for Rui to not get excited by.


    He needed to get as strong as possible as quickly as possible so that he would be able to fight against stronger Martial Artists, to do that he needed to master these four techniques he had purchased recently as soon as possible.


    "Come on, let''s continue training." Rui said, brimming with energy.


    ? "Weren''t you exhausted just a minute ago?" Dalen asked with confused skepticism.


    "Exhaustion is for the weak." Rui dered. "We need to train to get stronger."


    "Uh huh." Dalen sighed.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 138 Excited

    BOOM BOOM BOOM


    Rui and Fae exchanged powerful blows with each other. Fae pummeled at him with palms while Rui returned the offense with fists.


    Rui had spent a lot of time sparring with Martial Apprentices who had mastered the techniques he was training with currently. While he did have trouble initially with Blink because there was no one in his immediate friend circle or acquaintances was a stealth-oriented Martial Artist, he had no trouble with finding someone to train his Outer Convergence technique with.


    Fae had grown to be a close friend of his in the past year, and she had even helped him with training offense-ss Apprentice-level techniques before, so going to her was a no-brainer decision.


    Unlike the sparring training with Dalen, theirbat was a lot less restricted. They only limited offense to Outer Convergence, while using only one technique for the other aspects ofbat.


    This was because Outer Convergence could be dodged in real fights and Rui needed to forge experience in dealing with evasive defense and counters to Outer Convergence in real fights.


    Of course, they had decided to limit the number of techniques they used for defense and maneuvering because otherwise Rui had too much of an advantage.


    Limiting striking offense to Outer Convergence hurt Fae far more than it hurt Rui since a little over half of Fae''s Martial Art wasprised of striking oriented techniques, while Rui had only three, including his rough partially-learnt Outer Convergence.


    WHOOSH


    He sidestepped a weighted palm from Fae, beforeunching a right hook to her jaw. Fae unhesitatingly deflected the strike with an elbow, redirecting Rui''s hook while simultaneouslyunching a hand jab technique with her finger tips.


    BAM


    Rui grimaced as he skidded back.


    "That''s new." He nced at her with a curious look. "Elbows? Hand jabs instead of out ward palm attacks"


    It wasn''t the usage of elbows that was surprising. After all, Earth had martial arts where elbows were dominant features. Martial arts such as Muay Thai, a traditional martial art from Thand, and St, a traditional martial art from Myanmar, used elbows more than they used the hands.


    Muay Thai in particr used elbows offensively while St used them defensively and counter-offensively.


    "Surprised?" Fae smirked. "I''m trying to solidify my strikingbat prowess at all ranges in close quartersbat. Palm attacks are powerful but they have narrow flexibility as far as range goes. So, I decided to learn the Hooking Elbow technique. It''s a mid-grade counter-offensive elbow centric technique that allows me to keep up with opponents even at dangerously close ranges."


    Rui understood. "I see, and palm jabs have a longer range than outwardly open palm attacks, allowing you to handle somewhat longer-range close quartersbat better."


    Fae nodded, in response, before taking her usual open-palm stance before charging.


    (''Tsk, no chill.'') Rui tutted inwardly, as heunched several Outer Convergence kicks.


    POW POW POW


    Kicks were a good tool against someone who exclusively used her arms for offense, since legs had longer range than arms, he could effectively continuously attack her while she was unable to attack him.


    Unfortunately, his Outer Convergence was still too wed as she cleanly neutralized his attacks with her own.


    Another problem he was suffering was that kicks made it difficult to maneuver, since one leg was often mid-air, meaning if Fae was able to handle his kicks, she would be able close the distance faster than Rui was able to maneuver top maintain it.


    BAM BAM BAM


    She did just that, managing to close in,nding a flurry of palm attacks.<sub> </sub>


    Rui tried matching them with his own Outer Convergence, but it was too weak inparison.


    BOOM


    She managed tond a clean strike, as Rui fell backwards.


    "Huff..." She exhaled. "That was not bad, it''s actually quite remarkable considering you''ve only been training for a little under two months along with other techniques." Sheplimented.


    "Thanks."


    "But, it''s still too rough." She critiqued. "There are two elements to Outer Convergence; Drawing power from each muscle group individually, and then umting and converging that power in your strike by having all your muscles cooperate in perfect sync. You''recking in both those departments."


    "Yeah, I know." Rui replied, sighing. "It''s hard for me to get used to the increased mental load of synchronizing and managing each of the muscles."


    "It took me four months to fully get a hand of it." She said. "So don''t be discouraged, as I said, your progress is pretty good."


    Rui nodded. "I hope I can master it as soon as possible; I want to get finish some more missions and purchase a few more techniques as soon as possible."


    "What''s the hurry?" Fae asked, curiously.


    "I want to be as strong as possible when the Kandrian Martial Festival rolls around."


    "Ah, yes, the Martial Festival." She murmured with mixed emotions.


    "Do you dislike it too?" He guessed.


    "It''s not particrly pleasant." She shrugged. "But it is an opportunity for me to bring prestige to my family."


    "So you do intend to participate after all."


    "Yes, in both the Martial Academic Contest and other prestigious contests that are hosted every Festival."


    "Wait the Academies also hosts tournaments during the festival?"


    "Of course, they do." She threw an odd look at Rui. "There are thirteen branches of the across the thirty-nine states of the Kandrian Empire. The Academies conduct an inter-Academy tournament. Each Academy elects representatives in a manner of their own discretion and the representativespete against each other in arge tournament. The winners usually get a huge credit prize among other things you see."


    Rui''s eyes glimmered as he reveled in the idea of participating andpeting against the best of the best.


    "Do the other Academies have prominent and powerful descendants of the Martial Community?" Rui asked excitedly.


    "Yes, our batch and the batch before and after ours in total have arge number of Martial descendents now that I think about it. This tournament is bound to be a contentious one."


    Rui imploded with excitement at those words.


    He couldn''t wait for the Festival to arrive already!Belongs to ? n0velDrama.Org.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 139 Martial Contest

    Original from N?velDrama.Org.


    "I heard Kane was a favourite." Rui said. "Does that mean the other favourites among the descendants of the Martialmunity are also at his level?"


    Fae nodded. "Talen-wise Kane is considered a top three among all the descendants of the Martialmunity. Though he isn''t the most talented."


    Rui''s eyes flew wide open at those words. "You''re telling me there''s a prodigy even more talented than Kane??"


    Rui found that hard to believe. Kane broke through at the age of eleven, and was so talented that he was easily on par with Rui, despite all of Rui''s huge advantages. Up until, recently, Kane wasfortably stronger than him too. Rui was certain that if Kane loved Martial Art as much as he did, he might have gone to even greater heights.


    Fae nodded. "Her name is Fiona. Fiona Roschem. The granddaughter of His Honour Grandmaster Sage Damian."


    The granddaughter of His Honour Sage Damian, who was the Grandmaster of all the Academies in the Kandrian Martial Union, lived up to her pedigree.


    "How strong is she?" Rui asked with sparkling eyes.


    "I haven''t seen her in almost two years, I don''t know how strong she currently is." Fae replied. "But she''s strong. I haven''t beaten her a single time in any of our spars, despite being two years older than her. She''s the strongest Martial Apprentice of our generation, probably."


    "Damn, you''re killing me." Ruiined. The more Fae went on and on about this girl, the more he felt impatient for the Kandrian Martial Festival to arrive.


    "Don''t be so hasty, get a hold of yourself." Fae threw a disapproving look. "It''s still some time away, and as you are right now, you probably won''t be able to beat her. Forget fighting her, you can''t be sure you''ll be elected as a representative."


    "What is her Martial Art like?" Rui asked curiously.


    "She''s a perfect all-rounder." Fae stated.


    "Ah, a jack-of-all-trades but a master of none." Rui mused.


    "No." Fae shook her head. "She''s more of a jack of all trades and a master of all."


    Rui had another outburst of excitement, as Fae shook her head at the sight.


    (''If Fae is speaking so highly of her, she must be something else.'') Rui thought.


    A master of all fields? If that really was the case, then Rui had quickly surmised he stood no chance as he was now. He knew that he was far from a master of any one particr field, he had barely managed to be above average in all fields, which wasn''t unimpressive, because most Martial Apprentices could manage bing average in one or two particr fields.


    But thanks to his potion tolerance cheat code, he had managed to grind and get stronger at an incredible pace, yet he wasn''t even near being a master of all trades. He wondered how long it had taken for her to reach her level.


    "How long has she been a Martial Apprentice for?" Rui asked curiously.


    "Five years." Fae replied.


    Rui''s eyes flew wide open. "Wait, you said you were two years older than her. Doesn''t that mean...?"<sub> </sub>


    "Yeah, she broke through at the age of nine." Fae confirmed with aplicated sigh.


    "???"


    "There''s only a handful of people who have broken that young in the history of the Kandrian Empire." She paused, turning to Rui. "All of them became Martial Masters and some even Martial Sages."


    Her implication was clear. Fiona Roschem was pretty much a confirmed future high Realm Martial Artist.


    Rui grew engrossed in thought as he attempted to evaluate his chances of winning the contest and fighting her at all.


    In order to be elected as a representative of the Mantian Martial Academy, he needed to grow to be the strongest of the Martial Apprentices of the Martial Academy, he did not think he was there just quite yet.


    He did think that mastering the four techniques he''d set out to master gave him a decent chance, by then his wealth of techniques would probably be higher than most Martial Apprentices.


    Most Martial Apprentices in the Martial Academy had broken through after a few years of training in the Foundation Stage and Exploration Stage, and then needed to a few more years to build the foundation of their Martial Art.


    The descendants of Martial families like Milliana, Dalen and especially Fae and Kane were quite different from these Apprentices. Thetter four were talented and had broken much earlier than the norm and had spent more time as Martial Apprentices, thus their Martial Art were much more developed and mature than the norm, especially Fae and Kane


    Rui had also broken through early and had also possessed a Martial Art much more developed than the norm.


    Still, that didn''t mean his election was guaranteed, he had lost plenty of times against some of the more Senior Apprentices of older batches.


    A little less than one year was usually nowhere near enough to be significantly stronger, but the same couldn''t be said for Rui.


    (''Just you watch.'') Rui thought to himself. (''I''ll be so strong by the time the tournament roles by that not a single person will recognize me.'')


    Only then he would have a chance of fighting the best Martial Artists of his generation in the Empire.


    Just the thought of it pumped him up to the brim with energy like no rejuvenation potion ever could.


    If he could develop his Martial Art as strong as he hoped to by the tournament rolled by, then he might be able to win.


    Unfortunately, hecked too much information about his opponents. He could only specte. Still, there were a few things that could be established. As always, he had the VOID algorithm, a powerful advantage that allowed him vastly superior predictive and counter-deductive capabilities, altering his fighting style to be most suited to his opponent''s fighting style.


    Rui winced when he recalled she was an all-rounder. Just his luck, all-rounder were the hardest to predict and counter-deduce.


    Rui would need to go above and beyond to be able to win.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 140 Results

    N?velDrama.Org content rights.


    A little over four months passed by quickly. Time was often a blur to those who had immersed themselves in training. Especially to someone like Rui, who truly lost track of day and night thanks to his relentless training and immersion. Furthermore, his tolerance of potions made it even more difficult to keep track since he didn''t have daily sleep cycles.


    Ruiunched a tremendous attack at Kane. The sheer force the attack contained sted the air in its path apart, causing abrupt gusts of wind. The Outer Convergence technique once mastered had fundamentally upgraded his offensive force to a higher level.


    WHOOSH


    Kane evaded the attack, swerving to Rui''s open side almost instantaneously.


    POW


    He managed a get in a solid jab before Rui could guard, and leapt back unsatisfied. The jab had done nothing, it hadn''t even fazed Rui.


    "Tsk." Kane tutted.


    Rui took the initiative to charge in, chasing after Kane, trying to cut off as much room for escape as he could. One disadvantage that evasive maneuverer fighters had was that they needed space, they were crippled significantly if they were boxed in a small space.


    Still, this was not an easy strategy against someone like Kane, who had enough speed and mobility to bypass Rui''s attempts to block him.


    WHOOSH


    Kane dodged yet another strike as he managed to sneak in yet another strike past Rui''s guard, a strike that, once again, didn''t do any damage.


    (''Thank god for the fact that I have mastered three defensive Apprentice-level techniques. Kane''s general offense is too weak to bypass my solid defense, he''ll need to use higher-efficiency techniques like what he used against Fae.'') Rui mused.


    Ever since he had mastered Inner Divergence, he had be quite confident and secure in his defense. The three techniques he had purchased were all quitepatible with the VOID algorithm. Rui resumed his tactic of trying cut off Kane''s evasiveness, but his approach tobat had begun to change.


    No longer did he try running after Kane tond an attack, ever since Kane had mastered Axis Earthing, his ability to maintain his top speed despite making really sharp turns and curves had risen immensely. Meaning he could almost instantly switch directions extremely acutely without needing to slow down at all.


    Pursuing him trying to hit him was impossible as long as Kane was focused on evading was utterly impossible. Even though Rui was quite swift himself having mastered Outer Convergence and Parallel Walk and Bnce Direction himself, it was still far below Kane.


    Instead, he altered and adapted his approach to be as well-suited to Kane as he could. He continued to attempt boxing Kane, but instead of going for the attack, he took an extremely defensive posture with very few openings worth attacking.


    "Hah. Given up on attacking me?" He smiled yfully. "That just makes you a harmless punching bag you know."


    This wasn''t false, it was difficult tounch a swift attack from an extremely defensive position. On open offensive stance wasunched attacks quicker than super defensive stances.


    Against Kane, who was extremely swift and mobile, it just seemed like an incredibly bad idea.


    Kane wasn''t sure what Rui was thinking, but he shrugged, before dashing in. His confidence in his speed and evasive mobility was extremely high and he did not think Rui would be able to out-speed him, especially from that position.


    POW POW POW<sub> </sub>


    He closed in, andnded heavier blows, which hit harder than the speedy light jabs that he thrown earlier throughout the match with the few low-grade of the Apprentice-level offensive techniques he had.


    When he saw Rui didn''t bother counter-attacking, he threw a weight blow through a small chink in Rui''s guard, aimed for his neck, trying to finish Rui off with a single strike, unlike his normal fighting style. The reason he did this was because he knew Rui got stronger as the fight went on, he would alter his cement, timing and application of techniques, as well as general course of actions and tactics throughout the entire fight to better deal with his opponents. He did not want to prolong the fight too much out of wary caution against Rui''s adaptive evolution.


    BANG


    He cleanlynded the strike onto Rui''s neck, mming him back. It seemed almost entirely clear that Rui had chosen the wrong course of action.


    One moment, he felt ted for having won, giving him major bragging points.


    The next moment, he saw a grin on Rui''s face.


    And the moment after that, Rui''s arms and legs had alreadytched onto Kane''s arm, using the Binding Lash technique


    (''What??'') Kane was shocked that Rui had managed to use that technique against him sessfully. He was long aware of the fact that Rui had mastered the technique but did not fear it because his speed was too high for Rui to time that technique perfectly. It was a technique that involved the entire body, meaning that it was slow. Against extremely fast opponents like Kane, it was practically impossible to use unless one had timed the execution with miraculous uracy.


    (''How did he get me?'') Kane wondered as he struggled to get out of the lock. But it was of no avail, Rui was a much better grappler than he was. He used Shifting Silhouette, his only defensive grappling technique to crush all of Kane''s attempt at trying to attack Rui, while applying an immense amount of pressure on Kane''s joints.


    "Alright alright you win." Kane tapped the ground. Rui heaved a breath of relief as he let Kane go.


    "Hehe. Looks like I managed to squeeze out a win." Rui chuckled. "Good fight."


    "How did you even get me?" Kaneined. "I know you''re not an expert grappler to be able time that technique that well regrly."


    "You''re right." Rui nodded. "I timed it because I had predicted what you were gonna do by limiting your striking options."


    Kane tilted his head in confusion.


    "A closed defensive stance has fewer openings and holes than an open offensive stance." Rui said. "Your options tond a clean strike were much more limited and fewer in number, making it easier to guess which one you would pick. It''s like the difference between flipping a coin and rolling a dice."


    The probability of predicting a coin flip was fifty-percent, but the probability of predicting a rice doll was only one-sixth.


    This was because there were more options with the dice roll than the coin flip, thus making it much harder to predict dice rolls than coin flips.


    Rui had applied this exact principle to his stance, by giving Kane fewer opening tond clean strikes in, he was able to make it easier to predict which option Kane would go for.


    Kane grumbled while Rui chuckled at his expense.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 141 Considerations

    This was one Rui''s first serious spar after his training session ended. He was quite satisfied with his performance, though he still yearned to be stronger. The most recent techniques he had mastered


    The mastery of Inner Divergence had bolstered his defense to the point that Kane couldn''t even hurt him unless he went all out with his offense instead of his usual stinging jabs. Outer Convergence had increased his power to the point that fighting Rui head-on was a losing battle, Rui would always hurt and damage Kane faster than Kane could do take down Rui.


    Seismic Mapping had gotten rid of his blind spots, he was able to track Kane''s movements, maneuvering and position even when Kane escaped his peripheral vision quite urately.


    These three techniques sessfully bolstered his foundation making him a solid Martial Apprentice even without the aid of the VOID algorithm.


    Still, despite all that Kane was able to keep up with Rui despite all this. His speed, agility and maneuvering were always ridiculously high but after he learnt to maintain his top speed constantly, he had truly be incredibly difficult to deal with.


    Furthermore, the tactic he had used to beat Kane this time was not a tactic that could be abused. If they fought a second time, Kane would not fall for the same trick, all he had to do was avoid a belligerent attack when Rui entered a closed defensive stance, and the battle would just end up being a stalemate.


    In truth, Rui did possess a way to win even without the tactic he used.


    The fourth technique he had learnt; Blink. His trump card.


    There were several moments in the fight where Blink would have allowed Rui to get a hold of Kane, which would probably have ended with Rui as the victor most of the time since Rui was the better grappler between them.


    However, Rui had decided to not use the technique ultimately. The capability of the technique was at its highest when his opponents weren''t aware of it. Using it in the open in the Apprentice sparring facility was unwise, the facility wasn''t exclusively being used by the two of them, after all. There were many Martial Artists in the facility that had kept an eye on their spar.


    Maybe it didn''t make much of a difference at all. After all, Blink wasn''t overtly shy. Perhaps not a single one of them would notice.


    Still, Rui didn''t want to take the risk. So he decided to opt out of using the technique at all.


    The spar had given him idea what he could do to further improve his versatility. All this time he had primarily focused on primarily the fundamental aspects ofbat; Offense, defense, maneuvering stamina, striking, grappling etc. Now that he had truly bolstered all of these areas with twelve Apprentice-level techniques, he could focus on expanding the versatility of his Martial Art beyond these basic fields.


    On Earth, there wasn''t much more to MMAbat sports beyond striking, grappling, defensive guarding as well as evasive and offensive maneuvering.


    But this wasn''t the same for Martial Art in the world of Gaia.


    There were many more exotic systems of techniques and esoteric techniques based on principles and mechanisms that would be no more than pure fiction back on Earth.<sub> </sub>


    Now that Rui had truly cemented the foundation of his Martial Art to be rock hard and solid, he could focus on expanding his Martial Art to these more exciting fields. The idea was extremely alluring by itself, but there were strong concrete reasons for doing so.


    The biggest reason was the refinement process of the VOID algorithm, which was designed for the limited martial arts off Earth and not the near magical Martial Art of Gaia.


    This would not be possible without incorporating an effective counter-deductive system, which could not be done with intimate understanding of these techniques, and without mastery of these techniques and fields.


    Of course, he had already taken the first step in this regard. When he purchased and mastered Seismic Mapping and Blink; a sensory and stealth technique, he had already taken a step in widening the versatility of his Martial Art in fields outside of the fundamental fields ofbat.


    He intended to continue that trend. Of course, doing this wouldn''t be easy. The further away he got from the fundamental fields ofbat, the more useless his MMA andbat sports research background was. He might end up taking longer to master these techniques due to this. Furthermore, a lot of these techniques were not cheap, he recalled how expensive many of the techniques in the stealth and sensory sections were. Purchasing them would take an immense amount of time and sessfullypleted missions.


    Since the tournament was a bit over half a year away, he had already decided to grind like crazy with the missions and undergo onest time before undergoing a final training session just before the Kandrian Martial Festival rolled up.


    "Huff." Rui got up. "You wanna go another round?"


    "Sure, but are you sure?" Kane asked.


    "What do you mean?"


    "Did you forget what was there today?" Kane asked. "The Squirebat exhibition."


    Rui''s eyes lit up in tion as he recalled. He''d been so engrossed in the four techniques he had been training until just recently, as well as the matter of the Martial Festival he had totally forgotten about the event scheduled today.


    A Martial Squirebat session between the Squire instructors of the Martial Academy. Rui had seen Martial Squires use their Martial Art before, heck he''d even fought Squire Kyrie before, but this was different.


    Unlike when she fought them, she wasn''t going to be holding back most of her power. He would finally get to witness the true power of a Martial Squire with his own two eyes!


    Of course, the Squires wouldn''t be going all-out, but just seeing them spar seriously was enticing enough of an event to Rui, who dreamed of obtaining that otherworldly power.Original from N?velDrama.Org.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 142 The Might Of Martial Squires

    Martial Squires possessed power that was a whole realm above that of Martial Apprentices, literally. Rui had never gotten a chance to witness two Squires fighting each other, so he was as excited as a child would be in their first theatre experience.


    There were many Martial Apprentices who hade to witness this, having all been seated at a considerably great distance from the arena.


    This was done on purpose. Martial Squires were so ridiculously powerful that just being near them was incredibly dangerous. Furthermore, they were so superhumanly fast that if the Martial Apprentices were too close, their eyes would be entirely unable to follow the fight on any level whatsoever.


    It was easier to perceive speedy objects from a distance rather than up close. Rockets moved at dozens of times the speed of sound yet human had no problem keeping track of them with the naked eye from a distance.


    There was a general sense of excitement in the air, when suddenly multiple heavy presences pushed on the atmosphere.


    Squire Kyrie and Dylon walked into the facility with their Martial uniforms on, they were Squire instructors Rui was familiar with, having trained by them until quite recently. The Squire uniforms were quite different from the ones Rui was ustomed to as a Martial Apprentice. They made their way to the center of the Squire facility, ignoring the students. This wasn''t an academic event, and the students were free to watch or leave if they wanted to.


    Of course, an overwhelming majority of students were interested in observing Squires fight seriously, only a few of them, even from Martial families had experienced this before.


    Squires Kyrie and Dylon took their positions on the arena first, putting five meters of distance between them.


    "It''s been a while since we sparred, Kyrie." Dylon chuckled. "Since this is a special asion, let''s make a bet. If I win, you have to go out on a date with me."


    That earned a bit of amotion from the students.


    Kyrie merely snorted wordlessly, taking a neutral stance with an open-palmed arm extended forward and a closed-fist arm tucked a bit behind.


    Dylon on the other hand, chose an aggressive offensive stance with one fist at his waist, coiled with power ready tosh out and the other fist a bit in front of him at chest height, pointing straight at Kyrie''s face.


    Their stances reflected their styles, Dylon was naturally an offense-oriented Martial Artist as the head instructor of the offense training facility, while Kyrie was an all-rounder, being the head instructor of thebat training facility.


    As their concentration and alertness heightened, the atmosphere grew heavier by the second, weighing on the minds of the Martial Apprentices.


    The fight did not begin bombastically. Squire Dylon shuffled as he slowly closed the distance between them, while Kyrie remained stationary, unconcerned.


    POW


    sts of wind erupted as he threw a light jab, which Kyrie promptly blocked with ease. He threw several light jabs against Kyrie''s guard, just checking her.


    Original from N?velDrama.Org.


    And then the real fight began.


    Dylon threw a kick with tremendous force.


    SWISH


    Kyrie withstood while rotating to deflect the strike off her body.


    POW POW POW


    She threw a flurry of strikes of different forms.


    Fist.


    Knuckle.


    Palm.<sub> </sub>


    Chop.


    Her striking was incredibly diverse.


    However, although she had great versatility, Dylon seemed to have even more. Heunched an even greater barrage of attacks, leveraging his stronger physicality to gain an edge against her in striking.


    "Squire Dylon is amazing, he''s gaining an edge against Squire Kyrie." Kane murmured.


    "I dunno Kane." Rui replied, with an engrossed expression. "The fact that Kyrie can still hold parity against him despite being an all-rounder while he''s an offense specialist is even more incredible."


    All-rounders often had to spread themselves thin, it was generally not possible to be extremely good at any one field. Rui himself knew this all too well.


    The power and speed of their techniques was truly amazing. Their shes shook the earth, sending mild reverberations and shockwaves as far as the Martial Apprentices, earning their shock and awe.


    Yet Kyrie performing as well as she did in a contest of blows was rather amazing.


    But, as close as she was, she was still inferior in that regard.


    Eventually she disengaged, leaping back exhaling.


    "I suppose I can''t best you in contest of offense." She admitted.


    "Hehe." Dylon chuckled. "It''s only natural."


    "Still, I don''t intend to lose the fight." She adopted a different stance, rxing her arms in a lower stance in front of her with her legs centered closer to her body.


    (''That stance sacrifices offensive potential for mobility and evasion.'') Rui noted. (''She''s nning to change her approach a bit.'')


    She dived in with lightning swiftness, escaping the eyes of the Martial Apprentices despite the distance between them, leaving nothing but a shockwave behind.


    She appeared right behind Dylon.


    BAM


    Dylon barely managed to guard the impact in time, grimacing from her power nheless. Sheunched a flurry of strikes, however this time, she used different Squire-level techniques this time. These techniques ced more weight on swiftness than power, unlike before. She continuously pecked and stung at him.


    Dylon tutted, growing more frustrated as heunched a powerful side kick hoping to send her flying. She quickly stepped out of range to avoid it and simply resumed her offense. Dylonunched a barrage of blows hoping to inflict damage on her.


    She either dodged, deflected and redirected or did abination of all three, as opposed to blocking like she did before.


    Very few strikes had managed to cleanlynd on her.


    If they exchanged strikes straightforwardly, Dylon''s offense would overwhelm Kyrie''s defenses faster than Kyrie''s offense would overwhelm his defense, such was the offensive prowess of an offensive specialist.


    Instead, she made the battle asymmetrical by using her mobility, redirection and speed to dramatically reduce the number of hits that Dylon managed tond on her.


    Slowly, she managed to gain the advantage.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 143 Unclear

    WHOOSH


    Kyrie evaded a blow from Dylon, while striking soft and sensitive areas at specific angles with differing hand forms to inflict the maximum amount of pain and damage, earning grimaces from Dylon.


    POW POW POW


    "Isn''t that Vital Pressure?" Rui asked, just barely managing to recognize the familiar characteristics of the offensive striking technique after a few hours into the fight. Kyrie was so blindingly fast that he truly struggled to make out anything about her impacts at all! He would have instantly recognized had he seen a Martial Apprentice.


    However, Kyrie''s attacks were indistinguishably fast.


    "I can''t say for sure. But I think it is." Kane admitted as he squinted his eyes, ducking his head forward trying to keep up with Kyrie''s onught.


    (''Not even Kane is able to perceive her attacks cleanly.'') Rui thought. Kane was by far the fastest among his friends, if even Kane was this inferior, it spoke volumes to the prowess of Martial Squires.


    He wouldn''t be too surprised if Kyrie was using Vital Pressure. It was an extremely useful and fundamental technique; it was the type of technique that wouldn''t lose its relevance even at higher Realms of Martial Artbat.


    Every living being possessed soft, weak and sensitive spots. As long as these vital spots existed universally, they could be pressured in various ways to inflict higher amounts of pain and damage. This was the principle that Vital Pressure was based. It truly was a foundational technique. Nearly every Martial Artist he had seen that used striking to some degree, used Vital Pressure.


    (''Maybe I can integrate that fact into the VOID algorithm.'') Rui realized. (''If Vital Pressure is this universal, then developing a counter-deductive system specifically built for that technique might be quite useful.'')


    He could apply the tactic he used against Kane earlier to the Vital Pressure technique. Vital Pressure did reduce the number of strike locations because the number of weak and sensitive striking locations on the body was a minority of all the striking locations on the body, making it easier to predict his opponent''s moves in advance and adapt his counter to those attacks more optimally.


    He shook his head putting aside such thoughts and focused on the battle, he could think more deeply about thister.


    He began to notice that Squire Dylon''s movements were starting to grow more and more sluggish and lethargic. Compared to the start of the fight, where his movements were sharp and energetic, he had undoubtedly grown slower.


    His face was covered in sweat and his breathing was strained, whereas Kyrie on the other hand appeared much less fatigued.


    Rui immediately connected the dots together.


    (''As an all-rounder, she probably has better stamina than someone like Squire Dylon.'') Rui mused. As far as he could tell, she had adopted an approach tobat that maximized her all of her distributed strengths as an all-rounder while diminishing the significance of offensive power.


    (''Huh, what do you know.'') Rui thought to himself. (''She''s basically doing something simr to the most elementary tier of the VOID algorithm.'')<sub> </sub>


    He wasn''t too surprised. The VOID algorithm at its simplest iteration was just a systemized data-drive protocol form ofmon sense, in a way. He didn''t think the VOID algorithm was something invincible that higher Realms of Martial Art couldn''t replicate. Higher Realms of Martial Artists had traversed their Martial Path far, far deeper than Rui had, which almost certainly mean their minds were much superior inbat than his own mind, likely even with his reincarnation double-growth advantage.


    In fact, he wouldn''t be surprised if higher Realm Martial Artists possessed such superior cognition that they were capable of producing results that were superior to his algorithm.


    p As it currently was, the VOID algorithm was a relic that was special back on Earth, however Earth was astronomically inferior to Gaea as far Martial Art went. He was not arrogant enough to believe it was unsurpassable.</anda>


    However, it didn''t mean he was resigned to let it be that way. Project Water and the VOID algorithm were at the core of his Martial Art. The more he developed the VOID algorithm and upgraded and evolved it to epass Martial Art in Gaea, the more his Martial Art would grow stronger.


    Even if his Martial Art and VOID algorithm, as they were now, may just happen to be obsolete at the highest levels of Martial Art, he didn''t they would remain that way by the time he reached the peak of Martial Art.N?velDrama.Org content rights.


    GRASP


    A sudden shift in the fight''s monotonous flow broke Rui out of his reverie. Squire Dylon had purposefully tanked an attack from Kyrie in order to get his hands on her, in order to turn the fight into a grappling contest.


    He had managed to get his hands on her shoulder and refused to let go. His intent was clear to Rui, he wanted to get rid of Kyrie''s maneuvering advantage by dragging her into an all-out grappling contest. As far as Rui could tell, it was working.


    The two wrangled on the ground fiercely, consequentially cracking the hard tiles that were especially built to withstand the power of Martial Apprentices without a single scratch!


    Squire Dylon had a physicality advantage, he had a stronger body, by virtue of being of a higher weight-ss and also having a Martial Art in which raw power was important.


    Grappling was a field where physicality mattered much more than in striking.


    In a striking contest, it was possible for an inferior striker to defeat a superior striker thanks to a single well-times and well-ced strike due to dumb luck.


    There were no flukes in grappling, there was only inevitability.


    (''However, inevitability could swing both ways.'') Rui noted. (''His stamina is much more depleted than Kyrie''s stamina, and her stamina consumption is lower than his because of her higher conservation of energy, likely due to a Squire-level breathing technique.'')


    The fight had entered its final stage, and the conclusion was anything but clear!


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 144 Insights

    Squire Dylon''s goal was quite simple; to exploit his superior raw power to the absolute maximum in order to win as quickly as possible. He knew he was on a time limit, especially since attempting an offense in grappling was much more energy-consuming than attacking via striking.


    Squire Kyrie''s goal was also equally simple, to stall the fight for as long as possible and drain Squire Dylon''s stamina as much as possible. She knew she had a stamina edge, once her opponent was exhausted, she could begin her offense and win due to ack of sufficient energy from her opponent. She had an edge in grappling defense since Dylon wasrgely offensive as a Martial Artist, so she was confident that she could hold on.


    The wrangled for quite some time, even spending a lot of time just immobile. Some of the Martial Apprentices grew a bit bored, since the fight had be less exciting than it had been prior. But Rui only grew more and more engrossed.


    And after a while of shifting and rolling, the moment came.


    Squire Dylon''s grip lost its firmness or just a split second as he felt just a mild wave of light-headeness.


    But it was enough.


    WHIP


    Kyrie broke out and whipped her arm around his neck.


    A chokehold!


    That too, a sleeper chokehold. An extremely dangerous and nigh-unbeatable lock that put an unfathomable amount of pressure on the neck, the throat and the arteries. Rui gulped at the sight, with how strong Squires were, he was sure that if he was in Squire Dylon''s ce, his neck would have long been crushed to a pulp by her the sheer force of her hold.


    Dylon struggled to the best of his ability, hitting Kyrie as hard as he could with Outer Convergence but in that position, with his exhaustion as well as Kyrie''s formidable defense, he wasn''t able to break out.


    Eventually he tapped her arm thrice, indicating his resignation and defeat. Kyrie exhaled a deep breath of relief as she let him go, while Dylon gasped for breath as he inhaled as deep as he could.


    Both of them were quite exhausted.


    Immediately, several assistant staff members brought them several rejuvenation and healing potions.


    "Shame I won''t be getting my date." Dylon shrugged with emphasized mncholy, merely earning a snort from Squire Kyrie.


    "My, I didn''t think Instructor Dylon was someone who attacked women to get them to go out with him." Fae teased with her ssic sophistry. The Martial Apprentices had already moved to their instructors once the fight had ended.<sub> </sub>


    "Hey, you make it sound like I wasmitting a crime!" Dylonined, receiving a bout ofughter from the students, and even a smirk from Kyrie.N?velDrama.Org content.


    "That was an amazing fight Instructor Kyrie, Instructor Dylon." Ruiplimented. "Seeing yourbat prowess makes me want to return to training even though I just finish it."


    "Don''t be so hasty my boy" Dylon waved. "With how dedicated you are, you''ll surely surpass me as long as you dedicate yourself to your path. This is true for all of you." He said directing a nce to all the students. "Do not be discouraged by our performance, it is meant to inspire you. Each and every single one of you can obtain the power you have witnessed."


    Squire Kyrie nodded. "Talent matters less and less the further down your Martial Path your traverse, many of the most powerful and prominent Martial Artists of the past and present were not extraordinary geniuses who broke through to Martial Apprentice at an extremely young age, and many Martial prodigies did not make it past Martial Squire, and in some cases, even Martial Apprentice."


    "What matters most is how far down your Martial Path you walk, it requires perseverance, dedication, determination, suffering and sacrifice." Squire Dylon added. "You can be the most talented Martial prodigy on the entirety of the of Gaea, but if youck the will to walk down your Martial Path, you may never even be a Martial Apprentice."


    Those words were quite surprising to a lot of the Martial Apprentices gathered. They had all believed talent was the most important determining factor, or at the very least one of, despite the denial of others. But being told so in such a manner really made them think about what they ought to be focused on.


    Rui understood this well, this was true even on Earth.


    Talent allowed people a head start, but if they didn''t run, they would lose the race one hundred times out of one hundred. Whereas someone who may even be set back, would win as long as they ran with everything they had, one hundred times out of one hundred.


    Rui knew this, but right now he was too engrossed in the fight he had witnessed to think about that. He had no objective proof, but he could sense that Martial Squires were fundamentally different. It wasn''t just a matter of being stronger, faster and durable, or having a greater evolved mind.


    It was as if their bodies were constructed different, as if underneath their skin, they were robots running on motors and pumps powered by a powerful engine and energy supply.


    He recalled Squire Dylon''s words, that the ''quintessential foundation of their material bodies was different''.


    It sounded like utter rubbish the man had conjured up to confound and confuse Rui, but perhaps the truth was more literal than Rui had initially thought it would be.


    Rui had always had vague suspicions, but only after witnessing two Martial Squires fighting seriously had he actuallye to notice differences between Martial Squires and Martial Apprentices. Their mass and weight, the distribution of mass across their body and center of mass, the sticity of their flesh and their muscr power to body mass ratio.


    There were many physical discrepancies that Rui hade to notice.


    (''Could it be...'') Rui conjectured as an exnation came to mind. (''Could it be that the breakthrough to Martial Squires alters the body deeply on a cellr level?'')


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 145 Different Level

    Original from N?velDrama.Org.


    Rui wasn''t sure, yet he didn''t bother asking for rification, it had already been made quite clear to him that nobody who knew the truth would reveal it so easily. Fae and Kane had both not been told about the breakthrough to Martial Squire, and Squire Dylon himself had refused Rui the truth, being purposefully vague and unspecific.


    Still, Rui wasn''t too bothered by this, he knew he would learn about the truth and even experience it himself as long as he traversed down his own Martial Path.


    Once the event ended, Rui remained in the facility, looking for others to spar against.


    Although he had tentatively mastered each individual technique alone, he hadn''t fully gotten used to using all of them inbat. He''d decided he wanted to get more experience with them, it was better to refine it in the same environment of the Academy where he could afford to make mistakes than do so in the middle of a dangerous mission and lose his life as a result.


    Especially so since the Academy had upgraded his Martial Apprentice grade from grade three to grade five. Meaning, from now on he could routinely take on missions that posed some degree of a threat, albeit not much, all by himself.


    He would have only himself to rely upon.


    The first course of action he wanted to do was test himself against different Types of Martial Artists, with different specialties. This gave him a wider dataset for him to evaluate how well he used his newly mastered techniques


    He had already tested himself against an evasive maneuverer of Kane, and had been reasonably satisfied with his performance. Now he just needed to fight as many different types as he could. He could fight Fae for an offensive striker, Dalen for a defense-oriented Martial Art, Milliana for a stamina-oriented Martial Art. Felix for a grappling-oriented Martial Art.


    He didn''t particrly have anyone else he was acquainted with.


    He shrugged, approaching other Martial Apprentices who had also stayed behind looking for anyone who was interested in a spar.


    The sparing match he had gotten into now was just that.


    "Take your stances." The supervisor instructed.


    "Huff..." Rui exhaled as he put a foot forward, while extending his left arm open-palmed towards his opponent, while tucking his right fist at his ribs. It was a fairly neutral stance that didn''t put too much weight on offense, defense or maneuvering.


    His opponent, a girl named Karura, folded both arms to the absolute limit, as though she was trying to crush something in between her forearm and bicep, while raising her elbows, while crouching with bent knees


    The stance undoubtedly drew attention to her elbows. This alone suggested to Rui that her Martial Art was a super close range Martial Art centered around elbows. It reminded him of the elbow centric technique that Fae had learnt half a year ago.


    "Begin!" The supervisor began the match.


    Karura immediately closed the gap between them, something that was within his expectations. She wouldn''t be much of a super-close-range fighter if she didn''t close the gap between them.


    Naturally Rui did not intend to cooperate peacefully, he immediately dashed backwards, maintaining the distance between them.


    What surprised him was that she was actually faster than he was, which meant she had invested a lot into mastering maneuvering techniques to bolster her speed and mobility.


    (''She''s thought her Martial Art and repertoire remarkably well.'') Rui thought. He could understand why she had built up her maneuvering foundation.


    As a super-close-range fighter, her very obvious weakness was people with greater range who could attack her from outside her range while she couldn''t. The<sub> </sub>


    The mostmon-sense strategy against her was for one to keep her distance outside of her striking range, any moron coulde up with this strategy as long as they thought hard enough. Rui was rtively certain that she had encountered this strategy many times until she chose to significantly bolster her maneuvering prowess so that she could close the distance every time they tried to open it, and force them to fight on her terms.


    Rui suspected that in terms of raw techniques, he was probably inferior to her in super-close-rangebat. Still, he didn''t feel any threat or fear, his sense of security had risen tremendously after histest training session


    Just as she reached three meters away, Rui calmly stopped running away and instead ran straight into her.


    A look of surprise shed across her face, as this was thest thing she''d expected him to do.


    BOOM


    A tremendous impact let loose a huge gust of wind and that drew the attention of everybody within visible range of their spar.


    What they saw when they nced at the source of the explosive noise was Rui standing nonchntly with an fist extended midair.


    And a girl t at his feet, coughing blood.


    Their eyes flew wide open as they realized what had happened. Those who had already been watching the fight gaped with dropped jaws.


    A single strike! Rui devastated her with a single attack


    When Rui switched direction and ran towards her, he had elerated to his top speed with Parallel Walk and Bnced Direction in her direction


    Just as they were a meter away, he all three of his striking Apprentice-level techniques; Flowing Canon, Vital Pressure and Outer Convergence.


    Flowing Canon used the umted momentum of his eleration via Parallel Walk and Bnced Direction to ensure the power of his strike surpassed that of his normal strikes.


    Outer Convergence drew power from all his muscle groups.


    And Vital pressure finished the job by ensuring the strikended in a way the maximized as much pain and damage.


    It was an attack that was fueled by the power of a whopping five Apprentice-level techniques and was the single most powerful strike Rui could possiblyunch.


    Karura had tried to defend with an Apprentice-level technique, but it was nowhere near enough. She had tried counter-attacking as well, but having been caught off-guard with an already shorter range than Rui ensured that Rui''s attacknded first.


    And whence the attacknded, the fight ended.


    Nay, it was over before it had even begun.


    Rui had achieved a different level of power.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 146 Resumption

    "You feeling better?" Rui asked.


    Karura nodded as she finished consuming her rejuvenation potion. When she had copsed, the match had ended and a team of paramedics had immediately rushed to the ring and had administered a healing potion to her.


    "d to hear that." Rui replied.


    He said as he extended an open hand out to her, which she promptly epted, standing up. "Good fight, you''re incredibly strong."


    "You''re quite good yourself." Rui replied.


    "Hmph." She snorted mildly. "That''s not very convincinging from someone who defeated me with a single attack."


    p "I mean it." Rui scratched his cheek awkwardly. "I won because I exploited a weakness in your battle approach."</anda>


    "Weakness?" She squinted her eyes with curiosity.


    Rui nodded. "In exchange for being formidable at super-close-rangebat, the natural and obvious weakness that your fighting style has is that you cannot fight well outside super-closebat."


    "Wait." She frowned. "I never told you that I was close-range fighter, how did you figure that."


    He looked at her like she was dumb. "Because it was obvious after analyzing your stance."


    "..."


    "Anyway." He continued. "I could tell that your tried topensate for this weakness by boosting your maneuvering capabilities so that you could chase down your opponents outside your striking range."


    "..."


    "That''s not a bad solution, but is insufficient and doesn''t truly address your shoring. It can be dealt with the way I dealt with it. Instead of running away, I turned and charged straight at you, we both attacked at the same time, yet my attacknded first." He paused, before asking. "Why is that?"


    "Because you have greater range." She finally understood.


    "That''s right." Rui nodded. "As long as my attacks have greater range, I can always ensure you are unable to attack me, by attacking you before you are close enough to strike me. That is why chasing people is not a real solution. You''ll just be barricaded and restricted to a distance by attacks with greater range than yours."


    "Then what do I do?" She sighed with frustration. Rui could tell this was problem that had been bugging her for a while.<sub> </sub>


    "I cannot tell you what to do, though I could give you some suggestions."


    She nodded vigorously. "Please do."


    "Not all strikes can be used to keep you at a distance." Rui said. "Only attacks with significantly greater range than your attacks can be effectively used to keep you at a distance. Things like hooks or short jabs are too short, your opponents can only really keep you out of range with straight punches and kicks. This can be exploited."


    "How does that help me?" She frowned, not understanding.


    "I wouldn''t be surprised if the maneuvering section of the library has Apprentice-level techniques that allow the user to evade straight attacks and close the distance between the user and their opponent." Rui mentioned. "If you can find techniques like that, you better purchase and master them. Also, I wouldn''t be surprised if the offense section of the Apprentice library has techniques that are specifically meant to inflict damage on strikes and attacks optimally. Thus, every time they attack you to push you out of range, their limbs endure damage. Something like that could also work." He said.


    She grew engrossed as she realized the solutions he considered ''suggestions'' could be the key to erasing the range weakness of her Martial Art. "Thank you for your suggestion! I''ll take that into consideration." She said as she rushed to the Apprentice library.


    Rui chuckled at her retreating form.


    * * * * * * * * * *


    A week had passed by, Rui had finally rued enough experience with the technique he had recently learnt. He had spent the entire week testing the techniques against different types of Martial Art with different ranges, different specializations in regards to fields, Martial Art centered around different principles, mechanics and systems.


    He had gone onto make several adjustments to the way he used certain techniques. He had optimized the way he used Outer Convergence and Inner Divergence, though those were the easy parts. What he had trouble with was optimizing his application of Blink.Original from N?velDrama.Org.


    For one, he had already resolved not to reveal his mastery of this technique to the students of the Academy. Which meant he could not test his application of the technique against his peers andpetitors in the Martial Festival.


    Fortunately, he had managed to find a solution. He had trained with his former Apprentice supervisors from back when he was merely a student in the Explorer Stage.


    He could have chosen to train with the Martial Squires, but had ultimately decided against that. As helpful, knowledgeable and experienced as they were, they were simply far too strong on a fundamental level to be of use and to be able to provide what he was looking for.


    Martial Squires seemed to live and view the world on a fundamentally different level of speed and time. Blink was an Apprentice-level technique that was wholly ineffective against Martial Squires no matter how much they held back. At the very least his remaining Apprentice-level techniques were such that as long as the Martial Squires held back most of their power and reduced theirbat prowess to the Apprentice Realm. But the same was not true for Blink, it simply would not work against them no matter what they did.


    Inparison, the Martial Apprentice instructors were susceptible to the technique. All of the instructors he had approached had readily agreed to help him out even though mentoring and sparring with Martial Apprentice students was well outside their purview. Rui had an extremely good reputation among the staff of the education department, and was what many would consider the ideal student.


    After long periods of training with them, he had finally reached a satisfactory level offort and practical real-world proficiency with techniques he had learnt.


    With that out of the way. He hadpleted all the agendas that were holding him back from the next stage of missionpletion.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 147 Unknown

    Rui had two goals with the next phase of missionpletion.


    The first was to diversify his experience with different sses and types of missions. He intended to sign up for different missions outside of the standard bodyguard or protection missions. He had long grown bored of these kinds of missions and wanted to at the very least try out different kinds of missions before returning to a bodyguard mission.


    The second goal was to umte an evenrger number of merits and purchase powerful trump cards that he would hopefully be able to master before the Kandrian Martial Festival would roll around. His foundation was not truly solid as Outer Convergence bolstered his offense and Inner Divergence that solidified his defense, perhaps he ought to strengthen his grappling since it had been neglected a bit, but that wasn''t a big issue.


    The best way forward was to purchase the most powerful techniques within the library with the highestpatibility with the VOID algorithm that he possible could purchase. This would most definitely cost him a bomb of martial credits. So, he needed toplete as many high-grade missions as he possibly could to stack as much martial cash as he could.


    With these two goals in mind. He strode into the Martial library with a determined expression. He pointedly ignored defense-ss of missions that called out to him, instead ncing at the other four sections of the library, considering all of them carefully


    The first ss of missions he immediately crossed out was the Shadow ss. This was the ss of covert and furtive missions; the requirements of these missions were almost certainly beyond him. Most of the non-trivial mission would likely require multiple stealth-oriented techniques and multiple sensory oriented techniques for surveince, reconnaissance and espionage.


    He had initially sworn off covert operation missions because he wasn''t particrly interested them, but since then he hade to realize that if he truly wanted to be able to adapt to any Martial Art, any foe and any threat, he needed to obtain some degree of proficiency in all fields. There would always be certain


    But for now, he felt no urge to take up any Shadow ss missions, nor was he particrly qualified.


    And with that, he added the shadow ss of missions to no-go club where it gave the lonely defense-ss of missions somepany.


    Rui''s attention turned to remaining three sses of missions that had yet to be striked out.


    Hunter ss.


    Offense ss.


    Misceneous ss.


    Misceneous ss was also not something he was particrly interested in, perhaps even less so than his interest in the Shadow ss of missions. The entire ss was just a storage ce for a bunch of missions that didn''t fall into the other four big categories of missions.


    That left the hunter and offense ss of missions.


    The offense ss of missions while quite desirable did not offer anything to him from the private sector within the Kandrian Empire. Since Martial Apprentices did not receive international missions, asides from highest grades of Martial Apprentices. If he wanted an offense ss mission, it would have to be a Kandrian-authorized mission, which he would have to directly apply for at themissions department of the Academy.


    The hunter-ss of missions was much more essible.


    He shrugged, walking towards the hunting-ss section of the Martial library.


    He had always been interested in hunting-ss missions and had wanted to give them a go, but hadcked confidence in his foundation. But now he was quite confident, and now was good as any a time to apply for a hunting mission.


    The hunter-ss section of the library was further divided into multiple subsses and sub-sections.<sub> </sub>


    Extermination-subss; Missions centered around the extermination of non-human organisms.


    Procurement-subss; Missions centered around procurement of a specified non-human living or non-living target located within a sufficiently uncolonized natural environment.


    Reconnaissance-subss; Missions centered around the procurement of information rted to or involved operating within a sufficiently uncolonized natural environment.


    Extraneous-subss; Missions that involved operating within a sufficiently uncolonized environment that did not fall into the former three categories.


    Rui noticed that all of them specified ''sufficiently uncolonized natural environment'' as a condition for the mission to fall into the sub-ss. This was because this was the defining feature of the hunting ss of missions. If they did not involve natural environments that weren''t colonized by humans, then they simply weren''t in the hunter-ss of missions.


    He didn''t have any particr preference for any of the sub-ss of missions, so he walked right into the reconnaissance-subss.


    A lot of the missions were centered around overgrowth or over-poption of a certain species of flora or fauna in certain parts in the regions in the geographic vicinity of the town of Hajin. Many of them were missions centered around dangerous beasts that had wandered and inhabited areas to close to dense human poption.


    They were quite intriguing andpelling; it had taken Rui a while to let it sink how different from defense-ss missions these missions were. The mindset and the protocols were quite different as well.


    Just as he was skimming through the mission bills, one particr mission caught his eye.


    [Hunter-ss: Reconnaissance-extermination nested-mission


    Mission description: 1) To investigate and deliver a report on a single(suspected) unknown beast responsible for the destabilization of the ecosystem of the Shaia ins via mass hunting and 2) to eliminate said unknown beast(s) if difficulty grade as evaluated by the Martial Academy is within the evaluated difficulty grade of mission


    Difficulty Grade: 5


    Target location range estimate: Within 10-kilometer radius of (48.5, 39.7)Belongs to ? n0velDrama.Org.


    Initial mission time period: 30 days


    Missionmencement: Immediate


    Skillset pre-requisites: 1 mid-grade sensory technique, 3 offense-oriented techniques, 3 defense-oriented techniques, 2-maneuvering oriented techniques.


    Sessful Completion Renumeration: 17 gold coins and 3 silver coins/450 martial credits.]


    The reward had drawn him to the mission. He was quite intrigued by the mission as whole as well. Apparently, a myste beast or a group of beasts were responsible for destabilizing the ecosystem dramatically, however the species of the beast was unknown. Thus, the first part of the mission was merely reconnaissance, where he had to observe and gather as much information and intelligence on the beast. The second part of the mission was to exterminate it if the Martial Academy evaluated the difficulty of the mission to be within grade five.


    Rui picked up the mission bill, he definitely wanted to know more about this mission.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 148 Detail

    Nested missions were missions with multiple objectives and goals. These were typically objectives that could not be separated from the other or were rted closely enough that it was more efficient to lump them together in a nested mission.


    Rui had noticed that the client of the mission was the Ministry of Ecology and Environment. A ministry established by the Royal Family to maintain and regte the exotic and esoteric fauna and flora of the Kandrian Empire.


    Rui had been initially quite surprised that a society as scientifically primitive as the Kandrian Empire had established a serious environmental government organization aimed at regting the ecology and environment of the Kandrian Empire when he''d first learned of it long ago, but it hade to make more sense the more he learnt about this world.


    <o>,m The natural environments of Gaia, the Panama continent and the Kandrian Empire were far more dangerous than that of Earth''s. Furthermore, they were far more economically important than that of Earth''s. These natural ecological environments were the source of the many miraculous esoteric and exotic resources of many kinda that served as the foundation of the technological capabilities of not just the Kandrian Empire, but also all of human civilization.</o>


    If the environment was not regted properly, and were to copse, then human civilization would copse immediately after as well. The natural environment needed to be protected strictly because of this.


    The environment also needed to be limited. Because the many species that inhabited thisnd were extremely powerful and could only be stopped by Martial Artists or through the proprietary technological solutions of the Royal Family. If not limited, they were capable of inflicting untold suffering and death upon humans. But they could not be fully exterminated either, because they were part of a delicate ecosystem that needed them.


    There needed to be a delicate bnce between protection and oppression, which is why the Ministry of Ecology and Environment existed. They ensured the ecological and environmental parameters did not go below a certain level and ensured it did not exceed a particr level.


    When the ecological and environmental parameters threatened to exceed the established thresholds, they would usuallymission the Martial Union and cooperate with them via the terms and protocols established in the Kandrian Martial Convenant; the contract between the Martial Union and the Royal Family.


    This nested mission was one such example. An unknown beast had destabilized the ecosystem of the Shaia ins, a rich fertile ind outside of the town of Hajin, and the Ministry had taken action by cooperating with the Martial Union to send a grade-five Martial Apprentice to investigate and potentially eliminate the dangerous beast.


    Rui noticed he fulfilled the skillset pre-requisite of the mission, which was not small. He even satisfied the mid-grade sensory technique requirement thanks to having mastered Seismic Mapping. This condition probably existed because the necessity for environmental awareness was much higher in the hunter-ss of missions than in the defense-ss of missions.Original from N?velDrama.Org.


    Unfortunately, Rui couldn''t gain more information without epting the mission. This was because of the protection of personal information policy that the Martial Union guaranteed to their clients. A lot of the details ofmissions were quite sensitive and confidential. A lot of clienteles simply wouldn''tmission Martial Artists from the Martial Union if the Martial union hadn''t taken such measures to prevent data leaks. The information that was on public disy was merely information that the clients had consented to disying.


    (''I guess I''ll just ept the mission then.'') He shrugged. He had already resolved to take a hunter-ss mission. This mission was as good as any to start with in order to diversify his experience. It was even better because the mission sounded quite interesting.<sub> </sub>


    He quickly took the mission bill to the application registrar, and immediately took a seat in the library to read more about the mission.


    First traces of ecological destabilization in the Shaia ins had been noted about three weeks ago. The poption of the dominant herbivorous species like the six-legged deer and the triple-tailed Gazelles native to the Shaia ins had been decreasing rather abruptly. The sightings had begun sporadically since then as a number of native residents who survived an encounter reported a strange multi-legged creature that had been seening and leaving out of apparently nowhere at a distance.


    The description of the creature was rather bizarre, it had a mouse like main body, covered in scales instead of fur, with allegedly twelve limbs and a long tail and had a very odd-shaped bite pattern based on elementary surveys conducted by the Ministry. This information alone was insufficient for the Ministry to identify its species.


    Thankfully, thebat prowess of the creature was estimated to be at a low-mid grade Martial Apprentice Realm, since it was verifiably unable to hunt certain native apex predators of mid-grade Apprentice Realmbat prowess.


    Thus came the mission, the mission was to procure as much intel and relevant information as possible, including but not limited to; Appearance, primary habitat, caloric consumption, travelling patterns, means of travel and diet etc.


    At first, Rui found it absurd that a Martial Artist could be expected to perform all these tasks, but the mission specified that the Ministry would provide the Martial Artist with user-friendly tools that made it elementarily simply to record the required information. He merely needed to press the right buttons at the right time for a particr recording function. Meaning he didn''t need to actually mentally engage in any boring ecological procedures.


    If thebat prowess of the beast was at the expected level, then he was expected to proceed with exterminating the beast as a part of the second objective his mission.


    The rest of the mission bill went into the protocols that the Martial Artist needed to abide by, as well as some additional information.


    "Alright." Rui shut mission bill. "Let''s go for this."


    He immediately headed towards the Commission department to begin the pre-mission protocols.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 149 Guidelines And Protocols

    "Sign here onest time and you''re good to go." A staff member in the dispatch facility informed him. "Good luck on your mission."


    "Thank you." Rui nodded as he collected the assigned standard gear. In addition to the mission recording-device he was expected to use to update the Martial Academy, he was also issued an eco-survey device by apparently themission department of the Ministry of Ecology and Environment meant to be the tool with which he could procure the information and intelligence required by the ministry.


    He left behind his mask this time, he was dealing with a beast, not a human that could track him down via his identity. There was no risk associated with not concealing his appearance. He was grateful, as well-made andfy as the masks were, they were still a pain in the ass.


    The Shaia ins were a good three hours outside Hajin, by carriage. He, however, simply needed to jog and he would reach the ce in an hour. Leaving Hajin would require around an hour as well, since it was both big and a dense and popted.


    Once he left Hajin, he heaved a sigh of relief.


    This was the second time he had stepped out of Hajin for a mission, he had to admit that the less developed uncolonized areas were truly scenic and picturesque natural environments. Last time, he had been too tense to appreciate it well, especially since they were guaranteed to be ambushed by a bandit force led by Martial Apprentices.


    This time, however, he was much more rxed and calmer. He was far stronger than he was before and this mission wasn''t nearly as dangerous as hisst one.


    The endlessly extending greenery across the smooth topography, coupled with the cool breeze of fresh air pierced by the gentle warmth of the rising sun.


    Truly a peaceful sensation that did the concept of paradise justice. Especially to someone from Earth. Humans had ruined Earth''s atmosphere with smoke and greenhouse gases. Rui was quite grateful that the Panama continent had yet to follow suit. He didn''t anticipate they ever would, given that fossil fuels were worthless garbage in front of the miraculous esoteric and exotic resources of the of Gaea.


    His pleasant surroundings had made the mission seem less of a chore and more of a vacation, and he quickly reached the Shaia ins, looking down upon the vast ins from atop of a cliff.<sub> </sub>


    It was an endless t expanse of endless varieties of grass with dense distribution of wide-branched trees that spanned across the ins. In the distance he could see a lot of fauna, herds of six-legged deers, birds and other smaller mammals. The ins were vast enough to expand past the horizon, making for a potentially huge area over which the target of his mission could be located over. Furthermore, the intelligence provided by the Martial Academy and the Ministry indicated that the beast or beasts in question were quite elusive in nature.


    There were guidelines for surveince missions that were created by the Martial Union and the Ministry of Ecology and Environment such as this, to help Martial Artistsplete their missions with greater ease. There was even a corresponding protocol system that helped Martial Artists decide what courses of action where most apt for certain situations. Furthermore, in a lot of the missions they provided more direct guidelines so that Martial Artists didn''t have to make decision regarding a field they had no expertise in


    One of the rmended surveince methods was static surveince for this particr mission was; permanent employment ofrge-scale sensory techniques during the period of highest activity. The Ministry of Ecology and Environment had stated in the mission bill that the evidence they had gathered suggested that the organism in question was primarily nocturnal.


    By evaluating past known locations of hunting prey, the Ministry could correspond those locations with the known habitat cycle of the herbivorous species of the Shaia ins, the Ministry could roughly estimate the time of these hunting incidents. Then after further corroborating the evidence with timings from eyewitnesses, they could generally infer that the beast was most active during the middle of the night.


    This was good news for Rui because animals weren''t nocturnal and would be at rest at night, it was much easier for his Seismic Mapping technique to allow him to detect movement across much greater distances. This meant that if the target of his mission was extremely active during the night, then its seismic signature would be much more ever-changing than the seismic signature of animal resting stationarily. This meant that the target would be much more identifiable.


    Grid searching was anothermon way of coveringnd to find the primary habitat of animals. During the day, when the probability of the beast of beasts resting and sleeping was the highest, Rui would scale the Shaia ins, grid by grid until his sensory technique detected the presence of the wanted beast.


    Grid searching was amon method by which forest surveying teams would map and scale forests back on Earth, it was an efficient way of mapping and scaling any piece of area and reduced the margin of error significantly. By focusing thoroughly on one grid at a time, it prevented haphazardous and unstructured surveince.N?velDrama.Org content.


    These two surveince methods covered Rui for the day and night. Thankfully, he had brought many rejuvenation potions along with him allowing him to persist over longer expanses of time to increase the speed at which hepleted this mission.


    The grid search would only be useful during the day when the target of the mission was stationary and resting. If it was active like all the other animals, then grid searching would be utterly useless because the target of the mission would likely not only not be present at its primary hunting spot but also be travelling across the entirety of the Shaia ins, hunting or doing whatever apex predators did when they weren''t hunting.


    asionally missing content, please report errors in time.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 150 Time For Action?

    Rui pressed a button his standard-issue mission-tracking device that indicating arrival at the mission location, and another one right beside it, indicating themencement of the mission. The reconnaissance part of the mission was rather simple, albeit long and tiring.


    He had already begun the grid search as per mission guidelines. He divided the Shaia ins into one-acre squares. One acre was thergest area over which he had confidence of detecting the target of his mission, anyrger and the input was too undecipherable. There was too much activity during the day, he would probably be able to expand that range significantly, during the night.Belongs to ? n0velDrama.Org.


    Using some convenient standard-issue tools for hunter-ss missions, he was able to begin his grid searching process rather seamlessly.


    He closed his eyes, trying his best to focus on the input of Seismic data and deciphering its meaning. Seismic Mapping gave him a rough picture of the topography, as well as objects in the environment. What it couldn''t do however, give him an exact picture of the object radiating seismic vibrations. Of course, he could indirectly infer the source of certain seismic radiation, through the number of contact points on the ground as well as their weight.


    Humans walked with two legs, with two feet touching the ground, that along with the fact that he could estimate their weight, as well as the shape of their feet allowed him to instantly judge that they''re humans. To some degree he could extend this identification process to animals as well, but he needed to be familiar with their seismic signature.


    So, before Rui even began the actual grid search, he first spent as much time needed in order to be able to identify and distinguish seismic signatures of the mostmon types of animal species that could potentially throw his identification off by confusing him.


    In order to be able to detect the target of his mission, he needed to know what it definitely wasn''t, only then could detect it when it did enter his Seismic sense.


    He took his time as he memorized the seismic signatures of the six-legged deer and the triple-pronged gazelles so that he could instantly dismiss them when he detected their seismic signature.


    As time passed, he grew more and more familiar with the seismic radiation of the Shaia ins. Before what was an inscrutable influx of Seismic data was not slowly starting to turn into a clearer and clearer picture.


    It had taken a long time before he was finally at a stage where he could proceed with the mission with confidence. He opened his eyes in exhaustion, reaching for a rejuvenation potion.


    "Oh shit." He cursed when he saw the sun going down. Seismic Mapping did not tell him the time of the day nor could it tell him that the sun was going on because the sun did not produce any seismic radiation.


    He had grown so engrossed that he hadpletely lost track of time.


    "Oh well, I guess I can just start the grid search tomorrow." He sighed. For now, it looked like he would have to begin the static surveince first.


    He brought out the mission bill as he nced at the local-migration patterns of herbivorous herds in the Shaia ins. If the target of his mission were to begin a hunting spree, then he would be close to the likeliest locations he would likely run into the creature, or creatures.<sub> </sub>


    He activated Seismic Mapping, and extended his range as far as possible. Seismic Mapping as a sensory technique did not have any hard fixed defined limit as for how far it could allow him to sense seismic radiation. However, the further away the source of seismic radiation, the more muffled and less clear it was. It was, in a way, simr to the auditory sense.


    However, Rui was not looking for something detailed or clear. He wanted to locate the biggest gathering of resting herds of herbivores before they went to rest and stopped producing as much seismic radiation, making them harder to detect.


    He had already managed to narrow down the directions he conducted the search in thanks to the intel provided by themission department of the Ministry of Ecology and Environment, now all he had to was find the biggest source of general seismic radiation and he could be rtively certain that herds of herbivores were responsible for that. That was because thergest groups of animals of a single species were those of herbivores.


    Predators generally were either lonesome or part of a very small pack or pride.


    This was Rui''s strategy of finding the location of the herbivore herds before the target of his mission did.


    "There they are." He said with knitted eyebrows, trying to sense the precise direction of the source of the seismic radiation he hoped was the target of his target.


    He immediately began sprinting at top speed, activating both his Apprentice-level techniques to the absolute maximum while also using Outer Convergence to boost his travel speed, sprinting at incredibly fast speeds.


    He could sense the jolting seismic radiation that doing this caused. He could feel the earth trembling at every step of his.


    Soon, he could more clearly sense multiple sources of seismic radiation in different directions. The closer he got, what he thought was the result of a single source was actually multiple sources. It was just that the seismic radiation had interfered with each other too much over a great distance, making it seem it wasing from a single source.


    He stopped running as hard once he was at a distance of five hundred meters from the herd, and stopped using any Apprentice-level techniques whatsoever at three hundred meters away. They would draw too much attention, there was no point in pursuing them if they simply ran away from him.


    He crouched, taking cover under the tall grass ubiquitous in the Shaia ins.


    (''Alright, it''s time for action.'') He thought to himself. His heartrate elerated as his tension and alertness grew.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 151 Exploring Possibilities

    The herd began rxing as they settled down, resting as the sun had almostpletely dipped under the horizon. Rui observed carefully, waiting and hoping for the target of his mission to show up. As the night grew darker, he couldn''t help but wonder how the target of his mission had managed to hunt so voraciously and yet be so elusive.


    The Shaia ins were gigantic, meaning the herbivore poption was immense. In order for a single or even a handful of beasts to hunt so excessively that they significantly impacted the herbivore species and be still be so elusive that the Ministry had a hard time learning more about it, he couldn''t even imagine how such a thing came to be.


    It didn''t matter how powerful one was, hunting a huge number of herbivorous animals everyday was not something that could be done very secretively. If it was just one or two animals, it would be one thing, but as many as would be needed to affect the ecosystem?


    Was it really possible to do such a thing uncaught?


    Rui intended to find out. Out of all the herds he had detected, he had chosen thergest herd. Chances were that the target of his mission would go forrger groups of prey because of the greater amount of food it could eat. Thus, increasing Rui''s chances of being able to ambush the predator.


    Of course, it was entirely possible that the predator roamed around the Shaia ins in a much more random fashion, hoping to get lucky enough to stumble into a small heard that he could thenpletely devour.


    If that was the case, perhaps Rui''s strategy would not necessarily increase his odds.


    (''Can''t be helped.'') He shrugged. The Shaia ins were enormous, there was a limit to what could be done by him. There was even a chance he would fail this mission and the Martial Union would dispatch a team of Martial Apprentices to aid with the reconnaissance and extermination of the target or targets of the mission.


    Or he would get lucky.


    Heid in wait the entire night, staying up using a rejuvenation potion to erase his drowsiness. He waited patiently.


    And waited some more.


    And some more.


    And just a little bit more.


    And soon he had waited so long that the sun began rising out of its slumber.


    "Dammit." Rui cursed. "I knew this would take patience and perseverance. But I may have underestimated the psychological fortitude required for such missions."


    Now that dawn hade, he ceased the static surveince and returned to grid searching.


    Using some handy small portable tools that came with the standard gear for reconnaissance hunting missions, he was easily able to divide the Shaia ins into squares, positioning himself at the center of the squares and began applying Seismic Mapping to scan the area thoroughly.<sub> </sub>


    Trees, shrubs, grass, insects, smaller mammals and even somerger ones entered his senses. He could even sense an ecosystem within thend. Seismic Mapping did have subterranean sensing capabilities to a high extent. The problem was that it became harder to form a clear image of distances deep unground than it was to form onnd, because the human mind found it harder to parse information about an environment it did not live in.


    The goal of the grid searching was to locate the habitat of the target of the mission via direct surveince, so he especially kept a look out for any seismic signatures that were either unknown, unusual or could match the estimated appearance of the target of his mission.


    It was only a few hourster that he ran into something.


    "A six-legged deer corpse." Rui muttered as he approached the corpse. It could barely be called corpse, since almost only the bones had been left behind. Yet the remnant flesh had not rotted much at all, despite this. There were barely any flies circling the corpse either.


    (''All of this indicates that the corpse is still fresh as far as time since death goes.'') Rui thought to himself, he was no forensic expert. But he could be reasonably certain that the deer was hunted very recently.


    (''Last night.'') Rui realized.


    This meant that the beast had ran into different herds than the one Rui had been trailing. His luck mst have sucked.


    At a distance, several more deer corpses could be seen, all in a very simr condition. This was very odd to Rui for several reasons.


    "Why are there these many corpses in such a small geographic area?" He pondered out aloud.


    Normally, when a predator hunted an animal from a herd, the herd would evacuate from the area of the predator immediately, getting far away before finally stopping. Meaning, by the time the predator consumed the food he had caught, there would be no more prey anywhere within its range of vision.Original from N?velDrama.Org.


    Which is why having numerous corpses so close to each other was rather strange. It was almost as if the herd of animals simply stood around patiently watching the predator fill its belly until it was to be there turn.


    "Something is off here." He murmured. He was no zoology or ecology schr, but it didn''t take a genius to understand that there was something strange going on here.


    "Either the predator consumes its food at extraordinary speeds, such that it has finished consuming its prey before the rest of the herd can escape..." He voiced out on possibility. This was a terrifying possibility. What kind of a beast could instantly the sizeable carcass of a six-legged deer to such a degree that little more than bones were left with such speed?


    "...Or the predator simply killed as many deer in rapid session as it could before proceeding to consume them after rather than before, in order to maximize the amount of food it got from a single hunt."


    This possibility was potentially even worse. This implied the beast had a decent degree of awareness, intelligence and self-restraint.


    Just the thought of that made the atmosphere heavy.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 152 Discrepancies

    Generally, predators were too hungry to bother in doing anything else asides from consuming their meal once they hunted their prey. These beasts were already entirelycking in any significant self-awareness and self-restraint to be able to resist their hedonistic urges. In a state of heightened hunger, it was almost certain that consuming their prey to satiate their hunger would be their priority.


    Apparently, the target of his mission disagreed. He knew the carcasses were likely the remnant of the target of his mission. They did match the intelligence provided to him.


    The intelligence provided by the Ministry of Ecology and Environment stated clearly that the target devoured almost every ounce of flesh of the carcasses of its prey. The pictures provided by them matched the sight of the carcasses he saw.


    Rui sniffed the air. There was a faint acidic odour in the air, this also matched the traces of a corrosive acid detected on the carcass and the soil beneath. The Ministry of Ecology and Environment had concluded that the beast target of the mission likely had an acidic saliva that it used to aid in the digestion of the carcasses of its prey.


    If that was the case, then Rui had genuinely begun to give more credibility to his first conjecture that the beast was able to consume the carcasses of its prey at an incredibly rapid speed. Acidic substances were able to degenerate and dpose organic matter incredibly fast and thoroughly.


    Still, there were many more oddities at the scene.N?velDrama.Org content rights.


    Rui looked around the environment and the corpses, frowning.


    There were several things of note.


    First, this was a section of the Shaia ins with very few trees and only short grass. Meaning it was an open part of the ins. It was basically impossible to hide.


    The second thing Rui was paying attention to was the ground. It wasprised of yey-mud with high-silt saturation, the type that would retain foot prints quite well.


    He could see hoof-prints that matched what one would expect from six-legged deer. But what surprised him was that there weren''t any footprints of the predator in the distance that led to the carcasses.


    So how did the predator reach them in the middle of this open field without leaving any footprints on the way?


    (''So, it hunted the deer in the middle of this open field where every step left a footprint, even moreso when you''re moving faster and stepping harder, without leaving any trail of footprints?'') Rui frowned.


    Rui closed his eyes as he processed through all the information avable.


    There were several straightforward conjectures to be made with the intelligence provided by the Ministry of Environment and Ecology as well as his own observations and deductions.


    The fact that there were no footprints visible entering and exiting open in mean that either they were never there, or they had been erased.


    Thetter seemed too absurd, a predator beast erasing its own tracks? Furthermore, even if it erased its own tracks, how did un-crush the grass that something of its size and power would doubtlessly crush on its way in?


    Furthermore, why didn''t it erase its footprints from when it rested and consumed its prey?<sub> </sub>


    Rui shook his head; it was far too unlikely in the face of the other option.


    The other option was that the tracks had never been made at all.


    This directly followed with two of the least absurd options; The first option was that it had the ability to fly, glide or float, to some extent.


    The second was that it was deceptively light, and thus did not create a trail of trampled grass and footprints.


    He had considered whether this ce just happened to be the primary habitat and home of the animal and the deer had unwittingly stumbled upon it, which seemed to be the most usible and reasonable option at first, but how did it leave without leaving any footprints?


    It''s not as though the other options were without issues. If it was light? Why did set footprints after entering? Rui wondered about this as he stared at a stange footprint he had seen among the hoof-prints of the deer that matched the descriptions of the creature, and probably belonged to the target of the mission.


    That left flight, which wasn''t inherently weird as a possibility, wings were extremelymon in the animal kingdom, after all. But none of the eye-witness ounts mentioned any wings. Furthermore, the beast was immensely elusive to ordinary forest surveyors of the Ministry of Ecology and Environment apparently.


    How could a big beast that travelled by flying in the air possibly be elusive? Travelling birds in an open sky were among the easiest things to spot, and birds were far smaller and inconspicuous than an apex predator flying around in the sky.


    "Something''s not adding up." Rui muttered. He wasn''t able to figure out what.


    It could be that the beast just had some esoteric capabilities that gave it some abnormal and unconventional degree of stealth. Maybe intangibility, though that would beg the question why it was ever sighted at all.


    Or why the deer clearly showed a running pattern that indicated they could see their pursuer.


    Rui documented his findings using the eco-survey device that the Ministry of Ecology and Environment had given him for situations just like this.


    As he continued his grid searching, he ran into multiple odd instances where traces of a hunt urred or a trace of the predator could be seen.


    He also ran into corpses left behind by the native predators of the Shaia ins, species of the big cats, that normally hunted the herbivorous species of the Shaia ins. In these cases, he was able to deduce what had happened from the environment around the corpse, fairly straightforwardly with no logical discrepancies.


    As time passed, he managed to grid search a decent portion of thend, which he could conclude were not the primary home to the beast.


    Soon, dusk came, and he prepared for a night of dynamic surveince. Hopefully he would run into the beast tonight.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 153 The Key To The Mystery!

    Rui used Seismic Mapping to search for thergest source of seismic radiation and began heading towards it as fast he could. After some time, he ran into a herd of deer numbering hundreds, which was quiterge. And he tailed them at a distance, careful not to alert them of his presence, which was easy enough when one considered that they were resting.


    Now he just had to pray that this herd would be targeted so that he could get a close look at it for once.


    As time passed by, his hoped grew more and more dull. He waited, but nothing happened. His patience wore off and he felt tired from simply waiting and doing nothing.All rights ? N?velDrama.Org.


    In a way, he hade to develop respect and admiration for predators. Predators often had to endure agonizingly long waits before a realistic possibility of a sessful hunt urred. That respect extended to hunters as well. These Martial Artists that regrly took hunter-ss missions were definitely not to be trifled with.


    (''Well, even bodyguard missions can be long period of patience-draining waiting.'') Rui realized. Though he had never gone through a rigorous long-term bodyguard mission quite yet. His only two major bodyguard missions were quite shortpared to the norm.


    As Rui began to delve into his thoughts a bit, a sudden abrupt shift in the seismic radiation he was sensing with Seismic Mapping drew his attention.


    He sensed what appeared to be a lot of seismic radiation from one particr source away in the distance, he was too far away to be able to assess exactly what the source of all this seismic radiation was, but he could not ignore it.


    It didn''t make sense for such seismic turmoil to ur normally. Most animals were resting, furthermore the only species that were had enough weight and numbers to produce the seismic noise he was sensing were the herbivores.


    (''A herd of deer or gazelles are running.'') Rui realized in excited anticipation that he might actually be detecting an ongoing attack by the target of his mission.


    Of course, this wasn''t necessarily the case. There were other predatory animals that hunted at night what he detected might be an ongoing hunt by another native predator species of the local ecosystem of the Shaia ins.


    Still, he couldn''t let it go. He immediately got up and began sprinting towards the source of the seismic radiation he had detected; his abrupt speedy movements had shocked the living daylights out of therge herd of deer that had had no idea that Rui had been stalking them for pretty much the entire night.


    Rui sprinted excitedly, getting closer and closer. He thanked the fact that the target of the mission wasrgely nocturnal, this was truly beneficial to the Seismic Mapping technique. Nights were quieter, and generally had less seismic radiation and noise running through thend than during the day, making it easier for Rui distinguish the noise quite well.


    It was the equivalent of the difference between standing in a hall saturated with people talking and a hall with only two people.


    In the former, it would be a miracle if anything could be properly heard and distinguished across the room, in thetter one would be able to hear even soft sounds from across the room.


    As Rui sprinted and got closer and closer however, he noticed that the seismic noise was reducing.


    p (''Wait, why is it reducing?'') Rui panicked. (''Is the hunt ending?'')</anda>


    That was terrible news. He began sprinting at even higher speeds, pushing himself to the absolute limit. Using the conjunction of Parallel Walk, Bnced Direction and Outer Convergence, exceeding his speed limits, this was a bit haphazardous on his part since Outer Convergence was not a technique optimized for maneuvering, and it''s not like he had massive amounts of experience with it either.


    Each step sent him flying meters at a time almost causing him to fall at times, but the speed boost was definitely worth it.


    As he got closer, he began to panic even more. This was because he was able to sense the source of the seismic radiation with much greater rity than before.


    BOOM


    Hended hard, stopping abruptly as he skidded across the mud and grass. He quickly scanned his surroundings carefully.


    Arge herd of gazelles fleeing away.<sub> </sub>


    Corpses of gazelles.


    But nothing resembling his target, or even any predator at all, really.


    (''Damn!'') Rui cursed. (''Where the fuck is it?'')


    Rui had so many questions.


    There was something hunting the gazelles just minutes ago, and now he couldn''t sense any animal resembling it onnd at all?


    What were the odds that it escaped at the preciselyst moment?


    Rui felt truly frustrated, it was genuinely horrendous luck.


    He quickly got up and began scanning the area for any clues that might give him greater insight into the target of his mission.


    He nced over at the skeleton carcasses, there was still fresh acidic saliva over some of the leftover flesh, sizzling as it rapidly melted the flesh and skin into a gooey sludge that dripped into the ground. This confirmed that it could eat at incredibly rapid speeds, something he and the Ministry of Ecology and Environment had already suspected.


    He looked around at the ground. The soil was indented with the footprints from the hooves of gazelles, pairs of footprints with three long ws, which was identical to the previous footprints he had seen as well as the information provided by the Ministry.


    Yet once again, the footprint trail of the herd of deer as well as his own, could be seening and going and there was no iing or outgoing trail of footprints that indicated the creature came and went bynd.


    He stomped the ground in frustration, using Outer Convergence to vent. A tiny reverberation spread through the ground, just enough to shift the closest carcass by half a foot.


    Rui briefly nced at it, and just as he was about leave, something caught his eye.


    A strange indentation in the ground just under where the corpse had been a second ago.


    Rui kicked the skeleton carcass away, as he crouched to get a closer look. The mud was uneven and grass had been disheveled and thoroughly crushed and uprooted.


    Rui frowned as he sifted through the mud, digging deeper and deeper as recognition struck him like a lightning bolt.


    "This ce... has been dug up and refilled extremely recently!" Rui eximed. The mud was at an unnaturally uneven height, it was wetter and darker and the mud was easier to dig up, with no resistance.


    These were all ssic tell-tale signs of very recently dug up and hastily refilled mud!


    "Wait..." Rui realized immediately. "Don''t tell me..."


    Rui realized he just might have figured out the ley to the mystery!


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 154 Course Of Action

    A huge bombshell had exploded in Rui''s mind. Suddenly, everything from before was starting to make sense if what Rui was beginning to suspect was true. It was all starting to click.


    Theck of footprint trails iing and exiting the area of the hunt despite the fact that smaller and lighter creatures had footprints iing and outgoing out of the area. Then the presence of its footprints around the carcasses. It''s impressive elusiveness, being able to appear and disappear in and out of an environment far too easily and inscrutably.


    All of this could be exined if the creature was primarily subterranean or is primary mode of transport was subterranean fundamentally!All rights ? N?velDrama.Org.


    This wasn''t an absurd notion. Even on Earth, subterranean fauna was found worldwide and included representatives of many animal groups, mostly arthropods and other invertebrates. However, there was a number of vertebrates, although they were lessmon.


    This paradigm was not necessarily true in the world of Gaea, however. The world of Gaea was filled with many strange and exotic species that were capable of far more than the fauna on Earth was. Although travelling through subterranean means of transport to aplish what the target of his mission had aplished and shown to be capable of was not possible by any Earth-based fauna, the same could not be said of fauna of the world of Gaea.


    By travelling underground, the target creature would be able to travel to and from locations without ever leaving a trail of footprints. However, it may need toe above ground to actually hunt and eat its prey, which would exin why its footprints were there at the site of the skeleton carcasses.


    Everything seemed to fit.


    (''Almost everything.'') Rui corrected. (There''s the question of how my Seismic Mapping didn''t sense it.'')


    Seismic Mapping allowed the user to understand the shape of the topography as well as position of objects on thend via sensing and understanding seismic radiation. If the creature was moving underground incredibly fast, wouldn''t it generate immense amount of seismic vibrations and radiation?


    (''Maybe not.'') Rui conjectured. (''Maybe its body is optimized for geodynamic subterranean to such a degree that it could travel through the ground at incredibly high speeds without producing much disturbance through thend.


    This wasn''t umon in other modes of transport. Birds could fly through air an incredible speeds without ever producing a single sound ever.


    Same for many aquatic creatures, that zipped through water at vigorous speeds.


    If the target of his mission was simr in that nature, then Rui could understand why he had difficulty perceiving it, especially when he had never been within a hundred meters of it. Who knows, perhaps he would actually sense it clearly if he were closer.


    The problem was, the creature was gone just as he arrived.


    (''That''s another issue.'') Rui frowned. (''Was it just dumb luck that it left just a little before I arrived?)<sub> </sub>


    Upon this revtion, Rui wasn''t sure anymore. There were a few more odd things with his subterranean travel hypothesis.


    (''How does it detect its prey or the direction it wants to travel in or general topography underground?'') Rui wondered.


    There''s no way it could see or smell prey underground. Light did not travel underground and neither did odour. There was no air underground either, so how could it hear sound waves through the air?


    (''It might have a seismic sense simr to Seismic Mapping.'') Rui realized. It was a bit of an obvious conclusion once one asked the question how the creature could perceive information while being surrounded by mud, gravel and rocks.


    In that case even more things made sense. His horrible luck was no longer luck but an oue of his target''s sensing of his approaching. That begged the question, why did run away the moment it sensed him? It was an apex predator with prowess at the Apprentice Realm. It shouldn''t necessarily be afraid of a single Martial Apprentice.


    Yet it left the scene the second it sensed, assuming it did sense him.


    ? (''Was it because of how hard and fast I was running.'') Rui wondered. He had used Parallel Walk and Bnced Direction while also using Outer Convergence to boost his speed and stepping power. Having used Seismic Mapping at the same time, he knew for a fact that every step he had taken generated enormous amounts of seismic radiation.


    If the creature could hear through thend, it would have heard a creature causing explosions with every step it took. Every step had enough power to hurt even itself.


    In this case, fleeing away was not a strange choice, Rui realized. He had given the creature an exaggerated impression of himself, causing it to simply flee evacuating the area before this new apex predator reached its location, rather than risking a fight to death with a creature that seemed extremely physically powerful.


    (''That would also exin why it never went after thergest herd in the Shaia ins.'') Rui realized. (''It must have sensed me using my Apprentice-level techniques to chase after the deer, and assumed that I was another apex predator native to thend hunting after that particr herd of six-legged deer, so it avoided conflict by hunting other herds of deer of gazelles that were scattered around the Shaia ins.


    Rui sighed in helpless resignation as he realized the measures he had taken to increase his chances of running into the beast had thoroughly killed any chance of him running into the beast even in a million years.


    Rui exhaled, reminding himself that this was all deductive conjecture, rather an irrefutable proof. He had applied deductive and inductive logic to the data avable and had made some basic presumptions of the target and constructed a well-thought-out possibility that had the highest likelihood of being true than any other hypothesis or theory that wone could conceive. However, he was not a zoological or ecological schr, so his opinion didn''t hold much credibility, even to himself.


    (''I need convey all of this to the Martial Union and the Ministry.'') Rui realized. (''And I need to find some damn proof.'')


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 155 Consideration

    The first thing Rui did was begin documenting the entire scene, he used the eco-survey device that the Ministry of Ecology and Environment provided to him and carefully used it to collect pictures. He especially documented the refilled hole, extensively documenting it so that it couldn''t possibly under-considered when the Ministry went over his reports.


    Once he was done, he began considering his options.


    The first option was to simply routinely continue his mission ording to rmended guidelines, and hope for the best. Ultimately, neither the Martial union and Ministry expected a Martial Apprentice to solve the entire mystery of the mysterious creature all by himself, as long as he fulfilled his duties, he wouldn''t receive any bacsh.


    However, this route reduced the probability of Rui seeding inpleting the mission objectives. Which meant that Rui would not receive the full mission reward if he went down this route, most likely at the very least.


    The second option was to take a more proactive reconnaissance approach to the matter as a whole and begin verifying and gathering evidence of his hypothesis, or gather evidence that ends up disproving his hypothesis one way or another.


    And eventually use this hypothesis to actually fulfill the first objective of his nested mission, which was to collect swathes of data regarding the beast so that the Ministry new exactly what they were dealing with.


    He had already resolved to go for thetter, he just wanted to make sure he wasn''t missing anything and had considered his avable courses of action.


    (''Alright then.'') Rui exhaled, sitting down on a rock after he finished documenting all that needed to be documented. (''Time to make a n.'')


    He grew engrossed,pletely forgetting about the grid searching that he was supposed to engage in. He didn''t particr care either, if his hypothesis was even partially true, then the onnd grid searching was frankly entirely useless and unreliable.


    (''The first primary goal is to finish the first objective of the mission.'') Rui established. (''To do that I primarily need to document its appearance as well as its habitat and home, and ideally tag it with one of the tags that I''ve been provided with.'')


    He though as he nced at one of the small devices themission department of the Ministry Ecology and Environment, it was meant to serve as a rough tracker that Rui could use to tag the target of the mission. Though he wasn''t sure it would stick to the target of his mission if he used it, if his theory was true.


    As for the other objectives, Rui could use his constructed hypothesis of the beast to fulfill the first objective of his mission. If his theory was true, then he would be able to predict or manipte the beast to some extent. Using this, he would be able to gather the information about the creature he needed to fulfill the first objective.


    If that n seeded, it would serve as proof that his theory was, in fact, urate. Since if the theory or hypothesis wasn''t urate enough, any n based on the theory would simply fail. Thus, seeding would be the ideal oue.


    If the n failed, then it was a strong indicator that his theory was partially or entirely wrong, or iplete. Which meant he needed to change his approach.


    Either way, he gained new information.<sub> </sub>


    (''Alright, what n do I enact, that relies on my conjecture to manipte the target of my mission?'') Rui wondered.


    The n needed to rely on predictions that Rui could make if the beast was indeed a subterranean traveler with seismic sensing.


    The first fact of the matter was that it likely hunted in the direction that it detected the seismic radiation characteristic of hooves of herbivorous animals. This was the most straightforward manner in which it could reach its prey.


    Another fact of the matter was that it could travel extremely fast, at the very least as fast Rui, perhaps even faster. This was based on the fact that the creature was already out of Rui''s Seismic Mapping range by the time Rui had reached its hunting site, this was definitely an incredible feat.


    One more fact, if Rui could even call it that, was that it seemed to have an aversion to powerful animals that could potentially kill it. This would exin why it scurried away the moment it sensed Rui, and also why it didn''t hunt for thergest herd of animals that Rui had been surveilling two days ago. This also indicated that the beast was certainly cautious and had some degree of rationality, despite its immense hunger that had caused the problem in the first ce.


    It acted within a certain limit and perhaps that could be used against it in the first ce.


    He nced at the carcasses in the vicinity, recalling that it consumed food at incredible speeds. Rui wondered if that trait was something that could be used against it. Maybe by knowing the timeframe would allow him to predict it...?


    p Rui shook his head, he wasn''t able to conceive of a way that he could catch and document its appearance using that, if anything, that trait just made it irreconcbly harder to catch it, atleast other predators needed to slow down after they hunted.</anda>This content ? N?v/elDr(a)m/a.Org.


    Rui skimmed through the other pieces of information of his theory in his head, looking at each one individually and holistically, wondering how he could exploit them.


    It was difficult because there were too many variables to ount for, and far too many constraints that got in the way of every n.


    (''One of my biggest issues is size of the Shaia ins, it''s too huge, making it difficult for me toe up with a n, especially a n that somehow prevented the beast easily evading me at every turn.'') Rui sighed. (''It''s not like I can use that against it eith-.'')


    Rui froze as an epiphany struck him.


    "Wait a minute, there''s one option I haven''t considered yet..."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 156 This Time

    N?velDrama.Org content rights.


    "Apprentice Rui Quarrier." A woman sitting at a desk said. "We have gone over your request and have epted it, as we informed you. The items you requested will arrive soon enough."


    Rui merely nodded on the other side. "Thank you."


    It had been a week since he had epted the Shaia ins nested mission. He had filed a request to themission department of the Ministry of Ecology and Environment for certain items when he had finallye up with a n to tackle the beast.


    Normally, requesting the client for help was considered unprofessional. However, the ministry was not an ordinary client, but much more of a coborator. This was thanks to the Kandrian Martial Convenant that specified the terms of cooperation between the Ministry of Ecology and Environment and the Martial Union and its Martial Artists.


    Thus, he was able to request aid from the ministry without anypunctions. Thankfully, his request was epted. That was the reason he had visited the closest branch of the ministry; to receive the items he had requested.


    "May I know what the evaluation of the intelligence that I documented was?" Rui inquired. "It would be quite helpful to understand what actual experts think of the data I documented and the hypothesis I provided."


    "It was quite surprising for us to find such a nuanced take and analysis in your personal statement, considering you''re not an expert on the field." She replied with an intrigued expression. "Yet your analysis was quite valid and sound although rough around the edges, the evidence is well documented and supportive of the overall narrative."


    Rui nodded. As long as the Ministry of Ecology and Environment was receptive of the hypothesis, then he likely hadn''t made any ring errors when formting it. Now the only thing he had left to do was execute his n.


    "We''re quite interested in the oue of your strategy, it is a rather novel way of going about reconnaissance." She said. "We wish you good luck."


    "Thank you." Rui stated as he collected the items he had requested. "Well, I''ll take my leave."


    He left the office of the ministry official as he set out to return to the Shaia ins. He was feeling pretty good about this n in his gut and couldn''t wait to try it out this night.


    He nced at the bag, holding it carefully, wary of what were inside.


    Explosives.


    This was his ingenious n. Within the big box in has arms were arge number of timed explosives that he had requested from the Ministry of Ecology and Environment, around thirty small-grade explsoives.


    How these explosives worked? Rui didn''t know, and frankly didn''t care. He only cared about how he could use this to his advantage.<sub> </sub>


    When thinking about how good the target of his mission was at evading him, he realized that he might be able to use this to his advantage. He recalled that just force from his running alone had caused enough seismic radiation to scare the beast off immediately.


    This had been an incredible curse at this point, now he intended to turn into a blessing, by exploiting this trait to fulfill his objectives.


    The idea was simple; If intense seismic radiation made the beast stay away, then he could use this fact to restrict its hunting locations and targets. He could use this to manipte it into going after the hunting target that Rui wanted it to go towards.


    He could do this by rigging these explosives in different locations across the Shaia ins and timing them to explode one-by-one just as dusk came.


    The positioning was what mattered the most. Rui would have to ce them cross the Shaia in in such a manner that all hunting locations except for the one he would be waiting in ambush for would have explosives embedded in thend.


    Just as the hunting time period of the target of his mission was likely to begin, the explosives would all detonate in rapid fashion. This would create immense seismic radiation from a lot of directions. However, the beast wouldn''t be able to know the seismic radiation was caused by explosives. It was extremely likely that the beast would interpret the heavy seismic radiation as the presence of other predators, that had upied all locations except one.


    The only hunting location without a single explosive was the location Rui would be waiting at. To the beast''s seismic sense, this would be the only location with herds of herbivores grazing on grass that didn''t have a single predator in the area.


    Given its tendency to avoidpetition, Rui was quite certain, that if his hypothesis was true, the beast was sure to travel there to hunt for deer and gazelles.


    Rui was quite confident in this n. Even if it didn''t work, it would concretely give him new information by disproving his theory regarding the target of his mission. However, Rui found it quite iprehensible that the n would be an utter failure. He predicted that a partial sess at the very least was guaranteed.


    He had intended to run around the Shaia ins, burying the explosives about a meter deep. He couldn''t bury it too shallow, otherwise far too much energy of the explosives would be wasted into the air. He couldn''t bury it too deep otherwise the beast''s seismic sense would easily detect that the source of the seismic radiation wasn''t from a predator above ground.


    One meter felt just deep enough to retain enough energy to rm the beast while still shallow enough for other predators to not be ruled out as a cause. Of course, Rui had just estimated this intuitively, but he didn''t think it was far off from the optimal height.


    Just as he pondered about the chinks of his n, he had already arrived at the Shaia ins. He gazed at the beautiful expanse of the ins as they extended over the horizon.


    "This time..." His eyes narrowed. "This time I''ll get you."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 157 Time Had Come

    Rui had spent the next few hours cing the explosives in the right locations. He had to be very precise and urate in his cing.


    <o>,m If he threw them around haphazardly, then the beast might simply not take the risk toe hunting at all. He ced all the explosives on the other side of the hunting areas away from the hearnd of the Shaia ins, lining them inwards.</o>


    This would make it seem like very distant predators were approaching each hunting zone from the other side. These explosives were all ced extremely far away from the hunting zone that Rui wanted to guide the beast too, to ensure that they wouldn''t prevent the beast from going where he wanted it to.


    This n did require a bit of luck. Rui needed a herd of deer or gazelle of significant number to graze in the grazingnds where he hadn''t ced any explosives, where he intended to hide, lure and ambush the target of his mission.


    Once he had ced the explosives, he had three hours before it was time. He went over his n once more.


    (''First, I need to find a herd of deer and gazelle in the area I haven''t ced any explosives before dusk arrives.'')


    He couldn''t do this after dusk arrived like he did before, because by then the creature would undoubtedly be awake and active. If he used any Apprentice-level techniques after the creature was awake and alert, then it would immediately detect him and avoid the general area he was in. And he couldn''t possibly travel far without any Apprentice-level techniques.N?velDrama.Org content rights.


    Thus, he ideally should have found at the very least one herd of deer in the location he was nning to lure the beast in. If there were more than one, then he should probably round them up or monitor thergest herd out of all of them.


    He had initially intended to merely gain intelligence; however, the Martial Union and the Ministry of Ecology and Environment had already confirmed that the difficulty of the second objective; the beast''s extermination was within the difficulty grade initially set by the Martial Union. After reviewing all the evidence at hand, they hade to the conclusion that even if a grade-five Martial Artist may not be able to seed in exterminating the beast before it escaped, they were likely strong enough to at the very least escape with their life in a fight against Martial Artists.


    And if they wrong, well, that was the life of a Martial Artist. Every Martial Artist knew that traversing their Martial Path in the Martial World meant a life of peril, they were expected to endure all of it.


    Once Rui had received word of this decision, he had to alter his n a little and prepare himself for potentialbat.


    (''Still, the first objective takes priority.'')


    Rui got up, there wasn''t much time before dusk, he needed to find a herd, thergest herd before the sun dipped and begin trailing them before the beast grew active.


    It hadn''t taken him a particrly long time before this happened. Over the past week his familiarity with the seismic radiation of the Shaia ins had risen immensely, and he had be more proficient with tracking down herds of herbivores. He immediately began running towards the herd, but abstained from using any Apprentice-level techniques, although it was still some time before the beast likely grew active, Rui didn''t want to take any chances at all. He didn''t think the Ministry would take kindly to a request for yet another set of explosives.


    He slowed down once he ran into a big enough herd, and thankfully the onlyrge herd of gazelles in the area, perfect for his n.<sub> </sub>


    This time, instead ofying on the ground, he sat atop a humongous boulder the size of a small skyscraper and watched the herd from above. Against normal predators that relied on normal senses, this may have been a bad decision, but against a beast with a seismic sense, this was the best option.


    The seismic radiation he produced would have to travel through the gigantic boulder and only then through the ground, muffling and distorting the readings to a good degree. Even though the seismic radiation and the location of the source would very much be sensed, it became much harder to interpret the data urately, this was one of the shorings of his Seismic Mapping as well.


    Now, everything was finally in ce, and dusk hade, the beast was on the hunt.


    Rui grew taut with alertness and he dismissed all of his senses to focus his mind utmost on the beast. He didn''t want to miss anything.


    He nced at his pocket watch. (''Any time now....'')


    Suddenly, his seismic sensing picked up a bunch of impacts in the ground across the Shaia ins.


    Rui grinned. The explosives had gone off exactly when he had timed them to.


    He had timed the outermost explosives to go off before the inner explosives. To his Seismic Mapping, it seemed as though giant creatures were taking big burly steps one-by-one, as they walked towards the various grazing areas of the Shaia ins.


    This was exactly what Rui had intended, he had ced and timed the explosives in such a way, that any seismic sense would think that the seismic sounds were caused by big scary giants.


    Furthermore, in all direction except one. The direction Rui was in. The creature would have no choice but to go to the location Rui was at if it wanted to avoid these giant creatures making these huge explosions.


    Just as the explosives all finished exploding, Rui detected a sharp seismic signature roughly moving towards his location at incredibly high speeds from somewhere in the center of the Shaia ins.


    Ruiughed out loud with immense ecstasy and excitement, to think this would work out as well as it seemed to be.


    He calmed down, regaining hisposure, as he got up and prepared himself.


    The time hade.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 158 Hunt Has Begun

    Five hundred meters.


    Two hundred meters.


    One hundred meters.


    Fifty meters.


    Ten meters.


    Just when it was ten meters away from the herd, Rui was already in crouched tensed position, waiting for the right moment to use Bnced Direction, Parallel Walk and Outer Convergence to leap towards it.


    And there it was.


    The ground trembled, and a meter away from herd, a huge bump emerged.


    Five meters in length, five pairs of limbs, scales covering its entire body. But that was not the most eye-drawing part of the beast.


    It had a single big eye, and a circr mouth that expanded immensely to reveal jagged razor-sharp teeth within as multiple tentacle-like tongues protruded out.


    It looked like a monster created by a character design department of a horror film that were allocated far too much time and money to make the monster look as grotesque and terrifying as possible.


    It was the first time that Rui had seen such a grotesque creature in either of his lives.


    Rui immediately began recording from the eco-survey device, relieved that he had effectively fulfilled the first objective of the mission. The eco-survey device was strapped onto his body, a feature that made it convenient to carry around and use immediately when needed, allowing it to witness everything that Rui did.


    Rui waited for it to consume, at the very least, one beast. He wanted to document its consumption to verify that this beast was in fact the beast responsible for the mass-hunting of the herbivorous poption of the Shaia ins.


    (''Nice, nailed it.'') Rui thought ecstatically as he watched the beast consume a gazelle in seconds, as its acidic saliva dposed the deer''s flesh into a gooey sap which was sucked in immediately.


    A living gazelle was reduced to a skeletal carcass in less than a second.


    This was when Rui decided to jump in. He clutched the standard-issue tracking device and leapt towards the beast with Apprentice-level techniques. The beast in turn froze as it detected powerful seismic radiation from very close by. It tilted its head in the direction of the source of the seismic radiation.


    BOOM


    Ruinded ten meters away from it, grinning in ecstasy and flinching in disgust at the beast''s appearance.


    The beast on the other hand, did not look pleased, if it was capable of making expressions in the first ce. It was an apex predator as well, even if it avoided other predators, that was to minimize risk, not because it was incapable of winning. There were very few predators in the Shaia ins more dangerous than itself.


    But Rui was a Martial Apprentice, and was entirely focused on the beast in front of him. The weight of his mind pushed on the beast''s mind, making it wary.


    Every sentient living being had a nascent instinctual sixth sense, if it could be called that, as a result of evolution. This sixth sense was a result of subconscious analysis and evaluation of the risk and danger.


    Right now, the beast''s instincts were warning it that as tiny as the little pup of a creature Rui was, it was dangerous.


    The beast struggled to make a decision. One on hand, the gazelles had already fled away and its meal had been interrupted, evoking its primal rage and unsated hunger, on the other, fighting someone as strong as Rui in its current hungered state was even more dangerous.<sub> </sub>


    (''It''s more rational than I expected.'') Rui noted. The beast had simple stared at him with its giant wide eye.


    Suddenly, the beast retreated, as it faced Rui.


    (''It''s really gonna run away? That is incredibly rational.'') Rui cursed, he''d hoped the beast would attack him.


    Still, Rui had anticipated this, and prepared a contingency.


    The beast dug mud at an immense speed, using its saliva to break down the resistance in order to speed up the process.


    But Rui was even faster.


    He pressed a button on a device he had obtained with the explosives from the Ministry of Ecology and Environment.


    It was a detonator, a detonator that detonated all the explosives he had obtained from the Ministry of Ecology and Environement.


    Of course, most of the explosives he had obtained had long been detonated before to guide the beast intoing here, but there were a set of explosives Rui had not yet detonated.


    These explosives were ced ten meters deeps outside the grazing they were in.


    The detonator was triggered, the beast froze.Original from N?velDrama.Org.


    Rui grinned. "That''s right... Don''t go there, there''s danger there,e here instead."


    The objective of the detonated explosives was to prevent the beast from retreating by cing the explosives in such a way that would fool the seismic sense and the beast''s limited intelligence that there were threats underground capable of producing such seismic radiation.


    The beast dug itself out of the ground, a faint look of fear could be seen on its face. When did so many predators enter the Shaia ins? It didn''t understand. Its limited intelligence associated all intense seismic radiation with threats.


    The only safe way out of the Shaia ins were onnd, in its mind.


    And this was all part of Rui''s big n.


    FWHOOSH


    Rui dashed towards the beast at incredibly high speeds with all of his Apprentice-level techniques, and as he anticipated, the beast turned away, moving remarkably fast even onnd.


    But not as fast it was underground, and not as fast as Rui was.


    He immediately caught up and tagged the beast with the standard-issue reconnaissance tracker that the Martial Union and the ministry had provided him.


    The reason he hadn''t done it earlier was because he wasn''t sure the tracker would remain intact when the beast attempted to escape when it began digging, since he assumed the tracker was almost certainly not built for high-intensity subterranean rigour.


    But now that the beast was escaping onnd out of fear of the strange subterranean predators that had surrounded thend there was no problem cing the tracker.


    "The hunt has begun." Rui grinned, as he chased after the beast.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 159 Rui Vs The Beast

    The hunt had indeed begun.


    Rui sprinted after the beast as it evacuated, reaching it immediately. Atopnd, he was faster. He circled to the side of the beast.


    BOOM


    Heunched a powerful strike to its side.


    "ROOOAAAAR" The beast screeched in anger, as it turned tosh out at Rui with its mouth and limbs. Rui had no choice but to evade. There were several reasons for that.


    The acidic saliva of the beast was too potent. None of his Apprentice-level techniques were enough to be able to withstand it, they were entirely far too removed from defending against corrosive attacks like that. He focused with all of his concentration as he evaded bites and tongueshes of the creature, and w swings


    Thankfully, its offense was notplicated or convoluted. It had elementary attack patterns that it repeated over and over again. It never used any tactics or strategy, and was not flexible and versatile in its offense at all.


    This was to be expected. It was, at the end of the day, a carnivorous beast with a voracious apetite. As cautious as it seemed at times, it was not an intelligent being, and was ve to its shoring and urges. Furthermore, right now, it was in a bad psychological state. Hunger, anger and fear clouded its already primitive judgement.


    As far Rui, he fought cautiously despite this. This was because the VOID algorithm was not functioning to its normal level of effectivity in so far as predictive and counter-deductive capabilities.


    The reason, of course, was no mystery. The VOID algorithm was built for humans, beasts were outside its intended utility and purview. Of course, it wasn''t like there was no ovep. It was just that the further apart the target of the VOID algorithm was from being human, the less effective it was.


    Right now, the VOID algorithm was functioning at about thirty-nine percent effectivity. This was because the most elementary level of predictive and counter-deductive measures were quite universal. Distance and center of gravity were universal variables that undoubtedly tied back tobat for pretty much all lifeforms. But the higher levels that employed systems based on the more sophisticated data science research into humans specifically that Rui had conducted into the past, were not applicable.


    These higher parts of the VOID algorithm were much harder for Rui to apply tobat, he was usually unable to apply it most of the times.


    Still, Rui did have some advantages.


    BLINK


    BAM


    Heunched abination of Flowing Canon and Outer Convergence. This was one of his most powerful attacks. The blow contained so much forced that it broke a set of scales on the creature, and struck the exposed flesh beneath.


    "ROOOAAAR" the beast screeched in pain and anger,shing out at Rui with an attack only to miss fully.


    The creature had one big eye, which led to Rui to suspect that itrgely relied on vision outside of seismic sensing. Meaning onnd, it could only rely on vision.


    Which further meant that Blink was its mortal enemy.


    Furthermore, due to its primitive intelligence, it didn''t even understand what was happening. And even if it did, it was simply incapable of setting up traps using blinking.


    Rui even doubted if it had any awareness of blinking, beastscked a lot of self-awareness,pared to humans.


    Which meant Rui could fearlessly abuse and exploit Blink to the absolute maximum.


    He had begun to grow more and more used to the beast''sbative tendencies, and was quite confident that he could take down the beast, something he wasn''t prior. He had ced the tracker on the beast, so that even if the beast was too strong for Rui, he could at the very least fulfill the first objective of its mission, but now he could take it one step further.


    (''Assuming I can force it to remain here.'') Rui noted. Eventually, the beast''s caution from the explosives that Rui had used to trick it would wear off, meaning it would undoubtedly escape via subterranean travel.


    That was why Rui had to somehow force it to not go underground, and he had figured out the perfect way to go about it.Original from N?velDrama.Org.


    The scales<sub> </sub>


    Rui had already suspected that the scales were meant to allow the beast to withstand the immense tearing force of high sub-terranean travel.


    Under the scales, as he had just seen, was a much softer exposed hide and flesh. Rui had felt it and damaged it, so he was rtively certain that the exposed flesh would not be able to withstand high sub-terranean travel at all. In fact, it was quite likely that the scales it had were evolved to withstand high sub-terranean travel.


    It also exined why the creature was so cautious despite having such uncontroble anger. If it were a normal predator, some damage here and there would not be that big a deal. But this was not the case for this beast. If this beast endured significant damage to its scales, then its ability to travel underground was highlypromised. If it tried travelling underground with exposed flesh, then that flesh would be ripped and torn apart if travelled underground.


    Its scales were also not something that would heal in a short time, if at all.


    Thus, Rui''s n to prevent it from travelling underground was simple; Expose more flesh, and attack already exposed flesh damaging it further.


    BLINK


    BOOM


    BLINK


    BAM


    BLINK


    POW POW POW


    ...


    BLINK


    WHAM


    Time passed as the beast endured more and more damage.


    The two had long moved away from the original location, the beast had been fighting back while continuously running away at top speed.


    And Rui had been attacking while also running at top speed.


    BLINK


    JAB


    "Yes!" Rui eximed as he managed to jab the creature''s eye with a heavy jab amped with Flowing Canon and Outer Convergence, used inbination with Blink. Unfortunately, the eye was rather,rge and he had failed to rob it of its vision entirely.


    This was the final straw.


    "ROOOOOAAAAAAAAAR!" The creature had lost its mind as it abandoned escape and rushed towards Rui at top speed.


    This was the final sh.


    *   *   *   *   *


    Author''s note: Shoutout to Ethan and Jyork for the many golden tickets. Thanks to you two the novel is in the top 200 for golden ticket rankings.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 160 Final Moment

    Quite some time had passed since the hunt had begun. The creature had finallye to realize that its life was truly at stake this time. Whoever this predator was, it was determined to hunt and eat it. Previously, its encounters with other predators had been brief, and it was able to disengage and escape. But not this time, this time it was truly in danger.


    It abandoned all hope for outrunning and escaping its opponent onnd, the human boy was too fast, and its flesh was too damaged and exposed to dig underground. It threw itself at the boy, hoping to take its life.


    Rui on the other hand, felt much more pressured once this happened. It was much scarier to fight a beast that used every ounce of its mind and body dedicated solely killing you than it was to running away and fighting back in self-defense.


    The two scenarios were on two different levels of difficulty, even if thetter was easy to handle, the former wasn''t.


    (''That''s if I choose to fight it head on.'') Rui thought as he leaped back.


    There was a very simple strategy Rui was employing in response.


    Just stay away.


    The creature was slower than Rui was, and was already damaged and bleeding. Being faster, Rui could easily ensure the beast was always too far from him to damage him.


    Chase him with all its might it did, and yet it fell short of Rui.


    Such was the brutality of nature, of survival of the fittest. It wasn''t even able to go down fighting, it would go down struggling to eveny a w on Rui.


    Or so Rui thought, atleast.


    SCRUNCH


    Against all odds, the creature began digging once more. It dug and swallowed mud, excreting it speedily allowing it reach underground extremely fast.


    (''What?!'') Rui grew rmed. Why was it going underground? At this point, Rui had hurt it so much that it shouldn''t be able to withstand any long distance sub-terranean travel at all.


    Rui grew prepared as he full-fledgedly activated Seismic Mapping and prepared his maneuvering Apprentice-level techniques to track and chase after the beast.


    Yet what he sensed next made him sweat beads.


    The creature was not running away.All rights ? N?velDrama.Org.


    It was moving straight towards him!


    Rui''s face grew pale as he understood what the creature was doing. Travelling underground in its current state was extremely dangerous, indeed.


    But fighting the boy as it was, was even worse! It was guaranteed death.<sub> </sub>


    It was unable to travel far underground without bleeding to death. Escaping was out of question. But what if it didn''t need to travel far?


    The boy was only five meters away. If it could use sub-terranean travel to reach him and reduce his flesh to goo, then maybe it would be able to survive in the long run!


    (''Fuck.'') Rui cursed. This was a resourceful n on its end. It had already resolved to kill him using everything it had, not it was willing to sacrifice everything it had to kill him, including its health.


    This was bad, because now Rui had lost his biggest advantage; his superior speed. This was an advantage that allowed him to force the creature to fight on his terms, he could choose when to engage the creature, and he could choose when to disengage.


    Well, not anymore. Rui braced himself for a rough fight as Seismic Mapping sensed a huge mass of angry sub-terranean flesh rushing to kill him!


    LEAP


    BOOM


    Rui managed to leap out of the way just barely in time as the beast erupted from the ground. The beast could attack him underground and that meant he needed to be extremely careful with his timing! If he dodged too early by jumping away, then the beast would simply reach hisnding location before he did, being faster, and would attack him just as he reached the ground, and that would game over. He could not dodge mid-air.


    Thus, he knew quite well that he needed to dodge the attacks just a beat before it was toote. He had a very thin of error, and a very thing range of sess. Leap too early and he would get eaten, leap toote and he would definitely get eaten.


    He had only had one advantage here; his health. He was almost entirely unharmed, asides from some acid that had hit his skin from thest attack. But the creature''s condition was truly starting to fall apart, it had already been harmed significantly by Rui''s targeted striking, and using sub-terranean travelling, even if shortly, had elerated its damage. It was starting to bleed excessively and Rui had sensed its movements growing more sluggish, its reactions dull and its attacks, weaker.


    (''It doesn''t have much time left.'') Rui realized. (''I need to stall like my life depends on it.'')


    And it did, quite literally. A single bite would kill him without a question. But now that the creature had more pronounced weaknesses due to its deteriorating condition, Rui had regained a lost advantage that he normally had; the VOID algorithm.


    This algorithm loved weaknesses and mercilessly exploited and abused them. The algorithm ran at full speed as Rui did everything he could to stall the battle and make life harder for the beast. He even climbed trees and began leaping from tree to tree. Yet, the beast, being underground was able to uproot trees, to his surprise.


    The battle went on, Rui made inuracies and mistakes. Each time he was sshed with a little acid, flinching as it corroded his skin. Thankfully, it didn''t damage his body to the point of effecting hisbat capability.


    "ROOOOAAAAR." The beast screeched, as it erupted from the ground.


    WHOOSH


    Rui avoided the jaws of death once more, never taking his eyes from the creature even once. He could feel its desperation, fear and hatred. In some ways, he even felt some degree of sympathy, but he crushed those feelings.


    It was truly the final moment, Rui could feel it. He needed to do everything he could to win. That was all that mattered.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 161 Outcome

    Original from N?velDrama.Org.


    Most fights ended anti-climactically. In most cases, there wasn''t ast-minute powerup, ast-minute turn-around, ast-minute victory. In most cases, fights ended exactly how one would expect it to. There was no shy sh, high-risk decisions from both sides or high stakes. The winner simply won, and the loser simply lost.


    This was the cold unromantic reality of Martial conflict, of the martial World.


    ? Yet every once in a while, this truth was broken.


    Fights where onebatant was clearly losing, ends up winning. Despite all odds, despite all the damage one had suffered, one asionally managed to win. These were rare and marvelous moments, where the losing fighter managed to defy all odds and deny his or her fate.


    Unfortunately for the beast, this wasn''t one of those times.


    The beast was covered in blood, as multiple orifices gushed it out. It had begun losing its bnce, speed and even the ability to dig underground.


    Rui had splendidly managed to avoid any lethal attacks, even if just barely at times. In the end, he had managed to pull through the worst of it.


    BLAP


    "ROOOOOAAAAAAR!" Its roars had lost all anger, leaving only despair and fear.


    Rui had timed a Flowing Canon and an Outer Convergence attack perfectly well with a Blink, and had managed to damage its eye almost entirely. The beast had lost most of its vision, and now was iling around wildly.


    BOOM


    BAM


    POW POW POW


    WHAM


    Rui peppered it with strikes over and over, for nearly an hour.


    And an hourter, the beast had died.


    Rui even took the precaution of observing it with Seismic Mapping for another ten minutes, just to ensure that there was no chance whatsoever that this creature was still alive. At a distance of five meters, he would be able to hear its heart beating.


    Once he was finally convinced that there was no life left. He heaved a deep sigh of relief and copsed to the ground.


    He was truly exhausted, even the continuous usage of Helical Breathing was not enough to preserve even a decent amount of his energy.


    He reached for his belt, opening the pouch and taking out a healing potion. The first healing potion he''d needed in the entirety of the mission. The beast had left many acid burns throughout their long, drawn-out fight. Each time it had burned immensely, but Rui expressionlessly bore the pain, since he knew, he didn''t have to worry about flesh injuries since they could be healed easily with healing potions.


    What he had to avoid were lethal injuries, since the low-grade standard-issue healing potions would not heal that. He deeply inhaled the gas that had been stored as a pressurized liquid, allowing it to reach the deepest parts of his lungs via Helical Breathing so that as much blood as possible woulde into contact with it, to hasten the healing process.<sub> </sub>


    Ten secondster, his skin was back to normal.


    But he felt even greater exhaustion.


    Healing potions hastened the natural healing speed of the human body, meaning the nutrients,pounds, substances and stamina for the newly regenerated tissue came from himself, draining his energy even more.


    He quickly proceeded to consume a mental and physical rejuvenation potion, to invigorate and energize his body.


    After that, it was just a simple matter of following post-mission protocols for Hunter missions. First, he turned off the eco-survey device, he had been told that it saved data automatically so he didn''t need to bother with manual operation of it too much. Part of the data would be sent to the ministry apparently, while the vast majority of it would need be to handed in, a limitation Rui found interesting.


    He then indicated the sessfulpletion of both objectives of the nested mission through the standard mission-tracking device given to him by the Martial Union.


    Aaaaand he was done!


    A deep sense of aplishment and relief had filled his body.


    "Phew." Rui sighed, as he gathered his many tumultuous thoughts. It had been one hell of a mission, but he felt quite aplished. His first hunting mission was a dashing sess. It was an eye-opening experience as well in many ways. He hade to realize that he quite liked the adventurous spirit of hunting missions. It felt open-ended and free, he had never experienced a mission with as much as freedom as the one he had just undergone.


    (''Well, that''s only because I''ve undergone stuffy defense-ss missions all this time.'') Rui mused. Bodyguard missions were the most restrictive ss of missions among all, in many ways.


    Rui ended up enjoying the experience of hunting missions so much that he realized he might want to shift to hunting-ss missions entirely.


    (''No.'') Rui shook his head. He was unprepared and undeveloped for hunting-ss missions and he knew it. This mission had shown his Martial Art was still not as broad and wide as he would have liked it to be, from thepatibility of his techniques with beasts and the natural environments to thepatibility of the VOID algorithm and non-human targets.


    (''I have a long way to go.'') Rui sighed, getting up. He had sat around for long enough, and the rejuvenation potions had made him quite energetic.


    (''Maybe I should go for another mission, or maybe I should get some sleep.'') Rui shrugged. The effectivity of mental rejuvenation potions would wear off soon and it had indeed been a while since he''d gotten some sleep.


    Just then


    BEEP BEEP


    The mission-tracker device had received an notification.


    (''Urgent summon back to the Martial Academy?'') He frowned as he read the message. What could be so urgent that they summoned him back right after a sessfulpletion of the mission? Had he waited too long after thepletion of the mission?


    He shrugged, mystified as he hurriedly began jogging towards Hajin. He took onest nce at the Shaia ins, before turning his back and heading back as fast he could.


    He didn''t think the urgent summon would ur for trivial reasons.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 162 Stake

    What could the Martial Union want from him so urgently? Rui wasn''t sure, but there were several general possibilities. They wanted something from him obviously, the only rea possibilities were his Apprentice Realmbat prowess and his knowledge.


    Why would they want his Apprentice Realmbat prowess urgently? There was no shortage of Martial Artists in the Academy, unless the town of Hajin had suddenly been attacked by a horde of monsters or something, it was impossible for them to want his Martial prowess this desperately.


    That left information, what information did he possess that the Martial Union didn''t? Well, there was his scientific andbat knowledge and research from Earth, but obviously that was not why they were calling him. There was something that they knew he knew, they wanted.


    Information about thetest mission? This was the only real possibility as far as Rui could think of. There was something about this mission that the Martial Union needed him for.


    But he had already sent the Ministry of Ecology and Environment extensive data via the eco-survey device.


    Furthermore, even if they didn''t urgently summon him, he was naturally going to make his way to the Martial Union. So why the rush?


    (''It means there''s something of such importance and magnitude, that every second matters.'') Rui realized as he sprinted towards the town of Hajin.N?velDrama.Org content rights.


    Something to do with his mission.


    Something that was extremely urgent.


    Some need of theirs that only he could fulfill.


    (''Information about my mission definitely fits the first and third condition, but why would information about apleted mission be so urgent?'') Rui frowned, when suddenly a horrifying possibility crossed his mind.


    "Could it be that the beast is still alive?" Rui gasped, before calming down and shaking his head. (''That''s impossible.'')


    He had taken extreme precautions to ensure the beast was dead, there was almost no way whatsoever that the beast could possibly be alive, unless it was immortal.


    Of course, since this was a fantasy world, there were no limits. But if the beast was immortal it wouldn''t have been so afraid of death and risks, yet it clearly was.


    "It must be something else." Rui concluded. From his analysis, it was quite likely that the Ministry of Ecology and Environment had identified the species of the beast and had consequently discovered something about the beast that was quite rming and required his intelligence immediately.


    Maybe the beast''s body self-destructed in a gigantic explosion ten minutes after its death. Thus, the Martial Union had sent him an urgent summon to save his life? The mission-tracker was not capable of facilitating two-way conversations, after all.


    It was hard to say.


    Rui shook his head, putting aside these superfluous thoughts, the best thing he could do right now was rush back to the town of Hajin.


    As he sprinted back, the dawn had begun to crack through the veil of darkness and night, illuminating the Earth. It was only then that Rui had realized how long the fight against the beast had taken. As a beast its endurance was otherworldly, its size also allowed it to take damage from Rui''s smaller attacks that didn''t prate it too deeply.


    Rui had had to pepper it with an unbelievable amount of strikes, not even Dalen would have been able to survive that onught if he did nothing but stand and take it.


    As time passed, Rui eventually reached the town of Hajin. He had to slow down once he reached themercial districts of the town. The morning rush was truly insufferable, making Rui d that he spent most of his life far away from it. He wouldn''t be able to deal with it on a daily basis.<sub> </sub>


    Soon enough, he reached the Martial Academy.


    "Apprentice Rui Quarrier."


    "Miss Helga." Rui frowned, recognizing the official from the Ministry of Ecology and Environment that was in charge of his mission.


    Eachmission filed by the ministry to the Martial Union was handled by an individual official that kept tabs on the mission and ensured due process and protocols was being followed.


    "Your arrival is timely." She informed. "Please submit the eco-survey device and proceed with the post-mission protocols immediately, we don''t have much time."


    "Can you inform me about the reason for the urgent summon?" Rui frowned as he handed the eco-survey device to the Martial Union staff.


    She paused for a moment before replying. "I suppose we can tell you, especially since it may yield some useful results to us."


    Rui''s eyes sharpened at those words.


    "I''ll exin as we head to themission department, we are truly short of time." She said, continuing only after they had entered an empty office in themission department of the Martial union.


    "After you fulfilled the first objective and recorded the appearance of the target of your mission, wepared the image with our database of the animal kingdom, eventually, we got a hit for its species. Unfortunately, the result was problematic."


    She pulled out a device, fiddling with it until it projected and image on the table.


    (''Woah.'') Rui careful scanned the image. It was an image of the beast he had fought.


    (''No not quite right. A different beast of the same species.'') He realized as his eyes widened.


    "This is an extremely rare species known as the earthen basilisk." She exined. "It''s a species non-native to the Kandrian Empire, or any other human colony as far as we are aware. The only spotting of a creature of this species was far west of the Kandrian Empire well into the Beast Domain. We suspect that the target earthen basilisk of your mission must have migrated into the Kandrian Empire through our Mantian region, recently."


    (''Interesting.'') Rui couldn''t help but think. "So, what exactly is the problem here? What does this have to with my urgent summon?"


    She hadn''t yet divulged this.


    "I was getting there." She replied, before continuing. "One of the few known facts about the earthen basilisk is that they''re asexual hermaphrodite reproducers, meaning they reproduce without mating. The reason we summoned you urgently was because we need every ounce of information you can provide us... because this creature''s reproduction rate is proportional to its diet and food consumption rate."


    Rui''s eyes flew wide open at that statement. The creature''s reproduction rate was directly proportional to its food consumption rate? Meaning the more it ate, the more it reproduced?


    "But it has done nothing but eat like a monster for the past month." he said with a pale face.


    "Exactly." Helga nodded with a grim expression. "We require you to tell us everything, there is a lot at stake here. More than you can imagine."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 163 Elaborations

    Rui recalled jokingly thinking that the reason he was urgently summoned was because the town of Hajin was under attack.


    Now, after what Helga had told him, it didn''t seem as funny as before.


    "I don''t understand." He replied, shaking his head. "How could this be true? The earthen basilisk had been consuming deer and gazelles voraciously for nearly a month now. If it had been reproducing every time it went on a hunting spree, then the Shaia ins would noticeably be flooded with many earthen basilisks."


    How could this revtion possibly be true. Rui would absolutely have noticed if there were hundreds of earthen basilisks running around beneath the ground.


    "It reproduces byying eggs." She stated. "The eggs have a gestation period that is unknown unfortunately. It could be a day, a week or even a month. Furthermore, the earthen basilisk hatchlings don''t immediately turn into full grown adults either. The immediate danger here is not their current destructive potential, but their future destructive potential as well as their extreme elusiveness and migrative capacity."


    Rui understood, nodding. The limitations in his understanding in the field of ecology were starting to show. He hadpensated for this gap during the mission with his intelligent deductive and inductive reasoning, but in front of an actual professional in the field, he was no more than a rookie, an inexperienced rookie


    "Fortunately, the sightings of the earthen basilisk have been those of the target of your mission, and they were limited to the Shaia ins." She said. "This strongly suggests that the migration of the earthen basilisks is extremely limited, if not entirely non-existant."


    This made sense. If the earthen basilisks had already disseminated across the Mantian region, then there would damn well be more than the sighting of just one earthen basilisk in the Shaia ins.


    "Furthermore, sub-terranean travel is not limitless and wless, there are certain topographies andnd structures within and through which sub-terranean travel is utterly impossible. Mountainous and hill regions are an absolute no-go zone for them due to thendposition being saturated withyers of rock, granite and marble and other densepounds." She exined. "Still, these are merely silver linings. Even with these caveats, they can spread extremely wide across the Mantian region."


    "So what is the solution? Surely you don''t expect a single or even a handful Martial Apprentices alone to deal with these?" Rui asked.


    She snorted. "The danger and risk associated with this operation is far above what we can entrust Apprentices with. Especially Apprentices like yourself who aren''t specialized in hunting, let alone sub-terranean hunting operations."


    She shook her head. "We will be sending multiple squads consisting of a dozen Martial Artists in total, each with sub-terranean environment-oriented Martial Art, led by Martial Squires."<sub> </sub>


    Rui''s eyes widened at those words. If he was worried about how the Ministry of Ecology and Environment were going to deal with this, he no longer was.


    Martial Squires were not to be messed with. He knew the power of an adult earthen basilisk, and he knew the power of a Martial Squire. If dozens of Martial Apprentices specialized in sub-terranean environments led by Martial Squires with simr specializations were to hunt the earthen basilisks, then they stood no chance whatever!


    Especially not in direct conflict, but even in general. If he with his singr Seismic Mapping could detect the earthen basilisk, then these sub-terranean specialists would most certainly be able to much, much more than just that!


    "Even a single Martial Squire would be enough to annihte an army of earthen basilisks." Rui said with a bit of restored confidence.


    "Don''t be so certain." Helga reprimanded. "If an army of earthen basilisks all attacked a MartiaL Squire, then yes, the Martial Squire is almost guaranteed to seed. But the problem with these creatures isn''t their offensive capability. It''s their survivability and elusiveness as I mentioned earlier. Their high sub-terranean travel allowed them to survive even the extraordinarily dangerous environments of the Beast Domain, despite their extreme weakness."


    " ''Despite their extreme weakness?'' " Rui echoed, looking at her with skepticism. The earthen basilisk was not extremely weak, it hade close to killing him multiple times in their fight, and Rui had relied on preparation and some external help to create a scheme meant to take it down. It had given Rui a hell of a fight despite this and was very difficult and tiring to take down.


    She simply snorted in the face of his skepticism. "The Beast Domain are the uncolonizednds that exist in outside human civilization, towards the hearnd and core of the continent. Part of the reason it is uncolonized is because of how dangerous it is. The power and threat level of the fauna in the Beast Domain is so high that even the earthen basilisk that had given you a lot of trouble is no more than an insect in the Beast Domain, struggling to survive."


    Rui''s eyes widened at those words.


    "In fact, one of the reasons it likely migrated was that the Beast Domain was simply too dangerous and risky for it to live in. Predators far beyond anything you have ever tangled with, live and exist within the devastating environments of the Beast Domain. Someone like yourself wouldn''tst more than a few days, if you''re very lucky within that realm." She ruthless said. "For the earthen basilisks to have survived there for millennia as a species, shows how difficult they are to exterminate. That is why we are going all out and procuring the most suited and qualified Martial Squires and Martial Apprentices."


    She said, before leaning forward. "And that is why we urgently summoned you, we need every ounce of your experience with the basilisk and mission. I did not provide you with all of this information to give you an educational lesson. I''m telling you this so you understand the importance of out demand. You will submit a scrupulously detailed report covering the entirety of your time spent in the Shaia ins, minute by minute. You will include every scrap and ounce of information you can possibly conjure from your memories, regardless of how relevant and or irrelevant you deem, understood?"N?velDrama.Org content rights.


    Rui nodded vigorously. If all he had to was write a report, then a report he would write!


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 164 One Step At A Time

    Rui had taken his time. It was their one demand, after all, to take his time and ensure the report was immacte. He mentioned every detail in his report and statement, every single detail he could think of. He assumed the Ministry of Ecology and Environment would have experts pour over every word in his report and extract every ounce of potentially useful information from his words and supply it to the sub-terranean Martial Artists they were hiring from the Martial Union.


    Once he was done, he submitted his final report and his duties ended.


    Helga nodded as she scanned his report. "It was a pleasure working with you, Apprentice Rui Quarrier." She said, ncing at him. "We are quite impressed by your deductive insight and your resourceful tactical approach; we would be interested in having you retain us as one of your primary clienteles, via the Martial Union."


    Rui smiled wryly. "You tter me, I''m just an inexperienced Martial Artist exploring my Martial Path in this wide world."


    Helga raised an eyebrow, at those words. "I am not ttering you, Apprentice. Had this mission been undertaken by almost any other Martial Artist of your Realm and grade, it most certainly would have stalled and persisted for at the very least the entirety of the one month allocated to the mission, and perhaps even longer, this is the norm. The consequences of that would have undoubtedly been disastrous."


    p Rui had to admit she had a point. He didn''t like tooting his own horn too much, but it was an objective fact thatpleting the mission in eight days was not just an impressive feat but an extremely fortunate feat for the Ministry. Had the mission taken a month or more, like she said, the odds that the offspring of earthen basilisk would have either wreaked havoc in the Shaia ins, or migrated outside to other habitats in the Mantian Region, or both in session, were quite high.</anda>


    "Thank you." Rui nodded, epting her praise. "But for now, I don''t want tomit to any one field. I''m still exploring the world. Furthermore, I''m an all-rounder, thus I do not want to get too entrenched down a single path." He said, rejecting her subtle offer.


    She nodded, uninterested in pushing further. Rui was definitely a good Martial Artist, but he was just one asset out of many assets that existed in the Empire.


    "Well then, that brings about an end to our meeting." She said, getting up. "Thank you for your services."


    "Thank you for yourmission." Rui replied.


    After having bade her farewell, Rui heaved a sigh of relief. His job was over, he hadpletely washed his hands of the incident. All he could do now was ce his trust in the capable hands of the sub-terranean-oriented Martial Artists of the Martial Union that the Ministry of Ecology and Environment would no doubtmission to take care of this matter.


    He thought back to all the information she had divulged to him during their conversation. She had definitely revealed many important things during their conversation to contextualize how important any and all information he could provide to the Ministry through his report was. Although all of them were interesting, one particr topic had intrigued him more than most.


    The Beast Domain.<sub> </sub>


    It was vaguelymon knowledge that the Beast Domain referred to the natural environments of the Panama Continent that were uncolonized by humans. What Rui did not know was the exact danger level associated with them.


    This was why Helga''s words had shocked him as much as they did. He obviously knew that Beast Domain was dangerous, but for even scary apex predators like the earthen basilisk to be no more than insects, that was a shocking statement to make. The way she made it sound seemed like the Beast Domain, by andrge, was a domain exclusive to the Realm of Martial Squires and higher.


    He did not expect that the Beast Domain, which constituted a solid chunk of the entire continent, would be more dangerous than he could handle!


    As a Martial Apprentices, his recent string of sesses and growth had given him a stronger and stronger sense of confidence, but when someone bluntly told him that he was too weak to survive outside human civilization, that just humbled him and made him realize that no matter how strong he had grown as a Martial Apprentice, he was still a Martial Apprentice, the lowest Realm of Martial Art.This content ? N?v/elDr(a)m/a.Org.


    He had a long, long path ahead of him.


    However, this did not discourage him. If anything, it encouraged him. Knowing that there was an almost endless path he could walk down was exciting. His love for Martial Art, and his Martial Art; Project Water stemmed not from the power or utility it gave him. He truly loved the very concept at its very core for what it was.


    This was why where others might have grown sullen and disappointed with theircking power, but where other saw a shoring, Rui merely saw potential. His desire for power was not low, but his desire to indulge in the growth and development of his Martial Art was far, far stronger.


    In fact, he would be far sadder and more devastated than happy if he ever reached the pinnacle of power where he was unable to grow any stronger than he already was, this would mean the day hade where he would no longer be able to develop his Martial Art. What would he do if he ran into this hurdle?


    He shook his head, clearing out such silly thoughts. Reaching the pinnacle of power? That was such an arrogant thing to assume that even he felt silly.


    He was incredibly far away from this stage. He was far away from even understanding how far away he was.


    "All I can do is traverse my Martial Path." he murmured to himself with a hint of determination and rity. "One step a time."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 165 Decisions

    Rui had gotten a good long sleep that night, resting his weary mind and spirit. He slept rare, so when he did sleep, he slept for a good nine hours of deep sleep. Feeling rejuvenated, he was already prepared for the next mission.


    He did not feel the need to take a break or unwind, he was determined to gather as many martial credits he could six months before the Kandrian Martial Festival. That meant pushing himself to the absolute maximum.


    The reason he limited himself to at most six months before the Kandrian Martial Festival was because he needed time not just to master the individual techniques, but be familiar with using these new techniques with the rest of his Martial Art, he knew that the next round of training would also require the most amount of adjustment time.N?velDrama.Org content rights.


    Therger his Martial Art grew, the harder it was and longer it took to fully integrate new techniques. This was because having more options made it harder to choose. If one had to make a choice between two options, and two hundred options, one would obviously have a much harder time with thetter than the former.


    This was an exaggerated version of what Rui was going through as he grew stronger. He had undergone three rounds of training ever since he became a Martial Apprentice.


    The first round he had learnt very foundational techniques; Vital Pressure, stic Shift, Parallel Walk and Acute Edge and Helical Breathing. There was absolutely norge variety of options here. He barely had one technique for one field, and there were many fields his Martial Art needed to have had zero fields.


    Making choices were extremely easy when you had only one choice.


    The second round involved filling the gaping holes in his Martial Art; with techniques like Flowing Canon, Binding Lash, Shifting Silhouette and Mirage Dive.


    These still weren''t problematic because they only filled in the shorings, at the end of the day he still barely had one or two choices, at most three choices.


    The third round, thest round of Apprentice-level training he had undergone was a bit different. Now his Martial Art had a total of fourteen techniques. This was a surpluspared to before, he had plenty of choices, permutations andbinations to choose from and that made decision making process harder than before.


    More choices always meant more time to process, he needed to be able to master these techniques not just individually but also in conjunction with each other, He needed to treat them as part of one single Martial Art and individuals within a single group.


    However, this could not be done through merely words. Last time it had taken merely a week to growfortable with all techniques, since Outer Convergence and Inner Divergence were passive and constant, as was Seismic Sensing. Blink had been the only issue.


    However, Rui was quite certain that the next round of would be different. If he did in fact learn four to five techniques in totality, then he would have a total of eighteen to neen techniques in total. This was no trivial matter, he wouldn''t be able to optimize his swiftness andfort with using these techniques with each other in a week.<sub> </sub>


    This is why he had set himself a time limit for missions such that he would have just enough time after the technique training to ensure that his fluidity andfort in using these techniques in conjugation with each other and in rapid session with each other.


    Only then would he be able to participate in the Martial Festival with his Martial Art at its peak form. He would rather forgo mastering more techniques in order to truly master a few number of techniques. It meant nothing if he had all these powerful techniques if he did not know how to apply them optimally and apply them with other techniques optimally. His Martial Art would simply be no more than a haphazardous cluster of techniques that he wasn''t able to use as well as he could have.


    In many ways, techniques were like tools. Mastering a technique was like having a very high-quality tool, but if you did not know how to use these tools properly because your purchased too many too quickly, then you were inferior to someone who knew when and where to apply which tools and why.


    Rui would always choose to be thetter than the former, he believed in control above all. And he would never forsake it for anything, no matter how powerful the technique or power in question was.


    He did not intend to cross his limit, he would go all out in earning martial credits, and then ensure he spent them wisely.


    For now, he could forget about the future techniques he intended to master, for he had yet to umte the martial credits he intended to rue. It was for this very reason he was walking towards the mission library, after having taken a good long rest, he was already ready for his next mission. He intended to scan the library for the most profitable mission with a difficulty grade at or below his grade as a Martial Apprentice andplete as soon as he could.


    He entered the familiar pentagonal library, immediately running his gaze across the entire library.


    Last time he had picked a hunting-ss mission, he wasn''t sure if he wanted to go for yet another hunting-ss mission right off the bat. He did intend to widen and diversify his experience.


    There were three sses of missions he hadn''t experienced yet.


    The offense-ss, the covert-ss and the misceneous ss. He had already ruled out two of them in hisst visit, but he didn''t feel as close-minded as he used to. Maybe he would end up enjoying all three of these sses of missions more so than he did his hunting mission.


    "Decisions, decisions." he murmured, as he walked deeper into the library.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 166 Offense

    As he was thinking about the sses of missions he immediately crossed out covert operations. The skill pre-requisite for the covert operations missions was much more niche and extensive than the other sses. One needed stealth, sensory, infiltration and espionage capabilities that Rui just franklycked.


    While it was true that Rui had mastered Blink, Blink was not good enough all by itself. Blink had weaknesses, for example, it''s timing and usage wasrgely out of Rui''s hands. He could not use Blink whenever he wanted because he needed his opponent to Blink.


    Furthermore, the greater the number target numbers, the exponentially harder to became to apply Blink. Because people didn''t blink at the same time usually. These two rather big shorings made it harder for Rui to apply Blink the way covert operations required him to. Things like espionage and infiltration required timing, uracy and precision control. Blink was simply not a technique whose timing could be controlled; this was simply a fact about the fundamental nature of the technique.


    Perhaps in the next round of training he would learn some more stealth-oriented techniques.


    (''No...'') He shook his head. (''The next round will be focused purely on head-to-headbat, because of the Martial Festival.'')


    ? Most of thepetition in the Martial Festival was head-to-head one-on-one fights, stealth wasrgely unnecessary for the most part. He did not want to waste one his technique slots on learning stealth techniques that he almost certainly wouldn''t use.


    Although he intended to diversify his Martial Art to other sses, that would have to wait until after the Kandrian Martial Festival.


    He turned away from the covert operations missions. Some day he would undertake one of them, today was not that day, however.


    He really didn''t want to go for a defense-ss mission just yet.


    "That leaves..." He turned to the offense-ss section and the misceneous-ss section of the library.


    He immediately walked into the offense-ss section. It was no contest between assault-centric missions and a messy hotchpotch of odd missions that had no ce in the other sses of missions.


    There was one thing about the offense-ss section of missions that stood out from the other sections of the library.


    Arge majority of the mission bills, slotted in the shelves of the library had a special insignia inscribed on them.


    (''The Royal Insignia.'') Rui mused. Assault was stillrgely ouwed within the Kandrian Empire, although most domestic physical disputes did not reach the stage of prosecution, the Kandrian government and the Royal Family would not tolerate themercialization of violence within the borders of the country. That would simply give rise to tyranny onrge scales as those with the greatest amount of wealth would be able to monopolize the greatest amount of violence.


    Of course, like all illegal services and goods, there was an underworld with ck market and mafia that provided such services. One less extreme example would be the local gangs that that the Lowminers had effectively paid to handle their dirty business.


    Therefore, an overwhelming amount of themissions for unaggressed violence that the Martial Union received were from the Royal Family, via thew-enforcement branches of the Kandrian government.


    Thesemissions had all received Royal authorization and were perfectly legal.<sub> </sub>


    As Rui sauntered through the section he could see a variety of types of missions. Capture missions centered around known felons that were too dangerous for ordinaryw-enforcement officers to arrest. Execution-missions where the mission objective was the death of a particr target or targets. There were missions centered around royally authorized destruction of property too. A lot of the missions were rted to the criminal activities.


    Even among them, a lot of them were connected with objectives concerned with the underworld and the mafia. It seemed as though the Royal Family was off-loading all this work to the Martial Union.


    Which in a way made sense. The Martial Union and the underworld were probably eyesores to the Royal Family, that no doubt wanted to retain as much power and control over the Kandrian Empire as possible. These two goliaths stood in the way of its ambition and there wasn''t much meaningful that the Royal Family could do.


    Especially against the Martial Union, which was sorely vital and important to the Kandrian Empire.


    The underworld, however, not so much. The Royal Family had effectively managed to get both of its eyesores to fight against each other by dumping a lot of the workload centered around the suppression of the underworld via the Martial Union. Rui was able to sense that much, atleast.


    The underworld was too pesky of a problem and almost impossible to fight head-on against. This had much less to do with the Royal Family itself and more to do with human nature.


    If Rui had learnt anything during his time on Earth was that you can''t wage war against the underworld and win, for one very simple reason;


    Where there was demand, there would also be supply. This was almost aw of humanity.


    The government of the United States had waged war against illegal supply of alcohol and lost horribly. It was still waging war against drugs and was losing hriously yet again.


    Online piracy despite copyrightws was rampant. Pirates managed to supply movies, TV shows, novels and games and not a single damn person could stop it.


    This was why the Royal Family had simply washed their hands of this matter to the Martial Union in exchange for an unfathomable amount of funds, resources and privileges.


    Not that the Martial Union was having an easier time, but themissions were useful because it kept the Martial Artists busy and allowed the Martial Union and its Martial Artists to be sustained.


    Rui had decided.


    It was time for him to undertake an offense-ss mission.


    Out of all the sses of missions, the offense ss guaranteedbat much more than the other sses of missions did. It was literally a ss of mission that revolved around attacking people!


    This would be good experience for the Martial Festival. That alone was good enough reason for this decision.All rights ? N?velDrama.Org.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 167 Imperative

    Ever since Rui had been promoted to grade-five as a Martial Apprentice, he did not want to take any missions below his grade. Grade five missions were missions that posed some non-insignificant threat to Martial Apprentices. Either because a hostile Martial Apprentice was likely involved, because of extremely harsh environments, or because of powerful fauna.


    The reason he had avoided missions with grades that were too low was because they did not push him as a Martial Artist. Grades one-to-four were trivially easy ny-nine percent of the time, and none of them could make him feel endangered or draw out his survival instinct.


    They were simply inconducive to his growth.


    Thus, he had simply walked past the four outermost racks and shelves of missions graded one-to-four, they were not worth his time.


    He also avoided missions that were graded at five because of dangerous environments. Although he intended to eventually be able to adapt to any environment, that was not an immediate goal. His immediate goal was to gain morebat experience.


    He looked for missions that involved Martial Apprentices.


    Just as he was nonchntly browsing through the section when he came across something that caught his eye.


    [Offense-ss mission: Capture-Execution mission


    Mission description: Objective of the mission is to eliminate a child-trafficking ring situated in Hajin and capture the ring leader.


    Difficulty Grade: 5


    Target location: (13.4765, 7.8967)


    Mission Commencement: Immediate


    Mission time period: 12 hours.


    Sessful Completion Remuneration: 4 gold coins and 9 silver coins / 130 martial credits.]


    Rui''s eyes sharpened when he saw that the target of the mission was child-trafficking ring. He did not like people who inflicted suffering and pain against innocent people for no good reason, but he genuinely hated it when children suffered knowingly because of human greed and lust.


    This was especially so because he had been the victim of kidnapping by a child trafficker as a kid. Although that event had fortunately not left any real trauma on him, it did make him more sensitive to the issue. Child-exploitation as an industry earned his unadultered hatred.


    Especially because his family in the Quarrier Orphanage wasrgelyprised of children, the very thought of them ever having to undergo what he did made his blood boil.


    He had managed toe outrgely unscathed because he was already an adult and because of the inspiring words of the Martial Artist who had saved his life, he couldn''t say the same about the many children who fell prey to these disgusting human beings. No, to even call them humans was an insult.


    Already, he was feeling quite motivated to undertake this mission.<sub> </sub>


    He nced at the location coordinates, noting something very odd.


    (''Four digits after the decimal?'') He frowned. (''This means they almost know the exact location of the child-trafficking ring''s base.'')


    <o>,m The coordinate system was applied over the entirety of the town of Hajin, as well arge portion of surroundingnds. This mission having four digits likely meant they had narrowed down the location to within a handful of town blocks, at the very least. The fact that they hadn''tpleted the operation yet and had insteadmissioned a Martial Artist from the Martial Union yet meant that the presence of a Martial Apprentice was needed.</o>


    Which likely meant that the child-trafficking ring was extremelyrge and were armed to the teeth with weapons.


    Or that there was a Martial Artist involved.


    Or both.


    He wasn''t particrly surprised that a Martial Artist was involved, there were many low lives that used their Martial prowess to earn tons of money. The underworld was quite lucrative and there were many Martial Artists that delved into it. Martial power was quite valuable in the underworld, since most Martial Artists were monopolized by the Martial Union, and almost all of the remaining by the Royal Family. The few remaining Martial Artists were heavily sought after in the underworld.


    Rui turned towards the gigantic map on the wall to see exactly what part of the Hajin map these coordinates corresponded to when his eyes widened with shock.


    (''This district...'') He gazed with shock at the map. (''It''s the district closest to the Quarrier Orphanage!'')Original from N?velDrama.Org.


    Immediately, this mission was no longer just a matter of martial credits, or even his strong grudge against those that made children suffer.


    Now it was his absolute imperative! He did not want to entrust this mission to anybody else. There was too much at stake here for him to be nonchnt. Maybe the probability of the Orphanage wasn''t super high, but the Orphanage, a gathering of children being safe under these circumstances?


    Hell no.


    If anything ever happened the Quarrier Orphanage because of these bastards, Rui would never be able to forgive himself, especially now that he knew of this particr risk, he simply couldn''t proceed about his day like nothing ever happened.


    Rui even recalled something Lashara had told him when he had returned home during the Winter holidays.


    She had told him that there had been some child-trafficking busts on the outskirts of Hajin, and the number of homeless children in Hajin had increased as an inevitable result. The Quarrier Orphanage had adopted some of the children to the Orphanage, Lashara was too kind to let these kids suffer without shelter and food.


    Rui immediately picked the mission bill from the slot and headed over to the registrar to have it registered to him. He had decided he needed to fulfill this mission no matter what.


    Hell, he wouldplete this mission even if the reward was nothing more than peanuts. No, he wouldplete this mission even if he had to pay money himself! When it came to his family, Rui no longer cared about the material benefits the missions anymore, he needed toplete this mission no matter what.


    Once he registered himself as the applicant for the mission he sat down and opened the mission bill, intending to pour over every ounce of information that existed about this mission.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 168 Operation

    Author''s note: Hey priv readers, sorry for the mistake, please reread this chapter, uploaded an old one by mistake. Thank you for your continued support.


    *   *   *   *   *   *


    Rui spent quite some time pouring through the data avable to him. He wanted to make sure he knew this case inside out and backward front. The more familiar he was with this case, the better he would handle this mission.


    The mission bill first provided a general background of the case to ensure that the Martial Artist epting themission would have context as to what the mission was about.


    The child-trafficking centered in Hajin wasn''t small or old. Hajin was a hugemercial trade hub in addition to being residential town, there were many huge industries for a huge market and an unfathomable amount of good and services were exchanged every day.


    Not all of those goods and services were legal, of course. Drugs, forbidden esoteric resources, illegal services and other more nefarious goods and services were offered.


    Among the more heinous of them, was the child-trafficking industry. There were plenty of sick disgusting people with money and power that had an extremely perverted nature. These people were regr clienteles of the child-trafficking industry, and their patronage was what sustained this horrible industry.


    Original from N?velDrama.Org.


    This mission wasmissioned by the Kandrian Bureau of Investigation, as per the protocols established in the Kandrian Martial Convenant. When the difficulty of any operation exceeded a certain threshold, the Kandrian Bureau of Investigation need merelymission the Martial Union and within a stipted time period, they would have a Martial Artist aiding their operations.


    In this case, the intelligence that the Kandrian Bureau of Investigation had obtained over this particr investigation was that the ringleader of this particr child-trafficking gang was likely a Martial Apprentice and, in turn, they had immediatelymissioned the Martial union for a Martial Apprentice, as well.


    The intelligence that they had over the child-trafficking ring came from previous operations centered around the child-trafficking underworld industry based in the town of Hajin. In the past there had been many busts, but the Kandrian Bureau of Investigation had failed to capture the ringleader because of his Martial Prowess.


    The reason they hadmissioned for a Martial Apprentices ahead of time this time was because they had strong reason to suspect that the ringleader of the particr child-trafficking ring that was the target of the operation, was likely the same ringleader of the previous child-trafficking operations that had existed in the past in the town of Hajin.


    The mission bill even borated on why this was the case.


    The child-trafficking ring had first been detected when the Kandrian Bureau of Investigation had received intelligence from their infiltrated spies in certain high-profilepanies that certain wealthy merchants in the town of Hajin were likely holding children in capivity. Soon after, the Kandrian Bureau of Investigation had obtained a warrant and upon conducting a raid, they had sessfully rescued multiple children held in captivity. The wealthy merchants inquestion had been arrested on six ounts of child abuse.


    Upon a strict thorough investigation and interrogation, the criminals confessed and disclosed the means by which they acquired these children.


    That was when the Kandrian Bureau of Investigation had noticed patterns very simr to what they had seen in the past from this particr wanted felon.


    The delivery of the children, the means of payment, the means ofmunication and other parameters of the entirety of the modus operandi from the intelligence they had obtained from the confession of the convicted child offenders strongly matched the operations they had dealt with this particr child trafficking ring in the past.<sub> </sub>


    This immediately led them to strongly suspect that the ringleader in question was the same Martial Artist felon who had evaded capture in the past. Although there were strong differences in the modus operands of their current target and the child-trafficking rings of the past, these fell within the expectations of the Kandrian Bureau of Investigation of someone who was clearly switching his or her game up to shake the scent off them, but the intelligence department strongly suspected that this known child trafficking criminal was connected to the case.


    The mission bill then proceeded to expound upon the suspected identity of the ringleader.


    [Known aliases: Martha Myers, Jenna Jill, Ciara Carter


    Sex: Female


    Estimated age: 30-35


    Martial Art Realm: Apprentice


    Known felonies: 136 ounts of child trafficking, 81 ounts of kidnapping and 28 ounts of child abuse.


    Bounty: 100 gold coin


    ... ]


    Rui actually widened his eyes in shock when went through her criminal record which was more extensively documented in the next few pages. This bitch was an actual predator of children unlike anything he had ever seen. She would give even a certain American financer whose name rhymed with Heffrey Jepstein a run for his money.


    She was a veteran in the child-exploitation industry in the underworld, from what Rui could see, capturing her would save many potential victims in the future. Who knew how many children would end up falling prey to her in the future?


    The mission bill then spoke about the operation itself. The Kandrian Bureau of Investigation had managed to narrow down the range of locations that potentially were the child-trafficking bases of the child-trafficking ring via evaluating the known information of their operations and applying logistical constraints and the high need for covertness, they were able to shortlist the set of potential locations and over time managed to obtain a key set of locations that would be the target of their operation.


    What surprised Rui was that the Kandrian Bureau of Investigation actually had an internal Martial Artist from the Bureau that would also be participating.


    He had forgotten that the Martial Union wasn''t the only entity to have Martial Artists working for them, but this mission had reminded him of this fact. After all, this operation involved a Martial Artist from the Martial Union, a Martial Artist from the Kandrian government and a Martial Artist from the underworld.


    Rui grew more and more engrossed into the nned operation of the Kandrian Bureau of Investigation, he hoped they knew what they were doing!


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 169 To The End

    Author''s note: There was a big error in chapter 168. It has been fixed, but please reread it again. Sorry for the inconvenience.


    *   *   *   *   *   *


    Rui was initially surprised that the Kandrian Bureau of Investigation had deigned tomission a Martial Artist from the Martial Academy for this operation despite the fact that they already had a Martial Artist from the bureau taking part in the operation. Capturing a Martial Artist who was doing everything to avoid capture was much harder than defeating a Martial Artist in a head-on one-on-one fight.


    This wasn''t limited to Martial Artists either, it applied to people in general. Beating someone in a fight was easier than catching and single-handedly restraining them despite their resistance. If a person one was trying to capture simply ran away in the opposite direction with a ten-meter head start, the odds that one would close the gap, catch the person, be able to tantly overpower them and endure any resistance they made and drag them to jail was extremely low.


    In most cases, you would not catch up to them. Even if you somehow did, you would not be able to maintain hold were them, because it was unlikely you would get the right hold that would be able to restrict them, you would likely catch a pinch of their clothes, but that wasn''t solid enough.


    Even if you managed to get a strong hold of them, they could easily hinder you by dragging you to the ground, trying to wrestle their way out of this. The moment this happened, the odds that you would seed in arresting them by yourself was very low, because now your advantage would be gone the moment it hits the ground.


    Which is why the Kandrian Bureau of Investigation hadmissioned an extra Martial Artist for the operation, only then did they have a realistic chance of capturing the ringleader. Ideally, a squad of Martial Artists would have been best since it would have guaranteed victory, but they couldn''t afford to spent such resources for a single Martial Artist target and that too, only a strongly suspected Martial Artist target, not confirmed.


    ? The Kandrian Bureau of Investigation did not have the luxury of limitless funds and intel. They simply had to make do with what they had and try to make the best of it.


    The actual operation was quite simple in and of itself. The Kandrian Bureau of Investigation simply intended to surround the area and cut off any escapes and exits, then they would break into every location and cleanly search the entire area for the targets of the mission, eliminating the one by one. They would also free and rescue any captive children and immediately extract them to safety, and ideally, they would be able to capture the ringleader.


    Rui and the Martial Artist of the Kandrian Bureau of Investigation would be along with infiltration squad and were to remain on high alert employing sensory techniques to ensure that the ringleader of the child-trafficking ring would not be able to somehow escape by evading detection.


    Rui was confident he would be able to immediately detect the usage of any Apprentice-level maneuvering technique that allowed a Martial Artist travel at speeds exceeding the human limit via the Seismic mapping technique. The seismic radiation from these techniques definitely exceeded what normal humans produced and were capable of producing.


    The moment he detected the ringleader, he would immediately dash towards the ringleader along with the Martial Artist of the Kandrian Bureau of Investigation. Together, they should be able to capture her. Rui didn''t think she would be able to break out of the encampment and the two of them and escape safely all by herself.


    The operation would begin after Rui was arrived and briefed. Although all relevant information already existed in the mission bill, it was still better to establish a mutual understanding of everybody''s role in the operation.<sub> </sub>


    The number of officers taking part in the mission was a total of eighty-nine, not including Rui and the Martial Artist of the Bureau.


    The rest of the mission bill went more into the standard protocols Rui had to abide by.


    The first impression he got was that he had very little freedom in Royal authorized missions such as this particr mission. The protocols and guidelines had made it clear that the Kandrian Bureau of Investigation had full control over all operations and could effectively order Rui specifically in regards to his contribution within the mission, the moment he epted the mission.


    This was the pr opposite of his hunting-ss mission where he had an immense amount of freedom on how to fulfill the mission, to the point where he could try out wacky novel ways of fulfilling the mission based on hastily constructed hypotheses and evaluations.


    Here, the Kandrian Burea of Investigation would retain all decision-making power. Rui was to simply assist with the mission however they deemed fit.


    It''s not that he didn''t understand the reason for these protocols. Ultimately this was quite a serious matter that was exclusively the jurisdiction and responsibility of the Kandrian government. Allowing the Martial Union to have control over such operations gave the Martial Union a dangerous amount of power and authority that could allow them to easily cause massive problems to the Kandrian governemnt and the Royal Family.


    It was far too great of a risk for the Royal Family to undertake, and so the jurisdiction and authority of these missions was something the Martial Union had to inevitably concede to the Royal Family, as per the terms of the Kandrian Martial Convenant.


    Of course, in exchange the Martial Union got tons of funds, resources and privileges for making such concessions to the Royal Family. Compared to the soft power of having authority over these operations, the Martial Union was plentyfortable settling for the concrete benefits that these material exchanges provided.


    It was ultimately a win-win for both parties. But Martial Artists like Rui had to suffer being a subordinate for the Kandrian government specifically in regards to their participation in the operation, so he wasn''t feeling all too happy about it.


    Still, the sess of this mission was personally important to him, and having a diverse experience would always do more good than harm.


    Thus, Rui intended to see this mission to the end.


    This chapter upload first at  Original from N?velDrama.Org.

 Chapter 170 Introduction

    AN: Celebrating hitting 400 power stones for the first time! So here''s an extra chapter :) Thanks a lot for all the power stones.


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    Rui closed the mission bill, having learnt everything he wanted to learn. He immediately headed to themissions department to finish the application.


    The paperwork for a royal mission was actually much more extensive than those of missions from other sses, this was because he had to sign many more acknowledgements, nonpete agreements, non-disclosure agreements with the Kandrian government before he was allowed to undertake these missions officially.


    Once hepleted the exhausting amount of due process, he immediately headed towards the dispatch facility as themissions department informed the Kandrian Bureau of Investigation that theirmission had been epted.


    Even the dispatch procedures were different.


    For one, in addition to the standard gear that Rui obtained, he was also given a badge with the Royal Insignia. After all, he would be acting on behalf of the Kandrian government and by extension and the Royal Family by extension. He possessed a greater amount of authority over civilians just by being a government authorized agent.


    Furthermore, the consequences of attacking him or hurting him were much more severe than if he was undertaking a privatemission from civilian clienteles. After all, when he undertookmissions civilian clienteles, he was officially just a service provider eptingmissions via a private union, although assaulting people was a crime in the Kandrian Empire, he wasn''t any more special than any other civilian, officially, anyway.


    But whilst operating in a royalmission, he was temporarily now a royally-authorized agent. Assaulting him was a far more severe a crime under these circumstances.


    Rui was beginning to understand the allure of royalmissions. Initially, he didn''t understand why Martial Artists would undertake such stuffy missions outside of having a Martial Art suited to offense-ss missions. But the perks of royalmissions were much stronger than those privatemissions. Having such a deterence on your side must be quite reassuring, Rui realized.


    He quickly donned his gear, the royal badge and his mask. He absolutely did not want to let his identity slip up so he even procured a full-head mask that did not allow even a hint of his facial features to let slip. He even wore super-thin contact lenses that distorted his unique eye-colour.


    And he set off as soon as he finished the dispatch protocols.


    The Kandrian Bureau of Investigation had a branch in most towns in the country. The Hajin branch was actually quite close to the Martial Academy, which was near the center of the town itself. Rui reached it within ten minutes.


    The Kandrian Bureau of Investigation had a rather huge headquarters, not as unreasonablyrge as the Martial Academy, but quite extravagant nheless.


    When Rui entered the gates and front door, he immediately walked into what looked like a security checkpoint and a reception.


    It was a ratherrge hall with a wide table with at the opposite end, upied by many receptionists.


    "Are you here for a bureaumission, sir?" A receptionist asked him when he approached the desk.


    This content ? N?v/elDr(a)m/a.Org.


    "Yes." He nodded.


    "Please provide the verification token tell me your mission code." She requested.


    "HJN03486" Rui replied, as he reached for the token that contained the verification code that proved that Rui was indeed the Martial Artist assigned to the stated mission and not some random imposter.


    "Alright. You have been verified." She stated, as she stamped his token with the royal insignia with strange coloured ink. "Please proceed to themission department of the Bureau and provide this token to them, you will be guided to your assigned supervisor."


    Rui nodded, he''d expected the process to not be as simple as bodyguard or hunting mission due processes were.


    "Office number 28, third floor." The attendant at themission department told him. "Your supervisor is special agent Effels Muhil<sub> </sub>


    Rui sighed as he went on yet another journey in the borate facility, the levels of due process reminded him of airline industry back on Earth.


    "Ah, Martial Artist." A woman in her thirties sitting at a desk said. She nced at him with her judging green eyes. "I am Effels Muhil. Please provide me with your token."


    Thankfully she only took a nce at it before returning it. "I am your supervisor for this mission. Follow me, we will meet up with the rest of the members partaking in the operation your mission is centered around."


    (''Finally.'')


    "Have you memorized the intel in we provided to you via the Martial union?" She asked him sharply.


    "I have." Rui said, before proceeding to paraphrase all important and relevant information.


    "Good." She threw him an approving look.


    Soon they entered a dispatch facility with dozens of men in Kandrianbat gear had been upying. Among them, an older man with ck and white hair and a scarred face, noticed them approaching.


    "Effels." He said simply. "That him?" He asked throwing a skeptical nce at Rui.


    "Special agent Barnard." She addressed with formality. "This is themissioned Martial Artist from the Martial Union."


    Instantly, the atmosphere changed.


    Rui could feel the eyes of all the agents gathered staring at him. He could even the amusement, skepticism and even the confusion of all the agents that were supposedly part of the operation.


    "He looks like a kid." One of the murmured.


    "Can he do shit?" Another asked.


    "This ain''t a pic lil boy." Another grumbled.


    Rui sighed, he was about to focus his mind to pressure them and trigger their subconscious sense of danger with a little bloodlust when suddenly.


    "He''s the real deal alright." He heard the soft voice of a woman.


    Rui didn''t even turn around to understand who she was.


    (''Martial Apprentice.'') He nced at the neer.


    She was a short woman, even shorter than he was despite being an adult. She had long brown hair and eyes, and subtle aura that emanated a faint danger. He wasn''t able to identify the Type of her Martial Art from just observing her, which was unusual for him


    "Sorry I''mte everyone." She smiled, before turning towards Rui. "I am Neira Falual, pleasure to meet you!"


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 171 Breakdown

    N?velDrama.Org content rights.


    "Pleasure to meet you too." Rui replied. He said, not taking his eyes off her.


    "Well." Barnard shrugged. "If Neira is vouching for him, that''s good enough." He turned to Rui. "Do you wish to reveal your identity?"


    Rui shook his head. "I''d like to stay anonymous, thank you."


    The Martial Union had reserved the right, on behalf of its Martial Artists, for its Martial Artists to conceal their identities and personal information while engaging in Royalmissions. This was a right that the Royal Family had conceded very reluctantly.


    The reason the Martial Union had pushed for retaining this right was because it was far too dangerous to allow the Kandrian government and the Royal Family ess to such data. Once the Royal Family learnt of their identity, the Martial Artists of the Martial Union could forget retaining any privacy. The Martial Union was simply unwilling to tolerate such a leak in information.


    Barnard snorted, not saying another word about the matter, before asking. "How do you want us to address you?"


    Rui thought for a second, before replying. "You can call me John."


    He told them his name on Earth in his previous life.


    "Well John." Barnard continued. "Have you memorized all relevant information?"


    Rui nodded, before Barnard fired a series of questions that Rui cleanly answered, earning Barnard''s grudging approval.


    "We''ve been told you''re an all-rounder with some degree of sensory and stealth capabilities." Neira said to him.


    Rui nodded. "I have mastered Seismic Mapping and Blink."


    "Good." Neira nodded. "Your Seismic Mapping together with my Thermal Eye, and we''ll surely be able to ensure that the ringleader won''t escape detection.


    Rui raised his eyes at those words. Thermal Eye was a sensory technique he had seen in the Apprentice Library, it was quite pricey and difficult to master, this technique would surely be quite an asset for the operation.


    "Alright gather around. We have two hours before the operation dispatch, we''ll be going over the n onest time." Barnard dered. The men immediately gathered, forming a circle around their leader, who had drawn out a map and had ced it on the table.


    "The goal of this operation elimination, capture and rescue. The target locations of the raid operation range from the third block to the fifth block in the neenth district." Barnard said. "The participant squads of this operation are squads A28, D13, C34, D21, E62, F16, B02 and K23."


    He paused before continuing. "Squad A28 will cover the first half of the third block." he said, indicating the area on map with a pen.


    "Squad D13 the second half of the third block."<sub> </sub>


    "Squad C34 the first half of the fourth block."


    ...


    He continued reciting the target locations assigned to each participating squad. He went into many more details such as the infiltration means, the assigned gear, the protocol hierarchy and the many courses of actions that they were supposed to undertake under different possible scenarios.


    Rui listened on with a vague interest in regards to how much nning and organization that even a rtively simple and straightforward operation such as this one required. It wasn''t enough to say "let''s jump in, defeat the bad guys, catch the viin and save the good guys". In any given operation, there were many things that could go wrong, and many things that could happen, the nning, organization and protocols existed to minimize the probability that something went wrong or unexpected that could disrupt the operation and lead to failure.


    Soon, Barnard turned his attention to Rui and Neira.


    "The two of you have only one objective in this mission: Preventing the escape of the ringleader or any Martial Artist." He said. "Scenario A: If there are no Martial Artists involved then you will aid the operation as parts squads A28 and D13."


    "Scenario B: If there is a single Martial Apprentice, you will both focus your efforts on capturing them."


    "Scenario C: If there are more than one Martial Apprentices, you will both cooperate on apprehending the closest Martial Apprentice to you."


    "Scenario D: If there are multiple Martial Apprentices and one of them is the ringleader, you will focus your efforts on capturing the ringleader." He concluded. "At all times, maintain your sensory techniques and ensure nothing slips pass your detection. Neira, you will be in charge in rying your reports once separated from the squads. The two of you will infiltrate the target locations ahead of time and be prepared for the emergence of hostile Martial Artists."


    He added one final thing. "Above all else, do not let the ringleader escape. Do whatever needs to be done, we would rather her dead than alive and free."


    Neira nodded, throwing a side smile at Rui. "Looking forward to working with you."


    "Looking forward to working with you too." Rui nced at her with interest. "Our of curiosity, what type of Martial Art do you practice?"


    "I''m a close-range counter-offense specialist." She replied. "Generally I specialize in attacking while defending and using my opponent''s power, speed and movements against them rather than my own."


    "Interesting..." Rui murmured. The description of her style reminded Rui of certain martial arts fighting styles from Earth. Aikido from Japan and Krav Maga from Israel, specifically. These two martial arts specialized in using the opponent''s power, and movements against them. Aikido ced a special focus on attacking the opponent''s bnce while Krav Maga focus on attacking the vital and vulnerable areas of the body that were exposed by the opponent''s movements.


    However, on Earth Aikido was not a very practical martial art as it was practiced in the modern era and Krav Maga was just dirty fighting systemized to some degree, it was illegal in most sports.


    Still, the Martial Art in Gaea was far superior that on Earth, and was no meagre sport. So, he expected that she was quite formidable despite having a Martial Art that would have been quite dubious back on Earth.


    He looked forward to seeing her in action.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 172 True Mission

    Rui observed as the teams prepared for the operation, the sheer amount of gear that they had ess to made the standard gear that the Martial Union offered look like toys inparison.


    Granted, Martial Artists didn''t need a wealth of tools and devices as much as ordinary humans did.


    But even Neira was equipped with a much more sophisticatedbat uniform with visibly greater functionality than his own, making him look humble in turn.


    Soon it was time for the operation tomence. Neira and Rui were supposed to be dispatched separately from the agents, and would infiltrate the area and hide in a particr spot until the operation begun.


    The reason for this was that it was quite likely that the ring likely had scouts conducting surveince, Neira and Rui had a much likelier chance of running into hostile Martial Artists as long as they didn''t appear with the main raid force. They would join the main force once thetter had infiltrated the area.


    "Alright, the operation hasmenced." Special agent Barnard told Neira and Rui. "Execute phase one immediately."


    The two of them nodded and entered a stationed supply carriage in the dispatch facility immediately. This horse-drawn carriage would take them to the center of the district and a staged ''breakdown'' of the carriage would ur, stranding them in the center.


    An hour after they were dispatched, and the breakdown urred, Neira pressed a button on one of the devices she had. She nodded to Rui, indicating she hadpleted their role. Now, they would wait for the main raid force toe.


    The carriage was a supply carriage and had no windows, so Rui couldn''t even look outside to inspect the surroundings, furthermore, conversing was against protocol as well. Although the chances were slim, it could jeopardize the mission, there did exist techniques that could allow Martial Artists to listen in on conversations from a great distance away.


    The two of them had already activated their sensory techniques. Neira narrowed her eyes as she perceived the infrared radiation influx and deciphered it to be able to perceive heat signatures of across the entire area. While Rui closed his eyes and mapped out the topography of the area via Seismic Sensing.


    They both sensed an equal distribution of people across the entire area, and it was hard to say where the base was.


    Then Neira''s eyes narrowed, she nced at Rui and mouthed the word ''children'' to Rui, before taking her device and punching in some more buttons. Rui realized she must have sensed captive children in the area at some point. This was the confirmation that all the intel they had on the situation was urate. Neira had ryed the information to the main raid team, and the two of the Martial Artists would coordinate with the raid team through already established ns and courses of actions.


    Soon, the time hade.This content ? N?v/elDr(a)m/a.Org.


    Rui could feel the atmosphere growing more and more tense. Part of it was because of himself, of course. This mission wasn''t just another mission, the personal importance it had to him made him takt this much more seriously than he ever would any other mission with the remuneration that this mission had.


    Rui perceived the automatic carriages that the main raid team was supposed to use, from a great distance away via his Seismic Mapping. He opened his eyes, briefly nodding to Neira and showed four fingers to Neira, earning a nod of understanding from her.


    They were four minutes away. The main raid wouldmence the moment they arrived. Rui''s Seismic Mapping had a much greater range than Neira''s Thermal Eye, he was in charge of keeping an eye on the activation of Apprentice-level techniques and the arrival of the main raid force.<sub> </sub>


    Soon, motorized vehicles could be heard, Rui could feel them circling the target areas and one-by-one, they all got out.


    The actual infiltration of the main raid force wasn''t supposed to be a covert operation. They came in from the front, surrounded the area with a great number of men and vehicles.


    They quickly brought explosives that they rigged to the front doors of their target infiltration locations.


    BOOM


    BOOM


    BOOM


    The second the explosives went off, Neira and Rui jumped out of the carriage and immediately infiltrated the area along with the main raid force. They ignored ordinary men, the trained professionals of the Kandrian Bureau of Investigation were more than enough to handle the low-lives, and they were armed with all kinds of weapons, including muskets!


    Instead, they focused their senses on anything resembling a Martial Apprentice. A hostile Martial Apprentice likely would not know that there were two Martial Artists within the raid force. After all, the two of them had been careful not to use any Apprentice-level techniques.


    As they kept a sharp eye open for Martial Artists, Rui could sense that the rest of the operation was going well, the raid force had yet to suffer a single casualty as they swiftly brought down the traffickers with projectiles and hand-held weapons.


    Every once in a while, Rui and Neira ran into a musket wielding trafficker who shot projectiles at them, but it was hopeless. Martial Apprentices possessed heightened superhuman kic vision and reflexes, by the time their human opponents managed to pull the trigger, Neira and Rui were already long out of the way of the projectiles. Human movements appeared in slow-motion to them, they didn''t even need Apprentice-level maneuvering techniques to avoid the projectiles.


    ? BOOM


    Both Neira and Rui froze as thetter sensed one particr individual in the center of the targeted area began giving out intense seismic radiation that no human ought to be able to produce!


    They exchanged nces, nodding at each other.


    (''Martial Apprentice.'') Rui thought to himself, as he steeled his gaze. They both sprinted away as Neira punched some buttons on her device to indicate that they had located their target and were in pursuit.


    The true mission had begun.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 173 End Of The Continent

    All rights ? N?velDrama.Org.


    Rui closed his eyes as he ran, relying purely on Seismic Mapping. He wasn''t afraid of the criminals of the facility hurting him, even with Seismic Mapping alone, he was too good to be hit by them. Rui and Neira had abstained from using Apprentice-level techniques because they wanted to make sure the Martial Artist couldn''t possibly realize they were Martial Apprentices.


    "She''s wiped-out squad C34." Neira cursed, elerating. They were almost there.


    BANG


    They kicked open the door at the end of the corridor.


    For a moment, everyone was speechless. Rui needed a few seconds to process what he was seeing.


    But once he did, his blood boiled.


    Thirteen girls, seven boys, shackled in cages, like animals. Bruises, cuts, wounds. Clear abuse and malnourishment. This alone made him feel murderous emotions, but that wasn''t the worst of it.


    What truly made snap was when he saw semen on one of the girls.


    "You..."


    His rage shook the air.


    Never before had he felt such fury in his life.


    His veins popped, struggling to contain the raging blood pulsing and coursing through them. His eyes were bloodshot, reddening with red cracks passing through them. He had clenched his fist so hard that his nails had dug into his skin, blood ebbing out of them.


    His face was crumpled with rage. Every cell in his body wanted to kill the people in front of him. His bloodlust was so strong that even Neira flinched.


    Out of then ten people that Neira and Rui had opened the door to, only one of them was standing still, unharmed by Rui''s intense Apprentice-Realm bloodlust, the remaining nine had already plummeted to their knees.


    The woman at the opposite end of the dock undeniably was the target of their mission. Her appearance was a little different from the sketch and the description of her features, but Rui was rtively certain they had gotten a match. She had long blond hair that sashayed down to her waist, past a rather revealing outfit.


    She had frozen in shock as she recognized the Apprentice-Realm auras of the two intruders, before immediately turning around and sprinting away.


    Rui and Neira sprinted after her immediately. She was the very reason the two of them were even involved the mission in the first ce. They absolutely could not allow her to escape under any circumstances whatsoever!


    There was just one big problem, as they had soone to realize.<sub> </sub>


    "She''s fast!" Rui cursed as he was unable to close the gap between them. Rui was using Parallel Walk, Helical Breathing, Bnced Direction and even Outer Convergence to move as fast as he possibly could. Yet she was even faster.


    (''Is she a maneuvering-oriented Martial Apprentice?'') Rui couldn''t help but wonder. She must have learnt many Apprentice-level maneuvering techniques in order to obtain the speed she was demonstrating.


    Neira was slower than both of them, as she fell behind both Rui and the woman. It couldn''t be helped; she was a close-range counter-offensive specialist, she was not ustomed to long drawn-out chases such as this.


    The gap between Rui and the woman wasn''t too much, she was marginally faster than him, but that didn''t matter to Rui as much it would to normal human beings. Rui had already memorized her Seismic Signature. As long as the distance between them didn''t exceed one hundred meters, Rui would precisely know her exact location at all times. There was no way he could possibly lose track of the heavy seismic radiation she was giving off with her many maneuvering techniques.


    They sprinted through streets, alleys, over roof tops and in drainage tunnels. Rui didn''t slip up a single time, although he couldn''t prevent her from slowly opening the gap, he ensured that he didn''t fall back significantly at any stage. He replicated every maneuver and direction she took and ensured he never faltered.


    Rui didn''t let her out of his vision even a single time. As time passed, just by observing her, he was able to make some inductions about her.


    First, she wasn''t really a Martial Artist. She was a Martial Artist, technically.


    But not really.


    She had ayer of fat over her body, and her untoned physique told Rui she likely didn''t train frequently and probably hadn''t truly trained in a long time. ording to the intel, she ran away from every bust of her operation, which had struck him odd.


    A Martial Apprentice had very little to fear from ordinary humans. Rui could understand eventually retreating, but running away at the first instance of discovery? If he was in her ce, he would have wiped out the raid forces and ensured that he would be able to escape with his goods and valuables, but she abandoned the scene immediately this time and in prior instances.


    This told Rui that she was barely a fighter with very little experience. It was quite likely that if he ever managed to get his hands on her, she wouldn''t stand even the slightest chance of victory against him. she had probably mastered the maneuvering techniques she was disying so that she would be able to escape in situations like these.


    This just made Rui want to catch her even more.


    Neira had already fallen quite behind and had stopped her pursuit, having realized it was hopeless. Her Thermal Eye had a much short range than Rui''s Seismic Mapping, which meant she would inevitably lose track of Rui and their target. She could only pray that Rui would somehow capture her, though the chances of that were too low. She had instead taken it upon herself to brief special agent Barnard of what had urred.


    Rui on the other hand didn''t stop. He simply ran and ran and ran, and then ran some more.


    He didn''t how he was going to stop her. He didn''t have any strategy, for once. He only knew one thing.


    "I don''t care if I have to chase you to the end of the continent, I won''t let you escape!" He swore.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 174 Youll Wish

    Being a Martial Artist was not always easy. A lot of people who found their Martial Path were unable to tread deeply down it because they simplycked the perseverance and dedication needed. Completing missions was not so easy when you were on the lower spectrum of the Martial Apprentice grade scale, you earned a decent amount, but that was about it.


    That was a why a lot of Martial Artists turned to the underworld, there were many alluring fruits within reach, poisoned as they may be.


    Kate Kole remembered the first time she sold a child. She had earned more than ten time''s what she would normally earn as a low-grade Martial Apprentice of the Martial Union. And it was trivially easy too, capturing a single child from the backwaters of the Empire and shipping them to themercial hub of the town of Hajin and selling them in the thriving underworld of the town required very little physical effort from her,pared topleting the often long, difficult and tiring missions of the Martial Union.


    It was addicting. The first time she had kidnapped and trafficked a child, the sheer ease with which she was earning arger sum of money had pulled her into the Underworld. She would never be able to go back to being regr Martial Artist. She went around changing her name time and time again, Martha Myers, Jenna Jill, Ciara Carter and so on and so forth. She had amassed an immense amount of wealth.


    Of course, the Underworld came with its own fair share of detriments. There was a saying that there were only ten people in the Underworld who weren''t exploited by someone else, the ten most powerful people in the Underworld. Everybody else below them served someone or the other and was at the mercy of someone or the other.


    The moment she stepped foot into the Underworld, she was unable to escape. The demand for her goods was strong, and those that she had provided for would not let her go so easily. She was coerced to continue her child-trafficking business. Lest the Underworld sold her to the government once she was no longer of use, they had too much dirt on her.


    Life in the Underworld was one of fear, fear of the Underworld, fear of the overworld. She could not stop trafficking children; she was not allowed to. She was constantly afraid that the Underworld she had stepped foot in would consume her, or spit her out into the open where the Empire would consume her instead.Original from N?velDrama.Org.


    Eventually, she had reached a stage where she was willing to give away all of the wealth she had built upon the heinous suffering of innocent children just to be able to sleep at night without wondering ''When are they going toe for me?''.


    Today, she realized, just very well might be that day.


    She turned around in fear as she saw Rui pursuing her relentlessly. This wasn''t her first time being pursued by a Martial Apprentice. She was normally too fast for them to even keep up, she had managed to acquire many Apprentice-level maneuvering techniques in fear of being caught and mastered them to give her some sense of security. That inbination with her intimate familiarity with the town of Hajin allowed her to escape all her previous pursuers.


    But not Rui. She didn''t quite understand why he was so unshaken in his pursuit, when he was trying so hard. He was a Martial Artist of the Martial Union, not the government, this must have been amission from the Bureau, so why was he expending so much effort when the mission clearly was not worth it?


    She didn''t know, but she didn''t care. All she knew was that she had to get away from him. As long as she kept running, eventually she would leave him in the dust.


    Or so she thought.


    No matter how much she opened up the distance between them, he was still somehow able to keep pursuit of her! Even if she went through confounding paths, he always found his at her back.


    (''He has a sensory technique!'') She cursed.


    She would need to elerate even further in order to get of his sensory range. This would take a long time.


    A long time she didn''t know if she couldst.


    She hadn''t trained her body rigorously in seven years, and had let her body go with material indulgences. Her body had grown rusty, and her physical parameters had plummeted in the time that she had stopped training, more so than she had imagined. Her body had ached all over from stressing itself, her stamina was depleting already. Her lungs felt like they were on fire. Her joints felt like they were about to break apart and her bones felt like they were going to break. Her muscles were shaking with pain.


    Rui on the other hand was unperturbed. His entire life, he had trained immensely, even prior to the Academy. Furthermore, once he entered the Academy, he had honed his body like a madman with his extreme potion tolerance.


    He kept running, running and running some more, without ever faltering or slowing down.


    Their physical foundations were in two entirely different Realms.<sub> </sub>


    Kate had maintained hope that eventually Rui would give up but he didn''t. He just ran like there was nothing holding him back.


    Soon, a quarter of a day passed, and the two of them had already crisscrossed and circled around the town of Hajin multiple times.


    Soon, the moment had arrived.


    CRASH


    In her fatigued and strained state, Kate had stumbled on a rock and crashed hard into the ground, painfully.


    Yet the fear she experienced far surpassed the pain.


    She didn''t even need to turn around. She could feel the weight of his mind pressuring her instinctive and primal sense of danger.


    "Aargh!" She screamed as Rui grasped her hair before she could even turn around. He didn''t utter a word, the re in his eyes spoke for itself.


    "LET ME GO!" She screamed. "HELP! SAVE ME!" She cried to the onlooking passersby.


    CRACK


    "AAAAARRRGH!" She screeched as excruciating pain shot up from her leg. She turned around and saw her shin broken cleanly, bent at a grotesque angle.


    "LET ME GO PLEASE!" She grasped his knees.


    CRACK


    "AAAAAAHHHRRHH!" She screeched even more loudly as Rui cleanly crushed her second leg.


    She no longer had any escape.


    "HAVE MERCY." She half-wailed, half-screeched. "LET ME GO!!" She banged her hands against him with some feeble offense-oriented techniques as he dragged her by the hair.


    "I''m sure those children said the same thing to you." Rui whispered, turning to nce at her.


    The re in his eye shook her.


    "I may not be able to kill you, but it''s a long way to the Bureau headquarters. By the time we reach it, you''ll wish you were dead."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 175 Make The Best Of It

    That day, word of a strange sight spread around the town of Hajin that day. A Martial Artist of the Martial Union bearing the Royal Insignia had dragged a woman by her hair all the way from the outskirts of the town of Hajin to the central district. It was a sight that reinstated the fear in the civilians had in the Martial Artists of the Empire.


    Considering the Martial Artist seemed to be from the Martial Union and the Kandrian government, it probably meant that that woman had fucked up big time. If that treatment of the woman was unjustified, it would not have been done so publicly. The fact that she was being treated so horribly out in the open meant that she was being used an example by the Kandrian government and the Martial Union, this was the conclusion people came to.


    Of course, they couldn''t be more wrong. Rui honestly just didn''t care for the optics. He didn''t want to start sprinting with her already mangled body. There was a chance she might aactually die if he was too rough, as much as he would have loved to kill her, giving her to the Kandrian Bureau of Investigation would probably save more lives.


    She had valuable intelligence to offer regarding the child-trafficking industry, without a doubt. Suppliers, traffickers, purchasers and consumers. The hidden identities of these people that had lurked around in the shadows could potentially be exposed and uprooted by the Bureau and the Martial Union based on her intelligence.


    He had covered her face in a mask, and wrapped up most of her body in cloth, even her hair. He did this because he did not want anyone identifying her.


    Of course,mon citizens would have no clue who she was, but those in the know would realize that she''d been caught, and they might get exposed. He had been exceedingly meticulous and had ensured that there was almost no chance of that happening.


    The only thing that could be inferred about her was that she was a female adult, given the size of her voluptuous breasts.


    Soon enough Rui had reached the Bureau headquarters. It had taken him a while to get past the general bewilderment of the front reception staff and guards, but eventually he was greeted by several members of the team he was assigned.


    "You son of a musket." Barnard revealed a grudging smirk. "You actually did it, you madman."


    Several others chipped in as well.


    "We knew you had it in you!"


    "I knew he was capable the second Iid eyes on him."


    "As expected of a Martial Artist."


    "Why do I recall you saying the exact opposite when we first met?" Rui grumbled, but inwardly he couldn''t help but feel just a tiny bit validated.


    "Great job." Neira beamed at him. "You singlehandedly fulfilled one of the main objectives of the mission." She said before sighing. "Inparison, I was rather useless."


    "It''s just a matter ofpatibility." Rui consoled. "It would be unreasonable to expect someone with your specialty to aplish much more than what you did."


    He turned to Barnard. "How are the children?"


    His face turned grim. "Physically? Just fine. We rejuvenated and healed them up in a jiffy. Those with infections and other conditions were promptly given immediate medical attention and will make a full recovery." he said, pausing before continuing. "But mentally..."


    He shook his head.<sub> </sub>


    Rui nodded. It would be rather strange if the children''s mental health was perfect. He expected pretty much all of them would bear these wounds and scars for pretty much their entire lives. It would permanently alter and shape who they grow up to be. He couldn''t have expected the horrors the endured, and the even more horrifying effects it had on their psyche.


    He could only hope they would heal, a slim, feeble hope.


    He had seeded in fulfilling the main objective. Taking down the bitch would undoubtedly save many, many more children out there, and her intelligence and information would also do the same.


    But the damage had already been inflicted. He found it hard to be too happy about the mission, not after what he''d witnessed. But there was the silver lining that his goal of eliminating the risk the Quarrier Orphanage was under, had beenpleted.


    "Good work, your job is almost done." Effels, his supervisor stated. "Now you just have toplete some post-mission protocols here." She said, handing over a stack of papers that he needed to sign. Rui sighed as he got to work.


    (''That took forever.'') He thought, once he finished.


    He bade goodbye to them once he was done, returning to the Martial Union.This content ? N?v/elDr(a)m/a.Org.


    On the way back, he gathered his thoughts on the mission. He had chosen to get into an offense-oriented mission because he wanted to gain some experience with active hostile conflict with other Martial Apprentices, but this mission was anything but that.


    He had experienced more head-on conflicts in his bodyguard missions and his sole hunting mission. Which was definitely not what he was expecting. So to some degree, he was a bit disappointed.


    (''Well atleast the mission ended in less than half a day.'') Rui shrugged. He had gotten a decent number of credits for it too.


    (''Now what...?'') He wondered. He was still quite energized after having taken a rejuvenation potion, he didn''t feel like taking a break or rest. He had already slept for nine hours the previous night.


    (''Another mission it is...'') Rui shrugged. He had little over seven months before the Kandrian Martial Festival arrived. The preliminaries were scheduled one month before the actual interschool contest. Which meant he really only had six months, he had already scheduled one month after his training for adjusting and refining his usage of the new technique he had learnt into his Martial Art.


    That left five months.


    He needed four months for training, generally.


    That left one month.


    One month of missions, four months of training, one month of refinement.


    And the preliminaries would begin.


    (''The next one month is crucial, I have to make the best of it.'')


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 176 No Stone Unturned

    And just like that, a month had passed.


    Rui had taken up several missions, aiming for missions of the higher remuneration in the shortest amount of time within his difficulty grade. He had taken up a total of six missions in the past month. Five bodyguard missions, two hunting-ss missions and one offense-ss mission.


    He had racked up a total of six hundred and forty martial credits, that in addition to the martial credits he had earned from the earthen basilisk mission as well as the royal mission immediately after yielded to a total of one thousand two hundred and twenty martial credits!


    Rui was happy that he had managed to hit four digits by the end of the month. This means he had ess to a lot of the good stuff!


    You couldn''t buy multiple high-grade techniques with just a measly hundred or two hundred martial credits. He was satisfied with his reserve, especially since he couldn''t acquire anymore. He had run out of time.


    The next five months would fully be dedicated to getting stronger. After that, the long-awaited Kandrian Martial Festival will have finally arrived.


    But, he was experiencing a problem he hadn''t ever experienced before.


    He had absolutely no idea what techniques to purchase!


    Of course, even normally when he was about to purchase technique, he usually didn''t have a precise idea of exactly what techniques in the Apprentice library he wanted to purchase. But, he knew what kind of techniques he wanted to purchase, and what conditions they had to satisfy for him to purchase them.


    For his very first training round, he needed to procure foundational Apprentice-level techniques in all basic fields. At that point, he had no Apprentice-level techniques at all. It was embarrassing to even call himself a proper Martial Apprentice. He had been desperately trying to take the first step in forming the basic foundation.


    The second training round had been centered around filling therge gaping holes in his variety and diversity. By purchasing some grappling and wrestling techniques, as well as a finishing strike and some defensive and counter-offensive moves. He had expanded the limits of his options from merely Vital Pressure striking to many ways through which he could take his opponent down.


    The third round had bolstered the potency of his Martial Art. Outer Convergence had given it a foundational and fundamental boost in power and speed, while Inner Divergence had given him the ability to endure. Blink gave him the option of exploiting opening that he previously could not exploit while Seismic Sensing closed off many opening that his opponents would normally be able to exploit, but now couldn''t. This round had generally increased his overall formidability quite well, and in a well distributed fashion, too.


    He had entered each round of training with a clear specific defined goal.


    So what was the problem here?


    (''The problem is...'') Rui thought to himself. (''I don''t have any specific criterion for the individual techniques I want to purchase.'')


    He knew he wanted to master the techniques that would allow him to win the Martial Academic Contest in the Kandrian Martial Festival, but he didn''t know what those techniques were.


    Should he purchase some more power-boosting techniques like Outer Convergence? Hoping that the immense power he would generate would win him the contest?<sub> </sub>


    Or perhaps, he should purchase some more maneuvering-oriented techniques like Parallel Walk and instead hope that his evasiveness will ensure his defeat doesn''t ur?


    Maybe he should go down the Dalen path and boost his already solid defense even further?


    Or perhaps the Milliana path and ensure he could fight for long period of time? The VOID algorithm did like time, after all.


    He wasn''t sure. They were all alluring options, in all honesty. He simply didn''t know which of the many paths he ought to go down. Hell, he could even partially travel down multiple paths.


    Part of the reason he was so indecisive about which path to go down was because he didn''t know which path was most suited for the Martial Academy Contest that would be hosted together by all sixteen Martial Academies across the entirety of the Kandrian Empire.


    It was a national-level tournament!


    The winner of the contest would be crowned the strongest Martial Apprentice of their generation!


    ? Yet as much as Rui had been looking forward to this, he realized he didn''t know too much about the details. Part of it was because it felt so distant, just a while back it was a year away, and now suddenly Rui had only five months of training and refinement left.


    Original from N?velDrama.Org.


    Another part of it was that he had simply been too busy. Every hour mattered to Rui. He grinded, rested appropriately and then grinded some more missions. It had always been at the back of his mind, but now that the time to begin his fourth training stage hade, it had immediately and abruptlye to the front of his mind now.


    "I suppose I cane back to this decision once I learn more about the tournament." Rui shrugged. "No point in breaking my head over and over."


    He wasn''t able toe to a decision right away, and he would hate to waste his precious martial credits on a technique he would end up regretting buying. Martial credits were precious and had to be earned through clood, sweat and tears.


    "The Academy doesn''t offer refunds either."


    He made up his mind, he would immerse himself in the happenings of the Martial Academic Contest before making his mind up, perhaps he would ask his instructors or friends too.


    He already knew the format and general rules and facts, but surely people with much more experience with the Contest would have more insight and information to offer. Maybe not game changing, but insightful enough.


    Even the tiniest bit of a hint would be enough to make up his mind and choices that he would go through with confidence.


    He wished to have left no stone unturned.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 177 Clarity

    "The Martial Contest?" Squire Kyrie echoed, ncing at Rui.


    "That''s right." Rui said, nodding. "I''m about enter training for the Martial Contest. But, I''m not sure what kind of techniques to purchase. I was wondering if you had any advice for me?"


    In the past day he had spoken to multiple people. His friends, some instructors, some old instructors, he had received a diverse array of opinions.


    Kane had told him he should improve his evasive maneuvering. Fae had told he should consider improving his striking. Dalen and Milliana had respectively told him to consider improving his defense and stamina.


    He wasn''t sure. He had hoped that consulting others would give him some rity, but frankly, it only made him more conflicted.


    There were many good arguments for each of the options he had been presented.


    "What does the Martial Contest have to with the development of your Martial Art?" Kyrie asked.


    "Huh?" Rui tilted his head in confusion. "What does it have to with the development of my Martial Art? I want topete in and win the Martial Contest. For that, I have to grow stronger."


    He replied with a confused expression.


    Squire Kyrie didn''t respond immediately, taking her time to ponder about his words. "You know... I won the Martial Contest back when I was still in the Academy and was crowned the Martial Princess."


    "What??" Rui turned to her in shock and surprise. "I did not know that."


    "It was a long time ago." Kyrie smiled wryly. "So long ago, that it doesn''t even matter now. It''s insignificant, even though I was crowned champion." She said, throwing pointed look at Rui


    He frowned at those words. He was cognizant enough to sense that her words had meaning, she was trying to convey something.


    "Insignificant? The Martial Contest?" He murmured with a skeptical look.


    The Kandrian Martial Festival was held once every five years. Its infrequency ensured that whenever the Festival did eventually roll around, it had a lot of weight. It drew in attention from not just the entire Empire, but even surrounding nations as well!


    The Sekigahara Confederate, the Britannia Empire and the Republic of Gorteau all sent delegates to the Kandrian Empire during the Festival, to engage in some diplomatic show of goodwill.


    At the center of the Kandrian Martial Festival lied the inter-academic Martial Contest held by the sixteen Martial Academies across the Kandrian Empire.


    Sixteen representatives, four rounds, one champion. Glory. Prestige. Wealth.


    How could such an event be insignificant?


    "What''s more important to you?" She asked. "Reaching Martial Squire, or winning the Martial Contest?"


    "Reaching Martial Squire." Rui replied unhesitantly. As much as he wanted to win the Martial Contest, reaching Martial Squire was far stronger a desire for Rui than anything else. His ultimate goal was to pursue his Martial Art and traverse his Martial Path forever, he did not want to ever want to die constrained ever again. The first time was bad enough.


    If he could not reach Martial Squire, then it meant he had hit a dead end in his Martial Path and Martial Art.<sub> </sub>


    That was not something he was willing to tolerate, inparison, the Martial Contest was indeed inconsequential.


    "Can''t I pursue both?" Rui frowned, bing a Martial Squire didn''t mean he couldn''t participate in the Martial Contest, and participating in the Martial Contest didn''t mean he couldn''t be a Martial Squire. So why did it sound like Squire Kyrie was insinuating this?


    "Can you?" She asked.


    "Can''t I?"


    "Tell me. How would you have gone on training if the Martial Contest did not exist?" She asked, in turn.


    Rui remained silent at that question.


    "At the very least, would your normal training be different from that of your Martial Contest training?" She asked.


    "Probably."


    "How do you think you''ll reach Martial Squire if you allow something like the Martial Contest to dictate your Martial Path?" Squire Kyrie asked him.


    Rui''s eyes flew wide open at those words. He understood what she was trying to convey.


    "Training shapes your Martial Art and Martial Path." She said. "The influence your training has on your Martial Art and your Martial Path cannot be changed too easily. With that in mind, do you think altering training for the sake of the Martial Contest is conducive to your goal?"


    Rui shook his head. It wasn''t. She definitely had a point. The Martial Contest was not his end goal, he should not bend his Martial Path towards it, as that would inevitably mean it is bending away from its original path. What was the point of training for the Martial Contest specifically?


    The Martial Contest urred once every five years. He would really only to get to participate in it once. After that, it was no longer relevant. It was not worth altering his original Martial Path.


    Instead, he should simply train for the sake of his Martial Art itself, and not for anything or anybody else.


    "Thank you for your guidance, instructor Kyrie." Rui was grateful. He had gotten bit too fixated on the Contest itself. He was still excited for the Martial Contest, and still intended to grow stronger. But the difference was he was not willing to influence his Martial Path for the sake of the Contest.


    He could still train for the Martial Contest to a lower level, within his Martial Path, but he wasn''t willing to change his course. Even if the techniques he chose weren''t precisely the best for the Martial Contest, he would still choose to master them if he believed that these techniques were faithful to his Martial Path.


    Kyrie nodded with a hint of approval. "Good luck. I look forward to your performance in the Martial Contest and the Festival. But never forget, your Path goes far beyond them."


    Rui nodded. "Thank you." Before bading her farewell and heading to the Apprentice Library.


    His mind was no longer consumed by the incessant thoughts of the Martial Festival.Original from N?velDrama.Org.


    "My Martial Art is the VOID algorithm. And my Martial Path is Project Water." He whispered to himself. "I''ll do whatever it takes to achieve my dreams."


    He stopped, having reached the gates to the Apprentice Library.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 178 First Choice

    Had he instantly figured out what kind of techniques he wanted to purchase at this point in time?


    No.


    But at the very least he knew what he didn''t want to do.


    He didn''t want to focus exclusively on any one field, he was an all-rounder and that didn''t change. He was previously considering taking the suggestions of his friends and dialing down and focusing on the fields that may be the most useful in the Martial Contest setting, but he decided against that.


    "That is not my Martial path." He shook his head, as he entered the Apprentice Library.


    It was time to make his choices.


    (''What is something I would really like my Martial Art to obtain in this round of training?'') Rui asked himself.


    Well, this question was harder to answer than before because his Martial Art did not have very obvious needs anymore, being well-rounded enough with fourteen Apprentice-level techniques.


    He put aside logical deduction for one second. What was it that he truly wanted to for his Martial Art? He looked inside, trying to gauge his emotions. Staying true to himself was the key to staying faithful to his Martial Path.


    It had taken him a while, but he hade to a realization.


    (''I wish my Martial Art had more lethality.'') He realized, recalling his dissatisfaction during the hunting-ss mission being unable to take the earthen basilisk down in a shorter period of time.


    His offense was limited to Outer Convergence, Flowing Canon, Bindingsh and Mirage Dive.


    This made for a decent amount of variety, for sure. But itcked the level of lethality he wished he had. The kind of attack that could do serious damage to his opponent if wellnded.


    Usually, these techniques had a high difficulty of mastery or were extremely high-grade and thus super pricy.


    But now, atleast he had an objective. Was it the best course of action for the Martial Contest? Probably not, the Martial Contest had a non-killing or crippling rule, which restricted how much lethality he could use. Was he going to change his choice even if it wasn''t the most optimal choice?


    No.


    This was his Martial Path, not that of the Martial Contest.


    He set out to the offense-oriented section, looking for various techniques. The only ce he could possibly find lethal techniques would be in the offense-oriented section, after all.


    There he once again came to marvel at how diverse the Martial techniques on Gaea were.


    [Hypnotic w]


    A technique where one condition the tip of one''s fingers and nails to produce to be saturated with a potent venom that caused drowsiness. This was a technique that first required the user to spend months building up a strong tolerance to this venom by controlled administration of doses of the poison. Only then could the finger tips and nails be conditioned to produce this venom. Over the course of a fight, constant exposure of the venom to the user''s opponent via the Hypnotic w would cause induced hypnosis unless the opponent''s poison resistance is quite high.


    Rui shook his head in disbelief. He still had vaguely mixed feelings about using poison to fight, but clearly, in this world, Martial Art had a much broader scope than the martial arts of Earth.


    He might have been tempted to train in the technique anyway if not for the fact that it had downsides to it. He would be unable to train in any other technique whilst training this technique and he would need to wear gloves permanently for the rest of his life, because this technique would make put people to sleep whether he liked it or not.<sub> </sub>


    He put it aside, skimming through some other choices.


    He ran into many techniques that were capable of inflicting serious damage to their opponent or seriously incapacitating them leaving them vulnerable. Techniques centered around friction, body temperature maniption, force permeation, nerve striking, flesh tearing, artery targeting, oxygen deprivation and many other absurd techniques.


    Many of these techniques were extremely pricey, and were far too niche or had too much of a difficulty grade.


    This was to be expected, the power to instantly defeat or kill Martial Apprentices could not be easy to obtain!N?vel/Dr(a)ma.Org - Content owner.


    If these techniques were not super-difficult to master, then Martial Apprentices would be dropping like flies!


    One particr technique was especially absurd, its very existence shocked him.


    [Heart Permeation]


    A jabbing technique that manipted the impact of the jab such that the impact did not do damage to the skin, flesh, muscles or bone in the chest area, but permeated all the way inside from the outside to the heart. The impact would cause an instant cardiac arrest and would kill the target of the technique within seconds if well-executed.


    "What???" Rui eximed. A single jab that could kill a Martial Apprentice instantly??? He had not thought it was possible. He hadn''t ever gone through the higher-graded techniques in the Apprentice Library this extensively before. After all, he was still solidifying his foundation in the prior training stages, so he hadn''t ever seen this technique.


    This technique costed one thousand martial credits, and had a grade ten difficulty. Which corresponded to a one-percent sessful mastery rate.


    Only one percent of Martial Apprentices who purchased this technique had mastered it!


    Even the Martial Academy didn''t have that many martial Apprentices at that moment!


    Rui was sure whoever mastered that technique would instantly be the most dangerous Martial Artist in the Academy.


    Thankfully, it was absurdly difficult to master. He was definitely not purchasing it at this juncture.


    Just as he was inspecting the other techniques, something interesting caught his eye.


    [Stinger]


    This was a kicking-based piercing technique that involved conditioning the first toe of the foot from merely a toe to weapon meant to st holes in the target of the technique. The toe would be rigorously conditioned on a skeletal, flesh and epithelial level. It would effectively be re-engineered into an unstoppable bullet.


    When fullypleted and mastered. The Stinger allowed the user tounch swift front kicks that left a four-centimeter-long hole as wide as a toe in everything it touched!


    This one move could singlehandedly win him a fight and turn the tables in losing battles.


    Furthermore, this technique had a rather rtively reasonable pricepared to the others because of its high difficulty. The difficulty of the technique stemming from the long, painful conditioning process of the training. It had a high potency grade despite its price for this reason. It required to perseverance.


    If Rui purchased this technique, he will have gotten a huge boost in lethality while still retaining enough martial credits to purchase a few more techniques.


    "Alright, I''ve decided." Rui''s eyes narrowed with determination. "This will be my first choice."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 179 Phantom Step

    He picked the scroll for the technique out of the slot, examining it happily. He was quite satisfied with the significant improvement to his lethality.


    The technique costed around four hundred martial credits, despite the fact that it could cause more damage. The reason for this was because the Stinger had very low flexibility. It could be executed as a straight kick, or side kicks, to varying heights. But the fact of the matter was it required a leg, and unless the user trained therge toes of both feet for the technique, it could only be used with one leg.


    Outer Convergence was less devastating with every attack, but fundamentally boosted the power and speed of nearly all Martial maneuvers in general. It wasn''t limited to one leg or one type of attack and could even boost other fields if used cleverly. But itcked the lethality, in turn.


    The two techniques were equally high-grade with high-difficulty of mastery that made them more affordable, and had different strengths and weaknesses.


    With this, Rui''s offense was not to be messed with, he was probably still inferior to Fae in this regard, but he should still beparable enough to her in this regard once he mastered this technique.


    He moved on, stepping out of the offense-oriented section. He had no intention of purchasing any more pure offensive techniques.


    When he walked out, he paused.


    (''Now what?'') Rui wondered. He wasn''t sure. He sauntered around a bit, eying the different sections in the Apprentice Library, as they eventually settled on one.


    The maneuvering section.


    (''It''s been a while since I''ve visited that section.'') Rui mused. He hadn''t purchased a maneuvering-oriented technique since he purchased Parallel Walk two training sessions ago.


    (''That was a long ass time ago.'') Rui felt nostalgic.


    It actually was less than a year ago, but so much had happened since then, that Rui felt it was truly a long time ago.


    He shrugged. It was as good a choice as any. He didn''t even necessarily have to pick a maneuvering technique either. If he didn''t like what he was seeing, he could just move on. There was no reason to pick something he didn''t want to pick.This content ? N?v/elDr(a)m/a.Org.


    He came across the many techniques held in the maneuvering section, many of which he had seen before.


    [Godspeed]


    A technique that allows the user to momentarily surpass the speed of sound by umting power in the form of muscr potential energy, allowing them to surpass the reaction time of most Martial Apprentices,unching a clean knockout blow that was almost impossible to avoid.


    It was one of the few techniques of the entire library technique that had grade ten difficulty, just like Heart Permeation, Void Step and All-Seeing Eye.


    Rui was aware of the technique, this was the technique with which Kane had beaten Fae singlehandedly, and the technique that had forced Kyrie to stop holding back and limiting herself. It was an incredible technique with highest of efficiencies. If sessfully well-executed, Rui doubted there was a single Martial Apprentice that could avoid being defeated. Even Fae, who was among the strongest offense specialists in the Academy could barelyunch a failed counter before she got knocked out.


    The technique had some significant conditions and drawbacks, otherwise Kane would just go around one-shotting Martial Apprentices like he was a Martial Squire!


    Still, the fact that Kane mastered it in half a year was impressive, because this was the kind of technique that took several years of unhindered dedicated training to master.<sub> </sub>


    When it came to mastering maneuvering techniques, Kane was unrivalled. Not even Rui with his reincarnated-enhanced mind and reincarnated-enhanced potion tolerance was above him in this particr regard. He could just drink up maneuvering techniques like they were juice.


    The reason he was still slower than Rui on average was because he was average at learning techniques from other fields.


    Still, Rui didn''t think he could master Godspeed, nor did he feel the urge to so he left it at that.


    He went through the many techniques, many of which he had seen before, many of which were new, until he stumbled upon something interesting.


    [Phantom Step]


    A technique centered around creating illusions with extremely high-quality convincing feints based on urate and precise trajectories as well as appropriate shifts in center of gravity.


    It was a technique with equal amounts of flexibility and high-efficiency, which resulted in an overall high-quality technique, it was quite reasonably priced too.


    This wasn''t the first time Rui had seen techniques with the concept of feinting incorporated into them. In fact, he had mastered one himself.


    Mirage Dive was a technique that he had mastered two training stages ago. It used a feint grappling attack to create an opening for a takedown.


    "Hmm..." Rui pondered. This technique was a variable that would allow him to create variables to end the battle or turn around a losing battle by exploiting an opening created by the technique. Furthermore, this technique''s surprise effects could be used synergistically with the surprise effects of Blink, and also could be used as a tool to sessfullynd the Stinger kick.


    He could increase the likelihood of all his techniques working better directly or indirectly thanks to Phantom Step!


    All in all, it had goodpatibility and synergy with his existing techniques and Martial Art.


    "Alright then." Rui plopped the scroll out of the slot and walked away from the maneuvering section.


    The technique had costed around three hundred and eighty martial credits. Not unreasonable given what it was touted to be capable of. Along with the Stinger technique, his total expenditure was seven hundred and eighty martial credits.


    Leaving him a remaining of four hundred and forty martial credits.


    "Enough for one high-grade technique, or two mediocre techniques." He mused. He didn''t even consider purchasing mediocre techniques, if he wanted those, he could go back to the foundational techniques and pick four or five techniques from there.


    His Martial Art had already developed to a point where it needed high-quality techniques to grow significantly stronger!


    "That leaves onest technique."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 180 Final Technique

    One technique to go.


    Rui truly had no idea this time. He had picked one offense-ss technique, one maneuvering technique, following this pattern, wouldn''t it make sense to pick a defense-ss technique?


    Rui nced at the defense-ss section, before shaking his head.


    (''My defense is solid enough.'') He had already mastered three defensive techniques that were extremely synergetic with the VOID algorithm. He didn''t feel the need to beef up his defense just yet, at the very least he didn''t need to add another endurance technique, maybe he could consider adding some other form of defense?


    But for now, he didn''t intend to going into the defense-ss section, instead, he was quite interested in another section in particr.


    The misceneous section.


    The misceneous section was thergest of all sections in the library because it contained many sizable sub-sections across it.


    Environment-ss techniques, beast-ss techniques,bour-ss techniques, weapon-ss techniques, stealth-ss techniques, sensory-ss techniques. It contained many interesting techniques of various sorts.


    He didn''t care to go through many of these sses of techniques, half of these were far too early for him, he felt. Especially, the weapon-ss techniques. Further, not all of these techniques were super-useful to him either. The misceneous section had some rather funny techniques as well.


    [Mind Pce]


    This technique effectively gave the user a perfect memory. It was a technique developed for Martial Artists who had trouble remembering the vast amounts of information that mission bills often had. It also allowed martial Artists to remember many other important pieces of information like the protocols and guidelines of different sses of information as well. Meant for Martial Apprentices who were mentally challenged to some degree.


    Difficulty grade: Five.


    Cost: Free


    Rui almost burst outughing. The Martial Union actually added an Apprentice-level technique for ipetent Martial Apprentices who had difficulty memorizing information that needed to be memorized forpleting missions. Just how many instances of ipetency did they have, before they decided to add this technique?


    They even made the technique free of cost so that Martial Apprentices would have no qualms purchasing it!


    He shook his head, chuckling. He began skimming through some sses of techniques he had already visited prior in his previous visit to the Apprentice Library.


    The Sensory-ss.


    He had recalled some particrly interesting techniques in this section when he saw it in the Misceneous section. Just as he skimmed through the section, something interesting caught his eye.


    [Primordial Instinct]


    A technique that trained the danger evaluation intuition of the user, allowing them to subconsciously detect dangerous phenomena within a certain range.


    "This..."


    This was a technique he recalled seeing back when he picked out Seismic Mapping. He''d been pretty intrigued by it at the time, but eventually picked Seismic Mapping because Seismic Mapping had far greater range, whereas Primordial Instinct was abat-oriented technique.<sub> </sub>


    (''That was a such a great decision, in hindsight.'') Rui realized.


    Had he picked Primordial Instinct instead of Seismic Mapping, he wouldn''t have been able toplete the earthen basilisk mission, or the child-trafficking mission either. Mostly because Primordial Instinct wouldn''t be of much use in those particr situation


    However, Primordial Instinct shined inbat, in turn. While Seismic Mapping, inbat, could only be used to ascertain his opponent''s position and general movements, Primordial Instinct could aplish far more.


    This was a technique that trained the human subconscious danger sensing and evaluation capability as well as the human subconscious precognition. It basically evolved his mind''s capacity to sense danger and predict future instinctively and subconsciously.


    Ordinarily, these mental parameters were fixed and static, and had very little room for intrinsic improvement. But this wasn''t true for Martial Apprentices. Martial Apprentices possessed superhuman neurology as a result of the evolution and enhancement provided by the breakthrough to Martial Apprentice and the discovery of the Martial Path.


    Unlike normal humans, the subconscious danger and predictive instinct could be improved, and had the potential to be much greater. It need only be trained in the appropriate manner.


    Once mastered, the description of the technique professed that one could be able to predict their opponent''s much deeper than before, and would be able to instinctively sense and evaluate danger across their surroundings in all directions to a far higher degree than before. It became drastically much harder for the user to be caught off-guard.


    Rui had begun to strongly suspect that the Primordial Instinct technique had a strongpatibility with the VOID algorithm. The reason for this was because the predictive mechanism of the VOID algorithm was different from the predictive mechanism of the Primordial Instinct technique.


    The VOID algorithm predicted the user''s opponents by in putting variables into an algorithmic system that outputted the opponent''s future moves as well as the ideal ways to counter depending on what the user wanted to aplish. It was fundamentally founded on data science and a deep understanding about the fundamental nature of physical conflict.


    The Primordial Instinct''s predictive prowess instead was founded on the mind''s subconscious inexplicable ability to extrapte the future from the present.


    If the two had no ovep, then they could cooperate with no friction of any kind. Rui would be able tobine the predictive prowess of the Primordial Instinct technique with that of the VOID algorithm to truly peer into the future!


    Furthermore, the danger sensing ability of the Primordial Instinct technique was quite impressive as well.This content ? N?v/elDr(a)m/a.Org.


    If Rui wasn''t wrong, the danger sensing aspect of this technique could be integrated into the VOID algorithm as an extra variable to input. With even greater amounts of information avable, the VOID algorithm''s results would surely be even more refined, precise and urate!


    "This could serve as the first step to adapting the VOID algorithm to the world of Gaea!" Rui eximed with ecstasy; he was quite pleased with this epiphany.


    With all of these considerations, the Primordial Instinct technique might actually have the greatestpatibility with his Martial Artpared to the other two techniques he had chosen!


    Furthermore, almost as if it was telling him something, the price of the technique was just barely within his remaining budget.


    He nodded, plucking the scroll out of its slow. Adding it to pouch along with the other two.


    The Stinger.


    Phantom Step.


    Primordial Instinct.


    These would be the three techniques he intended to master. With these techniques, he intended to reach another level of power!


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 181 Training Regimes

    N?vel/Dr(a)ma.Org - Content owner.


    He quickly exchanged all of his hard-earned martial credits for the techniques, before sitting down at the Apprentice Library to memorize their training methods.


    Out of all the three, The Stinger''s training was the most painful and least pleasant by far. The training of the technique involved the repeated damaging of the toe to cause micro-fractures that when healed via healing potions would strengthen the bone structure to stronger than it ever was, while also reshaping the bone and the flesh to be more conducive to piercing.


    This was not something Rui was unfamiliar with as a concept. It was a well-documented fact that pressure and the reconstruction of microfractures strengthened the bone. There were several traditional martial arts on Earth that used this kind of conditioning to strengthen bones. The most popr ones being Karate, Kung Fu and Muay Thai. Each applied this principle in different way to varying degrees.


    But the Stinger technique''s training took it to a whole other level.


    It was a long and painful process that was nothing short of pure torture. This was one of the reasons it had an abnormally high difficulty grade. Too many students who had undertaken this training had simply quit. Only ten-percent of the Martial Apprentices who had purchased this technique had the determination to see it to the very end.


    The excruciating pain was simply too much for most of them, the power of the technique was simply not worth the agony that the technique''s training regime entailed, only a handful of Martial Apprentices possessed the fortitude needed toplete the training.


    Rui intended to see it through to the very end as well, the lethality of the technique was extremely attractive, it would benefit him not just in the Martial Contest, but it would help him in all future missions as well. He would be able to end fights much quicker than he ever was able to before.


    Had he had this technique in his very first mission, he would have been able to hinder the enemy Martial Apprentice and rejoin with Be before she was found and killed. He might have been able to prevent the bandits from escaping and the earthen basilisk would have gone down far sooner than it did.


    Inparison, the remaining two techniques had training regimes that were far easier.


    The Phantom Step technique had a training regime very simr to that of the Binding Lash technique. It involved memorizing the timings of feints by wearing suits that froze motion at the right moment so that Rui would understand the timing for feints of each maneuver. The training involved Rui learning to replicate that timing so as to be able to replicate the feint perfectly.


    Rui was certain he would handle this training regime quite well, he had already undergone it once and was quite familiar with how the Academy trained feinting maneuvering techniques. Thus, he would likely master this technique the quickest because he wouldn''t need to go through the adjustment phase of the training regime.


    This was also one of the reasons he wasfortable choosing it. With how brutal the Stinger''s training regime was going to be, he would like it if, at the very least one of the other two training regimes was something he was confident of nailing smoothly, that would put less stress on him during the entire training stage, without a doubt.<sub> </sub>


    The more at ease he was mentally, the easier he would be able to make it past the painful Stinger technique.


    The most interesting training regime however, was the Primordial Instinct technique. This technique exploited the fact that the danger and precognitive instinct of the human mind could be exercised and developed, like any other muscle.


    In fact, it treated the subconscious instinct of the human as a muscle, and trained it like one.


    How were muscle trained? By straining them with weight against their motion. A simr principle was applied to the subconscious instinct of the human mind. It was restricted by restricting senses and then thrust into situations where its danger sensing capabilities would inevitably be strained.


    This was also another training regime he wasn''t entirely unustomed to. He had gone through simr training for the Seismic Mapping technique. There were of course, several key differences.


    The first was that the Seismic Mapping technique almostpletely sealed off all senses so that Rui''s mind would be forced to subconsciously rely more and more on sensing the seismic radiation to be able to perceive the environment and objects in the surroundings as well as the movements of these objects, as long as they were touching the ground, of course.


    Primordial Instinct instead restricted all senses, including techniques like Seismic Mapping, to a high degree, but notpletely. This was because the Primordial Instinct of the mind operated via the subconscious processing of the senses. Restricting the sensespletely was not a good idea because it simply meant that the Primordial Instinct of the subconscious mind would simply not be able to operate at all.


    Thus, the training regime involved almostplete sealing og the techniques, but not entirely, and the user would be forced to rely on his instinct more and more. As months passed, the senses would be restricted more and more as the user improved, until they were almostpletely restricted and the user was still able to operate via the subconscious instinct alone.


    This was because as time passed, the instinctual sense would grow stronger and sharper until it was able to significantly boost the reaction time of the user, especially to blindside attacks as well as the subconscious precognitive capability of the user.


    "Alright then." Rui got up, dropping his scrolls into his pouch. "Time to get to training."


    He walked out of the Apprentice Library, heading towards the Apprentice offense training facility of the Martial Academy, headed by Squire Instructor Dylon. For the first time in his life, Rui was not excited for a training regime even before he had begun it.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 182 Conditioning

    "Instructor Dylon." Rui bowed.


    "Hm?" Squire turned away from supervising some training of other students, recognizing him on the spot. "Oh, Quarrier. Is it four techniques this time?"


    "Only three." Rui corrected him modestly.


    "..."


    "I''m here to learn this." Rui waved the Stinger technique scroll. "Care to help me out?"


    Dylon winced when he saw the name. "I hope you''re prepared. This is going to be rough, not to mention messy.


    "Thanks a lot for that, truly helpful." Rui replied.


    "Not at all, I''m just here to help after al- Wait, is that sarcasm? That''s sarcasm, isn''t it?"


    "Can we begin immediately?" Rui asked, ignoring him. "I have a busy schedule."


    "Of course, you do." Dylon replied, snorting. "Your life is a busy schedule, you''re never gonna lose your virginity, you know. Why not forget about learning this technique and instead learn how to pick up girls, or boys, if you swing that way."


    "If the Martial Academy ever did have such a teaching post, you wouldn''t be hired for it." Rui assured. "Don''t think I forgot how Instructor Kyrie rejected your ass by publicly beating you up in front of all your students." Rui ruthlessly reminded.


    "Guh!" Instructor Dylon copsed to his knees, clutching his chest in pain. "With this kind of offense, you don''t need to master any other technique."


    Rui sighed, exasperated. "Stop fooling around, let''s get to work."


    "No fun, are you?" He sighed, disappointed. "You''ve memorized the training regime, haven''t you?"


    "Every word." Rui confirmed.


    "Of course, you have." He nodded, unsurprised. "Well, then you know you don''t really need me very much. The Stinger technique merely requires the right training methodology and resources, and you''re set."


    He gestured to some unused equipment at one end of the training facility.


    It was a kicking dummy, meant to be kicked. Asides from some unusual features, nothing about its appearance was too different from ordinary target dummies.


    Yet, Rui winced at the sight. Because it was not an ordinary kicking target dummy. It was a special training equipment created by the Martial Academy specifically for the training of the Stinger technique. This training-dummy shaped the toe in the desire manner for the Stinger technique every time the user kicked at it with his or her toe.


    Its exterior was made up of a jelly like substance, a semi-solid substance through with one could insert fingers and toes like ordinary jelly. It was not rigid, and allowed objects to pass through it. Rui was supposed to kick at it with his toe, ensuring his toe passed through it each time


    This jelly was actually an esoteric substance that had a special property. It was engineered such that it would absorb the energy of the impact and use the same energy of Rui''s own kick to press against the toe sideways. Every time the toe made contact, it would pass through it, like jelly, and the jelly would pressure it sideways immensely with the power of Rui''s own kick!


    The esoteric jelly was use immense amount of energy attempting to reshape, restructure and strengthen Rui''s toe. Where did this energye from? From Rui''s own attack that would be absorbed by the esoteric jelly.


    It was an extremely efficient substance that would use the user''s own energy to continuously pressure and damage the toe, flesh and skin, aplishing two things by doing this.


    Firstly, it ensured that when Rui''s toe healed from the micro-injuries, it would be ever so slightly stronger, and its shape would be ever so slightly closer to what was required for the Stinger technique. Of course, this was a very gradual change, it would require many, many months of training toplete the transformation.


    "Was it one million kicks?" Dylon scratched his head, trying to recall. "One million kicks against the jelly dummy for the conditioning Stage to be over?"


    However, once the training ended, the many tiny minute reshapes caused by the micro-injuries would eventually culminate to ensure that the toe''s bone structure resembled a bullet, while the skin and flesh would be extremely rough like sand paper and as rigid as rock. This was to ensure that the skin of the target would tear apart with ease when the Stinger made contact with the flesh of the target.All rights ? N?velDrama.Org.


    Rui couldn''t even begin to imagine how painful it was, but he didn''t need to. He was about to find out himself.<sub> </sub>


    He took a stance, preparing his right leg for a kick, while sticking out his thumb-toe.


    BAM


    "FUCK!" He felt like a truck had run over his toe, the jelly absorbed the energy of his impact and used it to grind his toe, like it was sharpening a sword or a knife.


    He copsed as he looked at his bruised toe, gasping.


    "Get up." Dylon instructed, with a serious tone. "You can''t stop right after you start, you know that."


    Rui could only consume an extremely-low-grade healing potion meant for the training only after a hundred kicks.


    "Steel your will kiddo." He instructed. "As you steel your toe."


    BAM


    BAM


    BAM


    BAM


    BAM


    ...


    BAM


    One hundred kickster, Rui''s toe was swollen, bruised, broken all the medically different ways a toe could possibly be injured. The pain was beyond painful, it agonizing and excruciating and all the synonyms of the painbined. Rui could barely even hear himself thinking over its intensity.


    "Here." Dylon tossed him a healing potion, which Rui inhaled like a fish back in water, he even used Helical Breathing to speed up the process.


    Only when his toe finally healed, had he regained his senses.


    "What the fuck." He finally said.


    "Yeah, it''s messed up." Dylon nodded. "Most conditioning technique are. Pain is the part of the game."


    "This better be worth it." Rui groaned.


    "Heh." Dylon smirked. "You can be the judge of that."


    He casuallyunched an incredibly swift kick towards the closest striking target dummy.


    BOOM


    Rui''s mouth dropped as he saw Dylon extricating his toe out of a gigantic hole in dummy''s head, with cracks emanating from it.


    "You should be capable of that once you master it."


    Rui''s gaping mouth morphed into a smirk.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 183 Perseverance

    "But you''re a Martial Squire." Rui frowned.


    "I held back to match your physical power." He shrugged. "As long as you master it perfectly, the result shouldn''t deviate much from this."


    Rui was quite excited at the prospect of obtaining that kind of lethality, that he resumed the torture training immediately. This time, he even stopped screaming. Bearing the pain and putting his toe through utter hell with each kick.


    A little over an hour passed, and he had justpleted a thousand kicks!


    He nced at his toe, after he healed it for the tenth time. It didn''t look any different at all. But, that obviously to be expected, if the process would bepleted over the span of a million kicks, then there would be no visible progress over merely just a thousand kicks, which was 0.1% of the total progress.


    The bone reconstruction process was a well-understood one. Bone had an incredible ability to adapt to mechanical loads or pressure we ce upon it. ording to Wolff''s Law, a bone''s internal framework, known as trabece is initially weakened when strained and micro-fractured by mechanical stress, thereby triggering a rebuilding process that eventually made the bone denser. The hard outer shell of the bone also became a little thicker with time. This was how bone could be stronger.


    It was a long process that required prolonged period of just the right amount of stress and strain to the bones. It was not a process that could be sped up too much, even with healing potions.


    Rui sighed, before proceeding to continue. He usually spent many hours on a single technique, and as painful as the Stinger technique was, he did not want to skip out on it.


    If he left after only an hour, he would feel like he was admitting defeat! Thus he continued and persevered until several hourster, he finally managed toplete a total of three thousand kicks!


    Every time he consumed a potion, the pain reset. As dozens of these rounds went by, he grew more and more ustomed to the excruciating pain. He wasn''t sure how the hell he was going to get to one million, but he knew he had to damn well try.


    Still, this was just the first session. He put a halt to it after he hit the satisfying number of three thousand.


    When he walked out, his toe was perfectly healed and functional, but it still hurt in his mind.N?vel/Dr(a)ma.Org - Content owner.


    "Next." He sighed wearily before heading to the maneuvering training facility. The next technique he intended to break the ice with was the Phantom Step technique.


    He looked forward to this training session after the dreadful training session of the Stinger technique. He knew the training regime quite well, and was quitefortable with it as well.<sub> </sub>


    Once he reached, he searched for the head supervisor.


    "Squire Instructor Veena." He bowed once more, before exining that he''d arrived to train for the Phantom Step technique.


    What proceeded was a rtively smooth training session with no hups. Rui donned the body suit that was required for the prescribed training regime of the Phantom Step technique.


    Across the entirety of the training regime, Rui would perform a wide variety of maneuvers that he would normally perform in a fight. Punches, kicks, jabs, dives, dodges, blocks, shuffles and things of that nature. The bodysuit was actually a piece of equipment that could be frozen at a particr spot remotely by a device in possession of the supervising instructor. As Rui shadow-fought, his instructor would freeze the suit at the correct timing for a feint in any given motion.


    This would allow Rui to learn the exact position in all of thesemon motions he made, at which stopping abruptly would produce the most effective feint. By being stopped exactly the right timing and cement, Rui would be able to memorize the exact position and timing for feints in each of these maneuvers with his body.


    This training applied the principle of learning with your body to the absolute highest degree. It exploited the kinesthetic and dynamic learning capability of the brain to learn via the body to the highest degree.


    The training would focus on a handful of maneuvers at a time, each maneuver, Rui would need to practice thousands of times before he finally got the grasp of how to feint a particr motion. He needed to repeat this process for each motion. Different kinds of punches and kicks all required extensive practice before he could finally have some degree of confidence in them.


    Rui had already suspected it, but he hade to truly confirm that this technique would likely be the most straightforward and easiest training regime for him out of the three training regimes he would be subjecting himself to for the next few months.


    He had incredibly high hopes for this technique. It added a universal element of deception across the entirety of his Martial Art. In hindsight, he hade to realize that while Blink also did this, Blink was partially out of his control and also not something that he could time. Meaning he could never be too dependent on it. Blink exploited the blind spot of blinks to surprise his opponents, it was most fit to be a trump card, not a regr attack.


    Phantom Step was much more universal than Blink, albeit a little less powerful, but Rui enjoyed the stability and control he would obtain with the Phantom Step technique.


    As he daydreamed more and more about what he would aplish with this technique, he grew more and more excited and engrossed into his training. He trained every second because he couldn''t help but ache for the day he would master this technique.


    (''This is what training should be like!'') Rui thought ecstatically. The Phantom Step training was like a soothing balm to the psychological wear and tear that the Stinger technique had inflicted on him. Nothing like an easy coperative training regime to heal his spirits!


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 184 Prospects

    He left the maneuvering training facility with a smile on his face. He had decided, every training session of the Stinger technique needed to be followed up with Phantom Step training!


    This was the key to making this training phase a sess!This content ? N?v/elDr(a)m/a.Org.


    Only by coupling the tormenting training of the Stinger technique with the ecstatic and soothing one of the Phantom Step would he be able to endure the former in the long run.


    "Alright then." Rui sighed. "Time for the final training session."


    Out of all the techniques he was learning this time, he was actually most excited for the Primordial Instinct technique. He knew the technique had the highest amount ofpatibility with his Martial Art and could be the first through he adapts the VOID algorithm to the world of Gaea.


    "Squire Instructor Maxime." Rui greeted with a respectful bow for the third time. "I''ve returned to learn the Primordial Instinct technique."


    The man stared at him before making the faintest of head movements that Rui could barely identify as a nod, before walking away.


    (''?'') Rui tilted his head. (''Er. Should I follow him?'')


    He sighed as he trailed the man''s back. Rui had forgotten that he didn''t speak often. Once they reached a certain training room, he paused, gesturing Rui to enter.


    "..." Had Rui not had a thorough understanding of what the training regime entailed, he would have had the worst time with this Squire instructor.


    The training was specially designed to restrict as much sensory input as possible, though it would only be a partial restriction of senses. Rui wasn''t even sure how it managed to aplish this; this was something that even the technology of Earth was not capable of. But he had longe to ept that the esoteric and exotic material resources of the Panama Continent were capable of some crazy things.


    Once all the preparations were made, Rui could feel his perception of his surroundings dimming. His vision had plummeted, as had his hearing and smell. It was like he had entered a void.


    Suddenly he perceived a faint shadow in front of him despite his heavily restricted vision, he instinctively put a guard up.


    BAM


    He felt an impact, even before he could regain his senses, he felt a slight tingle of the nerves.


    BAM


    Another impact struck him from behind, this time, he hadn''t been able to block it.


    Rui grimaced in pain. The impacts were not light, especially when he was having a tough time timing his defensive techniques.


    This was on purpose, of course. If the attacks weren''t painful, then his sense of danger would not be activated, the attacks needed to be dangerous, only then would Rui''s subconscious mind push itself, and only then would his instinct increase.


    BAM<sub> </sub>


    BAM


    BAM


    The impacts came from all directions, and were equally distributed across the entire body, so Rui wasn''t able toe up with a useful model of pattern recognition that he could apply here to be able to more


    Before every impact, Rui felt a tingle in his nerves.


    This sensation was something every human experienced, there was a very simply way of understanding what this felt like.


    Take a finger, and point it in between your eyes, with the tip just a millimeter away from your skin and keep it there for several seconds. Ny-percent of the time, one would feel an ufortable tingling sensation. This was because one''s subconscious mind and brain were freaking out at the presence of an object that close to a vital spot.


    The effect was even stronger if it was someone else pointed their finger doing the point-nk pointing. This was because the brain didn''t know that it was safe like it did with one''s own finger.


    And Martial Apprentices were capable of having much more sensitive and stronger reactions to stimuli naturally, even more so when they trained this instinct like Rui currently was


    Rui never knew that his instinct generated this tingling sensation before. The reason for that was because he was too ustomed to relying on all senses to perceive his surroundings, his instincts rarely yed a role, especially when Rui''s fighting style was logically and rationally driven, he rarely moved on instinct or his senses alone, he usually applied the system of the VOID algorithm and made his decisions inculcating that and other rationality-driven thought processes.


    Thus, the entire experience was quite new to him.


    But he was starting to understand the value of the Primordial Instinct technique. It was not only supplementary, but also capable of helping Rui in areas where the VOID algorithm had trouble and difficulty operating. This made incorporating the Primordial Instinct technique as a variable into the VOID system much more alluring!


    This revtion was quite motivating to Rui, as it was the first true step that Rui had taken to perfecting and evolving the VOID algorithm to the world of Gaea anding one step closer to fulfilling his dream.


    Still, that was a while away, Rui had still not gotten the hang of relying on pure instinct to dodge attacks. As a scientist and a researcher, the very idea of not thinking was unthinkable, he wasn''t used to relying on instinct, even after he became a Martial Artist in this world, all his battles were conscious rationality driven.


    Only now did he realize the untapped power of the subconscious mind!


    This was a power he hadn''t yet harnessed, but if he could harness it andbine it with the power of conscious mind, just how strong would he be? Just how much more developed would his Martial Art be? Just how much deeper down his Martial Path would that alone take him?


    BAM


    He sessfully managed to block another impact.


    He didn''t know what the end oue would be, but he sure as hell couldn''t wait to see what lied in store for him.


    "Unlimited possibilities." He murmured to himself with giddy excitement. "This is why Martial Art is beautiful."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 185 Leave It To Me

    WHOOSH


    Ruiunched a strike at Kane, only for the strike to pass through him like he was an illusion. Kane returned strike, only for it to pass through Rui cleanly as well.


    The two continued exchanging strikes that passed through illusions of each other, until;


    POW


    Rui grimaced, stepping back. "Damn, you got me."


    "Your timing with the Phantom Step is still off." Kane informed. "It needs to flow smoothly."


    As an evasive maneuverer, Kane had already mastered the Phantom Step technique, it was extremely useful to his Martial Art. Rui had been training with Kane to refine his Phantom Step, it was easier to do this with an equal like Kane, who was in the same Realm as Rui.


    They had restricted all other techniques, focusing only on Phantom Step alone and nothing else, this way it became clearer to analyze shorings and for Rui topare his performance with the real deal.


    "Part of the technique is the psychological part." Kane said, tapping at the side of his head. "If you wanna sell it, you gotta own it." He said.


    Rui could understand that. It wasn''t possible to truly fake something unless you believed it on some level, if you could believe it in superficially, then you would most likely do a better job at convincing others of it as well. Rui was treating the feint aspect of the Phantom Step to mechanically. He needed to immerse himself in the feint.


    Problem was the fact this was a mindset he wasn''t used to, at all. It was not easy for someone with an empirical and rational mindset such as himself to be able to engage in high levels of self-deception.


    He also felt it was a bit scary and dangerous. Self-deceit could escte and once it did, it would be very difficult to break out of it since you were deceiving yourself continuously, leading to severe cognitive dissonance and coping.


    (''Still, as long as I exercise discipline and self-control, I should be fine.'') Rui thought to himself.


    "Again." He said to Kane, before taking a neutral stance.


    "Alright." Kane took a nonmittal stance that allowed him to maneuver the easiest.


    DASH


    Rui feinted a straight punch, but s Kane saw right through it.


    POW


    He ignored the imperfect feint andnded a clean jab. Rui grimaced, rubbing his abdomen.


    He tried again.


    And again.


    And yet again.


    But Kane was seeing through almost all of them.


    POW POW POW


    He smoothly punished Rui''s imperfect feints.


    "Tsk tsk." He tutted. "Remember, you gotta own it to sell it."


    "Easier said than done." Rui replied. Before taking a moment to center himself.


    He pictured the maneuver he was going to do. A dash punch, where he wouldunch the strike as he dashed towards Kane. He immersed himself in the image, picturing the details, making it more and more vivid.


    He opened his eyes.


    DASH


    He dashed towards Kane at high speeds, and a punch was thrown.<sub> </sub>


    WHOOSH


    Kane blocked only to realize it was a feint.


    POW


    Rui managed tond a clean low kick on him.


    "Yeah nice." Kaneplimented. "That was probably your best feint up until now, you''re getting the hang of it."


    Seems like as long as Rui exercised his imagination enough and immersed himself in it, the quality of the feints increased


    They spent a whole hour sparring with each other, as Rui took small baby steps with the technique, getting just a bit better across the entire sparring session.


    "Phew." Rui exhaled, once their session ended. "Can''t wait to master this technique and unveil it in the Martial Contest and the Martial Festival."


    "You sure are hyped for it." Kane muttered. "Is it really that exciting?"


    "Of course!" Rui replied. "I get to test my Martial Art against the best of my generation."


    Kane snorted. "It''s just a tform for the rate race of clout chasing that perpetually urs within the Martialmunity in the Kandrian Empire. I don''t want any part of it,"


    "You''re not participating?" Rui asked, surprised.


    "No, I''ll have to participate." Kane said. "I can''t even purposely get eliminated by fucking around, my family will learn of it and that will be even worse."


    "I see, that does suck." Rui said.


    "That''s why I''m counting on you Rui." Kane said, putting an arm on Rui''s shoulder.


    "What for?" Rui said, raising an eyebrow.


    "To beat me in the prelims." Kane said. "Each Academy sends only one representative, for a total of sixteen representatives in the Martial Contest. If you beat me, then it means I''m pretty much guaranteed not to go. So you have to win the preliminary contest that decides the respresentative of our Academy."


    Rui chuckled mncholically. "So, you won''t be able to hold back, but you still want me to beat you?"


    Kane nodded. "Basically. You should be able to do it, more than anybody else."


    Rui shrugged. "Alright. It doesn''t change what I have to do to participate."


    "It''s not gonna be easy." Kane said. "I don''t know what other techniques you''ve been training recently, or even the technique you mastered a few months ago, but you better be prepared. I''ve grown stronger."


    "Oh?" Rui eyed him with interest. "How much stronger?"


    "I will have mastered the Void Step technique somewhat soon enough." He said, dropping a bombshell. "I''ve been doing nothing but training this technique for a bit over half a year now."


    Rui''s eyes flew wide open at those words. "You what...?"


    The Void Step technique was one of the highest graded techniques in the Apprentice Library, it was primarily a stealth technique but also ovepped with evasive maneuvering. It was extremely powerful and extremely difficult to master.


    "It''s an important technique for me." Kane said. "One day I''m going to escape from the shackles of my status, when that dayes, this technique is going to be a lifeline."Original from N?velDrama.Org.


    "And you''re telling me this because..."


    "Because it improves the chances of you beating me." Kane said. "Seriously, you gotta beat me. And I genuinely can''t help you this time. If I ck off, my family will find out without a doubt and in the worst-case scenario they might take me out of the Academy."


    The graveness in his voice revealed the helplessness of his situation.


    Rui nodded seriously. "Don''t worry, you can leave it to me."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 186 Martial Musings

    Five months passed away quickly, quicker than Rui had noticed. With his potion tolerance, once he immersed himself into training, time passed way far too quickly. It got so bad sometimes that he wasn''t able to tell the difference between hours and days sometimes!


    Rui had spent the five months doing nothing but training the Stinger, Primordial Sense and the Phantom Step techniques. His estimates had been remarkably on point, he had wisely set apart one month after the initial four months of training to ensure he had properly integrated the three techniques he had mastered into his Martial Art and fighting style smoothly.


    He had done this with the Apprentice and Squire instructors of the Martial Academy, rather than his peers. He didn''t want to reveal his cards too early, since he knew that anything he showed would bemon knowledge to the descendants from the Martial Community if he won the preliminary contest and became the representative of the Hajin Martial Academy, giving them an unfair advantage in turn.


    Rui had thoroughly familiarized himself with the way the Martial Contest held by the sixteen martial Academies functioned.


    Across the span of an entire month, each Academy would put their Martial Apprentices through a battle against every other Martial Apprentice in their entire Academy. The Martial Apprentice with the best score would be chosen as the representative of the entire branch.


    The possibility of the top score being achieved by Martial Apprentices existed, however this would be resolved by looking at the oue of the matchup between the two Martial Apprentices, since all Martial Apprentices would face off against all others, this matchup would undoubtedly ur. The oue of this fight would decide which one of them would be chosen as the representative of their branch. In the worst case, if the top scorers with equal scores tied against each other in a matchup then the Martial Apprentice with the upper hand would be chosen as the representative.


    <o>,m The Martial Academy hadid out an borate set of rules for deciding the representative, to make sure there were no issues at all.</o>


    One of the things he had learnt that had initially surprised him was thebat arena in which the battles would ur.


    It wasn''t the straightforward big square or circr arena that one would expect for these kinds of events. It was actually a multi-environmental arena, meant to cater to all kinds of Martial Artists.


    The Martial Academies weren''t stupid. Having a wide-open arena would obviously benefit certain types of Martial Art more than others. Stealth-oriented Martial Art, environmental Martial Art and more niche Martial Art would be quite unfairly disadvantaged in such a setting.


    Thus, the Martial Academies had constructed a giant multi-environmental colosseum that catered to arge variety of Martial Art, such that not a single Martial Apprentice was unfairly advantaged or disadvantaged.<sub> </sub>


    This system existed in the Martial Academy sparring sessions as well, Martial Apprentices were allowed to fight on tforms that catered equally to both Martial Artists contending with each other. It was just that for Rui and most Martial Apprentices this meant they would fight on ordinary rings, since that was neutral for most Martial Artists.


    The Martial Colosseum, as it was known, contained multiple environments and topographies cramped within it, making it look very bizarre and oddly beautiful at the same time. It had many other features as well, like devices that recorded the fight and disyed it such that normal humans would be able to perceive them with, at the very least much better rity than if they were watching with their naked eyes. They could enjoy the high excitement of some of the strongest Martial Apprentices fighting while still being able to understand what was happening.


    The Martial Contest was a national event and one of the highlights of the Kandrian Martial Festival. The winner would gain many benefits. The sheer amount of exposure would mean that winning the Martial Contest or even performing well would result in a huge number of clienteles making exclusive offers to either retain the winner as their own personal Martial Artist, or as regr customer. The Martial Union allowed for clienteles to directmissions to specific Martial Artists within the Martial Union for an extra fee, though the eptance and refusal of those missions was upto the Martial Artist question


    This meant that the winner would be flooded with highly profitable missions and remuneration pays from many, many interested clienteles! Even if one-percent of the regr clienteles of the Martial Union decided to try and have the Martial Champion retain them as a regr clientele, that would result in hundreds of lucrative offers of all kinds!


    It would be a permanent boost to their careers for the rest of their lives.


    This was because the tiny proportion of the popte thatprised of the wealthy and influential clientele had enough capital to start caring more about the quality of the undertakers of their preciousmissions, so much so that they didn''t mind splurging an immense amount of cash to get the best of Martial Apprentices to undertake theirmissions.


    If Rui won the Martial Contest, he would probably be able to clear his student loan debt with the martial Academy with a single mission or two, that''s how incredibly lucrative it would likely have ended up being.


    Still, he wasn''t too concerned about the money. He simply wanted to fight against the best of his generation of Martial Artists. The fact that the Kandrian Martial Festival urred once every five years meant that the sixteen representatives from the sixteen academies would truly be among those who have reached a certain peak in their Martial Path and among their peers.


    Whoever won the Martial Contest would undoubtedly be the best of the best, the undisputed number one.


    Reaching that height would validate every ounce of his being. It would validate his ambition of two lifetimes and the dream that he gave everything and more to achieve!


    This chapter upload first at  All rights ? N?velDrama.Org.

 Chapter 187 Tomorrow

    The Kandrian Martial Festival was merely a month away. The entirety of the Kandrian Empire had begun to stir. The infrequency of the festival as well as the sheer novelty of how it was celebrated made it one hell of an experience for the average citizen.


    The general sentiment in the Kandrian Martial Empire was positive, mostly because the image of Martial Artists was positive in the eyes of the average citizen of the Kandrian Empire. Most of the visible missions that urred within the Kandrian Empire consisted of defense-ss, hunting-ss, royal missions and misceneous missions.


    None of these missions were the type that would leave a bad image in the minds of the average citizen. Essentially, all they saw was Martial Artists protecting and helping others. They did not see the assault that Martial Artistsmitted outside the country where arge influx of offense-ss missions from the many surrounding smaller sovereign state without their own unified Martial association that could supply the Martial services in demand.


    Nor did they see the covert operations that urred in the shadows and the darkness of society.


    When only the positive was ushered into the light and negatives being pushed out of sight, it was only natural the Kandrian Martial Festival generated an immense amount of bustling excitement.


    The Martial Contest would be held in the capital of the Kandrian Empire, the town of Vargard. The sixteen representatives would be escorted to the capital once the preliminaries were over by the Martial Academies.


    That concluded all the primary information surrounding the Martial Contest that Rui had managed to easily dig up. However, there were still many issues that he had gone out of his way to rify.


    "I''ve heard that many of the descendants of the Martialmunity participate in the Martial Contest, descendants of powerful Martial families." Rui once told Headmaster Aronian. "What is the risk of being a victim of their family''s retribution if I happen to defeat them publicly?"


    "That is a valid concern, just not very sound." Headmaster Aronian. "Unless you kill them, or dehumanizingly humiliate them so much that it cannot be interpreted as anything other than a personal attack on that of their Martial family, you will be fine."


    "Really?" Rui questioned, skeptically.


    "Really. There are several reasons for this." Headmaster Aronian nodded. "Firstly, you need to understand that as important as their heirs and descendants are to the Martialmunity, ultimately, the Martial World respects only strength. These Martial Families are led by Martial Artists who have vast experience in the Martial World. Every Martial Artist who has survived the Martial World knows that strength is the only thing that matters. Victory is everything and nothing less. They are very cognizant of this fact, they have to be, they would have died a long time ago if they hadn''t. These people are sober to the reality of the world, if their descendants fail, they have only themselves to me."


    Rui wasn''t convinced, visibly so.


    "The Martial Artists of the Martial Community of the Kandrian Empire have experienced many things, boy." Headmaster Aronian shook his head. "They have gone through things that you cannot even begin to imagine. Do you think it is possible for them to have reached the higher Realms they have with a delusional mindset about their social status?"


    Problem was, Rui wasn''t convinced. Part of it was because there was too much risk, this kind of reassurance by word wasn''t very reassuring.


    Headmaster Aronian sighed. "The more concrete reason why you have nothing to fear are the Martial Academies, myself and His Honour Grandmaster Sage Damian Roschem."<sub> </sub>


    "How so?" Rui raised an eyebrow.


    "The Martial Academies do not tolerate the harassment or bullying of their students. We''re extremely strict about this." Headmaster Aronian informed. "In the past few decades, there hasn''t been even a single incident during the Kandrian Martial Festival. The price of making an enemy of the Martial Academies that is responsible for grooming their students to be Martial Artists simply isn''t worth it."


    Now this was much more reassuring.All rights ? N?velDrama.Org.


    "I can promise you as the Headmaster of the Martial Academy, you have nothing to fear." Headmaster Aronian confidently informed. "Still, you''re getting a bit ahead of yourself, you haven''t been chosen as the representative yet, are you that confident?"


    "No." Rui replied. "But I am determined to give it my best, no matter what. I wanted to rify this issue so that I can go all out without any problems."


    "That''s a healthy attitude." Headmaster Aronian nodded, approvingly. "I wish you good luck young man. I am quite looking forward to your performance in the preliminaries." He said, before continuing.


    "You''ve mastered a variety of interesting and powerful techniques in the near two years you''ve been in the Academy, use them well." Master Aronian said.


    "Thank you, Headmaster." Rui replied.


    "Well, if there''s nothing else, you may leave." Headmaster Aronian said, with a ton of finality.


    Rui had bade farewell back then, and had returned to his dormitory room deep in thought. These were the among the many doubts and rifications he had obtained when he was going through the final refining stage of his Martial Art, before he was finally clear on everything he wanted to be clear on.


    "Now there''s only the prelims left." Rui said, after he finished going through his notebook where he had noted all the important information regarding the Martial Contest.


    The prelims began tomorrow. One month of fighting every single other Martial Apprentice in the entirety of the Academy, this included juniors who had broken through pretty recently as well as seniors who had been part of the Academy for years. They would all bepeting against each other fairly, and by the end of the month, the strongest Martial Apprentice of the entire Academy would go ontopete with fifteen other peers.


    <o>,m Rui was so excited he had trouble falling asleep, even though he had purposefully avoided using potions so he could start off at his peak.</o>


    (''I can''t wait!'')


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 188 Commencement

    It was time. Rui had gotten a good eight hours of sleep, instead of using a potion. Across the entire month, all of the Martial Apprentice participants would be given enough time to get a good organic sleep every night. So that they could be at their absolute best the next and also so that the students that did decide to use potions regardless didn''t have to worry about the days their sleep ovepped with any scheduled fight of their own.


    He had already donned his Martial uniform and was about ready to gather at the Apprentice sparring center.Original from N?velDrama.Org.


    "You ready?" Kane asked. "Let''s go."


    Rui nodded. As they headed to the Apprentice sparring center, neither of them exchanged a word. Kane merely had his hand behind his head, walking with an aura of lethargy and displeasure. Rui, on the other hand, was barely able to contain his excitement


    They had already said everything that needed to be said. A tacit understanding already existed between them.


    And soon, they reached, walking over to the group of Fae, Milliana and Dalen.


    "You''re here." Fae said, with an air of focusedposure. "Ready?"


    "No." Kane replied.


    "Yes." Rui nodded.


    Fae sighed, not saying more. Kane''s dislike of the Martial Contest was well-known, she didn''t want to distract herself with it at this important point in time. Soon, all the Martial Apprentices had gathered.


    There was an air of tension among all of them, all of them knew they would have to fight each other, and that only one of them would be chosen as the representatives. What would normally have been a light atmosphere with plenty of banter going around was dead quiet and frozen.


    Suddenly, a heavy presence weighed on all of their minds. They saw Headmaster Aronian enter the facility with his Martial Squire bodyguards. These bodyguards merely existed to ensure that the Headmaster never had to waste energy dealing with fools who tried to get too close to him, they couldn''t truly protect his life given his Martial Prowess existed two Realms above theirs.


    "My students." He addressed. "Martial Artists of the Martial Academy. All of you have gathered here for a reason. A reason that drives you. A reason that drives you down your Martial Path. Perhaps it is glory, or perhaps it is wealth. Perhaps it is prestige, or perhaps it is power. Regardless of what it is, it drives you. And here you are. Standing before me. Standing before each other on this special day. Today is no ordinary day. Today is the day you aim to prove yourself. Today is the day you aim to foge yourselves. Today is the day you aim to soar high into the sky. Today is the day you will reap the fruits of your perseverance. Today is a day you confront not just your opponents, but yourselves. Some of you will win, and some of you will lose. Some of you will retain the hope of being the chosen one, while some of you will won''t. Each of the seventy-nine of you that have gathered before me today, will face the remaining seventy-eight of your peers, and when everyst battle to be fought has been fought and the winner has won and the losers have lost. We will choose one of you to carry the burden of all those you defeated."


    He stroked his long flowing beard. "The only question is... Which one of you will it be?"


    He eyed all of the Martial Apprentices gathered before him, feeling their growing determination with a glint of satisfaction. It seems he was able to draw out their will adequately. Good.


    "Only time will tell. And that time will soone." He said. "I hereby dere themencement of the twenty-seventh preliminary contest of the Hajin branch of the Martial Academies!"


    He roared, shaking the earth with his powerful voice, along with the hearts of those who heard him.


    "I will return when the verdict has been made, until then; good luck and farewell."


    He bade with a tone of finality, before leaving with his bodyguards.<sub> </sub>


    (''He''s one hell of an orator.'') Rui grinned, clenching his quivering fists in excitement. How on Gaea could Rui possible remainposed after hearing that?


    He simply couldn''t!


    He couldn''t wait to start, he had been itching for this for many months now!


    "Still." He said with a frown. "Seventy-nine huh? Last I checked we had seventy-eight." He''d fought most of the Martial Apprentices in the Academy and had always known the student count was at seventy-eight even a few months ago.


    "You get too immersed into training." Kane said.


    Rui smiled wryly. In the past two months, he had trained almost exclusively with the Apprentice-instructors, and hadn''t interacted with anybody all that much. He was sure to have missed it if one of the Explorer students had broken through.


    Kane gestured to one of the Martial Apprentices in the crowd, directing his attention to him.


    "He-!" Rui''s eyes flew wide open as he instantly recognized the boy. Messy silver hair. Startling red eyes. A demeanor that oozed arrogance and a battle-lust that surpassed even Rui''s.


    "Nel...!" Rui was shocked. It had been nearly two years since their batch had entered the Academy, and Nel had finally be a Martial Apprentice!


    Rui had once wondered how absurdly strong the boy would be once he discovered his Martial Path.


    "Well, I guess we''ll find out how much he''s improved." Rui murmured.


    "He''s only been a Martial Apprentice for two months, not enough time have mastered any Apprentice-level techniques." Fae said. "That''s a disadvantage that will drag him down."


    Rui wasn''t sure about that. Nel had defeated a Martial Apprentice nearly two years ago, even if that Martial Apprentice was extremely low-grade at the time.


    However, since then Nel had undergone the Foundational Stages and the Exploration Stage, and had also discovered his Martil Path, and had naturally grown stronger as a result of age.


    This meant that Nel with without a doubt iparably stronger to his previous self that was already capable of beating Martial Apprentices with ease.


    "He just might be the strongest of us all." Rui realized.


    The difficulty of being chosen as the representative of the Academy had risen tremendously!


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 189 Incredible Feat

    Still, Rui wasn''t afraid. He had grown tremendously stronger in the nearly two years he had joined that Academy as well. It was a universal fact that Rui had gained the most amount of power since in the nearly two years since they joined. Not a single student of the Martial Academy could match his growth rate! Especially not Nel, who had taken a whole two years to aplish what Rui had aplished in two months.


    Did this necessarily mean that Nel was weaker?


    No, it did not.


    Nel had started out far stronger than anybody else, even if Rui grew stronger much, much faster, he had started out from a much, much weaker ce. It would depend on whether or not Rui''s astronomical growth was enough to close the astronomical gap.


    Rui shook his head.


    <o>,m Spection didn''t matter. Neither did theorizing and conjecture.</o>


    Reality would soon demonstrate the truth, and Rui would be able to find out for himself whether he was stronger than Nel, or weaker.


    Currently, his three biggest threats were Nel, Kane and Fae. Although there were other strong Martial Artists, like the seniors from the batch before them. Rui had sparred against them, and did not think they were in the top three threats, still he did not dismiss them either.


    Soon the matchups were announced. Since there were seventy-nine, one student would be left out every time. But this didn''t matter, because every student will have faced every other student by the time the month ended.


    Rui skimmed through the matchups, barely able to contain his excitement, looking for his matchup.


    He looked.


    Looked some more.


    And a little more.


    But he couldn''t find it.


    (''Wait, don''t tell me...'') Rui''s eyes flew wide open. Could it be that his luck was so horrible, that he would be the seventy-ninth person who didn''t have an opponent in the first person.


    "Oh for fuck''s sake!" He cursed, drawing attention.


    Now he would have to contain his energy and sit watching while the others fought!


    "Wait." He paused. "Maybe that''s not such a bad thing."


    He got to observe the strongest Martial Artists, especially the top three that he was wary of. Giving him a chance to grasp their prowess, and understand how strong they had grown, maybe even gain data for the VOID algorithm.


    He wasn''t sure that it would make a meaningful difference, but it was better than nothing. The others had already dispersed as their matchups and assigned sparring rings had already been decided. He walked over taking a seat at a ce where he could observe Kane, Fae and Nel with equal amount of ease.


    (''Maybe I should sit closer to Nel.'') Rui though, reconsidering his decision. He knew a lot about Fae and Kane, he even knew most of their techniques, having spent two years with them. He also knew which technique Kane had mastered in recent times. As for Fae, her mastery speed wasn''t as high as his own, in the span of four months she at most could have mastered one powerful technique or maybe two low-grade techniques.


    Regardless of which of the two it was, it was unlikely to make too much of a difference.


    Inparison to those two, he basically knew nothing about Nel. He had seen Nel fight only once since he joined the Academy. That fight was so long ago, any specific piece of information from back then was utterly irrelevant to his current self.


    He walked over to Nel''s fight, keeping a close eye on their fight.


    Nel had a savage aggressive aura. Ever since Rui had mastered Primordial Instinct, he had been able to do more than just subconsciously evaluate danger. Before, strong creatures and Martial Artists left an invisible pressure on him. But now that he had mastered this technique, it was no longer invisible.Original from N?velDrama.Org.


    He was able to see it, read it, interpret it. Nel very much gave him the impression of a savage wild animal. He didn''t know how a normal human could possiblye to develop to have such a temperament, but it was truly unlike anything else he had ever seen.<sub> </sub>


    "Take your stance!" the supervisor of their match announced, drawing Rui''s attention.


    Nel simply crouched, letting his arms dangle down, swaying loosely, an expression ofzy arrogance covering his face. Rui frowned; this was the same stance he had taken in his fight against Felix nearly two years ago, how was it possible for his stance to remain unchanged?


    Rui nced at his opponent, the girl kept both of her hands low, as they curved to the other side, all of her weight was on her left leg, which was in front of her right leg.


    (''Kicking specialist.'') Rui immediately concluded. Her positioning of the arms were for generating as much torque for kicks. She''d ced all her weight on one leg so that her other leg would always be free tounch kicks immediately.


    Rui also immediately concluded she was going to loose. Primordial Instinctbined with a lifetime of experience and research intobat psychology allowed him to evaluate his opponents far more urately and precisely than anybody else in his generation. Perhaps even in his Realm.


    She was too weak to pose a threat to either Rui or Nel.


    (''Alright, let''s see how overwhelmingly he beats her.'') Rui narrowed his eyes as he concentrated on their fight, he didn''t want to miss anything.


    "BEGIN." The supervisormenced the fight.


    The girl dashed towards Nel with a fierce expression. He body contorted as she tried her best to put as much weight on the very first kick of the fight.


    BAM


    ...


    (''Interesting...'')


    Nel had caught the attack with his bare hand. Such a feat required incredible toughness and muscr strength, especially when done without an Apprentice-level technique.


    He grinned, lifting her by her leg over his head.


    BOOM


    He mmed her down into the ground from above with incredible force!


    BOOM


    BOOM


    BOOM


    BOOM


    ...


    DROP


    She had already fallen unconscious, and was bleeding profusely. Nel''s grinned had already faded, as bored lethargy overtook his demeanor. He sighed, leaving the ring. His performance had left most onlookers stunned; he had crushed a Martial Apprentice!


    Even if his opponent was mediocre, it was still an incredible feat!


    Rui couldn''t help but a feel a grin cracking on his excited face at that sight.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 190 Fight Had Begun

    It wasn''t much, but it was enough.


    "Strong..." Rui uttered, grinning with raised eyebrows. His power was just a notch below Fae, his speed was a notch below Kane and his durability was a notch below Dalen.


    (''He''s this strong without even having mastered any Apprentice-level techniques.'') Rui was shocked. His physical body possessed such high natural attributes that it was like he was using Apprentice-level techniques permanently.


    Rui realized he probably hadn''t spent much time in the physical foundation stage at all. His physicals were as solid as anyone could ever hope they would be. He likely spent a lot of time in the Exploration Stage looking for his Martial Path.


    Rui wasn''t sure he could beat him. He could try topare his evaluation of himself, but frankly, he didn''t believe anyone''s evaluation of themselves could be trusted when the answer wasn''t obvious.


    He nced back at Nel''s retreating form before getting up and walking away. The fight was over, he might as well go observe other fighters.


    Just as Rui was about head to Kane''s fight, a voice beckoned him;


    "Apprentice Quarrier." A staff member called out to him. "Your first fight has been scheduled. Pleasee this way."


    Rui did his best to contain his smirk, as he followed the staff as they guided him to his first fight. Rui nced at his opponent once they reached the sparring ring.


    (''Gale Minskow.'') He mused with a raised eyebrow.


    Gale was the oldest Martial Apprentice of the Academy, and had spent one of the longest periods training in the Academy. He was a senior Martial Apprentice that everybody knew.


    He was also one of the strongest Martial Apprentices before Rui''s batch had joined the Academy. There was no doubt that he was in the upper echelons of the Martial Apprentices of the Academy.


    "Rui Quarrier." He said addressed Rui once he had gotten onto the ring. "Let me give you a piece of advice. Resign now and you won''t suffer much pain."


    He was also very arrogant. His sense of superiority came from the fact that he had been in the Martial Apprentice Realm for far longer than Rui had. Although Rui''s meteoric growth was well-known in the Martial Academy, he believed Rui was far too young and immature to challenge him.


    "Your talent has earned my admiration and envy." Gale said solemnly. "But unfortunately, you are still far too young to challenge me. Perhaps if you had another two years. No no, if you had another three years would be able to beat me as I am right now. But currently I am certainly destined to be the representative of our Academy. So therefore I strongly advise you to-"


    "Shut up."


    Gale froze instinctively.


    His eyes widened as he looked into Rui''s eyes.


    And they looked back into his.


    They were pitch-ck, sucking the very light out of the world greedily.


    He felt naked.


    Transparent.


    Invisible.


    They weren''t looking at him.


    No.


    They were looking far beyond him.


    A stone. A stepping stone. That was all he was reduced to.


    All his years of dedication, discipline and perseverance. A stepping stone in the Martial Path of Rui Quarrier.


    "Take your stances!" The supervisor broke Gale out of his reverie.


    "Y-You..." Gale stuttered.


    In just a few moments.<sub> </sub>


    With just a few words.


    With nothing but his gaze, Rui had crushed his confidence. Gale gritted his teeth as he felt boundless weight pressing down on him from Rui''s singr concentration.


    "Just how strong are you?"


    Gale didn''t understand. What separated him from the boy before him? Why wasn''t he also... special?


    "How strong am I?" Rui echoed softly, as the gentlest of smiles arose from his mouth as he pondered for a moment.


    "Well, hopefully a little less weak than I used to be."


    There wasn''t a shred of arrogance in his voice. Only sincere earnesty. Gale could feel it. He truly believed every single one of those words.All rights ? N?velDrama.Org.


    Had one stared at those words written on a piece of paper, one would conclude they were ordinary.


    Yet, they struck Gale harder than any attack from Rui ever could.


    One moment, Rui had driven his mind into turmoil.


    And yet, the very next moment Rui pulled him out of it.


    A little less weak than he used to be.


    Gale felt a sense of peace he hadn''t experienced in a long time. He had long grown insecure about his paltry growth ratepared to his peers, most of whom had surpassed him by leaps and bounds. He had always wondered why he was weak, why he had to struggle for six years to obtain what other had in less than two. The arrogance and ego he projected were merely to hide this vulnerability in his psyche.


    Yet here came this boy who shattered it in an instant.


    "Yes... I see." He adopted his stance.


    A little less weak than he used to be.


    "That''s right. I hope I''m a little less weak than I used to be too!"


    It didn''t matter if he was slower than his peers. It didn''t matter if they raced ahead while he traversed forward step-by-step. Nothing mattered.


    Not as long as he kept pushing forward. Not as long as he continued growing less and less weak than he used to be, to the best of his ability.


    If this young man who raced down his Martial Path faster than everybody else could abandon sight of everybody else''s Path and experience genuine satisfaction at being less weak than he used to be.


    Then so could Gale.


    (''Yes, I can.'')


    In that very moment, after what felt like an eternity, he felt he had gotten stronger. Breaking past a shackle he didn''t even know was chaining him down!


    He exhaled, opening his eyes to meet Rui''s, shining with gratitude.


    Rui''s head tilted slightly, intrigued at the change in his demeanor. "Well then, let''s both continue growing less and less weak than we used to be." He said, chuckling.


    The two solidified their stances, waiting for the fight tomence.


    "Begin!" The supervisormenced the fight.


    WHOOSH


    The two of them dashed towards each other.


    The fight had begun.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 191 Less And Less

    The two dashed towards each other.


    (''I''m faster.'') Rui realized.


    Yet despite this, Gale''s strike reached first.


    WHOOSH


    Rui dodged the strike.


    Gale continued dishing an onught of strikes and Rui avoided all of them cleanly. Ever since he mastered Primordial Instinct, his timing had grown much sharper and more urate. Its synergy with the VOID algorithm was truly impressive.


    Gale didn''t stop, his strikes were straight forward and had a huge range. Heunched all of them from outside Rui''s striking range, so Rui wasn''t able to do much.


    (''He''s a long-range striking specialist.'') Rui realized. Each strike had a huge reach, and heunched them in a way that deliberately prevented Rui from reaching close enough tounch his own attacks.


    Rui keenly observed this before making a decision, he stopped avoiding Gale and instead dashed against him once more.


    A sh of surprise morphed into Gale''s expression as he quicklyunched a straight jab at Rui, growing even more surprised when he saw Rui didn''t avoid them, and instead ran into it even faster. Just as the strike was about to hit Rui


    WHOOSH


    Rui disappeared.


    (''A feint!'') Gale realized.


    BAM


    A meteoric impact struck him!


    Rui had feinted with Phantom Step to draw his strike away while simultaneously using Flowing Canon once he reached striking range.


    Thebined power of Flowing Canon, Outer Convergence, Parallel Walk and Bnced Direction had crashed into Gale, leaving him reeling. He just barely managed to throw up a guard as Rui pummeled him with short range blows boosted with the power of Outer Convergence and Vital Pressure.


    Gale leaped back, grimacing.


    Yet Rui wasn''t kind enough to let him recuperate and regain his bearings, he rushed in. Gale panicked when he saw Rui dashing in, feeling an immense amount of mental pressure from Rui''s Martial Path.


    He threw a cautious strike at Rui, expecting another feint. This time he was a bit more prepared, he didn''t want to be caught off-guard yet again.


    Yet Rui didn''t dodge or feint.


    CLASP


    He let the strike hit him, moving with it to reduce the impact while simultaneously grasping Gale''s arm with all four limbs.


    The Binding Lash technique.


    In this situation, the VOID algorithm outputted a grapple counter as the most apt way of defeating Gale, dragging outside the realm of striking which is where his specialty lied. In the domain of grappling, Rui had a clear undeniable advantage.


    CRACK


    "ARGH!" Gale grimaced in pain as Rui managed to cleanly dislocate his arm. The Binding Lash technique allowed the user to dislocate and break arms as long as the timing was perfect and the physicality gap wasn''t too much.<sub> </sub>


    Both of these conditions were satisfied.


    The Primordial Instinct technique had improved not just his defense but counter-offense as well, allowing him to increase the uracy of his timing immensely. The VOID algorithm allowed him to consciously and actively analyze, evaluate and make a decision, while the Primordial Instinct technique allowed him to execute the decision with great uracy.


    Gale was physically stronger by virtue of being much older, but Rui had nailed the timing too well, that shoulder''s fate was already sealed.


    Despite the excruciating pain he felt, Gale did give up, struggling with everything he had. Despite the advantageous position Rui had, he didn''t give up and ruthless pressed and twisted the already dislocated joint, causing unimaginable agony to Gale.


    He had no qualms about inflicting pain and damage to Gale, had this been on Earth, this might have been a career ending injury, but in the world of Gaea, within the Martial Art, this wasn''t much of a big deal. Healing potions ensured that Gale would make a fully recovery.


    Gale tapped Rui''s arm three times, indicating his resignation. The pain was far too excruciating and even if Gale somehow broke through, he had no chance of winning with a mangled shoulder joint.


    ? Rui immediately loosened his grip with a sigh of relief. He did not enjoy the act of inflicting pain on others. He carefully let go of Gale''s arm, not wanting hurt him any further.


    "Fuuu..." Gale exhaled deeply, getting up slowly, before throwing a bitter smile at Rui. "You''re truly strong."


    He meant it.


    Between the shackling pressure that Rui was putting on him mentally the entire fight along with the perfect fight that he''d disyed from start to finish. Rui had shown him just how big the gap between them was. Gale had spent a long time in the Academy, and even with his mediocre growth, he hade to umte more power than most Apprentices in the Academy currently. But Rui still beat him cleanly, while holding back too, Gale was sure.


    "Good fight man." Rui offered a hand to Gale''s good hand. "You''re strong too."


    "Good luck." Gale said, now that he had lost to Rui this cleanly, even if he won every other fight, he almost would not be chosen as the representative of the Academy. "I haven''t given up yet though. On bing the representative, or bing stronger."


    Rui smiled. "That makes two of us."


    Rui bade him good luck and farewell as he left him to get medical treatment for his injury.


    Original from N?velDrama.Org.


    "Good fight." Kane said to him. "Pretty clean sweep."


    "Thanks." Rui replied. "How did your first fight go?"


    "Easy win." Kane replied simply. Rui wasn''t surprised, at this point there were two or three people at the very most who could possibly pull off a win against Kane in his current state.


    BOOM


    A minor tremor reverberated across the entirety of the facility


    Rui and Kane immediately nced over at the source of the impact.


    Fae.


    She was standing at the center of the ring with an outstretched arm with an open palm.


    A dozen meters away in the direction her palm was facing was her opponent, knocked unconscious with a palm shaped crater in his chest.


    A single attack with untold power.


    "He''s not dead, is he?" Rui asked as he looked at her poor opponent in worry, before ncing back at Fae with a wry smile. "Seems like everybody is getting less and less weak than they used to be."


    He couldn''t wait to fight everyone!


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 192 Spectation

    Fae had grown immensely in power in the time that she had joined the Academy. Rui did not forget that even two years ago she was able topete with Nel on roughly equal footing. She had grown vastly stronger than she was two years ago. That fact along with the ridiculous power she had demonstrated just then truly made Rui excited to fight her once more.


    Part of the reason was that he had never actually beaten her in a fight yet. Thought that was also further because they hadn''t had a serious proper spar in recent times. After Rui''s third training stage, where he had mastered Outer Convergence, he had immediately begun under taking missions and when he returned, he had immediately jumped back into training for the Kandrian Martial Festival and the Martial Contest.


    He simply didn''t have an opportunity to spar against her.


    (''I''ll get my first win against her this time.'') Rui was determined to win whenever they fought against each other in the preliminary contest, whenever that happened.


    "Let''s watch Dalen''s fight with Milliana." Kane said, drawing his attention.


    "Oh?" Rui raised an eyebrow. "They got paired against each other? What odds."N?vel/Dr(a)ma.Org - Content owner.


    "Yeah."


    Dalen was a heavy defensive type, he was capable of enduring an immense amount of onught, and was one of the very few Martial Apprentices in the Academy that could endure Fae''s onught head-on.


    Inparison, Milliana was a stamina-oriented Martial Artist, whose fighting style was centered around ousting her opponent.


    (''Not a good matchup.'') Rui mused to himself.


    ? They were both passive fighters for the most part, this would usually lead to a slow long fight.


    As they reached the ring, what Rui had predicted came to pass. The two of tehm were having a staring contest instead of an actual fight.


    "As expected." Rui sighed.


    He couldn''t me them for this, they were only being true to their Martial Art. And neither of themunched belligerent attacks.


    Eventually Dalen shuffled and began throwing a few jabs. The problem was, he needed to take initiative because if they just kept staring at each other, she would win simply by ousting him, even when standing.


    Someone who dedicated themselves to stamina would be able toplete every action with the least amount of energy needed.


    This is why Dalen had to break character and attack. Even if he was a defensive Martial Artist, he needed to attack. With his sheer size, it was guaranteed he would tire faster than she did, he needed to exercise some flexibility. Even if he didn''tunch a belligerent offensive attack like Fae did, he at the very least could not allow a standstill stalemate.<sub> </sub>


    He constantly engaged in an exchange of blows, forcing Milliana to atleast engage with him, giving him an opportunity to potentially win the fight.


    "This is going to take a long time." Rui sighed. The matches of the preliminary contest didn''t have a time limit. This was because time limits affected certain Martial Art more than others, and negatively affected several Martial Artists.


    Milliana alone was a good example.


    Victory would be nigh-impossible for her in a tournament with a half-an-hour time limit. She would be able to beat no one asides from the weakest of Martial Apprentices. This was extremely unfair towards her, and thus the rules would not restrict the time period of fights.


    Rui estimated that Dalen''s fight against her would take at the very least quarter of a day to end. As for who would win, he found it hard to say. They were both close enough that the probability for either side winning wasn''t extremely high or low. It woulde down to the specifics and how the fight actually unfolded.


    As he observed them sh, he could see both of them had improved.


    Dalen had diversified his Martial Art a little, he had always been exclusive defense. Up until recently, he had had only one foundational technique for the other fields such as offense, maneuvering, supplementary and grappling etc.


    His offense being the weakest, up until very recently he had nothing going for offense asides from Vital Pressure. The most foundational striking technique in the entire library


    This wasn''t particrly his fault. Only Rui was a freak who could master a whopping seventeen techniques in eighteen months. Everyone else would only be able be able to master four-to-five mid-grade techniques on average in that same timeframe.


    It had taken him a few years build his foundation, to have a defense technique for arge variety of attacks, to ensure that he would be able to defend against as many possible types of attacks and increase the probability he would be able to cope with them just fine.


    Only after he built this foundation had he decided to dedicate some time and energy mastering techniques of other fields and sses.


    Milliana on the hand was the exact opposite. She was already diverse from the very beginning, as far as her weightage on the different aspects ofbat. She did not ce any extra weight on offense, defense or maneuvering. She ced all her weight on supplementary techniques, specifically; stamina supplementary techniques.


    While Rui only had one stamina supplementary technique in Helical Breathing, she had seven. Seven techniques that all boosted her energy reserves, efficiency and longevity as much as possible. When it came to stamina, she was utter unmatched by any other Martial Apprentice in the Academy, probably even Nel, at this point in time.


    Nel did not have a single stamina-oriented Apprentice-level technique, and even though his stamina was initially superior and had likely grown due to age, the astronomical boost that Apprentice-level techniques caused could not be underestimated.


    Her energy reserves, efficiency and minimalization had long caused her overall stamina to surpass the human limit by leaps and bounds.


    Ultimately, whichever one was able to leverage their strengths to the best of their abilities, while mitigating their shorings to the best of their abilities would win the fight.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 193 Good Fight

    POW POW POW


    Dalen threw a flurry of jabs at Milliana, which she simply blocked by putting together guard.


    WHOOSH


    She dodged an iing kick, before once again blocking a few more jabs.


    POW POW POW


    She didn''t attack much, a decision Rui approved.


    Dalen''s defensive prowess was in the top three within the Academy.


    With a six-foot tall gargantuan frame, with heavy bones and muscles, along with eight defense-oriented techniques, he was a sheer tank. Hurting him was an incredibly difficult task. As far as purely the ability to withstand offense went, only Fae and maybe a few others could inflict meaningful damage on him head-on via ordinary attacks.


    Someone like Milliana whose offensive measures weren''t particrly impressive, would not be able to inflict so much as a scratch on him unless she somehow managed tond her strongest attack on his eyes or another spot that was equally vulnerable.


    She had a much higher chance of winning if she simply chose to wait for him to burn himself out.


    What Rui found interesting was the manner in which she handled his attacks. Each defense she chose was the most apt as far as efficiency went.N?vel/Dr(a)ma.Org - Content owner.


    She blocked quick swift jabs because their speed and number made them harder to dodge, she would need to expend more energy. Furthermore, jabscked power in exchange for their swiftness.


    She dodged more powerful strikes like kicks and heavy swings. These usually required a higher timeframe tondpared to speedy jabs.


    This was because they usually were thrown from a greater distance away in order to build up momentum and torque.


    She had to find the right bnce between what amount of damage was worth spending the energy to dodge instead of block.


    She needed to find the exact threshold in order to maximize efficiency tost as long as possible. He wasn''t sure if she was entirely urate, but she seemed to be doing a good job for the most part. It was an ambitious goal, after all. Being one hundred-percent urate was a tall order and one that Rui was certain he wouldn''t be able to fulfill.


    WHOOSH


    Dalen lunged for takedown which Milliana chose to avoid.


    This was another decision that Rui approved from both of them. As a male and particrly big and strong one, Dalen had a significant physicality advantage against Milliana. Physicality mattered much more in grappling than it did in striking.


    Furthermore, grappling was extremely energy intensive. It depleted stamina much more quickly than striking did and was aligned against Milliana''s Martial Art of stamina conservation.


    If she did choose to grapple, there was no doubt she would be severely disadvantaged.


    Furthermore, Dalen''s grappling defense was no doubt going to be impressive. Milliana''s chances of being able to grapple a victory was just extremely low. She would probably lose every quickly if the battle went to the ground and turned into a grappling contest


    Which is why it was a good deal for Dalen to try and grapple.


    WHOOSH


    He tried for another takedown, which Milliana avoided yet again.


    WHOOSH<sub> </sub>


    WHOOSH


    WHOOSH


    Kane frowned. "Why is he trying so hard when she''s clearly too careful?"


    "A grapple is his best way to win." Rui replied.


    "Only if itnds, right?" Kane asked.


    "Yes, but it also forces Milliana to expend serious energy to avoid him." Rui exined. "She knows the fight will end if the battle turns into a grapple. She needs to avoid it at all costs, but one of those costs is being more energy intensive."


    Kane nodded as he observed her evasion technique. As an evasive maneuverer specialist, he could see that she was expending a lot of energy as she avoided the shoots from Dalen. "Her evasion definitely is energy intensive. I can tell she doesn''t have much experience in high-energy evasion at all. She also hasn''t mastered any Apprentice-level techniques specialized in that regard."


    "Makes sense." Rui nodded. Kane''s insight in regards to the analysis of her evasion was definitely helpful as an expert in that regard. "What do you think she could be doing better?"


    "She''s moving too early, her timing is off." Kane exined. "That doesn''t help, because if you move too early, then your opponent would just dy the attack, that''s why I always move at the earliest moment when it''s toote for my opponent to cancel the attack. Still, her timing is honestly awful."


    "She''s paranoid." Rui exined, observing her with Primordial Instinct. "She''s ovepensating, but that isn''t the worst part."


    "Then what is?" Kane raised an eye.


    "At this rate, she''ll end up burning more energy than Dalen is." Rui answered.


    "Hmmm.." Kane narrowed his eyes as he observed their movements. "You would think she would have a countermeasure for grappling."


    "Evasion is her countermeasure." Rui noted. "Problem is, Dalen has a huge wingspan because of how big he is. He doesn''t need to expend much energy to reach her, but she does need to expend energy to avoid it. Her paranoia plus Dalen''s huge reach are what''s screwing over her game n."


    They both continued observing the fight.


    Dalen had also realized that his only way to win was through grappling. Milliana began sweating more and more. Dalen needed only to employ his size and wingspan to threaten cornering and grappling her, whereas she needed to spend energy retreating and circling away from him.


    Although she had many stamina-oriented techniques, they were meant for different situations. A good portion of her stamina-oriented techniques were for offense, another good chunk were for parrying, one of them was for a different environment and that left only a few for maneuvering. Meaning a lot of her techniques weren''t doing her much help in this particr regard.


    They were both burning a lot of energy, but eventually, she made a mistake.


    CLASP


    Dalen managed to get just the slightest grip on her, and that was enough.


    They wrangled on the ground, while Dalen exploited his physicality advantage to the maximum while also employing his grappling defense techniques to counter locks and holds.


    And within five minutes, she tapped.


    Rui had already expected this result, and was only waited for the inevitable to ur.


    "Good fight." Rui nodded.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 194 Kane

    "Cheer up." Fae said. "You did a good job."


    Dalen nodded. "It was a hard fight. If I hadn''t gotten you by the end, you had a solid chance of winning."


    Milliana sighed mildly, nodding slightly. She wasn''t very expressive, but everyone could see she was dejected by her very first match resulting in a loss.


    "The best part is that you can make improvements rather easily, just by shifting your tactics a little." Rui told her, trying to encourage her.


    The fight had ended, and all five of them had gathered after their first fight.


    Just as Kane was about to try and console her, a voice interrupted him.


    "Apprentice Kane Arrancar." A staff member addressed. "Your second official match is ready."


    Kane''s expression drooped, as he nodded wordlessly. "I''ll catch you guys after."


    They all bade him good luck, before heading to his ring. Kane had finished his fight earlier than all of them, thus it made sense that he was assigned a fight sooner than all of them, especially, he was assigned his first fight thetest.


    "His opponent..." Rui nced at the boy, recognizing him instantly. "Gale!"


    What odds. What was probability that Gale would get matched up with Kane immediately after Rui?


    (''What terrible luck, too.'') Rui thought. He knew Gale''s strength as well as Kane''s prowess well enough to know Gale had almost no chance of beating Kane.


    "Take your stances." The supervisor instructed.


    "Looking forward to a good fight." Gale took his stance, as stance that allowed him tounch ranged blows with the greatest of ease.


    "Yeah." Kane impassively replied, before taking an even bnced stance that allowed him maneuver with the greatest of ease.


    "Begin!" The supervisormenced the match.


    And that was when it happened.


    Kane disappeared.


    He didn''t run.


    He didn''t bob and weave.


    He didn''t dance around his opponent like he normally would.


    He simply and irreconcbly, disappeared.


    Fae, Milliana and Dalen were shocked.


    "Where did he go?!"


    "What kind of technique allows for such absurdity?!"


    "...!!" Even the impassive Milliana expressed visible incredulity.


    Rui on the other hand, wasn''t even watching.


    Or to be more precise, he wasn''t watching with his eyes. He had wordlessly closed his eyes the second Kane disappeared from his vision.


    He had immediately maximized Primordial Instinct and Seismic Mapping.


    The Void Step technique applied psychological tricks to minimize one''s presence, as well as maneuvering-based misdirection techniques to draw the target''s attention away from the user subconsciously whenever the user began moving.


    It was truly absurdly powerful technique when mastered since it meant you were effectively invisible when you moved, and it was an absurdly difficult technique that made you extremely difficult to deal with when mastered.


    The reason Rui shut off his vision was because he knew he would not be able to sense Kane at all with his normal senses, the misdirection was too strong and Rui had not trained in any anti-misdirection defensive measures, nor his normal senses to a superhuman level with sensory techniques.<sub> </sub>


    But he had honed two new senses in the form of Seismic Mapping and Primordial Instinct.


    He had primarily wanted to test how effective they were atbating the Primordial Instinct technique.


    Up in the ring, ten seconds had passed since the fight had begun. To the ordinary observer, Gale was merely getting pummeled by an invisible force. One could only see Kane momentarily appear when he paused briefly after smoothly evading Gale''s haymakers.


    His friends continued gaping at the sight.


    Rui on the other hand, was still motionless with his eyes closed.


    "Incredible..." He finally muttered.


    He wasn''t able to precisely sense Kane''s attacks.


    He wasn''t even able to precisely sense Kane''s exact position.


    The only thing he could properly sense was the direction Kane was in, and an extremely vague and unclear sense of distance.


    That was all.


    It was like watching a censored video. Asides from direction, everything else was almost entirely unclear!


    He was truly shocked that Void Step were able to obfuscate Kane to such an incredible degree against two roughly high-grade sensory techniques. Seismic Mapping was above average, while Primordial Instinct was a thorough and unshakably high-grade technique. Seismic Mapping had huge range, environmental mapping capabilities as well as object detection while Primordial Instinct had given him extremely heightened instinctual senses and evaluation as well as predictive measures. Together these two techniques should have ensured nothing could possibly obfuscate his senses.


    Yet both of these techniquesbined were barely able to make a dent against the Void Step technique!


    (''Thank god I mastered these two techniques.'') Rui mused. He would have been utterly screwed had he not mastered them. Kane would have thoroughly bullied him from start to finish.


    BAM


    Gale copsed to a swift kick to the chin, shaking his brain enough to cause enough brain trauma to knock him unconscious.


    Only half a minute had passed since the fight had begun, and it was already over.


    Rui opened his eyes with a wry smile only to find Kane throwing a pointed meaningful look at him, before exiting the stage.


    Even before Kane had actually exited the stage and reached them, they had begun pestering him with question.


    "What was that??"


    "How did you do that!"


    "Hey!" Calm down." Kane raised his arms, exasperated. "It''s just a peak grade technique, that''s all."


    Contrary to calming them down, it caused an even greatermotion.This content ? N?v/elDr(a)m/a.Org.


    "Congrattions Kane." Rui wished earnestly. Even though he knew Kane didn''t care for his victories in the contest and would rather lose, Rui still believed he ought to be proud of his aplishments.


    "Thanks." Kane replied, before returning to pacifying his over-excited friends.


    Meanwhile Rui simply smiled wryly as he pondered to himself.


    (''Alright now...'') He thought to himself.


    (''How the fuck am I going to deal with that?'')


    He wasn''t entirely sure about how he was going to deal with Kane''s newfound prowess. But, he did have a few ideas.


    (''We''ll see if they''re good enough when the timees.'') He mused.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 195 Right In Front Of You

    Rui needed to create some concrete countermeasures against the Void Step technique, but so far all he had were scraps of ideas.


    (''The biggest threat of the Void Step techniquees from its ability to bypass defense first, allowing the user tounch lethal attacks, and the second most annoying part about is the fact that it''s exceedingly difficult to harm the user because they cannot be perceived.'')


    Rui needed a solution for both of these problems.


    (''Thankfully, Kane''s offense is mediocre at best.'') Rui sighed in relief. Kane spent most of his time on maneuvering techniques centered around evasion, agility and speed. His offense was nowhere near as solid as his evasive maneuvering. He also didn''t have any high-grade lethal techniques like the Stinger, nor did he have any high-grade potent offensive techniques like Outer Convergence.


    He had a much harder time mastering techniques that were not maneuvering or evasive in nature, since that was where his talent and affinity lied. This was also proven by how long he took to beat Gale, if he had a technique like Stinger, the match would have ended in seconds.


    What this actually meant was that even if he could make it much more difficult for Rui to defend, it would still take him some amount of time to beat Rui, especially when Rui''s defense was as solid as it was.


    "What are you so engrossed about?" Kane asked, noticing Rui had zoned out of their discussion.


    "Just thinking about how I''m going to fight you." Rui replied. "You''ve grown incredibly strong Kane."All rights ? N?velDrama.Org.


    "You''ll figure it out." Kane shrugged, before smirking. "Probably. Maybe. Well, we''ll see."


    "You sure have faith in me." Rui grumbled grumpily, earning a mischievious chuckle from Kane.


    "Don''t worry." Fae interjected. "Even if Rui fails, I''ll be sure to pummel you to the ground. You can thank meter."


    Rui sighed as the two of them immediately began arguing and trash-talking each other again. Just as he was about to resume his brainstorming session on how to beat Kane, a voice drew his attention.


    "Fae Duhan." A staff member called to her. "You second match has been scheduled."


    "My, it''s that time already." Fae mused, before nodding. "Catch youter."


    The four of them immediately head to witness her match. Fae was a real contender and candidate for the representative position, and everyone wanted to see how strong she''d grown.


    "Her opponent..." Rui murmured recognizing her.


    "Tarah Meinfold." Dalen supplied. "She''s a senior Martial Apprentice of the Academy, a strong counter-offensive specialist."


    Rui immediately thought about Neira, who was also a counter-offensive specialist.


    (''She''d probably do well in this setting.'') Rui mused.


    "Take your stances." The supervisor instructed.


    Fae took her standard stance, with one upside-down palm at her waist and her other palm pointed straight at Tarah, with her legs spread and crouched.


    Farah brought both palms in front of her at chest-level, with one foot forward and the other back.


    "A non-offensive stance." Rui noted. "She can''t easilyunch a single attack worth anything in that stance. That''s stance meant to intercept iing attacks."


    "Makes sense." Dalen nodded.


    "Will she be able to intercept Fae''s attacks though?" Kane wondered out aloud.


    All of them could feel the coiling power in Fae''s frame, especially Rui. The sheer amount of potential energy in her muscles was tingling and prickling Rui''s Primordial Instinct.


    "We''ll see." Rui said open-mindedly. He didn''t think it was really possible, but decided to reserve his judgement.<sub> </sub>


    Counter-offensive specialists could be quite tricky, because their battles were inherently asymmetric and soft.


    What this meant was that they used abination of their own energy as well as their opponent''s energy against them.


    "Begin!" The supervisormenced the fight.


    BOOM


    Fae dashed at Tarah, the force of her leap, sent a mild reverberation across the ring. Just as she reached Tarah, the coiled palm tucked at her waistshed out like a viper. It was an incredibly powerful blow that even Rui did not think he would be able to endure very well even with all three of his techniques.


    FHWOOP


    Tarah''s arms stretched, reaching for Fae''s palm. But she did not strike or push against it, nor did she try to block or stop it. Instead, she pulled it in, manipting the trajectory of her palm while also partially side-stepping.


    WHOOSH


    Fae''s body twisted midair, rotating as she summersaulted,nding on the other side of the ring.


    "Woah." Kane raised an eyebrow. "What the hell was that."


    "Redirection." Rui replied, as he scrutinized Tarah''s form. "Counter-offensive redirection, specifically."


    "What does that even mean?" Kane tilted his head confused.


    "She used Fae''s momentum against her." Rui exined. "She redirected a bit of her momentum and energy and used it to try and throw Fae to flip and throw Fae down to the ground in a grappling maneuver. But she failed, she underestimated Fae''s sense of bnce as well as her exquisite control over her power."


    "Hmmm..." Kane narrowed his eyes as he digested what Rui told him.


    "Fae''s improved. A lot" Rui nodded. "When she joined the Academy, her style was still full of holes. But she''s improved all round. Furthermore, she''s mastered some high-grade offensive techniques and her power has since skyrocketed. She''s going to be a menace to beat. But..."


    "But?" Kane asked.


    "But Tarah is extremelypatible with her." Rui sighed. "A bit unfortunate for Fae, but Tarah is probably one of three or four Martial Apprentices in the Academy who can handle Fae''s power head-on. She specializes in using her opponents'' power against her after all."


    "Do you think Fae will win?" Kane asked.


    "She can if she chooses the right course of action." Rui replied. "For now, all we can do is watch and see whether she does.


    Their attention returned to the fight. Fae had not yet resumed her attack. She was merely shuffling around, testing Tarah''s reactions to feints.


    (''She''s calm andposed.'') Rui nodded approvingly. (''She''s taking her time to think this through because she knows she can. Tarah is a counter-offensive specialist, which means Fae inherently has the initiative.'')


    (''The answer is right in front of you, I''m sure you can find it.'')


    *   *   *   *   *


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    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 196 Cards

    Fae resumed her offense,unching yet another heavy blow.


    FWHOOSH


    Tarah redirected her energy yet again, flipping her with. Thankfully, Fae''s sense of bnce and control over her power always allowed her to ensure shended on her feet each time.


    (''My most powerful attacks take too long tond.'') Fae realized. (''It seems her counter-offense needs great timing, which is easier to achieve with slower attacks.'')


    Fae intuitively figured out one of the answers Rui was hoping she would. She immediately stoppedunching fearsome singr attacks and insteadunched a swift barrage of shorter palm attacks. These attacks contained less power than her strongest full-body palm strikes, but they were much quicker and she couldunch a greater number of them than her most powerful attacks.


    Immediately, she noticed a difference.


    Tarah resorted to redirecting them away, but she wasn''t able to use Fae''s energy against her like she had.


    "She''s switched to defensive redirection." Rui said, having anticipated it. "Redirection is delicate and requires a lot of precision, it won''t be easy for her to be able to redirect all of Fae''s power when there''s so many different attacks alling at her extremely swiftly."


    "Doesn''t seem like a capable technique." Kanemented. "She should stop relying on it."


    "Redirection can be quite powerful when mastered." Rui disagreed. "But the problem is Fae''s offense is just too strong. The greater the amount of power, speed and number, the harder it is to defend via redirection alone."


    Rui was sure that Tarah would be able to redirect most of his attacks head-on. His offense was inferior to Fae''s and she should have a much easier time than she was having against Fae.


    Of course, Rui wouldn''t fight her the way Fae did head-on. Analyzing and evaluating Tarah with the VOID algorithm yielded a pretty interesting solution. The anti-Tarah fighting style that the VOID algorithm developed relied on Rui abusing his Parallel Walk, Bnced Direction, Blink and Phantom Step together tounch tricky attacks, through holes in her defense that Rui had picked up via the VOID algorithm, that she would have trouble intercepting.


    Counter-offensive required the user to intercept offense at the right timing, to perform whatever counter-offensive maneuver the user would perform, but the interception was the most important part of counter-offensive Martial Art techniques.


    Drastically raising the difficulty to intercept was the greatest way Rui could hinder her.


    He wouldunch arge number of weaker but quicker attacks like Fae did, but he wouldn''tunch them head-on but instead would use his maneuvering and stealth tounch unpredictable and difficult tricky attacks.


    He would eventually end the battle with a takedown via Mirage Dive or pierce her with the Stinger.


    That was just him, of course. Furthermore, he had already resolved to hold back his more potent trump cards for important fights, and preferably win without them so that the surprise affect was maximized whenever he faced future opponents within the Academy.


    Faeunched a curling palm strike.


    FLICK


    Tarah failed to redirect a strike fully for the time, the palm bypassed her interceptions and struck her cheek, bruising it.


    POW POW POWAll rights ? N?velDrama.Org.


    Fae pressed upon the openingunching a flurry of strikes.


    Tarah grew more and more flustered as never-ending waves of powerful blows washed over her.


    Although Fae considered these shorter swifter blows to be weak, that was by her standards.


    By everyone else''s standards, they were still incredibly strong.


    BOOM<sub> </sub>


    Just the slightest of slip-ups from Tarah and Fae exploited the opening tounch a heavy blow, the sheer impact blew the air out of Tarah''s lungs, leaving her even more open.


    BAM BAM BAM


    Fae abused the gaping holes in Tara''s defense, pounding her as much as she could.


    BOOM


    CRASH


    A final close-range wound-up strikended against Tarah''s hastily construed guard, sending her crashing out of the ring.


    Fae sighed.


    "She won." Rui grinned.


    "And she sent her opponent flying out again." Kane grumbled. "Can she just not win in a sane way?"


    "It''s part of her Martial Art." Rui shruggedughing. "You can''t hold that against her."


    "Hold what against me?" Fae''s voice suddenly appeared behind them.


    "Holy fuck!" Kane jumped away. "Stop creeping on people woman!"


    "My, that exaggerated reaction." Fae said with a hint of suspicion creeping into her tone. "What did you say to Rui?"


    "Nothing at all." He shrugged nonchntly.


    He yed it cool as she stared at him with sharp eyes. Rui shook his head with a wry smile.


    "Congrattions." Dalen said. "Your offense is as absurd as always. I look forward to testing my defense against it."


    "Nice win." Milliana nodded.


    "Good tactic you employed there." Rui offered. "Your fighting approach has grown a lot more flexible since before."


    "I realized I was too rigid a year ago." Fae replied. "Ever since then I''ve put a lot of weight into improving my flexibility and versatility."


    Rui nodded. Fae was definitely in the top three threats, this was reaffirmed. Now that he had seen all three of the Martial Apprentices he considered to be the hardest to beat fight, he needed to start thinking about how he was going to deal with them.


    Although he would have liked to have obtained more data, it was best to have some ns anyway. After all, he may not have that luxury.


    It was very possible he would get paired up against one of them in the next few rounds, he didn''t want to be unprepared for when that happened.


    (''I don''t think I can hold back against any of them.'') He sighed inwardly. His n was to hide Blink and Stinger as his trump cards for as long as possible. But the strength these three had disyed was now causing him second thoughts. These two trump cards might be the only way he could possibly beat them, holding back was extremely risky. If he ran into them, he would use them whenever necessary.


    Although he would be revealing all his cards, that was still better than losing.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 197 Second Match

    As Rui pondered about the solutions he would need to develop against Fae, Kane and Nel, a voice called out to him.


    "Apprentice Rui Quarrier." A staff member addressed. "Your second match has been arranged. Please follow me."


    Rui nodded, turning to the others. "Catch you guyster."


    They bade him farewell and good luck, before heading to his match to spectate. Rui was on their list of greatest threats in the Academy, and none of them wanted to miss seeing how strong he''d gotten. Only Kane had caught thetter half of his first fight having finished early, the rest were still fighting.


    Rui nced at his opponent, recognizing him. "Ghein Marckle, it''s been a while."


    "Rui Quarrier." He nodded. "Today is the day I beat you."


    Ghein was a senior Martial Apprentice that Rui had run into many times. He was a grappling specialist, specifically, a strangling specialist.


    He excelled at restricting the blood flow and breathing of his opponents when grappling with them. Rui immediately applied the VOID algorithm and subsequently began thinking about how to adapt to and defeat him. The answer of course, was the same as in the past.


    The first principle his adaptatively evolved fighting style would need to have was maintaining distance. The intrinsic weakness of grapplers were that they had a short range outside of which they were unable to attack their opponent with grappling.


    Thus, the first trait that the adapted fighting style that the VOID algorithm would create was being a long-range fighting style.


    The second trait it needed to possess was difficulty in intercepting. As a grappler, Ghein possessed anti-striking countermeasures without a doubt. The mostmon countermeasures were intercepting and grasping strikes forcibly turning the battle into a grappling contest.


    Thus, Rui needed to increase the swiftness and agility of the strikes to make it harder for it to be intercepted, at the cost of power.


    This strategy was what Fae had used, the difference here was that Tarah was purely counter-offensive whereas Ghein was an aggressive offensive grappler, making it much harder to avoid ying onto his opponent''s ying field.


    The third trait his adapted style needed to have was evasive maneuvering capabilities. Ghein was prone to chasing after him and try and use shooting maneuvers to take him down. Shooting maneuvers were essentially charging bullrushes aimed at grabbing one''s target for a takedown or a throw. His adapted style would need to use Primordial Instinct, Bnced Direction, Parallel Walk and Phantom Step to avoid pursuit and ensure that Ghein wouldn''t be able to get a hold of him.


    The fourth trait his adapted style needed to have was a stamina advantage. If the fight would turn into a cat and mouse chase, then having a stamina advantage was vital. Since Ghein was a grappler, he could forgo some of his striking defenses in order to conserve energy.


    He could also reduce energy-intensive attacks, and focus on simpler low-risk low-energy Vital Pressure attacks that would eventually allow him to win. He ought to drastically cut down on Outer Convergence which was extremely energy-intensive as well, and use it only when an opening presented itself. Helical Breathing needed to be used continuously as well.


    "Take your stances." The supervisor instructed.


    "Fuuu..." Rui exhaled as he constructed a fighting style that possessed all of the traits that he and the VOID algorithm had created.


    He adopted a new stance. Feet centered and shifting, heels off the ground and hands close to the body. This was a stance that best catered to the four traits his adapted style needed to possess.


    Ghein on the other, crouched with both elbows at his ribs and open-handed arms that were looking an opportunity to grab and choke Rui. He intended to dash after Rui the moment the match began.


    "Begin!" The supervisormenced the match.


    DASH


    WHOOSH


    Ghein executed a shoot maneuver,unching himself at Rui reaching out to grab him, only to clutch at air. The Primordial Instinct technique ensured that such simplistic maneuvers would never ever be able to tag him in a million years.


    DASH<sub> </sub>


    He chased after Rui yet again, not willing to give up.


    WHOOSH


    Rui feinted him into grasping thin air.


    POW POW


    The briefest and quickestbo jabs with Vital Pressure, exploiting the opening the failed shoot maneuver created, irritating Ghein.Original from N?velDrama.Org.


    "He''s not fighting like he normally does." Dalen noted, watching Rui. "It''s remarkable how often his fighting style changes, almost like he doesn''t have a fixed Martial Art or a Martial Path."


    "That is his Martial Art and Path." Kane corrected. "He adapts and evolves his fighting style to suit his opponent. We stick to a single style the moment we be Martial Apprentices because that style is our greatest affinity, and we would be extremely weak if we fought with a drastically different style. But what is our weakness, is his strength. Being able to change styles smoothly like flowing water is his greatest strength."


    Kane gazed at Rui with intensely with sense of hope in his eyes. Rui had already begun bullying a senior Martial Apprentice while holding back. Only someone of this caliber could beat him as it currently stood.


    WHOOSH


    POW POW POW


    WHOOSH


    BAM


    "Fuck!" Ghein cursed in frustration, he raced in as fast as he could at Rui''s retreating sight.


    That was his final mistake.


    Rui''s retreat itself had been a feint, he was actually standing still. But Ghein had timed the shoot for the feint, meaning his timing was off far too early.


    Thest Ghein remembered was sense of absolute dread as an immense amount of pressure from Rui pressed down on his mind.


    "Got you." Rui whispered.


    BOOM


    Abination of Flowing Canon, Vital Pressure and Outer COnvergence crashed against Ghein''s sr plexus. Ghein had timed the shoot maneuver toote because he thought Rui was further away due to the feint.


    And Rui had ruthlessly exploited the opening and sted him with his most powerful technique.


    Thebination of using Phantom Step to feint in a way that threw off the timing of his opponent''s attack while then exploiting that mis-timing to finish the match with a pre-nned attack was abo that Rui had created in that very moment with the processes of the VOID algorithm.


    Ghein copsed like a puppet with cut strings.


    "Winner; Rui Quarrier!" The supervisor dered.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 198 Musings

    N?vel/Dr(a)ma.Org - Content owner.


    "Good fight man." Kaneplimented. "That was clean."


    "Thanks." Rui replied.


    "Good application of Phantom Step." Kane noted. "I never thought about using it like that."


    "It was the fastest way to end the fight." Rui lied. If he truly wanted, he could have ended the fight in ten seconds with either Blink or Stinger. But Ghein was too weak to force him to use it. He didn''t mind taking longer to win, what was three minutes versus ten seconds? It didn''t make any significant difference. In exchange, his trump cards weren''t revealed.


    As time passed, they all got assigned their third fight one-by-one. Dalen and Milliana had fought only once, and they went onto fight two more times.


    At the end of the day, out of all of them, only Rui, Kane and Fae got perfect scores with three clean victories. Milliana won only once out of three times and Dalen won two out of three in total.


    The scoreboard was revealed by the end of the day, with all seventy-nine contestants'' scores ranked.


    Out of seventy-nine contestants, only neen contestants had three wins and zero losses, and about as many had three losses and zero wins.


    The former neen roughly constituted the top twenty-five percent of the Martial Apprentices of the Academy as far asbat prowess went, of course there were some discrepancies where strong Martial Apprentices had run into just a notch stronger Martial Apprentices in the very first round or extremely ipatible Martial Apprentices against whom they had a disadvantage against.


    Most of the Martial Apprentices fell in the middle with both wins and losses.


    p Rui nced at the scoreboard and at the Martial Apprentices with three wins and zero losses. He was quite sure that the victor of the preliminary contest would go on to be elected. Whoever the victor was, this person could not afford to lose a single battle.</anda>


    As the days passed on, each Martial Apprentice fought roughly three battles a day. The number of matches per day would reduce until it hit one match a day by roughly around the end of month, by when most matches will have been over.


    As the days passed, Rui noticed a peculiar trend. Despite many days passing, he hadn''t faced any of the top-twenty contenders asides from Gale. In fact, neither did Fae or Kane. They consistently faced the proportion of martial Apprentices that had much more losses than wins. Rui hadn''t run into Nel, Fae and Kane yet.


    (''Could it be... they''re trying to maximize suspense and energy of the event by ensuring the most likely candidates don''t battle it out from the get-go?'') Rui wondered.


    The battle between the most likely candidates would likely decide which one of them would be the representative of the Hajin branch. This was true regardless of whether the Martial Artists fought in the beginning of the preliminary contest or the end. Thus, postponing those battle to the very end would undoubtedly create a much more tense and suspenseful preliminary contest.


    This wouldn''t affect the end oue either. At the end of the day, regardless of the order, all martial Apprentices would fight against all other Martial Apprentices. It did not matter who fought who when, at the end of the month, the one with the highest score would be selected as the representative of their Academy<sub> </sub>


    He almost wanted tough. Headmaster Aronian sure knew how to keep himself entertained. How else was the old man going to stave away his boredom? He was a Martial Master who had experienced things that none of the Apprentices could even begin to imagine!


    Rui would simply have to wait for his time toe. In any case, this was good news for him. The more time he had, the more data he would be able to gather. And the better he''ll be able to create counter adapted styles.


    He found Fae to be the least difficult. Not because she was the weakest, it was just that she was a much more conventional Martial Artist than Kane and Nel were. Her strength came from having an immense number of potent techniques that she could apply extremely well. She had more defined and conventional weaknesses and strengths. She was generally average in all regards, but her offense was astronomical. Even the weakest of her attacks were stronger than Rui''s strongest attacks, barring Stinger, and the sheer amount of force she was able to output was the single greatest that Rui had ever seen.


    Nel on the other hand was this powerful because of his absurd physical ability. He had always believed that humans were not capable of superhuman feats without Martial Art, but Nel had shown him how wrong he was. He still didn''t understand how he was as strong as he was. Was it just a mutation? Was he just one of the handful of humans who were born with broken limits?


    He didn''t know. And it didn''t matter. His physical prowess was off the charts and Rui needed to contend with that with techniques alone. Thankfully, theck of techniques meant that the VOID algorithm was actually quitepatible with him, since his fighting style was actually the closest to what humans on Earth would do.


    He didn''t have maneuvering techniques, he just ran.


    He didn''t have defensive techniques, he just blocked.


    He didn''t have offensive techniques, he just swung.


    Rui might actually be the mostpatible person against him in the entire Academy. The problem was Nel was stronger than him in every regard aside from stealth and perhaps sensory. Being decisively superior to Rui in all major aspects ofbat was a huge advantage. Whether or not Rui couldpensate and cope with that remains to be seen.


    As for Kane...


    Kane was actually the most confounding, because he was the most deviant of them all. Rui just wasn''t sure how to even begin going about beating him with such a perverse and overpowered ability. Furthermore, as powerful as Void Step was, Kane had also mastered another Grade ten Apprentice-level technique; the Godspeed technique. This technique when executed sessfully had knocked out Fae instantly and forced Squire Kyrie to use a Squire-level technique to beat it.


    He was an absolute menace.


    All three of them were.


    Yet, despite this, Rui still found himself grinning uncontrobly when he thought about fighting them.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 199 Victory

    BAM BAM BAM


    Rui released an onught of heavy blows, each bolstered by Vital Pressure and Outer Convergence. Dalen simply guarded against each of them. He was one of the few people in the entire Academy who could straightforwardly withstand Rui''s full power.


    Although Rui didn''t hit as hard as Fae or Nel, there weren''t many people who hit harder than him. Outer Convergence was an incredibly difficult and powerful techniques that was just a few grades short of being grade ten, only senior striking specialists could over power in a contest of blows.


    POW


    Rui''s strike found itself wiggling through his guard and striking his throat, earning a grimace for him. Dalen was just too rock solid, it would take him forever, if ever at all, to wear him down with ordinary strikes.


    That''s why Rui had aimed for vulnerable and vital areas with Vital Pressure, and tried his best to harm them with Outer Convergence.


    Throat.


    Sr Plexus.


    Testicles.


    Eyes.Original from N?velDrama.Org.


    Even the nose, for momentary incapacitation.


    Rui didn''t even bother trying to strike his honed muscles or his rock-solid bones. Only through these vital areas could Rui possibly hurt him.


    POW


    Dalen returned the favour, trying to take Rui down with blows. To his surprise, Rui didn''t even bother trying to block his attacks!


    Dalen had only mastered Vital Pressure for offense, and that was simply far too meagre to defeat Rui. Rui didn''t even bother blocking them, he simply used Inner Divergence, Acute Edge and stic Shift topletely negate their impacts.


    Rui sted forwardunching waves of attacks on Dalen, who did his best to withstand all of them while also trying to inflict as much damage on Rui as he could, albeit in vain.


    A battle could not be fought only via defense, Dalen was very cognizant of this fact. But his offense bounced off Rui like a beach ball.


    Inparison, Rui was making meaningful progress. His ability tond heavy blows on vital areas was truly troubling. Although Dalen had heightened his defense, vulnerable areas remained vulnerable areas.


    It was almost impossible to train the throat to be able to withstand the power of Outer Convergence nor were there any techniques barring a grade ten technique peak Apprentice-level technique that allowed the throat to withstand such immense absurd power.


    Usually when vulnerable areas were targeted, the only realistic solutions that existed was avoid or block.


    Had Kane been the one fighting him, he would have avoided. But Dalen was ustomed to blocking and parrying.


    Problem was Rui was faster. Much faster. Not only was he quicker because he was lighter, but his movement speed had increased significantly thanks to Outer Convergence. Furthermore, with maneuvering techniques, Rui was able to reposition himself to exploit holes in the defense very quickly.


    This alone was very difficult to cope with for Dalen, especially when Rui had extremely impressive and inhumanly perfect timing with the VOID algorithm and Primordial Instinct.


    On top of that, Rui made a fool out of him with Phantom Step. Dalen simply couldn''t cope with numerous techniques, many of which were very especially powerful.<sub> </sub>


    Eventually, Rui had be so unstoppably dominant that Dalen simply could do no more than turtle up and simply guard against the iing onught. But that had weaknesses as well, weaknesses Rui immediately exploited.


    FLICK


    He tripped Dalen by intercepting one of his steps with a well-timed sweeping kick. Rui had be so sharp at predicting Dalen with the VOID algorithm boosted by Primordial Instinct that he was able to intercept things that normally would be impossible to intercept.


    Dalen''s weight fell sideways as he had no crutch supporting it.


    BOOM


    Ruiunched him flying with a double palmed push, amplified with Outer Convergence. With merely one foot on the ground, Dalen simply couldn''t prevent beingunched. Since Rui pushed instead of colliding a strike against him, all of his defensive techniques werepletely useless, since they were meant to work against collisions.


    This was what Rui had been aiming for.


    THUD


    Dalennded hard outside the ring, skidding some distance away, before finally stopping. Although this was a win by rules, since Rui knocked him out of the ring. He knew Rui could have pummeled him to the ground until he eventually managed to beat him ck-and-blue or manage to wiggle in a lethal attack on a vital area causing immense suffering to Dalen. But he chose to win by a ring-out.


    The least painful way for Dalen to lose.


    Rui was not someone who enjoyed needless tormenting, he chose to defeat Dalen in the most humane way possible, especially since they were friends.


    "Winner: Rui Quarrier." The supervisor dered as Rui cleared the ring for the next scheduled fight.


    "You won." Dalen sighed. "Good fight."


    "Good fight. You were a difficult opponent to beat." Rui smiled at him. "Let''s spar again some time."


    Dalen nodded, epting his good will.


    "That double-palm push." Fae noted. "That was well-executed. It surprised me because you don''t normally use palm attacks."


    Rui shrugged. "I used it because it was the soundest solution in those circumstances and parameters."


    "You make it sound like a math equation." Kane grumbled.


    (''That''s actually closest to the truth.'') Rui mused.


    The VOID algorithm was created with cutting-edge data science, statistics, probability, linear algebra and geometry in the twenty-first century of Earth.


    It was forged out of more math and numbers than Kane, or anybody else could possibly fathom in his entire life. The sheer amount of information contained in the techniques was one of the biggest reasons that it was unviable in his previous life. No MMA fighter could possibly memorize all the information needed to utilize the VOID algorithm, even if they managed to memorize the entire algorithm, they were unable to memorize all the information about their opponent mid-fight that the VOID algorithm required them to memorize. Rui could only partially use the VOID algorithm even with his reincarnated-boosted conscious mind, he only used the earlier and more elementary iterations and versions of the VOID algorithm.


    If the VOID algorithm were a technique, it''s difficulty would likely very well surpass grade ten!


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 200 Scheduled

    In the past two weeks and more, Rui had beaten all the small and medium fries with ease. The theory he hade up with had turned out to be remarkably urate. He hadn''t run into a single top-level Martial Apprentice at all in the past two weeks. But he suspected that to change soon, the number of mid-level Martial Apprentices were almost running out, any time now he would begin being pit against the top tier Martial Apprentices.


    His prediction hade to be true.


    Suddenly, the doors to the facility opened, drawing the attention of the contestants and staff members.


    What drew their attention was the force of mind that they''d felt. Squire Kyrie, who was the head supervisor of the preliminary contest walked in. Behind her, a team of support staff members pushed in a rolling notice board.


    "Martial Apprentices." She addressed all of them. "Gather around."


    Everyone wordlessly heeded, curious as to what was going on.


    "The preliminary contest has reached its final stretch." She remarked. "A representative needs to be chosen soon. Thus, the Martial Academy has expedited the scheduling and has pre-scheduled all the remaining matches of the preliminary contest."


    She waved her hand, gesturing at the notice board as the staff unveiled it. "All remaining matches have been scheduled. We will provide all of you with a timetable containing the schedules of your own battles. You will be expected to appear ten minutes before your match. Failing to appear at the scheduled time will result in an automatic loss, so do not be tardy. You will have ess to healing and rejuvenation potions, so do not be tardy, there will be no second chances."


    The announcement caused a wave of tension to spread through the crowd. The staff member immediately began handing the Martial Apprentices their timetables, it was far too inconvenient to skim through the dozens of matchups scheduled every day looking for one''s own each day.


    "This..." Rui subconsciously murmured as he nced at his own timetable.


    From that day forth, he was scheduled to have only one fight per day. But that wasn''t the eye-drawing part.


    Each of his opponents were people who had perfect scores!


    All wins and zero losses.


    This was explicit confirmation of his observation. This would not have been possible if these Martial Apprentices had faced each other at some point. They, like him, had probably built the perfect record mopping up the lower and mid-tier Martial Apprentices of the Academy.


    At the very beginning of the preliminary contest, there were neen Martial Apprentices with perfect scores. However, since then seven of them had lost atleast one match breaking their win streak. These Martial Apprentices weren''t weak, but were clearly one notch below those that had managed to remain unbeaten from the very start.


    Rui grew excited, as a grin crept onto his face.


    This was where the true battle for the representative would begin!


    Everybody knew that the first twenty days of the preliminary contest was merely to filter out the losers who never had a chance in the first ce. The scoreboard after twenty days would reveal the elite few that had a realistic chance of being chosen as a representative.


    Rui skimmed through the list of names he would be fighting.


    Fe Garron.


    Jane Francis.


    Avi Seth.


    Sahar Kal.


    Fae Duhan.


    Hever Mendelieve.<sub> </sub>


    Sarron Malcolm.


    Vivian Dufresne.


    L Sec.


    Nel.


    Kane Arrancar.


    Eleven fights in eleven days.


    These were the strongest of the strongest. Most of them came from illustrious Martial families in the Martialmunities. Nel and Rui being one of the few exceptions.


    What he found curious was that his veryst match was scheduled against Kane.


    And his second-tost match was scheduled against Nel.


    ? He was scheduled to fight Fae six days from then.


    These three were the most threatening to him all out of all of the eleven.


    He was curious about when these three would be fighting against each other. He skimmed through the notice board, looking for fights that had two of these three. Quickly noting them and their order.


    Fae vs Nel.


    Fae vs Kane.


    Kane vs Nel.


    Kane''s battle with Nel was just one day prior to his. Rui was d that two of his three most difficult opponents were as further away as possible, allowing him to gather all the data he could possibly want. In the past neen days, he had carefully observed as many fights of all of them as he could, especially Kane and Nel, since these two freaks deviated too much from conventional.


    He had keenly observed their tactics, approach, tendencies and quirks, reactions and responses, strengths and weaknesses. Growing more and more prepared to fight them.


    The reason he had focused on Kane and Nel in particr more than Fae was because his previous knowledge on Fae not as outdated as his previous knowledge on Kane and Nel.


    He never had any information on Nel in the first ce, thus it became much more imperative to gather information on him.This belongs ? N?velDra/ma.Org.


    As for Kane, a lot of the old information Rui did have was now simply outdated, or at the very least needed some updating. This was the power of the Void Step technique. This technique singlehandedly changed the entire equation and the entire game! Now, all of a sudden he needed to be extremely careful fighting him, not just because of the Void Step technique, because old information might end up causing his downfall. At the very least, until he was able to ount for the Void Step technique, he would need to forget everything he knew about Kane.


    All in all, he had a tough time ahead of him.


    "Our match is scheduledst huh?" Kane frowned. "That''s funny."


    "The remaining matches are not going to be easy." Fae noted. "These Martial Apprentices are no jokes, even if I''m confident of victory."


    Rui nodded. If he was not careful, one of these might just pull a victory from under his feet!


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 201 Matchups

    Rui and Kane had already arrived at the sparring facility at the reporting time and had signed the attendance register. Now they simply waited for their friends and scheduled matches to arrive.


    Rui nced at the scoreboard.


    There were twelve people tied for rank one. These Martial Apprentices were consisted of the eleven that Rui was scheduled to fight across the span of eleven days as well as himself counting for the twelfth contestants.


    Rui nced around the facility, he could feel attention on Kane and himself. And it wasn''t just because of his ck features or Kane''s status. The two of them both had sixty-seven wins and no losses. Everyone paid extra attention to all those who tied for rank one.


    Rui''s eyes skimmed through the rankings, taking note of how everyone else performed.


    "Oh...?" He murmured.


    "Hm?" Kane nced at him.


    "Gale''s at rank number nine." Rui said. "Impressive."


    "Well, he''s strong." Kane said. "Even if we did beat him up easily."


    He had had fifty-three wins and fourteen losses, meaning he only lost to two people outside of the top eleven tied for rank one. Outside of the top eleven, it could be said that he was very close to the next best.


    "Dalen''s at rank fifteen." Kane noted. "That''s not bad at all either."


    "As far as pure defensive prowess goes, he should be in the top three." Rui agreed.


    The two of them sparked up a discussion about the rankings, eventually talking about the top eleven, the most interesting and also the most relevant of them all.


    "Who are you most worried about in the top eleven?" Rui asked, out of curiosity.N?vel/Dr(a)ma.Org - Content owner.


    "Hmph, I''m not worried about losing to anybody. I''m actually worried about not losing." Kane snorted.


    Rui chuckled at that response. "Alright, who are you least worried about then?"


    "Hmmm..." Kane scratched his chin. "Fae, as much as I hate to admit it, is one of the few who I''m least worried about. Her offensive power is absurd. I might actually die if she manages to get a clean hit on me."


    His body frame was built for speed, agility and mobility. It was not trained for defense in mind. If she struck him with a full-powered blow...


    Kane gulped at the very thought of such a thing happening.


    Fae''s power was so high that she shook the very air and ground with nearly every movement. Even Nel, who was blessed with superhuman power, was not nearly as strong as Fae. She was almost in a league of her own.


    He turned to Rui with a sharp gaze. "Don''t tell her I said that though."


    Rui burst out intoughter, his rtionship with Fae was truly entertaining and amusing.


    "So, who else?" He asked. "You said one of the few."<sub> </sub>


    "There''s that Martial Psycho guy Nel." Kane said. "I dunno how he''s that strong two months after bing a Martial Apprentice, but he''s really tough."


    "And yeah that''s about it." Kane shrugged.


    "Nobody else?"


    "Nope."


    "You sure?"


    "Yep. I can''t think of any other Martial Apprentice who is strong enough to beat me asides from Nel and Fae." He shrugged exaggeratedly, before turning to Rui. "Why, you have someone else in mind?"


    "Ha. Ha. Very funny." Rui grumbled, earning mischievousughter from Kane.


    The two of them bantered back and forth until Fae, Milliana and Dalen arrived, immediately grouping with them.


    "The three of you prepared?" Fae asked. "It''s the final run and it''s going to be the toughest for the three of us."


    Kane shrugged. "It is what it is. No big deal."


    "As prepared as can be." Rui replied.


    Today Rui was scheduled to fight Fe Garron. A powerful ranged fighter, and a senior Apprentice at the Martial Academy. She was the strongest ranged fighter in the entire Academy, because she had pursued range to an absurd degree. It was truly mind-boggling to see the sheer amount of range this woman hade to possess.


    She could strike people ten meters away!


    She did this by devoting herself to an extremely high-grade technique that allowed for the clean dislocation of limbs, via conditioning of the ligament as well as well-timed simultaneous expansion of the biceps and the triceps and other skeletal muscle groups.


    This not only gave her extra range, but also greater power and speed.


    This was because the strike elerated over a greater amount of distance. Her impacts were extremely quick and devastating. Although they weren''t at Fae levels of power, she wasn''t too much less threatening than Fae. Especially considering Fae had a range weakness while range was Fe''s greatest strength.


    After Fae, Nel and Kane, she was one of the people Rui was wariest about. In certain scenarios, she was likely even more dangerous than them.


    He would be fighting her today. And if he lost, he would certainly be thrown out of any realistic chance of winning the preliminary contest.


    Fae was to fight Avi Seth, a poison-oriented Martial Artist. Rui had seen him fight before, and he was curious about poison-oriented Martial Artist would handle a conventional Martial Artist of Fae''s calibre. It was quite intriguing because this fighting style was one of those fighting styles that his previous life''s knowledge as least useful against.


    Kane was scheduled to fight Sahar Kal, a strong all-rounder. Now this match Rui was interested in, he wanted to see how a strong all-rounder dealt with Kane. This would give him a lot of useful data on what worked and what didn''t against Kane and help him make the final set of preparations before their fight.


    Nel on the other hand was bound to face Hever Mendelieve. A rare bnce centric specialist. He fought in an incredibly novel way that relied on an extraordinary sense of bncebined with supreme flexibility. Rui was curious about how the two would fight each other.


    Thankfully none of the fights of the rank one Martial Artists were simultaneous, so Rui could take his time observing all of them.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 202 Ranged Combat

    "Apprentice Rui Quarrier." A staff member called out to him, breaking him out of his reverie. "Your scheduled fight is soon tomence, please wait by the assigned ring."


    "Sure." Rui nodded. "Alright, see you guyster."


    Rui left after they bade him good luck. Once he reached the ring, he saw Fe Garron waiting at the ring.


    She was a tall and lean woman with brown hair and eyes. She had a heavy aura, and was one of the few Martial Apprentices that could make his Primordial Sense tingle with rm.


    "Sorry for the wait." He said with a friendly smile.


    "No problem." She replied calmly.


    "Take your stances." The supervisor instructed.


    Fe proceeded to take the most bizarre stance Rui had ever seen in his life. Her right arm went back, with her hand hanging behind her. Her left arm went to the right side under her right armpit, as though she was trying to hug herself. She shifted all her weight onto her left leg, and her right leg was behind her with heels lifted off the ground, merely touching the ground at the toes.


    It was a bizarre stance, but it made sense when one knew what her Martial Art was.


    The arms were positioned the way they were because her attacks were extended swings, and chops that required arge amount of swinging distance, thus she was merely coiling up her arms and giving them as much room as possible. It was like stretching rubber band as far as possible so that it would hit back as hard as possible.


    She had shifted all her weight onto one leg because she was an immobile fighter. She generally nted herself at the extremes of the ring and sniped her opponents with ranged swings from the corner of the ring. It was easier tounch strikes with one leg quicker if that leg didn''t have any weight it was forced to support.


    "Fuuu..." Rui exhaled. He had already begun constructing an adapted Martial Art in his mind.


    She was a ranged Martial Artist and Rui''s range was significantly shorter. He would be unable to strike her if he fights her at range.


    Thus, the first trait his adapted fighting style would need to have was being able to close the distance between them. This way, he would be at a range where he could actually do damage to her. Another reason this train was important was because ranged strikes were useless in close quarters. What was the point of striking ten meters away if your opponent was one meter away?


    She would be forced to exchange normal arm-length and leg-length close quarters blows with Rui which he could certainly win.


    Why?


    Because assuming she spent most of her resources into bing the best at rangedbat and beating people at range, it logically followed that she was weak at close range quarters. Rui excelled at that range.


    Thus, this first condition he had set for the adapted fighting style was the most important.


    Rui adopted his stance.


    Feet close to each other, weight equally distributed and constantly shifting, arms close to the body propped up defensively.


    It was a defensive maneuvering stance. Aimed at ease maneuvering and defending against attacks. Since Rui could not attack, he did not need to take up a stance that catered to ease of offense. His primary goal was closing in on her.


    "Begin!" the supervisormenced the match.


    For a moment, nothing happened.


    Then, Fe''s arm blurred.


    And all hell broke loose.


    BOOM


    Rui narrowly avoided an impact where he was standing a tenth of a second prior. Just as he paused, his instincts tingled as he felt danger swinging down on him.


    BOOM<sub> </sub>


    He narrowly avoided yet another impact.


    (''Damn! She would have knocked me out if I hadn''t mastered Primordial Instinct!'') Rui cursed.


    The speed of her whips was absurdly fast, far faster than Rui was. The reason he was able to dodge them despite that was because they had to travel a longer distance than Rui had to avoid them. But as far as raw speed went, they were nearly as fast as Kane was although much less fluid and flexible. Furthermore, when they stretched, they became thinner, making it harder to follow them with the naked eye.


    BOOM


    Rui spun to the side as a gust of disheveled his hair. She''d almost got him that time.


    BOOM


    BOOM


    BOOM


    Every time he tried closing in, sheunched swift and powerful blow, cutting off his path. Her timing and cement were spectacr. Rui could tell she''d had an immense amount of experience at keeping people from entering close quarters range against her.


    Rui could see how she''d managed toe this far with zero losses. Most Martial Apprentices would not be able to beat her.


    He leapt away, increasing the distance between them before pausing.


    She didn''t attack him.


    (''So she has a range limit.'') Rui noted. He took the opportunity to reconfigure his adapted fighting style.


    Another trait his Martial Art needed to have was to be able to close the distance despite her restrictive attacks. This either meant avoiding them, or enduring them.


    Both methods were feasible, the question was which was the least risky and had the highest chance of victory?


    He could for evasive infiltration with Parallel Walk, Bnced Direction, Phantom Step and Primordial Instinct.


    Or he could for the enduring infiltration with Parallel Walk, Bnced Direction, Inner Divergence, stic Shift and Acute Edge.


    He inputted the variables and parameters into the VOID algorithm, before adopting his stance.


    "Both it is." he murmured, before gearing himself for the infiltration.


    He inhaled, and exhaled. Breathing in deeply as he calmed his body down, and focused his mind.


    His concentration grew deeper and deeper.


    Until everything disappeared.


    The only thing he could see was his target.All rights ? N?velDrama.Org.


    Fe gritted her teeth as the pressure Rui was generating began skyrocketing. She didn''t understand how someone much younger, who had only been a Martial Apprentice for less than two years could possibly generate such weight.


    She mirrored Rui, taking up her stance, as the two faced off once more.


    The second stage of the battle was about to begin.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 203 Outcome

    "Fuuu..." Rui exhaled.


    The next moment his muscles grew taut as he gathered as much energy as he could, preparing for the charge.


    DASH


    He dashed towards her. Yet, the moment he was close enough;


    BOOM


    WHOOSH


    A powerful whipnded onto him, only for him to disappear!


    (''A feint.'') Fe realized.


    He had been using feints to mislead her attacks, allowing him to avoid them.


    This was a particrly effective solution as Fe needed rely on predictive measures in order to strike her targets from such a distance. Meaning feints were particr effective against her.


    She immediately escted the attacks.


    BOOM BOOM BOOM


    Rui barely managed to avoid getting hit as three impacts struck around him. He nced at her with surprise.


    (''Damn, she''s using both arms and her leg simultaneously.'') Rui realized. Meaning the number of attacks had tripled.


    By using all three limbs at once, she was dishing out three separate ranged-attacks at any point in time. Thus, even if the first whip missed him because of a feint, the second or the third would undoubtedly strike him.


    BOOM BOOM POW


    The third whipnded square on Rui, pushing him back.


    The strategy was effective, but it was not without caveats. By increasing the number of strikes, she was forced to reduce the lethality of each strike. Making withstanding them a much more practical solution.


    Rui dashed towards her once more.


    BOOM BOOM


    He feinted out of the first two strikes, but the third was set to hit him!


    POW


    He used Inner Divergence, Acute Edge and stic Shift to negate the impact, before pushing forward.


    BOOM BOOM


    WHOOSH


    POW


    He got past yet another set of whips, making even more progress. By carefully choosing when to feint and when to endure, he was able to make use of abination of both of these approaches to close the distance between him and Fe.


    BOOM BOOM


    WHOOSH


    POWAll rights ? N?velDrama.Org.


    He timed his defensive techniques perfectly this time, enduring no pain or damage whatsoever.


    He was just five meters away.


    She had only onest chance!<sub> </sub>


    If Rui crossed thest barrage, the range would be too short for her whips to gain the speed and momentum they normally had.


    BOOM BOOM BOOM


    Rui feinted, throwing two of the whips off target while throwing up his guard and charging through thest whip with all of his defensive techniques.


    (''Shit-'') She didn''t even have time to curse.


    BAM


    Rui charged at her with his maneuvering techniques, umting momentum and striking her with Flowing Canon.


    Although having her back face the corner meant no one could ever take her back and attack her from a blind spot, it also meant that the probability of her getting knocked out of the ring was much higher. The ease of doing so was greater than if she were at the center of the ring.


    As predicted, her capabilities at close quarters were limited and she simply did not possess the techniques needed to deal with one of Rui''s most powerful attacks.


    WHOOSH


    The attackunched her flying, as she skidded across the ground.


    (''Winner; Rui Quarrier.'') The supervisor immediately dered.


    "Fuuu..." He exhaled in relief. (''Ten more battles to go.'')


    He was quiteforted by the fact that he was able to beat Fe handily, especially without needing to use his trump cards. It gave him greater confidence that if he went all out and used all the techniques that he had at his disposal he would be able tobat those he was most worried about.


    "Good fight." Rui had offered her a handshake after he exited the ring. "You were quite strong."


    "As were you." She returned his gesture. "Now that you beat me, my chances of being chosen as representative are all but gone. You better win."


    "I intend to." Rui smiled.


    He exchanged farewells with her before returning to his friends.


    "Good fight." Kane said.


    "That was clean." Fae agreed.


    "Thanks." Rui replied, consuming a rejuvenation and healing potion, before ncing at Fae. "You''re up next right?"


    She nodded. "My match will begin soon, so I should probably get going."


    Rui nodded. She was scheduled to face another rank one fighter; Avi Seth. The reason Rui was particrly interested in the oue of this fight was because Avi Seth was a Martial Artist with a Martial Art centered around poison.


    It''s not that he hadn''t seen poison based Martial Art, it''s just that he hadn''t seen it at higher levels. He didn''t think Fae would lose unless she was careless, so he was curious to see how Avi fought and what he would do against someone of Fae''s caliber.


    Rui and the others reached her assigned ring as they spectated. Avi had long red hair, his stature was not particrlyrge nor too lean, he was perfectly neutral.


    What drew Rui''s attention were his hands. They were bizarre, to say the very least. His nails were grotesque and purple, as though they were undergoing necrosis.


    (''Some special conditioning.'') Rui realized. There was no doubt in his mind that Avi had undergone some special conditioning training to that led to the strange physical features he had, there was no doubt that this was connected his specialty either.


    The human body did not naturally produce poison. In order for poison-oriented Martial Art to exist there needed to be some degree of human modification that had to be made to the Martial Artist or one simply would not be able to make use of poison oriented Martial Art.


    Rui suspected that his hands had been modified to either produce poison or store it. The purple pigmentation was likely due to the presence of poison itself.


    Which meant Fae should avoid it at all costs. He nced at her, sensing certain level of caution from her towards his hands. She could not be too rash, lest she be taken down with a potent form of poison!


    "Take your stances." The supervisor instructed.


    The match was about tomence.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 204 Poison

    All rights ? N?velDrama.Org.


    Fae took her ssic stance. Her right palm tucked at her waist, upside down. Her left palm faced her opponent, her legs crouched, evenly supporting her weight.


    Avi took an open-palmed stance with his fingers facing Fae. It resembled a Wing Chun stance from Earth.


    "Begin!" The supervisormenced the match.


    Avi immediately dashed towards Fae,unching a palm jab. Fae simply stepped back, avoiding any contact with his hands.


    WHOOSH


    She avoided a palm jab by sidestepping.


    "She''s being uncharacteristically passive." Dalen remarked.


    "She''s cautious of his poison. She doesn''t want to make contact with him easily." Rui said.


    "She sucks at evading though." Kane noted. "She''s just running away and avoiding it by ceding space. Eventually she''ll run out of room."


    Fae was cognizant of this, and before long, she changed her approach.


    POW


    Sheunched a light jab after avoiding a palm jab from Avi. He skidded back, barely putting together a guard.


    Fae had purposely made the jab as short and quick as possible. She wanted to minimize the amount of contact she had with Avi''s body, even it came at the cost of power.


    WHOOSH


    He simply tried jabbing at her with his palm


    POW


    She managed mmed him with a palm attack, as he just barely managed to throw together a guard in time.


    WHOOSH


    POW


    WHOOSH


    POW


    WHOOSH


    POW POW POW


    Fae grew more and morefortable and smooth as she grew ustomed to this fighting style. She had been apprehensive at first, but the fight was starting to go smoothly.


    (''Too smoothly.'') Rui frowned. Was this man really a rank one Martial Artist? His attacks were simple enough to avoid, and his defense was meagre. He would not be able to withstand Fae''s palm attacks.


    He didn''t understand how Avi managed to not lose a single time in the past neen days.


    Just as he was wondering what he was missing, he noticed something strange with Fae.


    "What''s with her arms?" Kane asked aloud, frowning. "They''re faltering...?"<sub> </sub>


    Rui''s flew wide open as he paid more attention. Fae''s expression had morphed into rm and confusion too, she had to exert serious effort to keep her arms up in her stance.


    "Don''t tell me..." Rui realized. "It wasn''t just his fingertips. His entire arms is covered in poison!"


    Fae had consistently struck his guard with each strike, this was on purpose. This exined why he always put up a guard even if there were better options.


    Although it looked like Fae was the one attacking him, in reality he was attacking Fae each time he defended himself!


    Rui hadn''t yet adopted the right mindset when it came to poison due to his inexperience and ignorance in regards to this field of Martial Art and techniques. But he did in fact realize, that this application was quite overpowered.


    If his entire arms were covered in poison, that meant he had an incredibly vast attacking area. He only needed to make contact with his opponent in order to poison them.


    Furthermore, this poison didn''t need to be ingested or be injected into the body, Fae had only made contact with his skin. Yet the poison was starting to affect the entirety of her arm. This meant the poison had high pration and a short timeframe within which it would start affecting peformance parameters.


    "The finger tips drew our attention and subconsciously made us assume that it was the only poisoned area." Kane understood.


    "Right." Rui agreed. "It doesn''t even matter if his nails are or aren''t poisoned or not. Their true purpose is a red herring."


    Suddenly their attention was drawn as Fae dashed at Avi.


    BOOM BOOM BOOM


    Kane narrowed his eyes in rm. "Why the fuck is she sting him with powerful attacks? Has she not realized what is going on?"


    "She surely has." Rui had no doubt about that. Fae was an intelligent fighter. "It''s the right move."


    "How so? Won''t this just elerate the poisoning?" Kane frowned.


    "Yes, but..." Rui continued. "It''s her only choice. The poison had just kicked in, meaning it wasn''t done yet in all likelihood, as time passes, it will likely have incapacitated her even more. A race agains time is a race she would have lost."


    "I see." Kane murmured as he realized. "So she wanted to pummel him as hard as she could to end the fight as fast as she could?"


    Rui nodded.


    "Wouldn''t it make more sense to attack parts of his body that aren''t guarded by his arms?"


    "Not really." Rui shook his head. "He''s carefully guarding the easiest and closest parts of his body to attack. All other parts of his body would require Fae tounch longer attacks and require her to alter the trajectories of her attack tond clean hits on. The difficulty of it is high given her arms are partial incapacitated, furthermore, greater distance means greater timeframe which allows Avi enough to poison her anyway. Either with his arms or his nails. Furtermore, the rest of his body might be poisoned too. Perhaps if she wasn''t poisoned already, this n might have been more feasible, but in her current state, she needs to end this fight quickly."


    BOOM BOOM BOOM!


    Rui could sense her desperation and determination. Seeing how far Avi was able to push someone of her caliber, he no longer had any doubts about hispetence, Rui could easily see how he could have beaten small fries with that ridiculous poison.


    However, it didn''t mean he was having it easy.


    Avi gritted his teeth as he guarded for dear life. Although his n was working, he had underestimated how absurdly powerful Fae''s full-powered blows were. Even the light jabs she had struck him with at the beginning were more powerful than anything he had been hit with in the entire contest!


    These full-powered blows were devastating.


    BOOM


    CRACK


    His arms were already filled with hairline fractures and even some clean cracks. She made aplete mess of his wrist and his entire arms were purple, and it wasn''t because of his poison!


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 205 Outcome

    BOOM BOOM BOOM!


    Fae unloaded an unbelievable onught of attacks onto Avi as thetter struggled to stay on his feet. His arms were broken already and the damage was no longer being restricted to them. Because his arms were broken, they were no longer able to guard the rest of his body effectively.


    His ribs, joints and muscles were all reeling from the impact. He had already begun to cough blood due to some internal bleeding in his body.


    He wouldn''t be able tost much longer!


    (''Just how much power does she have?'') He cursed. Praying she would be done soon.


    His prayers were answered.


    Suddenly her onught stopped, and her arms dropped, dangling freely. Her fair skin had taken on a sickly darker hue.


    Time was up.


    It was over.


    Her mighty feared palms had failed.


    Failed her, when she needed them the most.


    Avi''s eyes twinkled. Yet just as heunched himself at her;


    BAM!


    "ARGH!" He coughed blood as her kick cratered into his ravaged body.


    POW


    A high kick struck his jaw, rattling his brain.All rights ? N?velDrama.Org.


    The human mind was funny, it often failed to make the most elementary inferences. This was often caused by a variety of factors outside of intelligence. Conditioned inertia, when something abnormal bes so normal that people forget that it was ever abnormal in the first ce. Intense emotions in the heat of suspenseful moments also created psychological blind spots.


    For Avi, and perhaps for a lot of onlookers, it was the both of them.


    In the past two years, not a single soul had seen Fae kick. It was an unheard-of phenomenon and one that most people wouldn''t even conceive of. In that high-intensity situation, when Fae''s formidable palms and arms copsed, he had immediately felt incredible ecstasy and confidence.


    In that moment, he had just simply failed to realize that ''hey, maybe she can use those perfectly functional legs of hers to kick me.''


    If it was anybody else, he likely would not have dropped his guard and rushed in like he did. But Fae''s weakness, or what he considered to be her weakness, turned out to be his.


    His ravaged condition, and the final high kick to the jaw rattled his brain, causing immediate brain trauma.


    THUD


    He hit the ground like a bag of rocks, unconscious.


    Avi Seth had lost.


    Not just the match, but also his chances of being chosen as the representative.


    For several seconds, there was silence.<sub> </sub>


    "W-Winner; Fae Duhan!" The supervisor shook his head, breaking out of his reverie. He had been so engrossed he had forgotten he had a job to do!


    Fae was breathingboriously. Even the skin near her neck had gone from fairer to the darker hue her arms werepletely coloured in. The poison was taking its toll, and she hade in contact with it countless times after she had begun her final assault on Avi.


    She didn''t even return to her friends. The medical team immediately rushed her to the temporary section and gave her many potions of different colours.


    The Academy, of course, knew of all the techniques that the students purchase, since they were the ones who sold them to them in the first ce. They were well-prepared for all oues, including the poison techniques of Avi Seth.


    Soon, her skin retained its original colour, and she was back on her feet feeling invigorated after a rejuvenation potion.


    "Great fight Fae." Ruiplimented her.


    "That was intense." Kane offered. He couldn''t help but admit she had a great fight.


    "That was close too." Dalen noted.


    Fae nodded. "Thankfully I managed to get in thatst kick, which along with the earlier damage I inflicted was enough to put him out ofmission."


    "How are your arms." Milliana asked out of concern.


    "Ah." Fae nced at them. "They''re fine. The medical team fed me detox potions that cleared out the poison from my system. "I''m perfectly okay now."


    "Good to hear." Rui nodded. He would have been really dismayed if she was not at her peak in her seeding matches. He would take no please in beating her when she was in a weakened state. With this, he could put aside any worry and go all-out against her when they would eventually fight in theing days.


    They chatted a bit, before it was Kane''s turn for the day.


    "Apprentice Kane Arrancar." A staff member addressed him. "Your scheduled fight for the day willmence soon. Please wait at the assigned ring immediately."


    "Yeah. Will do." Kane nodded. "Alright guys see youter."


    He left after having been bade good luck.


    The four of them quickly made their way to the ring as Kane''s fight was about to begin. Both he and his opponent were already on the ring.


    "Who do you guys think will win?" Fae asked as she nced at Sahar Kal.


    "Kane." Rui replied unhesitatingly


    "It''s hard to imagine Kane losing." Dalen agreed as Milliana nodded.


    His shocking performance at the beginning of the preliminary contest had left a deep impression on all of them.


    Dalen and Milliana had already fought him and lost miserably. Fae and Rui on the other hand had yet to, and did not think victory would be anything short of extremely difficult.


    "Take your stances." The supervisor instructed.


    Sahar Kal was a strong senior Martial Apprentice with an all-rounder Martial Art. She adopted a neutral stance, positioning her arms equally defensively and offensively while bncing her weight equally between both legs with a foot of distance between them. The quintessential neutral stance. It was a stance that Rui himself often used when hecked information on his opponent.


    Kane instead nonchntly rxed his body and arms, lightly hopping between both feet. It was a stance that catered much more to maneuvering more than a rigid stance like hers. In this stance he would be able to enter top speed in any direction extremely quickly.


    "Begin!" The supervisor waved his hand,mencing the match.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 206 Potential Solution

    Everyone tensed when matchmenced.


    No one could get used to it.


    Kane exhaled a puff of air and sashayed out of reality.


    It was as though he had ceased to exist.


    Could one fight someone who may as well no exist?


    That the herculean task Sahar Kal was faced with.


    (''Now then...'') Rui mused as he closed his eyes. (''What does she n to do?'')


    By now the entire Academy was aware of the magician that Kane hade to be. Surely Sahar must have had some n against him.


    "RAAARGH!" She swung at empty air all around her.This content ? N?v/elDr(a)m/a.Org.


    "..."


    "HYAAAH!" She drop-kicked empty air.


    ? "..."


    BAM


    She body-mmed empty air.


    Rui could sense with Seismic Mapping and Primordial instinct that Kane hadn''tnded a single attack at all since the match began. He was merely circling around her.


    (''He''s probablyughing his fucking ass off right now.'') Rui couldn''t help but chuckle at the thought. He sighed; a bit depressed. He was hoping he could get some useful data, but it seemed that this was merely unrealistic optimism on his part.


    Suddenly, Rui vaguely sensed Kane had begun moving towards her while she continued swinging empty air.


    Whether by some sixth sense, or sheer luck. She coincidentallyunched a sweeping kick just where Kane was about to attack from.


    WHOOSH


    The attack missed, of course. Kane would never get hit by such a kick.


    But he was visible the instant he paused, before bing imperceivable again.


    (''This...'') A realization dawned Rui. The Void Step technique was a technique that misdirected attention and cognition of observers via maneuvering-based misdirection techniques. It employed the same tricks that magicians used in order to perform magic. Once someone was paying attention on the user, the user would move while misdirecting their opponent''s attention away from them and the direction they were moving in. Meaning in order to actually execute the misdirection, he needed to maneuver; to be in motion.


    That also meant if he ever had to inadvertently pause or stop in order to avoid an iing attack, the technique would also cease to function for the brief moment of time.


    He needed to constantly be in motion for the technique to constantly be in effect, it seemed. That one brief moment of Kane appearing had given Rui some hints about potential shorings in the technique''s mechanics that could potentially be exploited.


    Although this wasn''t the first time Kane had be visible in a battle, it was the first time Rui was able to associate a cause with the phenomenon. Since he hadn''t purchased the technique, he wasn''t familiar with all its mechanics.


    POW POW POW


    Kane had begun his onught. Peppering his opponent with a volley of strikes.<sub> </sub>


    Ever since he had mastered the Void Step technique, he had inadvertently be more offensive in his fighting style.


    This wasn''t because of any changes to his Martial Path.


    It was simply because he was too strong, he didn''t need bother using his real Martial Art against most Martial Apprentices.


    What was the point of being super evasive if his opponent couldn''t even sense him, let alonee close to touching him?


    If he did run into a Martial Apprentice who could counter the Void Step technique and sense him despite it, he would immediately revert back to his evasive style, since his opponent could nownd strikes on him.


    But if they couldn''t even sense him?


    There was simply no point in wasting time. Victory could only be won through offense.


    Heunched many strikes across her entire body. Targeting not just her vitals. He was cautious but not worried, he didn''t think there was anything she could really do against him.


    POW POW POW


    He jabbed at her throat before casually evading a wild haymaker with ease.


    Sahar Kal had grown more and more frustrated, swinging around more and more wildly as she endured more and more damage.


    BAM


    Heunched a strong kick to her sr plexus that left her grimacing.


    POW


    A swift kick to her jaw caused brain trauma, knocking her out immediately.


    She copsed immediately, as Kane came to be perceivable again.


    "Winner; Kane Arrancar!" The supervisor dered as Kane walked off.


    "You must haveughed your ass off at the start." Rui chuckled.


    "You goddamn bet I did." Kaneughed. He hadughed so hard that he almost deactivated the Void Step technique by mistake!


    Perhaps if Rui wanted a sure-shot way of taking Kane down he ought to arrive to their battle with stand-upedy prepared.


    "Clean win Kane." Fae nodded warily.


    "As ridiculous as always." Dalen agreed.


    Rui had grown engrossed on his thoughts from early on in the battle. Could there be a way to exploit the fact that the Void Step technique could only be operated when in motion? Perhaps, but Rui didn''t think it was that simple. For him to be able to exploit this trait would mean that he was somehow able to exploit the fact that Kane would be visible for a brief instant.


    But how was that exploitable exactly? A brief instant was just that; A brief instant. He did not think it would be easy to exploit. Even if Kane was visible briefly, there wasn''t too much that could be done. Even if it was a bit more than just a brief instant it would not be easy. Kane was quite strong even without the Void Step technique. Just because it was inactive for a moment didn''t mean he was suddenly extremely weak.


    Even without the Void Step technique, Kane could probably beat most of the Martial Apprentices. Admittedly he would need to go all out and there might even be several close calls, he should be able to make it to the top unbeaten, though there he would likely be defeated by one of the rank-one candidates.


    The Void Step technique greatly enhanced an already strong Martial Apprentice. Rui did not think he would have an easy fight even if countered it.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 207 No Longer Denied

    "Fuuu..." Rui exhaled as he calmed his pounding heart.


    He didn''t want to get too excited.


    He had been waiting for this day for quite some time. If he screwed things up because he was too excited he wouldn''t forgive himself


    He nced at his personal schedule for the preliminary contest.


    [Fae Duhan vs Rui Quarrier]


    It had been five days since the Academy pre-scheduled the remaining matches. In the following days after his fight with Fe Garron, he went onto fight Jane Francis; A powerful grappling specialist, as well as Avi Seth and Sahar Kal.


    In his fight against Jane Francis, he had adapted his fighting style into that of a distant ranged striker with elements of evasive maneuvering. This was one of the best solutions against an aggressive grappler, range to exploit their weakness, and evasiveness to counter their only means ofpensating for their weakness. He had eventually won the battle with a well-timed Flowing Canon which knocked his opponent out.


    Against Avi Seth, he was truly tempted to use the Stinger. The Stinger was one of his trump cards that would have been extremely effective against Avi Seth because it inflicted critical damage while minimizing contact with poison skin. Allowing him to take Avi Seth out far faster than the poison would incapacitate him. It would have been trivially easy for Rui one-shot Avi had he gone all out. But he decided to preserve the trump card for when it was truly needed.


    Instead, he took Avi down by abusing his maneuvering techniques and Phantom Step, carefully avoiding his palm jabs while also avoiding his arm guard. This turned out to not be as challenging as he expected, he came to realize that Avi had potent poison that he employed in tricky ways, but once Rui figured out the trick, the VOID algorithm chewed his Martial Art and spat out a counter-adapted fighting style which Rui used to dominate him start to finish.


    He ended the battle with a clean ring out.N?vel/Dr(a)ma.Org - Content owner.


    It definitely helped that he had spectated Fae''s fight with him.


    His third fight against Sahar Kal was the most dominant of all three fights. Despite being an all-rounder, she had poor adaptability and fought very straightforwardly. This is why Rui was able to cleanly handle her despite the fact that all-rounders were harder for the VOID algorithm to adapt to. He exploited the holes in her style without missing a beat and eventually defeated her with a chokehold, forcing her to tap out.


    In the past four days, the top twelve Martial Apprentices of the Academy who were tied for rank one had been whittled down having faced each other. At the current moment, of the original twelve that had a zero loss win streak, only five managed to maintain their win streak.


    Rui Quarrier.


    Fae Duhan.


    Nel.


    Kane Arrancar.


    Hever Mendelieve.


    And now the day hade for him to fight Fae.


    He headed to the sparring facility immediately, there wasn''t much time left for his match.


    He ran into all four of his friends on the way to the ring.


    "Oh, he''s here." Kane remarked.


    "Hey guys." Rui said, before turning to Fae. "Hey Fae, are you ready?"<sub> </sub>


    She nodded. "I am. Win or lose, no hard feelings, I won''t hold back."


    And Rui could sense that. She was pumped up to go all-out.


    "I couldn''t ask for anything more." Rui grinned. "May the best Martial Artist win."


    Soon, the match was to bemenced.


    There was an immense amount attention on this fight.


    All Martial Apprentices who weren''t participating in a match themselves had chosen to spectate this particr match. This was important. This was a match that would likely eliminate one of the top five candidates from the position of rank one.


    Furthermore, everybody was curious to see who would win between Fae and Rui. The two of them were both incredibly remarkable and had reached the very best of all the Martial Apprentices of the Martial Academy!


    Regardless of the oue, they were in for one hell of a fight.


    These official preliminary matches were very different from the routine mandatory spars the Martial Academy held between Martial Apprentices. The spars were spars, most people did not go all-out during them, but rather used them to train certain parts of their Martial Art, certain techniques, certain tactics and strategies. They were much more training than they werepetition.


    The preliminary contest was different. Every single Martial Apprentice was absolutely serious and did everything they could to in order to win. Each Martial Apprentice had grown stronger in the past few years having umted a lot of power. The preliminary contest was the one ce where all of this growth and power would be used to the absolute maximum.


    This fight would truly show them which one of the two titans were the strongest.


    "Take your stances." The supervisor instructed.


    Fae coiled her right arm to the side, tucking her taut open-palm upside down at her waist. That arm was a serpent waiting tost out at its prey. Her left palm faced Rui. This palm was positioned in manner that allowed her tounch quicker and lighter jabs, and also aid her right palm intonding powerful attacks sessfully.


    She exhaled, spreading her feet and dividing her weight between them.


    She stared at Rui with narrowed eyes. In this fight, she would not treat him as a friend. She valued her rtionships. But she was absolutely clear about dividing them from Martial matters. She was far too driven to allow herself to be moved by such matters. Her muscles shook with restrained power, she would hound him the second the fight began and mercilessly pound him to the ground.


    Rui grinned.


    Even as Primordial Instinct screamed at him about the sheer power in Fae''s frame.


    He grinned.


    Even as the weight of the attention of all Martial Apprentices and even Squires fell upon him.


    He grinned.


    He had been waiting for this for a long time. He would no longer be denied!


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 208 Slugfest

    Rui had already created an anti-Fae style in all the time he had known her. This was one of the best parts of the VOID algorithm, the growths he made against a particr fighter would umte. He woulde closer and closer to victory the more he fought against one particr fighter as the adaptive evolution of the VOID algorithm grew more and more refined and urate.


    But he yet never beaten her. This wasn''t because he was too weak, they simply hadn''t had a chance to fight seriously in recent times, Thest time they had a serious spar was nearly a year ago, more than two of his training phases ago, a little before the winter holidays.


    Although they had sparred when Rui was training the Outer Convergence technique, that was far from a real fight with many restrictions, furthermore Rui hadn''t mastered Outer Convergence back then. Thus, the results of those training spars were entirely irrelevant.


    After that Rui had been on a non-stop back-and-forth between training and mission phases, and he simply never fought her seriously. The two hadn''t tested their recent capabilities against each other.This content ? N?v/elDr(a)m/a.Org.


    p (''Today, that changes.'')</anda>


    He adopted a kick-boxing stance with an emphasis on leg room and kicking mobility. The first trait his adapted style needed to have against Fae was greater range. Fae''s Martial Art was centered around open palm attacks. Palm attacks had shorter range than fists and much shorter range than legs. By adopting a stance that catered tounching long-range attacks quickly and swiftly, he would be able to hurt Fae while she would be unable tond strikes on him as easily.


    However, by the estimation of the VOID algorithm, she would be able tounch a greater number of attacks, meaning he wouldn''t be able to prevent her from prating past his range-restrictive defense.


    Thus, Rui estimated, via the VOID algorithm, that his Martial Art would also need a focus on evasive maneuvering.


    The end-result oue as a ranged-striking evasive Martial Art that would pepper Fae with strikes from outside her Martial Art while also evading any advances on her part to get into palm-striking range.


    All of this was done in the span of a few seconds.


    When Rui focused, time almost slowed down to him. Catering to him.


    He could feel every cell in his body cooperating as they gathered energy at the core of his body.


    He could feel his concentration umting.


    He could feel his focus honing.


    When he opened his eyes, he saw but one thing.


    His opponent. His target. His objective.


    Fae narrowed her eyes as she felt a faint pressure from Rui''s stance.


    The two of them grew increasingly engrossed, the sheer pressure they emanated could be felt even by distant onlookers.


    "Begin!" The supervisormenced the match!


    BAM!


    Fae pushed down on the ground with her feet with such force that it shook!


    She sted forward towards Rui,unching a tremendous palm attack at him. The sheer momentum she had generated caused the generation of air cones around her attack.


    WHOOSH


    Rui was no fool. He avoided her attack with his maneuvering techniques, ceding ground. But she had no intention of letting him run away.


    DASH<sub> </sub>


    She charged at him,unching yet another fearsome blow!


    WHOOSH


    The palm crashed into a feint; missing Rui cleanly as heunched a speed high kick.


    POW


    She cleanly deflected Rui''s attack out of her way with a smooth palm attack. Yet just as she tried to close the gap.


    POW


    The kick she deflected pulled back and struck her in the back of her head, curbing her progress.


    The first clean hit of the battle had finally beennded.


    DASH


    She charged again,unching a flurry of palm strikes!


    This was where the wisdom of the VOID algorithm had begun to show its true formidability. Rui avoided almost every single palm strike with abination of evasive retreatment with his maneuvering techniques as well as counter-evasion with feints from the Phantom Step technique, throwing her attacks off.


    Fae was slower than he was, and had a hard time staying on him, and even harder time punishing him with palm attacks because of the constant gap between them.


    Furthermore, she had to deal with longer-ranged jabs and kicks that came from outside her striking range.


    It was frustrating. She had known about Rui''s adaptive evolution for quite some time and had seen it in action as well. But Rui''s ability to adapt to his opponent and fight in precisely the manner that would make it most difficult for them to win was truly annoying!


    She didn''t truly understand just by spectating. It was impossible to.


    The sheer prowess of the VOID algorithm in the field ofbat optimization.


    Only when one experienced the suppression firsthand, did oneprehend.


    At this rate, she would lose, she could feel it. Something needed to change. His style hard-countered hers. And she had to exert much more effort than he did in order to inflict much less damage. She barelynded a few strikes on him, the few that he was unable to avoid despite inhumanly perfect timing of the VOID algorithm supported by the Primordial Instinct technique.


    He avoided ny-percent of his blows, while she could deflect only fifty-percent of his blows. Even if her offense was much stronger, she could notpensate for the gap in their striking rate. The odds were stacked against her.


    But she was far from resigned!


    The air and the earth shook as she generated more power than she had up until now. She abandoned defense andunched waves and waves of attacks.


    "Guh!" Rui grimaced as the onught increased. It became twice as hard to avoid her ferocious blows. With such a high number of attacks, the effectivity of Phantom Step reduced tremendously. He couldn''t mislead such arge number of blows with Phantom Step.


    The decrease in the effectivity of Phantom Step meant that an even greater number of blowsnded on him.


    The battle had devolved into a slugfest as both of them volleyed weach other countless attacks!


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 209 Tables And Palms

    The Martial Apprentices spectating gaped at the sheer power that Rui and Fae disyed. They were shocked at the disy of Martial prowess, and for good reason. Even among the upper echelons of the Martial Apprentice poption of the Academy, Rui and Fae were special. They were genuine realistic candidates for the position representative of their Academy, and now, everyone could see why.


    BAM BAM BAM


    Fae drew every ounce of power from deep within her. Her body vibrated with unbridled power as she poured everything into the avnche of earth-shaking palm blows.


    Yet;


    WHOOSH WHOOSH BAM


    Two out of every three attacksnded into feints! Rui was abusing the Phantom Step technique to avoid her attacks. He did his best mitigate the damage of the attacks thatnded with Inner Divergence, stic Shift and Acute Edge. However, Fae''s offense was too strong, he could only partially mitigate the damage she inflicted.


    POW POW POW


    Fae gritted his teeth as she endured his powerful blows. Even though his striking power was much weaker than hers, it was also true that her defense was weaker than his. Hepensated for the remaining disparity with evasive tactics and that unbelievable timing of his.


    The end oue?


    Despite the maelstrom of offensive power that she unloaded onto him, she was hurting more than he did!


    It was unbelievable, yet painfully evident. The difference wasn''trge, or even significant. But it existed, and it existed in Rui''s favour.


    Rui was one of the few people who could fight her head-on and gain an advantage against her.


    She, who was nigh invincible in close-quartersbat, was being pushed back?


    Her expression steeled as boundless determination welled up from within her.


    (''Not on my watch!'') She swore as her eyes burned with defiance.


    She hade too far. She yet far to go.


    She could not afford to fall here!


    (''I wanted to save this trump card against Kane and Nel but...'') Her expression grew grave.


    But she had no choice.


    It was now or never.


    She coiled her right arm, twisting it to the highest degree she could umting enormous amount of power.


    He muscles strained.


    Her bones creaked.


    Her veins popped struggling to contain her raging blood!


    Rui''s hair stood up as he felt a shiver going down his back. Primordial Instinct was screaming at him to retreat.


    But before he could even decide...


    BOOM!


    A twisting impact burrowed itself his gut, sting him back.


    "Fuck!" Rui grimaced. The sheer power of the blow was above anything she had him with thus far. He could only mitigate a portion of the impact, it had still inflicted considerable damage on his body.


    DRIP DRIP<sub> </sub>


    Rui''s eyes flew wide open as he nced down.


    "...Blood?" He stared at arge open wound where the skin of his abdomen ought to have been, dripping blood.


    What?


    What had happened?


    How on Gaea did she skin his abdomen?!


    Before he could even process what had happened, his nerves and instincts tingled as Primordial Attack warned him of an iing palm attack.


    WHOOSH


    He managed to avoid it in thest second. The wound had hindered his physical parameters, slowing him down.


    This was what Fae had hoped for.


    This was her trump card.


    Outer Convergence: Whirlpool


    One of the most powerful and highest applications of the Outer Convergence that required a mastery of the Outer Convergence that was well above even that of Rui''s. This technique gathered power from all muscle groups just like the ordinary Outer Convergence technique. However, through incredibly precise and urate muscle control, it allowed the user to gather and convey the power in the form of rotational energy and torque, rather than kic energy.


    ? The rotation allowed the impact to damage flesh more thoroughly and effectively than just a straightforward blow.


    However, that was not the extent of the lethality of Fae''s attack. She had added an extra element. She had gone so far as to condition her palm to be extremely rough.This content ? N?v/elDr(a)m/a.Org.


    The sheer power of the rotational impact in addition to Fae''s conditioned rough palm scraping against Rui''s skin had cleanly sheared off not just his skin and the outermostyer of flesh with a single blow!


    This was the trump card she had prepared.


    She had persevered immensely to keep this trump card hidden. The nature of this move was such that it would have the greatest impact if her opponent did not know about it. She didn''t think she could defeat the likes of Kane and Nel without it, and it turned out she wouldn''t be able to defeat Rui without it.


    She had almost used it against Avi Seth, but ultimately decided against it. The poison had brilliantpatibility against the Whirlpool variant of the Outer Convergence, and singlehandedly crippled the technique. It took her everything to perform the attack, and she would not be able to in her poisoned state.


    However, in this fight, she had decided she would no longer hold back. Perhaps against other she would have tried to outwit her opponent with tactics and strategies, but not against Rui. Everyone knew that nobody outwitted Rui, it was a fool''s errand to even try.


    Having truly been backed into a corner, she had no other choice.


    BOOM


    Rui leapt back as he avoided her Whirlpool impact. He had gone into full evasive mode, abandoning his attack temporarily. In his eyes, Fae''s lethality had skyrocketed.


    Even being near her was too dangerous!


    Fae, on the other hand, was ecstatic. Her trump card had fulfilled her expectations, which brought an immense amount of relief to her. With the wound she had inflicted, there was no doubt she possessed an advantage now. Sheshed forward, pushing herself to the limit as sheunched a flurry of attacks while preparing to use the Whirlpool impact.


    Rui paused, he had reached the corner of the ring. He could no longer run.


    His wound had already bled profusely, he didn''t have much time, he didn''t have much space either with his back facing the corner.


    He had no choice.


    He steeled his will and dashed towards Fae.


    This would be the final sh!


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 210 Outcome

    The Martial Apprentices that had gathered around the ring spectating this important fight were gaping with their jaws dropped. The sight of Fae unveiling a powerful trump card no one had seen before was rather shocking.


    At this stage, almost all of them had fought Fae at some point or the other, and all of them had lost. However, when they realized that she could have shaved their flesh off at any point during their fight, they all gulped, sweating inwardly. A few of them even felt a bit relieved that they weren''t strong enough to force her to use this terrifying trump card.


    At the same time, they felt powerless inparison. She swept past all of them cleanly and smoothly without even using her strongest weapons? It was a humbling realization, albeit unpleasant. Even the former rank one Martial Apprentices of the top twelve Martial Artists couldn''t help but grow a bit bitter. Many of them had fought her and believed to be not too inferior to her, despite losing.


    But she had showed them how misguided their notions were.


    Even Avi Seth, who had pushed her the most asides from Rui, realized they if they had a rematch now, she would almost certainly crush him if she went all-out from the start.


    The reason she didn''t use this move against him was probably because she had already been too poisoned to employ the sheer amount of force the attack probably required. If they fought against, she would just use it from the get-go and skin him alive!


    His expression sank as he watched Fae and Rui dash at each other.


    Rui had been bleeding due to the gaping wound, especially because he had subjected himself to high-speed maneuvering, exacerbating the issue.


    He didn''t have much time.


    If this continued, his condition would fall below the tolerable threshold and he would lose any realistic chances of winning.


    WHOOSH


    Rui carefully avoided a Whirlpool impact from Fae with his maneuvering techniques and Primordial Instinct.


    BOOM


    The attack struck the ground, cracking and grinding the ground.


    (''I need to time it perfectly.'') Rui''s alertness skyrocketed.


    This was it.


    If he waited any longer, it would be toote.


    He subtly shifted all his weight to his left leg,pletely freeing up his right leg for a swift attack without any warning, as he flexed the muscles in the big toe of his right foot, turning the toe into a rigid bullet.


    Faeunched herself at him.


    Just one more Whirlpool impact.


    If she could justnd a single impact, the fight would be over. Rui''s condition would have degenerated to the point where he simply couldn''t sustain optimal fighting condition.


    Just one.


    Just one!


    (''Just one!'')


    Fae''s determination skyrocketed. She would do anything tond onest Whirlpool impact. She rejoiced when she saw Rui standing stationary as she approached him.


    (''He made up his mind.'') Fae realized. He was no longer running away, that strategy had already failed.


    That was good enough.


    The ground shook as Fae gathered every ounce of force from ever strand of muscle fiber!


    She coiled her left arm,unching herself at Rui. Her left palm rotated with such force that even the very air helplessly followed suit, forming a miniature tornado!


    Rui stood his ground as the attack approached, even as Primordial Instinct begged him to run.


    WHOOSH


    The Whirlpool had arrived.


    He ducked to avoid the attack.


    (''Toote!'') She thrust her attack forward, abandoning defense.


    She was willing to endure whatever Rui threw at her!


    As long as the impactnded, she would win!


    The attack swiftly soared forward, chasing after Rui.


    Half a meter.


    Quarter.


    Ten centimeters.


    (''It''s over!'') Fae rejoiced as the attack was centimeters away from Rui''s face. It was too close!


    Too close.


    Yet, too far.<sub> </sub>


    CRACK!


    Fae froze. Excruciating pain assailed her mind.


    The attack was almost there. Just a single centimeter away!


    Yet she froze.


    Victory was almost there.


    Yet, she froze.


    "It''s over." Rui whispered.


    Fae nced down at the source of her pain. Her eyes widened as she beheld a bewildering sight.


    His toe!


    His toe was in her chest!


    It was only then.


    It was only then she understood.


    The crack she heard was not from Whirlpoolnding on Rui.This belongs ? N?velDra/ma.Org.


    Not at all.


    It was from her very own sternum breaking.


    She was still frozen.


    And she wasn''t alone.


    For the briefest of moments, everyone was frozen. It was such a wildly abrupt oue that their minds struggled to keep up!


    SPLAT


    Rui extricated his toe as he retreated. Blood gushed out immediately.


    It was a sess.


    The sternum guarded important blood vessels, such as the Superior Vena Cava and the aorta. The fragments of her sternum as well as the Stinger had puncture multiple blood vessels.


    (''I just need to stop the bleeding!'')


    Fae pressed her hands against her chest, desperately trying to stop the bleeding with pressure. Rui had bled much more than her. As long as she contained the bleeding, she was still in the fight!


    Yet, her focus was on the wrong thing.


    The most dangerous thing wasn''t her wound.


    No.


    The most dangerous thing was the one who had inflicted that wound.


    The pain, the shock and the panic had eluded this simple fact from registering, causing her to divert too much of her attention to her plummeting condition.


    That was all Rui needed.


    Heunched the swiftest swing he could, exploiting her dyed reactions.


    POW


    A clean uppercut mmed into Fae''s jaw, rocking her head wildly. The abrupt and intense oscitions shook her brain, triggering blunt force trauma and causing her consciousness to shut down.


    THUD


    She copsed.


    A pool of blood had begun to ergen immediately, from her copsed body.


    THUD


    Rui fell to his knees. The entire front half of his Martial uniform was drenched in blood. If not for Helical Breathing supplying increased levels of oxygen, he would have fallen unconscious during the battle.


    He nced at her as a team of medics worked furiously to heal her. Her condition was not light. Neither was his.


    Rui''s vision blurred as the world spun.


    THUD


    The world went dark as his head hit the earth.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 211 Rui

    Rui opened his eyes. A bright blue sky assaulted his vision.


    That didn''t make sense.


    Shouldn''t he have been in the hospital?


    He got up to his feet, taking in his surroundings.


    He was in the middle of the wilderness, in the middle of nowhere.


    "Where am I?" He frowned.


    He didn''t know.


    He turned around.


    And what he saw shook him.


    He saw a path.


    A path he was standing on.


    It extended far beyond the depths of his vision.


    Who knew who far it went?


    It was a path that elevated towards the heavens above, growing in height the further it extended.


    It was a path no one else was on.


    Yet it wasn''t the path itself that drew his attention.


    It was the that what the path went through!


    Ferocious beasts of various shapes and sizes.


    Earthquakes.This content ? N?v/elDr(a)m/a.Org.


    Volcanoes.


    Tsunamis.


    Meteorites.


    The path winded right about treacherous monsters and cmities!


    Who in their right mind would travel down this path?


    Yet, as terrifying as it was.


    It was equally beautiful.


    It inspired fear.


    Yet.


    It also inspired awe.


    The path called out to him. Lulling him. Whispering to him.


    It was a path he wanted to walk down.


    Yet the moment he took his first step...


    The world cracked and shattered!


    His eyes opened as he rose up abruptly, gasping for air.


    He nced around him as his eyes ran into a set of familiar faces.


    "You guys..." Rui murmured as he gazed at Kane, Dalen and Milliana. His eyes danced around as he recognized the familiar visage of the medical wing.<sub> </sub>


    (''...A dream.'') He realized, almost in disbelief.


    It was so real.


    Vivid.


    What was that dream?


    "You okay?" Kane asked with a concerned tone, as he noticed Rui''s disorientation.


    "...Feeling fine, actually." Rui replied as his senses grew morefortable with reality. He shook his head, putting aside the dream. A dream was a dream.


    He nced to his side.


    "Fae..." She was still unconscious.


    "The doctors said both of you recovered fully and will be in perfect shape for tomorrow." Kane said.


    Rui nodded as the fight between them shed back to him.


    He had revealed one of his trump cards. The Stinger. Now all of the elites of the Academy that he was to fight knew of this trump card and would be wary of it.


    In the worst case, word of it might leak out to the fifteen candidates of the Martial Academies through certain channels in the Martialmunity.


    (''I''m getting too ahead of myself.'') Rui shook his head. He hadn''t even won the preliminary contest yet.


    Thankfully, he had managed to preserve his final trump card; Blink.


    He hadn''t needed to use it. He simply lured Fae too close. He did this by ducking to and leaning back to avoid her Whirlpool impact, forcing her to enter extremely close quarters. By then, his foot was outside her peripheral vision, and all her attention was directed towardsnding the Whirlpool attack on him.


    Furthermore, he had shifted all of his weight on his left leg prior, meaning his right leg was free to move without any trouble at any time without any warning.


    These three factors had allowed him tond the Stinger technique without her awareness. The technique was so swift she hadn''t even realized it had struck her until it did, and she onlyprehended what had happened a few momentster.


    Then the pain, the fear and the shock hadpletely thrown her mind off-track and Rui was able to exploit a timely opening in her spatial awareness tond the final blow at thest moment.


    Her Whirlpool attack stopped just a centimeter away from his face, it was truly too close. Thankfully the much greater range of the Stinger meant he couldnd the attack even if he was tilting away from her, which is why the Stinger hadnded first. She was moving towards the Stinger, but he was moving away from her attack.


    However, he hadn''t been sure of his victory until hended the final blow on her. Even if he managed tond a lethal and critical wound on her, so had she. He had even been bleeding longer, if she had simply kept her calm andposure, she might very well have been able to win the fight. At the very least he would have been forced to use Blink.


    But that was not what had happened. Ultimately, she was not a robot. Intense emotions and sensations had clouded her judgement and caused a single poor decision which Rui had ruthlessly exploited.


    All of this resulted in his victory.


    "I guess I really did win." He murmured to himself as a feeling of tion rose in him. He had finally defeated Fae in a serious fight for the very first time. This was a goal he had had ever since she beat him in the Martial entrance exam.


    He had an immense amount of respect for her. Defeating her was definitely a milestone he was proud of.


    "Mmmmhh..." She groaned as her eyes opened. She blinked a few times, ncing around as realization dawned upon her.


    "You okay...?" Milliana asked, concerned.


    "Who won?"


    "..."


    "I see." She sighed. The fact that she could not remember anything after Rui had struck her was not a good sign, but she''d still hoped she hadn''t lost.


    She sighed, closing her eyes, trying to processing her loss.


    With this, her chances of being chosen as representative were all but very low. Kane, Nel and Hever Mendelieve would need to lose atleast once. Rui would need to lose at the very least two times in his remaining matches for her to get back into thepetition. If he lost only once, she would not be chosen, even if she won her remaining match, since if their scores were tied, he would be chosen because he beat her.


    She open her eyes, exhaling. Turning to Rui, she smiled despite her disappointment.


    "Great fight." She said, extending an arm. "You''ve trulye a long way."


    "Thanks." Rui smiled. "You were incredibly strong, so much so that I could have easily lost that match."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 212 Banter

    The five of them bantered a bit more, touching more into several aspects and parts of the fight, going deep into them and offering their thoughts and opinions.


    "Outer Convergence: Whirlpool huh?" Rui murmured. "That''s amazing. If its difficulty is above Outer Convergence then my talent and affinity for offensive techniques is probably not good enough. Still, it was very creative of you adding a conditioning element to it to create that unique attack Fae."


    "Thanks." She replied appreciatively. "I had mastered the technique for the Martial Festival and the Martial Contest, but it was too optimistic to not lose without using it. In the end I lost despite using it."


    "You came too close." Rui said, shaking his head. "Just the tiniest difference could have been game over for me. In the end, I was forced to reveal my trump card."


    "What was that technique?" Fae frowned, ncing at his toe.


    "It''s a technique known as the Stinger." Rui exined. "Through intense conditioning, the toe is transformed into an extremely durable hard piercing instrument. That along with a kick amplified with Apprentice level techniques allows me to kick with piercing power significantly surpassing even musket bullets."


    The four of them were impressed.


    "That''s a lethal trump card." Dalen sighed. Out of all of them, the revtion that both Rui and Kane had power and lethal trump cards that they had hidden had hit him the hardest. He had lost against both Rui and Fae, but he believed that the gap was not gigantic, if he learnt two or three techniques, he would be on par with them.


    This fight had shown him how misguided that notion was.


    This was particrly disheartening because he was a defensive Martial Artist. He had endured Rui''s and Fae''s attacks better than almost anybody else. But now he had learnt that both Rui and Fae could have pretty much easily put him into a critical state with just a few attacks with their trump cards.


    Most people would be downed with one or at most two Stingers and Whirlpools. Dalen estimated he could take four-to-five Stingers and Whirlpools. Furthermore, if Rui and Fae truly fought him with intent of killing him, he wouldst lot less.


    He sighed. He still had a long way to go.


    The only one who was rather unmoved was Kane. The trump cards were less effective against him because they didn''t solve the fundamental that he posed to everyone else.


    The biggest issue fighting Kane wasn''t being unable to take him down with any attack that theynded on him. The biggest issue wasnding attacks on him at all. In that regard, the Stinger and the Whirlpool attacks were not any better than normal attacks. If anything, those attacks may be at an even greater disadvantage than normal attacks against him since he would be extraordinarily careful against them especiallypared to normal attacks.


    "They''re powerful trump cards." he noted. "Are you two going to continue using them now that everybody already knows about them?"


    "Yes, it doesn''t make sense to hide it after it''s already be revealed." Fae replied.


    "I''ll use them if it is optimal to use them, and won''t if it isn''t optimal." Rui shrugged. He made his decisions after analyzing his opponent and the circumstances via thinking it through the algorithmic analytic procedures of the VOID algorithm and general circumstantial evaluation.


    Kane threw a meaningful look at Rui. He had known from the very start that Rui had hidden trump cards. It wasn''t a particrly genius deduction on his part. He knew Rui had learnt three techniques in hisst training phase, and four techniques in the training phase before that.


    Our of those seven techniques, he was only aware of Phantom Step, Inner Divergence, Outer Convergence and Stinger.<sub> </sub>


    That left three unknown techniques he hadn''t seen Rui use.


    He still had hopes that whatever those three techniques were, they would be useful against himself.


    Little did he know, that his hopes werergely true.


    Seismic Mapping and Primordial Instinct were quite useful against him. They were more than just useful. They were Rui''s lifeline against Kane. With these two techniquesbined. Rui was able to sense which direction Kane was at all times, and also his position vaguely at all times. He could sense Kane''s attacks or motions, but beggars couldn''t be choosers. He could only thank his good fortune for having chosen techniques that would be useful against Kane.


    "Oh right." Rui suddenly remembered. "Nel''s fight isn''t over yet, is it?"


    "Nope." Kane replied. "It''s scheduled today."


    "Who''s he fighting against again?" Dalen scratched his head.


    "Hever Mendelieve." Fae replied. "I''m looking forward to that fight."


    Hever Mendelieve was now among the only four undefeated Martial Apprentices in the Academy along with Rui, Kane and Nel.


    Hever Mendelieve was one of the most unique Martial Artists in the Martial Academy. He was the only elite Martial apprentice who had mastered one and only one technique.


    Of course, there were freaks like Nel who hadn''t mastered a single technique, but this was rather different. Nel was gifted with godly physical prowess. Hever was a normal man.


    Yet, he had made it to the top undefeated having mastered a single technique.


    Meteor Swing


    This was a technique that was graded nine in regards to both potency and difficulty. It was a counter offensive technique that intercepted attacks with a grasp and used his opponent''s attacks energy in addition to their own energy in a swing that was executed with the principles of redirection, center of gravity and bnce maniption.


    He was a senior Martial Apprentice from the same generation of Gale, but had long since widened the gap between them.


    For the past six years, this Martial Artist had dedicated his everything to the singr mastery of this one technique. And elevated his mastery of application far beyond the general mastery. His timing, cement, body-eye coordination, precision and uracy with this technique were leagues above any other Martial Apprentices mastery of their techniques.All rights ? N?velDrama.Org.


    He was not a rank one Martial Apprentice for no reason.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 213 Alike

    Techniques were like weapons themselves. They allowed Martial Artists to achieve things that they would ordinarily not be able to. They allowed for greater prowess inbat. Lower-grade techniques had a marginal effect whereas higher-grade techniques could change the tide of battle.


    Usually, the one with more of these weapons, and better-quality weapons won. They would usually overwhelm with a quantity or a quality advantage.


    However, there was a variable that was often left unseen.


    Mastery of these weapons. Mastery of these techniques.


    Someone who had higher mastery of a technique would defeat someone with a lower mastery. Mastery was an important variable that had significant impact on the oue of a sh.


    Yet, there was a reason people moved on to another technique after mastering one to a satisfactory level. Learning new techniques was easier than increasing an already high mastery.


    The higher the mastery, the more energy and time it took to raise that mastery. It became an inefficient exchange and the effort and energy it costed to raise the mastery even a bit simply wasn''t worth it. Why spend all that time and energy for marginal gains when one could simply start mastering a new technique and make much greater progress?


    This was the rationale that drove ny-nine percent of Martial Artists to mastering multiple techniques.


    Even Rui was part of this group. Perhaps he was even at the forefront of that group with sheer number of techniques he had mastered in a short amount of time.


    But not Hever Mendelieve. Born in a prestigious Martial Family, he had reached Martial Apprentice even before he had joined the Academy.


    In all his time in the Martial Academy, he was the only Martial Apprentice to have never entered the Apprentice Library.


    He had chosen the Meteor Swing technique the day he broken through to Martial Apprentice, and had dedicated everything to this counter-offensive technique.


    Within a year of entering the Academy. He had mastered the technique to a general level. He had mastered it to a level that other Martial Apprentices would have stopped training it and begun training new techniques.


    But Hever wasn''t satisfied with his mastery of the technique.


    No matter how much better he got, there was always something missing.


    In fact, his sense of inadequacy only grew stronger and stronger.


    He grew more and more unsatisfied with his mastery of this technique.


    The Squire instructors had encouraged him to attempt learning other techniques, but he had deigned to reject their suggestions. He would move onto other techniques after he was satisfied with his mastery of Meteor Swing, despite their unspoken disapproval.


    Only Headmaster Aronian had encouraged his decision wholeheartedly.


    "Every technique is a limitless well of potential and possibilities. This is true even for the lowest of techniques, as well as the highest." Headmaster Aronian told him. "Yet most never realize this until muchter in their Martial Path, many have heard this, yet very few truly understand it."


    He paused before, continuing. "Your sense of inadequacy grows because your subconscious awareness of the infinite potential of your technique grows as well."<sub> </sub>


    "However, just because your awareness of the limitless potential of your technique grows, doesn''t necessarily mean you have to realize that potential." Headmaster Aronian told him as he stroked his flowing white beard. "You don''t have to do anything. Anything at all."


    "What does that mean?" Hever had asked, confused.


    Headmaster Aronian chuckled at his confusion. "Your voyage down your Martial Path isn''t an obligation. It''s a choice, it''s a will, it''s a desire." He said. "You only need to do what you want to, if you wish to keep travelling down this Path. So what is it that you want to do? Continue mastering this technique despite it yielding lower short-term growth or... abandon your training of this technique and pursue new techniques?"All rights ? N?velDrama.Org.


    More than five yearster, Hever Mandelieve stood before Nel in one of his final few matches in the twenty-seventh preliminary contest of the Hajin branch of the Martial Academies.


    And he had yet to master more than one technique.


    No.


    If asked, he would say he hasn''t mastered a single technique yet.


    "That''s crazy story, to be honest." Rui muttered excitedly as they waited for the match between Hever and Nel tomence.


    They had long since migrated to the sparring facility waiting for the matchup between Nel and Mendelieve. Neither Rui, Kane nor Fa had faced either one of the, so that alone was enough reason to spectate their match. Furthermore, this was a fight between two undefeated top rankers, the oue mattered a lot and would significantly affect who would eventually be the representative of their Martial Academy.


    "It is a remarkable story." Fae agreed.


    "We''re quite alike." Rui blurted, earning stares of confusion.


    <o>,m "You''re nothing alike." Kane grumbled. "He remained faithful and loyal to a single technique whereas you mastered seventeen techniques in eighteen months, you Martial Whore."</o>


    Rui threw a sharp re at Kane.


    "Putting his phrasing aside." Fae said throwing a disapproving nce at Kane. "He does have a point, you''re the exact opposite of Hever in every way."


    Rui shook his head wordlessly. He didn''t bother defending himself against Kane''s rebuts. They wouldn''t understand.


    But what Fae had told him about Hever resonated with him. He felt the exact same way with the VOID algorithm. The more he used it in this world, the more he realized that there was an immense amount of potential in his master of the VOID algorithm and the algorithm itself.


    Although he mastered other techniques, he only mastered them because they were necessary for his Martial Art and Martial Path; the VOID algorithm and Project Water.


    In way, he could rte to the one-track mindedness of Hever, and could even appreciate it.


    This made him all the more excited for his fight against Nel. He wasn''t sure who would win because hecked too much information, but he hoped for an amazing fight more than anything.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 214 Come Then

    "Take your stances." The supervisor instructed.


    Nel took his usual bizarre stance. Crouching and letting his arms danglezily, it was a stance that would have oozed lethargy if anybody else had taken it.


    But not Nel.


    No one would have called him lethargic.


    Not with the savage beastly aura he radiated. The sheer pressure he exerted on everyone with just a sh of focus was immense, it was as though one was staring into the eyes of a tiger face-to-face.


    Yet when one turned to nce at Hever, one could only see an unmoving mountain. He had a sturdy aura that gave one the impression that he was unmovable. He simply gazed abck at Nel, ignoring his strange antic as he took his stance.


    It was a modest stance.


    Distributed feats, and open hands ready for interception.


    The stance was modest.


    But the danger that Primordial Instinct felt going near it was not.


    "This is going to be one hell of a fight." Rui grinned.


    "Begin!" The supervisormenced the match.


    WHOOSH


    Nel dashed, reaching Hever in an instant. He swung a wild haymaker at his face with immense speed and force.


    BOOM!


    A heavy impact resounded through the air and the earth of the sparring facility. The oue of the sh shook not just the ground, but also the minds of those who were watching.


    Nel had been the one to attack first.


    Yet, the very next moment, he was t on the ground.


    A milestone had been crossed.


    For the first time since themencement of the preliminary contest... Nel had been downed.


    "This..." Rui''s eyes flew wide open. What had urred had unfolded so fast that it was a blur even to Rui''s eyes. From the looks of it, even Nel was unable tobat it in time!


    However, what had happened was clear. Hever had intercepted Nel''s attack and swung him across his shoulder using not just the energy gathered from across his body, but also the energy of Nel''s own attack.


    The resulting oue was a throwing maneuver with such absurd power, that even Nel was unable to mitigate the damage!


    "Unbelievably fast intercepts, remarkably smooth and fluid transition and an incredible impact fueled by his opponent and himself." Rui muttered.


    Rui realized that out of all the former twelve top rankers, Hever Mendelieve was a cut above the lower half. No wonder he had managed to go undefeated even at the top ranker began being pit against each other. He was a powerhouse and a contender for the position of representative of the Martial Academy in the Martial Contest.


    Yet Rui knew the match was far from over.


    Nel got up to his feet, grinning as he patted his uniform. He wasn''t bothered that his attackpletely failed and was used against him overwhelmingly m him into the ground.


    No.


    He simply grinned like a boy who had been gifted the toys he wanted for christmas.


    He turned to Hever, stancelessly.


    "Heber Menleave." Nel addressed.


    "You-" "-It''s Hever Mendelieve." Hever cut him off calmly, correcting him.


    "Ah.." Nel scratched his head awkwardly. "I''m not good with names. But I''ll remember yours." He promised.


    Suddenly, there was a change.


    It could be felt.


    The air grew heavier.


    It grew graver.


    The expressions of the onlookers tightened.


    A maelstrom of pressure pushed down on all of them as Nel''s grin grew wider.


    "You''re strong." His focus and concentration skyrocketed.


    His eyes burrowed into Hever. "Stronger than I could have hoped for."


    He took his signature stance.


    Yet, it waspletely different.


    What had changed?<sub> </sub>


    "The strongest I''ve faced so far."


    Nel had changed.


    "Please."


    Only sincerity could be heard in his tone.


    "Try not to lose too quickly."


    Hever simply gazed at him.


    He sighed.


    "Come then."


    His words cut through the heavy atmosphere.


    There was nothing left to be said.


    WHOOSH


    (''...Fast!'') Rui''s eyes widened (''Only Kane is faster!'')


    p Yet, what urred was even faster.</anda>


    BOOM!


    Nel mmed the floor. Yet before Rui could even marvel at Hever''s technique, he was already up!


    WHOOSH


    Nel blurred as he appeared in front of Hever. His fist was merely inches away from thetter''s face.


    And yet,


    BOOM!


    He was already on the ground, skidding away.


    WHOOSH


    BOOM!


    WHOOSH


    BOOM!


    ...


    WHOOSH


    BOOM!


    The Martial Apprentices gaped. Hever Mendelieve threw him over and over!


    Nel''s speed was immense. Only Kane would overwhelm it, almost everyone else would simply lose. The few that didn''t would need to be extremely careful.All rights ? N?velDrama.Org.


    Yet Hever Mendelieve was intercepting these speedy attacks and throwing Nel to thr ground before thetter could even do anything about it?


    "He''s incredibly fast." Dalen murmured.


    "No." Kane shook his head. "The speed of his motion isn''t special, he''s not bad, but he''s not particrly good either."


    "Then how is he aplishing such speed?" Fae asked.


    "Not sure." Kane admitted, scratching his head. "It''s like there''s no dy in his motions or something. It''s hard to exin."


    "It''s a result of an unbelievable amount of muscle memory. It has to be." Rui realized, observing Hever with his keen eyes.


    "I thought memory resided in the head not in the muscles." Milliana tapped her temple.


    "Muscle memory is the subconscious memory of movements and coordination." Rui exined. "It resides in a special part of the brain that is responsible for motion, coordination, bnce and equilibrium."


    "What does that have to do with Hever?" Dalen asked curiously.


    "Normally, all movements require conscious processing and guidance from the conscious mind." Rui exined. "Even as we move, our conscious minds are perceiving, thinking, making a decision and executing the decision regarding what movement we should make next."


    Everyone nodded. This made sense.


    "But." Rui added. "This takes time. Not too much time, of course, but enough time to slow down the execution of movements, especiallyplicated movements, especiallyplicated movements like Martial Art techniques."


    "Hever is skipping all of that through sheer muscle memory." Rui exined. "Rather than consciously perceiving, processing and thinking, and finally making a decision. He simply skips all of that because he subconsciously remembers what movements to make in any given circumstance."


    This was the secret to Hever''s strength!


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 215 Dangerous

    Normally, conscious reaction functioned like so;


    Perception -> Processing -> Decision making -> Reaction.


    But Hever''s mastery of Meteor Swing functioned like so;


    Perception -> Muscle memory -> Reaction.


    Of course, this was extremely difficult to aplish. It took a long time to build such immense amount of muscle memory. Merely general mastery of a technique was not enough.


    This was the fruit of five continuous unhalted rigorous years of training with the Meteor Swing technique. The Meteor Swing was a counter-offensive technique, it was meant to be used when the user was attacked.


    By practicing the Meteor Swing over and over and over against countless kinds of attacks, he had burned those motions into his muscle memory.


    If someone threw a punch at his face, he no longer needed to think and react, his muscle memory remembered what to do when someone threw a punch at his face. The speed of subconscious sensory recollection and muscle memory was far superior to the speed of conscious cognition. Thus, he reacted earlier and there was no dy in his maneuvers caused by conscious reactive processing, because it had been reced by the quicker muscle memory.


    This was why, even though his motion and movement speed were limited, he was still able to perform extraordinarily quick maneuvers because his reactions and motions were not hindered by the tedious process of conscious cognition.


    This was why he was able to keep up with Nel.


    "That''s unbelievable." Fae murmured, impressed.


    "But why doesn''t everybody do this?" Kane asked, frowning. "If muscle memory is this useful, why don''t more Martial Artists take his route? Won''t it make more sense to go down this route."


    Rui shook his head. "In most cases, dedicating yourself to a single technique will lead to lower growth than mastering multiple techniques. The reason it''s worked out so well has to do with the fact that the technique he picked covers everything; defense, offense and can handle a lot of styles as far aspatibility goes. Furthermore, it''s a grade-nine technique as far potency and difficulty go. And finally... It has to do with Hever himself. His affinity and talent with that technique and counter-offensive grappling must be extremely high. All of these factor into why it worked out for him."


    "I see..." Fae muttered as she turned back to the battle.


    BOOM!


    Hever threw mmed Nel onto the ground after intercepting yet another charge and swing.


    BOOM!


    BOOM!


    None of the fighters could take their eyes off the battle. This battle was such a bizarre battle that they were sure they would never see anything quite like it ever again.


    "Hever is tossing him like a ragdoll over and over." Kane said. "There''s no way Nel can possibly win right?"


    "I wouldn''t necessarily say that." Rui disagreed, ncing back at the fight.


    It was true that Hever was intercepting, defending and countering every attack whilending sessful throws each time...


    "Nel keeps getting up faster and faster. Rui noted. "His constitution is strong. The damage he takes with each strike is not significant."


    Nel wasn''t getting faster, he was getting more and more used to the timing. This wasn''t the same as the VOID algorithm, which would have adapted than he did, but it was a result of the natural optimization capabilities of the human mind.


    "At this rate..." Rui hesitated.<sub> </sub>


    At this rate, Hever Mendelieve would likely be more and more disadvantaged. This wasn''t his fault, usually someone with this level of durability and speed seldom existed. Nel was exhibiting a level of toughness that only Dalen could match while showing off speed that only Kane would surpass. Both of those were quite unconducive to Hever''s Martial Art. Usually people did notst long enough to adapt to his Martial Art. Prior to fighting Nel, no onested for more than three throws.


    But here came Nel, with the durability to endure many strikes and the speed to potentially overwhelm the Meteor Swing technique once he grewpletely used to the timing of the technique.


    Suddenly, there was just the slightest change in the ring.


    Just the slightest.


    Yet because of the monotony of the match, not a single onlooker missed it.


    ? "Mmrrg." Hever grimaced as he took a step back!


    BOOM!


    He still managed to sessfully execute the throw.


    But no one missed it


    BOOM!


    He had ceded even more ground.


    Nel''s grin widened at the sight as he threw more and more attacks in one direction, each forcing him to cede more and more ground in on direction!


    Hever mmed him more and more, but his breathing had grown strained.


    "His stamina iscking." Kane shook his head. "He''s going to lose this match, it''s a matter of time." Earning approval from the others.


    Only Rui and Milliana frowned.This content ? N?v/elDr(a)m/a.Org.


    "This doesn''t make sense." Millianamented. "It''s too sudden."


    Rui nodded, sharpening his eyes. "He went from pristine condition to tired in the span of twenty seconds? That''s now how exhaustion works, it''s linear with time, especially when consumption rate of energy is constant like in this fight. If he''s this exhausted right now, we would have seen signs of it five minutes ago."


    Milliana nodded in agreement. "Also, his Meteor Swing is a technique uses the opponent''s energy as well."


    "Yeah, it''s just a bit bizarre that he''s already this exhausted despite that in such an abrupt timeframe." Rui nodded. "Either he was born with strangely poor stamina or..."


    "Or?" Kane echoed.


    "Or he''s doing it on purpose." Rui''s eyes sharpened, even he found that hard to believe. What he didn''t understand was why he would bother. After, weren''t there only demerits?


    He was only ceding space, losing control of the center of the ring and reducing his own freedom. He was dragging himself to edge of the court for no reason. It would only increase the chances of a ring-out.


    Suddenly Rui''s eyes. "No way..."


    If what he hade to suspect was true, then Hever Mendelieve was even more dangerous than he had expected!


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 216 Shocking Outcome

    Hever copsed to a knee near the corner of the court. To everyone but Rui, Hever''s defeat was certain.


    "It''s over."


    "Well, he put a good fight."


    "Nel''s gonna knock him out."


    Nel didn''t even hesitate, he sted forward faster than he ever had. But Rui didn''t pay attention to him. He was staring at Hever intensely, wondering if he was right.


    It was then.


    Just the smallest of smiles crept onto Hever''s expression.


    CLASP


    He intercepted Nel''s attack, and fell back as he got up to his feet, using that momentum to throw Nel flying behind him. This was aunching maneuver that could only be performed starting from one knee.


    This was his goal. He wanted to get onto to his single knee stance near the corner of the ring. However, he could not simply walk to the edge, and get down on knee. Even the most simple-minded fool would realize that this was a trap.


    Therefore, he had begun working ahead of time. Feigning fatigue. Ceding ground as if he was starting to weaken. He redirected and threw Nel exactly where he wanted him. And at the end, he copsed to his knee like he was at his very limit.


    All so that he could executed a maneuver that wouldunch Nel outside the ring.


    (''I fucking KNEW it.'') Rui mused excitedly when he saw Hever sessfully intercept Nel''s haymaker. He fell back as he got up, using the upward motion to lift Nel and the backward motion tounch Nel flying behind him outside the ring. This was why he had let himself get pushed to the edge.


    It was smooth. Nel was airborne!


    The n had seeded!


    And then, it failed.


    CLASP


    In the final hour. No, the final moment.


    Nel found a way to salvage his fight.


    Nel''s reflexes were superhuman. This, in addition to the enhancement given by the breakthrough to the Martial Apprentice Realm, was truly immense. In this one particr area, his reflexes were on par with Kane despite not being a speed-oriented Martial Artist.


    Despite beingunched at incredible speeds, he still managed to catch a hold of Hever''s arm before it was toote!


    He threw Hever a shit-eating grin.


    Hever''s eyes flew wide open as Nel dragged him along with him!


    He had no holding leverage, furthermore, he was truly caught off. He was simply unable to resist the incredible momentum that he himself had generated!


    WHOOSHThis belongs ? N?velDra/ma.Org.


    Both Martial Artists took to the air as Nel guffawed out loud midair with mischievous ecstasy while Hever was simply shocked into an incredulous silence.


    BOOM<sub> </sub>


    They bothnded outside the ring as the same time.


    For a moment...


    No, for several seconds even;


    Everybody was shocked. The only noise that broke what would have been absolute silence was Nel uncontroblyughing.


    "Maaaan, that was awesome!" Nel grinned, turning to Hever. "Hey, let''s do that again some time."


    ...


    Hever sighed resigned. "Sure."


    Amotion broke amongst the Martial Apprentices and onlookers.


    The oue was truly shocking. Never had they ever expected that the fight would end in this manner. Rui was speechless beyond words. He was extremely impressed with both of them. Nel''s physical prowess had yet again shown why he was truly one of the top rankers of the Academy.


    Hever, on the other hand, had a level of mastery that made Rui envious, this sheer mastery had allowed him topete with Nel. He had crushed all of Nel''s offense and initiative andnded every single attack smoothly. Nel was truly blessed he had a strong constitution and sharp reflexes, otherwise Hever would have defeated him without a doubt.


    His tactical capabilities impressed Rui as well, that tactic was resourceful and well-nned. Rui was rtively certain that he was the only one who had figured it out ahead of time given how everyone had written the match off.


    Hever Mendelieve was a powerful Martial Artist with a sharp tactical and resourceful fighting style.


    "On ount of simultaneous ringout, this match is a tie!" The supervisor dered.


    This meant that both Hever and Nel''s win-streak had been stopped, by none other than each other.


    This also meant they were now below rank one, since they no longer had all wins like Rui and Kane did.


    Rui should have been ted about the fact that he was one of the two only top rankers, but frankly, he wasn''t. Hever Mendelieve was much stronger than Rui had hoped. He was now another addition to the top three threats Rui had to defeat.


    In fact, he might even be more dangerous than Kane or Nel!


    Rui grinned. He was excited to take on all of them.


    But he was clear about its difficulty. Defeating all of them would be a herculean task. He had alreadye up with countermeasures against Nel and Kane to a partial extent. It seems he would need to do the same for Hever.


    Thankfully, as strong as he was Hever was not as much of a deviant as Nel and Kane were. Although he was certainly quite unique, his strength was less anomalous to Rui than Kane or Nel.


    The biggest problem with him was dealing with his immense muscle memory, and Rui also had to be careful of Hever''s tactical capabilities. He was the only fighter in entire Martial Academy whose tactical capacity Rui was a little wary of.


    As for techniques... There was only one. But the problem was that it was grade nine and was highly efficient as well as versatile and flexible. It gave Rui perspective on the benefits of mastering techniques beyond just general mastery. Of course, the technique itself mattered a lot too. Rui did not think it was worth mastering techniques like Mind Pce technique that would allow him to remember information better.


    But perhaps in the future he might find a technique worth dedicating himself to a higher degree.


    Rui shook his head. This was a matter for the future. Right now, he should be focusing his all on the preliminary contest. There were only a few days until the preliminary contest was over.


    He was determined to win.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 217 Inevitable.

    WHOOSH


    POW POW POW


    Rui avoided kick as he fired of three strikes at Sarron Malcolm, one of the eleven he was scheduled to fight.


    Sarron grimaced as he stepped back, trying to open up some distance between them. But Rui was not merciful enough to allow that to happen. Rui dashed forward with Parallel Walk and Bnced Direction before;


    BAM!


    Rui sessfully burrows Flowing Canon into Sarron''s sr plexus. The sheer impact was too powerful. The boy crumbled like a house of cards, but Rui was not done.


    POW


    A single kick to the jaw knocked him out on the way down. Rui wanted to ensure he wouldn''t get up.


    The onlookers sighed. Rui was brutal, there was a reason he had gone undefeated.


    "Winner; Apprentice Rui Quarrier!" The supervisor dered.


    He walked off the stage, unperturbed.


    "Good fight." Kaneplimented.


    "Thanks." Rui replied. "I finished it especially quickly because I didn''t want to miss the next one."


    He nced at the preliminary schedule on the notice board.


    [Fae Duhan vs Kane]


    This was something Rui did not dare miss. They were both close friends of his, and even without that, they were top contenders of the Martial Academy. Rui would pay Martial credits to watch this fight.


    It''s not that the two of them had never fought. If one were to include verbal spats, these two fought every single day. About all kinds of things too. If there was something that could be argued about, there was at the very least a fifty-percent chance Fae and Kane would fight over it.


    But as far as physical fights went, these two hadn''t fought in a while. They had both grown stronger ever since then, having learnt new powerful techniques.


    But if he had to choose who was stronger...


    (''...It would have to be Kane.'') Rui sighed.


    It wasn''t a matter of overall prowess at all. It wasn''t that Kane operated on a higher level ofbat prowess.


    It was a matter ofpatibility. Kane had a stylisticpatibility advantage against Fae, this would tilt the battle in his favour.


    Unless Kane somehow blundered or Fae pulled a brilliant tactic, there was very little chance Kane would lose.


    They''d reached. Fae, Milliana and Dalen were already waiting for them.


    The atmosphere was tense, especially because these two irked each other to no end on a regr basis.


    Yet this time, they exchanged no words, merely exchanging stares.


    "Hey guys..." Rui tried breaking the stiff atmosphere. "Looking forward to a great fight. No hard feelings regardless of who wins."


    The two of them didn''t respond, merely making their way to the ring.


    "Do you think they''ll be fine?" Rui muttered.


    "They should be." Dalen stated, earning a nod from Milliana.


    Up on the ring, the two of them took their positions.


    The atmosphere grew taut.


    "Take your stance." The supervisor instructed.


    Fae reverted to her usual stance, tucking her right palm upside-down at her waist while her left palm pointed straight at Kane. "I''m intend to win."


    She spoke calmly.


    Kane snorted, as he lightly hopped between his feet. "Be my guest."


    That was the signal.


    "Begin!" The supervisormenced the fight.<sub> </sub>


    WHOOSH


    Fae raced forward as she threw a palm attack right onto him.


    WHOOSH


    And where Kane should have been, there was but naught.


    Kane sauntered out of all perception, having activated the Void Step technique.


    Fae stayed stationary, waiting.


    POW


    Her body jerked at a strike from behind hernded on her. She swiftly turned,unching swift palm attack.


    WHOOSH


    Despite her sacrificing power to obtain speed, she had missed. But this was not outside her expectations.


    Rui had observed the fight with Primordial Instinct and Seismic Mapping. Kane was currently circling around her in order to maintain the stealth given to him by the Void Step technique.


    This belongs ? N?velDra/ma.Org.


    POW POW POW


    WHOOSH


    Hended abo before evading her attack.


    This continued.


    And continued some more.


    And some more.


    This unfolded from start to finish. Kane abused his advantage and continued pummeling Fae up. She slowly but surely built up more and more damage as the fight went on. Fae''s defense was quite solid and Kane''s offense was unremarkable. Even if he did possess an advantage, he certainly would not be able to end the fight quickly, he was an evasive maneuverer at his core, his offense would never be special.


    Not every fight was shy.


    Not every fight was suspenseful.


    And most certainly, not every fight was unpredictable.


    Sometimes, there were just predictable fight.


    Sometimes, there simply were inevitable oues.


    This fight, Rui hade to realize, was probably going to be one of them.


    Fae was just too ipatible with the Void Step technique. Her techniques and her Martial Art were not conducive to it, and it showed.


    In the end, she grew more and more desperate, taking a gamble.


    She stood at the very corner of the ring, cutting out any ess to attacks from behind or even from her side. While waiting for an attack tond on her.


    Her idea was tond a strike as soon as she felt Kane''s attack.


    Rui shook his head. It may have seemed like a good idea, but it simple wasn''t. The risk was far, far too high. Kane''s offense was not special, but it wasn''t weak either, he had two mid-grade striking offensive techniques that amplified the power of his regr strikes and with the Void Step technique, he could easily build up momentum. She would fall off before she couldnd a single strike.


    Even if she had the defensive prowess of Dalen, she would still not be able tond a strike on him probably. His evasiveness was too good, and he could easilynd strikes while avoid strikes unperturbed.


    And, he was invisible. To Fae, atleast.


    That strategy was too risky even for Rui, who could actually sense his position vaguely. He would merely be trading out one disadvantage for another.


    The fundamental issue was not solved.


    BAM


    Fae was firmly ringed out.


    And the battle ended.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 218 Charge

    "Take your stances." The supervisor instructed.


    Hever shifted as he took his modest stance. He distributed his weight equally between both feet, putting his left foot forward and his right foot back as a support. His hands were open, ced at a height precisely in between his chest and waist. They were in interception position, ready to intercept all attacks that Rui threw at him.


    "I''m looking forward to fighting you." Rui said as he hopped lightly between his feet, with both hands in front of him perfectly positioned for speedy jabs.


    This stance sacrificed power for speed and mobility. Rui had seen that Hever wasfortably able to handle even the power of Nel without any problems for an extended period of time. There was no point in trying to overpower Hever. The only person who had chance of aplishing that in the entire Academy was Fae, everybody else could only lower their head to his obtuse counter-offensive mastery.


    "As am I." Hever calmly replied. Rui was not the only one paying attention to his rivals and contenders. Hever had long since identified Rui as one of the biggest obstacles in the entire Academy for the preliminary contest.


    Especially since Rui was also ranked higher than he was at the moment.


    "Begin!" The supervisormenced the match.


    Rui shuffled as he drew closer to Hever.


    Hever simply waited.


    Rui threw a jab only for Hever calmly intercept it.


    WHOOSH


    A feint. The Phantom Step technique.This belongs ? N?velDra/ma.Org.


    Rui exploited the opening to throw the quickest jab he could!


    Yet, the very next moment;


    BAM!


    Rui grimaced in pain as he skidded away. Even with the application of Inner Divergence and stic Shift. The throw hurt like hell. Even with Primordial Instinct, his reactions were inferior to Hever''s!


    He quickly got up,unching himself at Hever throwing a jab.


    WHOOSH


    BAM!


    Rui skidded away groaning in pain.


    (''As expected. I cannot beat him with such an easy tactic.'') Rui mused as he got up. If Hever was not aware of the Phantom Step technique, then Rui was certain he would be able to use it at the right moment and at the right ce to create an opening he could sessfully exploit.


    However, Rui had used the Phantom Step technique many times in this preliminary contest, and Hever was clearly prepared for it, anticipating that Rui would use this technique in this manner.


    Not that this surprised Rui. If he were in Hever''s ce, he would have made this realization the second he saw himself using the Phantom Step technique. He had anticipated that this would not work against the careful Hever.


    However, just being careful was not enough to foil a high-grade technique like Phantom Step. The biggest reason had to do with the Hever''s muscle memory quickness, it was so quick, that even after falling for a feint, he was still quick enough to respond to Rui''s real attack in time!


    Rui couldn''t help but admire his sheer mastery of a single technique, that allowed him to crush so many powerful techniques and attacks.


    He stopped attacking. Having already cleanly failed twice, he did not expect anything to change even if he continued, it was a fool''s errand. He was not going to fight foolhardily like Nel and continue attacking over and over.


    He dropped his guard, circling around Hever at a distance. The best part about fighting Hever was that Rui did not have to worry about being voluntarily attacked. Hever had mastered only one technique, and it purely counter-offensive, he had no pure offensive potential. This meant that Rui had fully grasped the initiative in this fight. He could leisurely do whatever he wanted and Hever would not press him.<sub> </sub>


    Thus, he took his time, thinking and analyzing.


    <o>,m Hever continuously shifted; rotating to ensure Rui was always directly in front of him at all times.</o>


    (''So the technique works best when he''s facing his opponent.'') Rui conjectured. (''Or perhaps it works worst or not at all when his back is facing his opponent.'')


    Rui thought of ways he could exploit this, but eventually shook his head, it was too difficult.


    "Do I really have to use that?" Rui murmured.


    He had inputted Dalen''s capabilities as well as his own into the VOID algorithm, and had long begun analyzing their fight with algorithmic procedures of the VOID algorithm. It wasn''t that he hadn''t obtained any solutions, it''s just that Rui was rather reluctant of using the solutions he had deduced through the algorithm.


    (''Sigh, no choice.'') He shook his head. At the very least, Dalen was easily in the top five, if not top three in the entire Academy.


    He took sce that he wouldn''t be wasting his final trump card against someone who was unworthy or could be defeated through other ways.


    "Fuuu..." Rui focused.


    He suspected he had one chance. If this failed, the odds of it seeding again were lower than the first time. Such was the nature of all trump cards.


    Especially for this one.


    He could not afford to fail.


    But what was new?


    Hever narrowed his eyes as the burden on his mind escted. His muscles grew tauter and his alertness heightened. His instinctual sense of danger heightened with the sheer amount of physical and mental energy Rui was gathering. He knew Rui was an intelligent fighter, he would not simply try to replicatepletely failed attempts with more effort and hope they would magically seed, whatever he was trying was certainly going to be new.


    Rui shuffled closer and closer, controlling every single movement carefully. He paused at a distance of one meter away.


    The pressure was immense. The air was taut.


    Hever could vaguely sense Rui was waiting for something.


    But for what?


    He didn''t know.


    Whatever wasing was big.


    Yet, what he didn''t expect was...


    He would never see iting in the first ce.


    BLINK


    Suddenly, Rui was right in front of his face!


    It was a takedown charge!


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 219 Hell Of A Fight

    Hever''s muscle memory shed as he just barely managed to reach Rui''s attack in time.


    WHOOSH


    It was a feint.


    Where did he go?


    THUD


    Rui had crashed into his lower abdomen before Hever could even realize! The force of the takedown had toppled Hever onto the ground t. Hever wrangled like a serpent, but to no avail.


    CLASP


    Rui used Shifting Silhouette, his only grappling defense technique to suppress all of Hever''s grappling activity, and sessfully mounted Hever.


    BAM BAM BAM!


    Rui mercilessly pounded on Hever like a gori, using the full power of Outer Convergence and Vital Pressure.


    Hever had begun bleeding immensely. He did not have any defensive techniques like Inner Divergence, even if he did, they would not work very well, if at all in such a scenario. Inner Divergence required the user shifting the area of impact as close to the center of the body as possible, whereas Rui had mounted him, preventing such a defense.


    Ultimately, the human body would not withstand the power of a Martial Apprentice. Rui even ended up holding back a bit, avoiding his head. One wrong mistake and Rui might have ended up even killing him.


    Soon, Hever''s condition had degraded immensely, but he never gave up. Rui couldn''t really knock him out via blunt force trauma because his head would not rock because of the ground.


    The solution was simply.


    He quickly maneuvered across Hever''s body, getting him in a chokehold. Hever''s weaknesses and shoring were starting to show.


    The brain would automatically shut down after seven seconds of limited blood or no blood supply.


    And seven secondster, Rui demonstrated this.


    "Winner; Apprentice Rui Quarrier!" The supervisor announced.


    The fight ended quickly.


    The onlookers gaped in shock!


    They expected Hever to win after that intimidating performance against Nel, but instead Rui almost crushed him.


    Was Rui this abysmally strong?


    Everyone couldn''t help but wonder.


    Rui shook his head. He wished he was, but the truth was a lot more sober. He was extremelypatible against Hever.All rights ? N?velDrama.Org.


    Although Hever was extremely strong thanks to his astronomical mastery of Meteor Throw, everyone knew that he had many, many gaping holes and vulnerabilities on paper. However, his absurd counter-offensive prowess shined too bright, dominating his weaknesses and even ovepensating for them. No one had figured out how to sessfully exploit his weaknesses.


    Except for Rui, and the VOID algorithm.


    The VOID algorithm loved weaknesses. When Rui gave had inputted the parameters of Hever, it had squealed in ecstasy and gulped it up before excreting the desire results.


    Metaphorically, of course.<sub> </sub>


    Rui had deduced many solutions that devastated Hever, but they all required the Blink technique one way or another.


    Only with thebination of Blink and Phantom Step, two high-grade techniques, could Rui be able to finally crack a hole in Hever''s invincibility.


    With those two technique Rui had generated many solutions to take Hever down. The solution he chose was Blink plus Mirage Dive, a grappling feint technique very simr to Phantom Step. Thisbination allowed Rui to permanently turn the battle into ground grappling, where Meteor Swing could not be used.


    This was the power ofpatibility. It was one of the most important variables in battle. Hever was decentlypatible against Nel, allowing him to crush every single initiative Nel took and evening close to winning.


    But Rui was extremelypatible against Hever. The VOID algorithm along with Phantom Step and Blink were the perfect tools to defeat Hever in a short amount of time!


    Rui''s biggest regret was that he was unable to win without Blink. But he couldn''t have his cake and eat it, too. But now all of his trump cards had been exposed.


    If there was one constion, it''s that he had only three more people to defeat.


    Nel.


    L Sec.


    And finally, Kane.


    At the very least, he managed to preserve his trump card until he had only three contenders left. But on the flip side, he would need to win despite the exposure of his trump card.


    However, Blink was not a very identifiable technique. It was not shy and attention drawing like the Stinger. Hopefully, people would not have identified it."


    "Great fight." Kane said with a thumbs-up.


    "Thanks."


    "That surprise takedown." Kane brought up. "That wasn''t just feinting right?"


    Kane being a master of the Phantom Step movement himself knew what feints were capable of, he had also grown familiar with Hever''s speed and had realized that feinting alone didn''t exin how Rui managed to cleanly bypass Hever''s muscle memory counters.


    He quickly tied the oddity with the many unknown techniques Rui had mastered.


    "Hehe." Rui chuckled, realizing Kane hadn''t figured out the mechanics of Blink from just that one instance. "Do you want me tell you about it?"


    "No." Kane replied. The more he knew, the likelier he was to defeat Rui, this was against his desires, thus he avoided the knowledge. He couldn''t purposely hold back either, his family had channels in the Academy, and if there were any signs of self-sabotage, then the Martial Squires observing the fight would no doubt ry this and eventually the information would fall into the hands of his family.


    "Sure." Rui replied, aware of this consideration. "You ready for your next fight?"


    "As ready as ever." Kane shrugged.


    Rui nced at the fight schedule on the notice board.


    [Kane vs Nel]


    Rui couldn''t begin to describe how incredibly hyped he was for this fight. Kane and Nel were the two greatest hurdles he had left. They were both perversely strong, to a shocking degree.


    Frankly, Rui wasn''t sure how the battle would go down.


    Hecked too much information. At the higher levels, it had be rare for him to be unable to predict the fight to some degree. Yet here was a fight between two of the strongest Martial Apprentices, and he couldn''t help but be even more excited than he was for his own fights!


    "This is going to be one hell of a fight..."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 220 Unsure

    The two boys stared at each other. One had a wild, excited grin. While the other had a detached lethargic expression. The difference in their demeanors was great.


    But not the difference in their Martial prowess.


    At the very least, no difference could be spotted in the mental pressure they exerted on all sentient life around them.


    "Take your stances." The supervisor instructed.


    "Hehe..." Nel took crouched, letting his arms dangle down. "You''re not escaping me, vanish boy."


    "Hmph." Kane snorted. "Catch me if you can."


    The two concentrated, tying up the atmosphere in knots.


    Many had gathered to spectate this fight. As two titans of the Academy, both Nel and Kane had drawn an immense amount of attention.


    Every single person in the facility was curious.


    Not a single person even blinked.


    Nobody wanted to miss this fight.


    "Begin!" The supervisormenced the fight.


    WHOOSH


    Nel soared forward at an incredibly high speed!


    "HYAAH!" He swung a haymaker at Kane.


    WHOOSH


    The attack collided with empty air where Kane was once standing.


    As for Kane?


    He had already disappeared


    Yet, by now, people had grown ustomed to this. There was only one thought in everyone''s mind.


    What was Nel going to do?


    Rui observed the battle not just with his eyes, but with Primordial instinct and Seismic Mapping as well. He was more curious than anybody else.


    He was standing at the center of the ring, while Kane circled around him.


    Suddenly, Kane rushed in. Launching an attack at his back.


    And that was when it happened.


    "HAH!" Nel snarled as Kane approached throwing back swing at Kane.


    WHOOSH


    Kane stepped back, shocked!


    This was the first time!


    For the first time in the preliminary contest, Kane had been seen through!


    Kane genuinely did not expect this to happen.


    What was worse was that he inevitably needed to pause before moving back to avoid the attack, causing the Void Step technique to be inactive for a second, confirming Kane''s position to Nel for just a second.


    Nel''s grin grew wider as heunched himself where he just sensed Kane.


    Down outside, Rui equally shocked. Nel hadn''t even mastered a single Apprentice-level technique, how the hell was he sensing Kane?


    (''Wait.'') He realized. (''Could it be he''s born with more than just superhuman physical prowess?'')


    If Nel was born with extraordinary senses, then that would exin why he''s able to vaguely sense Kane.


    Rui was able to judge the direction Kane was in at all times, and was just able to sense an impression of the distance Kane was at.


    This was due to him mastering Primordial Instinct and Seismic Mapping, as well as a boost from Rui''s reincarned mind.<sub> </sub>


    If Nel''s senses were as superhuman as his physical prowess, then he might be able to sense Kane vaguely.


    Up in the ring, Nel nced around. His sharp instinct told him Kane was somewhere in front of him, every time his nerves tingled, he simplyunched the widest swing he could to cover as much area as he could.


    But it wasn''t enough.


    POW POW POWThis belongs ? N?velDra/ma.Org.


    Nel''s body jerked from invisible impacts.


    Kane was an evasive maneuverer. Dodging attacks while simultaneouslyunching his own was child''s y at his current level


    He was merely caught off-guard earlier.


    (''But there''s caveats to that.'') Rui realized. Kane''s offense was mediocre. By Nel''s standards, it was downright garbage. Even if he pummeled Nel''s body for hours, it was doubtful whether he could take him down.


    Furthermore, his body was built for speed, agility and mobility. He was not built for defense. If even a single attack from Nelnded on Kane, it would do considerable damage, it would also lower his performance parameters, significantly increasing the probability of getting hit again.


    Meaning, he could not afford to get hit even once.


    The conditions of this battle reminded Rui of Kane''s fight with Fae. But there were a few important differences.


    Nel could sense Kane. Hispatibility against Kane was far higher than Fae''spatibility against Kane.


    WHOOSH


    Nel swung at empty air.


    (''Close.'') Rui noted.


    BAM


    His upper body jerked, he stepped back, rubbing his throat.


    (''Kane is focusing purely on the most vulnerable parts of the body.'') Rui realized, nodding in approval. This was a good way to maximize damage. This was normally not a good idea, since focusing on only three or four specific spots greatly reduced their options and made them much more predictable.


    However, this caveat no longer existed for Kane. Nel was just barely vaguely sensing him, he was far removed from normal conditions.


    Rui gazed at the fight with intense concentration.


    To others, this fight may not have been as engaging since no one knew what the hell was happening. But to Rui, this was incredibly suspenseful.


    WHOOSH


    He swung, and wasn''t too far off.


    POW


    A slight impact on Nel''s jaw wobbled his head.


    "RAAH!" Nel swung again in the direction the attack came from.


    WHOOSH


    Kane appeared as he paused for the briefest of moments.


    BAM


    Nelunched himself towards him with him in an instant.


    WHOOSH


    And, as expected, he hit air.


    So far, every single attack he hadunched had missed. But Rui didn''t think Kane was dominating. All it took was one blow. As far as he knew, Kane had only mastered stic Shift. This technique was basically paper in front of Nel''s physical prowess. In the worst-case scenario, a single attack from Nel could put Kane in a critical state!


    Rui sensed Kane knew this. Not through Primordial Instinct or Seismic Mapping, but by the fact that Kane''s movements were far more cautious than usual. This was probably the first time in the preliminary contest he was feeling a sense of danger.


    The strange stalemate between the two of them continued. Nel struggled to get a hold of Kane while Kane struggled to damage Nel to a significant degree. Currently, it was shaping out to be more of a race than a fight.


    Rui wasn''t sure how this battle would unfold.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 221 Outcome

    WHOOSH


    POW POW POW


    A hint of frustration shed on Nel''s face. He was struggling to tag Kane, and thus far he hadn''tid a single finger on Kane. He had spent quite some time, swinging every time his nerves and senses tingled, but that strategy had failed.


    The problem was simply sheer inadequacy.


    Nel was slower than Kane.


    He was less mobile than Kane.


    He was less efficient than Kane in his movements.


    Kane was an evasive specialist, and Kane had the Void Step technique on top of that.


    Nel just had too many tables stacked against him. If not for his constitution, Kane would have already begun dominating him.


    His only possible path to victory was ousting Kane. However, Rui did not think this was realistic. There were several reasons for this as well.


    While using the Void Step technique, Kane didn''t need to go as hard on maneuvering. In fact, he didn''t even need to use normal maneuvering technique, he could just take a casual stroll, and dodge every time Nel manages to get a strike somewhat close to him thanks to his sharp senses.


    This way, he could conserve an immense amount of energy.


    On the other hand, Nel fought like a maniac and burnt energy like there was too much. Every single movement was made with maximum effort regardless of whether it was necessary or optimal or not.


    Furthermore, Nel hadn''t mastered any Apprentice-level techniques yet, he waspensating by consuming far greater power than Apprentices did.


    For example, if Nel and Ruiunched a strike with equal amounts of power, Nel was able to consume several times more energy than Rui did for the same strike.


    All of these variables meant that even if Nel had a greater energy reserve, his energy consumption was simrly greater. The tworgely cancelled out each other.


    Even if he did possess an advantage in stamina, it would not be a gigantic one due to these factors.


    But, Kane had yet to find a win condition himself.


    Just as Rui had though that, a change urred.


    Kane decided to take a risk and dashed in straight towards Nel.


    WHOOSH


    Nel threw a strike, but Kane effortlessly dodged as he focused on Nel''s eyes.


    This was the most vulnerable vital area that was susceptible to Kane''s power. Everywhere else was rock solidpared to Kane''s measly offensive potential. Furthermore, if Ne''s eyes were incapacitated, it would be game over. He would be unable to sense Kane even with his enhanced sense and Kane would have won.


    Normally, it wasn''t easy to jab someone''s eyes since they could see youing. But thing was,


    Nel couldn''t. Not properly. As long as Kane maximized speed and precision, he estimated it was worth a try.


    This was Kane''s n.


    Kane forked his index and middle finger, and jabbed them into Nel''s eyes!


    CRUNCH


    Blood spilled as Nel''s head jerked back.


    Kane''s eyes flew wide as he felt a sharp piercing pain from his index finger.


    He had paused for a moment, inadvertently stopping the Void Step technique.


    "He... He bit the flesh off Kane''s finger tips off!" Rui eximed.


    Nel''s head returned forward with a gleeful grin, with Kane''s flesh and blood on his tongue. He immediately jabbed his palm straight at Kane.<sub> </sub>


    FLICK


    The jab bruised Kane''s cheek as he barely avoided it, going Void Step immediately.


    "Hehehe..." Nel spat out the flesh, grinning. "Again!"


    When Kane had jabbed at Nel''s eyes, thetter had felt an incredibly heightened senses of danger, furthermore his sharp vision had picked faint traces of Kane''s attack at close range. The eyes were extremely delicate, even for Nel, and he ducked back, while biting where his eyes used to be as hard as he could.


    He got quite lucky.


    Unfortunately for him, he wasn''t able to use bleeding to identify Kane, not a single drop hit the ground after.


    Kaneplete retreated, after his best shot, and eye attack, was not only aplete failure but also caused him harm in turn. He simply gave up on voluntarily offense.


    The remaining fight was intense as Nel grew energized by the sess of his first sessful damage inflicted on Kane, however, it was not enough.


    With Kane in almostplete retreat mode, there was nothing Nel could do. They fought fiercely for hours, neither side being able to inflict any further damage on the other.


    The fought.


    And fought.All rights ? N?velDrama.Org.


    And fought some more.


    Eventually, after a long time, Rui was one of the few people still watching the fight. Although the Martial Apprentices were interested in the oue, no one wanted to watch Nel kick air for hours. None of them were able to sense Kane like Rui and Nel could.


    And this is how, one of the most anticipated fights in the preliminary contest received the most anti-climactic ending ever.


    "Draw due to timeout." The supervisor waved his hand, ending the match.


    Both sides were simply unable to make any meaningful progress in time.


    "Tsk." Nel tutted. "You sure vanish hard, vanish boy."


    "Not as hard as you bite, you Martial Maniac." Kane grumbled.


    "Thank you." Nel smiled smugly, raising his head with pride.


    "It wasn''t apliment!" Kaneined.


    "Well, mine was." Nel replied earnestly. "Kane right? Let''s fight again!"


    "I''m good." Kane turned around as he walked over to Rui.


    "Great fight." Rui handed him a healing and rejuvenation potion.


    "Thanks." Kane consumed them immediately, sighing in relief as his finger healed. "That was rough."


    "You underestimated his reflexes, they''re frankly close to as good as your own." Kane chuckled as he nced at Nel. "You should bolster your offense."


    "Later." Kane waved.


    With this, Rui was the only one at rank one. Kane had broken his unbroken win streak. He could feel the burning gazes of his fellow Martial Apprentice contenders.


    It was a result he should have been happy about, but he was concerned.


    Neither Hever nor Kane could do better than drawing against Nel. The same could be said Kane, perhaps even moreso since he didn''t think Hever had a chance against Kane.


    These two were frankly undefeated even after facing each other, the two greatest threats.


    Confident of victory was one thing Rui was not, at this very moment. Regardless, everything would end tomorrow and the day after.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 222 Without Them

    "Take your stances." The supervisor instructed.


    Both Hever and Kane took their regr stances.


    "Begin!" The supervisormenced the fight.


    Immediately, Hever leaped, reaching the very corner of the ring.


    This was the strategy that Fae had used. It had failed miserably when she tried it, however, Rui suspected Hever was different.


    For one, Hever was a counter-offensive specialist, he would be able to handle invisible impacts much better than Fae did since he was quicker with his muscle memory.


    Of course, this did not mean he could effectively counter Kanepletely, but it was likely better than standing in the middle of the ring.


    Still, Rui did not think highly of Hever''s chances. Hispatibility against Kane was horrible. One of the worst, in fact.


    Because his prowess came solely from the Meteor Swing technique, anything that threatened to bypass the technique as a whole threatened him immensely.


    Which is exactly what the Void Step technique did. However, Hever likely had some muscle memory countermeasure for strikes after they impact, so he had some minor hope of throwing Kane out the ring as long as he managed to grab onto Kane after hended the strike. As long as he fought cleverly, which he was capable of, he might be able to pull a draw.


    However, that still wasn''t the biggest reason Rui didn''t think highly of his chances.


    Up on the ring, Kane was stationary. For the first time, he hadn''t immediately activated the Void Step technique. It was a bit risky, and he did not want to give Hever''s muscle memory a chance.This content ? N?v/elDr(a)m/a.Org.


    Instead, he put his right foot behind, and put his hands on the ground in front. Taking a stance resembling sprinter''s starting position.


    Rui smiled, excited. He was going to witness something he rarely did.


    The Godspeed technique.


    Through a build-up of energy in the muscles, the Godspeed technique allowed Martial Apprentices to obtain speeds on par with Martial Squires.


    It was a technique that allowed Kane to ascend to a higher Realm for just a moment.


    Its biggest weakness was that it required a vulnerable starting position, leaving Kane open to attacks that he could do nothing about while in that stance prior to activating the technique. But once that was ounted for, almost no Martial Apprentice could possibly handle that technique. The weakness was the reason the technique was only at grade ten potency, if Kane could reach Martial Squires of speed any time he wanted with no caveat, then grade ten would be too low!


    Against Squire Kyrie, Rui had managed to mitigate the shoring. The technique was so powerful that even Squire Kyrie had to stop momentarily stop holding back to use a squire-level counter-offensive technique to defeat both of them.


    As for Hever...


    Rui shook his head.


    Unless a miracle happened, the oue was almost already decided.


    Suddenly, the pressure escted!


    Everybody froze, wide-eyed.


    Even Hever was stunned.


    Both Rui and Nel simply grinned.


    It had been more than a year since the former had seen Kane use the technique. Primordial Instinct was ring loud emergency sound rms in his head.


    Kane opened his eyes and time slowed, even more than it normally did for Martial Apprentices.


    Heunched himself.


    The sheer velocity with which he did, cracked the barrier of the speed of sound, breaking it.


    BOOM!


    He disappeared, leaving a shockwave where he stood.


    BOOM!<sub> </sub>


    Kane stopped at the corner of the ring.


    Hever had beenunched flying, he bounced and skidded over to the other end of the facility, knocking over several people.


    The fight had ended. It was over in an instant.


    Everyone had frozen in shock.


    They slowly turned with incredulity towards Rui.


    "Hey." He said.


    "Great fight." Rui smirked. "Good idea using Godspeed instead of Void Step."


    "Thanks." Kane said. "Your fight is scheduled soon, right?"


    Rui nodded, ncing at Nel.


    He had had only two opponents left; Nel and Kane. His two biggest hurdles.


    If he could win these, he would go on to win the preliminary contest and be chosen as representative. Although his track record was a touch better than Kane''s and Nel''s, it was not enough to overset a loss against either of them.


    Thankfully, at the very least he was able to make the best preparations he could. He had gotten his hands against an immense amount of data.


    (''If this doesn''t work, I can rest knowing I gave it my very all.'') He mused.


    He had no intention of letting it not work, though.


    They bantered for a bit before Rui was called.


    "Apprentice Rui Quarrier, your scheduled fight is soon tomence." The staff member informed. "Please wait at the assigned ring."


    "Sure thing." Rui nodded. "Alright, bye."


    "Good luck." Kane wished him.


    Soon, it was time for the match.


    Rui had been waiting for this for a long time. Nel got up on the ring, with a wild grin and a savage aura to boot, staring hard at Rui.


    "You''re strong." He grinned. "I''m strong too. This is gonna be great!"


    Rui smirked. He couldn''t agree more.


    "Hey, can I ask you something?" Rui interjected.


    "Hm?" He tilted his head.


    "In this entire contest, you didn''t use a single Apprentice-level technique. Understandable, since it''s only been two months since you discovered your Martial Path..." He paused, before continuing. "But even if you don''t have any Apprentice-level techniques... Why aren''t you using exploration-stage techniques?"


    This was something Rui had been curious about for quite some time. Nel clearly broke through to the Apprentice Realm, which meant he undoubtedly passed through the exploration Stage. Why wasn''t he using any of the Exploration-stage techniques?


    Although these techniques weren''t as good as Apprentice-level techniques, they were still better than fighting without techniques.


    Rui remembered that until he mastered his first few Apprentice-level techniques, he used exploration-stage techniques as well.


    ? He nced at Nel with great curiosity.


    "Ah..." Nel scratched his head.


    He then met Rui''s gaze and said with a perfectly sincere voice;


    "I discovered my Martial Path without them."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 223 All Hell

    "..."


    "..."


    Rui stared at him.


    Nel stared back at him.


    "You... what?"


    "Broke through without em."


    "No, surely..."


    "Nope."


    Rui tilted his head with incredulous confusion.


    Broke through to Martial Apprentice without learning a single technique? What sort of nonsense was that?


    Rui wasn''t even sure what to say to that.


    He wasn''t even sure he believed him.


    Was he lying to get Rui to lower his guard so he couldter unveil them?


    Looking at his sincere clueless expression, Rui shook his head, this guy was serious.


    But wasn''t that even more absurd?


    "You... What is your Martial Path?"


    "Take your stances." The supervisor had arrived, and quickly told them to be ready.


    "Heh." Nel chuckled as he crouched, letting his arms dangle freely.


    "My Martial Path is to beat everyone up using my body alone." He dered, his aura growing more feral by the second.


    "..."


    Rui''s eyes flew wide open at those words.


    For the very first time, he had run into someone with a Martial Path even more obtuse than his own!


    "Take your stance." The supervisor insisted to Rui.


    "I see..." Rui ignored him, staring straight at Nel with a boundless fascination and excitement.


    He just couldn''t wait!


    "...My Martial Path is to beat everyone up with my VOID alone."


    Rui adopted a neutral all-rounder stance, dividing his weight perfectly, positioning his arms and legs to be equally conducive to offense, defense and maneuvering.


    "Fuuu..." He exhaled.


    His mind went nk.


    There was nothing.


    And slowly...


    He focused.


    Gathering the vast mental energy his mind had bloomed across two lives.


    He focused.


    Gathering every ounce of physical energy his body could muster.


    Nel grinned in amazement despite the weight.


    He felt immense amounts of pressure from Rui''s sheer focus. It grew by the second, pouring onto him from a boundless abyss. It was almost suffocating.


    Just how strong was he?


    Nel wanted to know.


    "Let''s see whose Martial Path is stronger void boy!" He grinned as the savage weight of an apex predator oozed out of every cell in his body.


    The maelstrom of mental pressure the two boys generated burdened every onlooker.


    Yet, no one could look away.


    Not a single person could draw their eyes away.


    "B-Begin!" the supervisormenced the match.


    RUMBLE


    The sheer force with which Nel hadunched himself sent tremors across the ring!


    "RYAH!" He snarled as heunched a wild haymaker.


    WHOOSH


    The powerful swing crashed into a feint, hitting empty air.


    BAM!


    Rui threw a powerful kick at his ribs from the side, but Nel simply blocked it, pushing the strike away.


    POW POW POW


    He threw a series of swift jabs. Rui leapt back, having calmly mitigated the strikes with Inner Divergence, stic Shift and Acute Edge.


    As strong as Nel was, even he couldn''t ovee thebination of two mid-grade defensive techniques as well as one high-grade defensive technique with ordinary jabs alone.


    He grinned.


    So what if ordinary jabs didn''t work?


    Nel was capable of much more!


    WHOOSH


    He burst forth with shocking explosive speed,unching a flying kick.


    BAM


    Rui grimaced as he bruised his arm visibly despite his defensive techniques.


    He had long suspected it, but only now had he confirmed that he could not take too many of Nel''s more charged attacks.


    Heunched another loaded strike.


    But Rui wasn''t going to try and tank it this time.


    WHOOSH<sub> </sub>


    Rui cleanly avoided it with a feint. He used Bnced Direction and Parallel Walk, to circle around him.


    BAM BAM BAM


    Heunched a flurry of attacks!


    Each strike was powered with Outer Convergence and Vital Pressure.


    Yet, it was not enough.


    It collided against Nel''s guard. His reflexes were too quick to allow Rui tond a clean strike on a vital, and when defended, his defense was too solid.


    "Tsk." Rui retreated.


    (''As expected, ordinary attacks aren''t doing the trick.'') He verified.


    WHOOSH


    He avoided a kick cleanly with the help of Primordial Instinct, stepping back to open up some distance between them


    Or so everyone thought.


    Yet, when Nel charged at him with a punch, Rui charged right back with an attack.


    BOOM!!


    Their sh shook the earth!


    Everyone gaped at the sheer disy of raw power.


    Nel hadunched his most weighted strike, while Rui had charged up his momentum to the max with Bnced Direction and Parallel Walk, andunched a Flowing Canon attack amplified with Outer Convergence and Vital Pressure.


    Yet Nel''s fist hadn''t backed down!


    He matched the power of five Apprentice-level techniques with his sheer physique!


    The boys furiously fought.


    Fists were exchanged.


    Kicks were dodged.


    Attacks were endured.


    And defenses were sieged!


    Rui knew his average offense, defense and speed were lower than Nel''s. A symmetric battle was not in his favour.


    He switched things up with Phantom Step and Primordial Instinct


    These allowed him to avoid more strikes than his speed did, and allowed him tond more attacks than his speed did.


    But, even then.


    It wasn''t enough.


    Slowly.


    Step-by-step.


    Nay, perhaps inch-by-inch.


    Nel gained the advantage.


    "HAHAHA!" He guffawed with ecstasy. "IS THIS THE BEST YOUR ''VOID'' CAN DO?!"


    BAM!


    Nel gasped, choking as a powerful impactnded on his throat.


    He couldn''t even breathe for a moment.


    BAM!


    He barely managed to guard as a sharp sense of danger caused him to leap a great distance away.


    But it was toote.


    FLICK


    The Stinger found its mark.


    However, Rui had still underestimated Nel''s instincts, he managed to avoid it at the right moment, preventing the Stinger from turning lethal, reducing it to a superficial flesh wound.


    "Oh..." Rui sighed disappointedly. "So close."


    He quickly took his stance once more.


    "No matter..." His unyielding concentration fixated on Nel.


    His dark eyes widened.


    They were pitch ck.


    As if they sucked the very light out of this world.This belongs ? N?velDra/ma.Org.


    All anyone could see in them was eternal darkness.


    They saw the void...


    And the VOID


    And they trembled.


    "...I''ll get you this time." Rui whispered.


    WHOOSH


    He sped away to finish the job.


    BAM


    A powerful impactnded on him!


    Rui grimaced as he leapt back.


    "What was that you said?" Nel tilted his head with wide feral eyes. "''Get me next time?''"


    A surge of ferocity sted out from his body. "I''m right here."


    For a moment, their eyes collided.


    And the very next?


    All hell broke loose.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 224 What Was He Thinking?

    BAM!!


    The ground rumbled as Rui''s Flowing Canon struck Nel''s weighted haymaker.


    BAM


    Abination of Blink and Phantom Step allowed Rui to barely get in a speedy jab.


    The two of the unleashed avnches of attacks. Rui abused almost all of his techniques to their very limit to keep up with Nel.


    The ferocity escted!


    Theyshed out at each other.


    Nel''s senses and senses were so sharp thatbos of Blink and Phantom Step that would normally be game-enders against almost anybody were reduced to defense bypassers


    But Nel was able to handle even that to a certain extent. Blink was only partially effective because he was capable of fighting via his other senses alone, however not as well, and his mind still relied on vision the most.


    Phantom Step allowed Rui to confuse him even further, allowing Rui tond in jabs.


    The problem was,nding kicks were much harder because they were easier to identify than jabs, and were slower than jabs. This is why Rui had troublending the Stinger. It was quite problematic because thebination of Stingernded with the help of Blink and Phantom Step was easily Rui''s greatest trump card attack. But against Nel, this trump card unable to end the fight.


    This techniquebo was notpatible with Nel, Rui hade to btedly realize.


    Still, Rui had onest trick up his sleeve that he hadn''t used yet.


    BOOM!


    A powerful impactnded on Nel''s body,unching him away.


    He nced up, looking at Rui with a hint of surprise.


    Up until now, Rui had only managed tond strikes with his tricky feints.


    But this time, Rui just straightforwardlynded a clean strike!


    What had changed?


    Something had changed.


    He felt a faint hint of danger evolving from Rui.


    "...It took me a while." Rui exhaled. "But it''s ready."


    Rui''s stance shifted, flowing from his neutral stance to an offensive and maneuvering stance. He brought his legs closer to his center of gravity and positioned his arms tond strikes more easily.


    It was time.


    WHOOSH


    Rui leapt at Nel,unching a powerful Flowing Canon.


    BOOM!


    Nel guarded, using all of his body to aid in defense beforeunching a flurry of weighted haymakers at Rui.


    WHOOSH


    Rui dodged all of them.


    POW


    Hended a jab on Nel''s abdomen, yet again cleanlynding strikes on him without even using feints.


    "RYAAH!" Nelunched an incredibly swift kick at Rui.


    WHOOSH


    It crashed into a feint, much to his chagrin


    POW POW POW


    Rui surprising managed tond three clean jabs to the sr plexus.


    WHOOSH


    POW


    A jab to the nose dodging a haymaker from Nel.


    WHOOSH


    BAM


    Landed a low kick after avoiding a charge.


    As this continued, the onlookers realized something!


    The tides of the battles were turning!<sub> </sub>


    Rui had been on a losing end initially, barely coping with blinked feints, but now he wasnding more strikes than he was taking.


    "It''s kicked in." Kane grinned.


    "What has?" Fae asked.This content ? N?v/elDr(a)m/a.Org.


    "His adaptive evolution thingy."


    "Doesn''t he do that from start?"


    "He said it''s harder against all-rounders." Kane shrugged. "Maybe that''s why."


    This was true, all-rounders had no pronounced weakness or shoring, although they didn''t have pronounced strengths either. This made it harder for the VOID algorithm to adapt.


    However, there was another variable than was unique to this battle.


    One of the VOID algorithm''s biggest shorings were that it was less equipped to handle the super Martial Art techniques that were ubiquitous. This is why Rui was unable to make use of several aspects of the original VOID algorithm, and several were obsolete on Gaea.


    However...


    What if his opponent was not using any techniques?


    What if one of the main the reasons the VOID algorithm was less effective was gone?


    The answer was obvious.


    BAM BAM BAM


    Rui cleanlynded a powerfulbo on Nel''s face.


    Rui grinned with ecstasy. For the first time in a very, very long time, he was able to use a much significant portion of the VOID algorithm against in a fight!


    WHOOSH


    BAM BAM BAM!


    Despite being a truly deviant monster among Martial Artists, his fundamental fighting structure was closest to what the VOID algorithm was originally built for!


    WHOOSH!


    BAM!


    Nel hadn''t evennded a single strike in over a minute. The only reason he was still contending was because asides from Flowing Canon, none of Rui''s punches or kicks were hurting Nel all too much. His constitution was truly remarkable. Only when Rui managed strike his throat and other vulnerable ces was he able to damage Nel with his normal strikes.


    To the audience it seemed like Rui was dominating, but Rui knew that his simply wasn''t the case.


    Unlike with Kane, Rui couldn''t afford to peacefully conserve his stamina walking around. He needed to push his energy reserves to the absolute limit if he wanted just to fight against Nel.


    In the long run, he would grow tired before he took Nel down.


    The only way he could inflict critical damage was through the Stinger, but he had already attempted this. Nel''s natural danger sense and instinct was close to as good as Primordial Instinct and his senses were able to pierce the veil of Kane''s Void Step technique, even if very slightly.


    Landing the Stinger, especially when Nel knew about it, was not easy.


    But there wasn''t any other way to win.


    POW


    Rui''s fist mmed into his abdomen, but Nel just barely jerked.


    "WEAK!" He shouted swinging another powerful haymaker.


    WHOOSH


    Rui calmly dodged it.


    He needed to make a decision soon, his power and speed would slowly start decreasing from this point forth, Helical Breathing was far from omnipotent.


    Rui wasn''t sure how to go about it, but his likeliest win condition would be a lethal Stinger. The second-best win condition was a ring-out.


    "Hmmm." Rui''s eyes narrowed as a third idea popped into his head.


    He grinned. "Why not?"


    Suddenly, heunched the Stinger at Nel.


    WHOOSH


    It missed, Nel simply evaded the technique cleanly, incredibly cautious of it.


    WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH


    To everyone''s surprise, Rui simply began spamming Nel with failed Stinger attempts.


    What was he thinking?


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 225 What A World

    Everyone was confused.


    Why was Ruiunching Stingers so unreservedly?


    Furthermore, why was heunching them when they all failed tond time and time again?


    Nel was incredibly focused on avoiding each of them too.


    He stared at Rui''s toe every time there was even the slightest hint of the attack. Every ounce of his focus was dedicated to avoiding the Stinger, this was Rui''s most lethal attack. As long as this could be avoided, Nel was quite confident he would in the long run.


    WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH


    Nel easily avoided the swift attacks.


    POW POW


    He even managed tond in some attacks as he dodged them.


    Yet Rui didn''t cease.


    Every single person could sense he was extremely difficult tond the Stinger.


    "He sure is betting everything on that technique." Fae mused.


    Kane frowned.


    He vaguely sensed something was off. Rui should have known thatnding a lethal Stinger when Nel was paying full attention to it was impossible.


    Nel was much faster and had incredibly sharp reflexes, senses and instincts. Furthermore, the Stinger was not a particr quick attack like speed jabs were.


    As an evasive maneuverer, Kane could sense that the odds of the technique sessfullynding were low. Even when Rui caught him very off-guard by exposing his Blink technique to him for the first time, he had only managed to get a surface wound, since then the effectivity of Blink had reduced as a trump card once Nel was aware of it.


    Kane didn''t understand what Rui was trying to do here.


    WHOOSH


    BAM


    Nel avoided the Stinger whilending his own strike, still mindful of Rui''s toe.


    WHOOSH


    POW


    ¡­.


    WHOOSH


    POW POW POW


    Everyone frowned as Rui ceded more and more space, reeling from Nel''s impacts. He was previously using Phantom Step and Blink to avoid attacks, but for some reason he was simply tanking Nel''s attacks, getting pushed back a result.


    "HAHAHA." Nel guffawed as he eyed Rui''s Stinger sharply, avoiding it. "I''MMA SEND YOU FLYING OUT."


    BAM!


    He managed to send Rui skidding away.


    One meter away from the edge of the ring.


    A hint of desperation shed across Rui''s face.


    But Nel had arrived, Rui charged at him furiously.


    The atmosphere contracted.


    The sheer pressure from the concentration of the two boys wrung the very air!


    This was the climax!


    Ruiunched the Stinger with Blink and Phantom Step onest time!


    He drew every ounce of speed and power.


    Every muscle.


    Every cell.


    They roared!


    They roared, pushing forward.


    Pushing forward towards victory.


    And yet.


    WHOOSH


    ¡­


    Nel grinned.


    He grinned like a madman.


    He grinned, his body tilted as he watched the Stinger just fly past him.


    Close.


    Close!


    Yet, far.


    Too far.


    It was in vain.


    The attack had missed.


    Nel narrowly dodged it, having focused all his attention into avoiding it.


    Not even the mighty prowess of the Blink and Phantom Step could reach Nel


    It was over.


    Rui was at the edge, standing on one leg as Nel charged at him with immense momentum.


    A ring-out was almost inevitable.


    Despair, was inevitable.


    BAM!


    !!!


    A powerful Flowing Canon impactnded cleanly on Nel''s jaw from the far left, rocking his head wildly.


    He staggered back, shocked!


    Where had ite from?


    Everybody was shocked.


    Where did the attacke from?


    The answer was simple.


    It came from Rui. It was a simple Flowing Canon attack.


    Nel simply failed to see it.<sub> </sub>


    The attack soared past his awareness, striking his jaw from the left.


    But why?


    Why did Nel fail to perceive such a clear attack?


    No one knew.


    No one moved.


    They simple bore witness.


    The attack shook his brain. Nel was durable, but not even he couldpletely withstand the power of five Apprentice-level techniques crashing into his jaw unguarded and unprepared.


    And yet.


    He stood.


    His brain shook.


    Yet, he stood.


    His vision blurred.


    And yet. He. Stood.


    He would not go down so easily!


    He would win!


    And yet...


    Just as he charged forward.


    PEW!


    ¡­


    DRIP DRIP


    "Huh...?" Nel murmured.


    A sharp pain shot up from his neck as blood spurged out.


    The Stinger had soared through the air once more,nding into his neck!


    In his disarrayed state, the bridge had finally been gapped.


    The Stinger reached Nel.


    Rui... reached Nel.


    "It''s over..." Rui whispered.


    BANG


    The third unguarded strike to the jaw.


    Brains weren''t meant to be tanks.


    Turned out, this applied to Nel as well.


    THUD


    He copsed to the ground as his brain shut down due to blunt force trauma.


    He was down.


    Unmoving.


    And he stayed that way.


    "W-Winner; Apprentice Rui Quarrier!" The supervisor dered.


    Rui fell to his knees, exhausted.


    He nced at Nel.


    His n had paid out.


    But just barely.


    (''That was close...'') He smiled bitterly as he thought back to his n.


    p Inattentive Blindness Syndrome and psychological inertia.</anda>


    The former was a psychological syndrome that was well-documented in field of psychological cognitive studies on Earth. It was the tendency of the brain''s attention to be focused on one phenomenon causing the mind to be significantly less attentive of surrounding phenomenon.


    Thetter was a psychological phenomenon of the mind to continue with already established psychological patterns.


    Rui had drawn Nel''s attention to his toe because of the Stinger time and time again. Nel''s attention had gradually grown more and more fixated on his toe as the Stinger was spammed increasingly. Furthermore, when Rui got pushed to the edge of the ring, his attention was further consumed by his own ring-out attack.


    The Inattentive Blindness Syndrome had caused Nel to be much less aware of his surroundings, far more than was normal.


    This tendency continued thanks to psychological inertia.


    When Ruiunched the Flowing Canon immediately after the Stinger, heunched it from the far right.


    Nel barely dodged.


    At that very moment, almost the entirety of his awareness and focus was on the Stinger.


    It was then.


    It was then that Ruiunched a modest Flowing Canon from the far left, the exact opposite direction.


    A simple follow-up attack.


    Yet, the deadliest of them all.


    It soared unhindered as the Inattentive Blindness Syndrome opened up a clean path forward.


    It crashed into Nel''s jaw, rocking his brain, stunning him for a few precious moments.


    But this was enough.


    It was now or never.This content ? N?v/elDr(a)m/a.Org.


    Rui had chosen now.


    He had generated so much power he could feel his blood vessels almost bursting. Launching the attack least likely to be detected ording to the VOID algorithm.


    If this had failed, it would have been over.


    But it hadn''t.


    "To think that research paper I published so long ago would end up saving the day." Heughed weakly.


    The very first research paper he published in the field ofbat sports was a modest amateurish research paper that aimed to demonstrate the positive corrtion between higher knock-out sess rates and the presence of the Inattentive Blindness Syndrome.


    Almost fifty yearster, this modest research paper had gone on to be the foundation of victory in his fight against Nel.


    Who else could ever have the privilege to make such a statement?


    "What a world..."


    What a world indeed.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 226 Suspense

    Rui was exhausted.


    Truly exhausted.


    He nced at Nel, who was already being treated by the medical staff on site. His blood loss was immense, Rui had struck the carotid artery in advertently.


    He quickly got off the ring after having consumed a rejuvenation and healing potion.


    "That was an insane fight." Kane grinned.


    "Congrattions Rui." Fae said. "That was incredibly close."


    They all congratted him before getting to the elephant in the room.


    "How did yound thatst Flowing Canon?" Fae asked curiously, it was one of the many offensive techniques she had mastered and thus she had recognized it immediately.N?vel/Dr(a)ma.Org - Content owner.


    "I was wondering the same thing too." Kane nodded. He was already familiar with Nel''s incredible speed and reflexes. He was quite curious too.


    "Just some psychological tricks." Rui smiled. "I distracted him with the Stinger so that his reactions to other attacks would be much lower. And then I just to find the perfect timing and cement of the Flowing Canon with my adaptive evolution."


    "Was it really that simple?" Kane scratched his head. "To think that''s how you managed to create such a huge turn around."


    Rui shrugged. "It was that simple. The human mind is more wed than you we tend to think of it. As long as you learn how to exploit these ws, you can do things that would normally be impossible."


    This was something he sincerely believed. Research in neuroscience and psychology had shown that the human brain and mind were filled with a myriad of ws and shorings, many of the elements of the VOID algorithm were derived from and centered around these phenomena.


    Of course, several of these elements were also in effective on Gaea against Martial Artists and beasts because they were too different from baseline human. Which was, of course, one of the many reasons the VOID algorithm needed updating and upgrading.


    They bantered for a bit, before a staff member interrupted them.


    "Apprentice Fae Duhan? Your scheduled match is soon tomence." He said. "Please be sure to wait by the assigned ring."


    Fae nodded, turning to her friends. "I''ll see you guys after."


    She left for her match after being bade good luck.


    "She''s fighting Hever, right?" Kane scratched his head.


    "Yeah."


    Rui was interested in the oue of that fight. He suspected there were too possibilities. If Fae''s firepower was within the limit of capability of the Meteor Swing technique, then Fae was guaranteed to lose.


    However, if her power exceeded the limits of the technique''s capabilities, then she was certainly primed to win.


    As for which scenario was the actual case of the matter, Rui was unable to gauge it. She had immense raw power however Meteor Swing was a grade nine as far as potency and difficulty went, furthermore Hever had mastered it to a high degree.


    It was quite likely that her regr strikes would not be able to overwhelm him.


    However, that was for her regr strikes alone.


    He couldn''t necessarily say the same for her peak power. Her peak power would probably be using Whirlpool in addition all the power striking power techniques she had mastered, such as Flowing Canon. The power of that strike would be on a whole other level.


    As far as her peak power went, it must have be on another level.


    Normally, she would likely only be able to exert such power momentarily and in some situations, and in many cases her opponents wouldn''t let her build up the power tounch the very best of her best.


    However, this condition was not necessarily true with Hever.


    Hever had no voluntary capabilities. He had no maneuvering techniques and offensive technique he could pressure Fae with, his fighting style gave all the initiative to his opponent.


    Meaning Hever was probably the only person she could take her time tond her most powerful strike against.


    This was why Rui was unclear and quite curious about the oue of the fight.


    Eventually, they reached the ring.


    Fae and Hever were already facing each other.<sub> </sub>


    "It''s about to start." Rui said excitedly, gazing at the two of them in anticipation.


    "Out of all the people in the Academy..." Hever said to Fae. "I have looked forward to fighting you more than anybody else."


    "My." Fae raised an eyebrow. "You tter me."


    "No, I don''t." Hever calmly stated. "You are the only Martial Apprentice in the Academy who could show me the limits of my techniques, even when facing it at its strongest."


    "Take your stances." The supervisor instructed.


    "Come..." hever took his modest stance. "Let us not waste time. Show me the peak of what you can achieve."


    His concentration was as imposing as a mountain.


    "Let me see whether your peak exceeds mine."


    "...Alright then." Fae replied as she took her stance. "This was my intention from the very start."


    Hever didn''t reply.


    There was nothing more he had left to say.


    "Begin!"


    For once, Fae didn''tsh out at her opponent, swiftly pummeling them with her incredible power.


    Instead, she walked to the opposite end of the ring, standing at the edge. Facing Hever, she closed her eyes, exhaling.


    She slowly moved in her stance, matching her movements with her inhtion.


    She focused as boundless power erupted from deep within her.


    Her muscles stiffened, growing more and more taut by the second. They turned from tissue into bundles of steel brimming with power.


    She opened her eyes.


    Rui shivered as Primordial Instinct screeched at him about the iing danger Fae was about to unleash.


    The oue of the fight was likely going to be decided by a single strike. If she failed, it meant she wouldn''t ever be able to bypass Meteor Swing, if she seeded, the match would end right there.


    And it was then.


    BOOM!


    RUMBLE


    The very force she struck the ground with reverberated across the facility!


    She flew at Hever with rocketing momentum.


    And the moment hade.


    BANG


    Just the shockwave generated by sheer force shoved against Rui, shocking him!


    Her palm propelled forward.


    BOOM!!!


    What happened, happened so quickly Rui was unable to even ascertain the oue!


    *   *   *   *   *


    Hey guys, in case you didn''t see the announcement. I''ll be reducing my chapter release rate to 1 chapter a day for the next three days. Details in chapter 221. I''ve already released several extra chapters this month for this reason and will release more on 31st topensate, hope you guys understand. Thanks for all the support, you guys rock.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 227 Interested

    Fae''s palm rotated ferociously as it pummeled forward, the sheer torque she generated with the Whirlpool create a mini-tornado around her attack!


    The moment her attack entered Hever''s interception range, his handsshed out in muscle memory, sping her arm.


    This was the deciding moment.


    CLASP


    "Hrng!" Hever gritted his teeth as he felt unbelievable force, pushing against him. The attack threatened to twist him along with it if he wasn''t careful. He exerted every ounce of his grip strength to maintain hold of it.


    And yet;


    BOOM!!


    (''Shit-'')


    The attack mmed into his gut, churning his flesh.


    The rotational force increased the amount of time he needed to sessfully intercept, redirect and swing her.This content ? N?v/elDr(a)m/a.Org.


    He wasn''t able to adjust the trajectory quick enough.


    Fae''s power in that moment had reached close to the limit a Martial Apprentice could achieve. Not a single person could remain calm in the face of such a disy.


    DRIP DRIP


    "Huff... huff..." Hever exhaled as he ignored the flesh wound the Whirlpool had inflicted on him.


    Fae simply watched him.


    The match was as good as decided.


    "What are you waiting for?" Hever calmly asked as he took his stance. "The fight isn''t over until the supervisor deres it over. Come, I still stand."


    The solemness of his unwillingness to admit defeat, no matter, what earned the admiration of the spectators as well as his opponent.


    "You''re correct." Fae took her stance. "It appears I was the onecking."


    What ensued was a long series of devastating blows, until eventually Hever copsed.


    "Winner; Apprentice Fae Duhan." The supervisor dered.


    The match earned a loud round of apuse as both fighters shook hands.


    "What a great fight." Rui told Fae as soon as they met up. "Good job, both of you." He said, turning to Hever.


    "Thank you." Hever calmly replied, having joined them.


    They all conversed as they talked about the fight, the matchups, the preliminary contest. As among the best of Martial Apprentices of their generation in the Academy, they had much to talk about.


    "Only one more day." Fae huffed. "Even if I win my next match, my chances are all but over unfortunately."


    "The same is true for me." Hever agreed. "Furthermore, your next match is not going to be easy to win."


    "Indeed." Fae said, as she nced at Nel, who was walking towards them after having been fully healed. Blood loss was a bit moreplicated to heal and not something that happened quickly, not with low-grade potions.


    "Nel." Rui addressed. "How are you?"


    "Good." Nel shrugged, before throwing apetitive grin at Rui. "Next time I won''t lose."


    Rui smiled wordlessly.<sub> </sub>


    Nel turned, grinning at Hever. "Hehe, you lost to palm girl. Don''t worry, I''ll avenge you tomorrow."


    Hever and Fae simply stared at him as heughed to himself.


    "It''s been a long time." Nel said, facing Fae with a mischievous grin. "You refused to fight me back then. because I wasn''t an Apprentice back then. Well... I am now."


    "And we''ll be fighting tomorrow." Fae smiled wryly.


    "I am interested in the oue of that fight." Hever remarked. "However, the main act of the show tomorrow is surely..."


    He nced at Rui and Kane wordlessly.


    Rui was ranked number one and Kane was ranked number two. They had the two highest scores and were scheduled to fight tomorrow.


    Their fight would decide the oue of the preliminary contest.


    Whoever won would go on to be the representative of the Hajin branch of the Martial Academy.


    One would expect to see restrained tension between them.


    Yet where it was supposed to be, there was none.


    The two interacted along with each other as if there was nothing to be said regarding the matter.


    Unbeknownst to him, the two had already longe to an agreement on the issue.


    There was nothing more that needed to be said.


    Rui shrugged at his remark. "Personally, I''m quite interested in their fight as well." He said gesturing to Nel and Fae.


    This wasn''t a lie.


    Two years ago, they had fought each other in the Martial Entrance Exam, securing first and second in the third round of the Martial Entrance Exam. However, their battle never reached a conclusion in the end. Rui had always wondered who would have won if they got fight till the very end.


    Now, he would get to witness both of them going all out. Even if their chances of bing representative were zero, they would not hold back and go all-out nheless.


    This was another matchup Rui wasn''t entirely sure about.


    There wasn''t an obviouspatibility advantage either side had. Fae definitely had much more offensive power than Nel did. Than anybody else did. Her speed and defense were quite respectable too.


    On the other hand, Nel was much faster, more agile and more durable than she was.


    Considering their personalities, temperaments and fighting styles the fight was likely to turn into a slugfest. This was the norm for both of them, and he didn''t think either one of them would deviate from this established pattern.


    If so, the fight would boil down to who was able inflict more damage to the other quicker.


    Nel was an absolute beast that couldunch extremely powerful attacks extremely quickly. The sheer rate at which he could inflict damage was extremely. In a head-on slugfest, there were very few that were in the same league as him.


    Fae was one of them.


    Every time he thought about her explosive palms, he found it difficult to bet against them. Especially when he thought about her Whirlpool attack. She had elevated her pinnacle lethal power to a much higher realm than Nel did.


    However, Nel''s defensive and evasive measure were far greater than Fae''s.


    Rui shook his head. He could go round and round about the matter with endless analysis and conjecture.


    In the end, he would find out. The fight would unfold and oue would tell him what he wanted to know.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 228 Clash

    "Who do you think is gonna win?" Rui asked.


    Kane shrugged. "They''re both freaks."


    "You''re one to talk." Rui grumbled.


    "Fae will win." Milliana confidently added.


    "I found Fae to be much harder to fight." Dalen said.


    "As did I." Hever calmly added.


    "Hmmm¡­" Rui turned. He didn''t necessarily think that meant Fae was stronger than Nel.


    Fae possessed a pretty decentpatibility advantage against both Dalen and Hever. Against Hever, although her regr attacks were ipatible and disadvantaged against him, her trump cards were perfectly suited to taking him down. His passive and counter-offensive fighting style were both perfect for her to leverage her trump card.


    Dalen on the other hand was a defensive fighter, he had no choice but to tank Fae''s attacks. Her offense inflicted most damage on his defense than his offense did against her. It was apletely symmetric battle where she had a strong advantagepared to someone like Nel, who''s offense Dalen could likely endure longer.


    Up on the ring, the fight was soon tomence.This content ? N?v/elDr(a)m/a.Org.


    "Take your stances." The supervisor instructed.


    "Hehe¡­" Nel grinned. "Today''s the day we decide who the stronger one is."


    "Indeed." Fae took her stance. She tucked her right palm upside-down at her waist, coiled like a viper waiting tosh out. Her left palm faced Nel as she crouched.


    Almost every single onlooking Martial Apprentice sweated inwardly at that sight as unpleasant memories welled up. At this stage, almost all of them had fought Fae, with Nel being her final opponent, and all of them had faced her fearsome offense.


    Nel''s grin grew wider and feral. He crouched, letting his arms dangle freely.


    "Begin!" The suoervisormenced the match.


    BOOM!


    The two of them leapt at each other with unadultered ferocity!


    They unleashed a maelstrom of explosive blows.


    BOOM!!!


    RUMBLE


    Their shes shook the very ground as an unprecedented amount of power was unleashed!


    "Hm?" Rui''s eyes flew wide open in shock as the heavy seismic vibrations rocked him, resembling an earthquake threatening to disrupt his bnce!


    Every single one of their attacks sted through the air with explosive momentum. The unyielding sts of wind shoved against the Martial Apprentice wave after wave. Even breathing was starting to take more effort!


    Every single Martial Apprentice gaped with unfiltered shock. Not a single one of them was unperturbed.


    The absurd power that the two were outputing was too unnerving. One could scarcely believe that Martial Apprentices were capable of such offensive prowess.


    Faeunched few attacks, yet every single attack was immensely charged. While Nel had much less striking power but threw more attacks.


    The Martial Apprentices spectating this fight braced their seatbelts in excitement, enjoying an amazing disy of power.


    Yet, the bnce had already begun to shift.


    BAM!


    Nel propped up a double-armed guard as Fae''s palm thrust crashed into it.


    BAM BAM BAM!


    Fae relentlessly threw a flurry of attacks as Nel was pushed back into a defensive position. Even with his rock solid defense, a nunber if bruises had begun umting on his arms.


    Everyone stirred at that sight!


    Fae was starting to dominate the slugfest!


    Nel''s pure offensive and defensive prowess as failed against Fae''s unparalleled power on-by-one!<sub> </sub>


    The meaning of this was undoubtedly clear.


    Fae was the unparalleled strongest in a head-on striking contest!


    BOOM!


    A powerful impact pushed Nel away. He leapt back, disengaging.


    "Hahaha¡­" Heughed. "I lost the punching battle. No one''s ever beaten me and pushed me back head-on before!"


    Fae remained silent as she charged at him, not intending on giving him time.


    "I may have lost the battle¡­" He said as his grin grew more severe. "But I won''t lose the war."


    Fae''s attack charged at him just in time.


    WHOOSH


    Only to strike empty air.


    Nel cleanly dodged asnded clean strike on her abdomen through a hole in her stance.


    The two began exchanging strike again. However, there was something different.


    Nel began employing his remarkable speed not just offensively but also defensively.


    "That''s a sharp change from before." Dalen frowned.


    "His evasive maneuvering is sharp." Kane noted


    "He''s given up on trying to outstrike her head-on." Rui mused. "There was no way in which he could best her anyway. In that regard, I wouldn''t be surprised if she was the strongest in our entire generation frankly."


    "I would." Hever said.


    Rui raised his eyebrow at that statement. Hever should a very thorough understanding as a counter-offensive specialist strong Fae was. Why would he be surprised at that statement?


    "Ah¡­" Kane realized what Hever meant. "Yeah, true I guess."


    Rui scrunched his face in confusion. "What do you guys mean?"


    They exchanged meaningful nces.


    "Not much." Kane said. "Just that it''s hard to take the title of best of anything in our generation. Not as long as Fiona Roschem is part of it."


    Rui''s eyes sharpened at that name. He had heard that name before. Fae herself had mentioned her as well.


    Fiona Roschem. The strongest.


    The three of the strongest Martial Apprentices he knew had mentioned her name, and her prowess.


    Rui turned back, facing Fae.


    Every single strike was stronger than his strongest Flowing Canon.


    If he had to fight Fae without his evasive tactics and the VOID algorithm, how long would hest?


    (''Maybe a minute, if I''m lucky.'') Rui mused. Even if he did managed not get knocked out in that time or lesser, he would certainly be a mangled mess at the end of the ordeal.


    Yet, despite this, she was not the strongest?


    Furthermore, Fiona was supposed to be an all-rounder. Just how abyssmally strong was she to be able match or surpass Fae in offensive striking despite being an all-rounder?


    What kind of a monster was she?


    Rui shook his head, putting asides such thoughts. He would find out eventuslly, if he won. For now, he turned his attention to the ongoing fight.


    Nel and Fae were caught in an intense sh, however, Fae was no longer dominating, Nel had be remarkably harder to deal with now that he dodged arge proportion of her attacks.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 229 No Second Chances

    WHOOSH


    BAM!


    Nel swerved out of a palm attack, as heunched wild haymaker at Fae. She grimaced, proceeding tounch a flurry of attacks.


    WHOOSH WHOOSH POW


    Out of three, only one found its mark.


    Although Nel didn''t have the effective feints of the Phantom Step technique, he did have his immense speed and agility. He was much faster than Fae without a doubt.


    POW POW POW


    Suddenly Fae managed tond three hits square.


    "She sacrificed power for speed." Rui nodded, having expected this. This was amon tactic she employed against slippery opponents. She''d used it against himself and Kane as well.


    Powerful weighted attacks usually needed greater distance to be elerated over, they were more obvious and were easier to detect and predict, all of these factors made them easier to avoid. Speedy jabs however usually travelled a much shorter distance, they were much harder to detect and predict.


    "Why isn''t she using that lethal attack she used against you and Hever?" Dalen frowned.


    "Probably because she can''t reallynd it." Rui replied. "That attack isn''t easy tond and is easy to detect because how much she needs to twist and curl her arm. It also takes longer tond than her other palm attacks. Although she is able tond these speedy jabs, that doesn''t mean she cannd her Whirlpool palm."


    He paused, turning to face the fight, before continuing. "Though if she doesnd it...."


    She would gain a very decisive advantage. The lethality of that attack far surpassed the lethality of Nel''s offense. This was the downside of his Martial Path, he couldn''t use any techniques that would increase the lethality of his attacks beyond what his body could normally offer.


    The question was how was she going to aplish this?


    The situation was quite simr to Rui''s fight with Nel. He needed tond the Stinger as well. Eventually, he managed tond it cleanly with a long and borate strategy as well as several techniques, the VOID algorithm and most significantly; some psychological tricks.


    Fae would likely be unable to replicate Rui''s methods.


    Shecked far too many things. Shecked the techniques he needed for the strategy to seed; The Phantom Step technique and the Blink. She certainlycked the VOID algorithm.


    And sacrificing false modesty, Rui knew shecked his cognitive capabilities by virtue of not having a double-reincarnated mind.


    WHOOSH


    POW POW POW


    Nel cleanly avoided a palm thrust, smoothly throwing three jabs at her. He had begun to get the hang of using his evasiveness against her. This was not something he was ustomed to, in the entire preliminary contest, Fae was the only one who had forced him to back down and fight evasively pretty much entirely.


    Even Rui only managed that by spamming the Stinger, which would have been foolish and reckless if not for his resourceful tactic.


    Heunched a weighted strike at her.


    BAM!


    To his surprise, she didn''t defend against it.


    BAM!!


    A powerful weighted blownded on him, pushing him back.


    She abandoned her defense, ignoring the damage he caused in exchange fornding an even stronger attack on him.


    "That''s a good strategy." Rui nodded in approval. "Frankly, she''s not getting anywhere even with her speedy jabs. She decided to gamble and go all-in. She tossed aside her defense and dedicated everything to offense."


    "Would that really help all that much?" Kane wondered.


    "It certainly would." Dalen nodded. "Defense takes physical and mental capital. It restricts your movements, consumes your attention and energy. If you forget about it, you''ve removed yourself of a lot of shackles."


    Rui nodded. "The downside is that you''re going to be punished with damage."<sub> </sub>


    Her conditioned had worsened already, each attack from Nel left a bruise on her fair skin, inflicting pain and damage on her unguarded abdomen.


    WHOOSH


    POW


    Nel avoided a strike,nding haymaker on her.


    WHOOSH


    He ducked sharply as a palm attack almost crashed into him. Ever since she abandoned her defense and went all-out, dodging attacks had be much harder. He was only able to dodge half of them as the other halfnded square on him.N?vel/Dr(a)ma.Org - Content owner.


    POW POW


    He leapt back after Fae smacked him twice, chasing after him immediately.


    WHOOSH


    He spun about a palm attack from her, infiltrating her stance.


    However, Fae was prepared. Her right arm twisted and curled as sheunched a Whirlpool attack straight at him.


    Rui was impressed. She had waited for a moment when he was super close to her tounch her Whirlpool attack. It was only at this range could she possibly have had chance atnding her Whirlpool at him.


    Her palm spun as it shot forward.


    But.


    Not before Nel''s foot crashed into her jaw.


    BAM!


    Having abandoned defense for the most part, the unadultered power of Nel rocked her head, disorienting her.


    Nel didn''t let the go of the opening!


    BAM BAM BAM!


    He threw a flurry of weighted strikes against her.


    POW!


    A wild haymaker crashed into her head.


    The damage done in her already disoriented state was too much.


    THUD


    She copsed.


    It was over


    "Winner: Apprentice Nel!" The supervisor dered, after verifying she was knocked out.


    Rui shook his head mncholically. The fight truly could have gone either way. If Nel had gone for that kick just a momentter, or for another attack Fae would have sessfullynded the Whirlpool attack in all likelihood.


    Once shended the attack, the match would have been over, Nel''s condition would have deteriorated quickly, like Rui''s had back then and within five minutes, his condition would have been too deste to possibly defeat Fae.


    Fae would have continuednding strikes, at an even greater rate than she had before thanks to his plummeting condition and eventually she would have pressed for a win and gone onto knock him out either by a palm strike or had him bleeding until he was unconscious.


    But no.


    There were no second chances.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 230 Commence

    "Shame." Rui shook his head. "But at the end of the day, it is what it is."


    Nel met up with them once he got off the ring, grinning ecstatically. He was immediately bombarded with biddings of congrattions.


    "Great fight." Rui told him.


    "It was awesome." He grinned. "Wish we could fight more, but this thing ends today right?"


    "Yeah." Rui said. "One way or another. But you can fight us even in the future."


    "Hehe... I sure will." He said as he each of them. "All of you."


    Soon, Fae joined them, after being healed up, with a dismayed expression.


    "Why the long face?" Kane asked teasingly.All rights ? N?velDrama.Org.


    "Shut up." She red at him.


    "You came pretty close." Rui consoled her.


    "Indeed." Hever agreed. "Just the slightest difference and the match could very well have gone down a different path."


    "Yes, but it didn''t go down that way." She sighed. "The fact that it went the way it did was mainly my fault. I still have many shorings to fill up before I can be satisfied with myself."


    "Heh." Nel smirked. "We can fight again when you''re satisfied. No, there is no need to wait that long, we can fight today again!"


    Everyone ignored the battle maniac.


    "On the bright side, dissatisfaction pushes you to grow stronger." Rui smiled. "You''re probably more motivated than you would be if you''d won. It''s the same with me too."


    They all bantered for quite some time, shifting from ce to ce every time one of them had a match.


    Rui''s fight with Kane had been rescheduled to be thest match of the day due to ''logistical issues''. An excuse that Rui found to be total nonsense, of course. The Academy was overflowing with logistical support, the idea they would be unable to hold the Rui''s match with Kane was just silly.


    Headmaster Aronian was unterally the cause for this. Rui could almost picture the old man stroking his beard with a mischievous grin as he rescheduled their match to be thest for the sake of suspense, tension and entertainment.


    Rui shook his head with resigned amusement. It wasn''t particrly a big deal, so it didn''t really matter when the match happened today as long as it did happen today.


    And soon, it came.


    "Apprentices Rui Quarrier and Kane Arrancar. Your final match is soon tomence, please be at the assigned ring." A staff member told them.


    They nodded solemnly.


    "Good luck to both of you." Fae wished.


    "Looking forward to a good fight." Hever calmly told them.


    "Fight hard." Nel instructed.


    They left after epting the well-wishes of their friends.


    Rui didn''t even need to look around.


    Everybody was there.


    Everybody.


    The Squire instructors, the staff, every single Martial Apprentice, even the Explorer students had gathered to witness this momentous fight.


    This fight would decide which of the two of them would represent all of them in one of the most prestigious Martial contests in the entire Martial Festival!


    How could they not be there?


    How could they not want to be there?


    Their emotions trickled into the air, saturating the atmosphere.


    Excitement. Uncertainty. Anticipation.


    The very air tingled with the various emotions floating about. Even breathing it became harder, as everyone held their breaths as the two Martial Apprentices boarded the ring and faced each other.


    They didn''t say a word.


    They didn''t exchange well-wishes, or trash-talk.


    They simply stared at each other.


    Even though Kane''s expression was neutral, Rui could see a meaningful look in his eyes.


    A meaning that only he understood.


    A meaning that only he was supposed to understand.


    And understand, he did.<sub> </sub>


    A silent pressure built-up.


    Theck of emotion. Theck of aggression. Theck of exchange.


    These did not ease the atmosphere.


    No.


    They hardened it.


    The two of them weighed upon everyone else pushing down everything else. Even the Martial Squires weren''t drawing attentions to themselves, they too had gathered to bear witness to this battle.


    "Take your stances." The supervisor instructed. His voice cutting through the frozen taut atmosphere.


    Kane began lightly hopping between his feet. A dynamic stance that allowed him to shift to max speed in any given direction as quickly as possible. His hands were loosely brought in front of him to abdominal height, allowing for speedy jabs.


    A silent, sharp pressure could be felt when one looked at his eyes. Some even shivered.


    In the past month, out of all the Martial Apprentices that had partaken in the preliminary contest, none had left a greater impact and impression on everybody than Kane Arrancar.


    All of them had faced him.


    And all of them had felt helpless against his perverse formidability. All of them distinctly remembered the experience of being relentlessly harassed and bullied by an invisible shadow, putting up futile and meaningless resistance.


    How could anyonepete with that?


    And yet.


    "Fuuu..." Rui closed his eyes.


    ck.


    There was darkness.


    There was a void.


    And VOID.


    Even when his eyes were closed, he could see his Martial Path. He could endlessly stare deep into its depths, deep into its void unfalteringly


    He yearned to walk down its path every second.


    Step by step.


    Yes, step by step.


    This fight was just that.


    Another step.


    His concentration trickled, gathering bit by bit.


    His concentration sharpened.


    His mind converged.


    He was ready.


    He opened his eyes, throwing a simple nce at Kane.


    The simplest of gestures.


    And yet.


    Everyone''s eyes widened.


    They widened in shock as they felt boundless weight erupt from within him.


    Even the Martial Squires raised an eyebrow, surprised.


    Just how much depth did this young boy possess?


    His pitch-ck eyes greedily consumed the very light around them, seeing through everything, seeing through everyone. Those eyes made one feel as transparent as ss.


    Kane''s mouth cracked into an almost indiscernible smile.


    Rui brought his guard up, as he centered his legs, crouching them.


    It was a stance that emphasized defense, bnce and stability.


    He was ready. It was time.


    The final battle was about tomence.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 231 Miracle

    "B-Begin!" The supervisormenced the battle.


    And like clockwork, Kane sashayed out of reality with the Void Step technique.


    The battle had begun.


    Rui pushed his mind to the very limit as Primordial Instinct and Seismic Mapping worked overtime as they did their best to pick anything they could on Kane''s movements.


    This time, however, he didn''t close his eyes. His eyes darted around.


    Rui could sense Kane was circling around him at a distance of roughly five meters.


    He simply waited.


    Suddenly, there was a change.


    Kane rushed in towards him.


    Yet, Rui didn''t react.


    He had reached.


    Yet, Rui didn''t move.


    POW POW POW


    Kane threw several jabs at Rui from the side.


    WHOOSH


    Rui finally made a move, but only after he was struck. He threw a heavy haymaker in the direction of the attacks, but they merely hit empty air.


    BAM


    A jab struck his face from the other side.


    WHOOSH


    Rui once again swung only after Kane had struck him.


    He refused to attack before Kane attacked him, attacking only after Kane had struck him.


    In the eyes of everyone spectating, Rui was helpless. He was merely trying to fight Kane the same way they had all already tried.


    The sighed in disappointment.


    This was the final match.


    This was also the match that would decide who would be chosen as representative of the Academy in the Martial Contest in the Martial Festival.


    And yet, the oue seemed to be already decided.


    Rui was trying to hit Kane immediately as Kane hit him, since Kane would be close to him the moment he struck Rui.


    However, this wasn''t a genius strategy. All of them had tried the exact same strategy, and all of them failed.


    Kane''s evasiveness was simply too damn good. He could easily avoid their desperate measure to strike him, especially when they couldn''t even see him.


    Rui was clearly trying the same thing in their eyes, meaning that he was unable to sense Kane either, correct?


    Wrong.


    None of them knew Rui had mastered Primordial Instinct and Seismic Mapping. Or the fact that these two techniques together were able to crack a dent in the invincible armour of the Void Step technique.


    Rui hadn''t told any of them.


    Furthermore, these techniques were not visually shy. It was almost impossible to directly infer that a person had mastered Primordial instinct and Seismic Mapping simply by looking at them.


    Not even Kane knew that he had mastered these techniques.


    Nor did he know that Rui could constantly sense the direction he was in and get a vague sense of how far he was from himself.<sub> </sub>


    Rui did not intend to haphazardly reveal this like Nel did. Unlike Nel, he was a resourceful, tactical and intelligent fighter who made use of everything he had.


    He yed the role of the blindsided victim who had fallen prey to the miracle of the Void Step technique like many others in this preliminary contest.


    He endured all the punishment that Kane dished out. Taking all of them.


    He was biding his time.


    For the right time.


    The right ce.


    He truly had one chance, and one chance only.This content ? N?v/elDr(a)m/a.Org.


    If he failed, his task would be immeasurably harder. Furthermore, with how much he had put to stake, if he failed, he would be far too lost to be able to turn the tables around.


    Down outside the ring, their friends spectated the match with great concentration.


    "A." Nel grumbled. "Void boy''s getting pushed around by vanish boy."


    The rest of them sighed, feeling a bit depressed. Kane had pushed around all of them dominantly as well, and it seemed the same was inevitably happening.


    Only Nel had managed to not to lose against him.


    "Shame." Fae sighed. "I hoped the match would be morepetitive but..."


    "Seems like Kane is set for the win." Hever noted. "Not a surprising oue. As brilliant of a fighter as Rui Quarrier is, there are hurdles that simply cannot be bypassed by purely tactics alone. At this rate, he will be knocked down or ringed-out."


    "Tsk." Nel tutted grumpily. "If I were in his shoes, I would have kicked his ass!"


    People threw a strange look at Nel at those words.


    "You already tried..." Fae nced at him with a frown. "And failed to kick his ass."


    "Hmph." He snorted. "That was a long time ago. A man grows."


    "That was a few days ago." Hever corrected. "And you''re still a minor."


    "Shut up!" Nel barked, sparking amotion.


    Fae simply shook her head, turning back to the fight, staring at Rui. There was nothing else to look at. Fights with Kane were fascinating, yet they grew boring to most spectaters after some time because no one had any idea what was happening.


    "Which one do you think will win?" Squire Dylon asked as his sharp eyes followed Kane''s movements effortlessly.


    The Apprentice-level version of the Void Step technique was an almost invincible technique in the Apprentice Realm. Yet the powerful minds of the Martial Squires could resist Kane''s misdirection entirely.


    "Hard to say." Squire Kyrie replied passively.


    "Ohe on." Dlyonined. "Don''t be a spoilsport. I put ten coins on Kane winning."


    "As do I." Squire Helen chirped, sparking several more Martial Squires to follow suit.


    "Hmph..." Squire Kyrie. "Then I''ll bet on Rui."


    "Huh?" Dylon tilted his head in confusion. "Really? Rui? Have you grown dull over the years?"


    "I guess we''ll find out." Squire Kyrie replied unperturbed as she gazed straight at Rui.


    His eyes held an unyielding determination beneath his fa?¡ìade. This was not stubborn perseverance, nor resigned resistance.


    Those were the eyes of one who believed they could win. Those were the eyes of one who was willing to do anything to do anything to win.


    She did not want to bet against those eyes. Her instincts told her that the fight was not over, and that the oue was far from settled.


    Although she bet on him, she was curious as to why she felt that way, and how the battle would unfold.


    What kind of miracle would that boy conjure up this time?


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 232 Exploit

    POW POW POW


    WHOOSH


    Kane peppered Rui with many strikes, evading a wild haymaker smoothly. On the outside, it seemed as though Kane was furiously punishing Rui, determined to win.


    Yet unbeknownst to anybody, perhaps even Rui himself, Kane was rather mncholic. He truly hoped Rui had a way to defeat him, but it seemed this wasn''t the case. It had been quite some time since the match had begun, yet as time passed by, the odds of victory of Rui seemed to grow dimmer and dimmer.


    Rui soon abandoned offense and focused purely on defense, being pushed to the edge bit by bit. Although his defense was solid, not being able to engage in any proactive defense because he couldn''t see Kane''s attacks meant that even Kane''s meagre offense was able to push him back and secure more and more space over time.


    BAM!


    Kane hit Rui with a powerful pushing kick, shoving him to the edge of the ring.N?vel/Dr(a)ma.Org - Content owner.


    Kane sighed to himself.


    It was time.


    He rushed towards Rui from an unconventional angle with a charged attack and a heavy attack.


    Every detail of this fight would reach the ears of his family, one way or another, they had too much influence.


    How could he possibly justify not taking this juicy opportunity?


    He couldn''t, especially when he exploited such opportunities in all his previous matches, and the fact that it was, frankly,mon sense.


    He sighed inwardly. It was a shame. But he didn''t intend to me Rui. He had done his best and it was unfair to expect more than that.


    Suddenly, a chill went up his spine as he reached Rui. Kane''s eyes widened as he saw the briefest of grins crack from Rui''s mouth.


    Suddenly Rui crouchedunching an incredibly swift sweeping kick towards Kane, aiming to trip Kane.


    Kane immediately understood. He was moving so fast that losing his bnce while moving towards at the edge of the ring would instantly mean he would fly out of the ring. Rui''s crouching sweeping kick seemed to be aimed at ringing out Kane or at least a simultaneous ring-out with both of them for a draw.


    But how did Rui know when and where tond this attack?


    He didn''t know.


    But it didn''t matter.


    Kane leapt high into the air, dodging the attack cleanly. The easiest way to avoid amitted sweeping kick.


    Yet what happened next shocked him.


    WHOOSH


    The attack disappeared.


    It was a feint!


    Rui hadn''t moved much, just enough for a feint.


    Kane''s eyes flew wide open as his he stared at Rui, who stared right back at him with an ecstatic grin.


    PEW!<sub> </sub>


    Rui''s right toe soared, cutting through the air as Rui propelled forward as fast as he could.


    This was his goal!


    Even if Rui was vaguely aware of Kane''s position at all times, it wasn''t enough. Kane''s evasive skill and capability was so high he could easily avoid Rui''s attacks even if Rui knew where he vaguely was at. This was obviously true, Kane was capable of avoiding Rui quite well even when Rui could see him, there was no contest when Rui couldn''t see him.


    So, what could Rui do?


    The answer was simple, either outmaneuver Kane''s evasiveness with brute speed or restrict Kane''s evasiveness.


    The former was frankly impossible. Perhaps if Rui could see Kane he might have managed with a well-timedbination of Blink and Phantom Step, but if he could not see Kane, then Blink waspletely useless.


    One of the few solutions he had managed to think about via the VOID algorithm was the very solution he had employed.


    If Kane was mid-air, then his evasiveness was almost entirely useless. He had feinted amitted sweeping kick, where he threw everything into it, meaning it would be hard to do anything else. This gave Kane the confidence to leap to avoid it, especially when he was under the impression that Rui couldn''t locate him.


    This was his blunder.


    He was mid-air. He couldn''t really avoid attacks.


    The Stinger was normally not a threat to Kane. Even Nel had avoided them, Kane could avoid themfortably.


    But, that was when his feet where on the ground.


    His eyes widened as he realized that this must have been part of Rui''s n from the very start. Everything that had happened so far had happened because Rui was waiting for this very moment!


    Kane threw up his guard


    POW!


    The Stinger plunged into his bicep, digging deep. Rui, of course, had no idea where the Stinger hadnded on Kane''s body. He simply struck in a way that would cause as much damage as possible.


    Unfortunately, the bicep was not a vital.


    Kane immediately retreated, but the damage was already done. Even if the bicep wasn''t a vital, the damage done was quite significant.


    The pain and shock the Kane experienced broke his Void Step technique, which required delicate execution. Rui refused to let go of the opportunity.


    BAM!


    He managed to get in at the very least one more jab, before regaining his bearings and reusing the Void Step technique.


    But the damage was done.


    His movements weren''t as easy as before. His right arm wasrgely incapacitated, making it harder to use it help with bncing his weight which was very necessary in maneuvering. Furthermore, there was the blood loss. Perhaps if he had time to minimize the blood loss and tie up the wound with a piece of his uniform, he might have been able to minimize the loss to hisbat prowess.


    However, Rui did not let up.


    He threw the charade up in the air, and hounded after Kane. Now that he had already revealed that he could sense Kane, there was no point in ying dumb, furthermore, now was not the time to be passive, he needed to exploit the opportunity he had finally generated. Constantly chasing after him prevented Kane from having time to gather his bearings and consolidate what could still consolidated.


    Only if he fully exploited the potential he had created, could he possible win!


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 233 Outcome

    Not a single person spectating was unperturbed.


    One moment, Rui was on the verge of defeat.


    The very next moment he sessfullynds his trump card on Kane, inflicting serious damage with Stinger!


    They all gaped in amazement.


    How did Ruind that attack on Kane at all?


    No one understood.


    The sheer manner in which hended the attack made it absolutely clear it wasn''t dumb luck. That was absolutely impossible.


    Furthermore, with the way Rui was running around the ring aggressively, it was clear that he was chasing Kane.


    What had changed?


    Did he develop a new way to sense Kane in the middle of the fight?


    "No... That''s impossible." Fae murmured. "But... that means he was able to sense Kane... from the very start?"


    Her eyes flew wide open in amazement.


    This revtion was unbelievable!


    But what amazed her even more was that instead of using this from the very start and hounding after Kane, he held it in as a trump card and used it at the very right moment and ce. If Fae was able to sense Kane she would not have used it in such a manner, she would likely have abused it from the very start and tried her very best to get a hit in on Kane.


    This is what most of them would have done. None of them would have allowed themselves to get bullied by Kane ever if they could avoid it.


    Yet Rui not only allowed himself to get bullied by Kane, but even used to his advantage to create an opening against Kane and gain a huge advantage.


    The blood drops scattered across the entire floor was testament to Rui''s to this!


    The only person to inflict a wound on Kane was Nel, and that was a minor wound that was bornrgely out of raw physical prowess and luck rather than the quality of his decision making.


    Now, Rui was winning!


    He chased and chased and chased.


    He wasn''t particrly bothered by the fact that his attacks still missed and he hadn''t touched Kane since the Stinger and blow immediately after.


    He knew that as long as he didn''t blunder, it was only a matter of time. Kane was no Milliana who would have been able to drag on the fight even in his condition forever until Rui ran out of gas.


    Kane began flickering in and out of everyone''s vision.


    The wound was taking its toll.


    Rui was also taking his toll by forcing him to go all-out with his speed. It was not easy maintaining top speed along with the Void Step. And it had be ten-fold harder with pain and blood loss.


    Soon, the odds snowballed against Kane.


    Pain, incapacitation and exhaustion had begun exacting their toll.


    POW


    Ruinded his third strike on Kane as he slipped up on Void Step technique.


    The jab struck his nose just barely, but the immediate pain and disorientation that came from it copsed his concentration on the Void Step techniqueplete.


    BOOM!


    Momentter, a powerful Flowing Canon crashed into his wound, causing him excruciating pain. Kane was not a defensive fighter, the Flowing Canon attack ravaged his arm.


    Rui had used Blink and Phantom Step tond the strike in his disoriented state. This caused even more disorientation, especially when he wasn''t a defensive fighter.


    It had snowballed too much.


    BAM BAM BAM


    It was over.


    Kane copsed, unconscious.


    He didn''t move.<sub> </sub>


    Everyone was shocked. Many people had already written Kane as the representative of the Academy. His ability was simply too perverse.


    Yet Rui overcame him with a brilliant tactic as well as formidable sensory prowess!


    This oue made one thing very clear to all of them.


    Rui Quarrier now held the position of the strongest!


    Although there were several close shaves, ultimately, he had a perfect win streak.


    Seventy-eight victories.


    Zero draws.


    Zero losses.


    Not a single person could avoid losing to him!


    "Winner; Apprentice Rui Quarrier!" The supervisor dered loudly, his voice echoing across the silent facility.


    Rui closed his eyes, exhaling.


    He had arrived.


    The profound weight of the realization reverberated through his entire being. He absorbed the impact, the waves of ecstasy and relief, as well as the excitement of participating in the Martial Contest.


    He would represent the Hajin branch of the Martial Academy in one of the highest levels of contest. He would go on to face fifteen of the best Martial Apprentices in his entire generation!


    He quivered slightly. He was unable to contain his excitement!


    The other fifteen representatives of the remaining Martial Academies were also among the very best of their Academies.


    What kind of monsters would Rui run into? What kind of Martial Art would these Martial Artists practice?


    Would he be able to win?


    He wanted to know.


    He wanted to find out.


    He clenched his fist, controlling himself.


    "Fuuu..." He exhaled, calming down. He waited patiently as the medical team healed Kane. He didn''t want to leave without his friend.


    "Hmm..." He groaned as his eyes opened, disoriented. "Wha...?"


    "Hey." Rui drew his attention to himself.


    "Rui...?" Kane''s eyes shed as he immediately recalled what had happened.


    "Ah..." An expression of relief and gratitude shed across his face. "Congrattions, and thanks."


    "Don''t mention it." Rui dismissed. "How are you feeling?"


    "Groggy." He said, getting up. "Man, thatstbo hurt like hell."


    "Heh, thanks." Rui smirked. "I enjoyed finally punishing you after you bullied me the entire fight."


    "Jerk." Kane grumbled, but his smile betrayed his emotions. He was truly happy, and truly proud. For the first time, he was actually excited for the Martial Contest.


    The two bantered as they met up with their friends.


    Rui was immediately bombarded with a flurry of earnest congratting wishes.


    "Thanks guys." Rui smiled. "Much appreciated, really."


    Suddenly, a voice called out to him.


    "Apprentice Rui Quarrier?" A staff member called out to him.


    "Hm?" Rui turned to her.


    "The headmaster has summoned you." She informed him. "Please head to the Headmaster''s office immediately."N?vel/Dr(a)ma.Org - Content owner.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 234 Names And Sects

    p "I wonder what Headmaster Aronian wants from you..." Fae pondered out aloud. "Probably not going to be as simple as superficial congrattions and pep talk."</anda>


    "I''ll find out soon enough." He shrugged. "I''ll catch you guyster."


    He left after they bade him goodbye, heading towards the Headmaster''s office.


    It had been a month since Rui had spoken to him, he had consulted him once before the preliminary contest had begun and now, he was visiting him as the representative of the entire Academy.


    He had arrived.


    Therge doors to the Headmaster''s office opened.


    Arge office came into his view as he gazed at the figure seated at the headmaster''s table.


    "Headmaster." Rui bowed deeply, partly because of the great awe and respect he had for vaunted Martial Masters, partly because the sheer weight of Headmaster Aronian''s mind pushing down on Rui,pelling him to bow.


    Every time Rui encountered him, he was reminded about how deep the Martial Path extended, and how shallow his own depths were. Any arrogance one might have incurred as a result of winning the preliminary contest would certainly been thoroughly dispelled.


    "Rui Quarrier." He spoke, stroking his flowing beard. "Come in."


    Rui walked in as the doors closed behind him.


    "First." He said, shing Rui a smile. "Allow me to congratte you on your victory in the preliminary contest. Congrattions on being chosen as the representative of the Hajin branch of the Martial Academies in the Martial Contest."


    "Thank you, Headmaster." Rui bowed once more.


    "Not at all, young man." He said dismissively. "You have truly earned it."


    Rui simply smiled at those words.


    "The reasons I summoned you, however..." Headmaster Aronian continued. "...are more than just merely congratting you."


    Rui simply listened, waiting for Headmaster Aronian to borate.


    "There is some paperwork that goes into being the representative, nothing burdensome rest assured. However, there are several personal details that need to be submitted. The one I want to bring to your attention is the fact that every representative generally submits the name of their Martial Art." Headmaster Aronian. "We will be requesting one from you, as well."


    Rui''s eyes shed at those words. He knew that Martial Artists named their Martial Art at some point. However, he had never paid too much attention to it. The VOID algorithm had always been his Martial Art in his mind.


    "As I''m sure you''re aware..." Headmaster Aronian told him. "We generally don''t hasten this process, which is why it''s never brought up in the Martial Academy by your instructors. The process of naming one''s Martial Art is rather profound, important and even sacred. The name you name it must truly resonate with you on a fundamental level. After all, the name of your Martial Art affects not just how others perceive your Martial Art, but also how you yourself perceive it. Such is the nature of the human mind. Names have power."


    Rui nodded, engrossed.


    The name of his Martial Art.


    Could he just call it the VOID algorithm? Perhaps.<sub> </sub>


    "There exist naming conventions in the Martial Community." Headmaster Aronian informed him. "Generally, the names of Martial Art begin with the actual core name of your Martial Art, followed by nouns that encapste how you view your Martial Art. Many view their Martial Art as an Art, and call it as such. Many view their Martial Art as styles ofbat, and thus name it as such. Many wish to emphasize on particr elements of their Martial Art and thus name it as such. So on and so forth."


    Rui nodded. "I understand.


    "I wished to inform you before you filled the paperwork." Headmaster Aronian told him. "Lest you be caught off-guard and hastily choose a name, and you''ll likely end up regretting it in the future."


    "Thank you for your consideration."


    "Not at all." Headmaster Aronian.


    Rui thought to himself.


    The name of his Martial Art.


    From the way Headmaster Aronian spoke about the matter, it certainly wasn''t going to be a light issue. He wanted to be careful about the matter. If names affected the way in which one viewed one''s Martial Art, then it wouldn''t be a stretch to say that an unsatisfactory name may even negatively affect one''s journey down their Martial Path.


    Which meant this wasn''t a light decision to be made.


    "Do I have to decide now?" He scratched his head.


    "Oh no, not at all." Headmaster Aronian denied. "Frankly, you have the right to refuse if you really want to. Refusing is a much better oue than just hastilying up with a name and regreting your choiceter. Anything but thetter is fine."


    Rui nodded. "Then I will take time and make a decision on the matter."


    "That you should." Headmaster Aronian stroked his beard. "Make sure you''re truly satisfied with the name, and if you aren''t satisfied, then there''s no need to rush it. But your Martial Art has matured to the point where you may already possess a name you''re satisfied with. I get the sense that you''ve tread deeper than most of your peers in your generation."


    "You tter me."


    "Hoho... Am I?" He threw a knowing nce at Rui.


    Rui didn''t reply, simply wryly smiling. Frankly, he wasn''t sure what to name his Martial Art. He would need to engage in deeper introspection before he could possible evene close to making a decision.


    "There are some more matters..." Headmaster Aronian said. "But one of them sticks out."


    Rui raised an eyebrow. "What matter is that, Headmaster?"


    "The Martial Union is not monolithic." The Headmaster seemingly randomly stated. "Like all human entities, it is subject to tribalism driven by differing mutual interests between different people within the upper echelons of the Martial Union. These different groups band together and work together and strive to fulfill themon interests they all hold."


    Rui tilted his head, confused. Why did the Headmaster randomly delve into such a topic?


    "Normally, it''s not something I would have taken upon myself to inform you of... But now that you have taken the position of representative, I do believe this is the best course of action." He said, before taking a deep look into Rui."


    "Tell me, what do you know of the Martial Sects?"


    This chapter upload first at  This belongs ? N?velDra/ma.Org.

 Chapter 235 Elaboration

    "Martial Sects?" Rui tilted his head in confusion.


    What were those? Certainly not something he was familiar with.


    "Hmm." Headmaster Aronian nodded. "Well, take a seat. This might take a while to exin."


    Rui sat down opposite to Headmaster Aronian, waiting for him to exin.


    "The Martial Union is amercial organization; this is one of its core functions." The headmaster revised. "There is an enormous market for Martial services from countless consumers and clienteles willing to pay for hiring Martial Artists for various services. The Martial Union serves as liaison between these consumers and the Martial Artists themselves, allowing for an incredibly smooth and regted exchange ofmissions and Martial services between the two sides."


    Rui nodded, being quite familiar with the way the Martial Union functioned.


    "As you know the Martial Union takes a fifty-percent cut of Martialmissions." Headmaster Aronian. "The reason for it being entitled half of themission is because the services it provides to Martial Artists and clienteles and consumer is indispensable. Without the Martial Union, there would be no avenue for Martial Artists to easily be able to easily ess countlessmissions that the Martial Union receives, processes, stores and organizes in an extremely user-friendly manner. This would be utterly impossible without a highly bureaucratic organization handling the immense documentation processing as quickly and smoothly as the Martial Union does. Furthermore, the intelligence and difficulty grades that are also indispensable to Martial Artists all require immense amount of funding."


    Rui nodded, agreeing. The Martial Union made life very convenient for Martial Artists. Without the Martial Union. Martial Apprentices would struggle to be able to ess themissions from clienteles and consumers of Martial services, there would be no extensive way for either side to contact the other. Furthermore, although not perfect, the intelligence and difficulty grade evaluations of the Martial Union were extremely useful, it minimized risk and maximized efficiency. Rui did not think that the Martial Union taking a hefty cut was particrly unfair, the services it was offering in return were quite substantial.


    "Naturally, acquiring such a hefty cut from allmissions inevitably means that the Martial Union umtes an enormous sum of money every year." The Headmaster continued. "The question is... what do we do with all that money?"


    Rui began understanding the direction this was going. "Paying the work andbour force of the Martial Union, the many staff members and the many other employees the Martial Union has hired. I imagine a sizable chunk of funds goes into the maintenance and repair of infrastructure too, stocking of supplies and other essential things that are needed to maintain the functioning of the Martial Union."


    "Correct." The headmaster nodded. "Running the Martial Union is more fund-intensive than you can possibly imagine, no doubt more than half of all funds are expended into the necessities that you mentioned."


    "The questions is..." He continued. "What do we do with the remaining funds?"


    Rui could feel the attention he was paying him, evidently the old man was finally getting around to the point after rambling on like old men generally liked to.


    Rui wasn''t sure, there were a number of obvious answers, he just wasn''t sure which on headmaster Aronian was looking for.<sub> </sub>


    "Do we primarily store all those funds in a treasury?" Headmaster Aronian asked. "Do we primarily invest those funds in side businesses? or perhaps we primarily invest those funds in territorial expansion?" He paused, throwing Rui an inquisitive look. "Do Martial Artists care for such things? What do Martial Artists care about the most?"


    Rui didn''t need to even think about this answer. "Power."


    ? "Correct." The headmaster nodded approvingly. "Martial Artists are generally not money mongers. We respect one thing between each other; power."


    Power was the very foundation of a Martial Artist, without it they were no different from normal humans. No, without it they were even worse. A Martial Artist without power was ipetent fool unworthy of the title of Martial Artist.


    "Power is what we seek." The headmaster continued. "Money cannot buy everything, but it can usually help with most things."


    "So the Martial Union spends its remaining funds on acquiring more power?" Rui asked. This made sense. The Martial Union was fundamentally drive by Martial Artists, who were driven by power. Power was indeed one of the most important pirs and interests of the Martial Union.


    "Indeed. And Martial power, specifically." He continued. "We invest a tremendous sum of funds every year into acquiring Martial power. In the form of research and development of Martial Art andbat."


    Rui''s eyes widened at those words. To think that his career in his previous life was in such high demand to the Martial Union.


    "All those countless Apprentice-level techniques that exist in the Apprentice library of the Martial Academy today." He said. "Did you think they fell from the sky or grew on trees? No, each one of those technique and trainings have been rigorously researched and developed by the research and development department of the Martial Union after many, many years and funds. The Martial Union ces a great amount of importance in this avenue. Only by investing arge amount of funds and research manpower into developing Martial power can the fundamental and foundational level of Martial Artists improve."


    This made a lot of sense to Rui. If not for this initiative, Martial Art would not grow stronger as generations passed. It was extremely difficult for this to ur naturally, because unlike technology, development of Martial Art was purely individualistic. One could not gather a bunch of Martial Artists and have them all collectively focus on developing one Martial Art. No, each Martial Artist developed their own Martial Art. This meant the development of Martial Art in the hands of Martial Artists alone was quite slow.


    "However, research and development is an extremely wide field in and of itself." Headmaster Aronian remarked. "There are manyrge avenues even within the field of Martial Art that can be researched. However, not everything can be researched, and some things are clearly more important. So how does the Martial Union conduct the decision-making process for the research and development fund allocation? How do we decide which avenue of research gets how much money?" The headmaster paused, before continuing. "This is where the Martial Sectse in..."


    Rui''s eyes narrowed. The old man had finally gotten to the point!


    This chapter upload first at  This belongs ? N?velDra/ma.Org.

 Chapter 236 Lot To Think About.

    "Not everyone agrees on how to allocate the budget for research and development." Headmaster Aronian continued. "Different Martial Artists in the Martial Union have different ideas on how these valuable funds ought to be allocated. Whether it be based on what they believe is best for Martial Art as a whole, or whether they desire a specific allocation because it benefits their Martial Art the most in the long run. Regardless of their intentions, not everyone agrees."


    p Rui nodded, understanding. An offense-oriented Martial Artist would want a disproportionate amount of research funding to be allocated to the research and development of offense-oriented techniques. A defensive Martial Artist would want the same for defense-oriented techniques and so on and so forth. This was quite a natural oue. Human beings were naturally self-centered.</anda>N?velDrama.Org owns this text.


    "The fund allocation is decided after immense deliberations and a voting session on the matter by the highest echelons of the Martial Union. Now, if you were one of them and you wanted to push for a specific allocation in these meetings, what would you do?" The headmaster asked.


    This reminded Rui an awful lot of political discourse and engagement that urred in governmental structures. Politicians often engaged in a lot of measures to try and push for certain direction policy making.


    Following that route of analogy...


    "I would find like-minded others who agree with me and band together to fulfill our mutual interests in regards to the allocation of funds." Rui answered.


    "Exactly." The headmaster nodded approvingly. "That is what has already long happened. Those groups have already been formed long ago, and continue to exist to further their own mutual interests in regards to the allocation of budgets. These groups are known as the Martial Sects."


    Finally, Rui understood. Martial Sects were no more than lobbying groups banded together to cooperate to ensure the fulfillment of their mutual interests in regards to the allocation of research funds.


    Rui grumbled inwardly, although he appreciated the contextual breakdown, couldn''t the old man have inly said that?


    "These Martial Sects are informal groups formed by Martial Artists with a simr mind and, usually, simr Martial Art, or atleast Martial Art of the same field." The headmaster continued, unaware of Rui''sints. "The Fire Sect is the Martial Sect that advocates for offense-oriented Martial Art research, The Lightning Sect is the Martial Sect that advocates for speed and maneuvering-oriented Martial Art research, the Earth sect is the Martial Sect that advocates for defense-oriented Martial Art research. These three are thergest of Martial Sects for obvious reasons. They cover the most important broadest of aspects of Martialbat."


    Rui grew engrossed into his exnations, the entire matter was extremely interesting and yet quite foreign to him. When he was a researcher, getting funds forbat research was quite difficult. But thebat researchers of this world were quite fortunate inparison, the Martial Union dumped tons and tons of research funding onto them every year.


    Rui felt a hint of envy. If he received such luxury in his previous life, he might have sessfully perfected the VOID algorithm.


    "There are other Martial Sects, of course. The Sun Sect is a Martial Sect centered around supplementary techniques. The Wind Sect specifically focuses on a smaller subset of maneuvering techniques centered around evasion. The Breathing Sect focuses on breathing-oriented techniques, the Poison Sect focuses on poison techniques and so and so forth." The headmaster exined. "These Martial Sects engage in various activities to fulfill their mutual interests."


    He paused before throwing a pointed nce at Rui. "One of those activities is roping in unaffiliated Martial Artists, particrly the newer and younger Martial Artists."<sub> </sub>


    He paused. "Particrly the talented and promising Martial Artists of the newer and younger generations."


    Rui''s eyes narrowed as he understood why headmaster Aronian had even brought this topic to him in the first ce.


    "The reason they do this is to increase the poption of the Martial Artists of their Martial Sect. They offer Martial Art techniques of their Sect at discounted prices, attracting unaffiliated Martial Artists to informally join their sects and learn and use their techniques. The reason they do this is to increase the number of Martial Artists using the techniques of their Sect. By doing this, they can demonstrate a greater need for research and development of the techniques of their Sect. After all, would you rather research Martial Art techniques that only a hundred Martial Artists use, or Martial Art techniques that ten thousand Martial Artists use?" He asked rhetorically.


    Rui nodded. This made sense. The greater the number of Martial Artists there using a certain type or field of techniques, then the greater the benefits of researching that particr type or field of techniques, since a greater number of Martial Artists would grow stronger by sessful research and development, in turn increasing the strength of the average Martial Artist more.


    "This is where youe in. Having more powerful Martial Artists would increase the political weight and capital of their respective Sects, and thus they sought out young talents like yourself, hoping to rope you in." The headmaster exined. "Especially now that you''ve been chosen as the representative of the Hajin branch, you have already entered the eyes of the Martial Sects."


    "I see..."


    Rui wasn''t sure how he felt about that. On one hand he was ttered and interested, on the other hand he was wary as well.


    "They will likely approach you, one way or another. And make rather tempting offers to you." The headmaster told him. "I would advise you to not offend them, but at the same time, be extremely careful with whatever decision you make. There is no need for haste or panic, the decision is important cannot be easily undone, therefore it must be made with immense scrutiny."


    "I understand." Rui nodded. "Thank you for your advice, I won''t be off-guard as much thanks to your warnings."


    Headmaster Aronian nodded. "You have much to think about. I''d suggest you take some time to give all of what I''ve told you some thought. You may go." He told Rui.


    Rui nodded, bowing deeply, before leaving.


    He did indeed have a lot to think about.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 237 Something To Look Forward To

    Rui headed back engrossed in thought. There was a lot consuming his focus and attention. There was a lot on his mind.


    Naming his Martial Art?


    What name ought he give it? Several generic names popped into his head but none of them really stood out to him. Headmaster Aronian had told him not to hastily pick one, and to only pick one that really satisfied him.


    Rui shook his head. He wasn''t feeling particrly inspired right now, so he put it off. He could spend more time on the matterter on.


    Then there was the issue of the Martial Sects, this was quite the interesting issue. Frankly, Rui would not mind joining a powerful Sect as long as they gave him a good enough deal. Otherwise, he would rather steer clear of the issue. However, easier ess to techniques of a particr Sect was quite attractive.


    However, he ran into a dilemma. He was an all-rounder; wouldn''t that mean it wasn''t particrly a good idea to practice the techniques of one particr Sect?


    Perhaps he should have asked headmaster Aronian to refer him to an all-rounder Sect, though he highly doubted such a Sect existed.


    Or whether it was even possible to join without a voluntary invitation from the Sect''s end.N?vel/Dr(a)ma.Org - Content owner.


    Ultimately, hecked too much information. But that wasn''t necessarily a problem. Headmaster Aronian was simply informing Rui to help him stay aware of the issue. So that he could be prepared mentally to some extent if he ever did run into one of the Martial Sects.


    But asides from that, this wasn''t an issue that required his attention any further. He would cross that bridge as and when it came.


    More importantly, there was the issue of the Martial Contest. Rui needed to get his shit together for it, otherwise he would lose. He could not afford to be distracted.


    Not that it was easy to get distracted.


    He was going to fight the strongest fifteen Martial Artists of his generation!


    How could his mind possibly wander to other things?


    What could possibly drown out his enthusiastic excitement for the event?


    However, even if he focused on it, there wasn''t much he could do about it at this stage. The Martial Contest was in the middle of the Martial Festival, he had no time to improve by any meaningful measure at all. The stage for growth was over, now he could only make the best of whatever he had. His confidence wasn''t as high as he would have liked it to be. The fact that there were four people in roughly the same tier of strength; Kane, Nel, Fae and Hever, was not particrly reassuring. It meant that his current strength level, while in the upper echelons of his generation was still some ways away from the peak.


    The other representatives in the Martial Contest would no doubt at the very least of a simr level to himself, to potentially much stronger.


    He would likely have as hard of a time against them as he did against the likes of his friends.


    The question was, what could he do in the two weeks before the arrival of the Martial Contest?


    There wasn''t much point in training, but at the very least he could condition his mind to be at its absolute peak.


    Over the next two weeks, the very least he could do is sharpen his focus and concentration to their absolute limits onto the Martial Contest.


    Clear out all distractions.


    Clear out everything else.


    Focus only and only on bringing out his very best.


    "Hey." Kane waved at him. "You''re back, that was quicker than I expected."


    He had been waiting for him.


    "Yeah." Rui told him. "There wasn''t much to it anyway."<sub> </sub>


    Kane nodded, not asking the details.


    "So." He continued. "What''s the n? You need a sparring partner?"


    Rui wondered about that. "If I feel like it. I''ll think about it. I''m definitely shutting myself out from all other activities. I want to immerse myself and bring myself to my peak before it''s time for the Martial Contest."


    Kane nodded. "Sure thing. I won''t be taking any missions in that time. So, you can just call me for anything you need okay?"


    Rui nodded. "Thanks."


    "Don''t worry about it." Kane waved his hand. He had been hating the arrival of the Martial Contest, but the moment Rui had been chosen as the representative of the Hajin branch, his attitude took a one-hundred-and-eighty-degree turn. He knew Rui had been aiming for this from the very start and wanted to see his friend do well. He was excited to see Rui''s performance.


    "The others told me tell you the same thing too." Kane added, remembering. "You beat us, and are now going to represent us, none of us mind helping you going all the way and bing the Martial Champion."


    Rui smiled. He was blessed to have good friends.


    "I''ll give them my gratitude when I see them."


    "So when do you n to start your isted training?"


    "Now." Rui replied. He had nothing better to do. Nor anything more important to do.


    "Are you nning on abusing potions again?" Kane sighed.


    "I''ll get a good night of sleep before themencement of the Martial Union." Rui said.


    "Gotcha." Kane replied. "Alright see ya. Let me know when you need anything."


    "Sure."


    * * * * * *


    "Young miss."


    "Hm?" A short petit girl turned, facing her attendant. She had short brown hair and silver eyes that sparkled with vibrant curiosity.


    "The results of the chosen representatives of the other Martial Academies were just sent by Master." The butler informed, holding a letter up.


    "Oh, finally!" She said, delighted, reaching her hand out for the letter.


    She immediately began pouring over the letter, mumbling as she read the letter. "Ohh.. Hm Hm. Ferlicia was chosen as the representative of the Ferlos branch eh? I get to see her after so long then~ Ah Ian was also chosen as a representative, tsk, expected but still annoying. Most of this is going as predicte- Hm?"


    Her eyebrows knitted in surprise as she read the final name. "Wait, Kane isn''t the representative of the Hajin branch? Who''s this Rui Quarrier?"


    "He''s a youngmoner Martial Apprentice who defeated young master Kane in the preliminary contest." The butler replied.


    "Heh~ Kane lost to amoner boy?" A mischievous smile lit up her face. "Hehe, more ammunition to tease him with. I wonder how strong this boy is though, to defeat Kane. In the Hajin branch, only Fae and Hever were at the level where they could have defeated him."


    "His record is a perfect win streak, he is undefeated." The butler added.


    "Something to look forward to then."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 238 True Festivity

    The Kandrian Martial Festival had arrived!


    The festive atmosphere in the entire nation had built-up for nearly a month prior until it erupted in full splendor. The streets were littered with decorations of various kinds as the emblem of the Martial Union; the face of Martial Art in the Kandrian Empire.


    There a huge number of events being held in all major towns, and Hajin was certainly no exception. As a popted urban trade hub of a town, as well as home to one of then sixteen Martial Academies in the Kandrian Empire, an immense number of festive activities hadmenced throughout the entire town.


    The Martial Academies had all held demonstrations of Martial Art in public, demonstrations of feats that Martial Apprentices were capable of, shy entertaining spars and other demonstrations that appealed to the average citizen.


    The local businesses also took full advantage of the Festival, setting uprge fairs with Martial Art festive ornaments and other domestic products of various kinds. These attracted an enormous number of people who attended them every day.


    "Hiyaah!" Fae threw a palm attack at a boulder with an exaggerated yell.


    CRACK CRACK CRACK


    Several visible cracks spread across the entire boulder.


    The crowd watching merrily erupted into cheers and apuses. It wasn''t everyday ordinary citizens got to witness what Martial Apprentices were actually capable of. The ordinary citizen rarely ran into Martial Apprentices on a day-to-day basis.


    Asides from manualbour, Martialmissions were far too expensive for most of them! The only reason they could hire lower Realm Martial Artists for manualbour was because thosemissions were rather cheap because most Martial Artistspleted them rather quickly, and the value ofbour was quite low to begin with.


    Otherwise, it was a rare sight. Most citizenscked a nuanced understanding of what Martial Artists were capable of, the Martial Festival would, of course, renew their memories, but because of its infrequency, the awareness of the matter never stuck.


    "Woooaah!" A child in the crowd squealed in awe and amazement. "Martial Artists are awesome! Is big brother Rui also like that?"


    "Indeed." Julian smiled. "Your big brother is also a strong Martial Artist."


    He turned back to the demonstration with a wistful look. "It''s a shame he isn''t able to join us yet, however."


    Rui had already long informed the orphanage of the fact that he was chosen as a representative of the Hajin branch of the Martial Academies. He had expressed his need to immerse himself in training and mental conditioning for the Martial Contest that would be held in Vargard, the capital town of the Kandrian Empire, in two weeks<sub> </sub>


    The Orphanage was quite ecstatic. Julian even promised to bring as many as he could to the town of Vargard as possible, although it wouldn''t be easy. However, none of them had wanted to miss this event.


    Rui would be participating in a national level event!N?vel(D)rama.Org''s content.


    Jus the very thought of it made all of them very excited.


    Furthermore, they would be travelling outside of Hajin and the Mantian region for the very first time in their entire lives! Most of them were born in Hajin and had been taken in by Lashara at a very young age, settling just outside the town of Hajin in the Quarrier Orphanage. Visiting the very capital of the Kandrian Empire, the town that housed the Royal Kandrian Pce was something they would normally not even be able to dream of.


    Julian had already begun making preparations for the lengthy four-day journey. Unfortunately, he wasn''t able to bring as many people as he would have liked. The recent expansion of the Orphanage he himself had funded meant that the current functioning of the Orphanage was rather tight.


    Only he Farion and Myra among the adults could go, that also limited the number of children they could take, since there only so many children three adults could manage. They had decided to bring as many adolescents as they could.


    Unfortunately, they couldn''t bring the younger children, it would simply be too much. Furthermore, the journey would be too burdensome and difficult for the children.


    Julian''s only regret was that Rui wasn''t able to join them today, but he understood how important this event was to Rui. Now there wasn''t much that could be done about it either, Julian would have to settle with spending time with Rui in thetter half of the month.


    There were numerous events going on, and Julian would have liked to visit them with Rui. Thankfully, it was likely this wish would still be fulfilled even in thetter half of the month. The Martial Families went all out with these kinds of events throughout the entire month. The demonstration they were watching was actually organized by the Duhan Family, a prestigious and powerful Martial Family in the Mantian region of the Kandrian Empire.


    Later today, an open Martial Apprentice tournament was being held by the Arrancar Family, another prestigious Martial Family that was actually based in their very own town of Hajin.


    The entirety of the Martial Community as a whole had been very proactive about their presence in the Martial Community. As the biggest proportion of the Martial Artist poption of the Kandrian Empire, this Festival was literally centered around them, how could they sit around quietly?


    An immense amount proactive initiative was taken by these Martial Families to increase the favourability and impression of Martial Art to the poption of the entire Kandrian Empire. In a way, the Kandrian Martial Festival was an avenue to advertise the power of Martial Art. Ultimately, Martial Artists were service providers, demonstrating the degree to which they were capable of providing the service. The influx of Martial Artmissions always increased substantially after every Martial Festival.


    The Martial Festival was aplex web of emotions and interests that interconnected in deep manners. No one knew the depth of it in its entirety, that was the true festivity of it to many.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 239 Naming Revelation

    Rui breathed in and out deeply.


    (''Focus.'') He told himself.


    He had been meditating for the past hour, after having finished a long sparring session with Nel. He taken time to recenter himself rather than rx.


    Inevitably his thoughts turned to his Martial Art and his Martial path.


    Ever since Headmaster Aronian told him about the part about naming his Martial Art, he had inevitably thought about it more frequently.


    He had never thought about it much since it wasn''t really something he was ustomed to. On Earth, although everybody did fight differently and uniquely, the variation was never big enough to have a special name for each unique fighting style.


    Yet this wasn''t necessarily the case in Gaia.


    The variance of Martial Art in this world was far greater than the variance of martial arts in his previous life, so the emergence of each unique and personal names for Martial Art was to be expected. But it never did click much for Rui.


    And now he often found himself stuck in regards to what he ought to name his Martial Art. There were several names that sprouted to mind.


    All-Devouring Water Style.


    Art of ck Water Style.


    Wet Void Style.


    These weren''t bad, except for thest one which even made him cringe. But none of them really struck him. They didn''t resonate with him like they should have.


    He even consulted his friends on the matter. He wanted to know how they had dealt with the naming of their Martial Art.


    "Dunno yet." Kane had simply shrugged. He hadn''t made much progress on that front and didn''t seem particrly eager to or overly concerned either.


    "I haven''t decided the name of my Martial Art yet." Fae had told him. "I wish to choose something I''m truly satisfied with."


    Surprisingly Hever and Nel had already chosen the names of their Martial Art. Hever wasn''t as much of a surprise, but Nel had only been a Martial Artist for a little over two months.


    However, one of the most insightful answers he received was when he consulted Headmaster Aronian more deeply on the matter.


    "One of the reasons we aren''t told to choose the name of our Martial Art earlier is because of its impact on ourselves, but also it bes difficult to find the name of your Martial Art so long as your Martial Artcks originality and uniqueness." Headmaster Aronian calmly exined.


    "Originality?" Rui tilted his head.


    "That''s right." Headmaster Aronian nodded. "A Martial Art that is no more than techniques built by others, is such a Martial Art truly original and unique?"<sub> </sub>N?velDrama.Org owns this text.


    Rui understood what he meant. So far, all the techniques of all the Martial Apprentice''s Martial Art hade from the Martial Academy, there was very little room for originality and uniqueness.


    "If you are unable toe up with a name that truly satisfies you, then it is a sign that your Martial Art isn''t uniquely personal, not enough, atleast. That is also the reason why I did not want to rush you, and told you that you had the right to refuse. If you are not ready, then it is what it is." Headmaster Aronian exined, pausing before continuing further. "Although you discovered your Martial Path rtively recently, you''ve developed it an incredible pace so I suppose I can tell you more."


    Rui listened attentively.


    "Every Martial Path is unique. Unique in the sense that they have unique starting points. However, if one''s Martial Art is not developed uniquely, then eventually your Martial Path will not long follow a unique trajectory. It will follow on paths that have been paved for you by others." He exined. "You will not grow stronger, and you will not be able to tread down your Martial Path any longer, for it will no longer be your own Path."


    "What are the negative consequences of this, specifically?" Rui asked. Although headmaster Aronian soundedpelling, he was talking rather vaguely and flowerily.


    "Hehe..." Headmaster Aronian chuckled. "Not an easy one to be convinced, are you?"


    Rui didn''t reply.


    "I''m sure you''re aware of the fact that the breakthrough to Martial Apprentice causes changes in the brain; permanent enhancements, correct?" Headmaster Aronian asked.


    Rui nodded, recalling his conversation with Julian during his Winter holidays. Back then he had conjectured that the enhancements affected the Cerebellum, the ipital lobe and the parietal lobe.


    "Do you think that this enhancement remains constant throughout the life of a Martial Apprentice? Or does it increase?" Headmaster Aronian.


    "I would imagine it increases." Rui replied.


    "It does, but not because of time spent, or the number of techniques explored." Headmaster Aronian exined. "Your brain bes more and more enhanced the more uniquely original your Martial Art is. The greater the personal and original development your Martial Art goes, the deeper down your Martial Path you tread, and the greater your brain is enhanced."


    Rui''s eyes flew wide open at this shocking revtion. In that case, developing your Martial Art with unique originality was much more beneficial than learning techniques from the Martial Academy!


    "The benefits of greater cognitive boosts, of course, cannot be overstated." Headmaster Aronian continued. "Greater reaction speed, greater mental fortitude and resistance, greater reflexes and senses and so and so forth."


    Rui wondered why the Squire instructors didn''t tell the Martial Apprentices such an important detail. But given enough thought he could figure it out.


    Most Martial Apprentices were too immature, inexperienced and incapable of developing their Martial Art uniquely the moment they discover their Martial Path.


    How could a bunch of teenagers create something truly personally unique the moment they be Martial Artists?


    It was impossible.


    Informing these kids that they had to develop their Martial Art uniquely would likely yield negative results rather than positive. They would all be consumed with futilely trying to aplish something they simply could not.


    Rui suspected that the Martial Academy let them hit their limits, by then they will have likely gained the maturity and experience necessary to take their own steps forward.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 240 Squire Candidate

    N?velDrama.Org owns this text.


    They were like newborn infants. They could not walk on their own the moment they were born, but many monthster they would finally be ready.


    Furthermore, there were more concrete reasons to be secretive about this fact.


    If finding a true name for one''s Martial Art was a measure of how uniquely original one''s Martial Art was, which would in turn indicated how cognitively boosted your brain was, then the young brash fools would hastily name their Martial Art in the hopes that this was a sign they had made a lot of progress!


    They would be putting the cart before the horse.


    If naming one''s Martial Art was a profound and important act, and it certainly was, then young hasty and greedy Martial Apprentices would certainly screw things up for themselves.


    Rui''s eyes widened as he recalled something Squire Dylon had told him. Squire Dylon had told him that they did not inform Martial Apprentices of the breakthrough process to Martial Squire because it ruined their development because they didn''t handle the important information maturely.


    That information Squire Dylon had inadvertently revealed back then was oddly simr to the revtion he had just had right now.


    The simrities between the two strongly suggested that the breakthrough to Martial Squire was linked to the originality and uniqueness of one''s Martial Art.


    Rui felt he had reached something significant. He nced up at headmaster Aronian, who had simply been watching him intrigued.


    "But why tell me this if you do not tell the others?" Rui frowned. "Aren''t you afraid that I might simply not be ready."


    "No." Headmaster Aronian simply answered.


    "..."


    "..."


    "No?"


    "No."


    "Why not?" Rui asked.


    Headmaster Aronian nced at Rui with intrigued eyes. "You don''t know?"


    "I wouldn''t be asking if I did." Rui sighed exasperatedly.


    "Hoho, I see I see." Headmaster Aronianughed. "It''s rather odd you don''t know. How could you possibly be unaware of this fact I wonder."


    "What fact?"


    "...The fact that your Martial Art is one of the most uniquely developed Martial Art I have ever seen in the hands of a Martial Apprentice." Headmaster Aronian grew a bit more serious. "It''s truly a wonder. Your case is unheard of. How did you give your Martial Art such a high degree of personal uniqueness in the span of a year and a half?"


    Rui tilted his head, incredibly confused. "I''ve only developed my Martial Art with the techniques of the Martial Academy. I don''t know wha-!"<sub> </sub>


    His eyes flew wide open as he understood.


    The VOID algorithm!


    The VOID algorithm was something he himself had created over the span of more than a decade!


    He had brought it over to this world with himself in his mind and had made it the core of his Martial Art.


    From the very start, his Martial Art was extremely uniquely personalized!


    The VOID algorithm had been the solution to Project Water, his personal ambition. He had been by far thergest contributor to the project and had been the brains of the entire research project. His researcher colleagues were much younger and were mainly executive researchers, executing his directives on the matter, handling the documentation, data processing and documentation and the more technical aspects of the research project.


    The VOID algorithm was truly a child of his own, that he molded into shape after years and years of dedication.


    Never had he realized that this would be counted as unique development of Martial Art in his second life!


    He simply hadn''t realized it. He knew his mind was cognitively superior to everybody else''s, however he had assumed that this was only because of the double-growth it had undergone, now he realized that there was another minor factor contributing to it!


    "Ah, so you''ve realized it." The headmaster noted. "The fact that you realized it only now just makes you an even more bizarre case. Truly, I cannot even begin to imagine the ridiculous circumstances that led to this oue, though I am curious."


    Rui shook his head. He could not tell the headmaster about his past life.


    More like, there wasn''t any point. No one would believe such a nonsensical story. Hell, even Rui himself had wondered once or twice whether it was real.


    "...No matter." The headmaster stated. "The Martial Union and Academy have a habit of respecting the right to personal privacy. However, it is a fact that your personal Martial Art has been immensely uniquely developed. That is why I brought the issue of naming your Martial Art in the first ce and why I revealed all of this to you."


    Rui pondered a bit. "Does the uniqueness of one''s Martial Art have something to do with the breakthrough to Martial Squire?"


    "..." Headmaster Aronian merely gazed at him. "Hmm. I suppose you''re privy to this information at your current level. Yes, yes it does. Your Martial Art needs to be uniquely developed to a high enough degree for you to even be a candidate for Martial Squire. It is one of two pre-requisites needed to be a Martial Squire candidate."


    "Candidate?" Rui asked in surprise. "All this and one more additional condition all to be merely a Martial Squire candidate?"


    "Hohoho..." He chuckled. "The breakthrough to Martial Squire is not as simple as the breakthrough to Martial Apprentice is, young man. I cannot tell you the breakthrough process to Martial Squire just yet, but I can tell you the second condition needed to be fulfilled in order to be a Squire candidate, you are eligible to hear it."


    "Please do." Rui requested.


    "There are two things needed to be a Squire candidate; Uniqueness and Martial Maturity." Headmaster Aronian told him.


    "Martial Maturity?" Rui tilted his head in confusion. "What''s that?"


    "Every Martial Art has a shape and a form. What it ends up looking like. Its parameters and attributes. Its strength and weaknesses. Its distribution of resources as far as techniques go." Headmaster Aronian. "A Martial Art is said to have reached Martial Maturity when the ''shape'' of their Martial Art is no longer in flux and is no longer shaping. You can think of it as after the Martial Art has undergone puberty and bes an adult."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 241 Their Names

    "I see..." Rui murmured engrossed in thought. "Once my Martial Art has achieved Martial Maturity, then would I be a Squire candidate?"


    Headmaster Aronian nodded. "As long as you fulfill both those conditions, yes, you will be considered a Squire candidate and we will begin the process."


    "We will begin the process?" Rui frowned. "It''s not a self-induced naturally urring phenomenon like the breakthrough to Martial Apprentice?"


    Headmaster Aronian smiled mysteriously. "Hoho... I''ll answer that question once youe a Squire candidate."


    "...Alright then." Rui slowly replied.


    They were incredibly stubborn on this matter. Fae and Kane hadn''t heard so much as a peep about the breakthrough process to Martial Squire, furthermore none of the Squire instructors yielded so much as an inch of information regarding the matter at all.


    Rui sighed inwardly; he would just have to wait until he fulfilled both conditions. He suspected the first condition may have already been fulfilled, based on Master Aronian''s choice of words. In that case, it was best that moving forward he focus on fulfilling the second condition as well.


    But frankly, that wouldn''t change what he was doing.


    His Martial Art had most certainly not yet reached Martial maturity, he could feel it.


    He knew it.


    It was still changing immensely and was in its flux state, it had also not reached where he wanted it to reach. It was still iplete.


    Furthermore, Rui suspected that although he basically got a free pass for originality and uniqueness, he might have an extra hard time with reaching Martial maturity.


    This was because he needed to go a long distance before his Martial Art could be consideredplete. With the limited number of techniques that he had it was impossible for him to be able to adapt to all Martial Art. His Martial Art would change shape a lot until it became equally well-rounded in all aspects.


    "Is there anything else you would like to talk about?" Headmaster Aronian asked, stroking his beard.


    "Nothing in particr." Rui said, before pausing. "How much information about the other representatives can I find out at this stage?"


    "I can give you a list of names." The headmaster shrugged. "But I''m afraid I cannot give you strategic information regarding them, I''m afraid. I do not have much of such information, nor would I give it to you even if I did. I can ensure that your information won''t get leaked too, as much as I can. Although details and general information of your Martial Art andbat will undoubtedly disseminate, nothing too specific and important will likely spread."


    "I''ll take the list of names then. And thank you for the aid." Rui bowed.


    "Not at all. I would be a worthless headmaster if I couldn''t aplish this much atleast." He chuckled, as he began scribbling down on a piece of paper, before handing it to Rui. "There you go. If there''s nothing else, you may go."


    Rui simply bowed before exiting the office.


    He sighed as he put some distance between them. Even the passive pressure that Headmaster Aronian put on him was unnerving. Rui could tell he was doing something to suppress the effect of that, and he was grateful.


    He nced at the list, scrutinizing the names carefully, character-by-character.


    Representative Ferlicia Ernand of the Fritzer branch.


    Representative Ian Nepomniachtchi of the Farund branch.


    Representative Arjun Erigaisi of the Hrava branch.


    Representative Mia Marnt of the Fellen branch.


    Representative Byron Harth of the Brillix branch.


    Representative Vyoming Hurin of the Narfinius branch.


    Representative Esfand Hanax of the Sicillia branch.


    Representative Freund Garmor of the Villimaine branch.


    Representative Ana Mariane of the Hyulflum branch.


    Representative Surman Marliak of the Vein branch.


    Representative Derk Sermont of the Brandar branch.<sub> </sub>


    Representative Servil Bisha of the Gragol branch.


    Representative Askin Nodt of the Fervor branch.


    Representative Kaerts Omegde of the Sarkar branch.


    Representative Fiona Roschem of the Vargard branch.


    His name paused at thest one.


    Fiona Roschem.


    Indeed, she was chosen as a representative like he had suspected.


    As for the other names, none of them struck out to him. However, he suspected that most, if not all, of them were from the Martialmunity.


    The descendants of Martial families simply had too many advantagespared tomoners like himself. Guided training from, at the very least, Martial Squires from a very young age. ess to an immense amount of valuable learning, training and growth resources of various kinds. Even if their talent was below average, their pedigree gave them a strong advantage.


    Those among these descendants who possessed immense talent as well, ended up being the top of the top. Kane, Fae and Hever were such examples. Frankly, Nel and himself were just absurd freaks with ridiculous circumstances. They were far from the norm.


    He would not be surprised at all if all the representatives were members of Martial Families.


    He knew for a fact Fiona Roschem was.


    He immediately went back to the dormitory and gathered his friends.


    "So, these are the representatives of the other branches, huh?" Kane frowned as he read the list. "Well, can''t say this is particrly surprising."N?velDrama.Org owns this text.


    "Indeed." Fae nodded as she nced over the list. "Some of these names were essentially locked for the win."


    "Like Fiona Roschem?" Rui inquired.


    "And Ian Nepomniachtchi." Fae nodded.


    "Who''s that?" Rui asked.


    "Remember I told you quite a while back that there were three prodigious geniuses of our generation in the Martial Community?" Fae asked.


    "Fiona and Kane were two of them, I recalled." Rui nodded.


    "Ian Nepomniachtchi is the third one among them." Fae said.


    "I see..." Rui''s eyes narrowed.


    So he was a monster, was basically what Fae was telling him.


    "So he''s as strong as Kane?" Rui raised an eyebrow, as Kane snorted.


    "He''s an insecure punk is what he is." Kane grumbled. "He''s a few years older than Fiona and I. When the two of us came along, he was always hostile towards us. Neither of us can stand his arrogant ass."


    "So how did you fare against him?"


    "I don''t remember." Kane shrugged.


    "He got defeated 10-0." Fae offered.


    "No, I didn''t! It was 7-3!" Kane barked.


    "My... so you do remember." A hint of mischievous smugness shed across her face.


    Rui sighed as the two of them got into one of their routine arguments.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 242 Information

    "Alright alright, that''s enough." He broke the two apart. "Are all of them descendants of Martial families?"


    "Yep." Kane replied.


    "Figured." Rui sighed. "Atleast, that makes reconnaissance easier. What can you tell me about them?"


    "Honestly, not much." Fae sighed. "It''s been two years, the information we have is extremely outdated. Look how much all of us have grown in two years, after all."


    Rui nodded. "I understand that. Just tell me what type of Martial Art they have."


    "Sure." Fae agreed. "I know Fiona and Ian the best, so I''ll begin with them. Fiona as I told you is an extreme all-rounder with immense mastery in all aspects ofbat with her sheer talent and affinity for all fields. Ian on the other hand is much more specialized."


    "Specialized in what?"


    "He specializes in breathing techniques."


    "Interesting..." Rui''s face shed with intrigue. He hadn''t heard of a breathing technique specialist before, there certainly wasn''t one in the Academy.


    "He had mastered breathing techniques incredibly quickly at a young age. I have no idea how strong he is now." Fae said. "But given his talent and his age, he should have an incredibly solid Martial Art. I would suggest being careful with him."


    "Will remember that." Rui said. "Anybody else?"


    "Ferlicia was a heat technique user, if I remember correctly..." Kane pondered aloud.


    "Right, though she had only mastered two techniques when we''dst met." Fae said.


    Heat techniques. Yet another type of Martial Art Rui hadn''t seen before. He had seen temperature-based techniques in the Apprentice library, of course, but he wasn''t familiar with them. He wondered Ferlicia Ernand would be capable of.


    "Arjun Erigaisi is an extremely strong defensive fighter. He''s unbelievably tough." Kane pointed out.


    "Even I had trouble hurting him back then." Fae agreed. "Mia is a sound-based fighter, by the way. I don''t know her personally but I''ve heard plenty of her."


    "Oh, you have to be wary of Byron." Kane said as he went down the list. "He''s a nerve striking Martial Artist. When he hits your nerves, they really fucking hurt and he can do all kinds of things."


    "A nerve striking Martial Art." Rui


    "Vyoming fights with vibrations." Fae said, earning a confused look from Rui.


    "Vibrations huh?" He said with interest. "I''ll have to look further into that, what else?"


    "Well, Esfand if I recall correctly..." Fae and Kane went on to divulge everything they knew on all the other representatives.


    In the end, it didn''t amount to much. However, what little he had learnt was extremely interesting and exciting.


    Every single one of them was colourful and special.


    Poison, heat, breathing, vibrations, nerves friction, sound and many other techniques of esoteric nature.


    In some ways, Rui should have expected this, how could they possibly reach at the peak of their respective Academies if they were ordinary and normal.<sub> </sub>


    It simply wasn''t possible. Out of the five people in the Hajin Academy who all had a chance of being chosen as the representative, none of them were ordinary!


    They were all deviants in their own ways.


    The question was how well Rui would do against the other representatives.


    That was a difficult question to answer. These Martial Artists had Martial Art that deviated from the norm quite significantly. He had no experience against many of these Martial Art and techniques at all before. Furthermore, he wasn''t sure he had the tools to defeat many of these Martial Art.


    Furthermore, the VOID algorithm was certainly ill-equipped to face many of these Martial Art techniques, even if he was being generous to it.This belongs ? N?velDra/ma.Org.


    This had to do with the fact that the VOID algorithm was not adapted to Gaea-based Martial Art yet, making it less affective. Rui had already long recognized this shoring, but he had yet to ovee it, though he had taken a few steps.


    Unfortunately, the further he went, the more he realized how difficult this ambition was!


    How was he supposed to incorporate solutions for such almost magical Martial Art techniques? IT was truly confounding problem. Furthermore, it wasn''t one or two or even handful of difficult techniques, there many of them.


    Although many of the fundamentals and the core of the algorithmic system were still entirely useful, it still became quite difficult to use the secondary portions of the algorithm. Then there was the fact that Rui still hadn''t fixed the viability problem of the VOID algorithm.


    Originally the algorithm simply wasn''t possible to master, it was tooplex, too difficult. Too mentally intensive. It essentially only worked when it was run on a literal high-speedputer.


    Thanks to the cognitive boosts he had received from his second cognitive growth stage and the breakthrough to Martial Apprentice, he was able to master a portion of it, but he still had some ways to go in that regard.


    Perhaps his Martial Art would reach Martial maturity only when he ovee this problem somehow. That was the worst-case scenario.


    He had many hurdles before him.


    Regardless, his fights against the representatives were not going to be easy. Hecked to much information to make judgements on how his fights with them would unfold, or whether or not he would win or lose. But the one thing he could confidently be sure of that his fights with the representatives of all the branches of the Martial Academies was going to be extremely tough and rigorous.


    Even against the average representative, he would probably be unable to hold back. Against titans like Fiona and Ian, he wasn''t sure he would be able to win even if he used every ounce of power he had and every resource he had.


    And yet...


    He couldn''t help but smile.


    He would be testing his Martial Art against the best of the best.


    How exciting!


    Rui grinned when he read through his notes. He was so excited he could barely even wait for the Martial Contest.


    He immediately got up, walking out.


    "Where are you going?" Kane asked.


    "Back to training."


    He said, leaving the two behind.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 243 Considerations

    He reached an isted training hall that he had reserved for himself in advance.


    He wanted solitude.


    He sat down, meditating. He had begun mentally training his application of the VOID algorithm. Since the VOID algorithm was a system of information protocols, he didn''t need to move in order to use it. He could hone it even if he was mediating.


    His goal was to refine his application of the VOID algorithm. He went back through his previous fights in the preliminary contest. He had reviewed each of them mentally, taking notes on how he could have done things better.


    And yet, when he closed his eyes...


    He saw darkness.


    He saw the void.


    Ever since he had begun training, he had been trying visualize his Martial Art as an entity.


    What would it look like?


    What would it be?


    What would it do?


    He closed his eyes and looked inward. Looked at himself. Looked at his Martial Path. Looked his Martial Art.


    p He saw a universe.</anda>


    Littered with stars. Littered with bright life.


    However, at the center of it was a void of darkness.


    It moved.


    No, it poured. It ebbed. It flowed.


    It warped, changing its form as it consumed the light in the universe. Stars disappeared one by one as the void flowed altering its form as it enveloped as smoothly possible.


    It was a psychedellic vision. One that beggared the imagination.


    But he understood what these strange sights were.


    This were his Martial Art.N?velDrama.Org owns this text.


    A flowing void that consumed all.


    "A flowing void..." He whispered. "Hm..."


    That didn''t sound bad...


    In fact, he quite liked the sound of that.


    He shook his head, returning back to training.<sub> </sub>


    * * * * *


    A week passed, and it was time. Only two days were left for the Martial Contest. The Martial Academy had arranged for secure transport that would escort him from Hajin to Vargard, the capital of the Kandrian Empire, where the Martial Contest would be held.


    This would be the first time he had left the Mantian region that housed his town of Hajin. But he wasn''t all too bothered with that at the moment. He had sat with his eyes most of the journey, trying to retain as much of his concentration and focus on the uing Martial Contest.


    He went over everything he knew about the Martial Contest.


    Sixteen representatives.


    Four rounds.


    One champion.


    The Martial Colosseum that the Martial Contest was being held in was arge multi-environmental field that ensured no one Martial Art would gain an unfair advantage over the other due to a singr environment.


    The tournament was an elimination style tournament where half the contestants would be knocked out and eliminated from the contest every round, until there was only one person remaining. That person would be crowned the Martial Champion.


    His opponents were distinguished warriors with unique and powerful Martial Art. Over the past week, Rui had often visited the Apprentice library. The reason he did was not because he wanted to purchase any techniques for himself, but rather to go through the techniques of the styles that he knew his opponents had.


    He did this to get a deeper understanding of how they might approach the fight and what theirbat style might end up looking like.


    Of course, it was still quite shallow since he didn''t know what techniques they had, nor did he know the techniques themselves very well.


    Unless he purchased the techniques, he would not be able to read all the data the Martial Academy had on the techniques. The very best he would be able to do is avoid blunders and make more targeted precautionary measures against each of them, as much help that would be.


    Of course, since he didn''t have much time, these measures were also simplistic and elementary. He would be able to build upon them as the Martial Contest progressed.


    The best part was that he would get to see almost all fighters fight at the very least once before he ran into them himself. The difference being his opponent in the very first round, who he would have to fight blind.


    However, for all the other rounds he would be able to construct a more thorough adapted style via the VOID algorithm. This effectively meant he would be a more and more difficult opponent to fight as time passed on. This format benefitted him while it disadvantaged normal fighters.


    His opponents would be easier to deal with because they would be forced to reveal more of their Martial Art as time passed on, and although this was also true for him. He had his adaptive evolution that mitigated that downside andpensated for it.


    In a way, the first round had a chance of being the most difficult hurdle of them all. Because he was walking in almost blind with no information. He needed to be extremely careful, otherwise he might end up getting defeated by a trump card before he even got a chance to adapt to his opponent.


    However, this was unlikely. Revealing a trump card of that sort in the first round was not a good idea. Since it meant your future opponents would be quite prepared for it. Rui estimated that his opponents would try to use as little as possible in the first round.


    This was his n as well.


    He would definitely not use Stinger and Blink unless he genuinely had to. He would also try to keep the Phantom Step technique a secret if he could get away with doing so.


    However, that might too greedy.


    All in all, he wanted to stay on the side of caution while still trying to get away with whatever he could. It was a thin line to walk. Too greedy and he might lose, too cautious and he might not be able to win the contest because he revealed too much to the other representatives.


    All these consideration were shing through his head despite hisposed demeanor.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 244 She

    He had arrived much quicker than he had expected. However, he had been transported in a much faster vehicle than a normal horse-pulled carriage. He assumed it was something powered by some esoteric technology, but he didn''t have time to think about it. He didn''t want to be distracted.


    Yet even he couldn''t help but marvel at Vargard, the capital of the Kandrian Empire. It was truly spectacr. The core of Hajin was an impressive trade hub but Vargard looked like some futuristic-fantasy utopia. It really sold the image as the capital of the Kandrian Empire.


    "How far is the designated housing dormitory, instructor Kyrie?" Rui asked.


    "Not too far in distance." Squire Kyrie replied. "But I''m afraid it will take some time."


    Each representative was supported by Squire staff from the Academy, Rui had been assigned Kyrie and Dylon.


    "Rx kid." Squire Dylon told him, waving his hands. "No need to be in a hurry or worry. The housing arrangements will be quite luxurious, I can tell you that."


    The Martial Contest was not an event that would end in a single day. Each round was designated to take at least a day. Thus, the entire contest would extend over four days.


    "Will I be in the same dorm as the other representatives?" Rui wondered.


    Dylon sneered at him. "What else? Did you expect the Academies to give you different luxury rooms in different parts of the town?"


    "No..."


    "The dormitory housing is quite close to the Martial Colosseum, you''re all gonna be kept close by so that it''s convenient and there''re noplications." Dylon shrugged.


    "Isn''t it weird to be living in the same block as yourpetitors?" Rui asked, amused.


    "It''s how things were even when I was the representative of the Hajin branch." She replied.


    "I see." He shrugged; it wasn''t a big deal.


    As time passed, they finally arrived.


    The Martial Colosseum was gigantic. It stood tall and mighty and could be seen from kilometers away. Its architecture reminded Rui a lot of ancient Roman architecture back on Earth.


    At a location not geographically far from the Colosseum was a facility that had the emblem of the Martial Academy.


    "Is that it?" Rui asked.


    "Yep." Dylon nodded. "It has everything you could want. All training facilities you could need if you want to practice and warm up. That''s why it''s so big."


    "That''s good to hear." Rui replied. But he didn''t think he would be training for the Martial Contest at all. There was less than twenty-four hours for the contest to begin. He knew there was absolutely nothing more additional that he possibly could have done at this stage. Now he could only calmly do his very best.


    Once they arrived, they quickly got off and headed towards the facility.


    "Wee, your housing amodations have already been arranged." A staff member greeted. "Please allow us to guide you to your respective aodations."


    "Catch youter Rui." Squire Dylon said. "Try to catch some rest and freshen up."


    Rui nodded, before they splitting ways with the instructors.


    "Have the other representatives arrived yet?" Rui asked.


    "One of them has." The attendant replied. "The representative of Vargard arrived yesterday, ahead of schedule."


    The representative of Vargard was...


    (''Fiona Roschem.'') Rui recalled. "I see."


    Perhaps he would run into her.


    Soon they reached his room.


    "These will be your amodations for your stay during in this facility." The staff attendant informed. "If you have any needs, please do not hesitate to seek our aid."


    "Thank you." Rui replied before walking in.


    The room was ratherrge and luxurious. The bag of clothes he had packed had already arrived ahead of time.<sub> </sub>


    "Good service." he nodded.


    The representatives were probably given suchfort so that there would be no doubt there was nothing diforting that could detract from their prime condition for their matches.


    "The bathroom is gigantic too, geez." He muttered. Not that he wasining, of course.


    He quickly fixed himself a tub bath before rxing in it. He felt his weariness and fatigue melt away. He had to admit, they did a good job ensuring the representatives would befortable.


    He absolutely wouldn''t mind spending four days here.


    "Once I''m finished, I should get something to eat. I''m famished." Rui muttered.


    He expected the food to be great too. It''d been quite some time before he had indulged in a luxurious meal.


    "I ought to meet up with instructors Kyrie and Dylon too." He recalled.


    A good half an hour rxed him quite well, though he was still constantly shifting his thoughts and concentration to the Martial Contest as much as wanted.


    Once he got out, dried and dressed up.


    He heard a knock at the door.


    He frowned.


    Who was at the door? The Squire instructors?


    "Hm?" When he opened the door, he saw nobody. Then he looked down a bit and his visionnded on a short petite girl with brown hair and silver eyes. Her appearance was not intimidating.


    What was intimidating was her passive mental pressure.


    "Hi." She said. "So you''re Rui Quarrier."


    She murmured, studying him top to bottom.


    "Uh..." He wasn''t sure what he was supposed to say. "I presume you''re the representative of the Vargard branch?"


    "Ye." She turned up, meeting his eyes. "My name is Fiona Roschem."


    "..."


    "..."


    They simply stared at each other.


    "So... do you want something?" Rui asked.


    Fiona shrugged. "Nothing at all. Why do you ask?"


    She tilted her head, genuinely confused and curious. Rui looked at her like she was an idiot.This belongs ? N?velDra/ma.Org.


    "Why are you here?" Rui frowned. "Are you lost?"


    "No." She replied. "I just wanted to see themoner boy who beat Kane. It found it quite hard to believe when I first read about it. How did you do it?"


    Well, she suddenly went from circr to straightforward.


    Yet strangely, when he gazed into her silver eyes, he only saw curiosity.


    Rui shrugged. "Fought hard. Fought smart."


    "I see." She said. "Anyways, bye-bye."


    She pranced away before Rui could even reply, leaving him standing at the doorway staring at her retreating form.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 245 Interactions

    Rui didn''t even know what to say. His image of her was shattered. He expected a cold, detached and arrogant temperament, but she came off as a scatterbrain girl with a lot of curiosity.


    But one thing he did get right was that she was strong.


    Incredibly strong.


    Her passive mental pressure was deep, she was strong without even trying. Without even wanting.


    Just her very curiosity alone exerted weight on his mind.


    Rui suspected she might have even been a Squire candidate, though he wasn''t sure.


    Soon, he headed to the cafeteria. To his surprise, the other representatives had not only arrived but had also gathered around the same table. Only then had recalled that they were all acquaintances with each other for the most part, since they were all part of the Martialmunity.


    They exchanged nces.


    Rui could feel their scrutinizing gazes even as he scrutinized them.


    (''They''re strong.'') He smiled just a little.


    "Rui." Squire Kyrie called out to him.


    "Instructor." Rui turned, facing her.


    "Eat quick. Also, feel free to join them." She gestured. "Although you arepetitors, you are all the best of your generation."


    "I don''t particrly care to interact with them over dinne-" "Hey RUI!" The voice of a girl called to him.


    He recognized it instantly.


    He wordlessly turned, facing Fiona.


    She gestured to an empty seat at the table they were all seated at.


    Squire Kyrie smiled wryly.


    Rui stared at her for a moment before shrugging.


    There was no harm to be done. Although he didn''t care enough to go out of his way to reach out to them, he would not refuse a direct invitation. He was curious about them.


    Even as he walked over, one of them men in the group threw looks of disdain at her.


    "Going out of your way to invite a mongrelmoner to your table." He grumbled. "Fiona, you haven''t changed at all in the past two years."


    "Is it that big a deal?" She threw him an inquisiting look. "You''re the only oneining. Aren''t you curious about themoner boy who beat Kane, Fae and Hever?"


    "No." He coldly retorted. "Even if I did, I wouldn''t invite him to eat at my table. You''re as careless of your status as always."


    Rui was more amused than offended. Generic insults weren''t really a big deal, and he had frankly anticipated snobby behavior from some of the representatives


    She shrugged, unperturbed. "I care for what I care for. He''s interesting, so I''m interested. I''m interested so I invited him."


    He snorted wordlessly, turning towards Rui, scrutinizing him condescendingly before sighing. "To think Kane lost to amoner with dirty hair and eyes like yourself. Why the Martial Community thinks his talent is on par with mine is beyond me."


    Rui tilted his head as a realization shed in him. "Ah, you must be Ian Nepomniachtchi."


    "Oh?" Ian chuckled. "Did Kane mention me?"<sub> </sub>


    "He did." Rui nodded. "He described your insecurity and inferiorityplex quite well, I have to say."


    Ian''s eyes narrowed at those words. "Bold wordsing from amoner. You dare insult me?"


    Rui shrugged with a wry smile. "Only an insult if you want it to be."


    "And what if I do?" The mental pressure he exerted on Rui increased. The other representatives at the table watched silently in interest.


    "Well..." Rui scratched his chin. "Then the Martial Contest is truly conveniently timed, isn''t it?" He said with a yful smile.


    Ian stared at him as a mild smirk cracked on his cold face. "Finally, we can agree on something. I''ll educate you in front of the entire empire. Free of cost, of course." He chuckled. "I know your poor plebeian ass doesn''t have the funds to pay me."


    "Don''t worry, I have a habit of returning favours." He shrugged. "With interest."


    The tension at the table escted.


    "If you want, I can give you that free lesson right here and now." He said coldly. "No need to wait for the Martial Contest."


    "That''s not allowed." Fiona chirped. "You''d get disqualified, you know? Ah maybe that''s for the best. Please continue, don''t mind me."


    She said, breaking the tension. She was entirely unbothered by the mounting irritated pressure the Ian exerted on her.


    "Hmph." He snorted, closing his eyes and getting up. "We''ll continue this in the Martial Contest." He said. "I''ll have to educate both of you, it seems."


    He walked away.


    "Well." A girl broke the silence. "He hasn''t changed in the past two years either."


    "Indeed." A boy with orange hair said. "He''s as arrogant and domineering as always."


    Rui recognized his features, and also the insignia on his clothes. They belonged to the Garmor Martial Family.


    Which made him representative Freund Garmor of the Villimaine branch. He had a heavy pressure to him, he was strong without a doubt.


    "He''s boring, let''s stop talking about him." Fiona said. "What I''m more interested in is..."


    She turned to face Rui with curious eyes. "You. Seriously, how did you beat Kane, Fae and Hever? That''s so much more interesting."


    "Do you really think he''d tell you?" A girl besides her asked. "He''s apetitor, he''s not going to reveal anything meaningful about hisbat."


    Rui identified her as well. Representative Ferlicia Ernand of the Fritzer branch. She had a calm demeanor that painted a picture of confident power.


    "Yeah, but aren''t you curious?" Fiona asked.


    "To say I''m not... would be a lie." Her eyes turned towards Rui with some interest.


    "Is it really that hard to believe?" Rui smiled wryly.


    "Very." Another man among them replied. He was gigantic, his presence was like an imposing mountain. "Kane is prodigiously talented, and is also part of one of the most powerful Martial Families in the Kandrian Empire. Yet herees along amoner who beat him despite having broken through only after he joined the Academy. It''s an almost absurd tale."


    Rui identified him immediately. Arjun Erigaisi, the defensive powerhouse.


    Rui smiled. He did agree that it was an absurd tale. Frankly, the reason he was able to grow strong enough to beat Kane was due to truly otherworldly circumstances.


    Literally.


    This chapter upload first at  This belongs ? N?velDra/ma.Org.

 Chapter 246 It Was Time.

    But how he was supposed to exin that to them?N?velDrama.Org owns this text.


    He shook his head in resignation. "I happen to be blessed with special circumstances."


    A girl among them snorted. "Anybody can tell that. You do not oveerge disadvantages in talent, resources and time without extraordinary circumstances."


    Rui nced at her, recognizing the emblem of her family.


    Representative Ana Mariane of the Hyuflum branch.


    Rui shrugged, not deigning to continue the conversation.


    Eventually, the conversation grew strained even as the food arrived. At the end of the day, they were only interacting with each other because most of them were long-time acquaintances of each other. However, they had not gathered here today for a reunion.


    They werepetitors in one of the most important and prestigious events in the entire Martial Festival.


    <o>,m Rui quickly took his leave once he finished his meals, meeting up with his instructors.</o>


    "So? How did it go?" Squire Dylon asked. "Made some new friends?"


    Rui snorted. "As if. Anybody who can make friends under these circumstances deserves and an award."


    "Tsk tsk." Squire Dylon tutted. "You''re still young, you should make friends. When I was your age, I had friends gallore. Ask Kyrie."


    She snorted. "You were just a fool who ran around getting along with everything that breathed."


    "The two of you were in the same batch?" Rui asked.


    "Unfortunately, yes." She sighed.


    They bantered a bit before reaching the split in the corridor.


    "Be sure to get some good rest Rui." Squire Kyrie told him. "Don''t rely on potions if you can. Save them. Tomorrow, you need to be at your peak form."


    Rui nodded. "Good night."


    He bade them goodnight before returning to his dorm room.


    He had a lot to think about. He thought about his interactions with the other representatives. He had tried to gauge them but, of course, couldn''t possibly obtain any meaningful tactical intelligence.


    All he could tell was each one of them was incredibly strong. However, even among them, there were clearly stronger ones.


    There was, of course, Ian Nepomniachtchi.


    His attitude and personality may have been rotten, but his power was real. Rui could tell he was incredibly strong. He exerted an immense amount of pressure on Rui in his attempts to push Rui back.


    And then there was Fiona.


    Her temperament was not what he expected. But her strength was.


    A master of all.


    He wouldn''t be surprised. She was not domineering, arrogant or haughty.


    She didn''t need to be.<sub> </sub>


    She exerted a gravity on everybody despite her carefree and curious temperament. She didn''t need to put on airs to emphasize her strength, her strength emphasized itself.


    Rui smiled. He couldn''t wait to run into her in the Martial Contest. He wished he could have fought all of them, unfortunately he would get to fight only four of them. And that was only if he made it to the very finals.


    It was a shame.


    He shook his head, thinking about tomorrow.


    Tomorrow the first round of the Martial Contest wouldmence. The matchups would be decided shortly before the round began. So, Rui would have no idea who he was fighting until sometime before he fought.


    Not that it mattered. He simply needed to his best, and hopefully win.


    There wasn''t much more to it than that.


    The next morning, he got up early, brimming with vitality. He had somehow managed to get a good night of sleep despite his excitement.


    The day had arrived. He could scarcely believe it. He clenched his quivering fist with anticipation, regaining hisposure.


    He fixed himself a tub bath, not because of luxury but because it helped him calm down and focus. He wanted to be in peak mental condition by the time he was ready.


    Once he got out, he quickly dried and dressed up, heading for the main hall. He was supposed to be present there at precisely the stipted time, he did not want to bete.


    The others had also arrived.


    Everyone was there.


    Soon, a heavy mental pressure weighed down upon them.


    Rui''s eyes narrowed as he recognized this sensation.


    (''Martial Master.'')


    "Gather around." The voice of an elderly woman reverberated as she walked into the facility, followed by the Martial Squire instructors of all the branches of the Martial Academies.


    Although she had the appearance of an old woman, not a single person in the room doubted that she would be able to solo all of thembined.


    "I am Master Firilia." She said. "I am the Contest Master, I will be overseeing the twenty-seventh Martial Contest. Each of you is here today after oveing a tremendous amount of hurdles and obstacles to reach where you are today. The feat of being chosen as the representative of the Martial Academy is an impressive feat without a doubt. Each of you has the right to be proud of your aplishment."


    She paused, before continuing. "However, each of you has the opportunity to be more. To be more than just a representative. Each of you has the opportunity and potential to be crowned the Martial Champion. An aplishment of boundless prestige that will change your life forever. Your name will go down in history, as it should. Should each of you ovee your opponents, this honour will be yours. I expect a lot of each of you, do not disappoint me."


    She said bluntly. Yet it was not the words, but the person saying them that mattered the most. The representatives felt burdened by such a blunt deration of her expectations.


    However, Rui only felt excited. He clenched his fist again, suppressing his tingling nerves as best he can before regaining his calm andposure.


    This was it.


    It was time.


    "It is time." She said. "Each of you will be taken to the Martial Colosseum. Come."


    Outside there were dozens of carriages designated to the representatives and their Squire instructors as well as the Martial Master herself and other staff members.


    It was time.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 247 Matchups

    Even as they travelled the to the colosseum, Rui could feel the tension and energy in the air. The poption density as they travelled to the Martial Colosseum had been increasing.


    It peaked once they arrived.


    There were countless rickshaws and carriages parked near the Martial Colosseum and a huge number of people from, not just Vargard, but also from other towns had arrived. The crowd was noisy and chaotic as they funneled into a huge line that was trickling into the Martial Colosseum.


    The Martial Colosseum itself was gigantic. Its architecture was grand. It was borate yet detailed. It inspired a sense of majesty in its bearers. Rui couldn''t help but feel he was privileged to have the honour of fighting in it in the Martial Contest.


    The carriages of the contestants and staff apanying them did not join the crowd of spectatprs bust instead stopped on another side of the Martial Colosseum, reserved for authorized personnel and individuals only thankfully. Rui was d he didn''t have to join that painfully long line to attend his own event.


    Soon each of the contestants were escorted to their own temporary quarters, separated from their Squire instructors.


    In his quarters, he found his Martial uniform. It had undergone thorough checking to ensure there was no modification and alteration of foul y. He found it initially surprising when they were so strict but he knew that foul y was probably was easier and far more deadly in this world than back on Earth due to esoteric technology.


    Once he donned it, his Squire instructors had arrived.


    "Ready?" Squire Dylon asked.


    "Quite." He replied.


    Thanks to the continuous priming and conditioning of his mind for the Martial Contest over the past two weeks, he was able to enter into a focused andposed state easier.


    "The opening ceremony will begin in an hour." Squire Kyrie said.


    Rui nodded. He simply sat cross-legged and began meditating, conditioning himself even more.


    An hour rolled by quickly.


    He was escorted by his instructors as they made their way to the lower levels, walking towards an opening into the arena of the Martial Contest.


    "... And now, we invite sixteen representatives of the Martial Contest to the stage!"


    Rui heard a loud projected voice say.


    "From the Fellen branch, representative Mia Marnt!"


    Rui saw Fiona enter the Colosseum arena, walking quickly as she reached the stage.


    The host called upon all of them one-by-one.


    When it was Rui''s turn, he felt a huge wave of emotional energy hit into him when he walked out in the open in front of God-knew-how-many people. The crowd cheered for him loudly much to his surprise, it seems his aplishments and position overshadowed his odd and ominous hair and eyes.


    "Ladies and gentlemen, there they are! The sixteen greatest Martial Artists of their generation! We look forward to witnessing which one of them takes the title of Martial Champion. Who will win? If you''re confident in your eyes then put your money where your mouth is!"


    The crowd roared in approval!


    Rui suppressed an expression of amusement.


    He had momentarily forgotten that the Martial Contest was part of a festival.


    And festivals were fun. And were supposed to have fun activities.


    Gambling was one of them.<sub> </sub>


    He shook his head inwardly.


    "... And without further ado, let us decide the matchups! As you all know, this is an elimiantion tournament where half the contestants will be knocked out every round! We will decide the matchups that will knock over every contest via random draws.


    Soon a board with a typical elimination tournament structure with sixteen numbered slots and eight matchups in the first round was brought. Along with it came a box with a hole in it.


    "Representatives!" he addressed the sixteen of them energetically. "Within the concealed box lies numbers from one to sixteen. Reach into the hole and pick a chit. The number on the chit will be the slot that you will be partaking in!"


    It was structured such that number one slot was to fight the number two slot, the number three slot was to fight the number four slot and so on and so forth till the sixteenth slot.


    He gestured to the box. "In the order that you were called please. Representative Mia Marnt! Please step forward and pick a number!"


    Mia stepped forward, walking towards the box. She picked a chit, unfolding it.


    "Eleven." She said, holding the chit up.


    "Eleven it is!" The representative cried as a support staff member wrote Mia''s name in the slot numbered three.


    One-by-one they all went up, picked a chit and got slotted ordingly.


    The results were interesting, to say the least.


    Match one: Ian Nepomniachtchi vs Vyoming Hurin


    Match two: Esfand Hanax vs Freund Gamor


    Match three: Arjun Erigaisi vs Servil Bisha


    Match Four: Rui Quarrier vs Surman Marliak


    Match five: Ferlicia Ernand vs Askin Nodt


    Match six: Mia Marnt vs Ana Mariane


    Match seven: Bryson Harth vs Kaerts Omegde


    Match eight: Fiona Roschem vs Derk Sermont


    Rui had been drawn number seven and had been paired against Surman Marliak, who had drawn eight. They were to fight in the fourth match.


    He nced over at the other matchups, noting ones he was interested in. The very first match featured Ian Nepomniachtchi. If Rui and Ian both won twice, they would face each other in the quarterfinals.


    The one he was most interested in was Fiona. She was way over on the other block. They would both need to win thrice to face each other in the finals.


    "...And with that the opening ceremony has concluded!" The host rambled on. "The first match of the first round will begin soon! Be sure to be at your seats with your snacks and drinks shortly or you''ll miss it! Representatives, please head back to your quarters and be prepared."N?velDrama.Org owns this text.


    They dispersed back to the entrances. Rui immediately ran into Squire Kyrie and Dylon.


    "Your first matchup is interesting."


    "Interesting Indeed." Rui replied with a barely contained smirk.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 248 Impressive Sight

    Mental maniption.


    That was Surman Marliak''s specialty, ording to Fae. His Martial Art and techniques were centered around affecting his opponents'' minds adversely and apparently, he was quite good at it too.


    This included things like misdirection, hypnosis, impression imprinting and other psychological-oriented skills. Rui had done some research into the matter in order to understand how Surman might end up fighting against him.


    He looked forward to the fight. It wasn''t everyday he got to fight against someone this unusual.


    He made his way to the observer balcony reserved to for participants.


    What he did not expect was the presence of the other representatives!


    He nced around at the several martial Squire guards inside and outside the balcony.


    (''Easier to protect us if we''re in the same ce?'') He wondered. It seemed that the Martial Academies did not want to take any risks. He simply ignored them as he leaned onto the railing, ignoring them. He would pay them attention when their matches rolled up, until then, they were not important. Thankfully the balcony was incredibly wide and there was plenty of distance between each of them.


    He nced at an observation balcony on the other side of the Colosseum, his sharp eyes distinguishing the headmasters of the sixteen Academies along with the Contest Master and some other VIPs, before an announcement caught his ears.


    "Aaaand we will notmence the first match of the first round right away!"


    "On one hand we have Representative Ian Nepomniachtchi of the Breathing Mountain style representing Farund branch! Touted as one of the greatest prodigies of this generation, he is known as the Breathing Goliath in the Martial Community! Join me in weing him!"


    The crowd cheered loudly as Ian entered the arena, stopping at the center. He simply folded his arms, waiting.


    Rui cringed slightly. "Epithets? They actually have titles."


    N?velDrama.Org owns this text.


    "They''re not umon." Squire Dylon exined. "Prominent Martial Artists generally tend to gain one. It''s a tradition primarily in the Martial Community that ended up bleeding into culture as time passed. Kyrie here was known as the Berzerker of Hajin during her prime."


    "Focus." Kyrie replied.


    "On the other hand, we have representative Vyoming Hurin of the Weaving Lightning style representing the Narfinius branch! Known as the shing Drift for his incredible speed! Give him a round of apuse!"


    Vyoming entered the arena, stopping some distance away from Ian.


    "Representatives." The referee of the fight addressed both of them. "I''ll be going over the rules onest time. No killing and no leaving the boundaries of the arena, either of those will result in a disqualification and a loss respectively. If you wish to forfeit, you may merely will it and the special device attached to your Martial uniform will alert us of your resignation, knowingly attacking after the fight ends will also result in a disqualification. Do you agree to abide by these rules?"


    "I do." Ian replied.


    "I do." Vyoming echoed.


    "Then without further ado, begin!" Hemenced the first match.


    "Aaand the first match is underway!" the host announced.


    WHOOSH


    Vyoming blurred as he instantly crossed the distance between himself and Ian.


    POW POW


    Hended a doublebo within the briefest of moments!


    WHOOSH


    Ian swung at him, only for him to hit empty air as Vyoming effortlessly dodged.


    Vyoming relentlessly shed around charging at Ian repeatedly aggressively in an impressive disy of speed.


    Rui''s eyebrows raised at the sight. "He''sparable to Kane. He''s faster in linear motion but Kane is much more agile and fluid in curvilinear motion. I see, he''s an offensive maneuverer."


    Rui found that to be quite interesting. The differences in their styles were quite apparent, despite both of them being maneuvering-oriented. Vyoming was much more aggressing and proactive with his offense conventionally, whereas Kane''s Martial Art evasive and counteroffensive.


    "Indeed." Squire Kyrie nodded. "His greatest strength is his impressive offensivebat speed."<sub> </sub>


    Rui nodded. "And yet..."


    Rui nced at Ian. "He''s unharmed."


    Not only was he unharmed, he was also unmoved. Literally, Vyoming was unable to even shift his position.


    WHOOSH


    Vyoming charged at him throwing an incredibly swift attack.


    CLASP


    Rui''s eyes widened at what he saw.


    Ian who was struggling and failing to keep up, suddenly caught Vyoming''s fist easily.


    What had changed?


    "Is this the best you can do?" He asked Vyoming as cold pressure flushed from him pressing on Vyoming even as the he struggled to break free. "Too bad, it''s not enough."


    BAM!!


    He delivered an incredibly powerful attack Vyoming''s gut.


    The sheer force he struck thetter with caused the former spit out blood.


    THUD


    Vyoming copsed to his knees in pain and shock.


    BAM!


    Ian kicked him across the arena with a slow but powerful kick. His speed had suddenly dropped immensely from when he intercepted Vyoming''s fist, but his power had risen tremendously.


    The sheer impact had caused the very ground to shiver!


    It was truly impressive, yet...


    Rui narrowed his eyes in confusion. He could immediately tell something was off.


    How did his speed suddenly spike mid-fight allowing him to intercept Vyoming with ease when he couldn''t do so before?


    How did his power increase so much? His striking power was just a notch below that of Fae''s!


    And why did his speed decrease so much again?


    There were unnatural fluctuations in his parameters that Rui was unable to exin. It was then that Rui recalled that he was a breathing technique specialist.


    "This must be because of a breathing technique then." Rui realized.


    "Yep." Squire Dylon nodded. "Multiple breathing techniques to be more precise."


    "Multiple?" Rui raised an eyebrow.


    "There are breathing techniques above basic foundational techniques like the Helical Breathing you''ve mastered. He seems to have mastered the Fire Breathing, Earth Breathing and Lightning Breathing breathing techniques to quite a high degree." Squire Kyrie exined. "They boost strength, durability and speed respectively to an immensely high degree. However, they cannot be used fully simultaneously. Hence, he switches between them as and when he wants or uses multiple partially. That''s why his parameters fluctuate unnaturally."


    Rui''s eyes flew wide open at that statement. That was extremely formidable, if that was indeed the case. Ian''d power and speed were shockingly impressive. Rui assumed the Earth Breathing would also be simrly impressive.


    It was truly an impressive sight, indeed.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 249 Outcome

    He could switch instantly between striking power very close to that of Fae''s tobat speed on par or perhaps even greater with Vyoming. Furthermore, it was practically guaranteed that he had several other techniques at bare minimum!


    In which case, Ian was a menace!


    Rui grinned, gaping in amazement. His personality was rotten, but his power was the real deal. He truly deserved to be ced in the same realm as Kane as far as talent went.


    In fact, without the Void Step technique, Kane stood very little chance of defeating him.


    Rui watched on with great interest as Ian Nepomniachtchi went onto dominate Vyoming, carefully observing his breathing noting its traits and forms.


    The breathing he used to amplify power; Fire Breathing was rather slower in frequency but much deeper andrger. Rui suspected the surge of arge amount oxygen in a short amount of time allowed for the maximization of power.


    The Lightning Breathing was a high-frequency breathing technique that supplied continuous oxygen boosting speed continuously.


    The different forms of respiration in the different breathing techniques caused Rui to realize that he had perhaps underestimated the power of breathing techniques. If Rui had such breathing techniques he would be able to adapt much better than he currently was able to.


    (''Maybe I ought to take a look at techniques like those when I get back.'')N?vel/Dr(a)ma.Org - Content owner.


    "Aaaand we have a winner!" The host dered. "Ian Nepomniachtchi moves onto the second round after a stunning victory against Vyoming Hurin!"


    Ian snorted, turning his back on the mangled body of Vyoming.


    "He''s going to be to be an extremely rough opponent for you." Squire Kyrie noted.


    "Indeed." Rui nodded. Ian''s fluctuating physical parameters made evolving to him a truly difficult endeavor; Rui would need to be careful not to make a single mistake.


    "Anding up next we have Representative Esfand Hanax of the Grip Scraping Style, representing the Sicillia branch!" Thementator announced, as Esfand walked into the arena.


    "His opponent is Freund Gamor of the Dreamy Poison Style! He is here representing the Villimaine branch! Known as the Toxinmonger in the Martial Community, he is one of the favoured representatives of the Martial Contest!"


    The crowd erupted in cheers as Fruend entered the arena.


    Freund had sickly-looking skin that had a shade of purple to it. Not a single person had any doubt that his entire skin was poisonous and that touching it would be a disaster.


    What Rui found suspicious was that he was wearing a mouth mask.


    The fact that he was wearing it meant that the mask was thoroughly scrutinized by the security staff of the Martial Contest, meaning it was not something that unfairly gave him an advantage atleast.


    But generally, when someone covered something, it meant they had something to hide. Rui assumed the mouth mask wasn''t a fashion choice, atleast.


    "Take your stances." The referee instructed.


    Rui raised an eyebrow as both of them took aggressive stances against each other that prioritized offense.


    "And begin!" The refereemenced the match.


    They dashed towards each other.


    SPLAT


    Rui''s eyes flew wide open at what unfolded.


    Freund came out of the exchange bleeding while Esfand came out seemingly unharmed, with slight bruises at the very most.


    Rui nced at Esfand, who was grinning.<sub> </sub>


    (''Wow, he''s rough just like Fae told me.'')


    Esfand was a Martial Artist centered around friction. He had taken skin conditioning to the most extreme level and his skin was beyond what mere ''rough'' could encapste. His skin had so much friction that simply pressing and rubbing one''s skin against it caused bleeding!


    Inbat, he applied his impressive offensive power through his dangerous skin allowing to unleash frightening damage and lethality!


    Rui raised an eye brow, he was quite impressed. Frankly, if Esfand had been part of the Hajin branch, he would have been able to stand in the top five atleast, in all likelihood. Rui could easily see how he managed to get chosen as the representative of his branch.


    SCRAP


    POW


    The two exchanged blows after blows, however the battle had begun to shift decisively in favour of Esfand. He was able to deal immediate damage, and had already dealt immense amount of damage.


    WOBBLE


    Suddenly, Esfand staggered.


    His vision blurred and as he began losing all power in his muscles at an rming rate!


    WHOOSH!


    He threw a haymaker that Freund easily avoided.


    POW POW POW


    Freund began pummeling him with blow after blow.


    The battle had suddenly turned tides!


    "His poison kicked in in time." Rui noted.


    Squire Kyrie nodded. "From the very start, both sides were aware that this fight was a race. They were both offensive type Martial Artists with high lethality. It seems it was a race that Esfand is losing and Fruend is winning."


    THUD


    Esfand hit the ground, the referee kneeled in closer to him before waving his hand.


    "Aaaand we have a winnerdies and gentlemen!" Thementator dered. "Emerging victorious out of representative Esfand Hanax''s relentless assault; Representative Freund Gamor will be moving on to the next round! He will be facing Ian Nepomniachtchi in round two!"


    Rui stared at Freund


    "His poison kicked in quicker and neutralized its victim quicker than that of Avi Seth." He noted.


    "Freund''s poison is much more powerful than that of Avi Seth''s." Squire Kyrie noted. "Poison-based Martial Art''s potency isrgely based on the poisons that they can wield, Talen in this field is decided by the most powerful poison that one can be immune to and then integrate into one''s body. In that regard, Freund is well above Avi."


    Rui nodded, agreeing with her judgement.


    Esfand was quickly extracted and treated by a team of medics while Freund consumed several healing potions while he was escorted by staff out of the arena.


    "Aaaand we now move on to the third match of the first round!" Thementator dered.


    Rui''s eyes narrowed. He was particrly interested in this matchup because if he won, he would be facing the winner of this matchup in the next round.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 250 Unconditioned

    "On one hand we have representative Arjun Erigaisi and his Adamant Boulder style representing the Hrava branch! He''s touted as the Adamant Boulder in the Martial Community for his impregnable defense! Join me in weing him!" Thementator dered.


    The crowd burst into cheers and an apuse.


    Arjun Erigaisi entered the arena, immediately drawing all attention to him. His stature and physique were enormous, he was nearly seven-feet tall. He had the presence of a looming mountain towering over everybody thatid eyes on him!


    "On the other hand, we have representative Servil Bisha and her Flickering Core style representing the Gragol branch. Known as the Flickering Ghoul in the Martial Community, none of you will want to miss out on this fight!"


    Servil looked like she hadn''t slept in a while. She had bags under her eyes. Yet she exuded an aura of peril. Primordial Sense did not even want to touch her.


    She was one of the few Martial Artists that none of his friends new much about.


    "Take your stances." The referee instructed.


    Arjun adopted an incredibly defensive stance, as Rui expected. He divided his legs, stabilizing his bnce and nting himself in one ce firmly. His arms were in front of him, guarding him. It was a stance that was at the epitome of defense.


    Servil instead adopted a rather neutral stance. Yet Primordial Sense still indicated to him that something was wrong. Her stance was quite tame, yet the danger she exuded was most certainly not.


    "Begin!" The refereemenced the match.


    Servil dashed towards Arjun as he remained stationary. Sheunched powerful several attacks at him.


    POW POW POW


    All of them bounced of his guard seemingly harmlessly. He didn''t even seem to use any techniques.


    "Conditioning?" Rui wondered.


    "Not just any conditioning." Kyrie said. "He''s conditioned the toughness of his body on every level. Skin, flesh, muscles and bones. He''s tough inside-out."


    Rui raised an eye, he had to admit that it was truly impressive. His defense put even Dalen to shame. At the rate the current battle was going on, he would win quite dominantly.


    Yet Rui had learned to trust his instincts. He didn''t think Servil was weak.


    Soon, a changed urred.


    BAM!


    Arjun''s eyes flew open as he felt an immense amount of pain from that blow, he staggered back.


    Rui''s eyes narrowed. "What was that?"


    BAM BAM BAM


    Arjun threw together a guard as her blows began hurting more! He began backing down more and more as each blow was staggering him!


    "Ah." Squire Dylon realized. "I see. Most interesting."


    "What is it, instructor Dylon?" Rui asked, raising an eyebrow.


    "Vibration." Dylon replied. "She''s managing to prate the impact beyond his enteriors to do damage to vital interiors. It''s novel form of damage infliction that permeates impacts using vibrations. Thus, she''s able inflict greater damage with each blow. It''s a powerful offensive field, very difficult to master, of course."


    Rui''s eyes widened as he nced back at her. He used Seismic Mapping as he tried focusing on the seismic radiation.


    (''He''s right.'') Rui realized. (''Her entire body is vibrating.'')<sub> </sub>


    Vibrations weremonly used in technology in for prative and permeating effects. They were used in drills to for greater prative effect, they were even used in medical technology for treatment of kidney stones where vibrations were used to break kidney stones done from the outside without the need of an invasive procedure.


    Servil was using those very principles to inflict far greater damage on Arjun Erigaisi than she normally would!


    BAM BAM BAM


    She was relentless in her pressurizing.


    Yet, she had underestimated Arjun''s fortitude and endurance.


    He weathered her every attack once he realized she could hurt him. He turtled up, going into full defensive and damage mitigation mode. This made Servil''s task harder and harder.


    Rui got the feeling that she wasn''t ustomed to someone withstanding her blows for as long as Arjun was. It was her misfortune that Arjun''s body was conditioned so extensively and deeply, that even the permeation of her impacts deeper into his body were not enough to take him down in a short amount of time.


    That didn''t mean Arjun was doing fine and dandy. He felt pain in ces deep within his body. His internal organs were sore, and there was a limit to how much he could toughen the vulnerable core of the human body, her powerful Apprentice-level power impacting him inside out was truly testing his defense and endurance unlike anything he had been subjected to asides from the torturous conditioning training regimes.


    (''Let''s see what is greater, your power, or my constitution!'') He took it up as a challenge. As apetitive man who took immense pride in his durability, he felt the need to prove himself in this tribtion.


    This fight was special in that regard.


    If he won this fight, he would be reaffirming his Martial Path, diverging it from external influences and traversing deeper down his own Martial Path.


    Perhaps this fight would be the most important for him in the entire Martial Contest!


    He grew more and more driven and fanatic about winning.


    And yet...


    WHAM!


    A powerful jab crashed onto his throat. The throat was one of the most vulnerable areas of the human body, even with Arjun''s powerful conditioning, it was not as incredibly tough as the rest of his body.


    Yet.


    He persevered.N?velDrama.Org owns this text.


    The pain was incredible, but he refused to fall.


    BAM


    A second strike slipped past an opening in his guard, mming against his head. The permeative nature of Servil''s strike rattled his brain, crossing a line.


    The brain could not be conditioned, any attempt to do so would be met with permanent brain damage.


    THUD


    He copsed to the ground as the shaking had caused blunt force brain trauma, causing his conscious mind to shut down.


    For a moment, everyone was silent.


    "Aaaand we have a winner folks!" Thementator immediately resumed. "Servil Bisha has passed the first round, breaking through Arjun Erigaisi''s incredible defense!"


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 251 No Matter What

    "WOOOOAAH" An adolescent cooed in excitement.N?velDrama.Org owns this text.


    "Look at them fight!" Another kid beside eximed.


    "They''re so cool!"


    "I wanna be a Martial Artist too!"


    "Alright alright." Julian chided. "Settle down for now."


    He got them to calm down, before ncing back at the ongoing matchup in amazement. It wasn''t that he had never seen a Martial Apprentice, he had Rui, and he had also worked with several Martial Apprentices in studies, surveys and experiments conducted by the Kandrian Insitute of Sciences.


    But he had never seen them in action going all out. Their performances were usually controlled and regted for the sake of research.


    This was truly the first time he had seen Martial Apprentices going all out. And the sight had left him speechless.


    Furthermore, these Martial Artists were not ordinary run-of-the-mill Martial Apprentices he had interacted with in his time as an assistant schr, they were the very best of their entire generation. They would likely go on to be the best of their Realm one day.


    The sheer prowess the first six Martial Apprentice representatives had shown him had truly opened his eyes into the power of Martial Art.


    "Big brother Julian." One of the adolescents called out. "When will Rui fight?"


    "The fourth match is about tomence, which means he''ll be fighting very soon." He replied. He inwardly grew tense. He had no idea how strong Rui was, he just hoped he would be fine holding his own in this group of monsters.


    Somewhere else in the Martial Colosseum in the 1 st ss seats of the Martial Colosseum.


    "Man, this is more intense than I expected." Kane sighed. "I''m so d I don''t have to deal with this.


    "They''ve all grown iparably stronger than when I knew them." Fae remarked. "Especially Ian. Truth be told, I didn''t think he was this strong. His talent as well as his age and the many years he''s spent as a Martial Apprentice have led him to grow much stronger than I expected. Rui will have a an extraordinarily difficult time defeating him in the semi-finals, if he makes it that far."


    "Indeed." Hever said. "Frankly, I would probably lose a majority of my fights against Ian Nepomaniachtchi. I wonder how Rui will fare against him."


    "There''s a chance he''ll lose." Fae sighed.


    Kane snorted. "Are you doubting him?"


    "My, just being level-headed." Fae replied perfunctorily. "Besides, forget about the third round, he still has his first round to clear. His first opponent is not weak." Fae''s eyes narrowed.


    Kane nodded. "He would have been called a prodigy if he was just a little more talented than he is."


    "I am rather interested in seeing how far Surman Marliak hase in the development of his niche Martial Art." Hever replied. "He will be formidable without a doubt."


    The three of them had purchased 1 st ss seats to be able to inspect the Martial Contest up close. With the wealth of their families, the cost of this luxury was nothing.


    The fourth match was to begin soon.


    "Aaaaand onto the next match we go!" The host announced. "In the fourth match, we have representative Surman Marliak and his Enchanting Willow Style representing the Vein branch. A fearsome Martial Artist known as the Mindbender! Keep your eyes open for this fight folks!"


    The crowd erupted in cheers and apuse as Surman entered the arena of the Colosseum.<sub> </sub>


    Surman was a nimble man in stature, there was nothing physically aesthetically threatening about him. Yet anybody who spent too long looking at him felt like they were going dizzy. His aura exuded a strange effect on people''s minds.


    "His opponent is representative Rui Quarrier of the Hajin branch." Thementator dered. "A dark-horse entry into the ranks of the reprentatives, how far will he go? How far will his Flowing Void Style go? Stick aound to find out!"


    Up in the first-ss seats, Fae frowned. "Flowing Void Style? I didn''t know he named it that. It''s such an abstract name."


    "It''s perfect." Kane grinned. "I bet the name symbolized the fact that his Martial Art and fighting styleck a form, they''re constantly and smoothly evolving and adapting to his opponent. Itcks an inherent fixed style or affinity for a style. Hence the Void."


    Kane was incredibly confident his interpretation was quite urate. His logic was quite sound indeed, after all.


    Yet he waspletely wrong.


    In reality, Rui realized that there was no way he could incorporate the full-form of the VOID algorithm; the Variable Objective Inverse Deductive algorithm into the name so he used the phic word of the short form; Void and then used the Kandrian dialect version of the word Void instead.


    Thus, came about the Flowing Void style.


    Even before thementator could finish, people had noticed Rui.


    Not because he stepped out earlier, no.


    Not at all.


    The sheer mental pressure that radiated from the weight of his concentration alone drew eyes to him even before he made he was visible.


    "Fuuu..." Rui exhaled as he appeared. His eyes were narrow and lock onto his opponent.


    He saw nothing else.


    The extended period of time he had invested into honing his focus had paid off. He was able to enter into a focused state of mind he had been cultivating rather easily and quickly.


    And it reflected.


    Surman Marliak eyebrow raised at the sight.


    He had initially wondered if Rui was truly qualified to be among them.


    Now any question about that matter had been put to rest. Rui''s unadultered focus on him was heavy. Surman had seldom experienced such pressure from a Martial Apprentice.


    Just gazing into those ck eyes that sucked in the light of the world greedily made him feel almost transparent.


    Almost.


    He was not a light man.


    His mentality was backed by the confidence that came with true power, true sess and having ovee true failure. He hade along way, he did not intend to stop now.


    No matter what.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 252 Let Me Thank You

    "Take your stances." The referee instructed.


    Surman Marliak took a strange stance. He lifted his left leg, positioning his left foot at right knee. One arm was raised over his head while the other was raised towards Rui.


    Rui wasn''t sure what to make of this stance. It looked strange and silly, but the fact that Rui didn''t understand the significance and reason for it simply meant his understanding of mental techniques was limited. He had tried to do some research, but he was limited.


    In the face of the unknown, he simply chose a simple neutral stance while activating pushing his sensory techniques to their limit.


    "Begin!" The supervisor dered!


    WHOOSH


    Surman Marliak disappeared in everyone''s eye, drawing a gasp from the crowd.


    POW


    He appeared next to Rui throwing a powerful strike, but to his surprise Rui had managed to block him easily.


    POW!


    Surman retreated in surprise. He didn''t expect his misdirection to fail so spectacrly. What he didn''t know was that Rui was able to see through misdirection far greater than what he had used. After all, Rui had been able to detect Kane''s position despite the Void Step technique; A technique with grade ten potency and difficulty.


    Rui chased after him, refusing to let him go too easily. Surman paused at the sight, taking his strange stance yet again, he moved his arms legs in slow wavy patterns even as Rui approached him. It was then, Rui''s eyes flew wide open as he suddenly Surman Marliak''s figure cloned into two!


    Suddenly he saw two Surman Marliaks!


    What was this sorcery?


    POW!


    Both Surman Marliaks threw a strike, pushing him back.


    Rui frowned, calming down. There was no way the clone was real, Martial Art was not that absurd, not yet. Furthermore, Surman''s specialty was mental techniques, so this was some kind of trick that Rui wasn''t quite understanding.


    The two images of Surman he saw were identical, their positioning, and their movements were all identical.


    Rui''s eyes widened as he realized what was happening.


    The brain received visual inputs from both eyes, however, both eyes were positioned seperately, meaning the visual input they supplied to the brain were different. The reason people had a singr vision despite two eyes was because the brain merged those two images. Diplopia was the condition of having double images due to the brain not fusing the two separate feeds from the eyes properly.


    Rui strongly suspected that that was why he was seeing two Surman Marliaks. The strange movements that Surman had performed shortly before his vision had doubled was likely some kind of hypnotic or mental technique.


    He knew that vision and other sensory input could affect the brain and mind in various ways. He also suspected that this was the principle on which mental maniption techniques worked.


    WHOOSH


    Surman dashed at him, hoping to take advantage of Rui''s disorientation, yet once again.


    WHAM!


    Rui not only didn''t get his but also batted Surman away with a swift kick. Surman frowned asnded back, realizing Rui was mentally remarkably resillient for him be this unaffected.


    Abination of Rui''s supernaturally powerful mind and the Primordial Instinct allowed Rui to fight almost unperturbed despite his disorientation. Rui''s mental fortitude was quite remarkable, to the point that Surman suspected he was employing anti-mental maniption techniques.


    He began employing even more strange stances. His body moved and contorted in bizarre ways bewitching the eyes of onlookers.


    Rui rushed forward attempting to stop what he was doing. He went for a swing when he suddenly froze. A sharp sense of pain rushed across his entire body!


    But nothing had physically changed!


    Why did he suddenly feel pain?


    POW POW POW<sub> </sub>


    Surman took advantage of Rui''s openingsunching a flurry of strikes. He began some more strange movements.


    Rui struggled to defend as he turtled up.


    (''He can induce pain?'') Rui wondered, shocked!


    He did not think such a thing was possible!


    Suddenly, he felt his mind blurring as Surman struck his temple before performing some more strange maneuvers.


    The result was that the very world around Rui had begun bending and morphing, more and more so by the second.


    (''He''s affecting my spatial awareness too?!'')


    BAM!


    Surman''s fist crashed into Rui, driving him back. He ruthlessly exploited Rui''s openings to the very limit, trying to end the fight as soon as he could.


    Rui on the other hand was still shocked.This belongs ? N?velDra/ma.Org.


    And excited!


    Every time he thought he understood Martial Art, some new technique came along and broke his world view!


    Surman Marliak had been thetest of them. A Martial Art who could affect the sense of pain, spatial awareness and attention remotely and continuously with almost no pre-conditions or significant caveats.


    It was extremely overpowered.


    Rui had fullye to see exactly why Surman was chosen as the representative of his Martial Academy branch.


    He was at a disadvantage. He was in pain. He was disoriented.


    Yet he felt only one emotion.


    Unbridled ecstasy.


    "Huhuhu..."


    Surman Marliak''s eyes widened as he heard a restrained chuckle from Rui. He saw a grin crack at the edges of his mouth.


    Rui beganughing uncontrobly. He couldn''t help himself. How could he not? He was just shown that there was yet another direction of Martial Art beyond his imagination that he never even knew had existed before!


    Everyone onlooking grew confused.


    Why was heughing like a mad man?


    Was this also a mental maniption Martial Art technique? Did Surman Marliak force his opponents tough as he beat them down? If so, how brutally sadistic.


    Surman himself had knitted eyebrows in confusion. When had he learnt such a technique? Did he not read the data of his technique scrolls properly?


    BAM BAM BAM!


    He didn''t stop pummeling. No, he was forcefully stopped.


    CLASP


    Rui suddenly caught one of his iing fists smoothly. He turned to Surman Marliak wordlessly. He didn''t speak but his expression conveyed gratitude.


    (''Thank you for showing me what is possible.'') He though as heunched a powerful weighted strike at Surman. (''Let me thank you by defeating you.'')


    BAM!


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 253 Depth

    "Do you think that''s part of a technique?" Fae had asked with concern when she saw Ruiughing like a mad man.


    Kane had gazed at him even as he was being pummeled before replying with a smile. "No, he''s just having fun."


    Fae was about to reply when suddenly, Rui had caught Surman''s Marliak fist cleanly, surprising both of them.


    BAM!


    He immediatelyunched a powerful blow, releasing his grip on Surman, sending him flying back.


    Not a single person was unsurprised.


    How did Rui go from being utterly dominated one second, to suddenly turning the tables around forcefully the very next?


    Such things did not happen!


    Up in the VIP viewing balcony, the headmaster of the Vein branch raise an eyebrow, turning to headmaster Aronian.


    "I do not understand Aronian." She said. "He clearly is not employing countermeasures against mental techniques, they affect him yet he breaks them too quickly."


    "Hohoho..." Headmaster Aronian chuckled at her confusion. "Impressive little pup, isn''t he?"


    "Does this have something to do with his mental tolerance of extended usage of mental rejuvenation potions that have been recorded in the database?" She wondered.


    "Partially." Headmaster Aronian replied a bit more solemnly. "Frankly his case isn''t entirely clear. However, with all the circumstantial evidence at hand. I havee to the conclusion that he''s an unfathomable genius of the mind hitherto unheard of in the history of the Academy. This much is quite clear when you consider the nearly unparalleled IQ scores and from his entrance exam, the fact that he is also the only student in history to pass the final stage of the mental evaluation exam and the numerous other feats such as that."


    He paused, before continuing. "Also, the depth of his Martial Path has reached the Squire Realm, perhaps even deeper. I cannot say for sure, it''s incredible."


    All of the headmasters reacted with visible surprise.


    "That''s impossible." She said. "He hasn''t even been a Martial Apprentice for two years!"


    "It''s unbelievable, but it is the truth." Headmaster Aronian confirmed. "Somehow, he has already long fulfilled the first condition to bing a Squire candidate. That is also why he''s doing well against your Surman Marliak, see?"


    She nodded with a confused yet enlightened expression. If his Martial Path was truly that deep, if Rui Quarrier had truly walked such a great length down his Martial Path, then she could understand what was happening, it indeed was the perfect exnation.


    "The depth of his Martial Path, along with his monstrous mind has made for an incredible sturdy mind." Headmaster Aronian said. "In fact, I''m actually quite impressed that your Surman Marliak was able to affect and incapacitate him to the degree that he did for as long as he did. Ordinary mental techniques would have just bounced off of Rui. Even the extraordinary Void Step technique was only partially effective against his sensory techniques and his mind. The fact that Surman did as well as he did proves he is extremely talented. He just had the poor fortune of running into Rui."N?vel/Dr(a)ma.Org - Content owner.


    POW POW POW!


    Each strike devastated Surman. Most of his techniques were mental techniques, his defense was not all that impressive. He had had a dominant undefeated win streak in the preliminary contest of the Vein branch simply by incapacitating his opponents with his mental maniption techniques immediately and winning straightforwardly.


    It had been a very long time since he had been punished this much!<sub> </sub>


    POW!


    A powerful swing to the jaw rattled his brain.


    THUD


    He copsed to the ground.


    "Aaand we have a winnerdies and gentlemen! Rui Quarrier sessfully advances to the second round after ast-minuteeback against Surman Marliak! What an unexpected victory as the gambling bets revealed! It seems that those who bet on the formidable Flowing Void style have received their money''s worth!"


    The crowd cheered excitedly!


    "Hey." Rui approached Surman who had just finished consuming a healing potion. "Great fight. You''re incredibly strong."


    Surman gazed at him for a moment, before cracking a resigned smile. "Thank you, you''re stronger than I expected and hoped. I''ve never felt that helpless before."


    "Thank you for that wonderful fight, you''ve shown me an additional dimension of what Martial Art can do. I will be looking into them when we get back after the Martial Contest." He said, smiling.


    "I''m always up for a spar, if we can meet that is." Surman chuckled. "Good luck with the Martial Contest, I''m rooting for you."


    "Thanks, appreciate that."


    They shook hands before heading back to their exits.


    The crowd cheered in approval of the sportsmanship that both representatives had shown.


    "Congrattions on passing the first round, Rui." Squire Kyrie told him when he returned to them. "You did quite well


    "Great job." Squire Dylon threw a thumbs up. "You beat him well. You should have seen the looks on their faces hehe." he subtly gestured to hispetitors in the contest viewing balcony. He notices several of them looked at him differently after his fight.


    He shrugged, turning back to the arena. He may have won, but he wasn''t going to call it a day and head back to his luxurious quarters. He still needed to observe his opponents fighting in order to be able to fight as optimally as he could against them.


    He had already watched his next opponent, Servil Bisha, fight in the third match and had begun thinking about that matchup.


    "That was an amazing fight without a doubt! However, the next fight is not any less exciting at all! On one hand we have representative Ferlicia Ernand of the Fritzer branch and her zing Fury Style. On the other hand, we have Askin Nodt and his Drunken Fever Style of the Fervor Branch!"


    Two contestants walked in.


    Ferlicia looked like a dignified heir of a Martial Family, as she was. But Askin looked like a drunk man, because he was one. He sauntered nochntly, with a dreamy lost expression on his face, huping every now and then.


    Rui smiled at that sight. He was interested in this fight.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 254 Amazed

    Rui recalled what Fae and Kane had told him about these two.


    Heat and alcohol.


    These two Martial Artists employed these two phenomena in their Martial Art.


    This was something Rui truly looked forward to. How could a Martial Artist fight with heat and alcohol? He didn''t even know that this was possible! There were some techniques, but to make it your entire Martial Art?


    The Martial Contest opened his eyes to so much that he hadn''t seen before, it was truly shocking. Yet it incredibly exciting nheless.


    "Take your stances." The referee instructed.


    Ferlicia crouched, cing her open-handed arms in front of her.


    (''Grappling stance eh?'') He mused.


    Askin on the other hand, just shifted around in one ce, imbnced.


    "Begin!" The refereemenced.N?velDrama.Org owns this text.


    Ferlicia''s skin grew incredibly red, as if she was blushing madly across every inch of her body, before dashing at Askin.


    It was a sight that amazed Rui. She was increasing the temperature of her own body to an incredibly high degree!


    The human body was actually capable of increasing body temperature to a high degree. It was capable of this and even did increase temperature in times of fevers. Through engogenous and exogenous pyrogens, it could cause a high elevation in the body''s thermoregtory set-point. However, the reason that it did not increase temperature beyond a small degree was because the brain simply couldn''t handle extremely high temperatures.


    Normal human brains, that is.


    Martial Apprentices possessed enhanced brains on a neurochemical level.


    Rui would not be surprised if this dramatically increased the ceiling of the temperature that she could withstand, that along with some conditioning meant that this was legitimately a powerful weaponizable phenomenon!


    Rui suspected that he had stumbled upon the core of her Martial Art technique.


    In this case, it made sense that she was a grappler! Is her body temperature was extremely high, then grappling was a field ofbat that was extremelypatible with her. It would exploit her strengths and give her far greater gains than striking would, in all actuality.


    He wondered how Askin would deal with it.


    Ferlicia shot towards Askin, charging to get into contact with him.


    WHOOSH


    He ducked so incredibly low that he would be fine even if a car ran over him!


    Rui''s eyes narrowed. It was a simple maneuver, but the reflexes he disyed were extremely quick. He dodged the strike at basically the veryst second!


    Ferlicia tutted, turning around as sheshed out at Askin who stumbled out of her strike, rolling out of the way.


    She continued chasing him around, but she literally couldn''t even get close.


    "Hue hue." heughed. "Can''t catch me baby."


    He wiggled.


    Rui smiled amused. "He''s drunk, isn''t he?"<sub> </sub>


    "Indeed he is." Squire Dylon nodded. "You can trust me, I know drunk when I see it."


    "Uh huh." Rui threw a resigned look at him. "How is being drunk a Martial Art technique."


    "Well Rui, I can tell you that being drunk allows you to do things that you would otherwise never be able to do. Like choosing to walk in on Kyrie while she was bathi-!"


    "Shut up." Squire Kyrie''s unadultered aura seeped out as she coldly cut him off, causing Rui to feel violent dreadful chills climb up his spine. The sheer force of her mind far exceeded anything he had ever sensed from an Apprentice.


    "Alright alright." Squire Dylon chuckled mischievously raising his hands,pletely unbothered by her fearsome aura.


    They hadn''t even noticed it.


    Rui wiped away some sweat, shaking his head inwardly. (''I have far to go.'')


    He turned back to the battle, pondering about Askin, who had still gone on untouched by Ferlicia.


    Alcohol impaired conscious cognition, but at the same it also consquentially ceded control of the body to the subconscious reflexive mind. Reflexes far surpassed conscious reaction speed.


    Furthermore, the enhanced Apprentice brain would likely be able to mitigate the downsides of being drunk that would normally severely impair normal drunk humans.


    Rui''s eyes widened with interest. This meant that alcohol was potentiall more beneficial to Martial Apprentices with some rigorous training!


    But did this mean the Martial Artists with alcohol had to get drunk before every fight started?


    Wasn''t this incredibly impractical?


    "I wonder if he underwent conditioning."


    "It''s quite likely he did." Squire Dylon said. "There are a few niche alcohol-oriented conditioning techniques that allow the users to permanently retain arge amount of alcohol in their bodies and blood."


    "What?" Rui turned to Squire Dylon, surprised.


    "They condition their body to not filter out alcohol quickly." He borated. "Therefore they can maintain being drunk for rather incredibly longer periods of times. Just by possessing alcohol in their system, they can gain extremely high reflexes."


    Rui nodded, turning back. Not even Nel had such incredible reflexes as what Askin was demonstrating, it was almost like there was no gap between stimulus and reaction. Only Kane could replicate that feat.


    Eventually, Ferlicia grew frustrated. The very air was sizzling at times due to her heat, and frankly Rui felt that temperature of the Colosseum might have even increased a bit by now all due to Ferlicia alone, but she was struggling to tag Askin.


    She brought her palm together. She folded all finger except for her index and middle finger, leaving a small gap between them and bringing them to her lips.


    When she got as close to Askin as she could, she inhaled deeply before exhaling as hard as she could.


    What Rui saw next shocked him!


    She did not exhale air like any normal human did!


    She breathed fire!


    The mes erupted from the tiny hole of her fingers, spreading out and covering wider area than any single human normally could with their body.


    This time even Askin''s great reflexes could not entirely save him. He emerged from mes, with first and second-degree burns.


    Rui gaped at the sight. He had thought Surman was incredible, but Ferlicia just very well might have taken that spot!


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 255 Outcome

    Rui felt this time and time again for each of the representatives, but they were truly worthy of the position of representative.


    Even with her body-heating technique alone, she would easily be in the top five in the Hajin branch of the Martial Academies. Herpatibility against basically everyone was great since merely touching her caused damage.


    In fact, Rui would even go so far as to say that she would even beat Hever and at the very least stalemate Kane. Hever needed to firm interception and physical contact, Ferlicia would dominate him because he would not be able to maintain contact with her.


    Kane may not lose against her, but he really would not be able to win against her either. Kane''s offense and defense was already limited. If he could not even realistically touch her, then there was basically nothing he could even do.


    And then there was her spectacr fire attack. Rui did not think she was actually expelling fire from within her lungs. If he had to guess, she was using the extreme temperature of her body to ignite the air. She blowed air as hard as she could through a thing gap in her red-fingers, thebination of the high temperature and the high pressure likely reached a level that was enough to ignite the air that she was exhaling.


    It was an incredible technique that had a remarkably wide area than one would expect, it was not a technique that could be mastered without dedicating one''s everything to heat.


    However, Askin wasn''t weak either.N?velDrama.Org owns this text.


    POW!


    He managed tond a strike on her minimizing damage by striking with footwear in obscure strange angles that were hard to defend from.


    POW POW POW!


    Heunched a barrage of backward kicks on Ferlicia while upside down hand-standing with his back faced against her. It was an incrediblyical scene, yet it allowed him to attack her without suffering any damage.


    WHOOSH


    He avoided her with a strange spinning flip onto his feet. Rui found his moves quite difficult to predict, it was not easy and he had an a rather unpredictable, unlimited and unconstrained fighting style. He deviated from orthodoxy.


    In the Martial Academy, there were several principles taught to students in the Foundational stage regardingbat, these principles were also taught on Earth. They were basic guidelines to fight optimally. Martial Artists had long grown ustomed to taking them for granted and fighting as if those guidelines would mostly be followed.


    And they were, because those guidelines and norms were generally good time-tested advice that actually worked.


    Yet it seemed that because of the peculiarities of his Martial Art, a lot of the foundational norms of orthodoxbat simply didn''t apply to him!


    He broke every rule, but somehow he kept getting away with it.


    Frankly, he was so divergent, even the VOID algorithm would need to take its time in order to adapt and evolve to him.


    Many of the Martial Artists spectating the match felt a headache just trying to process his bizarre motions!


    Ferlicia was also among them. She had grown more and more irritated at her inability to even properly touch him. He was bizarrely slippery and somehow always escaped her clutches.


    Furthermore, heunched bizarre unorthodox attacks that she found it hard to defend against.


    POW POW POW!


    He managed tounch a swiftbination of odd attacks that slipped right past her guard.


    Irritation shed across her face. So far, the only attack that had sessfully hurt him or even hit him was her fire breath attack. However, she did not think she would be able tond it any time soon again.


    Shockingly, it didn''t seem like he was so lose. Then, something changed.<sub> </sub>


    POW


    FSSHHH!


    "Argh!" Askin grimaced as he retreated. He had burnt his leg badly. He had trouble understanding what had happened. Heunched a kick but ended up getting burnt quite significantly.


    "She was unable to avoid getting hit, so she shifted so that an exposed part of his leg would hit her instead of more less vulnerable areas." Rui nodded. It wasn''t the best strategy she could have employed that Rui could see, but it showed that Ferlicia was a clever fighter.


    The damage was done. Askin was too reliant on his unorthodox maneuvering, thus the severe burns on his leg weren''t good.


    Furthermore, Rui realized he probably had it worse if his body maintained a high level of alcohol at all times. Alcohol was very mmable and Ferlicia was extremely hot. It was quite likely that every attack did more damage than it would normally do so.


    Furthermore, his maneuverability had decreased quite a bit due to the injury.


    FLICK


    FSSH


    Ferlicia managed to nick him with yet another attack. Her offense was finally starting finallynd on him. However, she was unable to grapple him, grappling charges were still much slower than jabs, after all.


    FLICK FLICK POW!


    She managed tond her first clean strike. Askin had already been burnt quite a bit by then. Inparison, she hadn''t any meaningful damage. Askin hadn''tnded too many heavy blows on her.


    His condition deteriorated more and more until eventually she managed to charge and grapple him.


    FSSHH!


    Asking grimaced. Just as Ferlicia was about to grapple and burn him even more.


    "I resign."


    She froze. Letting go of him immediately.


    "Did I hear that right?" She asked him, evidently in disbelief.


    "Match over!" The referee dered. "Winner; Representative Ferlicia Ernand!"


    Askin shrugged clumsily. "I''m not unreasonably stubborn. I know when to take a step back *hic*"


    She simply gazed at him wordlessly as he was supplied potions, before turning around and walking away.


    "Hmmm.." Rui pondered. "Well, atleast he saved himself some pain."


    "Indeed." Squire Dylon agreed. "I would have done the same if I was in his position. Nobody has time for prolonging torture futilely."


    Rui wasn''t sure he agreed with that entirely. "Regardless, she''s going to be incredibly strong."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 256 Amazement

    "Aaand we have a winner! Representative Ferlicia Ernand makes it to the second round after a spectacr victory against representative Askin Nodt! Onto our next fight. We have Representative Mia Marnt and her Echo st tyle representing ther Fellen branch. On the other hand, we have Representative Ana Mariane of the Hyulflum branch and her Belial w Style!"


    The crowd cheered loudly as the two women walked into the arena, facing each other.


    "Take your stances." The referee instructed.


    Mia took a bnced stance, however her hands were positioned oddly close to her face. Rui wasn''t entirely sure what to make of that.


    He did, of course, recall some the bare basic information Fae had told him about her.


    She wielded sound.


    Rui wasn''t sure what to make of that. But he had grown used to that feeling now. He had already long epted that basically anything and everything could be a Martial Art in this world, that''s just how things were.


    Her opponent on the other hand was equally interesting. Fae and Kane didn''t know much about her, but they said her Martial Art had something to do with wind.


    That''s right, wind. Rui had already given up on trying to understand.


    Ana took a bizarre stance. She ced one foot ahead of the other and then ced her arms to her side with her palms facing the ground.


    Rui shook his head. He genuinely had no idea what the fuck she was doing, but he assumed she did. He looked forward to seeing how both sides fought.This belongs ? N?velDra/ma.Org.


    "Begin!" The supervisormenced the fight.


    Mia inhaled deeply, bring her hands to her mouth.


    What came out of her mouth was not a shout.


    But a roar.


    Rui couldn''t see the attack, sound was invisible. But Primordial Instinct detected a small yet strong mass of kic energy.


    His eyes flew wide open in shock!


    She was shouting sound attacks!


    Ana Mariane avoided the attack not by moving to the side or ducking.


    No.


    She leapt to the air, reaching a good height to avoid the attack.


    Rui frowned. Being midair made escaping impossible, Mia would simply target her midair. She had blundered in his view.


    And exactly that happened. Mia didn''t let go of the opportunity and sent more sound projectiles at her.


    WHOOSH


    Rui felt a sh of shock for the second time in ten seconds as Ana Mariane avoid the attack midair!


    "Is she... stepping on air?!" Rui was bbergasted as he saw her gaining altitude continuously as she continued her stepping motion.


    Even Squire Kyrie frowned. "This shouldn''t be possible at the Apprentice Realm."


    "At the Apprentice Realm?" Rui turned, facing her in surprise. "What does that mean."<sub> </sub>


    "The technique she''s using is known as Sky Walking. It works by kicking air down hard enough to stay hovering. Essentially an air version of swimming, in a way. Martial Apprentices are too weak to do this however, only Martial Squires and above can use it. Which is why it''s impressive she''s able to." Squire Dylon pitched in.


    Rui''s eyes flew wide open. He nced back at the incredible scene.


    He was starting to get tired of being surprised over and over again in such a short timeframe. But the scene unfolding before his eyes was truly incredible.


    Miaunched invisible sound bullets and Ana moved out of her aim ever so slightly before the attacks wereunched.


    It did not look like a battle between Martial Artists!


    He focused on Mia first. From what he could tell, she was building an enormous amount of air and pressure and using that generate extremely intense sound waves focused in an incredibly small area. He figured she likely conditioned to arge degree to be able to convert the energy of her body to sound in that manner.


    However, he recognized the potency of her offense. She was able to spam reasonably powerful attacks from quite range, giving her a huge range advantage over most Martial Apprentices.


    Secondly, her attacks were invisible, it made countering them much harder than if they could be seen. This contributed to the formidability of her offense immensely.


    Thirdly, her attacks were incredibly fast, they moved at the speed of sound!


    After all, she was literally attacking with sound. This meant her offensive speed surpassed all martial Apprentices. Martial Apprentices could not break the sound barrier unless is specific exceptional circumstances.


    Rui shook his head, with an impressed expression. Yet again, he was convinced that the representatives were truly worthy of their positions.


    The same could be said for Ana Mariane. She danced around the air, avoiding the sound bullets incredibly well.


    His curiosity was in full throttle and his sharp senses had already begun uncovering the secret of her ability.


    "She''s using a breathing technique." Rui murmured, as he nced at her breathing motions.


    The two Squires nced at him.


    "She''s using a breathing technique to momentarily create high-pressure and high-density air pockets and then steps on them." He exined.


    Breathing rapidly pushed air from one location to another and back and forth, this momentarily created high density/pressure zones of air. At extremely high density of air, it behaved more like liquid or a solid.


    Rui strongly suspected that she was using her breathing and her dance-like motions to momentarily create high density air regions and then stepped on those high-density air regions like they were solid.


    In this way, she was literally creating momentary steps of semi-solid air to move around in the sky.


    And that wasn''t all!


    WHOOSH


    She kicked the air and a heavy st of air flew down towards Mia


    BANG!


    It collided with the ground as Mia avoided it,unching her own attacks. Rui narrowed his eyes at that sight. She was using the same principle that she was Sky Walking with tounch attacks! She created high-pressure and high-density projectiles and batted them against her opponent.


    What an incredibly novel way of fighting!


    In the sky, she was extremely secure, after all, how would prople even hurt her if they could not touch her?


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 257 Result

    ROAR!


    Miaunched a barrage of sound bullets in one go.


    WHOOSH!


    Ana barely managed to prance between them midair as she swirled, kicking the air andunching a powerful wind st.


    BANG!


    ROAR!


    It mmed into the ground as Mia summersaulted out of the way,unching even more sound bullets at Ana even mid-flip upside down.


    The two danced in a strange harmony, enrapturing every onlooker into their elegant and profound duet.


    Not a single person could avert their eyes.


    How could they?


    Rui was extremely absorbed into their strange fight. Watching their every movement with wide eyes, it had been truly a long time since he had been this shook by a fight.


    His powerful mind furiously processed the data his senses and techniques were supplying as he created mental profiles of each of the two women.


    Mia Marnt was a threat. There were three elements that contributed most to her formiablebat prowess; her incredibly long range, invisible attacks and the fact that they moved at the speed of sound. This meant she could badger her opponents with attacks that could not be avoided after they wereunched from a range.


    Furthermore, this wasn''t the only problem with her offense. Her sound didn''t just do physical damage, it also affected the brain. Since it struck the eardrums incredibly hard, causing pain and disorientation. Furthermore, at close ranges Rui had no doubt whatsoever that she could burst her opponents'' ear drums.


    Her only limitations and drawbacks were the fact that it was easier to predict the timing and direction of her attacks than conventional offenses, her options were limited and the linear trajectory of the attacks and the preparatory motions needed tounch her sound bullets made it easier to predict their timing.


    Of course, very few people would be able to actually practically apply this to mitigate the enormous advantages she held against an overwhelming majority of Martial Artists.


    Thankfully, Rui was one of them. The VOID algorithm was perfect for using these drawbacks and limitations to predict and fight in a manner most apt.


    Ana Mariane was also remarkably formidable, but not without her limitations either.


    Her greatest strengths and advantages were her range, as well as the fact that she could stay out of range of an overwhelming majority of offensive techniques thanks to her flight. Her maneuvering was not limited to the terrain or two dimensions, giving her a boost in her evasiveness, it was why she was doing a remarkable job at avoiding Mia''s attacks.


    However, her attack suffered. Air was not an efficient medium to try an elerate. Mia ovee this by focusing and narrowing the direction of sound with her mouth so that the energy remained mped and was conserved to a much higher degree. However, Ana was not using sound, she was using wind. She created a powerful wind st viaunching high-density air created by her breathing technique and physical movements.


    However, by the time the attack reached Mia, arge amount of the momentum of the travelling wind had already been bled off by the atmosphere. Thus, her offensive power was unremarkable.


    They were both extremely strong and would easily be top-five in the Hajin Academy, but they were thankfully not without ws.


    Just as he mused about them, there was a change in the battle.


    POW!


    Ana stumbled mid-air, plummeting a bit as a sound bullet hit her, causing pain and disorientation to her and disrupting her Sky Walking partially.


    Mia Marnt eyes narrowed as she pushed her offense to full throttle to unleash a barrage of sound bullets at Ana. She was not going to let this opportunity go!<sub> </sub>


    Ana was already pushing herself to the limit dodging each sound bullet impably, but in her state, it was impossible. One thing had led to another as several more sound bullets struck her.


    This caused even more pain and disorientation and led to a chain reaction that swiftly tilted the battle in Mia''s favour.


    POW POW POW!


    THUD


    Ana grimaced as she plummeted to the ground. Her face morphed into fear as Mia rushed in, closing the distance between them.


    BANG!


    A singr potent sound bullet struck Ana''s jaw.


    The blunt force trauma to her brain atop the disorientation she had already been inflicted with was too much.


    THUD


    She copsed t on the ground, unmoving.


    "Winner; Representative Mia Marnt!" The referee dered.


    The crowd erupted in excited cheers as the spectacr fight ended.


    "Aaaand we have a winner folks! Representative Mia will be moving onto round two after her solid victory against representative Ana!"


    Rui exhaled, a little tired from his own excitement. He shook his head.


    In reality, Ana could have won against Mia, perhaps even dominantly, had she fought more aptly.


    Her breathing technique could create high-density air regions. She could have used this to create currents that would alter the direction of the sound bullets by shifting the medium by which the sound was travelling by for a rather low effort.N?vel(D)rama.Org''s content.


    But it was unreasonable to expect her to apply a principle he studied in fluid mechanics in his bachelor''s degree. However, this realization alone showed him the value of his scientific background in this world. It showed him that there was likely massive untapped potential in Martial Art that nobody had yet uncovered. Nobody was qualified to uncover.


    This world did not have the scientific foundation needed to uncover and tap into this potential.


    In all of heaven and Gaia, he alone was qualified!


    How strong would he be if he realized this potential and employed its power in his Martial Art? Just how powerful would he be with the power of science and fantasy on his side?


    Just the very thought of it made him extraordinarily excited. Once the Martial Contest ended one way or another, he had a lot of considerations to explore and think about.


    There was simply too much he had too aplish, too much he wanted to aplish.


    Yet this did not discourage him.


    No.


    It did the exact opposite.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 258 Outcome

    "Moving onto our next battle! On one hand we have Representative Byron Harth and his Gentle Sting Style representing the Brillix branch. And on the other hand, we have Kaerts Omegde and his Soul Reader Style! Let''s wee them with a round of apuse."


    The two men entered the arena, earning an eruption of cheers from the audience.


    Rui raised an eyebrow at their heavy presence.


    They were strong.


    "Take your stances." The referee instructed.


    Byron Harth extended his left leg forward as he crouched his right leg. His arms positioned themselves in front of him, with all fingers except the index and middle fingers bent.


    Rui recalled that Fae and Kane had told him that Byron''s Martial Path and Martial Art were centered around nerve targeting.


    The nervous system of the human body was responsible for the functioning of the human body in many ways, Rui wasn''t even sure what Byron was capable of. He intended to pay close attention to hisbat style and make a profile centered around him as well.


    As for Kaerts, he wasn''t sure what to make of that strange name. Neither of his friends knew much about him either. They only knew that he was the son of a Martial Master.


    He simply took a simple neutral stance, making him all the more mysterious in Rui''s eyes.


    "Begin!" The refereemenced the match.


    Byron immediately dashed towards Kaerts,unching several finger poking attacks.


    WHOOSH


    Kaerts evaded the attack incredibly cleanly, he moved almost the very bare minimum needed to avoid the attack. What struck Rui as interesting was that he didn''t strike Rui as an evasive type, yet he possessed high evasive capabilities.


    Perhaps this had something to do with his Martial Art.


    WHOOSH


    WHOOSH


    WHOOSH


    As time passed, he continued avoiding each of Byron''s finger jabs with unbelievable timing. Rui''s eyes knitted with confusion and amazement as a certain realization dawned on Rui.


    (''This man... He''s not dodging the jabs as or even after theye.'') Rui noted. (''His evasive motion begins as or just before Byron begins his movements.'')


    There were very few people who were able to regrly do that at the Apprentice Realm. Kane was one of them, with his excellent reflexes and agility, he was able to often evade as early as possible. Rui was also one of them, with the VOID algorithm supported with Primordial Instinct, he possessed an incredibly high amount of foresight, and his prediction allowed him to move at among the earliest of intervals in the fight.


    However, Kaerts was certainly not an evasive-type like Kane was, and he absolutely certainly did not possess the VOID algorithm.


    "Hmmm..." Rui frowned. "There''s something strange here."


    "You noticed quite quickly." Squire Kyrie raised an eyebrow. "I was going to tell you after the match ended."


    "The fac that he''s evading this early... As well as the name of the Martial Art..." Rui''s eyes narrowed. "Is it a sensory technique?"


    "Quite likely." Kyrie nodded.


    If that was the case, then it could perhaps exin his remarkable Martial Art.


    (''But what is he sensing if that is the case?'') Rui wondered. (''And how is he sensing it in the first ce?'')


    Rui paid a lot of attention to his movements, trying to understand what exactly was happening.


    Suddenly, a strange event urred. Byron actually skidded just a bit under a particrly slippery part of the arena when setting up a kick, disbncing him as heunched the kick. Normally, this was a blunder and would be exploited by an experienced Martial Artist.<sub> </sub>


    Yet, not only did it not fail, the kick mysteriouslynded straight on Kaerts'' face.


    POW


    Rui raised an eyebrow at that sight in surprise, he would have been able to dodge that thanks to the center of gravity evaluation system of the VOID algorithm, yet for some reason, itpletely bypassed Kaerts'' sensory.


    It very well could have been a fluke, of course.


    (''Or perhaps...'') Rui narrowed his eyes as an idea formed in his head.


    Byron managed tond in a strike by fluke, but it worked in his favour. All he had needed was one element to give him an opening. The fluke strike hadnded square on Kaerts'' nose causing pain and disorientation.


    POW POW POW


    Hended three speedy close-range finger jabs that had very little power in them. He had sacrificed weight and momentum for speed, allowing him to cleanlynd them.


    Yet despite being weak jabs, they strangely affected Kaerts negatively.


    THUD


    He copsed to one knee all of a sudden, seemingly unvoluntarily.


    BAM!


    Byron managed tond a powerful kick to the face this time.


    Kaerts managed to get back up, retreating.


    Rui had watched the scene carefully with eagle eyes.


    Copyright by N?v/elDrama.Org.


    (''Temporary partial Paralysis.'') Rui thought with incredulity. With just a single tap, he could temporarily hinder or incapacitate a body part. It was an almost magical ability. The average Martial Apprentice stood no chance of defeating that ability. Byron would go very far in the prelimianry contest of the Hajin branch.


    In a way Kaerts was extremelypatible against him. However, that did not mean that Byron was necessarily weak.


    Against the right opponents, he would dominate incredibly hard. For example, Rui suspected that Nel would likely be helpless against Byron. The reason for that being that Nel relied on his durability toughness too much. Byron would paralyze him quickly and just eternally punish him.


    However, his opponent was not Nel, it was Kaerts. He had managed to gain a temporary advantage, but thepatibility was not good.


    BANG!


    Kaertsnded a powerful blow as he sneaked past Byron''s finger pokes smoothly.


    He had managed to regain his bearing and began avoiding Byron properly yet again.


    Once he began going all out, there was too much of a gap.


    POW!


    A powerful blow to the jaw rattled Byron''s brain, knocking him out.


    THUD


    He copsed to the ground.


    "Aaaaand we have a winner folks! Representative Kaerts Omegde has earned his spot in the second round after a solid victory against Representative Byron Harth!"


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 259 Fiona

    "Good fight." Rui nodded. They were both strong, however, Kaerts was a cut better. That along withpatibility advantage gave him very low chances of losing against someone like Byron.


    Although they were all chosen as representatives of their respective branches of the Academies, that did not mean they were all on the same level.


    The next match may even serve as proof of that.


    "What an incredible first round we''ve had folks. Now we have only one more fight left! On one hand we have Representative Derk Sermont!"


    Derk walked in, expressionless. Yet Rui could almost feel the fear from him.


    "And on the other hand, we have Representative Fiona Roschem representing the Vargard branch! Renowned as the Chosen Incarnate in the Martial Community. She is the representative with the highest gambling odds!"


    The crowd erupted in cheers louder than any other Representative had received. This was to be expected, since they were in the town of Vargard, the branch that she was representing.


    However, Rui noticed something odd.


    (''He didn''t mention the name of her Martial Art...'') Rui''s eyes widened. Could it be that she hadn''t even named her Martial Art yet? As strong as she was, her Martial Art did not possess enough individuality and originality?


    This came as a shock to Rui. He hadpletely suspected her to be a Squire candidate. But it turned out he was wrong.


    (How stra-!'') He froze as Fiona entered.


    She didn''t make any gestures out of the ordinary. She didn''t put on any airs. She was expressionless.


    Yet the sense of danger that her focus invoked in all those within her Realm was profound.


    In that moment, Rui instinctively felt certain of one thing.


    She was the strongest Martial Apprentice he had ever met.


    She was stronger than his old Apprentice instructors. Stronger than his friends. Stronger than the golden-haired bandit. Even stronger than the masked bandit who saved the former from eight Martial Apprentices.


    "Take your stances." The referee instructed.


    A strange tension took over the arena.


    Things were tense before, but Rui felt a faint whiff of fear had tainted the atmosphere.


    Derk Sermont adopted a grappling stance as a bead of sweat trickled down his face. Yet he held a resolute expresion nheless.


    Fiona didn''t move.


    The referee raised an eyebrow, beforemencing the match.


    "Begin!"


    Rui watched with hawk eyes.


    Yet, he couldn''t believe what had unfolded.


    BANG!


    RUMBLE


    She pushed the ground under her backwards with such ferocity that faint tremors travelled across the entire arena.


    In an instant, she had arrived in front of Derk.


    BOOM!


    A powerful impact crumpled into his gut, as he spat out blood. The impactunched flying across the entire arena.<sub> </sub>


    BANG!


    He finally stopped as he collided against the wall.


    THUD


    He copsed to the ground.


    ...


    "W-Winner; Representative Fiona Roschem!" The referee dered.


    For a moment, no one moved.


    "Aaaaand we have a winner folks! Representative Fiona Roschem soundly moves onto the second round with a dominant victory against Representative Derk Sermont!"


    Rui jerked as he finally unfroze.This belongs ? N?velDra/ma.Org.


    "Haha..." heughed, before sighing.


    "Well..." Squire Dylon scratched his head. "You might as well resign."


    Both Rui and Squire Kyrie turned to him, ring at him.


    "You''re supposed to be on my side." Rui shook his head.


    "Hey, I am on your side." Squire Dylon smirked. "I''m saving you a lot of time, energy and dignity. Only a true friend would do that."


    Rui ignored him. "This is going to be rough." he nced at the other Representatives, they were mostly expressionless, but he realized that they were all thinking the same thing.


    "She''s reached the very pinnacle that Martial Apprentices can possibly reach, generally." Squire Kyrie said. "She would even be able to survive a brief period of time against weak Martial Squires, frankly."


    Rui''s eyes widened at those words.


    "The gap between Martial Realms isn''t exponential." Squire Kyrie exined, noticing his reaction. "The strongest of Martial Apprentices born with monstrous talent after enough time and resources, like her, are not too inferior to the weakest of Martial Squires who just barely managed to survive the breakthrough and haven''t fully adapted to the power yet."


    Her words were casual, but the information she revealed was not.


    First, she had inadvertently revealed that the breakthrough process to Martial Squire was life-threatening. This added one more piece of the puzzle to the mystery that was the breakthrough process to the Martial Squire Realm.


    Secondly, he learnt that Realms were closer to each other than he suspected.


    "Is she really the peak of the Martial Apprentice Realm?" Rui asked.


    Squire Kyrie thought about the question for a moment. "Strictly speaking, no."


    Rui tilted his head, confused.


    "Headmaster Aronian informed me you have been informed of the two conditions needed to be a Squire candidate, so I suppose I can reveal some information to you." She paused, before continuing. "The Realms of Martial Artists aremon checkpoints along all Martial Paths, in a way. They do not directly corrte withbat prowess, not directly anyway. They corrte to how much progress you''ve made in the direction of your ideal perfect Martial Art at the end of the journey of the Martial Path."


    That was incredibly vague, especially thatst part. But he didn''tin, he had already received a lot of information.


    "So that means theoretically there isn''t a defined known limit on the power of Martial Artists of a certain Realm?" Ru asked.


    Squire Kyrie nodded. "Each generation of Martial Artists is stronger than the previous Martial Artists in general, that should tell you there isn''t defined power scales and limits purely theoretically."


    Rui''s thoughts turned back to Fiona. This meant that she wasn''t the very limit a Martial Apprentice could achieve. Perhaps someone even more talented would be stronger. She would probably surpass herself as she got older.


    But even if she wasn''t at the peak, it didn''t matter. She was absurdly strong, and Rui would have to defeat her to win.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 260 Analysis

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


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


    The second match was Servil Bisha versus Rui Quarrier.


    The third match was Ferlicia Ernand vs Mia Marnt.


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


    Ferlicia Ernand vs Mia Marnt.


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


    And when he had to try and extrapte a fight between Martial Art centered around techniques he had never seen anything even remotely like prior, he was definitely confident of being super urate as a result.N?vel(D)rama.Org''s content.


    Still, he could make more basic inferences.


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


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


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


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


    He put the issue aside as he took some rest.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 261 First Match

    Time passed quickly. Frankly, there wasn''t much for him to do at his quarters. He generally immersed himself in meditation as he thought about his uing fight with Servil Bisha, constructing an adapted fighting style for him.


    So far, he had onlye with a few elements that the adapted style needed to have in order to be suited to fighting Servil Bisha.


    Evasiveness and anti-striking counter-offensive were at the core of the style. As long as Rui could negate the lethality that came from the permeation of the impact due to the vibrations, he stood a pretty good chance of negating the threat.


    Another means by which he could reduce the formidability of Servil''s Martial Art was through grappling. Ground grappling was also another by which he could negate Servil''s permeation since Servil needed to inflict impacts to permeate them. He would not be able tond even a handful, if at all any strikes in super-close-range grappling.


    Establishing these two elements in his adapted Martial Art was the first step. Now he only needed to fune it to suit Servil''s Martial Art''s traits.


    This was where he had an advantagepared to the other representatives. They''rebat prowess would not change at all between rounds, but he would be more formidable with each round with the greater amount of data and time he had to thoroughly create the most suited Martial Art for taking each of them down.


    This was normally something he would have to do mid-fight, but he would achieve better results if he had more time to flesh it out.


    Soon, the day passed. He hadn''t left his quarters for anything asides from his meals, asionally running into the other representatives, only half of the original sixteen were present. Yet Fiona was the only one who bothered interacting with him. She remained as entric as she was the day prior, asking him all kinds of random questions as she satisfied her curiosity.


    "How are you so strong?"


    "What''s your favourite colour?"


    "Did you dye your hair ck?"


    Rui simply answered those questions as shortly as he could.


    Soon, a day had passed and it was time for round two. Rui went through the same procedures until he found himself in the contest viewing balcony yet again.


    "Wee back to the Martial Contestdies and gentlemen! We will soon bemencing the highly-awaited second round of the contest! Today''s matchups are..."


    His voice faded into the background as Rui closed his eyes, zoning out. Prior to the start of the Martial Contest, he always thought the festive nature of the contest was a good thing, but now he couldn''t help but disagree with his initial notions.


    Thankfully, the nonsense ended quickly and the first match was announced.


    "In the first match of the second round, we have Ian Nepomniachtchi and his Breathing Mountain Style of the Farund branch facing off against Representative Freund Gamor and his Dreamy Poison Style of the Villimaine branch. The Breathing Goliath faces off against the Toxinmonger!"


    The two contestants entered the arena, their powerful minds weighed on the onlookers as tension bwas bred in the atmosphere.


    "Take you stances." The referee instructed.


    Ian took a neutral stance while Freund''s stance leaned more towards offense and speed.


    One thing Rui found curious was that Freund took down his mouth mask this fight. He wondered if tehre was any significance to that.<sub> </sub>


    "Grown stronger, have you?" Ian asked coldly. "Unfortunately, it''s not going to be good enough. This fight is going to end the same asst time."


    "Hmph." Freund snorted. "You talk too much. I''ll show you how things have changed sincest time!"Copyright by N?v/elDrama.Org.


    There appeared to be a deeper history between them, though it wasn''t entirely clear.


    "Begin!" The refereemenced the fight.


    WHOOSH


    Freund blitzed out at Ian with his hand reached out. His intentions were clear. His entire skin was poisonous, but he needed to make contact to apply it against his opponents. He had other kinds of poison too, but they all generally had the same condition.


    WHOOSH


    Ian avoided Freund cleanly. The sheer speed at which he dodged told Rui that he was using Lightning Breathing to amplify speed. Rui paid close attention to his breathing. He had to face Ian in the next round if he won his match in this round, he hoped to gather as much as information as he possibly could.


    Ian was continuously avoiding Freund''s attacks. To the untrained eye, it merely seemed like he was being passive as he avoided. But Rui actually approved of his decision. With Freund''s poison being as potent as it was, it was best not to touch him unless the gains outweighed the losses. If his poison was like Avi''s then even clothing wouldn''t be too effective as a defense.


    WHOOSH


    BAM!


    Ian dodged a strike asnded a fearsome kick on Freund''s neck, staggering him in pain. It was only strikes to the vitals like this one that were worthing into physical contact with Freund for. Only with attacks that did meaningful damage could Ian always ensure that he was inflicting more damage on Freund than thetter was on Ian with his poisoned skin.


    In this way, Ian could take his time and slowly weather Freund down for a guaranteed win.


    Or so he, and even Rui, thought.


    Ian''s vision blurred just for the tiniest moment. His eyebrows knitted in confusion.


    (''Is his poison affecting me already?'') Ian wondered incredulously. (''But that makes no sense! His poison wasn''t this strong and quickst round. There is no way he upgraded it within twenty-four hours.


    He staggered mildly as he realized that even his sense of bnce was very slowly starting to get affected.


    Rui didn''t miss that, realizing what had happened. He too was surprised.


    (''It has to be another poison, but how is Freund applying it?'') Rui wondered as he closely watched their interactions.


    There was very minimal contact, and in fact zero contact since Ian discovered he was being affected. So what exactly was happening?


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 262 Outcome

    And that''s when Rui noticed something odd.


    Freund was continuously breathing with his mouth open. Not just a little open, he looked like he was trying to pump out air as much as possible. If he was exhausted, Rui would not have minded, but he shouldn''t have been that exhausted that quickly. Furthermore, there weren''t any other signs of exhaustion that apanied heavy breathing.


    Rui''s eyes widened as he realized what was happening.


    (''He''s exhaling poison!'') He mused with absolute incredulity.


    Rui couldn''t even begin to fathom the kind of body conditioning Freund Gamor had put himself through to obtain that kind of technique. It also exined why he removed his mouth mask. Everything fit.


    Furthermore, this technique was especially effective against Ian. Ian was abusing breathing techniques the entire fight, taking in an impossible amount of air every second.


    A technique that poisoned the very air was a technique that was extremely well-suited to taking Ian down!


    Down there, Ian had immediately shifted tactics when he realized that he was being poisoned even though he avoided Freund like the gue.


    If that was the case, then he simply had no choice.


    Heshed out at Freund with Lightning Breathing, and began an onught with Fire Breathing. If he could not avoid or even minimize the rate at which he was being poisoned, then there was only one thing left to do.


    To ensure that rate at which Freund was being damaged was even higher.


    He peppered Freund with an enormous amount of power! Only Fae and Fiona could match his offensive prowess.


    Freund fought back valiantly, yet he was enduring damage at an astronomical rate. Wounds appeared on his body every second. After just fifteen seconds, he was already bleeding from multiple ces, and half his body had been bruised badly.


    Yet he fought.


    As long as he coulde maximize the amount of poison that entered Ian''s system, he had a realistic chance of victory.


    BAM!


    A swift kick crashed against his jaw, rattling his brain.


    THUD


    He fell to the ground, unmoving.


    Several moments passed as the referee check up on him.


    "Winner; Representative Ian Nepomniachtchi!" The referee dered.


    "Aaaand we have a winner folks! Representative Ian Nepomniachtchi managed to snatch victory from the jaws of loss! He will be moving onto the third round of the Martial Contest!" Thementator announced


    Immediately after, Ian fell to one knee as he was unable to maintain his bnce very well for any longer. His vision was blurring too much to. He knew more than anyone how incredibly close that fight was.


    Rui, on the other hand, was very impressed.


    Freund was quite strong. Furthermore, he had a solidpatibility advantage against Ian too. Yet, Ian managed to win despite that.


    He was strong, there was no doubt about that.


    "Rui." Squire Kyrie called to him. "It''s time."


    "Mmm." Rui nodded. He turned around, heading towards the exit. Servil Bisha had done the same, taking a different route that would lead to the entrance on the other side of the arena.


    Rui was already prepared.


    He quickly gathered his concentration, honing his mind.<sub> </sub>


    His attention gathered.


    Bit by bit.


    Drop by drop.


    He had been finding it easier to enter states of absolute concentration recently. Hismand over his own mind had been growing rather well.


    "Aaaand for the next match we have representative Servil Bisha, the Flickering Ghoul, and her Flickering Core style representing the Gragol branch! On the other hand, we have representative Rui Quarrier and his Flowing Void style representing the Hajin branch!"


    The two of them entered the arena, stopping at a distance from each other.


    The atmosphere tightened as the two fighters stared at each other without breaking eye-contact.


    "Take your stances." The referee instructed.


    Servil brought both her fists in front of her, with her center of gravity leaning forward and her legs closed and centered. It was a stance that focused on offense and mobility.


    Rui immediately understood her intentions.


    They were within his predictions.


    He centered his legs, crouching while bring his open-handed palms to his chest.


    A stance that had a strong grappling affinity to it. But it also had a lot of mobility.N?velDrama.Org owns this text.


    "Begin!" The referee instructed.


    WHOOSH


    Servil shot straight at Rui,unching a fist. But Rui had simply cleanly avoided it. At his current level, his reaction and reflexes were extremely quick. His reincarnated-enhanced mind, the depth of his Martial Path, the VOID algorithm and the Primordial Instinct technique ensured his reflexes were far above what most Martial Apprentices could possibly have.


    Nel was his equal because he had superhuman reflexes even before he broke through, while only Kane was his superior because of his affinity for speed, as well as the reaction speed-oriented techniques.


    Landing a strike when he was going his best to avoid it, was a difficult task as Servil wasing to learn.


    WHOOSH


    WHOOSH


    WHOOSH


    Rui simply avoided the initial flurry of blows. He wanted to win, but he also wanted to hold back his trump cards. It wasn''t a pleasant feeling to try and bnce between the two.


    Suddenly Servil paused, she was getting nowhere, she realized. Rui was as slippery as an eel. The best she was able to wasnd some imprecise angled strikes, that too only if she significantly sacrificed umting power for quickness. She wouldn''t be able to win this way.


    Her stance changed as she stomped one foot in front of her.


    RUMBLE


    Rui''s eyes widened as the entire arena started vibrating sharply. He had to focus just to maintain his bnce.


    Servil short forward, maintaining the vibrations with every step.


    Rui understood her n. It was clear was extremely ustomed to vibrating surfaces, most likely thanks to extended training. She was using the fact that her opponent was notfortable under such circumstances to increase their vulnerability.


    Rui felt a sharp sense of danger as Servil rushed towards him. He needed to be extremely careful with how he dealt with this.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 263 Clashes

    WHOOSH


    Rui avoided the first strike, barely.


    BAM!


    ? The second strike, however, crashed into his guard. It was only then that Rui understood the threat that Servil Bisha posed.


    The impact freely permeated past his guard, through the skin and flesh of his abdomen. It prated all the way to his diaphragm, stunning the muscle and stunting his breathing a bit.


    It was almost like his defenses did not matter at all. Rui was shocked, he had never experienced an attack like this.


    Even though his raw power was not quite remarkable, the sense of threat his offense was no different from what Rui felt against Nel. If Rui did not have Inner Divergence that dispersed impacts across the entirety of his body uniformly, he would have suffered critical damage. He might have even gotten knocked out if his diaphragm suffered too much.


    He could not afford to take many of those attacks. If anything, he felt a lot of respect for Arjun Erigaisi, who withstood countless such blows for a long time in the first round.


    Rui was only able to avoid a portion of the blows, the remaining struck him, inflicting damage even though he did his very best with stic Shift, Acute Edge and Inner Divergence.


    He was waiting.


    Waiting for the right moment.


    Servil threw a weight blow at Rui''s face, hoping to knock him out.


    (''Now!'') Rui rolled with the strike, as he fell backwards.


    CLASP


    His four limbs wrapped around Servil''s arm, tightly coiling around it.


    Before she could even mount an attack;


    CRACK


    "Aargh!" She grimaced copsing to the ground as Rui dislocated her elbow cleanly, bending it at an unnatural angle.


    But he wasn''t done.


    He slowly maneuvered to her back,shing out at her neck the right timing. With his right arm wrapped tightly around it and his left hand on the back of her head pushing her into the chokehold. There wasn''t much she could do. She struggled as she used her vibration permeation as she attacked with blows over and over. But soon her vision blurred as she struggled to breathe.


    A proper chokehold severely restricted orpletely blocked blood blow to the brain. She had several seconds before she lost consciousness.


    Rui endured all of her attacks as excruciating as some of them were.


    "Winner; Representative Rui Quarrier!"


    The referee announced after he confirmed Servil had momentarily passed out. That was enough for Rui to fulfill the win conditions.


    He let go of her as got up, struggling. Even in a brief period of time, she had managed to damage the joints of his lower body with her permeation technique.


    She was strong. But unfortunately for her the VOID algorithm was remarkablypatible with her Martial Art.<sub> </sub>


    "Aaaand we have a winner folks! Representative Rui Quarrier also secures his spot in the third round of the Martial Contest after a brutal victory against representative Servil Bisha!"


    The crowd cheered loudly at those words amidst the apuse.


    On his way back, he pondered about his fight.


    Servil was strong, but he had pronounced strengths and pronounced weaknesses. That made him very ipatible against someone like Rui. Someone who was very good at negating pronounced strength and exploiting pronounced weakness.


    His next opponent was not going to be that simple, however. Ian Nepomniactchi was extremely strong, and he hadn''t probably even shown all his cards yet.


    That made Rui wary of him since he did not know what else Ian had. However, even if he had somehow revealed everything he could do, he was still an incredibly strong menace.


    Rui shook his head, dismissing the matter. He had enough time to consider the matterter.


    He returned the viewing balcony.


    "Well done." Squire Kyrie congratted.


    "You nailed that quite well." Dylon threw a thumbs up. "No doubt thanks to my brilliant guidance, of course."N?vel(D)rama.Org''s content.


    Rui ignored his remark as he focused on the arena. The next match was just about to bemenced. The oue of this match was most interesting to him.


    "Moving onto the next fight. We have representative Ferlicia Ernand of the Frtizer branch and her zing Fury Style. On the hand we have representative Mia Marnt and her Echo st Style representing the Fellen branch!"


    The two women stepped into the arena, walking in and facing each other. They were incredibly determined and it reflected, not just on their face but in the heavy aura they exerted on the atmosphere.


    "Take your stances." The referee instructed.


    Ferlicia reverted to her offensive grappling stance while Mia also reverted to her odd stance that focused on facilitating her sound attacks.


    "Begin!" The refereemenced the fight.


    WHOOSH


    Ferlicia dashed towards Mia as her skin reddened with heat.


    Mia immediately cupped around her mouth and roared as invisible sound bullets as she leapt back trying to maintain distance.


    They both were already aware of the fighting style of their opponent, and were also aware of the win conditions to the fight, one way or another.


    If Ferlicia managed to close the gap and get a hold of Mia, it was over. If Mia managed to keep Ferlicia at a distance, then she would be able to win the fight.


    Ferlicia''s toughness wasn''t great. It wasn''t bad, of course. But most of her defense came from the fact that nobody could touch her. However, Mia didn''t need to touch her in order to damage her. She only needed to pepper her with sound bullets from a distance.


    They both had little to no defenses against other. This battle had be a race. Ferlicia needed to close the gap and get a hold of Mia before she sustained enough damage from Mia''s offenses, while Mia had to avoid ever getting into contact with Ferlicia. As a grappler she would undoubtedly get a hold of her and roast her alive, literally, if that ever happened.


    Rui was quite curious about seeing how the two of them would go about this, it would also likely force them to use everything they had. Which was good for him.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 264 The Fourth Outcome

    WHOOSH


    Ferlicia leaped away as Miaunched a sound bullet in her direction. But the attack forced her put some distance between her and Mia, much to her chagrin.


    She summersaulted away as sound bullets struck the ground where she was just a moment prior. The battle had gotten stuck in a deadlock, having been prolonged for some time by then.


    POW!


    Ferlicia grimaced as she got hit by a sound bullet. But it happened, and sooner than Rui had predicted. Ana was able to dodge Mia''s attacks for as long as she did because she had three dimensions worth of maneuvering and was not restricted to terrain, but Ferlicia did not have that advantage.


    She had managed tost a while because she was quick herself, as a consequence of developing a style meant to outmaneuver her opponents who try to maintain distance from her. But in the end it wasn''t nearly good enough.


    Mia''s eyes narrowed as sheunched several more sound bullets in her direction.


    It should have been game over, yet suddenly;


    WHOOSH!


    A wall of mes erupted from her mouth, intercepting the bullets. Even though mes weren''t solid and couldn''t impede the path of the sound bullets, somehow the sound projectiles werergely dispelled by her mes.


    Rui watched the sight with great intrigue. Her mes had raised the temperature of the air as a medium, disrupting the sound wavergely. He hadn''t been sure whether Ferlicia''s mes would be capable of feat prior, but it seemed like her mes were indeed potent enough. Even if sound was particrly vulnerable to disruptions of its medium, he was quite impressed by her feat.


    She rushed in having finally found a way to break through, and was quite close.


    She released another wall of mes when Mia tried to spam more sound bullets at her in attempt to prevent Ferlicia from enclosing in.


    Yet it was in vain, Ferlicia emerged from her mes after they dispersed the sound bullets. She bullrushed towards Mia, charging for a takedown.


    To her surprise, Mia didn''t try to evade or escape, she instead rushed in herself throwing a haymaker at Ferlicia, seemingly hoping knock her out.


    WHOOSH


    Ferlicia calmly shifted her head, avoiding the blow. Just as she reached her;


    BANG!


    A loud sound echoed through the colosseum, hurting everyone''s ears.


    Down at the arena, Ferlicia was frozen, inches away from Mia.


    Mia''s right hand was besides Ferlicia''s ear. Her fingers in a snapping position.Copyright by N?v/elDrama.Org.


    THUD


    Ferlicia fell to the ground as right ear began bleeding.


    Rui''s eyes widened, having witnessed exactly what happened.


    After Ferlicia evaded the strike, Mia unballed her fists and snapped her finger right next to Ferlicia''s ear. Rui guessed she must have used a technique generate an extraordinary amount of sound with a snap.<sub> </sub>


    The sound burst Ferlicia''s eardrum and had also subsequently caused blunt force trauma, knocking her out.


    THUD


    Mia fell to her knees as her arms cupped her ears.


    (''It seems it''s a technique she''s not entirely immune to, either.'') He noted as he saw blood dripping from her ears. Regardless, it won her the match, and the fact that she would be healed fully was more than enough justification for her choice.


    It was a strategy he approved of. He would need to be very careful fighting her, she had proven herself to be clever.


    "Aaaand we have a winner folks!" Thementator announced after the referee dered Mia the winner. "Representative Mia Marnt has earned her spot in the third round after a smashing victory against Representative Ferlicia Ernand!"


    Rui had already updated her Mia''s profile with the information he had obtained from this fight. He would create an adapted styleter when he had more time. Besides, he wasn''t sure he would even fight her even if he won his next match. She still had to fight the winner of the next match.


    (''That''s not going to be easy to do.'') Rui mused.


    "Aaaand for the next match we representative Kaerts Omegde and his Soul Reader Style versus representative Fiona Roschem!"


    Rui raised an eyebrow at that announcement, once more reminded that Fiona''s Martial Art didn''t even possess enough individuality to have a name. Which he still found incredibly surprising.


    "Take your stances." The referee instructed.


    Kaerts took a neutral stance, while Fiona didn''t bother taking a stance at all, once again. Yet Rui could feel that she wasn''t putting on airs, nor was she being condescending.


    "Begin!" The refereemenced the fight.


    WHOOSH


    Fiona dashed at Kaerts with fearsome speed,unching an incredibly powerful attack. Yet the fight didn''t go as smoothly as it didst time.


    Kaerts dodged her blow cleanly, much to everyone''s surprise.


    Not to Rui''s, of course. He had already identified Kaerts'' predictive prowess from the very start. It was quitepatible against Fiona''s speed.


    He evenunched a speedy jab, but she calmly evaded the attack and began her own offense.


    Kaerts responded with a desperatebination of evasion and defense. He used his insight to react to her attacks as early as possible, beginning the evasion maneuver even as she began her movements to get out of the trajectory of her attacks. But his physical ability wascking. It seems his incredible predictive prowess that even Rui found respectable had carried him thus far.


    The match did not end immediately, but it did not prolong for too long either.


    BANG!


    A powerful blow crashed into his sr plexus. The sheer impact sent him fling even as he coughed out blood.


    He crashed into the arena walls, before copsing to the ground, unconscious.


    Rui shook his head, sighing. The sheer amount of force she was outputting could frankly give even Fae a good run for her money. Rui had understood what Kane and Hever had said back then about Fae maybe not being the strongest striker in their generation. He had ran into not just Fiona, but also Ian, who was a contender for that position.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 265 Third Round

    "Winner; representative Fiona Roschem!"


    "And there you have it folks! Representative Fion Roschem makes it to the third round as well! This brings us to an end to the second round. Be sure to be here at the Martial Colosseum same time tomorrow to catch it in time!"


    The crowd cheered loudly in response.


    Rui sighed as he left the viewing balcony along with squires Kyrie and Dylon, deep in thought.This belongs ? N?velDra/ma.Org.


    The following matches of the third round were;


    Ian Nepomniachtchi vs Rui Quarrier.


    Mia Marnt vs Fiona Roschem.


    The winners of those would go onto fight each other in the finals.


    "Freshen up a bit." Squire Kyrie told him before parting ways. "We''ll meet in an hour."


    Rui nodded as he headed his own way.


    He had a lot to think about.


    His next opponent was Ian Nepomniachtchi. He definitely had a lot to think about.


    He had already gathered two round worth of data on Ian. Not idea, but not bad, and definitely better than nothing.


    Yet he couldn''t help but feel a smirke on his face at the prospect of fighting him. Ian was incredibly strong, Rui would probably test his limits with his ability and Martial Art in that fight.


    He immediately fixed himself a tub bath, soaking in, rxing as the warmth permeated his ability.


    He skimmed through all the information he had on Ian. A breathing technique specialist that generally fought by amplifying his parameters by using specific breathing techniques.


    There were generally two traits that made him quite a formidable opponent. The first was that the degree to which he could amplify certain parameters by was incredibly high, matching and even surpassing dedicated Martial Artists to those parameters and fields.


    The second was the fact that his parameters kept changing, making it incredibly tricky to fight him, far more so than any of the other contestants. One moment he was a speedster, the next moment he could be an offensive striker, the next moment he could be a defensive fighter.


    In a way, he countered Rui extremely hard in a way. The fact that he was ever-changing meant that Rui couldn''t just create a single adapted fighting style, he needed to create multiple adapted fighting styles. Furthermore, he needed a way to ount for the rapid shifts and changes in Ian''s parameters.


    He sighed. If he was able to use the higher-end pattern recognition systems of theplete VOID algorithm, it wouldn''t be a problem, but he couldn''t. It was too difficult. He would need to analyze and memorize immense amounts of data in the middle of the fight and process them through the VOID algorithm.


    This was also the main reason the VOID algorithm was not a viable fighting style in his previous life. It was simply too data-intensive in its entirety. That problem had not yet been solved in this life either, he had been able to mitigate the problem to a certain degree with his powerful mind, but that was not good enough by itself.


    He needed to find a way to ovee this barrier, otherwise he wouldn''t be able to travel his Martial path for too long.


    He shook his head, putting asides such nebulous thoughts. They weren''t relevant to the issue at hand.


    Another thing he wasn''t sure about was whether he had the leeway to hold back. So far, he had just barely managed to hold back Phantom Step, Blink and the Stinger.


    Rui was absolutely certain he would need the Phantom Step to fight Ian, bare minimum. The worst-case scenario was that he would end up using all his trump cards and still end up losing. If he could do it, he would likely to keep the Blink plus Stingerbo hidden until he fought Fiona.<sub> </sub>


    Time passed, eventually he met up with his instructors.


    "Just do you best and hope for the best." Squire Dylon told him.


    "You need to be wary of his everchanging flexibility." Squire Kyrie had told him. "In a way, his fighting style is not too dissimr to yours."


    Rui nodded at those words. He agreed. Ian was also able to change to fight his opponent. Of course, he did this in a different way than Rui did, only time would tell who did it better.


    Soon the day passed and the third round was ready tomence.


    "Wee to the third round,dies and gentlemen!" Thementator weed. "In the first match of the third round, we have representative Rui Quarrier and his Flowing Void Style representing the Hajin branch facing off against representative Ian Nepomniachtchi and his Breathing Mountain Style representing the Farund branch!"


    The crowd cheered loudly, hyped for this anticipated matchup.


    Rui and Ian entered the arena simultaneously as they walked up towards each other, never breaking eye contact.


    "The promised time hase." Ian coldly stated. "I''ll show you your ce."


    Rui stared at him wordlessly. He didn''t care to engage in a juvenile exchange of insults.


    Instead, he closed his eyes, emptying his thoughts.


    There was nothing.


    Soon, he focused every ounce of attention. Gathering every iota of concentration he could get his hands on.


    The escting focus could be felt. The very weight of his mind pushed down on all onlookers.


    "Take your stances." the referee instructed.


    Ian took a neutral stance, which Rui chose to mirror.


    "Begin!" The refereemenced the match.


    Ian immediately crossed the distance in an instant, throwing a mighty blow at Rui.


    WHOOSH


    The attack crashed into Rui, yet it was only after the image of Rui dispersed had he realized it was a feint.


    Rui had immediately employed Phantom Step right off the bat. Ian could effectively move nearly as fast as Kane dide while throwing blows only Fae could overwhelm. He was not arrogant to enough to hold back that many techniques.


    POW POW POW


    Rui threw a powerfulbo of strikes, yet they merely banged on Ian''s guard.


    (''Earth Breathing.'') Rui mused. He had employed his defensive breathing technique.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 266 Eventually

    Ian''s defensive breathing technique was incredibly strong by itself. Rui was sure that it was stronger than all three of his defensive techniquesbined.


    POW!


    An incredibly swift blow mmed into Rui''s guard. Rui gritted his teeth as he used Inner Divergence, stic Shift and Acute Edge to mitigate as much of the impact as he could.


    WHOOSH


    Rui cleanly dodged the next attack with a well-timed feint, throwing a swift lower kick.


    POW!


    Ian merely threw an arrogant look at him. As if trying to say the blow didn''t hurt him at all. The worst part was that it was probably true.


    (''Okay, let''s try something else.'')


    Rui opened up some space between them, leaping back. Yet Ian immediately pursued, shifting to Lightning Breathing to increase his speed.


    Yet rather than trying to retreat faster, Rui immediately paused and rushed back at Ian.


    BAM!


    A powerful impact crashed into Ian as Rui threw his most powerful blow; a Flowing Canon boosted with Outer Convergence, Vital Pressure, Parallel Walk and Bnced Direction. The sheer momentum and power of this attack was the highest of all of his attacks.


    Not even Ian could shrug it off. He turtled behind his guard, even skidding back a meter from the impact.


    It looked great, but Rui knew that the attack wasn''t truly meaningful. Sure, it probably hurt and bruised him a bit, but in the long run that meant nothing. He needed to defeat Ian, not just hurt him.


    WHOOSH


    WHOOSH


    WHOOSH


    Rui evaded several strikes from Ian. His evasiveness was quite high, and he was confident of evading most of Ian''s strikes.


    Problem was that he was finding it really hard to develop a thorough adapted style. It was without a doubt the most difficult fighting style that Rui had ever had to try and adapt to. The sheerplexity of the issue at hand made it even worse than fighting all-rounders.


    Rui had to cleanly navigate the issue with an incredible amount of thoroughness and care.


    WHOOSH


    POW POW POW!


    Rui evaded a strike from him as he threw a flurry of strikes.


    He made some observations about Ian based on all the data at hand. Most of it was centered on how he employed the breathing techniques.


    He used the Lightning Breathing any time he wasn''t defending or attacking. Every time he did attack, he coupled it with Fire Breathing when he was about tounch an attack andpletely shifted to Fire Breathing when he was sure the attack wouldnd.


    BAM!


    Ian managed to get him with a powerful haymaker. Rui grimaced as he retreated. Ian''s offense was not not something Rui could afford to be hit with too often. His defense was good, no doubt, but Ian was at t a level where he could hit above what Rui could consistently take.


    Normally Rui dealt with this issue by adapting aplete style suit to taking Ian down, but he didn''t have that here.<sub> </sub>


    POW POW POW!


    Ian managed tond a flurry of weighted jabs yet again. He was almost adapting Rui in his own way. This was the problem with someone with such an unnatural level of flexibility.


    WHOOSH


    Rui feinted avoiding a strike as he tried tond a Flowing Canon, but s.


    POW!


    Ian intercepted him with Lightning Breathing.


    The fight prolonged for a bit, yet the scales only ever tipped in his favour.


    BAM!


    A powerful kick sent Rui flying away.


    (''Guess I have no choice.'') Rui sighed. He could not really win as things continued. The need for using atleast another trump card was starting to get unbearable. He would lose at this rate, without a doubt.


    But Rui had to wait, a trump card was most powerful and effective when it was unknown.


    Ian chased after himunching a powerful weight straight punch.Copyright by N?v/elDrama.Org.


    Rui waited as much as he could, ducking only when the punch was incredibly close. The punch extended closer and closer as Ian drew in closer and close.


    Yet before it could hit Rui;


    PEW!


    Rui''s right toe went flying as it burrowed itself in Ian''s gut.


    Rui had waited until the moment Ian switched from Lightning Breathing to Fire Breathing tounch a more powerful attack when he saw Rui unmoving initially.


    This was effectively the same way he unleashed the Stinger on Fae. The difference was that this was even more effective because Ian had already transitioned from Lightning Breathing to Fire Breathing, meaning this had urred after his speed had dropped.


    He had extended too much with trying tond that strike on Rui that Rui''s toe had already long exited his perifoveal vision.


    Furthermore, he had been not using any Lightning Breathing doing the end of that strike, focusing purely on Fire Breathing trying tounch a powerful attack on Rui''s face, trying to knock him out.


    This was exactly what Rui was aiming for.


    Only when Ian was not using his Lightning Breathing could this tactic work, and so Rui waited for a moment where he had a high probability of not using Lightning Breathing. He had to time it carefully because otherwise he simply would not be able to apply the Stinger that effectively.


    Ian''s Lightning Breathing and Earth Breathing were both quite powerful and would have foiled this attack after all.


    The wound was deep in his abdomen. Rui had aimed for the diaphragm, the muscle that was the source of his breathing techniques.


    "You bastard...!" Ian cursed in pain as he retreated. The diaphragm was quite deep and thus Rui was not able to mortally wound the muscle, however just inflicting a wide enough open wound on him was probably good enough to cripple his breathing techniques partially, if not entirely.


    It would all depend on how good Ian''s endurance was. In the worst case scenario, the difference wouldn''t be significant enough, and Rui would effectively need to beat only a slightly weaker Ian who was also now aware of the Stinger.


    He would find out eventually.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 267 Clashes

    BAM!


    Rui''s eyes flew wide open as Ian struck him with a more powerful blow than ever before. Rui skidded away as he gazed at Ian with a surprised expression. Why was he suddenly stronger than before despite the wound?


    Ian had a furious expression on his face. "You bastard...!"


    He coughed up a little blood.


    (''He''s pushing himself to the absolute limit.'') Rui realized. Ian was essentially pushing himself to his peak at the cost of elerating the deterioration of his condition.


    WHOOSH


    Ian abused Lightning Breathing even as blood splurted out of his wound, to move faster than he ever had, reaching Rui in an instant.


    BOOM!


    Rui grimaced as an immensely powerful blow crashed against his guard. His body shook with the impact as he leapt back. Even thebination of his three defensive techniques weren''t able to mitigate the impact.


    Rui''s senses heightened as he realized they had entered the final phase of the battle.


    He abandoned all offense and shifted all of his focus on evasion and defense. Whatever happened, he could not afford to make a mistake! A single mistake was all Ian needed to turn the tables around for himself.


    WHOOSH


    Rui carefully evaded a strike with a feint as he immediately activated his maneuvering techniques to open up distance between them.


    However, Ian was relentless.


    "RAARGH!" he snarled as he shook the very ground with the sheer force he was elerating towards with Rui with.


    WHOOSH


    Rui ducked sharply as he evaded yet another strike from Ian.


    BOOM!


    He spun out of the path of a drop kick that cracked the ground Rui was upon a moment earlier.


    The entire colosseum was absorbed into the battle, frozen.


    Everyone understood that they were witnessing the decisive part of the battle.


    And yet, the clinch came suddenly.


    WHOOSH


    BAM!


    Ian''s blow crashed into a feint as Rui sneaked past his guard,unching a FLowing Canon on his wound.


    "ARGH!" Ian snarled in pain as he crouched sping his wound.


    BAM!


    A powerful kicknded on his jaw, disorienting him. He ignored his condition,shing out a flurry of wild attacks, but his condition had deteriorated too much, he was barely able to use breathing techniques.


    POW!


    A simple uppercut to the jaw pushed his blunt force trauma beyond the threshold.


    THUD


    Ian copsed to the ground as he bled out, unmoving.<sub> </sub>


    "Winner; representative Rui Quarrier!" The referee dered.


    For a moment, nothing happened.


    And then the crowd erupted in cheers and apuse.


    "And there you have it folks! The winner of this fight is representative Rui Quarrier! Against all odds he managed to ovee one of the favourites with a stunning victory! He moves onto the finals of the Martial Contest!" Thementator cried.


    Rui exhaled, as he calmed his beating heart. He threw a deep look at Ian, who was being treated. He did not respect his character, but he respected his power, his perseverance and his determination. He never gave up until the very end, despite his condition.


    He left the arena immediately after.


    "Nicely done my boy." Squire Dylon smirked, throwing him a thumbs up.


    "You have managed to reach the finals, win or lose this is an achievement you have every right to take pride in." Squire Kyrie told him.


    "Thanks." Rui smiled wryly. He was not blind to why she was saying that. He was rtively certain she though he had a high chance of losing in the finals. She was just being more tactful about it. Squire Dylon on the other hand was very candid about that.


    Frankly, Rui appreciated when people were blunt in such circumstances, Dylon even managed to be funny about it. Though he did appreciate her sentiment.


    "Aaand onto the final fight of the third-round folks." thementator announced. "One on hand, we have representative Mia Marnt and her Echo st Style representing the Fellen branch. On the other we have representative Fiona Roschem representing the Vargard branch!"


    The crowd erupted in cheers as the atmosphere lit up with excitement.


    The two representatives entered the arena, facing each other. Rui could merely be surprised at the contrast between the two representatives. Mia was in her early twenties while Fiona was fifteen, like himself, furthermore she was short and petite for someone her age. It really did look like an adult was trying to bully a child.


    Yet no one in the colosseum entertained that notion for even a second. If there was a bully at all, it would certainly not be Mia Marnt.


    Fiona simply gazed at her, yet she exerted pressure on those who beheld her.This belongs ? N?velDra/ma.Org.


    "Take your stances." The referee instructed.


    Mia adopted her usual neutral stance with her hands in position to immediately begin attacking with her sound bullets. Rui approved of this decision when considering how fast Fiona was, she needed to maximize her chances of being able to keep Fiona at a distance.


    Fiona on the other hand, yet again, did not adopt a stance.


    "Begin!" The refereemenced the match.


    WHOOSH


    Fiona crossed the distance between them in an instance.


    Yet, for once, things didn''t particrly go her way.


    BANG!


    A powerful sound bullet collided into her, pushing her back.


    Rui raised an eyebrow, impressed. Mia hadunched an extremely potent singr sound bullet, instead of a barrage of sound bullets. Rui approved of that decision. Stopping Fiona should be her greatest priority since Mia would not be able to withstand even a single attack from her.


    Knowing that she wouldsh out and bull-charge like she normally did, a single sound bullet with high power had better chances than a barrage of sound bullets. Since the energy was more focused, rather than spread out.


    However, it didn''t deter Fiona for too long. She simplyshed out once more, this time even harder.


    BANG!


    The sound bullets had the power to blow her back but not enough to hurt her much, seemingly.


    What ensued was a ferocious battle between the two of them.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 268 What Else?

    Fiona threw herself at Mia multiple times, being blown away each time. She could have chosen a route where she used evasive maneuvering to dodge Mia''s aim, but instead she thrusted herself headfirst into Mia''s super-powered attacks.


    Yet each time, she managed to reach further and further.


    FLICK


    She managed to touch Mia''s face, earning Mia''s shock, before the sound bullet touched her.


    BAM!


    She swiftlynded a blow before the attack could push her away


    Mia skidded back despite guarding it, immediately setting up a sound attack.


    Yet it was toote.


    POW!


    A swift kick to the jaw sent her flying across the arena. Fiona didn''t even wait for her to gain her bearing.


    BAM BAM BAM!This belongs ? N?velDra/ma.Org.


    She pummeled Mia ruthlessly.


    POW!


    The second strike to the jaw.


    THUD


    Mia copsed as she lost consciousness.


    "Winner; representative Fiona Roschem." The referee dered.


    "And there you have it folks! Representative Fiona Roschem will be taking her spot in the finals against Representative Rui Quarrier! The finals will be conducted here tomorrow at the same time. Be sure not to miss it!"


    The crowd erupted in cheers and apuse.


    Rui exhaled at that sight, deep in thought. He had expected as much, so he wasn''t too surprised.


    What he found interesting was that Fiona had had to exert herself more each round. In herst fight, Mia was actuallypetitive to a certain degree.


    Thankfully, Rui had gotten three rounds worth of data on her. He would be able to construct a better style.


    However, Fiona was an all-rounder. The type that the VOID algorithm dealt with the worst. In order to adapt to her to the degree Rui wished he could, he would need to employ the higher-end data science-driven pattern recognition systems of the VOID algorithm. But he was currently unable to use it because it was too difficult, the amount of data he had to memorize and process on the spot was just too much even for his enhanced cognition.


    Rui sighed inwardly. He was truly beginning to experience his limitations. So far, even his iplete and partial mastery of an insufficient VOID algorithm had always been enough, but in this tournament, he had been shown his limits.


    Ian Nepomiachtchi first and now Fiona Roschem. This tournament had exposed him to a new tier of power than showed him the VOID algorithm''s inadequacies.


    His urge to perfect the VOID algorithm had grown much deeper than it was before. He had always been driven, but only now was he truly impatient.


    Unfortunately, the finals were in twenty-four hours, and he could only give it his best shot.


    But he vowed to tackle the problem of the VOID algorithm more seriously once the tournament ended.


    For now, he had to find some way to defeat Fiona.


    He left the viewing balcony, exiting the colosseum apanied by his instructors as they headed towards the living quarters.


    "We''ll have to talk once you get some rest." Squire Kyrie told him once more, as the they split ways.<sub> </sub>


    Rui simply nodded as he headed down towards the cafeteria to get something to eat. He was lost in thought, he didn''t even notice Fiona until he almost bumped into her.


    "Woah." He paused abruptly, startled.


    "Hi." She said. "Going to grab a bite?"


    "...Yeah." Rui replied.


    "Great! I was headed there myself." She said. "Let''s go together, there''s nobody else left here except for the two of us."


    Rui simply stared at her, before shrugging. "Sure."


    As they headed down, Rui simply walked in silence, unsure of what to say to her. They weren''t friends, after all. Hell, they were going to be fighting against each other in the finals of the Martial Contest. He didn''t know anything about her, though he was curious about her.


    "You know..." He began. "I was surprised that you haven''t named your Martial Art yet."


    "Really? Why so?" She asked, curiosity shing across her silver eyes.


    Rui wasn''t sure what to say, Headmaster Aronian did say that the significance of naming Martial Art was not something they revealed to Martial Apprentices, so he did not know if she knew. He did not want to meddle and make things inadvertently harder for her by telling her the importance of it.


    "Because you''re so strong." He said. "Not to mention you''ve been a Martial Apprentice for a long time, I thought you would have named it by now."


    She shrugged. "Never felt the urge to name it. Martial Art are no more than collections of techniques anyway, what''s the point of naming such a thing?"


    Her words essentially confirmed that her Martial Art definitely did not have much, if at all any, originality and individuality at all.


    So basically, she had gotten this far through somebination of sheer talent, resources and mundane albeit hard work.


    "Do you enjoy Martial Art?" Rui asked.


    "No." She said.


    "Do you enjoy fighting?" Rui asked.


    "No." She replied.


    "Do you enjoy power?"


    "It''s helpful, but I don''t particrly enjoy it, no."


    Rui had partial expected her answers. He had sensed it when she fought. She showed more life and energy in her talks with him than in her fights in the Martial Contest.


    "Then why do you fight? Why do you traverse your Martial Path? Why do you practice your Martial Art?"


    "Because I''m good at it." She shrugged. "A bit too good at it, in fact. What else am I going to if not this?"


    Rui was speechless at her answer. It was not something he ran into often, if at all. All of his friends had a core motivation, goal or interest.


    Fae fought for her family.


    Kane fought for freedom.


    Nel fought because he loved fighting.


    Hever fought because he wanted to pursue his Martial Path.


    Even Milliana and Dalen fought for simr reasons as well.


    Yet, he realized he shouldn''t be all too surprised. Even back on Earth, people often did things because they were extremely good at it.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 269 Insights

    So, her logic wasn''t all that surprising with that consideration in mind. Talent was often an opportunity, and it was an opportunity she had taken.N?velDrama.Org owns this text.


    "What about you?" She asked, curiosity shing through her eyes. "Do you enjoy Martial Art?"


    "With every fiber of my heart." Rui unhesitatingly replied. Normally, he would not say something that cheesy, but he did genuinely believe what he said. It was the unadultered truth.


    He would not have dedicated half his life to Project Water had he not truly wanted to fulfill his dream. Dying, reincarnating and being given an even greater opportunity to fulfill not just that dream, but also his original dream of wanting to be a Martial Artist, had only made his desire far stronger than they were.


    Back on Earth, he was constrained by all kinds of limits. Not just personal limits such as his health and other personal circumstances, but also the limits of the importance and capability of martial arts.


    On the other hand, Gaea was a miraculous world that often felt like it had been hand-crafted specifically for his sake.


    "Hmmm..." She hummed at his words. "Is it really that fun? What are you trying to aplish?"


    Rui paused, he wasn''t sure he should tell her, frankly it could help her against him in the finals tomorrow.


    But he supposed it didn''t matter, by now the bare basics of his Martial Art would have undoubtedly been leakes, just like how he easily got his hands on the bare basics of the Martial Art of the other representatives.


    "My Martial path is perfect adaptive evolution. I wish to create a Martial Art that allows me to perfectly adapt and evolve to not just all Martial Art and Martial Artists, but all entities that can engage in physical conflict." He said, confidently.


    Fiona''s eyes widened at those words.


    What an incredibly ambitious Martial Path! The sheer difficulty of creating and mastering such a nigh-omnipotent Martial Art could not possibly be stated!


    She couldn''t even begin to imagine what such a Martial Art would even look like!


    "..."


    She was speechless.


    "... I see." She had managed to squeeze out. Her instructors had told her that Rui''s Martial Art was fluid and formless and took on a shape that was more optimal at dealing with his opponent, but hearing it from Rui waspletely different. She hadn''t realized just how far it went, and far he intended to go with it.


    "Is such a thing even possible?" Fiona asked earnestly, curiosity brimming in her eyes.


    Rui suppressed the urge to confidently say yes.


    But the truth simply was... he could not possibly know. He was a scientist after a Martial Artist, and a scientist, he didn''t make ims that were not onlycking in evidence but perhaps had evidence to the contrary.


    He had already failed in achieving his dream once, and when he was given a second chance, the difficulty of sess had risen astronomically. He just could not in good faith say that it was definitely possible.<sub> </sub>


    "... I would like to believe it''s possible." Rui said slowly, after a brief silence. "But I don''t know."


    "What if it isn''t possible?" Fiona asked, as her curiosity intensified.


    "I can never know that." He replied. "It''s only truly impossible when one gives up. If it isn''t possible, then I''ll just die trying till myst breath."


    "I see... Inparison to you, I feel a bit shallow to be honest." She said. "Power is something I''m good at, it''s also very helpful and useful. But beyond that..." she shrugged.


    "Power is a tool." Rui said. "A tool to achieve what one wishes to achieve. What do you want to use this tool for?"


    "I''m not sure, making a living?" She pondered.


    Ruiughed at those words. "Well, you already have more than enough power to make a living. So why do you pursue power?"


    She shrugged helplessly.


    Evidently, she wasn''t too sure herself. It seemed she was merely going with the flow.


    Frankly, Rui could even understand. She was a prodigious genius with unbelievable talent. She discovered her Martial Path at the age of nine. She had instantly been thrust into Martial World at an incredibly young age, with the hopes that she would be a renowned Martial Artist.


    Rui vaguely guessed her family was much lighter about the matter. Perhaps if her family had been as oppressive as Kane''s family, she would have also developed s desire to break free of her shackles. Perhaps if the Arrancar Family was like the Roschem Family, Kane would have also been less driven than he is today.


    He couldn''t say.


    "Well, nothing wrong with that." Rui said, shrugging. You didn''t necessarily have to have a singr goal or ambition. Plenty of people lived perfectly fine lives in this manner.


    Though Rui suspected she wouldn''t be able to break through to higher Martial Realms with that sort of attitude. To merely be a Martial Squire candidate, one needed their Martial Art to have a certain degree of individuality and originality.


    Rui didn''t think she would fulfill that condition with that kind of outlook, perhaps she would simply never be a Squire candidate.


    Frankly, it was quite shocking to Rui. When he first heard about her, he had pictured someone who stood at the peak of the Apprentice Realm and was on the verge of a breakthrough to the Squire Realm. However, since then, his understanding of the Martial Realms and the Martial Path had deepened significantly.


    He kept these thoughts to himself however. The two of them spoke more freely, delving into all kinds of topics as they had dinner together.


    "You''re telling me Kane''s epithet is the ''Elusive Wind''?" Ruiughed as Fiona recounted a tale from the past. She had told him a lot of interesting things about his friends, showing him a side of their lives that he hadn''t known of. "He never told me that! That''s hrious."


    "He hates it." She giggled. "Every significant Martial Artist gets an unofficial epithet, I imagine you''ll also get an epithet, you made it to the finals, after all."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 270 Ready

    Rui did a double-take at those words. It was unexpected. Yet the idea of being called something incredibly corny or cheesy or shy made him cringe.


    "Uh. Can they not?" He asked.


    "Sorry, they can''t not. The Martialmunity of this Empire loves doing that." She smirked.


    They bantered a bit more, until Rui realized how much time had passed. He had trult gotten absorbed into the conversation.


    "Good talk." He said, getting up. "But I should return now."


    She nodded at his words. "This was fun."


    Rui simply stared at her for a second.


    "I look forward to fighting you tomorrow." He said, with a serious edge to his voice. "May the best fighter win."


    She simply shrugged. "They always do."This belongs ? N?velDra/ma.Org.


    Rui simply smiled at those words before taking his leave.


    He thought about his conversation with her, having gotten a stronger grasp of her character and personality.


    And then his thoughts soon proceeded to how to defeat her. Ultimately, that was what he would be setting out to aplish.


    His instructors came to his room shortly after, discussing the matter about her.


    "Well." Squire Dylon put a hand on Rui''s shoulder. "Do your best, we''ll console you after."


    Squire Kyrie red at him. But frankly, she didn''t have anything more meaningful to add. Although she was a Martial Squire and had vastly more experience than Rui, knowing how to fight specific opponents optimally was quite literally Rui''s entire Martial Path. And he had shown everyone time and time again that he was exceptionally brilliant at it.


    "There''s a high chance she''ll begin the fightshing out with a bullrush." Rui said. "Thus far she began every fight in that manner and didn''t stop even when it was clear that her opponents were quite prepared for that approach. Nor did she stop even if it was the sub-optimal solution, she''s demonstrated remarkable rigidity andck of flexibility in her tactical approach."


    Squire Kyrie nodded at that. "She''s quite arrogant in her fighting style in that sense, only someone who doesn''t believe they will lose, fights like that."


    (''Or someone who doesn''t care too much if they lose.'') He thought inwardly. He too had thought her carelessly rigid fighting style stemmed from deep arrogance, but after talking with her for a while, he had started to realize she simply wasn''t as invested in the fight as he was. She did her best, but only physically.


    The two instructors tried giving Rui several suggestions and tips. Some he agreed with and some he didn''t. Ultimately, it was up to him. He was the one fighting, after all.


    Soon, time passed, a lot.


    "Fuuu..." He exhaled, as he closed his eyes.


    He emptied his thoughts, one by one. He could hear nothing except for his heartbeat and his breathing.


    And then the image of Fiona manifested in his mind.


    His concentration umted.


    His focus sharpened.


    His mind gathered.<sub> </sub>


    It weighed on its environment, pushing down on it as it exerted incredible pressure.


    An unknown amount of time passed as Rui remained in that state of mind.


    "Rui." Squire Kyrie knocked on the door.


    Even she raised an eyebrow, surprised at how well Rui had focused himself. She had been worried he would have been to anxious or demoralized to win. But witnessing the determination in his eyes reassured her.


    "Good." Squire Dylon said. "You''re at your peak, maintain that."


    Rui wordlessly walked past them, he simply did not want to waste even the slightest bit of energy on anything not useful. Even in the short journey to the Martial Colosseum, he merely closed his eyes. Shutting off as much input as he could.


    His mental state was powerful, but it was also delicate, it could easily crumble if his attention was drawn away even slightly. Doing so would not weaken much at all, but being at his peak mental state would always ensure that he brought out his very best.


    He immediately walked towards the arena once they arrived at the Martial Colosseum.


    "It''s here folks!" Thementator cried. "The fight we''ve all been awaiting! The finale of the 27th Martial Contest!!"


    The crowd erupted in vtile cheers and apuse as chaotic excitement sizzled the atmosphere.


    "On one hand we have the highly anticipated Fiona Roschem, known as the mighty Chosen Incarnate, she is the representative with the highest estimated odds of victory ording to the gambling pool! She will representing the Vargard branch!"


    Fiona walked into the arena, taking her spot.


    "On the other hand, we have the dark horse of this tournament! Securing victory after victory, he made it to the very finals where he''ll be fighting with everything he has for the title of Martial Champion!" Thementator cried. Earning deafening cheers and apuse from the crowd. "Representing the Hajin branch with his Flowing Void Style. His unique yet potent, fluid and everchanging style has earned him the title of the Voidbringer in the Martial Community!"


    Rui froze even as he walked in, Fiona merely threw him a short smug smirk. Rui could almost hear her saying ''I told you so.''


    He sighed, shaking his head slightly. He hadn''t nned on getting distracted but he couldn''t ignore such a ridiculous epithet.


    The Voidbringer?


    Rui wanted to crawl under his bed and hide forever every time he thought of calling himself the ''Voidbringer.''


    Who was the idiot who named him that? He would not spare him!


    "Take your stances." The referee instructed.


    And immediately, all of his emotions on the matter melted away as his mind immediately recentered itself at those words. His subconscious mind had cooperated, realizing the significance of the uing fight.


    Immediately, the atmosphere grew taut.


    His raw focus cut through through the shallow excitement and chaos in the atmosphere. Its sharpness drew attention of every person.


    It pressed on them, threatening them.


    The full weight of his focus and concentration driven by unfathomable emotions triggered an instinctual sense of danger in nearly all those who beheld him. They felt fear merely gazing upon his form.


    He was ready.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 271 Not Going Down

    A drop of sweat trickled down Julian''s face as he watched Rui and Fiona facing off at each other with anxious tensions. All of the children were silent for once, staring at the two representatives facing each other off, not blinking.


    Julian had seen wonders in the time that they had spectated the Martial Contest. He had witnessed the Martial Artists aplish magical things one after the other. It shaken his worldview. Although he had worked with research teams that conducted research on Martial Art, he hadn''t quite seen anything remotelyparable to this.


    However, what truly caught his attention was seeing a side of his brother that he hadn''t seen. Rui was normally very pleasant, but when he stepped on the ring, he had be incredibly intimidating and scary. He was also very strong, having made it to the finals.


    Yet even Julian couldn''t help but feel quite anxious when he saw that Rui had to face that monster girl who thrashed everyone she fought against.


    He hoped Rui would be fine.


    He was not the only one who felt that way.


    "How do you think it''s going to go?" Fae asked in a different section of audience stands.


    "He has an uphill battle." Hever said calmly.


    Kane didn''t reply. He hated to admit it, but Fiona was stronger than he''d imagined. They were of the same age, but he didn''t think he could beat her. In fact, the only reason they could even have apetitive match was because Kane had the Void Step technique.


    He simply ignored Fae and stared at the duo.


    "Take your stances." The referee instructed, down at the arena.


    Fiona didn''t move. However, Rui did expect this. He raised his heels of the ground, lightly hopping. It was a stance that facilitated agility.


    "Begin!"


    WHOOSH


    Fiona crossed the distance in an instant,unching a powerful blow at Rui.


    WHOOSH


    Her fist crashed into a feint as Rui smoothly evaded her blow. The mildest sh of surprise flicked onto her face. She hadn''t expected Rui to be able to handle her first blow that well.


    Rui not only evaded her attack but spun as he threw a speedy jab at her face.


    BAM!


    He felt a heavy blow crash into him quicker than his own attack. He grimaced as he just barely managed to disperse a portion of the impact with Inner Divergence, shocked at her power. Only Fae could surpass her force, the fact that she could bypass his defense with ordinary strikes was ridiculous, not even Nel could do that.


    POW POW POW!


    Sheunched a flurry of strikes against him. Rui turtled up as he retreated, trying to mitigate the impacts as much as he could and open up some distance between them. Yet sheunched herself at him, throwing a wild haymaker at his head, hoping to knock him out.


    WHOOSH


    Rui evaded the strike thanks to abination of the VOID algorithm, Primordial Instinct and the Phantom Step. However, the importance of the role his enhanced mind could not be downyed either. All of these together resulted in extremely quick reactions that could give even Kane a run for his money.


    Not even Fiona was fast enough to overwhelm his reactions in close quarters like she did nearly everyone else.


    A mild frown shed across her face as she sensed that.This belongs ? N?velDra/ma.Org.


    Yet, his mind could not make his defenses stronger. Her offense power was overwhelming. Every single one of her strikes was on par with his Flowing Canon.


    BAM!


    Rui grimaced as a powerful blownded on his guard,unching him a distance away. Trying to evade every single strike threw was pointless, it as impossible. Her raw speed was extremely high, surpassing his. He was able topensate with his special circumstances, but not to the degree where he could evade even half her strikes, let alone all. Only Kane could possibly aplish that incredibly difficult feat.<sub> </sub>


    POW POW POW!


    Sheshed out against him, throwing a barrage of strikes at him. Each strike was extremely painful, bruising him visibly. His arm had be a mess in a just short period of time.


    Yet he was not resigned.


    WHOOSH


    BAM!


    He rushed in misdirecting her iing strike with Phantom Step, he charged with every ounce of his power, as he threw the strongest Flowing Canon he mustered.


    BAM!


    She skidded away a bit as she blocked the strike.


    Ultimately, it didn''t make too big a difference. But it was the first strike he had cleanlynded on her. It was a symbol of hispetitiveness, in a way.


    She simplyshed out at him, yet to her surprise.


    WHOOSH


    He cleanly evaded her yet again.


    POW!


    A second strikended on her. She barely managed to block it in time, much to her surprise. Sheshed out, throwing powerful blows one after the other.


    Yet to everyone''s surprise.


    WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH


    Rui began dodging better and better. His timing grew more and more refined as the uracy of his motions increased in real time.


    Adapting to all-rounders was never easy, so how was Rui aplishing it?


    (''Your tactical flexibility is non-existent.'') Rui mused. (''That makes you easier to predict.'')


    Because she was so extraordinarily strong, especially for her age, she had be ustomed to winning via the application of her techniques alone. She nearly needed to exert herself and her techniques in the most straightforward manner possible. Very few people could stand up to her when she went all out, and the few that could neverst long.


    That had always been enough, especially for her character.


    This was her greatest strength.


    Yet, it was also her greatest weakness, perhaps her only weakness. Yet it was a weakness that one had to be strong enough to exploit.


    Rui, however, wasn''t wless.


    BAM!


    Shended a powerful kick on his guard, propelling him away. She felt a strange sense of defiance welling up in her. The idea of losing to someone as old as her didn''t feel nice.


    "I''m not going down that easily."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 272 Surpassed

    Rui smiled mildly when he heard that. Yet his smile froze when he sheshed out an even greater speed than before.


    BOOM!


    He grimaced in pain as he skidded away.


    (''Just how much power do you have?'') He wondered, shocked. He could see a strained expression on her face, contrasting to the calm nk expression from prior.


    His eyes widened.


    Had she only truly began to push herself?


    The notion was terrifying.


    Yet Rui''s mouth cracked into a grin as he sensed determination in her demeanor.


    She was the strongest.


    And yet, he grinned.


    He could feel her body tensing up as she drew boundless energy from within her petite physique. It shook him unlike any fight he had been in before, pushing him beyond his limits.


    His eyes widened.


    His pupils dted.


    In that instant, time slowed down.


    The world disappeared.


    Everything disappeared.


    And yet, she was there.


    The only thing he saw was her.


    Her everything.


    From the tiniest strands of her brown hair to the furthest inch of her fair light skin.


    From her soft beautiful features to the ferocious power hidden beneath.


    He saw everything.


    His mind converged into one as he entered a state of absolute awareness and focus.


    In that instant, he could feel it.


    He was stronger than he had ever been.


    "Come." He beckoned. Like a lover would.


    Yet it was not her he loved; it was the VOID she had drawn about from within him.


    RUMBLE


    She stepped. The sheer power of the simple motion shook the very ground.


    WHOOSH


    She disappeared in the eyes of audience, and yet.


    WHOOSHThis belongs ? N?velDra/ma.Org.


    Rui avoided her blow with motions as smooth as the gentle ebbs of a soft flowing stream. Yet, his powerful attacks resembled a tumultuous violent river!


    BAM!


    She blocked his strike as she struck him with an immensely powerful blow. Rui spun out of it as he did his very best to mitigate his damage.


    What followed was a brutal exchange of attacks as Rui did his best to mitigate the damage from her extraordinary power.


    But the odds were stacked against him. He had endured arge number of blows from her at that point, his condition had already deteriorated from his physical peak.


    Every inch of his body ached.


    Every movement hurt.


    His skin was a bruised mess. He was bleeding from more ces than he realized.


    On the other hand, Fiona was nearly unscratched. The only attack that left a bruise on her was his Flowing Canon.


    The only attack in his arsenal that could truly hurt her was the Stinger.<sub> </sub>


    And she knew it.


    And he knew she knew it. And she knew he knew she knew it.


    That''s why he hadn''t used it yet. She was being careful of it, yet she wasn''t as easy to manipte as Nel was. If he triedunching the Stinger, she would intercept his leg with ease, being much faster, and probably even break it on the spot before he could do anything with it.


    There was only one trump card he had left.


    Yet, this was even harder to use.


    But because her movements were so explosively agile and fast, he was not able to get hold of a decent opportunity to use his final trump card.


    BAM!


    A powerful side kick mmed into his guard as skidded away. Yet, in the fraction of a moment she had already crossed the distance to him, and threw abo of strikes.


    WHOOSH


    Rui ducked, avoiding them as he threw a sharp spinning kick empowered with all the Outer Convergence and Vital Pressure he could manage.


    BAM


    His attack stopped dead at her ankle.


    He couldn''t even budge it.


    BOOM!


    Rui barely managed to roll out of the way as a drop kick impacted onto the very location he was at just a moment prior.


    She immediately spun, dashing at him aggressively, as sheunched a shooting maneuver, trying to tackle him wand then crush him on the ground with her greater power.


    But he was wise enough to decline her wrestling offer. His biggest advantage rting to his evasive reactions would be diminished, while her greatest advantage; her power would be highly emphasized.


    He would be an utter disgrace to his Martial Path if he chose to grapple Fiona.


    WHOOSH


    <o>,m He managed to dodge yet another attack as he wiped some blood streaming down his face from a wound on his head.</o>


    He didn''t have much time.


    And almost as if recognizing that, his entire body cooperated as it did its very best to prevent his condition from copsing.


    Yet, the end was near. Even Fiona had sensed that as she intensified her attacks.


    POW POW POW!


    Ruiunched a barrage of weight blows, yet Fiona effortlessly blocked them.


    BAM!!


    A powerful impact collided against him,unching him away as he grimaced in pain. He gritted his teeth as he entered his evasive maneuvering stance. He felt an extraordinarily strong urge to start abusing the Blink technique to mitigate his dire situation. Yet her managed to impose self-control, restraining his urges.


    The reason was simple. Frankly, she was so much superior to him that even the Blink technique could not allow him to start winning. It was just not enough. it was a strong technique, yes. But she had many strong techniques as well. Blink by itself could not turn the tides.


    The only thing that could turn possibly the tides was timing Blink with a Phantom Step and a Stinger attack with more than ny-nine percent uracy and precision, to inflict critical and vital damage on her.


    That was it.


    He had nothing else.


    Yet Fiona had no intentions of making life easy for him.


    She crouched as her leg muscles tensed until they were tauter than contorted steel wire bundles, brimming with an unimaginable amount of power. Even her veins bulged, unable to contain the energy she had gathered as her face trembled with effort.


    Every single person stirred at what was happening.


    And also...


    What was about to happen.


    BOOM!!!


    Rui''s instincts screamed as sheunched herself charging towards Rui unleashing a swing of untold power.


    For just the briefest of moments, her power surpassed the Apprentice Realm.


    BOOM!!!


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 273 The Final Outcome

    The attack crashed into Rui''s vulnerable abdomen, a gigantic impact wave rippling through his body. He did his best as he tried to mitigate as much of the impact as he could with stic Shift, Acute Edge and Inner Divergence.


    Yet it was sorely insufficient. Rui closed his eyes as he experienced a level of suffering that he hadn''t since the conditioning training of the Stinger technique. Every cell in his body ached as he wasunched across the arena. Large swathes of his skin were sheared off by the rough ground as hended into a tree in the arena.N?velDrama.Org owns this text.


    Yet what he did next shook those who beheld his mangled bloody form.


    He grinned.


    "...Gotcha." He stared into Fiona''s eyes with a hauntingly ecstatic smile that cut through his mangled bloody face.


    Fiona felt a shiver climb up her spine as she gazed into his intense bloodshot eyes.


    Then, and only then, did the pain follow.


    SPLURT SPLURT SPLURT!


    Blood pissed out of her neck, shocking everyone who witnessed it.


    What had happened??


    "...Huh?" Fiona murmured, not understanding. Her body was saturated with pain-suppressing endorphins that the human body naturally released in states of extreme excitement.


    But reality soon took a grip of her.


    She immediately pressed her hand to her neck, suppressing the blood flow as her eyes widened in shock at what she felt.


    A hole!


    A hole in her neck!


    She nced at Rui in shock.


    "...Ha... Haha..." Heughed unsteadily.


    THUD


    He put one foot on the ground.


    THUD


    The other foot soon followed.


    He grabbed onto the tree, pulling himself up.


    He struggled to stand. His body was a mess. No one would be surprised if he simply copsed that very moment.


    And yet.


    He took his stance, grinning weakly.


    He was exactly where he wanted to be.


    "Come..." He squeezed out. "The fight only ends when one of us falls."


    She stared at him in disbelief and shock.


    Had Fiona known thatunching that attack then would have resulted in a toe-sized hole in her neck, she would not have done it.


    But she did do it, and consequently, it did.


    Rui had thrown her caution of his Stinger off by feinting a weight shift onto his right leg, making her think he was not going to move it and eliminating it as a threat in her mind. And only when the timely blink during the attack came, did heunch the Stinger.


    A person''s defense was most vulnerable at the moment of their attack. Rui had taken the role a patient hunter, waiting for the right moment to strike.


    And yet, even thebination of a never-before seen trump card, along with her own mental blind spot was not enough by itself.


    No.


    It needed a sacrifice, a sacrifice Rui had to provide. A sacrifice he did provide. He sacrificed defense as he abandoned his guard tond the Stinger quicker, harder and deeper.


    That was the price ofnding his critical Blink Stinger sessfully.<sub> </sub>


    It was a costly price.


    He was certain he had broken, a the very least, a few ribs. His bleeding had elerated. His skin had been torn in multiple areas. His body was bruised essentially all over, even his balls hurt.


    Yet, it was not in vain.


    The carotid arteries and the jugr veins transported an enormous amount of blood. Furthermore, they carried blood not to any ordinary organ, but to the very brain itself, among all organs.


    And Rui had severed nearly half of them in her neck.


    So what if he broke a few ribs? So what if his skin tore? So what if he was bleeding from open wounds?


    Did it hurt?


    Yes, it hurt more than words could describe.


    Yet he was more than willing to endure it.


    Now he had brought her down to the same level. She no longer had ample time to crush him slowly.


    Rui just needed to oust her!


    As long as he could do this, he could win!


    Everything rested on whether he could seed!


    "That''s right..." He said unsteadily as he wobbled as he began losing his sense of bnce. "I just need to...st."


    "Last..." His breathing grew moreboured. "...long enough."


    His vision blurred, darkening.


    "The fi..ght.. Isn''t..."


    His hands fell limp, as they dangled helplessly.


    "...over."


    THUD


    He copsed in a pool of his own blood.


    ...


    He didn''t get up.


    Not a single person moved. Countless people had gathered in the colosseum with immense excitement and anticipation.


    Yet, they all froze.


    An eternity passed, seemingly, as everyone waited.


    Waited for Rui Quarrier to get up.


    And yet.


    "Winner; Representative Fiona Roschem!" The referee dered.


    "...And there you have it folks! Fiona Roschem persevered through the finals, defeating Representative Rui Quarrier to be the Martial Champion of the twenty-seventh Martial Contest!"


    His excited voice cut through the silence, as bands and celebratory crackers lit up, drawing people outside of their reverie.


    Medics had long since rushed towards Rui and Fiona, and had long begun treatment after rushing the former to the medical quarters after initial stabilization. Fiona had been supplied with a single healing potion as medics took over the task of applying pressure over her wound.


    Rui on the hand was surrounded by medics, that worked furiously to contain his bleeding as they administered depressurized gaseous potions were forcibly pumped into his lungs via medical breathing-aid instruments that resembled masks.


    Soon, his skin and flesh healed, followed by his ribs, bones and muscles. Eventually theypleted the regeneration of blood as well. It was only then had his skin regained its healthyplexion.


    Yet he didn''t open his eyes until muchter. The potions may have healed him, but he was exhausted on a much deeper level. His body and mind needed to rest organically after being stressed and strained to such a degree during the Martial Contest. Potions restored the body, but they also pushed it. Nobody wanted to push Rui Quarrier after witnessing what he had gone through.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 274 Aftermath

    Rui opened his eyes slowly. An clear sky entered his field of vision.


    He frowned.


    Where was he?


    He got up to his feet as he gazed forward, squinting as his eyes adjusted. A beautifulndscape extended as far as the eye could see as he gazed down at the breathtaking sight, appreciating its beauty.


    But he was still confused.


    He turned around, ncing at what was behind him, yet what he saw shook him to his very core.


    He saw a path.


    A path with profound depth.


    A path he was on.


    Yet what shook him wasn''t the path itself.


    No.


    What truly shook him was treacherous cmities the path winded through.


    Monsters.


    Earthquakes.


    Meteorites.


    Land-breaks.


    A torrent of devastating catastrophes littered his path.


    It was a horrifying sight that inspired primal terror.


    And yet, it inspired awe.


    Through his terror, he could see profound boundless beauty in that path.


    The path enchanted him, mesmerizing him, whispering to him.


    It was a path he wanted to walk down.


    And yet, when he took his first step, the world shattered into countless pieces fading away.


    He woke up a shock, jerking upright as he gasped for breath.


    He nced around spotting his squire instructors immediately.


    He squinted, dazed,pletely confused. It took him a few moments to remember what had happened.


    (''The same dream again...'') He thought to himself.


    "Wait, what happened to my match?" His eyes widened as he nced at them.


    They were both silent for a moment.


    "You lost." Squire Kyrie straightforwardly told him impassively. "You managed to get her with the Stinger, inflicting a critical wound. But the damage you took from herst strike had crossed the threshold, you fell unconscious not fifteen secondster."


    "...I see." Rui sighed, closing his eyes.


    He was expressionless, but inwardly he concealed immense disappointment and frustration. He had given that fight his everything, but not even his everything was enough.


    He took a deep breath as he exhaled deeply, shaking his head.


    "If it''s of any constion." Squire Dylon said. "Your performance surpassed my every expectation. You''re not even a two-year-old Martial Apprentice and you went against a monstrous prodigy that has been cultivating techniques for six years. The odds were stacked against you in every way, in every possible parameter, yet you managed to not only push her going all-out but inflicted a critical wound that threatened to lose her the match. Frankly, she also got a little lucky there at the end."


    Squire Kyrie nodded at his words. "Remember what I told you before the preliminary contest. Your Martial Path extends far beyond the Martial Contest, this is merely a checkpoint in your life. Do not let this halt or hinder your journey. You will one day achieve power that beggars the imagination."


    Squire Kyrie spoke those words with certainty. Yet, she wasn''t lying. The fact that Rui was already half-way to being a Squire Candidate at the age of fourteen was truly astonishing. Furthermore, he had fulfilled the harder and more important condition of Squire candidacy at his tender age.


    She was touted as a genius back in her era, yet even she couldn''t begin to even fathom his depths.


    (''The Voidbringer...'') She mused. (''How fitting.'')


    "Thank you, both of you. However, I do not intend to let this failure hold me back." he said solemnly. "Instead, this failure will make me stronger, stronger than I ever was."


    He stared at his hands, as a slight smile cracked past his gloom.


    The Martial Contest had shattered and reforged his world view of what was possible and what wasn''t. It expanded his view of Martial Art was capable of.<sub> </sub>


    His grinned widened as he thought of all the various techniques he would master in his next training stage.


    His dark eyes had already left the past, greedily eying the future.


    * * * * * * * * * *


    Fiona sat on a chair as she gazed outside the window of her room, as she beheld the lively bustling town of Vargard.


    A magnificent sparkling cup sat atop a table some distance away, drawing her attention.


    It was supposed to be an honour and a matter of boundless prestige, yet she didn''t fell much.


    She was in a pensive mood, unsure of what she felt.


    No, she knew what she felt. She wasn''t sure about how she felt of what she felt.


    Shortly after the match ended, she was dered the Martial Champion and given that cup as the crowd went berserk with cheers and apuse.


    KNOCK KNOCK


    "Come in~" She absentmindedly said.


    "Miss." Her butler bowed.


    "What is it?"


    "The Master has summoned you." He said, solemnly.


    Fiona simply nodded, having expected that.


    She dismissed him as she walked towards the center of the Roschem Family mansion.


    <o>,m Towards the center, where the study of Sage Damian Roschem was.</o>


    She breathed deeply as she steeled her mind, before knocking.


    KNOCK KNOCK


    Nothing happened.


    Until it did.


    The doors opened slowly. Ominously.


    Immediately, she gritted her teeth slightly as immense pressure weighed on her, threatening to crush her if she wasn''t strong enough.


    She walked in as her eyes fell on the figure seated at the center of the room.


    "Fiona."


    He murmured a single word.


    Fiona''s eyes fluttered unstably, as she struggled to stay conscious.


    A single word.N?vel(D)rama.Org''s content.


    And she felt limitless, boundless pressure crush down onto her.


    A single word.


    And she felt as though the very sky itself had converged onto her.


    A single word.


    And she felt the very core of her consciousness crumbling.


    A single word.


    "Dad...!" She just barely managed to squeeze out as her vision began blurring


    "Hm?" The figure nced at her. "Ah, I am quite sorry."


    Soon the weight on her mind disappeared as she fell to her knees gasping for air.


    "I''m sorry, my precious baby." He softly murmured sorrowfully, careful of exerting himself. "It is difficult to contain every ounce of my mind. Every once in a while, I let slip of just a tiny bit of it, like now."


    She got up, ring at him. "Hmph! You say that all the time but it happens every time!"


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 275 Return

    "Oh dear." Damian sighed softly. "Daddy really is sorry,e, why don''t you give me a make-up hug?"


    "Stop treating me like a child, I''m fifteen-years-old!" Sheined as she pouted.


    A soft smile emerged on his face, as he got up, approaching his daughter.


    "Congrattions on winning the Martial Contest." He smiled affectionately as he caressed her brown hair, patting her softly. "I''m proud of you."


    Fiona didn''t respond to those words.


    "Unsatisfied?" He asked with a knowing smile.


    "...Maybe." She replied.


    "What do you feel?"


    "I want to know..." She said.This belongs ? N?velDra/ma.Org.


    He waited for her as he continued caressing her head.


    "...I want to know what drives him and his kind down their Martial Paths."


    She closed her eyes as she recalled the intense determination that sparkled his bloodshot eyes even as he lost consciousness.


    "Is it really worth a path walking down?" She asked, as her intense curiosity coloured her eyes.


    "Who knows?" He smiled. "Is it?"


    Her eyes knitted in surprise and confusion.


    "Isn''t it?" She asked.


    "Is that upto me?" He asked, amused. "Can you truly know unless you travel down that path yourself?"


    She remained silent at that question.


    * * * * * * * * * *


    Rui returned back to the Martial Academy immediately. The first thing he did was reunite with all of his friends.


    "Wee back." Fae said. "You did amazing."


    "Nice job smacking Ian." Kane threw him a thumbs up.


    "Your performance was admirable." Hever calmly told him.


    "Let''s fight!" Nel grinned excitedly.


    "Thest round was quite close." Dalen told him. "Good job pushing Fiona that far."


    He spent quite some time interacting with them, catching up and bantering back and forth.


    "Hehe, good job ''Voidbringer''." Kane sneered.


    Rui red at him. "Thanks, ''Elusive Wind''."<sub> </sub>


    "Wait, who told him?!" Kane''s eyes widened as he dismayed.


    "Yeah, you thought you could keep it hidden from me huh?" Ruiughed.


    Just then, a staff member called out to him.


    "Apprentice Rui Quarrier?" She addressed. "The headmaster wishes to speak to you."


    Rui nodded as he got up to leave. "I''ll catch you guyster."


    He left after they bade him goodbye, heading to the headmaster''s office. He quickly reached the giant doors, waiting for them to open and entering after.


    "Headmaster." Rui bowed deeply as he expressed respect for a man who had reached a certain height of Martial power. The immense weight he felt on his mind only made that gesture easier to make.


    "Congrattions, Rui Quarrier." Headmaster Aronian smiled. "Your performance was admirable. You have done not only yourself a favour but this branch of the Martial Academy as well."


    "Thank you, headmaster." Rui replied.


    "How do you feeling back?" The headmaster asked.


    "...Invigorated." Rui replied after some thought. "I may have lost, but I''ve never been someone who chases after victory first. Victory and loss are consequences of my pursuit of my Martial Path. And I intend to continue doing that. The Martial Contest has expanded my vision of Martial Art. I intend on expanding my Flowing Void Style until it has matured and reached a shape resembling what my ideal vision of it is. In doing so, I will have be a Squire Candidate, and I will have travelled deeper down my Martial Path."


    Headmaster Aronian smiled at those words. Rui''s single-minded focus and fixation on his Martial Art and Martial Path was even more pure than he had expected. He had summoned Rui, expecting him to be in a gloomy and depressed state, but instead Rui had already picked himself and had begun moving forward.


    (''Truly, it is hard to believe he is only fifteen-years-old.'') He thought to himself. Rui was not showing the maturity one would expect of his age after such a loss. The Martial Contest held an extremely high amount of significance of the Apprentice students, a loss at the final round of the Martial Contest that forever denied them the opportunity to achieve extraordinary fame and prestige would usually atleast deal a heavy blow on someone his age.


    But Rui seemed to understand what was important and what wasn''t, what could be gained from the experience and what had to be done, without any guidance.


    In that moment, Headmaster Aronian had a premonition.


    This child would step into the higher Realm.


    He bore no doubts.


    "That''s a relief to hear." He replied, smiling. "What do you n to do now that you''re back?"


    "Ideally, I''d like to begin training." Rui replied. "But I do not possess any martial credits whatsoever, thus I will undertake more missions and gather arge sum of credits for my next round of training."


    "I see. I do approve. Missions broaden your understanding of the Martial World, gaining more and more practical experience at your age will nourish you as a Martial Apprentice. Furthermore, your evaluated grade as a Martial Artist has been upgraded from grade five to grade seven." Headmaster Aronian informed. "You will be able to undertake missions that will give you valuable realbat experience. At this stage, you may begin undertaking missions outside the Mantian region and experience a higher level of danger in missions."


    Rui''s eyebrows raised in interest. "What about international and foreign missions?"


    Headmaster Aronian paused for a moment as he pondered. "Generally, international missions are usually grade eight to grade ten. But it''s not impossible at your current grade."


    "I see..."


    "I would rmend abstaining from international and foreign missions." Headmaster Aronian told him with a pointed look.


    "Why so? If I may ask." Rui replied curiously. He had already mostly estimated why, but still, he wanted to make sure he understood.


    "Well, international missions are more dangerous." He replied. "Within the Kandrian Empire, the Kandrian Martial Union had an extreme amount of soft and hard power, meaning to some degree you have a certain amount of indirect protection and support. However, once you leave the Kandrian Empire, the power of the Martial Union decreases significantly. You''re taking on arger burden."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 276 Personal Comissions

    "Because we charge higher rates and fees for missions whose operation requires fielding Martial Artists outside the border of the Kandrian Empire, most of the international and foreign missions we get are not from small-time bodyguard missions by singr individuals with an average upation or anything such as that." Headmaster Aronian said. "No, most of them are missions from wealthy individuals with high socio-economic status, powerful cooperations,ndowners, political or governmental figures, arge variety of Beast Domain missions and things of that sort."


    "I see..."


    "Your bodyguard mission in the Basara Mountains is a good example of what foreign missions are like, at bare minimum mind you. Foreign missions are regrly fraught with such danger because there are no limits to what can happen in a foreign mission whatosever. You can run into Martial Artists of higher Realms from different nations who will unhesitatingly ughter you in an instant. Anything can happen and you''re absolutely all on your own, there''s no safety of any kind, you just die from a single mistake."


    Headmaster Aronian ended up convincing Rui. At the end of the day, Rui was not a daredevil who enjoyed staking his life for tasks he wasn''t qualified for just yet. He didn''t mind waiting half a year or so until he was much stronger after mastering even more techniques and diversifying his Martial Art.


    "Furthermore..." Headmaster Aronian continued as he stroked his beard. "Although you did not win the Martial Contest, you reached the finals and you put up one hell of a fight. You have already received manymissions from specific clienteles who are interested inmissioning you for missions." Headmaster Aronian told him.


    Rui''s eyes lit up in interest at those words.


    He had expected this beforehand, to some degree. Even if he did lose, and even he was not happy about it, the status of a Martial Contest finalist was not low. He was basically the publicly crowned number two of the Martial Artists of his generation.


    Considering that the Martial Contest was extremely prestigious, there was no doubt that there would be many clienteles interested in many things.


    "How many have I received since the Martial Contest began?" He asked, excited.


    "Fourteen." Headmaster Aronian replied with aplicated expression. "Much lower than a finalist would receive, in all honesty."


    Rui frowned at those words. "Why so?"


    "Well, I can''t say for sure." Headmaster Aronian shrugged. "But it probably has to do with the nature of your Martial Art. You''re not just a Type I all-rounder Martial Art, your fighting style fluctuatespletely depending on your opponent. It''s optimized for pure head-on physical conflict. The reason elite and wealthy clienteles sendmissions to the Martial Contest representatives is because they have proven theirpetence to be at the elite level. However, missions are generally specialized, while you''re an adaptive all-rounder. Do you understand?"


    Rui nodded, immediately deducing the headmaster''s message. "So basically, because I''m a fluid all-rounder, I''m never the best at any one particr field. Dalen and Arjun will probably always be better than me at defense-ss missions, Fae will always be better than me at offense-ss missions, Kane will always excel better than me at Shadow-ss missions and so on and so forth."<sub> </sub>


    "Exactly." Headmaster nodded. "You excel at adapting and evolving to any opponent. Yet exactly how useful is that to missions? It''s probably useful, no doubt. But is it more useful than the specialists? Can you surpass offensive Martial Artists at offensive ss missions? Can you surpass defensive Martial Artists at defensive missions? Is there any ss, type or even a particr mission that your Martial Art will fulfill better than any other kind of Martial Art?"


    Rui narrowed his eyes at those words. He didn''t like what headmaster Aronian was telling him, but there was truth to his words.This belongs ? N?velDra/ma.Org.


    There were five sses of missions in the Martial Union.


    Offense, defense, hunter, shadow and misceneous. Four of these sses had dedicated specialists to them, and Rui knew that he could notpete with the specialists in their specialized fields.


    The Flowing Void style did not have any particr ss of missions it could do much better than any other Martial Art would. His style excelled at adapting to his opponents and fighting them in the most optimal manner needed to take them down.


    However, taking down singr opponents in the best manner possible, in a head-on conflict was certainly not most desired or important quality looked for in these four different shes.


    In defensive-ss missions, your ability to protect your target of protections was the most valued trait. In offensive-ss missions your ability to inflict harm of varying degrees on your target was the most values trait. In the hunter and shadow ss missions there were so many different most valued qualities based on the sub-category, however Rui did not excel at any of those fields.


    Of course, because of how many techniques he had mastered and how potent hisbat ability was, he would always be relevant, but at the elite levels of the four sses, that wasn''t enough. If he wanted to gain more personalmissions from upper-ss clienteles, he needed to show them he couldplete missions of a certain kind better than his peers. And that was an area where he had failed.


    Of course, his performance was incredible and so he drew more than a dozen personalmissions anyway. But as spectacr and entertaining he was, all the upper-ss clienteles went to Arjun for defensive-ssmissions. They went to Mia, Vyoming, Servil and Ana for all the other sses. They were just more specialized and more suited.


    Rui bet that even Ian and Fiona got far moremissions than he did despite effectively being all-rounders. Fiona was just so abysmally strong that she couldpete with and surpass specialists in their own fields. Ian could also do that, albeit to a lesser extent.


    He shook his head; it was what it was.


    "Well, what are themissions I received?"


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 277 Defensive Missions

    "They are... well, interesting, I suppose." Headmaster Aronian smiled wryly as he plucked out a file from a drawer and handed it to Rui. "Go over them in your own time."


    Rui nodded as he received the file.


    "And with that, I have conveyed all that I wished to. You may go if you have nothing you wish to convey." Headmaster Aronian told him.


    Rui nodded. "Thank you, Headmaster." He said, bowing deeply, before turning around and leaving.


    Once he reached his dorm room, he immediately locked himself inside as he sat down, opening the file. The file had copies ofmission applications that the clienteles whomissioned him had submitted as well as mission bills created for each of them.


    He skimmed through them, reading them each briefly. His facial expressions morphed rapidly as he skimmed through.


    Many of the personalmissions in the file were the norm; what one would expect. Bodyguard missions of different types. A hunter-ss mission or two here and there.


    Yet what surprised him was the sheer number of misceneousmissions there were for him. Many of them were bizarre.


    A few sought tomission him for representing them in unofficial underground and upper-ss Apprentice-level fighting contests.


    A connoisseur and collector of unique Martial Artists hadmissioned him for his Martial Art.


    Prominent Martial Families hadmissioned him as a sparring partner for their Martial Apprentice descendents.


    A news outlet in the town of Vargard hadmissioned him for an interview.


    A prominent Martial Family holding an eventter on in the Martial Festival hadmissioned him to participate in their event.


    The Kandrian Institute of Sciences hadmissioned him as a research subject, to study his Martial Art. This one was a shocking notion to him.


    A Martial Art gear and uniform development corporation hadmissioned him for an advertisement and endorsement of their brand!


    Rui couldn''t help but be surprised when he saw these strange and abnormalmissions as he read into them in more detail. These were not the kind ofmissions he was expecting when he opened the file.


    He shook his head as he decided focus on one mission at a time.


    He grabbed the first mission bill, ncing at the summary of the mission printed on the cover.


    It was a bodyguard mission.


    [Defense ss: Bodyguard mission


    Difficulty grade: 4


    Target of protection: Bent Silihis


    Specified/estimated location/range of mission: Town of Vargard, Fastar Convention, 17th main, 15th cross.


    Time period of mission: Twelve hours.<sub> </sub>


    Missionmencement period: 39 th Winter.


    Sessfulpletion remuneration: 500 martial credits.


    Commission clientele: Silihs Corporation]


    Rui raised an eyebrow at that reward. He couldn''t help but be surprised at that reward. The man was willing to pay a lot just have Rui be his bodyguard. What struck Rui as odd was the fact that the mission difficulty was a grade four. Meaning the evaluated probability of threat to his life was very low.


    Five hundred credits for a grade four mission? That was severely overpriced. What was the point of hiring a grade seven Martial Apprentice like Rui for a grade four mission?N?velDrama.Org owns this text.


    Rui was beginning to suspect that he was being hired only to flex.


    The mission location was a convention of conglomerate leaders, Rui had no experience with such gathering, however it did seem like he was merely being hired to show off. Perhaps the convention was a snobby little rich people-meeting, where they all tried to out-flex each other.


    This was especially the case when one of the conditions of the mission was performing the mission without his mask.


    Rui immediately shook his head.


    It was one thing to go maskless in a Martialpetition event of peers who consented to a fairpetition between each other that was being regted by the Martial Academies, but he refused to reveal his identity to during a solo mission that could potentially make him new enemies who did not care about fairness and consent. That was just too dangerous.


    Furthermore, the mission did not offer him any valuable experience that could help him grow as a Martial Artist. Anything below grade five was frankly too paltry for his current level of power. He wanted a mission that could stimte him, and this simply wasn''t it.


    He immediately tossed the mission bill aside.


    The other bodyguard missions were also of a simr nature, where he was clearly being treated as a trophy to be showed off to others of a certainmunity or ss, rather than as a Martial Artist who was being paid to protect them.


    His status as the finalist in the prestigious Martial Contest would earn them a lot of social points, he imagined. The other representatives of the Martial Contest probably didn''t receive such offers since they were already part of their own Martial Family and would not affiliate with an external entity, but he could sense that people were trying to rope him in to some degree because he had no real ties with any individual or entity in the upper echelons of society.


    He immediately tossed all of those aside, he had no interest in indulging their vanity. Frankly, there wasn''t much that they could offer him that genuinely interested him.


    Money? Bing rich was not his goal.


    Resources for growing stronger? The Martial Union far surpassed them in regards to the resources they offered to Martial Artists. Only the Royal Kandrian Family could rival them in that regard.


    Social status? Again, he didn''t care.


    He only wanted to develop his Martial Art and traverse his Martial path.


    He skimmed through the hunter missions, intrigued. They were different. Half of them were from private individuals and other half was from the Ministry of Environment and Ecology. They were centered around a variety of different types of missions; reconnaissance, procurement of resources, extermination etc.


    He decided to ept all of them, they were more lowkey and gave him real valuable experience that the vanity missions did not.


    Putting them aside, he nced at the set of mission bills of misceneous missions.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 278 Sorting

    Rui opened the first one.


    [Misceneous ss mission: Commissioned representative fighter.


    Commissioning clientele: Freier Ester Inc.


    Mission objective: To fight and win in schedules matches against Martial Apprentices representing Freier Oil inc.


    Frequency: Twice a week (Negotiable)


    Minimum remuneration: 100 Martial credits/ 3 gold coins, 8silver coins and 4 bronze coins (Negotiable)


    Sessfulpletion remuneration: 1000 Martial credits/ 31 gold coins. 6 silver coins and 8 bronze coins (Negotiable)


    Location: Town of Harrifel]


    Rui''s eyes narrowed as he skimmed through the details provided by the mission bill. The location of the fight was apparently an arena in a town in the Mantian region about three hours away from the town of Hajin.N?velDrama.Org owns this text.


    The mission bill expounds upon the background a bit more.


    In the upper-ss of society, Martial Artists were hired to fight against other hired Martial Artists in apetitive setting. It was treated as apetitive and gambling sport within the circles of the upper echelons.


    ording to the mission bill, these circles were distinct from that of the Martial Community, although they did intersect with each other to a certain degree as Martial Families would send in heirs and descendants to face off against each other as well as the champions of other individuals who partook in the sport.


    Freier Ester Inc was arge supplier of Ester in the Kandrian Empire, and esotericpound that was most widely used for lighting products and devices ording to the information provided by the mission bill. They were a major supplier in the northern parts of the Kandrian Empire, epassing several different regions of the Kandrian Empire.


    The scale of Freier Ester Inc was far greater than the Hier Industries or the Lowminer Industries, both which were corporations he had worked with prior. These two corporations were limited to a handful of towns across the Mantian regions, and thus were much smaller than Freier Ester Inc which was a national giant in the Ester supplies industries.


    Rui could feel the newfound socio-economic status thanks to his performance in the Martial Contest. He would have never received such interest from a conglomerate titan such as the Freier Ester Inc.


    He nced through the few other simr offers he received for being amissioned fighter, although none of those clienteles were quite as distinguished as the Freier Ester Inc.


    He decided not to make a decision on the matter until he met up with his client, to learn more about him and themission itself.


    Themission also specified the required signature of his on a nonpete agreement that was valid for as long as the contract was active. Meaning he wouldn''t be able to be themissioned fighter of any other clientele who sought tomission him.


    Which made it all the more important to be careful while making a decision on the matter.


    Having made up his mind on that, he put themissioned representative fighting mission bills aside as he picked up the mission bill of anothermission.<sub> </sub>


    [Misceneous mission: Sparring partner mission


    Commissioning client: The Distar Family.


    Mission objective: To serve as a sparring partner for Martial Apprentices.


    Remuneration rate: 9 silver coins and 7 bronze coins/25 Martial credits per hour of sparring (Negotiable).


    Missionmencement duration: Indefinite.


    Commissioned time period: 7 hours a week (Negotiable).]


    There were other missions like this as well. Two others, to be precise. The Frial Family and the Shamik Family.


    All three of the Martial Families were led by prominent Martial Masters.


    Rui understood why he had received three suchmissions from Martial Families. Frankly, his Martial Art was quite suited for the role of a sparring partner for Martial Apprentices.


    The reason for this was quite straightforward. Sparring with him on a regr basis would force them to fight a Martial Art adapted to them. His adapted Martial Art exploited any and all weaknesses in their style that it could.


    Meaning, his Martial Art was the single greatest way to train weaknesses!


    Rui had never truly considered this application of the Flowing Void Style and the VOID algorithm. Back on Earth, this would not have really worked as well, and it was never intended to be the purpose of Project Water. Years of that had prevented Rui from realizing all the possible applications in this new world.


    By adapting to a Martial Artist, and having them spar against him over and over, they would learn what their weaknesses were and also how topensate for their weaknesses through experience. This kind of weakness training probably surpassed anything the Martial Academies could provide, Rui dared to say.


    The Martial Academies did have experienced Squires for teachers, but Rui did not think their insights couldpare to the results obtained by the mind-numbing amount of data science that was used to forge the VOID algorithm.


    It seems that the prestigious and insightful Martial Masters that hadmissioned him as a sparring partner hade to realize this, and had chosen to capitalize on it.


    Rui was inclined to ept this mission as well. This mission would not give him the real-lifebat experience; however, he ultimately could not refusemissions that his Martial Art was perfectly specialized to fulfill unlike any Martial Art in existence!


    He immediately made it a point to ept themission. Funnily enough, each of the Martial Masters had appointed a meeting with him if he epted themission. Rui couldn''t help but wonder if there was a reason for that beyond just themission.


    He put the three mission bills aside as he shifted his attention to the rest.


    He immediately dismissed themission of the connoisseur of unique Martial Art who wanted Rui to document and pass on his Martial Art to him. He was not interested in sharing his Martial Art for money. Perhaps in the distant future he would entertain the idea of passing on his Martial Art, or atleast the core of it. But that would be of his own volition in his own time and ce.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 279 New Goal

    He tossed aside themission that wanted him to participate in one of the events of the Martial Festival. He had had more than just enough of participating inpetitive Martial events for now, he would rather focus on other endeavors.


    He also tossed aside the mission bills of the interviewmission and the brand endorsement and advertisementmission. He was not interested in fame and exposure; they were utterly meaningless to him.


    That left the final mission.


    The Kandrian Institute of Sciences hadmissioned him to research his Martial Art.


    Rui wasn''t sure what to make of it. However, he suspected that his unique Martial Art had aroused interest in the schrs of the Institute of Sciences.


    He knew from his conversation with Julian during the Kandrian Winter holidays that the Kandrian Institute of Sciences researched Martial Art and Martial Artists.


    [Misceneous mission: Research subject


    Mission objective: Serve as a research subject for Kandrian Institute of Sciences.


    Remuneration rate: 20 Martial Credits/ 7 silver and 6 gold coins per hour.


    Mission duration: 2 months.


    Mission time period rate: 3 hours a day (Negotiable)]


    Rui wasn''t sure whether or not to ept themission. There were pros and cons to the epting the mission.N?velDrama.Org owns this text.


    The cons were that he would be divulging the research of a lifetime from his previous life as schrs collected data, studying it and probably even evaluating the feasibility of reverse engineering it and stealing his algorithm.


    He felt extremely repelled by that.


    However, it could be what helps him ovee certain obstacles that genuinely may require empirical research to ovee. It might end up being the key to progressing his Martial Art.


    He was extremely conflicted. Thankfully there was nomencement date, which meant it was likely an open-ended offer that would remain as long as he didn''t straight up refuse it.


    Furthermore, his brother Julian worked in the Kandrian Institute of Sciences as a schr. Rui knew he had even worked on projects rted to Martial Art.


    Perhaps they would end up working together.


    For now, he put the matter aside. He already epted a whole slew of missions, he did not need anymore, nor did he have time for anymore. He could take his time and consider it very thoroughly.


    <o>,m He was also going to get into a thorough long training stage after this set of missions.</o>


    In hisst training stage, he felt a bit rushed and constrained since he needed to scramble to obtain power in order to be ready in time for the Martial Contest. That due date had constrained his training options a lot.


    But now he felt no burdens on him. He had finallye to realize how much pressure and how many shackles the Martial Contest had put on him.<sub> </sub>


    He could finally enjoy being free!


    The things he could do without any worries or cares.


    Just developing his Martial Art, traversing his Martial Path with blissful peace.


    As peaceful as a Martial Artist''s life was, anyway.


    His ultimate goal was to develop his Martial Art as high as was possible, to travel his Martial Art as deep as was possible.


    He had already set a new forseeable goal in sight; To fulfill the second condition required for Squire candidacy.


    And eventually, to step into a higher Realm of power.


    To be a Martial Squire himself.


    His body quivered.


    The very thought of bing a vaunted and mighty Martial Squire was unimaginably exciting!


    To do that, he would need to undergo the breakthrough process. To do that, he would need to fulfill the second condition to Squire candidacy. He needed his Martial Art to mature and stabilize in its shape.


    He had suspected that this condition would be much harder for him than it was for others. His Martial Art needed to be able to do everything, no matter how slight, in order to be able to adapt to everything. That meant he needed to step foot into many different fields.


    He quickly jotted down all the aspects his Martial Art would need boost up in before it could be said to have matured.


    He needed range. There were plenty of techniques he had seen that could allow his opponent to be able to counter him from range. There were also opponents he himself needed to keep at range in order to defeat soundly. One way or another, he needed to extend his range beyond the normal limits of the human body.


    He also needed lethality that bypassed conventional durability. He would run into opponents whom he would struggle to hurt. He did not want to be extremely reliant on Stinger every time he fought a tough opponent. He needed more diverse ways of taking down his opponents. The Martial Contest had shown him that there were several options and possibilities to choose from.


    He needed defensive countermeasures against these diverse offensive solutions. Currently his defense consisted of Acute Edge, stic Shift and Inner Divergence for strikes, and Shifting Silhouette. He had always knew this wasn''t entirely sufficient, but only after the Martial Contest did he realize just how insufficient it was. He had zero direct countermeasures for high tier of poison, heat, sound, vibrations, permeation and nerve striking. He would struggle to adapt against these without atleast a core countermeasure.


    Lastly, he also needed to take a serious step in oveing the problems of the VOID algorithm. He had always been determined to do so, but only after the Martial Contest has he be impatient to fix them.


    Currently, there were still two main issues with the VOID algorithm. The first issue was an issue that existed on Earth as well. He needed to fix the viability problem of the VOID algorithm. It was almost impossible to master the VOID algorithm in its entirety. Which is why it was not viable on Earth.


    The second problem was, of course the new world problem. Adapting the VOID algorithm to the new world of his second life was something he intended on working on in the next training stage.


    He had chalked out his objectives. Now it was time to get around to fulfilling them.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 280 Meeting

    "Apprentice Rui Quarrier, Missus Nartha Freier is ready to receive you." A staff member addressed him bowing deeply as a sign of respect. "Please follow me."


    "Alright, thank you." Rui nodded as he got up, and trailed after her.


    Today was the day of his appointment with the chairwoman of Freier Ester Inc who hadmissioned to him to be a representative champion for Freir Ester Inc. They would likely engage in negotiations over several details of themission contract.


    This was one thing that separated personalmission contracts from regrmission contracts. Since the client had approached Rui and specifically desired him, Rui had obtained some amount of bargaining power. The Martial Union had very little active control over the contract asides from the standard conditions and rules.


    Soon they reached an office. The staff member stepped aside, bowing as she gestured to the door.


    "Thank you." Rui said as he entered the office.N?vel(D)rama.Org''s content.


    "Ah my." A feminine voice remarked. "It''s a pleasure to meet the finalist of the Martial Contest, Apprentice Rui Quarrier. I am Nartha Freier, the founder and chairwoman of the Freier Ester Corporation."


    "It''s a pleasure to meet you, Chairwoman Nartha." Rui replied bowing a little as she performed the smallest of curtsies. "Thank you formissioning me, and thank you for the invite."


    Nartha Freier was a beautiful older woman, with long flowing blonde hair. Yet her sharp eyes caught his attention more than her aesthetics did. She was a powerful woman; he did not feel particrlyfortable under her gaze.


    "Not at all, young man." Sheughed dismissably. "I''ve been looking forward to meeting you ever since I personally witnessed your performance in the tournament. Come, let''s have a seat."


    The office was extravagantly luxurious, with posh sofas of remarkablefort. Rui had already figured this was the office she used to greet guests she wanted to impress, hence the impractical architecture and d¨¦cor that facilitated aesthetics at the cost of practicality.


    "Would you like to have a drink?" She asked courteously.


    "Water, please." Rui smiled, as Nartha immediately signaled to an attendant in her office to heed Rui''s request.


    "I have to say, I''m quite surprised that someone of your age made it to the finals." Nartha remarked. "Even more surprising is that someone your age managed to win the Martial Contest. Usually, the Martial Contest is won by an extremely senior student past the age of twenty or something of the sort."


    "You tter me" Rui smiled.


    "Am I? I do believe in your potential and prowess, young man." Nartha told him. "What considerations do you have of mymissions? We can negotiate on the price, however I do believe it''s a reasonable price."<sub> </sub>


    "I''m satisfied with the price." Rui remarked. "However, I do have some questions and conditions."


    "Go ahead." Nartha replied.


    "First, I wanted to inquire about the level of the Martial Artists that I will generally be facing." Rui told him.


    In reality, Rui already knew the level of the Martial Artists he would be facing. The Martial Academy provided him with reasonably detailed information on the matter that the intelligence department had managed to procure. But he deliberately pretended not to know because he wanted to gauge how sincere and honest Nartha was, it would tell him how careful he had to be.


    "I''m not an expert on Martial Artists." She replied thoughtfully. "But I do believe your prowess should be most, if not all, of the representative fighters that participate. There are a few here and there that are powerful enough to be a threat to you, but for the most part, I do believe you would be a force to reckon with."


    "I see." Rui replied. Thisrgely matched with what he''s learnt from the Martial Academy through the mission bill. "What are the odds that by being your representative, I won''t earn the ire and hatred of yourpetitors and enemies? I may be a Martial Artist, but I cannot make powerful enemies."


    Frankly, if he was by himself, he would be less concerned. But he had the Quarrier Orphanage that was extremely vulnerable. He was not powerful enough to protect himself and his family. If he made powerful enemies, the Quarrier Orphanage could possiblye under danger in the worst-case scenario. He was not a na?ve fool.


    "You do not need to worry about such things." Nartha told him, reassuringly. "It is merely a sport with low stakes. There''s some amount of money involved in gambling to make things more exciting, but asides from that, there isn''t such arge conflict of interests between yourself and members of the circle whosemissioned fighters you will be fighting. Any conflict of interests wille about between myself and the others."


    "I see." He replied. (''Hmph, lies.'')


    In reality, things were not this peaceful. There was not only money at stake but prestige as well. Commissioned fighters were not excluded from being targeted simply because they won the wrong fight and earned the ire of some arrogant haughty wealthy and power individual.


    Of course, it wasn''t as though these people would immediately resort to something as extreme assassination, since such things would be more counter-productive to themselves within their circle and in general, and they would be pariahs. The Martial Union would investigate the disappearances and deaths of Martial Artists as well and nobody wanted to earn its ire.


    Still, Rui wanted to be careful.


    "I have two conditions." He said. "First, I will take several measures to conceal my identity and any trace of it. Second, I will require you to sign a non-disclosure agreement regarding the details of my identity."


    Nartha fell into thought as she twirled her long hair, before sighed and nodding. "I ept those conditions."


    "The non-disclosure agreement will need to be officiated by the Martial Union." Rui added. The officiation of the agreement by the Martial Union effectively meant the Martial union would be undertaking some responsibility for ensuring the agreement is fulfilled by both sides. This was a measure Rui had taken to ensure that Nartha would not b about his identity to show off. With the threat of the Martial Union, she would have no choice but to strictly abide by the agreement.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 281 Home

    "Is there a need to go that far?" Nartha raised an eyebrow.


    "I''m just being careful." Rui replied.


    "I see... careful indeed. It''s a shame personally, but I ept these conditions." Nartha replied. "Anything else?"


    Rui pondered for a bit. "There is the matter of the frequency of the fights." Rui said. "I do not wish to fight daily. However, I am unsure of the exact precise frequency of fights that I''m willing to fight in as of this moment."


    Rui had yet to finalize when he was going to do his other missions. He did not want to ept a high frequency of fights, otherwise he would not be able toplete his other missions.


    "I''ll have to consider the matter for quite a bit." He said. "I''ll get back to you on that issue shortly at ater date."


    "That''s not a problem at all. You can just send me a letter or a crystal message." She replied, referring to the crystal esoteric technology that was used to was poprly used tomunicate remotely in the middle and upper echelons of society.


    "Will do." Rui replied.


    "Well then, it was a pleasure talking to you." Nartha said, smiling as she got up, performing a mild curtsy. "Unfortunately, I have some matters to attend to soon, so I must put an end to our conversation, regrettably."


    "I''m sorry for imposing on you." Rui said smiling, bowing briefly. "I''ll take my leave then."


    They bade farewell to each other as Rui headed back. The meeting had taken ce in the town of Hajin, so he wasn''t too far from home. He had nned to head back straight home so that he could spend time with his family at the Orphanage.


    "RUUIIIIII!" Alice screeched when she saw him approaching the Orphanage from within.


    Alice ran out, giving him a big hug.


    "You''re crushing me." Rui squeezed out.


    "Wee back!" She beamed with a smile. She dragged him in as he was swarmed by the children who all pestered him for attention.


    "Big brother Rui, teach me Martial Art!" Max, one of the children who adored Rui the most, said.


    "Me too me too!" Mana, another girl who had been enraptured by Rui''s Martial Art chimed in.


    Rui chuckled as he patted their heads. "Alright alright, not now though."


    They pouted as Rui walked in, greeting the others.


    "You had an amazing run in the Martial Contest." Horatio told him smiling.


    "It felt like just yesterday we were helping you with bnce training in winter on the frozenke." Mica sighed.


    N?velDrama.Org owns this text.


    "He''se a long way." Farion greed.


    Rui smiled at those words. "I wouldn''t be where I am today if it weren''t for all of you."


    "Rui..." Lashara appeared.


    "Mom."


    She immediately pulled Rui in a hug.<sub> </sub>


    "My precious baby..."


    Rui smiled awkwardly as she held him there for several seconds. "Are you feeling okay? You got hurt in that contest didn''t you?"


    "I''m fine mom." Heughed. "Those wounds healed a long time ago."


    It took him a while before he was able to cate her, however.


    "Wee back Rui." Julian smiled. "Congrattions on your performance in the Martial Contest. It was truly amazing to see how far you''vee in the past two years."


    "Thanks." Rui smiled.


    Soon things died down as Rui settled back, rxing. He spent some time with his family. It was always refreshing to be able to rx in their presence without any worries.


    "I''ve wanted to talk to you for some time now." Rui told him.


    Julian threw him a knowing smile. "I know."


    Rui raised an eyebrow at that. "You do, do you?"


    "Of course." Julian said as he sipped tea. "I''ve been assigned the head researcher of the research project if you ept the researchmission."


    Rui was surprised by that. "Wow, you''ve reached the position of head researcher this early? That''s impressive."


    "It''s not all that much." Julian smiled modestly. "So what are your thoughts on the matter? For the record, you can speak freely. I''m not obligated to reveal anything to them. The project wasn''t proposed by me either, I don''t have that kind of authority yet."


    Julian was a brilliant schr who had managed to reach the position of a full-fledged schr from apprentice schr in the span of merely two years.


    "I see... I''m not sure yet." Rui spoke hesitantly. "Frankly, as of right now there are more detriments to benefits at my current stage. Even if I do ept, no amount of money is enough by itself."


    Julian seemed intrigued at that. "What do you mean specifically?"


    "I need to benefit from the research as much as the Institute does. The exact avenue of research needs to receive my approval, and I want ess to all data collected."


    Julian''s eyes widened as he understood. "I see, that''s thoughtful of you... Hm. That goes against the Institute''s norms, but nothing is impossible, I suppose. I don''t have anywhere nearly enough authority to take the matter into my own hands so I can amodate your needs unfortunately."


    "That''s fine." Rui had replied. "I don''t n on epting it any time soon anyways. I have far too many matters that require immediate attention."


    "Busy as always." Julian smiled. "Why not take it a bit slow? You''ve just finished the Martial Contest, after all."


    "It''s because I finally finished the Martial Contest that I''m rushing." Rui replied. "All of the things that I would have done if it hadn''t been there have been postponed because of it, it''s time get on it and finish it. I urge to take a step forward and reach higher Realms."


    A hint of surprise shed across his face as he understood what Rui was referring to immediately. "...Already? Most Martial Apprentices do not reach this stage until muchter." He noted.


    "I''ve been blessed with fortunate circumstances in that regard." Rui said, sipping his tea.


    Julian could immediately sense that Rui did not want to divulge anything specific. He did not push the matter out of consideration for his brother''s privacy. But he could not help but be curious regardless.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 282 Offer

    Rui had spent a few days at the Orphanage. Spending time with his family and catching up with all of them. He even spent time yfully training Max and Mana for Martial Art. Surprisingly, he found that perhaps their desire to be Martial Artists weren''t too oundish.


    Max was quite strong and tough for his age; his muscles were remarkably developed for someone of his age and he clearly spent a lot of time on physically intensive activities. He had potential to be quite remarkable.


    Mana on the other hand was remarkably agile and fast. She was remarkably nimble and light on her feet, capable mobile maneuvers.


    Frankly, if they underwent rigorous and thorough training, they had a decent chance to eventually crack the Martial Entrance Exam when they were older. Perhaps they wouldn''t crack it at the age of thirteen like Rui did, but atleast when they were older, it wasn''t unrealistic.


    Rui recalled how the most powerful candidates after the Martial Apprentices were the older students who were nearing the age limit of the Martial Entrance Exam. Their physicality and age, along with rigorous long-term training meant that they were among the best of the candidates.


    Furthermore, with Rui training them, their growth should be greater than the growth of other future candidates of their age. Decades of studying, learning, research and development on the most optimal physical andbat training had sharpened his training senses extremely high. He was sure he could optimize the growth of their bodies and theirbat sense with a customized targeted training n.


    Furthermore, he could prime their mindsets and attitude to be more conducive to discovering their Martial Art. Have them develop the tendency to introspect on themselves and theirbat. He was sure the Martial Families did something simr, in perhaps a more thorough way. This would exin why the breakthrough rate to Martial Apprentices was higher in the Martial Community. The children of these Martial Families had been raised in a way that facilitated breakthrough to the Martial Apprentice Realm and discoveries of their Martial Paths.


    After spending a several days with his family in a variety of ways, Rui eventually returned back to the Martial Academy. He had far too much to do to take an extended vacation.


    First, he had set-up an appointment for each of the three Martial Families that hadmissioned him for being a sparring partner for Martial Apprentices of their families.


    Today, he was visiting the Frial Family to iron out the details of themission contract.


    Once he had reached the gigantic mansion, he was immediately tended to and guided by an attendant.


    "Wee, Apprentice Quarrier." She said. "Master is awaiting you."


    "Thank you." Rui said as he followed her.


    Soon they reached a section of the giant mansion as they winded about the giant premises. Just the size and extravagancy alone showed Rui how much of a bigshot this family was.


    However, what shocked him was when he felt a dull yet heavy presence as he opened this door. His eyes widened as he recognized the feeling.


    Martial Master!


    "Are you alright, sir?" The attendant asked as she noticed his expression.


    (''Does she not feel that?'') He wondered. "Uh.. No, I''m good."Copyright by N?v/elDrama.Org.


    She gestured to the sliding door. "Please."


    "Thank you." He entered the room.


    (''I was right.'') He thought as heid his eyes on the sole figure in the room.


    Martial Master Rana Frial. The patriarch of the Frial Family.


    "Master Frial." Rui bowed deeply. "I''m honoured to meet you. I did not expect to be meeting you today for this trivial matter."<sub> </sub>


    Master Frial was a middle-aged man, on the older side. He gazed at Rui with his powerful eyes as an ancient voice escaped his mouth.


    "So you were able to sense me." He noted, ignoring Rui''s words. "I had restricted my presence so as to not cause distress to the people around me, yet you have a sharp mind to have been able to detect me anyway. I see, so this is how you overcame the Void Step technique."


    Rui did not reply, still bowing. He could feel the difference between Master Frial and headmaster Aronian. For one, headmaster Aronian had grown fond of him and thus was more friendly, he had an easy-going and grounded personality.


    Yet, the vaunted Martial Artist before him was different.


    Rui could sensed a hint of deep pride and a sharper temperament. This was a man who held no particr goodwill to him, nor any obligations. Rui instinctively felt a deep sense of danger.


    He definitely needed to be careful with what he did and said.


    "Sit." Master Frial said.


    No, he ordered.


    His tone was overbearing.


    As a being who crossed into the upper Martial Realms, he fully expected Rui to heed him.


    Despite the extravagance of the mansion, the quarters of the Martial Master were remarkably simple. Despite his immense pride and his overbearing temperament, he seemed to lead a simplistic and pious lifestyle.


    Rui sat on the ground at the table with folded knees, opposite to the Martial Master.


    "Mmm... It seems Aronian was right. You are special." He remarked.


    "You tter me." Rui bowed his head slightly.


    "I do not tter anyone." He pointedly retorted with narrow eyes. "My evaluation of you is urate and merited."


    Rui didn''t reply. He was confused.


    "Regarding the contract..." Rui began. "I don''t mind the seven hours a week rate, however I wish toplete in a single day of the week rather than a daily one-hour training session."


    "I ept." He replied dismissively.


    "Thank you, Master." Rui replied, before going silent.


    "With that trivial matter out of the way..." Master Frial said. "I have a proposal for you, young man."


    He stared right into Rui''s eyes with a heavy powerful gaze that sent a shiver up Rui''s spine. "Join the Fire Sect. You are worthy of being invited personally by myself to join our ranks, and I can swear in the name of the Frial Family that we will make it worth your time."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 283 Elaborations

    Rui had partially expected this to some extent. Thankfully, Master Aronian had already filled him in with regards to the matter of the Martial Sects


    "I believe Headmaster Aronian has already informed you of the matter of the Martial Sects, correct?" He asked bluntly.


    "Indeed, he has." Rui replied. "Unfortunately, I still do not think I possess possess a thorough understanding of the entire matter as a whole."


    In reality, Rui had more or lesspletely understood the matter. But there was no harm in fishing for more information to gain a greater understanding.


    "A little more than half of all Martial Art techniques and training regimese from the research and development department of the Martial Union." he straightforwardly exined. "The allocation of the funds and resources within the avenue of research and development is decided by the Union Council in moderated caucuses followed by a voting session where the Council passes the budget bill draft if it gains more than seventy-five percent of the votes of the Martial Councilors of the Council. The budget draft bill itself is proposed before being extensively modified and refined, based on what allocations will be most optimal for the Martial Union, in the moderated caucuses held in Union Council until it reaches the bare minimum number of votes to be passed. The Sects are semi-formal groups of those with like-minded views and interests on the allocation of budget that work together in a variety of ways to gain the budget allocations they desire. Such as increasing the number of Martial Artists that use the kinds and types of techniques they wish to be researched more, roping in more powerful Martial Artists to increase their political capital, etc. The Fire Sect does precisely this for greater budget allocations for offensive techniques and training."N?vel(D)rama.Org''s content.


    He paused before ncing at Rui. "Is there anything you failed toprehend?"


    His eyes narrowed ever so slightly, as if almost challenging Rui to say yes.


    Rui gulped. "No, Master."


    Rui found the difference between headmaster Aronian and Master Frial to be ratherrge. Headmaster Aronian was an easy-going retired old Martial Master that enjoyed to ramble on in conversations. While Master Frial was still an active Martial Master in the field, he had little patience for Rui andpressed all the information he wished to convey as much as he wanted to.


    "Good. That''s everything a Martial Apprentice like yourself needs to know." He bluntly told. "What is your answer?"


    "Answer?" Rui tilted his head.


    "To our invitation." He said expressionlessly.


    Rui''s eyes widened. (''Does he expect me to make a decision at this very moment?!'')


    "Er... I''m afraid I can''t possibly make a decision immediately, Master." Rui squeezed out. "Please do give me some time to consider it."


    "Hmph, fine then."


    "May I know what joining the Fire Sect will entail for me, precisely? What will I be expected to do, and what benefits will I receive in return?"<sub> </sub>


    "You will be expected to make learn offensive techniques, however in exchange, you will receive offensive techniques at a vastly discounted price." He replied. "You will gain ess to certain offensive techniques that cannot be normally obtained easily and you will gain ess to tutge from specialists you normally would be able to learn from."


    "I see..." Rui replied, this was very tempting, he couldn''t lie.


    Still, there were some concerns. "You mentioned I will be expected to learn offensive techniques... What if the degree to which I am expected to learn offensive techniques shes with my Martial Path?"


    He was an all-rounder. He would not let his Martial Art lean too much in the direction of offense.


    "If it diverges too much, you will be excluded from the Sect. The Fire Sect is for offensive Martial Artists, after all. If you do not increase the weight you ce on offense, then there would be no point in inviting you in the first ce."


    Rui had suspected this would be the case. Sects increased the poption of Martial Artists using their techniques. A greater poption would mean a greater amount of people would be benefitted by research in that particr field, and this would trante to a higher allocation of capital to research in the annual budget allocation bill.


    However, if Rui did not increase the number of offensive techniques he used, then he was not contributing to the poption using offensive techniques by specifically joining them. Which meant he would be gaining all the benefits of being in the Sect without actually contributing anything. The Sects would not allow him to join if that were the case. He would likely need to warp his Martial Art to suit the Sect.


    The very idea of altering his Martial Art for the sake of a Martial Sect disgusted him to his core. He would rather die than taint his Martial Art and Martial Path in such a manner.


    Still, the benefits were attractive. If he could find some way around it, then it would be incredibly perfect.


    For now, he put the matter aside, He still had a lot of considerations. He also wasn''t done talking to Master Frial.


    "Master, you mentioned more than half of the techniques and traininge from the research and development department of Martial Union." Rui told him "Where do the remaining techniquese from?"


    "From Martial Artists, of course." Master Frial replied. "Martial Art requires individuality and originality. Uniqueness to set it apart. Only then can you walk down your own path instead of a path paved by someone else. Martial Artists who create their own techniques take huge steps in regards to the individuality of their Martial Art and often sell a license for distributing their original techniques to the Martial Union in exchange for a huge sum of credits and other benefits and privileges. These techniques are then added to the library of existing techniques that can be purchased by other Martial Artists like yourself to be mastered. Often times, Martial Artists cooperate with the research and development department of the Martial Union to for the creation of the techniques and such."


    *****


    Will probably slow down chapters tomorrow and day after. I''ll release extra chapters on the days after, so don''t worry.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 284 Learnings

    Rui''s eyes raised his eyes in interest. It was possible for him to exchange lesser version of the VOID algorithm to the Martial Union for things he truly needed in the future. As far as potency went, the VOID algorithm was very easily a grade ten level technique as far as difficulty and power went. Rui wondered what he would get in turn for lesser versions of the VOID algorithm.


    "Train my daughter well." Master Frial. "The head butler of the family will handle the matter of the contract."


    Rui nodded.


    "Our time ends here." Master Frial bluntly told him. "Leave."


    Rui got up, bowing before leaving the room.


    He had a lot to think about. He quickly signed the contract before leaving. He would begin the weekly training immediately.


    What he found interesting was that his daughter attended the Hrava Martial Academy branch. This was a bit bizarre to him. But technically, Rui supposed he could enter other Martial Academies if it was for the sake of a mission. This made him feel a bit strange, sparring in other Martial Academies as a sparring partner while he was a student of the Hajin branch.


    "Also... If she''s in the Hrava branch..." Rui pondered. "I might run into Arjun Erigaisi."


    Arjun Erigaisi had been the representative of the Hrava branch in the Martial Contest. Rui had only met him once before themencement of the first round of the contest.


    Furthermore, the same was likely to ur with the other Martial Apprentices he was supposed to serve as a sparring partner to. He wondered which branches of the Martial Academies they belonged to.


    Having concluded his business with the Frial Family, he left for the Academy. He still had two more sparring partner personalmissions from the Distak and Shamik Families. He intended to visit both of the to iron out his details.


    And so he did.


    Over the next few days, he visited them both. Almost unsurprisingly, the Masters of both Martial Families extended him an offer to join the Earth and the Lightning Sects respectively. Although they went about it differently than Master Frial did, what they offered effectively boiled down to be the same.


    "In exchange for some highermitment to defensive techniques." Master Gillian Distak had told him. "We offer you a greater amount of techniques, resources, benefits and privileges for a lesser amount of cost. Your defense will undoubtedly grow should you ept our offer, bing your strongest parameter. Saving your life. Join the Earth Sect."


    "Furthermore, you''re a rare talent with a unique and powerful Martial Art." Master Verlen Shamik had told him at a separate asion when he had visited the Shamik Family. "We are willing to extend a certain amount privilege to you in particr. The Lightning Sect will undoubtedly facilitate your speed and maneuvering to rise significantly, you have much to gain and very little to lose


    Both Masters expressed a degree of sincerity, however they did not fret at all when Rui did not seem to keen on epting their requests. They simply wished Rui to take care of the Martial Apprentices he would be training, and did not push him further.<sub> </sub>


    Of course, Rui understood their perspective well enough. While he was probably promising potential asset in their eyes. At the end of the day, he was but one Martial Apprentice. The Fire, Earth and Lightning Sects were the threergest Martial Sects of the Martial Union, since they epassed offense, defense and motion inbat.


    Regardless, Rui learnt a lot about the politics of the Martial Sects from the exnations of the Martial Masters. For starters, the rtionships between Martial Sects wasn''t exactly straightforward. It wasn''t even necessarilypetitive, it all depended on the rtion between fields the Sects advocated research for.


    Apparently, there were smaller sub-sects that advocated for smaller fields that fell within the big fields. Field such as the Fist Sect that advocated for research on fist-striking techniques. The Palm Sect was a sub-sect of the Fire Sect that advocated for palm centric techniques.


    Apparently, these Sects came together under the Fire Sect for securing budget allocations for offensive techniques, however once budget allocation for the offensive techniques was secured, they immediatelypeted with each other for which sub-sect gets the bigger share for the new offensive-technique allocations.


    Apparently, a simr thing happened across all of the broad andrger Sects.


    Then there were Sects that weren''t mutually exclusive. The Fire Sect and the Grappling Sect ovepped a bit with offensive grappling techniques, for example.


    There were numerous power struggles that were in deadlocks for such reasons. It was a messy andplicated rtionship.


    Frankly, to some extent Rui just wished to stay away from Martial Sects entirely. It seemed like a tiring matter to be involved with the Martial Sects at all. This was especially the case when there was no definitive need to be involved. Even if he wasn''t a part of them, he could still work hard and purchase techniques from the Martial Union the good old-fashioned way.


    The only thing he would be missing was the prospect of many benefits and convenience, which could help elerate his growth.


    Then there was the matter of the conflict of interest between his neutral path and the Sects requirement of him to put a greater weight and emphasis of the techniques of their Sect above others.


    Rui shook his head; he would not do that.


    Another thing he confirmed was that there was no all-rounder Sect.


    Of course, this made sense and he had predicted it, after all, a Sect that advocated for the research of all fields and techniques was a meaningless and pointless Sect. Sects advocated for research allocations in specific fields over others, an all-rounder Sect would advocate for all fields, rather than one field over another.Copyright by N?v/elDrama.Org.


    "Maybe I can create my own Sect to suit my needs some day." He muttered out aloud, thinking to himself, before chuckling mirthfully and shaking his head at the notion.


    Rui creating his own Sect? There was no way such a thing would ever happen.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 285 Mission Begins

    PEW!


    The Stinger sliced through the air, whistling as it plunged into the vitals of six-armed gori.


    The gori howled as it wildly swung at Rui.


    WHOOSH


    Rui casually evaded the blow as he closed the distanced between them.


    BOOM!


    A powerful Flowing Canon attack crashed into the gori''s wound.


    The gori screamed in pain as it scurried away in fear and pain.


    Rui walked forward as he happened upon a transparent tree. Rui raised an eyebrow as scrutinized its strange features; the tree looked like it was made up of ss.


    His eyes turned to one of the fruits hanging, he immediately reached to pluck all of them, cing it in a special container.


    "Mission aplished; I guess." He muttered as he took out the mission tracker device and hit the missionpletion button before cing it back and heading back.


    This was one of the huntingmissions that he had received and decided to ept. A procurement mission of the ss Apples, a valuable esoteric resource that existed in the Jalvan Forest far south of the town Of Hajin, in the Mantian Region.


    The ss Apples were an esoteric resource that were used in the production of premium high-grade healing potions apparently. Themissions hade from a potionpany that had wanted to hire him to procure the ss Apples since the danger level of the heart of the Jalvan Forest was at the Apprentice Realm.


    He headed back towards the town of Hajin. Five days had passed since his signing of the sparring partner contracts with the three Martial Families. Today was going to be the first day of this mission. He would be heading over to the Hrava Martial Academy branch to begin a lengthy period of sparring training.


    The name of his training partner was Siera Frial, daughter of Martial Master Rana Frial. He hadn''t been given any additional information on her for some reason.


    He shrugged, it didn''t matter at all, frankly.


    Within two hours, he had reached the town of Hajin. And in half an hour, he had arrived at the designated drop-off location; one of the branches of thepany.


    "Apprentice Quarrier." An assistant bowed deeply. "Thank you for the sessfulpletion."


    "Express my regards to chairman William." Rui nodded before getting up to leave.<sub> </sub>


    "Ah, the chairman wished to speak to you about a partnership agreement." The assistant told him.


    "Unfortunately, I am busy for the rest of the day. Please convey my regret to him." Rui immediately turned around as he left like the wind, activating both his maneuvering techniques. It hadn''t taken him long to reach the Martial Academy at the core districts of the town.


    "Apprentice Quarrier." An inspection officer greeted him as he returned. "We have verified the missionpletion with the client. Please proceed toplete the post-mission protocols."


    "Will do." Rui nodded as he headed up to fill the necessary report and paperwork. It was the one part of missions that he disliked the most. But unfortunately, it was very necessary.


    Once he finished that, he immediately headed to his dormitory. Stripping nude as he tossed his sweaty uniform onto the bed. He couldn''t wait to take a bath. He was going to be heading to another branch of the Martial Academy. He, the representative of the Hajin branch in the Martial Contest. In the eyes of the Martial Community, it was bad enough that he was amoner. He bet that appearing sweaty and dirty would make his job much worse. Seeing how much prestige and pride the Frial Family had, he wouldn''t be surprised if the Siera Frial was an egotistical, haughty and arrogant girl.


    Still, a job was a job. The pay was very solid and he was curious to test the efficiency of the VOID algorithm as a good training and sparring method for others.


    Soon he made all the arrangements as he set out for the Hrava branch of the Martial Academy. He couldn''t very well walk to the branch, it was much too far, instead he partook in the transportation provided by the Martial Academy.


    The Hrava branch was a considerable distance away, outside of the Mantian region. The transportation made the travel more convenient. It was a semi horse-drawn carriage and a semi-motorized vehicle that was remarkably fast.


    Rui was impressed that the esoteric technology of this world allowed for motorized technology. He recalled that for the royal capture and rescue mission, the Kandrian Investigation Bureau had made use of wholly motorized vehicles. At the time he was too focused on a personally important life-or-death mission to consider the matter fully.


    It seemed that it wasn''t ubiquitous, however. For the most part, man-pulled rickshaws were the norm at the lower strata of society, while horse-pulled carriages were the norm for upper sses of society. And it seemed that motorized technology was either too impractical or unviable to mass-produce, or was proprietary technology of the Royal Family and to some extent, the Martial Union.


    Regardless, it was quite fast, and in the span of a few hours, he had already arrived at the Hrava branch in the Frixtal region of the Kandrian Empire.


    Rui immediately got off, gazing at the gigantic Academy before his eyes. The Hrava branch was no less impressive than the Hajib branch, it seemed.


    "Purpose of visitation?" The guards demanded.


    "Mission." Rui simply answered as he brought out his signed and stamped mission bill as well as his learner''s license, handing it over to the guards for inspection and verification.


    "All clear." The guard nodded, handing back the bill after he verified and confirmed the legitimacy of the document and the mission. "Please enter, Apprentice Quarrier."


    Rui wordlessly retrieved the mission bill as he entered.N?velDrama.Org content.


    (''The structure seems more or less the same.'') he mused as he gazed at a map conveniently ced upon entry. The alignment and designation details was a bit different, but otherwise the organizational structure was identical.


    "Alright then... time to begin the mission." He sighed as he entered the building.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 286 Spar

    "Please wait here a moment, Apprentice Quarrier." An assistance staff told him. "I will inform Apprentice Sierra Frial that you have arrived."


    "Please do." Rui nodded, as took a seat in the reception of the Martial Academy.


    Five minutester, he felt the presence of a tall and burly Martial Apprentice enter the room, recognizing her immediately, the Frial Family had provided him with a picture of her.


    "Apprentice Frial." He began. "Pleasure to meet you. I''m-"


    "I know who you are." She rudely cut him as she folded her arms. "Follow me to the sparring facility immediately. I want to see what you''re made up of."


    Her tone had more than just a little hint of challenging hostility.


    Rui stared at her for a second, before wordlessly getting up. They both headed towards the Apprentice sparring facility of the Martial Academy. Rui felt like a celebrity as everyone he walked past. Staff, foundational and explorer students, Martial Apprentices etc all recognized him as their eyes widened. It got even worse once he actually entered the sparring facility. It turned out there was an ongoing regr Apprentice sparring session. Nothing odd about that, his Academy had held plenty of those as well.


    He just felt countless eyes widened with surprise as each and every single one of them recognized him.


    To be fair, he understood their emotions. He would be surprised as well if someone like Fiona walked into his Academy one day wearing her Martial uniform. He just ignored all of them as Siera Frial dragged him to an empty ring.


    Yet before they could even reach it. Siera had been flooded with Martial Apprentices who all pestered her with questions.


    "What''s going on here?!" One of them asked in a barely concealed whisper.


    "Why''s he here?"


    "My Family hired him as a sparring partner." Sierra huffed with a hint of pride. "He''s mine for the next seven hours."


    A sh of surprise made its way through the small crowd as the Martial Apprentices nced at him with expressions of curiosity and admiration.


    "Enough." A powerful voice drew everyone''s attention as all of them experienced a familiar pressure.


    "Get back to your ces and leave them alone." The Martial Squire instructor of the facility ordered, much to Rui''s relief.


    Yet just as they were about to enter the ring;


    "Hey Quarrier, it''s been some time." A deep voice called out to him.


    Rui turned around, recognizing the towering, imposing man. "Arjun Erigaisi. I expected to run into you."


    "Well, I didn''t." He smiled friendlily. "What brings you here?"


    "Sparring partner mission." Rui gestured to Siera Frial.


    "I see... that''s pretty interesting heh."


    "Hey!" Sierained. "Don''t waste time, let''s go!"


    Rui sighed as he turned around. He quickly put his standard gear and kit aside the ring, before entering the ring.


    "Take your stances." The referee said.


    To Rui''s surprise, Siera adopted a closed defensive stance. She brought up her arms up and close to her in a solid guarding position. She even nted her feet apart, a position unconducive maneuvering.


    The reason he was surprised was because Master Rana Frial was part of the Fire Sect, which meant he was an offense-oriented Martial Artist. Yet Siera was a defense-oruented Martial Artist. It seems that her Family had not influenced her Martial Path.


    Rui adopted an offensive maneuvering stance. Positioning his arms in a way that made it easy tounch both quick and powerful strikes while remaining light on his feet.


    "Begin!" The refereemenced the fight.


    Rui immediately dashed towards her swiftly. As the only fighter with an offensive fighting style at all, the initiative of the fight was in his hands.<sub> </sub>


    POW POW!


    He threw two short speedy jabs, yet they harmlessly bounced off of her hefty guard.


    (''Solid.'') He mused.


    POW POW!


    He swiftly shifted to her side,unching another swiftbo. Siera turned trying to block in time, yet she was too slow.N?vel(D)rama.Org''s content.


    However, he was impressed when his strikes still failed to do any meaningful damage. He wasn''t umting momentum or using his weight, but it was still a proper strike empowered with Outer Convergence and Vital Pressure.


    (''That alone is not enough at the higher echelons of the Apprentice Realm, it seems.'') He mused. (''How well will she handle a proper swing?'')


    He swung his fist from behind him as he threw his weight behind it.


    BAM!


    It crashed into her guard, yet she remained steady even if she had to exert herself.


    Rui retreated before elerating towards her.


    BOOM!


    A powerful Flowing Canon crashed into her guard.


    She gritted her teeth yet she stood her ground, expressionless throughout.


    "Is that the best you can do?" She taunted.


    Rui''s expression broke into an amused smile. He wordlessly rushed in,unching another strike, she quickly shifted to block it.


    WHOOSH


    The attack disappeared.


    It was a feint.


    BAM!


    She gasped in pain and shock as a powerful Flowing Canon crashed into her gut, the impact overwhelmed her.


    She fell to her knees as he head hit the ground. She grimaced as she cradled her wounded gut.


    "Your defense isn''t dynamic enough." Rui sighed. "It''s tough, but it''s like a heavy shield that can barely be moved. I can easily circumvent it."


    In terms of toughness and durability, she was quite impressive. She just had a gaping weakness that made her easy to take down. Rui could easily see why she was not able to be the representative of her branch.


    "There are two straightforward solutions." He told her. "You either improve your dynamic defensive prowess. Or you improve your foundational defense, you need to be as solid as a rock everywhere. Much like Arjun Erigaisi. Although his defense is also more dynamic than yours."


    Her eyebrows knitted as she got up. "Shut up!" She shouted defiantly. "You beat me only once! Don''t get too cocky you hear me? Let''s go another round!"


    Rui sighed. "Well, atleast you''re not a pussy."


    She had the defiance needed to grow stronger, as long as she directed her energy in the right direction.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 287 Introspection

    POW POW POW!


    Siera grimaced as Rui''s attacks found themselves on her vitals, cleanly dodging her guard. He usually used abination of the algorithm''s predictive prowess in conjugation with his superior speed, agility.


    Phantom Step made it overwhelming.


    He didn''t even think about using Blink or the Stinger. That would just be bullying, at that point. He didn''t enjoy tormenting his opponents beyond what was necessary or warranted.


    He only went so far as to push her to her limit, allowing her opportunities and avenues to fight back and limiting himself to a portion of his techniques so that the spar would beneficial to her.


    Frankly, Rui could already see small improvements across the fight. Compared to their first round to their final round, she had grown to be able tost much longer. Her rawbat ability, of course, did not improve in the span of merely several hours. However, a shift in her mind-set caused her to take more solid and apt approaches to her predicament. That alone was worth the sparring session.


    BOOM!


    Rui flipped her t to the ground from a grappling position.


    "Let''s put an end to the sparring session for today, I''ve filled my weekly quota." He sighed before consuming a rejuvenation potion. "Goodbye."


    He left her as he gathered his belongings before making his way out of the sparring facility. Yet, just before he could;


    "Umm, excuse me!" He heard a girl call out to him.


    He paused, turning around wordlessly. A bunch of girls had approached him, waiting for when he was done.


    "Can you spar with us as well?" One of them asked.


    Rui shook his head. "I wasmissioned to spar her specifically, my time is up."


    "Th-then if my familymissions you, will you spend time with me as well?" She blushed, averting her eyes.


    Rui paused, staring at her until he finally understood why she was behaving strangely.


    (''Ah, I see...'') He scratched his head awakwardly, Rui had been so far detached from anything resembling popr in his school days that he almost failed to understand that the girls were probably interested in him.


    Or he could just be misreading them, he was no yer.<sub> </sub>


    Rui shook his head. "I''m afraid I won''t be epting anymoremissions for the timebeing."


    He turned around immediately, leaving the facility.


    Still, the incident made him think. He realized that he couldn''t even remember thest time he seriously thought about romance. It was almost a shocking realization.


    (''How long has it been? Decades? In this life I had been extremely focused on cracking the Martial Entrance Exam with everything I had. After I did, I was then focused on discovering my Martial Path, and now I''m eternally focused on traversing it deeper.'')


    And in his previous life, he had long given up on romance. He had given a shot at looking for a partner when he was a younger and more energetic man, but as he grew older, he grew increasingly consumed with his work. Furthermore, his health declined increasingly. He hadpletely given up on rtionships, blocking them away from his mind. Not just with women, but he grew increasingly isted from any meaningful rtionships at all. He had had ''friends'' among his fellow research team twho would coax him to join them in the asional meal at the local steakhouse, and he would often oblige, pleased with the many research sesses that Project Water got initially.


    However even those rtions cooled down once the research team had hit a hard dead-end with the viability issue of the VOID algorithm. He died without it ever changing.


    In his new life, the sheer positivity he felt as well as all the affection and support he had received had warmed him up again, but he hadn''t thought about romance.


    He was too young for it most of his life of course. But he was already fifteen now, and his body was undergoing through the familiar process of puberty, and annoying hormones were increasingly starting to gue his brain with annoying urges. Of course, his conscious mind was not weak to them, specially since he was an old man mentally with a mind that had grown twice.


    Still, they were there. Maybe it wouldn''t be a bad thing to engage in rtionships some day.


    The circumstances of his second life were far better than of his first life. He was perfectly healthy, maybe even a tad bit attractive. Who knew, maybe he would one day enter into a long-term rtionship with a woman he woulde to love.


    He shook his head. He didn''t think it was likely. He was far too single-minded in nature for this to be realistic. He spent all of his energy on his Martial Art and his Martial Path. Rtionships required a lot of time, energy and investment into, and they were yet very fragile with no guaranteed sess.


    Rui just didn''t feel the need to get into one in a spectacr world such as this.N?vel(D)rama.Org''s content.


    Even if he did, he would likely end up neglecting her and the rtionship, which was genuinely a bad thing to do.


    Or his rtionship would end up in a conflict of interest with his Martial Path. And that would not be a pretty conflict. Especially when he would never forsake his Martial Path for his rtionship, or anything.


    Ultimately the Martial Path was an extremely personal and lonely inherently. It was a path that only one person could walk on. That very nature made it difficult for amitted rtionship. Even if his partner was a Martial Artist. Hell, his partner being a Martial Artist could perhaps make things even worse.


    Since both of them would be walking their own individual lonely Martial Paths. Or maybe that shared experience would make it easier?


    Rui shrugged, he didn''t know. He was neither experienced nor an expert at all. He was just having random thoughts about the matter as he went back home.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 288 DiVilier

    "Apprentice Quarrier, here is the item you requested." A staff member said to him, while handing an object.


    It was a mask.


    Rui studied the mask thoroughly.


    ? "And this will reliably ensure my identity won''t be leaked through normal means?" He asked.


    "Yes. The mask is a proprietary product of the Martial Union developed specifically for the purpose of reliable identity protection for sensitive and risky mission." She exined.


    "I see." Rui nodded with relief as he put on the mask. "Thank you."


    He walked out of the dispatch facility, as he began jogging towards the location. Fortunately, the town of Harrifel was close enough to travel to on foot.


    Today was his first mission representing Freier Ester Inc in a fight. Rui had signed a contract for a single fight for a test, if all went well, Rui wouldn''t mind signing up for additional fights.


    Strictly speaking, he hadn''t signed up for a single fight, more of a single day. The fights were semi-formal. There were some fights scheduled and sine were spontaneously scheduled on the spot. It was ultimately for entertainment and sport.


    Soon, he arrived.


    "Apprentice Quarrier." A butler bowed to greet him. "Please follow me this way. Madame will join you shortly."


    Rui nodded as he worldlessly followed the butler inside.


    "What is this?" Rui paused as a the butlet led him to what looked like a conjoined luxurious bathing and changing room with several maids waiting inside.


    "The madam has tasked me with providing bathing and grooming services and aid as well as appropriate clothing." The butler exined.


    "And the maids¡­?" Rui tilted his head.


    "They will aid you with bathing and clothing your body." The butler exined inly, as if there was nothing unusual with the arrangement.


    "I can bathe and clothe myself, thank you very much."


    "But-"


    "I insist." Rui pointedly said as his powerful mind exerted some weight on the butler.


    "Understood sir." The butler gulped.N?vel(D)rama.Org''s content.


    "Also, what is this about ''appropriate clothes?''" Rui asked.


    "The madam wishes you won''t fight in your Martial uniform." He exined. "Thus she has prepared clothes for you."


    The butler gestured to a pair of pants.


    "¡­"


    "¡­"


    "¡­Is the top missing or on its way?"


    "There is no top." The butler crushed his hopes.<sub> </sub>


    "She wants me to fight in just pair of pants"


    "Correct, sir." The butler reaffirmed.


    Rui stared at him hard looking for any hint of this being a big joke or prank. But the butler''s expression was inscrutable, alhough he was sweating hard due to the pressure Rui''s mind was exerting was hi.


    Rui picked up the shockingly small pair of pants. "There is no way this''ll fit me."


    "They''re a special product meant to stretch to amodate your body size and shape. The cloth will contract to entuate the shape of your posterior for the spectators." The butler exined.


    Rui grew pale at those words. "Do I have to wear these?"


    "The madam has insisted." The butler exined.


    Rui sighed. (''I''m an underage minor. If it''s this bad for me, I can''t imagine how gross it must be for female Martial Artists. Seems rich people are universally degenerates be it Gaia or Earth.'')


    His eyes knitted in irritation as he pictured a bunch if gross old men leering at Fae, Milliana and Fiona.


    "Alright, I''ll handle myself. All of you leave." Rui insisted.


    The butler bowed as he took the maids away with him.


    Rui shook his head as he sighed. Yet the luxurious bathing area made his eyes raise.


    "This isn''t so bad." He admitted. He rxed himself in a tub bath for quite a bit before getting out and drying up.


    His eyes hurt whenever he looked at the clothes she had prepared. It took him a while but he got it on, and remarkably, it wasfortable, even if he felt awkward wearing it. The design seemed to be intended forbat, because it didn''t hinder his movements at all.


    When he entered, the butler was waiting for him.


    "The madam awaits, pleasee this way."


    He guided Rui to a spacious office where Nartha awaited him.


    "Looking good." She spoke informally. "Are you sure you don''t want to show your face? With your aplishment and your rare features, I''m sure there will be several women who will have an interest in you.


    "Firstly, I look ridiculous." He corrected. "And what you said is the very reason I want to hide my identity."


    She merely smiled at those words as though he were a cute little toddler who amused her as she donned a luxurious fur coat atop a loose one piece dress. "Shall we be on our way?"


    Once they boarded the carriage, it took no more than fifteen minutes to reach.


    The location of the event was arge multi-floored luxury gathering hall. Outside thete were a number of extravagant catriages each with their own emblems and insignias signifying which family or corporation the carriage belonged to.


    The main entrance to hall had its own ostentatious emblem on it, iming the entire hall. The emblem


    "This is the private property of the DiViliers family." Nartha said as she noticed his gaze. "Today''s Martial games, as we call it, is being hosted by the DiViliers Family. They''re a bigshot in the Martial Industry of the entire Kandrian Empire. The DiVilier Martial Corporation is one of the leading Martial Art esoteric technology producers. They''re good at what they do, so much so that the Martial Union and the Royal Family have both independently signed partnership contracts with the DiVilier Corporation. I imagine a lot of the training and mission equipment have been produced in partnership with them. Charles DiVilier is a well-known lover and connoisseur of Martial Art."


    Rui''s eyes widened as he realized why the name DiVilier sounded so familiar. This was the same family thatmissioned him for his Martial Art! The mission bill had listed how Charles Divilier roped in Martial Artists with unique and exotic Martial Art and Martial Paths with lucrative personalmissions initially before eventually dragging then away from the Martial Union entirely.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 289 Games

    Rui was shocked that such a bigshot had reached out to him, even if indirectly. Still, he did not regret his decision, the mission itself gave him absolutely nothing of value that could enrich his experience and help his Martial Art and his Martial Path at all. He would only be fattening his ego while being reduced him to a trophy for disy. Such vanity might even regress his Martial Path.


    The Flowing Void Style was more than a trophy for disy. It was the crystallization of decades of research, decades of relentless, maddening blood, sweat and tears, decades of searching. Searching for the pinnacle of martial arts and, now, Martial Art.


    Just the thought of it being treated as one of many trophies made Rui bristle, though he wisely hid his indignant range.


    The carriage paused as it reached the main entrance of the hall, and the doors opened as butlers of the DiViliers family helped Nartha out, Rui sooned followed suit.


    The scene he saw helped him understand what he was in for. Each of the invited guests were apanied Martial Apprentices.


    There were even a few Martial Squires!


    They had a sharp and heavy feel them, yet they restricted their emotion, dampening their aura. They did do a good job, none of the ordinary humans seemed to notice them. Yet, all the Martial Apprentices could clear feel power in a higher Realm.


    Rui could do much more, he could even gauge which among them was the greatest threat.


    "Mr DiViliers, it''s been far too long." Nartha''s pleasant voice drew him out of his reverie.


    Rui sharply turned as his eyes fell on an old man with an extremely groomed appearance. His clothes and skin were practically glowing with a lustre of their own.


    He long flowing white hair that extended to his neck. A thick white beard garnished his neck, beginning where his hair ended. He gave one the impression of a majestic lion, with a presence that demanded attention.


    N?vel(D)rama.Org''s content.


    "Mrs Freier." A deep melodic voice escaped his mouth, as he smiled. "I''m so happy you could be here."


    He turned to Rui. "And this is..."


    "He''s my representative fighter today." She smiled. "He goes by Thalken."


    Thalken was the alias he had decided to go with while his identity remained hidden.


    "I see." A hint of interest lit up in his eyes, before he turned back to Nartha. "Enjoy your time here today, if you need anything, I''m happy to help anyhow."


    "Thank you for your hospitality." Nartha curtsied as Charles DiViliers smiled, before proceeding to wee other guests.


    Nartha and Rui proceeded inside, as Nartha joined a circle of women, each of them apanied by their own Martial Apprentices


    "My, miss Freier." One of them greeted. "d you make it. Hm? Where''s Apprentice Gregory?"


    "I let Gregory go. I got my hands on someone even better. Meet Apprentice Falken." She introduced Rui.


    "Better?" Her eyebrows rose. "Impressive. He seems quite young too." She said, tantly eying his body head-to-toe openly.


    The women bantered until a booming voice gathered all their attention.


    "Ladies and gentlemen." The booming voice of Charles DiVillier resonated across the hall. "Allow me to express my sincerest gratitude to all of you for joining me as I host our customary Martial games. I''m pleased to inform you that our guest count has peaked in light of the Martial Festival. I hope all of you have a wonderful time today." He said with a pausing tone as he was showered with a round of apuse. "Now without any further ado. Let us begin!"


    As he said so. The gigantic doors at the end of the hall opened as they exposed a wide circr viewing tform with arge arena visible down below.


    The guests seemed ustomed to the phenomenon. They distributed across the ring viewing tform, indulging in the luxurious seating arrangements as butlers and maids tended to them.


    "Ladies and gentlemen." A different voice took over. He immediately began hosting the event. "As scheduled; the first match is between Mr Hoerken''s defending champion; Apprentice Frillix Hafbor versus Mrs Fellington''s challenger Apprentice Havier. Betting officiants are present at every location of the viewing tform, please ce you bets."<sub> </sub>


    Two men walked into the arena.


    "Take your stances!" The arbiter told them.


    Apprentice Hafbor took a stance that prioritized static defense. He nted his legs firmly to the ground away from his center of gravity as if he had no intention of moving from that spot.


    Apprentice Havier, instead, adopted a strange stance, his fingers curled as he brandished his hands at Havier, as if they were ws.


    Yet they were.


    Rui''s eyes widened as Havier''s''s nails grew in length. what were originally nails morphed into ws as he brandished his centimetre long ws.


    (''That must have taken an enormous amount of conditioning.'') Rui mused, surprised. Rui couldn''t even imagine what Havier put himself through to get nails like those.


    "You may begin." The arbiter stated.


    Havierunched himself towards Hafbor with remarkable swiftness, crossing the distance between them in the briefest moments.


    He swung heavily,unching his ws at Hafborn with remarkable swiftness.


    And yet.


    FRAP


    The ws tore through Hafbor''s cloth effortlessly.


    Yet they failed to pierce his skin.


    Hafbor took a moment to look down on Havier, staring him down as thetter tried his best to atleast inflict a wound.


    Yet to no avail.


    POW!


    Hafborn hit with a jab as Havier opened up the distance, beforeshing out at Hafbor with an even more powerful swing.


    And yet,


    THWACK


    His attack never reached Havier as Hafbor skillfully deflected it.


    THWACH THWACK THWACK


    Havier kept swinging, and Hafbor casually redirected them out of his way. What surprised Rui was that his body was barely moving at all. Meaning he wasn''t exerting himself as he calmly Havier''s powerful swings.


    (''He''s applying just a few ounces of weight on the strikes.'') Rui''s eyes widened with surprise. (''He''s not pushing them out of his way with brute force, he''s destabilizing their flow of power by applying the bare minimum weight on Havier''s motions at the right time and ce, causing them to destabilize and go off-trajectory.'')


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 290 Defense

    The body constantly had to maintain bnce. This was easy to do if one was merely standing in one ce. However, it was not as simple whenunching a powerful attack. Arge amount of mass of the body shifted very rapidly when attacks wereunched, it was not easy to maintain bnce when it was being disrupted so much and so quickly.


    It may seem easy tounch a strong punch, but that was only because the sub-conscious mind worked very hard and fast to ensure bnce was always maintained at all times. In reality, everyone''s bnce was always one step away from being lost.


    Hafbor''s redirection was centered around that fact.


    Rather than pushing Havier''s strikes out of the way like normal parries worked. He was pushing Havier''s body just enough off bnce in just the correct way that the strike would inevitably go off-trajectory due to the body''s imbnce.


    So how did the mind handle that?


    It countered the imbnce he caused by shifting and moving the body in the right way to restore bnce. And that was what Hafbor used.


    The strike''s trajectory would be ruined because the sub-conscious mind was altering the trajectory in the correct way to restore the bnce that Hafbor had ruined.


    Thus, he purposefully shifted all of Havier''s strikes off-trajectory by imbncing his flow of power precisely such that the strikes would need to go off-trajectory for bnce to be restored.


    The imbncing wasn''t the impressive part, what Rui found impressive was that Hafbor knew exactly how, where and when to imbnce the body and the flow of power such that the strikes would inevitably miss him.


    Furthermore, he did this in extremely brief periods of time. Havier was very fast and Hafborn only had a short window before he could do this.


    (''What a powerful dynamic defense.'') Rui couldn''t help but praise him. This defense allowed Hafborn to parry powerful and lethal attacks for very little cost. Imbncing the body and the delicate and fragile flow of power did not require arge amount of energy or power. Even ordinary humans were more than capable of doing that.


    What was superhuman was Hafbor''s understanding of bnce and the flow of power. His intuitive understanding of it surpassed even Rui''s who had studied the subjects for decades. Rui''s understanding of it was scientific and technical, although the VOID algorithm did employ the science to a certain extent.


    Inparison, Hafbor''s understanding was purely intuitive, drawn from heightened observation and arge wealth of experience. The understanding was embedded in his bones, in his eyes. He could almost see the flow of power every time he saw someone move at all.


    THUD


    Haviernded t on the ground as hepletely lost his bnce entirely,pletely wide open and vulnerable.


    Hafbor did not let the opening go to waste.


    BOOM!


    He mercilessly dropped a powerful drop-kick on Havier''s face.


    CRACK


    Havier''s nose broke as it began bleeding profusely.


    THWACK<sub> </sub>


    A ser kick to the jaw sealed the deal.


    "And the winner is; defending champion Apprentice Frillix Hafbor." The butler announced.


    Medics lifted Havier off the ground as they carted him away for immediate medical treatment.


    Nartha turned towards Rui. "What do you think?"


    Rui paused for a moment as he considered the question.


    "He''s incredibly strong." Rui nodded as he thought back to the entire fight. Hafbor''s defense was remarkable. His invulnerable passive defense from conditioning that allowed him to endure a lethal attack with very little to no damage, and his active defense from his surgical redirection that allowed him to crush all initiatives. Anybody who could even hurt him had every right to be proud of themselves.N?velDrama.Org owns this text.


    He was the bane of head-on offense.


    "He''s your opponent for today." Nartha smirked. "How do you feel? Scared?"


    "Not particrly." Rui replied.


    "Are you confident?"


    "..." Rui shook his head. "Not confident, no. Not against someone of his calibre."


    "What do you think the probability of victory is?" She asked.


    "Fifty-fifty." Rui replied curtly.


    He was a specialist, which meant the VOID algorithm wasfortable forming the optimal adapted style to take him down with the techniques Rui had. However, even then it would not be easy. From the way he withstood a lethal piercing attack from Havier, Rui doubted the Stinger could do much to him. Bone was stronger than nail, however nails were sharper, which of the two performed better would depend on the specific circumstances.


    However, Rui more or less assumed the Stinger wouldn''t be able to pierce his flesh significantly. He suspected the only two ce the Stinger would be able to hurt Hafbor meaningfully were his eyes and his balls. Rui estimated that only if he managed tond a solid strike to either of these organs, could he possibly manage to win. He had set that as his win condition and, using the VOID algorithm, had already begun to create an adapted fighting style meant to aplish that win condition.


    Thankfully, Rui got ess to lots of data. Theing fighters were diverse and reasonably strong. However, Hafbor endured everything they dished out with his incredibly passive and active defense before exploiting a gaps and holes in their defense.


    Although he wasn''t an offensive Martial Artist, his offense wasn''t necessarily weak either. He was quite remarkable in that regard, as his conditioning often benefitted both offense and defense. Strong bones and flesh did indeed allow him to endure, however it also allowed him to hit harder. Each of his strikes were heavy and hard, albeit slow.


    He was a solid threat. Rui estimated he would have done very well in the Martial Contest. He would have made it to the semi-finals, Rui suspected.


    Seeing yet another of Martial Artist of that caliber humbled Rui to a certain extent. Although he was the Martial Contest finalist, and arguably the second-best Martial Artist of his generation. That was limited to his generatiion and age group. There were Martial Artists from previous generation who were at a simr as him, and above as well.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 291 Clash

    Rui did not forget that despite all his strength, the Academy counted him as a grade seven Martial Artist, three levels below grade ten. Even Fiona was probably at grade eight or nine at most. She had mastered a lot of techniques, but her Martial Artcked individuality. Her prowess came from her techniques, not the depth of her Martial Path.


    One of the reasons he was able to cope as well as he did in their fight despite therge gap was because his mind had reached a higher level in the Apprentice Realm than hers did. His raw cognitive and neural enhancements were greater, it''s just that she more than made up for that gap with a bunch of powerful and incredibly difficult techniques.


    Hafborn was the example of someone who was incredibly powerful due to a lifetime of umtion of techniques and experience. He was not a man who had been a Martial Apprentice for merely six or seven years. Rui wouldn''t be surprised if Hafborn had been a Martial Apprentice for far more than just that.


    Even if Rui was a monster who could swallow up techniques at a rate of one per month, it was not possible overwhelm such a huge age and experience gap that easily.


    It was for this reason that Rui truly looked forward to fighting him. An excited grin broke under his mask as he thought of the idea of testing his Flowing Void Style against Hafbor''s Martial Art.


    Soon, his wish was granted.


    "And yet another win for Apprentice Frillix Hafbor. A remarkable performance, will his streak end?" The butler elegantly spoke. "Coming up next, we have the representative fighter of Lady Nartha Freier. This is Apprentice Falken''s debut in the Martial games. How well will he perform against the defending champion?"


    Immediately, a mild wave of interest fluttered through the guests. New fighters were always interesting.


    Rui walked down the stair leading to the small arena below, as he felt many gazes pouring down onto him. The fact that he concealed his identity made him even more mysterious and exciting to them.


    "Lady Freier." One of the women Nartha was apanied by addressed her. "What is his identity?"


    She shook her head, sighing. "I cannot divulge that I''m afraid."


    "My." She woman raised an eyebrow, before looking down back at the arena. The air had already changed by the time Rui even reached Hafbor and the arbiter. He wasn''t as immersed into his opponent as he was during the Martial Contest, yet the pressure his mind radiated shed with Hafborn as the two fighters stared at each other wordlessly, silently regarding each other.


    Rui stopped as he reached Hafborn.


    "Take your stances." The arbiter instructed.


    Hafbor adopted his rock-solid stance once more.


    Rui instead went for a stance that focused on offensive maneuvering. He didn''t bother trying to focus on raw power, his raw power was insufficient to hurt Hafbor. With maneuvering instead, he could exploit holes in his Hafbor''s defense tond the Stinger onto his eyes or balls. Rui had no problem in attacking his testicles, Martial Artists staked more than just those when they epted life-threatening missions.


    Furthermore, with potions, any damage to them could be undone, leaving him with nopunctions.


    However, Hafbor was not stupid. While it was true that his eyes and balls were his greatest weaknesses, it didn''t take a genius to figure this out. It was clear to Rui that he was aware of this. The position of his arms and legs rtive to Rui were such that it would be pretty hard for Rui tond a strike on either of those locations.


    Normally, Rui''s greater speed would allow him to jab those locations before Hafbor could defend, but because his arms are legs were positioned to obstruct attacks to those locations.


    "Begin." the arbitermenced the fight.<sub> </sub>


    Rui shuffled around a bit, before smoothly dashing in abruptly, hoping to throw Hafbor off.


    Yet he was unfazed.


    POW POW POW!N?vel(D)rama.Org''s content.


    Rui threw a flurry of jabs at him using Vital Pressure and Outer Convergence


    WOBBLE


    The strikes were cleanly redirected as Rui felt his bnce briefly disrupted. This sensation was rather bizarre, but it also felt unsafe, Rui couldn''t reallyunch follow-up attacks worthunching in that state. He understood immediately that he had underestimated Hafbor''s active redirection defense. Not only could Hafbor redirect strikes away from himself with little amount of energy, but he could also raise the difficulty of throwing follow-up strikes. What this meant for Rui was that it was much more difficult even maintaining a constant flow of attacks against him.


    "Tsk." Rui tutted as he retreated for a second, regaining his bearings. He dashed in again,unching a weighted strike.


    Hafbor shifted his guard to block.


    Yet;


    WHOOSH


    It was a feint!


    Rui swirled, crouching as heunched a low strike to Hafbor''s crouch.


    POW


    Hafbor shifted his body ever so slightly before the attacknded, causing it to strike his pelvis bone. Rui immediately retreated.


    Normally, when people evaded strikes, they tried shifting their entire body out of the way of a strike, otherwise there wasn''t much point in dodging.


    However, this wasn''t really the case for Hafbor. He didn''t need to move his whole body out of the way, he only needed to shift his vulnerable areas out of the way and that was good enough. His body was so tough that as long as he shifted the weakest parts of his body out of the way, he was not worried.


    Rui''s attacks could hit him basically anywhere, he would not move away unless his eyes and groin were being targeted, and because they were smaller than other ces normally aimed for, he only needed to shift his body to a limited degree to move them out of the way of attacks.


    This made evasion far easier for him than it was for everyone else.


    Rui would need to find a way tond a critical attack despite this, one way or another.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 292 Outcome

    Rui gained a more thorough understanding of Hafbor''s formidability through their exchanges. The man was probably the best defense-oriented Martial Artist he hade across. Arjun was strong as well, but his Martial Art was mostly passive, since his Martial Path was body conditioning.


    Rui was of the opinion that well-bnced defenses such as Hafbor''s were the hardest to deal with.


    Still, one good thing about the fight was that Rui could be as aggressive as he wanted. Hafbor''s offensive and counter-offensive initiative was not all that threatening to Rui. In most cases, he was too slow tond a clean strike on Rui, and even if he weren''t his offense was not impressive. It wasn''t weak, either, Rui couldn''t withstand it with zero damage, but it would truly take a long time before the damage could actually hinder Rui.


    Thus, Rui increasingly hit the pedal harder as he began pushing his maneuvering to the max. Hafbor increasingly grew strained as it became more and more difficult to redirect all of Rui''s attacks. He began relying more on his passive defense, his conditioning, than his redirection.


    Although redirection was not physically taxing, it was mentally taxing. Although Hafbor was good at it, estimating the correct timing and cement for applying force to correctly redirect strikes away was difficult. This was especially true for speedy motions like the one Rui was exhibiting. This was the adapted style that Rui had created with the VOID algorithm.


    POW POW POW


    Ruiunched a powerful flurry of attacks that Hafbor redirected smoothly. Suddenly, Ruished out an attack for his groin, Hafbor shifted.


    Yet;


    WHOOSH


    It was a feint.


    (''Now!'')


    PEW!


    His right toe cut through the air.


    "Aaargh!" Hafbor grimaced as the toe plunged into his right eye, blinding him.


    A wave of surprise fluttered across the guests.


    Rui retreated as Hafbor cradled his bleeding eye. He tried to regain his bearings as he entered a mild state of shock. He hadn''t even seen the kicking, he felt the pain before he even realized.


    Rui had been waiting for the timely blink. The problem with the Blink technique was that Rui had no control over when they urred. Furthermore, Hafbor was very careful, his eyes and groin were always guarded.


    Rui needed a bit of luck for him to pull off a sessful Blink-plus-Stingerbination. He needed to divert Hafbor''s guard and also hope for a blink to happen that he could then use to exploit andnd a Stinger to his vitals.


    The best thing for Rui to do was simply creating opportunities that he could exploit and hope for a timely blink.


    It had taken a while, but it finally happened. And Rui didn''t hesitate to abuse the opening and inflict a critical injury on Hafbor.<sub> </sub>


    Hafbor had managed to lessen the severity of the injury, despite being caught off-guard by the Blink. Yet, with half of his vision effectively gone, he didn''t have much leeway.


    Rui had also managed to cripple his active defense because perception was necessary for his delicate redirection.


    N?velDrama.Org content.


    What followed was one-sided domination. Rui abused the blind spot he had created to pepper Hafbor with powerful strikes. With one side of his vision gone, Rui was able tond the Stinger a few more times.


    ? Eventually, Hafbor copsed.


    "And what a shocking oue!" The butler cried. "Apprentice Falken is the new defending champion of the Martial games!"


    A round of apuse erupted from the guests.


    "Seriously." One of the women around Nartha said. "Who is he?"


    "He looks young. I bet he''s a real hottie under that mask." Another chimed in.


    "Congrattions Lady Freier, seems like you caught a big fish."


    "My." Nartha smiled. "It seems I did indeed get a good one."


    As the guests bantered, Rui couldn''t help but think back to the fight. He felt ufortable by how few options he had had in his fight with Hafbor. The Stinger was supposed to be a trump card, but it had ended up his only path to victory.


    This wasn''t the first time either. The same thing had had happened in the Martial Contest. He wouldn''t have been able to beat Ian without it, and he would have been able to hurt Fiona without it. Even in some of his hardest fights in preliminary contest. He needed the Stinger to win several of them.


    That wasn''t necessarily bad, however, he wasing to realize that at the highest levels of the Martial Apprentice Realm, his techniques were starting to grow obsolete.


    A lot of the times, he chose to incorporate the Stinger technique into his adapted fighting style not because it was the best possible technique for the job, but it was the best technique that he had. If he had a more diverse set of higher-end techniques, he would not be forced to be so over reliant on the Stinger.


    The same could be said of Blink.


    Blink, at the highest echelons of the Apprentice Realm, was no longer enough by itself. It required Rui to go out of his way to create special circumstances and hope that his opponent blinked, and only when they did could he actually use Blink confidently.


    Both of these techniques lost a lot of their power once his opponent knew about them. By now everyone knew about these, or atleast the Martial Artists did. In a way, this made him weaker than he was before the preliminary contest.


    Rui was not pleased about that. He had felt a certain degree of confidence in his prowess, but he soon realized that he needed to get stronger fast. He needed to be able to defeat the strongest of Martial Apprentices without going through a huge amount of strategic effort. Although his tactics and adaptive evolution were powerful, his techniques needed to support the VOID algorithm, not hold it back.


    (''The next training stage...'') He clenched his fist as a wave of determination shed through him. He stared at his next opponent with sharp eyes.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 293 Skip

    Two months passed.


    Rui continued his mission grind. Day-after-day, hour-by-hour. He relentlessly exposed himself to a wide variety of missions of different kinds. asionally he would form a party with his friends andplete some grade-nine missions, but otherwise he was mostly operating solo.


    In these two months, he had gotten an immense amount of experience with missionpletion. He had also consecutively gathered six thousand Martial credits in merely the span of two months. This was nearly thrice his previous rate, on average.


    Part of the reason for this was because personalmissions were generally much more lucrative, and he had received a lot of them across the span of two months. Most of them were misceneous missions, but he did get enough missions of defense, offense and hunting sses to keep him going.


    He had also continued with the sparring partner missions as well as his representative fightermission with Nartha Freier.


    Both of those missions had yielded him oues that he was quite pleased with. All of those missions were remarkably well-suited to his Flowing Void Style.


    He had confirmed that the Martial Apprentices he had sparred with had grown much better in the span of two months. All of them had be remarkably more solid. Their Martial Art itself had not grown stronger, nor had the quantity or quality of techniques increased thanks to him specifically. However, the quality of the application of their techniques had indeed risen significantly.


    They began applying their techniques more efficiently, and more mindful of their shorings and weaknesses. No longer could Rui effortlessly exploit and abuse their weaknesses the way he did on day-one. Of course, he still defeated them even without Blink and the Stinger, however by the end of sixty days he needed to fight quite seriously, barring his trump cards.N?velDrama.Org owns this text.


    That was not an insignificant boost, especially not in the span of two months. Usually, this kind of boost required years of experience. Yet, Rui had confirmed that the Flowing Void Style was able to shorten the process significantly. He highly doubted any other form of training could possibly result in such a drastic increase in efficiency and effectiveness. Perhaps the Martial Union could rival him if it invested a lot in esoteric technology, however, the difficult and the cost of such an endeavor would surely be astronomical. He, in turn, could do it at no special cost.


    Of course, he didn''t necessarily intend to turn this into his main career, of course not. However, it was nice to see the fruits of a two lifetimes ofbour result in such an unexpected boon. Perhaps he could reduce the frequency at which he epted suchmissions but still keep doing it once in a while for all the validation it gave him.


    There were no worries that he wouldn''t be able to either. The effectivity of his sparring training was not gone unnoticed. He had received many sparring partnermissions in the span of two months, not that he had epted any, of course. Three was already pushing it. But having received all thesemissions allowed him the luxury of variety of choice.<sub> </sub>


    His representative fightermission had gone even better. Two monthster, he was still the defending champion. He had been knocked off his throne a few times by newer exceptionally powerful Martial Apprentices. There were Martial Apprentices far older than he was, with much greater experience and umtion.


    However, he always managed to knock them back and take back his spot eventually. The Flowing Void Style and the VOID algorithm was more effective the more data they had. However, it still usually took him a few tries and even then, it was quite close. Furthermore, it didn''t mean they could never defeat him again, there were several who were strong enough to win even after his adaptive evolution. These were Martial Artists with greater physicality, greater number of techniques and experience.


    Furthermore, Rui had truly begun to feel his limitations in the past two months of fighting in the Martial games. Blink, Stinger and Phantom Step were now all well-known by all of those who came to fight him. It became far harder to execute these techniques in a fight. He needed to go through herculean effort in order to apply them the way he wanted, and it only kept getting harder and harder.


    Not only had it grown harder, it had actually grown dangerous. People had learnt to be extremely careful, but also had learnt to set traps and be prepared for both of those techniques. Although most Martial Artists weren''t as intelligent, strategic and tactical as he was, they were not morons either. Once Blink had bergelymon knowledge, setting traps with some basic prediction and some powerful attacks while they purposely blinked had started to be more and moremon.


    This made Blink increasingly risky. Stinger was still a threat, but he still needed to be careful. He had broken his knee once because someone had predicted and prepared to intercept the Stinger. He had grown extremely wary ever since.


    He had umted more than enough Credits for a set of new techniques, he just kept going to gain more experience. Experience was just as important as technique.


    However, he had grown more than satisfied with the two months of mission grinding he had engaged in, he had broadened his worldview and enriched his understanding of the Martial world. Now it was time to take a step forward, down his Martial Path. He felt his Martial Art would stagnate if he postponed this any longer.


    He intended to immerse himself in a long training period where heprehensively took one step towards bing a Squire candidate. He hadn''t forgotten the new goals he had set for himself to immediately focus on; bing a squire candidate and, eventually, a Martial Squire.


    (''It''s time.'') He mused as he paused before therge doors to the Apprentice library. He breathed deeply as he pushed forward.


    asionally missing content, please report errors in time.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 294 Caught His Eyes

    It wasn''t as though Rui hadn''t thought about what kind of techniques he wanted to purchase; it was just that the choice grew harder every time he returned to the library.


    When he first entered the library looking for the very first Martial Art techniques he wanted to learn, the choices were almost no-brainers. However, once he finished his fundamental needs, then it became a matter of optimization, which was much harder.


    Still, he had a good idea of what he wanted. He needed some degree of boosting his foundational parameters such as offense, defense and maneuvering. After that, he needed to increase the variety of his higher-level solutions. He needed be an all-rounder even in his trump cards. Firstly, because that was part of his Martial Path. Secondly, there was no point in learning another technique that was very simr to Stinger, he would quickly run into the same problem. The existing solutions that people found for the Stinger and Blink would apply quickly to simr techniques.


    However, if he had a significantly differing solutions, then he could avoid falling victim to existing solutions and tactics.


    Another important goal of the uing training stage was fixing the VOID algorithm''s faults. The first being difficult of application, and the second being adapting it to the Martial Art of Gaia.


    Frankly, Rui had already thought about potential solutions. It was possible that there were mental techniques that could aid in the process, and he intended to verify that. Mental techniques that could aid him in the processing that using the VOID algorithm required. This could potentially solve the difficulty problem of the VOID algorithm, or at the very least, alleviate it to some degree.


    As for adapting it to the Martial Art that existed in Gaia, that was a bitplicated. However, diversifying his Martial Art techniques and solutions should alleviate this problem. The Martial Contest and even the preliminary contest had shown him the sheer variety of fields of Martial Art that existed in this world. He had seen poison, heat, sound, nerves, shockwaves, friction, alcohol etc. as the basis for Martial Art techniques.


    Perhaps there were Martial Art that could be best countered by one of these fields. In that case, Rui would only be able to effectively adapt to counter that Martial Art by possessing techniques in that field. And assuming there was no such thing as a field that had no weaknesses, barring all-rounders, then there should theoretically be no Martial Art Rui would be unable to adapt to.


    With all of these thoughts upying his head, he walked into the library.


    (''First, the basics.'') He mused. (''Let''s just begin by picking techniques that boost my basicbat parameters; offense, defense and maneuvering.'')


    In truth, he had already had ideas for what he wanted to pick.


    As much as he disliked Ian Nepomniachtchi''s personality and character, he had to admit he was extremely attracted to Ian''s Martial Art techniques; the breathing techniques.


    He had a foundational breathing technique that improved his stamina; Helical Breathing, however Ian''s Martial Art was on a whole other level. The Fire, Lightning and Earth Breathing techniques he had used in the Martial Contest were incredibly strong.


    However, they were more than just strong. They actually fit Rui''s needs to an incredibly high degree. The Fire, Lightning and Earth breathing techniques amplified power, speed and durability respectively. Ian had mastered all of them and could switch between any at any given point in time, furthermore he could even use multiple techniques simultaneously, albeit partially.


    What this meant is that he could effective manipte and customize his physical parameters to suit his needs. Manipting his physical parameters to specifically adapt to his opponent, it was practically made for the Flowing Void Style.


    With this, Rui could elevate his adaptive evolution to a level he hadn''t even imagined. Before he could only alter the techniques, strategy and tactics he used to suit his opponents, now he could alter the physical parameters his body had as well!


    He grinned, excited at the prospect.<sub> </sub>


    Who wouldn''t be?N?vel(D)rama.Org''s content.


    He immediately headed over to the breathing technique sub-section within the supplementary section, and immediately began deep diving into the techniques.


    He hadn''t ever dug this deep into the breathing technique section, and he was surprised at how many things breathing could aplish, it was truly remarkable.


    Eventually, he stumbled into what he was looking for.


    [Fire Breathing]


    To increase the output of power of attacks by increasing the amount of air supplied to cells during theunching of attacks rather than a constant unchanging supply of air.


    [Lightning Breathing]


    To increase speed of certain maneuvers by supplying arge amount of air to cells during eleration to top speed, allowing for top speed to be achieved sooner.


    [Earth Breathing]


    To increase durability by countering impacts with increase muscle rigidity caused by an increase in air supplied to cells.


    The scrolls mentioned air instead of oxygen because Rui suspected that they weren''t aware of thepound present in air that humans actually needed for survival. Still, the techniques worked equally well regardless.


    The only problem was that each technique was a grade nine technique, much to Rui''s surprise. But it made sense the more he thought about it. These techniques allowed Ian to hugely amplify his physical parameters. To the point where they allowed him to give specialists like Fae, Kane and Arjun a run for their money in their own fields.


    Grade-nine techniques were extremely difficult to master. Usually, only people who a strong affinity towards the field the techniques were present in were able to master them.


    Maybe if Rui spent a truly long time on one of them, he might be able to, althought that was quite unlikely, but three? That was hopeless. He didn''t want to pick only one either, since that would shift the bnce of his Martial Art significantly, he would no longer be an all-rounder.


    Just as he tried to think of a solution, something caught his eyes...


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 295 Revelation

    [me Breathing]


    A less potent and less difficult version of Fire Breathing.


    Rui raised his eyebrows in interest as he stepped in closer for a better look. To his pleasant surprise, he found that the difficulty was grade-seven, which was far more manageable and achievably. In fact, he found simr techniques for Lightning Breathing and Earth Breathing.


    [Wind Breathing]


    [Rock Breathing]


    All of the names were tacky, they were each downgraded versions of the grade-nine breathing techniques.


    Rui immediately picked the me Breathing and Wind Breathing techniques. However, just as he reached for the Rock Breathing technique, he hesitated.


    The Rock Breathing technique was a form of active defense. Which meant defense that required active initiative and activation of the defenses from the user. It was different from passive defense which existed regardless of what the user did, like body conditioning.


    The reason Rui was reluctant to choose this technique was because he already had three active defense techniques; Acute Edge, stic Shift and Inner Divergence. He didn''t have a single passive defensive technique.


    This was a problem because he had learnt the usefulness and even the necessity of passive defensive techniques. Passive defense would not reduce if he made a mistake in timing because they were perennial. It gave him greater leeway than active defenses did.


    Of course, this didn''t mean passive defenses were better than active defenses, not at all. There were just as many scenarios where active defenses did much better than passive defenses. Arjun Erigaisi had lost in the very first round because he did not have any active defenses to counter Servil''s vibrations, while Rui defeated Servil with active measures.


    It all depended on the circumstances, and Rui wanted eliminate circumstances where his Martial Art was entirely inadequate.


    He shook his head, breaking his gaze from the Rock Breathing scroll. (''Maybe next time.'')


    As for passive defenses, he already knew what he wanted.


    He quickly headed for the defensive section and began looking for an appropriate defensive conditioning training technique. There were plenty, each for different purposes. He, however, was looking for something more general.


    Copyright by N?v/elDrama.Org.


    And he found it soon enough.


    [Adamant reforging]


    A conditioning technique that generally increased the durability and toughness of flesh for a variety of all kinds of damage, including blunt force, piercing, heat and stic strain.


    It was a grade-seven technique as far as potency and difficulty of the techniques went.<sub> </sub>


    He nodded; this did indeed suit his purposes. With this, hisbat prowess would reach the upper echelons of the Apprentice Realm without his trump cards at all.


    This left him with three or four more techniques, depending on their difficulty, that he was willing to purchase. He did not want to push himself too far nor stay immersed in training for too long, after all. The next thing he wanted to verify was whether mental techniques could alleviate the difficulty of using the VOID algorithm.


    Yet, he was disappointed, surprisingly.


    The mental techniques were not as powerful or game changing as he hoped. Furthermore, most of them were rted to the maniption of other minds, rather than his own. It was rather unfortunate. There were some self-hypnosis techniques that increased his focus and allowed him to manipte his mindset, but they weren''t nearly enough. He needed something ground-breaking.


    (''Is there no technique that can increase brainpower by a factor of three or four or something?'') Rui cursed.


    Yet he realized how unreasonable that demand was, that would be absolutely revolutionary, and even if a technique such as that did exist, Rui highly doubted its difficulty would be below grade-ten. Such a boost to the brain was not too far from the neural enhancements that the breakthrough to the Apprentice Realm provided to the brain, it was simply too overpowered.


    At the end of the day, the more powerful systems within the VOID algorithm required immense amount of nigh-instantaneous pattern identification and recognition. His mind was incredible, but it was not aputer. It could not engage in such a level of data storage and processing.


    Rui sighed in frustration.


    He was just about to leave, when a familiar technique caught his eyes.


    [Mind Pce]


    A technique that allowed the user to memorize the mission bills of missions perfectly so that Martial Apprentices couldplete missions without any problem. It did this by arranging pieces of information inside an imagined location inside the mind that the user was extremely familiar with in real life. The user merely needed to imagine the mind pce and ess information that they had previously ced in certain ces inside that location, and they would gain perfect recall if the technique was mastered. It was a foundational technique and was entirely free.


    Rui chuckled; he had always found this particr technique amusing. The fact that the Martial union went out of its way to develop this technique because there were Martial Apprentices who couldn''t memorize basic information was funny to him. He could imagine the Martial Councilors of the Martial Union passing a budget bill draft that specifically allocated a significant budget to a technique that improved memory.


    There was no way he needed such a technique.


    Just as he turned around, he froze, as a realization thundered across his mind.


    The Mind Pce technique was indeed meant to allow the user to store and memorize mission data... But what if he used it to store and memorize other data?


    What if instead of mission bill data, he used the Mind Pce technique to memorize the immense amount of pattern identification data that was needed to use the higher-levels of the VOID algorithm that he was unable to use before?


    After all, the biggest reason he could not use it was because he was not able to store such arge amount of information perfectly in the middle ofbat at all.


    Rui turned slowly as he gazed at the scroll of the technique with eyes filled with wonder and greed. To think that the one technique he denigrated the most would end up being perhaps the only technique that could save him from his predicament!


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 296 Six

    Rui should have seen it earlier but his amusement at the purpose of the technique had created a blind spot around it. If he had treated it as a normal technique, he would have seen this application of it instantly, but because he looked down on it subconsciously, he wasn''t able to.


    The potential of this technique, to him at the very least, was extraordinary. As long as he could master it and perhaps tweak it slightly to suit his needs, it should not yield poor results. This was especially taking into ount the fact that this technique had an extremely high affinity with his enhanced cognition.


    (''Stupid.'') He cursed himself. (''It was almost obvious, yet I missed it because I was being cocky.'')


    Still, he was d he saw it now in such a timely manner. He picked up the scroll without any hesitation as he added it to his pouch.


    Four techniques down, two more to go.


    (''The next two-to-three techniques need to enhance my versatility and variety.'')


    The first four techniques strengthened his foundation and aimed to mitigate the VOID algorithm''s weakness. Now, he needed to expand his capabilities to give him more options and choices inbat. He had several ideas of what he would have liked.


    "I could really use a boost in range." He muttered to himself. If he gained the ability to hurt his opponent from a distance, life would be a hell of a lot easier.


    Also, among all the fields his Martial Art didn''t possess, a longer range was the most optimal counter for the greatest number of Martial Art andbat styles. Meaning, by giving his Martial Art long-range capability, he would increase the number of Martial Art he could adapt to more than he could if he mastered some other technique or some other field. Long range was vital, and remarkably powerful in many scenarios.


    He even knew what technique he would have liked to master.


    He immediately went to the offensive section and began browsing through the techniques in a particr section.


    "Aha." His eyes lit up. "Found it."


    [Tempestuous Ripple]


    An offensive long-range technique that projected shockwave attacks from a distance. The user used abination a breathing technique as well as body movements to create a small localized region of high-density solid-like air, and then struck said air with a powerful strikeunching a wind attack.


    He reached for the scroll, picking it up.


    This was the technique he wanted to acquire. It was the technique that representative Ana Marianne had showcased in the Martial Contest, he had been quite impressed by her techniques, even if she did lose in the first round.


    Rui did not fault her techniques for that. Her opponent in the first round was Mia Marnt, who was remarkably powerful and managed to reach the semi-finals of the Martial Contest, losing to Fiona of all people.


    Furthermore, he did think Ana could have beaten Mia if she used her techniques more effectively to counter Mia''s sound attacks.


    Still, this was indeed was he sought for. If he mastered this technique, he would gain a huge boost in the number of potential solutions he could apply. Furthermore, the quality of his adaptive evolutions against close-quarters fighters would increase substantially.


    "That''s five techniques, one or two more to go."


    He scratched his head. He really wasn''t sure what else he ought to get. Perhaps he ought to bolster up his grappling to ensure that he wasn''tgging too far behind in that regard.<sub> </sub>


    He shrugged, that was a good idea, and with the Stinger his striking had over-taken his grappling, enhancing his grappling so that he would be able to adapt to Martial Art that could be countered by grappling was useful. Furthermore, with the Adamant Reforging training technique, Rui''s security in grapplingbat will have increased a lot.


    He immediately walked over to the grappling section as he strolled around, looking for techniques he could learn as he stumbled into something quite interesting and familiar.


    [Flow Flux]


    A counter-offensive technique that destabilized bnced through intercepting and applying targeted force on iing strikes in specific angles and directions.


    N?vel(D)rama.Org''s content.


    Rui''s eyes twinkled as he recognized the technique, or at the very least the principle behind it. This was the core of Hafbor''s active defense. The difference was that Hafbor''s technique applied this principle purely defensively, while Flow Flux aimed to create vulnerabilities and openings for the user to exploit.


    Rui didn''t want to learn the defensive version of the technique anyway, not in this training stage atleast. Flow Flux was attractive to him because it had the ability to create vulnerabilities, this was a trait that was extremelypatible with the VOID algorithm. It would allow for him to have a higher probability of being able to squeeze out victories in fights where he waspletely losing.


    It was a grade-seven technique too, which meant that it was powerful, but not overwhelmingly so. As long as Rui used to efficiently and effectively, it should serve as a valuable trump card for a quite some time toe.


    Rui picked the scroll out of the slot, before nodding.


    "This should be enough for this training stage."


    None of the techniques he had chosen were particrly easy to master, all of them were grade seven, which was around the grade where the difficulty was just low enough that it was worth Rui to engage in mastering. At higher grades, it was often the case that hard work alone was not enough. Many a times, techniques that fell from grade eight to grade ten required affinities and talent.


    Rui did not want to waste time on a technique only to discover hecked the needed talent and affinity needed to master the technique in a needed amount of time.


    Rui nced at all the techniques he intended to purchase.


    me Breathing.


    Wind Breathing.


    Adamant Reforging.


    Mind Pce.


    Tempestuous Ripple.


    Flow Flux.


    He wasn''t even sure how long it would take, but he intended to master all of them.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 297 Regimes

    He wasn''t entirely sure how strong he would be once he mastered these techniques but he genuinely couldn''t wait. He also didn''t know if his Martial Art would reach maturity once he finished this training stage. It was possible, but he couldn''t be sure, he could only hope.


    He took his six scrolls to the payment registrar. He didn''t care about the cost; he had earned an immense number of Martial credits and could easily afford many more techniques. He appreciated the system that the Martial Academy had set up. He had even long understood the reason it as the way it was and why it was so good.


    The Martial Academies were meant to pump out qualified Martial Artists, this was their top priority. He was rtively certain the Martial Academy didn''t give two hoots of the money it earned from the students of the Academypleting missions.


    So why did it charge Martial credits that could only be earned from missions?


    Wouldn''t just giving all the techniques to the students for free allow them to not waste time on missions and quickly master more techniques?


    The answer was yes, but doing this would reduce the quality of Martial Artists produced in the long run. Being given everything they need on a silver tter without any cost would simply produce Martial Apprentices who were not worthy of the techniques they were given. Once these over-privileged Martial Artists left the Academy and suddenly run into a much harder system as far as purchasing technique andpleting missions went, they would simply copse under the difficulty because they had not developed the experience as well as the perseverance needed.


    Yet at the same time, Martial Academies could not make the difficulty too high. It didn''t make sense to force Martial Apprentices to spend years grinding missions just to earn a handful of techniques. That was a waste of valuable time. The human mind and body''s ability to learn was at its highest until the age of twenty-five, this was also the age at which the brain wouldplete its development. After this age, the ability to learn and grow would slowly reduce, bit-by-bit.


    Forcing these Martial Apprentices to work when it was best to learn and, afterwards, learn when it was best to work would be utterly inefficient.


    Thus, the Martial Academy had aimed to sought the best bnce. After a month of mission grinding, Martial Apprentices could generally buy a handful of techniques. This was a good bnce because it just enough that it would force Martial Apprentices to go through several months of mission grinding across their time in the Martial Academy without hindering their training too much.


    Once he bought the techniques, he sat down at a table in the library. He could only read the techniques in detail only after he bought them, after all. He soon began opening each scroll, taking his time as he went through all the data.


    As always, the training regimes for the techniques were interesting.


    me Breathing and Wind Breathing required the usage of a training breathing apparatus that aided in helping the user master the timing and degree of inhtion and exhtion. To Rui''s surprise, there was also a light amount of conditioning required for the master of the techniques.


    It required the user to increase the flexibility and the strength of the diaphragm allowing for greater amount of inhtion at a much faster rate.<sub> </sub>


    "Interesting stuff." Rui muttered as he brought up the other scrolls.


    Adamant Reforging had a rather straightforward training regime. It was abination of torture of the skinbined with healing potions. Healing potions merely sped up the human body''s natural healing and regenerative properties. It only preponed the process in most cases, as long as a sufficiently low-enough graded potion was used during the process, the healing potion would not undo the effects of the conditioning training.


    This had been the case for the Stinger technique''s conditioning training as well.


    The Mind Pce technique was surprising, because it was surprisingly grounded the least fantastical out of all them. Part of the reason for this was because a simr technique existed on Earth, known as the memory pce.


    Essentially, it was a technique that trained the user to be able to easily imagine a certain location, such as a building or a street perhaps, any location that the user was very familiar with. Once the user was consistently able to imagine said location with great uracy and detail after practice, then they could begin to store information in different parts of that location. Such as storing certain facts inside a cupboard inside the house that the user chose as their memory pce.


    The next time the user imagined the house and went to the location inside their imagination where they had previously stored information, they would be able to perfectly remember whatever information they stored their perfectly, as long as they had mastered and executed the information perfectly.


    This was also how the Mind Pce Martial Art technique worked as well.


    The reason this technique worked so well was because it stored memory via conscious association rather than subconscious associations.


    Normal recollection worked by relying on the automatic subconscious associations created between thoughts and memories. If a student writing a physics exam was trying to memorize a simply equation of motion such as


    V = u + at


    Then they would repeat the equation over and over. The next time they would even think ''v...'' the remaining part of the equation ''= u + at'' would appear in their head because of the association created by saying the equation over and over again. This was due to the subconscious association mechanism that recollection worked on.


    But this was wed and limited. It often failed, which is why students failed exams, and had limitations to the amount of information that could be recollected. These two reasons were also part of why Rui was unable to master the higher-levels of the VOID algorithm.N?velDrama.Org content.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 298 Perseverance

    The Mind Pce technique did not have these limitations.


    The Mind Pce technique relied on conscious associations rather than subconscious associations. The imagined location that served as the mind pce was the association between memories and thought. It made the mind pce a mental databank and database of sorts that hosted all kinds of information that could very systematically be essed.


    The Mind Pce technique made the user''s mind closer to that of aputer!


    It was exactly what Rui needed.


    The training regime focused onrgely ensuring the mind pce that the user imagined inside their minds was absolutely perfect. There could be absolutely no room for ambiguity, vagueness, imprecision and inconsistency. The user had to be able to quickly imagine it in high-definition, and it had to exactly the same each time otherwise the technique simply wouldn''t work.


    Rui nodded. It wasn''t easy, but this technique was right up his alley, it was literally built for his enhanced cognition.


    He put the Mind Pce technique aside as he read through the Tempestuous Ripple technique scroll. This was definitely the wildest technique in his roster thus far, he was quite curious to see what the training was like.


    "Oh, it seems I''m lucky." His eyes lit up.


    The first part of the training regimergely ovepped with a part of the training of the me Breathing technique, increasing the power of his respiration. The second part however, required him to master the body motions needed in conjunction with powerful exhtions and inhtions to create pockets of high-density solid-like air that could beunched with strikes.


    He nced at the Flow Flux technique after he poured over the Tempestuous Ripple technique.


    He quickly realized that this technique might actually have been the hardest to master of them all. There were several training stages that involved growing familiar with bnce and learning how to manipte bnce by applying the right amount of force at the right time, ce and direction.


    <o>,m Once he finished reading up on all of them, he immediately headed to the training facilities to get a taste for the training regimes.</o>


    The first training facility he went to was the offensive training facility, he looked forward to training with Squire instructor Dylon after a long time.


    Yet he wasn''t exactly the most ecstatic to see Rui.


    "How many techniques is it this time kid? Spit it out." He said with a disdainful look.


    N?velDrama.Org owns this text.


    "...Six."


    "You-" He facepalmed, sighing. "It would be insane if it came from anyone else."


    "I''m here to learn the Tempestuous Ripple and the Flow Flux techniques." Rui waved the two scrolls.


    Squire Dylon whistled. "Good techniques. Good choices, especially for your Martial Art, it makes sense."


    Rui nodded.<sub> </sub>


    "Let''s begin with Flow Flux." He said. "It is the harder one of the two. I presume you''re familiar with the training regime?"


    Rui nodded. "Yes sir."


    "Flow Flux training requires you to develop an intuitive understand of the fragility of bnce. Unfortunately, there''s no singr trick to doing this. You''ll have to start with the basics, understanding the best ways to imbnce your opponent via interceptions in the most basic positions, and master them. You should be able to execute the basic misbncing interceptions maneuvers with zero dy, you''ll have to engrave them in your very bones."


    Rui nodded, already familiar with it.


    The training regime forcibly hastened the process of developing up a strong intuition on how to imbnce one''s opponents when intercepting attacks. To some degree, it waspatible with the maniacal manner in which Rui trained.


    The training regime soon began and Squire Dylon had him training in basic misbncing maneuvers. A lot of these maneuvers resembled a fusion between Aikido and Krav Maga techniques from Earth. It had taken him a while to be able to get the hang of the interception maneuvering forms. Furthermore, he was still too slow in his identification of what manner he needed to imbnce his opponents.


    "It''s going to take you a while to be able to develop the reflexes in the execution of this technique." He said. "A few months atleast, I imagine. Actually, considering you''re training six different techniques, maybe even half a year. Your potions tolerance can only help you so much. You''re in for the long grind."


    "I know." Rui squeezed out between his huffs, havingpleted hours of training. "I knew that when I chose six techniques, I''ve set the second condition of Squire candidacy as my most immediate and important goal. Developing my Martial Art is what I''m prioritizing now."


    Squire Dylon shrugged. "You do you. Anyways, four hours are up. Are you ready to move onto the Tempestuous Ripple technique?"


    Rui had given each technique an equal amount of training timing across a day; four hours.


    He nodded as he consumed a rejuvenation potion quickly.


    Squire Dylon tossed him a breathing apparatus.


    "Wear that and breathe." He told Rui. "Try not to pass out."


    The breathing apparatus hindered breathing to a ratherrge degree, even more than it did when he trained for the Helical Breathing technique long ago.


    Rui could feel his diaphragm straining as it struggled to push air or in and out of his lungs.


    This feeling reminded him of when he used to have severe asthma attacks back on Earth, it was truly an unpleasant training regime that brought back unpleasant memories.


    "You''re not going to be able to master the Tempestuous Ripple technique unless you''re breathing returns to normal despite having the apparatus on." Squire Dylon told him. "Keep pushing yourself, the harder you push, the less time it will take for your breathing to be strengthened to the point where you can even begin mastering the actual Tempestuous Ripple attack."


    Rui could barely hear him as he struggled to breathe in the necessary amount of air his body needed to sustain himself. He felt as though if he stopped for even a handful of seconds, he would simply lose consciousness and pass out.


    (''This is going to be one hell of a training stage.'')


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 299 Experiences

    N?velDrama.Org owns this text.


    In the span of twenty-four hours, Rui experienced the training regimes of all six techniques. Once he finished training with Squire Dylon for the Tempestuous Ripple and Flow Flux training, he had immediately headed for the training sessions of the remaining four techniques.


    He immediately headed to the mental technique training facility to begin training the Mind Pce technique. He was fascinated by the process.


    "Your mind pce needs to be based on locations from your memories that you know quite intimately." A squire instructor of the mind technique training facilities told him. "You need to be able to visualize them with extreme precision and uracy consistently. That is why it is best to use locations you are most familiar with. The mostmon kinds of mind pces involve using your home, the Academy, since you''ve spent years living here. Your hometown maybe, whatever works. The more mind pces you have, the better."


    Rui nodded.


    Thankfully, he wasn''t short on such locations. In this life alone, the Quarrier orphanage and the Academy could serve as viable mind pces. In his previous life, he had his parents'' home, his home, the research institute he worked at, and even the hospital he spent a lot of time in,ter in his life. Those were six locations that he could begin polishing his imagination of to serve as six mind pces eventually.


    What he discovered, however, was that the Mind Pce technique was morepatible with him than he had ever imagined. One''s visualization capabilities was the most important ability needed to master the Mind Pce technique. It was the one area where his mind, that had undergone two lifetimes of development, could shine the most, showing off its cognitive capabilities.


    Rui had begun making frightening progress as he began dedicating himself to the technique. In merely the span of four hours, he aplished what most Martial Apprentices aplished in an entire month. He had never experienced such affinity with any Martial Art technique.


    The Squire instructor who was guiding him even refused to believe this was the first he was learning the technique!


    He merely shrugged, letting him believe what he wanted. Merely being smart would not exin his progress with the technique and he did not want to be asked sensitive questions that he did not want to answer.


    Besides, he was genuinely ted at the results of his training of the Mind Pce technique and was far too distracted with the matter. Although he had initially been optimistic when he had the revtion that the technique could solve the problem of the VOID algorithm''s viability, he did not get ahead of himself and considered the possibility that it wasn''t sufficient.


    However, his high affinity and his rate of mastery of the Mind Pce technique allowed him a greater degree of confidence and optimism than before. At this rate of mastery, the probability of atleast partially solving the VOID algorithm''s problems was not low.


    They key was to ingrain the activation and usage into muscle memory and into his reflexes, only then would it be viable to use it mid-battle. He would need to restructure the way he stored data amidst battles, and that wouldn''t be possible until he ensured that using the Mind Pce in this manner became as easy and natural as breathing.


    He hade out with an immense degree of satisfaction and tion once he exited the training session at the end of four hours. Although he would have loved nothing more than to continue with the Mind Pce technique forever, the other techniques were also quite important.


    Just not quite as fun.


    "Aargh!" Rui grimaced as he finished a rep of the Adamant Reforging training.<sub> </sub>


    "Here." The Squire instructor tossed him a low-grade healing potion. Rui immediately consumed the potion as an indescribably sense of relief filled his body as his body healed the wounds on his flesh, but only enough to ensure that the conditioning effects of the training would not disappear. High-grade potions would undo everything and return his flesh back to how it was before. Only after his conditioned flesh became the normal state of his flesh could he use high-grade potions.


    The conditioning training began with his torso. It involved inflicting damage onto his torso with abination of blunt force, piercing and heat. The healed skin after he consumed a healing potion would have greater and denseryers of epithelial tissue each time. At the end of the training regime for the technique, his flesh would be far harder to inflict damage on.


    The training would be deemedplete only after the conditioning training was no longer able to inflict meaningful damage on him.


    Rui left that training session havingpletely lost the enthusiasm he had from the Mind Pce technique training.


    As much as he loved growing stronger. He had no masochistic tendencies, and that training was pure torture, even the Stinger technique''s training couldn''tpare to it.


    Thest two training regimes of the me Breathing and Wind Breathing techniques were fairly normal, they also ovepped with the training of the Tempestuous Ripple technique, so he was also making progress on that front. He was effectively going through the training regimes of five-and-a-half techniques instead of six thanks to a significant ovep in diaphragm training.


    He was also certain that the first three techniques to be mastered would be those three due to this reason.


    At the end of twenty-four hours, he returned back to the dorm. It had been a while since he had organically slept. He had been far too busy with missions prior.


    "Hey, where''ve you been?" A familiar voice called out to him.


    "Just began my training." Rui replied. "What about you Kane?"


    "I just came out of training." He told Rui. "I''ve actually justpleted the maturity condition of Squire Candidacy."


    Rui''s eyes lit up. "Congrattions! As expected."


    Kane had been working hard in training, filling up the holes in his Martial Art. The fact that he had elevated his Martial Art to that level this quickly was something Rui found amazing.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 300 Sparring

    BAM!!!


    A powerful Flowing Canon crashed into Nel''s guard. His eyes widened in shock as the sheer power of the techniqueunched him skidding away. Rui immediately chased after him, moving blurringly fast as he reached Nel in the briefest moments.


    Heunched yet another Flowing Canon. The very air trembled as a strike amplified by Parallel Walk, Bnced Direction, Wind Breathing, Outer Convergence, Vital Pressure and me Breathing.


    BOOM!!


    The two shed as they exchanged their most powerful strikes. The sheer power from their sh sent reverberations across the sparring arena.


    The Martial Apprentices who were also upying the facility were all frozen, gaping at the ridiculous prowess that Rui and Nel disyed.


    It was hard for them to believe the two were even in the same Martial Realm as them!


    POW POW POW!


    Nel basted Rui with abo of strikes, pushing him back. Yet when he tried to follow up with a strike;


    WHOOSH


    N?vel(D)rama.Org''s content.


    Rui cleanly swiveled out of the way with remarkable speed and agility.


    BAM!


    Hended a powerful blow on his ribs, pushing him back.


    Nel endured the damage as he threw a sharp kick even before Rui had finished his own attack.


    WHAM!


    Rui blocked, twirling away as heunched for an upper takedown maneuver.


    And yet;


    WHOOSH


    It was a feint.


    Rui coiled his arms around Nel''s legs as he sessfully used Mirage Dive to topple him to the ground. The two boys wrangled on the ground furiously as they tried to get an advantageous position.


    POW!


    Nel managed to break free with a timely strike just as Rui aimed for a chokehold.


    Eventually the two boys seperated, getting to their feet.


    Yet, they wasted no time.<sub> </sub>


    The two spuriously exchanged blows with each other. Every once in a while, one of them would gain a momentary advantage, yet the battle stalled to a rough stalemate.


    The spar went for some time until the two exhausted enough stamina to call for a break.


    Rui smiled in tion as he drank some water. Just four months had passed, and he had gone from being significantly inferior to Nel in all physical parameters, to be able to rival and even overwhelm him in head-onbat.


    "You''ve gotten stronger!" Nelughed. "Let''s do that one more time!"


    "Sure thing." Rui replied.


    Rui had recently gained satisfactory mastery me and Wind Breathing. He had begun sparring with Nel, who was also an all-rounder, to refine his application of the techniques inbat. He left out the VOID algorithm, and his other trump cards to gain a more objective understanding of his growth, and he was remarkably pleased with the results.


    His offensive power had risen to a level that perhaps only Fae could overwhelm, and speed had risen to a level that only Kane and Vyoming could outpace. He couldn''t ask for more from the two techniques.


    Of course, it wasn''t solely because of these two techniques that he had grown this strong, but he hade to have umted this power thanks to multiple techniques.


    Vital Pressure was the first technique he had learnt, and it was a foundational technique almost every Martial Apprentice learnt. However, Rui had mastered Outer Convergence and me Breathing, two powerful techniques that boosted the raw power to extremely high degrees. Each of these techniques were in the upper echelons of techniques that boosted raw power, and the only people in his generation who could match him were specialists in this particr field.


    Simr things were true for other fields as well. Rui''s agility, speed and maneuvering had also reached another level. With Parallel Walk, Bnced Direction, Wind Breathing and Phantom Step. Rui could quite literally run circles around more than ny-five percent of his peers!


    His defense would soon follow suit. Although the Adamant Reforging conditioning training was not yet over, it would take serious power and lethality to inflict meaningful damage on him. He would probably be able to walk through normal attacks like they were nothing at that point. The average Martial Apprentice had zero chance of overwhelming a defense of four Apprentice-level techniques.


    For an all-rounder like himself, these were incredible feats. There was a reason he had asked Nel to be his sparring partner. One was, of course, that he was an all-rounder. But the other reason was that Nel was one of the very few Martial Apprentices in the Academy who could stand up to him. He was literally the only all-rounder Martial Apprentice who could allow Rui to test all aspects of his newly empowered Martial Art equally. Rui was only one step away from straight up fighting with a Martial Squire because almost no one else was qualified.


    He no longer needed to adapt, nor constructplex strategies with his trump cards to be a powerhouse. Even if just used his existing techniques in the most straightforward manner, he would easily be almost unbeaten in the Academy. He could not even imagine how strong he would go on to be once hepletely finished this training session.


    And he couldn''t wait to experience that power.


    He couldn''t wait tounch powerful air sts!


    He couldn''t wait to flip fools off-bnce!


    And most of all, he couldn''t wait to apply the Mind Pce technique to apply the pattern recognition data science-based systems of the VOID algorithm.


    Just how powerful would his Flowing Void Style be?


    It was hard to even predict. The six new techniques wouldn''t just add to his technique straightforwardly, the boost they would produce was greater. Each of the six new techniques had great synergies with some of the others, as well as the existing techniques in his Martial Art. These would result in arge number of permutations andbinations of techniques that could be applied inbat.


    Even he couldn''t uratelypute all that data tond at the right answer.


    He would need to find out by actually experiencing it.


    He turned to Nel.


    "Let''s go another round."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 301 Mastered

    Deep inside the mental technique training facility in an isted room, Rui sat with crossed legs and closed eyes


    He was stoic, unmoving.


    The walls of the isted room were padded tiled with an esoteric substance found in the caves of the Basara Mountain range far west of the town of Hajin, that insted sound to an extremely high degree. Not a single decibel managed to escape its grasp.


    It was so silent that Rui could nothing but his own heartbeat and his own breathing.


    Yet, they did not distract him.


    No.


    They guided him in the void.


    The guided him as he traversed through his own vast mind pce.


    His body was in the Academy.


    His consciousness was also in the Academy.


    Yet, they were not in the same ce.N?vel(D)rama.Org''s content.


    One was in a real physical location, and the other was in a figment of his imagination thoroughly reconstructed inside his own mind.


    He walked across his mind pce leisurely. Nonchntly. Every location of his mind pce had documents and files neatly stacked on top of each other. Normally, it would be irresponsible to stack them that way, instead of in a drawer or file cab.


    What if they fell over? They would certainly get dusty as time passed.


    But Rui didn''t mind.


    This was within his mind, his imagination. He was effectively an omnipotent god inside his mind pce, gravity existed to help feelfortable as he navigated his mind pce.


    And dust simply did not exist.


    He would asionally pick up a document. He would carefully open it up, scroll through its content with interest before closing it and putting it back exactly where it was before.


    Eventually he made his way to the Apprentice dormitory, essing his room.


    Yet it was quite different from its real-life counterpart.


    The furniture was all gone.


    In the center was a book.


    On its cover was;


    [Project Water and the VOID algorithm


    By John Falken]<sub> </sub>


    It was the publication he had published after the final iteration of the VOID algorithm was created. He picked up the book carefully, affectionately.


    He skimmed to the final chapter, reading through a specific excerpt.


    [...And so, although the VOID algorithm isplete and functioning, Project Water is not yetplete. The next phase of our research is aimed at verifying whether or not the VOID algorithm is viable. If it is, then the Project will end on the spot, but if not, we will continue working for as long as it takes to realize this project and seed. We here at Combat Spots Research Co. Will aim to fulfill our dream to create the ultimatebat style!...]


    A tinge of mncholy shed through his eyes. He recalled the confidence and enthuse he had written that bit with. And yet, many yearster, he had ultimately failed andter died.


    Then he had woken up in a strange new world, with strange new phenomena. He was shown a new path, and he chose to walk it. And after much blood, sweat and tears, he had finallye to take a step further in the direction he never could in his previous life.


    He was going to take that step now.


    He shut the book with force, and instantly, his mind pce disappeared.


    He opened his eyes.


    "I have arrived."


    A total of seven months had passed since he originally began his training. The techniques themselves had been mastered nearly a month ago. The problem was getting used to them and learning how to apply them inbat, buildingfort and some amount of muscle memory so that he would fight fluidly.


    For the Mind Pce technique, however, required more than just basic mastery. Rui had found that even if he was able to use the technique, it was too slow. He needed to be so adept with it that he could enter it and exit swiftly with the slightest bit of effort.


    And so, he had locked himself in a room, dedicating himself to the technique thoroughly.


    There were times where he felt he was losing his sanity, unsure of what was real and what wasn''t. It got especially bad because the mental rejuvenation potions and theck of a sleep cycle made him lose track of time. He''d felt like an eternity had passed in that isted room and in his mind pce, and time didn''t pass the same inside his mind pce as it did in reality.


    But he gritted his teeth and continued until his proficiency grew tremendously. To a certain degree, he did with the technique what Hever had done with the Meteoric Swing technique, going far beyond basic mastery.


    He had reduced theg time until it reached a level where it no longer hindered him.


    He consumed a rejuvenation potion as he opened the door to his isted room, he simply walked out as he headed to the exit of the facility.


    He needed to test his current power level and more.


    He hadn''t used the Mind Pce technique because his proficiency with it was too low, and too slow. But now that he had mastered it to the degree where he could actually use it inbat, he no longer knew what he was capable of.


    He needed a strong, powerful opponent, preferably an all-rounder, preferably someone he didn''t have much information on prior. The reason for these were simple. All-rounders were the best to test the Mind Pce solution for the viability problem, because they had no inherent weakness and so several of the lower systems of the VOID algorithm weren''t effective, thus any sess he had would mostlye from the pattern recognition systems he was going to employ.


    It also had to be an opponent he didn''t have much information on so that his analysis of the Mind Pce technique would not be skewed and biased. He had fought against Nel too many times and had gained a good intuitive understanding for his rather simplistic fighting style, so fighting against Nel would not give him a clear idea for how effective the Mind Pce technique was.


    If he could not rely on Nel, then who could he rely on?


    "Squire Kyrie." Rui called out as he reached the sparring facility.


    She turned, meeting his unfathomably deep eyes.


    "It''s time." He told her.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 302 Commencement

    "It''s that time, is it?" She asked him as she took note of the depth of the weight of his mind. She wasn''t sure what it was, but she had the faintest sense he had grown stronger than just the number of techniques he had.


    Rui had already requested her for a match ahead of time when he began refining his mastery of the Mind Pce technique.


    The sparring facility was littered with Martial Apprentices. A routine sparring session with the Martial Apprentices was ongoing, yet they were surprised to see Rui. He hadn''t shown up to one of these in a long time.


    "Yes, I''m ready." He told her.


    "Alright,e along." She told Rui as one of the assistant instructors took over her duties.


    "I recall long ago that you and Kane managed to push me to use a Squire-level technique against the two of you." She said as they hopped onto arge sparring ring. "You''vee a long way since then."


    "I hadn''t understood how much you were holding back then." Rui replied. "The fact that I''ve grown vastly stronger since then and am yet so far away from you is truly astounding."


    "You''re not as far away as you might think." She said with a pointed tone. "Perhaps we''ll find out just how close you are in this fight."


    "That is what I wish to know as well."


    "I can limit my power, defense and movement speed to the general peak of the Apprentice Realm." She told him. "However, my reflexes and reactions will remain at the Squire Realm. I cannot change that."


    "I understand." He said.


    "Good." She said as her eyes narrowed. "Then I don''t have to worry."


    A powerful wave of pressure fluctuated across the sparring facility as every Apprentice''s attention inadvertently shifted towards its source.


    Kyrie took a neutral stance, catering equally to offense, defense and maneuvering.


    Rui simply closed his eyes.


    He was fighting a Martial Squire. If he did not atleast draw out the best from within himself, he was not worthy of this opportunity.


    The gravity of the air around intensified.


    His mind converged as he gathered every ounce of focus.


    This fight meant a lot to him. It was even more significant to him than the Martial Contest. He felt an unprecedented amount of energy saturate his muscles. His body quivered with power.


    When he opened his eyes, he had already taken his stance.


    "Are you ready?" She asked.


    "As ever."


    Kyrie didn''t even hesitate.


    WHOOSH


    RUMBLE


    The very step she took threatened to tear the earth as she pushed it behind,unching herself at frightening speeds. In just the briefest of moments, she had entirely crossed the distance between them, swinging a swift and powerful strike the aimed for his head.


    WHOOSH


    Rui calmly evaded the blow as he swerved past it. Kyrie immediately followed up with blinding speed as sheunched a barrage of swift yet powerful attacks.


    WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH


    Rui bobbed and weaved as he evaded the strikes narrowly.


    BAM!!!


    He rolled out of the way of a heavy drop kick the shook the very facility!


    She immediately dashed after him. Rui''s instincts screamed as she unleashed an avnche of attacks with untold power.


    And yet.


    Not a single blow managed tond on him cleanly.


    He just barely dodged, barely redirected and barely guarded.


    Yet, even that explosive offense did not inflict any meaningful damage on him.


    Kyrie frowned.


    Her parameters surpassed his, she should have been stronger and faster, yet Rui still somehow managed to defend just well.


    He was slower but he moved early.


    As if he knew what she was going to do ahead of time.


    Her eyes widened at that thought.<sub> </sub>


    Kyrie felt her pride a bit affronted. Even if she was holding back, she was still using enough power to be above him on paper. The fact that she was not able to overwhelm him meant that he was applying himself better than she was!


    A kid who hadn''t even been a Martial Apprentice, was fighting better than herself? A veteran Martial Squire who was the best of her generation?


    She wasn''t necessarily an overbearingly proud person. In fact, she was quite down-to-earth despite her sess.


    But still.


    She was a Martial Squire.


    She narrowed her eyes as she began moving more sharply. She wasn''t breaking her word and using her power beyond what she promised, but she was moving urately and precisely.


    BAM!


    Rui skidded away from an impact as he noticed it had be harder to keep up with her.


    (''She''s starting exert herself.'') He noted. It was easier for the VOID algorithm to work against a more static opponent, but now that she was fighting more dynamically, things would grow harder.


    He didn''t mind, he needed to be pushed if he wanted to test the prowess of his Mind Pce technique.


    He felt a wave of excitement. He had waited for a long time for what was about to happen.


    It was time.


    His preparations wereplete. Everything was in ce.


    It was time.


    Time to find out whether his efforts with the Mind Pce technique were in vain, or not.N?vel(D)rama.Org''s content.


    She stepped forward, shifting her weight onto her left foot as sheunched jab with her right arm.


    Rui''s eyes widened as his mind shed into the Mind Pce.


    (''Probability of right-left-rightbo; ny-two percent.'')


    And almost like magic, his prediction unfolded.


    Kyrie threw a right jab followed by a left and another right jab in rapid session. She hadpletely expected it tond on him.


    Yet;


    WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH


    He cleanly weaved past her strikes with his maneuvering techniques, boosted by Wind Breathing and Primordial Instinct as he threw a weighted speedy jab at her.


    ? BAM!


    It crashed into a hasty guard, she had just barely managed to intercept the strike. She retreated, surprised. She had managed topletely close the distance between when sheunched that speedybo, it should have been impossible for him evade it in those circumstances, let alonend an attack while evading.


    Yet he danced passed her attacks andunched a powerful strike before her attack was even over.


    Rui''s fixated on her as he watched her every movement like a hawk. Her every shift, twitch and movement.


    Her body shifted weight, yet her arms were steady.


    (''Side kick; ny-four-percent.) Heputed as he shed through the data in his Mind Pce.


    Heunched a crouching sweeping kick cleanly avoiding her side kick as his kick crashed into her ankle.


    Yet again.


    He dodged both attacks as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. Kyrie got the impression he wasn''t even reacting, it was as though he already knew what move was the best to make. Sheunched a swift jab, hoping to tag him.


    WHOOSH


    Rui yet again, casually evaded her blow as hepletely invaded her space with ease,unching a speedy jab of his own


    WHOOSH


    She swerved, evading the attack, yet before she could even counter, another attack from Rui had already arrived to the location she had moved to.


    BAM!


    The attack crashed into a hastily conjured guard.


    She summersaulted away, opening up some distance.


    (''He knew exactly where I was going to be even before I did!'') She realized, shocked.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 303 What It Said

    Everything had patterns. Everything was made up of patterns.


    People, animals, nts, rocks, dirt, all of them had patterns in their very being, one way or another. Whether it was behavioral, psychological, cellr or even molecr and atomic.


    Even the universe itself had patterns. These were codified in thews of physics.


    Martial Artists were no different.


    The pattern recognition systems of the VOID algorithm collected data on the movements of the opponent of the user, organized them into an ordered data set and then conducted a statistical analysis on them to create a predictive model of the movements of the opponent based on the data gathered.


    This predictive model allowed the user to predict the movements of their opponent based on certain parameters such as; position, center of gravity, distance, speed and eleration. The greater the amount of data collected, the more urate and precise the predictions of the predictive model were.


    However, that was only half the work. After all, the VOID algorithm was an algorithm to adapt and evolve to your opponent, not an algorithm to merely predict your opponent.


    Once the predictive model waspleted, the user would input the predictions into the adaptive evolution model of the VOID algorithm that would output the move needed to counter the inputted move. The adaptive evolution model was created after many years of empirical research by Rui on what the best counter to every move was. It outputted the best counter for every move.


    For example, the objectively best counter to a crouching sweeping kick was a flying knee kick. A flying knee kick cleanly would avoid the sweeping kick since the user jumped, while the knee kick wouldnd perfectly into the face of the crouched person that was executing the sweeping kick.


    If one inputted the crouching sweeping kick into the adaptive evolution model, it would output the best counter to the inputted move; the flying knee kick.


    Thus, pattern recognition systems of the VOID algorithm had the user predict the movements of their opponents using the predictive model, then they would figure out the best counter to the predicted moves by inputting those predicted moves into the adaptive evolution model. The adaptive evolution model would output the counter to the predicted move, and then the user would execute said counter moves, once the prediction came true.


    This allowed the user to fight in a manner that waspletely adapted and evolved to their opponent. Such was the prowess of the VOID algorithm, yet the difficulty of executing this was inhuman. Which was why Rui had failed to make it viable in his previous life.


    ''In his previous life'', being the key phrase.


    He grinned with excitement.


    He was seeding!N?velDrama.Org content.


    It took another lifetime, but he had experienced the first taste of sess!


    His dream was possible!


    He felt like a parched traveler taking the first sip of water after days of being stranded in the desert.


    (''Hahaha... HAHAHA!'') he felt ecstatic excitement course through his body. (''I can do this! I can-'')


    POW!


    "Gugh!" He grimaced as Kyrie''s fist crashed into his face, knocking him down like a bowling pin.


    Kyrie''s head tilted in confusion. His movements had suddenly be clumsy despite being pristine the moment prior.


    Rui grimaced as he retreated. (''...Everyone has a n until they get punched in the face.'') He mused.


    The predictive model of the VOID algorithm was not absolute. The user needed to always be ready if the predictions didn''te out to be true. Of course, Rui had momentarily forgotten this because no one had even been able to reach a stage where he could warn them of this before.


    He was the first person to get this far with the VOID algorithm.


    Squire Kyrie narrowed her eyes as she dashed towards him, unaware of the sheerplexity of the mystery of Rui''s incredibly urate and well-timed movements.<sub> </sub>


    WHOOSH


    Rui cleanly leaned out of a hook as he simultaneouslyunched an upper cut that perfectly exploited the gap in her defense created by the hook.


    Yet;


    WHOOSH


    She avoided it cleanly.


    He wasn''t surprised.


    Her power, defense and speed were limited to the peak Apprentice Realm, but her reflexes were much harder to limit, reflexes were subconscious and she could not consciously reduce it.


    This was even though she was holding back, they were still there. Rui was fighting against someone with Squire-level reflexes.


    And he wasn''t losing.


    "Squire Kyrie." Rui said to her. "Please use as much power as is needed to defeat me. There is no point in holding back for my sake if you cannot force me to go all out."


    Her eyes widened at those words.


    He was telling her she wasn''t strong enough.


    He spoke those words seriously, yet he didn''t realize how shocking it was for a Martial Apprentice to utter those words to a Martial Squire.


    "...I see." She eventually replied. "I don''t know what happened to you, but it seems I underestimated you."


    Rui stiffened up as the pressure she exuded grew perilous. His sense of survival was triggered by the weight of mind she exerted onto him.


    WHOOSH


    The VOID algorithm barely predicted her movements in time as he just barely managed to throw a guard together before her attack crashed onto him with a power that exceeded what Martial Apprentices were normally capable of.


    BAM!!!


    Even with the four techniques of defense he had, his arms were bruised. His focus deepened as he drew everything he had, preparing for onught she was about to unleash.


    And, onught it was.


    Her every movement reverberated the ground and the shook the air violently. Their fight was no longer localized as it drew attention from everyone within the facility.


    The spectating Martial Apprentices and staff all froze, gaping in disbelief at what unfolded before their very eyes.


    In their eyes, Kyrie was no longer operating within the Apprentice Realm.


    What did that say about the Martial Apprentice that was able to keep up?


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 304 Outcome

    What it said was crystal clear;


    Rui''sbat prowess was no longer even in the same Realm as them.


    He hadn''t even been a Martial Apprentice for three years, yet he had somehow skyrocketed past all of them. Not a single person would show disbelief if they were told that Rui was the strongest Martial Apprentice of the Kandrian Empire.


    WHOOSH


    Rui just barely managed to avoid a strike with frightening power. Kyrie was showcasing a level of power and speed he had never faced off against before. Not even Fiona had been this overwhelming.


    FLICK


    He felt a sharp pain on his cheek as he avoid a strike.


    DRIP DRIP


    His eyes widened as he felt his cheek bleeding. (''She used a piercing technique.'')


    Her bodyweight shifted.


    (''Straight jab.'')


    The jab was almost blindingly fast to him, yet he managed to intercept it thanks to having predicted beforehand. He immediately activated Flow Flux, boosting it with Outer Convergence and me Breathing.


    WOBBLE


    She had limited herself greatly, and Rui had used a lot of power to destabilize her. Her bnce was unstable for merely the briefest of moments.


    Yet that was enough.


    Heunched the Stinger straight at her eyes. It was empowered with Outer Convergence and me Breathing.


    Kyrie''s eyes shed, she had expected that. It was his trump card, after all.


    Yet when she tried to catch his foot.N?vel(D)rama.Org''s content.


    WHOOSH


    Her eyes widened.


    It was a feint.


    The Phantom Step technique would not have worked, ordinarily. But unfortunately for Kyrie, the technique had shown her exactly what she had wanted to see, what she had anticipated seeing.


    BAM!!


    A powerful kick crashed into her gut. The sheer force of his attackunched her several meters into the air despite her remarkable defenses. Rui had purposely aimed the strike upwards so as tounch her up.


    POW POW POW!


    Ruiunched several Tempestuous Ripples that struck her midair. The Tempestuous Ripple attacks blew her away even while she was midair, propelling her further and further away until she was headed well outside the ring!


    This had been his strategy.<sub> </sub>


    All those spectating widened their eyes in disbelief.


    Rui was going to win!


    Yet.


    "Gentle Fury Style: Sky Stepping." Kyrie whispered.


    Rui felt a shiver down his spine as his hair stood up.


    BOOM


    The very air itself shook.


    A maelstrom of wind assaulted all those spectating.


    Rui widened his eyes.


    Kyrie had exerted a tremendous amount of power on the entire atmosphere, she stepped on the very air itself, stopping her plummet instantly with the might she possessed by virtue of being a Martial Squire. She walked down from the air as though she were walking down a staircase, returning back to the ring.


    Martial Squires were capable of such power that even the atmosphere could be treated like solid ground!


    "Oh yeah..." Rui scratched his head, feeling stupid. He had totally forgotten that Martial Squires were capable of walking on the atmosphere itself. He only recalled that Kyrie had mentioned it to him in the first round of the Martial Contest when Ana had demonstrated the Sky Walking technique. But nine months had passed since then that he almost forgotten.


    He sighed at the sight of Kyrie returning in front of him, taking his stance once more. His n had ended in a failure, he would need to create a new one.


    Yet Squire Kyrie shook her head. "I told you Martial Squires could Sky Step, and that is true. I wasn''t holding back in order to, breaking my word in the process. Thus, the win is yours."


    Rui scratched his head. "Is that how it works?"


    "This is the second time you''ve forced me to use my Martial Art." She said, as a rare smile broke onto her face. "The first when you were at the bottom of the Apprentice Realm, and now when you are at the peak."


    "I look forward to seeing how far you will go, Rui Quarrier." She said with a profound tone as she turned around walking away, returning to her duties as the head instructor and supervisor of thebat training facility.


    Rui bowed at her departing figure, as he himself left the ring deep in thought. He had mostly gained what he came for.


    The Mind Pce was indeed a viable solution for the viability problem of the VOID algorithm. Although he wasn''t nearly as adept with it as he would have liked, as was optimal, he was not saddened. The fact that he was able to use it at all meant that it absolutely was viable! As long as he worked hard and grew as a Martial Artist, he would one day be able to use the VOID algorithm to absolute perfection.


    In his current state, his usage of the Mind Pce technique to store and sort patterns was still clunky, inefficient and slow. It had taken him quite some time and some preparation until he was ready to apply the pattern recognition systems of the VOID algorithm, and he was still not quite where he wanted to be.


    Yet he did not mind. In fact, he was quite ecstatic. He felt a huge burden lifted off of his shoulders.


    For a long time, he had gone to sleep thinking about the viability issue of the VOID algorithm. If he included his previous life, it would sum up to almost thirty years.


    Thirty years of god-only-knew how much emotional investment in the matter. Words couldn''t describe the relief he felt on finally gaining the certainty and confidence he had been looking for, for all this time.


    Now, as long as he maintained an upward trajectory the problem would eventually be solved.


    The only big problem left would be the VOID algorithm''s inadequacy for the world of Gaia. Yet that was not a problem that could be solved in a short amount of time. Nor did it have a singr solution like the viability problem.


    Still, he intended to solve that as well, one way or another.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 305 The Next Step

    The goal of his spar with Squire Kyrie was to verify whether the Mind Pce could serve as solution to make the application of the VOID algorithm viable. And now that he had acquired what he wanted, he left the sparring facility.


    He had zero interest in fighting any of the Martial Apprentices of the Academy, they were simply far too weak to be able to even stand up to him. At this point only Nel and Fae could give him a challenge and only Kane had any real chance of defeating him because of the two grade-ten techniques he had mastered.


    At this point, he needed to build experience with his current Martial Art.


    At this point in time, he had twenty-three techniques in his Martial Art, furthermore with the Mind Pce technique, the way he went about the VOID algorithm hadpletely changed. He would be changing a very fundamental way of hisbat style and he needed to build experience around it in a variety of situations.


    "Missions it is." He mused.


    The safe and controlled environment and atmosphere of the Martial Academy no longer provided him with any stimtion. Theck of stakes made it a very dull atmosphere to him, making it hard to draw any real tension from him. That along with the fact that almost none of his peers were his equals anymore made staying the Martial Academy lose its allure to him.


    (''Honestly, there isn''t too much point in staying anymore.'') He had reached a stage where he was more than ready to be able to sustain himself independently, if needed. He also didn''t want to incur a greater debt with the Academy than he already had.


    He hadn''t forgotten about the debt schrship he had undertaken when he joined the Academy. The Martial Academy was expensive. It provided him with housing amodations and other necessities as well as expensive learning and growing resources, as well asbat resources.


    The countless facilities and resources such as potions and equipment he had used in the near three years he had spent in the Academy did note cheap, not at all. Nor were the highly-experienced instructors that had guided him. Everything he had indulged in as he walked his Martial Path had costed something, and every extra day he stayed, the more it costed.


    His existing debt alone was quite substantial in and of itself.


    He wasn''t miffed about that. He would not be where he was today, and he had a lot of goodwill to the Academy for that. But soon it would be better if he left.


    He reached for hismunication device that he had purchased to keep in touch with Nartha during his previous missions, sending her a short message, informing her of his openness to undertake representative fightermissions.


    The next thing he intended to do was open himself for personalmission. Before he went into training, he had closed his profile for personalmissions since he knew he would be in training for quite some time. Now he intended to open it so that people could send personalmissions to him.


    He headed to themissions department asking them to do as much before he left for the mission library. Even if he opened his personal profile to personalmissions, they weren''t going to flood in the very second he opened them. For now, he would need to rely on the standard missions made to the Martial Union.


    "I''m a Grade-ten Martial Apprentice?" He asked, with raised eyes.


    "Correct, Apprentice Quarrier." A staff member informed him. "The update was extremely recent. Just four minutes ago, in fact, this is why we didn''t have time to inform you."<sub> </sub>


    Rui''s eyebrows knitted at those words. It wasn''t a coincidence his grade was updated just as he finished his spar with Squire Kyrie. "I see."


    Squire Kyrie must have sent over the information of his newfound prowess to the Commissions department immediately. He was surprised at how quickly they processed his data and evaluated his prowess.


    Regardless, this worked out to him. Now he didn''t need to worry about taking missions that were too tame. He wanted to increase the intensity of the missions so that they could push him and his Martial Art. This meant he could skip boring low-level missions and immediately head for more difficult missions


    Soon, he entered the mission library, pondering what ss of missions to undertake.


    Defense-ss missions oftencked conflict. Thus, he was reluctant to go for that ss of missions. The misceneous ss of missions were simr, they also didn''t feel pressuring because of how odd many of them were. He was looking for a good old-fashioned ssic mission that involved genuine conflict.


    The remaining three sses of missions guaranteed genuine conflict much more, to some degree; Offense-ss, hunting-ss and the shadow-ss missions.


    Of these three, he was the least qualified for Shadow-ss missions. The only Stealth technique he possessed was Blink, which was not enough by itself. He did intend to one day be qualified for Shadow-ss missions, but for today, he would have to settle for one of the other two.


    He immediately headed to the offense-ss section of missions. It had been quite some time since he had taken an offense-ss mission.


    He scrolled through the section, browsing through the missions. As always, there were many Royal missions. Usually,w enforcement missions all kinds. There were only a few non-Royal missions, all of them were international.


    N?velDrama.Org owns this text.


    Rui had previously abstained from taking international missions because of the difficulty and risks, but now, he had no more qualms.


    Besides, he was curious. He was nearly sixteen, and he would be stepping outside the Kandrian Empire for the first time. Although the Kandrian Empire itself was quite exoticpared to Earth, he had stillrgely experienced a tamer life,pared to what this continent offered.


    What was the rest of this crazy magical world like? What kinds fantasies and tribtions were out there? He wanted to experience all of it with his own two eyes.


    And for the first time in his life, he had the power to.


    He skimmed through international missions in the Academy, looking for something that met his needs.


    There were many that did.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 306 International

    The Kandrian Empire wasrge. Especially whenpared to the many small sovereign states in its immediate geographic neighborhood.


    Most of these small statescked a strong Martial foundation. They were unable to sustain or retain many of the Martial Artists that did end up breaking through from their poptions.


    The reason was brutally simple; Large nations were more attractive to Martial Artists than smaller nations. Many of them moved to therger nations such as the Kandrian Empire, the Sekigahara Confederate, the Britannian Empire and the Republic of Gorteau.


    These nations were able to facilitate their growth as Martial Artists to a much higher degree than smaller nations could. Due to a greater avability of better learning and growth resources.


    These nations were also one of the few that had a strong centralized Martial Artist organization, such as the Martial Union of the Kandrian Empire. This was also an additional incentive to the Martial Artists of smaller states to join therger nations, as these Martial Artist organizations often offered a plethora of useful benefits to joining them.


    Therger nations did not make it too difficult for these Martial Artists to integrate into their states either. After all, Martial Artists were precious assets to all nations. They were of strategic importance and were absolutely vital to all nations in order to maintain their militaristic power.


    Thus, no nations would refuse gaining more of them.


    As a consequence, the smaller nations were much more depleted of Martial Artists inparison to therger nations. The fewer Martial Artists of each of these nations were unable to fulfill the consumer demand for Martial Art services.


    Furthermore, without a strong andrge bureaucratic organization such as the Martial Union that could quickly process allmissions for Martial Art services in a standardized manner and convert them into mission bills that could swiftly be delivered to all Martial Artists, it impossible for the Martial Artists of these smaller nations to be able to fulfill therge demand of the market for Martial Art services in their own nations.


    So what did the consumer market do when the Martial Artists of their own nations could not fulfill their demands?


    They turned to therger nations.


    The Martial organizations ofrger nations like the Kandrian Martial Union were in no shortage of capable Martial Artists, thus they happily catered to the demand for Martial services. Each of therge nations hadmission offices across the territories of the smaller nations, allowing them to ess a wide international market outside of their own borders, receiving a vast number ofmissions from across all these nations.


    The missions Rui was browsing through were among thesemissions from nations within therge international market that the Kandrian Martial Union.


    [Offense-ss mission: Elimination mission.


    Clientele: Dashaian Temple. Mosca, Minnivaille Kingdom.


    Target of elimination; Inhabitants of Mosca Church of Woyeh.


    Location of target; Mosca, Minnivaille Kingdom.


    Difficulty: Grade 8


    Missionmencement: Immediate.


    Sessfulpletion remuneration: 30 gold coins, 7 silver coins and 5 bronze coins/ 800 Martial credits.


    Mission summary: Eliminate as many inhabitants of the Mosca Church of Woyeh once the missionmences. Averaging with a poption 150 at any given point and confirmed presence of one Martial Apprentice.]


    "Woah." Rui''s eyes widened.<sub> </sub>


    A templemissioning a grade-eight mission to massacre a church in the same town as itself?


    "That''s wild."


    The Kandrian Empire was secr and didn''t have a particrly dominant religion. However, it seemed that the Minnivaille Kingdom had to have severe religious conflicts if a temple was willing to massacre a church!


    Copyright by N?v/elDrama.Org.


    Rui shook his head. He had no interest in doing something as distasteful as massacring a church.


    The other offensive missions weren''t necessarily better. All of them made Rui feel fortunate to be born in the Kandrian Empire where there was a certain degree of stability. He did not have to feel worried about international Martial Artists beingmissioned by citizens to harm others citizens within the same nation, because such things were unprecedented, as far as he knew.


    "Hm?" Another mission bill caught his eye.


    [Offense-ss mission: Elimination/Capture mission


    Clientele: Fria


    Target of mission: Ruyloken Gang


    Difficulty: Grade 9


    Missionmencement: Immediate.


    Sessful remunerationpletion: 38 gold coins, 4 silver coins


    Mission execution location: [23.3285, 26.4523] Hefermaine Vige, outside the Kingdom of Grahal


    Mission summary: Eliminate or capture the Ruyloken Gang that has seized control of the Hefermaine Vige alive.]


    This one didn''t seem as distasteful as the rest. He picked up the mission, shugging. It was definitely the best out of the existing international missions that he saw.


    He took it to the Registrar, officially epting the mission before sitting down at a table in the library. After all, one couldn''t gain ess to the full information in the mission bill until one epted the mission. Mission bills often contained sensitive and confidential data that only the Martial Artists epting themission had ess to, ording to themission contract that the clientele signed with the Martial Union.


    He immediately opened it, as he began reading the details of the mission thoroughly.


    The Hefermaine vige was a tributary of the Kingdom of Grahal, a small kingdom south-west of the Kingdom of Grahal. it was a small settlement as far as poption went. The vigers made a living by engaging in agriculture, they upied rich ins with highly arablend and sold all the excess crop harvest to the Kingdom of Grahal.


    Although their lifestyle was rather simple, it was a peaceful vige.


    Until a gang known as the Ruyloken Gang took over the vige and robbed all of the vige''s wealth earned from the harvest sold to the Kingdom of Grahal and other surrounding states. The vige had very little security, being as remote as it was. Furthermore, the gang was lead by an experienced Martial Apprentice. The vige had no way to resist.


    The gang simply upied vige and barred anyone from leaving, they simply had the vigers work relentlessly and took the gold when the pay came.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 307 Undertaking

    The clientele was a young woman named Fria. She was a viger of the Hefermaine Vige who had managed to escape during the hostile takeover nearly eight months ago. She had recentlymissioned a mission to free the Hefermaine Vige from the grasp of the Ruyloken Gang.


    And Rui had just picked up the mission bill of the mission.


    He skimmed through the data provided by the Martial Union.


    The Ruyloken Gang was a known criminal gang of the Grahal Kingdom. They were rather small for a gang, with a member count of only twenty-four. But their size meant that each member got more of each plunder.


    Furthermore, the gang was led by a middled-aged Martial Apprentice known as Vranil Fra. The intel the Martial Academy had managed to gather on him was not scant. However, as far as hisbat prowess went, the only the mission bill told Rui was that he was an extremely strong Martial Apprentice.Copyright by N?v/elDrama.Org.


    Confirmed to, at the very least, be in the upper echelons of the Apprentice Realm without a doubt. He once fought off and killed three mid-grade Martial Apprentices, and that was before he reached his physical prime. The other piece of information the Martial Academy had been able to provide him was the fact that he was an offense-ss Martial Artist.


    He was the reason the mission was graded nine. For a singr Martial Apprentice, this mission was close to about as dangerous as Apprentice-level missions got. Furthermore, the fact that the mission was urring well outside the Kandrian Empire made it that much more dangerous.


    There was a lot more information included, but they were more mundane details. Rui quickly inputted and stored all the data in his Mind Pce as he began sorting it out.


    There were several things that he didn''t quite understand. But he intended to resolve them after meeting up with Fria, the clientele who hadmissioned him. She had made themission from the Kingdom of Grahal, through one of themission offices of the Kandrian Martial Union in the Kingdom of Grahal, and was currently residing in the Kingdom of Grahal.


    She had even requested a meeting with the Martial Artist that epted themission prior to themencement of the mission in the Kindgom of Grahal, which Rui found odd. Themission costs included the travel, shelter amodations and food costs, among other things. She was making the mission more expensive by requesting a meeting with-in the Kingdom of Grahal.


    Regardless, Rui had no choice but to oblige. He did want to ask her some questions as well, if he could.


    He got up heading back to his dorm room to get prepared. He really didn''t have much to do at the moment, so there was no problem beginning his journey immediately. The mission was meant to bemenced immediately ording to the mission bill, and he also had to meet Fria before he actually began the mission.


    He quickly bathed, freshening up before he tidied up and put on his Martial garb. He immediately headed to themissions department,pleting the paperwork needed before he headed down to the dispatch facility where he collected his toolkit and gear.


    Once he finished the final bit of paperwork, he immediately dispatched. The Kingdom of Grahal was located well away from the Kandrian Empire. About a little under three hundred kilometers south-west of the Kandrian Empire.<sub> </sub>


    Rui was travelling by foot, at his current level, even the effort that transport saved him was not worth the lower speed. The costs of travel in this case would be the rejuvenation potions that the Martial Academy had equipped him with tost the entire journey.


    His route required him to cross a few regions of the Kandrian Empire before he exited it. Hergely travelled by foot. At his current level it only took two hours to cross entire regions


    Which was actually very little, a bit surprisingly. His physical parameters were extremely high in the Apprentice Realm, he could run a huge amount of distance at high speeds before he felt the need of using a potion.


    Rui followed a main route that directly connected the Kandrian Empire and the Kingdom of Grahal, and thus the terrain was suited to maintaining what was a decent speed for him.


    In less than three hours, he had already reached.


    The environment and weather were considerably more different than he was ustomed to in the Mantian Region. The temperature was warm and the air was quite humid, the sun shone bright, unleashing its fury onto the inds of the Kindgom of Grahal. The Mantian Region was generally quite cold most of the time, barring two months of the year.


    An abundance of fauna and flora saturated his surroundings, different from what he was ustommed to seeing on the outskirts of the town of Hajin where the Quarrier Orphanage was. Lush bold green leaves littered all the trees and shrubs, painting a picture of an environment filled with vitality.


    This was the first time he had journeyed outside the Kandrian Empire, and the experience was refreshing. Different people and different environments assailed his deep senses, he genuinely did feel like a tourist. Yet, his alertness had also heightened.


    He had been pushing Primordial Instinct and Seismic Mapping to the maximum. Everything was a potential threat. The safety of the Martial Union and Kandrian Empire was gone and he was truly all by himself. If anything happened, he had only himself to rely on and nobody else, unfortunately.


    His immediate destination inside the Kinggdom of Grahal was to rendezvous with Fria at a Martial Unionmissions office where he could actually interact with her directly.


    As for getting into the country. He didn''t care to get in via legal channels, the Kingdom of Grahal was a weak and small nation that had not managed to obtain an extradition agreement from the Kandrian Empire. Meaning, no matter what crimes hemitted in the Kingdom of Grahal, the Kandrian Empire would not cooperate with the Kingdom of Grahal to enforce theirws onto him, and there was nothing the Kingdom of Grahal could do about it.


    The Martial Union did not have any protocols requiring him to enter legally and maintaining the secrecy of his identity was rmended by it.


    He himself didn''t want to reveal his identity under any circumstances, something that entering through legal channels, being the Martial Artist that he was, would undoubtedly happen.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 308 Arrival

    (''What they don''t know won''t hurt them.'') Rui casually leaped past the fence that had marked the territory of the Kingdom of Grahal. The security was pitifully weak, but then again, he had expected this.


    Even back on Earth in the twenty-first century with all the civil engineering capabilities of the technologically advanced first-world countries, perfect border security had not been aplished and was quite difficult.


    Even superpowers like the US had not achieved even satisfactory border control as illegal immigrants, smugglers and traffickers routinely burrowed into its territories.


    ? It wasn''t that these nations in both Gaia or Earth were doing a particrly bad job, the problem was not with the administration or initiative.


    The problem simply was that nations were absolutely enormous. The sheer distance that was covered by the borders and circumferences of these nations was huge, it was an incredibly difficult task to try and achieve high security across every inch of one''s borders.


    This was especially true for smaller and more impoverished nations. Although their borders were also smaller, the inadequacy of the number of Martial Artists due to emigration, thecklustre technological development meant that achieving security across borders was far more difficult despite being smaller.


    Larger nations like the Kandrian Empire were much better, although not perfect. More powerful nations had an abundance of Martial Artists; thus, these nations could afford deploy a certain number of Martial Artists with sensory capabilities patrolling the borders as well as a sophisticated anti-infiltration system in ce thanks to their highly developed esoteric surveince technology.


    Although it was certainly not impossible infiltrate the Kandrian Empire. One had to be far more careful, equipped, specialized and prepared in order to infiltrate the Kandrian Empire. This was in sharp contrast to Rui who infiltrated the Kingdom of Grahal with ease.


    The Kingdom of Grahal had a different air to it than the Kandrian Empire did. It exuded a gloomy and deste vibe.


    Rui couldn''t put his finger on a single element, it was abination of things that made him feel that way.


    He could see it in the energy of the people that he walked past. He could see it in their eyes; tired resignation. He could see it in the poorly maintain infrastructure, the number of homeless people who slept on the streets, these were people who were just trying to get by day-to-day without much of an eye on the distant future.


    The Kandrian Empire, on the other hand, was generally a more vibrant nation. Especiallymercial hubs like the town of Hajin. He walked through the steets, having covered himself in a robe that hid his affiliation with the Kandrian Martial Union.


    Soon, he reached amissions office of the Kandrian Martial Union.


    "Purpose of visit?" One of the Martial Apprentice guards asked him as he approached the building.


    "Mission." He replied as he showed them his mission bill and learner''s license. The guard frowned when he saw Rui''s grade, before nodding after having verified the legitimacy of the documents and the mission.


    "Okay, clear."


    They let him in without any problem.Copyright by N?v/elDrama.Org.


    (''I guess it''s odd for a grade-ten Martial Artist to still have only a learner''s license.'') He guessed as he reached the reception.


    "Excuse me." He approached one of the receptionists.


    "Hi! How may I help you." She cheerily replied.<sub> </sub>


    "I''m a Martial Artist of the Martial Union here to meet with a client." He told the receptionist. "She lives in another city, I was hoping to contact her via the Martial Union."


    "Alright, I need your license and mission bill please."


    He duly handed her the documents as she fiddled with a device on her table. Rui guessed that the Martial Union employed a certain degree of information technology in order to manage its data. However, he suspected that the information technology was highly limited and also not viable for mass production due to relying on umon or highly valuable esoteric resources.


    The same was true for all the esoteric technology he had seen in this world. They were capable of replicating a lot of Earth''s mostmon technology, yet they relied on scarcer wondrous esoteric resources instead of science to aplish it, making it impossible for it to be mass-produced and fully integrated into the structure of society because of scarcity and value of the esoteric resources used.


    "Your client is miss Fria, correct?" The receptionist asked.


    "Yes."


    "She resides in the town of Frungeur, which is about a little over two hours from here on carriage." The receptionist. "I can give you her address."


    "Isn''t there any issue with disclosing her personal details in that manner?"


    "Not at all, themission contract indicates consents to it in order to meet the Martial Artist who undertook themission."


    "I see, then please do."


    She scribbled down an address on a piece of paper before folding it and giving it to Rui. "That''s the address. You can visit themissions office of the Martial Union in the town of Freunger for guidance if you want."


    "Will do. Thank you."


    "You''re wee."


    Rui immediately set out for the town of Freunder.


    The receptionist had told him it would a little over two hours on carriage, which meant he could easily reach in under an hour as long as he exerted himself a little.


    He took the off-beat path away from the public to avoid as many prying eyes, and in about half an hour, he had reached the town of Freunger.


    It took him a longer time to actually reach the location in the address, since he needed to ask around. Thankfully there enough people who spoke Sanskrit, the internationalnguage of the Panama continent. Julian had helped Rui be proficient in thenguage when he was growing up.


    Eventually, Rui found himself in a rather slummy area. The infrastructure of this part of town was particrly bad, and the people were much poorer too.


    Rui was a bit confused. His remuneration pay was thirty gold coins, which meant the mission must have costed sixty gold coins. How could someone who could afford to pay for such a mission live in such an area?


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 309 Fria

    N?velDrama.Org content.


    "This should be it."


    He murmured as his eyebrow raised at the poor small hut in front of him. The structured looked so frail that Rui wouldn''t even need to use an Apprentice-level technique topletely demolish it.


    He knocked on the door lightly.


    "I haven''t finished preparing myself, the night hasn''t begun yet, please wait."


    Rui hadn''t even the faintest idea what those words meant, they were literally in a differentnguage. "I''m the Martial Artist from the Kandrian Martial Union who has epted yourmi-"


    The door clicked, instantly swinging wide open.


    Rui found himself staring at a young beautiful woman, who stared right back at him with disbelief and tion.


    "Miss Fria?" Rui asked.


    Rui''s eyebrows rose as he saw a tear flowing down from her eye, she seemed choked with emotion.


    "Are you okay?" He asked, seeing that she clearly wasn''t.


    "No. I mean yes, but no. Oh god I can''t believe you''re here. I ca-" She choked once as again as she pressed her lips together suppressing her emotions.


    Rui felt awkward. He had zero experience withforting emotional young women. He was quite happy that she spoke Sanskrit, however. For now, he just tried to move things along as smoothly as he could


    "Calm down miss." Rui said. "Take things slowly. I believe you wished to speak to me before the mission wasmenced?"


    She seemed to pull herself together at those words. "Yes, pleasee in."


    Rui crouched as he bent to fit into the small doorway. His growth spurt in the past three years had done wonders for his height. But it was more of a hinderance in situations like this, but he was surprised she was able to live in such small amodations.


    "Please take a seat." She gestured at a disheveled torn sofa that looked like it had been extracted from and dump. "Would you like something to drink?"


    "No thank you." He was thirsty, but he didn''t want to get sick on an international mission, and he didn''t trust anything in the entire district to be hygienic.


    She took a seat opposite to him, staring him in the eyes. "Sorry for my outburst earlier... It''s just that I''ve been through a lot, all for this very day."<sub> </sub>


    "It does seem that way, it''s not a matter to apologize about." Rui cated her.


    "Thank you. Unfortunately, I had been informed that mymission had been epted although they refused to share any details about you to me asides from your grade." She said.


    "I''m afraid I cannot share any details about myself either." Rui told her. He hadn''t taken off his mask even once the moment he left the Martial Academy.


    "Are you really a grade-ten Martial Artist?" She asked, concerned. "You seem very young."


    Rui had consciously maintained extremeposure, this was a technique every Martial Artist naturally learned as they grew stronger and stronger, in order to suppress and limit their aura and pressure. Martial Artists were so powerful that there very presence could trigger the subconscious sense of danger in normal humans, and could exert a lot of pressure on them that way. Restricting emotional expression was one way they could limit the pressure they exerted on others.


    The light grew a shade darker as the air grew tauter and perilous for just the briefest of moments, before returning to normal.


    Rui had loosened his control on his emotions just a little. However even that tiny bit inspired an immense amount of terror in Fria as she understood the Martial Artist before her was anything but ordinary


    "I''ve earned my grade." He told her. "Rest assured that I''m more than qualified to undertake this mission."


    Fria''s expression molded into relieved tion, before her emotions gripped her once more. "Please. Please save my family, my people, my vige. I cannot imagine how much they''ve suffered in the past eight months. I had just barely managed to escape that night, migrating to the Kingdom of Grahal. And it took eight months of working as a maid by day and a prostitute by night, living in this filth to cut down expenses until I had finally saved enough money tomission you."


    Her voice cracked at the end as she choked as she stared into his eyes. "You have to. You have to save them. Our vige is not poor, that''s why those Royluken bastards targeted us. If you seed, we''ll give you a lot of money! I''ll give you everything I have, even my bod-"


    "I cannot promise you of my sess." Rui cut her off before she could finish her words, crushing a pang of lust his hormonal teenage body felt. "What I can promise you is that I''ll do my absolute best. This, I can absolutely guarantee. My grade is a bit higher than the difficulty grade of the mission, which means the Kandrian Martial Union believes I''m more than qualified to undertake this mission, therefore the probability of sess should not be low."


    Rui''s words inspired confidence in her, lighting up hope in her eyes.


    Rui on the hand, understood why she went out of her way to request a meeting with him even though it would have increased the cost of the mission, being that this was an international mission.


    She wanted to incentivize and motivate him to seed by offering him money and sex, so that he would take the mission very seriously and do everything he could to seed.


    He also understood how she managed to afford such an expensivemission. Thest eight months must have been a living hell for her as she did everything she could to amass the money needed tomission a powerful Martial Artist who was capable of fulfilling her wishes.


    Her story earned his sympathy, as well as his respect and admiration for her dedication and perseverance for the sake of her people.


    "If there''s nothing else." He said, getting up. "I''ll be setting out to fulfill your wish."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 310 Observation

    "Thank you, and good luck." She got up, bowing. Yet, just as Rui was about to leave, she stopped him.


    "Wait. I have something to give you."


    Rui tilted his head as she reached for her neck, taking off a string ne with what looked like a w attached to it.


    "This is the w of a skyfringe eagle." She told him. "It protects the crops by hunting the pests and critters that destroy the crops. In our vige we wear it around our necks for good fortune."


    Rui wordlessly epted it as she put it around his neck.


    "Good luck." She wished him.


    "Thank you, goodbye" Rui nodded as he left her humble abode.


    The Hefermaine vige was located a little south of the Kingdom of Grahal. Rui thought about how he was going to do this.


    The first thing he needed was information. Information on the exact number of gang members in the vige. The tendencies and habits; things like where they spent most of their time, what they did with most of their time and how alert they were.


    He would also have liked to get as much information about Vranil Fra as he could, although he didn''t expect to get much as much as he would have liked. After all, he would need to see Vranil fight in order to gain any meaningful information.


    "Maybe I can get him to fight." Rui murmured as a few ideas popped into his head.


    A few hourster, he reached the edge of the Kingdom of Grahal on the western side, quickly jumping past the border as he sprinted away at top speed. He never lost track of the path that would take him most of the way to the Hefermaine vige, but he never stayed close either.


    It was possible that the Ruyloken gang had kept lookouts on the path to the Hefermaine vige that would inform them of the arrival of a new Martial Artist, thus Rui chose to travel parallelly to it deep in the forest, he kept track of the path from afar with Seismic Mapping, which allowed him to map the environment and anything that had seismic radiation.


    This way, there was absolutely no way the Ruyloken Gang could possibly know that there was a Martial Artist out for them. Rui had not given his identity entering or exiting the Kingdom of Grahal and now was keeping himself remote as he travelled to the Hefermaine vige.


    Thankfully, it wasn''t more than three hours away by carriage, he managed to reach it in an hour.


    He was quite paranoid about being found; thus, he took his precautions. When he was ten kilometers from the vige, he stopped using Apprentice-level techniques. If Vranil had sensory techniques, he might have been able to sense Rui''s approach, after all.


    When he was one kilometer away, he stopped. He jumped to the top of a tall tree, pulled out a portable monocr as he used it to get a good look at the Hefermaine vige.


    Unfortunately, he didn''t see much.<sub> </sub>


    The Hefermaine vige wasrge, because there were a lot of wide andrge crop fields across the entire vige. Meaning the vige was asrge as a small town, or multiple districts because of the size of the crop fields, despite the poption of the vige being low.


    This made things harder for Rui.


    However, he didn''t want to take a risk and try infiltrating the vige, if Vranil was a good sensor and detected him, then there would be problems.Copyright by N?v/elDrama.Org.


    The reason Rui was averse to just walking in wreaking havoc was because it was possible that the Ruyloken Gang would use the vigers as hostages, which inevitably would mean that they would die if he didn''t surrender himself or something of the sort.


    And there was no way he was surrendering himself, that was as good as signing his death warrant.


    Although he didn''t think the probability of Vranil being a powerful strong sensor was high, because otherwise, Fria would not have been able to escape the Ruyloken Gang, he still wanted to be careful. It was possible that Vranil simply didn''t care that a single girl managed to escape.


    If that was the case, that would make Vranil a bit careless and stupid, because that very well could lead to a bounty being ced on his head.


    Like it basically did, with Rui aiming to take him down.


    Rui began circling around the vige from a kilometer away, asionally jumping a tree and taking a good look with his monocr. He soon saw his first gang member.


    (''They''re armed quite heavily.'') Rui noted. They had muskets, knives and other des as well.


    It had taken him quite some time to circle around the vige, gathering as much information as he could piece-by-piece, until he got a general gist of what was going on.


    The vigers outnumbered the gang immensely. However, the gang members being armed as well as the presence of a powerful Martial Apprentice was more than enough to crush any hope of resistance.


    The conditions of the vigers was not great, they looked a little malnourished, but were still healthy enough to keep working, which they had been doing non-stop.


    (''They''re feeding them just enough so that they can keep working and tending to the yield and so that the money keeps rolling in.'') Rui sighed.


    Furthermore, he sensed groups of vigers holed in buildings with guards on the outside, preventing anyone from leaving. Rui''s seismic sense was too far away to get him a clear picture of the people inside, but he already had had his suspicions.


    (''They''re holding the elderly and young children hostage so that the working adults don''t even dream about trying something. I bet they''ve killed a few of them as an example.'')


    This was the reason Rui didn''t see too many patrollers from the gang, they already had a pretty good way of guaranteeing cooperation from the vigers. If the vigers were even half of what Fria was, they wouldn''t do anything that put their families at jeopardy.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 311 Observations

    In summary, the able adult farmers worked relentlessly while the elderly and the children who couldn''t work were used as leverage. The presence of arms as well as the powerful Martial Apprentice made their situation absolutely hopeless.


    Rui only counted a little less than half of the gang members from the known number of members of the gang in his reconnaissance, which meant they were hidden in the vige. He wasn''t able to pin-point which seismic signatures he was sensing via Seismic Mapping were the unseen gang members, but they were likely cooped up in the building.Copyright by N?v/elDrama.Org.


    Now that Rui hadpleted the initial reconnaissance surveince of the vige. He wanted to take his time gathering more information of the movements and activities of the vigers and the gang members before making a n of how toplete the mission.


    He had already ruled out running into the vige at this very moment at attacking the gang. Although the human gang members with muskets weren''t a threat by themselves, they were a threat if he was fighting another powerful Martial Apprentice.


    Although musket bullets were faster than he was to some degree, the humans firing them most certainly were not. By the time normal humans would shift, take aim and pull the trigger, Martial Apprentices could easily have killed all of them thanks to their enhanced battle cognition and superhuman speed, especially one as good as Rui. Even if some stray bullets hit Martial Artists, most of them had defensive techniques that could mitigate their damage.


    The problem was that even though Rui could easily deal with the gang if they were by themselves, they weren''t by themselves. Rui would be distracted with fighting Vranil and they could pepper him with bullets or even take hostages.


    Although Rui could probably still fight and even win under those extenuating circumstances, it would be far riskier and would certainly end up with a lot of dead vigers. One of the conditional constraints of themission was that the loss of life to the vigers needed to be minimized, and he could certainly be viting that condition with this tactic.


    Thus, this idea was immediately tossed out. Taking a head-on brute-force approach was not really viable. That left more covert measures.


    He would need to ensure that the conflict between himself and the gang urred asymmetrically and non-confrontally. Meaning, he attacked them in ways, timings and ces that mitigated their advantages and increased the significance of their disadvantages.


    He had hatched up several potential ns, but intended to gather more information to gauge their probabilities of sess and flesh out the ones with the highest probability of desired sess while tossing out the ideas that probably weren''t going to cut it.


    Night was just an hour away, and Rui intended to see what their arrangements for the night were. That was a crucial piece of information that would be required before he decided on how to proceed.


    Once it was night, he began circling the vige while carefully observing what he saw. When it was night, the gang members who had patrolled throughout the day actually changed with a different set of guards who took their ces.


    (''A day and night shift system.'') Rui observed. The working farmers stayed in the fields for quite some time more until they were finally allowed to sleep.<sub> </sub>


    (''They''re basically ves.'')


    One of his ns was to ambush them during the night, however he realized that might not be as easy as he had hoped. The night shift guards and patrollers were actually quite alert and sharp, to their credit. Rui could see they were highly aware of their surroundings at all times. Despite the night, it would be difficult to ambush them without being instantly noticed. It seems they were extremely wary of being attacked at night


    If he had more stealth techniques it would have been manageable. Rui sighed. Even though this hadn''t meant to be a covert mission, it kind of was turning into one inadvertently because Rui wanted to optimize his approach.


    He had Blink


    Still, it was one of his best ns regardless. Unless something better popped up somehow, he would probably be sticking to this n.


    The night passed away boringly and statically. But in the morning, there was a change.


    Early in the morning, a group of five of the gang members headed off into the forest, carrying muskets, ropes, arge bag among other things.


    (''They''re hunting.'') Rui mused. He had expected that. He decided to follow them at a distance, making sure he was never closer than two-hundred-and-fifty meters to them. With Seismic Mapping, he didn''t need to be particrly close to them. Furthermore, they didn''t seem to speak Sanskrit, so there was no intel he could gain from following them around.


    In the span of four hours, they managed to catch fourrge boars as well as a deer. They hauled back their catch merrily, heading back to the vige. The gang members feasted on the meal, even giving some to the vigers, albeit not much. What annoyed Rui was that he still hadn''t even gotten a glimpse of Vranil Fra yet. The man refused toe out of wherever the hell he was.


    The rest of the day passed the same as the previous day, and Rui got aplete picture of all the activities of all the members of the vige, gang or otherwise.


    He already had a n at hand, but the problem was hisck of information on Vranil. Ultimately, the information he had on Vranil was not as updated nor detailed as he would have liked. If he could see Vranil fight for even a bit, he would understand the man''s physical parameters, approach to conflict and even hisbat mentality. These things could make the difference between life and death. It was possible that Vranil had grown much stronger since hisst recorded fight.


    In which case, Rui would be saving his own life by finding that out ahead of time.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 312 Bear Chasing

    The good news was that Rui had more-or-less figured out Vranil''s location through analyzing the seismic radiation readings his Seismic mapping technique had picked up. Vranil''s location was likely in the most luxurious amodations that the vige had to offer; the vige chief''s home. Rui deduced his position based on the frequent iing and outgoing traffic of the gang members in and out the building,pared to all other buildings. That along with the fact that there was only one presence of only one Seismic signature within the building, despite its size, gave him away.


    "But how can I get him to fight?" Rui wondered. "The only reason he himself would fight instead of his gang members is if they cannot handle an issue without casualties."


    Just then, Rui''s eyes widened as an interesting idea shed through his head.


    "Hehe." He chuckled. "This might actually work."


    He immediately turned around heading back to the Kingdom of Grahal, moving swiftly through the forest. Within an hour, he had entered the Kingdom of Grahal. He quickly made his way to the closestmissions office of Kandrian Martial Union.


    "Excuse me." He addressed a staff member, having entered the building after the legitimacy of his documents were verified.


    "How may I help you?" The staff member smiled at him.


    "I wish to purchase information on all known Apprentice-level fauna within a hundred-kilometer radius of the Hefermaine vige."


    Martial Artists could purchase information from the Martial Union not included in the Mission bill, however extra information outside the mission bill was not free and had to be paid for.


    N?velDrama.Org content.


    "Alright, please give me your license."


    Rui provided it to her as she verified it, returning it back to him.


    "It will be prepared shortly." She told him. "It will cost around one-hundred-and-fifteen silver coins."


    "Can it be deducted from my Martial Academy ount?"


    "Yes, of course. Give me a second."


    Soon the process waspleted as the woman handed him a box of files. "Here you go, Apprentice Quarrier. The information you requested for."


    "Thank you."


    Rui immediately took the box over to a couch and table on the waiting room. He immediately started skimming through the files, absorbing the information at an incredible rate. Normally, even the Mind Pce technique did not allow for such speedy storage of information, but Rui''s enhanced mind as well as the extreme effort he had put into heightening his master of the technique had allowed him to reach a level with it that broke the ordinary limits of the technique.


    In merely ten minutes, he had read through all the files, and hadpletely memorized all the data provided in it.


    "Thank you. I''ll be taking my leave." He put the box on the table.


    "You''ve purchased the information, not rented it. It''s yours." She said.


    "I''ve memorized it, I don''t need it anymore, I can''t carry it around for my mission either." Rui said, turning around and leaving in a hurry as she stared at his back, dumbfounded.


    There were many more Apprentice-level beasts within the the geographic vicinity of the Hefermaine vige, more than he had expected. But, in hindsight, it was to be expected. The Kingdom of Grahal was poorer and couldn''t afford the high amount of environmental and ecological control that the Ministry of Environment and Ecology of the Kandrian Empire had.


    Thus, the fauna was more unadultered. Rui quickly sorted through the information in his mind pce, as he found what he was looking for.<sub> </sub>


    "The Frowning Bear... Mid-grade Apprentice-level beast. Thick-headed but also has a strong sense of survival and is also easy to aggravate. Not to mention, just strong enough to force him to show a bit of his strength. Just perfect for my needs." He murmured.


    That was his n.


    If he wanted to see Vranil fight, then he merely needed to give him a reason.


    A rampaging Apprentice-grade wild bear that threatened to sabotage his whole operation was just perfect.


    Thankfully, the bear wasn''t too far either, merely forty-two kilometers away from the Hefermaine vige. Furthermore, it was a territorial creature that spent most of its time in its cave, this made it easier for Rui to find it.


    Within an hour, he reached the location of its known territory. Rui uncaringly sprinted in as he used Seismic Mapping to look for it.


    Thankfully, a big bear with Apprentice-grade power was hard to miss. Its seismic radiation was loud and Rui could perceive I from quite a distance away.


    Half a minuteter, it was already within his field of vision.


    "Intimidating." he murmured.


    The bear was quiterge. Its eyes were blood-red and it had razor sharp teeth that adorned a huge jaw.


    But despite this, Rui didn''t feel even a pang of fear.


    The bear was too weak, Rui could kill it quite quickly if he wanted to. At his current level, anything below the highest echelons of the Apprentice Realm could not even make him feel threatened.


    "ROOOOOAAAAR" The bear spotted him.


    Rui wordlessly watched it as it rampaged towards him, angered at having its territory invaded


    "ROAAA-" "Shut up."


    His voice was soft, but the peril he emitted was not.


    The bear froze as the air grew cold and sharp, stretching taut. A maelstrom of pressure crashed onto the bear''s mind as Rui red at it, releasing the shackles he had ced on his aura earlier to reduce his presence for the sake of stealth.


    Suddenly, Rui dashed towards it at a high speed. The bear didn''t even dare to try and fight back, as it turned around, running way at top speed.


    "Good." Rui had predicted this. Its strong survival sense was one of the reasons Rui had chosen it. This way he could lead it wherever he wanted by threatening it, especially since it was slower than it. Rui slowly began forcing it to run in the direction he wanted.


    He did this by barricading its path every time it ran in a direction that he didn''t want it to. This involved a lot of circling around to ensure the bear followed a path he wanted it to.


    They had a long way to go, especially since Rui couldn''t just chase the bear to the vige through the shortest direction, he had more or less figured out the general location of Vranil, he wanted the bear to enter the vige at a location Vranil was closest to.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 313 Plan

    The task turned out more difficult than Rui expected, the bear was quite erratic and chaotic, causing Rui to spend literally every alternate second redirecting the bear in the direction he wanted to. He needed to use abination of fear and pain with the Stinger to redirect it each time.


    It took half a day until they were finally close to the vige.


    (''Finally!'') Rui was ecstatic. He was actually quite exhausted, but he focused. The crucial part was soon toe. He had redirected the bear where he wanted, through great difficulty. Now he needed to send the bear rampaging straight into the part of the vige where Vranil was closest.


    As they reached closer, Rui red at the bear, exposing his hostility. He wanted to inspire even greater terror to cause the bear to speed up.


    "ROOOAAARR." The bear roared as it picked up the pace in terror. Rui kicked it in the ass with the Stinger once more before stopping and diving straight to the ground. He had already reached quite close to the vige and he could not go much further without revealing his presence.


    But what he had done was already enough.


    In the distance, nearly half a minuteter he heard the bear roaring once more. However, this time, he heard the humans screaming in rm as well. He heard several gunshots firing over and over again, followed by painful screeches drowning out grunts from the bear.


    And then there was silence.


    Rui jumped up to the top of a tree swiftly. Hiding behind the trunk as he stood on a branch. He pulled out a monocr not wanting to miss anything further. Thankfully, dusk had already longe and the darkness gave him cover.


    The bear had run into a group of gang members patrolling the vige, and had immediately attacked them in a frenzy.


    This was part of Rui''s predictions as well as his n. Having been forced to run for half a day had caused it to develop an extreme sense of hunger. It had avoided Rui because its survival instinct was even stronger, but ordinary humans could not threaten it, even with weapons. It had immediately lunged at them even as they futilely shot at it, and killed them all, before beginning to eat silently and greedily.


    But the deed was done, and it had already drawn the attention of the second of the two living beings that could kill it.


    "There it is." one of the gang members shouted from a distance pointing at a distance. "It''s already killed three of us."


    Rui''s eyes sharpened as he felt the atmosphere grow heavy.


    The humans and the bear froze in terror.


    "Strong." Rui evaluated, raising an eye.


    Vranil Fra was a gargantuan man, he had an aggressive and savage aura. With unkept hair and beard, he looked like someone who had resided in the wilderness for the past eight months, than luxurious quarters.


    He ran to the bear with wide open arms.


    "Not that fast at all, still not bad, especially for his size." Rui murmured.


    The bear immediately turned around, running away. But it was toote.


    SPLAT


    He swung his open hand at the bear and five long finger-deep gashes appeared on its back.


    "ROOOOAAAAR!" The bear roared in pain as it tried getting away despite the pain and the profuse blood loss. Yet Vranil held in ce with fingers still in the wound.<sub> </sub>


    Rui''s eyes widened at that sight.


    He was holding the bear back with just a single arm!


    N?velDrama.Org content.


    Even Rui would need to use his entire body to aplish something like that. As far as sheer raw physical power went, Vranil was in the same league as Fae, probably even higher, being a male.


    The bear turned around, biting him. It had realized escape was futile, its sense of survival forced it to fight back.


    Yet, it couldn''t even hurt him, another feat that impressed Rui immensely.


    SPLAT


    Five deep gashes emerged on bear''s neck, spurting out blood like an open tap. It was already toote at that point.


    The bear perished, quickly.


    ? Vranil Fra had an ugly expression on his face. "Where did this beare from? There were supposed to be no Apprentice-grade animals in the near vicinity of the Hefermaine vige, nor has this bear been spotted in the past eight months. Why did this bear travel such arge distance away from its natural habitat?"


    The men scratched their head in confusion. They hadn''t even considered the matter; they had been too busy trying to stay alive.


    "There''s a chance it was driven here by a predator. A predator powerful enough to chase it. Look at these wounds on its body." He pointed at wounds inflicted by Rui''s Stinger. "I did not give it those, and they''re quite fresh as well." The man gruffly spoke. "Be careful when you head out for tomorrow''s hunting, take more men."


    The men gulped in fear at those words.


    Vranil turned back to the corpse of the bear. "Drain and skin the corpse. Its meat can be of use."


    He turned around at those words, heading back to his quarters.


    "Yes sir!"


    If Rui had been able to hear and understand their conversation, he would have been grinning ear-to-ear.


    Everything was proceeding as he had forseen. All of it.


    Rui''s n to chase the bear was not just to see Vranil fight, it was also part of his n to eventually take down the gang, all without a single casualty to the vige. He intended toplete this mission as cleanly as possible.


    If the gang members came to believe that there potentially was a predator in the forests powerful enough to hunt even mid-grade Apprentice-level bear, then would they suspect a Martial Artist when Rui killed all their hunting gang members in the forest tomorrow?


    Furthermore, once all those hunting gang members did die in his hands tomorrow, would they foolishly send more ordinary humans? Or would they send in a Martial Artist instead?


    Into the forest, misbelieving he was fighting a dumb beast instead of a superhumanly smart Martial Artist.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 314 Macabre

    The answers to those questions were exactly what Rui wanted them to be. Rui had already made up his mind on how toplete the mission. He would no intentions of fighting them in the vige where they were mostfortable, not immediately at least. He would draw them out to the forest and finish them before they ever even knew that their enemy was a human.


    At the very least, he absolutely had to fight Vranil away from the vigers and the rest of the Ruyloken gang. That was a bare minimum condition he had created for whatever n he would enact toplete the mission.


    He hadputed seventeen potential ns. Out of which only four had a reasonably high probability of sess. Drawing Vranil out into the woods under the pretense of Apprentice-level beast had one of the highest probabilities of sess.


    Furthermore, these created the best and most advantageous circumstances for Rui to fight Vranil as well. The mentality one adopted was very different from the mentality needed to fight humans. This would work against him in their fight.


    "Still, he''s strong." Rui murmured. "It''s been a while since the difficulty grade of my mission was inurate."


    He thought back to his very first mission nearly two years ago.


    Still, this wasn''t nearly as bad as that was. The mission should have been a grade-ten mission as far as difficulty went, in Rui''s opinion. Vranil was almost quite likely a grade-ten Martial Artist, instead of the grade-nine that was the estimated difficulty of the mission.


    Vranil was strong. His offense was even greater than was advertised. His piercing offense was lethal.


    "No, it was closer to ripping than it was piercing." Rui murmured to himself. The man had not conditioned his nails to be particrly sharp or anything of the sort. He had incredibly powerful hands and grip strength. He sheared the flesh off of the bear, which was an even more impressive feat as far as Rui was concerned.


    "His defense was extremely impressive too." Rui murmured. The fact that the bear was unable to hurt his hand with its bite was quite problematic, even if the bear was already weakened and damaged immensely. Rui would not be able to win the battle with a single Stinger, most likely.


    His speed, however, was unttering. Rui definitely held a significant edge in this regard and that would most certainly turn out to be a huge boon in the fight. It was an advantage Rui intended to abuse.


    For now, he had done everything he needed to. Rui merely needed to wait until the next morning,


    And waited he did. He consumed a few rejuvenation potions. He had been quite exhausted from the bear chase, and he also did intend to stay up until the next day until the men went out for hunting. Falling asleep would be an absolute blunder, even if he had been trained to sleep very lightly in the Martial foundation stage.


    The night passed as Rui observed the gang members on guard and patrol duty than night. It seemed as though word of a potential Apprentice-level predator in the forest had spread among the men of the Ruyloken gang, as they were all extremely tensed and alert as they patrolled the vige, far more so than usual.


    Soon, dawn came.


    And as expected, the hunting team was loaded.


    Nine heavily armed men set out cautiously, early in the morning just as dawn cracked in the sky.


    It was a beautiful day that inspired positivity.


    Yet the men looked terrified.


    "Ssshh." One of them whispered to the other. "You''re making too much noise!"


    "I can''t help it!" The other replied. "It''s literally a pouch of metal bullets!"


    "Why the fuck did you bring that along with you?"


    "It can save our lives! More bullets mean more firepower!"


    "Idiot!" He cursed. "You won''t have time to reload that many times if we do find the Apprentice-level predator!"


    "Oh." Realization dawned on his face.


    If Rui could understand their words, he might have burst outughing, giving away his hidden position.


    Once the men were one-hundred meters into the forest;


    THACK


    A sudden sound behind them drew their attention, as they instantly turned around with terrified expressions on their faces.


    "It was just a stone that fell." One sighed, before his expression turned confused. "Fell from where?"


    Suddenly, the air grew extraordinarily peril.


    Yet, before they could even begin to process it.


    THWACK<sub> </sub>


    POW


    BAM


    ...


    In the span of two seconds, Rui had whizzed in and broke all the limbs of all the men.


    Copyright by N?v/elDrama.Org.


    They began screeching in pain even before they hit the ground, and Rui watched as they did.


    CRACK


    "AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRGHH!" One man screamed as Rui crumbled an already bone with a single step.


    (''I need to finish this now.'')


    He grabbed one of the knives, walking over to the men.


    Raw terror coursed through their body as they understood what he was about to do.


    Rui understood what he was about to do.


    How could he not?


    He could feel a part of his heart holding him back, begging him to stop as it moaned what he was about to do.


    What he had to do


    Every step he took forward felt heavier and heavier.


    Yet, he didn''t stop.


    "NO! PLEA-!"


    SPLAT SPLAT SPLAT


    The man choked in pain as Rui hacked at his body thrice swiftly, leaving deep gashes that killed him on the spot.


    Rui could feel it.


    He could feel the very moment the light escaped the man''s eyes, sending a shudder down to his very heart.


    He forcefully turned his eyes away from the corpse''s eyes that still contained horror in them.


    The remaining men all screamed in terror.


    They screamed at the top of their voices in despair.


    And then, they didn''t.


    Their voices died down.


    One-by-one.


    It happened quickly.


    Yet, it took forever.


    When it ended, he was surrounded by corpses. His eyes were cold, and his lips were pursed.


    The worst part was that he didn''t quite feel as bad as he wanted to.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 315 Commencement

    In less than a second, Rui had already made deep gashes across all their bodies, killing them on the spot. He ensured that the length and depth as well as the distance between the gashes was consistent and equal across all bodies.


    All of this was to reinforce the idea that a beast had killed them instead of a Martial Artist. If Rui had killed them with his techniques, then it would be quite difficult to believe that a carnivore was responsible for his deaths. Vranil mighte to suspect that it was a human.


    Suddenly, Rui turned around sharply as Seismic Mapping picked up a powerful seismic signature in the vige moving towards his direction at an incredible speed.


    (''It''s time'') He grabbed one of the corpses, slit its throat and sprinting away deeper into the forest an incredible speed, dragging the corpse with him by the arm.


    The corpse left arge trail of blood as Rui dragged it along, indicating the path Rui had taken.


    Just two secondster, Vranil arrived at the location of the corpses.


    As Rui had predicted.


    Rui had ensured that all nine men were screaming as loud as possible, screeching to their absolute limits.


    There was no way the Ruyloken Gang failed to hear them, the men must have quickly informed Vranil of the screams and he must have dispatched immediately. That was the reason Rui tortured them before killing them.


    All to draw Vranil out from the vige.


    Hunting a predator in a vast forest was difficult, not just because predators were strong, but because they were also difficult to locate in such a vast amount of area.


    However, in this scenario, the predator''s location wasrgely known. The men walked the same path and hunted in the same area every day. This was a rare chance for Vranil to be able to easily locate and confront the beast immediately.


    In Vranil''s mind, if the beast wasn''t dealt with immediately, there would only be more and more casualties as time passed. He intended to kill the beast that threatened to sabotage his operation as soon as possible, he couldn''t let it wander around freely.


    Thus, he had immediately sprinted into the forest at top speed when his men informed him of the screams. There was no doubt in his mind that the same beast that had hunted the bear into the vige was definitely responsible for killing his men. They were armed to the teeth and would have easily dealt with the ordinary predators of the forest. He was also rtively certain that the beast would not leave the area immediately as it fed on the corpses of his men.


    It was the perfect timing.


    When he had arrived, his expression rotted as he beheld the corpses of his men with deep gashes that looked like they were mauled by the ws of a big cat predator.


    He frowned. (''Why did it not eat them? Did it kill them for fun?'')


    Then he noticed one of them was missing, and soon the trail of blood that Rui had left entered his vision.


    Vranil''s eyes widened as he made a deduction. (''It didn''t eat my men, but it took one of the corpses away with it. The only reason it would do that is if it had cubs or offspring that it wanted to feed!'')


    In his mind, this was an excellent and brilliant inference.N?velDrama.Org content.


    (''I can''t let them survive! If its offspring grow up and popte the forest, we''re fucking screwed!'')<sub> </sub>


    If Rui had been able to hear his thoughts, he would have smirked. Rui had evaluated the probability of Vranil infering the existence of offpsring as around seventy-five percent. Unfortunately, he couldn''t be sure, it would all depend on exactly how smart the man really was. Rui could not know such a thing, but he truly did not think Vranil was stupid.


    Thankfully, Vranil was actually quite smart. Smart enough to bepletely fooled by Rui.


    Vranil did not even hesitate as he followed the trail of blood at top speed. He was confident he could catch up, the fact that the bear managed to escape the beast meant that the beast wasn''t very fast, as long as Vranil chased after the blood as fast as he could, he believed that he should have been able to catch up.


    Just as Rui predicted he would.


    Everything was going as he had forseen.


    "He didn''t react." Rui murmured, running, as he watched Vranil chasing after him, with Seismic Mapping.


    He nced at the corpse he was dragging.


    There was no head.


    Where did the head go?


    Rui had tossed the head into arge bush five meters side of the trail of blood he was making.


    Why did he do that?


    He wanted to test Vranil''s sensory capabilities. If Vranil had even decent sensory capabilities, he would have been able to detect the head inside the bush instantly, and most certainly would have atleast reacted differently. After all, why would the predator put the head into a bush?


    In order to test distinguish whether one had good senses or not, he nearly needed to create circumstances where someone with good senses would react quite different than someone with bad senses. Then he would be able to tell whether one has good or bad senses based on their reactions.


    Rui had done exactly that.


    However, Rui could not detect even a single hint of any reaction from Vranil based on the seismic radiation he was giving off. He had not even turned his head, as far as Rui could tell.


    "He didn''t react, I guess that means his senses are probably shit." Rui murmured to himself softly. "Regardless, n D it is."


    He dragged the corpse into deep a cave that he had scouted earlier and tossed it deep inside.


    Vranil arrived ten secondster, yet he paused as he saw the trail enter into a cave.


    "Tsk." he tutted with irritation as he gritted his teeth.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 316 Clash

    Rui watched his reaction carefully. In Rui''s mind, there was a forty-five-percent chance he would head straight into the cave, a forty-five-percent chance he would go back to the vige to get his hands on some lighting so he could see, and only a ten-percent chance he would forget about hunting the beast.


    Vranil turned around and sprinted away in the direction of the vige.


    "Hm, cautious." Rui muttered unhappily. He had hoped Vranil would enter the cave blind. That would have made his life much easier. Had he done that, it would have been game over.


    Darkness did not matter to Rui. Thebination of Seismic Mapping and Primordial Instinct was more than enough tofortably fight even with his eyes closed. Vranil on the other hand clearly did not possess great sensory capabilities. The test from earlier as well as the fact that Fria managed to escape was enough evidence in favour of that matter. The fact that he chose not to enter the cave blindly proved this as well.


    Rui truly wanted to fight him head-on. He was quite confident in his ability to win. Vranil had defined weaknesses, meaning the VOID algorithm would eat them up, especially now that he had acquired the ability to use the pattern recognition system of the VOID algorithm.


    However, he wasn''t stupid.


    This wasn''t a training spar in the Academy. Nor was this a contest like that of the Martial Contest.


    This was a real fight. This was life and death.


    If he lost, it would be game over and the lives of those vigers would be at stake. There were plenty of powerful Martial Artists who he could fight in a fair setting. But when it came real fights where his life was at stake. He was not going to pull his punches by not using unfair tactics that gave him unfair advantages.


    Everything was fair game in war.


    "Get me torchs,mps, matches and a rope!" Vranil snarled at his men when he reached the vige.


    His men had no idea why he wanted those items, but they did not dare question him as several of them scurried about to procure the items he wanted.


    Vranil quickly tied the smallest ofmps to the belt loops in his lower garments. He quickly grabbed the matches and the torch and immediately sprinted back into the forest at top speed.


    He had no intention of letting the beast go. The beast had already killed twelve of his men, and more importantly, if it did have cubs, then the situation was much worse than he thought and he would need to kill them as soon as possible otherwise they would be a threat even he would not be able to handle.


    Soon, he reached the cave. He lit the torch quickly before tucking the matches in his clothes and immediately walked in.


    The multiple sources of light he had with him gave him the confidence to jump straight into the cave. But the deeper he travelled, the more he felt something was wrong. He could not hear anything; it was almost as if the cave was entirely deserted. If there were indeed carnivore offspring feeding on the corpse of one of his men, then there wouldn''t be such silence at all.


    He was already quite deep into the cave and the light from the entrance was already dim.


    Suddenly, he stepped on something soft.


    His eyes widened when he recognized the headless corpse as that of one of his men. His confusion turned into fear when he realized that he already reached the end of the cave.


    ("Something''s wrong here.'') He could feel it. Something was very wrong.


    Yet the realization came toote.<sub> </sub>


    POW POW POW.


    Suddenly, out of nowhere, several wind sts came out of nowhere, striking sting against his body. They did not do much damage to him. But the same could not be said for the sources of light he had brought along.


    The wind sts shattered the torches and themps into pieces,pletely dispelling mes.


    "Fuck!" Vranil had no idea what was happening, but his sense of danger was tingling. Yet before he could even turn away to leave.N?velDrama.Org content.


    PEW


    "AAARRGHH!" Vranil snarled as he felt an excruciating piercing pain on his neck. He abandoned the n of running back to the entrance.


    He needed to leave immediately.


    BOOM!!!


    An explosion sted a hole in a clump of rocks in the forest, reverberating across the entirety of the forest.


    From the dust, Vranil''s body emerged as he leaped out of the cave.


    He nced at his left shoulder.


    His neck was bleeding profusely. He squeezed his neck muscles and bleeding stopped. He had applied an endurance technique that mitigated the impact wounds had on hisbat prowess, it was a technique that had saved his life multiple times.


    Vranil turned back to the hole he had made. He hade to realize what had happened.


    "You...!" He said to the masked figure that emerged from the dust. "You did this! You did all of this!"


    His eyes were bloodshot with rage.


    Rui did not say a word to him. He didn''t understand thenguage, but he more or less understood what the man was trying to say.


    He raised his closed fist, and a single finger stood up, drawing attention.


    The middle-finger.


    "I''LL FUCKING KILL YOU." The man rushed towards Rui. Just as Rui hoped. Rui''s only regret was that he wasn''t able to inflict a critical-enough wound to the man, as the detrimental effects of the Stinger to the neck weren''t enough. Furthermore, the man''s flesh was quite tough.


    Still, Rui was unperturbed. He took a neutral stance with an eager expression as the manshed out at him. He was secretly and guiltily relived that his Stinger ambush hadn''t done much damage. He intended to test his new-found prowess against someone at the peak of the Apprentice Realm, who was rushing towards him to kill him.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 317 No Longer Of Earth

    Heshed at Rui, swinging his wed hand at him wildly.


    WHOOSH


    BAM!


    Rui somersaulted out of the attack,nded a powerful drop kick on the man''s head. Vranil grimaced as he swung at Rui once more.


    Rui intercepted strike at the middle of his forearm, careful to avoid his hand.


    FLIP


    Vranil''s eyes flew wide open as the world turned upside-down. Rui had cleanly flipped him using Flow Flux. Under ordinary circumstances, Rui would not have been able to but Vranil''s state of mind was not conducive to stability.


    PEW


    Rui''s toe flew, whistling as it cut through the air and buried itself in his throat.


    "ARGH!" He choked as hended on his head.


    BAM!!


    Rui ser-kicked him to the head, sending his body flying across the forest, breaking past some trees. Even if the man was strong, Rui''s raw power was immense.


    Having mastered two highly-powerful high-grade techniques; Outer Convergence and me Breathing, as well as Adamant Reforging which also significantly increased the impact his fists were able to deliver had reached a whole different level. With four techniques in total amplifying his power, every strike of his was remarkably heavy. As far as he knew, only Fae, Ian and Fiona surpassed him in raw power.


    Well, Vranil did as well. But his defense wasn''t nearly as good. Even he couldn''t shrug off such a powerful impact to the head.


    He got up groggily.


    BLINK


    PEW!


    Rui used Blink to pierce him yet again. Vranil stumbled unsteadily as he breathed heavily as he closed the new wound Rui had just inflicted on him.


    He tried to gather his bearings, but Rui was just overwhelming. Had he been in peak physical and mental condition, he would have performed much better. But he was psychologically and physically far away from his peak. Rui''s schemes and ns had affected him negatively in many ways, physically and psychologically.


    Furthermore, he noticed Rui had changed. The pressure he exerted on Vranil had been rising, bit-by-bit. His fighting style slowly and gradually morphed as it flowed, changing forms.


    And Vranil felt weaker and weaker.


    Rui''s timing and cement grew sharper and sharper. He had begun shutting down everything Vranil did, bit-by-bit.


    Every attack.


    Every defense.


    Every evasion.


    All of it crumbled. Rui mercilessly crushed all of it.


    Vranil didn''t understand. It was as though every movement Rui made was made to defeat him. Every step, ever shift, every swing and thrust, even the tiniest of twitches. Each movement Rui made was as though it was made to defeat him.


    Vranil''s eyes widened as he met the boy''s sharp gaze.


    He felt transparent.


    He felt naked.


    He felt as though Rui saw through him.


    Saw through his Martial Art.


    Saw through the depths of his Martial Path.


    Saw through, and denied.


    Denied his sess.


    Denied his aplishments.


    Denied his pride as a Martial Artist.


    Denied his Martial Art, and even his very Martial Path.


    In his eyes, Rui had be the Antithesis; He who Denied.


    Rui''s fighting style took on a new light in Vranil''s eyes. It was as though his Martial Art had been created to destroy his.


    With every movement Rui made, countering every move his foe made, Vranil felt like his Martial Art itself was breaking.<sub> </sub>


    He felt as though his very Martial Path was crumbling.


    He felt despair.


    A Martial Art that countered his own Martial Art to the very depths of his core, of who he was.


    He felt as though Rui was denying his very being!


    Every w. Every Imperfection. Every trace of weakness. Every trace of inadequacy.


    They came to life.


    It was as though Rui had given them life. They came to life and began eating away at his Martial Art. They ate away at his Martial Art as Rui''s adaptive evolution exploited the void where Vranil''s Martial Art was.


    Vranil felt his power leaving him. He hadn''t felt this weak since he was a human, before he discovered his Martial Path.


    A Martial Path he could no longer see.


    It was gone.


    All that was left was a void.


    All he could see was the Antithesis that had destroyed it.


    His eyes lost their vitality as he went limp.


    BAM!!


    A powerful Flowing Canon crashed into his gut, sending him flying away at tremendous speeds, breaking past a few trees until one finally stopped him.N?velDrama.Org content.


    THUD


    He felt to the ground, coughing blood.


    He didn''t care anymore.


    He had lost more than just the fight and his operation.


    He had lost his Martial Path.


    Every time he thought about his Martial Art, he could only see the antithesis that had destroyed it. Every ounce of power in his body dissipated at the sight. He didn''t want to be a Martial Artist in a world where that Martial Art existed.


    "Kill me." He said the object of his despair as walked towards him.


    He didn''t respond.


    He simply stared at him with his dark eyes.


    "Kill me!" The man snarled in anger. "I said kill m-"


    BOOM!!


    CRACK


    An incredibly heavy drop-kicknded on his head. The sheer power it contained shook the verynd.


    A pool of blood and cerebral fluid emerged on the ground from his head.


    Rui simply watched, waiting.


    He only left after he sensed that Vranil''s heart stopped beatingpletely. No healing potion of any kind would save him.


    "I wonder why he gave up at the end there." He murmured. "He should have felt he still could have won or definitely escaped alive if he had continued fighting. It''s annoying to chase people after all."


    Rui took onest look at the corpse in front of him, before sighing and shaking his head.


    What shook him more than killing was how little he was shook by killing. He had been prepared to feel traumatized, prepared to feel horrible.


    But no.


    He didn''t feel all too much.


    Part of it was because these men had enved the innocent vigers of the Hefermaine vige no doubt. He still felt angry when he thought about how much they must have suffered. But another part of it was, without a doubt, himself.


    He had changed. Nearly sixteen years in a world where death was far more frequent and normal had altered his mentality, sixteen years of aiming for a profession that involved killing and risking being killed had changed him. It had changed him more than he had realized.


    "I guess I''m truly no longer of Earth." He sighed.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 318 Conclusion

    Rui circled around the vige in the forest. All of the remaining gang members'' attention was focused on the direction that Vranil had gone in. Rui circled around where the security and surveince had been reduced drastically. The death of twelve of their members and now the deathly silence of the forest after all the noise that hade earlier had caused a lot of panic and anxiety.


    Rui intended to exploit the chaos to take them down swiftly and quickly without giving them any chance to properly fight back. He reached the edge of the vige, arriving at a field barricaded by a fence.


    Two men immediately spotted him. But it was toote.


    POW POW


    Two Tempestuous Ripples sted at their heads, breaking their skulls and killing them on the spot.


    CLASP


    He caught both before they could hit the ground.


    There were two other men at some distance.


    POW POW


    They copsed.


    Four down.


    Rui used the tall crops as cover as he crouched beneath them, sprinting at top speed. There were guards patrolling the street, their eyes widened as they spotted him racing in at speeds that well-exceeded even that of cheetahs.


    POW POW POW POW


    Rui sted them with swift Tempestuous Ripples instantly, ravaging their bodies.


    At this point, the rest of the gang patrolling the vige noticed themotion.


    Rui could hear their shouts as they raised the alert to the rest of the gang and soon the rest of the gang had be alert.


    POW POW POW!


    Rui never let anyone who caught an eye live, bombarding them with Tempestuous Ripples. The crops were a great ce to hide as it gave him great cover across a great amount of area. He engaged in gueri warfare from the very beginning, taking them down one-by-one using the element of surprise and deception and confusion.


    The problem for the gang members was they had no idea what was happening. None of the remaining surviving gang member had gotten even a glimpse of Rui, which is why they weren''t dead, yet. Furthermore, with the fear and paranoia of the fictional predator beast that Rui had created, at the very least half of them thought the beast had killed their boss ande for them.


    Had they known it was a Martial Artist from the start, they would have used the vigers as hostages, which inevitably would have led to their deaths. The vigers absolutely would have died if Vranil was here since the gang members would have begun killing them when Rui refused to listen to their demands of surrender.N?velDrama.Org content.


    But this way, he could get rid of them without a single viger being so much as hurt.


    BAM BAM BAM!


    One by one, they all began dropping like flies until the final group huddled together with their backs facing each other.


    BOOM!


    Multiple ovepping Tempestuous Ripples converged on the entire group straight down from the sky. ttening them to death.


    Ruinded right in between the corpses.


    He sighed.<sub> </sub>


    It was over. Suddenly, the door to one of the buildings opened on the street.


    "Don''t move!" A Ruyloken gang member yelled. In front of him was a child, and to her head was a musket.


    Rui simply stared at him, waiting. There was a chance he could rush over extremely swiftlyand kill him before the man could even react, but he didn''t want to risk it. The man had wisely kept quite a lot of distance between them.


    "Get on the ground!"


    Rui didn''t listen to him, he simply waited.


    "I said, GET ON THE GROU-"


    BLINK


    BAM!


    He died before he could even process it.


    His corpse flew across the vige, his head had been mangled to a bag of flesh pulp by the Flowing Canon that Rui had hit him with.


    The little girl broke down shivering as she began crying at the top of her voice. The vigers who had been rounded and housed when Vranil left all came out in shock and bewilderment. Their eyes widened in horror at the gory and bloody scene.


    They were far too shocked to understand that they had been freed. Furthermore, the trauma of seeing such blood and gore had been too much for many, they began puking on the side of the road. Several even fainted.


    It had taken them a brief while of limatization, before one of them walked over to him with grateful eyes, asking him a question in anothernguage.


    He shook his head. "I don''t understand."


    The woman widened her eyes, switchingnguages. "I see, so you''re not from the Kingdom of Grahal."


    "No, I''m not." He told them. "I am a Martial Artist of the Kandrian Martial Union. I wasmissioned to eliminate the Royluken Gang."


    A wave of surprise rippled through the vigers at those words. Their reactions varied. Some were just overwhelmed andpletely broke down. Some just stared at him in disbelief. Most expressed genuine gratitude to him through their tears.


    "Whomissioned you to save us?" One asked incredulously.


    "A girl named Fria." He replied. This drew an even stronger reaction to them.


    "She''s alive!" An elderly woman fell to her knees as she sobbed in relief as a man teary-eyed manforted her. "I told you she was, she''s strong."


    The woman turned to Rui. "Where is she? Where is my daughter? Is she safe?"


    Rui nodded. "She''s in the kingdom of Grahal. I have already notified the Kandrian Martial Union of the sessfulpletion of mission, which in turn will have likely already notified her. I imagine she''s on her way here already."


    "Thank you. Thank you for saving us." She held his hands in hers.


    "Not at all." Rui replied. "I was just doing what I was paid to do. Your daughter is the who is truly to be praised."


    He took the ne Fria had given him, returning it to her mother. "Please give that back to Fria when you see her. Goodbye."


    He turned around and sprinted away heading in the direction of the Kandrian Empire.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 319 Thoughts

    Rui had to admit, nailing a difficult mission was one of the best feelings ever. An immense wave of satisfaction washed over him as he thought about the fact that not a single viger died. Although, one dide close.


    Thankfully, there was only one hidden gang member inside the building. Rui had no idea what he was doing in there instead of joining his gang-mates, but thankfully there had only been one. If there were several and each had taken a hostage, then there would have been a bit of an issue.


    For now, he was fine, but he really felt the need to improve his covert abilities. There were many missions just like this one where he felt hiscking stealth. Missions where, if he had been stealthier, he would have been able toplete them with much greater ease and simplicity.This content is ? N?velDrama.Org.


    This mission was an example. If he had a technique that at the very least allowed him topletely evade normal human senses, then life would have been far easier.


    (''I''ll put it on the list for next time.'') He mused. At the end of the day, missions were literally his livelihood. It made sense to purchase techniques that would make thepletion of missions easier in that regard. Even if his missions weren''t of the covert-ss, that did not mean he did not require covert capabilities. Generally, it was best if one possessed some amount of capability in all general andmon fields. There were just too many reasons to not invest further into his stealth


    But he didn''t intend to do that immediately. He had recentlye out of a seven-month-long training stage, he had no intention of jumping back into training. He intended to go for various, different kinds of missions that would enrich his experience and expand his worldview. He had lived in this world for nearly sixteen years, yet he had experienced too little of everything it had to offer. He wanted more, he wanted to do more.


    He even had ideas on what he wanted to do.


    (''The Beast Domain...'') His eyes lit up with wonder.


    The Panama Continent was absolutely gigantic and a majority of it was colonized by humans. However, a little over a third of the continent''snd was uncolonized natural environments that were upied by diverse fauna. Arge proportion of thisnd was at the heart of the Continent.


    The hearnd of the continent was entirely uncolonized, it was an extremely perilous environment where Martial Apprentices like himself were only qualified to enter the outskirts of the outer-mostyer, going any deeper would be absolutely suicide for him.


    When Rui had learnt of that, it had made sense to him that the Beast Domain was uncolonized and left alone by the human nations. The difficulty of colonizing and conquering the Beast Domain was so extraordinarily high that the nations simply could not afford to undertake such a herculean task. Furthermore, it wasn''t just a matter of difficulty, perhaps if humanity as a species came together as one, it could take over the Beast Domain in a conflict that could shake the very continent.


    However, the fact of the matter was that humanity was so astronomically far away from any semnce of united that it was genuinely hrious, yet also incredibly sad. Humans fought with each other to a degree beyond what imagination could beggar. Conflicts on all scales were nearly omnipresent, these prevented the humans froming even close to uniting.


    It would take an absolute miracle for them to join hands, short of a global extinction-level threat, there was probably nothing that could unite the species.


    Regardless, the Beast Domain was not going anywhere. And while it was a source of danger, it was also a source of great opportunity. Untold esoteric resourcesy within the fauna, flora and thend of the Beast Domain. Many of the missions of the hunting-ss were rted to resource extraction and procurement.


    These high-grade esoteric resources could be used to aplish wonders. This was why the human species held a great amount of interest in the Beast Domain.


    Because of its perilous environment, Martial Artists were really the only ones capable of surviving in the Beast Domain. As wondrous as esoteric technology was, it was extremely difficult and untenable to use it to allow normal humans to survive in the environment. It was far easier to dispatch Hunter-ss Martial Artists who wouldplete their missions remarkably well and efficiently.<sub> </sub>


    And thus, they did.


    Rui wanted to experience the Beast Domain with his own two eyes at some point. Perhaps his next mission ought to be a Beast Domain mission?


    Rui shook his head. If the Beast Domain was as dangerous as advertised, then he was not quite as ready yet.


    His very first hunting mission with the Earthen Basilisk had shown him how inadequate his Martial Art really was when it came to non-human entities. Many hunting-ss missions after that had reflected that as well.


    The predictive model system of the pattern recognition system was not particrly bothered by the differences between humans and non-humans. However, the adaptive evolution model was designed for humans.


    Now that Rui hadrgely found the main solution for the viability problem of the VOID algorithm, he needed to find solutions for the ipatibility problems. This was something he intended to target in his next training stage,


    It didn''t matter that he was a grade-ten Martial Artist. That was very general grade given to him by the Martial Academy in evaluation of hisbat prowess. What mattered was hispatibility. He was notpatible with them as much a he''d liked.


    Rui shook his head, putting aside such nebulous thoughts.


    He still had time.


    The world wasn''t going anywhere.


    What kinds of Martial Art would he fight?


    What kind of ces would he see?


    What kind of people would he meet?


    A whole world of opportunity awaited him, and he had a lifetime to explore it.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 320 Return

    Rui returned to the Kandrian Empire in the span of few hours. He didn''t feel the urge to travel back too quickly. The scenery was unique and beautiful. The fauna and flora were different from Earth thus it gave an exotic and alien feel to someone like Rui.


    Eventually, he reached the Kandrian Empire, it took him a few more hours to eventually reach the Mantian Region and finally, the Town of Hajin.


    "Ahhhh..." Rui sighedfortably as he took in the cool weather. "There''s no ce like home!"


    He immediately headed back to the Martial Academy. Swiftlypleting the annoying post-mission protocols before heading to his dorm.


    He took his time as he rxed a hot water tub, looking into what he''d missed.


    "Oh?" His eyes lit up. "Nartha got back to me."


    The next Martial Games was going to be held at the DiViliers Hall, where it was held the very first time had attended it.


    He couldn''t wait. The Martial Games would allow him to test the pattern recognition system of the VOID algorithm against diverse set of Martial Art.


    Several days passed as Rui simply sparred with his friends to pass time, and the day had finallye. This time, Nartha had finally resigned to his request and allowed him to wear a normal sparring garb.


    "Ready?" She asked him.


    "Absolutely." he replied.


    "Still not willing to take that mask off?" She probed.


    "Absolutely not." He replied.


    She shrugged, sighing. It was worth a try.


    "It''s been quite some time since youst participated." She told him. "And the grade on your profile has gone from eight to ten." She said with raised eyebrows. "Gotten stronger this quickly?"


    "Just a bit." He said cryptically.


    Soon they arrived at the resplendent DiVilliers Hall. Rui got off the carriage first, as he escorted Nartha down. They were surrounded by guests and their fighters, and all of them recognized Rui''s mask.


    "Lady Nartha." The chairman of the Gregolion Company told her. "I see your champion has returned. Today''s Martial Games are going to be most interesting haha!"


    "Indeed, I''m looking forward to him whipping up a storm." Another said.


    "Apprentice Falken, I can see you''ve grown stronger." The matriarch of a small Martial Family greeted him.


    Watching all these elite members of society express goodwill to him made him realize that he had inadvertently engaged in a lot of connection-building by simply doing what he did best. Although this was never his intention when he signed up with Nartha Freier, it wasn''t necessarily a bad thing. Perhaps one of these connections could help him in the future. Besides, earning their goodwill was vastly better than earning their bad will.


    In the two months that Rui had served as the representative fighter of Nartha, he had gained a lot of respect and goodwill from many of the guests of this elite social circle. Although many of the more seriouspetitors who treated it as apetitive sport disliked him because of how annoying he was. Therge majority of the more casual guests who simply attended the Martial Games for recreation orworking hade to appreciate him.


    His fights were incredibly interesting and entertaining to watch,rgely because they were never the same. With almost all other Martial Artists, theirbat style rarely fluctuated much and eventually their fights grew monotonous and boring. There were only so many times one could remain entertained watching the same thing over and over again.


    Yet with Rui, they soon came to discover that this wasn''t the case. The more he fought, the more entertaining he became!


    Every fight, it was as though he had be a different person.


    They were mesmerized.


    Normally, participating guests never kept one fighter for more than too long,rgely because things got boring. For them as participants and for the audience. But even at the end of two months, no one was tired of Rui. When he left the Martial Games for training, they had all been disappointed.


    But now, he was back!


    A small crowd formed around Nartha and Rui as many came to speak to the two.


    Yet suddenly, the crowd parted as a man walked by. He had long flowing white hair that reached his neck, while a thick white beard adorned his face. He had the bearing of majestic lion.


    "Lady Freier, Wee." Charles DiVilier smiled, as he bowed mildly at Nartha''s curtsy. "I''m so happy you could join us today." He said before turning to Rui with a twinkle in his eyes. "And with an old face, no less, or an old mask I should say."This content is ? N?velDrama.Org.


    "Lord DiVIlier." Rui bowed to greet him.


    "How do you do? Apprentice Falken." He emphasized Rui''s alias with a knowing smile.


    "Just fine, thank you."


    "I''m happy you could join us today. Today''s Martial Games will be interesting indeed." He chuckled. "Come, let us not stand outside any longer."


    Charles led his guests into the circr hall within the building that overlooked the fighting arena down below. The guests settled in their luxurious seating amodations as the maids and butlers of the DiVillier Family tended to them.


    "Ladies and gentlement." Charles DiVillier''s voice boomed across the hall, drawing everyone''s attention. "I hope you''re all feeling good today. We have an exciting session of games ahead of us."


    He turned towards Rui. "I''m sure everyone recognizes our old friend Apprentice Falken. He has graced us today with his attendance, we look forward to his interesting and entertaining fights."


    Rui''s eyebrows knitted. Even if he was liked, wasn''t Charles going too far putting him on the spotlight in front of all these guests?


    Rui could suddenly feel the intense gazes and pressures of all the Martial Artists in the hall on him. Unfortunately, he didn''t recognize most of them. It had been seven months since hest participated in the Martial Games. Most of the old fighters had been cycled out, only a few mainstays were still present after that long a period.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 321 Shocking

    "And in our first fight, we have the current defending champion; Lord Graham''s representative fighter Apprentice Fernan Melver versus Lady Farnu''s representative fighter Apprentice Jivia" The head butler took over as he announced the first fight.


    Rui watched as the two fighters entered the arena, stopping at a distance from each other.


    "Take your stances." The arbiter instructed.


    Apprentice Jivia took a generic defensive stance. While Fernan Melver simply stood. What Rui found strange was that he was cloaked quite heavily. That was a ck cloak that covered his entire body, with only his neck and head exposed.


    Rui felt a primal sense of danger with Primordial Instinct, as if he was looking at somebody that wasn''t entirely human.


    Then, Fernan shed the cloak.


    What Rui saw shocked him to his core.


    No Martial Art had ever shaken him as much he was beholding at that very moment.


    A pair of wings unfolded from Fernan''s back!


    There were an extra set of arms above his normal arms!


    Rui''s eyes widened in shock.


    He blinked, hard, wondering if he had overused potions recently.


    (''I need to be careful, I can''t believe I''m seeing hallucinations.'')


    When he opened his eyes, the wings and the extra arms were still there!


    He turned towards Nartha. "Did you put something in that tea you gave me earlier?"


    One of herpanions burst outughing. "It seems you''re unfamiliar with symbiotic Martial Art despite being a Martial Artist. Understandable, they are so rare and there are so few Martial Artists with such techniques."


    "Symbiotic Martial Art?" he turned towards Fernan, extremely confused. "What the fuck is that?"


    "Martial Art techniques that involve the imntation and cooperation with a living symbiote forbat for extra utility. The extra arms and wingse from imntedrva of certain special species of symbiotes that integrate into the host''s body and growingrger until they turn into those." She gestured at Fernan''s extra limbs and wings.


    Rui''s eyes widened as his jaw dropped with shock. "How do you know that?" Doubting her information.


    "He''s my fighter, silly." Lady Farnu chuckled. "I know everything about him. Symbiotic Martial Art techniques involve putting symbiotes with special utility that the human body cannot ordinarily possess." She turned towards him. "I was very excited when Nartha here told me you were returning. We have a bet on which one of our fighters will win."


    "No pressure, of course." Nartha smiled at him with a smile that didn''t reach her eyes.


    Rui didn''t care. He was too stunned by the revtion of symbiotic Martial Art.


    How did it work? How was something like this even possible in the first ce???


    Symbiotes didn''t have super special powers!


    (''No, wait.'') He corrected himself. (''That''s true only for Earth''s symbiotes. Gaia is a whole different beast. If fauna and flora can be fantastically absurd, then is it impossible that to apply to symbiotic life-forms?'')


    Given the wonders he had already witnessed in this world, it did not seem impossible for symbiotes to be capable of incredible things.


    Giving its host extra utility inbat would theoretically viable.


    In fact, Rui was reminded of several creatures from Earth that in reality weren''t too different in principle from what the symbiotic Martial Art he was witnessing. Cymothoa exigua was an underwater tongue-eating louse from Earth that consumed the tongue of its host andtched itself onto the blood vessels and the muscles of the newly severed tongue, and then became the new tongue of the fish!


    This creature aided in the digestion of the food of the fish in exchange for sustaining itself on the host fish''s blood.


    What Rui was witnessing was essentially an infinitely moreplex and fantastical version of the same principle.


    (''But still...'') Rui gaped. (''This is absurd!'')


    It also seemed absurdly overpowered. Rui couldn''t believe that Fernan possessed an extra pair of arms and a pair of wings!


    How was a normal human supposed to defeat something like that?


    (''There have to be drawbacks.'') Rui said, almost trying to convince himself. (''There is no way it''s that easy.'')


    He could ready think of several.


    Symbiotes were organisms that existed in a mutually beneficial rtionship with host bodies. If the symbiotes gave the host such wondrous abilities, then surely, they benefitted from being bonded to their host. The first thing Rui thought of instantly was the huge nutritional and energy needs that the additional biological systems that the symbiote brought about. Maintaining their body must be extremely difficult and demanding.


    Furthermore, there was the matter of getting used to new limbs. Rui couldn''t even begin to imagine how difficult it was to build brand new muscle memory for brand new limbs, it must have abysmally torturous and intensive.


    And then what about the wings? At the very least, Fernan had some familiarity with arms, but no human had any experience of using wings. How difficult must it have been to not only learn to use the wings, but also achieve such high mastery of them that they could be a Martial Art? How difficult must it have been for Fernan to go through the Martial Foundation Stage essentially all over again to achieve high proficiency with them by Martial Art standards?


    And after all that, he still probably needed to master Apprentice-level techniques with them.


    After considering all these disadvantages, Rui reconsidered his evaluation of the allure of symbiotic Martial Art techniques.


    A surge of respect and admiration for Fernan grew within Rui.


    The only emotion that surpassed that was his excitement and desire to fight Fernan. He wondered how the VOID algorithm would fare against the man. He would eventually find out, of course. He had no intention of leaving the ce until he fought Fernan, no matter what happened. Thankfully, it seemed like a done deal based ondy Farnu''s words.


    Rui intended to observe Fernan as carefully as he could. Collecting as much data as he could on the man to begin creating the predictive model for him. Rui strongly suspected that he would need to improvise the adaptive evolution model, since it would certainly be quite inurate against someone like Fernan, without a doubt.


    This chapter upload first at  Content held by N?velDrama.Org.

 Chapter 322 Exotic

    Fernan had a beautiful face aesthetically, many would say. His soft features were calming and pleasant.


    This was in sharp contrast to the rest of the body. Two extra arms stuck from an opening on a bump on his shoulder while a huge ck-feathered pair of wings grew from his mid-back section.


    One pair of arms folded into closed defensive guards while the remaining two took an aggressive stance.


    Rui nodded, this made sense. With four arms, he could maintain the perfect offense and defense at all times!


    His wings lifted into the air, stretching back as much as they could.


    His intentions were clear. He intended to get into flight the moment the match began.


    "Begin." The arbiter began the match.


    WHOOSH


    A huge gust of wind was released as Fernan took the air immediately. Apprentice Jivia had tried to intercept him before he could reach the air, but the distance was too great and Fernan was not slow.


    Rui was amazed at how stable Fernan''s flight was, his trajectories were smooth and uniform, he didn''t wobble or stumble midair or do anything of the sort.


    He was even able to hover midair in a stable manner, which truly impressed Rui. Most birds weren''t able to hover stationarily. There were only a handful of birds that could that, like the hummingbird. It pped its wings with high frequency to generate a constant thrust upwards that canceled its weight.


    Fernan was doing a simr thing with his pair of wings. He simply hovered as he looked down at his opponent. The initiative of the battle was thoroughly in his hands.


    Finally, he made a move.


    BOOM!!


    He pped his wings with incredible swiftness.


    A tremendous wind st emerged from his wings. The sheer force and speed of the wind attack greatly surpassed Rui''s Tempestuous Ripple! Objectively, his power was not particrly above Rui''s own power since Tempestuous Ripple''s power was much below his normal power and lethality. However, it shocked Rui that he could output from such a distance. Not even Ana''s Martial Art allowed her to output such levels of power from a distance.


    Just this one symbiote had resulted in wings that basically allowed him to surpass Ana''s Martial Art.


    BAM!


    Apprentice Jivia grimaced as she failed to evade the swift wind st. Its powerful impact inflicted some amount of damage on her abdomen.


    She leaped into the air,unching herself at him.


    Rui shook his head, sighing.


    BOOM!!


    A powerful wind st drove her into ground with such force that it broke her ribs.


    "Argh!" She grimaced as she coughed blood. She tried getting up onest time.


    BOOM!!


    The third wind attack crushed her to the ground and put her in a critical state.


    "The match ends there!" The arbiter dered the match over as Jivia had lost consciousness and was bleeding profusely. "Winner; Apprentice Fernan Melver."


    Rui smiled.


    Fernan was strong. He would have swept everybody in the Martial Contest with ease asides from maybe Fiona, who would have put up a fearsome fight. Rui wondered how that matchup would go.


    Fighter after fighter arrived, yet none of them could put so much as even a scratch on him. Several Martial Artists with long-range techniques were able to attack him but he managed to beat them soundly with much greater physical parameters.


    Ruipletely understood why he was the reigning champion. He was truly worthy of the position.


    "Up next, we have Lady Freier''s Apprentice Falken." The butler announced.


    Instantly, a wave of excitement fluttered through the crowd of guests. Two defending champions facing off against each other. And the two most exciting ones as well.


    "Good luck." Nartha cheered.


    "Thanks."


    Rui made his way to the arena, stopping at the starting position.


    "Take your stances." The arbiter instructed.


    N?velDrama.Org content.


    Fernan took the same stance that he normally did.


    Yet his eyes suddenly narrowed as a wave of pressure washed over him.


    "Fuuuuh..." Rui exhaled deeply as he finished preparing himself mentally as he hopped lightly between his feet, his hands loosely held at chest level.


    It was a stance that prioritized maneuvering.


    The weight his concentration mounted onto Fernan''s mind escted by the second as the very air itself was wrung by the powerful Martial Apprentices.


    "Begin!" The arbitermenced the fight.


    WHOOSH!


    Fernan instantly took to the air swiftly, gaining altitude swiftly. Rui didn''t bother moving from his spot or trying to stop Fernan from taking flight with a Tempestuous Ripple, the probability of sess was too low.


    BOOM!


    Fernanunched a powerful wind st at Rui.


    BAM!


    The attack missed Rui narrowly as it struck the ground next to him.


    Rui merely stepped aside.


    People frowned. Wasn''t this the same attack that everyone else had failed to dodge for any extended time? Why did it suddenly look so easy.


    BOOM!


    STEP


    Rui hopped out of the way once more.


    Fernan frowned.


    Something was wrong, but he couldn''t quite put his finger on it.


    BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!


    as heunched more attacks, yet Rui dodged them all with casual ease.


    (''He''s not extraordinarily fast...'') Fernan frowned. He could see Rui''s movements quite clearly. Speed wasn''t the issue here.


    Fernan narrowed his eyes as heunched another attack, yet Rui moved a beat before his attack evenunched.


    Fernan''s eyes widened as realization dawned him. (''He''s not reacting or moving fast, he''s reacting and moving earlier.'')


    Fernan simply didn''t understand. His wings were incredibly swift agile and smooth, how on Earth was Rui able to time his movements so well? He was already halfway out of the way of Fernan''s attacks by the time the attack wasunched. Even if his movements were slower, he needed to move a very small distance to get out of the way while Fernan''s attack needed to travel arge distance before it could reach and hurt Rui.


    Rui could sense his confusion. (''It doesn''t matter if I can''t reach you very well. As long as you can''t reach me, I''ll eventually win.'')


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 323 Clash

    Where others saw invincibility, Rui saw shorings.


    First, while it was true that Fernan was able to output a huge amount of power from a huge distance away, the way he applied that power was highly inflexible.


    The trajectory of the attack was linear. Linear attacks were easier to predict than attacks with a curving trajectory, this was a universal fact. The fact that Rui could effortlessly predict the trajectory of the attack well ahead of time mean that as long as he tweaked his predictive model just a little bit to Fernan''s unique situation, it was almostically easy to predict Fernan to the T


    Specifically, Rui looked at his altitude rather than the wings itself. Whenever Fernan prepared an attack, he would stop the rapid pping of his wings to maintain altitude and stretch them back tounch a powerful wind attack. This caused his altitude to drop just a bit since he wasn''t pping them to maintain his altitude. That was what Rui paid attention to.


    The mistake his previous opponents made were trying to keep with his speedy pping in order to react to his attacks. However, Rui merely kept an eye on his altitude and timed his movements with respect to fluctuations in that.


    Because his predictions were pristine, he was able to spend a very little amount of energy for evasion. The guests were mesmerized as Rui danced away from Fernan''s attacks with ease.


    This was another w in Fernan''s long-range strategy. Generating wind sts cost a lot of energy, Rui knew this for a fact with his own Tempestuous Ripple technique. Neither side was hurting the other side, yet Fernan was expending far more energy than Rui was. Astronomically more.


    Rui merely needed to exert himself mildly while Fernan need to execute one of those mighty swings each time he wanted tounch his attack.


    This was the elementary adapted fighting style that Rui had created to counter Fernan''s long-range style.


    Not every adapted style was shy. Not every adapted style needed to be shy. Sometimes the most effective path to victory was the quietest and the most passive.


    Besides, Rui didn''t think he was quite on the path to victory yet. He absolutely confident that Fernan was capable of much more than just being a static flying air canon.


    (''Those arms aren''t just for decoration, are they?'') Rui mused.


    "Tsk." Fernan tutted. He had given up on trying to harm Rui from a distance.


    Still, he wasn''t particrly pessimistic.


    What nobody asides from his clientele knew was that Fernan was actually strongest at mid-to-close range quarters.


    WHOOSH


    Rui widened as Fernan dashed towards him with blinding speed.


    BAM BAM!!


    Rui guarded as two powerful impactsnded on him. Fernan hit him with two straight right attacks at the same time!


    WHOOSH!


    Rui avoided the next duo of strikes carefully as he got ustomed to the abrupt change.


    WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH


    He evaded Fernan''s strikes pristinely as the speed and maneuvering techniques as well as Primordial Instinct and Phantom Step had made him an absolute menace to even try and touch.Copyright by N?v/elDrama.Org.


    Yet, Fernan had a gigantic mobility advantage as he rapidly shifted around with unbelievable speed and agility. Furthermore, he could freely maneuver across all three dimensions while Rui was constricted to two.


    Rui had greatbat speed, but Fernan''s travelling and maneuvering speed were something else entirely, only Kane could match it, and even Kane couldn''t move in three dimensions.


    Even if Rui''s arms moved faster because he was more nimble and agile, Fernan had four of them, this more than made up for the gap in speed.


    And yet.


    WHOOSH


    Fernan frowned.


    Rui evaded him yet again.


    A barrage of swift blowsnded on Rui as Fernan used all four of his arms to hurt Rui.


    Yet to his greatest amazement, not a single one of thended cleanly!


    Rui grinned like a madman under his mask.


    (''Having extra limbs may allow you tounch more attacks, but they also reduce the freedom of each limb!'')


    There was a limited amount of space around a person. Twice the number of arms drastically reduced the area of mobility that each arm had ess to. If their mobility was constrained due to the presence of arms, then Rui could use that to predict which way the arms wouldn''t move because they couldn''t!


    This stacked on top of the predictive model that Rui had begun developing for Fernanpensated for the increased number of attacks he had.


    Everybody watched on, absolutely enamored as Rui cleanly dealt with every single attack Fernan threw at him. It didn''t seem to matter which way and where Fernan twisted and turned, Rui mitigated the entirety of his offense immediately.


    Rui, however, wasn''t entirely pleased with the oue. The adaptive evolution model was only forty percent effective against Fernan. Fernan fundamentally differed from a human too much. Currently Rui was merely relying on it in conjugation with the Primordial Instinct to try and mitigate its shorings, but there was a limit to what it could do.


    "RAH!" Fernan snarled as he swung both his left arms at Rui, frustrated at his inability to cleanly hurt Rui despite his advantages. It was as though Rui was somehow moved in exactly the right way at the right time to mitigate all of his advantages.


    His feet hit the ground, a sight at which Rui''s eyes widened. (''Wind st iing!'')


    Rui dove to the side desperately he narrowly managed to dodged Fernan''s attack despite being at point-nk range.


    Fernan felt more frustration against Rui than he had felt in his entire career. Dodging a point-nk wind st from his wings should have been absolutely impossible, yet this annoying weasel of a Martial Artist kept managing to avoid his clutches by jus the slightest margin. Watching him get away every single time was starting to piss Fernan off.


    He dashed through the air,shing out towards Rui, when suddenly.


    BLINK


    Rui appeared in front of his face.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 324 Outcome

    PEW!


    Rui punctured a hole in his left wing.


    "Argh!" Fernan grimaced.


    Rui''s eyes widened at that sight. (''The symbiote sends pain signals to his brain in response to painful stimuli.'')


    This was another disadvantage that Rui hadn''t predicted.


    Fernan''s flight destabilized as he struggled to gain a bearing in the air. Rui had punctured a muscle, making it difficult for him to p his wings equally. Furthermore, Rui exacerbated the issue with Tempestuous Ripple.


    POW POW POW!


    Hended three Tempestuous Ripples on Fernan''s injured wing. The attacks did hurt Fernan as evident by the grimace on his face, yet the main reason Ruiunched those attacks was not to hurt him but to destabilize him. Launching the gusts of at only one wing and not the other caused his trajectory to be even more unstable.


    THUD


    Hended on the ground, stumbling. He tried to regain his bearings, but Rui had no intention of allowing him to.


    BAM!!!


    A powerful Flowing Canon amplified by eight techniques crashed onto his guard. Fernan gritted his teeth as he tried to mitigate the damage, yet even thebined defenses of four arms weren''t enough to stop Rui''s overwhelming strike.


    BOOM!


    Fernan wasunched across the arena as he crashed into the walls of the arenaN?velDrama.Org content.


    He turned around in fear.


    BAM!


    A powerful blow crashed onto his face. He tried fighting, back, returning a powerful strike right back at Rui, when;


    CLASP


    Rui caught on to his strike and flipped him upside down with Flow Flux.


    (''Your extra apendages have destabilized your bnce, all it takes is the slightest push at the right time and ce.


    BAM!!


    A tremendous kicknded on Fernan''s jaw even as he was upside down.


    It was the second impact to the head.


    The threshold had been crossed.


    THUD


    He hit the ground, unmoving.


    Fernan lost consciousness as his brain was overwhelmed by the blunt force trauma.


    "Winner; Apprentice Falken!"


    Rui ignored the apuse he received as he studied Fernan''s body. There several bumps on his body where his wings and extra arms came from.


    (''So the symbiote even generates hard bone in his body before generating a limb.'') Rui scrutinized Fernan with interest. (''Furthermore, the features of the extra set of arms are the same as his original arms. This means that Symbiote used his DNA to create the arms.'')


    Rui''s mind furiously analyzed the situation even as he found the entire notion thoroughly amazing. (''Lady Farun said that the symbiote is imnted into their body asrva, the symbiote likely extracts the DNA of the host to recreate whatever parts that particr species of symbiote recreates.'')


    His eyes turned to Fernan''s wings. (''But that doesn''t exin the wings.'')


    Human DNA didn''t have any information on wings, so how did the Symbiote acquire those?


    (''They must have used another animal, a bird with a wingspan that suited humans.'') Rui concluded. (''I wonder if Symbiotic Martial Art can do other things.'')


    He was sure that there were other species of symbiotes that operated differently.


    (''If the symbiotes are connected to the brain, then there probably is a constraint of mental capacity.'') Rui mused.


    The subconscious human brain was not meant to amodate more limbs and organs. More organs meant more information the subconscious brain had to process and act on.


    Suddenly, his eyes widened as the realization of an incredible possibility dawned on his mind. (''If mental capacity is a constraint on symbiotic Martial Art... Then what if someone with superhuman mental capacity tried mastering a symbiotic Martial Art?'')


    Rui''s body was well within human constraints that applied even to Martial Apprentices. However, his brain and specifically mind had undergone growth to a degree beyond human parameters. His subconscious mind had a much greater mental capacity that ordinary humans.


    Greed creeped into Rui''s eyes.


    It was entirely possible that Rui was extremelypatible with symbiotic Martial Art techniques. If that was the case, Rui would be a fool to not, at the very least, look into the matter.


    Rui added symbiotic techniques into the long list of things he wanted to look into for his next training stage. Yet as much as the very idea of gaining additional biological utility appealed to him.


    Was it truly worth it?


    Rui nced back at Fernan who was being carried away before shaking his head. Sure, Fernan was incredible. His Martial Art had shocked Rui unlike anything. But he was not without ring ws.


    (''In pursuit of superhuman power, he neglected human power.'') Rui mused.


    Humans were strong. Humans had their own bottomless potential. Fernan had abandoned human power and potential when he gave himself extra arms and wings. Not realizing that he hadn''t even explored the full power and potential of his existing limbs.


    Now, did this mean that symbiotic Martial Art was inherently bad or weak or sub-optimal?


    No, Rui was not na?¡¥ve enough to think that either. Fernan was absolutely proof that it was not a sub-optimal field. Before Rui, he had crushed all opposition with all kinds of Martial Art with a fraction of his full power.


    At the end of the day, results spoke the loudest. And Fernan''s results were deafeningly loud.


    (''They key is bnce.'') Rui realized. (''Obtaining extra-human power like symbiotic Martial Art must note at the cost of abandoning human power.'')


    Rui came to believe the key was finding that very thin but sharp line where the symbiotic power added to the human body did not dampen human power or potential. But perhaps even enhanced it and cooperated with it.


    If Rui''s suspicions about hispatibility with symbiotic Martial Art was true, then Rui would like to try and think about aiming to achieve where he added just enough symbiotic techniques to his Martial Art where it didn''t dampen his potential. He wondered if he could achieve the best of both worlds. He was firmly of the belief that someone like Fernan was of neither world. He had no intention of adding extra limbs or giving himself wings.


    But perhaps symbiotic Martial Art possessed a solution for the many problems he was gued with. Perhaps a single symbiotic technique could be the key.


    Anything was possible.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 325 Clash

    The Martial Games soon proceeded as Fernan was carried away. Rui was the new defending champion of the Martial Games and he sent challenger after challenger.


    Yet, none of them prevailed.


    One after the other, Rui overwhelmingly crushed them all with adapted styles that wrecked them inbat. The rest of the participating representative fighters weren''t quite as deviant as Fernan was. The adaptive-evolution model was far more effective against them than it was against Fernan. His victories against them were smooth, clean and elegant unlike his messy battle against Fernan.


    However, Rui had begun to notice something strange.


    Every once in a while, some of his opponents would simply give up even when the fight wasn''t quite over. Their bodies went limp as their eyes lost life as if someone had drained them of it. And he would win easily once they stopped resisting. They would copse as if they no longer cared for anything.


    Rui didn''t understand what was happening. He only a found it a little strange because he experienced something simr with Vranil. But he simply shrugged, maybe they just knew went to stop?


    There were Martial Artists that fought bitterly to the very end and gave Rui one hell of a run till the very end. Their eyes burned with determination and perseverance even as Rui knocked them out.


    At the end of the day. He was still the defending champion and had defeated every single fighter who had participated.


    All of the guests were shocked as they witnessed Rui upending the Martial Games!


    "Winner; Apprentice Falken. He is the current undefeated reigning champion!" The butler announced. "There are no more challengers!"


    The guests apuded loudly at Rui''s performance. Suddenly, a voice boomed from the crowd.


    "No, not quite."


    Charles DiVilier smiled as he drew everybody''s attention to him. "Normally, I don''t participate as one of major hosts of the Martial Games. But today is a special day, an old champion hase back to reim his rightful title and has done so undefeated. It would be interesting is he was met with a challenger qualified to fight him."


    Rui''s eyebrow rose at those words.


    "My representative fight will be participating today." He said.


    Suddenly a wave of silence overtook the guests, before they erupted in enthusiasm. They seemed familiar with the fighter.


    Soon, Rui sensed a heavy presence entering the ring.


    The man was tall, his body was chiseled like he had been sculpted by hand. What surprised Rui was that the man was also masked, just like himself.


    He paused at a distance from Rui, at the starting position.


    "Take your stances." The arbiter said.


    The masked man took a neutral stance, and Rui followed suit.


    There was an air of anticipation unlike any of his previous matches.


    "Begin." The arbitermenced the match.


    Rui widened his eyes as the man appeared in front of him in an instant.


    BOOM!


    A powerful blow crashed into Rui as he hastily threw together a guard in time. The sheer impact of the blow sent him skidding away. He was shocked. The masked man was stronger than Kyrie was when she had held back, limiting herself.


    An avnche of pressure crashed onto Rui as the man had already appeared in front of him.


    WHOOSH


    Rui managed to evade his strike narrowly as he furiously started building the predictive model for this man.


    (''Who the fuck is this guy?'') Rui gritted his teeth. (''Is he a Squire pretending to be a Martial Apprentice??'')


    The biggest problem with the pattern recognition systems of the VOID algorithm was that it required data, unlike the other systems in the VOID algorithm. Which meant it required time, which meant that he could not use it right off the bat. Which meant he was not at as strong as his peak.


    POW POW POW!


    Rui through abo of strikes, but the masked man casually blocked them as he threw another strike at Rui.


    BAM!


    Rui skidded away.


    What ensued was a dominant disy of power. Just when the crowd thought Rui was a goner.


    WHOOSH


    BAM!


    Rui cleanly evaded a strike, while hended a powerful Flowing Canon on the man''s gut, pushing him back.


    Yet he didn''t relent. Heshed after Rui once more, yet to his surprise, Rui calmly dealt with his attack rather well.


    The two exchanged blow furiously as Rui began gaining perfect parity with the masked man. The crowd''s eyes lit up in tion as they realized that Rui''s fighting style had changed once more.


    Rui had managed to perfect the prediction model just in time. Confidence filled every cell in his body as went all-out trying to defeat his opponent. His opponent had superior parameters, but Rui''s prediction and adaptive evolution allowed him to mitigate the advantage to arge degree.


    However, his opponent was extremely efficient. He was also a tricky and tactical fighter that impressed Rui. He didn''t fight head-on like a brute but instead fought cleverly, making the best of what he had.


    POW!


    Rui grimaced as he stepped back. (''He can extend his range!'')


    WHOOSH


    Rui stepped back as he avoided another extended strike that stopped at a certain distance, failing to reach Rui. (''But there''s a limit to his range extension.'')


    Yet when Rui stepped out of his range, trying touncha ttacks from a distance with Tempestuous Ripple.Content held by N?velDrama.Org.


    POW!


    A powerful strikended on him, despite the range, throwing him off-bnce.


    WHOOSH


    The man instantly crossed the distance,unching a barrage of attacks on Rui, exploiting the opening created.


    (''He tricked me'') Rui gritted his teeth. (''He fought with a shorter range because he knew I would make the wrong inference. He must have watched me fight all this time!'')


    BAM!


    Rui leapt away from a strike as he opened up the distance between them, before winding up a strike. They both charged at each other, racing tond a strike first.


    BAM!!!


    Their attacksnded on the other''s head.


    THUD


    They knocked each other away turning to face each other, only to realize that they had broken each other''s masks.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 326 Revelation

    The masks that Martial Artists wore were not meant to protect their face or head, it was meant to protect their identity. Of course, Martial Apprentices got hit in the face and the head regrly thus the masks that Martial Apprentices wore were designed to survive the rigor of Apprentice-Realmbat. Of course, most masks needed heavy maintenance after rigorous extendedbat.


    Ordinary substances that couldn''t withstand the rigors of Apprentice-Realmbat while the esoteric resources with the tensile strength to be able topletely endure Apprentice-Realmbat were strategic resources that also too scarce to be wasted on masks.


    Thus, as well as masks were designed to survive and at the very least stay intact, when faced power and onught at effectively the pinnacle of the Apprentice Realm, they simply couldn''t stay intact.


    Rui hadn''t even realized that his mask had fallen off until he felt the warm air make contact with his face.


    Yet before he could even process his situation, his eyes fell on his opponent, who was in the same predicament.


    Golden hair and golden eyes. Perfect, beautiful features.


    The man looked like a prince.


    Yet it wasn''t his aesthetics that shocked Rui.


    "You...!" He murmured in shock. Rui''s mind shed back nearly two years ago, back to his bodyguard mission in the Basara Mountains. He had fought a bandit group that was routinely ambushing and plundering supply convoys for high-grade esoteric resources.


    The leader of the bandit group back then who had managed to escape was the very man before him.This content is ? N?velDrama.Org.


    Rui quickly contained his shock as much as he could, pretending it was his own mask slip he was shocked about. He didn''t want the golden man to figure out he recognized his identity.


    Meanwhile the crowd had grown extremely excited. The identity of not just one, but two of the strongest Martial Artists of the Martial Games had been revealed in one go.


    Rui''s features had instantly given him away. The crowd immediately his identity to the finalist of the Martial Contest.


    "Hey, that ck hair and eyes. That''s that Apprentice Rui Quarrier fellow!"


    "Wait, Lady Freier managed to rope in the finalist of the Martial Contest??"


    Rui sighed. There was nothing he could do at this point. He had done his reasonable best hiding his identity.


    At the very least, he wasn''t nearly as concerned as he was when he first epted the representative fightermission from Nartha. Since then, his goodwill with the members of the Martial Gamesmunity had risen, if he was in bad blood with all of them, he would have been extremely concerned.


    Furthermore, in the two months he had spent initially in the Martial Games, he hade to realize that basically nothing happened to the fightersmissioned for the Martial Games. Part of this was because no Martial Artist would ever participate in it if there was serious adverse risk to participating in the Martial Games.


    Part of the reason was Charles DiVilier. Everyone knew the man loved Martial Art, he went out of his way to ensure that there were no disincentives and incentives. Nobody wanted to make any enemy of a man with the wealth, power and influence that he had.


    So why was it this man''s representative fighter was a bandit?


    This raised huge red gs in Rui''s mind. But for now, he kept things under a lid. He was enjoying the fight prior, but not he just felt wary. He nced at Charles and saw the man was staring at him with a knowing a smile. He didn''t seem surprised at Rui''s identity.


    Both fighters immediately got their feet as they immediately took their stances against each other.


    "It''s very unfortunate that the fighters'' masks have broken." Charles'' voice boomed. "It would be unfair to expect them to continue when they were unable to conceal their identities the way they originally wanted to." He continued. "Here at the Martial Games we amodate Martial Artists when and where we can. This match will be called off for today."


    A wave of disappointment washed over the guests, but none of them dared raise an objection to his words.


    Rui''s eyebrows knitted at those words. His identity was already revealed, the mask or not, it didn''t matter. Yet the fact that Charles insisted likely meant that the reason he wanted had nothing to do with Rui''s identity.


    Rui turned back to the blond man, scrutinizing him in suspicion.


    Did Charles know who he was? Is that why he was stopping the match? He didn''t want even the slightest chance of it being leaked that his representative was a prolific bandit that disrupted economy of the town of Hajin and no doubted affected several of the guests and members of the Martial Games?


    Rui didn''t know for sure. He turned back to the blond man, who was turning around to leave.


    "Hey." Rui called out.


    The man paused. Meeting Rui''s gaze from the edge of the field of his vision.


    "I''m Rui Quarrier." Rui told him. "May I have the honour of knowing your name?"


    He stared at Rui for a few seconds before turning around wordlessly and leaving.


    (''So he won''t bite.'') Rui mused.


    He sighed. There wasn''t anything he could do about it frankly. And at the end of the day, he wasn''t sure he wanted to do anything about it.


    He was quite shocked to see the man here, and he was wary and suspicious of Charles. But that was it. The culture of the Martial Games had be a lot more transparent to Rui and this event didn''t really matter all that much.


    He would still participate in the Martial Contest every time he wanted to test his prowess against a diverse set of Martial Artists in a seriouspetitive match.


    Soon the matches had ended since there weren''t any fighters left challenge Rui. And the guests mingled with each other freely.


    Rui had been bombarded with praises and admiration from many of the guests who had personally taken an interest in the Martial Contest. The reputation that Apprentice Falken had built from scratch in the Martial Gamesmunity ovepped with the fame that Rui had acquired in the Martial Contest. His image rose in their minds as many of the guests cozied up to him, trying to get him retain them as clienteles.


    Rui sighed.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 327 Disadvantages

    "Apprentice Quarrier." Charles DiVillier addressed him at one point.


    "Lord Divilier." Rui bowed, expressing goodwill.


    "It is truly unfortunate that your identity was revealed in the manner that it was." Charles DiVilier sighed, shaking his head. "Unfortunately, these things happen. Though I daresay this hasn''t yielded any negative consequences."


    "It seems that way." Rui replied perfunctorily.


    "By the way." Charles smiled. "I recallmissioning you for your unique Martial Art, in vain unfortunately. However, after witnessing your remarkable growth since the Martial Contest, I wish to extend my offer to you. Join the DiVillier Family." He said. "You will find it to be worth your time"


    The guests who were listening to the conversation widened their eyes at his words.


    However, Rui shook his head at those words. "I already have a family. I''m afraid I will have to decline your offer."


    "It''s a pity I cannot acquire you." Charles DiVilier sighed, almost speaking of Rui as an object. "However, if you ever do reconsider, I''ll always be more than willing to amodate a Martial Artist of your calbre."


    "Thank you." Rui replied, ending their conversation. He didn''t want to interact with Charles, especially after he learnt of the identity of his fighter.


    The guests interacted and socialized with themselves, while the fighters interacted with each other. Rui walked over to the Martial Apprentices present in the room after he managed to pry himself from the guest members. He wasn''t particrly interested in befriending them or anything of the matter. It was just that Martial Artists were more interesting to interact with.


    Furthermore, he was only really interested in interacting with a single Martial Artist at the moment.


    "Hey." Rui said to Fernan, having approached him. "Hope you''re doing fine."


    "Potions healed me up just fine." Fernan didn''t seem to mind talking to him despite having lost his position as defending champion to Rui just a few hours prior.


    "Your Martial Art is really interesting, I wanted to learn more about it." Rui admitted. "What is the name of your Martial Art?"


    "I call it the Bestial Rage Style." Fernan replied.


    "Interesting..." Rui eyes lit up with interest. (''So it has enough individuality to be named.'')


    "Your Martial Art is fascinating to me." Rui told him. "I''d never heard or even seen of symbiotic Martial Art techniques before, they''re truly powerful. Can you tell me more about them?"


    Fernan seemed to appreciate the interest in his Martial Art. "Most people are disgusted by them, not to mention afraid."


    Rui shrugged. "Anything that can help me walk down my Martial Path by strengthening my Martial Art as it is, is worth my interest. Aesthetics or other sensibilities don''t matter."


    Ferna''s eyes lit up at that response. "That''s the right attitude to have. Imend you for being this mature despite your youth."


    "Thank you."


    "As for Symbiotic Martial Art techniques..." he began. "They''re quite the niche field. However, it is my Martial Path. When I first learnt of these techniques in the Exploration Stage and tested my affinity with them. I just knew I had to master them, that was when I discovered my Martial Path."


    "How did you test your affinity with them?"


    "That can be measured with how well you''re able to engage in symbiosis." Fernan replied. "The imntation of the symbiotes are not the techniques themselves. The Martial Art techniques one performs with symbiosis with an imnted symbiote are what''re known as Symbiosis Martial Art techniques."


    "I see..." Rui grew engrossed.


    "Are you interested in learning symbiosis techniques?" Fernan asked hopefully.


    Rui nodded. "I suspect I may have a decent amount ofpatibility with them, to the point where it would be foolish of me to ignore them. Thus, I wanted to learn more about them. What kinds of Symbiosis techniques exist?"


    "Oh, all kinds." Fernan said. "There are different species of symbiotes capable of doing different things. They''re generally categorized by whether the utility they provide is extrinsic or intrinsic. Extrinsic symbiotes usually manifest something on the body, much like these arms and wins of mine. While intrinsic symbiotes manifest inside the body. They usually boost existing metabolic function or provide for metabolic functions that the user didn''t have prior."


    "Symbiosis techniquese after imnting a symbiote." He continued. "The quality of your techniques depends on the symbiotes avable. Higher-grade symbiotes will generally have more powerful techniques for the same amount of difficulty."


    "Wait." Rui frowned. "Symbiotes have grades?"


    "Of course, they do." Fernan replied. "My dark eagle symbiote is a grade eight Symbiote, my arm-raiser symbiote is a grade-seven symbiote. I even have a few lower-grade intrinsic symbiotes."Content held by N?velDrama.Org.


    Rui''s eyes lit up in interest. He was much more interested in intrinsic symbiotes than he was extrinsic symbiotes. He didn''t want any physiological growth of appendages on his body like extra arms or wings. He wanted somethingplimented his current power and potential, not something that aimed to usurp it.


    "What are the shorings and drawbacks of symbiotic Martial Art?" Rui asked. He had already figured a lot of the answer but he wanted to confirm it with an actual expert.


    "There''s risks, conditions and constraints." He sighed. "That''s one of the reasons symbiosis Martial Art techniques haven''t taken off, there''s so many disadvantages that other fields of Martial Art simply do not have. The risks include possibility of brain damage if you overburden your mental capacity since most symbiotes used in Symbiosis Martial Art techniques form neural pinks with the brain, weakness due to overburdening your stamina. Furthermore, each symbiote has their own additional risks specific to them that need to be ounted for. The difficulty of mastery is also greater because you need to develop basic proficiency and coordination with symbiotes."


    Rui nodded. With all these disadvantages along with the instinctive fear disgust of putting a strange disgusting creature inside your body and connected with your mind was likely the reason that symbiosis Martial Art had not taken off.


    "What are the advantages of symbiosis techniques?"


    Fernan smirked. "I''m d you asked."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 328 Martial Commission

    "There are solid advantages to symbiotic Martial Art." Fernan exined. "For one, it''s easier to master powerful techniques once you obtain basic mastery of the symbiote."


    Rui raised an eyebrow at those words, waiting for him to continue.


    "There are symbiotic techniques with grade-ten potency but only grade-nine or sometimes even grade-eight difficulty!" He said, grinning smugly.


    Rui''s eyes widened at those words. Grade-ten potency techniques like God Speed, Void Step, All-Seeing Eye and Heart Permeation were all extraordinarily potent techniques with extraordinary difficulty. They could not be mastered without extreme talent, high affinity and immense amount effort. All of the grade-ten potency techniques that Rui hade across in the Apprentice library also had grade-ten difficulty. All grade-ten techniques were grade-ten in both power and difficulty


    However, Fernan just told him that it was possible to obtain grade-ten potency techniques with lower difficult grades in symbiosis Martial Art!


    Meaning it was possible to obtain that absurd power with significantly lower difficulty.


    "That''s... impressive." Rui admitted.


    "Indeed." Fernan replied. "There''re also other advantages like a greater diversity of utility. Surpassing your biological limits gives you options to do things that would be unfathomable otherwise."


    Rui nodded. Flying with wings was one of them. He wondered how fast Fernan would be if he ever became a Squire, Martial Squires had all reached a level where they could propel themselves by simply stepping on air. Surely someone with wings would be able to do far more.


    These two advantages alone were worth looking into symbiosis Martial Art when he had the time.


    (''Next training session for sure.'') He noted, excited.


    He didn''t know what kind of symbiotic Martial Art technique he would pick, if he would even end up choosing one in the first ce.


    The two chatted for some time more until the event finally ended and guests and their representative fighters dispersed and returned.


    Rui returned the Martial Academy that day, deep in thought. He had many things to consider. His most immediate goal was fulfilling the conditions of Squire candidacy. Missions helped him stabilize his growth so that he could bolster the new techniques he learnt with realbat experience rather than mediocre sparring experience he would have if cooped himself in the Martial Academy. It was also one of the reasons the Martial Academy had the learner''s license provision.


    It was so that Martial Apprentices could go out in the real world and understand where their truebat prowess andpetenceid.


    Rui could feel that he had grown just a bit stronger in the span of a week since he came out of training. Purely because he had grown more and morefortable and familiar with his own strength. He wouldn''t mind continuing missions until he felt himself stagnating.


    However, he had an instinctive feeling that he was close to achieving Squire candidacy, just onest step away. When he hade out of training, he wasn''t sure whether his Martial Art had achieved maturity or not. He was told he would be certain of it one day, but after the recent bit of experience he had umted, he could feel his Flowing Void Style only needed a bit more of growth before it reached maturity.


    (''Probably just onest training stage.'') Rui mused to himself.


    That was why he needed to have serious considerations about the notion of mastering symbiosis techniques in his next training stage. It would be quite crucial. Was it wise to try and delve into an exotic field like symbiotic Martial Art?


    Rui wasn''t sure.


    Thankfully, he still had some time. He wanted to enrich his experience and ensure his master over his current power had peaked. Not just in a sparring scenario, but in realbat as well.


    When he returned, he had wanted immediately to jump into another mission, when he suddenly found Kane running up to him.


    "Hey Rui, where you''ve been?" He asked hurriedly.N?velDrama.Org content.


    "Just came back from a mission, about pick another, why?"


    "Well, you don''t need to pick another." Kane shook his head. "It''s been picked for you.


    Rui''s eyebrow lifted. "A mandatory mission from the Royal Kandrian government?"


    Kane shook his head. "Not the government, the Martial Union itself."


    "How do you know of this?" Rui frowned.


    "Because you''re not the only one who was picked." Kane replied.


    "You too?"


    "And Fae, Nel and Hever."


    Rui frowned. "A mission involving the top five Martial Apprentices of the Martial Academy? What kind of mission is it?"


    "Don''t know yet." Kane sighed. "The mission breakdown will apparently ur at the Martial Union headquarters by an official Martialmissioner."


    Rui''s eyes widened at those words. The fact that the mission was being personally delivered at the Martial Union by a Martialmissioner meant that it was likely quite a lot more important to the Kandrian Martial Union than just standard mission. That also reflected in the Martial Artists that were chosen to undertake the mission.


    "Well, let''s go then." Rui urged.


    The two boys immediately met up with the other five and they all dispersed for the Martial Union Hajin branch headquarters.


    "What do you think the mission is about?" Fae wondered.


    "Hard to say." Hever replied. "I''ve never beenmissioned by the Martial Union itself."


    "It''s definitely a mission that affects the interests of the Martial Union itself." Rui murmured thoughtfully. "However, theymissioned Martial Apprentices. Even if it''s distinguished Martial Apprentices like us, it means that the difficulty of the mission does not exceed the Apprentice-Realm, that''s for sure."


    He paused before continuing. "The fact they''re hiring Martial Artists at all means that there''s a conflict of interests that is affecting the interests of the Martial Union. That actually limits the possibilities by a lot. For starters, it''s not a hunting mission, those aremissioned by the Ministry of Environment and Ecology. It''s not primarily a covert mission, only Kane here is suited for high-grade shadow-ss missions. That leaves offense-ss and defense-ss missions, maybe some weird misceneous mission. As well."


    "So basically, we''re going to be protecting somebody or attacking somebody." Kane concluded.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 329 Commissioned

    The Martial Academy gave an impression of wealth and prestige, it was quite ostentatious andrge. Yet it stood in sharp to the Martial Union headquarters. The Martial Union headquarters had a no-nonsense militaristic approach to its structure. Rui could feel that it was designed for absolutely efficiency without even the slightest care for aesthetics.


    All major and semi-major towns had a branch of the Martial Union in them, and the town of Hajin was no different. It wasn''t even all too far from the Martial Academy, thankfully.


    They''d soon arrived and immediately headed inside towards themission department of the Martial Union.


    "Please wait in office Three-twelve." The staff member said. "Commissioner Frelmaunt will join you and begin the briefing as soon as possible."


    ? The briefing room was a lot more earthlike than Rui had more expected, then again there were only so many ways to make a briefing room.


    "Booooring!" Nel sunk in a chair. "This is boring! I''m going back."


    "That''s a bad idea." Kane told him. "The royalty contract we signed specified an agreement to mandatorily epting at a certain frequency annually."


    "Screw that!" Nel spat, standing up. "I''m going back to the Academy and fighting strong Apprentices."


    "There are no Martial Apprentices left that are strong enough to fight you either." Rui pointed out. "The only ones from the Academy who can are all sitting in this room. Do you want to fight weak Martial Apprentice you already beat?"


    "Tsk!" He tutted as he slumped back into his chair. "UuuUurrgh! Hurry up already."


    "Be patient you child." Kane red at him.


    Fae through him an amused look as she scoffed.


    Kane turned towards her. "What?"


    "My, nothing at all." She shrugged.


    Kane knitted his eyebrows. "That didn''t feel like nothing at all."


    "You''re overthinking."


    "Am I?"


    "You are."


    Rui sighed, exasperated as the exchange continued. Fae''s and Kane''s ability to bicker over literally nothing was truly something to marvel at.


    (''We''re so far away from anything resembling a team.'') Rui sighed inwardly. (''Let''s hope this mission isn''t too demanding on coordination and cooperation.'')


    Finally, the door opened.


    A man in a suit-like garb with the emblem of the Martial Union walked in.


    "Sorry for the dy." He said as he walked into the room with a box files. "Apprentices Rui Quarrier, Fae Duhan, Kane Arrancar, Nel, and Hever Mendelieve?"


    "Yes sir." They all affirmed.


    He nodded, taking the files and distributing them to each of the Martial Union.


    "The mission that you''re all going to bemissioned toplete is an offense-ss mission." He told them "Naturally, this means it''s an international mission. The target of the mission is a research facility in the Commonwealth Duchy of Vinfarna. One of the smallest sovereign states that orbits the Kandrian Empire. Your goal is to kill all of the researchers of the research facility and extract all the research data that of the research facility and bring it back to the Kandrian Empire."This content is ? N?velDrama.Org.


    Rui frowned. He didn''t expect a research facility in a foreign nation to be the target of the mission.


    "The research facility''s existence is ssified information of the Commonwealth Duchy of Vinfarna. It''s built and located far and away from the popce and even underground in order to conceal its existence." Commissioner Frelmaunt told them. "The intelligence provided by the Martial Union covers rather extensive data on the research facility. Our spies have managed to acquire general intel on its structure, security measures as well as the location of the desired target. After carefully evaluating all this information, the difficulty of this mission has been evaluated as among the highest even in the grade-ten range, requiring atleast one grade-ten Martial Apprentice and four other Martial Apprentices above grade-eight."


    He paused before continuing. "Of those four, we have evaluated the need of atleast one Martial Apprentice with high offensive power and one Martial Apprentice with high stealth capabilities. The sensory prowess of the team cannot dip below a certain threshold as well."


    "To reiterate, your mission has two objectives. The first objective is to ensure the deaths of all researchers of the underground facility. All of them. Not a single one may leave. This is of absolute paramount importance. Failure toplete this objective will be considered aplete failure for the mission. The second objective is to acquire all the research data of the facility. The means of which is detailed in the mission bill." He spoke. "The missionmences immediately, once you''re done being briefed, you''ll immediately head to the dispatch facility where you''ll immediately travel to Vinfarna on foot. The sessful remuneration is a six hundred gold in total."


    Rui''s eyes widened. That was twenty times his remuneration from his Ruyloken Gang mission. The sheer amount of money the Martial Union was willing to fork over for this one mission was astounding.


    "That covers the most significant parts of the mission. The less significant but important details are all thoroughly detailed in the mission bill. Be sure to memorize it." The man told them.


    "Ah." He suddenly remembered something. "The nativenguage and script of the Commonwealth Duchy of Vinfrana is Vinfranese. The mission includes a length list of Vinfranese words and phrases that need to be memorized."


    "Ideally, all of you ought to memorize it." He told them. "But at the very least, one of you needs to memorize it."


    Rui skimmed through the mission bill as he quickly inputted and stored them in his mind pce.


    "Ah, one more thing." He said, turning to Rui. "You, Apprentice Quarrier, will lead the mission, clear?"


    None of them were surprised by that. Rui was more or less the strongest, and he was absolutely the smartest.


    Rui nodded in response. "Yes sir."


    "Good. Memorize the mission bill inside out and once you''re done, proceed with the necessary protocols and head out. If you need any further rification, you may consult me in themissioner department."


    "Excuse me." Rui interrupted his departure. "Is it possible to know why the mission is beingmissioned?"


    The man stared at Rui thoughtfully. "Well, if you have to know, it''s because the research facility has engaged in gross vition of human rights. The Martial Union cannot tolerate it, simple as that."


    He said, leaving.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 330 Speculation

    Rui''s eyes narrowed at those words. (''Does he think we''re idiots? That''s absolute nonsense and everyone knows it.'')N?velDrama.Org content.


    The part of the human rights vition was actually true. It was even detailed in the mission bill. The research facility was mass experimenting on human beings relentlessly. The Commonwealth Duchy of Vinfarna used prisoners as test subjects for research and development and the mission detailed how hundreds of bodies were disposed by the research facility every month.


    Still, Rui wasn''t a fool.


    The Martial Union was not a humanitarian or a phnthropic organization. It was an organization that thrived and flourished on human conflict and suffering.


    Would such an organization give even the slightest bit of a fuck of human rights vitions in another sovereign nation? That too a small nation with no bargaining power with the Kandrian Empire?


    (''The answer is obvious not.'') Rui mused.


    The true goal of the mission likely was the research data. Rui had figured this out the very instant Frelmaunt hadid out the objectives of the mission.


    What Rui didn''t understand was why Frelmaunt stressed on the first objective of eliminating all inhabitants of the Martial Union instead of research data acquisition.


    In fact, wasn''t eliminating all researchers a bad idea?


    If the Martial union secretly stole all the data and allowed the research to continue, wouldn''t it gain even more research data in the future that it could steal once more.


    Wasn''t that ultimately more productive?


    (''If they had decided to send someone like Kane once a year to use Void Step to secretly infiltrate the research facility, steal all the data, then they would end up with much more research data in the long run.'') Rui noted. (''Why not go for something like that?'')


    There was only one conclusion.


    The Martial Union strongly wanted the research to not continue.


    (''Which means the disincentives and detriments of letting the research continue surpass the benefits of letting it continue.'') Rui concluded. (''But why would that be?'')


    Information by itself did not hurt anybody.


    (''It''s not the information, it''s who has it.'') Rui realized.


    The Martial Union did not want the Commonwealth Duchy of Vinfarna to possess the data obtained from the research projects being conducted in the research facility.


    This was understandable, of course. Research and development were the cornerstones of civilization and could singlehandedly benefit a country enormously. It was understandable for the Martial Union to want to prevent other nations on getting their hands on a lot of it.


    (''The fact that the Martial Union is involved means that it''s rted to Martial Art and not conventional technology.'') Rui mused.


    The Martial Union did not engage in research of conventional esoteric technology, as far as he knew. If the Vinfarna research facility was engaging in normal esoteric technology research, the Martial Union would likely not bother. The Royal Family would be the one to interfere if that was the case.


    This was also supported by the fact that they were experimenting on humans.


    (''It''s quite likely that this research is something that threatens the overwhelming power dynamic advantage that the Kandrian Empire possess over the Commonwealth Duchy of Vinfrana.'') Rui mused.


    However, he couldn''t understand what that could be. It was unlikely that this research wasn''t something that the Martial Union had already possessed. Rui was aware of how much the Martial Union invested in the research of Martial Art. The research budgets wererge enough for the entire organization to form Martial factions on how the gigantic research budget ought to be allocated.


    Rui highly doubted that the Commonwealth Duchy of Vinfrana could match the Martial Union''s frightening Martial Art research.


    (''If the Martial Union already possesses the research data that the Vinfrana research facility has, then it means that the research data is important enough that the Martial Union simply cannot tolerate the state of Vinfrana gaining ess it.'') Rui deduced.


    That made the chances that the research was based on techniques alone to be quite low. A handful of techniques alone would not matter to the Martial Union. All nations developed Martial Art techniques, the cost it took to prevent that was not worth the benefits gained.


    If it wasn''t techniques that were being researched, then what was it?


    Rui was quite curious. Unfortunately, the mission bill did not specify the research that was actually being conducted in the research facility. Which likely meant that Martial Apprentices like themselves had too low of a clearance level to have ess to information of this sort.


    Still Rui had several of his own suspicions that he put aside for now. The mission was more important. He began scrolling through the data on the research facility provided by the mission bill.


    The research facility wasn''t small, it was circr and had a diameter of more than a kilometer. The general area of the secret entrances was known; however, the exact locations weren''t deduced. Rui immediately realized that this was one of the reasons he was picked for this mission. With Seismic Mapping, he had the ability to detect underground anomalies within a certain depth limit. Unless he was way too far, he should be able to detect one of the entrances of the research facility.


    Funnily enough, the mission bill had intel on the general structure of the research facility but not on the location of the entrances.


    Thankfully, the security measures weren''t beyond their ability. It wasn''t that the research facility wasn''t important enough to be given higher security, it''s just that the Vinfranan government couldn''t afford to provide it more security.


    Among all the smaller nations, the Commonwealth Duchy of the Vinfrana was most deprived of Martial Artists due to therger nations. It had had a weaker Martial Art foundation than even a state for its size, and Kandrian Empire had ruthlessly stripped away all of its Martial Artists by attracting them over with the rich and immense learning and growth resources that it had to offer.


    It was to the point that the Commonwealth Duchy of Vinfrana was left with nothing but Martial Apprentices!


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 331 Plan

    The Commonwealth Duchy of Vinfrana was a direct bordering nation of the Kandrian Empire thankfully, so the journey back and forth from the town of Hajin to the location of the research facility wasn''t all that long.


    "Have you guys memorized it?" Rui asked, closing the mission bill, after quickly storing all the data in his mind pce.


    "No." Kane yawned. "But we have you. So, it''s all good."


    Rui rolled his eyes.


    "I''ve memorized everything but the finer details." Fae replied.


    "As have I." Hever calmly replied.


    Rui nced over at snoring Nel, sighing.


    "Hey, wake up!"


    "Hm?" His eyes shed open. "Is it time to go?"


    "Yes."


    He stood up abruptly. "What are you wasting time sitting here for? Let''s get going!"


    Rui simply gave up, as they all proceeded to the dispatch facility,pleting the required protocols before they could finally be dispatched.


    The journey took longer than if Rui alone had set out. Partially because the group was as slow as the slowest person; Hever.


    The Commonwealth Duchy of Vinfrana was almost in the opposite direction of the Kingdom of Grahal. They had to travel north past the Mantian region and even cross a tiny mountain range reach the border.


    Unlike the Kingdom of Grahal, the weather and climate were cold and dry too. They ran in the cold until they finally reached the border.


    Much to Rui''s amazement, the border security of the Commonwealth Duchy of Vinfrana was much worse than even that of the Kingdom of Grahal. Atleast the Kingdom of Grahal had something resembling a wall protecting the border.


    Vinfrana had no more than a paltry fence marking its border. Even ordinary humans could casually cross it.


    "How much further from here?" Nelined.


    "Three hours at our current pace to reach the Frujmel forest." Rui replied.


    The general location of the research facility was in the north of the Frujmel forest, though its exact location was unknown. The intelligence was not gathered through direct surveince, clearly.


    Rui could see why the research facility was built in the forest. It wasrge and far away from poption ording to the mission bill. The only thing that surprised Rui was how they were able to build and underground research facility.


    The more sophisticated civil engineering of Gaia, like all forms of technology in this world, was based on esoteric technology which was far more expensive than the civil engineering technology of Earth due to the scarcity of the esoteric resources used and also because of their value.


    Building underground facilities even on Earth was not easy, he could not imagine how difficult and expensive it was in this world.


    Furthermore, the Commonwealth Duchy of Vinfrana was a poor sovereign nation. Meaning projects like this were highly extravagant and ostentatious for it.


    Yet, it invested this much into the facility.


    (''My suspicions likely aren''t wrong.'') Rui thought as analyzed the data avable. (''The research facility is researching something important, something rted to Martial Art. Something it doesn''t have and something the Martial Union does. Something significant enough that the Martial Union is willing to raid and annihte all research on the matter so that the state doesn''t gain the results it is looking for.'')


    (''The fact that they''ve gone this overboard with the secrecy likely means they''re aware that the research taking ce is not something the Martial Union is willing to allow. If this was merely ordinary research, they would not go this out of their way to hide it.'') Rui conjectured.


    He grew more and more curious about what exactly was being researched in the facility.


    Time passed.


    They eventually ran into a sea of trees in the forest.


    "We''ve arrived." Rui dered. "The forest does have Apprentice-level creatures. So, keep an eye out everybody."


    "How do we find the location of the research facility again?" Kane asked.


    "Leave that to me." Rui told them. "My Seismic Mapping is perfect for locating it. I''ll scan... well, the entire forest I guess."


    Rui sighed.


    "Will you be able to locate the facility."N?velDrama.Org content.


    "Given enough time, yes." Rui replied. "I don''t even need to directly locate the facility even."


    "What do you mean?" Fae asked.


    "A research facility of this size absolutely gets shipments of supplies no matter how self-dependent it is. Basic human sustenance supplies because they are this far away from the popce, energy supplies, esoteric supplies and human test subject supplies as well." Rui replied. "In fact, this is probably how the Martial Union discovered of the research facility''s existence in the first ce. Even if the Commonwealth Duchy of Vinfrana did a good job concealing the physical location, it''s not good enough. One needs to conceal all exchanges with the research facility to truly hide it."


    Rui suspected the Martial Union learnt of the existence of the research facility via the expenditure of funds and resources of all kinds needed to build the facility. Such expenditure was hard to hide, and the Martial Union''s intelligence department likely picked up signs of it early on.


    Of course, the Martial Union would not bulldoze any and all research facilities of all small nations around it. That was a worthless endeavor that yielded no meaningful benefits. It was quite likely the Martial Union then narrowed down the general location to the northern portion of the Frujmel Forest looking at the flow of funds and resources.


    Resources needed to be shipped physically, it was easier to catch a shipment travelling through the forest than it was for Rui to scan the entire forest with Seismic mapping looking for a facility that was God-knew how deep. The deeper it was, the closer he needed to be to be able to detect it.


    Furthermore, the topography of the Frujmel Forest was uneven, which make it more annoying to use Seismic Mapping to urately map out the environment.


    "Hopefully we hit some luck" Rui muttered, sighing. "The sooner we locate the exact entrance, the sooner we can end this mission.


    * * * * * * * * * *


    If you''re reading this on a website other than Webnovel, then you''re reading pirated content. Follow thetest updates of The Martial Unity at; https://m.webnovel/book/the-martial-unity_23416629005385305


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 332 Next Step

    Rui knew one of the reasons he had been picked was the Seismic Mapping technique. It was the best technique to locate a hidden underground research facility. Although there were sub-terranean specialists, the difficulty of the mission mean they needed to be extremely strong.


    Furthermore, since the conflict wouldn''t actually be taking insidend or the actual ground itself, they were useless beyond detection. Thus, it was more efficient to send someone who had the sensory techniques needed but also the power needed for the mission.


    How many grade-ten Martial Apprentices were there that had also coincidentally mastered the Seismic Mapping technique, that also weren''t on a mission?


    Not many, Rui suspected.


    Still, it wasn''t fun to be the only one working while his teammates were effectively doing nothing.


    Rui opened his eyes, lifting his palm from the ground sighing. (''Nothing here as well.'')


    Rui had long begun grid-search across the northern part of the forest. It would take him a full day of non-stop work to be able to map the entire area with his speed and sensory range.


    The problem was figuring out the sizes of the grid boxes because he didn''t the depth at which the facility was built at. The deeper it was, the smaller his grid boxes would need to be and the more grid boxes he would need to have. Because the deeper it was, the closer he needed to be in order to be able to detect it. If his grid boxes wererge, the probability that he would be close enough reduced the few grid boxes he had.


    Most people would simply try to be thorough and careful, and leave it at that.


    That was the normal and even reasonable thing to do


    But not Rui.


    He was careful and thorough. But he also decided to mathematically construct a probability function of the likelihood of the research facility being missed by his Seismic Mapping at certain depths.


    Thus, Rui had decided to create a probability function that inputted a possible depth of the research facility underground as well as the size of the grid boxes he was scanning the forest through, box-by-box, that outputted the probability of him missing it.


    As for trying to gauge the maximum depth the facility could possibly be, he had conducted a small quick survey where he quickly dug holes into the ground as deep as he could to see where he would hard rock. That would likely be the hard limit where he could safely assume that the research facility would not be below.


    Inputting that into the function, he could estimate the minimum amount of effort he would need to exert with his grid searching to be absolutely certain that he would not miss the research facility with his Seismic Mapping sense.


    With the Mind Pce technique, parsing through the data was easy, too.


    This was how a man of science operated.


    Just as Rui felt he needed to take a break, he froze.


    (''Hm?'') His eyebrows knitted as he sensed something odd deep within thend at a certain distance ahead of him.


    His eyes widened as he felt a t continuous hard structure.


    A structure that could not be naturally formed.


    (''This is it!'') He turned towards Kane, who was apanying him. "I think I found it."


    "Brilliant." Kane replied, relieved. "Let''s storm in and wipe them all out."


    "We don''t know the exact entrance location yet." Rui told him. "Besides..."


    "Besides?"


    "There''s a reason this is a grade-ten mission with a minimum requirement of five members." Rui told him, narrowing his eyes.


    There were six Martial Apprentices in charge of the security of the research facility.


    Among those six was a grade-ten Martial Apprentice while the remaining five were estimated to be mid-to-high grade Martial Apprentices at most.


    For the Kandrian Empire and the Martial Union, this was trivial. However, Rui suspected that for the Commonwealth Duchy of Vinfrana, this was not a small amount. Its Martial Artist-per-capita, the number of Martial Apprentices for the entire poption, was much lower than that of the Kandrian Empire.


    Furthermore, because it hadn''t had higher Realm Martial Artists in a long, long time. So, every Martial Apprentice was treated as a highly-valuable strategic asset. It wasn''t easy for the sovereign state to dispatch these many Martial Apprentices to sit idle in a research facility when there were so many other urgent needs for Martial Artists.


    Rui intended to gather as much information as he possible could before he wouldunch an assault. The current information avable was too scarce.


    Where was the entrance? How was it essed? Could they ess it the same way? Could the exit it the same way once the mission wasplete?This content is ? N?velDrama.Org.


    The information that the Martial Union had gathered had allowed them to understand a very general broad structure of the research facility, the Martial Union entrusted them with figuring out all the details.


    "What do you suggest we do now?" Kane asked, scratching his head. "Search for the entrance by scouring the area?"


    Rui shook his head. "That''s too direct, there''s a chance they have basic surveince near the entrance. If we go walking about, there''s a pretty decent chance we''ll be discovered immediately."


    "Then what do we do?" Kane asked.


    "Thorough extended surveince." Rui replied. "You all have monocrs. The four of you will surveil the patch ofnd below which the research facility is below. You''ll look for any opening using the monocrs from an elevated height with an eagle view of the entire area."


    "What about you?" Kane asked.


    "I''ll keep track of activity with Seismic Mapping." Rui said. "You guys keep aerial vision. There''s no way we can miss something if something does happen."


    He turned to Kane. "Also, once we do discover the entrance and obtain an opportunity to enter. You''re going in alone."


    "Hey! Why single out me?" Kaneined.


    "You have the Void Step technique; reconnaissance is yourst name."


    "Myst name is Arr-" He paused, recalling he hated that name. "Alright fine."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 333 Discovery

    Rui smirked. "Get going then, tell the others what I''ve told you and begin executing the n immediately. If any of you see something, send a beep to the rest of us."


    "Got it." Kane disappeared as he Void Stepped away.


    Rui turned back, continuing his surveince of the research facility with Seismic Mapping.


    He could sense part of the structure of the facility. Now he nned to circle around it and see if he could stumble into something resembling a secret opening.


    At the very least, they could notunch the attack without having a clear means to enter and exit. That would be incredibly foolish and short-sighted and would probably doom the mission. The research facility would probably detect them and would inform the government which would probably send reinforcements. The Commonwealth Duchy of Vinfrana would also be aware that the Kandrian Empire was aware of the existence of the secret research facility.


    Rui suspected that even if they themselves could not actively find the entrance to the research facility, they could, at the very least, detect the flow of resources into the research facility. A research facility of this sort absolutely required regr supply shipments to continue operating smoothly.


    There were way no way Rui could miss any exchanges in and out of the facility, he had deliberately repositioned himself to the shortest route between the closest urban town that would likely be the location from which the research facility received supply shipments from. If something came, he would see it in a heartbeat


    There were other ways to narrow down the location of the entrance as well. In all likelihood the entrance was some sort opening concealed by earth and some vegetation over it. It was simple and effective. And there really wasn''t any other straightforward manner in which they could hide the entrance without leaving anything visible that could distinguish it as a location.


    If that were the case, then there actually was a limited amount of area throughout the entire forest that the opening actually could be. The Frujmel forest was a dense forest with thick trees whose roots burrowed deep. The area the opening was constructed in could not be an area highly popted with the trees, the roots would likely be far too deep and widespread, furthermore the soil would also be quite tightly held. The most convenient locations to build a secret concealed underground entrance would be under light vegetation like grass or shrubs.


    This remarkably cut down the proportion of the area of the forest that the entrance could be at, making their job easier.


    Soon, time passed as Rui continued maintaining his surveince. It wasn''t as though there wasn''t any human activity whatsoever. There were travelling convoys and carriages of humans across the entire forest, but Rui had deemed them to be unrted as they continued through the forest without ever stopping in a human that cut through the forest at a much distant point.


    Until one of the convoys detoured.Copyright by N?v/elDrama.Org.


    (''Hm?'') Rui''s eyes knitted as he sensed a convoy approaching the general geographic area. (''Could it be?'')


    The convoy moved slowly and discreetly without drawing much of any attention at all, from what he could tell from such a great distance away. This was a good sign.


    Half an hourter, they stopped at a location nearly a kilometer away from his location.


    His eyes lit up as he felt a substantial increase in seismic activity from underground. He moved in closer discreetly, looking to get a better seismic view of the situation. At this point, he was rtively certain he had found what he was looking for.


    (''I see.'') He realized as he got a better understanding of the undergroundyout Seismic Mapping. (''The opening does not directly lead to the facility. It leads to an initialyer for logistics and security before leading to the actual research facility deeper underground. That makes sense. It''s also consistent with the general structure of the research facility that the mission bill provided us.'')


    He even felt the faint sensation of the Void Step technique from a distance. (''Kane''s on the move, good.'')


    He nodded as he felt Kane approaching the area, circling to keep the Void Step technique as he waited for entrance to open. He likely wouldn''t be able to return immediately, but when he did, he should be able give them valuable intelligence. Then, they could formte a more thorough n once they actually executed the assault.


    The convoy waited as arge hatch in the ground open. Two Martial Apprentice and six armed men emerged from it, poised for battle.


    (''Strong.'') He evaluated. (''But definitely not grade-ten.'')


    The Martial Apprentice walked over to the convoy, visibly alert and wary as they exchanged words with its upants and verified documents handed to them before nodding and rxing.


    (''Strict security.'') Rui noted. (''This should be routine to some extent, yet they don''t let their guards down.'')


    Soon, men from the convoy got off as they extracted boxes and other goods, walking into the entrance and down the steps as the Martial Artists and human guards inspected and guarded the area. Rui ensured he was far enough to not be detected but close enough to get a clear view of the situation with Seismic Mapping.


    (''Supply shipment, as I''d predicted.'') Rui mused.


    The men worked quickly and urgently. Quickly and hastily finishing the unloading and dropping before getting back into their carriages, while the Martial Apprentices and armed guards returned back into the facility and the hatch closed. And there were no signs of it anymore to the naked eye.


    (''Alright, time to catchup with the others'') Rui decided as he sent a vibration message to his teammates, a standardized message that was a call to regroup. Rui turned around and stealthily returned to their temporary make-shift base.


    Rui had immediatelyputed several ns in his head with varying degrees of probabilities of sess, already. He intended to flesh them out with his teammates and with Ker once he returned.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 334 Plans

    They had chosen a small cave as a temporary base to retreat to at any time. So, once Rui sent the message out to his teammates, he simply returned the cave to find them there.


    "Hey." Fae greeted him. "What''s the n now?"


    "We wait for Kane to return." Rui replied. "Nothing more until then. But we can talk about what happens after that."


    "We kick their asses after that!" Nel dered. "Vanish boy doesn''t get to have all the fun!"


    "He''s not having fun." Rui sighed exasperated. "He''s probably having a miserable time."


    "He gets to fight the enemies while we sit in this cave!" Nel scowled at him.


    "He''s not fighting."


    "Then why did he go in???" Nel frowned, confused.


    "I told him to observe everything inside and tell us what''s going on." Rui said. "He will simply look around and tell us everything."


    Rui wasn''t sure Nel was even familiar with reconnaissance as a concept, so he had to spell it out.


    "So he''s only looking at the enemy but doesn''t get to fight them?" Nel''s eyes widened.


    "Correct. Now then, moving on." Rui quickly shifted away from the mindless conversation. "Kane''s information will help us optimize our n, but the choices at hand fundamentally remains the same. We have a handful of options which can roughly be divided into three broad categories."


    "The first..." He continued, raising a finger. "Is the direct, straightforward and brute force method. We effectively walk upto the hatch and break it open forcefully and go on a rampage killing everything in sight."


    "The second is the covert option. We infiltrate the research facility undetected or disguised and thenunch a secret ambush once we''re inside with a dominant element of surprise."


    "The third is the semi-covert/direct approach. Where we ambush them at an opportune time with a decent element of surprise but then transition to a head-on approach after the initial ambush. This is the most practical approach in my opinion." Rui concluded.


    "Why do you say that?" Hever asked.


    "The head-on approach is probably not good. It''s almost guaranteed that the research facility is able tomunicate the with the government of the Commonwealth Duchy of Vinfrana. No matter how strong we are, we cannot possibly break open the secret entrance, kill all the Martial Apprentices, and then also kill all the personnel in the research facility before they manage to inform their government, and before the government sends some serious reinforcements."


    "Even if they inform the government of the attack, can''t weplete the mission before the reinforcements travel all the way and arrive here?" Hever asked.


    "If they fought normally, we could." Rui replied. "But they won''t. Not if they know that reinforcements are arriving."


    "What do you mean?" Fae asked.


    "If they know that there are reinforcementsing, then they''ll fight to stall." Rui exined. "Not losing is easier than winning, much easier. If they spend every resource on prolonging our operation as much as possible, we''re screwed. It will take an enormous amount of energy and time toplete it and it probably won''t happen before the reinforcements ur."


    "I see." Hever replied calmly. "That does make sense. What about the covert approach then, doesn''t that approachpletely solve the problem with the element of surprise and a huge head start?"


    "It does." Rui admitted. "The problem is it''s too unviable as far as probability of sessful implementation goes. Only Kane could employ that strategy, realistically. There''s no way we can sneak past the security via stealth or disguise, it was quite tight. If we attempt to, we''ll probably get caught and be in an even worse version of the problems of the direct approach."


    "That indeed does make sense." Fae admitted. "What about the third option? The semi-covert/direct option?"


    "It''s the best option as far as probability of sessful implementation goes." Rui exined. "We use a minimal amount of stealth to ambush with a decent element of surprise and snowball that advantage with a quick devastating attack." Rui exined.


    Copyright by N?v/elDrama.Org.


    "Hmmm..." Hever pondered the matter. "There''s one thing I don''t understand. Can''t the research facility contact the Vinfranian Duchy government even in this scenario?"


    "That''s only if all of us attack from the outside." Rui grinned. "But we have someone who can infiltrate the research facility and remain there undetected."


    "Kane is your solution to the problem?"


    Rui nodded. "The best role for Kane is to destroymunication devices and infrastructure and kill the department and security leaders from the inside. This prevents them frommunicating with the outside and also prevents the security department and team from organizing efficiently. The more the chaos there is, the smoother our operation will be."


    "You n for Kane to not join us with the external attack, but be present inside the facility when we attack and coordinate the destruction ofmunications and leadership? That''s..." Hever couldn''t help but be quite impressed. "...Quite a brilliant n. I cannot think of anything better, in fact."


    "Kane can infiltrate a day before whenever the entrance is opened for a supply shipment and simply wait for the time of the attack." Rui exined. "We can simply beep him when wemence the attack and he can begin his operation. Once we meet inside, we can proceed with the clean-up."


    "That is indeed a really solid strategy." Fae nodded. "How are we going to enter the research facility semi-covertly though?"


    "There are several possibilities, but the best one is definitely intercepting and hijacking the supply shipment enroute to the research facility, when the hatch opens up and the documents are verified and they rx a bit, then we bust out and ambush them all." Rui exined. "We just need to kill them, asides from the driver perhaps and thenpel him to proceed as if everything is normal. Jumping them at this point in time is quite high in the probability to seed. In my opinion, this is definitely the best n that can be employed in a short period of time."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 335 Shocking Conjecture

    "So, to reiterate the n." Rui continued. "We have Kane infiltrate the research facility sometime prior the day of the assault and have him keep a close eye on the location of thems and the leaders of the facility."


    "Then, when the next supply shipment is enroute, we attack it and kill most of its upants. Either we keep the driver alive or rece him with one of ourselves. Then show them the documents and once they go to the back to check up on the supply goods, we ambush them." Rui exined. "During the shipment unloading and docking, there were only two Martial Apprentices who stood guard during the entire process. If we gang up on them and overwhelm them quickly with a numbers advantage and the element of surprise, we''re doing very well."


    He turned to Fae. "The element of surprise is especially important and powerful. With the element of surprise, you should sessfully be able tond your Whirlpool attack on one of them and I should be able tond my Stinger sessfully. Once that''s done, their hope of survival is absolutely zero. Taking them out early means we get to fight the remaining four Martial Apprentices with a five-on-four advantage, that should be quite solidly in our favour as well."


    "While we''reunching an ambush from the outside, Kane sabotagesmunications and leadership which shouldn''t take more than a minute given his prowess. He can also stall the four Martial Apprentices from entering, although that can be dangerous. However, as long as it''s merely stalling and distracting, and he''s careful, he should be able to manage. The Void Step technique is overpowered, and he''s grown stronger since mastering it."


    "Once we enter, we regroup with Kane and fight the remaining the four Martial Apprentices while securing the secret entrance to the research facility so that none of them leave and begin our clean-up operation thoroughly and finish up the job as fast as possible, secure the data and leave."


    Rui inhaled lightly at the end of the lecture. "This will be the general gist of the n, any suggestions? Critiques? Questions? Note that the n is tentative, until we scour through the intelligence Kane brings back, we can''t be as certain as we''d like."


    "Even if we sabotage themunications, won''t the fact that the convoy shipping the supplies to the research facility did not return to wherever it was dispatched from raise rms?" Hever asked. "They would certainly try to track the location of the convoy if it doesn''t return."


    "That''s definitely true, however, we are geographically far away from even the closest poption center, which means the convoy is expected to take several hours to return back to the dispatch location. By the time the time any measures are taken due to the convoy beingte, we will have longpleted the mission and left the research facility." Rui told them. "It''s quite likely there''s a verification report sent by the facility to whatever executive branch is responsible for the supply shipments. We need to begin our ambush after the report is sent or send the fake report ourselves. The details of which will be ironed out once Kane returns."


    The four, no, three of them discussed the n and thought it through thoroughly. A few days passed as another shipment of supplies arrived and Kane was able to escape once they opened up the secret entrance once more.


    Soon, he regrouped with the rest of his team, copsing when he was finally in safety.


    "Kan-." "Later! I''m sleeping first!" Kane barked at Rui.


    "Ah..." Rui forgot he hadn''t slept in a while and had also been keeping the Void Step technique active for extended period of time.


    It was only after ten hours of sleep that Kane finally awoke from his slumber. "Oh man... That was horrific, I never want to do that ever again."


    "You''ve mastered the Void Step technique; you''ll be expected to do that by people whomission you and the Martial Union as well." Rui scoffed. "Why do you think you were assigned to this mission? Your stealth is the strongest reason why."


    Rui chuckled as Kane groaned loudly, earning chides from Fae.


    "Alright, now give us a detailed report first." Rui told Kane.


    "Okay." Kane took a deep breath as he began narrating the entire story.


    When he had first entered, he saw arge and wide room with security personnel that inspected the supply goods before sending the goods down a heavily guarded elevator. The two Martial Apprentices who had overseen the unloading and docking of the supply shipments were permanent security in the security floor.


    The remaining four Martial Apprentices were guarding down in the actual research facility below. Out of which Kane only ever saw three.


    "Only three?" Rui asked. "Was the grade-ten Martial Apprentice among them?"


    "No." Kane shook his head. "I never saw the grade-ten Apprentice. He was probably in the core wing of the research facility that I never got visit."


    "Why not?"This content is ? N?velDrama.Org.


    "Because it never opened, not even once."


    "Hmmm..." Rui''s eyes narrowed. "The simplest exnation is that the most important and vital research is ongoing within that core wing. Which is why he''s permanently guarding it at all times."


    "That''s what I though too." Kane nodded.


    "Tell me more about the research ongoing." Rui said.


    Kane winced at those words. "Yeah. The research. It was bad. Hundreds of humans, locked in sealed ss rooms. Strapped in beds as test subjects. They would make them consume some kind of potion, subject them to some kind of torture or the other and the test subjects would all be brain-dead. They would never wake up and eventually die."


    Rui frowned. That sounded remarkably bizarre.


    "But their bodies were different, almost as if that procedure changed something."


    "Different?"


    "Yeah, improved, I guess. Whatever they did to them, basically killed them but also made their bodies stronger. Afterwards hey would conduct tests on things like toughness of the body and a bunch of other things I simply didn''t understand, but basically, something was always different about the body in a measurable waypared to before. From everything I could gather..."


    His eyes narrowed. "It felt like they, the entire facility, all the researchers and everybody weren''t just testing the human body... I think they..."


    He paused, hesitating. "I think they are trying to enhance the human body. I think that is the ultimate goal of the entire research facility."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 336 Fleshed

    Rui''s eyes widened at his words as he pondered about them. It didn''t seem imusible given what Kane described, but it didn''t match his earlier deductions. The research facility was absolutely researching something rted to Martial Art. Rui was quite certain about that. Either Martial Art techniques or trainings or something like that, or something that was a threat to Martial Art fundamentally.


    (''Human enhancement isn''t exactly that much of a threat to Martial Art directly.'') Rui mused. This was especially true because there already were extremely rare and high-grade esoteric resources that could be used to create a permanent enhancement potion. This was a generally a field that the Martial Union would not involve itself in, this was more the Royal Family''s business.


    So, what exactly did all the mass experimentation on humans that Kane saw have to with Martial Art?


    Rui sighed, shaking his head. He had far too little information. Furthermore, he was just trying to satisfy his curiosity to some extent, knowing the purpose of the research facility was not something that was necessary for thepletion of the mission.


    "Tell us more about the security floor." Rui told him.


    "Right." Kane nodded as he began exining his observations.


    The security floor served as the gateway to the actual research facility, the only way down was through an elevator stand. As Rui had suspected, there was indeed amunication terminal on that floor through which verification messages for shipments were sent.


    "When I entered the security floor initially after the hatch was open, thems guy operated it to send a message after the documents were verified." Kane exined.


    "Hm." Rui nodded. "Then we cannot begin our operation until after the shipment verification message is sent. However, as soon as it is sent. The device needs to be destroyed by you, Kane. Which means that you''ll need to be at the security floor when weunch our ambush."


    "What about themunications of the research facility down below? Kane cannot be two ces at once." Hever told him.


    "Hmmm..." This was indeed a problem.


    He turned to Kane. "Does sound from the security floor reach the research facility easily? Could they hear amotion from all the way down below?"


    "No way." Kane shook his head. "There''s too much of a distance of pure solid ground between the security floor and the research facility."


    "Good." Rui nodded. "Then we''ll have you wait in the security floor when the ambush happens."


    Rui exined the n of hijacking the shipment supplies andunching an ambush after the documents were verified to Kane.


    "I see, so you want to wait for the message to be sent tounch the attack so that no suspicion will be raised." Kane nodded. "That means I have to destroy themunication terminal and the operators immediately after the message is sent?"


    "That''s right." Rui replied. "We''ll hijack the shipment convoy, show them the documents that the shipment convoy original had once we arrive, as soon as the verification is done and the verification confirmation message is sent by the operator, you need to destroy them and then weunch an ambush immediately. We cannotunch an ambush before they send the confirmation message because if the confirmation message is not sent, an investigation will beunched at some point. It''s too risky."


    "Got it. That''s a pretty solid n. What happens after the message is sent and weunch the ambush and sessfully take the security floor?" Kane asked.


    "You said that nomotion on the security floor could be detected from the research facility directly." Rui reminded. "That means even if we ughter the security floor, the research facility would not immediately learn of it on the spot at that very moment. Which means we can straightforwardly take the elevator down and conduct a second ambush. The fact that the security floor and the research facility are this isted was a design decision that will ultimately bite them in the ass."


    This content is ? N?velDrama.Org.


    "So after we ambush and take the security floor, we just straightforwardly take the elevator down?" Kane asked, scratching his head.


    "Do you know of any other entrance?"


    "No." Kane admitted. "It just seemed like a pretty simple n."


    "Simplest ns have the highest likelihood of seeding." Rui told him.


    "Ok, so what happens when we take the elevator down and actually reach the research facility?" Fae asked.


    "After that the n is straightforward." Rui admitted. "We just take out as many people as possible as fast as possible. Though Kane, you need to disablemunications and kill the leaders. Once you do that, their inability to call for help and the chaos will work in our favour."


    "What about the Martial Apprentices?" Fae asked.


    "You, Hever and Nel will take down the three Martial Apprentices who will run into us. We know that their grade isn''t particrly high so the three you of should be able to win handily, in the worst-case scenario, I''lle to help though that almost certainly won''t happen." Rui reassured.


    "And the grade-ten Martial Artist?" Kane asked.


    "I''ll take him on for sure." Rui nodded. "In which case, you keep an eye on the other fights. Cleaning upms and a few ordinary humans won''t take much time with your speed. In the worst case, you might need to back me up if the grade-ten Martial Artist is too much for me."


    None of them believed that Rui would need help, but Rui wanted to be sure anyway. Just a single mistake could be the difference between life and death.


    They began fleshing the n out. Considering different possibilities and oues, creating contingencies while optimizing the n to suit all of the information that Kane had managed to gather from his reconnaissance infiltration into the research facility. Thankfully, the Void Step technique was perfect for reconnaissance and Kane had managed thoroughly gather all the information that was needed thanks to it. Thus, they were able to create the best n they possibly could.


    Soon, only the execution of the assault was left.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 337 First Phase

    "When are theying?" Nel groaned impatiently.


    Rui sighed. "They should be here soon."


    "You said that three minutes ago!" Nel retorted.


    "Then stop asking every three minutes!" Rui red at him. "Listen here young ma-"


    Rui suddenly froze as he turned around, narrowing his eyes. "They''reing. Everyone scram. Fae, do the honours."


    Fae immediately rushed to tworge, tall trees.


    BAM BAM!


    With two powerful blows, the trees copsed, blocking the usual path the shipment convoy would usually travel through.


    They all immediately scattered to the sides as they hid some distance away.


    Two minutester, a few loaded carriages arrived at that spot, stopping at the copsed broken tree trunks blocking their path.


    Soon, the men emerged from the carriages, talking exasperatedly and loudly in vinfranese and sanskrit.


    BAM BAM BAM BAM!


    Fourrge Tempestuous Ripple attacks crashed onto almost all of them men, killing all those it touched.


    Only four survived.


    THUD


    Ruinded heavily on his feet from the sky, sighing at the corpses. Killing was a dirty sensation, but it was one he endured. He could, at the very least, take sce in the fact that they didn''t suffer. Heunched a solid, heavy attack that killed them the very instant it crashed on their heads.


    He turned to the only four men he had spared. "You''re going to take us to the secret research facility. You will cooperate with us. Is that clear?"


    They simply stared at his masked face in shock, their legs had long given in, and they were shivering in fear.


    They furiously nodded. Rui had heard them speak Sanskrit so he wasn''t too concerned that they didn''t understand him.


    The n he hade up with had worked just fine. He wanted to draw them all out of the carriage and away from it so that the carriage would not even need to be forced into in a way that could damage it. He also killed them extremely quickly in a way that wouldn''t agitate the horses too much. Both carriages and horses were perfectly fine and the entire hijacking took only ten seconds in total.


    This was much better than conventionally attacking them, forcing their way in and damaging the carriage, losing the horses that would get far too agitated with all the screaming that would inevitably ensue. It was too messy and lowered the probability of sess of the mission, which Rui wanted to avoid at all costs.


    Soon the Martial Apprentices gathered and quickly boarded the convoy after they cleared the trees out of the way. Fortunately, because Rui finished the job that quickly, they would still be quite on schedule for the scheduled shipment.


    That along with the fact that that there no visual elements that would give away that the convoy had been hijacked by them, Rui did not see any way they could possibly be given away.


    An hourter, they reached the secret entrance of the research facility. All of them tensed, yet maintained their calm andposure. They did not want to give their presence away because of a failure to keep theirposure.


    The hatch opened.


    Like clockwork, the Martial Artists and the armed men emerged from within and approached the leading carriage.


    The man immediately gave him the documents without saying a word, exactly as Rui had instructed him to. The Martial Apprentices skimmed through the document briefly, nodded, heading to the back.


    Just as he reached;


    BAM!


    "AAARGH!"


    A loud sound and screech from within the security floor startled the two Apprentices just as they were about open the door to the storage convoys.


    Yet, before they could even move.


    BAM BAM!


    The doors of the two carriages they were close exploded open as Rui and Faeunched themselves at the two Martial Apprentices with ferocious speeds


    Had the two Martial Apprentices been alert, focused and prepared, they might have been able to react optimally.


    But they weren''t.


    And so, they didn''t.


    PEW


    BAM!!!


    The Stinger and the Whirlpoolnded on them hard as the two attacks inflicted critical injuries. Rui didn''t have time to aim, precision and uracy usually came at the cost of speed and haste, and in this scenario thetter two were more important. As long as the Stingernded somewhere, that was satisfactory.


    "Argh!" The two Martial Apprentices grimaced as they leaped backwards in shock and pain.


    Rui turned in the opposite direction towards the guards while Nel and Hever ran towards the wounded Martial Apprentices.


    The reason for this was simple, it was a matter ofpatibility. Hever was strongest in a one-on-one scenario; thus, he joined Hever. Rui was better at dealing with numbers than Nel thanks to Tempestuous Ripple, thus he let Nel take on the Martial Apprentice while heunched Tempestuous Ripples that killed the men who fired at them.


    When he turned around to inspect the progress of his friends, he was impressed. It was overwhelming.


    Hever and Nel had killed their Martial Apprentice before he had even realized while Fae was almost done.


    WHOOSHThis content is ? N?velDrama.Org.


    She pulled her hand back, and suddenly her opponent fell forward towards her as if being pulled by an invisible force.


    BAM!


    His skull cracked under the force of Fae''s powerful blow, killing him.


    (''She created a vacuum between her opponent and herself with abination of movements and breathing.'') Rui''s eyes lit up in interest. The vacuum pulled her opponents to her, increasing the probability of hernding her ferocious offense. Rui recognized it because it had mechanics simr to Tempestuous Ripple, just the opposite at its core.


    He turned to the corpse Hever and Nel were standing over. The head was almostpletely ttened, and its body was bruised gravel.


    (''Their lethality has increased.'')


    "They''ve grown stronger." Rui murmured as he turned back to the security floor. Primordial Instinct and Seismic mapping told him all but one was dead.


    "You''ve grown stronger too Kane." He said to nobody visible. "You''re getting harder to sense."


    "And yet you sensed me anyway." Kane grumbled, appearing out of thin air.


    Rui chuckled as he inspected the scene, nodding. The first phase was a crushing sess.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 338 Clean-Up

    "Let''s get going quickly." Rui said as they all entered the security floor.


    It was wide with differentpartments and sections. And they were all littered with corpses.


    "You memorized the means of operating the elevator, correct?" Rui asked as he nced at the closed doors at the end of the security floor.


    "Of course." Kane replied.


    He walked over to the elevator. Hitting a few buttons and pulling a lever and then rotating it until the doors finally opened leading to a spacious tform meant to amodate many.


    Kane spun a lever on the inside, closing the doors and the elevator automatically began descending.


    The tension in the air rose. None of them were particr fond of what was about follow.


    Except for Nel, who was grinning at the prospect to a fight to the death with hopefully strong Martial Apprentices. If they were weak, Nel intended to crush them and fight the grade-ten Martial Apprentice. However, he didn''t reveal this to Rui in a rare moment of logical analysis. He knew Rui would probably not allow it.


    He was right.


    But what he didn''t know was that Rui was already well aware of his intentions. He simply decided to personally ensure that the mission wasn''t screwed up due to Nel''s desire to fight strong people. He did not think he could control him.


    THUD


    The elevator touched the ground.


    "Here we go." Kane said as he opened up the elevator doors. They all took their stances as he opened it. Rui merely executed the breathing technique needed for the Tempestuous Ripple.


    One moment before heunched it, he saw a bustling energetic research facility with all kinds of men and women hurrying around vibrantly, busy with something or the other.


    He sighed.


    Not a single one cared to look towards the elevator, asides from stationed guards whose eyes widened at their sight.


    Yet before they could even do anything;


    BOOM!Exclusive content from N?velDrama.Org.


    Ruiunched a fully charged and powerful Tempestuous Ripple that sted away expanding in front of him.


    It instantly killed all humans within fifteen meters of him and went on to inflict varying degrees of critical damage to most humans in their section of the research facility. Kane immediately disappeared as he raced through the facility at incredibly high speeds, sabotagingmunications and killing


    Only two people were unharmed to Rui''s senses.


    "Two Martial Apprentices, approaching us at high speeds, gang up on them." Rui instructed. He had no qualms of using a number advantage against them. Primordial Instinct told him that they weren''t particrly strong.


    Rui ran forward as he saw the two Martial Apprentices rushing towards him.


    WHOOSH


    He avoided their attacks as he feinted behind them.


    POW POW!


    He sent them flying towards the trio, who quickly pounced on the hapless Martial Apprentices. He turned around, employing Seismic Mapping and Primordial Instinct to locate the hiding and fleeing survivors, killing them swiftly and painlessly.


    Once he entered the main research and development infrastructure and area, he paused. Taking a look around.


    There were tons of test subject humans who were being subjected to all kinds of things. Rui felt a less horrible about his actions when he thought about the suffering they went through. This was one of the most horrific things that a human being could be put through. Rui would rather die than be put in through this, yet the researchers of this research facility did not even give them even that.


    All of them were medically alive upon closer inspection, but their eyes were lifeless and rolled over. Rui''s instincts told him that there was no consciousness or mind left.


    (''Brain death.'') He recalled Kane''s descriptions as he noticed that all the test subjects possessed the same trait. Medically alive, but brain dead.


    All of this seemed to support Kane''s theory of the goal of the facility being human evolution. But Rui''s gut instinct as well as certain logical rationales told him this was not true, or atleast iplete.


    He shook his head. He had a mission toplete. The grade-ten Martial Apprentice and the remaining Martial Apprentice were the only things that could obstruct the mission anymore.


    (''Speak of the devil.'') He turned as he felt faint weight on his mind from a distance, locating the source with Seismic Mapping. (''He''s not grade-ten, but he''s strong for sure.'')


    Rui dashed towards the Martial Apprentice, finding him quickly.


    The man attacked him immediately, throwing a swift and heavy punch.


    WHOOSH


    Rui simply feinted as he shifted past the attack andunching a strike with ferocious power and speed.


    BAM!!


    The attack crashed into the man''s neck, creating a devastating impact. Rui could even feel something cracking from the strike. After all, it was a strike strengthened with four Apprentice-level techniques, three of which were grade-seven.


    THUD


    The man crashed into a thick wall, falling down.


    BOOM!!


    A Powerful dropkick from Rui crushed his skull, denting it.


    At his current level of power, even Martial Apprentices of high-grade were no longer even worthy of being subjected the VOID algorithm. It would simply be a waste of time. They would all die before the predictive model was evenpleted.


    (''Now there''s only the grade-ten Martial Apprentice.'') Rui mused. (''But where the fuck is she?'')


    Grade-ten Martial Apprentices were certainly strong without a doubt. But Rui had already killed a Martial Artist who was, at the very least, at the lower-end of grade-ten. Even if this grade-ten Martial Apprentice was as strong as Rui, he did not see himself losing. He had four powerful Martial Apprentices in his team and that was an overwhelming numeric advantage that nobody in their Realm should be capable of overwhelming.


    The quality of those Martial Apprentices was high as well.


    Fae, Kane, Hever and Nel had grown significantly stronger in the past nine months since the preliminary contest, they had all been promoted to grade-nine since then. Rui had absolute confidence in all of them.


    (''Unless something absolutely crazy happens, this mission is aplete sess.'') He thought confidently.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 339 Understanding

    Rui was beginning to think this team was perhaps a little overqualified for the mission. So far it had been overwhelming sess, the Martial Union had chosen a team with a decisive advantage over the security of the research facility. Out of the six Martial Apprentices assigned to security for the research facility, four of them were mid-grade, one of them was roughly grade-seven and only one was a grade-ten Martial Apprentice.


    They had sent a grade-ten Martial Apprentice who had experience taking down grade-ten Martial Apprentices in response.


    The human security was insignificant. Even low-grade Martial Apprentices could deal with arge number of guards easily, they were mostly a token and were there to enforce order in the research facility.


    (''Now the only thing left is the grade-ten Martial Apprentice.'') Rui mused. (''I''ll round up the others and we''ll go together.'')


    The original n was that Rui handled the grade-ten Martial Apprentices alone while the remaining four handled the remaining three Martial Apprentices. However, things had evolved a bit unpredictably and all the remaining Martial Apprentices were handled before the grade-ten Martial Apprentice had even appeared.


    However, this was in their favour. Now, they got to fight with a huge dominant upper-hand. The moment the grade-ten Martial Apprentice showed up, it would be game over for her.


    (''Speaking of which, seriously, where the fuck is she?'') Rui wondered as he finished off a few more researchers. The only thing he knew about her was whatever the mission bill had told him; that she was female and a defensive Martial Artist. Which made sense given that she was assigned to a bodyguard mission from the Vinfranian government.


    A section of the research facility had been massacred, God knew how many researchers had died, all the other Martial Apprentices were also dead. Yet this grade-ten Martial Apprentice had refused to leave the deepest section of the research facility that Kane hadn''t manage to infiltrate before.


    "You guys are done?" Rui asked as the three of his teammates appeared.


    "Just sweeping up some survivors." Fae replied.


    "Where''s the grade-ten?" Nel excitedly asked.


    "I''m heading there right now." Rui said.


    Kane appeared out of thin air. "Count me in."


    Rui nodded. "Let''s get going then, we''ll finish off all survivors on the way there."


    In the deepest section of the research facility, amotion that didn''t escape past the confines ensued.


    "Wait doctor!" One researcher said. "Subject SQ007 is not yet fully ready for deployment! The project has only seeded the day before yesterday! This is against protocols!"


    "IDIOT!" The head researcher snapped. "WE''RE GOING TO DIE YOU MORON! NO ONE GIVES A FUCK ABOUT PROTOCOLS. The Martial Apprentice guards are all dead!"


    "But still!" Another researcher. "We shouldn''t-!"


    "Move!" The head researcher pushed his way past her as gazed at a giant transparent cylinder with a woman inside. "She''s our only hope!"


    He walked over to a terminal before operating a few controls. "We''ll show those bastards thating here was the worst mistake of their lives."


    The man looked up, grinning when he saw the woman''s eyes opening slowly.


    Quite some distance away, Fae broke into the sealed section of the facility. The five of them entered the research area through the hole in barrier.


    Inside was a wide spacious facility with many sections across it. Inside were many containment rooms with even more test subjects in the same state as the test subjects in the rest of the facility, though far fewer in number, only in the single digits.


    However, Rui suspected this part of the research facility was special. The technological infrastructure wasrger and more extravagant.


    Furthermore, there was something strange about the few test subjects. Each of them had their ownrge sub-section. Clearly, they were special.


    Rui walked in closer towards them as his senses told him something was wrong. Their eyes were rolled up and they were barely medically alive. But still, something told him these weren''t ordinary humans in the first ce.


    "Rui?" Kane asked, pausing as he looked back at him.


    (''Are they test subjects that managed to endure the experiments?'') Rui wondered, shaking his head. (''No, they''re in the same state. That''s unlikely.'')


    Primordial Instinct could almost feel something. Rui closed his eyes, homing in on a particr sensation. It grew clearer and clearer by the second.


    Until he recognized it.


    His eyes widened in shock!


    "Martial Apprentices!" He eximed. "These are Martial Apprentices!"


    "Are you sure?" The four of them nced over at the test subjects.


    "No doubt." Rui had be surer of it.


    The research facility was ultimately trying to sessfully apply their human augmentation procedures to Martial Apprentices. Rui had be more and more certain that this was the core goal of the research facility.


    "They are trying to elevate Martial Apprentices to a higher leve-" Rui froze as another realization hit him. "...No. Not to a higher level. To a higher Realm."


    This research facility was researching the breakthrough to the Squire Realm. The Commonwealth Duchy of Vinfrana had long lost all of its higher Realm Martial Artists, who taken away the secret to the Squire Realm with them, leaving them with a weak Martial Art foundation that was unable to elevate their remaining Martial Apprentices to the Squire Realm.


    Finally, all of it made sense to Rui. This was why the Martial Union wanted to destroy the facility and ughter all the researchers. Once the Commonwealth Duchy of Vinfrana obtained Martial Squires they would probably eventually obtain Martial Seniors and then maybe even Martial Masters in a more distant future. It wouldn''t be enough to defy the Kandrian Empire, but it would be enough to share a significant portion of the market in the Duchy that the Kandrian Empire had a monopoly over.


    It would create and upward and elevating trend in the growth of Martial power in the Commonwealth Duchy of Vinfrana.


    Yet, before Rui could ponder about the issue more;


    BOOM!!


    A loud explosion in the distance shook the very facility, drawing their attention.Content held by N?velDrama.Org.


    "The grade-ten is here." Rui warned. "Get ready."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 340 Confrontation

    They all got into position, even if Nel urged rush forward and attack.


    In the distance, a silhouette could be seen through the dust, walking in their direction.


    STEP


    STEP


    STEP


    It took its time.


    Nothing out of the ordinary happened.


    Yet, their eyes widened.


    The air grew taut as an unimaginable amount of pressure crashed onto them. The air froze, and they haplessly followed suit.


    Something was wrong.


    Very wrong.


    They felt primal fear arise from within their depths, crippling their body.


    It was as though time itself had slowed down.Exclusive content from N?velDrama.Org.


    STEP


    She emerged from the dust.


    Completely naked.


    Not a single shred of cloth covered her ample breasts or her pelvis. Yet the sight of her generated nothing but unparalleled fear in all of them.


    Rui''s eyes widened as he recognized the sensation Primordial Instinct was sensing.


    This wasn''t just fear.


    This wasn''t just danger.


    Nay.


    This was a sensation that only those in a higher Realm of existence could exert onto one.


    This was a sensation that only those at a far deeper depth of their path could exert onto one.


    "Martial Squire...!" Rui whispered, shocked.


    The research facility had seeded. They had managed to discover the secret to the Squire Realm just in time.


    The woman examined them expressionlessly. Raw hostility emerged from her, crashing onto them. Rui was the only one who was able to maintain some semnce ofposure. He adopted a stance in defiance. Yet, he was the only one.


    The woman adopted a bull-rushing stance, aiming at them.


    Rui snapped out of his reverie. "Shit. DODGE!"


    Yet he was the only one who dove to the side. The other four were frozen, not even Nel had been able to move.


    "NOOOOOO!!!" he bellowed with terror as the womanunched herself at the four of them.


    BOOM!!!


    The womanunched herself at a with an astronomic speed that far exceeded even that of Kane''s!


    Her body tore the very atmosphere apart!


    The sheer titanic power she hadunched herself with would absolutely have killed the four of them on the spot.


    Would have.


    Yet, it didn''t.


    She went flying far over their heads crashing through a part of the wall many meters above the ground, crashing through more obstacles until her tremendous momentum had finally been killed,nding a great distance away from them


    She... missed?


    (''...Huh?????'') Rui was so mind-boggled he just stared at her with an expression that was saturated with confusion.


    Even the four of them who had been paralyzed turned over in shocked confusion. The woman got up, unharmed. Yet she wasn''t pleased, she nced at her own palms in irritation.


    It was then that Rui understood. His mind shed back to a conversation he''d had with Squire Dylon a long time ago.


    "Because we are fundamentally different, our techniques function mechanically different." Squire Dylon had once told him long ago when Rui had asked him about the difference between Apprentice and Squire level techniques. "An Apprentice-level Martial Art technique simply cannot utilize our full power because it is not meant to handle our power. Squire-level techniques are simply techniques that can handle the power of Martial Squires, and can only be used by Martial Squires."


    "So, they''re just designed to bepatible with the power of a Martial Squire?" Rui had asked him back then.


    "Yes, and it''s harder than it sounds." He had directed a pointed look at Rui back then. "The difference between us exceeds your imagination."


    Rui''s eyes widened in tion as tinge of hope entered his eyes. It was quite clear she was a test subject in this facility, which meant it was extremely likely that she had only very recently broken through to the Squire Realm.


    Which meant she had not mastered any Squire-level techniques! It was especially impossible since Rui highly doubted the Commonwealth Duchy of Vinfrana even had any Squire-level techniques in the first ce.


    (''No, forget Squire-level techniques!'') Rui realized. (''She hasn''t even gotten used to her own power, clearly.'')


    Meaning she could not be considered a full-fledged Squire. She would be crushed by the likes of Squire Kyrie or Dylon. Thebination of her unustomed demeanor and herck of Squire-level techniques meant that she was well below the Squire-Realm as far as overallbat power went.


    (''It''s more urate to think of her as a quasi-Squire.'')


    The woman took her time leisurely, trying to analyze and rectify her whopping inuracy. She didn''t immediately rush over and resume killing the Martial Apprentices.


    In her mind, they were already dead.


    She was a Martial Squire. They were going nowhere.


    A new-found arrogance had already taken her mindset, but this worked in Rui''s favour. If they had any chance of not dying. It would only be if all of them worked together.


    Rui red at all four of them, focusing all of his mind on them. The sheer pressure he exerted drew their attention in an instant.


    "Is this how you want to die?" He asked. "Is this how you want to go down? Frozen in fear like pathetic cowards? Dying at the hands of a Martial Artist that hasn''t even mastered her power?"


    He insulted them on purpose. They all had their well-earned pride, such an insult would surely evoke defiance.


    Nel was the first to crack.


    "SHUT UP! I''m going to fucking CRUSH her! You''ll see!" He snarled at Rui, turning to face the woman with determined eyes.


    That shook them all out of their reveries as determination crept into all of their faces. They turned around.


    "That being said..." Rui said. "We need to run away."


    He immediately dashed off in the direction of the security floor at top speed.


    "What was that about cowardice?" Kane caught up to him, grumbling.


    "This is a strategic retreat." Rui insisted. "If I have to choose between fighting a Martial Squire and running away from a Martial Squire, I''ll choose thetter in a heartbeat."


    "I thought we were going to fight her!" Nelined.


    "You''ll get to fight Martial Squires when you break through." Rui retorted. "So shut up and train when we get back!"


    The elevator could be seen in the distance.


    Yet;


    WHOOSH


    She arrived in front of them.


    "Did you really think I would let you escape?" She spoke in Sanskrit


    Rui narrowed his eyes. "You can either let us go, or die trying to stop us."


    "Bravado." She chuckled. "Come, young one, I will show you the power of a higher Realm. I will show you power that you will die too young to achieve."


    One moment, there was a deathly silence.


    The next?


    All hell broke loose.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 341 Clash

    "I think... we might not die today." The head researcher shook his head.


    Subject SQ007 had been woken up, briefed and dispatched. There was a set of loud terrifying explosionster before silence reigned again.


    The surviving researchers were too terrified to leave the confined of their little hideout, but they had begun to suspect that perhaps the job was done.


    After all, she was a Martial Squire. There was no way she would lose to Martial Apprentices. The researchers were well aware of her shorings and drawbacks. She did not possess a single Squire-level Martial Art technique, only the Apprentice-level techniques that were no longerpatible with her. Furthermore, she had only very recentlypleted her breakthrough and wasn''t too familiar with the power of a Martial Squire.


    Still.


    She was a Martial Squire.


    There was no way she would not win easily.


    Right?


    "Not unless there''s an extraordinary grade-ten Martial Apprentice with an unbelievable Martial Art..." He pondered, before shaking his head.


    There was no way that could happen.


    Suddenly;


    RUMBLE!


    "Woah!"


    The very facility began shaking as the researchers fell to the ground losing their bnce, scrambling fear.


    "What is happening?!"


    On the other end of the facility, a horrifying conflict hadmenced.


    BOOM!


    WHOOSH


    She had crossed the distance between her and Rui in the smallest of instances. Her body twisted as she generated unprecedented power into an attack.


    The very air shivered in fear as sheunched a devastating attack.


    Yet, to her surprise;


    WHOOSH


    Rui managed to evade her attack.


    ? Abination of prediction based on center of gravity and distance analysis, Primordial Instinct, four maneuvering techniques and one breathing technique just barely allowed him to avoid the attack cleanly.


    Yet, she wasn''t done.


    BAM!


    A swift speedy kick swung at him.


    BOOM!


    He grimaced as he skidded backwards, barely managing to guard in time. She immediatelyshed out after him, swinging yet another attack when;


    POW!


    An invisible attacknded on her face, affecting her fragile bnce.


    Kane had tried to throw her off.


    Her eyes immediately shifted to Kane despite the Void Step technique. Yet before she could evennd an attack;


    BAM!


    Nel had caught up,nding a kick on her.


    Soon Fae and Hever immediately arrived, trying to prevent her from focusing on Rui.


    Every single one of the Martial Artists were clear on one thing; Rui was the key to the battle.


    The Martial Squire thought so merely because he was clearly the strongest among them. That was true, certainly, yet the Martial Apprentices knew something about him that she didn''t.


    Rui grew stronger the longer a fight prolonged.


    The more data he had ess to, the more urate and precise the predictive model was. The stronger his adaptive evolution was.


    Whatever happened, they needed to prolong the battle for as long as possible and ensure Rui was as good a shape as possible.


    They had an immense amount of faith in his prowess.


    WHOOSH


    Rui barely managed to avoid yet another attack, yet he was left wide open.


    The Martial Squireshed out to exploit the opportunity, aiming to kill him with a powerful blow in that moment.


    Yet;


    POW!


    BAM!


    Kane and Nel had just barely managed to intervene in time,unching powerful and swift blows at her vitals.


    She blocked both of them, irritated.


    Her expression alone sent shivers down their spine.


    "RARGH!" She snarled as she flung them away, yet before she could even turn back to Rui.


    BAM!!!


    A tremendous blownded on her arm.


    Her eyes widened as Fae''s single most powerful attack had just barely managed to bruise her flesh, pushing her away as she skidded away.


    CLASP


    Hever caught her arm. His extreme muscle memory activated as it furiously executed the improved Meteor Swing technique.


    BOOM!!


    The facility shook as he did his best to swing the Squire with as much power as he could.


    "Insignificant."


    The gravitas of her voice shook him as he felt boundless pressure paralyzing him.


    She was unharmed.


    BAM!!


    He grimaced, coughing blood, as a swift kick propelled him across the facility.


    She red at Fae as sheshed out at her. Yet before her strike could reach;


    CLASP


    Rui had caught her shoulder.


    WOBBLE


    Her body stumbled as Rui activated Flow Flux at thest moment.


    WHOOSH


    The strike she threw missed Fae due to Rui''s sabotage.N?velDrama.Org content.


    Her bnce was more fragile than it normally would be because she wasn''t ustomed to it. She had not developed the muscle memory of active bnce maintenance for her new body. Thus, Flow Flux was especially effective on her.


    She turned to Rui with a murderous re as she charged him, looking for a takedown. She would be able to crush him in ground grappling.


    Rui''s eyes widened in fear as she reached him.


    POW!


    BAM!


    Extremely swift and powerful strikes aimed at her vitals from Nel and Kane intercepted her yet again. They had managed to recover and return back just in time, yet they were far from okay. Even if her power was far below that of a normal Squire, she was still devastatingly powerful.


    BAM!


    Nel coughed blood as her elbow crashed into his ribs, he copsed, losing consciousness.


    WHOOSH


    Kane barely evaded an attack as he escaped with his powerful evasive maneuvering.


    BOOM!!


    Faended another powerful attack on her. Yet the Squire simply withstood the attack as she swiftly turned around and sted Fae with a powerful swing.


    BAM!


    Fae crashed into a wall, falling down unconscious. A single strike had taken her out ofmission.


    Only Rui and Kane were left.


    It was a despairing oue.


    Rui closed his eyes.


    "Don''t wish to look death in the eyes?" She asked. "Understandable."


    Sheshed out,unching a straightforward strike.


    Yet in that moment, a profound change had urred.


    One that wasn''t beyond her senses.


    But certainly beyond her understanding.


    WHOOSH


    BAM!


    She gasped as he cleanly danced past her attack,nding a powerful Flowing Canon into her chest.


    His attack collided into her bare chest as theirbined power fueled the collision.


    She leapt away, retreating for the first time as she nced at Rui warily. (''...Something is wrong.'')


    Rui finally opened his eyes. His dark eyes locked with hers as she felt a strange profound pressure from his gaze.


    His eyes pierced passed her body, as though she were transparent.


    She felt naked, even more so than she already was.


    "You... You need to die." She murmured. She instinctively felt she could not allow him to stay alive any longer.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 342 Couldnt

    Throughout the fight, Rui had wondered.


    How hadn''t they lost yet?


    She was a Martial Squire, was she not?


    What exactly was happening?


    Based on the power and speed she had disyed the first time when she had missed, she should have been able to mangle them with just a few attacks, if not one.


    Yet when she fought the second time, she was noticeably inferior.


    Rui had been able to dodge her attack, as had Kane. Nel had been able to withstand her attack without losing consciousness the first time, although he did the second time.


    It was only after a few exchanges that Rui understood.


    (''She''s given up on using techniques entirely.'')


    Her proficiency with her body was sub-optimal, adding on top of that ipatible Apprentice-level techniques and these two elements sabotaged her uracy too much.


    She could not fix the proficiency with her body on the spot, that would require a lot of time, experience, and training. But she could get rid of the ipatible techniques sabotaging her uracy.


    But only if she stopped using them entirely.


    It was a tough choice. But ultimately, she chose control over raw power, as a good Martial Artist would.


    Once she stopped using ipatible techniques, her power dipped well below the Squire Realm, but her uracy and precision had risen.


    Once Rui realized this, he realized that maybe, just maybe, victory wasn''t too far-fetched.


    But only if they used everything they had. Throughout the fight, he watched her like a hawk. He documented everything about her.


    Every twitch.


    Every shift.


    Every attack.


    Every block.


    All of it.


    Large volumes of information entered his Mind Pce as he watched her toying with his friends with gritted teeth.


    Watching his friends suffer to prolong the battle for his sake made him feel unparalleled rage.


    He was almost there.


    So close.


    He closed his eyes.


    "Don''t wish to look death in the eyes?" She had asked. "Understandable."


    Just then, he heard a click in his mind.


    The final piece had finally fallen in ce.


    He was ready.


    (''Straight right blitz punch; 100%'')


    WHOOSH


    BAM!


    Rui executed the most urate and perfect counter to the maneuver as he adapted to her attack with the help of the adaptive evolution model.


    She was struck with effectively both of their powerbined, yet she didn''t suffer more than a graze.


    It was then that Rui recalled she was a defensive Martial Artist. The reason she was fighting aggressively was that there was a huge gap in physical parameters between her and them individually. If she was fighting against an equal, she would likely revert to her defensive style.


    On paper, it should have been easy for her to win.


    Yet, some time had passed since the fight began and for some reason, none of them were dead yet.


    Rui could feel that Nel, Fae, and Hever were still alive through their seismic signatures. Yet their conditions angered him.


    He intended to vent it out on her.


    "You... You need to die." She glowered at him.


    Rui didn''t even bother exchanging words.


    The very air contorted under the weight of his bloodlust. It was almost as if his desire to kill her was warping the environment itself. She widened her eyes as she experienced a mental pressure that exceeded that of anything she had ever felt of a Martial Apprentice.


    She felt fear for the first time since stepping into the Squire Realm.


    And then she felt shame.


    How dare a mere Martial Apprentice humiliate her?


    "You... You will die."This content is ? N?velDrama.Org.


    The verynd beneath them shook as she mangled it, pushing it back as she propelled herself forward at a speed that beggared the imagination.


    The atmosphere wailed woefully as she tore it apart with every movement.


    Yet.


    WHOOSH


    Rui avoided.


    It took abination of the prediction and adaptive models the VOID algorithm, Primordial Instinct, and five Apprentice-level techniques.


    But he avoided it nheless.


    BAM!!


    His elbow crashed into her chest with a titanic collision fueled by both their power.


    Yet, she didn''t so much as blink. She unfurled a flurry of strikes at him, the power of each strike was beyond even Fae, even what Squire Kyrie had struck him with, even beyond what the blond bandit had hit him with.


    Yet, they crashed into empty air as Rui feinted away.


    He could tell that an aggressive offense was not something she wasfortable with. On top of that, she was still not ustomed to her new body.


    Her movements had ws and inefficiencies you would not normally see in a Martial Artist. These ws made it easier for Rui to predict her. It was part of the reason he was coping well.


    Yet he was doing merely just that; coping.


    Winning was still a herculean task with abysmal difficulty. His attacks did not faze her, she was a defensive Martial Artist. Even Fae''s Whirlpool attack had only managed to bruise her, despite the fact that the Squire wasn''t using any techniques. Her raw durability and constitution were above Fae''s lethality.


    That alone meant none of Rui''s attacks could really hurt her. He doubted even the Stinger would put more than a scratch on her flesh.


    Even a Stinger to the eyes likely wouldn''t threaten her life.


    He alone couldn''t defeat her.


    He could feel it.


    The VOID algorithm wasn''t omnipotent. It allowed him to cope by predicting his opponent beforehand instead of reacting after and allowed him to respond with just the counter that increased his probability of winning the most.


    But it wasn''t enough.


    The VOID algorithm allowed him to cope, but it could not do more for him. Its existing shorings and ws in addition to Rui''s own limitations were too shackling.


    Time passed as the disadvantages snowballed. His inferior speed, power, stamina as well as health. They all worked against him.


    Every attack she asionally managed tond hurt him significantly. Every attack hended bounced off of her. A quasi-Squire level defense was beyond even his capabilities, he was an all-rounder, not an offensive specialist.


    THUD


    He fell to one knee.


    He was bleeding profusely.


    The world spun as he felt momentary dizziness.


    STEP


    She arrived, pausing.


    She savored the moment. She stretched her right arm back, drawing vast amounts of power from her core.


    Rui knew he wouldn''t be able to survive that attack.


    He couldn''t defeat her.


    "Goodbye, little Apprentice."


    Her eyes narrowed.


    It was time.


    The very world mourned as she unleashed her attack.


    BOOM!


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 343 Profound

    He couldn''t defeat her, not by himself, at the very least.


    But he didn''t need to.


    He wasn''t fighting alone.


    BOOM!


    A powerful invisible collision crashed into her head, rocking her body. It threw her attack off-course, missing Rui by just a few millimeters.


    Fae and Nel appeared out of nowhere,tching onto her arms in arm-bars with their whole bodies, doing their best to restrain her movements.


    Her reactions were heavily dyed due to her surprise and confusion.


    She felt an invisible force grabbing her shoulder and chest; Hever.


    Rui grinned at the sight. (''Kane, you madd, you actually seeded.'')


    Kane had healed all of them with the healing potions that they each carried while Rui kept the Squire busy. He then carried them over while using the Void Step technique. Theoretically, Void Step wasn''t limited hard to a single person. However, in practice, it was extremely difficult to expand it beyond one''s self.


    Yet, Kane''s mastery and fortitude allowed him to seed in doing just that for three people. He appeared out of thin air a few momentster, copsing to the ground, exhausted. He would not be able to fight anymore for the time being.


    Yet he had already done more than enough. He had dispelled defeat and given them another chance, it was more than Rui could expect from him.


    Not even a moment had passed since they appeared. Hever''s extreme muscle memory shed as it activated the improved Meteor Swing technique in the briefest of moments. He elevated her over his head before plummeting her down headfirst at incredible speeds. Fae and Nel coiled on her as though their lives depended on it. In a way, it did depend on it. Their legs coiled around her neck and head, holding both in ce.


    Yet, even as she plummeted headfirst, she wasn''t afraid. She had already withstood this attack unharmed earlier. The other two Martial Apprentices were not hurting her, just momentarily restraining her.


    She was vulnerable momentarily, yes. But she did not think it could be exploited, Hever''s motions were too fast for any kind of coordinated attack. She had already decided to kill them all the second shended.


    That was when she heard it.


    PEW!


    A whistling sound, as if something sharp were cutting through the air at high speeds.


    It was only after that she realized what it was.This content is ? N?velDrama.Org.


    Her eyes widened as the world turned in her vision and she saw a foot flying straight toward her head, its thumb-toe aiming straight up at her eye as she plummeted toward it.


    Neither the chaos, his tumultuous emotions, nor his physical condition.


    None of it.


    None of it had been able to prevent Rui Quarrier from ceasing the dimmest light of hope that had appeared in front of him.


    The Squire wouldn''t have believed Rui had he told her that none of this was coordinated beforehand.


    Fae and Nel simply used their power to hinder her. They were too weak to fight her head-on, as much as Nel hated to admit that.


    As for Hever?


    He didn''t even need to think.


    He literally had only one technique in his arsenal. In all that time, he hadn''t mastered a single other technique.


    At the very moment they''d appeared, there was chaos in Rui''s mind. He did not know what he ought to have done.


    If he did nothing, they would all die.


    If he did what he had already done, they would all die.


    What should he do?


    If only there was a way to figure out the best decisio-


    "...!"


    A thundering realization shed in his mind.


    Rui''s dark pupils dted.


    Time itself slowed down to a drawl.


    His eyes widened.


    The best part about the Mind Pce technique was that it never forgot.


    No matter what he put in it, no matter how long ago.


    (''I have a predictive model for all of them in Mind Pce at this very moment.'') He had realized, looking at the four Martial Artists before him.


    What if he used four predictive models instead of one? What if urately used all four models to peer into the future?


    To gaze deeper and sharper into the future than he ever had?


    And input that into the adaptive model to figure out the best move for that particr moment?


    Predicting all of their movements would be no different from seeing the very future itself!


    At that moment, his mind had violently rampaged into a frenzy through his Mind Pce. The Mind Pce shook as he had extracted the predictive model, inputting the parameters like a madman as he had watched Fae and Neltch onto the Squire''s arms, as he had watched Hever grab her shoulder and chest.


    His eyes narrowed as he predicted the future with the power of four predictive models. The adaptive model of the VOID algorithm hastily swallowed the data up and instantly, the result was out.


    It was objectively the best move possible in that scenario. Nothing else could give Rui a higher likelihood of victory.


    Yet the likelihood of victory was still small.


    It was up to him.


    Their fate, their future, their lives. He bore the burden.


    It was heavy.


    It was painful.


    It was fearful


    Yet, he strived forward.


    Eyes closed.


    The mildest of smiles cracked on his face.


    Despite the pressure.


    Despite the fear.


    Despite the pain.


    He smiled.


    PEW!


    The Stinger whistled as it cut through the air!


    Rui delicately maintained the trajectory, correcting and refining it as it flew upwards.


    If it was off by even the slightest millimeter and the slightest millisecond, the n would fail and they were all as good as dead.


    Yet, even if it was inhumanly urate, victory was not assured. He could only do his best and pray.


    But pray to whom?


    Fate?


    Science?


    His idol Bruce Lee?


    The God that had reincarnated him in a different world?


    Rui prayed to all of them.


    Who knew? Maybe that would be the difference between life and death.


    PEW!


    He would soon find out.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 344 Outcome

    The Frontal Lobe of the brain, as the name suggested, was the foremost part of the brain. It was responsible for conscious cognition as a whole.


    It also happened to be the part of the brain that was closest to the eyeball and the eye sockets.


    The distance between the opening of the eye socket and the Frontal Lobe of the brain was shorter than Rui''s big toe. In a hypothetical scenario, if his toe were to enter a human eye socket at precisely the right angle and location, it would pierce the brain.


    That had always been the most lethal option Rui had, from the very start. Yet he lost the first time despite possessing it.


    What made this time all that different?


    For one, her incredible active and passive defenses were no longer all that invulnerable.


    Fae and Nel were using their tremendous power to seal her arms and shackle her neck and head in ce.


    As for her passive defense, her remarkable constitution wasn''t particrly all that relevant here.


    The only thing in between the Stinger and her brain was her eyeball and her eyelid.


    Yet, previously, even this had been demonstrably enough. Rui could barely hurt her flesh. He did not think the Stinger alone could prate to her brain.


    Yet, what was different this time was that the Stinger wasn''t alone this time.


    Although it propelled forward with the same power and speed it usually did, the difference was that its target was propelling towards it at remarkably high speeds and momentum.


    Hever had grown far stronger in the past nine months since the Martial Contest.


    He had added minor elements of other techniques to the Meteor Swing technique. Elements of breathing and muscle techniques to amplify power and speed. Elements of mental techniques to amplify his mind in a few different ways, conditioning techniques to amplify his grip.


    It had taken him a long time to incorporate these elements into the Meteor Swing technique. But once he seeded, the grade of the technique as a whole had risen.


    It was no longer merely a grade-nine technique. It had stepped above the ninth grade and had slowly begun to approach grade ten.


    It was a quasi-grade-ten technique.


    That was the difference.


    She struggled, but Fae and Nel coiled tighter and tighter. As strong as she was, she had no Squire-level techniques and was unustomed to her power. Not even a Martial Squire could overwhelm the many high-grade techniques that Fae used across her entire body to shackle her. It didn''t help that Nel was outputting a power that wasn''t too far off either. Even if she was slowly overwhelming them, she wouldn''t make it in time.


    Every time she shifted, Rui almost reflexively readjusted the Stinger''s trajectory, refining the aim with Primordial Instinct.


    Time was up.


    She closed her eye, hoping her Squire-level constitution would hold.


    The Stinger crashed into her eyelid.


    The verdict would soon be delivered.


    The sheer power of the quasi-grade-ten Meteor Swing inbination with the Stinger, me Breathing, Outer Convergence, and Adamant Reforging pushed against her eyelid through the sharp toe.


    ...


    SPLAT!!!


    All that pressure.


    All that fear.


    All that pain.


    All of it melted away as he saw a splurt of blood erupt from her eye. Her eyelid hadn''t even withstood the attack for more than a millisecond. The sheerbined power it had been subjected to far exceeded the Apprentice Realm.


    Had she possessed even a single Squire-level defensive technique, her eyelid would have emerged unscathed.


    But she didn''t.


    And thus, it hadn''t.


    His tion erupted as his toe pushed deeper and deeper into her skull. But he controlled his emotion as he heightened his senses. If the trajectory was off by even a bit, the damage would not be critical.


    The Martial Squire would quickly crush them all. A single missing eye would not be enough to give them a win.


    BAM!


    The toe had gone as deep as it could, and his foot had banged into her head.


    BOOM!


    The Meteor Swing had beenpleted.


    Fae, Nel, and Hever widened their eyes, they had only just seen Rui after the attack had ended. Without techniques like Primordial instinct and the VOID algorithm, they simply had beenpletely unaware of what Rui had done.


    Yet Rui ignored their reactions.


    He didn''t know the oue.


    Yet, he didn''t care.


    "RARGH!"


    BOOM!


    BOOM!


    BOOM!


    He snarled as he began mming her head over and over with drop-kicks and ser kicks.


    If the n had failed, then he at least needed to inflict as much damage as he could. Blunt force trauma, increased blood loss, and hopefully even a concussion.


    He could feel her powerful heart still beating through Seismic Mapping. He didn''t give a fuck whether the n had seeded or not anymore.


    He was not going to stop until either she died or she got up and they died.


    His friends had absolutely no idea what just happened. In their eyes, Rui had just somehow appeared out of nowhere.


    Yet they realized the gravity of the situation and joined in.


    Seconds passed.


    BOOM!


    BOOM!


    ...


    BOOM!


    Minutes passed.


    BOOM!


    THUD


    Rui stumbled back and fell.


    His vision was blurring, his muscles lost power.


    He lost too much blood.


    "Huff... Huff... Huff..." He got back up weakly, raising his leg to kick.


    "Rui." Kane called out to him.


    BOOM!


    "Rui!" Kane insisted.


    He paused ncing at him.


    He turned straight to the ground.


    He followed his gaze.


    Arge pool of blood and cerebral fluid had formed from the head of the unmoving body of the Martial Squire.


    "It''s over." He said. "We won."


    He knew that.N?velDrama.Org content.


    But the sheer paranoia coupled with his disoriented mind propelled him forward.


    Now that reality had been forced onto him, he fell to the ground exhausted. "...Holy fuck."


    He cursed.


    He still found it extraordinarily hard to believe.


    It was surreal.


    To think that despite how horrendous the odds were, they still somehow managed to pull through.


    He shook his head. "What a world."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 345 Completion

    They were all silent for a while, trying to process the fact that they were still alive. Rui appeared calm and rxed but in reality, his mind was a maelstrom of chaos.


    (''Holy shit, we beat a Martial Squire.'') His eyes widened as the full gravity of their situation dawned on him. (''The Martial Union is going to go nuts when they learn about this.'')


    Still, the context made the situation less absurd. The Martial Squire they were facing was nerfed and shackled in several ways.


    If she had been given even a month of training and even a single Squire-level technique of the weakest grade, she would have crushed them.


    Rui recalled how weak he was when he first broke into the Apprentice Realm. Back then, he hadn''t mastered even a single Apprentice-level technique. Any Martial Apprentice could casually toy with him with Apprentice-level techniques.


    The Martial Squire was in a simr situation with the Squire Realm.


    (''No, her predicament was even worse.'') Rui shook his head. (''At least I didn''t have a new body to get ustomed to.'')


    If she didn''t have those handicaps...


    Rui sighed. "We have a mission toplete. Let''s get going."


    The others stirred, before nodding.


    "Where''s the grade-ten Martial Apprentice?" Nel asked, scratching his head.


    Rui turned towards him. "That was the grade-ten Martial Apprentice."


    Nel''s eyes widened. "She broke through to the Squire Realm?!"


    "Yeah." Rui nodded. "Thanks to this facility. It was almost certainly set up to research the breakthrough to the Squire Realm and they very recently seeded. She must have been a Squire candidate." Rui said. "That''s why the Martial Union sent us to destroy it and the researchers. They must have learned of its existence and location fairly recently."


    He turned towards the other end of the facility. "There are a few more researchers alive, we''ll extract the research data from them as nned, kill them, and set out. We don''t have too much more time."


    They all nodded, before heading in deeper.


    Finding the hidden researchers didn''t take any time at all. Their seismic signatures were loud and clear to Rui.


    "I know you speak the international dialect." He told them. "Where are the research logs? I want all of them."


    The researchers simply stared at them in shock, before one of them managed to choke out a question. "What happened to the Martial Squire?"


    "The logs. Now." He exerted some mental pressure on them. They quickly scurried before procuring two sets ofrge boxes.


    "Is this truly all there is?"


    "Y-Yes!" The head researcher gulped. "That''s everything from the inception of the research facility till today!"


    Primordial Instinct could sense earnestness hidden beneath all the fear.


    Rui opened the boxes as he began skimming through all the documents, hastily storing the precious research data in his Mind Pce.


    "What are you doing?" Kane asked in the Kandrian dialect.


    "Verifying the research data." He lied.


    "Really?" Kane peered at him suspiciously. "Even though you can''t read Vinfranese?"


    "There are other ways to verify whether these are, in fact, legitimate documents or just some nonsense," Rui replied. "You wouldn''t want to return home with a bunch of documents about the sanitation logistics of the research facility instead of the research data we seek, right?"


    "No." Kane admitted.


    "It won''t take long." Rui told them.


    Rui intended to memorize all the data. He was truly curious about the research that the facility had engaged in. For now, as Kane said, he couldn''t under a word of what was written. But if he learned to read Vinfranese, then he would have ess to all this research data on the breakthrough to the Squire Realm!


    This would surely be beneficial to him in the long run.


    Normal Martial Artists did not possess the background in mathematics and science to understand even a single page of the research documents but that was not true for Rui. Rui hade from a world with a far superior scientific and research foundation. He himself possessed an extremely rich background in research. As long as he could understand thenguage, he should be able to make some significant gains from all the research.


    The only problem was hisck of understanding of esoteric technology based on all the wondrous esoteric phenomena in this world.


    (''I can get Julian to help me out.'') Rui smirked. As long as Julian aided him with the more fantastical parts of the research that were unique to the world of Gaia, he would have no problem understanding the core of what was happening and what exactly Martial Squires were in the first ce.This content is ? N?velDrama.Org.


    Ten minutester. He had skimmed through all the documents, having memorized everything.


    BAM!


    He gave them a painless death.


    "They''re legit." He said, nodding. "Let''s get going."


    "Finally!" Nel eximed, ted. "This was getting boring!"


    They grabbed the boxes, heading towards the elevator.


    "We''re taking that as well." Rui gestured to the corpse of the Martial Squire.


    "Why?" Fae frowned.


    "There''s a chance that our story sounds too hard to believe." Rui told them. "The part where five Martial Apprentices from the Academy defeating a Martial Squire, that is. Even if they believe that the research facility managed to crack the secret to the Squire Realm based on the data we are procuring, it may not be enough to corroborate our story of how we took the Squire down. They may suspect a number of other circumstances outside of our merits. Taking her body is absolute irrefutable proof of our story."


    Rui took off the outer garments of his uniform, clothing the naked corpse before lifting it and tying it to his back. "There."


    Soon, they set out.


    Rui grabbed the mission tracking device before hitting the button that indicated the sessfulpletion of the mission. The Martial Union would now be aware of the sess of their operation. All they had to was return.


    A grin broke out on Rui''s face. He couldn''t wait to see their faces when they realized what they had aplished.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 346 Spread

    The post-mission wing of Martial Union headquarters wasrge. It had to be, after all. Many, many missions werepleted every day and each mission had post-mission protocols that needed to bepleted. The Martial Union needed to procure reports and statements from the Martial Artists before official confirmation could be provided.


    A lot of Martial Artists returning from missions usually gathered in the wide wing as they handled the final protocols after the mission ended.


    The wing was divided into different sections for different Martial Realms, each Realm of Martial Artists had its own dedicated post-mission facility.


    ? That was why all the Martial Apprentices in the Apprentice post-mission facility were surprised when they felt the faintest Squire-level aura in the facility.


    That was strange.


    They all frowned.


    Squire-level Martial Artists were not supposed to be in the Apprentice post-mission facility.


    What was even more strange was that it was muffled. As though someone had snuffed it. Yet, they could sense it. It was unmistakable, every Martial Apprentice knew the aura of a Martial Squire quite well, after all.


    Yet, when they turned around to see what was happening, they only saw five Martial Apprentices walking towards them. None of them were emanating the faint Squire-level. No. Instead, the Squire-level aura came from a bandaged corpse that one of the Martial Apprentices dragged along the floor.


    It took them a few seconds to process.


    Corpse. Squire-level aura. Martial Apprentices.


    The entire facility froze. Every Martial Apprentice stared at them with bewildered shock and confusion.


    The one carrying the corpse had strange hair and strange eyes. They were pitch ck. It was what allowed him to be recognized.


    "Excuse me." Rui said to one of the support staff. "I need to deliver the target of the mission." he pointed to the boxes they had procured.


    "Right here..." She managed to reply, before ncing at the corpse, unable to recognize the aura. "I''m afraid that trophies such as that are not allowed into the facility."


    "It''s not a trophy." He replied. "It''s evidence. I would like to enter it into evidence."


    "Evidence of...?"


    "Of the fact that we killed a Martial Squire."


    Rui ignored themotion that his words sparked as they all quickly finished up their reports and statements and signatures.


    "I''m done." Rui got up. "Catch you guyster."


    Once Rui hadpleted the post-mission protocols, he moved on after bidding them goodbye.


    He had a lot of thinking to do.


    "What should I do now?" He wondered aloud.


    It actually had only been ten or so days since he came out of training. Yet, it felt a lot longer.


    He shook his head a bit. (''I don''t want to jump into training immediately.'')


    He wasn''t entirely done garnering experience with his current skillset. He also wasn''t as smooth andfortable using his skillset as perhaps he would like to be.


    Solidifying his power with experience was just as important as learning new techniques. If he went on learning techniques without the minimal amount of experience supplementing them, his awareness and control of his power would slip. He would be ineffective and even unstable. Just like the Martial Squire that they fought was.


    Besides he also had other things he wanted to do.


    (''I need to learn to read Vinfranese.'') Rui mused. He absolutely intended to get to the bottom of the research data. He was even willing to go as far as to transcribe all of it into the Kandrian dialect so that Julian could help him understand the esoteric science unique to the world of Gaia. It would give him an idea of what was in store for him immediately after once he fulfilled the Squire candidacy condition.


    It was also possible that Rui could optimize his breakthrough using the scientific foundation that he had inherited from Earth. If that were the case, he would be a fool not to look deeper into the research data procured from the facility.


    It was especially valuable because the truth of the breakthrough to the Squire Realm was still something that was concealed from him by the Martial Union.


    That more or less decided the path he would immediately take. Continuing his mission and understanding the research data that he had procured from the research facility would be the two things he would immediately focus on. Once that was done, he would go into training with the knowledge of the Squire Realm.


    "After that..." Rui muttered. "I''ll probably leave the Martial Academy."


    As time passed, the Martial Academy mattered less and less to him. Even if he left at this very moment, he would be able to manage just perfectly fine. The only reason he didn''t immediately leave was that it was convenient and also, he would be faced with arge amount of debt that he would need to pay off.


    Still, that debt was growing by the day, and he didn''t want to prolong it for much longer, especially since it no longer offered him anything he wouldn''t be able to get once he became a full-fledged Martial Artist. He would gain more freedom once his license upgraded to that of a full-fledged Martial license rather than the learner''s license he currently had at the moment due to still being a student.


    "I have much to do." He mused.


    That day, a small rumor spread across circles. Certain circles in the town of Hajin, the Mantian Region, and even across the Kandrian Empire. Circles of the high upper-ss elite, circles in the Kandrian Government, and even circles in the Martial Community.Content held by N?velDrama.Org.


    The rumor was outrageous.


    Five Martial Apprentices of the Academy defeated a Martial Squire.


    Many of them had managed to get their hands on the names, recognizing the prominent heirs of the Martial Community, as well as the finalist of the Martial Contest.


    Many scoffed at the notion. Yet even they choked when they heard the body had been retrieved.


    It sparked more than ripples once the legitimacy of the news was verified. It sparked waves.


    The legend of Rui Quarrier spread.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 347 Understanding

    Three weeks passed. Yet Rui hadn''t undertaken another mission. In fact, not a single person had seen so much of a shadow of him after he locked himself in his dorm room with a box of books.


    No one knew what he was up to.


    Yet everyone was admittedly curious. The feat that he and the other performed in their previous mission had only spread more and more. It was practically impossible to hide such astounding news, especially since it had been heard by arge number of people in the Apprentice post-mission facility who technically were not bound by any rules to keep what they''d heard a secret.


    And even if they were, the word would have leaked regardless.


    Not a single person in the Academy or the other Academies was unsurprised. Rui had gone from being one of the strongest Martial Apprentices of his generation to performing a feat that was unthinkable for the Apprentice-Realm.


    Of course, they did not possess the necessary contest to understand that the feat was exaggerated andpletely blown out of proportion and was far more grounded in reality than it sounded. However, not only did they not know, they did not care.


    The remaining four Martial Apprentices had been harassed to no short extent. It had reached the point that Kane, Fae, and Hever had taken medium-term missions away from the Academy because they weren''t being left alone.


    Nel, on the other hand, simply attacked every single person that wouldn''t leave him alone, resulting in him being penalized, since conflict outside the ring was not allowed.


    Rui inadvertently avoided it by locking himself in his dorm room, he didn''t know what was going on in the outside world, and he didn''t care in the slightest.


    THUD


    He closed the book in his hand.


    [Learning Vinfranese for the Advanced]


    "Ok." He said. "I''m finally ready to begin."


    In the past month, he had dedicated himself to learning Vinfranese. He had bought several learning books with the funds from his previous mission as well as a Vinfranese dictionary. He began obsessively learning thenguage soaking in the vast information and pouring it into his mind pce. It had taken him a while, but with his powerful mind and the Mind Pce technique, he had mastered thenguage in its entirety in under a month.


    He closed his eyes, sitting in a meditative posture.


    Yet he didn''t see darkness, the mind pce he had built in his mind appeared. He immediately briskly walked over to a part of it where he had stored the research data of the research facility.


    He opened the box, taking out the first log journal and opening it.


    To his tion, the words were fully understandable. The document was structured quite simrly to how a research paper on Earth would be syntaxed. A section titled ''abstract'' gave context and background followed by an introduction section that spoke more about the research project straightforwardly and then the body of the actual paper containing the actual data and research.


    He immediately jumped in.


    [45th autumn, year 406ME


    Project Apotheosis


    Abstract: The Commonwealth Duchy of Vinfrana is a nation with a weak Martial Foundation. Due to the mass migration of Martial Artists of higher Realms to other nations, the secret to the breakthrough to the Squire Realm that was monopolized by those of higher Realms was also lost. Since then, none of the Martial Apprentices of the Duchy have broken through. Among the few scarce pieces of information on the breakthrough to the Squire Realm that has been confirmed is the fact that the breakthrough to the Martial Squire is man-made and man-induced...]


    Rui paused as his eyes knitted in deep thought at thest sentence. In truth, he hade to realize that by himself. He recalled the way the breakthrough to the Apprentice Realm was talked about when he was in the Explorer Stage.


    It was talked about as a spontaneous epiphany that could ur at any moment. It was a natural process that the brain underwent that could not be triggered consciously by one''s self or others.


    Then hepared that to the way that the breakthrough to the Squire Realm was talked about. Every time it was spoken about, it was treated as something that was... controble. That was something Rui had caught sharply. It was spoken off as a process or a procedure of sorts, rather than a singr spontaneous event.


    The document said that it had been confirmed that the breakthrough was man-made. In research, this was not a term that was used lightly. It meant there was conclusive proof that all pointed to the fact that the breakthrough to the Squire Realm was not a natural event but was something engineered and developed by humans to a certain extent.


    ? That was something Rui found exciting.


    How exactly did this work?


    It almost certainly required esoteric technology, Rui was certain of that. But how exactly did whatever fantastical technology used allow Martial Apprentices to step into a higher Realm of Martial Art?


    He couldn''t wait to find out.


    He dived right back into the document.


    [Among the few scarce pieces of information on the breakthrough to the Squire Realm that has been confirmed is the fact that the breakthrough to the Martial Squire is man-made and man-induced. The breakthrough is not something that will naturally ur without human intervention. This is the reason that none of the existing Martial Apprentices and Squire candidates have broken through to the Squire Realm since the mass migration of Martial Artists of the Commonwealth Duchy of Vinfrana. This is the fundamental reason the Duke has invested a tremendous amount of funds into the construction of the research facility and Project Apotheosis.


    Another piece of information confirmed is that Martial Squires possess physical parameters that biologically far exceed conventional human parameters. Martial Apprentices possess brains with superhuman parameters while Martial Squires exceed the bounds of humanity in nearly every measurable attribute.


    If such an oue can unfold due to human intervention, then the first hypothesis thates to mind is a form of human augmentation, or perhaps more aptly; human evolution.


    That is the foundation for the research approach of Project Apotheosis...]


    This chapter upload first at  Content held by N?velDrama.Org.

 Chapter 348 Approach

    "Interesting." Rui murmured. "It does make sense to turn to human augmentation or evolution if the superior physical parameters of Martial Squires were human engineered. Furthermore, it''s clearly a procedure that only Martial Apprentices can go through, that should serve as a rather important clue when researching the breakthrough to the Squire Realm."


    Rui resumed reading, moving on to the next section.


    [Introduction: The goal of project Apotheosis is to discover or create a stable and consistent means of breaking through to the Squire Realm. As discussed in the previous section, the primary approach to fulfilling this goal is through a brute force attempt to naturally discover the process by engaging in research in all feasible means of human augmentation.


    Although at first nce it seems to be far toorge of scope to attempt, there are several constraints that reduce the number of possibilities from near-infinite to a much more manageable, albeit still extremely difficult, number.


    The first condition is that it''s a process that can sessfully work only on Martial Apprentices, and only Squire Candidates, due to unknown reasons. It is clear that this means physical augmentation is not something that can be applied to humans or even most Martial Apprentices for that matter. That filters out several potential possibilities. The only physiological difference between Martial Apprentices and humans lies in the brain, thus we''ve decided to prioritize potential methods that aim to augment humans to those especially rted to the brain in any way whatsoever.


    The second condition is that it is unlikely to be a process that is highly financially taxing. We can be rtively certain of this. If the Squire breakthrough is purely the result of one or more extremely valuable and scarce esoteric resources or technologies, then we would not observe the sheer poption of Martial Squires universally distributed across the Panama Continent and human civilization. It is clear that the difficulty of the breakthrough does note from economic constraints.


    The third condition is that the process is singr, it is not a collection of fundamentally different enhancement methods, but one enhancement method at the core that fundamentally enhances the body in its entirety. Thus, we can ignore methods that exclusively arepletely limited to one portion of the body.]


    "Interesting." Rui murmured. He did think this was the most reasonable path forward. He couldn''t even begin to imagine how difficult stumbling onto the breakthrough of the Squire Realm was, but they certainly were being pragmatic about their approach to the matter.


    He resumed reading.


    [Down below are certain avenues of research that are under consideration;


    Varnardium Blood Refining Spongification.


    Infire Leech detoxification.


    Cranial Grecardian Bleost Infection.


    Drilliomint Intoxication.


    ...


    Brunhild Spore Bone Marrow saturation.]


    "Wow." Rui muttered. He didn''t understand even a single one of the mentioned avenues of research. He felt as though he was back in high school and college.


    It was effectively the same. The potential candidates of the breakthrough method to the Squire Realm were all based on the esoteric phenomena of the world of Gaia.


    "I''m going to have to get Julian''s help on this." Rui sighed. He didn''t want to just skim on without, at the very least, gaining an understanding of the core of the methodologies involved. Otherwise, there would be no point in having memorized the information at hand.


    "I should also purchase information on the methodologies involved." Rui noted. "That way even if Julian is unfamiliar with something in the research data, I can provide the information needed on the matter."This content is ? N?velDrama.Org.


    Rui got up, immediately leaving his dorm room. He headed over to the student affairs department and applied for a leave. He wished to head back home so he could talk to Julian immediately, now was the time he would have returned from the Kandrian Institute of Sciences.


    To his surprise, the application was epted on the spot.


    "Aren''t these things supposed to take time?" He asked, curious.


    "Normally, they do." The staff member replied, smiling. "But your profile is marked with the permission to leave the Academy any time you want."


    "I see..."


    It seemed even the Academy did not see the need for Rui to remain in it, at this point. It had no problem with him leaving whenever he wanted. All of this supported the notion that his time at the Martial Academy wasing to an end.


    Rui left the Academy as he headed straight home. At his current speed, it only took him twenty minutes to reach the Quarrier Orphanage.


    "RRUUUIIIII" Alice greeted him loudly with a smile when he arrived. "Surprise visit!"


    "Hehehe." Rui smiled. "I had some free time and some stuff to do."


    "Come in!"


    The adults and children all greeted Rui.


    "Big brother, teach us Martial Art!"


    "Yeah! Teach us Martial Art!"


    Rui''s Martial Art had fascinated all the children in the Orphanage, but of them all, it had truly struck Max and Mana the most. They had dedicated themselves to the training regimes that Rui had told them to practice and it reflected.


    Rui could see that their muscle tone had visibly grown since hest saw them nine months ago, which meant they were most certainly training very hard, just as hard as he did.


    (''I should put them through even more kick-boxing and Brazillian jiu-jitsu training like what I went through.'') Rui mused. He had used the physical andbat training methodologies from Earth back when he had been training for the Martial Exam bing remarkably proficient at them by the time, he reached the age of thirteen. It certainly had helped himst in the Martial Exam and staved off the huge disadvantage he was at to a certain degree as far as the age gap went.


    It certainly would give them an edge. At the very least Rui was sure they would eventually manage to get in before they cross the age limit for the Martial Exam.


    "Wee back Rui." Julian smiled. "What brings you back on this surprise visit?"


    Rui turned to Julian. "I need your help with something, I think you''ll find it interesting."


    "Oh?" Julian raised an eyebrow. "I already am interested."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 349 Proposal

    "Recently, Ipleted an international mission." Rui said, sipping tea after they had settled alone in a room. "I happened to get my hands on research data of great importance to my Martial Path."


    Julian stared at him silently, waiting for him to finish.


    "Research data on the breakthrough to the Squire Realm." Rui added. "It''s legitimate and sessful."


    Julian''s eyes widened. "Are you absolutely sure?"


    "We fought a Martial Squire who broke through to the Squire Realm through the method developed by the research I obtained."


    Julian almost spat out his tea as he burst into a bout of coughs, taking a few minutes to regain hisposure. "Surely, you jest."N?velDrama.Org content.


    Rui shook his head. "You know I''m not."


    "There''s no way you fought a Martial Squire. You would be dead."


    "She was only a quasi-Martial Squire as farbat prowess went." Rui rified. "She had very recently broken through and was not only entirely unustomed to her power but alsocking in Squire-level techniques."


    "But even then..." Julian continued.


    "I didn''t beat her alone. We were a team of five. One grade-ten Martial Apprentice." He pointed to himself. "And four grade-nine Martial Apprentices."


    "Still..." Julian murmured uncertainly. "It''s incredibly hard to believe."


    "It definitely happened." Rui shook his head. "I''d show you the body, but I submitted it to the Martial Union as evidence."


    Julian''s eyes widened at those words. "That''s... unbelievable. How strong have you be?"


    "Quite." Rui admitted. "But that''s beside the point. The point is, the research data is legitimate."


    Julian regained hisposure as he understood what Rui wanted from him. "You want help with understanding the research data from me, correct?"


    Rui nodded. "I know you''re busy, but I hope you''ll help me out. Besides, you do stand to gain much if I''m not wrong."


    Julian nodded. "The breakthrough to the Squire Realm is not easily revealed. I haven''t been given ess to that information despite bing a full-fledged schr of the Kandrian Institute of Sciences. I''m quite interested in what you have procured. But what I''m curious about is why are you so strongly interested in this?"


    "What do you mean?"


    "The Martial Union will give you the opportunity to attempt the breakthrough once you''re ready." Julian told him. "Whatever information you managed to procure from outside the nation is certainly paltrypared to the highly-advanced and highly-refined breakthrough process and procedure the Martial Union has developed. At your absurdly high rate of growth, you''ll almost certainly receive this opportunity. When that timees, you''ll gain ess to not only the information you procured from your mission but also much more and moreplete and reliable information that you surely couldn''t get your hands on."


    This was true. Julian had keenly noted this point as Rui had expected. But he could not exin the truth. The truth was that there was the possibility that his scientific foundation from Earth could potentially allow him to optimize his journey to the Squire Realm. It all depended on the mechanics of the breakthrough to the Squire Realm.


    If this was the case, then he would rather find out sooner rather thanter. He would like to know if there was something he could do during the next training stage that could either lessen the risk of the procedure or maximize his gains during the breakthrough.


    "That''s true." Rui admitted. "Still, I cannot share the Martial Union''s information, they will surely have me sign a non-disclosure agreement of sorts regarding that. However, I can share this information with you and gain a more in-depth and thorough understanding of the breakthrough to the Squire Realm as well as how it was developed."


    "I see..." Julian tentatively epted that information. "Alright then, I''m more than willing to help you out with understanding the research data. When do we start?"


    "As soon as I finish transcribing it myself." Rui replied.


    "Yourself?" Julian frowned. "Just get it transcribed by a trantor."


    "No can do." Rui shook his head. "All of the data is in my mind. I memorized it perfectly from start to finish."


    "What?" Julian''s expression morphed into one of surprise. "But how?"


    "An Apprentice-level mental technique." Rui replied nonchntly.


    "I see." Julian sighed. "I can''t say I''m not envious."


    "Hehe." Rui smirked yfully. "Anyways, I''ll get back to you when I''m done."


    "Alright." Julian nodded. "Message me when you''re done."


    "Will do."


    Rui spent the rest of the day at the Orphanage. He always found it refreshing to return home and spent some time with his family. It usually took his mind off matters that otherwise perpetually consume his attention whether he liked it or not.


    He''d spent some time training Max and Mana, giving them even more training regimes and routines and sparring methodologies while humoring them in some matches to satisfy their battle lust. There was only over a year left before they were old enough to undertake the Martial Exam. Rui wasn''t entirely sure how he felt about that.


    The Martial Exam was dangerous. There was a small risk of death and a few applicants died every year participating in it and many were left crippled, traumatized, and injured.


    Still, he respected their determination. Once he left the Martial Academy, he would focus on training them a bit more before their first attempt.


    Once the day ended, he returned to the Martial Academy.


    "What''s that you''ve got there?" Kane frowned when he saw Rui returning to the dorm with a bunch of boxes.


    "A typewriter, ink, and paper supplies." Rui replied. "See you in however long whatever I''m about to do takes me."


    He shut entered his room, shutting himself in before Kane could even ask what he was talking about.


    Rui intended to finish the transcription process as soon as he could. The longer he dyed it, the longer he was dying his own ns. He wanted to gain ess to the information he wanted as soon as possible. Once he got it, it was time to take the next step toward Squire candidacy and eventually; the Squire Realm.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 350 Secret

    "Are you sure the security is adequate?" A bald bearded man asked, ncing at the Martial Apprentice sitting opposite to him in the carriage.


    "Do not worry, My lord." The Martial Apprentice replied. "Our Earthen Shieldforger party is one of the most reputed bodyguard parties in the Karjakin Confederate. We have a well-bnced team of Martial Artists, and most importantly, me, the most powerful defensive Martial Apprentice in the entire region as well as an excellent sensory Martial Apprentice here." He said, patting the Martial Apprentice sitting beside him.


    "Hm." The man nodded. "That''s good to hear."


    "Still, I have to say. It''s an honor to be assigned as the guard of a feudal lord like yourself, lord Faishon." The defensive Martial Apprentice smiled.


    "Mm. It is an important and consequently risky asion. I am enroute to dere war. There are those who oppose war. The pacificists will no doubt attempt to kill me, if they know about this journey. Fortunately, I have all of you. They should be unable to sessfully take my life en route to the Haraul Region." He replied.


    Feudal lord Faishon Durant was a feudal lord of the Karjakin Confederate, a tiny sovereign state some distance away from the Kandrian Empire. The Karjakin Confederate was a state rife with internal conflict. Due to its nature as a confederate state, its political power was divided among many militaristic leaders known as feudal lords.


    The state was always on the brink of civil war over the issue of monopoly and distribution of resources.


    Recently, it was pushed over the brink when an irreconcble disagreement caused one of the feudal leaders to decide to dere war.


    Feudal lord Faishon Durant. He was currently en route to the Region ruled by another like-minded feudal lord.


    However, he wasn''t a fool. The pacifist faction formed by feudal lords with the goal of settling disagreements through peaceful means would do everything in their power to prevent him from sparking war.


    Including ambushing and killing him.


    He''d hired the most powerful andrgest bodyguard party in his region.


    A team of nine elite Martial Apprentices led by a vaunted defensive Martial Apprentice that the Martial Union had evaluated as the equivalent of grade-nine.


    Nothing should have possibly gone wrong.


    Should, being the keyword.


    The sensory Martial Apprentice sitting beside the defensive Martial Apprentice froze. "Something ising!"


    The defensive Martial Apprentice immediately heightened his alertness as he turned to the sensory Martial Apprentice. "Which direction?"


    The sensory Martial Apprentice closed his eyes before his opening them with a pale face, turning to the ceiling of the carriage. "UP!"


    BOOM!


    The carriage exploded the very next moment as a fearsome wind st crushed it. The sensory Martial Apprentice was knocked out. The defensive Martial Apprentice was unharmed, yet he quickly turned back in rm and panic.


    His eyes widened when he saw the crushed corpse of feudal lord Faishon in front of him.


    Rage pulsed through his body as he looked around, looking for the killer. "WHERE IS HE?!"


    The entire guard force scanned their surroundings yet none of them had been able to find so much as a peep of the culprit.


    A kilometer away;


    BOOM!


    "Mmm." Rui sighed as he walked out of the crater. "I still suck at aerial maneuvering."


    He had used Tempestuous Ripple to elevate himself to a great height by firing downwards and using it as a propeller system, simr to a rocket, to reach directly above the carriage of the target of his mission andunched Tempestuous Ripples down once he reached close enough.


    It was the most efficient and effective way to kill the feudal lord Faishon through the heavy-duty bodyguards the man had hired.


    Unfortunately, his aerial maneuvering through Tempestuous Ripple was crude and embarrassing. He was still heads and shoulders below Ana Mariane, who had mastered aerial maneuvering through a simr method to an extremely high degree. She could dance elegantly and smoothly in the air whereas Rui resembled a drunk caveman, inparison.


    "Well, at least it allowed me toplete the mission quickly." Rui shrugged, consoling himself. He pulled out the mission tracker device and hit the sessful missionpletion button, before setting off in the direction of the Kandrian Empire.


    He was especially impatient to reach back home because of a message he had gotten from Julian.


    [I''ve finished.]


    Rui''s eyes had twinkled at that message. It had been a little over a month since Rui handed over thepleted transcripts of the research data he had procured from the research facility to Julian to read, understand and help Rui understand all the heavy esoteric science and technology that the research logs he had procured from the research facility used.


    Content held by N?velDrama.Org.


    And now, Julian had finally finished and would help Ruipletely understand the secret to the Squire Realm.


    His eyes shed with greed.


    It had been far too long a time, but Rui had managed to patiently endure the entire time.


    But now, he was ready.


    He had originally nned to take his time with the assassination mission that the pacifist faction hadmissioned, to be absolutely careful and execute the mission with surgical precision. But once he saw the message from Julian in the middle of the mission, he decided to go all-out andplete it as soon as possible.


    He sprinted back to the Kandrian Empire with speeds that far exceeded that of even the fastest of cheetahs on Earth.


    It took him only an hour to reach the Kandrian Empire. And merely another two hours to reach the town of Hajin.


    He rushed to the Martial Academy before racing through all the post-mission protocols with a frenzied vigour.


    It had taken him only five minutes to reach the Quarrier Orphanage once he sprinted back to the Quarrier Orphanage.


    The sheer amount of energy he''d burnt in total was tremendous even for a Martial Apprentice of his caliber. He''d arrived a sweating wheezing mess when he walked into the Quarrier Orphanage.


    "Julian!" He urged. "Tell me. What''s the secret!?"


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 351 Report

    Julian sighed. "Calm down. Also, take off that mask."


    Rui hadpletely forgotten to take off his mask all this time. It was a mask that disguised his hair and eyes. "Ah, my bad."


    However, before he could pester Julian again, the rest of the Orphanage had noticed his arrival and fawned over him yet again. As he drowned in a crowd of adults and children, Julian took his timeughing heartily at Rui''s plight.


    "Finally!" Rui eximed as he sat down opposite to Julian. "Alright, no more dys. Spit it out!"


    "Calm down." Julian told him. "I''ve prepared a short summary and a more borate and detailed summary depending on how much you want to know."


    He told Rui before extracting two documents of varying sizes, and handing them to Rui.


    Rui''s eyes widened as held the documents delicately, as though they were priceless artifacts made of ss. "This..."


    "I have to say, it was truly an incredible read." Julian told Rui. "I learned far more than I ever imagined, and I''m still digesting all my gains. I have so many ideas that I would like to research derived from the research provided to me."


    "I can imagine how beneficial it must have been," Rui told him. He knew the feeling, having been a researcher himself.


    Julian nodded. "Even though their technology is much inferior to that of the Kandrian Empire, the knowledge and capabilities of the researchers involved surpass mine. The Commonwealth Duchy of Vinfrana truly went all out with Project Apotheosis, in all regards."Exclusive content from N?velDrama.Org.


    Rui nodded. "I can''t wait to dig into it. Thanks a lot, Julian. Seriously, I can''t express how grateful I am."


    Julian smiled. "


    Rui spent some more time at the Orphanage, having dinner before leaving for the Martial Academy.


    Once he returned, he immediately locked himself in his room and began reading the quick brief report that Julian gave him. Once he finished that, he would move on to the more detailed report that exined the research


    "Alright, let''s see..." Rui murmured as he opened up the document.


    [Introduction; The entirety of the research logs that you provided to me documented the inception of Project Apotheosis all the until the recent initial sess of the project with subject SQ007. It documents nearly two years of reports and I''ll be broadly summarizing the core of the research in a manner that is easy to understand for someone without a background in esoteric science.]


    Rui nodded. This was indeed what he was looking for.


    [The research begins with the inductive deduction that the breakthrough to the Squire Realm is something that is a) engineered manually b) Something that only Martial Apprentices viably undergo. Thus, the hypothesis emerges that the breakthrough to the Squire Realm is something with severe constraints that only some Martial Apprentices can endure.


    A further deduction can be made that the constraint of the Squire breakthrough procedure is likely rted to the brain. The reason this can be deduced is that the only physiological difference between Martial Apprentices and normal humans is in the brain. Thus, if there is a reason that the Squire breakthrough can be applied only to Martial Apprentices and not to ordinary humans would be because of the brain.


    The final deduction made about the Squire Realm was that the breakthrough process was some form of human augmentation based on the fact that unlike Martial Apprentices, Martial Squires are augmented physically as well.


    The fundamental research approach began by attempting to find the augmentation procedure via a brute force attempt.


    For context, the avenue of human augmentation is not at all a new avenue of research by any means at all. The first recorded attempt at augmenting humans via the many fantastical esoteric resources in this world precedes the Age of Martial Art.


    However, although many have tried, there hasn''t yet been a sessful attempt at mass production of augmented humans. The only sesses have been extremely risky and fatal procedures with astronomically high mortality rates, or procedures with extremely high costs and needs. Many extremelyrge obstacles prevent the faint sess of human augmentation from being even remotely mass-viable.


    The research looked at arge variety of such existing means of human augmentation in hopes that Martial Apprentices could somehow ovee therge ws and shorings that these methods had. Below are the methods that are primarily under the consideration of the research facility:


    Varnardium Blood Refining Spongification: This is a method that purifies and energizes blood using a liquid esoteric known as Varnardium. The energized blood delivers its excess energy to all cells across the body, causing enhanced metabolic output. It''s one of the earliest attempts at human augmentation. The following is an extremely oversimplified exnation, however, it should suffice for now. The procedure leads to a very temporary state of human augmentation; however, degeneration follows suit immediately after. The process causes the nervous system to degenerate until the connection between the brain and body no longer exists and the subject dies on the spot.


    It''s an inevitable oue that the researchers hoped that Martial Apprentices would be able to ovee...]


    "Interesting." Rui''s eyes twinkled with interest.


    He had already learned a lot even before delving into the report.


    For starters, he had had no idea that the human augmentation field of research even existed. Let alone the fact that it existed for this long and was this widespread. He appreciated Julian providing him with the necessary contest that someone without a background in esoteric science did not possess. It helped him understand more about why certain decisions were made and how things came to be the way they were.


    "Varnardium Blood refining spongification," Rui murmured. "Not an element that exists in the periodic table that''s for sure."


    The idea that a certain substance could ''purify'' blood, whatever that meant on a bio-chemical level, and energize it to then distribute to all other cells across the body was truly fascinating. Rui even had a few ideas of what exactly was urring thanks to his scientific background.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 352 Almost There

    "Probably something to do with ATP," Rui muttered.


    ATP was the short form for Adenosine Triphosphate. It was the organicpound that provided energy for muscle movements, nerve impulse propagation, and several other important metabolic processes that required and consumed energy.


    If a process was able to energize cells, then that likely meant it was somehow increasing the supply of ATP to the cells to increase the production of energy. As for how that was happening, Rui wasn''t sure at all.


    He turned back to the document, proceeding down to the list of means of human augmentation one by one. They each relied different mechanisms to try and augment the human body. They each had their own ws and shorings.


    And at the end of each method, Julian spoke about why each method eventually could not be the breakthrough to the Squire Realm.


    He finally reached the final means of human augmentation;


    [This brings us to the final potential candidate for the Squire breakthrough. I''ve gone into the other avenues of research and summed up why the head researcher dismissed all other avenues of research as the candidate for the Squire Realm. There''s a reason I left this one for thest, I think you''ll be quite fascinated by it, Rui.


    The Flux Mutation procedure. To understand this process, I must provide some contextual scientific background.


    Specifically, on how life evolves.


    There is a theory on the natural development of life in this world; The Theory of Evolution.


    The reason why species of animals, including humans, have evolved the way they have in this world is exined by this theory. The offspring of a generation of members of a species of creatures are never gically identical to that of their parent generation. There are always small changes caused in the gic information that defines all of the phenomena that ur within each organism from generation to generation due to inurate copying of information from the parent to the offspring and even external influences at times.


    These changes are called mutations.


    These mutations are not identical even across the members of the same generation. Different members of the same generation end up having different changes in their gic information. However, not all of the mutations in the gic information of an organism are good. Many a time these changes are bad, and reduce the probability of the organism surviving and thus, reproducing.


    Those organisms with good mutations that increase the probability of survival and reproduction end up surviving and reproducing more than the organisms with bad mutations. Over time, this inevitably means that the next generation of the species ends up inheriting the good mutations rather than the bad mutations because the animals with the bad mutations died and reproduced much less.<novelnext>  </novelnext>


    The same process happens with the next generation, resulting in the generation after, having inherited better mutations. Over a long period of time, these inherited mutations snowball into arge difference. So much so that any given generation of a certain species greatly differs from its ancestral generations in the distant past.


    And are much superior as well. This is how species evolve. This is how all species of life have evolved.


    The Flux Mutation method aims to enhance the human body through a simr principle.


    Although the human being is considered to be a single organism, what it really is, is a gigantic system of invisibly small organisms we call ''cells'' that all work together in extraordinarilyplex and numerous ways that beggar the imagination.


    However, if it can, for the sake of the experiment, be considered as a group of organisms. Then the mechanism of the Theory of Evolution can be applied to the human being on a cellr level.


    In theory, The Flux Method aimed to subject the body to harsh conditions via technological setups. These harsh conditions caused mass cell death across a particr region of the body. However, amidst the mass cell death, a small proportion of cells would survive. The body would then be fed high-grade healing potions so that the only remaining surviving cells of the body would quickly reproduce and new tissue formed with the new cells would be able to withstand the harsh conditions that they were initially subjected to.Content held by N?velDrama.Org.


    The biggest drawback was that the probability of death was one hundred percent. This was expected. After all, killing off most of the cells was no different from killing off most of the body of the organism, which absolutely caused death. Even if there were few remaining living cells, the initial mass death immediately caused death, the healing potions thus could not heal the body.


    The research facility tried a known method of reducing the intensity of the harsh conditions subjected to the human body. This way, a greater number of cells survived the filter. However, this had its own drawbacks. In order for there to be a high-enough probability of survival, one needed to ensure more than ny-nine percent of cells survived.


    However, this also inevitably meant that the quality of the augmentation, once the cell count was restored through replenishment via healing potions, was insignificant. There was no meaningful augmentation observable in even the slightest observable degree by any means whatsoever.


    The research facility aimed to ovee this obstacle by subjecting the human body to an invisible form of energy we call ''radiation'', This invisible form of energy is extremely simr to light, they''re both of the same kind of energy.


    This radiation when subjected to the cells of the body would affect the gic information of the cells, causing mild changes at a much higher rate than normal. This would effectively speed up the rate at which the body evolved. Across several rounds of cell death and regeneration, the cells had undergone a significant amount of evolution.


    Radiation, however, is dangerous. It could cause painful deaths and disastrous mutations if even the slightest amount was excess or if the subject was not healthy and a variety of other conditions. It took years for them to nearly perfect the process such that the radiation would merely increase the rate and degree of mutations urring without causing nearly any other side-effect.


    Nearly, being the key word...]


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 353 There

    [¡­ The only, yet the biggest w of the augmentation method; Brain death. The brain was the by far the single most fragile organ of the body. What other organs could survive; even the heart and the lungs, it could not evene close to surviving. Even this near-perfect solution when subjected to subjects caused brain death. Thebination of mass brain-cell death and radiation was simply too lethal.


    If the brain was left unenhanced while the rest of the body was evolved via this method, then the brain would die of extreme seizures anyway due to being stressed with metabolic processes that it was not evolved to withstand. It was not possible to evolve the rest of the body but not the brain.


    No solution worked; it was absolutely not a viable form of human augmentation. This is why it''s a dead-end for ordinary humans.


    Ordinary humans, being the keyword. The goal of Project Apotheosis was to discover the breakthrough process to the Squire Realm.


    The research team did not give up on their final candidate. The final possibility was that even if human brains could not survive the process, it was possible that the superhumanly augmented brains of Martial Apprentices could.


    This was put to the test with test subject SQ001. He was a hostile foreign Martial Apprentice caught infiltrating the Commonwealth Duchy of Vinfrana.


    The result was a failure. However, this result was illuminating. The test subject''s brain came far closer to the threshold of survival.


    This gave the research team hope that the Flux Mutation method was the key to the Squire Realm. Each time they refined the process heavily before bringing in another test subject; SQ002.


    Because of the extreme scarcity of Martial Apprentice test subjects, each experiment was conducted after arge amount of refining. Months went by between each test subject.


    However, all of them were failures. Six Martial Apprentices died. But the research team was still optimistic. They reached closer and closer each time, fueled by the data of their failures.


    Then, they seeded.


    Test subject SQ007; Cae Feeria; female. The equivalent of a grade-ten defensive Martial Artist. She was a volunteer test subject that was ''officially'' sent as a guard but in actuality was a test subject. She was subjected to thetest and most refined Flux Mutation method.


    She survived.


    Her brain was powerful enough to withstand the procedure without dying or losing her consciousness due to brain death.


    She had broken through to the Squire Realm; sessfully bing a Martial Squire.


    This is the secret to the Squire Realm; Human evolution.


    The features you described of her entire body matched that of the ones recorded in research logs. I do believe that you fought and defeated Squire test subject SQ007 in your mission.


    And that is the end of the brief report on the research conducted in the research facility. The borate report contains all the nitty gritty details that I have entirely omitted or oversimplified in this report so that it remains easy forymen without a background in esoteric science.


    Hope that helped, feel free toe over and ask any questions you have.


    ~Julian.]


    ¡­<novelnext>  </novelnext>


    ¡­..


    Rui dropped the document as he stared off into space.


    He was looking at walls, physically. But really, he was looking at nothing.


    His mind was still in a state of shock as he struggled to even process what he had read.


    "Evolution..." He murmured in wonder. "To think literal Darwinian Evolution would be the key to the Squire Realm."


    He was beyond bewildered. Yet so many things made sense to him. It all fell into ce. Like pieces of a puzzle. The many pieces he had picked up over a long period, one by one, falling into ce.


    "That''s why only Squire candidates are allowed to attempt the breakthrough." Rui''s eyes widened. "Normal Martial Apprentices would die."


    Squire candidates needed to achieve a substantial degree of individuality. This was one of the two conditions of Squire candidacy.


    Rui finally understood why.


    (''It''s in order to ensure the brain can survive and withstand the process.'') He realized. (''In order for the brain of the Martial Apprentice to survive, it has to be augmented enough. It has to be augmented far above human parameters. In order for it to be augmented enough, the Martial Apprentice has to walk deeper down one''s Martial Path!'')


    Rui recalled something he had once been told by Headmaster Aronian.


    "Your brain bes more and more enhanced the more uniquely original and individualistic your Martial Art is. The greater the personal and original development your Martial Art goes, the deeper down your Martial Path you tread, and the greater your brain is enhanced as a consequence." Headmaster Aronian had told him, back then.


    This meant the only way for a Martial Apprentice to have a powerful enough brain to survive the breakthrough was to tread deeper down one''s Martial Path, which, in turn, requires one''s Martial Art to have individuality.


    "That''s why it''s the condition to be considered a candidate for the Squire Realm!" Rui eximed, growing more and more excited.


    He had already fulfilled that condition.


    Which meant that he could attempt and even survive the breakthrough to the Squire Realm!


    What was the other condition for?


    He didn''t know. But, at the very least, as far as Martial matters went, the Martial Union was one hundred percent credible as an expert. He was sure that there was a valid and sound reason why Rui wasn''t yet a Squire candidate despite being able to survive the breakthrough to the Squire Realm.


    Rui had far too many questions asides from just that. Why couldn''t this process be applied over and over again for infinite evolution? What were the ''harsh conditions'' subjected to the human body for evolution to begin? How much radiation did they subject the body with? How did they regte it?


    He turned towards the more borate report that Julian had given him with gleaming eyes. He would surely find answers to those questions there.This content is ? N?velDrama.Org.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 354 Further Insights

    Once Julian provided context on all of the esoteric science that the research logs referenced, Rui had a far easier time understanding all of it. But he mostly focused on the Flux Evolution method, as it had been renamed by the end of the research logs.


    "I see." Rui murmured as he read through the borate exnation report that Julian provided him. "The reason that the evolution procedure cannot just be performed infinitely is that there is a time limit before the radiation administered bes lethal due to overdosage. On Earth, this would be considered to be an Acute Radiation Syndrome."


    Julian''s report mentioned prolonged exposure to radiation was lethal. What he was surprised by was the fact that they didn''t know why. Both Julian and the researchers treated radiation as a dangerous butrgely unknown and inscrutable form of energy simr to that of light.


    "So, they haven''t yete up with Maxwell''s Electromaic Theory or the Quantum Theory of light, huh?" Rui surmised. "They also haven''t discovered DNA or a detailed structure and function of cells. It also doesn''t seem like they have an uratelypleted theory of the atom."


    The research logs gave him a lot of insight into the scientific limitations of this world. While they possessed arge sum of knowledge on the many supernatural phenomena of this world, they did not develop deep scientific theories that exined the phenomena in this world.


    Part of this was because esoteric sciences werergely sufficient and a proven field. Most of the research and development in this world was targeted around the esoteric and supernatural phenomena in this world. This neglected research into ordinary fields that looked at the more mundane and ordinary phenomena such as that of gravity.


    Rui didn''t necessarily fault them for this. In front of the many fantastical esoteric phenomena in this world capable of wonders, the ordinary phenomena weren''t really as alluring inparison.


    (''interesting.'') Rui mused. (''The harsh conditions that they subjected the body to are varied depending on which biological system they are evolving. To evolve the muscr system, they subjected the muscr cells to a substance via a potion that would force the muscr cells to consume a greater amount of energy to produce greater amounts of muscr force. The muscr cells that couldn''t keep up due to being too weak would perish while the gically best cells would survive. The new cells reproduced from these surviving cells thanks to the healing potions will have mutated even more than normal thanks to the dosage of radiation that causes more mutations from generation to generation to speed up the evolution process. The process repeats over and over again such that each generation of mutated muscr cells is much superior to the previous generation. By the end of the procedure, the newest of muscle cells will have evolved far past normal human parameters.'')


    Rui was fascinated by this process. Simr processes had been developed for all biological systems in the body. These processes were such that only the gically superior proportion of the cells of a particr biological system or organ would survive. The next generation of cells would inherit the superior genes with some amount of mutations caused by the radiation. The best mutations would survive in the next round while the worst would die. The end result was cells snowballed with the most superior gic mutations over countless rounds of evolution.


    This ended up with all biological systems and all types of cells being gically far superior to the originals.N?velDrama.Org content.


    However, there were constraints. Not only was there a maximum amount of radiation the body could be subjected to before it became dangerous and lethal, but there were also internal constraints to the body. Increasing the metabolic power and capability of each cell increased the energy consumption of each cell. This was dangerous because if the energy consumption was too high then the stamina of the body would decrease.<novelnext>  </novelnext>


    Of course, the energy reserves also increased during the Squire breakthrough evolution process. The aim was to ensure that the bnce suited the Martial Artist.


    For some Martial Artists like Fae, increased power at the cost of stamina was desirable. It suited her style. She was a hyper-aggressive offensive fighter who went all-out to defeat her opponent with overwhelming offense in a short amount of time.


    On the other hand, sacrificing stamina for greater raw muscr power was absolutely catastrophic for a Martial Artist like Milliana.


    "Different Martial Artists need customized Squire breakthroughs." Rui realized. "You cannot universally apply the exact same identical procedure to different kinds of Martial Artists. It would ruin their Martial Path. Each Squire evolution needs to be surgically customized to fit the target Martial Artist."


    "That is also why the Martial Squire we fought, Cae Freelia, was so unstable." He muttered. "Her body was not onlypletely different that it used to be. But the evolution ''configuration'' she underwent was probably not customized for her. That''s also why her control was so unstable. We would probably be dead if she underwent perfect evolution."


    Rui wiped some sweat off his forehead. The fact that Cae had dominated them despite being nerfed in so many different ways went to show how much stronger true Martial Squires were.


    "I bet this is the reason for the second condition of Squire candidacy." His eyes widened as he made another realization. "Assuming the Squire evolution is permanent, then getting the correct evolution configuration of physical parameters is absolutely vital. If your Martial Art changes drastically at its core after you undergo Squire evolution, you''re fucked!"


    In that case, it made sense to wait for a Martial Apprentice''s Martial Art to mature so that it would not undergo any drastic fundamental changes. Otherwise, the irreversible Squire evolution would not be suited to the drastic changes.


    Rui finally understood the reasons for Squire candidacy. The individuality condition was to ensure that the brain was augmented enough so that the Martial Apprentice''s brain would survive the breakthrough. The maturity condition was to ensure that the Martial Art would not change drasticallyter on after the breakthrough to be ipatible with the Martial Artist''s evolved body.


    asionally missing content, please report errors in time.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 355 Considerations

    Rui closed the report document. He burnt both of them since he had alreadymitted them to memory, he didn''t want this document to be leaked.


    (''Wow...'') He sat back, pondering all the information he had digested. He had wondered about the breakthrough to the Squire Realm for years. And now, he had finally learned about it.


    (''The question now is... How do I use this to my advantage?'') He wondered.


    The whole goal of pursuing this knowledge was to somehow exploit it to give himself an advantage by relying on his background and other unique circumstances.


    He had already begun to think hard about the matter.


    (''There are only three ways this can benefit me. I gain an advantage that no other Martial Artist normally has, or I mitigate an advantage no other Martial Artist is able to, or I bolster existing benefits to a degree that no other Martial Artist is able to.'') He quickly surmised. (''Or somebination of the three as well, I suppose. I should jot down the avenues where the is potential for benefit.'')


    The existing benefits of the Squire evolution breakthrough were, of course, obvious and straightforward. Vastly improved gics for superhuman metabolic parameters. Though Rui wasn''t entirely sure how he could maximize his benefits.


    Create better cell-straining processes that are used to filter out the gically most superior cells?


    Rui shook his head. All of the cell-straining processes that were used to filter out the gically inferior cells were based on esoteric technology. Rui could not really use his scientific background to rece them. He would need to either develop conventional technology in his world or familiarize himself intimately with esoteric technology which could not be done in a short amount of time. There was no point in wasting time chasing down that path with no guaranteed returns.


    (''What about mitigating the drawbacks and constraints or giving myself benefits in other avenues?'') He wondered.


    This wasn''t as unfeasible.


    The drawbacks and constraints of the Squire evolution process were the radiation dosage limit and the stamina constraints. If he could somehow mitigate these two drawbacks, then his evolution should boost him to a significantly higher degree than what would normally be expected.N?velDrama.Org content.


    His eyes lit up as a few ideas entered his mind. "Hehehe... This is going to be interesting."


    He spent the rest of the day in his room refining his ns for the Squire evolution breakthrough.


    A few days passed.


    It had been nearly a month since the mission in the Commonwealth Duchy of Vinfrana ended. At that time, the information regarding the shocking mission had been disseminated to a muchrger extent. Arge number of people with any ears in the general intelligenceworks of the Empire had learned of the feat of the five Martial Apprentices.


    Many wondered if this feat would set new standards for Martial Apprentices.


    Everybody knew that each generation of Martial Apprentices was stronger than the previous generation of Martial Apprentices. This was because of the higher quantity and quality of techniques and trainings. This would inevitably cause the average level of Martial Apprentices to rise. Across a few generations, the difference would be noticeable.


    When Martial Artists grew too powerful, the Martial Union would have to set new standards. The Martial Artist grades would be readjusted to ount for the increase in power. The grades would all jump up one step. Grade-ten Martial Artists would be Grade-nine Martial Artists and so on and so forth.<novelnext>  </novelnext>


    Historically, this change would be made only when it became painfully evident that the Martial Artist grades were painfully outdated. This usually happened when an era-defining genius performed a feat so ridiculously impressive that it became extremely clear that the Martial Artist grades needed to be readjusted.


    Many suspected that Rui and his feat of leading a victory against a Martial Squire would be the trigger or at the very least a significant contributor to that trigger.


    This only made him that much more alluring as a Martial Artist to the many clienteles of the Martial Union. Rui''s inbox had been flooded with more than a hundred different personalmissions! He even received personalmissions from international clientele.


    Themissions were as diverse as they were many. Ranging from more standard missions to odder and more unusual missions.


    There was even amission for a vial of his semen!


    Amission that Rui had promptly refused on the spot.


    Many in the Kandrian Empire had taken notice of him much more seriously than they did when he was merely the finalist in the Martial Contest.


    The same could be said for the Martial Union. It was even more interested in him than anybody else. The Martial Sects dropped all pretenses and sent open invitations to him.


    He gotmissions from Martial Sects he didn''t even know existed!


    The Poison Sect, the Weapons Sect, and the Subterranean Sect.


    Rui refused all the invitations, albeit with highly courteous and gratifying responses. He didn''t want to piss off the Martial Sects.


    He refused all but one.


    The Symbiotic Sect.


    He hadn''t forgotten his interest in Symbiotic Martial Art techniques. Especially the fact that he likely had a high affinity with these techniques. He wanted to explore the possibility of him being able to benefit disproportionately due to a potentialpatibility with these techniques. Problem was that he knew far too little about the techniques.


    Although the Martial Academy did have symbiotic techniques, it wasn''t nearly as extensive as he''d have hoped it would have been.


    Thus, he had reached out to the individual who had invited him to Symbiotic Sect; Squire Grillogan.


    If he expressed interest in symbiotic techniques, there was a pretty decent chance that Squire Grillogan would at the very least cooperate with him and help him out to increase the probability of Rui joining the Symbiotic Sect. It was practically a necessity if he had any hopes of Rui joining their Sect over any otherrger Martial Sect in the Martial Union.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 356 Meeting

    Rui entered the Martial Union Hajin branch after showing his learner''s license and an invitation letter to the security.


    The Martial Union was incrediblyrge, one could easily get lost in its vastness while navigating through itsrge structure. Thankfully, there were maps frequently ced across the entireplex. Otherwise, Rui would have gotten lost even with the Seismic Mapping technique.


    CLACK


    Rui opened the door to an office, having reached his destination. Inside was a Martial Squire in a business attire, which took Rui by surprise. He had done a remarkably good job at restraining his mental pressure, even if Rui''s powerful senses and mind were able to detect it.


    "Squire Grillogan, a pleasure to meet you." Rui greeted him respectfully.


    "The pleasure is mine, Apprentice Quarrier." The Squire replied with a smile. "Have a seat."


    Squire Grillogan was a rather old man and a clearly retired Martial Artist.


    Rui took a seat at the table, as he scrutinized the room briefly. His eyes immediately fell on the name on the card ced on the table as well as the photos of the Martial Squire and what appeared to be his family on the table.


    "I must confess, I am surprised." Rui told him candidly. "I did not know that Martial Artists also upied bureaucratic and management positions within the Martial Union. I was under the impression that these posts were upied by non-Martial Artists."


    "That is mostly true." Squire Grillogan confirmed. "More than ny-five percent of the bureaucratic and management posts are actually upied by normal humans. However, there are posts with a certain amount of autonomy and power that are a bit sensitive. For positions like these, the upper echelons wish these posts be upied by retired Martial Artists like myself. Important posts with power and authority should be in the hands of Martial Artists because it is less likely that the power would be exploited against the ss interests of Martial Artists and the Martial Union as a whole."


    Rui nodded. That made sense. By ensuring that all the important positions were in the hands of Martial Artists, the loyalties of the people upying these posts could be much more assured than if all these posts were upied by normal humans. "I would imagine that all of the executive posts with no autonomous power are given to humans then."


    "Indeed." Squire Grillogan nodded. "These posts are much lesser in significance inparison to posts like my own. Of course, with the sheer number of such posts, they do possess a soft amount of power in total. Rest assured; the Martial Union has many fail-safes, deterrents, and contingencies."


    He waved his hand. "Regardless, that''s not particrly important or worth getting into. You have gone out of your way to set up a meeting with me. I presume you came here to make more than just light talk."<novelnext>  </novelnext>N?velDrama.Org content.


    "Indeed." Rui nodded. "Let me be straightforward, I cannot ept the invitation of the Symbiotic Sect at this particr moment. I do not yet possess a single Symbiotic technique, after all. The reason I wished to speak to you was that I am interested in learning more about Symbiotic techniques. I do believe that I might have a high degree ofpatibility with them and thus want to work on at least one technique if that is the case. I was hoping you could help me out with this."


    "I see..." The Squire responded thoughtfully. "I appreciate your honesty, as well as your interest in our Sect''s techniques. I am more than willing to help you out, to a certain degree. However, you''ll have to be a bit more specific with your interests. If all you want is a basic guide to help you understand the more esoteric nature of our techniques, then such a thing can easily be handled by the staff that I can have help you, it''s not something that warrants me helping you out personally."


    Rui nodded. "That would also be appreciated. However, I also do have a general idea of what I want from a symbiotic Martial Art technique."


    "Go on." Squire Grigon told him.


    "I do not want the Symbiotic Martial Art technique to usurp or hinder the inherent and intrinsic human capability for the sake of additional capabilities. I do not want a symbiotic Martial Art that reces human capability or potential in any way. What I seek from a symbiotic Martial Art is to enhance my strengths, or mitigate my shorings."


    "I see..." The Squire murmured. "Unfortunately, that does cut away arge proportion of symbiotic Martial Art techniques. Most of the techniques of our Sect do rece human capability with the capabilities provided by symbiotes."


    Rui nodded. He''d suspected as much when he saw how Fernan fought.


    "Well, no matter." The Squire replied. "For what it''s worth, I do think that the choice is indeed most fit for you. You''re clearly an all-rounder. A technique that changes the configuration of your body unevenly like how most Symbiotic techniques do will likely not coincide with your Martial Art."


    "Although this does reduce the number of techniques that can give you what you''re looking for. It''s not too much of a problem. For a single Martial Artist, we still have plenty of techniques that match what you''re looking for. I''m sure that amidst all these techniques, there will be something that suits you." He finished.


    "Thank you, Squire Grigon." Rui bowed his head. "I appreciate your help."


    "Not at all, young man." The Squire waved his hand. "I shall personally ensure a list of techniques that match the conditions you haveid out will be sent to you in the Martial Academy. The list will contain all the general information about the techniques that are normally disyed free of cost like in the technique scrolls of the Martial Academy. Once you find something you''re interested in learning more about or purchasing some techniques, you can just purchase it from the Martial Union straightforwardly."


    Rui smiled. "Thank you, much appreciated."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 357 Techniques

    Rui had begun making preparations for his next training stage and for the eventual breakthrough to the Squire Realm. Of course, he wasn''t even a Squire candidate yet. He had hoped that the next training stage would lead to the maturity of his Martial Art as a whole.


    Maturity was partially a nebulous concept, to begin with. Although Rui knew his Martial Art had not yet reached maturity, he had been told that when it did, he would feel instinctive certainty regarding the matter.


    So far, he had felt no instinctive certainty of any kind yet.


    Regardless, he could ensure that whenever the second condition would be fulfilled and the Squire evolution breakthrough woulde around, he would be prepared.Content held by N?velDrama.Org.


    "Alright now..." Rui murmured as he opened a document with the emblem of the Martial Union. "Let''s see..."


    The list of symbiotic techniques that abided by the conditions Rui hadid out had arrived. Once Rui made his decision regarding this matter one way or another, he would immediately delve into his next training stage.


    The first page inside the document was an index page. The techniques were divided into intrinsic and extrinsic techniques as well as by offense, defense, maneuvering, or supplementary. Each section was further divided into sub-categories.


    Rui whistled. This made things convenient.


    He started skimming through the extrinsic section, pausing every time he came across a cool technique.


    The techniques were grouped together under the core symbiote species with which the techniques could be performed.


    [Silverstreak Winged Louse


    Grade: 8


    ? Difficulty grade: 7


    The Silverstreak Winged louse is a parasite that can be found in rare portions of the mountain ranges in the north of the Kandrian Empire. This symbiote enters the bloodstream and makes its way to the cervical spine of a vertebrae creature. Once at the cervical spine, the creature burrows itself into the vertebrae of the host. After an initial period of gestation and gathering of the gic information of the host, it begins the growth of wings outside of flesh. Within the span of two weeks, the pair of wings are fully grown and connected to the spinal cord and brain.


    It ced a significant mental and nutritional burden on the body and mind.


    Techniques associated with it include;


    Tempestuous Whirlwind Sword: A wind projectile technique generated by the wings and a breathing technique performed by the user to manipte the air density of the air around the wings to match that of the solids. The wings then generate a powerful p that projects powerful wind sts with great range and power.


    Silverstreak Tautfirm Conditioning: A special kind of training designed for the Silverstreak Winged Louse. Increases tensile strength and rigidity of the flesh of the Silverstreak Winged Louse.


    Aerial Flickering...]


    A variety of techniques were listed under the Silverstreak Winged Louse.


    (''This is quite simr to Fernan''s wings and techniques.'') Rui noted, recalling the techniques he had seen when facing off against Fernan.


    Fernan used techniques not too dissimr to the techniques of the Silverstreak Winged Louse.


    As for whether Rui was willing to insert the symbiote into his body, the answer was most certainly a resounding no.<novelnext>  </novelnext>


    Although wings were certainly useful. They ruined the bnce of his Martial Art. Reducing his close-quartersbat flexibility and nimbleness in exchange for long-range aerial maneuvering. This would reduce his ability to adapt to Martial Artists whose prime weakness was close-quartersbat.


    He had long disqualified symbiotes such as this one as potential candidates for the symbiote he was willing to insert into his body.


    The other extrinsic techniques were all simr. Extra limbs, extra appendages, and all sorts of external growths would all ruin his bnce and dampen his inherent potential.


    He shook his head, dismissing all of them. He had more or less expected it, but indeed he would not be choosing even a single extrinsic technique.


    (''Hopefully, the intrinsic symbiotes and techniques will be better.'') Rui sighed.


    Once he opened them, however, he was surprised.


    "Wow." His eyes lit up in interest.


    Intrinsic symbiotes were certainly more along the lines of what he was looking for.


    [Freshwater Skincreeper Symbiote


    Grade: 7


    Difficulty grade: 6


    The Freshwater Skincreeper Symbiote is a symbiote that burrows itself into the outer flesh of its host and grows, spreading outwards, bing ayer in the outer flesh of its host. It increases the resilience of the outer flesh of the host and increases the durability of the host as a whole. It is a static symbiote and does not have much of a scope for techniques beyond concentration and density adjustment and some amount of conditioning.]


    "Not bad." Rui nodded. This symbiote increased his defense significantly. The best part was that its difficulty grade was below potency grade. Which meant he would get even more power from it than he would from a normal technique with the same amount of difficulty.


    "But it''s not what I''m looking for." Rui shook his head.


    He wanted a symbiote that could do more than just provide him with mundane boosts. What he wanted was a symbiote that could provide him with special utility that normal techniques could not. Perhaps it could mitigate some of the drawbacks of his Martial Art or empower its strengths.


    There was no point in going out of his way to get a symbiote that merely boosted his offense or defense. Those were things that even ordinary techniques could provide him. What he was looking for was a unique exotic solution that ordinary techniques couldn''t provide him.


    Ideally, it would be a symbiote that could enhance the viability or effectivity of the VOID algorithm. But he did not know whether such a symbiote existed.


    He skimmed through the list with hopeful eyes, speeding past the offense, defense, and maneuvering pages, until he reached the supplementary section.


    "This seems more promising." He murmured as he carefully went down each technique one by one.


    That was when he came across something rather interesting to him.


    "The Mindmirror Worm?" He frowned. "What the heck is that?"


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 358 Weighing

    [Mindmirror Worm


    Grade: 10


    Difficulty grade: 10


    The Mindmirror Worm is an extremely rare worm that inhabits the Beast Domain. It infiltrates a potential host''s system via ingestion or inhtion while it is still in the spore form before entering the bloodstream. It is one of the only symbiotes that aids the most vital organ in the human body: The brain...]


    Rui''s eyes widened at those words. The brain was an extraordinarily fragile organ, and Rui didn''t understand how an invasive symbiote could not only not damage it but also somehow benefit it.


    He continued reading on interest.


    [The spore attaches itself to the bottom of the temporal lobe and the frontal lobe before it gathers the gic information of the host through the blood and begins reproducing the brain cells known as ''neurons'' in the gap between the brain and the skull tes below the brain. It saturates the gap, forming a small organ made up of neurons that are intimately connected to the host''s brain.Content held by N?velDrama.Org.


    It effectively forms a secondary brain that serves as an additional lobe for the brain. This secondary lobe is capable of boosting reactions and aids with mentally strenuous and time-consuming processes. It''s an incredible boost that greatly enhances mental faculties.


    Its downsides are that it increases nutritional expenditure and mentally burdens the brain to an extremely high degree, increasing the need for sleep, and causing the brain to need to sleep for an extra fifty percent without potions. It exceeds ordinary human parameters in so far as the mental stress it puts on the brain. The symbiote is also sentient and inherently power-hungry and does attempt to take over the brain of the host. Often seeding in the cases of Martial Apprentices without powerful enough brains and minds.


    All of these heavy drawbacks are the reason that the difficulty grade of the technique is grade ten. It is estimated that only someone with extraordinary mental parameters can possibly master the Mindmirror Symbiote.]


    He waspletely blown away by the symbiote. The drawbacks sounded incredibly scary, but the benefits were almost irresistible. Martial Apprentices were significantly above baseline human parameters because of their cerebral augmentations. This symbiote was effectively providing a boost that was not too far from the boost that Martial Apprentices gained thanks to the discovery of the Martial Path.


    "No wonder the potency of the technique is grade ten." Rui sighed. "But the difficulty is equally high. Just the fact that there are high stakes at risk, for failure to master the technique alone means that it''s game over. An easily grade-ten technique."


    Normally, Rui ignored grade-ten techniques. They required extraordinary talent and extreme affinity for there to even be a reasonably-high possibility of mastery. Rui wasn''t conventionally talented; one of his biggest advantages came over from inheriting an already-developed mind and the consequences of it undergoing a second round of cognitive growth.


    However, he hade to realize that in the context of this technique, he might actually possess the ''talent'' needed for it; extremely high mental parameters. He also had an affinity with it because the core of his Martial Art was a mentally intensive system of fighting; the VOID algorithm.


    "Is this the reason this is literally at the very top of the list?" Rui wondered. He most certainly had not missed the ring oddity it was to ce a grade-ten technique at the very top of a list for someone who had merely expressed interest in symbiotic techniques. That was a conscious decision made for a very clear reason.<novelnext>  </novelnext>


    "Is the Symbiotic Sect thinking what I''m thinking?" He wondered out loud.


    It was far from a secret that Rui''s mental parameters were far above baseline Martial Apprentices with the same amount of experience and time in the Apprentice Realm as him. The Martial Academy had carefully recorded and documented his feats and oddities.


    If Squire Grillogan had the authority to look into the data the Martial Academy had on him, then Rui could see why this particr Symbiote had been put to his attention.


    If it really took someone like Rui to seed in mastering the Mindmirror Symbiote then there were probably no Martial Apprentices in the Kandrian Empire who had mastered the Mindmirror Symbiote.


    Rui pondered the matter carefully. The benefits and demerits were extremely clear.


    If he mastered the symbiote, the viability issue of the VOID algorithm would not only bepletely and entirely gone, but his mastery of it would skyrocket. The sheer amount of information he would be able to promise would be far greater than he currently was able to.


    His current usage of the VOID algorithm was just barely satisfactory as far as proficiency went. The Mind Pce technique allowed him to store and process data at a far higher rate than would normally, especially with his mastery of it. But now, he could be incredibly masterful in his execution of the VOID algorithm. His overallbat prowess would skyrocket.


    If he mastered this technique, he could very well be the strongest Martial Apprentice in the entirety of the Kandrian Empire.


    The downsides were that his mind would be taxed more, understandably so. It would be receiving a constant influx of neuron impulses from the secondary lobe of the Mindmirror Symbiote and would need to process that.


    "My rate of mastery of techniques would reduce," Rui murmured unhappily. The brain needed an increased amount of sleep due to the burden that the symbiote ced on it. Even if that wasn''t the case for Rui due to his brain''s superhumanly high mental capacity, he strongly suspected that he wouldn''t be able to use potions to gain an extraordinary amount of training time.


    His brain could either handle the symbiote, or the strain of no sleep for long periods.


    But even his incredible brain and mind likely would not be able to handle both burdens at the same time. Which meant he would only be able to choose one of the two.


    If he chose the symbiote, his training speed would no longer be extraordinary. If he wanted to retain his training speed, then he would not be able to obtain the symbiote.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 359 Options

    He put aside the matter for now. He didn''t need to make the decision immediately. It was not an easy choice and it was one he needed to make after careful consideration of the consequences. For now, he wanted to proceed with going through the rest of the intrinsic Martial Art techniques.


    [Opticorb Symbiote


    Grade: 9


    Difficulty grade: 8


    The Opticorb Symbiote is a symbiote that enters the body through the air as arva before entering the bloodstream. Once in the body, it travels to one of the eyeballs and begins consuming it in a slow process, breaking down the cells and tissues into nutrients and building blocks for a new eyeball. The new eyeball, whenpleted, connects to the optical nerve and serves as the new eye for the host. The new eye has extreme physical parameters. It is able to cleanly perceive phenomena kilometers away as well as microscopic phenomena. Its field of vision is a perfect 360 degrees. It also provides the user with heat sense as well as numerous newer forms of perceptions that allow the user to gain an extremely thorough understanding of the environment.


    Its downsides are that it produces a much higher mental burden not only due to the additional link to the brain but due to the far higher influx of sensory information from the symbiotic eye into the brain. The incapability of withstanding the burden will eventually lead to strokes and seizures.]


    Rui''s eyes widened in interest. This was certainly a remarkably alluring symbiote as a potential option to explore. Powerful sensory prowess would certainly benefit him on his missions, that was certainly true. Although Seismic Mapping and Primordial Instinct were just fine, having the symbiote would boost his environmental awareness by leaps and bounds.Content held by N?velDrama.Org.


    His reconnaissance capabilities would skyrocket significantly. If he had had this ability in his missions, most of them would have seeded with far greater ease and simplicity.


    He kept a note of it as he skimmed through a few more.


    [Grinwich Nervesprouter Louse


    Grade: 9


    Difficulty grade: 8


    The Grinwich Nervesprouter Louse was a symbiote that consumed and reced the entire nervous system of the host with a far superior nervous system with a much greater amount of speed and control than ordinary nervous systems of vertebrae creatures. Downsides include a standard amount of mental and physical strain.]


    Rui nodded, considering it. It was certainly alluring but it didn''t really provide him with something that would truly be of use to his Martial Path or his Martial Art.


    He skimmed through all of them one by one. Although there were many alluring andpelling options, none of them truly uniquely benefitted his Martial Art with greatpatibility.


    He sighed.<novelnext>  </novelnext>


    By the time he reached the end of the list, none had struck him quite as the Mindmirror Symbiote did. Yet it was also one of the most treacherous options at hand.


    Furthermore, it was yet another either or option in this scenario as well. He would not be able to take any other symbiote if he chose the Mindmirror Symbiote. He would not be able to choose the Mindmirror Symbiote if he chose any other Symbiote.


    The reason for this was rather simple, the Mindmirror Symbiote would likely be far too mentally strenuous for his mind to possibly amodate any other symbiote. This assumed his mind could even handle the Mindmirror Symbiote in the first ce. If it couldn''t, then there was no conversation to be had at all.


    "I need to learn more about the Mindmirror Symbiote." Rui murmured. He was on the cusp of entering his next training stage. He did not want to be dyed too much longer, he already had ideas of what he wanted for the other techniques he would be mastering.


    He immediately pulled out hismunication device and sent a message to Squire Grillogan requesting more borate information on the technique.


    He wasn''t surprised that the information had arrived within the day.


    He opened the document that had been sent to him by Squire Grillogan. The document was actually aption of research data on the effects of the Mindmirror Symbiote. The document detailed the exact consequences thoroughly, demonstrating the consequences of the Mindmirror Symbiote on ordinary test subjects.


    It had even documented the failures of the Martial Apprentices who had chosen to try and tame the symbiote.


    Rui had to admit, the data was intimidating. However, he was surprised to find out that there was one recorded sess of mastery over the techniques.


    A Martial Apprentice called Valem Deen had once sessfully mastered the symbiote. Valem was a prodigious genius with an extraordinary mind. With an extremely high recorded IQ and several other feats, his sess had demonstrated that only a host with remarkable mental parameters and a high affinity could possibly master the technique.


    Rui understood why the Symbiotic Sect had shown him the Mindmirror Symbiote. Rui''s enhanced mind had gone far from unnoticed; they had not only noticed it but also found a powerful symbiote that only someone like himself would likely have a reasonable chance of mastering.


    Of course, Rui was not foolish enough to believe that they were doing this out of phnthropy. He could see their motivations and intentions as clearly as day. By having a Martial Apprentice of his caliber master a grade-ten symbiote, it would likely increase the political capital the Symbiotic Sect had. Especially if Rui began dominating his peers if he mastered the symbiote. It would also be the most powerful technique in his Martial Art and, in their eyes, increased the probability of Rui joining the Symbiotic Sect.


    If he failed, then at the very least the other Martial Sects would not gain a powerful Martial Apprentice who clearly had a bright future ahead of him.


    Perhaps, this was a tad bit too pessimistic and paranoid, but Rui did not believe the truth was too different.


    Still, as long as the information was legitimate, ying along may very well be his best choice.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 360 Unorthodox

    He wanted to get the perspective of someone reliable before he made a decision on the information. He would feel far more confident if someone reliable and trustworthy reaffirmed the information. There was a very high chance that the decision he made would, at the very least in part, shape the rest of his Martial Path. He could not afford to take any chances.


    "And that''s the reason I wanted to consult you, headmaster Aronian." Rui told him.


    Rui had visited headmaster Aronian.


    ? "Hmmmm..." he stroked his beard as he held the document that Rui had shown him. "There''s nothing wrong or misleading here."Content held by N?velDrama.Org.


    "I see, thank you." Rui nodded.


    "But still, the Symbiotic Sect. It seems that even the unorthodox Sects have gone out of their way to seek you after the staggering results you produced a month ago." The headmaster mused with a knowing tone.


    Rui wasn''t surprised he had found out. It was clear that the news was not something that could be hidden, given the number of people who seemed to have found out. He was more curious about the phrase that headmaster Aronian used.


    "Unorthodox Sects?" Rui asked, curious. "What are those?"


    "That''s just a colloquial and informal phrase used to refer to Sects centered around Martial Art techniques that are unusual, strange, or esoteric in some manner." The headmaster exined. "Martial Sects like the Poison Sect, the Symbiotic Sect, and even the Weapon Sect fall under this broad category."


    "Even the Weapon Sect is considered unorthodox?" Rui raised an eyebrow.


    "Of course." Headmaster Aronian nodded. "How many Martial Artists wielding weapons do you see?"


    "Very few." Rui admitted. He had seen a handful here and there and some in the Martial Festival nearly a year ago. "Why is that there are so few weapon-oriented Martial Artists?"


    This was an oddity about the world that Rui had shrugged off but never dug too much deeper into. However, since then he hade to learn a lot more about the world and also much more about Martial Art from an anthropological perspective.


    The oddity of the high scarcity of weapons was much more confusing than it was before.<novelnext>  </novelnext>


    "It''s due to abination of factors." Headmaster Aronian replied. "One of the biggest reasons is simply because there are far fewer Martial Artists whose Martial Path is weapon-centric. That''s also partly why the Sect falls under the category of Unorthodox Sects. There are simply fewer Martial Artists whose Martial Path involves weapons."


    "But why is that the case?" Rui asked. "Is it because of the overwhelmingly greater number of conventional unarmed techniquespared to armed techniques?"


    "No, not quite." The headmaster shook his head. "The avability of techniques at the juncture of the Exploration Stage does not influence the Martial Path. The Martial Path is already set by that point, one needs to only discover it to be a Martial Apprentice. The reason there are so few weapon-centric Martial Artists is not because of the avability of techniques, but rather because weapon mastery is fundamentally and inherently deviant from the natural application of human prowess."


    "Huh?" Rui tilted his head in confusion.


    "Let me exin." The headmaster told him. "The frequency of urrence of a certain type of Martial Art centered around a field depends on how much of inherent human capability the field primarily makes use of. Fields that make use of natural human capability primarily are moremon Martial Paths than those that don''t. Take, for example, a simple striking Martial Art. This Martial Path is strongly centered around natural human capability; the infliction of damage via the swinging of one''s limbs. It''s a very primal application of the human body inbat. Then look at Martial Paths centered around more esoteric fields like symbiotes, weapons, and poison. Do you see the difference?"


    "I see..." Rui pondered aloud. "Because the convention unarmed Martial Art are closer to the natural application of the human body, they''re moremon consequently."


    "That''s right." Headmaster Aronian. "It isn''t exactly clear why, but there is a clear difference in the frequencies of urrence of certain fields as Martial Paths depend on how close they are to the most natural application of the human body. That''s why offensive, defensive, and maneuvering are the mostmon Martial Paths. They''re absolutely fundamental to the natural application of the human body. Poison is quite unnatural and artificial in that it requires the introduction of foreign substances into the human body to function. The same is even more true for symbiotic Martial Art. Weapon-centric Martial Art are also in the same predicament, albeit to a lesser degree. If the form ofbat is too deviated"


    "I see..." Rui nodded. This did indeed match up with his own observations of the Martial Paths he hade across. All-rounders, offensive, defensive, and maneuvering Martial Artists were certainly the mostmon types of Martial Art he had run into. "What about the other reasons?"


    "There are economical and logistical constraints to weapon-oriented Martial Art that most other Martial Art generally do not suffer from." Headmaster Aronian replied. "For example, the weapons in question need to be able to bear the entirety of the power of the Martial Apprentice. You understand how tall an order that is, correct?"


    Rui nodded in response. Martial Apprentices generated a tremendous amount of power. For weapons to be viable, they needed to be able to withstand that power for extended periods of time without breaking. For ded weapons such as swords and knives, all of that power would be focused through an extraordinarily tiny segment of the sword. The material needed to be durable enough such that even a small portion of it needed to be able to withstand the power without breaking or deforming in even the slightest.


    In other words, the material''s tensile strength needed to exceed the Apprentice Realm significantly.


    "There certainly are esoteric metals,pounds, and ores that can withstand the power of a Martial Apprentice. However, the supply cannot meet the demands to supply all or even most Martial Apprentices with weapons. At higher Martial Realms, the supply only grows scarcer and scarcer rtive to the poption of Martial Artists." Headmaster Aronian replied.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 361 The Next Step

    "Perhaps it is more viable at the Apprentice Realm, but it bes increasingly difficult for Martial Artists of higher Realms." Headmaster Aronian exined. "Martial Squires exert an enormous amount of force. Yet even they are akin to children before the might of Martial Seniors. The gap in power between the two Realms is asrge as that of the gap between the Apprentice Realm. And above that Realm lies the Martial Master Realm. Martial Masters such as myself are capable of exerting titanic amounts of force far beyond anything you could even close to beginning to fathom."


    He paused. "Of course, I am merely a retired old man who is far weaker than I was in my prime. Who knows? perhaps even you can defeat me, hohoho." He chuckled mirthfully.


    Rui''s eyebrow twitched at those words. Even though headmaster Aronian restricted the pressure his mind exerted, even the tiniest shreds of the weight of his mind were enough to strain Rui. There wasn''t the faintest doubt in thetter''s mind that headmaster Aronian could erase every trace of his existence with the slightest bit of exertion.


    "But you get the point." Headaster Aronian continued. "It''s highly resource-intensive. Not only that but forging a weapon of enough quality to be worthy of a Martial Artist requires among the most skilled cksmiths. However, the incredible toughness of the materials needed to forge the weapons is incredibly high. This means that the forging process is extremely difficult. Forging even a single weapon requires a massive amount of heat and powerful esoteric technology. The same is true for maintenance. It''s an extremely expensive endeavor."


    "I see..." Rui nodded. This made a lot of sense, it perfectly exined why weapon usage wasmon among humans, but not among Martial Artists. "Thank you for your exnations, Headmaster Aronian."


    "Hoho, not at all." Headmaster Aronian. "Is there anything else you came to see me for?"


    "No, this was all. Sorry for taking your time. I''ll take my leave then." Rui said, bowing deeply.


    "Mmm." He nodded. "You''re at a crucial stage in your Martial Path. Soon, this Academy will no longer be able to be worthy of you, you will begin your life as an independent Martial Artist. You have important decisions ahead of you. More than anything, make sure you stay true to your Martial Path at the end of the day."


    "Yes headmaster," Rui affirmed. "Thank you."


    He turned around and left the office.


    The doors closed behind him as he headed towards the Apprentice library.


    (''Stay true to your Martial Path.'') He repeated in his mind.


    Which of the two choices was truer to his Martial Path? A path of speedy mastery of techniques, or a path that empowered the very core of his Martial Art that he had spent two lives working on?


    In reality, the answer was always obvious. He was just extremely reluctant to part with the remarkable advantages that his training speed had due to his extreme tolerance for sleeplessness.


    But anything pertaining to the VOID algorithm was more important to him. Especially a technique that could potentially allow him to use it with absolute perfection and excellence.


    Its difficulty was certainly extremely high, but he demonstrably had the tools to ovee it. As long as he did everything he could, the probability that something would go wrong wasn''t too high.


    He brought out hismunication device, sending a message to Squire Grillogan, informing him of his decision.<novelnext>  </novelnext>Content held by N?velDrama.Org.


    "This will be thest training stage where I retain my growth speed advantage." Rui murmured with a tinge of resignation. "I really have to make the most of it."


    It was the same mindset one had when stocking up as much discounted food as possible before the prices went back to normal.


    Just then, he reached the Apprentice Library, sighing.


    (''This will probably be thest time enter the Apprentice library of the Martial Academy.'') He mused. He was pretty certain about this. Regardless of whether he became a Squire Candidate from this training stage or not, he would be leaving the Academy. It had begun to feel like a dull shackle that no longer provided him with much more utility. He yearned to be independent once more after getting rid of the debt he had incurred from his time at the Academy.


    "Time for my final training stage at the Martial Academy." Rui murmured, walking in. The Apprentice library was now an extremely familiar ce to him.


    (''Now then.'') He wondered. (''What to pick?'')


    He hadn''t entirely made his mind up. Though he was sure about the avenues of his Martial Art that he most certainly did not want to train.


    (''My physical parameters are quite solid from thest training stage.'') He mused. (''I gain more from broadening my Martial Art allowing me to increase the number of Martial Art I can adapt to. That is my Martial Path, after all.'')


    Rui knew that there were still Martial Art out there that he was not fully capable of adapting to. He was more interested in targeting those than ones he was already fully capable of adapting to. That would mean he would need to diversify his capabilities to a certain extent.


    To a certain extent, he was quite excited about this training stage, he would be gaining arge sum of new capabilities, or at the very least, that was what he would be aiming for.


    (''Now then.'') He wondered. (''Where should I start?'')


    He nced over to a particr section in the library.


    The mental technique section. It was the same section where he had gotten the Mind Pce technique, which was the single most revolutionary technique that he had ever mastered in his entire life.


    (''If I''m going to start somewhere, why don''t I go with techniques that I''m quitepatible with?'') His eyes lit up in eagerness. The mental section had given him a gemst time, perhaps it would give him another this time as well.


    (''Doesn''t hurt to look.'') He shrugged.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 362 Mental

    If he could diversify his Martial Art while also learning techniques he had an incredible amount ofpatibility with. This would allow him to master higher-quality techniques with much less effortpared to normal techniques of the same amount of power.


    Once he reached the mental section, he took a good long look at the techniques. He recalled running into many of the techniques he was seeing. In his previous training stage, he had given all of them a nce, however, dismissed them because he was looking for something very specific. Back then, he was looking for a mental technique that could help him use the pattern adaptation system of the VOID algorithm revolving around the predictive and adaptive evolution models.


    Now, he had approached them with a significantly different mindset. He wanted something that give him additional capability rather than augmenting existing capabilities. It was the exact opposite mindset to the one hadst time.


    He began seeing techniques he didn''t pay much attention to before.


    His eyes fell on something interesting.


    [Mind Mask]


    (''Interesting...'') He thought to himself.


    ording to the description, the Mind Mask technique allowed the user to alter the danger that sentient life instinctively perceived from the user by an application of self-hypnosis. This could be used to increase the amount of danger felt or also to decrease the amount of danger felt by the user. It could be used as a strategic deterrence via a bluff of being even stronger than one actually was to lower one''s guard by appearing harmless despite being a Martial Apprentice.


    At higher levels, it could be used to hinder an opponent by inducing an immense amount of fear and paranoia, causing one''s opponent to perform sub-optimally. Mastering it to this degree was anywhere between a grade eight or nine as far as difficulty went.


    The difficulty the user would experience with this technique was entirely dependent on the prowess of their visual imagination. It was not rmended to those Martial Apprentices with poor visual imagination, for the proficiency likely to be attained would be quite poor.


    It was a strange technique where both the potency and difficulty grades of the technique were in flux and were entirely dependent on the mental prowess of the user.


    Rui sighed.


    The technique was almost calling out to him. How could he possibly toss out a technique of that kind with his circumstances?


    "Alright fine." He picked up the scroll, putting it in his pouch.


    He had to admit, he was eager to see how potent the technique would end up being in his hands. If his estimations weren''t wrong, he would get to witness something truly amazing by the time he came around to mastering the technique.


    Content held by N?velDrama.Org.


    He walked around, looking for something interesting and new. Mental techniques were sopatible with him that he was willing to train another one as long as it was worth it.


    "Hm?" His eyes fell on something interesting.


    [Mind Switch]<novelnext>  </novelnext>


    This was a grade-three training technique that would condition the mind and brain to trigger certain mental and neurological phenomena when the user took certain physical stances by creating associations between the targeted neurological phenomena.


    This training technique could allow the user to enter into a calm and rational state of mind when the user performed the trigger stance that the desired calm and rational state of mind is strongly associated with the particr stance.


    The user could program multiple trigger stances for multiple different states of mind. This would allow the user to operate under a desired state of mind at any point.


    "This is association therapy." His eyes lit up with interest.


    Association in the psychology of Earth referred to a mental connection between concepts, events, or mental states that usually stems from specific experiences. Association therapy was a form of treatment that applied this mental trait to treat and often even cure mental disorders.


    "To think it could be elevated to an Apprentice-level technique that could be applied inbat." He murmured, before ncing back at the technique and shaking his head. It was a nice technique with practical utility but he had no real need of it as far as he was concerned. It was a very low-grade technique and something meant to help newbie Martial Apprentices retain their calmness and rationality instead of being hindered and shackled with fear. It wasn''t really something that offered him something new. He had always managed to retain his wits even in despairing scenarios


    Just as he walked away, he froze, before slowly turning back to the technique. "Wait... it can trigger any neurological phenomenon?"


    He grabbed the technique reading the description again as his eyes lit up in interest. An incredible idea popped into his head.


    "If I use this technique correctly... It could help me mitigate some of the constraints of the Squire Realm!" He realized.


    Triggering neurological phenomena at will was something that could be abused and exploited to produce significant results.


    (''The Kandrian Empire does not know as much about human anatomy as I do.'') He realized. (''That''s why they didn''te up with the idea that I just did.'')


    He realized he had made a discovery of potentially incredible significance. If he was not wrong, this technique could make his journey to the Squire Realm a lot smoother and beneficial!


    He nced back at the technique. In its current state, it wasn''t useful to him, therefore he didn''t need to waste a slot of his final elerated training stage on it. It would only be useful at a muchter date.


    He turned around walking away from the mental techniques section with a wide grin on his face.


    He had one more reason to look forward to the day he became a Squire candidate.


    But for now, he needed to get some techniques to master in the immediate training stage. He had already chosen the Mindmirror Symbiote as well as the Mind Mask technique. He had already reserved a spot for yet another mental technique in the future.


    He intended to purchase some physical techniques for the remaining slots.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 363 Choices

    "I should purchase techniques that will allow me to deal with things I currently can''t deal with." He murmured. As far as missions went, he was ipetent at shadow-ss missions and sub-par as far as hunter-ss missions went.


    He had long wanted to do something about that, but each time a training stage came around, there was always something or the other of greater importance. Finally, he was at a stage where he could pursue it straightforwardly.


    "Alright, time to nail these two issues," Rui murmured as he walked over to the stealth section of the Apprentice Library. It wasn''t his first time going for a stealth technique, he had purchased Blink, after all. The problem was that Blink was highly limited.


    For starters, it was beginning to be obsolete at the higher echelons of the Apprentice Realm as Martial Apprentices tended to have naturally strong senses and many of them did have sensory techniques as well. He needed to use it extremely carefully else it could actually turn out to be detrimental to him.


    Furthermore, as a stealth technique, it only worked to evade human evasion when there were few humans. It was impossible to use Blink to bypass even decent surveince.


    He didn''t hold it against the technique, of course. The technique had served him well and had saved him in truly desperate situations, but it was no longer adequate.


    "Alright then," He murmured. "Let''s see what we have here."


    There were plenty of techniques that boosted stealth, but what he was looking for was a high-grade technique that wholistically gave him stealth. He nced over at a technique that caught his eye.


    [Dead Step]


    A technique that allowed the user to avoid the production of noise in the air by manipting air via a coordinated breathing technique that cancels out the sound waves in the air.


    He recalled seeing this technique a year and a half ago when he had purchased the Blink technique. However, back then he hadn''t cared all that much about the technique.


    Although it was more alluring now, he still shook his head.


    (''I need something more potent.'') He noted.


    His quality standards had risen with each training stage. He wasn''t interested in learning lower-grade techniques unless there were specific reasons for it.


    He skimmed through other techniques until he ran into something familiar.


    [Void Step]Exclusive content from N?velDrama.Org.


    He sighed. Unlike with the Mindmirror Symbiote, he had almost zero talent orpatibility with the technique, so purchasing it would be a waste of money. It was a shame, of course. He deeply desired the prowess the technique gave the user.


    He moved on, shaking his head.


    Yet, it wasn''t long before another technique lit his eyes up with interest.<novelnext>  </novelnext>


    [Shadow Step]


    A downgraded version of the Void Step technique that used maneuvering-based misdirection to conceal and obscure one''s presence to a partial degree. It could onlypletely evade the senses of ordinary humans the way Void Step did with Martial Apprentices. It was only partially effective against Martial Apprentices under several conditions. It was less effective the closer the surveilling Martial Apprentice target was to him, and only worked if he was in the far peripheral ends of the target''s vision. Furthermore, the technique''s effectiveness decreased the greater the sensory capabilities of the target were.


    "Nice." Rui nodded. A technique that made all human surveince ineffective and allowed him to bypass even Martial Artist surveince with some amount of effort. This technique covered his basic needs perfectly well. His biggest issue wasn''t that he didn''t have extreme stealth capabilities that allowed him to bamboozle Martial Artists the way Kane could. His biggest problem was that he almost no viable stealth capabilities whatsoever.


    The missions in the Commonwealth Duchy of Vinfrana and the Hefermaine Vige would have gone far smoother and easier if he had had this technique back then.


    Thankfully, it was a grade-seven technique. Which meant he could guarantee that he would master it as long as he put in enough effort.


    Furthermore, although the potency of the technique was grade seven, Rui suspected his stealth would end up being greater than just what the technique would provide him. The Mind Mask technique could allow him to significantly lower his presence, which worked very synergically with the Shadow Step technique that misdirected attention away from his presence.


    This was especially so since Rui suspected he likely had an extremely highpatibility with the Mind Mask technique.


    He plucked the technique scroll out of the slot, inspecting it before nodding.


    "Three down. Three more to go?"


    He wanted to go with six techniques likest time since this would be thest time that he would be able to train arge number of techniques at once.


    "What else?" He asked himself. He had solved his stealth problem.


    "That leaves the hunter-ss missions." He murmured. He hadn''t forgotten about his desire to visit the Beast Domain. He had abstained from doing so because hispatibility with hunter-ss missions was much lower than it was with missions involving humans.


    However, with this training stage, his stealth would skyrocket, giving him the qualifications to travel the dangerous ecosystems of the Beast Domain. As long as he added solutions that were effective against Flora and Fauna, he would be qualified to enter the Beast Domain.


    "I need to be able to hurt them for sure," Rui murmured.


    As far as defense went, humans were often very different from Apprentice-level creatures. One of the biggest differences was size. Because they were usuallyrger, their vitals were tucked much deeper within their body. Vertebrae mammals had a huge amount of flesh, fat, and fur on them that ordinary human attacks would simply not prate deep enough and would be dispersed.


    He could punch them over and over, but the impact would be much more dispersed.


    "I need a way to inflict damage on mammalian creatures despite that, otherwise taking them down will be a bloody pain in the ass." He murmured.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 364 Decisions

    He had alreadyputed several potential solutions from all the Martial Art techniques he had ever known off.


    "Poison, piercing, heat, friction, and permeation are the prime candidates." He murmured.


    Poison was attractive, it inflicted damage in a manner thatpletely bypassed the physical durability of the target. It didn''t matter how tough one''s muscles or bones were. Poison would inflict damage all the same. However, it was less effective therger the target was. This was because a greater amount of mass meant a greater number of cells that the poison had to attack.


    Piercing was a solid candidate as well, but he already had the Stinger. Although the Stinger had piercing depth limits that made it less lethal againstrger targets, Rui wasn''t sure it was worth getting another technique of the same kind. He was looking to expand the diversity of the fields his Martial Art covered, not build up more on a single field.


    Heat was certainly a potent field. Ferlicia had gone incredibly far in the Martial Contest thanks to it. However, it had its problems. It was not a light field to delve into and would require an immense amount before it would be lethal torger creatures. The size problem worked against it as well.


    Friction was also a lethal field. Byron Harth had been chosen as the representative of his Martial Academy in the Martial Contest. However, it wasn''t lethal enough to deal critical damage to mammalian creatures that had an incredibly thick amount of flesh and fur.


    "That leaves permeation," Rui noted.


    Permeation was a powerful field. Rui had personally fought against Servil Bisha who had given a long run for his money. Permeation was a field of striking techniques that allowed an impact to permeate deeper into the body of a target via vibrations. This allowed the power of a strike to bypass the strong flesh, bones, and muscles of the target to arge degree and inflict on the more vulnerable inners of the target.


    It was quite perfectly suited forrger creatures. It allowed him to hurt them with every strike and even knock them out the same way he could knock out Martial Artists. It was perfect and especially suited to handling them. Itcked the same level of lethality as some of the other options but gave him more stability in his ability to hurt them.


    It didn''t even take him long to find a technique that suited his needs.


    [Reverberating Lance]


    A general formless technique that used high-level vibrations to permeate the impact of a strike deeper into the body to inflict damage more so onto the internal organs of the body rather than the tougher exteriors of the body.


    It was a grade-seven technique, which was right at the sweet spot bnce of potency and difficulty where Rui could absolutely guarantee that he could master it. Once he mastered that, his offensive prowess would probably approach the level of Fae.Content held by N?velDrama.Org.


    He grinned, eager to master the technique.


    "Four down. Two more to go." He noted. "Alright then. What else should I get?"


    The past four techniques had strengthened his ability to adapt to a greater number of opponents and also handle shadow and hunter-ss missions.


    "Since I''m going to be embarking on the most difficult of missions, the danger will also be proportionally higher. I should get an endurance technique that will increase my survivability." He realized.


    He hadn''t purchased even a single endurance technique to date. Part of this was because he always had a healing potion at hand. However, not only were his missions getting increasingly dangerous, he was undertaking a lot of foreign missions. This meant that he was far and away from the safetys that the Kandrian Empire and the Martial Union gave him.<novelnext>  </novelnext>


    Out there, there was often no support. This was especially true in ces like the Beast Domain. Out there, he was truly on his own.


    Getting a supplementary technique that could empower his endurance and survivability could be the key difference between life and death.


    "Better safe than sorry." He concluded.


    He skimmed through the supplementary techniques until he ran into something that met his needs.


    [Final Breathing]


    "What an ominous name." He raised an eyebrow.


    It was a breathing technique that eased the pain by triggering an increased release of hormones that allowed for the pain to be less hindering than it normally was. It also elerated the clotting of wounds, preventing the user from losing much blood. It was a breathing technique that minimized the shackles of damage as much as humanly possible and allowed the user to operate with the best they possibly could.


    It was a grade-five technique, which meant it would be quite easy to master.


    "This is pretty good." Rui nodded. He plucked the technique out of the slot and ced it in his pouch.


    "Onest technique." He mused. "What should I get?"


    He had no idea. He strolled around the misceneous section aimlessly until he ran into a rather bizarre Martial Art technique. In all the time he had spent in the Academy, it certainly was one of the most unique techniques.


    [Fauna Flow]


    This was a technique that allowed Martial Apprentices to be able tomunicate with the more intelligent creatures of the animal kingdom!


    Rui raised his eyes in wonder.


    Intelligent creatures oftenmunicated via a form of non-verbalnguage since they certainly hadn''t learned any humannguage. This allowed humans to be able to engage in the same kind of non-verbalnguage, effectively allowing humans tomunicate with these creatures.


    Rui found this technique fascinating. Yet at the same time, it wasn''t as absurd as it initially came off. Research on Earth in the field of human behavioral science had shown that more than half ofmunication was inherently non-verbal. If that was the case, Rui could certainly see how that could inherently be the single form ofmunication between intelligent species who didn''t have any other means of high-levelmunication with each other.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 365 Trainings

    Rui was highly curious about whatmunication with intelligent creatures of other species was like.


    But he was conflicted. It wasn''t abat-oriented technique, which meant it wouldn''t make him stronger inbat or even increase his ability toplete missions. The only thing it would do was allow him tomunicate with animals.


    Yet, despite this, he really felt the urge to master the technique.


    "Hmmm..." He had aplicated expression on his face.


    After a bit, he finally decided to go on with it.


    "Screw it. It''s my Martial Art, I get to do with it what I want." He rationalized, trying to make himself feel better about his decision. "I bet there are some missions centered around the ability with the ability tomunicate with the more intelligent life forms."


    He grabbed the scroll for the technique before plopping it into his pouch.


    Please check at N/?vel(D)rama.Org.


    With this, he had selected all six techniques for his next training stage;


    Mindmirror Symbiote.


    Mind Mask.


    Shadow Step.


    Reverberating Lance.


    Final Breathing.


    Fauna Flow.


    These would be the six techniques that he had chosen to master. Each of the six techniques expanded his capabilities significantly, which had been the general goal of the uing training stage. The most immediate goal was to reach Squire candidacy, which could only be done once his Martial Art matured, fulfilling the second condition of Squire candidacy.


    This was the reason he had gone on to expand his capabilities. He knew his Martial Art wouldn''t reach a certain degree of maturity until he expanded its capabilities to a certain extent. Since it was meant to be an all-epassing broad Martial Art in its ideal state.


    He quickly headed over to the registrar of the library before purchasing all five of the scrolls. The sixth technique was something that he would be getting from the Martial Union directly. The Martial Academy was not equipped with the means to handle the Mindmirror Symbiote imntation. Even if it was, he would rather get the procedure managed by the Symbiotic Sect in the Martial Union who were the specialists surrounding the matter.


    Once he purchased all five techniques, he took a seat at one of the tables before going through the training regime of each technique with great interest.<novelnext>  </novelnext>


    The Mind Mask technique had a training system that was quite interesting, yet it didn''t deviate much from his expectations. It was training centered around meditation and thought processes that allowed the conscious mind to influence the subconscious mind to a certain degree. Initially, the process of self-hypnosis was quite long.


    It would take hours for the user to first prime his own mind and set it in the right state via meditation. Once that urred, the user needed to exercise imagination to create an image of themselves that diverged from reality as far as dangerousness and presence went. The technique worked by using well-defined imagination to substitute reality such that the subconscious mind responded to the imagination as though it were reality.


    This raised the sense of danger that one could perceive from the user of the technique. The effectiveness and difficulty of the technique depended on the prowess of the imagination of the user and the amount of concentration the user could gather. It was a mentally demanding and taxing technique.


    Perfect for Rui. The best part about the technique was that the technique had no upper limits inherently. Its only upper limits were the limits of the mind of the user of the technique.


    It took a greater amount of imagination to construct an image the more the image deviated from reality. Since the user would have to rely more and more on imagination and less and less on the experience of what was real and actual.


    Rui looked forward to the training of the technique.


    He quickly opened up the other scrolls, going through them one by one.


    "Interesting." He murmured.


    The Shadow Step technique was certainly different and difficult. The technique definitely had a mental aspect to it as it required the understanding of how attention and awareness functioned, but beyond that, it was a rather brute-force technique with repetitive practice on the right forms and the right timing and cement of movements to engage in misdirection.


    But at the core of the technique, the technique function by swiftly moving in the opposite direction that the attention of the user was being misdirected. The misdirection was integrated into the movements and had the same elements that people''s movements had when their attention truly was on something in the opposite direction of their movements, like something chasing them.


    The difference was when a Martial Apprentice with a superhuman brain and mind performed the same technique, it was much more effective because of the higher precision and uracy of the maneuvers needed to draw attention away.


    "It''s not going to be easy to master this." He shook his head, before moving on to the other techniques.


    The Reverberating Lance was an even more straightforward technique. The frequency at which a human being could vibrate their limbs was limited due to a neurological limit to the speed at which the human brain processed information and made decisions.


    Because that limit was far higher for Martial Apprentices, the limit of the speed at which muscles could be vibrated was also much higher. However, that limit could not simply be attained, it could only be attained after immense practice.


    The Reverberating Lance applied that to train the Martial Apprentice to vibrate their muscles at extremely high speeds and used that permeate an impact beyond just the outer skin, flesh, and muscles to the weaker and more vital organs within mammalian creatures.


    Since it was a grade-seven technique, he wouldn''t be pushed to the very absolute limit of vibration he could physiologically dish out, but he certainly would be pushed quite far along the way. Furthermore, he would have to train it for every muscle group so that he could engage in the permeation of an impact regardless of how it was dished out.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 366 Regimes

    The technique whose training he found quite interesting was that of the Fauna Flow technique. It required him to master non-verbalmunication. It was like learning a newnguage, except it had universal rules that could be reverse-engineered and followed. What really helped about thenguage was that the Mind Pce technique could greatly aid in the learning of the technique.


    Once Rui was done understanding the training procedures of each of the techniques, he immediately headed out to the training facilities for each technique.


    "How many techniques is it this time?" Squire Dylon asked, before pausing. "No, wait, let me guess. Five? Six?"Exclusive content from N?velDrama.Org.


    "Six." Rui confirmed.


    "Of course it''s six." He snorted. "Well, what technique is it this time?"


    "Reverberating Lance." Rui raised the scroll.


    "Good pick." He admitted. "Good technique. Allows you to take down things far bigger and tougher than you. You''ve memorized the training regime, right?"


    "Yep."


    "Alright. Let''s get started then."


    The training regime designed by the Martial Academy for the training of the vibrational capabilities needed for the technique was quite fascinating. It relied on a body suit that covered every inch of the body except for the head.


    The body suit was actually a piece of technology with the ability to vibrate any and all parts of the body suit in any direction, as controlled by a remote device. The Martial Artist needed to wear the body suit with the aim of negating and canceling the vibrations produced by the suit with the oscitions of one''s own movements. Thus, if the suit vibrated the hand, the Martial Artist was to vibrate their arm in the opposite directions such that there were no vibrations left because the two vibrations canceled each other.


    The difficulty of the exercise rose when the frequency and speed of the vibrations also increased, requiring even greater vibrations from the user. Every time the user grew fullyfortable with a certain frequency and speed, the difficulty would be increased by one percent. Over the span of a few months, the growth in the speed and frequency would grow well past human limitations.


    Then the next phase of the training stage would teach the Martial Artist how to apply the vibration in the correct manner to permeate the impacts of strikes deeper into the body. It required urate timing and cement of the vibrations, otherwise, the impact would simply not permeate well.


    "Alright, the suit is adjusted." Squire Dylon remarked. "Let''s get started with some basic arm vibrations at low setting."


    Dylon fiddled with a device to get the suit vibrating. Rui quickly reacted before vibrating in the opposite direction, canceling out the vibrations and causing his arm to go still.


    The difficulty increased progressively until Rui was no longer able to cancel them out.


    "Alright, this is your limit, we''ll stop here until you''re able to cancel vibrations of this level."<novelnext>  </novelnext>


    A few hours quickly passed by.


    "Damn." Rui muttered, rubbing his sore arm. "I couldn''t get any higher."


    "It''s your first day." Squire Dylon replied, shrugging. "It''s to be expected."


    Once he was done with experiencing the training regime for the Reverberating Lance technique, he quickly moved to the training facilities for all the remaining techniques.


    At the end of twenty hours, he was finally done with five of the techniques he had purchased.


    "Maaan that was exhausting." He fell back into bed.


    Part of it was because these techniques were all quite different from what he was normally ustomed to. Since he had gone out of his way to train with techniques that gave him brand-new capabilities that he didn''t really possess before. Of course, some were easier while others were harder. Even though three of the five techniques were of the same difficulty grade, it didn''t mean they were identical. The difficulty grades were a bit broad after all, furthermore, thepatibility of the techniques with the user mattered a lot.


    Rui had a lot of fun with the Mind Mask technique. He had actually raced through the initial stage of the training at an incredible pace. Completing days worth of progress in the span of a single session. It didn''t even feel like training. The way in which he was able to exercise his imagination to create the necessary images with the necessary amount of detail and consistency was something that had fascinated the Squire Instructor of the mental techniques training facility.


    Still, it wasn''t necessarily unexpected, Rui had shown incrediblepatibility with mental techniques before when he mastered the Mind Pce technique to a basic mastery level in record time and then went on to elevate his mastery of the technique to a level that had simply never been reached before.


    The Mind Mask training didn''t even feel like training, it was just fun. He left the training stage regretful that he couldn''t remain any longer.


    He had other techniques to attend to, unfortunately.


    "The Shadow Step was also smooth, much easier than I expected." He noted. The technique was mentally demanding after it was maneuvering-demanding. To an extent, Rui was alsopatible with the technique.


    The third easiest technique was Flow Fauna, which also required high cognitive capabilities to an extent. "It''s just like learning anothernguage." He remarked.


    Final Breathing was the second hardest technique of the five after the Reverberating Lance technique. Even though its difficulty grade was lower, he had no specialpatibility with the technique, which meant he had to slog it out the hard way.


    "But the most difficult of them all is yet toe." Rui murmured.


    He had yet to begin with the Mindmirror Symbiote imntation. It was a grade-ten Symbiote as far as difficulty went, and the only reason he had the courage to take on the Symbiote was that he had proof that he was qualified to at least attempt undertaking the Symbiote. If it wasn''t for his highpatibility with it, trying to master the technique was pure suicide. Literally. And despite hispatibility, he would need to be extremely careful with the technique.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 367 Final Technique

    "Purpose of visit?" The guard at the main gate of the Martial Union asked, inspecting his learner''s Martial license.


    "Purchase of technique," Rui replied, before proceeding to fill in a bit of paperwork needed to enter the building.


    Once he was in, he immediately headed for the symbiotic facility.Content held by N?velDrama.Org.


    The Martial Union was evenrger than the Martial Academy as it catered to not just far more missions, but also far more Martial Artists. Furthermore, the needs of Martial Artists were often greater than that of Martial Apprentices, thus a greater amount of space was inevitably required.


    It took him a while until he reached the facility he was looking for.


    "Ah, Apprentice Quarrier." A staff member nodded. "You do have an appointment scheduled for a symbiotic procedure. Please make your way to operating room fifty-one."


    She handed him a receipt for the purchase of the Mindmirror Symbiote as well as its procedure. It was much more expensive than Rui had expected, but thankfully he had earned a heft amount in thest month as well as the months prior. He was able to afford it.


    "Apprentice Quarrier." A medical staff approached him after a bit of waiting in the designated room. "The procedure is ready. Pleasee this way, sir."


    There were a few nurses and as well as a doctor, who weed him with a smile. "I am doctor He, I will be leading and overseeing the procedure. I believe you have been briefed on the procedure you will undergoing today?"


    "I have." Rui nodded. He had taken the liberty topletely familiarize himself with the process.


    The imntation of the Mindmirror Symbiote was not a simple quick procedure, much to Rui''s chagrin. Most Symbiotes normally took an extended period of time to fully grow and develop to maturity from the time of the imntation into the host. That process was normally highly elerated with esoteric biotechnology such as potions made from esoteric substances andpounds that elerated the growth of the symbiote as well as rejuvenating and nutritional potions that quickly supplied the symbiotes with arge amount of sustenance needed to sustain the elerated growth of the symbiote.


    However, that unfortunately could only be done to a highly limited degree with the Mindmirror Symbiote as an extremely elerated process was too harsh on the brain of the host, and would likely cause brain damage. Furthermore, the development of the Mindmirror Symbiote was not simple inherently, and thus prolonging it more than normal to a certain degree was a cautious measure.<novelnext>  </novelnext>


    The symbioterva would first be injected into the bloodstream at a particr point in the circtory system and would enter the brain. This part was the first procedure that required thorough medical supervision and potential intervention during the bonding between the symbioterva and the brain.


    Once the symbiote sessfully formed the initial bond with the brain, it wouldtch onto the ipitotemporal artery and vein to gain ess to fresh blood in order to obtain the oxygen and other nutrients it needed to survive while also extracting the gic information of the host. It would then undergo the growth phase, slowly expanding in volume, forming a small mass of interconnected human neurons underneath the brain and above the internal skull tes.


    It would take a few days for the symbiotic brain mass to fully grow. The symbiote would need to slowly siphon energy nutrients and otherpounds needed to reproduce more neurons.


    When the secondary brain was developed was when the grade-ten difficulty of the technique would ur. The symbiote would begin the secondary bonding process between the secondary brain and the host''s brain. Neurons of the secondary brain would branch out andtch onto open-ended neurons, forming connections with the host''s brain.


    And that was when the initial takeover process would begin while the bond was still in flux and not yet stabilized. It was akin to a virus; it was capable of corrupting the host''s brain despite not being conscious or sentient. If the symbiote seeded in taking over the brain, the host consciousness would be usurped. However, the host merely needed to resist until the secondary bond matured. Once that happened, the symbiote will have fully matured and its rtionship with the host would be permanently unchangeable.


    Only then would the imntation of the symbiote be considered a sess. However, that was just the beginning as far as mastery of the symbiote went. The mental strain wouldn''t begin immediately, it would begin once the secondary bond deepened and greater exchanges of information urred that the brain was not supposed to deal with, putting an unnatural strain on it.


    After that, it would take some time before the user obtained basic proficiency of the symbiote. The symbiote functioned like an extra-connected processor. It would not boost general cognitive phenomena and processes or massively boost his IQ, but it could process massive amounts of information in ways that he wanted to after a certain amount of training.


    The secondary brain was like a high-speed processor hooked up to the brain. It was a nk te that could be ''programmed'' to process different kinds of information in different ways as per the user''s wish via certain techniques. This allowed the user to pawn off time-consuming thought processes and calctions to the secondary brain which would process it much quicker than he would because it didn''t have any other cognitive processes ongoing inside. It truly functioned more akin to aputer rather than a conscious organ.


    Rui could program heightened reflexes, speedy calctions, and other neurological phenomena that his consciousness would be forced to do by itself. The secondary brain could process the information parallelly with his own consciousness once it had been trained to, allowing the speed at which hepleted mental tasks to skyrocket significantly!


    Rui wondered how much faster his processing of the VOID algorithm would grow. He was sure he would be so much superior with it that he would utterly crush anything he was currently capable of with it. He needed to contain his excitement; he didn''t want to embarrass himself in front of the medical team that would be overseeing the procedure.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 368 Time

    "Good, you''ve understood the procedure." The doctor nodded as Rui exined the procedure perfectly. "Have you made sure to satisfy the conditions for being viable for the procedure? Have you consumed alcohol in the past week?"


    "No, I haven''t." Rui confirmed.


    "Have you consumed psychedelic drugs in the past forty days?" The doctor asked.


    "Not at all."


    "Did you get two nights of natural normal sleep without having consumed any mental rejuvenation potions?"


    "I did." Rui assured.


    The medical procedure required him to be awake till the procedure ended. Being asleep increased the probability that aplication would ur. The medical team would also be using rejuvenation potions before the secondary bonding urred in order to ensure he was at his peak, mentally. However, an abuse of mental rejuvenation potions before the procedure began would reduce the effectiveness of the mental rejuvenation potions administered to him during the procedure, increasing the probability of failure of the procedure.


    "Good. We''ll be verifying this anyway with a few quick blood tests, of course." She smiled at him.


    They quickly drew some blood with a special syringe that was able to pierce his conditioned skin. Thankfully, the results came within an hour.


    "Good news, you''re fit to undergo the procedure." Doctor He told him. "We''ll begin shortly. We need to inject a few serums before you''re ready for the imntation."


    The medical team prepared all the devices and instruments. Soon he was injected with a few serums as promised.


    "These serums are meant to ensure the initial bonding of the symbiote with the brain goes as smoothly as possible." Doctor Le informed him as she injected the final one, exining their purposes. A few minutester, the procedure was finally ready to begin.


    A strange-looking syringe was brought and provided to doctor He. A spot on his wrist was rubbed with an antibacterial as a strap was tightened to his forearm.


    "We will begin the imntation of the Mindmirror symbiote." The doctor told him.


    The thick needle of the syringe plunged past his conditioned skin painfully.


    "Imntationplete. Heal the wound." Doctor He instructed as a nurse duly administered a healing potion to him, to stop the bleeding and close the wound.


    They all immediately turned their attention to the projections on the screens behind him, carefully watching it without missing a beat.


    "Symbiote has entered the bonding site." Doctor Le remarked.


    Rui had no idea how they knew that, but he suspected it was likely esoteric technology that allowed them to keep track of the symbiote via some physical trait that made its location apparent.


    Some more time passed, as Rui simplyy unmoving patiently. He had already known it was going to be a long process and had long prepared himself psychologically.<novelnext>  </novelnext>


    "Bonding process has begun." Doctor He noted. "Prepare the RP-154 and HP-C16 potions."


    She rattled off a few more instructions that Rui failed toprehend. The nurses however swiftly prepared certain potions, ready to administer them to him the moment they were instructed to."


    Rui on the other hand didn''t feel a thing despite the fact that the Mindmirror Symbiote had already bonded with his brain ording to doctor He''s remarks. That was even scarier than if he had been able to notice it himself, he felt.


    An hour passed before he got an update on it.


    "Bonding process has seeded." The doctor nodded. "The development phase has begun. Begin the potion administration.


    They began administering Rui with potions periodically. The potions were physical rejuvenating potions and nutrient potions, but he didn''t feel all that rejuvenated. The reason was, of course, known. All of the energy and nutrition supplied to his body was inevitably consumed by the Mindmirror Symbiote as it began growing in mass and volume.


    "Let us know anything that you feel." Doctor He told him.


    Rui simply nodded briefly. He found it rather amazing that he still wasn''t able to feel anything quite yet. Yet there was a technical exnation for that as well, of course. The brain didn''t have any sensory nerve endings as most organs did, thus it could not experience the sensation of touch or pain.


    Furthermore, at this stage, the Mindmirror Symbiote still had a very shallow connection with his brain. It would take quite some time before the secondary brain of the Mindmirror Symbiote was fully developed.


    Hours passed, and the nurses and the doctor kept a thorough track of the development stage of the Mindmirror Symbiote. The entire procedure was supposed to take a few days. The best thing Rui could do was simply stay awake.


    Twelve hourster, the nurses rotated shifts with others, however, doctor He remained as the head of the medical team responsible for his case.


    A few dayster, the time hade.


    "Development of the secondary brain is estimated at ny-five percent." Doctor He remarked. "ce the locks and shackles.


    The nurses cuffed him to the bars of the bed. They meticulously cuffed each limb and joint at various ces with thick rigid cuffs that prevented any escape. Even his head and neck were locked tightly in ce. Rui had been informed about this detail ahead of time, so he didn''t react to it. Once the secondary brain was developed, the brain takeover process from the Mindmirror Symbiote would begin. During that process, there was a chance of his body going out of control wildly, hurting the people around him and screwing the procedure.Content held by N?velDrama.Org.


    "Ordinary steel won''t be able to hold me." He told doctor He.


    "I know." She smiled. "That''s made up of peak Apprentice-level alloys. It is able to restrain you based on the data of your physical parameters. So do not worry."


    Rui had mostly figured as much, he just wanted to make sure. A few hours passed by and the development of the secondary brain had finally beenpleted. Rui still couldn''t feel a thing, but that would soon change.


    "Administer the mental rejuvenation potion." The doctor instructed, before turning towards Rui.


    "This is it. Stay strong and hold on until the bond stabilizes. Good luck." The doctor told him with a solemn tone.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 369 Clash

    Rui wasn''t sure what to expect, but what he went through was beyond his expectations.


    The worst part about the Mindmirror Symbiote was that the information on the experience of having your mind invaded was scarce. The doctors could exin the process technically, but no one could tell him what he was going to experience inside his mind. No one could tell him that. Because no one alive had undergone the process and survived it.


    The only information was records of the recounting of Apprentice Valem Deen, the only other confirmed and recorded Martial Apprentice to ever master the Mindmirror Symbiote in the Kandrian Empire. His recountings of the mental takeover phase were incoherent. He used vague flowerynguage to describe it and wasn''t very informative.


    He had described the process as a loss of everything, including himself as he fought a battle against the shadow of the symbiote until he finally woke up to realize he was still alive.


    Rui wasn''t sure what he meant but he tried to prepare himself by at the very least not being surprised and flustered regardless of what happened.


    But he failed.


    It happened out of nowhere.


    His vision ckened and the world disappeared. His remaining senses were still functioning, but he had lost his vision. Thankfully, he could still perceive his environment perfectly with the help of his remaining senses.


    But soon they dimmed quickly too.


    Sense of hearing.


    Sense of smell.


    Touch.


    He tried moving his body, but he couldn''t even feel it. It was as though he had be a ghost floating in empty darkness.


    Even more passive senses like his sense of bnce and time were fading as well, bit by bit. Rui tried not to panic, his state of mind was relevant to whether or not the process would be a sess, and he knew that. Yet before he could even fully regain hisposure.


    He felt something.


    It was strange because all he could sense was darkness.


    Yet, there was something in the darkness.


    He could feel it.


    Suddenly, a pair of eyes opened in front of him in the darkness.


    They were inhuman. Mindless. But they stared, nheless.


    (''Is that... the symbiote?'') Rui wondered with fear.


    Before he could even ponder the matter, the darkness converged and gathered around the eyes, forming a pitch-ck silhouette that resembled Rui.


    Rui was finally able to see with the darkness around them having suddenly gathered into the silhouette. His eyes widened as he saw vision around him. What shocked him was that he recognized all of the visions around him.


    They were visions of when he was first diagnosed with asthama, when he watched his first Bruce Lee movie, when he finished his degree when he began research onbat sports and of Project Water and the VOID algorithm, and when he died and was reborn in this world and when he discovered his Martial Path.<novelnext>  </novelnext>


    (''These are my memories!'') His eyes widened in shock.


    Wait.


    Eyes?This content is ? N?velDrama.Org.


    He nced down in relief. His body had returned!


    The shadow Rui, which had now fully formed, did not give him any time to process his situation. Itshed out against him moving and sprinting towards him as itunched a powerful blow.


    The shock of the event hit him greater as he recognized the technique the shadow Rui used against him.


    (''Flowing Canon!'') He gaped, grimacing in pain.


    The veryst thing he came into this procedure expecting was a physical fight. But that didn''t mean he wasn''t prepared for one. What shocked him, even more, was the fact that the shadow clone of himself was using his techniques.


    He didn''t understand the details of what was happening, but it was clear that he was experiencing a dream or a psychedelic illusion of sorts.


    Still. He wasn''t going to not fight back. If his state of mind was vital to the sess of the procedure, then he had to go all out and fight back with everything he had. If he could do that, he would at the very least not be reducing the probability of the procedure being a sess.


    The worst part was that he had no idea how much time was left. Not only was the time period of the mental takeover phase undetermined and variable, but also, his sense of time was warped. He had no idea how much time had passed since he cked out.


    This was a psychological impediment, to some degree. If he knew exactly how long he needed tost then he would be able to mentally prepare himself for it and build up his resolve. But this was harder to do when he didn''t know how long he needed tost. The sheer uncertainty regarding how long the ordeal wouldst could drive a man insane.


    He felt a little pissed off at Apprentice Valem Deen, the only recorded Martial Apprentice of the Mindmirror Symbiote.


    Couldn''t he have been more clear and specific that there literally would be a very physical fight inside the mind? Rui swore he would have beaten the man ck and blue if he was still alive. He intended to look into the man after the procedure regardless.


    All these thoughts and considerations shed across his mind instantly as the shadow clone of himself rushed at him with remarkable swiftness. Rui recognized the maneuvering techniques it used; Parallel Walk, Wind Breathing, and Bnced Direction.


    Rui had no idea how the Symbiote got a hand of his techniques, but he didn''t particrly have time to consider it.


    The shadow clone rushed towards himunching yet another Flowing Canon.


    WHOOSH


    Rui dodged it this time, spiraling out of the way as he threw a flurry of strikes. The shadow Rui dodged all of the attacks with great agility and maneuvering before. It threw a swift kick at Rui, which Rui cleanly dodged. Yet;


    BAM!


    Another strikended immediately after on him, having already reached the location he had dodged to!


    Rui''s eyes widened as he barely blocked the attack.


    (''It knew where I was going to move before I did!'') He realized. (''Don''t tell me it can use the VOID algorithm as well?!'')


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 370 Balance

    Rui wasn''t sure what was happening. He didn''t understand how this was possible.


    How was the symbiote, assuming that''s what the shadow clone of himself was a manifestation of, able to gain ess to his techniques? Not just his Martial Art techniques, but also the VOID algorithm. The movements that his shadow clone-self had disyed were without a doubt the VOID algorithm, the movement used was the perfect counter to his movement and it had been initiated even before his own.


    That was the ssic tell-tale sign of a perfectly executed VOID algorithm adaptation via the pattern adaptation system of the VOID algorithm. The shadow clone was clearly using it, as well as other techniques.


    Rui had alreadyputed two broad usible hypotheses. The first hypothesis was that the visions he was experiencing were not actually from the Mindmirror Symbiote. He had just assumed that it shadow clone of himself was how his subconscious mind was processing the symbiote, but that''s all that was; an assumption. It was entirely possible that the visions he was seeing now were no different from a dream or some other psychedelic illusion that his mind was generating as a result of trying to process the neurological and mental conflict with the Symbiote.


    The exnation for the shadow clone of his being able to use his Flowing Void Style Martial Art was that the shadow clone was being generated by his subconscious mind which did, in fact, possess an intimate understanding of the Flowing Void Style. This would exin how the shadow clone was able to use the Flowing Void Style.


    The second hypothesis was that the Mindmirror Symbiote had ess to his memories and knowledge. And was able to extract information that would be useful against the host. It was possible that he was simply partly imagining the shadow clone using the Flowing Void style because those were the memories the Symbiote was essing and triggering in some way.


    There were other hypotheses, of course, but they all fell into the same category as the two hypotheses he hade up with. Either the Symbiote was genuinely essing his memories and knowledge and Martial Art amidst the mental invasion, or he was simply imagining it due to an attempt of his mind to process the conflict in an understandable way.


    However, there was onemon trait that both hypotheses shared. Regardless of which hypothesis was true, it was a bad idea if he lost the fight.


    If the fight really was merely his mind attempting to process the mental conflict, then losing the imaginary physical fight would mean he was losing the mental conflict since the former would merely be a visual representation of thetter ording to the theory. If the imaginary physical fight was genuinely the core of the actual mental sh between his mind and the mental invasion of the Mindmirror Symbiote, then losing was absolutely a bad idea.


    (''I have to win no matter what, then.'') Rui reaffirmed.


    He turtled up, defending as he gathered his concentration and focus.


    Perhaps it was the peril of the situation he was in.


    Perhaps it was because of what was at stake.


    Perhaps it was because he was fighting a clone of himself.


    Perhaps it was because he was inside his own mind.


    Regardless of what it was, he was able to enter a highly focused state almost instantaneously. The shadow clone paused as Rui stared at it with his pitch-ck pupils.


    WHOOSH


    Rui dashed off towards his dark clone, throwing speedy jabs.


    WHOOSH


    The clone swerved out of the way, but in vain;


    BOOM!<novelnext>  </novelnext>


    A colossal attack crashed into his clone as it wasunched away.


    Rui grinned. (''It worked!'')


    If the shadow clone fought identically to him, then wasn''t there a good chance that it used the same movement patterns as he did?


    If that was indeed the case then he very well could just create a predictive model on himself and apply it to the clone, couldn''t he?


    Rui and his clone rushed at each other with immense speed. What followed was a marvel that would likely never reur.


    Two identical Martial Artists.


    Two VOID algorithms.


    They shed against each other in a furious exchange of attacks. They were both using the VOID algorithm, they were both using the same predictive model and the same adaptive evolution model. They were equal in nearly every way.


    Except for longevity.


    The worst part about losing his sense of time was that it became harder topute stamina. He had energy constraints, yet it seemed as though the shadow clone didn''t have any restriction on that front.


    Time passed, more than he knew. He grew increasingly mentally fatigued. The psychological stress of not knowing how and when this nightmare was going to end was also starting to gnaw at him, he was generally quiteposed, but under such circumstances even he was starting to feel the strain. It took an immense amount of mental fortitude to maintain his calm and not panic. And it was only growing harder and harder as an immeasurable amount of time passed.


    Physical stamina wasn''t a thing, but mental stamina was indeed a thing, at the end of the day.


    POW!


    Rui grimaced as a strikended square on his jaw. He had fallen behind on his reactions by just a beat and the shadow clone, which had not yet ceased to be pitcher perfect, overwhelmed him in that regard. The strike had created an opening that the shadow clone brutally exploited with an avnche of attacks, just as he would have if he were in its ce. It was the best option.


    That was bad news for him. He went all-out with defense and evasion as he tried to regain his bearings and restore the bnce of initiative.Please check at N/?vel(D)rama.Org.


    WHOOSH


    He avoided a strike, leaping backward. Yet;


    BAM!


    The clone followed through immediately, predicting his retreat andnding a Tempestuous Ripple on Rui.


    (''Damn it!'') He cursed. (''At this rate, the disadvantages will simply snowball!'')


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 371 Solution

    Rui racked his brain as he thought of a solution. He couldn''t rely on the VOID algorithm. He couldn''t really rely on his techniques alone. Their physical parameters were identical.


    WHOOSH


    Rui barely managed to evade a strike. (''The only difference lies in mind that is controlling the mental bodies if the second hypothesis is correct.'')


    If that was the case, then Rui very well might have a tactical advantage. If not, then he could reasonably be assured that the first hypothesis was true. After all, what were the odds that the symbiote that was not supposed to be genuinely intelligent or actually sentient had the same degree of tactical intelligence as him?


    He highly doubted that it was able to gain somehow gain ess to his tactical capability either. That would require a degree of supernatural absurdity that was too ridiculous even by the standards of this world. His tactical capability was a product of his consciousness operating on his memories and senses. If the symbiote was able to ess that, then it would no doubt have already won by now.


    BAM!


    Rui reeled from a powerful Flowing Canon crashing into his guard as he was marginally outmaneuvered by the shadow clone. (''But how can I possibly out-strategize a superior version of myself?'')


    It didn''t help that he was truly not ustomed to the VOID algorithm being this ineffective in battle. Because the VOID algorithms being used by both sides were identical, they more or less canceled each other out and their effect was not really felt. This meant that this was a fight where Rui was practically fighting without any help from the VOID algorithm.


    When was thest time that genuinely happened? He couldn''t even remember. He had always used the VOID algorithm in at least a minor capacity ever since he discovered his Martial Path nearly three years ago.


    The psychological difort and inexperience with such a situation were also hindering him. At this rate, the disadvantages would snowball and he would most certainly lose.


    (''Tsk.'') He tutted mentally. (''This is even worse than when the VOID algorithm is ipatible with my oppon-'')


    Rui''s eyes widened as an idea shed across his mind, taking root as he began fleshing it out. (''Interesting, this might work.'')


    He leaped backward, immediately chased by the shadow clone. Then he paused before rushing straightforwardly at the shadow clone. Rui threw a targeted sweeping kick at his shadow clone.


    The shadow clone stepped back, avoiding it.


    Yet;


    BAM!


    An invisible Tempestuous Ripple mmed into it, flinging it far away. It swiftly got up, yet Rui had immediately arrived. Heunched a low sweeping kick, which the clone leaped to avoid.<novelnext>  </novelnext>


    Yet the sweeping kick disappeared.


    It was a feint.


    BAM!!


    A powerful blow from Rui crashed into the symbiote midair, flinging it into the distance.


    All of a sudden, the tables had turned!


    (''I was right!'') Rui grinned. (''It can borrow my Martial Art. But it cannot borrow the intelligence or the tactics that I use topensate for the ws in my Martial Art!'')


    Rui''s Martial Art had not yet achieved maturity. Despite having mastered twenty-three techniques, it was still not yet mature. Furthermore, there was the matter of the VOID algorithm. Although he had made significant progress with the VOID algorithm''s viability thanks to his extreme mastery of the Mind Pce technique, he had yet to make significant progress in the other major problem of the VOID algorithm.


    Its ipatibility with the fantastical Martial Art of the world of Gaia. He had yet to fix the issue. There were times when the VOID algorithm wasrgely helpless. In those times, hepensated for its shorings with improvised corrections in the calctions and estimations that were roughly urate enough to work decently enough, albeit still far from what the VOID algorithm was supposed to be capable of ideally.


    Using the VOID algorithm blindly could potentially be dangerous. Rui never mindlessly epted the results spat out by the adaptive evolution model. He relied on quick thinking and instincts, Primordial Instinct, to judge howpatible the VOID algorithm was and how urate the adapted style it outputted was.


    This was not something that could be copied or stolen by the Mindmirror Symbiote, in all likelihood. And he was being proven right by the second.Content held by N?velDrama.Org.


    If that was indeed the case, then it could be exploited. Rui knew the VOID algorithm inside-out, and upside-down. He knew exactly where all of its shorings were, and what all the risks due to those shorings were. The shadow clone of himself did notpensate for the shorings the way Rui did when he fought with it.


    That meant as long Rui used the right moves at the right time, he would be able to cause a disadvantage to the shadow clone.


    The key was to use techniques that were the most supernatural and impossible by Earth''s standards. The more it diverged from anything Earth had, the less urate the counters the shadow clone used were, as far as being the most suited to countering and adapting to his moves.


    Moves like Tempestuous Ripple, Phantom Step, and Stinger were most effective because they diverged significantly from anything on Earth. There was no such thing as a wind st caused byunching a dense pocket of air that was caused by abination of breathing techniques and body movements in thebat sports of Earth.


    Likewise, Phantom Step and Stinger were also absolutely otherworldly by MMA standards. His other offensive techniques were much closer in concept to MMA techniques, unfortunately. Techniques like Blink were also absurd by Earth standards, but it wasn''t useful against the shadow clone. Neither of them had blinked in the battle.


    Still, these three techniques gave him a fighting chance. He had already taken significant damage and his mental fatigue and strain were only snowballing. These three techniques were the only thing between him and inevitable defeat. He would need to apply them to the very best he could.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 372 Climax

    Rui did his very best to exploit the ws and shorings in the VOID algorithm. Exchange after exchange, he abused them to the best he could. The disadvantage he had umted prior was slowly starting to get mitigated.


    The biggest problem was that his shadow clone self didn''t really seem to be capable of taking damage. Even if Rui pounded it with a barrage of powerful attacks, it would get up, walk it off and continue as if nothing happened. Whereas any damage Rui took didn''t magically disappear, he retained all of it. Even if his new tactic allowed him to outy his opponent, theck of damage and fatigue on his opponent''s part meant that none of it ever stuck.


    Rui had to work harder and harder each time he wanted to overwhelm his opponent.


    But what did it matter? His opponent simply got back up and continued fighting with the same ferocity as before. Rui''sbat kept getting duller and duller.


    It only snowballed even further as time passed.


    BOOM!!Content held by N?velDrama.Org.


    Rui grimaced as a powerful Flowing Canon flung him away. He crashed into his immediate surroundings, getting up quickly.


    An eternity had passed. He felt as though he was going insane with all this endless fighting. He was bleeding profusely and panting heavily in exhaustion. He felt his mental body going limp with fatigue.


    Yet, he didn''t give up.


    He grabbed the iing attack from his shadow clone, using Flow Flux to throw him off. Heunched a Tempestuous Ripple, sting the shadow clone of his with a wind st. His shadow clone swiftly recoveredunching another attack.


    BAM!


    Rui grimaced as the attack crashed into his abdomen, unguarded.


    PEW!


    The Stinger mmed into his clone''s head. Yet, Rui wasn''t done. Heunched a barrage of attacks that bypassed the VOID algorithm via its ws and shorings.


    BOOM!


    A final attacknded on the shadow clone, flinging him away.


    Rui copsed to the ground, exhausted. Every ounce of his mental body was in pain, he could barely move as he gasped for air.


    WHOOSH


    The shadow clone had arrived,unching a powerful attack at Rui.


    (''Shit... Is this how it ends?'') He struggled to put up a guard.


    The attack warped the very world around them with the sheer power it had. Rui could feel the tiniest hint of haste and panic from the shadow clone.


    As though it didn''t have any time left.


    The attack was just about to crash into him.


    Rui had gritted his teeth with his head tucked, bracing for the impact.


    ...


    Nothing happened.


    "Huh?" His eyebrows knitted in confusion. He raised his head as he leaped back.


    There was nothing.


    He looked around in suspicion. (''Where did he go?'')<novelnext>  </novelnext>


    Then, the illusory work crumbled as darkness enveloped his senses yet again.


    He opened his eyes. An expression of shock molded onto his face as the familiar white ceiling of the operating room entered his field of vision along with doctor He and a set of nurses tending to him.


    "Apprentice Quarrier?" She asked as she shed his eyes with a shlight device. "Pupils are reactive. Apprentice Quarrier? Are you feeling alright?"


    "I''m back!" He eximed with tion and ecstasy.


    "Congrattions." Doctor He said to him. "The procedure was a sess. You sessfully resisted the mental takeover phase."


    Rui felt exhausted beyond anything he ever had.


    "We''ll be conducting a few tests just to make su-" She paused when she heard a snoring sound.


    He had fallen asleep on the spot. His eyelids were too heavy and his mind was too tired to even try staying awake after it had confirmed it was safe. He didn''t even experience a single dream as his mind tucked away silently, taking some much-needed rest.


    He woke upter feeling fresher than he ever had. Not even potions were this invigorating. He got up in his bed slowly, before looking around.


    (''I''ve been moved to a different room.'') He mused as a nurse popped into his room, noticing he was awake.


    "Apprentice Quarrier, how are you feeling?" She asked.


    "Great." He replied. "How long was I asleep?"


    "Fourteen hours." She replied. "Your mind needed an immense amount of rest after the incredibly strenuous ten minutes. We''ve steadily injected highly nourishing and healing potions into your body that would allow your brain and mind to naturally recover."


    "I see..." He murmured before perking up at something she said. "Wait, ten minutes? You mean the bonding procedurested ten minutes?"


    "Correct." She replied.


    Rui squinted in confusion. His sense of time must have been extremely messed up. That fight hadsted many days, at the very least.


    To think that all of that had actually happened in ten minutes tops.


    "Doctor He has been notified of your awakening. She''ll be here shortly." The nurse informed. "Would you like anything? A ss of water?"


    Rui nodded absentmindedly, absorbed in thought. "Please do."


    Soon, doctor He entered his room with a smile. "I heard you had woken up. Feeling good?"


    "Much better than I expected, yes."


    "That''s good news." She nodded. "We conducted a few tests, and there is no abnormality. The secondary brain is still dormant, limatizing to its circumstances. Soon, it will be active and you will be able to feel it. It is rmended you do not begin training with it for at least a few days. Your mind is still not done recovering and the once you begin training and the flux of information exchange between the brains increases it will strain your brain more than it normally would be."


    Rui nodded. "Will do."


    Soon the conversation ended after the doctor rattled off some instructions and answered some questions.


    "You''ll be discharged tomorrow after some more supervision. Be sure to rest as much as possible, do not strain your mind in any way."


    Rui nodded, bidding her goodbye as she left the room.


    He closed his eyes, turning his attention inside himself. He flinched when he felt the presence of a dormant entity connected to his own.


    "This... is the secondary brain?" He murmured in wonder.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 373 Embed

    He simply observed it, trying to get a better feel for it.


    (''It doesn''t feel like it''s conscious in the same way my brain is.'') He mused.


    Even its mental takeover was not something that the Symbiote was consciously doing, but rather something that was part of its biological programming. This matched the information that he had learned about it.


    As time passed, the dormant brain began showing more and more activity. He felt excited at the prospect of mastering the extra brain capacity. However, that was not something that could be done quickly. The symbiote had grade-ten difficulty for a reason, and that reason wasn''t purely due to the risk of being mentally taken over by the symbiote.


    Currently, the brain was an empty te. Neurons alone weren''t enough for them to be of immediate use. It was like aputer without an operating system. There were training techniques that he would need to undergo, and nned to undergo in this training session.


    There was only one training technique that was associated with the Mindmirror Symbiote. It was called the Mental Embed training technique. Even though it was only one, it alone was versatile enough to allow the user to aplish a multitude of things.


    It allowed the user to embed thought patterns into the secondary brain. These thoughts did not need to be limited to conscious thoughts; they could also be subconscious neurological patterns as well.


    It essentially allowed the user to program the Mindmirror Symbiote like it was aputer. In order to get the Mindmirror Symbiote to aid the user inbat, one needed to embed all of one''sbat thought patterns into the secondary brain using the Mental Embed training technique.


    Once that waspleted sessfully, the secondary brain would then be able to function identically to Rui''s main brain as far asbat processing went. It would be able to aid Rui inbat by doing so. With two brains processing data, hisbat mental processing would boost tremendously.


    Essentially, the secondary brain''s primary purpose was to function as a parallel processor to the main brain, aiding all cognitive and neurological processes. This would boost all mental parameters such as battle cognition, spatial awareness, reaction speed, reflexive speed, kic vision, and other such phenomena vital tobat.


    This boost would put Rui''s mental parameters far beyond the limits of the Apprentice Realm!


    He strongly suspected that he might even reach quasi-Squire level as far all mental parameters went with just this basic application alone!


    There were even further ways it could be applied. After all, the Mental Embed technique was a technique that allowed the user to embed conscious thought patterns as well.


    (''This means I can embed the VOID algorithm and my Mind Pce into the secondary brain as well!'') Rui grinned, eager to start training. Yet, at the same time, he didn''t want toplete it too soon. The mental burden of the Mindmirror Symbiote only came after a sessfullypleted mental embed into the secondary brain.<novelnext>  </novelnext>


    After all, until then, the Mindmirror Symbiote didn''t particrly interact with the main brain. That''s why it wouldn''t interfere with his training growth speed until after the mental embed was fullypleted, which would only happen by the end of the training stage.


    Once he embedded the VOID algorithm and Mind Pce, his utility of those would skyrocket. The best part about that was that he didn''t need to constantly update the embedded thoughts, the secondary brain''s cognitive capabilities were high enough to ensure that it was capable of growing based on the growth of the corresponding original thought patterns of the main brain.


    He wanted to test the training technique right away but the doctor had instructed him to take it easy as far as straining the mind went, thus he had to abstain. The technique was important, but his literal mental health was even more so.


    A day passed by and he was finally discharged.


    "All your tests havee back fine." The doctor informed him as she skimmed through medical reports that hade back from the tests. "Again, make sure you get enough rest when get back, got it? No mental rejuvenation potions, make sure you get normal sleep, alright?"


    "Will do." Rui nodded. "Thank you, doctor."


    Once he bade her goodbye and finished a bit of paperwork, he immediately set back for the Martial Union, thinking back to thest few days he had spent in the Martial Union.


    At the end of the day, he had never figured out which of the two hypotheses regarding the shadow clone was true. Was it really just a dream his mind had conjured up representing the state of the mental battle between the symbiote and his brain or was it genuinely the actual conflict itself?


    He didn''t know, but regardless, he had made a lot of gains from the conflict, unexpectedly. What he hadn''t experienced, and didn''t ever expect to experience, was fighting against the VOID algorithm. He hadn''t realized how much of a blessing it was at the time, because of the things that were at stake at the time.


    Fighting against the VOID algorithm gave him a perspective about it that he had never had before. He was able to appreciate and admire its prowess with pride, but he also gained a clearer perspective on its ws and shorings. He understood them much more intimately than he had before. If it weren''t for this experience, it would have taken him a long time to gain the understanding that the experience had yielded to him.


    Rui had gotten several new ideas on how to partially solve the ipatibility issue of the VOID algorithm with the Martial Art of Gaia. Ideas that he likely would not have considered this early had he not fought against his clone. It was a rich and an unexpected gain that hade from the mental battle, and that alone justified the purchasing of the Mindmirror Symbiote.


    "All in good time."This content is ? N?velDrama.Org.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 374 Difficulty

    WHOOSH


    Rui dashed from one point to another, before pausing and looking at Kane. "How was that?"


    "You''re messing up the maneuvering part." Kane shook his head. "The misdirection needs to be in precisely the opposite direction you''re going, otherwise it won''t work."


    "Yeah, true." Rui sighed. "I know that in theory, it''s not easy to get the hang of it in practice."


    "It does take a while to learn." Kane agreed. "You need to burn the technique into your bones with repeated practice. Or at least that''s how I did it."


    Several months had passed since Rui began his sixth training stage. He had made significant progress with all techniques and was in the final phase of getting rid of all of his ws and shorings. He had reached out to Kane for help with the Shadow Step technique. Although he hadn''t mastered that technique, he had mastered the Void Step technique which was the original technique that the Shadow Step technique was an inferior version of.


    Kane merely needed a few tries to get the hang of it since he had mastered the Void Step technique. He only needed to understand to what degree it was inferior before he could use it masterfully, making Rui green with envy.


    "Man, it''s crazy how good you are at this." Rui sighed.


    "I mean." He shrugged. "One can say the same thing with you and a number of things. The most recent being the second brain you got."This content is ? N?velDrama.Org.


    Rui smiled, he couldn''t argue with that.


    He hadn''t finished mentally embedding hisbat thought patterns or the VOID algorithm and the Mind Pce technique into the secondary brain yet. The best part about the Mental Embed technique was the fact that he could use it while training physically as well. In fact, the Mental Embed technique worked most efficiently when thebat information that the user of the technique was actually being used inbat.


    The secondary brain learned the information faster when there was actual execution of the movements that were being learned by the secondary brain.


    Thus, he could embed the five other techniques he was learning into the secondary brain while he was training them. Thankfully, he wouldn''t need to go through another training stage just for that alone, that would have been incredibly wasteful.<novelnext>  </novelnext>


    Once he wrapped up his Shadow Step training with Kane, he returned back to the Mindmirror training session. He had only very recently gotten ustomed to the feeling of the active secondary brain. It felt like a force with untapped potential. He could constantly feel that he wasn''t able to use it to its full potential, which was frustrating.


    He continued the Mental Embed training technique process, which was harder and more mentally taxing than he had expected it to be. But in hindsight, he should have expected that would be the case. He was trying to copy and transfer all the data centered around hisbat, every speck of it, into the secondary brain.


    The size of the data and information that had to be embedded into the secondary brain was gigantic! Although the Mental Embed technique was not weak by any means, it still took an immense amount of time and effort.


    The good news was that he was extraordinarilypatible with the technique unlike anything before. It was actually quite surprising initially, but it made sense. His enhanced mind as well as the umted concentration that came from days of using the technique straight without any breaks thanks to the mental rejuvenation potions allowed him to use the Mental Embed technique with extraordinary proficiency.


    This allowed him to speed up what would otherwise be an ordeal of years into just a few months. Rui was d he had chosen to master the technique sooner rather thanter because mastering it sooner allowed him to automatically transfer future information via the Mental Embed technique into the secondary brain.


    This was because of the phenomenon of neuron sticity. A phenomenon that was responsible for memory and associations. Neuron connections, that corresponded to particr though, that were activated time and time again would grow closer and be bonded stronger. The same thing was happening when the Mental Embed was used to transfer particr information from his brain to the secondary brain, the act formed strong neuron connections between the brain and the secondary brain that allowed the automatic transfer of newer information from his brain to the secondary brain in the future.


    By mastering it sooner, he was reducing the amount of information that needed to be manually transferred. After the initial manual transfer, the secondary brain would naturally and automatically learn newerbat information. By executing the initial manual transfer as soon as possible in his life, he was ensuring most of thebat information and thought processes transferred across his life would be learned automatically and not manually.


    This was the reason he had chosen to master the Mindmirror Symbiote sooner rather thanter. As time passed on, the difficulty of mastering the Mindmirror Symbiote would simply rise continuously, far beyond the already peak grade-ten difficulty.


    As painful as it was parting ways with his enhanced growth speed, he ultimately found that the benefits outweighed the losses. He did not want to deal with a technique whose difficulty of mastery was extraordinarily high, at something like grade eleven or grade twelve.


    It was especially desirable that he made the transfer of the VOID algorithm as soon as possible before he adapted and expanded it. The VOID algorithm was already a giant system with many sub-systems within it. If he dumped all the information into the Secondary Brain, then anyplicated changes made to the VOID algorithm needed to be done only once as the Secondary Brain would follow suit automatically.


    Still, the process was extremely tiring and difficult despite his extreme affinity with the techniques involved. This along with the mental invasion of the technique as well as the mental burden that would be iing once the mental embed wasplete made the entire process truly worthy of having its difficulty being graded ten.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 375 Improvement

    Six months passed. Rui worked day and night, literally, mastering his new techniques. The first technique he had mastered among the six was the Mind Mask technique. His mastery of the technique was immense and he could either amplify or reduce his presence and the sense of danger he evoked in sentient minds depending on what kind of image he projected on himself.


    The second technique that he hadpletely mastered was the Fauna Flow technique, it was a rather unique technique the learning process of which he had enjoyed thoroughly. The technique was rather bizarre but he enjoyed the process of it. His growth speed and cognition allowed him to master it rather swiftly. He embedded thenguage into the secondary brain as well, using the Mental Embed technique.


    The remaining techniques followed suit quickly. He attained mastery in the Reverberating Lance, the Final Breathing, and Shadow Step techniques one by one.


    The final technique that followed was the Mindmirror Symbiote technique. It took a whole extra month after the remaining five techniques until he was finally ready.


    CLICK


    Rui gasped in disbelief after he finally embedded thest bit ofbat information into the secondary brain. The embed wasplete and the secondary brain was finally ready to be used inbat. He closed his eyes as he felt the secondary brain exchanging a massive flux of information with his mind.


    Time slowed down as the world became sharper. It was as though someone had lowered the ying speed of a video. The secondary brain had been embedded with the sensory processing neurological protocols. It processed the information parallelly alongside his own mind, producing much better results much sooner.


    "So, this is what the Mindmirror Symbiote does?" Rui muttered aloud as he brought his hands up to his face.


    His eyes widened in shock as he realized he was both hearing his own voice and seeing his own hands in slow motion.


    (''I see, because my cognition speed has risen while my physical speed has declined, even my own body appears slower to me.'') He realized.


    He closed his eyes as he applied the Primordial Instinct and the Seismic Mapping techniques. Seismic Mapping had also slowed down in his mind, the iing seismic radiation had a lower frequency. This was within his prediction.


    What was a little outside his prediction was how Primordial Instinct interacted with the secondary brain. Primordial Instinct was merely the instinctual subconscious sense of danger and risk trained to an extremely high degree. It worked better out than he had ever expected.


    The Primordial Instinct sense had be more urate and precise. Or at least, that''s what Rui felt like. Before, it was merely limited to vague feelings, but now Rui could feel it was more tangible and concrete information regarding the dangers and risks.


    "Man, I wonder what the VOID algorithm is like now?" He muttered with an excited grin. "I need to test it immediately!"


    The problem was, he needed an opponent in order to test out the VOID algorithm against. But this had already be a major problem at this stage.


    "I''m too strong." He murmured. He was already considerably stronger than his friends, who were extremely powerful Martial Artists themselves even before hisst training stage. At his current level, even other grade-ten Martial Artists were no longer much of a threat to him.


    "Squire Kyrie again then?" He wondered, before shaking his head. "I already have a predictive model for Squire Kyrie."<novelnext>  </novelnext>


    One of the reasons he had chosen to master the Mindmirror Symbiote in the first ce was because it was a symbiote that allowed him to speed up the process of forming the predictive model. If he wanted to test the actual increase at the speed at which he formed the predictive model thanks to the secondary brain, then he would need to fight someone he didn''t have a predictive model on.


    He had already formed one when he fought against Kyrie, so he couldn''t fight for his purposes.


    "If not Squire Kyrie then... I guess I''ll have to make do with Squire Dylon." Rui murmured. Ideally, he would liked to have fought an all-rounder since those were the hardest for the VOID algorithm, but s, Kyrie was the only all-rounder Martial Artist in the Academy as thebat training Squire instructor.


    He didn''t waste any time, choosing to immediately head towards the offensive training facility. He quickly consumed a few potions on the way. He wanted to be at his peak when he fought Squire Dylon. He spotted Squire Dylon mentoring several Martial Apprentices practicing techniques when he arrived.


    Yet the moment he stepped in, he drew everybody''s attention.


    The sheer pressure he exerted was eye-drawing. Not a single person could avoid throwing a nce his way. One thing was clear to all of them.


    He had grown stronger.


    "Well well well." Squire Dylon said, addressing him. "Lookie who we have here."


    "Squire Dylon." Rui replied.


    "You know, there''s a reason we Squire instructors put a tight lid on our minds when we''re in facilities training." He said. "It''s to ensure we don''t disturb the Martial Apprentices training. Although you''re not a Martial Squire, you''re no ordinary Martial Apprentice either. Turn down the pressure a bit, will you? You''re disturbing the other students."


    "Ah." Rui nced around before nodding. "Alright, my bad."


    He closed his mind before activating the Mind Mask technique,pletely concealing every ounce of mental pressure. The people around him grew startled as all the suffocating pressure disappeared into thin air instantly as Rui appeared to be no more than an ordinary sixteen-year-old boy.


    Squire Dylon''s eyebrow raised at the sight. "Huh. You''ve mastered some interesting Martial Art techniques. Speaking of which, why are you here? You''d already mastered the Reverberating Lance technique a month ago. Don''t tell me you''ve already purchased more techniques?"


    "No." Rui shook his head. "I''vee here because I wish to spar with you."


    "Ah..." Squire Dylon pondered the matter as he scratched his chin, before shrugging. "Sure."This content is ? N?velDrama.Org.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 376 Clash

    "But." He said. "Not now. As you can see, I got Martial Apprentices to instruct over there."


    He gestured over to some Martial Apprentices who were listening.


    "No no sir, no need to bother with us."


    "That''s right, we can practice on our own for a while."


    "You should also help other students out, not only us."


    They quickly chimed in, insisting Squire Dylon spar with Rui then and there. Dylon sighed as Rui smirked. In the three years that he had been in the Martial Academy, he had earned arge fanbase among the newer batches of Martial Apprentices that hade along.


    Furthermore, everyone could see that he had gotten much stronger than he was before. They were all curious to see how much stronger, and how far he could push Squire Dylon. It was a very rare event that they probably wouldn''t get to see again. And they got to take a break.


    "Hmph." He snorted as Rui smirked. "Popr, aren''t you? Been here for only three years and you''re more popr than I am."


    Rui shrugged. He didn''t give a damn about such things, never had and never would. "So, can we spar now?"


    "Sure." He shrugged. With the other Martial Apprentices agreeing to put off their training to witness the spar, he had no reason not to agree.


    Suddenly, a heavy pressure mounted onto Rui.


    "Be warned though. I''m not nearly as gentle as Kyrie is." A small grin cracked on his face.


    Rui smiled wryly. "I couldn''t ask for more."


    It wasn''t long before they stood facing each other.


    The sparring facility slowly morphed into a spectator stand as all the Martial Apprentices mysteriously took breaks at that moment together, and mysteriously gathered around the ring that Squire Dylon and Rui were in.


    "Take your stances." A referee instructed with a much softer tone, considering he was instructing the head instructor, his superior.


    Squire Dylon took an aggressive offensive stance with no care for defense. "I suppose limiting myself to grade-ten Apprentice level is good enough?"


    "No." Rui replied, shaking his head.


    "Oh?" He raised an eyebrow. "Well, we''ll see. I''ll just keep hitting the pedal until you can''t take it anymore."


    Rui nodded. "That works for me too."


    He exhaled, closing his eyes.


    His concentration umted as his mind converged. The secondary brain revved up as a flux of information flowed between both brains. He dispelled the mask he had ced earlier, it consumed mental energy that he couldn''t afford to waste.


    The Martial Apprentices shivered as a horrifying avnche of mental pressure washed over them, suffocating them.


    "This..." One of them muttered. "Isn''t something that belongs solely to the Apprentice Realm."


    "Huh..." Squire Dylon paused, his eyebrow rose as a grin cracked onto his face. "I guess you weren''t exaggerating."


    He said as Rui took a defensive and evasive stance. He did not want to engage with Squire Dylon''s offense head-on if he could.


    "Begin!" The refereemenced the battle.


    The hairs on every Martial Apprentice''s body stood as Squire Dylon shot forward. The sheer force with which he pushed forward, churned the ground beneath him.


    BOOM!


    He zoomed forward with a single step. Heunched a powerful blow at Rui''s face.Please check at N/?vel(D)rama.Org.


    WHOOSH


    The blow crashed into an empty illusion.


    It was a feint.


    BAM!


    Dylon barely blocked an attack to his vitals, skidding backward. He rushed forward instantly, unleashing a wave of attacks.


    Yet he could only widen his eyes in surprise as every single attack missed.<novelnext>  </novelnext>


    And it wasn''t even close.


    Just a few centimeters.


    That was it.


    That was all Rui moved to avoid each blow. His graceful soft movements contrasted with Squire Dylon''s aggressive and loud movements.


    Yet none of them touched so much as a hair on his body.


    It was effortless.


    (''I see...'') Rui noted. (''Even peak Apprentice grade offensive specialists are obsolete against me?'')


    The secondary brain inbination with the Primordial Instinct technique was so potent that Dylon''s movements werefortably easy to keep track of. He had plenty of time to consciously track, process, decide and then act on that decision and still evade every strike.


    He wasn''t even using feints!


    WHOOSH


    (''What about the speed of the predictive model construction?'') He wondered as he smoothly evaded yet another strike.


    The Mind Pce had been firing at an extremely smooth speed as both his mind and the secondary brain processed and inputted data into it at an incredible speed.


    (''I''m a little over twice as before!'') Rui gaped. A more than one-hundred-percent increase thanks to one technique was a ridiculous improvement.


    Yet before he could look deeper into the matter.


    BAM!!


    A tremendous blownded on him, flinging him backward as he grimaced in pain.


    The atmosphere grew taut as an oppressive aura red across the facility.


    "Focus." His voice was soft, yet it drowned out the world. Forcefully drawing Rui''s attention towards him. "I''m not someone who can be defeated by a distracted boy."


    Rui got up, heightening his alertness and awareness as he took a stance.


    WHOOSH


    Squire Dylon shot towards him in the briefest of moments, throwing a blow with untold power. His fist shredded the very atmosphere as plummeted towards Rui.


    Rui swerved to avoid it, like he had been doing, yet;


    WHOOSH


    BAM!!


    He grimaced in shock as an invisible force pulled him back toward the attack, preventing him from dodging it.


    He gritted his teeth as the powerful attack crashed into a hastily construed guard,unching him backward.


    (''He used a wind-maniption technique to pull me back towards his attack and prevent me from dodging. It''s a more refined version of what Fae has!'') He immediately realized as he scrambled, regaining his bearings


    Squire Dylon had already arrived, but this time Rui was prepared.


    What followed next shook the entire facility. The Martial Apprentices watched with expressions of awe as the two Martial Artists engage in a furious exchange of attacks with each other.


    PUNCH


    KICK


    PARRY


    DODGE


    A wave of exchanges decorated the arena as the conflict obtained a momentary bnce.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 377 Proceedings

    WHOOSH


    Rui avoided a strike sessfully.


    Squire Dylon had been using some a wind-maniption technique that pushed Rui back into the way of his attack every time he tried to dodge it. But Rui had already found a solution.


    Fight fire with fire.


    Fight wind-maniption technique with wind-maniption techniques.


    He used Tempestuous Ripple to counter the wind-maniption technique that Squire Dylon was using to obstruct his evasion.


    WHOOSH


    BAM!


    Rui smoothly dodged an attack he cleanlynded a powerful attack on Squire Dylon. Squire Dylonshed out once more, yet, the same oue recurred.


    Rui countered every single move he made, almost as if he knew it wasing.


    Rui grinned. The initial predictive model had beenpleted sooner than he had expected. Furthermore, the increase in effectiveness had been remarkable. He could obtain much more urate and precise results much more quicker.


    WHOOSH


    BAM!!


    Hefortably evaded yet another jab as he simultaneouslynded a powerful hook at a vulnerable hole in Squire Dylon''s defense that he had exposed during his attack.


    It was the perfect counter.


    (''This is amazing. The VOID algorithm''s execution is perfect!'') He grew excited once more. He was able to see more than just one move into the future, something that was actually beyond his expectations.


    But by processing the data much more than he ever would be able to in that brief period of time, he was able to statistical evaluations of the likelihood of the target of the predictive model making a certain move.


    Yet the battle didn''t return to the previous domineering advantage that Rui had held.


    Squire Dylon wasn''t done yet.


    Rui felt a sharp sense of danger through the empowered sense of danger and risk of the Primordial Instinct.


    BAM!


    An incredibly swift and powerful straight punch crashed into his guard.


    He skidded away, as he nced over to Squire Dylon. (''He''s no longer limiting himself to the conventional Martial Apprentice Realm.'')


    Squire Dylon hade to recognize the truth in Rui''s words. Limiting himself to grade ten wasn''t enough. He would need to exceed the Apprentice Realm.


    And exceed it he did.


    The pressure he exuded wasn''t extremely far from that of a genuine Squire-level aura.


    Rui''s expression broke into a grin as he heightened his reactions, awaiting yet another attack.


    He didn''t have to wait at all.


    WHOOSH


    Dylon had crossed the distance between them at a speed that exceeded the perception capabilities of most Martial Apprentices spectating.


    WHOOSH


    Rui avoided a flying knee kick empowered with the full momentum of his charge, as he swiveled around,unching a swift high-kick at Dylon''s head.<novelnext>  </novelnext>


    POW!


    He blocked the attack beforeunching a flurry of attacks at Rui. Rui''s extreme mental processing along with the Primordial Instinct and the VOID algorithm allowed him to counter every strike urately and precisely.


    High kicks were met with perfectly-timed spinning sweeping kicks.


    Strikes were met with other strikes that dodged the attack naturally as a part of its form. Every move had its perfect counter.


    This was until Squire Dylon began demonstrating the reason he was hired.


    FLICK


    A stinging sensation extended across Rui''s hand from a nick from one of his strikes.


    DRIP DRIP


    A few drops of blood hit the ground as Rui''s eyes widened. (''He has piercing techniques too!'')


    This meant Rui had to dedicate even more resources to be careful.


    Yet he wasn''t careful enough.


    His vision blurred for just a tiny bit, confusing him. He nced at Squire Dylon''s nails, they had not only extended into razor-sharp ws but also had a sickly purple color to them.


    (''Poison!'') Rui''s eyes widened.


    He had fused both a piercing and a poison technique so that the poison could be injected directly into his bloodstream!


    "There is a reason they made me the head instructor of the offensive-training facility, you know." He smirked.


    Squire Dylon began unleashing his versatility, hindering Rui''s predictions of him. Rui needed to continuously update his prediction model with every new technique that Dylon used. Thankfully, with the help of the secondary brain, he was able to perform these data-intensive calctions and estimations rather swiftly.


    Still, the sheer diversity that Squire Dylon dished out was truly impressive. He seemed to have techniques in nearly every offensive field that Rui had evere across!


    Furthermore, his physical parameters had risen ever since he decided he couldn''t afford to hold back. His parameters had long since risen beyond the general limits of the modern Apprentice Realm.


    They were in the quasi-Squire Realm.


    Yet, Rui did not falter. Move after move, exchange after exchange, he incorporated all the data into the VOID algorithm and began forming even more urate and precise predictions of Squire Dylon. The Martial Apprentices were struggling to even visually keep up.


    Yet the tidbits that they could perceive andprehend properly were so shocking that they almost wished they couldn''t.


    How could a Martial Apprentice operate at such a level of power?


    How could a Martial Apprentice react to speed far above the general limits of the Apprentice Realm?


    How could a Martial Apprentice force someone with a durability of a mighty mountain to block his attacks?


    They didn''t understand.


    They simply took the liberty of being beheld to the magnificent battle between the two Martial Artists as they watched a Martial Apprentice attain power that perhaps no single Martial Apprentice had ever obtained prior.


    BAM!


    Squire Dylon blocked a powerful uppercut empowered with Vital Pressure, Outer Convergence, me Breathing, Adamant Reforging but also the Reverberating Lance technique. Many powerful Apprentice-level techniques had pushed the sheer force of the collision with the attack beyond bare basic human parameters.


    Yet his opponent was one of a higher Realm. Even if the defensive techniques he used were not truly Squire-level, his evolved body alone meant he could withstand an immense amount of punishment. The strike ultimately didn''t inflict any meaningful damage.


    (''Damn, I can''t win using ordinary attacks.'') Rui cursed. (''I''m going to have to create an opportunity where my trump cards may be able to take him down.


    This chapter upload first at  This content is ? N?velDrama.Org.

 Chapter 378 Unshackled

    BAM BAM BAM!


    Rui somersaulted away as he evaded wind st attacks from Squire Dylon. The speed at which they wereunched and propelled as well as their power all exceeded the conventional limit of the Apprentice Realm. Yet Rui had been able to predict and react to all of them with the help of thebination of the secondary brain, the VOID algorithm, and Primordial Instinct allowing him to cleanly evade a majority of Squire Dylon''s attacks.


    CLASP


    Dylon grabbed his arms holding them in ce, yet instead of grappling, he simply took in a deep breath.


    Rui''s eyes widened as he ducked sharply while executing Flux Flow to destabilize Dylon. Dylon staggered a bit as he spat out a zing fireball that just narrowly missed Rui thanks to the sabotage.


    WHOOSH


    The mes dispelled harmlessly as Rui broke out of his grip and leaped backward, wiping off sweat from his forehead, as he nced up at Squire Dylon warily. His offense was genuinely diverse and versatile. Despite the fact that it was easier to adapt to specialized Martial Artists, Dylon couldn''t be considered a specialist with how many various offensive options he had.


    WHOOSH


    Rui cleanly evaded a powerful haymaker swing, as he carefully maintained his distance. Even though Dylon was operating with a speed and power that was at a quasi-Squire level. He was unable to gain a sustained advantage against Rui!


    He knew Rui was special, but this was genuinely surprising to him. He couldn''t believe how powerful he had be. His reactions were almost closer to what one might expect from a Squire than what one would expect from a mere Martial Apprentice. There were moments where it felt as though he had seen right throughpletely, these were times when Rui began moving before Dylon to counter moves that came after.


    It was thoroughly bewildering.


    BAM BAM BAM!


    He guarded as Rui pummeled over and over with body blows empowered with the various offensive techniques he had mastered over the years. The power of his offense was staggering. Thebined power of Vital Pressure, Outer Convergence, me Breathing, Adamant Reforging, and Reverberating Lance boosted the impact of every single one of his strikes. Squire Dylon had a sh of nostalgia as recalled having trained Rui with every single one of these techniques, as the head of the offensive techniques training facility.


    (''He''se far.'') He noted. (''But it''s right about time to begin ending this.'')


    BAM!!


    Dylon managed tond a swift and powerful haymaker, as he held back by one less degree.


    Squire Dylonshed out as he beganunching an avnche of attacks against Rui. The sheer speed gap between them was not small. Rui pushed the secondary brain as it furiously aided him with the VOID algorithm and the Primordial Instinct heightening his reaction speed to the absolute limit that was possible.


    Yet, even it had limits.


    Squire Dylon was operating at a tier of power that would have killed any other Martial Apprentice within three seconds, and all of the Martial Apprentices that were spectating were extremely aware of this fact. They even spectated from a distance out of fear.


    The ring that was bolstered with esoteric technology meant to withstand battle even at the peak of the Apprentice level had begun to be quite damaged by the battle.


    Rui grimaced as he did his best to mitigate the speed gap between them. Yet, the odds were truly stacked against him. The damage he had suffered throughout the battle had begun to adversely affect hisbat parameters. Every attack of Dylon thatnded on Rui leftsting damage. But, in turn, Rui''s attacks didn''t inflict nearly as much damage against Dylon''s hyper-evolved body and constitution. Even with Reverberating Lance permeating the impact through Squire Dylon''s body, the effect was minimal.


    Still, Rui wasn''t done yet.


    (''I still haven''t used my trump card yet!'') Rui gritted his teeth as he struggled to maximize the number of blows that he sessfully evaded while preparing the Stinger. If he could pull off a Stinger as he did against Squire Freelia Ca, he might be able to at least inflict some damage on Squire Dylon.


    The biggest problem was that Squire Dylon was operating at a level even above what she had when he and his friends had fought her in the Commonwealth Duchy of Vinfrana.<novelnext>  </novelnext>


    He had only one chance, he needed to use it wisely.


    He evaded and endured Squire Dylon''s onught.


    Blow after blow.


    Technique after technique.


    (''Now!'') Rui''s eyes sharpened as the moment arrived.


    He swiveled to the right of Squire Dylon,unching a powerful blow. Dylon promptly responded by riddling him with attacks.


    WHOOSHExclusive content from N?velDrama.Org.


    Rui''s image disappeared.


    Dylon''s eyes widened in surprise.


    It was a feint.


    His awareness spread as his sharp senses immediately located Rui behind him. Yet, a shiver ran down his spine as he felt immense danger.


    A Squire-level aura.


    In the briefest of moments, as he turned, a heavy Squire-level aura descended onto the facility as every Martial Apprentice, froze at their spot, shivering in fear.


    Squire Dylon''s long-buried instincts awakened as the reflexes of a veteran who had killed many a Squireshed out in a heightened sense of danger. For a moment, he forgot he was fighting a mere Martial Apprentice.


    The sensation of ceding his back to a Martial Squire generated a fear that bypassed all reason, instinctively taking over his body. It was this instinctive fear that had saved his life in the Martial World. Rui had reawakened one of the most powerful Martial Squires of his generation.


    His speed and power surged as he broke all restraints on them. The might of a Martial Squire had bared its fangs against Rui.


    The verynd beneath them shook as the air boiled. The sheer power of a Martial Squire warped the world around them.


    And yet;


    PEW!!


    The Stinger soared through the air, unperturbed, striking Squire Dylon''s eye.


    In exchange?


    The unshackled might of a Martial Squire crashed into Rui.


    BOOM!!!


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 379 Outcome

    It wasn''t often that Rui''s ns went wrong. But not even he was omniscient, anything could happen. His n had been straightforward. He had feinted a swivel to the side using Phantom Step, but that wasn''t what he had limited himself to. He had also used Shadow Step in conjugation with the Mind Mask technique to misdirect Squire Dylon''s attention to the feint while his own presence was heavily reduced thanks to the Mind Mask technique. Furthermore, he had used the VOID algorithm to predict the moment when he would be in Dylon''s far-end peripheral vision where the Shadow Step technique was at its most effective.


    Neither technique would have been effective against Squire Dylon individually. But together when used at the perfect moment with the help of the VOID algorithm, he was able to sessfully elude Squire Dylon''s attention.


    He had circled back behind and aimed a Stinger for when Squire Dylon exposed his eye. Normally, this alone wouldn''t be enough to sessfullynd the Stinger on his eye when Dylon turned to prevent his back from being exposed.


    That was where the Mind Mask technique hade in. It was a technique that generally allowed a Martial Apprentice to be perceived and sensed as much more or less dangerous and attention-drawing than they really were using self-hypnosis. In this case, Rui had used it to startle Squire Dylon and impede his reactions with shock, which would decrease the probability that Squire Dylon would defend urately against the Stinger.


    Rui''s mastery of the Mind Mask technique had been extraordinary. This was especially true even after he had embedded it into the secondary brain. He had been able to project an image of danger and presence far above that of reality even before the mental embed had finished.


    It had been a good n, quite effective.


    There was only one problem with it.


    He had underestimated how much stronger he had gotten thanks to the Mental Embed and the activation of the secondary brain. Of course, part of the point of the fight was to discover exactly how strong he was. But he hadn''t expected he would have grossly underestimated the boost the Mind Mask technique would get thanks to the secondary brain.


    He had simply tried to create the strongest Mind Mask he could.


    How could have known it would end up bing a Squire-level mask that made him indistinguishable from a Martial Squire?


    He couldn''t!


    What was worse was that he hadpletely failed to predict the effect it would have on Squire Dylon. When Squire Dylon had felt the sudden Squire-level mental pressure re from behind him, it hadpletely bypassed his conscious mind and triggered his survival instincts, he simply reflexivelyshed out backward with a Squire-level attack.


    It was only after the attack hadnded had he realized what he had done.


    Rui''s enhanced Primordial Instinct had felt a terrifying amount of danger from Squire-Dylon, informing him that Dylon had be serious and a Squire-level was iing. The Stinger was already too far gone and couldn''t be stopped. Instead, an instant before Squire Dylon''s attack had begun, he had brought his guard up and dipped backward swiftly, hoping that the backward and downward motion would reduce the damage inflicted.


    The VOID algorithm went into overwork as Rui predicted the exact trajectory of the attack, doing everything he could to minimize the damage.


    BOOM!!!<novelnext>  </novelnext>


    Rui had thought he knew what it was like to be hit hard, but he had realized how na?¡¥ve he had been. A Squire-level haymaker hadnded on his guard.


    CRACK CRACK CRACK


    The sheer initial impact had mangled his arms as Squire Dylonunched him flying. Rui sted past the walls of the facility violently as he flew past it, crashing and breaking multiple trees until his momentum had finally been bled out.


    Thest thing he felt before he lost consciousness was excruciating pain.


    And somewhere within all that pain was immense awe. He was in awe of the power of a higher Realm. (''Damn... I''ll obtain that power someday...'')


    His eyes closed as he lost consciousness due to the blunt force trauma, still managing to use Final Breathing.


    Squire Dylon flew out of the facility as he Sky Walked in the air, looking for Rui with one eye. His other one had been bleeding due to the attack, but he didn''t seem to care in even the slightest. He spotted Rui in an instant as he instantly reached him.


    "What have I done?!" He gritted his teeth as he immediately pulled out a healing potion, allowing Rui to consume it.


    This was against medical protocols for serious injuries since there could beplications at times, but Dylon didn''t care. Everything could be fixed as long as Rui was alive, but everything was lost if he died from profuse blood loss or some internal organ rupture. The potion healed the wounds, but the bones in his arm were still bent unnaturally. The sheer force of the blow hadpletely broken them immediately. In fact, Dylon was surprised it didn''t do more damage. Rui wasn''t even a defensive Martial Apprentice, he wondered if he really had grown weaker over the years.


    Once he had stabilized Rui''s condition, he finally exhaled in relief as he studied Rui in confusion and surprise.


    (''What the fuck was that thing he did?'') He wondered. (''It''s as if he became a Martial Squire magically.'')


    He shook his head after thinking about it for a while, sighing. "I''m probably going to get fired."


    Not that he was particrly resentful of it, he knew the gravity of what he had done. If he had done it against almost any other Martial Apprentice student in the Academy, they would have died on the spot and that would have been absolutely catastrophic for the Martial Academy.


    He nced back at Rui with a look of admiration and pride.Please check at N/?vel(D)rama.Org.


    "Hehehe, the world isn''t ready for when this kid climbs up the Realms." He chuckled.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 380 Aftermath

    Funnily enough, this hadn''t been the first time Rui had been defeated by a Squire-level technique. He, along with Kane, had been knocked by Squire Kyrie with a Squire-level technique. Although, she had done it in an extremely safe manner with the precision of a surgeon while Squire Dylon had done it in the most extreme way possible.


    Of course, their circumstances had been extremely different.


    Rui had woken in the medical wing of the Academyter. The first thing he did was nce at his arms.


    "All healed up." He sighed with relief. They had been crushed by a single attack from a Martial Squire. "Man, he''s so strong."


    Rui muttered, sighing as he tried to squash his increasingly intense desire to break through into the Squire Realm. But s, it wasn''t time yet.


    He closed his eyes as he directed his thoughts toward his Martial Art. He didn''t quite feel the instinctive certainty about the maturity of his Martial Art that he had been told he would feel once his Martial Art reached maturity.


    He shook his head. "Perhaps it wille once I cement my current level of power with experience."


    It wasn''t impossible after all.


    He put those thoughts aside as he considered his situation at the moment. (''What to do from here?'')


    His immediate goals were, of course, still Squire candidacy and the Squire Realm, but he still had to n and take steps to reach that level.


    "For now... it''s time to leave the Martial Academy." Rui murmured.


    He had long anticipated the arrival of this milestone; his graduation from the Academy. It had been nearly a perfect three years since he first joined the Martial Academy. He had already be sixteen years old. "So much has happened since I joined."


    He thought back to his journey within the Martial Academy. From the time he had joined, entering the Foundation Stage that had honed his body and bare basic hand-to-hand capabilities. The Exploration Stage had given him a taste of what Martial Art really was like and soon after he had discovered his Martial Path with Project Water.


    What followed was an exciting journey of training and growing stronger while experiencing the world through his many missions. The Martial Contest had been a highlight, allowing him topare himself with his many peers across the Kandrian Empire. He had stepped outside the Kandrian Empire for the first time only when he had epted his very first internationalmission, learning more about the world outside the Kandrian Empire.


    And now he hade to the stage where the Martial Academy could no longer provide him any meaningful value. He did not want to continue being a student if that was the case.


    "Apprentice Quarrier?" A nurse noticed him awake. "I see you''re awake. How are you feeling?"


    "Perfectly fine actually." Rui replied. "My arms are fixed."


    "Indeed." The nurse replied. "We''vepletely treated and healed all your wounds. We''ll just conduct a final check-up, and then you''ll be discharged immediately."


    It wasn''t long before Rui left the medical wing in his sparring uniform, heading straight to the offensive technique training facility.


    "You''re back!" Squire Dylon eximed when he saw Rui walking in.


    Rui smiled in response. "Instructor Dylon."


    "I''m really sorry for what I did, my boy." Dylon sighed as he apologized. "I lost control there for a second."<novelnext>  </novelnext>


    Rui shrugged. "No worries, sir. In hindsight, it gave me a much better understanding of what Martial Squires actually are capable of. Squire Kyrie has always held back and the Martial Squire my friends and I defeated could not be considered a genuine Martial Squire. In hindsight, I''m d that you did what you did."


    Rui nodded, consoling Dylon.


    "I''m d you feel that way." Dylon sighed in relief. "Though I wouldn''t hold it against you if you were resentful. A direct hit with a Squire-level attack would kill most Martial Apprentices."


    Rui shook his head, chuckling. The two bantered some more as Rui revealed that he was going to be leaving the Martial Academy very soon.


    "Is that so..." Squire Dylon sighed, with a mixed smile. "I might be joining you very soon."


    "Did you n to retire as an instructor?" Rui knitted his eyebrows in confusion.Please check at N/?vel(D)rama.Org.


    "No." He shook his head. "But, the ident in our spar might lose me my job."


    Rui''s eyes narrowed at those words. "I see... Don''t worry, I''m sure that the Martial Academy will recognize that this isn''t something worth losing a Martial Squire instructor of your caliber. I have learned a lot from you, and I''m grateful for all of it. I''m sure there are many Martial Apprentices who feel the same way."


    "You''re going to bring tears to the eyes of this old man." Squire Dylon chuckled, before gesturing Rui away. "Good luck, and goodbye."


    Rui left the training facility after bidding him goodbye before immediately heading to the reception of the Martial Academy.


    "Excuse me?" Rui asked one of the support staff.


    "Yes? How may I help you?" She asked.


    "May I have a sheer of paper and a pen?" He asked, promptly epting them from her.


    He sat down at one of the tables and began writing a letter. It took him nearly ten minutes before he was done. He walked over to the receptionist before handing her the piece of paper. "Could I request you to please pass on that letter to headmaster Aronian?"


    "Of course, Apprentice Quarrier." The receptionist bowed towards him, carefully epting the folded letter.


    "Thank you." Rui turned around as he made his way back to his dormitory room. He had plenty to think about now that he had finished some smaller matters. Yet immediately, a staff membere to inform him that the headmaster had summoned him.


    "Right now?" Rui asked.


    "Yes." The staff member replied.


    "Alright." Rui nodded. (''That was quick.'')


    It took him a while, but he reached the headmaster''s office shortly.


    "Headmaster Aronian." Rui bowed deeply as he expressed the respect earned by a Martial Artist of the upper Realms.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 381 Discussion

    "Hm." Headmaster Aronian nodded. "Interesting letter. You don''t want Squire Dylon to be penalized for his actions?"


    "Yes sir." Rui nodded, affirming. "He certainly didn''t mean any harm and the ident wasn''t truly his fault. I''m certain I could force a simr reaction out of every Martial Squire that wasn''t aware of that capability of mine."


    "You can, can you?" Headmaster Aronian chuckled.


    "I''m certain that I can." Rui reaffirmed, projecting confidence.


    In truth, he didn''t truly know that for a fact. But he wanted to make sure to convey that Dylon wasn''t particrly at any fault.


    "Your statement will be taken into consideration. However, not only can I not promise anything, I cannot divulge any information on the matter to a mere student." Headmaster Aronian firmly said.


    "I see, thank you for hearing me out regardless, headmaster." Rui sighed. He couldn''t really do anything beyond appealing for Squire Dylon.


    "As for the other matter mentioned in the letter." Headmaster Aronian nced back at it.


    "I believe it''s time for me to leave the Academy. I just wanted to consult you on the matter." Rui confirmed.


    "Hoho." He chuckled in response. "I do not have any input to offer outside of encouraging you to do what you feel is best."


    "I see..." Rui murmured. "In that case, I would like to graduate as soon as possible."


    "Alright then." Headmaster Aronian nodded. "That can be arranged. Your learner''s license will be updated to a full-fledged Martial license once you do graduate and the debt you undertook when you enrolled in the Acadamy will be in effect in the new contract you sign with the Martial Union. You do recall the terms and conditions of the contract, yes?"


    "A quarter of my earnings of the fifty-fifty split goes to the Martial Union until the debt is repaid" Rui nodded, sighing.


    This meant he would receive only thirty-seven-point-five percent of the totalmission paid for every mission he sessfullypleted. The silver lining of the matter was that the Martial Union did not charge any interest over debt. As long as Rui paid back the exact amount he had borrowed, the debt was considered settled.


    This was an odd policy on the surface, but Rui understood the reason for it. The fundamental and most important goal of the Martial Academy was to produce as manypetent Martial Artists as possible, not to make as much money as possible. Crippling young graduates with a brutal interest rate that wouldpound over the years and suffocate them for more than a decade was not the intention of the Martial Union.


    Enacting such a policy would only reduce the power of these young Martial Artists due to their inability to purchase techniques and training resources due to being crippled by debt. It would also result in an increase in the mortality rate of young graduates whilepleting missions due to hindered capability to purchase necessary and vital tools needed forpleting missions, like potions.<novelnext>  </novelnext>


    This was a disastrous oue for the Martial Union. Thus, the debt did notpound interest. Nor was there a time limit to the debt. It did not shackle the young graduates, merely put pressure on them toplete missions at a higher rate.


    "It''s a good thing you have umted a lump sum of Martial credits." Headmaster Aronian chimed in. "Credits can be exchanged with the Kandrian currency, and you''re going to need funds immediately after you graduate."


    Rui nodded. Once he graduated, he could no longer mooch off of the Martial Academy for providing the resources needed forpleting missions. He would need to purchase every tool, potion, mask, and other item mandated and rmended to be carried by the Martial Union.


    All this time, the Martial Academy had funded the supplies for those resources, and the debt he had incurred included the cost of three years'' worth of supplies of needed resources. It would take him a long time of sustained missions to repay all of the debt he owed the Martial Academy and the Martial Union by extension.


    "Have you decided what sses of missions you are most interested in?" Headmaster Aronian asked.


    Generally, Martial Artists used their time in the Martial Academies to get a good understanding of each ss of missions before sticking to one, sometimes two sses of missions. Generally, offense-oriented Martial Artists stick with offense-oriented missions, and asionally hunter-ss missions. Defense-oriented Martial Artists did the same with defense-ss missions and hunter-ss as well. However, the situation was usually moreplicated for non-specialists, especially non-specialists like Rui who was an all-rounder.Please check at N/?vel(D)rama.Org.


    He had no particr affinity to any of the sses of missions in particr. Since hisst training stage, he had mastered techniques that would allow him to bepetent at even shadow-ss missions.


    "I''m afraid I haven''t decided yet." Rui said. "I think I''ll just stick to all sses, I don''t have any particr affinities within them and I do think I would be better off if I periodicallypleted missions from all of them. I was especially surprised at how well a lot of misceneous missions suited me." Rui noted.


    The representative missions with Nartha gave him a chance to test himself against a wide variety of Martial Artists. He had served as her representative fighter many a time.


    "I see." Headmaster Aronian nodded. "That is a model that most all-rounders like yourself adopt, however that needn''t be the case with you."


    "Why do you say that?" Rui asked inquisitively.


    "Because you have garnered arge number of personalmissions." Headmaster Aronian replied simply. "Thanks to that you have gained ess tomission opportunities that most Martial Artists won''t."


    "Ah..." Rui scratched his head awkwardly.


    Hismission inbox had blown up withmissions from many elite and wealthy clienteles across the nation. There were a number of reasons for this. His fame as the Martial Contest finalist, his fame in the Martial Games, and the fame he acquired thanks to killing Squire Freelia Cae. He had be a bit of a celebrity in the Martial circles of the Kandrian Empire.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 382 Inspection

    "It''s true," Rui admitted. "Personalmissions are quite interesting and unique many a time."


    "Indeed. They''re generally quite lucrative." The headmaster added. "Though their difficulty is usually higher too."


    "Although I enjoy personalmissions, I prefer international missions more." Rui chimed.


    "Oh?" Headmaster Aronian raised an eyebrow in interest. "Why is that?"


    "Well. I learn more about this world through them." Rui replied. "It''s a big wide world out there, I don''t want to limit myself to the Kandrian Empire. I also want to visit the Beast Domain on a mission this if possible."


    "Adventurous, aren''t you?" The headmaster smiled, amused. "The Beast Domain is quite dangerous. Be prepared, or else you will die."


    "I will, headmaster." Rui nodded.


    The jovial headmaster humored Rui for some time before their conversation came to a halt. They discussed a few more things of greater note, such as Rui''s graduation, before the headmaster concluded their talk, bidding Rui farewell.


    "Thank you for all your help not just with these matters, but also for everything in the past three years." Rui bowed deeply with sincere respect and gratitude.


    "Hoho, not at all." Headmaster Aronian. "Be careful and never forget; always be true to your Martial Path."


    "Yes sir." Rui nodded. "Goodbye."


    He turned around, leaving the headmaster''s office as he sighed in relief, massaging his head. Headmaster Aronian was a pleasant person, but as a Martial Master, the pressure he exerted on Rui was not small. Rui felt like a weight had been lifted off of his shoulders.


    "What now?" He wondered aloud.


    He strolled around the Academy aimlessly as he immersed himself in his thoughts. "Hm..."


    His mind fell back to the spar with Squire Dylon. He had learned a lot about his newbat prowess in that sparring match thanks to facing an opponent who could actually take him on and defeat him soundly, although he was defeated more soundly than he had hoped for.


    Still, there were plenty of conclusions that could be drawn from it. "The Mindmirror brain really is something else. It was an absolutely perfect move on my part to purchase that technique."<novelnext>  </novelnext>


    He didn''t normally toot his own horn, but the Mindmirror Symbiote had turned out to be such an extraordinarily powerful andpatible technique that purchasing it was probably the second most important purchase of a technique he had ever made. The top spot, of course, went to the Mind Pce technique which was the only reason the VOID algorithm was viable in the first ce.


    He had cleared most of the difficulty of the grade-ten difficulty of the technique as well. The only existing negative impact was his sleeplessness tolerance. He sighed as he painfully recollected that this would be thest time he could purchase and master six techniques in six months.


    He could quite clearly feel the strain that the Secondary Brain permanently exerted on his brain from the moment he finished his Mind Embed fully. Normally, the host of the symbiote would need to sleep for an extra few hours so that the brain could use that rest time to recover from the fatigue caused by the strain that the Mindmirror Symbiote exerted on his brain. However, his mind was capable of bearing the strain without needing extra sleep. However, he would no longer be able to go for long periods without sleep now.


    "Still, it was worth it." Rui shook his head. The sheer boost in the perfection with which he used the VOID algorithm alone was worth it. But the general overall boost to hisbat prowess was not small. With his current prowess, Rui was truly a cut apart from his peers.


    However, the Mindmirror Symbiote wasn''t the only thing he had mastered in his training stage. Although it had certainly stolen the spotlight, it wasn''t the only technique he had mastered.


    The Mind Mask technique was also a spectacr sess. It was a shocking sess. At the very least, he hade prepared with what to expect with the Mindmirror Symbiote, but he had been absolutely shocked by the results of the Mind Mask technique.


    How on Earth could he have known he would have projected Squire-level danger and pressure? He had simply done his best. The interaction between the Mindmirror Symbiote and the Mind Mask techniques was almost unfairly effective.This content is ? N?velDrama.Org.


    "Putting those two freaks aside, the other techniques were also quite solid." Rui nodded.


    The Shadow Step techniques was a very good technique by itself, however, when he paired it up with the Mind Mask technique, its effectivity rose significantly. Together they were on par with grade-nine techniques rather than the grade-seven technique that it originally was. Furthermore, if used inbination with Blink, then it was truly a force to be reckoned with. Although it still felt short of Kane''s Void Step technique, Rui could take pride in his stealth capabilities.


    "The Final Breathing technique was also effective." Rui nodded. He had used it when Squire Dylon had walloped him away with a Squire-level attack, it had mitigated the damage significantly even after he lost consciousness. It was a technique that could be used even when unconscious.


    "The Reverberating Lance was certainly good... But unfortunately, Martial Squires aren''t the right opponents to get a good understanding of it." Rui murmured.


    Martial Squires were essentially hyper-evolved human beings as far as physique went. Unlike Martial Apprentices, their inner body wasn''t weak and easy to hurt as a Martial Apprentice. Therefore the Reverberating Lance technique did not have too much relevance when he, a Martial Apprentice, used it against a Martial Squire, it simply wasn''t as effective as it was. Thus, he didn''t get too good of a grasp of how strong the technique was.


    "Should I hit Nartha up?" He wondered, before shaking his head.


    The Martial Apprentices of the Martial Games weren''t weak in general, but they certainly weren''t a threat to him at his current level.


    "People are either too strong or too weak." He sighed. He wondered if there were other Martial Apprentices out there who were also perhaps quasi-Squire level like he was.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 383 Graduation

    "Maybe there are beasts in the Beast Domain who can suit my needs." Rui pondered aloud. If Martial Artists weren''t able to cut it, then maybe powerful Apprentice-level beasts could.


    After all, wasn''t the whole purpose of purchasing the Reverberating Lance technique to be able to harm beasts with great body mass?


    Rui shrugged. "Alright, why not?"


    He put that on his checklist. He had nned to enter the Beast Domain before he entered hisst training stage.


    "But there''s still something left to do before that..." Rui murmured.


    A week passed.


    The many Martial Apprentices of the Martial Academy had gathered at the main hall of the Martial Academy before the elevated podium. Upon the podium was Headmaster Aronian. He gazed at all the Martial Apprentices before him, before addressing them.


    "Today we gather to celebrate the graduation of a peer of all of you. A fellow peer who joined the Academy and is now ready to step out and move forward with his life." He began, before continuing. "The Martial Academy is a haven for Martial Art. It fosters the foundations needed for Martial Art in the Foundation Stage while also creating an environment within which all of you could immerse yourselves within yourselves and Martial Art before discovering your Martial Path."


    He paused, before continuing. "Yet therees a time when your Martial Path grows too deep for a mere academy to contain. Someday all of you will depart this ce that has sustained your growth, as you follow your Martial Path. Someday this ce will cease to be a haven and turn more into a shackle. When that dayes, you will leave, as you must. Today is that day for Apprentice Rui Quarrier. He joined this Academy three years ago, and today is that day. The day he departs this Academy and bes a true full-fledged and independent Martial Artist. Please wee Apprentice Rui Quarrier for his farewell with a round of apuse."


    Headmaster Aronian gestured at Rui as he walked on stage, drowned by a wave of loud apuse. It took more than just several seconds for the apuse to die down. The Martial Apprentices of the Martial Academy hade to develop an immense amount of respect and admiration for him, and it reflected. He was a source of inspiration for many who had witnessed his astronomical rise in the span of three years in the Academy. There were more than just a few Martial Apprentices in the crowd who were part of his batch of students of the Martial Academy, although that fact did not matter once students reached the Explorer Stage.


    "Ahem." Rui cleared his throat as the apuse finally died down. "I won''t bore all of you with a super long boring speech, especially since this will probably be thest time I see many of you. In the past three years, I have shared countless spars with all of you. We have all forged ourselves with the heat of our peers and we have all grown stronger as a result. I do believe that I would not be here today if not for you, my peers, and especially those of you that I truly consider friends."


    He said as he grinned at the beaming faces of his Kane, Fae, Nel, Hever, Milliana, and Dalen down at the crowd.


    "I would like to thank all of you, not just my peers and friends, but also all of the Squire instructors of our Academy for all the tutge and guidance you have showered me with as I pursued my Martial Path and developed my Martial Art. I would like to extend a special thanks to instructor Kyrie and instructor Dylon for the aid they have provided me with in my time in the Academy." Rui mentioned both of them. "I would like to thank headmaster Aronian who has aided me with his wisdom whenever I was in need of it. I would like to thank all of the staff of the Martial Academy for ensuring this gigantic andplex institute is always running smoothly. Thank you all for all you''ve done for me. I will now be taking the next step into the next phase of my life and I hope that all of you seed in the pursuit of your Martial Path. Thank you, and farewell."


    He bowed deeply as not only the Martial Apprentices but all those who had attended the convocation began pping loudly. A thunderous apuse resonated across the hall as Rui rose before making his way off the podium and into the crowd.<novelnext>  </novelnext>


    He interacted with all of them, epting their congrattions and well wishes until he reached his friends.


    "So." Kane sighed. "You''re leaving already huh?"


    "You''re supposed to say ''congrattions Rui'' there." Fae threw a disapproving look at him.Please check at N/?vel(D)rama.Org.


    "Wait till I graduate!" Nel grinned. "I''ll be even stronger than you!"


    "Good luck with your further endeavors." Hever calmly wished him, nodding.


    "It feels quite surreal to think that you''ll be leaving the Academy," Dalen muttered.


    "Congrattions." even the normally mute Milliana wished him.


    "Thanks." Ruiughed, before reassuring all of them. "Nothing much changes, if you ask me. We can still hang out and evenplete missions together regardless."


    They bantered a bit before he bade them an emotional farewell before heading back to his dorm room with Kane.


    On his bedy the same old cloth back that he had brought with him when he first joined the Martial Academy three years ago. The sight of it still brought back waves of nostalgia from back then. He felt wistful about leaving the Martial Academy, yet his eagerness of being an independent full-fledged Martial Artist was even greater.


    "So you''re really leaving huh?" Kane sighed.


    Rui turned to face him. "Hey man, cheer up. You''re still my best friend. We can still hang out and do missions together."


    "Yeah, it''s just going to get duller without you here anymore." Kane sighed. "Maybe I ought to leave the Martial Academy too."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 384 Return

    "Are you ready to leave the Academy?" Rui raised an eyebrow.


    Generally, students graduated when the Academy no longer provided much utility to them, or when they were no longer merited to remain in the Martial Academy. In either case, the Martial Academy would graduate them and they would go on to operate as full-fledged Martial Artists.


    "No," Kane admitted, sighing. "I need to grow stronger if I want to be able to forcefully gain my independence from Arrancar Family. Furthermore, if I leave now I''ll just end up under their clutches."


    "Right." Rui nodded, sighing. "Do what''s best for your future Kane, that''s what''s most important at the end of the day."


    "Yeah, I know, it''s just a shame we won''t be able to hang out anymore," Kane remarked.


    "Like I said, we can still take missions together," Rui told him. "So cheer up, it''s not all that bad."


    "Yeah, I know." Kane sighed gloomily.


    Soon it was time for Rui to depart the Martial Academy. He took his time bidding farewell to the many acquaintances he had made in his time in the Martial Academy. His close friends, peers, instructors, and other staff. Finally he stood at the gate, ready to leave.


    "Man." Rui muttered. "I''m going to miss this ce."


    He turned around and walked past the gates of the Martial Academy, no longer a student.


    From now on, he was a full-fledged independent Martial Artist. And now the burden of debt that he had incurred over the past few years would not actually be ced on his shoulders. The sum had been calcted and given to him before he departed, and the sheer amount was not something that could be repaid in any short amount of time.


    "For now, I should forget about staying independent." Rui shook his head.


    He immediately began jogging towards the Quarrier Orphanage. This is where he would be staying until he repaid all his debt, at the very least.


    It didn''t take long for Rui to reach the Quarrier Orphanage. He was greeted the second he reached the gates.


    "RUIIII!" Alice squealed energetically when he reached the Orphanage, as she pulled him for a hug. "You''ve grown so tall!"


    "Thanks." Rui squeezed. "Good to see you too, Alice. You''re choking me you know."


    "Ahhh~ my bad my bad." Sheughed as she let go of Rui. "Come in. I''m so d you''re back!"


    Rui let her drag her in with an amused smile as the other members of the Orphanage. The children and the adults of the Quarrier Orphanage quickly swarmed him as they greeted him.


    "Congrattions on graduating from the Academy." Farion smiled as he hugged Rui.


    "Hehe, so you''ve be a full-fledged Martial Artist now, eh?" Nina smiled.


    "Congrattions Rui." Julian smiled weingly. "You''ve trulye a long way."


    "Big brother!" Max and Mana greeted him as the children followed suit. "You''re back, teach us Martial Art."


    "Alright alright." Ruiughed. "Good to finally be back with all of you."


    "Rui." Lashara called out to him.<novelnext>  </novelnext>


    "Mom." Rui walked towards her.


    "My precious baby." She pulled him for a hug.


    He remained lowered until she was finally satisfied, letting go. "You''ll be staying here?"


    "For the foreseeable future, surely." Rui confirmed.


    The orphanage fawned over him some more before finally letting him be.


    "Phew." He copsed into a couch.


    "So." Julian sat across from him. "What do you n to do from here on?"


    "Nothing much has changed really." Rui shrugged. "I don''t believe I''m too far from the Squire Realm, and that is my immediate goal."This content is ? N?velDrama.Org.


    "I see." Julian sipped some tea. "Will the debt hinder you too much?"


    "Hmmm..." Rui pondered. "It will impede me to a certain extent I would imagine, but it doesn''t change too much. At the end of the day, I still n onpleting missions and that doesn''t change regardless if I''m in debt or not."


    "What about the cost of training and growth resources?" Julian asked.


    Previously, the cost of the training and growth resources were all covered by the Martial Academy outside of the cost of gaining ess to techniques. Rui could simply walk in and purchase the techniques that he wanted and immediately begin training with the training equipment and resources that he needed while being guided by a veteran Martial Squire with arge amount of experience in guiding Martial Apprentices with the training and mastery of those particr techniques. He could use all the rejuvenation potions he wanted in the world without a care.


    "Well..." Rui scratched his head awkwardly. "That''s going to be much harder than it used to be."


    The Martial union offered essentially the exact same resources the Martial Academy did, but all of them cost the Martial Apprentices. These resources weren''t cheap.


    "Thankfully, my training and growth resources needs have reduced tremendously." He told Julian.


    "Oh?" Julian frowned. "Why is that?"


    Rui proceeded to tell Julian everything about the Mindmirror Symbiote.


    "Fascinating." Julian''s eyes lit up with interest. "That''s quite remarkable. I know of symbiotic Martial Art, but I''ve never heard about the Mindmirror Symbiote before. It''s genuinely shocking to know that such extreme symbiotes exist."


    "Yeah." Rui nodded. "I was pretty shocked too."


    "In that case, the reduced training and mastery speed might actually be perfectly timed." Julian spected. "Since you no longer have the ability to train for free, it''s quite likely that the debt you''re enduring will also prevent you from training at your previous speed. So your financial constraints match your mental constraints."


    Rui nodded. "True, this is one of the considerations I had when I picked the Mindmirror Symbiote for my previous training stage. I knew I would be leaving the Martial Academy once the training stage ended. Thus, it would coincide very well with my debt constraints and I would avoid wasting potential that could have been used to grow stronger faster."


    "That''s quite wise of you." Julian nodded.


    The two of them conversed for quite some time before it was time for lunch."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 385 Purchase

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    Rui spent a few days with the Quarrier Orphanage as he took his time to settle in. The Quarrier Orphanage had grown a lot thanks to the number of adults working in the orphanage that had grown since Rui was a child as well as Julian''s funding and support. Rui got his own room in the Quarrier Orphanage, which was certainly something he needed. Although he loved his family dearly, he had be extremely ustomed to privacy in the Martial Academy and was not willing to go back to the dormitory halls if he could have avoided it.


    Even in his previous life on Earth, he had valued his privacy immensely. In the early years of his second life, he had willingly tolerated the dormitory hall because of the fact that he was still a child. But now he was a contributing adult and he had the right to his own room. His being a Martial Artist was also quite helpful in that Martial Artists had a special status in human societies.


    After a few days of getting limatized to living in the Quarrier Orphanage, he had decided it was time to resume his mission undertaking. He headed over to the Martial Union headquarters early in the morning that day, looking for missions.


    "Excuse me." Rui addressed a staff member after having reached themissions'' department. "May I gain ess to my inbox of personalmissions?"


    "Of course." She replied. "Is there something wrong with your ounter?"


    "My ounter?" Rui frowned. "What''s that?"


    "Ah, you aren''t aware." She surmised. "An ounter is a device that allows you to ess your ount at the Martial Union that allows you to ess the information pertaining to you in the Martial Union such as your profile, data on the missions you''vepleted, your inbox, and other aspects of you as a Martial Artist. It also allows for easiermunication between you and others to contact you whether it be from within the Martial Union or clientele interested in contacting you. It''s not mandatory or necessary, but generally, Martial Artists with a need to have quick and easy ess to this information purchase one."


    "I see." Rui''s eyes lit up. "Where can I purchase one?"


    "You can purchase them at themercial wing of the Martial Union." She replied.


    "Thank you."


    Rui immediately headed to themercial wing. It was an entire chunk of the Martial Union, extending over a wide area. There were various sections within themercial wing selling all kinds of products for Martial Artists including potions, garbs, masks, monocrs, and other tools Martial Artists generally carried or used whenpleting missions.


    "Wow." Rui murmured. He felt as though he had entered one of the gigantic shopping mallplexes from Earth. "Guess this won''t be thest time Ie here."


    From this point on, he would need to purchase his own supplies by himself from the shopping wing. No longer would things be handed to him on a silver tter.


    "Excuse me." He addressed one of the support staff members in the digital device section of themercial wing. "I''m looking for an ounter."


    "Of course." She replied. "What kind of an ounter are you looking for?"<novelnext>  </novelnext>


    "My knowledge of the devices is extremely shallow, but I would like one with longevity and high functionality in the basic features of an ounter. Meaning I can reliably ess my profile and inbox and contact people reliably at all times. However, I do not require any additional features."


    "Understood, in that case, I would rmend the SM-16 to you." She brought out a box with a product in it. "It''s part of the standard model series developed by the Martial Union itself specifically meant for its reliability in the basic features that it has. It''s one of the mostmon no-nonsense type digital ounters that allow you to rely on it at any time."


    Rui nodded. "How much does it cost?"


    "About ny-three gold coins and seven silver coins." She replied. "About two thousand four hundred and forty Martial credits."


    Rui winced at the price, before slightly shaking his head. Thisrgely confirmed what he had always suspected about digital technology based on esoteric resources. Fifty-three gold coins were an immense sum for a single digital device. A single gold coin was worth ten silver coins and a silver coin was worth a hundred bronze coins.


    The lower echelons of the Kandrian Empire earned and spent bronze and silver coins. Middle-ss citizens earned and spent silver and gold coins whereas only the upper ss of society could really afford to splurge ny-three gold coins on a single digital device such as an ounter of this sort.


    This reinforced the fact that the cost of production of digital currency was high, too high for it to be viable for mass production. It was quite likely the cost of the esotericpounds that allowed for the digital device to function were valuable and umon. This was really the only usible reason why it cost nearly a hundred gold coins for a digital device that, on Earth, wouldn''t have cost him more than fifty dors.


    Once he made the purchase, she quickly set up the device and registered him into his ount, and showed him how to use it.


    The disy technology was not nearly as refined as the disy technology of Earth, but it served its purpose. It was a little choppy and roughpared to high definition disy technology of Earth.


    "...And this is how you view your inbox." She finished her exnation. "It runs of energy cells that need to periodically be reced. It is rmended that you purchase an extra cell and keep it on your person at all times so that you can easily rece it if the cell dies during an important time. It has a warranty of three months so be mindful of that as well."


    "How much does the cell cost?" Rui inquired.


    "About twenty-five gold coins." She replied straightforwardly.


    "..."


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 Chapter 386 Interesting

    Rui took a seat after he purchased his ounter. He scrolled through his profile in interest.


    "Grade ten." He murmured. He felt the grade was no longer apt for his current level of power. He was a grade-ten Martial Apprentice even before he grew significantly stronger thanks to the previous training stage.Exclusive content from N?velDrama.Org.


    He scrolled through his profile, ncing over all the details it specified before going over his inbox. He had opened his inbox formissions a while back when he came out of training.


    "Woah." His eyes widened. "Three hundred and twelve personalmissions?!"


    Rui''s fame had pierced into the right circles in the Kandrian Empire. There were many with more than enough wealth tomission him, who were willing to splurge in order to gain the services of one of the best Martial Apprentices in the Kandrian Empire.


    Of course, the only reason not every single clientele in the Kandrian Empire coveted him was because there often was a thin line between peak Martial Apprentices and Martial Squires in so far as whether wealthy clientele wished to hire the former or thetter. If a mission was difficult even by grade-ten standards, then many wealthy clientele would rather not take any chances and hire a Martial Squire who is guaranteed to seed.


    Rui sat down as he took his time browsing through the many personalmissions made for him. They were, as always, diverse and varied.


    The sheer number of personalmissions he had received were not something he would be able to finish in a short period of time. He quickly began screening them one by one.


    "Man." He muttered. "There are so many personalmissions for a personal fighter."


    Ever since his identity got revealed in the Martial Games he had eternally been flooded bymissions to represent the clientele as their representative fighter in events simr to the Martial Games across the Kandrian Empire. The many elite participants of the Martial Games had finally learned of his true identity and sought tomission him with hefty bonuses, hoping to rope him in.


    Of course, Rui wasn''t all that interested in permanently participating in the Martial Games. The Martial Games was perfect for him a year ago, but at his current level of power, he was too strong for any Martial Apprentice he had ever faced.


    He ignored all representative fightermissions for the time period.


    He also threw away all defense-ss missions. Frankly, they weren''t worth the time in his opinion. These missions despite their difficulty never fully guaranteed conflict that would give him the realbat experience that he was looking for. Unless he was absolutely certain he would see action, he would rather avoid bodyguard missions if he could.


    "There is a surprising amount of shadow ss missions." His eyes lit up in interest. "Maybe I''ll take one of them this time around."


    He didn''t expect to be personallymissioned with shadow ss missions because they were usually the most divergent and demanding ss of missions as far as the skillset necessary. One needed to have good stealth and information-gathering capabilities. Rui had no history or experience with stealth, nor was it indicated in his profile that he had such capabilities, thus he was a bit curious as to why anyone wouldmission him for a shadow ss mission.


    "Espionage, eh?" He mused as he read through the information volunteered by a clientele.


    [Shadow ss mission: Espionage


    Cliele: Hruvalian Inc.


    The target of Mission: Freefel limited.<novelnext>  </novelnext>


    Difficulty grade: 7


    Missionmencement: immediate.


    Sessful remunerationpletion: 60 gold coins.


    Mission execution location: Freefel limited branch office, the town of Kining, Kingdom of Verlis.


    Mission summary: To gather ssified and confidential information on the research and development projects of the Freefel limited corporation.]


    "Interesting." Rui murmured. "The clientele is based within the Kandrian Empire, but the target is in a different country."


    Rui shook his head. Although he was interested in undertaking shadow ss missions, he did not want to engage in something as boring as corporate espionage. It was one of the most boring kinds of missions that only exercised stealth and information-gathering capabilities. It wasn''t a field that would give him the realbat experience he was looking for.


    It was also the type of mission that required an immense amount of patience. He was simply unwilling to engage in nonbat-orientedmissions unless he really needed to.


    His need for direct head-on conflict conflicted with how shadow-ss missions worked, fundamentally. The defining condition for a mission to fall into the shadow ss was the necessarily covert nature of the mission. The missions needed to be furtive and ndestine. This usually meant head-on open conflict was automatically not an option unless absolutely necessary.


    He kept scrolling until he ran into an interesting mission.


    [Hunter ss mission: Surveince


    Clientele: Ministry of Environment and Ecology


    The target of mission: The Serevian teau, Beast Domain


    Difficulty grade: 9


    Mission summary: A variety of mysterious and unnatural environmental and ecological changes have urred within the Serevian teau. These changes include changes in migration patterns of fauna, changes in flora density and distribution, unnatural seismic radiation, and other phenomena. The cause is suspected to be singr and thus simpler to identify. The mission goal is to primarily identify the cause and eliminate it if possible.]


    "Interesting..." Rui murmured. This was the first mission pertaining to the Beast Domain that he had evere across before. What was interesting was that this wasn''t a personalmission but rather a mission rmendation from the Martial Union as far aspatibility went.


    "I suppose the mission does suit me to some extent," Rui admitted. A phenomenon that required sensory capability, specifically when seismic radiation was involved was one that he possessed the skill to handle.


    Furthermore, the Beast Domain was dangerous even for Martial Apprentices and only the upper echelons were qualified to enter even the outskirt regions such as the designated mission location of the mission at hand. Rui stared at it contemtively, it was certainly an attractive choice.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 387 Comprehension

    "Well, let me look at some other options before I decide." he shrugged.


    He skimmed through his inbox, carefully going through the other missions.


    The kinds of missions in his inbox were diverse. The mostmon ss of missions he got was the defense-ss missions followed by the hunter-ss and finally; the offense-ss missions. The offense-ss missions were the fewest due to the restriction of offense-ss missions


    Eventually, he stopped, shaking his head.


    "It''s not that these missions aren''t good, they''re just not new or interesting to me." Rui murmured.


    It had been nearly two years since he had begunpleting missions, and he had gained plenty of experience in the offense, defense, hunter, and misceneous sses of missions. The only missions truly outside of his experience were the Beast Domain and the shadow-ss missions.


    Although he certainly intended to try his hand at shadow-ss missions, for now, he wanted missions that would put him in head-on straightforward conflict. This way he could bolster his current Martial Art with experience.


    Even if the Beast Domain mission was a surveince mission, the fact that it was the Beast Domain and was a grade nine mission meant that the mission was certainly going to put him to the test. Normally, grade nine missions were too easy for someone of his caliber, but that applied to human missions. The VOID algorithm''s ipatibility with non-human conflict meant that he would have a harder time with this mission than he would for any other human mission of the same grade.


    That on top of the fact that he would be visiting the Beast Domain for the first time made it the most alluring mission in his inbox at the moment.


    "Alright. Screw it, let''s go ahead with it." He shrugged. It wasn''t like he wouldn''t get a chance to undergo the other kinds of missions. He was one of the most sought-after Martial Apprentices in the Kandrian Empire. Commissions would flood him regardless of whether he wanted them or not. Furthermore, the Martial union received a huge influx ofmissions from across the country and from arge number of foreign nations surrounding the Kandrian Empire in the geographic vicinity.


    He headed back to themissions'' department, approaching the support staff.


    "Excuse me." Rui addressed them. "I wish to officially ept amission that was rmended to me by the Martial Union."


    He said as he showed them themission that he wanted to ept, as well as all the details.


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    "Just one moment." She said taking down the details before operating her digital terminal. "Please provide me with your Martial license."


    Rui reached for his pouch as he procured the shiny glistening license card and passed it over to her. His learner''s Martial license had already been upgraded to a full-fledged Martial license when he graduated from the Martial Academy.


    "It''ll require you to sign some paperwork, sir." She told him as she passed him a thin stack of paper.<novelnext>  </novelnext>


    Rui sped through as he sped through the forms filling up the details that needed to be filled while signing the ces that needed to be signed.


    "Everything is in order." She nodded after verifying the papers that he returned, before stamping all of them with the seal of the Martial Union. "You are now the registered Martial Artist designated to thismission. Kindly wait as the mission bill is procured by our staff."


    Rui nodded. It wasn''t long before he was seated at one of the tables engrossed in the missions bill of themission.


    "Alright now," Rui muttered. "Let''s get a closer look at this baby."


    The mission bill gave him the context behind themission after the basic details.


    The Serevian teau was a part of the outermostyer of the Beast Domain that made contact with and even infiltrated into human civilization. It was a t in that extended tens of thousands of square kilometers. It was sort of a pocket of uninhabited naturalnd that had prated into the human domain and was somewhat far from the Kandrian Empire geographically, to the point that it was equally close to the other three first-world nations geographically.


    This meant that if Rui epted this mission, he would be traveling further away from the Kandrian Empire than he ever had. This was an exciting notion for him, he looked forward to being so distant from the Kandrian Empire for the very first time.


    He turned back to the mission bill as he continued reading.


    The Serevian teau was topographically t and even, as teaus always were. The minimumbat prowess capability required to survive in the Serevian teau was grade seven, as evaluated by the Martial union and the Ministry of Ecology and Environment, the clientele of themission.


    Rui raised his eyes at those words. (''Grade seven is the bare minimum needed to survive?'')


    He frowned. In ordinary natural habitats that weren''t considered part of the Beast Domain, grade-seven Martial Apprentices would be usually at the very top of the food chain. Yet even in the outermost and safest parts of the Beast Domain, they were just marginally able to survive in the Beast Domain?


    Rui recalled when he was a grade-seven Martial Apprentice, he had been quite impressive by general standards back then and had been able to reach the finals of the Martial Contest.


    (''The Beast Domain must be built different.'') He noted while his eyes lit up with eagerness. He moved on after absorbing the general information on the Serevian teau, reaching the actual point of themissions.


    The Serevian teau had very recently experienced a rather bizarre and abrupt change in several ecological and environmental parameters including migration patterns, seismic radiation, temperature, and even weather.


    Drastic changes in these parameters in a rather brief period of time were quite confusing and puzzling to the Ministry of Environment and Ecology which also overlooked the uninhabited natural habitats and environments anywhere even remotely within the geographic vicinity of the Kandrian Empire.


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 Chapter 388 Details

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    The Ministry of Environment and Ecology strongly suspects that the cause for all the environmental and ecological changes lies at the core of the Serevian teau based on the triangtion of seismic radiation, and extrapting from the measurements of the intensity of changes across the entire region.


    That was where Rui came in. The core of the Serevian teau was too dangerous to even grade-nine Martial Apprentices. Only grade-ten Martial Apprentices were capable ofpleting the missions. Furthermore, the number of grade-ten Martial Apprentices who had mastered something like Seismic Mapping was extremely low. However, that wasn''t the only reason Rui was ideal for the mission.


    "Fauna Flow must have been a deciding factor as well," Rui murmured.


    Fauna Flow allowed him tomunicate with fauna species. The effectivity of which depended on the intelligence of the creature, in particr, he was trying to converse with using the technique. This technique likely yed a role in his suitability for the mission. Being able to gather information from the fauna creatures in the Serevian teau likely increased hispatibility with the mission.


    The actual objective of the mission was primarily to gather information about the phenomenon responsible for the change. To detect, observe, and rigorously document said phenomenon and potentially eliminate the target if needed.


    The Martial Union and the Ministry of Environment and Ecology provided him with the devices he would need in order to document the phenomenon with the required rigor that the Ministry of Environment and Ecology needed. He would need to operate the surveince technology after he reached the core of the Serevian teau.


    The mission bill specified that he was required to memorize the protocols as well as the means by which the surveince and recording device provided to him was operated. He quickly inputted the data into his mind pce before quickly absorbing all the data on the functioning of the device.


    "Interesting," Rui remarked.


    This wasn''t the first time a hunter-ss mission required him to make use of surveince technology to document his findings so that they could be referenced once the mission concluded. In fact, his very first hunter-ss mission two years ago with the earthen basilisk required him to make use of simr surveince technology.


    Of course, the surveince device that he would be required to use in this mission was much more capable than the surveince device he had used back then. The surveince device back then was no more than a head cam that took basic photographic evidence of what needed to be documented. Back then, the Ministry of Environment and Ecology only wanted to figure out the identity of the earthen basilisk that had been wreaking havoc across the Shaia ins.


    This time, it wanted to know the cause of a set of high abrupt andplex ecological and environmental changes to the Serevian teau.


    This meant that Rui''s job would also be considerably moreplex. He had already confirmed that the operation of the surveince device was not simple and it would require much more than just straightforwardly pushing a button.


    Still, he had memorized the protocols perfectly and it wouldn''t be a problem for him.


    The secondary objective of getting rid of the cause of the environmental and ecological changes wasn''t absolute. The Ministry of Environment and Ecology would inform him of whether it even had to be fulfilled or not.<novelnext>  </novelnext>


    This was different from the attitude they took during the earthen basilisk mission where the elimination of the cause was non-negotiable and the only thing in question was whether Rui was qualified to undertake that mission.


    However, here, there wasn''t necessarily as much of an imperative. For one, the Serevian teau was far outside the Kandrian Empire. Therge geographical distinction between the locations of the two meant that it was extremely unlikely that the events urring within the Serevian teau could ever affect the Kandrian Empire.


    This was quite different from the situation of the Shaia ins which was inside the Kandrian Empire. The Ministry of Environment and Ecology kept a tight leash over the environment and ecological state of the uninhabited natural habitats within the Kandrian Empire.


    Inparison, the situation with the Serevian teau was more due to the professional interest that the Ministry of Environment and Ecology held.


    (''No, not entirely.'') Rui shook his head. (''Although the probability of the Kandrian Empire being affected by the events of the Serevian teau, it''s still not impossible. The earthen basilisk was originally from the Beast Domain. Yet, it migrated a gigantic distance and became a big problem, almost catastrophic.'')


    He hadn''t ever heard back from the Ministry on whether the earthen basilisk hatchlings had been sessfully contained by the subterranean Martial Artists that had been gathered to hunt and exterminate all of them. However, considering there wasn''t an epidemic of earthen basilisks in the Kandrian Empire, he could be rtively assured they had soundly seeded.


    He wasn''t surprised of course; the operation was allegedly led by Martial Squires. He knew first-hand how strong Martial Squires were. Those earthen basilisk brats never stood a chance.


    However, the earthen basilisks had allegedly migrated due to being too weak to survive in the Beast Domain. Whatever was affecting the Serevian teau was clearly not weak. If whatever was causing it, being it living or non-living, were to affect the Kandrian Empire, the results would not be pretty. It was quite likely that Martial Artists from Realms even above the Squire Realm may need to be involved.


    Rui shook his head, dispelling his pointless spections. "The mission was to bemenced immediately. So I guess they won''t have a problem if I travel there immediately."


    The journey would take a while, even for him. "I''m going to need several potions."


    He paused at his own words. "Speaking of which, I''ll need to start paying for all of them starting with this mission."


    He sighed. Potions weren''t cheap and he was going to need more than a few when entering the Beast Domain. He just hoped his umted credit was good enough.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 389 Instinct

    "Twenty-two gold coins for the rmended number of potions for this mission?" Rui winced. He was truly starting to feel the absence of the boons that the Martial Academy granted its students. Back when he was a student, he didn''t need to care about the price of potions of missions. Although the cost of potions was usually covered in the post-sessfulpletionmission fee, if he didn''t have the money to purchase it ahead of time then he would not be able tomence the mission.


    Furthermore, he used to receive theplete amount Martial Artists were normally entitled to without actually having to purchase them in the Martial Academy.


    Rui reluctantly coughed up the funds as he ced the potion vials in his pouch as prepared all the other things necessary. The final necessary piece of equipment for this mission would be supplied in the dispatch facility.


    "Apprentice Quarrier." A staff member bowed before gesturing him to a device on the table. "This is the bio-recon ES-263 device that you will be operating in your mission. The mission bill should cover all the information regarding this device but I shall still provide you with an exnation and demonstration. The device was designed by the Martial Union and the Ministry of Environment and Ecology in partnership to make the device user-friendly enough for Martial Artists who do not possess a background in Environmental technology."


    Rui nodded politely, letting her do her thing. He had found that staff members tended to waste their time less when he simply let them do as they pleased. Even when he had shown in the past that he mastered the Mind Pce technique, the staff members would pester him like he was a child who could be trusted.


    (''They must have been scarred by plenty of ipetent yet overconfident Martial Artists, surely.'') He mused.


    Thankfully, it didn''t take long.


    "Any questions?" She asked.Please check at N/?vel(D)rama.Org.


    "Just one, can you show me the..." He proceeded to ask a random question to convince her he was paying attention.


    Soon, it was time to depart.


    The Serevian teauy straightforwardly far west of the Kandrian Empire. It was a long journey on foot, even by Martial Artist standards. Rui would need around five hours to reach the location even if he sprinted the entire time.


    It would take him quite a while and he would require himself to exert himself to a high degree. He immediately employed his maneuvering techniques as well as Wind Breathing as he zoomed across the Mantian Region, and eventually the Kandrian Empire. At his current level, it only took three hours to exist the Kandrian Empire and head in the direction he wanted.


    He had momentarily paused as his departure was recorded by the gate security. Although he could vite the immigration policies of other nations, he could not do so for the Kandrian Empire.


    However, once he stepped outside the Kandrian Empire, he picked up speed. It was always fascinating to leave the Kandrian Empire and witness the world outside the Empire to Rui. Back on Earth, the world was thoroughly connected with an extremely dense and strong bond of information exchange thanks to the inte.<novelnext>  </novelnext>


    However, the same couldn''t be said for the Panama Continent. When he stepped outside the Kandrian Empire, he woulde across truly isted and disassociated people. People are disassociated with his knowledge and experience. There truly was a sense of novelty in his travels, a true sense of exploration, curiosity, and uncertainty. It was truly a euphoric experience.


    The temperature did not deviate as much as one would expect, however it was clear that the other environmental parameters varied greatly. As Rui traveled, he experienced a wide variety of weather, atmospheres, and environments.


    As time passed. Human civilization grew sparser and scarcer. The touches of human colonialization and inhabitation began reducing, bit by bit. It was only some time before he was running through what was effectively a forest before he even realized.


    Five hours passed until he finally reached it.


    "Huff... huff..." Rui crouched using his knees as a crutch as he quickly consumed a physical rejuvenation potion.


    He nced forward, walking slowly toward the edge of a sharp cliff ahead of him. The cliff sharply descended for hundreds of feet before hitting an even greater expanse of trees and other vegetation and topography constituting the jungle down below.


    "So this is the Serevian teau," Rui mumbled. It was an extended piece of the Beast Domain that had infiltrated human civilization and had disconnected a bit from the maind of the Beast Domain. It was the most dilute of what the Beast Domain had to offer, yet it was not something that Rui could dismiss very easily.


    "This ce..." Rui''s eyes narrowed. His augmented Primordial Instinct told him it wasn''t anywhere nearly as simple as it was.


    "It gives off a faint sense of peril." He murmured.


    He did feel a subtle danger from the Serevian teau. He was extremely trustful of his instincts, especially since he got the Mindmirror Symbiote technique which had evolved the technique to another level of insight.


    Furthermore, it wasn''t only that, there was indeed strange seismic radiation that simply did not ur naturally in normal environments. What was strange, however, was that Rui was actually having a hard time processing what the seismic radiation meant. Usually, he could interpret it the way he interpreted light. But in this particr case, he felt he had never quite perceived anything quite like it prior.


    It was as if it was just meaningless noise and gibberish.


    "Coming from deep within the Serevian teau." He murmured. He would need to reach the core in order to learn what the source of the strange seismic radiation was. Ultimately, that didn''t deviate much from his n in the first ce at all. His goal was always to make it to the core of the Serevian teau, gather as much information as possible, and report back to the Kandrian Empire and the Ministry of Environment and Ecology.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 390 Entry

    WHOOSH


    Rui leaped off the cliff and dived straight down the cliff, plummeting hundreds of feet from above the ground. He inhaled deeply as he prepared a Tempestuous Ripple as he reached the ground.Content held by N?velDrama.Org.


    WHOOSH


    He released a Tempestuous Ripple downwards as he canceled his momentum,nding perfectly on the ground. It wasn''t that falling from such a great height would kill him with his defensive techniques, but it certainly would hurt. He was far away from the Kandrian Empire and it was best he avoided anything that would affect his condition.


    He pulled out apass as he began jogging in the direction of the core of the Serevian teau. He had memorized the map of the Serevian teau that the mission bill had provided, thankfully. He couldn''t afford to get distracted from his surroundings while travelling in an environment as dangerous as the Serevian teau.


    "SCREEEEEETCH." A painful high-pitch screeching roar drew his attention as arge figure dashed at him with remarkable speed.


    WHOOSH


    Rui dodged it as he tried to get a better look at the creature that had suddenly attacked him.


    (''A darkhide lizard.'') Rui recognized the creature. He had memorized all of the known native fauna species that inhabited the Serevian teau. It was a dangerous predator with an incredibly powerful bite force and potent acid for saliva that allowed it cut through its prey''s body effortlessly.


    What surprised Rui was how incredibly swift it was. It could keep up with him despite the four Apprentice-level techniques he was using to evade it. It was not a low Apprentice-level beast.


    WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH


    Rui evaded it time after time as itshed out after him.


    BOOM!!


    Hended a powerful Flowing Canon, amplified by me Breathing, Outer Convergence, Vital Pressure as well as the momentum generated by his three maneuvering techniques. It was his most powerful attack as far as impact went.


    Furthermore, Rui used Reverberating Lance to permeate the devastating impact on the inside of the lizard''s body. The impact permeated past the hard scaly exterior, and tough flesh and crushed the weak and vulnerable inners.


    "SCREEEETCH!" The lizard roared as it staggered around in pain, spitting some green blood.<novelnext>  </novelnext>


    BOOM!!


    The second impact downed it. The beast dropped to the ground, lifeless.


    (''Reverberating Lance is capable of fulfilling the purpose I bought it for.'') Rui nodded, relieved. If he didn''t have the Reverberating Lance technique, he would have had to pound at the lizard for God knew how long. But the Reverberating Lance technique was able to expedite the process significantly, allowing him to take the lizard down much earlier than he would have before.


    He immediately turned around and began moving towards the center of the Serevian in, keeping Seismic mapping on high alert as well. He also used the Mind Mask technique to minimize his presence while using the Shadow Step technique to misdirect any attention away from him. What surprised him was how dense the fauna was in the Serevian teau. He ran into hordes of animals as he traveled. Thankfully, he usually avoided them cleanly with the help of Shadow Step, however, it wasn''t an absolutely perfect solution. asionally, he would be detected and would usually be involved in a scuffle.


    Wild dogs. Bears. Wild cats etc. He also ran into a bunch of fantastical creatures that were exclusive to the world of Gaia and didn''t exist in the world of Earth.


    Leucrocutas. Perytons. Catoblepas. Hippogriffs and a variety of other beasts were pure fiction in the world of Earth but were nothing short of actual in the world of Gaia.


    (''I see. So this is why only a grade-seven Martial Artist is the pre-requisite for survival in the Serevian teau.'') He mused.


    He had detected countless fauna creatures even within the first hour of his stay in the Serevian teau with the help of Seismic Mapping. What he found was shocking. The average power level of the fauna in the Serevial teau seemed to be extreme low-end of the Apprentice Realm.


    This was absolutely stunning to Rui. This meant that Apprentice-level creatures were the norm, not the outlier. In more normal uncolonized natural habitats, Apprentice-level creatures were usually the apex predators, like in the Shaia ins. But in the Serevial teau, they were extremelymon, at least low-grade Apprentice-level creatures were.


    The fauna wasn''t the only thing extraordinary about the Serevial teau. The Flora was quite astounding as well. The size of the fauna life was muchrger than one would normally expect. These trees and nts were huge, growing up great heights and widths. What Rui was spooked by despite having read about was the carnivorous nt species that weremon across the Serevial teau. These were huge nts that were otherwise ordinary but couldsh out the hidden fangs and consumerge animals that came too close with swift and powerfulshes.


    This was one of the ways the fauna poption didn''t destroy the forest despite being so dense. It was because the forest consumed the animals as well. Truthfully, Rui would have been unable to avoid them all had he not had his enhanced Primordial Instinct. The two brains processing the technique allowed him to concretely evade ambushes from carnivorous flora species.


    (''I would have at least been injured multiple times without Primordial Instinct and the Mindmirror Symbiote.'') Rui mused. The fact that it took a grade-seven and grade-ten technique working together for Rui to be able to guarantee to sense and evade the attacks was rather mind-boggling.


    Even the average mid-grade Martial Apprentice would be in extreme danger in this ce. Only higher-grade Martial Apprentices could possibly navigate the Serevial teau confidently.


    The forest grew denser and denser as he traversed deeper and deeper into the Serevial teau. The same could be said about the fauna. This was something Rui found odd. There was no real reason for such a bizarre poption density distribution. It was extremely unnatural and not something Rui could find an exnation for.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 391 Gathering

    "It''s odd that they''re grouping up so much the deeper you go into the forest," Rui murmured.


    What was driving the migration of fauna toward the center of the Serevian teau? The mission bill had mentioned changes in the migration patterns of the fauna in the Serevian teau. Rui wondered if they were referring to this.


    "Anyways, is it about time I begin?" Rui murmured to himself as he nced to the right gazing down at ake.


    He was required to use the bio-recon surveince device at eight points equally distanced from each other and the center of the Serevian teau to gather data on various environmental parameters. Furthermore, he had to do this multiple times at different distances from the center of the Serevian teau. Essentially, he would be taking environmental data along effectively all portions of the Serevian teau at a certain distance from a certain point onwards.


    As for how he knew whether he was at the required distance to conduct the eight-point empirical surveince, he would refer to topological features on the map and get a roughly urate estimate of the distance from the center of the Serevian teau. Once that happened, even if he was roughly off, he would more or less obtain the data he wanted to obtain.


    Since there was no such thing as GPS or satellites that would allow him to reach the exact position, such practices weremon and really the only norm.


    He navigated a bit rtive to theke until he stopped.


    "Right about here should be fine." He nodded. He plucked out his bio-recon device and nted it into the ground as per protocols, before hitting a few buttons.


    The device immediately buzzed and whirred. Rui watched on with interest as he felt the insertion of a thin needle dig into the soil and the extraction of soil with Seismic mapping. The bio-recon device had taken an incredibly thin but deep soil sample. The next step involved some more button pressing and different positioning. It took him several minutes until he had collected the required data at that particr point. He moved on to the other points, using the same practice of moving rtive to topographical features to find his spot.


    It wasn''t easy, as he constantly ran into other beasts and creatures. He promptly fought them away testing his prowess against different types of creatures.


    The diversity in fauna gave him a lot of data on how the Flowing Void Style performed against vastly differing species. There were several conclusions he had been able to draw.


    First, the predictive model was surprisingly effective against the various creatures that he squared off against. It seemed that he was able to eventually predict their motions with close to the same degree that he predicted humans.


    It was surprising, but in hindsight, he should have expected it. The predictive model was merely just applying statistics and probability to motions and inferring the probabilities of possible moves based on existing patterns of motions.


    Thus, it could effectively be applied to any dataset of motions within a closed system. This was a relief to Rui, it meant he would not need to change the predictive model all that much in order to adapt to the world of Gaia.<novelnext>  </novelnext>


    However, the same couldn''t be said for the adaptive evolution model. The model that outputted the correct counter move to the predicted move by the prediction model. This model was ipatible with non-human animals.Please check at N/?vel(D)rama.Org.


    However, it was moreplicated than that, Rui learned. The adaptive evolution model was varyingly ipatible with non-human opponents. For example, it retained a portion of effectivity against four-limbed mammalian vertebrae creatures with two legs and two arms. This was because there were surprisingly enoughmon grounds between these creatures and human opponents that the adaptive evolution model wasn''t entirely obsolete.


    However, when the opponent diverged from humans gically, the adaptive evolution model grew increasingly obsolete. Once the opponents were non-vertebrae or had a different number of limbs, then Rui simply tossed it away, it couldn''t even be used at all.


    It showed him the scope of the problem in so far as it was rted to non-human creatures.


    (''This won''t be easy.'') Rui sighed as he nced back at an animal that had approached him threateningly. At this point, Rui was tired of testing the VOID algorithm against the fauna of the forest.


    He used the Mind Mask technique to project a powerful image of himself as he viably could. The Mindmirror secondary brain chugged alongside as it aided with the technique parallel to Rui''s mind.


    He opened his eyes as a Squire-level aura descended onto the area.


    The wolf-like creature whimpered in fear as it turned around and fled for its life, intimidated by the sudden spike in danger that Rui had emanated.


    Rui dropped the stealth strategy and went for the intimidation strategy when gathering data with the bio-recon device, mostly because he was stationary and couldn''t use the Shadow Step technique when stationary. Mind Mask was powerful but it could not provide him with stealth all by itself.


    Instead, using it to fool all the creatures that he was in the Squire Realm was a much more effective strategy. It was attention-drawing, of course, but effective nheless. It was a bit dangerous in so far as if he ran into a Martial Artist who approached him despite the Squire-level aura. Which is why he would rather keep a low profile. He wasn''t going engage in shy showing off in the middle of a dangerous mission if he could avoid it.


    It took him a few hours, but he finally covered all the points he was required to by protocols.


    "Finally done." He huffed before setting back the bio-recon device, before turning to face front. "Now for some more personal investigation into the heart of the matter."


    He eagerly began traveling towards the heart of the Serevian teau as the explorer within him woke up. He wanted to find out the mystery thaty at the heart of the continent.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 392 Discoveries

    He dashed forward towards the heart of the Serevian teau. His Seismic Mapping technique picked up unnaturally high and yet fluctuating seismic radiation iing from the very direction he was headed at the very moment. He shed his squire-level mind mask before adopting his stealth mind mask and activating the Shadow Step technique, bing incredibly stealthy and hard to register.


    It took him some time but eventually, he reached the heart of the Serevian teau.


    "What the..." Rui''s eyes widened as he beheld the strange sight in front of him. "What in the world is this?"


    It was so bizarre he couldn''t even put it into words.


    In front of him was an elevatedndmass. Thendmass extended beyond what the eye could see on both sides. It was as though a piece of the tectonic te had been elevated by dozens of meters, randomly. It was as though thendmass had been transported over and dropped onto the center of the Serevian teau.


    "What the fuck is this?" He wondered aloud. "How can such a ridiculous elevation even ur naturally?"


    He was no geologist, but he racked his brains, both of them, searching for an answer.


    "Earthquake?" He quickly wondered.


    Earthquakes were caused due to shifts of tectonic tes bordering each other. The shift led to the release of a massive wave of seismic radiation. On the surface, this seemed to be a logical exnation for why thend was elevated and what the cause for the seismic radiation he was sensing was.


    "No, that makes no fucking sense." He shook his head.


    The seismic radiation released by earthquakes was non-uniform and constant over long periods of time. They were destructive, but acute and didn''tst too long. They certainly didn''tst four days without ever once reducing in intensity.


    "Furthermore, if it was an earthquake, I refuse to believe that the Ministry of Environment and Ecology is ipetent enough to not recognize an earthquake when they see it." He shook his head. "That''s not the only problem with that option either. This ce is too clean to be the epicenter of an Earthquake."


    Earthquakes were destructive. It was absolutely impossible for the structures atop and around the epicenter to be intact. Yet the surroundings were remarkably unkempt. Although a few trees at the very edge had been uprooted due to the split, the surrounding trees were untouched. Even the nests of birds atop the trees had not fallen off.


    "Then what else could it be?" Rui wondered as he turned back to face the elevatedndmass.


    He began investigating it deeply with Seismic Mapping. The results were illuminating.


    His eyes widened in shock as a realization hit him. "The roots... The roots of the trees atop that part of thend have grown so much that they have elevated thendmass above its normal level!"


    He could clearly sense that the roots were enormously thick, thicker than those of the other trees around him, and had extended far deeper than even his Seismic Mapping could follow!


    Because these roots took up so much space underground, thatndmass itself shifted up due to an increasingck of space!


    "What the fuck kind of trees and roots are those?" He wondered as he used Seismic Mapping to investigate the structure of the elevatedndmass. Due to being disced in such a manner, a lot of cracks, breaks, and copses urred within its structure. This resulted in the creation of many natural caves throughout thendmass. These caves wound about the internal structure of the elevated section of thendmass, interconnecting with each other and the surface of thendmass as well, forming a vast underground cavework.


    He also sensed a vast amount of fauna within.


    "What''s the surface look like? What species are those trees?" He wondered curiously. He leaped,unching himself to an extremely high height with thebination of me Breathing, and Outer Convergence. He used Tempestuous Ripple to propel him forward by firing it backward.


    STEP


    Hended on the surface of the elevatedndmass, and his eyes widened, startled, once more.


    "What...?" He squinted, rubbing his eyes before looking back up.


    He shook his head. "No no. This isn''t really possible..."<novelnext>  </novelnext>


    He took some more measures before he finally gave and epted his vision wasn''t faulty.


    Before him, was a vast sea of trees.


    Except they weren''t.


    ''They'' were a single tree!


    All of the tree trunks rooted into the ground that looked like they were separate, were actually all part of the same tree! Their branches were all connected!


    Rui gasped as he walked deeper and deeper. Every single ''tree'' was connected by a branch. The branches were covered in leaves. The sheer number of branches meant that the leaves covered the entirety of the elevatedndmass, forming some resembling a canopy.


    Suddenly, Primordial Instinct sensed danger behind him.


    WHOOSH


    He somersaulted he evaded an attack.


    (''A tree branch?'') His eyes widened as a terrifying thought entered his mind. (''Is this entire tree a carnivorous species?'')


    WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSHContent held by N?velDrama.Org.


    He evaded a few branch attacks as he moved forward. He nced around curiously as he stumbled across something quite interesting.


    "Fruit?" He nced at the strange exotic glowing round objects hanging from branches.


    They glowed and vibrated. Rui instinctively felt with Primordial Instinct that these were no ordinary fruits, they were extremely powerful and energetic.


    He reached for one when he sensed something to his right. He turned,ing face to face with an Apprentice-level monkey-like creature hanging on the trees.


    "AAahh!" The monkey chattered.


    Yet, the meaning it wished to convey magically entered his mind.


    [Don''t touch those. Those are mine.]


    The Fauna Flow technique allowed him to understand the meaning the monkey was trying to convey to him.


    Rui snorted. It was merely a high-grade monkey. Rui narrowed his eyes as he activated the Squire-level Mind Mask to scare the monkey off. Yet the very instant he did, he felt a terrifying fear himself through the Primordial instinct technique.


    DRIP DRIP


    Sharp pain spiked through his body.


    "Huh?" Rui nced down, as his eyes widened.


    A branch had attacked and impaled him from the back.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 393 Realization

    DRIP DRIP DRIP


    Blood started spurting out of his guts as the branches extricated themselves from his body. He coughed blood as fell to the ground. The shock had initially left him frozen, but he immediately activated Final Breathing which immediately elerated the clotting process, slowing down the profuse bleeding. He weakly reached for his pouch, pulling out a healing potion.


    He gasped as the healing potion diffused into his lungs in gas form and dissolved into his blood, aided by the Final Breathing technique. It quickly reached his wounds, healing them at a remarkable pace.


    He gasped in relief as the pain disappeared along with the wound, before getting up abruptly stressing Primordial Instinct to the absolute limit on his immediate surroundings. He eyed the branch with his blood on it.


    (''What the fuck was that?'') He narrowed his eyes.


    A branch of the tree randomly attacked him and then went back without doing anything else? At the very least, if it was a carnivorous nt that attacked him in order to consume him, that would make more sense. But why attack him without doing anything else other than injuring him?Content held by N?velDrama.Org.


    Rui immediately dashed out of the forest at a high speed, leaping off of the elevatedndmass andnding back in the ordinary forest. The branch that attacked him wasn''t visibly different from any of the other branches in the forest, it was just the closest.


    Yet itnded an extremely fast and potent attack that allowed it wound him critically. If he didn''t have Final Breathing or the healing potion, he would have died on the spot. The fact that it wasn''t visibly different from the other branches likely meant that it simply wasn''t. This led to the scary conclusion that every branch in the forest was likely capable of the same feat.


    "If that''s the case, that makes the forest, or the tree itself, extremely dangerous." He noted.


    He had no doubt by now that the forest-tree was probably responsible for the environmental and ecological anomalies of the Serevian teau. But he wasn''t satisfied with just that.


    "Why did it attack me?" Rui wondered. "If it was going to attack me, why didn''t attack me the second I entered the forest?"


    If it was a carnivore tree species, then would it really need to wait that long to attack him?


    "It''s not impossible, but what are the other possibilities?" He pondered.


    It could be that his initial presumption of the branch that attacked him was no different from any other was wrong. Perhaps there were certain parts of the tree that were capable of attacking and hunting prey to consume them.


    "But that still runs into the problem of it leaving me after attacking me."


    That seemed to indicate that it likely wasn''t trying to consume him. Then there was likely another reason why the tree attacked him in the first ce.


    "It attacked me after I saw the monkey." He recalled as realization dawned upon him. "It attacked me the instant I used the Mind Mask technique."


    If that was the trigger, then there was a logical exnation as to why the tree reacted so adversely to him.


    "The mind mask I had used back then was the Squire-level mind mask. If that was the trigger then I likely triggered its sense of danger." Rui realized.


    Fortunately, there was a way to verify it. He could do it again, except this time under less dangerous circumstances.


    He stood at a good distance away from the branches of the tree on the elevatedndmass, before taking a deep breath and heightening his alertness and Primordial instinct with the help of the Mindirror secondary brain.


    (''Here goes nothing.'') Rui inhaled deeply.


    He activated the Mind Mask technique as a Squire-level aura descended upon the surroundings.<novelnext>  </novelnext>


    RUMBLE


    The very ground, both the teau and the elevatedndmass, shook violently.


    Rui''s eyes widened in excitement and fear as waves of branchesshed out from atop elevatedndmass, stretching unnaturally as they attacked him at a frightening speed.


    Yet this time, he was prepared.


    WHOOSH


    WHOOSH


    WHOOSH


    Rui weaved away from the attacks as he began retreating at a swift pace. The branches kept following him down at a rapid pace unperturbed. Rui was surprised at the ridiculous amount of range these branches had. They continued following him despite him moving further and further away from the elevatedndmass.


    The branches weren''t originally that long, which meant they were likely being extended further by the tree.


    (''Which means the wood mass of the tree is not fixed and can be shifted and moved.'')


    WHOOSH


    BAM!


    The branches crashed into the ground where Rui was just a moment prior. The leaves and stems got shredded in the process, yet the branch continued attacking him unperturbed.


    (''This defense mechanism, if that is what it is, is quite self-destructive.'') Rui noted. These branches were doing more damage to themselves than they were going so to him.


    He continued evading them, getting better and better at it as time went by. He had already begun forming predictive models for the branch attacks with each passing move. The tree quite likelycked consciousness for its movements were as static and unchanging as a robot. It took Rui just a brief period of time to develop predictive models for all of them.


    Suddenly the branches froze as Rui retreated once more.


    "Hm? Noting?" He tilted his head in confusion. The branches simply froze in front of him.


    However, when he shifted to the right, they shifted to the right. The same was true regardless of what direction he moved in.


    "Ah, range limits perhaps?"


    He released the Mind Mask technique as the danger he plummeted from the Squire Realm. The branches swiftly retreated. He stepped forward a few meters before reactivating the technique. The branches immediately returned,shing out against him.


    WHOOSH


    He stepped out of their range once more, before releasing the technique and watching those branches retreat once more.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 394 Documentation

    Content held by N?velDrama.Org.


    "Alright then." Rui stroked his chin. "Time to summarize everything I''ve learned thus far."


    He quickly parsed through all the facts in his Mind Pce, arranging them neatly.


    The core of the Serevian teau was an elevatedndmass that had been disced due to the vast number of roots that began consuming more space under the ground due to their expansion, in all likelihood. This caused thendmass to elevate above ground level. It was also the source of the abnormal seismic radiation and certainly the source of other anomalies like migration patterns and other environmental parameters.


    The elevatedndmass had a high poption density upon its surface and inside the vast underground tunnelwork beneath the ground. Rui suspected the shift of arge number of animals into the elevatedndmass was likely what caused the changes in the migration patterns. He was sure there was a logical exnation and mechanism demonstrating how the elevatedndmass affected the Serevian teau in different ways.


    The flora atop the elevatedndmass was all part of a single organism, a single tree that somehow had countless trunks all connected by different branches that all embedded roots so deep into thend that even Seismic Mapping lost track of them beneath the ground.


    The tree gave off glowing fruits of different colors, each of which made his Primordial Instinct feel quite uneasy.


    The tree also had a defense-mechanism system seemingly. It would attack creatures with a sense of danger in the Squire Realm with branches relentlessly and even self-destructively. Its range was quite high, most likely due to shifting off wood to facilitate its extension.


    Rui nodded after organizing all the facts in his head, opening his eyes. He immediately began traveling towards the elevatedndmass. He wasn''t done with his reconnaissance just yet. Admittedly, he was more curious than he was motivated forpleting the mission. How could he not be? Earth simplycked such fascinating phenomena.


    He got back onto the elevatedndmass without the Squire-level Mind Mask. As expected, there was no reaction. He navigated back to where wasst time.


    "Hm?" Rui''s eyes narrowed in surprise.


    The monkey he had seen then was dead, on the ground. A bitten fruity a few steps away from its corpse.


    What was even more shocking was that roots had risen from the ground, pulling the corpse deeper into the ground bit by bit.


    Rui''s eyes widened as he realized what was happening before him.


    "The fruit is poisonous!" He eximed with shock. The monkey likely had died after consuming a single bite of the fruit.


    Furthermore, the roots were clearly going to consume the ground beneath the ground. The tree was a carnivore after all.<novelnext></novelnext>


    "It doesn''t fail to surprise," Rui murmured as he updated his Mind Pce with the new facts regarding the tree.


    "Now I need to record all these facts and send them back to the Martial Union and the Ministry of Environment and Ecology without any further dy." Rui nodded.


    He quickly returned, jumping off the elevatedndmass. He ran some distance away before climbing tall trees and rock structures that allowed him to capture images of the elevatedndmass with the bio-recon device that he had been provided by the Martial union and the Ministry of Environment and Ecology.


    Still, he wasn''t able to get a good image epassing the entirendmass. Mostly because it was as wide as a small city and he couldn''t fit it all within the frame. Regardless, he took images of thendmass from various angles around it.


    He also documented images that demonstrated that all the flora atop the elevatedndmass was all part of a single organism. He couldn''t really demonstrate that the roots were causing the elevation in thendmass because he couldn''t share his Seismic Mapping with others, but he was sure that just reporting his findings that he had gotten through the technique would be enough.


    He also documented the effect the squire-level Mind Mask had on the tree. Showing its reaction to the activation and deactivation of the Mind Mask technique, demonstrating causality between the two events. He also demonstrated the astounding range of the branches of the tree.


    He finally ended the report by demonstrating the poisonous nature of the fruit and the corpse of the monkey that was already almost entirely dragged underground by the roots at that point.


    "Alright, that''s done." He hit the send button, sending all the data he had collected to the Martial Union and the Ministry of Environment and Ecology.


    "Now time to wait for the orders." Rui shrugged. He had mostlypleted his job, which was to gather information on the environmental and ecological anomalies in the Serevian teau. Now he just had to sit tight.


    "Well, I can explore the elevatedndmass a bit more." Rui shrugged. It wasn''t like he had anything to do, and it wasn''t like it would hurt the mission.


    He leaped up back to the top of the elevatedndmass before traveling deeper into it. On his way there, he ran into many creatures that had consumed a portion of the fruits and had died, resulting in roots emerging from the ground and dragging the corpses down slowly.


    (''Woah, there''s another one.'') Rui watched a monkey bite into the fruit.


    In just a moment, it copsed to the ground, spasming as it tried to crawl away, yet it was paralyzed. Slowly, its breathing and heartbeat slowed down until it finally passed away. Not even a secondter, roots slowly emerged from the ground as theytched onto the corpse.


    "The roots didn''t emerge until the very moment the monkey had died," Rui noted keenly. "Either that''s coincidence or the tree is able to sense the difference between a living and a dead creature, and only goes after the former with its roots. Could it be that all of this is so that it can poison animals and consume their corpses?" Rui wondered curiously.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 395 Summon

    Rui knew that there was a reason why all of this had urred, but he simply wasn''t qualified to figure it out. Thankfully, it wasn''t his job to figure it out either. That was something best left to the Ministry of Environment and Ecology. He only needed to do his job.


    He chose to travel deeper into the elevatedndmass. The deeper he traveled the greater the density of fruits. And the greater the density of corpses that had been poisoned after consuming it and died. Each and every single one of the corpses was being slowly pulled underground by the roots. Rui could believe that these corpses were the reason the tree had grown in this strange fashion. Such was the sheer count of the corpses thaty on the ground.


    Furthermore, the deeper he got, the taller the tree trunks were, elevating in height as he continued traveling.


    It took a while, but Rui soon reached the core of the elevatedndmass.


    "Woahhh..."


    Before himy a gigantic tree trunk that dwarfed all other tree trunks.


    "Is this the main tree trunk of thisrge tree?" Rui wondered. It certainly seemed to be the case. The tree trunk was tall and wide and had manyrge branches branching off from it. Each of the branches from the main tree had secondary tree trunks attached to them. Those secondary tree trunks had even more branches that had even more tree trunks attached to them.


    "Could it be that each of these tree trunks is actually branches that simply extended downwards before reaching the ground and taking root?" Rui wondered.


    In that case, it was more urate to call all the tree trunks in the forest tree branches.


    Just as he was about to ponder more, he got a beep on his mission tracker device, indicating a message from the Martial Union.


    Rui frowned as he read the message. "An urgent summon back to the headquarters?"


    Rui tilted his head in confusion. Why was he being urgently summoned home?


    He didn''t know for sure but...


    "It has something to do with this tree, doesn''t it?" Rui nced back at the main trunk suspiciously, before setting off back in the direction he hade from. He couldn''t afford to waste any time at all.


    He immediately began running back at a high pace, using all his maneuvering techniques to nearly their limit.


    (''Could it be that the tree is actually extremely dangerous to human civilization and I just discovered a big threat?'') A random thought entered his head before his logic and reason quashed the idea.


    (''No, there''s no way that tree is a threat.'') Rui shook his head. (''If I can avoid its attacks then that means that Martial Squires can handle it with ease.'')


    If it was a threat that Martial Squires could handle, then there was no way it was a threat in the grand scheme of things.


    (''Though that may not entirely be true. The earthen basilisk ould get crushed by any Martial Squire, but they were still viewed as a threat by the Ministry of Environment and Ecology.'') Rui recalled. This was because the earthen basilisks were very difficult to exterminate and were capable of wreaking havoc across human settlements.


    (''If it''s not because of a threat pertaining to the tree, then it probably has something to do with opportunity.'') Rui''s eyes lit up in interest. If the urgency was not negative then it was likely positive, which meant that there was something that could be gained and Rui could help with it in all likelihood.<novelnext></novelnext>


    He didn''t know which one was the case. Of course, there was the possibility that the urgent summons had nothing to do with his mission and some other emergency had urred that required all hands on deck.


    He would find out regardless.


    Five hourster, he had arrived at the headquarters of the Martial Union, panting heavily. He quickly consumed a physical rejuvenation potion before entering the Martial Union, after showing his license to the security.


    "Excuse me." Rui addressed a staff member. "I received an urgent summon from the Martial Union. Can you please tell me what to do?"


    "Ah give me a moment." She fiddled with her terminal. "Office number two hundred and thirty-seven."


    "Thank you," Rui replied before turning around and navigating his way to the designated room.


    KNOCK KNOCKBelongs to N?velDrama.Org - All rights reserved.


    "Come in." A male voice instructed him.


    "Excuse me." Rui entered. "I was told toe to this office regarding my urgent summon back from my mission."


    "Indeed." The man nodded. "Have a seat."


    He gave off the air of an intellectual with authority, with a well-groomed attire and a confident demeanor. "I am Zhrekes Shrul." He introduced himself. "I''m an office from the Ministry of Environment and Ecology."


    He showed Rui a badge before continuing. "I require an immediate report from you regarding every moment of your stay at the Serevian teau. You must include every single detail without fail."


    "That''s not a problem, of course." Rui nodded. "I was hoping I could be informed as to why I was urgently summoned in the middle of my mission."


    "Your mission is over, Apprentice Quarrier." He told him. "Nheless, you will be informed."


    Rui waited for him to continue.


    "The target of your mission that you were required to identify as the cause for the environmental and ecological anomalies that urred in the Serevian teau is not ordinary." He stated. "It is a rare, yet well-known and well-documented phenomenon that urs in the Beast Domain. You''re not the first to find it and you won''t be thest. It is a source of great opportunity, yet we won''t be the only ones in pursuit of it. There will be greatpetition from our rivals."


    "Uh..." Rui''s eyebrows knitted in confusion. "I''m afraid I have no idea what any of that is supposed to mean, unfortunately."


    Officer Zhrekes chuckled a bit before nodding. "Don''t worry, I''ll exin all of it right away."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 396 Explanation

    "The data you brought back was most interesting. We identified what we were dealing with in a moment before urgently summoning you back." Officer Zhrekes exined. "The tree responsible for the anomalies is actually not of a species that normally engages in such biological developments."


    "What?" Rui frowned. "The species of the tree doesn''t grow and develop this way?"


    Officer Zherkes nodded. "Correct."


    "Then... Are there some specific circumstances under which the tree develops and grows this way?" Rui asked.


    This was the first possibility that came to mind. However, he had no idea what circumstances those were.


    "Also correct." Officer Zherkes nodded. "In fact, this species isn''t the only species that engages in such growth and development. There are many species that engage in simr growth developments under a specific set of circumstances."


    "What are these circumstances?" Rui asked curiously.Exclusive content from N?velDrama.Org.


    "Many tree species in the Beast Domain have a high root development capacity." He continued. "Their roots have the capability to grow to an extremely deep depth. The root volume ends up providing an immense amount of sustenance to the tree in question. However, every once in a while, these roots run into something more than just ordinary soil, water, and nutrients."


    "They run into high-energy esoteric ores." He continued. "Most species do not possess roots powerful enough to drain the esoteric ores and turn them into sustenance for elerated growths. But what if a species that was capable of absorbing high-energy esoteric ores andpounds?"


    Rui''s eyes lit up with interest and curiosity. These circumstances had not even entered his mind when he thought about it himself. Largely because this required an understanding of the geology of Gaia, something he was sorelycking. But he could see the direction his exnation was going down.


    "If there was such a species... Then it would likely gain ess to arge amount of energy?" Rui scratched his head. His understanding of esoteric matter and other esoteric resources was very shallow. He could not possibly provide a well-thought exnation.


    "Correct." Agent Zhrekes nodded before continuing. "And what happens when the tree gains ess to extreme energy sources that it can viably provide energy to? What happens is that the tree is able to grow and develop to a much greater degree than it normally can under normal circumstances. The excess energy is channeled into the expansion of the tree. However, that expansion does not ur in the vertical elevation of the tree, it urs in theteral expansion of the tree."


    "Wow," Rui remarked. "Is that why the tree was that ridiculously wide in regards to the area it covered?"


    "Correct." Agent Zherkes nodded. "The branches reach down to the ground and burrow into the soil before sprouting even more roots that will dig deeper towards the esoteric ore reservoirs to siphon more of the high-energy matter. Based on the data you have provided, it''s quite clear that the tree that was the target of your mission has run into a ratherrge reservoir of esotericpounds, considering that it has expanded into the size of a town."


    "I see..." Rui digested the information officer Zherkes provided him.


    "The reactive defense mechanism of the branches is also not umon. The tree does not allow lifeforms that are too dangerous to it to approach it. Which is why it attacked you when you disyed a Squire-level aura with the Mind Mask technique. Only Martial Apprentices that are, of course, below the Squire Realm are able to enter the forest unobstructed." Officer Zherkes mentioned.<novelnext></novelnext>


    "And the opportunity you mentioned earlier..." Rui continued. "You''re referring to the esoteric ore reserves beneath the ground?"


    "In part." Officer Zherkes nodded. "However, the tree itself is valuable. The fruits that you remarked on are actually biological products with processed and purified esoteric matter within them, hence their strange traits, including their high toxicity. The tree allows creatures weak enough to be a threat to itself to be lured in by the fruit''s allure so that they consume it, only to die and be absorbed by the tree."


    "The fruits are valuable themselves, then?" Rui asked.


    "Quite." Officer Zherkes nodded. "They process ores in ways that we often do not understand nor can replicate. They''re often used in the purification and processing of the ores."


    "So all we need to do is swoop in and take the fruits and mind the esoteric ores?" Rui asked.


    If that was the case, he could certainly understand the Martial Union''s and the ministry''s interest in the tree. But what was the urgency?


    "Ideally, it would be as simple as that." Agent Zherkes nodded. "But s, reality is rarely that ideal. Do you know the geography of the Serevian teau and its cement in human civilization? Specifically, the nations closest to it?"


    Rui nodded. "The immediate surroundings are those of small human settlements and states. Further away lie the super-nations such as the Kandrian Empire, the Republic of Gorteau, and the Sekigahara Confederate."


    Rui''s eyes widened as he understood. "We can''t im the esoteric reservoirs and the trees easily, can we?"


    "Not at all." He shook his head. "The super nations will have realized the significance of the anomalies of the Serevian teau sooner orter. Once that happens..."


    He locked eyes with Rui. "It''s war. A mine of valuable esoteric ores the size of arge town is not something that the super nations can or are willing to afford to just give away to theirpetitors for free, especially when they are all equally distanced from the Serevian teau, roughly speaking."


    Rui gulped. "So that''s why I was urgently summoned back... My information is highly valuable in a way that will involve the Martial Artists of higher Realms even..."


    "No." Agent Zherkes shook his head. "That is unlikely to happen. The war will actually be restricted to the Apprentice Realm, in all likelihood."


    "What?" Rui''s eyes scrunched up in confusion. "What do you mean by that? Why would such an important conflict be restricted to the Apprentice Realm?"


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 397 Elaboration

    "Because of practical reasons." Officer Zherkes told him. "As you know, the tree attacks Martial Artists at or above the Squire Realm."


    "But surely those attacks mean nothing to Martial Squires." He insisted. "I know they don''t. I was able to avoid them when alert. Those attacks are nothing to a Martial Squire."


    "They may be nothing to a Martial Squire, but they''re everything to the tree itself." Officer Zherkes replied. "Martial Squires would be able to crush the attacks that the treeunches, but the reactive defense mechanism of trees that undergo banyanification, the broad colloquial term of the expansive growth process, is too self-destructive. Although Martial Squires woulde out unharmed, the tree itself would not. The fruits would all be crushed and destroyed rendering them extremely difficult to process into potions, if not impossible. The fruits are just as valuable as the actual ore itself, if not more due to their pure constitution. Therefore, generally, nations do not dispatch Martial Artists at or above the level of power that would result in the triggering of the reactive defense mechanism."


    "''Generally''?" Rui asked, catching the implication of the word. "This has happened enough times before for there to be a trend?"


    "Indeed." Officer Zherkes nodded. "There is an unspoken, and sometimes even spoken and written agreement between relevant human nations to restrict the conflict to the necessary Realms, so that the conflict would not result in a waste of resources. Nations would rather get their hands on such processed bio-resources that are much easier to employ in technological solutions, rather thane back home empty-handed."


    "I see..." Rui murmured. "So in this case..."


    "That''s right." Officer Zherkes replied immediately. "In this case, it is quite likely that Martial Apprentices like yourself will engage in the dungeon wars."


    "''Dungeon Wars''?" Rui frowned.


    "That''s what they''re referred to colloquially." Officer Zherkes chuckled. "Because there is a three-dimensional environment including the underground cavework, the surface and the branchworks that are more or less closed off, the environment of the banyanified forest are called dungeons."


    "I see..." Rui muttered. "This has happened more than a few times, I''m guessing."


    "Much more yes." Officer Zherkes nodded. "So much so that there are official protocols and systems in ce designed to address the emergence of a banyanified forest. One of those protocols is urgently summoning the Martial Artist or individual in question who discovered the banyanified tree and extracting a report from them." Officer Zherkes exined. "That is why you and I are both here. Now then, time is of the essence. Please provide a detailed report of your mission. Do not dismiss any piece of information as insignificant or unnecessary, is that clear?"


    Rui nodded. "Understood."


    Rui set aside his curiosity and interest and began typing on a typewriter that officer Zherkes had provided him. Because of the detail that he needed to go into. It had taken him quite a while to write the report.


    "Done." Rui huffed after he finally finished. "Here you go."


    Zherkes looked up, having been reading the finished pages of the report. "Good job Apprentice Quarrier. Yourpletion of the mission was nearly wless and you have elerated a process that would have otherwise taken much longer than usual, giving us a crucial time advantage. Now then, do you have any questions before I leave?"


    "Yes." Rui nodded. "How would the other nations even find out about this?"


    "The other nations aren''t ipetent." Officer Zherkes snorted. "Nations have various informationworks that would allow them to learn of it given enough time. Furthermore, the seismic radiation projected by the tree when it attacked you is not insignificant and will have no doubt earned the scrutiny of the nations that aren''t too far away from the Serevian teau."<novelnext></novelnext>


    Rui nodded, having figured that out by himself, he just wanted to verify that he had the right idea on the issue. "So, if only Martial Apprentices will be involved in the conflict to monopolize the banyanified tree, can I expect a mission soon?"


    "The Martial Union will certainly take some effort intomissioning its Martial Artists into participating..." Officer Zherkes nodded. "As for what measures, I can''t say."


    He turned back to Rui. "Though it is almost assured that you will be incorporated into the war effort."


    "Oh?" Rui raised an eye. "Why is that?"


    Officer Zherkes snorted. "ying modest, are we? You''re a grade-ten Martial Apprentice with a skillset highly useful in dungeons. That alone is more than enough. Now then, I must get going, pleasure meeting you, Apprentice Quarrier."


    Rui fell into thought after he bid officer Zherkes goodbye, as he walked back home.


    A conflict between Martial Artists over the monopoly of esoteric resources.


    He grinned, excited. Just when he was getting a little bored, he gets presented with a brilliant opportunity to participate in a conflict much bigger than himself.


    Just how many Martial Artists would be participating? How many of the elite Martial Artists of the geographic surroundings would he be fighting against?


    "The sheer number of highly elite Martial Artists even among the tenth grade will be staggering!" Rui eximed, excited.


    The proportion of Martial Apprentices in the tenth grade was a very minute proportion of the Martial Apprentice poption. There were extremely few Martial Apprentices in the Kandrian Empire that could truly give Rui a run for his money.


    However, that was only when the conversation was limited to a single nation.


    When many nations were involved, the sheer number of even pinnacle Martial Apprentices was not low!Please check at N/?vel(D)rama.Org.


    "This is a god-sent opportunity," Rui remarked.


    It was very difficult for him to find a perfectly equal opponent. Although Martial Squires could restrict themselves, it wasn''t the same. They could only hold back so much. It was physically impossible form to slow down their mental processing and reflexes as well as the toughness of their constitution. While it was challenging, it was not perfect.


    But with this, he would truly be able to fight against Martial Apprentices who were genuinely his equal, perhaps even greater!


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 398 Await

    A few days passed, and Rui refused to take any missions out of fear that he would be missing out on whenever the Kandrian Empire decided to take action in whatever it decided to handle the matter of the dungeon war.


    Frankly, Rui wasn''t sure how things would pan out. Would the Martial Union be involved alone? Would the Kandrian Government or the Royal Family be involved or take control? He didn''t know. He couldn''t be sure about how the two hegemons of the Kandrian Empire would act.


    His understanding of politics was still very vague and broad. He didn''t understand the nuances that were involved in such matters that would ultimately decide the manner in which the Kandrian Empire would participate in the dungeon wars. It wasn''t just a matter of intelligence or smartness; he just wasn''t informed enough on international dynamics and foreign policy or the domestic decision-making protocols that the Martial Union and the Kandrian government engaged in when they processed the matter.


    Eventually, an announcement was made. However, it wasn''t the one Rui was waiting for or anticipating.


    "A change in the Martial Apprentice grading system?" Rui frowned. "Really? At this time? But why? Wasn''t it working just fine? What caused this change?"


    He hadn''t yet realized that he was the leading trigger to the updation of the existing ten-point grading system of Martial prowess evaluation.


    Thankfully, the announcement that he had gotten both through his ounter and through a letter exined the reasons behind the change.


    Each generation of Martial Artists was stronger than the previous generation of Martial Artists. This was due to higher-quality techniques and higher-quality growth and training resources that younger and newer generations had ess to. Several of the techniques and training and growth resources that Rui had used over the years were actually recently developed products that the previous generation never had ess to.


    Over time, those differences umted too much such that the strongest of Martial Apprentices exceeded the limits of the ten-point grading system set by the Martial Union. At such times, the Martial union would scale most Martial Apprentices down by one point while the strongest of Martial Apprentices would be the new peak.


    The message informed him that his new grade would remain the same as his old grade.


    "Hm. Odd." He shrugged, tossing the letter away. It changed nothing for him, so it didn''t matter all that much.


    However, he could not help but wonder if this had something to do with the uing dungeon wars that had been forecasted for him. Were they readjusting the Martial Apprentice grading system in order to ensure only the most qualified Martial Artists participated in the war?


    Rui strongly suspected that was close to the truth. He had contacted his friends via his ounter, asking them about their grading points.


    "I remained at grade nine," Kane confirmed. "But Hever, Fae, and Nel fell to grade eight. Dalen fell to grade seven, while Milliana fell to grade six."


    "I see... That''s a shame for them." Rui admitted. "Good on you for staying at grade nine. You must be really strong right now, on the verge of reaching the previous grade ten, probably."


    "Been working hard. Can''t remain in the Academy forever." Kane replied.<novelnext></novelnext>


    They chatted a bit more before hanging up.


    "I wonder at what grade Fiona and Ian are at." Rui wondered. They were also two of the strongest Martial Artists of his generation. He was curious as to what level they currently were at. It had been more than a year since the Martial Contest had ended, after all.


    Particrly, he was curious about Fiona, she had an incredible rate of mastery that probably surpassed even his, now that his own rate of mastery had reduced significantly.


    "I''ll probably meet them for the dungeon wars then." He realized. If they were powerful enough, and they almost certainly were, he absolutely would run into them when the Martial Union and the Kandrian government came to a conclusion as to how to proceed with the dungeon conflict.


    "Why are you so restless?" Julian asked with a suspicious look in his eye.


    "I''m not restless," Rui replied nkly.


    "You''ve been osciting back and forth on the sofa for the past few days instead of going out there andpleting some missions or training a new technique like you normally would. You constantly look at your ounter with eagerness, as if you''re expecting something, likely an announcement of some sort." Julian told him. "Am I wrong?"


    "Tsk." Rui tutted. "Alright, you got me."


    "What is it that you are waiting so impatiently?" Julian asked, curiously.Belongs to N?velDrama.Org - All rights reserved.


    "I received word of a conflict involving arge number of nations that will likely be limited to the Apprentice Realm," Rui told him, without revealing anything specific. "It''s the perfect opportunity for me to test my prowess against the most powerful of Martial Apprentices across a tiny chunk of the Panama Continent!"


    Julian''s eyes widened at his words. "Are you absolutely certain of that? If that is the case, that''s huge news!"


    "Very sure." Rui nodded. "I''m just waiting for it because I don''t want to be away on a mission when the announcementes. If the announcement doesn''te within a week, then I''m going to take low-grade quick missions that can be finished in no time until it doese!"


    "Are you sure you want to participate?" Julian asked with a worried expression. "It sounds extremely dangerous. You''ll bepeting against some of the most powerful Martial Apprentices and be risking your life against them."


    "I know." Rui nodded. "It''s not that I''m being overconfident. But not only is fighting other Martial Artists a core part of being a Martial Artist but also, I do need to be stronger at this point. I need experience against truly powerful Martial Artists in order to make forward progress on the road to Squire."


    Julian felt a bit more reassured seeing the determination and confidence. "If that''s how you feel, then I can only wish you good luck."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 399 Negotiations

    "Delegates of the many sovereign states you represent, as the delegate of the Kandrian Empire. I thank all of the participating nations for your eptance of our invitation as well as your willingness to enter negotiation regarding the matter of the Serevian Dungeon."


    In arge extravagant hall in the Royal Pce in the town of Vargard was a round table with many figures seated at it. Yet, among all of them, only one was physically present. The remaining figures were projected three-dimensional images projected using esoteric three-dimensional projection technology. Before the only physically present individual, the delegate of the Kandrian Empire was a device that tracked his movements and ryed the information to several locations in different countries that would project a three-dimensional image of the Kandrian delegate.


    This was a high-level form ofmunication that allowed individuals tomunicate with each other as though they were present in the same room.


    "As all of you are surely aware. The Serevian teau has be home to a dungeon at its very core. The purpose of this meeting is to cooperate ore to apromise on the matter regarding the ims on the Serevian Dungeon and the resources thaty within; the vast amount of Featherblood Mercury and the Nereneal Flintstone detected to be present in the fruits of the Serevian Dungeon." The delegate of the Kandrian Empire continued. "We shallmence the deliberations and negotiations immediately. The first proposal I would like to offer to all the representatives and delegates present is the collective denial of the acknowledgment of any ims to the Serevian Dungeon made by sovereign states more than one sovereign state away from the Serevian teau. The Kandrian Empire is firm in the belief that sovereign states separated from the Serevian tea by more than a sovereign state do not have any right to stake a im on the territory upied by the Serevian Dungeon. All in favor?"


    Immediately, all the delegates in the room raised a hand, indicating their agreement with the proposal made by the Kandrian delegate. The proposal effectively prevented sovereign states from very far away from trying to infringe on the Serevian Dungeon. The sovereign nations, the delegates of which were present in the currently ongoing summit hosted by the Kandrian Empire were all those nations who weren''t too far away enough to not have a valid im onto the territory of the Serevian Dungeon.


    All of them were more than willing to not acknowledge the ims of even further nations on the Serevian Dungeon as valid. The fewer the sovereign states they had to acknowledge as legitimate contenders for the Serevian Dungeon, the few the people they would be forced to share the pie with.


    "A unanimous agreement." The delegate of the Kandrian Empire nodded. "With that out of the way, the floor is open to any delegate that wishes to make a proposal or a statement."Belongs to N?velDrama.Org - All rights reserved.


    Immediately, one of the figures raised two fingers, indicating their desire to speak.


    "King Jurrian Fil Nochus." The delegate of the Kandrian Empire acknowledged.


    "As the ruler of the Kingdom of Nochus, I would like to dere the Serevian Dungeon as the property of the Kingdom of Nochus. As the nation closest to the Serevian teau, to the point that the border of the Kingdom of Nochus oveps that of the Serevian teau at several points. The validity of our im is the strongest and the only truly valid im to the Serevian Dungeon. I point to the way ims over neighboring uncolonizednds to states are treated. Uncolonizednd is generally treated as belonging to and the responsibility of the closest bordering sovereign state. Following this rationale and international custom, the Serevian teau and the Serevian Dungeon belong to the Kingdom of Nochus." he concluded.


    Several delegates raised their hands.<novelnext></novelnext>


    "Delegate of the Sekigahara Confederate." The Kandrian delegate nodded at the closest individual to him.


    "The Sekigahara Confederate does not acknowledge the validity of King Jurrian Fil Nochus'' statement or im over the Serevian teau and Dungeon."


    "The Republic of Gortea seconds the Sekigahara Confederate." Another delegate chimed in.


    "The Britannian Empire also seconds the Sekigahara Confederate."


    One by one, all of the delegates followed suit as they supported the Sekigahara Confederate delegate in the refusal to acknowledge the im over the Serevian teau and Dungeon.


    It didn''t matter whether King Jurrian had a point or not. No one gave a damn about that. None of them were willing topletely fork over a city-wide mine of featherblood mercury or nereneal flintstone over something like international customs.


    "The Kandrian Empire also seconds the Sekigahara Confederate in its stance against King Jurrian''s im over the Serevian teau and Dungeon. The Kandrian Empire would further like to point out that the Kingdom of Nochus has neglected the responsibilities that generallye with being internationally recognized as the bona fide owner of Serevian teau." The Kandrian delegate added. "Thus, the legitimacy of such a conveniently timed im over the Serevian teau is highly questionable and not eptable."


    The Kandrian delegate turned back to face all the other delegates. "The Kandrian Empire proposes a division of the territory of the Serevian Dungeon among all the sovereign nations present in this summit. This proposal aims to eliminate the waste of Martial Art resources that would undoubtedly ensue in a conflict in the Serevian Dungeon over the Serevian Dungeon itself."


    This was a more controversial proposal from the Kandrian Empire. The proposal favored those sovereign nations that were among the smallest and weakest of nations that were doubtful to even be able to sessfully seize and keep a portion of the Serevian Dungeon if there was a war over it. On the other hand, it was a proposal that did not necessarily favor therger and more powerful nations that were present at the summit.


    "The Britannian Empire strongly refuses the proposal offered by the Kandrian Empire." the delegate of the Britannian Empire sternly replied. "We are more than capable of seizing what''s ours."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 400 Proposal

    Exclusive content from N?velDrama.Org.


    The atmosphere grew tense at the heavy-handed deration of the delegate of the Britannian Empire. It didn''t help that the delegate had broken the norms of addressal by referring to the Britannian Empire in first-person rather than third-person when he wasn''t the ruler of the kingdom.


    Still, none of the other delegates piped up immediately against the rude gesture. The arrogance of the delegate of the Britannian Empire was not all that unfounded. Everybody knew that the Britannian Empire was the most powerful sovereign nation in the summit hosted by the Kandrian Empire. All of them were wary about butting heads with the titan.


    "Bold words, delegate." The delegate of the Republic of Gorteau replied. "The Republic of Gorteau also refuses the Kandrian Empire''s proposal regarding the division of the territory of the Serevian teau."


    "The Sekigahara Confederate is willing to participate in the division of territory between the present sovereign states provided that the division of the territory is done so in ordance with economic parameters such as GDP." The delegate of the Sekigahara Confederate.


    The Kandrian delegate nodded as he turned back to the delegates of the Republic of Gorteau and the Britannian Empire.


    The delegates of the four nations began deliberating with each other as the remaining delegates simply watched along. Most of them were delegates of small sovereign nations with very little negotiation power and had only just barely qualified to have a seat at the summit.


    Instead, they simply watched as the four most powerful nations, the Kandrian Empire, the Sekigahara Confederate, the Republic of Gorteau, and the Britannian Empire, duke it out amongst themselves. The best they could really do was secure the best terms and conditions in whatever agreement these four nations chalked up.


    "It seems as though we are unable toe to a resolution, regretfully." The Kandrian delegate stated. "If the Britannian Empire and the Republic of Gorteau are unwilling to agree to the division of territory, then allow the Kandrian Empire to make another proposal instead."


    The delegates waited in silence.


    "Instead of a division of territory, allow the Kandrian Empire to propose an assignment of a minute amount of territory to each of the present nations as a guaranteed territory. The remaining vast majority of the Serevian teau and the dungeon is up for free colonization by any of the present sovereign states" The Kandrian delegate concluded.


    All of the delegates considered the proposal as they realized the significance of the proposal.


    Because of the nature of dungeons, enacting a scorched earth policy was quite easy for any of the present nations, small orrge. Because of the self-destructive defense mechanism of the Serevian Dungeon, all one needed to do was send over several Martial Squires to attack the Serevian Dungeon and the Dungeon would suffer an immense amount of damage quite quickly. The process could be elerated with Martial Artists of higher Realms that would allow any of the nations present topletely annihte the Serevian Dungeon.


    Of course, no sovereign nation would want the Serevian Dungeon to be annihted, not when it was as much of a rich resource-high location. The problem was, if some of the nations were bullied out of gaining even a portion of the Serevian Dungeon, then there was a logical incentive to destroy the dungeon for these countries since it would minimize the gains made by the other nations.


    The proposal made by the delegate of the Kandrian Empire addressed that issue by providing all the present sovereign nations a minute but core territory that all nations would agree not to infringe upon. This way, none of the other sovereign nations would be pushed to choose to go for the scorched earth policy.<novelnext></novelnext>


    "The Kingdom of Grahal seconds the proposal made by the Kandrian Empire."


    "The Commonwealth Duchy of Vinfrana also seconds the proposal made by the Kandrian Empire."


    ...


    One by one each of the delegates recognized the usefulness of the proposal that the Kandrian delegate had made.


    "Delegate of the Britannian Empire." The Kandrian delegate turned to face him. "The Britannian Empire the only member in this summit which has yet to convey its stance on the matter."


    The delegate of the Britannian Empire remained silent for a few seconds before the mildest of sighs escaped his mouth. "... The Britannian Empire seconds the proposal made by the Kandrian Empire."


    The proposal made too much sense, not even the Britannian Empire could guarantee that nations that had been bullied out would not resort to such measures. Even if it could, the measures needed to be in ce would be too much. It would require arge number of Martial Artists to remain under surveince in the Serevian teau such that the number would make the Serevian Dungeon be a liability.


    Instead, the proposal of the Kandrian Empire guaranteed, to a certain extent, that no scorched earth policy would be enacted by any of the sovereign nations present.


    "Then there is a unanimous agreement." The Kandrian delegate nodded. "Let us begin fleshing out the details of the distribution then."


    What followed was an intense debate about how much of thend ought to be guaranteed to the participating states. There was an immense amount of controversy and conflict over this issue. The amount ofnd assigned couldn''t be too much or too little. It had to be just the right amount.


    If it was too much, then the smaller and weaker nations would be unfairly advantaged by gaining ess to an amount of territory that they normally would not be able to retain. Yet if the amount was too little, then it would not serve as a viable deterrence to prevent any of the present nations from enacting a scorched earth policy, because the gains would be too minute to be enough of an incentive to not destroy the Serevian teau.


    The nations had to be careful and find the right bnce to ensure that nothing went wrong that could lead to the destruction of the Serevian Dungeon.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 401 Announcement

    The news came all of a sudden. Twelve countries announced the existence of the Serevian Dungeon as they got together to sign the Serevian Pact which specified the terms and conditions that the signing countries agreed to operate under when colonizing the Serevian Dungeon.


    Soon after, the Martial Union and the Kandrian Royal Family published an announcement regarding the participation of the Kandrian Empire in the Serevian Dungeon wars as well as the cooperation of the Royal Family and the Martial Union in the colonization of the Serevian Dungeon.


    "Finally!" Rui sat up in ecstasy as he browsed through his ounter.


    [Announcement:


    The Martial Union ismissioning Martial Apprentices above grade seven to participate in the Serevian Dungeon mission. The details of themission are as follows;


    Mission objective: The aim of the mission is to aid the Kandrian Empire in the colonization of the Serevian Dungeon. This includes protecting assets and territories but also the invasion of territories of other colonizers of the Serevian Dungeon.


    Commission clientele: The Martial Union and the Kandrian Royal family.


    The difficulty of the mission: grade ten.


    Time period of the mission: Indefinite


    Remuneration: Five hundred Martial credits per hour or neen gold and two silver coins per hour for grade-eight Martial Apprentices.


    One thousand Martial credits or thirty-eight gold and four silver coins per hour for grade-nine Martial Apprentices.


    Two thousand Martial credits or seventy-six gold and eight silver per hour for grade-ten Martial Apprentices.


    Missionmencement: twenty-third of winter.]


    "Woah." Rui''s eyes widened at the remuneration. "That''s insane."


    Two thousand Martial Credits per hour was an extreme remuneration pay that Rui seldom ever saw in any mission.


    "The Martial Union must really want its Martial Apprentices to go all out on this mission," Rui murmured.


    That was clearly the reason the Martial Union was incentivizing the mission to Martial Apprentices. It was going to be facing off against powerful Martial Apprentices from other nations, all of whom were going to be the cream of the crop. If the Martial Union held back, it would simply lose thoroughly.


    "Damn," Rui muttered excitedly. "This is going to be insane. Twelve countries?! Just how many powerful Martial Apprentices will I run into?"


    "Many," Julian answered his rhetorical question. "It seems this Serevian Dungeon was what you were referring to earlier when you spoke of a big conflict between Martial Apprentices. How did you even find out about it?" Julian asked curiously.


    "Mission." Rui waved his hand. "Do you know what featherblood mercury and nereneal flintstone are?"


    "They''re too esotericpounds." Julian nodded.


    "Yeah. I know that. I meant what are they used for."


    "Featherblood mercury is used for higher-grade healing potions, while nereneal flintstone is used formunication technology like you ounter, for example," Julian exined.


    "Interesting..." Rui muttered.


    Both healing potions andmunication technology were extremely vital for human societies to function in their current state.<novelnext></novelnext>


    "No wonder the nations are taking this so seriously." Rui nodded. A city-wide dungeon nearly filled to the brim with purified featherblood mercury and nereneal flintstone.


    The missionmenced in forty-eight hours. Still, Rui intended to get himself epted to handle the mission. He had no doubt that the Martial Union would ept him with open arms. Why wouldn''t they? Rui was the one who had discovered the Serevian Dungeon and had already proven his capability in the Serevian Dungeon.


    Even if it weren''t for that, he was a grade-ten Martial Apprentices. This held even more significance since the difficulty of bing a grade-ten Martial Apprentice had risen significantly and the Martial Apprentices who were still grade ten even after the updation of the Martial Apprentice evaluation grading system were very few.


    Furthermore, several of the techniques he had mastered were suited to the mission in question. His enhanced stealth capability as well as his sensorypatibility all bolstered by the Mindmirror secondary brain.


    If he was not qualified, then no one was!


    Rui immediately began hurrying up as he put on his Martial Uniform and mask, immediately heading for the Martial Union after having bid goodbye to his family. He didn''t know when he was returning, after all.


    Once he had reached the Martial Union there already was a huge rush at the headquarters. Among the crowd was arge variety of Martial Artists who had most certainlye to inquire regarding the Serevian Dungeon mission.


    Rui managed to squeeze his way through the crowd. He immediately headed towards themission''s department.


    "Excuse me." Rui reached out to one of the staff members. "I would like to ept the Serevian Dungeon mission."


    "Will do, Apprentice." She smiled briefly. "Age?" She asked immediately.


    "Sixteen."


    "Martial Artist grade?" She asked.


    "Grade ten," Rui muttered.


    "Name?"


    "Rui Quarrier."


    "And finally, usually there needs to be proof of identity." She nodded. "Please provide your Martial license please."


    "Ah Apprentice Rui Quarrier." Her expression changed. "You have already been marked as priority recruitment in your profile. There will be no dy in the eptance of the mission then. Please fill these forms and sign in the required ces."


    "Done." Rui drew her attention as she went through all of the pages.


    "Thank you, Apprentice Quarrier." She replied. "Here''s the mission bill for the mission you have epted."


    Rui beheld the mission bill of the Serevian Dungeon mission with excitement. In his eyes, the otherwise normal booklet had been glowing and sparkling as it developed its own halo.Exclusive content from N?velDrama.Org.


    Without any further dy, he ripped open the booklet, breaking the seal in the process.


    "Interesting." He immediately murmured as his eyes lit up in eagerness. The mission bill began delving into the means by which the Serevian Dungeon had been discovered providing context to the Martial Artist who had chosen to undertake the mission so they understood as much as was generally possible about exactly what they were getting themselves into.


    "Woah." He remarked. "They''re even using some of the documented images that I had collected as a part of my mission, that''s cool." He shrugged, as he read on.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 402 Approach

    The Martial Union and the Royal Family had chosen an interesting strategy for expansion and colonization. The twelve nations participating in the raid of the Serevian Dungeon had all agreed that each nation was entitled to one percent of the territory of the Serevian Dungeon. This one percent of the territory was recognized as unassable and uninfringeable by each of the twelve nations participating in the raid of the Serevian Dungeon.


    The Martial Union and the Royal Family had chosen a territory-expansive strategy that chose to continue expanding their territory until they ran into the first hostile colonizing force. In such a case, the assault team was to immediately begin attacking the hostile colonizing force with the aim of seizing as muchnd as possible. General conditions established were to minimize the number of nations with which the Kandrian Dungeon team picked a fight.


    Restricting the number of nations with which they picked a fight with was to ensure that the dungeon team did not stretch themselves thin as far as defense and resources went. There was no point in picking a fight against ten people and losing all ten than picking a fight against only five people but winning three. The biggest issue was bncing ambition with the constraints of the dungeon team.


    Another rule of thumb they had to follow was to target the weaker nation over the stronger ones, if possible. Ideally, they would want to take on smaller and weaker nations because they were easier to bully. It was inefficient and ineffective to try and take any of the other three super-nations; The Sekigahara Confederate, the Republic of Gorteau, and most importantly; The Britannian Empire.


    The initial assault and defense squads that would be apanying the dungeon team were only part of the total amount of Martial Apprentices that would eventually partake in the colonization of the Serevian Dungeon.


    This was because not even the Martial Union could magically gather every single Martial Apprentice on the spot in an instant, most of them were deployed on missions and could only be deployed to the Serevian Dungeon after their existing missions were over.


    The Martial Artists that got to be part of the initial assault squad would end up seeing most of the action in the Serevian Dungeon.


    This was why Rui was eager to be part of the initial dispatch.


    "Purpose of visit, name, and ID please." He was told when he reached security.


    "I''m here to partake in themencement of a mission I''mmissioned for, I''m Rui Quarrier, and here''s my Martial license."


    In no time, he was inside the building. He immediately headed over to themissions'' department.


    "Excuse me." Rui addressed a staff member. "Where can I find the dispatch for mission KEMU-3142?"


    "Give me a moment." She said as she verified his documents, before finally providing him with the information he was looking for.


    Rui immediately headed to the dispatch facility of his mission.


    Before he even stepped into the facility, he could feel the mountain pressure on him. He slowly opened the door and stepped in to be greeted by many silent stares that all exerted pressure on him.


    They were all high-grade Martial Apprentices. Rui could feel that every single one of the was without a doubt no lower than grade eight with a good chunk of them being grade-nine and some even grade ten.


    "I knew you''de." A familiar voice of a girl addressed him. "It''s been a while, Rui Quarrier."


    "Fiona," Rui muttered as he smiled, amused. "It has been a while indeed, I never got to congratte you on winning the Martial Contest. Congrattions on that. A bitte, but better than never."<novelnext></novelnext>


    She shrugged, waving the matter off.


    "What did you mean you knew I''de?" Rui asked curiously.


    "Well, I found out that you were the one who discovered the Serevian teau in the first ce, so expected that you would be here since you definitely know more about it than we do."


    "Everything I know is listed in the mission bill for the most part." Rui shook his head. "I only spent several hours in the ce, it''s not like I have a great amount of experience on the matter."


    "By the way, are you going to be part of the assault squad or the defense squad?" She asked, her eyes lit with curiosity.


    "Assault squad," Rui replied unhesitatingly. "I''m interested in active battle with the best of the Martial Artists the other nations have to offer."


    "Oh?" She raised an eyebrow. "Are the Martial Apprentices of the Kandrian Empire too weak for you?"


    Her tone was jovial, especially since she was the one who defeated Rui in the Martial Contest.


    Rui smiled wryly at herment. "Yes, unfortunately."


    Her eyes widened at those words. "Well, given the feats you achieved, I suppose that''s not particrly hard to believe."


    She was clearly referring to him leading four other Martial Apprentices to victory against a Martial Squire. That was a shocking feat that still buzzed the Kandrian Empire every now and then more than seven months after it had already happened.


    Rui simply smiled at those words. Yet he frowned when he felt a pang of hostility emerge from the crowd of Martial Apprentices in the dispatch facility. He turned in the direction of its source as his eyes widened in surprise.


    "Ian Nepomniachtchi." He murmured,


    He hadpletely forgotten about the obnoxious arrogant Martial Apprentice that he had defeated in the third round of the Martial Contest.


    But evidently, Ian had not forgotten about that. Rui could feel an unadulterated hatred brewing in his eyes as he stared Rui down with a well-concealed but ultimately oozing re that had specks of bloodlust. Rui could already tell that the man hadn''t taken his loss gracefully, epted he was wrong, and moved on. Instead, the man had clearly nursed a vendetta and grudge against Rui that had been smoldering in him for more than a year.


    Rui sighed. "I hope this idiot doesn''t do something stupid."


    This chapter upload first at  Please check at N/?vel(D)rama.Org.

 Chapter 403 Converse

    "Oh Ian?" Fionaughed. "Ignore him, but be careful, he''s really mad at you for beating him in the Martial Contestst year."


    "I can tell." Rui sighed.


    "By the way." Fiona turned to him."You''re much stronger than you were a year ago, but you feel very weak, like a normal human, what''s that about?"


    "Ah¡­ That''s a mental technique I use to reduce my presence and danger so that normal humans don''t get affected by me even if I don''t maintain my emotions perfectly." Rui exined.


    "Oh? Fiona''s eyes shed with curiosity. "How does that work?"


    The two bantered for a bit before another individual entered the dispatch facility.


    "Martial Apprentices, gather around."All of you are those who have, both applied for one of the two two squads of the dungeon team and all of you have been epted for the respective roles."Belongs to N?velDrama.Org - All rights reserved.


    "I ammissioner Feristen of the Martial Union in charge of themission. I will be breaking down the mission for all of you once more."


    He projected an image on a wall before gesturing at it. "The initial one percent core sovereign territory that every nation posses that cannot be infringed via mutual agreement is something that can be done with choice. Rest assured, the choice will be made by experts who will be part of the dungeon team who will carefully make the decision based off of the positions chosen by the smaller and weaker states as well as thergest and most powerful states that will make life easier for all of you."


    Rui nodded. It made no sense to leave such a strategic militaristic decision in the hands ofymen like Martial Artists. Rui was not arrogant enough to believe that his previous life''s memories and other cognitive advantages would somehow magically make him an expert in the field of militaristic strategy.


    "Once you safely escort the dungeon team into and through the Serevian teau until you reach the Serevian Dungeon, you will escort and protect the dungeon team to the coordinates of the location chosen by the strategic department. Then you will form an perimeter around the dungeon team on hih alert as they begin the base formation." He paused.


    "Once that urs, the defensive squad will engage in standard location protection missions protective protocols, while the assault squad will begin engaging in expansion and seizing of territory. The variables will vary and you will be expected to consult the strategic department on the assaults conducted." Themissioner nodded. "The nature of the mission is such that very little can be concretely said beyond what I already have. The mission willmence in eighteen hours, be sure to be at this dispatch facility by then. It is rmended you finish all your paperwork well before then. You''ll be meeting up with the dungeon team as soon as the missionmences. And with that, I bid all of you good luck. Perform well, and you may earn some extra bonuses."


    He nodded before promptly exiting the dispatch facility.


    The Martial Apprentices followed themissioner''s words as they filled in the paperwork before leaving.


    "You''re not nning on going back to Hajin right?" Fiona asked.


    "No. It would be pointless to go back only toe back half a dayter." Rui shook his head.


    "Then do you want toe over to my ce?" Fiona asked she threw a side eye at him.


    Rui met her gaze as he contemted her offer, before shrugging. "Alright, thanks for the offer."


    "Yay." She grinned before dragging him by the arm, much to his surprise.


    Once they exited the office of the Martial Union, she waved to an extravagant horse-pulled carriage with the emblem of the Roschem Family stopped right before them.


    "Er¡­miss , who might this be?" A maid from within asked once she saw the hand of a young man in hers.


    "He''s now a guest of the Roschem Manor." She dered.


    "¡­Very well, miss." The maid relented.<novelnext></novelnext>


    "Get in." She told him as she hopped in herself, patting the seat next to her.


    "Are you sure this is ok?" Rui asked, scratching his head.


    "It will be fine, let''s go." Fiona insisted, giggling.


    Rui sighed as he got in, sitting beside her. Soon, the carriage began moving.


    "You know¡­" She began. "Thatst fight we had was unlike any other fight I''ve ever had in my life."


    "Oh?" Rui asked, raising an eye. "Why do you say that?"


    "I never had too much of a strong ambition for any one particr thing. But after seeing how far you''re willing to persevere for the sake of pursuing your Martial Art¡­ I got a little curious, you see." She continued, as she turned to face him. "I wonder what pursuing your Martial Path really feels like."


    In that moment, Rui felt as though she had actually matured a lot since hest spoke with her when they ate dinner together.


    "That''s good to hear." Rui nodded. "Have you named your Martial Art yet?"


    "No. Why?" Fiona asked.


    "Just curious." Rui replied. (''So she hasn''t yet made much progress on the individuality of her Martial Art.'')


    This wasn''t particrly unexpected after all. She was still only a somewhat carefree sixteen-year-old. Even Kane hadn''t named his Martial Art yet because he hadn''t developed enough individuality yet. Although he did fulfill the other condition of Squire Candidacy; maturity.


    "Well, you have enough time. Just make sure you remain true to your Martial Path, always." Rui added.


    "That sounds like something an old man would say." Fiona noted.


    "It''s just your imagination."


    "Is it?"


    "It''s actually something the headmaster of my Martial Academy branch, Headmaster Aronian had told me. His wise words had truly helped me through some trying and difficult times."


    "Really?" She peered at him suspiciously.


    "Really." Heughed awkwardly.


    The two bantered until they finally reached the Roschem Residence.


    "And this is my home." She waved at her home.


    "Wow." Rui cooed. This is going to be good."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 404 Spar

    The Roschem Manor weed Rui as a guest and he was given his own guest room to stay at. This was a luxury beyond Rui''s expectations. Fiona chattered with him a lot as they waited for themencement of the mission.


    He''d learned a lot more about Fiona by that point. She was a grade-ten Martial Apprentice, even after the update of the Martial Artist grade system. Which meant her prowess was the real deal.


    "By the way." She said at one point. "Do you want to spar?"


    Rui''s eyes lit up in interest as he considered her offer.


    "Sure." He nodded. He had considered the same thing, but he wasn''t sure if it was wise to challenge her in her own home after she had invited him. "I''ve been wanting a rematch for more than a while."


    "Alright." She grinned. "Let''s get started then."


    She took him to a sparring facility inside the Roschem Residence., making him sigh at how rich and loaded her family was. He had visited the Arrancar Manor before and had seen something simr there as well, but that was more than three years ago. Back then hecked the contextual understanding as to how ridiculous it was, unlike his current self.


    "This is meant to withstand the power of Martial Apprentices." She told him. "We can go all out here without a worry."


    "Honestly..." Rui scratched his head. "It''s gonna need to do more than just withstand the power of Martial Apprentices for us to truly be unworried."


    She smiled at those words. "Don''t worry, we''ll be fine."


    "Alright, if you say so." Rui shrugged.


    "Take your positions." One of the servants served as a referee.


    Both Fiona and Rui took neutral stances against each other. They were both all-rounders, it was one of the reasons Rui wanted to face her. She was an all-rounder Martial Apprentice who was capable of going toe-to-toe with him.


    She was the perfect opponent to exercise his capability with the VOID algorithm.


    The atmosphere grew heavy as the two began focusing.


    "Begin!"


    WHOOSH


    Fionashed out as she crossed the distance between them in the briefest instance. She didn''t hesitate tounch a barrage of powerful yet swift attacks. She had a much better understanding of his Martial Art since thest time they fought. She knew that he grew stronger as time passed, and she wanted to prevent from him growing to a stage where she would no longer have an advantage against him inbat.


    She knew that his true strength did note from overwhelming physical parameters but the freakish way he was able to adapt and evolve to his opponent with urately timed and ced movements with high precision. Thus, prior to his change was the one time he was most vulnerable.


    Yet to her surprise, overwhelming him was much harder than it seemed.


    WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH


    Rui bobbed and weaved as he evaded every single one of her attacks. His reactions were incredibly sharp.


    (''No, they''re too fast!'') She realized. It was as though his brain was simply functioning faster than what was possible in the Apprentice Realm. He reached with almost no dy, in the briefest of shes.<novelnext></novelnext>


    She didn''t understand. She knew that he was capable of ridiculous reactions after he did his so-called adaptive evolution thingy. But she was pretty sure it was far too early for that to have already kicked in.


    And she was right.


    What she was dealing with was not the VOID algorithm. Rui was still building the predictive model of her. What she was facing was just the raw battle cognition upgrade that he had gained from the Mindmirror symbiote brain. His reactions and reflexes had all improved significantly thanks to programming the secondary brain with those neurological patterns with the Mental Embed technique so that the secondary brain could parallelly process identically alongside Rui''s own mind.


    His reaction and processing speed had increased by more than one hundred percent. Despite possessing greater movement speed than Rui, she simply struggled tond a proper attack on him.


    Of course, she was far from done.


    CLAP!


    She released a loud sound that disoriented Rui on the spot.


    (''High-density infrasonic sound waves?'') Rui cursed as he identified the principle of the technique she had used. Infrasonic sound waves were sound waves at a frequency below the audible range of the human ears. Greater amounts of this frequency of sound caused disorientation, sea sickness, and nausea.


    She used a technique that generated high-density infrasonic sound that would disorient the target if the technique.


    BAM!!


    She managednd in her very first jab on him and the very first damage inflicted on an opponent in the duel.


    Belongs to N?velDrama.Org - All rights reserved.


    Rui grimaced as he used all four of his Apprentice-level techniques; Adamant Reforge, Inner Divergence, stic Shift, and Acute Edge to mitigate the damage done by her attack, yet it was only partially effective, he couldn''t negate everything.


    (''Damn, she hits like a truck, as always.'') Rui grimaced. He had always known that she hit hard, but she had be even stronger than she was before. Her single strike throbbed through his body.


    Yet, Fiona wasn''t done. Sheshed out after him again, refusing to let him catch his bearings and awareness. She continued to whale out an onught of attacks, hoping she would get in more attacks by exploiting his openings.


    Yet;


    WHOOSH


    BAM!


    Rui evaded attacks as he slipped in a clean strike that neatly squeezed through an obscure hole in her defense.


    It was a Flowing Canon with enough power to push even her back.


    She nced back at him with a wary expression. He, in turn, had a confident expression as he met her eyes with a new stance. He hopped lightly as his arms were aggressively ced. His new stance was offense and speed-oriented stance which ced less weight on defense.


    The statement it made was clear. He didn''t need to focus on defense when fighting against her.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 405 Outcome

    Rui calmly took his new stance as he met Fiona''s probing gaze.


    The initial predictive model had beenpleted. Rui had managed to hold on for long enough for himself and the Mindmirror Symbiote brain to work together.


    This time, it was his turn to go on the offensive.


    POW POW POW!


    He began with a flurry of jabs at her, testing her out and feeling her reactions as he continued refining his predictive model.


    It wasn''t enough to be called a w, but one shoring of the VOID algorithm was that he needed data in the same areas as the things he was trying to predict by creating a predictive model.


    Because of the fact that she had been on the offensive the entire time and he had been on the defensive, he didn''t have much data on her defensive patterns. Although he could still predict her with parameters that were unchanging across offense or defense, the predictive model was at its most effective when it had adequate data.


    WHOOSH WHOOSH


    BAM BAM!


    He casually evaded her, having predicted her movements with the predictive model, whileunching perfectly ced and timed uppercuts into openings created by her own attacks.


    She grimaced as she leaped back, throwing a concerned nce at Rui who chased after her, refusing to let her get her bearings in the fight.


    With every attack he threw, sess or failure, the prediction model gained ess to more and more data that allowed the predictions to be more and more refined.


    She knew that she had already failed in trying to defeat him before he evolved to her. The best she could do at that point was trying to win regardless of the evolution.


    Yet she didn''t have any viably means to do so


    CLASP


    Rui caught one of her arms having predicted her attempt at using the infrasonic sound attack to disorient him to try and exploit the opportunity tond a powerful blow on him then and there.


    Yet, Rui mercilessly used Flow Flux bolstered with me Breathing and Outer Convergence.


    She stumbled, yet before she could even try to regain her bnce;


    BAM BAM!


    Two Tempestuous Ripples hit her from below as theyunched her airborne as they carried her well outside the boundaries of the ring.


    THUD


    Shended heavily, out of bounds.


    She sighed. "That''s your win, I guess."


    "Hehehe." Rui chuckled as he smirked. "Looks like I win this time."


    "You''ve truly gotten ridiculously strong." She admitted. "Since when was your evolution thingy that strong?"


    "For a while now," Rui admitted.<novelnext></novelnext>


    Back when he had fought her in the Martial Contest, he had not yet mastered the predictive model at that time. He had fought Fiona purely with the more primitive stylistic adaptation systems of the VOID algorithm back then. Although it wasn''t entirely obsolete, it was obsoletepared to what he was capable of now.


    It wasn''t as though Rui had created something brand new in the time since the Martial Contest. The only difference was that he had mastered the Mind Pce and the Mindmirror Symbiote which allowed him to use the VOID algorithm himself inbat not just viably but also perfectly and sometimes even excellently.


    Yet the VOID algorithm itself was the oue of a project, Project Water that had taken him a lifetime to achieve.


    So the power he had obtained in thest year wasn''t just something he had obtained in thest year. But something he had finally crystalized after decades of effort.


    "How did you get this fast and this strong?" She asked curiously.


    "Hard work, talent, calcted risks, and a lot of luck." He replied dismissively.


    He''d rather have kept the secret as down on the low as possible.


    "Besides, you''ve gotten a lot stronger too," Rui added, consolingly.


    "I just mastered a few stronger Martial Art techniques." She said.


    "That''s more or less what I did, really." Rui shrugged.


    The two bantered some more as time passed. Rui enjoyed the extreme hospitality that the Roschem Family provided him. He had basically never experienced such luxury since he wasn''t rich enough to afford such luxuries. He partook in everything they had to offer until the time for themencement of the mission took ce.


    "Finally." Fiona muttered as they set out for the Martial Union. "This took far longer than it should have. What was the point of having to wait eighteen hours when we could have started immediately back then?"


    "We may have been ready, but the civilian parts of our Serevian Dungeon team may not necessarily have been ready. These include miners and mining equipment as well as research schrs and other extraction teams for resource acquisition." Rui exined.


    "But why not?" Fiona asked.


    "Because there is more than just manpower that goes into these teams," Rui answered. "You need the necessary equipment and machinery, you need supplies; both personal and industrial as well as means of transportation that needs toe together for our Serevian Dungeon team to be ready."


    "Ah, makes sense." Fiona nodded. "I''m just d I''m not stuck with defending and protecting these nerds instead."


    "You''re also in the offensive squad by that you mean?" Rui asked, raising an eyebrow at the girl.


    "Yes, of course." She nodded. "I would get bored just sitting around waiting for attacks. I epted the Serevian Dungeon mission because I was quite curious about what the Serevian Dungeon was like and whether it was as exotic as people say or not."Belongs to N?velDrama.Org - All rights reserved.


    Rui nodded as an interesting point took his attention.


    "I wonder what Squad Ian Nepomniachtchi, is going to be a part of," Rui asked out aloud.


    "Who knows, we''ll find out." She shrugged.


    "He struck me as an aggressive person, hard to imagine himing all the way to the Serevian Dungeon unless he wants to actively seek out fight himself." Rui noted.


    "That is true." Fionaughed at his words mirthfully.


    The two of them got out of their carriage once they arrived, immediately heading inside.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 406 Arrival

    The two of them quickly headed over to the designated dispatch facility. Plenty of Martial Artists had already gathered at the dispatch facility. They all prepared as they gathered the necessary gear and equipment. Thankfully for the Martial Artists, the Martial Union had provided them with the necessary potions free of cost.


    This was one of the incentives that the Martial Union had offered to incentivize the mission and attract even more powerful Martial Artists to undertake the mission.


    Rui and Fiona immediately began preparing their kits with the rmended and necessary gear.


    Soon it was time for being dispatched. However, they weren''t going to be dispatched to the Serevian teau immediately. They first needed to intercept the dungeon team that would be dispatched from the Kandrian Government.


    The Martial Union''s role in the dungeon wars was purely Martial and militaristic. The Kandrian Government would be solely shouldering the burden of gathering the team that would be in charge of mining and resource acquisition. Specifically, the Ministry of Mining and the Ministry of Environment and Ecology would be joining hands in the endeavor.


    The Kandrian Royal Army would be dispatching several defensive corps to aid the dungeon team. The army would be bearing the heaviest weight as far as defensive measures went. This was natural, as although manual bodyguarding and surveince from the Martial Artists of the Martial Union in the defensive squad was certainly quite necessary, it was not enough by itself. Setting up defensive barricades and defensive technological solutions were also equally necessary.


    The army would contribute to the core defense while the defensive squad of the Martial Union would focus on repelling attacks on their territory.


    They would be joining the convoy before it was dispatched from an army base.


    Rui counted the Martial Artists using Seismic Mapping.


    (''Forty-eight Martial Apprentices on the very first dispatch?'') Rui raised an eyebrow. (''The Martial Union isn''t holding back it seems.'')


    Furthermore, each of these Martial Apprentices was high-grade Martial Apprentices of the Martial Union. Both the quality and quantity of the Martial Artists being assigned to a single mission far exceeded anything he had ever participated in.


    Soon,missioner Feristen entered the dispatch facility. The Martial Artists had all prepared themselves in time. They would soon need to be dispatched.


    "Apprentices. The time hase. The dungeon team is currently in military base KEM-423 right outside the town of Vargard. All of you have the coordinates in your mission bills. It''s time to dispatch. Get going."


    The Martial Artists left the facility as they headed towards the designated military base outside the town.


    The sight of forty-eight Martial Apprentices zipping through the town of Vargard spurred waves of excitement among themon public. It was very rare to see such an exorbitant number of Martial Apprentices traveling together. Such a sight inspired awe and amazement as each of these mighty beings individually was far beyond what normal humans could ever be.


    Soon, they arrived at the designated military base. It wasrge and heavily fortified, withrge spiked walls that barricaded any entry.


    The security was not light, and guards armed with weapons and other devices Rui could not even identify.<novelnext></novelnext>


    "Purpose of visit?" The security guards asked with a straight face and a stern expression.


    "Mission KEMU-3142." One of the Martial Apprentices at the front of the crowd chirped up.Please check at N/?vel(D)rama.Org.


    The security team began inspecting each and every mission bill and Martial license with heavy scrutiny. The Martial Apprentices were heavily scanned as were their belongings before they were finally allowed in.


    "Barrack number 7." Rui was told as he was returned his belongings.


    The Martial Apprentices made their way to the designated barrack. The barracks housed manyrge motorized vehicles of different kinds.


    "Martial Apprentices of the Martial Union." A man in an adorned militaristic uniform addressed them. "I am colonel Carnes. I am the acting leader of the Kandrian Serevian dungeon team, as I''m sure you''re already informed. The Kandrian Serevian will soon depart now that you have arrived as per protocol."


    Soon, the many motorized carriages emerged out of the barrack in a particr formation. The motorized carriages on the outermostyer were heavy,rge, and highly armored. They were part of the defensive deployment to protect the dungeon team.


    The inner circle wasprised of supplies and storage carriages that contained necessary supplies and resources that were absolutely vital for maintaining a fortified mining endeavor.


    The Martial Apprentices already knew what to do. They would be traveling by foot, forming a perimeter protecting the dungeon team convoy.


    Soon, the voyage to the Serevian Dungeonmenced. The journey was estimated to take a whole day. After all, arge traveling convoy couldn''t move as fast as Rui did when he ran to the Serevian Dungeon. The journey would be agonizingly slow.


    Both the offense and the defense squads partook in the perimeter. The many Martial Apprentices with sensory techniques kept an eye out on their surroundings as they traveled alongside the dungeon team.


    Nearly a whole day had passed until they finally reached the Serevian teau. They paused some distance away from the cliff that led down to a forest.


    It was impossible for them to travel down the cliff, of course. Fortunately, the Ministry of Environment and Ecology had already chartered a viable route down to the Serevian teau safely. The convoy veered as they evaded the cliff safely. Traveling parallel to the cliff. As time passed, the elevation of the cliff declined slowly as the convoy traveled downhill.


    Soon, the cliff melted into a straightforward pass.


    The convoy took their very first step into the Serevian teau. Many of the Martial Artists tensed up as they continued traveling. The mission bill stressed the dangers of the Serevian teau. The fact that one needed to be a grade seven Martial Artists just to be barely qualified to travel the Serevian teau hadn''t escaped their memories. Even if they were all powerful Martial Apprentices chosen for this very reason, it didn''t ease their burdens.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 407 Confrontation

    Part of the reason for this was the size of the convoy. It was one thing for a nimble, flexible, and fast Martial Apprentices to travel the Serevian teau. It was entirely another thing forrge convoys such as the Kandrian Empire''s Serevian Dungeon team to travel the Serevian teau.


    The biggest difference was the size which made them extremely loud and conspicuous. On top of their conspicuity, their inability to easily and swiftly retreat and disengage from any conflict that may arise made their position that much more vulnerable. Martial Apprentices often simply retreated or escaped in the face of grave danger.


    But in this case, they couldn''t.


    Rui was also a bit worried. He did not think he himself was in any particr danger of dying. But he certainly did worry about the convoy. The Serevian teau had arge amount of Apprentice-level fauna and flora. The individual prowess of the creatures was not a problem, the problem was the sheer number of the creatures that the Serevian teau held. They were at a numbers disadvantage.


    Of course, the Ministry of Environment and Ecology as well as the military weren''t stupid. They were aware of the same problem as well. In addition to the forty-eight high-grade Martial Apprentices that were protecting the dungeon team convoy, there were the defensive carriages that were capable of pulling their own weight. The many defensive carriages that formed their own parameters protecting the core of the dungeon team inside all began buzzing and humming. From atop therge and heavy defensive armored carriages emergedrge long structures that eerily resembled a railgun or a canon. Rui felt a sense of danger from the structures that were clearly weapons.


    Yet he felt more confident. The sheer prowess of their convoy was quite high. Even if they were attacked, whoever attacked them would be quite sorry for ever having done so.


    Even if arge wave of Apprentice-level creatures happened upon them, they would certainly be able to repel them away with ease.


    Another major problem for the dungeon team convoy was traveling itself. The Serevian teau didn''t have the wide space needed for a wide convoy of this nature to be able to travel unperturbed while still maintaining the necessary formation.


    However, this had also been ounted for. The carriages at the very forefront of the convoy were equipped with path-clearing devices and technology that cleared away any trees that obstructed the path of the convoy, swiftly.


    Yet, this also hindered their path considerably. They needed extra time because of all the dys that the clearing of the path was causing.Belongs to N?velDrama.Org - All rights reserved.


    Their journey was not unhindered, either.


    "Pack of eight Frost Wolvesing from nine o clock!" Rui shouted as his Seismic Mapping recognized the signature of the seismic radiation.


    The Martial Artists around Rui immediately turned toward the direction that Rui had indicated their arrival to be from. The canons of the armored defense carriages turned in the direction that Rui had announced they wereing from.<novelnext></novelnext>


    Soon, they came.


    Seven wolves appeared, sprinting toward them at an incredible pace.


    Rui, Fiona, and several other Martial Apprenticesunched long-range attacks toward the wolves as the canons fired.


    BAM BAM BAM!


    Multiple attacks crashed into the wolves as they whimpered in pain. The attacks of high-grade Martial Apprentices and the many canons atop the armored carriages were overwhelming.


    Most of the wolves died while the remaining ran away, in fear for their life.


    Rui sighed in relief as he nced at the canons atop the defensive armored carriages with an impressed expression. This was his first time witnessing esoteric technology inbat. As expected, it was not weak. The sheer speed and power of the projectilesunched were quite impressive and dangerous even to Martial Apprentices. Only Martial Apprentices of the high grades could deal with them. Martial Apprentices of the low grades would likely be unable to dodge it due to the speed and unable to withstand it due to the power.


    Rui could only think of the conflict between Martial Artists and sovereign states when he saw what the canons were capable of. He hadn''t forgotten that the only way the Kandrian Royal Family waspetitive with the Martial Union was through their esoteric technology. The Royal Family invested in esoteric technology to the same degree the Martial Union invested in Martial Art. Its technological capabilities were supposed to allow it to be a threat to the Martial Union, and Rui was starting to see how. If the Royal Family and the Royal army possessed weapons of such power and much greater, then that alone would be a threat to the Martial Union.


    Thankfully, canons like these weren''t nimble and flexible like Martial Apprentices were. They were also a permanent money drain proportional to the firepower they outputted whereas Martial Artists were not nearly as expensive to maintain.


    However, the Kandrian Royal Family wasn''t just limited to weapons such as these. They had various other technological solutions that allowed them to be quitepetitive with Martial Artists. This included other weapon technologies outside of mere canons.


    Rui recalled what Julian had told him a long time ago. One of the main ways the Kandrian Royal Army kept up with the Martial Union was through temporary augmentation potions. These were potions that could temporarily augment the consumer of the potion significantly, granting them superhuman physical and mental parameters. These potions allowed ordinary humans to fight Martial Artists on an even footing, at least until the effects of the potions wore off. This way, even though the Royal Family had far fewer Martial Artists than the Martial Union, they had ways of allowing ordinary soldiers to fight with Martial Artists.


    (''I wonder if we''ll see any of those in this dungeon team.'') Rui wondered. It was quite usible that they would. After all, if it was one of the core ways by which the Royal Family and the Royal Army stayed relevant, then there was a pretty good chance he would see it, one way or another.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 408 Core

    Rui put his thoughts aside as they were attacked multiple times after the first attack. Sometimes it was hippogriffs, other times it wasrger wild cats, and sometimes it was aerial beasts.


    Yet each time they were attacked, the Martial Apprentices and the canons fired, warding off beasts before they could evene closer to the convoy. Most creatures that attacked them either died or got hurt enough to simply run away. Ultimately. Most creatures in the animal kingdom had a strong sense of survival that prevented them from fighting highly dangerous battles that would likely result in them getting butchered.


    After many hours of agonizingly slow travel, they finally reached the core of the Serevian teau.


    Thend had suddenly and sharply elevated highly at a particr point, just as Rui had remembered it.


    The only question was how the carriages of the dungeon team were going to travel up all the way to the surface of the elevatednd.


    That had also been nned by the Ministry. The convoy veered to the side as they traveled parallelly to the Serevian Dungeon before they happened upon a particrlyrge cave that was muchrger than any of the ones that they had run into prior. The cave had been located prior to themencement of the mission when searching for a cave that would allow the dungeon team convoy to reach the surface of the Serevian Dungeon.


    The convoy temporarily broke formation as the carriages proceeded one by one through therge cave, following a particr path that brought them to the surface. The Martial Apprentices had secured the entrance and exit of the cave and had also scouted the path ahead of time to make sure that there weren''t any hostile Apprentice-level animals that would pose a threat to the particrly more vulnerable carriages of the convoy.


    "That''s thest of it." Rui nodded as the final armored carriage finally pushed itself up to the surface of the Serevian Dungeon.


    He turned back, facing the Serevian Dungeon for the first time since hisst mission. "This ce hasn''t changed much." He nodded.


    Soon the carriages huddled together in their formation. However, this time, some of the inner carriages buzzed and hummed as the top of theserge carriages began to change as certain devices began growing out of it. Several devices resembling satellites had formed atop these carriages. They were positioned such that they faced the entirety of the Serevian Dungeon in all three hundred and sixty degrees of vision.


    Rui knew what they were for. Not only because the mission bill had spoken about them, but also because they resembled the technology of Earth a bit too much.Please check at N/?vel(D)rama.Org.


    ording to established protocols, the dungeon team was supposed to gather environmental data before that data would be set back to the higher-ups back home.


    The Ministry and the government back home would process the data and choose the location of their core territory.<novelnext></novelnext>


    The location of the core territory of a sovereign nation in the Serevian Dungeon was extremely important. ording to the Serevian Pact that the twelve countries thatid im to the territory of the Serevian Dungeon, the territory that each sovereign nation dered as its core territory would be, as sworn by all nations, uninfringeable and unseizable by any other nation.


    Thus, the location of such territory was an extremely important and strategic decision that needed to be made. The choice was important enough that it would permanently impact the oue of the nation''s participation in the Serevian Dungeon war.


    Thus, it would likely take some time before the relevant militaristic and strategic experts in the headquarters of the operation back home in the Kandrian Empire, figure out the most optimal spot for dering as territory.


    Important decisions like this took into ount logistical and inventory constraints, the risk of getting attacked by other nations, risk of getting attacked by Apprentice-level beasts. It also needed to take into ount the distance from the edge and the cost and difficulty of restocking.


    It also needed to take into ount the evaluation of mining viability and resource avability.


    For now, the dungeon team convoy set up a temporary base and other temporary defensive measures. A simple fortification fencing was erected for basic protection as the defensive squad and the armed and armored carriages also formed a perimeter around the dungeon team.


    It was only after several defensive and surveince measures were taken before the inhabitants of the Serevian Dungeon finally exited the carriages. It was quite clear that the many individuals who emerged from the inner carriages were mix of intellectuals and manualborers, particrly miners. They contained people of the intellectual professions such as environmentalist schrs as well as ecologist schrs for very obvious reasons.


    Both of these professions were quite needed in the Servian Dungeon, of course, but they weren''t the only needed professions. The Ministry of Mining had deployed miners and specific mining technological solutions that would aid in the process of the extraction of some of the vast reserves of featherblood mercury and Nereneal Flintstone.


    They immediately began looking busy as they began acquiring samples of literally everything that could even be sampled. Inparison, the offensive squad was mostly jobless. It wasn''t their fault of course, their turn would onlye after the Kandrian Empire chose their core territory and only after they stabilized their base in their core territory.


    Thankfully, the decision came within a few hours.


    To everyone''s delight, the decision of the core territory of the Kandrian Empire within the Serevian Dungeon had ovepped with their existing position. Meaning they didn''t need to move ces in order to begin colonizing their core base in their core territory at the edge of the Serevian Dungeon.


    Rui had partially expected that the core territory would be ced at the edge of the Serevian Dungeon. After all, it was a smart move from his point of view. There were several clear advantages to doing so.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 409 Analysis

    The benefits of choosing the core territory at the edge of the Serevian Dungeon were clear. For one, the restocking and resupplying of necessary goods and supplies for the Serevian dungeon team became a lot more convenient for the Kandrian Empire. Otherwise, the routine supply shipments sent by Kandrian Empire would need to enter the Serevian Dungeon. Once it entered the Serevian Dungeon it was vulnerable to attack from hostile Martial Apprentices who had no qualms about attacking supply shipments in order to hind the Kandrian Empire.


    Protecting the supply shipments heavily enough to deter the attacks from otherpeting nations would require an immense amount of Martial Art resources that would make the already expensive expenditure of the entire endeavor far greater than it already was.


    However, making the core territory of the Kandrian Empire at the edge of the Serevian Dungeon meant that the supply shipments never needed to enter any hostile territory in the Serevian Dungeon. Furthermore, it restricted the area over which their territory could be attacked from. Doing so reduced the threat they would be subjected to, while also bolstering their defenses due to a much lesser area over which an attack could ur.


    Part of the reason that choosing territory at the edge of the Serevian Dungeon was a wise choice was because of the fact that the twelve nations had agreed to never engage inbat in the Serevian teau outside the Serevian Dungeon. This was to prevent the esction of the conflict of the Serevian Dungeon outside it into full-blown war.


    The Serevian Dungeon''s limit of the Apprentice Realm functioned as a hard ceiling for the limit to the degree to which the conflict could escte to; to never above the Apprentice Realm.Please check at N/?vel(D)rama.Org.


    However, once the conflict moved outside the Serevian Dungeon, then Martial Artists of higher Realms would no longer be limited by the defense mechanism of the Serevian Dungeon. The conflict could freely escte to the Squire and the Senior Realm rather quickly.


    Once that happened, it wasn''t just about the featherblood mercury and nereneal flint stone. Martial Artists of the higher Realms were extremely valuable. The losses suffered by all participating sovereign nations in such a conflict would be tremendous and would likely even the profit being made.


    Thus, out of consideration for themselves and others. The twelve nations agreed to the terms and conditions in order to limit the losses suffered by the Serevian Dungeon wars.


    Thus, choosing one''s core territory at the edge of the Serevian Dungeon effectively meant that their backs were covered. Of course, the Kandrian Empire still took defensive measures in case one of the twelve countries chose to vite the Serevian Pact. However, the probability of this urring was quite low as the Pact specified that the vitors of the Serevian Pact may have their territories infringed upon by all the other eleven states participating in the Serevian dungeon wars.


    The work had begun immediately. The many nonbat carriages were soon unloaded and docked as the civil engineers began building quick amodations for the entire team to be able to live in the Serevian Dungeon.


    They began employing esoteric civil engineering technology to build small but efficiently spaced huts that were viable housing amodations for the members of the dungeon team. The military began deploying the more sophisticated defensive and counter-offensive solutions that it hade prepared with, bolstering the defenses of its base.


    These included multiple lines of fortification, and an army of live canons pointed in all directions that an invasion coulde from.<novelnext></novelnext>


    What drew Rui''s attention the most was when the soldiers of the Royal Army finally got out of their military carriages.


    What surprised Rui was thecking of Martial Apprentices, even when considering the Kandrian Empire''scking Martial Artists. The remaining soldiers seemed like normal human beings. Yet many of them had strange contraptions on their arm and other gizmo that Rui had no idea what was.


    He shrugged, before turning his back to the actual martial Apprentices.


    They weren''t many, but they were quite strong. What interested Rui was that two of the Martial Apprentices actually wielded weapons. This was quite a rare coincidence. Rui studied the weapons of these Martial Apprentices carefully.


    One of the wielded a gigantic sword, tied to his back. It was actually quite shocking to see such a ridiculouslyrge de on his back that was almost as tall as its owner! It was a longsword that hyper-emphasized power rather than speed and durability differences.


    (''Still, does he actually manage to sessfullynd hits on his opponent with something that unwieldy) Rui wondered with curiosity and intrigue.


    He turned his attention to the other one. Her weapon was a trident, a three-pronged spear. This was not a weapon he had any familiarity with it. He had never seen the concept of such a weapon in his life. Yet he conducted a quick mental analysis on the object.


    The lethality of the weapons had a lot going for it. It became far easier tond critical attacks with the extra piercing prongs. However, it didn''t mean there were no shorings at all. The pressure it exerted through each tip was reduced by one-third because of the amount of area through which the force was being exerted onto him.


    Furthermore, it also likely reduced the flexibility of offense of the weapon. It was much more difficult to be able to attack with the triple-prong spear head which made it more difficult to actuallynd the damage it ought to have.


    Of course, this was just the price to pay for being able to inflict the three wounds with a single attack that normal spears would be unable to do. At the end of the day, he would likely have still chosen the spear as the most superior weapon, but he wondered whether that would be the case for her. The existence of the Martial Path that created hyper affinities for certain forms ofbat often meant that what was objectively the best did not matter.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 410 Coordination

    A day passed as the Kandrian military speedily worked on the fortification of their core territory. Walls were erected, simple lodging were constructed at incredibly high paces. One of the many things that the army had to take care of was sealing the many caves that littered the territory beneath them that led onto the surface. It served as a hole in the defense and security and could be exploited by hostile Martial Apprentices to infiltrate into the territory.


    Of course, this would vite the Serevian Pact and it was unlikely that any nation would cross the line, the military was not taking any chances. There was also the psychological pressure of living with such a security hole. So much so that there were a few Martial Apprentices of the defensive squad who had been chosen because of their mastery of the Seismic Mapping technique.


    It took a few days for the base camp to fully stabilize as the most important issues had been taken care of and the secondary and tertiary tasks were being handled by the dungeon team dispatched by the Ministry of Environment and Ecology and the Ministry of Mining.


    Rui was starting to get a little bored until finally the offensive squad was ready to be dispatched.


    "Martial Apprentices of the offensive squad." Colonel Carnes addressed the offensive squad. "The first phase of the colonization of the Serevian Dungeon isplete. The Serevian Dungeon team will begin an aggressive expansion deeper into the Serevian Dungeon henceforth with continuous supply shipments from the Kandrian Empire. As per protocol, the offensive team maymence the offensive attacks on any foreign settlements that aren''t part of the core territories of other nations. As all of you are surely aware, you cannot attack the core territories of the Serevian Dungeon. This would vite the Serevian Pact on behalf of the Kandrian Empire."


    Rui nodded. None of the Martial Apprentices were foolish enough to do something that stupid, when the mission bill as well as themissioner of the mission and the colonel leading the mission had all drilled it into their heads that infringing on the core territories was absolutely uneptable.


    "The maps that you will be provided contain clear and defined illustration that detail the core territories of the foreign nations in high uracy and precision." Colonel Carnes informed them as a soldier hauled a box. "Each of these maps also details the territories of a few nations that have already begun expanding territory. As all of you are aware, your goal is to hinder and obstruct the colonization of ourpetitors to the highest degree possible. Ensure that ourpetitors cannot take a single step outside of their core bases!"


    The Martial Apprentices simply stared at him nkly. They were unustomed to such pep talks, being from the Martial Union. The Martial Union was very much practical and business-oriented. Martial Apprentices were not motivated with pep talks, but with money and other more concrete benefits.


    Regardless, the Martial Apprentices were motivated.


    "Colonel Carnes is correct." Commissioner Feristen nodded. "The higher-ups at HQ have already messaged ryed all of you your offensive missions on your ounters regarding the targets that you will be attacking. Refer to the map andmence the attacks at the given timeframe."


    The Martial Apprentices were immediately given the maps with the territories of theirpetitors.


    "Red marks the core territories while blue marks the extended territories, huh?" Rui red the map along with its legends.Content ? copyrighted by N?velDrama.Org.


    The closest territories to the Kandrian Empire''s territories were several small nations. The Kingdom of Nochus, the Republic Jerefin and the State of Hreefeal were the among the three nations closest to the Serevian teau, directly touching it at certain points. This allowed the three nations to get a head start in the exploration and colonization of the Serevian Dungeon.<novelnext></novelnext>


    Rui nced at his ounter as he read the message.


    "My target is... the Kingdom of Nochus huh?" Rui mused as he read the orders of the message that the Martial Union had sent him.


    The Martial Artists of the Martial Union were different from the soldiers of the army that had a high amount of cohesion and coordination. The Martial Artists of the Martial Union had no such thing unless it was with members of a party.


    It wasn''t possible to foster such kind of coordination with Martial Artists who were effectively no different from frencers. The individualistic frencer mindset was what gave the Martial Apprentices its greatest strengths, but it also gave them their greatest shorings. The Martial Union was inferior to the Kandrian Royal Army as far as coordination of its forces went.


    This problem was the reason why the Martial Union included training ofrge-scale coordination guidelines in the Martial Academy. The training wouldn''t magically make all teamwork absolutely perfect, but it would ensure that at the very least the coordination wasn''t a negative.


    It included simple principles that allowed Martial Apprentices to not get in each other''s way.


    That training would be put to use in this mission since the Martial Apprentices that would be working together to assault a certain base had no basis for coordination.


    In fact, Rui didn''t even know who his fellow teammates were that would be attacking the Kingdom of Nochus!


    The Martial Union was taking full control, moving each Martial Apprentice like pieces on a chessboard so that the pieces didn''t need to try teaming up together only to make a mess. Inparison, colonel Carnes had full authority over the Kandrian Dungeon team and the garrisons of the Royal Army. He would be making a lot of decisions and would be held ountable for them.


    Rui shook his head as he began preparing for the assault on the territory of the Kingdom of Nochus. Each nation would be bringing out their best, which meant that their defenses would be significantly stiff.


    Regardless, Rui was quite excited for his first battle of the Serevian Dungeon wars. Just what kind of Martial Artists would he run into?


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 411 Conflict

    "Which territory were you assigned to?" Rui asked Fiona.


    "The State Hreefal." She replied. "You?"


    "Kingdom of Nochus."


    Rui found it a shame that they weren''t working together, but the decision wasn''t in their hands.


    "Martial Apprentices assigned to the Kingdom of Nochus." Commissioner Carnes addressed all of them at one point. "The data regarding the defenses of the territory of the Kingdom of Nochus are present in the mission bill each of you was provided, but I''ll be breaking it down once more."


    He projected some images onto the wall of the room they were all in.


    "The Kingdom of Nochus has opted for a rather straightforward standard fortification structure. The territory is protected by a rather straightforwardrge spiked wall that prevents entry. The wall has openings through which heavy artillery can be mounted and fired. The twenty-four of you are best off simply bypassing the wall from the top. With your capabilities, it cannot prevent your entry indefinitely." Commissioner Carnes exined. "Remember, your goal isn''t necessarily to conquer but to hinder and obstruct their expansion capabilities."


    The Martial Artists nodded, well aware of their role. Rui nced around him, counting the number of Martial Apprentices that were assigned to the Kingdom of Nochus. A total of twenty-four Martial Apprentices were assigned to the mission. It was a rather formidable offensive force that would be no doubt extremely difficult to counter. Especially considering that each of the Martial Apprentices was high ranking Martial Apprentices.


    Rui sighed as he sensed the hostility of Ian Nepomniachtchi from the crowd. It was rather unfortunate that he was paired with the hostile Martial Apprentice, Rui would rather have been assigned a different target.


    Soon, it was time for dispatch. The Martial Apprentices all prepared themselves as the time for themencement of the assaults began.


    They all set out in the direction of their respective targets immediately. The Serevian Dungeon was asrge as a small city, however, that wasn''t too big a problem for the Martial Apprentices. It didn''t take more than twenty minutes for the Martial Apprentices to arrive at the target territories that they were supposed to assault.


    Suddenly, Rui''s Primordial Instinct warned him about a barrage of attacks from the enemy base.


    WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH


    Rui avoided cannon balls that narrowly missed their targets as each of the Martial Apprentices dealt with them in their own way. Each of them was high-grade Martial Apprentices that had been chosen by the Martial Union to partake in the Serevian Dungeon wars and the assault on the territories of the Kingdom of Nochus.


    BAM!


    One of them sted the canon balls into tiny smithereens with a fist. Another simply rampaged forward through the attacks that barely fazed them. Rui merely shifted slightly as he moved the bare minimum needed to evade them.


    BOOM!!!


    One of the Martial Apprentices, a burlyrge man,nded a staggering blow to the fortified wall. The sheer force with which he struck the barrier was tremendous.


    CRACK CRACK


    A deep web of cracks formed on the fortified walls. The materials with which the walls were constructed were certainly not average as they managed to not instantly get utterly annihted by the devastating attack that the Martial Apprentices had unleashed.


    BAM BAM BAM!<novelnext></novelnext>


    The other Martial Apprentices took that as a cue as theyunched a barrage of attacks on the damaged wall.


    BOOM!


    RUMBLE


    An entire section of the fortified wall copsed as the weight of the attacks of the Martial Apprentices was simply too much. The Martial Apprentices rushed in immediately, yet they were immediately met by enemy Martial Apprentices.


    A battle ensued as Martial Apprentices shed with each other.


    Rui simply walked in as he looked for the most powerful Martial Apprentice. Primordial Instinct precisely gave him the danger evaluations of every Martial Apprentice in the vicinity, thus he could tell that the Martial Apprentices of the Kandrian Empire were stronger.


    It likely had to do with the fact that the Martial Union went above and beyond in investing in the growth and development of Martial Artists and Martial Art. A small country like the Kingdom of Nochus simply couldn''tpete with the Kandrian Martial Union as far as the growth of Martial Art and Martial Artists went. This clearly reflected in the difference in the quality of Martial Artists.


    Rui didn''t feel much threat despite being in the middle of a war between Martial Apprentices. His sense of security was simply too high, at this point.


    "Him." Rui muttered as he fixated on one individual who was casually defending from the attacks of two grade-nine Martial Apprentices of the Martial Union.


    Rui dashed towards him at an incredibly swift pace.


    BOOM!!


    He exploited a momentary pause in the battle between the three Martial Apprentices as he rammed into his target with a heavy Flowing Canon, separating him from the Martial Apprentices that he had been taking on.


    "I''ll take this guy on," Rui told them.Belongs to N?velDrama.Org - All rights reserved.


    He didn''t even bother listening to their response as he began unleashing an onught of attacks on his opponent with extreme power and speed.


    Yet, much to his joy, his opponent cleanly redirected every attack with surprising uracy, precision and sess.


    (''Hehehe. I''m going enjoy this one.'') Rui grinned behind his mask.


    His opponent was a defense-oriented Martial Artist. He had a clear focus and nt toward active defense.


    Active defenses were defenses that required the conscious cognition of the user to function. The Inner Divergence, stic Shift, and Acute Edge techniques were all dynamic. These techniques required the user to process and time them correctly, otherwise, they were simply ineffective. The advantage of active defenses was that they were much more flexible their effectiveness didn''t usually have a hard upper limit and often depended on the skill of the user and the uracy of the timing of the user.


    Rui enjoyed fighting against active defenses, they were a better exercise for the VOID algorithm and allowed him to thoroughly test the offensive prowess of his opponent.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 412 Initial

    POW!


    Rui swung a hook only for his opponent to step towards the strike, blocking it with an armed guard. Rui seamlessly hurled an already-wound straight punch to the man''s face.


    BAM!


    Once again, the man stepped forward in the direction of the attack, blocking it with a forward guard. He was incredibly swift for a defensive Martial Apprentice, being able to keep up with Rui''s every attack. Ruiunched a barrage of blows, yet time after time, the man somehow continued blocking all of Rui''s attacks casually.


    (''He''s ruining the timing of my attacks.'') Rui quickly realized. (''He''s using a technique where he steps forward in the direction of the attack and blocks it prematurely before the attack has charged enough to reach its peak.'')


    It was a simple yet fascinating principle. Every attack had a peak as speed and power went. Martial Artists swung their fists and legs and spaced themselves such that the attack wouldnd on their target when the attack was at peak power in order to deliver the maximum possible impact.


    Rui''s opponent instead, rapidly stepped forward in the briefest of moments before the attack had reached its peak and intercepted it when it was weak. This way he could prevent his opponent from showing their best striking power in a fight. Of course, he used other techniques to mitigate the impact, including some passive defense that came from conditioning.


    Yet, it was this mistiming technique that drew Rui''s interest.


    This technique also foiled Reverberating Lance since Rui always timed the technique for the normal collision of the attack. But that was only if Rui continued to fail.


    BOOM!


    The man grimaced for the first time as a powerful body blow mmed into his guards


    Rui kept a careful eye on his movements with Primordial Instinct boosted by the Mindmirror secondary brain, carefully readjusting the timing of the Reverberatingnce to suit the sabotages of his opponent. Rui continued whaling away at him as he began inputting data about his opponent into his mind pce.


    BAM!


    Rui cleanly bypassed his guard as a powerful blow crashed into the man''s guardunching him some distance away.


    The biggest problem with the mistiming technique was that it made him predictable and easy to read. If he approached attacks o through them off-timing, then Rui knew exactly what he would do to each attack.


    The actual predictive model of each attack was not evenplete, yet at this stage, Rui wasn''t even sure if he actually needed it.


    Ruiunched a powerful hook aimed at the man''s jaw. The man, like clockwork, prematurely moves to mis-time the attack. Yet;


    WHOOSH


    It was an illusion.


    BAM!


    Before he could even process it, a sudden attack appeared and crashed into his jaw. The sheer impact of Rui''s true, unhindered power crashed into his jaw. The impact shook his brain, immediately triggering brain trauma.


    THUD


    He copsed on the ground.


    Yet, Rui wasn''t done.<novelnext></novelnext>


    (''Thisrt sucks.'') Rui sighed with a solemn expression.


    BAM!!


    A powerful drop kick to the head was the end. A pool of blood began forming from the man''s head. His skull had been shattered and his brain had already been damaged.


    BAM!


    Rui immediately turned over as the deed wasplete.


    The mission bill had been extremely clear. There was to be no mercy shown to hostilepetitors'' Martial Apprentices. The participating Martial Apprentices were not allowed to let the vanquished Martial Artists survive. Rui began attacking the Martial Apprentices one by one.


    The tide of the battle had begun to overwhelmingly devolve in the favor of the Kandrian Empire. The reason for that was that the Kingdom of Nochus was a small and weak country that simply was unable topensate for therge disparity in quality and quantity of Martial Apprentices.


    Rui was the biggest problem, as everyone soon came to realize.


    He was a menace. An incredible all-rounder who was highly capable. On top of that, the VOID algorithm was particrly brutal. Yet what was even more brutal was how none of them were Martial Apprentices where Rui genuinely would be unable to win without it.


    BAM!


    Ruinded stray attacks on other hostile foreign Martial Apprentices. He pranced around the battlefield looking for especially powerful Martial Apprentices, yet he couldn''t find them.


    He sighed, disappointed mid-battle. Although he knew the Kingdom of Nochus was small and weak he hadn''t expected how much weaker it actually would be. Theckluster Martial Apprentice all reflected the inferiority of the Kingdom of Nochus.


    Rui sighed as he evaded a canon attack. Primordial Instinct kept a focus on the battle yet his mind was preupied. He had nopetition in the little ce.


    Rui was certain that therge nations would be different. These were nations that were more or fewer supernations that were on par with the Kandrian Empire. Rui was sure that at the very least one of the supernations had enough Martial Apprentices who were powerful enough to take him on. What were the odds that he was genuinely unmatched even with such a drastically wide andrge ample size? What were the odds that not a single Martial Apprentice across so many countless Martial Apprentices was simply insufficient to take him on and truly test his powers against a genuine equal who could push him to his absolute limit?


    Before he could even ponder the manner:


    Suddenly.Belongs to N?velDrama.Org - All rights reserved.


    WHOOSH


    Rui side-stepped as he cleanly and smoothly evaded the attack, ncing back at the direction ite from.


    His eyes widened as he clearly beheld two Martial Apprentices in the room.


    One of which was Ian Nepomniachtchi, who had been eying him in hindsight.


    (''No way...'') Rui thought to himself. (''No way he just fired an attack at me?'')


    Rui felt several conflicting thoughts as he analyzed the situation and many different possible exnations as to why the other Martial Apprentice was the one to have fired the attack. Yet his gut told him that he was wrong.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 413 Return

    Rui wanted to walk over immediately and smack some sense into the treacherous moron. But his rationality quashed that urge quickly.


    They were in the middle of a battle. The most important matter was the sessfulpletion of the assault on the expanded territory of the Kingdom of Nochus. Rui would be doing himself harm by being the one to escte the matter in the middle of battle. He could not prove Ian had deliberately aimed at him, but Ian would be able to prove that Rui escted the matter in the middle ofbat.


    He would be ying into his hands if he simply acted on his emotions, thankfully Rui was quite rational regarding the matter


    But Rui realized he needed to be careful of Ian, the man''s grudge was stronger than Rui had expected if he was willing to backstab a fellow Kandrian Martial Artist in a battle against other nations.


    BAM BAM BAM!


    Rui took down another Martial Apprentice as he nced at the state of the base of the Kingdom of Nochus. The base had been evacuated, and the sheer environmental damage caused by many dozens of high-ranking Martial Apprentices was immense.


    "Hm?" Rui''s Seismic Mapping sensed the seismic radiation of motorized carriages heading towards them at incredibly high speeds.


    "Reinforcements!" He shouted, announcing the Kandrian Martial Artists.


    It seemed that the Kingdom of Nochus had gone as far as to forsake a part of the defense of the core territory to reinforce the Martial Apprentice assets that were still defending the expanded territories.


    The motorized vehicles rushed towards the battlefield even as the Kandrian Martial Artists were whittling down the Martial Artists of the Kingdom of Nochus.


    The carriages spread out as several uniformed soldiers leaped out of them. They were part of the military of the Kingdom of Nochus, distinct from the Martial Artists that Kandrian Martial Artists had been fighting up until then.


    Rui frowned as he felt a strange sensation from all of them. They emitted a faint threat to the Martial Apprentices yet they didn''t feel like Martial Apprentices. Rui noticed strange devices across their arms, recalling seeing something simr on many soldiers of the Kandrian Royal Family.


    (''Potions!'') Rui''s eyes widened.


    The soldiers dashed at the Kandrian Martial Apprentices with fearsome speed and power.


    "Retreat!" Rui bellowed as he maximized Primordial Instinct and the Mindmirror brain. Time slowed down from his perspective as he took in the whole situation. The Martial Artists had begun retreating at the sight of the motorized vehicles, thankfully. Ruiunched several Tempestuous Ripples as he himself backed away from the battlefield, slowing down his pursuers.


    Yet, he wasn''t worried that they wouldn''t let them retreat. As defensive reinforcements, they weren''t meant to pursue. Furthermore, potions had time limits. They couldn''t afford to engage in a lengthy, time-consuming chase.


    The Martial Artists were hurt and damaged by the overwhelming offense from the Kandrian Martial Artists.


    The operation was sessful.<novelnext></novelnext>Exclusive content from N?velDrama.Org.


    "Ian." Rui sternly addressed him. "Why did you attack me? Your action is a vition of the oaths you swore not only to be a Martial Apprentice but also the ones you undertook when epting this mission."


    Martial Artists were required to sign statements that they would be held to in order to obtain their Martial licenses. Among these statements was the pledge to good faith, to never act detrimentally to the Martial Union or a mission.


    "It was a mistake." Ian coldly replied without even bothering to look at Rui. "I was locked inbat with a Martial Apprentice and he avoided an attack of mine, which then traveled on to find you in its path. I did not have any ill will against you."


    He was lying. Rui could feel it with his Primordial Instinct.


    "I see." Rui instead replied. "Take care to ensure that it never happens again. Surely you wouldn''t want to hurt a fellow Martial Apprentice in a conflict against foreign nations."


    "Surely I wouldn''t." Ian echoed.


    (''This is going to be a pain in the ass to deal with.'') Rui sighed inwardly.


    He was sure this wasn''t going to be thest attempt by the man to try and harm Rui. The circumstances were anything but convenient. He would need to find a proper way to deal with Ian or this would likely be a long-term problem.


    He couldn''t just attack him without proof. The ramifications of such actions would not be light. There was very little to no point inining tomissioner Feristen or HQ. Without concrete evidence, there wasn''t anything that either would to him. Still, Rui could at least request to be not assigned to the same missions as Ian. That would solve most of the problems.


    Rui shook his head as he put aside the matter. However, he decided he would keep Primordial Instinct active the entire time he was at the Serevian Dungeon. He couldn''t trust Ian to not try something when they were at the base.


    "Woah." His eyes widened as the Kandrian Empire''s territory emerged in his field of vision.


    What surprised him was that the territory had more than doubled in the time that he had been away.


    (''They weren''t kidding when they said ''aggressive expansion''.'') Rui mused.


    In fact, the Kandrian Empire would simply have colonized a gigantic portion of the Serevian Dungeon, however, the underground cavework that created many security issues meant that they couldn''t simply ce gigantic barriers over arge territory. Any territory they seized had to be quickly secured before expansion could begin. It appeared that the security process had been fullypleted and thus the Kandrian Empire had chosen to expand further outside the core territory.


    (''At this rate, the Kandrian Empire''s expansion of territory will lead it to eventually have a direct border and territorial conflict with the other nations in no time at all.'') Rui estimated.


    These would be where the actual conflicts would take ce, the inevitable conflicts. The assault mission he had undergone was merely a proactive measure that the Kandrian Empire had taken to suppress its directpetitors.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 414 Musings

    "You''re saying Apprentice Ian Nepomniachtchi attacked you amidst the mission?" Commissioner Feristen asked him, frowning.


    "Yes,missioner Feristen." Rui nodded. "He insisted it was an ident, but the exnation he provided was imusible. I also sensed his lie as a master of the Primordial Instinct technique and Mindmirror Symbiote. He also has the motive to do something like this."


    "And what motive might that be?" Commissioner Feristen asked him.


    "I defeated him in the Martial Contestst year, he did not take it well and has maintained a grudge by all ounts," Rui exined.


    "Is that all you have?" Commissioner Feristen asked. "I''m afraid you''ve offered nothing but your word."


    "I can''t be expected to provide more," Rui replied. "I''m not asking for an investigation or even for justice. However, it would be appreciated if you could ce us in different missions."


    "I do not make the decision of assigning Martial Apprentices their particr missions. Those are made back home by the higher-ups. Nevertheless, I can put the word of yourint back to the higher-ups, though I can''t guarantee that your wish will get fulfilled."


    "I see, then please do that." Rui nodded. "Thank you."Belongs to N?velDrama.Org - All rights reserved.


    He bademissioner Feristen goodbye before leaving the office, sighing. This was about as far as he could go in regard to relying on his superiors to solve the problem. The Martial Apprentices had just returned and filled in a report, submitting it. Rui had decided to take the time of contactingmissioner Feristen and informing him about Ian.


    For now, he put the matter aside.


    The Kandrian Empire''s territorial expansion was going remarkably well. Rui had heard rumors that another team of Martial Apprentices had been brought in to bolster the defenses of the expanded area. The Kandrian Empire had set a minimum Martial Artist per unit area ratio in order to ensure that the territory could be adequately defended.


    Rui''s face lit up in tion when he ran into a friendly face.


    "Hever!" Rui called out to him. "It''s been a while!"


    "Indeed it has." Hever calmly replied.


    "You''re part of the defensive squad, I''m guessing?" Rui asked him.


    "Indeed."<novelnext></novelnext>


    "Figured." Rui nodded.


    Hever''s Martial Art was fundamentally counter-offensive, he didn''t have a single actively offensive bone in his body. His being part of the offensive squad would be a brain-dead decision on the part of the higher-ups.


    "I heard your assault mission was sessful," Hever told him. "How did it go? What were the Martial Artists of the foreign nation like?"


    "It went well," Rui replied. "The Martial Artists of the Kingdom of Nochus were frankly several notches below than the Martial Apprentices of the Kandrian Empire. Their Martial Art were much more generic and grounded, and they didn''t possess counters for a lot of the more exotic Martial Art techniques that the Martial Apprentices of the Kandrian Empire showed."


    "Seems like the Martial Apprentices ofrge nations are more than just a little favored by virtue of being born in more powerful nations," Hever noted.


    Rui nodded. "The quality of the techniques of Martial Art is very important, the visible power gap between the Martial Artists could be entirely exined by the difference in the quality of the Martial foundations between the nations. I don''t think the defensive squad has much to worry about, there are only smaller nations in our vicinity. None of the super nations'' core territories are even remotely close to ours, rtively speaking."


    "Still, we need to be careful. Eventually, the territory of the Kandrian Empire will expand significantly until it covers swathes of the Serevian Dungeon." Hever noted. "When that timees, direct conflict at the very border of the Kandrian Empire will be inevitable. The defensive squad''s merit will be truly tested when that happens."


    "True." Rui nodded. "None of the smaller nations will attack the Kandrian Empire''s territory unless absolutely necessary. Only the other three fellow super-nations such as the Sekigahara Confederate, the Republic of Gorteau and the Britannian Empire have the power to do something like that, but the territories of these nations were not particrly close to each other.


    In fact, the core territories of the four nations were nearly as far away from each other as possible. This wasn''t done by ident, there was a very strong reason that the four nations each ced their core territories at the most distant part of the Serevian Dungeon.


    The closer the core territories of the super-nations were with each other, the greater the conflict the nations would have to be subjected to for otherwise the same number of resources. There was no point in having the nations close to each other only for the nations to immediately engage in tumultuous conflict.


    By giving each other the wide distance that they would each like, each nation could freely expand in the Serevian Dungeon with only the weaker nations and the many fauna life forms in the Serevian Dungeon impeding their progress. Neither couldpete with the super-nations.


    The Kandrian Empire''s n was to expand aggressively andfortably as fast as possible while being restricted by the necessity of closing all the underground caveworks in their new territory while also eliminating the many low-level Apprentice-level lifeforms that existed in the Serevian Dungeon in their newly seized territory every time they expanded it.


    The problems would begin when the territory of the Kandrian Empire would eventually hit the territories of the other super-nations despite the massive distance between them, simply due to the sheer expansion that all the super-nations would eventuallyplete.


    When that happened, the onlynd that would remain uncolonized would be the core of the Serevian Dungeon. None of the twelve nations had ced their core territory in the center of the Serevian Dungeon, there were simply too many disadvantages to such a decision. The territory would face stiffpetition from every direction. Furthermore, the territory would be boxed out of the border of the Serevian Dungeon making it impossible to receive supply shipments from their home states.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 415 Happenings

    The Kandrian Empire''s initial n in regard to the Serevian Dungeon was simple;


    Expand aggressively and fast.


    Prevent the closestpetitors from expanding.


    The former was, of course, to capitalize and colonize as muchnd and as many resources as possible. Thetter was to ensure that none of the Kandrian Empire''s closestpetitors could colonizend and drain it of resources.


    It wasn''t good enough to seizend already seized by thepetitors of the Kandrian Empire. If the Kandrian Empire seizednds from other nations, thosends will likely have already beenpletely drained of their fruit. The fruit extraction process was rather easy and quick, after all. Even if the Kandrian Empire invaded and conquered territory only a few days after they had been initially colonized, it was entirely possible that all the fruits will have been entirely plundered by the colonizing group that the Kandrian Empire conquered thend from.


    That was why, in the context of the Kandrian Empire, prevention of colonization was more important than stealing colonizednds. That was why the second objective of the constant assault on the territories of the closestpetitors was there at all.


    By having the offense team constantly assaulting the territories of the small nations, the Kandrian Empire could significantly slow down if not entirely impede the expansion of the small nations outside their core territories. This was why the offensive teamprised the best of the best that the Martial Union was able to gather in a short amount of time.


    Days flew by as the Martial Apprentices of the offensive squad continued conducting an increasing number of assaults into the expanded territories of the Kingdom of Nochus, the State of Hreefal, and the Republic of Jerefin.


    BOOM!!!


    Arge section of the fortified wall barricading the territory of the Republic of Jerefin in the Serevian Dungeon copsed.


    Dozens of Martial Apprentices of the Kandrian Martial Union leaped in.


    The very atmosphere contorted and wrung under thebined weight of mind of all the powerful Martial Apprentices.


    Yet, among all of them, a single Martial Apprentices stood out.


    All of the Martial Apprentices of the Republic of Jerefin were drawn to him as they gazed at him with fear.


    He met their eyes.


    What was a meaningless gesture to him sent chills down their spines as they found themselves unable to break eye contact? His eyes froze their gaze, as they greedily sucked out the light from the air.


    It was as though they were naked before his gaze.


    The titanic pressure he exerted on them was almost crippling. But not nearly as crippling as the onught he unleashed upon all of them.


    It wasn''t as though he had godly physical power. It wasn''t as though he moved as fast as lightning. It wasn''t as though he was as tough as a mountain.


    Yet, Martial Apprentices copsed like bowling pins before his rampage.


    Later on, when the Martial Apprentices of the Republic of Jerefin were asked to fill in their reports, it was discovered none of them could quite describe it.<novelnext></novelnext>


    None of them could quite describe the reason for the sheer dominance that Rui disyed on the battlefield. When the intelligence department pressed them for an answer that was vital for understanding the prowess of the Martial Artistbat asset that had wreaked havoc, the exnations provided were so ridiculous that the intelligence officers felt embarrassed typing them out into the profile created for the extremely dangerous Martial Artist in their database.


    "It was... magic." One Martial Apprentice described with a whisper.


    "I felt like a puppet. My movements were pre-ordained, known, and seen through. He was no Martial Artist, he was a prophet." Another murmured.


    Yet, to the horror of the higher-ups of the Republic of Jerefin, confusion was not the worst symptom of fighting the powerful Martial Apprentice.


    No.


    "I can''t see it." The hands of a Martial Apprentice shivered as she held her held.


    "See what?" The intelligence officer asked, confused.Content ? copyrighted by N?velDrama.Org.


    "I can''t see my path... I-I can''t see my path." Her sense of bnce deteriorated. She held her arms out as though she were bncing on a ledge. "I can''t... Path. I can''t. Where Wait, I can''t..." She began mumbling incoherently.


    "I''m going need to medical aid here." the intelligence officer spoke through amunication device. "Apprentice Ferlin is showing signs of disorientation and incoherence."


    "I''M NOT SICK." She screeched. "HE DESTROYED MY MARTIAL PATH."


    She wasn''t the only victim.


    "What do you mean you''re retiring?" A staff member asked politely, confused.


    "Knowing that... thing... exists in the Martial World..." The Martial Apprentice whispered. "I don''t want to fight in a world where that Martial Artist exists. I think I''ll just inherit my father''s farm and lead a peaceful life. I do not ever wish to see that void ever again."


    "You''re in the middle of a grade-ten mission!"


    The Republic of Jerefin was far from the only sovereign state that had experienced such bizarre anomalies. The State of Hreefal and the Kingdom of Nochus had experienced simr happenings. Martial Artists that survived an extended battle against the menace Martial Artist were all psychologically impacted.


    Confusion and iprehension were the most basic symptoms. Not a single Martial Apprentice understood what was happening. As time went on in their fights against him, it was as though a mystical force was warping fate in his favor.


    Why did every attack, every defense, every maneuver, all of them magically work? Why did each of their fights feel like a scripted fight from a cheap action y where the hero magically defeated the viin impably?


    They didn''t know. Their ignorance was a void, it ate away at them the more time passed. Many went to sleepless nights as they struggled to understand. Yet try as they might, they were unable to fathom.


    Very quickly, an urban legend spread through the dungeon teams of the three nations. The Voideater, The Antithesis, The Scourge. The intelligence agencies tagged the profile of this anonymous Martial Artist with many a title.


    The legend of Rui Quarrier spread through the Serevian Dungeon.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 416 Progress

    The Kandrian''s offensive initiative was incredibly effective. The goal of the offensive initiative was to hinder the expansion efforts of the State of Hreefal, Republic of Jerefin, and the Kingdon of Nochus.


    Thus far, the efforts had been more than just sessful. The Kingdom of Nochus had been more than just merely impeded, they had been pushed back. The constant assaults from the Kandrian Empire had forced the Kingdom of Nochus to seriously consider and eventually go through with the n of reducing their expanded territory to tighten their defense and be able to withstand the destruction the Kandrian Empire left behind each time.


    All three of the small nations gritted their teeth as they did their best to withstand the onught from the Kandrian Empire. The performance of the Kandrian Empire had exceeded the expectations of the spectating nation. The fact that the Kandrian Empire was disying such dominance despite fighting against three nations while also spending a lot of resources towards the expansion of its own territory indicated that the Martial Apprentices were incredibly remarkable.


    Even the other three super-nations had taken notice. It was not something that could be ignored. Even if Martial Apprentices were of the lowest Martial Artist Realm, the Martial Apprentices of today were the higher-Realm Martial Artists of tomorrow. It was evidently clear that the Kandrian Empire, and the Kandrian Martial Union, in particr, were not going away any time soon.


    The nations had also noticed the performances of one particr Martial Artist that seemed nearly invincible in the Apprentice Realm.


    He wasn''t extraordinarily strong, fast, or resilient, yet somehow his motions were such that he could defeat people who were much superior to him.


    Furthermore, there was strange vague news that went around regarding the curse of the masked Martial Artist. It was said that those that fought against him one-on-one for any meaningful period of time experienced things that left them traumatized. The super nations'' formidable intelligence-gathering capabilities had gathered a lot of information regarding the details.Please check at N/?vel(D)rama.Org.


    From confusion to depression, to hysteria and delusion. Many of the Martial Apprentices who fought him experienced and disyedsting psychological effects. However, not all Martial Apprentices copsed against him. It was discovered that Squire candidates were mentally strong enough to not experience any psychological distress.


    Many nations took the threat seriously and had begun treating it as an advanced grade-ten Martial Apprentice technique.


    This was a response Rui could onlyugh at. As long as the very basic premise of their research into the matter was just hriously wrong, he didn''t expect them to make any progress.


    A month flew by as the three states of the Kingdom of Hreefal, the Republic of Jerefin, and the Kingdom of Nochus got utterly dominated by the Martial Apprentices of the Kandrian Empire. The three nations had gotten so bullied that they even made their own alliance!


    ? The Serevian Fringe Alliance was an alliance between the Kingdom of Nochus, the State of Hreefal, and the Republic of Jerefin. It''s an official charter was a statement where the governments of the alliance pledge to never attack each other so long as the contract is valid. Its stated goal was merely a front, everyone knew that the alliance was to help the three nations cope with the Kandrian Empire''s aggression.


    It was an imperfect solution and helped mitigate the damage that the Kandrian Empire left in its onught. The Kandrian Empire would need to apply more pressure and force if it wanted to silence these weak and small sovereign nations.<novelnext></novelnext>


    Yet, for now, there were bigger fish.


    A month went by in a simr monotony as the nations engaged in long-established patterns of war between each other. However, soon, the Serevian Dungeon wars were beginning to reach the meat of the entire saga.


    The four super-nations had enjoyed a dominant disy against the many smaller and weaker nations that suffered at the hands of therger nations. They had been aggressively expanding each, and eventually, they were bound to run into each other.


    Each of them was aware of this.


    No longer would the Kandrian Empire experience casual dominance with greater quantity and quality of Martial Apprentices against its victims.


    The final phase of the Kandrian Empire involved direct head-on conflict over the remaining territory of the Serevian Dungeon. The Kandrian Empire had long since prepared for this since the very discovery of the Serevian Dungeon. A huge number of defensive and offensive Martial Artists hade a long way to partake in the conflict to monopolize as many resources as possible.


    The sheer scale of these conflicts would far exceed what Rui had partaken in thus far. Thus far, he had mostly participated in assaults on the smaller nations. These missions that Rui had been much smaller. Most of them were rtively simple and straightforward for assaulting bases that merely fought to protect and defend.


    Furthermore, Rui had the ability to retreat easily and be rtively safe despite being the aggressor as well as being a trespasser on enemy territory.


    However, in active reciprocated war, there were no such guarantees of safety. Rui would be fighting against the genuinely powerful grade-ten Martial Apprentices that were powerful enough to ensure that even someone as strong as himself couldn''t just effortlessly walk over them.


    Yet this didn''t discourage him, it only made him feel more eager to participate in a battle of the pinnacle of the Martial Apprentice Realm. The best of the best, it was an opportunity he would never be able to get in nearly any other setting. He was quite grateful to the Serevian Dungeon in many ways.


    The very concept of dungeons increased the importance of each Realm much more so than would normally be the case. Because only Martial Apprentices could participate in the Serevian Dungeon, that made each high-ranking Martial Apprentice was an extremely important asset. Furthermore, it created settings that catered remarkably well to what Rui was looking for at this stage in his Martial Path.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 417 Summon

    The game had shifted as the four super-nations expanded aggressively towards the center of the Serevian Dungeon. The smaller nations had been drowned out of thepetition as they sat tight struggling hard to maintain their territory. The four super-nations continued funneling more Martial Apprentices and other resources into the Serevian Dungeon as the tension between the nations began escting.


    The amount of territory left for grabs was decreasing every day.


    The Kandrian Empire weed a new influx of Martial Apprentices in response to the growing potential forrger scale conflict.


    "Kane, Fae, Nel!" Rui''s eyes lit up in tion. "You guys are here already."


    The three of them had informed Rui prior that they would be epting the Serevian Dungeon mission. They were previously tied up with other missions, but quickly made haste for the Serevian Dungeon when theypleted their prior engagements.


    "Just in time too!" Nel grinned.


    "I happened to hear things were spicing up in the Serevian Dungeon." Fae offered. "Now is the most crucial phase of the mission."


    "Can''t let you have all the fun." Kane smirked.Exclusive content from N?velDrama.Org.


    The four of them didn''t even catch any respite as their ounters received notifications for the very next mission.


    "A new assault mission..." Rui murmured. "And the target is the Sekigahara Confederate. Wow."


    This was the first time the Kandrian Empire had ordered an assault on one of the three other super nations. Rui nced at his friends; it wasn''t a coincidence that the Kandrian Empire had chosen to attack itspetitors head-on, thest surge of Martial Apprentices was likely chosen for the sake of gathering enough Martial Artist assets that would be required tounch a viable attack on one of the super-nations.


    The defense measures that the other three super nations had enacted weren''t nearly as paltry as those of the smaller nations. From higher-grade technological measures to more powerful defensive Martial Artists. Sessfully assaulting the territories of the super nations was no small joke.


    "You guys got the notification too?" Rui asked as they all checked their ounters.


    "Yep, seems that way." Kane affirmed.


    All of them were part of the offensive squad. Fae was naturally a given, being an offensive striking Martial Artist. Kane would also do better in an offensive setting thanks to his stealth.<novelnext></novelnext>


    Nel was neutral in so far as his affinity went, but his temperament was suited towards assault.


    Rui read through the information detailed with greater scrutiny. The assault mission was scheduled in six hours. The territory they were supposed to siege was actually remarkably close to the Kandrian Empire. The reason for this was because the distance between the territories was no longer asrge as it used to be due to the continuous expansion of the super nations in the Serevian Dungeon.


    Suddenly, their ounters buzzed once more as they received a summon to the Martial Union branch office in the Serevian Dungeon territory.


    "Figured." Rui had anticipated it.


    This was standard practice. Themissioner would take the liberty of breaking down the operation in more detail and addressing any concerns that the Martial Artists may have. Normal missions that featured a single Martial Artist or a single party didn''t normally require themissioner to breakdown the mission in such a fashion, but high-grade missions such as this that required arge number of exceptionally powerful Martial Artists required this additional step.


    Soon the Martial Apprentices gathered at the Martial Union''s office.


    "Apprentices." Commissioner Feristen addressed them. "I''m sure all of you have realized the significance of this mission. This will be the first conflict that the Kandrian Empire will be having with the Sekigahara Confederate. The mission objective, as always, is to inflict enough damage to their territory, assets and Martial Artists. However, this time, there are several things that will be different."


    He paused, before fiddling with a device that projected an image onto a screen.


    "The Kandrian Royal Army will be partaking in this assault mission as well. The Sekigahara Confederate''s defensive measures will be extremely difficult to ovee. The fortified wall protecting their territory is a meter thick wall made up of tempered Ferendil Iron, an esoteric substance which is capable of withstanding a lot more punishment in the Apprentice Realm. Based on reports from the Kandrian Intelligence agency and the intelligence department of the Martial Union, the Sekigahara Confederate has gathered more than a hundred powerful high-grade Martial Apprentices."


    Commissioner Feristen paused, letting the number sit. "A half-hearted attack will simply be crushed by the sheer defensive fortress they have created. Thus, you will the Kandrian Royal Army will be aiding this assault mission. The Kandrian Army will be deploying thirty Falcon-ss siege tanks that will be aiding you in the assault of the fortress walls. However, the most important matter to be discussed is the Sekigahara Confederate''s response."


    He projected another image onto the screen.


    "Unlike the Kingdom of Nochus, State of Hreefal, and the Republic of Jerefin, the Sekigahara Confederate''s surveince capabilities are quite impressive. With the former nations, they be aware of an impending attack far toote, due to inferior surveince technology as well as lesser number of Martial Artists with sensory techniques. However, the same cannot be said for any of the four super nations in the Serevian Dungeon. Just as we have borate surveince and reconnaissance measures that would allow us to almost immediately realize the existence of an impending attack the second any of the other three nations makerge moves, the same can be said for them."


    He paused, before continuing. "It is highly likely that the other three nations have already obtained intelligence on the high influx Martial Apprentices that our base has wees very recently. It is inevitable that they will detect the attack the second our assault team leaves our base and they will likely have prepared well in advance. The strategic and intelligence departments of the Serevian Dungeon team have evaluated the measures and strategies that the Sekigahara Confederate may enact, and I will be presenting them to all of you."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 418 Time

    "The immediate goal of the Sekigahara Confederate upon any such invasion would be to ensure that no conflict urs within their territory." Commission Feristen exined. "After all, ideally our goal would be to ensure the conflict urs within their border, this would inflict the most amount of damage to their base and would ensure that their expansion is hindered the most. Their goal is the exact opposite. They''ll want to minimize the amount of damage we inflict, while also maximizing our losses."


    Rui nodded. This wasmon sense. It was impossible to prevent any damage from being inflicted in such a conflict, but at the very least the damage could be significantly minimized depending on their strategy and tactics.


    "If they want to minimize the damage done to their territory, it logically follows that not letting the conflict take ce within their territory is ideal. There are only two ways of doing this." he paused, before continuing. "Either their defensive measures prevent us from entering their territory, which is certainly a tall order. Or they intercept out force away from their territory with their own counter-offense striking force."


    He projected another image detailing the known information regarding the defensive measures of the base Sekigahara territory.


    "The probability of a powerful force not inflicting at least some damage to their territory once the assault team reaches their territory is low. This is because their territory isrge and their defensive resources are spread across a wide area whereas our offensive resources are going to be very focused on a single part of the border. Once we reach the border of their territory, it will be untenable to ensure that no damage is inflicted on their territory. Therefore, the second option is evaluated to be much more likely."


    He pressed a button on his projector that switched to a map featuring the Kandrian Empire''s and the Sekigahara Confederate''s territories in the Serevian Dungeon.


    "Our analysts predict that once our assault team is dispatched from our territory the Sekigahara Confederate will quickly mobilize their Martial Artists and military to intercept our assault team a little away from their border." Commissioner Feristen continued. "This is expected because our protocols entail something simr as well."


    "Thus, it is quite likely that all of you on the assault team will be intercepted a little earlier by their military. Regardless, you will have to fight, the only variable is where. That depends purely on their response." Commissioner Feristen exined. "If the battle urs at the border, then you may retreat only after you havepromised the security and stability of that portion of their territory, which will be evaluated by the strategic department in live time. You will receive a specific number of beeps from your mission tracker devices that correspond to different orders."


    He paused before continuing. "In the case of being intercepted by the forces of the Sekigahara Confederate, you will have to ensure that the damage and loss of assets inflicted on the opposing force exceed the loss of assets endured by the Kandrian Empire. This will also be evaluated by the strategic department, and orders will be ryed mid-battle via a certain number of beeps that will each correspond to a different order."


    He dove deeper into certain finer details of the mission before the mission breakdown finally ended, and would soon bemenced in a few hours.


    "Nervous?" Rui asked his friends.


    "Hell no!" Nel grinned.<novelnext></novelnext>


    "A little," Fae admitted.


    "Not nearly as much as I should be." Kane shrugged.


    Rui could definitely understand why Kane was more nonchnt. It was extremely difficult to hurt him at all even when people knew of his abilities and had time to prepare against him. In a chaotic scenario like the conflict they were going to be engaged in, as long as he was careful, he was going to be quite safe for the most part. Although it wasn''t too unlikely that there would be Martial Apprentices with enough sensory prowess to at the very least sense him, there was likely almost nobody that could sense him well enough to pose enough of a threat to him.


    Even Rui, who had actually beaten Kane and the Void Step technique before, wouldn''t be able to do much in such a chaotic scenario. He was simply too slippery and Rui had needed to use a niche tactic in order to defeat him inbat.


    Nel being a battle-loving freak meant that it was very difficult to intimidate him. It had taken the bloodlust of a Martial Squire to scare him, anything below that was simply too weak. He would dive head-on recklessly. Rui made a mental note to keep an eye on him to ensure he doesn''t get killed.Content ? copyrighted by N?velDrama.Org.


    Fae was the most bnced out of them, her striking prowess was quite extraordinary, and she had even be a grade-nine Martial Apprentice in the past month, which meant she was an extremely powerful Martial Apprentice.


    However, she was fighting in a huge war where everybody was exceptionally powerful. In this context, she was merely above average. It was not strange to feel a certain amount of nervousness, this was a new yet incredibly dangerous circumstance.


    The same could be said for most of the Martial Apprentices of any of the nations participating in the dungeon wars. War on this scale was something most Martial Apprentices were unustomed to. There weren''t too many wars of this nature. Although there was a conflict between nations, none were nearly on this scale, they were limited to smaller-scale scuffles that were par for the course between nations regardless of whether they were allies or enemies.


    These Apprentices had all gone through war for the very first time, and it was visible to all of the nations. There were inadequacies and shorings in their performances that were sub-optimal.


    A few hours passed, and eventually, it was time for the mission to bemenced. The military had taken their time ensuring all the preparations were done carefully.


    "It''s time."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 419 Clash

    The Martial Artists were ready to leave at any given time, but the military wasn''t nearly as flexible. This was because of the differences in the logistics of the two groups. Martial Artists had very low logistics in general. They merely needed to prepare their uniforms and masks and other necessities such as potions, before getting ready to dispatch.


    And soon, they did.


    The Martial Artists immediately rushed out as they sprinted toward the Sekigahara Confederate, they were each on extremely high alert. After all, the Sekigahara Confederate''s territory was just around the corner. Although it wasn''t a long time away by carriage or horse, that meant nothing to Martial Apprentices, especially to Martial Apprentices of as high a grade as they were.


    The tension in the crowd was high. This was their very first time fighting an even battle. No longer would they be able to secure a dominant advantage thanks to the quality and quantity of Martial Apprentices.


    No.


    This time, they were fighting against equals.


    Death was inevitable. It was absolutely impossible for them to get away with very few to potentially zero casualties.


    That fact weighed on the air, burdening it.


    Yet it wasn''t the only thing that was.


    Rui''s concentration was so fierce that it distracted other Martial Apprentices around him. He focused his mind into a sharpnce, as he gazed forward.


    "Their Martial Apprentices have been dispatched." Rui dered loudly as he counted them with Seismic Mapping. "There''s sixty-three of them."


    This was a grim number. Sixty-two high-grade Martial Apprentices were more or less the same as the size of the Martial Apprentices in their assault group.


    It seemed that the predictions of the strategic department were spot on. The Sekigahara Confederate would indeed rather avoid war in their territory. They had more to lose. Not only would their territory take damage even if they sessfully repelled the assault team of the Kandrian Empire, but also the closer to their territory they fought in the


    "The siege tanks of the Kandrian Royal Army are trailing behind us at a distance" Rui further announced.


    The siege tanks were much slower than the Martial Apprentices, especially in an environment like the Serevian Dungeon.


    Although it seemed counter-productive to begin a battle without them, it was much more detrimental to reduce their speed to travel along with them. It simply gave the Sekigahara Confederate more time to prepare a more concrete response to the assault team heading their way.


    "There they are," Rui whispered as they entered everybody''s field of vision, bringing along with them a grave sense of danger that one would naturally expect from dozens of highly powerful Martial Apprentices.


    BOOM BOOM BOOM!


    Many Martial Apprentices from both sides, including Rui,unched long-range attacks. The many attacks collided against each other in the middle point between the forces, the sheer energy in those attacks shook the very air.


    Soon, they made contact.


    BAM BAM BAM!Belongs to N?velDrama.Org - All rights reserved.


    The Martial Apprentices began exchanging waves of attacks at each other.


    RUMBLE<novelnext></novelnext>


    It was as though the very dungeon was shaking under the onught of the sheer power that the Martial Apprentices outputted.


    WHOOSH


    BAM!


    Rui casually dodged a swift and powerful round-house kick as he rushed in.


    BAM!!


    A tremendous Flowing Canon crashed into an opening that was inherent to the roundhouse kick. Rui had used the perfect counter whileunching his most powerful strike. The sheer power of the strike was far beyond that of any of his normal strikes. It was boosted with the power of Outer Convergence, me Breathing, Vital Pressure, and Adamant Reforging that had strengthened the flesh of his fist. His momentum was also driven by Parallel Walk, Wind Breathing, and Bnced Direction.


    "ARGH!" The man grimaced as the strike propelled him into the air and into the distance.


    BOOM!


    Before Rui could evenunch Tempestuous Ripples, a powerful projectile with an incredibly high momentum crashed into his opponent,unching him further away.


    Rui didn''t even need to turn back to figure out what that was. The siege tanks had arrived, making haste. Yet they didn''t fire down at the Martial Apprentices fighting because they weren''t able to selectively hit only hostile Martial Apprentices when they were all mixed together.


    However, they weren''t aiming to.


    The only true goal of the assault team was the loss of assets on the side of the Sekigahara Confederate.


    And that was what they would do.


    The elevation of the canons atop the siege weapons raised higher.


    BOOM BOOM BOOM!


    They fired cannonballs with incredible momentum. Each cannonball whizzed through the air at speeds that made it hard to even perceive for normal humans.


    They fired not at the enemy Martial Apprentices, but at the fortified wall of the Sekigahara Confederate in the distance.


    The best part about the siege weapons was the sheer distance over which they could project attacks of immense power with very little loss in power due to the drag of air that would dampen their power. Their design was highly aerodynamic and cut through the air with remarkable speed.


    BOOM BOOM BOOM!


    Despite the distance away, the sound of the cannon balls mming into the highly durable fortifications was loud and clear. Rui rejoiced inwardly as he heard debris falling with his Seismic Mapping. The attacks from the siege tanks were at least effective.


    What he hadn''t expected was an even greater number of cannon balls toe flying back from within the territory of the Sekigahara Confederate. The barrage of cannon balls crashed into the many siege tanks that had apanied the Martial Apprentices. Like the siege tanks of the Kandrian Empire, none of the cannon balls struck the Martial Artists. The siege weapons couldn''t specifically target only Kandrian Martial Apprentices just like the siege cannons of the Kandrian Empire couldn''t, theycked the uracy and the precision to aplish such a feat.


    But instead, they could attack the greatest threat to their security, which weren''t the Martial Apprentices, but the tanks that were chipping away at their fortification.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 420 Forced

    WHOOSH


    Rui''s image faded as his opponent was flummoxed at her attack hitting what seemed like an illusion.


    POW POW POW!


    Rui assaulted her with a violent flurry of jabs to her rib. Yet even before she jerked down due to the impact of the attacks, his right footshed out toward her shoulder


    PEW!


    "Argh!" She grimaced as the Stinger cleaved through the air, whistling as it made its way to its target and burying itself in the flesh of her shoulder.


    THWACK!


    Rui immediately retracted his leg as he seamlessly transitioned into a low sweeping kick that struck her ankles with remarkable force, knocking her over.


    BAM!


    A ser kick to the head ravaged her as it mangled her, knocking her out. Just as he was about to kill her, Primordial Instinct warned him of an impending attack on his back.


    WHOOSH


    CLASP


    He ducked as he evaded the jab, sping his opponent''s hand as he activated Flow Flux, using his own momentum as Rui threw him over his shoulder onto his previous enemy with the power of Outer Convergence and me Breathing.


    BAM!


    The mannded t on the ground atop hisrade.


    BAM!


    Yet another ser kick knocked his opponent out.


    Yet just as Ruiunched yet another killing blow, Primordial Instinct detected yet another attack iing.Please check at N/?vel(D)rama.Org.


    WHOOSH


    "Tsk." Rui tutted, irritated as he cleanly evaded a wind attack from behind him. This particr battle was far more chaotic than any of the previous ones. He was unable to even spend time on a single enemy, every time he defeated one, he would be confronted.


    He nced at his attacker with a raised eyebrow.


    (''Strong.'') Rui''s eyes twinkled with interest.


    The man had a heavy weight to his presence that matched his giant size. He was one who would truly be ssified as grade-ten even by the updated grading standards of the Kandrian Empire.<novelnext></novelnext>


    He immediately forgot about his unconscious targets as he dashed toward the Martial Apprentice. Yet despite all of the fierce pressure that Rui exerted on him, he was unperturbed.


    He raised his open palm as he pushed it forward straight in Rui''s direction.


    BOOM!


    A huge and wide wind st attack crashed into Rui remarkably swiftly and impactfully. Rui guarded as he was pushed back by the sheer force of the wind st despite his resistance. Rui was surprised by the sheer power that the man had outputted with a single attack.


    (''The attack is incredibly wide andrge, making it really hard to sidestep it. Yet despite its size, it was still ridiculously fast and strong.'') Rui swiftly analyzed he managed to stop his motion.


    This was the most powerful wind maniption user that Rui hade across. He put the likes of Ana Mariane, one of the sixteen representatives of the Martial Contest, and even Fernan, who was a defending champion in the Martial Games. None of them couldpete with the powerful Martial Apprentice before him.


    Rui grinned behind his mask.


    This was why he had joined the Serevian Dungeon mission. Precisely so that he could fight strong Martial Artists such as the man in front of him with his Flowing Void Style.


    He dashed once more at the man with extreme speed, yet the distance between them was too great for Rui to reach him in time.


    The man''s arms swayed as he breathed powerfully, using a breathing technique to gather a vast amount of air as he used his arms and body to channel the powerful air currents being generated by the breathing technique into a pocket of extraordinarily dense air. Even the optical density of the air pocket had changed as light passing through it had begun being diffracted like it would in a drop of water.


    BOOM!


    The man palmed the sphere forward as an enormous power as the attack propelled forward with an incredible amount of momentum as it expanded in size.


    BAM!


    Rui hadunched a Tempestuous Ripple as the attack feebly collided with the wind attack that his opponent hadunched, being snuffed by an attack much more powerful than it.


    Yet it had served its purpose. Rui hadn''t used the Tempestuous Ripple as an attack that was supposed to pierce through the gale that his opponent unleashed. Instead, it was a shield that lessened the power of the portion of the wind st that had hit him.


    And it worked.


    Rui merely skidded back instead of literally beingunched airborne.


    He dashed forward again and yet, as expected, the wind st came as Rui himselfunched a Tempestuous Ripple to reduce the impact of the attack on himself. Yet he wasn''t able to nearly nullify the main problem of range restriction when he was being pushed back despite all his strength resisting it.


    His master was a master at the long-range onught. Unfortunately, Rui''s means to deal with long-range Martial Arts weren''t nearly as developed as his solutions against close-range Martial Apprentices.


    Ideally, he would cross the distance between his opponent and himself and engage them in close-rangebat where he certainly was at an advantage. But he couldn''t do that this time as easily. The wide andrge attack made dodging and sneaking past it extremely difficult, even if he somehow moved several steps to the side before the swift attack reached him, it would still not be enough to dodge the attack, that was how wide it was.


    Furthermore, thisrgely negated one of the most impactful advantages of having the Mindmirror brain. The processing advantages he had gained from the brain werergely useless in trying to cross the distance between them. It did not matter if he could react extremely fast if there was no way he could outspeed a wide attack that was that fast with his own feet.


    Rui grinned in eagerness and tion as he processed his current circumstances. It had been a long time since he fought against a Martial Apprentice that was strong enough to force him to strategize. Thest two Martial Artists that had forced him to strategize were both Martial Squires, after all.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 421 Outcome

    Rui felt nostalgic about his current circumstances, it had been a long time since he had faced a Martial Artists genuinely capable of forcing him to pause and think. Before he mastered the pattern recognition system of the VOID algorithm, he had always been forced to fight with creativity and tactics in order to win.


    However, the previous two training sessions had simply made him too strong. It took literal Martial Squires to force him to strategize and rely on tactics. Against other Martial Apprentices, he was usually too strong. He didn''t need to strategize to win against them.


    He was d that there were still Martial Apprentices out there strong enough to force him out of hisfort zone.


    (''Alright, think, how do I get past this wall of wind?'') He pondered as he blocked yet another wind st from his opponent.


    He couldn''t outmaneuver it because it was simply toorge and swift. He couldn''t force his way past the wind attack with brute force alone. The wind that his opponent generated was incredibly powerful, overwhelming the friction between Rui and the ground. It wasn''t a matter of strength, Rui simplycked the leverage needed to apply his strength against the wind attacks.


    WHOOSH


    Rui dashed towards him with remarkable swiftness.


    BAM!


    He put together a guard as he skidded away some distance away from the wind attack. He nced up at his opponent, after finally having paused.


    He stopped attacking, as he took a moment to process his circumstances. The predictive model had beenpleted, but unfortunately, it wasn''t nearly of much use. Sometimes, even predicting your opponent wasn''t enough to counter them.


    Even if Rui predicted his opponent urately, he wouldn''t gain some massive advantage. He still had no way to close the distance.


    (''My feet aren''t fast enough.'') Rui mused. (''It''s hard to picture me outpacing the attack with my speed alone.'')


    Suddenly his eyes lit up with interest as a crazy yet usible solution hit him. He took a few moments as he fleshed out a n.


    (''If my feet aren''t fast enough, then I ought to use more than just my feet.'') Rui realized.


    It seemed like an extremely silly thing to think, but Rui saw potential in it.


    (''However, I need to ensure that my uracy and precision are high enough, otherwise, I''m screwed.'')


    One thing Rui was grateful for was the fact that even though he was having difficulty getting to his opponent, his opponent was also having difficulty hurting Rui. Although the size of the attack made it very difficult to evade, it also reduced the potency of the attack because the power was diluted over arge area. Furthermore, Rui bled off a lot of the power of the attack with the help of the Tempestuous Ripple attack.


    He was in no danger of going down to the attack any time soon.


    However, something needed to change and Rui intended on doing just that.


    (''Alright, here goes nothing.'') Rui crouched as he prepared himself for yet another attack.


    His opponent stiffened as he saw that Rui was about to attack once more, prepared to immediately use his wind st attack at a moment''s notice.


    WHOOSH


    Rui dashed diagonally forward at a tremendous speed. The Martial Apprentice immediatelyunched the wind st attack toward Rui.


    Yet;


    WHOOSH


    Rui''s image disappeared, evoking shock from the Martial Apprentice.


    It was a feint.<novelnext></novelnext>


    Rui was on the other side. He had feinted using Phantom Step while misdirecting his opponent''s attention toward the feint, causing it to be even more effective. He ran in the opposite direction with more than just his feet. He propelled himself forward byunching Tempestuous Ripples in the opposite direction. Using Newton''s thirdw of motion to exceed his normal limits. He moved at a staggering speed as he rushed forward toward his opponent.


    His opponent''s eyes widened in shock as he hastily tried tounch a second wind st in time, yet Rui had no intention of letting him seed.


    BAM!!


    A powerful Flowing Canon crashed into his opponent''s guard, mming him backward as he grimaced in pain.


    Rui immediately chased after him, ensuring that he simplycked the space or the time tounch a wind st attack.


    POW POW POW!


    He threw a flurry of straight body blows that struck his opponent''s guard. Rui discovered that despite being a long-range specialist, his opponent was quite tough even in close-range quarters. His defense was tough enough to withstand the onught Rui unleashed.


    (''As expected of a genuine grade-ten Martial Apprentice.'') Rui mused.


    WHOOSH


    He avoided a blow with tremendous power. His opponent had extremely high striking power, close to that of Fae''s, from what Rui could tell. This made sense since the immense power of the wind st attacks came from his striking, after all.


    Yet, despite his surprisingpetence in close-quartersbat, he was still a far cry from being able to defeat Rui.


    WHOOSH


    BAM!


    Rui casually evaded a strike he sawing from a mile away as hended his own., the VOID algorithm and the Mindmirror Brain were simply too much together.


    Content ? copyrighted by N?velDrama.Org.


    His opponent fell to his knees as he grimaced in pain. Rui hadn''t thrown an ordinary attack, it was an attack that permeated the impact with Reverberating Lance. The attack had struck his liver, as Reverberating Lance exacerbated the effect.


    BAM!


    A swift and powerful kick struck his opponent''s gut, the impact permeating all the way to the diaphragm, stunning it.


    He was unable to breathe.


    POW!


    A final kick to the jaw rattled his brain enough, triggering enough blunt-force trauma.


    THUD


    He copsed t to the ground, unconscious.


    Rui paused a moment before saying out aloud to apparently nobody;


    "I appreciate you not intervening," Rui said.


    Kane appeared out of thin air, shrugging. "I knew you''d be fine, there was no need to intervene."


    Kane had been running around the field, helping out his fellow Martial Apprentices in battle. Yet he had abstained from doing so with Rui''s fight.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 422 Outcome

    He hadplete faith in Rui winning his fight. After seeing how strong Rui had be, he had almost no doubt that Rui was the strongest Martial Apprentice in the modern era. Furthermore, he knew Rui would not have appreciated his intervention.


    "How''s the rest of the battle going?" Rui asked as he turned back.


    It was impossible to confine arge number of Martial Apprentice battles over a small volume of space. It was too dangerous for each one of them, and a single attack from their blind spot could critically injure or kill them, and none of them were willing to take that risk.


    Thus, the battle had spread out over arge area.


    "Hard to say when there''s so much happening," Kane replied. "Anyways, let''s return to the battle immediately."


    "Sure thing."


    The two immediately dashed back.


    Rui immediately saw a Martial Apprentice of the Kandrian Empire getting overwhelmed by an enemy Martial Artist. He quickly dashed over, looking to intervene.


    WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH


    He threw a flurry of strikes, which his opponent sessfully dodged cleanly.


    (''Evasive maneuverer. But not nearly as good as Kane.'') Rui mused.


    BAM!


    Rui managed tond a strike on him after faking him out with Phantom Step. His opponent grimaced, struggling to endure even a single attack. Defense wasn''t his strong suit, clearly.


    He tried retreating, being painfully aware that he couldn''t defeat Rui. Yet Rui had no intention of letting him go.


    BAM!


    Rui intercepted him with Tempestuous Ripple at a distance, causing him to copse. He turned around in fear and Rui was already there.


    POW!


    A swift strike to the jaw triggered blunt force trauma that caused him to copse unconscious on the spot.


    Rui sighed.Belongs to N?velDrama.Org - All rights reserved.


    BOOM!


    Heunched a blow with tremendous power at the unconscious Martial Apprentice''s temple.


    CRACK


    He immediately turned back to the Kandrian Martial Apprentice.


    "You alright?" Rui asked him.


    He nodded, looking at Rui with awe. "Thanks."


    Rui turned back towards the direction of the main battle. "Alright, time to get back."


    From that point on, Rui wreaked havoc on the battlefield. Very few opponents couldst long against him. Regardless of whether they were offensive, defensive, or maneuvering-oriented Martial Artists. Rui simply disemboweled all of them with casual ease.<novelnext></novelnext>


    It was to the point where he was single-handedly making a visible impact on the battle all by himself. Yet to his surprise, he wasn''t the biggest impact on the battlefield.


    WHOOSH


    BAM!


    Kane instantly took down an enemy Martial Apprentice with the Godspeed technique.


    Rui''s eyes widened at that sight. (''He chained the Godspeed technique with the Void Step technique!'')


    One of the biggest weaknesses of the Godspeed technique was the fact that it required preparation in advance which left the user vulnerable to being attacked. However, bypleting that preparation while using the Void Step technique, he had reduced the probability that he would be attacked during the preparation significantly. After all, an overwhelming majority of Martial Apprentices were unable to sense Kane when he was using the Void Step technique.


    This meant that Kane could now use the Godspeed technique much more freely than he normally would ever be able to use. This made him far more dangerous than ever before.


    (''If I''m not careful, he might even be able to defeat me.'') Rui realized. He was quite impressed with Kane''s newfound prowess.


    It was no wonder that he had remained in grade nine even after the Martial Apprentice grading system had gotten updated. It meant that he was very close to the previous grade ten. Rui wouldn''t be surprised if he wasn''t too far from reaching the current grade ten.


    Kane was a bigger impact on the battlefield despite being weaker than Rui in general simply because he was far morepatible with their current circumstances than Rui was. Rui was at his best when facing off against a single opponent, whereas Kane was best suited in chaotic circumstances with distracted targets.


    The two of them began sweeping through the battlefield, taking one Martial Apprentice down after the other. Soon enough, the Sekigahara Confederate couldn''t tolerate the losses they were suffering


    Rui picked up a new influx of Martial Apprentices heading towards the battlefield from the Sekigahara Confederate base with Seismic Mapping.


    (''They''re sending in their defensive Martial Apprentices as well huh?'') Rui mused.


    Immediately, his mission tracker beeped a single time.


    (''Retreat.'')


    That was what a single beep meant.


    Immediately, all the other Kandrian Martial Apprentices merrily retreated from the battleground. None of them wanted to face the influx of reinforcements.


    Rui sighed. He begged to differ, but orders were orders. It was just a shame for him since he would rather have continued fighting against the new Martial Apprentices. But of course, he understood why they were being ordered to retreat. They had fulfilled their mission sessfully, the Sekigahara Confederate had lost far more Martial Artists than the Kandrian Empire did. Retreating now was for the best.


    The Kandrian Martial Apprentices all ran back towards the Kandrian Empire territory as fast as they could.


    "Disappointed?" Kane asked him.


    "You know me so well." Rui chuckled. "By the way, did anything happen to the others?"


    "They''re all alive, although Nel got seriously injured at one point," Kane replied.


    "Well, as long as they''re alive, it''s all good." Rui nodded.


    He valued the core friends that he had made in the Academy. He would be riddled with grief if this battle had imed their lives. They were strong, but as this battle had shown him,rge-scale conflicts were extremely chaotic and anything could happen. Even if they were strong, they could be outnumbered, run into someone even stronger, or be hit with an attack from their blind spot.


    It was no longer a matter of whether they were strong or weak.


    Soon, they reached the Kandrian Empire''s territory. Most of the Martial Apprentices sighed in relief as they finally reached a safe space. The constant battle in arge and chaotic battlefield under raining cannon balls was more unnerving than anyone had expected it to be.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 423 Aftermath

    One of the perks of the missions in the Serevian Dungeon was the fact that Martial Artists did not need to write reports on their missions like they would normally be required to. The reason for that was the Martial Union and the Kandrian Royal Army were surveilling the battle with the surveilling facilities that had been erected within their territory. The Serevian Dungeon colonization team already had urate information on exactly how the battle proceeded.


    "The mission was a brilliant sess." Commissioner Feristen announced with a smile. "Frankly, all of you have exceeded even our most optimistic projections. The Sekigahara Confederate has suffered disproportionately high losses and the military has sessfully inflicted significant damage on the fortifications that they had erected. I have been authorized to bonus all of you for your meritorious efforts..."


    Rui listened to his words carefully as he scrutinized the man.


    (''He''s painting a very positive spin to this.'') Rui noted. (''What about the Martial Apprentices that died?'')


    Around nine Martial Artists of the Martial Union had died. Not too devastating in the big picture, but not insignificant. Yet their sacrifices didn''t seem to be as impactful as he had initially expected.


    Each of those Martial Apprentices had fought for the Kandrian Empire and died in the process.


    Of course, Rui understood the mindset behind the response of the Martial Union to this. While it certainly was true that Martial Artists dying was a pretty undesirable oue, it couldn''t be avoided.


    It was inevitable.


    Conflict killed, regardless of whether it was between ordinary humans or Martial Artists.


    Martial Art was a field centered around conflict. If conflict was synonymous with death, then it wasn''t too much of an exaggeration to say Martial Art was a field centered around death. Every Martial Apprentice that hade here hade of their own free will knowing full well the dangers and potential for death in this mission, especially with the entirely urate intelligence that the Martial Union had gathered for them.


    Furthermore, the Martial Union had beefed up the payments on the mission to a ridiculous degree to justify the difficulty and had also waived off the expenses of potions and other expenditures that the Martial Apprentices would normally need for their missions.


    With all of this in mind, Rui couldn''t really say the mission was not worth attempting.


    It was also not to be forgotten that only under the threat of real death could Martial Apprentices genuinely improve. The most powerful Martial Apprentices in the world almost always ended up being the ones that had persevered through the most. It was physically impossible to nurture truly strong Martial Artists if one only coddled them like they were precious vases.


    Soon, they dispersed oncemissioner Feristen had finished his address to the Martial Artists.


    "Hey, heard you guys were doing alright." Rui nodded as he met up with all his friends.


    "It was he fun!" Nel grinned.<novelnext></novelnext>


    "I heard you got seriously hurt." Rui threw a resigned look at him.


    "Whoever told you that lied."N?vel(D)rama.Org''s content.


    Rui didn''t even bother engaging with him any further as he turned to the rest.


    "I was made aware of several shorings in mybat style in the circumstances of the battlefield," Fae replied. "I''ve made improvements that have generally focused on one-on-one battles, but I have soone to realize that my ability to cope under circumstances as chaotic as the battlefield has reduced. I have focused and invested a lot in my vacuum palm techniques that increased the rate at which I sessfully connected my attacks on my opponent. But in turn, it''s a technique that doesn''t work too well against multiple opponents."


    Rui nodded. He recalled her demonstrating her vacuum palms during the assault attack on the Squire breakthrough research facility. She used a breathing technique as well as synchronized movements to create a vacuum in the atmosphere between her and her opponent. This created a suction force that pulled her opponents towards her and made it easier for her tond strikes on them.


    The problem with the technique was that it forced her to invest too much in a single opponent. If she used this tactic in a scenario against multiple opponents she would be leaving herself wide open to an attack from the other Martial Apprentices. That was why she couldn''t operate her tactic in circumstances with more than one opponent with the same amount of efficiency that she could against single opponents.


    "You should try investing in some passive defensive Martial Art techniques that will reduce the risk of being hurt inbat," Rui told her. "This way you have more leeway even in scenarios where your active defense ispromised due to focusing on one opponent at a time. I know you''re an offensive Martial Apprentice, however, it is impossible for Martial Apprentices to not rely on defensive techniques. That''s why it''s known as a core field."


    Fae nodded, considering her options. "That does indeed sense. I''ll consider that option once I''m done gaining enough experience with my current Technique base. I''ve also considered getting evasive maneuvering skills. Can you help me out with that, Kane?"


    "Of course, not. Go figure it out by yourself." Kane scoffed with a sneer, earning her ire.


    Rui sighed as the two began bickering.


    "They''ve always been like that, for as long as I remember." Fiona giggled.


    "Same here." Rui sighed. "How did you fare in the battle?"


    "Oh, it was not nearly as hard as expected, honestly." She shrugged, nonchntly. "I was quite curious because my dad told me this mission overall was harder than most grade nine and grade ten missions, but I am a bit disappointed."


    "Curious, eh?" Rui chuckled. "I have never seen anyone walk into a mission that is ranked as one of the hardest among all because they were curious."


    "Well, not anymore I''m not." She replied. "But what I''m curious about is the fact that we won so dominantly. Was that because of you?" She asked with a hint of interest in her eyes.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 424 Chain Reactions

    "Well..." Rui scratched his head. "I can''t take full credit for that. Kane actually yed a pretty important role as well."


    "Really?" Fiona raised an eyebrow at Kane.


    "My man doesn''t lie." Kane smirked, turning to Fiona. "We haven''t met in like, what, three or four years?"


    "We would have met a year ago if you''d won the preliminary contest." She retorted.


    "Boo. No thanks, I''m good." Kane waved her away.


    "Alright alright." Rui intervened. "Let''s all go catch some rest. We shouldn''t rely on potions when we don''t have to because that reduces the probability that we''ll be able to use potions when we need to."


    It was the norm to have sleep taken care of as soon as a mission waspleted since that was the only it could be guaranteed that a sleep cycle wouldn''t sh with the deployment of the Martial Apprentices on a mission. Rui had learned to be more aware of his sleep cycles since he could no longer merrily stay awake for extended periods of time.


    The rest of them concurred, participating in the war wasn''t something that could be considered light work, regardless of one''s prowess.


    The five of them returned back to their lodges, looking to get as much rest as they could for the day before their next mission.


    Which, much to their surprise didn''te too quickly.


    The attackunched by the Kandrian Empire was more than just a simple attack. Or at least, it ended up growing to be much more than that.


    The Kandrian Empire''s attack on the Sekigahara Confederate left it in a position of vulnerability and weakness as far as border security and military assets went. However, this position of vulnerability wouldn''tst long and all the countries knew it.


    The Britannian Empire, which was also adjacent to the Sekigahara Confederate, had chosen to exploit this moment of weakness created by the Kandrian Empire tounch its own devastating attack on the momentarily exposed territory of the Sekigahara Confederate.


    Many Martial Apprentices, potion users, and siege tanks marched toward the Sekigahara Confederate as fast as they could. This was a far more dedicated and invested war effort. It could not even be called an assault team. This was a marching legion. It was an open brazen deration of war.


    The Sekigahara Confederate hastily stopped the reconstruction process that they had begun just a day prior, having been forced to invest even more militaristic capital into mustering a defensive and counter-offensive war effort.


    The shsted for days. It dwarfed the Kandrian Empire''s operation on the Sekigahara Confederate by arge margin.


    However, things became even more chaotic when the Republic of Gorteauunched an attack on the Britannian Empire. Something that had not been foreseen by anybody.<novelnext></novelnext>


    Even the Britannian Empire couldn''t fight a war on two sides. The army that had been sent to chip away even further at the Sekigahara Confederate had been ordered to retreat immediately and return to the base territory of the Britannian Empire to aid in repelling the attack from the Republic of Gorteau.


    However, once the Britannian army returned back to the Britannian territory, the army from the Republic of Gorteau also immediately retreated as soon as the reinforcements arrived.Belongs to N?velDrama.Org - All rights reserved.


    And finally, there was silence.


    The Kandrian Empire simply spectated the chain reaction that its actions had caused with amused intrigue. It took a while for the intelligence departments of all the countries to gather all the information needed to have a good understanding of why what unfolded actually unfolded the way it did.


    "The Republic of Gorteau has formed an alliance with the Sekigahara Confederate?" Commissioner Feristen frowned as he read some reports.


    "Indeed." Colonel Carnes nodded. "Of course, this is far from a phnthropic move. The strategic department has already established why."


    "The Republic of Gorteau stands the most to lose if the Britannian Empire and the Kandrian Empire gang up on the Sekigahara Confederate." Commissioner Feristen noted.


    "Indeed." Colonel Carnes affirmed. "The Republic of Gorteau is the furthest away from the Sekigahara Confederatepared to the Britannian Empire and the Kandrian Empire within the Serevian Dungeon, geographically."


    The four nations'' territories had slowed down at the core of the Serevian Dungeon which was still up for grabs. The Kandrian Empire''s territory faced the Britannian Empire''s territory which was the most distant to it, and the Sekigahara Confederate faced the Republic of Gorteau, which was also the most distant to it.


    The Sekigahara Confederate was adjacent to the Kandrian Empire and the Britannian Empire, thetter two were much closer to the Sekigahara Confederate than the Republic of Gorteau was.


    What this ultimately meant was that if the Sekigahara Confederate was forced to yield some territory or halt expansion activities in order to stabilize, then only the Kandrian Empire and the Britannian Empire would monopolize the yielded territory. The Republic of Gorteau would be too far to be able to im and the Kandrian Empire and the Britannian Empire would not tolerate its im on the new territory.


    Once the two empires gained more territory in the core of the Serevian Dungeons, it was quite likely they would end up being the ''winners'' of the Serevian Dungeon while the Republic of Gorteau and the Sekigahara Confederate would end up being the losers.


    This was not something that either the Sekigahara Confederate or the Republic of Gorteau were willing to tolerate. An alliance had already formed after the Kandrian Empire''s initial attack.


    The Republic of Gorteau forced the Britannian Empire to retreat, giving the Sekigahara Confederate respite it needed to restore its border security and replenish its militaristic capital.


    There was temporary silence once that particr chain of events ended. However, the ice had already been broken. The four super nations had finally shed with each other. It was inevitable, but its timing was unclear.


    The Sekigahara Confederate and the Republic of Gorteau had predicted the Britannian Empire would draw first, yet to everyone''s surprise, it had been the Kandrian Empire.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 425 Abyss

    It was quite uncharacteristic for the Kandrian Empire to be hyper-aggressive and brazen as it did. It was a dangerous decision that somehow managed to work out in their favor.


    "How was our interception force routed so soundly?" A man in military garb gritted his teeth as he walked into a crowded room. "Their Martial Apprentices can''t possibly be stronger than ours on average!"


    "Sergeant Mindow, ording to the analyst department, it seemed that the cause of the defeat of the interception force was actually mainly caused by two Martial Apprentices."


    "WHAT?!" Segreant Mindow. "You''re telling me two Martial Apprentices caused all of this!?"


    "That''s correct, sir." The intelligence officer gulped. "The analyst department hasn''t yetpiled a report, but even based on partial analysis, it''s clear that two particr Martial Apprentices caused the disproportionate losses that our interception force suffered."


    "Bring me all the details immediately." The man bellowed in response.


    The intelligence agent rushed out of the office, and within an hour, there was a report on the sergeant''s table.


    The report was more than illuminating.


    "An extreme stealth maneuverer that has mastered the pinnacle of evasive misdirection." He spat. "We needed high-grade sensory Martial Apprentices to contain this menace. Ideally, they''re going to also need long-range and wide-scale offensive capability, in order to deal with the speed of the Martial Apprentice, codenamed Ghost."


    This was a viable and effective solution. By bringing in Martial Apprentices equipped to handle the dangerous elements of the Martial Apprentice that needed to be contained, they could create sound solutions to ensure they would never again suffer such losses against the Kandrian Empire.


    Yet, the sergeant''s eyes squinted in confusion as he turned the page. "Hm?"


    "That''s the intelligence on the second Martial Apprentice for the disproportionate losses that our interception team suffered, sir."


    "I can see that." He gritted his teeth. "But where''s the damn analysis on his Martial Art!? The strengths? Weaknesses? That section is basically empty!"


    "Unfortunately, the analyst department was unable toprehend the nature of the Martial Path of the Martial Apprentice in question." The intelligence agent gulped.


    "What? What did you just tell me?"


    "The analyst team wasn''t able to sessfully grasp the core of the Martial Art of the Martial Apprentice in question." He squeezed out.


    "INCOMPETENT FOOLS." The sergeant roared as he mmed the document into the ground. "A single Martial Art of a Martial Apprentice confounds the team of analysts that were chosen to be deployed to the Serevian Dungeon?! The height of uselessness!"<novelnext></novelnext>


    "Forgive me for saying so, sir." The intelligence meekly interjected. "But it isn''t that the analysts aren''tpetent, it''s that the Martial Art we are dealing with isn''t something ordinary, in fact, its traits are something we''ve frankly never seen before. It''s a genuine anomaly."


    The sergeant calmed down a bit at those words and frowned at the prospect. "A Martial Art so obtuse and deviant that even analysts can''t crack?"


    He nced back at the document,bing through the observations and inferences made by the analyst department.


    The Martial Artist, codenamed Abyss, in question didn''t seem to have any core style, any affinity towards techniques or fields. This was the biggest stumbling block in trying to urately and precisely identify the actualbat style of the codename Abyss. His fighting style changed too drastically from opponent to opponent.


    It was far different from the all-rounder style that used many fields to rtively equal degrees regardless of the opponent. His style changed from fight to fight, from circumstance to circumstance.


    It was formless, almost like it was water.


    The analyst departmentmented that his fighting style did not seem to change at random but in a fashion that seemed extremely efficient and effective against his opponents.


    However, that wasn''t the most shocking part. The most shocking part about the Martial Apprentice, the main reason why he was incredibly dominant against nearly any Martial Apprentice he ran into was his extraordinary uracy and precision in so far as the cement and timing of his every move. ording to a preliminary analysis conducted by the Martial Consortium of the Sekigahara Confederate, the cements and timings for each of his movements were extremely effective. Allowing him to produce extremely effective results with every movement, far more so than was normally possible.


    The Martial Consortium had not yet formted a viable and sound solution against codename Abyss, although the task was being prioritized.


    "Even the Sekigaharan Martial Consortium couldn''t tell us how to take him down immediately?" His eyes widened.


    The Sekigaharan Martial Consortium was a private organization formed by the Martial Artists of the Sekigahara Confederate. It was simr to the Martial Union, yet there were a few key differences. The Consortium was looser and far more flexible than the Martial Union, yet it also provided far fewer benefits to the members of the Consortium than the Martial Union did.Content ? copyrighted by N?velDrama.Org.


    Kandrian Martial Union was just one of the many Martial Artist organizations that existed on the Panama Continent. There were many shapes and forms such organizations took, in some cases, they didn''t at all, Martial Artists werepletely dissolved by the state. Though such states were umon.


    In some cases, the Martial Artist organization took over the state and became the ruling entity, imposing Martial Law and Regime. Though neither the Kandrian Empire nor the Sekigahara Confederate were nearly as extreme as either side.


    "For now." The sergeant just gritted his teeth. "Just gather a bunch of strong Martial Apprentices of different kinds of Martial Art the next time we engage in conflict with the Kandrian Empire. That should be enough. They''ll see that one Martial Apprentice can never truly be enough to influence a war all by himself."


    This was the only option they had for now. If quality wascking, then the very best they could do was simplypensate with quantity and hope that it did the job well enough


    "Yes sir." The intelligence officer bowed before raising his head and scurrying out of the room.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 426 Bolexeuen Hill

    The mes of war that the Kandrian Empire had lit could not be snuffed out. As the four nations began expanding their territory bit by bit. There were all kinds of scuffles that began urring as a result. The core was the only part of the Serevian Dungeon that was yet to be colonized. However, as the four super nations expanded, not even that was going to remain uncolonized for too much longer.


    The scarcity of the remaining resources made them even more valuable. This caused the conflict to be more frequent, causing the Martial Apprentices to be deployed more often than before.


    Today was another such day for the Martial Apprentices of the Martial Union. The offensive team, for the first time since the previous sh, would be shing with the Sekigahara Confederate over a territorial dispute.


    "The mission today will not be quite the same as the one nearly a month ago." Commissioner Feristen informed them. "Back then, we attacked the fortified core territory of the Sekigahara Confederate with a powerful assault team to inflict as much damage and force them to stall their expansion endeavors. Of course, they have more than recuperated and have eagerly begun expanding once more to make up for the lost time. This has predictably led to a sh of interests as far as expansion interests go."


    Commissioner Feristen pressed a button on a device, projecting the image of a marked map on a screen.


    It was a map of the core of the Serevian Dungeon, highlighting certain territories in different colors that were relevant.


    "As you can see." Commissioner Feristen continued. "The territories in red are the territories that the Sekigahara Confederate have demonstrated interest in, in the past month. The territories in blue are the territories that the Kandrian Empire aims to colonize. The territories in purple are the territories that both Sekigahara Confederate and the Kandrian Empire have demonstrated interest in."


    The way that all of the nations within the Serevian Dungeon expanded wasn''t by simply blindly expanding from their core territory outwards in a singr circle. That was wasteful and inefficient because the distribution of esoteric resources was not even, obviously. The territory of each nation was divided across multiple settlements in the more rich and lush parts of the Serevian Dungeon, including the guaranteed core territories that all of the participating nations had.


    "One of the purple territories is actually the Bolexeuen Hills." He said, projecting another image. "A Sekigahara Confederate convoy has been spotted heading towards the Bolexeuen Hill. The intelligence makes it clear that the Sekigahara Confederate intends to colonize the Bolexeuex Hill, based on this and other things. Your mission is not merely to sabotage or damage the colonization endeavors of the Sekigahara Confederate, but topletely drive them away from the Bolexeuen Hill. Even though the defensive measures of a convoy are most certainly not equal to the defensive measures of one of the main territories of the Sekigahara Confederate that the offensive teamunched an attack onst month, the actual objective of the mission isn''t as easy as it was before."


    In short, they were no longer merely going to be fighting over trying to inflict damage to slow their opponents down, the Kandrian Empire wanted to boot the Sekigahara Confederate from one of the prime locations for esoteric resources that they both had had an eye on.


    The Kandrian Intelligence Agency and Intelligence department of the Martial Union hadn''t been able to gain an urate understanding of the Martial Artist assets that had been deployed to protect the convoy as it began colonizing the Bolexeuen Hill.


    Regardless, dozens of Martial Apprentices had been mobilized to partake in the mission. Among them were, of course, Rui, Kane, Fae, Nel, and Fiona.


    And much to Rui''s chagrin, Ian.


    He shook his head putting him aside for the moment.<novelnext></novelnext>


    Commissioner Feristen continued in greater detail regarding the topographic features while exining the route that the strategic department had charted out for the operation. He went into several other things before nodding. "Alright, that brings us to the end of the mission breakdown seminar. Be prepared until it is time tomence the mission."


    The Martial Apprentices went their ways, needing to prepare for the uing battle.


    "Do you reckon this is going to be easier or harder than the initial sh with the Sekigahara Confederate?" Kane asked.


    "Harder." Rui replied. "In the previous mission, we simply assaulted one of their main territories with the intent of hurting. And more importantly, our win condition was quite shallow and light. We did not need to force our opponents back, this is not true in this case. This time we''ll need to overwhelm thempletely otherwise we won''t be able to disce their convoy from the Bolexeuen Hill. That''s a much taller task to impose on us than just inflicting a lot of damage."


    "Makes sense." Kane nodded. "Still, if this battle goes anything like it did the first time, dominating them shouldn''t be much of an issue."


    "That''s if it goes as it did in the first attack," Rui replied to him.


    "You don''t think it will?" Kane raised an eyebrow.


    "Hard to say." Rui sighed, shrugging in response. "But it is best to proceed under the assumption that it won''t. The Serevian Dungeon is such that the nations can surveil the battles directly in real-time, meaning they have an intimate understanding of why they lost. And part of why they lost is because the two of us took down a disproportionate number of Martial Apprentices. Unless the Sekigahara Confederate is ipetent they will likely have solutions to ensure that at the very least something like that won''t happen again."


    "But how?" Kane asked, frowning.


    "I can''t say for sure, but regardless, be wary and careful. Don''t just bombard around the battlefield without any caveats or caution." Rui advised.N?vel(D)rama.Org''s content.


    "I''m an evasive maneuverer." Kane shrugged. "Caution is myst name."


    ? "No, yourst name is-"


    "Shut up."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 427 New Conflict

    The Martial Apprentices quickly prepared themselves for the uing conflict that they were going to be participating in. In a few hours, the mission was soon enough ready tomence, and it did. The Martial Apprentices all dispatched as they rushed together towards the Bolexeuen Hill via the rmended path in their mission bills.


    The distance was genuinely not all that great for a Martial Apprentice because it was already only a small portion of the core of the Serevian Dungeon which itself was a minority of the Serevian Dungeon. This meant that it didn''t take much time for them to run into action from the moment they had left.


    The focus of the Martial Apprentices weighed on the atmosphere, growing in weight once the two became aware of each other.


    The Sekigahara convoy immediately deployed a few defensive measures, including having their many defensive Martial Apprentices deployed to intercept the iing assault force and protect the settlement convoy of the Sekigahara Confederate.


    When the assault team of the Kandrian Empire reached the general location of Bolexeuen Hill. Many cannonballs had already been fired in their general direction. Yet, the Martial Apprenticespetently dealt with them. Some destroyed or overpowered them with attacks, others defended against them, and many simply evaded them.


    Although cannon balls weren''t slow. The sheer distance that they wereing gave the Martial Apprentices plenty of time to react and deal with them however they felt mostfortable.


    Soon, the Martial Apprentices had reached the convoy of the Sekigahara Confederate. The groups of Martial Apprentices immediately shed.


    Arge number of attacks were exchanged in the briefest of moments. The Martial Apprentices all began spreading out from each other to ensure that their battles with each other didn''t hurt themselves and theirrades.Please check at N/?vel(D)rama.Org.


    WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH


    Rui evaded a flurry of sharp jabs from a conditioned piercing attack of the Martial Apprentices that had first attacked him.


    His opponent seemed to be someone who had dedicated an immense of conditioning training to his nails. Rui recalled seeing the techniques long ago in the Martial Contest.


    WHOOSH


    BAM!


    He evaded a swing whileunching a powerful low-sweeping kick, staggering his opponent into an unstable position.


    POW POW POW!


    He threw speedy jabs to his opponent''s gut, Reverberating Lance permeated the impact deeper, yet the man managed to remain conscious despite the fact that his diaphragm was no doubt immobilized due to the attack to the gut.


    He took a moment to build up momentum tounch a powerful Flowing Canon at his opponent. Yet suddenly


    WHOOSH


    His opponent suddenly moved away from the attack unnaturally, as if being protect from harm''s way.


    Suddenly, three new powerful Martial Apprentices between him and Rui. The three of them exchanged a word with Rui''s previous opponent, as thetter nodded and scurried away.


    (''They''re strong.'') Rui could tell. The pressure they exerted was immense. Yet what drew his attention, even more, was that they chose to intervene in his battle, all three of them.


    Rui immediately inferred that these three were sent to deal with him. There was no other reason that he would randomly be targeted by three Martial Apprentices.


    The atmosphere contorted under the weight of his mind as he grew more serious. The sheer pressure he exuded was not something any Martial Apprentice should have been capable of exuding, and his three opponents could clearly feel it.


    Yet, they didn''t hesitate.


    Two of them dashed backward, and one of them dashed forward toward him. His arm curled backward as he wound up a powerful strike.


    WHOOSH<novelnext></novelnext>


    Rui casually evaded the strike with a feint via Phantom Step, entering his space.


    POW!


    His elbownded on his opponent''s face, staggering him back. Yet when Rui went throw a front kick, he merely ducked, exposing a wind st attack from behind him.


    BAM!


    Rui blocked as an immensely powerful and focused wind st attack mmed into him. He nced back at the source of the attack.


    (''So they were ranged experts? And the one before me is a close quarters Martial Artist.'') Rui noted. (''So they wanted to create a synergistic team of Martial Apprentices specifically to take me down?'')


    The close-quarters Martial Artist rushed back at Rui with renewed vigor, throwing a flurry of jabs at Rui. Rui evaded all of them cleanly. He felt a bit impatient, which was uncharacteristic for him. He knew that they were being sent to stall him and ensure he doesn''t go off on a rampage like he didst time, which made him not want to allow that to happen, yet he needed to be careful despite that.


    WHOOSH


    BAM


    Rui evaded a strike cleanly andnded a powerful uppercut on his opponent pushing him back, when suddenly;


    POW POW!


    Two wind bullets mmed into him with a lot of power.


    ? (''They only attack me when their teammate isn''t in my immediate vicinity.'') Rui keenly noted.


    There was no point in putting together a team of three Martial Apprentices if they attacked one at a time instead of simultaneously, yet here they were. They were either an ipetent team, or there was some real reason why.


    (''It''s quite likely that their precision isn''t high enough to not affect their teammate from such a distance away if we''re too close.'') He sharply realized.


    Rui grinned at that realization.


    WHOOSH


    He dodged another wind bullet as the close-quarters Martial Apprentice charged back at Rui. Yet this time, instead of cautiously avoiding him, he charged forward as well.


    His opponent threw a powerful swing, yet;


    WHOOSH


    It hit empty air as Rui carried out a lower takedown after having feinted an upper takedown.


    This was the Mirage Dive technique.


    Rui sessfully leveraged his power and momentum to topple his opponent. He expertly used Flow Flux and Shifting Silhouette to gain an advantageous position until he quickly coiled his arm around his opponent''s neck from behind.


    As Rui had predicted, his opponents did not fire any attacks.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 428 Envy

    The close-quarters Martial Apprentices wrangled in Rui''s grip with an immense amount of ferocity and power. Yet Rui stayed strong, refusing to let go. He used Outer Convergence, me Breathing, and Helical Breathing to squeeze with as much power as he possibly could.


    Thankfully, he didn''t need to squeeze for too long.


    The human brain would lose consciousness after seven seconds of ack of oxygen. Rui was squeezing hard on his carotid artery and ensuring that there was no blood flow. Although Martial Apprentice couldst longer, they too had a limit.


    His resistance rapidly grew weaker and eventually, his body went limp.


    He was unconscious.


    THUD


    Rui tossed his body aside as he immediately turned towards the two distant long-range specialists. They had already begun firing against him. But Rui had no intention of being hit by them at all this time.


    WHOOSH WHOOSH


    The two attacks hit an illusion of Rui, as Rui misdirected their potent attacks with Phantom Step. He immediately began running toward them with an immense amount of speed and agility. It took just a few moments to reach there as he evaded all their attacks.


    They even began retreating panicked, as Rui approached them.


    BAM!


    Ruiunched a powerful Flowing Cannon thatunched one of them into the air, while the second had gotten stung.


    PEW!


    The Stinger burrowed itself in his back as he ran away, triggering a profuse wound.


    BANG!


    CRACK


    A powerful hammer kick on the man cracked his skull.


    (''It''s going to take more than that if you want to suppress me.'') Rui mused. He knew that the Sekigahara Confederate would certainly try even harder than before, but that was. He had no intention of backing down or losing. He was curious to see the kinds of things that the Sekigahara Confederate would try to do in order to stop him.


    Kane on the other hand wasn''t nearly as lucky. His opponent wasn''t somebody that he could defeat with casual ease, or even in a small amount of time.


    His opponent was the only one on the entire battleground asides from Rui who could sense him quite clearly, a sensory Martial Apprentice. The Sekigahara Confederate had deployed him to be able to deal with Kane so as to ensure that Kane also doesn''t go around taking down arge number of Martial Apprentices.


    In addition to possessing sensory techniques that were required to be able to sense Kane despite the Void Step technique and a few other stealth techniques Kane had taken to improve his overall stealth prowess, his opponent also possessed incredible speed.


    With their speed, it was basically like two speedy cars were running around. Kane tried to get away from him as fast he could, but it was simply too much even for someone with Kane''s sheer velocity.


    BAM!<novelnext></novelnext>


    THUD


    Kane paused in surprise as his opponent just copsed to the ground unconscious.


    "Had some trouble?" Rui asked, chuckling.


    "More than just a little." Kane sighed. "This guy was meant to handle me, to ensure that I can''t do what I did back then."


    "Yeah." Rui nodded. "I went through something quite simr just now."


    "How strong was he?" Kane asked in return.


    "They, you mean." Rui chuckled. "One of them was a pretty good close-quarters Martial Artists while the others were long-range Martial Artists."


    Kane''s eyes widened. "They sent three Martial Apprentices to merely keep you at bay?"


    "Yep."


    "That''s hrious, they have actually significantly underestimated you a lot huh?" Kaneughed out loud. "They''re going to need much more than if they want to keep you in check."


    "Anyways, enough chitchat," Rui told him. "Let''s get back into the battle.


    The two of them returned back to the battle and returned to what they were doing in the previous battle against the Sekigahara Battle.


    Wreaking havoc.


    Now that there wasn''t a single enemy Martial Apprentice who could sense him, Kane freely went back to sabotaging his opponent. He zipped through and across the entire battlefield, helping the Kandrian Martial Apprentices and making the life of the Sekigaharan Martial Apprentices miserable in battle was his general modus operandi. This immediately resulted in a visible impact on the state of the conflict. Martial Apprentices of the Kandrian Empire began winning more often, while Martial Apprentices of the Sekigahara Confederate simply lost, more and more.


    Rui on the other hand began taking on the most powerful Martial Apprentices that the Skigahara Confederate had to offer. It wasn''t as though the Sekigahara Confederate''s Martial Apprentices were ipetent. Not at all.


    It was just that Rui was simply far too strong.Please check at N/?vel(D)rama.Org.


    He hade to the war hoping to run into people just as strong as he was, yet thus far, he hadn''t run into someone who was genuinely as strong as him. Yet that hadn''t just yet. He had run into interesting challenges like the wind maniptor Martial Artist that he had fought the very first time that the Kandrian Empire hadunched an attack on the Sekigahara Confederate.


    Yet he had not yet found something nearly as powerful as he had hoped for. Someone who could force him to use his Flowing Void Style to its absolute most.


    Even to this day, he still didn''t even know what that looked like.


    To a certain extent, he envied all the Martial Apprentices he saw running around and beating each other up. At least they were still in a position where any one of them could be defeated by their peers at the same level as themselves.


    He recalled how fulfilling the preliminary Martial Contest had been to him. It was one of the best parts of his time in the Martial Academy. Back then, he still had peers who were genuinely his equals and were more than capable of defeating him. It gave him good experience in using his Martial Art and the VOID algorithm. He''d needed to strategize nearly every fight and would have straight up lost several fights if not for his creativity.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 429 Outcome

    Now that Kane and Rui were freed up, they were unstoppable together, they quickly began taking down Martial Apprentices one by one.N?vel(D)rama.Org''s content.


    Kane was like a fish in water, abusing his stealth to the most tounch the Godspeed technique that allowed him to take down Martial Apprentices almost with a single attack. Rui took Martial Apprentices the hard way, yet very few managed tost longer than a short amount of time against him. While his physical parameters were certainly extremely impressive, they weren''t beyond all fathoming. There were all-rounder Martial Apprentices that, as far as raw technical parameters went, wereparable to him.


    But because of the Mindmirror Brain and the VOID algorithm, none of them managed tost more than a brief amount of time against him.


    Rui nced around the battlefield, spotting his friends.


    Fiona was holding her own against two Martial Apprentices just fine. Although the level of dominance wasn''t anywhere near to that of Kane''s despite being of a higher grade than him. Kane just had a ridiculous amount of affinity with the circumstances they were in.


    Fiona was fighting against a long-range Martial Apprentices, applying her Vacuum Palm technique to cut down on the distance between them, hoping to strike him with one of her devastating lethal attacks and win the fight on the spot.


    Nel was fighting against three Martial Apprentices with a rabid grin> This was despite getting pushed back by all of his opponents.


    (''Idiot.'') Rui sighed. Rui was certain that he had gone out of his way to provoke himself into those circumstances. He immediately headed over to relieve his friend.


    Soon the defensive team assigned to the colonizing convoy of the Sekigahara Confederate was slowly getting overwhelmed. The Martial Apprentices slowly retreated until the numbers'' disparity had grown so much by this point that they could no longer even cope.


    The defensive convoy had long followed suit, leaving the Bolexeuen Hill.


    The mission was a sess.


    The Kandrian Empire had sessfully booted out the Sekigahara Confederate convoy from colonizing the most lucrative parts of thend.


    He could already sense from a distance that there was a convoy being dispatched by the Kandrian Empire to colonize and build a defended base in this location. They had not yet been instructed to retreat from the Boloxeuen Hill, most likely to serve as additional protection for the convoy of the Kandrian Government.


    A few Martial Apprentices on the side of the Kandrian Empire had died away in the middle of that heated battle. Their bodies had already begun being consumed by the roots of the forest that surfaced and began wrapping around their corpses and dragging them deeper into the ground. A process that Rui still found creepy.<novelnext></novelnext>


    Thankfully, his friends were all safe again once more. Though Rui swore that Nel might have even died had Rui not helped him out at that point.


    Once the convoy arrived, it immediately beganying down heavy fortifications around the territory to begin securing it. The convoy had been supplied with its own defensive team that had tagged along with for security. With the defensive and offensive teams together, there was a security force protecting the territory until it stabilized.


    It took forty-eight hours for the initial fortifications to be built. By then, the base had obtained enough stability for the offensive team to return to their previous territory. Their mission wasplete, after all.


    They would no doubt receive praise for their strong victory as well as a fat bonus from the Martial Union. On the other hand, the Sekigahara Confederate grew even more frustrated.


    "Our defensive measures didn''t work! That Martial Apprentice tore past our trio team meant to keep him preupied like it was easy. Then he proceeded to free up hisrade from his harasser. The two of them began umting damage onto our force until it became too much!"


    The analyst department scratched their heads as they took even graver measures to handle them.


    "Five high-rank Martial Apprentices." A sergeant said. "That''s how much we''ll deploy next time against codename Abyss. It doesn''t matter how strong he is. No one in the Apprentice Realm can possibly fight high-ranking Martial Apprentices simultaneously. As for the stealth one, double the number of powerful sensory Martial Artists. He was unable to break past one of them all by himself. Two of them will be more than enough to finally take him down once and for all."


    Their subordinates immediately bowed before heading out to make the preparations of executing the orders of their superiors.


    He sighed. "Where did such a monstere from? Is he really even in the Apprentice Realm at all? They didn''t find a way to smuggle inside the territory a Martial Squire, did they?"


    That''s how impressive Rui was. The predictions he made were high uracy, furthermore, the counter-adaptive model of the VOID algorithm was abysmal. It was a style that allowed Rui to squeeze out literally drops of water from a stone.


    They hadn''t yet figured out his actual identity yet, as of this point. They had heard of simr corresponding pieces of information from the small nations that the Kandrian Empire has squared off against; The Republic of Jerefin, the State of Hreefal and the Kingdom of Nochus. Putting together an even more borate profile together.


    "I found a lead on the identity of codename Abyss." Sekigaharan intelligence officer noted. "The fluidity andck of uniformity in his fighting styles resemble that of Contest Rui Quarrier of the Martial Contest in the Kandrian Empire."


    "What is the likelihood of this being the case?" The head of the intelligence department asked. "Regardless, continue investigating the Martial Apprentice codename Abyss. We need to look at all possibilities and from the looks of it, this very well might be the case. Gather all of the information on the matter in any way you reasonably can. There''s a very good chance we can use it to formte a way to defeat that monster."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 430 Plan

    There was a limit to the amount of militaristic capital that each of the nations was willing to spend on the expansion endeavors in the Serevian Dungeon. This limit had to do with the loss of the assets suffered by nations in conflicts with other nations weighed against the profits made by the extraction of the esoteric resources from the territories in the Serevian Dungeon.


    Although Martial Apprentices were meant to be deployed in conflicts, no nation was willing to stake too much. The number of Martial Apprentices that were qualified to be deployed in the Serevian Dungeon was not too high. After all, only the Martial Apprentices above grade seven were qualified to be deployed in the Serevian Dungeon. Otherwise, they were simply too weak.


    These Martial Apprentices were valuable in and of themselves, after all, it took time, energy, dedication, and resources to train a Martial Apprentice to be grade seven. Each Martial Apprentice was valuable, they certainly weren''t disposable or receable.


    That was why every nation didn''t harbor grand ns of trying to dominate the Serevian Dungeon territorially. Not that they didn''t want all territory, but the cost of even attempting to fulfill such an extravagant ambition was simply not worth the reward. The losses would far outweigh the gains.Please check at N/?vel(D)rama.Org.


    This was why Commissioner Feristen and Colonel Carnes grew shocked when Rui had informed them he knew of a way to defeat arge number of Martial Apprentices and other enemy militaristic assets rather swiftly all by himself without needing their forces to suffer any losses.


    They didn''t believe him at first.


    How could they? It was too ridiculous to believe, even though they knew of Rui''s aplishments. But as Rui began exining his n to them, their eyes widened in shock as they realized, he just might be onto something!


    "How sure are you of this?" Commissioner Feristen asked with a stern voice.


    "Quite," Rui confirmed. "I had confirmed this when I first discovered the Serevian Dungeon in a mission. I have documented it as well using the eco-survey device that the Ministry of Environment and Ecology had given me so you can verify it through that as well."


    "Are you able to exert as much control as you profess?" Colonel Carnes asked.


    "Yes, I have mastered the technique quite well. I haven''t used it in a while, for obvious reasons, but there is no problem in that regard."


    "It''s extremely risky." Commissioner Feristen told him. "You could die so fast that no potion could possibly save you!"


    Rui thought about his words for a moment. "It''s not impossible. But I have reason to be confident. Because of my mastery of the Mindmirror Symbiote, my reaction and processing speed greatly surpass what it would normally be. Furthermore, in my initial mission, I applied my Martial Art to be very familiar with them so that I can predict them very well. I am more than equipped to sessfully undertake andplete this task."


    The two leaders paused at those words, deep in thought. The n that Rui proposed was bold and risky, yet if seeded it would allow a single Martial Apprentice to annihte an entire army!


    The best part was that there were no chances that the losses would extend beyond a single Martial Apprentices regardless of whether it seeded or failed.


    "This is a great n." Colonel Carnes nodded. "I have heard tales of your brilliance, it seems they were not exaggerated. We will, of course, pass this through with the joint strategic department of the Kandrian Empire and the Kandrian Martial Union just to be sure, of course."<novelnext></novelnext>


    Commissioner Feristen was not as enthusiastic.


    Their positions were different. The Kandrian Royal Army did not lose anything even if Rui died. He was not a member of the Royal Army, after all.


    Commissioner Feristen wasn''t in the same situation. The Martial Union valued Rui immensely. They did not want to lose him if possible. He was their most powerful Martial Apprentice and that had be evidently clear even before his current proposal was put forward. Now, the value of him as a Martial Artist in the Serevian Dungeon wars had risen once more.


    But the risk of the n he had proposed was not light.


    "...I''ll pass on your n to the higher-ups. If they approve it, then we can deploy it to implement your n, otherwise, I cannot allow it." He exined.


    "I understand." Rui nodded. "It was just an idea that hit me when I tried to think about what I could be doing better, and this is the n I quickly created in response."


    "You have a brilliant mind." Commissioner Feristen sighed. "Not even the strategic department had thought about this despite having ess to this information. You''re quite the Martial Artist, young man."


    "Thank you,missioner Feristen. But you tter me." He smiled awkwardly. "Well, I''vee to convey what I wanted to. If there''s nothing else, I''ll get going."


    He bade the two men farewell as walked out of the building.


    "What do you think?" Commissioner Feristen asked colonel Carnes.


    "It seems like a viable n." Colonel Carnes nodded, revealing a hint of eagerness. "If executed well, it could allow us to demolish all three of the other nations and monopolize all of the remaining territories. The Serevian Dungeon will soon be fully colonized for the most part. Only the core is left uncolonized, but not for long. This could allow us to win the scramble for the Serevian Dungeon."


    "He''s going to be facing the three armies of the three nations all by himself." Commissioner Feristen replied. "The risk is too high."


    "His aplishments are high. We''ve both gone through his file. He''s aplished things that would be dismissed as a fairy tale if he hadn''t brought back irrefutable proof."


    Commissioner Feristen remained silent. The body of the Martial Squire Cae Freelia had raised waves of shock as they absolutely corroborated the testimonies surrounding that mission. Testimonies at the center of which was Apprentice Rui Quarrier.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 431 Single

    "I wonder if I should have done that." He scratched his head awkwardly. It was a dangerous n, and it was a n that only he could execute. He would be putting himself in a ton of harm, and for what? The Kandrian Empire?


    He didn''t even feel such a terribly strong loyalty to the Kandrian Empire. The Kandrian Empire was doing very fine in the first ce, it didn''t need a massive boost.


    He shrugged. What was done was done. Besides, although it was risky, he somewhat weed it. Even the wars with the other nations were starting to grow a bit dull to him.


    He was just too strong.


    "At least this way, I can challenge myself with something extremely dangerous." Rui shrugged as he returned back to his lodgings.


    It didn''t even take a single day for the Martial Union to summon Rui back.


    "Commissioner Feristen?" Rui asked as he returned back to the Martial Union office. "You called?"


    "Yes." he nodded. "The strategic department has analyzed the n you have provided and has evaluated it favorably. You have already expressed your personal consent in the execution of the n, correct?"


    "Yes, I''m willing to execute it if the Martial Union requires me to," Rui replied simply.


    "Well, that''s good to hear." Commissioner Feristen replied. "Then be ready, you''ll need to go over the strategy to iron out the details with the strategic department."


    Rui nodded. "Will do."


    "If all goes well, we can try it out against the other nations over the dispute of certain territories in the center of the Serevian Dungeon." Commissioner Feristen told Rui.


    Over the next few days, Rui ironed out the n that he had proposed to the strategic department of the Kandrian Empire, honing out all the details to maximize the effectiveness of the n and minimize the risk.


    Soon, it was time for Rui to actually apply the n inbat.


    The four super nations were rapidly grabbing up all the remaining territories. However, the more they did that, the closer they came to the center of the Serevian Dungeon, and the territories began involving more than just one nation.


    N?vel(D)rama.Org''s content.


    Before, each nation was contested by only the two closest nations, but now most remaining territories were being contested by three nations because the three nations were equally close to the territory.


    This was predicted by all the nations of course, and it was only primed to get worse. Soon, at the very center of the core of the Serevian Dungeons were territories that were equally close to all four super nations, which would involve a conflict involving all four nations.


    The Kandrian Empire reserved Rui''s strategy for the right time. It would be less effective once it was known about by the other nations.


    As the four nations began gobbling territory up, the only territory left was the territory that was equally distant from all of them.<novelnext></novelnext>


    The heart of the Serevian Dungeon was soon the sole remaining territory left that could be colonized by the four nations. Whoever gained control over thest and thergest piece of resource rich territory would likely win the Serevian Dungeon Wars.


    Of the four nations, the Sekigahara Confederate, the Republic of Gortea, and the Britannian Empire each mobilized their armies of not just Martial Apprentices but also potion users.


    Yet, the Kandrian Empire did none of that, much to the shock of the other nations. Each of the nations had a power information gather capability that allowed them to gain insights into the preparations and mobilizations of the forces of the Kandrian Empire.


    Yet, to their surprise, the Kandrian Empire was not mobilizing all that much. The offensive team seemed to be on standby, but that was nothing. Where were all therge preparations and mobilizations that the resource-intensive military would be eating?


    How could the Kandrian Empire not be engaging in heavy mobilizations like the rest of them? Did it n on conceding the heart of the Serevian Dungeon to the remaining nations?


    None of the other three nations thought that was a reasonable or likely position for the Kandrian Empire to have.


    It was evidently clear that the Kandrian Empire was plotting something.


    Yet none of them were sure what.


    It was mindboggling. It was definitely not some high-end technological solution that exceeded the Squire Realm because the tree branch reacted to both Martial Artists and technological solutions that exceeded the limit it set. This meant reducing the number of possibilities it could be.


    It was possible that the Kandrian Empire had learned something that reduced the value of the core territory of the Serevian Dungeon. This was spection that the other nations went through even as their armies mobilized and were on the verge of being set out to wage war over the territories.


    Many countries thought that the Kandrian Empire was biding time to let the other three nations fight it out amongst themselves and then charge in with an army afterward. In this case, the wisdom of fighting a war with the other two nations was raised into question.


    However, at the end of the day, the possibility was dismissed because the fortifications would be erected by the winning party as soon as the wars were over, making it even more difficult to boot the winner out of the territory. Furthermore, the spoils of war would all be imed by the winner part alone.


    Regardless, the three nations did not stop mobilizing their armies. The final war was inevitable and approaching. The three nations deployed their armies.


    Later, the Kandrian Empire''s gates opened as Rui walked out.


    Alone.


    He immediately began sprinting toward the heart of the core of the Serevian Dungeon. The three nations were incredibly confused when their surveince channels caught a single Martial Apprentice being deployed by the Kandrian Empire.


    This was much more confusing than if the Kandrian Empire had deployed nobody at all. What was the point of deploying a single Martial Artist?


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 432 Clash

    The nations recognized Rui even with his mask on. Martial Artists were distinct and Rui was very infamous at this stage. Every nation had had a hard time containing him in war. He was simply a menace and no individual Martial Artiststed very long against him.


    However, he by himself could notpensate for an entire army. The nations felt more confused than offended. What were they trying to do? Were they just sending a single Martial Apprentice to specte the war and gather intelligence from a distance?


    However, the Kandrian Empire did not need to engage in such tactics for surveince. It was also quite clear that Rui wasn''t primarily or even significantly a sensory-oriented Martial Apprentice. Thus, there was no way that Rui was being deployed due to a need for surveince, there were many more fit Martial Apprentices that could be deployed for this particr role.


    So why send their ace Martial Apprentice all alone in the middle of a war?


    He shouldn''t have been able to aplish anything meaningful on a battlefield with three armies, yet the nations paid attention to his movements, if only because they were curious as to what his purpose on the battlefield could possibly be.


    Rui didn''t need to travel much to reach the battlefield. It was literally the final piece of valuable territory left and it wasn''t far away at all.


    Once he reached it, he was immediately attacked by many Martial Apprentices. These were powerful high-grade Martial Apprentices of each nation that had been assigned to stall and potentially defeat him. It was an overkill force but that was merely because they were thebined force of three opinions that each wanted to hold him off or ideally kill him.


    Please check at N/?vel(D)rama.Org.


    All of them wished to do thetter, after being chewed out by their superiors for being unable to defeat a singr Martial Apprentice.


    The atmosphere grew taut as Rui''s brains both went into top gear mode. Time slowed down as he analyzed his circumstances. He needed to break past and reach the center of the war.


    That was his goal at the moment, reaching the center of the war being waged at the center of the Serevian Dungeon.


    BOOM!


    Rui somersaulted out of the way as he evaded a powerful long-range attack from one of them narrowly, immediately behind was a speedy Martial Apprentice.


    POW POW POW!


    Despite being caught off-guard, Rui reacted to all of his strikes perfectly, blocking them perfectly well, much to his opponent''s surprise. His opponent had been hoping tond clean strikes that would draw blood.


    Yet Rui''s reaction speed was something that was outside the Apprentice Realm. The Mindmirror Secondary brain worked parallelly with his main brain thanks to the Mind Embed technique allowing it to amplify his Primordial Instinct technique as well. His reactions and reflexes were almost impossible to assail for even the fastest of Martial Apprentices to assail.


    WHOOSH


    Rui evaded yet another attack as he hoped to squeeze through his opposition hoping to get to the center of the Serevian Dungeon.<novelnext></novelnext>


    Yet, he had no such luck.


    Three Martial Apprentices appear before him before, targeting him specifically. They boxed him, looking to simply dogpile him with sheer numbers.


    They all rushed at him at the same time. Yet they simply underestimated how difficult Rui was to suppress.


    Even while facing all three of them, he managed to keep up. He feinted and dodged, bobbed and weaved, and used his high-grade power, speed and durability to keep up with opponents. Furthermore, the predictive models were being constructed as rapidly as Rui could manage.


    However, even without the predictive model, Rui''s engagement with his opponents was phenomenal. It was impossible to dodge and block every single attack three Martial Apprentices dogpiling him, however, he could time and ce his dodges and blocks correctly such that he could mitigate every single attack. Even if he did not have the ability to also simultaneouslyunch his own attacks while dealing with the onught of the opponents that outnumbered him, simultaneously.


    That was until the initial predictive models were built.


    WHOOSH


    BAM!


    Rui dodged a right as he ducked with impable timing andunch an uppercut that perfectly fit into the counter-vulnerable gap that was created by the hooking maneuver. The powerful blow crashed into his opponent''s head, empowered with Outer Convergence, me Breathing, and Adamant Reforging. Furthermore, the Reverberating Lance technique permeated the impact deeper into his head.


    The sheer impact shook the brain enough to trigger enough brain trauma causing his brain to shut down on the spot.


    He fell unconscious from a single strike from Rui. Even though he was a powerful Martial Apprentice with techniques that weren''t weaker than that of Rui, abination of the right timing made all the difference in the world.


    WHOOSH


    Another Martial Apprentice tried to get Rui, not willing to loosen the pressure that they were exerting on him, yet Rui saw that attacking a mile away with the help of the predictive model and his reaction speed and the attack crashed into a feint.


    Rui leaped away backward as heunched a barrage of Tempestuous Ripples, mming into his opponents, yet the second he distanced himself from the close-quartersbat, the long-range specialistsunched all kinds of attacks toward Rui.


    Yet to their frustration, despite the sharpness and timing of their swift attacks, Rui was simply too good at somehow mitigating all the attacks that were unleashed against him. It was ridiculous to watch. A team of Martial Apprentices fighting him simultaneously in close-quartersbat wasn''t good enough to beat him in close-quartersbat and long-range Martial Apprentices also struggled to take down Rui with their extended long-range targeted attacking.


    Ruished out towards the long-range Martial Apprentices, yet to his annoyance, the close-quarters jumped in, intercepting him. Both the long-range and close-quarters teams realized that they genuinely needed to work together to have any chance of taking down Rui Quarrier.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 433 Epiphany

    This was the single riskiest mission Rui have ever partaken in, not even the mission in the Commonwealth Duchy of Vinfrana that featured an enemy Martial Squire had been so threatening. Each of the three nations had sent its own team of Martial Apprentices that was meant to suppress him.Please check at N/?vel(D)rama.Org.


    Of course, none of the nations had expected that he himself would be deployed alone with no backup. But the Martial Apprentices that were specifically deployed to target him were immediately informed of his arrival.


    Rui pushed to his absolute maximum. He used nearly every technique at his disposal as he fought violently, trying to break past the many Martial Apprentices that had been targeting him. What surprised him was that although the Martial Apprentices targeting him from different nations did not actively cooperate with each other, they did not fight against each other either.


    They werepletely focused on taking down Rui.


    He was forced to fight nine powerful Martial Apprentices that were specifically meant to take him down. Yet, to everyone''s surprise. Rui managed to hold on, even if barely.


    WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH!


    Rui managed to cleanly evade the powerful attacks of a close-range Martial Apprentice.


    BAM!


    He was immediately struck with a wide-range projectile, pushing him away.


    (''I can''t separate from the close-range Martial Apprentices.'') Rui immediately concluded. The long-range Martial Apprentices had to restrain themselves when he was in close-range proximity to their close-quarters teammates.


    He immediately rushed forward to meet the close-range Martial Apprentices as they aimed to take him down in hand-to-handbat.


    Despite being surrounded by Martial Apprentices, he managed to keep up. His heightened awareness and reactions were an absolute godsend, thebination of the Mindmirror brain and Primordial Instinct was incredibly powerful even at the highest of echelons of the Apprentice Realm.


    He blocked some attacks while simultaneously contorting his body to avoid an equal number of strikes. He abused his maneuvering and speed technique to the maximum, using Parallel Walk, Bnced Direction, and Wind Breathing to allow him to evade position himself at the right time and ce urately. He further used Phantom Step to feint to misdirect their attacks and aim. He used Flow Flux to intercept and destabilize his opponents while using Blink tond as many surprise attacks as he could.


    PEW!


    WHOOSH


    He managed tond the Stinger on one of his opponents while evading a haymaker from behind.


    POW POW POW!


    An offensive speed-oriented Martial Apprentice managed to tag Rui with a barrage of strikes cleanly, hurting him in the process.


    BAM!


    Another powerful swing mmed into Rui, flinging him away.


    POW POW POW!


    The long-range Martial Apprentices peppered him with different kinds of attacks from varying distances.


    He grimaced as he quickly regained his bearing, yet he was immediately beset by three more Martial Apprentices who unleashed an onught of attacks on him.


    Rui pushed himself as he fought back. He used Inner Divergence, Acute Edge, stic Shift, and Adamant Reforging to deal with the attacks of two of his opponents as he targeted the remaining Martial Apprentice.


    BAM BAM BAM!


    Ruiunched a barrage of swift and powerful attacks, using Reverberating Lance to permeate the impact of his attacks to his vital organs, leaving him reeling.


    The brief respite allowed Rui to focus on the remaining two Martial Apprentices, he positioned himself between them and waited for the right moment.<novelnext></novelnext>


    WHOOSH


    BAM!


    POW!


    Their attacks crashed into an empty image, passing through it and striking each other off-guard.


    Rui raced through the field as he evaded the attacks from the long-range Martial Apprentices and unleashed an avnche of strikes, trying to tag him. He threw them off with abination of Phantom Step and Shadow Step and the Mind Mask technique that reduced his presence and sense of danger to the absolute maximum.


    Rui disappeared into the chaotic battlefield as the Martial Apprentices chased after him, using the environment to his favor.


    The atmosphere grew tense as the Martial Apprentices saw shes of him in the chaotic environment. The other nations had already built an extensive profile on Rui and the way he fought. He was extremely resourceful and tactical, when he fought, the environment fought alongside him.


    None of them wanted to get caught up in his spell.


    Yet none of them had realized it was toote.


    BAM!


    He caught the group in their blind spot with Shadow Step and the Mind Mask technique, mming the offensive speed-oriented Martial Apprentice with a power Flowing Canon. At his current level, the attack''s sheer power was beyond what something a speed-oriented Martial Apprentice could withstand when caught off-guard.


    The attackunched him into the distance, as Rui reduced one of the Martial Apprentices meant to target him.


    His enemies felt a shiver down their spine as they realized their roles had changed.


    They were no longer targeting him.


    No.


    He was targeting them.


    He let go of the Mind Mask restraining presence as the weight of his mind was unleashed. The sheer pressure of the concentration of one of the singled greatest Martial Apprentices of the modern era crashed onto them, jolting them


    It was then that it hit them.


    They might actually lose. Despite all the odds.


    That was how fearsome Rui was in their eyes


    What ensued was a devastating battle. Rui fought like a demon, expressingbat prowess they had never felt before. The difference between now and before was that Rui had finallypleted the predictive models for all of them. He was no longer on the back foot.


    The remaining seven Martial Apprentices weren''t weak, they were among the cream of the Martial Apprentices deployed by their respective nations.


    Attacks emerged from three different directions of the Martial Apprentices of the three different nations.


    Time slowed down in Rui''s perspective as his pupils dted.


    He knew exactly what he needed to do in a moment of incredible rity and peace.


    (''I''ve arrived at the higher Realm.'') He realized.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 434 Execution

    Rui rode a wave of euphoria as he felt his Martial Art maturing, it was a feeling of unmistakable rity. Heshed forward as he acted on the predictive models that he had created for each of the over the span of the fight while deriving the best counter to their impending actions with the adaptive evolution model.


    WHOOSH


    BAM!


    He avoided a predicted low kick by leaping forward with a flying knee kick, striking his opponent''s diaphragm with a powerful impact. It was especially worse because Reverberating Lance permeated the impact deeper into the body, shocking the diaphragm and impeding his opponent''s breathing. The woman copsed, writhing on the ground.


    Six more Martial Apprentices to go.


    WHOOSH


    POW POW POW!


    He evaded a roundhouse kick as he threw abo of strikes at his opponent, disorienting him with the powerful impacts of his strikes permeating deeper.


    The remaining two immediately ganged up on him.


    BLINK


    PEW!


    He managed tond a Stinger on his opponent''s neck veiled through a Blink. He immediately grimaced, retreating as he cradled his bleeding neck.


    The final remaining close-range Martial Apprentice threw a swing that Rui sawing from a mile away thanks to the predictive model.


    CLASP


    He intercepted the swing with Flow Flux immediately, destabilizing bnce and leaving him wide open in the bnce.


    BAM!


    A powerful kick to the jaw rattled his head violently, causing enough blunt-force trauma to cause the brain to shut down. Rui didn''t bother trying to kill them as the long-range Martial Apprentices immediately unleashed an onught, yet it was toote.


    Rui avoid them as he confused them with feints and misdirection along with his swift maneuvering. He ran straight toward them as heunched multiple Tempestuous Ripples to block and neutralize as many of their attacks as he could while he relied on maneuvering to evade all of them.Belongs to N?velDrama.Org - All rights reserved.


    The long-range Martial Apprentices furiousunched as many long-range attacks as they could, whether it meant extended flexibility, wind attacks,unchingnd, or other sorts of attacks, yet Rui dealt with all of them, much to their dismay.


    BOOM!!


    A powerful Flowing Canon crashed into the necks of one of the long-range specialists.


    He died on the spot.


    It didn''t take him long to swiftly take down the remaining Martial Apprentices.


    He only took a moment of respite after he had defeated all of them. All of the Martial Apprentices were part of the anti-Rui strike forces that the various nations had created. He had defeated a total of nine powerful high-grade Martial Apprentices.


    All by himself.<novelnext></novelnext>


    In front of the entire world, he had forged himself a new feat. At some point in time, the mask he had put on had broken before he had even noticed. The various nations immediately verified his identity as they learned more about the foe that had foiled every response that had ever been thrown against him by any of them.


    Yet despite their shock and anger at his feats, there wasn''t much fear in all of them.


    A single Martial Apprentices could not singlehandedly affect an entirerge-scale war all by himself, no matter how brilliant he was.


    Or so they thought.


    Rui immediately began sprinting to the very center of the chaotic war. He used Mind Mask and Shadow Step to avoid gathering the attention of the many Martial Apprentices and potion users that were wrangling with each other in his vicinity and the many siege tanks and otherrge-scale weapons in the distance.


    And soon he arrived.


    He immediately knelt on the ground.


    The time to execute the n that he had proposed to the Kandrian Empire hade.


    He closed his eyes, while still wary of his surroundings.


    He crushed every stray thought that shed through his mind as he began gathering his concentration and focus like he had done so many times. Yet this time, they were especially important, they would be ying a very significant role in the uing n. He knew that there was no way he would be able to execute the n sessfully.


    In his mind, he began using his imagination in the Mind Mask technique to construct the most powerful mind mask he ever had. He pictured himself as invincible, invulnerable, and omnipotent. He pictured himself embodying the very concept of power, and everything that it meant to be strong. This was the most Mind Mask he had ever created.


    He opened his eyes as he prepared his reflexes and alertness. He knew that if he didn''t react appropriately and timely, he would die in an extremely painful way and no number of potions would be able to save his life.


    (''It''s time.'') He whispered. The weight about what he was going to hit him, if he seeded, most of the people on the battlefield would die. It was a heavy burden.


    He sighed. ("Here goes nothing.'')


    He donned the mind mask he had created.


    Suddenly, the battlefield froze as a Squire-level aura weighed across the entire battlefield, every Martial Apprentice recognized that feeling, the pressure of mind of a being that was very well a higher life form than themselves. They felt weak and primitive before such might like they were insects.


    Rui had also chosen to channel his bloodlust, the bloodlust of a Squire sent shivers down everybody''s spine as they barely had time to wonder what a Martial Squire was doing in the Serevian Dungeon.


    Yet, that was when it happened.


    The branches of the singr tree that had formed the Serevian Dungeon had activated.


    Rui had already documented that these branches had evolved to instantly attack any threat perceived to be in the Squire Realm by the tree.


    However, the battlefield was specifically chosen because it was barren, with no vegetation. The closest ring of branches was outside the battlefield.


    This was the n that Rui had cooked up.


    He deliberately put himself at the center of the war, so that when the tree branches attacked, they would be forced to attack from outside the battlefield. And in reaching him, they would run through everybody else first.


    That was why he had positioned himself in the center of the battlefield. Everybody would be targets along with himself.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 435 Outcome

    The branches of the trees of the Serevian Dungeon had incredible prative power. Rui recalled when he had first entered the Serevian Dungeon, he had been prated by a branch that easily impaled him with no difficulty, despite the Adamant Reforging technique making him extremely tough and durable. It had also moved fast enough to bypass his reflexes when he wasn''t alert and focused.


    This meant that it was extremely likely to be quite lethal to most Martial Apprentices. However, this never mattered because the branches weren''t a threat to Martial Apprentices they were only a threat to threats perceived to be in the Squire Realm.


    This was the very core of the n that Rui hade up with. If he used the Squire-level mask, he would be triggering the tree and the branches would be unleashed toward him.


    He also knew from experience when testing them that the branches didn''t give a shit what was in between them and their target, they simply moved through the shortest path between themselves and their target; a straight line.


    They didn''t care what blocked their path, they simply sted past any and all obstacles between them and their target.


    Rui had wondered, what if there was an army between him and them?


    In this case, the branches would st through the army in order to reach him.


    What if that army was an army of the enemy?


    Wouldn''t that have meant that Rui could vanquish an entire enemy army in a blink of an eye as long as he and the army and the trees were positioned correctly?


    It was then that Rui realized that the squire-level Mind Mask technique was extremely powerful because it had the power to manipte the Serevian Dungeon to its favor.


    In the Serevian Dungeon, Rui was the only being whomands the Serevian Dungeon, indirectly. When Rui realized the devastating potential of his n, he immediately submitted it to Commissioner Feristen and Colonel Carnes. The two of them were initially skeptical of such a n, but as Rui exined they grew increasingly shocked as they realized the viability of the n wasn''t low.


    The other nations had initially thought that Kandrian Empire had lost its mind when they deployed a single Martial Apprentice instead of an army.


    But Rui wasn''t alone.


    He was fighting with the entirety of the Serevian Dungeon on his side. The others had an army, he didn''t need more than himself.


    What followed was one of the most shocking urrences that any of the nations had seen since they stepped foot in the Serevian Dungeon.


    The entirety of the part of forest surrounding the battlefield warped as the branches shot outwards at staggering speeds and power. Branches from all directions from outside the forest shot inwards with ferocious momentum.


    The tanks were hit first.


    The branches sted through the tanks, spurring countless holes in them as they shot forward. Instantly, all the personnel that was operating the siege tanks died in an instant. They were merely normal human beings who were impaled by an avnche of branches.


    A tsunami of razor-sharp branches shot through the battlefield at extraordinary speeds and power.


    It was blindingly fast.


    Most Martial Apprentices were impaled across multiple locations.


    Most of them died.


    Of course, not all of them died.<novelnext></novelnext>


    The Martial Apprentices with extraordinary passive defense managed to get away unscathed.


    The best and also the most fortunate of speed-oriented Martial Apprentices were fast enough to somehow evade the branches as they were lucky enough to be in a position to react rather than too consumed with their opponent or the war to react.


    All of the Martial Apprentices on the battlefield were not ipetent. They were high-grade Martial Apprentices who were qualified to be on the battlefield of the Serevian Dungeon.


    Had they been alert, focused, and prepared for the branches, most would have at least managed to survive.


    However, they were all extremely distracted by the war and their opponents. Theirck of awareness and the surprise and shock that followed greatly hindered their movements. The initial pain also messed with their response, causing them to make suboptimal responses. All of these factors caused them to fall prey to the flood of branches.


    The branches spiked across the battlefield as theyshed out towards the center of the battlefield, towards their target.


    Fifty meters.


    Ten meters.


    One meter.


    It was only when they were ten centimeters away from him did they stop.


    Content ? copyrighted by N?velDrama.Org.


    Rui had managed to deactivate the Mind Mask technique in time, just in time. This was the riskiest part of the operation.


    If he stopped the Mind Mask technique too early, then it would not have done its job and the operation would only be a partial sess, but if he stopped the technique toote, then he would simply die after the branches impaled him from all directions.


    Still, he had managed to cut it close.


    "Too close." He whispered as the branches retracted once the Squire-level aura had subsided. The branches quickly retracted as they returned to their original position.


    They left behind carnage, unlike anything Rui had ever seen.


    In just a few moments, countless people had died.


    The few that survived looked around with the rawest, unadulterated bewilderment and shock that they had ever seen. They looked at the countless littered corpses,pletely dumbfounded and speechless.


    They didn''t even know what to do.


    What should they have ought to do in such a situation?


    There was nothing in the protocols on what to do if you survived a freak branch catastrophe that annihted your entire army.


    However, the Kandrian Empire did not mess around. They had been waiting in anticipation and tension. They had bet everything on this n seeding, going so far as to allow the three countries to fight over it. The Kandrian Empire immediately opened its gates and they deployed the offensive team immediately. The team soon arrived at the scene, since it was that close.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 436 Aftermath

    All of the nations had been surveilling the war at the heart of the Serevian Dungeon closely. It was an important war over the richest of territories with the highest esoteric resources yield. Whichever nation of the four nations won that war would likely ''win'' the war of the Serevian Dungeon as a whole.


    The Sekigahara Confederate, Republic of Gorteau, and the Britannian Empire had thought the Kandrian Empire had simply thrown in the tower as it chose not to send a powerful army, but instead a single Martial Apprentice. A single Martial Apprentice who, while no doubt extremely impressive, could not aplish anything meaningful in a war of this scale all by himself.


    Thus, one could imagine their sheer shock and bewilderment when a huge tide of branches swept across the warzone wiping out almost all of the military and Martial Artist assets from the entire battlefield.


    Initially, they were shocked as such a catastrophe waspletely outside of any predictions of any of the nations. However, the nations weren''t stupid, it didn''t take too long for the intelligence departments to gain an understanding of what happened.


    Or what they thought happened.


    "The Kandrian Empire vited the Serevian Pact by bringing in a Martial Squire!" The delegate of the Britannian Empire snapped, barely containing his rage.


    "The Sekigahara Confederate strongly supports the Britannian Empire in its allegations of the Kandrian Empire." The delegate of the Sekigahara Confederate coldly supported the delegate of the Britannian Empire.


    "The Republic of Gorteau also chastises the Kandrian Empire for this vition of the Serevian Pact." The delegate of the Republic of Gorteau chipped in.


    The three nations were infuriated, and an emergency diplomatic Summit had been called for by all three of them as they applied pressure on the Kandrian Empire.


    "The Kandrian Empire vehemently denies the usations levied by the Sekighara Confederate, the Republic of Gorteau, and the Britannian Empire." The delegate of the Kandrian Empire calmly stated. "The Kandrian Empire has not vited a single use of the Serevian Pact. The Kandrian EMpire advises the three nations to not make defamatory allegations."


    "There is irrefutable proof that the Kandrian Empire deployed a Squire-level asset. Multiple surviving Martial Apprentices from different nations have corroborated that the bloodlust and pressure they had experienced were in the Squire Realm." The delegate of the Britannian Empire.


    "The Kandrian Empire employed a Martial Apprentice, we do not believe that the three nations are unfamiliar with the Martial Apprentice deployed." The delegate of the Kandrian Empire said. "We have documented proof that the Martial Artist deployed is a Martial Apprentice. The Kandrian Empire is even willing to allow the other nations to verify this, under the supervision of the Kandrian Empire, of course."


    "The testimonies of the surviving Martial Apprentices of the three nations cannot be exined by a Martial Apprentice." The delegate of the Britannian Empire coldly retorted.<novelnext></novelnext>


    "Sure they can." The delegate of the Kandrian Empire replied casually. "The Martial Apprentice in question is a Martial Apprentice that has mastered a mental technique that allows the user to manipte the pressure and danger exuded by the user. The Martial Apprentice in question can use the technique to exert Squire-level aura and danger. This exins why the surviving Martial Apprentices of the battlefield report experiencing a Squire-level aura. We have documented proof of this as well.


    The delegates of the three nations remained silent at that as they furiously thought about a valid counter to the exnation that the delegate of the Kandrian Empire.


    In reality, none of the three nations gave a damn about whether the Kandrian Empire did or didn''t break the Serevian Pact. All they wanted was an excuse to diplomatically justify the extra retaliation from the three nations. They were enraged by the losses they suffered and were simply looking for the best excuse that could justify the three nations taking measures to make the Kandrian Empire pay for their losses.


    Yet, to their surprise, the Kandrian EMpire had an airtight excuse. The nations could not simply trigger a war outside the bounds of the Serevian Dungeon because each of the three nations had publically agreed to the Serevian Pact that prevented them from escting the conflict outside the Serevian Dungeon.


    If they did not have just cause in any measures for retribution they took, they would not be able to justify even the slightest bit of retribution outside the Serevian Dungeon.


    It would vite their credibility and reputation in the international geopolitical market. It would affect alliances, partnerships, agreements, and trade as well. Nations would not want to engage in trade with a nation that vited written agreements with such ease. It would jeopardize trade and supply chains and channels that were vital to the economies of their nations.


    If only the Kandrian Empire had vited the Serevian Pact, then their responses would be justified. However, it had be exceedingly clear as the delegate of the Kandrian Empire provided irrefutable proof in favor of its ims, that there was no possibility of that being the case.


    The Kandrian Empire had prepared extremely carefully, the strategic department had predicted the need for proof and had already conducted several demonstrations of several kinds that proved the truth.


    "Thus, we can say with absolute certainty that the operation was carried out by a Martial Apprentice." The delegate of the Kandrian Empire concluded, switching off the projection. "There was no vition of the Serevian Pact, all MArtial and military assets that the Kandrian Empire has ever deployed have been limited to the Apprentice Realm. If there''s nothing else, then this emergency diplomatic meetinges to an end."


    The delegates of the three nations were silent, there was nothing more to be said.Belongs to N?velDrama.Org - All rights reserved.


    "Good day to you,dies and gentlemen." The delegate of the Kandrian Empire chuckled as he logged out of the call, causing them to leave silently one by one as well.


    Back in the Serevian Dungeon, the Kandrian Empire imed the heart of the Serevian Dungeon as it rapidly began erecting powerful fortifications around the entire area, iming it for itself.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 437 Next Step

    The Kandrian Empire had timed the application of this strategy quite well. It had used this tactic for the final and the most important territory in the Serevian Dungeon so that the element of surprise would be at the highest for the most important territory to be imed.


    The three nations did not mount a retaliatory force against the Kandrian Empire within the Serevian Dungeon in order to reim the core of the Serevian Dungeon.


    Not because they chose not to, but because they couldn''t, it wasn''t viable. Each of the three nations had lost arge sum of assets to the branch attack that Rui had triggered. Their bases in the Serevian Dungeon were simply toocking in the military and especially Martial Artist assets needed to siege and overrun the fortifications that the Kandrian Empire had erected around the core of the Serevian Dungeon that they had now imed as Kandrian territory.


    Martial Apprentices did not grow on trees. Each nation had a limited number of Martial Apprentices. This naturally meant that each nation had a limited number of Martial Apprentices that could be deployed to the Serevian Dungeon.


    The nations couldn''t possibly deploy every single Martial Apprentice in their Martial Artist poption to the Serevian Dungeon. Each nation had estimates of required Martial Apprentices based on different scenarios and circumstances to fulfill different goals, as well as a thorough analysis on the costs vs benefits of varying degrees of ambition in their Serevian Dungeon endeavors. All of these together created hard limits to the number of Martial Apprentices that they were willing to deploy to the Serevian Dungeon.


    In order for the three nations to challenge the Kandrian Empire, they would need to exceed the hard limit of Martial Apprentices that they were willing to deploy in the Serevian Dungeon.


    As much as they hated the Kandrian Empire for the moment, they were unwilling to cross their limits. If they deployed any more Martial Apprentices to the Serevian Dungeon for yet another battle, they would cross the threshold where the losses incurred would exceed the benefits of the resources extracted from the core of the Serevian Dungeon.


    This was how the Kandrian Empire annihted three armies without a single casualty and proceeded to im the territory over which the three armies were waging war.


    Leaks of the happening leaked into international media as many people in the local geo-political sphere that epassed the nations in question gaped at the shocking result.


    The details were unclear and the media outlets that reported on the issue merely reported that the Kandrian Empire had pushed back three nations over a territorial dispute with some operation that allegedly featured a single Martial Apprentice.


    The public went wild at that report as many spections regarding what the operation was or who the Martial Apprentice were spurred wildly. Of course, there were arge number of people who expressed heavy skepticism over the news. After all, it was simply too wacky and wild to believe.


    The Serevian Dungeon Wars came to an end as almost all of the resource-rich territory had been colonized by some nation or the other. The nations deployed enough number of defensive Martial Apprentices, while the rest of the Martial Apprentices would be sent back home and their mission in the Serevian Dungeon would beplete.


    "Allow me to congratte and thank you on behalf of the Kandrian Empire." Commissioner Feristen told him. "Your contributions to this mission have been disproportionately higher than what we would expect from a participating Martial Apprentice. We had high expectations of you in the field given your track record and other aplishments. You not only exceeded those by making a visible impact on the battlefield in every battle despite facing active and targetted suppression, but you also brainstormed and singlehandedly executed an operation that allowed us to annihte all opposition in a war over territory without a single casualty."<novelnext></novelnext>


    He took a pause. "The Martial Union is very pleased with your performance and has decided to double your already immense earnings, as a token of our appreciation. Should you need anything, you may turn to the Martial Union for aid, and you will find that we are willing to make amodations and offer assistance that we would not extend to anybody else in your position. We hope to see you go far down your Martial Path."


    "Thank you,missioner Feristen." Rui bowed lightly. "I''m afraid the Martial Union has overestimated me."


    "Not at all." He replied. "We''re quite sincere in our appreciation of you."


    The conversation proceeded ndly for a bit untilmissioner Feristen asked an important question.


    "What do you n to do from here on out?" Commissioner Feristen asked curiously.


    Rui paused for a moment as he contemted his answer. "... I think I have achieved Squire candidacy. The rity I feel about the current state of my Martial Art... Seems thest battle finally pushed me far enough to the point that I could reach this stage."


    Commissioner Feristen''s eyes lit up in tion. "Incredible! That''s absolutely amazing to hear. The Martial Union will dly aid you in the breakthrough to the higher Realm. Have you had any thoughts on whether you want to begin preparations for the breakthrough to the Squire Realm immediately?"


    "I do want to begin them immediately." Rui nodded at his words. "I have waited long enough. Are you aware of what the preparation entails?"


    "I''m not authorized to reveal it, unfortunately." He shook his head. "The Martial Union will first verify whether you have indeed achieved Squire candidacy when you apply for it. Once your status as a Squire Candidate is verified, you will be offered the Squire breakthrough process."


    "How much does it cost?" Rui asked.Belongs to N?velDrama.Org - All rights reserved.


    "Do not worry, the cost is incurred as a loan without interest even if you are unable to pay for it." Commissioner Feristen assured. "However, with the ie you have umted from the Serevian Dungeon, I can''t imagine you being forced to go down that route."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 438 Plans

    Arge number of Martial Apprentices left the Serevian Dungeon as the cope for conflict in that territory had gone almostpletely. Each of these Martial Apprentices was simply no longer necessary.


    "What do all of you n to do when you get back?" Rui asked.


    "I n on increasing my ability to cope against a greater number of Martial Apprentices," Fae replied. "The Serevian Dungeon has shown me that I''m ill-prepared to handle such circumstances, and that is quite concerning. In the real world, it''s not impossible to run into such scenarios. I might end up perishing due to my inability to handle it."


    "That''s a good initiative." Rui nodded. Fae was a powerful close-quarters palm striker. Increasing her ability to handle multiple opponents was something she had mentioned before.


    "I think I might leave the Academy," Kane replied.


    Rui raised an eyebrow in surprise. Not because he didn''t think Kane was ready. Kane was incredibly powerful as he was right now, stronger than he might have been able to deal with prior to hisst training session.


    However, if Kane left the Academy, he would have to return back to his family, in all likelihood, something Kane would despise having to do.


    "Are you sure?" He asked cautiously.


    "I''m seriously considering it." Kane sighed. "The Academy is bing stuffy and suffocating, I don''t want to hide in there forever."Belongs to N?velDrama.Org - All rights reserved.


    Kane had initially entered the Martial Academy to get away from his family. It would have been the first time he would be living outside their grasp. However, now he was no longer satisfied by that enough for him to force himself to remain there.


    "I understand that feeling, the Martial Academy had begun to feel small and shackling to me as well." Rui nodded. "But it''s a big decision your you, leaving the Martial Academy. Have you thought about what you want to do?"


    "Well, I''ve be an adult legally." Kane sighed. "That alone isn''t enough for me to break away from the grasp of my family as easily, but I have also joined the Wind Sect which is opposed to the Fire Sect that my dad and several other prominent Martial Artists of the Arrancar family belong to."


    "Wind Sect, eh? Makes sense." Rui nodded.


    The Lightning Sect was the Martial Sect that was surrounded by speed and maneuvering-oriented techniques. However, Rui wasn''t surprised that Kane had chosen to join the Wind Sect, a sub-sect of the Lightning that focused on evasive maneuvering specifically.


    "Can the Wind Sect help you?" Rui asked.


    "If I''m valuable enough, it certainly can." Kane nodded in response. "But only if I''m worth the expenditure of the political capital."


    "Fortunately for you, you''re a genius with a high affinity for maneuvering, speed, and specifically evasive maneuvering techniques and stealth as well," Rui noted. "Which means they''ll probably be willing to go far for you. Is that your n?"


    Kane nodded. "The more I aplish, the greater the value I am of to the Lightning Sect, and the more and longer they will be willing to amodate my needs for political protection from my family."<novelnext></novelnext>


    Rui nodded. "That''s a realistic and pragmatic n. You''re in no position to resist your family as a Martial Apprentice who just barely is an adult. Your n gives you a reasonable way to resist."


    "Yeah, that''s the n, for now." Kane sighed.


    "You''ve thought it through, have faith in yourself." Rui nodded. "Besides, you''ve got me, for what little it may be worth. I''d suggest frequently taking long-term missions outside the Kandrian Empire."


    "That makes sense. The more time I spend away from the Kandrian Empire, the less I''m incurring from the Lightning Sect, and the less pressure I''m in. Ironically enough, I might actually be able to more rx on foreign missions than I might be able to in the Kandrian Empire." Kane sighed.


    "You should also move to the other side of the Empire, just put as much ground between you and your family," Rui noted.


    "That won''t help all that much to be honest." Kane shrugged. "Distances don''t matter to them."


    "I suppose that''s true."


    In truth, Kane just did not want to move away because he wouldn''t be able to interact with Rui if he did. Communicating through theirmunicators or ounters was just not the same, he would feel quite dull if he could not interact with his friends physically.


    Even Fae, as much as he would not admit it out loud, had grown on him in the past three years.


    "This was an incredible mission." Fiona sighed. "I''m going to be going back to Vargard though, no big changes."


    "Same here." Hever calmly replied.


    "I want even bigger missions!" Nel grinned.


    "Are there even bigger missions of the Apprentice grade?" Kane wondered.


    "Most certainly not," Fae added. "The Serevian Dungeon mission is an extremely rare kind of mission in so far as the scale and the difficulty went. Even grade eight Martial Apprentice were merely barely above average in such circumstances."


    Many of the high-grade Martial Apprentices that had participated in the Serevian Dungeon wars had forgotten that they were high-grade Martial Apprentices that stood far above the average Martial Apprentice. It was difficult for them to hold the opinion that they were special after having fought in wars in the Serevian Dungeon. The mission had shown Martial Apprentices from not just the Kandrian Empire but all nations just how small and insignificant they were in the grand scheme of things.


    There was only one Martial Apprentice that had the right to disagree with that. Yet he didn''t care about such things. He had already forgotten all about the Serevian Dungeon as heid his eyes on the Realm above him. He could almost feel it await his arrival.


    The time had finallye. He was quite certain that his Martial Art had achieved a certain degree of maturity. It would not change in its shape all that much even if he mastered several more powerful techniques.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 439 Verify

    The six of them eventually split ways when they returned to the Kandrian Empire. Fiona broke off from them first when she returned to Vargard instead of Hajin. Rui broke off from the remaining four of them as he returned home instead of the Martial Academy.


    "RUIIII!" Alice tackled him with a hug when she saw him. "You''re back!"


    "Alright alright." Rui squeezed out after getting choked by her.


    "You went away for more than a month!" She chided him.


    "That''s not unusual for missions, you know." He sighed.


    He was soon swarmed by children and adults alike who inquired about him and his mission. The Orphanage was always excited to hear about Rui''s unique experiences as a Martial Artist.


    "I''d expected to see you soon when the news of the war in the Serevian Dungeon dying down spread." Julian smiled. "I also heard the most ridiculous tale of a single Martial Apprentice in the Kandrian Empire singlehandedly defeating three armies all by themselves."


    Rui chuckled. "Technically true, but overblown and misrepresented."


    Julian''s eyes widened in shock. He had expected Rui to deny the alleged report.


    "But who...?"


    "Yours truly," Rui smirked yfully, yet Julian''s reactions were even more exaggerated. He knew that Rui was not someone that lied for the sake of an ego boost. It meant that he was quite serious.


    "You''re picturing the wrong image." Rui waved his hand dismissively. "It''s not nearly as impressive as you think it is."


    Julian''s eyes scrunched in confusion at those words. "I see... You''ve certainly had a colorful experience in the Serevian Dungeon, it seems."


    "Indeed," Rui affirmed. "The drastic experiences I underwent in the Serevian Dungeon have helped push my Martial Art above the threshold."


    "Threshold... Surely you don''t mean...?" Julian probed.


    "I mean exactly that." Rui nodded. "I''m ready to break through to a higher Realm of Martial Art."


    Julian was amazed at those words. "That''s incredible! Congrattions."


    "Thanks, but save it for when I actually reach it." Rui chuckled. "The breakthrough process is anything but easy and simple, as you know."


    Julian cooled down at those words. "Indeed. I imagine they won''t just plop you into the breakthrough procedure when you announce your Squire candidacy. I''m actually curious about the system that they have created for new Squire candidates."


    "As am I." Rui nodded.


    "When do you intend to apply for the procedure?" Julian asked.


    "As soon as I''m done with lunch," Rui replied. "Besides, I have some things to do in preparation for the procedure as well."


    "Oh? What''s that?" Julian asked, curious.


    "I have a technique to master," Rui said as he recalled the Mind Switch technique.<novelnext></novelnext>


    It was a mental technique he had spotted in hisst training session that he had identified as a technique that could potentially help him in the higher Realm. Rui had considered taking a look at that technique if and when he got the time.


    (''I''ll make a decision on that after the Martial Union ispletely done debriefing me regarding the Squire breakthrough process.'') He noted.


    He hadn''t grown conceited, believing that he didn''t require briefing from the Martial union regarding the breakthrough process to the Squire Realm. After all, although he had figured out the secret to the Squire Realm, he had only figured out the general mechanics and principles of the process, he may as well have been illiterate on the details.


    Furthermore, the Squire breakthrough process that the Commonwealth Duchy of Vinfrana had discovered was the most primitive and unrefined version of the process that Rui would likely evere across. The Kandrian Empire''s breakthrough process was likely far more refined, efficient, and effective.


    He had no doubt that the Martial Union had likely dumped an obscene amount of funding into the research and development of even marginally better breakthrough processes that were just a touch safer than before, or just a notch more efficient and effective. The current iteration of the breakthrough process was something that had likely undergone decades of refinement and improvement.


    Rui was curious to learn more, it was quite likely that the process would be dumbed down immensely to cater to Martial Artists, still, Rui hoped he could ask questions.


    He didn''t want to waste any more time. That day, he immediately headed towards the Hajin branch office of the Martial Union.


    "Purpose of visit?" The security team asked him as they verified his Martial license.


    "Purchasing of growth resources," Rui replied, and soon he was on his way to the reception.


    "Hello." Rui greeted a receptionist. "I wish to apply for the breakthrough process to the Squire Realm."


    "Of course." The receptionist nodded as she punched some buttons into her terminal device. "Name and ID please."


    "Rui Quarrier." He replied as she provided her with the necessary documents.


    "Before you can actually purchase the Squire breakthrough procedure, the Martial Union will need to verify the fact that you actually are a genuine Squire candidate. Once the fact of the matter is verified, you will gain ess to actually purchasing the breakthrough procedure or incur its cost as debt with no interest..."


    Rui simply nodded to her exnation before signing some paperwork.


    ? "Office number forty-three in the training facility." She told him.


    It hadn''t taken him long to reach there.


    KNOCK KNOCK


    Rui knocked on the door.


    "Come in." A clear and strong voice instructed him.


    He hadn''t even needed to enter the room in order to understand who he was dealing with.Belongs to N?velDrama.Org - All rights reserved.


    (''Martial Squire.'') He mused as he entered the room, making eye contact with a Martial Squire that had been waiting for him.


    "Apprentice Rui Quarrier. I''ve heard a lot about you." She admitted. "Your prowess and feats are powerful and undeniable. However, that is entirely separate from the matter of whether or not you have fulfilled the two conditions of Squire candidacy. I am Squire Deria, and I will be verifying whether or not you have genuinely achievedplete Squire candidacy and are eligible to undergo the breakthrough to the Squire Realm."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 440 Test

    Rui already knew this wasing, but he didn''t know the process could be conducted by a Martial Squire.


    "We will conduct an examination of you to ensure that you have indeed fulfilled both conditions of Squire candidacy." She exined. "Once that''s happened, you will be briefed on the breakthrough to the Squire Realm and everything about it. The mechanics and principles that allow a Martial Apprentice to be a Martial Squire, and what it even means to be a Martial Squire. Once the briefing is done, we''ll move to the preparatory phase, and only then will you undergo the actual breakthrough to the Squire Realm."


    "What exactly does the preparatory phase entail?" Rui asked, curious.


    Squire Diera shook her head in response. "The preparatory phase will be exined thoroughly if you have indeed fulfilled the conditions to the Squire Realm."


    "I understand." Rui nodded. "Will the examination begin immediately?"


    "It will, I require you to sign this consent form before that." She exined.


    "Consent form?" Rui frowned. "What for?"


    "The verification examination can be mentally distressing if you are not a Squire candidate." She exined in response.


    "Distressing?" Rui raised an eyebrow.


    "Only if you aren''t a Squire candidate." She exined. "It''s not toote to turn around. There''s no shame in admitting you aren''t ready, it is nothing to be ashamed about."


    "I''m quite ready." Rui signed the form after having read it.


    "Good, then follow me to the examination room." She gestured to him to follow her. "The examination requires me to test your mental fortitude by applying a tremendous amount of mental pressure on you."


    Rui''s eyes lit up in interest at those words, as he processed them.


    (''I see.'') He realized. (''The procedure allows the Martial Union to test the mental fortitude of the Martial Apprentice in question, Squire candidates naturally have a stronger mental fortitude thanks to the breakthroughs in the individuality of the Martial Art in question.'')


    Thus, the Martial Squire would be able to weed out the wannabes from the real deal by subjecting an immense amount of mental pressure and seeing who cracks and who doesn''t. However, that by itself did not verify that those who didn''t break under her pressure were in fact Squire candidates.


    (''There''s probably a specific mental threshold for that as well.'') Rui mused.


    Mental and neurological fortitude was required to survive the breakthrough process to the Squire Realm, as Rui had learned from the research data he had brought back from the mission to the Commonwealth Duchy of Vinfrana. The Martial Squire could probably test him to see if he had the required amount of mental fortitude required to survive the process by exerting mental pressure on him.<novelnext></novelnext>


    They traveled for a bit before they reached a separate facility. Rui was made to sit on a chair with several contraptions and a helmet-like device wired to it, which reminded Rui of Professor X from the X-Men series.


    In the facility were several screens with images projected on him.N?vel(D)rama.Org''s content.


    "Prep him for the Squire breakthrough verification process." She told a team of a doctor and his assistants.


    They made Rui sit down on the chair as various devices were hooked up to him. If Rui had to guess, they allowed the team to gain a lot of data on his metabolic data. Rui guessed this would aid in the verification of whether he had fulfilled the first condition of Squire candidacy.


    "Bite down on this at all times." One of the assistants instructed him as she ced a bite guard in his mouth.


    (''They''re taking some precautions alright.'') Rui frowned. He was even strapped to the seat tightly, which were some ridiculous measures for a simple verification examination.


    "Is all of this really necessary?" He asked Squire Deria through his bide guard.


    "As I said earlier." She replied. "The examination can cause distress in the applicants of the examination."


    Rui raised his eyebrow in surprise. This was one of the most rigorous verifications he had been through. Soon, the medical team left the entire facility, leaving him and the Martial Squire alone.


    Rui felt awkward.


    But the emotion went away as a profound sense of danger erupted within him with Primordial Instinct. The sensation rippled through him as he recognized the feeling.


    (''This is simr to when Squire Dylon was serious against me for a moment.'') Rui felt his nerves tingling sharply. Primordial Instinct screamed in fear as it gnawed at Rui''s self-control wanting to force the body into a panicked state of fight or flight mode.


    Her eyebrows narrowed as the pressure mounted increasingly on him. Yet to her surprise, he didn''t grimace or wince or break down in fear. He maintained his calm andposure despite the heavy pressure that she exerted on him. He met her gaze with a measured gaze.


    (''Interesting...'') She mused. It certainly proved he was not simply lying about the first condition to Squire candidacy, otherwise, he would not havested this long. Yet it was the manner in which he prevailed against the pressure that she was exerting on her. She had never seen a Martial Apprentice withstand the degree of pressure that she was currently extending, she had already exceeded the bounds of pressure that any normal Martial Apprentice could possibly exert.


    Barring Rui, of course.


    She grew absorbed as she tried to gain an urate and precise measure of his mental fortitude. The pressure she mounted on him would have incapacitated him by now. Rui had already previously witnessed an aura in the Squire Realm freezing his friends in shock and fear, he didn''t think he would be nearly that easy. Yet, he was able to withstand it. At some point she even began exerting tinges of her bloodlust in the weight that she exerted onto Rui, however, she was unable to push him over the limit. Rui had grimaced from time to time as he withstood everything she threw him with and more. He relied purely on mental fortitude, not even certain mental techniques that may have aided him on the matter after all.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 441 Interrogation

    In the middle of that ordeal, she threw him a simple question.


    "Have you fulfilled the two conditions of Squire candidacy?" She asked him straightforwardly.


    "I have," Rui truthfully answered. She peered at his reactions with her sharp eyes, discerning every detail. Rui felt transparent, for the first time.


    "Tell me about your Martial Art and your Martial Path."


    Rui paused for a moment as he contemted his answer.


    What could he even say on the spot to such a request?


    "My Martial Path is adaptive evolution. My Martial Art allows me to adapt mybat style and all of my movements to suit my opponent''s, Martial Art." He replied, pausing before continuing. "In its most ideal state, I would be able to adapt to any form of opposition of any kind inbat. However, unfortunately, I''m far away from achieving that goal. I have yet to develop solutions against many fields of Martial Art, several domains and different kinds of opponents as well."


    Content ? copyrighted by N?velDrama.Org.


    "An ambitious goal, no doubt." Shemented. "How do you hope to go about it?"


    Rui paused. This alone was more than he would tell most people, but this was clearly part of the test. "By expanding the diversity of my capabilities. Every Martial Art has a unique solution, the greater the diversity of my capability, the greater the number of Martial Art I can adapt to."


    He didn''t mention adapting the VOID algorithm to the world of Gaia, although it was relevant. It was difficult to exin the VOID algorithm to people of this world, let alone exin its ws. He couldn''t very well tell her that the VOID algorithm was a relic from a different world that was limited to the previous and needed to be adapted adequately to suit this world.


    "I see..." She appeared deep in thought. "That will take a long time to achieve."


    "Most likely," Rui admitted. "Yet, I intend to see it through to the very end."


    "That''s quite admirable of you." She replied. "Do you remember the moment you felt the maturation of your Martial Art?"


    "Vividly." Rui nodded. "It was like time slowed down, and an immense wave of rity washed over me. I felt ready to step into a higher Realm of power."


    "When did the moment happen?" She asked.


    "Very recently, a few days ago," Rui replied. "It happened in the middle ofbat. I had been beset by targeted attacks from ten Martial Artists across three nations on the battlefield. The situation was dire and I had been pushed to my very limit. For a moment there I had been forced to use all of my Martial Art, every maneuvering technique, every supplementary technique, every offensive, and defensive technique. It was at that moment that I had an epiphany."


    "Are you ready for a higher Realm of power?" She asked him.<novelnext></novelnext>


    Rui paused for a moment. "As ready as I''ll ever be."


    She stared at him.


    Suddenly, the pressure she exerted on him was gone.


    "Okay, that concludes the test." She nodded. "In my evaluation as a mind-sensory Martial Squire, you are indeed qualified to undergo the breakthrough to the Squire Realm."


    "''Mind sensory Martial Squire?''" Rui echoed with raised eyes.


    "It''s a very niche field, an ovep of the sensory Martial Art techniques and mental techniques." She exined. "It allows me to peer into the mind of my target to a certain degree. Most applications of my Martial Art are purelybat-oriented. But it is quite useful in circumstances like these, where the state of a Martial Apprentices mind is required to be verified by a credible and reliable source."


    "So you verified that I am a Squire candidate through those techniques?" Rui asked, incredulous.


    She nodded. "Indeed. I verified that you have the mental fortitude to at the very least not be guaranteed to die to the procedure due to being too weak. Furthermore, I have verified the stability of your Martial Path as well as the sincerity of your recounts."


    Rui''s eyes rose up in interest. He had never seen a mind-sensory Martial Squire before. It was a fascinating concept to him.


    He wondered if he could master some mind-sensory techniques. Although he had no affinity for sensory techniques, he certainly did have some affinity for mental techniques. Surely that meant he would have a certain degree of affinity to an ovep of mental techniques and sensory techniques, right?


    Squire Deria had mentioned most of the applications of her Martial Art were meant forbat. He wondered what that would actually look like in practice. He wasn''t entirely sure, but he had a few guesses regarding what she meant.


    For example, he would be quite surprised if there weren''t techniques that allowed the user to sense the intentions of their opponent, one way or another. Although such a technique would undoubtedly be extremely high-grade. He would expect there to be a technique that allowed the user to sense the weaknesses of their opponent via a mind-sensing technique. There probably were techniques that allowed the user to sense the kind of Martial Art their opponent had.


    Of course, this was all merely conjecture, but these were the kinds of techniques he pictured when he thought about mental sensory techniques.


    (''I''ll definitely have to look into this intersecting specialty when I be a Martial Squire.'') Rui mused.


    He instinctively felt that there probably was something that would aid his Martial Art significantly. After all, the mental sensory technique was a niche field that allowed the user to gain information about their opponent in a very unique and special way. Considering the fact that his Martial Art heavily relied upon gathering information about his opponent, it was quite likely there was something that could at the very least supplement his information-gathering ability on his opponent. He would be quite surprised if there wasn''t a technique that could aid in the creation of the predictive model or the execution of the predictive model to predict the movements of his opponent.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 442 Briefing

    "So, is the examinationplete?" Rui asked.


    "The analyst team will be cross-referencing my results with the data gathered by all the sensors." She replied. "They aren''t just for show. However, those are only extra precautions that the Martial Union is taking to make sure beyond any shadow of a doubt that you are a Squire candidate."


    "What follows from here?" Rui asked.


    "Once they have verified your status as a Squire candidate, the actual briefing on the process will begin." She exined. "Once that''s done, you will need to go through a few procedures that are necessary for the breakthrough to the Squire Realm."


    "How long will the verification of my status as a Squire candidate take?" Rui wondered, curious.


    "Should be done within a day." She replied. "I need to file a report regarding my examination of you, the analytics department will verify my evaluation along with the data the sensors gathered on you. Together, the truth will be irrefutably clear. The Martial Union will contact you when the results have been evaluated."


    "Alright." Rui nodded.


    He bade her farewell and returned to the Quarrier Orphanage, waiting patiently with high expectations. Sure enough, as Squire Deira told him, the Martial Union messaged him several hours within the day.


    Please check at N/?vel(D)rama.Org.


    [Apprentice Rui Quarrier,


    We write to inform you that the evaluation of your Squire candidacy examination has beenpleted. You have sessfully passed and are now officially acknowledged as a Squire candidate. Your application for the breakthrough procedure to the Squire Realm has been processed and epted. You may debrief yourself at the Hajin branch office of the Martial Union by an official at a time of your convenience.


    Regards,


    The Martial Union]


    Rui didn''t even hesitate.


    He immediately returned to the Martial Union.


    "Excuse me." He addressed one of the receptionists. "I received a message from the Martial Union stating that I was evaluated as a Squire candidate, and thus I could apply for being debriefed on the breakthrough process to the Squire Realm. I would like to proceed with that."


    "That is correct." She said. "You can undergo a briefing session if you have been epted as a Squire candidate and have applied for the breakthrough process to the Squire Realm. May I have your Martial license?"


    She plucked the card from Rui as she ran the details through her terminal.


    "You have indeed been evaluated to be a Squire candidate. Please wait while I make the arrangements for the briefing session."


    Rui nodded.


    Surprisingly, it didn''t take them long at all.<novelnext></novelnext>


    "Apprentice Quarrier? The preparations for the briefing session have been made. Please head to presentation room thirty-eight. You will be met with a support staff member who will exin the process to you."


    Thankfully, it didn''t take much time until he got there, despite the size of the branch office of the Martial Union.


    What he didn''t expect was a Martial Squire waiting for him instead of the promised support staff member when he entered the room.


    His presence was loud and eye-drawing. He did his best to restrict and halt his aura, yet Rui''s keen senses and powerful mind instantly discerned his identity.


    "Apprentice Quarrier." He said. "You have arrived. Let us begin immediately. I am Squire Gunther, and I have taken the liberty of handling your briefing myself when I received the notification that you were to be briefed on the breakthrough procedure to the Squire Realm."


    Soon, Rui found himself seated at the front row of a desk as the Martial Squire finished loading up the projector.


    Rui wasn''t a fool. The fact that a Martial Squire had shown up for a simple briefing session was not random. It was a sign that demonstrated the value that the Martial Union put in Rui. Otherwise, it was inconceivable that a Martial Squire would go out of their way to provide a service that would otherwise be handled by ordinary support staff.


    Still, he almost wished that he had gotten ordinary treatment, it was a little burdening and shackling having a Martial Squire to do this.


    "The breakthrough to the Squire Realm, as you have realized by now, is not a natural spontaneous phenomenon that urs to a Martial Apprentice. Unlike the discovery of the Martial Path, the breakthrough to the Squire Realm is entirely man-made." He exined.


    Rui nodded, acting surprised and intrigued. He had expected to hear a lot of the same old stuff, yet he added something that made him knit his eyes in confusion.


    "The breakthrough to each Realm requires the discovery of an important part of every Martial Path. The breakthrough to the Apprentice Realm requires the discovery of the Martial Path." She told him. "However, the breakthrough to the Squire Realm requires the discovery of the Martial body."


    Rui''s eyes lit up in interest at those words. (''The discovery of the Martial body... So that''s how they''ve chosen to frame it?'')


    "The discovery of the Martial body...?" He probed.


    "The Martial body is the body that Martial Squires acquire from the breakthrough process. It is effectively a brand-new body with superhuman physical prowess. One that is catered to suit your Martial Art and your Martial Path."


    He began exining the mechanisms and principles of the breakthrough to the Squire Realm.


    Rui oohed and aahed as he did his best to appear surprised and shocked. He also threw in a fair bit of confusion, after all, he was supposed to be a Martial Artist in a world with an already poor scientific background.


    "The details, frankly, don''t matter." He waved his hand. "No Martial Artist truly understands the core of the science behind the breakthrough."


    "Truly fascinating." Rui nodded. He probably understood the principles behind the breakthrough better than anyone else in the world did.


    "All you truly need to know is that the procedure evolves your body, but there will still be a possibility of death, and a guaranteed tremendous amount of suffering." He exined. "The effectivity of pain-reliving medication and drugs is non-existent. You will need to bear the pain."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 443 Configuration

    "How high of a risk is death?" Rui asked.


    He had previously been under the impression that bing a Squire candidate got rid of all the risks of the procedure.


    "Not insignificant, that''s for sure." He sighed.


    "I thought the point of the first condition of Squire candidacy was to ensure that the subject survived the procedure." Rui probed.


    "The first condition of Squire candidacy is the bare minimum to ensure you won''t automatically die due to brain death due to the procedure." He exined. "There is no way to guarantee the absolute sess of the procedure, not without extraordinarily high-grade potions and things of that nature. Certainly things beyond your reach as a Martial Apprentice."


    "I see..." Rui pondered deep in thought.


    "Each Martial body is usually perfectly tailored to suit the Martial Apprentice and their Martial Art and Martial Path of the Martial Apprentice in question." He told Rui. "We do this by allowing the user to experience a taste of what the Squire Realm is like through certain hallucinogens and hypnosis techniques."


    "What?" Rui''s eyes widened in surprise. "I need to be drugged and hypnotized in order for me to discover my Martial body?"


    Squire Gunther nodded. "The goal is to figure out exactly what kind of Martial Art body is best suited to your Martial Art and your Martial Path. There is an endless kind of bodies that can be forged by adjusting the process and changing several parts of it. It is possible to obtain a heavy body with high muscr and bone mass rtive to body mass. It is possible to obtain a light nimble body that ces weight on speed, agility, and mobility at the expense of power and durability. It is possible for the procedure to be adjusted such that the Martial body obtained is a perfect all-rounder."


    The biggest problem in such a case was figuring out the most optimal configuration and bnce for each particr Squire candidate in question. If the wrong configuration was applied, then the Martial Path of the Martial Artist in question would forever be ruined by a Martial body that conflicts with their Martial Path.


    That was why the Martial Union had invested an immense amount of research and development funding into this matter so that Martial Artists had a more reliable and less risky route of breaking into the Squire Realm.


    The most effective solution in the modern era was the process of mental induction by abination of hallucinogens and hypnosis.


    It wasn''t easy to hypnotize a Martial Apprentice, least of all Rui. The hallucinogens reduced the resistance and made it easier to exercise imagination, all it did was require a powerful suggestion to allow the user to imagine exactly what it was like to possess a different body.


    It was this out-of-world experience that worried the authorities of most nations had resulted in the n to simply ban all of the relevant hallucinogens.


    However, it was quite useful in allowing the Martial Apprentices to experience the hallucinogen with realistic Martial bodies before the actual breakthrough procedure. This was effectively highly altered experiences of reality that were often bad, but often could be useful when used correctly.


    "Are the effects of the drugs and hypnosis harmless and temporary?" Rui asked sternly.<novelnext></novelnext>


    His mind was extraordinarily important to him, more so than any other part of his body, he would watch his own body get annihted before he allowed something to happen to his mind.


    "The procedure is harmless with no permanent influence on the body." He reassured.


    Rui stared at him with stern eyes. "I have the Mindmirror Symbiote in my head, does that change anything at all?"


    "Not at all." Squire Gunther replied "The procedure is verifiably for all kinds of Martial Art and Martial Path. It is a perfectly harmless procedure that does not negatively impact symbiotes in the body."


    Rui looked unconvinced. "So what exactly are my tasks to do in this maelstrom of drugs and hypnosis?"


    "Your goal is to experience the hallucinogenated state as well as the highly urate and precise images and sensations of apletely different body" he exined. "Once you have locked down a general type of Martial body that you are looking for, your job is to narrow down the precise and exact kind of Martial body that clicks with you and your Martial Art. Once you have done that, your initial goal will be quiteplete."Content ? copyrighted by N?velDrama.Org.


    "So... I''m just going to have to take some amount of drugs and be hypnotized in order to discover my Martial Art?" Rui asked.


    "Well, not just some, but a fair amount is." He replied. "The worst part is not having as much agency as you''d like, it can be pushy on them. The drugs and hypnosis are absolutely necessary, furthermore, the value they provide exceeds any potential demerit thates with them."


    "So, how do I figure out whether a particr configuration is my particr Martial body or not?" Rui asked, testing him.


    "Mostly by gaining experience with that particr configuration of physical parameters." He replied. "You''ll know when you''ve run into the perfect body that suits you to the T."


    "What happens if I don''t find the ideal physical parametric configuration?" Rui asked.


    "There exists a unique configuration of unique parameters for every Martial Apprentice." He reassured him. "All it takes is some amount of time and energy and dedication. However, when you hit the unique configurations of physical, you''ll know for sure, and personally, it is an incredibly eye-opening experience."


    "Once I''ve discovered my Martial body," Rui added. "How much time will it take before I''m ready for the actual procedure?"


    "That depends on howplicated the kind of Martial body in question is, A strange and more exotic kind of Martial body to suit rare techniques is quite unusual, and is usually much harder to be able to replicate in reality. Depending on how strange or esoteric that is, it is something that can take some time for the Martial Union to fully figure out.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 444 Fortunate

    "Hallucinogens and hypnosis, huh?" Rui murmured.


    It seemed extreme at first, however, it made sense. It was very difficult to figure out the most optimal Martial body as far as the configuration of physical parameters went without something like this. How else could Rui personally experience a particr kind of Martial body?


    The only other viable possibility was some kind of temporary-enhancement potion that enhanced his body in one particr kind of way that would allow him to experience a particr kind of body for him to decide whether or not he waspatible with that kind of body or not.


    However, this was an incredibly expensive and wasteful solution. Temporary-enhancement potions were military assets that allowed ordinary trained humans to keep up with Martial Artists. They were not resources that could be splurged on training.


    Hallucinogens and hypnosis techniques were much more pragmatic solutions to the problem.Content ? N?velDrama.Org 2024.


    They allowed Rui to experience various configurations of physical parameters inside a hypnotized hallucination. If he wanted, he could try out a power-defense configuration where his body was extremely big and muscr possessing great power and defense at the cost of speed. Or a speed-mobility configuration where his body was light and nimble, sacrificing power and durability for speed, agility, and mobility.


    All inside his head.


    "Alright." Rui nodded. "I understand."


    "The discovery of the Martial body requires experiencing all kinds of Martial bodies, but the Martial Union has perfected the way of narrowing down on the ideal body for you. We begin by subjecting you to the configurations suited for every primary field. You will experience a Martial body suited for power, defense, speed, striking, grappling, and so on and so forth. Of the many basic temtes, you can zero in on the types of body that suited you the most when you experienced them in the hallucination. From there will begin a process of adjustment. The bodies that you expressedpatibility with will be continuously adjusted with repeated refining until we hit the most optimal configuration suited for you." He exined.


    "And that would bring us to the final procedure?" Rui raised an eyebrow.


    Squire Gunther nodded in response. "The Martial Union will document the particr body that you experienced optimalpatibility with and will then devise a procedure in order to create an identical Martial body when you undergo the breakthrough to the Squire Realm."


    "The procedure needs to be devised from scratch?" Rui asked.


    Squire Gunther nodded in response. "Because the Martial body of each Martial Squire is unique, a unique procedure is required to achieve each of them. The procedure needs to be customized perfectly for you so that when you be a Martial Squire after the evolution procedure, your Martial body will be perfectly suited to you."


    As Rui had expected, the Martial Union''s breakthrough procedure to the Squire Realm was much more borate than the Commonwealth Duchy of Vinfrana.<novelnext></novelnext>


    The Commonwealth Duchy of Vinfrana hadn''t yet even conceived of the concept of customized evolution processes.


    These processes were alterable and customizable because the evolution procedure worked by subjecting the Martial Apprentice to various procedures that caused cell death, round after round. The surviving cells would pass on the genes that allowed them to survive the procedure in the first ce and the next generation of cells would be superior. That was how the evolution process functioned.


    However, the degree to which the filtration processes caused cell death could be manipted. A particr process that caused evolution to the toughness of the body could be reduced in exchange for increasing a particr process that increased speed, resulting in a faster, but more fragile body. A particr process that evolved agility could be reduced for a particr process that evolved power, resulting in a slower but stronger body.


    By increasing and reducing the timeframe of these procedures, different kinds of Martial bodies could be produced.


    The Commonwealth Duchy of Vinfrana had only just very recently stumbled upon the secret to the Squire Realm. They had not yet devised a system that allowed each Martial Apprentice to obtain the perfect body when they broke through to the Squire Realm.


    (''Man, I''m so d I''m born in the Kandrian Empire.'') Rui sighed in relief.


    Had he been born in the Commonwealth Duchy of Vinfrana, he would have had to deal with inferior Squire breakthrough processes, however, that wasn''t the worst part. The worst part was he would have had to deal with being given a body that doesn''t align with his Martial Art and Martial Path.


    Squire Cae Freelia, the sessful Squire subject that the research facility had created, was supposed to be a defensive Martial Artist, yet her body was not aligned with that because the Commonwealth Duchy of Vinfrana had not yet conceived of the idea of customized and personalized Martial bodies.


    Her Martial Path was inadvertently ruined because of the inadequacy of the Commonwealth Duchy of Vinfrana. Inparison, The Kandrian Martial Union had a strong foundation in that regard. Going so far as to develop procedures centered around hallucinogens and hypnosis techniques in order to make the very absolute best of the breakthrough to the Squire Realm. He was absolutely certain that the filtration processes that caused the evolution to ur over time were also likely to be far more effective and efficient, given the fact that the Martial Union had doubtlessly invested an immense amount of research into the matter.


    After all, the quality of the breakthrough procedure to the Squire Realm decided the quality of not just Martial Squires but also the quality of Martial Artists of the higher Realms. It had already been made clear that the breakthrough to the Squire Realm was not something that could be undone or reversed, any ws and shorings would bear down on the Martial Artist for the rest of their life. In a way, he had done a favor to Squire Cae, he would rather die than live with a ruined Martial Path.


    Rui nced at Squire Gunther.


    "When can we begin the process?"


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 445 Explanation

    "Immediately, if you so wish." He replied. "Finding the right Martial body is something that requires time and exploration."


    "How much time?" Rui asked, curious.


    "Oh, it can vary wildly." He replied simply. "I think the minimum it has ever taken was a few days, and the maximum it took was a few months."


    "A few months?" Rui frowned.


    "Yes, we were dealing with a very fussy and indecisive Martial Apprentice." Squire Gunther nodded. "Lot of it depends on how much rity you have with how you want your Martial Art to look at the end of your Martial Path. Usually, Squire candidates have very high rity on exactly what is needed."


    "I see." Rui absorbed the information he provided. "Can we begin the process right now then? I do not wish to waste any time before heading to the matter."


    "Alright." He nodded. "The preparations have already been made. I won''t be conducting the procedure, of course. It''s a mostly medical procedure."


    "A team is already prepared?" Rui''s eyebrow rose. "That was remarkably quick. Wouldn''t these things need to be booked days in advance?"


    N?vel(D)rama.Org''s content.


    "It was." Squire Gunther sheepishly admitted. "The Martial Union expedited the process so that there would be as few dys as possible, back when you informedmissioner Feristen of your status as a Squire candidate."


    Rui''s eyebrow rose even higher. To think the Martial Union had gone this far the second he had off-handedly made thatment tomissioner Feristen after the Serevian Dungeon mission ended.


    It was yet another reflection of how valuable he was to the Martial Union.


    Of course, in hindsight, it was to be expected.


    Rui''s contributions to the Serevian Dungeon mission were beyond ridiculous. Furthermore, he had made major contributions to a mission that was of great importance to the Martial Union, making his feat all the more impactful on the rtionship between himself and the Martial Union.


    Commissioner Feristen had already informed him that he could basically ask for a favor from the Martial Union and they would help him out, within reason, of course. Rui still hadn''t figured out what he would use the favor for. But frankly, there was no real hurry.


    It was a valuable one-time opportunity, he ought to use it for something important, significant, and something only the Martial Union could do.


    That instantly disqualified all of his ideas. He had initially considered requesting the Martial Union for waiving his loan, however, he quickly dismissed it as a stupid idea. His ie was tremendous as a Martial Apprentice, and although his loan was by no means little, it was static because there was no interest.


    Meaning, he would absolutely repay his loan. There was no doubt about that. In that case, there was no point in wasting the favor on something that he was very confident of being able to aplish by himself.


    Was it worth using it on obtaining techniques?<novelnext></novelnext>


    Rui shook his head. Techniques could be purchased, unless it was some confidential technique, there was no point in wasting something that could straightforwardly be purchased.


    (''Besides, if I''m not wrong, from this point on, techniques are going to be increasingly less purchased and increasingly more developed instead.'') Rui mused.


    Although there were Squire-level techniques, things weren''t nearly the same as it currently was with Apprentice-level techniques.


    For one, every Martial Squire had a unique body. Meaning it was impossible for Squire-level techniques to be able to be universally applicable to each Martial Squire.


    Furthermore, it was quite likely that no Squire-level technique as they were sold waspletelypatible with every Martial Squire.


    He recalled when Squire Dylon had told him there existed Squire-level versions of Apprentice-level techniques. He had taken it at face value back then, but of course, there was likely much more nuance to it than he had expected back then. Nuance Squire Dylon had chosen not to reveal because the breakthrough to the Squire Realm was still a secret from him back then.


    The deeper down one''s Martial Path one went down, the greater the individuality the Martial Art would possess, and the greater the individuality needed to make any progress down one''s Martial Path. That was the reason that Rui


    However, if it was true that purchasing and mastering Squire-level techniques was far more difficult and less viable, then it was even more unlikely that he would waste the favor on a technique.


    He certainly didn''t need it for the breakthrough to the Squire Realm either, since he could freely purchase it.


    He couldn''t really think of any favor he wanted that was important and also something that could only bepleted with the help of the Martial Union. Thus far, he had led a rtively simple and normal life as far as Martial Artists went.


    (''Whatever.'') He shook his head. (''I''ll leave the matter for another day.'')


    It was best left for a rainy day when he would genuinely need the Martial Union''s help over a matter with high stakes. He did not want to lose something important because he had already squandered his one-time favor on something unimportant.


    "The preparations for the explorative process areplete." Squire Gunther nodded, interrupting Rui''s reverie. "You will be notified and guided to the procedure room when it is time, which should be soon."


    He turned to face Rui. "That brings us to the end of the briefing session. Goodbye, Apprentice Quarrier. I bid you a sessful breakthrough to the Squire Realm."


    "Thank you, Squire Gunther." Rui bowed as he expressed gratitude and respect to a Martial Artist of a higher Realm. A Realm that he hoped to be a part of soon.


    Rui simply waited in the presentation room once Squire Gunther had left, waiting for the promised explorative process that would allow him to figure out the most optimal Martial body suited to him.


    Before long, as promised, he received a message on his ounter as he was instructed to go to a particr operating room in question.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 446 Commencement

    "Apprentice Quarrier." A doctor greeted him when he reached the designated room for the procedure to ur. "We''ve been expecting you. I am Doctor Herin. I will be overlooking the administration of the hallucinogens that you will be undergoing during the procedure."


    "Pleasure to meet you, doctor. Will you be overlooking the procedure as a whole?" Rui asked.


    "That would be me." A voice addressed him from behind, entering the room.


    Rui didn''t even need to turn to recognize the presence of the Martial Squire.


    "I am Squire Luna." The old woman told him. "I will be overlooking the actual explorative procedure."


    Apanied her was a Martial Apprentice. Rui wasn''t sure what his presence here was for, but he didn''t question it.


    "Pleasure to meet you." Rui greeted. "When can we begin the procedure?"


    "Immediately." She replied, gesturing at a medical bed. "Lie down there."


    "A few tests will be conducted to make sure you are fit for the procedure." Doctor Herin exined. "We will be subjecting you to hallucinogens, after all. It won''t take much time at all, however."


    "I understand," Rui nodded, as an interesting thought came to mind. "Do Martial Apprentices require an increased dosage of hallucinogens for them to be effective?"


    He hadn''t considered the possibility before, however, it was quite usible. The brains of a Martial Apprentice were quite resilient in many ways, it was quite reasonable that this resilience extended to resistance influence of drugs such as hallucinogens.


    "They do, actually." He replied. "We''re giving you an increased dosage to achieve the desired level of influence,pared to normal humans."


    This made sense, raising the dosage would definitely be needed if Martial Apprentices were indeed more resilient towards it.


    "How do you know the exact dosage needed for me, in particr?" Rui asked.


    Even if Martial Apprentices were more resilient, surely different Martial Apprentices had different degrees of resilience, which would then lead to different dosages needed for each of them.


    "We have prepared the correct amount of dosage from the reports of your verification examination." The doctor exined patiently. "The data from the reports of your verification examination give us all the necessary information to urately and precisely estimate the necessary amount of hallucinogens."


    Rui''s eyes lit up in interest as he pondered the implications of those words. This meant that from the data that verified that he had fulfilled both conditions of Squire candidacy, his resilience towards these drugs could be urately estimated.


    Squire Deira''s report was likely to be too vague to provide them with something that specific. This led Rui to suspect that the metabolic data on him that had been acquired during the procedure was likely what allowed them to estimate the correct dosages.


    He found it quite unlikely that the maturity of his Martial Art, which did not have a bearing on the state and nature of his mind, would be corrted with resilience. Thus, that meant that they must have used the data they had on him from the verification of thepletion of the first condition of Squire candidacy.


    The doctor proceeded to draw some blood, something that hadn''t been done in the verification exam.<novelnext></novelnext>


    "It will take just a little time before the tests will bepleted, you may, of course, leave and return, however, It is advised you wait," he exined friendlily.


    Fortunately, the doctor was true to his word. The results of the test came back remarkably swiftly.Content ? N?velDrama.Org 2024.


    "There are no problems with the result, we are free to begin." The doctor confirmed as several nurses, as well as the Martial Squire and Apprentice gathered around.


    Rui''s limbs, neck, and head were locked in ce.


    "Are there any issues by having a Mindmirror Symbiote in this procedure?" Rui asked.


    The Mindmirror Symbiote did not amplify his general base intelligence or capacities in any natural way. It could only aid the user in any way if the Mindmirror Symbiote is mentally embedded with the neurological processes of the particr task that the user wants augmented.


    However, that only included neurological phenomena. Resistance to hallucinogens was not something that fell under neurological phenomena.


    "The Mindmirror brain wille in contact with the hallucinogen, naturally, through your bloodstream. However, it''s not conscious and cannot be a victim of hallucinogens, it simply is utterly incapable of falling for the hallucinogens and hypnosis." He exined. "After all, it does not possess a consciousness of its own."


    "I see..." Rui digested the information. "Does the presence of the Mindmirror Symbiote interfere with the process?"


    "Not at all, thankfully." The doctor sighed. "Alright, we will begin this process soon."


    At those words, the Martial Apprentice arrived in front of him.


    A breathing apparatus was immediately adjusted to his face, as the nurses strapped it to his head from behind.


    "Once the hallucinogens are administered, the hypnosis will be immediately administered as well. Hypnosis is the means by which we control what you see in your hallucinations, allowing us to allow you to exist in several different bodies." The doctor exined.


    Once that happened, Rui would get to experience different kinds of Martial bodies that he could potentially have. At his current stage, he was merely supposed to test and experiment with different bodies.


    "Ah, you probably have been told prior, but remember." The doctor exined. "The flow of time inside your hallucinations under the influence of hallucinogens and hypnosis will be significantly slower than it normally is in real life. Meaning, you''ll have plenty of time inside your own world to seek the Martial body that will be the body you''ll have as a Martial Squire and for the higher Realms as well above."


    "Above all." The Martial Squire interjected. "Be sure to be true to your true to your Martial Path, as long as you do this, Apprentice Rui Quarrier, you cannot go astray."


    "Thank you for your encouragement." Rui nodded. "I''m ready. Please begin the process."


    Suddenly, the sound of gas releasing hit them as Rui inhaled the hallucinogens.


    The world went dark.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 447 Clash

    "The hallucinogens have been administered." Doctor Herin nodded. "Subject is under the influence of the drugs."


    "Begin." Squire Luna turned to the Martial Apprentice who had apanied her.


    "Yes, Squire Luna." He nodded as he walked over to beside Rui, kneeling down. He brought his mouth close to Rui''s ear as he began whispering inaudibly.


    It was an auditory hypnotic technique that manipted the target''s mind to alter their perception to a certain degree. Normally, it was something that was very partial in nature, however, due to the fact that Rui was already in a drug-induced hallucination, the technique worked entirely, allowing the Martial Apprentice to manipte Rui''s perception of not just the world, but himself.


    (''Woah.'') The pitch-ck world turned white as Rui fell to hard ground.


    As Rui tried to get up, he noticed something extremely strange.


    (''I''m heavy...'') He nced at his arms. His eyes widened as he realized he was extremely muscr. His muscles bulged exaggeratedly, as though they were trying to break out of his body.


    (''Huh...'') He tried getting up, almost falling over due to ack of familiarity with his body. Yet, he realized it didn''t feel as alien as he had expected.


    (''Partly because this is inside my imagination, but also because it is still based on my memory of my body.'') He mused.


    It was the perfect way to test hispatibility with various kinds of bodies.


    (''As nned, the first Martial body configuration is a heavy-weight power and durability oriented Martial body that sacrifices speed.'') He noted as he tried moving his arm around.


    (''I''m so ridiculously slow.'') He groaned mentally, as he swung a few strikes, trying to gauge how the body actually performed.


    His agility and speed were painful. He felt like a lumbering slothpared to his actual body.


    (''Man, how the fuck do heavier Martial Artists deal with being this slow?'') He groaned inwardly. (''This is criminal!'')


    Suddenly, a figure appeared before him.


    It was a spitting image of his actual self.


    This was something that Rui had been informed about ahead of time, so he wasn''t too surprised. However, he undeniably felt a sense of deja-vu.<novelnext></novelnext>


    (''Didn''t I go through something simr during the Mindmirror imntation procedure?'') He recalled fighting himself back then, during that procedure as well.


    Suddenly, his figure rushed towards himself with remarkable speed and agility. Yet Rui had expected that as well. He had already been informed about the details in the briefing session. The point of the procedure was to test howpatible a given Martial body was with his Martial Artpared to his current body.


    Content ? N?velDrama.Org 2024.


    Of course, Rui did not actually have any expectations that he would perform well with a heavy power-oriented and durability-oriented body. Yet, this was part of the standard procedure so he couldn''t help but bear it.


    He was already sure that his Martial body would be some configuration that would fall into the all-rounder category, however, he was required to test out Martial bodies of various kinds regardless, just to be sure.


    BAM!


    Rui barely managed to move his slow heavy body as he conjured up a guard, blocking the straight punch that his clone had thrown at him.


    His clone had attacked with one of its most powerful attacks; the Flowing Canon. The attack was further boosted with Outer Convergence and me Breathing as far as power went, furthermore, the blow had been empowered by the momentum built up with Parallel Walk, Bnced Direction, and Wind Breathing. Furthermore, the impact had been permeated with the help of Reverberating Lance.


    It was a devastating attack that whennded was extremely difficult to defend against.


    Ordinarily, had Rui faced such an attack himself, he would have chosen to evade it rather than withstand it head-on. However, in his heavy and slow body, it was impossible for him to evade anything. He gritted his teeth as he used Inner Divergence, Acute Edge, and stic Shift to mitigate the damage of the attack. The Adamant Reforging seemed to have been retained even in the new Martial body that he currently had.


    He skidded back a bit, surprised. The damage had been far less than he had expected. The raw durability was far greater than that of his actual body, allowing him to withstand an immense amount of punishment.


    His clone began aggressively pummeling him with attacks. Rui immediately had to adjust his strategy, he aimed for a tight defense that required minimal movement in order to counter fake Rui''s attacks.


    However, that crippled his offense and gave fake Rui an immense amount of leeway, thetter''sbat style grew more and more offensive as there was less thetter had to fear. Rui was at a disadvantage since his maneuvering techniques were basically useless, he had to try and stick with his offensive and defensive techniques whereas fake Rui was using everything in his arsenal.


    (''Almost everything.'') Rui suddenly noted as he made an astute observation. (''He''s not using the VOID algorithm... Not the predictive or the adaptive-evolution model.'')


    This told him a lot about the nature of the hallucination and the hypnosis. The fake Rui was clearly using his techniques, which meant that the hallucination being generated did tap into his mind for information on his Martial Art to a certain extent. However, the fact that his clone was not using the VOID algorithm, meant that the hallucination could not replicate the mental processes he engaged in when he fought.


    The VOID algorithm was one such thing. Its requirement to actively gather and process information likely made it impossible for it to be replicated in a hallucination. This was quite distinct from the Mindmirror imntation process where the clone he faced mentally was able to replicate the VOID algorithm inbat against him.


    (''I''m at a disadvantage in so far as thepatibility of my body with my Martial Art is, but the fact that I can use the VOID algorithm and my hallucinated clone can''t is more than enough of an advantage.'') Rui grinned.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 448 Outcome

    POW POW POW!


    Fake Ruiunched a barrage of swift jabs at Rui. Thetter merely blocked them with a guard. With his current unnecessarily high defensive prowess, he needed much less effort in order to defend against other attacks effectively. This made defense more convenient, however, Rui still hated every moment of it.


    He hated hisck of flexibility, both physically and tactically. He had no leeway to evade, he needed to defend every strike even though they weren''t always the optimal move had he still had his all-rounder body.


    He began relying increasingly more on his passive defense and natural defense rather than active defense. In his actual body, his raw durability wasn''t high enough to rely more on it than more active defensive techniques like Inner Divergence. But in this body, its innate toughness meant that he had to worry less about getting hurt.


    He had already begun gathering and processing fake Rui''s data as the construction of the predictive model was already underway. It helped that he was quite familiar with his own move set, which hastened the construction of the predictive model.


    POW!


    BAM!


    Rui gritted his teeth as he withstood an attack from fake Rui in exchange forunching his own. They both mutually bypassed the other''s defense, yet the oues were different. Rui''s strike was heavier because his hallucinated body was much more suited towards offense than fake Rui, while his body was more suited towards withstanding fake Rui''s attack.


    Although fake Rui was much faster, more mobile, and more agile than real Rui, it didn''t seem to make too much of a difference. This was because Rui''s timing and cement were more effective and efficient than fake Rui''s. This was the difference that the VOID algorithm caused. Even arge speed and mobility gap caused by a difference in frames were still smaller than the advantage that the VOID algorithm granted Rui.


    (''Low kick, 92%.'') His mind shed as he nted his legs firmly and stabilized his bnce. Ordinarily, he would have met low attacks with attacks that evaded them while also hitting his opponent, like flying knee kicks.


    However, he wasn''t as nimble as his actual self that would have been able to smoothly execute that attack. Instead, he relied on his power and defense in order to anchor himself strongly to the spot.


    POW!


    Fake Rui''s kick stopped in its tracks, unable to so much as budge against Rui''s body.


    WHOOSH


    Rui triednding a strike on fake Rui, however, thetter was too swift for his slow self.


    Rui found the experience more illuminating than he had expected it to be. The VOID algorithm was designed for an all-rounder body. A lot of the solutions provided by the adaptive evolution model were solutions that could only rely on the well-rounded nature of an all-rounder. This was the biggest ipatibility between his Martial Art and his body at this point in time.<novelnext></novelnext>


    Rui had to improvise. Because of his intimate understanding of the adaptive evolution model, he was able to understand which counters could be performed by his current Martial body and which ones couldn''t Every time the optimal counter to fake Rui''s predicted move involved a lot of movement, speed, and agility, he simply reced it with something that achieved as close to the effect as the original counter.


    Normally, this was not something the VOID algorithm could handle, but with Rui''s extreme understanding of the algorithm as the actual creator of the VOID algorithm, he knew exactly what wasn''t the best counter-move for his current Martial body.


    However, actually applying this knowledge inbat showed him the limits of thepatibility of any Martial body that wasn''t an all-rounder. The VOID algorithm assumedpetence in all basic fields ofbat on Earth, at least.


    BAM!


    Rui managed tond a devastating uppercut on fake Rui despite the speed gap between them. Exploiting a mistake as well as perfect counters from the VOID algorithm allowed him to ensure that he was able tond a blow with great power on fake Rui.


    THUD


    Fake Rui copsed to his knees, before falling down entirely, losing consciousness due to blunt-force brain trauma.


    (''Tsk.'') Rui was displeased despite his victory. (''I would not have lost against me if I had been the fighting against myself with my actual body.'')


    The point of the procedure was to test thepatibility of different body types with that of the Martial Art of the user inparison to the actual body of the user. However, if the fake version of himself was not even using the VOID algorithm, which was the core of his Martial Art, then the effectiveness of the procedure was at least halved.


    He sighed, shaking his head. He had already long known that he would not be going for a heavyweight kind of body frame, so it didn''t really matter.


    All of a sudden, the world dissolved and he opened his eyes.


    "How do you feel?" Doctor Herin asked as he shed light on his eyes.


    "Alright." Rui stretched a bit as he got up. "It was a strange experience, however, I confidently say that the heavyweight body type is certainly not suited for me."


    "That is expected." Squire Luna nodded. "However, there are Martial Apprentices who have said something simr but ultimately found themselves to be wrong when they actually experienced the Martial body in the hallucinated hypnosis. The reason these are mandatory is that it is not umon for Martial Apprentices to have wrong conceptualizations on thepatibility of certain body types and their Martial Art."


    "I understand." Rui sighed. He couldn''t wait to reach the all-rounder part, he was pretty sure he would stick with an all-rounder body type, the question was the details of the physical parameters of his body. He wasn''t sure if he would ce absolutely equal weight on all physical parameters or perhaps lean a little more in the favor of certain kinds of Martial Art. He couldn''t wait to find out.N?vel(D)rama.Org''s content.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 449 Second Round

    "Your resistance towards mental techniques is quite remarkable, even for a Squire candidate." Squire Luna informed him. "Apprentice Frix here alone wasn''t able to maintain the hypnosis because you were developing too much of a resistance, I had to step in personally."


    "Ah..." Rui recalled that he was able to resist offensive mental techniques. He recalled the first round of the Martial Contest where he had fought against a mental technique Martial Artist. He had been able to dominantly resist the influence of mental techniques back then.


    The reason he''d forgotten about it here was that he thought he needed to actively resist the mental technique for it to affect the procedure. However, it turned out that he was wrong, his passive mental defenses alone were enough to hinder the Martial Apprentice, to the point that a Martial Squire had to intervene for the hypnosis to still be effective on him.


    "My bad," Rui added apologetically.


    "It''s not your fault." She waved her hand dismissively.


    "Your condition is remarkably well." Doctor Herin added. "We can begin the next session immediately if you so wish."


    Rui nodded in response. "Please do."


    Preparations were made and Rui closed his eyes as the hallucinogens entered his system, affecting him.


    When he opened his eyes, he had returned to the white world that seemed to expand infinitely.


    Belongs to N?velDrama.Org - All rights reserved.


    (''Woah.'') He got up with a jump. He nced at his thin arms, unsurprised. This time, he was hallucinating a lightweight body. The abrupt shift from heavyweight to lightweight had caused him to use too much force.


    He hopped on his feet lightly, amazed at how nimble he was.


    Suddenly, fake Rui appeared at a distance before him.


    Rui grinned, dashing towards him. He moved with a speed and agility he could scarcely fathom, crossing the distance between them in just a moment.


    POW POW POW!


    He hadunched a flurry of strikes at fake Rui with blinding speed and impable fluidity. Yet, fake Rui didn''t even bother blocking them. Rui frowned as he realized his attacks were too weak.


    Even when he used Outer Convergence, me Breathing, and Reverberating Lance, they were unable to overwhelm fake Rui''s Inner Divergence, stic Shift, Acute Edge, and Adamant Reforging. They weren''t even able toe close. Fake Rui''s defensive prowess was extremely high, not only because he had four potent techniques defending him at any time, but because three of the techniques were techniques whose effectivity depended on the timing and uracy of the user.


    Rui was able to apply these techniques with far greater timing and cement than almost any Martial Apprentice he knew, and fake Rui had inherited his prowess.


    Rui had no hope of ever taking him down with ordinary blows.


    Ordinary blows, that was. He still had solutions against fake Rui if he used his trump cards.


    WHOOSH


    Rui evaded a hook with remarkable ease. The predictive model he had made in his previous mental fight was still effective, after all, fake Rui was not changing like he himself was.<novelnext></novelnext>


    PEW!


    The Stinger flew swifter than it ever had before, whistling as it cut through the air, burying itself in fake Rui''s neck.


    He grimaced as he retreated, covering his wound. Rui immediately pursued him, not willing to give him any respite. Heunched a Flowing Canon amplified with many techniques at fake Rui. Although ordinary blows could not even faze fake Rui, the same could not be said for Flowing Canon, Rui''s most powerful blow.


    BAM!


    Fake Rui blocked the attack, being forced to let go of his wound. The bleeding immediately resumed, just as Rui had aimed for. Heunched an avnche of attacks that were nigh unblockable.


    He was a ghost.


    His maneuvering techniques which were stifled in the previous fight in the heavyweight body, took center stage as they shined brightly. Parallel Walk, Bnced Direction, Wind Breathing, and Phantom Step. These techniquesbined with the VOID algorithm allowed Rui to express a degree of speed, agility, and maneuvering that far surpassed anything he would ever be capable of as a Martial Apprentice in his actual body.


    However, his staggeringck of power was painful to watch. Heunched many an attack, yet they all mostly bounced off fake Rui''s powerful defensive prowess. Only the attacks thatnded on extremely vulnerable and vital locations had any effect at all. However, they were unable to make any meaningful impact by themselves.


    (''Can I only inflict any significant damage through the Stinger?'') Rui cursed. Although his speed and maneuvering allowed him to move around like the wind, he only felt more shackled. His offensive potential was so pathetic that it disgusted him.


    Furthermore, he could forget about trying to withstand even a single attack from fake Rui. In his current state, every single blow that struck his body would st him inside out. Each blow would be devastating, he needed to run away from all of them even if there were better responses had he been durable enough to execute them.


    PEW!


    Rui managed tounch a devastatingly swift Stinger for a second time, once again towards fake Rui''s neck. This time he had managed to pierce an artery.


    Blood spurted from fake Rui''s neck as he tried covering it. Fake Rui had already activated Final Breathing to mitigate the damage done and reduce the impact it had on hisbat prowess. However, too much damage had been done.


    Rui simply continued to abuse his speed and maneuvering to continuously pepper fake Rui with well-timed Stingers, until eventually, too much damage had umted for Fake Rui to maintain his originalbat prowess.


    BAM!


    Rui mustered all of his might as hended a Flowing Cannon on his opponent''s jaw. In his condition, the attack shook his opponent''s head, triggering enough brain trauma to knock him out.


    THUD


    He copsed to the ground unconscious.


    Yet Rui wasn''t too pleased with his victory.


    (''This body type may suit someone like Kane, but it certainly doesn''t suit someone like me.'') Rui sighed.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 450 Balance

    Although Rui wished he could have skipped all the hallucinations based around body types he didn''t care about because he knew they weren''t going to be the ones that would be mostpatible with his Martial Art, he did gain some unique experience that he would probably never gain again.


    The procedure was extended for days as he was made to experience a variety of body types. He was supposed to experience the body suited to each of the fields he had mastered a technique for. This included power, speed, defense, grappling, and supplementation, among other fields. Thankfully, he didn''t have to experience Martial bodies centered around fields he had never even touched.


    He never lost against the hallucinated version of himself. This was a surprising oue to Squire Luna, it was the norm that the hallucinated mirror version of the subject won against the subject due to ack of familiarity andfort with one''s new body in the hallucination.


    Rui, of course, had already figured out the reason. Because the hallucinationcked the core of his Martial Art. Without it, it could express only a portion of his true power. Meanwhile, even if he had a new body, he could still use the VOID algorithm to a high degree. The disadvantage he had from having a drastically different body type was not enough to dampen the advantage the VOID algorithm provided him. Furthermore, he could use the same predictive model each time, which meant he didn''t need to adapt or evolve to his hallucinated clone all over again each time.


    The predictive model only grew increasingly urate and precise the more they fought.


    The biggest problem was that he alwayscked the body that was able to execute all of the adapted counters provided by the adaptive evolution model. He usually made do with his own improvised counters that while perhaps not the best in his current body, was still good enough.


    Soon time passed and eventually, they had finally reached the all-rounder-oriented Martial body.


    "This is the final body type on our checklist." Squire Luna informed him. "This Martial body is oriented around cing an equal amount of weight on power, speed, defense, and endurance. With a muscle mass to body mass ratio that perfectly caters to all primary fields equally as well as a mildly augmented healing capability."


    "That''s possible?" Rui wondered in glee. "An increased healing factor?"


    "Indeed. Martial Squires with Martial Art focused around endurance often have a heavy focus on regeneration, at the cost of power and speed." Squire Luna exined.


    "At the cost of them?" Rui asked, intrigued. "Why would the increased healing capabilitye at the cost of power and speed?"


    "The reason for that is the fact that an increased healing factor creates an increased consumption of energy and nutrients. This reduces the avable energy and nutrients needed for power and speed." Doctor Herin chimed in, exining it to Rui.


    "Ah," Rui nodded. "That does make sense. After all, there are constraints to how much stamina can be augmented by the evolution process."


    Content ? N?velDrama.Org 2024.


    "Correct." Doctor Herin nodded. "We improve stamina to the necessary amount withoutpromising the other physical parameters more important to the Martial Art in question. Endurance-oriented Martial Artists usually improve stamina and healing capability along with toughness to the maximum extent. However, this is not really possible in an all-rounder-oriented Martial body."


    Rui nodded, as several considerations flew through his mind. He hade across a potential solution to bypass or at least mitigate the stamina solution. But he needed to verify it before he could attempt them. For now, he decided to stick to figuring out his optimal Martial body.


    The medical team was subjected to hallucinogens once more as he entered a trance-like state. Squire Luna quickly began executing the hypnosis technique, causing him to return to the white world.<novelnext></novelnext>


    (''Wow.'') He nced down at his own body. His current body had been the closest to his original body. Yet it still felt mildly different from anything he had ever experienced before. Considering this body was a body that was a perfect all-rounder, it meant his previous body was not perfectly an all-rounder.


    This was to be expected, to some degree. Although he had consciously trained to ensure that his body catered equally to all fields ofbat, it was impossible to make it perfectly so. If he had had the technology of his previous world, reaching something close to perfectly all-rounding was perhaps not impossible, but in this world with theck of the technology he was familiar with, with only the resources he had at the Academy, it was impossible to gain perfect bnce.


    Fake Rui immediately dashed towards Rui after he appeared.


    BAM!


    He gasped as Rui perfectly evaded a swinging blow from fake Rui asnded his own blow in thetter''s gut. Rui immediately followed up with a barrage of perfectly-timed swings.


    POW POW POW!


    Each bypassed the guard of his opponent, relying on impable timing and cement.


    BAM!!


    Rui followed up with a Flowing Canon, sessfullynding the attack and flinging him away in the distance with a devastating blow.


    His performance against his hallucinated clone was domineering, more so than any of their previous fights. Rui had been previously burdened with an unfamiliar and ipatible body in each of his fights that had partially dampened his advantage of being the sole VOID algorithm user. Now, however, there was no ipatibility between his body and his Martial Art.


    The gap between himself and his hallucinated self wasrge. He didn''t even need to exert himself. Fake Rui couldn''t even be considered a modern grade ten Martial Apprentice due to an inability to use the VOID algorithm. He stood no chance against Rui alone.


    Alone, that was.


    Suddenly, a second hallucinated clone of Rui appeared in Rui''s perception.


    (''Two of them against one?'') Rui was amused at the improvisation on the part of Squire Luna in the procedure.


    (''Very well then.'') Rui nodded. (''It will allow me to test this body even more.'')


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 451 Decision

    The two fake Ruis faced off against him, quicklyunching themselves at him. They, together,unched a wave of attacks that would have ordinarily been annoying to deal with, but his current state of having predictive models on both of them allowed him to not only deal with the situation but do so with even a certain amount of leeway.


    WHOOSH


    POW!


    Rui evaded the attack of one of his opponents as he simultaneouslyunched a low sweeping kick against the other, staggering them. Rui quickly rushed forward, performing a throwing takedown on his opponent. He used his imbnce to simply take him down at that moment with less resistance. His opponent crumbled backward quickly. However, he didn''t have any leeway to turn the battle into a ground grappling match.


    WHOOSH


    Rui somersaulted away as his other opponent intervened attempting to throw another strike at him. He quickly unleashed several Tempestuous Ripples toward his opponent disallowing them to gather their bearings too easily. As soon as they dealt with the attacks, they realized that Rui simply used it as a means to escape from their attention for just a bit.


    BLINK


    BAM!


    Rui managed to catch one of his opponents off-guard with abination of Blink, Phantom, and Shadow Step, hitting them with a powerful Flowing Canon and flinging him that way.Belongs to N?velDrama.Org - All rights reserved.


    Rui used the temporary one-on-one he had with the other fake Rui. He immediately began dishing out several waves of attacks against his hapless opponent. Although they weren''t all that different in physical prowess, Rui was still able to dominate them despite this. He was simply strong.


    Eventually, Rui managed to take both of them out, relying on some clever tricks, but he took them out eventually.


    THUD


    When the final fake Rui fell to his knees copsing to the ground, the fight had beenpleted. Rui felt amazing in his current body, it was able to execute the counters of the VOID algorithm more urately than his actual body would. Yet before he could even bask in his victory, time was up. Rui woke up, opening his eyes to be greeted by the familiar ceiling of the procedure room he was in.


    "The data suggests that there was a high degree ofpatibility with your own body." Doctor Herin said once Rui regained his bearings. "Seems we have hit close to the optimal bullseye."


    "This is where the hard part begins." Squire Luna added. "You''ll have to discover the optimal configuration by brute force trial and error until we run into the optimal configuration of the parameters of the all-rounder Martial body."


    All-rounders were generally on a spectrum; an all-rounder was still considered an all-rounder even if they ced a bit more weight on one particr field than the others. As long as there wasn''t an overwhelming dominance in the emphasis on one particr field inparison to the others, they would still be considered all-rounders.<novelnext></novelnext>


    "No..." Rui shook his head. "Frankly, this configuration is perfect."


    Squire Luna raised an eyebrow at those words. "A perfect distribution between all physical parameters just so happens to suit your Martial Art the best?"


    Rui paused for a moment as he considered his response. "My Martial Path is adaptive evolution. I aim to adapt to all. I cannot ce more weight on any one field as it would hinder my ability to adapt to some other Martial Art in question. Therefore, I think it is best if I proceed with this Martial body."


    Rui nced down at his hands at those words.


    He could feel the mild ipatibility between his current body and his Martial Art inparison to a perfectly-bnced all-rounder Martial Art. His current body was a tad too heavy to perfectly execute some of the counters to his opponent''s predicted moves. He used the VOID algorithm more effectively and efficiently despite not having the familiarity with the hallucinated body than he did with his actual real body.


    His Martial Art would be able to grow smoother once he had a body that catered to it perfectly. A speed and maneuvering-oriented Martial Artist would never be able to go further down their Martial Path with a heavyweight body. A power-oriented Martial Apprentice would never be able to go down their Martial Path with a lightweight body.


    "If that is the case, then you can move on to the next preparatory step of the Squire breakthrough process." Squire Luna informed him.


    "The measurements?" Rui asked, recalling if from the briefing he underwent with Squire Gunther.


    In order for the Squire breakthrough procedure to be perfectly tailored and customized to every Squire candidate, there were two things that were necessary. The first was knowing the end goal of the evolution process, this was the Martial body configuration. The second was knowing where the starting point was, this was equally necessary.


    The procedure could not get a Martial Apprentice from a particr starting point to a particr destination if the starting point was unknown. Thus, Rui''s physical parameters would need to be documented thoroughly from the very top to the bottom and everything in between. Once his physical parameters were measured, then the evolution process would quickly be created, perfectly suited to take him from his current body to his Martial body in the Squire Realm.


    Thankfully, it was a mundane process, there was no difficulty in sessfully passing it.


    "I shall inform the Martial Union of the sess of the Martial body procedure, and the arrangements for the measurement process will be arranged rather swiftly, by today, even." Squire Luna told Rui.


    "Actually..." Rui interjected sheepishly. "I would rather not undergo the measurement procedure immediately. I have some personal matters that I would like to before proceeding forward with the preparations for the breakthrough to the Squire Realm if that''s alright."


    Squire Luna simply stared at him. "That is your prerogative, of course. If you wish to dy the breakthrough to the Squire Realm, then you do have that choice."


    "Thank you." Rui bowed down. He had some personal preparations to make for the breakthrough to the Squire Realm.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 452 Benefits

    As impatient Rui was to undergo the breakthrough to the Squire Realm as soon as possible, he managed to retain self-control. Optimizing his breakthrough to the Squire Realm was much more important than ensuring it happened as soon as possible.


    In hisst training session, he hade across the Mind Switch mental technique. It was a grade-three mental training technique that would condition the mind and the brain to trigger certain mental and neurological phenomena when the user took certain physical stances or performed certain actions by creating associations between the desired neurological phenomena and the trigger actions.


    This was generally a training technique that was used to allow the user to enter a calm and rational state of mind when the user performed the trigger stance that the calmness and rationality were associated with.


    It was an Apprentice-level version of association therapy that existed on Earth. Association in the field of psychology of Earth referred to a mental connection between concepts, events, or mental states that usually stemmed from specific experiences. Association therapy was a form of treatment that applied this mental trait to treat and often even cure mental disorders.


    In the world of Gaea, it had been elevated to an Apprentice-level technique that could be applied inbat in order to optimize the state of mind that the user of the technique. Rui had seen this technique more than half a year ago when he had scoured the Apprentice library for a technique for his previous training session.


    Back then, he had an idea of how he could apply the technique to make the most of his breakthrough to the Squire Realm and optimize his Martial body as much as possible.


    He intended to verify whether his application of the technique was possible or not, if it was, then he intended to master it before undergoing the measurement procedure and the breakthrough procedure to the Squire Realm.


    (''If it does work like I think it does... then I might be able to harness the power of autophagy.'') He noted.


    Autophagy was the natural, conserved degradation of the cell that removes unnecessary or dysfunctionalponents. It allowed for the orderly degradation and recycling of cellrponents for the continued sustenance of other living cells. In the case of extreme starvation, the process of autophagy was highly elerated and maximized in order to maintain energy and nutrition for surviving cells.


    In other words, it was a metabolic phenomenon that naturally increased stamina. Something that was a constraint to the configurations of the Martial body, after all, you couldn''t give too much power and speed, otherwise, energy consumption would rise resulting in very low stamina.


    However, autophagy was a phenomenon that could potentially aid in mitigating the issue. However, extreme autophagy only urred in cases of high starvation, it was not something that the body normally did, unfortunately.


    (''That is where the Mind Switch techniquees in.'')


    The Mind Switch technique allowed him to associate any neurological phenomenon with a trigger and, thus, trigger said neurological phenomenon whenever he wanted. When Rui had first seen that technique, he had thought of the possibility of using the Mind Switch technique to be able to trigger the neurological phenomenon associated with starvation, which would then go on to trigger elerated autophagy.


    Thus, he would be able to tap into the power of autophagy in order to enhance stamina in a very natural way. With greater stamina, the constraint over his speed, power, and healing would also be lessened. After all, the greater the amount of stamina, the greater the avability of energy for various purposes such as strength, speed, and healing.<novelnext></novelnext>


    If possible, it would likely allow him to obtain a Martial body that was a cut above the norm. He still nned to choose an all-rounder Martial body, of course. But each of his raw physical parameters would be above what someone of his natural physical prowess undergoing the evolution process would have thanks to his naturally higher energy reserves.


    (''However, that holds true only if the Mind Switch technique works the way I think it does.'') Rui mused.


    After all, if the technique didn''t work like Rui had hoped it would, then it would all be in vain. The worst part of it all was that due to their primitive understanding of cellr biology and biochemistry, he highly doubted that the Martial Union could provide him with an actual answer on the matter.


    Not even he was sure whether it would help despite his scientific background on Earth.


    (''I guess I''ll just have to try it anyway and hope for the best.'') Rui sighed.


    Although this would result in a slight dy in his breakthrough to the Squire Realm, it was worth it if he could obtain a more powerful Martial body. After all, that would be an advantage that he would retain for the rest of his life.


    He reached the Apprentice library of the Martial Union, entering it for the first time.


    (''It''s bigger than that of the Martial Academy.'') Rui realized.


    There were many more Martial Apprentices browsing the library than there were in the Martial Academy, which made sense given the poption disparity of the groups of Martial Apprentices that the two libraries catered to.


    He didn''t even bother browsing through the techniques, after all, he knew exactly what he was looking for. He could simply request one of the librarians to procure the techniques for him. He didn''t n to purchase and master any other techniques. He didn''t want to dy his Squire breakthrough evolution procedure by any more than he had to.


    He could focus on expanding his Martial Art after he bes a Martial Squire, until then, everything was about breaking through to a higher Realm of power. If it weren''t for the fact that the potential benefits were immense, he absolutely would not have detoured to master a mental technique just before the procedure.


    (''This shit better be worth it.'') He groaned inwardly.Content ? N?velDrama.Org 2024.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 453 Technique

    "Excuse me." Rui addressed one of the support staff members of the library.


    "Yes? How may I help you?" She replied.


    "I''m looking for the Mind Switch technique; a mental training technique," Rui told her. "I was hoping I could request for it to be procured."


    "Of course." She nodded. "Please wait here a moment."


    She took off as Rui took a seat on one of the benches in the library. Rui waited patiently as he scrutinized the library.


    (''It has more techniques than the Apprentice library of the Martial Academy did.'') He noted as he looked at the endless shelves of techniques across the entire library. The reason for this wasn''t too difficult to think about. The Martial Academy had lower quality Martial Apprentices than the real world, thus it wasn''t hard to see that the Apprentice library was also a little smaller in so far as the sheer number of techniques it offered.


    Rui suspected that the Martial Art techniques of the higher grades were a little scarcer in the Apprentice library of the Martial Academy than they were in the Apprentice library of the Martial Union.


    Just as he pondered on the matter, his thoughts were interrupted.


    "Apprentice Quarrier, here is the Mind Switch technique you requested for." A support staff member told him, handing him a scroll.


    "Thank you." Rui got up, nodding as he epted the scroll.


    He immediately walked over to the registrar of the library and quickly purchased the technique.Belongs to N?velDrama.Org - All rights reserved.


    "The costs of the training facilities and guidance needed to master the techniques are charged separately," Rui murmured, recalling that fact.


    In the Martial Academy, the training and growth resources were all part of the fees paid to the Martial Academy, however, the Martial Union operated with an upfront charge for the usage of such facilities at an hourly rate.


    The technique was more expensive than it was in the Martial Academy, which didn''t surprise him. The Martial Academy had managed the price of the techniques to ensure that the prices of techniques were just in the price range such that the students of the Martial Academy would have to work hard in order to earn the Martial credits needed to purchase the technique, but still not too expensive that each student would need to waste too much timepleting missions just to earn the Martial credits needed to purchase a single technique.


    However, the Martial Union didn''t coddle its Martial Artists the way the martial Academy coddled its students, thus the Martial Art techniques of the Martial Union had been priced purely ording to their actual value and the resources invested by the Martial Union into acquiring those techniques be it therge research and development project budgets that went into developing the techniques or the cost of purchasing the original techniques developed by the Martial Artists of the Martial Union.<novelnext></novelnext>


    Still, Rui unhesitatingly bought the technique and the required training hours for an initial introduction to the technique.


    He sat down at one of the benches as he opened the scroll and began reading the detailed breakdown of the technique as well as the training methodology needed to obtain basic mastery of the technique. He carefully read the more detailed exnation in regards to the actual functioning of the technique, looking for any information that would confirm that his goal and hope for the technique were possible, but he didn''t receive any concrete confirmation of the technique.


    Because of the seeminglycking understanding of the field of neurology of the world of Gaea, the technique breakdown did not get too very far in so far as the technical exnation of the functioning of the technique. Rui was unable to derive anything that could confirm or deny that the Mind Switch technique was something that could trigger the autophagy process.


    He sighed. (''At least, thanks to my high affinity to mental techniques as well as the low difficulty grade of the technique, I won''t be wasting too much time trying to master this technique.'')


    Even if it was a failure, he wouldn''t have wasted too much time trying to master the technique due to this very reason. This was part of the reason he had gone out of his way to train in the Mind Switch technique. There wasn''t much to be lost beyond some time. If this were a grade-eight technique, Rui would not have been as enthusiastic and energetic about mastering the technique, for the most part.


    It would have been a much harder decision if the decision would have bled away months of hard work and time. But with the sheer ease with which the technique could be mastered as well as his own affinity for it, he had weighed the potential benefits against the investment of time and energy and eventually gave in to his desire to obtain even greater power at a slightly slower pace.


    He moved on to the training regime of the Martial Art technique.


    "Interesting..." Rui murmured as he read through it in detail.


    The training session was not beyond his expectations.


    "As expected, it''s brute force association therapy." Rui nodded.


    The training involved a constant and simultaneous execution of the trigger position or movement with the activation of whatever neurological phenomenon was to be triggered by the triggering stance or movement.


    The mind would begin developing a strong association between the two, eventually triggering one with the other, allowing the Martial Apprentice a certain degree of control over the involuntary phenomena that continuously urred in the subconscious part of the mind and the brain.


    The desired neurological phenomenon that was the target of being triggered would be artificially induced in response to the trigger, convincing and hammering into the mind that there was a causal rtionship between them.


    This was the same principle by which several disorders such as addiction were handled, by associating negative experiences with things they were addicted to using association therapy. Of course, what Rui was about to undergo was far worse than anything any psychiatrist on Earth could conjure up.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 454 Pain

    "You want to use the Mind Switch technique to trigger everything associated with extreme starvation?" A Martial Squire frowned at Rui.


    Rui had opted for the guidance of a mind-oriented Martial Squire to guide him in the mastery of the Mind Switch technique. Squire Juvier''s face had scrunched in confusion when he learned of Rui''s objective of trying to trigger the sensation of extreme starvation using the Mind Switch technique.


    Normally, people learned this technique to retain calmness andposure in the middle ofbat. There were many Martial Artists that found it difficult to retain calmness andposure in highly dangerous situations. In such situations, fear and panic could cause them to act in sub-optimal ways, increasing their probability that they would make mistakes.


    The Mind Switch technique was created to give Martial Artists a way to reduce the probability of such things happening to them. It allowed them to hone their mind and impact it favorably.


    Thus, Squire Juvier''s surprise was quite understandable when Rui approached him, asking if it was possible to trigger the mental processes that came along with extreme starvation.


    "I suppose it''s theoretically possible, maybe" Squire Juvier frowned scratching his head. "I can''t be sure because I''m positive that nobody has ever tried to use the technique in this manner. Why do you want to in the first ce?"


    He peered at Rui curiously, wondering why he would want something that odd.


    "Ah..." Rui smiled awkwardly. "Just something I wanted to try. If it doesn''t work out, it can be scraped, but I have to give it a shot."


    "Huh." He frowned, confused. "Well, that''s your choice, I guess. Have you read the technique scroll?"


    "I have." Rui nodded. "I''ve understood and memorized all of it, I just hope to gain your guidance when undergoing the training for the technique."Content ? copyrighted by N?velDrama.Org.


    "Well, you did pay for Squire guidance." He shrugged. "So that''s perfectly fine. Hope you don''t regret your decision though."


    "Me too." Rui sighed. Even if it turned out that he was wrong, the technique could be reversed by hypnosis from a Martial Apprentice. The only risk he was taking was wasting time, but the very real and likely possibility of him being able to be a stronger Martial Squire was too much to pass. With his affinity for mental techniques, he wouldn''t be wasting much time mastering it.


    Furthermore, it was a grade-three technique. The single lowest-grade technique he had ever chosen to master. The lower the grade of the technique, the lesser time it took to master it, generally. Even though the Mindmirror brain had gotten rid of his superior training speed, he was still quite the sharp learner.


    "Well." Squire Juvier shrugged. "We can begin whenever you want. If you''ve memorized the training regime, then you know that it is exceedingly simple. You''ll be induced into a state of mind where you''re open to suggestions to be imnted into your mind. Then, the mental state you desire will be artificially induced while you perform the trigger. Due to the state of mind, your mind will more easily form a connection between the trigger and the mental state you''re in, allowing you to trigger the mental state with the trigger after extended periods of this kind of association training."


    Rui nodded.


    "The only problem is I don''t think we have a way of artificially inducing starvation." He murmured thoughtfully.


    "That''s fine," Rui replied. "I can induce it by simply reducing my consumption of food."<novelnext></novelnext>


    "You won''t be able to train for too long, though." Squire Juvier noted.


    "I have physical rejuvenation potions." Rui reminded. "They don''t directly get rid of hunger, they simply directly supply the energy and nutrients needed to the body."


    "Smart." He admitted. "You can get started then, as long as you know what you want as the trigger and the mental state you want to trigger."


    Rui was already starting to feel a tad bit of hunger, but it wasn''t intense enough. He wanted to reach a stage of starvation, otherwise, he couldn''t be sure that the Mind Switch technique would make maximized autophagy as the targeted phenomenon that he wanted to trigger.


    There was another problem, however.


    (''What should I make as the trigger?'') Rui wondered.


    The trigger was something he needed to be able to effortlessly use to trigger autophagy. Ideally, it would be something that he did constantly and involuntarily so that he would need to consciously trigger his autophagy.


    Ideally, something like blinking or breathing would be the trigger for autophagy, but the problem with trying to make those the trigger was that the trigger had to be something Rui was conscious of all the time for it to actively serve as the trigger.


    Most of the time, breathing and blinking was done subconsciously. Therefore, if he ever got too focused in a fight where he wasn''t conscious of his breathing or blinking as a trigger, then he would not be able to trigger the autophagy.


    (''What if I associated the autophagy with a sensation like pain?'') Rui wondered.


    The only problem was that it wasn''t as much of a voluntary trigger unless he was willing to hurt himself every time he needed to trigger autophagy.


    (''Is that a problem considering every time I am hurt I could benefit from enhanced healing that would require energy and nutrients?'')


    One of the benefits that came from the all-rounder Martial body was that it gave him enhanced healing thanks to the evolution of his endurance and survivability. Healing required energy and nutrients, that could be swiftly provided by autophagy.


    Furthermore, any instances where he would genuinely require healing would be instances where he was injured. If he was injured, then he would certainly experience significant pain.


    (''In that case, making pain the trigger to autophagy might actually be the ideal trigger.'') Rui realized.


    He took his time pondering the idea, making sure he was not mistaking anything wrong in regards to his already scant knowledge of neurobiology.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 455 Painful

    "Pain?" Squire Juvier looked at Rui with disbelief. "You want to make pain the trigger to extreme starvation? Have you lost your goddamn mind?!"


    "Trust me." Rui sighed. "I know what I''m doing."


    Squire Juvier facepalmed himself as he shook his head. "Well, you''re the one who''s going to be responsible for it, so go for it. It''s a crazy stupid idea that serves no purpose, but I''ve already warned you of that. My responsibility as a guide and aid ends there."


    "Then let us begin the moment I am beset by starvation." Rui nodded. He went on to solidify details of the procedure with Squire Juvier. Matters such as the kinds of pain to be inflicted as well as the frequency of infliction of pain and the order.


    Squire Juvier had never been asked to torture a Martial Apprentice in order to form a pain trigger. Therefore, he had absolutely no input to offer from his previous experience, he merely shrugged and epted whatever Rui told him on the matter. He had long given up on trying to make sense of the strange and crazy Martial Apprentice.


    It didn''t take long, he was already quite hungry after the continuous hypnotized hallucinations that he had undergone in order to be able to experience and identify the idea Martial body type that would be the temte for his body as a Martial Squire.


    They shifted to an isted training room for the training technique.


    "It''s time." Rui nodded, as his stomach growled and he was beset by famished hunger.Content ? N?velDrama.Org 2024.


    Squire Juvier sighed, before suddenly pping swiftly before Rui''s face, startling him.


    Squire Juvier swiftly subjected Rui to a few quick whispers, before slowly edging back to speaking normally.


    "You feel open, transparent, shapeable." He told Rui softly.


    Hypnosis was a verifiably real field even back on Earth. It was a form of indirect maniption of the subconscious mind. The subconscious mind was normally to external information that the mind processed by virtue of the fact that it was subconscious, external influx of information could and did influence it, but only if it bypassed the conscious mind. The conscious mind served as a guard between the external influx of information and the subconscious mind, preventing the former from influencing thetter as much as possible, by processing the information itself.


    That was why, back on Earth, hypnosis didn''t work if the subject didn''t allow the hypnosis to be effective by allowing it to influence the mind by immersing one''s self into the hypnotic treatment. It was impossible to forcefully hypnotize someone against their will back on Earth.


    The same couldn''t be said for the hypnosis in Martial Art of Gaea.


    Martial Artists weren''t limited to the same degree as ordinary people when it came to the application of hypnotists.


    Martial Artists had developed techniques that allowed them to directly influence the subconscious mind by misdirecting the attention of the conscious mind before proceeding to hypnotize the subconscious mind swiftly in the moment of the misdirected attention of the conscious mind.<novelnext></novelnext>


    Or they would engage in highly stealthy and subtle maniption that was sneaky enough to bypass the recognition of the conscious mind as an attempt to manipte the subconscious mind.


    Squire Juvier had applied a hypnosis technique that relied on the former principle. All he needed was the momentary misdirection that a gesture as simple as abrupt and loud pping caused in order to exploit the momentary distraction to influence Rui''s subconscious mind to induce his subconscious mind into a state where he would more easily form associations between the trigger and the triggered.


    As powerful as Rui''s mind was, he could not inherently resist and negate the mental techniques of a Martial Squire the way he did the mental techniques of a Martial Apprentice. He opened his eyes once Squire Juvier had finished. His eyes were different, they were nk than they normally were.


    "We''ll begin soon then." Squire Juvier told him.


    Rui simply nodded wordlessly.


    Squire Juvier sighed.


    THWACK


    His arm struck Rui''s skin, making a loud sound. Rui winced, silently grimacing. Squire Juvier had used just enough power to whip Rui to cause him significant pain, but not too intense to be overwhelming. Rui wanted the pain threshold for the trigger to be not too high. If he subjected himself to too much pain during the training session then he would not be able to necessarily trigger autophagy when he was wounded.


    Thus, he needed to ensure the pain was just significant enough, and nothing too overwhelming.


    That was why the pain caused by a simple whip with his arm was chosen as the preferred means to cause pain. It was easy enough to inflict enough pain using this method, and the need for healing potions was also minimal inparison.


    Squire Juvier could continue whipping Rui''s skin for a long time before the need for a healing potion emerged.


    Rui gritted his teeth as he endured the suffering, while also focusing on his hunger. Focusing on the mental state/phenomenon that was to be triggered was necessary to ensure an associative bond formed between the trigger and the triggered phenomenon.


    Otherwise, he would just needlessly suffer. There was no point in simply subjecting himself to torture if he didn''t ensure it was as effective as it could be. He would simply be increasing the amount of time he would be subjecting himself to torture.


    The procedure continued for hours. Rui gritted his teeth as he bore the pain. Thebined mental torment that came from both starvation, as well as the physical pain he felt, was overwhelming together. The fortitude and strength he had built after the torturous training regimes of the Stinger and the Adamant Forging were faltering as starvation drained him of his strength and his willpower.


    Despite the pain not being worse than that of the training regimes of the Stinger and Adamant Forging, he still felt a greater amount of torment from the Mind Switch technique training.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 456 Outcome

    Rui gritted his teeth day in and day out as he continuously experienced starvation and torture. He had underestimated the sheer mental fortitude required to master the Mind Switch that he had aimed to master.


    The technique was grade-three as far as the difficulty of mastery went, the problem was that it was rated as a technique with low difficulty of mastery because most applications of the technique were to be able to trigger calmness andposure in the Martial Artist aspiring to master the technique. The best part about the technique, when applied this way, was the fact that it was rtively straightforward and didn''t need any severe exertion from the Martial Apprentice.


    However, Rui had gone far off the normal path and used it to try to trigger the neurological phenomena associated with hunger with pain.


    This was something Squire Juvier still found absurd and stupid.


    "What do you hope to aplish?" Squire Juvier asked one day, unable to contain his curiosity any longer. "Why subject yourself to this madness? Why do you want to trigger hunger in the middle of battle? That will only get you killed, take it from someone with extensive experience in the Martial World."


    "That''s not how it works." Rui sighed. "Hunger is a physical sensation primarily. The Mind Switch technique cannot trigger physical sensations, it can only trigger mental phenomena."


    It wasn''t that Squire Juvier didn''t understand how the technique worked, he just didn''t have as thorough an understanding of the difference between sensations and mental phenomena as Rui had, thanks to his background.


    "If hunger cannot be triggered, then isn''t this even more pointless? Why chase after hunger?" Squire Juvier sighed exasperatedly.


    "What I desire are the neurological phenomena associated with hunger," Rui informed him.


    "But why?" Squire Juvier asked, curiously.


    "Because they''ll help me obtain a more powerful Martial body when I be a Martial Squire," Rui replied to him.


    "There''s no way of that possibly being true." Squire Juvier shook his head, sighing. "The Martial Union would definitely know of such a thing and they would have made it part of the standard procedure if this was worth it. They absolutely would have told me about it, someone who mastered the Mind Switch technique when I was a Squire Candidate."


    Rui simply shook his head but kept quiet. There was no need for him to debate with the Martial Squire, it didn''t matter one bit whatsoever whether the Martial Squire approved or disapproved of his idea. All he needed was his guidance and help.


    And Squire Juvier had obliged dutifully.


    In merely a little over a month, Rui had mastered the Mind Switch technique. Even if he had made it more difficult due to his crazy modifications, it was, at its core, a straightforward technique that required zero talent. Furthermore, Rui had a strong affinity for mental techniques due to his enhanced mind.


    "Time for a test." He murmured.


    There was a straightforward way to verify the degree of sess, if any at all, of the technique in achieving the objective with which he had mastered it. If the technique did in fact trigger maximized autophagy that naturally increased the energy and nutrients avable to the body, then his stamina would rise tremendously.Content ? N?velDrama.Org 2024.


    All he had to do was test his stamina.<novelnext></novelnext>


    He turned to Squire Juvier with a smile that gave the former a headache. "What is it now? You''ve mastered the technique, go away!"


    "I need you to do the whipping part to me again," Rui informed him


    "But why?" Squire Juvier cajoled him.


    "To verify whether the technique does in fact function like I want it to," Rui replied.


    After some back and forth, Rui finally managed to convince him to heed his words.


    "The things I do for Martial Apprentices in the name of guidance." He sighed.


    "Alright, begin," Rui instructed him.


    And so began a long session of pain infliction. Rui knew his body quite well, he knew how much stamina he normally had. Thus, he would be able to detect any improvements to his stamina sharply. He engaged in physically strenuous exercise amidst the infliction of pain, using Outer Convergence and me Breathing to consume vast amounts of power.


    At the end of a few hours, the answer became clear.


    "Amazing!" Rui''s eyes shed in excitement.


    He had retained his energy levels remarkably well. He knew himself, he knew that without Helical Breathing, a technique that aided in preserving stamina, he would not be able tost this long and this well, yet his current condition was better than it would have been had he used Helical Breathing!


    "This is beyond my expectations," Rui murmured. The effects of the Mind Switch were the equivalent of consuming multiple physical rejuvenation potions!


    This was a luxury because every martial Apprentice knew they could not afford to have it. Consuming a potion could not be done immediately. It took a deep, slow inhtion and then some extra time for the aerosolized potion to bepletely diffused into the blood in the lungs. It usually took around ten seconds for a single potion to be consumed.


    This was not something that could be done in the middle of physical conflict, especially so since Martial Apprentices experienced time far slower than normal humans. What were ten seconds to normal humans was over a hundred seconds to Martial Apprentices!


    Was there any enemy that was patiently willing to wait a hundred seconds for their opponent to rejuvenate themselves? The answer was clearly no. This was even more true for Martial Artists of higher Realms. It was simply too impractical.


    That was why Rui was thrilled to discover the sheer effectiveness of maximized autophagy. All his old, dying, and dead cells and other organicponents within his body were being broken down and turned into fuel and nutrients for new cells. It was an incredibly efficient and conservative process that truly made the best of everything the human body had.


    "Now then..." Rui murmured. "Time to break through to a higher Realm."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 457 Shock

    Not a day after he informed the Martial Union that he wanted to proceed with the measurement process, an appointment for the procedure was promptly arranged for the very next day. The very next day after he mastered the Mind Switch technique and verified its sess.


    Rui peeked into arge room with many machines and equipment. There was a team of men and women, who nced up at him.Content ? N?velDrama.Org 2024.


    "I''m Apprentice Rui Quarrier." He told them holding his Martial license up. "I was informed that my measurement process would be conducted in this facility."


    "Indeed, wee. I''m the supervisor who will overlook the process. My name is Fylic."


    They exchanged pleasantries as the final preparations were made, discussing the process.


    "We will be taking static measurements first," Fylic informed him. "This includes things like, but not limited to, your weight, height, proportions, and lengths of your figure, your muscle and bone mass, cardiac and other metabolic parameters among other things."


    Rui nodded. It made sense they would start with static measurements; those were always the easiest, simplest and quickest measurements to be made. Even when he was constructing the VOID algorithm, he would start with static measurements of his test subjects.


    "Once that''s done, we''ll move on to active parameters. We''ll measure the maximum force generated by every muscle group, reaction time and reflex time, bnce, body-eye coordination, and stamina among other things." He informed Rui. "Once that''s done, the data will be transmitted to the relevant department that will begin carefully customize the evolution process to ensure that the evolution process will evolve your current parameters to the parameters of the desired Martial body that you have chosen."


    He turned to Rui. "Ah, I am to inform you. Once the measurement process ispleted, you need to begin the evolution process as soon as possible. You also must abstain from mastering any new Apprentice-level technique after the measurement process today ispleted until you break through to the Apprentice Realm."


    "Why so?" Rui asked, curious. He had no intention of going out of his way to master yet another technique before he broke through to the Squire Realm, but he was curious about Fylic''s statement.


    "The data we collect in the measurement process is delicate, in a sense." He replied. "It needs to be urate otherwise the evolution process that was created based on that data will not yield the desired body and could potentially lead to death in the worst-case scenario."


    "I see..." Rui immediately realized. "The static and dynamic parameters can and do change over time, leading to inurate data that can be gravely problematic."


    "Correct." Fylic nodded.


    They conversed a bit more, warming to each other until it was time to begin the measurement process. Rui was subjected to test after test as they began testing his static parameters. Thankfully, the boring measurements werepleted quickly, within reason. Yet there were so many measurements that despite the quickness of each one, it stretched on longer than he had imagined. Only a few hourster did they move to the dynamic measurements.


    Rui was a little more interested in this one. He felt a little childish as he longed for the stamina test. He was prohibited from using active techniques during the tests and there were even devices that he had to wear that could apparently detect the activation of techniques by a Martial Apprentice.


    Thankfully, the Mind Switch technique was not an active technique. It wasrgely passive and did not require any specific voluntary actions that activated the autophagy, all he needed to was experience enough pain.<novelnext></novelnext>


    And sure enough, when the stamina test began, the device didn''t pick up on the autophagy when he triggered it by crushing his tongue and the insides of his cheek just hard enough to trigger the autophagy.


    "This..." Fylic''s eyebrows knitted in confusion and amazement as he witnessed Rui maintaining peak human exertion without the application of Apprentice-level techniques. Rui should have disyed physical parameters that were perhaps at the peak of normal humans, but to his shock, Ruist well past what would be considered normal human limits!


    "Did he consume a physical rejuvenation potion somehow?" He frowned.


    The question was rhetorical, of course. He was being carefully monitored by the assistants, the device he was wearing on his head would have detected the activation of an Apprentice-level technique that allowed them to exert themselves beyond human limits using the technique actively.


    Yet it hadn''t detected anything of the sort.


    "Has he mastered some rare passive stamina conditioning technique?" Fylic frowned as he read through Rui''s profile, scouring through all the techniques present in his file.


    There were some passive training techniques that permanently improved stamina, but Fylic had already gone through Rui''s mastered techniques prior, and there was nothing, as far as he could see, that would give Rui enhanced superhuman stamina.


    Rui had mastered a total of thirty Apprentice-level techniques since bing a Martial Apprentice, however, he could not see a single passive stamina-boosting Apprentice-level technique.


    He turned back to Rui withplete confusion. Hours flew by until Rui finally copsed, unable to maintain the continuous high-effort exertion. Even autophagy had limits. However, he was quite pleased with the result. This would undoubtedly help him obtain a more powerful Martial body once he broke into the Squire Realm.


    "You skyrocketed past human limits despite not using an Apprentice-level technique!" Fylic told him energetically. "How did you do that?"


    "Well..." Rui scratched his head as he caught his breath.


    He looked Fylic straight in the eye. "A wise and powerful man once rmended a powerful training regime that would help me be stronger."


    "What training regime?" Fylic asked with curious eyes.


    "One hundred push-ups, one hundred sit-ups, one hundred squats, and a ten-kilometer run," Rui told him with a dead-serious expression as his strong mind exerted pressure on Fylic. "Also, you can''t use any air-conditioning esoteric technology when you''re done. Only then can you forge such stamina and endurance."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 458 Arrived

    Fylic gave up trying to pry into the source behind Rui''s supreme stamina after multiple failed attempts. Rui simply deflected all of them skillfully.


    Once the dynamic measurements resumed, it didn''t take long after that, the stamina test was the most time-consuming of them all. The rest of the dynamic measurements were taken rather quickly, and the process came to an end.


    "How long will the Martial Union take to create the customized and personalized Squire breakthrough evolution process?" Rui asked Fylic.


    "It usually takes about two to three days," Fylic replied.


    This wasn''t beyond Rui''s expectations. He certainly didn''t expect that the breakthrough to the Squire Realm would happen then and there, or even within the day.


    After all, a vast amount of information needed to be processed for the exact conditions of the personalized evolution breakthrough process to the Squire Realm to be done.


    Rui simply bade the team farewell as he returned back home. He had done everything he needed to do, and now the only thing left was the breakthrough to the Squire Realm.


    He returned back home peacefully and all he had to do now was wait.


    "Have you prepared yourself mentally?" Julian asked him, at some point.


    "For how awesome bing a Martial Squire is going to be?" Rui asked ndly.


    "For the risks associated with the breakthrough to the Squire Realm." Julian sighed replying.


    "Ah..." Rui pondered the matter. "Generally, yes."


    Despite the fact that the Kandrian Empire had developed an immense number of safeguards and fail-safes, it was impossible to guarantee that there was no possibility of failure. Although the rate of death was low, the rate of failure was a little higher.


    The most extreme oue was, of course, death. However, there were other ways for the breakthrough to the Squire Realm to fail. For instance, it was possible that the process would go horribly wrong in so far as the mutations developed that it would permanently cripple him in some horrible way that would almost certainly destroy his career as a Martial Artist.


    One of the reasons that few Martial Apprentices went on to be Martial Squires wasn''t just because of the difficulty of achieving enough individuality, or the difficulty of also achieving Martial maturity.N?vel(D)rama.Org''s content.


    It was because some Martial Apprentices failed to sessfully break through to the Squire Realm. Furthermore, there were Squire candidates who were unwilling to take the risk to be a Martial Squire.


    After all, not all Martial Artists were as ambitious as Rui was. There were some Martial Apprentices who were unwilling to risk everything in order to be Martial Squires. To them, being a Martial Apprentice was more of a profession than it was an integral part of their identity.


    It earned them money.


    It brought them a status over most of the poption.


    They were able to remain lowkey in order to avoid the attention of powerful and dangerous people while still reaping enough benefits.<novelnext></novelnext>


    Furthermore, the missions were also a lot safer and easier. Most domestic missions within the Kandrian Empire were Apprentice-level missions. Of course, there was room for missions within the Empire for Martial Squires, and perhaps even Martial Seniors.


    However, the three upper Realms had no ce engaging in conflict anywhere near settlements. Their power was simply too destructive.


    The higher the Realm that a Martial Artist was, the more their missions were perennially outside the borders of the kandrian Empire. Foreign missions were much more dangerous than domestic missions, on average.


    There were Martial Apprentices that did not want to take on the amplified risk that came with foreign missions. Even if they made it smoothly to the Squire Realm through the breakthrough. They wouldrgely be forced to abandon the safety nket that came with the domestic Apprentice-level missions within the Kandrian Empire. The psychological safety that came from knowing that the Martial Union was always just around the corner was valuable to Martial Apprentices that weren''t too driven.


    Not Rui, however.


    "It is scary," Rui admitted. "But not enough to try and get me to stop, nowhere near enough. If that''s even possible to do in the first ce."


    Of course, he wasn''t immune to fear like some stone-hearted unfeeling rock. But his desire and ambition to elevate the Flowing Void style and the VOID algorithm to as high as possible was too strong.


    At the end of the day, the process was beyond his control. He had already done his best. Autophagy would increase the healing rate of the cells during the procedure. And it most certainly would be triggered by all the pain he would inevitably suffer.


    That was the scariest part of the procedure.


    The pain.


    He had already gotten a good understanding of what the procedure was going to look like from both the Martial Union and the data from the Commonwealth Duchy of Vinfrana.


    It wasn''t possible to use anesthesia because of the sheer amount of cell death and regeneration that would be urring in the breakthrough to the Squire realm. This meant he would have to feel every ounce of pain that procedure would cause him for however, long the procedure would take.


    This was another reason why some Martial Apprentices simply opted out. The breakthrough was sheer unadulterated torture. There weren''t many Martial Apprentices who were willing to endure horrific amounts of pain and all the risks that came with the procedure.


    Not Rui, however.


    "I can''t wait until they''re done." Rui grinned excitedly. "This is going to be absolutely unbelievable."


    It had been three years since he had be a Martial Apprentice, and very soon, he would be elevating himself to a higher Realm of power.


    (''Ah, I haven''t told my friends yet.'') Rui realized. He immediately got up, sending messages to each of them.


    Time passed in the Orphanage, too slowly for Rui''s taste. The more he longed for the message toe, the slower time ticked, but it did tick, slowly and steadily. And sure enough, the day had finally arrived.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 459 Time

    He made his way to the Martial Union with a pounding heart. He was going to be crossing one of the most important checkpoints of his life and his Martial Path. He was understandably a little tense, especially because he had very little agency and control over the sess of the procedure beyond this point. Everything that could be done had been done.


    Rui considered everything even as he passed security, showing them his Martial license. He couldn''t think of a single thing he could do while still a Martial Apprentice that would aid him in the evolution process to the Squire Realm.


    "Excuse me." Rui addressed one of the staff members. "I have an appointment for my breakthrough process to the Squire Realm."


    He handed over his Martial license.


    "Apprentice Rui Quarrier, you do indeed have an appointment scheduled today, soon." She nodded. "Facility SRB-001 in the west wing, the maps will help direct you to your location."


    "Thank you." Rui nodded before making his way to the designated room.


    It took him longer than he had expected, after all, the Martial Union was huge, Rui had to refer to the various maps that were nted at multiple locations across the Martial Union.


    "Excuse me?" Rui voiced out, drawing attention to himself as he entered the designated facility. "I believe I was told the procedure to my breakthrough to the Squire Realm would be taking ce in this facility."


    The room inside wasrge, it gave Rui the impression of a futuristic medical facility. There were strange contraptions and machines. Among them was a small chamber that wasrge enough to amodate a man in it.


    There was also a medical team within. Several nurses and assistants and a few elderly doctors.


    "Wee." One of them said. "I am doctor Menun. May I see your Martial license for verification?"


    Rui duly handed over his Martial license, which was promptly verified by one of the assistants.


    "Wee Apprentice Rui Quarrier." Doctor Menun said, smiling courteously. "I will be the doctor overseeing the evolution breakthrough procedure to the Squire Realm."


    "Pleasure to meet all of you." Rui offered a bright smile, eager to earn some goodwill from the people who he would be cing his life in the hands of.


    "The final preparations for the Squire evolution breakthrough procedure are beingpleted." Doctor Menun exined. "There are certain measures that need to be taken before you are ready for the procedure. We will begin them shortly, please take a seat at the table."


    She gestured for Rui to sit opposite to her at her table.


    "Now then, time for a few standard procedure questions." Doctor Menun informed him. "Have you consumed alcoholic beverages since your measurement process?"


    "Not at all." Rui shook his head.


    Forget since the measurement process, Rui had yet to put even a drop of alcohol into his mouth in his second life. But he had no real intention of doing that. He wasn''t a drinker in his previous life, and he had no intention of starting the habit in his second life.


    "Have you consumed any hallucinogens since the measurement process?" She asked, after scribling on her notepad.<novelnext></novelnext>


    "No."


    "Have you undergone as much natural sleep since the measurement process till now, as we advised you?"Content ? N?velDrama.Org 2024.


    "Yes."


    Sleep was a good way to burn time so that the agonizingly long wait for the evolution process to the Squire Realm. He could cut more than a dozen hours out of his waiting time that he would have had to sit through if he had used potions to keep himself awake.


    He was delighted when, among the guidelines to follow for the breakthrough to the Squire Realm, was the necessity for natural and organic sleep.


    "Have you suffered any injuries since the measurement process?" She asked.


    "No."


    It was hard to get injured when he simply sat around in the Quarrier Orphanage, doing nothing asides from training Mana and Max to while away time.


    "Have you engaged in the training or mastery of a technique since the measurement process ended?" She asked with a t tone.


    Obviously, the answer to this was no. It was absolutely impossible to master any technique in the span of a few days, even if it was the lowest of grades of difficulty.


    "Andstly..." She paused, before bringing out a printed sheet of paper with writing on it. "Do you consent to partake in a procedure that is inherently quite painful, strenuous, and risky and agree that the Martial Union holds no liability in the oue of the procedure?"


    Rui nced down at the sheet of paper that she had ced in front of him, as well as the pen.


    He would need to sign it to express written consent. This was something he had expected and been informed of. He signed it without hesitation.


    "We''ll need to take some blood in order to ensure that your answers to some of these questions are indeed urate." Doctor Menun exined. "Sometimes it is possible that there are issues without the Martial Apprentice''s awareness."


    Rui readily offered his arm to the nurse who had a syringe prepared. Soon enough blood was drawn and was taken away for testing. Fortunately, blood testing was remarkably quick in this world. It usually took a few days on Earth. Here, the process was highly expedited when it came to Martial Artists in order to ensure the timely delivery of the necessary data and information.


    And sure enough, it took a little over an hour for the results toe.


    "Good news." Doctor Menun told him as she studied his results. "You''re suitable to undergo the breakthrough process to the Squire Realm."


    She turned towards him. "All preparations areplete now. Strip all your clothes down."


    She stared at him, almost as if expecting a protest. Yet Rui obliged wordlessly, handing his clothes to an assistant who collected them. Although the hormones of his youthful body were annoying in such situations, he was too old and strong mentally for any embarrassing ''mishaps'' to ur.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 460 Commencement

    Not a single individual changed even a shade at the sight of his naked figure, disying perfect professionalism.


    "The assistants will help you upy and strap into the apotheosis chamber." Doctor Menun told him, gesturing towards the machine. It looked like a bed perfectly meant to epass a whole human body head to toe. Atop was a lid that looked like it would absolutely smother him when the chamber closed. It was the machine within which he would be undergoing


    He made his way toward the Apotheosis chamber, sliding on top of it as he entered the chamber. The assistants and nurses strapped him down firmly, restricting his movements severely. Soon, they moved away, and the elevated lid to the chamber came down, shutting the chamber closed.


    Immediately, after, two small tubes extended from above him. Attaching itself to his nose and mouth, and sealing the connection shut. Instantly, a supply of fresh air came from the tubes, allowing him to breathe peacefully.


    The chamber was pitch ck, but Rui could still sense the physicalyout quite well thanks to Primordial Instinct and Seismic Mapping. That was why he immediately sensed when a strange liquid entered the chamber, filling it up to the very brim.


    His body rose to the center of the chamber under the buoyancy force the liquid generated. Instantly Rui ran some calctions in his mind. Given the fact that he could sense how much he rose before he stopped, he could calcte the density of the liquid using the fluid dynamics that he had studied in his bachelor''s of science degree.


    (''About one thousand eight hundred kilograms per meter cube.'') Rui estimated. (''Definitely not water. I wonder what the point of this liquid is.'')


    Suddenly, he heard a voice, the sound traveled through the liquid. Yet it was clear that he was beingmunicated through using some submerged speaker.


    "Apprentice Quarrier." Doctor Menun''s voice rang in his ears. "Do you feel any nausea, difort, or anything else of the sort?"


    "Not at all," Rui replied within the mask sealed around his mouth. "I''m feeling fine."


    "Good." Doctor Menun replied. "The process will begin soon enough."


    Rui was left in silence as he got to experience absolute solitude, the kind that provoked introspection and contemtion.


    (''I''vee a long way.'') Rui realized.


    His mind shed back to a long time ago. The day he firstid eyes upon Martial Art. An old retired Martial Squire who had humbly limited himself to trivial manualbor had epted a cheapmission from the Quarrier Orphanage to clear a fallen tree that urgently needed to be moved because it had been covering the back exit to the Quarrier Orphanage.


    Since that very moment, he had been enraptured by the concept of Martial Art. He had begun doing everything in his power to crack the entrance exam of the Martial Academy. Subjecting himself to years of fitness and MMA training. He had trained himself on kickboxing, Brazillian Jiu-jitsu, Judo, Muay Thai and some Tae-Kwon do. These were a variation of the bread-and-butter martial arts that UFC fighters strived to master in order to gainpetence and experience in all fields of hand-to-handbat. These skills helped him somehow crack the entrance exam and be epted as a student, despite the age gap.


    He raced through the physical and Martial foundation stages thanks to his pre-existing martial arts foundation, before being thrust into exploration. Then, he became a Martial Apprentice after having discovered his Martial Art, and then a long period of growth; six stages of training thirty techniques. He had proven himself as a Martial Artist in the many missions he had undertaken, and now he was ready to take the next step.


    (''It''s been a hell of a journey so far.'') Rui mused to himself. (''I can''t wait for the journey that is toe.'')


    "Apprentice Quarrier." Doctor Menun''s voice reverberated through the liquid he was submerged in. "All preparations have beenpleted. Are you ready to begin?"


    Rui took a deep breath.<novelnext></novelnext>


    "Yes, please begin."


    "Alright, the procedure will begin three... two... one..."Content ? copyrighted by N?velDrama.Org.


    Rui''s eyes widened as a surge of pure agony welled up within him.


    The sheer intensity, the sheer scope was beyond anything he had ever felt in his entire life.


    "AAAAARRGHHHGRRHRGHRG!" He bellowed into his mask.


    He didn''t even know what part of his body was actually experiencing pain!


    It was as though his very soul was being torn to shreds.


    The pain came from everywhere. It was omnipresent.


    He had lost all sense of physical self. It was as though his body had disappeared and his brain and nerves were kept alive, being subjected to the most horrific artificially manufactured sensations of pain.


    Pain radiated across his entire being. As though he was being burnt alive, torn to shreds, broken to pieces, and ttened down all at once.


    It was such a nonsensical amount of pain it almost felt like somewhat that could only happen in a nightmare, the kind the details of which would be forgotten once he woke up.


    Soon, the pain began eroding everything.


    His situational awareness had dropped to zero. The liquid whose density he had deduced cleverly had all but disappeared. His sense organs were still functioning but his brain and mind were beset with so much pain that they temporarily forgot about the senses feeding them information about the external world.


    The sheer amount of pain input his brain was receiving forced it to abandon a lot of other preupations otherwise it would short-circuit and he would experience a seizure.


    The worst was that he could do nothing about it. He couldn''t even be in a position to think about it, because his ability to form conscious thoughts had been highly nerfed and impeded. Yet that was not the worst of his problems by a long shot.


    He could feel that even his mind was beginning to slip. His consciousness, chipped away minute bit by bit. It was as though he was drowning, drowning in an ocean of pain.


    Yet, the worst had yet toe.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 461 Shift

    Pain was all he could feel, and his sense of surroundings began disappearing, however, that wasn''t all.


    He didn''t know how much time had passed within the apotheosis chamber. Any number of seconds, minutes hours, or even days could have passed. There was no source of light within the apotheosis chamber, after all. There was nothing that moved that could indicate the passage of time.


    He had earlier relied on his own heartbeat, but now he was consumed in too much pain for him to be able to focus on his sense of hearing.


    Suddenly, a change urred.


    His pain localized to his skin and flesh, the portions of his body that it was spread across had reduced, but the intensity of the pain had risen.


    "AAAARRRRRGHGHRGRHRGR!!" Rui screeched in pain as his brain and mind reeled at the sheer intensity of the influx of pain that was hitting him. The pain this procedure was inflicting on him was hitting the limits of the possible amount of pain that could be felt from a single organ.


    He soon realized he had underestimated the sheer amount of agony this procedure would be subjected to.


    Of course, this might have sounded stupid in hindsight. He already knew full well how the evolution process worked. It should have been obvious to him that he would feel this kind of pain. But it was difficult to understand beforehand just how much pain the process would inflict on him. It was one thing to understand theoretically that he would feel excruciating pain he had never felt before, it was another thing to be able to actually understand how much the pain was and how it would feel.


    He felt like his nervous system was burning. Each of his nerves was firing an enormous amount of pain signals all the way to his brain. He felt as though they were being overburdened by the sheer amount of nervous signals that were firing back and forth.


    An unknown amount of time passed, and eventually, the pain began shifting inwards.


    Amidst all the pain, Rui still managed toprehend what was happening. He knew that the evolution process did not happen to all cells all at once. Instead, the evolution process focused on one system of cells and organs within the body at a time.


    From what Rui was able to piece together despite all the pain, they were definitely focusing the evolution process on his skin and outer flesh, and now they were focusing on inner organs.


    "AAAARRRGHR!" He screamed in pain, as his muscles stiffened, experiencing a wave of agony. Every single muscle group felt like they were on fire. Rui struggled continuously, yet the apotheosis chamber withstood every ounce of his power without so much as budging. It was a chamber meant to contain Squire candidates after all.


    His muscles burned endlessly. Rui could almost feel muscle fibers in each muscle dying as the surviving muscle fibers began reproducing and new muscle fibers took the ces of the old ones.<novelnext></novelnext>Content ? N?velDrama.Org 2024.


    Despite all the pain, he felt a surge of power, unlike anything he had ever felt before. His muscles were brimming with energy beyond his limits!


    With every second, his muscles left human limits as they slowly and steadily ascended to the Squire Realm, step by step.


    Despite the agony, he was submerged in. He could instinctively feel him stepping away from ordinary humanity as he, for the very first time, ascended to a higher level.


    The pain was horrific, yet he could also feel it filtering out the weaker and sub-optimal flesh of his body. Anything that remained was among the best of the best, and it only get better and better thanks to the radiation he was being subjected to that caused mild mutations in every new generation of cells, some good and some bad.


    The bad ones perished quickly while the good ones survived and reproduced.


    Rui could almost feel this process happening as the waves of pain he was suffering indicated the timing of the filtration processes that were being subjected to his muscle groups that filtered out gically superior cells. He knew that each time he felt a wave of pain, his muscle groups had grown a bit stronger.


    After a long time, the pain shifted away from his muscles as they moved to his bones.


    "AAAAAARRRGRGRRGRH!" He screamed in pain, as sharp and piercing pains afflicted every ounce of his bone. Although the actual calcium of the bones was not living, the many nerves that dug around in the bone made it feel like the bone itself could experience pain.


    He felt as though his bones were melting away. He could feel clear alterations to their mass, abrupt reductions, and increments in their structure.


    He could feel them growing denser and heavier with every wave of pain. Bones wereprised of soft bone which was quite porous and hard bone which waspletely solid, his bones were gaining more of thetter.


    The evolution of bones was a bit moreplicated than that of cells. The cells that produced bone were undergoing evolution, however, that wasn''t enough. The existing bones were formed by normal skeletal stem cells, they were too weak. Thus, the procedure involved breaking down the old bone and recing it with bone formed from the evolved skeletal stem cells. The bone formed by the evolved skeletal stem cells was much denser and harder, allowing it to withstand a tremendous amount of stress. Without this, the power exerted by the evolved muscle groups would be too much for the bones and they would break down under the stress of his own evolved power.


    With the evolved bones, he would be able to all out, as far as exertion went, without having to worry about his skeletal structure crumbling under the burden of his power.


    Time passed. Just as he was finally getting used to the pain in his bones, it shifted once more, causing immense agony in another part of his body.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 462 Final Step

    An eternity of agony passed on. Rui had no idea how much time had passed since themencement of the evolution procedure. His internal clock hadpletely been shot thanks to all the pain, and even metabolic phenomena were no longer reliable because of how much his body was rapidly changing. Due to that, things like hunger and thirst were no longer reliable indicators of how much time had passed since he had consumed any food.


    The procedure didn''t have a defined time limit. This was because everybody had different physiologies and metabolisms that caused the procedure to require different amounts of time toplete sessfully.


    The psychological effect this had on him along with the pain was not light. It ced an immense burden on his psyche. It wasn''t easy maintaining absolute mental fortitude in the face of an unknown amount of agony. This was despite his superhuman mental fortitude by virtue of his mind growing twice and him being a Martial Apprentice. He felt as though if he was an ordinary person he would have lost his mind by now, or at the very least be afflicted with severe PTSD


    He gritted his teeth as the pain shifted to different parts of his body within him over long periods of time. He could even vaguely sense which parts of his body were undergoing the evolution process. After the evolution process was done with his bones, they moved on toward his abdomen.


    (''My digestive system?'') He wondered, through the pain.


    He knew that the process acted system by system. If the pain was inside his abdomen, then there were a limited number of options it could be. By narrowing down all the possibilities, by eliminating possible systems that didn''t match up with the ce he was experiencing pain in, he could more or less figure out which parts of his body were undergoing the evolution process at any given time.


    He gasped as his throat felt like it was burning. He felt like he had gotten the worst sinus infection that could possibly afflict a human body. Every second, he was in absolute agony, struggling to breathe as he felt like he drunk a ss full of concentrated acid.


    Thankfully, his lungs and trachea were perfectly functional, otherwise, he would bepletely unable to breathe at all.


    Time passed on and on, as he gritted his teeth, keeping track of the pain as it shifted after long periods of evolution.


    From the digestive system to the circtory system. His very veins and arteries underwent slow and delicate evolution. The process had to be deliberately slow, otherwise, the system would take too much damage and he would die. Blood supplied oxygen and the necessary nutrients to every cell, without which cells would begin dying within a minute.Content ? N?velDrama.Org 2024.


    The pain didn''t spread across all veins and arteries at once. Instead, it focused on one section of the circtory system at a time. This made it easier to lower the risk of death during the procedure. The circtory system was one of the most vital systems of the human body.


    The pain traveled across his body step by step. Despite being focused, the agony he experienced wasn''t less. If anything, it was even worse. The fact that it was hyper-focused merely meant that the pain was hyper intense.


    He would rather have a little less intense agony spread across his body than an abysmal amount of paining from a singr location.


    An unknown amount of time passed and the pain shifted from his circtory system to the left side of his chest.


    "AAAAAAAAAARRGGHRGRH!" He bellowed in pain as he felt his heart melting. He didn''t even need to employ any amount of deductive reasoning to know exactly what part of his body was undergoing the evolution process.


    His heart.<novelnext></novelnext>


    Or more urately, his cardiovascr system.


    Had Rui not been under a tremendous amount of pain, he would have wondered whether the filtration processes for the circtory system were the same as the ones for the cardiovascr system. After all, the two systems were so intricately connected. He had no idea whether the two were even considered to be distinct in the field of biology of Gaea.


    An enormous amount of time passed as the remaining systems also evolved over a long period. The renal system, the endocrine system, the lymphatic system, and the exocrine systems quickly followed suit.


    One by one, they all evolved one after the other.


    Until only one organ was left.


    The brain.


    Or in Rui''s case, the brains.


    Rui certainly pondered how the process of evolution would be affected by the fact that he has the Mindmirror Symbiote inside his skull. Thankfully, Squire Gunther had touched up on it. Symbiotes had an extreme amount of survivability, thus they were rarely in danger of dying due to the evolution process, which would affect the DNA of the Mindmirror Symbiote.


    Thankfully, the Martial Union had made it a rule to develop the evolution process for each of the symbiotes that it offered to its Martial Apprentices, based on its DNA.


    Thus, each of the symbiotes had its own customized evolution process. This included the Mindmirror Symbiote. Rui would be the first Martial Apprentice to be undergoing the procedure of the evolution of the Mindmirror Symbiote.


    This had been a little scary but at the end of the day. There was nothing he could do about it. All he had to was wait and have faith in the highpetence of the researchers and doctors of the Martial Union.


    However, he had counted down and kept track of all the bodily systems that had evolved, and he knew that the most difficult part of the procedure was here.


    The evolution of the brain.


    This part of the procedure was the reason that normal humans couldn''t be evolved. Only the brain of a Squire candidate could possibly survive the procedure and ascend to a higher form of life. And he would be taking that final step now.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 463 Path

    It came sooner than he had expected. Yet, the transition took its time.


    The pain disappeared.


    Rui gasped in relief. He had almost forgotten what it was like to not feel pain. Pain had been his only reality for extensive periods of time, more time than he knew. He clenched his fist as raw power coursed through his muscles. He felt invincible.


    Yet, he grimaced.


    (''My brain... My mind... This body is too much for them as they are right now.'') He winced as shes of pain coursed through his head.


    This pain was not from the evolution procedure, it was pain from his brain straining.


    The human brain had limits to the amount of information it could receive an influx of from the senses. Normally, the human body did not exceed the limit, thus the brain was never strained. However, due to the evolved nervous system and the evolved sensory organs, the influx of information that his brain was receiving had risen tremendously, beyond its ordinary limits.


    That was what was causing his momentary pain.


    This was the reason that it was impossible for normal humans to simply avoid brain evolution. It was not possible to evolve the rest of the body without evolving the brain. The brain would quickly be overwhelmed.


    In fact, Rui was certain that had he not been a Martial Apprentice or reincarnated man, his brain would have already begun suffering seizures and strokes due to the overwhelming influx of information.


    Just as he tried exploring the new sensations of his new body. The world disappeared once more.


    He could feel nothing.


    All that was there was an infinite void.


    Soon, even that void was swept away as he reached a familiar ce.N?vel(D)rama.Org''s content.


    (''These are my memories...'') He looked around as strange visions of memories of two lifetimes shed before his eyes. He recalled going through something simr in the imntation process of the Mindmirror Symbiote.


    It was peaceful and blissful, especially inparison to what he had gone through prior.


    Just as he was beginning to forget that this part of the procedure was supposed to be the hardest, he was reminded of it.


    The world inside his mind shook. A strange force struck it, causing it to rumble.


    Yet, it wasn''t done.


    He watched in horror as his memories began crumbling bit by bit. Breaking down to bits as they were destroyed by a mysterious outside force.


    A wave of destruction spread through his mind world, destroying everything in sight. He watched helplessly as the countless memories and experiences he had forged across two lifetimes began crumbling to dust.


    (''NO!'') His eyes widened as he watched his Mind Pce break down in the distance. It held strong initially, resisting the destruction. The Mind Pce was a technique that had been enhanced by the Mindmirror brain, giving it greater resilience.


    Yet in the face of evolution breakthrough, it eventually crumbled as well.


    Everything broke down.


    Too much had broken down.


    His anguish was reced by confusion as his memories were scattered.


    (''Who... am I?'') He wondered, uncertain. He knew nothing anymore. Nothing of who he was, where and when he was, or why and how he was.


    He looked around. (''Everything... is gone.'')


    The wave of destruction had rippled through the entirety of his Mind world.


    Suddenly, his eyes caught something in the distance. Something that was resisting destruction. It held strong. Waves of destruction crashed into it over and over again, yet it remained unfazed. It was the only thing so far that had sessfully survived the assault of destruction.


    (''What... is that?'')


    It was a path.


    To his shock, it was a path he was standing on.


    It extended far beyond the depths of his perception. A path that elevated towards the heavens above growing in height the further it extended.


    It was a path that no one else was on.


    It was a cmitous path that wound through all kinds of disasters and dangers.


    Ferocious beasts of various shapes and sizes.


    Earthquakes


    Volcanoes.


    Tsunamis.


    Meteorites.


    It was a terrifying path.


    Yet as terrifying as it was, it was even more beautiful.


    It inspired fear.


    Yet, it also inspired awe.


    The path called out to him. Lulling him. Whispering to him.


    It was a path he wanted to walk down.


    The waves of destruction crashed harmlessly against the path, unable to put so much as a dent in it.


    It protected Rui from the destruction, it was the sole reason that he, his consciousness, had not been annihted by the waves of destruction.


    He had lost almost all of his memories. He was beset by fear, anguish, and confusion.


    Yet despite everything, an epiphany thundered in his mind.


    (''This... is my Martial Path...'') He realized.


    It was his consciousness''s interpretation of it. A beautiful path that he wanted, but fraught with danger and risk.


    At that moment, the wave of destruction retreated.


    To his surprise, the fragmented memories pieced themselves back together, one by one. With each step the wave took back, a memory was restored.


    His eyes widened as he regained the tiniest of motes of his memories every moment.


    (''John Falken... Rui Quarrier...'') He remembered.


    Recognition dawned on his every moment.


    It was only after what seemed like an eternity, the wave of destruction hadpletely retreated. Everything had returned to how it was previously.


    (''No... That''s not quite right.'') He realized. (''It''s... stronger. Greater. Larger.'')


    His mind had grown sturdier. Almost as if what didn''t kill him only made him stronger.


    (''Was all of this my subconscious mind''s interpretation of the evolution process to the Squire Realm?'') He wondered.


    If that were the case, then it could only mean one thing.


    He opened his eyes as he regained his physical senses.


    Raw energy coursed through his veins. Raw power brimmed in his muscles. An otherworldly amount of awareness and rity consumed his mind.


    He didn''t even need the doctors to verify it.


    He knew it from the bottom of his heart.


    He had ascended to a higher Realm of power.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 464 Next

    Rui suppressed the urge to break out of the apotheosis chamber with his newfound power. He wondered if the chamber was built to withstand the kind of power he would unleash when he used Outer Convergence and me Breathing.


    Even if his current body was out of sync with the Apprentice-level bodies, the sheer amount of power he was capable of unleashing was beyond anything he had ever been capable of in the past. However, he didn''t want to damage the property of the Martial Union needlessly, of course. Besides, he did not know if the procedure was medicallypleted.


    He sat put for some time, in the darkness of the apotheosis chamber, until eventually, he heard Doctor Menun''s voice through the fluid.


    "Squire Quarrier." She addressed him. "I''m pleased to inform you that the procedure has beenpleted. Congrattions."


    Suddenly, the liquid in the apotheosis began draining. His body slowly lowered as he eventually hit the base.


    The breathing masks detached from his face as they retreated back into the hatch they came from.


    Soon, the top of the apotheosis chamber opened. Rui squinted in pain as the light from the outside blinded him. Having spent a long time in pure darkness, the sudden exposure to light was overwhelming. Thankfully, his other senses were sharp enough to allow him to perceive his environment. He perceived the team of medical staff that had been overseeing his procedure.


    "Squire Quarrier." Doctor Menun approached him. "How do you feel?"


    "Amazing," Rui replied, before frowning.


    His body had changed so much that even talking felt incredibly strange.


    However, his words were true.


    He felt like he was in paradise. Not because his condition was particrlyfortable normally. But because he was no longer in physical pain. This alone made his current physical state feel like heaven.


    "The procedure has beenpleted sessfully. An extraction team is already en route here, they will aid you in exiting the apotheosis chamber." Doctor Menun told him.


    The reason he couldn''t be released then and there was because his control over his body was highly impeded, one wrong move and he could unintentionally massacre all of the medical staff in the vicinity. That was why the protocols involved a separate team that was qualified to handle newly ascended Martial Squires safely.


    Rui nodded. "Thank you, doctor. Thank all of you."


    He offered his gratitude to the entire team of medical professionals.


    "Not at all, young man." Doctor Menun replied. "We''ll be extracting some blood in order to verify that there aren''t any unseen anomalies."


    A syringe pierced his arm, extracting blood.


    The medical team soon bade him goodbye as they left the facility. Soon, two people entered, made their way toward him.


    They didn''t even bother hiding their Squire-level auras.Belongs to N?velDrama.Org - All rights reserved.


    "Squire Quarrier." One of them addressed him. "I''m Squire Ferin and this is Squire Gerd. I will be aiding you to your assigned quarters. I will also be aiding you in the rehabilitation process along with my colleagues."<novelnext></novelnext>


    Rui turned towards them. The two of them were old, with ck and white hair and wrinkles on their skin. They had an edge to their aura, the type that could onlye with a vast amount of experience in conflict. Yet they were also very clearly retired.


    Rui suspected that many retired Martial Squires were recruited to fulfill positions like these that were best upied by Martial Squires.


    He also hadn''t gotten used to being addressed by the Squire title. It felt surreal, like all of this was some kind of dream. He almost expected to be woken up.


    "Squire Quarrier?" Squire Ferin echoes, raising an eyebrow at the sight of Rui wordlessly staring at them.


    "Ah... My bad." Rui managed to squeeze out. "I honestly still haven''t quite processed everything yet."


    "That''s quite understandable." Squire Ferin nodded. "The breakthrough to the Squire Realm is not a light breakthrough and it isn''t umon for such an immense internal change to negatively affect mental health if not handled appropriately. That is what we''re here for."


    "And what exactly are you supposed to do incidentally?" Rui asked.


    "We will be aiding you to your lodgings, and we will be responsible for your limatization process with the power of the Squire Realm." Squire Ferin replied. "The Martial Union cannot allow a Martial Squire who hasn''t yet mastered their power to return back to the public. The sheer power that Martial Squires can unleash even without the use of techniques is too much, the slightest slip can cause a lot of suffering."


    "I understand." Rui nodded. This was part of the documents that he had signed in order to undergo the breakthrough process to the Squire Realm, so he had no issues with his arrangements.


    "Be careful as you get up." Squire Fernin told him as he fiddled with some keys over at the terminal that controlled the chamber.


    The straps restraining Rui''s motions unshackled him as they retreated back into the openings that they came from.


    Rui took a deep breath. He would be taking his first real movement as a Martial Squire at this moment. It was an incredible milestone.


    He got up with mild exertion.


    BAM!


    Rui grimaced as he mmed the ceiling with much speed and power, havingunched his entire body up with just the slightest bit of exertion.


    THUD


    He fell t to the ground.


    "You exerted yourself too much." Squire Fernin informed him ndly. "Of course, no need to get worried. This is very normal as the very first movements as a Martial Squire are the most difficult to be able to control. As you undergo your limatization process, this will change, of course. Once you''ve retained control over your body, your time in the limatization phase will end and you will be allowed to return to your normal daily life."


    "I understand, Squire Fernin." Rui nodded.


    He tried getting up again, yet instead, heunched himself up, spinning simultaneously. Squire Gerd caught him with an arm, stopping his motion.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 465 Habilitation

    It was only after he had be a Martial Squire that he understood how nerfed Squire Cae Freelia was against him in their fight. Although they hadn''t fought her the very moment after she became a Martial Squire, it was still soon enough after her breakthrough when she was still out of sync to be able to express all of the power of her new body.


    Just as he tried to take another step, Squire Fernin stopped him.


    "Rx, no need to move right now." He told Rui. "It''s best that all of this be done once we''re in a controlled environment. For now, you will be taken to the Squire habilitation facility in a wheelchair."


    They gestured to one in the room, having brought it over.


    Rui sighed. He was not too fond of wheelchairs; they reminded him of the worst part of his life when his health deteriorated to the point that he was unable to move around on his own. It was one of the worst parts of his life not only due to his health but also due to the continuous failures he suffered in trying to make the VOID algorithm viable.


    Still, he obliged as they strolled him to the Squire habilitation facility, which was connected to the breakthrough facility, side by side for convenience.


    Once they arrived at the facility, they immediately entered a particr section of the facility.


    "What''s this ce for?" Rui asked as he looked around. It appeared to be a storage facility for a strange kind of body suit, of sorts.


    "The bodysuits you see here are the core of the habilitation training stage that you will be undergoing." Squire Fernin told Rui. "These suits are highly resistive to all movement, and generally limit the power and speed of all movements by ny-nine percent."


    Rui''s eyes lit up in interest as he immediatelyprehended the reasoning for such a form of training. "Steady limatization."


    "Correct." Squire Fernin nodded. "You will be wearing this suit for the entirety of your habilitation phase in this facility. We will progressively lessen the resistance the suit offers to your movements, roughly one-percent a day. After a hundred days, you will be discharged as long as your control, uracy, and precision aren''t below the bare minimum standards for you to not be a threat to civilians and Martial Apprentices around you."


    This was new. Rui had never had to exhibit extreme caution to normal humans around him as a Martial Apprentice because Martial Apprentices were physically human, only their brains were superhuman.


    The way Martial Apprentices generated superhuman power despite having a normal human body with normal human muscles was thanks to efficiency. It had taken Rui a while to piece this together since the science in this world had not developed why having superhuman brains enabled superhuman physical power. Of course, the principles and mechanics of each technique were well-known. But the precise neurological reason as to why exactly superhuman brains enabled Martial Apprentices to use Apprentice-level techniques was not known.


    To anyone except Rui, as far as he knew, thanks to his strong scientific background.


    The answer was simple; efficiency.


    Research back on Earth had indicated that human beings generated several hundreds of joules of energy with every strike. Technically, this was enough energy to crack and break rocks and boulders.


    Yet no human was able to crack and break rocks. Not even the mightiest of heavyweight fighters who held the world record for the most powerful punch ever thrown; Francis Zavier Ngannou, could possibly crack and break a rock.<novelnext></novelnext>


    The reason for this was simple, due to the many mechanical inefficiencies and structural inadequacies of the human body, only a small portion of that great energy were actually transferred to their striking targets.


    Due to this, no human was capable of cracking and breaking rocks with a strike. Very few animals were capable of such a feat, despite generating far more than the necessary power to do so.


    All of this was due to inefficiency in movements, and inadequacies in structure.


    When a Martial Apprentice discovered their Martial Path, the brain evolved in battle cognition, and along with it, the potential to be superhumanly efficient with their motions inbat.


    Apprentice-level techniques such as me Breathing, Outer Convergence, and Flowing Canon allowed Martial Apprentices to be extremely efficient with the energy that their body generated, maximizing both the energy generated and the amount of the energy generated that actually did damage to their target.Belongs to N?velDrama.Org - All rights reserved.


    However, this was a conscious and voluntary phenomenon.


    This meant that he could not hurt normal humans unless he used Apprentice-level techniques. There was never a worry of identally bumping into a human and killing them because he exerted too much force.


    However, now that he obtained his Martial body, this was no longer the case. His natural raw power had been elevated far beyond natural human limits. He could mangle humans with just a wave of his arm if he wasn''t careful.


    "You''re going to also need to develop a psychological awareness of the sheer damage you inflict upon humans." Squire Fernin told him. "It''s not enough to just gain control, uracy, and precision. Your psychology needs to adapt to your body as well."


    "How will we be going about that?"


    "Hypnotic therapy." Squire Gerd spoke up for the first time.


    Rui turned towards her. "What exactly will that entail."


    "We will be subjecting you to a suggestion that will, over time, along with other measures such as reflexive correction will help you develop the necessary psychological habits that will ensure that you aren''t a threat to the people you know and care about." Squire Gerd exined. "It''s not just humans you have to worry about, it''s also Martial Apprentices. They''re now to you what humans are to them. I am in charge of the psychological conditioning while Fernin will handle physical habilitation."


    Rui now understood why there were two Martial Squires instead of one.


    "I look forward to your guidance."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 466 Rest

    The suit was easily worn, thankfully. It slipped on Rui and the assistant staff members fastened it quickly.


    "Woah," Rui murmured. "It''s so light, it doesn''t even feel like I''m wearing a suit at all. Can this really impede my motions that much?"


    "It''s made up of special esoteric substances that are capable of exerting a tremendous amount of force on your movements." Squire Fernin exined. "Try getting up normally."


    Rui cautiously got up in a normal fashion. He was pleased to see that he didn''t over-exert and send himself flying. His motions were dulled by his suit just enough that he ended up exerting human-level force.


    "Huh, this actually feels quite normal," Rui said appreciatively.


    "That''s to be expected." Squire Fernin said. "The biggest problem with the rehabilitation is getting used to how little force you need to apply for daily mundane tasks."Content ? N?velDrama.Org 2024.


    Rui nodded, this made sense. As a Martial Apprentice with a mostly normal human body, he normally applied a small, but a decent chunk of his strength when he performed mundane tasks like walking or eating. However, now he had to learn to apply the tiniest of motions for these same tasks. Consciously, this was possible to do, however, it wasn''t enough for this to be a conscious measure. This needed to be part of his subconscious tendencies and traits, it needed to be as natural as breathing. Such that he could be assured it would happen even if he wasn''t paying any attention to himself.


    "Alright, get some rest for today in your room. You''ve spent three weeks in a horrifying procedure, after all." Squire Fernin casually threw that out there.


    Rui turned to him in shock. "Three weeks??"


    "Yes." Suire Fernin nodded. "Your procedure took a little longer than average due to the delicate nature of your brains."


    "I see..." Rui pondered deeply. Thankfully, he had already informed the Orphanage that he would be leaving for some time.


    "The staff members will help you with your room and other matters." He told Rui. "For now, get some rest. We''ll begin tomorrow. Goodbye."


    Rui bade him goodbye as he turned to the staff members for aid. Now that he had the body suit impeding his extra power immensely, he could more or less move around normally. He was quickly assigned a room in the facility.


    "Ohhh mannnn..." Rui groaned infort as he crashed into afortable bed in his room. He reveled in itsfort, having been forced to deal with the torture and general difort of the Apotheosis chamber.


    He retrieved hismunicator from the bag filled with his belongings, sending a message to Julian, the only one in the Orphanage with amunicator. He also sent messages to each of his six friends, informing them of his breakthrough to the Squire Realm, before tossing his phone aside.


    He was tired. Although the procedure had rejuvenated him with mental and physical rejuvenation potions, the former had long lost effectivity.


    Furthermore, the exhaustion he felt was more psychological than anything else. He just wanted to rest a bit before he set out on the next phase of his Martial journey.<novelnext></novelnext>


    On the other hand, he was also excited about the fact that he was a Martial Squire. Having stepped into the Squire Realm, he had still not gotten over it. Generally, he was level-headed and calm regarding other matters, but when it came to Martial matters, he could be immature.


    At this very moment, he was in a way no different from a child that had received the toy that they desired the most for Christmas.


    (''I wonder what the habilitation training will be like.'')


    He suspected that it wouldn''t be too different from the physical and Martial foundations of the Martial Academy. These phases focused on the core of Martial Art. They focused on the most important and fundamental aspects of any physical conflict.


    Things like uracy, precision, timing, coordination, and bnce were all aspects of his motion that would require training from scratch.


    (''In a way, this isn''t too different from the mismatched muscle memory between my body of Earth and the new body I got in Gaea.'') He realized.


    He had taken truly a long time to ovee the ipatible muscle memory that he had retained from Earth. It had taken many years despite working hard. Thankfully, the Martial Union could speed up the process thanks to hypnotic mental maniption techniques.


    What otherwise took many years to fully ovee would hopefully take much lesser time thanks to the mental maniption.


    (''This is just the beginning though.'') Rui noted. ("I still have the Squire-level equivalent of Apprentice-level techniques to master.'')


    That wasn''t something he would be able to master any time soon. He had mastered thirty Apprentice-level techniques at this point, even if mastering the Squire-level equivalent took only a month per technique. That would still take two and a half years toplete in its totality.


    (''It''s like bing a Martial Apprentice all over again.'') Rui couldn''t help but think so. He was starting off with effectively no techniques whatsoever, just like he did when he became a Martial Apprentice. It was almost a fresh start in many ways.


    Of course, he didn''t n on re-mastering all of his old techniques. Not all of them needed to be re-mastered, and some were simply no longer worth it.


    Techniques like Stinger and Adamant Reforging were passive and did not disappear entirely due to the transition, however, techniques such as Blink were entirely obsolete at the Squire Realm. Lack of vision was a meaningless hindrance that aplished absolutely nothing against a Martial Squire with superhuman senses that allowed them to map their environment with their remaining senses. Furthermore, most Martial Squires had at least one sensory technique.


    Thus, his Martial Art was likely not going to be identical to what it was when he was a Martial Apprentice.


    His attention wandered between many topics, yet eventually, exhaustion took over his excitement and he began to nod off, falling asleep.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 467 Heights

    The habilitation training began immediately the next day.


    Rui was immediately thrust into training regiments that honed his uracy and precision. Despite the suit reducing most of the power he generated so that it resembled his old body, he was still unustomed to his new body.


    The differences between his old and new body were greater than he had expected. The rtionship between how much power, speed, and durability he had had fundamentally changed. His power decreased slightly while his speed had increased slightlypared to his old body.


    This was not an enormous difference, but it was enough to throw off all of his movements. What had fundamentally changed was the ratio between the power output of his muscles and the mass of his body. The raw speed of a Martial Artist depended on how much power their muscles generated with respect to how much they weighed. It was this ratio that mattered.


    Someone capable of generating a vast amount of power would still be average in speed if they also weighed a lot.


    Currently, his body had evolved in precisely the manner needed to ensure that there was an equal weightage between power, speed, and durability. His old body had ced a little bit more weight on power and durabilitypared to speed.


    Due to this, he had found that his timing for allplicated maneuvers was toote. Since his movements were proportionally quicker, he was still acting on his old speed where he was slower.


    This was one of the biggest errors in his muscle memory that messed up his uracy a lot. He had to throw himself into extensive repetitive training all over again. Getting rid of the muscle memory from his previous life fully had taken a long time of extensive training. Thankfully, it wasn''t the same case for his current muscle memory. Squire Gerd subjected him to a light hypnotic suggestion that allowed him to rece old muscle memory with new muscle memory quicker far quicker than was humanly possible.


    "This technique ''convinces'' the subconscious mind to let go of the past and ept the future." Squire Gerd exined. "Thanks to this you''re able to unlearn the tendencies from your old human body and create new ones for your Martial body."


    ? Rui nodded. Of course, from a scientific perspective, this exnation made very little sense and was inadequate. However, Rui had hypotheses on the mechanics of the technique.


    (''Enhanced neural sticity is probably the answer.'') Rui mused.


    Memory as a neurological phenomenon was the result of a biochemical trait of neurons known as neural sticity.


    Neural sticity was the ability of the neuralworks of the brain to change through growth and reorganization. It is when the brain is rewired to function in some way that differs from how it previously functioned. These changes range from individual neuron pathways making new connections to systematic adjustments like cortical remapping.


    From what Rui could see, Squire Gerd had somehow enhanced the neural sticity of the part of his cerebellum that was responsible for muscle memory. A fascinating technique that allowed its target to unlearn past habits and gain new habits quicker as a result.<novelnext></novelnext>


    (''It''s also why Squire Fernin is extremely strict during training.'') Rui mused.


    Although this technique was a boon to Rui, it was also risky. Mistakes and ws were costlier because he reced old tendencies with new tendencies, all new tendencies, including the wed ones with mistakes. If the ws were allowed in, then he would not be able to get rid of them, not without undergoing the whole procedure all over again.


    Thus, the standards he was held to were extremely high.


    "Part of the reason I was chosen as a Squire habilitator was because of extraordinary vision, allowing me to assess the uracy and precision of your movements on a microscopic level." Squire Fernin told him. "I can see every mistake, w, and shoring in every single one of your movements thanks to that and my experience and training in this matter. Currently, your maneuvers are infested with mistakes, as is to be expected. I will be correcting each and every single one of them during your habilitation phase."


    Many of Rui''s training sessions were consumed simply by Squire Fernin fixating on merely a handful of Rui''s mistakes. Only after Rui performed with uracy and precision that satisfied him, was he allowed to even begin the repetitive training to burn the urate movements into his muscle memory.


    One of the particrly annoying obstacles in his way was the difference in the center of gravity between his old and new body. His body was heavier, but the mass was not distributed in the exact same way as with his old body. His bones and muscles were disproportionately denser, causing a change in the center of gravity of his body as a whole.


    This affected his dynamic bnce; the ability to maintain bnce during curvilinear motion.


    He would often trip and lose bnce every time he performedplicated whole-body maneuvers due to this.


    In fact, in the first couple of days of his training, he wasn''t even able to perfectly somersault consistently. An embarrassing thing for a Martial Artist of his caliber to ept. Yet it only fueled his motivation to grow and regain his motor capabilities.


    "Calm down." Squire Fernin told him. "Your current state is frustrating, however, it is entirely normal. Your rate of growth is fascinating. Your brain and mind are soaking up your training at a speed I have never seen before."


    Rui didn''t even bother trying to exin it. He couldn''t.


    "In fact, that isn''t the only oddity about you." Squire Fernin stroked his white beard. "Your raw physical parameters are greater than what should be possible. You''re stronger and faster than someone who underwent the all-rounder evolution process should be. It''s truly bizarre, I have never seen a Martial Squire start off from such a high starting point. You do live up to the rumors, Rui Quarrier. Who knows to what height you''ll rise if this is where you begin."Content ? copyrighted by N?velDrama.Org.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 468 Consequences

    Content ? copyrighted by N?velDrama.Org.


    Days passed.


    Half his time went into physical training while the other half went into psychological training. To his surprise, the psychological training was just as hard as the physical training.


    "Your reflexes must be more defensive." Squire Gerd told him. "You cannot il around with that kind of power, it needs to be controlled and safe."


    They were in a room, meditating. Rui absorbed her words, taking them in. This was one of the therapeutic training sessions that he was made to undergo. Itsted a few hours until they were done.


    "Does the Martial Union go this far for non-Martial Artists?" Rui asked afterward. "Ultimately, it''s an organization for Martial Artists, not everybody else, right?"


    It''s not that Rui didn''t understand the point of the rule, it made sense, but it was also quite restrictive to Martial Artists. Although he was personally doing well with the training, he could imagine others having a hard time with the training. Was the Martial Union really the kind of organization that would hamper Martial Artists for the sake of civilians?


    "Martial Artists need to integrate into society." Squire Gerd told him. "Part of that entails not being a permanent threat and risk to all people around us. We''ll be detached from society if we are unable to not hurt people by mistake. That increases the probability of a civil war between the state and Martial Artists."


    "Is the Martial Union that concerned with the coexistence of Martial Artists and normal human civilization?" Rui asked, probing a bit more.


    "..." She pondered his question. "Those that are in power care enough, yes. Although there are those of political factions within the Martial Union that disagree."


    "Factions within the Martial Union?" Rui asked, curious. "That are separate from the Martial Sects?"


    "The Martial Sects are centered around a very specific matter; the budget allocation of research and development funds." She exined. "They do not concern themselves with any other matters outside of the political advocacy, campaigning, and lobbying for the research budget allocated to the research of the techniques that each Martial Sect is centered around. The political factions concern themselves with much bigger matters."


    "Matters like what?"


    "Matters like the one you brought up." Squire Gerd replied. "The matter about the role and ce for Martial Artists in society is not a simple matter, most certainly not something that everybody agrees upon."


    "There are political factions centered around the role that Martial Artists ought to y in society?" Rui asked.


    "Of course, several of them." Squire Gerda answered him. "There are Martial supremacists that believe that Martial Artists are superior beings that ought to rule humanity by virtue of our power. Of course, they aren''t the majority. The majority are normal Martial Artists that believe that Martial Artists while superior inbat, ought to be part of normal human civilization in some form of coexistence."<novelnext></novelnext>


    "I presume that faction is muchrger and also in power now?" Rui asked.


    "You can say that." Squire Gerd nodded. "That''s why arge number of the policies and conditions that the Martial Union has are conducive towards ensuring that Martial Artists are able to integrate into the Kandrian Empire as seamlessly as possible."


    "Does that include the Martial Festival, as well as the fact that offense-ss missions are not permitted within the boundaries of the Kandrian Empire?" Rui asked.


    "Indeed, they are among the more prominent measures." Squire Gerd nodded.


    The Martial Festival was arge festival that celebrated Martial Art and Martial Artists. It was a festival that attributed positive energy to Martial Art and Martial Artists. Rui had no doubt in his mind that it yed an important and significant role in ensuring that Martial Artists were as well integrated into modern society as they currently were.


    Festivals were a vital and core aspect of cultures, and clearly, the Martial Union knew about this, which is why they made a gigantic fussy festival every five years, in order to ensure that culture and values would always remain on the side of the Martial Artists.


    The fact that offense ss missions did not ur within the boundaries of the Kandrian Empire also greatly helped in this matter. If the citizens of the Kandrian Empire had to live every day worried that Martial Artists of the Martial Union would assault them or even kill them due to a simple privatemission, then Martial Artists would certainly be hated.


    However, because no offense-ss missions were allowed in the Kandrian Empire, all the citizens of the Kandrian Empire ever saw were Martial Artists protecting normal humans in defense-ss missions and hunting dangerous animals and keeping them at bay, risking their lives all the time. This greatly aided in the process of creating a positive image of Martial Artists in the mind of the citizens of the Kandrian Empire.


    Furthermore, the Martial Union also tolerated odd and quirkymissions that went straight into the misceneous ss of missions, these earned the Martial Union the reputation of being tolerant and flexible.


    "What happens to Martial Squires that aren''t able to achieve an adequate degree of control?" Rui asked.


    "The Martial Union infringes on their freedom to a certain degree if the degree of control is too low. Low to the point that unintentional mass murder is guaranteed. If it''s not a severeck of control, then the punishments and penalties of different kinds." Squire Gerda told him straightforwardly. "This is part of the agreement that you signed before you were allowed to undergo the Squire evolution breakthrough process. Martial Squires are far too much of a threat to those around them. We can exert Apprentice-level power with just our raw physicality alone."


    Rui raised an eyebrow at those words. "So if I fail the habilitation phasepletely, I may be restricted from leaving and forced to continue training? Will the Martial Union actually go that far?"


    "Of course." Squire Gerd. "I''ve seen it happen before. I, along with Squire Fernin, will be judging you by the end of your habilitation phase."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 469 Techniques

    Of course, Rui was merely curious. There was basically no chance of him failing the Squire habilitation phase. Part of this was due to the fact that he was most certainly a fast learner thanks to the enhanced nature of his brain and mind.


    A little over three months passed. Extensive and difficult training regimens allowed him to finallypletely adapt to his new body.


    By day hundred, the suit was off and his uracy and precision were incredibly high despite using the full power of his Martial body.


    BAM!!


    A tremendous strike crashed against a wall. The full unshackled might of a Martial Squire crashed into the barrier.


    "Fuuuu..." Rui exhaled.


    "A perfect strike." Squire Fernin told him. "You''ve mastered your Martial body. How does it feel to finally be a full-fledged Martial Squire?"


    "Incredible," Rui admitted.


    He felt like a god.


    Without any technique, with just the slightest exertion of his body, he was already able to output power that far exceeded most Martial Apprentices. The fact that he could defeat his previous self without a single Squire-level technique was something that boggled his mind.


    "You have far exceeded the necessary level of control needed to sessfully pass the Squire habilitation phase." Squire Fernin informed him. "Congrattions."


    "Can I begin undertaking Squire-level missions immediately?" Rui asked out of the blue.


    "Yes, but it is highly rmended against." Squire Gerd chimed in. "As you are now, you would lose handily to any Martial Squire. Undertaking any mission as you are right now is risky. It is rmended you master a few Squire-level techniques, be they Squire-level versions of techniques you mastered in the past or new Squire-level techniques that are more suited to your Martial Art."


    Belongs to N?velDrama.Org - All rights reserved.


    "People do that?" Rui frowned. "Abandon old techniques for new techniques?"


    "It ismon." Squire Fernin told him. "Squire-level versions of Apprentice-level techniques are often not as good as techniques that were created for the Squire Realm. At the end of the day, techniques created for a purpose will generally be better than techniques that were created for another purpose originally, but are adapted for yet another purpose."


    "That makes sense." Rui nodded. "At the end of the day, the only reason Apprentice-level techniques are adapted to Squire-level is to allow Martial Squires to retain the progress that they made in a lower Realm."


    "Correct." Squire Fernin nodded. "Most Martial Squires find a bnce between old and new. There is no shortage of techniques that can''t be applied to Martial Squires."<novelnext></novelnext>


    Rui nodded, thinking of Blink. The technique was not only useless but also detrimental in Squire-levelbat.


    "Furthermore, each Martial body is unique due to the starting point of each body being unique. The necessity for originality and individuality in your techniques rises a lot now that you have be a Martial Squire. You will need to be truly separate your Martial Art from that anything that exists or has existed. Remember, every Martial Path is unique, and that needs to reflect in your Martial Art as well." He told Rui.


    Rui nodded. He had heard this before as well. In order to walk down a Martial Path that was unique, the individuality in his Martial Art needed to reflect, otherwise, he could not ascend to a higher Realm.


    Of course, this was easier said than done. There was a reason the poption of Martial Artists of higher Realms was exponentially lower than those of Realms lower. Martial Apprentices ounted for an overwhelming majority of the poption of Martial Artists. Part of this was because most Martial Apprentices of previous generations simply failed to imbue their Martial Art with the necessary amount of individuality needed to elevate it to a higher Realm.


    It was an incredibly difficult task to create one''s own technique, after all.


    "It is worth it in more ways than one, however." Squire Fernin informed him. "Techniques sessfully created by Martial Artists generally have an extreme amount ofpatibility with one''s self than other techniques."


    Rui turned towards Squire Fernin, deeper in thought.


    "The physical variation among bodies of Martial Squires is far greater than the variation among Martial Apprentices. Martial Apprentices are normal humans as far as physicality goes. There is variation among normal humans, of course, but ultimately, they are within certain limits. Humans on a broad scale are quite simr to each other."


    "The same cannot be said for Martial Squires, I presume?" Rui asked, understanding the point Squire Fernin was trying to make.


    Squire Fernin shook his head. "At least, not to the same degree. Martial Squires deviate from humanity on a fundamental level, there is greater variation among us. This ends up affecting Squire-level techniques as well."


    "I see." Rui quickly pieced it together. "Because Squire-level techniques have to cater to a wider variety of Martial bodies, it is more difficult to find techniques with satisfactorypatibility with yourself in particr."


    The further away Rui was from the Martial body type that a particr technique hadpletepatibility with, the lesser thepatibility he had with that technique.


    "That''s right." Squire Fernin nodded. "Most Squire-level techniques are created with somebination of the Martial Union and a Martial Squire. Therger pool of types of Martial bodies has caused more techniques to be too ipatible with a lot of Martial Artists."


    "The best solution would be to create your technique, but that''s too difficult for an overwhelming majority of Martial Artists. Perhaps it is feasible for a few techniques, but no more than that, surely?" Rui wondered.


    "What matters is individuality." Squire Fernin told him. "It is very rare that a new technique is conjured from thin air. Gaining inspiration from other techniques, from the world around you, and creating techniques that borrow from already existing phenomena is the norm. Even simply modifying a technique to suit your needs involves individuality. You will find that inevitably, you will need to engage in individuality as a matter of inevitability, not just necessity."


    Rui frowned at those words.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 470 Next

    Once the two Squire habilitators officially dered his sess at undergoing Squire habilitation, Rui no longer had anything else that needed to be done.


    "Thank you for all your help." Rui shook the hands of the two Martial Squires.


    "Not at all." Squire Fernin waved his hand dismissively.


    "You aplished it through your own hard work." Squire Gerd told him.


    He bade them farewell, leaving the Martial Union.


    "Ah, freedom." Rui inhaled deeply.


    He had spent a lot of time with his freedom shackled to a certain extent in the past three months. Be it the Squire breakthrough process, or the Squire habilitation process. Both were necessary, but both certainly were suffocating.


    He reveled in the sense of freedom he got from finally having left the Martial Union.


    "Time to go home." He immediately began jogging in the direction of the Quarrier Orphanage.


    As much as he wanted to begin obtaining some Squire-level techniques immediately, he decided to go back home and connect with his family for some time. He hadn''t seen them in quite some time, after all.


    He began sprinting in the direction of the Quarrier Orphanage. Each step shook the Earth, he sped through the districts at a speed that he had never moved before in his entire life. He had surpassed all limits and peaks that held him back as a Martial Apprentice.N?vel(D)rama.Org''s content.


    Soon, he had arrived, opening the gate and making his way inside.


    "RUIIIII!" Alice squealed when she saw him.


    "How are you always the first to notice me?" Rui wondered aloud as he exchanged a hug with her.


    "Hehe... I can sense when family is close by." She beamed at him.


    "That''s a neat trick," Rui admitted.


    Soon he was greeted by the others. It had taken him quite some time to pacify their curiosity regarding his status as a Martial Squire.


    He had informed all of them about the sess of his breakthrough to the Squire Realm through Julian, but they still wanted to know the difference.


    "Wow." Farion frowned. "Each of your steps feels like a rock dropped to the floor."


    "I have put on weight due to bing a Martial Squire," Rui admitted. "It makes things inconvenient. I''m honestly not sure if my bed can hold my weight anymore."


    ? "Rui..." Lashara emerged into the hall where everyone had gathered.


    "Mom." He walked forward, exchanging a hug with her.


    "My precious baby." She addressed him, stroking his head. "You seem very different."


    "Yeah well, the breakthrough to the Squire Realm has caused a lot of changes to my body you see." Rui shrugged.<novelnext></novelnext>


    "Are you okay?" Lashara asked, worried.


    "Never felt better, actually." Rui smiled.


    "To think that kid who was obsessed with Martial Art since forever ago went and actually became a martial Squire."


    "I remember when you used to pester us to help you train, dragging us to the frozen river every winter and practicing your bnce on the ice."


    "We get at least half the credit for you bing a Martial Squire. The Martial Union should give us honorary Martial licenses."


    They teased him a bit, before eventually letting him settle down. He found himself sitting opposite to Julian in the study.


    "So, was it as excruciatingly painful as advertised?" Julian asked.


    "More than you can possibly fathom." Rui sighed. "It truly is a procedure that only Squire candidates can survive."


    "The suffering was inevitable. Thankfully, there were no further healthplications." Julian sighed


    Rui nodded. Shortly after the doctor had extracted his blood after the procedure ended, he received word that there were no healthplications with his breakthrough to the Squire Realm.


    Rui was more afraid of that than anything else. The pain was no doubt the single most torturous experience of both of his lives, but at least the pain wasn''t a threat to his life or health. It was the price of undergoing the breakthrough evolution to the Squire Realm, but the pain did not cause any impediments to his Martial Path.


    Had the procedure failed in some way, that would be a terrible oue. Fixing the mistake would be extremely difficult, potentially impossible, and certainly painful as all hell. This was the oue that Rui feared the most.


    "Congrattions on your sessful breakthrough to the Squire Realm, Rui." Julian smiled. "You''ve trulye far, and you''re set to go further."


    "Thanks, Julian." Rui smiled back. "I''m genuinely indebted to you for helping me with the Vinfranian research, the information those filed provided me helped me be stronger as a Martial Squire."


    He was referring to the Mind Switch technique. That technique had allowed him to obtain physical prowess greater than what he would normally have obtained had he not learned that technique.


    "Is that so?" Julian asked with a curious expression on his face. "How so?"


    "I mastered a technique that increased my energy reserve in a very organic and natural way," Rui exined. "This allowed me to go for a stronger and more energy-intensive Martial body than I would have normally been able to acquire. So, I''m quite grateful to you."


    "That''s what brothers are for." Julian smiled. "I''m d to hear that you benefitted from my reports of the Vinfranian research data. It certainly did benefit me."


    "It''s a win-win." Rui pointed out.


    "Indeed. What do you n to do from here on out?" Julian asked, curious.


    "Well, I need to get my hands on Squire-level techniques." Rui sighed. "Otherwise, there is nothing else that can be done. I''m in an awkward position where I''m overqualified for Apprentice-level missions and underqualified for Squire-level missions."


    He didn''t n to immediately focus on remastering all thirty of the techniques he had mastered as an Apprentice, in one go. That would take too much time. Furthermore, as Squire Fernin pointed out,patibility was a much bigger issue for Squires than it was for Martial Apprentices. Squire-level versions of techniques he waspatible with as a Martial Apprentice may not bepatible with him in the Squire Realm.


    He would need to be careful.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 471 Training

    The time he spent with his family was healing and soothing. Helping them out with manualbor, and stockpiling enough firewood for theing winter. Due to the distance between the Orphanage and even the closest district of the town of Hajin, it wasn''t very practical to try and rely on it for resources once winter came in full force. The Orphanage stored up as much as they could on all essential supplies so that they would be self-sustaining for at least the harshest parts of winter.N?vel(D)rama.Org''s content.


    Aside from that, he spent his time training Max and Mana too. Of all the children in the Orphanage, they were among the most inspired and motivated to follow in his footsteps and be Martial Apprentices. Their resolve had managed to withstand the test of time, and the difficulty of the training regimes that Rui had made them undergo.


    They were both twelve. This meant that, soon, they would be eligible for the Martial Exam.


    Rui had mixed feelings about letting thirteen-year-olds undergo the Martial Exam. Of course, he himself underwent it at the age of thirteen, but he was mentally an adult and he knew what he was getting into. Mana and Max were still kids, both physically and mentally.


    Of course, in this world, people weren''t coddled nearly as much as first-world kids back on Earth. The world was harsher and more dangerous. This forced them to mature faster.


    Still, the Martial Exam guaranteed injury, and the possibility of death existed as well. The Martial Exam was made just tough enough that at least one applicant would die every year in each of the sixteen Martial Academies.


    Part of this was no doubt to deter arge chunk of highly unfit Martial Artist aspirants that would have undoubtedly applied for the exam had the exam not been at least this dangerous.


    Another reason he had somepunctions against letting them participate was that they would be younger and weaker than an overwhelming majority of the applicants partaking in the Martial Exam. Of course, failure was not bad. It would give them some experience with the difficulty and ruthlessness of the Martial Exam.


    Still, that meant that they had a higher chance of suffering grave injury or, in the worst possible scenario; death.


    Of course, it would be double standards considering that Rui had attempted and sessfully cleared the Martial Exam at the age of thirteen.


    Still, he had gotten a pass from everybody else because he demonstrated a genius-level intellect, having learnednguage and academics at an extraordinarily young age. He also had a generally calm andposed temperament from a very young age. So much so that after thirteen years of observation of him, Julian had hit the truth, even if jokingly, about Rui, about his reincarnation.


    All of that atop his severe determination had led the adults of the Orphanage to allow him to undertake the exam.


    The same could not necessarily be said for Mana or Max. They were driven, however, they had an immature temperament;cking in patience andposure.


    "What are we training today?" Max asked, interrupting his thoughts.


    Rui turned to face the two of them. He found their determination and eagerness adorable and worrisome at the same time.


    "Mental fortitude," Rui replied.


    "Why are we so far from home?" Mana wondered aloud.


    "This training can trouble others, unfortunately," Rui exined. "That''s why I wanted to do it away from the others."<novelnext></novelnext>


    "Trouble?" Max frowned. "What even is mental fortitude anyway?"


    "Endurance. Not of the body, but of the mind." Rui tapped his head.


    "How do you even train such a thing?" Mana asked.


    "The same way you train anything else," Rui replied. "Perseverance. Now, stand before me."


    They obediently obeyed, curious at what was going on.


    "Alright then, let''s begin. From this point forth, you need to do your best to remain standing where you are to the best of your abilities, ok?" Rui asked.


    They nodded, firmly nting their feet on the ground.


    Rui breathed deeply, as he very mildly opened up a bit of the Mind Mask technique that had been covering up his Squire-level aura.


    Mental techniques were easier to adapt to the Squire Realm because the evolution the brain underwent did not have a gigantic variation as far as mental parameters went. They were purely normal human brains scaled up through evolution. Thus, Apprentice-level mental techniques could more straightforwardly be used in the Squire Realm.


    This was especially true for Rui, who had an affinity for mental techniques. In the past three months of his Squire habilitation phase, he had managed to retain most of the effectivity of the Mind Mask technique. Enough to seal off his Squire-level aura when interacting with his family. A Squire-level threat evoked too much passive fear in ordinary humans. He would be tormenting his family if he let his aze strongly.


    The Mind Mask technique allowed him to appear no different from an ordinary person.


    He had peeled off just the tiniest bit of the mask. He wanted to make sure he started at almost rock bottom before escting the pressure bit by bit. If he started too high, he might trigger shock.


    Max and Mana stiffened as they felt significant pressure mounting upon them. What was almost entirely insignificant to Rui at this point, was more pressure than the two of them had ever endured.


    Yet, they gritted their teeth and stood strong against the pressure they were being put under. They did their best to fight away the fear with determination. Yet Rui merely increased the pressure he exerted on them, slowly and exceedingly carefully of course, but he increased it nheless.


    Soon his pressure had reached the Apprentice Realm and they had reached their limits. They bother took a step back, unable to bear it any longer.


    "Not bad." Rui nodded as he extinguished the pressure. "Considering that you haven''t had any training for it yet. However, this alone won''t allow you to pass the first round of the Martial entrance exam."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 472 Decisions

    Their mental fortitude wasn''t quite there yet. At the level they currently were at, they wouldn''t be able to pass the first stage. Building up the necessary mental fortitude would take months. Thankfully, months, they had.


    The only problem was that Rui wasn''t always going to be around. In fact, he nned to leave once the Quarrier Orphanage hadpleted all the required preparations for winter. He had stalled long enough and had taken enough of a break. The best he could do wasmission a Martial Apprentice to continue their mental fortitude training.


    And soon enough, the time hade. Rui bade his family farewell before he set out for the Martial Union. The time to strengthen and elevate his Martial Art to the Squire level hade. He could barely suppress his grin as he ran at an incredible pace to the Martial Union, reaching them in no time at all.


    The more time he spent on his Martial Path, the further he walked down it, and the lesser time it took for him to cross to travel to the heart of the town of Hajin from the orphanage. He recalled a time when it took him around an hour, now, he crossed it in a minute, without any exertion at all.


    Soon enough, he had reached the heart of the town of Hajin. He quickly provided his license to the security check-in before they allowed him in. Before he knew it, he had already reached the Squire Library, finally pausing.


    It''s not that he hadn''t considered what he wanted to re-master first, it just wasn''t an easy consideration. He had mastered thirty techniques as a Martial Apprentice, he most certainly wouldn''t be able to master all thirty in a single training phase.


    He needed to pick and choose wisely.


    The only real condition there was to the choices he made was that his Martial Art needed to be as well-bnced as possible as far as the techniques he would be mastering and the weightage they added to his Martial Art.


    (''Since I have effectively zero techniques at this moment, let''s go for the maximum and purchase six. Can''t really be trusted to go on Squire-level missions with fewer.'') Rui noted.


    He opened up his Mind Pce, another mental technique that worked exactly like it did when he was a Martial Apprentice. He skimmed through all the techniques he had ever mastered.


    In the first training phase that he had ever undergone:


    Vital Pressure, stic Shift, Helical Breathing, Acute Edge, and Bnced Direction. One offensive technique, two defensive techniques, one offensive, and one maneuvering technique. They were foundational techniques that, individually, were rtively weak, but were a force to reckon with when used alongside the many other techniques he had mastered over the years.


    He quickly sorted all the techniques into groups.


    Offensive techniques:


    Vital Pressure (striking), Flowing Canon (striking), Mirage Dive (grappling), Stinger (striking), Reverberating Lance (Striking), Tempestuous Ripple (Projectileunching)


    Defensive techniques:


    stic Shift, Inner Divergence, Acute Edge, Adamant Reforging, Shifting Silhouette/


    Maneuvering techniques:


    Bnced Direction, Parallel Walk, Blink (also stealth), Phantom Step, Shadow Step.


    Supplementary techniques: Outer Convergence (offensive enhancement), me Breathing, WInd Breathing, Helical Breathing, and Final Breathing.<novelnext></novelnext>


    Counter-offensive techniques;


    Binding Lash, Flow Flux.


    He discounted the mental techniques for obvious reasons. The same could be said for sensory techniques, which did not require re-mastering.


    Now, he had to choose just the right and strongestbination of techniques while also ensuring that they constituted a well-bnced Martial Art that was just right for him.


    That was the hard part. A satisfactory oue was easy enough, all he needed to was pick a reasonable selection of diverse techniques. But that wasn''t satisfactory to Rui, he was aiming for the best choice, the most optimal choice.


    (''The first thing I can do is rule out the foundational and lower-grade techniques unless necessary.'') Rui noted.


    The only reason he had ever chosen foundational techniques was that he had no choice in the very beginning. After all, he didn''t have the capital to purchase any worthwhile technique at the time, he had to choose among the foundation techniques that were free of charge.


    Considering he had only six slots or so, he was going to fill them up with high-grade techniques.


    (''My Martial Art needs to have offense, defense, and maneuvering equally, for now, everything elseester.'') He nodded.


    Content ? copyrighted by N?velDrama.Org.


    That left two techniques for each of them.


    (''Outer Convergence for offense is surely the first choice.'') Rui nodded.


    It was a powerful technique that allowed Rui to bolster his offensive prowess with power from every muscle group in the body.


    This technique was powerful, and highly versatile and could be used in a lot of situations and scenarios. It had saved Rui''s life many a time in the field, and he had grown too attached to the technique as well.


    That was one down.


    (''I''ll have to go with Reverberating Lance for the second option.'') Rui decided. It was a powerful technique that permeated the impact of his strikes deeper into more vulnerable and vital areas to cause more damage. It increased the damage he inflicted with every strike.


    Of course, there were other candidates. Flowing Canon had been with him for a long time, and he did intend to remaster it someday. As for the Stinger, it had lost some of its value at the Squire Realm. Having experienced other types of Martial bodies, he knew that the danger of the smaller punctures in the flesh that the Stinger technique inflicted were no longer as effective as they were against Martial Apprentices. The endurance of Martial Squires towards flesh wounds and blood loss had evolved to a higher level, unless he pierced an extremely vital spot, it was not going to be nearly as effective.


    Another strong candidate was the Tempestuous Ripple technique, of course. A powerful technique that gave him long-range damaging capabilities. But he wanted to ground his fundamentals before he retained his other capabilities.


    If he ever chose to re-master all his other techniques in the first ce.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 473 Individuality

    He had made his choices for offense, the next was defense. This was a remarkably easy choice for Ves.


    (''Inner Divergence and Adamant Reforging it is.'') he nodded.


    These were his two most powerful defensive techniques. Inner Divergence was an active defensive technique that worked by spreading the impact of the strike across all muscle groups. Effectively the muscles of the body acted as a shock absorbent for the entire body. The impact was safely dispersed instead of inflicting damage on the area of the collision.


    Adamant Reforging was a training technique that strengthened the flesh of the user. Flesh would grow more reinforced across many rounds of restorative healing from wounds inflicted in just the right manner, allowing for a tougher exterior. This would result in a passive defense for the user in question.


    A good bnce between passive and active defenses.


    That left two maneuvering techniques.


    One of them was definitely the Phantom Step technique. The technique was incredibly useful and had helped Rui immensely since the very day that he mastered it. However, none of the other techniques were all too alluring at this point in time. Out of the remaining four, two of them were foundational techniques that automatically ruled them out in his head.


    That left Blink and Shadow Step. However, one was obsolete in the Squire Realm while the other was notbat-oriented. It was suited for infiltration and other operations that required genuine stealth. He didn''t have another technique.


    (''I guess I can go for Wind Breathing?'') Rui wondered, scratching his head. Technically, it was a supplementary technique, not a maneuvering technique, but it boosted his agility and speed. Still, it suited his needs.


    That was his technique roster;


    Outer Convergence.


    Wind Breathing.


    Phantom Step.


    Inner Divergence.


    Adamant Reforging.


    Reverberating Lance.


    He quickly picked the scrolls of the techniques he was looking for. However, what he wasn''t prepared for was the price of the techniques.


    "Sheesh," Rui muttered aloud.<novelnext></novelnext>


    Squire-level techniques were far more expensive than Apprentice-level techniques. The total sum was nearly an order of magnitude more expensive than even his most expensive training phases in the Martial Academy.


    If not for the fact that the mission in the Serevian Dungeon had yielded him a tremendous amount of ie, he would not have been able to


    Of course, this wasn''t greed. Squire-level techniques were far more precious than Apprentice-level techniques, that was for sure.


    (''Furthermore, I have to pay for guidance and equipment, unlike when I was in the Martial Academy.'') Rui groaned inwardly.


    Thankfully, he was very familiar with these techniques. He didn''t need any guidance from an experienced Martial Squire, or even a Martial Senior to help him train with the techniques. All he needed was some basic aid in operating some of the equipment.


    Once he purchased the techniques, he sat down at one of the tables in the library with his scrolls, skimming through all of them and inputting all the data into his Mind Pce.


    (''Interesting.'') Rui noted as he processed all of it.


    The techniques were not entirely the same as their Apprentice-level versions. It seems they weren''t scaled identically all the way to the Squire Realm.


    (''The Squire-level version of Outer Convergence is most suited to Martial bodies with high muscle mass to body mass ratios.'') He quickly realized, studying the details of the technique.Belongs to N?velDrama.Org - All rights reserved.


    The technique was morepatible with users withrger muscles, which allowed for a greater amount of energy transfer across the body. Of course, this did not mean that Rui couldn''t use it, however, it meant that it would not nearly do him as much good as it would do a heavyweight power-oriented Martial body.


    As Rui went through the other techniques. He quickly realized that each technique wasn''t nearly as apt to him as their Apprentice-level versions were to him. Because Martial bodies could have all kinds of wacky configurations and quirkspared to normal humans, the variety and diversity of Martial bodies of Martial Squires were muchrger. There were all kinds of configurations that led to unnatural types of bodies. Techniques needed to cater to a significant portion of the Martial Artist poption, otherwise, they were useless. If a technique could only be used by a handful of Martial Artists due to its ipatibility with other Martial Artists, then its impact and contribution to Martial Art were minimal.


    Thus, each technique was generally catered to bepatible with arger proportion of the Martial Artist, which meant that it could not be toopatible with any one particr Martial Artist, otherwise, itspatibility with a lot of other Martial Artists reduced drastically. It needed to be more generalized.


    This was the issue that Rui was undergoing right now. A lot of the techniques he had chosen to learn were in a simr spot. Of course, it wasn''t as though this would be a hindrance, just a bit of a bigger shoring that he had realized it would be when he was informed about this by his Squire habilitators.


    (''This must be one of the driving incentives for creating your own techniques. Or at least personalizing and altering all the techniques you do use, to some degree.'') Rui mused.


    The abundance of techniques in the higher Realms was much lower and only grew progressively lower and lower with each Realm. This was because of the scarcity of Martial Artists in higher Realms, but also because of how difficult it was to conduct research and development of techniques in the higher Realms.


    Martial Artists were inevitably forced to develop their own techniques if they wished to reach higher Realms. What Rui was experiencing was likely just the beginning. As time passed on, purchasing techniques to master them the way he already had all this time, would be more and more unfeasible.


    It was both scary and exciting. On one hand, the difficulty of growing stronger would increase, without a doubt, on the other hand, it was that much bigger a canvas to express himself.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 474 Training

    Thankfully, the training regimens for all of the techniques weren''t all that different from the Apprentice-level versions of them.


    Outer Convergence had three training stages, just like it did in the Apprentice-level version.


    The first stage was some elementary form of training, that had the user go through a set of motions that involved all muscle groups simultaneously. These were intensive dynamic workouts that focused on priming the user''s mind to get used to delicately coordinated muscle group expansion and contraction rhythms.


    This was the very first step to eventually paving the way to converging the power generated by all those muscle groups, the end goal. There were a total of thirteen borate dynamic exercises in total. Which Rui noted was equal to the number of broad muscle groups in the human body.


    The second stage of training was sparring with equipment that restricted the motion of certain muscle groups. The user would have to rely on muscle groups that would normally not be used to a high extent. Rui had instantly realized this was to ensure that the process of regrly and routinely drawing power from each muscle group would be part of muscle memory. The more rigorously trained each muscle group individually, the more smoothly and timely one would be able to use it.


    The final training stage was actually wearing a suit that heavily resisted the motion of the body. The suit was carefully configured to ensure that the user''s raw strength was not enough. This was done by conducting a series of weight-lifting tests to measure the physical strength of the user, and the suit was configured ordingly. The user was then supposed to utilize the gains made from the previous training stages simultaneously to be able to move past their physical limit.


    Inner Divergence had two training stages. The technique required that attacks bended as close to the center of the body as possible, otherwise, it wasn''t possible for all muscle groups to absorb the impact as shock absorbers did. The first training session was dedicated to learning how to intercept strikes closest to the center of mass of the body.


    The second stage involved learning how to time the gradual stiffening and tensing of the muscles to be able to absorb the impact. If the muscles were stiffened taut to slow, then the technique would be ineffective. If the muscles were stiffened too fast, then the impact wouldn''t be absorbed very well and the body would suffer harm.


    Wind Breathing required increasing the intake of air first. The first stage of the technique was a demanding regime of breathing exercises that would increase lung capacity and strengthen the diaphragm. The second stage of the training regime for the technique was mastering the timing for Wind Breathing. The rush of oxygen that all the cells received from deeper breaths needed to be timed with the initial eleration of the body. This ensures that the body has all the energy it needs when elerating at speed. Since the oxygen from inhtion does not instantly reach the cells upon inhtion and takes a brief amount of time to travel to the various cells across the body, it needed to be done ahead of time.


    Mastering the timing of the deep inhtions such as that the iing surge of energy matched the eleration of the body was the key part of Wind Breathing.<novelnext></novelnext>


    Adamant Reforging was the simplest for Rui to undergo, he merely needed to resume the conditioning process for his new body and he would eventually obtain flesh that was tough even for Martial Squires.


    The final technique was reverberating Lance. The training regime of this technique was centered around learning to vibrate and then learning to apply the vibrations to permeate the impact deeper into the body. The Squire-level version of this technique was the closest to its Apprentice-level version, which is one of the reasons he picked it. All he needed to get used to was the differences that his new center of gravity and other physical parameters that had changed in him would cause in his execution of the technique, and he will have mastered it as well as new.


    Once hepleted the training regimes of these techniques, he will have obtained six new techniques. Of course, this didn''t mean he only had six techniques, after all, he retained his mental and sensory techniques.


    This meant that he still had his Mind Pce, Mind Switch and Mind Mask techniques, as well as his Seismic Mapping and Primordial Instinct techniques. This meant that he was going to start off with eleven Squire-level techniques.


    (''Can''t wait.'') Rui grinned. He felt like it had been a long time since had seen any real action, he couldn''t wait to master these techniques so that he could go ahead and undertake Squire-level missions. He couldn''t wait to test hisbat prowess against another Martial Squire once he got out.


    (''All of thates after.'')Content ? N?velDrama.Org 2024.


    He intended on finishing the training regimes as soon as he humanly could. Normally, six techniques weren''t something that he could finish in a short amount of time, especially ever since he got the Mindmirror brain, however, his immense familiarity with these techniques and the fact that he had already mastered the Apprentice-level versions of these techniques made the task a lot easier. He would be able to speed through the training a lot quicker than he would have otherwise. What would otherwise have taken a year could be finished in six months, perhaps even less if he worked particrly hard and efficiently.


    He immediately headed to training. The Martial Union had training facilities that he had already paid to use. He had only paid for some basic aid from assistant staff members who would be aiding him with anything that required more than one person. There were training regimes that required the remote operation of training equipment by another person such as the Outer Convergence and Reverberating Lance techniques.


    He had reached the training facility just as he wrapped his thoughts.


    asionally missing content, please report errors in time.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 475 Training

    The training sessions went smoothly, due to the fact that he already knew how they went. Of course, there were varying degrees of difficulty. The easiest among them was the Adamant Reforging technique. His tolerance of pain had risen tremendously thanks due to the breakthrough to the Squire Realm. The sheer amount of agony and suffering the procedure put him through was shocking.


    The pain hadn''t reduced, but his tolerance of it was high enough that the training phase for the Adamant Reforging training technique was both easy and simple.


    The more difficult techniques were the techniques that had the highest demand for uracy and precision. The most difficult of them all was the Phantom Step technique which required extremely urate and precise timing and cements.


    The Phantom Step technique allowed extremely convincing feints that were so effective that the target of the technique momentarily experienced a brief illusion of the projected motion of the feint. This involved actually beginning the motion but freezing it at just the right moment for the feint to be convincing enough.


    It was the most mentally challenging training phase of them all.


    However, it was only a matter of time before he mastered it.


    And as enough time passed, he did.


    Half a yearter, Rui hadpleted his training.


    "Fuuu..." He exhaled deeply.


    Unadulterated energy coursed through his body. A full-fledged Squire-level aura descended upon the world, dering his presence.


    Rui''s clenched fist tightened as he adopted a striking stance, opening his eyes.


    He was in an uninhabited natural environment. A lush forest surrounded him, peaceful just a moment ago until his power scared the fauna in the vicinity. Yet his eyes were fixed on what was before him.


    A boulder. One the size of a building.


    "Fuuu..." Rui exhaled once more, before inhaling. A surge of power flowed through his body as oxygen rushed across all his cells.


    It was then.


    With the sharpest abruptness, his wound fistunched forward with tremendous speed and momentum. The atmosphere recoiled away in shock as he produced a sonic boom with just the sheer velocity of his motion, exceeding even the sound barrier.


    Yet, that wasn''t the only barrier that he broke.


    BOOM!!!


    The sheer power of the blow was tremendous, with Outer Convergence drawing power from every muscle and directing it into his fist. The power of the impact spread across the entirety of the boulder due to the Reverberating Lance technique.


    CRACK CRACK CRACK


    The boulder cracked, shattered, and crumbled into chunks and pieces that wereunched some distance away.


    Thorough destruction.<novelnext></novelnext>


    "Fuuu..." Rui exhaled as he took it upon himself to inspect his handiwork.


    "How many full-powered attacks would it have taken me to do that when I was a Martial Apprentice?" Rui murmured as he scrutinized the debris.


    Dozens, realistically.


    "And despite just beginning my climb in the Squire Realm, I can already exceed anything I was capable of before with the simplest of ease," Rui murmured.


    He nced down at his palms with incredulity. He had be so much stronger that it was hard to believe, he half-expected to wake up, realizing all of this was just a dream and he was still a Martial Apprentice.


    He nced at his pocket watch, noting the time. "I should get going now, I don''t want to bete to my next rendezvous."


    Ever since he became a Martial Squire, his perspective of time had changed. He was capable of aplishing a lot, especially mentally, in a shorter amount of time. His evolved and elerated metabolism was to me of course.N?vel(D)rama.Org''s content.


    Thus, he was more wary of the passage of normal time.


    He immediately began sprinting back towards the town of Hajin. Right now, he was well outside the town of Hajin in the Drunfil Forest, testing himself in istion. He had only just finished his training and had left the artificial and engineered environment of the training facilities of the Martial Union to test his own power.


    Thankfully, Drunfil Forest was only four hours away by carriage.


    Or about five minutes on foot with exertion for a Martial Squire. The power he gained was certainly the highlight, but the ease of traveling to distant destinations and back was quite amazing. The entire nation was well within his reach with a minor amount of exertion.


    Though, he didn''t return to the town of Hajin. He instead made his way to a remote but barren t in. It was one of the farnds that were not being used for the season.


    Soon, he sensed a presence approaching his location, reaching it swiftly.


    "Rui." Squire Kyrie addressed him. "Congrattions on bing a Martial Squire. It''s truly hard to believe that a little under five years ago you were merely a novice student among hundreds of others."


    "Squire Kyrie..." Rui smiled. "Thank you for epting themission."


    "It is amission." She replied nkly. "You are paying me to be here."


    "Yes, but I know you don''t eptmissions anymore, so thank you for humoring me."


    "It''s not that big of a deal, really." Squire Kyrie dismissed his words lightly. "I can''t say I am not curious. I wouldn''t be human if I wasn''t."


    Rui smiled at those words.


    This would be the third time he would be fighting Kyrie. The first time felt like a lifetime ago, he had just entered the Apprentice Realm and had mastered some weak foundational techniques. The second time urred after he had obtained a significant amount of power, and after he had mastered the pattern recognition viability problem of the VOID algorithm.


    And this would be the third time after he ascended to the Squire Realm. He was still a newbie Martial Squire, as far as techniques went, but he was by no means particrly weak. His Martial body was boosted by the Mind Switch technique that boosted his stamina and allowed him to expend greater energy and power. Furthermore, he still retained other advantages like the Mindmirror brain that aided battle cognition and of course; the VOID algorithm.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 476 Mitigate

    He had chosen that locations because the two of them could go all out and not worry about causing destruction to people and infrastructure. There wasn''t any of either within a decentlyrge radius.


    "Let''s begin then." kyrie adopted a simple bnced stance. "I have a training session to head, soon after this."


    Her stance ced an equal weight on power, mobility, and defense. A neutral, all-rounder stance.


    Rui simply adopted a simr stance.


    The two of them simply maintained a deadlock, staring at each other. The sheer weight of their focus and concentration yielded a pressure that exerted itself on the scant sentient life that was anywhere even remotely close to them in any capacity.


    Birds took flight, and pests and other small critters evacuated as they scurried for their lives. Their battlefield grew truly barren of any sentient lifeform.


    And then, Rui made the first move. He cautiously stepped forward shifting his weight back and forth, making his movements less apparent through their center of gravity. Kyrie simply waited, unfazed, as Rui approached her step by step.


    They were only a few steps away from each other.


    And the first move came soon enough.


    The atmosphere shook as a sonic boom emerged from Rui''s flying hook. Heunched a simple attack, testing her.


    WHOOSH


    Kyrie smoothly evaded the strike, ducking whileunching one of her own with the opposite arm.


    POW!


    He defended her attack by stepping forward and intercepting the blow at the forearm and the wrist. This was amon tactic that was used even on Earth to deal with strikes like the hook. Punches dealt damage via the fist, generally, this could be circumvented by intercepting and blocking strikes at parts of their body asides from the fist but was just as vital to the generation of power.


    He threw a flurry of swift jabs at her, having blocked her attack.


    WHOOSH


    His attacks were quick but she demonstrated remarkable agility and nimbleness as she swiftly evaded all of them.


    Heunched a powerful frontal kick, yet she merely somersaulted away backward in time, avoiding the attack entirely.


    The sheer speed of Martial Squires was such that, in real-time, the amount of timemenced since the start of the battle was no more than a single moment or two. Yet the Martial Artists had alreadyunched and dealt with several attacks. Their metabolism and cognition were so far beyond human limits and even the Apprentice Realm, it was as though they existed in a different level of time and speed.


    Yet, the battle continued. Neither side was nearly going all out. Rui simply observed her Martial Art andbat style as he inputted its properties. He hade to notice details about her Martial Art andbat style that he hadn''t noticed before.


    Back when he fought her in the Apprentice Realm, she hadn''t used her true prowess, not even close. However, how she had begun using her Squire-level prowess, it had be quite clear that she was not a perfect all-rounder.<novelnext></novelnext>


    (''She ces a greater weightage on speed and maneuveringpared to offense and defense.'') He realized.


    Her Martial body leaned more towards speed than power, and this reflected in her techniques as well. However, it wasn''t significant enough to make her a maneuvering-oriented Martial Artist.


    POW POW POW!


    Kyrie managed to cleanly bypass his guard as shended a flurry of jabs on Rui''s abdomen, much to his surprise. With the Mindmirror Symbiote and Primordial Instinct, bypassing his active defense was extremely difficult. Yet, she managed to do so with ease.


    N?vel(D)rama.Org''s content.


    Her power and strike began escting as he did his best to cope. He could sense that she wasn''t anywhere near going all out, yet herbat parameters had already reached a stage where he was struggling to hold on.


    WHOOSH


    Kyrie cleanly evaded a blow from Rui as she moved in,unching a blow with tremendous power and speed toward him. Yet, to her surprise, the blow crashed into an empty image.


    BAM!


    A strong kicknded on the back of her head, causing her to stagger forward. She immediately turned back, a sh of surprise rippling across her face.


    She immediately leaped forward, attempting tond another blow on him. Yet, Rui shifted his head ever so slightly, and the attackpletely missed him.


    Sheunched a flurry of strikes with great speed, yet none of themnded. Rui''s evasive capabilities had suddenly spiked.


    (''I see. This is the same asst time.'') She noted. She recalled that in their previous fight, Rui''s fighting style had changed drastically as the uracy of his movements in their capacity to counter her own had risen astronomically. It was clear that the same thing was urring at the moment.


    "I suppose I should stop holding back." She murmured.


    It was a murmur, yet it hadn''t escaped Rui''s enhanced senses. Primordial Instinct felt a tremendous amount of danger as Kyrie''s aura spiked.


    WHOOSH


    Suddenly, she disappeared in his field of vision.


    BAM!


    An attack of hers crashed into Rui''s gut with tremendous speed and momentum. He grimaced in pain as he did his best to mitigate the damage with Inner Divergence. Yet Kyrie didn''t stop. With newfound speed and power, sheunched an avnche of Squire-level attacks against him. Had Rui not had the VOID algorithm, he would have been mangled from head to toe even before he lost consciousness. However, the predictive and adaptive-evolutionary models saved his life. He managed to move at exactly the right time and in the right manner to avoid the brunt of her power. What he hadn''t expected was the fact that the gap between them was still sorge. However, in hindsight, it wasn''t particrly unusual. She was a veteran with many years of training and battle experience in the Squire Realm.


    Even with the VOID algorithm, he couldn''t ovee such a huge gap in techniques and experience. The best he could do was mitigate it to the best of his abilities.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 477 Outcome

    She had mastered several dozens of techniques, techniques Rui had never heard of or seen before. She was constantly using several techniques at once, at a minimum and that number could rise to double digits very often.


    Her speed was blurringly fast, and it took Rui everything with the VOID algorithm, Primordial instinct, and the Mindmirror Symbiote to be able to keep up. Had hecked even a single one of those elements, he would not have been able to keep up with her, even in a passive position.


    However, he was no quitter. He racked his brain for a path to victory as he desperately defended and evaded her onught. The problem with all-rounders was that they didn''t have an obvious weakness. Thus, there wasn''t a particrly obvious or straightforward avenue that he could exploit in order to gain an advantage against her.


    (''I need to turn the battle into a grappling one.'') Rui knew. The VOID algorithm agreed with him. A grappling battle mitigated the effectiveness of her speed advantage. Of course, as an all-rounder, grappling as far from her weakness, however, would likely end up being a better oue than allowing her to capitalize on her best asset.


    The only problem was that he hadn''t mastered any Squire-level grappling techniques.


    POW POW POW!


    Rui guarded against a flurry of jabs.


    (''I''ll have to go for basic grapples but apply Outer Convergence and hope for the best.'')


    He waited patiently as the optimal moment showed itself. In the meantime, his body had already begun aching immensely as her staggering blows and soon enough it did.


    WHOOSH


    Rui evaded a hook as he crouched, dashing for her hip, using Outer Convergence for power and Wind Breathing for speed.


    BAM!!


    A tremendous and blindingly fast elbow crashed onto his head.


    The sheer impact rattled his head and his brain. Despite all the evolution that he had undergone, he was still very much susceptible to blunt-force trauma.


    He staggered, disoriented, yet before he could regain his bearings:


    POW!


    A swift kicknded on his chin, sealing the deal.


    THUD


    Rui copsed to the ground, unconscious.


    When he woke up, he found himself staring at a white ceiling.<novelnext></novelnext>


    (''An unfamiliar ceiling.'') he thought, jokingly, before getting up and looking around. He was in a medical bay, upied by several other nurses and patients.


    "Squire Quarrier." A voice addressed him. A doctor walked towards him. "d to see you''ve woken up."


    "Where exactly am I?" Rui scratched his head.


    "Within the medical wing of the Hajin branch of the Martial Union, of course." The doctor replied. "I''m pleased to inform you that you''ve made aplete recovery. You have an unnaturally high healing capability for your particr Martial body, by the time you were brought to the hospital, all your physical wounds hadpletely healed. We didn''t even need to administer any healing potions."


    Of course, Rui was not surprised by this. The Mind Switch technique that he had mastered triggered autophagy, which supplied the energy for the higher rate of healing his Martial body had evolved to have.


    "You have ess to the data of my Martial body, doctor?" Rui asked.


    "Of course." The doctor replied casually. "Medical treatment of Martial Squires is moreplicated than that of medical treatment of normal humans due to your evolved and inhuman parameters. We require your personal data in order to ensure you receive personalized medication and treatment."


    Martial Squires had evolved genes, which meant that the field of medicine had to develop an additional branch that allowed them to treat different kinds of Martial bodies. Changes in genes produced changes in the metabolism of the Martial Squire. Ordinary medicine that was not personalized to suit Martial Squires was not only effective but also dangerous and risky.


    "You said I''ve fully healed up, correct? Does that mean I can be discharged immediately?" Rui asked.


    Content ? copyrighted by N?velDrama.Org.


    "Of course, you just need to sign some paperwork and you''re set to go." He informed Rui.


    Rui obliged, and soon he found himself leaving the Martial Union, heading home.


    "I got my ass beat." Rui sighed. He wasn''t surprised, of course. Squire Kyrie may have been retired for quite some time, but physically, she was still in great shape. Furthermore, she was an extremely strong Martial Squire who had been dubbed the Berserker of Hajin. She had also won the Martial Contest when she was a Martial Apprentice of the Martial Academy.


    If the Squire Realm was asrge and wide as the Apprentice Realm, then it made perfect sense. He had only just begun his journey in the Squire Realm, he was still at the bottom of thedder. It was no different from when he first broke through into the Apprentice Realm. Any grade-ten Martial Apprentice would have annihted him with ease. The same could certainly be said for Martial Squires.


    "Her speed and power were ridiculous." Rui sighed. "She didn''t use an enormous number of techniques, but the techniques she did use were extremely potent. Either she mastered some crazy grade eight and nine techniques or..."


    Or she had developed her own personal techniques. Personal techniques that made the best of her own particr Martial body and its unique parameters and quirks. Allowing her to exhibit a level of efficiency that techniques created by the Martial Union, which weren''t customized for her, simply couldn''t.


    (''Maybe I should prioritize individuality a little more than I did before.'') Rui sighed.


    This partly gave him a bit of a goal to aspire to as he continued his training. The primary goal, of course, was to elevate his Flowing Void Style and the VOID algorithm to absolute perfection, if such a thing was even possible, and master it. He would need to pursue his Martial Path deeper.


    He nced up to the sky, closing his eyes. He could see his elevating Martial Path ovepping with the blue sky, illuminated by the brilliant blinding sun.


    "Step by step... and eventually I''ll get there."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 478 Missions

    Of course, the question was; what was the next step, precisely? This was something he had wondered the entire dayter, even after he returned to the Orphanage.


    Normally, after a training stage, he would undergo some missions to gain more experience with the techniques that he had just mastered and solidify his foundation of those techniques inbat with missions.


    This time, however, it wasn''t strictly necessary. Each of these was a technique that he previously used for a long time. Although they were lessfortable by virtue of not being nearly as well suited to him as they were when he was a Martial Apprentice, it wasn''t as though he needed experience using them in battle. That imperative was missing this time.


    Still, he was in favor ofpleting some Squire-level missions. After all, he hadn''t yetpleted a mission since he broke through, and it had been nearly nine months since he broke through. Although Rui still retain a great chunk of all of his earnings from the Serevian Dungeon, he still needed to earn money.


    A mission it was.


    Rui scrolled through his ounter he scrolled through his mission inbox. He had recently indicated that he was eptingmissions again, and he had received some within a reasonable timeframe. However, the rush for him wasn''t nearly as strong as it was when he was a Martial Apprentice.


    Of course, he wasn''t surprised. The answer was obvious.


    He was the most powerful Martial Apprentice of the Kandrian Empire when he had been a Martial Apprentice, however, after bing a Martial Squire, he had once again reached the bottom of thedder.


    The Squire Realm was a different league altogether.


    There were an overwhelming number of Martial Squires who were more powerful than him, more experienced, and more reliable than him. This was a fact that he needed to ept. In fact, newbie Martial Squires like himself didn''t generally receive personalmissions. However, his fame and reputation as a Martial Apprentice were great enough that some of it managed to rub off into the Squire Realm.


    He skimmed past them, examining them.


    [Hunter ss mission: procurement


    Clientele: Ferena Fillisburg


    Target of the mission: One kilogram of herpious limestone.Content ? copyrighted by N?velDrama.Org.


    Location of the target: Fatanuy Hills. [876.5, 60.76] +- 10 kilometers


    Difficulty grade: two<novelnext></novelnext>


    Mission summary: This mission is a hunter¨Css mission that requires the Martial Artist to procure a kilogram of herpious limestone; a solid esoteric crystalline substance. Fatanuy Hills is home to many dangerous creatures that are at the peak of the Apprentice Realm and several active and aggressive beasts that are quasi-Squire-level as far asbat prowess goes, raising the difficulty of the mission to the base of the Squire Realm. The target of the mission is a substance that is rtively abundant across the forest, procuring the desired amount will require the continuous collection of smaller amounts of herpious limestone, increasing the probability of encountering a quasi-Squire-level creature significantly. The procurement of the target can be done via special storage devices that need to be rented for the mission,


    "Hm..." Rui read through the mission summary.


    A hunting mission wasn''t bad to kick him off. It was rtively straightforward and as long as he was careful there was effectively nothing to be feared. A proper Martial Squire would most certainly not lose to a quasi-Squire-level creature.


    This mission was the kind of mission that was too weak to threaten Martial Squires but was far too dangerous for nearly any Martial Apprentice. Thus, it had been ssified as a Squire-level mission. Many of the very low-grade Squire-level missions were only evaluated as Squire-level because Martial Apprentices were too inadequate to handle them.


    It was a good candidate for a mission, still, Rui wanted to take a closer look at some others. He scrolled to the next one.


    [Defense-ss mission: bodyguard mission.


    Clientele: Vintar Industries.


    Target of protection: Supply shipment.


    Location of mission: Trade route from the town of Frentoy to the Kingdom of Farjen. [123.45, 764.3] to [224.6, 564.88]


    Difficulty grade: One.


    Mission summary: Clientele Vinta Industries hasmissioned a Martial Squire bodyguard to escort and protect a supply shipment convoy traveling from the town of Frentoy to the Kingdom of Farjen. The supply route the convoy will be traveling through is the shortest and the quickest by distance, however, it is fraught with danger. The route is home to many bandit gangs that consist of many Martial Apprentices. They often ambush and attack convoys with insufficient protection and deterrence.]


    This mission was different in so far as the fact that it could bepleted by arge group of Martial Apprentices. However, Rui could see why it had instead been evaluated to be a Squire-level mission. Even he would not be able to sessfullyplete this mission as a Martial Apprentice. Protecting something else, especially something asrge as a convoy, was much harder than surviving by himself, which he was confident of even as a Martial Apprentice.


    However, rather than diverting arge number of Martial Apprentices on a singr mission such as this, it was better to evaluate it as a Squire-level mission and leave it to a single newbie Martial Squire. It avoided forcing arge number of Martial Apprentices to go off on a risky mission where a lot of valuable Martial Apprentices would be lost, or waste time if an attack didn''t ur. Instead, it gave a newbie Martial Squire some experience with missions at the bottom of the barrel of Squire-level missions.


    However, Rui wasn''t particrly interested in this mission. No Martial Apprentice in their right mind would attack a Martial Squire, a single attack would mean death or excruciating and incapacitating suffering if they managed to survive. Rui''s arms had been mangled and broken all over due to a single strike, a quick reflexive one rather than a proper attack that too, and he had lost consciousness after beingunched away by the impact through numerous walls of the facility and through several trees.


    It was a particrly painful memory, second only to the Squire breakthrough procedure.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 479 Tame

    Rui skimmed through some other of his personalmissions but ultimately shook his head in dismay. What he was looking for wasn''t there at all. None of these were particrly stimting missions. Ideally, he would have liked to have had a mission that would pit him against another Martial Squire. But he wasn''t quite yet eligible for such a mission just yet.


    He was evaluated to be a grade three Martial Artist in his current state. He was inexperienced withbat in the Squire Realm and had only just re-mastered six techniques. Normally, such a Martial Squire would be graded at grade one, but not Rui.


    For one, he had the VOID algorithm. This technique allowed him to keep up with those withbat parameters much higher than his and even defeat them. Furthermore, he had naturally retained his mental and sensory techniques as well, increasing his formidability thanks to it. Thirdly, his body was above that of a baseline all-rounder Martial Squire. He was stronger, faster and healed faster, and had greater stamina.


    All these factors allowed him to operate several grades above grade one, which he would be without those factors. He didn''t think he would lose even if he were pitted against another Martial Squire, as long as they weren''t too much of a much higher grade than his own.


    Unfortunately, none of his personalmissions could provide him with that.


    That was why he found himself standing in the mission library of the Martial Union, the Squire-level one. If he could find a mission that pit him against another Martial Squire, he would most certainly take it. It wasn''t as though he wanted to fight a Martial Squire because there wasn''t another way that he would be able to fight one, he most certainly couldmission a sparring partner if he wanted to.


    However, there was always arge difference between a sparring partner and someone who was genuinely hostile against you in a fight in the real world. Thetter was a much greater experience than the former. The former usually operated within a certain limit, otherwise, death was usible and that was something no sparring partner would want.


    It simply wasn''t real.N?vel(D)rama.Org''s content.


    He nced around the mission library.


    Even at the Squire level, missions were divided simrly to the way they were divided in the Apprentice Realm; Offense, defense, hunter, shadow, and misceneous sses.


    The best ss to guaranteebat in a mission among all of the sses was...


    (''The offensive ss, without a doubt.'') Rui nced at it, walking over to it.


    Ideal missions in the defense, hunter, shadow, and misceneous missions were those missions that didn''t entailbat and conflict. However, the same could not be said for missions of the offense ss.


    The offense-ss mission necessarily entailed conflict. Which meant that Rui could ensure that he was participating in some form of conflict. All he needed to do was find one that allowed him to fight against a Martial Squire.


    He began skimming through some of the lower-grade missions.


    [Offense-ss mission: elimination mission<novelnext></novelnext>


    Clientele: Frilin Marnen


    Targets of elimination: Apprentice Jurver, Apprentice Gernin, Apprentice Har, Apprentice Vundeg, Apprentice Kernil, Apprentice Seren, Apprentice Axel, Apprentice Meren, Apprentice Kolun, Apprentice Hilos, Apprentice Gringar.


    Location of targets: Kingdom of Gunir, town of Hatchel (65.34, 54.2)


    Difficulty grade: two


    Mission summary: The clientele seeks tomission a Martial Squire to eliminate eleven Martial Apprentices who, on average, are high-grade. The difficulty of the mission arises not from the physical difficulty of killing Martial Apprentices, which is trivial, but fromplications of even a single or two of the target Martial Apprentices escaping the assault in time that most are killed. Orplications arising from the Martial Apprentices learning of their impending fate and going into hiding.]


    "Hmmm..." Rui winced at the mission. He was not interested in mass-murdering Martial Apprentices. It was distasteful, not to mention pointless and boring.


    He skimmed through a few more mission bills at the lower grade, but unfortunately, they were not too dissimr.


    A lot of the lower-grade missions involved an enormouslyrge number of normal humans, requiring him to mass murder many thousands of humans, if not tens of thousands without letting a single one escape alive, or mass-murder arge number Martial Apprentices, or in many cases, capture them instead.


    In hindsight, Rui should have expected this. The lower-grade missions were missions that were not supposed to threaten the life of the Martial Artist undertaking them. The moment a mission involved other hostile Martial Squires, his life would be at threat and the difficulty grade would likely exceed his own grade as a Martial Apprentice.


    Something simr was also the case with Apprentice-level missions, missions at lower grades of the Apprentice level were centered aroundrger groups of humans that no single ordinary human could defeat. It was only at grade four and above that missions could threaten his life, and involve other Martial Artists of the same Realm as the Martial Artist undertaking the mission.


    (''I guess for now I should just level up until I reach a point where I can undertake a mission that involves fighting against other Martial Squires.'') Rui shrugged.


    As long as he gained more experience and demonstrated his abnormal and unnaturalbat prowess, he was bound to be upgraded to a higher grade as a Martial Artist.


    The Martial Union by default ced newbie Martial Artists at extremely low grades regardless of their capabilities. Theck of experience was the main issue. While it wasn''t as though the experience of the Apprentice Realm was useless or obsolete, Martial Squires differed too much from Martial Apprentices, allowing brand-new Martial Squires to fight against experienced Martial Squires was too risky. Rui would need to prove hisbat capabilities and gain some experience withbat in the Squire Realm before he could be eligible to fight other Martial Squires.


    Just as he finished his thoughts, he happened upon an interesting mission bill that caught his eye. A familiar name from the past...


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 480 Old Receipts

    [Offense ss mission: Capture mission? N?velDrama.Org - All rights reserved.


    Clientele: Kandrian Bureau of Investigation


    The target of the mission: Faraday Lowminer


    Location of the target: Kingdom of Violis, a town of Garten


    Difficulty grade: two


    Remuneration: 15,000 Martial credits


    Mission summary: Faraday Lowminer is the founder and former president of Lowminer Industries, a once-reputed andrge esoteric resource supplier in several towns in the Mantian Region. In the past five years, the target of the mission; Faraday Lowminer has been implicated in a variety of crimes, including fraud, tax evasion, ckmail and bribery, assault, and murder conspiracy. The litigation was dyed and stalled due to ack of evidence, however, when the evidence of his crimes came to light, Faraday Lowminer had already left the country illegally, migrating to an orbiter state; the Kingdom of Violis, along with his bodyguard team of Martial Apprentices. The mission objective is to capture and retrieve the target alive.]


    Rui''s eyes rose.


    Lowminer Industries.


    He had not forgotten that name. His very first mission was a mission to protect a girl named Be Hier. He had ultimately failed that mission because he was unable to protect her from the gangs affiliated with the Lowminer Industries, while he held off an assassin sent to kill her.


    Furthermore, in a twisted turn of events he was roped into a mission for the Lowminer Industries bymitting to a mission whose client he hadn''t known was them ahead of the time.


    While Rui was far too consumed with Martial Art to be self-absorbed in the failures of the past, he had never forgotten his very first mission. It was ironically the one mission he remembered the most vividly like he could close his eyes and rey it from the moment he first saw Be to thest time he did.


    Especially thest time. It was an image seared into his memory.


    "...Fate must be smiling upon me." A hint of darkness dampened his expression, as the tiniest of smiles cracked at his cheek. "To think I would get a chance to get revenge this quick."


    Rui had felt the urge to storm into the main branch of the Lowminer industries and wreak havoc and kill the man responsible for Be''s death, but the risks were too high. If he had done that, the Martial Union would eventually dig up something or the other implicating him, just like it did with the Lowminers.<novelnext></novelnext>


    It wasn''t a matter of him making mistake, or not executing it properly. He could conjure up the best n to murder and get away with it, but his knowledge of the forensic and investigative capabilities of the Kandrian Empire was unreliable. He effectively knew nothing about the kind of esoteric technology that the Kandrian Bureau of Investigation employed. It could be that they could narrow down the possibility of techniques that were used in killing a victim, or perhaps even the exact technique.


    Then they could further narrow it down to possible Martial Apprentices and eventually he would likely end up being the prime suspect. Or they could perhaps employ the mental sensory techniques that he was exposed to more than half a year ago to verify that he was truly a Squire candidate. Perhaps they could forcefully verify his honesty and sincerity if they ever managed to pin him as a suspect.


    There was simply too much to risk, and the oue wasn''t worth the risk. Sure, he was mad that he failed to protect Be, he was mad that she died the way she did under his protection, and he was mad that the very first mission he had ever undertaken was his single worst mission to this date by far. But that was it, he wasn''t super attached to Be on a personal level, and he didn''t even know her.


    He didn''t want to ruin his life bymitting a crime. Although Martial Artists were not punished as hard, it was undoubtedly true that it would halt his progression. Especially at a time when his growth was extremely important.


    But this time, this was different. The clientele was the Kandrian Burea of Investigation, and the mission was epted and approved. Meaning both, the Kandrian Empire and the Martial Union were on his side.


    Meaning he didn''t have to worry about anything.


    He looked at themission date and time, the exact time the Kandrian Burea of Investigationmissioned this mission.


    "Three hours ago. Wow," Rui muttered.


    It was an extremely fresh mission. One that came rather quickly. Usually, missions like these would be put out in the library, free to be epted by any Martial Artist that is eligible to ept themission and undertake the mission. However, if it sat out unepted for too long, then it would mandatorily be assigned to a Martial Apprentice.


    The Martial Union could assign Martial Apprentices missions that they were obligated toplete, this was one of the terms of the licensing contract. It was used for important missions that needed to bepleted quickly. One such mission was the offense-ss mission that Rui and his friends were assigned in the Commonwealth Duchy of Vinfrana.


    Rui immediately plucked the mission bill out of the slot of the shelf before immediately heading over to the registrar, quickly epting the mission officially before opening the bill in a corner of the library at a desk.


    "Alright then," Rui murmured to himself. "Let''s see what this is all about."


    He began reading the details of the mission in greater depth. The intelligencework had managed to gain information on the location of the base operations that the former president of Lowminer Industries was operating at. It appeared that he had managed to escape by simply escaping with the immediate liquid and transportable assets of hispany that he had managed to gather before escaping just before the warrant for his arrest was released.


    Rui found it rather surprising that he managed to make it out of the country and sessfully migrate to another country, but it could be inferred that Faraday Lowminer had been preparing for this for a long time, most likely.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 481 Border

    Rui found it a shame that he couldn''t kill the man himself, but the fact that there was a Martialmission to capture and retrieve him from a foreign nation using force meant that whatever his fate was, it was not pretty. He was definitely doomed.


    Rui quickly memorized the intelligence that the Martial Union had gathered. He was particrly impressed that they had obtained the location of the target of the mission this quickly, as expected, the intelligencework of the Martial Union was not to be underestimated.


    There was no doubt in his mind that the intelligence department of the Martial Union had Shadows stationed in every nation that were extremely specialized in sensory and stealth-oriented techniques in addition to a more conventional spywork. These spies'' ability to obtain information was sharp and swift.


    "In the southern region of the town of Garten in the Kingdom of Violis?" Rui remarked.


    The Kingdom of Violis was an orbiter sovereign state of the Kandrian Empire, close enough to fall within the primary sphere of influence of the Kandrian Empire.


    The precision of the location wasn''t high, Rui would need to engage in a bit of surveince and detection in order to find the precise location of his target.


    The mission bill had specified that the Martial Artist needed to have wide-range sensory techniques that would allow them to detect the precise location of the target of his mission.


    That was why Rui was eligible for the technique. With the Mindmirror brain amplifying the Seismic Mapping technique as well as his own enhanced senses as a Martial Squire, his sensory prowess had risen tremendously. As long as the intel wasn''t wrong, he would definitely find them.


    Rui quickly inputted all the data in the mission scroll into his Mind Pce for convenience before heading to the dispatch facility.


    He quickly purchased the basic gear that he needed. The mission was straightforward and the risks were minimal. The only potential problem that could arise was the fact that the Kingdom of Violis did possess Martial Squires. Thankfully, they didn''t possess Martial Seniors, which would make an infiltration of the kingdom much more of a pain and riskier.


    Martial Squires were bad enough, of course, but that was much more manageable. The chances that he would be caught for infiltration were far lower, furthermore, his ability to cope was not low. He merely needed to be careful and the mission ought to proceed smoothly.


    It wasn''t long before nearly everything was done and he could freely dispatch and head off for the mission.


    "Onest signature here, Squire." A staff bowed to him.


    Rui quickly obliged before putting on a mask and setting off.


    The sheer speed at which he could travel was extraordinary, however, within the dense and bustling poption of the town of Hajin. If he ran forward at top speed without care he wouldn''t merely shove them aside, he would leave a slew of mangled corpses in his path due to the sheer amount of momentum his body had.


    That is why he chose to Sky Walk instead of sprint on the ground.


    Rui had familiarized himself with the natural ability of Sky Walking that came with obtaining a Martial body.


    His foot pressed into the air as he stepped on seemingly nothing.<novelnext></novelnext>


    WHOOSH


    His body elevated as he continuously pushed down in a periodic motion rising continuously higher and higher.


    This was one benefit of breaking into the Squire Realm that he did not expect he would enjoy so much. Every single muscle was able to exert an extraordinary amount of force even without a single technique. Once he employed Outer Convergence, he could easily ''step'' on the atmosphere like it was solid, he could swim through it like it was a liquid.Content ? N?velDrama.Org 2024.


    He decelerated as he hovered in midair, exerting just enough force with his motions to float midair and take in the full view of the town of Hajin.


    He felt incredible, almost like a god.


    "This is lit." He nodded, breathing deeply and setting off.


    He employed Outer Convergence and Wind Breathing as he speedily dashed off into the air with severe speed. While it was less restricting and freer, it was slower as far as absolute top speed went. It was easier to travel with solidnd under your feet than on air. However, it did help bypass traffic.


    The kingdom of Violis was south of the Kandrian Empire, Rui had to cross the entire Empire to exit the Kandrian Empire facing south, it was the shortest and straightest route to the Kingdom of Violis.


    It took him five hours to reach the border of the Kandrian Empire. Yet just as he came close to crossing it, he felt a sharp sense of danger. He froze on the spot in midair as a figure appeared before him with tremendous speed from below, hovering in midair before him.


    The woman wore militaristic armor, something that Rui was unustomed to seeing. Her armor bore the insignia of the Kandrian Empire.


    Yet what drew his attention the most was the sharp Squire-level aura she exuded.


    "I am Squire Ranger Vera of the Kandrian Border Patrol Force." She introduced herself with an icy tone. "Your attempt to exit the Kandrian Empire through Sky Walking bypasses departure regtions. This is your first warning, abide by the protocols at all times. We will require you to provide valid identification to us as well."


    Rui sighed at the consequences of his own rash actions as he pulled out his Martial license. Normally, the identification of a document from a non-governmental department was not considered a valid ID, but the Martial Union was different.


    She nodded as she studied the card, before returning it to him.


    WHOOSH


    A thick gust of air smoothly and cleanly carried the ID card over to Rui.


    (''She''s a master of wind maniption techniques!'') Rui inwardly gaped at the precision, uracy, and control over the atmosphere that she had demonstrated.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 482 Arrived

    Rui kept a nk face as he retrieved his ID card, but inwardly he was fanboying over her and her mastery of the wind maniption techniques.


    (''She''s like an airbender!'') He eximed inwardly.


    He immediately wished he had wind maniption prowess as good as hers, but she had surely spent more than a decade as a Martial Artist obtaining her current level of skill. As an allrounder, he couldn''t imagine how long it would take him to obtain that kind of prowess.


    She escorted him to the Kandrian transit port leaving only after he had been admitted into the building. A whileter he exited the Kandrian Empire. Thankfully, the due process needed to leave a country wasn''t nearly as extensive and annoying as the process was on Earth, where effectively half a day could be gone into merely trying to leave a country.


    DASH


    He immediately began running south towards the Kingdom of Violis at top speed. He chose to stick to the ground, it was too dangerous to Sky Walk outside the Kandrian Empire. It drew too much attention and left him too vulnerable and open. Within the Martial Empire, this wasn''t a problem, the probability of anything happening was too little.


    BOOM!


    He elerated, picking up the pace, as a sonic boom rippled across the air. He was sprinting so fast that a sonic cone formed around him, facing the direction he was moving in. The Kingdom of Violis was only roughly five hundred kilometers away from the Kandrian Empire. It took him a little less than half an hour to reach the Kingdom of Violis.


    He stopped some distance away from the border, scoping out the area with Seismic Mapping. Ever since he broke through to the Squire Realm, the same sensory techniques that he had carried along to the Squire Realm had all grown in all parameters. Even from a distance, he could urately gain an understanding of what it was like on the other side of the wall.


    (''There''s too many people in the vicinity of this section of the border.'') Rui muttered inwardly, unhappy.


    He had no intention of entering the country legitimately. Faraday Lowminer had demonstrated that he was a careful man, considering the fact that he sessfully managed to leave the Kandrian Empire and run away from the consequences of his crimes. The possibility that he had a way to be alerted when a Martial Squire from the Kandrian Empire entered the Kingdom of Violis was not low.


    The border was barricaded by a simple wall, as the intelligence provided by the Martial Union told him. Unlike the Kandrian Empire, the Kingdom of Violis couldn''t afford to dedicate too many resources to border security due to its poverty andck of necessary resources.


    The Kandrian Empire was rich and loaded enough to have a much more secure border barricade, resembling a fortress than the mere wall the Kingdom of Violis had to make do with. The Kandrian Empire had the Kandrian Border Patrol Force that Rui had run into, which maintained border security, capable of detecting and stopping a Martial Squire from leaving the country unauthorized. The Kingdom of Violis only had small lookouts stationed at distant intervals.


    Rui could easily escape their surveince with his speed alone, that wasn''t a concern. He just needed to make sure he was infiltrating a part of the country that didn''t have too many witnesses.


    (''Found it,'') Rui eventually stumbled across what he wanted after he circled around for a bit.


    WHOOSH<novelnext></novelnext>


    In the blink of an eye, he had already closed the distance and leaped over the wall, maintaining extreme caution.


    He had long put on a Mind Mask that suppressed all sense of threat and pressure that he, as a Martial Squire exerted on sentient life, reducing him to a normal seventeen-year-old boy. He had already memorized the map of the Kingdom of Violis, so he knew exactly where he needed to go.


    He didn''t draw any attention to himself by running at superhuman speeds, he quickly cloaked himself with arge cloak, so that his Martial Union would not be visible while wearing arge hat, tipped over to reduce the exposure of his appearance. His mask would give away his status as a Martial Artist, after all.


    The Kingdom of Violis was warmer and had more humidity than the Kandrian Empire, which was colder, having been higher up north.


    The towns of the Kingdom were reflective of the economic standing of the Kingdom itself. The infrastructure was more elementary, less sophisticated, and less well-maintainedpared to the town of Hajin.


    Despite his desire to mesh in, he inevitably drew attention. It was clear that he was a foreigner.


    Of course, Rui didn''t expect anything else, nor did he care. It was enough that he wasn''t identified as a Martial Artist. The Mind Mask technique was a lifesaver in times like these.


    Because the pace of his traveling had slowed down, traveling to the town of Garten, the town where Faraday Lowminer was supposed to be basing his operations, was taking time. Rui needed to travel for a longer period of time to reach where he wanted to.


    Of course, when traveling through remote routes with no human presence, he could simply sprint and pick up the pace.


    It took him a whole day before he finally reached the town of Garten.


    "Alright then," Rui muttered. "Time to get to work."


    The town was a bustling one, full of energy and vigor. It made it easier for him to move around without drawing attention, something he was grateful for.


    He knew the base of operations of Faraday Lowminer was in the southern part of the town, he needed to figure out a way to sniff the man out, capture him and, ideally, his band of Martial Apprentices as well, and drag them to the Kandrian Empire.


    Rui closed his eyes as heputed a list of courses of action he could take to dig out his target.


    This chapter upload first at  Content ? N?velDrama.Org 2024.

 Chapter 483 Approach

    The simplest and most straightforward method was a direct and head-on approach of manually interrogating the townsfolks, asking them about the men he was pursuing.


    Of course, he immediately scratched that course of action out of his mind. It had a low probability of seeding and a high probability of alerting Faraday Lowminer of his presence. If he realized that someone was in town looking for him, then he would simply vanish like the wind, in all likelihood.Content ? N?velDrama.Org 2024.


    Thus, Rui had to take a more indirect approach to capture.


    (''First, what would lead me to him in the first ce?'') He asked himself.


    He could either obtain the information directly by extracting the information from someone who did know his exact location or indirectly by following a trail that would lead him to Faraday. No matter how well he hid, as long as he was running an operation of any kind that made him money of any kind, he was inevitably connected to arrows that pointed in his direction.


    Even if he distanced himself from everything, he would need people managing his operations on his behalf. These people would most certainly be required to be physically at the site of the base of operations, overseeing inventory, schedule, supplies, processing, and shipments. The base of operations could be tracked via the influx and outflux of funds, and the influx and outflux of goods.


    However, this was the avenue of intelligence gathering that the intelligence department of the Martial Union was responsible for.


    And so far, they had done a good job with the intelligence that they had managed to obtain.


    Faraday Lowminer had already long set up the foundation for a base of operations in another state even before he escaped the Kandrian Empire, ording to the intelligence that the Martial Union had provided to Rui.


    The man had not hurriedly set up a new base of operation but simply went all-out with an existing base of operations.


    The intelligence that the Martial Union managed to dig up was more specific, of course. The man had set up a drug trafficking and selling business. The esoteric kind, the kind that was illegal and heavily penalized.


    It made sense, he was once in the esoteric resources-supplying industry, the legitimate one. He had no choice but to delve into the underworld once he was ousted by the Kandrian Empire.


    The Kandrian Empire had an extradition treaty with almost all states in the geographic surroundings of the country. Meaning he couldn''t just travel to another state and set up shop and continue with a legitimate business. He would either need to travel extremely far to do that, in nations he had very little exposure to and understanding of. Or choose to remain in a part of the Panama Continent he was more familiar with.


    The Martial Union had done a good job trying to narrow his location down soon after his escape, meaning his n hade close to failing. The intelligence department could easily narrow down his location by tracking exchanges in funds and tracking down the movement of the illegal esoteric drugs that he was receiving and supplying.<novelnext></novelnext>


    However, that only worked as far as narrowing down the general location of his base of operations. It took more time to pinpoint it.


    Rui did not intend to try and aid the intelligence gathering by following in their footsteps. While analyzing the flow of money and drugs was certainly useful, he wouldn''t be able to add much value as dedicated experts and specialists were already on the job.


    Sure, he wouldn''t be useless, but was it really his most effective and efficient way to find his target?


    (''The intelligence analysts can do what they do best, I intend to do the same.'')


    His operations weren''t the only way he could be traced.


    The fact that he had a band of Martial Apprentices was another opening through which Rui could trace his location. Rui could easily detect whether a person was a Martial Apprentice or not. Furthermore, the Kingdom of Violis most certainly did not have anywhere near as many Martial Apprentices as the Kandrian Empire.


    The town of Garten was unlikely to contain arge number of Martial Apprentices. As long as hetched on to each of them one by one, he would inevitably have found himself on a trail back to his target.


    Rui intended to go down the list of all Martial Apprentices in town that he detected and verify whether they were one of Faraday''s men. If it was true that Faraday''s base of operations was based in the town of Garten, then it was quite likely the case that all of the Martial Apprentices were also inhabiting the town of Garten.


    It wouldn''t be quick or easy, but it was quite a reliable n. He hadputed several other ns as well, of course, but given his circumstances and capabilities, none of them were nearly as reliable as this one.


    Furthermore, it was a n that extremely few Martial Squires, including Rui, couldplete. The n would require the ability to sense Martial Apprentices within a reasonably wide area, otherwise, it would take far too long and was far too unreliable. Rui was able to sense Martial Apprentices within a wide area thanks to the presence of both Primordial Instinct and the Mindmirror brain augmenting it. There were very few who could urately detect Martial Apprentices over a wider area the way Rui could.


    Even if some of the Martial Apprentices that Faraday was employing had high stealth capabilities, it wouldn''t matter because there were several others who Rui could use to lead him back to Faraday. There were very few things that could go wrong with the n as long as Rui was careful and cautious.


    He immediately began solidifying the details of his approach as he fleshed out the n. Details such as how would hee to eventually verify whether a Martial Apprentice he was tracking was a target or not, or how far he should track them from, and other important details.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 484 Profile

    Rui immediately got to work. He hit the missionmencement button on his mission tracker device as he traveled across town.


    The town of Garten was a highlymercial location. However, unlike Hajin,merce did note fromrger corporations conducting organized business. Most of the market wasprised of smaller-scale businesses and entrepreneurs of various kinds.


    There were a lot of flea markets of various kinds and different areas for different kinds of goods. The poption and energy were high, resulting in a lot of chaos.


    (''An ideal ce to run an illegal drug distribution operation.'') Rui noted.


    Illegal activities illicit less attention in chaotic circumstances. The fact that there was so much happening at all times was the perfect cover for an operation like the one Faraday Lowminer was engaging in. Isted and shady hideouts were unreliable because they couldn''t do a good job hiding the base of operation of a certain drug distribution operation.


    Martial Artists would sniff out the location of the base of operations in a heartbeat with no difficulty if the base of operations urred in a distant but isted and shady location.


    On Earth, there were no sensory techniques, and although there was sensor technology that allowed investigators andw enforcement to pinpoint location to a surprisingly high degree, it wasn''t as effective as Rui''s sensory capabilities, for example.


    Thus, a better solution than hiding was actually disguising. Hiding could be ovee in a straightforward and brute force fashion because they could be directly sniffed out, but disguising bypassed that because you didn''t where what you were looking for was actually amidst the things you were searching.


    Considering how much of a wide area the chaotic nature of the small business and entrepreneurmercial part of the town spread, Rui could easily see why the Martial Union had had a little troubling it down any further.


    He had already begun looking for Martial Apprentices within the area just as he had nned. Furthermore, he had already formed a system by which he either confirmed that a particr Martial Apprentice was or wasn''t a Lowminer.


    If Faraday was as careful as Rui suspected him to be, then it was quite likely that each of the Martial Apprentices maintained a very low profile even when they were in traveling themercial part of the town, especially when they were traveling outside their base of operations.


    That meant it was unlikely that they would talk loudly or make noise, it was quite likely that they had something obstructing their appearance, and it was quite likely they would avoid picking fights or engaging in any kind of conflict.


    This already was a pretty decent way to focus on the Martial Apprentices that were more likely to have a connection to the Lowminers. Of course, this was necessarily absolute, but there was quite a high probability that they would be instructed to minimize the amount of attention they drew. Of course, as a Martial Apprentice, the people immediately near them would be able to pick it up, but by minimizing his emotional expression, he was able to reduce the attention he drew.


    Unlike Rui, of course. Even as a Martial Squire, he could only reduce his presence all the way down to an ordinary seventeen-year-old boy, he could even go further beyond and truly minimize the attention he drew. He had taken the initiative to do so.


    It was especially ideal in a scenario where the chaos in the environment made it so that he was effectively invisible.


    He had already dialed Primordial Instinct and Seismic Mapping to the absolute maximum. The former sense quickly gave him the threat level of each person even in his general area. An overwhelming majority of people gave him zero sense of danger.<novelnext></novelnext>


    The entire town could gang up on him and he would still feel unperturbed. Even as a Martial Apprentice, humans were entirely obsolete unless they were amped up on potions or were using some kind of technology.


    Suddenly, his senses perked as he felt a greater, but ultimately still insignificant, amount of weight from one particr individual that entered his sensory range as he kept walking forward.


    (''Martial Apprentice.'') Rui rejoiced as he walked toward the source of the pressure subtly.


    The man was drunk, causing a bit of a scene before everybody.


    "You messing with me punk?" He slobbered, holding a young man up by his cor.


    The Martial Apprentice had loud and ostentatious clothes, he hadpanions who looked more like servants than acquaintances or friends. The food and beer he had consumed were also not little, furthermore, they each had their own saddled horses.


    (''Rich kid who somehow managed to discover his Martial Path.'') He sighed. Partly because the probability that the Martial Apprentice was of the Lowminers was quite low. If the Lowminers were stupid enough to have someone this unreliable as a part of their drug operation then they would have long been caught.


    Furthermore, Rui quickly deduced that he was most likely the heir of a wealthy and influential family. His garments were of much higher quality than what Rui had observed in the market, and the fact that he had servants and a horse was also indicative of his status, yet their light belongings andck of other goods indicated short-distance traveling. That coupled with the fact that he was being an insufferable prick for no reason was also consistent with the profile that he would expect from someone with that background.


    Rui made sure that there were no prying eyes that could be watching with Primordial Instinct and Seismic Mapping, before returning his attention to the drunk idiot before him.


    Time slowed down in his perspective as he leaped forward with extreme speed.


    WHOOSHContent ? N?velDrama.Org 2024.


    TAP


    He simply jabbed lightly with a karate chop at the neck of the Martial Apprentice as he crossed to the other side.


    THUD


    The man copsed like a puppet cut from its strings, earning the surprise of the crowd. Rui had moved so fast that even a crowd was far too slow to perceive him and catch an image of him.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 485 Decision

    Even as a Martial Apprentice, he was blindingly fast to normal humans, as a Martial Squire, normal humans were so slow in his eyes that they were no different from statues. It was as though he gained the ability to slow down and freeze time. Knocking him out without anyone noticing was an extremely simple and easy task.


    The crowd didn''t even suspect a thing.


    "He drank himself out."


    "The young master is a wretched drunkard who abuses his power."


    "Well, at least he didn''t hurt anybody this time."


    Those words affirmed Rui''s deductions about the man. He was clearly a local and a resident of the area, most certainly not a neer Martial Apprentice associated with the Lowminers. It seemed even his drinking and harassment weren''t umon.


    It was an odd sight to Rui. Yet it showed him how much better the Kandrian Empire was. Martial Artists weren''t allowed to run around hurting people with impunity. While it was true that the sentencing penalties for violence were light, this wasn''t because of ss privilege, but it was because Martial Artists were a crucial part of the state and were too important and valuable to be wasted rotting behind bars for a decade.


    Of course, this didn''t mean they got away scot-free. They usually signed an agreement with the Martial Union or the Kandrian government where they worked free of cost for certain degrees of limited freedom, depending on how severe their crime was.


    This was the way that the Kandrian government and the Martial Union punished Martial Artists that crossed the line while also exploiting them for free Martialbor. It was a ruthless but clever system that squeezed Martial Artists of their value. Not only were no resources wasted in imprisoning Martial Artists in special prisons meant to withstand even the massively superhuman power that Martial Artists were capable of exerting, but positive utility was obtained from such an arrangement.


    The only reason Martial Artists didn''tin was that the deal was still much better than being imprisoned. Thus, it was ultimately a win-win for everybody involved.


    The Kingdom of Violis was much different in that regard, it seemed. For half a second, Rui considered killing the Martial Apprentice, yet quickly reigned in that thought. It drew too much attention, especially as the young Martial Artist appeared to be the son of someone important. It might also alert his target.


    He immediately walked away from the scene inconspicuously, before resuming his search.


    The good thing was that there wasn''t arge poption of Martial Apprentices for him to have to work with. Of course, this was to be expected.


    The rate of breakthroughs of human beings into the Apprentice Realm was one in a thousand, roughly speaking. Only 0.001% of the poption of a country was a Martial Artist, after all.


    In time, he ran into yet another.


    Content ? N?velDrama.Org 2024.


    This time, the chances were much more optimistic. He maintained a decently low profile, did not employ his power recklessly, and did not draw attention unnecessarily through any other means.


    (''This seems like a good shot,'') Rui thought optimistically. He memorized the man''s seismic signature and began tailing him from a distance. Thankfully, he could tail him even with arge distance between them thanks to Seismic Mapping. There was absolutely no risk of being caught for tailing him due to the sheer distance between them.


    The man took his time, slowly navigating through the bustling crowd. Yet to Rui''s surprise, he was heading away from themercial areas of the town, heading closer up north. To Rui''s dismay, this reduced the probability of him being associated with the Lowminers.<novelnext></novelnext>


    And he was proven right.


    The man entered a residential area and eventually walked into a house. He was greeted by a woman carrying a child. Rui sighed as they exchanged embraces, walking back down to the south of the town. The man was clearly a local, and not someone who had migrated to the country extremely recently.


    He ran into a lot of duds, far more than he had expected.


    Some of these Martial Apprentices were earnestly shopping, others weremissioned to act as a bodyguard by a client, escorting her around as she shopped.


    Rui had almost given up hope when he detected one more Martial Apprentice just up ahead in the distance.


    It was only after he made he got a glimpse of his face did his eyes widen.


    A masked man, one that looked nearly identical to the one that had separated Rui from Be on his first mission many years ago.


    (''That bastard...'') Rui''s eyes narrowed.


    He hadn''t expected that he would verify a member of the Lowminer gang this fast after detecting a Martial Apprentice.


    (''I''ve hit the lottery. I just need to follow this guy back to wherever he goes and I''ll find the base of operations of the Lowminers.'')


    Rui had no intention of letting him go. He would lead him to the base of operations, and he would pay for making Rui fail to protect Be Hier.


    Rui was on max alert as he made sure to follow the Martial Apprentice from a distance as inconspicuously as he possibly could. He wound about through the alleys of the bustling marketce before he entered the flowering district. Arge group of shops with flowers and bouquets set up on the top.


    (''This is it.'') Rui nodded.


    This ce was it. Not just because the Martial Apprentice had entered it, but also because Rui could sense an undergroundyout with activitying from under through Seismic Mapping.


    He was about seventy-percent certain that this ce was the actual base of operations or one of the bases of operations. It had a limited undergroundyout that probably served as the inventory for drugs


    But Rui wasn''t primarily interested in the base of operations as much as he was interested in the ringleader, who actually was the target of his mission.


    (''Alright then...'') Rui wondered. (''What exactly to do now?'')


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 486 Interrogate

    There were several courses of action that he could take. The first one was, of course, the most straightforward course of action. He could just storm in and start interrogating the people running the show.


    But the odds were high that that would alert the target of his mission before Rui actually reached him. First, he would be assuming that the people there were actually aware of the location of their ringleader. Second, even if they were aware, he needed to be careful of how he extracted the data from Faraday''s men. It was risky.


    Even if he killed all of them after interrogating them, there was a high chance that Faraday would find out about the leak and would immediately scram, making Rui''s job even harder.


    The probability that the target of his mission was waiting at this location was, of course, unlikely. Rui was rtively certain this was merely the location where the drugs were sold and distributed. The actual location where they were received and processed was likely not at this particr location, which was clearly just amercial outpost.


    (''Barging in is risky.'') Rui noted. (''I should nab a Martial Apprentice and interrogate him separately.'')


    It didn''t take long for the masked Martial Apprentice to leave the flower shop. Rui waited for the right moment.


    WHOOSH


    One moment the Martial Apprentice was simply walking minding his own business, and the next moment he was gone.Content is property ? N?velDrama.Org.


    A few random people who were near him turned, and nced at the spot he was just at in confusion, before shrugging and going on about their day.


    In a distant remote alley away from themercial district, Rui dropped the man to the ground. Although Rui had moved extremely quickly, the Martial Apprentice had still struggled to break free from his grip while they were moving. Too bad that in front of him, even a grade ten martial Apprentice was no different from a childpared to a sports athlete.


    The Martial Apprentice dashed away the second he was dropped to the ground, yet Rui simply tore off his Mind Mask.


    "Freeze." He said calmly.


    The masked Martial Apprentice froze on the spot as if forcefully halted by a powerful force.


    Fear was a powerful force.


    The grand aura and force of a Martial Squire descended upon the area as the masked Martial Apprentice shivered in his spot.


    He knew that Rui could kill him with the slightest exertion of effort.


    "You," Rui spoke in Kandrian. "You''re of the Lowminers, aren''t you?"


    The Martial Apprentice stiffened as he realized what all this was about.


    "I know you''re not sticking with the Lowminers out of sheer loyalty. Faraday Lowminer must be paying you heftily to earn your services. The question is whether whatever he''s giving you is worth your life." Rui told him.


    The Martial Apprentice didn''t reply, but he understood where Rui was going with this.


    "I have an ability that can allow me to detect whether you''re lying or being honest," Rui told him. "I can urately determine what is true and what isn''t."


    In reality, it wasn''t that convenient. With Primordial Instinct, Rui could gauge emotion and intention in normal people to a certain degree. He could tell the difference between the sincere truth and aplete lie, but when things were a mix of both, he had no idea what was the truth and what wasn''t.


    "You will answer my questions truthfully. If you lie, I will inflict horrific suffering on you. I won''t let you die. You will suffer at my hands and at the hands of the Kandrian martial Union until you spit out the truth. This doesn''t need to happen if you speak the truth. Is that clear?"


    He nodded nervously.<novelnext></novelnext>


    "Alright then." Rui calmly asked him. "Where is Faraday Lowminer?"


    There was a moment of silence before the Martial Apprentice opened his mouth to answer Rui.


    "He''s at our main base of operations, in an underground base that poses as a homeless shelter on the surface."


    Rui processed the information that the Martial Apprentice gave him as he carefully studied the man with Primordial Instinct.


    (''Sincere... Hm,'') Rui noted. "Where is this homeless shelter?"


    "A little south of themercial districts." The man quickly ratted out.


    (''So it was even further south than we suspected, while he certainly did use the chaoticmercial districts as a way to distribute drugs without attracting much attention, I suppose it''s not feasible to have their main base in such a popted area.'') Rui realized.


    "Give me an address, be as precise and urate as you can," Rui told him calmly.


    He carefully eyed the man as thetter spat out an address, as well as somendmarks.


    "You''re lying. Trying to throw me off?" Rui snorted.


    "I''m telling the truth!" He eximed, repeating the address again, being more descriptive this time. Rui kept pushing him despite that.


    SNAP


    "AAARRRGH!" The Martial Apprentice cried out loud as Rui casually broke his arm with a single hand. "I''m not lying!"


    "Hm..." Rui stared at him.


    In actuality, Rui sensed a lot of desperate sincerity from the man, he just wanted to make sure there was absolutely no avenue for him to lie whatsoever.


    "Last question," Rui told him. "Do you remember the assassination of Be Hier?"


    His eyebrows scrunched in confusion, wondering why Rui randomly brought up something of that sort.


    He nodded slowly, nervous.


    "Do you remember the Martial Apprentice you fought?" Rui asked with an icy tone. "The one you attacked, fought, and separated from Be Hier?"


    More confusion, more nodding.


    "That Martial Apprentice had been too weak to fight and protect his target back then, hadn''t he?" Rui said, looking at the sky, before turning back to him. "What do you think he would do to you if you were standing before him after all that time?"


    More confusion followed until the Martial Apprentice had a scary realization.


    He turned towards Rui in fear, but a jittery shiver flew down his spine.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 487 Infiltration

    He stared at Rui with fearful eyes. Rui calmly returned his stare with an icy one of his own.


    "ACK!" He choked as Rui grabbed him by the neck.


    "I know it was no more than an assignment for you." Rui strengthened his grip. "I know it wasn''t personal for you."


    He brought the man''s face closer.


    "But honestly?" Rui asked. "I don''t give a damn."


    "...!" The Martial Apprentice''s face grew red. He felt as though his head was going to burst. He struggled desperately, trying to pry Rui''s hands off his neck while kicking Rui with all the Apprentice-level technique he could.


    In vain, of course.


    His measly attacks couldn''t even budge Rui even when he wasn''t using any Squire-level defensive techniques.


    The Martial Apprentice''s eyelids fluctuated as his vision blurred.


    The brain tended to automatically shut down when blood flow to it was shut down for more than seven seconds.


    Rui clenched his grip, squeezing down hard.


    SNAP


    A Martial Apprentice''s body was fundamentally human, barring the brain. Rui didn''t even need to use Outer Convergence to snap his neck with ease, killing him on the spot.


    THUD


    He dropped his body to the ground, sighing.


    (''Not the most rational decision.'') He had enough self-awareness to realize that wasn''t the best decision he could have made. Maybe the Martial Apprentice had mastered some mental technique that allowed him to fool Rui''s Primordial Instinct. Maybe the location that he had given Rui was wrong and fake, and he sessfully fooled Rui using that technique.


    In that case, Rui should have kept him alive in case the location was wrong so that he could extract the real location from him.


    Of course, it wasn''t likely, but Rui was normally quite careful on missions.


    This time, however, he had acted irrationally.


    He sighed, shaking his head. He quickly scoured the man''s body, finding some cash and amunication device, both of which he took. There was nothing else of value on the corpse.


    He raised one foot up in the air.


    THUD!!Content is property ? N?velDrama.Org.


    His foot struck the ground, cratering past the soil. In an instant, he had created a crater several meters deep, tossing the corpse in it. Within five minutes, he had buried the body in soil and hadpletely covered it, and ttened the ground.


    "Alright then." He pped his hands, dusting them off. "Time to set off."


    First, he updated the Martial Union on the intel he had acquired, through themunication device. It was necessary to keep them in the loop as soon as he got ess to new intel, a policy that ensured that Martial Artists did not die before conveying valuable intelligence to the Martial Union.


    He turned, facing south. That was where the location of the homeless shelter was.


    RUMBLE!


    The very ground shook as he dashed away at incredible speeds. The air recoiled as a sonic boom sted through it.


    Twenty seconds, that''s how long it took him to reach the location that the Martial Apprentice had given him.


    The homeless shelter part appeared to be urate, this was a good sign. Rui could sense arge number of people within the warehouse, huddled together. It was a cramped location. Seismic Mapping detected an undergroundyout as well, whose only entrance was at the center of the shelter.


    There was no reason to hesitate.


    He ignored the odd stares that the people inside gave him. He was clearly not one of them. There appeared to be helpers who aided the needy, they too threw confused looks at him. Rui simply ignored all of them as he headed toward the entrance to the underground facility.<novelnext></novelnext>


    "Hey." A man stopped him. "Who are you and where the fuck do you think you''re going?"


    A bunch of armed guards stopped him.


    "I''m here to kill Faraday Lowminer." Rui simply replied.


    He studied the looks of shock and anger that emerged on their faces. Their reactions supported the im that the target of his mission was here.


    THWACK


    Rui simply waved his hand across the two guards, killing them instantly.


    All hell broke loose as themotion attracted the attention of the rest of the security team.


    He simply tore off his Mind Mask and watched them all freeze in fear, studying their reactions. He was trying to gauge how confident they were in their defenses.


    "Hm..." He dashed forward, running through them like they were light curtains. Deeper inside the facility was what appeared to be a locked section. Rui could sense the tunnel leading underground behind the gates.


    BAM!


    He broke through, shocking the many people within.


    Inside was arge opening into the ground that inclined downwards. There were storage vehicles that entered and exited the tunnel. There were many men loading and unloading boxes, filled with drugs no doubt.


    The guards immediately raised their muskets and other projectile weapons, yet they never had a chance to fire them.


    Rui simply disappeared from their vision.


    He was already running down the tunnel.


    "Deep." He murmured.


    A security block soon entered his vision, they manually checked all the iing vehicles, before letting them pass. Amongst them was a man in what appeared to be a suit, overseeing the security team.


    POW POW POW!


    Rui killed all the security guards in the briefest of moments. It happened so man that the security head hadn''t even realized what had happened until after Rui killed all of them.


    "You''re the head of security?" Rui asked him in internationalnguage.


    He tried pulling out a musket, pointing it towards Rui. Yet he shivered his knees buckled. Rui took off his Mind Mask, drawing out his primal fear.


    "Where is Faraday Lowminer?" Rui coldly asked.


    The man pointed with a shivering finger down the block.


    (''Good, he''s here.'') Rui nodded. "How many Martial Apprentices does he have?"


    "S-Seventeen." The man gulped.


    Not a small number.


    "How many Martial Squires?"


    "N-None."


    "You''re lying." Rui scoffed.


    CRACK


    "AAARGH! It''s the truth!" The man sobbed, caressing his broken arm.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 488 Drag

    In actuality, he wasn''t lying. Rui just wanted to make sure.


    "Where is he exactly?" Rui growled.


    "H-He''s in his office, at the very end of the underground warehouse." He managed to squeeze out.


    Just then, the armed guards from above that he had simply zoomed past had finally caught up, having rushed downhill at top speed.


    Rui tossed the man outside, but he couldn''t be bothered dealing with them. Why waste time killing people that he could simply avoid? It''s not like they could do anything in the first ce. His goal was primarily to capture and bring back Faraday Lowminer, and secondarily to bring back the Martial Apprentices alive, if possible.


    Of course, he had killed one of them already, but he didn''t care too much. He didn''t mind not perfectlypleting the mission in order to regain some revenge.


    They fired at him, but the various bullets and arrows were too slow to be able to tag him. Or hurt him if they did hit him. He just disappeared from their field of vision as he headed further down.


    "Hm?" His senses pricked as he faintly felt a heavy presence at the edge of his field of senses. The type that only Martial Apprentices could dish out.


    He immediately happened upon a storage facility where men were unloading and docking boxes into the storage room. It was immediately evident that his ce served as the inventory for the drug operation. However, his attention was most fixated on the two Martial Apprentices he had happened upon.


    They immediatelyshed out against him, yet they simply froze when he unleashed his Squire-level aura. To a Martial Apprentice, Martial Squire''s bloodlust aura was no different from a Martial Apprentice''s aura to normal people.


    In fact, when Squire Cae Freelia unleashed her aura upon Rui and his friends in the Commonwealth Duchy of Vinfrana, only Rui had broken out of the fear it generated while his friends were still paralyzed.


    Rui didn''t even need to bother anymore with interrogations, he had already gotten close enough. Furthermore, there were plenty of Martial Apprentices that were huddled around in a somewhat small area and a single human.


    (''There he is'') Rui sighed in relief.? N?velDrama.Org - All rights reserved.


    POW POW!


    He knocked the two Martial Apprentices out, before administering to them a potent drug that would leave them knocked out for twenty-four hours. He ignored all the human workers, they didn''t even register to him.


    Even an army of ordinary humans had a perfect zero chance of defeating him.


    He headed towards the area where he could sense the many Martial Apprentices huddled.


    BANG!


    He kicked open the door.


    Nine people turned their attention to him.


    Of the nine of them, six were Martial Apprentices, they were frozen, having sensed that their opponent was a Martial Squire.


    The other three were normal humans, two of them were clearly natives of the Kingdom of Violis judging by their facial features which were generally distinct from that of Kandrian natives.<novelnext></novelnext>


    And the man at the center, who was hurriedly packing up a suitcase with money and some files, simply stared at him with a grim expression.


    It was him.


    Faraday Lowminer.


    He looked a little different from the image that the Martial Union had provided him. He looked wearier and older. But there was no doubt in Rui''s mind that this was the man he was looking for. The man who had gotten Be killed and had caused Rui to fail his first mission.


    "Faraday Lowminer." He addressed the man with a calm voice despite his emotions. "As authorized by the Kandrian central government, I''m here to escort you back to the Kandrian Empire where you will undergo a trial for the charges levied against you by the Kandrian Bureau of Investigation."


    The man gritted his teeth. "I''m going nowhere! Attack him!"


    Only one of the six Martial Apprentices managed to break free from the oppressive fear that Rui generated in all of them. He was a particrly powerful Martial Apprentice, judging by the weight of his mind and the fact that he broke through.


    Yet before he could even take one step forward.


    POW POW POW POW POW POW!


    Rui shed past all of them, and a single strike knocked all of them out.


    STEP


    He was just before Faraday Lowminer, staring deeply into the man''s eyes. "You''re going to pay for your many crimes."


    Before the man could even open his mouth, Rui had already stuck the syringe needly into him, injecting him with a drug. The man copsed on the spot.


    Rui wanted to ensure he didn''t get provoked to kill him by mistake, so he quickly dosed the man so that there was no chance of that.


    He quickly drugged the Martial Apprentices. Before using the highly portable bags to tie the drugged Martial Artists and the target of his mission into them.


    He turned back to the two other humans that had remained frozen since the very start. They weren''t Kandrian citizens and while they were guilty of crimes, they had not vited thew of the Kandrian Empire within the territory of the Kandrian Empire.


    He simply ignored them.


    When he was walking up, he didn''t receive any resistance. In fact, he hardly ran into anybody. However, he wasn''t surprised. The guards and workers here weren''t extremely loyal, once Rui had shown how formidable he was and they had finally understood he was a Martial Squire, they ran away like the wind, knowing that this drug operation was doomed.


    Not that Rui cared. He had obtained what he came for and didn''t really care much for the small-time crooks that were involved in this operation. It just made his job easier, he would rather not mass murder if he didn''t need to.


    He dragged his targets out, this was the boring part of the mission. Hauling the targets of his mission to the nearest Martial Union office. Thankfully, he did not need to manually drag them back to the Martial Union, handing them over to the Martial Union office would seal the deal.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 489 Charged

    "We have sessfully acquired the targets of your mission, Squire Quarrier." A woman wearing a uniform with the emblem of the Kandrian Martial Union told Rui, bowing. "Thank you forpleting your mission."


    Rui nodded. "Will there be any problems with handling the Martial Apprentices and getting them back to the Kandrian Empire?"


    "Not at all." She politely responded. "The Martial Apprentices will be carefully monitored by a team of experts who will ensure they remain sedated. We have an extradition treaty with the Kingdom of Violis and there are many channels that the Martial Union has established for smugglingrger goods in and out of the Kingdom of Violis."


    Rui nodded in response.


    "Is there anything else, Squire?" She asked politely.


    "Not at all, I''ll be taking my leave then." Rui nodded.


    "I bid you farewell then." She wished him.


    He left the branch office of the Martial Union soon after, breathing a sigh of relief. He had finally gotten something off his shoulders after this long, he felt like a weight had gotten lifted off of him, leaving him more refreshed and at peace.


    On the way back, he pondered the mission he had justpleted.


    (''Certainly one of my smoother missions.'') Rui noted.


    He had an incredible sess rate as a Martial Apprentice, failure was extremely rare. Of course, this didn''t mean that the mission itself was too easy, it was just about right for its grade. The actual arrest was the easy part, the investigation and location of the target of the mission were the harder part. The mission deployed a Martial Squire to extract and return an escaping charged criminal back to the Kandrian Empire the moment his location was determined.


    Of course, normally, the intelligence gathering was done by the intelligence department of the Martial Union. But Rui took the matters into his own hands and made more progress in a few hours than they had made in a week, thanks to the resourceful and effective means of acquiring intelligence that he hade up with.


    He didn''t expect anything other than a perfect evaluation from the Martial Union.


    THUD


    Hended after jumping over the wall that ran along the perimeter of the country, before running back towards the Kandrian Empire casually. Just like when he set out for the Kingdom of Violis from the Kandrian Empire, it took him only half an hour to reach the Kandrian Empire.


    He quickly entered the Kandrian transit port before undergoing the brief protocols that returning Martial Artist citizens needed to go through before finally setting foot into the Kandrian Empire.


    Once in the Kandrian Empire, he could sky-walk without any problems at all. It was only when he was outside the Empire that the risk of taking to the skies and making yourself an open target was a risky move.


    "Ahhhh..." He sighed as he treaded through the atmosphere. He couldn''t get over just how pleasant it was to freely traverse the skies. One of the most primal desires of man was to fly, after all. It was that desire for freedom that led to the birth of the ne.


    The ability of Martial Squires and Martial Artists of higher Realms to be able to aplish that with raw physicality alone dampened the marvel of that feat in this world. However, there did indeed exist means of traveling through the sky via esoteric technology. Of course, he had never seen such means of transport himself. What were the principles and mechanics by which this technology operated?


    Such thoughts centering topics that intrigued him shed around in his mind all throughout his return to the Mantian Region and the town of Hajin.


    Eventually, he reached, descending to the Quarrier Orphanage. There were several figures in the garden.<novelnext></novelnext>


    "Max, Mana." He called out. "How''s it going?"


    "Big brother!" They cooed when they saw him descending from the air. "You can fly?!"


    Rui chuckled, recalling he hadn''t yet told them that Martial Squires could sky-walk. "Just a trick."


    "Why don''t you teach us how to do that?" Max asked innocently.


    "Maybe when you''re older," Rui suggested with a wry smile.


    "Are you going to overlook our training?" Mana asked.


    "While I am here, of course." Rui turned to the third figure in the backyard. "I trust their training has gone well?"


    "Yes, of course, Squire Quarrier." The Martial Apprentice bowed, expressing respect. "They certainly have potential, as well as the drive."


    Rui hadmissioned a Martial Apprentice with training experience to overlook their training while he was gone. The entrance exam for the Martial Academy was half a year away and he wanted to increase the intensity and quality of their training. It was especially necessary to hone their mental fortitude which required a Martial Artist.


    That was one of the core responsibilities that the Apprentice trainer was burdened with. She was to train and build the mental fortitude of the siblings by exposing them to greater mental strain as time passed, among other things.


    Rui quickly scanned their bodies, observing the changes they had undergone in the past few months. Their muscle tone had increased to what Rui would consider an optimal level. It wasn''t too little where the power they generated as well as their durability were both too low, nor too much where their flexibility and agility suffered too much.


    They had the bodies of fighters.


    "Hm..." Rui nodded.


    Of course, this was just the bare minimum.


    "Let''s see how much progress you''ve made," Rui told them. "Come."


    The two children grew excited as they adopted their stances. Mana adopted a lighter stance with her center of gravity localized and close, hopping and bobbing on her feet. Max, on the other hand, nted himself on the ground, positioning his legs to maximize the amount of power they could generate.


    Rui smiled. "How scary. Looks like I might not be able to hold back."


    "We''re going to make you fight hard, big brother!"


    They charged at him together.


    This chapter upload first at  ? N?velDrama.Org - All rights reserved.

 Chapter 490 Reunion

    Mana was an agile and flexible fighter while Max leaned more toward power and durability. Their approaches inbat reflected that. Mana reached Rui the quickest before throwing a flurry of quick and light jabs, testing Rui''s reaction to them.


    Rui lightly blocked them, redirecting them away. He was nning on limiting himself to human-level power, about what one would expect from an ordinary seventeen-year-old boy.


    Max followed through quickly, throwing a powerful blow.


    WHOOSH


    Rui simply avoided the blow as he sidestepped, spiraling out of the way.


    The two of theshed out after Rui, attacking together. What impressed Rui was the fact that the two of them could not only attack him simultaneously but do so in a manner that did not detract from each of them individually.


    They either utilized as much space as they needed around Rui to be able to simultaneously attack without getting in the way of the other to any degree. Other times, they would attack from the same direction but time their attacks rapidly after each other''s, making it more difficult to defend against the relentless onught that they generated.


    They had developed a respectable degree of coordination, just as Rui had hoped.


    One of the things Rui had hoped was that by developing a good degree of coordination with each other, they would have a higher chance of cracking the entrance exam of the Martial Academy. Individually, they would have a very hard time, it was very rare that someone their age applied for the Martial Exam and even rarer that they would sessfully pass.


    The only thirteen-year-olds who had passed in their batch were Kane, who was already a Martial Apprentice by then, and Rui, who was... well, Rui. Both of them were far from the norm without a doubt.


    Rui carefully analyzed theirbinedbat strength as they tried their best to take him down. While it was true that they had good teamwork, that alone wasn''t particrly special. It wasn''t like teaming up to crack the entrance exam was unheard of. Hell, Rui himself had teamed up with Kane in the second round of the entrance exam.


    He intended to harden their training as time passed. Particrly, he wanted to ensure that their defensive and evasive prowess was solid, it would lower their chances of suffering grave injury or, in the worst-case scenario, death. He didn''t particrly care too much if they didn''t manage to crack the entrance exam, they had five more attempts as they progressively grew older and stronger.


    A few hourster, the two of them were t on the ground, entirely exhausted and drained.


    "Man, in the end, we couldn''t even properly attack a single attack on him!" Maxined.


    "It was to be expected, he''s a Martial Squire." Mana sighed.


    "The two of you did quite well for your age," Rui told them. "Keep training hard, you two."


    He turned to the Apprentice trainer that had been spectating the training spar. "Please look after their training."


    "Of course, Squire Quarrier." She bowed respectfully.<novelnext></novelnext>? N?velDrama.Org - All rights reserved.


    He nodded before heading back in.


    "RUIII!" Alice greeted him first, as always, yet this time she wasn''t too happy. "You''ve been home for hours yet you didn''te to greet us! Hmph!"


    Rui smiled wryly as he scratched his head awkwardly. "My bad. I''ll greet all of you immediately next time."


    "As you should!"


    He spent a few days hanging about with his family. It was always a good break mentally when he could spend time with them, a natural soother and rxer. If not for his family, he would have no speed breaks that forced him to slow down and appreciate the finer aspects of life.


    A few dayster, he returned to the town of Hajin. However, it wasn''t to pick another mission, not immediately, at least.


    "Show off," Kane grumbled as Rui sky walked down to them.


    "Sky Walking is always a sight to see." Fae sighed, earning a nod from the others. Hever, Dalen, Milliana, and Nel were present as well.


    Rui smiled at his friends. "It''s been quite some time all of you, nearly a year."


    It wasn''t easy meeting them because everybody was busy, consumed in training orpleting missions. Right after he broke through to the Squire Realm, he needed to immediately dive into Squire habilitation to get ustomed to his power. He hadn''t been able to meet his friends after due to conflicting schedules. Most of them had been away on a mission while the rest had been in the middle of training.


    Immediately after that, Rui spent half a year in training and had undertaken his first Squire-level mission soon after. He was grateful that they had finally gotten together after that long.


    "So, how''s it all been going?" He asked.


    Kane shrugged. "It''s been going good. Good enough, honestly."


    "How''s living truly independently been working out for you?" Rui asked. He had, of course, been exchanging messages with Kane, so he knew that his n had been sessful enough. Joining the Wind Sect within the Lightning Sect had given him the power to be able to live independently. With the sheer talent that he undoubtedly possessed, he was quite a valuable asset to any Martial Sect. He had leveraged his value to be able to resist the Arrancar Family''s im over him.


    The Arrancar Family was led by a vaunted Martial Sage, leader of the Fire Sect. It was no longer as simple a matter for the family to reim him, and the Lightning Sect was a Martial Sect of equal power and influence as that of the Fire Sect. It could not allow the Fire Sect to tantly steal one of its most valuable Martial Apprentice assets not only because it would vite the only condition that Kane had provided to them, but it would also make them look weak, hurting their prestige and their ability to recruit Martial Artists.


    "Better than I expected." Kane grinned. "The Martial Academy was alright, but this is way better!"


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 491 Technique

    "Of course," Kan added. "It still makes me dependent on the Lightning Sect for protection against being coerced against my will to rejoin my family, but hey, we''re getting there."


    "Indeed." Fae nodded. "I am particrly impressed that your n actually seeded."


    "It won''t be that easy breaking out of the Arrancar Family''s grasp, you know," Dalen told him.


    "I know," Kane replied. "But there''s a limit to how far they are willing to go."


    "Perhaps," Hever replied calmly. "But that limit is likely much higher for someone like yourself. You''re no ordinary Martial Artist. With your talent, you''re a precious boon that any Martial Family would kill to have."


    Kane sighed. He was aware of that, it would be much easier to cut ties with his family if they didn''t give a shit about him.


    "You should just fight them if they try holding you back." Nel snorted.


    Kane snorted, ignoring him as he turned back to Rui. "Well, putting that aside..."


    He studied Rui from head to toe. "So this is you as a Martial Squire, huh? You don''t look or feel any different."


    Rui chuckled. He had sealed the pressure that they would experience with the help of the Mind Mask, he didn''t want them to change their behavior with him now that he was a whole Realm of power above them. "I''ve taken some measures."


    "What was the experience of breaking through like, I''ve wondered." She stared at him with interest and curiosity in her eyes.


    "Painful," Rui replied immediately.


    Silence befell the group as they processed his simple yet scary answer.


    "Like... breaking bones painful? Stubbing your tow painful? Or worse? Like stepping on lego painful?" Kane asked nkly.


    "No no, it''s not nearly as bad as stepping on lego, obviously." Rui shook his head. "But it was pretty bad."


    The two of them exchanged a chuckle as Fae rolled her eyes. "I''m serious, you have to tell us more about the experience."


    Rui scratched his head awkwardly. The information regarding the breakthrough to the Squire Realm was ssified and not something Martial Apprentices were privy to until they fulfilled the conditions for Squire candidates.


    Partly because the actual information itself was strategic intelligence that was highly relevant to the Martial power of a nation. Rui was vaguely aware that the discovery of the Martial body set the foundation for the higher Realms of Martial Art, though he wasn''t aware of any details.


    He sighed. "It''s not that I don''t want to tell you, it''s because I can''t."


    There was also the fact that if their Martial Art hadn''t reached maturity, then there was a chance that their lust for the power that the breakthrough to the Squire Realm would grant them would warp their Martial Art. Instead of their Martial body catering to their Martial Art, their Martial Art might cater to the ideal Martial body that they may desire.


    Fae sighed. "I expected as much. Every Martial Artist of the higher Realms has unterally refused to tell me any meaningful information about the breakthrough to the Squire Realm, and what it is that actually separates Martial Squires from Martial Apprentices."


    She turned back to face Rui. "It''s because we aren''t Squire candidates, correct?"


    Rui sighed in relief, if they were aware of the concept, then it was easier to refuse them. "Correct."


    "Would you tell us if we became Squire candidates?" Hever asked thoughtfully.


    "If you became Squire candidates then you would be informed by qualified experts trained to exin to Martial Apprentices like yourselves about the breakthrough condition to the Squire Realm, you won''t need to hear it from me," Rui exined.<novelnext></novelnext>? N?velDrama.Org - All rights reserved.


    "Don''t care about that." Nel snorted, interjecting abruptly. "How strong have you be?"


    Rui smiled at the hint of battle lust that shed through his eyes. "Stronger than I ever thought I would be."


    "Show me." Nel grinned.


    Rui sighed. "In time. You should focus on attaining that power rather than challenging those that already have it before acquiring it yourself. How much stronger have you gotten."


    "Way stronger." He grinned. "I would crush the old you!"


    "That''s quite remarkable." Rui smiled, amused. "You must be close to Squire candidacy, right?"


    He shrugged silently.


    "Each of us has fulfilled at least one of the conditions of Squire candidacy," Fae told him.


    "That''s good to hear." Rui nodded, before pausing. "Ah, I need each of you to contact me when you reach Squire candidacy."


    "Why''s that?" Kane asked curiously.


    "I have an Apprentice-level technique to give to each of you," Rui told them.


    They all threw confused expressions at him.


    "It''splicated." Rui sighed.


    He wanted to get all of them to master the Mind Switch technique. Specifically, the version of the technique that he had mastered. Triggering the neurological and metabolic phenomenon associated with hunger via pain. This would increase their stamina very naturally and organically, allowing them to ultimately obtain a stronger Martial body.


    "You said ''give'' us a technique." Fae frowned at his odd wording. "As in, a technique of yours and not something in the Martial Academy."


    "Sort of." Rui scratched his head awkwardly. "It''s a personal modification of a technique that exists in the Apprentice library."


    "Why not give it to us now instead of after we be Squire candidates," Dalen asked thoughtfully.


    "Mmm..." Rui wasn''t sure how much to tell them. "Let''s just say it has something to do with the breakthrough to the Squire realm."


    "I don''t do techniques." Nel snorted.


    "You do training techniques, however." Rui pointed out. Nel was not averse to any training technique that naturally made his body''s natural physicality greater. He had no problem with conditioning techniques that increased his body''s natural toughness. Autophagy was a very normal and natural phenomenon, thus it wouldn''t sh with his Martial Path.


    "Will it make us stronger?" Nel asked.


    Rui smiled. "Much."


    "So you''re telling me..." Kane summed up Rui''s instructions. "...that you have an Apprentice-level technique that you modified to make you much stronger as a Martial Squire. A technique that the Martial Union and other Martial Squires don''t have?"


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 492 Selfish

    "Is that skepticism I hear in your tone?" Rui chuckled.


    The rest of them just stared at him with mixed emotions. If anybody else from their batch of students in the Martial Academy had told them that they had altered an Apprentice-level technique at the age of seventeen and created a technique that allowed them to be much stronger as a Martial Squire, through means that even the Martial Union did not know, they would have called him a conman and walked away.


    But not when that person telling them this was Rui Quarrier.


    While Rui''s Martial prowess was one of his most impressive assets, they knew that at the core of all of his uniqueness and absurdity was his exceptional mind. By his ounts, he had learned to speak, read and write at astonishingly young ages. His performance in the evaluation of his mental parameters of the evaluation exam they had undergone after joining was the single highest recorded performance in the history of the Martial Academies.


    Each of them had many anecdotes about his mind. Be it his impable analyses and deductions, or his ridiculously urate predictions and decision-making. The most absurd feat was the one he performed time and time against, the most frequently, that was the creation of abat style designed to have the highest probability of victory against his opponent.


    None of them could even begin to fathom how such a feat was even possible, yet it was bread and butter for Rui.


    Thus, despite how scam-ish the im sounded, it could not be dismissed when the one uttering it was Rui.


    "Look." Rui cated them. "If it doesn''t work out, it doesn''t work out for you. It can be undone so there''s no issue. Of course, I guarantee you it works, but there is very little to be lost if it doesn''t. I took that risk because the benefits were too good, and it paid out extremely well."


    "Alright, I''ll do as you say." Kane shrugged nonchntly. He was the closest to Rui among all of them and knew him better than any of the others.


    "Count me in!" Nel grinned.


    The others soon followed suit. Rui''s intentions and credibility were trustworthy enough.


    "Still, why not give it to us now." Kane wondered.


    "I might be able to give it to some of you, depending on whether the time is right." Rui scratched his chin.


    He was afraid that by giving them a technique outside of their Martial Path before their Martial Art reached maturity, he might mess up their Martial Art and hinder their progression to obtaining Martial maturity.


    Of course, some of them had achieved Martial maturity like Kane, and he had already left the Martial Academy so the others wouldn''t find out even if he mastered it.


    "I might be able to give it to you right away Kane... and also..." He turned to the silent Milliana. "You as well."<novelnext></novelnext>


    This surprised all of them. They had assumed that the reason he couldn''t give it to them was that they weren''t strong enough yet. Yet he had also given it to Milliana, who was the weakest of all of them.


    "Me?" She asked with a surprised expression.


    "Yes, you."


    "Why me?"


    "Because you''re suited for it," Rui replied.


    Her Martial Path was centered around stamina, thus regardless of whether her Martial Art had achieved maturity or not, giving her the technique would not cause any problems. Although it was a mental technique at its core, it was quite low-grade. With Rui''s modifications, it was a stamina training technique more than anything else.


    As long as she had the perseverance needed to get past the torture that the training entailed, she would receive a significant boost to her stamina.N?vel(D)rama.Org''s content.


    Furthermore, there was another benefit to giving to Milliana. He wanted to avoid making the others think he was showing some kind of favoritism by teaching it only to Kane, who was his best friend. By choosing Milliana, who he wasn''t very close to at all, he was indirectly proving to them that he wasn''t being driven by personal bias.


    "You have to keep it a secret for now, however," Rui told them. "It would be a pain in the ass if others found out."


    "The Martial Union has ess to the techniques that we master, I ought to remind you." Fae pointed out. "They would certainly find out about the technique, isn''t it better to tell them about the technique and gain some special benefits and credits in return?"


    Rui smiled. It was not easy to exin his motivations. The problem was that the principles of the technique stemmed from the human anatomy of his previous life. While Martial Artists did create new techniques, it would be nearly impossible to convince them that the mechanics of the technique are legitimate. After all, how could a seventeen-year-old Martial Squire know more about the human body than even the top experts of the Martial Union?


    He needed proof that the technique was effective, and for that, he needed empirical data. He needed to establish a corrtion and causation between his personalized Mind-Switch technique and superior Martial bodies.


    That was perhaps the more selfish reason he was giving the Mind Switch technique to his six friends. Once they mastered the technique, and if they reached the Squire Realm, then they would be the proof that Rui needed to substantiate his ims.


    Once he proved to the Martial Union that his technique was indeed revolutionary, then the benefits he would gain in return for submitting the principles, mechanics, and a refined training regime for mastering the technique would be enormous. After all, he would be responsible for making the new generation of Martial Squires of the Kandrian Empire superior to those who came before.


    Of course, while he was using them to his benefit to a certain degree, the primary reason he was giving them the technique was for their sakes, especially Kane, who needed power more than the rest of them.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 493 Mission

    The seven of them conversed for nearly an hour before they needed to disperse, after all, they were all preupied with their own matters. Everyone but Rui and Kane had returned to the Martial Academy.


    "Keep in touch, Kane," Rui told him. "I''ll send you the details of the technique soon."


    "I already have a bunch of techniques I''ve chosen to work on at the moment." Kane shook his head. "I''ll let you know when I''m open to learning it."


    "Sure, will do." Rui nodded. "See ya."


    "Bye." They exchanged a handshake and a hug before setting out in their own directions.


    Rui set out for the Martial Union. He had taken enough of a break in the past few days and intended to get back into grinding through missions. He needed to build up experience in the Squire Realm, experience that he was sorelycking.


    He was especially keen because he didn''t yet have any genuinebat experience in the Squire Realm. He had sparred against some Martial Squires, but he did not have any experience engaging in actualbat against a hostile Martial Squire or a Squire-level beast. Something he intended to fix as soon as possible. However, missions involving other Martial Squires came at and above grade four, thus he had to upgrade so that he ran into missions of a higher grade.


    Soon enough he found himself standing in the Mission library of the Martial Union. He immediately walked to the offense-ss section of missions in the library. Out of all sses of missions asides from perhaps the hunter ss, the offense ss of missions was the ss of missions that had the highest likelihood of actualbat. The mission involved actively attacking the target or targets of the mission.


    As long as he ground and cleared the missions with impable perfection, the Martial Union would have no choice but to raise his grade as a Martial Artist. It was a simple but straightforward n.


    He immediately began browsing through the missions, running into a few interesting ones.


    [Offense ss mission: Elimination mission.


    Clientele: Frindul Sentar


    Target of the mission: King Fujilin Verine


    Location of the target: Royal Pce of the Dermile Kingdom


    Difficulty grade: 3


    Mission Summary: The client seeks tomission a Martial Squire to eliminate King Fujilin Verine, the King of the Kingdom of Dermile. King Fujilin Verine is perpetually guarded by an borate security detail consisting of more than a dozen of the mostpetent Martial Apprentices of the Kingdom Dermile, each being no lesser than grade ten, causing the difficulty of the mission to reach grade three.


    Missionmencement: Immediate]<novelnext></novelnext>


    "Wow." Rui''s eyebrows arched. "I''m holding the mission bill for amission to assassinate a king?"


    He immediately plucked the mission bill out of its slot, smiling widely.


    (''This must be the first time I''ve chosen a mission this quickly.'') Rui smirked.


    He immediately proceeded to the register counter, duly filling up the paperwork needed to officially ept the mission. Soon enough, he was seated at a table with the mission bill in his hands. He had already gotten the gist of the mission, he wanted to process the background and all the details.


    The first thing he learned was that the clientele was merely an ordinary butler that served in the government of the Kingdom of Dermile. ording to the intelligence provided by the Martial Union, the butler was merely a personal servant of Minister Riunge Hurut. She was the Finance Minister of the Kingdom of Dermile, and also the true clientele that hadmissioned the mission.


    "Interesting..." Rui murmured, absorbed in thought.Content ? N?velDrama.Org 2024.


    The fact that she had her butlermission the mission under thetter''s name instead of her own suggested a degree of caution and prudence. It was a sign that she did not trust the Kandrian Martial Union''s data security. After all, if the official details of themission contract were leaked somehow, she would be implicated.


    Furthermore, the, albeit few, restrictions of the contract would not necessarily bear down on her since she was not the contractor, officially. Of course, the Martial Union would not let such technicalities slide, officially or not, it was still cleaner than being officially involved.


    Of course, this wasn''t a particrly unusual urrence, but usually, these means were employed by criminals and other shady figures that had reason to hide from the Martial Union while still requiring the services of Martial Artists that the Martial Union liaised for.


    There were risks to such a method, making someone else the official contractor meant handing over a lot of power and authority in regard to the matter. If the official contractor wanted, they could cancel the mission against the real client''s wishes and the Martial Union would unhesitatingly cancel it.


    The fact that the finance minister sent a personal butler meant that this wasn''t an ordinary employee of hers, meant that this was someone whose loyalty could be trusted.


    (''Or someone whose loyalty is coerced.'') Rui noted, before moving on. While he liked knowing as much about his client as possible, it wasn''t the most important information.


    The mission bill went a bit into the target of the mission as well. King Fujilin Verine was a greedy tyrant who had been draining the capital and resources of the already small and impoverished Kingdom of Dermile for his own personal greed. So much so that the GDP, the gross domestic product, had actually reduced noticeably due to his reckless and selfish expenditure of the capital he drained from his citizens.


    His death would end that, and that was likely the motivation of the mission.


    (''Great.'') Rui nodded. If he had to get his hands dirty, he would rather do it for a better cause rather than a bad one.


    He quickly moved on to the details regarding the security and protection assigned to the king, which was actually the most important detail of the entire mission bill. While he was confident of winning regardless of what the Martial Apprentices were like, he still wanted it to be as clean as possible.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 494 Meeting

    The Kingdom of Dermile, like the Commonwealth Duchy of Vinfrana, did not possess any Martial Squire or Martial Artists of higher Realms, thus the strongest Martial Artists in the kingdom were Martial Apprentices. The twelve Martial Apprentices assigned to the king''s immediate security and protection were elite. They were almost all grade ten Martial Apprentices by the Martial Union''s evaluation, barring two grade nine sensory Martial Apprentices.


    Furthermore, their specialties were well-picked. There were three mid-range specialists, five close-range defense ss Martial Apprentices, and two close-range offense specialists. A reasonable bnce between protection and counter-offense to eliminate any threat to the king.


    Meaning it was absolutely impossible for a Martial Apprentice toplete the mission. Frankly, Rui didn''t think even back when he was a Martial Apprentice could seed in attacking and killing the king in a direct head-on attempt. If he was still a Martial Apprentice, he most likely would not be able to crack the sheer amount of defense and counter-offense that the king possessed.


    (''This would be much harder than when I was ganged up on by the anti-me teams that the three super-nations had put together in the Serevian Dungeon.'') Rui mused.


    Back then, he had been attacked by ten Martial Apprentices, and he had won using the chaos of the war. He had also spent a huge amount of time just trying to survive, whereas this time he would need to actively break through and directly overwhelm twelve powerful Martial Apprentices.


    Of course, it wasn''t impossible, but it didn''t particrly matter.


    (''Because I''m no longer a Martial Apprentice, I''m a Martial Squire.'') Rui smiled.? N?velDrama.Org - All rights reserved.


    Martial Apprentices were simply not a threat to him unless he was beset by many dozens of the strongest Martial Apprentices with perfect coordination and teamwork and well-bnced Martial Art.


    He quickly brushed up on all the other details that he needed to know, adding all of them to his Mind Pce. There wasn''t anything left to do, the mission was supposed to bemenced immediately, and the clientele had requested a meeting with him prior to themencement of the mission.


    He quickly headed down to the utility department of the Martial Union. This was the ce where Martial Artists purchased the necessary gear and equipment needed for their missions. Rui had grown ustomed to purchasing stocks of the standard regr necessities.


    "One Skydrop healing potion and four Sunspark rejuvenation potions please," Rui told one of the attending staff of one of the potion stores.


    Unlike the Martial Art library, this department wasn''t filled with products that were developed and owned by the Martial Union and Martial Artists. The Martial Union was not involved in the industries and sectors surrounding the gear and equipment that Martial Artists generally used. After all, almost all of them had no exclusive connection with Martial Art.


    Anyone could use a potion, anyone could use apass, a monocr, rope, etc. In fact, a vast majority of the consumer market for these items were not Martial Artists, which were only a small portion of the consumer market.


    Thus, the Martial Artists purchased the things they needed, as rmended and mandated by the Martial Union from other private and public manufacturers.


    The Martial Union allowed thergest and the most poprpanies and brands to set up a branch outlet inside the utility department of each Martial Union branch., allowing Martial Artists to be able to purchase the equipage they needed for their mission out of reach of prying eyes that could use the potentially sensitive information maliciously.


    Rui even wore his mask for good measure when procuring cheap but useful potions from a popr brand.<novelnext></novelnext>


    And soon enough, it was time to be dispatched. Rui filled up some of the registration and checkout paperwork before setting out in the direction of the Kingdom of Dermile.


    The Dermile Kingdom was three hundred kilometers northwest of the Kandrian Empire. It was a great distance for ordinary humans, a significant distance for Martial Apprentices.


    But for a Martial Squire like himself, it wasn''t more than a warmup.


    Fortunately, the border of the Kandrian Empire through the shortest route to the Kingdom of Dermile was also quite close.


    He immediately took to the air, escting as he stepped higher and higher, basking in the euphoric sensation that sky walking gave him. The only disadvantage of sky walking was that it was slower than walking on solidnd, far slower. He could not travel massive distances in a very short amount of time like he did when he was on the ground.


    Still, considering the fact that the Kandrian Empire was too popted to run too fast withoutmitting mass murder and that he really enjoyed sky walking, he didn''t mind the dy. King Fujilin was certainly going nowhere, not until Rui killed him himself.


    It was only after he passed the transit port, wisely not sky-walking past the border to run into the Kandrian Border Patrol Force, that hended on hard ground.


    BOOM!


    The very atmosphere recoiled as a sonic boom rippled past it. He sped at such a rapid speed that the ground, along with the sound barrier, broke with every step.


    A little under fifteen minutes.


    That''s how long it took him to reach the Kingdom of Dermile.


    He saw the paltry fence that ran along the perimeter of the Kingdom of Dermile. It was a pitiful and sorry excuse for border security, even a child could infiltrate the country. He simply walked past it, not even bothering to avoid breaking it as he simply trampled it under his feet.


    If the Kingdom itself didn''t give a fuck, which should he?


    He quickly infiltrated and put on his mind mask, reducing his presence to that of an ordinary seventeen-year-old boy. Before traveling to the location where the clientele had requested a meeting at. Although the request hade from the official client, Rui had no doubt that he would be meeting his true client in this meeting.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 495 Ignorant

    As Rui had expected the location of the meeting was not the personal residence of the finance minister. He looked around when he arrived, noting how remote the location was. There was not a single soul anywhere within his senses to be able to pry on their meeting.


    (''No one except...'')


    He turned to his right. Seismic Mapping had picked up a ratherrge horse-pulled carriage traveling in his direction. As it got closer, Primordial Instinct picked up the presence of Martial Apprentices within the carriage.


    Rui walked over towards it as the door opened and a man walked out.


    He was the official client, the butler of finance minister Riunge Hurut. He walked towards Rui cautiously as he sized him up.


    "Mister Frindul Sentar." Rui addressed him. "I am the Martial Squire who epted yourmission. What is it you wish to discuss with me in this meeting?"


    "Please provide me with the verification code for the mission." The man cautiously asked.


    Since Martial Artists did not directly eptmissions face-to-face with the client and immediatelymence the mission then and there, there was a necessity to verify that Martial Artists were the registered Martial Artists of certain missions that they had epted. Thus, the Martial Union had a verification system where a random verification code would be supplied to both the client and the Martial Artist.


    Rui simply pulled out a card and handed it over to the man, who carefully studied it for some time before nodding. "The Madame is awaiting you inside."


    He escorted Rui to the carriage gesturing to him inside the carriage. Within the spacious cabin of the carriage were two Martial Apprentices who stared holes into as he walked in, taking his seat opposite to the three figures inside.


    "Pleasure to meet you, Squire Falken." She told him, initiating the conversation.


    In order to protect the identity of all Martial Artists, they had the option of choosing an alias to be conveyed as the identity of the Martial Artist epting a particr Martialmission. Of course, this only applied to public Martialmissions, the ones that were ced in the mission libraries. It did not apply to personal Martialmissions from clients who knew his identity and wanted tomission him because of his identity.


    "Pleasure to meet you, Minister Riunge," Rui told her as he studied her. She was quite beautiful, but her sharp and fierce dark eyes drew away any attention from her aesthetics. She was intimidating, and Rui felt that it was best to not earn her ire if possible. "You wanted to speak to me?"


    "Yes." She nodded. "There are very few things I wanted to rify."


    Rui simply waited for her to continue.


    "It pertains to the means by which you willplete the mission." She paused, before continuing. "I wish to confirm the means by which you will go about it."


    "It''s rather simple," Rui told her. "I will simply straightforwardly infiltrate, either throughnd or through the sky, and kill the target and those who stand between me and him."


    She had a remarkable poker face, but Rui could sense surprise, confusion, and skepticism with the help of Primordial Instinct. Her twopanions were much less subtle about it.


    "Hmph." The one on the right snorted.<novelnext></novelnext>


    "You n to straightforwardly attack?" The one on the left questioned him with a raised eyebrow. "Did the Kandrian Martial Union not provide you with information on the security measures surrounding King Fujilin Verine?"


    It was Rui''s turn to feel confused. Were they trying to insult him? Or were they really ignorant of how much stronger a Martial Squire was than a Martial Apprentice?


    (''Oh wait... They actually might be that ignorant.'') Rui realized. Unlike the Commonwealth Duchy of Vinfrana, the Kingdom of Dermile did not ever have any history of ever having birthed a Martial Squire. The Commonwealth Duchy of Vinfrana had retained extensive documentation on the capabilities of Martial Squires, but even that was missing here.


    Of course, they knew Martial Squires were stronger, but they did not entirely understand just how ridiculously superior Martial Squires were to Martial Apprentices.


    (''Wow... Fucking country bumpkins.'') He stifled a chuckle, feeling a little bad for finding their ignorance a little funny.


    "The twelve Royal guards that are always within immediate reach are extremely wrong." She told him with a neutral-enough tone, maintaining a cordial atmosphere.


    "I''m a Martial Squire." He simply said. "I''m quite strong."


    This further irritated her aids. They seemed personally invested in this operation, rather than employed Martial Artist bodyguards. They were also clearly envious of his status as a Martial Squire and felt insulted when he treated Martial Apprentices as insignificant.


    "If you infiltrate straightforwardly you will have to deal with the pce guards who are also quite elite, all by yourself." She told him. "You might want to consider another course of option. I have some sugges-"


    "With all due respect, minister." Rui cut her off, losing patience. "I don''t tell you how to manage the national treasury of your nation, I would appreciate it if you didn''t tell me how to do my job."


    ? Her eyes narrowed but the two Martial Apprentices lost control and stepped up.


    "What did you say punk?"


    "Apologize to her excellency for your rudeness."


    Suddenly they choked as the atmosphere grew perilously taut. A maelstrom of mind-bending pressure erupted from Rui as he ripped off his Mind Mask. The full might of the fear he generated in all those of a lower Realm crashed into them.


    A terrified expression appeared on minister Riunge''s face as her poker face disappeared. The carriage rocked as the horses panicked.


    The very next moment, the pressure disappeared.


    The two Martial Apprentices copsed to the ground, sweating bullets as they realized that the Martial Artist before them could extinguish their lives with a wave of his hand.


    To her credit, minister Rinuge regained herposure quite quickly, even quicker than the Martial Apprentices. The very next second, her poker face had already taken its rightful ce as her expression while the Martial Apprentices tried to pull themselves together.Content ? N?velDrama.Org 2024.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 496 Accelerate

    She had regained herposure rapidly, earlier than her Martial Apprentice aids. Her fortitude earned Rui''s respect, she was quite impressive for regaining her calm.


    "My apologies," She told him.


    While she did not possess the sensitivity to understand exactly what the pressure Rui exerted on her meant about his power, she could make indirect inferences about how strong he was by looking at the state that her subordinates were in.


    Her subordinates were not weak or ordinary Martial Apprentices by any means. The fact that they had such exaggerated reactions to his aura meant that he was likely more than just heads and shoulders above them. That put her at ease that he was indeed qualified toplete the mission.


    "No worries," Rui replied. "Is that all you wished to talk to me about?"


    "I wanted to make a request," She told him. "I want you to kill him publicly."


    Rui raised an eyebrow under his mask. It was an odd request since most assassinationmissions were requested to be done covertly normally, rather than publicly. But Rui now understood the reason why this mission wasn''t in the shadow ss section. All shadow ss missions needed to be covert in nature, and any mission that didn''t fulfill this condition, no matter what, was immediately excluded.


    Thus, she had likely specified that she did not want a covert mission where the death would be silent and swift. As for why she wanted a public death, Rui could think of several reasons, but it didn''t matter.


    "...That can be done." Rui straightforwardly said. "How public do you want his death to be?"


    "As public as possible." She told him.


    "Hm... Alright." Rui eventually agreed. "Is there anything else?"


    "No, that will be all." She told him. "When do you n toplete themission?"


    "Well, my n was to begin immediately," Rui told her. "But your conditionplicates it a little bit, but I intend to end it at the soonest no matter what."


    She nodded. "Understood. If you need any help of any sort, please let me know and I will do my best to aid you."


    Rui nodded. "Is there anything else you wanted to discuss?"


    "No, that was everything I wanted to cover." She told him.Content ? N?velDrama.Org 2024.


    "Alright then, I''ll take my leave." Rui got up. "Goodbye."


    He left after having exchanged farewells with her.


    "What do you think Surn, Azazel?" She asked the two of her subordinates once he had left.


    "He is... very strong," Surn admitted. "This is my first time seeing a Martial Squire''s aura, and they are much stronger than I had ever expected."


    "I agree..." Azazel sighed. "Had I known he was that much stronger than us, I would not have been nearly as cocky as I was with him."<novelnext></novelnext>


    "Hm..." She nodded. "What do you think are the odds that he will smoothlyplete the assassination?"


    She was worried about what would happen if there was a failure. If Rui failed, then she would no longer have any chance of doing it again. The king would take extreme measures to protect himself, and the cost of killing him would rise drastically.


    This would be especially rough because the Kingdom of Dermile was poor, hiring Martial Squires from the Kandrian Martial Union, that too with international taxes, was not cheap. Services tended to be exponentially more expensive in richer countriespared to poorer countries, themission fee for even a low-grade Martial Squire was absurdly expensive by the standards of the Kingdom of Dermile.


    This was why she was incredibly paranoid about whether Rui was qualified to handle the mission, and whether the seemingly hazardous strategy of just running inside and killing him was going to work or not. But after experiencing the momentary horrific fear that Rui generated in her and her subordinates, she realized that the Martial Union wasn''t messing around when it said it guaranteed that Martial Artists who happened to eptmissions were not unqualified.


    "Well, let''s wait and hope." She said. "The preparations for both sess and failure have already been established."


    "How long will it take him to actuallyplete the mission?" Azazel wondered.


    "Well, I assume that he has to gain a good understanding of the king''s schedule and find a good time for when the king is exposed to enough eyes and ears that his death cannot be concealed." Surn voiced a reasonable inference.


    "Indeed." She nodded. "Which means he should likely take at least a day."


    They spent a lot of time trying to figure out how he would go about it as they traveled back to her mansion.


    It also depended on how much information he had been provided by the Martial Union. They were aware that the Kandrian Martial Union provided Martial Artists with intelligence. Perhaps he didn''t need to spend too much time engaging in reconnaissance.


    Just as she was absorbed in her thoughts, she received a message on hermunicator. Her heart skipped a beat as she read the message with a shocked expression.


    "The king is dead!" She eximed. "He was murdered!"


    One of her informants had sent her a message regarding credible information he had just hearde across.


    "What?!" Surn and Azazel simultaneously eximed.


    She wondered whether Rui botched it up by killing regardless of the circumstances.


    What were the odds that the king was in the public eye the very moment Squire Falken reached him? Very low, to say the very least.


    She grew worried that the king''s death would be hidden. It was not enough to remove him, he needed to die in specific circumstances, otherwise, it could be covered up and the rest of her ns would be put on halt due to that.


    (''How did Squire Falken even get there this quickly??'') She wondered, gritting her teeth. (''Are Martial Squires that absurd?'')


    "New destination!" She snapped at the coachman. "We''re heading to the Royal pce!"


    The carriage elerated as it corrected its course, heading towards the new destination.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 497 Proactive

    Rui immediately took off once he had exited the carriage.Content is property ? N?velDrama.Org.


    (''Alrighty, how do I deal with this?'') He wondered.


    The very first thought he had was engaging in recon to figure out what part of his daily schedule had the highest exposure to the public eye whenever Rui killed him.


    It was then that he realized something.


    (''What if I just kidnap him and drag him into the public eye?'') Rui wondered.


    The condition he had been given to fulfill was the assassination of King Fujilin with as much exposure as possible. Wasn''t it better to drag him out into the public eye and then kill him rather than wait for him to go into the public eye naturally?


    Who knew how long it would take before the man would step out of his castle and actually make his way into a ce with enough exposure?


    Rui didn''t want to waste all that time doing nothing. Ideally, he would have liked toplete the mission as early as possible.


    (''Will she get mad if I drag the king out to a busy area and kill him there?'') He wondered before a mischievous grin cracked on his face. (''Even if she gets mad, what she can do?'')


    Her request was unofficial and something Rui was willing to humor because it wasn''t that big a deal. Meaning, she couldn''tin to the Martial Union about the way Rui went about it. He technically will not have vited the contract and will have fulfilled the mission as quickly as possible, which was a performance parameter that the Martial Union cared about, and one that went into the rating evaluation of a Martial Artist. This was another reason to go all out and kill him quickly, he wanted to upgrade to a higher grade as soon as possible.


    (''Well, she should have been careful what she wished for.'') He sped through the Kingdom of Dermile, arriving at a bustling and surprisingly urban town.


    The town of Bulgare was a rather posh town that was upied by the rich of the Empire, by the looks of it. It was also not too far from the Royal Pce. He nodded as he walked around, looking for a good spot, it took him a while to spot what he was looking for.


    (''Perfect.'')


    He stopped as he happened upon the town center, where arge podium in the middle of a bustling area was present. Anybody that died atop that in front of the crowd could not possibly have their death exposed to a greater degree.


    (''Alrighty.'') He turned in the direction that the Royal Pce was in, geographically, before immediately heading towards it. It only took him a minute to arrive at his speed.


    Thanks to the information provided to him by the Martial Union, he knew the structure of the Royal Pce and the location of the king''s personal chambers. All he had to do was verify that the king was there, and he could immediately swoop in and pluck him out and run with him to the town of Bulgare and off him on the podium.


    He sneaked up as close as he could before extending his Seismic Mapping as far as he could. Its range had risen significantlypared to before he had the Mindmirror brain and before he obtained his Martial body.


    (''Hm...'') He discerned through all the seismic radiation that he picked up on forming a decently crisp view of the Royal Pce. (''There are multiple presences in the king''s personal chambers.'')


    ording to the intelligence that the Martial Union had provided, the king''s chambers were off-limits unless one had the king''s authorization. Which meant that the people in there were almost certainly the king and others that had been authorized to be in his personal chambers. The Martial Apprentices, and the servants perhaps?<novelnext></novelnext>


    Primordial Instinct did pick up the presence of Martial Apprentices near the same location.


    (''Good enough.'') Rui shrugged.


    He crouched, as his legs tensed up, the very air quaked as his muscles built up power. His eyes narrowed as he estimated the distance, angle, and force for hisunch.


    BOOM!


    Heunched himself like a bullet as he crossed a great distance with a single leap.


    BOOM!


    Hended right in front of the entrance, shaking the ground and the entire pce with the sheer impact.


    The Martial Apprentices guarding the doors took a moment to ovee their shock as they charged at him. Yet he simply ignored it as time slowed down from his perspective. He activated Wind Breathing as he hurried past them, still moving in slow motion to him, heading towards the king''s personal chambers.


    He ran into several Martial Apprentices, but he simply ran past them like they were crash test dummies.


    POW POW POW!


    Several Apprentice-level attacksnded on his body as he reached the king''s personal chambers.


    (''Oh? Not bad.'') He nodded. The Royal Guards certainly appeared to be the best of the best of those Martial Apprentices assigned to the castle.


    Yet he didn''t care to kill Martial Apprentices that he didn''t need to. He simply blitzed past them inside, where he found the target he was looking for.


    The defensive Royal guards were already in position, forming a defensive boundary around the target of their protection. Within their circle of protection was a nude, obese man surrounded by several nude women, cowering in fear at the sudden thunderous quakes.


    Rui sighed. He fit the stereotype of a lecherous greedy ruler so well that it was almost funny. Rui simply brushed aside the meager defensive attempts that the Martial Apprentices attempted before grabbing the king and his garments and simply leaving.


    The Martial Apprentices sounded the rm for the kidnapping of the king, but it was far toote. Rui had long left the pce by then as he literally ran with the king above his head to the podium in the town of Bulgare, reaching there rather quickly.


    THUD!


    He dropped the man atop the podium as the two of them began drawing attention from the crowd.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 498 Next

    The death of King Fujilin was a shock to the entire nation, yet a pleasant one. Rui was actually quite shocked at the positive reception he received frompleting his mission.


    (''He must have been a real scumbag.'') He mused.


    He escaped wondering if he would get an angry message from Minister Riunge, before shrugging. What was done was done, there''s nothing about it that could be changed. He simply hit missionpleted button on his mission tracker before bolting out of the nation at top speed.N?vel(D)rama.Org''s content.


    Of course, it wasn''t as though he was particrly in trouble. The Kingdom of Dermile did not possess Martial Squires, so even if he was caught, there wasn''t anything they could do about it.


    He simply crossed the border and ran back to the Kandrian Empire.


    "This has got to be my shortest mission so far." Rui thought out loud.


    Travelling between the Kandrian Empire and the Kingdom of Dermile was rather trivial, trivially quick. The mission itself was wrapped up in around an hour.


    "A little under two hours." Rui affirmed. "It''s honestly not even worth going back home, might as well grind another mission."


    He usually took a small break with his family in between missions, but it hadn''t even been a quarter of a day since hest spoke with them.


    He underwent the border transit process once he reached the Kandrian Empire, before entering and heading towards the Mantian Region and the town of Hajin.


    The Kandrian Empire covered an area of thousands of several millions of square kilometers, it actually took him longer to travel through the country than it took him to travel to destinations in the geographical orbit for whenever he had foreign missions.


    Once he arrived, he immediately headed right back to the mission library, pondering what ss of missions he should pick this time. The default was offense-ss, but it wasn''t the only ss that had a high propensity for conflict.


    He nced at the hunter ss section.


    It had been quite a while since he picked a hunter ss mission. There was a degree of simplicity that came from tackling missions surrounding beasts. Of course, that didn''t mean hunter ss missions were particrly easy, they simply required a different skillset and mindset.


    Offense ss missions dealt with humans. Humans who were intelligent, rtively speaking,pared to most of the animal kingdom and thus needed to be tackled differently. While there were animals who possessed intelligence on par or perhaps even greater than that of normal humans, they were far scarcer.


    This didn''t necessarily make animals easier targets, because most hunting ss missions operated in the wild and the natural environment. An environment that humans were quite unustomed to,pared to normal human civilization where most offense-ss missions took ce.


    Understanding the best way to operate in these environments when dealing with beasts that were in their home court was an art in and of itself and one that took many years of experience to master. They were a challenge that was entirely different from that of the offense-ss missions.


    Rui shrugged. (''Why not?'')


    He was an all-rounder, limiting himself to offense-ss missions may not be conducive to maintaining even proficiency across the board.<novelnext></novelnext>


    (''Besides, I have a technique that''s useful in this ss of missions.'') Rui mused.


    The Fauna Flow technique was a technique that allowed him to engage in non-verbalmunication with animals. Thus far, he hadn''t yet used it to its greatest potential because he hadn''t been in a position where he could employ the technique.


    The only time he had used was when hemunicated with a monkey like creature in the Serevian Dungeon. After that, he had immediately gone on to master a mental technique before undergoing the Squire evolution breakthrough process, Squire habilitation and the mastery of six more techniques. He obviously hadn''t gotten to use the technique during this time period.


    He nodded, having made up his mind.


    He took his time scrolling through the several missions that the library had, noting how much lesser there were.


    This wasn''t particrly unique to hunter ss missions, Squire-level missions were fewer than Apprentice-level missions simply because these missions were nearly an order of magnitude more expensive than Apprentice-level missions due to how much stronger Martial Squires were and how much more difficult Squire-level missions were. There were fewer Martial Squires than Martial Apprentices too, increasing the value of the supply of Martial Squires.


    Rui saw some interesting missions in the library, taking his time to scour through all of them. His eyes ran into something interesting


    [Hunter ss mission: Capture mission


    Client: Ministry of Environment and Ecology


    Grade: 3


    Elimination target: A frost hypogriff


    Target location: Cravitz Mountain [2.1, 3.45]


    Remuneration: 10,000 Martial credits


    Mission summary: The elimination target is an adult frost hypogriff. The target is a quasi-Squire-level threat that is verging on Squire-level, with a remarkable top speed, powerful beaks and limbs. It''s a normally passive species of the hypogriff family that can engage in rampages that are destructive to the environment and life surrounding it when they experience emotional distress. The target of the mission has destabilized the ecosystem and has terrorized arge proportion of the fauna poption into migrating away from their habitat, causing them to encroach on human settlements and towns. The mission is to capture the target and deliver it to the Ministry of Environment and Ecology with as little damage to the target as possible.


    ...]


    "Interesting..." Rui''s eyes lit up in interest. A capture mission instead of an elimination mission meant that Rui had to exercise a certain degree of finesse. He couldn''t just mindlessly go all out against it, otherwise it would just die at his hand, since this particr creature was below the Squire-Realm. It made for a much more interesting mission since he needed to exercise control over his power.


    "Alright." Rui nodded. "I''ll take it. Sounds like a fun challenge."


    He immediately plucked the mission bill out of the slot before heading to read more about it.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 499 Bait

    Content ? N?velDrama.Org 2024.


    He registered the mission to his name, before sitting down at a table by himself and reading through it, inputting them into his mind pce before analyzing them.


    "Interesting..." Rui murmured as he sorted through all the information.


    Mount Cravitz was a mountain at the very north of the Kandrian Empire, amidst the Faravali range. The temperatures dipped tremendously at those elevations, making it much more difficult to conduct missions. It wasn''t as though the cold could kill him with his evolved body, but navigation and fighting were harder, and surveince was harder as well.


    Hippogriffs were winged creatures with the front half of an eagle and the back half of a horse. They were fast and powerful, nearly reaching the Squire Realm in those parameters, but their body was not particrly tough and their flesh was vulnerable to attacks in the Squire Realm. This meant that they could dish out more powerful than their body could necessarily withstand, which is why they generally weren''t threats to Martial Squires, especially those of Rui''s caliber


    However, this also made it trickier to try and fight and capture aggressive rampaging hippogriffs with minimal harm. If he was not careful both he and the creature could get hurt.


    Thankfully, he didn''t need to immobilize and capture it with his bare hands, manually dragging the struggling creature back to the Ministry of Environment and Ecology was also imusible and difficult to do. The mission bill did have rmended tools and gear to rent or purchase that would aid in the capture of the hippogriff.


    (''Increasing the bill to evenplete the mission.'') He grumbled inwardly. Thankfully, the pay for the mission was solid and justified the extra expenditure he would need to make. He nced at the list quickly memorizing their names


    [Sedative: Tier 2 Refined Xhrenos Dew]


    A potent tranquilizer that would subdue the creature. And an automatic syringe that would automatically inject the drug into the body of the hippogriff upon pration.


    Rui immediately got up before heading to the utility department, finding a drug store, and purchasing the necessary amount. It wasn''t long before he had everything he needed. He had purchased several rejuvenation potions and food pills, consuming one of each to revitalize himself from his previous missions. While his previous mission wasn''t particrly difficult, it did consume stamina to a certain degree.


    "Onest signature here, Squire Quarrier."


    Rui nodded, obliging before wearing his mask and dispatching from the dispatch facility. He took to the air, rising to great heights and taking in the picturesque view.


    WHOOSH<novelnext></novelnext>


    It wasn''t long before he paddled his way forward at remarkable speeds. He wasn''t nearly as fast as he was onnd, but he was faster than his previous peak onnd when he was a Martial Apprentice. It never ceased to amaze him just how much of a raw boost he had received ever since he discovered his Martial Body.


    It took him a few hours to travel to the north of the Kandrian Empire. The weather and climate had changed dramatically, the temperatures plummeted, and the winds pushed harder and sharper. The air grew more opaque as time passed, hindering his vision.


    THUD


    Hended heavily on dense snow, gazing at the mountain before him.


    "Here we are," Rui murmured. "Mount Cravitz."


    He had already scanned the skies, hoping to catch a sight of the hippogriff flying around so that he wouldn''t have to search for it, but s, he wasn''t nearly as lucky.


    Hippogriffs only flew around when they were hunting. Unlike eagles, their bodies weren''t entirely suited for sustained flight. The fact that the back half of their body was that of a horse, and-bound animal, meant there was more of a limit to their flight capabilities. Their body was nowhere near as aerodynamic as that of a bird''s, nowhere near as proportionally light either. Of course, as a Squire-level creature, flight was no issue. It was just that, by nature, it would spend most of its time onnd.


    He would most likely run into it whenever he chose to hunt. All he needed to was wait for it. Of course, he didn''t intend to do anything. He had already chalked out the most effective and efficient means of finding the hippogriff.


    He took to the air again, this time slowly escting. He distanced himself from the mountain such that he was maximizing how much attention he drew to himself. Too close to the face of the mountain and only a small section would be able to spot him in their field of vision, too far and he would be too small and insignificant to draw any meaningful attention. He was intuitively adjusting himself to the contours of the mountain to ensure he was maximizing his noticeability.


    That wasn''t all he did, of course, he was also adjusting his presence. The ''aura'' and ''pressure'' that powerful beings emanated was something that existed in the eye of the beholder, rather than an actual phenomenon in physical reality. Powerful beings generated subconscious fear and a sense of danger from the subconscious evaluation of danger and risk that all creatures evolved with. The conscious mind simply perceived and interpreted this sense of fear and danger in the form of an ''aura''. It was an important element in the cognition creatures had of each other.


    Rui was able to control this through the Mind Mask technique. He chose to reduce his aura and pressure to the peak of the Apprentice Realm. This was strong enough to draw even more attention as he triggered the sense of danger of the creatures inhabiting the environment of Mount Cravitz, while still being weak enough to appear as juicy prey to the target of his mission.


    With this strategy, he could increase the probability of him running into the hippogriff better than any other n he was able toe up with at the moment. He quickly set everything up just as it needed to be. He hadid the bait, now he needed to wait for the target to take it.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 500 Clash

    It wasn''t long before his n came to fruition. Primordial Instinct rang rm bells in his mind as he sensed danger approaching from below him at an astonishing speed.


    WHOOSH


    Rui evaded the creature narrowly as it zoomed past him at incredible speeds. It flew close to as fast as he was on the ground, meaning it was incredibly difficult to evade. He only managed to do so this time due to how far away it had approached him; from the ground.


    The hippogriff opened its beaks, releasing a powerful eagle chirp. It locked eyes with Rui for a moment, as they stared at each other.


    Rui could only see fury in its eyes, anger at having missed its prey.


    [Why do you rage?] Rui asked it with Fauna Flow. He conveyed the question using abination of body gestures, breathing, and growls. The hippogriff''s eyes widened as it understood what he was trying to convey.


    [FOOD] It chirped defiantly as itunched itself against him once more at a tremendous speed.


    BAM!


    It rammed into him with its full momentum, trying to haze him before finishing him off. Rui hadn''t been able to avoid it in time because it was too fast and much morefortable in the air than he was. He was fighting in its terrain. However, Rui had already predicted this would be the case.


    He wasn''t a moron. A creature withrge wings was most certainly going to be more equipped in aerialbat than he was. He didn''t intend to capture the beast midair amidst aerialbat. That was not his n.


    It turned once more facing him as it charged towards him with full force towards him again, this time, it raised its forelimbs towards him; its talons.


    POW POW!


    Rui smacked the two talons away with both arms as he evaded the attack. Eagles were generally ambush predators that swooped in,tched onto their prey, and pecked and tore apart at its prey until it was no longer moving before then feasting on it. He would be in for a world of hurt if he allowed it to reach that stage.


    The hippogriff chirped beforeunching itself at him.


    BAM!


    It stumbled backward with a hint of surprise on its face.


    Rui had negated the damagergely with the help of Adamant Reforging and Inner Divergence. He wasn''t particrly concerned about the damage he suffered. In the past, he would have needed to take this into ount. Damage could rue fast, and he could be in trouble quicker than he realized.<novelnext></novelnext>


    Bruises could umte and he could suffer damage to a vital area, or his performance would decline too much leading to critical injuries that most certainly would threaten his life. There were all kinds of slippery slopes that could easily end up being very bad if he wasn''t careful.


    but this was no longer the case, thanks to his evolved healing. His enhanced healing factor healed lesser wounds quite quickly. Although he most certainly was no Wolverine, lesser and more superficial wounds effectively disappeared in a matter of minutes. Larger wounds couldn''t be healed so easily, but his healing factor could do just enough to ensure that even major wounds wouldn''t hinder his performance too much.


    Thanks to this, his endurance had risen tremendously. He could withstand a lot.


    But, he wasn''t necessarily limited to simply enduring.


    BAM!


    Hended a blow on the hippogriff as it rammed into him. The creature chirped in pain as what appeared to be a grimace shed across its face. Rui had not forgotten that this particr species was vulnerable as far as its durability went. Its muscles and bones were tough, but its flesh wasn''t able to protect its inner vitals from damage very well.


    This was especially true when Rui had mastered Reverberating Lance, which allowed him to permeate an impact deeper causing greater damage than he would have been able to with his raw power alone.


    In fact, he needed to restrain himself. If he trulyunched his most powerful attacks, the creature would probably end up hemorrhaging as a result of his attack. He wanted to avoid killing it at all costs.


    He had briefly considered mortally wounding it and then feeding it a healing potion after drugging it, but that was too risky. The potions he had bought were meant for humans, he didn''t know if they would work on the hippogriff. If they were ipatible or inadequate, then the creature would die. He couldn''t possibly know how hard to hit it for this n to work thus he avoided it.


    BAM!


    Hended another strike on the creature. He hadn''t made up his mind on whether he ought to try administering the tranquilizer in aerialbat or onnd. It was extremely difficult to do it midair when the creature was as mobile, fast, and agile as it was, and had as much of an advantage over him as it did. The three dimensions worth of maneuvering space made it difficult as well.


    It wasn''t just a matter of hitting the creature with the syringe, he needed to hit within certain locations and hold it there for a few seconds which made it difficult. He also needed to ensure it didn''t break, which could happen given how fast the creature moved.


    All of these considerations flew through his head, causing him to prefer to administer the drug onnd than in the sky. He would need to wait until the creature was done with him.N?vel(D)rama.Org''s content.


    Thankfully, it wasn''t long before that happened. The hippogriff hade to realize that Rui was not something that could be taken down easily, if at all. Every time it shed with him, it came away reeling in pain inside its body whereas he shrugged off everything it threw at him in the long run.


    The creature chirped loudly before taking off back towards Mount Cravitz.


    (''Now, I can take the next step towardspleting this mission.'')


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 501 Cub

    Catching up with the hippogriff proved to be more difficult than he had anticipated. The creature was faster in the air than he was. He would probably lose track of it if he tried chasing it in the air with Sky Walking.


    THUD


    Hended on the mountain hard before sprinting off in the direction that the hippogriff had taken off. The atmosphere recoiled as he shot forward at tremendous speeds. He kept his eyes on the hippogriff at all times, using Seismic Mapping to make sure he was keeping track of his immediate surroundings. Seismic Mapping couldn''t keep track of things that were in contact with the ground.


    Rui had already predicted that Seismic Mapping would be increasingly inadequate in the Squire Realm. Aerial maneuvering andbat were much moremon in the battles of the Squire Realm. It became much more important to develop sensory skills that were equipped for the atmosphere.


    There was an issue to be handledter. For now, he needed to drug this hippogriff.


    Rui continued chasing through the snowy environment keeping track of the creature in the air, minimizing his presence to the absolute most that he could with the help of Mind Mask. Suddenly the hippogriff dove towards a mountainside.


    (''It''s hunting another creature.'') Rui realized as he sensed a mountain ram scaling the mountain where the hippogriff had dived.


    "BAAAA!" The creature shrieked as the hippogriff sped it with its talons and dragged it away into the air. Rui maintained a safe distance chasing after it while carefully observing it. Its prey struggled to break free from its talons, but it was already far toote, its fate was sealed.


    After a few seconds, the hippogriff slowed down as it appeared to have finallynded on the ground. Rui slowed down quietly and simply observed it. The hippogriff quickly killed its prey with a simple attack with its beak.


    It dragged the corpse into a cave out of his vision. He quickly closed his eyes as he focused on Seismic Mapping to continue his surveince of it. In his seismic vision, he saw that there were more figures inside the cave, but much smaller.


    (''Cubs?'') He opened his eyes, surprised. (''It has cubs?'')Content ? N?velDrama.Org 2024.


    They were, without a doubt, smaller hippogriffs.


    (''Is that the reason that the hippogriff has been terrorizing other animals?'') Rui wondered.


    The mission bill mentioned that this species of hippogriffs tended to be exceedingly aggressive when in emotional distress. He hadn''t bothered considering the cause for the emotional distress of the target of his mission, but now that he knew that the hippogriff was a mother, there was a pretty high chance that they were rted to the cause of the emotional distress that caused the hippogriff to go berserk and destabilize the ecosystem of the Mount Cravitz.


    (''Hm.'') Rui scratched his chin. (''I should inform the Ministry of Environment and Ecology.'')


    He sent a message to themissioner that was assigned to handling his mission, informing them of the offspring of the hippogriff.


    It wasn''t long before he received an answer.<novelnext></novelnext>


    [We have duly noted and evaluated the information you have provided us. Please proceed with the mission normally. Do not attempt to apprehend or capture the cubs, a qualified team will be dispatched to safely acquire both the target of the mission and the cubs.]


    Rui nodded. Thankfully, his discovery didn''tplicate his mission. He was happy to know that the hippogriffs would be handled safely. He wouldn''t be able to sleep right if the cubs were going to end up being hunted or killed.


    Which made him feel odd about his meta-ethics. He normally didn''t care to think about his core ethics, it was a waste of time, and he usually just stuck to what felt right. But he found himself more unwilling to kill baby hippogriffs than the many humans he had already killed.


    Of course, this wasn''t exactly a fairparison. Most of the people he had killed were either people involved in crime or enemies who were trying to kill him. There was a limit to the amount of empathy he could feel for people belonging to either group, especially in the heat of battle. It was an entirely different thing to kill innocent, harmless, and probably adorable hippogriffs cubs.


    He shook his head, putting aside such superfluous thoughts before quietly sky walking toward the entrance of the cave. He had already minimized his presence to the absolute limit, as he sneaked in the air.


    The hippogriffs were close to the entrance of the cave, feasting away on the corpse of the mountain ram when suddenly the mother hippogriff froze as its pupils dted.


    WHOOSH


    It immediately adopted a defensive position with its cubs behind it as it red at Rui, who looked like a thief who had been caught from afar. He sighed before dashing in with the syringe in his hand. Now was the time to use the tranquilizer drug. He was quite confident it wouldn''t take to the air to fight him, not when it had to protect its cubs. He was using the fact that it wanted to protect its cubs to restrain its maneuvering. Without a maneuvering advantage, the hippogriff couldn''t really batter him around the way it did in their previous fight.


    [GET AWAY!] It chirped aggressively and menacingly, spreading its wings, appearing as big and threatening as it could.


    Rui simply ignored it beforeshing forward at it, yet just before he was actually about to sh with the creature, he swerved, aiming for the cubs. The hippogriffshed out at him with its beak preventing him from doing that.


    (''Gotcha.'')


    CLASP


    He wrapped himself around the beast''s neck, just under its beak where neither the beak nor the talons could reach him. The hippogriff screamed in pain as he drove the syringe deep into the side of its neck, injecting the tranquilizer into the creature.


    THUD


    The hippogriff quickly copsed to the ground heavily, unconscious.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 502 Hlorn

    Rui sighed to himself in relief, he was quite happy that he didn''t need to injure the hippogriff whilepleting his mission. Thankfully, he nailed the timing and was able totch onto it in a position where it was unable to do anything about him. The timing he had managed to nail with a predictive model he had created for it. He had exclusively used the predictive model alone without the adaptive model since thetter was not very reliable against non-human opponents.


    Something he had yet to fix.


    (''It''s not like I''ve been using the VOID algorithm much recently.'') He sighed. Thest time he had used it was against Kyrie in their spar, but it had been quite a while since he used it on a mission. It couldn''t be helped, after all, his opponents were too weak for him to employ his strongest weapon. So far, he had only fought groups of high-tier Martial Apprentices.


    He sighed. Only once he got to a higher grade would he undertake missions that featured actual Squire-levelbat assets. Whether it be Martial Squires, potion-amped humans, or war weapons that could threaten even Martial Squires. All of it woulde with grade four missions and above. That''s why he was grinding through the easy missions quickly and perfectly, he would get to where he wanted to quicker that way.


    He heard light chirps as the little hippogriffs tried waking their mother up, distressed. Rui sighed, putting on a mind mask of positivity as he approached them.


    "Hey, who do we have here?" He cooed at them as warmly and non-threateningly as he could, trying to calm them down.


    He only needed to keep them there until the team arrived. Thankfully, it wasn''t long before the team from the Ministry of Environment and Ecology arrived. Eight men had trudged traveled up the mountain in motorized carriages, carrying some equipment with them.


    "Squire Falken?"


    "That''s me." Rui nodded. "What''s going to happen to the hippogriffs?"


    "Oh, they''ll be nursed, taken care of, and then habituated when deemed ready." The officer told him as they began strapping up the hippogriff and putting the cubs into crates. Rui was satisfied with the care they were handling the hippogriffs with, so he hit the missionpletion button before finally leaving.


    He was quite satisfied with the way he hadpleted the mission. The hippogriffs were safe and unscathed, thus the evaluation of thepletion of his mission should be quite high.


    He sighed.


    Whilepleting a good mission was satisfying, he was starting to grow quite unsatisfied with theck of real stimtingbat. The aerial sh with the hippogriff was the closest thing to a challenge ever since he had begun his streak of missions. Grade three missions simply weren''t stimting enough. He couldn''t wait to engage in actual Squire-levelbat.


    So far, he had finished three grade-three missions exceedingly well. He estimated there weren''t too many more he would need to finish before he got upgraded to grade four as a Martial Artist. He intended to grind past them to reach higher grades as soon as he could.


    It was a little tiring, without a doubt. Sometimes he wondered if sparring against other Martial Squires as he did with Kyrie was a better alternative than trying to seek real-lifebat but he already knew it wasn''t. No matter how intense sparring got, it could not rece actualbat in the field against hostile forces.


    There was a different kind of pressure that one experienced when one fought a battle with high stakes, if he didn''t routinely expose himself to that pressure and temper his mind under that weight, he would be increasingly rustier as time passed, and his actualbat ability would decrease.<novelnext></novelnext>


    There were several things that he wasn''t willing topromise on, and his actual effectiveness in realbat was one of them. However, it wasn''t just aboutbat effectiveness, it was also about his Martial Path. He would not be able to go much deeper down his Martial Path if he did not have realbat experience.


    He sighed. (''Just need to keep grinding.'')


    He traveled through the air as fast as he could towards the Mantian region and the town of Hajin. He intended to reach the town immediately and undertake another mission as soon as he could. A few hours passed and he soon enough reached the Martial Union branch.


    He quickly passed the security after showing them his ID and mission bill beforepleting the post-mission protocols such as writing statements and a report. Once he was done with the annoying paperwork, he headed straight over to the mission library.


    (''I still have one more mission in me before I''ll need to head home and catch some rest.'') He sighed. (''Better make it good.'')


    He went right in towards the offense ss section, skimming through the avable missions. He ran into an interesting mission rather early on.


    [Offense ss mission: Destruction


    Client: Fushin Hunfer


    Grade: three


    Destruction target: Hlorn: Squire-grade siege weapon.


    Target location: Fort Zurtun


    Remuneration: 16,000 Martial credits / six hundred and eight gold coins


    Mission summary: The target of destruction is the Hlorn, a Squire-grade siege weapon that is capable of unleashing as much damage on a human settlement or group as a higher-grade Martial Squire can. The client of the mission would like tomission the destruction of the weapon, under specific circumstances. The degree of destruction must be to ensure that light repairs cannot repair the functionality of the weapon. ]


    (''Interesting...'') Rui''s eyes lit up with interest. Destruction of an object owned or possessed by another individual counted as an offense-ss mission as opposed to manualbor as it was an act of aggression to the owner of said possession. If the Hlorn weapon did not belong to anybody, then the mission would not have been ssified under the offense ss.Content ? N?velDrama.Org 2024.


    Rui immediately took the mission bill to the register counter to register it to his name.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 503 Fort

    503 Fort


    He had never taken a mission centered around the destruction of property before. Not that such missions were rare, but they just usually weren''t the kind of missions that Rui was interested in. However, this particr mission was interesting since it would involve breaking into a fort. Something he had never done prior.


    He sat down at a table in the library he quickly read and memorized the information, adding all of it to his mind pce.


    (''Interesting...'')


    Fort Zurtun was arge fort surrounding the Town of Zurtun a small city-state colony of the Britannian Empire that was quite southwest of the Kandrian Empire. The fort was situated on a mountain, giving the location with strategic value as far as defense and security went. Attempting to overrun the fort would require scaling the mountain and facing the military forces of the fort uphill against Zurtun military on their home turf.


    The military even consisted of Martial Apprentices, albeit no Martial Squires. They were a small force that was unable to produce their own Martial Squires because theycked the scientific foundation to do so.


    On top of that, the fort was armed with a Squire-grade weapon capable of unleashing vast amounts of destruction on a significant scale. Despite its great potential for destruction, the weapon was smallpared to what it could unleash, this was possible thanks to the esoteric technology that went into it, making it easier to shift around and position appropriately in times of need. It was recently acquired by Fort Zurtun and it served as a deterrence to all those that wished to attempt a siege on Fort Zurtun.


    Of course, climbing a mountain was a breeze for Martial Apprentices. The problem came from fighting other Martial Apprentices uphill. The terrain and location advantage made it untenable unless the invading force had a significant numerical advantage or much more powerful Martial Apprentices.


    Fort Zurtun was previously an independent sovereign state until it was invaded by the Britannian Empire and colonized. The Britannian Empire had seized control of the fort after defeating the military forces of Fort Zurtun and ruling over the poption. The previously sovereign city-state turned into no more than a


    The client was Fushin Hunfer. ording to the intelligence provided by the Martial Union, this man was the leader of a rebellion group that aimed to seize control of Fort Zurtun. The group consisted of the remnants of the military that used to protect the Fort, and ording to the Martial Union, had ns of trying to size the fort and the town from the hands of the Britannian Empire.


    Rui skimmed through the backstory lightly, he didn''t care all that much about the motivation and intentions of the client as long as it didn''t pertain to his mission directly. He focused more on the intelligence the security of the fort and the location of the weapon.


    The weapon being small and easily portable meant that its position wasn''t static nor evidently determinable at any given point in time. It could be shifted around wherever it needed to be at any given point in time.


    Thankfully, that didn''t make it harder to track. ording to the information provided by the Martial Union, the weapon was mobilized every time the rebel group tried to seize Fort Zurtun. Which meant that as long as he posed enough of a threat, the weapon would be employed against any invaders.


    (''The threshold for how much of a threat depends on the security level of the fort.'') Rui realized as he revisited the fort''s military details.


    The fact that not a single Martial Artist exceeded the Apprentice Realm was strange to him at first, but he realized why this was the caseter on. The fort was extremely far from the Britannian Empire, it was not pragmatic to devote any military or Martial assets above the Apprentice Realm to the security of a fort that far away. Thus, they had resolved to dedicate only some Apprentice-level assets to maintain their control over the fort and the town within.


    It also had to do with the fact that there were states that werepeting over the control of the town in the vicinity that was above the Apprentice Realm. Thus, there was no real need for Martial Squires. They had supplied a single Squire-level weapon that was extremely effective in the terrain.


    The rebel group had suffered massive casualties years ago during an attempt to climb the mountain and seize the fort back. In an attempt to eliminate the weapon, they had amassed as much wealth in the span of several years until they could finallymission a Martial Squire from the Kandrian Empire to destroy a single weapon.


    (''So, I just need need to make enough of a ruckus to draw out their Martial Apprentices, and force them to use the weapon. Then the second I see the weapon, I destroy it.'') Rui thought. It was a straightforward n.


    The weapon was made out of Squire-grade alloys that could withstand the force of even powerful Martial Squires, so destroying it was not something that could be done quickly. N?vel(D)rama.Org''s content.


    (''I don''t have to destroy it then and there. I could seize it and escape with it and destroy it elsewhere I guess.'') Rui shrugged. That wouldn''t vite the conditions or the objective of the mission.


    He skimmed through the details of the mission until he was satisfied.


    "Alright then." He got up. "Time to pay the utility department another visit."


    Trying to destroy a weapon with Squire-grade alloys with his bare hands was foolish, there were some rmended tools in the mission bill from the Martial Union to aid with that part of the mission. An object that looked like a hammer with a pointy edge was one of them, it also happened to be the cheapest.


    (''Good enough for me.'') He shrugged before heading over. Thankfully, he didn''t need to purchase it since the Martial Union offered Martial Artists the option of renting the rmended utility gear and equipment.


    Thanks for reading, hope you enjoyed that.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 504 Meet

    "How much does the Grintle-edged hammer cost for renting?" Rui asked the storekeeper.


    "A gold coin for every twenty-four hours sir." She replied. "This doesn''t include charges for damaging, destroying, or losing the tool either. Any amount of wear and tear will be charged based on the charges for restoration."


    Rui nodded while sighing inwardly. A gold coin a day was enough for one person to lead a good life. Paying that much for a hammer seemed obscene. However, he did understand the rationale. The hammer was not ordinary, not at all. It was made from esoteric alloys that were not easy to procure and were quite valuable. Materials that could withstand Squire-level power were far from abundant and were highly in demand.


    With that consideration in mind, the price for even renting it was actually quite understandable.


    He purchased a rejuvenation potion before heading to the dispatch facility to sign out and head for Fort Zurtun. It wasn''t long before he took to the air, heading towards the south of the country. It was the shortest path to the destination of his mission.


    He also needed to meet the client before beginning the mission as requested by the client in the mission bill.


    (''He probably wants to coordinate a siege on the fort right after the mission ispleted and the siege weapon is gone.'') Rui figured.N?vel(D)rama.Org''s content.


    In order to destroy the weapon, he would need to cause enough damage to their military or to the fort itself to prove that he was worth employing the weapon on. Meaning once he destroyed the weapon the damaged fort would be at its weakest it had ever been likely since the Britannian Empire had taken over and turned it into a colony.


    This was the perfect timing for them to attempt seizing the fort back into their hands.


    (''If that is the intention of my client, then he is a smart one that''s for sure.'') Rui nodded.


    If he were in the man''s ce, he would have prepared his forces for an attack on the fort so that they could immediately move out and begin an assault on the fort. It was best to not give them any time to recover from the damage that they would sustain from the attack of a martial Squire. The chaos wouldn''tst long, and the damage and loss would be repaired and replenished.


    Rui shook his head, putting aside such thoughts, he would find out soon enough once he reached.


    It took him several hours to reach the border at the south of the Kandrian Empire. He stopped skywalking after he left the Empire, after having gone through the due process, and began running on the ground.


    BOOM!


    A shockwave rippled across the atmosphere as he sprinted at a tremendous speed.


    Fort Zurtun was more than a thousand kilometers south of the Kandrian Empire. Even with his tremendous speed, he needed a little more than an hour to reach his destination while maintaining his high speed.


    The rebel group had a base in a forest surrounding the mountain that hoisted the fort.<novelnext></novelnext>


    (''It should be around here.'') Rui nced at his pocket watch, before looking around. He had been instructed to arrive at a hill near the mountain, serving as andmark for them to intercept him. The Martial Union should have already informed them about his dispatch and the estimated timing of his arrival. It was a whole ten minutes before he finally detected human presence with Seismic Mapping.


    A group of five people arrived at the location soon enough.


    (''Four Martial Apprentices, one normal human.'') He surmised with a single nce. The four Martial Apprentices guarded the man, clearly distrustful of Rui.


    They covered their faces with masks, just like Rui, out of caution. The Martial Apprentices were inbat garbs while the man they were protecting wore something resembling a business or formal outfit.


    They approached him cautiously before the man addressed him. "May I know your name?"


    "I am Squire Falken." Rui responded simply, confirming his identity.


    "Let us exchange verification codes." The man reached inside his jacket as Rui reached for his pouch. They quickly verified that they weren''t dealing with imposters, before proceeding with business.


    The Martial Apprentices didn''t say anything, but Rui could vaguely sense that they were confused by his presence, probably due to the fact that he felt like a normal human being


    "Thank you for epting ourmission anding this far to humor our request to meet you, Squire Falken." He bowed, expressing the respect that a Martial Squire deserved.


    "No problem." Rui nodded. "Where is the client? I was under the impression that I was going to meet him."


    "Ah, he''s at our base." The man rified. "He didn''t want toe here personally due to security reasons. Please allow me to escort you there."


    Rui nodded, before following them through the forest. The Martial Apprentices were clearly on edge due to the fact that Rui didn''t feel like a Martial Squire did, at all.


    (''Maybe I should drop the mind mask from here on out." Rui wondered. He used it because he didn''t like drawing attention, but having to confirm that he is a Martial Squire each and every time was a pain in the ass. Besides, it''s not like he could just suddenly drop the mask now. If he randomly dropped the mask while he was behind them, he would scare them into thinking he was going to kill them or something.


    He sighed inwardly, it didn''t really matter too much. If they were concerned about whether he was a Martial Squire or whether he was qualified for the mission, then he could simply prove it rather easily.


    It wasn''t long before they happened upon the base of the rebel group. It was a group of tents and other simple structures that were hidden under a canopy in the forest, hiding them quite well from the lookouts stationed on the fortress walls. It allowed them to mount attacks on the fortress easier than if their base was much further away.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 505 Conversation

    The camp was clearly prepared for his visit. They all gazed at him with varying emotions. Joy. Relief. Expectation. Confusion. Skepticism.


    The men guided him to thergest tent, gesturing him inside. Inside were several more Martial Apprentices that stood guard. Rui recognized the only non-Martial Artist within the tent as his client, Fushin Hunfer.


    His eyes narrowed as he felt a faint sense of pressure from the man that he shouldn''t have. He was old, his body was covered in scars and his skin was wrinkled and what was left of his hair was white. Despite his visage being that of an old man, Rui didn''t dare to think of him as one. The man almost had a heavier presence in Rui''s mind than the Martial Apprentices in the room.


    Rui recalled the details of his background from his mind pce, provided by the mission bill.


    Fushin Hunfer was the fifteenth general of Fort Zurtun. When the Britannian Empire attacked, he personally led the military of Fort Zurtun against the forces of the Britannian army. When they inevitably lost, the man didn''t resign to his fate, nor did he throw himself into the jaws of death in some banal sense of honor.


    No.


    He gathered the surviving forces of his military that would have either died or been imprisoned and escaped with them. He was the progenitor of the rebel group. And many yearster, his will to win and free hisnd had not withered in the slightest, Rui could sense a smoldering fire in his calm eyes.


    Instantly, Rui felt a measure of respect for the man, and it reflected in his demeanor.


    "Squire Falken." The former general addressed him. "I''m grateful to you for humoring my request."


    "Not at all." Rui politely replied.


    The man silently extended a hand, refusing to say another word until Rui shook it.


    "That being said..." The former general said. "I''m afraid I have another request of you."


    He gestured towards a seat opposite his own as he took his own.


    "I would like for you to time the execution of ourmission with or slightly prior to our own assault on Fort Zurtun." He told Rui once thetter took his seat.


    (''As expected...'') Rui nodded inwardly. He had suspected that this would be the case. The general had shrewdly realized that getting rid of the weapon had the most impact only if the opportunities it provided were capitalized immediately.


    "No problem," Rui told him. "I don''t mind you coordinating the timing of yourmission as long as you don''t alter the pre-established conditions of the mission itself or if there are other reasons that work against my interest. You havemissioned me to destroy the weapon, and I will destroy the weapon and everything needed for me to do so. However, that is it, nothing more and nothing less. I will not y any other role in this war."<novelnext></novelnext>


    Rui sternly drew a line in the ground early on in their conversation. He needed to express this stance strongly and make it clear that he would not do anything he wasn''tmissioned to do. The old man before him would exploit anything and everything he could for the sake of his goals, and Rui needed to ensure that he wasn''t one of them.


    "I did not intend to request or tell you to do more than what you have beenmissioned to do." He nkly stated without any shift in his expression. "Once you havepleted your mission, you may leave."


    That sounded all well and fine, but Rui felt he needed to be careful. Even if the old man didn''t request Rui to participate in the war straightforwardly, there were ways in which he could coerce Rui to take part in the war or contribute to it.


    Content is property ? N?velDrama.Org.


    If Rui''s exit was somehow restricted or if his well-being was threatened, he would need to employ force to force his way out of this predicament. This would result in Rui contributing to their cause even if he didn''t intend or want to.


    If the old man decided the timing and the coordination of Rui''s attack, then there was a chance that he could forcefully put Rui in such a situation where he would be able to exploit Rui further than just themission. Perhaps this wasn''t likely, but the man had already proven himself to be quite shrewd.


    "That''s good to hear." Rui nkly stated. "Give me a timeframe for when you intended to execute your n."


    "Within a day or two." The old man replied. "I''ll present the general n to you by then."


    Rui paused for a moment. That timeframe was just the maximum dy he was willing to tolerate, he didn''t want to dy the mission any further.


    "I''ll add a bonus of ten percent." The old man offered, keenly noting from the slight hints in his bodynguage that he wasn''t too inclined to ept the offer. "In writing."


    Rui sighed. Since the man was clearly expressing his goodwill and charity, he ultimately decided to ept the offer. "Alright then, please finish all your preparations as soon as possible. I will not tolerate too much of a dy."


    The old man cracked a smile for the first time. "An overwhelming majority of our preparations areplete, all we need are some very final steps, and we can begin the assault any time after. We have prepared some quarters for you to rest and reside until the time is ready."


    "That''s good to hear." Rui nodded. "Chalk up the contract for the bonus and have it sent it to me as soon as possible."


    The two discussed some other details and technical matters, confirming the basics of what preparations were still iplete and the kind of role Rui would be ying.


    "Alright then." Rui nodded, getting up. "That brings us to the end of our conversation."


    "Indeed." The old man replied. "Please get some rest, you have traveled far after all."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 506 Challenge

    Just as Rui was about to leave, the man who had guided him here interjected.


    "Excuse me..." He sheepishly said, drawing attention. "I do not mean to be rude, but the Martial Apprentices of our group have informed me of some troubling observations surrounding you..."Content is property ? N?velDrama.Org.


    Rui sighed, having expected this. "I don''t feel like a Martial Squire?"


    "Yes." The man replied. "It''s not that we''re distrusting the Kandrian martial Union''s credibility by any means, but it would be of great relief if you could provide us with some form of demonstration of your power or status as a Martial Squire."


    Rui sighed, yet before he could even respond, the old man interjected.


    "That won''t be necessary." A grin cracked at the edge of his mouth. "This man is the real deal."


    An amused smile cracked underneath Rui''s mask. "Are you sure about that?"


    "Do I look uncertain?"


    "But sir.." The man tried to appeal to him


    "Forget about it." The old man snorted before turning to Rui. "Please, forgive the indiscretion."


    Rui nodded, before turning to the bowing servants who offered to escort him to his quarters. As he was escorted out towards a tent that had been prepared just for him, he was deep in thought about his conversation with the old man. Everything about him made him feel wary about the mission. He realized he needed to pay careful attention to this mission. Once he entered the tent, he immediately used Seismic Mapping and Primordial Instinct to surveil the entire camp, gathering as much information as he could.


    He had counted a total of twenty-seven Martial Apprentices, not a bad number for a group of this size. There seemed to be many thousands of men in the camp that was well-hidden in the densest region of the canopy of the forest. This roughly matched the intelligence that the Martial Union had provided him with. A decent force, but it was questionable whether this was enough.


    After all, the fore upying the fort was not small either. ording to the Martial Union, Fort Zurtun was upied and controlled by a five-thousand-strong military battalion of the Royal Britannian Army with more than two dozen Martial Apprentices.


    While the Britannian battalion that upied Fort Zurtun was a little smaller than the rebel force, they had other advantages that more than made up for the gap in numbers with superior Martial Artists and soldiers, superior militaristic technological assets and weapons, as well as terrain advantage as the rebel group would be fighting against the Britannian battalion uphill while thetter was protected by a fort.


    Furthermore, Fort Zurtun had the Hlorn canon as well. Fighting against them in a head-on symmetrical war was practically suicide, it was a wonder they hadn''t all been wiped out.


    (''It must be thanks to the old man.'') Rui hazarded a guess. He couldn''t be sure since the mission bill didn''t cover that information but based on what he had gathered about Fushin Hunfer, the former general of Fort Zurtun and the leader of the Zurtun rebels, it was clear that the old man was the reason this rebel group was even together at this point.


    He surveilled the rest of the camp, observing what the rebel soldiers did with their time. Most of them were tending to logistical matters. Preparing weapons and armor, arge number of horse-pulled carriages. Many of them were stocking up the final bits of food supplies that would be necessary for their climb to the fort. It did seem as though they were nearly ready to begin the assault on the fort at any given time.


    A person carrying a tray made her way to his tent.<novelnext></novelnext>


    "Excuse me, sir..." She addressed him from the outside.


    "Come in."


    A young woman carrying a tray with a bottle of water and some light edibles walked in. "Some water and food for you, sir."


    Rui nodded as she ced the tray on a table in the tent. "Thank you."


    She bowed before scurrying outside.


    He nced at the tray, noting the small little balls on a disposable te that was supposed to be his food. "Food pills."


    It was to be expected. The rebels were not leading a particrly luxurious life such that they could provide guests withvish meals at any given point in time. Rui suspected that for the most part, food pills were consumed for two out of three meals.


    It made too much sense, they were cheap, portable, and had a long shelf life. They weren''t appetizing, but they were nutritious and gave the human body everything it needed. They were perfect for the circumstances under which they were in.


    Eventually, a few hours passed and the sun had gone down.


    "Sir?" Thedy addressed him. "It''s time for dinner, please join us."


    "I''ll be there soon enough." Rui nodded.


    He was looking forward to the meal considering he already knew that they had gone hunting. What he was surprised by when he came out was the intensity of themps that they used, they were rather dim.


    (''Ah, it''s to avoid drawing much attention.'') Rui immediately realized.


    The intensity of themps was low because even if they were some ways away from the fort, brighter light would draw attention and reveal their location.


    He nced towards the many animals they had caught, ranging from rabbits all the way to bears. Feeding a small army was no joke. He sauntered steadily, ignoring the many eyes he felt on him. Yet, it seemed that not all of them were going to ignore him.


    "Hey, you!" A Martial Apprentice approached him, sizing him up exaggeratedly. "So you''re the Martial Artist they hired to help us eh? You sure don''t feel like one!"


    (''This shit again.'') He sighed. He realized he needed to drop the mind mask before he met clients, otherwise, it created too many problems. That was two times in a row now, as far as human-rted missions went anyway.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 507 Course

    Even as the young Martial Apprentice brazenly bbed on, Rui''s mind had tuned out. In his perception, the Martial Apprentices were talking in slow motion. He pondered how he ought to go about this.


    (''Should I just flex again?'') Rui wondered. He very well could drop the mind mask and unleash the bloodlust of a Martial Squire.


    (''No.'') He decided against it. (''These aren''t the same circumstances asst time.'')


    He wasn''t isted like he was with the two Martial Apprentices and the finance minister two missions ago. He was in a densely popted area with a small army that was on edge because of an uing battle. Unleashing the bloodlust of a Martial Squire at this point in time would have negative consequences that he would rather avoid taking the responsibility for.


    At the bare minimum, he would be hurting morale and terrifying the already anxious and nervous soldiers of the rebel group. The bloodlust of a Martial Squire would spread far and wide, unlike that of a Martial Squire, and would impact the entire army. It might even dy the operation as the old man would likely decide that the army was in an insufficient state for the war. That was something Rui definitely wanted to avoid.


    He pondered even as the young man threw taunts at him in extremely slow motion.


    (''Should I just ignore him?'') Rui wondered. He could just walk around and avoid the man, that option was always there.


    (''No...'') He quickly nced at the Martial Apprentices in the vicinity, the look in their eyes indicated this most likely wasn''t something spontaneous. Knowing how cocky Martial Apprentices could get, it probably wouldn''t work. Besides, running away from them also would be bad for morale, since he was someone that they had paid an enormous sum of money to hire for one specific purpose, that too. In the


    (''Hm, I guess I ought to handle this head-on?'') He wondered before his eyes narrowed. (''Did the old man put them up to this?'')


    From his observations of the camp across the day, the camp was exceedingly well-run, like an oiled machine. There was a lot of order and discipline in the way things worked around here, clearly. The man knew how to run an army efficiently, as one would expect from his position.


    The fact that the Martial Apprentices were seemingly running around free didn''t exactly sit right with him in that case. He nced at some of the Martial Apprentices and their clothes, noting that several of them weren''t even supposed to be in this part of the base given what unit they seemed to be a part of.


    (''Was he lying when he expressed I was qualified to be here?'') He wondered, he couldn''t be sure. This could be some sort of test on his part.


    That still left him with what he ought to do.


    (''I ought to ensure that this confrontation does not alter anything significant firstly.'') Rui noted. That meant no seriously injuring the Martial Apprentices or killing them obviously. But it also meant that there could be no coteral damage whatsoever, he could not destroy their storage and inventory or other essentials that would slow down their preparations and extend the time he spent on this mission.


    He also ought to prove his strength in a constructive manner, maybe he could help the Martial Apprentices out. He could take off his mind mask slowly amidstbat while avoiding an extreme emotion that would make his aura scarier than it needed to be. As long as he warmed them up to it in the right manner, there ought not to be any problem.


    He finally turned his attention back to the Martial Apprentice in front of him.<novelnext></novelnext>


    "-like a normal person. Is that Martial Art uniform even yours?" He snorted, putting his hand on Rui''s shoulder, feeling the fabric.


    THUDContent ? N?velDrama.Org 2024.


    He fell to the ground with a resounding impact, having hit the ground before he realized what had even happened.


    The man grimaced lightly, ring at Rui.


    "You talk too much," Rui murmured softly, yet everyone heard him clearly as the weight of his presence slowly escted, bit by bit.


    "What the fuck did you say?" Another joined in, as they walked in closer. "He was just talking to you. No reason to flip him!"


    Rui snorted, ignoring his words. "Come."


    They rushed at him, throwing a volley of attacks from all directions. Rui didn''t bother employing any Squire-level force, as nned. He carefully grabbed their attacks, forcefully redirecting them to the ground or against each other, ensuring that the destructive power they possessed as Martial Apprentices didn''t do any real harm to anybody or anything else.


    "You!" The Martial Apprentice who had first picked a fight with him hadshed out at him. He threw a powerful right kick straight to Rui''s jaw.


    POW


    His eyes flew wide open as Rui didn''t so much as budge under the weight of his attack, despite it hitting his jaw! He couldn''t believe that he wasn''t able to move his head in the slightest. The resistance was so hard that he actually ended up falling backward.


    A shiver went down his spine as Rui finally removed the entirety of his mind mask after having slowly removed it across the little sh. He, and everyone around him, had begun to realize how tremendously strong Rui actually was.


    "I will be risking my life to protect you, all of you, from a Squire-level threat." He sternly announced. "I do not believe I am overstepping my bounds when I expect a certain degree of respect and courtesy."


    When the onlookers remembered that this powerhouse would be fighting on their side soon enough, a surge of confidence sprung within them. A smile broke on their faces as they imagined the sheer devastation that the bastards that had seized their hometown would be experiencing when this menace would be unleashed upon their foes soon enough.


    Rui nodded inwardly at their reaction, it had proceeded more or less as nned. He nced back at the Martial Apprentice before him, extending an arm to help him up.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 508 Conversation

    The man epted Rui''s hand, pulling himself up before lowering his head to Rui.


    "I''m sorry... I did think you would be strong, but to be this strong was beyond my expectations." He sighed. The others quickly followed through issuing quick apologies.


    "It''s alright, as long as you understand." Rui nodded before walking away towards the food gathering. He didn''t want to interact with anybody beyond what was necessary. He simply procured a meal while ignoring the attention that he was still receiving.


    The mood had gotten better because the spat had ended amicably and also because of the confidence boost they had received thanks to him.


    "Mind if I sit here?"


    Rui nced at the woman who had approached him, recognizing her. She was one of the few Martial Artists who had not attacked him back then.


    "Feel free." Rui shrugged.


    She smiled, taking a seat beside him, holding a te of meat, rice, and some greens. "I appreciate you holding back against those hot-headed fools earlier. It might have gotten bad if things had escted."


    "It''s nothing at all." Rui dismissed.


    "I''m Vemy, by the way." She told him. "What''s your name?"


    "Falken." He replied straightforwardly, using his official alias.


    "Earlier, you took a kick from Deny to the face without moving even an inch." She noted, before peering at him with curiosity. "That was unbelievable, can all Martial Squires do that?"


    "Most, I suppose," Rui replied. He hadn''t even used Inner Divergence to dispel the impact, his inherent toughness was enough to withstand the impact of the blow. Meaning most Martial Squires should be able to replicate the feat asides from perhaps the most fragile Martial Squires whose Martial bodies had an extremely strange configuration with weak durability.


    There was also the fact that he was better than Martial Squires with Martial bodies of a simr configuration due to the fact that all of his performance parameters were better thanks to autophagy supplying him with energy and other sustenance that one could get only from multiple high-grade potions mid-fight.


    "That''s truly incredible. It makes me want to be a Martial Squire even more." Sheughed. "It''s the reason why I wanted to talk to you."


    (''Well, at least she''s honest.'') He didn''t particrly think less of her for it. He hadn''t been much different when he was a Martial Apprentices, after all. The secret to the Squire Realm was something that he had tried to pry out of Martial Squires himself, thinking back fondly to all the times he had spoken to Squire Dylon and Kyrie on the matter.


    "We... don''t have Martial Squires, not even when we were at our prime before the Britannian Army had invaded." She sighed. "I keep thinking to myself if we Martial Apprentices had been stronger, if I had been a Martial Squire, we would not have lost. We would not have needed to spend years ruing the funds needed tomission you."


    Rui didn''t respond to her, though he did understand her perspective. Martial Apprentices were physically human, there was a limit to what they could do. In fact, prior to the age of Martial Art, Martial Apprentices were controlled via force or coercion because they alone weren''t enough to turn the tide. That changed when the first Martial Squire was born. Martial Squires truly defied logic in a way that Martial Apprentices couldn''t.


    "I know that you have no obligation to fulfill it... but I did have a request." She told him, turning towards him, meeting his eyes with a pleading gaze. "Can you please divulge to me the way to be a Martial Squire? I''ll do anything in return."


    Rui stared at her, before sighing. "I cannot."


    Squire candidates needed to sign oaths swearing they would not divulge the information that the martial Union provided to them regarding the Squire Realm before they could be briefed about the whole matter.<novelnext></novelnext>


    Of course, technically, Rui knew about the secret of the Squire Realm before the Martial Union briefed him about it thanks to Julian exining the research data that Rui had provided him. However, that didn''t matter, he would still be considered to be viting his oath if divulged the secret to the Squire Realm.


    "Why... not?" Vemy asked with a dejected tone.


    "Because it would get me in trouble."


    "I won''t tell anyone else!"


    "I cannot trust you. Even if your intentions are genuine, this is an extremely sensitive and important matter to the Martial Union and they aren''t half-assed about their efforts to keep the information you''re asking for a secret. I cannot take that risk." Rui told her.


    "I see..."


    "That being said, the information is useless to you even if I did tell you," Rui exined. "There''s nothing you can do about it, trust me. Rather than wanting to know exactly how Martial Apprentices break through to the Squire Realm, you should be more concerned with even being qualified to undergo the breakthrough.


    "Qualified?" She frowned. "Meaning only some Martial Apprentices can breakthrough?"


    (''Well, no shit.'') "Correct."


    "I see." She pondered his words deeply. "What decides whether a Martial Apprentices is qualified?"


    Rui stared at her before his gaze wandered across her entire body unapologetically, intensifying as he stared at all her beautiful features.


    (''A well-toned body. She exudes a decent amount of pressure even when she tries to hide it. Grade seven or so. I suppose I can answer her questi-'') "Pervert!"


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    His thoughts were interrupted by her words. She covered her chest and crotch with her arms with a disapproving re on her face, yet her cheeks were tinted red.


    "...Huh?" Rui tilted his head, confused.


    "You may be a Martial Squire, but don''t even think of trying anything, OK?" She huffed.


    "You-" "-But you know," She interrupted him. "If you could, do answer my question, please. Hehe."


    Rui just stared at her, before bursting outughing, much to her surprise.


    "What''s so funny?"


    "Nothing." He shook his head, chuckling. "But to answer your earlier question..."


    He raised two fingers. "Individuality and maturity. That is what you must seek to achieve."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 509 Individuality

    "Individuality... and maturity?" She frowned.


    "That''s right." Rui nodded. "Individuality and maturity. Your Martial Art needs to obtain enough of both, otherwise, you won''t be able to even survive the breakthrough process to the Squire Realm."


    "What exactly do both of those terms even mean?"


    "I was getting there." He nodded. "Individuality is a measure of how much your Martial Path diverges from others, and how much of its depthes from you."


    She wordlessly stared at him with a skeptical expression.


    "Your techniques and the way you apply them, that is what need to possess individuality. They need to possess a measure of uniqueness and originality."


    "So... I need to create my own techniques?" She frowned. "That''s super difficult!"


    "If it were easy, everyone would be a Martial Squire." Rui snorted. "But you don''t specifically need to create a technique from scratch, and all kinds of viable modifications and alterations to suit yourself, newer applications of an existing technique,binations that you yourself derived from existing techniques, and really anything that originated from you that sets you apart from the others will be one step deeper into your Martial Path."


    "I see..." She hummed as she processed her words. "So that means your Martial Art is much more unique than any other kind of Martial Art that exists out there?"N?vel(D)rama.Org''s content.


    "You can say that." Rui nodded.


    In reality, one could say much more than that. The fact that he inherited the VOID algorithm from his past alone meant that his individuality was on another level. He wasn''t even sure how much of it he had, in all honesty. He knew he had more of it than any other Martial Artist his age, without a doubt. It would be rather shocking if there was.


    "So, my Martial Art just needs to gain enough individuality, hm." She nodded. "Will do. But why is that necessary?"


    Rui paused for a moment, considering whether he could answer her question, before shrugging. "To survive the procedure."


    "Hm?" She frowned.


    "The greater your individuality, the deeper your Martial Path, and the greater your mind can withstand," Rui told her, arriving dangerously close to the limit of what he could tell her.


    "How much individuality do you think I have?" She asked him.


    He once ran his gaze across her.


    "Hey!" Sheined, covering her chest and crotch again.


    "I''m just observing you." Rui sighed, shrugging helplessly.


    There was an awkward pause before she finally relented.


    "Alright then." Uncovering herself, she even puffed her chest out a bit, as if that would somehow make his job easier.


    It didn''t.


    "No, I''m good." Rui turned away. He felt too self-conscious, especially with all the attention on him. Furthermore, while his mind was pure, his seventeen-year-old hormonal body had other thoughts as blood gushed to his groin, awakening little Rui from its slumber down below.


    "Hey! This is beneficial to my Martial Path. Just... get it over with." She looked away with a miffed expression, yet her blushed expression revealed her embarrassment.


    Rui turned back to meet her eyes.


    (''She''s hot.'')


    She looked to be in her early twenties. He wasn''t even able to look at her body without his cursed hormonal teenage body revving up, ever since she perverted the conversation.


    "Forget it, this method isn''t all that reliable anyway." He sighed. "It relies on my instincts, which are unfortunately clouded right now."


    "Clouded?"


    "Forget about it." He growled.<novelnext></novelnext>


    "Well, how do I know how close I am to fulfil the individuality condition to be able to survive the breakthrough to the Squire Realm?" She asked him.


    Rui shrugged, before freezing.


    He recalled when he went through the evaluation examination where a Martial Squire evaluated whether he had indeed fulfilled both conditions for Squire candidacy. The way she had verified whether or not he had fulfilled the individuality condition for Squire candidacy was by stressing him with her mental pressure and noting how much he was able to withstand.


    If a Martial Apprentice was able to withstand pressure above a certain degree, then that Martial Apprentice would at the very least not die due to being too mentally weak.


    He even recalled how much pressure she exerted on him, and since he was also a Martial Squire, he was capable of generating that mental pressure and more.


    He looked around, recalling the dense poption of normal humans around him. He couldn''t perform that here, not in front of all these normal people, they would be too disaffected by the psychological stress.


    "What happened?" Vemy asked him, noticing his demeanor.


    "I have a way of answering your question, but I can''t do it here." He told her. "You need toe to my personal quarters, it''s detached enough from the main camp that others won''t be affected."


    She threw a skeptical re at him.


    "What?" Rui raised an eyebrow, confused.


    "You know what."


    "I haven''t the faintest clue."


    "You''re just making all of this up so you can lure me to your personal quarters where nobody can see us and where you can try to do something to me, aren''t you?"


    Rui just stared at her wordlessly, speechless.


    "Never mind." He turned away, a hint of exasperation creeping into his tone.


    "I''m kidding. Kidding!" Sheughed. "Come, let''s go."


    She got up, trying to pull him up, unable to even budge him.


    "I said I''m good." He grumbled lightly.


    "I said it was a joke, I''m serious!"


    He turned towards her with skeptical eyes.


    "This is really important to me, okay?" Her tone grew soft, yet serious.


    Rui sighed, relenting. The two of them scurried to his personal quarters quietly.


    "Alright then." She turned towards him once they entered.


    "Why did you zip it close?"


    "I don''t want anybody else knowing what you''re going to do to me." She innocently replied.


    Rui narrowed his eyes at her wording, shaking his head. "Sit opposite to me."


    "Sit?"


    "Yeah. Sit." His voice grew heavier, as she sat opposite him.


    The air grew taut. The world shivered ever so slightly. Vemy gasped as a profound amount of weight crashed onto her mind.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 510 Graduation

    She winced at the sheer force her mind experienced from Rui exerting a bit of charged pressure against her. She steeled her expression, trying to withstand the pressure.


    Rui narrowed his eyes as the atmosphere grew chillier.Content ? N?velDrama.Org 2024.


    Had any normal human being been present there, they might have already fallen to the ground and lost control of their dders. Yet her fortitude as a Martial Apprentice was far beyond the limits of the human mind. She grimaced, clenching her fists and gritting her teeth.


    Huff...


    Huff...


    She executed a basic breathing technique, trying to center herself.


    Huff...


    Huff...


    She felt her heartbeat returning to normal soon enough.


    The pressure hadn''t reduced even by the slightest, but she managed to pull herself together.


    Rui could see a profound resilience as she met her soft, yet steely brown doe-like eyes.


    A small grin cracked at his mouth.


    His eyes widened as he directed all-out bloodlust at her, a tsunami of pressure washed over her as she gasped, overwhelmed.


    Her eyelids fluttered as her body went limp, falling backward.


    The pressure disappeared as Rui rushed forward to catch her,ying her body on the bed immediately.


    "Urgh..." She woke up immediately.


    "You okay?" Rui asked, concerned.


    "Fine, surprisingly" she smiled at him. "By the way..."


    "Hm?"


    "How long do you intend to hold me like that?" She stared at him with a teasing expression.


    Rui quickly let go of her, realizing how close he was to her, with an exasperated expression.


    "Well, what did you learn?" She asked, amused. "You didn''t do that just to bully me, right?"


    "Ah, right." Rui shook his head as he ignored his hormonal body. "You''re far from ready. You''ll need several years of working on your individuality before you might be ready."


    She got up, leaning forward towards him with a disappointed sigh. "As expected."


    There was an awkward silence for a bit.


    Rui coughed. "Well, I should get some rest."


    "Are you actually tired?" She raised an eyebrow with a sarcastic tone. "Or are you just trying to kick me out?"


    "Take a guess." Rui sighed. He had had enough of her cheeky and frankly immature attitude.


    His youthful body begged to defer.<novelnext></novelnext>


    He had leaned forward trying to hide his groin.


    "Well, if I don''t, then I won''t have to leave, right?" She smirked, running her hand across his arm.


    Rui groaned inwardly as he felt his body revving up in excitement.


    "Just go before something we do something that probably vites the rules that such a disciplined and well-run base has." Rui sighed.


    "Hehe, too bad that won''t work." She giggled before a hint of mncholy crept into her tone. "Gramps is extremely strict when people are on duty. Even the slightest mistake gets harshly punished. That''s how difficult our predicament is, not even the slightest mistake can ur for us to win. So when we''re on duty, he''s extraordinarily strict, but when we''re off-duty, he allows us to do whatever we want..."


    She turned towards him. "...With whoever we want. Otherwise, even the remaining spirit we have will break."


    Rui felt the emotion she tried to hide from him with his sharp senses. He could feel his reluctance disappearing, which rmed him.


    (''Stop it you horny pig! You''re on! a fucking! mission!'') He groaned inwardly but clearly, his body didn''t care.


    "Well, what if I don''t want to do whatever with whoever?" He used the Mind Mask technique to try and sell indifference and apathy.


    "Hehehe." She walked her two fingers up his leg until they bumped into something rock-hard.


    She didn''t even need to say more. The gesture alone was so erotic that he lost thest shred of self-control that he had. He popped off his mask against his better judgment.


    "Oooooo." She cooed as she studied his appearance, leaning in closer. "You''re cute."


    She kissed him softly and slowly as he reciprocated her energy, she ced a hand on his face as their bodies leaned closer. They kissed passionately, falling onto the bed as they began stripping their clothes off one by one.


    Rui ran his arms across her nude body, drowning in lust and arousal as he indulged in feeling every curve and bump on her body. She moaned lightly as she gently stroked him, kissing him aggressively and sloppily as she pushed him deep into the right ce.


    Rui gasped in shock as he entered. It had been literally decades since hest experienced the intoxicating feeling, the surrounding warm and wet sensation. He shuddered as he felt waves of pleasure flow across his entire body.


    "It''s a safe day."


    Hisst shred of self-control melted away at those words as he thrust in and out vigorously, almostpletely consumed by the raw pleasure he was experiencing.


    "Mmmmm." She moaned lightly, grinning excitedly as she saw howpletely overwhelmed he was by the experience. Rui slowed down periodically, trying not to finish too early, he didn''t want to lose the pleasure he was experiencing. At that moment, he wouldn''t mind if he could continue forever. Yet soon enough that moment came. He elerated energetically as a tremendous build-up of pressure in his groin rued.


    Until he finally couldn''t hold it in any longer.


    For several seconds he waspletely consumed with infinite pleasure, frozen stiff as his muscles were as taut as iron in a response to the sheer stimulus the experience of ejacting inside gave him.


    He finally gasped for air desperately once it ended. Falling on top of her, powerless for a moment.


    "Hehe... That was intense." She grinned, her face flushed red, and she leaned in to whisper in his ear. "You... wanna keep going?"


    He groaned inwardly as he grew hard again.


    Outside in the camp, someone had finally taken notice of their disappearance.


    "Hey, have you seen the martial Squire?" The man who first picked a fight with Rui appeared. "Ist saw him together with Vemy."


    "I dunno, haven''t seen them in a while."


    "Hm..." The man turned around wistfully. "I wanted to know more about the breakthrough to the Squire Realm."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 511 Considerations

    The next morning Rui woke up peacefully, feeling quite serene. He could hear birds chirping outside and the light of dawn cracking through the fabric of the tent. He felt a warm sensation on the right side of his body. He looked down to his right, Vemy was peacefully asleep on his chest clinging to his body, looking equally serene. Rui sighed, embarrassed. It was more than a little embarrassing for him to have given in to the urge of his hormonal teenage body.


    He''d forgotten how good sexual intercourse felt, especially since he had lost all of his libido for decades due to his failing health. But now that he had returned to a youthful healthy body, he was beginning to recall how frightening the power of lust could be.


    He sighed, shaking his head as he recalledst night. Thankfully, he had managed to gain a better hold of himself after his initial shot, taking into ount her experience as well. It had been so long that he was effectively no different from a virgin.


    Yet a part of him wished he hadn''t had the experience because he was better off not remembering what it was like to experience it, not just the intercourse, but all of the intoxicating and blissful physical intimacy he had with her after as well. He realized life would be a lot more pleasant if he could have that with someone he truly cared for.


    He sighed, shaking his head. He did not intend to spend energy and detour from his path especially, for chasing opportunities for it. If they came, he would take them, if not, then that was that. His determination to elevate his Martial Art to its peak was a dream that had survived the rigors of an entire lifetime and even carried over to his next one.


    He would never forsake chasing after it in exchange for chasing after another childish dreamlike love. He was far too driven. He could only hope they could coincide somehow. As for how that could be? Now was not the time to think about it.


    (''I''m on a fucking mission. I need to get my head back into the game.'') He exhaled deeply, closing his eyes and tempering his mental state.


    "Mmmmrgh." He heard a soft moan as Vemy woke up.


    She turned up towards him before smiling. "Hehe good morning."


    "Morning. I should get up now. I''m here on a mission you know." Rui sighed, as he gently ced her head on the pillow as got off from under her.


    He pulled a new set of Martial Art clothes from his utility belt and began clothing himself.


    "Woah, where did thate from?" She asked.


    "They''re made from a rare esoteric fiber that shrinks tremendously under pressure, allowing me to travel with a spare change of clothes" He sighed before putting his old clothes into a pouch that shrunk tremendously.


    "Wow." She looked impressed. "Wish I had one of those. The Kandrian Martial Union sure is impressive."


    "You should get going too," Rui told her. "And try not to let anyone know what happened, I don''t want people to think I''m unprofessional."<novelnext></novelnext>


    "Oh rx, we''vemissioned Martial Apprentices before. This isn''t particrly strange ormon." She nced at her pocket watch. "But I am due to be on standby soon, so I really should go."


    She hurriedly put on her clothes.


    "Bye-bye, I had fun. Let''s do that again if we can." She left sneakily before blowing a kiss at him.


    Rui shook his head, trying to get his head back into the game. Once he was fully clothed, he stepped out of his tent, heading towards the main camp. The air was noticeably tenser than it was the day prior and almost all the preparations werepleted. Soon, he reached therge tent that served as the headquarters.


    "Squire Falken." Fushin Hunfer addressed him without even looking up from all the paperwork he was working on. "I trust you''ve rested and rejuvenated in the past day? I hope you had a good night."


    There was nothing in his tone or words that implied anything beyond what his words conveyed, but Rui could tell the man knew about his nightly affair.


    "Just fine, thank you." He said with a straight tone.


    "Good to hear." The old man nodded, facing him for the first time. "Have a seat. We have important matters to discuss."


    "The attack willmence at dusk." He straightforwardly informed Rui as Rui took a seat opposite to thetter, he pointed at a section of the mountain on a map that he had before him. "We aim to climb the mountain from the south, where the mountain''s inclination is gradual. The attack shouldmence around three hours aftermencement."N?vel(D)rama.Org''s content.


    "Hm." Rui nodded. An attack in the night favored the ambushing force. The ability to surveil and gather information on hostile third parties in the vicinity was hampered due to the darkness, for all parties. Not only did the ability to gather intelligence generally decrease, but the risks in attempting to do so also increased. Thus even attempting proactive intelligence gathering was no longer as easy and simple.


    Even though this also affected the rebels, they possessed an intelligence advantage due to their extreme familiarity with the mountain and the fort, their familiarity with the protocols of the battalion of the Britannian Empire stationed at the fort from previous conflicts, as well as the fact that the location of their enemy being very well known, made it easier to gather information.


    Attacking during the day when both sides would be able to detect the other was far more beneficial to the Britannian battalion than it was to the Zurtun rebel group. Thus, it simply made more sense to eliminate that factor by operating at the night.


    "Tell me about the details, and specifically where and when you wish for me to time my mission and remember, I have the right to refuse if I want to."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 512 Amiss

    "Of course." The old man nodded, seemingly having expected that. "You will disguise yourself amongst our soldiers at the vanguard of our formation and only act when the Hlorn weapon is brought out, which ording to our predictions based on previous assaults is presumed to be anywhere between five and seven minutes depending on multiple factors such as preparation, alertness, and, of course, luck."


    Rui nodded memorizing those details, they made perfect sense.


    "The assault will begin as soon as we approach the boundary of guaranteed detection." The old man stated. "This is the boundary beyond which, no matter what, we are unable to avoid detection from the surveince of the Britannian battalion upying the fort. The Martial Apprentice engaging in surveince in this section of the fort will detect us about one hundred meters from the fort, and from there we will immediately elerate while the long-range squads of our army will beginunching explosive arrows once we reach fifty meters away from the fort in order cause as many casualties in the Britannian battalion as possible as well as much as chaos as possible and slow down their preparation."? N?velDrama.Org - All rights reserved.


    He paused before continuing. "Once we reach the fort, our offensive Martial Apprentices will immediately beginunching coordinated attacks on the fort wall and work to pierce through it and form an opening for the army to infiltrate the castle. We''ve tried variants of simr strategies before, however, we incur too much damage for us to continue, due to the Hlorn being fully operational at this point in time. This is where youe in."


    "I see..." Rui nodded.


    It was a rational n that had a clear goal and made the best of the resources avable to them. Using the darkness in this particr circumstance made sense, and the change in their approach once surveince once they were inevitably detected also made perfect sense, the goal of wanting to infiltrate the fort was also quite logical as seizing back the fort would be an impossible task otherwise. However, there were certain holes that made Rui concerned.


    "If your goal in approaching the fort is to infiltrate it, then why not go for the actual transit entrance gate instead of trying to forcefully create an opening in the middle of the fort wall?" Rui asked. "Doesn''t it make more sense to go for a strategy that creates an asymmetrical warfare where you focus on gaining control over the gate covertly or forcefully one way or another and then simply opening it when the timees?"


    "Your proposal is what we would ideally desire, but there are issues with trying to aplish that." The old man sighed. "The gate is actually the most secure point of the entire fort. Furthermore, it is extensively locked with multiple fail-safes when dusk arrives, meaning gaining control and opening it for when weunch an attack will be a time-consuming task. Combining the power of ten offensive Martial Artists who have trained specifically for this task to coordinate their attacks efficiently to st a hole in the fort is actually less time-consuming. Ten Martial Apprentices whenbining their power can effectively yield an output that surpasses the Apprentice Realm greatly."


    Rui nodded. "It is a simpler n, that is for sure."


    "Simplicity is ideal. Trying to open the gates would require a degree ofplexity that increases the likelihood of a mistake beingmitted or some other variable going wrong or unexpected which can botch our whole n. If we do not get into the fort in time, then we have to immediately retreat down the steeper and quicker side of the mountain lest we get blown to hell by the Hlorn weapon."<novelnext></novelnext>


    Rui nodded. It was true that the greater theplexity and sophistication of a n, the greater the likelihood of a mistake or unexpected oue urring and the greater the likelihood that said mistakes and oues would cause too much of a deviation from the projected n.


    Simpler ns had fewer variables, meaning there were fewer things that could go wrong. In the case of this n, unless one of the offensive Martial Apprentices got taken out very early, or continuously blundered, there wasn''t much that could go genuinely wrong conceptually.


    In the heat of battle, it was best to keep things simple. Although it was tempting to pull off incredibly sophisticated andplicated operations as one might see in the Mission Impossible franchise, anyone who had ever been in arge-scale battle knew that it was best to keep things simple.


    "Once I destroy the Hlorn, I will immediately leave, I will havepleted my mission, and I''ll immediately leave, clear?" Rui nced at him, observing his reactions carefully.


    "Of course."


    His tone, expressions, micro-expressions, and demeanor were impable, yet something told Rui he was missing something.


    (''The Hlorn is not a recently transferred weapon to the Britannian battalion.'') Rui noted. (''Yet the old man nevermissioned a Martial Squire. Even though the weapon''s power is immense, it is a somewhatrge unwieldy cannon that is quite inflexible, and slow with limited effective range, uracy, and precision. It also cannot be used if the army is inside the fort or too close. The window for which the Hlorn is at its most devastating is in the time period between their detection a hundred meters away and reaching the fort walls, once they stick to the walls, there isn''t too much the Hlorn can do otherwise the fort walls will also take damage from the cannon.'')


    Rui''s sharp mind furiouslyputed and analyzed the motive behind hismission both from an empirical standpoint with the data he had avable as well a personal evaluation of the former general of the Zurtun Fort. The man was not a fool, if the Hlorn had been around for years and the rebel army was still not only alive and kicking but also in a position tounch attacks with a reasonable chance of victory, then spending funds umted across years tomission destroying the Hlorn weapon was clearly not something worth doing.


    His eyes narrowed as he eyed the man. (''Just what are you up to old man?'')


    asionally missing content, please report errors in time.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 513 Confirmation

    "Ah, one thing to remember." The old man said, turning to face Rui. "This is a premium guarantee mission. Meaning you will face more severe consequences in failing toplete your mission within the stipted mission."


    The atmosphere froze as the others inside the tent felt shudders climbing up their spines, as their knees buckled, copsing under their own weight. The world creaked to a halt as waves of pressure emanated from Rui.


    "...Is that a threat?" He asked with narrowed eyes.


    "It''s a warning made in good faith." The old man calmly replied. "Now then, if you have any other questions, please do go ahead."


    Rui stared at him until the pressure in the room subsided. He was actually quite impressed that the old man was unfazed. That kind of mental pressure wasn''t something that could be shaken off easily, the old man either underwent some kind of mental training that improved his fortitude or had undergone extraordinary experiences that tempered his mind to be able to keep itsposure under the flux of pressure of Rui''s hostility.


    "Whymission me to destroy the Hlorn weapon if it was unable to stop you fromunching assaults year after year?" Rui asked straightforwardly. He had already inferred and deduced all the information he could through deductive and inductive logic. The only way he could learn more was by creating scenarios where he would gain more information.


    Of course, he didn''t expect old Fushin to answer him honestly, but there was still information to be gleaned, directly and indirectly.


    Fushin threw a wless confused expression at him. "I... I didn''t suppose I had to exin that. The Hlorn weapon outputs power in the Squire Realm while we arepromised almost entirely of ordinary humans barring the two dozen Martial Apprentices we have. The reason should be obvious unless, of course, you''re saying the Squire-level power means nothing here."


    That was an extremely well-constructed evasion of Rui''s question. The way he framed it threw out all the nuance for why Hlorn was not as obviously devastating as he was making it clearly seem. Itpletely skimmed over the many disadvantages that all canons possessed, but especially the Hlorn in these circumstances.


    Furthermore, he also hampered Rui''s ability to push back with hisst statement, making it seem as though Rui was implicitly stating that Squire-level power was useless.


    Rui could try and dissect his statements and his reasoning in a debate, but that was tedious and long-drawn, and ultimately pointless, he would simply be wasting everyone''s time and patience. It was better not to bother with something like that.


    (''And that''s why he said that because he knows that I know that there is no point in doing anything of the sort.'') Rui noted. (''Sly bastard. I''m even more certain that something is a little off here.'')


    However, Rui never intended to extract information from the old man himself, he was too careful. Rui had already observed that he held an incredible amount of sway about the information he conveyed through verbal and non-verbalmunication. It would take Rui extended long-term effort to be able to extract information from him.


    (''But the same cannot be said for your subordinates, old man.'') A slight smile cracked under his mask.


    Their reaction to his question was not something that someone would have to an extremely stupid question with an obvious answer. When he studied them with his senses and techniques, he couldn''t really make out much obvious emotion on their faces at all.N?vel(D)rama.Org''s content.


    (''And that''s what gives it away.'') Rui mused.<novelnext></novelnext>


    Their emotional expression was controlled to hide whatever they were feeling. And the only reason they would feel the need to do that is if there was something to hide at all in the first ce. In the context of these particr circumstances, Rui could safely rule out whatever it was they were hiding as most certainly not benign or unimportant.


    Besides, he could sense they were nervous inside. But unfortunately, that didn''t mean too much. There was a war iing within twenty-four hours, nervousness was rife. Furthermore, his little flex earlier had affected them as well, so he truly could not say that their nervousness was indicative of anything. If anything, it could be said that he could learn more from their desire to control their reactions.


    "Well then. It appears my worries were misced." Rui simply stated. "I suppose I''ll be seeing youter at war, gentlemen."


    He turned away, leaving. There wasn''t much else for him to do here.


    "Ah onest thing, Squire Falken." Old Fushin called out to him.


    Rui paused, turning his head back to meet the old man''s gaze with the edge of his eye.


    "Our Martial Apprentices, do you mind serving as their training and sparring partner?" He requested. "I''m sure they''d be thrilled to receive the rare opportunity to do so. Of course, only if you''re willing. But it''s not like you have anything else to do the rest of the day, correct?"


    Rui stared at him for a while, before simply nodding his head and turning back to walk out.


    An entire minute passed before a Martial Apprentice broke the silence. "He''s far away enough."


    "Close the tent," Fushin ordered.


    The inneryer of the tent had beenyered with a sound-insting esoteric fabric that prevented any sound from entering or escaping.


    "That was terrifying." One of the men fell back to his knees. "I think this is a big mistake. Who knows what he''ll do to us when he finds out the truth."


    "How did he even catch any wind of it at all?" Another oneined.


    "He''s highly intelligent... Just our luck." Fushin stroked his beard, sighing. "There should have been nothing. Nothing but the tiniest of scraps of clues, yet he noticed all of them and managed to deduce and infer much of the truth, considering what he worked with. Not only that, he took prudent steps to verify his suspicions and then confirmed them to be true... Are all Martial Squires like this? Did I underestimate these breeds of superhumans? Hmmm..."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 514 Opportunity

    "He was going find out anyway eventually... But his me would have fallen on the Martial Union ordinarily. But now that he seems to understand there is more to this than meets the eye, the me will likely fall on us when the timees." He sighed. "It''s inconvenient that he is so sharp."


    They discussed the matter to a greater extent. Rui on the other hand thought about the matter by himself.


    (''At the very least, I can be certain it''s not malicious.'') Rui nodded. It would vite the terms of the contract and would be interpreted as an open deration of war against the Kandrian Martial Union. A team of Martial Squires would be immediately dispatched and the entirety of the Zurtun rebel group would be massacred indiscriminately.


    Despite all the deception at hand, the rebel group was fundamentally driven to im back their homnd and return back to their families. There was no mistaking this. This meant that whatever deception was going on at hand likely was not malicious against him, but more so exploitative in nature.


    (''Seeing how shrewd that cunning old fox is, I bet it''s technically not a vition of the contract either.'') Rui sighed. He didn''t think the old man would do anything that could be proven to vite the contract since that would invite a severe penalty from the Martial Union.


    (''It''s also something he can''t reveal without giving me legitimate grounds and incentives to call off the mission in a justified manner ording to the contracts.'')


    If whatever he was hiding, which had to pertain to the true reason for the mission, was benign and harmless, then Fushin would have revealed it to Rui. It would have even been mentioned in the contract. But clearly revealing it was problematic, thus it was being hidden.


    That gave Rui further clues.


    (''I cannot attack the client at any given point in time unless my life is at stake.'') Rui noted. (''This means he''s not worried for his life, the consequences of revealing the information he is hiding are more so to do with the mission being voided if he does reveal it.'')


    (''But what information could void my mission and cancel it if I learned about it?'') Rui wondered.


    There were several possibilities that came to mind. Yet before he could consider them deeper, a spike of seismic radiation in the distance drew his attention.


    (''Hm, the Martial Apprentices are training.'') He realized as he focused his senses in that direction. Rui recalled Fushin''s request regarding sparring with them, sighing. He wasn''t in the mood to be charitable with the man, but it was true that he genuinely had nothing else to do for another twelve hours.


    The twenty-seven Martial Apprentices of the Zurtun rebel group were collectively sparring a great distance away from the base camp and the mountain so that they wouldn''t give their presence away to the Britannian Battalion upying the fort.


    BOOM!


    BOOM!


    BOOM!


    Ten Martial Apprentices wereunching attacks at a gigantic boulder in groups of three, forming a wide and deep crater that grew deeper with each group of attacks the Martial Artists threw.<novelnext></novelnext>


    (''This must be the offensive team that will work on breaking through the thick and dense wall of the fort wall.'') Rui thought inwardly, nodding. The coordinated offensive power of ten Martial Apprentices would make short work of the fort walls in a reasonably short period of time. Once the fort wall was prated, the army could quickly swarm inside and the Hlorn weapon would be rendered useless. It couldn''t be used inside the fort, it would cause too much damage to themselves.


    He smiled slightly as he saw Vemy among them. She seemed to be an offensive Martial Artist with a kicking-oriented Martial Art. What was distinct about her style is that it seemed to put more weight on singr power above all else. Sheunched long-winded spinning kicks that generated tremendous amounts of torque that she transferred to her target in a devastating blow.


    It was a style that distinctly resembled Taekwondo in several ways.


    Just as he analyzed her movements deeper, he was interrupted.


    "Come out." One of the Martial Apprentices suddenly looked in his direction, in the forest, calling him out.


    (''A Martial Apprentice with a sensory technique.'') Rui mused. He wasn''t particrly rmed. He was not especially trying to hide and he had nothing to hide. He was simply taking liberty in observing them train.


    "I won''t say it again,e out." He said, walking towards the forest.


    Rui sighed, revealing himself in the distance. The Martial Apprentices looked at him in surprise, wondering why a mighty Martial Squire would bother spying on them, meager Martial Apprentices.


    N?vel(D)rama.Org''s content.


    "Uh..." The man scratched his head, loosening his tone a bit. "Do you need something, sir?"


    "Not particrly," Rui replied, approaching them. "General Hunfer requested me to train and spar with all of you, but I didn''t want to barge in and disturb you when you were preupied, you have my apologies."


    Their eyes lit up with interest. Almost none of them had met a Martial Squire prior, let alone be trained by one!


    The best they had ever been trained by were the old surviving veteran Martial Apprentices of the Zurtun town. However, while they were experienced and knowledgeable, not even they were aware of what it took to be a Martial Squire.


    The same could not be said for someone who had managed to elevate himself to a higher Realm. This was the only person within their reach who could tell them more about the road to a higher Realm. In fact, if it wasn''t for the fact that they had something even more important, they would have long swarmed him to learn more from him.


    "Please guide us." They requested sincerely.


    Rui nodded. "Alright, will do. While there''s nothing that I can do to make you stronger for tonight''s operation, what I can offer will be helpful in the long run."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 515 Teams

    "We understand." The man addressing Rui said. "We''ll make the best of your teachings."


    They nodded vigorously. Vemy threw him a brief mischievous smile sneakily that the others didn''t notice.


    (''So she didn''t tell them, phew.'') He sighed inwardly.


    "How do you propose we go about this?" The man asked.


    "Hm..." Rui thought about it. His mind shed back to the days when martial Apprentices all ganged up to fight Kyrie, once the sparring session was over, she would round them all up and instruct them on their shorings, ws, and weaknesses as well as offer suggestions on how to mitigate or get rid of them.


    "We don''t have much time," Rui told them. "A third of youe at me at once first, followed by the remaining third."Content is property ? N?velDrama.Org.


    It was not practical to try and spar with twenty-seven people at once. Not because Rui could not aplish it, but if he wanted, he could ughter all of them with rtive ease. But sparring twenty-seven people at once wasn''t really practical for a meaningful form of training because there was a physical logistical limit to the number of people who could attack him at once, and a limit to the number of Martial Apprentice he could focus on grilling at once.


    Meaning, sparring twenty-seven at the same time would make all of them feel left out for longer periods of time. It was better to spar with fewer people at once and ensure that each of those people could have a proper sparring session where they were intensely involved with the fight.


    They nodded at that proposal, having simr thoughts.


    "You three." Rui pointed to three random Martial Apprentices out of the crowd. "What are your names?"


    "Cern."


    "Gerard."


    "Mina."


    "The three of you are the strongest of all of you, aren''t you?" Rui could clearly sense that those three were the only full-fledged higher-grade Martial Apprentices in their group.


    The three of them nodded with surprised expressions, wondering how Rui was able to discern it so easily. Was this one of the abilities of Martial Squires?


    "Form three teams that each of you will lead, and decide who will go first," Rui told them as he sat on a rock, observing them.


    Rui observed them intermingling with each other carefully. What they didn''t know was that Rui was already testing them. Depending on how smoothly their team formation went, it would tell them much about themselves. If they scrambled to obtain all the strongest Martial Apprentices for their own team at the cost of the other teams, then it would generally reflect poorly on their sense of unity and teamwork. If they were truly united in their goal to make the best of this opportunity for all of them, it would reflect in their choices and actions.


    (''So far it''s already going well.'') Rui nodded inwardly.<novelnext></novelnext>


    Cern, Gerard, and Mina were discussing amongst themselves rather than trying topete with each other by trying to attract the other Martial Apprentices to their team. In little over ten minutes, they had already formed their teams.


    "We''re ready, Squire Falken." The three of them told him with three groups of Martial Artists behind them.


    Rui swept his eyes across the three groups, analyzing them. He was satisfied when he saw that the teams were broadly equally strong. Although it was impossible to create three perfectly equally strong teams, he was pleased that they had gone or an approach that made each team equally strong that allowed all of them to experience a simr level of power from Rui.


    He also noticed that each team had roughly three of the ten offense-oriented Martial Apprentices that he had seen practicing coordinating their attacks to sting arge opening in walls to allow the army to pass through smoothly. Meaning each team had a simr level of offensive capabilities. This meant that they had tried to create teams that not only were equally strong but also equally bnced.


    "Good." Rui nodded. "Let me begin by exining how I''m going to go about this. I will be restricting my power and speed to the peak of the Apprentice Realm, though I may decide to use even lesser if I can, barring my toughness and reaction speed, both of which I cannot truly restrict or change in any other way, got it?"


    They all nodded. It made sense, there was no point in him going all out as that would simply kill them or defeat them so fast that there was nothing of value to be learned in their loss. They would gain no valuable experience.


    "So which group will be going first?" Rui asked.


    "I''ll be going first, Squire." He smiled confidently. He was arge man with a towering well-built physique, and also the strongest offensive fighter amongst all of them.


    The nine of them surrounded him quickly while the other two groups retreated to an adequate distance to give both sides enough room to fight all out.


    They all took their stances, waiting for Rui to send the signal.


    "Alright then..." Rui cracked his knuckles. "Come."


    WHOOSH


    In an instant, two Martial Apprentices were at his sides while another was above him. Two more emerged, attacking him from the front and behind.


    (''Three maneuvering-oriented Martial Apprentices and two offense-oriented Martial Apprentices.'') Rui casually noted while he studied their movements that were in slow motion in his eyes. He had no intention of flexing his power and sting them all away, which he could even with his stated restriction.


    Instead, he caught the attacks of all the two Martial Apprentices attacking from his sides and slowly shifted them to the Martial Apprentices that were front and behind him, pulling them in those directions. His twisting motion also deflected the attacks of the Martial Apprentices front and behind him that was about to touch his back and front, redirecting them to the Martial Apprentices to his side.


    Their attacks were redirected such that it looked like they were attacking each other in a chain!


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 516 Spar

    He simply pulled the Martial Apprentice who was kicking down,unching himself as he somersaulted out of his position, recing himself with him.


    POW POW POW POW!


    BAM!


    The four Martial Apprentices who attacked him onnd grimaced as they not only hriously missed their target but also ended up hitting their teammates. The one Martial apprentice whounched a flying kick found himself standing where Rui was, while Rui was standing outside their circle.


    Everyone looked at him with amazement. This is what he was capable of when he restricted and limited himself to the Apprentice Realm.


    Team Gerard quickly gathered itself, regrouping before they came at him again, two maneuvering-oriented Martial Apprentices dashed out at him with tremendous speeds,unching swift and short barrages of jabs.


    Rui never let his inherently high toughness do the job for him. He cleanly parried away every single strike with as little movement and effort as he could, just barely applying the necessary force to ensure that they don''t connect with him properly. He considered constructing predictive models to try and minimize the effort he needed to expend to take them down, but he decided not to. That was far too overkill, they wouldn''t evenprehend what happened to them and would gain the misunderstanding that all Martial Squires could replicate the feat. He did not want to give them an inurate view of the Squire realm.


    (''These two aren''t bad.'') Rui mused. (''But their top speed is much greater than their agility, creating unnecessarily high amounts of inertia, making it difficult for them to decelerate and reach zero. They''re fast at their peak but they''re not quick to switch.'')


    They were almost like trains. Bullet trains had a very high top speed, but these massive transportation vehicles took their time to reach their top speed and to get back to zero from top speed. Of course, this could be due to their Martial Art being highly centered around speed, but that didn''t necessarily mean everything had to be sacrificed to obtain speed at all costs, everything was needed to create a viable Martial Artist.


    He had already identified numerous shorings and ws


    WHOOSH


    He avoided a powerful blow from one of the Martial Apprentices, crouching. The powerful kick sted across empty air.


    CLASP


    Rui caught his leg, swinging him down to the ground.


    BAM!


    The man grimaced.


    (''This is the second time you''reunching an attack off the ground.'') Rui smiled behind his mask, amused. (''Don''t take your feet off the ground so often if you''re helpless midair.'')


    He sensed a powerful wind projectile beingunched at him from behind.


    (''Oh?'') Rui raised an eyebrow. As itshed out toward Rui, he simply watched as it arrived.


    STEP


    He jumped,nding on the wind!


    The other Martial Apprentices gaped as Rui rode the wind!


    He even bnced upon it like he was surfing a wave, which he effectively was.<novelnext></novelnext>


    "Woah" Hended on the ground once the energy of the attack fizzled out. "That was fun."


    He turned to face Gerard who hadunched the powerful attack, nodding in approval. (''He waited for me to deal with the maneuvering-oriented Martial Apprentice whounched an airborne attack so that he wouldn''t hurt them, yet the attack wasunched before he was out of the way, meaning he predicted I would deal with him quick enough.'')


    This showed that Gerard had a respectable degree of foresight, something none of the other Martial Apprentices had demonstrated thus far.


    (''But you were too presumptuous.'') Rui disapproved, as he casually evaded a few more attacks from those around him. (''If I chose to dodge instead of m him to the ground, your attack would have hit him instead, inflicting critical damage.'')


    He returned his attention to the remaining Martial Apprentices.


    There were four of them who had tried to dogpile him with attacks again, yet this time they were a bit more clever about it.


    CLASP


    Two Martial Apprentices grabbed him in mirror body holds, from behind while the two offense-oriented Martial Apprentices threw their most powerful strikes straight toward his face.


    WHOOSH


    Rui evaded them ever so slightly as he bent forward.


    BAM!


    He chained that maneuver into an over-body flip, throwing the two Martial Apprentices that tried to restrain him straight to the ground with a powerful impact.


    POW POW!


    A lean roundhouse kick swept across their faces, striking them hard. The two of them leaped back, grimacing. The Martial Apprentices took a moment to re-position themselves.


    (''When he said he would be restraining himself to Apprentice-level output, I thought it would be a difficult fight for both sides.'') Gerard gritted his teeth. (''Since the reason why he''s stronger than us; the power of a Martial Squire would no longer be in y. But he''s toying with us even though he''s outputting power and speed that is not too different from us.'')


    Gerard paid close attention to him as the battle resumed. (''What is it that makes us different? Theoretically, all of us should be physically capable of this level of power.'')


    Gerard studied all of Rui''s movements carefully, ceasing his attack briefly. He watched Rui dismantle all opposition while making it look entirely easy. Every move he made seemed measured and nned, causing a cascade of events that perfectly yed well for him.


    (''He''s using his power like a surgeon uses a scalpel.'') Gerard realized. (Each of his moves is precise and urate. They''re always at the right time and ce, ultimately, it''s ying a much greater role than it does when we wield that same power!'')? N?velDrama.Org - All rights reserved.


    Gerard had always thought he was a sophisticated and refined fighter, but before the elegant brilliance of Rui, he felt like a caveman swinging around a club trying to fight a fencer.


    "I have a long way to go." He sighed.


    Just this battle alone had given him a lot of inspiration and motivation. He felt determination growing within him, the determination to win the uing battle, and the determination to grow stronger after.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 517 Guidance

    Of course, while he was motivated and determined to aplish what Rui was demonstrating, he did not realize it was futile. Martial Squire''s brains possessed a far greater degree of the same cognitive and mental enhancements that Martial Apprentices possessed.


    The reason Martial Apprentices were so strong with Apprentice-level techniques was that Martial Apprentices were able to fight with a high degree of efficiency, they were able to use all of the energy generated by the cells of the human body extremely efficiently unlike normal humans, allowing them to exhibit an extraordinary amount of output, much of which would otherwise go to waste.


    This was even more true for Martial Squires, who was able to exhibit a degree of efficiency that far exceeded even that of Martial Apprentices. That was one of the reasons Rui was able to school the Martial Apprentices even though he didn''t use the formidable power of the body of a Martial Squire. He used his power with a degree of efficiency and effectivity that was physically impossible for a Martial Apprentice.


    (''Still, he doesn''t know that.'') Rui mused. (''As long as he doesn''t know that and believes it is possible, then the motivation and determination to obtain that power will drive him further down his Martial Path.'')


    Rui had no intention of correcting his ill-conceived notions, not as long as they were beneficial to him. He simply proceeded to beat up not just team Gerard, but also team Mina and team Cern for nearly half a day. At the end of a long and extensive sparring session, all the Martial Apprentices copsed to the ground exhausted while Rui hummed to himself admiring the pleasant weather and climate that was lessmon in the cold Kandrian Empire.


    "How are youpletely fine after fighting for that long? Is it some special Squire-level stamina-oriented technique?" Gerard asked, panting.


    "Martial Squires have inherently superior stamina." Rui sighed, wishing he could take his mask off and enjoy the cool breeze. "No need for a technique."


    "That''s not possible! How can Martial Squires have superior stamina even when they aren''t employing any Squire-level techniques?" The man asked, surprised. "Are Martial Squires even humans?"


    Rui didn''t respond to that, that came too close to the truth that he couldn''t really reveal and get away with. But it was an interesting question. He tried not to think too much about it, but technically, he wasn''t a human anymore. At the very least, he wouldn''t be ssified as a homo sapien ording to the biological nomenture that existed on Earth.


    He wasn''t entirely sure how he felt about that. But regardless, he didn''t have any strong feelings about it. He looked human, he was able to function in society as a normal human, he was human at heart and he was still able to pursue his Martial Art and Martial Path.


    It was a technicality that didn''t truly change anything. It didn''t even change the fact that his children would be gically human instead of whatever he was. The evolution process was isted from the reproduction system because it was too harsh and ended up resulting in turning the subject sterile. Thus, in order to retain one''s reproductive capabilities, certain parts of the reproduction system had to be excluded from the procedure. Doing so would allow the Martial Squire to reproduce normal human beings.


    This was another interesting avenue for thought that was interesting to ponder.


    Gerard sighed, drawing Rui''s attention. "The more I learn about the strength of a Martial Squire, the more I want to step into that Realm of power..."


    Rui didn''t even need to hear the rest to know where this was going. "So, you want me to help you out with what it takes to be a Martial Squire, correct?"<novelnext></novelnext>


    Gerard sheepishly nodded.


    Rui sighed. "I cannot divulge anything about the actual breakthrough to the Squire Realm, I am bound by oath. But I can divulge what it takes to be qualified to undergo the breakthrough to the Squire Realm to some of you."


    "Some of us?" Gerard frowned.


    "Yes, the rest of you aren''t nearly ready yet, learning about it will be harmful to your progression to the higher Realm," Rui informed them.


    "Who among us qualified and why?" Gerard asked with a hint of anxiety, he would be disheartened if he wasn''t qualified to learn even about what it took to just be ready to attempt breaking through to a higher Realm.


    "Generally, it''s based on power and experience," Rui informed. "Among all of you, I sense only nine individuals are qualified to learn about the conditions to bing a Squire candidate. The three team leaders, followed by you, you, you, you, you, and you."


    He pointed at the nine individuals.


    "Then can you tell us?" Gerard.


    "I expected that I would be asked this at some point, so I wrote it down on a sheet of paper." Rui pulled out a folded piece of paper and flicked it to Gerard. "Show it only to those who are qualified, but only after the battle, it is best not to be distracted and underperform. You might end up costing everybody the war."? N?velDrama.Org - All rights reserved.


    Rui got up. "With that, we''re done. Good luck to all of you, rejuvenate yourselves, and prepare for the war."


    "Thank you for your guidance." Gerard thanked him as they all bowed to his retreating figure.


    Rui had taken his time sparring and guiding them thoroughly. Part of it was because he enjoyed the process, he had taken up missions where he boosted the growth of Martial Apprentices by sparring with them regrly. Using the predictive and adaptive evolution model to detect all the ws and shorings and then sparring with them in a manner that forced them to get used to their opponent trying to exploit ws and shorings for them to learn how topensate for them in the long run, was incredibly satisfying.


    Besides, he had nothing else to do the entire day, so it was a good way to while away time.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 518 For Home

    The time had arrived.


    Rui had spent the remaining quarter of the day in contemtion of what Fushin Hunfer and hisckeys were hiding, but eventually, he stopped. He had already inferred a lot of information through deductive and inductive reasoning, but there was a limit to how much he could learn through that route. The more he tried to deduce further, the less reliable and baseless his conjectures would be. It was ultimately a wasteful mental exercise. He could not conjure up new information out of thin air.


    (''I need to be careful though.'') Rui sighed.


    He had already concluded that whatever they were hiding was not malicious against him, it was at most convenient exploitation that would aid in their goal. Rui was quite certain that their conviction to reim their hometown that had been colonized by the Britannian Empire was very real. He could feel it in most of them to a strong degree, and it made sense.


    These were all former soldiers that defended their fort and hometown, they all had some family or the other that was currently being ruled by the Britannian Battalion and exploited to provide value to the Britannian Empire.


    One reason he wasn''t too rmed and paranoid was that he had rtively high assurance regarding the magnitude of the matter. For example, it certainly couldn''t be something that would definitively get Rui killed or defeated but would spare them all, that was inconceivable even if Rui entertained wild possibilities.


    Anything that was guaranteed to kill Rui would absolutely be guaranteed to annihte all of them, it would be foolish to put him and themselves in that situation. Perhaps if it were done by the average person, Rui wouldn''t put it past then, but Fushin Hunfer was too shrewd to do something that foolish. At most this was a calcted risk.


    "Besides, this might actually turn out to be good, ironically," Rui chuckled. There were certain possibilities that he hade up with that was actually favorable to him. He wouldn''t mind those possibilitiesing true.


    He whiled away his time considering these thoughts, even while he was in his room, having dinner; food pills. Hours passed until the time was nigh.


    "Squire Falken." A person called out to him from the outside. "It''s soon time. Please be on standby."


    "Will do," Rui replied back.


    He got up, heading out of the tent as he made his way to the core of the main camp. He could feel the air growing tenser the closer he headed toward it.


    The atmosphere was taut as everybody was stiff with nervousness and determination.


    Rui made his way to the camp headquarters.


    "Squire Falken, it''s time, we will dispatch in about half an hour once the very final step is undertaken. You recall your position and all the details of the n, correct?" The old man asked with a respectful tone.


    "Every word." Rui shortly replied.


    Rui would be stationed at the vanguard of the army as they approached the fort, as they had previously agreed.<novelnext></novelnext>


    "But I have another idea." Rui suddenly spouted.


    Everybody paused as they looked at him nervously,st-minute changes were rarely a good thing.Content ? N?velDrama.Org 2024.


    "The night is dark, I think I should sky-walk to the fort at a certain elevation and attack from the sky when the Hlorn weapon is brought out. It gives me an eagle-eyed view of the entire fort and allows me to know exactly when it is brought out. I could even ry information to you if you need it. And it has a better element of surprise and would increase the likelihood of the operation."


    To his surprise, Fushin agreed with that course of action.


    "If that is what you want, then that works too." He simply responded to Rui, earning the surprise of everybody.


    In reality, Rui did not care much about which approach he took. This was simply a clever n he had undertaken to gain more information from the man. He wanted to see Fushin''s reaction to ast-minute change in the n. If he objected hard to the n even though the end result of the n would be the same, then Rui could be certain that whatever he was hiding had something to do with the position he had given Rui in his strategy of attacking the fort.


    ? But the fact that he had no problem with Rui detaching far away from the army and going his own way showed that it wasn''t particrly important to him where Rui was prior to the actualmencement of the assault. Meaning whatever he was hiding didn''t have anything to do with anything before the actual conflict itself.


    Of course, with how shrewd the old man was, there was a possibility that he figured out Rui trying to gauge more information from him, meaning it was entirely possible he had said that simply to throw Rui off.


    "On second thoughts, I think I''ll stick to the original n," Ruimented.


    "That works too."


    Rui did not want to separate from the army because if he was with them, anything bad that happened to him would also happen to all of them, by sticking with him as tightly as he could for as long as he could, he was binding his fate to theirs. If he was hit by a nuke, then they would also be hit by a said nuke. There was almost no way he could exclusively be the victim of something for the time period that they were all together.


    Time passed and eventually, every single final preparation was made. The entire camp had been neatly divided into their respective units and everybody was exactly where they were, with everything they needed and knew everything they needed to know.


    "Zurtuns," Fushin addressed them, just before they were all about to be dispatched. "Today is the day. Today is the day we reim our home and our people. Today is the day we reim what they have taken from us! Today is the day we win this war! FOR VICTORY!"


    "FOR VICTORY!!!"


    "FOR HOME!"


    "FOR HOME!!!" The army echoed.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 519 Unsurprised

    Content ? N?velDrama.Org 2024.


    Very swiftly he pumped the morale and the energy of the army to a decent degree. Soon enough, the order had been delivered and the army began dispersing. The general himself would not be taking part in the operation, he was far too old and losing him would likely be even more devastating than losing some Martial Apprentices. In the time that Rui had spent in the camp, it was very clear to see that Fushin yed an important role in the Zurtun Rebel group. He was the core, in many ways.


    Rui turned, looking at the old man as they left. He felt a chill run down his spine as he saw the man staring straight at him with a smile on his face. Rui had to take a moment, breathing deeply topose himself. He steeled his heart as he forged on with the army. They were on foot because the horses would draw too much attention, furthermore, they were wearing sound-insnt footwear to reduce the amount of noise they made.


    Rui''s standard Martial Union uniform consisted of footwear that did the same thing to a higher degree. They soon reached the mountain summit, where four guards game into view. Yet before they could even process what was happening.


    POW POW POW POW


    All four of them were killed by the Martial Apprentices that scouted ahead.


    The scout squad was supposed to eliminate the guards that were posted along the way to the fort. They did so just narrowly before the army came into their field of vision so that they could quickly be reced by rebels of the rebel group who would pass off as the guards, even wearing the necessary armour and other attire.


    The army quickly delved into the forest, keeping away from the standard path that led straight to the fort gates. They would easily be detected, they wanted the cover of the trees in the already dark night that would obfuscate their approach for as long as possible, as long as they didn''t make any mistakes.


    This part of the operation was slow and rigorous and truly tested the perseverance of the army. They would need to climb up a mountain carrying all the gear that they were carrying without making too much noise. They couldn''t collectively pant or stomp their feet, they needed to be careful and soft while still exerting themselves significantly.


    Hours passed, Rui casually strolled up while the men around him were doing their best to maintain their pace and ensure they didn''t generate any noise. They breathed hard, trying to mitigate their exhaustion and fatigue.


    Rui turned his gaze forward as he realized they were close to the boundary of inevitable detection. The scout Martial Apprentices signaled as much to the army, causing them to all stop as they passed on the signal to the people behind them in a wave until everyst man knew it was time.


    They all crouched, slowly pulling out a rejuvenation potion out of their pouches and inhaling it.


    They each consumed rejuvenation potions, invigorating themselves. If they attacked in their current state, they would do so poorly that they would all die very quickly. Thus, the n was toplete energize them so that they were all in peak condition. Even the Martial Apprentices consumed some potions. The only one who didn''t bother was Rui. Slowly climbing up a portion of the way up a small mountain was a walk in the park for a Martial Squire.


    Five minutester, every singlest soldier in the rebel army had consumed a potion.


    The unit captains signaled the charge phase, and soon the entire army elerated towards the fort that was clearly visible in the distance.


    Rui sensed turmoil in the fort as seismic radiation originating from the fort had increased exponentially.


    (''They know and they''re making haste.'') Rui noted as he sharpened his senses, preparing for anything. Whatever the old man was hiding, would most likely be revealed within a short period of time. He kept an eye across all directions with his senses as they charged towards the fort.


    The long-range units soon began firing explosive arrows towards the fort once they reached the necessary range. However, arrows rained back on them as well.


    "SHIELDS!" The captains yelled.


    Soon each soldier raised their shield above them as they continued running. They managed to mostly get away unscathed but there were some who had been hit by the small explosions in unshielded areas, causing them to fall.


    Rui ignored the arrows entirely as he paid attention to the fort with Seismic Mapping, gaining reasonably sharp view of what was going on inside.


    (''There it is.'') Rui concluded. As both Seismic Mapping and Primordial Instinct told him about the weapon. Rui could feel the sheer amount of energy packed in the cannon. If he got hit by a round from that, he would not get away unscathed or with minor wounds. If not for its significant strategic inconvenience in these particr circumstances, they would have gotten utter annihted by the weapon in their previous encounters. It had a strong Squire-level sense of threat in his mind, his subconscious sense of danger evaluated it as a threat.<novelnext></novelnext>


    "PENETRATION SQUAD GO!" The captain yelled once they reached the fort walls.


    BOOM!


    BOOM!


    BOOM!


    The offensive Martial Apprentices immediately fired away attacks rapidly with wless coordination as they together made huge a huge crater that only grew bigger by the second.


    Rui focused on his target, which was making its way to the fort wall.


    (''Now!'') Rui shot up,unching himself above the wall in an instant as he flew a great distance inside, straight towards the canon.


    Yet just before he reached it, he froze, before leaping away.


    BOOM!!


    A massive crater formed where he had been standing just prior.


    Time slowed down profusely as Rui''s senses were in overdrive as his awareness hit unprecedented peaks, trying toprehend the situation he was in.


    Yet, the answer was self-evident.


    Rui could feel it in his bones.


    At the center of the crater was a single silhouette behind the dust.


    STEP STEP STEP


    The figure walked out nonchntly despite time being almost frozen in Rui''s perception. Whoever this was, it was someone who existed in the same realm of cognition as Rui himself.


    And the inevitable soon followed, confirming what he already knew with sheer instinct.


    A squire-level aura descended upon the entire area as the very air froze, growing taut. The war itself creaked to a halt as the aura bathed the battlefield, inspiring fear in all those it graced.


    Not a single person was unsurprised.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 520 Clash

    The atmosphere was perilous. Before such oppressive pressure, even Martial Apprentices were scared stiff.


    A second Squire-level aura bathed the battlefield as Rui stripped away his mind mask. The two Martial Squires made their presence known. The fate of the battle rested upon the conclusion of the battle between them. Even if the human and the Martial Apprentice forces of one side won, if the Martial Squire of the opposing side lost, then they would still lose. They could not defeat a Martial Squire who had mastered his power.


    The dust cleared as the two Martial Squires got a close look at each other.


    The man who stood at a distance from Rui was a surprisingly young man, perhaps several years older than Rui. Rui could sense that he was simr to himself, someone who had somewhat recently begun his journey in the Squire Realm. At the very least he wasn''t as strong as someone like Squire Kyrie who had mopped the floor with Rui even after he became a Martial Squire.


    It was not going to be an easy battle if Rui chose to fight it in the first ce.


    "Heh..." Rui grinned at the sight of the man.


    Rui had already suspected this scenario was a possibility. He didn''t how it was possible. How did the Martial Union not know this ahead of time? This was almost certainly something that the old general knew, clearly. This was what he was hiding, there was no doubt about that in Rui''s mind.


    He didn''t know how or why this happened, but frankly, he cared even less. This was one of the possibilities he had suspected, but it was also one he wished urred rather than hoping against. Why had he been yearning to undertake higher-grade missions? It was all so that he could fight full-fledged Squire-level threats!


    Now that he had been prematurely blessed with the opportunity to fulfill his wish, he was not going to let it go. This was very evident in the frightening bloodlust in his aura that drove chills down the spines of all those who experienced it.


    Rui had no intention of running away. He was going to fight and defeat that Martial Squire, no matter what!


    The two Martial Squires didn''t even bother exchanging words with each other. They had alreadymunicated everything worthmunicating.


    All that was left was the battle.


    For a brief moment, nothing happened.


    Every soul was still.


    Something had to give.


    And something did.


    BOOM!!!


    The very ground beneath them crumbled as the two Martial Squires pushed at it, propelling forward. The very atmosphere recoiled in terror as their every movement generated enormous wind currents that blew everybody away.


    BAM!


    The two collided fists, causing a devastating shockwave to emerge from their sh. It expanded outwards,unching humans into the air. Only the Martial Apprentices were unperturbed by the force.


    "RARGH!" The Martial Squire threw a heavy attack toward Rui, aiming for his face.


    WHOOSH<novelnext></novelnext>


    Rui ducked as heunched a swift and sharp straight kick with his right leg, aiming straight for the jaw of his Martial Squire.? N?velDrama.Org - All rights reserved.


    POW!


    The attack connected, much to Rui''s surprise. Yet what surprised him, even more, is that he shook it off rtively easily despite flying high into the air. He didn''t seem particrly shaken or damaged at all. There wasn''t the slightest bruise on his jaw despite eating a kick to it head-on.


    WHOOSH


    Rui took to the air andunched himself after the man.


    POW POW POW


    The man didn''t even bother defending himself as he simply took Rui''s strikes head-on. Rui frowned, confused, it was a bizarre sensation. Rui was going his best to inflict as much damage on his opponent as possible, it felt distinctly ineffective. As though the impact of his strike were being muffled in some strange way.


    This was especially hard toprehend when he was constantly using Reverberating Lance to permeate the damage as deep as possible. It was a powerful technique that increased the lethality of his strikes significantly, yet for some reason, even this technique didn''t do too much to him.


    POW!


    Rui drove his fist into his opponent''s abdomen, trying to burrow it as deep as he could.


    BOING


    (''Hm.'') Rui knitted his eyebrows as he stepped away from his opponent, momentarily leaving them at an impasse. (''What was that?'')


    He felt as though he had hit a bouncy beach ball, it was a bizarre sensation.


    (''His skin and flesh...'') Rui realized with wide eyes. (''They''re like extremely stic rubber!'')


    He clearly recognized that there was something off about the man''s body based on the sensation that the man''s skin and flesh gave him. He was cognizant enough to realize that while he was indeed using a Squire-level technique that contributed to his defense, it was not the cause for the strangeness of his skin and flesh.


    (''It must be a feature of his Martial body.'') Rui realized.


    The Martial Union had developed many evolution procedures that gave the body many different and strange features. The only reason Rui didn''t experience any of them in the discovery of his Martial Body was that he was an all-rounder and thus had undergone an evolution process that gave his body general features.


    However, it was clear that this was not the case for the young man. Not only had he gained highly stic flesh, but he also had a technique that allowed him to maximize that feature of his Martial body. This likely meant that there was enormouspatibility between his defensive technique and his physique. This was something Rui stillcked at this point, and the difference showed. Even when hebined Outer Convergence and Reverberating Lance, he was unable to inflict almost any damage whatsoever on his opponent!


    (''This is going to be a really rough battle.'') Rui sighed inwardly as the two Martial Squires circled each other.


    Yet, despite that, he grinned. Despite the difficulty of the challenge before him, he could only feel excitement and enthusiasm.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 521 Engage

    It was incredible that even his most powerful strikes were almost entirely ineffective against the Martial Squire''s defensive prowess. Rui put all the effort and power into trying to damage his opponent, yet they all were almost entirely in vain as the man before him was entirely unharmed.


    (''This is the power ofpatibility.'') Rui sighed with a hint of envy, even as the two Martial Squires shuffled around each other.


    Frankly, the Martial Squire before him did not strike Rui as a particrly powerful Martial Squire in the grand scheme of things. Rui broke through at an age that was uncharacteristically young, far below average. The Squire before him was just a few years older at most, thus it was unlikely that he had much experience in the Squire Realm, the fact that he was assigned to defending a very secure fort that did not have any Squire-level threats against it prior also likely meant that this Martial Squire was quite low on the totem pole.


    The fact that he was still able to make a fool out of Rui''s striking prowess showed that the power ofpatibility was not something that could be underestimated. A Martial Artist with grade five techniques that they were extremelypatible with was probably much stronger than a Martial Artist with grade seven techniques that they were not muchpatible with.


    This added a whole new variable that was not prominent when he was a Martial Apprentice. Rui had received his first reality check upon discovering just how muchpatibility mattered in the higher Realms.


    (''I''ll have to ponder the matter deeplyter on.'') Rui sighed. (''For now, let''s win.'')


    Despite the vain attempts at trying to pummel his way to victory, Rui was not intimidated. He had steadily been gathering as much data on the man as he could from the moment heid eyes on him. That data was deposited into his Mind Pce, as he swiftly processed them through the systems of the VOID algorithm.


    He had alreadye up with a partial prediction model based on many subconscious patterns in the movements of his opponent.


    Less than a single second had passed since theirst exchange, however, in the perception of time of the Martial Squires, it had been several minutes since theirst exchange.


    Evidently, his opponent lost patience with Rui, as he charged forward aggressively despite clearly being a defensive Martial Artists.


    "RARGH!" He threw a powerful left hook at Rui.


    WHOOSH


    Rui seamlessly avoided it as heunched a swift elbow to the man''s groin.


    "ARGH!"


    (''You have a pattern of ovemitting every time yound a blow.'') Rui mused.


    This was a pattern he had identified with the predictive model and had correctly chosen the right response, to inflict as much damage as he could on his opponent.<novelnext></novelnext>


    It was evident that the man''s testicles were not nearly as invincible as the rest o the body given how much he appeared to be in pain.


    POW POW POW!


    Rui bludgeoned him with more strikes as he collected more data on the man, trying topute a way to take him down. His foremost means of offense had already been shown to be useless, he could not take them down the way he normally would strive to.


    WHOOSH


    Rui swiveled out of his path as he attacked several more times, taking his time. The battle between them was reaching a bit of an impasse since neither side could effectively damage the other for different reasons. Rui because he couldn''t damage him meaningfully with his strikes, and his opponent because Rui''s evasive maneuvering was too effective thanks to abination of the VOID algorithm and Primordial Instinct. The elerated autophagy also boosted his speed and agility to a certain degree.


    Rui thought he could take his time to methodically and perfectly take him down in a manner thatpletely overwhelmed him and minimized the probability of his own defeat. It was exciting to finally exercise all of his capabilities against a worthy opponent.


    Yet all of that changed when the Martial Squire snorted, before suddenly plummeting down back to the fort where the fierce battle between the two armies hadmenced.


    (''Well shit, turns out he isn''t a moron!'') Rui cursed as he elerated downwards at top speed.


    It turns out his opponent wasn''t a fool. He wasn''t going to waste all of his energy pointlessly iling around when it was entirely clear that Rui''s evasive maneuvering was too impressive for him to ovee. The man had managed to remember that his duty was to protect the fort and the Britannian Battalion, not chase after an elusive Martial Squire who drew him away from his post.


    Rui could not let him return to his position. He would immediately begin hunting the biggest threats of the rebel army; the Martial Apprentices. Even if Rui could easily evade him, they didn''t stand a chance. Rui even felt a tinge of fury at the thought of Vemy dying at his hands due to Rui''s negligence.


    (''This isn''t going to happen. Not on my watch!'') He elerated at top speed plummeting downwards at a speed that far exceeded his opponent.


    BAM!!


    He managed a tremendous spinning kick fueled by his momentum that pushed him away from his original direction.


    Yet the man had already realized that this was the only productive way to go about this. If Rui didn''t let him go, then Rui would be forced to engage with him, and if Rui did let him then he would reign destruction on the Rebel army. If Rui decided to attack the fort, then he would surely defend against the attack. Regardless of which of these happened, it was better than iling around and trying to get a hit in on Rui.Content ? N?velDrama.Org 2024.


    The two began engaging in a furious back and forth as Rui intercepted every single attempt of his opponent to return back to the fort. Loud shes could be heard on the ground as two figures shed against each other in the sky.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 522 Strange

    Content is property ? N?velDrama.Org.


    POW POW POW


    The two of them shed against each other midair, yet the directions they were facing were strange. The Britannian Martial Squire wasshing downwards towards the fort while Rui was facing him upwards in the exact opposite direction, with his back against the fort. The two of them mmed against each other, exchanging strikes. This was a particrly pleasant development to the Britannian Martial Squire since it meant that Rui could no longer evade him since he needed to sh with his opponent to prevent him from joining the battleground down below.


    His opponent grinned, recognizing the benefits of this arrangement. He had finally managed to ovee the difficulty ofnding a blow on Rui.


    Yet, his smile disappeared very fast.


    BOOM!!!


    A tremendous impact sted against him as they shed with each other. Rui''s elbow dug incredibly deep into his body.


    "ACK!" The man grimaced in pain as he lumbered backward, pain and shock shing across his face. He didn''t understand, how did Rui ovee his tremendous defenses. Heshed downward again, preparing a strike as Rui intercepted him.


    BAM!!!


    His entire body trembled as the impact reverberated across him, causing him waves of pain across his body.


    BANG!!


    THWACK!!!


    BOOM!!!


    After the fifth exchange, Rui finally managed to drill past his stubborn mindset, causing him to stop.


    "Hmph." Rui snorted. (''You really thought it would be that easy to out-strategize me?'')


    Rui quickly turned around the tables as he conjured up a way to hurt his opponent despite his solid defenses. Earlier, Rui had used all of his power to try and inflict as much damage on his opponent as he could, yet he was too weak to do so.


    But, what if the impacts of his strikes were powered by not just one Martial Squire but two of them?


    Both of them generated a significant amount of momentum every time they charged each for a strike. Rui simply ced and timed his attacks such that the impact would be empowered by both his own power as well as that of his opponent.


    His opponent was effectively running headfirst into a punch with all his power each time, causing himself damage alongside the inherent power of the punch.


    Of course, this required perfect timing and cement from Rui. He needed to ensure that the vectors of their bullrushes were perfectly aligned with the vector of his own attack to maximize the impact of the strikending on his opponent.


    Ordinarily, this was an extremely difficult task, especially in three-dimensionalbat, a form ofbat that Rui had almost zero experience with!


    To perform the necessary calctions within the span of milliseconds to achieve the correct timing and cement of his movements in aerialbat was something that could generally only be aplished with experience.<novelnext></novelnext>


    Or much more rarely; brilliance.


    Rui rushed tounch another attack, yet even before he could reach his opponent, Primordial Instinct warned him of an attack, much to his confusion.


    BAM!!


    Rui grimaced in pain and shock as he beheld his opponent''s arm stretching far beyond its limits. He quickly centered himself as he took note of what was happening. This wasn''t the first time he had seen such an attack. He had run into it once in the preliminary contest of the Martial Academy more than two years ago.


    It turned out his opponent was holding back such a trump card!


    (''Why didn''t he use this earlier?'') Rui wondered, suddenly his eyes widened as he saw something that shocked him. His opponentunched several more whip attacks, yet this time Rui was more prepared.


    WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH


    Rui watched in amazement as he made a shocking discovery.


    (''It''s not just his skin and flesh that are stretching, his bones are stretching too!'') Rui gasped. (''His entire body is stic in nature.'')


    Rui watched with amazement as he witnessed the most bizarre Martial body that he had evere across at this point. To think it was possible to evolve the body of the human body in such a bizarre direction, Rui''s worldview of what was possible had broadened in light of what he had juste across.


    His opponent on the other hand was infuriated. He seemed especially angry that Rui had managed to thrash his defenses to such a degree. His arms and legs turned into whips thatshed across the air within a certain range. His striking range was ten meters, they whipped around forming an unassable sphere with a radius of twenty meters within which any unsuspecting objecting would turn into a merciless target.


    The whips managed to gain so much tangential velocity that the end of his limbs would have been blurringly fast even for a Martial Squire. The sheer wind currents all of his whips created were tremendous, he was affecting the environmental parameters of the local atmosphere with all of his movements!


    Yet despite all of that, Rui grinned.


    WHOOSH


    He dove towards him as he cleanly evaded all the whips, much to his opponent''s shock. Thanks to his enhanced cognition due to the Mindmirror brain as well as Primordial Instinct and the increasingly growing predictive model on his whips, Rui aplished a feat that should have been beyond a Martial Squire of his power and inexperience. He wasn''t able to avoid all of them, but even the ones that did strike him were adequately defended against, he didn''t get away unscathed, but the damage was well within tolerable limits.


    He rushed towards the martial Squire''s body, doing everything he could to get close.


    BAM! BAM! BAM!


    Rui grimaced as powerful whips struck him in the gap. But-


    (''I''ve got you now.'') hetched onto the man''s body, wrangling him in the sky. The whips were long-range attacks, they were ineffective in full-contactbat! Rui forced himself to withstand attacks that he ordinarily could have stepped away from in order to continue getting as close to his opponent as possible


    The man''s limbs returned to normal as the two of them tumbled across the air together.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 523 Rough

    CLASP


    Rui managed to get hold of his opponent from the back. The two were iling around in the air as Rui desperately tried to get a chokehold on his opponent. His opponent, on the other hand, recognized the gravity of the situation.


    His rubbery physique and corresponding defensive techniques were only useful against striking-based attacks and other collisions. They were not useful against strangling-based attacks. Furthermore, at this range, his whip attacks were also not able to serve as a viable defense. He realized that Rui had purposely endured raw damage from his attacks that he normally would have dodged in order to ensure that he would not have to deter from his path.


    Yet his panic set in only once Rui sessfully maneuvered behind him and managed totch his arms around his opponent''s neck and head. Rui gritted his teeth as he exerted a tremendous amount of force on his opponent with Outer Convergence. His left arm was wrapped around his opponent''s neck while his right arm pushed down on his opponent''s head. He squeezed as though his life depended on it.


    His opponent struggled like a madman. He turned away, facing Rui who was on his back to the ground, and charged straight downwards. The two of them were fighting in what was effectively in the troposphere, several kilometers above the ground. His opponent continuously used Sky Walking to push the both of them increasingly faster straight downwards.


    (''Shit, this is going to be rough.'') Rui gritted his teeth.


    Considering the altitude that they were at, the impact, when they hit the ground, would be tremendous!


    (''Furthermore, I''m going to be the one to take all the damage!'')


    His opponent was highly resistant to collisions. Even if he crashed into the ground plummeting downwards at top speed from the clouds, he would most likely be fine enough. Especially since Rui would be the one hitting the ground and serving as a cushion for his opponent since he was the one facing the ground with his opponent above him.


    (''Just faint already!'') Rui urged.


    Unfortunately, things weren''t that easy. The normal human body could maintain consciousness for several seconds to minutes depending on how perfectly executed the chokehold was. This was even longer for a Martial Squire thanks to their evolved constitution. Meaning Rui was going to have to hold him for quite some time in real-time.


    Furthermore, Martial Squires perceived time to be flowing much slower thanks to their superhuman cognition and speed, they were effectively slowing down time from their perspective. One second was a few minutes.


    Meaning, Rui would have to hold out for a long time from both of their perspective of time!


    Rui gritted his teeth as he prepared Inner Divergence for the iing impact. They were just a few seconds from crashing into the ground.


    BOOM!!!<novelnext></novelnext>


    RUMBLE


    The very earth beneath them shook as a crater of unparalleled proportions was formed from the impact. The sheer energy in the collision was so great that a minor Richter-one Earthquake reverberated through the ground into the forest, disrupting the natural wildlife that existed in the environment.Content is property ? N?velDrama.Org.


    "ARGH!" Rui grimaced as he gritted his teeth, never once easing up on his grip. The moment he let go, all of his progress would be undone while the damage his opponent exerted would not be going anywhere for a while. Even though Rui had a respectable healing factor, the damage would very likely be just enough to turn the tables around.


    His opponent continued thrashing on the ground, his arms stretched back as he did everything he could. He ripped at Rui''s hair, wed at his skin, and even tried gauging his eyes. Yet Rui mitigated all of his attempts as best as he could while still maintaining a tremendously strong hold on his opponent.


    Both Martial Squires grew extremely desperate as the critical decisive point of the match was soon going to arrive. If his opponent could break free of the stranglehold, then Rui could most likely forget about winning. Although Rui was still confident of surviving, he will likely have lost too much to be able to guarantee to win against his opponent, who was almost entirely unharmed, unlikely Rui.


    The Zurtun Rebel Group was as good as dead if that happened, the Martial Squire would return once Rui would inevitably be forced to retreat. He could clearly imagine the onught that would ur. The Martial Squire would have zero difficulties whatsoever in annihting the Zurtun Rebel army. Rui would also face the blemish of having failed his first Squire-level mission, which would break any hopes of having a perfect record in the Squire Realm.


    Yet, even as these thoughts faintly passed away, he didn''t immediately notice the increasingly weakening resistance from his opponent. His attempts to pull Rui''s arm away grew softer, and his attempts to inflict upon Rui as much damage as he could grew feebler.


    Until they finally ceased.


    THUD


    His limbs copsed as his body buckled and fell loose, weight down on Rui''s body. Yet Rui didn''t let go, he didn''t dare to even take that risk. He could sense that his heart was still beating, he had merely lost consciousness because his brain finally shut down due to theck of supply of oxygen.


    It was nearly two minutester that even his heart decided to call it a day and stopped beating as well. Only then did Rui have the certainty of his victory, letting him go.


    "Huff... Huff... Huff..." He panted heavily as he evaluated his own condition.


    He was hemorrhaging somewhere inside, having coughed up blood. He had also probably broken a rib in that earlier collision that produced a deep crater a dozen meters wide. Even his body could not take such a devastating impact without significant damage.


    Rui quickly consumed a potion as he sighed under the tremendous relief that spread through his body. It was a rough battle, yet he couldn''t help but feel a great sense of aplishment after having won it.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 524 Clarity

    His first genuine battle in the Squire Realm.


    His first victory in the Squire Realm.


    His spar against Squire Kyrie did not even remotely count as a proper battle, that was so elementary that Kyrie had even withheld from sky-walking inbat which would have allowed her to dominate Rui with her superior experience. She held back to allow Rui to express and test himself against her and gain a better understanding of what he had and what he was missing before mopping the floor with him.


    The training spars against his two Squire habilitators were even more meaningless. He had still been mastering his power back then and hadn''t mastered a single technique at that point.


    He felt like he had finally gotten a good grasp of what he could achieve inbat and what he couldn''t. He was no longer as dominating inbat as he used to be in the Apprentice Realm. Of course, he had grown far stronger than when he was a Martial Apprentice, but hispetition had grown even fiercer.


    This battle had shown him he shouldn''t be as satisfied with himself as he was. He had run into an opponent in the same age group as him who possessed a defense that made a fool of his offensive techniques and possessedbat speed with his whip techniques that also significantly surpassed that of Rui.


    All of this came with the power of synergy andpatibility. His Martial body and techniques must have been born for each other. Or at the very least, that was the impression that Rui got.


    Ultimately, Rui did manage to win. But this victory cleared his head of the fog that had recently been upying his vision. Now that he had sessfully be a Martial Squire, hecked rity on the path forward. Before breaking through to the Squire Realm, he had extremely concrete and clear goals that made it exceedingly simple to know what he ought to do, he had lost some of that when he became a Martial Squire.


    Of course, he still had very long-term goals such as fixing the ipatibility of the VOID algorithm with the Martial Art of this world. But that was exactly that; a long-term goal, something that may very well take his entire life to fix considering how difficult it was. It was a goal whose path to achieving was not very clear, at this point in time.


    Another long-term goal was to be a Martial Senior. This was yet another goal that he naturally looked at now that he sessfully became a Martial Squire, but again, the path to Martial Senior was not something that was very clear to him. He hadn''t even met one thus far.


    But now that he actually fought against another Marital Squire, he could see one path forward.


    "To align my Martial Art with myself, and against everything else."


    It sounded like a meaningless statement, but it sinctly epassed the truth. He needed to harness the power of synergy between Martial Art and Martial Body to move forward, while also increasing the synergy of the VOID algorithm against all opponents. He decided he was going to dedicate his all to these two goals and go all out into aplishing them.


    These were two conditions he could be certain would help in progressing his Martial Art to a higher level.


    When he opened his eyes, they were no longer searching. They were fixated on the future, and on his goals. His approach to training and growth would have to fundamentally change from when he was a Martial Apprentice.<novelnext></novelnext>


    "Huff..." He sighed, getting up as he stretched his body, ncing at that of his opponent.


    (''You were strong.'') Rui thought to himself sincerely. (''Thank you for what you have given me. Sorry, but I won''t be able to give your body a burial. I''m sure the Martial Union will be pleased to obtain your body and gauge its secrets.'')


    It was possible that the Kandrian Martial Union would be able to obtain intelligence on the Britannian Empire from the objects that he was carrying, as well as his Martial Body. After all, the nations did not necessarily have identical evolution processes. His body would serve as a valuable avenue for research for the Martial Union.


    (''But first, I need to finish my mission.'')


    Rui nced over to the right where Mt Zurtun was situated. Rui was grateful that the battlefield was such an unmissablendmark because without it he would have no clue where he was. They had migrated pretty far from the battlefield by sky-walking.


    Rui picked left the corpse at that location, they were in a rather remote location in the forest and it was unlikely that anybody would take it. He did take the liberty of covering it up with soil lest it is consumed by some creature.Content is property ? N?velDrama.Org.


    (''Alright then, let''s get back.'') Rui pulled out his ounter to verify how much time he had left for the mission.


    "Huh???" He froze as he read a new message on his ounter.


    [Your ongoing mission, mission code number HJN23SPR40053, has been canceled by the client Fushin Hunfer. Please terminate your operation and fulfill the relevant post-mission protocols.]


    "But the Hlorn hasn''t been destro-" His eyes widened as he finally realized what was happening.


    "That bastard..." Rui murmured. "His goal was for me to fight the Martial Squire, not the weapon. The reason he canceled the mission must be because the battle is going well."


    His goal was never to destroy the weapon, he wanted tomandeer it and make it his own! That was the only logical exnation for why he would cancel the mission. The destruction of the weapon was now against his interests.


    "As for why hemissioned the mission in the first ce. He must have gotten the intelligence of a Martial Squire being deployed by the Britannian Empire to reinforce Fort Zurtun extremely recently from some proprietary source from within the fort itself, likely some secret spy that had managed to squiggle into a ce where they could learn ssified intel and pass it on to Fushin remotely." Rui realized.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 525 Bizarre

    The spy, or whatever the source of the leak was, was probably a native of the Zurtun town who probably managed to squiggle his way into a ce where he could learn important information and ry it back to Fushin.


    This would exin why the Kandrian Martial Union did not possess any intelligence on the Britannian Martial Squire that Rui ended up facing and killing. While the Kandrian Martial Union no doubt had a powerful intelligence department that had plenty of means of gathering information with a giganticwork of intelligence sources over arge geographic area, it probably didn''t have ess to more information about Fort Zurtun than Fushin himself did due to his unique position and sources and intimate familiarity with the fort.


    As much as Rui wanted to, he couldn''t fault the Martial Union too much here. It was a bit unreasonable to expect them to know about a Martial Squire who had covertly been deployed to the fort extremely recently. The Martial royalty contract that Martial Artists signed with the Martial Union stated that intelligence could not be guaranteed to be entirely urate always. That was not how the intelligence sector worked, and he was cognizant of that fact.


    But frankly, he didn''t feel as though he had been done wrong.


    (''If anything...'') Rui grinned. (''This was the perfect set of events for me.'')


    He got to fight a Martial Squire well ahead of when he would normally have gotten to do so had it been a normal grade three mission, after all. Furthermore, he beat his opponent. This would effectively force the Martial Union to concede what was already obvious that he was ready for missions of a higher grade because of his qualifications, elerating what would otherwise have taken longer.


    Everything was fine, except...


    (''I got outyed by the old man.'') Rui sighed, with a resigned expression. He had mixed feelings on the issue. On one hand, the general''s actions had inadvertently done a lot of good for Rui, on the other hand, he got yed.


    Perhaps others would have been able to shake this off considering all the benefits, but not Rui.


    Perhaps that was a little vain of him, but Rui took pride in his mind and intelligence. His mind was extraordinary, and his intelligence was easily in the genius-level territory. That was why he felt affronted having been outyed by the old man in their little mind game that the two yed against each other. He did not like the idea of being outwitted. He was a sore loser when it came to this.


    Of course, they weren''t exactlypeting on a level field. The old man was intelligent, no doubt, but more importantly, he was extremely experienced. He had served a lifetime in the field of strategies and tactics in conflicts of all sorts, ording to his background. Rui was intelligent but had zero meaningful experience in this field, he was effectivelypeting against the old man''s wit and vast experience with sheer deductive intelligence alone.<novelnext></novelnext>


    Furthermore, he was clearly at an information disadvantage, making it difficult for him to not be exploited when he didn''t even know that such a thing was a possibility at all. Furthermore, he was constrained by the mission rules and guidelines as well, since he was in the middle of a mission. Reneging on an epted mission for unjustifiable reasons was an ugly stain on his record that would be publicly visible. Ensuring that didn''t happen was more important than trying to win a mind game against an old fox, even Rui was rational enough to recognize that.


    (''My only constion is that the Martial Union does not refund, and canceling a mission without justification requires a fee, and also reduced the trustworthiness of Fushin as a client, meaning missions will be more expensive for him because of this.'') Rui mused.


    The Martial Union was cognizant of the loopholes that came with the ability to cancel a mission at any time. Thus, several rules, conditions, and penalties had been ced to discourage frivolous or malicious usage of the mission cancetion facility.


    (''Anyways, putting that matter aside, I guess my business here is done.'') Rui sighed, as he grabbed a hold of the corpse of his opponent before skywalking away. He had no intention of returning to Fort Zurtun now that the mission had been canceled. He simply wished the rebels good luck in his heart.


    He felt a little bad at the prospect of not seeing Vemy again but didn''t have any emotional connection to her. They were just strangers that spent the night together. He wasn''t going to dy his return to the Kandrian Empire to bid her an awkward goodbye or dy his return to the Kandrian Empire to spend another night with her. At most he could bid her and the Martial Apprentices good luck on the battle and their Martial Paths.


    (''Maybe I should pay the old man a visit before I leave.'') Rui pondered the thought, before shaking his head. (''Nah, fuck it. I''m in a good mood, why needlessly irk myself over the old man?'')


    He simply pedaled away into the sky with the corpse in his hand as he headed back in the direction of the Kandrian Empire carrying the corpse with him. He had already extracted a healing and rejuvenation potion from it, among some other things.? N?velDrama.Org - All rights reserved.


    (''What a strange physiology.'') Rui thought to himself as he could feel that his body did not have the rigidity to structure that clearly came with having solid bones and rigid flesh bound together by fascia, the connective tissue within the body that ensured everything stayed in ce.


    This opened his eyes to the possibilities of other kinds of bizarre Martial bodies. As time passed, he mighte across simrly absurd things. He had a feeling his reaction to these various Martial bodies was going to be no different from his initial incredulous reactions to the many bizarre Apprentice-level techniques he hade across in his life.


    asionally missing content, please report errors in time.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 526 Grade

    "And you''re saying as you headed to destroy the objective of the mission, you were confronted with a hostile Martial Squire?"


    "Yes,missioner," Rui replied. "I straightforwardly headed for the target of the mission because I wanted to get it over with, but unfortunately the Martial Squirended in front of me as I dashed towards it, blocking my path. At that point, it had be evidently clear to me that I would not be able to get away with a fight."


    "I see. And prior to your victory over your opponent, your client canceled the mission at some point in the middle of thebat."


    "Yes." Rui nodded.


    "I see." The man before him nodded simply. "It is all a rather unfortunate turn of events, but you made the best of them. Not only did you defeat your very first Martial Squire opponent inbat, but you also brought his body back in a remarkable condition. Congrattions, Squire Quarrier, it appears your tendency to overachieve has persisted."


    Rui had long since returned to the Martial Union and handed over the body of the Martial Squire to the Martial Union once he finished all the post-mission protocols. However, he had been summoned for a meeting by the Martial Union once they processed his report.


    "Thank you," Rui replied simply. "Is there anything else that needs to be discussed?"? N?velDrama.Org - All rights reserved.


    "Just a few small matters." Themissioner smiled. "For one, the Martial Union is quite pleased with what you have brought back. You made the right choice, in exchange for your gift, we have decided to triple yourmission payments. As a token of gratitude as well as an apology for the inurate difficulty evaluation of the mission."


    Rui raised an eyebrow, that was not a light concession. It was more likely that the Martial Union was trying to get rid of any negative impression he had of them.


    "I see," Rui replied with a brief smile. "I appreciate that."


    "You''re wee. Another matter that we''ve wanted to inform you was that your Martial Apprentice grade has been upgraded to grade four." Themissioner informed him. "The Martial Union fully recognizes that any concerns of your youth in the Squire Realm are unwarranted, you have proven you are capable of undertaking a mission that poses a threat to even Martial Squires like yourself. Congrattions, you are actually the quickest Martial Squire to reach grade four after having broken through to the Squire Realm."


    Rui raised an eyebrow. It had been nine months since he broke through to the Squire Realm and he had already reached grade four. That was quite fast all things considered.


    Rui shrugged. "I''m just progressing with my Martial Art."


    "Yes, you''re progressing a remarkably powerful high-grade Martial Art remarkably quickly." The man noted, smiling.


    Rui''s eyes narrowed as hetched onto part of the statement. "High-grade Martial Art?"


    Martial Art had grades?<novelnext></novelnext>


    He was aware that Martial Artists had grades based on their power, but he had never heard of Martial Art being graded.


    "Yes, one of the highest we have ever seen." Themissioner replied. "Martial Art are graded by their potency, which is defined as the strength that Martial Art inherently possesses, outside of techniques."


    "As in, the intrinsic strength that a Martial Art would possess if one were to strip away its techniques, or equalize the technique with other Martial Art?" Rui asked, curious.


    "Correct." The man nodded. "It is an extraordinarily rare sight for a Martial Art to possess the kind of power that yours does. It is almost unheard of for a Martial Squire to be as strong as you currently are for the techniques that you possess."


    "I see..." Rui knitted his eyebrows as he pondered the matter. "Why have I never heard about the concept before?"


    "Martial Apprentices are generally too immature. Informing them about the concepts of grades of Martial Art may influence them, especially negatively." Themissioner exined. "Only once a Martial Apprentice aplishes Squire candidacy are they qualified to learn about the Martial Art grading system. Even then, we don''t bring it necessarily have to bring it up, it is not important for the personal development of a Martial Artist, it is merely an attribute that the Martial Union keeps a track of for the purpose of research and development."


    "How does the Martial Union evaluate how much inherent power a Martial Art possesses? The only time that Martial Squires do not possess any techniques is during the Squire habilitation phase." Rui noted. "Does the martial Unionpile empirical data on thebat prowess of a Martial Artist during this phase and evaluates the Martial Art grade based on that? Or does the Martial Union perform aparison of the Martial Artist''sbat prowess rtive to the predictedbat prowess based on the techniques mastered?"


    The man''s eyebrows rose, he was evidently impressed. "You really are as shrewd as they say. To answer your question, the Martial Union does both. I''m surprised you hit the mark without any prompting."


    "Mmm..." Rui nodded absentmindedly as he considered the matter. In reality, it was a rather trivial matter to predict given his background in statistics.


    "We have evaluated your Martial Art grade on the basis of the data obtained during your Squire habilitation phase as well as your most recent mission. Defeating a rising star Martial Squire of the Britannian Empire, who is older than you and possesses more techniques not to mention a remarkable Martial Art himself, is quite impressive."


    "The Martial Union has identified him, has it?" Rui inquired.


    "We have. The Martial Union keeps track of the Martial Artists of other nations, especially the super-nations. The higher the Realm, the more attention we dedicate. Your opponent was a distinguished scion of a family of the Britannian Empire. His Martial Path was stic dynamics, a Martial Art that used sticity in offensive but especially defensive measures. Certainly not a trivial Martial Art."


    "I see..." Rui digested that information as he gave it some more thought.


    "The Martial Union is interested in seeing you develop your Martial Art for more than one reason, Squire, we hope you elevate your Martial Art as high as possible."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 527 Offer

    "I see. Well, the Martial Union doesn''t have anything to worry about." Rui told themissioner. "Almost everything I do, I do to progress my Martial Art. I am extremely motivated and recently have gained rity on how I want to proceed with that."


    "That is great to hear, Squire Quarrier." The man nodded. "The Martial Art has a vested interest in your Martial Art for more than just strengthening the Martial Union with another Martial Artist. One of our interests is actually analyzing what makes your Martial Art and opening up the opportunity for the next generation of Martial Artists to obtain a piece of that power in the form of techniques."


    Rui''s eyebrows rose at themissioner''s statement. "Hmmm... I don''t know how I feel about that."


    "Of course, the Martial Union never coerces its Martial Artists to divulge anything." Themissioner chuckled. "We cannot im to be a haven for Martial Artists if we''re constantly attempting to rob a Martial Artist of their Martial Art. The Martial Union offers much in return for valuable contributions. These include unpublicized techniques, resources, appropriate aid and advice from Martial Artists much stronger and elder than yourself, power and influence."


    "Hm..." Rui considered the matter, before shaking his head. "I do not like relying on others unless I genuinely have an absolute necessity to. Unfortunately, I''m not particrly attracted to what the Martial Union offers in return at this point in time. Techniques would have been an attractive offer had I been a Martial Apprentice, but as a Martial Squire I have recently resolved to pursue a path where I develop my Martial Art with individuality to progress it and make it stronger through the intrinsic synergy thates with techniques customized for myself."


    Rui wasn''t particrly interested much in the other things that themissioner offered in return. Power and influence? He had never given a damn about such things, in this life or his previous one. As long as he had the power to do what he wanted, he didn''t care. Resources were also not too attractive, although they could be useless. Rui didn''t have a burning need or desire to acquire any particr kind of resource.


    One thing that did somewhat interest him was the aid from elder Martial Artists. That was certainly valuable and useful, but not necessary. Ultimately Rui was an extremely pure Martial Artist. He pursued Martial Art truly and purely for his love of Martial Art. Much to his surprise, this wasn''t a particrlymon sentiment based on his experience as a Martial Artist among other Martial Artists. When he first joined the Martial Academy, he had a very pure and idealistic image of Martial Artists, one where Martial Artists immersed themselves in their Martial Art purely and entirely out of love for it.Belonging ? N?velDram/a.Org.


    But reality had shown him otherwise. Most Martial Artists were far from purists like himself. Kane pursued Martial Art to be free of his shackles with his own power. Fae pursued Martial Art for the prestige that it brought her Martial Family. Even people like Nel pursued Martial Art out of their love for fighting and battle, rather than his Martial Art itself. Fiona was just mundanely going with the flow that came with being a prodigious genius. Every Martial Artists he hade across had motivations and goals outside Martial Art.


    This was a little disappointing, but it was realistic. The kind of Martial Artists he had seen in fiction was just that; fiction. In reality, Martial Art was simply power. That too truly individualistic and personal power held by Martial Art that originated from themselves. People chased after power, and thus people chased after Martial Art and the many other things it brought to those who seeded in pursuing it to a certain extent.<novelnext></novelnext>


    "An admirable resolution." themissioner smiled. "You have correctly identified an important element in the progression of one''s Martial Art. Still, the Martial Union is also most certainly aware of this. There are ways in which we can aid you in the personal development of your Martial Art."


    "Perhaps," Rui admitted. "However, as I said, I do not like developing a reliance on others. Perhaps if Ie across a barrier that is difficult to surmount, I may consider this option, but I certainly do not need to rely on others when ites to progressing my Martial Art otherwise."


    He doubted the degree to which the Martial Union could aid him in the further development of the VOID algorithm. It would be nearly impossible for the organization to aid him with something they do not understand. When it came to developing individualized techniques, it was almost even more fruitless. If he relied too much on others to develop his own techniques, then could they truly be said to from him? epting too much aid was also counterproductive in his opinion.


    Of course, that didn''t mean any and all aid or cooperation was bad. If there was a time when he wanted more reliable data or measurements while developing a technique, there was no harm in epting the help of the Martial Union to perform the measurements and convey the data to him. It would be purely acting in an assistant role, and nothing more.


    However, these services could be procured by Martial Squires in exchange for Martial credits, he did not need to sell the VOID algorithm to obtain such services.


    The Martialmissioner smiled, as though approving Rui''s statement. "We understand, Squire Quarrier. Please feel free to contact us if you''re interested in engaging in an exchange with us. We always wee contributions and innovations."


    "Will do." Rui nodded. "I fully appreciate the offer of the Martial Union and am grateful for the privilege. The reason I reject it today is due to who I am as a Martial Artist. That being said, if there everes a day when I do decide to ept your offer, I will let the Union know immediately."


    "We appreciate your sincerity, Squire Quarrier." Themissioner smiled.


    asionally missing content, please report errors in time.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 528 Joy

    "For an important conversation, it sure felt trivial," Rui muttered as he headed back home.


    After the revtions and rity that he had obtained from hisst mission, he no longer felt a burning drive to immediately jump into another mission, even if it was a grade-four mission that would actually pose some danger to him. Of course, he would definitely dive into a grade four mission in due time, he had just finished speedrunning four missions back-to-back, and he was willing to slow down a bit and process his gains.


    For now, he was focused on the conversation he had just had with amissioner from the Martial Union.


    (''They were quite friendly even when I rejected them straightforwardly. He didn''t even try to apply pressure on me.'') Rui frowned.


    Was that truly how the Martial Union operated?


    Rui had the feeling that part of why he was receiving such good treatment was because the Martial Union did not want him to develop even a hint of a bad or hostile impression of them. That would exin why themissioner was remarkably polite and pleasant. Even thepensation of tripling his reward as a token of gratitude and regret was a bit unnecessary, as far as rules and agreements went.


    (''They weren''t being overboard with showering goodwill, that would be counterproductive. They maintained their dignity as the Martial overlord while also giving me my due.'') Rui noted. (''This must mean they value me more than I had expected.'')


    Rui expected that the Martial Union might be a bit more heavy-handed if he was just another Martial Squire, at the very least, they wouldn''t be treating him as an honored guest.


    (''At least they were straightforward with their intentions.'') He shrugged as he pondered about what themissioner had told him.


    (''Wanting to analyze and dissect the core of my Martial Art and disseminate it to other Martial Artists in the form of techniques huh...?'') Rui pondered. (''What a fascinating objective.'')


    It''s not that Rui was particrly averse to others inheriting a part of the VOID algorithm, it''s just he couldn''t exin how he came up with it. Talent alone couldn''t justify it, he wasn''t sure if the Martial Union would buy him developing it because he was oh-so-smart.


    Furthermore, he didn''t think the Martial union could seed in disseminating his Martial Art to others, even if partially. The only reason his usage of the VOID algorithm was viable and proficient was because of his mind, his absolute familiarity and understanding of it, the Mind Pce technique, and the Mindmirror brain.


    Without any of these, he would not be able to apply the VOID algorithm the way he did. Even if the Martial Union did manage to derive the VOID algorithm through some kind of reverse engineering, he did not think they would be able to make it mass-viable for Martial Artists.


    As fascinating as the sight of many different Martial Artists applying the VOID algorithm, partially or entirely, was, it was just too unlikely. He had spent his entire previous life trying to make it viable for normal people and he had failed.


    He had seeded in making it viable for himself, but he was far removed from any semnce of ordinary. He was satisfied with making it viable for only himself in this life.<novelnext></novelnext>


    He shook his head. (''The Martial Union''s goal is not relevant to me, it''s interesting, but it doesn''t matter.'')


    His thoughts immediately returned to his own Martial Path.


    (''I have some ideas...'') Rui''s eyes lit up in interest.


    He had been considering the way to make progress forward, and he had already conceived of some ideas on how to go forward with developing his Martial Art.


    (''My techniques need to bepatible with both my Marial body and the VOID algorithm. Furthermore, these techniques need to be individualistic; they need to originate significantly from me and have significantly unique.'')? N?velDrama.Org - All rights reserved.


    These were the conditions that Rui would need to fulfill when developing his Martial Art. They were significantly stricter than the conditions for growing stronger back when he was a Martial Apprentice. Back then he simply needed to find something that would make him stronger and had decentpatibility with him.


    Now he needed to derive a technique or create one entirely from scratch that possessed extreme synergy with his Martial Art and body that also deviated from the existing base of techniques. The ones that he knew of, at least.


    Yet despite the difficulty of this challenge, Rui grinned. He had to control himself from acting stupid out of excitement, but it was entirely evident regardless.


    He would be truly forging his Martial Art from this point forth!


    Prior he had been taking existing blocks and building his Martial Art from them, barring a handful of exceptions here and there. But now, he needed to construct even the blocks that he would use to further develop his Martial Art himself!


    He truly looked forward to this immensely personal process. Just the thought of developing his own solutions to further his Martial Art was so exciting he could hardly wait to begin. He was no longer satisfied with the dull process of walking into the Squire-level library and mundanely picking whatever techniques sounded good. That had already grown mind-numbingly boring and dreary, and it was also weaker than creating one''s own techniques.


    Someone who did thetter would be able to perform better due topatible synergetic techniques that made much better use of the Martial Artist and were better used by the Martial Artist. Furthermore, their individuality would bring them closer to the higher Realm in the long run. It was superior in every single way possible.


    (''A new chapter in my journey down my Martial Path begins.'') Rui breathed deeply as he opened his eyes to the world around him. Even the air felt refreshing and invigorating. The Sun''s shine was beautiful while its warmth was gentle. The wind danced as though rejoicing. It was almost as if the world was rejoicing alongside him.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 529 Idea

    Rui found himself meditating on arge rock in the forests near the Quarrier Orphanage, absorbed deep in thought. He had recently obtained rity about his path forward in the Squire Realm and had even fleshed out some of the conditions that he would need to keep in mind when developing his Martial Art from this point forth.


    All he had to do was take the first step concretely.


    (''What are my most immediate needs?'') Rui asked himself.


    Although developing the VOID algorithm to be able to counter all Martial Art in the world was certainly important, it was much more of a lifelong ambition than an immediate objective. He thought back to his battle against the Britannian Martial Squire, analyzing his shorings, weaknesses, and faults.


    (''Myck of ability to hurt him was a pain in the ass.'') Rui sighed emphatically.


    Rui had been able to react to, outmaneuver, predict, and counter his opponent just fine. The only reason the fight had extended for as long as it did was that he had trouble inflicting any meaningful damage on his opponent.


    (''My higher-end lethality is shit.'') Rui sighed.


    His offense was mostly centered around Outer Convergence, which allowed him to employ power from all muscle groups at any given point in time as well as Reverberating Lance, which employed vibrations to permeate the impact of his strike deeper into the body of his target allowing him to inflict damage in the more vulnerable parts of the human body.


    However, against Martial Artists that were highly resistant to impacts, he may as well have no offensive capabilities at all. He didn''t always have this problem, when he was a Martial Apprentice he had a versatile offense that allowed him to inflict all forms of damage against his opponent.


    However, while he was vastly stronger as a Martial Squire than he was a Martial Apprentice, he did not possess the same kind of versatility that he did back then.


    (''That is something I need to fix.'') Rui sighed.


    His Flowing Void style needed to possess a wide array of tools in order to counter a wide array of Martial Art and opponents.


    (''I should note down all the primary avenues that my Martial Art iscking the most.'')


    He needed to increase his lethality. This was especially needed against defensive opponents with a tendency to be able to resist ordinary attacks to a significant degree, such as the opponent he fought against at Fort Zurtun.


    (''The simplest way to increase my lethality is to obtain piercing attacks.'')


    In the past, as a Martial Apprentice, he had faced a simr issue, his solution back then was to obtain a piercing attack that allowed him to inflict flesh wounds on his opponent. Purchasing the Stinger technique had increased his lethality to a satisfactory degree.<novelnext></novelnext>


    Ordinarily, he would have been satisfied with remastering the technique as a Martial Squire, but that no longer was the case.


    (''The technique isn''t aspatible with me as I''d like. Furthermore, it has zero individuality since it isn''t something I created.'') Rui sighed.


    The Stinger was useful, but it wasn''t nearly as flexible as Rui would have liked. While it was true that his toe had effectively be a bullet that he could puncture his opponent with, it was also true that it required a tremendous amount of momentum to do so. Every time he needed to use it, he needed to use all his offense-supplementary techniques, and strike as hard as he could with as powerful a kick as he could.


    This added all kinds of limitations and restrictions on the number of scenarios he couldfortably use it in.


    (''Furthermore, the Stinger is a bit obsolete in the Squire Realm,'') Rui sighed.


    The reason for this was that Martial bodies were vastly superhuman in their ability to withstand pressure and their ability to cope with wounds. The Stinger could potentiallynd critical wounds on his opponent if Rui aimed well or got lucky and hit a blood vessel, but the same could not be said for Martial Squires. Puncturing them was disproportionately harder, and punctures were no longer that critical of a wound unless in vital areas. Martial bodies bled less to flesh wounds and were hampered to a lesser degree by such wounds.


    (''Unless I try to aim for a grade-eight or higher technique, it''s not going to be nearly as effective as I''d like. But I do not possess thepatibility with extreme piercing-oriented techniques, thus I''d rather avoid going more powerful and extreme techniques that I probably would not be able to master as much as I''d like.'') Rui analyzed. (''Thus, the solution is not piercing, or at the very least, it is not piercing alone.'')N?vel(D)rama.Org''s content.


    Maybe he could derive or create a technique that possesses more than just piercing, or two separate lethal techniques based on two different mechanisms that worked well together.


    (''It would be nice to add another element to a piercing technique. Something that is synergetic with piercing and can work well together with it.'') Rui pondered the different possibilities. (''Heat maybe?'')


    Heat was a very niche and esoteric field in Martial Art, but it would certainly go well with a piercing technique and increase the degree to which the attack damages his opponent.


    (''But heat also cauterizes wounds.'') Rui sighed as he shrewdly detected a drawback of this idea. If heat cauterized the wound, it would bleed less, removing one of the primary lethal elements of piercing attacks. (''Also, heat is no doubt extremely difficult to master. Probably more so than a powerful piercing attack. I need something with greater synergy and less impedance.'')


    His mind scoured through several problems as he finally came up with a potential solution.


    (''Should I... include a poison element?'') Rui wondered as he opened his eyes.


    Incorporating poison into the technique would most certainly increase its lethality as poison was especially effective when administered directly into the body as it would in the case of a piercing attack.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 530 Ambitious

    It was an intriguing idea, one that was definitely worth seriously considering. Poison would allow him to capitalize the most on an open wound, more than almost any other offensive field. He pictured something such as conditioning the part of his body that would be piercing into his target with a powerful toxin. Doing so would allow him to incapacitate, hamper, or even kill his opponent depending on what kind of poison he chose and how potent it was.


    (''The only problem is the matter of howpatible I am with poison.'') Rui sighed.


    Poison was a niche field, perhaps not to the same extent as something like heat was, but it certainly was very much divorced from the mainstream fields of techniques that Martial Artists most dabbled in.


    Rui recalled a conversation he had with headmaster Aronian regarding the Unorthodox Sect and why they had been dubbed as such. Fields such as poison and heat were not inherent natural applications of the human body. The proportion of Martial Art and Martial Paths centered around these fields was low due to this very reason. The same applied topatibility, thepatibility of the average martial Artist with these fields was low.


    That was Rui was somewhat unsure of whether he was qualified to incorporate any potent poison into his technique.


    (''But it doesn''t necessarily need to be potent.'') Rui noted.


    As long as the poison aplished some meaningful difference, it was worth pursuing. Furthermore, unless Rui was, for some reason, especially horribly ipatible with poison, it was unlikely that he would be unable to obtain something of some utility.


    (''This would have been an easy decision had I still been in the Apprentice Realm, but it gets moreplicated now that I''m in the Squire Realm.'') Rui sighed.


    Squires were not easily susceptible to poison. Martial Apprentices were physically human, unless they had gone out of their way to master some defensive resistance training techniques against poison, they were as vulnerable to poison as other normal humans were.


    The same could not be said for Martial Squires, Martial Squires possessed far more resistance to invasive substances that were detrimental to the human body. What would kill even the most resistant Martial Apprentices was something that most Martial Squires would be able to resist. The question was whether Rui would be able to master Squire-level poison techniques that were required to affect Martial Squires to a meaningful degree.


    (''Hm...'') Rui narrowed his eyes, deep in thought. (''I might need to learn more about the poison-oriented techniques from the Martial Union before I can make a decision on this matter. It is always best to be informed about the subjects that are important to you.'')


    It was in these avenues that Rui was willing to obtain some help from the Martial Union; purely distant aid that did not overreach.


    (''Well, until I get to that, I have to consider my other options as well. Another option thates to mind is friction-oriented elements.'')


    He recalled that one of the Martial representatives of the Martial Contest had a Martial Path that was centered around friction. The man''s very touch wrenched and ground against the flesh, causing excruciating flesh wounds.<novelnext></novelnext>


    (''What if I incorporate friction into the sides of whatever part of my body pierces into my opponent?'') Rui wondered with intrigue in his eyes. (''Then, as I prate my opponent, I will be inflicted damage to the sides of the wound due to sheer friction.'')


    It could be likened to a knife with a de with many tiny spikes on its de surfaces. If someone was stabbed with a knife, both the actual sharp de and the tiny spikes on its side would cause tremendous amounts of damage and pain to its target.


    (''Wait... What if Ibine piercing, friction, and poison?'') Rui''s eyes widened.


    What if the knife that had many tiny spikes on its side was also covered in poison?


    Such a technique would have devastating lethality. Any technique that incorporated meaningful amounts of each of the three fields would be no different from a lethal assassination technique that could potentially kill its opponent with a single attack!


    (''Is such a thing even possible?'') Rui began to wonder with excitement.


    He didn''t know. To be more precise, he didn''t know if he possessed the qualifications to master such a technique.N?vel(D)rama.Org''s content.


    (''I need to learn more about this.'') Rui nodded, seriously. (''Oh, I should also consult Julian. He definitely knows a lot about the scientific side of the Martial Art in this world.'')


    In a way, so did Rui. The difference between them was that Rui had gone to extremely far lengths in his previous life in the martial arts andbat sports of Earth while the scientists of this world tapped into the more supernatural side of Martial Art.


    Sometimes Rui felt the need to learn more about the esoteric sciences of the world of Gaia. It was in times like these, as well as the time when he obtained the research data of the Squire breakthrough process from the Commonwealth Duchy of Vinfrana. Thankfully, in both this and that situation, he had his reliable older brother who was always willing to help him out.


    (''I just don''t have enough time.'') Rui shook his head.


    Even though Earth''s understanding and application of natural reality were far greater than that of the human civilization on the Panama continent, he did not underestimate how difficult learning esoteric in-depth most likely was. Mastering it was probably extremely difficult all things considered. If Julian needed many years of education and experience to be qualified to be a full-fledged schr, Rui did not think he would be able toplete it in a sh.


    (''Well, that wraps my thoughts on one project.'') Rui opened his eyes. (''I''ll have to do more research when I get back, but I don''t think I need to limit myself to only a single Martial Art technique development project if I can help it.'')


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 531 Range

    (''Well, what else is my Martial Artcking at the moment, as far as fundamentals go?'') Rui wondered.


    Well, that was an easy question to answer. This wasn''t quite like theter days of his Apprentice times when he had so many Martial Art techniques that it was exceedingly difficult to find a technique that wasn''t redundant.


    Now he had returned back to stage one, in a way, where he once more needed to fill the gaps in his Martial Art like he already had once upon a time.


    (''The only difference is the difficulty of this task is exponentially more difficult than it was before.'') Rui sighed, yet he couldn''t suppress the mild grin on his face no matter how hard he tried.


    His attention returned back to the matter at hand as he pondered through what his Martial Art needed and could use.


    (''Lack of range is definitely one thing to consider.'') Rui nodded.


    When he was a Martial Apprentice, he had mastered the Tempestual Ripple technique, which allowed him tounch attacks a good distance away by manipting the air into a dense ball which he thenunched with a strike.


    (''How on Earth am I going to create a long-range technique from scratch?'') Rui sighed.


    The sheer difficulty of the task made it amply clear why the poption of Martial Artists decreased across higher Realms.


    (''If it was easy, everybody would do it.'') Rui chuckled cynically.


    In this particr case, Rui suspected that it was probably better to modify existing techniques to suit him and his Martial Art better. It wasn''t an absolute necessity that every technique he ended up mastering in the Squire Realm was something entirely brand-new that was purely constructed out of thin air without borrowing from any existing foundation. That was an extremely rare urrence and a pointlessly impractical condition.


    Rui estimated that less than one percent of techniques fell into that category. He didn''t need to feel too self-conscious about borrowing from existing foundations as long as whatever he ended up creating satisfied the conditions he had already created for himself; synergetic, original, and unique, all to a certain degree.


    (''What would it mean for a long-range attack to be synergetic with me and my Martial Art?'') Rui asked himself. If he wanted to make one that was synergetic with his Martial Art, he needed to understand what that statement or idea actually meant in a practical sense.


    (''It would be one that is most effective when paired with my strengths and one that isn''t hampered by my shorings.'') Rui noted.


    Of course, this was still merely a very general statement, he needed to derive more specific conditions that the technique would need to fulfill.


    (''My timing and cement are excellent thanks to the VOID algorithm, Primordial Instinct, and the Mindmirror brain. This what makes my Martial Art powerful and high-grade'') Rui noted. (''That means a technique with a great amount of power in exchange for an extremely high requirement for urate and precise timing and cement would be the ideal.'')<novelnext></novelnext>


    This was still a somewhat general statement, but it was something much more concrete to work on. He could take his time deriving more specific conditions until he eventually came up with a technique that suited those conditions perfectly.


    (''What kind of long-range technique would have an extremely high requirement for uracy and precision?'') Rui wondered.


    However, the answer struck him the very instant he finished parsing that thought.N?vel(D)rama.Org''s content.


    (''The super-dee-duper long-range type.'')


    It sounded like a silly thought, but in reality, there was truth to be found in his words. He thought back to every action movie that featured snipers back on Earth. Sniping from arge distance was always portrayed as an extremely difficult feat that required nearly superhuman levels of uracy and precision as well as a lot of aid from instruments that measured all kinds of environmental parameters.


    Of course, Rui wasn''t a moron, far from it. He was aware that action movies were nothing short of fiction. However, whatever he knew about marksmanship and sniping, it was at least close to the truth. The details didn''t matter.


    If one further extended that thought, there were even more extreme examples like an intercontinental ballistic missile. The sheer calctions that were performed by theunch and propulsion systems were so incredibly much that they surpassed human cognition. Not even Rui dared to think that he could perform the necessary calctions in the necessary amount of time in order for a sessfulunch and hit.


    Not yet, at least.


    (''My technique is going to be closer to the sniper analogy than an intercontinental ballistic missile.'') Rui chuckled. At the Squire Realm, at least, he had no fathomable way of creating a technique rivaling missiles.


    If he could find a way to tremendously increase the uracy and longevity of his long-range attack at the cost of extremely high demand for uracy and precision, then it would be worth considering without any shred of a doubt.


    (''Just how unbelievable will my long-range attacks be if I actually seed?'') Rui wondered as he clenched his fist, trying to contain the sheer amount of excitement he felt at the prospect. He began envisioning grand visions of him sniping away targets from unbelievably great distances.


    He chalked out the n a bit more as he considered various possibilities. He still hadn''t decided on the nature of the long-range technique. It could be based on shockwaves, but it could also be based on other projectile systems. Hell, even lifting up a rock and throwing it could technically be considered a technique.


    (''I should probably stick to wind-based techniques. I already have a pretty good understanding of them thanks to all my experience with Tempestual Ripple. I ought to adapt it to the squire Realm while also modifying it so that it suits all of my needs.


    The Tempestual Ripple was a somewhat generic, albeit powerful, technique centered around wind-based principles. What he intended to create, on the other hand, was something that wasn''t necessarily more powerful in general, but something that was more powerful if it was in the hands of Rui.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 532 Defense

    After Rui fleshed out the requirements and objectives of his second technique development project, he put it aside for the time being. He would need to do more research before he could flesh out both of his projects any further.


    (''I should give the projects names if I''m going to have more than one.'') Rui shrugged. (''For the piercing technique, I should call it the... the Severer Project. The long-range technique project will be called... the Sniper Project.'') Rui nodded. (''Both of these technique projects are centered around offensive techniques, I should probably develop a defensive project as well.'')


    However, deriving a defensive project was easier said than done. He needed toe up with a concept of a technique that was extremely potent with the cost of being very demanding on the uracy of timing and cement of the execution of said technique.


    (''Well, for starters, it would have to be an active defense.'') Rui noted.


    Only active defense techniques were contingent on the execution of said technique, a passive technique was not particrly executable and thus would not improve based on parameters such as uracy of execution.


    (''Inner Divergence is contingent on timing and cement.'') Rui remembered. It was part of why his defense was that good. However, Rui wondered whether he could develop a technique even better and more synergetic with him than that.


    (''What kind of principles and mechanisms would end up requiring such a high degree of uracy in timing and cement?'') Rui wondered.


    He could think of a few.


    (''What if I seek to create a defensive technique that... aims topletely negate any and all impacts?'') Rui wondered, absorbed in his train of thought.Content is property ? N?velDrama.Org.


    Such a technique would be demonstrably overpowered. The only question was whether it was realistic or even usible in the first ce.


    (''Let me dig into the fundamentals. What is an impact and why does it inflict damage?'') He asked himself, rehashing basic collision mechanics and kinematics.


    An impact was simply a collision between two objects where an exchange of energy urs. The kic energies of the two objects get converted into damage or kic energy.


    (''My goal is to avoid the former; letting the kic energy of an object colliding with me get turned into damage.'') Rui reiterated.


    Instead of letting the kic energy of an object hitting him get converted into damage, he would rather the second option ur; where it gets converted into kic energy. In ssical mechanics, this was known as an stic collision, a collision where two objects shing into each other do not inflict damage, and the kic energy does not get converted into damage but remains as kic energy.<novelnext></novelnext>


    An example of this would be two bouncy balls hitting each other. They did not damage each other, instead, they simply bounced away from each other. This was very different from two balls made out of ss that would simply break each other into pieces.


    (''Following that analogy, won''t get sent flying away if I try to essentially turn myself into a bouncy ball?'') Rui wondered with a confused expression. Bouncy rubber balls were notorious for being extremely crazy and hard to control. Just the slightest sh against them wouldunch them into a frenzy.


    (''It''s simr to my previous opponent, except he was quite literally a bouncy ball, where I am trying to figuratively or effectively be one.'')


    Rui did not want to create a technique that would send him flying far away every time he blocked an attack, like a bouncy ball. This was the issue with trying to convert the kic energy that hit him into the kic energy of his own body rather than damage. Kic energy meant movement. Too much movement. He would not be able to even stand in one ce if he got hit. It was too impractical.


    (''What if I try to get rid of my kic energy as soon as I receive it from my opponent?'') Rui wondered. If he could get rid of the kic energy in his body, that was gained from an attack, immediately after his body gains it, then he would be able to stay in one ce.


    (''So basically. My opponent hits me, I convert his attack''s kic energy into the kic energy of my own in an stic collision like a bouncy rubber ball with zero damage to me, and immediately after that I get rid of the kic energy, and then I''m safe?'') Rui scratched his head.


    Even he had to admit, this sounded like an absolutely crazy technique. He wasn''t even sure if it was physically possible.


    For example, how would he be able to make all collisions perfectly stic? This alone was a difficult conundrum. In fact, back on Earth, absolutely perfect stic collisions with one hundred percent sticity were said to be practically impossible. Even if he didn''t need to be one hundred percent, it was still something that would be extraordinarily hard to aplish.


    Furthermore, the second challenge to his proposed technique was how on Earth was he supposed to magically get rid of the absorbed kic energy in his body instantly on the spot? That was also something that seemed like it defied the principles of kinematics.


    "Hmmm..." Rui pondered the idea a bit as he considered the possibilities avable at hand. The second part of the problem was definitely more difficult than the first problem. For the first problem, he already had a potential solution.


    (''stic Shift... might help.'') Rui recalled his very first Apprentice-level defense technique that he had mastered many years ago. It was an active defensive technique that allowed him to hamper impacts by increasing the distance over which the impact urred. It was simr to how baseball yers caught baseballs by moving their hands along with the ball while catching them. It also made collisions more stic, and thus there was potential that the technique could end up solving part of the problems that stood in Rui''s way in the construction of his ambitious project.


    "To think that paltry foundational technique I learned a long time ago would end up helping me create what will probably be the most impressive defensive technique I''ve learned this far."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 533 Correlation

    "Project Bounce." Rui nodded. It was as good a name as any.


    While Rui had other ideas, he decided to stop at three projects. In fact, three was pushing it, but Rui wanted to gauge how difficult the process of developing his own techniques was. He could learn more about the challenges of developing his own techniques if he had arger sample base to judge that from.


    Besides, he didn''t think that he would be necessarily finishing these projects soon. He didn''t think it would be that easy. Martial Squires didn''t normally break through to the Senior Realm in the span of a few years. Rui was prepared to persevere for as long as needed, though he wished to speed through the journey as much as possible.


    (''Project Severer, Project Sniper, and Project Bounce.'') Rui nodded.


    He got up, stretching before skywalking back to the Orphanage. The sun was setting, after all.


    (''Julian will have been back by now.'')


    He intended to inquire about the viability of his projects to Julian. While he didn''t think his brother would be able to magically provide him with the solutions to his problem, there was a good chance that he would at least be able to point him in the right, or at least helpful, directions.


    Once he arrived at the Orphanage, he spotted Mana and Max sparring with their Apprentice instructor. He quietly avoided their field of vision, not wanting to interrupt their training. Still, he could see that they were making an impressive amount of progress on that front.


    (''As for whether it will be enough to pass the entrance exam...'') Rui sighed.


    He couldn''t say. For one, asides from the first round, the Martial entrance exam was ever-changing so that no specific targeted training could be used to allow students to pass the test even if they were otherwise undesirable.


    They would have to rely purely on their own prowess if they wanted to pass the entrance exam.


    Rui put the matter aside once he entered the Orphanage.


    "Big brother Rui!"


    "You''re back!"


    Several children flooded him once he returned, putting a smile on his face. Rui was a bit of a celebrity to them as the only Martial Artist in the Orphanage. He especially earned a lot of appreciation from the Orphanage ever since he generously donated substantial chunks of ie to help with the maintenance and expansion of the Orphanage.


    The Orphanage had weed some more young toddlers into the family who had also developed a strong attachment to him. Thankfully, it wasn''t long before they returned back to their meals at the insistence of the caretakers who were ensuring they ate their meals.


    Ever since he had been living in the Orphanage, his returning was no longer a fuss like it was when he visited the Orphanage only once in a while when he lived in the Martial Academy.


    [You free? Got something to talk about.]<novelnext></novelnext>


    Rui sent Julian a message.


    Julian did not like being disturbed when he was working, that was difficult for him to fulfill in a noisy home filled with boisterous children. However, he also hadn''t wanted to move out of the house into his own home, leaving his family, thus he had personally funded the construction of an extra wide room with everything he needed at the south end of the Orphanage. He even went as far as to pad the room with sound insntyers that ensured that the perennial noise in the Orphanage did not affect him when he was working at home.


    [I''m not preupied,e in.]


    Rui read the message, nodding as he headed toward the room.


    "Sorry to disturb you." Rui apologized pre-emptively as he entered the room, closing the door behind them. "Hope you weren''t working."


    "Just finished for the day, actually." Julian smiled, taking off his spectacles.


    "Good to hear, because you sure look busy," Rui noted the room filled with all kinds of files and documents stacked and arranged in shelves and cupboards, feeling nostalgic. His office used to look like that before the digital revolution in the twenty-first century.


    "Well," Julian sighed. "I have been consumed with several research and development projects. It has been getting busy recently."


    "Have you been working on anything interesting?" Rui inquired with a raised eyebrow.Belonging ? N?velDram/a.Org.


    "Everything I''m working on is quite interesting." Julian smiled. "I can''t reveal some of them because they''re ssified military-funded projects. But I can tell you about some of the rest if you''re interested. I think you will definitely find some of these as fascinating as I do."


    "Oh go on." Rui nodded, intrigued. While he was a Martial Artist to his core without a doubt, he had also retained some of the curiosity he had as a scientist in his previous life.


    "One of the more innocuous projects I''m working on is rted to Martial Art. More specifically, it aims to discover all the factors influencing the field of the Martial Path of any given Martial Apprentice." Julian exined. "We''ve been analyzing the corrtion between parameters such as age, sex, physicality, temperament/personality, and that of the field of the Martial Path. We''ve found some interesting results."


    Rui''s eyes lit up with intrigue. "Interesting, go on, surely you''ve found some worthwhile discoveries."


    "The research project is still ongoing, but yes, we certainly have. We''ve observed that, of the aforementioned parameters, all of them have some degree of corrtion with what field the Martial Path of a Martial Apprentice is, in different ways." He paused, letting Rui digest that for a moment, before continuing. "Let''s begin with age. Age is observed to have a corrtion with the sophistication of the Martial Path field. We observe that the older the Martial Apprentice is when they break through, the more sophisticated their Martial Path is."


    Rui raised an eyebrow. Julian was right, he most certainly did find this fascinating. The older the Martial Artist was when they broke through, the more sophisticated their Martial Art was. That seemed to indicate that maturity yed a great role in shaping what their Martial Path was.


    "Interesting..."


    "That is really interesting." Rui absorbed the information. "It certainly makes sense intuitively. How exactly are you measuring ''sophistication''? I''m interested in the measuring system you have developed to measure a concept that isn''t as straightforward as physical parameters."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 534 Revelations

    "You''ve correctly identified one of the problems that gued us the most." Julian nodded, evidently impressed. "Sophistication of Martial Path is indeed a bit of a nebulous concept that is hard to measure. However, we have developed a measurement system centered around several parameters such as how narrow and specific their field is, theplexity of the Martial Path, and frequency of the Martial Path in the Martial Artist poption among other things."


    "Interesting." Rui nodded. "That isn''t necessarily in line with the conventional definition of ''sophistication'' though, is it?"


    "Perhaps not," Julian admitted. "The conventional definition is a very broad ambiguous term that epasses a lot of meanings in different contexts. When we use the term, we''re referring to how the word is used in the context of Martial Art."


    Rui nodded. Although he could argue that even in the context of Martial Art it wasn''t a very rigorously defined word, at that point, it was just pointless semantics. What mattered was what the data revealed.


    "Anyways, to continue with what I was saying earlier. The studies we conducted revealed that the older the Martial Artist was when they discovered their Martial Path, the more sophisticated their Martial Path was. The prevailing hypothesis is that with age,es experience, perspective, and maturity, allowing for the maturity of the Martial Path into something beyond a simplistic broad field." Julian told Rui. "We haven''t verified this hypothesis yet, unfortunately."


    "Interesting." Rui thought deeply. "The most straightforward way to verify this hypothesis would be to create a measurement system for maturity and measure it in a sample base of Martial Artists while controlling for all other factors except for the sophistication of Martial Path. This way you could iste the corrtion between maturity and sophistication."


    "Correct." Julian smiled, impressed at Rui''s deep understanding of how empirical research functioned. "We''re having trouble verifying this hypothesis. After all, it isn''t particrly simple to measure the maturity of a Martial Artist. It''s hard to even define maturity objectively, and it''s even harder to measure it empirically."


    Rui nodded. Research in the field of psychology had developed extremely rigorous means of measuring temperament after decades of refining. He didn''t think the researchers of the Kandrian Empire were quite there yet, from what he could see.


    "Furthermore, Martial Artist psychology cannot necessarily be treated the same as that of normal humans." Rui also added.


    "Exactly. Due to that and other reasons, further research has stalled." Julian sighed with resignation.


    "No matter. Tell me more about what your research has yielded." Rui coaxed.


    "Well, the next variable is actually sex," Julian exined. "Sex does y a role in predicting certain parameters of the Martial Path of the Martial Artist. Firstly, female Martial Artists on average are likelier to have Martial Path revolving around more than one field, while male Martial Artists'' Martial Path is likelier to fixate on a single field."


    "Interesting..." Rui thought about his own personal experience and observations. "Doesn''t seem right, intuitively. A lot of my female Martial Artist friends have fixated on a single field, while several of my male Martial Artist friends focus on multiple fields."


    Fae, Milliana, Nel, and Hever were certainly examples of this. Rui was an example of this as well. Rui''s Martial Path was meant to epass every field, theoretically.


    "Of course, this is just a very broad trend, far from an absolute rule. There are plenty of male and female Martial Artists who no doubt stray away from the trend." Julian exined.


    Rui nodded, he was quite familiar with this concept.<novelnext></novelnext>


    "Several other discoveries we made are more niche things such as the frequency of sensory techniques is higher among female Martial Artists while male Martial Artists tend to have a higher trend towards offensive techniques. Women are also likelier to master and excel at techniques that demand fine motor skills, uracy, and precision while men are likelier to master and excel at more physically strenuous techniques."


    "These make more sense, I guess." Rui nodded. Men had a higher propensity for aggressing violence due to testosterone, while women demonstrated higher sensitivity towards stimuli. Men had greater physicality while women exhibited better hand-eye coordination and delicacy. Men and women had different strengths and affinities biologically which seemed to manifest in the demographics of their Martial Paths.


    "A lot of our results were intuitively satisfying and predictable, though they are a bit more mundane," Julian added. "One of our more fascinating findings is actually the corrtion between exposure to a field throughout the years of development and the probability that their Martial Path will be relevant to said field."


    Rui raised an eyebrow at that, waiting for him to continue.


    "One of the more fascinating case studies we conducted is actually the Garath Tribe in the Crimel Forest south of the Kandrian Empire." Julian smiled. "This is a Martial Artist tribe that lives a very primitive lifestyle that characterized our species eons ago, barring the Martial Art part. What is most fascinating is that a huge proportion of the Martial Artists of this tribe have Martial Paths centered around weapons."


    "What?" Rui couldn''t help but be genuinely surprised at this revtion. "How much, exactly?"


    "Around half." Julian chuckled, enjoying Rui''s reaction. "Around half had Martial Paths centered around spears, bows, and arrows, elementary des, etc."


    "Half? Half of them were weapon-wielding Martial Artists?"


    "Indeed."


    "But how...?" Rui recalled his conversation with headmaster Aronian a few years ago. He had told Rui that the reason for the low urrence of weapon-oriented Martial Paths was that weapons were inherently deviant from the natural application of the human body inbat.Belonging ? N?velDram/a.Org.


    (''Was he wrong?'') Rui wondered for a moment, before shaking his head. (''No, it makes sense. The reason for the Garath tribe having a higher frequency must be, as Julian said, due to the exposure.'')


    "So, people''s experiences can cause drastically different Martial Paths," Rui concluded.


    "That does seem to be the case."


    "That raises a lot of questions." Rui hesitantly said as he considered the ways this could be exploited to produce more desirable Martial Paths, as well as the ethics of doing such a thing.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 535 Incompatibility

    ? N?velDrama.Org - All rights reserved.


    "The Martial Path seems to be a product of one''s mentality and experiences," Julian exined. "It makes sense that a lifelong exposure to a certain field of conflict would influence the Martial Path of a person."


    "I see..." Rui was absorbed in thought. "I bet the Martialmunity of the Kandrian Empire employs several means to condition their offspring to be likelier to have a Martial Path that is more desired."


    "They do." Julian nodded.


    "But, it doesn''t necessarily always work," Rui concluded, as he thought about Kane. Kane was the heir of the Arrancar family, he no doubt underwent a simr process if such a thing is amon practice in the Martialmunity. Yet despite that, his Martial Path was the pr opposite of that of his father. Instead of a fearsome aggressive offense, his Martial Path was centered around evasive maneuvering.


    "Indeed, it doesn''t." Julian nodded agreeing. "Ultimately, there are many variables and factors that influence the Martial Path prior to its discovery. It is most likely impossible to absolutely control what one''s Martial Path will be. At most, one can influence across a long period of time."


    "Incredible..." Rui murmured as he considered the various matters that instantly came to mind.


    Was it possible to employ hypnosis to manipte one''s Martial Path? He wasn''t sure if that worked. However, the fact that he had nevere across anything of that sort whatsoever in the Martial Academy prior to the discovery of his Martial Path likely suggested that such a practice was not the norm.


    Julian smiled, seeing Rui deep in thought. "By the way, you said you wanted to speak to me about something. I didn''t intend to hijack the conversation to turn it about myself."


    "Ah, right." Rui shook his head. He''s almost forgotten why he''d wanted to talk to Julian in the first ce. "I wanted to get your thoughts on something."


    "Go on."


    "Well, I recently came up with a few technique development projects. Projects where I focus on developing techniques that are highly suited to me, unlike the techniques of the Martial Union." Rui exined.


    "Interesting," Julian muttered in response. "I had heard that this was amon tendency amongst Martial Artists in the higher Realms, though I don''t know much about it."


    Rui nodded. "It''s a necessary measure to continue developing your Martial Art and also to progress to higher Realms."


    "So, what exactly do you have in mind?" Julian asked with a hint of interest.


    "One of the techniques I seek to develop is a piercing technique that incorporates friction and poison into the technique to maximize lethality," Rui told him. "I was wondering what you think about the viability of such a technique, and how I ought to go about it."


    "Well, it''s an ambitious technique without a doubt." Julian frowned mildly as he considered the matter. "Perhaps a bit too ambitious."


    "All of them are." Rui nodded.


    "Have you mastered any poison techniques prior to this?" Julian asked.<novelnext></novelnext>


    "No, I haven''t."


    "What about friction-based techniques?"


    "Haven''t touched that one either."


    "Hm. But you have mastered a piercing technique before, correct?"


    "Yep. The Stinger served me well while I was a Martial Apprentice."


    "Then I''d suggest beginning to assess the viability of your technique by checking how much affinity you have with those two fields. There''s no point in proceeding any further until you verify that." Julian exined. "Statistically, Martial Art techniques tend to be more difficult when they incorporate multiple different fields like the kind of technique you''re aiming to create. Once you have that down, then you can proceed to flesh out the technique such that they fit within what you can realistically master."


    "Those were my thoughts as well." Rui was d that Julian affirmed his concerns.


    "Asides from that, be careful with poison. You have a symbiote, which does not inherit whatever poison resistance you possess." Julian warned. "Even if you arepatible with it, your symbiote necessarily isn''t. There''s a bit of a sh between symbiotic techniques and poison techniques."


    "Damn, I hadn''t considered that." Rui nodded appreciatively. This made his technique that much more difficult. He didn''t want to jeopardize the Mindmirror Brain because it was valuable. He never ''used'' it, but it was constantly helping him in the background very silently.


    This made for moreplications. In fact, it made this project somewhat dangerous. If something went wrong, then he would be screwed big time.


    "I''d suggest taking it slow and easy, as well as consulting experts on the matter," Julian told him.


    "Will do." Rui nodded as he added that to his list of to-do things. "Any other inputs?"


    Julian shrugged softly. "No, unfortunately. I''m not familiar enough with the fields you''ve specified to be able to offer anymore."


    "It''s all good." Rui nodded. "You''ve helped plenty already. Let me tell you more about the remaining two projects I''m working on. Project Sniper is the project centered around developing a long-range offensive technique that uses my strengths to deliver urate and precise attacks from a great distance away without sacrificing too much power."


    "Interesting," Julian murmured. "You''re going to have to tell me more than that if you want meaningful input from me, I''m afraid. Have you fleshed it out more?"


    "To a certain degree, yes." Rui nodded. "There are roughly three problems that primarily stand in the way of creating a viable technique that fulfills my conditions for the Sniper Project. The first is the most obvious one; firing an attack over such arge distance requires a lot of uracy, beyond what should be possible for my affinity and Realm. The second is that environmental factors cause greater deviance across a greater amount of distance, meaning even if I aim correctly, my attack could still veer off course. The third is that at such great distances, moving targets are absolutely hell because the projectile takes longer due to the distance between me and my target. So even if I aim correctly and I ount for environmental factors, I could still miss if my target is moving even a little!"


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 536 Issues

    The two men stared at each other for a few seconds.


    "Youid that out better than I could," Julian sighed. "I hadn''t realized your project was that ambitious. Is there a particr reason you have confidence that fulfilling such a project is realistic? I don''t mean to be discouraging, but setting extremely unrealistic goals is usually not only a waste of time and energy but also actively counterproductive."


    "You''re right." Rui nodded. "And to answer your question, yes, I do have a reason."


    "Well, let''s hear it then."


    "The difficulty of oveing the three problems I justid out for you lies in the difficulty of processing avable urately and quickly enough to aim in exactly the right direction, to ount for environmental factors, to ount for the target''s movements." Rui diligently exined, before pointing to himself. "I, however, possess a much greater ability to process information systematically in the manner needed to obtain urate answers quickly, putting aside false modesty."


    "I''m not sure I entirely agree with your characterization of the difficulties you just illustrated." Julian frowned. "uracy of aim is generally not a mental exercise in the manner that you describe it so much as it is a pure skill. Skilled marksmen do not solveplicated projectile mechanics equations when they fire urate shots, they simplyunch their attacks in exactly the right matter through judgment born out of abination of talent and a vast amount of experience."


    "You''repletely right about that." Rui grinned. "However, just because that is the norm, doesn''t mean it is a paradigm I need to abide by, especially when I''m better of not doing so."N?vel(D)rama.Org''s content.


    "So, you''re telling me..." Julian looked at him with a hint of skepticism. "You''re telling me that you''ve created a new and superior paradigm for the very concept of long-range uracy?"


    Julian knew that his brother was quite strong, special, and brilliant. But as a schr with a background in the study of Martial Art, he understood the sheer magnitude of ims that Rui was making at the moment. What he was talking about was nothing short of revolutionary.


    "Hear me out, Julian." Rui smiled. "We already know that there are rather simple equations defining the motion of projectiles that are quite easy to understand, correct?"


    "To you and me, perhaps, but neither of us is particrly average, are we?" Julian sighed. He wasn''t tooting their horns, it was merely an objective fact. "Projectile mechanics is cutting-edge theoretical science, Rui. How did you evene about learning about them when you didn''t go to a science university?"


    Rui suppressed a snort. Projectile mechanics was extremely elementary physics back on Earth. He had studied it in middle school and more extensively in high school. However, Julian''s words allowed him to discover the actual limit of understanding of theoretical physics of the Kandrian Empire. "Oh, you know, I read some of your old books when you were away living at the university."


    Julian looked at him with skeptical eyes.


    "I''m not lying, okay!"


    "If you say so..." Julian shook his head with resignation. "Anyways, you were saying."


    "So, as I was saying," Rui exined. "I understand projectile mechanics extremely well, and I''m also capable of systematically and objectively processing information quickly and urately in the middle ofbat. With these two traits, I should be able effectively to calcte my aim, making my uracy objective rather than relying on skill."<novelnext></novelnext>


    "Even if that was possible, you may not necessarily be able to execute your calctions urately. It''s one thing to calcte exactly with how much force, and at what angle you mustunch your attack, it''s another thing entirely for your body to precisely and urately execute those results." Julian astutely pointed out.


    "True, that is where the true challenge lies, honestly. I might need to train my hand-eye coordination if I want this technique to work the way it does. But my hand-eye coordination is not a weakness of mine or something, not by any means. As long as I work hard and train my body to execute my calctions urately, there is a decent chance that my vision for this project will be entirely realized." Rui exined with an excited grin.


    "Hm." Julian considered his argument for a moment. "Well, there is a chance, of course. Provided your assumptions about your mental faculties are not inurate. I can''t think of anything else to offer about this project, I''m afraid. My background doesn''t really ovep with this field."


    "No worries." Rui friendlily replied. "The fact that it has, at least tentatively, earned your approval is quite a encouraging news. It''s a good affirmation that I''m not crazy."


    "Oh, I don''t know about that." Julian chuckled.


    Rui was far removed from normal in many ways that it was sometimes hard to consider him sane. Even if he wasn''t insane, he certainly wasn''t normal in the head. There were just too many abnormalities that when considered individually, could be written off with his genius-level intellect, talent, or hard work, but when one zoomed out and looked at the big picture, it was truly mind-boggling.


    Julian knew this because he had done exactly that, he had even jokingly insinuated that Rui was an adult in a child''s body, a long time ago. As time passed, the more urate that joke seemed to be.


    Julian shook his head mildly. A joke was a joke.


    "What about the final project?" He asked.


    "Ah, it''s a development project centered around an active defense technique," Rui exined. "I''m trying to create a technique where I transfer all the kic energy of an attack to me while ensuring none of it damages me, then I disperse that energy instantaneously, ideally."


    "...That''s it?"


    "So far, yeah."


    "That''s not a goal, that sounds more like a pipe dream." Julian chuckled. "You need to have a more concrete way of aplishing what you want instead of just stating as much."


    "I know, but it''s difficult to form a concrete n for this one, that''s why I wanted you to help me out," Rui exined.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 537 Purchase

    "I can''t really help you with that so spontaneously. Besides, if I''m not wrong, the core of your n probably ought to originate from you to satisfy the condition of individuality." Julian conjectured.


    "Hm, true." Rui nodded. "You''ve given me a lot of food for thought thus far that has been quite illuminating. I suppose that''s enough for a single conversation."


    "Well, I''m d I was of some help." Julian smiled. "You should work on fleshing out the n by doing research on the relevant topics. If one of your projects is unviable for some reason, then it is best to know that as early as possible. You don''t want to realize that after having spent six months on the project, do you?"


    "Most certainly not, will keep note of that." Rui nodded.


    The two of them discussed the matter more in-depth as they visited a variety of topics before their long discussion was finally concluded, or rather interrupted by the calls from dinner by Lashara.


    "Well, that has been pretty fulfilling. Thanks again for hearing me out." Rui thanked him as he got up.


    "Anytime." Julian smiled.


    The two headed towards the dinner table together, spending time together with their family for the rest of the night.


    The next day, Rui headed towards the Martial Union to purchase the necessary reading material he wanted. Particrly, he was most concerned with learning poison techniques when he possessed a particrly delicate symbiote inside his head.


    Inparison, the Sniper and Bounce Projects were much more within Rui''s background and understanding. The core mechanics for these two projects were centered around ssical mechanics which Rui was intimately familiar with. He needed to look within to figure these two projects out, for the most part.


    The same could not be said about the Severer Project.


    Perhaps if it was an external symbiote like the kind Apprentice Fernan had, he wouldn''t be nearly as concerned, after all those had to be tough, otherwise, they would get destroyed quite easily. Brains, on the other hand, were fragile in every sense possible.


    He headed straight toward the Martial support counter. It was a department dedicated to exchanging or selling goods, services, or information that the Martial Union directly owned. This was separate from the utility department which had outlets for various esoteric technologypanies. The Martial Union effectively served as a safe reliable middleman that ensured that the Martial Artists weren''t exposed or exploited.


    "Yes?" A staff member smiled. "How may I help you?"


    "I wanted to purchase information regarding thepatibility between poison techniques and symbiotic techniques. Furthermore, I also specifically want all data surrounding thepatibility between the Mindmirror Symbiote and various poisons used in offensive poison techniques." Rui quickly surmised.


    "Please provide your license for verification of security clearance." The staff member requested.


    The Martial Union did sell information, however, only if the customer in question had the security clearance to ess and purchase said information. This was done so that valuable intelligence didn''t find itself in the hands of those who simply could not be trusted, or were ineligible for other reasons, with whatever information said customercked the security clearance to purchase.


    For example, a Martial Apprentice couldn''t simply purchase any information surrounding the breakthrough to the Squire Realm because they were ineligible to acquire that information.<novelnext></novelnext>N?vel(D)rama.Org''s content.


    "Alright Squire Quarrier, we have verified that you possess the necessary security clearance to purchase the information you seek. Please give us some time to collect all the information you seek before we can quote you a price." She requested. "You can take a seat while you wait."


    Rui nodded as he took his seat, observing the staff members as they hurriedly left to procure his purchase. Thankfully, it did not take too long.


    "Squire Quarrier." She called out to him. "We have procured the information you wished to purchase. The price for all the details adds up to about 5780 Martial credits."


    Rui raised an eyebrow at that price as he winced inwardly. That was a little over half the price of a low-grade Squire-level mission. The Martial Union was squeezing him dry!


    "You also need to acknowledge and ept certain terms and conditions stipted by the Martial Union." She said as she pushed forward an acknowledgment form along with a pen toward Rui.


    Rui quickly skimmed through it, disinterested.


    It was rtively strict, but nothing too extreme. He wasn''t allowed to distribute the information he purchased from the Martial Union''s authorization and would be held liable for any unauthorized distribution and will be penalized.


    Rui felt it was understandable that the Martial Union was as restrictive of the information it sold. All of the information that it sold to its customers was acquired via means that required a lot of funding and resources. All technical scientific information was information that had been painstakingly obtained after years of research. Information outside of science was also acquired through the intelligence department which required a massive amount of funding and resources to function adequately.


    If the Martial Union allowed its customers to resell information at cheaper prices than the Martial Union, then it would make it an entirely losing business. It at the very least had to break even, otherwise, it was a liability.


    Rui simply signed the acknowledgment form as he nced at the sheer volume of books and documents that the staff had procured.


    "Would you like it delivered to a location or would you rather take it on your person?" She asked, smiling.


    "I''ll take it with me, thanks."


    Thankfully, they were neatly packed together making it less inconvenient to carry in person. But still an important task for a normal human.


    Rui whistled as he skywalked home with two giant bags filled with scientific literature centered around Martial Art.


    "If the answer isn''t in here, then it probably isn''t anywhere." Rui sighed as he looked down at the books and documents that he was carrying home with hope.


    All he could do was pray.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 538 Poison

    "Damn, this isn''t looking so optimistic." Rui cursed as he read through a research journal.


    He had spent the past week pouring through all the literature on the topic, asionally consulting Julian when the esoteric scientific jargon went over his head. Turns out Julian was entirely correct when he told Rui that there was arge degree of ipatibility between the field of poison and symbiotes.


    One thing he did appreciate was the fact that there was an abundance of research on the topic. This was because a lot of the test subjects that were used to conduct the necessary experiments were actually animals. Since a lot of these symbiotes were able to take root in other animals, the effects of poison-based techniques were easy to observe.N?vel(D)rama.Org''s content.


    One of the biggest problems Rui hade across was that almost all poison-oriented techniques required the user to actually developplete immunity to said poison. Such a requirement was almost inevitable, all things considered. After all, how could one integrate poison into the body to use on others if said poison would end up killing them in the first ce?


    The Mindmirror symbiote was particrly vulnerable since most of its body was brain tissueprised of neurons that certainly weren''t resistant to poison. The only poisons that it was able to develop immunity to were low-grade poisons that weren''t lethal.


    This meant that whatever poison Rui nned to integrate into his Severer Project had to be a minor poison that couldn''t really do active damage to his opponent. He was limited to minor neurotoxins that negatively affected motor control or poisons that affected certain parts of the body. He couldn''t for the big shots that could kill even Martial Squires with just the slightest bit of exposure.


    (''Though that doesn''t necessarily too bad.'') Rui thought to himself. (''I highly doubt I would have the affinity and the talent to be able to master such poisons in the first ce. Poison is supposed to be one of three elements that make the Severer Project a powerful lethal attack. There was also the piercing attack and the friction element to batter the wound.'')


    He quickly went through each poison that was viable as he made a mental note of all of them in the mind pce. Each of the poisons that were viable had to be such that they did not negatively affect brain tissue directly or indirectly, which most poisons did, which is why they were ipatible with the Mindmirror Brain. He then further shortlisted them as far as actual utility went.


    [Hurndrum Nectar]


    This was a poison derived from a special nt that caused a tremendous burning sensation to the applied area of the body that was indistinguishable from the actual sensation of burning. However, it did not actually cause any actual impediments to the functioning of the body. Thus, if the target was able to endure the pain, the poison would not cause any meaningful difference inbat.


    The reason that this was considered a low-grade poison was that most Martial Squires had a disproportionately high amount of pain tolerance. After all, every Martial Squire had undergone the mind-crushing hellish torture that was the breakthrough to the Squire Realm. Once one underwent that, almost all other forms of conventional pain were rather trivial inparison.


    [Gangaer drop]<novelnext></novelnext>


    This was another potential candidate that caused necrosis to affected flesh, however, the rate at which it caused necrosis was exceedingly slow, to the degree that it was very unlikely to make much of a difference before the fight ended, and even then, it was not immediately debilitating and healing potions could further slow it down tremendously.


    [Serinflow powder]


    This was a poison created from the grain of the Serinflow crop. It functioned as an anti-coagnt that prevented wounds from slowing down blood flow through the coagtion of blood. If administered to an open wound, it would cause said wound to continue bleeding without pause. However, pressure on the wound effectively could rece the natural coagtion of the body, thus it wasn''t particrly lethal.


    This was a poison Rui had the most hope for. This poison would pair really well with the technique he had in mind, the piercing and the friction in his attack would certainly cause a wound that was quite open and exposed, if he could master the Serinflow powder, then every time he sessfullynded an attack, he could be certain it would be difficult for his opponent to endure the bleeding wound he had created.


    There were a few other candidates as well, and Rui intended to verify hispatibility with all of them before he could have a much clearer idea of how realistic Project Severer was.


    He sighed, putting aside the matter for now. "I should work on the other projects as well."


    The remaining two projects weren''t easy, but he was morefortable with them since they did not require theprehension of fields that he did not have a good understanding of. This was especially true for the Sniper Project. Out of all of the three of his projects, the Sniper Project was, in his estimation, the likeliest to seed. He had fleshed out the technique almost entirely on a conceptual level.


    He essed the model for the technique from his mind pce, going over it once more. The goal of the project was a technique that allowed him urately extreme long-range attacks that would ordinarily be impossible for a Martial Squire by relying on his ability to process information systematically, swiftly, and urately.


    The three main obstacles to the viability of the technique were therge distance over which he would need to aim urately, the atmospheric and environmental factors that would influence the trajectory of the attack over such a long distance, and the movements of his target that, over such arge distance, could end up causing aplete miss.


    He actually had reasonably viable solutions for all of these problems, and he intended to test them out as soon as he could.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 539 Technique Candidates

    There was only one issue.Content is property ? N?velDrama.Org.


    (''Testing these solutions will require me to master and modify some techniques; new and old.'') Rui shook his head with resignation.


    It couldn''t be helped. The originality of Project Sniper came from its revolutionary concept of relying on a data science approach to improve aim and uracy instead of pure skill. However, that didn''t necessarily mean that every ounce of the technique across all aspects waspletely original and something Rui had developed from scratch.


    For example, Project Sniper required a projectile firing mechanism to fire projectiles of some sort from a long distance away. However, Rui was not going to create from scratch a brand-new projectile-firing mechanism that the Martial world has never ever seen before. He was going to look at existing super long-range offensive techniques and choose one that was most fit for his needs. Once he mastered said technique, he intended to modify the projectile firing mechanism of the technique to suit Project Sniper.


    He had no intention of re-inventing the wheel, he was only going to modify existing wheels to suit his needs.


    He also needed to master a technique that gave him much more thorough long-range sensory capabilities. After all, how could he possibly snipe a target away from a great distance away if he could not sense them from a great distance away?


    Of course, he did have Seismic Mapping, but Seismic Mapping did not have the detail and precision he was looking for. Furthermore, its uracy grew worse the further above the ground any given object or person was. Furthermore, it had grown a bit obsolete in the Squire Realm because Martial Squires did not need to touch the ground thanks to Sky Walking.


    He intended to pick up an aerial sensory technique that would allow him to urately evaluate atmospheric conditions which he could use to process and make more objective deductions and conclusions. He could only proceed with the rest of the development of the technique after he obtained the necessary sensory prowess needed. After all, any question of whether he could possibly snip people urately from a great distance away came was meaningless if he could not even perceive his targets properly.


    "I can purchase the technique and begin mastering them when I go to the Martial Union to verify mypatibility and tolerance for the poisons I hope to master." Rui nodded. Until that happened, no further progress with the Severer and Sniper Projects could be made.


    That left only one project; Project Bounce.


    He sighed. This project was the least developed, even on a conceptual level. While he had a somewhat clear idea of how to go about the other two projects, Project Bounce was more difficult.


    "Converting iing attacks into kic energy of my own body is not the most difficult part, even if it is difficult. But it''s definitely usible. On the other hand, getting rid of that kic energy on the spot instantaneously andpletely is quite difficult, I''m not sure how to even go about that." He sighed.


    Well, he intended to tackle the first part with suited techniques while he brainstormed a way to handle the second part. He had already given the matter some thought but he could not think of a realistic way to do so at the moment.


    Rui shook his head, he would cross that bridge when he came across it, he was not going to unnecessarily waste too much time when it was clear that he simply couldn''te up with a solution at the moment.


    "Alright, no time to waste." Rui immediately left the Orphanage and headed straight to the Martial Union, arriving within five minutes. He quickly headed towards the Martial support counter.


    "Excuse me."


    "How may I help you?" The staff member smiled.


    "I wish to book poisonpatibility tests for these poison-oriented Martial Art techniques." Rui handed her a list with the names of the poisons.<novelnext></novelnext>


    "This... will take a while to arrange, please wait while we arrange the tests you seek." She informed him.


    "I also wish to visit the Squire-level library," Rui exined. "Please do inform me through the ounter when the process is done."


    "Alright, we will be sure to do that."


    He immediately headed to the Squire-level library while the Martial Union arranged the tests he was looking for.


    "Alrighty then," Rui murmured once he reached. "Where to begin?"


    He intended on purchasing a suitable long-range technique, a wide-range aerial sensory technique, a technique that allowed him to intercept attacks stically if such a thing existed.


    He sauntered over to the offense-oriented section of the library, walking over to the long-range portion. Thankfully, the techniques in the library were organized very systematically, making it rather simple and easy to find any particr kind of technique that one was looking for.


    He skimmed through them as he happened across several interesting techniques.


    [Fireball]


    This technique was a head-oriented long-range technique that ignited the air through intense pressure while exhaling, causing one to blow out fire.


    Rui had seen this technique before, once in the Martial Contest. One of the representatives was a Martial Apprentice with a heat-oriented Martial Art. Her dangerous heat-based techniques had made her a force to be reckoned with.


    (''This won''t work for my purposes, however.'') He shook his head.


    The requirements he had for his sniping technique was the fact that it needed to be precise and discrete, while also being able to sustain itself over great distances. This technique did the exact opposite. The Fireball technique was not precise or discrete, it affected a broader area before the user, and it most certainly did not have the kind of range that Rui was looking for. While it was an extremely iconic attack across all of fiction, it was not something that Rui could even consider purchasing for the Sniper Project.


    He ran across a very familiar technique.


    [Tempestual Ripple]


    "Hmm..." Rui pondered whether this old technique of his would work or not.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 540 Choices

    It was definitely much more pragmatic and alluring than the previous technique, without a doubt. One of the greatest allures of the technique was the fact that Rui was already intimately familiar with the technique. So much so that he could probably adapt the Apprentice-level version of the technique to the Squire Realm by himself if he wanted.


    Furthermore, theoretically, it could have the range he was looking for depending on the shape of the wind attack. If he made a smaller but concentrated attack, it wouldst much longer than it normally would.N?vel(D)rama.Org''s content.


    "Hm, I''ll consider it." Rui plucked the scroll off the shelf as he continued on with his inspection. There were numerous techniques of all sorts. He saw several techniques that he had run into in the past, such as the arm extension attack. There were many techniques that were alsopatible with one particr kind of Martial body.


    [stic Whip]


    This was a technique thatpatible with only the rubber body Martial body. Rui was surprised to see this here considering thest time he saw it was in the hands of a Britannian Martial Squire.


    (''Then again, I guess most super-nations probably have simr variants of the same technique.'') Rui guessed.


    He walked past it, there was no point in even considering the technique, considering that he didn''t have the right Martial body for it.


    He continued examining the existing techniques one by one until he ran into something that drew his attention.


    [Sonic Bullets]


    This was a technique that generated discrete pulses of high-intensity sound that traveled forth at the speed of sound. The sound was generated by abination of conditioning of therynx and a specific breathing technique.


    Rui''s eyebrows rose with interest.


    Sound was very persistent in the atmospherepared to gusts of wind. The reason was simply, while techniques like Tempestual Rippleunched pockets of condensed air through space, sound traveled using the atmosphere as a medium. Techniques like Tempestual Ripple experienced immense resistance from the atmosphere, however, the same wasn''t true for sound.


    The reason sound had a range limit was only due to a dilution and loss of energy in the ever-expanding wavefront.


    (''However, in a concentrated sound pocket like the Sonic Bullet technique, the dilution of energy would be significantly lesser than a normal sound wave.'') Rui realized.


    He recalled that another representative in the Martial Contest had employed sound attacks. Her attacks did not have extremely limiting ranges, from what he could tell.


    (''Furthermore, sound is much harder to detect than wind-based techniques like Tempestuous Ripple.'') Rui noted.


    This was because sound did not generate any phenomena that could be used to detect its arrival. It was hard to ''perceive'' sound before it arrived. It was not the same as physical objects or living organisms that could be detected via light and sound. Sound was used to detect others, but detecting sound itself before it arrived was an extremely difficult task. Rui suspected nothing short of specialized aerial sensory Martial Artists would be able to detect theunching of highly concentrated andpact sound bullets.


    This meant that his Sniper Project technique had inadvertently gained an element of stealth to it if he did choose this technique to function as the projectile-firing mechanism of his technique.<novelnext></novelnext>


    (''This might just work out perfectly.'') Rui felt a surge of excitement.


    Of course, he had no doubt that he would need to modify the technique before it could truly work out the way he hoped it would. But that was already part of the n, a necessary inevitability even.


    (''Alright, I''m going to master this technique even if it kills me!'') Rui was extremely determined. He didn''t think it would be easy, given that it was a grade-seven technique. He didn''t know how good hispatibility with sound-based techniques was. However, as long as he had even decentpatibility with it, enough effort would allow him to obtain sufficient proficiency with the technique.


    This was unlike poison where Rui was decisively quite ipatible with them because of the Mindmirror Brain. He had no hard impediments of the sort when it came to mastering sound-oriented techniques.


    He plucked the scroll from the shelf as he set back the Tempestuous Ripple scroll. He found it a shame that he wouldn''t be remastering an old technique which would certainly ur much quicker than mastering a new technique from scratch.


    (''Alright, I need to get a long-range aerial sensory technique.'') Rui nodded as he immediately headed to the sensory technique section.


    This wasn''t the first time he had visited this technique, he even recognized many of the techniques, having seen their Apprentice-level equivalents when he shopped to purchase the Seismic Mapping and Primordial Instinct.


    [All-Seeing Eye]


    Rui sighed, recalling the grade-ten sensory technique. It was an extraordinary technique that functioned by the same mechanism that radar did and more. It allowed the user to not only map the environment to a far greater range and quality than his Seismic Mapping did, but it also allowed them to observe their opponent even on a microscopic level. It was a technique in the same tier as Godspeed and Void Step, one that could only be mastered if one had immense affinity and talent.


    He shook his head, moving on. He came across several more techniques of various kinds.


    [Heat Vision]


    This was a technique that functioned through the perception of infrared radiation, allowing the user to perceive through barriers via the heat signatures on the other side of the barriers.


    Rui considered it. It could bypass physical barriers which was definitely a desirable trait. He wasn''t sure that he could possibly sense targets over arge range very urately, but it was worth considering. He simply moved on, for now.


    [Tempestuous Feel]


    This was a technique that functioned by sensitizing the user to sound and fluctuations in air pressure, allowing them to map all objects that came in contact with the atmosphere within a certain range.


    (''This might work out.'') Rui''s eyes twinkled with interest as he plucked the scroll from its shelf.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 541 From Scratch

    Tempestuous Feel checked all the boxes he was looking for in an aerial sensory technique that could allow Rui to sense his targets better while also allowing him to sense the atmospheric conditions that could influence the trajectory of the sound bullet. When the technique was paired together with Seismic Mapping, it could allow Rui to sense his opponent with even greater detail and precision.


    With this technique, Rui will have obtained two of the three techniques he set out to obtain. This was already a pleasant development, for him to have found what he was looking for this quickly.


    Both of the techniques he had chosen to master so far were part of the Sniper Project, which was in line with Rui''s suspicions that the Sniper Project was the most likely to seed out of the three projects. It couldn''t be helped, it was just far more viable than the other two projects, one of which he hadn''t yet even conceptually fleshed out, and the other; he didn''t even know if they were conceptually possible.


    (''Alright, time to get the final technique I''m looking for.'') Rui noted as he headed toward the defensive-technique section.


    He was looking for techniques that could potentially be modified to allow him to stically convert the kic energy of iing attacks into his own kic energy, and then dispel that kic energy rapidly before it sent him flying away.N?vel(D)rama.Org''s content.


    Of course, he had considered more ambitious ns as to what to do with the kic energy once his body was obtained, but they were astronomically more different. He could potentially consider them if Project Bounce ended up seeding.


    He went through the many techniques in the defensive section. There were many kinds of active and passive defensive techniques across the section. Many of them catered to a broad type of Martial body, mostly the ones that were defensive in nature. If Rui chose to master them, he would not be able to utilize the technique to their full potential. He automatically disqualified those techniques in his mind. If they were specifically created with the pre-condition of having a specific kind of Martial body, then there was no point in even thinking about purchasing these techniques.


    He paused as he came across an old familiar technique.


    [stic Shift]


    This technique mitigated an impact by extending the distance and time over which the impact urred by shifting along with the attack. It was the same principle that baseball yers used when they moved their hands along with the ball when catching it.


    He had already considered the technique, but he didn''t think it was particrly viable. This technique fundamentally differed from what he needed even though it also employed sticity.


    (''Shame.'') Rui shook his head as he continued scanning through all of the remaining techniques.


    At the end of an hour, he found that his worst fears hade true.


    (''There aren''t any pre-existing techniques that are close enough to what I want.'') Rui sighed. The ones that did cater to a different Martial body. There unfortunately were generalized techniques that he could use as the basis for the technique he truly needed.


    This meant that he would need to create his own technique from scratch, drastically increasing the difficulty of Project Bounce.<novelnext></novelnext>


    Still, he intended to give it his all. Besides, if he seeded then that would be a signal that even developing the core technique purely from scratch for any given project was not too imusible. He didn''t want to be restricted to only having to rely on the Martial Union''s technique


    Shortly after, he received a message on his ounter.


    [Squire Quarrier, your requested testing procedures are ready. Please arrive at the allocated locations listed down below as soon as possible.]


    (''Alright, let''s hope these tests give me better news.'') Rui sighed.


    Having already finished his agendas in the Squire-level library. He immediately headed over to the designated procedure rooms.


    He already had an idea of what to expect thanks to have already familiarized himself with the scientific literature surrounding the topic. The waypatibility with poison was measured was by administering non-lethal dosages of various poisons into the Martial Artist''s body, and observing the symptoms that the Martial Apprentices experience. Based on the symptoms and the general effect of the poison on the Martial Artist''s body, the degree ofpatibility of the Martial Artist with said poison could be gauged.


    This system was developed after observing the effect of poisons across people of all degrees ofpatibility with poison. They gathered the necessary data to know exactly how people of various degrees ofpatibility reacted to said poison, such that they could easily identify the degree ofpatibility of a Martial Artist with said poison, based on the symptoms he showed.


    "Excuse me?" Rui peered into the room he had been told to go to. "I''m Squire Quarrier. I was informed that this was where my poisonpatibility tests would ur."


    "Ah yes." A doctor greeted him. "Wee, Squire Quarrier. Please provide your license for verification."


    Rui obliged as he inspected the procedure room. It was spacious with all kinds of instruments in the room. Within the room was another more isted chamber with an operation table with restraints and cuffs at its side.


    Of course, Rui understood that that was where he would be undergoing the test in. Since he would be subjected to the poison which could cause him tosh out, he needed to be restrained by what were probably Squire-grade esoteric alloys.


    This was understandable. As a Martial Squire, even the shockwaves and wind gusts generated by his power could kill humans. It was simply too dangerous for these medical professionals to be in the same room as him when he was going to be subjected to poison.


    "All done, we''re good to go." The doctor smiled as he returned Rui''s Martial license back to him. "Please take off upper garments."


    Rui sighed with relief inwardly. At least it was only his upper garments, unlike hisst procedure with the Martial Union.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 542 Burning

    "...And that is how we''ll be measuring yourpatibility with each of the poisons you''ve applied for." The doctor exined as Rui was being prepped. "Any questions?"


    "None at all," Rui replied. The doctor had just exined what he had alreadye to learn from his own research into poison, he didn''t even need it in the first ce, but the doctor was mandated to exin the procedure.


    The doctor smiled wryly at his words, no questions meant that either nothing was understood, or everything was. He did not even need to wonder which of the two it was considering Rui was a Martial Artist. But it did not matter much to him, he had already done his duty.


    "We will be taking blood samples and conducting brief preliminary tests to ensure that you''re not particrly vulnerable to any of these poisons." The doctor exined as the nurses around him drew blood with specialized syringes that were capable of piercing even his flesh. "There are certain conditions that are benign but are such that certain poisons are extremely lethal to said Martial Artist, and even the minor dosages that we subject them to will end up causing extreme damage and potentially death."


    Rui nodded, it was a good measure in ce to prevent any idents. Thankfully, he didn''t need to wait long for the results of the tests toe in.


    "Good news, you don''t have any particr vulnerabilities towards any of the poisons you wish to test yourpatibility of." The doctor informed Rui as he read through the test results. "We can proceed with the tests immediately."


    Rui was taken into the chamber where he was strapped and cuffed into the bed. He had correctly guessed that the cuffs and straps could restrain even Martial Squires like himself. The nurses began attaching all kinds of instruments and devices across his body, a lot of them resembled those of Earth, and it even seemed that they were meant for the same purpose; to collect physiological and metabolic data.


    After all, in order to verify the symptoms that Rui would experience due to the poisons, they would need to be able to measure them objectively. A bit of time passed as the medical team overseeing the procedure collected enough data on his normal state, which would serve as the control dataset for the evaluation of hispatibility with the various poisons.


    "Alright, Squire Quarrier." The doctor''s voice was projected into the chamber. "We will now begin the procedure. A remotely controlled syringe will inject the appropriate doses of the particr poisons in your blood, you may experience varying degrees of difort or pain, please try to remain asposed as possible."


    Rui nodded. "Will do."


    "Good, the poison will be administered now. We will begin with Hurndrum Nectar."


    Rui nced down at the two tubes sticking into his arms as a teaspoon of an ominous dark purple fluid passed through it into his body. Rui gritted his teeth because he knew what he was in for. The Hurndrm Nectar poison was the poison that caused an intense and lifelike sensation of burning.<novelnext></novelnext>


    "RRRGHH!" Rui gritted his teeth with a restrained scream as he felt his entire body igniting on fire instantly. It was his very first time experiencing a burning sensation to such an enormous degree. He felt as though someone had dunked him in kerosene before igniting him on fire.


    He did his best to restrain his urge tosh out. Thankfully, his pain tolerance had reached a much higher level thanks to the boundless agony that was the breakthrough process of the Squire Realm,pared to that, this was a lot easier.


    He closed his eyes as he focused on his breathing. The pain never ceased to go away but Rui managed to bear it much better rapidly as time passed, even his heart rate returned to normal despite the enormous pain. This poison was a high-grade poison in the Apprentice Realm but its effectivity as it passed through higher Realms decreased significantly.


    (''As expected, this poison will only cause surprise in my opponent at most, that too only once.'') Rui sighed. Having finally experienced the Hurndrum Nectar, he was confident that it was not as useful as he had hoped it would be. While it was certainly startling and even shocking to his opponents when they felt an inexplicable burning sensation, they would probably quickly get over it without any meaningful difference in theirbat ability.


    Of course, startling one''s opponent could cause openings inbat that could be exploited, but that benefit was not worth learning a whole separate poison technique for, especially when there were other more suitable poisons at hand. He was pretty sure he could already shock his opponents with his Mind Mask technique in the first ce, thus he didn''t have any particr need for this poison even if the other poisons didn''t work out.


    He opened his eyes only after the pain dissipated.


    "You endured that very well, Squire Quarrier." The doctor told him. "We will now be administering the next poison; Gangaer drop."Belonging ? N?velDram/a.Org.


    The Gangaer Drop poison was a poison that caused slow and steady necrosis; cellr death and breakdown. Such a technique would ordinarily be considered an extremely dangerous poison, however, its rate of affection was quite slow, and only in extremely long and drawn-out battles could its effectivity be maximized.


    A few more instruments were remotely manipted as made their way over to his hands, wrapping around his wrists and squeezing hard, so much so that his hands began feeling numb with the strange itchy feeling that came along with suppressed blood flow to any particr part of his flesh.


    (''This is probably to ensure that the necrosis is contained within a specific area rather than to have it spread across the entire body.'') Rui noted. It was much easier to deal with a localized necrotic spread rather than one that was urring across the entire body.


    A syringe was pricked into the center of his palm and a strange translucent liquid was injected into his skin.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 543 Commonality

    He actually didn''t feel any changes in his body for a decent amount of time after the Gangaer Drop poison was injected into his flesh, which was revealing the w that made it a low-grade poison.


    (''This is stupid.'') Rui sighed. He would need tond the attack half an hour before the first signs of it affecting his opponent could be seen.


    It was only after quite some time could he notice some dark purple patches on his palms. The poison had begun taking effect and had begun causing cell death on his palm. It was an rming sensation as even the itchy feeling across his palm caused by the low blood cirction had disappeared from the affected areas, but he knew that there was no reason to worry. This was a rtively standard procedure and when it came to Martial Art-rted procedures, he was quite certain that the Martial Union surpassed even the Kandrian Ministry of Martial Art.


    None of the other poisons had too much of a visible impact on him, they pretty much blurred as time passed, Rui was quite thoroughly bored when the finalpatibility test ended.


    The restraints and cuffs came off automatically,


    "All of thepatibility tests you''ve scheduled arepleted, Squire Quarrier." The doctor informed him as Rui got up, rubbing his arms.


    "How much time before the resultse?" Rui asked as he put on his garments.


    "Oh, it shouldn''t take too long." The doctor told Rui with a smile. "Probably around a few hours depending on how much of a rush the medical analytics department is under. You don''t need to wait here, of course, the data will be forwarded to you on your ounter."


    "Understood." Rui nodded.


    Rui thanked him before leaving the procedure room and heading for the training wing of the branch. His business with the Martial Union wasn''t quite over yet. He still had the two techniques that he had purchased from the Martial Union that he needed to begin training.


    "Excuse me." Rui addressed one of the staff members at the Martial support counter.Content is property ? N?velDrama.Org.


    "How may I help you?" The staff member asked him with a courteous smile.


    "I''d like to purchase the training resources for Tempestuous Feel and the Sonic Bullet techniques." Rui quickly told her.


    "Yes sir, may I see your Martial license?" She asked, before verifying his identity as a Martial Artist and member of the Martial Union.


    "Would you also like to purchase the tutoring services of a Martial Artist guide?" She asked.


    "No." Rui shook his head. "Just the training resources will do for now."<novelnext></novelnext>


    He had spent a lot of money in a very short period of time, he needed to be mindful of his budget. Furthermore, he was quite confident in hisprehension and digestion of techniques. The two techniques weren''t even thatplicated, all things considered.


    Hiring the few retired Martial Squires that served as training guides were quite expensive, he recalled from when he hired one for the Mind Switch technique. Back then, he had directly been modifying an existing technique, thus he had felt it was prudent. Furthermore, that was an Apprentice-level technique, it was much more expensive to hire Martial Squires for Squire-level techniques.


    "Here are the training passes." She handed him two slips of paper that allowed Rui to make use of the necessary facilities for training in the two techniques he wanted to master.


    The first technique Rui wanted to begin mastering was the Tempestuous Feel technique. It was quite important in more than one way. It not only would give him the means to sense his targets at range, boosting the Seismic Mapping technique, but it also would allow him to sense targets that were in the air more urately. Furthermore, it also would give him the means to thoroughly sense the atmospheric factors that would end up affecting the trajectory of the sonic bullet.


    It was a remarkable technique that fit his needs quite well.


    Once he entered the sensory technique facility of the Martial Union with his training pass, he immediately sat down at a bench in the main lounge, pulling out the scroll of the Tempestuous Feel technique and unraveling it.


    He didn''t even bother trying toprehend it as he quickly dumped all the information into his mind pce, before closing the scroll and his eyes as he was in deep thought.


    "Interesting." He murmured as he finished reading through all of it soon enough.


    The training for the technique relied on the premise that the body and mind possessed the capabilities to not only deeply detect atmospheric fluctuations, but to also learn to interpret them with enough continuous exposure and experience.


    Thus the training regiment involved sealing off all of the senses of the Martial Artist forcefully while leaving only their sense of touch to atmospheric fluctuations unhampered. A tremendous amount of time would need to be spent by the Martial Artist in such a state in an environment with moving objects


    (''This is very simr to the training regiments for the Seismic Mapping and the Primordial Instinct.'') Rui realized.


    For those techniques, Rui had been required to seal off all senses but one so that he could focus on mastering and building the one sense that he was trying to master.


    (''Considering this a recurring theme across three techniques of different kinds and even different Realms, it is probably the case that this training method is a core training method for probably a majority of all sensory techniques.'')


    Rui wondered if they could even seal off all of his senses considering he had mastered Seismic Mapping and Primordial Instinct. The scroll insisted that the Martial Union could seal off all senses, including the techniques that one had mastered, but Rui felt an immense amount of skepticism towards that im, he felt that such a thing should be impossible even when his rationality reminded him that the Martial Union was vastly more powerful than a measly little Martial Squire.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 544 Training Begins

    When he inquired about the matter to the assistant staff in the facility, they confirmed as much.


    "These facilities are designed to be able to seal most kinds of sensory techniques that the Martial Union possesses." One assistant informed him. "There are other measures in ce used to seal the remaining kinds."


    "Good to know." Rui nodded. This meant that his Seismic Mapping and Primordial Instinct wouldn''t hamper his training in a new sensory technique. "I wish to begin immediately. Make all the preparations immediately."


    The assistant bowed. "Yes, Squire Quarrier."


    There were several training regimes that were such that they could not be operated without third-party aid that was capable of operating the machines, instruments, and facilities that they would be training with. This aid was included in the standard training package that Rui had bought.


    When the two assistants arrived, they arrived with arge ck body suit, as well as an old man with an aura of power.


    "Squire Quarrier, this Squire Firinun, he will be aiding you in the preparation for the training for the Tempestuous Feel technique." The assistant informed him.


    "I didn''t purchase the guidance of a Martial Squire though." Rui frowned.


    The Martial Squire snorted at those words. "This is part of the standard aid that you''ve purchased, boy. There is no other way to seal your Primordial Instinct asides from a hypnotic technique that locks away your instincts. Without locking away the Primordial Instinct technique, you cannot train on your Tempestuous Feel technique since your mind can and will still rely on the former to sense your environment. I won''t be offering you any aid beyond this necessity, rest assured."


    "I see..." Rui nodded. (''So that''s how they n to seal the Primordial Instinct sensory technique, through hypnosis. How incredible, I have got to delve deeper into the mental maniption field.'')


    Once Rui donned the ck suit and entered the training chamber, the Martial Squire followed him in.


    "When are we going to be-!"


    BAM!


    A loud noise surprised him when suddenly, the old man''s voice reverberated inside his head.


    (''You feel your instincts dulling by the second, slowly, slowly. Every second, they grow weaker, smaller, softer....'')


    Rui felt a degree of rm but realized that this was part of the hypnosis that would seal his Primordial instinct for the duration of the training period. He immersed himself in the man''s voice, allowing it to influence him. Time passed as the man continued with his hypnosis. Much to his surprise, Rui''s inherent mental fortitude was incredibly tough. If not for the fact that Rui was actively cooperating, he wasn''t even sure if he was strong enough to hypnotize Rui!


    An hourter, Rui finally snapped out of it, breathing deeply.


    He turned around, meeting the stare of the Martial Squire.? N?velDrama.Org - All rights reserved.


    "Is it done?" Rui asked.


    "Yes." He snorted. "Finally."


    "Will we have to do that every time I want to train?"


    "No, I''ve nted a suggestion and a trigger in your subconscious mind." Squire Firinun informed him. "Next time, it will be a lot simpler to get you into this state."


    "I see..." Rui was quite curious about the hypnotic technique that the Martial Squire used.


    He closed his eyes as he tried to employ Primordial instinct to test whether it was truly sealed or not, before opening his eyes in shock. He couldn''t sense a thing!


    (''Wow.'') Rui was impressed. (''The technique is actuallypletely sealed.'')


    He felt a stronger desire to look into mental maniption techniques whenever he could in the future.


    "Thank you." Rui bowed, expressing respect.<novelnext></novelnext>


    The Martial Squire snorted before leaving the chamber and closed shut behind him.


    "Squire Rui, we can begin whenever." The assistant told him.


    "Begin immediately," Rui instructed.


    "Yes sir."


    Rui waited for ten seconds before suddenly everything went dark. Rui felt rmed as he very rarely felt this blindsided. Ever since he broke through to the Squire Realm, his senses had grown immensely powerful over the years. He had be tremendously aware of his surroundings even without his sensory techniques.


    Now suddenly, all of that disappeared. It was quite the jarring switch, he wasn''t ustomed to this.


    (''There''s almost no seismic radiation either.'')


    The chamber was clearly constructed such that no vibrations would pass through the floor, certainly none that could allow him to make much out of his environment.


    The only thing he could feel was air bouncing on his skin energetically.


    (''This is the second function of the suit.'') Rui recalled the training regiment from the scroll. In order to slowly get him ustomed to interpreting atmospheric fluctuations to map out his environment, the suit amplified atmospheric fluctuations, making it easier for him to analyze and interpret them. Once he learned to perceive his environment, the amplification would be continuously yet steadily decreased until it reached standard atmospheric conditions.


    Once Rui would be able to demonstrate hisbat ability in standard atmospheric conditions, he will have attained satisfactory mastery of the Tempestuous Feel sensory technique.


    "Squire Quarrier, we can begin low-grade evasion training anytime." the assistant informed him.


    "Alright, start at the lowest level, I haven''t yet gotten ustomed to this," Rui informed. He could barely hear his voice externally due to the noise suppression, but he knew that the assistant staff managing the facilities of the chamber could hear him.


    "Will do, sir."


    Soon enough, Rui felt some exaggerated fluctuations on his back. He wasn''t sure what that meant, but before he could even begin to understand what it meant.


    POW!


    He felt a light ball-like object strike him on his back.


    (''Is that how it works?'') Rui wondered, as he quickly made some quick inferences. He felt a simr fluctuation on his front.


    POW!


    This time as well, a ball hit him in the chest.


    This time on his arm.


    POW!


    Leg.


    POW!


    Rui simply kept observing for a while as he recorded and measured several parameters about the sensations and the projectiles that hit himter. He wasn''t in a hurry to begin dodging them, he just wanted to collect more data for now.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 545 Speed

    The assistant standing outside felt a bit strange. Rui had not moved at all in the past half an hour since the training began. Although he was merely trained to be able to operate the machines that could not be operated by the person using them to be trained, such as the chamber that he was operating now, he had been doing this job for years, serving alongside the head and side Squire instructors of the facility that had trained many a Martial Artist to master many sensory techniques, it had given him a degree of expertise on how Martial Artists ought to go about the training and what worked best while what didn''t.N?vel(D)rama.Org''s content.


    It was why he was confident that Rui was simply wasting time standing in one ce instead of gaining enough experience in evading the projectiles. Rui even made bizarre requests such as adjusting the speed of the projectiles, size of the projectiles and weight of the projectiles.


    (''But what is the point of doing this if you''re not going to even begin dodging?'') He shook his head. Of course, he did not dare voice out his thoughts. Rui was a Martial Squire, someone who possessed an exalted status in not only society but especially in the Martial Unionpared to a rtively low-level employee like him.


    Suddenly, there was a change.


    CLASP


    Rui caught one of the projectiles aimed for his face.


    The assistant shrugged, somewhat impressed, in his experience, it was somewhat unusual for a Martial Artist to gain the uracy in timing and cement of movements to catch the projectiles, but considering he was still at a rtively low level, it wasn''t anything crazy.


    "Alright, time to put my preliminary understanding and preparations to the test. Begin increasing the difficulty of the exercise slowly as time passes." Rui instructed.


    "Yes sir, will do." The assistant promptly replied, sighing inwardly.


    He increased the difficulty level by a bit, increasing the speed, and frequency and diversifying the size a bit.


    CLASP


    Rui caught a projectile the size of a baseball aimed at his shoulder, tossing it away. Technically, this was supposed to be evasion, but catching it had greater sensory requirements, thus Rui had chosen to focus on cleanly intercepting all of them.


    One by one, he caught all iing projectiles regardless of their direction and size.


    (''Interesting, maybe he is particrly talented.'') The assistant staff member watched with interest. (''Let''s step up the difficulty a bit.'')


    Once again, all the parameters were increased. Yet, Rui easily kept up with all of them. The speed and power of the projectiles weren''t at the Squire Realm, not at all. The lowest level of the training as Rui requested was at the human level, thus it wasn''t physically difficult to catch the projectiles for a Martial Squire, not at all. The difficulty of this training exercise was the fact that Martial Squires were unable to sense them at the beginning, thus no amount of strength or speed would allow them to catch or evade the projectile until they could.


    An hourter, the assistant''s demeanor had long gone from calm andposed to shocked.


    CLASP


    Rui caught a thin ball the size of a ping pong ball, before moving his head to evade another projectile aimed at his head, while simultaneously catching a third projectile dashing for his knee. He was dealing with multiple projectiles simultaneously quite smoothly. What was especially shocking to the assistant staff member was that the speed and momentum of the projectiles had escted from human level to quasi-Squire level!<novelnext></novelnext>


    This was unheard of in all his time serving as an assistant helper in this facility in the Martial Union, he had never heard of someone reaching the quasi-Squire level stage in evasivebat exercises after a single hour!


    Rui had made more progress in one hour than some Martial Artists did in weeks!


    ? Even now, he was dodging the projectiles smoothly, catching them whenever possible.


    (''He''s an unparalleled prodigious genius in the field of sensory Martial Art!'') The assistant gasped in excitement.


    Of course, this wasn''t exactly true. The way Rui had gone about it was very simple, yet very different from all other Martial Artists.


    He made the obvious deduction that the strange sensations he was experiencing were generated by the projectiles. However, while most people would stop there, Rui went much further,


    In the beginning, Rui had simply spent quite some time observing and collecting data. He had begun by measuring the time difference between the inception of the sensation, and the actual sh between the projectile, while also measuring the momentum of the projectile based on the impact, and also measuring the weight and size of the projectile. These three measurements over a period of time allowed him to understand the corrtion between these physical parameters and the sensations that they caused.


    (''Higher momentum seems to linearly corrte to a more intense sensation, as does density.'')


    (''Higher speed seems to linearly corrte to the abruptness of the inception of sensation of increased fluctuations.'')


    (''The sine of the angle of incidence is directly proportional to the intensity of the sensation, while also causing a simr angle in the pressure causing the sensation.'')


    There were several corrtions between what he felt and what they told him about the iing projectile. Using these rules, Rui could infer the speed, weight, size, momentum, and even direction of the projectile, allowing him to effectively ''see'' these projectiles at any given moment using these calctions.


    Unfortunately, it was still far from perfect.


    POW


    Rui was smacked in the face by a football-sized projectile.


    (''Hm, I was too slow in my estimations.'') Rui noted. He wasn''t particrly displeased. He knew that this would take time, he needed to be able to read these sensations subconsciously, unlike the conscious calctions he was making at the moment.


    Conscious calctions were far slower than reflex, the moment the assistant reached even the very base of the Squire Realm as far as the speed of the projectiles went, Rui knew he wouldn''t be able to keep up.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 546 Lagging

    Rui decided to call it a day for the training of the Tempestuous Feel. While had made remarkable progress in a single day, he had quickly discovered the hard limit that no number of tricks would help him ovee, from here on out it would be grueling sustained hard work over a long period of time. Once Rui was done with the technique, he got out of the sweaty suit, feeling the satisfaction of all his senses returning, including the Primordial Instinct technique.


    "Incredible work sir!" The assistant came to his aid. "I look forward to your next training session!"


    "Hm?" Rui threw an odd look at him. "Ah, er, yes, thanks."


    He ignored the strange assistant before heading towards the long-range offense training facility. It was one of thergest facilities in the entirety of the Martial Union branch, for obvious reasons. In fact, Rui was partly worried whether it would be able to facilitate his needs considering the kind of technique that he sought to develop.


    Once he entered the facility, he took the time to sit in the corner as he unraveled the scroll for the Sonic Bullet technique, before reading through it as quickly as he could, inputting all the data into his mind pce before closing the scroll and keeping it away.


    It took him a while to process all the data he hade across.


    (''Interesting.'')


    The technique first required conditioning of therynx by applying stress to it, causing it to grow thicker over time. This was the very first step taken that was necessary to generate powerful sound waves that could be concentrated into a bullet.


    After that, Rui would be subjected to a vocalizing strengthening stage where his ability to generate sound would be exercised with breathing apparatuses that were mechanically designed such that one could not exhale through it unless one generated a certain degree of sound. The difficulty of the apparatus would be continuously increased over time as Rui improved, strengthening hisrynx and his diaphragm.


    The final stage of the technique involved learning how to efficiently convert the power potential energy in one''s diaphragm when fully inhaled into sound energy and learning how to direct that sound energy.


    It was definitely going to be different from the techniques he had learned prior.


    "Ah, the Sonic Bullet technique, is it?" An assistant helper nodded. "I will fetch the conditioning device for the first phase."


    "Please do." Rui nodded.


    Rui put on the device, resembling an oxygen mask, on his face as the assistant aided him with the functioning of the device.


    "RRGH!" Rui gritted his teeth once the conditioning process began. A tremendous amount of pressure was exerted onto hisrynx. He felt as though he was choking. He couldn''t even scream due to the fact that hisrynx couldn''t even contort under the pressure causing him to lose his voice while he was under training.


    He wasn''t even sure with what mechanism with which the device was exerting pressure on hisrynx, but he didn''t particrly care at the moment. He quickly gathered hisposure as he breathed through his nose.<novelnext></novelnext>


    The exposure of hisrynx to pressure on its tissue over time would cause it to be stronger, allowing it to be able to project the intensity of the sound he needed for the sake of the technique. Tissue tended to develop a greater degree of toughness due to long-term exposure to pressure. This was one of the ways that the human body could adapt to its external circumstances.


    A few hours passed before Rui could finally take off the wretched device, drinking a healing potion as soon as he could. The moment he was done, he left the facility without a moment''s waste.


    He did not enjoy the training for the Sonic Bullet technique one bit, especially whenpared to the highly pleasant training that he had experienced with his previous technique''s training. Hell, it was almost as though they bnced each other out. One was quite fun, while the other was straight torture.


    "That was rough." Rui sighed as he skywalked back home.


    He had alreadypleted all of his remaining business in the martial Union, all he left to do was go home and go through the results of the poisonpatibility tests.


    (''And also begin developing the core techniques for the Bounce Project.'') He sighed.


    Out of all three projects, Project Bounce was the one technique that he had yet to make any progress with. He needed to immediately start developing techniques for the core principles of Project Bounce, until he did that, he would not be able to take a single step towards sessfully realizing the project.


    (''But how am I going to do that?'') Rui wondered.Content is property ? N?velDrama.Org.


    He needed to figure out a way to actually at least get his foot in the door. The progress of one project could notg too far behind the others, otherwise, he would be more inclined to abandon it. However, the ambition of Project Bounce was certainly something that was still alluring to him to, he would rather it seed in any way he could.


    (''Even the simpler of the two problems, stically observing all her kic energy and converting it to my body''s own kic energy is quite hard.'') Rui sighed. (''I would literally need to be made out of rubber or springs for such a thing to be poss-!'')


    His thoughts paused as an idea shed through his mind.


    (''Made out of springs, huh?'') Rui considered that thought.


    It was, of course, impossible for him to be made out of springs, but that didn''t mean he couldn''t get the next best thing.


    (''Springs are coiled wires that exert a restoring force on themselves, when stretched or pressed, that is directly proportional to the degree of their stretching or pressing.'') Rui recalled the basics about springs.


    (''If I can replicate the functionality of a spring with my own body by mimicking their mechanics with my body.'') Rui nced down at his hands. (''I might just have a fair chance.'')


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 547 Severed

    "Ah, shit." Rui sighed.


    The moment he had gone home, he had gone through the results of the poisonpatibility tests that he had undertaken. More than enough time had passed since he undertook the test, thus the results would have undoubtedly been processed and sent to him.


    Unfortunately, the results weren''t what he was looking for at all.


    (''Mypatibility with the Serinflow Powder is too low.'')


    Serinflow Powder was the poison Rui most hoped to master out of all of the other low-grade poisons that the Mindmirror Symbiote wasn''t ipatible with. However, based on the results of his test with the poison, it became evidently clear that he wasn''tpatible with the poison.


    (''Shitty luck.'') Rui shook his head.


    There was nothing he could do about it. The problem at hand was the fact thatpatibility wasn''t something he could alter, it was innate. With poison, it was a bit different becausepatibility was marked by the degree to which the body was able to tolerate and flourish despite the introduction of a new poison, rather than it being a mental problem like it was for other fields, wherepatibility rted to the affinity one had with the field.Belonging ? N?velDram/a.Org.


    He could not change the degree to which his body was able to inherently tolerate the Serinflow Powder poison, so he could forget about trying to master the poison. At best, he could look at the poisons he waspatible with to at least a decent degree and consider them as candidates to employ in Project Severer.


    (''Problem is...'') Rui nced down at the list. (''They aren''t particrly optimistic either.'')


    Gangaer Drop, Hurndrum Nectar... These were the poisons that he didn''t see as much value in mastering. Should he try to forcefully incorporate them into the technique and try to make it work? Or perhaps, should he try to reinvent the concept of the technique?


    He wasn''t sure.


    The whole point of the technique was to help him increase his lethality, perhaps as long as it solved that problem, it didn''t matter what form it took.


    (''That sounds wrong.'') Rui frowned. Was a technique truly synergetic with him like he had decided he wanted his to be if it didn''t have any other conditions asides from them being lethal?


    In that regard, perhaps he had been wrong about how he went about Project Severer in the first ce. While it was true that the concept he hade up with was not weak, how synergetic was it with his Martial Art and Martial body?


    ...


    (''...Not at all.'') Rui realized.


    After all, he was struggling to find a poisonpatible with him that was also quite useful. All the ones that he truly desired were ipatible with him. It wasn''t synergetic with his body, and Rui was starting to see that it wasn''t synergetic with the core of his Martial Art either.<novelnext></novelnext>


    Unlike Project Sniper that concretely made use of his strengths in systematic analysis and calction in order to potentially result in revolutionary long-range uracy, Project Severer did not offer anything of the sort. It was just a powerful tool that would no doubt be put to good use in Rui''s hand, but it didn''t use his strength to be even greater as a technique.


    Individuality was important, but he needed to make sure that the techniques born out of that were also synergetic with his Martial Art and Martial body, taking his strengths and using them to produce even greater outputs than just the sum of the parts.


    With that condition in mind, Project Severer wascking. It did not particrly resonate with the VOID algorithm with Rui''s personal strengths or his Martial body.


    (''If that is the case, then Project Severer was a failure from the start.'') Rui sighed. He had simply gotten excited with the technique, but now that he had realized its greatest w, he no longer felt any desire to develop it.


    At least, he made this realization somewhat earlier thanter. It would have been best to realize that now than monthster after he had already made a lot of progress in developing the technique.


    (''Should I... try to create a recement project?'') Rui wondered, before shaking his head. Ensuring the sess of the two ongoing projects was more important than creating a new third project. As long as hepleted those two projects, it would give him a measure of understanding of the difficulties of creating one''s own techniques.


    (''In that case, I need to do everything I can in my power to ensure that Project Sniper and Project Bounce seed.'') Rui was determined.


    Project Bounce''sck of progress was worrying him a little. He had gotten a bit of an idea prior, an idea that he may be able to convert into actual progress.


    (''I''m going to need to test my ideas out in some way.'') Rui realized. (''Should I go back to the Martial Union?'')


    He could purchase Squire sparring services and get one of the Martial Squires of the Martial Union to help him flesh his technique out.


    (''Nah.'') Rui shook his head.


    It was too expensive, and although he certainly had funds, he could not spend them too ostentatiously.


    (''It''s cheaper tomission a low-grade Squire to be my training partner.'')


    This was because purchasing Squire sparring services from the Martial Union required purchasing their sparring facilities as well in addition to the price ofmissioning a Squire. While it would be nice to train in a training facility, he didn''t particrly need it this time, and as such would rather save his money.


    (''Well back to the Martial Union anyway.'') Rui sighed as he headed back to the Martial Union to make amission himself. He intended even add a small fee that would speed up the process as much as possible. Thankfully, he didn''t need a high-grade mission either, the mission would be a grade-one mission that would allow him to pick up a newbie the rates for whom would be cheap.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 548 Test

    A dayter, a Martial Squire stopped by the Orphanage. He immediately found another Martial Squire waiting for him at the gate.


    "Squire Casen." Rui greeted him. "You''re here."


    "Squire Quarrier." The woman replied. She looked several years older than Rui, with brown eyes and green hair extending to her waist.


    "Let''s go," Rui told her, as he began sky walking.


    "Where to?" She frowned, as she followed along.


    "To where we''ll be training," Rui told her as he led her deep into the forest near the Orphanage, towards a hill.


    Rui had cleared himself a lot ofnd, suspecting that he''d need the space for what he was nning.


    "You do have a striking technique, right?" Rui asked for confirmation. He had made that one of the conditions of themission. He was going to be testing the idea he hade up with for the Bounce Project. He needed his training partner to possess at least one striking Martial Art technique.


    "Of course." She replied.


    "Good." Rui nodded.


    "What kind of training do you wish for me to aid you in?" She asked.


    Rui hadn''t been specific in themission, he had simply mentioned that he simply needed a training partner that could strike.


    "It''s a defensive technique that I''m currently working on," Rui told her. "All I need you to do Iunch straight punches when I tell you to."


    "Okay." She nodded, shrugging. This was a simple enough matter.


    Rui walked up to her before taking a forward-leaning stance with his left arm reaching, facing her.


    She frowned at the bizarre stance, before proceeding to wind up a right punch and swinging it.


    POW!


    Her fist struck his open palm, pushing it aside as it shot forward, striking his chest.


    (''Tsk, that was a failure.'') "Again, this time aim for my palm."


    She nodded, before striking him again.


    POW!


    Once again, the strike flew past his palm,nding on his chest.


    "Again."


    POW!


    "Again!"Belonging ? N?velDram/a.Org.


    POW!


    ...


    Only after the tenth time did Rui take pause.<novelnext></novelnext>


    What he was trying to achieve was effectively trying to turn his arm into a spring that would intercept strikes in the same manner that springs would. The spring needed to be positioned between himself and his opponent for it to be effective. An iing strike''s power would push against the ''spring'' causing it to contract and in turn push his entire body backward, sending him flying.


    This way, instead of the strike hitting him and causing damage, it would hit him andunch his body into motion. The spring would act as the middleman between the strike and Rui, ensuring that no damage would be inflicted on Rui and that he would only beunched into a motion.


    However, in order for this to be possible, his arm needed to function in the same way a spring did. Springs linearly increased the force they exerted the more they were contracted. Which was a fancy way of saying that springs became harder to press the more they were pressed.


    His arm would need to intercept the iing strike and mimic that mechanism.


    (''The problem is that it''s hard for me to properly intercept an attack with my palm.'') Rui sighed. (''I need to intercept it at the base of my palm that is reinforced by arm and ensure it stays there.'')


    "Alright, let''s get back to it," Rui told her.


    She nodded before they both took their respective stances.


    As she threw a straight punch, Rui adjusted his palm ever so slightly.


    POW


    FSSS...


    Rui''s eyes widened in tion as he realized he had skidded a few meters away from her. (''A hint of sess!'')


    The fact that he had managed to push himself away meant that he had at least partially managed to convert a portion of her attack into kic energy instead of damage. (''But it''s still really rough, an overwhelming majority of her strike hurt my hand.'')


    That was fine, of course. It wasmendable progress considering he had just begun!


    "Again."


    The two got into position again, before she once more pulled back her right fist, winding up for a punch. Rui''s sharp eyes were fixed on her fist.


    POW!


    FSSS...


    "Tsk." He tutted. This time, he had only skidded a single meter. (''Inefficient, my angle was wrong.'')


    "Again."


    POW!


    This time, hepletely failed as his palm was pushed aside, striking his face.


    A few hours of practice went into this singr exercise. Rui had managed to make very minor general improvements as he figured out some ws in his maneuver that were causing his arm to be flung out of the way.


    The biggest change he had to make was offering no resistance to the strike with his palm to the strike as it arrived. He needed to flow with the strike and only after ten centimeters begin slowly offering increasing resistance like springs being pressed would. This would cause his whole body to move backward, converting the attack''s power into harmless kic energy.


    (''It feels like pushing a wall to go backward on roller skates.'') Rui likened the sensation to a memory from his previous life. (''A wall that is moving towards you. You can either let it hit you and get hurt or slowly push it as it approaches you and roll backwards away from the wall on your skates.'')


    That was the best analogy he coulde up with, and it helped him get a better idea of how he ought to treat iing strikes.


    By the end of the allocated daily training sessions, he had managed to reach a stage where he shifted by about a few meters at least. His record was five meters, which was pretty respectable progress for the very first session.


    More importantly, he had received confirmation that it was most likely viable, considering the rate of progress he was making. He had found the answer to converting his opponent''s attack into harmless kic energy. Now, if he could find a viable way to get rid of all the kic energy instantaneously, then he would be very satisfied!


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 549 Trainer

    While he was quite satisfied with his progress, there was one issue.


    "This is going to take longer than I expected," He muttered, turning to the distant figure of Squire Casen in the sky. "And even if she is a low-grade Martial Squire, it''s not easy tomission Martial Squires constantly. I don''t have that kind of money."


    This obviously meant only one thing.


    "I need to do missions if I am to continuemissioning her." Rui scratched his head.


    He had considered buying a Squire-grade punching machine, before tossing the idea out the window.


    "This technique needs to apply to more than just a punch. I need a Martial Squire training partner."


    Project Bounce needed to work on all manners of striking attacks, it would be actually detrimental if he limited his training to mechanical and inorganic strikes.


    "This will also be the first time I''m working on mastering techniques while alsopleting missions," Rui noted. "It''s going to be a messy schedule."


    While he could organize his training sessions well, it became harder to regte the amount of time on missions, the types of missions he chose generally didn''t allow him to predict the amount of time it would take toplete them.


    "In which case, I should probably choose missions with defined time periods," Rui noted. "Ideally, long-term missions with defined timings would be perfect."


    Though, those missions tended to have very low pay, unless he managed to get a real big shot to hire him as a bodyguard. In those cases, he would usually be doing nothing while earning really well.


    (''Do I really want that kind of a mission though?'') Rui frowned.


    Time was precious and even if it was a mission, Rui felt it was a waste to burn that many hours a day. Missions that gave him some kind of experience somehow, were the best.


    (''Oh wait...'') An idea lit up in Rui''s head. (''I wonder...'')


    He plucked his ounter, going through his personal missions. He had opened up his profile and inbox formissions recently, and he had received more than just a few.


    [Defense ssmission: Bodyguard


    Client: Savil Vengard


    Grade: Two


    Remuneration proposal: Fifty gold coins per hour.


    Daily time: 84 hours a week.]


    Rui raised an eyebrow at the mission. Just based on the rate alone, he could tell that this was one of the richer clientele of the martial Union. Fifty gold coins an hour was an outrageous ie that an overwhelming majority of Martial Squires, especially at his current grade, would not hesitate in epting themission.


    But not Rui.<novelnext></novelnext>


    (''eighty-four hours a week?'') Rui shook his head. His time was vastly more valuable than the time that would be burnt away standing around doing nothing. There was no amount of money that could purchase eighty-four hours a week from Rui.


    He moved on to several others. They weren''t too unfamiliar;  standard defense-ssmissions, as well as those from the hunter-ss.


    However, those weren''t the ones that Rui was interested in at the moment.


    "Ah..." A smile broke out on Rui''s face. "Found it."


    [Misceneous ssmission: Sparring trainerBelonging ? N?velDram/a.Org.


    Client: Hestia Beauregard


    Remuneration (negotiable): twenty gold coins per hour minimum


    Mission timings (negotiable): fifty hours a week.]


    He had been known as a highly effective sparring partner in the Martial Community and had receivedmissions to spar with other Martial Apprentices to help them grow. They had been enjoyablemissions, although they did not contribute to the growth of his Martial Art in any particr way, it felt good to apply his Martial Art in other ways.


    Seems that people still remembered him for that quality.


    He looked for themission for the highest pay and negotiable timings, before epting themission.


    [Misceneous ssmission: Sparring Trainer


    Client: Jeane Viermont


    Remuneration(negotiable): Thirty-five gold coins per hour


    Mission timing: sixty hours a week.]


    Although this mission didn''t give him any meaningfulbat experience unless the target of the training was a Martial Squire, it did bring him satisfaction, so Rui was willing to allow theck of high productivity.


    Training someone via the VOID algorithm wasn''t really an application of the VOID algorithm that Rui had thought about in his previous life. After all, the VOID algorithm was designed to win against any and all opponents. Rui had not even entertained such notions back then. But now he was starting to see how this could be the same. The VOID algorithm forced all Martial Artists to confront their ws, shorings and imperfections.


    There was no other form of training that forced Martial Artists to work on theircking Martial Art andbat the way the VOID algorithm did. Furthermore, it did in the midst ofbat, rather than through targeted training and exercises for any and all of their ws like was normally the case. What Rui had learnt that demonstrating exactly in what manner their ws, shorings and imperfections could be exploited against them allowed them to learn how to deal with those that would exploit their weaknesses.


    It allowed Rui to see patterns in their Martial Art andbat style that they themselves would have never ever noticed without him. It was simply too difficult for them to introspect that deeply into their own Martial Art. They would need to get researchers of Martial Art to study their Martial Art extensively with all kinds of devices while processing the data they received before obtaining such results.


    Rui just needed to observe them, and he would end up extrapting even more information than any team of Martial Art schrs of the Kandrian Empire ever could.


    He had applied this to Max and Mana when he trained with them, showing them their ws and weaknesses. He was never too overbearing in his instructions, he did not want to have an undue effect on their Martial Path and end up causing them to be something that they weren''t. It was possible that using the VOID algorithm to train potential Martial Artists was dangerous, and had thus acted very conservatively.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 550 Client

    Rui arrived before a giant manor, escting down from the sky.


    "Huh..." He frowned.


    He had epted the most well-paying sparring trainer mission in his inbox and had arrived at the client''s residence, but the residence was more extravagant than he had expected. However, what surprised him was the insignia of the Kandrian Empire outside the gates.


    (''Did I misunderstand who my client is?'') Rui frowned. (''Or am I in the wrong ce?'')


    Furthermore, the guards below also had armor and weapons with the Kandrian Empire''s insignia on them. They were spear-wielding Martial Apprentices, who immediately took a stance once they saw a Martial Squire stepping down from the sky before them.


    "Purpose of visit?" They asked, noticing his garb from the Martial Union.


    "Commission."


    One of them pulled out ams device, reading a message on it. "Name?"


    "Rui Quarrier," Rui replied.Belonging ? N?velDram/a.Org.


    Thismission was made directly to his actual identity, so he did not use his official alias to protect it. He also didn''t bother bringing his mask for this mission, anyone whomissioned him had ess to his public profile in the Martial Union.


    "Mission verification code?" They asked.


    "8b49ebJ87" Rui replied, recalling from memory.


    "You may enter." They nodded, evidently also possessing the mission verification code. "We will escort you to the Master."


    Rui quietly followed them about, noticing the various Martial Apprentices stationed at various locations guarding the mansion. They too were armored and armed with various weapons that also possessed the insignia of the Kandrian Empire.


    (''None of these Martial Apprentices are of the Martial Union.'') Rui concluded the obvious. The fact that their armor and weapons possessed the insignia of the Kandrian Empire alone implied that they were part of some governmental or Royal branch. Thatbined with the fact that the gates of the mansion had the insignia of the Kandrian Empire implied that the client was an authority high up in the heirarchy of the government or the military. No ordinary employee of the government possessed this much power.


    Rui frowned, the information on the client that the Martial Union had provided him did not match the inferences he had just made.


    (''Did the client use a personal servant tomission this mission?'') Rui wondered.


    Still, wouldn''t the Martial Union have easily detected this? After all, it was able to figure out the true client of a mission he hadpleted a while back that did exactly the same thing. Furthermore, this was in a foreign country, while this was within the Mantian Region of the Kandrian Empire.


    The guard led Rui inside the mansion, where Rui froze for a second.


    "Hm?" The guard noticed.


    "This..." Rui frowned. (''This pressure... isn''t just a Martial Squire, is it?'')<novelnext></novelnext>


    His senses were remarkably sharp, with Primordial Instinct, he could easily sense Martial Artists who were suppressing their presence to an extent. The moment he actually reached the mansion, he hade across a presence with a sense of danger that far exceeded what someone within the Squire Realm ought to be able to produce.


    "What happened? The master is waiting,e." The guard insisted, coaxing Rui.


    Rui nodded as he continued following him inside, growing curious about who his true client was.


    They walked in deeper and the presence drew closer to Rui until it was just a rock''s throw away.


    "Hm." Rui heard a strong deep voice acknowledging his arrival.


    "You''ve arrived." He walked towards Rui rigidly.


    The man was seven feet tall, standing a foot taller than Rui. Rui could sense that his body was coursing with power, the sheer amount of power that coursed through the man''s body was intimidating was unnerving. Yet he didn''t give Rui the profound sense of pressure that people like Master Aronian did, who could make Rui bow with sheer mental pressure alone.


    "I am Martial Colonel Geringan Jenken." The man addressed Rui. "I''ve heard much about you, Rui Quarrier.


    Rui''s eyes widened at the man''s introduction. "Pleasure to meet you too, colonel."


    The man curtly nodded before gesturing to hisvish sofa, never taking an eye off Rui. "Have a seat."


    It sounded more like an order, Rui suppressed the urge to salute with a ''sir, yes sir!'' as he took his seat.


    "I take it you are the real client of themission?" Rui asked, breaking the ice.


    Geringan didn''t respond, he simply waved his hand. A few secondster, a butler appeared. Rui wasn''t surprised when he recognized the man as the actual client of themission. What he was surprised by was why the Martial Union didn''t inform him of it. Unless the colonel had gone through extensive means to hide it, he didn''t think there was any possibility that the Martial Union wasn''t aware of it.


    Rui remained silent. He was dealing with an individual with far more power than himself in every measurable parameter. Although he was curious and cautious about why a person from the Royal Kandrian Army hadmissioned a Martial Artist from the Martial Union, he didn''t want to be too forward in his inquisition.


    "You must be wondering why I went through such a degree of obfuscation tomission you, correct?"


    "Perhaps." Rui remained ambiguous.


    "Hmph, fret not. I''m not going to do anything to you." He replied. "The Martial Union will not tolerate a Martial Senior of the Royal Army bullying one of their Martial Squires even if I did have any malicious intentions. It does vite themission contract too."


    "You are powerful and of high rank," Rui replied, with a little bit of straightforward honesty.


    "Exactly." He nodded. "It is because of my status and my rank in the Royal Kandrian Army that the Martial Union cannot tolerate the affront, it would affect their prestige within the Kandrian Empire. Besides, they''re not afraid of a Martial Senior in the first ce."


    He met Rui''s gaze. "Besides, as I said, I don''t have any ill intentions. I simply feared the possibility that you might reject my personalmission because I was from the army, hence the deception."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 551 Merger

    This made more sense. It was a publicly known fact that the Martial Union and Royal Kandrian Family were not on the best of terms. Although Martial Artists rebelling against states and organizations of various kinds was a universal phenomenon that led to the birth of the Age of Martial Art, it still inevitably created some degree of friction in the Kandrian Empire between the Royal Family that directed the government and the Martial Union.


    The Martial Union was a congregation of Martial Artists that was powerful enough to rival the Kandrian Empire through the power of Martial Art, exclusively. It was cautious and resentful of the Royal Family that once dominated Martial Artists before the breakthrough of Martial Squires, and no doubt would do so if it was viably possible. The Royal Family, on the other hand, no doubt disdained the Martial Union as it was an entity within the Kandrian Empire that it could not control, and that faintly had the potential to overthrow the Royal Family.


    Of course, this was very ambiguous, however, it did create a sense of aversion and wariness within the Martial Artists of the Martial Union to the Royal Family and the Kandrian government. Rui wasn''t sure he would have epted the personalmission from the colonel had he known that he was the true client.


    Of course, he could cancel choose to cancel it even now. It''s just that this would penalize him since he did not have a just cause, and he wasn''t so sure if it was warranted now that he had actually met the man.


    "However, you don''t seem to be the emotional type." He pointed. "I wouldn''t have gone to such degrees if I could be sure that you would not refuse mymission, but s, I can''t be sure of that since we''re not of the same faction."


    Thest sentence he uttered caused confusion in Rui.


    "You and I? Part of the same faction?" Rui frowned.


    "Did I stutter?" He asked, impassively.


    "We''re not even part of the same organization or movement or group of any kind." Rui threw a puzzled look at him. "How could we possibly be part of the same faction?"


    "Your understanding of the politicalndscape of the Kandrian Empire is woefully inadequate." He shook his head. "The faction I am of in the Royal Army and the Kandrian government broadly shares the exact same goal and ideal as that of a political faction within the Martial Union. We cooperate distantly to try and achieve ourmon goal. We are effectively part of the same faction."


    Rui''s eyes rose a little, in interest. It was an intriguing concept and one that he hadn''t considered prior. Of course, he didn''t deny the colonel''s statement about his political acumen, because it was indeed true. What little he knew were things he had heard, read, or inferred. He had not studied political history to any meaningful degree.


    He simply didn''t care to dive deep into the field, and intelligence alone wasn''t enough to somehow make him not ignorant.<novelnext></novelnext>


    "What faction is this?" Rui asked out of curiosity.


    "The Merger Faction." Senior Geringan replied.


    Rui''s eyes narrowed, he could instantly infer what the faction was about based on the name and what he had told Rui about his faction prior. A faction that extended across the government, army, and the Martial Union, known as the ''Merger'' faction.


    "Is the political objective of this faction the union of the Martial Union and the Kandrian Government?" Rui''s narrowed.


    This sounded like an absurd goal, it was absolutely impossible for the Martial Union and Kandrian governments to merge into one entity. The sh of interests between the entities was real, after all.N?vel(D)rama.Org''s content.


    "Correct." The man nodded. "We strive every day to influence legition that increasingly pushes us in this direction until we hope to unite the Kandrian government and the Martial Union with an equal division of power between the constituents of the groups within a new ruling power.."


    "That seems unfeasible given the friction between the two entities." Rui voiced his thoughts as he considered the colonel''s thoughts. "After all, the head of state and the head of government both are the Royal Emperor. In order to form a government where legitive, executive, and judicial power is equally divided between the two groups, the Royal Emperor would at the very least need to change, and a more neutral head representing the interests of the two former entities would need toe in ce. Unless the Royal Emperor himself is part of the Merger Faction, there is no way he would concede his power for such an arrangement."


    While Rui wasn''t an expert, he knew that the Royal Emperor represented the legitive branch of the government singlehandedly, the rest of the government generally served as the executive of the legition that he passed. Meaning he was the only one who possessed the authority to facilitate any fusion between the Kandrian Government and the Martial Union, which he would be disincentivized to do if it involved sharing his absolute legitive power with the Martial Council, the highest governingmittee of the Martial Union in some form or the other.


    "You have very correctly identified one of the biggest stumbling blocks on our way to aplishing our objective." The colonel nodded, impressed. "It is one of the reasons our faction has existed for as long as it has without seeding. It is highly disadvantageous to those in power to share one''s own authority for the sake of the nation. However, the need of the nation is greater than one man''s selfish desire, wouldn''t you agree?"


    "I would, but unfortunately, it''s extremely unlikely to happen from what I understand," Rui replied sardonically. "Merging the Martial Union and the Kandrian Government would not just mean merging our forces, it would be changing the very identity of the nation. After all, Martial Artists possessing legitive power by virtue of being Martial Artists would turn the very nature of the Kandrian Empire as a sovereign state into a militaristic nation or a Martial state."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 552 Compelling

    ? "That is also true." The colonel nodded. "There is a great debate within our faction regarding the nature of the union, after all, we need a clear and precise objective. It would be foolish of us to chase after the ambiguous principle ''united we stand, divided we fall''. There are a lot of issues that need to be resolved and ironed out that we still aren''t as united as we wished we were." He sighed. "Frankly, a lot of the more technical issues are beyond my understanding and area of expertise, I am a Martial Artist and a military man, after all. But the principle alone is strong enough that we are able toe under one banner, a banner I am willing to lend my power and influence to."


    Rui was clearly unconvinced. There was an argument to be made that the checks and bnces that the Martial Union and the Royal Family ced on each other kept the nation stable. Neither side could be domineering as it would inevitably sh against the interests of the other, which meant that the former would not be allowed to go too far before thetter began exercising its power to contain the former.


    For instance, the Royal Emperor could not be as exploitative of Martial Artists as perhaps a ruler would like to have been due to the Martial Union''s powerful presence. Going too far against the Martial Union was not good, for if it decided to employ its vast Martial might, resources, and intelligence, the Kandrian government would not be able to remain stable. It could not afford to push the Martial Union too far lest thetter decide enough was enough and threaten civil war.


    Furthermore, the Martial Union could not be as overbearing in its influence over society as it may have liked to be due to the Kandrian Empire curbing its influence. It still had to abide by thews of the nation that it wasn''t specifically exempt from in the Kandrian Martial Covenant.


    This impasse was much more trustworthy than unlimited and unchecked power poured into the hands of a single entity.


    He turned towards Rui, noticing his reaction. "Perhaps it is because you''re still a young Martial Squire and haven''t obtained enough power and authority within the Martial Union yet, which is why you may find the principle and objective to be na?¡¥ve, however, it is certainly the case that a merger would strengthen this nation tremendously."


    Rui raised an eyebrow in doubt. "I don''t think the difference would be that tremendous. The resources haven''t increased, after all."


    The man shook his head. "The Kandrian government and Martial Union waste a tremendous amount of capital of various sorts due to each other. Although it may appear that the impasse between the Kandrian government and the Martial Union isn''t, it truly is taxing on both entities."


    "How so?" Rui''s eyes furrowed.<novelnext></novelnext>


    "Although both sides know that the other side is quite unlikely to provoke a civil war, the possibility exists and thus both sides employ a lot of measures and countermeasures to ount for the possibility of a civil war provoked by their enemy." The colonel exined. "If such an oue urs, the most desirable wish in this scenario would be to know that it ising. To know when it ising, to know how it ising. Both sides employ arge number of funds and resources in intelligence and information gathering. The Martial Union keeps a track of the movement of the military, it keeps track of existing siege weapons, their deployment, movements as well as the manufacturing of such siege weapons, it keeps track of the manufacturing and existing inventory of temporary augmentation potions, its most powerful Martial Artists, etc. The intelligence gathered from such activities allows them to evaluate whether the Kandrian Empire is gearing up for war or not."


    Rui nodded. This was definitely a prudent measure and one that he approved of, it was important to be able to detect the earliest signs of civil war and prepare for it ordingly.


    "The Kandrian Empire also does something very simr, obviously." The man exined. "It keeps track of the most powerful Martial assets of the Martial Union; its Martial Sages and Martial Masters as much as possible. There are entire departments within the Kandrian Intelligence Agency that are solely dedicated to keeping track of a single Martial Artist. If you be powerful enough, you can assume you''ll have your own department as well. It also keeps track of the rate of eptance ofmissions of the Martial Union, the number of Martial Artists outside the country at any given moment, and the influx and outflux of Martial Artists through the borders as well as within the nation itself. All of these parameters allow the Kandrian Empire to evaluate whether the Martial Union is gearing up for war or not."? N?velDrama.Org - All rights reserved.


    Rui nodded, this made a lot of sense. Just the sheer amount of funds and resources expended in the intelligence war that, no doubt, was constantly urring between the Martial Union and the Kandrian Empire drained their capital a lot. Espionage, tapping, surveince, tracking, infiltration, and other covert intelligence-gathering missions were no doubt quite expensive. Yet both sides could not afford to not engage in them.


    Furthermore, if Rui wasn''t wrong, there were probably other measures that both sides took that were taxing as well.


    "It isn''t limited to just intelligence gathering, either." He sighed. "Neither the Martial Union nor the Kandrian Empire can ever weaken their militaristic and Martial power within the Kandrian Empire beyond a certain degree because of the fear of inviting an attack from the other side. The martial Union cannot afford to allow its Martial Artists to ept more than a certain number of foreignmissions at any given point, because it cannot afford to have too many Martial Artists leave the Kandrian Empire, weakening their base power at any given time. The same also applies to the Kandrian Empire."


    He sighed. "Don''t you see? We are both holding each other back so much, the Kandrian Empire could be so much more if we truly made the best of every ounce of our power."


    asionally missing content, please report errors in time.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 553 Crea

    ? N?velDrama.Org - All rights reserved.


    With the considerations in mind that the colonel had justid out, Rui had to admit that perhaps the Merger Faction wasn''t silly, it was true that the Kandrian Empire would be a greater force to be reckoned with if the power of the Martial Union merged with that of the Royal Family.


    He shook his head, while that may be true, the likelihood of a union between the Kandrian Government and the Martial Union was too unlikely that it was not even worth pursuing in his opinion.


    "This has been very interesting and illuminating," Rui interjected. "However, it isn''t particrly relevant here at this moment."


    "You''re right." A small smile curled on his face. "The conversation just strangely went in this direction."


    (''Yeah right.'') Rui snorted inwardly. He wasn''t a na?¡¥ve fool, it was clear that the colonel brought up his faction for a reason. (''He''s probably trying to steer my perspective and impression of the Merger Faction in hopes that I''ll join the faction.'')


    Of course, Rui had no interest in delving into politics, it wasn''t particrly relevant to him. As long as he could peacefully train,plete missions and get stronger, he didn''t care about the political scene of the Kandrian Empire.


    "Anywaysing back to what''s relevant at hand here..."


    "Ah yes, themission." The colonel nodded. "I had one of my friends high up in the Merger Faction, prevent your mission bill from divulging the truth about the true client of themission. I apologize for the deception, truly. I really wanted tomission you, after all."


    The man lowered his head slightly.


    "To introduce me to your faction?" Rui asked inly, not reacting outwardly to the man''s admission.


    "That was part of the reason." He nodded. "But I truly do want tomission your training capabilities as well. You are known for your ability to train."


    "Oh?" Rui raised an eyebrow. "And who exactly have youmissioned my services for, colonel?"


    "My daughter." He told her. "She''s going to be attempting the Martial entrance exam this year."


    Rui raised an eyebrow as many thoughts flew through his head, the child of a Martial colonel of the Royal Army joining the Martial Academy seemed odd, but not nearly as much when he put it into perspective with the Colonel''s political beliefs. In fact, if she joined the Martial Union as a Martial Artist, it might even increase the political leverage of the Merger Faction.


    Furthermore, he would be helping apetitor of Max and Mana train, he wasn''t sure how he felt about that. At the very least, he ought to ensure that he trained them even better.


    "I see." Rui nodded. "Alright, we can begin immediately."


    The colonel nodded with a smile, before gesturing to one of his servants. "Bring my daughter here immediately."


    Within a minute, the servant returned with a girl who looked to be around the same age as Max and Mana. She had a slender physique, with startling blue hair and pink eyes. Yet more than her aesthetics, what caught his eye was her demeanor.


    She had a fierce look in her eye with a hint of pride, as well as a hint of admiration towards Rui.


    "This is the Squire Rui Quarrier that I told you about, your new sparring trainer for the uing Martial Entrance Exam in a few months." The colonel told her with a smile. "He is extremely renowned for his incredible ability to train and facilitate the growth of his mentees. Introduce yourself to him."<novelnext></novelnext>


    "Yes, father." She respectfully replied before turning and bowing to Rui Quarrier. "I am Crea Jenken, I look forward to training under your guidance."


    "It''s a pleasure to meet you. I look forward to facilitating your growth and your Martial Journey." Rui courteously replied, before turning towards the colonel. "We have whiled away enough time colonel, we ought to begin the training as soon as possible."


    The colonel nodded. "Please do begin immediately, my daughter will guide you to her training grounds."


    Rui got up nodding at the man. "It''s been a good discussion, colonel."


    "Indeed." He nodded. "I hope to continue it with you someday."


    Rui nodded lightly before following Crea as he pondered his words. They made it clear that he was interested in pulling Rui into their circle.


    He shook his head as he put the matter aside, as he focused on the girl as she led him to an open training hall. It was rather wide, with arge array of physical training equipment forming a gym in one section of the hall and sparring training equipment in another section of the room. There were several servants in the training hall, ready to cater to their needs.


    "We''re here." She turned around, facing him.


    Rui nodded, as he looked around. "You have a good set-up here for you."


    "I heard that you managed to crack the Martial Entrance exam on your first try at my age." She suddenly said as she looked at him with intense eyes.


    "...That''s right. It seems you''ve learned a little about me."


    "How did you do it?" She asked.


    Rui simply raised an eyebrow, before chuckling. "Abination of skill and tactics, I suppose. I was physically weaker than almost all of mypetitors back then, I had to fight hard, but more importantly, I had to fight smart."


    He turned, facing her. "As will you, if you intend on cracking it."


    "I will join the Martial Academy!" She expressed with a vigorous tone.


    Rui smiled a little at her determination, before asking her a question. "Why do you wish to join the Martial Academy?"


    "To be a Martial Artist, obviously." Her eyebrows furrowed.


    "It''s not as though you have to go to the Martial Academy to be a Martial Artist," Rui told her, as he gestured to the training hall. "Look at this ce, your father has arranged a wonderful ce for you to train and grow stronger. He''s able to hire Martial Squires like me to help you train. Why do you want to go to the Martial Academy when you have all of this?"


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 554 Sparring

    "It''s not the same." She shook her head. "The Martial Academy has other strong students and Martial Apprentices from my generation, I want to test my strength against them, I also want toplete a lot of missions."


    "Don''t you want to enter the army and join your father?" Rui asked, curious.


    She snorted at his words. "The army is boring. Also, I hate following a ton of orders."


    Rui chuckled.


    "Are we going to start training or what?" She folded her arms.


    "I was just getting to know you better." Rui calmly replied. "But yes, we can train."


    "Good, let''s begin right away." She nodded. "What do we do first?"


    "Well, for starters. Let us spar, I wish to experience your strength before we can begin training." Rui told her as he gestured to the sparring area.


    She nodded as she followed him. "By the way, I had a question."


    "Hm?"


    "Why don''t you feel like a Martial Artist?" She raised an eyebrow. "Martial Artists feel scary, but you feel like a normal person."


    "Ah, that was for your sake." He replied.


    "Hmph! I don''t need your help."


    "Alright then." Rui smiled as he took off the Mind Mask, and the passive aura of a Martial Squire washed over her.


    She stiffened but didn''t say a word. Rui nodded, if she couldn''t even handle the passive fear he generated in normal humans, she had no chance of cracking the first phase of the Entrance Exam which filtered out most of the applicant poption with the heavy bloodlust tests that were administered to applicants.


    She managed to take it well enough, though he would need to verify the extent to which her mental fortitude had been trained, it was quite clear that this aspect wouldn''t be neglected by the colonel.


    "Come." Rui calmly stated.


    She charged forward,unching a swift powerful kick to his face. Rui stepped back slightly, and the attack missed narrowly, a gust of wind ruffled his hair. He observed her form midair as she was almost a statue in his vision, as most humans were to him inbat.


    (''Her form is efficient.'') Rui nodded inwardly. Just from that attack alone, Rui surmised that she was well past the Martial Foundation stage which corrected an error one had one''s fundamentals.


    "Tsk." Sheunched herself after him, throwing a flurry of shorter, lighter jabs that were quicker, in hopes of tagging him.


    Rui calmly redirected them as he noted her rapid striking form (''Her bnce is a little off, she''s a bit too aggressive.'')


    POW<novelnext></novelnext>


    He deflected her strike andnded a palm into her little abdomen, pushing her away. At all times, he restricted himself to human parameters, barring his durability, which he could not change. He even dyed his reactions to match human parameters.


    Shended on her feet a meter back, grimacing lightly.


    "Is that all you''ve got?" Rui calmly taunted her. "I''m barely breaking a sweat here."


    "Tsk." Her eyebrows furrowed in irritation as sheunched herself against him.


    An hourter, she was mmed into the ground with an over-shouldered Judo throw, exhausted.


    "Let''s take a break for now," Rui suggested as he sat beside her.


    "How did I do?" She asked, in between her pants.


    "Not bad. Not bad at all." Rui calmly replied.


    Her eyebrows furrowed at his less-than-ster evaluation of her capabilities. However, Rui simply ignored her reaction. While it was true that given her age, she was quite impressive, it was also true that given what she wanted to aplish, she wasn''t nearly as strong as she needed to be. If she gave the Martial entrance exam currently, she most likely would not be able to pass. At least Max and Mana had each other to rely on, she would be fighting alone.


    "I''m going to be whipping you into shape in the uing months."


    "I''m not out of shape, ok!" She insisted. "First of all, I-..."


    Her voice faded in the background as he considered how he ought to go about training her. Just simply sparring and giving herbat training wasn''t going to be particrly helpful, it was nothing that others couldn''t give her.


    Instead, he was going to leverage his specialty to help her grow stronger.


    The VOID algorithm allowed him to create a fighting style that countered his opponents, he needed to create that style, but rather than just straightforwardly leveraging it against her, he ought to train her to be aware of her weaknesses, ws, and shorings. He could help her gain a greater degree of self-awareness of her own fighting style inbat with the help of highly specialized training, he could even copy her style to a certain degree and use it against her, helping her get a third person perspective on it.


    All of this would no doubt increase her rate of growth beyond what almost any other trainer in the Kandrian Empire could help her with. Shoring up her weaknesses would definitely do her good in the long run. He could also train her to develop a tactical mindset that would no doubt be just as important to her when she attempted to crack the Martial entrance exam, but also in the future beyond that when she sparred and fought against the other students of the martial Academy.


    Of course, Rui wasn''t sure how useful that would be to her if she didn''t discover her Martial Path and break through to the Apprentice Realm, but it certainly wouldn''t hurt. Unfortunately, there wasn''t anything he could do to help her be a Martial Apprentice. The best he could possibly do was ensure that her development trajectory was constantly facing upward. It was also paramount to instill into her an inquisitive mindset that would be useful when she enters the explorative phase in the hopes of discovering her Martial Path.


    "Hey! Are you listening?" She folded her arms as she peered at Rui suspiciously.Content is property ? N?velDrama.Org.


    "Of course, I am," Rui replied calmly.


    "Then what did I just say?"


    "..."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 555 Difficulty

    Rui headed back home once the training session with Crea ended. Today was the first session between them, thus he didn''t engage in any deeper training. He simply sparred with her to get a preliminary evaluation of her prowess, he spent the rest of his time getting to know her.


    Her desire to be a Martial Artist was strong, however, it was different from the determination he saw in Max and Mana. The two of them were truly fascinated by Martial Art and thus chased after it. They enjoyed training and especially sparring as well, he could see that their motivation was true.


    With Crea, it wasn''t quite as simple. She yearned to be a Martial Artist, even more so than Max and Mana, but she didn''t enjoy sparring or fighting, even if she was quite fierce during training. Rui could sense that she had a deep sense of reverence and admiration for her father, as a Martial Artist. She even disyed that towards Rui to a lesser degree, though less so because Rui hit his presence unless he needed not to. That along with his informal interactions with her had caused her to be a lot more informal and casual with him.


    From what he could tell, her desire to be a Martial Artist wasn''t a calcted objective or goal. He could sense it was a deep desire of hers. It seemed that simply bing a Martial Artist, in and of itself was probably something she desired extremely. Not for the things that Martial Art seemed to bring, she didn''t disy much of a desire to make money, to obtain tremendous power, or prestige and social status. It didn''t seem it be any of those, or perhaps it was all of those.


    It was as though she simply couldn''t stand not being a Martial Artist, more than anything.


    Even if he didn''t expect to figure her out on the first day he met her, it was clear that she was inscrutable andplex.


    Still, that didn''t particrly matter. Her motivation and determination were real, and that was all that mattered to him as a trainer. Everything else came after.


    Once he reached home, he put the matters regarding her aside. He had plenty of work to do. His schedule was jam-packed. He had two techniques to learn for Project Sniper in the Martial Union that ate away at a significant chunk of his time, he also had to work on building up Project Bounce from scratch and all from the ground up, which was no doubt a daunting task that also ate away at his funds, that were needed to hire his sparring partner.


    He also needed to continue with rtively regr training of Crea to earn the money needed to fund the training required for Project Bounce. Furthermore, he also felt the need to train with Max and Mana more extensively out of guilt of spending that much time training Crea, theirpetitor.


    He truly had no breathing space at all, and every second mattered.


    "I''m going to be busy as all hell for the next few months." Rui sighed.


    And he was right.<novelnext></novelnext>


    For the next three months, Rui slogged away.


    He painstakingly made progress with Project Bounce, one small step at a time. He had been increasing the distance over which he was propelled by a straight right punch from a Martial Squire significantly, which was good progress to be made. However, it was far from enough.


    A straight right punch was just one of many strikes that one couldunch, if Rui wanted Project Bounce to seed, he would need to ensure that he could harmlessly convert all attacks into kic energy that wouldunch him flying rather than hurt him, for all strikes.Belonging ? N?velDram/a.Org.


    This was truly one of the most difficult and frustrating parts of Project Bounce. It was the sheer number of types of attacks that he needed to learn to stically defend against to ensure they harmlesslyunched him in an stic collision, that was too many. Countless different kinds of punches, jabs, kicks, swings, and other striking attack variations, and he needed to train his stic collision against each and every single one of them the hard way.


    That alone raised the difficulty to ridiculous degrees, however, it wasn''t the only difficult part. Part of the problem was that he had discovered that it wasn''t so simple to apply what he had been training in real-lifebat.


    Part of the reason that he was able to stically defend against the straight right punch was that he knew ahead of time that a straight right punch wasing. He was able to defend against it because he knew that that attack specifically wasing, and he was prepared for it. This was something that did not normally happen in real-lifebat.


    Normally, that was.


    Rui was different, with the VOID algorithm, Rui would be able to predict whenever his opponent wasing, allowing him to ovee the impediment. This was the difference between Project Bounce and Project Severer. The former was a project that was to yield great power by oveing barriers by synergizing extremely with Rui''s Martial Art, and strengths. Employing and leveraging the predictive prowess of the pattern recognition system of the VOID algorithm gave Rui active defensive prowess that he would not have been able from the technique normally.


    This meant that only Rui could use this technique, this was the peak of synergy.


    Inparison, Project Severer was just a hotchpotch of elements thrown into one technique with the hopes that they would work together to form a lethal attack, it did not make use of Rui''s strengths to reach even greater heights, nor could the Flowing Void style make use of its strength in a special manner. It was a highly impersonal and distant technique in hindsight.


    While he did feel sorrow for having to abandon a project that he was initially passionate and excited about, the lessons he extracted from this failure benefited him even more.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 556 Progress

    Squire Casen wound her arm back all the way behind her, before swinging with a tremendous amount of power, her fist generated shockwaves every inch as it coursed through the atmosphere.


    POW!


    It collided against Rui''s hand, yet his hand rapidly drew back along with the strike, increasing resistance against her fist the closer it got to Rui, pushing him away from the strike harmlessly.


    WHOOSH


    Rui was consequentlyunched a great distance away, out of a normal field of vision.


    THUD!


    Hended with a significant impact on the ground, maintaining his bnce, before grinning excitedly.


    "That''s my best one yet! That''s got to be like more than seventy percent conversion efficiency, surely." Rui guesstimated.


    This was the first time he had managed to harmlessly convert such a high proportion of an iing attack into pure kic energy of his body. Kic energy was the energy of motion, to possess kic energy meant that one was in motion. That was why when Rui stically converted his opponent''s attack''s power into kic energy through spring mechanics, his body would inevitably be sent flying through the power of the strike.


    The fact that he wasunched a great distance away meant that he managed to absorb most of the power of the strike of his opponent. He was quite satisfied that he had made so much progress. Of course, he was most familiar with applying this principle to a straight right punch, which is why he was further aplished with dealing with that attack more than any other striking attack.


    This was the progress that he had made in three months. He was well beyond halfway through the first phase of two phases of Project Bounce. Considering that this was a Project that he was developing entirely from the ground up that waspletely natural, it was incredible to have gotten this far in just three months.


    He had been worried that the progress would stall, but now he was reasonably certain that phase one of Project Bounce would be over within a month or two. In totality, that would mean half of Project Bounce would end in five months tops. Although this may seem like a long time for half of a project in a vacuum, considering the sheer number of matters he was juggling, it was even more impressive with that in context.


    "This is especially the case considering I''m far more than halfway done with mastering the Tempestuous Feel and Sonic Bullet techniques," Rui muttered.


    He had gone all out with dedicating himself to those two techniques, especially since they were truly contributing to his expenses. Between the monthly expenses of the training resources of the Martial Union, the cost of hiring an Apprentice trainer for Max and Mana when he wasn''t training them himself, the cost of hiring Squire Casen to help him with the development of Project Bounce, the expenses of Squire-grade rejuvenation potions and the financial aid he gave to the Orphanage, Rui''s ie was considerably taxed.


    If not for the fact that Martial Colonel Geringan had truly given him an extravagant remuneration for his services, he highly doubted that he would be able to sustain his expenses.


    "Well, that is the furthest you''ve beenunched." Squire Casenmented as she sky-walked to him.<novelnext></novelnext>Content is property ? N?velDrama.Org.


    She had been quite stumped three months ago at Rui''s bizarre training but had gotten over it since then. She had no idea why he was putting himself through something like that, but she generally understood that Rui was trying to getunched as far away by her strikes as possible.


    Rui, of course, had never disclosed the details of Project Bounce, he treated it like unpatented research that was dangerous to disclose before it was published under his name or patented in his name, as was the norm in themunity of research and development back on Earth.


    "Yeah, it''s great!" Rui nodded.


    He continued the rest of the training session with heightened vigor, and it yielded heightened results, even if barely.


    "My average is up by five percentpared to yesterday." He was quite pleased, a five percent jump in a single day was an incredible jump. He just needed to take some time to process his gains and made sure he retained that progress.


    "Well, that brings us to an end to this session." Squire Casen noted as she looked at her pocket watch.


    "Shame." He sighed. "Well, see you next time."


    He bade her goodbye, before taking off after consuming a rejuvenation potion, feeling physically and mentally invigorated.


    However, the direction he had taken off wasn''t the Orphanage or even the Martial Union. He immediately headed off to the Jenken residence. It was just about time for his training sessions with Crea.


    In the past three months, the growth that she had made was truly impressive, earning Colonel Geringan''s respect and approval. She had very subtle yet core shorings that maybe only the most extreme and thorough data analysis from Martial Art researchers would have revealed.


    Or, Rui.


    With the predictive model that Rui had created and refined, he was able to identify core patterns in her style that were problematic. Not all patterns were bad, of course. The patterns in one''s movements were a product of the experiences and fundamental nature of a person, in a way. Changing them would require suppressing the very identity of the person in question. Someone who was naturally aggressive would have aggressive attack patterns, while this could be forcibly changed with extremely oppressive training, it would no longer be a reflection of one''s true self, and thus would be sub-optimal in performance. What Rui did was aid in optimizing her patterns to get rid of ineffective inefficiencies and help them truly reflect her core self.


    In the past three months, he had exposed her patterns to herself, by mimicking them in front of her and also countering themselves before her. Thebination of those two had not only allowed Crea to get rid of shorings in her patterns that she was able and willing to optimize, but they also gave her an increasingly deeper amount of self-awareness about her fighting style.


    Self-awareness that one could not normally obtain prior to the discovery of the Martial Path.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 557 Preparation

    "You''rete!" Crea huffed


    "I''m actually exactly on time." Rui retorted.


    "If you arrive just on time, then training beginste, so you''rete!"


    "Training begins after I arrive and I arrived on time, thus training begins on time as well."


    "The entrance exam is in a week. We don''t have time for dys!"


    "Well, you''re the one dying it now with your little tantrum, you know."


    Rui chuckled as she red at him, doing her best to intimidate him, in vain of course.


    "Colonel Jenken." Rui bowed lightly, happening to run into the man on the way to the training grounds.


    "Squire Quarrier, I''m d to see you''ve arrived on time." He nodded stiffly, ignoring his daughter''s reaction to his words. "The entrance exam is just around the corner, and we''re in the final stretch for preparation. She''s made incredible improvements at your hand, validating my decision tomission you. Good job and good luck."


    He turned towards his daughter, bending to her as his military posture rxed a little as he smiled. "You''ve already made me proud. Do your best. I love you."


    She nodded, a little embarrassed.Content is property ? N?velDrama.Org.


    He got up, turning back to Rui. "Alright then, I''ve got to head to work, as you can see."


    He gestured to his military garb and adornments. It was an ostentatious uniform with badged, medals, and several stars. None of which were adornments that would decorate the uniform of an ordinary Martial colonel, Rui was sure.


    Rui and Crea quickly reached the training grounds after bidding him goodbye.


    "Alright, let''s begin!"


    Rui smiled, nodding, as he walked back and forth. "We''ve already reached the climax of your training under me. There is no time to start anything new, the only thing we can do is polish what has already been built, and more importantly..."


    He turned towards her. "... Condition your mind and body to be at their absolute peak. Understand?"


    She nodded.


    "All the training you''ve done in the past few months, and perhaps even the past few years will be utterly meaningless if you do not take appropriate care of your mind and body for when the timees," Rui warned her. "In fact, an intense workout will coincide the day before the exam where you will be denied rejuvenation potions so that you can get a real organic night of sleep to time it right so that you will wake uppletely refreshed for the exam, and your tolerance for rejuvenation potions will be refreshed."


    "Ok Ok." She impatiently nodded. "Let''s begin training."


    "Alright, as usual, let us begin with mental fortitude training." Rui nodded.


    Her eyes narrowed as she exhaled.


    Rui wordlessly exerted a little bit of pressure on her as he removed his mind mask slightly. Currently, he was exerting just a little above what he had experienced from the Martial Apprentices in the first round of the exam. This was the only round of the entrance exam that didn''t change because of how important and useful it was. Thus, Rui paid an immense amount of attention to it.


    She handled it well, of course. Otherwise, Rui would be very pessimistic about her chances of cracking the entrance exam.


    She gritted her teeth as she stared him dead in the eye. She had a brave face on, but Rui could tell she was under significant pressure.


    Ten secondster, he eased up. "Well done."<novelnext></novelnext>


    She exhaled deeply, massaging her sweaty forehead.


    "This is another reason why you should ensure you''re at your mental peak," Rui advised. "It takes the entirety of your focus to muster up the mental fortitude needed to resist the pressure you will experience in round one, if your emotional state or concentration is sub-optimal, you will fail."


    "I know that." She grumbled. "I did just fine this time and many other times, didn''t I?"


    "No harm in reminders." Rui smiled.


    He hadn''t informed her that he was actually exerting more pressure on her than what she would be subjected to in the entrance exam. This was to increase her chances of nothing going wrong in the entrance exam. He didn''t want to tell her this for fear of her letting her guard down and making a blunder causing her to fail the round.


    An hour of continuous mental resistance trainingter, she was quite exhausted.


    "You''re doing good." Rui lightlyplimented her. "Here."


    He handed her a mental rejuvenation potion.


    Half a minuteter, she was on her feet, ready for more.


    "Let''s go for some dynamic omnidirectional sparring, as usual." Rui casually said. Yet she stiffened at those words.


    "What''s with that face? This is quite important, you know."


    She took a light stance with arms close to her body.


    Rui smiled as he walked towards her.


    POW!


    He threw a quick, by human standards, a jab at her. She blocked, yet Rui had already disappeared. Her eyes widened as she sensed him behind her.


    POW!


    She just barely managed to block yet another attack from him with an iplete turn.


    POW!


    This time, Rui had appeared on her left, throwing a straight kick at her.


    POW!


    POW!


    POW!


    Rui continuously appeared and disappeared around her,unching attacks from all directions. Crea gritted her teeth as she struggled to keep up, barely blocking or evading his attacks. She didn''t even know how Rui was teleporting around, was teleportation an ability that all Martial Squires had?


    In reality, Rui was just moving very fast. Even with a tiny portion of his speed, he could easily surpass her vision, bing invisible to her every time he shifted, creating the illusion that he had teleported. However, Rui was quite careful to ensure that his attacks didn''t exceed her limits. Even though he shifted very quickly, he made sure to wait around two hundred milliseconds which was just around human reaction time, before initiating a human-level attack. This gave her the chance to react and defend against each attack.


    He made sure that she was pushed to her limits constantly, allowing her to exercise herself to the peak.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 558 Ponder

    The point of this training was to maximize her ability to cope with omnidirectional attacks from multiple opponents around her. He knew from experience that the Martial entrance exam did not necessarily have its students fight one on one in fair bouts. Rui recalled how much of a target he had been in the third round of the Martial entrance exam from multiple opponents that he struggled to keep at bay.


    Coping was an important skill for all applicants of the Martial entrance exam. Crea didn''t need to decisively win, she needed to decisively not lose. She needed to hang on till the very end and only then was there a chance that she would be selected as a student of the Martial Academy.


    And one important avenue to know how to cope with was learning to deal with attacks that could from anywhere. In the past three months, this form ofbat training was one that Rui had ground her through. She had been quite miserable at coping with Rui''s attacks, but in the span of three months, she had developed a truly respectable amount of cope.


    She would most likely not go down easily even against multiple opponents who were most likely older.


    One thing Rui respected about the girl was her tenacity. He truly hoped that she would somehow make it through, even if her odds were quite low.


    A few hourster, the training session came to an end.


    "Alright, that''s all for today." Rui nodded.


    "Wait, that''s it?" She frowned. "Mental fortitude training and omnidirectional defense training? No standard sparring, no maneuvering training? No offensive training?"


    Rui shook his head. "Those are nowhere near as important as your mental fortitude and your cope. At this point, I''m merely polishing your most important assets. Unfortunately, I cannot train what I would consider the single most important asset that all Martial Artists ought to have like I train other things."


    "And what is that?" She asked.


    "I''ve told you, haven''t I?" Rui shook his head. "It''s your mind."


    "I''m already training my mind." She huffed.


    "I''m not talking about your fortitude." He sighed. "I''m talking about your intellect. The decisions you make are going to affect your attempt to the entrance exam more than any other parameter."


    "Martial Art isn''t like studies, being smart is not more important than being strong." She furrowed her eyebrows.


    Rui snorted, resigned to shaking his head. "Being smart is part of being strong. And isn''t intelligence that is the most important parameter, but your rationality."<novelnext></novelnext>


    He crouched down to her. "An intelligent irrational person will always lose to a dumb rational person. You don''t have to be smart, you just have to use the smarts you have up here..." He tapped her temple. "...to their absolute most. This is relevant not just to the entrance exam, but also to your Martial Path."


    "It is?" She grew confused.


    "Martial Art, in a way, teaches you how to walk," Rui told her. "But what is just as important as knowing how to walk is knowing which direction to walk in."


    "Ah, that makes sense." She nodded. "Does this direction have something to do with the Martial Path?"


    "Er, in a way?" Rui scratched his head. This was where his analogy started bing strange, but it was more or less on track.


    "Anyways, I have dyed my leave enough. This will be ourst ss before the entrance exam. You''ve worked hard, you''ve put in almost every conceivable effort to maximize your chances in the entrance exam. Now you just have to go all out and not worry about the oue." Rui calmly encouraged her. "I believe in you."


    Well, thatst part wasn''t strictly true. He did believe she would do her best and perform excellently, but statistically, she was too unlikely to crack the exam. Of course, nothing was impossible. But Rui only believed in science and himself.


    "I''ll make you proud, teacher!" She bowed deeply. "Thank you for all your guidance."


    "Good luck, and goodbye." He smiled at her as he sky-walked away, sighing inwardly.


    He had mixed feelings because as much as he hade to care about the little shrimp, he cared for Max and Mana even more. The two had followed and admired him for a long time and had even made great progress in Martial Art over the many years through his guidance. And they would bepetitors with Crea unless she applied to a different branch for some strange reason.? N?velDrama.Org - All rights reserved.


    Though, as much as he didn''t want to admit it, he had to. She was stronger than Max or Mana individually. She had much richer foundations than the two. While the two had only truly taken their training seriously after Rui got into the Martial Academy, that was only five years of meaningful training. He had taught them basic mixed martial art while letting them personalize theirforts and strengths in a very natural and organic way.


    However, Crea had clearly been training longer than them, even if not Martial Art, she had ess to vastly better training and growth resources that the siblings most certainly didn''t have ess to. In fact, they had only recently gotten ess to what Crea had her entire life. While Crea did turn out to be more of a spoiled brat than those two, she had also tempered herself with extreme determination.


    (''If those two run into her in the Martial entrance exam, it would be interesting to see the oue, at least.'') Rui pondered the matter deeply. (''She can beat them individually, but she would lose if she fought them both, which is likelier to happen than fighting them alone.'')


    He had trained up their teamwork, and together, they were able to cope much better than in the more chaotic rounds of the entrance exam because they could cover each other''s backs and blind spots. Rui didn''t intend to tell any of them about each other, if they all passed and found out anyway, then that was that.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 559 First Phase

    "Good luck." Rui wished them with a gentle expression. "Do your best and look out for each other. Good luck."


    "We''ll make you proud, big brother."


    "Yeah, we''ll definitely get in, just you watch!"


    Rui smiled with pride and affection, hoping he did a good job hiding his anxiety.


    "Off you go, then." He sent them towards the long busy line of applicants, inspecting theirpetition. As predicted, they were all taller and bigger.


    His senses swept through the area examining them carefully. (''Any Martial Apprentice applicants...?'')


    His eyes narrowed after a moment. (''Just one.'')


    When he applied, there were five.


    Well.


    Technically four, since Nel wasn''t a Martial Apprentice, but he was as strong as one without a doubt. This made the difficulty of the entrance exam much lower, something Rui was relieved about. In his senses across the entire area, he had sensed several Martial Artists of various Realms, including a Martial Senior.


    "So." Colonel Geringan''s voice came from behind him. "You''re seeing your siblings off, are you?"


    "Same as you." Rui calmly replied. "You don''t seem too surprised."


    "Of course not." He circled around with measured strides in his military garb. "I knew that there was a high chance that you would enroll those two kids for the Martial entrance exam."


    Rui wasn''t surprised by this revtion. Colonel Geringan had already divulged that he had friends in the Martial Union, from his faction presumably, who could get things done for him that would otherwise not be possible.


    He probably found out that Rui wasmissioning a Martial Apprentice instructor, and why, through his sources within the Martial Union.


    "You know, I''m surprised youmissioned me despite that," Ruimented lightly, meeting his gaze.


    "Well, you have a reputation, and themission was about more than just Crea, anyway." He replied straightforwardly. "And in my judgment, you haven''t attempted to sabotage Crea or hold back in your training of her."


    "Did you think I would?"


    "It was always possible, I didn''t know you very well, of course." He shook his head.


    "..." Rui sighed as he watched Max and Mana finally enter. "Does Crea know?"


    "Of course not." He snorted. "I''m not a fool to reveal something that could affect her performance. I don''t intend to tell her, and neither should you."


    "That sounds about right," Rui replied before turning and sky-walking away.


    He exhaled heavily, trying to rx. He didn''t care about Max and Mana failing to get in, it was always a long shot and they were aware of that. They had five more attempts each with an additional year of training and growth. He was sure that under his training, they could crack through it.<novelnext></novelnext>


    The failure would probably be good for tempering their psychological fortitude


    He was more concerned with them getting hurt, but that too was not a problem in the long run.


    But the worst oue; death, was something that scared him a lot for Max and Mana.


    Applicants died, it was part of the deterrence of the entrance exam, to prevent people who would be scared away by even a statistically low probability of death from applying. A lot more people flood the entrance exams if not for that.


    He shook his head. "I''ve done everything I can, I need to trust them."


    While he was outforting himself.


    Crea, Max, and Mana had already entered the Martial Academy and were guided to the first phase of the entrance exam. It was in arge hall, they had entered at one end of the hall, with the exit indicated at the very opposite end.


    In between the two exits was a line of Martial Artists in the uniform of the Martial Union, with tables with boxes on them, filled with something they couldn''t see. Time passed until the hall grew jam-packed with thousands of applicants and finally, something changed.


    An old man emerged from the other side with a long flowing beard and mustache. Even his eyebrows extended, curling down. He was escorted by two Martial Artist bodyguards that intimidated anybody from approaching too close to him.


    Yet, neither the row of Martial Artists forming a barrier to the other side nor the bodyguards drew, nay, wrenched their attention away. The old man singlehandedly outshined all of the other Martial Artists in the room.


    "Applicants." He addressed them.N?vel(D)rama.Org''s content.


    It was a simple word, yet it exerted profound pressure on each of them. They weren''t able to fathom even a portion of it, yet they could sense, instinctually, that the man possessed godly power. They were no more than ants.


    The atmosphere chilled, by just a degree, as none of them dared to interfere.


    "Today you have gathered here for a reason. You havee from close and far to ovee the barriers and obstacles that stand between you and the Martial Academy, the greatest haven for the growth of Martial Art in the Kandrian Empire." He paused. "Most of you will fail."


    The atmosphere stiffened as he very clearly iterated what they all knew.


    "Some of you will seed. Only those that have disyed the necessary mental fortitude born out of determination and perseverance, only those whose desire to walk their Martial Path is extraordinarily strong can be a Martial Artist." He paused once more, letting them digest his words.


    "Steel your hearts, applicants." He continued. "I am headmaster Aronian, and I look forward to seeing you traverse your Martial Paths."


    "The first phase of the exam is rather simple." He exined. "The Martial Apprentices you see before you will be handing out passes to the second phase of the exam. You need only collect the pass from the Martial Apprentices sessfully. If you do obtain a pass from them, then you may proceed to the second phase of the exam. Good luck."


    And just like that, he turned around and walked away.


    Many of the applicants had confounded expressions on their faces. Yet, there were many that werepletely unperturbed among them.


    Crea, Max, and Mana calmly walked toward the Martial Apprentices.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 560 Second Phase

    Most of the applicants didn''t understand what was happening. Only the applicants from the Martialmunity or applicants with a connection to a Martial Artist or repeat applicants knew what was going on. The first phase was unchanging, but that wasn''t public knowledge, not exactly.


    Yet people soon understood as they tried approaching the Martial Apprentices.


    ? "Waaah!" One boy squealed in terror as he stumbled back, away from the Martial Apprentice holding a pass in his hands.


    The Martial Apprentices red at him with a fierce expression, terrifying him even more, while eying all the applicants, daring any of them to step forward and grab the pass.


    The applicants froze as waves of bloodlust came from the Martial Apprentices. It exerted a terrifying pressure inside their minds as their subconscious danger and risk evaluation systems evaluated them to be terrifyingly strong, posing a huge threat to their life. A tremendous amount of pressure was generated in a lot of them.


    "Damn...!" Another girl gritted her teeth as she did her absolute best to push herself towards the Martial Apprentice. "Not again!"


    Just because one knew about the test did not mean that one could pass it. Just knowing about an obstacle did not mean that they could ovee it, and a good chunk of the applicants of the Martialmunity and of those who attempted the entrancest year was realizing this the same way. Mental fortitude was much harder to train than physical fortitude because the rate of sess was low, there was no guarantee that the training would yield sess.


    "Applicant 538; Crea jenken, pass!"


    "Thank you." Crea plucked the pass out of the Martial Apprentice''s hand before walking past him to exit the hall.


    "Woah," Max mumbled. "She was so cool."


    "We can do it too." Mana reminded him. "Just remember what big brother Rui taught us."


    Max nodded. "Concentration."


    The two exhaled deeply before recentering their focus and walking towards the Marital Apprentices.


    Each step was harder than thest.


    As they approached the Martial Apprentices, the fear generated within them grew more intense. Their steps bebored as they walked on, as though they were wading through a river. The deeper they crossed through it, the more resistance the currents threw their way.


    STEP


    The two of them were panting by the time they reached their Martial Apprentices.


    "Applicant 878; Mana Quarrier, pass!"


    "Applicant 877; Max Quarrier, pass!"


    The two of them quickly took their passes before quickly passing through the exit.


    "We did it!" Max rejoiced.<novelnext></novelnext>


    "We sure did." Mana grinned.


    "But, I dunno, is it just me, or was that easier than the training we did big brother Quarrier?" Max wondered with a curious expression.


    "Now that you mention it..." Mana grew a little absorbed in thought. "Big brother does get us much more winded much quicker."


    The two pondered a bit before shrugging. It didn''t really matter since they had already passed it. They simply followed the directions to the second phase of the exam. They were eventually led to an open ground. It was an artificial multi-environment ground with various different kinds of topographies and vegetation.


    When Mana and Max arrived they found a much smaller group of applicants that had passed through the first round. The two could vaguely feel that this group of applicants was much stronger. It was par for course, no one could pass the first round with weakness.


    The two of them silently waited as an increasing number of applicants poured in, each having passed the first phase until the flow stopped.


    Max and Mana looked around, getting an estimate of the number of applicants that had made it through the first phase. The sheer number of applicants that didn''t make it through was astonishing to them.


    Rui had never given them great confidence in their capabilities, he had always made the first phase sound basic and fundamental. They had assumed that most of the applicants would be able to pass it. To their utter surprise, it was the exact opposite. Most people failed it.


    They wouldn''t be surprised if only less than ten percent of the original poption made it through.


    "Wow..." Max whispered to Mana. "So few..."


    "Yeah..." Mana nodded.


    Soon, the next phase began. A Martial Apprentice appeared from the entrance, gazing at them all.


    "Applicants, I am the proctor of the second round of the entrance exam. The second phase of the exam willmence here." He told them. "You will all be provided badges with your application number on them. Your objective for the second round is simple. The average application number of this group, that is when all your application numbers are summed and divided by the number of applicants, is 1026. Your objective and the condition for passing this round is to ensure that the sum of your application badges at the end of the round exceeds 1500. Meaning, you can take the badges of other candidates and wear them. As long as the sum of all the badges you''re wearing exceeds 1500, you will have passed."Belonging ? N?velDram/a.Org.


    He paused, letting them digest the second phase of the entrance exam.


    "The rules are few. You made procure the badges you need in any way you wish. Any badge in your position must be pinned on your chest at all times. You may not conceal your badge or the number on it in any way. The second phase begins the very moment the doors close behind me. The second phasests exactly an hour."


    He informed them as he walked out of there.


    Instantly all the applicants put a huge distance from each other, they had barely gotten any time to consider the second round of the entrance exam at all and it was already about begin. Each of them was highly tense as they looked at their badges, doing some quick math and figuring out who among their opponents they ought to target.


    They scouted their opponents'' badges, looking for a suitable number and also a suitable opponent.


    STEP STEP STEP


    THUD


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 561 Clash

    Had Rui been there, he would have made deeper insights into the second round of the entrance exam. He would have immediately mentally plotted distribution graphs with sses of badge number, with a certain range, and the proportion of badges that fell within each of those sses, based on his observations, allowing him to figure out exactly how many applicants would need to be disqualified for the winners to win.


    And he would have more or less correctlye to the conclusion that only twenty percent of the applicants could possibly pass the second round of the entrance exam. That was why the number 1500 was chosen when the average was 1026.


    Max and Mana immediately had each other''s back as the applicants around them increasingly began getting broiled in more intense conflict.


    ? They were cognizant of the fact that their badge numbers were decisively below the required number to pass the second round.


    "What should we do?" Max asked urgently.


    "We should target one applicant together," Mana responded.


    Max nodded. "You''re right! Big brother said that we should work together, just like we do in training!"


    The two of them scoured their surroundings as they looked for a suitable target. They did not have any foolish thoughts of chivalry or honor, they knew that they were the underdogs and that were disadvantaged individually against pretty much all the applicants. Rui had drilled teamwork into their heads.N?velDrama.Org owns ? this.


    "There." Max pointed at a girl. "She looks about our age and although her badge number 538 isn''t enough by itself, it''s our best shot."


    Mana followed his gaze, before nodding. "Good thinking."


    The two of them watched their target, Crea.


    She had beenying low as she herself had been looking for a target, yet suddenly she felt something approaching her. She turned, just barely in time to react to Max and Mana rushing towards her.


    POW POW POW!


    Max and Mana bull-rushed her with a quick flurry of jabs. Crea gritted her teeth as she just barely managed to square a guard up in time to defend against the siblings'' attacks.


    (''Two on one...!'') She cursed. Max and Mana had surrounded her as they began circling her, throwing attacks in her blind spot.


    Yet to Max''s and Mana''s surprise, she was able to cope quite well. She managed to partially evade or block almost all of their attacks despite them leveraging their numeric advantage against her. They could even feel that her skill was better than theirs.


    POW!


    Maxunched a right kick to her thigh, retreating his leg that she almost managed to catch and would have no doubt kneed to oblivion had she seeded.


    THWACK


    A second kicknded on her shin, causing her spike of pain.


    "RARGH!" Crea turned and swung her leg towards Mana swiftly, yet Mana had seen the attacking from a mile away, avoiding it cleanly


    POW!


    BAM!


    THWACK!


    Crea kept defending against the external attacks, yet the light of determination never once faded from her eyes. A faint memory resurfaced even as she withstood all the attacks that her opponents bombarded her with, as she defended her badge.


    "I can''t avoid getting hit?" Crea asked Rui.<novelnext></novelnext>


    "No, you cannot." Rui shook his head. "The sheer chaos, the sheer numbers, not to mention your disadvantages, it is impossible to avoid taking a lot of punishment unless you''re extremely lucky."


    "Then can I just defend against all of them, right?"


    "That''s just as hard, I''m afraid," Rui replied, shaking his head. "At most, you can guard, but it won''t help much in those circumstances


    "Well, then what can I do?" She scratched her head.


    "What you can do... is make it count." Rui grinned.


    "Make it count?" She tilted her head in confusion.


    "Yep, make it count." Rui nodded. "Suppress your futile urge to evade or defend every attack, instead, take it and use the opportunity created by you not wasting your physical resources into futile defense and the opening created by an attack tounch a counterattack. If you''re going to get hit, then make sure every strike theynd on you is costly. That is the best way to prevent bing a punching bag when you''re at a disadvantage."


    "Ohhh..." Crea nodded as she understood what Rui was trying to convey. "I see. I just have to make it count. I feel like I really like that tactic, for some reason."


    POW!


    A blow flew towards her shoulder, yet Crea hadn''t bothered with trying to guard. Her armsshed out toward his elbow and shoulder even as a painful impact assailed her right shoulder with pain. Yet she ignored it as she sped him, before swiftly sweeping him off his feet and over her shoulder t onto the ground.


    BAM!


    She immediately tried reaching for his badge, yet;


    POW!


    Crea blocked a powerful kick to the face, gritted her teeth as she ignored the pain in her guard.


    "URGH!" Crea rushed in throwing abo of blows toward Mana.


    WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH


    Mana stepped back as she managed to evade Crea''s attacks. She was always the more mobile one out of the siblings. Yet it wasn''t too long before Crea managed to gain an edge. Every time Mana attacked, she got hurt.


    She threw a swift strike at Crea, yet thetter ignored the threat of damage as her elbow fell and her knee rose, crushing her forearm in between them mercilessly.


    "ARGH!" Mana muffled a scream as she felt a sharp pain in her arm, as though it was broken.


    "Sis!" Max rushed in as he rushed towards Crea, colliding with her.


    BAM!


    "URGH!" Crea gritted her teeth as she turned towards Max with a murderous expression.


    Max threw a jab at her, yet Crea didn''t even bother dodging or guarding, she opened her mouth, biting down hard at what was supposed to be a strike to the jaw.


    "AH!" Max leaped back as he stared at his bleeding fist.


    Crea spat out his blood, before turning towards him. "I made it count."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 562 Surprise

    The three of them came to a momentary stand-off as Max quickly tended to his wound, while Crea and Mana caught their breaths and gathered their bearings. Despite being pounded by the two siblings, she felt amazing. The way of fighting that she had just engaged in was incredibly satisfying and fun. A strange feeling came from within her, she didn''t really understand what it meant.


    Attack to defend. Make it count.


    These principles that Rui had imparted to her really resonated with her.


    Why that was the case, she didn''t know, but she decided to ride the wave. Making it her only principal way to engage with her opponent.


    She had a fierce expression as Max and Mana regrouped, preparing another volley of attacks. Yet just as they leaped at her.


    WHOOSH


    "Waaaaah!" A boy went flying just between the siblings and Crea, surprising them. Hended a few meters away, groaning in pain. The three of them couldn''t help but look in the opposite direction, wondering whatunched him flying.


    Their eyes widened as a faint aura crept over them, pressuring their minds. They stiffened as they gritted their teeth, their attentions had already been drawn away from each other.


    The boy walked towards the three of them with azy grin, assessing them as they did him.


    "Martial Apprentice..." Crea clenched her jaw as she whispered.


    Just her luck, before she could even obtain the necessary badges, she was ambushed by two punks and now even a Martial Apprentice had taken note of them.


    What was especially eye-drawing was the number of badges pinned across his clothes. There were many badges across his upper garbs. It was clear that he had umted more badges than he needed. The man was no longer just fighting to pass the second round, he was fighting for fun.


    N?velDrama.Org owns ? this.


    Crea would have ordinarily evaded him, but it was toote, his eyes were locked on them. Max and Mana could sense the same, as they faced him instead of each other.


    He smiled, wordlessly, there was nothing to say at all, after all.


    The three of them took their stances. Crea still held hope, she knew who the boy was. He was a talented heir in the Martialmunity who was part of the rare group of adolescents who had broken through to the Apprentice Realm prior to entering the Martial Academy or bing an adult.


    However, he had broken through very recently, and Crea was sure that he hadn''t mastered any Apprentice-level techniques either. She could see a bruise or two on his face, which would be impossible if he had mastered even a single Apprentice-level technique.


    The atmosphere tensed as the three of them faced him waiting.


    But evidently, he was done waiting.


    WHOOSH


    POW!


    In what seemed like an instant, he had crossed the gap between them, andunched a kick at Max,unching him several meters backward.


    "Max!" Mana cried out, yet she made the blunder of losing track of her opponent in the middle ofbat.


    POW!


    A single strike across the jaw caused her to crumple down like a puppet with cut strings.


    Crea growled as she adopted a highly closed stance. Her eyes were bloodshot, she loosened her jaw a bit, ready to use her brand-new bite intercept attack.


    POW!


    "RRGH!"


    A low kick to the ankle brought her down to one knee. It was too fast for and too difficult otherwise to be able to counterattack upon. The boy scoffed lightly, beforeunching a swift kick to her face.<novelnext></novelnext>


    POW!


    Crea spun backward, copsing to the ground.


    DRIP DRIP DRIP


    A sharp pain flew up his foot, startling him as he looked down.


    "ARGH!" He kneeled down cradling his bleeding toe.


    "Heh.... hehe..." Crea stood up like a zombie as she chuckled unsteadily.


    Something had snapped inside her. A switch had turned on, a door had opened. Inside her head. It was a path that extended deep beyond her fathoming. A path that she had taken a single step down.


    "PTHOO!"


    She spat before him, amidst her saliva was a human toenail.


    "You fucking bitch!" He got up, ignoring the pain and bleeding as he charged at her at full speed. He threw his full weight behind a strike. Yet what she did shocked him.


    Instead of moving away, she charged toward him and his attack.


    POW!


    BAM!


    His strike struck her shoulder, clearly dislocating it, yet her elbow buried itself in his throat, forming a deep indentation.


    "ACK!" His eyes watered as he fell t to the ground, cradling his throat, trying to breathe.


    BAM!


    Crea ser kicked him in the head, but he managed to mitigate the impact by shifting just enough, getting up to his feet.


    "YOU''RE DEAD!" He screeched. "FUCKING DEAD. DEAD! YOU HEAR M-" "Shut up."


    He froze as he felt a tremendous amount of pressure on him. Crea was a mess, she was bruised up and bloody. Yet her piercing eyes made him shiver. There was no way a normal human could make him feel like that.


    (''That''s right!'') He gritted his teeth. (''She''s still weak. Only way I could feel this threatened is if she was a...'')


    His eyes widened.


    He took a good look at her, growing more shocked by the second.


    (''She discovered her Martial Path... She''s a fucking Martial Apprentice.'') He gaped.


    She walked towards him with a fierce expression,pletely unperturbed. He clenched his jaw with a tense expression.


    The two Martial Apprentices exerted a tremendous amount of pressure on the other applicants, the rest of them had already moved away from them, flinching. The two of them exerted a maelstrom of pressure on everybody else, together it was above the pressure that the applicants faced in the first round.


    Everybody stayed as far away from them, returning back tobat only after they were confident they wouldn''t get caught in the crossfire.


    The two of themshed out at each other, charging at top speed without any restraint.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 563 Outcome

    "Ack...!" The boy crawled away bleeding profusely from his mouth. "Rrgh."


    He puked out some more blood.


    STEP


    Crea stepped over him.


    "Get away from me!" He cried in fear.


    Crea looked like something out of a low-budget horror film.


    She turned him over.


    "S-Stop!"


    She plucked a badge out of his garb, pinning it on hers, before walking away. Soon after, an announcement drew everybody''s attention.


    "The second round of the entrance exam hase to an end." The proctor announced.Belonging ? N?velDram/a.Org.


    All the applicants paused. Some sighed in relief, some broke out in celebration. But most were disappointed.


    "Huff..." Mana exhaled, trying topose herself as she tended to her broken jaw.


    "Fuck!" Max cursed as he gently caressed his broken ribs. "We''re disqualified."


    His expression grew more severe as he thought about Rui. "He''s gonna be disappointed in us."


    Mana shook her head. "Not unless we didn''t give it our best. The ones who are truly disappointed should be... us."


    "Big brother is kind." Max choked up a little before stifling his urge to break down in tears before his sister. "Next year."


    His expression grew fiercer. "Next year. We''ll definitely get through next year."


    Mana nodded as she furrowed her eyebrows, wiping away a single tear, ignoring her throbbing jaw. She turned towards the distant figure of Crea, healed up after drinking a healing potion. She was surrounded by many proctors and other individuals wearing garbs with the emblem of the Martial Academy.


    "She became a Martial Apprentice in the middle of the exam." Mana gasped in disbelief. "That''s impossible."


    "Whoever she is, she''s fucking amazing," Max grunted. "Damn, I wish I broke through in the middle of the exam in a moment of hopeless despair! Urgh."


    He grimaced in pain, caressing his ribs.


    "Careful." Mana chided him.


    A team of nurses came over to them, examining them.


    "Here." One of them handed them potions. "This should heal everything, we''ll give you stronger potions if not."


    Thankfully, although their injuries had been too debilitating to allow them to pass the round, a potion had been enough to heal them each. The two of them thanked the nurses before leaving the Martial Academy.


    Mana sighed after messaging Rui toe to pick them up, having retained their belongings. She didn''t need to mention whether they had passed or failed. Rui instantly guessed that they had failed, they came out far too early to have passed.


    The two of them simply stared at the Martial Academy, yet, only a minuteter, the ground rumbled and the air danced.<novelnext></novelnext>


    STEP


    Rui appeared out of thin air, stepping down gracefully before them. He took a good look at them. For a moment, none of them said anything.


    "Big brother..." Max squeezed out.


    "The future is more important than the past." Rui nkly stated. "What''s happened has happened."


    He looked at both of them. "That being said, only the past can teach you how to forge the future you want. Do not let this failure drag you down, instead, turn it into fuel that will propel you to even greater heights."


    "Don''t worry, brother," Mana told him with serene, yet sharp, piercing eyes.


    "I''ll get into the Martial Academy next year even if it fucking kills me." Max''s eyes zed with barely restrained determination.


    The two of them were consumed in their own thoughts, they didn''t notice the smallest of smiles crack at Rui''s mouth.


    (''Perfect.'') Rui nodded inwardly. (''I''m d they lost, in hindsight.'')


    It''s not that Rui wished ill on them, of course not. It was the exact opposite. Prior to the exam, Max and Mana had been passionate, curious, excited, and a whole other slew of generally positive emotions. There was nothing wrong with this, of course.


    (''But it''s not enough.'') Rui sighed inwardly.


    He didn''t sense a fire in them. Burning willpower that would drive them forward no matter what. That was the difference between them and Crea in his mind. Her determination and perseverance were strong beyond her years. Inparison, Max and Mana were much tamer.


    (''This is different from the first round of the entrance exam.'') Rui noted. (''That test can be trained for, prepared for, because ultimately it is a highly controlled and superficial impediment to the mind, and the mind knows that. Over time, it can be taught to power through the subconscious fear generated by the immense sense of danger and risk that it knows aren''t truly real.'')


    However, when that certainty of safety and superficiality disappeared, that was when the heart was truly tested. If Max and Mana had fragile hearts before, they didn''t anymore. This oue alone made the failure inconsequential in his mind. He grew even more certain, instinctually, that they would not only crack the entrance exam but also open the door to their Martial Paths.


    Of course, he still put on a solemn demeanor. He didn''t want them to feel this way, it was their failure, and they needed to feel the frustration.


    He nodded. "It seems I wasted my breath. Hah. Truly, I''m proud of you."


    "How do you want to get home?" Rui asked. "Rickshaw? Sky walking? Or-"


    "Let''s just... walk... slowly," Mana suggested softly, interjecting, earning a nod from Max.


    "Well. Walking it is, then." He turned around, sauntering in the direction of the Quarrier Orphanage.


    The three of them trudged quietly to the Quarrier Orphanage, wordlessly. Rui didn''t try to start a conversation forcefully, he could see that the two of them needed and wanted solitude for a bit. They knew that they wouldn''t get quiet for a while when they returned home. Alice would undoubtedly leap at them and smother them to death.


    Once they left the town of Hajin, their surroundings grew quiet, having left the bustlingmercial and industrial districts of the town of the Hajin.


    Max sighed exaggeratedly as he inhaled deeply.


    "Feeling better?" Rui quizzed lightly.


    "Yeah... Much better, honestly." Max was surprised.


    Rui nodded, that was a good sign, it meant that they weren''t holding on too strongly to the past.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 564 Shock

    "Don''t you want to know what happened, big brother?" Mana raised an eyebrow.


    "The details don''t matter as much, but yes." Rui nodded. "Whenever you want to."


    Mana paused for a moment, before sighing. "We ran into a Martial Apprentice. He broke my jaw and Max''s ribs."


    That was about as strong as any justification for a loss one could have. Of course, that didn''t make things better, a loss was still a loss.


    "By the time we could even gather ourselves, it was already over." Max gritted his teeth. "That girl, Crea Jenken? She broke through to the Apprentice Realm and wiped the floor with that other Martial Apprentice. Damn, I wish I was li-"


    "Wait." Rui paused abruptly, trying to conceal his shock with a mind mask. "You''re telling me a girl broke through?"


    "Yeah." Max nodded.


    "Her name was Crea Jenken? You''re sure?" He asked in an unassuming tone.


    "Pretty sure that''s what they called her when they passed her." Max scratched his head.


    The two would have noticed something odd in his demeanor had they been in a normal state of mind, but they were too consumed by themselves to do so.


    "Mmm..." Rui nonchntly nodded.


    Inside, though...


    (''What the fuck...?'') Rui was truly shocked. (''No, what the actual fuck??'')


    He had no idea how Crea broke through to the Apprentice Realm so soon and in the middle of the entrance exam. He was sure that she was still very far away from bing a Martial Apprentice, yet she threw his consideration out of the window and began traversing her Martial Path.


    (''But how?? Nothing has changed since three months ago in her life except...'')


    His eyes widened a bit. (''...Me.'')


    He considered the implications that could potentially be inferred.


    (''The discovery of the Martial Path is fundamentally about self-awareness...'') Rui noted as he came to a realization. (''In the past three months, I have been systematically increasing her awareness and cognizance of her patterns, her strengths and weaknesses, and other things dramatically... Could it be that...?'')


    Could it be that the VOID algorithm could be applied to aid with the self-exploration process needed to gain the degree of self-awareness to discover one''s Martial Path?


    (''Have I discovered a way to increase the rate at which people break through?'')


    A shiver crept down his spine.<novelnext></novelnext>


    "Are you ok, big brother?" Mana asked, noticing it.


    "Haha, it''s just a little cold today."


    "But you''re sweating."


    "It''s humid, after all."


    (''If the Martial Union finds out...'')


    He didn''t even want to consider what would happen if they found out about his strong suspicions. He would be the golden goose that could elerate the journey to breaking through to the Apprentice Realm.


    Such a capability was game-changing, it was revolutionary. It could change the standstill political struggle between the Martial Union and the Royal Family. It could allow Martial Art to truly overrun the world and be the most powerful force on the continent.


    Of course, these were highly fanciful extraptions, and the situation was infinitely moreplex and nuanced than that. However, there were many more considerations that flew into his head that were perhaps more relevant to him.


    The various Martial Sects and factions would very well wage a civil war to get their hands on the method of facilitating breakthroughs at a higher rate. If any stakeholder got their hands on him, they would force him to spit out the method to increase the rate of breakthroughs of Martial Artists and get him to pass it on. Naturally, this would be difficult because not anyone can learn the VOID algorithm and apply it as well as he does.


    He would forever be embroiled in all kinds of entities interested in harnessing such a capability.


    Such a future was highly undesirable. The logical decision to be made from such a conclusion would be to never divulge it and never let anyone figure out the truth.


    (''Wait.'') He sighed inwardly, pausing his overexcited self. (''I don''t know for sure that my suspicions are true. I have only one test subject, meaning only one data point to observe, that is far from enough objective evidence to be confident that there is a corrtion between my training and the probability of breakthrough.'')


    His inner scientist quickly restored his rationality that had been momentarily dispelled by paranoia and shock. He needed more data to make sure he wasn''t dreaming up something out of thin air. It would be really embarrassing if all of this was just wrong, and Crea broke through because of her owntent talent and some good luck.


    But he had a very strong feeling that he was onto something here. He just needed more empirical data.


    He nced at the crestfallen Max and Mana with a glint of interest. Unlike Crea, he knew these two very well, he had known them their entire lives practically, which meant that the effects of long-term VOID algorithm training were something that he could verify more thoroughly in the cases of these two. There would be less uncertainty whether he made a meaningful concrete impact on their breakthrough than there currently was with Crea.


    (''I''ll have to spend more time with them.'') Rui noted.


    Thankfully, Crea had broken through and gone to the Martial Academy, meaning he didn''t need to train her anymore since the objective had been fulfilled.Belonging ? N?velDram/a.Org.


    He originally wanted to rx his schedule a bit, but it was clear that he needed to get to the bottom of this, thus it seemed that his busy life in the past three months wouldn''t get any easier in the meantime.


    (''Should I consult Julian about this?'') Rui wondered.


    It was extremely tempting, Julian had studied breakthrough to the Apprentice Realm extensively and, given his sharp insight, would certainly be able to help Rui out in some way or the other. But, given the sensitivity of the topic, he decided to abstain from revealing it to him for the time being. He could revisit the decision if he had any trouble regarding the matter.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 565 Meet

    STEP


    Ruinded before the Jenken residence gently, facing the guards. Though hismission from Colonel Geringan had ended, the guards opened the gate for him immediately.


    "Hahaha! Look who''s here!" Colonel Geringan''s voice was uncharacteristically boisterous. "If it isn''t the man who helped my daughter be a Martial Artist!"


    He shook Rui''s hand vigorously with a wide grin.


    "I merely offered guidance." Rui smiled modestly. "She is ultimately responsible for breaking through her limits, that too in the middle of a crisis, from what I hear."


    Rui yed down his contribution and impact on her growth. He didn''t want to ept credit that couldnd him in hot water that he was not equipped to handle. If he truly did contribute to her breaking through, then he did not want people to know that.


    Funnily enough, if he was sure that he didn''t actually contribute anything, then taking credit looked more attractive.


    "Have a seat." Colonel Geringan told Rui as he sat down himself. "Crea will be here soon enough, she''s just preupied with a few matters."


    "It seems to breaking through has put a lot on her te." Rui chuckled.


    "You have no idea." Geringanughed. "Just entertaining our various acquaintances, in the Martialmunity and otherwise, who called in to congratte us alone has taken up hours of her free time, she has been quite cranky because of that."


    "That does sound like a pain." Rui smiled wryly. "When I broke through, I only had to deal with my family, thankfully."Belonging ? N?velDram/a.Org.


    "It was actually the same for me." Colonel Geringan nodded. "What little I had of a family back then, anyways."


    That implied he wasn''t part of the Martialmunity when he broke through. Rui did recall reading that the Jenken family wasn''t part of the Martialmunity, or even a Martial family before Colonel Geringan.


    What that meant was that all of the sess, power, money, and prestige that Colonel Geringan had today was earned by Colonel Geringan himself. Rui''s respect for him had grown knowing that. The fact that he was a Martial Colonel despite only being a Martial Senior was rather impressive, for the rank was normally given only to Martial Masters, from Rui''s understanding.


    It was among the special rank hierarchy of the army given to Martial Artists. It conveyed authority without much of the management and leadership responsibilities and duties that normally came along with the normal equivalent of those ranks in the regr Kandrian military hierarchy.


    Martial Apprentices were usually promoted to the Martial corporal rank.


    Martial Squires were usually promoted to the Martial sergeant rank.


    Martial Seniors were usually promoted to the Martial major rank.


    Martial Masters were usually promoted to the Martial colonel rank.


    The fact that Geringan Jenken was a Martial colonel despite only being a Martial Senior meant that he had likely rued arge number of merits in his time in the military allowing him to be promoted to a higher rank.<novelnext></novelnext>


    Just then, another individual entered the room.


    "Teacher Rui!" Crea eximed as she arrived, rushing towards him.


    "Alright, take it easy." Ruiughed as he caught her dive at him. "Congrattions on bing a Martial Artist, Crea."


    "It''s all thanks to your training," Crea replied with a grateful tone.


    Rui shook his head. "I may have helped, but that is what I was brought here to do. The actual effort, among other things, that one needs to put to break through is something only could have put."


    "Hehe..." Crea epted his praise with a beaming smile.


    "So, tell me about your Martial Path." Rui casually said. He hadn''t yet gotten any details from colonel Geringan, probably because he wanted to let his daughter be the one to exin it to Rui.


    Crea nodded. "My Martial Path is counter-offensive deterrence. My greatest defense is sacrificing defense but using that opportunity to inflict more pain and harm than my opponents do on me."


    She exined the details with a sadistic smile.


    "Interesting..." Rui replied with a measured tone once she finished exining the details.


    He hade across counter-offensive Martial Artists before, many of them. In his time serving as a representative fighter, in other missions, and also in the preliminary tournament of the Martial Academy. Yet he was rtively certain he had never seen a counter-offensive Martial Art this extreme. This Martial Art truly took counter-offense to its most extreme interpretation.


    A Martial Art that abandoned defense and scared away attacks with even more lethal attacks that made use of the spontaneous holes in opponent''s defenses when thetter attacked? That was verging on insanity.


    In fact, Rui could see the anxiety hidden behind colonel Geringan''s joyful expression. Such a Martial Art was very mutually destructive and was such that she was guaranteed to get really hurt every time she fought.


    Frankly, Rui was worried too, for the same reason. Although this was just a job, he had grown to have attachments to Crea in the past three months. He did not want any harm befalling her.


    (''Maybe... I can get her to learn the Autophagy Mind Switch technique that I created.'') Rui noted inwardly. It would be particrly useful to her when the time came, though he didn''t need to take that measure for now.


    He also wanted some more empirical data on that technique as well, so that he could extract maximum value with all the proof he gained of its effectiveness from the Martial Artists that were going to master it. Though for now, she didn''t need it.


    "Well, I''m looking forward to how you''re going to develop your Martial Art." Rui had many thoughts, but he kept them to himself, it seemed that colonel Geringan was also doing the same, the man clearly withheld the many thoughts he had regarding what he believed she ought to do.


    This was because Martial Artists of higher Realms ought not to interfere with the Martial journeys of lower Realms, this was a philosophy that was well upheld in the Martial Academy.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 566 Matters

    In the Martial Academy, Martial Apprentices were given an immense amount of freedom on how they wanted to spend their time and what and how they wanted to train. The Squire instructors merely took the roles of guides, rather than teachers. This had done the Martial Apprentices well, and without it, they likely would not make as much progress with the individuality and maturity of their Martial Art, thereby reducing the number of Martial Apprentices that achieved Squire candidacy.


    If Rui were her, he would immediately begin arming himself with many lethal offensive techniques that could inflict greater damage with every attack. Of course, this alone was going to be a long and difficult journey that would likely take Crea several years to trulyplete. In his opinion, she ought to also increase her passive defense and endurance.


    If she was going to abandon active defense and go all out on offense every time her opponent attacked, then she needed to ensure that her skin, flesh, muscles, and bones were all tough. Otherwise, she might very well lose the fight in one exchange.


    He also felt that she ought to purchase endurance techniques that allow her to mitigate the damage she ended up suffering.


    But he didn''t mention any of these rmendations, he was pretty sure colonel Geringan would not be pleased even if he did try.


    They conversed for some more time before another matter interrupted them.


    "Young miss Crea." An employee of the family addressed her, bowing.


    "Hm?" She turned towards him, knitting her eyebrows.


    "I''m afraid you need to begin preparing for your evening appointment now, or else you will not be able to make it in time."


    Her expression drooped. "Later."


    "Crea." Geringan gave her a measured look.


    "Tsk. Fine." She rolled her eyes before looking back at Rui. "Bye-bye teacher. Thanks for everything. I will never forget how much you helped me."


    She turned around and ran before Rui could even respond. "Well, there she goes."


    "Indeed." Rui sighed. "Well, then I ought to take my leave."


    He got up, prompting Geringan to do the same.


    "Ah, one more thing." Geringan paused. "I''m holding a party to celebrate Crea breaking through. I''m inviting you to it, as her trainer."


    Rui caught his intentions, he was pretty sure that there would be a heavy presence of members of the Merger faction.


    "Ah... Unfortunately, I''m extremely busy actually." Rui smiled apologetically. "And I also have to look after the training of my two siblings as well, they didn''t manage to clear the exam, unfortunately."<novelnext></novelnext>


    The colonel was actually aware of this, which is why he avoided asking about it. "That''s a shame, but it can''t be helped. Once again, thank you for your phenomenal service. If you ever need anything, be sure to give me a call."N?vel(D)rama.Org''s content.


    "Thank you, that''s generous of you." Rui smiled.


    The two bade each other goodbye, as Rui left the residence. However, he didn''t head in the direction of the Orphanage when he took off into the air. He headed straight for the Martial Union.


    (''Time to grind through and finish those two techniques as soon as possible.'') Rui noted.


    He felt a sense of urgency because his source of ie; training Crea was now gone. Of course, colonel Geringan had been more than generous with the proposed hourly remuneration rate, allowing Rui to umte enough wealth to sustain his expenditure for some time without needing another source of ie. He intended to finish the two techniques that he had purchased from the Martial Union before that happened, which would get rid of one of his biggest liabilities and would allow him to develop Project Bounce and Project Sniper peacefully.


    Once he learned the two techniques, he didn''t need the Martial Union anymore. He could do most of the work by himself just like he was currently doing with Project Bounce.


    (''Everything is going well.'') Rui nodded.


    He was pleased with the progress he made with both projects, especially Project Bounce. Soon, he would be able to almost entirely absorb the power of the iing attack and turn it into kic energy of his entire body harmlessly.


    Once that urred, he would immediately move on to the second phase; Getting rid of all the umted kic energy harmlessly.


    He had given this part a lot of thought, and he hade up with potential solutions.


    (''I need to somehow discharge the inherited kic energy into the environment; either thend or the air. There is no realistic way of getting rid of it otherwise.'') Rui sighed.


    He had considered harnessing that power and using it to empower his own attacks, but that was no longer an objective as much as it was a magical pipe dream. He wasn''t even sure if such a thing was physically possible at all. For now, he discarded the idea.


    The most straightforward way to get rid of energy and impart it to the ground was through friction. That was how most people got rid of their kic energy when they wanted to slow down or stop. There was only one problem with that.


    (''Friction has limits, it cannot bleed away all my power before I have already moved more than a hundred meters from my original position.'')


    The friction of an object experienced on any given surface was entirely dependent on the roughness of the surface and object, measured by the coefficient of friction, and the weight of the object pushing down on said surface. The product of these two quantities determined the maximum amount of frictional force that there could be between the object and the surface.


    Thus, friction was not a viable solution.


    (''Another potential solution is through an instic collision with the ground.'') Rui noted. (''If I can somehow channel that energy and ground it, or release it into the atmosphere through a hard enough collision where I pass on the kic energy in the same that my opponent''s power was passed onto me, then I might be able to harmlessly get rid of all that energy on the spot.'')


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 567 ODA

    Rui inhaled deeply, closing his eyes. His skin tingled as he carefully felt atmospheric fluctuations pressing against his senses. He could feel the air currents and shifts in the atmosphere all around him like watching the surface of the ocean fluctuating about.


    However, he wasn''t just limited to that, he could do much more once he ''read'' the atmospheric fluctuations. Instantly, a three-dimensional omnidirectional image of the world around him appeared in his mind. He could perceive the fauna and flora in the natural environment around him in the forest through their atmospheric signatures and sonic radiation. He could perceive them with great detail, right down to thest bit of fur on the back of a squirrel dozens of meters away.


    This was the world perceived through the Tempestuous Feel technique when fully mastered


    Rui then focused on Seismic Mapping as well, ovepping the sensory information both techniques supplied him. Together, the two techniques provided a more holistic, urate, and precise image of the world to Rui.


    And a greater sensory range that went beyond just the sum of the parts. Rui could sense truly far with these two techniquesbined.


    Rui inhaled deeply, before opening his mouth.


    WHOOM!


    A potent sonic bullet escaped his mouth, traveling incredibly fast and far, knocking down many dozens of trees before its momentum had finally bled out.


    Rui exhaled, nodding. "Finally, it''s time, to begin with the actual development of Project Sniper."


    Two months had passed since the Martial entrance exam, and Rui had very recently mastered both the techniques that he had bought from the Martial Union. Mastering Tempestuous Feel and Sonic Bullet were merely Rui procuring the necessary tools to fulfill Project Sniper. Now that he had obtained those tools, he intended to go all out and seed.Content ? N?velDrama.Org.


    He looked at a tree dozens of meters away, beforeunching a Sonic Bullet at it.


    WHOOM!


    The sound bullet flew before striking the tree urately. He repeated the exercise, but this time, with a tree more than a hundred meters away.


    WHOOM!


    "Tsk. Missed." Rui tutted.


    He had already known that his uracy was nowhere near adequate. There were two reasons.


    The first, of course, was his own imperfect aim. Beyond a certain distance, it was clearly evident that his aim was shit.


    However, he had alreadye up with a potential solution.<novelnext></novelnext>


    (''Marksmanship skill isn''t my forte. So I just need to rely on what I am good at rather than what I am not good at.'')


    He intended to create a systematic way to aim the Sonic Bullet techniques at any given target. This was the first mini-phase of Project Sniper; increasing his uracy.


    The question was how he ought to go about it.


    (''The underlying condition for perfect aim is ensuring the trajectory of the attack oveps with the target. What are the further underlying conditions to achieving that in the context of the Sonic Bullet?'') Rui wondered as he gave it deep thought, before arriving at an answer.


    In order to systematically and scientifically aim at a target urately, he needed to figure out what theunch conditions for hitting the target urately were. Launch conditions were the parameters of theunch of the projectile that decided its trajectory; like the angle of his head, the intensity of the sound bullet etc.


    In order to find out the necessaryunch condition to hit a particr target properly, he needed to know the equations of the trajectory of the wavefront. If he knew the necessary equations that described the trajectory that would hit the target, he could figure out theunch conditions needed to get a perfect hit.


    In order to figure out the equations describing the trajectory that would hit the target, he needed to know the distance between himself and the target, the direction of gravity rtive to them, and the inclination and angle of his body rtive to the target.


    And that was where Tempestuous Feel and Seismic Mapping came in.


    These two techniques could provide him with those variables, which would allow him to calcte the equation of the trajectory of the Sonic Bullet needed to hit his target, which would allow him to calcte theunch conditions, which would allow him to know exactly how he shouldunch his attack to get a perfect hit.


    It was aplicated and tedious set of steps, however, if he could master this system, then he could achieve using science to aim instead of pure skill.


    Of course, it would still require very urate hand-eye coordination. Even if he figured out, in his head, how exactly he ought tounch the Sonic Bullet to get a perfect hit, he also needed to actually execute apletely urate and perfect replication of the image that he had developed in his mind or on paper.


    This would most likely require sustained practice over a long period of time. Until he managed to execute the outputs from his systemized aiming system, he would not be able to make much use of the many innovations that would be going into this project.


    (''I also shoulde up with a name for this new system.'') Rui thought inwardly. (''Hm... How about the Objectively Derived uracy system, or the ODA System? Has a nice ring to it.'')


    Developing and mastering the ODA system was the most important step he had to take, but he was confident he could do it. (''The VOID algorithm is far moreplex and more difficult to master than the ODA system, but I managed to pull that off.'')


    Of course, he spent more than one lifetime on the former before he seeded, be he conveniently left that part out.


    (''The ODA system also needs to take into ount atmospheric factors that could influence the trajectory of the Sonic Bullet and throw it off.'') Rui recalled. (''Otherwise, the bullet will miss the target over truly long distances, which does increase theplexity and difficulty of the task, although still nowhere near that of the VOID algorithm.'')


    He immediately began working on it, he had his work cut out for him.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 568 Concept

    The basic ODA system that focused purely on aim wasplicated enough already, but taking into ount the influence of air currents, winds and breeze, temperature, and drag on the trajectory of his attack among other things to ensure an absolutely urate hit on the target made things much more difficult.


    He had yet toe up with a way to ount for that. This was perhaps even more difficult than the base ODA system.


    (''I only need to ount for the atmospheric condition whenever and wherever the Sonic Bullet is along its trajectory.'') Rui noted.


    Only the atmospheric pocket immediately outside of the Sonic bullet could influence the sound pulse projectile at any given time, anything that was never going toe into contact with the Sonic Bullet would not be able to directly influence it.


    (''In order to fully ount for the impact of the atmospheric conditions on the Sound Bullet, I need to know the precise atmospheric conditions that the bullet will face after it leaves my mouth.'') Rui noted. (''However, how can I know the precise atmospheric conditions that my attack will face in the future after it leaves my mouth, before they happen?'')


    He would effectively need to predict the future to aplish such a feat. This was a nigh-impossible task for any Martial Artist, they were not prophets, after all.


    However, this didn''t necessarily affect Rui.


    (''Temperature for any given area is a constant gradient within short intervals of time, that''s not the issue.'')Belonging ? N?velDram/a.Org.


    The issue was ounting for the forces of drag, pressure, and currents that would influence the trajectory of the projectile. Predicting that was much harder.


    Thankfully, it wasn''t impossible.


    (''All of these factors obey thews of physics, particrly, they arepletely predictable through the ssical wave equation and the equations of superposition and resonance.'')


    All he needed was ample enough data on the initial conditions, and he could predict the manner and way in which the system of waves in the atmosphere would evolve. If he knew how it would evolve, then he could predict the influence that it would have on the particr trajectory involved, then he could ount for those influences and alter the trajectory and hisunch appropriately.


    The equations were the easy part, although it had been a long time since he had finished his degree in physics, he still recalled the core of each of the subjects that he had studied, especially when his mind had grown more powerful in his second life.


    The hard part was inputting all the relevant data from the Tempestuous Feel and the Seismic Mapping techniques into the relevant equations andputing the results in the briefest of moments. This was an incredibly difficult task even for Rui who was very confident in his mental math.<novelnext></novelnext>


    (''That is where the Mental Embed technique will save my ass.'') Rui sighed.


    This was the technique that involved embedding the mental and cognitive processes that urred in the brain when executing a technique, into the Mindmirror Brain, allowing thetter to aid the former in a parallel processing fashion. Even to this day, the Mindmirror Brain aided Rui with the processing of the VOID algorithm primarily, and the other techniques secondarily.


    His confidence in mastering the ODA system to the point where it be practical to apply it in long-range battles and long-range attacks was high thanks to the Mental Embed technique and the Mindmirror Brain.


    And with that, the conceptual basis of the uracy issue of the Sniper Project waspletely solved. All he needed to do was begin executing the concept and bringing it to life.


    The first step was optimizing the ODA system''s algorithmic protocols. The protocols would decide the manner in which Rui would obtain the desired outputs. Optimizing this was necessary because Rui didn''t want to work with an inefficient process that would increase the time period and effort needed for him to ultimately obtain the desired results. Thus he needed to simplify the equations, and find as many functional shortcuts as possible in the math to ensure that the process was as simple as possible.


    This approach was verymon in engineering. Referring to the purely theoretical basis of any given field that they were trying to apply was something that was tedious and inefficient. Engineers cut away all the useless redundancies that the theoretical physics nerds came up with, and extracted the very distilled essence of theoretical science that was needed to apply the science in practical applications. This left them with much simpler practical equations that would be the basis of their algorithms and programs of their development projects.


    Rui was effectively doing the exact same thing, but with Martial Art instead.


    He spent several hours developing the relevant and necessary simplified algorithmic protocols for the ODA System, he had been very careful and thorough, checking and rechecking his work over and over. The end product was two-phase which was still quiteplicated despite his best efforts. The first phase focused purely on uracy disregarding the effects of the atmosphere, and the second part dealt with atmospheric conditions. The second phase of protocols waspleted in his mind, he needed to execute them.


    After all, he couldn''t predict that deep into the future, in fact, it was very limited. He could only calcte a few seconds at the very most. This meant that the sonic bullet could only travel for a handful of seconds before it crossed the degree to which Rui could predict it.


    Of course, a few seconds was still a lot considering that the Sonic Bullet could cover a kilometer in that distance.


    Meaning, if everything went ording to n, then Rui could urately snipe his opponents or targets from an enormous distance away!


    Most long-range techniques did no go anywhere near as far as Rui suspected Project Sniper could,rgely due to range and uracy constraints, but Rui had ways of bypassing both. As long as everything went ording to n, of course.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 569 Attempt

    Although there were always more ways he could increase the uracy of the technique, he ultimately gave up on it. The problem was that the principle of diminishing returns made it simply not worth the investment. He would have to spend an incredible amount of effort in oveing many obstacles for benefits that were simply too insignificant to justify the efforts.


    In fact, the second phase of the ODA System was almost verging over the limit, however, it was because Rui was quite keen on extending his maximum distance at which his aim was fully urate well beyond the norm. After all, the first phase of the ODA System would merely give him uracy of the best marksman.


    Of course, this was still a great boon and an incredible development, however, Rui was not satisfied with this alone knowing he could go much further, thus he had resolved himself to push himself further to obtain even more extraordinary results.


    If he was not wrong, then it was quite likely that no Martial Squire possessed the long-range uracy that he did!


    Hell, he wouldn''t be surprised if this extended even to the Martial Senior Realm, though he didn''t dare to have confidence in that possibility.Belonging ? N?velDram/a.Org.


    Time passed as he worked on the Sniper Project, refining the ODA system and field testing the protocols to gain some data. The best way to test whether something was functioning as desired was to simply physically test and gain data that would clearly indicate if it was functioning as desired or not.


    Rui spent time in various kinds of environments, testing whether his predictions and extraptions of atmospheric conditions were urate to reality or not. Each time he noticed certain deviations, he identified the problem and corrected it, trying it over and over until the result was satisfactory.


    In the meantime, Project Bounce had made a lot of progress as well.


    Some great distance away from the Quarrier Orphanage in an uninhabited part of the Mantian Region, Squire Casen wound her right arm all the way back, clenching her fist rock hard. A tremendous amount of potential energy had gathered, brimming in her taught muscles.


    Standing right before her was Rui, with arms in an extended stance, waiting to intercept the strike.


    Casen swung her fist as her upper body twisted. The very atmosphere rippled, and the ground rumbled in shock as the unadulterated might of a Martial Squire crashed into his palm.


    Yet Rui was ready.


    His eyes narrowed as his palm intercepted the strike, moving with it as it increased its resonance the further it was pushed back, just like a spring. By the time Squire Casen had finished the strike, Rui had already beenunched into the air.


    The sheer velocity at which Rui had beenunched far surpassed the speed of sound as his body cleaved through the air, leaving numerous sonic booms behind.


    ? BOOM!!


    In just an instant, he hadnded more than a kilometer away from his original position!


    "...Holy fuck!" Ruiughed. "That''s the tenth one hundred percent stic collision in a row!"


    Ten in a row with different kinds of attacks was definitely a sign that he had mastered it to a satisfactory extent. It would be more productive to move on with the next phase rather than be caught up with trying to refine the first phase even more, the issue with diminishing returns would certainly apply here as well.


    "Another round?" Squire Casen asked as she sky-walked to his location.<novelnext></novelnext>


    In the past five months, she had helped Rui perfect and refine the first phase extensively and had grown ustomed to their training sessions.


    "Yes, though you''ll have to scale down your strikes back to how elementary they were when we first began, you can''t go all out like you have been doing recently. I''m going to be trying something new."


    Her eyebrows rose in surprise. It seemed that Rui was finally satisfied with what he had been trying to aplish for quite some time now. She was curious about what he would be trying to do next. Rui still hadn''t told her about the point of the technique, or what he was trying to aplish at the end of the day. She had her own guesses, of course.


    Her biggest suspicion was that Rui was trying to create an escape technique that was fueled by his opponent''s power. Perhaps the point of the technique was that it allowed you instantly get away right in the middle ofbat.


    In which case Rui will have already mastered that technique, but he evidently hadn''t thus she could only conclude that her suspicions were iplete or straight up wrong.


    "Alright," Rui took his stance. "Let''s go, keep it nice and easy. We can increase the difficulty as time passes."


    "Ok..."


    She didn''t even wind her attack back, she intended to begin with a jab.


    Rui on the other hand, increased his concentration to the max. He was going to be trying something new that he hadn''t developed the muscle memory for, after all. His conscious mind needed to pull all the weight.


    She threw a solid jab at him.


    Rui tried not only converting the power to kic energy, but this time also tried directing it downwards into the Earth.


    POW


    THUD!


    He failed as he instead was sent tumbling across the ground in a spectacr failure.


    "Tsk." He tutted as he dusted himself.


    He didn''t experience much pain at all thanks to the Adamant Reforging conditioning training that made his skin and flesh quite resilient.


    He was trying to test out one of the possible solutions to aplishing phase two of the Bounce Project, which was getting rid of the inherited kic energy. He had tried directing it to the ground in an instic collision where all of it would get converted into damage into the ground, but his timing was terrible, and he mostly lost control of the kic energy.


    Of course, he didn''t expect to seed on the first try in the first ce.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 570 Epiphany

    He nned to see how viable grounding the kic energy that he absorbed from his opponent''s attack to get rid of it, the same way one did electricity, was. However, his initial failure wasn''t an indication that the option was not viable. He just messed up the execution of the n.


    "Again."


    Once again, she threw a solid jab at him. This time, he managed to absorb and channel more of it downwards than before.


    SKRRRRR...


    He skidded heavily, and deeply into the ground. By the time he stopped, he was a hundred meters away and waist-deep into the ground.


    "That was better." Rui''s eyes glinted with interest. "However, there might a problem I hadn''t foreseen."


    When he tried to direct his kic energy downwards, he was essentially trying to make himself move downwards instead of flying away like he normally did. He hoped that by directing the inherited momentum and kic energy down, he could dispel it into thend without any issue.


    However, he now realizes that there were likely issues with that n as well. When he directed his inherited momentum and kic energy downwards, it meant that his body was moving fast down, which meant that he was essentially crashing into the ground.


    (''That''s why my body dug in so deeply.'') Rui frowned as he looked at how below the surface he had dug into as he skidded across the ground.


    Furthermore, this was just with partial sess, if he did seed in diverting all of his momentum down, how deep would he go?


    (''Shit.'') Rui felt a pang of anxiety. (''This issue isn''t light, it might make the project unviable if I don''t find a solution.'')


    He spent most of the rest of the session trying to divert one hundred percent of the inherited energy downwards, yet when he did seed, he was quite displeased.


    "Are you okay?" Squire Casen asked as she gazed down the deep hole that Rui had created and pushed himself down.


    The hole extended down more than a hundred meters. Yet Rui easily sky-walked out of it without any issue.


    "Just fine." Rui sighed. "Let''s take a break."


    She nodded. "What exactly is it that you''re trying to achieve with all of this?"


    This was the first time she had asked so straightforwardly. They had grown more familiar with each other over five months. She feltfortable asking a direct question.


    "I''m trying to efficiently pass on my momentum to my surroundings without getting hurt." He turned towards the deep hole he made. "And without that happening."


    She threw a confused look at him.


    "It''s like when you strike, say, a rock," Rui exined. "Your fist inevitably digs in, right?"


    She nodded.


    "That''s what''s happening here, I''m digging into the ground because I''m effectively striking it with my body," Rui exined, before sighing.<novelnext></novelnext>


    "So you''re looking for a way to strike the ground without digging into it, while still passing the energy on to the ground?" She wondered. "If there''s no difference between you striking the ground with a body or a fist, then doesn''t that make it very simr to a striking technique?"


    "Sort of." Rui shrugged half-heartedly. "I want to strike without causing surface damage like digging in, it''s a shame that it seems impossi-'')


    Rui suddenly froze as his eyes widened.


    Striking without causing surface-level damage?


    Didn''t he have a technique just like that?


    (''What if I use Reverberating Lance to dispel all the energy to the ground?'') Rui grew excited. (''This way I can permeate the energy deeper into the ground without causing myself to dig into it!'')


    Reverberating Lance used vibration to permeate the damage of the impact of a collision deeper into the target, past the surface. This principle was the same principle that was used in modern medicine back on Earth to deal with kidney stones.


    His current issue was that he was causing too much damage to the ground, the surface of thend when he tried to impact against it with his body to pass on energy.


    What if instead of straightforwardly directing his inherited kic energy to the ground with an impact, he used the Reverberating Lance technique to permeate the impact beyond the surface? If the energy was permeated deeper into thend through vibrations rather than through the surface, then Rui could theoretically avoid digging deeper into the ground!


    Just like how the Reverberating Lance allowed Rui to hurt his opponent on the inside without necessarily damaging the outside, he could pass on the inherited kic energy of Project Bounce deeper into thend without necessarily digging through the surface as he did before!


    He grew giddy with excitement as he stood up abruptly, startling Squire Casen, who looked at him strangely.


    "Alright, break''s over, we need to get back to practice right now."Content ? N?velDrama.Org.


    It had only been fifteen seconds since the break began, yet she obliged, she was being paid, after all. She was also curious about what Rui wanted to try since it was quite evident that he had just gotten a new idea.


    "Alright, same as before, no changes, okay?"


    She nodded, before throwing an identical straight right jab. Rui intercepted, carefully absorbing the energy of the attack as it automatically converted into harmless kic energy, he strained himself as he pushed down, crouching and bracing for the impact.


    RUMBLE


    The ground shook as Rui immediately applied Reverberating Lance downwards to its absolute maximum. The shaking continued for a moment, before subsiding.


    "...This is great!" Rui eximed.


    He had only gone down knee-deep, standing in the same spot. When he did the same thing prior, he had gone a hundred meters deep. The difference made by the Reverberating Lance was tremendous, getting rid of almost all of the piercing and digging through the ground. However, considering that this was his very first attempt at the technique, it was very promising!


    "This is the solution!" Rui eximed. "This has to be it."


    He intended to grind it out until Project Bounce was effectively aplete sess!


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 571 Success

    It was a windy day.


    Rui squinted from atop a tall hill as he stared at a distant small tree that was no more than a collection of dots in even his superhuman vision. He couldn''t make out too many details of it due to the distance between him and the tree.


    He closed his eyes, relying instead on his two long-range sensory techniques, Tempestuous Feel and Seismic Mapping. He ovepped both images together, forming one image with remarkable detail and rity despite the distance between them.


    He had been training hard to gauge distance urately through Tempestuous Feel and Seismic Mapping. This had taken him a while as he tried various methods of obtaining an objective evaluation of distance. He tried using his body in his own senses as a measuring tape, he triedparing it to the max range of his sensory techniques, among other things. The problem was none of these were truly objective since his height certainly wasn''t constant, and the maximum range of his sensory techniques also wasn''t necessarily constant.


    Instead, he carried a small rigid ruler on his person at all times. This allowed Rui to gain an objective measure of the distances of things that he senses by referring to his ruler and scaling the actual distance from that. It was not convenient, but he was willing to tolerate it. As a Martial Squire with a superhuman physique, the weight of a single ruler was beyond negligible and didn''t hamper him in any way at all.


    "Five hundred and eight point two meters, forty-three point one degrees of inclination below principle axis," Rui noted before plugging the data into thetest iteration of the first phase of the ODA System. He quicklyputed the outputs, gathering the relevantunch data that told him how tounch his Sonic Bullets for a perfectly urate aim.


    However, this didn''t take into ount atmospheric conditions. That was what the second phase was for. He closed his eyes once more, diving deep into the Tempestuous Feel technique. He felt the air currents, the pressure shifts, the temperature, and other environmental parameters. He inhaled and exhaled deeply, sharpening his focus, gathering his mind, and refining his concentration.


    Had a human been there, they may have already fainted from the tremendous amount of pressure that he was generating.


    When he was ready he immediately took the sensory readings of the Tempestuous Feel technique before throwing them into the second phase of the ODA system, processing them as quickly as possible. Unlike with the first phase, he was on a restrictive time limit. If he was even a moment toote, then it would be toote as the data would have grown outdated by then.


    Just when he finished, his expression dropped. "Tsk! Toote, I''m not as used to this yet."


    Thankfully, he didn''t need to begin with the first phase, which didn''t have a relevancy lifespan, not a short one anyway. He immediately began with the second phase once again, furiouslypleting the already highly simplified calctions.


    Suddenly he swiftly positioned himself appropriately before lightly opening his mouth.


    THWOOM


    A sound projectile flew out of his mouth, traveling forward with a certain inclination down. Less than two secondster.


    POW!


    The little tree''s stump exploded in the middle, as several baseball-ball-sized holes and a deep hole in the ground appeared in the trees behind it.<novelnext></novelnext>


    A perfect shot.


    "YES!" Rui leaped hundreds of meters into the air in unrestrained celebration. "It only took more than half a year for the very first sessful execution of Project Sniper!"


    Even as he tried topose himself, he couldn''t stop a wide grin from appearing on his face. It couldn''t be helped, the sheer satisfaction and pure joy that came with seeding with a project after nearly seven months of work was immense.


    This marked a new chapter in his Martial Path, a new milestone. This was his first truly original Martial Art technique as a Martial Artist. While it was true that there were other instances of individuality and


    "Ok ok... Calm down, it''s just one sess amidst a lot of failed tries. I still need to reach a point where I seed one hundred percent of the time, only then is this project an absolute and true sess in every sense of the word."


    Rui sky-walked over to the target site, wanting to get a closer look. Now that he got over the joy of sess, he was fully cognizant of just how incredible the feat he just performed was!


    Almost half a kilometer under windy conditions and heunched a sound bullet that traveled and struck the target urately.


    The sheer difficulty of such a feat could not be overstated!


    Rui was extremely certain that extremely few, if not zero, Martial Squires in the Kandrian Empire were capable of such uracy at such arge distance away from the target. His feat would likely shock even Martial Squires whose Martial Paths were centered around long-range uracy! Regardless of which system of technique they relied on.


    (''This is the power of synergy and individuality.'') Rui''s eyes glinted with a deeper understanding.


    Project Sniper and the ODA system that he had created were extremely synergetic with him, they were born out of his understanding of science, and were only viable because of his monstrous ability to process arge amount of data necessary in a short amount of time.


    Its very existence was born out of his strengths and its very functioning required his strengths. Strengths that no Martial Squire in the entire Empire possessed!


    In return, it gave him frightening long-range uracy!N?vel(D)rama.Org''s content.


    Now, Rui could fight enemies from an extreme distance, sniping them with urate Sonic Bullets while his enemies would have no way of fighting back! This was a broken strategy that not many could viably ovee.


    However, its greatest strengths showed up when its targets were unaware that they were being targeted but were still highly protected and secure.


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 Chapter 572 Implications

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    The Martial Union received a flood of all kinds ofmissions every day. Among these were those of the antagonistic kind, the kind that fell into the offense ss or the shadow ss of missions. The offense ss dealt with head-on missions that involved aggressing straightforward conflict. The shadow ss dealt, in part, with missions with the same goal, but done covertly and secretively.


    That was the key difference between the offense and shadow ss of missions. Killing someone straightforwardly in front of anyone after rushing towards them directly, or killing someone extremely covertly, secretively, and concealingly.


    Rui hadpleted missions of the former, like when he dragged and murdered King Fujilin in public in front of everyone. However, he had never had the opportunity to undertake missions of thetter kind. Mostly because he never had the necessary skillset.


    Now, however, that was no longer true. He had the skillset to kill covertly and concealingly, thanks to Project Sniper.


    As the title of the Project explicitly said, it allowed him to snipe his targets from a great distance away. It allowed him to kill his targets from an exceedingly high distance away. Higher than would trigger the rms of sensory bodyguard Martial Artists keeping a watchful eye around their target of protection.


    "That''s not all," Rui muttered as he recalled another trait that made it highly suited for sniping assassinations.


    The projectile he wasunching was the Sonic Bullet technique. The advantage of this technique was that concentrated sound pockets like the Sonic Bullet technique were difficult to detect directly and ahead of time. The reason for this was that a sound wave or pulse did not produce any of its own sound that could be used to detect it ahead of time. Sound could be used to detect and sense other objects and phenomena that produced sound, sounds in and of themselves could not be detected through that same method.


    Simr to how light could be used to perceive other objects that reflected or gave off light, light itself was not something that could be perceived in the same manner because it did not give off light itself.


    This meant that detecting the Sound Bullet technique after it had already beenunched was difficult. The disadvantage of the technique was that itsunch was very easy to detect even without sensory techniques. As long as it happened close enough, the breathing and generation of the sound were detectable phenomena as long as they happened close enough. The process to generate such a concentrated sound pulse was very intense and simply could not be missed even by normal humans.


    This was the reason that the Sonic Bullet was normally unfit for assassinations. Normally, it drew too much attention within a certain range.


    Normally, that is.


    "That doesn''t apply to me." Rui grinned.


    The reason Rui was exempt from this drawback was that he wasunching from extraordinary distances away!


    It was not possible to distinguish theunch of the technique in the background of meaningless sensory input or ''white noise'', because it blended and melted entirely! This was what happened over extremely long distances.


    Thus, Rui''s strengths allowed him to ovee the greatest obstacle preventing the Sonic Bullet from bing a force to reckon with in the assassination industry.


    This meant that Rui could potentially get away with assassinating people that no Martial Squire could possibly assassinate!


    Although he didn''t enjoy the act of murder, he did enjoy exercising the results of his hard work and making a concrete impact in the world with it.<novelnext></novelnext>


    (''There''s still some time before I can reach a stage where I can use it in missions, however.'') Rui sighed.


    He needed to build the muscle memory of executing the ODA system''s protocols as fast as possible, otherwise, he would not be able to guarantee that he would get an urate shot one hundred percent of the time.


    (''Well, I''ve worked enough on this for today.'') Rui noted as he looked down at his pocket watch. (''It''s about time for her to arrive soon enough, I suppose.'')


    And he was right, soon enough, Squire Casen had arrived.


    "Squire Quarrier." She told him as shended from the sky. "I got your message about your trainingmission to me ending soon."


    "That''s right." Rui nodded. "As I''m sure you''ve realized, I''vee quite close to mastering the technique that I''ve been training with you. Once I''ve obtained the satisfactory degree of mastery that I''m looking to achieve, themission will end then."


    "I appreciate you informing me about this in advance." She told him. "How long do you suspect it will be before themission finally ends, precisely?"


    "Well, we can find out today," Rui replied nonchntly as he took his stance.


    "Very well."


    She too took her own stance. The air froze under the pressure that the two Martial Squires emanated, Rui had recently requested her to go increasingly all out with her striking offense with each session. Today she didn''t intend to hold back at all to help Rui gauge how far away he was from obtaining the degree of mastering that he hoped to achieve.


    Suddenly, sheshed out toward him with remarkable velocity, leaving behind shockwaves in her path. She threw a powerful straight right at Rui.


    Rui''s eyes narrowed as he intercepted the attack with his palm, going with the attack, while simultaneously executing the Reverberating Lance technique with his back leg. As her attack moved forward, pushing his increasingly resistant palm, Rui pushed himself downwards with her attack.


    RUMBLE


    The ground shook as Rui''s back leg sessfully permeated all of the impact deep into the ground.


    Squire Casen''s eyes widened as she felt the energy and impact of her strike being harmlessly dispelled away. It was a bizarre sensation, she threw all her power into the strike, yet from the moment Rui touched it, she felt her attack bing weaker and weaker.


    It was only now that she understood what Rui had been working on for more than half a year!


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 Chapter 573 Test

    She grew more serious as she threw swift yet powerful jabs. Her Martial Path was centered around agile momentum. She ced equal weight on speed and power, allowing her tond a great deal of solid strikes quite quickly. The reason she had chosen to ept this mission in the first ce was that her Martial Path suited the needs of the mission quite well.


    She was quite curious to see what Rui had actually aplished after training with her for so long. She decided to use the entirety of her arsenal to test his current prowess.


    POW POW POW


    Rui intercepted all of the strikes with palms while effectively spamming Reverberating Lance with his back leg, while also pushing himself down every time she intercepted a strike.


    Squire Casen twisted her core as shended a devastating roundhouse kick.


    CLASP


    To her surprise, Rui managed to intercept and dispel the momentum that she had painstakingly gathered with the torque of her body.


    RUMBLE


    The verynd shook under the sheer amount of power that Rui was permeating across its depths. Of course, this didn''t even hamper either of the Martial Squires, the vibrations were urring so slowly in their perception that it may as well have not been urring at all.


    As Rui put himself on max alert and focus to dispel the energy of all her attacks, he purposely avoided using the VOID algorithm to build a predictive model and adapt to her entire Martial Art. The point of this training, and of this particr exchange was to test how well he had mastered Project Bounce.


    Bringing in the VOID algorithm would ruin that because it would take the burden off him and make it too easy to defend against her attacks. Even if he was imperfect with Project Bounce, the VOID algorithm was simply too powerful, he would be able to counter her so easily that he would not notice any imperfections in the master of the technique.


    Thus, for the time being, he consciously avoided building a predictive model on her.


    Of course, once he verified that he was doing just fine as far as proficiency went, he would not hesitate to use it with the VOID algorithm. After all, using it with the VOID algorithm was how he would be fighting against his opponents and enemies normally.


    Rui almost wanted to abandon his abstinence and immediately begin using the VOID algorithm to see just how incredibly powerful his defense had no doubt grown thanks to the synergy between the VOID algorithm and Project Bounce.


    He could feel it in his bones that the sheer amount of defensive prowess he would no doubt gain due to the synergy between the VOID algorithm would be far beyond anything he would obtain through an of the defensive techniques in the library.N?velDrama.Org owns ? this.


    Yet he managed to reign in his urge.


    (''This... is ridiculous!'') Squire Casen, on the other hand, was incredibly impressed by his current prowess. (''It''s like I''m fighting a defensive Martial Squire of a higher grade!'')


    BAM


    Shended what should have been a devastatingly impactful dropkick right on top of his head she found that even such an attack was entirely dispelled. It was utterly confounding to her.


    Although she had been watching Rui for nearly half a year, the level of understanding she had managed to develop about his intentions wasn''t actually that deep. Part of it was because shecked the scientific background to understand exactly what Rui was doing.


    In her eyes, Rui had simply gone from sending himself flying with each strike to sending himself digging into the ground with each strike to suddenly magically dispelling all of the power of her attack into thin air!


    It was an utterly ridiculous transition from her perspective. Where was the power of her strike going? How could it vanish so easily?<novelnext></novelnext>


    (''Something like this might very well be a grade nine defensive technique!'')


    She did not speak vainly. Her biggest nemesis was the solid active defensive technique.


    Rui immediately sky-walked into the sky. "Come. I wish to test my defensive prowess in the air."


    She nodded,shing out toward him high in the air.


    Rui grew even more serious. Dispelling the energy of the attacks in the sky was harder because the air was not as much of a conductor of impacts the way the ground was.


    She ran towards him, throwing a powerful kick.


    VMMM!


    Both of their faces morphed, surprised. When Rui dispelled the attack into the air, a strange sound was produced.


    (''I see. My vibrations are partially turning into air currents, but also sound when I use Reverberating Lance to dispel the impact in the air.'') Rui realized.


    It made sense, sound was nothing but vibrations in the air, thus Reverberating Lance, which generated vibrations, also generated sound when used to dispel attacks in the air!


    He didn''t normally notice this effect because he only used Reverberating Lance at the moment of impact with another body, thus sound was never generated because the attack permeated into the body of his opponent, rather than into the air.


    VMMM!


    BRMMM!


    RNNNN!


    What Rui found most interesting was that the pitch of the sound seemed to be proportional to the pitch of the sound generated. The stronger the attack, the higher the pitch and frequency of the sound generated.


    EEEEEEEE!


    Rui winced as he felt a shiver go down his spine. The sound was particrly high-pitched which was extremely irritating and painful, like chalk on a board.


    (''I need to keep that in mind.'')


    WHOOSH


    Rui chose to evade another attack as he returned to the ground. Squire Casen chased immediately after him from a height above. She sprinted downwards at absolute top speed, gaining a tremendous amount of speed and momentum as several sonic booms recoiled across the sky. As she approached the ground, her leg stretched all the way, before striking downwards with incredible power.


    This drop kickbined one of her most powerful strikes that were greatly empowered by the immense momentum she had generated!


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 Chapter 574 End

    RUMBLE


    Thend around them rocked violently under the devastating power of the strike of the Martial Squire. Rui gritted his teeth as he did his best to sessfully dispel the power of the strike entirely.


    THUD


    Squire Casennded aside heavily, shocked at how Rui, yet again, managed to somehow make all the power she generated disappear into thin air.


    Rui, on the other hand, was thoroughly pleased with the prowess of the technique he had created. The fact that a single technique was able to aplish this much was already incredibly impressive. It would definitely be the mainstay defensive technique of his Martial Art.


    In fact, he could thoroughly forget about Inner Divergence in one-on-one fights, at least. Only if his arms were extremely preupied with other matters would he be in a position where he was forced to use Inner Divergence instead of his new technique.


    They continued sparring for a few hours, as Rui tested the performance of his new technique in the heat of battle. Thankfully, it seemed that she was quite the diverse offensive striker capable of all kinds of both simple andplex striking attacks. Furthermore, when used with each other back-to-back, they were much different than when they were used individually and isted.


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    It allowed him to ensure that there weren''t any chinks in the defense provided by his new technique. For instance, he got to test the technique against a double-blowbo where the two attacks wereunched in opposite directions.


    He also discovered that he could dispel multiple attacks at once as long as he made sure that the vector of the inherited momentum always faced downwards.


    He realized that against piercing attacks that he couldn''t afford to take head-on, it was best to catch the attack by the wrist and apply the technique that way, which worked just fine.


    By the end of the training session, he had ironed out all the foundations and the basics, satisfied with the degree of proficiency and effectiveness the technique had.


    "Alright, that brings us to an end for today''s session." Rui nced at his pocket watch. "Thank you for all the aid that you''ve provided over the past half year, you''ve helped me finally reach where I''ve wanted to reach."


    Squire Casen stirred, understanding his message. "Does that mean...?"


    "Yes, I think today will be thest training session. Frankly, I thought it might take a little longer, but I''ve arrived where I''ve wanted to be." Rui gently replied.


    "I see..." She sighed. "Well, I guess this is it."


    "I guess it is."


    "Before I leave..." She hesitated. "I''d like to thank you."


    "What for?" Rui''s eyebrow rose.<novelnext></novelnext>


    "For inspiring me to take the initiative to walk my own path." She replied. "Watching you build such a remarkable technique from absolutely nothing has been enlightening. You are truly the ideal Martial Artist, and all of us pursuing our Martial Paths should take after your example. I, for one, intend to."


    "Thank you, I''m d to hear I made a positive impact doing what I love most." Rui smiled. "Good luck, and goodbye."


    "Goodbye." She nodded, before skywalking away.


    Rui''s thoughts immediately turned back to Project Bounce.


    (''I need to stop calling it that.'') Rui mused. (''Project Bounce has seeded, and the technique that I will be using from now on has also been created. It needs its own name.'')


    Rui wanted to pick a name that did the technique justice, one that had just enough dignity to do a technique that powerful justice, while also ensuring that it was an urate representation of the technique.


    "Flux Earther."


    It was a simple name, not the most straightforward, certainly, but Rui liked how it sounded. The former half of the name came from the fact that Rui essentially absorbed an influx of kic energy before transmitting it out to the environment as an outflux of energy. Thetter half came from the earthing systems used to ground electric charges and current to get rid of them. It wasn''t too dissimr to what Rui did with the attacks of his opponents.


    Thus, Flux Earther was what he chose to dub the name.


    Now that he had sessfullypleted the technique to the point that it was deployable inbat, he felt an immense wave of satisfaction. A part of him immediately wanted to pick out a mission where he could test the technique against a real opponent that was trying to kill him.


    Yet his better sense stopped him.


    He still hadn''t fullypleted Project Sniper. It would be extremely detrimental to abandon the project when it was just one step away frompletion, all he needed to do now was refine the final stages of the technique before he could achieve the degree of proficiency with that technique that he desired.


    Unfortunately, he was at the stage where he couldn''t shorten the process with ingenuity. He was at the stage where he needed to burn the ODA System into his mind and muscles with repetitive hard work and practice. There was a limit to how much of the conventional path to uracy he could rece with uracy.


    The ODA System, specifically the second half of the technique, was something that had a very small window of operation. Even just one beatte would mean that his work was futile, he would need to start over. In the middle ofbat, or even when assassinating a target, he could not afford to fail, thus he could not ever afford to be even a beatte.


    It could mean giving his opponent just the window they needed to leap in from the great distance between them and turn it into a close-quarter fight where Project Sniper was almost entirely useless. The ODA System was useless when the target was within a certain range since Rui''s inherent uracy was good enough to be able to hit them right even without the ODA System.


    "Once I''m done mastering Project Sniper, I can finally go out into the field and apply what I''ve painstakingly built!" A glint of excitement appeared in his eyes.


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 Chapter 575 Pathfinder

    Rui narrowed his eyes as he followed the movements of a Hermitian Squirrel. This species of squirrel, which was known for its remarkable senses and illusive agility and speed made for the perfect sniping practice target. It was an Apprentice-level creature in a forest in the Mantian region


    It sniffed around, winding about a tree, it was never static for more than a second. This would normally make it practically impossible to snipe for more than half a kilometer away.


    Yet Rui was attempting to do just that.


    He kept track of the squirrel with the help of Tempestuous Feel and Seismic Mapping, of course. He had also already built a predictive model of its movements, having observed it for a while. It was difficult to build predictive models of targets outside ofbat, especially erratic creatures like Hermitian Squirrels, but as long as Rui had enough time and data, he could pull it off, it just wouldn''t be as effective as ones made out of and forbat.


    Suddenly, his eyes widened as he executed the ODA System with the predictions of the VOID algorithm. Just a momentter, his mouth opened, and a dense sound projectile escaped from it, flying straight towards his target.


    THWOOM!


    The projectile coursed forward at the speed of sound, before nailing the target in the head.


    SPLAT


    Even though the energy of the projectile had undoubtedly decreased over therge distance that it had traveled across, it still was more than strong enough to crush the bodies of Apprentice-level creatures. The head of the squirrel exploded into a confetti of blood and tissue.


    "YES!" Rui eximed, rejoicing as he managed to execute an exceedingly difficult snipe. It was more than just a little difficult to snipe hermitian squirrels from that distance, any Martial Squire wouldugh and call him a liar if he imed that he was capable of such a feat.


    "It''s finally done!" Rui pumped his fist. "Seven months is all it took!"


    That was partially sarcastic and partially genuine. Seven months for developing a technique, or two techniques, was much longer than it took to master two techniques of the Martial Union that had been refined, and had a well-constructed training regiment as well as the necessary training resources to master it. Yet, it was also an incredibly short amount of time considering he created a potent brand-new technique out of nothing.


    Rui had to suppress the urge, once more, to sprint to the Martial Union, and immediately pick out a mission.


    "Wait, hold on." He stopped himself "I still have shit to do."


    He needed to name this technique as well. He was quite satisfied with his previous name, and thus wanted toe up with something just as good.<novelnext></novelnext>


    "Pathfinder."


    It was a simple name that bore allusions to the purpose of the technique. Ultimately it was one that satisfied Rui, and that was all that mattered.


    After seven months of effort, he had finally created the Flux Earther and the Pathfinder techniques, the twotest additions to his Martial Art, strengthening it tremendously.


    "Alright, now that I''ve finished training, I have to go pick some missions that will allow me to use these techniques in the field."


    Finding missions that would allow him to use the Pathfinder technique was easy, all he had to was go pick some assassination missions and that would most likely allow him to exercise the technique.


    As for Flux Earther, ideally, he would be on a bodyguard mission when a striking-oriented Martial Artist tried to assassinate his target of protection, and he would be able to exercise the Flux Earther technique.


    However, the most ideal circumstance would be a striking-oriented Martial Artist trying to kill him. If he was protecting someone, he couldn''t fool around and prolong the battle because he wanted to test the limits of his techniques. That would be hical and also a vition of the agreements that every Martial Artist had with the Martial Union.


    It wasn''t as easy to be able to perfectly choose a mission that would specifically allow him to test the Flux Earther technique or any other single technique in his Martial Art. Especially one that technique addressed only one aspect ofbat whenbat will naturally include all aspects unless both Martial Artists were extreme specialists. But even then, even the most extreme defensive Martial Artists needed to attack, some way or the other, to win, and even the most extreme offensive Martial Artists needed some way to defend or evade to not lose.


    Inparison, the Pathfinder technique could be used outside confrontations, giving it greater versatility in utility. Inparison, the Flux Earther technique could only be used for defense against strikes and absolutely nothing else.


    "Not that that''s a bad thing," Rui noted.


    The Flux Earther did the one thing it was supposed to do extremely well. The defensive prowess that this technique gave him was much greater than Adamant Reforging and Inner Divergencebined. Normally, his limit with the difficulty and potency of techniques was grade seven, at least, as far as techniques offered by the Martial Union went.Belonging ? N?velDram/a.Org.


    However, because of the synergy this technique had with his capabilities, it effectively performed at much higher grades of potency. Its difficulty was not low either, if anybody else tried to master the Flux Earther technique, they were almost guaranteed to fail.


    Because theycked Rui''s unique strengths that allowed him to master and execute the technique with admirable proficiency. That was why his defensive prowess had suddenly be on par with a defensive Martial Artist despite being an all-rounder in every sense. It was much more difficult to bridge the gap between all-rounders and specialists in the Squire Realm because the gap between their bodies was enormous in addition to techniques that were synergetic with their bodies and capabilities.


    If not for the fact that Rui had created a truly impressive defensive technique, it would have been impossible for him to match the defensive prowess of a defensive Martial Squire.


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 Chapter 576 Also

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    There was a very concrete example of this. In his previous mission at Mt Zurtun, he had run into a powerful defensive Martial Artist who could entirely negate the entirety of Rui''s offensive arsenal. He had, to some degree, turned into the motivation and inspiration for Project Bounce.


    The man''s defensive prowess came from techniques that were synergetic enough with his rubberized Martial body. Together, his defensive prowess was far greater than that of an all-rounder Martial Squire like Rui, than it would have been had both of them been Martial Apprentices.


    Yet, now that Rui had created the Flux Earther technique, he didn''t think there was a significant gap between their defensive prowess at all. Rui was very confident that the Flux Earther technique could replicate all of the feats that the defensive Martial Squire had aplished in their fight.


    One disadvantage that he had was that the defensive technique was an active defensive technique that required his judgment to function while it seemed as though the defensive Martial Squire that he had fought operated with passive techniques.


    Still, this could also work out in his favor, since excellent judgment would yield excellent oues in the case of active techniques. The same could not be said for passive techniques which were static andrgely unchanging generally.


    "We''ll just have to see whether that will happen or not." Rui shook his head, before turning away and taking off.


    Yet he didn''t intend to go back to the Quarrier Orphanage. He headed straight toward the town of Hajin. It had been far too long since he had undertaken a mission. Seven months of no real-life action that could make his nerves tingle and his heart pound made him feel like his instincts were dulling. No amount of training could rece the genuine fear of death and uncertainty.


    It stimted a Martial Artist''s potential better than any training could possibly do so. Nothing pushed Martial Artists beyond their limits than the possibility of losing the most important thing to them all.


    "Yet before that, I have an appointment to be at." Rui smiled, as he looked at his pocket watch.


    Soon.


    He immediately sped up, heading towards the town of Hajin, before arriving andnding outside a little caf??, of sorts.


    He was early, but he didn''t mind waiting.


    After all, it had been a while since.


    "Hey, you''re early." Kane greeted him as he descended from the air, skywalking.


    Rui wordlessly smiled as he scrutinized Kane''s new form.


    The first thing that he noted was the low-end Squire-level sense of threat that Rui felt from Kane with the help of Primordial Instinct.


    "You''ve arrived." Rui grinned, replying with a measured tone. It was intended to be a double entendre. Kane certainly had arrived at their rendezvous, but he had also arrived at the Squire Realm.


    "I have," Kane smirked.


    He exerted a faint sense of danger to Rui, yet it was unlike anything he had sensed from a Martial Squire. It was the kind of pressure that one felt when one noticed a viper camouged in in sight. OR the kind of pressure that one felt when one noticed the scales of a croc at the edge of theke that one was standing too close to.<novelnext></novelnext>


    Kane had called Rui several months ago, informing him of the fact that he had be a Squire candidate, and would be undergoing the breakthrough to the Squire Realm.


    He had also mastered the modified Mind-Switch technique that Rui had given him, realizing its use after he had mastered it. However, he only learned of its genuine value after he underwent the seminar exining the process of breaking through to the Squire Realm.


    Several monthster, he finally contacted Rui again, informing him he had sessfully broken through and had be a Martial Squire who was also in control of his power.


    "How was the Squire habilitation process?" Rui asked.


    "Tedious and tiring." Kane sighed wearily. "I cannot tell you how fucking relieved I am to actually be without that suffocating restrictive suit every second of the day. Hell, that was my single best motivation to finish the Squire habilitation phase as soon as possible. More than anything else."


    "I felt the same way, though I did enjoy regaining the feeling of control over my power and my body once more so it was worth it." Rui nodded. "Though it was still nothingpared to the suffering of the breakthrough to the Squire Realm."


    Kane winced at the very mention of it. "That was mind-shattering."


    "How long had itsted?"


    "About a week." Kane sighed. "I cannot believe yourssted for almost a month, how is your sanity not utterly destroyed from suffering and enduring that pain?"


    "I think Martial Artists have a much higher fortitude when ites to mastering these techniques. After all, ordinary people cannot learn even Apprentice-level conditioning techniques because the strain of the pain erodes their mind, but our Martial Path protects us from that." Rui mused out loud.


    "Well, I''m sure your Martial Path did you a big favor with that one," Kane grumbled. "You might just have suffered less if it hadn''t."


    "Are you saying I was better off dying in that procedure?"


    "Hey, those are your words, not mine."


    "What do you n on doing now?" Rui asked with an amused expression.


    "I need to relearn the core of my Martial Art," Kane replied, shrugging. "Can''t do without certain techniques."


    "Do you n on re-mastering Void Step?" Rui asked, interested in Kane''s decisions. He was in a bit of a different spot than Rui for whom almost no single technique of the Martial Union was of vital importance to his Martial Art. The same couldn''t necessarily be said for Kane who possessed numerous techniques that defined the core of his very approach inbat.


    "Definitely." Kane nodded. "That and a few others, but I don''t think I''ll be mastering everything. I''ve learned that there are reasons not to fall back into the same learning patterns that I had as a Martial Apprentice."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 577 Realms

    "Synergy matters a lot, or so I''ve been told." Kane shrugged. "Also more individuality is needed apparently, more so than when we were Martial Apprentices. Yay, that''s fun. Just what I was hoping when I reached the Squire Realm."Belonging ? N?velDram/a.Org.


    Rui chuckled at the oozing sarcasm from his tone. "Trust me, you want to have both of those. I recently got a sessful taste of both, it''s actually startling how important both of them are, and how much value they can impart to you."


    Kane raised an eyebrow. "You''ve already developed your techniques from scratch? I guess that shouldn''t be surprising considering that you''ve already done that even before you became a Martial Squire."


    "That was a modification." Rui reminded him. Of course, Rui had definitely created techniques from scratch when he created the VOID algorithm, but that took a ridiculous amount of time to fully aplish.


    Besides, he wasn''t even sure if the VOID algorithm would count as a Martial Art technique. It felt more urate to say that it was his Martial Path.


    "So?" Kane asked expectantly. "What did youe up with?"


    "A long-range technique and defensive technique," Rui replied simply.


    "Knowing you, I bet neither of them is anywhere near normal techniques, are they? Go on, spit it out. I bet that long-range technique can kill people across the country while that defensive technique can allow you to withstand attacks from Martial Seniors, correct?" Kane smirked, amused.


    "Stop." Rui''s re was half mirthful and half real. "You just make what they actually are sound unimpressive when you make such exaggerated guesses. Not the two techniques don''t feel like much inparison to your guesses. Do you have any idea how difficult creating them was? Stop taking away my sense of aplishment."


    "That''s hrious." Kaneughed. "I''m sure they were mind-breakingly difficult to create, knowing you."


    "You have no idea." Rui sighed. "No wonder only a small proportion of Martial Squires break through to the Senior Realm. If it''s this difficult to take a single step towards that higher Realm, most Martial Squires simply won''t be able to reach that distant Realm within their lifetimes."


    "Stop." Kane sighed exasperated. "I haven''t even started yet and you''ve already made me dread it. Can''t I just enjoy being in the Squire Realm without having to worry about yet another climb from one Realm to another? Does it ever even end?"<novelnext></novelnext>


    Rui could sense a hint of real frustration behind the flippant tone. He found it hard to sympathize, on a personal level, with it. This was one avenue where Kane and Rui differed significantly, more than any other area. The long Martial Path that each Martial Artist had to walk, climbing Realm after Realm was a delight to Rui.


    Back on Earth, there was a very hard limit to both power and skill that every human had. There was no seemingly endless path that one could walk as far as individual and personal power went. As the biggest fan of martial arts and unarmedbat, this was always a shame to Rui, but he could not change reality.


    That was why he was exhrated and excited when he arrived in this world and discovered that only the sky was the limit for individual power. To Rui, this was something to celebrate and be grateful for. He loved the idea that he could pursue his Martial Art to brand-new and greater heights for a lifetime.


    As for Kane''sst question, he didn''t know whether the journey ever ended. The information regarding Martial Artists of higher Realms grew increasingly scarce and vague. For example, when he was a Martial Apprentice, he found it very difficult to obtain any specific information on Martial Squires. He had to literally memorize foreign research data on the breakthrough to the Squire Realm of a differentnguage, then master saidnguage, then trante the research data before getting Julian to study them, and finally tell him the secret.


    Those were the lengths he had to go to in order to obtain what he was looking for. And now, he hadn''t the faintest idea what the actual breakthrough to Senior Realm was. No clue whatsoever. Colonel Geringan had always been very careful to make sure that he wasn''t revealing something inadvertently in their conversations.


    As for the higher Realms, they were even more inscrutable. Rui had no doubt that any information on Martial Masters and Martial Sages was highly strategic confidential information.


    And then, of course, came the highly illusive Martial Transcendent Realm.


    This Realm was so far removed from Rui that he didn''t even dare to make guesses about what these legendary beings were capable of. He had no reliable way to find out. The Panama Continent was not like Earth where vast amounts of information that beggared the imagination flowed throughout the that could be essed instantly. There was no inte on the Panama Continent where Rui could Google what all these Martial Art ranks were and could do.


    He didn''t even know of the existence of even a single Martial Transcendent. He had never heard anyone credible utter anything meaningful or insightful about them. Rui could only assume that these Martial Artists had reached such titanic heights that they were no different from gods that were far removed from mortal squabbles and civilization that there were very few channels to obtain reliable information on them.


    Rui''s zed over as he wondered what all the Martial Artists of higher Realms were capable of. If the difference in power of Martial Artists between sessive Realms was the same as that of the difference of those between the Apprentice Realm and the Squire Realm, then the Martial Master and Sages, asbat assets, were no different from tactical nuclear missiles and bombs.


    Rui could scarcely imagine what these exalted beings could do. Master Aronian strongly withheld his mental pressure when interacting with lesser Martial Artists, yet even the tiny portion of his mental pressure that leaked out was tremendous, he could probably easily annihte every single Martial Apprentice in the Martial Academy simultaneously with minimal effort.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 578 Leave

    "Hey!" Kane snapped his finger in front of Rui, drawing his attention. "Are you even listening?"


    "Ah." Rui jerked back lightly. "My bad, I zoned out a little. You were saying?"


    "I was saying that I was considering leaving the Empire someday." Kane sighed.


    Rui''s eyes widened. "But why?"


    "To get away from all of this," Kane replied with a tired tone. "My family, the politics, all of it."


    "I thought you had more or less resolved the matter regarding your family?" Rui raised an eyebrow. "By joining the Lightning Sect."


    "I thought so too, but I realized that the Wind and Lightning Sects were just as suffocating as my family." He sighed. "They protect me from my family, but that gives them lots of leverage over me. Put that on top of the fact that they naturally have very high expectations from the start due to my potential and talent, it makes it hard to live the way I want."


    "Damn..." Rui''s eyes narrowed slightly.


    Now, this was an issue that Rui couldpletely understand and sympathize with. Rui absolutely valued his autonomy, without a doubt, he would not tolerate being beheld by another group with interests that weren''t entirely in line with his.


    Kane had worked really hard to obtain power that he could use to leverage to obtain the freedom he sought. But he realized that merely breaking through to the Squire Realm was not enough. While was true that the breakthrough to the Squire Realm was an important milestone in his Martial Path and journey, it was not enough to grant him the freedom he sought.


    Perhaps if he was alive half a millennium ago, this would have been enough. After all, the birth of Martial Squires a millennium ago was what allowed Martial Artists to break free of the power of the state and the power of many. Furthermore, there were no refined Squire-level techniques considering Squires hadn''t been around for a very long time. Furthermore, the evolution process probably would have been much weaker and far more iplete than it is today.


    Kane, even with his current prowess, would have undoubtedly been the most powerful human in that era and could have easily earned the freedom he sought.


    But in the modern world, where Martial Squires were just on the second rung of adder that had six steps, there was a limit to how much he could aplish with his own individual power.


    He had realized that he either needed to get much, much stronger and obtain the power needed to take the freedom he wanted, or he simply needed to leave the wide ecosystem in which his interests were threatened.


    It was no wonder that he considered leaving the Empire. That was probably much easier and far more straightforward than bing strong enough to defy his family without the help of the Lightning Sect.<novelnext></novelnext>


    "It''s not going to be as easy as you might be thinking." Rui sighed.


    "How not? I just leave and that''s that." Kane folded his arms.


    "Leaving only means that you''re forfeiting your protection from the Lightning Sect. But it doesn''t really mean much because your family is powerful and has influence within the Martial Union. You shouldn''t underestimate the intelligence-gathering capability of the Martial Union particrly in regards to matters that are directly tied to its own interests, such as one of the most promising Martial Squires of our generation leaving the Union." Rui exined.


    "But, I have the Void Step technique." Kane reminded him. "They cannot trace me that easily using regr tracking means."


    "That is true," Rui admitted. "While the Martial Union does have sensory Martial Artists that are capable of detecting you, it''s questionable whether they''ll be deployed to catch you. Most of them will probably be of the higher Realms. The only Martial Squire I know that that can sense you is..."


    He turned towards Kane. "Me."


    Kane''s expression grew more severe. He understood the underlying message, there was a chance Rui would be deployed to track Kane if there ever came a day when the martial Union wanted to track him.


    "You''ll either have to run extremely far away or use the Void Step technique a lot of the time if you''re just going to hide in one of the small satellite states of the Kandrian Empire. You can also forget about revealing your Martial Artist status wherever you choose to reside."


    "Why''s that?" Kane asked curiously.


    "Because it will instantly draw attention to you," Rui replied. "Martial Squires are fundamentally different from Martial Apprentices, Kane. I don''t mean just physically. Martial Apprentices can and do appear out of the poption somewhat naturally. But no Martial Squire has ever appeared naturally, we are all man-made products. Every Martial Squire was born out of some state or entity that possesses the means to break through to the Squire Realm. Thatbined with the fact that Martial Squires are far scarcer than Martial Apprentices and draw more attention to themselves than Martial Apprentices means that they are far easier to track and keep track of."


    "How does that work in a practical sense?" Kane asked him, absorbed.


    "I would not be surprised in the least if it were the case that the Martial Union had a grasp of the general location and identities of almost all Martial Squires in the surrounding states within arge range. It is very likely that this is the case," Rui recalled what he had learned when he brought back the corpse of his Martial Squire opponent and the martial Union identified him in a jiffy. "What do you think the Martial Union would conclude that a brand-new unknown Martial Squire has appeared in a somewhat distant state who possesses remarkable agility and speed, right after you left the country?"


    Kane''s face paled a little as he finally understood what Rui was getting at.


    "That Martial Artist would be pegged as a suspect and would be investigated. The only way you can avoid the situation I just described is if you never ever use your Martial Art, and distance yourself from all civilization."Content ? N?velDrama.Org.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 579 Choice

    In an age of Martial Art, Martial Artists were undoubtedly given a lot of attention and importance. In the eyes of sovereign states, Martial Artists were walking strategic weapons. They were no different from living tanks, jets, bombs, and missiles that had their own interests and agendas.


    Martial Squires, among them, held a somewhat unique ce. They were strong enough to be important and of great strategic importance, while also just enough that their numbers made them formidable, but not too many that they could not be individually treated as valued assets.


    And only irresponsible fools treated valued assets without care and caution. It was impossible for a Martial Squire to up and leave the nation without some repercussions or measures being employed by states. Rui was smart enough to know that Kane''s hopes of leaving the country, cutting all ties, and living a peaceful and blissful life were far-fetched, and the price to be paid for sess was high.


    "I''m curious though," Rui asked while Kane considered his words. "All this talk about the feasibility of fleeing and hiding made me think of an obvious solution; Why do you still need to be protected from your family? Your Martial Path is not suited for the Fire Sect, but now even your Martial body isn''t suitable for the Fire Sect. It isn''t like your family will kill you now, or destroy your future, so why not try to reconcile?"


    Kane snorted. "The Fire Sect isn''t the one that is after me. It''s my family. Yes, it''s true that my father leads the Fire Sect, but he isn''t employing the power and the influence of the Fire Sect to try and reign me in, he''s employing his own personal influence and power and that of the Arrancar Family. The reason the Lightning Sect treats it as the Fire Sect infringing on me, even though this isn''t the case, is because that''s how it looks like to everyone else."


    Rui quickly understood all the nuances of what Kane was trying to convey.


    "The Arrancar Family isn''t strictly associated with the Fire Sect, then?"


    "Not exclusively, no. Ultimately, while Martial Paths can be subtly and indirectly influenced over a lifetime of the most gentle and subtle conditioning, it cannot be controlled and there is always a perfectly usible possibility that the child of a certain Martial Family may end up having a Martial Path that is very different from that of what the family desired." Kane exined. "This is something that the Martialmunity has long learned and epted. Thus, my having an evasive maneuvering-oriented Martial Path isn''t enough for my family to forget about me. This is not an umon urrence, and no Martial Family is willing to let go of a genius Martial Squire who discovered his Martial Path at the age of eleven just because their Martial Path diverges from that of the Family head."


    "I see, that makes sense." Rui nodded.


    His interaction and exposure to the Martialmunity were limited. At most, he got glimpses of it in the Martial Games held by the DiVilier Family. This caused him to have a limited understanding of how things worked in the Martialmunity, as opposed to Kane who spent his whole life in the ecosystem, no doubt.


    "Well, then maybe you should consider running away." Rui thought out aloud.


    "Didn''t you just advise against it?" Kane frowned.


    "I just warned you of the difficulty and the price that you need to pay, most likely, to seed." Rui shook his head. "I never said it was a bad choice. Who knows, you might end up enjoying the solitude thates from suppressing your Martial Artist status forever and leaving a simple life in a remote ce."<novelnext></novelnext>


    Kane''s expression fell upon hearing that. "This shit is rough."


    "That it is." Rui nodded.


    "Sometimes I''m really quite envious of you, you know?" Kane sighed. "Your life sounds awesome."


    "It definitely has been thus far." Rui nodded. "Though what you disdain, I envy as well. I wonder how early I might have broken through had I the training and growth resources that you had, growing up."


    Potions and other training resources were a huge boon in getting stronger. While Rui made do with what he could, it wasn''t the same. He didn''t even have proper training and sparring partners. The adults had always been too busy to y around with him for too long, while the other kids in the Quarrier Orphanage were nowhere near what Kane had. They could at best take elementary roles in aiding his development and growth.


    He couldn''t even properly train in boxing and Brazilian Jiu-jitsu and other martial arts that went into training MMA, because he didn''t have the time to train them on how to help him train!


    Rui estimated that he very well could have discovered his Martial Path much earlier, perhaps not as early as Kane, but certainly earlier than he did. Definitely, before he entered the Martial Academy.


    Of course, it was true that the suffocating and unpleasant environment of the Arrancar Family was probably nightmarish and torturous to children, but Rui wasn''t a child.


    However, despite that, he would probably choose to be reborn in the Quarrier Orphanage even if he did have a chance to change that. That''s because they had already long solidified their ce in his heart as family. It was hard to imagine a world where that wasn''t the case.


    Even if it wasn''t particrly conducive to maximizing the rate of his growth, no matter how important his Martial Art was to him, he didn''t want to forsake them. The memories that he had formed in his childhood would stay with him forever.


    "What do you n to do from here on out?" Rui asked.


    He wanted to know what Kane would do in the short-term timeframe, and also in the long term. There was probably nothing he could afford to change in the meantime, he was simply too weak. He had just be a Martial Squire and was sorely unqualified to execute any radical ns.N?vel(D)rama.Org''s content.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 580 Class

    "Honestly, I''m just going to have to get stronger, forging my own path andpleting missions to gather more experience," Kane replied, sighing. "There isn''t much else to do besides that, for now at least."


    Rui nodded. "That''s level-headed and prudent. For now, your situation is stable, albeit far from what you desire. It''ll be a while before you have a chance to change that. Getting stronger by creating techniques that are synergetic with you is definitely a good initiative."


    Kane nodded, before asking. "How do you even create techniques from scratch?"


    "It''s difficult," Rui replied honestly. "But you don''t have to make it from scratch. For example, both my techniques use other techniques as building blocks. The long-range technique which I named Pathfinder required me to master two techniques from the Martial Union before I could incorporate them into the Pathfinder technique. My defensive technique also relies on Reverberating Lance, a striking supplementary technique that I learned as a Martial Apprentice."


    "Wait." Kane jerked his head back lightly. "You constructed a defensive technique out of a striking technique? How is that even possible, that makes no sense."


    "Be creative, Kane." Rui chuckled. "An offensive technique doesn''t necessarily only have to be used to inflict damage on your opponents, how you use techniques matters just as much as the techniques themselves."


    "Hm..." Kane''s eyes narrowed as he processed what Rui told him. "What was the thought process for creating the technique like? Did you just think ''alright, I''m going to create this technique like this'' or what?"


    "I identified my needs and my strengths, and then aimed to create a technique that fulfilled my needs to a great degree by relying on my strengths to do so," Rui told him as he looked up in thought. "That was how I conceived of the conceptual basis of the two techniques that I created. One addressed my long-range inability and the other addressed my defensive needs. Both of them rely on my unique strengths to do so, and wouldn''t be able to do it without them, that is true synergy."


    "That actually makes a lot of sense, now that I think of it." Kane nodded. "My current needs are... frankly everything because I only have a few techniques right now. My strengths are my speed, agility, and evasive mobility."


    "Also your affinity for techniques centered around thosebat attributes." Rui pointed.


    "But that isn''t relevant if I''m trying to create a new technique rather than learn already constructed techniques, right?" Kane frowned.


    "As I said, you can incorporate existing techniques into your new technique partially, or even wholly." Rui reminded. "As long as the concept of your technique truly stems from you, it will be individualistic enough to help you take a step towards the Senior Realm."


    "Interesting..." Kane began to grow a little more interested in the matter. "It''s incredible how you are probably the only person who can make me enjoy Martial Art. Talking to you is rather refreshing after the torment that I''ve gone through in the past few months."


    "Any time." Rui nodded.<novelnext></novelnext>


    The two conversed for some more time before it was time to split up. After all, Rui had other ns and Kane had other things to attend to.


    "Anyways, I''m d to have spoken to you after I got out." Kane sped Rui''s hand in a partial hug.


    "Me too, it''s remarkable that you finished your Squire habilitation phase just before I picked my first mission in a while." Rui nodded. "Take care, Kane. And congrattions on reaching the Squire Realm. I''ve been waiting to congratte you in person."


    The two of them exchanged farewells as they went their separate ways. Rui headed straight toward the Martial Union. He could barely suppress his excitement as he swiftly made his over to the Hajin branch office of the Martial Union. He would not be dyed in the undertaking of a mission that would allow him to employ and exercise his new techniques in the field.


    He swiftlypleted the security check-in before immediately heading to the mission library.


    Once he entered, he was gued with the age-old dilemma of which ss of missions he ought to go for. Thankfully, the fact that he had a more specific goal that he hoped to fulfill with whatever mission he ended up choosing.


    (''It is probably impossible to rigorously use both techniques in one mission.'') Rui had already realized this.


    The scenarios and circumstances in which the techniques would feasibly be used were almost entirely mutually exclusive from each other. The Pathfinder technique could only be thoroughly tested in circumstances where there was a great distance between him and his target or opponent. How could he exercise the Flux Earther technique in such a situation? It was practically unfeasible.


    (''I''ll need to begin with a mission that allows me to thoroughly test one over the other.'') Rui sighed. It was unfortunate.


    Furthermore, one technique was easier to find missions very well suited than the other. The Pathfinder technique was born for sniper assassin missions and hunting missions. It would be quite effective and would shine in both of these circumstances.


    On the other hand, the Flux Earther technique would work best in a bodyguard mission. However, that was only if the target of protection was actually under attack. Most bodyguard missions did not have intense life-threateningbat. Rui knew this from experience.


    Bodyguards served as a deterrence more than anything. They severely disincentivized attacking the target of protection of the bodyguards because those bodyguards ensured that there were consequences for trying to attack their client. Rui wasn''t sure he would actually get to use the technique all that often. In fact, he was more likely to use the Flux Earther technique in an offense ss mission than he was to use it in a defense ss mission.


    After all, offense ss missions guaranteedbat while defense ss missions didn''t necessarily do so. Rui would rather go for a guaranteed generalbat application of the Flux Earther technique than the possibility of a specialized application of it.Content ? N?velDrama.Org.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 581 Approve

    The hunting ss of missions sounded just fine for the Pathfinder technique, but the shadow ss of missions sounded even better.


    (''The problem is that these sses of missions have a higher barrier of entry than other sses of missions.'') Rui noted.


    For most other sses, having a few extra techniques of a certain kind was good enough to be more or less eligible to undertake missions of those sses. However, the same could not be said for the shadow ss of missions. It was most divergent from standardbat, and thus, it wasn''t as simple for Martial Artists to get into this field.


    One needed a foundation in stealth, sensory capabilities, and assassination capabilities to enter this field.


    (''Thankfully, I should be just barely passable.'') Rui noted.


    While he didn''t have stealth, he had the ability to disguise himself as a normal human being even to the senses of other Martial Artists. This gave him the ability to infiltrate ces under the guise of being a normal human, it wasn''t something an overwhelming majority of Martial Squires could do. Even people who had mastered the Mind Mask technique couldn''t use it as well as Rui because their imaginations weren''t as powerful as he was.


    He had pretty good sensory abilities thanks to his three sensory techniques. Primordial instinct was mainly abat-oriented sensory technique whereas the rest of his sensory techniques were broadly applicable and had a wider range.


    As for assassination, he certainly did have the tool to do so with his newly developed Pathfinder. Furthermore, with how far he could assassinate targets, he didn''t particrly need stealth capabilities. Stealth was more relevant when he needed to be in the vicinity of his target or within a surveilled area.


    He went to the shadow ss of missions, having chosen to take a mission from there.Content ? N?velDrama.Org.


    (''Come to think of it, this is the first time I''m taking a shadow ss mission.'') Rui mused.


    It couldn''t be helped; the high barrier of entry prevented him from entering this field when he was a Martial Apprentice. Furthermore, assassinations didn''t guarantee having to engage inbat against Martial Artists of the same ss, thus Rui, who had always been in pursuit of realbat experience, never felt driven to go for this particr ss of missions.


    He sauntered across as he skimmed through the many mission bills that were ced there, before running into something that caught his eye.


    [Shadow ss mission: Assassination mission.


    Client: Fauche Viril


    Target of assassination: Hergusen Meine


    Target location: Republic of Menrea


    Difficulty grade: 4


    Remuneration: 7000 Martial credits.


    Mission summary: The target is one of the directors of the board of directors that the client is the vice president of. The target is guarded by two low-grade bodyguard Martial Squires at all times, estimated to be adept sensors and defensive Martial Artists. The client has special conditions for the assassination.]<novelnext></novelnext>


    "Interesting," Rui murmured. "Two defensive Martial Squires with sensory capabilities is actually an excellent opportunity to try out Pathfinder in the field. Furthermore, it will help me gain some credibility as a Martial Artist entering the Shadow ss of missions for the first time once I seed."


    Rui was not unaware that even if he was truly capable of some incredible feats, it was difficult to gain recognition for those feats right off the bat. Ultimately, the best proof of his ability to assassinate in the field was a good track record, and nothing could truly rece a good track record. He needed to start from scratch and build up a good reputation as he piled up achievement after achievement.


    Only then would he truly be able to get his hands on missions andmissions that truly tested his limits that effectively no other Martial Squire could possiblyplete?


    (''This is a good start.'') Rui nodded.


    He plucked the mission bill out of the slot as he headed over to the registration counter.


    "Excuse me, I''d like to ept this mission please." Rui offered her the mission bill along with his Martial license.


    "One moment please." The staff member took both of them before tapping on her terminal.


    "I''m afraid the client has applied for a conditional-approvalmission; he would like to meet with the Martial Artist who seeks to ept themission before allowing them to ept it." The staff member smiled apologetically. "I''m afraid you can only ept this mission after the approval of the client."


    Rui frowned. "That''s a thing? I didn''t know clients could do that."


    "It costs an extra fee as it dys the rate ofpletion of missions, hence clients of missions in the Apprentice Realm generally don''t apply for them, however, this is not an umon sight for many Squire-level missions." The staff member informed him.


    "I see..."


    Rui had onlypleted four Squire-level missions, he didn''t have much experience with dealing with Squire-level missions. However, he could see how clients who were wealthy enough to afford Squire-level missions on a regr cared about the Martial Artist fulfilling theirmissions that they did the fee needed to obtain that benefit.


    "Alright then," Rui nodded. "I don''t mind meeting with the client. How does this normally work?"


    "The client applies and pays for a timeframe after a Martial Artist seeks to ept amission before which they approve of the Martial Artist or reject them." The staff member exined. "The client of the mission you''ve applied for has set a time limit of twenty-four hours. They will most likely contact you privately, or they can also choose to immediately ept or reject you based on the information avable in your alias profile."


    "I see..." Rui murmured. "So I just have to sit doing nothing until the client chooses to ept or reject me?"


    "That''s correct, if the Martial Artist does choose to reject you, then half of the fee paid for the conditional-approval contract will be deposited in your ount topensate for the loss of time."


    It seemed that the Martial Union did understand that Martial Artists didn''t enjoy having their time wasted. Even if Rui wasted time only to be rejected, at the very least he would earn money doing so.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 582 Client

    "And they''ll contact me through my ounter, I presume?" Rui wondered.


    "They can." The staff member nodded, "But they can also choose tomunicate with you through other ways, such as arranging a personal meeting with you. It all depends on the client. It is rmended to get two separate ounters for your two separate profiles on the Martial Union database. On the other hand, you may also take the initiative tomunicate with them as the client has chosen to divulge a means of contact through theirms. You will receive a verification code that can be used to verify your identity."


    "I see..." Rui muttered. "Thank you."


    He walked away as he considered the matter. The client, Fauche Virgil, had chosen to approve the Martial Artist who applied to ept the mission, in spite of the extra fee. That alone told Rui much.


    (''It seems like he has conditions for the Martial Artist who will be attempting toplete the mission.'') Rui thought to himself. (''Conditions that the profiles and the information about the Martial Artist offered by the Martial Union aren''t enough for him to know whether the Martial Artist actually fulfills those conditions.'')


    Rui was pretty certain that the public profiles offered a general understanding of the Martial Artist''s capabilities without getting too specific. There were probably plenty of clients who wanted to get a much more precise understanding of themissioned Martial Artist''s capabilities personally.


    (''Or he could simply be the paranoid type in general.'') Rui shrugged.


    Rui wasn''t sure which one it was, but there was definitely a high chance that it was one of the two.


    Just as he walked out of the branch office, his ounter beeped.


    [This is Fauche Viril. Be there at a restaurant called Grill Feast in the town of Vermeen within the next three hours.]


    (''Well, he seems rather blunt.'') Rui mused as he closed off his ounter.


    He knew the town that Fauche was talking about, albeit not the restaurant. Not that was a particrly problematic roadblock. The town was within the Mantian Region, so Rui didn''t even need to travel very far.Content ? N?velDrama.Org.


    Rui took to the air as he sky-walked towards the town of Vermeen as he donned his mask. All he needed to do was spot the path that led from Hajin to the town and follow it while in the air.


    Although he was slower in the air than on the ground, it didn''t take more than ten minutes to reach his destination. He found himself standing before the designated restaurant after having asked for directions from the locals.


    The town of Vermeen was not amercial hub like the town of Hajin was, it was a much more down-to-earth residential area of sorts. Rui found it strange that the man would choose this town instead of the town of Hajin.


    It wasn''t long before Rui spotted him, either. Fauche had consented to have his appearance disclosed to the Martial Artist that applied for hismission. The man was rather young for someone who upied the position of vice president in apany that wasrge enough to have a board of directors. He had a certain degree of gravitas about him, well-groomed, and smoked a cigar, which was the tell-tale sign that a person was a gangster, or wanted to appear as a gangster.


    He was apanied by two Martial Apprentices, who stood behind him, alert.


    "Fauche Viril?" Rui approached him, speaking in the international dialect. "I am Squire Falken, the Martial Artist who applied for yourmission."


    The man didn''t respond, as he nced Rui over, clearly trying to get an impression of him. Rui pulled a chair opposite to him, taking a seat. He couldn''t be bothered by the man''s antics.


    "You wanted to arrange a meeting? Well, here I am." Rui told him.


    The man puffed a cloud of smoke before leaning forward to Rui, opening his mouth to utter a single word with his gravelly voice. "Code."<novelnext></novelnext>


    "HJN91u287bh39." Rui replied, having memorized it on his way there.


    The man nodded, before finally uttering more than a word. "So, Squire Falken..."


    He paused, running his gaze across Rui once more. "I hear you''ve applied to ept mymission."


    "Indeed," Rui replied.


    "Why?"


    Rui considered the question for a moment, he could just give some generic reply to that question, but he didn''t particrly feel the need to obfuscate much.


    "I wanted to test my capability, having grown stronger recently," Rui replied, refusing to be specific.


    "Stronger how?"


    "That''s none of your business, I''m afraid."


    "What if I choose to reject you because you refuse to answer my question?" Fauche asked with a hint of curiosity in his eyes.


    "Your loss, not mine. You''ll be paying me regardless." Rui shrugged. It was true, Rui didn''t particrly need this mission. It was a nice opportunity to test the Pathfinder technique, but it was hardly the only opportunity for him to do so.


    "Hm." The man chuckledzily at Rui''s words. "Here''s the deal. I want you to kill the target at a particr time, as specified in the contract. You do that sessfully, I''ll give you a bonus, hm?"


    He nodded upwards inquisitively at Rui, wanting to know his response.


    "I don''t mind." Rui shrugged. "Mind you, I only know some generic details about themission contract. I have not obtained full ess to it until after you approve my application to ept themission."


    "Hm." The man''s expression grew a tad bit perplexed. "Did not know that."


    He tossed his cigar out as he waved to the waiter. "Two whiskeys, please."


    "Then you and I have a lot to talk about." The man said, turning back to Rui.


    Rui didn''t particrly have anything against that, it seemed the man wasn''t particrly averse to epting Rui''s application. Rui wasn''t even sure why he went out of his way to want to meet Rui prior to approving him. Given how strange he seemed, Rui chalked it up to personality issues.


    "I don''t drink," Rui replied simply.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 583 Sub-Optimal

    "They weren''t for you." Fauche shrugged.


    Rui didn''t bother responding as he waited for the man to borate.


    "This is specified in the contract, but I need you to kill the target Hergusen Meine at a specific time and ce." Fauche borated. "Specifically, in the middle of a hearing with the Senate that is going to be held in..."


    He pulled out a pocket watch, referring to the time. "In a little over seventy-two hours."


    He turned back to Rui. "The Senate hearing is going to be held where it usually is, the Congress Capitol block in the capital of the Republic of Mernea; Rjavoi."


    He pulled out a small map before opening it on the table.


    It depicted the capitol block, which seemed about asrge as a big city block, as well as the surrounding districts of the town of Rjavoi. On the map were several marks and symbols that corresponded to a map legend that exined what each of the symbols represented.


    Some represented vehicles, others represented Martial Squires, some represented security stations, roadblocks, and a variety of other things.


    "This is the nnedyout ording to protocols for Senate hearings." The man exined, before tracing a circle on the map with his finger. "This is the area beyond which authorized personnel are no longer allowed. So someone like yourself cannot get past this area through ordinary means."


    He pointed at several locations on the map. "These are all stationed Martial Artists, all Martial Squires, of course. The Republic of Mernea does not possess more than low-grade Martial Squires."


    "They''re divided into twoyers." He continued. "The outeryer is responsible for detecting and stopping the unauthorized entry of anyone or thing."


    His finger shifted inwards, tracing a smaller circle. "This is the inneryer of security. They are tasked with protecting and ensuring no harm befalls the senators and other authorized witnesses."


    "Here..." He tapped a specific point on the map "is where the target will be when you have to conduct the assassination."


    "And when is that?" Rui asked him.


    "When I give you the signal." He replied.


    Rui wordlessly considered his response. He was gaining a bit of an understanding of why he wanted to meet all Martial Artists that wished to apply for themission. This mission required active coordination with the client, it wasn''t as straightforward as most missions when it came to the degree of cooperation needed between the client and the Martial Artist.


    If Fauche wanted the assassination to ur at a particr point of his own choice, then he needed to that he had a good understanding with themissioned Martial Artist.


    "I read that you can disguise as a normal person, and that you have long-range capabilities." The man revealed. "The capitol block is six hundred meters wide, this makes it quite difficult to snipe the target with a long-range attack. The difficulty of achieving the necessary uracy is high. Furthermore, the outeryer of Martial Squires will no doubt jump intercept the attack and prevent it from reaching the target. Therefore, I propose..."N?vel(D)rama.Org''s content.


    He pulled out what seemed like an ID card. "Infiltration."


    Rui stirred, considering the idea.


    "I have prepared a slot for you to be an authorized staff member of the Capitol block in the senate building. This will allow you to bypass the outeryer and reach an area where you can take out the target of mymission, Herguson Meine." The man exined.<novelnext></novelnext>


    "The inner team of Martial Squires isn''t going to be just sitting around, I''d imagine," Rui replied. "How do you propose I actually kill the target? The basic information I was given informed me that the target was protected by two defensive sensory Martial Artists."


    "Good question." The man nodded. "I have prepared a distraction. An explosive at the edge of the Capitol block, it will go off three seconds after I give you the signal, that will give you the opportunity to kill the target, hm?"


    "I see..." Rui replied, before asking. "Why do you want the target killed?"


    The man''s eyes narrowed. "That''s not a very professional question in your line of work."


    "I''m not very professional in this line of work, not yet," Rui replied calmly. "But I don''t takemissions that I do not wish to execute. You don''t have to reveal anything confidential, but I am curious about the core motivations of yourmission."


    "And what if I refuse?" His eyebrow rose.


    "Then I might refuse."


    "I''m the one who''s in the position to refuse you."


    "True, then I suppose I''ll have to settle to make you refuse by making you refuse," Rui replied tly, unperturbed.


    The man stared at Rui, before snorting into a brief chuckle. Heid back, lighting up a new cigar before taking a puff.


    "Ambition." He replied, exhaling smoke. "The target of assassination is a director in the board of directors of thepany that I am vice-president in. However, my true target is the president of the samepany."


    "How does that work?" Rui asked curiously.


    The man stared at Rui silently. "This falls under confidential information between you and me as mandated by the Kandrian Martial Union, I hope you''re aware."


    "I''m aware." Rui shrugged. "I don''t care to vite that agreement."


    "The assassination, especially with how I intend to time it, will be med on the president due to their well-known, hatred for each other and the sensitive nature of the senate hearing that conflicts with the interests of the president. He will be under immense heat, and it will allow me to discredit him enough to win over enough shareholders and stakeholders of thepany that I can dethrone him and regain my position as president of thepany."


    "Regain?" Rui tilted his head.


    "Yes, regain." The man nodded. "Regain it from the man who took it from me. That is the second motivation; revenge against him, for that and plenty of other things he has done to me."


    "I see," Rui looked up, considering the matter. "Alright, I ept."


    "Hm, then I sha-" "But your n is sub-optimal. Leave everything to me, and I''ll get him killed."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 584 Agreement

    "What did you just say?" The man growled.


    "I said..." Rui leaned in closer, "Your n is sub-optimal. My specialty does not lie in infiltration. I can hide my identity as a Martial Squire very well, yes, but there''s more to infiltration than that. I would effectively be no different from a normal human trying to infiltrate the Senate building of the Capitol block. The intelligence and security agencies or departments or whatever they are will instantly sniff out someone of my caliber. Furthermore, my unnatural features draw attention to me, so there will be eyes on me."


    Rui sharply and aptly highlighted the problems with the ns that the man hadid out. He was sure that the man was somewhat aware of these considerations, he didn''te across as a fool. Yet the fact that he proposed such a n meant that he had some reason to.


    (''He''s likely constrained by resources and funds.'') Rui mused. (''The Republic of Mernea doesn''t have Martial Artist above the Squire Realm it seems.'')


    This wasn''t particrly surprising considering how difficult the path to Martial Senior seemed. There were other clues that Rui had picked up to gain a clearer understanding of the limits of the security at hand.


    (''I''d learned that they were very low-grade Martial Squires protecting the target,'') Rui thought to himself. (''The fact that low-grade Martial Squires are the best the nation can muster to protect the senators of the Republic is very telling...'')


    Rui spected that the Republic of Mernea probably discovered or obtained the secret to the Squire Realm very recently, historically speaking.


    (''Definitely no more than five years ago, purely based on the grade of the Martial Squires at hand.'') He mused.


    Had it been more than ten years ago, then he highly doubted that the best they could muster would be low-grade Martial Squires, they would have at least developed some mid-grade Martial Squires in that timeframe.


    Because of this, Rui considered a straightforward assault from the outside considering he was definitely much stronger than any individual Martial Squire. Though he ultimately tossed the idea away.


    (''If they have sensors, they will see meing from a mile away.'') He sighed.


    He was confident in his strength, but there was a limit to the number of Martial Squires he could fight at once. He was not confident of taking on the entire outer team, winning, and killing the target before the target would undoubtedly have been swiftly evacuated by the security. He was not at the peak of the Squire Realm, to aplish a feat like that.


    The man considered Rui''s words, stirring a bit before finally looking back at Rui. "You said you have a better n?"


    "Yes." Rui nodded. "It''s simple. I snipe him from outside the Capitol block."


    The man''s expression darkened as his jaw grew tauter.


    "That''s a moronic n." He huffed. "I alreadyid out why. There is no way you can possibly make that shot with the distance and the windy conditions that aremon in the town of Rjavoi."


    Rui smiled underneath his mask. "Trust me, I can make it."


    "And why should I trust you?" He leaned forward. "When you, a grade-four Martial Squire who doesn''t even specialize in long-range uracy, make oundish statements about your long-range uracy?"<novelnext></novelnext>


    "I''ll sign a conditional contract." Rui shrugged. "If I fail, I''ll do you tenmissions for free."


    Belonging ? N?velDram/a.Org.


    The man''s eyes widened, as he wordlessly stared at Rui.


    Rui had already made certain inferences regarding the man''s situation. Firstly, themission was only about exploiting a ripe opportunity, it was not a desperatest resort of sorts, based on the information he had at hand. Furthermore, the consequences of Rui''s failure probably weren''t even that severe, Rui spected. Hell, a failed assassination was probably not that bad either as far as fulfilling the purpose of themission, though the man probably had incentives to want the assassination to seed. It clearly wasn''t the case that the man''s career or life was at stake with the nonchnce and the core motivations for themission that he gave Rui.


    Both of these meant that the costs of Rui''s failure were not too high.


    Thus, Rui simply had to give the man a payment, if he failed, which exceeded the costs of failure.


    Based on the information regarding the wealth and Martial prowess of the Republic of Mernea, Rui was rtively certain that ten freemissions from a Martial Squire himself was a highly attractive deal.


    "You''re willing to sign that right now?" The man asked with a serious face as he put aside the cigar.


    "Well, I don''t trust your words, I''ll sign it after I''ve obtained all the information from the Martial Union to verify that the information you just provided is urate." Rui shrugged.


    "But you will have epted the mission by then." He growled. "How can I trust you''ll sign the contract after?"


    "I''ll sign an agreement that if the information you provided is urate then I''ll sign the failure-conditional contract."


    "And who decides whether the information I provided is urate?" The man asked with a skeptical expression.


    "The Martial Union, of course." Rui shrugged. "The Martial Union can judge whether the information you provided me here today, something we both agree upon, is urate. There is nothing to be afraid of, the Martial Union works hard to maintain its fair position."


    "Unless, of course..." Rui continued as his eyes met his gaze. "...the information you provided to me was inurate."


    "Hmph. I did no such thing of the sort." The man snorted. "I''m going to hold you to your word. Let''s chalk out all the information I''ve provided here before I have you sign a deration promising what you promised me." The man stared at Rui with furrowed eyebrows. "I presume that sounds fine?"


    "No problem on my end." Rui smiled.


    The two of them quickly whipped out a statement that contained all the elements that they had agreed upon before Rui signed it.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 585 Accepted

    Rui had long gotten the impression that the system ofmissions worked differently now from when he was a Martial Apprentice. The role that the Martial Union took when he was a Martial Apprentice was much more significant than when he was a Martial Squire. The Martial Union was like a manager and a boss to Martial Apprentices when they undertook missions. However, when he was a Martial Squire, the Martial Union took a few steps back and instead shifted to the role of a somewhat distant moderator and a rule enforcer.


    He had already felt this in the few Squire-level missions he undertook, but he could really feel it in this particrmission.


    Conditional-approval contracts, personally negotiated failure penalties, and derations that the Martial Union would enforce without having any hand in were much different than it was when he was a Martial Apprentice.


    He had much more freedom and liberty in the arrangements he could have with his client. It was as though the martial Union was giving him more autonomy now that he was a bit more mature as a Martial Artist.


    Of course, he didn''t mind. It made his job much more enjoyable. But he also had to make important decisions.


    Like the one he just made.


    In all honesty, from an objective perspective, he knew that he was being risky and foolish. Not only was there a natural chance for failure from an objective perspective, but perhaps his own client may try to cause him to fail.


    Of course, this was extremely difficult as the agreement meant that all the information he gave him prior needed to be true, or else it would vite the contract and Rui would not be prohibited from aggressing violence on Fauche.


    However, Rui was quite confident that he would seed. He also wanted to put himself in a situation where he was under pressure. The true test of his capability would not be under light circumstances, but under circumstances where there were stakes.


    That is why he decided to take the risk, ultimately. Granted, he was more than smart enough to know that he probably wasn''t being the most rational he could be.


    "Alright, done." Fauche looked up at Rui as he put hisms device away. "I''ve officially epted your application to ept mymission. I imagine you should already have ess to the information you need."Belonging ? N?velDram/a.Org.


    Rui wordlessly took out his ounter as he essed his ount, finding a digital version of the mission bill.


    He quickly read through it as he inputted the information into his Mind Pce.


    To his relief, the information that Fauche had provided seemed urate. The details regarding the locations of security specifically were on point. The broader details surrounding the event were also quite urate.<novelnext></novelnext>


    In fact, the Martial Union provided him with even greater insight regarding the desired oues of the assassination. The director of the board of directors was answering to the Senate on the potential for treason in the form of facilitating espionage into ssified military intelligence, that thepany had ess to and was capable of in its current state.


    Caruntel Corp was a weapons developer that had been contracted by the military of the Republic of Mernea, ording to the mission bill. Rui could gauge the objective of the assassination on a deeper level, though he wasn''t if it would even work.


    "You must really be convinced that the president will automatically be under a lot of suspicions just because this particr director happens to be assassinated," Rui murmured. "Because based on this, there''s nothing strongly


    "That''s because you''re highly ignorant on the matter," Fauche puffed some smoke. "When the director about to utter testimony in a senate, that will be detrimental to your publicly-stated stance on governmental intervention on the information that you as a president has, dies before he can finish the sentence, you will be the first person everyone will look at. Especially when the two of you have had a history of severe conflict of interest. That''s enough."


    "Hm." Rui didn''t deign to bother replying to that. It wasn''t particrly relevant to him and the mission, it was just a point of curiosity.


    "Lots of sensory Martial Artists, I can see," Rui noted.


    "Indeed." Fauche nodded. "That''s why your n is screwed. Don''t say I didn''t warn you. I did it twice."


    "Mhm." Rui didn''t bother to retort.


    The probability that a nation with little to no Squire-level martial Art foundation had developed sensory techniques that would be able to develop a technique that allowed Martial Artists to sense potent sound bullets that were naturally invisible and difficult to perceive was very low.


    Rui didn''t think they would be able to perceive the activation of the technique, either. That was too difficult for a bunch of low-grade Martial Squires. Of course, Rui didn''t care to inform this rationale to his client. He would just have to be content with watching a sh of shock on the man''s face when Rui seeded.


    He would still take precautions around the matter, he would fire off a sonic bullet in the air in the same general direction as the shot he would take to test their reactions to it. It would tell him whether by some miracle it was somehow sensed, or whether he was right.


    Now he needed to find a spot where he could perch himself before the Senate hearing so that he could take care of the technical stuff. That would require Rui to scout the areas around the Capitol block to find a good spot to take out the target of the mission.


    He wanted the best altitude and the best cover he could get. While he could shoot under much less ideal circumstances, he did have much on stake, thus he wanted to make sure he wasn''t missing a single thing. It was one thing to be confident enough to make raise the stakes, it was another to be careless and arrogant and end up goofing on the job.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 586 Arrival

    "That will be two thousand Martial credits."


    "You can debit it from my ount," Rui replied as he picked up the product he just purchased.


    [VXL-100 Monocr]


    This was a rather high-quality monocr that Rui had purchased just in case he needed it. Although he was quite confident that he wouldn''t, he still decided to err on the side of caution.


    That wasn''t the only thing he had chosen to purchase. He had also purchased several clothes that were native to the Republic of Menrea and part of their ethnic wear. Although he certainly would stand out, it was better than outright being detected as a Martial Artist of the Kandrian Empire.


    He immediately headed down to the dispatch facility after changing into those clothes, finishing the pre-mission protocols before heading out.


    His destination? The Republic of Menrea.


    It had been only two hours since his conversation with Fauche Vigil had concluded. The Senate hearing was a little under three days away, he had plenty of time. Had it been an ordinary mission, he might have even deigned to leaveter rather than waste precious time doing nothing.


    However, this wasn''t an ordinary mission.


    This was his first Shadow-ss mission. It was also the first mission where he would be testing the pathfinder technique in the field for the first time. Furthermore, he had staked a lot on the sess of the mission. He couldn''t help but feel just a tad little tingly inside.


    (''I''m going to have to be extra careful.'') Rui noted.


    There were several things on his agenda that he needed toplete before the time for the actual assassination came through. First, he needed to find an appropriate spot where he wouldn''t be noticed, but from where he would also have a clear shot of the target of assassination.


    Ideally, he would like to have a spot that has the same amount of elevation as the target, as differences in elevation increase the distance between him and the target and forced him to shoot at an angle. Not that he couldn''t do thetter and still seed, but he didn''t want to take chances.N?velDrama.Org owns ? this.


    Thankfully, the senate hearing was actually at ground level, thus he didn''t have to worry much about finding a good spot.


    Once that was done, he needed to consider his escape route. He wasn''t too concerned, the Martial Squires of the Republic of Menrea, ording to the intelligence provided by the Martial Union was not a threat to him individually.


    Not only was the evolution breakthrough process of the Republic of Menrea inferior to that of the Kandrian Empire, which was what Rui underwent, but their techniques were shit inparison to that of the Kandrian Empire as well.<novelnext></novelnext>


    Furthermore, Rui was especially tough thanks to the new techniques he had developed and the VOID algorithm. He also had a symbiote empowering his cognition.


    Although the impact it produced was no longer as significant as it was before as the Symbiote did not undergo as immense of an evolution as he did at all, and thus was only a grade-ten technique by Apprentice standards, it was still useful and gave him an edge over the Martial Squires of the Republic of Menrea.


    Furthermore, Rui had also obtained a superior Martial body thanks to the Mind Switch technique. He could probably crush any individual martial Squire of the Republic of Menrea in a head-on fight. The issue was if he got surrounded by arge number of them. That wouldplicate issues significantly and he couldn''t be truly confident that he would be able to escape in such circumstances.


    Still, he wasn''t too worried about this issue. He was most likely faster than almost all of the Martial Squires assigned to protect the target, and there would be a significant gap between them since he would be sniping his target from a long distance away and would begin running away the second he seeded. There was surely no way that any of them would be able to catch him with him getting such a head start.


    Even if one of them was that fast, Rui wasn''t concerned with a single Martial Squire.


    Another potential hindrance to the escape route would bew enforcement departments enforcing a shutdown of transit in and out of the country, and perhaps a strengthened border control, but that wasn''t something Rui was too concerned about.


    Although the Republic of Menrea was a small nation, its borders were still far toorge to be thoroughly guarded, and even if Rui encountered a stationed garrison, they were unlikely to be able to stop him even if they contained a Martial Squire.


    Still, he needed to scout a path first, just to be careful. He didn''t want to take chances.


    As he pondered these issues, he finally arrived.


    As he had suspected, the border wasn''t particrly secure. Though he had to admit, it was better than a lot of the other nations that he had been to. It was a rather tall fence that would make it difficult for a normal person to get in, though Martial Artists would surely have no problem.


    And he didn''t. He had already sensed that there were no people on the other side, so he peacefully jumped over before taking off his mask. He had covered his hair withmon garb worn on the head in the Republic while wearing contacts to ensure that his abnormal features did not draw too much attention.


    "Alright," He murmured. "Time to head to the site of the deed.


    He didn''t rush through the country at the speed of sound as he might have had he not been on a mission, but it was hard to control himself at those speeds, and he would draw far too much attention from everybody if he recklessly revealed his status as a Martial Squires that was clearly not from this nation.


    He peacefully walked into the street of the nearest town, having already worn a solid Mind Mask that made his vibe feel diminutive.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 587 Considerations

    It took him a while to reach the town of Rjavoi, he took the shortest route to the town that he could find in the maps of the entire country and the regions that he inputted into his mind pce. The first thing he did was head to the Capitol block which was located at the center of the town.


    (''Hm, they could also choose to lock down the town once the assassination happens.'') Rui noted, before shaking his head. (''They can try, but I''ll be long gone before they can.'')


    He didn''t think that the officials could lock down the town before he escaped, but it would take him escaping at top speeds onnd.


    Both means had their merits.


    The only issue he hadn''t resolved was whether he should prioritize speed or stealth while escaping. If he simply ran for the closest border at top speed, he would draw a lot of attention but he would make the quickest progress. There was very little chance that they could possibly obstruct him, the problem was that if they did seed in obstructing him, then he could be in deep trouble.


    A stealthy escape had its own merits as well. With the sheer distance between the Senate hearing and Rui, if he quietly mixed into the town, they would almost certainly never find him. Then he could quietly leave the country from another point and it would be over.


    This method took longer, but it didn''t have the risk of revealing his position and even his tentative appearance to the martial Squires who would no doubt notice him otherwise. That being said, spending more time in the country came with its own risks. Perhaps a clean speedy getaway was desirable, Rui didn''t think the Martial Squires would be able to stay on his tail for very long. Thanks to the Mind Switch technique, he was fast, but he also had a ton of stamina. He also had the Phantom Step technique that allowed him to juke his trackers if they did manage to stay on his tail.


    (''What if I try abination of both?'') Rui wondered. (''I can get out of the immediate area when the assassination isplete at rtively high speeds, then choose the stealth option once I''ve gotten enough distance.


    Another advantage he had was the element of surprise and uncertainty. It wasn''t as though the Martial Squires would be released into pursuit the very instant the shot seeded, they would be obligated to at the very least ensure the Senate was safe, and only after several seconds of chaos in doing that would a team of Martial Squires be dispatched.


    Rui, on the other hand, would be dashing away the very second that he confirmed the assassination operation was a sess.


    Furthermore, their searches would be restricted since they wouldn''t know that Rui would be sniping from tremendous distances away. Thus, their preconceived notions would prevent them from taking the apt measures that would be required for them to capture Rui. In fact, depending on how primitive their techniques were, they might even suspect that the culprit was within the Capitol block or just outside. Instead of a great distance away from it.


    (''Hm.'') Rui nodded.


    He pulled ams device from his utility pouch. Fauche had given it to him before they parted ways, it would serve as the way for him to signal to Rui the timing of the assassination. He would have to be very conscious of both the target and the timing.


    He put it back into his pocket as he began circling the Capitol block at a distance of nine hundred meters. Although there were windows, Rui didn''t need them thanks to his sensory techniques and also the prative power of his attack. A measly wall was no different from wet paper before the might of a Martial Squire like himself.<novelnext></novelnext>


    (''This works.'') Rui paused as he looked around. He was in a residential area, with buildings that were each only one story tall, across the entire area.


    Operating in an environment with great uniformity was a good idea, it made it more difficult for the trackers to estimate where the shot actually came from, as opposed to if he shot from the highest height in the area.N?velDrama.Org owns ? this.


    He got quietly jumped upon the t roof of a wider house.


    (''This is ideal,'') Rui nodded as he noted the short fencing at the border of the room that would ensure that nobody on the street would see him.


    He only needed to make sure that the upants of the house would not inadvertently walk onto the roof when he was upying it.


    (''I can just lock it from the outside,'')


    He jumped on, lying t on the ground, facing the Capitol block. He immediately activated thebination of Seismic Mapping and Tempestuous Feel. Together the two techniques synergized with each other, in a way, and allowed his senses to extend a great distance in the direction of Capitol block, upying the Senate Hall.


    He could sense the structure of the hall with remarkable precision and uracy. When the Hearing would be held, the room would be filled with the many senators, the other dignitaries, and the target; Herguson Meine, a director on the board of directors of Caruntel Co.


    (''Alright, location of sniping; check.'') Rui nodded, getting up. (''Exit strategy; check. I just need to make sure that I have several contingencies down for the possible measures they may take.'')


    The mission bill covered the protocols that would be undertaken in such a scenario, though they weren''t as certain of the oue as Rui would have liked, thus he decided to take extra measures in any case.


    (''Also... I have to observe the target and formte a predictive model of him.'') Rui noted.


    It was much more difficult to form predictive models of people outside ofbat, for there was more data to be taken in and the results weren''t as reliable asbat predictive models. However, this was also another precaution Rui had decided to take.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 588 Fire

    A little under three days passed.


    Rui spent most of the time in the Republic of Menrea, fleshing out his contingencies as he spent his time observing the target Herguson Meine from a good distance away with the help of his two sensory techniques. He had identified the man''s tics and other movements that could be used to predict his movements ahead of time.


    All the preparations had beenpleted.


    It was time.


    There were only a few hours to go before the estimated time of assassination provided by Fauche.


    "That''ll do." Rui quickly locked the door to the roof of the house he had chosen to reside on.


    Hey t on the ground as he observed the Senate Hearingmencing.


    The security measures were quite urate to the information provided by the Martial union and by Fauche. Rui hadmitted all of them to memory.


    The outeryer patrolled the Capitol block, scanning the area with their senses. The senses of a Martial Squire were sharp even if one did not learn sensory techniques. They could all be used to ensure that there were no unauthorized intruders within the Capitol block.


    Rui could sense that, as informed, there were multiple security check-ins and verifications at multiple levels before ess to the Senate Hall.


    There were even Martial Squires sky-walking in the air to get a bird-eyed view of the area surrounding the Senate Hall.


    (''The measures are definitely strict,'') Rui mused.


    Unfortunately for them, none of those measures were going to be effective.


    (''Oh, it''s starting.'') Rui peered with interest as all the senators and other dignitaries had taken their ce and the chairperson had opened the hearing.


    Unfortunately for him, the hearing was being conducted in the nationalnguage of the nation. Rui didn''t really have any clue about what was going on. It was a shame because themission had given him some interest in the contents of the hearing, to gain a deeper understanding of why Fauche chose tomission him.


    Still, it was probably better that there was an avenue for him to grow distracted. He hadn''t developed the assassination mindset that centered around absolute mental perseverance in the field, nor did he intend to.


    Still, he managed to stay focused. Focused on the target, while conscious of thems device that Fauche had given him.


    Hours passed, and soon the fated time approached.


    Rui''s demeanor grew more severe and solemn as the estimated time for the assassination was nearly there. If not for the Mind Mask straining to control his mighty aura, the surrounding humans in the area would have long copsed unconscious. Civilians, who didn''t receive training to resist mental pressure, did not have any way of not sumbing to it.


    (''Ok, he''s getting up and walking to the speaker''s tform.'') Rui''s eyes sharpened.<novelnext></novelnext>


    That was the cue for Rui to be ready to fire at any time. The assassination would ur during the address and opening statement of the target to the Senate. The whole point of the operation was to kill him at a time in his speech that would inevitably throw suspicion on the president. Rui had already informed Fauche that the shot wouldnd only after nearly three seconds after the message was sent.


    After all, sound could travel nine hundred meters in less than three seconds, but Rui also had to ount for the execution of the ODA system and the time taken to physicallyunch the attack.


    Of course, Rui had long finished the first phase of the ODA system for the speaker''s podium, because he knew that that would be where the target for his tform would be standing. Thus, all of the calctions of the distance between them, the equations of propagation of the wave trajectory, and theunch conditions had long been well figured out.Content ? N?velDrama.Org.


    The only part left was the second phase of the ODA system that tackled atmospheric conditions. He could notplete that part until after he got the signal. He had already begun paying deep attention to all the atmospheric conditions ready to input them into the protocols of the second phase of the ODA system any second.


    BEEP BEEP BEEP


    Thems device that Fauche had given him began beeping in his pocket.


    The moment had arrived.


    Rui''s pupils dted as time slowed down to nearly a halt, it was as though his consciousness had ascended to a higher dimension of time. His mind fired through the Mind Pce as remarkable amounts of information flushed through the calctions entailed by the ODA system.


    An image formed in his mind.


    This was the necessary trajectory that he needed tounch the Sonic Bullet. Rui''s mouth widened as he shifted himself in order to fulfill theunch conditions needed for the fated trajectory.


    THWOOM


    A sonic boom rippled into the air as the sound bullet sprung forth as it shot forward at a remarkable speed. Even Rui could not really sense it once it left his vicinity. Only Primordial Instinct made him feel danger, albeit nothing specific.


    His perception of time returned to normal, by Martial Squire standards, as the Sonic Bullet crossed the great distance between Rui and his target


    BANG!


    By the time the Martial Squires could ovee their shock at the sight of the wall breaking open to apparently nothing. The speedy projectile had already moved on.


    SPLAT


    The head of Herguson Meine sted as a wave of blood, cerebral fluid, and human tissue sttered across the entire room, dousing everyone in gore.


    The heightened shock in the room was almost physically tangible. The civilians in the room were frozen in horror in the moments after the hit. The Martial Squires, however, dashed in as their training kicked in. Bothyers of security shielded the various dignitaries in the Senate Hall as they were swiftly evacuated.


    The entire town erupted in chaos as the town was put in lockdown as the mayor of the town took the most extreme option to catch the culprit that dared to assassinate a dignitary in the Senate Hall!


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 589 Shock

    Fauche Viril was having a good day.


    He had found himself in the middle of a good deal, with only two possible oues, and both oues were just fine by him.


    If Squire Falken ended up seeding, then he would have sessfully destabilized the loyalty of the shareholders and stakeholders towards the president significantly. It didn''t matter if there was no proof, the timing of the attempt given the friction between the president and Herguson Meine would, at the very least, sprout significant doubts and distrust toward the president.


    If Rui failed, then the situation would be less ideal, albeit more vtile since the director would still be alive and would also suspect the president above all else.


    No one would dare suspect Fauche, one of the staunchest supporters of the director and a close friend of his.


    Furthermore, if Rui failed, then Fauche would gain ten freemissions from Rui. That was not a small amount!


    Although Fauche was wealthy,missioning Martial Squires from the Kandrian Martial Union was not a light matter. There were taxes on any transactions and exchange of services that he had to pay to both the Kandrian Empire and the Kandrian Martial Union, on top of the actualmission fee for the mission.


    Furthermore, the Kandrian currency was a heavyweightpared to the paltry currency of his nation. A single Kandrian copper coin was equivalent to a hundred and twenty-seven crolls! Thetter could get you three meals a day in the Republic of Mernea.


    Commissioning Rui had cost him over a dozen million crolls! Even for a multi-millionaire, within the Republic of Mernea, this was not a trivial sum.


    That was why he found it hard to believe that Rui promised ten freemissions. He had gone through all the paperwork exceedingly thoroughly, trying to find a loophole that Rui was perhaps thinking of exploiting in order to get out of doing the ten freemissions that he promised, but he found nothing.


    It seemed that Rui was actually serious and earnest.


    A small part of Fauche prayed that Rui would fail. That''s effectively how alluring the fortune Rui was offering was worth.


    He didn''t understand why the clearly young man made such a rash deal, but he chalked it up to youthful recklessness. He surmised that Rui was likely a young, but talented, Martial Artist who had recently broken through to the Squire Realm. It was rather clear that he had let his newborn power and status get to his head and inte his ego.


    Fauche was not intimately clear with the power of a Martial Squires, after all, the Republic of Mernea had only obtained the secret to the breakthrough less than ten years ago. However, he was rtively certain that Martial Squires were not capable of the feat that Rui imed he would aplish. In his perspective, it was possible that extremely high-grade long-range uracy Martial Squire veterans would be able to urately snipe targets from nearly a kilometer away, despite highly unfavorable atmospheric conditions. However, for a meager grade-four all-rounder Martial Squire to be capable of this feat?


    (''It''s impossible.'') Fauche shook his head lightly.


    "Next, I call upon the chairman Herguson Meine to the speaker''s podium." A senator invited him, to which Herguson deftly made his way to it.


    Fauche moved his hand atop his pocket within which the button of thems device, when pressed, would send the signal to Rui to assassinate Herguson. Rui had already informed him of the time dy, so Fauche had to judge the timing ahead of time.


    He listened to the man''s words carefully as he droned on with an official statement.


    "Last but certainly not least, I would like to bring up the issue regarding the current president of Caruntel Company, Herguson Meine..."


    Fauche had already pressed the button the moment the man began to utter the president''s name.


    "... poor judgment and igno-"


    BANG<novelnext></novelnext>


    The wall sted open.


    The Martial Squires in the vicinity jerked back, startled. They began moving as per protocol once they saw that something had somehow managed to bypass their senses and break in.


    Yet, it was too little toote. Even though they could reach the speed of sound themselves, that was at top speed, not when they were stationary.


    Not that they even knew that an invisible projectile was moving at the speed of sound.


    SPLAT


    Herguson''s head, which was still in the middle of making a passionate point against the president, sted.


    Gore violently sprayed across the hall, covering every single dignitary in the room.Belonging ? N?velDram/a.Org.


    "AAAAAAAAH!"


    "OH MY GOD!


    "WHAT THE FUCK!"


    At that moment, the sheer shock and panic that beset these highly important individuals caused their otherwise trained demeanor to crumble. These were people who were used to feeling personally safe due to the security measures in ce to protect them. Exploding heads were not something that they were ustomed to.


    The Martial Squires of bothyers immediately formed a sort of physical barrier between the direction the shot came from and the dignitaries they were obligated to protect. Until their charges were safely evacuated, they could not afford to move.


    Easier said than done, with the sheer chaos in the Hall. The only person who wasn''t scrambling around or panicking was Fauche. His face was covered with shock, and blood, but mostly shock.


    (''He seeded!'') Fauche was frozen. (''Nearly a kilometer! Strong winds! Dozens of Martial Squires!'')


    He felt a deep surge of regret, in hindsight. He strongly wished that Rui failed, he would have gotten himself tenmissions out of this unfathomable Martial Squire!


    (''DAMMIT!'') he cursed inside. (''Ten freemissions from him could give me a tremendous amount of power! Nothing could possibly get in my way had he failed!'')


    "SIR! GET DOWN!"


    Fauche jerked back as a Martial Squire shouted at him in his face.


    "I know you''re in shock! But your life is at risk!"


    The Martial Squire had a strong urge to shove the man to the ground, but he wasn''t sure if he would be able to get away with it.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 590 Value

    The town of Rjavoi erupted in hysteria as word of an attack on the Senate Hall spread through the town. None of the citizens had managed to gather anything specific, but that alone was shocking enough. The mayor even went so far as to put the entire town on lockdown!


    "Too little, toote." Rui shrugged as he crossed the border of the Republic of Mernea by the time any meaningful and coordinated investigative measures were taken once the dignitaries were secured. He had left the town of Mernea stealthily, before heading to a more remote region, he then shot off at top speed towards the shortest route without intersecting with any towns or other settlements.


    While there were, no doubt, some people here and there who noticed a noisy blur in the distance, they were inconsequential.This is from N?velDrama.Org.


    Once he crossed the border and left it in the dust behind him, he finally loosened up a bit before indulging in his exhration of having seeded.


    "YES!" He jumped high into the sky. "That was perfect! Oh, how I wish I could have seen the look on Fauche''s face when the assassination seeded."


    Unfortunately, that was impossible. Rui would have to be content with imagining it.


    More importantly, the sheer satisfaction of actually employing the Pathfinder technique in the field and sessfullypleting missions in ways that would have been utterly impossible for him prior, was truly immense. He could be happy for days at how well it worked out. It was an addicting feeling, almost. Although he didn''t face anybat against Martial Squires, he wasn''t too dissatisfied, which was very strange for him.


    "I wonder what the Martial Union is going to say to this," Ruiughed out loud as he tried imagining how shocked the Martial Union would be when they learned about what Rui had aplished.


    He was sure that their very first reaction would be skepticism. The Martial Union had, no doubt, seen its fair share of lies and exaggerations when it came to reports of Martial Squires regarding the events that urred during missions. Although Rui had a pretty good track record of proving his unbelievable reports, such as the time he killed a Martial Squire as a Martial Apprentice.


    He was sure that the Martial Union would not have believed that had he not brought the corpse of the Martial Squire with him.


    The same could be said this time as well. He wouldn''t be surprised if the martial Union took extra measures to verify the veracity of the report that he submitted.


    After all, the Martial Union doubtlessly had an intelligencework based in the Republic of Menrea that would give them as much information as they could procure. In fact, given that the Martial Union already knew that an assassination attempt would be taking ce at a given time and ce, they probably had spies that were watching the Senate Hearing from any and all angles.


    That should provide some degree of confirmation that his ount was quite truthful. Furthermore, Fauche would also vouch for the veracity of Rui''s report, if needed.


    "The question is what they''ll do after," Rui murmured.<novelnext></novelnext>


    It was possible that they would do nothing. Perhaps they would simply be impressed, but shrug and leave Rui alone. Rui''s understanding of how the Martial Union worked was not intimate, he did not think he understood all the nuances of how the association treated such feats.


    After all, they did not do anything even though he killed a Martial Squire.


    "Oh, that''s not true." Rui stroked his chin. "They did update the Martial Artist grading system."


    He had heard over the years that that was done most likely in response to the shocking feat that he and his friends had managed to aplish. Although he had help, the reports, especially those of his friends, made it clear that Rui was the core reason that they were not as hopelessly screwed as they ought to be.


    "This time is a bit different than that time though," Rui frowned.


    It was one thing for his Martial Art and Martial Path to be so potent that it allowed him to exploit an opportunity that allowed him to kill an inexperienced and unhabilitated Squire, it was another to have a singr technique that could allow him to surpass even specialists in their field.


    The former was not something that could be easily obtained and replicated. A Martial Path was deeply personal and individualistic. It was impossible to universalize itpletely, or even partially. At most, certain elements could be turned into universal techniques.


    But a technique could be passed on much more easily than a Martial Path.


    Rui would be truly surprised if the Martial Union did not take any measures to obtain the technique that Rui had created. As an organization that prioritized the interests of the Martial Artist group as a whole, collecting techniques that could be used by others was an extremely important part of the process.


    Rui recalled hearing from a headmaster Aronian that roughly half of all Martial Art techniques that the Martial Union collected came from Martial Artistsing up with them. It would be rather irresponsible for them to ignore techniques like the one Rui had demonstrated in this battle.


    "The question is what to do then." Rui scratched his head.


    Frankly, he wasn''t all that averse to sharing the technique with the Martial Union if he had an opportunity to. Unlike the VOID algorithm, the ODA system wasn''t as fundamental to his Martial Path and Martial Art. He didn''t feel the burning sense of possessiveness like he did with the VOID algorithm due to this reason.


    As long as the Martial Union evaluated the value of the technique urately and gave him fairpensation for his valuable contribution, he had no qualms about selling them the Pathfinder technique. He wasn''t too concerned about a bunch of copycats arising from the Martial Squire poption of the Martial Union. The conditions for using the technique sessfully were anything but easy.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 591 Invitation

    The difficulty of mastering the Pathfinder technique could not be overstated. While the data processing needed to use the Pathfinder was still not as extreme as that of the VOID algorithm, it was far from something a Martial Squire could aplish.


    In fact, if it wasn''t for the fact that Rui had mastered the technique, it could probably be considered a Senior-level technique!


    After all, by definition, Senior-level techniques were techniques that only Martial Seniors and above could master. If not for Rui, it would most likely be the case that Martial Squires simply didn''t have what it took to master the technique.


    Of course, he had no idea what Martial Seniors were actually capable of, so he couldn''t be sure that Martial Seniors were actually capable of using it either. But he didn''t even dare to assume that Martial Seniors were incapable of mastering the technique. If the gap between Martial Squires and Martial Seniors was even remotely asrge as the gap between Martial Apprentices and Martial Squires, then such a technique would most likely not be too problematic.


    However, within the Squire Realm, the technique was probably a grade-nine or a grade-ten long-range uracy technique.


    (''This is the power of synergy.'') Rui reminded himself.


    Mastering an ordinary grade-ten long-range uracy technique was beyond him in ordinary circumstances, but thanks to the synergy between the technique and himself, he could ovee this barrier and take that step.


    He let his thoughts as he finally reached the Hajin branch, quickly heading in toplete the post-mission protocols. He needed to fill up a report and write down statements.


    Rui made sure to give just enough information about the technique to inspire the greed from the Martial Union. An alternative method and system of aiming in the form of the ODA system was nothing short of revolutionary, after all.


    (''I wonder what the Martial Sect centered around long-range techniques thinks about this.'') Rui wondered, realizing he had almost forgotten about them.


    He was certain that there was a Martial sect centered around long-range techniques. After all, if something as obscure as symbiotes could have their own sects, then surely long-range techniques, which were much moremon, would also have their own sect.


    Furthermore, it was probablyrge enough that it wouldn''t be considered an unorthodox sect like the Symbiotic Sect. Though it would certainly be smaller than the Fire, Earth, and Lightning Sects.


    Once he finished up his paperwork, he quickly left the Martial Union after confirming his pay. He had earned some money from themission and intended to spend it on himself and his family. He also wanted to take some time off and stick around for whatever the Martial Union''s response to his report would be, as much as he wanted to go on another mission.


    He didn''t think that the Martial Union would show up at his door immediately. He had submitted the report normally, which meant that it would undergo a normal process. There was probably some evaluation team that evaluated the degree of uracy and honesty of the report based on the intelligence supplied by the intelligence department.


    Perhaps the parts regarding the description of the technique would be highlighted and passed on to the relevant experts; such as the long-range Martial Artists that were either retired or simply partaking as a consultant in an issue that required their expertise.<novelnext></novelnext>


    Once the long-range Martial Artist read Rui''s report and verified the existing intelligence on the matter themselves, that was when Rui''s technique would truly catch the notice of the right eyes.


    After all, what long-range Martial Artistpetent enough to partake in confidential consultants wouldn''t be part of the long-range technique Martial Sect?


    This individual would most likely alert the Martial Sect of the technique that Rui describedpellingly in his report. The Martial Sect would verify the report and the intelligence once over itself before digging more into Rui in their database.


    Once they learned the various things that Rui had aplished even as a Martial Apprentice, the veracity of his ims became a lot less questionable. Only then would they look at his personality and character evaluation. They would most likely run into the fact that Rui had rejected the invitations of Martial Sects much more powerful than themselves. This meant that they would naturallye to the conclusion that there was most likely nothing that they could do to convince him to join their sect.


    Rui had made it clear that he didn''t want to forsake his desire to be an all-rounder in order to join a Martial Sect.


    Beyond this point, Rui had a harder time predicting their actions. It all depended on variables that he had no way of ounting for. Either they would lessen the conditions that deterred Rui from joining a Martial Sect, or they would focus purely on obtaining the Pathfinder technique more than anything else.


    In the case of the former, he wasn''t sure what he ought to do. He was not averse to making favorable deals that benefitted him, but he wanted to make sure that he wouldn''t be forced to do things he didn''t want to. The Fire Sect required him to ce greater weight on offense than other fields, which was instantly an impossibility for Rui.Content ? N?velDrama.Org.


    The second possibility was a lot less demanding. Selling the technique for something worthwhile in return was definitely worth it. Though hecked far too much cognizance in regard to what could be offered and what was good and what wasn''t. Value was one thing, but he wasn''t sure how far he could push.


    (''Meh, I''ll cross that bridge when I get to it.'') Rui shrugged. (''Besides, technically, this is all still spection.'')


    He didn''t even know if the chain of events that Rui had predicted would ur, would actually ur.


    Just then, his ounter beeped.


    He pulled it out, scrolling through the message inbox.


    [Squire Rui Quarrier, this is an official invitation to the Hajin branch of the Martial Union regarding matters surrounding thetest mission that you havepleted. Please be sure toe at 16:00 on the 40th spring.]


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 592 Ceeran Deriol

    "Well, that was quick," Rui murmured out loud as he sipped some tea.


    It hadn''t been that long since he submitted his report, just a few hours. He had barely gotten any time to rx, in reality.


    "Do they really process through reports this quick?" Rui scratched his head.


    He didn''t think this was the norm. Unless the Martial Union had a ridiculously loaded administration and staff, it shouldn''t take lesser than a day, at least, for all of the procedures and due process to bepleted.


    "Assuming that''s true, then would that mean my reports underwent a different stream of processing?" Rui wondered aloud.Belonging ? N?velDram/a.Org.


    It wasn''t impossible.


    For the Martial Union to have finished processing his report quickly made him suspect that perhaps his profile was gged for priority, though he couldn''t be sure about that.


    (''Not that it matters.'') Rui sighed.


    Time passed until the time for his meeting had arrived. Rui quickly sky-walked to the Hajin branch of the Martial Union.


    "Excuse me," Rui addressed a staff member on the Martial support counter.


    "How can I help you?" She offered a courteous smile.


    "I actually have a meeting scheduled with the Martial Union," Rui replied, showing her the message.


    "May I see your Martial license, please?" She requested as she essed her terminal.


    Once Rui obliged, she began fiddling with her terminal, before finally looking up at Rui.


    "You have an appointment with Senior Ceeran Deriol," She informed him. "He''s a Martial deputy director of the long-range development department of the Martial Union. The appointment is scheduled in his office."


    "Which is where exactly?" Rui asked with a raised eyebrow.


    "Here." She gave him a sheet of paper with the address of therge branch of the Martial Union and a map with the route indicated on it.


    "Thank you.," Rui walked away as he studied the sheer of paper.


    (''Martial deputy director of the long-range development department, eh?'') Rui scratched his head.


    Unfortunately, hisck of familiarity with the hierarchy of positions within the research and development department of the Martial Union impeded his understanding of exactly how high up the totem pole a Martial deputy director was.


    However, the fact that he was a ''Martial'' deputy director gave him some clues. If the logic behind its presence in the title of the upation was the same as that of the military ranks, then it would mean that Senior Ceeran had the power and authority that came with being a Martial deputy director, but none of the nominal management, administrative and research-oriented responsibilities that came with a deputy director of a rather significant research department.<novelnext></novelnext>


    This made sense as Martial Artists were not usually trained and equipped to handle administrative duties. Furthermore, it was a waste of their time and energy. A Martial Artist''s greatest asset and avenue for contribution was in their Martial prowess.


    The best thing that a Martial Artist could generally do for themself and the people they were an asset to, was be stronger. This was the rationale behind the emergence of a separate equivalent hierarchy of positions without the duties and responsibilities that came with said positions despite retaining the authority that the position nominally held.


    Thus, Rui was sure that most Martial Artists that were retained by the Martial Union did not really engage in ordinary work that other employees of their equivalent position would be expected to.


    Just as he finished that train of thought, he arrived at the office. Outside were two guards Martial Apprentice guards that blocked his path, despite them being a Realm below him. Though Rui d


    "I have an appointment with Senior Ceeran," Rui simply exined.


    "Please provide us with the authorized invitation," They simply replied.


    Only once Rui showed them the digital invitation did they open the door to his office.


    "Ah, you''re here." A tall dark-skinned man greeted him with a courteous smile, reaching out for a handshake. "Squire Rui Quarrier, It''s a pleasure to meet one of the most promising young Martial Squires of the Empire. You''re more than just a little well-known in the Union and even in the Martialmunity, you know."


    "So I''vee to realize," Rui smiled wryly. The fact that a Martial Senior, who was also a Martial colonel, had chosen tomission him to train his daughter had given Rui an inkling that he was probably more well-known than he might have previously suspected. Colonel Geringan should have had the capital and the connections tomission even experienced Martial Seniors to train his daughter.


    However, he had ruled all of his plentiful options to insteadmission Rui, a rather new Martial Squire with no aplishments in the Squire Realm at the time.


    This was far from ordinary.


    "Come," The man gestured to thevish couches adorning his ostentatious office. "Let us have a seat."


    Rui inspected the room as he took a seat. Immediately, he made several observations, concluding that his previous understanding of Senior Ceeran''s role as a Martial deputy director was not inurate.


    It wasn''t hard for Rui to deduce that this office was sparingly used. It was well-maintained, but itcked the signs that would indicate regr prolonged usage and upation of it.


    His table was devoid of anything suggesting regr usage or that he spent much time at it. There wasn''t even a digital terminal, so what kind of work would someone as high up as Senior Ceeran even aplish at such an empty table?


    Furthermore, he could feel that Senior Ceeran was out of ce and unustomed to the office despite it being his.


    "So, Squire Quarrier. We have much to talk about." He began. "Almost don''t know where to begin."


    "The invitation mentioned my most recent mission," Rui helpfully replied.


    "I suppose that is set this into motion," The man replied with an amused smile. "Your report was more than just a little surprising. When I was alerted to some excerpts of your ount, I was naturally more than just a little surprised."


    "I can imagine," Rui smiled wryly.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 593 Carrot

    "I''m not in the habit of beating around the bush too much, Squire Quarrier." Senior Ceeran eyes narrowed a little as his demeanor grew more solemn. "So I will ask you directly. Is your ount of the execution of the mission urate? Did you truly, with a technique of your own creation, urately hit the target of the mission from nearly a kilometer away?"


    Rui remained silent for a moment, before nodding. "My report is the whole andplete truth. I stand by every word written in it."


    The man stared at Rui for a few seconds, trying to assess how sincere Rui was being.


    "Your ims are more than just a little surprising. They''re frankly shocking. What you im to aplish shatters known and established paradigms when ites to long-range uracy." He exined to Rui. "If true, they are a cause for celebration. Just discovering a new path to aplishing high degrees of uracy is a great contribution to the Martial World. It proves that there are other paths forward for us to pursue in the field of uracy."


    "Assuming, of course, that you''re telling the truth." He added. "If you aren''t... You will find our implementation of the penalties of deceit in reports and such to be fierce. So, having cleared that, do you still maintain your ims?"


    The air grew frostier. The mighty Martial Senior did not even attempt to exert any pressure on Rui. Just the sheertent sense of danger that Rui felt from him due to his sharp senses alone was greater than even his most powerful Mind Mask!


    Rui sighed. "Director Ceeran, I am not a fool. Why would I tantly make up fairy tales and serve them to the Martial Union when I know I would not be able to escape its consequences? I assure you, my report is the whole andplete truth."


    "For one, please address me by my Martial Artist rank if you will, rather than my position within the Martial Union. I identify with my identity as a Martial Artist more than anything else." He smiled, lightening the atmosphere a notch or two. "Secondly, I am of the personal opinion that you are sincere. My warning was more of an expression of the official stance of the Martial Union, more than anything."


    "And, if I may ask, what is your stance?" Rui asked, curious.


    "That you''re a prodigious genius who has made an extraordinary breakthrough." Senior Ceeran''s eyes lit up with greed. "Tell me everything. How does this technique work? What are the principles and mechanisms of this technique? How does it allow you to aplish what you did?"


    Rui paused for a moment, considering his reply. "This is a bit abrupt. I thought the Martial Union respected the autonomy and right to privacy of the Martial Artists, Senior Ceeran."


    Senior Ceeran''s enthusiasm dampened a bit as he studied Rui with a measured look. "Are you unwilling to share the development of your technique with the Martial Union?"


    "I haven''t really given it much thought." Rui lied. "But I am open to it, I was just a little overwhelmed."<novelnext></novelnext>


    "It is true that the Martial Union does not force its Martial Artists to divulge their techniques and Martial Art." Senior Ceeran. "We obtain their techniques through the carrot, rather than the stick."


    Rui had already figured out why. While the Martial Union was, no doubt, powerful enough to bully nearly every Martial Artist and extract their secrets from them, this would be highly detrimental in the long run. The most negative consequences would involve a mass migration of Martial Artists from the Kandrian Empire to other sovereign states that were more pliable and less tyrannical.


    Especially other super-nations like the Britannian Empire, the Republic of Gorteau, and the Sekigahara Confederation. These nations would more than happily ept the influx of Martial Artists, growing stronger while the Kandrian Empire and the Kandrian Martial Union both would grow weaker.


    No Martial Artist would stay in an organization that proimed to be for Martial Artists but had no qualms about employing violence against the Martial Artist ss to obtain what it wanted. This would reduce the rate at which it obtained techniques quickly and would severely weaken the foundations that the organization had worked hard to build.


    There was nearly no technique that was worth officially breaking this important norm and setting a dangerous precedent that would break the trust that it had earned from Martial Artists.


    Of course, Rui was not a na?¡¥ve fool. He was rtively certain that as long the incentive was great enough, the Martial Union would shatter this norm without any hesitation to obtain whatever they wanted.N?velDrama.Org owns ? this.


    Like, for example, a way to significantly increase the rate at which Martial Artists emerged from the poption would massively increase the number of Martial Artist poption in the long run. Such a training technique would hold the strategic equivalence of a tactical intercontinental ballistic missile. Obtaining it was paramount. That was why Rui didn''t dare reveal the possibility of the VOID algorithm aplishing this to the Martial Union.


    Of course, he was much less concerned about revealing his Pathfinder technique. That technique was valuable, no doubt, but it wasn''t enough to get the Martial Union to take unscrupulous measures to obtain it. Especially if Rui already intended to share it in exchange for benefits.


    "I''m aware," Rui nodded. "I am willing to share the Pathfinder technique with the Martial Union. However, only if the Martial Union fully appreciates the value of my Pathfinder technique, and that reflects in the remuneration and the rpense that the Martial Union is willing to trade."


    "Pathfinder..." He murmured. "Interesting name, though it also sounds like a sensory technique to a certain extent."


    He paused for a few moments. "No need to fret, young Squire. The Martial Union''s evaluation of the value of a technique is fair and objective. We evaluate the value of a technique based on its individuality, potency, difficulty, and dissemination viability. In practice, it depends on how impactful your technique is on the Martial World."


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 Chapter 594 Impact

    "Impact... is it?" Rui considered his words, understanding what he meant.


    "Impact," Senior Ceeran nodded. "Allow me to briefly exin the four parameters, that I just described, deciding the ''impact'' of a technique. Individuality is one you should be familiar with, considering you''re overflowing with it. Individuality is considered an attribute that epasses both uniqueness and originality. A technique that has zero individuality is not that valuable, because it adds no value. Anything a technique with no individuality has to offer, we can already be certain is already ubiquitous, almost by definition."


    Rui nodded, this was rather straightforward.


    Why would the Martial Union try to acquire something that is neither unique nor original? Such a thing would not be able to offer anything that everything else didn''t. This was an important parameter to consider when evaluating the value that a technique had, perhaps even the most important and foremost parameter to consider.


    In this regard, Rui was quite confident that his technique would blow the minds of the Martial Union. The ODA system was probably nothing short of game-changing as far as its uniqueness and originality went. It literally stood for the Objectively Deduced uracy system, a means of obtaining uracy outside of intuitive judgment and muscle memory, which was the only known paradigm for uracy, Rui was sure.


    "The next is potency," The man exined. "Potency is just as important as individuality when evaluating the value of a technique. It''s all fine and dandy for a technique to be unique and original, but it would still be worthless if it was extremely weak and had no potential to be potent. It is simply a measure of how much a technique is actually able to aplish."


    Rui nodded. He was rather confident that the Pathfinder technique would do well in this parameter as well. After all, the potency of the technique was what drew the Martial Union''s attention and interest in the first ce.


    A technique that allowed one to snipe targets urately from nearly a kilometer away was far too potent.


    "Thest two are rted to each other to some degree," He exined. "Difficulty and dissemination viability are two parameters that decide how much the potency of the technique can be propagated. A technique that cannot, to any degree whatsoever, be passed on to others or even modified to facilitate other applications from it is not a particrly valuable technique. After all, these two parameters are ultimately what decide the actual impact that degree will have for its potency and individuality."


    Rui nodded unhappily.


    A technique with grade ten difficulty was something an extremely minute proportion of the Martial Artist poption could possibly master. Thus, the impact it had was limited. One thing Rui knew for a fact was that the technique was extremely difficult to master. The ODA system was extremely taxing and demanding of its user for it to be useful. Most Martial Artists stood no chance of conquering the sheer number of calctions that needed to be made.


    Dissemination viability looked at the factors influencing how easy propagation of the technique was. Really harsh conditions such as requiring the Mindmirror Symbiote to perform it drastically reduced its viability.


    Of course, Rui''s dependence on the Mindmirror Symbiote had reduced significantly since he ascended to a higher Realm of power. His own brain had evolved to arge degreepared to the much meager boosts that the symbiote had received.<novelnext></novelnext>


    Still, he was different, he did not think that the average Martial Squire coulde even close to mastering the ODA system without some kind of mental processing boost, at the very least. Mastering the Mind Pce technique was the bare minimum to achieve this. Even Rui would not be able to use the ODA system without the Mind Pce technique.


    "Having exined all of them, we can proceed to actually talk about the evaluation of your technique," The man exined. "Only once we have done this can we actually talk about the remuneration and rpense that we will trade to you in exchange for an exclusive license to use, distribute and adapt your technique and use it however we may deem fit."


    "So it will be treated as intellectual property?" Rui raised an eyebrow.


    "Yes, at least all the information about the technique will be considered intellectual property that is owned by you, and only you," He nodded.


    "Does that mean I will earn a cut every time this technique is sold?" Rui asked, curious.


    "Of course, about fifty percent in general. The technique may be yours, but ultimately the Martial Union is the one that engages in lots of research and development to increase its dissemination viability by making the technique easier or developing highly effective training regimes. All of this costs money, which is why we take at least fifty percent. Though if the technique is adapted to something that is very different from what was originally purchased, then we will be obliged to take an even higher cut."


    Rui found the system to be interesting, though he didn''t particrly care all that much about the money being earned through themission cut.


    "If you have no further questions, then let us proceed to the evaluation process of the technique." Senior Ceeran impatiently coaxed him.


    "How does the process work, exactly?" Rui asked.


    "You will begin by giving a scrupulously detailed report about the development period of the technique; the manner in which you came up with it, before finally divulging every ounce of information on the technique, even if it is just remotely relevant. Once that is done, you will be subjected to a bunch of tests that will gather the data which, in conjugation with the aforementioned reports, will allow us to have a clear idea of exactly how valuable the technique is. Once that is done, the Martial Union will be sure to offer rpense that ismensurate with said value. The details can be negotiated as there are plenty of exclusive techniques, goods and services, opportunities and avenues that the Martial Union can provide in return."


    Rui''s eyes lit up in interest at those words.


    This chapter upload first at  This is from N?velDrama.Org.

 Chapter 595 Excited

    The Martial Union was an immensely powerful organization in more than just one way. Its most powerful asset was, of course, its tremendous Martial power. As an organization that retained almost eighty percent of all Martial Artists in the nation, the Martial Union was unmatched when it came to individual power. To the point where it could match and perhaps even surpass the military power of the Royal Kandrian Family in some circumstances.


    However, that wasn''t the sole extent of its power. It had arge and extensive intelligencework and had unique intelligence-gathering methods through Martial Art that only an organization as Martial Art-centric could possibly have. Information ranging from mundane reports on the state of affairs to extremely significant information that would cost a small fortune to purchase. These were also part of the goods and services that it was capable of offering.


    Beyond that, it could offer many highly useful and attractive benefits that would certainly appeal to Martial Artists. The tutge and wisdom of high-ranking Martial Artists, reserved confidential techniques that were not publicly avable, extremely effective and valuable yet rare training and growth resources.Belonging ? N?velDram/a.Org.


    Furthermore, as an organization with a tremendous amount of influence over society, it was also capable of offering power and authority. Martial Artists already passively possessed such influence, but with a high-ranking position inside the Martial Union, the entire nation was within your reach.


    That was why Rui didn''t underestimate the potential rpense that the Martial Union could offer him in return for the Pathfinder technique.


    The two of them chatted a bit more before Rui was guided to another facility and made to sit at a table as he was given a typewriter to document the development process of the Pathfinder technique.


    Yet before he could begin, he felt a Squire-level presence approaching him.


    "Hm?" Rui nced up as his eyebrows furrowed.


    "Squire Quarrier, this is Squire Friedrich." An assistant staff member. "He will be ensuring that the development procedure and the information surrounding the technique is sincerely being documented."


    "A mental sensory technique?"


    "More than one, actually." Squire Friedrich replied casually. "Ensure you''re conveying the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, else I will find out, I assure you."


    The man issued a warning in a nk tone to Rui.


    Rui even believed him. The man was concealing his mental pressure, but Rui could still sense that he was still not someone Rui wanted to make an enemy of.


    Funnily enough, that made him want to fight him even more, to test his Martial Art against him.


    Instead, Rui wordlessly turned back to his work and began describing the development process of the Pathfinder technique as well as all the information associated with the mechanism of the technique.


    Within an hour, he finished, having managed to pump out arge amount of information thanks to his super speed.


    Squire Friedrich had not voiced out a singleint the entire time, which Rui found interesting. It appeared that the ''whole truth'' was not necessarily a strict demand. The Oda system was partially inspired by the way that he developed the VOID algorithm, though Rui did not mention that, yet Squire Friedrich either did not notice or did notice but didn''t deem it significant enough to reprimand him for.<novelnext></novelnext>


    It was half an hour before he met Senior Ceeran.


    His demeanor was a lot less restrained than in their first meeting.


    "I have gone through your report and I just feel the need to say, if even half of what you have described is urate, then your mind must work in ways that I cannot even fathom. To be able to obtain such a high degree of uracy not through intuition and muscle memory as nearly everybody else does, but through mathematical calctions is unheard of! There is no Martial Artist on the damn continent that I know of that can replicate your feat!" He excitedly eximed.


    "I''m d you recognize its value, I would have been a lot more concerned if you didn''t seem to," Rui smiled.


    "How could I not?!" he eximed. "In fact, I can''t wait to try mastering this technique and incorporating its principles into my own original techniques!"


    Rui raised an eyebrow at those words. "I take it you have a long-range centered Martial Path?"


    "Correct," He nodded. "My Martial Path is long-range trajectory maniption. It''s a very niche subset of long-range offense, making me one of the few of my kind."


    "Interesting," Rui furrowed his eyebrow. "What exactly does your Martial Path and Art actually entail, in practice?"


    "My Martial Art is centered around a style of fighting where I manipte the trajectory of my attacks once they''ve beenunched to suit the situation. I aplish this using various mechanisms and principles, some of which I myself have developed." He stated with more than just a hint of pride.


    Rui''s eyes widened. "Manipting the trajectories of long-range attacks after they''re alreadyunched? Is such a thing even possible?"


    "Of course it is!" Heughed good-heartedly. "There are a few means to do so. Manipting the atmosphere is the mostmon way. Things like heat, air currents, and such can be used to alter the trajectory after release to dramatically increase the probability of the attack hitting the intended moving target."


    "I see..." Rui furrowed his eyebrows as he considered the implication of the man''s words.


    The man was probably a medium to long-range fighter and fighting him was probably a pain in the ass. Avoiding attacks was extremely difficult, and with the knowledge that he had the ability tond his attacks thanks to this homing feature, he probably had several lethal long-range attacks that made defending against them very difficult!


    "Truly incredible... Considering that this is your Martial Path and the fact that you''re the Martial deputy-director of the long-range research department... You must surely be part of the Martial Sect surrounding long-range techniques. Am I right?"


    "Of course," The man nodded, before turning to Rui. "I am most certainly part of the Longranger Sect."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 596 Sect

    "The Longranger sect... is it?" Rui considered the name, not having heard it before.


    The Martial Sects were not public knowledge, one only learned about them if one reached a certain level of political or economic status, or if one was a Martial Artist. Furthermore, learning more about any one of them required actually entering a Martial Sect, or being approached by that Martial Sect.


    Rui didn''t fulfill those conditions until now, exining his ignorance of what was surely an important Martial Sect.


    "That''s right." Senior Ceeran. "We Longrangers fight for an increased weightage on long-range techniques than they are currently given. Long-range techniques have very simple but potent advantages and benefits that ought to be more capitalized. Our techniques are simply superior to short-range striking."


    Rui raised an eyebrow at those words. "Both ranges have their strengths and disadvantages, as I''m sure you''d agree."


    "This is not false, of course," He nodded. "But the more urate truth is that long-range techniques have better advantages to offer and lesser disadvantages to hinder the Martial Artist from using them. If you are in a sparring match or a duel where you and your opponent start meters away from each other, things may seem more equal, but in practice, such circumstances are quite rare. Especially in circumstances of war, having long-range offense has been shown to be dramatically more sessful than engaging in close-quarter brawls."


    Rui wanted to retort, but he paused, considering the matter.


    It was not easy to refute the man''s words. Especially when Rui had lived an entire lifetime in a world where projectile weapons with range were demonstrably more impactful inbat than close-quarter weapons.


    This was especially true inrger-scale conflicts where there were no rules of any sort. Even bows and arrows and spears were historically more potent in warfare and became a main staple in conflicts. Most genuine conflicts began at a distant range, thus long-range offensive measures always gained the advantage of inflicting damage before shorter-range weapons could. Many a time, this was the difference between life and death.


    Still, Rui rejected the notion that long-range offenses needed to be given higher priority rtive to short-range offensive measures. For once, the distance shortened, long-range offensive Martial Artists would find themselves at a disadvantage!


    For Rui, maintaining a good bnce between both was key. Increasing both his long-range and short-range offensive capability was a prudent measure to take.


    (''Maybe I should look into the trajectory maniption techniques that he specializes in,'') Rui considered.


    The synergy between the ODA system and such a technique was incredible, maybe he could expand the Pathfinder technique to include a long-range maniption technique to turn the Sonic Bullets into homing projectiles!


    (''Then the technique would truly live up to its name!'') Rui''s eyes widened.


    The pathfinder''s effectiveness would increase substantially. Rui had to admit that Senior Ceeran was on to something with trying to integrate the ODA system with his Martial Art.


    "Reading the development process of the Pathfinder was even more interesting than the actual technique itself," The man noted. "Truly, you''d just fine in the Longrangers."


    "Are you attempting to recruit me, Senior?" Rui smiled wryly.


    "I''d be lying if I said I wasn''t interested, but..." He shook his head. "We''ve gone through your profile. You''ve already rejected the invitations to Martial Sects much more alluring and powerful than that of the Longranger Sect, like the Fire Sect, for example. Yet after all this time you still haven''t joined a Martial Sect. We can safely conclude that you have qualms with the fundamental idea of joining a Martial Sect and everything it entails."<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    Rui nodded, they had hit the nail right on the head. "That is true. It''s a shame that there isn''t an all-rounder Sect."


    "The focus of such a Sect is almost contradictory to the point of Martial Sects in the first ce." The man replied. "That''s why there are none. It doesn''t make sense to advocate for all fields equally, that doesn''t impact the budget spending in any way."


    "True..."


    "That being said, even if we don''t invite you straightforwardly, we can still engage in transactions. Like the one we''re engaging in right now." The Martial Senior smiled. "I promise you that the Longranger Sect will not be ungrateful for your technique, especially once we verify that the technique actually works the way you im it does in the tests we are about tomence."


    Belonging ? N?velDram/a.Org.


    "I am intrigued at what you have to offer, truly." Rui raised an eyebrow.


    "In good time." The man smiled, before gesturing forward. "We''ve arrived."


    Rui turned, facing arge facility before him.


    Inside was a sight that made even his eyebrows rise. Extensively long tracks over with all kinds of targets on the other end. Even the ceiling was remarkably high, meant to amodaterger and wide area techniques.


    Rui nodded in appreciation. "This is remarkable."


    "It''s something our Sect funded to facilitate the most thorough and rigorous research and development of long-range techniques in all parameters to the extreme. Now then, let''s begin, shall we?"


    He gestured as he walked forward.


    At a particr station in the vast facility was a team of researchers, engaging in some technical work with various devices and machines of all kinds.


    "Ah, Senior Ceeran, we just finished all the preparations for the testing experiments that you ordered us to." An elderly greeted him, bowing deeply when they reached her. "We can begin any time."


    "Great, we''ll begin immediately!" The man smiled excitedly., before turning to Rui. "This is it, be sure to give it your best."


    "What do I need to do precisely?" Rui asked.


    "You simply need to hit the targets we instruct you to hit. We will be testing the range, frequency, and precision limits of your static and dynamic uracy while controlling for factors such as target size, position, and inclination of the target as well as atmospheric and sensory conditions..."


    As they conversed back and forth, Senior Ceeran was incredibly impressed that Rui was not only capable of keeping up with the concepts employed in empirical research but was able to demonstrate an understanding of it that surpassed even his!


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 597 Test

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    This gave Senior Ceeran an even greater impression of Rui. He watched, impressed, as Rui spoke with the researchers of the Longranger Sect directly as Senior Ceeran was no longer able to keep up with him in the conversation, deferring to the experts of the process.


    Once the doubts were resolved, the tests began immediately.


    "Test RQst5s100 willmence soon." One of the researchers spoke into a recording device. "This test entails testing static uracy of the Pathfinder technique of the subject at a range of hundred meters with a target of size five."


    He turned towards Rui, nodding.


    Rui turned, looking at the target a hundred meters, quickly executing the ODA system effortlessly before firing a Sonic Bullet in the distance.


    THWOOM


    BANG!


    In less than a second, the bullet struck the red center of the target.


    A perfectly urate shot.


    No one was surprised, hundred meters may be extremely difficult for Martial Apprentices, but Martial Squires and their evolved brains atop the boosts provided by the advancement of their Martial Paths allowed them to achieve this degree of uracy fairly handily.


    However, the expressions of the team and Senior Ceeran grew increasingly more excited as the experiments progressed.


    By the time Rui reached five hundred meters, Senior Ceeran already had a smirk on his face. It was quite evident that he liked what he was seeing. He paid close attention to Rui as Rui fired each shot, especially his demeanor. He noted that Rui''s exhibited the kind of behavior one would exhibit when one was engaging in mental math, which is what Rui was actually doing, as opposed to someone hyper-focused on the target.


    At seven hundred meters, even the voice of the researcher narrating the oues and the proceedings was starting to get disaffected as he became increasingly impatient and excited.


    At nine hundred meters, Senior Ceeran had a small outburst of energy as Rui seeded in striking the target from that distance. The same distance he proimed to kill Herguson Meine from. This was irrefutable proof that everything he uttered was the truth and that this was truly and wholly the real deal!


    At one thousand meters, a bead of sweat trickled down Rui''s forehead as he just barely managed to get the shot on target, clenching his jaws as he strained himself to the limit.


    It was only at one thousand and one meters that his expression fell as he finally missed the target entirely.


    "Tsk, seems that this is my limit, for now," Rui sighed.


    "You should be ecstatic, jumping in the air with pride," Senior Ceeran chuckled at Rui''s disappointment.


    "Perhaps, it''s just a little irksome because I know that this isn''t my absolute limit, I can do better as time goes on," He sighed.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    "The fact that you''re starting off this well is an extremely good sign, young man. I don''t think there''s a single eighteen-year-old Martial Artist out there who can even dream of aplishing what you just did!" He eximed. "Your future is bright, and your potential is limitless!"


    "Thank you," Rui nodded.


    The remaining tests progressed smoothly. Rui''s Pathfinder technique was tested in ways that even he hadn''t tried prior. By the end of the evaluation, Rui had walked out with a much greater understanding of his own technique than ever before.


    There were some things offered by a systematic scientific approach that he simply could not rece with his sharp observation, no matter how shrewd he was. The power of the Pathfinder technique was undeniable. Senior Ceeran had lost the dignity that a Martial deputy director was supposed to maintain as he lost himself immersing himself in the study of Rui''s techniques.


    "Just watching you has given me tremendous amounts of inspiration, more than I know what to do with it." The man had a hard time restraining his excitement. "I just need one more step to the Master Realm and you may have provided me with a solution!"


    Rui raised an eyebrow. "One step away from the Master Realm?"


    "I am a Master candidate." The man nodded absentmindedly. "I''ve been at the zenith for nearly two decades, trying to figure out how I ought to take a step to the higher Realm!"


    Rui jerked back in surprise as he took a good look at the man. He looked remarkably young, most certainly not as old as a man who had spent more than ten years stagnating at the peak of the Senior Realm.


    Rui narrowed his eyes. (''Has he consumed a longevity potion?'')


    Rui was aware that entering the Squire Realm prolonged life to a certain extent, but it would not justify the youth the man seemed to disy. Was there perhaps a simr effect when one entered the Senior Realm? The information surrounding the details of Martial Artists of higher Realms was so inscrutable that many such details were entirely out of reach of someone like Rui.


    The man however continued mumbling to himself, pacing back and forth, unaware of Rui''s confusion.


    "Uh, sir?" Rui cautiously coaxed.


    "Hm?" He looked up.


    "The various tests are over." Rui reminded him. "Is there anything else that needs to be done before we can negotiate the rpense and remuneration?"


    "Oh, silly me. I almost forgot about that part, having been so absorbed in my own thoughts." He shook his head. "Of course not, let us head back to my office immediately, we have much to discuss, young man."


    Rui suspected that the Martial Union, or rather the Longranger Sect, would not be insincere with their rpense. The terms of this deal would singlehandedly decide whether Rui would ever be willing to sell his techniques to them ever again. If Rui felt cheated, they would never ever benefit from his brilliance ever again, and they probably knew it.


    Hell, Rui wouldn''t be surprised if they offered remuneration that was even greater than what the technique was worth, just to ensure he develops a particrly good impression of the Sect as fair and charitable.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 598 Remuneration

    "Now then," The man began once they finally sat down in his office. "Let us talk about our end of the deal,"


    Rui simply stared at him silently, waiting for him to begin.


    "The evaluation of your technique isn''t out yet officially, however, unofficially, I can tell you that we value the technique that you''ve developed immensely. However, our concern is the low dissemination viability of the technique due to the burdensome mental calctions that need to be rapidly executed within a short timeframe. This is an extremely high hurdle of difficulty. So much so that we see fit to grade its difficulty as nothing less than ten." The manmented.


    Rui didn''t bother refuting this, he knew that this would most likely be the case. He didn''t think it could possibly be graded below nine due to how demanding the mental faculties of the Martial Artist aiming to use them were.


    "Don''t get me wrong, this does not take away from your personal aplishment, in fact, it makes you even more impressive. But unfortunately, it does significantly reduce the impact the technology will have on the Martial world," He sighed, a hint of regret shing in his eyes. "I don''t know how many Martial Artists there are with the qualifications to attempt mastering this technique there are, but I can be damn well sure that they are no more than a minute portion of the Martial world."


    Rui nodded, agreeing. "I take it this significantly impacts the value of the technique to the Martial Union, correct?"


    "Yes, I''m afraid," He sighed. "Of course, every technique is valuable, and grade-ten techniques are no doubt extremely valued for increasing the peak of what Marital Artists are capable of. However, its direct impact is not as revolutionary as I truly hoped it would be."


    "Won''t the Martial Union work on researching ways to increase the dissemination value of the technique though?" Rui asked.


    "Of course we will, but the oues of research projects cannot be guaranteed," The man sighed. "A preliminary research endeavor will be undertaken to gauge the difficulty of the project, depending on the results after a year of research, we may either proceed with it if it shows promise or abandon the research project if no progress is made even after a year. However, the research we conduct is not considered a part of the remuneration and rpense that the Martial Union will give you in exchange for the technique."


    "That''s fair," Rui nodded. Unless he was personally contributing to the research, he could not demand remuneration for the fruits of their researchbor.


    "Alright," The man nodded. "For a grade-ten Squire-level technique that is viable across even higher Realms and showing us a brand-new paradigm of uracy that has produced shocking results, we have decided to award you one million Martial Credits!"


    Rui raised an eyebrow.


    That was an enormous amount of funds. Rui made less than ten thousand Martial credits with Squire-level missions. Meaning this reward was the equivalent of more than one hundred Squire-level missions.


    Rui was extremely rich!


    This degree of wealth would allow him to potentiallymission Martial Masters for an extremely low-grade Master-level mission, who were among the most strategically powerful Martial assets of the Union and the Empire!<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    "I''m a little confused," Rui scratched his head, reacting in a way that Senior Ceeran did not expect. "I thought that the Martial Union would provide me with all manners of rpense that were exclusively offered to those who made contributions. I''m a little surprised at only being offered a huge sum of money."


    Senior Ceeran chuckled, understanding Rui''s confusion. "All of the various kinds of rpense that you''re referring to can be purchased with the sum that we provided you with."


    "So, anybody with money can purchase them?" Rui frowned.


    If these goods and services were not exclusive to the Martial Artist, then the incentive to share techniques with the Martial Union was very little. Any rich douchebag could easily purchase all these services that Rui had to give up a precious personal technique to obtain.


    "No," The man shook his head. "The exclusive goods and services that the Martial Union has can only be purchased by Martial credits. And Martial credits cannot be exchanged with Kandrian gold coins or any other legacy. The only way to obtain them is through contributions, such as missions, submitting techniques, training methodologies, intelligence, etc."


    "I see," Rui sighed inwardly in relief. "I''m d to hear that."Content ? N?velDrama.Org.


    This meant that the one million Martial credits that Rui had were extremely valuable and could probably purchase him all kinds of goods and other services.


    "As for what you can purchase..." The man pulled out a thick book from his shelf. "There are far too many things for me to convey to you in a conversation. This is a collection of all the various exclusive things that you can purchase from the Martial Union using Martial credits. I will only be going through a number of the most sought-after and significant things. You can go through the rest here, or you can ess a digital version through your ounter."


    The size of the book wasrge.


    "I see..." Rui narrowed his eyes as he considered the matter.


    "The Martial Union offers many things to its contributors. We generally divide them into a number of categories. I will be going through the broad categories, while you can indulge in a deep dive through them in your own time."


    Rui nodded, paying close attention to his words.


    He wanted to make sure he got a thorough understanding of everything the Martial Union had to offer before making a decision on how to spend them. Hell, Rui wasn''t even the neediest person. He was doing just fine training andpleting missions on his own. However, that made his decision even harder. After all, now his choices weren''t as obvious as before. He needed to work on choosing what fulfilled his interests the best.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 599 Product

    "We divide our exclusive goods and services by their nature," The man began by exining. "The first and foremost broad category is, of course, material products. This category very broadly includes goods whose value lies in the material physical product that we offer."


    The man paused, before continuing. "Things like Martial gear, that you won''t find in the utility department, that aids Martial Artists beyond what normal products can. You can think of extremely powerful versions of the gear that you already rely on. Particrly high-grade monocr, abnormally effective restraining gear, potent healing potions, even Martial garbs that can provide defensive protection against other Martial Artists or, in your case, Martial Squires!"


    Rui widened his eyes. He knew that for something as small and thin as a Martial garb, providing any amount of defense against Squire-level power was definitely a difficult task!


    "Why aren''t such products moremonly avable to Martial Artists?" Rui asked.N?velDrama.Org owns ? this.


    "Because the materials used to make them are strategically valuable," The man replied. "I''m sure someone as shrewd as you have figured out that the sheer quality of the material must be high in order to allow cloth fabric to provide any kind of defense against another Martial Squire, correct?"


    Rui nodded. He wasn''t stupid. The quality and quantity of a material determined what the limit of the product, created with that quantity of material, was.


    If the quantity was very low, like that of a Martial garb, then the quality would have to be exceedingly high!


    "If I''m not wrong..." Rui gulped. "Such a Martial garb would need to be made out of Senior-level materials."


    "Correct," The man grinned.


    Rui shook his head, chuckling weakly.


    To think he could potentially purchase a Martial garb made out of a material whose tensile strength was an entire Realm above his own power!


    This was certainly not a privilege that many Martial Artists could afford. Only weapon-oriented Martial Artists possessed such products, and only because it was necessary.


    "That isn''t all, however." The man smiled. "The Martial Union offers all kinds of products whose utility is not exclusive to field usage. For example, we offer potions that can permanently boost the physicality of a Martial Squire like yourself."


    Rui''s eyes widened. "By how much?"<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    "The effects vary," The man replied. "But it provides a fifteen percent boost on average."


    "For a singr potion, that is incredibly amazing," Rui murmured in amazement. "Can it be repeatedly consumed to stack its effects?"


    "I''m afraid not," The man shook his head with a rueful smile. "If life was that convenient, Martial Artists as a ss would be far more powerful than we are right now. Most high-grade Martial Squires end up having consumed one by the time they''ve spent enough time in the Squire Realm, you are the only one who has an opportunity to consume one this early in the Squire Realm."


    "I see..." Rui rested his chin on his hands as he considered the matter. "I bet with thebination of mytest technique and the potion, I''ll be promoted to grade five very soon."


    "I wouldn''t be so sure if I were you," The man replied.


    Rui furrowed his eyes in confusion. "Is there such arge difference between the grades? In the Apprentice Realm, I jumped between grades much more easily."


    "The Squire Realm is generally farrger than the Apprentice Realm, young man. Our evolved, varied and customized bodies obtained from the breakthrough process make synergy between Martial Art, techniques, and Martial body a much more powerful variable, allowing for a greater difference between the base and the peak of the Squire Realmpared to the Apprentice Realm." Senior Ceeran exined. "Grade-ten Martial Squires are a sight to behold within the Squire Realm. Any one of them would utterly annihte multiple of you simultaneously inbat, based on the mission records of yours that I took the liberty of going through. You cannot simply extrapte your stunning rate of growth in the Apprentice Realm to the Squire Realm, I assure you your journey in the Squire realm will be long and grueling."


    "I see... To think that even a grade-ten technique and a fifteen-percent boost would not be enough for a jump in grade..." Rui sighed. He was being overloaded with information at the moment. He could consider this matterter, for now, he needed to focus on the discussion at hand.


    "But this is all irrelevant," The man waved dismissively. "The point is you can gain an important boost to your physicality in the long run. Normally, Martial Squires have to spend many years grinding on missions to finally save up enough funds to purchase such potions."


    Rui would be lying if he said he wasn''t deeply attracted to this option. Gaining such a boost to his physicality was immense. Although fifteen percent may not seem that game-changing, it would allow Rui to be strong enough to decisively win against his previous self every time. The effective boost it provided to hisbat was not something that could be dismissed so easily.


    Of course, Rui had yet to hear about the rest of the goods and services that the Martial Union offered, but this was a solidpetitor. However, Senior Ceeran hadn''t even finished covering the first broad category. He looked back at the man with a measured look.


    "As far as potions go, that isn''t the only kind that we offer. We offer extremely potent potions that take significantly less time to work and can heal even critical wounds extremely quickly. Or mental rejuvenation potions that lessen the burden that prolongedck of sleep causes on the mind. Even longevity potions that can extend your lifespan beyond even the evolved lifespan of Martial Artists."


    Each of these was a highly desirable potion, especially thetter which was the dream of not just Martial Artists but also the human species in general. No one objected to being able to extend their natural lives beyond their limits!


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 600 Internal

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    The man proceeded toy out several sub-categories within material products. Many of them didn''t even necessarily have anything to do with Martial Art, earning Rui''s apathy due to that. He wasn''t interested in products that didn''t aid his Martial Path and Martial journey.


    "That is a general overview of the material product categories," He exined. "You can go through the digital library avable on your ounter to gain more information regarding specific details."


    Rui nodded. "Will do."


    "The next broad category is information and intelligence," The man exined. "This includes Martial Art oriented information such as techniques and research centered around Martial Art that you may be interested in for developing a new technique, for example."


    Rui nodded. He had already expected this. The Martial Union invested a tremendous amount of its revenue into the budget for research and development of Martial Art techniques and training techniques, training regimes, and other training resources.


    Unfortunately, just like the research and development in another field, not all avenues and projects of research and development were sessful. In fact, many of them were not. Rather than allowing all of the research to be in vain, the Martial Union documented and stored the data and sold it to third parties that were interested in purchasing that data, particrly Martial Artists who may be able to sessfully make breakthroughs in that particr field thanks to unique circumstances surrounding them and their Martial Art.


    This was the most productive way to squeeze value out of failed research. Not only did it fetch them revenue, but it also increased the probability that Martial Artists would seed in their endeavors of creating and developing new techniques that would ultimately funnel back to benefit the Martial Union even more.


    "We offer a wealth of knowledge in our attempts to learn more and strengthen Martial Art much more readily and easily than we would to third parties that are not connected to the Martial Union in any way. This is the advantage of being a contributor to the Martial Union." The man smiled. "In addition to information rted to Martial Art, the Martial Union also possess a library of information outside Martial Art, on all worldly matters, both general and specific knowledge within reason. Our extensive intelligence department andwork have allowed us to grasp highly valuable and confidential information that would otherwise be very difficult to obtain. Of course, you do not possess the sheer required number of Martial credits to get your hands on the particrly juice stuff such as national secrets, confidential observations on the Beast Domain, etc."


    Of course, Rui didn''t care about this in the slightest. He was not going to waste money on something irrelevant to his goals and objectives.


    "Now now, don''t be too quick to dismiss this category of information," The man smiled, noticing Rui''sck of enthusiasm. "You can evenmission a covert investigation and intelligence-gathering operation around a matter or a person, or to obtain information that you''re looking for. For example, and forgive me if this is personal, but I read that your mother died when you were born, and your father is aplete unknown. Our intelligence department can dig up the truth about their identities, your heritage, and your roots if you want."


    Rui raised an eyebrow.


    It wasn''t as though he had never thought about who his biological parents were. He wouldn''t be human if he wasn''t curious. He still had a memory of his mother before she died, though he never knew her name, as she had been taken in in an emergency. As for his father, he hadn''t the faintest clue who he was.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    Still, it wasn''t enough for him to care too much. He had a family that he was more than happy with.


    Rui shook his head. "Next,"


    "Alright," Senior Ceeran immediately acquiesced, wisely not pressing further. "That pretty much sums up the information and intelligence category, it possesses only two sub-categories, but they are both immensely deep and wide with more information than you can fathom. This brings us to the next category; authority and power."


    Rui raised an eyebrow.


    "In order to exin this category of services, I need to exin the structure of the Martial Union and its rtionship with its associated and constituent Martial Artists." The man exined. "Martial Artists like yourself are considered to be external members; Martial Artists who have only signed a partnership contract with the Martial Union where youplete missions and receive half the pay while the Martial Union receives the other half for all the services and systems in ce that allowed for the transaction between client and Martial Artist to smoothly take ce."


    Rui nodded, following his words. He even understood where this was going, but he kept silent, allowing Senior Ceeran to finish his point.


    "Whereas Martial Artists like myself, are internal members of the Martial Union. We do not merely sign a partnership contract with the martial Union, but also a conditional employment contract where we undertake few responsibilities and duties while also gaining more authority and power within the Martial Union, in the form of security clearance to ess information that external members simply cannot purchase regardless of how many Martial credits one possesses. As well asmissioning authority; the authority tomission the Martial Artists of the Martial Union using the Martial Union''s treasury to fund themission instead of my own. Of course, this cannot be abused, but it still does give us internal members a lot of power."


    "So..." Rui pieced together his implicit offer. "Are you saying I can purchase my way into the Martial Union''s inner circle to obtain greater power and authority?"


    The man eagerly nodded. "That''s right. There definitely are some constraints and burdens, but it''s not bad. There are several more benefits such as an even greater degree of impunity from thew and the penal code, as well as easier ess to more powerful Martial Artists, you can leverage your position to-"


    "Thank you, sir, but I have no intention of bing an employee, I value my freedom and autonomy too much."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 601 Key

    Rui didn''t even hesitate in refusing thest option that Senior Ceeran had provided to him. Rui simply had no interest in the various ways that the Martial Union could grant him influence, wealth, and power.


    At least, that wasn''t the kind of power that Rui was interested in. Rui wanted to dedicate his life to pursuing his Martial Path and developing his Martial Art. If anything, positions in the Martial Union would burden him with explicit and implicit responsibilities and burdens that he simply didn''t care for and would also hinder him from focusing on what he wanted to focus on.


    He didn''t want long periods of training frequently intruded by responsibility calls from the Martial Union.


    "Well, that''s fine. Quite understandable actually, especially at your stage," The man exined. "There''s plenty of time to change your mind when you get stronger and reach higher Realms."


    Rui raised an eyebrow. "You make it sound like it is something that will inevitably happen,"


    Senior Ceeran smiled mncholically. "Why do you think so many Martial Artists of the Martial Union spend so much time in Martial Sects?"


    Rui scratched his head. "Because they want their field of Martial Art to receive more funds and capital for research?"


    "Of course," The man nodded. "But my question had more to do with why this was the case?"


    "Hm..." Rui scratched his head.


    "An overwhelming proportion of the research and development happens in the lower Realms, after all, it is extremely difficult for research teams to aid Martial Artists of the upper Realms. These beings have reached such an absurd level of power across the centuries that they''re no different from natural disasters. Just being in the same region as them is dangerous," The man exined. "So why is that Martial Artists in the higher Realms get involved in this matter that has no direct relevance to them so fiercely?"


    Rui didn''t know the answer. In truth, he wasn''t sure why these Martial Artists that were so vastly above such matters cared so deeply about the research and development allocations of the Martial Artist.


    His first guess was that it was a matter of ego and pride. Perhaps seeing their field receive lesser capital than those of their peers was interpreted as an indication of inferiority, causing them to fight hard to get their field more recognition than they believe it deserved.


    Yet for some reason, Rui didn''t think that this was the case.


    Were the Martial Artists of the upper Realms really that petty?<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    "It''s because progressing bes much harder the higher the Realm of the Martial Artist," The man sighed. "It''s almost impossible to maintain the rate of progression in the higher Realms than it is in the lower Realms. This is true for any two sessive Realms. You reached the Squire Realm after spending around four years in the Apprentice Realm, this is impressive and very optimistic but it is hardly unheard of. However, I can assure you that you will almost certainly not reach the Senior Realm in the next four years, or less than three, since you have already spent around eighteen months in the Squire Realm."


    Rui could already feel that. He started out at grade three thanks to how potent his Martial Art was, and his extra-enhanced body, however, his rate of progress across the Squire Realm was slower than he had expected. He could especially feel that when he learned that mastering a synergetic grade-ten technique along with a permanent augmentation potion wasn''t necessarily enough to move up a grade.


    He would probably spend many years in the Senior Realm before he could take a step into a higher realm of power.


    "But what exactly does this have to with higher Realm Martial Artists joining factions and being involved with the Martial Union?" Rui scratched his head, confused.Belonging ? N?velDram/a.Org.


    "It has to do with the difficulty of treading down your Martial Path, individuality generally bes much harder toe up with. It''s like climbing a mountain, easiest at the bottom, but gets continuously harder as it grows steeper," The man exined. "Oftentimes, Martial Artists hit into nigh-insurmountable barriers. In times like these, the innovations and creations of the humblest of Martial Artists can often serve as the key to progressing forward. These Martial Artists have a high capability to deconstruct the essence of lower techniques and adapt it to their need. One of the variables that decide the avability of such techniques is the amount of capital for research that the Martial Union allocates to their fields."


    "I see..." Rui narrowed his eyes in thought. "So it is, at least, partially fueled by personal and self-centered reasons."


    "Correct," The man nodded. "Martial Artists that reach this level are highly driven, it takes an immense amount of perseverance to transcend your limits multiple times and reach the upper Realms. That is why these Martial Artists are willing to look any and everywhere to obtain inspiration or solutions. I can tell you that someone very high up and special in the Longranger Sect is particrly interested in your Pathfinder technique. Joining the Martial Union is ultimately something all Martial Artists find great value in doing."


    He gave Rui a measured look.


    "Well, if and when that dayes, I''ll consider joining the Martial Union," Rui sighed, throwing him a bone.


    "It''s always good to keep an open mind," The man smiled. "And that just about brings us to the end of the brief overview of the services that the Martial Union offers. The one million martial credits have already been deposited in your ount, and you may spend them how so ever you deem appropriate."


    Rui nodded. "Thank you for your help, Senior Ceeran, it is much appreciated."


    "No," The man shook his head vigorously. "I''m the one who should be thanking you, young man, you have shown me a new path forward that I had never even known existed. Inparison to that, the aid I provided you is rather trivial."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 602 Considerations

    Rui had plenty to consider on the way back home. He had a huge array of choices to spend his million Martial credits on, and he didn''t want to be too hasty.


    (''I''m not under a tremendous amount of pressure in any regard at the moment.'') Rui sighed. (''I can take my time to think it through. Hell, I don''t even think it is ideal to spend all of it on one go.'')


    It was best to keep a smaller proportion in his ount as a part of his savings, or he could even give it to the Quarrier Orphanage and allow them to spend it on things that even the ie supplied by both Rui and Julian would normally not allow.


    (''I should prioritize spending the credits on something that will aid my Martial Art and my power.'') Rui decided.


    Those two were different, albeit very closely rted. Progressing his Martial Art made him stronger, but bing stronger did not necessarily progress his Martial Art. The clearest example of thetter was the perma-augmentation potion that augmented his physicality but did not impact his Martial Art in any way.


    Of course, this was not bad, not by any means at all. But Rui would rather have an option that made him stronger by making his Martial Art stronger. But, of course, there was no straightforward way to make progress in your Martial Art, it certainly was not something that could be purchased. No potion boosted one''s Martial Art.


    (''Still, it is an option worth considering,'') Rui noted.


    The Martial World was dangerous. That potion could mean the difference between life and death where he would not have been able to ovee an opponent had he not consumed said potion. Thus, Rui was very open to considering consuming said potion.


    (''Although there is nothing that can straightforwardly strengthen my Martial Art, there''s a variety of smaller things that should be able to aid.'') Rui realized.


    Things like being able to purchase a lot of research data surrounding a field to learn more about it were certainly quite useful. He had done just that when he purchased information rting to thepatibility between poison and symbiotes.


    The next time that he wanted to obtain information surrounding a field that was relevant to a technique development project that he was working on, he could be much less reserved in the amount of money that he spent on it.


    Doing so would increase the probability that he would obtain some degree of sess in regard to the project that he was working on, or, if the project was not viable in the first ce, then he was less likely to waste time on that avenue of development.


    He could also be much less reserved when spending on training resources in the Martial Union, for one. After all, with the sheer number of Martial credits he had sitting in the bank, he didn''t need to worry about spending too many training resources.


    Rui could evenmission Martial Artists of higher Realms like Martial Seniors to aid him if he ever experienced any difficulty with training or a particr technique.


    Martial Artists of higher Realms possessed knowledge and experience that far surpassed that of a rtively young Martial Squire like himself. There were insights and wisdom that came with the sheer quantity and quality of experience in regard to Martial Art that these Martial Artists possessed that could not be reced by anything else.


    Of course, he highly doubted he couldmission them too many times before even his expansive reserves of Martial credits emptied up.


    (''It''s probably best to spend a certain degree of Martial credits on immediate boosts such as the perma-augmenting potion while keeping the rest to be avable for future expenditure on continuous purchases that can help the growth of my Martial Art in many ways.'') Rui nodded.


    Ultimately, this was the most prudent way to handle the way to spend these funds. While the goods and services of the Martial Union were no doubt quite impressive and alluring, ultimately, they weren''t something that Rui was too willing to spend much capital on. He didn''t particrly need or want most of them, and while there were no doubt products that could aid his missionpletion, he was content with augmenting his physical prowess.


    Anything else was simply too temporal and would grow obsolete as time passed. There was no way that he could retain most of these products when he stepped into the Senior Realm, but the perma-augmenting potion would certainly aid him throughout his entire journey.


    By the time he gathered his thoughts on the matter, he had already arrived at the Quarrier Orphanage. As he sky-walked down, he found Max and Mana sparring fiercely outside the Orphanage. Thankfully, he already had the mind mask on, thus his arrival didn''t draw their attention. The two were so intensely focused on theirbat sparring that they didn''t even notice Rui descending from the sky.Content ? N?velDrama.Org.


    It was only after they paused of their own volition that they finally saw Rui smiling at them from a distance.


    p¨¤§ád¨¢-¨¾?¦Í¨º¦É.§ã¨®§® "Big brother."


    "You''re back."


    "Have you finished your business in the Martial Union? It sure took a while."


    "I did," Rui nodded. "How is training going?"


    "It''s going as tough as it usually does, but we can handle it just fine," Max replied.


    Rui had been paying close attention to them as he has been increasingly putting them through the VOID algorithm training, sparring with them with an adapted style produced by the VOID algorithm, using the bare minimum amount of energy and power that he needed to beat them, while also replicating their own styles against them.


    He had watched as time passed, the two of them had gained an immense amount of self-awareness about their fighting styles, learning their affinities and capabilities at a remarkably young age, the kind of thing that one would really learn about only in the exploration stage that students went through in the Martial Academy.


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 Chapter 603 Team

    (''Of course, this alone probably isn''t enough to discover one''s Martial Path and break through to the Apprentice Realm.'') Rui noted.


    For example, if their Martial Path happened to be rted to a non-standard field like poison, then no amount of self-awareness of their existing style andbat would be able to allow them to discover their Martial Path until they were actually exposed to poison.


    Of course, it was highly unlikely that they had Martial Paths rted to poison. Now that Rui had gained ess to some lesser-known secrets of the impact of one''s personal experiences throughout their life on their Martial Path, he knew that their life experiences would almost certainly not morph their Martial Path into something niche and esoteric.


    Furthermore, Rui already had some suspicions about their Martial Paths.


    Max was likely going to have a Martial Path centered around offense or power, or both. Hisbat style contained a lot of both, thus it was not unreasonable for Rui to suspect that the boy would be going down this path.


    Of course, Rui could not specifically say what his Martial Path would be. Both offense and power were extremely broad fields of Martial Art, and there were arge number of possible specific sub-fields that his Martial Path could be.


    The same could be said for Mana, who seemed to excel in all-around maneuvering and agility. Even within those fields, she could end up pursuing numerous particr sub-fields.


    He decided to, at the very least, give them decent levels of exposure to various unorthodox fields, it would expand their Martial Art worldview and give them a better understanding of the various kinds of Martial Art there could be.Belonging ? N?velDram/a.Org.


    "Big brother, can you spar with us again?"


    The two of them looked at him expectantly.


    "Alright, fine." Rui sighed, relenting.


    "Alright!"


    The two took their positions and stances while Rui simply stood where he was, waiting for them. He took his time to observe their stances and movements in slow motion.


    Yet more than that, what drew his attention was their demeanor and impression. Rui recalled that a few months ago when they attended the Martial entrance exam, while they were certainly passionate and excited, he couldn''t help but think that they were quite childish and na?¡¥ve.


    However, ever since their loss in that exam, the two had grown a lot more determined and worked much harder and fiercer than they did before. They lost their childish demeanor rather quickly as they persevered through much more intense training than before.


    Rui had to admit that he was quite proud of them.


    "Begin."


    The two of them rushed at him once he uttered the word. Mana reached him first,unching a remarkably swift kick to his chin. What impressed Rui was that she did not even shift her body tounch the attack, her knee reached her shoulder as her leg flexibly flew up unhampered.


    WHOOSH


    Rui stepped back five centimeters slowly, having begun the moment her attack began. Her kick missed him narrowly, disheveling his hair with the gust of wind she generated.


    She sidestepped as Max charged in with a powerful blow charged up, swinging it with all his might against Rui.


    POW


    Rui partially redirected the strike while also partially dodging, applying the bare minimum amount of power needed to sessfully defend against the attack. He leaped to the side, putting some distance between them as he analyzed their teamwork.


    (''She reached first,unching a swift attack, yet her goal was only to give Max enough time to charge up all the momentum and power so that he couldunch it in a single attack.'') Rui noted as he watched them turning towards him in slow motion.


    Rui nced at Max.


    p¨¤§ád¨¢-¨¾?¦Í¨º¦É.§ã¨®§® (''Maybe Max''s Martial Path will be abination of offense and power in the form of maximizing one-hit power. He doesn''t seem to have much of an interest or knock for grappling.'') Rui mused.


    Rui had taught them both Brazilian jiu-jitsu, a martial art that Max was not too very fond of.


    He watched as the two of them rushed at him again, using all kinds of tricks and coordinated maneuvers to try and maximize their chances of pushing Rui farther than they ever had before. Rui noticed that, since the entrance exam, the two had really begun to specialize theirbat styles even more. Max focused mainly onnding the most powerful impacts that he possibly could, while Mana created opportunities that allowed Max tond his powerful blows on their opponent.


    They made a good team, as far as their specialties were considered. Furthermore, they had a lot as a team. Though Rui also made sure that they trained and sparred individually as well. Ultimately, it would be quite dangerous if theirbat styles became too dependent on each other. This would hinder their path forward to the upper Realms.


    Furthermore, it might warp the development of their Martial Paths in an unhealthy manner too, which was worse than just being hindered. Thus, Rui ensured that both of them spent more than half their sparring training, sparring one on one, rather than two-on-one.


    Still, teamwork was useful, especially when they were trying to crack one of the most difficult Martial exams in the country.


    Rui just had to ensure that there was a bnce. Teamwork would still be useful even after they join the Martial Academy if they did choose to form a party. They couldplete missions together, allowing them to leverage the many years that they had been fighting together. Although their fighting styles would certainly evolve as time passed, as long as they spent a healthybination of individualistic growth and team growth, they could be formidable Martial Artists in the future.


    It was a future that Rui was looking forward to. He definitely took pride in them as both siblings and students. Every time he trained with them, he made sure to give it his all as a mentor and as an older brother.


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 Chapter 604 Spendings

    THUD


    The two of them copsed to the ground, exhausted.


    "Good job you two," Rui remarked with a smile. "The two of you have grown stronger."


    "But we still couldn''t evennd a proper blow on you even though you were moving at a normal speed!" Maxined, earning a nod from Mana.


    Rui had held back his movement and reaction speed to human level by deliberating dying his movements to match those of normal humans, yet despite his raw movements being that of a normal human being, and often slower than them, they were unable tond even a single clean strike on him!


    Max and Mana were dumbfounded at how Rui was able to aplish such a feat. Their understanding ofbat had not yet matured to a level where they could actually grasp the means by which Rui was able to pull off such a feat.


    "I''ve told you many a time, have I not?" Rui chuckled, amused. "uracy of timing and cement matter more than raw speed."


    "But what does that actually even mean?" Mana raised an eyebrow.


    "I can predict your movements rather easily, I just need to evade or deflect at the right time and ce that I know will be enough to deal with predicted strikes," Rui shrugged.


    "Can you teach us how to do that?" Mana asked, intrigued.


    Rui shook his head. "Most Martial Artists obtain the ability to predict simpler and primitivebat styles like yours after lots and lots of experience. Although there are exceptions, I am afraid they cannot apply to you."


    The two of the children sighed, looking crestfallen.


    "Cheer up, the two of you are making respectable progress," Rui tried to coax them, much to no avail.


    He decided to try and give them some good news.


    "I''ve decided to switch your Apprentice mentor," Rui exined.


    The two of them looked at Rui with knitted eyebrows. "But why?"


    "I want to expose you to all kinds of Martial Art," Rui exined. "It helps to broaden your perspective regarding what the two of you aspire to pursue. I''m going to bemissioning all kinds of Martial Artists with all kinds of Martial Art for you to experience. And let me tell you, there aren''t just a few. Aren''t you excited to see just the kinds of things that Martial Artists are capable of?"


    The two of them lit up with eager interest at Rui''s words. As avid admirers of Martial Artists, the two of them were quite excited at the prospect of meeting all kinds of Martial Artists.


    Of course, the reason Rui did this was that he wanted to hasten the discovery of their Martial Path. This required both external and internal exploration. Rui had been doing a great job of significantly hastening their internal exploration by exposing them to the VOID algorithm turned down to match their prowess.


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    However, he hadn''t given them too much of thetter. They needed to be exposed to different kinds of Martial Art, otherwise, they would likely nevere to the realization of what their affinity out of all these possibilities was.


    In fact, that might have been the reason why Crea broke through earlier than Mana and Max despite receiving less tutge from Rui than those two. While Rui greatly elerated her self-awareness regarding her patterns andbat style, her strong foundation as the daughter of a Martial Senior who was also loaded, gave her vastly more exposure to Martial Art than Max and Mana, who, up until now, had only met two Martial Artists in their life.


    (''Tsk, had Ie to this realization earlier, they might have already broken through by now.'') Rui sighed.


    Of course, this was not necessarily true. Rui didn''t really possess the funds tomission Apprentice mentors full-time back when he was a Martial Apprentice. He hadmissioned a mentor for them pretty much as early as he could financially afford to.


    If it weren''t for his debt, he would have been able to pay for tutge much earlier.


    (''Oh wait, Ipletely forgot about my debt.'') Rui immediately realized.


    It couldn''t be helped, because it didn''t have a time limit and didn''t snowball interest, it didn''t put too much pressure outside biting a chunk of all of his paychecks, however, once he got used to that it simply became normal.


    (''Currently, I actually have the funds to get rid of my debt in full... Should I?'') Rui wondered.


    On one hand, it would eventually get cleared even if he didn''t do so himself, as he grew stronger, he would bepleting higher grade missions that would yield even greater ie than he currently had and he was already able to manage with what he currently had. There was no need to spend a solid chunk of revenue on paying back his debt.


    p¨¤§ád¨¢-¨¾?¦Í¨º¦É.§ã¨®§® On the other hand, there was a saying that a man in debt was never truly free. The psychological freedom of getting rid of his debt alone was worth it at the end of the day. It was not nice having to constantly remember that he had arge sum of money to pay back to the Martial Academy for his time in it.


    (''That alone with the perma-augmentation potion, as well as the tutors for the kids will be my initial spending.'') Rui nodded inwardly, having made up his mind regarding this issue.


    He didn''t intend to spend the rest of his Martial credits immediately, however, he was not opposed to spending them on pricey things here and there that he needed that he otherwise might not have deigned to purchase due to ack of funds.


    For now, however, he intended to get back intopleting missions, rather than jumping into training back again. He was eager to put his new techniques to the test.


    (''Perhaps I should undertake a mission that allows me to use the Flux Earther technique in the field for once.


    It was a less shy and shocking move and also a mundane part of normalbat, thus it wasn''t as impactful as the Pathfinder technique, but it was something Rui looked forward to using.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 605 Administer

    Rui headed back to the Martial Union soon enough after he made up his mind on how to initially spend a proportion of his one million Martial credits.


    "Yes, how can I help you?" A support staff member at the Martial counter inquired.


    "I would like to purchase the Bein Blood potion," Rui informed her.


    She quickly essed the inventory database, typing, before turning back to him.


    "That costs about one hundred and thirty-seven thousand Martial credits," She replied. "The administration procedure costs nine thousand Martial credits, and the pre-administration blood test to confirm that you arepatible with the potion costs five hundred Martial credits."


    The fact that the administration procedure cost that much meant that it most likely wasn''t a straightforward injection into his body. Though, because of his augmented physique, just piercing his body to inject blood into it required special measures, thus that wouldn''t be as cheap as it was when he was in the Apprentice Realm.


    He wasn''t too concerned about the pre-administration blood test. It was only to ensure that Rui didn''t have any blood conditions that would make administering the potion into his bloodstream harmful.


    "I have taken numerous blood tests that the Martial Union should have a record of," Rui pointed out. "Wouldn''t that suffice?"


    "As long as they''re within two years of the administration of the potion, they are viable." She confirmed.


    "Good to hear, then I shall proceed with purchasing the potion and the medical services that are necessary along with that," Rui nodded.


    Rui wasn''t sure if it was because the Martial Union held him in higher regard than it used to before, but the process happened quite rapidly and the procedure was immediately ready.


    "Squire Quarrier, you''re just on time. I''m doctor Brenix and I''ll be overseeing the procedure," The doctor waved friendlily when Rui entered the operating room.


    "Pleasure to meet you, can we begin the procedure soon?" Rui asked impatiently.


    Part of the reason that he wanted to get the procedure done and over with as soon as possible was because he knew it would take a little while to get perfectly limatized and used to his new power.


    Of course, it wouldn''t take much time, perhaps a week or two at most. Far less time than it took him to get limatized to the Martial body that he got breaking through to the Squire Realm. After all, the former was just a fifteen-percent boost, while thetter boosted all metabolic processes by a factor of one hundred on average!


    It was no wonder that Rui needed three months of habilitation for thetter. It was a revolutionary experience that changed everything.


    Fifteen percent required only enough training to learn to apply just a little less power on a day-to-day basis. Furthermore, with how much he held back on a regr basis when interacting with regr humans, a fifteen percent increase in his held-back power wouldn''t even lead to nearly as much of a drastic consequence as opposed to being unable to control any of his power at all like when he first broke through.Belonging ? N?velDram/a.Org.


    Thus, it was unlikely that Rui would be held back for a habilitation phase like he had when he broke through to the Squire Realm.


    "Ah Squire Quarrier, all the preparations are ready. We have gone through your bloodwork after you became a Martial Squire and have found no elements that would make you ipatible with the potion." The doctor informed him.


    "Good to hear," Rui nodded. "Let''s begin immediately."


    "Absolutely, please sign this consent form." The doctor provided him with a sheet of paper and an ink pen. "It''s just a statement dering that you are aware of the difort and pain that the administration process may cause to you and that the Martial Union isn''t liable for any suffering so incurred during the process."


    "Is such a thing really necessary?" Rui voiced out loud as he signed the form before handing it back.


    "It wasn''t necessary a while back until there was an issue with a Martial Apprentice who filed an officialint regarding the pain of a different potion administration procedure." The doctor sighed, talking openly. "Ever since then, it became a mandatory protocol to follow for all such procedures."


    "The Martial Union heeded to theints of a single Martial Apprentice?" Rui frowned. "That doesn''t sound right."


    "I''m afraid it very well does when the Martial Apprentice is from an important Martial Family that upies several high positions within the Union." The doctor sighed, resigned.


    "Ah, that makes more sense," Rui nodded. Arrogant elitists were a thing of both Earth and Gaea, it seemed.


    "Alright, pleasey down on the operating bed inside the chamber and we''ll strap you down." The doctor requested.


    Rui nodded, having already expected this. Martial Squires were generally in control of there, even involuntarily thanks to the extensive habilitation training that he had undergone. However, the risk of Martial Squires massacring the entire medical team due to an outburst reaction to immense pain was something that was not insignificant. Even shockwaves made by the movements of Martial Squires could kill regr humans.


    Thus, it was almost standard practice to iste Martial Artists as far away from the medical team as possible to ensure safety.


    Rui settled in as mechanical cuffs restrained his limbs and head.


    "Squire Quarrier, we will begin soon." The doctor''s voice could be heard projected into the chamber.


    "Any time," Rui replied, having already mentally prepared himself for the pain.


    The pain was generally described to be like a searing hot liquid being injected into your body. It sounded horrific, but Rui wasn''t too concerned, he was confident that he would be able to bear the pain.


    And he wasn''t wrong.


    The description of the pain was urate, Rui judged, once a syringe pierced into his body and injected the potion. He grimaced as he felt the painful heat flowing across his entire body, making him feel like all the blood in his body was boiling.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 606 Outcome

    Rui gritted his teeth lightly as pain flowed through his veins, simultaneously, several syringes piercing into his limbs, injecting another liquid seemingly, having a cooling effect on the pain sensation, lessening it as time passed.


    Soon, it was entirely gone, causing Rui to heave a sigh of relief.


    "Squire Quarrier, the procedure has beenpleted, we will be unshackling you. However, the chamber will remain closed for a while as per protocols. As long as you can demonstrate that you have sufficiently high control over your new state, you will be released."


    "Understood," Rui replied.


    CLACK


    All of the mechanical shackles opened.


    (''Fifteen percent less effort than usual,'') Rui noted.


    He exhaled before sitting upright slowly.


    "Woah," Rui muttered.Belonging ? N?velDram/a.Org.


    He felt much lighter than before, though nothing too debilitatingly different.


    After all, this was an overall fifteen percent boost, not a fifteen percent boost in every single physical parameter identically. The difference was manageable.


    Rui turned slowly, as his feet touched the ground. He exhaled before getting up on his feet with as little effort as possible.


    (''This isn''t that bad,'') Rui realized as hended on his feet just fine.


    STEP


    He carefully took a step forward.


    VRMMMM


    The operating table disappeared into an opening in the ground that promptly closed to serve as ordinary flooring, giving Rui more space.


    The chamber was justrge enough to allow him to test elementary control.


    STEP


    He took another step forward.


    STEP


    STEP


    STEP


    "Oh this is easy."


    Of course, he could feel that he wasn''t nearly asfortable with his body as he normally was, but his motor controls werergely retained because the effort he put in wasn''t too different from what he needed to, and what he normally put in. He was stronger, but within reason where he would retain all of his muscle memory as long as he got used to his new body.


    "You are showing good hand-eye coordination, the fact that you haven''t made a single imperfect movement thus far is a very good sign of control. Still, you will be guided out of the Martial Union in a different route to minimize risks. Good luck and goodbye, Squire Quarrier." The doctor bade him.


    "Thanks for the treatment doc," Rui called out.


    VRMMM


    A door opened in the wall on the other side of the chamber, it was a hole in the ground that led straight down.


    Rui shrugged, jumping down.


    THUD


    There was a path that led to the exterior of the Martial Unionplex, with a pair of Martial Squires guarding the opening out.


    They did not say a word to Rui as he walked out.


    Rui, for one, felt amused. He had basically taken something of a secret route out of the Martial Unionplex. He walked over to the closest gate carefully before exiting the branch office entirely.


    Rui recognized the risks of sky-walking immediately after the procedure, but he couldn''t care less, he just wanted to see what the difference would be like.


    "Woah."


    He unsteadily rose into the air as he pedaled against the atmosphere. Sky-walking required skill to leverage the power of the Martial body to apply Newton''s thirdw of motion to generate a constant but low thrust to increasingly escte into the sky.


    Rui could truly test how far he was from his normal degree offort, familiarity, and uracy he was by sky-walking.


    "Not bad at all," he muttered as he increasingly regained all of the finesse he had with sky-walking


    WHOOSH


    He managed to nail a somersault midair.


    "A few rough patches here and there, but not bad at all." Rui nodded.


    The few awkward motions could be fixed quickly enough, there was nothing ringly wrong, and Rui was bing more proficient by the second, reaching very close to his previous level of uracy and precision.


    There were only a few minute problems that could easily be fixed in a short amount of time.


    "The benefits far outweigh the downsides," Rui grinned as he enjoyed the feeling even lighter than before.


    He could feel that his body was much more powerful than before while still maintaining the physical configuration of his Martial body. He would not dare purchase a potion that disrupted the parametric configuration of his body, and he highly doubted whether the Martial union would even offer such potions to Martial Squires in the first ce.


    The martial Union, of all organizations, would know the importance of not selling products that would disrupt the parametric configuration of the Martial bodies of Martial Squires. This was something that could ruin their future Martial Path, thus Rui had been very stringent regarding this issue, going to great lengths to ensure that the potion would not affect his configuration in any way.


    Rui inhaled deeply, before opening his mouth lightly.


    THWOOM


    An incredibly charged and powerful Sonic Bullet sted across the atmosphere at an incredible speed.


    "Nice," Rui nodded, satisfied. The attack was definitely more powerful than what he would have been capable of prior to the Bein Blood potion being administered to his body. "The boost in power alone is worth it.


    He faced down, looking at a distant rock in an uninhabited area a great distance away. His eyes narrowed as he executed the ODA System,pleting the calction rapidly before a small, but potent, Sonic Bullet wasunched out of his mouth.


    THWOOM


    BANG


    The Sonic Bullet struck the target head-on, sting the rock into smithereens before digging a hole more than a hundred meters deep.


    "Its potency has also increased," Rui nodded, satisfied. "Executing the ODA System has also grown a little easier."


    This meant that he could push the boundaries of the Pathfinder technique beyond what he already thought was possible.


    "Man, if only Senior Ceeran was here to see this." Rui smiled, he could easily imagine the passionate long-range Martial Artist growing excited at the improvements in his execution of the technique that Rui just made. He would definitely have called Rui back to test his limits again.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 607 Spar

    POW POW POW


    Rui just barely managed to dispel the impact of three incredibly swift and powerful blows.


    RUMBLE


    The sheer might of two Martial Squires permeated across thend as a fierce maelstrom of pressure radiated from the two focused Martial Squires.


    The two of them locked eyes beforeshing out at each other once more.


    Two weeks had passed since Rui consumed the Bentein Blood potion. He had received a significant boost to hisbat prowess. In order to acquire the degree of control and uracy over his body and movements that he had prior to the administration of the potion, he hadmissioned a grade-five Martial Squire to serve as abat training partner.


    He wanted someone about as strong, or perhaps even stronger than himself to put a lot of pressure on himself to whip him into shape.


    What he didn''t fullyprehend was how strong a grade-five Martial Squire was.


    In hindsight, Rui should have heeded Senior Ceeran''s words regarding the size of the Squire Realm and the significant difference between grades of Martial Artists in the Squire Realm.


    However, it was difficult to appreciate something one hadn''t seen yet.Content ? N?velDrama.Org.


    This was part of the reason he hadmissioned a grade-five Martial Squire in the first ce; curiosity.


    Well, he got what he wanted.


    His opponent was Squire Jamil, a man who had been in the Squire realm for nearly a decade, and he was not someone to be trifled with.


    WHOOSH


    Rui barely managed to avoid a devastatingly powerful roundhouse kick ducking backward. His eyes widened as the very air ignited due to the sheer friction caused by the blurring speed of Squire Jamal''s attack!


    "Tsk," he tutted before resuming his onught.


    Hisrge arms wound backward flying forward with incredible speed and power!


    BAM BAM BAM!


    Rui gritted his teeth as he pushed himself to the absolute limit trying to dispel the man''s offensive prowess. If not for Flux Earther, Rui wasn''t sure he would have been able to even handle the man''s potent impacts.


    Furthermore, he could feel that Flux Earther wasn''t able to entirely dispel all of the kic energy of Squire Jamal''s power. He could feel the pain pulsing in his arms every time he intercepted and negated an attack with Flux Earther.


    This would have been a much greater problem if not for the fact that Rui''s healing factor had risen considerably beyond human limits once he entered the Squire Realm. Furthermore, the Mind Switch technique that he had modified and mastered aided his recovery greatly.


    The man swung an exceptionally charged strike at Rui, yet it simplynded on an empty image


    WHOOSH


    It was a well-timed feint.


    BAM!!


    Rui mmed his knee into the man''s face, catching him off-guard at the perfect time. He had exploited a little opening in his attack patterns once he created the predictive model on the man, allowing him to thoroughly exploit it with Phantom Step.


    "Hm?" Rui''s eyes widened as he realized that he hadn''t even budged the man''s body despite a direct m into his face.


    WHOOSH


    Rui barely managed to evade a bear hug, having predicted it with the predictive model based on subtle and tiny tells and movements that allowed him to deduce his future movements based on pattern recognition, as well as aid from Primordial Instinct.


    If not for these two, Rui didn''t think he would have been able to dodge the blurringly fast attack.


    Squire Jamal rubbed his bleeding nose as he frowned.


    Rui''s eyes widened as his eyebrows knitted, his mind was at peak alertness, and he knew that he would not be able to keep up with hisbat sparring partner if he did not give it his absolute most.


    Despite his gargantuan physique, the man was extremely fast and agile, even more so than Rui. Seeing himunch himself forward as though he was as light as a feather was more than just a peculiar sight, Rui would not have seen such a sight had he been in the Apprentice Realm still.


    Martial Artists were still limited by their mortal coils in the Apprentice Realm, sights such as juggernauts moving around like little birds, faster than someone like Rui was almost unheard of.


    Yet in the Squire Realm, it was all but possible, and normal, even.


    Rui could feel that the man''s physical superiority over him was not just due to techniques, but also due to a superior physical body. His power, speed, and durability exceeded that of Rui''s considerably despite the fact that Rui just consumed a potion that made him fifteen percent superior overall.


    On top of that, the man had a wealth of experience in the Squire Realm and had no doubt devised a lot of techniques.


    In fact, Rui was the one who was an anomaly for being able to keep with him inbat and even gain a tiny upper hand every now and then, even though he struggled to do so and had been bullied plenty by his opponent.


    Ordinarily, he should have been crushed, even Rui understood this. His body was significantly inferior and his opponent had mastered a greater number of techniques. There was no question who the victor between them ought to have been.


    But Rui was no ordinary Martial Artist.


    (''Double-hand drop strike; 98.7%!'') Rui promptly began moving ahead of time, and yet;


    BOOM!


    RUMBLE


    Thend around them groaned as the full power of a Martial Squire struck it.


    Rui just barely managed to evade the swift and powerful strike despite the boosts provided by the VOID algorithm!


    Yet he pulled it off wlessly, objectively speaking.


    "Huff... Huff..." Rui panted, taking his stance one more, preparing for yet another strike.


    Yet to his surprise, the man made a timeout gesture, indicating the end of the spar.


    "Huff..." Rui sat down, exhausted.


    "You truly are a confounding Martial Artist, Squire Quarrier," The man walked. "Today is thest day of themission,e, I wish to speak with you."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 608 Talk

    N?velDrama.Org owns ? this.


    Rui had fully mastered the boost in physicality that he had received in the past two weeks under high-pressurebat, and both of them knew that this would be thest sparring session between them.


    "Why do you say that?" Rui asked with a raised eyebrow.


    "I''ve never seen someone as deviant as you, eh?" The man replied straightforwardly. "Your Martial Art, your techniques, and even your Martial body and your grade as a Martial Artist. They''re all more than just a little confusing,"


    Rui shrugged. "I have a high-grade Martial Art, and my body has received non-standard empowerment. That''s all."


    The man snorted, before shaking his head. "Your body is definitely strong, much stronger than I would expect of an eighteen-year-old Martial Squire who hasn''t even spent two years in the Squire Realm. And the potion alone isn''t enough to justify the difference."


    Rui was surprised. The man had also noticed the boost in power that he gained thanks to the Mind Switch technique increasing his stamina beyond human limits, which he had then managed to sacrifice for greater physical parameters when he underwent the Squire evolution breakthrough procedure.


    "Yet despite the fact that your body is stronger than someone who has only spent a year and a half in the Squire Realm, your body is actually weaker than what I would expect from a grade-four Martial Artist."


    "Hm?" Rui couldn''t help but frown. Despite the boosts that he had received, his body was weak for a grade-four Martial Artist?


    "You are aware that Martial bodies grow stronger as time passes, correct?" The man asked, turning to Rui.


    Rui nodded. He was aware of this basic fact, although he hadn''t been informed of the specifics.


    "Normally, Martial Squires with your youth in the Squire realm have bodies that are quite weak and immature. All Martial Squires would start out with what is informally ssified as a grade-one body," The man exined. "You should have been in that category as well. Yet you have received empowerment that made your body stronger than that of someone of your age in the Squire Realm. Still, this would at most make your physical body as strong as that of the average grade-two Martial Squire. Yet your Martial Artist grade is grade four."


    Rui immediately understood the source of the man''s confusion surrounding Rui. Ordinarily, Rui should have possessed a body that the average grade-one Martial Artist would have because he had spent only eighteen months in the Squire Realm. However, due to the Mind Switch technique making his Martial body stronger than normal from the start, and the Bein Blood potion he received recently made him stronger than a Martial Squire of his youth in the Squire Realm should have been.


    Which meant that his body was probably much weaker than the average grade-four Martial Artist!


    (''Back then in the Zurtun mission, the Martial Squire I fought back then definitely had a powerful body. He could negate my strikes easily with a single technique and his body. Part of that must have been due to his superior Martial body in addition to synergy. No wonder he seemed so invincible!'') Rui realized.


    Rui knew that victory would have been quite unlikely had he failed to get a good strangle on the man and maintain it, a tactic that the VOID algorithm had given him.


    That was also when his Martial Artist grade had upgraded.


    (''The Martial Union gave me a Martial Artist grade higher than my youth in the Squire realm would warrant because of the strength of the VOID algorithm!'') Rui realized.


    That''s why he started out with a grade-three evaluation despite only possessing the equivalent of a grade-two body!


    Rui narrowed his eyes, absorbed in thought. A lot of things that he hadn''t given much thought to in the past were making much more sense with the information that Rui had managed to extract from just a short conversation with a much more experienced Martial Squire.


    "You must have a truly potent Martial Art." The man noted. "That''s what allowed you to keep up with me, even if barely."


    Rui snorted. "I probably would have lost if the fight prolonged. Your stamina is greater and eventually, it would have been game over."


    Rui now understood why Senior Ceeran had told Rui to restrain his expectations of being upgraded to grade five as a Martial Artist. In fact, he felt he was rather na?ve and ignorant for making that strength in the first ce.


    "True, but... it has been both humbling and inspiring to see you fight. Makes me more motivated to work harder and finallyy foot into the Senior Realm." The man got up. "That challenges that need to be surmounted in order to step into a higher realm of power for a third time are not... trivial."


    Rui raised an eyebrow as he looked at the man. "You know what it takes to be a Martial Senior?"


    Rui hadn''t heard so much as a peep about the actual breakthrough to the Senior Realm.


    The man nodded. "It is truly profound."


    "Why do you say that?" Rui casually said.


    "Nice try," The man chuckled. "You''re hoping I will divulge what I know, eh?"


    "Tsk,"


    "You''re a tricky brat. Do not be impatient, when you be a grade-five Martial Squire, you will be eligible to learn more." The man nodded. "With your rate of growth, I suspect that that day isn''t that far away."


    Rui shrugged.


    He was d that he didn''t need to wait until he became a Senior candidate or something, to learn more about what it took to be stronger. Now that he had witnessed the power of a grade-five Martial Artist, he knew that it wouldn''t be easy to reach that level of power in a short amount of time, that was for sure. All he needed to do was progress forward, one step at a time and he was sure to reach not only higher grades but also a higher realm of power.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 609 Next

    Once they finished conversing, the man sky-walked away. Rui considered the conversation that they''d just had. It was quite insightful, and he had learned a lot from the man.


    "Now what?" Rui asked himself, having yet to get up.


    In truth, he already knew the answer.


    "I need to push myself to the absolute limit applying my power in the real world."


    He had only gotten to use the Pathfinder technique once in a mission, and he was not satisfied with that at all. Furthermore, he had also gotten a boost to his body and thus wanted to test that as well.


    "Well, off to the Martial Union I go," Rui shrugged.


    Five minutester, he had reached the Martial Union, quickly making his way through all the security check-ins before immediately heading towards the mission library. He walked towards the shadow ss of missions, browsing through the missions.


    Right off the bat, there were a lot of missions that would allow him to rue more fame for his sniping capability, but Rui was looking for something more than that. He didn''t want a simple elementary mission where he needed to get into position and take a shot before leaving.


    He wanted a mission that would also allow him to exercise his capability as a Martial Artist.


    An assassination mission that would require fighting Martial Squires would be ideal for him, while he was excited to apply Pathfinder and show the world the power of his techniques, he was not an assassin. He was a Martial Artist, first and foremost. He could already feel himself itching for a good fight where he exercised his Martial Art, and he was growing more reluctant to do simple and static assassinations.


    Doing it once was fine with the missionmissioned by Fauche, however, he had no interest in doing it any further.


    However, there was just one problem.


    (''I cannot judge whether a mission of this kind actually involves me fighting other Martial Artists, after all, it sort of runs contrary to the point of Shadow ss missions.'') Rui sighed.


    Shadow-ss missions were all covert and ndestine by definition. Fights between Martial Squires were not covert by any means. Thus, the proportion of missions that involved straightforward shes with Martial Artists was actually quite a few.


    Furthermore, it was extremely difficult for Rui to judge whether a mission would entail him fighting other Martial Artists based on the publicized information avable. These descriptions only offered the basic facts of the mission, they did not offer any details that would allow Rui to judge whether he would find the realbat that he was looking for.


    Rui had to make a choice out of several options here. He could try to make the best judgment he could regarding whether the mission would give him opportunities to exercise both hisbat and his assassination capabilities.


    It was definitely extremely difficult, but Rui had a shot at doing so.


    Another choice was to simply ept that finding both of these elements in a single mission was not really practical. What was much more practical was alternating between missions that definitely gave him one of what he was looking for. He could go for shadow-ss missions that would give him the opportunity to exercise his assassination capabilities, and then go for an offense ss or hunter-ss missions that would allow him to exercise hisbat ability as a Martial Artist.


    That was much more reasonable than hoping to find both in a single mission.


    (''That seems quite logical,'') Rui shrugged, it was the best option he had. (''Since I already picked a shadow ss missionst time, I''ll go with an offense ss mission or a hunter ss mission.'')


    Offense ss missions were generally preferable because they allowed him to pick missions where he could be guaranteedbat against other Martial Squires, especially since he was now a grade-four Martial Squire.


    (''Well, since my previous mission was an assassination mission, I should go for an offense-ss mission.'') Rui shrugged, walking towards the offense ss section.


    As always, the offense-ss missions were either international or sanctioned by an authorized governmental entity. There were even a few authorized by the Martial Union as well, that also possessed the right to issue such missions within the Kandrian Empire.


    Rui sauntered through the section in the library as he looked for a suitable mission.


    [Offense-ss mission: destruction mission


    Client: Feruir Cerni


    Difficulty grade: four


    Target of destruction: Supply shipment convoy


    Target location: Fruid trade route; [45.3, 24.6 to 46.5, 23.2]


    This is from N?velDrama.Org.


    Remuneration: 11,000 Martial Credits / 418 gold coins


    Mission summary: The target of destruction is a supply shipment convoy from the Kingdom of Violis heading towards the Commonwealth Duchy of Vinfrana. The protection outfit assigned to the supply shipment consists of ten Martial Apprentices and a defense-ss Martial Squire.]


    (''Interesting, a mission relevant to nations that I have alreadypleted missions in before.'') Rui mused.


    The Kingdom of Violis was the nation where he had been deployed by the Kandrian Bureau of Investigation to capture Faraday Lowminer, while the Commonwealth Duchy of Vinfrana was the nation where he had beenmissioned by the Martial Union itself to annihte a hidden research facility that was researching the breakthrough to the Squire realm. It was thanks to the research data that he had procured from this mission that he had finally managed to learn the truth about the mechanics of the breakthrough to the Squire Realm.


    Both of these missions were quite memorable to him, and now he had the opportunity to undertake another mission involving both of these nations.


    Of course, it wasn''t particrly surprising. There weren''t an infinite number of nations, so he was bound to run into the same nation as long as he continued doing foreign-based missions.


    (''Alright, I''ll ept it, why not.'') Rui shrugged, it wasn''t as though this didn''t fulfill the conditions that he had set. He plucked the mission bill out of the slot on the shelf before heading towards the mission application counter.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 610 Video

    "Ah, Squire Quarrier. I''m afraid the client''smission contract includes the conditional-approval use that requires them to approve of any and all Martial Artists that apply for themission," The staff member apologetically informed him.


    Rui sighed, he''d forgotten that this was closer to the norm in the Squire Realm than it was in the Apprentice Realm. The clients who had the capital tomission Martial Squires were much more particr about the qualifications and inclinations of the Martial Artists that they hadmissioned.


    "And will they contact me and give me a location to meet up with them?" Rui asked tentatively.


    "I''m afraid not, Squire Quarrier. It seems they cannot physically meet you. They have offered tomunicate via a video call as their most preferred means ofmunication." He informed Rui dutifully.


    "Video call?" Rui''s eyes widened. "That''s a feature?"


    Rui felt like a country bumpkin. At that moment, he regretted not knowing the extent of the technological development of this world, but s, it was not easy gaining an understanding of the best of what technology had to offer.


    Part of this was because the best of what technology had to offer was highly restricted, expensive, and highly resource intensive, even for a Martial Squire like himself prior to recently.


    For example, the ounter that he was currently in possession of was considered a luxurious and high-ss product that only the upper echelons of society could afford. This was because the resources required to construct the device and to maintain its functionality were prohibitively scarce. Yet, its functionality was much inferior to even that of the earliest touch-screen phones produced at the dawn of the twenty-first century back on Earth.


    Rui knew that his ounter was unable to perform video calls. However, he wasn''t aware that the technological development of human civilization on the Panama continent had reached a level where they could achieve video calls.


    It was surprising because it was highly unlikely that his client was particrly elite from the perspective of human civilization. After all, someone who chose tomission a Martial Squire was unlikely to be able to alsomission Martial Seniors, which put a hard ceiling on how rich they were.


    This meant that the general public and even ordinary rich people were likely unable to get their hands on such technology.


    "Yes sir," The man finally replied after a while, from Rui''s perspective. "As far as I''m aware, only higher-grade Martial Squires tend to have ounter models with such a feature."


    "I see," Rui nodded. "I''ll apply for themission anyway."


    "Understood sir."


    Rui swiftly breezed through the paperwork before heading down to the utility department, taking a good look around. It resembled a posh and lush version of the market districts in the town of Hajin. There were various shops of different tech manufacturingpanies that set up highly monitored outlets within the Martial Union for purchasing utilities, products, gear, and equipment relevant to Martial Art and missions.


    "Could I purchase some ounters with a video call feature?" Rui asked at the store if he had purchased his current ounter.


    "Of course, sir," The saleswoman nodded with a courteous smile. "Are there any other parameters you would like to select by?"


    "Affordability, portability, and user-friendliness, I suppose," Rui replied. "I don''t want to buy extravagant options, and I want an ounter that won''t get in my way in missions while also one that is simple to use as far as its core functions go."


    She presented several options.


    "I rmend the FRN-W31." She told him, presenting him with a product. "It, more or less, ticks all the boxes you''re looking for..."


    Rui nodded after a brief exnation. "Alright, I''ll take this one."Content ? N?velDrama.Org.


    "That will be forty-thousand Martial credits, sir,"


    Rui almost double took at her words. "I thought you said it was affordable."


    She gave him a sheepish, apologetic smile. "I''m afraid that this is quite affordable as far as rates of ounters with video call functions go."


    Rui couldn''t be bothered to scour the entire department to test that im. He wouldn''t have even dared to consider purchasing one in the past, but his recent windfall made it practicable to purchase.


    Once he purchased it, he immediately logged into his ount, only to find a message in his inbox.


    [Squire Falken, I am Feruir Cerni, the individual whomissioned the mission that you applied for. Please ept the video call that I have initiated with you so I can converse with you regarding the mission.]


    (''I probably shouldn''t hold this conversation in an area filled with people.'') Rui realized.


    It wasn''t long before he was sky-high in the air, mingling with the clouds, using them as a cover. He used Tempestuous Feel to make sure that there were no Martial Artists sky-walking within a kilometer of him.


    Once he epted the invitation for a video call from the client, it wasn''t long before a choppy image of a man appeared on the screen. Rui cringed inwardly, the quality was quite low. It appeared that the technology wasn''t refined enough for more affordable ounters with this feature to have a more refined feed.


    "Squire Falken?" The man spoke, his voice nearly drowning in a sea of white noise. "I am Feruir Cerni. It is a pleasure to speak with you, are you alone?"


    Rui felt like he was using a walkie-talkie.


    "I am, rest assured." He assured the man. "You can speak freely."


    "That is good to hear," The man nodded. "Let me begin by thanking you for epting themission. I have gone through your profile, and your skill set is more than satisfactory for what I have in mind. While your experience since bing a Martial Squire is a bitcking, your sess rate is quite impressive. As long as you are able and willing to abide by certain conditions, I am more than willing to ept your application for ourmission. These conditions areid out in the contract, of course."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 611 Converse

    Content ? N?velDrama.Org.


    "So, what did you want to discuss with me, Mr. Cerni?" Rui asked tentatively.


    "I wish to discuss the modus operandi that I hope you will be engaging in whenpleting the mission," Feruir Cerni replied. "I wish for you to spare the lives of the crew of the convoy while wearing a particr Martial garb of another nation. I require you to kill the Martial Squire, followed by handicapping and incapacitating the convoy."


    Rui immediately understood the motive of the mission.


    (''He wants topromise the supply line of the Commonwealth Duchy of Vinfranaing from the Kingdom of Violis and frame it on another nation or group.'') Rui realized.


    There was no other reason to have Rui wear a separate Martial garb and spare the crew of the supply shipment convoy.


    "Of course, you don''t have to particrly spare their lives in a manner that makes it obvious. All you need to do is allow them to escape when you spar with the Martial Squire assigned to protect the convoy," The man exined. "Once you defeat the Martial Squire and kill him, do not pursue them. Instead, let them escape back to the Kingdom of Violis."


    "So, if I''m understanding this right, you want me to, first, engage with the Martial Squire alone and kill them, while ensuring that the crew of the convoy managed to escape while making sure they see the Martial garb that you will provide, correct?"


    "Correct."


    "And this is all part of themission contract, right?"


    "Right."


    "I''ll hold you to that." Rui pointedly told him.


    "Please do not worry, I have no intention of crossing lines that will undoubtedly result in my death." The man assured.


    "Alright," Rui tentatively replied. "Where do I pick up the Martial garb?"


    "I will send you the address where a correspondent will provide the appropriate Martial garb," He stated.


    The two of them conversed for a bit more before finallying to an understanding.


    "Alright, that is all I wished to convey and confirm," The man nodded. "I will immediately ept your application to this mission."


    Rui scrolled through his notifications once the call had ended, and sure enough, there was a notification informing him that the client had epted Rui''s application.


    (''Not that he is the true client, anyway,'') Rui mused to himself.


    Rui was rtively certain that Feruir Cerni was not the true client of the mission, but was most likely a subordinate of the person who had trulymissioned the mission. Rui had observed his mannerisms, demeanor, and speech patterns throughout their conversation, and the man had many tells that indicated that he was likely a highly trained individual in the service industry.


    Rui wasn''t particrly surprised. There were, no doubt, many clients who wished to keep their hands entirely clean of any connection to themissions that could perhaps serve as proof of their involvement with a particr operation.


    (''The Martial Union isn''t exactly the most trustworthy in all aspects,'') Rui noted. (''Especially if you''re an outsider. I wouldn''t be surprised if the Kandrian Martial Union sells confidential client information highly covertly.'')


    He had grown increasingly familiar with the Martial Union''s conduct as time passed and his engagement with them increased.


    (''Not that any of this matters at all,'') Rui shrugged.


    Regardless of who the true client was, Rui''s mission did not change in the slightest. What Rui needed to do was simply execute the operation like he was supposed to.


    Rather than wondering about the identity of the true client, he was more curious about the Martial Squire that had been assigned to protect the supply shipment convoy.


    (''Oh?'') Rui raised an eyebrow. (''An offense-oriented Martial Squire whose Martial Path is centered around torque-driven strikes?'')


    This was much more interesting to Rui.


    A torque-driven striking-oriented Martial Art did not sound like a particrly unique Martial Path, but Rui did not underestimate it. Torque was powerful, it allowed Martial Artists to generate impacts that would surpass that of their weight and power ss.


    Back on Earth, one of the most powerful striking martial arts was Taekwondo. This Korean martial art was a striking andrgely kicking martial art, that focused on delivering devastating impacts driven by torque rued through rapid rotation before the strike.


    Furthermore, the rotation of the body that would be used to empower the impact also made it trickier to predict the timing of the attack as opposed to a more staticunch form for a kick.


    He was evaluated to be a grade four Martial Artist, thus Rui could be rtively certain that at the very least he was not outssed. While the man was older and certainly had more experience in the Squire Realm, Rui was not intimidated.


    Of course, he did not underestimate his opponent either. He made sure to temper his mindset appropriately.


    (''I get to test Flux Earther in the field.'') Rui grinned.


    It would be the first time, and while it wasn''t as shocking of a debut as that of the Pathfinder technique, it was still something Rui was going to look forward to.


    He was also curious as to how well he would be able to handle swinging kicks driven by torque with the help of Flux Earther. None of the Martial Artists he had tested it against possessed a style simr to this, after all. Regardless, it was something that would get him more data and help him figure out the strengths and weaknesses of this technique when it came to this field.


    Thankfully, knowing the Martial Path of his opponent ahead of time was useful to anyone, but it was especially useful to Rui who could prepare the most with this information. He could already form the bare bones temte for the predictive model that would most likely be what he would be creating when he fought his target.


    This would reduce the time he would need to form the predictive model on his opponent, not by much, but by enough that it was worth it.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 612 Intercept

    The Kingdom of Violis was sending supply shipments of particr esoteric resources that were necessary for maintaining themunication technology that facilitated remotemunication in the Commonwealth Duchy of Vinfrana.


    This was the supply shipment that Rui was supposed to be targeting.


    When Rui had finished scrolling through the mission bill, he hade to understand the greater picture behind the motives of the mission.


    (''They''re trying to cripple Vinfrana,'') Rui concluded.


    Although the Kingdom of Violis was the prime target of themission. Although the supply shipment was from the Kingdom of Violis, the Kingdom did not lose anything regardless of whether the supply shipment made it through or not, though they most certainly would be losing a Martial Squire.


    The mission bill rified the identity of the true client as well, referring to some hotshot from a neighboring nation.


    As for why they were trying to aplish what they were, Rui couldn''t care less.


    "This doesn''t fit all that bad," Rui murmured as he tried on the Martial Art garb that he was obliged to.


    "We''ve bought various different fits for different physicalities," The assistant added. "Furthermore, they''re self-adjusting to a certain degree, thus there should be no problem. Of course, if there is a problem, feel free to try another."


    "It''s fine," Rui finished adjusting, testing it out.


    Once he was done with that, he could focus on finishing the mission.


    He immediately took the air, flying high as he headed east, towards the supply route that the supply shipment convoy was supposed to be taking.


    Reaching the Kandrian border took him only fifteen minutes, however, he needed to keep himself to the ground while he was out of the country.


    Especially when he was wearing the garb, as that could potentially vite the non-exposure use in the contract.


    (''Which means I cannot travel through the many nations on the way to the traveling route between the Kingdom of Violis and Vinfrana.'') Rui noted.


    Generally, he transited past the many small, satellite sovereign nations that were in the geographic surroundings of the Kandrian Empire.


    (''That might make the journey longer,'')


    He would need to take certain detours around these states and travel through the small cracks in between their borders.


    (''If it''s a nation with no Martial Squires though, I don''t need to bother.'') Rui shrugged.


    These nations were too weak to stop him even if he dashed passed their sovereign borders.


    Regardless, he needed to get to his destination as fast as possible.


    (''The convoy has actually already been dispatched a day ago. I need to make sure that I intercept them at the right point in the convoy''s journey to the Commonwealth Duchy of Vinfrana.'')


    He simply needed to camp ahead of time at a particrly suitable location and ambush the convoy when it did reach him. Thankfully, he had gotten pretty detailed information on the convoy''s structure and constituents, its speed and path among other things.


    (''This seems about right,'') Rui reached a particr spot on a hill.


    Down below, arge, wide road of sorts winded as far as the eye could see in both directions.


    He had reached a point on the route that the convoy in question would run into in about an hour or so.


    He didn''t want to reach a point that was too close to the convoy at the time that he would arrive for he might not get the timing right. He wanted enough time to where he could choose a good spot that would allow him to spot the convoying but was probably too far for any of the few sensory Martial Artists that he had been informed would be present.


    As for the measure he took?


    "Huff..."


    He sat down behind a tree.


    He was monitoring the situation with both Seismic Mapping and Tempestuous Feel, so there was no risk that he would somehow miss the convoy passing through at this point.


    In truth, Rui didn''t intend on exploiting his element of surprise too much. He didn''t want tond a critical blow on his Martial Squire opponent via such a method. That would render the whole point of the mission rather meaningless.


    He would let the crew members, including the Martial Apprentices, escape, so he could have a fair one-on-one with his opponent so that he could test how effective the Flux Earther technique was against a powerful impact-centric Martial Artist like.


    If he managed tond a critical blow when his opponent was unharmed, then the following fight would likely be meaningless.


    Of course, Rui was aware that this attitude wasn''t exactly mostmensurate with the mission, which was defeating and killing his opponent at all costs and subsequently handicapping the supply shipment. Furthermore, he didn''t have unlimited time as the surviving crew members would no doubt manage to contact the Kingdom of Violis and reinforcements would be dispatched the moment they alerted their home nation of the ambush.


    This meant that Rui had to work fast the moment that he initiated the ambush. Thankfully, his opponent was an offensive Martial Artist. Had he been a defensive or an endurance-type Martial Artist, then Rui would certainly have had an incredibly hard time trying to take them down within a short amount of time.Content ? N?velDrama.Org.


    But the situation was a lot more manageable since his opponent was an offensive Martial Artist. Now, as long as he exploited his opponent''s weaknesses while mitigating his strengths well enough like he always did, then he would be able to pull a win.


    In the worst-case scenario, Rui didn''t think his life was in danger. At worst, he highly doubted if the Martial Artist in question could possibly restrain him from escaping. A Martial Artist that focused on using torque to deliver highly potent singr impacts was likely far unqualified to be able to prevent Rui from escaping from the scene.


    While he would fail the mission, he would gain partial credit for the attack, and while failing sucked, staying alive was worth it.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 613 Clash

    "Hm?" Rui''s ears perked as Seismic Mapping and Tempestuous Feel picked up some heightened activitying from the direction that the convoy was supposed toe. Furthermore, it should have been about time for the convoy to approach, by his estimations, give or take.


    He got up before crouching down to a knee behind some vegetation on the hill.


    It took a while for Rui to finally be close enough to make out details about the approaching source of the activity that he had perceived using his two techniques.


    (''Twenty-eight carriages,'') Rui counted. (''Matches the information I was given about the convoy.'')


    The convoy was transporting esoteric supplies to the Commonwealth Duchy of Vinfrana, most of these carriages were storage carriages that were filled with the esoteric raw supplies needed to sustain themunication sectors of the Commonwealth Duchy of Vinfrana. Thus, Rui didn''t think it would be easy for them to be able to evacuate with supply carriages.


    As long as he disrupted the vanguard and the rear, they would be forced to abandon the entire convoy as they escaped.


    Rui''s eyes narrowed as the convoy approached closer. His Primordial instinct alerted him to the presence of a strong Martial Squire. He could sense his opponent increasingly clearly.


    Of course, Rui was quite certain that his opponent couldn''t sense his own Martial Squire status. After all, Rui had been strongly concealing his mental pressure aura with the Mind Mask technique.


    Soon the convoy had entered his field of vision, and Rui had already prepared what he was going to open with.


    It was time.


    Rui leaped into the air,unching seven Sonic Bullets at the rear row of carriages.


    BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM!


    In less than a second, the carriages had been carefully crippled, and broken apart in a manner that made it impossible to turn around and run back from where they came. The cohesion of the crew broke apart as immense panic beset them, Rui could hear the crew members screaming as they tried to follow whatever protocols they could when attacked.


    THUD


    Hended in the path of the convoy, unleashing the bloodlust of a Martial Squire.


    Heunched a powerful Sonic Bullet in the direction of the convoy, but it was toote.


    POW


    A man appeared in the path of the attack, dispelling the attack with a spinning kick.


    (''Squire Crillian,'') Rui smiled behind his mask.


    The man barked instructions to the crew members in a foreignnguage never once taking his eyes off Rui. His gaze ran up and down thetter''s body, noting the garb, only for his expression to grow even graver.


    The crew ran away as though their life depended on it, even the Martial Apprentices assigned to the mission did not dare to stick around and try intervening in the fight.


    The air grew frosty.


    One could almost feel the frozen atmosphere growing tauter by the second as it was wrung under the maelstrom of pressure the two formidable Martial Squires exerted.


    It was only half a second in real-time, yet from their perspective, it was all the time in the world.


    The man''s expression grew increasingly contorted with rage, inducing bone-chilling terror in any human who bore witness to it.


    STEP


    ...


    STEP


    STEP STEP STEP


    He walked towards Rui as he gathered every ounce of power in his muscles, his body shook as it brimmed to the rim with power!


    BOOM!


    Heunched himself forward with tremendous momentum. The sheer power with which his body tore through the atmosphere left violent sonic booms in his wake. His body contorted as he released a thundering swirling kick to Rui''s face.


    And yet;


    RUMBLE


    The man''s eyes widened in shock as Rui intercepted his strike with a single palm. What was even more bizarre was that the palm didn''t even try to stop his attack!


    Yet to his greatest shock, the power of his attack disappeared!


    By the time his kick had fully extended, Squire Crillian felt weak. He felt as though someone had extracted the power of the attack and thrown it away.N?velDrama.Org owns ? this.


    His will steeled as he contorted his body, extracting his leg beforeunching a spinning kick that sent iting from the opposite direction!


    RUMBLE


    The ground shook as Rui once more intercepted the attack, channeling its power through him stically, before dispelling it into the ground via Reverberating Lance.


    Had Squire Crillian witnessed the exhrating grin behind Rui''s mask, he would have lost his temper even more. Yet Rui valued keeping his appearance a secret too much to try and provoke his opponent using non-verbal triggers.


    Thankfully, it wasn''t needed.


    "RARGH!" The manunched into a tirade of torque-empowered blows, trying his best to overwhelm Rui''s defense. A torrent of strikes befell Rui, swinging at him from all directions.


    "Ngh." Rui gritted his teeth as he barely managed to negate every single swift and powerful strike that his opponent threw.


    Rui realized that his opponent''s fighting style contained more nuance than he had given it credit. Every attack that his opponentunched was a set-up for the next attack. If heunched a roundhouse kick, then he would use the fact that his body core was twisted, to generate torque for a right hook when he untwisted his body from the previous body in the opposite direction. That then also served as the set-up for the next attack after!


    He employed a dynamic attack style that employed all four limbs while also using each attack to charge up torque for the next attack. Which meant that each of his attacks was nearly as strong as a fully charged attack!


    Rui, on the other hand, only had two palms which were also the sole limbs that could use the Flux Earther technique, against the torque-empowered dynamic strikes that involved all four limbs.


    POW!


    A straight punch managed to wind past Rui''s defense,nding on his torso.


    "Urgh," Rui grimaced as he stepped back, yet his opponent had no intention of letting Rui go.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 614 Void Pathfinder

    It wasn''t that Rui wasn''t aware of this shoring, he was shrewd enough to realize that a dynamic defense that relies on palm interception is held back by the fact that he has only two palms. Arms were part of the upper body, which meant intercepting powerful torque-empowered strikes to the body below the waist took a greater amount of time and energy, and had arger margin for error.


    Furthermore, if the oneunching the attacks was someone with as much of a relentless dynamic and flexible offense as that of his opponent, there was no doubt going to be several opportunities that his opponent could probably exploit tond strikes against him.


    This was one of those instances.


    "Heh," A wild grin covered his mouth as heunched himself toward Rui, oozing an aggressive savage aura. The sess had given him great confidence that he could eventuallypletely crack Rui''s strangely effective defense. He threw a wild attack at Rui, yet to his surprise


    BAM!!


    "ARGH!" The man grimaced in pain as Rui''s elbow dug deep into his gut. Rui had evaded the attack cleanly beforeunching a powerful attack deep into his gut as he charged forward. The sheer power of the impact flung him hundreds of meters away!


    "Rgh!" The man stopped his momentum midair, furious.


    Yet Rui didn''t intend to give him any leeway. Yet, this time, he didn''t close the distance between them tounch attacks. Instead, he opened his mouth slightly.


    THWOOM!


    POW!


    The man grimaced as an expression of pain and fury enveloped his face. The long-range attack had caught him off-guard, he did not expect that his opponent possessed such a capability given that he fought close range from the very get-go.


    What surprised him more was that the ability had struck him right in the face.


    Was that a fluke?


    He didn''t think so, only Martial Artists specialized in long-rangebat could achieve such uracy in the middle ofbat.


    He must have gotten lucky, surely.


    Regardless, that didn''t change the fact that he couldn''t let his opponent turn this into a long-range battle. After all, he was a close-quartersbatant. He was utterly harmless in a long-range battle!


    WHOOSH


    He swiftly pedaled through the atmosphere in a zig-zaggy pattern as he closed the distance between them, while also trying to throw Rui''s aim off as much as possible!N?vel(D)ra/ma.Org exclusive ? material.


    BAM!


    Arge Sonic Bullet mmed into him!


    "AAARGH!" The man roared in frustration, as his body emerged covered in light bruises.


    How did this infuriating Martial Artist tag him this cleanly yet again?!


    THWOOM THWOOM THWOOM!


    Ruiunched Sonic Bullets rapidly one after the other. His opponent, being a Martial Squire, had learned to recognize the atmospheric tremors that theunch of the technique created. He dashed about in the air, desperately trying to evade them.


    Yet to his greatest shock, each and every single attack found its mark.


    BAM BAM BAM!


    "WHAT THE FUCK?!" The man screamed in frustration in his native tongue.


    He had dodged after Ruiunched the attacks!


    Yet somehow, the attacks stillnded on him after Rui had alreadyunched the attack, despite him also dodging after the attack wasunched.


    For that to happen, Rui would need to have correctlyunched the attacks to exactly where Squire Crillian would be when they crossed the necessary distance.


    Squire Crillian was slow, but even he wasn''t stupid enough to miss the obvious implication of this.


    (''He knows!'') The man gritted his teeth as his expression morphed into one of shock and frustration. (''He knows where I''m going!'')


    The man shivered as he eyed Rui.


    A maelstrom of pressure crashed against his mind as a faint sense of fear clutched at his heart, trying to crush it. He only saw darkness when he gazed into his opponent''s eyes, the kind that sucked the very light out of the world around it.


    He felt naked under the piercing eyes that never lost track of him.


    He felt transparent in his opponent''s vision.


    He felt like air.


    Like a hollow shadow that merely impeded the soul-piercing stare of his opponent, and paid the price.


    His heart rate started spiking as his body began perspiring. His instincts only told him one thing.


    To run.


    This was the power of the ODA Systembined with the VOID algorithm inbat. A mind-numbing number of calctions shed through Rui''s Mind Pce as his mind strained under the furious processing of his mind.


    With the data provided by the predictive model that he had meticulously constructed through the VOID algorithm''s data processing protocols, he could then apply that data to the ODA System. Instead of using current coordinates, he uses future coordinates!


    He was not attacking the present, he was attacking the future!


    He had never gotten to test the Pathfinder technique in this manner; however, he had spontaneously developed this application of the Pathfinder technique in battle!


    It was amonsense application to a certain extent, to be fair, however, Rui had underestimated how effective it actually ended up being in practice.


    Thisbination was so special, that it deserved its own name.


    (''Void Pathfinder,'')


    It was a spontaneous name that he had nearly subconsciously generated, yet it was a fitting yet simple name.


    (''Trying to run?'') Rui raised an eyebrow as he watched the man trying to escape once he realized the futility of the fight. Hispatibility with Rui was bad, fighting would simply prolong the inevitable and increase his chances of dying.


    Still, Rui had no intention of letting him.


    THWOOM


    BAM!


    A single shot destabilized his sky walking, causing him to copse into a mountainside.


    Rui quickly followed through as he swiftly ran after where his opponent had crashed. He didn''t have too much time. Thus, he had to kill his opponent as fast as possible. The escapees would likely have informed the Kingdom of Violis remotely about the attack by now, which meant that Martial Squire reinforcements were most likely already deployed.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 615 Outcome

    Rui''s perfect aim had battered Squire Crillian significantly. He had constantly aimed for Squire Crillian''s vital spots with potent and powerful Sonic Bullets, causing the man to rue too much damage to have any chance of winning, most likely.


    Yet the man''s expression grew grave when he saw that Rui had already caught up with him after sting him from the sky. What had shocked him was that Rui had gotten his aim perfect despite the fact that he had moved nearly a kilometer away from Rui!


    The fact that Rui still managed tounch a potent attack that knocked him out of the sky from such a great distance away was beyond shocking right now, but he had more important matters at the moment.


    Surviving.


    The damage disparity between them wasrge. Rui had negated almost every single strike that thetter hadunched at him, bar one. Whereas Rui had pummeled him with arge number of potent Sonic Bullets that had hurt him. The damage wasn''t too much, but it was enough that it would serve as an advantage to Rui in their fight.


    Furthermore, Squire Crillian was cognizant enough to realize that Rui also probably had a stamina advantage at the moment. Sky-walking was quite energy-intensive, especially when used at maximum speed continuously for quite a while to fail to avoid powerful attacks while Rui had been stationary the entire time.


    However, these two factors would be most problematic if Squire Crillian was trying to win, however, he was also cognizant enough to know that help was probably on its way. All he needed to do wasst.


    In fact, if he managed to hold Rui back, then he would also get to capture the annoying bastard!


    Squire Crillian''s eyes zed with fury and exhration as he gave Rui a wide, bloody grin. Heunched himself at Rui, putting his arms together before him as he charged forward.


    (''He wants to tank the attacks with a guard and force his way through to reach me.'') Rui mused.


    "RAAAA-!"


    BAM!


    A powerful torque-empowered kick mmed into his jaw from the side. The sheer impact, having caught him off guard, caused his body to droop as he felt immensely dizzy.


    POW!


    The final strike to the jaw sealed the deal as the blunt-force trauma exceeded the threshold, even by Martial Squire standards.


    THUD


    The man fell to the groundContent ? N?velDrama.Org.


    Rui sighed. "Idiot. You''re not the only one who can use torque, you know? I''m a big Taekwondo fan."


    Rui knew that if he engaged in what the man wanted, it was unlikely that he would seed in the mission. While the Pathfinder technique was certainly powerful, it was not a lethal technique against Martial Squires. It would hurt, bruise, cut, and perhaps even crack, but it most likely would not be able to take down a grade-four Martial Artist this quickly.


    At least, not while Rui himself was a grade four Martial Artist.


    Thus, Rui swiftly switched tactics as he employed his opponent''s own strengths against him tounch a game-ending blow to the side of his jaw with a powerful spinning kick.


    (''I don''t have much time.'')


    Rui was aware of this. He quickly knelt down next to the Martial Artist''s unconscious body, turning him up as he stiffened his index finger.


    SPLAT!


    Blood spurted from deep within the wound in his eye as his heart stopped beating due to the irreparable brain damage caused by the deep jab. The brains of Martial Squire were evolved, however, they were still nowhere near strong enough to withstand the power of a Martial Squire directly unprotected.


    As soon as Rui confirmed that he was dead, he took off. He knew that the Martial Squires of the Kingdom of Violis most likely wouldn''t take long to get here given the fact that they could travel faster than the speed of sound. Especially in an emergency.


    Rui immediately dashed away from the scene as he headed back to the Kandrian Empire.


    He immediately sent the missionpleted notification to the Martial Union that would inform the client that the mission had beenpleted.


    Rui on the other hand, thought about his fight against Squire Crillian. While the Fluc Earther performed very well, negating almost all of the great power of his opponent, it wasn''t perfect and certainly had shorings. Furthermore, Rui didn''t think that the Flux Earther technique was nearly as groundbreaking and revolutionary as the Pathfinder technique was.


    He didn''t like it, but there was an objective reality to techniques. If he gave the Flux Earther technique to the Earth Sect, he highly doubted he would receive another million Martial credits. Rui suspected it probably would not earn him more than a hundred thousand Martial credits.


    Unlike the Pathfinder technique, the Flux Earther technique simply wasn''t grade ten. Rui suspected that it would probably be graded as a grade eight technique. After all, it could negate impacts much greater than what the Martial Artist would generally be able to defend against, and it was especiallypatible with him because it worked most effectively and reliably when the user had foreknowledge of the iing attack, which Rui did have thanks to the VOID algorithm.


    Grade eight defensive techniques were techniques that generally required an affinity for defensive techniques and talent for Martial Art in general. Rui would normally not be able to master such techniques within a reasonable timeframe, and thus would usually avoid grade-eight techniques. The fact that he had mastered such a technique was thanks to his synergy with it.


    Thus, while Project Bounce was not as paradigm-shattering and groundbreaking as the end results of Project Sniper, Rui could still take pride in the end result as one that allowed him to go past his conventional limit.


    The Pathfinder technique, on the other hand, was the gift that kept giving. The synergy between the ODA system and the VOID algorithm was more potent inbat than he had ever given it credit.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 616 Considerations

    Of course, the sheer strain that it put on Rui could not be understated. Neither the VOID algorithm nor the ODA system was easy to applypletely in the heat ofbat, especially the former.


    However, together?


    Together they were a whole other beast that truly pushed even Rui''s prodigious superhuman mind to its absolute limit. He didn''t think he would be able to maintain for any extended period of time. He had only done so for about ten minutes before the battle transitioned.


    (''Very effective against close-range experts,'') Rui noted. (''Unfortunately, I cannot maintain it for the entirety of a battle, thus it cannot serve as a universal solution against close-quarters specialists.'')


    There were certain temtes that fights between certain kinds of Martial Artists followed. After all, while every Martial Art and Martial Path was unique, that did not mean they had zero intersections and simrities.


    Fights between long-range Martial Artists and close-range Martial Artists generally went the same way. If the long-range Martial Artist was able to open and maintain the distance between his opponent and himself by firing attacks at them to stop them froming closer and also moving back, then there was a good chance that they would not lose. Furthermore, if they possessed the capability to inflict meaningful damage with every attack, then their chances of winning were also more significant.


    In cases where long-range Martial Artists won, they usually never allowed the close-range Martial Artist to close the distance between them, and fire off powerful attacks from a distance, inflicting enough damage with each attack such that, over time, their opponent would lose, one way or another.


    Close-range Martial Artists also had their work cut out for them. Their win conditions were closing the distance between themselves and their opponents so that their opponent was within striking range. At such close range, their victories were almost guaranteed. There was simply no way the average long-range Martial Artist could possibly keep up with a close-range Martial Artist at close quarters.


    There were even existing paradigms for close-range Martial Artists as a means to aplish closing the distance that had already been tried and tested as solutions that were effective enough. For example, one popr solution was to master maneuvering techniques that allowed one to weave through iing fire from range while closing the distance. Evading the attacks while closing the distance prevented the long-range Martial Artists from pushing them away with said attacks.


    Another solution was to either withstand the attacks with a powerful passive defense or to power through them with momentum and strikes.


    Regardless, close-range Martial Artists that were able to ovee or bypass the long-range offense usually won by sessfully reaching their opponents and overwhelming them with their powerful close-range offenses.


    One of the disadvantages that long-range Martial Artists often suffered was that it was too difficult to keep close-range Martial Artists away from beyond a certain range. Some of them could prevent them from approaching closer than a hundred meters, though they were very few.


    The issues were too many, it was far too easy to avoid attacks at that distance.


    Rui, on the other hand, could keep them away from a huge distance thanks to the fact that Sonic Bullets were difficult to perceive after theunch and the fact that Rui''s uracy was too high even at great distances away. Furthermore, thebination of the ODA system and the VOID algorithm allowed him to ensure that even though his opponent did his best to avoid being a target by moving around in random trajectories, Rui could still hit them very urately!


    This meant that Rui the maximum distance at which Rui could force his opponents away and from entering was incrediblyrge. Large enough that almost all long-range Martial Squires would burn in jealousy if they found out.


    Of course, this was not a viable strategy because not only could Rui only maintain it for a short amount of time due to the mental toll it took on him, but also, when he did eventually reach his limit, his mental strain would hinder his performance significantly, preventing him from fighting optimally against an opponent in close-quartersbat


    Thus, unless he somehow massively improved the ease of usage of the VOID algorithm and the ODA system, it was highly unlikely that this would ever be a one-size fits all strategy. Rui didn''t think that the difficulty of the VOID algorithm and the ODA system was something that could be lowered. If anything, it would probably only keep increasing as time passes.


    He had spent an enormous amount of time trying to reduce the difficulty of the VOID algorithm but to very little avail. The principle of diminishing returns had already long stalled the research of optimizing the VOID algorithm to make it easier to execute.


    Rui didn''t think that he would have better luck in this world. Even if it was possible, it was simply not worth the time and effort that would almost certainly be needed to make any meaningful progress. It was far easier for him to pursue other avenues of strength, even in regard to the VOID algorithm itself.


    For example, Rui was still very cognizant of the fact that the VOID algorithm''s protocols were still not adapted to the new world that he had been reborn. He still needed to reconfigure the protocols of the VOID algorithm and perform new original research or borrow from existing research to form the new basis of the adaptive evolution model that actually allowed him to adapt to his opponent''s Martial Art.Content ? N?velDrama.Org.


    That was a far more productive and vital area of research to go into.


    Even if Martial Artists lived longer, time was a precious resource that they needed to spend wisely and allot appropriately.


    (''The ODA system is good, but I do not have a need nor a desire to spend too much time trying to optimize it,'') Rui noted. (''I am an all-rounder, not a long-range Martial Artist, after all.'')


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 617 Invitation

    It didn''t take Rui long to reach the Kandrian Empire. What took longer was reaching the Town of Hajin because he couldn''t run on the ground at top speed, he sky-walked, which was much slower than running on solidnd.


    He quickly finished the boring and tedious post-mission protocols, detailing statements and a report that conveyed all events urring since themencement of the mission and thepletion of it. He wasn''t too concerned that he didn''t have proof that he killed the target of elimination; Squire Crillian. He was sure that the martial Union had already verified and confirmed his death, knowing their extensive informationwork.


    Hell, Rui wouldn''t be too surprised if the Martial Union had dispatched a sensory specialist Martial Artist that had already witnessed the entire mission from start to finish.


    ¦Ñ¦Á§ád¦Á §«?¦Í¨º|(§ã¨°m) What he didn''t expect was to be stopped when he finished the report by an assistant.


    "Squire Quarrier," She bowed deeply, expressing the respect that Martial Artists garnered from normal humans.


    "Hm?" Rui turned, facing her.


    "I''m here to notify you that Martialmissioner Derun Berfheim has invited you to his office. Please pay her a visit as soon as possible," She courteously informed him.


    Rui frowned. "A Martialmissioner has invited me? Why?"


    "I''m afraid I was not informed about this; I was merely instructed by the Martialmissioner to convey her invitation to you." She replied, before pulling out a card from her pocket and presenting it to Rui. "This is the address of her office."


    Rui plucked the card out of her palms, studying it. On one side, generic details about the Martialmissioner were written, on the other side was the address to his office.


    "A rank three Martialmissioner?" Rui raised an eyebrow. He had learned a lot more about the Martial Union in the years that he had spentpleting countless missions. He was aware of the significance of a rank three Martial Artist within the Martial Union.


    Martialmissioners were executives of the Internal Commissions department. This department was an executive branch of the Martial Union that looked at the various interests, agendas, objectives, and liabilities of the Martial Union aspiled by the Internal Affairs department and formted missions that addressed them and assigned them to the most optimal Martial Artists most suited topleting them.


    These missions fell under the internal missions use of the Martial contract that every Martial Artist signed with the Martial Union, conditionally agreeing toplete these missions when assigned to them.


    Martialmissioners were agents or executives of the Internal Commissions department whose job was to create just the right missions that would address a particr interest, need, or liability of the Martial Union, and assign these missions to the most optimal Martial Artist for the mission.


    They required a broadpetency and knowledge base in order to be qualified for their roles. They required adeptpetency in administration,w, sociology, and economics, as well as a deep understanding of Martial Art and Martial Artists.


    They were divided into ranks that corrted with the level of importance and significance of the interests and issues of the Martial Union that they dealt with.


    Rank one Martialmissioners were the lowest-ranked Martialmissioners. They exclusively dealt with domestic, localized interests and issues whose significance and impact did not extend beyond that of a town of the Kandrian Empire. They dealt with issues such as mitigatingcking intelligence in certain circles orworks of society, or particr locations by dispatching Martial Apprentices to gather intelligence and data. They focused on increasing the ease of ess of the Martial Union to customers in low-ie and high-crime districts, to increase the amount of business that the Martial Union got, by building highly essible and securemission offices that were protected by Martial Apprentices.


    These missions, while not highly important and significant on arge scale, were necessary for furthering the interests of the Martial Union and mitigating its issues.


    Rank two Martialmissioners dealt with issues on arger scale, they dealt with matters whose scale, importance, and significance extended to an entire region. They tackled issues such as the ever-present underworld Martial Artist services in certain regions that sought to wring away the unshaken dominance of the Martial Union in the Martial Art industries in certain parts of the Empire. They dealt with optimizing the securities of estate and assets of the Martial Union by weighing the risk factor vs their importance and significance. These were much more important and could affect the martial Union in a meaningful, albeit small, way.


    Rank three Martialmissioners dealt with issues of even greater importance.


    Rui wasn''t even sure what these dignitaries of the Martial Union dealt with on a day-to-day basis, his Martial Artist Realm was not high enough to have ess to such information. All he knew was that these dignitaries possessed enough authority to assign missions to Martial Seniors!


    What would an executive like that want with a grade-four Martial Artist like Rui?


    Rui had some vague guesses, but he couldn''t be sure. He didn''t think this was about trying to pry a technique out of Rui. Martialmissioners were not Martial Artists, and generally, the more informal Martial Sects dealt with pure Martial Art-rted matters.


    "...I understand, I shall meet with her," Rui nodded.


    The only time Rui had met with a high-ranking Martialmissioner was during the colonization of the Serevian Dungeon, however, that had been highly impersonal as the dignitary had addressed many Martial Apprentices in addition to him.


    However, this would be the first time that he would be particrly invited by one.N?vel(D)ra/ma.Org exclusive ? material.


    It took him a minute to reach the address given, leading to arge extravagant office.


    "Squire Quarrier," She smiled once she noticed Rui entering the office, and getting up. "I''ve heard a lot about you, a pleasure to meet one of the most promising assets of the Martial Union among the younger generation."


    "It''s a pleasure to meet you as well, mam," Rui replied with a measured tone.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 618 Diplomat

    "I had sought you out earlier, only to learn that you were away on a mission," She told him as she gestured to the seat opposite to him. "I had an assistant staff member convey my invitation to you when you returned."


    She gave him a courteous smile. Despite possessing a higher standing within the Martial Union than he did, she did not put on any airs nor was her demeanor and attitude condescending. Part of this, Rui figured, was no doubt due to internal training and guidelines that reinforced the status and importance of all Martial Artists to the Martial Union.


    No Martial Artist would face any disrespect from a baseline human being within the Martial Union. The higher-up Martial Artists that held the greatest sway over the Martial Union were no doubt wary of normal humans consolidating power with the power that many of their high positions gave them.Content ? N?velDrama.Org.


    In fact, one reason that Martial Artists themselves didn''t upy each and every single position of power was that there were far too many of them. Another reason was that Martial Artists were warriors that pursued their Martial Path. They did not belong behind the desk,pleting administrative and bureaucratic work all day long. That would be the greatest disservice to themselves, and to the Martial Union.


    "I was curious as to what a rank-three Martialmissioner wanted to do with a young inexperienced Martial Squire like myself," Rui scratched his head.


    "You don''t need to engage in false modesty, Squire Quarrier." She shook her head lightly. "Your prowess is unique and surpasses the limits of your Realm in some parameters. That alone means that there is special value and utility in you that isn''t there in other Martial Squires."


    Rui smiled wryly, not saying a word.


    "As I''m sure you have figured out, I invited you here to speak to you about a mission," She exined. "A mission unlike anything you have everpleted, as far as your record goes.


    She leaned in closer. "We require you to be a diplomat,"


    Rui jerked his head back as his eyebrows furrowed. "Excuse me?"


    "You heard me correctly, Squire Quarrier," She smiled, amused at his reaction.


    "I''m not sure I did,missioner Derun," Rui managed to squeeze out. "After all, that seems more reasonable than believing that the Martial Union wouldmission a Martial Artist, of all people, to be a diplomat."


    "In ordinary circumstances, you would be correct," She sighed. "Unfortunately, the circumstances at hand have left us with no choice."


    "Please exin," Rui frowned.


    She cleared some documents from her desk before opening a map of the Kandrian Empire and the surrounding nations and geography.


    Her finger moved to the Nam Ocean that bordered the Kandrian Empire, before tapping onto an extraordinarily small speck ofnd barely visible on the map to the ordinary eye.


    p¦Á§ád¦Á-¨¾?¦Í¨º|¡¤§ã¨®§® "This is Vilun Ind," She said. "It is an ind home to many tribes whose way of life resembles that of human civilization at the dawn of the Age of Martial Art. In other words, they''re four centuries behind civilization on the Panama Continent. The tribes are in a constant state of war with each other, fighting for territory, supremacy, and most importantly to them; prestige. Due to the varied topography of the ind, different tribes developed different philosophies inbat having dealt with different environmental circumstances, focusing all their Martial Art endeavors in one, or at most, two particr fields to an extreme degree."


    She pulled out another document, passing it on to Rui. "The K''ulnen Tribe pursues an aggressive striking fighting style to the absolute extreme, subjecting their progeny to heavy conditioning towards striking to ensure the Martial Path of the Martial Artists that emerge out of them are all centered around striking."


    Rui read through the document that detailed information on the tribes of the Vilun Isle.


    "What is relevant to the mission that the Martial Union wishes tomission of you is actually the G''ak''arkan Tribe." She mentioned. "This tribe upies the top of the only mountain, Mt Kto, of the Vilun Ind. Its Martial traditions are entirely centered around long-range offense, specifically, techniques centered around atmospheric maniption."


    Rui raised an eyebrow at that statement, gaining a clearer idea of what the Martial Union wanted from him.


    "The underlying goal of your mission is their techniques," She straightforwardly divulged. "The Martial Union has a vested interest in obtaining their techniques."


    "The Martial Union, the same organization that allocates arge number of funds and resources for the budget of research and development of long-range techniques, cares about the techniques of a primitive tribe?" Rui asked with a raised eyebrow. "Furthermore, with the number of long-range Martial Artists in the nation, it no doubt receives a lot of original development as contributions from Martial Artists, right?"


    "Correct," She agreed. "However, that does not mean the value of the techniques G''ak''arkan Tribe isn''t high. The number of long-range Martial Artists of the G''ak''arkan tribe isn''t too far behind that of the Martial Union. While this tribe is iparably smaller than the Kandrian Empire and the Martial Union, almost every single Martial Artist is centered around long-range offense, unlike the Martial Union. Furthermore, they have developed their craft for four centuries, and their rate of dissemination is high. Every Martial Artist has ess to the techniques of every other Martial Artist. While they are certainly inferior to the long-range Martial Artists of our Union in some parameters, they possess truly remarkable techniques that allow them to outmatch the long-range Martial Artists of the Union in other parameters."


    Rui raised an eyebrow. That was truly an incredible aplishment and a testament to their dedication to long-range Martial Art. Obtaining those techniques would bring great benefit to the Martial Union, so Rui could definitely understand why the Martial Union wanted them.


    What he didn''t entirely understand was why the Martial Union bothered with diplomacy as opposed to more heavy-handed measures as it did with the other smaller satellite states in its orbit. He wasn''t entirely clear why they dragged him into this either, though he definitely had an inkling. There were many things that didn''t make sense to him about this at the moment.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 619 Elaborations

    "I''m confused," Rui admitted. "For one, why is the Martial Union even taking a formal diplomatic approach? We dominate the weaker and smaller nations around us much more forcefully because we can. Isn''t it more efficient and effective to apply this same approach to the G''ak''arkan Tribe? Furthermore, why me? A Martial Artist with nopetence in the field of diplomacy?"


    "Your point is valid," She nodded. "We generally do not take such a soft approach when dealing with third parties that are vastly smaller and weaker than us. The two strongest Martial Artists of the G''ak''arkan Tribe are merely Martial Seniors. If we deploy a single Martial Master or even our best Martial Seniors, we could dominate the entire ind... However, our intelligence department and foreign affairs department has long since decided against such an approach,"


    Rui waited for her toplete her point.


    "The G''ak''arkan Tribe and the many Martial tribes of Vilun Ind generally possess a highly warmongering and prideful culture. Based on the profile our foreign intelligence division has created on them, there is an extremely high probability that the G''ak''arkan Tribe are entirely willing to fight a bloody war to the veryst warrior, if need be, than to submit or lower their heads." She paused, before continuing.


    "Based on the extreme responses that we have recorded from them to a show of domination or hostility, we have deemed that the probability of the G''ak''arkan Tribe willingly submitting their techniques to us if we adopt a forceful and hostile approach is very low. It is much likelier that they would get themselves killed, knowingly, than to cooperate with us to avoid conflict with us. While this may not necessarily be true for every Martial Artist among them, there is a preponderance of warmongering, reckless, and conflict-seeking elements in their culture that will simply cause most of them to respond in an undesirable fashion to our objectives."


    "I see..." Rui narrowed his eyes, absorbed in thought.


    This was one of the few exnations that actually made sense. The Martial Union''s fundamental goal was to progress Martial Art and the interests of Martial Artists. It was not a sovereign state that cared too much about territory or other capital and assets. The Martial Union did not seek to dominate the Martial tribes of Vilun Ind. It would far rather cooperate with the Martial tribes of Vilun Ind than it would engage in conflict that would end up annihting those Martial tribes, causing their reservoir of techniques developed across centuries to be forever lost.


    Short of these techniques falling into the hands of a technique, there was nothing else less desirable than this oue to the Martial Union.


    "That is why we do not want to take a forceful approach that could very easily lead to this oue," She sighed.


    "That does make sense," Rui nodded. "But I still don''t understand why I''m being assigned the role of a diplomat."


    "I was getting to that, young man," She chided him. "We have tried making peaceful initiations before, however, they have generally been to very little avail for several reasons."


    She raised a finger. "First, their highly insr tribe as well as their enmity with all external entities on the ind have led them to develop an inherently hostile and uncooperative attitude towards foreigners. This has heavily hampered any and all diplomatic measures that we have taken in the past to gain their friendship and engage in a mutually beneficial exchange of Martial Art."


    Rui could see why this hindered the attempts at befriending the G''ak''arkan Tribe. Diplomacy and negotiation came only after there was an established intent to cooperate due to mutual interests or issues. Between more standardized sovereign states or independent third parties on the Panama Continent, this was a lot easier because everybody yed within the same broad framework with each other. Money, resources, political, economic, and militaristic incentives, and disincentives guided the interactions between all of them. There were broad interests, both mutual and exclusive, that all these nations and groups shared with each other.


    However, all of that was thrown out due to the highly unique circumstances and history of the G''ak''arkan Tribe, making regr means rather ineffective. The G''ak''arkan Tribe almost certainly didn''t care about the Kandrian currency in the slightest bit at all. From what Rui understood of highly insr and small tribes whose culture and lifestyle were deeply rooted in their natural environment, they probably rejected foreign influence on their culture vehemently and would most likely adopt a close-minded outlook on the modern technological resources that the Kandrian Empire could provide.


    Rui could easily imagine the Martial Union and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Kandrian Government getting frustrated as the G''ak''arkan Tribe remained indifferent to money, esoteric natural resources, technological resources, knowledge, and the various other assets that the Kandrian Empire and Martial Union could muster.


    Of course, there were still elements that didn''t entirely make sense, but each time she spoke, it became increasingly clearer.


    "Another hindrance has been the fact that they only respect strength above all else," She exined. "They do not respect normal humans anywhere near as much as even Martial Apprentices. This applies even to our diplomatic teams consisting of normal people that underwent higher education in diplomacy and foreign affairs before being hired and trained by the Martial Union. The status and authority that our diplomats have are meaningless in the eyes of the G''ak''arkan Tribe, and they have received less than lukewarm receptions from them."


    "Why not dispatch strong Martial Artists capable of earning the respect of even the strongest Martial Artist of the G''ak''arkan Tribe?" Rui asked, gaining a clearer picture of why he was being assigned this mission."


    "Martial Artists are capable of superhuman feats in the domain of physical conflict, but unfortunately, that is the one trait that is the most unnecessary and perhaps even definitively unconducive with the field of diplomacy." She sighed. "We have found that blindly sending in Martial Artists has a high propensity for even worse oues where fights almost broke out between the Martial Artists we dispatched and the G''ak''arkan Tribe and our Martial Artists."


    asionally missing content, please report errors in time.N?vel(D)ra/ma.Org exclusive ? material.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 620 Suited

    This was also something Rui had half-predicted. Martial Artists of higher Realms were a different breedpared to a normal human, both literally and figuratively. There were many things that Martial Artists required in order to reach higher Realms, things like individuality and synergy in their Martial Art were paramount. However, at the root of it all, there was a core trait that every Martial Art had in order to undergo to climb up their Martial Path, Realm by Realm.


    Willpower.


    Determination.


    Perseverance.


    There were important differences between all of them, however, they could generally be treated as a broad singr temperamental and personality trait.


    Without the willpower and determination to strive and continue climbing up their Martial Path, nothing else coulde. Martial Artists could persevere through the difficulties of developing their Martial Art only if they had the willpower and determination to. It could be said that Martial Artistsprised a tiny proportion of the poption that possessed the talent, luck, and willpower to break through and attain a new Realm of power.


    Of course, no rule was absolute, and all rules rted to human civilization had exceptions. There were some Martial Artists who possessed such a tremendously high affinity to Martial Art that they could break through without the willpower and determination that was normally necessary.


    Rui had evene across one such example himself. Fiona Roschem was so abysmally talented that she seemingly breezed through the breakthrough to the Apprentice Realm.


    However, for the average Martial Artist, it could most certainly be said that they possessed a psychological profile that less than zero-point-one percent of the poption possessed!Content ? N?velDrama.Org.


    Regardless of what their driving motivation was, most people could not fathom the sheer amount of mental strength it took to reach higher Realms.


    However, Rui could easily see why this highly exalted group of people, while strategic and priceless, were perhaps not the most suited for diplomacy with their unyielding determination and willingness to directly confront problems head-on.


    Rui recalled his encounters and interactions with the Martial Artists of higher Realms. Asides from a few exceptions, almost all of them had a foundation of determination and willpower beneath their surface temperament. Colonel Geringan was driven by loyalty to his family and his nation, Senior Ceeran was driven by a purist passion and ambition in regard to his Martial Path and Martial Art that was simr to that of Rui.


    "I can definitely see why sending Martial Artists is extremely risky and prone to causing the situation to degenerate detrimentally as far as engaging in a diplomatic rtion with the G''ak''arkan Tribe. Diplomats are trained to cut away their self and rece it with that what they represent from their perspectives when interacting the foreign parties and entities. Such a mindset is almost fundamentally ipatible with that of higher-ranking Martial Artists," Rui keenly observed. "However, this is not an absolute rule. Surely there are Martial Artists with not just the necessary ability to adopt the mindset needed to conduct long attempts at persuasion and negotiations that would eventually yield sess, but also the intelligence to do so fruitfully and effectively."


    Even before Rui finished talking, he had understood why the Martialmissioner had approached him for this task. He smiled wryly, recognizing that he himself had supplied the answer for why she did.


    She even smiled back, amused as they exchanged a knowing nce with each other.


    "Our Martial Union has built an borate profile on you," She began. "You are highly intelligent and have demonstrated an almost unprecedented degree of deductive and inductive logic and reasoning all the way back at the age of thirteen when your mental parameters were evaluated after you first joined the Martial Academy. You have demonstrated remarkable strategic intelligence in many of your missions, ranging from identifying the Earthen basilisk infestation through clever tactics just in time to prevent them from spreading. The clever strategy you once employed in using their ambush to trap and ambush them, the brilliant idea you came up with in the Serevian Dungeon war that ended up winning the Martial Union and the Kandrian Empire the most lucrative parts of the Serevian Dungeon, and your other exploits make you a truly unique and incredible Martial Artist in this regard."


    She paused, letting her words sink in.


    Of course, Rui wasn''t na?¡¥ve. He could tell that while sincere, she was certainly trying to tter him to a certain extent.


    "Furthermore, your record-high time period of mastery of the Fauna Flowmunication technique makes us confident that you are qualified to undertake the necessary training and education needed to converse with the G''ak''arkan Tribe." She borated.


    Rui''s eyes furrowed as he realized the implications of those words. "Wait, I need to learn theirnguage?! I was under the impression that I would be supplied with trantors."


    "In the past, with other Martial Artists, this certainly was the case inevitably. However, you are certainly capable of mastering a newnguage, especially given that you have mastered the Mind Pce technique to a rather extreme degree," She pointed out.


    "True, butnguages are not simple to master," Ruiined. "I do not wish to dedicate much time to mastering a newnguage."


    p¦Á§ád¦Á §«?¦Í¨º|,§ã¨°§® "You do not need to be too concerned about that," She shook her head. "The G''ak''arkan dialect is a small and primitivenguage whoseck of sophistication ismensurate with that of their culture, knowledge, society, and capability. With your gifted cognition, your Mindmirror Symbiote, and your mastery of the Mind Pce technique, you should be able to reach a stage where you canmunicatepetently with them in a short period of time."


    "True, but as a Martial Artist, I do not wish to waste time sitting around with books learningnguages when I neither the need nor the desire to." Rui insisted.


    Of course, Rui had learned Vinfranese, but that was only because he needed to unlock the secrets of the breakthrough to the Squire Realm, there were clear personal benefits back then.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 621 Agreement

    "Don''t dismiss this measure too quickly, Squire Quarrier," Martialmissioner Derun told him calmly. "We intend topensate you ordingly. The details can be negotiated, yet the Martial Union is willing to go above and beyond to make this measure worth it."


    She extracted a document from her desk, handing it to Rui.N?velDrama.Org owns ? this.


    "This..." Rui''s eyes widened when he read through it. "It seems that the Martial Union must truly value the techniques of the G''ak''arkan Tribe to get to go this far to get me to undertake this role."


    "Indeed we are," She smiled. "Do not look down this opportunity, young man. The standard offense, shadow, and hunter-ss missions that you normally undertake regrly are a dime a dozen and will forever be that way for as long as Martial Art exists. You will never run out of them, and they will always be avable whenever you seek them. They are not special nor unique experiences that can meaningfully nourish your experience and worldview of the Martial World. While it is true that you are extremely attractive as a prospective diplomat to us, it is also true that this is an opportunity that you will probably never ever receive again for the rest of your extended lifespan."


    This was a much harder rationale to refuse for Rui. It was true that the monotony of the standard mission could get too boring for him, and it did not hurt to go for a change of pace every now and then. Furthermore, his love for Martial Art inevitably fueled a deep curiosity about the Martial tribes of Vilun Ind. New experiences that diverged immensely from anything he had ever experienced ever before could greatly fuel his imagination and serve as fuel for new inspiration.


    This new inspiration could potentially serve as fuel for new techniques. Individuality was not easy to generate, in order to exercise his imagination toe up with something new and original, he would do himself well by expanding his worldview on what is possible. It could potentially serve as a rather solid boost to his individuality in the meantime.


    This alone was worth undertaking the mission as a diplomat. The exaggerated remuneration that the Martial Union was willing to give him in exchange for taking this measure was simply the cherry on top.


    "...Alright," Rui sighed. "I ept the mission and the preparation it entails."


    "Brilliant," She smiled. "That is quite relieving to hear."


    "What I''m unclear about is the degree of preparation that will be necessary for me to serve as an adequate diplomat," Rui pointed out. "I''m also unclear on the negotiation capital that the Martial Union is willing to concede for this diplomatic endeavor."


    "You will undergo basic training on the fundamentals of diplomacy, the Kandrian Empire, and the Martial Union. You should bepetent enough to be able to quell any queries that the G''ak''arkan Tribe may pose to you if the negotiations go well. You will also receive instruction on the specifics and the limits of the diplomatic capital that the Martial Union has set aside for the endeavor." She exined. "Furthermore, you will need to thoroughly familiarize yourself with everything rted to our diplomatic targets, directly on indirectly. That includes the known history, geography, and topography of Vilun ind, its cultural profile as well as the details surrounding its demographics. Ultimately, you will be familiarized with their interests and issues intimately. This will allow you to know what they want, and what they don''t, and you will be able to correspondingly navigate how to go about establishing a Martial Art trade by knowing what the Martial Union can and is willing to offer; Our negotiating capital."


    Rui nodded.


    He actually had a good understanding of the thought process of diplomats in a general and broad sense. Diplomats furthered the interests of the entity that they represented by ordingly persuading and negotiating with foreign parties to act or engage in a manner to further their own interests. In practice, this included trades and exchanges, offers and threats, and other transactions.


    However, it was one thing to have a good qualitative understanding of the role of diplomats and how they fulfilled it, and another thing entirely to obtain thepetencies required to do that sessfully.


    Of course, neither Rui normissioner Derun expected Rui to obtain thepetencies on par with that of the actual professional diplomats of the Martial Union, not at all. That was an impossibility for the most part and would require many years of studying that Rui would not even consider doing even for the slightest millisecond. However, Rui was sure that he could reach a stage where he would at the very least abstain from making tremendous blunders like his predecessors did.


    "All of these matters will be addressed once you sign the contract," Martialmissioner Derun told him. "We will specify all of the agreements we have made in the contract as uses. In exchange for serving as a diplomat to engage in a diplomatic endeavor to obtain the long-range techniques of the G''ak''arkan Tribe, you will be given extensive remuneration in return as shown earlier."


    Rui nodded as a tiny smile broke onto his face.


    A small little world isted from that of the rest of human civilization. Martial philosophies that he had never encountered before and Martial Art techniques that he had never seen before. There wasn''t a single element of this experience that wouldn''t be entirely brand-new to Rui. He probably would have experienced such a culture shock since he was reborn into this new world!


    Rui couldn''t wait to get going with this mission immediately. He intended to give the training and tutge his very absolute best so he could immediately head over to Vilun Ind and convince the tribal folks to trade techniques. He wasn''t sure how he was going to go about it, but he was very confident that he would figure out some n that would make things proceed in a desirable manner.


    asionally missing content, please report errors in time.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 622 History

    Once they came to an agreement, Martialmissioner Derun drafted a contract that specified the details of the mission before Rui signed it and once the stamp of the Martial Union hit the document, it became official.


    "So, now what?" Rui asked as he rxed back into his seat.


    "I''ll have the department of foreign affairs and the intelligence department set up a team and a training program to train, instruct and brief you on everything you need to know to aplish the mission as well as possible," Commissioner Derun informed him. "Unfortunately, that takes some time. We cannot subject you to ordinary training programs that our diplomats have gone through, that would take too long. Not even you with your supreme cognition couldplete it within a reasonable timeframe, as we''ve agreed. That means our internal training department will need to cooperate with the department of foreign affairs and the intelligence department toe up with a tailored training and briefing program just for you and this particr mission."


    "I understand," Rui nodded. "Can I ess the historical reports and records documenting all of our diplomatic endeavors with the G''ak''arkan Tribe?"


    "That can be arranged," Commissioner Derun nodded. "Although that will be thoroughly covered in the briefing program arranged by us, it won''t hurt for you to go through them if you wish to."


    They conversed extensively, discussing the details before the conversation finally came to an end.


    Rui had a lot to think about on his way home, there were so many things to think about that he felt like he could do so forever.


    "This will probably be one of the most unique missions that I have undertaken thus far," Rui murmured to himself as he sky-walked home. "At the very least, it''s probably the only Martial Art barring training partner missions where mybat prowess is entirely irrelevant."


    The Martialmissioner was absolutely right when she said that this was a unique opportunity. Where else would Rui have the opportunity to serve as an ambassador for the Martial Union?


    Rui had already rejected the invitation to be an internal member of the Martial Union rather than just an external associate. This meant that, unless very necessary like it was in this circumstance, he would not be assigned to handle truly sensitive matters of the Martial Union.


    Rui was firmly against putting himself in a position where he had to undertake responsibility for matters and people other than himself, and perhaps his family. While he did not regret this decision, and had no intention of changing it in the short term, it was also true that he would generally not be given the juiciest and most important of missions to the Martial Union.


    "That''s fine by me," Rui shook his head.


    Once he reached home, he locked himself in his room, opening up his ounter as he essed his inbox. He had already received documents of the Martial Union''s diplomatic history with that of Vilun ind.


    He opened them, browsing through their history.


    [Naval exploratory team EW778 ''Eagle''s Flight'' daily report


    Date: Year three hundred and seventy-one, 53rd August


    Title: Discovery of a new ind.


    ....]


    Rui raised an eyebrow as he read through the report that preceded all the other files in the digital document that the martial Union had sent him.


    This is from N?velDrama.Org.


    "To think she literally sent me the entirety of all documentation of the Vilun Ind since the very initial discovery of the ind thirty years ago," Rui smirked.


    What surprised Rui more than anything was that they only happened to discover the ind thirty years ago. This seemed to indicate that the exploration and mapping of the world by the human civilization on the Panama Continent was disproportionatelycking behind other aspects of its progression.


    This was an interesting revtion, but not one Rui focused on too much.


    Rui read through the report of the initial discovery of Vilun Ind. The team reached the ind and immediately deboarded and began hastily scouring the ind, after noting that there were no signs of civilization. This was as per protocols at the time, of course. The naval team was not supposed to make contact with inhabitednd with clear signs of civilization such as the infrastructure of buildings, roads, ports, etc. They were supposed to merely record the location of thend before promptly returning to the Kandrian Empire.


    However, this did not appear to be the case with Vilun Ind. The ind was covered in a lush, dense, and rich forest without any signs of human inhabitation. The naval exploratory team mistakenly assumed that the ind was uninhabited and endeavored to explore the new ind extensively.


    They discovered valuable esoteric natural resources, yet the second they began aggressively extracting them, they received a shocking wee from the Martial tribes of Vilun Ind who retaliated after witnessing the outsiders harming their ind.


    The naval exploratory team suffered many casualties as they retreated and ran away from the ind in a haste.


    (''Interesting,'') Rui was faintly reminded of the story of Columbus with this tale. Of course, the oue of that discovery was radically different. The fundamental difference between the opposite oues of the two discoveries was the bnce of power.


    The natives of Vilun Ind were strong enough to drive away the naval exploratory team dispatched by the Kandrian Empire. However, the same could not be said for the natives of North America.


    Ultimately, power was all that mattered.


    Rui resumed reading through the files, gaining a broader understanding of the events that followed understand.


    The naval exploratory team of the Kandrian Empire was part of arger exploratory endeavor to map out the oceans while also seekingnd and natural resources. The Martial Union partook in this endeavor by supplying the much-needed aquatic Martial Artists that at the time was a special niche in which the Kandrian Empirecked enough of a foundation.


    The discovery of a new isted and small ind filled with many Martial Artists was a much more interesting development to the Martial Union and the Kandrian Empire.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 623 Mystery

    While the territory and esoteric natural resources of the ind were of interest to the Kandrian government, the Martial Union had grown a lot more interested in the discovery of a primitive civilization entirely distant from the Panama Continent that also happened to develop Martial Art.


    Rui also got ess to confidential analytical reports of the Institute of Martial Anthropology regarding the Martial Artists of Vilun Ind as well as the transcripts of the internal moderated caucuses of the Martial Union regarding the situation.


    The fact that Vilun Ind was many thousands of kilometers away from the Kandrian Martial Union made the usibility of Martial Art existing independently on the ind quite interesting. This was usible.


    After all, the breakthrough to the Apprentice Realm was entirely a natural phenomenon. It wasn''t imusible that the Martial Tribes of the Vilun Ind independently discovered the Apprentice Realm.


    After all, these Martial Tribes lived a life of conflict. They engaged in a drastically disproportionate amount of physical conflict that far exceeded that of nearly any society on the Panama Continent. Furthermore, unlike that of human civilization on the Panama Continent, the Martial Tribes of Vilun Ind did not develop excessive reliance on technology to augment their warfare.


    This meant that all of the physical conflicts were conducted with their physical bodies. Rui was sure that this was, no doubt, the reason that the first Martial Apprentice of Vilun Ind came to be. It was probably the case that the first Martial Apprentice of Vilun Ind was a particrly skilled fighter who had dedicated themselves to increasing theirbat prowess by training before finally discovering their Martial Path and bing a Martial Artist.


    The first several Martial Apprentices of the Martial Tribes of Vilun Ind must have set a precedent and facilitated theing generation of their tribes to develop the mindset, body, and approach tobat that was conducive to them discovering their Martial Paths.


    Over time this process must have be significantly refined and an increasing number of Martial Apprentices would go onto blood from each generation.


    The analytical report of the Institute of Martial Anthropology spected that this hypothesis was the likeliest exnation when one only considered the breakthrough to the Apprentice Realm. However, this hypothesis became much less likely when one considered the fact that the Martial Tribes were discovered to have also discovered the breakthrough to the Squire Realm and also the Senior Realm!


    This discovery made the then prevailing hypothesis that the Martial Tribes of Vilun Ind became Martial Artists independently of the Martial Martists of the Panama Continent much less credible and likely.


    This was because the breakthrough to the Squire Realm was an artificially constructed product of science and not a natural phenomenon.


    The original evolution breakthrough that gave birth to the first Martial Squire was developed by a researcher. Although it was absolutely true that this breakthrough procedure was highly crude, unsophisticated, and primitivepared to the modern evolution breakthrough process that the Martial Union currently employed, it still was the origin of the Squire Realm.


    The Martial Artists produced by that original process, while far weaker than that of modern Martial Squires, were still bonafide Martial Squires.<novelsnext>please visit </novelsnext>


    This was not something that could be aplished without a technological foundation.


    This was something that the Institute of Martial Anthropology found puzzling. But as an institute that extensively documented and studied the history of Martial Art and Martial Artists and their impact on society and civilization, they had managed toe up with an alternate hypothesis.


    While it was true that Vilun Ind was separated from the Panama Continent by thousands of kilometers, that was by modern standards. ording to historical records as well as modern extraptions of geography, climate, and the environment used to be like in the past, it was entirely possible that Vilun Ind was connected to the main continent bynd for a brief period in history during the birth of the Age of Martial Art due to elevatednd and lower sea levels.


    This meant that the Martial Art that currently existed on Vilun Ind may very well be a strange mutation of a relic inherited from the Panama Continent.


    Of course, this was just a hypothesis. There was no proof that this was actually the case. Ultimately, the history of the Martial Art of Vilun Ind was nebulous and unclear to this day. Not even the diplomatic endeavors with Vilun Ind had managed to shed light on this mystery.


    Part of it is due to the failed diplomatic endeavors on setting up cooperative and mutually beneficial trade between them and the G''ak''arkan Tribe as well as the other tribes. Another part of it was certainly due to the fact that the natives themselves did not have sophisticated documentation and recording in their culture. What history and heritage they seemed to know about were vague legends that had been passed down by word.


    If there had been any specific details surrounding the birth of Martial Art on Vilun Ind, they had long been stripped, leaving uselessly ambiguous tales that did not rify this puzzle.


    Of course, it was not particrly important, all things considered.


    At the end of the day, who particrly cared about how Martial Art originated on Vilun Ind? Once the initial spection hit a dead-end, it was forgotten about. The Institute of Martial Anthropology, an institute founded by the Martial Union, never received too much support in its proposal to uncover this historical mystery above other matters.Content ? N?velDrama.Org.


    Rui was the same, to an extent. Of course, he was curious about the truth, but he cared much more about the actual Martial Art of Vilun Ind!


    He moved to the files that contained the reports detailing the Martial Art techniques that the Martial Artists of Vilun Ind, and specifically, the G''ak''arkan Tribe employed. These were not only much more interesting and valuable, but also much more relevant to his mission. In fact, it was the driving force behind why this mission had even been created in the first ce!


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 624 Technique

    "This..." Rui''s eyebrows rose as he read through the files that contained reports of observed techniques employed by the G''ak''arkan Tribe.


    A variety of long-range techniques that were truly unlike anything Rui had seen in the libraries of the Martial Union or in the field ever before.


    One report spoke about a magical telekic-like technique that allowed the user to exert magical invisible force on anything within a certain range as though there were invisible arms extending from the user''s body!


    This user could simultaneously fight enemies by using this technique to exert a crushing force on their opponent, while also using the technique to form invisible barriers. Furthermore, the user reportedly possessed a lot of finesse with this technique. She was reported engaging in a variety of activities simultaneously. Trees cleanly chopped themselves into wood, food cooked, toys magically yed with by the young ones, etc.


    It was a magical degree of control that was hard to believe. If not for the fact that this oue was verified by multiple sensory/stealth-oriented Martial Artists who engaged in long-range surveince, Rui wasn''t sure he would be able to ept this so easily.This is from N?velDrama.Org.


    Rui had no doubt that the Martial Union possessed Martial Artists that could replicate these feats, the important point was that these Martial Artists would certainly be Martial Seniors and Martial Masters. The report alleged that the Martial Artist performing these feats was a young and otherwise unremarkable Martial Squire.


    This was the shocking part.


    In a way, this was very simr to Rui''s situation.


    Rui''s Pathfinder allowed him to strike targets with extreme uracy from remarkably great distances away. No Martial Squire was likely his equal in this regard.


    However, this did not apply to the Senior Realm or the Master Realm. Rui did not dare to assume that his feats were even impressive by such standards, let alone irreplicable.


    Despite this, the Martial Union and the Longranger Sect greatly valued his technique. The reason for this was that it was a technique that allowed a Martial Squire to replicate a feat that should have ordinarily been impossible for Martial Squires.


    Allowing Martial Artists of lower Realms to aplish what should have otherwise been impossible to achieve was what Rui was contributing with the Void Pathfinder technique.


    Evidently, the technique that he had just read about was of a simr value.


    Of course, the difference was that Rui developed the Void Pathfinder technique all by himself, while the techniques of the G''ak''arkan Tribe were probably developed over an extensive period of time.


    Regardless, Rui could only imagine how much the Martial Union yearned for techniques like these.


    The value of such techniques was not low. Rui could easily imagine the potential these techniques had as far as strengthening the Martial Union. Although the difference wouldn''t be too drastic, it was still extremely relevant.


    With how powerful the Martial Union was, even a single percent boost to its Martial power was something that was extremely valuable. It was not easy for the Martial Union to obtain such a straightforward boost.<novelsnext>please visit </novelsnext>


    Of course, whether this was even possible depended on the difficulty of the technique and its dissemination viability. These two factors decided how widely such a technique could be spread. Rui''s Pathfinder technique scored high as far as the difficulty of mastery went and low as far as dissemination viability was concerned.


    If this technique was a grade-ten technique like Pathfinder, then its value would decrease, but it would still be a highly desirable technique capable of strengthening the high-end capabilities of Martial Artists.


    Rui studied the reports as he tried to figure out how the technique worked.


    Of course, given that he had nothing but reports, albeit detailed, to work with, Rui wasn''t particrly optimistic about his chances of figuring it out.


    (''But if I had to guess...'')


    If he had to guess, then he highly suspected that she was using a breathing technique to generate powerful wind currents, and then using intricate movements of his body to manipte those wind currents to exert force in certain ways.


    In a way, she would be manipting objects like they were puppets, where the winds acted as the strings.


    This hypothesis matched up with the observation that she was never still when applying this technique. If that was the case, then Rui had to admit that he would be more than just a little curious as to how such a technique was able in the first ce. He would have loved to have mastered this technique if it was viable. However, he probably would not bepatible with such a technique in the first ce.


    The reason that the Pathfinder technique was a technique that he had a high affinity,patibility, and synergy with was that the technique almost fundamentally depended on his unique strengths to be viable for him to use at all.


    The technique that he was reading about was probably a grade nine or grade ten technique, Rui highly doubted that it had a difficulty lower than that.


    Regardless, it was definitely valuable. Rui could easily imagine Senior Ceeran growing extremely excited at this technique.


    (''Actually, given the fact that he''s the deputy director of the long-range research division, he''s probably already aware of the matters surrounding Vilun Ind, the G''ak''arkan Tribe, and the various techniques that they possess.


    Given how excited he had gotten when Rui showed off what his Pathfinder technique could do, he was probably heavily involved with the analysis of the techniques of the G''ak''arkan Tribe. Hell, Rui wouldn''t be surprised if he had been one of his predecessors and been dispatched to Vilun Ind as a diplomat.


    He could also imagine why the endeavors failed if that were the case. The Martial Senior was certainly driven, and that was probably what would disqualify him in the first ce.


    Rui shook his head as he continued reading through the recorded techniques and capabilities of the G''ak''arkan Tribe, growing more interested in what he read the more he did.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 625 Limitations

    Rui spent time going through the reports that the Martial Union had provided him with, gaining a more nuanced understanding of the G''ak''arkan Tribe''s techniques. He understood that while the techniques of the G''ak''arkan Tribe were truly spectacr in some regards, they were trulycking in other regards.


    "They have shitty range limits," Rui sighed.


    They were unable to target extremely distant techniques, at least, nowhere near as far as the Martial Artists of the Kandrian Empire could. Rui understood what Martialmissioner Derun meant when she said that they had their own shorings and their own unique strengths.


    "Their potency is alsocking, rtively speaking," Rui realized as he went through the techniques that were of special interest to the Martial Union.


    The G''ak''arkan Tribe possessed a diverse set of techniques that, while strong in some ways were much less than optimal when it came to range and potency.


    "But this is an area that the Martial Union''s techniques thrive in," Rui nodded. "While the Martial Union''s techniques less gimmicky, they possess greater superiority in some of the more fundamental aspects of long-range offense."


    Part of this has to do with the fact that the Martial Union dumped a fortune for the budget allocation of long-range techniques research every year. Not all of this funding went into creating new techniques, a lot of it also went into optimizing existing techniques.


    Considering that this had happened for nearly four centuries, it had snowballed tremendously over time, leading to much stronger long-range foundations as far techniques went. The G''ak''arkan Tribe did not possess such an advantage, and thus their techniques were less solid in many wayspared to that of the Martial Union.


    Part of the superiority of the techniques of the Martial Union came from the fact that the Squire evolution breakthrough process of the Martial Union was much superior to the much more primitive version that the G''ak''arkan tribe seemed to have.


    The Martial Union was able to grant Martial bodies that had high affinities for long-range targeting to long-range Martial Artists. Once these Martial Artists developed techniques that were highly synergistic with that of their body and their Martial Path, then they were able to exhibit power greater than what the technique by itself was able to merit at times.


    This was an advantage that the Martial Artists of the G''ak''arkan Tribe were unable to match. It was one of the reasons that the Martial Artits of the G''ak''arkan Tribe were unable to match the Martial Artists of the Martial Union.


    Rui studied the reports surrounding their techniques extensively until he was finally satisfied.


    (''There is definitely plenty of merit to befriending these tribal folks,'') Rui concurred by the time he was done.<novelsnext>please visit </novelsnext>


    It wasn''t just the techniques that they had already developed and refined thus far, but also the advancements they would make in the future. These people had many Martial Artists every generation, considering how much progress they had made in centuries, Rui could not imagine how much further they would go in the future. New techniques and improvements to existing technique were almost a guarantee. It was a waste to try and kill them, or dominate them. The Martial Union would benefit the most by keeping them alive and growing stronger, which in turn would make the Martial Union stronger.


    (''I can also see why the Martial Union is relying on a diplomatic strategy instead of an espionage strategy to try and steal those techniques.'') Rui nodded.


    The Martial Tribes possessed remarkable senses, they had grown so familiar with their forest and ind that encroaching upon it had considerably higher risk of detection. And reaching close enough to try and spy on them was even worse.


    Meaning, any stealth and sensory oriented Martial Artist would not be able to get particrly valuable information because the tribal folks were highly cautious of their techniques being stolen due to the presence of multiple Martial Tribes. When training, they took measures to obscure any secrets surrounding their techniques. Esoteric natural resources found on the ind that dampened matter and energy flux through them were quite effective in hampering sensory although they could only be used in a small isted area.


    In order to avoid detection of all the Martial Artists including the Martial Seniors, while also gaining deep sensory insight into the training methodologies and techniques of the G''ak''arkan Tribe could probably not be aplished by shadow-ss Martial Seniors.


    Rui suspected that it would probably take Martial Masters to aplish such a feat.


    (''The problem is that Martial Masters are scarce and highy strategic resources that need to be employed on matters that truly warranted their power.'') Rui sighed.


    The G''ak''arkan Tribe was significant, but it did not weight down on priorities of far greater importance such as the deadlock between the Martial Union and the Royal Family. Or the power struggle between the Kandrian Empire and the other super-nations such as the Britannian Empire, The Republic of Gorteau and the Sekigahara Confederation.


    Maintaining surveince of the most powerful assets of their adversaries was a near full-time job and required these powerful Martial Artists to invest conisderable time and energy on them.


    These matters were of existential importance and were far more needy of the most powerful Martial Artists of the Martial Union than the curious and interesting, but ultimately harmless G''ak''arkan Tribe.


    That was why Martialmissioner Derun had approached him, outside of the upper echelons of the Martial Union who possessed the power to extract the techniques of the G''ak''arkan Tribe, simply because such a mission wasn''t worth the time of Martial Artists who possess far more important matters to attend to.


    The more Rui read, the more heprehended why she decided to entrust this mission to him. He also gained a deeper understanding of how he would likely go about it. Of course, he abstained from making any specific ns. He was still quite far away from that stage and there were plenty of things that he needed to before he was ready to serve as a diplomat.


    This chapter upload first at  Content ? N?velDrama.Org.

 Chapter 626 Trainer

    Rui spent the entire day reading through all the files and documents that the Martial Union had sent him before finally putting his ounter down, massaging his forehead.


    He had already memorized the data and stored them in his mind pce, organizing them most appropriately.


    The data could roughly be divided into a number of categories:


    Surveince data which was obtained through low-risk and low-yield surveince.


    The diplomatic history between the tribes of Vilun Ind.This is from N?velDrama.Org.


    Analytical reports from various departments and divisions regarding the data procured.


    Surveince reports could be divided between that of the surveince of the G''ak''arkan Tribe and the other tribes of the ind as well as general discreet surveys conducted of the ind itself. The surveince reports could further be bifurcated into surveince surrounding their Martial Art and non-Martial Art surveince.


    Rui still needed to take time and process all this information thoroughly.


    It was one thing to memorize them word for word, it was another thing to have properly processed them and derived and inferred all the information from them that he could. He couldn''t do that in a short amount of time. He would need to spend an extensive amount of time immersing himself in the information before he was content


    Fortunately, he didn''t really need to. A few dayster, he received a message from the Martial Union regarding the preparation for his briefing and training program had beenpleted, which was sooner than Rui expected, but the Martial Union could not keep him waiting for too long.


    "Squire Quarrier," An aged man bowed to him, greeting him with a smile once he reached the briefing office where he was supposed to be. "I am Carl Sullion, a senior diplomatic trainer for the Martial Union. I am a former diplomat of the foreign affairs department, having served for twenty years as the assigned representative of the Martial Union to the Town of Xeron before retiring and spending eighteen years as a trainer. I have been tasked to provide you with the basic training to help youplete your diplomatic mission in the G''ak''arkan Tribe."


    Rui studied him and the men and women behind him. The man possessed grace and dignity while still maintaining an appropriately modest and adequately deferential attitude. He managed to convey the respect that ordinary employees of the Martial Union ought to have for Martial Artists while still maintaining a sense of pride and self-esteem. He gave Rui an impression of a wise man who had a wealth of experience.


    Rui could instantly tell that the man must have been one hell of a diplomat when he was upying his post. Rui was very adept at reading non-verbalmunication, courtesy of abination of his shrewd awareness as well as his mastery of the Fauna Flow technique. Rui got the impression that the man had impable control and mastery over his demeanor.


    Rui smiled. "Thank you for your help, it seems that I am in good hands,"<novelsnext>please visit </novelsnext>


    "Thank you," The man responded with a gentle smile. "I was the assigned diplomatic trainer for your predecessors. I have a lot of experience with this particr mission and am the most qualified faculty of our internal training department to aid you with it."


    "That''s quite reassuring to hear," Rui nodded. "Well, if there are no other matters at hand, can we begin the training and briefing immediately."


    "Of course, though since this is your first day, we will begin talking about the actual objective of the mission thoroughly and deeply, before naturally shifting to basic diplomatic theory and its relevancy here. We will also look at the broad and basic information and the facts surrounding the mission, including information about Vilun Ind, and the martial Tribes, including your target; the G''ak''arkan Tribe. We will also touch upon the constraints that you will be expected to abide by as a representative of the Martial Union."


    "I see," Rui nodded. "That will set up a good foundation in aiding me to actually understand what is necessary to seed, and how I can ensure those conditions are fulfilled."


    "Indeed," Carl smiled. "I have prepared a presentation for you focused on ease of assimtion of the understanding that I aim to convey."


    Rui nodded. "I shall endeavor to learn as much as possible."


    Rui didn''t try to disrupt the ns that Carl had made by pointing out that he had already memorized and considered pretty much all the relevant data surrounding the mission. Carl''s familiarity and expertise on all relevant matters were much greater than his, and there were plenty of insights that he could gain from Carl''s presentation.


    Although Rui was aware that he was very intelligent, he was not arrogant enough to assume that he could beat a veteran specialist in their intellectual field of a specialist. Intelligence alone was far from enough to beat education and experience.


    The only reason he somewhat broke that rule when talking to Julian about research and science was that he had spent a lifetime as a researcher and a scientist, thus he had the qualifications to speak to Julian as an equal on this matter. Of course, he restrained himself as he did not want to expose his alien degree of understanding of science beyond cutting-edge Kandrian theoretical physics.


    "Have a seat," Carl gestured.


    The room wasrge with many chairs and tables facing the podium where Carl promptly walked over to as his assistant faculty prepared the table with the necessary stationery.


    "Today we will begin the training and briefing program that we have prepared for you, Squire Quarrier" Carl began with a solemn tone. "I have personally gone through your profile and created a training and briefing program that is best suited for you. I was very pleased to learn that you have particrly high cognitive parameters, this makes both our tasks much easier and greatly increases the probability of sess. Your mission requires your finesse more than it needs the standard parameters that you are most ustomed to using in Martial missions. Acknowledging andpletely epting this fact is the first step that you need to take."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 627 Breakdown

    He was right.


    Rui walked into missions knowing that his Martial Art would allow him to ovee hurdles and obstacles that ordinary humans couldn''t even dream of doing so. Although he was conscious enough to know that hisbat prowess did not have any direct role in this mission asides from being taken more seriously, it was not easy to alter his subconscious attitude.


    Still, Rui''s attitude was driven by his conscious thought, since he put a lot of thought into each and every one of his decisions whenpleting missions, so this wasn''t too much of a problem.


    "One of the biggest issues with the previous Martial Artists who had been appointed as the diplomat was that they werergely unable to shake the subconscious attitude that physical power was the answer to all missions, in a way. Or at least necessary for all missions," He sighed. "In this mission, any disys of yourbat prowess will only reduce the chances of sess of your mission."


    "I understand that sir," Rui nodded. "Fear not, I do not intend to act in a manner that will jeopardize the mission."


    "I am d to hear that," The man nodded. "Of course, there will be some degree of psychological training regardless, but it is already a very good sign that you have so easily agreed with this."


    Rui felt a tinge of sympathy for the man. How ipetent were the previous Martial Artists when it came to diplomacy for the man to be relieved by something so basic?


    Of course, since he had gone through the reports so he knew exactly how ipetent they were. But he could only imagine the heat and ck this man must have gotten for the ipetence of others.


    "With that out of the way, I intend to go deeper into the briefing and training program that we have put you through." The man nodded as he pulled out a device from his coat, fiddling with some buttons.


    The board behind him lit up differently before an image of a flowchart upied the screen.


    "This is the progression of your briefing program," The man nodded as he pointed to the first box in the flowchart containing the word ''objective''.


    "The most fundamental part of this mission is, of course, the actual objective. What is your objective when you serve as a diplomat for the Martial Union to the G''ak''arkan Tribe? I''m sure Martialmissioner Derun has informed you that the Martial Union wishes to obtain its techniques. But which techniques, exactly? What exactly about them do we wish to obtain?"<novelsnext>please visit </novelsnext>


    These were good questions, even if they seemed silly and pointless on the surface. The first question wanted to precisely establish the techniques that the Martial Union wanted. After all, the Martial Union did not want each and every single Martial Art technique that the G''ak''arkan Tribe was in possession of. Some of them were extremely poor that the Martial Union would rather not obtain them at all, while there were several key gems that the Martial Union sought after the most.


    "The Martial Union is interested in these particr techniques," Carl nodded as he pressed a button, the slide changed and a brief list of techniques and a brief exnation for each of them covered the screen. "These techniques were observed and reported by our sensory and stealth techniques who managed to catch the asional employment of these techniques despite the distance that was between themselves and their surveince targets."


    Rui scanned the list quickly, nodding. This list has more or less abided by his understanding of why the Martial Union was bothering with the mission at all.


    "Furthermore, we want the techniques, their mechanisms, and principles as well as the training methodology used to train this technique," Carl added. "All of these are part of the goal to obtain those techniques.


    "The Martial Union has ruled out a forceful approach for reasons we will go intoter, although I am told that you have been briefed about that to a certain extent. But for now, that means we will be relying on a peaceful approach that involves the G''ak''arkan Tribe giving us their techniques voluntarily. The most immediate and basic question that arises is, how can we aplish such a thing?" The man patiently exined.


    "And this is where the necessity for diplomacy arises," the man continued before switching the slide to another one. "Why would the G''ak''arkan Tribe willingly divulge their Martial Art techniques, when they seem, as you have already been informed, quite protective about their Martial Art techniques?"


    The man asked. "In a broader sense, why would anyone give up anything that they possess a strong attachment to and are unwilling to give up?"


    Rui bore with the man''s somewhat patronizing lecture because he understood why the man was beginning with something so elementary and simple, as far as Rui was concerned. It was probably the case that the previous Martial Artists were so shit at these topics that the man realized he needed to start the basics of the basics.


    "Because they could be provided with incentives greater than their attachment to their belongings or given disincentives that are greater than their desire to not give up their belongings," Rui noted. "In this case, the Martial Union has already ruled out forceful methods that include threats and forceful coercion. Thus, we can effectively say that for my mission, we cannot get them to divulge their techniques via disincentives like the threat of death or pain and suffering for their loved ones. Instead, we need to levy enough a number of high-enough incentives in order to get the G''ak''arkan Tribe to willingly hand over their techniques."


    Carl''s eyebrows rose as he realized that Rui actually had a much more thorough understanding of the basics of diplomacy than he had given credit to the Martial Squire. He seemed remarkably sharp and had already given what was effectively a perfect self-framed answer that encapsted the core philosophy underlying diplomatic theory very well.This is from N?velDrama.Org.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 628 Interests

    "That''s correct," The man nodded, evidently pleased with Rui''s answer. "Everybody has needs, interests, and issues. These can be and are leveraged to foster mutually beneficial rtionships between two parties."


    He turned to Rui. "Can you figure out what are some of the most universal interests that are frequently leveraged in diplomatic negotiations and deliberations between two parties such as sovereign nations on the Panama Continent?"


    Rui nodded. "The most universal interests that are likeliest to be leveraged are the fundamental necessities of every sovereign nation. Things such as sufficient food supply and security are absolutely necessary for the sustenance of any viable society. These are primary needs that are required for any form of human civilization."


    Regardless of the culture, traditions of a society, the surrounding geo-politicalndscape, and other parameters of said state, food, and security were absolute necessities for human sustenance.


    "On a secondary level," Rui continued. "Technological sophistication is also vital for maintaining a baseline modern lifestyle and is a highly desired asset. Things like themunication sector andworks that the most important significant sectors and institutions of our empire use to function viably. Without it, our empire would almost certainly be crippled immediately. As such, every nation prioritizes building a sustainablemunication sector within the nation."


    While remotemunication technology had not spread as far as to reach the averagemon citizen, it was still quite important in the functioning of the nation. All executive branches, ministries, and departments of the entirety of the government frequently relied on esotericmunication tech for remote coordination across the entire country.


    Even the Martial Union frequently used it all the time for the remote coordination of Martial Artists, clients, and within the Martial Union between branches and employees.


    "That is quite true," Carl nodded. "In fact, I once negotiated a highly favorable agreement for the Kandrian Empire with one of the surrounding satellite nations that I was, at one point, the appointed Kandrian representative and ambassador for, thanks to the universal interest that is sustainedmunications."


    Rui''s eyebrows rose in interest. "That sounds interesting, and confidential."


    Carl chuckled. "I have been authorized to share personal anecdotes and experiences if it aids in your training, within a certain limit by Martialmissioner Derun. This thanks to the fact that you are a Martial Squire, that too one of interest, to the Martial Union."


    "I see," Rui expected as much. "You were saying?"


    "This nationcked a sustainable supply of Ire gpowder, which is an esoteric substance that is one of the mostmonly used battery fuels formunication devices. Because the nation needed it so desperately, I was able to negotiate remarkably favorable terms for the Martial Union, including but not limited to heavy annual remuneration, significant reductions in import tax, and tariffs imposed on the Martial Union''s Martial goods and services as well as highly favorable amendments to the extradition treaty between the Kandrian Empire and said nation, among other things."This is from N?velDrama.Org.


    Rui raised an eyebrow at his words.


    Those were considerable concessions!


    The heavy remuneration was guaranteed, and Rui was rtively certain that the price paid by the nation was not low, given this was nothing short of a strategic resource. The nation must have bled dearly to obtain it. On top of that, they had to lower the import tariffs that were imposed on all imported goods from foreign nations. This use would cause the Martial Union''s international business to boom in the nation. After all, the price of international goods factored in the import tariffs and duties, this meant that they were generally pricier than the equivalent of the same goods in the local economy in order to maintain standard profit margins. However, with a reduction in import tariffs, the Martial goods and services that the Martial Union could provide would oupete its other internationalpetitors.


    This would stimte the Martial Union''s internal economy surrounding Martial Artists and other departments that earned secondary streams of revenue.<novelsnext>please visit </novelsnext>


    What Rui didn''t understand, however, was the third use that Carl mentioned. "Why negotiate for favorable amendments in the extradition treaty between the Kandrian Empire and said nation? Isn''t that a use that benefits the Kandrian Empire more than it does the Martial Union?"


    "That is true," The man nodded. "We internally negotiated with the Kandrian Empire and obtained concessions andpensations before proceeding with the deal. It also makes the environment safer forpleting missions because we can recover our Martial Artists who arepromised to the nation. It also serves as a good training ground for younger and more inexperienced Martial Artists who don''t have much experience in foreign and international missions."


    "I see..." Rui thought about it. "That sounds like it must have been an exceedinglyplicated negotiation and lobbying effort on your part."


    "It took a few months to settle, but it is one of my more significant and prouder aplishments," The man nodded.


    "Which nation is this, by the way?" Rui wondered, curious.


    "It is a nation you are actually familiar with, as far as your record goes," The man smiled. "The Commonwealth Duchy of Vinfrana."


    "That actually makes a lot of sense," Rui nodded.


    He had always wondered why the Martial Union deployed him and a few other Martial Apprentices on such a mission. It made a lot more sense if the Martial Union viewed the territory of the Commonwealth Duchy of Vinfrana as a somewhat safer zone.


    "Coming back to the main point, you aren''t incorrect in your analysis of the mostmon interests of nations that are frequently levied to negotiate agreements between two parties," The man smiled.


    "Thank you."


    "But unfortunately, your worldview is a bit oversimplistic," The man pointed out.


    Rui raised an eyebrow. "How so?"


    "It is true that food and security are absolutely paramount. But is also true that most nations are able to fulfill this interest to a muchrger extent than you suspect. It is actually rarely the case that food and national security are interests levied in negotiations between two parties. This is because there is a corrtion between the fundamental importance and necessity of a certain interest and the ability to obtain it."


    Rui narrowed his eyes as he absorbed the information that Carl divulged to him.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 629 Estimate

    "If we humans were unable to obtain things like food and security that are fundamental to survival with a certain degree of ease and certainty, then we would not have prospered to the degree that we have," Hemented. "It is because they are important that nations do everything to make sure that they have enough of both. While there are certain impoverished and vulnerable nations that make heavy concessions to obtain one or both of these interests from foreign parties. Most nations have obtained satisfactory national and food security. Or to be more urate, most nations have acquired enough of the two to, at the very least, not be in a crisis."


    "I see..." Rui nodded as he understood his error. "That definitely makes sense."N?vel(D)ra/ma.Org exclusive ? material.


    "If anything, it is the secondary set of interests that you mentioned that are levied in diplomatic negotiations. Things like securing enough resources to maintain highly vital technological sectors, institutions, and foundations of the country usually y a much bigger role when trying to incentivize foreign parties to engage in a trade with you. You mentionedmunications, which is certainly very important. Another important sector of modern society is transport, the ability to move to distant locations in rtively short amounts of time and with no personal effort is an important ability that has be a sector that is akin to the blood of the country," The man noted. "Development and maintenance of infrastructure is yet another highly important aspect of modern society. The fulfillment of each of these interests is much more difficult and thus can be used as powerful incentives in negotiations."


    The man paused before continuing. "That is the underlying driving force of diplomacy, negotiation, and trade. Different parties have different needs and desires. One nation may becking food security, another mayck national security. Giving food to thetter and protection to the former is, of course, foolish. In order to offer what they want in return for what we want, we need to know what they want in the first ce."


    He turned to Rui. "How would we go about knowing what they want? After all, most parties will not divulge their weaknesses and shorings so easily to others. It gives an advantage to other parties in negotiations. If a man trying to purchase water were to reveal to me that he hasn''t drunk water for days due to being stranded in the desert, then I may very well raise the price of water since I know that that water is priceless to him. I know that he will be willing to pay a fortune for just a mug of water."


    Rui smiled wryly as the man droned on about ruthless and dubious ethical practices. Of course, Rui was cognizant enough to recognize that that was the way the world worked.


    "That is where one of the foremost steps of diplomacy and negotiationse in," The man continued. "We have just discussed how you can levy the fulfillment of others'' interests to fulfill your own. However, you cannot do this if you do not know what the interests of said parties are. And as I just mentioned, other parties will note out and tell you what their interests are, because it generally puts them at a disadvantage at the negotiation table. So, you do not know what their interests are, and they are not willing to tell you... How do you find out about them, then?"


    "Recognizing the signs of deficiency of one of the primary or secondary interests in a country through signs that cannot be hidden that would inevitably arise if such interests were not being met, or on the verge of not being met," Rui replied quickly, having already anticipated the conversation to go this way.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    "That isn''t incorrect, but let''s get specific. What exactly does that mean in practice? What signs are you talking about? How will you evene to recognize such signs even if they do ur? What signs would we see were there, say, a chronic food shortage problem in a certain country that the country was doing its best topensate for and cover up?"


    "That''s simple. We rely on data gathered through various means. Part of it would originate from public records, another part of it we would no doubt have to rely on our intelligence department," Rui replied.


    "What data specifically?"


    "We would need several things. First, we need to estimate the annual food consumption of the nation. This is rather simple to obtain as we can easily estimate this from the poption and poption demographics of the nation that should be easy enough to obtain. Then, the important question is whether the domestic food production sector of the nation is able to produce the necessary food needed to sustain the poption''s food consumption." Rui exined.


    "And how would you go about finding out?" The man asked, curious to the degree to which Rui understood this matter.


    "It''splicated, but there are still ways and means to do this. We can estimate the size of their crop and animal agricultural industries by gauging the amount ofnd that is used for these two sectors. This is also something that can''t be hidden. Estimating food production from fishing or other broad sources of food is also not difficult. Together, they can be used to gauge the limit of the food produced by said nation. With that estimate, we can then learn whether or not there are signs of a chronic food shortage problem or not." Rui replied, before continuing. "We can also look at the price of food and food ingredients. That allows us to also gauge the bnce of supply versus demand. If food production is less than that of consumption while the price of food is reasonable, then it can be concluded that the problem is being averted through imports from foreign parties."


    The man beamed as he nodded. "This is all correct, and in fact, these are the steps that we go take and have taken. It is quite remarkable that you have such a thorough understanding of economics. If I did not know better, I would have assumed you were a promising trainee of our foreign affairs department!"


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 Chapter 630 Warped

    "You tter me," Rui smiled.


    "No no, I''m quite optimistic about your prospects of sessfullypleting this diplomatic mission based on our discussion up to this point alone," The man shook his head. "Coming back to the main point, as I said, you are correct about the means by which we identify how well a third party is able to fulfill primary interests such as food security. However, I did choose food shortage as hypothetical for a reason. It is, by far, the easiest to identify and recognize through the means that you have identified and more. However, identifying the degree to which other interests are fulfilled is not nearly as easy. Even other primary interests such as national security are moreplicated than the hypothetical that I gave you, mainly because it is easier to hide."


    Rui nodded. He was aware of this fact.


    National security depended on factors such as the size of the military, the quality and quantity of militaristic technology, the Martial prowess of a nation; the number of Martial Artists it has, and its demographics as far as Realms went. These were far more difficult to estimate. For suchplicated matters, it was safer and more reliable to directly rely on intelligence-gathering agencies and departments to directly gather such facts through espionage, surveince, and infiltration among other things.


    "However, this alone isn''t enough," The man exined. "Yes, it''s true that we can utilize a variety of means to understand whether or not a third party is able to fulfill a particr interest, it is also important to verify whether or not that particr interest is even an interest in the first ce. Do you understand what I mean by that?"This is from N?velDrama.Org.


    Rui nodded. "I do. Not everybody will value all things equally. Still, there should be a broad intersection. Food and physical security are absolute. Even the secondary interests arergely universal."


    Carl smiled. "Largely, yes. But not absolutely universal. Take examples that we have discussed earlier, for example. Technological sectors likemunications, motorized transport, development and maintenance ofplex infrastructure, and military and defense technology are all almost universal interests among all sovereign states on the Panama Continent. Yet there are examples of third parties that do not fall into this paradigm."


    Rui had a feeling he knew what the man was talking about.


    "What if there was a somewhat isted society that is devoid of technological development in most sectors? What if there was an ecosystem of parties that each led a lifestyle that is so deviated from what you and I are familiar with, such that technological sectors and industries such asmunications, transport, and military tech are all entirely irrelevant to them?" The man smiled knowingly. "In this case, you would be dealing with parties with highly warped interests that fall outside of standard and ssical paradigms that we deal with regrly. How should we proceed in such a scenario?"


    Rui smiled. "We should do our best to understand their interests thoroughly before proceeding to levy the fulfillment of them to get them to fulfill our interests."


    "Correct," Carl nodded. "I''m sure you''ve already figured out the reason that I have brought this up."<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    Rui nodded. "The G''ak''arkan Tribe perfectly fits the hypothetical that you gave me. They are part of an isted ecosystem and have developed a highly warped culture and society that is highly divergent from modern civilization. For example, their little quasi-society has not developed any dependence on technology to sustain itself. This alone would be very rare on the Panama Continent."


    "That is very aptly put, Squire," Carl nodded. "The G''ak''arkan Tribe has been very inscrutable to us for quite some time, and still is, to a certain extent. Their highly unique and warped culture and mentalities have rendered most of our negotiation chips, tactics, and capital to be useless. They reject our technology vehemently as they perceive it as a threat to their culture and way of life, as well as a primal aversion to what they don''t understand. This is problematic because that means that they not only reject technology but also many esoteric natural resources that are valuable because of their high utility in technology. For example, what value is Ire gpowder to people who reject remotemunication technology in the first ce? To them, this otherwise valuable resource is no more than a strange form of dust. Vilun Ind is quite rich in its natural resources, yet the indigenous natives have not extracted these resources from thend, the fauna, and flora all that much because they simply do not use it."


    Rui nodded. These insights matched those of his own. Diplomacy, trade, and negotiation were highly developed fields with rock-solid paradigms built upon universal traits and interests that everybody possessed. This led to a framework within which everybody operated. Diplomats and ambassadors were trained to excel within this framework, Rui had no doubt that it frustrated the Martial Union to no end that the G''ak''arkan Tribe did not y with these rules and within this framework at all whatsoever.


    Perhaps that was another motivating reason to deploy Martial Artists as diplomats to negotiate with the G''ak''arkan Tribe.


    "So,ing back to the main point," Carl continued. "The G''ak''arkan Tribe''s interests are warped and are considerably deviated from expectations. As you promptly said earlier, we should learn as much about their interests as much as we can. In order to learn about their interests, we inevitably have to learn about them intimately, their history, their culture and values as well as their surrounding circumstances."


    Carl paused, looking at Rui. "I was informed that you were given the case files and documents surrounding everything rted to the G''ak''arkan Tribe."


    "True," Rui nodded.


    "How much of them have you gone through?"


    "All of it," Rui smiled.


    To his credit, Carl did not disy any outward sign of surprise. Perhaps he was able to control his body just that well. Or perhaps, he wasn''t surprised at all, having studied Rui''s profile before their meeting no doubt.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 631 Profile

    "That''s quite proactive of you," Carl nodded. "I had suspected that you might have read and remembered a bit of it when I read through your profile and saw the Mind Pce technique, but it is quite impressive that you have managed to get through it all."


    The man looked quite impressed at Rui.


    "It''s not all that much, I didn''t have much to do, after all," Rui modestly replied.


    "If you have gone through it all, then we can begin by going through your thoughts on the G''ak''arkan Tribe," Carl nodded.


    Rui paused for a second, gathering his thoughts as he considered it. It was one thing to read through and store all the vast information in his mind pce, and it was another entirely to infer all relevant important information and present it in a neatly tied package. Of course, since this was just a preliminary ss in his training and briefing program, it was okay even if he wasn''t being as concise as possible.


    "The Ga''ak''arkan Tribe possesses a highly diverged culture and sets of values due to their extreme history and circumstances," Rui nodded, beginning by revisiting this basic fact. "This warps their interests greatly as well, albeit not entirely."


    Carl gazed at him silently, unwilling to break his train of thought.


    "The one universal interest that they share with us, by virtue of being human, is survival. Outside of this, there are far too many divergences from the norm," Rui stated. "However, surprisingly enough, it is not their greatest interest. The extreme willingness to provoke and engage in conflicts with the other tribes of the Vilun Ind despite victory not necessarily being guaranteed shows that surviving, while still desirable, is not the most important thing to them. I believe it is because of this trait that the Martial Union has chosen not to antagonize them."


    Carl nodded slowly, acknowledging Rui''s points.


    "When I read through the diplomatic dialogue with the G''ak''arkan Tribe, I was able to get a better understanding of why the G''ak''arkan Tribe is so extremely warmongering with the other tribes of Vilun Ind," Rui mentioned. "It isn''t entirely clear, perhaps due to linguistic barriers and inuracies in trantion, but it does seem that they are primarily motivated by a desire to assert supremacy and dominance, as well as battle lust and pride. These three abstract interests are so strong to them that together they even trump their desire to survive! This is why they are so incessantly warmongering. These are their greatest interests without a doubt."


    Carl smiled. "That''s a very apt albeit slightly iplete profile that you have created there. Well, follow up with logical conclusion of the premises that you just have included with the diplomatic theory that we went over prior. What can we do with the information that you have just inferred?"


    "We can offer aid to them with fulfilling these abstract interests. We can help them achieve dominance on Vilun Ind, we can help them fulfill their intense battle lust. But..." Rui paused, sighing.


    "But?"<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    "But we have already tried that ording to the diplomatic records of our negotiations with them," Rui shook his head. "The problem is the third abstract interest that I identified earlier; their pride. They possess an immense amount of pride. Too much to ept our help in defeating the other indigenous tribes of Vilun Ind."


    "Exactly," Carl nodded, sighing. "They are extremely prideful and have vehemently rejected any aid from us in their eternal conflict with their rivals and enemies. Sometimes I personally cannot help but wonder whether they actually want to win at all, as opposed to maintaining this deadlock of conflicts that they currently have."


    Rui could understand that sentiment.


    "Regardless," Carl continued. "Your analysis is spot-on; their pride prevents them from epting the aid of any kind in their conflict with the other Martial tribes. They do not care for our tech and our resources. Currency is utterly meaningless to them. I''m sure you can understand our frustrations. However, despite this, there is one resource that we offered them that they showed some interest in. Can you tell what that is?"


    "Martial Art techniques," Rui replied immediately.This is from N?velDrama.Org.


    "And what makes you say that?"


    "The negotiations where we deliberated regarding the techniques that we had to offersted the longest, and had the greatest amount of engagement and initiative from the G''ak''arkan Tribe," Rui replied. "It can be surmised that out of all our attempts at attempting to levy their interests to earn their cooperation, our Martial Art techniques had the greatest degree of sess."


    "Shrewd of you to notice that," Carl nodded with a pleasant smile. "And can you discern why they failed?"


    "...Not through my own merit, no. Martialmissioner Derun informed me about the reason." Rui admitted. "The measure of respect they have for those they interact with is entirely dependant on one''s Martial prowess. Many of our attempts to negotiate with them were doomed simply because our diplomats were normal humans and were thus entirely dismissed despite representing the Martial Union."


    "That is indeed what happened," Carl nodded. "Our foreign affairs department had to grind against a wall as we dealt with members who simply did not possess as much power or influence within their tribe. It was only after that we switched to the nearly unprecedented decision of sending a Martial Artist as our main diplomat. I can assure you that this was not an easy decision to make. From my perspective at the time, it was nothing short of insanity. You do not send Martial Artists for diplomatic negotiations for the same reason you don''t send diplomats toplete Martial missions. It is a suicidal idea that will lead to heavy losses in nearly every case."


    Rui smiled wryly. "''Nearly'' being the keyword here."


    "Yes, the most important word there," Carl heaved a resigned sigh. "In these particr circumstances, sending in Martial Artists to negotiate with the G''ak''arkan Tribe was quite remarkable in so far as how effective it initially seemed to be turning out."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 632 Failures

    "They took our diplomatic team much more seriously when we first trained and sent a Martial Squire to head the negotiations," Carl continued. "Our diplomatic team was even able to negotiate with one of their most powerful and influential Martial Squires. However, we had never managed to draw the attention of the shot callers of the G''ak''arkan Tribe. The three Martial Seniors are considered the three leaders of the Tribe. They regarded our Martial Art technique offers with curious intrigue, but never took us too seriously because of the gap between their ranks and ours. We were not able to give those three particr individuals anything they considered worth their time, since they were Martial Seniors."


    "Why didn''t they consider the benefits it would bring to the rest of their tribe? Even if they can''t use it, surely the rest of the Martial Squires would benefit from such a trade." Rui frowned as he scoured through the transcripts of the negotiations in his mind pce, looking for the relevant files.


    "That is a painfully rational and logical reason, and one Ipletely agree with," Carl sighed once more. "Unfortunately, as you may have noticed, rationality is, well,cking in this particr ecosystem. Leadership in this tribe is merely a consequence of being the strongest and is not considered to be a burden or a responsibility. They rejected it because their attachment to their techniques was higher than their desire to strengthen the rest of their n. Another part of it is paranoia since their Martial Art techniques are their lifeline in not getting overrun by their rivals and enemies. They rejected disclosure of their techniques when we deployed Martial Squire diplomats. Another part is also the fact that our Martial Squires acted out of order when they experienced the disrespect that they were shown despite being the diplomats of the Martial Union. They may have partially seeded if they kept their cool."This is from N?velDrama.Org.


    Rui could easily imagine this happening. While Martial Seniors were stronger than Martial Squires, Martial Squires had their own pride. Furthermore, there was the fact that they were representing the Martial Union. Rui could easily imagine Martial Squires who was used tomanding respect and had no conception of the mindsets of diplomacy losing their temper and spoiling negotiations.


    "But things weren''t the same when the Martial Union finally tried sending a Martial Senior to try and get them to take us seriously," Carl sighed once more. "It is absolutely unprecedented and wild, mind you. That decision. It is one thing for Martial Artists to converse with foreign Martial Artists over highly specific matters. It is absolutely another to send Martial Seniors as an ambassador to alien third parties."


    "I can imagine that this decision sparked a lot of controversy within the Martial Union," Rui smiled wryly.


    "You are quite correct. Martial Sects and factions got embroiled in the controversy, but ultimately, we decided to go forward with sending a Martial Senior."


    "I read the transcripts. The Martial Seniors were definitely taken seriously. The problem was that their pride andpetitiveness got in the way. It created an atmosphere where the G''ak''arkan Tribe would effectively be admitting inferiority and defeat if it epted our deal at the time."


    Both of them sighed.


    The problem was how the Martial Senior handled it. It was almost the textbook example of how not to conduct diplomatic negotiations with the G''ak''arkan Tribe to exchange and trade techniques. The Martial Senior deployed had turned into apetition by aggressively touting the techniques of the Martial Union and iming superiority, thereby triggering immensepetitiveness and wounding the pride of the Martial Senior leaders of the G''ak''arkan Tribe. If not for the fact that the diplomatic team apanying the Martial Senior had managed to cut off the negotiations and had one of the Martial Masters of the Martial Union directly order the Martial Senior to retreat, a fight may have broken out then and there!<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    It also helped that the Martial Seniors of the G''ak''arkan Tribe did not break out into a fight then and there because their devastating power would have annihted almost all of their tribe.


    Rui wasn''t even surprised that this happened as recalled the identity of the Martial Senior that had been sent as a diplomat.


    "Senior Ceeran is a Martial Senior that is highlypetent and powerful when ites to long-range techniques... But unfortunately, his immense pride and passion for long-range techniques drove the negotiations downhill," Rui chuckled amused.


    "Correct," Carl nodded. "Senior Ceeran was chosen because he is the deputy director of the Long-range Research Department of the Martial Union as well as the fact that he is in the upper echelons of the Longranger Sect. That has worked against the diplomatic mission. But it makes little sense to send Martial Artists from other Martial Sects."


    "I was made an exception because of my personal profile, I imagine," Rui noted.


    "True, but anyways,ing back to the big picture. Let us revisit the things that we have discussed until now. We have discussed the elementary diplomatic theory. Levying other people''s primary and secondary interests to fulfill your own interests. We discussed specific examples n the mostmon types of such urrences, such as food and national security, and the maintenance of the technological sectors. Then we recognized that while these interests are almost universal, there are exceptions such as the G''ak''arkan Tribe. We then proceeded to form a profile of them andid out their most important interests, before proceeding to discuss why our diplomatic endeavors with them have failed up to this point due to this reason and others. Is there any part of this that you have any doubts, questions, or issues with?"


    "No, you are a great instructor and have madeplicated matters easier to digest," Rui replied earnestly.


    "I believe your remarkable understanding and foundation in the humanities and social sciences despite no formal education in them is what has facilitated our discussion to be smooth," Carl replied with a smile. "It has taken me weeks and even months to reach this point with some of your predecessors."


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    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 633 Solutions

    "Regardless, we''ve gone into the basics of general diplomacy, the uniqueness of the G''ak''arkan Tribe as well as their warped primary interests, how we could negotiate with them based on these warped interests, and finally, the reasons for why those negotiations failed," Carl paused, for a few seconds, inhaling and exhaling deeply. "That brings us to the heart of our talk; your mission. Your goal is to sessfully trade techniques with the G''ak''arkan Tribe. Based on the conversations we''ve had all this while, how would you go about the diplomatic negotiations of the G''ak''arkan Tribe?"


    ...


    Rui''s eyes wandered as he spent some time considering the question.


    It was a difficult question to answer, even for Rui.


    "The principle of the negotiation strategy that we have previously employed isn''t necessarily wrong... The issue is the execution that has caused previous failures. Specifically, we need to execute our negotiations in a way that leverages theirpetitiveness and pride in our favor," Rui carefully stated. "Senior Ceeran caused theirpetitiveness to be riled up against us while wounding their pride with his aggressive insistence on superiority. That needs to be avoided at all costs."


    Carl nodded as he waited for Rui to continue.


    "Let us consider their primary interests that we have established so far," Rui said as he raised three fingers. "The desire to dominate their enemies, the desire to engage in physical conflict, and the desire to take pride in all their decisions and actions. These are the three primary interests that we will have to contend with. We need to appeal to each of these interests strongly in our negotiation strategy."


    He paused for some more time as he gathered his thoughts. "The desire to dominate their enemies is the easiest interest to levy in our favor. The power that our techniques inbination with that of theirs will produce should allow them to be overwhelmingly stronger in the long run."Content ? N?velDrama.Org.


    Any third party that desired more power to dominate its enemies could not resist the allure of new and powerful Martial Art techniques as long as it was handled properly. The foolish Martial Artists that went before he screwed up by shing against theirpetitiveness and pride.


    Rui did not intend to do that.


    As long as he demonstrated that he could give them the power they desired to dominate their opponents, he will have already taken a major step toward earning their cooperation.


    "The desire to engage in physical conflict isn''t something we can necessarily directly levy, unfortunately. But the good news is that it cannot work against us as long as we are careful. It will most likely work out to be a neutral variable." Rui noted. "In ideal circumstances, it could work in our favor if they recognize that they can engage in a much greater amount of conflict by gaining more power. But that will depend on whether I am able to effectively paint apelling picture for them."


    It could not be leveraged in a direct fashion since it wasn''t as though Rui could fabricate new and more native tribes out of thin air for the G''ak''arkan Tribe to fight against. In the worst-case scenario, if their desire to engage in physical conflicts would turn against the diplomatic team of the Martial Union, then this diplomatic endeavor would be as good as screwed.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    This was one of Rui''s biggest concerns.


    On the flip side, if he could create an alluring image of even greater and more sessful physical shes with their enemies, then it could be leveraged as a positive force that would drive the G''ak''arkan Tribe further into cooperating with the Martial Union.


    "Thest element is, of course, the trickiest out of all of the three abstract interests of the G''ak''arkan Tribe," Rui sighed.


    Their pride was the least understood variable out of all the three. Their pride caused them to deny military aid from the Martial Union despite possessing a strong desire to defeat and dominate their enemies and rivals. It also caused previous diplomatic endeavors to fail, Rui understood all of this, but it still wasn''t clear what exactly might offend their pride in a detrimental fashion and what wouldn''t.


    At the very least the previous variables were well understood. Rui wasn''t entirely sure what he ought to say to manipte them such that their pride would work in his favor. He was highly intelligent, but he wasn''t some mastermind maniptor!


    "I''m not entirely sure how to levy their pride in our favor. I guess we can pretend their techniques are superior. That feels extremely insulting and disrespectful as a Martial Artist of the Martial Union though," Rui sighed. He wasn''t the most prideful of people, but even he found it very unpleasant to have to lower his head to this degree.


    "Your predecessors reacted along the same lines, except they were intensely vehement to employing such measures," Carl mused. "It is unfortunate and even a bit strange to me personally because if I were in your position, I would have been extremely happy and joyful rather than insulted."


    "Why''s that?" Rui frowned.


    "Because if all it takes is lowering pride to achieve our goal, then we diplomats would have done so without hesitation. One of the key necessities of being a diplomat is knowing when to drop your pride and humble yourself when representing your group or nation in certain circumstances. Pride is not as important as concrete benefits from sess. While you find pretending our techniques are inferior as a strategic means to achieve our goal, we diplomats are trained extensively to have no problem and even consider such means a boom because of how simple they are," Carl sighed. "It seems that even for rational and intelligent Martial Artists like yourselves, such a thing is still not possible. It''s a shame."


    "Well, sorry about that," Rui smiled wryly.


    "Oh, it''s no matter. Besides, that strategy still isn''t the best at hand. Though it probably wouldn''t hurt to employ to a minor degree."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 634 Confidence

    "Not the best strategy?" Rui raised an eyebrow. "Why do you say that?"


    Rui was sure that the strategy, although infuriating, would definitely appeal to their pride. He wasn''t able to think of a singr better way to do so than to give their techniques greater esteem.


    "Although it does leverage their pride well, it does so at the cost of the perceived value of our techniques," Carl exined. "If they perceive our techniques to be much less valuable than their own, then their trade will inevitably be far too skewed in their favor. What we desire from the G''ak''arkan Tribe is an equal and fair trade, not a scam."


    "That definitely makes sense," Rui nodded.


    "Besides, Senior Ceeran will never tolerate the downying of the long-range techniques of the Martial Union and, by extension, all of the techniques of the Longranger Sect. As one of the upper echelons of the Longranger Sect, he would rather dere war against the G''ak''arkan Tribe than tolerate the techniques of his sect being diminished. If he hears you go in that direction during the negotiations, he may even pick a fight then and there."


    "You make it sound like he will be part of the diplomatic team that will be deployed to the G''ak''arkan Tribe," Rui raised an eyebrow.


    "You need an expert on long-range techniques with you. You are far from sufficient; you have only mastered three long-range techniques in your career as a Martial Artist. If the negotiations proceed favorably, then we need someone who can demonstrate the techniques that we will be trading." Carl exined patiently.


    "Is it wise to send the previous diplomat who failed spectacrly?" Rui sighed.


    "The wisdom of the choice of the Martial Artist chosen for this role is up in the air. However, Martialmissioner Derun was the one who made the decision. I was told that you and Senior Ceeran have a good rtionship, which probably factored into her decision. The diplomatic mission is hard enough already, we cannot afford disunity in our diplomatic team."


    Rui sighed. He suspected as much himself, it couldn''t be a coincidence that Senior Ceeran was the one appointed as the long-range expert and consultant. Martialmissioner Derun was probably aware of the submission of the Pathfinder technique that Rui had given to the Longranger Sect.


    "How much diplomatic training did Senior Ceeran undergo when he was chosen as a diplomat?" Rui asked.


    "He tried going through all of it, to his credit." Carl sighed. "However, by the time the negotiations took ce..."


    "He may as well have not gone through any training or briefing," Rui chuckled, saying what Carl was reluctant to say out loud. "Well, putting that aside. I guess we should ce just enough weight on their techniques to tickle their pride but not to the point we stand to make a loss," Rui noted.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    "Right, there other things you can that will incentivize their cooperation with us," Carl said, before continuing. "For example, and this is risky if misapplied, if you make it so that their pridepels them to master our techniques, you could make a fruitful exchange likelier."


    "True, but that won''t be easy to aplish," Rui sighed.


    "Don''t worry, you''ll undergo some training on how to address their pride in their Martial prowess in my training program," Carl assured.This is from N?velDrama.Org.


    "Also, I noticed something when I was going through the reports I was given on their techniques," Rui noted. "They have a lot of remarkable techniques that allow them to aplish impressive feats given the Realm of the Martial Artist performing them, but at the same time, what we would consider being fundamentals, they''re actually quitecking from our perspective. I think rather than bombarding them with our most powerful techniques to impress them, they would likely be more receptive to techniques that may not be the ones we''re most proud of, but would actually address some of their shorings. Senior Ceeran should have definitely been aware of their shorings, but I don''t know why he didn''t think of this tactic."


    "Senior Ceeran is not the most rational person when ites to long-range anything, let''s just say," Carl sighed. "Your tactic sounds quite useful. You should flesh it out more when you go through my training program. Which should be significantly shortened by the fact that you have already memorized all the files surrounding this case."


    Rui nodded as he gathered his thoughts.


    Appealing to the pride of their techniques, appealing to their pride in their ability to learn difficult techniques, and offering techniques that would specifically shore up all of their strengths and weaknesses.


    These were three mini-objectives that Rui hade up with in order to make the negotiations with the G''al''arkan Tribe go smoothly.


    Of course, this wasn''t everything, but it was a start. He had plenty of time to flesh out the strategy once he began his training. Furthermore, his strategy would get naturally refined as time passes due to themunication training that he would receive from the training program. Verbal and non-verbal expression were avenues that any diplomat needed to master, and with the high cognitive parameters that Rui had demonstrated, he would probably be judged to be able to handle much more rigorous training than his predecessors.


    They spoke for quite some more time until the conversation finally winded to a halt.


    "This has been the fruitful of discussions, Squire Quarrier." Carl smiled, getting up. "This discussion was meant to gauge the depth of your understanding and capability in several areas to judge where I would have to begin and to fune the training and briefing program to suit your needs. But you have made my job considerably easier, you cannot imagine how difficult it was to train your predecessors to a bare minimum eptable degree, and ultimately, I failed, clearly. But I am quite optimistic about you, I look forward to seeing the oue."


    Rui smiled, getting up himself. "I appreciate your confidence in me, and I will strive to do my best."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 635 Chieftain

    Rui''s training began in earnest. Yet for what was perhaps the first time in his second life, he was not training in his Martial Art. Instead, he dedicated most of his time to verbal and non-verbalmunication as well as the most optimalmunication tactics with the specific high-profile members of the G''ak''arkan Tribe.


    "This is tribe leader N''Kunu," Carl brought up an image that the previous diplomatic team managed to snag of the unsuspecting fellow.


    It was an image that Rui had seen before, just looking at it gave him an impression of power. The man had light skin and an imposing figure. His face and body were vividly colored in a manner that was traditional to the indigenous tribe he wore several adornments in addition to the traditional garb of the G''ak''arkan Tribe, indicating his status as the tribe leader.


    "As I''m sure you know, N''Kunu is ny-seven years old and has been the leader of the G''ak''arkan Tribe for the past thirty years, taking over from the previous tribe leader." Carl rehashed the facts. "It has taken us quite some time to form a profile on him, but we have managed to do so. Contrary to our expectations that we have of the leader of a highly militant, aggressive, and proud tribe, chieftain N''Kunu is more stable than the other Martial Artists of his tribe, rtively speaking. There have been several instances in previous negotiation sessions with the G''ak''arkan Tribe that were quite dire and could have easily deteriorated for the worst. It is not an exaggeration to say that theposure that chieftain N''Kunu disyed is one of the greatest reasons that hostilities didn''t break down between the G''ak''arkan Tribe and our diplomatic team."


    Rui nodded as he recalled the transcripts of the diplomatic meeting between the Senior Ceeran and N''Kulu. There is no doubt that the man was being highly considerate of the fact that a fight breaking out at that point in time would end up causing a lot of damage to the G''ak''arkan Tribe. Even if he had, like the rest of his tribe, grown up possessing their highly aggressive, warmongering, and proud temperament, he needed to have greater awareness and foresight as the leader of his tribe. Otherwise, his poor decisions would lead to the destruction of his own tribe.


    "He is the greatest stakeholder of the G''ak''arkan Tribe," Carl pointed out. "As the peak of the only hierarchy that is centered around power, his word possesses the greatest weight. He is the oldest and the strongest, and that is why he''s the leader. If the negotiations go poorly such that he refuses any possibility of a trade, then you can rest assured that it doesn''t matter what the rest of the tribe thinks. Even the other two younger and weaker Martial Seniors are unlikely to question him."


    He turned to Rui. "In addition to the set of interests of the G''ak''arkan Tribe that we have gone through in previous conversation, what additional interests do you think this man possesses?"


    "It seems clear that his desire for the survival of his tribe is greater than that of his fellow tribesmen. I''d say that the responsibility that he bears has been made less insane than the rest of the tribe he leads. He''s probably the reason that this tribe is doing as well as it has," Rui analyzed as he stared at the image of the man. "Still, that''s by their standards. From what it seems like, he still has demonstrated highly militant and aggressive tendencies, it''s just that he''s likely much more careful. In fact, I would venture to guess that the reason hostilities haven''t broken out between us is that he has realized the fact that someone as strong as he has been deployed as a mere diplomat means that the ''tribe'' that we represent is unfathomably stronger than the G''ak''arkan Tribe. While he has still demonstrated highly aggressive tendencies towards us despite likely realizing this, he has never crossed a line. I believe that he should be most receptive to our negotiations. It is a shame that the Martial Union is unwilling to divulge the secret to the Master Realm to Chieftain N''Kulu. I''m sure he would agree to our dealer in a heartbeat, just based on that alone."<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    "Martialmissioner Derun has been exceedingly clear and explicit with the negotiation capital that you possess as a diplomat," Carl replied with a measured look. "She has, in no uncertain terms, made clear that the secret to the Master Realm is more valuable than every single technique of every Martial Tribe on Vilun Ind, and cannot be used as a negotiation chip. Even if you did bring it up as a negotiation chip, you would be penalized and the Martial Union would never follow through. So forget about it."


    Rui wordlessly stared at Carl as he tried to reign in his curiosity.


    Of course, he highly doubted that Carl knew anything about the secret to the Master Realm. He was a diplomatic and foreign affairs trainer and was only a mid-level ambassador in the prime of his career. Hell, he was sure that even Martial Commissioner Derun was unaware of this highly sensitive piece of information. At best, she was informed of its value.


    Of course, Rui could also understand why they had chosen not to divulge it. Martial Masters were strategic assets of extremely high value. They were significant forces to be reckoned with by every nation. Handing over the path to the Master Realm to forces that didn''t possess the secret was a reckless move.


    It was no different from nations on Earth freely teaching other nations on Earth how to construct short-range ballistic missiles in exchange for a few hand grenades!


    Rui put this matter aside as they discussed the profiles of the most significant personalities of the G''ak''arkan Tribe. Rui had to keep track of all the significant stakeholders of the tribe, which happened to be the strongest Martial Artists of the tribe.N?velDrama.Org owns ? this.


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    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 636 Concerns

    "You''re pronouncing it wrong!" A woman hissed at Rui. "It''s H''ahmatouoho, not H''ahmatoooho!"


    "H''ah-H''ahmatouoho?" Rui stuttered.


    "Not bad but do better!" She red at him, seemingly uncaring of his status as a Martial Artist.


    If not for the fact that Rui retained the patience and maturity that came with fifty-nine years of life, he may very well have lost patience with his highly passionate linguistic trainer in his training of the Vilun dialect.


    Rui struggled with the tongue-twisting number of sybles that every word seemed to have. Even a simple greeting had as many sybles as a normal sentence in the Kandriannguage.


    "I would like to revisit the wisdom of relying on a trantor." Rui straightforwardly told Carl.


    "Nice try, but no," Carl replied, amused.


    "Senior Ceeran could rely on a trantor," Rui pointed out. "Why can''t I do the same?"


    "Senior Ceeran easily has enough clout to do away with having to learn a dialect," Carl honestly replied. "Learning newnguages is too difficult for him and is far too not worth his time as a Martial Senior. The first point entirely does not apply to you, and the fact that you''re an external member of the Martial Union does not help you either."


    Rui sighed as he resumed his training with the linguistic trainer.


    Thankfully, it appeared that the dialect was much smaller, simpler, and less sophisticated structurally. This was reflected in the state of their development as a society. They were highly primitive in every sense. Their developments as far as theoretical, esoteric science and technology were practically non-existent with the sole exception being their mysterious and albeit much inferior version of the Squire evolution breakthrough.


    Asides from that, the very concept of economics was non-existent, their geography was limited to that of the ind, their history was not well documented and recorded, and their sense of sociology was highly warped and limited.


    This meant that theirnguage was equally limited because theirmunication was also highly limited. As a citizen of the Kandrian Empire, there were vast amounts of information that could and wasmunicated regarding matters of the world they lived in and their lives in it.


    The same couldn''t be said for the Martial tribes of Vilun ind.


    Their conception of reality was fundamentally far more limited.


    Thenouns and verbs could be listed down on a single page, if one really tried hard. They fought, they ate, they slept and they built families.


    This made Rui''s job easier, had it been a highlyplex and sophisticatednguage of the Panama Continent, Rui didn''t think that he would have agreed to the mission if they had insisted on learning thenguage. However, its simplicity managed topel him.


    "You have a meeting with Martialmissioner Derun soon if I''m not wrong," Carl mentioned to him once the Vilun dialect learning session came to an end.


    "Indeed," Rui sighed.


    The two chatted informally for a bit. They had grown more familiar with each other and had dispensed with formalities as they focused on preparing Rui as much as possible for the diplomatic mission.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    Rui simply headed for Martialmissioner Derun''s office when the time for the appointment came.


    "Squire Quarrier, you''re here right on time," She smiled as Rui walked in.


    "Hello, Martialmissioner," Rui walked in.


    "Please, have a seat," She waved at it. "I''ve heard your training and briefing program has been going quite well."


    "I''m just doing my best," Rui modestly offered.


    "And yet Carl has informed me that at the rate that you''re growing, you will achieve the desired results within a third of the total projected time," She smiled.


    "Part of it has to do with the fact that the Mind Pce technique has allowed me to memorize all the data that would otherwise have to be painstakingly studied," Rui shrugged. "Still, it is optimistic nheless, I suppose."


    "Indeed," She nodded. "I called you here today to finalize your team. I figured you ought to know."N?vel(D)ra/ma.Org exclusive ? material.


    "I thought that had already been decided," Rui raised an eyebrow.


    "Not officially, no," She shook her head as she pulled out a document from her desk, handing it to Rui.


    "Much of your team are diplomatic assistants and employees who partook in the previous diplomatic endeavors with the G''ak''arkan Tribe. Including, of course..." She gave another document.


    "Senior Ceeran..." Rui muttered as he opened the document, detailing the profile of the man.


    "I heard you may have had some apprehensions with Senior Ceeran," She mentioned. "I wanted to hear your thoughts from you personally."


    "I have had a decent dynamic with Senior Ceeran, though I do not possess any working rtions with him at the moment. He evaluated my technique and was quite pleased by it, and we got along well enough thanks to that. It''s truly nothing special," Rui rified. "I did have some concerns. I understand that a long-range Martial Artist is needed to demonstrate techniques, after all, the G''ak''arkan Tribe is not going to take us at our word for this matter. However..."


    "You can speak freely," She said, noticing a hint of hesitation from him.


    "I am fearful of the impact Senior Ceeran can have on the mission," Rui sighed. "He is a prestigious Martial Senior, I can easily see him bing the spiritual leader of the diplomatic mission and hijacking my position as the lead diplomat due to this. I also fear for him triggering a conflict with the leaders of the G''ak''arkan Tribe due to his extreme pride in his techniques and the techniques of his Martial Sect. I have gone through the transcripts of his interactions with the chieftain, and let''s just say they are not the most reassuring."


    "Your concerns are very valid," Martialmissioner Derun nodded. "However, you can rest assured. Senior Ceeran has taken responsibility for his failures as a diplomat and has fully conceded the role. He has also, in writing, guaranteed his cooperation with an assisting role."


    Rui''s skeptical expression revealed that he did not find her reassurances very reassuring.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 637 Month

    N?vel(D)ra/ma.Org exclusive ? material.


    "You seem skeptical," Martialmissioner Derun noted.


    "Writing isn''t much of a guarantee. Especially when we''re thousands of kilometers away from the Kandrian Empire," Rui replied, with a measured tone.


    "That is true, but you can rest assured about Senior Ceeran''s sincerity. He has vowed not to overstep his boundaries to his direct superior, Master Haloen, the co-leader of the Longranger Sect," She informed him. "I can assure you that Senior Ceeran would not break his work against that personage for any reason."


    Rui raised an eyebrow at her words. The fact that Martialmissioner Derun went this far to obtain a guarantee for hispliance meant that the Martial Union had considerable interest in the mission seeding.


    "Alright then," Rui shrugged. "I suppose I''ll just have to be content with that."


    He turned towards the first document that she had given him. "And how do I know that these members assigned to my team are going to respect my authority? What if they naturally defer to Senior Ceeran?"


    "You can rest assured that that won''t happen," She reassured him. "Those diplomats were present when Senior Ceeran nearly jeopardized any chance of the mission seeding. And it was they who did their best to prevent that from happening. They do not have any natural inclination towards following Senior Ceeran''s leadership, instead, as long as you show them that you are level-headed and are going to execute this mission rationally, they will undoubtedly follow your lead and support you when you need it."


    Rui nodded.


    It wasn''t as though there was anything else that he could do in the first ce at all.


    They conversed for a bit more before the conversation ended.


    Time passed as Rui continued his briefing and training. With each passing day, he would be increasingly adept at the Vilun dialect. The biggest problem with him was not memorizing thenguage and the script but being able to fluently pronounce all the words. He simply gritted his teeth as he bore the tough and harsh linguistic training from his passionate tutor.


    The other aspects were far easier and quicker. Communication was an important field that he spent a lot of time on. Gaining a greater degree of awareness of his demeanor, tone, facial expressions, as well as his micro-expressions, allowed him to learn to exert an appropriate amount of control over them at all times.


    He found the process of learning to exert fine control and maniption to be quite fascinating. His tutor would engage in a number of honest and earnest discussions with him at all times. Each discussion was meant to evoke certain emotions and reactions out of Rui to record and measure what his authentic non-verbalmunication looked like when he was angry, happy, sad, and a number of other more elementary reactions.


    Then the training team took those recordings and created an extensive training program that was aimed at teaching Rui how to bring up those authentic facial expressions and micro-expressions identically. Rui not only learned exactly what he looked like when he was genuinely experiencing a particr emotion or particr sets of emotions but also learned to replicate it on demand.


    Much to the surprise of the training team, he absorbed the lessons and training like a sponge. It was just a matter of time before he reached a level that waspetent even by their standards.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    Rui also fleshed out his negotiation strategy and tactics with Carl in long and extended meetings with the man. They had already fleshed out the broad big picture with him long ago, but now they filled in every chink they could find to the best of their abilities. Rui hade up with ns to buy the support of every major stakeholder of the G''ak''arkan Tribe.


    They focused on opening statements, initial persuasion, and negotiation tactics as well as the initial presentation of their case. By the time they were done at the end of the month, Rui was actually proud and confident in what they had managed to hatch up.


    He had also gotten acquainted with his team before his briefing and training program ended, and they soon became part of the program to establish an understanding between everyone on the team.


    Even Senior Ceeran showed up when Rui''s training and briefing ended.


    "To think we would meet again under these circumstances," The man eagerly greeted Rui. "When I heard that you had been chosen as the new diplomat, I had to admit it was a great choice. Given how shrewd you are, you have a better chance of seeding than I did!"


    "Haha... Thanks for your vote of confidence, Senior Ceeran," Ruiughed awkwardly as he observed the man.


    To his surprise, he didn''t show any reluctance in his position on the mission.


    "Any help you need my boy, you need only ask, those idiots got mad when I pointed out that they had much more to gain from this transaction because our techniques shit all of theirs. I hope you''ll get those uncouth savages to see reason," He nonchntly insulted them with a contemptuous expression. "Honestly, even to this day, I do not understand why I failed. It''s a wonder, really."


    "Yeah, I wonder why," Rui sighed.


    He would have worded that stronger, but Senior Ceeran''s immensely powerful aura, even when suppressed so as to not knock out all humans in the vicinity, was a ring reminder that he could eradicate Rui with the slightest exertion.


    "Never mind, it''s all in the past. This time, we will seed," His eyes narrowed as his restrained aura grew sharper. "I will get my hands on their techniques no matter what happens."


    (''Oh boy,'') Rui once more questioned the wisdom of getting Senior Ceeran on board the mission.


    He mentally prepared himself for constantly being aware and alert of Senior Ceeran, he could already sense that he ought not to let his guard down around Senior Ceeran, the man was simply not someone who could be trusted at all at this point in time.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 638 Driving Force

    "How do I look?" Rui asked as he adjusted his Kandrian version of a tie.


    "You look good, sir. It appears that the suit fits just fine" One of the attendants of the assistance team assigned to him replied.


    He had just been provided the formal wear that he would have to wear for his role as a diplomat. It was different from the one that was normally provided to diplomats. This particr set of clothes had been specially designed to incorporate Martial elements to it, making it seem more like the ceremonial battle garb of a warrior king.


    "I haven''t been this formally dressed since..." Rui''s eyes zed over as he recalled the interviews he had given back when he first announced thepletion of the first iteration of the VOID algorithm. It was one of the few times that he had truly gone all out with his grooming for the momentous asion.


    "Are there any diforts or anything else of the sort, sir?" His personal attendant asked politely. "Alterations or recements can be swiftly issued."


    "None at all, it fits just fine," Rui nodded as he looked at himself in the mirror.


    He nced at his suitcase. "How much more time until boarding time is ready?"


    "A little under three hours sir. The crew aboard the Veomine Starling are nearly done with their final preparatory protocols," She informed him with a courteous tone.


    "Hm," Rui nodded as he nced over at the suitcase lying at the other end of the suite.


    He had been staying at a coastal branch of the Martial Union for the past day as the final preparations for the diplomatic expedition were beingpleted.


    He spent the remaining time he had in the Kandrian Empire making sure that he had missed nothing. None of his personal belongings that he needed, and most certainly none of the documents and other things that he needed toplete the mission.


    "Proof of identification... check, proof of authorization of representation of the Martial Union... check, four sets of official diplomatic uniform... check," He murmured as he meticulously ruffled through his oversized suitcase.


    Sure enough, everything was in order and it was finally time to leave for Vilun Ind.


    "Squire Quarrier," Senior Ceeran grinned excitedly, exerting faint pressure on Rui with his elevated excitement alone. "It''s time. I presume you have done everything needed to nail this diplomatic endeavor?"


    "Of course," Rui nodded, maintaining a perfect fa?¡ìade of casual friendliness. "I intend to seed without a doubt."Content ? N?velDrama.Org.


    "Good to hear!" The man nodded with an approving expression.


    The two made their way to the harbor, sky walking through the air.


    Rui breathed deeply as he enjoyed the distinct odor of the ocean. It was easy for Rui to forget that the Kandrian Empire was a coastal nation of the north-eastern side of the Panama Continent due to the constant cold that the town of Hajin experienced.


    The town of Farund was a town that was very different from that of the town of Hajin. For one, it was the only town he had seen that was busier and more bustling than the town of Hajin, barring the capital of the nation; the town of Vargard.


    It was also amercial trade hub, however, unlike the town of Hajin, it was also a coastal seaport. There was an immense amount of traffic in and out of the town. Rui could simply feel the brimming energy in the town as he skywalked towards the Farund seaport.


    What drew his attention was the sunrise over the ocean. The rising sun''s reflection flickered over the morning ocean.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    "Good view, isn''t it?" Senior Ceeran said with a surprising degree of calmness.


    "The best," Rui nodded.


    "You know... One of the best parts of being a Martial Artist is the ability to escape the confines ofnd," Senior Ceeran sighed, appreciating the beautiful visage. "It was actually one of my greatest driving motivations to be a Martial Artist, if I''m being honest."


    Rui turned to him in surprise. "Is that so?"


    "It certainly is," He nodded. "I used to look up at the sky and feel a burning desire to walk across it."


    Rui felt quite surprised. He had always thought Senior Ceeran was a simple man with a singr motivation and objective not too different from his own at all. A person who single-mindedly pursued a single objective; his Martial Path.


    Perhaps there was a greater nuance that Rui wasn''t aware of, people wereplicated.


    "Of course, that was just one reason," The man sighed.


    "Does that mean you grew less motivated after you became Martial Squire?" Rui asked.


    "Perhaps..." The man admitted, surprising Rui once more.


    "That''s hard to imagine," Rui admitted. "Given how driven you seem to be,"


    "Thank you, it''s reassuring to hear that from you," The man smiled. "It gives me more hope for reaching the Master Realm. Perhaps, I still meet the threshold to cross into the upper Realms."


    Rui''s eyebrow furrowed as he considered the implications of his words. "Did you... just inadvertently reveal the breakthrough condition to the Master Realm?"


    "Haha, no." The man chuckled, amused. "It''s more like one of the implicit necessities for eventually reaching higher Realms."


    Rui raised an eyebrow at those confounding words.


    "It makes sense when you think about it," The man exined, noticing Rui''s confusion. "How far one can go, in any field of pursuit, depends on how strong their driving force is. The stronger the driving force, the further you can go before you stop. The same is true for the Martial Realms,"


    Rui wordlessly listened as the aged Martial Artist candidly offered valuable insights.


    "People strive to be Martial Artists for various reasons... Power, money, prestige, and love. These motivations, desires, and objectives are our driving forces. Unfortunately, most driving forces, regardless of which category they''re in, aren''t strong enough to drive them to the upper Realms. Do you understand?"


    Rui nodded. "You need strong motivations to reach the upper Realms."


    "Well yes, but that wasn''t what I meant," He shook his head. "The truth is, not only are they not strong enough to reach the highest of Realms, but they''re too weak to even survive beyond a certain level."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 639 Surpass

    Rui''s eyebrows knitted at those words. Unlike his previous words, they didn''t make any intuitive sense to Rui. Driving forces of Martial Artists being too weak to survive beyond a certain level?


    "I don''t understand," Rui interjected. "What does that mean?"


    The man remained silent for a few seconds, before finally replying. "Take, for example, one of the examples I just gave you; money. You would be surprised by the number of people that pursue Martial Art to gain greater wealth. After all, Martial Squires like yourself can earn an ie in the top five percent to the top one percent of ies in the entire nation."


    Rui nodded. Lashara had even refused the significant sums of money that Rui offered her, it was so much money that the Quarrier Orphanage didn''t know what to do with it! Lashara did not want to aggressively expand the Orphanage''s scale because there was no way that the current caretakers would be able to handle anything drastic. She was extremely reluctant to rely on hired aid, causing her to reject any such notions.


    "However, if one bes a Martial Artist in their pursuit of wealth. What do you think happens to their motivation once they obtain wealth? As I said, Martial Squires like yourself are quite wealthy. A person whose objective to obtain money is their driving force will lose motivation to grow stronger and pursue their Martial Path after they have aplished that objective, naturally. After all, they havepleted the objective of the pursuit which caused them to grow stronger. They will no longer have reason to grow stronger, and thus no longer have a driving force to grow stronger." Senior Ceeran exined. "That''s what I mean by their driving force not even surviving past a certain stage."


    "That actually makes a lot of sense," Rui grew absorbed in thought. "Unless the person has extremely difficult ambitions with wealth, like bing the richest person on the entire continent or something, they will lose their driving force long before they reach higher Realms."


    "Exactly," The man sighed. "That is the true core reason why so few Martial Artists reach the highest of Realms. It takes a truly powerful and resilient driving force to push through the restrictive barriers within each Realm and the gigantic walls that stand between each Realm. Martial Masters are all truly powerful beings with driving forces that drove them all the way past three Martial Realms and into the Master Realm. These personages possess driving forces that are much stronger than any shallow objective such as wealth."


    "I haven''t met many Martial Masters, I''ve only spoken to one more than once, a retired one." Rui sighed.


    "You shouldn''t underestimate him just because he''s retired," Senior Ceeran gave him a measured look. "The old man didn''t be a Martial Master by sitting at his table doing nothing. He isn''t a headmaster because he wants to kick back and rx. The old man has grand ambitions and designs for the Martial world that cannot possibly be achieved without the power that he possesses today."


    Rui grew extremely curious at those words. In all the time that Rui had known Master Aronian, he had never learned anything truly significant about the man, asides from the fact that he held Rui with high regard.


    "And what exactly is he trying to achieve?" Rui asked.


    Senior Ceeran shook his head after a few seconds "It''s not for me to say. The point is that while there are strong impediments that Martial Artists face within each Realm, the true reason that many of us don''t ovee them is because of ourselves."


    Rui processed his words. "Is that why you''re willing to go far to aplish your goals?"<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    Senior Ceeran nodded. "It''s reaffirming my own conviction and ambition."


    Rui felt that he hade to understand the man much better in the span of this small conversation than he did before. The man drove himself far, perhaps too far sometimes, in order to ensure that he never got toofortable with what he currently possessed. He did not want to let his driving force grow dull and soft. He primed himself to never let that happen.


    He also felt better about his own situation. That was because his driving force was extraordinarily difficult to achieve.


    (''It''s not so simple though,'') Rui shook his head.


    On a fundamental level, Rui simply wanted his pursue his Martial Path for as long and far as he could, preferably forever!


    This desire was open-ended and could never be fulfilled no matter how strong he became, intrinsically.


    On the other hand, he also did possess a more specific objective; fulfilling Project Water. The project that he set out to achieve a lifetime ago. Furthermore, he had upgraded the difficulty of the project astronomically more difficult by expanding it to include everything in this world too, which was exponentially harder than if he had just limited it to Earth standards.


    These two desires served as his greatest driving forces in his pursuit of power, and he was very confident that they were powerful enough to drive him to much greater Realms of power and much deeper down his Martial Path. Up to this point, his rate of growth was truly spectacr and didn''t seem to show any signs of slowing down, if anything, it had only elerated the stronger he got!


    It was a good reaffirmation that he was on the right path. As long as he gave himself time, his driving forces would propel him to heights that even he couldn''t fully imagine!


    "That''s good," Senior Ceeran suddenly said with an approving nod as he watched Rui. "You possess what it takes to enter the Senior Realm, at least. I can''t say if you''ll go any further, but I''m certain that one day you will surpass me as I am today. Truly, I cannot wait to see that day."This is from N?velDrama.Org.


    "Neither can I," Rui replied.


    The two of them silently sky-walked slowly towards their destination.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 640 Surprise

    "Wee aboard the Veomine Eagle, sir," A man wearing a naval cap with the emblem of the Martial Union said as they boarded, bowing. "I am Captain Crartas, the captain of this ship."


    "Pleasure to meet you, captain," Rui replied with a smile. "I believe the journey to Vilun Ind will take ten days?"


    "That''s correct sir. This ship is an Eagle-ss ship with an upation capacity of five hundred passengers and a storage capacity meant to carry goods that would enable medium to long-term inhabitation aboard the ship. Furthermore, this ship possesses battleship grade hull and thus also weighs us down, slowing us down in the process" The man replied seamlessly. "Therefore its speed isn''t its strong suit."


    "I get it, it needs to be able to handle a hit or two in case the diplomatic mission goes awry," Rui instantly figured.


    "Yes sir," The man gave Rui a measured stare.


    After all, whether it took a beating or not depended on whether Rui was able to do his job as he was expected to.


    "I presume we won''t be able to take a straight route to Vilun Ind, correct?" Rui asked as he looked at a map ced in the conference room.


    "Not exactly, sir, there will be several deviations in our route to avoid the manyndmasses in between the Kandrian Empire and Vilun Ind," Captain Crartas turned towards the map, himself.


    It wasrge enough that even though it covered the entirety of the Panama Continent, Rui was able to have a clear view of all thendmasses between Vilun Ind and the Panama Continent.


    There were countless such inds in the ocean.


    It was as though the Panama Continent was a half-eaten cookie with eaten edges and the surrounding inds were chunks and smaller pieces of the cookie. They grew smaller the further they were from the main continent.


    It was an interesting map.


    It gave Rui the impression that there only was a singr continent once, but perhaps some major geological event happened that caused the edges of the continent to break off, causing all kinds of inds to form all around the Panama Continent. Some cmitousary events eons in the past with such tremendous power that the very continent suffered damage.


    Rui thought about it for a few seconds before shrugging.


    Regardless of what it was, it wasn''t as though it would ever affect him, right?


    "How much more time till the journey begins?" Rui asked.


    "The ship crew have all long boarded and have assumed duty, the diplomatic team, the security team, and the intelligence team are nearly done with their final steps sir," The captain duly informed.


    "Hm¡­" Rui nodded.


    Each of these teams was there to facilitate the mission in their own way.


    The diplomatic team, of course, was the only team that Rui was familiar with. These included assistants that would help him with any and all needs regarding the actual diplomatic mission. In the past month, he had spent some time with them just enough to get a bare basic understanding of each other so they didn''t get in each other''s way.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    The security team was a team of Martial Squires meant to guard the Veomine Eagle against any damage of any kind. This was a considerable investment of Martial capital from the Martial Union, but Rui understood why they had offered such a degree of security.


    Without the security of a Martial Squire team protecting them, Rui and Senior Ceeran would not be able to focus on the mission of worries about their security. Furthermore, neither of them was particrly effective at underwaterbat that involved fighting against powerful underwater creatures, unlike aquatic-oriented Martial Artists.


    Admittedly, Rui did feel safer and at ease. Especially when there were Martial Squires engaged in constant surveince so that he didn''t have to.This is from N?velDrama.Org.


    The intelligence team was there to help Rui obtain any information that he might seek in the middle of thepletion of the mission in order to sessfullyplete it. It was reckless and stupid of him to try and obtain them himself, thus there were specialists who were assigned for this specific possibility.


    The best part was that because both the technology and diversity of Martial Art of the G''ak''arkan Tribe were highly limitedpared to that of the Martial Union, the technological measures and systems that were employed to gather intelligence were going to be much more effective than they usually were. The best part was theck of awareness on their side, thus they would not take the measures that they could take with what they had and what they could.


    "Ah¡­" Captain Crartas looked at hisms device. "The assigned heads of the diplomatic and the security team are on their way here, sir, I imagine they''d want to meet you as well,"


    "Of course," Rui nodded. "I look forward to meeting them, they are valued assets on this mission, after all."


    Soon enough, a man entered the conference room where the two of them were. He wore a Martial uniform of the Martial Union, but Rui sensed his concealed Squire-level auraing from a mile away.


    "Captain Crartas, Squire Quarrier¡­" He nodded at both of them. "I am Squire Captain Vermeal Clonsky, a pleasure to meet both of you."


    The two men greeted him, engaging in light topics such as the coordination of their nominal duties and teams before Squire Vermeal turned to Rui.


    "Oh yeah, one thing," He said, recalling something. "I heard that one of the Martial Squires of the intelligence team wanted to speak to you. He''sing along with the captain at this moment."


    "Is that so¡­?" Rui frowned. "Are you sure it''s a Martial Squire?"


    His senses told him there were only two humans walking toward the conference room.


    KNOCK KNOCK


    Rui turned towards the door, before widening his eyes in shock.


    "Captain, Squires. I am special agent Cravis," She said with apletely neutral tone. "And this is the Martial Squire assigned to our team¡­"


    She gestured to the green-haired and green-eyed young man standing beside her.


    "¡­Squire Kane Arrancar."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 641 Kane

    "Kane?!" Rui blurted out in surprise.


    "What''s up Rui?" Kane grinned, as he walked forward. "Didn''t expect to see me here, huh?"


    "At all," Ruiughed.


    The two sped hands, exchanging a hug.


    "What are you doing here?" Rui asked.


    "Well, after re-mastering the Void Step technique and some others in the past ten months, the Martial Union gave me an internalmissioned mission very recently," Kane shrugged. "I was highly inclined to apply for a decline¡­ until I learned that the mission was surrounded around you. So I epted, and here I am."


    He opened his arms with a smirk.


    Rui''s eyes lit up at that story.


    "Of course, how could I possibly forget? You would be highly invaluable on this mission," Rui realized.


    Rui wouldn''t be surprised that out of all the possible Martial Squires that could be deployed with the intelligence gathering team, Kane was probably one of the most attractive candidates due to his mastery of the Void Step technique. It was no wonder that he was offered the spot, especially considering that he had most certainly shown a pattern of picking international missions in order to spend as much time away from his family''s sphere of influence.


    "This just makes things much better," Rui grinned. He would have a friend tagging along with him.


    The four of them exchanged some words before Rui and Kane walked away from the conference room.


    "So you''vee here in your capacity as an infiltrator¡­ Interesting," Rui noted. "I thought they''d send a long-range sensor."


    "Well, they already have esoteric tech that can do that," Kane shrugged. "But infiltrating into the base camp of the G''ak''arkan Tribe is something that it can''t."


    Rui nodded. That was definitely a good asset to have at hand.


    "You''ve improved," Rui told him. "Even right now, I can''t sense anything but a normal human. This technique¡­"


    "Mind Mask," Kane nodded. "You''d told me about it a long time ago, and frankly, it''s too relevant to me for me to ignore it. So I did master it."


    This meant that sensing Kane had just gotten much harder.


    Rui recalled how effective the fusion of the Mind Mask technique and the Shadow Step technique that he had back when he was a Martial Apprentice was. While it still was inferior to Void Step, Rui had managed to achieve a knock-off that was not too far off.


    However, he wasn''t sure that he would even be able to sense Kane at all now that he had mastered both techniques alone.


    The two bantered along for a bit more, talking about certain matters before they reached their current mission.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    p¦Ánd¦Á`no¦Í?1~§ão§® "So, diplomat mission huh?" Kane mused. "Never expected you to take this kind of mission given how much you care about pursuing your Martial Path and elevating your Martial Art. These kinds of missions never seebat."


    "You''re right, they don''t," Rui nodded. "But what they do see are things that you could never see otherwise. The Squire Realm is all about diverging your path, well, it helps to see what others who have diverged their lives from everybody else have aplished. The G''ak''arkan Tribe may not be able topare to the Martial Union at all, but given what they had, they sure have aplished a hell of a lot."


    "That is true, this is an interesting mission. Not to mention that is one hell of a distance away from the Kandrian Empire so I''m happy to be here too," Kane mused. "Hell, maybe I can consider this ind as my hiding spot from my family. They sure as hell won''t even think to look here."


    "And what? Spend the rest of your life amongst warmongering tribes who will pester you worse than your family does?" Rui joked.


    The two of them bantered for some more before finally splitting ways.


    "I got some protocols to follow, so I probably won''t be able to see you very often during this mission," Kane informed him. "Still, anything you need, let me know."


    "Will do," Rui nodded before they went apart.


    Rui sighed as he focused back on his mission.


    Suddenly, he heard the speakers project a voice.


    [This is your captain Crartas speaking, we will be departing right on schedule for the departure of mission code MU42Wi413¡­ Please be sure to¡­]


    "Finally," He sighed as he felt the cruise ship moving away from the port as it head deeper into the ocean.


    The mission was a lot moreplicated than almost any other mission that he had ever been a part of, except for the Serevian Dungeon wars. However, back then he was simply a strategically valuable foot soldier. But now, he was leading this diplomatic mission, which meant the burden ced on his soldiers was much higher.


    "Ah, Squire Quarrier," A familiar voice called out to him.


    "Senior Ceeran," Rui turned, smiling. "What can I do for you?"N?vel(D)ra/ma.Org exclusive ? material.


    "Oh, it''s nothing at all," He shrugged. "I just learned that you have seen fit not to put me on your counsel."


    Rui sighed. "Look, with all due respect, Senior Ceeran, this is a decision that received near unanimous support from the diplomatic team. It was rmended against unless there were specific interests needed, and I''m afraid that this just isn''t the case this time Due to certain incidents, I''m afraid I really cannot change my decision."


    There was silence.


    Rui was rtively certain that he had been the first Martial Squire that had been this blunt with him since he became a Martial Senior.


    Still, Rui was rtively confident in his decision to be straightforward and honest with the man. Based on everything he understood about him, he was quite certain that Senior Ceeran was not somebody who would lose his temper and leverage his political power or, worse, his Martial power to suppress Rui and jeopardize the entire mission.


    Even if he was that kind of a person, Rui was rtively certain that he had very little wiggle room as far as what he could aplish went in this particr mission due to the past.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 642 Week

    To his credit, Senior Ceeran did not disy even a hint of anger or suppression of anger. So unless his mastery over his non-verbalmunication had reached a level simr to what Rui''s was, it was highly likely that Rui had been right.


    "That takes courage," Senior Ceeran smiled. "I hadn''t expected you to be that firm."


    "Well, it is my mission, not yours," Rui reminded him. "I do not want this mission being botched, and I certainly don''t want it happening under my watch."


    "Rx kiddo, I had no such intention. I don''t want control over your mission or anything of the sort, believe it or not," Senior Ceeran huffed. "The reason I brought it up is that there was a reason that a Martial Senior like me was chosen for this mission. You''re a Martial Squire. They won''t take you as seriously. I don''t think you''d even get to meet that bastard N''Kulu."


    "Yeah well, that won''t be an issue," Rui replied.


    "Why not?" Senior Ceeran asked, curious.


    "Because of this," Rui closed his eyes as he used an ability he truly had not used in a long time. He exercised his imagination as he created a powerful mind mask that would boost his projected power tremendously.


    The atmosphere grew taut as the sheer amount of pressure that Rui gave out wrung it to the limit. The sheer amount of peril he exuded far surpassed anything a Martial Squire of his caliber should have been capable of.


    This was the projected power amplification that the Mind Mask technique was capable of at its peak. Normally, the degree enhancement wasn''t this exaggerated, however, Rui was far more capable of doing so that any other person that had mastered the technique.


    However, despite all this, Senior Ceeran waspletely unfazed. "Impressive, you''re exuding the power of a grade nine Martial Squire, almost grade ten. Though you should not be above grade five. I had forgotten about this technique of yours, you had used it to bring us a great many victories for the Martial Union in the Serevian Dungeon wars. The favor for which we still owe you, by the way. But I see, that''s how you n to circumvent it,"


    Rui nodded. "If I''m not wrong, then there isn''t a single Martial Squire in the entire Martial Tribe. Which means that by their own standards, they''re going to need to call in at least one Martial Senior to address me and that''s a good enough start."


    "...I see," Senior Ceeran epted it with grace. "You genuinely seem to have it all covered, so I should probably stop getting in the way. Call me when you need me."


    "Thank you," Rui bowed, expressing the respect that someone like Senior Ceeran deserved.


    The journey was quite different from anything Rui had ever taken in the second life. In between breaks, he would stand on the deck, enjoying the ocean while he asionally chatted up with Kane.


    Most of the time he spent, however, went into solidifying everything about the case.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    "Alright, let''s go over the opening dialogue to the M''etkanun Tribe," Rui sighed.


    The M''etkanun Tribe was a tribe that lived out on the outskirts of the ind, forming a ring around it. They werergely beach dwellers that were particrly fond of water, wishing they were amphibian, if not aquatic.


    The Martial Artists of this tribe also nted entirely in the affinity of aquatic environments, and so did their Martial Paths and Martial Art. They were the first ones who originally attacked the original naval exploration team that originally discovered Vilun Ind. The next several diplomatic endeavors from the Martial Union''s side required extensive and severe peacekeeping efforts from the Martial Union until the rtionship finally returned to neutral and the tribe left the subsequent ships of the Martial Union alone.


    In order to enter the ind, Rui would most likely need to interact with this Martial Tribe and would need to earn some degree of non-conflict with him.


    "Sir, I think what we have is definitely the best," One of the assigned diplomats of his team informed him. "There is historical precedent, thus the Martial Tribe knows that to expect, having encountered this multiple times in the past from outsiders. They willingly y along because they are the only Martial Tribe that gets tipped in this manner and gets to benefit the most out of everybody,"


    "That definitely makes sense," Rui nodded.


    There was no need to fix what wasn''t broken.


    "Alright then, putting that side matter aside, let''s go over our initial contact with the G''ak''arkan Tribe then," Rui nodded as he sat back down at the table filled with files and documents as he scrolled through his ounter. "Make sure we''re missing nothing and that nothing is out of order. Even the slightest mistake can set us back indefinitely. If anybody here wants to be the reason that Senior Ceeran is dyed from returning home, then be my guest."N?vel(D)ra/ma.Org exclusive ? material.


    This motivated his team significantly as they went over all the information.


    However, while they paced through the documents at a slow pace, Rui had already made sure to memorize every piece of information that could even possibly be relevant.


    He closed his eyes as he opened his Mind Pce, scouring through the vast amount of information stored in it up to this point since he learned the technique all those years ago.


    The week to Vilun Ind was one of the most nerve-racking pre-mission time periods that Rui had evere across as he checked and rechecked everything.


    (''How is a mission isn''t even a threat to my life making me more nervous than all of the ones that did?'') Rui wondered, before sighing.


    Of course, he knew. The stake, the scale, and the responsibility that he bore were far greater than that of every other mission that he hade across ever before in his entire life. Still, he couldn''t help but feel quite excited about the adventures thaty ahead.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 643 Gift

    Rui tapped his feet as he waited in the cockpit.


    "The ind hase in view," Captain Crartas as he gestured, before turning around to the crew of sailors behind him. "Alright folks, let''s slow down ording to protocol,"


    p¦Á§ád¦Á`no¦Í?1`§ão§® Rui ignored the surge in the bustling of the sailors behind him. "Why slow down when the ind is that close?"


    "It was protocol that came into y after we realized that they cooperate better when we aren''t rushing at them at top speed. They''re a paranoid bunch," The captain replied.


    "They already know we''re here," Rui replied.


    Half of the coast of Vilun Ind was sharp cliffs with dangerous rock formations that protruded from below the surface. The other half was more gentle beaches that the M''etKanun Tribe resided near.


    The Martial Union had no intention of infringing on the territory of one of the Martial Tribes of Vilun Ind with a cruise ship, thus the only route was to scale up the cliffs that were naturally uninhabited.


    Of course, the intelligence made it clear that they would not be able to interact with the M''etKanun Tribe due to their frequenting the oceans around the ind.


    That was why Rui was waiting for the inevitable confrontation with the M''etKanun Tribe.


    He had worn the attire that the Martial Union had given to represent them, and he also had his mind mask ready and prepped to put on the second he sensed something or was alerted of something.


    Rui was actually quite grateful that he had other Martial Artists engaging in surveince because his sensory techniques weren''t of much use. Tempestuous Feel was utterly useless when it came to sensing phenomena underwater, while Seismic Mapping wasrgely useless due to how different sound waves propagated underwater vs how seismic radiation propagated onnd.


    Unless the M''etKanun Tribe was ipetent enough to generate tremendous amounts of noise underwater, he would not be able to sense theming up to him.


    This had really shown him how useless he was in aquatic environments.


    (''I can''t allow that to remain this way in the long run," He sighed.


    His Martial Path was adaptive evolution, and Rui had set high ambitions that he had no intention of reneging on. That meant that he would need to learn how to adapt to even aquatic-oriented Martial Artists even in their home element.


    "Sir, they''re here," Squire Kravis nodded when they reached close to the ind. "A few seconds."


    Time slowed down in their perspective as they exchanged a nod with each other while Captain Crartas was frozen mid-air. Rui walked out of the cockpit briskly as he headed toward the front of the ship.


    "They''re here, sir," Another Martial Squire seamlessly shot out of the ocean and onto the ship.


    "Good work," Rui nodded. "You have ''it'' prepared, right?"


    "Of course, sir."


    Rui gazed into the waters before the ocean. His sharp senses couldn''t pick up a thing aside from a few fish, except for his eyes that saw several human figures emerge to the surface of the water, skywalking before the ship.


    They wore garbs that seemed to be fashioned from the aquadynamic scales of aquatic animals and other adornments that all originated from the oceans. Rui spotted many corals and shells adorning nes on their neck and other parts of their body.N?vel(D)ra/ma.Org exclusive ? material.


    Their patterns and designs across their body were done with squid ink.


    Yet what drew his attention was their eyes.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    They were prepared and willing.


    Rui knew that they, like all other Martial Tribes, had no problem with picking a fight with the entire ship if necessary.


    They too had set their eyes on him as well. For he had long donned the most powerful mind mask that he could muster.


    Even the Martial Artists around him felt bewildered at his tremendously overpowering presence.


    The five Martial Squires of the M''etKanun Tribe could see that he was the most powerful Martial Artist on the boat. Of course, this was only because he had told Senior Ceeran to wrap his aura and vibe as deep as he could, Rui could only hope that his highly magnified aura would be able to hide and overpower his highly diminished aura as well.


    Thankfully, it seemed to work out.


    "Greetings, respected warriors of M''etKanun Tribe," Rui smiled at them as he spread his arms, speaking fluent Vilun dialect. "Wee in peace,"


    "What is your purpose foring to this ind, outsider?" The strongest Martial Squire standing at the lead asked him.


    His voice was deep and his tone was detached. He didn''t bear any hostile intentions, but he wasn''t going to be particrly friendly with them either.


    "Wee in peace," Rui repeated, before continuing. "Wee for friendship, and we have a gift to offer to the M''etKanun Tribe."


    None of them were particrly surprised.


    Rui waved his hand as one of his assistants gave him arge and ostentatious box. They swiftly epted the box from Rui''s hand unceremoniously, before opening it up.


    "Hm," The man nodded. "We ept the gift. Thank you. Continue"


    The five of them returned to the ocean as unceremoniously as they had arrived.


    For several seconds, nothing happened.


    "They''re gone," The Martial Squire nodded.


    "That was easy," Rui shrugged. "Hope the negotiations with the G''ak''arkan Tribe are that easy."


    "They won''t," Senior Ceeran''s voice interjected from behind. "Trust me."


    At this moment, Rui was not inclined to trust anything the man had to say regarding the case, but he was right. It was one thing to respect the general im the M''etKanun Tribe had over the waters surrounding the ind as outsiders. It was another thing entirely to manage topel the G''ak''arkan Tribe to cough up their most valued techniques that were a heritage for centuries, most likely.


    "Proceed towards the ind, and continue as per protocols," Rui instructed once he stepped into the cockpit.


    "Aye aye, sir," The man smiled, nodding. "Onwards we go, men,"


    Rui breathed deeply as the ship reached the ind.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 644 Contact

    Once the ship hit the ind, the protocols were to immediately set up an elementary preliminary security perimeter around the ship. The ship was the most important asset to the mission as that was the only easy way back home. Thus the Martial Union had stuffed her up with enough Martial Artists to protect her at all costs.


    The second step in the chain of protocols was to construct a temporary preliminary base on neutral territory.


    The base, of course, was no more than a set of tents that would be guarded by the security team. The necessary supplies and personnel would be escorted by the cliffside by the skywalking Martial Squires.


    "Just a day, correct?" Rui asked.


    "Yes sir," A man behind nodded. "As soon as that is done, we initiate the diplomatic negotiations."


    Rui nodded as he turned back to face the mountain at the center of the ind.


    The development proceeded quickly, as Rui and the diplomatic teampleted the final steps of preparation for the diplomatic endeavor.


    A dayter, it was time


    "Are you ready, Stemple, Zeyra?" Rui asked the two people behind him.


    The two of them were dressed in highly professional attire themselves. They carried briefcases that contained files and documents that were tranted into the Vilun Dialect.


    Rui turned as he breathed deeply.


    The time for the first swing had arrived.


    The game n had been set, and now it was time for Rui to make sure he executed it perfectly.


    "Let''s get going," Rui nodded as they headed out of the tent.


    Waiting outside was a motorized chariot that was specifically meant to travel through narrower paths of the mountain. It would cause a minimal amount of damage to the surrounding environment.


    Rui had made sure to not give the G''ak''arkan Tribe any reason to dislike their little convoy, and that included not harming the natural environment of the mountain that they cared so much about. It was narrow, flexible, and even far more silent than a standard motorized chariot that burned special esoteric substances that caused a lot of noise.


    Rui could already sense motion in the surroundings with his sharp senses and techniques. Several humans.


    (''Scouts of the G''ak''arkan Tribe,'') Rui noted silently.


    They maintained their distance from the small convoy as they made their way up a path in the small mountain.


    Rui just prayed that they wouldn''t use long-range techniques to try and snipe them from a great distance away. The fact that they hadn''t probably meant that the G''ak''arkan Tribe was not unwilling to meet with them.


    The Martial Union had taken the initiative to build good decent, albeit superficial, rtionships with all of the Martial Tribes, it had taken quite a long time of asional but regr contact with the Martial tribes. Over many years, contact andmunication slowly and painstakingly elevated from highly cautious and tense interactions to increasingly familiar interactions.


    Only then did the Martial Union begin the diplomatic missions to try and negotiate a way to try and obtain their highly-guarded techniques. Which led to the history of diplomatic failures to seed with the mission.


    Rui had no intention of joining that list.


    It quite some time for them to reach the top of the mountain. Rui could have skywalked to the very top very quickly, but he didn''t want to leave behind his assistants.


    The top of the mountain was scenic and picturesque, so much so that even Rui paused for a moment to admire it.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    When he turned back, he saw several humans walking toward him.Material ? of N?velDrama.Org.


    Behind them in the distance were visible signs of a settlement.


    Rui got off the chariot slowly, as he took slow and measured strides forward, as his assistants nervously followed.


    The air was tense, so much so that one could nearly cut it with a knife.


    Rui''s demeanor was calm and rxed, yet inwardly he was sweating bullets.


    First impressions mattered, and they mattered a lot.


    That was why he hadn''t retracted his mind mask since he put it on. He was basically a glowing beacon that irresistibly drew the attention of the warriors of the G''ak''arkan Tribe.


    All of them were Martial Squires, yet every Martial Artist knew that they were all weaker than him.


    Or, at least, so they thought. Rui was the only one who knew that wasn''t necessarily true.


    "What brings you here?" An older man stepped forward amongst all of the approaching warriors of the G''ak''arkan Tribe.


    (''He''s the strongest without a shadow of a doubt,'') Rui noted.


    The man exuded abination of power and experience, a dangerousbination that Rui didn''t want to be on the receiving end of.


    "Wee in peace," He smiled.


    His voice was clear and calm, and his speech as fluent as a gentle ebbing stream.


    "We bring gifts," He waved his hand as his assistants brought forward boxes simr to that which was given to the M''etKanun Tribe. "We wish to talk,"


    Rui bemoaned theck of formal synonyms in the Vilun Dialect inwardly.


    "Speak about what?" The man didn''t budge as he peered down at Rui.


    "An important matter," Rui replied, unyielding as he continued walking slowly towards the man.


    "Speak about what?" The man insisted as he enunciated each word. "


    p¦Á§ád¦Á`no¦Í?1`§ão§® "You are not qualified," Rui calmly stated out loud for everybody to hear. "We will negotiate with an equal, or a superior."


    The man''s expression soured.


    Yet Rui didn''t hesitate. He would not have dared to utter such words against any other dignitary of any other group or state, but with the G''ak''arkan Tribe, it was truly the right approach, and that was one of the truly remarkable things about the tribe. Their hierarchy depended on power. Unlike with other groups where Rui would rely on standard negotiation tactics, Rui needed to double down. He was not going to earn their respect without the acknowledgment that he was stronger.


    This, of course, was a bit of a gamble, but they had long decided that it was worth it.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 645 Hospitality

    It was more important to take a not entirely probable sess versus a rtively certain failure.


    "What did you say?" The man stepped forward.


    The air changed as his expression crumpled in rage. His aura became more aggressive and savage.


    "I respect you. I''m asking for you to respect my power," Rui replied. "Are you a warrior who cannot sense the truth?"


    Rui waved around. "Because the truth is clear to everyone except you. Any warrior can see this is as in as day."


    The man followed the gesture as he looked around.


    Their expressions were clear.


    ording to Rui''s senses, he probably was a grade-six Martial Artist at most. His own projected power was leagues superior. The man-made eye-contact with his fellow tribesmen as his expression turned sour.


    "Wee in peace," Rui replied. "We respect your strength,"


    He paused, before turning to all of them. "We respect all of your power. That is why they sent someone as powerful as me."


    N?vel(D)ra/ma.Org exclusive ? material.


    He gestured to himself. "We came to the G''ak''arkan Tribe because its proud and powerful warriors are the most powerful warriors of the entire ind."


    Had he been conversing with a trained diplomat, or even a normal Martial Artist of modern society, none of them would have fallen for ttery that shamelessly obvious.


    Unfortunately for them, both Rui and Carl came to the agreement that even the age-old ssics ofmunication and maniption tactics would be utterly useless against people extremely aware of such tactics.


    The same could not be said for the warriors of the G''ak''arkan Tribe with no culture of refinedmunication, no education in the field, and almost no experience in negotiating with genuine outsiders.


    Of course, they weren''t too stupid, but Rui''s words had clearly spoken to all of them and had tickled their pride in the process. Still, that didn''t make them chummy with the outsiders, however, their hostility had reduced.


    "We want to talk to the G''ak''arkan Tribe because it is the most powerful Martial Tribe on Vilun Ind," Rui nodded, before pausing. "But, just as we have given you the respect that all of you mighty warriors deserve, we deserve the respect of speaking with an equal, or superior."


    This time, the old man was a lot more pliable.


    (''Don''t fight the pride, harness it,) Rui smiled inwardly.


    Just as he opened his mouth to respond, things changes rapidly.


    A mightily powerful presence exerted itself on every sentient being. If not for the two Martial Squire bodyguards that gave them mental protection with their own auras, they would have very well fainted.


    "My lord," All of the Martial Squires bowed deeply in the presence of the newly arrived figure.


    The atmosphere that had previously warmed up a bit quickly crawled to a freezing halt as the gears ground and jammed.


    The unadulterated might of a Martial Senior washed onto his body. Rui smiled unchangingly as he bore the mental pressure that the man unscrupulously had thrown all over him.


    Rui felt more pressure put on him than he ever did before.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    (''Martial Senior,'')


    This was the first time that he had seen the mental force of the Martial Seniorid and bared out in the open.


    Neither Colonel Geringan nor Senior Ceeran had demonstrated their own prowess to him in their talks. Rui never bothered asking, but he was quite curious regardless.


    Suddenly, the pressure disappeared.


    "He''s right," The man lightly nodded, with a hint of respect. "He is stronger than all of you, and we will not leave him with someone not fit. No one in the second rank is fit to take him on."


    Thement hurt, and Rui could feel that the older Martial Squire did not appreciate it.


    Still, it did not matter.


    The Martial Senior had already overridden his authority and control with the discussion with the diplomatic team of outsiders that had approached their Martial Tribe.


    (''The first objective, achieved,'') Rui smiled inwardly.


    The first objective in the initiation of contact with the G''ak''arkan Tribe was to enter diplomatic talks with one of the three Martial Seniors of the G''ak''arkan Tribe. The Martial Squires were pawns or, at best, slightly more valuable pieces.


    Rui hadn''t expected it to this be easy to obtain what he wanted, the Martial Seniors were the only ones who had the influence and power to make a decision such as trading the Martial techniques of the Marital Union.


    (''I pressed the right buttons and it happened.'') Rui nodded.


    "But, you are guests," The man straightforwardly informed Rui. "Take some rest. We will talkter."


    "Thank you, we have traveled very far, thus we are tired,"


    Rui didn''t need the rest, but he needed to build a friendlier rtionship with the G''ak''arkan Tribe. Declining an invite for hospitality would be an especially bad choice considering it was not necessary.


    The Martial Squires reluctantly escorted all of them closer toward the G''ak''arkan Tribe settlement.


    Soon enough, they arrived at the vige of the G''ak''arkan Tribe.


    Rui kept his eyes wide open, not wanting to miss a single detail. Unfortunately, he wasn''t allowed to join the vige, he was given a small hut at the corner of the small mini-vige.


    (''The intelligence did not paint the most urate picture of their nomadic lifestyle, or theirck thereof.'') Rui noted.


    Of course, not every piece of intelligence was one of high confidence, the Martial Union probably had the highest rate of credibility, and not everything could be urate all the time.


    (''Thankfully, this doesn''t change anything of my n,'') Rui noted.


    "You two, get back down and back to the case, inform them that I have epted the hospitality of the G''ak''arkan Tribe.


    They needed to engage in all the detail-oriented technical stuff to be approved. While Rui yed along with his hosts that had gone out of their way to show him some hospitality. He was willing to do whatever he could as long as it primed the future discussion with the G''ak''arkan Tribe in his favor.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 646 Initiation

    Rui wasn''t a fool, and apparently, neither was the G''ak''arkan Tribe.


    (''Let me, a Martial Squire rest because I''m a guest?'') Rui chuckled.


    Currently, he was inside a hut in the vige of the G''ak''arkan Tribe, sitting on a bed, contemting what had happened.


    (''As I''d expected, the Martial Squires were aggressive and prideful, but that man¡­ He kept his cool and smoothly dyed my ns after he confirmed that I was too strong to be dealt with by them,'') Rui noted.


    Of course, he recognized that Martial Senior.


    Even without the Mind Pce technique, he would not possibly forget one of the three youngest Martial Seniors of the G''ak''arkan Tribe.This is from N?velDrama.Org.


    (''Hm, there may be some deviations from expectations, this early¡­'') Rui sighed.


    The intelligence on Senior F''ahru, the youngest Martial Senior out of the three Martial Seniors of the G''ak''arkan Tribe was limited. Unfortunately for Rui, there wasn''t too much data on the man in previous diplomatic negotiations with the G''ak''arkan Tribe.


    The problem was that the Martial Union jumped from directly dealing with the Martial Squires of the G''ak''arkan Tribe to dealing with the leader of the tribe, N''kulu. The issue was that while the previous Martial Squires that had been chosen to delegate dealt with Martial Squires, Rui was portraying himself as too strong to be dealt with any of the Martial Squires of the G''ak''arkan Tribe.


    However, that did not necessarily mean he would be dealing with the Martial leader of the tribe immediately. If Rui was understanding what the intervention of the third and the youngest Martial Senior meant, then that would be the person that the G''ak''arkan Tribe was sending to negotiate with Rui.


    This was a little sub-optimal for Rui because he knew the least about the man out of the three Martial Seniors.


    (''He seems a lot calmer and rational than the other Martial Artists of the Martial Tribe,'') Rui sighed. That was exactly what he didn''t want.


    He would rather deal with someone more simple as far as their mentality went, than someone who could retain theirposure.


    Of course, Rui didn''t think it was too big a deal. Part of it was because the man was a Martial Senior, and that meant there was a limit to how much Rui could impact his emotions. Rui had already long begun to feel this way about Martial Apprentices. There was very little that Martial Apprentices could do that would shake hisposure.


    "Only time will tell¡­"


    And time did intend to follow through.


    Soon enough, a Martial Apprentice informed Rui that the G''ak''arkan Tribe was willing to meet with him at any time. All Rui had to do was inform his assistants to hurry themselves up, and eventually, the diplomatic team reunited as they were led through the vige.


    Rui ignored the piercing stares from the many members of the G''ak''arkan Tribe. People of all ages came forward and out as they stared at the striding diplomatic team.


    Rui was only grateful that their gaze wasn''t filled with fear or contempt, but mostly curiosity. It was a good sign that the tribe did not have a strong bias against the ambassadors of the Martial Union.


    Soon, the team was led towards arger hut closer to the center of the vige.


    Rui didn''t even need to walk in to know who was in there.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    "Senior F''ahru," Rui smiled as he walked in. "I''m honored that you have chosen to hear us out."


    "Have a seat, ambassador," The man gestured to the stools on the opposite side of the table. "We will humor you, even though we know what this is all about."


    "What this is about¡­" Rui said as he took a seat. "¡­Is the mutual benefit of both G''ak''arkan Tribe and our Martial Union."


    "Your Martial Union has failed to convince us of this matter numerous times in the past. Enough is enough." The man scoffed.


    "Our Martial Union is invested in pursuing this matter and seeing it through to the end. I hope to seed, as long as you give me a chance," Rui smiled.


    "A chance, yes," The man replied smoothly. "But I assure you, getting our techniques will be nearly impossible."


    p¦Á§ád¦Á`no¦Í?1`§ão§® "We are aware," Rui nodded. "Your techniques are highly precious to you."


    "They are sacred," The man insisted. "They are the foundation of our power."


    "Entering an agreement with us will strengthen that foundation," Rui exined. "What was sacred before will be divine, if you agree to cooperate with us."


    "And you think your techniques are so much more special, do you? Do you think you''re so much ahead that your techniques will strengthen ours? Is that what you''re saying?"


    The man stood up and he leaned forward with a stern expression.


    To his credit, Rui remained fearless in the face of a Martial Senior ring at him even as his assistant diplomats were shivering below the table.


    Both Rui and F''ahru could sense it, but neither of them cared. They were irrelevant to the oue of the diplomatic meeting, and they both knew it.


    Rui paused for a moment as he considered his situation.


    This was the tricky part that every Martial Artist that had been chosen as an ambassador for the G''ak''arkan Tribe hade across, and one that none of them had managed to ovee.


    It was at this point that Rui hit an important crossroads.


    He had two conventional choices at hand.


    He could either refute that assertion and go down the route where he got into a pissing contest over which side had the better Martial Art techniques, challenge their pride and provoke theirpetitiveness and aggression and most likely get into some kind of physical conflict orpetition by the end of it.


    Or, he could concede that point in order to not do that, but end up devaluing the Martial techniques of the Martial Union and perhaps end up chalking up a deal where the martial Union is forced to trade thrice the number of techniques that the Martial Union was going to receive.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 647 Confrontation

    "How our techniquespare, I cannot say. I certainly have not mastered all of the long-range techniques of the Martial Union, and I have but a shallow understanding of the sacred techniques of the G''ak''arkan Tribe." Rui replied. "Unfortunately, there is not a single person in the world who can say which side has better techniques."


    "Then how can you say that your techniques will benefit us to the same level that ours will benefit you?" the man asked.


    "Each technique can be individually evaluated by both sides and be traded with other individually evaluated techniques from the other side," Rui let him know.


    "And who gets to evaluate the value of techniques in this n?"


    "We can form an evaluation board of Martial Artists on both sides that will togethere to a fair consensus orpromise," Rui exined.


    He knew that the Longranger Sect would celebrate in joy if that ever happened.


    Although learning a newnguage was difficult, the Martial Union would have no problem would getting a few volunteer Martial Artists to undergo tutge in learning thenguage. And although Rui did breeze through his tuition fast, it was not easy learning a newnguage, especially when they were Martial Artists.


    This was one of the preliminary routes that Rui had created when confronted with the very dilemma that caused numerous failures in the past.


    "We do not trust your Martial Artists to be fair with our techniques," The man retorted sternly.


    "There are other measures that can be implemented to ensure that that won''t happen," Rui exined.


    "Maybe, but that still requires us to ce a certain degree of trust in your so-called measures." The man shrugged lightly.


    Rui paused for a moment as he considered his opponent.


    "Our techniques when used along with the techniques of that of the G''ak''arkan Tribe can result in tremendous results. Results that would directly benefit your entire tribe."


    Rui leaned forward towards F''ahru. "You will dominate the entire ind, and all the other Martial Tribes on it,"


    This was not a small im, it was bold, but did not an unsubstantiated reasonable cause of doubt meant that it was something seriously concerning. The truth was that F''ahru could not afford to dismiss Rui''s ims regarding the techniques being able to strengthen the entire n to the point that it could overwhelm the entirety of the Martial Tribes on the entire ind.


    "But, it gets better," Rui exined. "You can offer greater to the protection of the most vulnerable part of the Tribe."


    "We protect them just fine as we are now," He snarled.


    Rui nodded. "Yet, is there such a things as too much protection for the ones that we care about most and fight for the most."Material ? of N?velDrama.Org.


    "That''s not enough, I''m afraid," F''arhu declined Rui''s advanced once more.


    Rui sighed as he sat back in his chair.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    Of course, Rui could continue in that regard, but he paused for a moment.


    (''If he''s ying this hard to me at the face of every proposal, then this is more than just a simple disagreement.


    He thought back to the three interests that he headed done deep into his talks with Carl. He needed to harness their desire for domination of the other Martial Tribes of Vilun Ind. Of course, he did not expect that it would fail to be effective at all.


    Rui got the faint feeling that he was probably missing something. These kinds of situations usually meant that his gut was onto something.


    "Well, with the techniques we give you, then you could easily fight multiple wars at once with your newfound power," Rui offered. "You could pick a fight with all of them and stille out on top."


    The man stared at Rui hard.


    Rui smiled magnanimously.


    He had already revealed to the man two of his three opening arguments to win over the three abstract interests of the G''ak''arkan Tribe. Unfortunately, they did not seem to be as shocking as Rui has hoped it would.


    "That¡­ is still not good enough reason for us to part with the techniques that we hold sacred, ambassador," The man gritted his teeth as he stared at Rui. "Unless you have something more?"


    "I don''t understand¡­" Rui leaned in forward as he dropped his diplomatic front for a moment. "You don''t want our techniques even though it is going to help you dominate the various Martial Tribes on Vilun Ind. It is a technique that will allow the G''ak''arkan Tribe  to eternally engage in war with how many ever martial Tribes you wish. Furthermore, despite the solution of allowing Martial Artists working together to ensure that each technique, regardless of which side that they were on, would allow you to foster greater exchange with the techniques of both sides. Yet you seem very determined to decline my offers."


    The man snorted, waving his hands.


    "I don''t know¡­ because it seems to me like you''re rejecting our offers due to the fear of something else," Rui wondered, asking out loud


    "What did you just say to me?" The man stood up as he towered Rui.


    Rui''s two diplomatic assistants shivered at that.


    Yet Rui was as cool as a cucumber. He was highly certain that the Martial Senior would not do anything to him for any reason.


    There were far too many friendlies in the surrounding area, for whom Rui had gotten all of them to serve as a passive shield.


    Rui was too strong for a Martial Squire of his projected caliber, for F''ahru would require to exert himself far too much to kill Rui that would also cause a lot of casualties in the vige. A senior-level attack is no joke.


    This was, of course, a high-level attack that be far too overpowering, especially when he was a long-range martial Artist, and that meant that he could not turn act on his any towardly desire that he may have momentarily been ovee by the fact that Rui had chosen his tactics well.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 648 Outcome

    Of course, Rui knew what he was doing.


    His dedication and training had paid off.


    "I''m afraid that it truly does seem to me that maybe you don''t think that the Martial Artists of your Martial Tribe could master our difficult techniques?" Rui shrugged.


    "That is not true!" The Martial Senior insisted. As he gritted his teeth, ring down at Rui.


    "If you say so," Rui sighed. "Because it would be a true insult to the mighty warriors of the G''ak''arkan Tribe if they were implied that they couldn''t handle something as simple as the training required our techniques."


    At this point, Rui was not even talking to him at all.


    He was talking to every Martial Squire that was listening to the conversation.


    This was, once again, triggering their pride. The more he riled them into potentially believing that the Martial Tribe did not think they were capable of doing so. After all, why else would they refuse the offer?


    Rui graciously built up a good image of the warriors of the G''ak''arkan Tribe with swifter smooth talking.


    "Unfortunately, this doesn''t seem to be going anywhere," Rui shook his head, sighing.This is from N?velDrama.Org.


    He had already coaxed them with numerous offers and incentives, but Senior F''ahru rejected him every time, straightforwardly.


    "I would like to hold these conversationster on once more." Rui smiled. "If you would be so gracious."


    "If it''s nothing new, don''t bother," He huffed.


    Rui and his assistants quickly got out of there, descending the hill.


    "I''m sorry sir, but it seems the initial negotiations are a failure," They sighed.


    "Yeah, but... what''s more important is why it happened," Rui sighed. "Why exactly did they reject the so many favorable terms that I brought up."


    "Ah, regarding that, sir. You stepped a bit out of bounds with some of those officers. You were not authorized to offer several things that you did make the offer to them.


    "I know," Rui nodded. "It made the deal that much harder to resist, yet he did it regardless. What I am more interested in is what is it that keeps him from agreeing to our deal. Are the techniques they have truly something they genuinely consider to be sacred?" Rui wondered.


    None of them had an answer to that question.


    "I get the feeling that he didn''t have enough trust in us to abide by our words," Rui frowned.


    Rui''s eyes narrowed.


    "That''s probably one of the reasons, at least," Rui sighed. "Still, if we want to obtain sess on this, then we need to do better than this next time."


    "Next time, sir?" One of them asked. "What''s the point of trying again?"


    "Why do you say that?" Rui frowned.


    "Sir you tried the primary opening offers and arguments and even went into the deep end of the stuff that I don''t even entirely understand,"


    "We can still seed with this mission, alright?" Rui nodded. "Have faith in us,"


    The two of them looked at him dubiously.


    "What?" Rui returned with a disapproving look.


    "How can we possibly seed after this failure?"<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    "By figuring out a new way to make them want to voluntarily trade their techniques," Rui replied.


    In fact, he had alreadye up with a few usibilities.


    "We need to work harder in earning the support of every stakeholder in that goddamn Martial Tribe," Rui narrowed his eyes.


    "Sir, I''d suggest that go back ho-"


    "No, not yet," Rui shook his head. "We''re gonna get those techniques together,"


    BEEP BEEP


    It was a call with Senior Ceeran.


    "Yes sir?" Rui sighed.


    "I got your message, it didn''t go that well, did it?"


    "Not at all, sir."


    "Well, I don''t me you, my first time was not that good either."


    Rui''s eye twitched as he smiled sardonically.


    Rui had merely failed topel them, whereas Senior Ceeran hade near provoking a war.


    "Never mind, there''s nothing that can be done. For now, we can only-" "I''m afraid I can do that right now, sir. I believe I can seed with just some time." Rui replied.


    "How do you n on doing that?"


    "Long story sir, for now, I just n on refining and altering my approach.


    "I don''t know how much longer Martialmissioner Derun will tolerate this mission if it isn''t yielding meaningful results, Rui."


    "I understand,"


    "Also, if this bes something of an extended operation, then I will have to return back to the Martial Union." Senior Ceeran informed him. "I cannot afford to spend so much time away from the Martial Union not aplishing much. However, if and when you ever need me, I''ll be sure to return to the mission, just like that?"


    They spoke for some more time before their conversation finally ended.


    Once he left, there was a lot less peace of mind with what was happening. The fact of the matter is that the reason he felt confident in poking people if he needed to was that he knew that Senior Ceeran has his back, professionally and personally.


    "Looks like I''ll have to be looking to be more cautious," Rui nodded.


    Of course, he wasn''t averse to this.


    "What exactly are you nning to do, sir?" One of his assistants frowned.


    "I need to find a way to lower their trust, and also strengthen their incentives to agree to our deal. We will get our hands on those techniques no matter what happens.


    One thing Rui needed to do was gain more information on the timing.


    "Information will allow me to make more urate decisions," Rui straightforwardly informed them. "Oh man, I am so d that Kane is here, he is really useful for things like that."


    Infiltration was a highly useful niche. And Kane was extremely good at it. Rui would need to only worry about him getting caught, which may happen in the vicinity of Martial Seniors. However, as long as Kane avoided some really dangerous spots, Rui was still quite confident that he could get him what he wanted


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 649 Obstacles

    "You''re telling me those idiots refused us again?" Senior Ceeran frowned. "Why can''t they be objective and rational about this? No matter how you spin it, it''s a great deal! They''re lucky we in the Martial Union have decided not to pursue a forceful approach!"


    He turned towards Rui. "So, what are you nning on doing?"


    Rui considered the question for a brief period, before sighing. "The most important matter to understand is the core reason, or reasons, that they do not want to engage in a trade. If we can understand that, we cane up with a better n."


    His fingers drummed on the table as he was deep in thought. "Still, there are measures we can undertake regardless."


    "And what might that be?" Senior Ceeran asked inquisitively.


    "The G''ak''arkan Tribe does not have a good idea of what our techniques are capable of," Rui stated. "At the very least, they do not have as much of an idea of what it is we are capable of as we do of their capabilities."


    "That is true, sir," Stemple, one of his assistant diplomats, said before continuing. "However, this is usually not a problem as we readily demonstrate the basics of what we are offering once the intent to cooperate has been established. The issue here is were unable to even reach the stage where we can arrange for a demonstration of our techniques to them,"


    "That is definitely one of the issues here," Rui nodded. "The impression I got is that the G''ak''arkan Tribe definitely thinks their techniques and Martial Artists are superior, regardless of how true it is or isn''t. I suspect their ignorance of our capabilities is definitely getting in the way of productive exchange."


    "Then all we have to do is show them what we are capable of!" Senior Ceeran dered.


    "Yes, but we cannot be too direct and overt about it. That will be interpreted as a challenge to their capabilities. At the very least, we cannot walk up to them and rub our prowess in their face. That would definitely be seen as an affront to their pride and a challenge, based on what happened in previous negotiation talks."


    Rui gave Senior Ceeran a measured look, who, to his credit, noticed and even understood what Rui was trying to convey.


    They both knew that in his previous negotiations with the G''ak''arkan Tribe, Senior Ceeran had rashly used a long-range technique in the middle of the negotiations with the G''ak''arkan Tribe. It had instantly caused hostilities to break out and the G''ak''arkan Tribe came close to war with the diplomatic convoy that had been dispatched to the G''ak''arkan Tribe.


    Rui found it truly astonishing that even after going through some diplomatic briefings under the experienced and wise Carl, he still thought using a powerful Senior level technique in the middle of an official meeting was not a bad idea.


    "Well, if you''re not going to go up to them and shove the technique in their faces, then how are you going to solve this problem?" Senior Ceeran.


    "There are other ways to demonstrate our long-range capabilities implicitly," Rui informed him.


    He got up abruptly before Senior Ceeran could respond.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    "I need to speak to Martialmissioner Derun, I''m afraid. The ns I have in mind cannot be implemented without her help," Rui informed them.


    He walked away to his own quarters briskly as he considered the matters at hand.


    (''It''s not just a matter of demonstrating our techniques blindly. We need to make them feel the need for our techniques otherwise they will never truly ept our deal," Rui had carefully paid attention to the demeanor of Senior F''ahru.


    The man was either ignorant about the Martial Union''s techniques or also deluded that theirs were better, or both. Furthermore, the G''ak''arkan Tribe did not have a pressing need for what the Martial Union had to offer, thus there wasn''t a pressing incentive.


    (''They neither know, are too proud to express care, nor need to care,'') Rui summarized three of the intangible barriers that had gotten in the way of a sessful negotiation.


    These problems had not been highlighted during his briefing program under Carl, and Rui could understand why.


    (''The problems I had faced are problems that had never been faced before, probably because no one had even reached the stage I have,'')


    This wasn''t a statementing from arrogance. It was a rational observation and inference. The first set of diplomats sent were normal humans who earned no respect from the G''ak''arkan Tribe which only respected Martial prowess. The second set of diplomats sent were Martial Artists who botched the negotiations by triggering hostilities due to crude negotiation approaches.


    Rui had faced neither problem. He was powerful enough, or at least appeared to be thanks to the Mind Mask technique, to earn the audience of one of the most powerful Martial Artists and leaders of the G''ak''arkan Tribe. Furthermore, he had directed the negotiations in an ultimately safe manner. While he did provoke Senior F''ahru, he had shielded himself by cleverly appealing to the pride of the G''ak''arkan Tribe, while his predecessors had wounded their pride foolishly.Material ? of N?velDrama.Org.


    Rui would need toe up with a n to bypass all of those barriers and obstacles to eventually get them to agree to engage in a trade of techniques with the Martial Union.


    (''One thing is for sure, negotiations alone aren''t going to pierce the barriers of ignorance, pride, and aggressivepetitiveness of the G''ak''arkan Tribe.'') He sighed.


    Just talking to them was not sufficient. Senior F''ahru had sternly ended every attempt at alluring the G''ak''arkan Tribe to the trade. He even crossed the line and promised things he wasn''t necessarily allowed to as an experiment, yet even those were shut down.


    Which meant he needed to implement measures outside of the diplomatic negotiations to get the G''ak''arkan Tribe to acquiesce.


    (''This will be fun,'') Rui smirked as several ideas popped into his head regarding how to handle and ovee these issues.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 650 Plan

    "Commissioner Derun," Rui smiled as her image popped upon hisms disy.


    He had been issued a premiumms device that allowed him tomunicate with the Martial Union reliably despite being a great distance away for the duration of the mission, for mission-rted purposes only.


    "Squire Quarrier, good of you to contact me, I just finished the report that your diplomatic team filed. Good job, your execution as a diplomat was better than had been anticipated." She smiled ruefully. "It''s a shame that the diplomatic missions failed, engage with them a bit more, and increasing your offers by a certain margin is the only option left. And if that fails¡­ then I''m afraid we will have to question whether this mission is even worth pursuing in the first ce."


    Rui raised an eyebrow at those words. "Is the Martial Union willing to give up on obtaining those techniques?"


    She considered his question. "That''s outside of purview, officially at least. However, the Martial Union is cognizant enough to distinguish which avenues of approach are worth investing in, and which aren''t. There have been numerous attempts at negotiating for the techniques of the G''ak''arkan Tribe. Granted, those missions failed for foreseeable reasons that could be rectified on our end, and you managed to avoid those reasons for the most part, it seems. Yet you failed to achieve any sess at all beyond that. It is clear that talking to them over and over again is not going to help."


    Rui smiled. "Those were my thoughts exactly. However, I am quite convinced that any further negotiation is meaningless toward actually convincing them, actually. I would rather not spend any time on it. I certainly wouldn''t rely on it."


    She raised an eyebrow at that statement. "It seems you do not intend to go for another negotiation session."


    "Not any serious one, anyway," Rui nodded. "As I said, it''s futile."


    "Then what are your intentions?" She asked, curious.


    Rui paused for a few seconds before replying. "The biggest problem is their ignorance of what it is we are actually offering because demonstrations in these kinds of negotiations onlye after a mutual interest to cooperate. However, we cannot be overt and direct in demonstrating the power of our techniques the way Senior Ceeran did, otherwise we will trigger their pride in their own techniques and their aggressivepetitiveness. Then it won''t matter how valuable our techniques are, they will refuse to cooperate. I have a better idea to implicitly and passively demonstrate theplete and whole value of our techniques."


    "And what would that be, Squire Quarrier?"


    "It''s simple. We inhabit a part of the ind, self-sustain, and flourish purely on the merits of our techniques," Rui simply exined.


    "Excuse me?" She frowned.N?vel(D)ra/ma.Org exclusive ? material.


    "What I''m saying is¡­ we show them exactly what we are offering through and through by putting ourselves in their situation and environment, and demonstrating that the techniques we are offering perform far better in the parameters and avenues that they are weak at, allowing us to solve mutual issues that gue us both," Rui exined.


    Her eyebrows widened, as she considered his suggestion.


    It was beginning to make sense, in theory at least.


    After all, the ''value'' of a technique as far as utility went was nuanced and multiyered. Pure numbers on the parameters of a technique alone could not convey the practical long-term benefits and utility of a technique.


    In reality, it was impossible to predict the entirety of all direct and indirect benefits and impacts a new widely adopted technique might have without actually doing so and observing the results.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    Thus, such intangibles were generally not urately conveyed, not as explicitly and objectively as numbers of the performance parameters of a technique were.


    But what Rui was offering was a way to convey both the explicit and the implicit value of the techniques that the Martial Union was offering.


    "I see¡­" She mumbled as her eyes widened as she shrewdly understood exactly what Rui was trying to achieve. "That''s actually a great n, better than any non-forceful measure that we havee up with."


    She turned to Rui with an amazed expression. "You came up with this all by yourself?"


    Rui nodded.


    "Did you have this in mind before the diplomatic negotiation with the G''ak''arkan Tribe?" She couldn''t help but wonder aloud.


    "I came up with it fifteen minutes ago as I considered the various measures that we could take to make them more pliable to our demands."


    "Quite remarkable," She nodded. "Thus far, you havepleted your role as a diplomat of the Martial Union quite professionally. As professional as our actual professionals, dare I say."


    "Thank you. Still, I haven''t gotten to why I actually called you," Rui told her. "If this was something that could easily be achieved with our own prowess, then I would have straightforwardly gone and implemented it. After all, I possess the authority to do so since it is my mission. However, this n requires measures that I do not possess the authority and means to execute."


    "And you need my authority to help you fulfill your n?" She smiled.


    "That''s right," Rui replied to her.


    "You are aware that the moment I exert my authority to cede to your demands as a Martial Artist fulfilling your mission, then I be more liable and responsible for the oue of the mission than I already am?" She asked him with a raised eyebrow.


    "I am aware of that,missioner Derun," Rui nodded. "I can only request you to aid me on this mission."


    She considered the matter for several missions before looking back at him. "Alright, Squire Quarrier, I am willing to give you some leeway. What is it that you need exactly?"


    Rui smiled.


    The fact that she acquiesced to his request meant that his n had likely earned her confidence and that Rui himself had earned a bit of her trust, as far as his capability went. That was optimistic to Rui as far probability of sess went. A rank-three Martialmissioner was anything but ipetent.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 651 Drastic

    This is from N?velDrama.Org.


    "What I need¡­" Rui exined. "Is to have a team of Martial Squires of the Longranger Sect aid me in building a settlement on neutral territory on the ind for the skilledborers employed on the cruise ship, the diplomatic team, the security team, and the intelligence team. We seek to be self-sufficient, so we would also require the necessary skilled expertise and the necessary supplies and goods needed to build a self-sustaining settlement on the ind."


    The current personnel as well as the goods and supplies that had been assigned to the mission were very insufficient in aplishing what Rui was trying to aplish. He needed more than what he already had.


    "Hm, alright. As for the specifics¡­"


    "Those can be haggled over, but the main point is that we need to demonstrate the totality of all the value that our techniques can provide," Rui mentioned. "The most important part of my request is the Martial Squires of the Longranger Sect. Specifically, their Martial Paths need to line up with what we are offering."


    "I see, so you want to get the Martial Squires of the Longranger Sect to have Martial Paths centered around the kinds of techniques that the Martial Union is nning to offer to the G''ak''arkan Tribe?" She asked.


    Rui nodded. "The techniques we are offering are those that shore up the shorings of the G''ak''arkan Tribe. Thus having Martial Squires that are experts in those fields that the G''ak''arkan Tribe iscking in really allows us to showcase exactly what it is we are offering. The Martial Squires need to perfectly fit our needs."


    "That is understandable, I''m sure Senior Ceeran can arrange for that." She replied. "Have him work out the choices of what Martial Squires he thinks are most fit, and send that list to me, and I will see what I can do with assigning them to this mission."


    "Thank you,missioner Derun," Rui smiled.


    "Not at all. Is there anything else?" She asked.


    "Well, yes. I''m a little hesitant, but I think this next n has enough merit to warrant mentioning," Rui said. "I wanted to get your opinion on this idea that I had."


    She nodded, waiting for him to finish it.


    "I was considering the idea of introducing a powerful species of fauna to the Vilun Ind that would disrupt the ind and would make life harder for the G''ak''arkan Tribe," Rui told her.


    The idea sounded so absurd and out of pocket that Martialmissioner Derun was stumped for a second. It was truly out of her expectations that Rui would make a request like this.


    "What?" She frowned. "What merit is there in such a pointless n? You''ll simply cause harm to the tribe that we are already struggling to befriend."


    "Yes, but the species of fauna that I''m considering must be one that can easily be dealt with by the kind of long-range techniques that the G''ak''arkan Tribe iscking in, the kind that we are offering to them because they arecking in. If we do that¡­"<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    "Then the value of our techniques would be much greater," She quickly understood. "You want to introduce a brand-new problem and crisis that would increase the value of what we are offering and introduce an additional need for the G''ak''arkan Tribe to ept our proposal to trade techniques."


    One of the problems that Rui had highlighted earlier was that the G''ak''arkan Tribe had no driving motivation to ept the trading offer that the Martial Union had made for them. They were satisfied with their Martial prowess and had great pride in their own techniques. There simply was nothing strong enough to put down that pride and take interest in the techniques of the outsiders.


    Rui had recognized this and realized that there was only one viable solution.


    If there was no driving motivation for the G''ak''arkan Tribe to ept the trading offers of the Martial Union, then Rui realized that he need only introduce a reason for the G''ak''arkan Tribe to develop a driving motivation into epting the offers of the Martial Union.


    "You''re plotting against them, if the G''ak''arkan Tribe discovers or suspects your ploy, then you will have forever destroyed the rtionship between the tribe and the Martial Union, do you understand?" She warned him.


    "I am aware of that," Rui nodded calmly. "Of course, it cannot be done in haste. And it will require some preparation and a lot of deception. But I am confident that as long as we n thoroughly, and execute the n thoroughly, we can be reasonably confident that the G''ak''arkan Tribe will eventually acquiesce to our trade offers."


    She considered his words quietly for several seconds. "I will get back to you on this, I am afraid I cannot make a decision regarding this request of yours on the spot,"


    Rui understood why, of course. If the n failed, then the Martial Union could forget about getting all of its techniques through diplomatic negotiations. The G''ak''arkan Tribe would instantly be sworn enemies of the Martial Union, and hostilities would break out immediately.


    In the worst-case scenario, they might break out into a war with the diplomatic convoy of the Martial Union then and there, leading to the entire convoy being ravaged.


    Rui was not optimistic about Senior Ceeran''s chances of taking on three Martial Seniors at once. Although Martial Seniors of the G''ak''arkan Tribe were much weaker than that of the Kandrian Empire, on average, three-on-one was still very one-sided as far as the odds went.


    Of course, he was quite certain that Senior Ceeran was probably very strong even for a Martial Senior of the Martial Union.


    Even if he could win, the destruction of their battle would be immense and would likely end up hurting the entire convoy. Furthermore, the G''ak''arkan Tribe outnumbered the diplomatic convoy as far as Martial Artists of lower Realms went, too.


    The consequences of being discovered would be devastating, Rui wasn''t sure he would even survive in such circumstances.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 652 Pespective

    Life in the G''ak''arkan Tribe was quite simple.


    One ate, slept, and fought.


    This was their daily cycle and everything else in their lives revolved around it. Each day they would prepare the entire day to engage in some physical conflict with another Martial Tribe that also upied Vilun Ind, or they themselves would find themselves to be the target of some attack or assault of another Martial Tribe.


    The G''ak''arkan Tribe were mountain folk, although the Vilun mountain was not toorge, it was the sole mountain on the ind and the G''ak''arkan Tribe upied it. The mountain gave them a natural advantage as they could leverage their long-range specialty the best with the natural inclination that the terrain gave them.


    The conflicts between the Martial Tribes of the ind were straightforward and head-on. They did not ever seem to engage in asymmetric warfare and covert operations that could turn the tables in their favor, for some reason. The oues of conflicts werergely contingent on the quantity and quality of warriors involved. An overwhelming proportion of the conflicts that urred on the ind were limited to human-level and Apprentice-level spats.


    A smaller proportion of conflicts involved the Martial Squires that fought independently, for their destructive power was too strong to be fighting between humans. None of the Martial Tribes of Vilun Ind wanted their own Martial Squires identally massacring their own people inadvertently in the middle of fighting against Martial Squires. This was a universally undesirable oue, thus across time, an unwritten agreement had naturally formed between all of the Martial tribes of the ind.


    Conflicts need to be segregated by Realm.


    Every day, human-level shes would spark between different Martial Tribes, and Martial Apprentices would frequently also get into fights with the Martial Apprentices of other tribes.


    The deployment of Martial Squires was much more special and was reserved for targeted moments. These conflicts were much more destructive and every Martial tribe needed to be careful with where and when these Martial Artists fought.


    However, the most destructive fights in Vilun Ind were between the leaders of each of the Martial Tribes; the Martial Seniors.


    These exalted beings were so far above everybody else, that the rest may as well have been no different from insects. These warriors did not pick fights frivolously, even if there was an opportunity for a Martial Senior to wipe out hapless Martial Apprentices or Martial Squires of enemy tribes, they would not bother lifting a hand themselves to destroy the lessers. It was beneath them, no different from an adult bullying little children.


    The few times they did fight against Martial Seniors, the entire ind would sit tight and grit its teeth.


    Such was the power of the most powerful warriors of the ind, even separating one''s self from the battlefield of these mighty warriors to the other side of the ind did not guarantee safety. Their power was too oppressive.


    The few times that they did fight would leave scars on the ind that sometimes never faded away!


    It was the pinnacle of physical conflictN?vel(D)ra/ma.Org exclusive ? material.


    Such was the life of the Martial tribes of Vilun Ind.


    A static monotony of head-on and straightforward physical conflict that all participating tribes had grown not only intimately familiar with but alsofortable with. It was all they had known, and all they would know; eternal conflict on this chunk ofnd that was surrounded by infinite seas.


    Or so they thought.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    The arrival of aliens to the ind was one of the most shocking events to have ever happened on the ind.


    They arrived on a strange,rge vessel that lumbered aboard water towards the ind. Not a single Martial tribe on the ind had missed the arrival of the original ship of the Kandrian Empire and the Martial Union that first discovered Vilun Ind. Their innate fears hadrgely been dispelled when they saw that even the Martial Apprentices and Martial Squires of their tribes were able to obtain a dominant victory against the outsiders who had boarded onto the ind and had begun exploring and even extracting resources aggressively the moment they arrived.


    A single attack sent the hapless aliens packing where they came from, but not before a lot of them, died because they weren''t strong enough.


    They weren''t much of a threat, it seemed.


    Yet despite getting beaten ck and blue and running away entirely in a shameful disy of cowardice, the aliens returned. This time, they smiled, offered gifts that the Martial tribes appreciated, and even attempted to hold dialogue, as difficult as that was initially. They went all out in pleasing the Martial tribes and making friends with them despite their fellow aliens being killed by their people.


    In the eyes of the Martial tribe, this was a sign of weakness and cowardice.


    What kind of tribe befriended the murderers of their own tribesmen?


    It became clear to the tribe folks that the alien tribes were probably weak and cowardly, and not worth paying much attention to. They strongly rejected the strange contraptions and objects that they brought along, disdaining them as a pathetic means to cover up for their weakness.


    They scoffed when the aliens sent mere ordinary humans as representatives of their entire tribe, or their ''union'' as they insisted on calling it. Only the strongest of the tribe could represent the entire tribe.


    Yet the aliens sent a bunch of ordinary humans to represent their entire tribe?


    What a joke.


    Furthermore, these humans were not even Martial Artists, but they had nobat ability whatsoever. Even the children of the Martial tribes were strong enough to beat them up.


    What the Martial tribes found to be most humorous was that despite being so weak and cowardly, the alien tribe had the gall to offer a trade to obtain their techniques.


    The sacred techniques that they had inherited from their powerful and glorious ancestors?


    The diplomats wereughed away.


    Yet theirughter froze when the aliens seemed to regain basicmon sense and sent a Martial Artist to represent them for the first time.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 653 Changes

    These weak aliens suddenly seemed to bring about a Martial Artist out of nowhere. Furthermore, A Martial Squire, not a Martial Apprentice.


    That caught the attention of the Martial tribes of Vilun Ind.


    Power was all that mattered to them, which meant that those that had power definitely were much bigger in their eyes.


    The Martial Squire offered to trade them the techniques of his ''union'' for the techniques of the G''ak''arkan Tribe.


    Yet that was not what had angered the G''ak''arkan Tribe.


    "Our techniques are much superior to your primitive techniques, so you have every reason to ept our offer." The alien Martial Artist told them with a contemptuous expression.


    The Martial Squires of the G''ak''arkan Tribe felt boundless rage boiling from deep within their being as they exerted superhuman willpower to control themselves from attacking and tearing the fool apart!


    If not for the fact that they were too close to the ordinary tribe-folk of their vige that would die from just the minutest fraction of their power, they would have killed him on the spot.


    What followed was even more bewildering to them.Material ? of N?velDrama.Org.


    The ordinary humans that had apanied the Martial Squire chastised the Martial Squire in their native tongue!


    They dared to adopt a strong tone with the Martial Squire despite being ordinary humans.


    This was unheard of to the G''ak''arkan Tribe.


    What dumbfounded them, even more, was that the Martial Squire heeded their words and apologized for the insult. Later that day, they sent even more gifts as a token of apology.


    Truly iprehensible behavior.


    Yet what was even more shocking was that muchter after several more attempts, they returned with a Martial Senior!


    Now, this was a jolting event even to the highest leaders of the Martial tribes of Vilun ind. The birth of a new Martial Senior was always a defining and significant event on Vilun ind and one that could influence the power dynamics of the many Martial Tribes.


    Every Martial tribe paid close attention as the Martial Senior specifically headed towards the G''ak''arkan Tribe.


    The offer was the same as before; their techniques for the techniques of the G''ak''arkan Tribe.


    This time, there was more gravitas to the offer.


    Yet the problem was the phrasing. The previous Martial Squire was bad enough, but this one was far worse.


    "Your primitive techniques are much weaker than ours, the only reason we want them is that you have certain novelties that we are interested in. Don''t be stupid and ept our offer." Senior Ceeran had conveyed to them, despite his pleasant smile.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    Hostilities had nearly broken out then and there, frankly, it was a miracle that they hadn''t. If not for the fact that N''Kulu, the leader of the G''ak''arkan Tribe, had more maturity in him than his nsmen, it may very well have turned into a war then and there.


    At this point, the G''ak''arkan Tribe was very confused.


    Itsck of understanding of the aliens which stemmed from having dismissed them for many years after their initial underwhelming appearance was starting to get in the way of how they ought to deal with them.


    At the very least, they never showed any overt hostility to the Martial tribes of the ind. They maintained a peaceful rtionship and continuously made offers to trade Martial techniques.


    s, the G''ak''arkan Tribe, at least, was not interested in sharing their techniques to obtain the techniques of people whose Martial Artists were disrespected by normal humans. How could such Martial Artists have worthy techniques?


    They may have reached higher Realms, but their conduct with lessers gave the Martial Artists of the G''ak''arkan Tribe very little confidence that they had any merit in them.


    Then came thetest Martial Artist in the long line of ambassadors.


    A Martial Squire with pitch-ck hair and eyes. He zed with more power in a Martial Squire than any Martial Artist on the ind had ever seen. It was a wonder to them how he was still in the Squire Realm.


    For the first time, the G''ak''arkan Tribe had a serious discussion with the ambassador of the ''union'' that managed to actually end on a peaceful note. The G''ak''arkan Tribe skeptically listened to his tale of offering techniques that covered some of the shorings of the G''ak''arkan Tribe in exchange for some techniques that covered their shorings.


    There was only one problem.


    What shorings?


    The G''ak''arkan Tribe did not see any of the so-called shorings that the ambassador had suggested that their techniques had; their range and power, among other things.


    This made no sense to the G''ak''arkan Tribe. Their long-range techniques had more range and more power at range than any other long-range techniques on the entire ind!


    This was naturally true since they were the only Martial tribe that developed an affinity for long-range techniques that other Martial tribes did not, due to their environment.


    Long-range techniques were particrly useful at elevated heights and distances.


    Regardless, the G''ak''arkan Tribe simply failed to make heads or tails of the mentality and thoughts of the rtively friendly but strange aliens that continuously had been pestering the G''ak''arkan Tribe to obtain their techniques for quite some time now.


    At the very least, their talks had made more progress than in the past, but it had be very clear that both sides were nowhere near each other on the same page. This was the fundamental barricade between a fruitful negotiation session.


    Soon after, the alien outsiders seemed to receive reinforcements that brought over more people to the ind. This was an rming development. If not for the fact that the outsiders had spent many years slowly building up goodwill with the Martial tribes of Vilun Ind, they would have long kicked them all to the curb as they did many years ago the first time they stumbled upon the ind.


    The vignce of the G''ak''arkan Tribe grew stronger as they closely observed what the outsiders were up to on the ind, whatever it was, it was not insignificant.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 654 Requirements

    "This is quite the novel idea," Zeyra, an assistant diplomat of his, remarked after Rui finished exining his initial idea.


    "I agree," Stemple, the other assistant diplomat, nodded. "Did you reallye up with this sir?"Material ? of N?velDrama.Org.


    "I did," Rui nodded. "I proposed it to Martialmissioner, and she approved after giving it some thought. There are many merits to the n I have proposed, after all. The best way to demonstrate the value of our techniques to the G''ak''arkan Tribe is by putting ourselves in their position and showing them the value that our techniques bring us when we are in their position. I have already identified some areas in which we can make very demonstrable impacts that will no doubt make all of their Martial Artists quite jealous. I''ll have to rely on the intelligence team to aid me in uncovering more ways in which we can demonstrate the power of our techniques. As long as we can sufficiently sway over enough stakeholders of the G''ak''arkan Tribe we can move past the biggest hurdle hampering our discussion."


    They were both speechless. For a moment, Rui sounded like an actual diplomat rather than a Martial Artist. It was hard for them to reconcile his remarkable insight with his being a Martial Artist.


    "So, I guess we''ll be settling on Vilun ind for the time being?" Zeyra asked.


    "That does seem to be the case," Rui nodded.


    "We''ll need to be careful while selecting the location of our settlement," Stemple noted.


    "That''s true," Rui nodded. "Ideally, we can look to settle on a different part of the Vilun mountain, but I am unsure about how the G''ak''arkan tribe will react to that."


    The G''ak''arkan tribe was most certainly notrge enough to upy the entirety of the area on the mountain. However, the mountain was viewed as the G''ak''arkan Tribe''s territory. It would be a foolish move to rashly build a settlement in their own territory without permission.


    Rui was sure that regardless of all the goodwill that the Martial Union had spent building with the G''ak''arkan Tribe, they would not hesitate to drive them out of their territory. It was one thing to engage in discussions and talks about the mutual trade of Martial Art techniques with the Martial Union, it was another thing altogether to start building a house in their front yard.


    "I think they are quite likely to ept that, sir," Stemple said thoughtfully. "The Martial tribes of Vilun ind have all demonstrated a high value for the sovereignty of their territory."<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    "That is the troubling part," Rui sighed. "I think getting them to agree to us building a settlement on the mountain that they have imed as their territory is unrealistic. However, building a settlement at the mountain base or on the surrounding hills should not be that much of a problem," Rui exined.


    "The further away we are, the longer it will take for this n to take effect, sir," Zeyra chimed in. "The n would be most effective if we are able to be as close to them for them to observe us with the greatest amount of ease and thoroughness."


    She had a good point. The entire point of the settlement n that Rui hade up with was to thoroughly demonstrate the tangible and intangible benefits and utility that the techniques that they were offering to trade, provided to them when they were in simr enough circumstances as the G''ak''arkan Tribe.


    However, consequently, the time period for this n to seed would stretch out increasingly further away from the G''ak''arkan Tribe that they were. How could the G''ak''arkan Tribe effectively surveil the settlement if they were on the opposite side of the ind? It would be many, many years by the time the G''ak''arkan Tribe naturally came about to discover the value of the techniques that the diplomats of the Martial Union were offering to trade to the G''ak''arkan Tribe.


    "That is also a valid point," Rui sighed. "We''ll have to find a good spot that is able to fulfill our requirements. The two of you and the rest of the diplomatic team will have to help me chalk out a list of requirements and conditions for the potential locations that we could inhabit so that we can provide this to the intelligence team and have them discreetly conduct surveys across the ind for locations that could fulfill our requirements."


    "That''s a ratherrge burden to ce on the intelligence team, sir," Stemple remarked. "This ind is small only in the context of a continent map," Stemple nced over to the gigantic map of the Panama Continent in the conference room. "It is still a gigantic amount of area that the intelligence department will have to surveil. Furthermore, this ind is dangerous not only due to the Martial Artists but the abundant fauna that inhabits the natural uninhabited portions of the ind."


    "I am aware of that," Rui nodded. "Thankfully, they don''t have to scour the entire ind literally, as Zeyra pointed out, the location cannot be too far from the G''ak''arkan tribe. This means there is a hard limit to the distance from the G''ak''arkan tribe beyond which it is no longer able to fulfill our requirements. It significantly cuts down on the area that they have to surveil, and the risk associated with surveilling the area around the mountain is lower considering that the G''ak''arkan tribe is unlikely to go out of their way to kill simple scouts of ours."


    Rui continued fleshing out the list of requirements that thend that they would eventually inhabit would need to have. The list turned out to be longer than expected, but that was not entirely disadvantageous since that would mean making a choice would be easier due to the fewer choices.


    Their work wasn''t done just by locating a ce, however. They would need to gain a very thorough understanding of the final location in order for the settlement construction process to proceed smoothly.


    asionally missing content, please report errors in time.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 655 Location

    Before long, the intelligence team received a full list of requirements in order of importance that needed to be scouted within a certain range of the G''ak''arkan vige. The intelligence department got to work immediately, there was a lot ofnds to be covered, after all.


    Furthermore, they needed to take the environmental survey and recording devices with them that would allow them to measure the environmental parameters of the candidate locations for their soon-to-be settlement to upy.


    However, that alone wasn''t enough. Once the choice was made, the diplomatic team would need to send the data of that location back to the Martial Union, tomissioner Derun who would then make the necessary preparations and dispatch another cruise ship with the supplies and personnel that would be necessary to make the settlement work.


    "I had suspected it would be the case, but I guess that hill paralleling Vilun mountain is indeed the best choice," Rui sighed.


    He was in a meeting with his diplomatic team in the conference room as they piled through all the reports and data that the intelligence team had painstakingly gathered across twenty days. They had curated and sorted all of the viable venues within range of the G''ak''arkan Tribe


    "There are many merits to colonizing the G''una Hill, but there are other candidates as well, sir," Stemple remarked. "For example, the ttened crater at the center of the ind seems like a good ce to settle."


    "No, that''s a bad idea." Rui shook his head. "Haven''t you memorized all the previous anthropological and environmental data the Martial Union has collected on Vilun ind?"


    "Uh¡­ no?" Stemple sheepishly admitted.


    Of course, this wasn''t necessarily a fault of his. It wasn''t really his business as an assistant diplomat to memorize data that was well outside his expertise and purview and did not possess any direct relevance to his job as a member of the diplomatic team.


    "That crater¡­ was created by the sh between Martial Seniors," Rui smiled weakly, sighing in admiration.


    The many assistants in the room jolted as they halted their work, turning to Rui in shock.


    "Tha-That''s impossible!" Zeyra''s eyes widened. "That crater is nearly two kilometers in diameter and nearly a hundred meters in depth at the center!"


    Rui couldn''t me them for their shock, he hadn''t been any less shocked himself when he hade across the report himself.


    He had never seen a Martial Senior in action, but now he realized that may not have been a bad thing. If he stood too close to a fight between them, significant injury from just the aftereffects was guaranteed. Death was the worst-case scenario.


    The assistants assigned to the diplomatic team began to gain a clearer understanding of why hostilities hadn''t broken out in the previous diplomatic endeavor with Senior Ceeran. If they had broken out, the G''ak''arkan Tribe would be annihted through and through barring the stronger Martial Squires.<novelsnext></novelsnext>Material ? of N?velDrama.Org.


    "Regardless, the other Martial tribes avoid that spot because it served as a battleground for some of the powerhouses to intercept enemy powerhouses before the battle takes off into the air, building our settlement there is utter suicide," Rui shook his head.


    That was a pretty good reason to avoid that location.


    It took a while, but the diplomatic team finalized the location. As Rui had predicted, choosing a hill, that too one that was closest to the G''ak''arkan Tribe was the best idea. The elevation was important to Rui because it allowed them to demonstrate the utility of their techniques at a height, which was relevant to the G''ak''akran Tribe.


    Once the decision had been made, Rui sent the data to Martialmissioner Derun.


    "Hmmm, definitely a logical choice," She told him when he called and informed her of their choice. "I''ll start making preparations immediately. It shouldn''t take too long, as long as Senior Ceeran sends me the profiles of Martial Artists of the Longranger Sect as soon as possible."


    Rui nodded. "Understood. I haven''t had a chance to inform him of the choice of locations yet, but I will let him know as soon as possible."


    "Good," She nodded as she read through the data that Rui had sent her.


    "Another thing," Rui remarked. "I wanted to inquire regarding the matter of authorization of the second n of action that I had proposed to you."


    Her expression did not change at his words, but Rui could sense the hesitation in her demeanor.


    It was understandable, what he had proposed was much riskier than the more innocuous n of building a settlement on the ind to show off the explicit and implicit utility of the techniques of the Martial Union on a day-to-day business as well as their value in physical conflict.


    "Unfortunately, your other proposal and request are not nearly as easy to grant as this one. It will take more time for me toe to a decision on that. Thankfully, it is not something that can be rushed anyway, I want to make sure that I am absolutely certain before using my authority to facilitate something of that sort," She replied.


    "That''s understandable," Rui nodded. "Personally, I think that your prudence and thoroughness are quite apt. I myself am bogged with the mission so I do not have much time to specte on the pros and cons of yet another potential n when I am burdened with having to manage the execution of the ongoing mission at the moment."


    "Good, be sure to focus on making sure the settlement operation runs smoothly. I cannot guarantee I will approve your other n if the settlement operation seeds, but I can definitely guarantee you that it will never receive my approval if you are unable to make sure the settlement runs smoothly. Although you have received some basic training and tutge from Carl in the humanities and social sciences in one month, do not think that running a self-sufficient settlement on a foreign ind is simple or easy."


    "Of course, I can assure you I don''t have any hubris in regard to this matter," Rui nodded.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 656 Issues

    "So, your n is to form a settlement on Vilun Ind?" Senior Ceeran frowned even after Rui thoroughly exined everything.


    "As I said, there are many merits to this n that I justid out," Rui neatly disguised his exasperation with patience.


    "How long will be settling on the ind?" Senior Ceeran wondered.


    "For however long it takes," Rui replied calmly. "But I am predicting for several weeks to potentially a few months. Worst case scenario it would take years of grinding at their reluctance before we seed."


    Of course, Rui did not think that would happen. Frankly, he was most optimistic about wearing down the G''ak''arkan Tribe''s continuous refusal to trade techniques with his second n, more than anything. The settlement n only addressed one hurdle out of the several that blocked the path to a sessful and fruitful trading agreement with the G''ak''arkan Tribe.


    "And you said you wanted me topile a Martial Artist profiles formissioner Derun whose expertise and Martial Paths are centered around the kinds of techniques that we are offering to the G''ak''arkan Tribe?" Senior Ceeran turned to Rui with an inquisitive look.


    "That''s right, you can limit to Martial Apprentices and Martial Squires only," Rui nodded. "From what I have concluded from a preliminary analysis, the G''ak''arkan Tribe iscking in range and power,pared to our techniques," Rui remarked. "So perhaps getting a lot of Martial Apprentices and Martial Squires who greatly excel in these two parameters specifically would suit our needs the best."


    "Those aren''t the only avenues that they arecking in," Senior Ceeran snorted.


    "Then feel free to include any additional parameters that they arecking in additionally, as well," Rui replied. "I''d suggest picking Martial Art techniques that are low in difficulty as possible while still having a high enough potency grade to be significantly superior to the G''ak''arkan Tribe in any given avenue or parameter. We want to impress them with how powerful our techniques are, but impressing them with how manageable they are to master is also equally important. They will not be receptive to trading techniques with us if our techniques will be damn near impossible for them to master. At most, the high-difficulty and high-grade techniques can be used additionally to impress them."


    "That''s a shame, they would certainly be very impressed with your Pathfinder technique that just so happens to cover one of their weaknesses," Senior Ceeran smiled, turning to Rui.


    Of course, Rui had long realized this himself. It was most certainly true that his Pathfinder technique ought to be nothing short of shocking to the G''ak''arkan Tribe. He wasn''t even sure if even the Martial Seniors of the Martial Tribe could replicate its feats.


    Rui did intend to leverage it to seduce the G''ak''arkan Tribe into having a trade with them. He only needed to figure out the best way to make the moststing impact on them. He hadn''t yete up with an aptly satisfactory timing and situation yet.


    "Regardless, please be sure to send the Martial Artist profiles to Commissioner Derun as soon as possible," Rui requested him. "The sooner she gets that information, the sooner she can put together a team for the mission."


    "This mission has escted more than I ever imagined it would, I never realized that facilitating diplomatic rtions with foreign parties can be aplished through such indirect methods as well," He noted. "As expected, Derun made a great choice by assigning you to this mission."<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    "The two conversed before going separate ways.


    Rui''s immediate work was done, now he just needed to make sure he was informed of all thetest updates to the settlement operation preparations.N?vel(D)ra/ma.Org exclusive ? material.


    It wasn''t as simple as rounding up some skilledborers needed to build the basic infrastructure of his settlement from the natural resources abundant on the ind and manage the logistics of the settlement, he would need to rely on the ecologists of the Ministry of Environment and Ecology that would be dispatched and figure out a way to build a self-sufficient settlement. They would need to secure food and water supplies, they would need to establish security measures based on the fauna of the ind.


    Thankfully, Rui''s n involved building only a highly primitive settlement. He was not adept at statesmanship, if he had to build a modernized settlement, he would probably fail as he struggled to build viable minimunications, energy, and transportation sectors.


    Still, just because he was building a simple settlement did not mean his job was simple. The G''ak''arkan Tribe made it look simple because they were highly unified in their warped culture, and their hierarchy of authority was entirely centered around Martial prowess.


    The same could not be said for the settlement that Rui needed to construct. Things were moreplicated, unfortunately. As the lead diplomat and the initiator of this operation, he was the highest in the chain ofmand, despite neither being the strongest nor probably sufficiently qualified.


    He would most be delegating almost all of the work to the settlement team that Martialmissioner Derun would dispatch, who had their own orders.


    It was messy andplicated.


    Still, as long as it looked nice on the outside, Rui was fine. They were not trying to create a settlement that was highly efficient and viable forever in the long term. It was merely a means to show the G''ak''arkan Tribe exactly what they were in for if they decided to ept the trading offer that the Martial Union had repeatedly made to them.


    "Those techniques better be worth all this effort," Rui sighed in frustration.


    The workload, even when he delegated a lot, was not easy. Just staying on top and making sure things were in order to much of his time. Yet Rui did his job diligently until the Martialmissioner informed him that all of the final preparations had been made and the settlement team was soon to be dispatched to Vilun ind.


    Within two weeks, a new andrger ship arrived at the ind.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 657 Plan

    "Squire Quarrier, I am captain Shevy Le, the interim leader of the Vilun settlement team, sir," A tall sharp-eyed woman greeted him straightforwardly.


    "Pleasure to meet you, captain," Rui shook her hand. "The settlement operation is an attempt fulfilling a mission of significant importance to the Martial Union. I hope to work with your to ensure that it is a sess."


    "Martialmissioner has informed me of the purpose of this operation, and I have been briefed about your mission. I have also been highly familiarized with all of the protocols surrounding the execution of the settlement operation from the very first to thest step, all of the details of the operation as well as the authorized chain ofmand. I am second inmand after you, I hope to work by your side to ensure this is a sess as well sir," She replied curtly


    Rui nodded, appreciating her professional conduct. It was good to have somebody who knew exactly what she was doing.


    "Alright captain,missioner Derun has already briefed me, but let''s go through the settlement building operation thoroughly," Rui suggested.


    She nodded curtly, before beginning. "The Vilun settlement operation begins with the preliminary security measures, such as security permeter, patrol and scouting deployments. Building a settlement without some guarantee of security is a foolish move. It is unknown whether we''ll be targeted by other Martial tribes and predators of the forests of Vilun ind."


    Rui nodded. Security was certainly one of the most primary concerns of building any establishment in a potentially hostile environment. Rui recalled his discussions with Carl regarding security being one of the primary interests of any third-party groups above a certain scale. He was seeing that discussion manifest in real-time.


    "Once the necessary preliminary security measures have been deployed and undertaken, we will establish a transportation channel between the ship and the ind to be able to transport goods and people up and down the cliff. Relying on Martial Artists may have worked when the only thing being built were several tents, but it is far too impractical to expect Martial Artists to undertake all of the heavy lifting," She told Rui.


    He nodded, this definitely made sense. "Manualbor is outside of the purview of the Martial Artists anyway, and I think it would have been much more difficult to get the Martial Artists of the Longranger Sect on board if they were going to simply be engaging in mundane manualbor."


    "Once security and transportation of goods and resources are taken care of, we can move on to the construction phase. Ourborers and esoteric machines will engage in the necessary development of basic infrastructure. The settlement will be divided in the following manner; housing, storage, and security blocks. Thetter will form the outermostyer, while the former two will be separated and will upy the optimal proportions of the area within."


    "The best part is that the housing and storage units can easily be converted into each other to suit whatever need arises," Rui nodded. "Allowing for a flexible infrastructure."This is from N?velDrama.Org.


    "Indeed. The housing and storage are further divided into subsections such as housing for the different teams that are partaking in this operation and in your mission. The storage will also be further divided into further sections for storage of different groups of goods, resources, and other material needs."


    "That will more or less conclude the construction phase, I believe," Rui noted.


    "Correct, sir," She nodded. "Once that''s done we''ll simply have all personnel upy the settlement, and then bid the ships goodbye."<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    "Hm," Rui nodded. "What is the estimated time forpletion of the construction phase?


    "About three months," She curtly replied.


    "Then we don''t have any time to waste, I''m afraid," Rui sighed. "Let''s begin immediately, I''ll familiarize myself with your team on the run."


    "Understood sir, the security teams are already finishing their preparations to begin," She gestured around at the bustling personnel running around the ship.


    "Good, I believe the Martial Squires have moved to the Veomine Eagle to meet with Senior Ceeran, correct?"


    "They took the liberty of doing so as soon as we reached," She sighed disapprovingly. Unfortunately for her, as an employee of the Martial Union, she did not have much authority over them.


    "I see. Well then I ought to meet up with them as well, I''ll see youter captain."


    He bid her farewell as he took his time making his way to the Veomine Eagle. All of the new iing Martial Artists were of the Longranger Sect, meaning they definitely possessed a high degree of deference towards Senior Ceeran, who was part of the upper echelons of the Martial Sect.


    Rui was worried that despite having to report to him officially, they would dismiss his word over that of Senior Ceeran. Rui wasn''t even naive enough to believe that this wouldn''t happen, they were far too beholden to Senior Ceeran for him to expect anything else. It was definitely frustrating, but it wasn''t too bad.


    Thankfully, Rui could reasonably expect Senior Ceeran to cooperate with him on this matter and ensure that the Martial Artists did not disregard the chain ofmand. Much to his surprise, Senior Ceeran had surprisingly been on his best behavior during this entire mission. He did not disobey Rui''s request to remain as scarce as possible, nor did he try to butt into the mission or try to reign the mission out of Rui''s control. He only asked to be kept in the loop on all of the happenings, which Rui was more than happy to oblige in return.


    Now he had to hope that Senior Ceeran would ensure that hisckeys would y ball with Rui. This entire n would go to shit if they ran around doing whatever it is that they wanted rather than following the n.


    He intended to speak with Senior Ceeran and them separately and remind them that obtaining those techniques was most important. Thankfully, they were long-range Martial Artists, so that wouldn''t be too difficult to do.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 658 Construction

    The Martial Union had dispatched dozens of Martial Apprentices, and several Martial Squires, all of them belonging to the Longranger Sect and each having a Martial Path centered around long-range techniques.


    Rui could sense the dense sense of power emanating from the Veomine Eagle. "Those idiots, they were told toy low until authorized otherwise."


    He quickly headed to the conference room, where they had all gathered to meet Senior Ceeran.


    "But sir, why can''t we just take ove-!"


    THUD


    Rui mmed the doors open, inspecting the Martial Artists who had arrived.


    They all stared at Rui as their eyes scanned him from top to bottom, sizing him up. Rui could sense surprise and caution in their demeanors, and it was understandable. He was supposed to be a grade four Martial Squire, but for some reason, he had an overwhelming aura that they had seldom sensed within the Squire Realm.


    Rui had still donned his mind mask from the moment he had arrived at the ind without ever having taken it off. Appearing much stronger than he was gave his words more gravitas, and certainly helped him in being taken seriously by the G''ak''arkan Tribe.


    And it would be of invaluable help in the Squire Realm as well, being taken seriously by these Martial Squires who mistakenly thought they were weaker than him thanks to the projected power that came with the technique.


    "Ah, Squire Quarrier, you''re here," Senior Ceeran smiled well-meaningfully. "Allow me to introduce these good Martial Artists; they''re good members of the Longranger Sect that I have handpicked as rmendations for Derun. I''m sure you''ll get along with them."


    "I''m sure you''re correct," Rui lied, before turning to all of them. "I am Squire Quarrier, the leader of this diplomatic mission. As I''m sure you''ve all been informed, the objective of this mission is to obtain several potent and exotic long-range techniques. The settlement operation that you have all been deployed as a part of is our n at obtaining the techniques they want. When the timees, you will all have the opportunity to show off your long-range prowess, be sure to go all out when that happens."


    Rui turned around, leaving abruptly. He did not expect them to warm up to him on the first day, or ever. He could try and earn their respect by demonstrating the Void Pathfinder technique, but that ran the risk of revealing it to the G''ak''arkan Tribe. He decided to trust Senior Ceeran with ensuring they all remained in line. No matter what they thought, Senior Ceeran was determined to obtain their techniques, and would not allow lower members of his sect to get in the way of that.


    The construction began immediately, yet steadily. Rui did not want to elerate the construction too much because that would draw too much attention. The machinery and equipment needed to finish all of it within a month would be particrly eye-drawing. He did not want to inadvertently provoke a Martial Tribe into attacking them.


    Thus, the reliance onrge esoterically-derived machinery was reduced and arger proportion of the work was done with manualbor.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    Rui returned to back to the ind before proceeding to inspect the happenings on the hill. The security perimeter was being constructed, Rui could already see the perimeter being outlined as the Martial Artists aided in setting up the lift transportation system between the ship and the top of the cliff above.


    Within a day, the goods and supplies toplete the security measures had already beguning in.


    The goal was to create multipleyers of fencing around the marked area. Thankfully, the process was rtively simple as already prepared building blocks for the necessary constructs made assembling the perimeters rather simple and straightforward.


    The Longranger Martial Artists also got off their asses as a portion of them distributed themselves across the marked perimeter. Until the security measures wereplete, they would take shifts watching over their newly acimed territory.


    Time flew by as the security measures slowly came into ce, and the fences were built rapidly.


    A secure route between the ship and the hill that the settlement would be built upon was constructed. The necessary goods and supplies flew through, as the construction of the settlement rapidly began.


    The outermostyer of the settlement was for the Longranger Martial Artists assigned to the mission, they would protect the settlement from external threats and thus their quarters were ced in between the inner parts of the settlement and the external parts of the settlement. Before soon, the construction of this had also begun.


    Yet, the construction wasn''t the only thing that Rui had his hands full with.


    "So, most of our food wille from hunting and gathering?" Rui frowned as he skimmed through a document prepared by the many experts gathered for the Vilun Settlement operation.


    "At least initially, sir," A man sitting opposite to him nodded. "Unfortunately, the environmental parameters make it somewhat unsuited for a lot of the crops that we grow, harvest, and consume in the Kandrian Empire. It will be a while before we are able to establish an adequate agricultural setup. However, given that this operation isn''t projected to extend for too long, it''s under question whether even endeavoring to set up an agricultural sector within the settlement at all in the first ce."


    "I see," Rui mumbled as he was absorbed into the report that the environmental experts hadpiled for him regarding the matter of agriculture. "Can hunting and gathering alone take care of all of our nutritional needs then ording to the resident nutritional expert?"N?vel(D)ra/ma.Org exclusive ? material.


    "Not easily, no. But it does certainly most of our needs, and the food pills that we have on board can certainlypensate for the rest if need be. It is much more practical to rely on those to cover our shorings than to engage in a tedious and painstaking agricultural operation."


    "That''s fine, I suppose," Rui shrugged. "It doesn''t really take away from my mission, thus it''s not at all problematic."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 659 Choices

    The aliens never ceased to confuse the Martial tribes of Vilun Ind. Now these outsiders seemed to be trying to build a modest vige atop a hill on the ind that wasn''t too far from the G''ak''arkan Tribe.


    All of the Martial tribes knew that for some reason the outsiders held a lot of interest in the G''ak''arkan tribe, more than any other tribe on the entire ind. None of them, except the G''ak''arkan Tribe, had any idea why this was the case.


    It wasn''t as though the G''ak''arkan Tribe was the strongest Martial tribe on the entire ind or anything of the sort. It was rather strange for them to constantly be sending people to the Martial tribe.


    And now, they were building a small vige very close to the G''ak''arkan Tribe. This was certainly no coincidence.


    Why were the aliens bothering trying to build a home on the ind in the first ce? Even if they did, why did they do it so close to the G''ak''arkan Tribe?


    While most of the Martial tribes spread across the ind scratched their head at this development, the G''ak''arkan Tribe had a slightly better understanding of the situation.


    "This must have something to do with that trade offer that they''ve been pestering us for many years with," N''Kulu, the chieftain of the G''ak''arkan Tribe solemnly said. "They haven''t given up it seems."


    "Those annoying pests!" Senior K''ahru glowered. "We should treat them like any other Martial tribe and destroy them!"


    That earned many nods from the Martial Artists who were a part of the meeting.


    Back when the outsiders first greeted the G''ak''arkan Tribe and tried to hold dialogue with them and expressed an intent for a peaceful rtionship, many members of the G''ak''arkan Tribe were a little confused and at a loss for words.


    Such a thing rarely happened on Vilun Ind. To them, everybody else that they had ever known prior were all enemies. The very concept of establishing friendly rtions with other parties wasrgelycking in their minds.


    This was why the process of befriending the G''ak''arkan Tribe took far longer than it would have with states on the Panama Continent. It took a tedious and painstakingly slow build-up to where it was today, it had begun with the smallest of tokens and gifts between ordinary humans for an extensive period of time, before escting the gestures and tokens that they expressed. It even took providing a little bit of aid to the G''ak''arkan Tribe during certain times of need.


    Years and years of doing this was what finally led to a stage where they could even talk to the tribe without being treated like an enemy.


    This is from N?velDrama.Org.


    However, despite this, the G''ak''arkan Tribe was simply much morefortable in picking a fight with the diplomatic convoy than they were trying to maintain a friendly rtionship. Thetter was something that was ufortable and strange while the former was normal and regr.


    They were much morefortable knowing that they were their enemy than wondering if they were friends.


    Yet, not everybody was supportive of the idea of engaging in hostilities with their strange alien ''friends''.


    "I strongly believe we shouldn''t make them our enemy," A third strong voice interjected, drawing all the attention to her.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    The third Martial Senior of the G''ak''arkan Tribe.


    "Sister K''M¡­" K''ahru gritted his teeth.


    "I believe that their offer has merit, I have always said that," She voiced her opinion, uncaring of the frowns that it drew. Her sharp eyes swept across the many members who were an audience of this discussion.


    "Hah!" Her brother scoffed. "Their Martial Artists listen to the words of mere humans, even submitting to them! How can such weak and pathetic Martial Artists have anything worth offering to us? It''s a miracle that they even managed to be Martial Artists in the first ce."


    This once again earned many nods from the members of the meeting. K''ahru''s logic was sound in their minds.


    "Their customs are¡­ strange. But that does not mean they are weak. Have all of you forgotten the Martial Artist of the third rank that sought an audience with us many seasons ago?" She addressed her gathered tribes-folks with a calm andposed voice, striking a chord with them.


    She turned to K''ahru and N''Kulu. "You remember how strong his aura was, do you think he has nothing of value to offer?"


    K''ahru gritted his teeth. He could not, in good faith, insist that a Martial Senior was useless when she focused on his rank. The Martial tribes of Vilun Ind worshipped power more than anything else, after all.


    "You both have offered valuable insights," The heavy voice of N''Kulu drowned out the presence of the two younger Martial Seniors. "It is true that Martial Artists of higher ranks cannot be useless."


    He nodded towards K''M, acknowledging her point. K''M smirked as she reveled in her victory over her younger brother.


    "Yet, that is entirely different from whether they have enough merit to be able to offer power that is worth our sacred Martial Art techniques," His voice grew graver. "Our techniques are everything, they are the foundation of our power against our many enemies that seek to annihte us in war. That is what they desire to have from us. Today they have settled near us, tomorrow they will move closer, the day after they may pierce their way into our tribe, or take away members of our tribe possessing the techniques they seek. They have relentlessly chased after our techniques for many years now. I do not believe such a group will be satisfied with our refusal."


    The air grew solemn as everybody stared at the elderly warrior chieftain, awaiting his verdict.


    "I will not tolerate this forever," He dered. "I will give them onest opportunity to ept our final refusal in the next talk. Should they continue to strive for our technique despite that, then it is clear that they do not respect or fear us enough to ever stop. When that happens¡­"


    He opened his eyes. "We will destroy them. We will hurl our mighty techniques at them from the skies, and wipe them out with the techniques that they desired! Long live the G''ak''arkan Tribe!"


    "Long live the G''ak''arkan Tribe!"


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 660 Conflict

    Some distance away in a recently constructed hall, Rui listened to the chieftain dere his ultimatum for the diplomatic settlement that they had correctly guessed had something to do with their techniques.


    "First of all, brilliant job Kane," Rui nodded at the Martial Squire. "The fact that the G''ak''arkan Tribe''s technology is practically non-existent is very useful when ites to espionage. It also helps that your stealth has grown to the point where you are able to sneak in and ce a wiretap that would have been discovered by most modern security measures!"


    Like almost all technology, the wiretap technology of the Kandrian Empire and of the Panama Continent was derived from various esoteric substances that had properties that effectively allowed them to record sound. The wiretap in question was a particr substance whose physical characteristics were partially altered by sound. The wiretap functioned by exposing the substance to sound before figuring out exactly what sounds it was subjected to based on its end shape.


    However, it had also bemon enough that most security departments or agencies of most states on the continent had developed means to detect it. Thus, it had be a little obsolete.


    Yet, they were still useful against technologically primitive groups such as the G''ak''arkan Tribe.


    Rui had had Kane sneak it into their little hall at a time with his formidable stealth when each of the Martial Seniors would be assured to not detect him. It was still a risky move to deploy Kane, even if two of the Martial Seniors were outside the vige in a rare coincidence and the third was in a slumber. However, after having listened to the entire conversation, Rui could say it was worth it.


    "Why was the conversation so grainy? It''s hard to make out everything everyone is saying," Rui frowned.


    "That''s because it bes increasingly difficult to extract information from the sound recording Derium Jelly that is used to record sound the longer it is exposed to sound," Special Agent Cravis exined to Rui.


    "I see, that''s a shame. Still, it has served its purpose well, I heard the most important parts after all. And that is good enough," Rui nodded.


    He had much to think about. He did not expect the chieftain to take such a bold stance and force an ultimatum such as that. This was not something that he would expect from any normal group that was in a friendly rtionship with the Kandrian Empire. Normally, that group would do everything in its power to ensure that its rtionship with the Kandrian Empire was friendly, but Rui had long known that the G''ak''arkan Tribe wasn''t part of this group.


    Still, he didn''t expect them to be this decisive on how to proceed with their rtionship with the diplomatic settlement.Material ? of N?velDrama.Org.


    "This is going to take a while, that''s for sure," Rui sighed. "Just sitting around peacefully isn''t going to help either."


    He could see that the settlement n was a little inadequate, now that he actually heard the senior most members of the G''ak''arkan Tribe speak unhampered. He needed something more shocking, in addition to basic demonstration.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    His eyes widened as he came up with an idea. "If we want to show them that our techniques are highly useful to them. Then we need to demonstrate its value in the one activity that they spend more energy, time, and power to than any other¡­"


    "Sir?"


    "Rui?"


    Kane and special agent Cravis exchanged a look before turning back to him.


    "We need war. Conflict. Not that different from what they regrly engage in with the other tribes across the ind," Rui grew more certain. "That is much more effective than the passive n of simply hunting and ying defense and safe. That is much likelier to impress them more than anything else is likely to."


    "I need to speak with my team, and Senior Ceeran¡­ andmissioner Derun too¡­" Rui murmured as he got up with an excited expression.


    The idea of actively entering into conflicts with the other Martial tribes of Vilun ind was one that he should havee up with earlier, but unfortunately, he had never seriously considered it due to the fact that the Martial Union had painstakingly built even a decent rtionship with the native indigenous of the ind. Even reaching a stage where they weren''t enemies was one that took several years of courting.


    Waging war would instantly and forever ruin all of that hard work that the Martial Union had put in, thus Rui never considered it. But now that it was a potential necessity to achieve his mission, Rui had to admit that it was an actually alluring option.


    He was also quite optimistic about the chances of it being well-received.


    The Martial Artists assigned to this mission were, frankly, bored. There wasn''t a whole lot to do, and their presence in the mission wasn''t actively needed beyond some mundane duties and some simple hunts to gather food.


    Rui knew that because he was starting to feel the same way. Yes, he had been chosen as a diplomat, yes, he was the leading authority in this whole operation. But he was a Martial Artist first, and exercising his Martial Art was something that he needed to do otherwise he would feel suffocated!


    He could imagine that even Senior Ceeran wouldn''t have a problem with picking a fight with other Martial Seniors if it not only didn''t sh with the interests of the mission but also fulfilled them. He simply needed to ensure that it remained in control and within proportion so that it aided the mission, and didn''tpletely blow it away. If he ended up sparking a conflict with the G''ak''arkan Tribe inadvertently, then he would be screwed big time and would have to take responsibility for theplete failure of the diplomatic endeavor that was of interest to the entire Martial Union, but particrly the Longranger Sect, the Martial Artists of which were all around him at the moment.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 661 Considerations

    "That sounds like a great idea!" Senior Ceeran dered without hesitation. "Let''s rally our troops and rush down and attack another Martial tribe immediately."


    "No, we''re not going to do that, will all due respect," Rui tried to hit the breaks on his enthusiasm as soon as he could. "We''ve painstakingly built an image of a peaceful and friendly group over many, many years of sustained diplomatic efforts. We cannot destroy all of that in the blink of an eye by provoking a conflict out of the blue. It will destroy our credibility."This is from N?velDrama.Org.


    Senior Ceeran frowned. "Then how do we engage in conflicts with the other tribes?"


    "Oh don''t worry about that," Rui smiled. "There are many ways to indirectly provoke a conflict without actually aggressing it."


    "What ways are those?" Senior Ceeran raised an eyebrow.


    "Well, for one, infringing on their interests is one. Ordinarily, this alone wouldn''t lead to conflict, but given how violent the natives of Vilun Ind are? They won''t hesitate to lead an assault on us."


    Senior Ceeran frowned, throwing a puzzled look at Rui.


    "Don''t worry about the details, we''ll handle that. I''ll inform you when the preparations are made," Rui nodded.


    The two split ways as Rui headed towards the diplomatic office to flesh out the n with his assistants.


    He initially nned on tellingmissioner Derun but eventually decided against it. The reason he had called her regarding the settlement n and the sabotage n was that he needed her authorization for it to work.


    He needed her to dispatch the necessary Martial Artists, skilledbor and manpower, supplies, and the necessary means of production. And he still needed her to make all the preparations for the sabotage n that she hadn''t yet approved.


    However, this was still his mission, and he had the autonomy to operate within the confines of his mission.


    "And that is the n," He said, after having exined all of it to the diplomatic team.


    They were taken aback, wordless, at his bold n.


    "I don''t know boss, there are risks to this n, and there definitely will be losses," Zeyra was the first to reply. "You don''t spark conflicts if you don''t want to suffer losses."<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    "That is absolutely correct," Rui nodded. "What we need to do is be very careful, and be highly calcted. Thankfully, we''ve collected a lot of anthropological data on the Martial tribes of Vilun Ind. We can use it to ensure that whatever conflict arises will be controlled, and limited to the degree that suits our interests."


    Rui was quite confident that this n, albeit difficult would be quite sessful as long as they acted with scrupulous care.


    "Well, if we''re going to provoke them to trigger hostilities to break out, then we need to cross the lines of the right target just enough," Stemple nodded.


    "Deciding the target is more important," Zeyra interjected.


    "That''s right," Rui nodded. "There are several conditions that the target would need to fulfill in order to serve as a viable target for us."


    "Such as?"


    "Well, for one. They need to be unable to dedicate all of their war capital against us if push came to shove," Rui replied. "They need to be in already constrained circumstances that prevent them from escting any conflict with us to the peak."


    The members of the diplomatic team frowned. They hadn''t quite caught on yet to what Rui was suggesting in a pragmatic sense.


    "I mean, that they need to be in existing ongoing, long-standing, and continuous conflicts with other Martial tribes," Rui said. "That is the only thing that these damn tribes are ever preupied with in the first ce; conflict. So, we find a Martial tribe that cannot afford to go all out against us because they are already fighting against preferably two or maybe three other Martial tribes."


    The diplomatic team nodded as realization dawned on them. Rui''s suggestion was a good way to minimize risk and inevitable loss. If they waged an all-out war against a Martial tribe with no other militaristic preupations, then they would end up eventually having to withstand all of the militaristic power of the Martial tribe.


    The losses would be devastating, the Martial tribes on the ind were almost all highly aggressive folks that fought like there was no tomorrow. On top of that, they had more militaristic capital than the small settlement of the Martial Union on the ind, meaning there was a chance that the settlement that they were building would lose, and even if they didn''t many Martial Artists and people would die without a doubt. The only reason it was a fair fight at despite the difference in numbers was that the quality of Martial Squires of the Martial Union was much greater thanks to a superior Squire breakthrough and evolution procedure. Maybe one Martial Squire of the Martial Union could manage to fend off two of the native Martial Squires at the same time. That is what it would need toe to if a focused all-out war broke out.


    Ultimately, even if Rui did seed in getting the techniques from the G''ak''arkan Tribe in the long run, it would be a highly pyrrhic victory, and Rui doubted that his efforts would be appreciated.


    And if he failed to obtain the techniques even after all of the time, energy, funds and resources, and most importantly, all the Martial Artists lost. Then that would be aplete and utter fiasco with no redeemable oue whatsoever.


    That was why Rui was extremely paranoid about getting everything absolutely right. They could not afford to make a single mistake, at all, whatsoever. Rui had already resolved to personally double and triple-check all the work and data that he would be making crucial decisions and judgments upon, while also making sure to double-check the entire team''s work as well. If they made a mistake that blew the whole operation away, it wouldn''t matter, he would be fully andpletely liable and responsible for the oue.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 662 Vetting

    "Sir, are you perhaps overestimating how bad an all-outrge-scale conflict would be?" Zeyra couldn''t help but ask. "After all, there are several other advantages we have asides from just higher-quality Martial Artists. We also possess a massive advantage in covert operations like intelligence gathering, sabotage, infiltration, destabilization, and assassination. We also possess an advantage in tactical and strategic asymmetric warfare. These are all considerable advantages that would no doubt, in conjugation with higher quality Martial Artists, grant us an advantage against any Martial tribe. Wouldn''t we be impressing the G''ak''arkan Tribe more if we go all-out and defeat a Martial tribe?"


    "You''re not wrong, but your analysis is too shallow," Rui shook his head. "Yes, it is true that we possess advantages in the field of covert operations and intelligence, we also possess a more sophisticated approach to war. Not to mention, we even have better technological aid in the form of potions. But, have you forgotten why we are trying to execute this war operation? Hm?"


    Rui looked around. "We want to demonstrate the prowess and utility of our Martial Art techniques, not everything else except that. What message does it send when we win a war through all of the aforementioned advantages and not the prowess of our Martial Art?"


    Realization dawned on the team as their heads tilted downwards in thought.


    "It overshadows what we are offering to them, the one thing that they have responded to positively," Rui sighed. "We cannot allow the only thing of ours that they have shown interest in to be overshadowed and trivialized to a certain extent. That''s self-sabotage."


    "Furthermore, an all-out war will still lead to too many casualties and too much expenditure. It would cross our bottom line and this whole diplomatic mission can be kissed goodbye," Rui exined patiently. "We need to ensure that this remains a scuffle, but scuffles that we overwhelmingly dominate and dazzle the G''ak''arkan Tribe scouts that will no doubt be paying close attention to us. Martial Apprentices mostly, Martial Squire conflicts too, and to top it off maybe one exchange between Senior Ceeran and a native Martial Senior."


    His reasoning was solid, leaving the diplomatic team speechless. For a second, they had forgotten that Rui was not a career diplomat and was actually a Martial Squire. For several seconds, it was difficult to reconcile that fact with the image that they had inadvertently built in their head.


    Squire Rui Quarrier. Shrewd and Sharp. Intelligent and rational. Knowledgeable and wise.


    "Now," Rui interrupted their brief reverie. "Let''s get to work. Break into teams and look into every Martial tribe and evaluate how well they satisfy these conditions."Material ? of N?velDrama.Org.


    "First," Rui raised a single finger. "As we just discussed, the Martial tribe needs to be preupied with existing opponents, or, otherwise preupied with its Martial forces."


    The entire team nodded.


    "Second," Rui raised another finger. "Theirpatibility with long-range techniques must not be high. We aren''t going to be able to show off much if our techniques aren''t intrinsically effective against their Martial Art. Winning better is always going to make a better impression than losing better. Still, none of you are experts on Martial Art, so I will mostly evaluate this parameter by myself. Still, I want you to be aware of this condition nheless."


    "Three, there needs to be an avenue or interest of theirs that we can sh with. Something justifiable," Rui raised a third finger. "Remember, we are not going to trigger hostilities to break out, we are going to provoke them to break hostilities with us. Which means we need an effective and guaranteed way to provoke them. The simplest way thates to mind is infringing on home territory, however, that will most likely be interpreted as an act of war. Perhaps something more benign like infringing on hunting territory or airspace. Whatever works."<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    Rui listed out some more minor conditions before finally being done. "Alright, let''s get started."


    While the assistants immediately got up and ran around, picking and scouring through the documents that detailed the relevant information that they needed. Rui simply sat down on a chair and drummed his fingers on the table, absorbed in his thoughts as his eyes flickered around.


    Unlike his team, he didn''t need to reach for the physical documents, he only needed to enter his Mind Pce and ess all the documents that he stored there.


    The Mind Pce technique had proven to be invaluable to him during this mission. It could be said that because Rui was able to speed through information like a breeze thanks to it, the entire schedule and pace of the mission had increased a lot. The long and extensive process of familiarizing himself with the G''ak''arkan Tribe was finished in a matter of hours and days, after all.


    What was going to be a long-term mission from the Marital Union became a much more mid-term almost solely due to this fiendish cognition.


    "Sir, the X''erhnu Tribe might fit the bill," One group of assistants reached out to him after a few hours.


    "No, they''re not fit," Rui shook his head. "They are indeed in hostilities with two martial tribes, but the level and scale of the conflicts is too low and doesn''t seem to be escting any time soon."


    All of them did a double-take at that. It had appeared as though Rui was simply daydreaming away, but now they weren''t even sure what to say.


    "Sir, the Q''ueta Tribe might be a good target,"


    "Their Martial Art techniques give them remarkable maneuvering, allowing them to prate past offense and defense. They are a poor match for our techniques when you pair that with the environmental familiarity and expertise that they have, having lived on this ind their entire lives. It''s all they know and you do not want to challenge them on that part, trust me," Rui shut down the suggestion of yet another team.


    Hours flew by as Rui vetted all of the work of his team.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 663 Triggers

    "Sir, I think I may have found the perfect candidate," Stemple announced, exhausted. "The K''ulnen Tribe. A Martial tribe centered around close-quartersbat, mostly focusing on striking. They have a warmongering culture, as expected. And they are very touchy about their hunting territory. They are a good distance away with no other Martial Tribe territory butting in."


    "Hm¡­" Rui considered the suggestion.


    The diplomatic team''s eyes lit up at this sight.


    "You might actually be right," Rui murmured. "Furthermore, one of the Martial Tribes that they are in conflict with at the moment is the G''ak''arkan Tribe. It''s a very direct measure of the performance of our techniques. There is no clearer perspective to offer them."


    "Then¡­" Stemple peered at Rui with hope.


    "Everybody double-checks everybody''s work, make sure we have not missed anything," Rui announced. "I''ll go through it myself as well."


    The diplomatic team spent an entire week making sure there was nothing wrong at all.


    While the diplomats of the Martial Union were fleshing out their ns, the G''ak''arkan Tribe had their own things to consider.


    "Sir, we received reports from one of our scouts regarding one of their hunting sessions," K''M patiently exined to the chieftain of her tribe.


    "And¡­" N''kulu asked, raising an eyebrow.


    "The same as the previous one," K''M sighed with a hint of admiration. "Their techniques allow them to strike down Dusk Eagles with a single attack, all while on the ground, never having sky-walked into the air. These were all from Martial Artists of the second rank."


    "What¡­?" K''ahru was the most surprised out of all of them. "Impossible! Martial Artists of the second rank should not be able to do that."


    "And yet¡­" K''M followed up with a smirk. "They are clearly capable unless you think the scouts were daydreaming."


    The two bickered back and forth until N''Kulu intervened.


    "Enough¡­" He raised a hand, silencing the two immediately.


    "What should we do, chief?" K''ahru sighed.


    "Nothing," N''kulu replied straightforwardly.


    "Huh?"


    "They are simply hunting game within their territory," N''Kulu calmly recognized. "While this has led to interesting discoveries. That''s all that is."


    "It also gives their ims of their own techniques more merit." K''M pointed.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    "It''s just one or two techniques in the second rank. That''s far from enough from being able to chase after all of our techniques!" K''ahru snarled.


    "Neither of you is wrong. K''M, you''re correct in saying their ims of their own prowess are more credible, however, K''ahru is also correct that this in and of itself is far from enough for possessing the merit to exchange all of our Martial Art in an equal manner," N''Kulu pointed out. "For now, nothing has changed. My ultimatum still stands."


    His eyes grew narrower as his aura grew more perilous. "We will destroy them should they cross the line."


    The G''ak''arkan Tribe was content with observing the Martial Union settlement while it was constructed. The Martial Union, on the other hand, ironically didn''t have any time or leeway for the G''ak''arkan Tribe at the moment.


    For now, the construction was still underway, and Rui had been concretely fleshing out the various potential ns for provoking them to trigger a conflict.


    He needed to carefully measure how much aggression the Martial Union could show, by looking at the responses to such aggression disyed by other Martial tribes to their target the K''ulnen Tribe. By looking at how vehemently the G''ak''arkan Tribe responded to certain kinds of provocations or slights against the Martial Tribe.


    "Kidnapping some of their women is a big no-no," Rui murmured as he scoured through the documented history and the second-hand intelligence gathered from the other Martial tribes and such.


    Another Martial tribe had once done such a thing to have more women to increase the birth rates of their tribe, and the K''ulnen Tribe had dropped all conflicts with the other Martial tribes in a heartbeat and had deployed all of their forces against the offending Martial tribe to retrieve their women.


    "Infringing on their hunting territory and airspace are much less severe slights against the tribe in their eyes,"


    This led to parties present at the time of the infringement to escte the situation and get into a fight. It also caused more frequent shes between the two sides.


    "Stray attacks in their direction are derations of war and will be treated as such. Also, infringing on their water source the Chan River is a pretty serious slight against them too. Perhaps this wasn''t at the level of all-out war despite water supplies being very important because rivers were not confined to one location.


    "Spats between human-level conflicts aren''t that big a deal," Rui shrugged as he read through how human-level conflicts happened even without the knowledge and authorization of the higher-ups of Martial tribes.


    Apparently, these conflicts were so inconsequential to the big picture that all of the martial tribes let all of it slide, they could not be bothered and even viewed it as a good thing given their warmongering nature.


    "Hm, this is starting to be more transparent,"


    Rui had be increasingly clear regarding exactly what buttons he could press and what lines he ought to cross in order to trigger an initially mild conflict that would go on to escte just at the pacing that Rui wanted it to.


    He intended to take his time with Apprentice-level conflicts, followed by more serious Martial Squire conflicts.Material ? of N?velDrama.Org.


    Maybe the Martial Union could really cross the line and abduct some women of the K''ulnen just to piss them off enough to deploy their Martial Seniors so that they could disy the prowess of their Martial Senior versus Martial Seniors that were native to the ind.


    "I bet Senior Ceeran would have no issue with that whatsoever," Rui chuckled.


    Of course, Rui did not intend to toss him intobat with many martial Seniors only for the man to very likely die. That would ruin not only the mission but also Rui''s career in the process.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 664 Fleshed

    Months passed before the construction had finally beenpleted, and the Martial Union settled into its first colony on Vilun Ind.


    Rui considered holding a big speech in celebration but decided against it at the end of the day.


    This was merely part of a mission, and the settlement would be dismantled once they got over. It wasn''t as though this would end up being one of the permanent residences of all those who were partaking in this mission and operation.


    The settlement n was already underway, and Rui had already expected that the G''ak''arkan Tribe would have had their eyebrows raised on more than one asion since the construction of the settlement.


    "The hunting¡­ and the security, they''re nothingpared to how impactful this next move is going to be," Rui couldn''t help but smile when he tried imagining how impactful the victories of the Martial Union would be on the G''ak''arkan Tribe.


    The n was ready. They had scrupulously fleshed out all of the details and ounted for multiple possible routes that it could go down, as well as developing multiple contingencies.


    "Let''s go through the final n onest time," Rui nodded to the diplomatic team. "Stemple, Zeyra."Material ? of N?velDrama.Org.


    The two of them nodded in acknowledgment as they walked up to the sets of pinboards in the conference room while Rui took a seat.


    "The objective of the K''ulnen Operation is to engage in controlled physical conflicts with the K''ulnen Tribe," Zeyra began. "The constraints and conditions on this operation, however, are not little, and are arguably more important that the actual objective itself."


    "The constraints that we will have to be working under include but are not limited to ensuring that the K''ulnen Tribe never dedicates the entirety of its Martial capital towards us. This alone is aplex condition that epasses several other constraints. This means that we cannot cross any line when casualties or any kind of damage upon their civilian poption, particrly the children, elderly, and women. We cannot dedicate the entirety of our Martial capital to each other since they won''t settle for anything less than at least matching our effort. We cannot allow their conflicts with the other two Martial tribes to grow less extreme."


    Rui nodded. Each of these was a constraint that they needed to adhere to and stay within, otherwise, the entire operation could be damned.


    "The contingencies that we have in ce all ensure that these constraints never disappear, or if they do slip away, then we have perfectly viable recements that will ensure that we never engage in an all-out war with the K''ulnen Tribe," Stemple continued. "Having established the objective and constraints, we can move on to standard course of actions that we''ve chosen¡­ The first step is to trigger regr and frequent conflicts at the human infantry level. As we have gone through before, conflicts at these levels, unless at a gigantic scale, simply do not register much in the radars of the leaders of the Martial tribes. The intelligence department decided it was best to proceed slowly and organically."


    Essentially, the conflicts would begin at the human level, before proceeding to escte. The n was, to begin with, individual conflicts, before escting them to group conflicts, and finally bringing in Martial Apprentices.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    "The moment one side deploys Martial Apprentices against the other side, we will officially have broken hostilities with the K''ulnen Tribe. From that point on, we suspect that K''ulnen Tribe will most likely not seek to voluntarily escte the scale of conflict with us, at least not when they''re fighting against two other Martial Tribes at once," Zeyra continued.


    "This is the idea stage where the conflict growth of scale stagnates, and we can demonstrate all of the long-range prowess we have at the Apprentice and Squire Realms thoroughly. With a good strategy and the techniques of the Longranger Sect, the extreme value of our techniques to the warmongering and power-hungry G''ak''arkan Tribe will be made amply clear. Once we have sufficiently demonstrated the value of what we are offering and get that past their thick skulls, we can move on to ending conflicts with the K''ulnen Tribe."


    "Except, as a highly warmongering n themselves, they are not going to drop hostilities with us easily, making peace with them is highly dubious, thus we have Operation Endline," Zeyra stated, pointing to the final section of the board. "Operation Endline is a covert operation with Squire Kane Arrancar. We abduct some women of the K''ulnen Tribe, and nt them in one of the rival Martial tribes, leaving enough trails and evidence leading to them. Once that happens, we predict that the K''ulnen Tribe will forget about us and dedicate all of their militaristic capital towards the Martial tribe that we framed, putting an end to all of it."


    The two of them paused, walking back and sitting down.


    The general n had long been fleshed out, but the details of conflicts were outside the expertise of the diplomatic team. Rui had already resolved that he would handle it with the interim captain and the Longranger Sect. Together, they would be able to figure out the best way to handle the demonstration of their long-range techniques.


    "Alright, that wraps things up here," Rui announced to the whole team. "If this operation seeds, then the next diplomatic talks with the G''ak''arkan Tribe will not be ourst. If not, then at the very least we can say that the diplomatic approach will have failed for certain."


    The atmosphere was a little tense with those words.


    Rui however, was not being entirely sincere. There was, of course, the second n that he had proposed to Martialmissioner Derun. She had yet to approve the measure, unfortunately.


    (''She''s observing,'') Rui knew. (''Observing the oue of this operation,'')


    If the K''ulnen Operation failed, then Rui could forget about getting authorization for something much riskier and more difficult to pull off in nearly every way that he could think of.


    "Alright, I got some work to do," Rui left the office.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 665 Escalate

    All the necessary preparations were made, and the n was implemented immediately, and smoothly. Of course, the initial part of the n was rather straightforward and easy, and low-risk. All they had to do was stage low-risk conflicts, before slowly turning up the heat and increasing the numbers that they dispatched each time.


    They breached the hunting territory of the K''ulnen Tribe, infringing on the game, and water sources among other things, ensuring that they got into scuffles, and ensuring that they won.


    It was nothing special and drew norge attention from any martial tribe, including even the K''ulnen Tribe.


    Vilun Ind was a rtivelyrge ind, especially whenpared to the actual amount ofnd that was inhabited by humans. The Martial tribes were suspected to not attempt building empires by expanding their territory and poption due to wanting to ensure that there remained enough of a separation between their territories and that of their enemies and rivals.


    What that meant was that ordinarily, it wasn''t easy to actually run into the groups belonging to the other Martial tribes.


    Yet, it happened all too frequently on Vilun Ind.


    A good distance away from the Martial Union settlement, arge group of soldiers of the Martial Union was working together.


    Today''s operation was particrly important. Amongst the human soldiers were actually two Martial Apprentices of the intelligence team that had hidden and disguised themselves as ordinary humans. Their goal was to intercept any Martial Apprentice that the K''ulnen Tribe dispatched when conflicts broke out.


    ording to the data that they had at hand, they had managed to correctly identify the scale of human-level conflict at which the K''ulnen Tribe tended to escte by deploying a Martial Apprentice.


    The Martial Union had hit that stage very recently, and Rui had deployed two shadow-ss Martial Artists and ensure that when that did happen, their forces were more than adequate to catch the Martial Apprentice off-guard.


    Once that happened, hostilities would officially be broken with the first Martial Artist sh between the Martial Union and the K''ulnen Tribe.


    Rui had even posted some Martial Apprentices some distance away further behind in case the K''ulnen Tribe deployed more than one. Rui didn''t want the first Martial Art conflict between the Martial Union and the K''ulnen Tribe to go poorly. That would reflect very poorly on the Martial Artists of the Martial Union, even if it was only a superficial understanding of what happened.


    "The A-team is about to make contact with a hostile group," An intelligence officer reported.


    Rui and Captain Cravis stood together in the intelligence facility.


    There was a team of analysts and intelligence agents that were coordinating with therge group of infantry personnel that had already been deployed to cross the K''ulnen Tribe''s hunting territory.


    Rui leaned forward as he nced at the screens on the terminals resembling something one would see in the ancient spy thriller movies that were made in the twentieth century. The screen showed the approximate positions of the Martial Union infantry team, and the interception team that was deployed by the K''ulnen Tribe was only a minute away from shing with the infantry of a Martial tribe that took itself too seriously.


    "The teams have made contact, so says our surveilling scout at the sight," An intelligence officer cited.


    Far away from the intelligence facility in the settlement, tworge groups of infantry had already shed with each other.This is from N?velDrama.Org.


    "Get off our turf!"


    "Fuck off outsiders!"


    "Alien bastards!"<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    Perhaps it was due to the fact that they were especially frustrated and wound up due to the many conflicts that they were involved with, at the moment. Theyunched themselves at their opponents without any hesitation. Rushing forward with primitive weapons in their hands.


    "Bring it on!"


    The Martial Union''s infantry may pale drasticallypared to its Martial forces, however, even the infantry was very well trained and honed. They were highly professional, and these kinds of missions and operations were the one ce where their prowess had any meaning and bearing at all in this respect.


    That section of the forest had so much noiseing from it that it drove away any of the animals away at the first century.


    Suddenly, a strange noise drew their attention from all of the fighters on the battlefield.


    Everybody turned just in time to witness a single small projectile elevate into the sky quickly before;


    POP!


    Arge amount of smoke was the first thing that they all saw. For a moment, everybody stopped fighting for a second.


    "They''ve deployed a signal," Captain Cravis announced to the teams. "Seems like the prediction was urate after all."


    Everybody exchanged nces. "Martial Apprentice. One."


    "Let''s go with n B then," Rui nodded, sighing. He hadn''t expected that two Martial Apprentices would be deployed from the very start.


    "Understood, sir."


    The two Martial Apprentices raced forward at a great speed, it hadn''t taken them very much longer to reach their destination.


    Yet just as their two Apprentice-level auras were about topletely overwhelm the human forces, three more rose up. Yet before the surprised K''ulnen Martial Artists could reply.


    POW POW POW


    The two Martial Apprentices guarded as they barely managed to block three wind projectiles, halting them in their paths.


    "Targets'' approach to our team has been halted," Captain Cravis smiled mildly at that news.


    Rui on the other hand, was much more cautious, despite feeling happy himself.


    "All that training and prep has paid off nicely, it seems," Rui nodded.


    It wasn''t just enough to have really good techniques, that''s why the Martial Artists had been tested and trained enough to coordinate their attacks to make sure that the impact is also very high. Stopping two Martial Apprentices simultaneously would certainly look very optimal for the G''ak''arkan Tribe that was no doubt watching the fight, they probably developed a much greater impression of their techniques that has just grown much bigger. This was just the first step out of many.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 666 Personal

    More importantly, the scale of the conflict had just crossed an important threshold which meant that the conflict would no longer be unofficial and under wraps.


    "We are now at war with the K''ulnen Tribe," Rui softly stated out loud.


    The mood was a little somber, yet everyone wordlessly waited for the reports.


    BAM BAM


    The K''ulnen Tribe Martial Artists gritted as they withstood the attacks from the long-range Martial Artists of the Martial Union.


    "What''s going on here?"


    "Damn! How are they hitting us so hard from so far away so urately?"Material ? of N?velDrama.Org.


    The two Martial Artists that had been used to take down the K''ulnen Martial Apprentices were in a sense heavy artillery. They embodied the sniper''s way of doing things, powerful aim and power while sacrificing personal close-range prowess in order to pursue range.


    They could not avoid or defend against attacks like this in order to give everything that they had toward long-range offense.


    They were perfect for a first-time entry and debut to the Martial tribes of Vilun ind.


    "Tsk, retreat!"


    Eventually, one of the K''ulnen Tribe Martial Apprentices realized how futile and bad this situation was, ordering a full retreat of all their people.


    Immediately, all the people belonging to the K''ulnen Tribe retreated back to where they came from, seriously.


    "Operation sess!"


    There were some general celebrations in the war room in the Martial Union settlement. The debut of the Martial Union as a party that is capable ofpeting with the other Martial tribes in, at least, lower grades.


    (''That will change given time,'') Rui nodded.


    Soon, Martial Apprentices would begin partaking in this war regrly.


    Eventually, that would escte to Martial Squires.


    "Order full retreat," Rui nodded.


    That team truly could no longer afford to stick around in the hunting territory of the K''ulnen Tribe. If they stuck around, then the K''urnen Tribe would soon send stronger reinforcements that were much more capable of handling the specialties and thepetencies disyed by the Martial Artists that had been part of the team covertly and some ways behind the team.


    While the Martial Union cheered and the K''ulnen cussed them out, a third-party spectator watched silently, with many different emotions spiraling through their mind. Surprise, caution, skepticism, and fear.


    "¡­That''s quite impressive," One Martial Artist sighed.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    "Maybe¡­ Maybe exchanging techniques with them isn''t a bad idea¡­"


    The G''ak''arkan Tribe''s attitude towards the Martial Union had begun changing slowly for a while. It all began with the hunting that had begun a while ago, hunting that was used to regrly bring in enough food for the entire settlement.


    That, however, was against prey. The circumstances were highly in favor of the hunter in such scenarios. After all, the hunter has too much power over his prey. This was one of the reasons that the G''ak''arkan Tribe had reservations about putting too much weight on such feats.


    However, what they had just aplished, was much greater than thest time. They had walked into the K''ulnen Tribe''s hunting territory, and beaten them back in their own territory despite the K''ulnen Tribe escting the level of the conflict to the Apprentice Realm first and foremost.


    The techniques that had been demonstrated were each solid and reliable, and very powerfully covered the areas of weakness and shorings that the G''ak''arkan Tribe.


    Rui was absolutely confident that the G''ak''arkan Tribe was having a serious meeting that would deliberate once more on the matter of the Martial Union.


    Now, whatever part of the G''ak''arkan Tribe had already expressed support in increasingly in was growing stronger and stronger in its political weight and capital.


    "Can you handle the rest, Captain Cravis?" Rui asked the captain of the intelligence leader.


    "Yes sir, but do you n not to?" Captain Cravis threw Rui a puzzled look.


    "For now, no," Rui shook his head,


    The brain-storming part of the mission was done for now. Rui had to make personal preparations to make sure that he was personally ready to take part in the iing Martial conflicts with the K''ulnen Tribe.


    (''Any longer, and my battle instincts will begin to dull,'') Rui sighed, before steeling his expression.


    In the past three months, he had been receiving very little logistical support in helping the mission seed had, meaning that he was very busy, they did not have the capital to help him out despite the fact that he had something that could stay for him to suffer.


    "Thankfully, this phase of the mission can safely be delegated to other qualified personnel," Rui grinned.


    What this meant was that he had more free time than he had ever had in the past three months. What he was going to use that free time for, was entirely obvious.


    "I need to train hard, and strong," Rui murmured.


    His situation was particrly sensitive. The Mind Mirror technique causes him to be evaluated as far more dangerous than he actually was. This worked just fine when he was a diplomat on a warmongering ind, but it did not create the best situations when he himself would be fighting out there against people who think that he was much stronger than he was.


    Meaning, that it was quite likely that powerful martial Squires would be dispatched to target him specifically. Martial Squires were equipped to take down someone that they perceived was a grade nine or grade ten Martial Artist.


    This was bad because Rui was much weaker than grade-nine or grade-ten Martial Artists. Rui needed to get back into absolute peak form otherwise, he did not stand a chance against any such measures if he did not go all all-out.


    "This is going to be some good old fun times, just like in the old day," Rui smiled. Despite the tribtions that were iing, he couldn''t help but grow genuinely eager and even excited at the prospect of engaging in some conflicts, with meaningful and important relevancies to him. Growing stronger was something Rui was highly ustomed to doing.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 667 Debut

    In an underground facility in the Martial Union settlement sat a lonesome figure. He sat on the ground with folded legs and his arms resting on his knees.


    He had donned hisbat attire, as opposed to the formal attire that he had grown ustomed to wearing in the past three months.


    His ck hair was unkempt, an increasingly rare sight to see due to his position.


    His visage was hardly strange or unusual, yet almost everyone standing in the room as him would be paralyzed with primal fear. The fear that came from a great threat to one''s well-being and life.


    Not only had Rui donned his strongest mind mask as usual, but his mind which had been consumed with the diplomatic mission for more than three months had entered a state it hadn''t in recent times.


    He had ejected all considerations regarding his mission from his previously scattered mind. For the most six hours, he had been honing his mind on his Martial Art and Martial Path. It took him a while to gather the entirety of his focus, conscious and unconscious.


    His eyes were closed, yet it wasn''t the darkness that gues his vision.


    He saw a path.


    One he was standing upon.


    It stretched on forever onwards and upwards.


    It winded on and about.


    Yet it wasn''t just the path that drew his attention.


    What the path winded through was equally eye-drawing.


    Monsters of all kinds gue his path, each more horrifying than thest. Cmities and catastrophes of all kinds made any attempt to try and reach the end of the path almost impossible!


    It was a terrifying path, yet it was all too beautiful.


    Yet despite that, it called out to him. Lulled him in.


    It was a path he wanted to walk down.


    (''¡­It''s been a while since I''ve been down here.'')


    He could only ever enter the mentalndscape of his Martial Path when he immersed his everything into it. Yet, now that he was here, he realized how long it had been since he had actuallye down here. It used it be a frequent visit for him, given how immersed in his training he would get. Yet he hadn''t done so in the past three months.


    N?vel(D)ra/ma.Org exclusive ? material.


    (''¡­A blunder.'')


    He couldn''t help but feel some regret.


    ying diplomat was a new and refreshing experience. It was even enjoyable, yet now that he was immersed in his Martial Path, he realized that it could neverpare to the path that he had already chosen. A path that he had perhaps been neglecting in recent times.


    (''Never again.'')


    A powerful yet stifled presence suddenly grazed against his senses drawing his attention and moving closer toward him.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    STEP


    STEP


    STEP


    "You know, it has been fascinating to see your work as a diplomat. I hadpletely predicted that you would be able to ace this mission when Derun informed me of her choice of picking you for it¡­ but I have to say¡­" Senior Ceeran paused. "I still like this you more than that one, at the end of the day."


    Rui opened his eyes slowly.


    It was as though his pitch-ck eyes had grown a few shades darker.


    A mild grin broke out at the edge of Senior Ceeran''s mouth. "It''s not even a contest, in hindsight. Look at you, if I was a little sleepy, I might even mistake you for a Martial Senior. What a potent aura. I can''t wait to see how strong it will be when you enter the Senior Realm."


    Rui smiled mildly. "I''m assuming it''s time?"


    "Just about, you should get going."


    "You didn''t have toe down here to inform me of that yourself, you know?" Rui remarked as he got up.


    "Yes, but I was just wondering how you were doing. It seems my concerns were unwarranted," Senior Ceeran shrugged.


    Rui made his way up, taking in the busy bustling atmosphere in the settlement.


    Today was the day, after all.


    In the past few weeks, the scale of the conflicts between Martial Apprentices had reached the precipice, it had reached the tipping point where it would crossover into a higher realm of power.


    The conflict would only keep escting, and the only way up was into the Squire Realm. The analytics team had projected that the scale of the conflict that was nned today would cross the bottom line of the K''ulnen Tribe and a Martial Squire would be deployed, perhaps more than one.


    That was why Rui would be joining today''s operation. He would be there to intercept the Martial Squire that would inadvertently be deployed to handle the overwhelming scale of Apprentice-level conflict.


    That wasn''t necessarily the hard part. The hard part was that Rui needed to handle the man with his one and only long-range technique.


    That wasn''t easy to aplish, even for Rui. His decision to take part in the first Squire-level conflict between the settlement and the K''ulnen Tribe was not well-received by everybody, especially the Longranger Sect Martial Squires.


    If not for the fact that he was the leader of the mission, as well as the fact that he had rued a lot of prestige for a Martial Squire his age and his apparent high Martial Artist grade, he probably wouldn''t have gotten his way.


    He had also managed to cate them with good reasoning.


    "I am the face of our settlement to the G''ak''arkan Tribe," Rui had told them some time ago. "For now, at least. Their scouts have no doubt seen me managing the settlement, and I was the lead diplomat in our talk with them a while back. Taking down a Martial Artist in the manner that I intend to will be good for increasing the amount of respect that I willmand from them. It will increase the chances that I will be able to secure a win on the diplomatic end in the future."


    As long as it was for the sake of the mission, he could justify his actions well enough.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 668 Dispatch

    Rui''s n was straightforward.


    He would employ his Mind Mask technique and diminish his presence to an Apprentice level and his appearance and identity with a mask. The Martial Apprentices all wore masks anyway as Martial Apprentices normally did, so there was nothing suspicious or abnormal about that.


    The Martial Apprentices had all been debriefed about his presence in the operation. However, they had all been informed very firmly that Rui would not divulge his power until the Martial Squire appeared. He would be operating at the level of a modern grade-ten  Martial Apprentice of the Martial Union. When, and only when the Martial Squire from the K''ulnen Tribe would be deployed would he intervene and fight with them.


    They were to retreat when that happened, for they could all potentially die being near the fight between Martial Squires.


    (''Not that it will even reach that stage,'') Rui kept that thought to himself. If his n worked out, then he would achieve the most shocking victory a Martial Squire could have over one of their peers.


    Of course, this wasn''t that easy given that he wasn''t all-powerful within the Squire Realm like he used to be in theter years of his time in the Apprentice Realm. He was in grade-four, perhaps verging on grade five.Material ? of N?velDrama.Org.


    The natural growth of the Martial bodies due to evolved muscle hypertrophy and enhanced cell adaptability meant that the strains that came with subjecting the body to training andbat made the Martial body stronger that was one of the reasons that the Squire Realm was so muchrger than the Apprentice Realm, the body was a constant, rather than a variable, in the Apprentice Realm. What didn''t kill a Martial Squire always made them stronger in the long run.


    (''Still, it''s not like they''re going to send in their top Martial Squires just to protect their Martial Apprentices from a losing battle against other Martial Squires,'') Rui noted. (''It''s quite likely they''ll send in someone on the lower half of the grades of the Squire Realm. Which means it isn''t likely that I''ll be overwhelmed in a fight.'')


    Soon enough, it was time for the preparations for the operation to begin immediately.


    Rui entered the military facility in the outer ring of the settlement, heading to the dispatch grounds.


    "Squire Quarrier,"


    The gathered Martial Apprentices bowed to him.


    "Not anymore, no," Rui replied, before adjusting his mind mask to diminish his presence to the peak of the Apprentice Realm. "I''m a Martial Apprentice for the time being. Treat me that way."


    This was a little hard for the Martial Apprentices. They all gazed at Rui with awe and admiration in their eyes. After all, at this point, there wasn''t a single Martial Apprentice that hadn''t heard of the great Rui Quarrier. There were many rumors and legends floating around him in many circles. He was the reason that the Martial Union adjusted the grading standards for Martial Apprentices. He killed a Martial Squire with his team. He was the reason the Kandrian Empire won the Serevian War.


    Once all the preparations were done, they simply left the settlement, heading towards the K''ulnen Tribe at a solid pace.


    (''They should be getting ready in a hurry by now,'') Rui noted calmly.


    All the Martial tribes had scouts watching all of the others. Their means of surveince were much more primitive than that of the Martial Union, but they were still enough to get the job done. It would be impossible even for the Martial Union to dispatch such arge force without the K''ulnen Tribe realizing what was going on.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    (''A little over ten minutes to the tribe at this rate, though we will be intercepted by a force sooner than that,'') Rui mused.


    The speed at which they were running meant that even ten minutes was a huge distance between the two tribes was quiterge, it was just that with how fast Martial Apprentices were, that distance was quite manageable to run across.


    "I sense something," Rui said calmly as they were running.


    Even if he was going to limit his aura andbat prowess to the Apprentice level, there was no way that he could suppress his own senses. He could sense far beyond any of the Martial Apprentices in their forces.


    "How far away sir?" One of the Martial Apprentices asked.


    "Four minutes," Rui replied. "Their force isn''t asrge as that of ours. Maybe about five to ten percent lower than that of ours. Hm."


    This was a good sign. Not just because they were likelier to win, but also because it meant that they really were being stretched by conflict in three ways. It seemed as though they were hitting their limits with Martial capital.


    The force they gathered was the bare minimum to ensure that a loss wasn''t guaranteed.


    (''That means the likelihood of a Martial Squire being dispatched is quite high,'') Rui noted.


    No group, Martial tribe or otherwise, could afford to lose too many Martial Apprentices. Although a single Martial Squire would win against even dozens of Martial Apprentices, that did not make a single Martial Squire more valuable than dozens of Martial Apprentices.


    Martial Apprentices were all, in some ways, Squire candidates in a sense. In the future, dozens of Martial Apprentices would yield a few Martial Squires. In the long run, the value of Martial Apprentices exceeded theirbat prowess alone due to their potential to discover their Martial body and enter a higher realm of power.


    The K''ulnen tribe was the same, they would not allow their Martial Apprentices to get butchered, and hence would send in reinforcements capable of helping and saving them; Martial Squires.


    (''When that happens, I''m going to kill them so quick they won''t know what hit them... Literally.'')


    Soon enough, the two forces ran into each other.


    The Martial Apprentices paused the moment they sensed them, before retreating slowly. They each began firing long-range attacks at their opponents from a great distance. A flurry of wings, sounds, and even rocks flew forward as the battle began.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 669 Variety

    The battle began as the Martial Apprentices of the Longranger Sect fired all kinds of long-range attacks at the Martial Apprentices of K''ulnen Tribe once they entered the firing range of the Martial Apprentices.


    Rui watched with interest as he studied the battle in slow motion.


    (''There is more diversity among the Martial Apprentices'' long-range offense than I expected,'') Rui noted with interest.


    He even saw one Martial Apprentice wielding Seismic radiation as a weapon, used to destabilize the ground that the enemy Martial Apprentices traversed on.


    (''Nice. Bet the G''ak''arkan Tribe would really love to have that one.'') Rui mused.


    He hadn''t seen many of the kinds of techniques that he saw with these Martial Apprentices. He had to admit, the Longranger Sect certainly knew its long-range.


    (''Still¡­ Rocks?'')


    He nced in interest at the Martial Apprentice who was hurling literal rocks at the enemies. Furthermore, she was doing it in the most primitive fashion, seemingly. She literally just kicked at the ground and debris flew forward at tremendous speeds.


    (''Wait a minute¡­ She''s not just kicking.'') Rui realized as an eyebrow of rose. (''She''s doing something simr to the reverse of my Flux Earther technique.'')


    The Flux Earther technique involved stically converting the kic energy of an attack into the kic energy of his body through an stic collision, before grounding it into the ground with the help of the Reverberating Lance technique.


    What she was doing on the other hand was stically converting her own kic energy into the kic energy of anything that she could kick. Once the object inherited her kic energy, it would naturally end up moving at tremendous speeds forward.


    It was a bizarre technique, but Rui couldn''tin about its power or effectiveness.Material ? of N?velDrama.Org.


    (''It doesn''t require learning breathing techniques or any additional crutch techniques that many long-range techniques, so the difficulty was probably much lower than a wind-based technique. Quite practical, really. I bet the G''ak''arkan Tribe would like that.'')


    There were several other techniques that caught his eye. He didn''t even bother contributing as he spent his time analyzing their techniques in interest.


    (''The seismic radiation technique is in a way the opposite of the rock flinging technique,'') Rui mused.


    He was converting the power of his strikes into surface-level seismic radiation techniques that allowed him to disrupt the grounding of approaching techniques.


    (''It''s like a failed version of the second half of my Flux Earther technique,'')


    Reverberating Lance in the Flux Earther transmitted the impact of the attack deep into the ground such that it did not affect the surface, but if he didn''t then it would affect the surface.


    (''The difference is that he''s directing the seismic radiation in one direction; towards his enemies, rather than in all directions. Quite impressive.'') Rui acknowledged.


    His eyes ran across all of the other techniques being employed. Wind was the norm, but he even saw arm extensions, and even fire. Something that he had only seen once.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    (''The gimmicks are quite attractive. But that isn''t the area in which the G''ak''arkan Tribe iscking,'') Rui turned back to face their opponents, taking a good look at them as well.


    They all simply rushed forward with balled fists or open palms.


    From the few attacks that they had tried tounch, it didn''t seem as though they had anything interesting at all.


    Of course, Rui was starting to understand why the Martial Union hadn''t been pining to obtain the techniques of the K''ulnen Tribe. Unlike the G''ak''arkan Tribe, the K''ulnen Tribe did not possess any remarkable novelties, thus the Martial Union had no interest whatsoever regarding that tribe.


    (''Well, let''s speed this up a bit, shall we?'') Rui sighed as he opened his mouth.


    THWOOM!


    He employed the power that he was capable of when he was a Martial Apprentices, which while nowhere near what he was capable of now, was still enough to overwhelm most Martial Apprentices.


    BAM!


    The sound projectile struck a charging Martial Apprentice, knocking him unconscious and giving him a concussion.


    BAM BAM BAM!


    Three more attacks invited three more groans and wails of pain. Broken ribs, face, and arms were just the direct consequences. In less than a second, he had taken four Martial Apprentices.


    "Move backward and maintain distance!" The leader of their unit bellowed. The Martial Artists of the K''ulnen Tribe were closing too much distance even if the Martial Apprentices of the Martial Union were doing a great job mowing them down and hurting them with long-range attacks.


    Retreating backward was amon way for long-range Martial Artists to ensure that close-quarters Martial Artists never managed to get their hands on them.


    They moved backward as they continuously rained a volley of attacks on their opponents. Although one or two of the Martial Artists of the K''ulnen Tribe managed to sneak past the volley and get close to their opponents, Rui subtlyunched a sound bullet, knocking them down before they ever managed to reach close.


    Although he wasn''t interested in fighting the battles of Martial Apprentices for them, this battle was important. He wanted to make as perfect of an impression on the G''ak''arkan Tribe as possible.


    Not a single casualty, and not even a single injured Martial Apprentices. A literally perfect battle. Of course, if not for the fact that Rui had taken down some of the key Martial Apprentices while also sabotaging their sess in breaking through, it would definitely have not been possible for the victory to be this squeaky clean.


    Now Rui just needed to ensure that they pushed hard enough to force the K''ulnen Tribe to deploy as strong a Martial Squire as they were willing to deploy. The stronger the Martial Squire, the more impressive it would be when he took them down effortlessly.


    As for how he intended to do that, he had spent weeks preparing a n and making preparations to fulfill that n when the time came.


    Although it wasn''t easy, he had gone to extreme lengths to ensure that not a single thing could go wrong.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 670 Changes

    Time passed on more monotonously than Rui had expected, the entire battle was happening in slow motion within his eyes, so he had gotten rather bored for quite a while now. As time passed, his intervention in the battle reduced bit by bit, to ensure that the battle proceeded more organically, otherwise he would end up taking too much credit from the Martial Apprentices of the Longranger Sect that were partaking in this battle.


    He had beenunching fewer attacks and had also been sabotaging his opponents less as time passed by.


    The problem for the K''ulnen Tribe was the fact that the advantages that came from the initial numbers advantage, as well as the higher-quality Martial Artists in general. On top of that the umted advantage that came from having an immensely sessful battle up till this point was also adding on top of the pile.


    It was slowly starting to get overwhelming at this point. Unlike before, a single Martial Apprentice of the K''ulnen Tribe had to face more than one long-range Martial Artist of the Martial Union and the Longranger Sect since their numbers had been cut down since the start of the battle.


    It was already difficult for them having to deal with just a single Martial Apprentice, but now that they had to deal with a lot more, not a single close-range Martial Apprentice of the Longranger Sect was able to prate the wave of attacks that wereing from the distance and close the distance faster than the Longranger Martial Artist was moving back.


    The Martial Artists of the Longranger Sect had also coordinated their matchups much more excellently than at the start of the battle. It helped that they had a solid intelligence advantage over the K''ulnen Tribe.


    The heavy long-range artillery Martial Artists focused on the heavyweight durable close-range Martial Artists in the K''ulnen Tribe. Thetter was extremely difficult to halt in their path and required serious firepower within the Apprentice Realm to stop them.


    They were generally handled with techniques with high single-hit power or techniques that could be used continuously, resulting in a tremendous amount of power being outputted every second.


    Only such techniques could stop the momentum of heavyweight power and durability-oriented close-range Martial Artists.


    On the other hand, there were plenty of middle and lightweight maneuvering-oriented Martial Apprentices that were able to dodge the attacks of such unwieldy, albeit powerful, attacks. These kinds of Martial Apprentices did not fear such attacks since it was extremely difficult to hit them with such attacks.


    Instead, they were handled by the Martial Apprentices of the Longranger Sect which was capable of highly flexible and adjustable, quick and wider attacks. Such techniques were inherently harder to avoid due to the higher area of effect, while also being easier for the long-range Martial Artist to tag due to their flexible nature.


    The biggest downside to such techniques was the fact that their power was quitecking. This meant that it would be nearly impossible to take out heavyweight power or defense-oriented Martial Artists. On the flip side, lightweight Martial Artists almost always tended to have low durability and toughness which meant that even such powercking techniques were strong enough to be effective against them as a means of offense.


    BAM!


    "Argh!"


    Another powerful K''ulnen Martial Apprentice fell to a key shot that hit a vital, incapacitating them. The momentum of the K''ulnen Tribe''s charge had stalled to a tipping point.


    BAM BAM BAM!


    Attacks rained on them wave after wave. Not only did they significantly hamper the path forward, but they were also beginning to push back!


    Step by step, leap by leap, the Martial Apprentices of the K''ulnen Tribe backed off as the overwhelming amount of artillery piled on them.


    (''Anytime now,'') Rui grew more alert as he waited for the signal.


    "Chase after them!" An order was bellowed once the Martial Apprentices of the K''ulnen Tribe learned that they had effectively lost the battle.


    The Longranger Martial Apprentices began charging forward swiftly, unwilling to let their enemies retreat easily when they had such dominant odds.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    That''s when it happened.


    PEWWW¡­


    What appeared to be a firecracker of some sort wasunched into the air.N?vel(D)ra/ma.Org exclusive ? material.


    BANG!


    It exploded, producing a lot of sound and light.


    Rui grinned. "It''s time,"


    This was the signal that the Martial Apprentices were supposed tounch when they were in real trouble, ording to the intelligence that had been gathered on the K''ulnen Tribe


    That served as a signal to summon a Martial Squire to clean up the mess.


    "Retreat!" Rui ordered them Martial Apprentices.


    They were well aware of what was about toe, having been debriefed about this operation thoroughly.


    Rui remained behind as he prepared himself to use the Void Pathfinder technique.


    Normally, the Void Pathfinder technique, which was the VOID algorithm applied to the Pathfinder technique could not be applied to Martial Artists of which he hadn''t prepared a predictive model and thus an adapted style to counter them.


    That was why Rui had painstakingly built predictive models for all of the Martial Squires of the K''ulnen Tribe for almost two months. It had been quite difficult and had taken quite some time, but he had done all of that not just for today''s spectacle, but also for future conflicts against the Martial Squires of the K''ulnen Tribe.


    The VOID algorithm was necessary in this case for when the target of his Pathfinder technique was in motion since it would require some degree of prediction that he would use to input into the ODA System. Together, he would be able to achieve a feat that ought to leave even the G''ak''arkan Tribe''s jaw-dropping.


    (''Now then¡­ Which one will it be in the end?'') Rui wondered.


    BEEP BEEP


    Hisms device vibrated, drawing his attention.


    [Code H]


    Said the message that Kane had sent him.


    (''¡­Unexpected,'') Rui shrugged as he prepared himself to execute the ODA algorithm in a split second when the Martial Squire arrived. (''But not a problem.'')


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 671 Outcome

    Even if Rui had made predictive models for all of the Martial Squires ahead of time, he could not know which Martial Squire was being deployed when the K''ulnen Tribe''s Martial Apprentice inevitably failed, ahead of time. That was why Kane had been deployed outside of the K''ulnen vige, waiting to identify which of the Martial Squires of the K''ulnen Tribe had been dispatched against the Martial Apprentices of the Martial Union to protect the K''ulnen Martial Apprentices.


    He was to immediately inform Rui of which of the Martial Artists had been deployed via a pre-decided code since they did not know the names of all of the Martial Squires of the K''ulnen Tribe.


    Code H was a low-grade Martial Squire, lower than Rui but not by much.


    Based on the intel that the intelligence team had gathered on the man, he was an extremely close-quarter striking-oriented Martial Squire whose Martial Path was centered around elbow and knee striking. This caused his Martial Art to turn out to resemble something like a fusion between Muay Thai and St, two traditional martial arts of Earth from Thand and Southeast Asia.


    Rui had painstakingly constructed a predictive model of his iing opponent based on the intelligence gathered by the Martial Union as well as data that he himself had collected based on surveince of the battles between the K''ulnen Tribe and other Martial Sects that Squire H had partaken in.


    Rui closed his eyes as he brought up the predictive model for Martial Squire code H from his mind pce, readying it to immediately fire in an input and pass the output to the ODA System.


    And soon enough, Squire H entered the very periphery of his Tempestuous Feel technique. One of the challenges of applying his Pathfinder technique to Martial Squires was the fact that Martial Squires often traveled and fought in the air, which meant that Seismic Mapping was useless in this scenario, the only thing that he could do was rely on tempestuous Feel.


    The second that Squire H hit the edge of Rui''s Tempestuous Feel sense, Rui''s pupils dted. His brain went into overdrive as the entirety of his mind fired up, furiously rushing to ensure that the VOID algorithm and the ODA System would bepleted as early as possible.


    He pumped histest sensory data into the VOID algorithm, and immediately he extracted a high-certainty prediction of his opponent''s position. Almost reflexively, he tossed that prediction of his opponent''s future position and trajectory into the ODA System, establishing the predicted data as the position of the target.


    Instantly, heputed it and obtained the trajectory of the Sonic Bullet that he would beunching against his opponent.


    The second half of the ODA System was alsoputed rather swiftly. Thankfully the atmosphere was tranquil, the atmospheric factors were rather easy and simple to predict.


    It all came together.


    An image formed inside Rui''s head.N?vel(D)ra/ma.Org exclusive ? material.


    The exact movements he had to make. From the position of his limbs to the center of gravity. He could see exactly what he needed to do, where he needed to be, and when he needed to be there.


    With almost no dy, he shot into position, opening his mouth andunching a small, yet potent Sonic Bullet.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    THWOOM


    The sound bullet flew for just three seconds... before stopping. Stopping after it crashed through the right eyeball of Squire H.


    There was no scream, nor a struggle. There was no resistance, nor evasion.


    THUD


    The body of Squire H fell from the sky, falling straight down to the ground like a puppet whose strings were cut.


    Rui heaved a deep sigh as he began panting slowly. The sheer mental strain of pulling off what he did was not low. The VOID algorithm was hard enough as it was, the ODA System piled on top of that, on top of yet anotheryer of difficulty being the fact that his opponent was a sprinting Squire gave him no room for error whatsoever. He had to be exactly perfect, and not even the tiniest bit less.


    Yet, one could be quite certain that he''d seeded, given the unmoving body of his target. Rui couldn''t even sense a heartbeat through Seismic Mapping.


    Rui hit a button on hisms device, before sky-walking above the trees, revealing himself to the world. He donned his grade-ten Martial Squire mask, allowing any scout of any Martial Tribe to feel his presence and the illusion of power he projected.


    He also wanted to highlight the distance from which he had sessfully taken that shot, highlighting the power of his technique quite deeply.


    He quickly began retreating towards the Vilun Settlement at top speed. The K''ulnen Tribe would no doubt be extremely furious at the death of a Martial Squire, and he did not want to wait around to deal with repercussions directly. He did not think he stood a chance if he had to deal with more than one Martial Squire at a time unless they were extremely weak.


    His mouth broke into a shark-like grin as he rushed back towards the Vilun settlement at top speed.


    He couldn''t help but feel quite excited at the feat that he had just aplished. It was not hard at all to believe that he was a grade-ten martial Squire given that he just nailed a Martial Squire from nearly a kilometer away!


    If the G''ak''arkan Tribe was merely interested before, he had no doubt that they were extremely shocked at this point. After all, the feat he aplished was not something that any Martial Squire could possibly aplish, yet if there was one that could, it could only be a grade-ten Martial Squire, correct?


    He did not think that even the Martial Squires would be able to keep theirposure when they learned what Rui could do despite the distance. If Rui was not wrong, then he had achieved a feat that they likely were not confident of replicating with their own long-range prowess.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 672 Reaction

    As he had predicted, the impact that his feat had was not low. The most immediate of which he could see the moment he returned.


    "As expected!" Senior Ceeran grinned excitedly. "You were able to pull it off! I did not doubt you for a second!"


    It was true, Senior Ceeran was one of the few people who expressed his full-fledged support for Rui''s n after he had brought it up and proposed it.


    The Senior had long known and had directly witnessed Rui''s spectacr long-range uracy, he had even begun training in the technique after Rui sold the technique to the Martial Union. His support for Rui came from solid foundations as opposed to blind faith.


    However, it had be clear to Rui that of all of the Martial Artists of the Longranger Sect that had been deployed to the Vilun Sect, none of them had any knowledge regarding the Pathfinder technique at all.N?vel(D)ra/ma.Org exclusive ? material.


    They all stared at Ves like he was an alien thatnded from outer space. Their stares were wide-eyed, their silence was loud, and they naturally parted ways for Rui as he walked through the crowd.


    "Rui, great job!" Kane grinned.


    He had been quite surprised when he had heard Rui''s n. Of course, this wasn''t the first time that he had heard of the Pathfinder technique from Rui. Yet this certainly was the first time he learned what the technique was capable of. Rui had merely introduced it as a long-range technique.


    Of course, knowing Rui, he knew that it would be anything but a normal mundane technique, having benefited from Rui''s previous original technique greatly as a Martial Squire. Still, he had been more than just a little surprised when he learned about exactly what Rui had been setting out to aplish, and what he had ended up seeding in aplishing.


    "Thanks Senior Ceeran, Kane," Rui smiled at the two of them, before turning to special agent Cravis. "What is the response from the K''ulnen Tribe?"


    "Your feat has caused quite a bit of ruckus within their vige. A lot of rage, shock, and even panic," Special Agent Cravis replied. "The body has already been retrieved by a high-grade defensive Martial Squire. It is quite clear that despite you retreating from the battlefield in an overt manner, they are still taking remarkable precautions to ensure that what happened will not repeat."


    Rui nodded, having expected that. Even if Rui left, they would feel incredibly stupid if the same thing happened yet again because they let their guards down.


    "We have observed a warmongering spark within the tribe. It seems that the impact that this shocking death has had on them is much greater than if he had died in an extended fight. It appears that they are highly unsatisfied with the seemingly vain and meaningless death of their Martial Squire." Special agent Cravis exined.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    Rui raised an eyebrow and looked at him with a hint of concern. "Surely this won''t escte beyond the expected degree, right?"


    "Rest assured sir, we are quite certain that the K''ulnen Tribe will not abandon all their pursuits and engage in an all-out war against us purely because of the death of a single Martial Squire. Though, as expected, you can rest assured that we have gained the highest priority of all of their ongoing conflicts." Special agent Cravis exined.


    "Good, because it sounded like they were going to do something rash based on what you''d just described to me," Rui sighed in relief.


    "They cannot afford to do that, sir," Special Agent Cravis exined. "We have not crossed their bottom line by engaging in gross vitions of their purely civilian poption. We killed a Martial Squire that they had deployed to a battlefield that was supposed to be only for Martial Apprentices. Considering that their Martial Squire perished on the battlefield, a battlefield he was not supposed to be a part of, they do not have much of apelling incentive to react extremely."


    "You would think the death of a Martial Squire would be a morepelling reason tosh out than the death of civilians, at least that''s the way it is everywhere on the Panama Continent," Rui mused.


    "On the Panama Continent, perhaps. But we are quite far away from the maind. The culture here is different. Deaths of warriors on the battlefield are anything but unusual to them. Sometimes one side wins, and sometimes the other side does. Every Martial tribe is intimately experienced within both oues. However, an attack on civilians is something entirely different. If they let that slide, it would be no different from announcing to the entire ind that they have grown weak, and that their warriors were too weak to protect their own people. Not only is that a disgrace that they are highly repulsed by, but being perceived as weak or soft would invite greater opposition and pressure from their rivals and enemies."


    "Their values are fundamentally different from that of ours. Their strong desire for war and conflict is what allows them to cope with the deaths of their warriors since it is an unavoidable consequence of their very way of life. But a dastardly attack on their non-warrior members isn''t," Rui shook his head, sighing in resignation.


    It was this warped culture that had made what should have been an open-and-shut diplomatic endeavor long ago, draw out across many years.


    "Never mind all of that," Rui continued. "Just be sure to update me on any and all abnormal movements of the K''ulnen Tribe. And also, keep an eye on the surrounding Martial Tribes as well, it won''t be bad to cue in on their situation as well."


    Rui paused in his tracks as he realized he forgot to inquire about arguably the most important party on the ind.


    "Tell me what we know about the G''ak''arkan tribe''s reaction. We already know that there''s no way they missed a conflict of this scale in their geographic vicinity, rtively speaking."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 673 Incredulity

    "What?!"


    A wave of incredulity spread across the members of the vige council meeting of the G''ak''arkan Tribe.


    Inside the little council meeting room at the center of the vige were many dozens of members, each of them being a Martial Artist. This was the prerequisite to being qualified to be a member of this meeting. The three Martial Seniors of the tribe faced the rest of the Martial Artists, whose seating position was determined by their power. The strongest of Martial Squires sat the closest to the leaders of the tribe, while the weakest of Martial Apprentices sat the furthest away.


    Currently, they all faced one of the youngest Martial Squires of the tribe who had just returned from observing thetest battle between the K''ulnen Tribe and the Martial Union. The sheer scale of the battle was so high that the G''ak''arkan Tribe decided to send a Martial Squire to observe the happenings of the battle rather than a Martial Apprentice.


    Normally, a council meeting would never be called just to hear the report of such a battle. However, the leaders of the Martial tribe decided to call one nheless when they heard his shocking ounts of the battle.


    "What? What did you just say?" One of the eldest Martial Squires of the tribe couldn''t help but murmur in shock.


    "It is exactly as I said, sir H''Rulu," The Martial Squire scout managed to squeeze out. "When the Martial Artist of the second rank was dispatched from the K''ulnen Tribe, one of the Martial Apprentices stayed behind and waited for his arrival, seemingly. And when the K''ulnen Martial Artist was just a little under a few kilometers away¡­ the outsider Martial Artist opened his mouth andunched an attack, a few secondster the K''ulnen Martial Artist suddenly copsed to the ground a kilometer away bleeding from his eye¡­ And then the rank of the outsider Martial Artist went up by one! His aura became that of a powerful rank-two Martial Artist. It was unbelievable. I thought I was daydreaming! How could something like that happen? I''m not sure, it was¡­"


    The scout had be absorbed in his own thoughts, losing cognizance of where he was.


    "Wait wait!" Another Martial Squire raised his hand. "You''re telling me this rank one outsider Martial Artist became a rank two Martial Artist?! Afterunching an attack that killed the K''ulnen Martial Artist from a kilometer away?! Ha! Do you think we''re fools? Have you been drinking?"


    A few nervous chuckles rose from the crowd. It was easier to believe that this was merely a drunk man''s ramblings than to ept that this was the actual truth.


    The scout''s eyebrows furrowed at the usation. "It''s the truth! I know what I saw. I confirmed it many times. I even pierced my own flesh because I thought I was literally in a dream!"N?vel(D)ra/ma.Org exclusive ? material.


    He pointed at the reddenedyers of cloth wrapped around his palm. "It happened. I checked! I saw the K''ulnen Tribe drag away its corpse very soon after! The blood on the ground is still there! I carefully verified the distance between the battlefield where the outsider Martial Squire was present, and it was without a doubt a huge distance!"


    The members of the council meeting stirred at those words, this was far more undeniable proof of the man''s words.


    "Enough," K''M, one of the Martial Seniors of the tribe, said with a measured tone to the members of the council who tried refuting the scout. "X''Na is one of our best scouts, his word is very credible. We have already verified with other scouts watching the K''ulnen Tribe of his report. It is true."<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    One word from her, one of the most powerful and important members of the tribe ended all of the reluctance from the recalcitrant members. As a Martial Senior, her word was nearly absolute to the rest of the tribe.


    "But¡­ how can this be?"


    "How can a rank one Martial Artist jump to the second rank so quickly and without the ritual?"


    "That too in the middle of battle! Is this a technique of the outsiders?"


    The atmosphere of the council meeting grew chaotic and unstable, the reluctance to ept the scout''s report as true was understandable. After all, the implications of the truth were scary.


    "That outsider Martial Artist¡­ I can''t be sure of this... But his aura felt exactly like that of the diplomat who came to meet us a few months ago. Almost identical, really. It''s a shame that I couldn''t see his face," The scout squeezed out, breaking the silence.


    "If that is the case¡­ then that means he has the ability to hide his strength," K''ahru, the youngest Martial Senior realized. "It''s unheard of, but it''s a much less insane exnation than a rank one Martial Artist jumping to the second rank in the middle of battle¡­"


    This earned some nods as several members sighed in relief.


    If the outsiders had the ability to break through to the second round without the Sacred Ritual, then they would have been a terrifyingly powerful force. However, this exnation made more sense and was grounded closer to what they knew.


    "Still¡­unching an attack from that far away, hitting the eye of the target urately and killing a rank two Martial Artist¡­" K''ahru gritted his teeth. "His powerful aura does not do his prowess justice. This is the strongest outsider we have evere across after the rank three Martial Artist¡­ the strongest rank two Martial Artist that I have ever seen, at least."


    This earned the nod of many members of the meeting. Such a statement would normally wound the immense pride of the rank-two Martial Artists of the tribe, however, given the magnitude of the feat that they were beingpared, not a single one of them dared to express any disagreement.


    "Honestly¡­ I don''t think I could replicate this," K''M honestly admitted as she heaved a sigh of admiration. "That technique that he used to aplish this¡­ I wonder if he is willing to trade it with us¡­"


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 674 Opposing

    That statement turned heads, filling their eyes with greed at the thought of obtaining such power.


    Were the outsiders willing to offer them this technique, among others?


    If so¡­ that made the prospect of trading with them much more alluring than before. As a long-range-oriented Martial tribe, obtaining such a technique would likely boost their power significantly.


    "Do not lose yourselves in your greed," The chieftain ordered, immediately drawing the attention of all the members of the council meeting. "Even if we were to obtain that powerful technique, it is quite likely that very few of us will be able to master it. Such power does note easily, and the greater the power of a technique, the greater the difficulty of a technique. With how immensely capable this technique is, it may be so that none of us can master it."


    This dampened the excitement and greed in the atmosphere of the council meeting. The chieftain''s words weighed the heaviest, and everybody took them seriously. Of course, they were all aware of the corrtion between power and the difficulty of techniques.


    "Furthermore, we don''t know if they are willing to trade it with us in the first ce¡­" Senior K''ahru. "But even if they aren''t¡­"


    He gritted his teeth as his aura intensified, bathing the entire council in his heavy aura. The Martial Squires present shivered as they felt his immense greed and battle lust.


    "Even if they aren''t¡­" He continued. "Can we really let them keep such a technique to themselves?"


    The question awoke the fighting spirit of many members of the council. He had directly appealed to the battle lust that every G''ak''arkan warrior was imbued with from birth. He had directly appealed to their greed to obtain such power.


    "That''s right¡­" Their eyes widened. "We must obtain this technique at all costs!"


    They were warriors. They fought. It made sense. Why give up their sacred techniques when they could simply obtain what they wanted by force?


    "Enough," K''M warned them with a stern tone. "Have you forgotten why you want their techniques in the first ce? Because they are strong. Do you think such strong people will roll over and let you have their techniques? What if they decided to do that with us? Would we roll over and let them have our techniques?"


    This stirred up the council members even more.


    Giving up their techniques just because someone was attacking them for it? Just the very thought of that was disgustingly alien to them.


    "Never!"


    "We will fight to thest warrior to protect our techniques!"


    "Then you can be assured that you''ll have to fight to thest warrior to obtain their techniques as well," K''M retorted. "We will lose more than we have gained."


    "Your words are cowardly, sister," K''ahru''s icy tone grew dangerously perilous. "Do you think we are weaker than them? They don''t even have a single rank three Martial Artist right now!"<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    "Don''t be naive, little brother," She scoffed contemptuously. "Look at all of their actions thus far. Do you really think they trust us to act friendly after showing us their treasure? I wouldn''t be surprised if there was a rank three Martial Artist lurking in their vige,ying low."


    "Ha! A rank three Martial Artist lowering his head and hiding among lesser Martial Artists? That is absurd!" K''ahru snarled.


    "The outsiders have absurd customs. We know too little about them," She retorted. "Waging war with them will bring us many losses. Even if we win, we will be too weak to defend against our sworn rivals and enemies¡­ Does anybody want that to happen?"


    This struck a greater chord with them. Unlike the Martial Union, the G''ak''arkan Tribe''s rtionships with the other Martial tribes on the ind were more than just extremely bad. They had centuries worth of bad blood built up. The very thought of losing and being destroyed by their enemies and rivals put a stop to all of their momenta. The stakes were too great for even thick-headed warriors like them to rush in.


    K''ahru gritted his teeth as he sensed the ceding mes that he had tried stoking in the warriors of his tribe. He turned towards his older sister with a hateful look. "A little coward who''s too afraid to fight even lesser Martial Artists. Pathetic. You''re a disgrace of a warrior!"


    Her eyes sharpened as he insulted her in front of the entire tribe.


    She walked towards him. "An immature child who needs to needs to be treated like a baby. Think with your brains instead of your balls, for once, fool."


    The two of them surged forward with furious expressions.


    "Enough," An overpowering aura suppressed theirs.


    They winced under the overwhelming pressure of the most powerful warrior and the leader of their tribe.


    "Yes, sir," They bowed toward him.


    "I have heard enough," he raised his hand, heaving a sigh. "I have made my decision."


    The atmosphere of the council meeting grew more severe as everybody waited for the chieftain''s decision. His word was absolute. His power was much greater than that of K''M and K''ahru, and his experience on the battlefield dwarfed that of theirs. Even the two of them did not possess the capital to defy his orders.


    "As usual, the two of you have opposing views," He began. "And, as usual, both those views possess merit nheless."N?vel(D)ra/ma.Org exclusive ? material.


    He turned towards K''M. "Your concerns are valid and sound. There is a lot at stake here. Cooperating with them in a trade is a much better oue than having to wage a war against them. We can grow considerably more powerful without suffering any material loss."


    K''M nodded, delighted to see her opinion being given its due credit.


    "However, K''ahru is also right. Our tribe is muchrger than their settlement. Furthermore, in the past three months, we have not seen a hint of a rank three Martial Artist leading their settlement. We haven''t yete across an individual possessing such power. While it isn''t impossible that they are in hiding. To remain in hiding for nearly an entire season seems very far-fetched. It is much likelier that there is no rank three Martial Artist, this is consistent with that rank two diplomats clearly being the leader of their vige," He said.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 675 Decisions

    K''ahru grinned at the chieftain''s words. "Does that mean-!"


    He froze as a wave of anger washed across him.


    "Do not interrupt me," The chieftain''s sharp eyes red at him. "I see much merit in both your stances. However, what weck is the necessary information we need to make this decision. Therefore, I have decided we will wait until we can move with confidence. None of us wish to weaken ourselves with a war that doesn''t need to be waged just to be consumed by our real enemies. Yet, at the same time, none of us wish to simply hand over our precious and sacred techniques so easily."


    He stood up, indicating the end of the meeting.


    K''M and K''ahru felt ambivalent, while they did not get what they wanted, at the very least what they definitely didn''t want happening did not happen. Thus the oue was tentatively neutral.


    The council dispersed quickly as each member processed what they had learned from it.


    Back in the settlement of the Martial Union, Rui and Special Agent Cravis were still concerning themselves with the reaction of the G''ak''arkan Tribe.


    "It''s unfortunate that we do not have a functioning wiretap in the council meeting room anymore," Special Agent Cravis sighed with regret.


    "There hasn''t been an appropriate opportunity since then," Rui shook his head. "The presence of three Martial Seniors concentrated within such a small vige makes it difficult to infiltrate the ce."


    Martial Seniors possessed tremendously powerful natural senses, Rui had confirmed. Senior Ceeran''s natural senses were sharper than all of Rui''s sensory techniquesbined. This meant that trying to infiltrate the vige when there were Martial Seniors was a suicidal operation for the most part.


    "Last time, it was an exceedingly rare opportunity that the two younger Martial Seniors K''M and K''ahru had left the vige temporarily at night while the chieftain was asleep. That is the only reason I approved Kane infiltrating the vige and nting wiretaps," Rui sighed. "Even then, it was extremely dangerous. If the chieftain woke up for any reason, Kane would have zero chance of survival."


    Rui was not willing to put his best friend on such a dangerous mission again.


    "Forget the wiretaps, what can the intelligence and analytics teams tell me about the impact that this battle will have on the G''ak''arkan Tribe?"


    "There are only a few possibilities as we had discussed briefly when you suggested the idea," Special Agent Cravis calmly replied. "For one, we can be assured that they will be shocked regardless of what course of action they choose toe to. Your feat is unprecedented to them,"


    Rui took some pride in knowing this. The fact that his Void Pathfinder was able to shock a tribe that had been practicing and refining their long-range techniques for centuries was greatly validating, but that was beside the point of the discussion.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    "Well?"N?vel(D)ra/ma.Org exclusive ? material.


    "We believe that they will eventually choose to cooperate to obtain our techniques, or they will choose to wage a war against us to obtain our techniques," Special Agent Cravis exined. "Cooperation would be themon sense option were they a normal state, but given their warped culture as well as the fact that they perceive a Martial Squire instead of a Martial Senior leading our settlement will likely make thetter option more alluring than it normally would be. As for which route they will choose to go. Only time will tell."


    "Then it is time to prop Senior Ceeran back up, I presume?" Rui asked as he quickly understood the circumstances and immediately came up with a straightforward solution.


    "It will serve as a deterrence, that is true," Special Agent Cravis nodded. "However, the problem is that propping up Senior Ceeran may also make the situation worse."


    Rui turned towards Special Agent Cravis with a knowing expression. "His previous interactions with the G''ak''arkan Tribe."


    "That''s exactly so, sir," He nodded in return. "Senior Ceeran had wounded their pride in his previous endeavor to negotiate with them. One of the reasons that war didn''t break out then and there was because he apologized. Martial Seniors apologizing are an extremely heavy and significant gesture in the G''ak''arkan Tribe, after all. Although Senior Ceeran never intended to offend the and was merely being brutally honest, that doesn''t change their impression of him. Given how irrational the G''ak''arkan Tribe is, they may be more driven to wage war seeing him. After all, one Martial Senior is not enough to defeat three of them, in their eyes. Extracting the techniques of a Martial Senior may even appeal more to the Martial Seniors of the G''ak''arkan Tribe."


    "May?"


    "Unfortunately, we are unable to model all of their thought processes and patterns. Thus it is unclear how they will respond. However, the results of propping up Senior Ceeran cannot be undone, good or bad. Please keep that in mind."


    "Can we switch him out for another Martial Senior?" Rui wondered half-heartedly.


    "Definitely not," Special Agent Cravis shook his head. "Senior Ceeran enthusiastically volunteered for this mission. That is one of the reasons that Martial Commissioner Derun got him onboard. Martial Seniors are at the peak of the lower Realms. It will take a lot of time, capital, and justification to rece Senior Ceeran with another Martial Senior. Furthermore, Senior Ceeran strongly desires to be here, it is impossible for you to override his will on that matter. Remember that you are able tomand him to a small extent because he has graciously allowed you to exert authority over him."


    Rui knew that. Senior Ceeran was a purist, quite like himself, when it came to bing stronger. If allowing Rui to take charge of a mission that he was part of meant that he could obtain the techniques of the G''ak''arkan Tribe and be stronger, he was more than willing to allow it. It also helped that he was fond of Rui for creating the Pathfinder technique.


    "I''m aware of that," Rui sighed. "Keep a closer eye on their movements, if we see something rming, then we can reveal the presence of Senior Ceeran."


    "Yes sir."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 676 Escalate

    Thetest battle between the Martial Union and the K''ulnen Tribe had reached the ears of all the Martial tribes on Vilun ind. The manner in which Rui had downed a promising K''ulnen Martial Artist had impressed many Marital Artists. Some found it to be absurd, while others were shocked. There were some who even wanted to challenge Rui to a fight to test themselves against someone of his caliber.


    The battle marked the esction of the conflict between the Martial Union and the K''ulnen Tribe. Now that not only had the first Squire battle been fought, but Squire blood had also been spilled, the battle would no longer go back to being fought between Martial Apprentices.


    Of course, Martial Apprentices would still be involved in the conflict, but their conflict would wrestle around less important avenues and assets of the many reasons that there was friction between the K''ulnen Tribe and the Martial Union.


    The more prime reasons such as the war over the hunting and water sources, as well as ims over secondary and extended territories, would now be fought by the Martial Squires of both sides.


    The Martial Tribes had their primary territories which were thends that their viges upied. However, the Martial Tribes did not tolerate other Martial tribes getting too close to their vige. For example, if another Martial tribe tried building a vige just a kilometer away from an existing vige of another Martial tribe, thetter would most definitely do everything in their power to drive away the intruders.


    They were territorial and did not tolerate other entities and groups infringing within their direct domain of influence.


    This was the reason that the Martial Union could not build their settlement on the Vilun mountain even though there was plenty of space. The Vilun mountain fell within the domain of influence of the G''ak''arkan Tribe and thus the Martial Union''s attempt to build a settlement on the mountain would not be tolerated. It would definitely be a source of intense conflict between the G''ak''arkan Tribe and the Martial Union.


    And it was one of the sources of conflict between the Martial Union and the K''ulnen Tribe.


    "And that is the point of today''s conflict," Rui said out loud.


    He eyes his audience, which consisted of the Martial Squires of the Vilun settlement.


    "This is the first Squire-level conflict that consists of more than just a few Martial Squires," Rui told them. "There''s going to be a lot of chaos, and unlike the previous Squire-level conflicts that we''ve had with the K''ulnen Tribe it is much harder to control the flow of the entire battle, or n the entire battle as well as we''d like to."Material ? of N?velDrama.Org.


    It has been a week since the first Squire-level conflict between the Martial Union and the K''ulnen Tribe. Since then, several shes had urred featuring more than one Martial Artist. Rui had partaken in a portion of them after carefully nning and making all the preparations that need to be done.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    He couldn''t just enter the battlefield rashly. After all, he was targeted far too aggressively and hatefully. The K''ulnen Tribe identified him through his build, not to mention the overpowering aura that he was projecting thanks to the Mind Mask technique. He was still a grade four Martial Squire at the end of the day, maybe grade five at best. Any Martial Squire at a higher grade would be able to fight and eventually overwhelm him. Since the K''ulnen Tribe was fooled, like everybody else, that he was an extremely powerful Martial Artist, they would undoubtedly send especially powerful Martial Squires to take him down if they ran into him inbat.


    He had experienced something simr in the Serevian Wars, the only problem was that back then he was actually strong enough to deal with even such measures, but this time he definitely was not.


    This meant that he absolutely could not get any close to any of the K''ulnen Martial Squires for more than an instant, otherwise, he might suffer grave damage. In order to be able to do that, he needed to make much greater preparations in advance to close the gap. He spent a greater amount of time analyzing the Martial Squires of the K''ulnen Tribe, sharpening his predictive models. There was no upper limit to the degree to which a predictive model could predict the target, the more data it had, the better it was.


    However, because he didn''t have much time, he needed to cut down on the number of targets that he had.


    He looked through all of the data that the Martial Union had on the K''ulnen tribe. Especially, he scoured through the conflicts that they had partaken in and the Martial Squires that had been respectively deployed in each of those.


    By organizing and tabting the parameters and nature of their battles vs the parameters and nature of the Martial Squires that were deployed in those battles, he was able to develop a predictive model for the Martial Squires that would be deployed in any given battle, given that he had ess to enough information.


    This was not part of the VOID algorithm, of course. What he was doing was employing the same branches of statistics and probability that were used to create part of the predictive capabilities of the VOID algorithm.


    This allowed him to anticipate which Martial Squires were likely to be deployed Knowing that, he could make more extensive and deeper preparations for the Martial Squires that were likeliest to be deployed against the Marital Union.


    (''They''re pissed off at me, so they won''t fight back half-heartedly,'') Rui knew that. But he was actually somewhat happy to know that. Since it meant that he could make better preparations due to having ess to better information regarding his opponents.


    "Be careful, this battle is going to escte the scale of conflicts once again," Rui reminded them. "If things go as nned, then it''s entirely usible that this conflict will reach the Senior Realm."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 677 Contingency

    The Martial Union wasn''t interested in a long-drawn conflict that would stretch out for many months to half a year. The goal of this entire conflict in the first ce was to demonstrate the power and utility of their long-range techniques and draw out the greed of the G''ak''arkan Tribe for those techniques so that the next time that Rui makes an attempt to negotiate with them, it would go much better than it did before.


    That was why Rui had no problems rushing the conflict between the Martial Union and the G''ak''arkan Tribe to the next level. After all, once the conflict between the two groups reached its peak, then their little exhibition conflict would be done, having exhibited everything that they need. At that point, the conflict was no more than a liability that did nothing but sapped away the capital of the settlement.


    Once that happened, Rui would immediately have Kane execute Operation Endline, an operation that would frame another tribe of having abducted the women of the K''ulnen Tribe. Once that happened, that tribe would earn the absolute ire of the K''ulnen Tribe. It was far worse than killing one of their Martial Squires fair and square on the battlefield.


    "Hm?" Rui''s attention was drawn by one of the younger and weaker Martial Squires raising a hand. "Speak, what is it?"N?vel(D)ra/ma.Org exclusive ? material.


    "Uh, sir? I thought that this n could only be executed when certain conditions were fulfilled, conditions that weren''t always fulfilled?"


    "Correct," Rui nodded. "The goal of this operation can only be aplished if the K''ulnen has already dedicated a considerable portion of its Martial Squire capital to other battlefields. The intelligence team very recently discovered that this soon going to be the case, most likely. Once we verify that this is the case, and the K''ulnen Tribe dedicates greater manpower to its battles against H''Nata and the F''Ruku Tribes, then we shall swoop in and attack in its temporarily spent state. It will need to muster out all of its remaining Squire-level assets once that''s done."


    This also helped Rui''s predictive model, allowing him to make far better predictions with the information that he currently held.


    "What about the mission bill for this operation?" Another Martial Squire asked.


    Each of the Martial Squires had grown so ustomed to the system of mission bills that contained all of the information that they needed to know in apact form that the settlement adopted the same briefing to all of its Martial Artists.


    "They''ve beenposed, of course," Rui nodded to the team of assistants in the room. "I''ll break down the most important parts of the n myself here, you can go through the details in your own time immediately after. Of course, there isn''t much time left before themencement of the mission."


    Rui paused for a moment as each of the Martial Squires received a mission bill, before continuing.


    "The goal of this operation is to make a final demonstration of all the cards relevant to the trade that we wish to make happen between the Martial Union and the G''ak''arkan Tribe," Rui informed them once more. "Which means, by the end of it, we''ll have deployed every Martial Squire we have, and more."<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    Several Martial Squires frowned mildly at that.


    "And more?" One of them asked as her eyes widened. "You mean..."


    "That''s right," Rui nodded. "If all goes as nned, then Senior Ceeran will have intervened in this battle."


    The otherwiseposed Martial Squires stirred at those words. Their reactions ranged from excited and motivated to a little anxious and uncertain.


    "Based on our estimations, the K''ulnen Tribe does not possess the assets to push back against the forces in this room with their Martial Squires. This means that they will be forced to deploy a Martial Senior if they wish to avoid incurring heavy losses. After all, the remaining Martial Squires in their vige at the moment are the only Squire-level assets between us and their vige," Rui exined, before continuing. "If we deploy all of our long-range Martial Squires at once, then it is quite likely they will take one look at our numerical advantage and immediately deploy a Martial Senior, with or without their Martial Squires."


    The Martial Squires looked a little pale at the scenario that Rui just described. While the gathering of the Martial Squires within the military conference room was certainly impressive, none of them thought they could fight a Martial Senior and win.


    "Of course, I think we can all agree that such a scenario is undesirable," Rui smirked. "Instead, we will begin by deploying a number of Martial Squires just five percent below the number of Martial Squires that they are able to deploy at all once they havemitted Martial Squires to other battlefields. This is just enough of a margin to be assured that the K''ulnen Tribe won''t deploy its Martial Senior from the get-go."


    "What if it isn''t?" One of them asked, with a skeptical expression.


    "Even if it isn''t, and this is very unlikely, but even if it isn''t, we have Senior Ceeran waiting on standby and on high alert. He''ll move in at top speed the second we have even the first indication that a Martial Senior will be deployed immediately."


    This brought some relief to their faces. As Martial Squires of the Longranger Sect, all of them looked up to Senior Ceeran. Furthermore, as a long-range Martial Senior, he could protect and intervene even before he actually reached the battlefield. This was an even greater reassurance.


    "The likeliest scenario is that we will be embroiled in a heated conflict with the Martial Squires of the K''ulnen Sect," Rui reminded them. "We will need to fight hard and fight strong and produce good results. You have all been assigned duties and roles that are suited to your strengths so that your very best performance can be drawn out of you. Be sure to go all out and show them what we are capable of onest time."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 678 Comparisons

    Those words motivated the Martial Squires a lot. Since this would be their final battle against the K''ulnen Tribe, they were definitely going all out.


    "If this is our final battle, then that means that Senior Ceeran will be taking part anyway, correct?" Another Martial Squire asked.


    "Of course," Rui nodded. "The battle will begin with only Martial Squires, however, as it progresses, we will have reinforcements giving us the edge against their Martial Squires. The K''ulnen Tribe will have no choice asides from deploying their Martial Senior and by that point, it will be outside our hands."


    The Martial Squires nodded, understanding the n.


    This way, they get to demonstrate the full power of the Squire-level assets of the Martial Union, before then demonstrating the full power of the sole Martial Senior of the Martial Union settlement.


    "Um¡­ The K''ulnen Tribe has two Martial Seniors, right? Will Senior Ceeran be able to handle them by himself?" Another Martial Squire boldly voiced out.


    Of course, he immediately turned himself into a target for the res of his fellow peers and sect members. It was a considerableck of faith on his part to ask that question, though Rui did appreciate the caution.


    "Had it been more than just a handful of Martial Seniors, I would entirely share your concerns," Rui smiled. "But just two of the native Martial Seniors of this ind are not enough. Senior Ceeran is in the upper echelons of the Senior Realm by the Martial Union''s standards. That''s good enough."


    There was a moment of silence as the air turned awkward. Not everyone was convinced.


    Rui sighed. "The quality of our Martial Apprentices is greater than that of theirs. This is true across all Realms to varying degrees. The difference is the least in the Apprentice Realm."


    The power of Martial Apprentices had the fewest variables controlling them out of all of the three lower Realms. The potency of one''s Martial Path, the quality of techniques that one had mastered, physicality, and experience were the major factors that decided the power of Martial Apprentices.


    "Because there are fewer variables that determine the power of a Martial Apprentice, that ends up meaning that there are fewer advantages that our Martial Apprentices possess over theirs," Rui exined. "Which is why the gap is the smallest. From what I can see, their Martial Apprentices are about two grades lower than that of ours, on average."


    Rui was absolutely certain that his Martial Apprentice self would have crushed any and all Martial Apprentices on Vilun Ind withughable ease. He was once the strongest Martial Apprentice in the entirety of the Kandrian Empire, it was possible that he would have been mistaken as an extremely weak and young Martial Squire on Vilun Ind. Especially when he had the Mind Mask technique making him look like a weak grade-one Martial Squire.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    "However, the story is not the same when ites to Martial Squires," Rui smiled. "The power of Martial Squireses from not just all of the aforementioned factors for the Apprentice Realm, but also thepatibility and synergy between each of the Martial body, the Martial path, and the Martial Art techniques. The synergy between each of these three provides tremendous amounts of power."


    Rui would know. He produced a grade-eight defensive technique, something that was probably beyond his ability to learn otherwise, and a grade-ten long-range technique that put even Martial Seniors like Senior Ceeran in a fervor.


    "In this regard, it is absolutely the case that we are well beyond them. Take a look at our revolution breakthrough process. We each possess Martial bodies that are most aligned with our Martial Art and Martial Path. However, do you think the same can be said for them?"


    The evolution breakthrough process of the super-nations of the Panama Continent gave the Martial Squires a physicality best suited for their Martial Paths. However, the intelligence and analytics teams hade to the conclusion that their sacred Ascension ritual was incapable of providing the same benefit to the same degree that the Martial Union could.


    This meant that on top of all of the advantages that the Martial Union Apprentices had over the Vilun Apprentices, the Martial Squires had the advantage of a superior and more customized evolution breakthrough process.


    On top of that, they also possessed a greater diversity of techniques and a much stronger foundation due to the sheer amount of research and development that went into optimizing and creating techniques.


    "By my estimate, we, on average, are superior to the native indigenous Martial Squires by two grades. Two grades of the Squire Realm," Rui continued.


    The difference between grades wasrger in the Squire Realm than it was in the Apprentice Realm, which meant that there was a greater gap between the Squires of both sides than the Apprentices of both sides.


    "Now, if we extrapte this to the Senior Realm¡­" Rui smiled. His point had be apparent at this point. It was a solid rationale that was quite convincing to the Martial Squires present.Material ? of N?velDrama.Org.


    Of course, not all of the Martial Squires were aware of the conditions to break through to the Senior Realm, and he highly doubted any of them were actually aware of what the apotheosis to the Senior Realm actually was. Still, even if there were no additional variables in the Senior Realm that further widened the gap between the Seniors of the two sides, it could certainly be no smaller than the gap between the Squires of both sides.


    "And that alone is enough to have confidence in Senior Ceeran," Rui calmly told them. "I have already spoken to Senior Ceeran regarding the matter, and rest assured that his confidence was quitepelling and reassuring to me. In fact, he seemed quite excited to see action after a long time of doing nothing butying low. All of you can talk to him when you get the chance."


    Rui''s words reassured them, his logic was sound which made his confidence much more rxed.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 679 Deployed

    The preparations were soon made. Each of the Martial Squires equipped themselves with the bare minimum unlike what they would for normal missions. Since this operation involved directbat and nothing else, there was no need to make other kinds of preparations or take utilities that they wouldn''t need.


    The only thing they took was a pair of potions, a rejuvenation, and a healing potion. Though, since the G''ak''arkan Tribe was not inclined to ept their technology that they did not understand or trust, using them was not conducive to the goal of the operation.


    "Is everybody ready?" Rui asked once they all gathered back in a dispatch facility in the outer ring of the settlement.


    He didn''t even need to ask, he could feel their steeled wills and determination through their aura.


    "We''ve just gotten word from the intelligence team that the K''ulnen Tribe seems to be about to dispatch arge chunk of their Martial Squires to another battlefield very soon. As soon as we''ve received confirmation that the battle has begun and that it''s toote to call them back, we''ll immediately head out ourselves, got it?" Rui informed them, receiving a series of nods in return.


    Just then, an extremely potent yet restrained presence entered their senses.


    "Senior Ceeran," Rui bowed his head lightly, expressing the respect that the Martial Senior deserved by virtue of being a Martial Senior.


    Rui had also noticed the differences in his demeanor as well. Usually, the man was in a light-hearted albeit highly passionate state of mind. He resembled an excited adventurer or even an artist pursuing their craft into the unknown, looking to improve their craft. Yet today, he was nothing short of a grizzled warrior. His focus was single-minded, single-mindedly on the uing battle.


    He had long been briefed about his role in the battle, and he knew that his role was pivotal, it was no surprise that he took it extremely seriously


    Nobody said a word as they all waited. A brief time passed before Rui finally received the confirmation that he had been waiting for.


    "Alright, it''s time," Rui quickly signed on thest bit of paperwork tomence the operation officially, before eight Martial Squires set out immediately.


    They sprinted through the sky at top speed, zipping through the reluctant air.


    While they could travel much faster when they were onnd, there were far too many obstacles that they would have to permanently destroy in order to surpass their speed through the sky. They had chosen to avoid doing so since their environment was very necessary to their self-sufficiency and sustenance on the ind. All of the Martial Tribes were well aware of this. It was why there was an unwritten agreement to avoid certain parts of the ind when engaging in conflict because if something went wrong, everybody would suffer.


    Martial Squires generally avoided the ground the only time that Martial Seniors shed on the ind had left a gigantic crater that seemed to permanently wipe out any and all vegetation and served as a battlefield for many of the urring conflicts that came muchter.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    As they shed through the sky at tremendous speeds, it was only a short matter of time before they could see the vige of the K''ulenen Tribe in the distance from their elevation. Even though the Martial Union settlement and the K''ulnen vige were separated by several dozens of kilometers, such a distance meant very little to Martial Squires.


    "They''reing," Rui''s eyes narrowed as he managed to distinguish several tiny dots escting from the vige, headed directly toward them. "Just as we predicted, all nine of the remaining Martial Squires in the K''ulnen Tribe have been dispatched to defend their vige. Let''s pause here."


    This confused his peers. "Why do you want to stop? Shouldn''t we drive the battle as close to their vige as possible?"


    Rui shook his head. "If we''re too close to their vige, Senior Ceeran will not be able to intervene in the battle in time, even with his long-range attacks, to handle the Martial Senior that will inevitably be killed."Material ? of N?velDrama.Org.


    This made sense. The rest of the Martial Squires immediately acquiesced, none of them wanted to be left alone facing a Martial Senior, that was a suicide battle that they had no hope of winning whatsoever.


    "Tsk, looks like they''re not so stupid after all." Rui tutted as he saw the Martial Squires of the K''ulnen Vige covering their eyes.


    It was clear that they were extremely wary of Rui''s super long-range uracy. None of them wanted to have their brains scrambled by a sound bullet crashing into their eyes.


    "That''s a shame, but it isn''t outside of my expectations." Rui sighed. It didn''t take a genius to figure this solution out. "Alright, get ready, they''re starting to get close enough."


    The Martial Union''s Martial Squires took their stances as they prepared their long-range attacks.


    Rui went even further back since he had a much greater long-range capability. He was arguably the weakest Martial Squire on the battlefield since this battle was meant to showcase long-range techniques. Which meant that he could not use the vast majority of the techniques that he had mastered.


    This was a serious handicap. If not for the fact that he had a grade-ten long-range technique, he would be utterly inconsequential in this battle. At best he would be able to provide distractions and brief moments of relief for his teammates.


    Of course, Rui had long predicted that this would be the case. He had note this far only to be helpless in battle.


    (''This is going to be one the most challenging battles I will be putting myself through since I became a Martial Squire,'') Rui grinned. Although he was displeased that he wouldn''t be able to utilize his Martial Art, he did enjoy the prospect of pushing his mind to the limit as he tried to make the best of what he had, and he intended to excel at it.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 680 Clash

    "I WILL AVENGE MY BROTHER!"


    Was the first instance ofmunication between the two groups. The woman who bellowed those words from a few kilometers away was one who led the charge of the K''ulnen Martial Artists.


    Rui could feel her hateful re pinning on him even from that distance away. "He just had to have a muscle-brain high-grade Martial Squire for a sister, didn''t he?" He sighed. This was outside of his prediction, but it didn''t alter the battle too much. However, he had to be careful about how far this Martial Squire would be willing to go to take him down.


    She was powerful, he could very clearly feel that she was several grades above him, which meant that she was very capable of ending his life if she wanted to.


    Even though Rui was a grade-four Martial Squire, this grade was above the power that his techniques and Martial body should have yielded.


    It had been less than two years since he had be a Martial Squire, the growth that his Martial body would have had thanks to the evolved muscle hypertrophy and evolved passive tissue conditioning that every Martial body had would have been minimal. He had been told that the power of his Martial body was a few grades below what one would expect from a grade-four Martial Squire. The number of techniques that he had mastered was also lesser than that of other grade-four Martial Squires.


    It took many years to reach close to the halfway point in the Squire Realm power-wise, years that Rui had certainly not fulfilled


    The reason that he was in grade-four despite his infancy in the Squire Realm was thanks to the VOID algorithm and also little thanks to the powerful techniques that he had created.


    However, those were no longer factors in this battle due to the fact that his Martial Art was restrained. The only thing he could use was the Void Pathfinder.


    This meant that the difference between some of his opponents and himself was much more exaggerated.


    (''Especially against that vengeful grizzly bear of a woman,'')


    Her body was huge, packed with muscles that he didn''t even know existed. Hell, considering how strange Martial Squire could be, it may very well have been that they didn''t exist in normal human bodies. Rui wasn''t sure he could take more than even a few attacks from her.


    Thankfully, she didn''t seem too agile, and most of her prowess was likely centered around muscr power and defense. As long as he avoided allowing her to enter within a certain range, he could be assured to be safe.


    It would have been too dangerous for a long-range Martial Squire to fight another Squire many grades above the former, but Rui had a grade-ten technique, perhaps even above grade ten after he used it along with the VOID algorithm.


    He opened his mouth.


    THWOOM!


    A powerful Sonic Bullet flew through the atmosphere, traveling at the spend of sound. The Martial Squires of the K''ulnen Tribe noticed that gesture, scrambling the direction furthest away from when he seemed to haveunched the attack, covering their eyes.


    BAM!


    "Argh!" One of the Martial Squire groaned as immediately reached to caress their bruised and bleeding neck, leaving his eyes exposed for just a split second.


    That was thest gesture he ever made as a second Sonic Bullet crashed into his eyeball the second he dropped his arm guard over his eyes instinctively.


    ...


    All of the Martial Squires froze as they realized what had happened.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    "I''LL KILL YOU!" The leader of the K''ulnen Squire team screeched as her expression grew even more intense and hateful. The other Martial Squires also threw hateful res at him as they raced forward more intensely Seeing theirrade fall so easily and quickly shook all of them, angering them to their core.


    It instilled their hatred and fear of him, atop the grief of losing a brother.


    Yet, this was no time to mourn.


    Rui grinned wildly, further enraging his opponent. (''Taste the power of a predictive model refined over many weeks!'')


    The only predictive models of his that were more refined were that of his friends who he had spent many years observing.N?vel(D)ra/ma.Org exclusive ? material.


    "I''LL HANDLE HIM. THE REST OF YOU FIGHT THE REST!"


    "Fire!" Rui ordered once their opponents entered the more limited firing range of hisrades.


    The remaining Longranger Martial Squire immediately began raining attacks galore on their opponents. As much as Rui would have loved to fulfill his curiosity and analyze their attacks, he didn''t have much leeway. After all, this wasn''t an Apprentice-level battle that posed zero danger to him, one that he could perceive in slow motion.


    This was a powerful battle that could get him killed with even the slightest bit of carelessness. Furthermore, he was facing someone very determined to kill him.


    "YOU''RE DEAD!" She raged as she sprinted across the air toward him.


    She was extremely careful of his one-shot attack, of course. She was infuriated, but she had not lost her mind. Rui could sense the wariness in her demeanor even as she chased after him. He could tell that she was putting a lot of attention on his mouth. Guarding her eyes every time he opened his mouth.


    THWOOM!


    BAM!


    The attack crashed against her neck.


    "IS THAT THE BEST YOU CAN DO?!" She snarled as a brief smile cracked at the edge of her mouth.


    Rui tutted. He had already known that the same trick wouldn''t work twice, but what really displeased him was how little damage his attack caused.


    (''Her body is a fucking tank!'') Rui groaned.


    The Sonic Bullet was not a tremendously powerful attack. He could not possibly inflict much meaningful damage on her body unless it hit a vital, like her eyes.


    Honestly, it was an impossible scenario, if not for a few elements.


    Firstly, Rui did not need to win. He merely needed to engage with his opponent to a respectable degree, and that was enough for the most part. The other Martial Squires were genuine experts at long-range battle and would take care of evoking the greed of the G''ak''arkan Tribe''s techniques.


    Secondly, herbat style was elementary, which meant that his already extra-refined predictive model was especially effective against her.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 681 Catapult

    That battle was intense and heated from the very start. The Longranger Martial Squires demonstrate their prowess and their worth as they rained all kinds of attacks on their opponents. Not only did they demonstrate techniques centered around the same principles that Rui had seen the long-range Martial Apprentices employ, but there were also many techniques that Rui hadn''t seen ever before.


    Techniques became a lot more absurd in the Squire realm since the Martial body allowed for the application of power in ways that the human body was simply unable to even attempt to replicate.


    Still, he was more concerned with his opponent than anything else.


    Their battle became independent of the others. Rui was forced to continuously move away from his opponent while sheunched herself after him. Despite being much more powerful than him, she was quite heavy. The power canceled out with her mass, preventing her from drastically out-speeding Rui.


    THWOOM THWOOM THWOOM


    Rui fired Sonic Bullets one after the other relentlessly as he tried umting damage on her neck. Thanks to the extra-refined predictive model that he had built on her, he was able to urately aim for her throat despite both of them chasing after him at top speed.


    What he did discover was that even her throat was ridiculously tough! He had alreadynded numerous attacks on it, and the most he was able to do was bruise her.


    (''What the fuck? She has got to be grade seven at least, if not grade eight. That kind of defense is stupid.'') He groaned inwardly as he relentlesslyunched attacks, trying to slow down her momentum in vain.


    She chased after him, barrelling through his attacks like a rhino. His attacks didn''t do too much to slow her down. She gritted his teeth and bore all the attacks that he tried directing at her vitals, defending them or inly tanking them head-on.


    Unfortunately, she was extremely wary of any attacks to the eye. As tough as she was, not even she believed that she would be able to withstand an attack of that caliber to the eyes. If Rui seeded in hitting her eyes like he did the previous two Martial Squires, then that would almost certainly kill her, or cripple her forever at the very least.


    The K''ulnen Tribe was much more sensitive towards injuries than the Martial Squires of the Martial Union were. After all, the Martial Squires knew that healing potion technology was a deeply developed field. Although the cost of healing potions for Martial Artists was progressively more expensive and restrictive as one went up the Realms, they were still certain there was an extremely little chance that they would incur an injury that the Martial Union would be unable to heal, or that even their potions would be unable to heal.


    "ARGH!" She snarled in frustration as Rui began maintaining the distance between them that much better.


    The distance between them was a few hundred meters. Far enough that the chances of her reaching were not too high, and he didn''t need to fight like he was treading on extremely thin ice. But close enough that he could aim for her vitals despite being highly consumed by maneuvering away from her. It was much harder to aim urately when both the shooter and the target were moving at top speeds in a dance of high-effort maneuvering.


    Unfortunately for Rui, he couldn''t do much more than that at the moment. She put an immense amount of effort and care into ensuring that Rui would be unable to take her down the same way. Even if he so much opened his mouth, she would immediately tighten her guard around her vitals. Her eyes were perenially guarded. It was clear that she possessed some sensory technique that allowed her to sense his location from a good distance away, and that was enough.N?vel(D)ra/ma.Org exclusive ? material.


    Even if her sensory capabilities were much lower than that of Rui''s it didn''t matter all that much. Even if she couldn''t sense the motions of his limbs, it didn''t really affect her all that much. As long as she had rity on his location at any given moment, it was good enough. Her goal was to get close to him and pummel him to death. Sensing his location was enough because once she reached his location, it did not matter what Rui did to defend against those attacks, they both knew that the fight would be over with a single clean attack.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    THWOOM THWOOM THWOOM


    Ruiunched another barrage of attacks against her as his movements began growing increasingly effective and urate. He smiled as he began using the data that he was obtaining in this battle to further refine his predictive model of her.


    (''If you cannot defeat me at the start of a battle, then you cannot defeat me,'')


    This was very true for Rui. The VOID algorithm ensured that he grew stronger with every passing second. His power growth against particr opponents in the middle of a battle meant that the best and only opportunity to take him down was at the start of the battle.


    It was his one and only weakness.


    (''You have long crossed the threshold,'')


    That was why Rui was quite confident that she would not be able to take him down despite clearly being several grades higher than himself.


    However, that only applied if this was a one-on-one battle.


    (''Hm?'') Rui''s noted another Martial Squire circling around their own opponent to reach Rui''s opponent, meeting up with her.


    The man twisted his upper body as he wound his balled fist back behind his body preparing for a punch despite being very far away from Rui.


    Yet Rui''s eyes widened as he saw his opponent bracing her body before her fellow tribal member.


    (''Shit!'') Rui cursed as he realized what their n was. He scrambled away at top speed as the man swung his wound fist, catapulting the woman forward at an extremely high speed, straight towards Rui.


    "HAHAHA!" She cackled as she shed through the sky at a tremendous speed, quickly catching up with the frantically retreating Rui. "YOU''RE DEAD!"


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 682 Plan

    This battle came to remind Rui of one of his other weaknesses. Perhaps it was more of a shoring, but regardless, Rui hade to remember how muchrger scale conflicts and team battles could catch him off-guard.


    Thest time he had been part of a conflict this big was in the Serevian War, however, back then he was the most powerful and dangerous person on the battlefield, thus he never felt this shoring nearly as much. However, he realized that he was too ustomed to analyzing and makingbat-centric decisions in a vacuum with his opponent and himself, and the environment. He did not have much experience in group battles.


    Thest time he truly fought together as a group was with his four friends against the newborn Martial Squire of the Commonwealth Duchy of Vinfrana. Even then, that was against one opponent.


    Rui swore that he would rectify this problem when he got the chance. For now, however, he had to deal with the consequences of being caught off-guard due to not having factored in such an elementary solution.


    His opponent shot across the sky at an extremely high speed towards him,ughing maniacally winding her leg back to m him with a powerful attack no doubt. Rui scrambled away from the trajectory of her motion, but she carefully made sure to adjust her trajectory to keep up with Rui via sky-walking.


    Rui felt Primordial Instinct screaming to him about the iing danger as she got closer to him until it was toote for him to avoid her.


    "RARGH!" She kicked hard, contorting her body to generate as much torque as she could. She employed power-boosting supplementary techniques not too dissimr to Outer Convergence. However, it was exponentially more powerful than that of Rui when she used it. Hell, Rui was sure that she was proportionally more powerful than even Fae if their Realms and grades were hypothetically equalized.


    Her leg blurred in his vision as itshed out against him with tremendous power. Rui gritted his teeth as he intercepted the attack with his palm, immediately activating Flux Earther.


    BAM!!!


    CRACK!


    WHOOSH!!!


    Her eyes widened at an incredibly strange urrence. The attacknded, and she even felt his wrist cracking, yet what surprised her was that the impact seemed to suddenly send him hurtling an incredible distance away at incredible speeds as though he had beenunched by a catapult. It was a strange sensation unlike anything she had ever felt and a strange sight, unlike anything she had ever seen.


    "Ugh¡­" Rui groaned as he finally managed to stop his momentum. "I almost died¡­"


    He grimaced as he looked down at his swollen wrist. As bad as it looked, the situation wasn''t all that bad. After all, he wasn''t fighting with his arms in this battle.


    (''Unless, of course, I need to do what I just did again,'') He sighed.


    In thest second, he used Flux Earther to intercept the strike, however, instead ofpleting the full technique from start to finish, he only executed about half the technique. He stically converted the power of her attack to kic energy to elerate his body and send him flying as far away from her as possible.


    Considering that he wasn''t able to prevent his wrist from cracking, Rui considered it a partial sess.


    (''This is still better than any other solution I had,'') He sighed as he consumed his healing potion. He had brought multiple since he knew that it was entirely possible he would end up needing them given how restrained he was in this battle.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    (''Now then¡­'') He turned back to face his opponent. She was still rushing down towards him, unwilling to give up on taking him down. She barreled down, passionately cursing him in increasingly creative ways to take him down. (''How do I handle this?'')


    He needed an actual solution here. Her tribe mate was already winding as he wrung his body to generate as much power as he could when he flung her the next time.


    (''I can''t stop them from cooperating,'') Rui braced himself as he prepared himself to take on yet another K''ulnen human cannon shot. (''They only need a moment to get their littlebo off,'')


    WHOOSH


    In the distance, she braced herself as her tribe mateunched her forward as he withstood the attacks of his actual opponent with raw durability to ensure that he could help her against Rui.


    (''Can''t escape, can''t defend,'') Rui summarized even as she shot towards him. (''I guess the only possible way out of this situation is to retreat from the battle entirely or¡­'')


    His eyes narrowed. (''Win.'')


    A germ of an idea formed in his head as he came up with a strategy.


    Even as she flew towards him, guarding her vitals, she was prepared to not ensure that he could not possibly escape this time. She took a partial grappling position as she decided to crush him in a midair grappling contest, rather than allow him to escape yet again with that strange technique.


    Yet her eyes widened as Rui began sprinting towards her at top speed, closing the distance rapidly.


    (''Does he have a death wish?'') She wondered in confusion as her senses picked him getting increasingly closer to her increasingly faster.


    What kind of a long-range Martial Artist purposely drew closer to a close-quarters specialist barreling straight towards them with every desire to kill them? She didn''t understand, this made no sense!


    Hundred meters.Material ? of N?velDrama.Org.


    Fifty meters.


    When they were only ten meters away from each other, Rui finally opened his mouth,unching two Sonic Bullets in rapid session.


    THWOOM THWOOM


    He was staking a lot on this n, his opponent didn''t understand what his intentions were. He should have known that those attacks were almost entirely ineffective against her thanks to her ridiculously high passive durability. There was no way that any attack would be able to stop her from reaching Rui, and she certainly didn''t think they were capable of preventing her from crushing him alive.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 683 She Comes

    In human anatomy, the ulnar nerve was a nerve that ran near the ulna bone; one of the two bones that the forearm wasprised of. The nerve was one of thergest nerves in the body that was also unprotected by muscle or bone. It was covered by the skin and thus was quite prone to injury. When cleanly struck by an impact, it would send an electric jolt across the body, while also causing a knee-jerk or, rather, an elbow-jerk reaction in the arm.


    Colloquially, most people knew the ulnar nerve as the funny bone at the elbow joint, a strange not-really-a-bone nerve that caused electric-like sensations and jerks in the arm.


    That was why when Rui''s first Sonic Bullet struck his opponent''s ulnar nerve. Her body shuddered as the potent, precise, and urate strike send electric-like shudders across her body her arm involuntary disced itself in a jerk, consequently leaving her eyes exposed again.


    Rui grinned, as a terrible sense of fear arose in his opponent.


    He had aimed for this from the very start!


    Her pupils dted as time slowed down in her cognition, it was as though her brain went into overdrive, realizing how dire the situation was. She struggled to drag her aching arm back up, trying to protect her eyes.


    Yet it was toote.N?vel(D)ra/ma.Org exclusive ? material.


    SPLAT!


    The second Sonic Bullet that Rui hadunched earlier flew unhampered, crashing into her left eye, crashing through it, and dove further into her skull even as her body elerated forward inertially.


    BANG!


    She crashed into Rui violently, and the two tumbled out of the sky, free-falling out of the sky.


    THUD!


    A crater as wide and deep as a dozen meters formed, with the two Martial Artists at the center of it.


    (''One Martial Artist, and one corpse, more like,'') He shoved herrge body off him grimacing even as blood pissed out of her eyeball onto his face.


    THUD


    Her massive body shook the ground even as it fell, having weighed as much as a grizzly bear.


    (''Honestly, I''m a little surprised that actually worked,'') Though Rui would never admit that out loud.


    The first Sonic Bullet had been reduced in size. He needed precision far more than he needed raw power to strike her ulna nerve to achieve the desired effect. Ordinarily, this would have been extremely difficult, but considering how thin and small the ulna nerve was, it was very difficult to strike it in exactly the right way to achieve the desired effect, even when it came to one''s own ulna nerve.


    (''If not for the extra-refined VOID algorithm, it probably would be nearly impossible to not only locate and aim urately but also time and angle it urately to cause the desired reaction,'') Rui sighed.


    Of course, he wasn''t going toin. He was happy that he survived.


    (''It''s not like that strategy is something I can consistently employ in my battles,'') He shrugged.


    Just how many times would he be in a scenario where he would be facing off against a primitive group that made gathering intelligence on them easily due to theirck of technology, allowing him to make remarkably deep preparations against any possible enemy that could be deployed in him?


    Rui was rtively certain that this was thest time that he would ever be in this kind of situation again.


    He grabbed her corpse by the head, lifting it up with him as he sky-walked into the air.


    Despite being a good distance away from many of the other battles, he could sense that they all were eying him.


    He could sense their emerging shock, rage, and hatred.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    THUD


    He dropped the corpse, after having achieved the result he wanted.


    (''The battles are stagnating, though we have a winning edge.'') Rui noted.


    At the moment, there were an equal number of Martial Squires on both sides. They had mostly sorted themselves out against opponents closest to their own grade. Resulting in bnced battles.


    (''The fight''s gone on long enough for now, time to move on to the next stage,'') Rui noted as he pulled out hisms device, hitting a few buttons.


    Rui immediately rushed back to the battlefield.


    Now that the Longranger Martial Artists had plenty of time to demonstrate the prowess of their techniques, Rui felt that it was time to move on to the next stage of the battle.


    Drawing out the Martial Senior.


    Senior Ceeran was probably on extremely high alert and on immediate standby at the moment. This was the moment that Rui and the others had to be very careful of. If not, they may very well just end up dying before Senior Ceeran could arrive.


    Rui no longer attempted any spectacr assassinations. The goal of this battle was not to kill as many K''ulnen Martial Squires as possible. It was a sales pitch. And Rui had already done enough for his own techniques. The other Martial Squires needed their own time in the spotlight.


    Rui half-heartedlyunched a few attacks here and there for a brief amount of time to apply more pressure on the K''ulnen Martial Squires.


    Until, of course, reinforcements came from the Martial Union as nned.


    What followed was rather hard to watch.


    The Martial Artists of the Martial Union already had an advantage that would have snowballed in the long term. However, with the arrival of even more Martial Squires. The odds of the battle tiltedpletely.


    It was overwhelming.


    The Martial Squires of the K''ulnen Tribe gritted their teeth, refusing to retreat. How could they? They were the final line of defense within the Squire Realm!


    ¡­Within the Squire Realm, that was.


    Everybody froze.


    It was abrupt.


    Rui knew that it wasing, and yet, he never saw iting.


    Everybody froze as the atmosphere shifted, both metaphorically and literally.


    The air chilled.


    It was cold.


    Chills crawled up their spine as an unprecedented amount of pressure crashed onto all of them.


    "Shees¡­" One of them murmured with a maniacally wide smile. "You have courted death, outsiders!"


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 684 Calamities

    It was one thing to predict, on paper, after having analyzed historical data.


    And it was entirely another to experience that prediction in the flesh.


    For none of them were ready.


    None of them were ready for the unhampered and unhindered bloodlust of a Martial Senior.


    Even Rui shuddered as he gritted his teeth. His mental fortitude among them was probably the greatest, but even he was not mentally prepared for the avnche of pressure that washed through them all.


    It felt like a bomb had gone off on the ind. The fauna in the forest broke into a frenzy as the creatures, regardless of their status in the food chain, ran away from that section of the forest as their lives depended on it.


    Of course, they did.


    "Don''t retreat," Rui managed to squeeze out when he noticed the Longranger Martial Squire instinctively backing away, nearly making for a run. "Have faith in your senior!"


    They barely heeded his words.


    Rui was the only one who maintained a fierce expression.


    He opened his mouth, aiming tounch a Sonic Bullet at one of the K''ulnen Martial Squires.


    Yet he froze, once more.


    His eyes widened as a tiny figure entered his vision in the distance behind the K''ulnen Squires.


    It was merely a dot in the distance.


    Yet, it wasrger than all.


    Not even the Sun drew as much attention to itself.


    Not even the Sun shined brighter than the tiny figure emanating bloodlust so thick that one could nearly cut it with a knife.


    Rui blinked, yet when he opened his eyes. His heart nearly jumped out of his mouth.


    "You..."


    She stood right before him.


    In just a second, she crossed the many kilometers between him and the K''ulnen Vige.


    She, matriarch R''An''Alnen of the K''ulnen Tribe, stared at him with bloodshot wide eyes. The sheer amount of power that was contained within her feminine figure made Rui feel insignificant.


    Staring him in the eyes. "You d-!"


    Every hair on Rui''s body stood on edge as an unprecedentedly powerful wind attack mmed into her, just barely missing Rui!


    Rui was frozen in midair, unable to move. He felt like he just barely avoided being hit by a tactical nuke!


    Before he could even process what happened, a tremendous explosion shook the entire ind to its core!


    Rui turned to the right, his eyes widening in shock.


    Where a hill used to be, was a mighty crater!


    "What... No, this can''t b-" Rui subconsciously murmured.


    Another mighty presence washed over the entire area, one less chaotic and more focused.


    And one that was more familiar.


    "Rui."


    It was soft, yet it reverberated across the sky.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    Rui turned his head in the direction it came from.


    "Senior Ceeran!"


    He heaved a sigh of relief.


    "Good job distracting her," A brief smile cracked at the edge of his mouth. "You''ve all done great. Now leave. This is beyond you."


    At that moment, Senior Ceeran appearedrger than life. Had Rui been an ordinary man, he may very well have gotten down to one knee and bowed in devotion to one that many may call a god.


    He never even looked at Rui.


    No.


    His eyes were fixed in the direction of the second Senior-level aura.


    Rui didn''t even need to turn in that direction to know that she had already emerged out of the crater of that attack. Every sense in his body, even ones he didn''t know existed, told him that he needed to get out of there immediately!


    Whether it was out of consideration for their own Martial Squires, or whether they were sizing up each other, they did not engage in hostilities immediately.


    It gave the fearful Martial Squires the time that they needed to get as far away from the battlefield as they could.


    None of them had any thought of trying to circle around in order to try and continue their battle with the other side. At this very moment, both sides needed to return back to their respective homes.


    The Longranger Martial Squires especially needed to be careful, they needed to protect their settlement from any side effects that maye in their direction. Even though the two Martial Seniors were situated far away from the Martial Union settlement, only an idiot would think that that mattered at all! Especially after witnessing what Rui just had.


    In a single second, she crossed a little under half the distance between the K''ulnen Tribe and the Martial Union Settlement.


    Furthermore, Senior Ceeranunched an attack from so far away that Rui could even sense it despite his incrediblyrge sensory range.


    Furthermore, that attack sent the matriarch of the K''ulnen Tribe a dozen kilometers away, crashing into a sizeable hill, and leaving nothing but a crater behind. The flying debris alone crashed a small part of the forest!


    Material ? of N?velDrama.Org.


    That was what shocked Rui the most.


    Of course, he always knew that Martial Seniors were iparably more powerful than Martial Squires. Perhaps to an even greater degree than Martial Squires were stronger than Martial Apprentices.


    Still, it was hard to visualize what that looked like.


    Now, he didn''t need to.


    Now, he knew.


    They were forces of nature. Cmities bound to human form. There was no other way to describe them.


    Yet, as shocked as Rui was, he was even more excited.


    And as excited as he was, he was even greedier.


    He yearned to elevate his Martial Art to that level of power!


    When would the daye when he could alter the topography of a small region all by himself?


    (''Not anytime soon, that''s for sure,'')


    He knew that he was a truly long way from bing a Martial Senior. He did not know what the conditions for breaking through to the Senior Realm were, and whatever they were, he needed to go through much before he was qualified to undergo the breakthrough process to the Senior Realm.


    RUMBLE!


    Thend shook, startling Rui.


    "They''ve begun," He murmured. "This battle will decide the fate of many people."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 685 Unprecedented

    Senior R''An''Alnen rose from the giant crater spanning hundreds of meters in diameter with a hateful expression on her bruised face.


    She red at him.


    Senior Ceeran smiled helplessly as waves of pressure washed over him in vain.


    Her expression crumpled into one of venomous hatred, rage, and plenty of shock.


    The two hadpletely lost any interest in the Martial Squires that were still scrambling away. The matriarch of the K''ulnen Tribe stayed her hand briefly to ensure that she did not inadvertently hurt her own Martial Squires. She no longer cared about Rui who had already put a good distance between himself and them.


    After all, as impressive as Rui was, he was but an infant in her eyes. The adult that had stepped in to protect him was a far worthier and more meaningful target of her ire and hatred.


    "Rank three outsider Martial Artist, you have returned," She spat those words with venomous contempt, from many kilometers. Not even Rui would have heard her despite his remarkable senses, yet Senior Ceeran shrugged mildly at her words.


    "Have work here," He replied in the Vilun dialect.


    Four months ago, when Martial Commissioner Derun had requested him to return to Vilun Ind to aid Rui in a mission that he was previously assigned, he took the liberty to begin learning thenguage. Of course, his Vilun was broken and he couldn''t understandplex sentences yet and he definitely couldn''t read or write its script. But he had reached a point where he was able to understand her words and reciprocate basic replies.


    "You outsiders¡­ You dare infringe on our domain. You dare to challenge us. You dare to kill our warriors!" She snarled. "You will pay for your transgressions!"


    The atmosphere grew taut.


    N?vel(D)ra/ma.Org exclusive ? material.


    The two of them narrowed their eyes as their expressions grew more severe.


    A maelstrom of pressure radiated from their powerful frames wrung the air between them. It was as though their very presence weighed down on the world.


    Chaos began to consume the ind.


    Humans, animals, and even the flora.


    Nothing was the same.


    The Martial tribes sensed the brewing pressure that was churning the atmosphere.


    Children cried as their mothersforted them while fathers guarded them. The many animals and beasts of the ind ran amuck as their instincts warned them of the terrifying conflict that was toe.


    Only the Martial Squires across the ind retained theirposure, and only the Martial Seniors were unfazed.


    "Enough¡­" Senior matriarch R''An''Alnen spoke softly. "It is time for you to die."


    The air grew tumultuous as their expressions grew more severe.


    What followed beggared the minds of those who witnessed it.


    Their eyes began glowing.


    Thin glowing red lines began trickling across their entire body.


    An increasingly devastating sense of power and peril radiated from their bodies. Their muscles brimmed with power as their skin grew taut with restraint.


    It was as though they were volcanoes, on the cusp of erupting in a mighty explosion of power.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    For a moment, it seemed as though nothing happened.


    Yet in the very next, all hell broke loose.


    "RARGH!" She snarled with an inhumanly intense expression.


    The atmosphere behind her ignited into a small inferno!


    The sheer force with which sheunched herself forward generated a sonic boom the size of a small town as the pressure was enough to ignite the mmable constituents of the air!


    The sheer friction generated by the velocity of herunch ignited all her clothes on fire.


    Yet she shed forward at a blindingly high speed unperturbed.


    Her eyes were fixed on Senior Ceeran, and nothing could stop her.


    Senior Ceeran inhaled deeply, and powerfully, causing a vacuum sorge that animals in the surrounding area had trouble breathing for several seconds! He extended one arm in front of him, spreading his fingers far apart.


    His other arm went behind him with his palm facing forward.


    When he exhaled, he did not exhale an ordinary transparent gaseous breath like normal humans did all the time.


    No.


    What he exhaled was opaque, heavy, and powerful.


    His lungs hadpressed a gigantic volume of air into a temporarily solid state with sheer pressure!


    His highly dense breath dispersed at a speed far surpassing that of sound. Yet his finger began moving rapidly as though he were manipting a puppet, he began inhaling and exhaling in patterns. Thebination of movements created wind currents and areas of higher and lower-pressure air.


    The result?


    A culmination of highly dense and powerful wind gusts formed as the many winds and currents superimposed over each other, congregating into a single attack.


    The attack was so dense that not even light could pass through. It shed across the sky, heading straight toward his ignited opponent.


    Matriarch R''An''Alnen''s re grew more severe, yet unfazed. She kicked downward, and a burst of messhed downward as the recoil of the sheer force and energy allowed her to avoid Senior Ceeran''s attack at thest second thanks to an extremely high eleration that the gesture had generated by recoil.


    She burst forward, leaving the attack behind her. Yet her sense of danger spiked when she saw a grin erupting on her opponent''s red linedened face. Her eyes widened as she sensed his earlier attack changing trajectories!


    It turned a whole one-hundred and eighty degrees as it quickly caught up with her


    "Tsk," She tutted as she kicked the air again, releasing a st of mes as she somersaulted out of the returning attack that sought to strike her in the back.


    The attack rushed towards Senior Ceeran, seemingly about to strike him, yet he was unperturbed. He brought a balled fist before him, suddenly opening his hand and spreading his fingers as he inhaled and exhaled in a pattern.


    Matriarch R''An''Alnen''s eyes widened as the attack split up into dozens of smaller attacks that each turned curved around before flying in her direction. Some chased after her directly while others pirouetted to intercept her from other directions from various angles!


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 686 Spectation

    "What is happening?" Rui murmured subconsciously with a bewildered expression. His sharp senses strained themselves to the limit as he did his best to get a good view of what was happening.


    So many of the things that he had witnessed from the very start of the battle had flummoxed him, he wouldn''t even know where to begin had someone asked him what was wrong.


    Normally, he shouldn''t have been able to even perceive what was happening. Martial Seniors were exponentially faster than Martial Squires, or at least, the two Martial Seniors who were currently fighting most definitely were.


    The Matriarch of the K''ulnen Tribe was moving so fast that both her clothes and the air caught on fire due to the friction caused by drag. However, Rui knew that only rockets moving at dozens of times the speed of sound generated such a degree of friction due to their speed!


    It was a level of speed that he could only dream of achieving. Not even Kane with the Squire-level version of the Godspeed technique could hold a candle to it, Rui suspected.


    The reason he, and other Martial Squires, were able to perceive the battle at all was because of the size of the attacks and techniques that each Martial Senior was using, and also due to the distance away from which they were spectating the battle.


    The further away an observer, and therger the size of the event one was perceiving, the easier it was to perceive extremely rapid events.


    This was due to the fact that at great distances away, the field of vision covered a massive area, which meant that despite the fact that the Martial Seniors were engaging in attacks and maneuvers that crossed massive distances in seconds, they still did not exceed the boundary of the field of vision of the spectating Martial Squires, allowing them to barely keep up with the battle, even if ipletely.


    It was the same reason that ordinary humans could perceive a rocket take-off despite the fact that they moved at Mach twenty-three, or the same reason that humans had no trouble perceiving the moon despite the fact that the moon was moving at supersonic speeds.


    Size and distance mattered. Many of the techniques that the Martial Seniors were using definitely had thetter.


    He was shocked when Senior Ceeran breathed what looked to be a dark-colored opaque gas, but once he realized that it was an enormous volume of gas that was highly condensed, his mind was boggled.


    He gritted his teeth as he pushed back against the force of the air currents that the mere presence of the temporarily-solidified dense gas had created. Wind currents naturally emerged flowing from high-pressure areas of air to low-pressure areas. The side-effect wind currents that were created from Senior Ceeran''s opaque breath were so powerful that Rui had to exert himself to a little degree to prevent himself from being blown away despite the gigantic distance he was from them.


    When Senior Ceeran harnessed those wind currents and directed them at his opponent along with his breath, the scale and power of the attack were greater than Rui had ever seen before in his entire life. That attack alone would easily destroy both the Martial Union settlement and the K''ulnen vige many times over.


    That was why Rui had grown even more shocked when, in the face of such a shockingly fast and powerful attack, the matriarch of the K''ulnen vige casually ignited and sted away a huge volume of the atmosphere, generating an immense amount of elerating via Newton''s thirdw of motion, evading the attack at thest moment.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    She was literally a rocket in human form!


    Senior Ceeran was like a tactical homing nukeuncher in human form!


    "I see... so Martial Seniors are no different from superweapons disguised in human flesh!" Ruiughed weakly. "I wonder if that has something to do with the glowing thin red tattoos that they both have on their bodies.


    Rui would have to be as blind as a bat if he missed that incredibly peculiar feature that the bodies of both Martial Seniors hade to bear. He hadn''t even the faintest idea what they were, and how they were rted to the Senior Realm, if at all. But he noted that both Martial Seniors had grown much more powerful since they appeared on their body. They resembled volcanoes in Rui''s eyes.


    (''They''re not much weaker than volcanoes, if at all!'')


    Rui watched the ensuing battle like a hawk as the two mighty Martial Artists shed against each other violently. The battle between them had stabilized into a pattern, reaching an equilibrium.


    The Matriarch of the K''ulnen Tribe, despite her magical techniques, was clearly a Martial Artist whose Martial Path was centered around speed and agility, as opposed to power and toughness.


    She had yet tond a strike on Senior Ceeran, who expertly foiled all of her attempts to get close to him so she could pummel him into bits.


    (''The fact that she''s content evading all of Senior Ceeran''s attacks instead of shing against them with her own indicates that she most likely is not a power-oriented striker,'') Rui analyzed the battle as he calmed his beating heart.


    The battle began morphing into the mostmon model and temte for battles between long-range and close-quarters Martial Artists. Though, there were clear differences. Rui recalled that Senior Ceeran''s Martial Path was postunch trajectory maniption, allowing him to alter the trajectories of his attacks even after they had long beenunched. Rui got to witness exactly what this looked like. In the distance, dozens of infernos rapidly extended across the sky for a dozen kilometers in every direction, all before Rui could even react to a single one of them.


    The matriarch of the K''ulnen Tribe danced across the clouds as she was pursued by dozens of homing projectiles. While Senior Ceeran continuedunching an increasing number of attacks at a pace that was invisibly fast even to Rui''s eyes.N?vel(D)ra/ma.Org exclusive ? material.


    The battle only continued to get more serious.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 687 Unfair

    WHOOSH!


    Matriarch R''An''Alnen narrowly evaded a wave of homing breath projectiles leaving behind an inferno. Her clothes had long burned off, revealing her naked feminine red linedened body. Yet it did not inspire lust, merely fear as one could nearly see power itself condensing within her body, the same power that allowed her to leave infernos in her step that could burn down an entire vige!


    WHOOSH


    Matriarch R''An''Alnen dodged yet another attack, yet her eyes widened as she surveyed the area to a shocking discovery.


    She was trapped!


    No matter where she looked, she was beset by attacks that weaved a closing together, preventing her from escaping in any direction.


    The smirk on Senior Ceeran''s face angered her as she realized that he had been carefully nning for this. He hadunched the right number of attacks in the right manner, manipting their trajectories such that he could eventually cut off all paths of escape!


    She gritted her teeth, whipping her leg in a rotating kick as she created a small inferno around her, attempting to intercept the attack.


    BOOM!!!


    A tremendous explosion of wind and fire emerged with her at the epicenter. The explosion was sorge, that it rapidly expanded to the ground, despite the fact that it originated in the sky!


    The ball of wind and fire could not only be seen across the entire ind but could also be seen nearly a hundred kilometers away at sea!


    "Cough... Cough..." The Matriarch of the K''ulnen Tribe coughed. Every inch of her skin was bruised, and she was bleeding from multiple areas. Her body possessed a mild healing factor, however, it would not do much in the short term.


    And the short term was her biggest obstacle to ovee.


    She immediately triedshing out from that area, refusing to fall victim to the same trap again.


    Yet, she discovered, it was toote.


    Senior Ceeran had already prepared yet another powerful wave of attacks even as she had been bombarded by the previous set of attacks.


    "It''s over," Senior Ceeran smirked as a giant wave of wind enveloped her location preventing her from escaping.


    BOOM!


    A humungous st of wind arose. The attack would have undoubtedly ravaged her already battered body. After all, she was not a defensive Martial Artist at all. Her lean and petite body was extremely able to maneuver around the atmosphere aerodynamically, yet it was not conducive to withstanding barrages of potent projectiles sting her across her entire body.


    Yet something was off.


    Senior Ceeran froze, pausing his next attack as his eyebrows furrowed.


    "Tsk," He tutted in irritation as he saw a second figure standing beside the battered matriarch of the K''ulnen Tribe. "Two on one... this not fair."<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    "Everything is fair in love and war." The patriarch of the K''ulnen Tribe replied to Senior Ceeran''s broken Vilun, turning toward his mate.


    Senior Ceeran inspected the neer. He had a gargantuan body, unlike his partner. It was rather clear that his Martial Path was most certainly not centered around speed and agility.


    "YOU''RE GOING TO REGRET EVER COMING TO THIS ISLAND!" The wounded matriarch roared as her aura soared.Material ? of N?velDrama.Org.


    Yet the two of them froze suddenly froze as their senses were rocked by an incredibly potent burst of pressure.


    Senior Ceeran''s smile was gone. His expression grew graver and increasingly severe as the glowing red lines that wound about his body began glowing even brighter as his. His eyes be increasingly bloodshot, growing redder by the second.


    "You''re right, nothing is fair. Just like this battle," He told them. "You two are no match for me."


    He exhaled deeply,unching breath projectiles that were more than twice asrge as before!


    The eyes of the K''ulnen Martial Seniors widened as they realized that despite their numeric advantage, they needed to go all-out with the risk of death if they wanted to win!


    The glowing lines cracking across the skin of the patriarch instantly emerged as his expression grew severe. He had emerged, thinking that the battle was as good as done, with his partner and him double-teaming Senior Ceeran.


    He rushed forward, umting momentum as he prepared an attack. Senior Ceeran narrowed his eyes at the sight. He knew that he couldn''t deal with the man the same way he dealt with the matriarch.


    He moved his fingers as heunched a powerful breath attack at the man. He didn''t even bother broadening it to prevent him from trying to dodge it, he knew the man wouldn''t dodge it.


    He was right.


    The patriarch of the K''ulnen Tribe confidently rushed forward at the attack, shaking the atmosphere with each step as he threw a powerful kick.


    BOOM!!!


    A gigantic wind explosion expanded outwards as the patriarch of the K''ulnen Tribe was flung away.


    A shocked expression emerged on his face when he realized that Senior Ceeran possessed the power to push him back!


    The patriarch of the K''ulnen Tribe was a power-oriented striking Martial Artist, his Martial Path was core-driven striking. he had developed the core of his body to an extreme degree and empowered each strike and even every movement with it in a manner simr to Outer Convergence.


    Yet Senior Ceeran had not only neutralized his attack but also the moment that the patriarch had gathered.


    All while simultaneously fighting his partner with volleys of attacks in the exact opposite direction.


    (''How is he so strong?'') The man tried to conceal his shock as he rushed in for another attack. He could not let up his offense for even a second, otherwise, his already injured partner might die!


    The patriarch of the K''ulnen Tribe was more than a hundred years old, and yet he had nevere across a Martial Artist this strong. None of the other Martial Seniors on the ind could possibly fight both the matriarch and patriarch of the K''ulnen Tribe simultaneously, and not only not get suppressed, but also push back and even gain an upper hand in battle!


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 688 Analysis

    Rui''s emotions fluctuated immensely throughout the entire battle. When Senior Ceeran and the matriarch of the K''ulnen Tribe began showing their true strength at the start fight, he had been shocked by the true capabilities of both Martial Artists. Not only was their raw prowess incredible, but their techniques were very interesting as well.


    The matriarch employed the same principles that rockets did to achieve extreme eleration. Except unlike rockets, she could apply that speed in all avenues inbat while rockets elerated in linear motion exclusively.


    This allowed her to dart across the battlefield at blinding speeds. Frankly, if not for the giant infernos she left behind with every step, Rui would have had absolutely no chance of tracing her movements and trajectories.


    However, while her technique was a novel and extreme application of Newton''s thirdw of motion, it was elementary at heart. Senior Ceeran''s techniques thus far held far more of his interest than hers. Senior Ceeran employed the tendency of the gaseous particles to move from high-pressure areas to low-pressure areas.


    (''It''s an advanced application of the Pauli Exclusion Principle,'') Rui noted.


    The Pauli Exclusion was a principle of quantum electrodynamics that stated no two electrons of an atom or molecule could have the same quantum numbers and states. In a general context, the principle stated that two particles could not have the same positions and velocities, and the closer one of the two parameters was, the greater the difference in the other parameter.


    This principle of quantum mechanics was the reason that densely packed particles experienced a strong repulsion from each other. It was the reason that the atmosphere functioned the way it did, and it was the driving force behind Senior Ceeran''s techniques.


    (''He densely packs particles together in his lungs, and when he exhales them, he uses breathing techniques to manipte his high-pressure breath which alters the directions of the wind currents that they produce from his high-pressure breath to low-pressure areas.'') Rui analyzed. (''Means he doesn''t directly control the wind currents themselves, he controls their starting point; his high-pressure breath, and the ending point; the low-pressure areas and vacuums. This allows him to manipte the trajectories of the attack even after he hasunched them!'')


    Rui couldn''t help but marvel at the ingenuity of the technique. It was quite remarkable and gave a genuinely high amount of flexibility and efficiency with his attacks. Unlike Rui''s, his attacks were not dealt with when sessfully evaded once. He could keep reusing them even after they filled to hit their target. Of course, their potency greatly decreased with time until they fizzled out, but it made his offense extremely efficientpared to more generic Martial Paths and Martial Art.


    (''It''s definitely one of the reasons that he''s able to keep up with two clearly experienced and veteran Martial Seniors of the K''ulnen Tribe simultaneously,'') Rui noted.


    Because he was able to save a lot of power due to this technique against the matriarch who was forced to waste energy evading the same reused attacks over and over, Senior Ceeran still had enough power left to also overwhelm the patriarch of the K''ulnen Tribe simultaneously.


    This was a feat that was extremely impressive to Rui. The patriarch of the K''ulnen Tribe was a mountain in human form. The man made the Martial Squire that Rui fought look like a little girl, inparison.


    His abdominal and back muscles, the muscle sets thatprised his core, were especially quite formidable. Each of his charges was as heavy as meteorite impacts, and yet Senior Ceeran managed to push him back.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    The battle''s dynamics had changed once the third Marital Senior had joined the battle, yet they once more fell into a pattern and a paradigm.


    Senior Ceeran was much more concerned with the patriarch of the K''ulnen Tribe than he was with the matriarch. There were several reasons for this.


    Firstly, the matriarch was already wounded. And while she did possess a resilient body by virtue of being a Martial Senior, her affinities did not lie towards endurance, thus it was inevitable that herbat prowess had taken a solid hit. Even when she was healthy, Senior Ceeran was capable of taking her down swiftly even when holding back, but in her current state, it was safe to say that the patriarch of the K''ulnen Tribe forcing Senior Ceeran to dedicate a significant chunk of his power to handle his offense was the only reason that she was able to fight against Senior Ceeran without dying.


    Senior Ceeran had to divide his attention between both his opponents, and Rui could sense that bncing them was not easy.


    Handling the matriarch was moreplicated since he needed to make sure that he never left a chink in his waves of attacks that could allow her to hurt him. But she was less of a threat due to her injuries, and hence he could afford to use less energy in her direction.


    The patriarch of the K''ulnen Tribe was extremely simple inparison. His attack consisted of charging at Senior Ceeran as hard as he could hoping tond a powerful strike on the man. Although he had much greater raw power than his partner, Senior Ceeran didn''t need to think m


    He only needed to ensure that he was using a marginally greater amount of power than his opponent to ensure that there was no way that he could possibly get through.


    The one that was more dangerous and powerful, at the moment, requires more raw power but less thought to handle. The one that was less dangerous to her injuries required more thought and less raw power to handle.


    Senior Ceeran needed to bnce both in order to ensure that he was not overwhelmed by either one of them.


    (''However, I don''t know if he can win this way...'') Rui frowned.C0ntent ? 2024 (N/?)velDrama.Org.


    At the end of the day, Rui was not sure whether he possessed greater stamina than the two Martial Seniorsbined. While he was able to stalemate the battle for now, it was quite questionable whether he would be able to do the same for an extended period of time.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 689 Course

    "Tsk," Seniro Ceeran tutted in irritation as he once again failed in taking down the matriarch of the K''ulnen Tribe. He, unfortunately, had too little work with the remaining power that he could afford to spare after overwhelming the K''ulnen patriarch''s attacks.


    (''This can''t go on forever,'') He sighed.


    He needed to find a way to ensure that this stalemate did not go on for too long, otherwise, he would lose the power needed to change the battle from a stalemate to a checkmate. He needed a change in ns.


    (''I can''t take either of them down individually,'') He established, he had already tried doing pretty much that for half an hour, and it was clear that he was not quite at the level where he could aplish that just yet unfortunately. Even if he had better techniques and a better Martial body, the two Martial Seniors were clearly extremely experienced and elderly within the Senior Realm. They were remarkably strong and together stood at the upper echelons of all the Martial Seniors on Vilun ind.


    Senior Ceeran was much stronger than either individually, he was sure, but together they were capable of not only withstanding his full power but refusing him to give much of an advantage, if any.


    Of course, technically, still possessed an advantage. He was the only unharmed Martial Senior in this battle. The matriarch had been hurt significantly, and the patriarch had also incurred a certain degree of damage; with many bruises and wounds across his entire body. The problem was that it was not enough in the long run, most likely.


    Senior Ceeran was consuming his stamina at a pace far higher than he was, both physical and mental. He had to chase after and barricade the matriarch with sophisticated andplex maniptions of the trajectories of his attacks, spending at least as much energy as her, and even more energy than her partner each time Senior Ceeran pped his attack and him back. He definitely was consuming more mental energy than them having to divide his attention across both targets when both of them needed only focus on him.


    Even if his physical reserves could somehow keep up, he would most certainly end up feeling mentally exhausted before them and would likely make a mistake that would allow one of them to close the distance and get a good hit on him.


    (''That''s an uneptable oue,'') He resolutely decided. He refused to allow that to happen, and that naturally included going down the path that would allow that to happen. He needed to find a new course of action to allow him to win the battle and avoid a slow defeat.


    (''I need to focus my attention on just one of them for long enough to overwhelm them without incurring too much damage from the other,'') He decided.


    The question was which one he ought to focus on, and how he ought to go about it.


    (''Of the two of them, I can take down the matriarch the fastest,'') Senior Ceeran noted. (''But conversely, turning my back to the patriarch will be quite painful when he ms me with his powerful physique,'') Senior Ceeran hesitated. He was not a particrly tough Martial Artist, he would not be able to survive many attacks from a striking-oriented Martial Artist of that caliber. This was especially the case if those attacks struck his vitals. He would easily get knocked out from a single strike most likely.


    (''I need to ensure that there is enough of a distance between us if and when I choose to go for the matriarch,'') Senior Ceeran thought to himself.


    Had Rui been in his position he would havee up with a more sophisticated n with manyyers and steps while also using predictive models that he would have undoubtedly created by now, while also relying on the outputs of the VOID algorithm to deal with them.


    Senior Ceeran was certainly not as intelligent as shrewd as Rui, but he was far more experienced.


    He exhaled thergest breath of solidified breath he could, getting ready to immediately manipte both it and, in turn, the wind currents that it would create. Normally, he would divide them into two batches for both the Martial Seniors. Yet this time, turned all off toward the patriarch, shocking both his opponents.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    WHOOM!!!


    A titanically powerful wind current mmed into his opponent,pletely crushing his momentum and sending him flying dozens of kilometers away.


    The matriarch''s expression grew grave as she dove towards Senior Ceeran at top speed even as her partner was being blown away, looking to exploit this rare opportunity to close the distance between her and her opponent.


    Several infernos sted off behind her as she propelled herself forward with the recoil force, reaching her top speed nigh-instantaneously. She shot across the sky at an unprecedented speed, flying straight toward Senior Ceeran.


    "RARGH!" She snarled with excitement as she finally reached within striking range of him,unching a powerful ming straight at him!


    The temperature of the me spiked as she poured in every ounce of her power, turning blue instead of orange as it reached another level of potency and power.Material ? of N?velDrama.Org.


    BOOM!!!


    An explosion of mes and wind sted outwards with Senior Ceeran at the epicenter of the attack.


    "URGH!" She grimaced as she was pushed back, incurring even more damage. Yet a savage grin emerged on her face until she realized something was wrong.


    WHOOM!


    Suddenly, thousands of projectiles seized an opportunity, emerging from the smoke as they weaved a around her. Her eyes widened as Senior Ceeran emerged from the smoke with first-degree burns all over his body.


    "Watch out, R''An''Alnen!" The patriarch''s voice frantic voice echoed from afar as he rushed in to try and intercept the attacks like he originally did.


    "Toote," Senior Ceeran softly murmured even as the wind current that he had created copsed on her, crushing her at the epicenter.


    BOOM!!!


    "NO!" The patriarch''s bellow echoed across the entirety of the ind and beyond.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 690 Perspective

    The battle unfolded in a manner that shocked all of the spectators, especially the Martial Seniors of the ind who were most certainly paying rapt attention to the conflict between two of the most powerful Martial Seniors on the ind and the single outsider Martial Senior who hade to the ind as a diplomatst time.N?vel(D)ra/ma.Org exclusive ? material.


    They had been quite surprised when they saw him intervening to protect his Martial Squires from the matriarch of the K''ulnen Tribe. After all, none of them knew that he was even present on the ind. Still, they cared much less about why he was here than they did about his battle with the leaders of the K''ulnen Tribe and his Martial prowess.


    And, without a doubt, everyst one of them was shocked at his techniques. Yet, none of them were more shocked than the Martial Seniors of the G''ak''arkan Tribe.


    "HOW IS HE DOING THAT?!" Senior K''ahru''s jaw dropped as he momentarily lost all of his dignity and bearing as a Martial Senior as he witnessed Senior Ceeran elegantly manipting his attacks like a magician.


    "To think that the outsiders possess techniques that allow you to manipte your attacks to such an extreme degree!" Senior K''M was unable to maintain herposure either. "Truly enlightening! It''s a good thing we did not rashly attack them with just the two of us, isn''t it little brother?"


    She said with a measured tone as she threw a bit of a smug expression at Senior K''ahru. "If that man can fight the leaders of the K''ulnen Tribe and even injure them while remaining in pristine shape himself, the two of us would definitely have died a quick yet glorious death had we tried attacking their vige."


    Senior K''ahru gritted his teeth at her words. He was indeed the one who held the opinion that they ought to attack, dominate and extract the powerful long-range techniques of the outsiders because they clearly seemed to not possess a rank three Martial Artist like themselves, only rank two Martial Artists like the dark-haired diplomat who came to the tribe earlier.


    Now he realized that had they tried to implement his suggestion, both he and his elder sister would have undoubtedly died. The two of them had fought the vaunted matriarch of the K''ulnen Tribe together years ago and had almost died. They certainly would have died if not for their tribe leader intervening to protect them from the powerful woman at thest second. They had spent many weeks healing before they finally recovered from the burns that the matriarch had inflicted on them.


    They both knew that she was a fierce and powerful warrior that had dominated them from the very start. She was worthy of her position as the leader of the K''ulnen Tribe.


    So what were they supposed to make of the Martial Artist who bullied her with a fraction of his full power?


    Just how exponentially more powerful was this Martial Artist rtive to them?<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    They would die on the spot, and not even their chieftain would be able to save them in time, most likely. Maybe if the three of them took him on at once, they might be able to make it a fair fight, still, after witnessing his ridiculous Martial prowess, the three of them did not want to provoke a battle against him unless there was a real need to. Besides, unlike their hatred born of their many enemies and rivals on the ind, they had no ill will toward the outsiders.


    At the same time, they felt a great deal of quivering excitement at the prospect of fighting such a powerful being as dangerous as it was, they were warriors, after all. Not even the chieftain was able to quash such a temptation entirely.


    Part of this was definitely also because of the fact that he was a long-range Martial Artist like themselves. This roused their interest and curiosity tremendously.


    In the duration of their audience of the fight, they had already forgotten about the outsider''s offense when he tried engaging in negotiations with them. He had already apologized, which had be much heavier after witnessing just how much power the man wielded.


    He had the capital to look down on their techniques to a certain degree, they painfully realized, yet he apologized to them nheless all to prevent hostilities from breaking out and facilitate cooperation between both groups, all to obtain their techniques. Was this not a sign of respect?


    The three of them found their reluctance in engaging in trade with the outsiders melting away. The events that had urred over the past few months had shown them all of the merits of choosing to cooperate with the outsiders.


    They had demonstrated the value of their techniques in both explicit and implicit manners, holistically in many avenues that were highly relevant to the G''ak''arkan Tribe. After watching the settlement flourish in every way possible, in many ways, thanks to their long-range prowess, not even K''ahru, in good faith, could deny the merits of cooperating with the outsiders.


    In fact, Senior K''ahru was one of the most eager to master many of the techniques that were highly relevant to the Martial Art techniques that were highly relevant to his Martial Path. The prospect of making jumps into power ovee any xenophobia he had. Martial Artists hungered for Martial power, after all.


    "Hm?" The chieftain N''Kulu had been the first to notice something strange in the battle between the outsider and the K''ulnen leaders. Their eyes widened as they saw Senior Ceeranunch a powerful surprise attack at the patriarch, breaking his existing pattern of alternating between them. The attack had been so powerful that it crumpled all of the momenta that the patriarch of the K''ulnen Tribe had gathered, it flung him so far away that he ended up outside of the ind!


    The three Martial Seniors of the G''ak''arkan Tribe had realized that the battle had reached a new stage as the Senior Ceeran targeted the matriarch of the K''ulnen Tribe momentarily unhampered.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 691 Outcome

    The patriarch of the K''ulnen Tribe cursed his massive frame for the very first time in his life as he dashed across the sky as fast as he could, wishing he was faster. He pushed himself to the limit reaching where he had been before Senior Ceeran had expelled him.


    BOOM!!!


    "NOOO!" The patriarch of the K''ulnen Tribe dove into the fray desperately hoping to save his partner in time.


    The devastating attack resulted in a wind st that reached the ground from the clouds. Senior Ceeran narrowed his eyes as he prepared another set of attacks tounch at his enemies. He wasn''t sure if he seeded, after all, the patriarch of the K''ulnen Tribe may very well have protected his partner from Senior Ceeran''s devastating attack.


    "I''LL KILL YOU!!!" The patriarch bellowed as the attack subsided.


    His voice was inflicted with grief and rage.


    His body was wounded.


    Yet he didn''t care about that. His eyes were fixed on the heavily battered corpse in his arms. The attack had broken the matriarch''s entire body, she had already been injured previously, and now he had bombarded her with his absolute most powerful attack. She had sumbed to critical injuries, passing away.


    Even if she hadn''t she would have been in a highly critical state, unable to fight at all. The battle would have likely ended then and there as the patriarch would have most certainly retreated.


    "She''s dead," Senior Ceeran smirked smugly. "And you''re next."


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    The atmosphere grew taut, both literally and metaphorically.


    If not for the fact that he was holding his wife''s corpse, the patriarch would have rushed Senior Ceeran immediately. However, they were many kilometers abovend and even farther away from the vige. He did not want to just drop his partner''s body down to the ground.


    "I''ll kill you when I''m done paying respects to my partner." The patriarch swore, struggling to choke out the words. "Be prepared. I will kill you if it''s thest thing I do!"


    His eyes werepletely red, entuating his intense re. Yet he retreated slowly, never taking his eyes off the murderer of his partner.


    "Where are you going?" Senior Ceeran asked with a puzzled expression.


    "TO BURY MY WIFE!"


    "And who said you could do that?" Senior Ceeran mercilessly asked with a mocking expression as he exhaled dense breath once more, weaving a barrage of powerful attacks.


    The patriarch of the K''ulnen Tribe was dumbfounded. "How dare you desecrate the right to bury the dead?!"


    The Martial Tribes regarded the warriors that fell in death with respect and honor. Martial Tribes allowed each other to collect the corpses of their warriors and return them home to give them honorable burials.


    "This battle isn''t over," Senior Ceeran dered.


    WHOOSH!


    Powerful wind currents mmed into the patriarch, pushing him back.


    He gritted his teeth, forced to drop the corpse of his partner as he guarded his vitals.


    "HOW DARE YOU?!" The patriarch''s skin cracked as glowing red lines trickled across his entire body like rivers. The patriarch''s aura grew more intense and perilous as his expression crumpled with rage and hatred.


    He rushed forward, charging at top speed.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    "You''re no match for me alone just like your pathetic little wife," Senior Ceeranughed brazenly, angering the patriarch.


    "RARGH!" The man felt like his very sanity was being consumed by his rage. "I''LL KILL YOU!"


    Senior Ceeran''s expression grew serious as he exhaled arge volume of dense breath. He took a greater amount of time as he shaped and shifted around such that the resulting wind currents were extremely narrow and small. Their power was highly focused.


    An entire second passed as Senior Ceeran continuouslypressed and focused the power even further.


    It may not have been much time to ordinary humans, but to a Martial Senior, it was enough time to cross the dozen kilometers that separated them.


    The patriarch grew increasingly excited as he reached within ten meters of Senior Ceeran! Just ten more meters and he would be able to pound that wretched man who murdered his partner!


    That was when Senior Ceeran opened his eyes.


    The lines on his body glowed as his expression strained. A deep sense of peril radiated from him.


    SWHOOSH


    A tremendously powerful beam of wind flew towards the patriarch at a tremendous speed.


    "HAH!" The man braced himself for an impact. He was extremely determined to withstand the attack and take the final step to get his hands on his opponent.


    BAM!!!


    The attack mmed into him as thergest st of wind thus far rose, spreading far past the battlefield. An entire portion of the forest spanning a kilometer in radius was crushed, leaving a crater behind.


    "Cough!" Blood spewed out of the patriarch''s mouth.


    Yet his eyes were fixed on his abdomen, where once there were flesh, muscles, and bone was now a gaping hole. He weakly nced up at Senior Ceeran, who waved him goodbye with a pleasant smile, before darkness assailed his vision and his mind.


    THUD!


    His corpse struck the ground heavily.


    "Huff..." Senior Ceeran sighed as he pulled out a healing potion, and quickly consumed it. He exhaled in relief as the potion wound through his blood, working its magic on his wounds as his tissue regenerated and healed the burns that the matriarch of the K''ulnen Tribe had inflicted on him.


    "Well, that''s that," He heaved a sigh, inspecting the battlefield.


    His senses pricked as he sensed iing figures in the distance.


    "Congrattions on your victory, Senior Ceeran!" The Longranger Squires were ecstatic at the magnificent disy of long-range prowess that Senior Ceeran had demonstrated.


    "Why thank you," he smiled. "Will one of you fetch the corpses of the two Martial Seniors of the K''ulnen Tribe? The Martial Union will definitely want to have ess to it for research purposes, that is for sure."


    He nced at another figure approaching the group, smiling when he saw who it was. "Rui,"


    "Senior Ceeran," Rui smiled. "That was an amazing fight."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 692 Insights

    "Haha, thanks. It''s been a while since I had a fight that pushed me to the limit. Watching all you younglings get all the action had me impatient for my turn," He paused, before asking. "Do you think this will be enough to convince the G''ak''arkan Tribe?"


    "I cannot guarantee it, but I would be surprised if they were still resolutely averse to obtaining our techniques," Rui replied thoughtfully. "With everything they have witnessed, there should be plenty of reason for them to be leaping at the opportunity of obtaining our techniques."


    Senior Ceeran nodded, no longer pursuing the matter. He had done his part and he trusted Rui to do his. So far, Rui had not yet given him any reason to doubt him. The young man had proven hispetence many times in the time that he had known him. In fact, Senior Ceeran doubted that anybody had figured out that Rui was not a high-grade Martial Squire. This was despite the fact that Rui had fought multiple times in battle, yet no one had realized that he was actually much weaker than he imed to be.Content held by N?velDrama.Org.


    This was because Rui''s Martial Path and Martial Art were so potent and powerful that they gave enough credence to the mind mask that Rui was wearing, that nobody questioned Rui''s prowess at this point in time.


    "Why the long face?" Senior Ceeran raised an eyebrow as he noticed Rui''s solemn expression sticking out of the excited and ecstatic Martial Squires.


    "Hm? Ah, it wasn''t much. I was just thinking about the K''ulnen Tribe," Rui replied. "We''ve killed their leaders as well as many of their warriors, including Martial Squires. Without their leaders and in their dysfunctional state on top of their existing irrationality, I fear they may react aversely to this. Worst-case scenario, they may just decide to go all out in a suicide attack against us."


    "Hm, that isn''t much of a problem right?," Senior Ceeran shrugged. "After all, they''re only left with Martial Squires and Martial Apprentices. They have zero chance of taking us down."


    "That is true¡­" Rui smiled wryly. The issue was that it was unlikely that Senior Ceeran would fight Squire-level battles for them. This meant that if the Martial Squires and Martial Apprentices did decide tounch an all-out war, it would most likely be the Martial Squires and Martial Apprentices of the settlement doing all the hard work.


    Of course, Senior Ceeran would definitely intervene if things were starting to get too ugly, still, Rui would rather they didn''t have to deal with the K''ulnen Tribe at all. They had just finished aplishing their goal, and now Rui was finally ready to move back into negotiations with the G''ak''arkan Tribe. Their schedule would be significantly dyed yet again if the K''ulnen Tribe if thetter lost their minds and decided to try and annihte the Martial Union settlement.


    (''I should send Kane to wiretap the entire ce,'') Rui''s lit up as he came up with a good n. The reason they had to be careful with trying to send Kane into any Martial Tribe to try and gather information directly or indirectly was that Martial Seniors were too much for Kane to misdirect the attention of with Void Step, meaning that he wouldn''t make it out alive.


    Now that both the Martial Seniors of the K''ulnen Tribe were dead, Kane ought to have no problem infiltrating the K''ulnen Tribe and gathering information while bugging the ce to hell and back.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    Still, Rui wasn''t too concerned by the K''ulnen Tribe. After all, the Martial Union''s settlement was not the only enemy that they had. They were still engaging in active war against a few other Martial Tribes. Unlike the Martial Union, these Martial Tribes had an active interest in getting rid of the K''ulnen Tribe. Rui was sure that at this very moment, these other Martial Tribes were preparing an all-out war with the K''ulnen Tribe topletely crush and take everything that they wanted from the tribe.


    Though Rui highly doubted that the Martial Tribes would massacre the nonbatants for no reason, he was pretty sure that all the Martial Squires and Martial Apprentices were as good as dead. They would be eliminated by the other tribes to ensure that none of them would ever reach the third rank; the Senior Realm to ensure that the K''ulnen Tribe would never return to power ever again.


    Regardless, Rui didn''t care about what happened to them as long as the Martial Union did not get dragged into the mess. He only wanted to ensure that their n seeded.


    "Hm?" Rui paid more attention to the corpses of the two Martial Seniors that the Martial Squire found and dragged up.


    The patriarch''s body was still in a good condition aside from the gaping hole in his gut, but the matriarch''s body was quite unsightly. Senior Ceeran had bludgeoned her extremely well, and the post-mortem time had not done anything good for it.


    Still, there were insights to be drawn from their bodies. And Rui had already gained one when he inspected the bodies deeply.


    (''Their veins¡­ are bloated and inmed¡­'') Rui realized when his eyes widened with a particr thought. (''Could it be that those sharp red lines were in fact all part of the circtory system?'')


    It was a shocking thought, but now that he tried recalling the exact position of those lines, which wasn''t easy due to the distance between him and them and the fact that they moved blindingly fast, he could see that the positioning of the red lines was not inconsistent with the locations of veins and arteries.


    (''What exactly does that even mean?'') Rui''s mind was filled with all kinds of hypotheses, but none of them made too much sense at the moment. (''If they are the veins and the arteries, then that means that their veins and arteries are glowing inside the skin very brightly. Only then could any amount of light could pass through the skin.


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    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 693 Considerations

    The human body was not absolutely opaque. This was something that an overwhelming majority of people were not aware of. In reality, the human body was translucent; It allowed light to partially pass through it. This was partly because of the fact that seventy percent of the body of the human body wasprised of water, which was perfectly transparent. This was whatrgely gave the human body its translucence.


    The translucence of the human body could even be tested and measured at any give point in time.


    One need only ce a bright and intense source of light behind one''s thumb, and one would notice the thumb glowing red due to all the light passing through and bouncing off the red blood and flesh, bing red.


    ("If that is what is happening with the circtory system of Martial Seniors, then that would exin the red flowing lines across the body,'') Rui realized in excitement.


    The exact same thing would be happening if the veins and the arteries of the body also glowed bright white, for Martial Seniors.


    (''But that''s so bizarre!'') Rui tried making sense of why such a thing would be happening.


    Why would veins and arteries starting glowing bright white in the middle ofbat? How would such a thing even help at all? Why even bother trying to do that with them?


    After all, they certainly did not directly intervene in the battle he just witnessed, did they?


    (''Well, maybe such a sh function is useful, but I don''t know how,'') Rui considered. (''But if they aren''t useful¡­'')


    Then why glow bright white?


    (''Things that tend to glow super bright white are usually¡­'') His eyebrows rose as he had an interesting thought. (''¡­filled with energy.'')


    If that applied to the strange phenomenon of the glowing veins and arteries of the Senior Realm the¡­


    (''Maybe I''ve discovered an important secret of the breakthrough to the Senior Realm.'') Rui tried his best to suppress his excitement with the non-verbalmunication control training that he had received in his training for serving as a diplomat of the Martial Union. Thankfully it yed out, and nobody noticed his inner turmoil and excitement.


    They quickly wrapped up and headed back to the Martial Union settlement once they had secured the two bodies. They needed to bring them back to the settlement as quick as possible where the medical team would be able to ensure that their condition didn''t deteriorate.


    On the way back, Rui couldn''t help butprehend the recent insights that he had made regarding the power of Martial Seniors. He continued to remain enraptured by the matter.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    (''If the glowing veins and arteries are a sign of extremely dense energy and power in their blood, then wouldn''t that mean that the cells of Martial Seniors are supplied with a tremendous amount of power?'') Rui considered the thought before frowning. (''I''m not sure how much sense this makes though, considering that the human cells generate power with ATP molecules. Blood vessels carry nutrients andpounds, not raw energy in a manner that inadvertently generates light.'')


    Of course, Rui was aware that his argument would have made perfect sense if it applied to the baseline human. It could not be applied to human beings that had undergone elerated Darwinian evolution.


    (''It makes sense that this is a trait exclusive to Martial Seniors if the evolution breakthrough process is what allows it to be possible anyway,'') Rui spected.


    Still, even if that was a usible exnation, it did not address many other questions that Rui had. One of the biggest ones that Rui was that if they were supplying energy in some kind of form, then where was that energying from? After all, he highly doubted that Martial Seniors could break the firstw of thermodynamics; thew of conservation of energy.


    While Martial Artists were spectacrly and inhumanly powerful, he had yet to see an instance of them warping reality itself.


    He wasn''t able to answer that question, though he did have a few guesses.


    Rui took a good look at Senior Ceeran. He knew that the man would not divulge the secrets of the Senior Realm to him, even if did his best to persuade him.


    Regardless, there was no way for him to verify what he hade up with. He would just need to get stronger until he qualified to know.


    He recalled that a grade-five Martial Squire had once told him that upon reaching grade five, he would be told of the conditions that needed to be fulfilled to undergo the breakthrough to the Senior Realm. Without them, he would not be able to break through to the Senior Realm.


    From what he had once been hinted at, the breakthrough to the Senior Realm was not like the breakthrough to the Squire Realm, which was entirely man-made instead of a natural phenomenon that naturally urred. If anything, it was quite likely that the breakthrough to the Senior Realm was simr to that of the breakthrough to the Apprentice Realm, a spontaneous event.Material ? of N?velDrama.Org.


    Eventually, Rui overcame his rapture once they reached the Martial Union settlement. The Settlement was in a great mood, having heard that Senior Ceeran won the battle that broke out between himself and two native Martial Seniors of the indigenous tribe that the Martial Union settlement had been at war with.


    When the members of the settlement heard that Senior Ceeran had been engaged in a battle against two Martial Seniors, they had grown quite worried. Not just for him, but also for themselves. If he died, then there was a good chance that their little settlement was doomed. After all, the K''ulnen Tribe would have an overwhelming advantage against them in terms of Martial power. A single one of their Martial Seniors would be powerful enough to annihte all of the Martial Squires of the Martial Union settlement.


    Thus when they received word that Senior Ceeran won a solid victory, they couldn''t all help but heave a collective sigh of relief.


    It was good to be alive.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 694 Aftermath

    Once Rui returned, he immediately began issuing orders to relevant personnel. They had acquired the corpses of two Martial Seniors whose conditions could not be allowed to deteriorate any further.


    While Senior Ceeran could excuse himself and treat himself to a good hot bath for a job well done, Rui had immediately visited the intelligence team regarding some important matters.


    "You want me to infiltrate the K''ulnen Tribe and bug the entire ce? Sure, that''s no problem now that those two looming threats are gone. I''ll walk right past those Martial Squire chumps and ce wiretaps right under their noses.


    "Be careful though. Wiretaps lose their invisibility and imperceptibility once they leave your person," Rui warned him.Content held by N?velDrama.Org.


    Kane himself was invisible and imperceptible to almost all other Martial Squires. However, the moment that an object left his small area of influence, it would immediately be perceivable. What that meant was that if there was any other Martial Artist in the immediate vicinity of the location where Kane was cing a wiretap, then there was a chance that they would notice the wiretap seemingly appearing out of thin air. In which case, they would definitely investigate the object.


    "Rx, don''t be such a worrywart," Kane reassured. "If I do this mission, it would be at night when at least a good portion of them will be sleeping."


    This was true and definitely did alleviate the risks of the operation.


    The rest of the meeting proceeded smoothly as he informed the intelligence team of his concerns regarding the more zealous Martial Artists of the K''ulnen Tribe that would choose to retaliate against the Martial Union settlement for having killed their highest leaders and most powerful warriors.


    The intelligence team immediately formed several ns to implement greater surveince on the K''ulnen Tribe to ensure that they did not even miss the faintest signs of anything the tribe might nning that was less than desirable to the Martial Union.


    Once that was done, Rui left them to their devices and their ns. He had a lot of people to talk to, after all. He reached the conference room and used hisms device to reach out to Martialmissioner Derun. She generally received reports of all happenings naturally, but the matters that had urred today were significant enough that he felt the need to report it to her directly.


    "Squire Quarrier," She picked up rather quickly, giving Rui a courteous smile. "To what do I owe the pleasure of this call?"


    "Good news, mam," Rui smiled. "We have finally concluded the show-off n just now as Senior Ceeran defeated the two Martial Seniors of the K''ulnen Tribe that we picked a fight to demonstrate the might of the Martial Art techniques of the Martial Union. We have also retained their corpses that have been adequately stored by our medical team."


    Her eyes lit up as her smile grew more genuine. "That is indeed good news. I presume that now that the war is over you intend to go through with the negotiations talks once more?"


    "That''s correct," Rui nodded. "I do not dare to guarantee sess, however, I am not pessimistic about our chances. We have truly performed really well."


    "So I''ve read," She nodded. "The fact that you took down a Martial Squire with a single attack, and a rtively high-grade Martial Squire all by yourself makes it hard to believe for a Martialmissioner like myself that you are technically a low-grade Martial Squire at the moment."


    Rui could sense that she was being genuine. It was to be expected, after all. His prior feats did not measure up to the ones that he had performed during his participation in the war effort against the K''ulnen Tribe.


    He had killed Martial Squires before, but they were in the same grade as him when his Martial Path was taken into ount. And that was also after an intense battle.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    In this conflict, however, Rui had taken down one low-grade Martial Squire with a single attack and had taken down a rtively high-grade Martial Squire despite her receiving assistance from another Martial Squire.


    These were feats that far exceeded what one would expect of a grade-four Martial Squire.


    "Well, I''ve been putting mytest technique to good use," Rui smiled humbly. "With good preparation, one can exceed their limits in a given situation, and that is mostly what I did to ensure that my facade of being a high-grade Martial Artist did not fail. After all, the G''ak''arkan Tribe will give me much less respect if they realize that I am only average, maybe a bit above average by their standards."


    "Hm, I see," She said. "Regardless, I''m sure you didn''t call me just to tell me that, correct?"


    Rui smiled. "That''s right. I wanted to inquire about the approval and authorization of my proposed failsafe n."


    The martialmissioner took a moment to consider his words, before responding. "I decided to authorize the n if it is needed,"


    Rui raised an eyebrow at her words. "I see¡­ Thank you. Frankly, that is a little bit unexpected."


    "It was to me as well," She sighed. "After all, it is a n that necessarily guarantees losses to our side regardless of the oue. We''d be nning a disaster that would affect the Martial Union settlement on the Vilun Ind¡­"


    "Then why¡­"


    "Why did I authorize it nheless?"


    Rui nodded with an expression of curiosity on his face.


    "It''s because your conduct and execution of this mission has been impable and assuring, young Squire," She told him. "Your Martial prowess is not the only attention-drawing aspect about you. You have handled the settlement quite professionally and aptly. I do not know if you realize the significance of this matter, but it is quite reassuring to see that you are capable andpetent."


    "You tter me," Rui smiled wryly.


    "Regardless," She moved on. "In addition to that, we have invested a lot in obtaining those techniques. We must have them no matter what. Be sure to seed."


    "That is my intention, mam."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 695 Rejection

    "Good," She nodded. "Thepetence and knowledge that you''ve demonstrated in your role as a diplomat, and as the interim leader of a settlement of the Martial Union is quite impressive and desirable. The Department of Foreign Affairs has informed me that you most likely meet the qualifications to be a qualified entry-level ambassador of the Martial Union. A Martial Artist that also satisfies the expertise andpetence requirements to be an officer of the Department of Foreign Affairs is a greatly valuable asset."


    She gave him a measured look, before asking. "What do you think?"


    Rui raised an eyebrow at her question, a little at a loss for words. "I think that the Department of Foreign Affairs might be overestimating my capabilities. I have no formal education at all. I was home-schooled by my mother and older brother. I certainly have no higher education in diplomacy, foreign affairs, and international politics."


    "Oh, it is probably true that, at the moment, youck a foundation in some of the aspects that we expect from our foreign affairs officers," She casually replied, nodding. "However, given your demonstrably high ability to absorb information, that isn''t much of a problem is it?"


    Martialmissioner Derun had received reports from the Department of Foreign Affairs that stated that the assistant diplomatic team that they had assigned to Rui had reported that he was the most knowledgeable out of all of them when it came to understanding, and knowledge regarding Vilun Ind.


    She had been considerably impressed by this considering that the assistant diplomats assigned to the mission had been studying Vilun Ind for more than a year. Yet Rui, in the span of one month, had already reached a level where he could be considered one of the foremost experts of Vilun Ind and the G''ak''arkan Tribe.


    A Martial Artist who could also serve as an ambassador was a desirable asset for the same reason that it was needed in this particr mission. This was the Age of Martial Art and Martial Artists were by far among the most respected and exalted beings in human civilization. Just by being a Martial Artist, he would be able to aplish more as an ambassador than another with a simr level ofpetence.


    "Are you sure you don''t want to consider this line?" She asked gently.


    "I am," Rui replied unhesitantly. "I do not regret this mission that I undertook or my role in it. However, in the past four months, I haven''t gotten the opportunity to train or fight all too much outside of the conflicts that I participated in against the K''ulnen Tribe. That is a huge gap for someone who is ustomed to constantly fighting or training. Now, this mission has been helpful and insightful in many ways, but at the same time, I cannot say that it is something that I would be willing to do more than one time,"


    "I see, for what it''s worth, I agree," She nodded. "I was merely passing on the suggestion from the Department of Foreign Affairs. Personally, I believe that Martial Artists should stick to what they''re best at, and leave the rest to others who are qualified."<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    "I agree with that as well," Rui nodded.


    It was one of the most effective and efficient divisions ofbor. Society could not afford specialists practicing in another field that was entirely separate from their field of expertise. Civilization would only progress if the people did what they were best at, and continuously got better at it.


    Rui quickly concluded his call with the Martialmissioner, before growing absorbed in his thoughts. It would seem that his execution of the mission thus far was quite satisfying to the Martial Union. Perhaps there was a chance that he would be able to earn extra credits.


    He put the matter aside, after all, he had actual urgent matters to tend to.


    It was time to roll up to the G''ak''arkan Vige once more and request an audience with the leaders of the tribe. He quickly sped to the diplomatic office, gathering the entire team.C0ntent ? 2024 (N/?)velDrama.Org.


    "Alright, as you all have surely learned by now. The war against the K''ulnen Tribe hase to an end; our victory. The two leaders of the K''ulnen Tribe are dead, and every long-range Martial Squire in our settlement has participated multiple times, demonstrating the prowess of our techniques thoroughly." Rui announced to all of them. "We have finished our little sales pitch, and now it''s time to actually conduct the sale. The intelligence department has supplied us with all the information that they can gather on the G''ak''arkan Tribe, and it is your duty to go through it all, gain a good grasp of the impact that our war with the K''ulnen Tribe has had on the G''ak''arkan Tribe, and then formte a course of action that will serve as our negotiation strategy. Once that''s done, we''ll refine it before executing it. Get to work."


    The assistant diplomats scrambled once more as they went through the stacks of documents and files consisting of the intelligence reports of the Intelligence department. Now that the war had ended, the spotlight once more fell on the diplomats of the Martial Union. They would be taking action once more.


    Honestly, Rui felt quite confident that if they walked up to the G''ak''arkan Tribe right at this very moment, then there was a very good chance that they would immediately jump at the opportunity to trade techniques. Yet Rui had still chosen to take a cautious and thoroughly prepared route anyway because he didn''t want careless overconfidence to ruin what was otherwise a m dunk opportunity.


    There was more to negotiation than merely getting both sides to be invested in cooperating, which was the stage at which they were right now. After the actual trade that was going to take ce was training the Martial Artists in their techniques while having their own Martial Artists be trained in the techniques of the G''ak''arkan Tribe.


    asionally missing content, please report errors in time.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 696 Barriers

    For example, when conducting the trade, both sides would not want to be short-changed and be given techniques the value of which were inferior to the techniques that they gave the other side.


    That meant both sides needed to agree that the value of the techniques exchanged needed to be agreed to be equal by both sides.


    This was where theplications arose.


    For starters, what decided the value of a technique?


    The Martial Union already defined the value of a technique objectively, using several parameters that it valued in a technique. Rui had already learned about it when he submitted the Pathfinder technique to the Martial Union.


    The Martial Union judged the value of techniques based on four parameters; individuality, potency, difficulty, and dissemination viability.


    Individuality was a parameter that was a measure of both uniqueness and originality. The value of a technique was low to the Martial Union if it had zero originality and zero uniqueness. It would mean that the Martial Union most likely already possessed such a technique in its vast database of techniques, and thus there was no point in purchasing the technique that was being offered.


    Potency was a measure of how effective and impactful the technique was inbat in whatever field the technique was of. High-grade techniques excelled in the field they were in and produced much greater results than low-grade techniques. It was the foundation of the value of techniques.


    Difficulty and dissemination value were both simr parameters that generally measured how difficult it was to spread a technique. The easier it was to spread a technique among Martial Artists, the more valuable the technique was, since such a technique would singlehandedly be able to increase the Martial prowess of the Martial Union.


    However, it was possible that the G''ak''arkan Tribe had different conceptions of what was valuable in a Martial Art technique and what wasn''t. It was entirely possible that what the Martial Union deemed to be junk was quite valuable to the G''ak''arkan Tribe.


    Of course, it was unlikely that there would be drastically different values. At the end of the day, power was power. Power was what all Martial Artists sought, and was what set them on their Martial Path.


    With thatmon value, it would be possible toe to an agreement in trade.


    The problem wasn''t the big picture, the devil was in the details. Being able to cleanly form a trade that both sides would be satisfied with was not going to be easy.


    That was one of the things that the diplomatic team had to handle.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    In this particr matter, Rui took the initiative to iron out the structure of the trade all by himself. Since he was a Martial Artist and apetent diplomat, he was by far the most qualified to work on this particr matter.


    (''Firstly, the trades need to be simplified. Rather than doing a singrrge bulk trade of techniques, it is best to proceed with arge number of simple and smaller trades. Ideally, we can trade one technique for a technique that both sides agree is a fair and eptable trade,'')


    Of course, Rui knew that it was not quite so simple. But it was definitely far simpler than if they tried to trade a group of ten techniques for another group of ten techniques.


    (''Of course, it is best to remain flexible, rather than forcing a one-for-one technique exchange rate. It''s not bad to obtain two mid-grade techniques for one higher-grade technique as long as the value on both sides is generally the same.'')


    What both sides would consider whatprised the value of a technique would need to be negotiated with the G''ak''arkan Tribe. But Rui was rtively sure that that was also manageable.


    One thing that could potentially be problematic was the training of the Martial Artists of the G''ak''arkan Tribe in the techniques of the Martial Union. This was an issue that the Martial Union would not be able to easily solve.Content held by N?velDrama.Org.


    For example, almost all of the training methodologies of the Martial Union were centered around specially developed training equipment, gear, machines, and facilities that were used to efficiently and effectively train the Marital Artists of the Martial Union.


    What that meant was that for every technique that was traded to the G''ak''arkan Tribe, the Martial Union needed to ensure that it had the facilities, faculties, and resources needed for the Martial Artists of the G''ak''arkan Tribe to train and obtain the techniques of the Martial Union.


    This was not simple, while the Martial Union settlement already possessed some training and sparring facilities and infrastructure, they were quite paltry and underdeveloped. The Martial Union would need to build the infrastructure needed and transport the supplies and resources needed for the settlement to be equipped with the many things needed to train the Martial Artists of the G''ak''arkan Tribe in their techniques.


    Another issue that the G''ak''arkan Tribe might have would be the propagation of these techniques once the Martial Union left. Rui wasn''t sure whether the Martial Union would choose to continue having a settlement on the ind once his mission concluded, but even if they left, the G''ak''arkan Tribe needed to ensure that they could train their future Martial Artists in these techniques.


    That was the biggest problem that the Martial Union would need to ovee. Of course, it wasn''t as though training these techniques would be impossible without the training resources of the Martial Union, it would definitely be much more difficult. Maybe Rui would need to consult with some experts and provide them with the best training methodologies that are devoid of technology.


    Though, given that the G''ak''arkan Tribe was used to training in this manner, Rui could be rtively confident that they would probably find a way to train their Martial Artists in those techniques regardless. They might be irked, however, to find that the way that they would be trained was not the way that their Martial Artists would be training it in the future.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 697 Audience

    Another problem was thenguage barrier. Training the Martial Artists of the G''ak''arkan Tribe was going to be aplete pain in the ass for the Martial Union. Rui was truly thankful that his role in the mission was only to serve as an ambassador and get the G''ak''arkan Tribe to cooperate with the Martial Union.


    He would rather avoid serving as a trainer if he had the choice to. Though he suspected that he would not be able to avoid it at the moment.


    After all, he was currently the only master of the Pathfinder technique. It had been a little over four months that the Martial Union was in possession of the technique, after all. That was probably not long enough for a long-range Martial Artist to have mastered it. Hell, he highly doubted that any Martial Squire had even attempted to master it at the moment. As far as he knew, the only Martial Artist who had attempted to master this technique was Senior Ceeran.


    And thus far, it looked like he hadn''t mastered it yet at all, from what Rui could tell. He was rtively certain that Senior Ceeran would inform him, given their rtionship, if he did sessfully master it.N?vel(D)ra/ma.Org exclusive ? material.


    (''And he would be insanely powerful if he had sessfully mastered it.'')


    Not that he wasn''t already insanely powerful, but Rui meant that even by the standards of the Senior Realm, he would have been extraordinarily capable, he would have most likely been able to fight the matriarch and the patriarch of the K''ulnen Tribe from across the ind!


    (''I can see why he wants to master it, the synergy between the Pathfinder technique and his techniques is quite incredible,'')


    Combining the ODA system with his ability to manipte trajectories of attacks after they''ve beenunched would allow him to urately hit targets that he wouldn''t be able to hit with just the ODA system alone since it meant that he would be able to make adjustments to the shifts in the trajectories of the already highly urate attacks, thanks to the ODA system, to ensure that he could correct any mistakes he made over extremely long distances.


    (''Given how much range he already possesses by virtue of being a Martial Senior, it is entirely possible that Senior Ceeran would be able to urately snipe people from across the entire ind!'')


    Such a feat was so far beyond what Rui was capable of that it wasn''t even funny. He could only sigh at the power that Senior Ceeran would obtain if he sessfully mastered the Pathfinder technique.


    However, until he did, Rui was the only Martial Artist that had mastered the Pathfinder technique. Furthermore, Rui already possessed a good foundation in training other Martial Artists, on top of that, he had also be fluent in the Vilunnguage. He was literally the perfect trainer for the Martial Union to have trained the martial Artists of the G''ak''arkan Tribe.


    He sighed, shaking his head. He could think about this matterter, for now, they needed to focus on establishing the intent to cooperate full-fledged for mutual benefit.


    A few days passed as the diplomatic team came up with a final negotiation strategy, along with Rui. The reason they were able to hurry up the process was that the diplomatic team had not been sitting on their thumbs doing anything. They had been quite busy as the intelligence team supplied them with intelligence on the G''ak''arkan Tribe.


    What that meant was that the foundation for the negotiation approaches for the G''ak''arkan Tribe for various oues was already established at its core. They simply needed to refine it.


    And soon enough, they had.


    It was time for Rui''s second visit to the G''ak''arkan Tribe.


    "Ready, Zeyra, Stemple?"<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    "Yes sir," The two of them replied confidently.


    "Good, then let''s get going."


    They headed out, getting into the prepared motorized carriage that immediately began driving off.


    On the way there, Rui wondered whether it was a good idea to leave Senior Ceeran behind. After all, the native indigenous Martial Artists of the ind respected power above all else. Senior Ceeran would most certainly obtain far more respect than Rui would.


    Still, Rui was sure that the G''ak''arkan Tribe had already figured out that things were working differently for the Martial Union''s settlement. Rui was the interim leader, and that technically included Senior Ceeran as well.


    They had already seen Rui act as the diplomat when it turned out that a Martial Senior had been with them the entire time.


    At this point, he highly doubted that they would give him the cold shoulder, especially when Rui himself had merit even as a Martial Squire.


    It took a while for the carriage to tread up the mountain. It gave the G''ak''arkan Tribe plenty of warning that they wereing so that the G''ak''arkan tribe didn''t feel caught off-guard or disrespected.


    Rui could already sense a distant scout maintaining surveince from a distance as they followed them up the mountain. Rui bet that if he made any threatening actions, they wouldn''t hesitate tounch an attack on them.


    Nothing of the sort happened.


    Even before Rui and his assistants got off when they arrived, they had already been faced with a ratherrge crown that had left the boundary of the vige to take a good look at the outsider.


    At the foremost were Martial Squires that sought to shield the civilian vigers that stared at him with awe and fear.


    (''Looks like my feats are making the rounds in the vige,'') Rui smiled pleasantly at all of them even as his high-grade mind mask amplified the sense of power he radiated.


    Suddenly, a far greater presence weighed on everybody''s mind as a figure descended down from the sky.


    "Outsider." She said with a mild smile. "Wee to our vige once more. I am K''M, one of the leaders of the G''ak''arkan Tribe. What brings you to our vige?"


    (''She''s a bit stronger than the Martial Senior I dealt withst time,'') Rui noted as Primordial Instinct gave him an impression of her power.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 698 Concerns

    "Thank you for weing us," Rui began. "I am Rui, representative of the Martial Union. We are here to facilitate sessful cooperation and trade between our viges. We hope that the G''ak''arkan Tribe will heed us and ept our offer to engage in a mutually beneficial rtionship."


    Rui stared at Senior K''M as she processed his words. He could immediately tell that she was not averse to the offer that the Martial Union had made. Although she did not do anything overt to reveal her thoughts on the matter, Rui was rtively certain that she did not possess any disregard for his offer.


    Her subconscious non-verbalmunication betrayed her interest in his offer.


    "We are interested in listening to and considering what you have to say, warrior Rui," She replied carefully as she reached the ground. "Has the rank-three warrior not chosen to apany you? Do you truly represent your vige when he is a part of it?"


    Rui was aware that the G''ak''arkan Tribe assigned numbered ranks to each Realm, ascending with the power of the Realm. Rank three Martial Artist was nothing but a Martial Senior, while he would be considered a rank two Martial Artist.


    "As I''m sure you have long been made aware of, the rank-three Martial Artist and myself are both part of a group that is extremelyrge and powerful," Rui smiled. "Both the rank-three outsider and I are following orders. I am the leader of the vige, and he is the rank three guardian and protector of it."


    "I see¡­" Her eyebrows knitted briefly as she tried wrapping her head around the matter. She couldn''t imagine why the group that they imed to be a part of would ever order a rank-three Martial Artist. She especially couldn''t imagine why a rank three Martial Artist would willingly bow his head to a rank two Martial Artist like Rui, yet she was open-minded enough to understand that they were outsiders with customs and norms that were entirely different from that of theirs.


    They had already taken him seriouslyst time, and now they took him even more seriously after witnessing what he could do. Thus, it wasn''t nearly as much of a problem as it would have been.


    It spoke volumes about how impressed they were with Rui.


    "Come with me," She said as she turned around and walked toward the vige. The crowd parted ways for her as Rui and his assistants quickly followed suit.


    Not much had changed in the vige since Rui''sst visit four months ago. There was greater greenery as it was the season of spring, it seemed. Yet everything else had more or less remained the same.


    She didn''t say a word until they reached therger hall that they used for important discussions and meetings.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    "Have a seat," She gestured at arge table in the room. The room was heavily guarded with several Martial Squires at every corner and on both sides of the entrance.


    Rui waited as a servant ced y cups of water on the table for all of the four seated members.


    "Now then. Please begin."


    Rui smiled. "As the G''ak''arkan Tribe is very well aware, our Martial Union has offered all of you the opportunity to engage in a trade of techniques between both sides. We believe that both sides have unique advantages, ensuring that both sides stand to gain power from this trade. We see every reason to proceed with this trade and no reason not to. Today, we are here for that very reason. We hope that the G''ak''arkan Tribe will acquiesce this time."


    "¡­" She stared at Rui wordlessly for several seconds, before opening her mouth. "We¡­ are not unwilling. But we wish to ensure that this trade of Martial Art techniques is truly beneficial to us in the way that you im it is. We do not wish to rashly give our word in an agreement that is exploitative or deceptive of us. If you are able to truly convince us beyond any shadow of a doubt that our tribe truly benefits no less than your so-called Martial Union, then and only then will we ept your offer to engage in trade with us. If you are unwilling to ept this, then there is no possibility of cooperation.


    This was the very first time in all of the diplomatic interventions with the G''ak''arkan Tribe in history that the Martial Union had managed to not get rejected by the G''ak''arkan Tribe. Rui and his assistants were unfazed to the eye, yet they were celebrating inwardly.


    Of course, their response was far from affirmative. But this was already a really good result considering history.


    Finally, a mutual intent to cooperate had finally been established, with that out of the way, Rui could slowly and surely break through everystpunction and shred of reluctance withpelling arguments. Now that they were finally going to be actively engaging with what the Martial Union was offering, they could finally get to the heart of the issue.N?vel(D)ra/ma.Org exclusive ? material.


    "Of course, most certainly. We are very much willing to address any and all concerns that you may have," Rui smiled. "Please do not feel troubled to share any and all concerns you may have on this matter."


    She nodded nkly. "The first concern we have is our confidence in yourmitment to this trade. We are aware that you possess the ability to leave the ind with all of the vigers of your vige. What is to stop you from leaving our ind the second we give you all of the information regarding our techniques? Information that may very well be enough for your so-called Martial Union to recreate our techniques based on it."


    Rui had somewhat expected this concern. After all, it was a fundamental issue with the very nature of trading with the Martial Union. It was true that he was very much capable of leaving with the employees of the Martial Union any time he wanted with some preparations ahead of time.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 699 Assurances

    "This is an entirely valid concern of yours," Rui nodded. "It is absolutely true that we possess the ability to leave this ind at any point we want."


    Senior K''M''s expression rxed slightly at those words. She was afraid that the outsiders would deny this in an attempt to deceptively hide their capabilities and cate the G''ak''arkan Tribe.


    However, the fact that Rui openly admitted to this straightforwardly was a good sign, it meant that they did not have any intentions of deceiving the G''ak''arkan Tribe by leaving the moment they got their hands on the techniques of the G''ak''arkan Tribe regardless of whether they had paid their end of the deal or not.


    "We have ounted for this concern that you have brought up," Rui continued. "One way can amodate it is by fulfilling our part of the bargain before you do yours, regardless of what agreement wee up with. This way, we cannot ever deceive you by swiftly evacuating from this ind at any given point."


    K''M raised an eyebrow at that. It was quite relieving for her to hear that they were willing to make that concession. By fulfilling their end of the agreement before the G''ak''arkan Tribe, it was indeed impossible for them to get away with deceiving the G''ak''arkan by retreating from the ind at a particr moment.


    On the other hand, it meant that they were supremely confident that the G''ak''arkan Tribe would not use that advantage to their benefit.


    (''Is it that they believe that we wouldn''t, or that we couldn''t even if we wanted to?'') She couldn''t help but wonder.


    It was true, but the G''ak''arkan Tribe did not possess the ability to trick the Martial Union in the same way. After all, they did not possess any ability to retreat from the ind, they possessed no naval capabilities whatsoever. They were going nowhere, and the Martial Union knew it.


    Of course, the Martial Squires and the Martial Seniors did have the ability to leave the ind by sky-walking, the Martial Union could rest assured that these Martial Artists wouldn''t even dream of leaving the Martial Apprentices and the civilians of their tribe as they escaped away from their ind. The G''ak''arkan Tribe possessed an immense amount of cohesiveness with each other. They had to, who else could they rely on on an ind where everybody else was trying to kill them?N?vel(D)ra/ma.Org exclusive ? material.


    That was why the diplomatic team had fewpunctions granting this condition to the G''ak''arkan Tribe. It was of no consequence.


    "If you of the Martial Union are truly willing to make that concession, then I can only be relieved by the sincerity that you are showing in this agreement," She said with appreciation. "We will graciously ept your offer."


    Rui nodded, smiling. "That''s good to hear. Then is that also an indication that the G''ak''arkan Tribe is epting our trade offer?"


    "Not yet¡­" She admitted. "One concern that we have is whether you are willing to disclose all of the techniques that we have witnessed your Martial Artists using in the past. Particrly the more powerful ones that we are interested in."


    "Of course, we are willing, on the condition that the G''ak''arkan Tribe also reciprocates all of its techniques," Rui smiled. "We will reciprocate the sincerity that you show us. I hope that we cane to an agreement for a full-fledged exchange between both sides. Doing so will only be of greater benefit to both sides."


    "Do you want all of our techniques?" She frowned.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    "Not exactly¡­ We are hoping that you will be willing to exchange any or all of your techniques without restriction. It would be troublesome if after confirming the intent to exchange techniques, we discovered that the minority of techniques that you are unwilling to disclose happen to include all of the techniques that we do desire, while the techniques that you are willing to disclose to us are of no interest." Rui exined. "As long as you are willing to exchange any of the techniques that you have, you can rest assured that the Martial Union will also be open to exchanging any of the techniques that we have demonstrated in the past few techniques."


    "I see¡­"


    "Of course, we will still want to make fair and equal trades regardless."


    "What are the techniques that you desire?" She asked with some degree of uncertainty.


    "We are willing to disclose what techniques we seek, but I think it would be more productive if both sides are aware of what the other side wants," Rui stated perfunctorily. "I believe it is best if we make a simultaneous exchange of the lists of techniques that we desire from each other."


    Rui did not want to disclose the specifics of what they wanted too soon. Handing over that information to them prior to establishing a final agreement to cooperate would be giving them undue initiative in the discussions. Once the means of exchange were confirmed and ironed out, only then was it fit to talk about the actual trades and exchanges that would be urring.


    Of course, if the G''ak''arkan Tribe was willing to divulge the techniques that they were interested in, then Rui didn''t mind also doing the same.


    "How do you want us to exchange techniques exactly?" She asked. "We pass on our techniques to our descendants by personally training them in it. We do not possess any physical form containing the techniques."


    "I see¡­ In that case, training our Martial Artists will be just fine." Rui nodded. "We are also willing to train your Martial Artists."


    "But we do not speak the samenguage¡­"


    "We have trantors on our side. It will be difficult and long. However, once it ispleted, then both sides will permanently be stronger than ever before. Thus, it is worth it," Rui nodded.


    "Hm¡­" She considered the matter, losing a bit of apprehension.


    The meeting proceeded as Senior K''M went through the list of issues and concerns that had already been discussed in the vige some while ago.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 700 Evaluation

    Content held by N?velDrama.Org.


    Rui was d that he hade thoroughly prepared, for many of the concerns and issues that Senior K''M brought up were things that he perhaps wouldn''t have been able to confidently provide a solution for. But thanks to having fleshed everything out with the diplomatic team, he could be grateful that they could present a strong first impression.


    Well, it wasn''t really a strong first impression considering this was far from the first time that the Martial Union or Rui had had an audience with the G''ak''arkan Tribe. But it certainly was the first time that the Martial Union had had a serious and fruitful discussion with the G''ak''arkan Tribe over the trade that the former was proposing. Being able to ount for all of the concerns and amodate them gave the G''ak''arkan Tribe much more confidence that the trade was a good idea.


    "How do you propose that wee to an agreement on whether a particr trade is fair or not?" She asked, getting closer and closer to the heart of the trade with her concerns.


    The fact that she had already reached the stage where she was most concerned with the fairness of the trades was a good sign, it meant that Rui had probably addressed all of the more fundamental concerns that dealt with the foundations of the trade such as theck of trust that she wasn''t able to poke holes in them at the very moment.


    "It is best that we agree upon a general means by which we can evaluate the value of techniques. If we can agree upon that, then it will be possible to ensure a deal is fair to both sides." Rui exined.


    Of course, the way Rui framed it was a little different from the way it actually was. For example, both the G''ak''arkan Tribe and the Martial Union had been in possession of Martial Art techniques for a long time. This inevitably meant that both groups had developed their own thoughts on what distinguished valuable techniques from those that weren''t particrly of any value.


    There was no saying whether these were going to be the same or not.


    Of course, there certainly would be a lot of ovep. Both sides certainly valued potency and ease of mastery. These were highly foundational areas that every Martial Artist would undoubtedly value. The G''ak''arkan Tribe would have to be utterly insane to deviate from this particr standard.


    However, beyond that, things got a little hazy. Things like individuality were not necessarily to be guaranteed to be valued by the G''ak''arkan Tribe. Thus it was possible that techniques that the Martial Union appraised to be high partly because of their individuality would not necessarily be appraised.


    That was one thing that could potentially impede the trading.


    "The Martial Union generally tends to evaluate a technique''s value with three parameters," Rui told them. "Power, difficulty, and dissemination viability."<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    In reality, there was an additional parameter: individuality. However, Rui had chosen to discard this variable for several reasons. For one, the reason this variable was considered when the Martial Union evaluated techniques was that if a Martial Artist in the Kandrian Empire submitted a technique with very little individuality, it usually meant that said technique or something extremely simr already existed in the Martial Union''s database.


    After all, that''s what individuality stood for. It was abination of originality and uniqueness. If a technique submitted by a Kandrian Martial Artist did not even have a shred of originality or uniqueness, then it meant that this technique was shamelessly copied since it wasn''t original, and it also meant that the technique was probably verymon; since it wasn''t unique. That was why the Martial Union cared for individuality.


    However, this only applied to Kandrian Martial Artist. If a Kandrian Martial Artist submitted a technique without individuality; then it was a cheap knock-off that the Martial Union already possessed. However, that wasn''t true for a G''ak''arkan Martial Artist. Even if one of the G''ak''arkan techniques that the Martial Union sought was a cheap knock-off of another G''ak''arkan technique, its value did not decrease since the Martial Union did not possess it. Individuality was a filter to ensure that the Martial Union did not purchase what it already had, G''ak''arkan techniques were techniques that the Martial Union did not have, thus there was no fear of purchasing techniques the Martial Union already had. Thus individuality was not arge concern when it came to evaluating unique foreign techniques.


    Furthermore, by getting rid of it, there was less of a chance that the G''ak''arkan Tribe would have an issue with the means of evaluation that Rui had just proposed.


    "Dissemination value...?" Senior K''M raised an eyebrow.


    Rui nodded. "Essentially, it depends on how easy it is to spread a technique amongst arge group of Martial Artists. The greater the number of Martial Artists that are able to master the technique, the greater the value of the technique. After all, it is able to provide a huge boost in power if you consider the number of Martial Artists that have received a boost in power after mastering the technique."


    "Perhaps that is where our two groups differ slightly," She remarked. "In the G''ak''arkan Tribe, we do not try to spread techniques as much as possible, but rather encourage our Martial Artists to create their own techniques the second they discover their Martial Path."


    Rui raised an eyebrow at that, surprised.


    That was very different from how the Martial Union dealt with guiding their Martial Apprentices forward. At the Apprentice Realm, individuality was definitely important, but it wasn''t as vital to growing stronger. It was mostly a means to be Squire candidates since individuality was a necessity. At the Apprentice level, individuality did not make one stronger than techniques that were purchased from the Martial Union. Not by any solid degree.


    Rui suspected that that was why the Martial Union did not ce as much of a heavy weight on the individuality, rtive to the Martial Apprentice, of the techniques that Martial Apprentices chose to master.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 701 Philosophical Differences

    The reason that Martial Apprentices did not gain much power from techniques of their creation or contribution that were highly individualistic versus techniques of another''s was that their bodies were still shackled to human limits, barring their brain. Martial Apprentices also possessed nascent Martial Paths, thus even if a technique was highly synergetic with their Martial Art and body, it did not end up resulting in the kind of explosive power that the Void Pathfinder technique gave Rui by virtue of being synergetic.


    The Martial Union had probably judged that while it would be truly ideal if Martial Apprentices did not use others'' techniques and instead mostly created individualistic techniques that werepatible and synergetic with their strengths and weaknesses, it was an extremely difficult standard to hold them all to. The strength that they would gain would not be too much greater than if they mastered pre-existing techniques before slowly warming themselves up to the idea of creating techniques or contributing to them.


    It was a pragmatic and rational approach that weight the pros versus the cons of the matter. However, it seemed that the G''aka''arkan Tribe was more idealistic surrounding the matter. Which Rui wasn''t too surprised by, they were certainly not the most rational bunch.


    However, it also meant that, to a degree, the G''ak''arkan Tribe valued dissemination viability to a lesser degree than the Martial Union. They would not aggressively spread the techniques that they would obtain from the Martial Union, most likely. They would probably keep using it as a stepping stone for creating new and more powerful techniques that incorporate elements of the Martial Art techniques that they would end up obtaining from the Martial Union.


    "We encourage our Martial Apprentice to draw from existing techniques rather than using those same very techniques," She confirmed Rui''s thoughts.


    (''It is probably because of this philosophy that the G''ak''arkan Tribe has developed unique techniques that even the Martial Union is lusting after,'') Rui sighed inwardly with admiration.


    From the very moment that he had been briefed about this mission, he had wondered something since.


    How did a primitive tribe such as the G''ak''arkan Tribe develop so many unique, odd yet powerful techniques that even the Martial Union was willing to go out of its way to obtain them?


    It didn''t really seem to make much sense when one thought about it critically. After all, the Martial Union invested a huge amount of wealth and resources into funding research and development that optimized existing techniques and attempted to create new ones. This massive effort led to the research and development department of the Martial Union developing, or at least contributing to the development of nearly half of all the new techniques that the Martial Union happened to obtain.


    The remaining came from Martial Artists like himself who submitted the technique for personal use and a license for propagation of the technique.C0ntent ? 2024 (N/?)velDrama.Org.


    This was a significant influx of techniques with varying degrees of individuality that the Martial Union got in return for the tremendous amount of wealth.


    Yet despite that, the G''ak''arkan Tribe had created numerous techniques that had attracted the greed of the Martial Union.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    The reason for this was most likely because of the philosophy of the G''ak''arkan Tribe that allowed them to diverge from existing paradigms better than a Martial group of their size should have been able to, had they followed a paradigm of Martial Apprentice guidance that was quite simr to the one that the Martial Union.


    (''Maybe, the Martial Union should follow in the G''ak''arkan Tribe''s footsteps,'') He mused for a second, before shaking his head inwardly. He was getting distracted.


    "Well, thankfully, it seems that that may be the only difference in our evaluation of the value of techniques," Rui nodded. "It isn''t ideal, but it shouldn''t pose too much of a problem."


    At the end of the day, as long as neither side perceived the value of what they were giving to be less than that of what they were receiving, the deal would be eptable to both sides. There were ways to ensure that this was the case even if both sides did not have the same appraisal of techniques.


    For example, the Martial Union could offer techniques that with low dissemination viability in exchange for techniques that it would have valued more than what it was offering since it did care for dissemination viability. In this case, the trade would be eptable to both sides since the G''ak''arkan Tribe did not care for dissemination value as much as the Martial Union and the Martial Union would have what it would consider to be a winning trade.


    The same could ur in the reverse. The G''ak''arkan Tribe could give techniques with high dissemination viability in return for techniques that were even more valuable, to the tribe, since it cared less for dissemination viability than the Martial Union did.


    Rui was confident that it was possible for both sides toe from trades that both sides found agreeable and eptable.


    "Hm..." She hummed as she considered Rui''s exnation. "Even if that manages to work out, demonstrating the power of a technique is not that straightforward. After all, techniques do not exist by themselves, they exist in Martial Artists who can execute them. I think the evaluation of their power depends on the mastery of the Martial Artist, does it not?"


    She raised a very good point. Even if a technique was powerful, if the person executing them had not mastered them properly, then the technique would not function properly and would produce shitty results.


    On the contrary, a technique could be evaluated to be more valuable than it actually was if the Martial Artist had mastered it to an extremely high degree.


    One example of this that immediately came to mind was his friend Hever and his trusty sole technique Meteor Swing. That technique was a grade-nine technique, however, Hever had mastered it to such a ridiculously high degree, that it had eventually obtained parity with a grade-ten technique.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 702 Mastery

    Mastery of techniques, as well as the quality of the Martial Artist mastering them, were two variables that severely impacted the evaluation of the power and potency of a technique. It was impossible to separate the quality of a technique from the mastery of it when judging the results that a Martial Artist produced when executing that technique.


    "Correct," Rui nodded. "However, we have ounted for this. It will require both sides to be forting, however."


    Rui was the one who had realized this problem a long time ago and had already thought of several solutions.


    "What do you mean?" Senior K''M frowned.


    "I mean that it is possible to gauge the power of a technique, as long as we have enough information on the Martial Artist executing them," Rui replied. "We can evaluate thepetency of the Martial Artist at hand based on avable information at hand, such as the time it took to train that technique, and the time that the Martial Artist has used that technique inbat. The speed at which that Martial Artist mastered other techniques and the generalpetency and skill of that Martial Artist."


    "I see¡­" She realized his point. "You wish to understand the limits of the Martial Artist to gauge how much of the results of their execution of a technique is because of them and how much is because of the technique, correct?"


    "Correct," Rui smiled. He was pleased that she was caught on to his intentions quickly, it was clear that even if she was uneducated by the standards of the Kandrian Empire, she was very intelligent, and furthermore, she had a great understanding of Martial Art as a Martial Senior.


    This made his job much easier.


    "However¡­ that would require both sides to be honest¡­" Her eyes narrowed.


    "Correct," Rui nodded.


    This was an inescapable requirement. This gave both sides a lot of power since it was possible to deceive the other side by presenting false facts regarding the information that Rui suggested was needed to truly evaluate a technique''s power.


    "Then how can you guarantee that the trades will be fair?" She asked skeptically.


    "Because such lies will inevitablye out and would trigger war," Rui replied calmly. "Would let the Martial Union get off lightly if and when it became clear that we have tantly lied to oversell a technique''s grade?"


    "No¡­" She shook her head resolutely. "We would definitely annihte all of you."


    Rui felt his nerves tingle at the sight of a Martial Senior announcing their demise if they were to deceive the G''ak''arkan Tribe


    That caught him off-guard. The intelligence that the intelligence team had gathered on Senior K''M suggested that she possessed a much more rational temperamentpared to her brethren. Yet it was clear that she did not deviate too much considering she said something so undiplomatic in a diplomatic meeting.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    Of course, considering how diplomatic the Martial Artists of the Martial Union have been, he still had to admit that she was doing a much better job than Senior Ceeran did.


    "And that would be a highly undesirable oue for us," Rui smiled pleasantly as though she just hadn''t said what she had. "I can assure you that the Martial Union will be very infuriated if it turned out to be the case that you have deceived us, and I think we can both agree that a sessful trade of techniques that will strengthen both sides is more desirable than an all-out war with no gains."


    She did not deny that, simply considering his words.


    There was a brief period of silence as Rui let her consider the matter.


    "I cannot make a decision here and now¡­" She eventually said, shaking her head. "That being said, I am personally in favor of this sessful trade. You have been reassuring in your replies to our concerns and issues. I can promise you that I will do my best to convince those that need to be convinced for this trade to go through."


    "I see, that''s good to hear," Rui smiled, he wasn''t surprised. The moment he saw Senior K''M deliberating with him all by herself, he knew that he would not get a handshake on the deal today. A matter as important as disclosing their sacred techniques to outsiders was something only the chieftain could make.


    The chieftain N''Kulu had chosen not to deal with Rui alone probably because his ego and pride refused to allow him to speak to Rui as an equal, regardless of if Rui represented an organization exponentially more powerful than the G''ak''arkan Tribe could ever hope to be.


    He knew that she would have to take back his words to the Martial Seniors, although he was absolutely certain that the two Martial Seniors and several Martial Squires had been listening to their conversations. Their sharp senses would not be stopped by y and stone.


    They would probably deliberate, then approach Rui and give him their response.


    "Please take your time," Rui smiled, getting up before Stemple and Zeyra followed suit. "We understand that this is an extremely important matter to you. Feel free to visit our vige if and when you have any further queries or concerns or wish to proceed with the discussion. I can assure you that you will be treated with hospitality."


    "Thank you," She replied straightforwardly, before turning to the Martial Squires in the room. "Please escort our guests."


    And just like that, the second audience between Rui and the Martial Union came to an end. The three of them entered their carriage before it began taking them down the mountain.


    "Submit the preliminary reports," Rui ordered his two assistants, speaking in the Kandrian dialect to prevent the scouts who were following them potentially listening from understanding.


    "Yes sir, congrattions on seeding,"


    "We''ll celebrate after the deal has been concretely established," Rui replied. "Let''s not get ahead of ourselves, we are still some ways away from achieving our goal. Still¡­ it is true that we have achieved preliminary sess.Material ? of N?velDrama.Org.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 703 Desired Technique

    The settlement was in a good mood after having heard that Rui was sessful in engaging with the G''ak''arkan Tribe in regard to his diplomatic efforts. Having achieved more than any diplomatic venture with the G''ak''arkan had ever achieved before, naturally, the many employees and Martial Artists that had been dispatched to the settlement were d to hear that this tedious ordeal was at least making solid progress.


    "Nice!" Senior Ceeran grinned when he heard the news. "Finally, I can get my hands on their techniques!"


    Rui nced at him. He knew that the man had been pining for their techniques for a long time. "


    Just the fact that he, a Martial Senior had decided to not only serve as a diplomat but also decided to prolong his stay away from the Martial Union and the Kandrian Empire for this long.


    This couldn''t have been easy, considering his position and authority within the Martial Union. It was usually quite unusual for a Martial Senior to spend this much time away from the Martial Union for a mission that wasn''t his own. Rui knew that Senior Ceeran was very motivated, he wouldn''t have gone through all this effort if he wasn''t.


    "Which of their techniques are you most interested in, if I may ask?" Rui was curious.


    "All of the unique ones that we''ve been looking to obtain, really," He replied nonchntly. "They''re all unique techniques that would definitely strengthen the Longranger Sect."


    "I meant, which ones are you interested in for your Martial Art, if that''s not too much," Rui probed.


    "¡­"


    Senior Ceeran was silent for a few seconds, before replying. "Currently? I''m most interested in their ability to create sustained long-range force over longer periods of time and manipte it with a great degree of precision and delicacy. If I can just get my hands on that¡­"


    Rui understood what he was referring to. A few Martial Squires of the G''ak''arkan Tribe had the ability to maintain constant force regardless of the angle at which they were beingunched from range via the atmosphere, simr to telekinesis. They could hold objects mid-air from a distance via the air.N?vel(D)ra/ma.Org exclusive ? material.


    This was unusual because most long-range projectiles were singr, or a continuous emission in a singr direction. Even if Senior Ceeran could manipte the trajectory of his attacks after havingunched them, he wasn''t able to maintain a constant stream of force that could be precisely adjusted as though he was using his very own hands.


    "You would be able to use your power more efficiently and lethally¡­" Ruipleted his sentence as he tried imagining Senior Ceeran with that kind of power.


    He would have just straightforwardly crushed his two opponents where they were sky-walking in his previous battle.


    "That''s right, and once I master your Pathfinder technique and use the so-called ODA system along with the mechanisms of the techniques of the G''ak''arkan Tribe¡­" His eyes lit up in excitement. "Who knows just how absurd the end result will be? It may just help me take one step closer to bing a Martial Senior."


    "I see¡­" Rui remarked.


    No wonder he was so pumped about the sess that Rui had managed to obtain. He was one step closer to eventually obtaining their techniques.


    "Well, I''ll definitely do my best. It''s just that¡­"


    "Just what?" Senior Ceeran raised an eyebrow.


    "It''s just that there are a lot of issues that need to be ovee and a lot of work that will need to go in before we actually get those techniques," Rui sighed. "Honestly, it might be best if I request the Martial Union for specialized Martial Squires that have experience in training other Marital Squires¡­"


    "Don''t bother, that''s not going to happen, don''t even bother," Senior Ceeran shook his head.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    "Why not?" Rui frowned.


    Senior Ceeran turned to face Rui with a strange expression before realization dawned on him. "Ah, I see, you haven''t been informed yet."


    "Informed about what?"


    "Had you been in the Kandrian Empire at the moment, you would have gotten the news without a doubt." Senior Ceean nodded, with an understanding expression.


    "I''m sorry, but I have no idea what you''re referring to."


    "Hmmm¡­ Well, it''s not confidential at all, so there should b no issue in telling you this."


    "¡­"


    "A new dungeon was discovered," Senior Ceeran told him straightforwardly.


    Rui''s eyes widened. "What? Really??"


    "That''s right," He nodded. "It''s a Squire-level dungeon too, located not too far away from the Kandrian Empire."


    "I see¡­" Rui processed the information with a lost expression. "That''s what you meant when you said that I won''t be able to have the Martial Union deploy any more Martial Squires here."


    "That''s right," He nodded. "In fact, you can be sure that once the deal is made, every non-essential Martial Squire here will be brought back to the Kandrian Empire."


    "I''m guessing there''s going to be a huge colonization war again," Rui remarked.


    "Not, actually, that won''t be happening." He shook his head.


    "Why not?" Rui frowned.


    "Because the dungeon is not habitable to ordinary humans. It generates a simr level of fear and pressure in normal humans as Martial Squires do, meaning they would be suffering from severe anxiety and panic attacks to even fainting," Senior Ceeran exined.


    "So then¡­ Only the Martial Squires of all nations will be sent with the hope of plundering and looting the dungeon." Rui realized.


    Dungeons werend and subterranean structures created when the roots of flora came across highly rich and energetic esoteric mineral andpound reserves deep underground. The roots began expanding, pushing thend above ground by natural discement as it expanded in size from having absorbed the esoteric mines bearing fruit, both literal and metaphorical, that were highly valued.


    "Squire-level dungeons are different from the Serevian dungeon that you discovered. As I said, there''s going to be no army to colonize you. You Martial Squires will be deployed in a much more independent capacity, and you will face the Martial Squires of other countries on your own."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 704 News

    This sudden piece of news that came from seemingly nowhere threw him off-guard a bit. For half a second, he regretted taking this mission. After all, he could have been part of this exciting new adventure had he chosen not to ept this mission from Martial Commissioner Derun. Still, this mission was worth it on his own. It was a choice that was worth it, and it broadened his worldview even more and exposed him to new techniques that nourished his imagination and inspiration.


    Hell, it could even potentially end up making him stronger.


    "You said that Martial Squires would be dispatched independently, did you not?" Rui frowned. "What did you mean by that?"


    "Unfortunately, the dungeon has fallen within the territory of the Shionel Confederation," Senior Ceeran sighed. "The nation is not on par with the Kandrian Empire or any of the other super-nations. But unlike most of the nations on this continent, it is not a pushover. It is a Sage-level nation, unfortunately."


    "A what?" Rui raised an eyebrow.


    "Oh, it''s just a convenient way of categorizing the Martial prowess of nations. We put them into the category corresponding with the Realm that their most powerful Martial Artist is of," Senior Ceeran replied. "It gives you a rough idea of their Martial prowess very easily, after all.


    "That means they have Martial Sages?" Rui sighed.


    "Just one. But, just one is enough to prevent other powerful nations from straightforwardly trampling over them, our Kandrian Empire included."N?vel(D)ra/ma.Org exclusive ? material.


    "So¡­ if the dungeon is part of the territory of another nation that isn''t weak, then¡­ why do the Martial Squires of the Kandrian Empire get to partake in delving into the dungeon?" Rui asked with a confused look on his face.


    "Well, just because they''re not weak does not mean they''re strong enough to hoard all of it for themselves¡­" Senior Ceeran shrugged.


    "They must have cut a deal or given some opportunity for other nations to make gains of the dungeon?"


    "Exactly," Senior Ceeran nodded. "They cannot withstand thebined pressure of the nations in the geographic vicinity just because they''re not weak. If they do not cooperate, then they will definitely get trampled eventually. They have agreed to open the dungeon to the outside world with the condition that they keep twenty-five percent of the haul that foreign Martial Squires made from entering the dungeon."


    "That''s not insignificant."


    "They originally tried to get more than fifty in a private diplomatic summit between the many nations, but were forced to hit twenty percent," Senior Ceeran casually revealed what was probably ssified information.


    "It must be because destroying dungeons is pretty straightforward, and is too easy to do for many nations," Rui noted as he shrewdly understood why they had made such heavy concessions. "Other nations pose far too much of a threat since they can just send a Martial Senior and ravage the dungeon."


    "That''s probably true, now that I think about it," Senior Ceeran noted with casual boredom. Since it was a Squire-level dungeon, he had nothing to do with it and didn''t particrly care.


    "So the Kandrian Empire will be officially deploying an army of Martial Squires, I imagine? Since they can''t deploy the actual Royal army due to the extreme mental pressure?" Rui wondered.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    "Not exactly, this is different from the Serevian Dungeon, as I said before," Senior Ceeran sighed. "All of the work will be done by Martial Squires themselves, and not arge colonization team that will be handing things in the background. It''s a lot simpler, and the martial Squires inherently have a much higher degree of autonomy. Thus, the Martial Union has also rxed the degree of control that it will exert on Martial Squires during the degree exploration. There is no official mission."


    "What?" Rui''s eyes widened. "Why not?"


    "Because it isn''t worth it in this case, the Martial Union has incentivized the Martial Squires to explore the dungeon and bring bang loot by alerting avable Martial Squires of an attractive exchange rate for the loot that they will bring back from the dungeon. There are a lot of Martial credits and other rewards to be earned by being sessful in the dungeon exploration and cooperating with the Martial Union.


    "I see¡­" Rui nodded. "This certainly a way thatcks a lot of hassle, that''s for sure."


    By simply creating a powerful incentive structure, the Martial Union could get just the right number of Martial Squires heading towards the dungeon to take part in its exploration and plunder.


    "Can foreign Martial Squires enter the dungeon without any official representation?"


    "Martial Squires do not need any backing or serve as representatives, any and all Martial Squires cane and attempt clear the dungeon."


    "That is remarkably open," Rui remarked.


    "Indeed. Regardless,ing back to the main point. Martial Squires are already bing scarce, thus you can forget about trying to get too many reinforcements to make your life easier. I bet that woman Derun is losing sleep with all the stress. Hehehe¡­" He chuckled lightheartedly.


    p¦Ánd¦Á`no¦Í?1--§ão§® Rui on the other hand, wasn''t even listening to him. Senior Ceeran''s news was not immediately relevant to him at the moment, but, Rui wouldn''t remain on Vilun Ind forever.


    Perhaps when he got back¡­


    (''That remains to be seen until after I''vepleted this mission,'')


    For now, he could safely put away what he had learned. The only important point surrounding it was the fact that Rui was a bit on his own at the moment.


    (''That''s not too much of a problem, thankfully. I''m pretty sure that we can handle anything that the G''ak''arkan Tribe throws at us.'') Rui was sure.


    The settlement had a solid foundation as far as Martial Artists went. Even without Squire trainers, it was not impossible for the training to be conducted smoothly. Of course, thenguage barrier and the rtive inexperience of the Martial Squires meant that it was definitely not going to be easy, or quick. But Rui was willing to take what he could get.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 705 Second Meeting

    A few days passed, and not much had changed. At this point, Rui could only wait for news. They had done everything that had to, and now the ball was in the G''ak''arkan Tribe''s court. Rui just had to make sure that they were prepared for anything.


    And he was when it did end up happening.


    "Sir, a Martial Squire from the G''ak''arkan Tribe has arrived, announcing that Senior K''M of their tribe would be arriving at dusk," An agent of the diplomatic team rushed into the diplomatic office, announcing to Rui.


    "Well," Rui stood up. "At least they had the courtesy to tell us ahead of time. Almost all of the preparations have already been prepared. Make sure they''re all ready."


    "Yes, sir," The man nodded, before rushing away to do his job.


    "You heard that, Zeyra, Stemple?" Rui raised an eyebrow at his two assistants.


    "Yes, sir, we''ll ensure that we are ready by then," They nodded.


    "Good,"


    And the settlement was thrown into a bit of a hurry as they made preparations to wee for the first time.


    (''I''m just d that the K''ulnen Tribe has not postponed this moment,'') Rui sighed.


    It would have been a pain if they decided to go into an all-out war against the Martial Union. But unfortunately for them, they were far too busy trying not to get torn to shreds by the sharks in the geographic vicinity that smelled blood.


    Thus, Rui could peacefully focus on receiving his guests.


    p¦Ánd¦Á`no¦Í?1--§ão§® They came precisely when dusk arrived.


    Rui could sense a powerful Senior-level force approaching the Martial Union settlement at a slow pace, so as to not rm them. She did not want to be sted away with a powerful attack from Senior Ceeran if he interpreted a high-paced approach as a sign of an enemy trying to catch them all off-guard.


    She even took the precautions of descending a good distance away from the entrance of the settlement, choosing to walk the rest of the distance.


    "K''M," Rui smiled. "Wee to the Martial Union vige."


    The G''ak''arkan Tribe did not have honorifics for Martial Artists, thus Rui had no choice but to call her directly by her singr name.C0ntent ? 2024 (N/?)velDrama.Org.


    "Thank you," She replied shortly, reaching her hand out toward Rui.


    It was a gesture that was not of the G''ak''arkan Tribe, but she had learned that that was how the outsiders greeted each other.


    Rui smiled appreciatively as he shook her hand, before gesturing her in.


    Once they entered the vige, her attention was drawn to the sheer alienness of what she was witnessing.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    The outsiders did everything differently, after all.


    Their buildings were entirely different from the huts made up of y and stone that the G''ak''arkan Tribe had. This was the first time that she had realized just how different from the G''ak''arkan Tribe, no, all the tribes on this ind were from the outsiders.


    She didn''t even understand how they built suchrge structures that seemed so stable and solid. The structures that her tribe built were unstable beyond a certain height and size, thus they were forced to be constrained by their inability to buildrger homes.


    She looked at the various strange objects that they used that seemed to have a life of their own. They seemed capable of moving on their own and even giving out their own light.


    She watched in wonder as the humans of this vige sat inside some of them, and be carried around by them. It was a drastic culture shock and the first one that she had ever received in her entire life.


    "We have arrived," Rui smiled, gesturing inside a conference hall. "Let us hold our talks in here."


    "Now then," Rui began once they were seated. "We are d to have received you this quickly after our previous talk, K''M. Please begin however you would like."


    He left the stage open for her. After all, he truly had said everything that he needed to and everything that he could. Now it was time for the G''ak''arkan Tribe to issue their response.


    She was silent for a few moments before opening her mouth and simply uttering:


    "We ept the conditions of the trade that you have proposed."


    Those words were delightful to Rui, yet he didn''t allow them to impact his perfunctory smile one bit.


    But inwardly, he was fisting the air yelling ''WOOOHOOO!''


    "I have with me a list of the techniques that we are interested in trading with you," She brought out a rough parchment of somewhat thick wood-like paper. "I am willing to trade this with you as long as you provide us with the techniques that you outsiders are interested in."


    "We ept that offer," Rui nodded as Zeyra immediately plucked a document from her bag of files, handing it to Rui wordlessly.


    "In this," He gestured to the file he holding since the G''ak''arkan had no noun equivalent for the word file or document. "We have detailed the techniques that we desire in quite the detail, in the Vilunnguage, of course."


    The two simultaneously exchanged their lists, before immediately going over the other''s.


    Rui raised an eyebrow.


    At the top of the list was a description of none other than the time he used the Void Pathfinder technique in his debut battle.


    It wasn''t as though he hadn''t expected this. He would be a fool not to expect them to want the technique that allowed him to maintain his facade of being a high-grade Martial Squire. Not that they knew that part.


    Still, he didn''t expect that it would be at the top of the list. That was, well, an honor in a way. That meant that despite the presence of so many long-range oriented Martial Artists, his Pathfinder technique still somehow managed to steal the spotlight from them all. This included Senior Ceeran, it seemed. His trajectory maniption techniques were very next on the list, also earning the interest and greed of the Martial Artists of the G''ak''arkan Tribe.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 706 Techniques

    Rui skimmed through the remaining techniques listed there.


    They were within his expectations. Power, range, and uracy were the cornerstones of the techniques that they sought. Based on what she''d just told him, their intention wasn''t to just spread the techniques themselves across their entire tribe but to spread the elements of these techniques that they werecking to their tribe to be incorporated into the techniques that Martial Squires would end up creating. This would allow them to fundamentally improve the quality of their techniques.


    On the other hand, the techniques listed in the document that Rui gave Senior K''M were different. The techniques that the Martial Union sought were sought after due to their uniqueness.


    Techniques that allowed them to exert sustained force in any direction with remarkable precision and uracy as if the atmosphere was part of their body. Techniques that allowed them to project wide-area defenses; allowing a single Martial Apprentice to extend protection over many people simultaneously. Techniques that incapacitated opponents from a distance by depriving them of air, causing them to choke on the spot in the middle of a fight. Techniques that caused blood to tear out of their opponent''s body because of a rapidly created vacuum causing the internal pressure of the body to momentarily overwhelm the flesh that was withholding it.


    The G''ak''arkan Tribe was a formidable Martial tribe, and not without reason. It was for these techniques that the Martial Union wanted to engage in trade with them.


    These were not techniques that were foundationally strong, but they were techniques that opened new avenues for the Martial Union to explore. Once the Martial Union got its hands on it, it could spread the technique to other Martial Artists while also spending a lot of funds and resources on improving and optimizing them.


    Both finished reading through the other''s desires, and it didn''t seem as though either side was particrly surprised.


    Rui wasn''t surprised because this was part of his n from the very start. Show them techniques that allowed them to push past their limits. For the G''ak''arkan Tribe, however, it was only natural that the Martial Union would want techniques that it didn''t already have. Thus, when that logic was applied to their repository of techniques, it wasn''t particrly surprising that they had managed to predict many of the techniques that the outsiders would want.


    Once both of them had digested what the other side wanted, they provided each other with basic information about the techniques that they wanted, as agreed. They wouldter also have to look at demonstrations and thepetency of the Martial Artists performing those techniques as agreed, after all.


    Once they reached the basic degree of familiarity, they could resume the negotiations.


    "This so-called Pathfinder technique that you wielded in your first battle on this ind, we strongly desire this technique. Tell me more about it," She told him.C0ntent ? 2024 (N/?)velDrama.Org.


    As per their agreement, the Martial Union would take the first step when it came to both providing information and techniques, thus Rui obliged her request as Stemple passed her a document detailing some data on the technique. None of it was confidential information regarding the mechanics of the technique, but it gave them a good idea of what it was capable of.


    "The Pathfinder technique is a technique that I created. What it is, is a technique that allows one to aim urately without relying on the inherent uracy of the marksman, but a more calcted uracy," Rui exined vaguely.


    He did not want to give them any specific information, just very vague and general information on what they could expect if they wanted to master the technique.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    He did not hold back in exining the difficulty of mastering the technique. It was a grade-ten technique for a reason, after all. Furthermore, these were primitive people when it came to science, which is what the ODA system of the Pathfinder technique was based on. So the difficulty for them was perhaps even higher than that of the Martial Artists of the Kandrian Empire.


    Then again, Kandrian Martial Artists were also generally quite scientifically uneducated, thus he didn''t think that there would be too much of a discovery.


    "As I said, it is an extraordinarily difficult technique; what we consider to be a grade-ten technique, the highest level of difficulty a technique can be ssified to have," Rui concluded.


    "...How difficult are grade-ten techniques, exactly?"


    "Grade-ten techniques are the kind of techniques that one, or perhaps a few people at the very most, master every generation despite a huge number of people trying to master it," Rui replied.


    Grade-ten difficulty was a bit different from the other grades that had upper limits to their difficulty above which there was a higher grade of difficulty. A grade-ten difficulty technique was open-ended as far as the upper limit of difficulty went.


    After all, difficulty in and of itself did not have a limit. A technique could be difficult such that only one in ten Martial Artists could master it, or one in a hundred, or a thousand, or a million, or a billion and so on and so forth, there was no end till infinity.


    In practice, however, there was very little meaningful difference between a technique that was so difficult that only one in a million could master it, and one that only one in a billion could master it. The distinction between these two was not worth making. Nor was it possible to distinguish between the two unless one had a billion Martial Artists.


    Thus, grade ten was an open-ended group for all techniques that were so difficult that generally, only one Martial Artist in arge Martially-rich country like the Kandrian Empire could master it.


    Thus, sometimes Rui felt that grade ten undersold the Pathfinder technique, he suspected that his technique could potentially be on the higher end of the grade.


    In which case, he wasn''t sure that anybody in the G''ak''arkan Tribe could possibly master it.


    The worst part was that he was going to have to train them to master it.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 707 Difficult

    This was the disadvantage of being the creator of a grade-ten technique. The very next person that mastered the technique would most likely need to be trained by the creator.


    "So it is extremely difficult to master, hm¡­" She considered his words. She didn''t seem very surprised to Rui, which was understandable, it was very rarely the case that a technique''s power was not proportional to its difficulty.


    "I want to see demonstrations of the technique. As well as the relevant information of Martial Artists who have mastered this technique as agreed," She demanded.


    "No problem," Rui sighed. Since he was the only Martial Artist to have mastered it, he would need to divulge a lot about his own personalpetency. This would probably dampen the value of the technique since she would quickly discover that he had a powerful mind, something very relevant to his execution of the Pathfinder technique. "I suggest, however, that weplete all the demonstrations of techniques and the exchange of the relevant data on the mastery andpetence of the Martial Artists that have mastered these techniques, in one go. Rather than having to do this every time we want to discuss a new technique. This way we can smoothly proceed once this process is done in an orderly manner."


    She considered his words, before nodding. "Alright. Please provide us with all of the information on your techniques, since you have agreed to go first."


    "No," Rui resolutely shook his head. "We have already gone first when I provided you with information regarding the Pathfinder technique. It is your turn to show some sincerity by giving us information on the technique on our list."


    She narrowed her eyes mildly before nodding. "Alright, we''ll do that in the next meeting. For this meeting, however, we would like to confirm our willingness to proceed with a trade of Martial Art techniques under the conditions that we haveid out."


    "That is great to hear," Rui smiled. "Then let us draft the agreement on paper then."


    "What for?" She frowned.


    Written contracts were unheard of in the G''ak''arkan Tribe. Verbal promises meant a lot within their culture.


    "Just to ensure that neither side forgets, or tries to back out of the deal, or tries changing one of our agreements. Writing it down and signing on it makes sure that there isn''t any possible way to break them sneakily," Rui exined.


    "Signing on it?" She tilted her head in confusion


    "You just have to write your name at the bottom of the parchment," Rui exined patiently.


    "Alright, I don''t really understand, but if that is what you want," She nodded.


    Stemple quickly fetched two thicker parchment-style sheets of paper detailing the terms and conditions of their agreement that would be able to weather a lot. Since it probably was the case that the G''ak''arkan Tribe would probably not store their copy of the contract as prudently as they perhaps ought to, Rui wanted to make sure that there was no way they could damage it unless intentionally.Content held by N?velDrama.Org.


    "Just so you know, in the Martial Union, these mean a lot, just as much as verbal promises mean to the G''ak''arkan Tribe," Rui warned her before she could sign it. "Once you sign this, it will be considered binding, and we cannot be content with allowing you to break it. The Martial Union that sent me here will not be pleased, and will most likely take action. So, please ensure that you are certain about this."


    "I have already given you my word in the name of my tribe," She casually replied. "I have no intention of breaking it unless you outsiders do, this piece of paper is for yourfort, that is all."


    "That''s fine too," Rui smiled, amused, as he signed both documents before passing them onto K''M.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    "Well, the agreement has been set, we look forward to trading with you," Rui smiled as he offered his hand to her once she signed the document.


    "When should we conduct the demonstrations of the techniques that both of us are interested in, as well as the exchange of information surrounding the Martial Artists?"


    "We can do that in a week," Rui nodded.


    "Why so long? Can''t we do it today?" She frowned.


    "No, unfortunately. We need to transcribe and trante the information to the Vilun dialect, and that cannot be done in just a few days. We will inform you when we are ready, rest assured we will try to get it done as soon as possible," Rui offered.


    "I understand," She nodded, realizing how convenient the outsiders were making it for this trade to ur. She would have expected thatmunication with outsiders would have been quite difficult even after one of the outsiders was sessfully taught thenguage, but apparently that was enough for dozens of outsiders who spoke thenguage fluently to show up.


    They made it look easy.


    That inbination to carry many people across the vast seas, and build a remarkable vige unlike anything anybody had seen, she realized that she, and her brethren, had probably only seen a small drop of the power of this so-called Martial Union.


    "¡­"


    Rui raised an eyebrow at her. "Is there anything else that you wanted to discuss in this meeting?"


    "¡­I was just curious."


    "About what?" Rui asked with a hint of curiosity.


    "The world that youe from, what is it like?" She wondered.


    "¡­"


    "So, I was hoping you could tell me more about it," She said.


    Rui had to weigh his options here. On one hand, information was power. The more he revealed about the Kandrian Empire and the Martial Union, the more information he was providing to her. On the other hand, this could serve as a good way to strengthen his rtionship with her and ensure that the likelihood of them falling out with the G''ak''arkan Tribe was low.


    Besides, it wasn''t as though she was asking for strategically important intelligence or confidential information. What she was asking for was basic knowledge that even the most uneducated person on the continent would know.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 708 World-Building

    "Zeyra, Stemple, the official negotiation is over for today. Begin the due process," Rui told them.


    "But sir¡­"


    "Just do it,"


    The two bowed before taking a leave.


    They were his official assistants and advisors, but this wasn''t an official meeting from this point forth.


    He loosened his tie a bit before drinking some water.


    "Now then," He began. "You wanted to know about the world we came from? I can tell you. Well, wee from a faraway ce, it took us quite some time before we got here."


    "How far away?" She asked.


    "I cannot reveal that, unfortunately," He shook his head. "But the distance is much greater than the size of this ind, I can tell you that much."


    Revealing the distance between the Kandrian Empire and the G''ak''arkan Tribe would increase the, albeit low, probability that they could run into the Kandrian Empire someday. If hostilities ever broke out, then this would be yet another headache for the Kandrian Empire.


    "What is your world like?" She asked once more.


    "¡­What is our world like, eh? There''s so much to say that I don''t know where to begin." He paused for a moment, before starting. "Our world isrge. Veryrger. Larger than you can probably imagine."Material ? of N?velDrama.Org.


    "Large?"


    Rui nodded. "The number of people, the size of thend that wee from. The territory, everything is magnified."


    "I see¡­" She muttered. "How many tribes are there in the world that youe from?"


    "About that, we don''t have tribes." Rui smiled wryly. "We have something called countries. You can think of them as veryrge tribes, that are much easier to enter and exist. Most countries are bigger than this entire ind, you know?"


    "What?!" Her eyes widened. "Those must be gigantic tribes!"


    "You can think of them in that way," Rui shrugged. "But countries are not as tightly bound as your G''ak''arkan Tribe. Usually, most people can enter and exit them with some ease."


    "What?" She frowned. "That sounds horrible, why do these tribes allow anybody to enter??"


    Rui scratched his head, her question was so fundamental that he needed a moment to gather what he had always taken for granted. Not just in this life, but in his previous one as well.


    "Principally, it is because countries hold that people have the right to freedom to leave the country if they want to. Practically, it''s because the vast amount of trade that happens between and through countries would be impossible if people weren''t allowed to leave their countries and join other countries."


    She just stared at him, too confused to even know how to respond to that.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    "Er, countries and people of those countries trade things with other countries¡­ Kind of like how we just have agreed to trade Martial Art techniques with all of you," Rui exined.


    "Oh, I see! You all trade Martial Art techniques with each other, correct?"


    "Well, not really. We mostly trade many kinds of things, ranging from food to resources, technological pro-"


    He paused when he saw confusion creeping into her expression, before shifting his exnation. "You see all the various objects of all sizes and shapes that you see our people using"


    He gestured out the window.


    She nodded. "Like those strange moving ones that have people in them."


    "Correct, people exchange those things from other countries, among other things," Rui exined.


    "I see¡­"


    Rui continued helping her understand what the Panama continent was like bit by bit. The G''ak''arkan Tribe was so vastly different that she didn''t have even the slightest bit of familiarity with concepts that would have otherwise been ubiquitously known back on the Panama continent.


    The G''ak''arkan Tribecked an economy. The tribe satisfied everybody''s needs to the best of its capabilities, and it did a well-enough job. If there was something that somebody in the tribe wanted from another one of their members, they needed to simply ask, and they would oblige. People naturally did everything they could to help their tribe. Boys and girls who had the potential for Martial Art dedicated everything to it, bing the new generation of Martial Artists that would protect the tribe from the hostile enemies on the ind, while the remaining children would take on more ordinary roles befitting their capabilities.


    This is why she was unable toprehend the very concept within a country. She still faciously attributed the values of a tribe, but on arger scale, to countries.


    "People do not give each other what they want just because they want it, that kind of behavior is limited to within families. Outside of family, If you want something, you need to offer something worth its value. A fair exchange, simr to what we are trying to do between us."


    This was technically true since money counted, but it still sounded like the barter system which existed prior to the invention of the concept of currency. But he hadn''t even gotten to the concept of currency yet. She still had far too iplete a worldview for him to even broach that topic yet.


    Slowly but surely, she began gaining a somewhat clearer yet blurred view of what the continent was like.


    "Do these countries fight the way that the tribes on this ind do?" She asked, curious.


    "Well, some of them do. Butrgely, most countries do not fight with each other like the way the tribes of this ind do with each other."


    Of course, war was by no means gone. There was plenty of conflict that urred across the entirety of the continent. Yet the countries did not fight each other as intensely as he had seen the tribes of the ind do with each other.


    They knew nothing else but war, they were born in it, molded by it. There was no diplomatic cooperation between any of the tribes for the most part.


    This was something that surprised her the most.


    "They are so big, yet they do not use their size to fight with each other?" She wondered aloud.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 709 Desired

    An entire hour passed as Rui helped her gain a crude understanding of the outside world. In the span of the discussion, K''M had her mind blown more times than she could count. By the time, the discussion ended and she left, she was left in a little daze with the information overload.


    Rui hoped that their discussion hadn''t gotten her to forget the official negotiation talks that they had had.


    Rui immediately sent a request to Martialmissioner Derun for the confidential information that was required as per the terms of the agreement. He immediately set the entirety of the trantors in the diplomatic team into tranting the data into the Vilun dialect so that they couldprehend.


    Of course, things weren''t that simple, there was also the need to, to a certain degree, simplify the data and spell out the conclusions that could be inferred from it. The G''ak''arkan Tribecked the personnel that could analyze and process the data in its raw form. This was why Rui had requested a week, it was needed.


    A week passed soon enough, and the day for the exchange of information and demonstrations had arrived.


    The demonstrations would include many techniques from both sides, at the Squire and even Senior level, they could not be conducted within the settlement or the vige. In the end, Rui and Senior K''M decided to hold the demonstrations in one of the barren patches of the ind where their demonstrations would not harm the natural environment of the ind.


    "You''re a littlete," She tapped her feet as Rui and the others arrived at the location that they had agreed upon.


    "You never specified a time in the first ce," Rui sighed, amused.


    "I said the first crack of dawn," She snorted.Material ? of N?velDrama.Org.


    "You do realize that the timing of dawn depends on altitude, right? You guys are on a mountain, we''re on a hill, therefore we''d see the light of dawn after."


    "Excuses," She snorted, unconvinced.


    Rui sighed with resignation. "Regardless, we''re all here. Let''s begin."


    Rui looked around.


    Numerous Martial Artists had gathered here, among which were two Martial Seniors and many Martial Squires. On Rui''s side, there were several normal humans as well, they were to serve as trantors for the Martial Squires, each tending to one Martial Squire.


    "Alright, as agreed, you will begin the demonstrations," She told him.


    "We''ll go alternatively, in the order of the techniques that we listed," Rui added. "¡­And the first technique on your list was¡­ me."


    "That''s right," She nodded with impatience. "It''s your turn to begin. Demonstrate that technique in any way you wish."


    Rui sighed, as the many Martial Squires looked at him in interest and anticipation. Even Senior Ceeran, who had resolved to stay silent in fear of getting in Rui''s way, was smiling. Rui looked around as he spotted a suitable target for demonstration.


    There was arger boulder in one direction that was just at the right distance from Rui.


    "That will work,"


    He opened his mouth andunched a Sonic Bullet at the boulder.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    THWOOM!


    BANG!


    A foot-wide crater emerged. Rui had reduced the power of the attack to the standard of a mid-grade Martial Apprentice since the reason this technique was sought after was because of the aim, not the power. He also did not want to destroy thatrge boulder with a single attack, since that would miss the point of the demonstrations.


    WHOOSH!


    He immediately took off into the air,shing around zig-zagging within a constrained area, all while firing many Sonic Bullet techniques in the direction of the target.


    THWOOM THWOOM THWOOM!


    BANG! BANG! BANG!


    Each attack heunched in the middle of rapid and non-uniform flight,nded exactly where he hadunched his first shot. Not a single attack deviated by even an inch, maintaining the perfect crater that only grew deeper with each attack.


    The many Martial Squires on both sides stared in wonder as Rui nailed the bullseye that he had created with his first shot, from more than a kilometer away from the target. For Martial Squires, such uracy from such a distance away with such a small projectile, that demanded greater precision, was pretty much impossible!


    Even Senior K''M''s eyes widened as Rui casually fired many attacks rapidly one after the other and they all traveled a great distance before hitting perfectly on the already deep crater.


    BANG!


    The Sonic Bullet broke through to the other side as a clean hold had passed from one side to another. Ruinded on the ground beforeunching a final attack that passed straight through the hold, hitting another rock that was behind it without ever touching the drilled boulder despite going through it.


    "That should be enough for a demonstration," Rui remarked nonchntly as he casually nced at Senior K''M.


    "¡­Yes, that''s good enough¡­" She managed to squeeze out.


    The Martial Squires of the G''ak''arkan Tribe moved over to the boulder to take a closer look at Rui''s handiwork. They studied the hole that his repeated Squire-level attacks had made.


    "The hole is not that rough," one of the G''ak''arkan Martial Squires mentioned as they rubbed their palms along the inside of it. "What incredible uracy!"


    None of them were concerned regarding thecking power of the attack, they knew that he had limited himself since the entire bould would have been reduced to smithereens with a single attack or two had he used his full power.


    "This technique, we definitely need to get our hands on this technique!" The Martial Squires'' greed for this technique only grew deeper. They had long heard about this technique when Rui had first used it in his debut battle against the K''ulnen Tribe. It had been hard to believe back then, but seeing it in the flesh was almost harder to believe.


    It took a while for them to get over their fascination, to the point that Senior K''M needed to drag one of them back herself with force!


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 710 Domain

    "We have taken the initiative as promised, now it''s your turn to follow up," Rui calmly reminded her.


    "We do not intend to go back on our word¡­ The first technique on your list was the Sacred Lotus Blooming Gale, correct?"


    "¡­Yes," Rui sighed.


    The names of the Martial Art techniques of the G''ak''arkan Tribe were overly metaphorical and figurative. They offered no insights onto the techniques themselves.


    The differences in philosophies of both sides were entirely evident in the way they handled the naming of their techniques. The Kandrian Martial Union and most Martial Artist organizations of a simr nature usually took a more pragmatic approach to name techniques. Techniques usually alluded to their purpose and their capabilities. Although it wasn''t as though they were entirely literal themselves, it was also true that they were grounded in reality.


    To Rui, Sacred Lotus Blooming Gale was an unnecessarily ostentatious name that aplished nothing.


    A Martial Squire stepped forward from that G''ak''arkan Tribe. Rui recognized her. She was the one that they had seen use the technique that they sought.


    Senior Ceeran, in particr, was quite impressed with this technique and wanted to use elements of the technique with that of his own techniques to strengthen them, Rui could sense that he was paying greater attention to her ongoing demonstration.


    "Uhm¡­ My technique is a wide area technique, so I cannot demonstrate it here¡­" She nervously said as she notices Senior Ceeran''s intense stare. This was quite a lot for her to bear even if Senior Ceeran was suppressing the pressure that he was exerting since the G''ak''arkan Tribe ced a lot of weight on Martial power when it came to their social hierarchies.


    Once she took her ce in the distance. She closed her eyes, focusing, as she raised her arms. She inhaled and exhaled in a pattern while her body swayed smoothly yet swiftly in a particr matter. Rocks, stones, and soil rose from the ground slowly as they began swirling in a circle, forming a dome around her.


    The intensity of the mini sand storm continued increasing until it reached a peak before suddenly freezing. She breathed in and out rapidly as she continued with her gestures. The sand and rocks flew inward beforepressing into a smooth sphere in her hand, that smoothly crumbled into dust that the wind dragged away.


    Senior Ceeran''s eyes had lit up in excitement at the sight as she continued to demonstrate the manner in which she could apply her technique.


    (''She is able to maintain a directed and controlled stream of force by reducing the amount of power that she was exerting per second,'') Rui noted in interest.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    Usually, with long-range techniques, there was a rapid discharge of power in a brief amount of time to create a powerful singr impact or a decently strong barrage of impacts, or forceful streams of attacks. However, what she was doing was reducing it even further where she could exert continuous force over a much longer period of time. She was able to control the angle and locations of force to a much higher and more precise degree while also having a much greater degree of control over how she exerted her force.


    (''In exchange, her power isckingpared to long-range techniques, but she makes up with her control and flexibility.'') Rui remarked.


    It meant that she would be a real menace to deal with in a battle of attrition because she would be able to o on for a long longer than most Martial Artists. In a battle of attrition, she would brutally squeeze her opponent, metaphorically and literally like an anaconda.


    It was a particrly clever application of force, and Rui could see why Senior Ceeran would want it. It could help himst much longer in battles of attrition like histest battle against the leaders of the K''ulnen Tribe. He would be able to apply his force much more efficiently in longer battles.


    "Next," Senior K''M broke Senior Ceeran out of his reverie.


    "I believe your trajectory maniption is the second on the list of techniques that they desire, Senior Ceeran," Rui offered.


    Senior K''M directed a cautious look toward the Martial Senior. She had witnessed his power and knew for a fact that if a fight broke out here, she stood no chance of surviving against him, let alone beating him.


    Senior Ceeran wordlessly rose to the air. His energy was lethargic, but everyone present grew more tense yet excited. It wasn''t every day that they got to witness the power of a Martial Senior being demonstrated for them at close range, without their life being on the line.


    Everyone watched with hawk eyes as a dense and opaque breath escaped Senior Ceeran''s mouth. It immediately split into several directions as Senior Ceeran harnessed the wind currents that it generated, directing them diagonally downwards as Senior Ceeran skillfully manipted the trajectories in all kinds of directions. He made sure to demonstrate his ability to alter techniques at all speeds. Even at the highest of speeds of his attack, he could make rtively sharp curves across the air, showing everyone that nobody could juke his attacks even if they tried.


    And everyone believed him, of course. They had not forgotten how even the matriarch of the K''ulnen Tribe was not able to cleanly avoid the attacks of Senior Ceeran for more than a short time. If not for the patriarch of the K''ulnen Tribe intervening at the right moment, she may very well have died then and there.Content held by N?velDrama.Org.


    The long-range pressure and suppression that Senior Ceeran was able to exert were quite impressive and was clearly why the G''ak''arkan Tribe sought after his techniques. Even if heavily restricted almost all of his power, people could feel how oppressed they would be if they had to fight him even with his highly restricted attacks.


    "Incredible," Senior K''M''s eyes widened as she stared at the power that Senior Ceeran effortlessly demonstrated to all of them without breaking a sweat.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 711 Unique

    One after the other, Martial Artists of both sides came forward to demonstrate the techniques that the other side wanted to obtain. The demonstrations were different, as none of the techniques were too simr, and they had different parameters that made them impressive.


    Rui watched with interest as they came up one by one, executing their techniques. It was one thing to read reports and analyses on them, it was another to actually witness them in the flesh.


    He realized there were many nuances that he had missed prior.


    For one, despite theircking of impact power in their attacks. They were not necessarily less lethal than the Longranger Martial Squires of the Martial Union by a great degree. They had a surprising amount of lethality through means besides impacts.


    There were many ways to inflict damage on a person. Impacts through strikes or wind-based projectiles were just the most straightforward and easiest ways to inflict damage on people.


    In reality, there were entire fields of Martial Art that were dedicated to inflicting damage on people through unusual and non-standard means. The most significant ones that came to mind were poison-oriented techniques. These techniques were lethal in ways that did not involve inflicting more than a bit of a wound. Sometimes, no wounds were required to be inflicted at all.


    Of course, these techniques of the G''ak''arkan Tribe did not operate on the same principle as poison techniques, but they also inflicted damage through non-standard ways. Thus, despite not having techniques that exerted powerful impacts, they possessed techniques that were just as damaging as powerful impacts, and sometimes even more.


    One of the techniques that Rui hade across caused debilitating damage to ear drums through directed sound waves. Another Martial Artist used techniques that caused a rapid vacuum around their opponent spontaneously, causing the internal pressure generated by the body to momentarily exceed skin durability for just a brief moment caused by the extremely rapid shift in pressure. The enhanced durability of Martial Squires prevented this from happening under ordinary circumstances, however, the rapid pressure shift allowed for internal pressure to surpass the durability of outer flesh such that it could cause flesh to tear, inflicting wounds on the body using its own pressure.


    Another technique suffocated their opponent with vacuums, which was a form of inflicting damage that was radically different from impacts, yet quite dangerous. If the target spent too much time affected by the technique, theck of oxygen would quickly weaken them, causing them to lose the strength to leave the technique''s area of effect and eventually causing them to die.


    Rui could even understand how the G''ak''arkan Tribe hade to discover this technique in the first ce. It was most likely because Martial Artists, in pursuit of individuality, came up with newer means to harm their opponents than just by standard impacts or tears.


    This wouldn''t have happened if the G''ak''arkan Tribe did not hyper-emphasize the individuality of Martial Artists, and encouraged all of them to pick their own unique paths from the very start of their journey down their Martial Path. Had they not done that, then Rui highly doubted that any of the Martial Artists would have gone so far off the beaten path.


    After all, if they were not encouraged to find new ways to hurt their opponent, then they would have straightforwardly inherited and mastered existing long-range projectile techniques that allowed them to rely on existing paradigms to inflict damage on their opponent.Material ? of N?velDrama.Org.


    Rui wondered if this demonstration proved that there was merit in the Martial Union adopting the approach that the G''ak''arkan Tribe had taken with its extreme pursuit of individuality. If this little tribe was able to generate so many unique techniques that even the Martial Union chased after, then perhaps it would make sense for the Martial Union to adopt the same, or at least a simr approach to encourage and foster more individuality, even if it was difficult with no immediate benefit of power to the Martial Apprentice.


    If these techniques were interesting to Rui, then there were several that really interested Rui.


    THWOOM!


    A thin potent sound bullet moved at an incredible speed as it pushed through the atmosphere.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    Rui widened his eyes as he watched it cover nearly a kilometer in less than a second. He had read about this technique in the reports but realized that there was more going under the surface than he had realized.


    (''That''s an attack made of sound.'') He frowned. (''Yet it moves faster than the speed of sound by a huge degree.'')


    This was generally not possible unless¡­


    (''Unless the pressure that she''s exerting far exceeds atmospheric pressure.'') Rui noted. All sound waves were restricted at the speed of sound due to several factors, such as atmospheric pressure. The pressure that the atmosphere had on air molecules that served as the medium of soundrgely decided, when other factors were constant, the speed at which sound propagated through the air.


    The pressure constrained the speed and rate at which air molecules bounced at each other, and only in special circumstances could this be changed.


    Among these, were ensuring that the pressure of the sound wave exerted that of the shackling atmospheric pressure by arge degree.


    (''Is that why her attack is so small?'') Rui nced at the bullet-shaped crater that her attack had made on her target wall.


    By reducing the size of the projectile, she was increasing the energy density of the wave and thus the pressure thatunched the wave forward.


    Allowing her to break the threshold that allowed the sound wave to propagate forward. With this, she was able tounch incredibly speedy projectiles that were extremely difficult to dodge.


    (''This technique¡­ There is so much potential in this technique.'') Rui realized.


    It could potentially make life a lot easier for Rui, he had to admit.


    (''There is worth in mastering this technique¡­'') Rui''s eyes lit up in interest as several ideas for a new technique shed through his head.


    *****


    Author''s note: I will be adding more priv chapters, as for what form that takes, that remains to be seen. Also, there will be a mass release in the month of May.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 712 Idea

    Rui''s eyes glinted as a germ of an idea formed in his head.


    (''Being able to alter the speed of sound waves through the air and surpass the speed of sound¡­ There are applications of this beyond just creating speedy projectiles that move many times the speed of sound,'') Rui realized.


    In fact, the increased speed of the projectile was actually just the simplest of applications.


    (''The constant speed of the Sonic Bullets was shackling, but with this technique, there are routes that I can consider that I couldn''t before,'') Rui noted.


    With sound projectiles of much higher speed, the execution of the Pathfinder technique became much easier since the sound bullet traveled to its target much faster and thus took less time to reach its target.


    This significantly allowed Rui to expand his targeting range since the bullet can cover much greater in the same amount of time, thus the ODA system, which had a time limit as to how many seconds ahead of time he could predict atmospheric conditions would also allow him to hit much more distant targets since the distance the bullet could travel within that time limit was greater.


    At the moment, he could only predict atmospheric conditions for three seconds ahead of time at the most. This may not seem like much, but given howplicated the math and the physics were and the sheer amount of data he needed to sense and process himself, it was actually a bit of a miracle that he was able to process all that data to that degree in that short amount of time. Given that sound only traveled a little over a kilometer in three seconds, that was also his maximum for guaranteed perfect hits. In order to hit with one hundred percent uracy beyond that range, he would need to be able to predict the atmosphere deeper than three seconds in the future.


    He knew that that was damn near impossible given how much he was straining himself with his current limit.


    However, now that he hade across a technique that could potentially allow him to send his attacks further than a kilometer in three seconds, that meant that he could also have a one hundred percent uracy beyond a kilometer.


    This alone was an excellent reason for Rui to pursue this technique.


    (''That''s just the most straightforward application of the technique,'') Rui smiled.


    Rui had considered an even crazier idea.


    (''If I''m not wrong, this technique can allow me to surpass the limits of the attack power of my Sonic Bullets,'') Rui thought to himself with excitement.


    An absolutely crazy idea popped into his head, he wasn''t sure if this would even work in the first ce. But if it worked at all, then there was no way he could possibly afford to miss such an opportunity to create yet another powerful technique.


    (''I have to learn this technique no matter what!'') Rui decided.


    Thankfully, he was the boss here. Senior Ceeran would definitely not object. Hell, he was sure that the Martial Senior would be keeping a close eye on the techniques that Rui would be developing.


    "An incredible technique¡­" Rui nodded when the demonstration was done. "I look forward to mastering it myself."


    Senior Ceeran raised an eyebrow at Rui. They hadn''t yet decided which of the Martial Squires on their side would master which techniques.N?vel(D)ra/ma.Org exclusive ? material.


    The rest of the demonstration proceeded quickly and both sides took their time examining the techniques of the other side, ascertaining their value themselves.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    This would allow them to get a good grasp of the cards that both sides had.


    "The demonstration hase to an end," Rui turned toward when thest G''ak''arkan Martial Artist had ended his demonstration.


    Senior K''M nodded absentmindedly, deep in thought.


    "Why don''t we reconvene tomorrow at our vige?" Rui offered when he noticed her state. "After all, both sides have a lot to think about."


    Both sides had already received the information detailing the degree of mastery andpetence of the Martial Artists of the other side. There was a lot that needed to be considered before both sides settled on a discrete appraisal of the other side''s techniques.


    "¡­Alright, at the break of dawn, don''t bete this time," She nodded.


    (''You''re the oneing to us though,'') Rui sighed inwardly, not wanting to spark a fight over something so silly and childish.


    The two of them bade each other goodbye before setting off in opposite directions.


    "Interested in the Mighty Roar sh st technique?" Senior Ceeran asked with curiosity.


    "¡­Yes," Rui cringed a little at the shy name of the technique. Fiction normally had such techniques, but Rui had to admit that there was no way that he could possibly give his own techniques such shy names.


    "What technique do you n on creating?" Senior Ceeran grew even more interested.


    "The technique will greatly benefit the Pathfinder technique as it is," Rui began. "That alone is good enough reason to master it."


    "That is true. Your ODA system will definitely perform much better if your projectile speed was faster, considering that the ODA system''s predictions are constrained by the time period of projectile flight, and not distance. Thus faster projectiles will travel greater distances in the same time limit, increasing your uracy range."


    "It seems you have gained a good understanding of how the ODA system works," Rui raised an eyebrow at Senior Ceeran.


    "Of course! I intend to master that technique no matter what. I have had to spend a lot of time understanding the theoretical reading material that you had given me a while back. But I think I am slowly getting it," He nodded energetically.


    Rui had to admire his motivations and perseverance. Trying to understand and master the partial differential equations that described the system of wind current vectors among other things with no scientific foundation was extremely difficult.


    They chatted as Rui exined some of his ns while concealing his most ambitious yetpelling ones. They seemed so difficult that he didn''t want to count his chicken before they hatched.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 713 Constructive

    Rui immediately handed over the data that they had recorded with a remote recording device that a few people possessed. The analysis team quickly began appraising the value of a technique when weighed against the Martial Artists''petence and skill. This would allow them to objectively iste the technique''s capabilities from that of the Martial Artist''s mastery.


    The way this worked was by taking the average time it took for other Martial Artists of the Martial tribe to master the technique. Then it would bepared to the time it took for the Martial Artist that demonstrated the technique to Rui, to master it. If the demonstrating Martial Artist achieved basic mastery of it sooner, then one can presume that the Martial Artist likely possesses talent or affinity that is perhaps biasing the results. The value of the technique will be increased or reduced by one or two grades if the difference in the time it took for the demonstrating Martial Squire was too greatpared to the average.


    The same would be done for the amount of time that the Martial Squire has mastered the technique.


    If the Martial Artist had mastered the technique for decades, then it can be assumed that part of the quality of the performance came not from the technique, but how deeply the Martial Artist had mastered the technique. Obviously someone who only just mastered it would be much inferior in performance, which would be a more urate reflection of the technique.


    In that regard, Rui''s Pathfinder scored quite high. He had only mastered the technique in a little under four months and had spent nine months creating the technique.


    This way, the value of the technique can be gauged while ounting for talent and mastery.


    These estimations were rtively simple, partly due to the simplicity of the information that they had to work with. What surprised them was that Rui not only understood their work but waspleting it even faster than them!


    "This ispletely wrong," Rui shook his head as he inspected the work of one of the analysts.


    "Um¡­ Sir?"


    "The time period of mastery of a technique is not the same as the time period needed to create it from scratch, the Sky-splitting Tempestuous Whirlwind Sword technique was a technique that was created from constituent techniques that the Martial Artist had already mastered. You need to ount for these differences in order to urately gauge the proportion of the empirical potency grade of the technique that is caused by the time period of initial mastery."


    "I-I see¡­"


    Soon enough, they had the data they needed. The actual and urate value of the techniques of the Martial Artists in the form of power and difficulty grades of the techniques, as well as their dissemination value in the form of the sess rate of the mastery of the technique.


    "Interesting¡­" Rui hummed as he studied the analysis on the Mighty Roar sh st technique. "This just might work¡­"


    Rui smiled as some of his excitement leaked out.


    (''The fact that it can surpass the speed of sound¡­ means that constructive superposition  is possible,'') Rui''s eyes lit up.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    Constructive superposition was a phenomenon described in the ssical theory of waves like that of sound waves. When two simple harmonic waves met and ovepped, there were three possibilities; either the two waves canceled each other out to a certain degree resulting in a weaker wave, or they added their strength to create an even stronger wave with a greater amplitude.


    It could be envisioned with ocean waves. If two ocean waves ovepped them such that the crest ovepped with the crest, it would yield an even greater crest. However, if the crest ovepped with the trough, then the two would naturally cancel each other out resulting in still water.


    The former was known as constructive superposition, and thetter was known as destructive superposition.


    Rui was interested in the former.


    (''If Iunch a sound bullet, beforeunching a second sound bullet that was even faster. I could potentially merge the two attacks into one using constructive superposition¡­'')


    He wasn''t sure if it was possible or not. But if it was possible¡­


    (''The power of my long-range attacks would increase a lot. Maybe I wouldn''t have had so many clean shaves against the woman,'') He recalled his final against the Martial Squires of the K''ulnen Tribe.


    The female Martial Artist he fought against could shrug off his Pathfinder Sonic bullets like they were a child''s attack. If not for his idea of striking her funny bone to shove aside her arm, he may not have won that fight.


    Winning a fight with tactics and strategy when his power was insufficient was definitely something he had done plenty of. What he would rather happen was to never be put in a situation where his power would be insufficient.


    If he could superimpose two Pathfinder Sonic Bullets into one attack making twice as strong, or perhaps even more than two, then he would be able to hit far above his grade, most likely. His grade was already higher than it should have been on paper by more than one grade thanks to the VOID algorithm, but with this, he might even end up being two grades higher than he actually was!


    (''I don''t if this will work or not, but will I really get another chance to strengthen the Pathfinder technique''s attack potency by such a degree through any other means¡­?'') Rui wondered, before shaking his head.


    There was very little chance that he would get such an opportunity. What were the odds that he would find a technique whose system and mechanics were centered around sound and wave mechanics, that would allow him to amplify the power of a technique beyond his ordinary limit thanks to synergy with his strengths?N?vel(D)ra/ma.Org exclusive ? material.


    (''Almost non-existent¡­ really.'') He sighed.


    That just made his decision that much more certain. There was no way that he could let it go after making the realization that he just had.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 714 Efficiency

    What would it look like if he stacked three sonic bullets on top of each other in constructive superposition, creating an attack that could be thrice as powerful as what he would normally be able to dish out in a single impact?


    Of course, he could also release those three same bullets normally in a barrage, but singr impacts were often more desirable than barrages. This was because damage was not necessarily linearly rted to power.


    That meant that three equal attacks did not cause an equal amount of damage as one attack thrice as powerful as one of those three attacks. There were many exceptions, such as piercing attacks and other means of inflicting damage.


    But by andrge, the damage rate of barrages of smaller attacks was lesser than that of onerge blunt force attack.


    One could clearly intuitively understand this when considering a feather following on one''s head one million times, or a boulder that weighed as many as one million feathers following on one''s head one time.


    The former would not cause even an ounce of damage while thetter could potentially kill an ordinary person.


    Rui could use this principle in his favor when it came to his Pathfinder projectiles, by summing up attacks that would do less damage than if he summed into a single attack. He was basically increasing the efficiency of the power he spent versus the result he obtained, and increasing the effectiveness of every single attack that he could potentially deal if he truly mastered what he was looking for.


    The reason that he needed the Mighty Roar sh st technique was that he could not have superposition happen at all if his attacks were of the same speed, with the reason being rtively obvious. In order to superimpose, they needed to ovep the same location at some point. This was not possible if they were moving at the same speed whenunched one after the other, obviously. The distance between them would never shrink.


    Thus, this technique that allowed him to increase the speed of his sound projectiles was absolutely vital to Rui if he wanted to master constructive resonance and use this principle of physics to augment his attacks.


    The day moved agonizingly slow as Rui waited for the appointment with Senior K''m. He even made sure to ensure that they were well-prepared ahead of time to ensure that Rui would be ready to handle the negotiations with her even if she showed up an hour earlier insisting that dawn had already broken back home.


    "Senior K''M, I''m d you''re here," Rui smiled when she finally arrived. "Today is going to be an important day."


    "Mmm," She nodded wordlessly, uncaring for etiquette. Such a concept did not really exist in their culture, since they almost never had any meaningful diplomatic rtions with anybody in their entire lives prior.


    Once Rui led her to the conference hall, they immediately began.


    "We have an issue with the information that you provided us," She straightforwardly began with a stern expression.


    Rui frowned. That was a rather bold usation. They were basically implying that the Martial Union was lying and engaging in deception.


    "You people are lying and engaging in deception."


    ¡­And now she straightforwardly dered what was implicit earlier.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    Rui remained silent for a few moments.


    Had this been another country, Rui would have responded strongly and sternly. He would have used them of defamation and would warn the other side to avoid making statements that are patently false. Although it would lead to friction, maintaining a strong front was generally the right move to go for. Any half-hearted response to nderous ims would be a sign of weakness that others may seek to exploit.


    But this was not another nation that operated within the same framework of international political engagement where the perception of the Martial Union''s tolerance, orck thereof, was extremely vital for the deterrence of deception.


    This was an entirely different situation. If the G''ak''arkan Tribe used them of lying, it was almost certainly genuine earnestness and sincerity rather than a deceptive ploy. The G''ak''arkan Tribe was much more trigger-happy than other nations, thus Rui needed to change his approach.


    "I can assure you we have done no such thing of the sort, K''M," Rui calmly, yet confidently stated. "I''m sure this is a misunderstanding, can you tell us what exactly you believe is a lie?"


    "It is you,"


    "¡­Sorry?"


    "You are definitely lying about yourself," She tossed the document with the information of the Martial Artists of the Martial Union on the table. "This says that you have been a rank two Martial Artist for eight seasons. This is impossible!"


    Material ? of N?velDrama.Org.


    She snorted as she folded her arms as she stared at Rui with a stern expression, albeit calm.


    Rui on the other hand was putting in effort as he resisted the sheer amount of pressure and fear.


    That was until he heard an exnation.


    "I''m sorry?" He frowned. "I have been a Martial Squire for eight seasons, this is an absolute fact."


    "Do you think I''m a fool?" She growled as she leaned forward. "You are stronger than every rank two Martial Artist we have ever seen. Including those that have been in the second rank for decades! How is it possible for you to obtain such power so quickly? How can someone so inexperienced exert such kind of pressure? It is impossible!"


    Rui''s eyes widened as understanding dawned upon him.


    It was the Mind Mask, as well as Rui''s thorough preparations before battle that allowed him to convince them that he was an extremely high-grade Martial Squire. When they read that he had only been in the Squire Realm for a little under three years, they undoubtedly that the Martial Union was trying to sell them nonsense to deceive them to make his techniques more valuable.


    (''Fuck¡­'') Rui cursed inwardly. Not even he, with all his foresight, had considered the possibility that the decision to make himself seem stronger woulde and bite him in the ass thiste in the game.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 715 Explanation

    "You have it all wrong," Rui heaved a sigh. "That data is entirely urate."


    "That''s impossible," She snorted, her aura growing more forceful by the second."


    "The reason that it is possible¡­ is that I''m not as strong as you think I am," Rui sighed, revealing to her.


    He would not have gone for this choice had he been dealing with another nation on the Panama Continent. After all, revealing that he wasn''t a grade-ten Martial Squire would be giving them more strategically important intelligence.


    This was especially the case when one considered the fact that Rui wasn''t an unknown Martial Artist. When he was a Martial Apprentice, he earned himself a name in other countries during the Serevian Dungeon War. After all, he had destroyed many Apprentice-level assets in the war, and the Martial Union had been forced to prove that he was a Martial Apprentice to prove that they didn''t vite the uses of the Serevian pact that the many nations had agreed to.


    Thus even his identity had been exposed to a certain degree.Content held by N?velDrama.Org.


    Revealing that he was actually much weaker than he had initially presented himself was risky. It wouldn''t be impossible for other nations to potentially exploit this fact to their advantage.


    However, he was dealing with the G''ak''arkan Tribe. He could rest assured that there was very little chance that they would engage in deceptive subterfuge when there was no record of them having ever done so in the history of the Vilun ind.


    "What?" She frowned. "What nonsense is that?"


    "I am presenting myself to be stronger than myself using a special mental technique," Rui calmly exined. "See? I''m not as strong as you think I am."


    His passive aura of pressure diminished significantly as he got rid of his mind mask.


    Her eyes widened as she stared at him with an incredulous expression. "Eh¡­?"


    "I can even use it to suppress my aura entirely," He exined as used a mind mask to present himself as an ordinary human.


    She simply stared at him with an open mouth, wide eyes pushing back against her furrowed eyebrows.


    "So, yes¡­ The information is urate. I just have been altering my power to ensure that people don''t belittle me or doubt whether I am fit for my job or not," He revealed withplete honesty.


    "¡­"


    "¡­"


    Rui smiled wryly as she continued staring at him wordlessly. One of the reasons that he had been able to speak with Martial Seniors of the G''ak''arkan Tribe instead of Martial Squires was that he presented himself as stronger than all of the Martial Squires of the G''ak''arkan Tribe with the help of his Mind Mask technique.


    It was the very reason that he was speaking with Senior K''M instead of some Martial Squire of the G''ak''arkan Tribe.


    "¡­But you killed that rank two Martial Artist with a single attack¡­ You defeated the daughter of the leaders of the K''ulnen Tribe swiftly even when she had help¡­ How was that possible?"<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    "The Pathfinder technique¡­ and some preparation¡­" He replied, after giving it some thought.


    Now he was being just a tad little deceptive.


    It wasn''t just ''some'' preparation.


    He had spent the months that the settlement was being built absorbing any and all data that he could get his hands on the Martial Artists of the K''ulnen Tribe, to build more urate and extensive predictive models on his opponents. He had even spectated other battlefields where the Martial Squire of the K''ulnen Tribe were fighting against other Martial Tribes, building predictive models on every single one of them.


    What that meant was he entered the battle against the K''ulnen Tribe effectively far stronger than he normally would be and only grew stronger as he refined the existing predictive models on them. Thanks to this, he entered the battlefield much stronger than he would have been had he not done so.


    But, the more he diminished that, the more valuable the Pathfinder technique would be.


    (''¡­And it seems to be working.'') He watched her open the document he had given her to the Pathfinder technique as she stared at it in amazement, reading through all the information listed on it, before turning back to Rui in amazement.


    "I assure you, if you saw me fight against a powerful Martial Squire, I would struggle to win and would lose in most cases," Rui added.


    He was a little concerned by her reaction to the deception, but thankfully he had already created a favorable impression of himself to her, having conversed with her extensively off the record.


    "I see¡­" She murmured. "I suppose in that case the information you have provided to us is urate."


    "Indeed," Rui nodded. "Is there any other issue that you had regarding the information that we provided you with?"


    "No," She shook her head. "I appreciate the honesty. You are one of the most shocking rank-two Martial Artist I have ever seen"


    "Thank you for the kind words, you tter me," Rui smiled. "In that case, I presume that there are no further issues that may dy the main matter at hand then?"


    "Yes¡­ We may begin¡­" She regained herposure. As even more amazing Rui had be in her eyes, she needed to ensure that the G''ak''arkan Tribe got a favorable agreement regarding the exchange of techniques.


    "Alright, why don''t you open the negotiations with an offer?" Rui offered. "You can begin with any of the techniques that you''ve listed as ones that you desire and are interested in obtaining."


    "In that case, we''ll begin with the technique that we are most interested in," Her demeanor grew more serious. "The Pathfinder technique¡­"


    Rui''s smile did not faze as he stared at her wordlessly before finally responding. "Well, that is an objective, not an offer. We evaluate the Pathfinder technique to be quite valuable, especially when considering the G''ak''akran Tribe''s more limited long-range capabilities. So the question is¡­ what are you offering in return?"


    Rui felt a little embarrassed as he spoke highly of the Pathfinder technique as the representative of the Martial Union.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 716 Offer

    "We are willing to offer two techniques; the Catastrophic Thundercrack Whish and the Dark Abyss Bloodsurge technique, in exchange for the Pathfinder technique," She replied.


    Rui immediately shook his head. "That is not enough. Those two techniques are of much less power and capability and don''t have an alluring dissemination viability."


    Not all of the techniques of the G''ak''arkan Tribe that the Martial Union sought were for their actual capabilities. Many of the techniques that the Martial Union sought were for research purposes. These techniques were novelties that presented them with new paths to obtaining power.


    In other words, they had great potential. And the Martial Union intended to exploit its formidable research and development department to expand on those techniques and build upon them to create more optimized and powerful upgraded versions of the technique that follow the same principle.


    However, the G''ak''arkan Tribe did not know this, and this was one of the advantages that the Martial Union had in these negotiations.


    They did not know that the techniques they had were valuable to the Martial Union, far more so than it was to them. Thus they could get away with deals that, while fair in the eyes of the G''ak''arkan Tribe, were quite advantageous to the Martial Union.


    "Those techniques are too little in value inbatpared to the Pathfinder technique," Rui replied, as he falsely expressed ack of too much value for two such techniques that possessed great potential in the eyes of the Martial Union.


    "Then what more do you propose we give you in exchange?" She asked.


    "¡­How about the Mighty Roar sh st technique additionally?" Rui pointed out. "ording to our evaluation of the technique, it would be fitting in addition to the two techniques that you offered earlier?"


    Rui had been interested in that technique ever since he identified that it could help him grow stronger and allow him to remarkably improve existing techniques. He decided to try obtaining it in this negotiation. After all, they would not be exchanging techniques all at once, since both sidescked a guarantee, especially the G''ak''arkan Tribe.


    The G''ak''arkan Tribe had agreed to this deal under the condition that the Martial Union would fulfill its agreements of an individual trade before the G''ak''arkan Tribe did theirs. This was to ensure that the Martial Union did not swiftly leave the ind and run away once it got what it needed at the expense of the G''ak''arkan Tribe not obtaining what it did first.


    By ensuring that the Martial Union would always fulfill its obligation a bit earlier than the G''ak''arkan Tribe, this possibility was entirely erased.


    However, the Martial Union, on the other hand, did not want to give away all of its techniques and then expect the G''ak''arkan Tribe to give up all of its techniques. It was entirely possible that this group of irrational warmongering idiots would decide to renege on their end of the agreement.


    Thus both sides agreed to not conduct all the trades simultaneously.


    That was why Rui was quite determined to ensure that he got the technique he was looking for in the very first trade that the Martial Union and the G''ak''arkan Tribe conducted.


    "Three techniques for one?" She narrowed her eyes as she frowned a bit. "That''s too much."


    "My technique is that valuable," Rui insisted. "And I''m sure you realize that, especially after learning that I am not a powerful Martial Squire. It makes the technique that much more impressive, does it not?"


    She remained silent at his words.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    It was true.


    She had to reevaluate the value of the technique then and there.


    In a way, Rui was d that she found issues with his personal information since that gave him a good reason to exin the truth while simultaneously making the technique more valuable.


    Of course, the technique was even more powerful when he used it with the VOID algorithm to create what he called the Void Pathfinder, but this was just fine too. They would still be gaining a huge boost.


    "One of the many good things of the Pathfinder technique is that once mastered, it can be applied to any sound-based technique," Rui informed them. "It can also be applied to lesser degrees that decrease its difficulty. Its value is greater than that of itsbat applications. This is quite the fair deal, and I''m sure you realize that."


    She remained silent for a few seconds, before sighing and nodding her head. "Fine, the Catastrophic Thundercrack Whish, the Dark Abyss Bloodsurge technique, and the Mighty Roar sh st technique in exchange for your Pathfinder technique.Material ? of N?velDrama.Org.


    Rui felt a headache just listening to those stupidly long names. Hell, he was surprised she didn''t bite her tongue trying to enunciate all of those names so rapidly.


    (''No technique, no matter how grand and powerful it is, needs such inconveniently long names are absolutely unnecessary!'') Rui resolutely dered.


    It was then he remembered that he was the one who came up with the names ''Variable Objective Inverse Derivation'' algorithm and ''Objectively Derived uracy'' system.


    At that moment, he could not help but feel like a hypocrite.


    (''¡­At least I have the decency to make cool-sounding acronyms with them!'') Rui nodded to himself.


    "Hm? What was that?" Senior Ceeran noticed.


    "Ah nothing, since we havee to an agreement on this matter, let us quickly draft the agreement on paper before we begin then," Rui smiled with an encouraging expression.


    He wanted to ensure that the deal went through. After all, there was no way he would allow the technique that he wanted to be dyed.


    When it came to his Martial Art, he was not a patient man. Waiting for a few weeks before he would have another chance to bargain for it was too much for Rui.


    (''Also, since the Pathfinder technique is their very first technique, it means I will be teaching and learning simultaneously.'') Rui scratched his head at that. That was definitely new for him.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 717 Done

    They quickly chalked out the first agreement on paper and both sides signed it, making it official.


    After that, the dominoes fell one after the other. Rui and Senior K''M haggled over the exchanges a lot.


    Most of the trades were one technique for another. However, like the first technique, there were techniques that were valuable enough to warrant two techniques from the other side.


    However, none of the remaining techniques on either side ended up being exchanged for three techniques.


    After a few hours, each of the techniques that both sides wanted and were willing to give had all been traded off in the agreements.Content held by N?velDrama.Org.


    "Huff¡­" Rui fell back in his seat after the final set of contracts had been drafted and signed. "Finally¡­ It''s done."


    It had taken a long time to reach here, but finally, he hadpleted his mission.


    (''In fact, if not for the fact that I have to pass on my Pathfinder technique, I might have been sent back home,'') Rui noted.


    After all, Martial Squires were not deployed in areas where their mission waspleted and their objectives were satisfied.


    "You sound tired," Senior K''M snorted mirthfully.


    "You have no idea how much we have gone through to obtain this result, K''M," Rui sighed, before turning to his two assistants. "Finish all the protocols and the due process surrounding the contracts."


    "Yes sir," The two assistant diplomats obediently collected all the documents carefully before leaving the room.


    Rui turned back toward K''M.


    "I still can''t believe you''re just an immature rank-two Martial Artist," She murmured.


    In her mind, Martial Squires who hadn''t even spent five years in the Squire Realm were still immature children as far as Martial Squires, the fact that the martial Squire who was so powerful he seemed like he was on the verge of bing a Martial Senior was actually just one such immature Martial Squire was quite the shock.


    "Well, I''ll take that as apliment," Rui shrugged with a wry smile.


    "It is apliment," She insisted. "I''m looking forward to learning that technique of yours."


    Rui raised an eyebrow. "You are going to be my student?"


    "That''s correct," She nodded with a nk expression.


    "¡­"


    "¡­"


    Rui wasn''t sure whether he ought tough or smile.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    "Why are you willing to be the student of a Martial Squire?"


    She smiled at that question. "Why, did you assume that I was too proud and egotistical just like the other rank three Martial Artists to lower my head to a rank two Martial Artist?"


    "¡­"


    "Hmph," She snorted. "I thought so. I am not as block-headed as my brother and the chieftain."


    Rui was impressed. He had to admit, that she was definitely more rational than her brother who had dealt with Rui thest time.


    "After all, bing stronger is already so difficult once you reach the third rank¡­ If I want to step into a higher rank, I cannot afford to allow things like pride to get in the way," She sighed.


    Rui raised an eyebrow.


    This was not an insignificant thing for her to say. This was the first confirmation that Rui had heard from the Martial Tribes of Vilun ind that they were aware of the existence of a higher Realm of power.


    Rui remained silent as he considered how to respond. He did not want to reveal anything that could potentially give her more information about the Master Realm. Even though he probably knew way less than she did due to her being closer, he had met a few Martial Masters in his life, which she hadn''t


    If she truly was aiming for the Master Realm, she would definitely try to pry out information surrounding it from him.


    "Be honest," She began as she turned toward him. "Your world¡­ has rank Martial Artists, doesn''t it?"


    "¡­"


    "You don''t have to be so wary. It isn''t that difficult to conclude." She sighed. "Less than one out of ten rank-one Martial Artists bes a rank two Martial Artist, and less than one out of ten rank-two Martial Artists bes a rank three Martial Artist. You said your world wasrge. It would logically follow that, given your size, you most likely have many rank-four Martial Artists, maybe even rank five Martial Artists. After all, why else would a rank three Martial Artist like that of yours be dispatched by superiors?"


    Rui smiled. "Well, there''s good news and bad news. The bad news is that I cannot answer your questions surrounding this topic. The good news is that you are intelligent enough to potentially master the Pathfinder technique. Probably never as good as I have, since I am the creator of the technique who created it to suit my strengths. But still, you will definitely make good use of it as long as you are willing to put yourself through the wringer."


    "This isn''t the first time I have persevered past a hurdle," She snorted. "I did not reach the third rank by being a quitter."


    "I admire that, but do not be too overconfident, I can absolutely assure you that you have never evere across a technique like this in your entire life, K''M."


    Rui earnestly warned her about the challenge of mastering the ODA system. He had alreadyid out the difficulty of the technique more extensively in the documentation that he had provided them, but he was worried that it would perhaps not be enough.


    After all, the reason for the difficulty of the Pathfinder technique had to do with the ODA system which was probably unlike anything that they could possibly fathom.


    Rui was unable to put into words to exin to someone with zero background in science how difficult it would be to master the ODA system.


    On top of that, he had to teach her this in the Vilun dialect. That was torturous. He wasn''t sure if he could possibly handle the sheer amount of effort and tutge that it would require to teach her and ensure that she has mastered it to an adequate degree.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 718 Education

    "Hmph, I''ll handle whatever you throw at me," She confidently stated.


    The two conversed for a while before she decided to get up and leave. "See you tomorrow morning sharp at the crack of dawn. I can''t wait to begin learning this new technique. It''ll be fun to have my blood gushing through my body as I push it to the limit."


    Rui smiled bitterly as he realized she still had no idea what she was in for.


    She would not be pushing her body to the limit any time soon.


    Not at all, what she would be pushing to the limit was her mind. In every way possible.


    He would be pushing her learningprehension, her intellect, her memory, and her patience.


    She would be learning the ssical wave theory from scratch, while he would be giving mini crash courses on the various mathematical concepts that she should be needing to understand the ODA system. This included the entirety of algebra, trigonometry, exponents, calculus, and differential equations, partial and whole, of multiple orders.


    There would probably be a lot of other mathematical concepts that she would be involved in that Rui would normally take for granted that she clearly would not know. But he would need to handle that on the run.


    This was not going to be easy, several months would most likely go into getting her to understand and master the ODA system.


    On the other hand, this process would probably not stretch out for as long as it did in school back on Earth because the objective of her education was highly objective-oriented. He had one goal; to get her to understand and embed the ODA system into her bones.


    This meant that educating her was going to be much more straightforward. He wasn''t going to give her a shred of knowledge beyond what she needed to know to understand the ODA system.


    He could construct her education program to ensure that he was only giving her what was necessary to ensure that she understood what she needed to understand. This way, he could really cut away a lot of the fluff that the education system had when teaching students these concepts.


    This way it was more efficient than if he had to start all over.


    He shook his head, putting away the thoughts for the time being. He had not needed to go to such lengths when it came to pass the technique on to the Martial Union. The Kandrian Empire just barely possessed enough theoretical scientific advancements that the ODA system was not iprehensible to them. After all, the mathematics and physics that it relied upon were very far away from cutting-edge theoretical science. The knowledge itself was from the neenth and twentieth centuries.


    He would need to spend some time today to create an educational training n for her.


    N?vel(D)ra/ma.Org exclusive ? material.


    (''I should take the advice of Senior Ceeran,'') Rui mused.


    Senior Ceeran was also trying to master the ODA system, he should consult the man at least once to ensure that there wasn''t anything that he should be taking into consideration when ounting for her being a Martial Senior.


    (''Speaking of which¡­'') Rui''s eyes narrowed. (''She said something strange just then.'')


    Rui recalled her exact words.


    ('' ''It will be fun to have my blood gushing through my body as I push it to the limit'' is what she had said'')<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    They were insignificant in a vacuum.


    However, when he contextualized that statement with the insights he had made regarding Martial Seniors and those peculiar glowing veins of those, he couldn''t help but wonder if she meant that statement in a more literal way.


    His eyes narrowed before his body loosened up, as he shook his head. (''I have a lot of work to do.'')


    When he returned back to the business of the settlement, he was unsurprised at the positive atmosphere. People greeted him with greater respect and appreciation.


    This was especially true in the diplomatic team, that celebrated the most.


    "This wouldn''t have been possible if you hadn''t done your job so perfectly well, sir!" Zeyra had told him when he ran into her once more.


    "Good job young man!" Senior Ceeran had told him with an excited grin. "Now I can proceed with obtaining what I have always wanted."


    "Neatly executed as always," Kane had given him a thumbs up.


    It took him a while before Rui was able to finally get back to his own quarters and rx for a bit.


    He looked at his personal ounter as he skimmed through his credit bnce.


    "As expected," He smiled.


    The Martial Union had already deposited a huge sum of money into his ount. He bet the second that Zeyra and Stemple had finished the preliminary report of the sess of the negotiations and signing of the contracts to the Martial Union, they paid him his due. His official mission was not sessful to obtain all the techniques of the G''ak''arkan Tribe.


    His official mission was to serve as a diplomat to sessfully ensure that the G''ak''arkan Tribe would officially sign the contract agreeing to a number of trades that included all of the techniques of the G''ak''arkan Tribe that they possessed an interest in.


    And now, he had very sessfully aplished that goal when all of his predecessors had failed spectacrly.


    (''Oh, there''s another message¡­'') He skimmed through it.


    [Squire Rui Quarrier, as per the trade contract between the Martial Union and the G''ak''arkan Tribe featuring an exchange of the techniques Catastrophic Thundercrack Whish, Dark Abyss Bloodsurge, and the Mighty Roar sh st of the G''ak''arkan Tribe and the Pathfinder technique of the Martial Union, you will be expected to abide by the terms and conditions of the contract. The royalties surrounding the international distribution of the Pathfinder technique, as per the Martial Art licensing contract, will be credited to your ount shortly after the transaction isplete.


    -Department of Foreign Affairs]


    (''Essentially telling me I need to stick around to teach them my technique and will get paid my royalties as agreed.'') He mused.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 719 Supremacist

    "And thus¡­ we require you to reign over the settlement for the time being of the exchange¡­" Martialmissioner Derun told him.


    Rui had contacted Martial Commissioner Derun soon after, to find her beaming at him as though she was his aunt.


    "You''ve really managed to cleanlyplete this diplomat endeavor that has been guing the Department of Foreign Affairs for many years, in just a matter of three months," She sighed in appreciation. "They''re quite impressed, so much so that they have insisted on retaining you."


    "I''ve already made my stance on that quite clear, I''m afraid," Rui shook his head.


    "And I have conveyed that to them, don''t worry," She told him, before turning to Rui. "I forgot to inform you, but your grade will most likely be pushed to grade five."


    Rui raised an eyebrow at that.


    "You were already quite close, being able to keep up with grade-five Martial Squires quite well, and then you got even stronger. On top of that, your feats in the battles against the K''ulnenTribe are quite impressive."


    "I see¡­" Rui nodded with a smile on his face. "That''s very nice to hear."Content held by N?velDrama.Org.


    He had known he could take on grade-five Martial Artists for a while now. Though he wasn''t too very hurried with getting the Martial Union to allow him to leave.


    After all, he cared more about progressing in his Martial Art than he did care about the fact that he was officially a grade-five Martial Squire.


    "Grade five within three years of reaching the quire Realm. That''s a record, you know," She nced at Rui with immense interest.


    Rui found the piece of information interesting. Aside from taking a bit of pride in it, however, there wasn''t much of a reaction from him.


    "Martial Art is not a race,missioner," Rui replied. "It''s a marathon, and you are your onlypetitor."


    "That is remarkably wiseing from a Martial Artist of your inexperience," She mused.


    "Normally, it takes thrice as much to make the progress that you have. Your body is that of a grade three Martial Artist, and yet yourbat prowess is two grades above your physical limit. That indicates an immensely potent Martial Path and powerful techniques." She remarked. "I''ve heard that you have expressed interest in one of the techniques of the G''ak''arkan Tribe?"


    "Yes," Rui nodded. "I hadn''t realized it when I went through the descriptive reports, but actually witnessing it in the flesh was quite revealing. The technique will definitely benefit me a lot just by learning and straightforwardly applying it. However, if I am able to realize my ambitions, then I should be able to progress my Martial Path significantly better."


    "That''s quite pleasant to hear as an executive of the Martial Union, Squire Quarrier." She smiled. "The growth of all Martial Squires is highly desirable to the Martial Union. We need every ounce of power that we can get our hands on, you see. The greater the power we possess, the greater the ability we have to deal with the greatest threats thaty just beside us¡­"


    Her expression grew intense.


    Rui had a strange feeling about those words.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    His eyes narrowed. "What¡­ are you referring to?"


    "The Royal Family, of course," She replied as though it was the most obvious thing ever. "The very Kandrian government is our enemy that we have no choice but to cooperate within our mutual interests against the other Sage-level super-nations in the geographic vicinity."


    Rui furrowed his eyebrows as he felt something was off.


    "¡­The Kandrian government are our sworn enemies¡­? Why in the world would you say something like that, if I may ask?"


    "That should be obvious by now, am I right?"


    "Uh¡­ no?" Rui feltme saying that, but he was being honest.


    "¡­Martial Artists are humans who have shed a portion of their mortality and surpassed their limits. They have transcended ordinary humanity. How does it make sense for Martial Artists like you to acquiesce to the royal family, who are merely ordinary humans?" She turned towards Rui. "Martial Artists ought to be the ruling ss. Anyone who opposes that is an enemy of our civilization and species."


    Rui just stared at her for a few seconds, waiting for her to say ''I''m just messing with you lol''.


    But it never came.


    "Take a look at the Martial Tribes of Vilun Ind," She smiled when Rui refused to respond. "Look at how cohesive they are. Look at how united they are. Look at how much loyalty their tribes-folks possess toward their leaders. Ordinary humans cannot convey such natural dominance over others."


    Rui furrowed his eyebrows as he realized what was happening.


    (''She''s part of the Martial supremacists!'') Rui realized.


    He had heard about the political factions that supported the political, socio-cultural, and economic dominance of Martial Artists. He thought he had never run into a single one of them.


    Yet he could now see that he had known one for quite some time now. He wondered how such a crazy entered the Martial Union in the first ce.


    (''Well, it is the Martial Union. Pro-Martial Artist sentiment is probably never wee.'') Rui noted btedly. (''Her political faction is probably an absolute enemy of that of Colonel Geringan''s political faction.'')


    He recalled the Martial colonel who had hired him to train his daughter. The man belonged to the Merger Faction that wanted to fuse the power and resources of the Kandrian Empire and the Martial Union so that they created a single entity that was stronger than the sum of the two individually and separated.


    (''Is that part of why she had me undertake this mission?'') Rui wondered. The Martial Tribes of Vilun ind were a good embodiment of her ideals and political beliefs. She took the initiative to introduce him to them.


    Rui wondered if that was the motivation for sending him to Vilun Ind. There were many ways in which she could influence his view on this matter without directly trying to convince him of her political beliefs.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 720 Interests

    "I''m afraid I don''t understand," Rui replied earnestly. Frankly, her extremism was starting to freak him out a bit.


    Even if it was a political ideology that benefited Martial Artists, he had to admit that he wasn''t particrly drawn in by it. He had never been too into politics, but he believed in the equality of opportunity. However, from what he could see, she definitely did not believe that.


    She nced at him for a few seconds, before opening her mouth. "Ites down to what form of society is best for human civilization."


    "And you believe that a Martial Kraterocracy is the best for society?" Rui raised an eyebrow with skepticism.


    Kraterocracies were systems of governance where power was seized by physical and martial force. There existed nations on the Panama Continent where the head of state was a Martial Artist, and power was distributed via Martial merit.


    She simply smiled at his question. "Of the many nations of this world, what form of government, on average, do you think has the most amount of cohesiveness and unity?"


    Rui frowned as he considered that question. He didn''t know the answer, and he wasn''t sure if he was going to like it.


    "Of the many forms of government in this world, the kind that harnesses and uses the power and resources of a nation most efficiently are those that are driven by Martial power." She exined. "This is not an argument or a prediction. It is purely an observation, and we have since understood the reasons for this."


    She turned toward Rui. "Do you know why this is the case?"


    Rui remained silent for a few seconds before sighing. "Martial Artists are one of the main stakeholders of every nation that the head of state and head of government need to appeal to. They are one of the most important interest groups because they possess tremendous Martial power, which trantes into political power as long as they are able to unite as a group with baselinemon interests. They serve as constraints to leaders of nations since their interests need to be met because if they aren''t met, they will either migrate or rebel¡­"


    Martialmissioner Derun nodded appreciatively. "But¡­?"


    "But this doesn''t apply to systems of governance where the Martial Artists themselves are the leaders. They are not constrained by themselves, after all. While other forms of governance are constrained by Martial Artists and need to appeal to their interests, sometimes at the cost of their own, Martial leaders do not need to pay such a price since the Martial Artists are the leaders."


    She nodded. "Correct, Squire Quarrier. Take a look at our own nation, the Kandrian Empire. The Royal Kandrian family is considerably constrained by the Martial Union. The Kandrian Emperor cannot make unscrupulous legitions that harm the interests of the Kandrian Empire, because the Kandrian government does not possess the ability to enforce legition that the Martial Union vehemently is opposed to, logistically. That is a tremendous constraint on the Royal family."<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    Rui listened to her wordlessly. Technically, there wasn''t anything false about what she said.


    "Yet what if the Kandrian Emperor and other people in positions of power were all the powerful Martial Artists? If they themselves were the rulers, then there would be no powerful Martial Artist interest groups that they would be constrained by, they are that group!"


    She turned toward Rui. "When leaders are not the Martial Artists of the group, they are constrained by thetter. It is only when Martial Artists lead a nation that they are unconstrained and unhampered in their mobilization of the power and resources of a country. In other words, only Martial Artists can bring out the true power of human civilization in a sense."


    She paused before continuing. "Take for example the Britannian Empire. It is an example of a Martial Kraterocracy, and it also happens to be the most powerful nation in this section of the continent. The Britannian Emperor is the head of state and happens to be the most powerful Martial Artist in this section of the nation. All of the other examples of Martial Kraterocracies are simr, this includes the G''ak''arkan Tribe to a good extent as well. Do you think the tribe would be cohesive if the chieftain was decided by democracy and if there was an ordinary person leading the tribe"


    Rui couldn''t, in good faith, say no.


    "That''s partly because their culture would conflict with such a system. It does not mean that such a system is inherently bad," Rui pointed out. "And regarding Martial Artists taking over the legitive branch of any governmental structure, I believe it was you who told me that Martial Artists ought to spend their time training and fighting, as opposed to engaging in non-Martial rted work. This seems contradictory to what you''re telling me now."


    She smiled at his argument. "That is true. However, when I say Martial Artists ought not to spend much time on matters unrted to Martial Art, I mean quite literally time spent on it. It is possible to be in positions of power while not having to engage in administrative or bureaucratic work. There is one such example right before your eyes."


    Rui had already known what she was talking about. "The Martial Union¡­"


    "Correct," She smiled. "The ultimate positions of power are held by Martial Artists, and most of the bureaucratic and management work is handled by executives like myself, who can entirely be dismissed from our positions of power the moment our Martial Artist superiors deem so. In this way, they can maintain power over arge organization while still not being swamped with executive duties. Senior Ceeran has spent months away from the Martial Union while still retaining his position of power within our Department of Research and Development, has he not?"C0ntent ? 2024 (N/?)velDrama.Org.


    Rui nodded.


    He had to admit that there was the logical foundation in her arguments. Their disagreement was more fundamental than that. He had to admit that the Martialmissioner had a point though.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 721 Kraterocracies

    In a sense, while she was dramatically opposed to the Merger Faction that Colonel Geringan was a part of, their end goals had somemonalities. The Merger Faction wanted to merge existing institutions of the government with that of the Martial Union to create a hybrid singr ruling structure with a division of power that cated all of its constituents so that the constraints and restraints on and from the government, and on and from the Martial Union would go away, strengthening the nation as it became more unified.


    Martialmissioner Derun, on the other hand, also wished to retain the constraints that the two groups ced on each other, however, she believed that only one of the two groups possessed the ability to truly unify a country and draw out its full power. She even extended this philosophy to the entirety of human civilization.


    "Your propositions make sense," Rui admitted. "When the biggest stakeholder interest group with unshakeable hold over military do not possess legitive power, then they do end up hampering those in seats of legitive power with conflicting interests. The most straightforward solution to prevent this conflict of interest is to ce such said Martial Artist stakeholders in positions of power themselves."


    She nodded. "But¡­?"


    Rui smiled wryly. "While it is true thatck of political opposition from stakeholder interest groups leads to a less fragmented political power dynamic, that is not necessarily a good thing."


    "Oh?" She raised an eyebrow at his words. "And why do you say that?"


    "Such a power systemcks too many checks and bnces. Conflict of interest groups may slow down a country, but it also prevents any one stakeholder from extreme exploitation of others. This is a bit of a guess since I''ve never studied political philosophy all that much, but the nations that are Martial Kraterocracies most likely also have greater urrences of human rights vitions and economic exploitation of the lowest sses of society, am I wrong?"


    When legitors were constrained by conflicting interest groups withparable influence and the ability topete for political power, it became much harder for the former to exploit the citizens of the nation.


    She simply stared at him for a bit, before finally replying. "Perhaps, but I do not believe that it is inevitable. And even if it were¡­ I believe that the pay-off is worth the benefits."


    Rui furrowed his eyebrow in confusion.


    Why did he, a Martial Artist, seem to care more about the average person in a tyrannical system than her, a normal human being?


    It was rather odd.


    "I might have to disagree with you there,missioner Derun," Rui shrugged. "I can''t dismiss the costs so easily I am afraid."


    "There''s no need to be apologetic," She shook her head. "We are all entitled to our own opinions, after all."


    Well, she was at least open-minded. She didn''t try to spend too much time trying to persuade Rui. She epted that he disagreed with her, and moved on.


    For now, at least.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    "I''m surprised that you are willing to be within a system run by people who would die from a single attack from you. Would it not feel better to be in a system where people at the top have the power to crush you effortlessly? Martial power proportional to their political power?" She seemed genuinely intrigued.


    "I''m just worried that they''ll screw things up if I''m being honest," Rui shook his head. "We Martial Artists are not entirely normal in the head. And that bes increasingly true the higher we go up the Realms."


    Martial Artists were driven to pursue power for whatever core reason it was that any Martial Artist pursued power. This meant that they would be willing to go to insane lengths to obtain what they wanted to obtain. Who knows if some Martial Sage would be willing to let a country go to ruin just to be stronger or something like that?


    They could very well destroy a country without batting an eye. Furthermore, with how strong Martial Seniors were, it was not entirely inconceivable that Martial Sages may be able to destroy a country if they let loose and fought within the borders of the country.


    They were two Realms of power above that of Martial Seniors, after all. Rui could not even possibly imagine that he did not have any clue as to what degree their power would exceed.


    With these considerations in mind, how could he possibly feelfortable letting these beings take rule over the country, he would be unable to sleep at night with just paranoia alone.


    Of course, he was cognizant that this was paranoia, rather than a well-justified fear. There were countries ruled by Martial Artists, and they did not befall cmities and catastrophes caused by Martial Artists. Regardless, it just wasn''t a good idea, and certainly one he wasn''t willing to entertain at the momentMaterial ? of N?velDrama.Org.


    The conversation proceeded a bit more before it ended.


    Rui sighed as he put hismunication device away.


    (''The average person sure has a lot to fear with people of her mindset,'') Rui couldn''t help but sigh as he thought of the tumultuous world that his family back at the Quarrier Orphanage lived in.


    Frankly, if not for them, he would not be too opposed to the Martial Union taking over the Kandrian Empire and establishing Martialw.


    He was not a saint. He helped people immediately within his capacity to help, but he did not go out of his way.


    He shook his head, he was never interested in political lobbying in the first ce. Multiple Martial Sects and factions had already approached him, hoping for support for their cause or goal or whatever.


    (''Don''t care,'') Rui shrugged.


    He immediately got back to work. Given that his training and teaching would both begin tomorrow, he had a lot to sort through. He needed to n and flesh out Senior K''M''s crash course to ensure that she had learned the necessary and relevant theory.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 722 Homework

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    He divided her crash courses into two simultaneous courses.


    The first course would be to help her develop an urate model of the atmosphere, air, wind, and sound. This included what they were, how they worked, what were thews that governed their motion, and why these phenomena urred.


    It was important to develop a good foundation, even if not absolutely necessary. She would have no fathoming of what the ODA system was and, how and why it worked. She most likely would be able to use it well without a theoretical foundation for the technique.


    The second course would be about the technicals. She would need to learn many mathematical concepts, as well as memorize the processing protocols of the ODA system. This would definitely be the harder of the two courses, and by a good degree as well.


    What he needed to figure out was a way to get her to absorb thetter well enough. Unfortunately, there was little chance that she would be able to master the Mind Pce technique. He would need to grind it into her head by force.


    He spent the entire day chalking up and fleshing out a course, before finally presenting it to Senior K''M the next day.


    "What do you think?" He asked her with a perfectly normal expression, yet he was sweating inside.


    Her eyes were wide open, yet not as wide as that of her open mouth. Her eyebrows were knitted and she stared at Rui with an iprehensible expression.


    "What is this?"


    "Er... Well, like I said-!"


    Her aura red before flooding Rui with pressure that he struggled to bear. Thankfully, a friendly aura washed over him, shielding him from her.


    "Watch it," Senior Ceeran grumbled mildly.


    He was also invested in mastering the technique, thus when he learned that Rui was creating a program for her to master it, he decided to join in and learn from Rui himself.


    Senior K''M warily nced at him before subsiding her pressure, leaving Rui relieved.


    His mind was strong, far stronger than an eighteen-year-old Martial Squire ought to be, but she was still an entire Realm and a half above him.


    "What. Is. This." She demanded. "What is all of this? This isn''t a technique!"


    She was so overwhelmed that she defaulted to elementary confusion where she couldn''t even ask pointed doubts.


    (''This is going to be rough,'') Rui sighed.


    "This is the knowledge that you need," Rui exined.


    "Techniques don''t need knowledge! Techniques only need movements!"


    "Well, first time for everything. If you want to master this technique, you will have to follow this." Rui gave her a smug grin. "Didn''t you say that you could handle whatever I threw at you?"


    She stiffened as she recalled those words.


    "Well well well¡­ I wonder what the Martial Tribes on Vilun Ind will think when I inform them that the mighty K''M got bested by a Squire''s technique?"


    She gritted her teeth. "Fine! I''ll master it!"


    "That''s the spirit," Rui grinned, receiving a note of approval from Senior Ceeran. "Let us begin with the basics. What is air?"<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    "Air is to be breathed to survive," She replied.


    "What is it made of?" Rui probed.


    "Air is made up of something?" She frowned.


    N?vel(D)ra/ma.Org exclusive ? material.


    "¡­I see."


    The challenge was looking even tougher as seconds passed.


    The first sessionsted only three hours. Aughably small amountpared to how long students would generally study.


    Yet, she was exhausted by the end of it. She had spent the entire session as Rui began exining theposition of the atmosphere and its traits and principles.


    Rui wished he had recorded her reaction when he told her about molecules and atoms. It appeared that the Martial Tribes of Vilun Ind still believed in the continuous model of matter that believed that matter was not made up of individual particles but was continuous and singr.


    She gaped in wonder as he gave her a brief breakdown of how sound worked.


    It was odd, that despite now knowing what it was or how it worked, they were still able to leverage sound in their Martial Art techniques that allowed them to use it in their favor. Rui suspected that it was a highly instinctual process that they were able to execute because of extreme familiarity with the phenomenon intuitively after immense hard work and subjection of themselves to it.


    This was also how the Martial Union trained its Martial Artists, to a certain degree, although it was also true that they were more objective as far as the quality of training went.


    Rui was probably the first Martial Artist to be able to substitute passive skills such as uracy and aim with a conscious and thought-driven system that cleanly substituted for the intrinsic capabilities and parameters such as aim.


    And if she mastered it, she would be the second.


    By the time the first lecture was done. Senior Ceeran looked wound up, but Senior K''M looked like her soul had been sucked out.


    "Ohe now," Rui tutted disapprovingly. "It wasn''t that bad. I made it as fun as I possibly could. There was no way you did not enjoy that."


    Both the Martial Seniors gave him a look of incredulity.


    Rui felt offended, he had served as a teaching assistant at a university long ago, and he enjoyed organizing sses.


    None of his students reacted this way to his teaching when they came to him for aid.


    Then again, this was their first conventional ss, so perhaps he ought to cut them some leeway.


    He took two copies of certain pages before tossing them before them.


    "What is this¡­?" Senior K''M had an ominous feeling.


    "What is it?" Rui smiled. "It''s called¡­ homework."


    They shouldn''t have known what it meant. Yet it was as though they were subconsciously able to sense all of the hatred all students had for homework all the way from Earth. Senior K''M threw a resentful look at him before defiantly picking it up and leaving without bidding him goodbye.


    "Oh dear¡­"


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 Chapter 723 Windfell

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    The second that his two students left with solemn expressions and demeanor, Rui immediately rushed off to the G''ak''arkan Tribe as early as he could. After all, during this time, he would also be serving as a student, not just a teacher.


    He quickly finished the bit of paperwork he needed to do before immediately shooting off to the G''ak''arkan Vige. This time, he wasn''t apanied by his assistants, so he could freely move at his top speed through the sky. Content (C) N?v/elDra/ma.Org.


    THUD


    Hended with an impact some distance away from the G''ak''arkan vige. He could see that people had begun gathering the second that he had arrived, looking at him with curiosity and awe, as well as skepticism and intrigue.


    "What business do you have here, outsider?" A Martial Squire stepped forth.


    "I havee to learn the technique, as agreed," He replied calmly.


    Another Martial Squire stepped forward from the crowd behind, whispering something in the former''s ear.


    He then turned to Rui with a grudging expression. "Alright, we will guide you to Kt''ob."


    The name was pronounced with a click, a sound that the Vilun dialect employed frequently, both in words as well as in names.


    Soon enough, Rui was taken deeper into the vige than he had ever been. The borders of the G''ak''arkan Vige did not strictly epass only the area that was inhabited by the tribes folk. It included several other areas and ces that weren''t frequently inhabited with housing but were still considered directly part of their vige.


    He was led into their mountain through an extensive cavework that led into arge internal cave that spanned a huge area. There were glowing crystals and other gems sticking out of the walls. Thin holes in the ceiling gave beams of light that caused them to sparkle.


    Across the area, there were arge number of Martial Artists that were deeply absorbed in some training or the other.


    (''What a picturesque scene,'') Rui couldn''t help but sigh in appreciation. It reminded him of the trope of martial art masters training in the serenity of the mountains for extended periods of time.


    While the Martial Union was obviously more sophisticated, efficient, and effective, there was a degree of profoundness in the way these Martial Artists trained to be stronger.


    (''In a way, these Martial Artists pursue individual capability to the absolute maximum,'') Rui couldn''t help but sigh. They relied on themselves and nature.


    Nothing else.


    "Kt''ob," One of them addressed a meditating man, who promptly opened his eyes when called out.


    "You''re here?" He asked, ncing at Rui, sizing him up from top to bottom.


    "I am," Rui nodded. "I''m here to learn the Mighty Roar sh st techniques. I look forward to your guidance."


    Kt''ob expressed respect for Rui, having got up and even shook hands with him out of respect.


    (''It seems Senior K''M hasn''t spread the news of me not being grade ten to the Martial Squires,'') Rui noted their respectful yet wary demeanor of him.


    She definitely would have told the Martial Seniors of the tribe, but it seems as though she did not see any reason to inform every Martial Squire.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    "Your training will begin today," Kt''ob remarked. "Today we will look at the way through which we train in order to facilitate our body in applying this technique."


    "Follow me," He gestured to Rui, before heading deeper into the mountain.


    It wasn''t long before they arrived at an isted part of the mountain, a small cave that was a dead-end.


    Inside was just barely enough space for two people two sit. There was a tiny body of water just a meter wide, yet it extended incredibly deep ording to his Seismic Mapping technique.


    Furthermore, the walls were even prettier in this little cave dead-end. They were covered in all kinds of esoteric minerals and stones.


    "This technique requires a powerful breath and a powerful voice," He exined as he tapped his diaphragm, and tapped hisrynx. "Only when both of those are strengthened to the limit can you apply this technique to surpass the speed limit to sound sts?"


    "And how do we strengthen this?"


    "By pushing them to their limits, of course," He smiled, gesturing to a small body of water in the small cave.


    Rui nced at the small hole filled with water inquisitively, it seemed that it clearly had something to do with his training.


    "The best way to push one''s self beyond one''s limit is through the fear of death," He exined. "Only via the fear of death, can you truly push past your limits and obtain new power."


    Rui didn''t try arguing with him. Even if he disagreed, he was here to listen and learn whatever he could.


    "Now then¡­" He plucked a rock tied to ethnic garb. "I was there to witness your technique, so around this much should be okay¡­?"


    He broke the rock into two pieces, tying one back to his garb.


    "What is this?" Rui frowned as he studied it.


    It was a purple rock with a hard and rough texture.


    "That there is what we call Windfell Stone," He exined. "It''s special, when one puts it in water, the water immediately begins to absorb air, the only way to release air from the water is through sustained powerful sound. If you do not release enough air by producing enough sound underwater, you will suffocate to death."


    He walked out of the cave before tossing the Windfell Stone into the water. The water immediately turned purple as a powerful wind current was generated.


    Rui widened his eyes as he realized the powerful wind current was being caused by the sheer amount of the atmosphere the water that the windfall stone had dissolved in.


    (''This is ridiculous!'') Rui frowned. (''What kind of solute causes a solution with water such that it causes a spontaneous exothermal reaction that somehow absorbs air?'')


    He was no specialized expert in inorganic chemistry, but he was absolutely certain that there was no substance equivalent to this on Earth!


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 724 Pressure

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    Rui stood in ce as an extremely powerful wind current pushed at him. An ordinary human would have long sumbed to the wind pressure.


    Rui turned to clear his doubts, yet his eyes widened as he saw the man sealing the entrance to the cave with a gigantically long boulder that was sealing the entrance shit


    "Don''t bother trying to break your way out, this ce is close to the center of the mountain that is reinforced for huge distances in all directions with many strong rocks that will be extremely difficult even for you to break out before suffocating to death! This willst for about three hours since this is your first time. Please don''t die."


    Rui didn''t even have time toin about thecking exnations and borations on the technique. He was ustomed to knowing the entirety of his training regime involved before he began it. Yet it turned out that this was not how things necessarily operated in the G''ak''arkan Tribe.


    And he had no choice but to acquiesce, he would not allow Senior K''M to dictate how he would teach her, thus he could not expect the G''ak''arkan Tribe to do that for him.


    THUD!


    Somehow, the rock covered all the edges to ensure that there wasn''t even a single avenue for air.


    In less than a second, all of the air in the cave had disappeared, absorbed into the water. There was no replenishing air from the outside since the entrance to the cave had been shut.


    Suddenly, Rui could not breathe anymore.


    (''I need to release sound in the water!'') He recalled what Kt''ob said before jumping into the narrow hole of purple water.


    THWOOM!


    He immediately released a Sonic Bullet downwards.


    A tremendous gush of bubbles pushed him back to the surface, where he found fresh cool air hitting his skin.


    He gasped for air, but he only had a split second before the water absorbed all of the released air back into it.


    He went back down again, mustering the air he just barely managed to inhale beforeunching another Sonic Bullet.


    THWOOM!


    Once more a huge wave of bubbles of air pushed him back to the surface where he once again gasped for air, before diving back down again andunching a Sonic Bullet.


    THWOOM!


    He barely managed to supply himself with the oxygen he needed t each time as he released sound time and time again to get what he needed.


    Rui was just barely cognizant enough to realize that there was nobody around this cave,  through Seismic Mapping.


    (''Meaning if I fail, then I''ll suffocate to death and actually die here!'') The thought shed through his head as he gasped for more air.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    This meant that he could not afford to mess up, his very life was on the line.


    This drove his mind and body to their limit as he began going all-out while ensuring that he didn''t miss a beat.


    Very soon, his entire body began aching. The medium that he was in was water, which made things a lot different. The pressure and drag to movements that water produced were exponentially greater than the drag and pressure produced by the atmosphere. This applied regardless of how powerful one was. He had to exert much more effort than he would if he was doing those movements in the air.


    The struggle of breathing reminded him of his asthma back on Earth. It wasbored, hampered, and tiring. Each breath felt like he had to pull a huge load of rock with his inhtion


    Furthermore, he had to admit that the fear of death did indeed put pressure on him.


    His nerves were tingling, even Primordial Instinct warned him of the danger of the situation he was in. His body temperature rose he began sweating a lot. His heart rate was permanently high too.


    This continued for about three hours.


    Until the water turned normal as the purple solute of the solution subsided and delved to the bottom.


    Finally, he could breathe properly.


    He could even hear Kt''ob moving therge amount of rock and debris that he had closed the entrance of the cave with.


    "Huff¡­ Huff¡­" he panted as he enjoyed the ability to breathe normally. If nothing, this training at least taught him to appreciate things that he was starting to take for granted. Breathing normally was a gift.


    Suddenly, the boulder shifted as he found Kt''ob at the entrance, who inspected his condition, before scratching his head. "I would have expected you to feel better given how strong you seem to be."


    Rui didn''t even bother responding. Even if he wanted to correct his misunderstanding, he did not want to talk, it would interfere with breathing after all.


    "This technique puts a lot of pressure on the breathing force and your voice," He exined. "This will help strengthen it to the level that is required."


    The man continued going into deeper detail as he exined more than he did initially.


    "Once you''ve achieved the strength of breathing force and voice, we will move to learn how to shape the sound with your mouth before releasing it. Once you have mastered that, your training here with the Mighty Roar sh st technique will beplete."


    Rui nodded, wordlessly as he got on his feet. He waspletely drenched, so he needed to squeeze the excess water out of his clothes before he could leave the ce.


    Rui was beginning to understand why the Martial Artists of Vilun Ind were able to master techniques within reasonable periods of time despite severelycking the technological training and growth resources of the Martial Union.


    This has always been something he had pondered. How on Earth were the Martial Artists able to actually aplish this? So far, there hadn''t been any definitive answers even with the help of the intelligence team. The only thing that he hade to learn was the fact that their techniques were sacred and thus kept secret at all costs.


    Yet, now he was starting to get an inkling of why they could master techniques at respectable paces despite not possessing the training resources of the Martial Union.


    This chapter upload first at  C0ntent ? 2024 (N/?)velDrama.Org.

 Chapter 725 Risks

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    The G''ak''arkan Tribe mastered sophisticated and powerful techniques in reasonable periods of time. Not only that, they also created arge number of unique Martial Art techniques at a remarkable pace and frequency.C0ntent ? 2024 (N/?)velDrama.Org.


    They did all of this without the training and growth resources that the Martial Union had. That was extremely worthy of respect, Rui had to admit.


    (''They do this by cing a tremendous amount of mental pressure with the genuine possibility of death


    Still, he highly doubted that this was all fun and games.


    "How many Martial Artists have died in the training that I just underwent?" Rui asked with narrow eyes.


    "About two or three in ten," He replied nonchntly, without batting so much as an eye.


    Rui on the other hand widened his eyes at that mortality rate.


    It was no wonder. They were able to match the training speed of the Martial Union because they were willing to tolerate insane mortality rates to obtain that result.


    The cost of the lives of twenty to thirty percent of Martial Artists of the Martial Union was something no one in the martial union would ever tolerate. Hell, Rui suspected just suggesting this to someone like Martialmissioner Derun would earn him strict reprimands.


    Even if they wanted to have such training methodologies, no sane Martial Artist of lower Realms, like Martial Apprentices would voluntarily subject themselves to that. They would leave the Martial Union in droves.


    It would instantly turn into a stream of migration of Martial Apprentices and even Martial Squires to the Royal Army and the Kandrian government, as well as to other nations.


    Still¡­ In the G''ak''arkan Tribe, it didn''t even seem that out of ce. The G''ak''arkan Tribe''s culture was so extreme that it felt normal when he considered that this was their way of doing things.


    Still, he had to admit that he hade to gain a certain degree of respect for the Martial Artists of the G''ak''arkan Tribe, they put their lives at risk to a much greater degree than the Martial Artists of the Martial Union. Even training was probably a significant threat to their life and bore a significant risk of death.


    Of course, that did not necessarily mean that their way of doing things was better or superior. He just had to admit that people who sessfully reached higher Realms of Martial Art in the G''ak''arkan Tribe had ovee obstacles and barriers that most Martial Artists in modern nations of the Panama Continent did not.


    As far as output went, the Martial Union would still take the win. Even ignoring the fact that the Martial Squires of the Martial Union had stronger Martial bodies, just the fact that the Martial Union had twenty to thirty percent more Martial Artists than any group of the same size that tried the same kind of risky training as the G''ak''arkan Tribe was enough.


    A twenty to thirty percent advantage in quantity would be damning in an all-out war. Thus the Martial Union''s means of training could be evaluated to be superior as far as the context of resulting Martial war potential.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    Still, he wondered if he, as an individual, ought to care about this parameter. After all, a increment acrossrge sample sizes did not necessarily mean that the Martial Union''s way of doing things was better for him.


    (''Maybe I should consider borrowing from the G''ak''arkan Tribe''s ways to a certain degree¡­'') Rui''s eyes narrowed.


    His training speed had reduced, to a lesser degree as a Martial Squire, when he imnted the Mindmirror Symbiote.


    (''Maybe I could regain a part of that speed if I made my training life-threatening,'') Rui''s eyes lit up in cautious interest.


    Of course, Rui was aware that was incredibly risky and substantially increased the probability of death across his lifetime.


    (''But¡­ there are benefits, clearly,'') Rui noted. (''These martial Artists surpass their technological limitations by putting their bodies in a state of fear of death. That cannot be ignored¡­'') Rui''s eyes lit up in even greater interest.


    Of course, he wasn''t some hot-headed fool who didn''t care for his life. He absolutely cared for his life, and he definitely wanted to avoid death, even if he wasn''t actively scared of it.


    However¡­


    (''I can''t say I care for my life more than my Martial Path, honestly.'') Rui sighed. He would rather die than not have his Martial Path, Art, and the VOID algorithm, for example. Project Water had be a multi-incarnation project and had only grown dearer to him than it was back on Earth, and it only seemed to continue to do so as he grew stronger.


    When he first joined the Martial Academy, he was not as driven as he was today, and when he was a Martial Apprentice, for the most part, he didn''t even know if his dream was possible in any capacity for a long time!


    Once he mastered the Mind Pce technique and used it to finally execute the VOID algorithm in its entirety from the start, he had to admit that he definitely had grown only more zealous and determined to fulfill Project Water, after having gotten the taste of sess for the very first time in two lifetimes.


    And now he had reached a level ofmitment that he simply had not reached prior to at this point in time. He was not unwilling to risk his life to be stronger quicker and in the long term. He just needed to make sure that it was definitely worth it as far as the probability of the risky possibility unfolding.


    He was willing to risk his life, as long as he gained something concrete that was worth it.


    (''This means that this training regime will be a good test for whether the benefits are worth undertaking the risks,'') Rui concluded.


    Over the next few months, he would be testing whether the training regime was going to be worth it. It was possible that this training phase would determine how the rest of the training phases for the rest of his life go.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 726 Skip

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    Time quickly passed as Rui''s life took on a bit of a routine. He would teach Senior K''M and Senior Ceeran about mathematical concepts, the theoretical framework of the atmosphere, and the ssical wave theory. Senior Ceeran had already read up on the theoretical framework in the time after Rui had submitted the technique to the Martial Union. Thus, he was able to follow Rui''s sses better than Senior K''M.


    Thetter found Rui''s training vastly more difficult than she had ever imagined. She found that she hade across a problem that she couldn''t just ovee with hard-headed perseverance. She needed to exercise her patience in trying to ovee difficulties with problems that she had never even fathomed before.


    "You failed," Rui stated calmly as he scribbled crosses across a sheet.


    Senior K''M''s eyes narrowed at those words. "Tsk,"


    "You just barely managed to pass, Senior Ceeran," Rui announced as he gave the man a smile.


    Rui had been grilling them on their fundamentals very hard. He put an immense amount of pressure on them, and despite his instinctual fear towards both of them, he suppressed it and made sure to never let them off easy.


    He couldn''t give them an easy fun and joyful education when it came to what mattered, unfortunately. He had to impart an education intensity that matched high-intensity exam-prepping coaching sses.


    What they were aiming to crack was much harder than any exam Rui nned to give.


    Of course, when it came to the qualitative theoretical sses, he was a lot more patient, understanding needed to be nurtured, it could not be forced.


    His own training was not easier than theirs.


    The sustained underwater-sounding training drained his stamina at a rate that was scarcely believable. He was exhausted and his throat was sore to the point where he had trouble talking. If not for the healing and stamina potions he would have been extremely tired.


    Yet as the weeks passed, he made improvements. He grew less tired from that particr exercise as he learned to execute it more efficiently and lower his heart rate and body temperature, among other things that allowed him tost much longer than his first time. He grew increasingly better and better as his diaphragm strengthened, and hisrynx toughened.


    Until finally, the day came when he could begin with the training of executing the technique.


    "You havee far very fast," Kt''ob remarked with a surprised expression. "As expected of a Martial Artist as strong as yourself."


    Rui smiled, without replying.


    The truth was that he would have had to take at least twice as much time to master those techniques if he didn''t have healing and rejuvenation potions. Thankfully, it helped to keep up his facade.


    "Now that you havee this far, you simply need to take one more step," Kt''ob said as he got up, turning to face another direction.


    He deeply inhaled, before opening his mouth ever so slightly.


    THWOOM!


    BANG!<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    The attack soared forward at a tremendous speed, far faster than his own Sonic Bullets did, before destroying a boulder the size of a building to smithereens in the distance.


    "Wow¡­" Rui


    "You need to leverage the strength that your breathing force and voice have gained," He exined. "Use all your power to force all that power into a small space in your mouth, and give it only the smallest opening to escape from your mouth while expelling it spontaneously and instantaneously."


    "I see¡­"Property ? 2024 N0(v)elDrama.Org.


    Rui got up, inhaling deeply before attempting the technique with the instructions that Kt''ob hade up with. He pushed his diaphragm to the absolute limit, minutely opening his mouth before spitting out an extremely potent Sonic Bullet, that was much smaller and denser than any Sonic Bullet that he had ever released.


    But¡­


    (''It hasn''t surpassed the atmospheric pressure to the degree that is needed to surpass the speed of sound,'') Rui sighed.


    "It''s not bad," Kt''ob nodded. "Rather it''s surprising that you''re this good already. I have no doubt that you will master it soon enough."


    "Well, I''ll have to keep training to get there," Rui sighed.


    And he did.


    Within three months after he originally began training, he had gotten hang of the Mighty Roar sh st technique. He simply needed to make small, but enough progress every week, and eventually, he reached the stage where he couldunch supersonic sound projectiles with tremendous pressure and energy density.


    However, to Rui, this was just the beginning. The first step in his mind.


    This technique was not the end goal. It was simply one of the ingredients that was necessary for his goal. It was simply one of the building blocks for his new technique. The fact that it helped the existing ODA system was also just a bonus at best.


    He wanted to create a power umtive technique that allowed him to surpass his long-range power limits.


    (''Once I create this technique, my long-range formidability will likely reach on par with that of my close-range formidability.'') Rui noted.


    He was never under the illusion that the Pathfinder technique alone could make his long-range prowess on par with his close-quartersbat. Yes, the technique was evaluated to be grade ten, but that did not instantly mean that his long-rangebat would be on par with his short-rangebat.


    Pathfinder was best for assassinations. It still worked well in head-onbat but to a lesser degree. Compared to short-range where he had numerous techniques that werergely short-range, he had to admit that there was no way that he would be able to ovee those advantages with Pathfinder alone.


    (''But with this new technique¡­'') Rui''s eyes narrowed. He would be a genuinely well-rounded Martial Artist as far as range went. He would be effective at short-range, mid-range, and long-range.


    "Time to set out on a new training phase!" He grinned. Now that he was free from Kt''ob''s training, he could dedicate all that time towards the development of his own technique.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 727 Wavestack

    C0ntent ? 2024 (N/?)velDrama.Org.


    ?


    In the past three months, all of the other contracts signed between the G''ak''arkan Tribe and the Martial Union had begun. The Longranger Martial Artists had begun training more than a dozen G''ak''arkan Martial Squires, helping them learn their techniques.


    As expected, thenguage barrier slowed down both sides, however, considering both sides understood that they stood to benefit a lot as long as it worked out, they put their patience to the test as they worked through the slowmunicative process of trantions.


    Things had settled down in the settlement of the Martial Union as its primary purpose had already been achieved, now it only needed to function and be protected until they got what they wanted and left the ind.


    Rui had more or less forgotten about his role as the manager and leader of the settlement. It no longer needed him, as the administrative work that needed to bepleted was delegated to qualified personnel who were capable of handling the workload.


    He secluded himself in one of therger long-range open training facilities.


    (''Alright,'') He thought to himself meditating. (''New project. Project goal? To create a technique that increases my long-range offensive power limit significantly via the help of constructive superposition through sonic projectiles of different speeds.'')


    This was easier said than done. The ssical wave theory, while simpler than the quantum wave theory, was not a particrly easy thing to apply inbat.


    (''I don''t think it will be more difficult than the ODA system,'') Rui noted. (''But it certainly will require an immense amount of mastery. I first need to begin by establishing the conditions needed to ensure constructive resonance urs between, say, two sonic projectiles of different speeds.'')


    The constructive resonance between two waves urred when the crests and troughs of two waves upying the same points in space at any given time, were ovepping. The two waves would merge and form into a single stronger wave with crests and troughs much greater than the two constituent waves.


    (''Essentially, I need to ensure that the two waves are always in phase.'') Rui noted. (''They need to have the same frequency, and their initial angr phase difference must be a whole number factor of pi, also¡­'')


    Essentially, Rui was simply establishing the conditional equations that needed to be fulfilled for two waves of different speeds moving in the same direction to superimpose constructively.


    Waves like sound waves were generally described by simple harmonic equations where the ''height'' of crests and troughs were defined by sinusoidal functions. He needed to only equalize the simple harmonic wave equations of all the sound projectiles and he would gain the conditions that needed to be fulfilled for the two waves to be in phase.


    If he could do that, that was most of the work.


    He would gain theunch conditions for each of the sound projectiles and then he could simply use a standardized timing every time. Once he figured out how constructive superimpose a single time, he simply needed to memorize that particr timing and cement and it would work every time.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    This was one of the convenient aspects of this hypothetical technique. Unlike the ODA system, this technique would be more static. With the ODA system, every Pathfinder shot was unique and needed the ODA system to be run every single time. With the technique of this project, he just needed to find theunch conditions for constructive superposition once, and he could simply memorize it and would never have to calcte it ever again.


    (''The mental burden is much less than the ODA system in that regard. Every time I use it would be the same as every other time, whereas no two ODA system outputs are the same. Every situation is unique, and it needs to be executed every single time I use the Pathfinder.'')


    This was good because he was seriously starting to reach his limits with mental processing systems, for now. He already needed to use the VOID algorithm and the ODA system. If he needed to use a third system every time he used this technique, his mind would explode with the sheer amount of calctions, Mind Pce or not.


    (''Find theunch conditions to create two sound projectiles in phase with each other, and then memorize thoseunch conditions and burn them into my blood, because I never have to use otherunch conditions again'') Rui nodded as he came up with the n for the new project.


    (''What should this project be called¡­?'') He wondered as he gave it a few seconds of thought. (Project Wavestack¡­ Good enough.'')


    With that trivial issue out of the way, he began delving into it immediately.


    The math was not difficult. Constructive superposition in simple harmonic waves was a topic that was taught in high school and college. The challenging part was fulfilling the conditions.


    The frequency needed to be simr, ideally identical, otherwise the constructive resonance grew increasingly inefficient mechanically and would result in the loss of a lot of energy.


    (''Which means I need to be wary of the ''pitch'' of my Mighty Roar sh st projectiles and of my Sonic Bullet projectiles. I need to ensure the pitch of my voice is the same in both cases, I cannot have them be different.'') Rui scratched his head.


    He had never been a good singer, due to his asthma, but even taking that into ount he was quite bad. He was nearly tone-deaf, thus learning to match the pitches of the techniques that were quite different and were executed differently was going to be very difficult.


    Furthermore, the frequency of both those attacks was deep in the ultrasonic range due to the high energy density of the projectile, thus he couldn''t even hear whether the frequencies were the same. His hearing range had improved far beyond that of a normal human when he obtained his Martial body, but still, it was not enough for such powerful techniques.


    (''This is going to be brutal.'')


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 728 Indicator

    ?


    Unfortunately, due to hisck of ability to be able to objectively measure the frequency of the sound that he produced, he would need to rely on trial and error to arge degree. Furthermore, unlike when he was creating the Flux Earther technique, it would be much more difficult to observe the sess or failure of his trial-and-error method.


    Since the technique involved constructive superposition of two sound projectiles, he would necessarily need to release two sound projectiles of different speeds.


    The first projectile would be the Sonic Bullet technique which moved at the speed of sound, and the second technique would be the Mighty Roar sh st technique, which moved faster than the speed of sound. He would need to use both those techniques and ensure that he timed and ced them and ensured that they were in phase with each other such that they would engage in constructive superposition.Content held by N?velDrama.Org.


    The difficult part was ensuring they would beunched in phase with each other. Because he had no way to ensure that they would have the same frequency, he was at an impasse.


    He nced at therge target barrier more than five hundred meters away.


    The barrier wall was made up of Apprentice-level materials, however, they had been extensively engineered with the right kind and mix of esoteric substances that they could withstand even the power of Martial Squires.


    Rui had wondered why they couldn''t apply such a methodology to weapons to create even stronger weapons that allowed them to be more ubiquitous but thinking about it, he coulde up with a rather straightforward answer.


    Weapons needed to be strong enough such that even if the power of the wielder was focused across a millimeter square of its surface area, it would not break. It needed to be so strong that every millimeter square of the weapon was individually capable of withstanding the full power of the wielder focused on it, without breaking.


    When des shed with each other, only such a tiny amount of the de ends up bearing the primary brunt of both the wielder and the opponent. If it every millimeter of a sword''s tensile strength did not greatly exceed that of the user, it was an unfit weapon.


    With human-level weapons, it was easy to ensure this was true. No ordinary human could ever break the edge of a sword made with steel alloys no matter how strong their muscles were. The difference between the tensile strength of steel and the muscr strength of swords was like that of the sky andnd. It was arge gap. That was why humans could fight with full power without having to worry about breaking their weapons with their own power due to this big gap.


    It became increasingly difficult to maintain this same gap for Martial Artists.


    This same rationale did not apply torger structures. Withrger structures disproportionately greater than the human body in size, all forms of esoteric materialistic engineering of different esoteric resources could b employed to ensure that these structures could withstand punishment from powerful Martial Artists.


    He found it to be an interesting albeit irrelevant detail.


    (''As long as it fulfills my needs, I am fine,'') He mused.


    He took his stance before opening his mouth.


    THWOOM!


    He closed his mouth after having shot a Sonic Bullet, preparing the Mighty Roar sh st technique rapidly after.


    THWOOM!


    Thetter trailed three meters behind the former, rapidly catching up to it due to being faster than it.


    Soon the two sound projectiles ovepped with each other.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    BOOM!


    A wind st emerged from the union of the two projectiles, causing a huge gale.


    (''Hmph, they werepletely out of phase, causing destructive superposition,'') He sighed.


    And the problem was, as predicted, different frequencies.


    (''This time, same pitch,'')


    THWOOM!


    THWOOM!


    BOOM!


    A huge wind st emerged once again.


    The reason the explosion was violent was because the crests of the wave were meeting the troughs. The waves were osciting in opposite directions when they touched, which basically meant that they were directly crashing into each other, and the molecules of the air were blown away.


    That was what caused the violent dispersion of air.


    (''Wait, can''t I judge the degree to which there exists a difference in frequency between the two projectiles based on how violent the superposition is?'') Rui realized.


    The more violent the st, the more the waves were out of phase. The less violent it was, the more they were in phase. If they weren''t violent and formed a single projectile, then that would b a sign of sess; that they were in phase with each other.


    He felt better. After all, he hade up with an objective way of measuring the degree to which the two waves were out of phase with each other.


    Now he just needed to do it over and over until he learned via muscle memory how to get it right. It was sheer and raw experience needed to master the frequency equalization of the technique and nothing else.


    Still, his job wouldn''t be over once he mastered just constructive resonance between two sound projectiles. He wanted to learn how to aplish it between three, and perhaps even four and five.


    Of course, he highly doubted that thetter two would be viable in mostbat. At most, if he ever happened to be put in a situation where he needs five times the singr offensive power of his strongest attack that he possesses at the moment, then he would be able to muster it up.


    In the right circumstances, he could potentially end up outputting power that was on par with Martial Squires who were several grades above him.


    (''Now wouldn''t that be one hell of a technique that the Martial Union would love to get their hands on?'') Rui smirked with anticipation. He wondered what Senior Ceeran would think when he learned of this technique that Rui was working on, given his fascination for new techniques!


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 729 Kane

    Kane yawned as he reclined back in his housing quarters. It had been half a year since he had been deployed to the G''ak''arkan Tribe. He had been deployed on many espionage and infiltration missions on the G''ak''arkan Tribe and the K''ulnen Tribe.


    Against the G''ak''arkan Tribe, he mostly had to gather as much information on their movements as much as possible.


    Prior to the sess of the mission, every ounce of information mattered when it came to adjusting and optimizing their approach and ns surrounding this mission. After that, he spent most of his time gathering information on the K''ulnen Tribe before and during the war with them.


    However, that too ended.Content (C) N?v/elDra/ma.Org.


    Once the diplomatic mission with the G''ak''arkan Tribe seeded, his job was more or lesspleted for the time being. Rui quickly ensured that the negotiations with the G''ak''arkan Tribe were sessful as both sides managed toe to agreements and trades that were satisfactory and fair to both sides.


    Now, he didn''t really need to be there. In fact, most of the intelligence team, both agents and Martial Artists had immediately taken the opportunity to return back home once the bulk of their mission had beenpleted.


    Not Kane, though.


    Kane had adamantly chosen to remain on the ind, he had no intention of going back home too early.


    There were two reasons, firstly, he had reason to stay away from the Kandrian Empire. The further away from his family he was, the better it was for him. As Kane''s Martial prowess grew, he only became more valuable to his family. Even if his Martial Path was different from that of many of the Martial Artists in his family, having him would increase the power of his family. The many more influential members of his family were not content letting him go.


    One thing he found a little odd was the fact that his father never made an effort to bring him back directly.


    It was strange.


    The man was a Martial Sage, someone who had reached one of the highest Realms of the Martial Path. He had the power, both Martial and political, to drag Kane back without caring about the consequences. While the Wind and consequently the Lightning Sect were willing to protect him from the Fire Sect, it was a different matter if his father acted personally in the capacity of a father rather than as a Sect leader.


    Kane knew that he was far from worth the political capital that would need to be spent to protect him from a Martial Sage that personally sought him out. Sage Viranaka, the leader of the Lightning Sect, would need to personally act for Kane to be protected.


    And there was no way that was happening.


    (''Still, it''s good to be far away from them.'') Kane nodded to himself.


    The second reason was that Rui was here. Although they didn''t as much time hanging out together as they would have liked to. After all, Rui had be the manager of the settlement of the Martial Union and the highest in the chain ofmand. He had a lot of duties that had him busy.


    Even when he wasn''t working he was training. Once the deals seeded, he shifted to full-time training. Spending his time isted in one of the training facilities in the settlement.


    (''He''s definitely found something new to pursue with his Martial Art,'')Kane smiled.


    He knew his friend well.


    Suddenly, he got up from his bed and leaped to his feet. He wanted to visit him, perhaps it may not be the best time. But it was fine to try regardless.


    "Have you seen Rui?" He asked one of Rui''s assistants.


    "Ah, he''s in training facility fourteen sir," Stemple bowed with respect.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    "Thanks,"


    (''Fourteen¡­ That''s that super long one for long-range techniques¡­'') Kane noted.


    Most of the training facilities in the settlement were centered around long-range techniques. After all, the settlement was loaded with long-range Martial Artists. They had to cater to the majority, and also they needed the training resources that were necessary for learning the Martial Union''s techniques for training the G''ak''arkan Tribe in the promised techniques.


    (''He must be training some new long-range technique that he''s cooked up,'') Kane concluded.


    He had no doubt that Rui was working on something significant. He recalled when he first saw Rui killing a Martial Squire with a single attack from a huge distance away. Martial Squires weren''t supposed to be capable of such feats.


    BOOM!!


    He grew startled when he reached the entrance of the facility, a huge gust of wind washed over him following a loud explosion.


    (''What in the world?'') He sky-walked to get a good look into the open facility.


    BOOM!!


    His eyes widened as he saw Rui making strange fish-like mouth movements rapidly before a huge boom followed.


    (''Was his long-range offense that strong?'') Kane frowned.


    No, that couldn''t be the case. He had seen Rui''s attacks from range and while they were decent for his grade, this attack was much stronger. At least twice as strong as before!


    (''Is this the technique that he learned from the G''ak''arkan Tribe?'') Kane considered it for a moment before shaking his head. (''He wouldn''t use techniques created by others without adding his own individuality to it¡­'')


    But that made what he was seeing even more impressive. Rui had managed to rapidly create a powerful technique that allowed him to grow this much stronger already.


    Kanended at the edge of the range far behind Rui.


    He watched as Ruiunched more attacks one after the other, celebrating or cursing alternatively.


    It was a while before Rui finally heaved a sigh before turning around to leave.


    "Woah!" Rui''s head jerked back when he spotted Kane. "Since when were you there?"


    "For a while now," Kane yawned. "I''m surprised you didn''t even notice me."


    "Ah sorry," Ruiughed. "I lose track of my surroundings when I train, tend to get sucked into it, especially if I''m enjoying it,"


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 730 Plans

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    Rui was pleasantly surprised to see Kane. He didn''t have anybody else he could consider a friend in the settlement. Stemple and Zeyra were firmly assistants and no more, and Senior Ceeran was a friendly Senior benefactor with mutual interests.


    He could not talk to anybody else too casually given his position in the settlement. Kane, on the other hand, had not changed his interactions with Rui even the tiniest bit. This was something that Rui appreciated.


    "So, what was that technique you were using?" Kane asked with a curious expression.


    Rui would have been more opaque and vague had anybody else asked, but he had nopunctions about being honest with Kane.


    "It''s a technique where Ibine multiple attacks into a single much stronger one," Rui exined briefly, yet Kane''s head cocked back a bit.


    "I''ve never heard of a technique like that before," Kane frowned "Wouldn''t that mean you can surpass your limits greatly to match much higher grade offense?"


    "No, unfortunately," Rui grimaced briefly.


    In the past few months, Rui had onlye to master double superposition. It was an aplishment he was very proud of, of course. Still, it wasn''t the limit of what he wanted to aplish. He wanted to be able to extend to a higher number of attacks stacking into a single attack.Property ? 2024 N0(v)elDrama.Org.


    He had been attempting a threefold superposition in his training, but it sted violently more than half the time. He hadn''t yet memorized the correct timing as he had with the two-fold superposition.


    It took time, effort, and experience to slowly get better at nailing the timing. If not for the fact that he had been solving equations to help him achieve proper constructive superposition, he would have taken forever to reach where he had.


    "It has many limitations," Rui sighed. "I won''t be able to match high-grade Martial Squires just yet, at most I would struggle to keep up."


    "Why''s that?" Kane frowned. "That attack just now looked really strong."


    "It''s because I need tounch two attacks to form that one attack, while a high-grade long-range Martial Artist needs tounch only one attack to achieve that level of power. They can fire far more strikes of that level of power in a period of time than I can."


    "Ah, that makes sense," Kane nodded. "You really have been into long-range stuff recently, haven''t you?"


    "I suppose I have." Rui shrugged.


    It couldn''t be helped, soon after creating the Pathfinder technique, he was thrown into a mission to which long-range Martial Art techniques were highly relevant.


    "Hehe¡­ Do you n to be a long-range Martial Artist?" Kane teased him.


    "Hah. No," Rui shook his head, snorting. "I will always strive to maintain my bnce as an all-rounder. Once this mission is over, I will go for new projects that bnce me out as a Martial Artist even more."


    He had been bing increasingly long-range in his Martial Art inclination. When he got back to the Kandrian Empire, he intended to fix that problem immediately. He even had some consideration for how to go about it.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    The two conversed for some more time.


    "d to hear that some of our Martial Squires have mastered the techniques of the G''ak''arkan Tribe," He said.


    In the past six months since the deals had been signed, many of the Martial Squires had finally mastered the techniques that they were sent to obtain. Now they were simply in the process of ''giving'' those techniques to the Martial Union by allowing the Martial Union to thoroughly test the techniques through and through, while also having them train the basics to several other Martial Squires.


    Rui had to go through this for a brief period as well.


    It was necessary to allow the Martial Union to get their hands on the technique while also having a few more Martial Squires learn the core of the training regimes so that the Martial Union could gain the full ability to spread the technique to other Martial Artists when needed.


    That was how it ensured that a technique never died. By trying to ensure that they spread.


    Of course, this wasn''t always possible such as with grade-ten difficulty techniques that could be propagated. The Martial Union had no choice but to make do with what they had, at least, they had to strive to ensure that it wouldn''t happen with other techniques.


    "Which means that we''ll be leaving soon¡­" Kane said with a mixed tone.


    On one hand, he did appreciate being far from his family.


    On the other hand, he also felt bored staying on the ind.


    "Don''t look so sullen," Rui tutted. "I know you want to stay away from the Kandrian Empire, but there are other ways to do that you know, other missions. For example, I heard that a new dungeon had opened months ago. Maybe you could choose to head there."


    Kane considered the suggestion. "That''s not bad, though dungeons are not my specialty."


    "This one is different from Apprentice-level dungeons that humans can enter and colonize like the Serevian Dungeon." Rui shook his head. "It poses too much mental pressure on ordinary humans due to its danger, thus it cannot be colonized by humans. The only ones who may enter it are¡­ Martial Squires."


    Kane''s interest was piqued. If only Martial Squires could enter, then that served as a much greater degree of security than if all Realms of Martial Artists could enter.


    It meant that his family was extremely restricted in what they could do if they randomly decided to use a forceful method with him.


    "Also¡­ The Martial Union won''t be deploying external Martial Artists like us," Rui smirked. "You know what that means?"


    "What?" Kane gave him a wary nce.


    "It means that you and I would have greater freedom in how we choose to go about that mission," Rui grinned. "It''s a rare chance. We don''t have to follow the annoying protocols and other shit that we have to deal with missions. We can jump in, and retrieve treasure by ourselves!"


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 731 Hiding

    ?


    Rui found it to be quite refreshing. Heading out and exploring of his own volition rather than themission of the Ministry of Ecology and Environment or the Martial Union was something he hadn''t done much of.


    He had to admit, that this mission had given him a taste for independence. He hadplete control over the diplomatic approach to the G''ak''arkan Tribe. And he also hadplete control over the settlement.


    He had to admit, the freedom was relieving, although it certainly came with its fair share of responsibilities and burdens. Since he was taking care of others.


    However, this venture would most likelye with all of the freedom of the former, and few of the responsibilities that hade with this diplomatic mission.


    The only people they would be responsible for were themselves.


    "Well¡­ Now that you mention it, that does sound interesting," Kane admitted. "It will be very dangerous though."


    "Ohe on, we''re Martial Artists. That is par for the course," Rui shrugged.


    Neither of them was wrong, of course. Considering that the dungeon would be attracting Martial Squires from all over their section of the Panama Continent, it was no doubt going to be fierce inpetition.


    "Regardless, that''s not happening any time soon," Rui shrugged. "It''s just an idea I threw out there. We could choose to do something else. Or if you have your own ns, that''s fine too. We can talk about it when the timees."


    "Yeah,"


    The two parted ways after talking some more. Rui had students to mentor, after all.


    In the past six months since Rui had begun mentoring his two students, they had made a lot of progress. It had been grueling and brutal. But he had managed to get his students to work hard and get past a lot of the hardest parts.


    Senior Ceeran faired better for the earlier part of the education session, but Senior K''M not only caught up to him, much to his dismay but also surpassed him.


    This was very impressive considering he had already been studying it for quite some time by then. He simply needed to get her up to speed. He had suspected that this would happen, K''M was quite bright and while the culture shock and a drastically different worldview had held her back at first, it had begun to grow on her as she immersed herself in studies. The only concepts of mathematics that both of them studied were ones that were necessary for the execution of the ODA system.


    He did not even go one hair beyond what was necessary. He knew damn well that being able to master what they were learning at the given moment was going to be difficult as all hell.


    "You''rete," Senior K''M grumbled.


    "Sorry, I was caught up with my own training," Rui smiled.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    "Working on that new technique, are we?" Senior Ceeran''s eyes twinkled. He had noticed that Rui was using the long-range facilities quite frequently. It was entirely clear that he was working on something new.


    "Perhaps," Rui shrugged it off. "I am not relevant at the moment. But what is relevant are the elementary first-order differential equations you solved." Rui handed out papers to both of them. "You both did decent, congrattions."


    At that moment, one would find it hard to believe that these were both vaunted Martial Seniors. The feeling of cracking an exam was a universally good feeling.


    "I think you have reached the proficiency that I require you to have," Rui remarked. "Your calction skills have grown better as well."


    Rui had them do their calctions on an abacus. Abacuses were great means to improve mental math calction capabilities. The instrument allowed for quick calctions, and once they reached a high level of mastery, they would be able to essentially envision the abacus in their mind and solverge calctions instantly. This was a modern method of improving mental calctions back on Earth that had very promising results.


    He didn''t need it himself,pared to the Mind Pce that serves could serve as RAM, Random ess Memory, for him. He couldplete even greater calctions extremely rapidly through means of processing that resembled that ofputers. Abacuses were primitive to him, but they were just what the two Martial Seniors needed.


    Their growth was appreciatable when considering that they were elder adults. Younger adults and adolescents would not have taken nearly half a year to get to where they currently were. Rui in his previous life as a student would havepleted it in less than a month.


    Still, it wasn''t bad, all things considered.


    "Alright," He smiled. "It''s time."


    "For what?" Senior K''M raised an eyebrow.


    "To learn the ODA system," Rui''s smile remained unchanged.


    Senior Ceeran''s expression grew more solemn and yet more enthusiastic. He had seen the ODa system before since Rui had submitted all the data to the Longranger Sect. However, he had to admit, that itsplexity greatly surpassed his wildest imagination. He had immediatelye to learn that he was vastly unfit to learn the so-called ODA system. Looking at the equations and protocols, he may as well have been readingnguages that he didn''t understand.


    He could onlyugh at how unworthy he was of the technique back then.


    (''Things are different now, however,'') His eyes narrowed. His understanding of algebra, exponents, trigonometry, calculus, and differential equations was much better than they were when he had first attempted to try and master them. Maybe, this time he could pull through.


    He couldn''t help but gaze at Rui with respect and admiration for having created such a technique. The more Senior Ceeran had learned about the relevant math and physics in the past nine months, he had to admit, the more he found it absurd that an eighteen-year-old Martial Squire hade up with that technique. It was mind-boggling and simply didn''t make sense. Yes, Rui had a proven mind that was extremely capable in any endeavor of the human intellect, but Senior Ceeran had a nagging suspicion that that alone was not the whole truth.


    There had to be something else, something Rui was hiding from everybody.Property ? 2024 N0(v)elDrama.Org.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 732 Mind Matters

    ?


    "You''re telling me you perform all these calctions in the middle ofbat every time you use the Pathfinder technique?" Senior K''M asked him with a horrified expression.


    (''More actually,'') Rui smiled. "Just about, yes."


    The Martial Union and the G''ak''arkan Tribe knew about his remarkably potent Martial Path, but nobody asides from him knew about the VOID algorithm. Nobody knew the sheer amount of calctions that fired through his mind and the Mind Pce every time he created an anti-style to counter his opponent.


    Senior Ceeran just sighed with a wry smile. He had already gone through this shock a long time ago and had gotten used to this truth, but the same could not be said about Senior K''M who had been presented with the ODA System for the first time.


    Up until this point, she had been entirely unfit to even learn about it. The G''ak''arkan Tribe''s mathematics had not progressed beyond the four basic operations of mathematics. However, she had finally gotten up to speed where she could read the ODA system protocols and calctions and not feel like a fool.


    Yet, when she realized that Rui had executed all these protocols continuously in his fights against the K''ulnen Tribe but also in that impressive demonstration of the technique that he had given, she couldn''t help but lose herposure for a brief moment.


    "How?" She narrowed her eyes. "You''re just a rank two Martial Artist, your mind should be slower than that of ours! Yet you can perform this technique faster than we ever could!"


    Rui couldn''t help but smile awkwardly at that outburst.


    His mind went back to what his brother Julian had told him regarding some of the empirical research that had been conducted regarding the neurological enhancements that Martial Artists received.


    Martial Artists possessed superhuman mental faculties and cognition when it came to mental and/or physical activities surrounding Martial Art. The further away the activity they were performing was away from that of physicalbat with their Martial Art, the less superhuman their mental faculties and cognition were.


    That meant that even the most powerful Martial Artists would not be able to read sophisticated literature faster than a human schr or make mathematical calctions faster than a human. But if it came to processing their opponent''s attacks and the battle, Martial Apprentices and Martial Squires were dozens and thousands of times superior to baseline humans.


    Rui had strongly suspected that this was due to the fact that only some parts of the brains of Martial Artists were augmented and enhanced. He suspected that out of all the regions of the brain, almost all of the augmentation went to the parts of the brain that were relevant inbat such as the cerebellum, the ipital lobe, and the parietal lobe. This would exin why Martial Artists were extraordinarily superhuman mentally inbat but otherwise normal when it came to ordinary mental activities. The parts of the brain being used for the two activities were different and mutually exclusive, and only the parts of the brain used for one activity were vastly superhuman while the other one was normal.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    At this point in time, he hadn''t figured out whether the VOID algorithm and the ODA system fell into the nonbat orbat group. The two were mental systems that involved a lot of mathematical and statistical calctions which were certainly not rted to thebat parts of the brain. However, their purpose was forbat, and it ultimately was performed in the midst ofbat, thus it could not be said to be nonbat rted. It was most likely leaning toward thetter.


    As far as Rui could see, his intellect and extra-grown mind most likely made up for any gap it had.


    However, the same could not be said for Senior Ceeran and Senior K''M. The calctions of the ODA system were daunting to them because they did not have his remarkable intellect.Property ? 2024 N0(v)elDrama.Org.


    He knew that in a directparison between him and them, he would most likely fall back a bit because their minds were still vastly faster, but that was purely because of their rank. They would not be able to use it as smoothly as he did, against other Martial Seniors.


    And that was fine. Their goal was to merely use the ODA system as a contributing element in the long-range techniques that they themselves would be developing.


    "I have an affinity for these techniques because I built them for me and my strengths and weaknesses. It''s part of the reason that the technique has so much individuality," Rui exined patiently. "It is obvious that the two of you won''t use it as well as I do. Now, get to memorizing this. You need to embed the ODa system into your bones otherwise you have no chance of mastering it."


    And so the grind began as Rui had begun the third course of his education program, pushing them through rigorous and tough education and testing.


    Senior K''M gritted her teeth as she did her absolute best to keep up. Every time she even remotely felt like giving up, Rui reminded her of her haughty statement regarding being able to handle everything he threw at her. Her pride and ego would not allow her to let Rui force her to swallow her words back.


    It was frustrating because Rui even seemed to enjoy it to a certain extent. It put a fire under her ass and drove her to learn everything he gave her as fast as she could. She was determined to master it and prove herself right.


    Though, she half suspected that that was exactly what Rui was after every time he teased her. He did not seem like a needlessly cruel or vindictive person, and with how shrewd he was, he may very well have figured out that this was the best way to motivate someone like her. With how sharp he had proven himself to be, she knew that this was probably the case. She had always been one of the few intellectual and rational people of her tribe, yet she felt slow in front of Rui.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 733 Faulty

    ?


    While Senior K''M and Senior Ceeran slogged hard to master the ODA system, Rui had been furthering his depth with Project Wavestack.


    He had reached a point where he couldfortably do double superposition at any point in time after more than a year of hard work since he first began learning the Mighty Roar sh st technique.


    However, he had quickly run into some of the disadvantages of the technique.


    (''It requires a lot of attention and focus,'') He sighed.


    Of course, this was expected to a certain degree, but it still was a constraint that he had to work with. Even if the technique did not require active calctions once he memorized theunch conditions of the two sound projectiles such that he couldunch them in exactly the right way to constructively superimpose with each other, it still required attention and focus.


    Which meant that he could not use the ODA system to the same degree when he was using constructive superposition. The more he used it, the shorter his maximum range grew. He found that simplifying using double superposition had cut his max range by half. Sessful triple superposition cut his max range by sixty-six percent.


    And he had yet to get even a single sessful quadruple superposition attack off. Though he was slowly getting better at triple superposition. He suspected that quadruple superposition would reduce his range to roughly about two hundred and fifty meters.


    One of the things that he had underestimated how drastic the power boost he got was, he had expected there to be discrepancies between his predicted values and reality due to things like inefficiencies and loss of energy, but in reality it was even better than what he had expected from it.


    (''This technique¡­ it''s ridiculous. If I theoretically superimposed ten attacks atop each other, then I would be able tounch quasi-Senior level attacks!'') Rui gaped at the thought.


    He had seen what Martial Seniors were capable of,unching quasi-Senior level attacks was an incredible aplishment. At the very least, he was certain that grade-ten Martial Squires probably were not ten times above him in offensive power.


    Still, when he witnessed Senior K''M and Senior Ceeran training with the VOID algorithm, it became all too clear that he was far, far behind them.


    THWOOM!


    BOOM!!


    "TSK!" Senior K''M tutted as she tried hitting a target five kilometers away.


    Because their inherent uracy and senses were so much greater than that of Rui''s their baseline was still greater than Rui''s greatest range limit even though their proficiency of the ODA System was faulty and far below that of Rui''s.


    Admittedly, Rui felt proud about the fact that two Martial Seniors wanted his technique, but after seeing that even with a highly primitive and elementary use of it, they were still way better than he probably ever could be as a Martial Squire, he had to admit that he was humbled to a certain extent.


    It was hard to tease Senior K''M when she wasunching powerful attacks that would break his body if they hit him.


    "Why am I missing?" She turned toward Rui.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    "Your execution of the first phase of the ODA system isn''t bad, honestly. It''s still far from perfect given that you are a Martial Senior and should be able to do better. The problem with you arises from the second phase of the ODA System, I''m afraid," Rui exined.


    The second phase of the ODA system was rted to the prediction of atmospheric conditions such as pressure and temperature shifts, and air currents. The importance and significance of the second phase of the ODA system increased the greater the distance the target was from the user. After all, wind currents could significantly affect the trajectory of a sound projectile over the course of a kilometer.


    This was less true for shorter ranges. Rui had even discovered that he didn''t need it most of the time for targets lesser than a hundred meters away. His attacks would cross that distance in a split second and that was too little time for any atmospheric factors to throw the sound projectiles off trajectory.


    "I''m actually a little surprised at the power of your projectiles, however," Rui scratched his head. "Though I suppose holding back does make it easier?"


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    She considered his words a bit before nodding. "You''re right, I was restraining myself from the power of the third rank, but my goal is to be able to use this technique with my full power, not without it."


    Suddenly, the atmosphere grew heavier.


    Rui''s felt a chill crawl up his spine as a heavy wave of pressure crashed over him. Red light emerging from deep within her skin glowed as it trickled across her body.


    She opened her mouth, and an incredibly dense attack emerged rushing forward at a tremendous pace!


    BOOM!!!


    A gigantic crater in a barren part of the ind several kilometers away emerged.


    Rui''s eyes widened, as he wiped away some sweat from his forehead. "Maybe¡­ You should dial back the power. Now we don''t know if you actually hit it or not because everything within hundred meters from that point has been destroyed¡­"


    Senior K''M scrunched her eyes as she studied the site. "Tsk! You''re right¡­"


    The red glowing lines subsided.


    Rui, on the other hand, had seen enough.


    (''I was right!'') He grew excited inwardly. (''Those are glowing blood vessels!'')


    He hadn''t been able to make outst time because they were too far away from him. But now that he had been given the opportunity to study it up close, he could clearly see that the red lines traced the circtory system inside. This strongly supported his hypothesis that the red lines that were blood vessels that were glowing for some unknown reason. That would exin this strange and peculiar visage that all Martial Seniors possessed for some reason that clearly had to do with the Senior Realm.


    Although this didn''t add to his understanding of the Senior Realm, it did bolster his suspicions.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 734 End

    C0ntent ? 2024 (N/?)velDrama.Org.


    ?


    He still had no idea what they were, or why Martial Seniors had those, and no way of knowing yet. He knew that neither of the Martial Seniors was going to breathe a word to Rui, most likely.


    (''Although Senior Ceeran did let slip that the breakthrough to Martial Senior was a spontaneous event that could even ur in the middle ofbat,'') Rui recalled.


    Perhaps that information was too trivial for Senior Ceeran to care to bother hiding. Furthermore, he was recounting his own breakthrough to the Senior Realm which had urred in the middle of a battle ording to him.


    Regardless, when he nced at the Martial Senior, things weren''t looking too good. Senior Ceeran was having much greater difficulty than Senior K''M. He was not the type that was suited for the ODA system. In fact, Rui was sure that if he did end up adopting the ODA system in some new technique, he would probably use a portion of it.


    And that was fine.


    The point of learning the ODA system was to gain ess to a unique and powerful ingredient and building block for new techniques that could have higher uracy than what they used to have prior.


    "Senior Ceeran," Rui addressed the struggling Martial Senior gently. "Perhaps you should consider ignoring the second phase of the ODA system and focus on just the first phase alone. In reality, I only created the second phase because I had very high expectations of the ODA system in the first ce and because I was capable of handling even greater difficulty when it came to mental requirements and burdens.


    "You''re probably right, young man," Senior Ceeran sighed. "In reality, the second phase is not all that relevant to me because I can manipte the trajectory of my attacks really even afterunching them," He shrugged. "So I can make corrections to my trajectory of attacks that may be disced by atmospheric conditions. In reality, I had already resolved to master the first phase more than anything. The second phase is not bad and would help, but it is not that deep of a matter if I cannot master it."


    Rui nodded, agreeing with his logic.


    The two continued training hard as Rui overlooked their training. Every day, they would start training their executions of the ODA system, growing better at it as time passed.


    In time, Senior K''M''s rate of calctions with the first phase of the ODA system had soon reached a stage where she could apply them inbat against other Martial Seniors. She had begun bullying her little brother in fights as she firmly kept him out of range. Her uracy had risen tremendously and she could hold him off further away than he could attack her, creating a situation where she steadily umted damage on him while he could not even hurt her in the slightest.


    Her mastery of the second phase of the ODA system was still imperfect, and it seemed that after many months of training it, she had finally hit her deadlock. She was unable to master it perfectly the way Rui had, yet it was still viable to the point that it helped her greatly.


    Rui himself had made great strides in Project Wavestack. He hade to a point where double superposition was effortless, and triple superposition was consistently sessful. He had even managed to get a fluke with quadruple superposition, but it was far too difficult for him to even consider mastering at the moment.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    Pursuing superposition could go on infinitely, thus Rui decided to temporarily put an end to Project Wavestack as a sess. A powerful technique that could amplify his offense by a factor of two or three had been created and it was finally time to give the technique a name.


    (''Transverse Resonance,'') Rui spontaneously came up with a name.


    The name was a bit ironic since sound wasn''t transverse waves, it was carried by what was known as longitudinal waves.


    Regardless, it was a cool name, so Rui didn''t particrly care. Ten months had passed since the contracts had been signed between the Martial Union and the G''ak''arkan Tribe. Every single technique had been sessfully exchanged and traded.


    The mission objective was achieved, in every way possible. He had to admit that it was one of the most satisfying missions that he had everpleted and was certainly the longest he had ever undertaken, and also the most unique allbined into one.


    "We have aplished our objective," Rui calmly informed Senior K''M in an official meeting between the Martial Union and the G''ak''arkan Tribe. "We are grateful to the G''ak''arkan Tribe for cooperating with us in an exchange of techniques. We hope to maintain our good rtionship with the G''ak''arkan Tribe."


    He had told her with a pleasant smile as they shook hands and bade each other goodbye. There was a very good chance that he might not see her again or any of the other Martial Artists of the tribe.


    They exchanged a final smile before the migrating process began. The members of the settlement transferred all movable valuables. They left the infrastructure as it was, after all, there was no need to break it down. The Martial Union didn''t give a damn what the native indigenous Martial Artists of the ind did with it once they left. If they ever decided toe back, it could make another settlement process much easier than the first time since they could rely on the foundation that they had left behind.


    The migration process proceeded swiftly. Rui had been discharged from his duty as the leader of the settlement, and specialized personnel had been dispatched by the Martial Union to ensure that the various personnel and supplies, and inventory would be transported back to the Martial Union appropriately.


    Soon enough a dozenrge cruise ships sailed away from Vilun ind, heading straight towards the Kandrian Empire that very day.


    Had anyone asked how Rui was feeling that day, he wasn''t he would be able to reply.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 735 Plans

    ?


    "Missing them already?" Kane asked Rui was gazing back at the ind.


    "It''s not like I spent too much time with any of the Martial Artists, in all honesty," Rui replied.


    "What about that one Martial Senior chick though?" Kane asked uncouthly.


    Rui furrowed his eyebrows in response. "Yeah, I suppose I am going to miss her."


    "Hehe, do you have a crush on her? Did you guys have a thing going on? Rui and K''M sitting on a tree¡­"


    Rui shook his head with a resigned smile. He was too old mentally to be bothered with juvenile jests. "By the way, have you figured out what you''re going to do next?"


    Kane grew more serious upon hearing that. He knew why Rui was asking that question, it was regarding the proposal that he had made to Kane a while back on Vilun Ind. It was one proposal that he had to give credit to as being alluring.


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    Kane didn''t know much about the dungeon.


    But he did know a lot about Rui. If he thought that visiting the dungeon was a good idea for both of them, then Kane definitely thought it was a good idea as well.


    "Alright, I''m in," Kane shrugged. "What was the dungeon called again?"


    Rui threw a disapproving look at his friend. "You should have familiarized yourself with the dungeon before agreeing to it straightforwardly. You''re prone to getting exploited with an attitude like that."


    Kane shook his head inwardly. He would have instantly rejected almost anyone else had they suggested partnering up with him and diving into a dangerous dungeon with immensepetition from other Martial Squires across this section of the continent.


    Yet it was different from when it was Rui who was the one making that proposal. Not only was the man sharp and shrewd, but he was also someone Kane trusted deeply.


    That was why he had epted Rui''s proposal. In reality, he had epted the moment Rui had made it months ago inwardly, this was the first time that he was informing Rui about it.


    "I''m d you''re willing," Rui turned back towards the ocean. "It definitely reduces the risks than if we went alone."


    Rui was confident in his capability, however, at the end of the day, he was only one person. He could make mistakes, he could be caught off-guard. It was always better to have another person with you.


    Kane was reliable in his eyes, and quite trustworthy. There were very few Martial Squires he could say that for.


    "But unfortunately, neither of us is ready yet," He sighed.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    "Hm?" Kane raised an eyebrow.


    "The dungeon is a gathering ground for some of the most aplished Martial Squires in this section of the continent. We''re not going to be dealing with any low-level Martial Squires. I highly doubt anybody below grade five is going to be able topete effectively."


    "True that," Kane nodded.


    He had broken through a lot more recently than Rui did and was two grades below him. He was especially unfit to be partaking in an endeavor as crazy as this one.


    "Also, I need to gather as much information regarding the Shionel Dungeon as well," Rui pointed out. "We can probably purchase detailed information and intelligence on the dungeon from the Martial Union. But just that isn''t enough. We''ll need to analyze that information ande up with a strategy and course of action that will allow us to maximize our fruits from the venture."


    Rui was not someone who undertook ventures like this without preparation. Getting to know everything relevant that he had to do.


    The dungeon was probably like the one in the Serevian forest, except its underground system was firmly intact because it was not forcibly filled withnd to prevent security holes. It would extend deep underground.


    He needed to find information surroundings its structure, the level ofpetition, and the esoteric material yields that could be taken up for grabs. Furthermore, he needed information surrounding the beasts that upied the dungeon, those would greatly factor into his evaluation of the difficulty of delving into the dungeon of the Shionel Confederation.


    "We also need to get stronger," Rui noted. "While we gather and analyze information we should go ahead and increase our power to the bare minimum degree."


    Kane nodded, sighing. "That''s not gonna be so easy, you know. Bing stronger as a Martial Squire is so much moreplicated than it was as a Martial Apprentice. Back in the Apprentice Realm, you could just master techniques that weren''t your own and call it a day. But in the Squire Realm, without the synergy thates with using techniques that you have an affinity for, your growth will be stalled. And without the individuality thates with having created, even partially, your own techniques, one can forget about trying to reach the Senior Realm."


    "If it was easy, everybody would do it," Rui replied calmly.


    He didn''t necessarily disagree with Kane. He was right in saying that growth in the Squire Realm was different than it used to be in the Apprentice Realm.


    To Rui, however, this was a good thing. He had suspected it before, but recently he had confirmed it. But he was great at developing his own strength.


    He had a lifetime of experience and knowledge from another world. He could apply it to create techniques that nobody else could fathom creating. Because of the knowledge about the human being and the mechanics of reality that he had inherited from his previous life, he had plenty of fuel and source material to build techniques out of.


    Where other Martial Squires struggled, Rui thrived. He was certain that no Martial Squire of his youth and experience, orck thereof, in the Squire Realm, could havee up with so many powerful techniques.


    He recalled one of the Martial Squires he had sparred with when creating one of his techniques told him that the path to the Senior Realm was difficult and hard. Well, Rui realized that may not entirely apply to him.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 736 Return

    ?


    The climate changed as the days passed. It was a sign that they were getting increasingly closer to the main continent. The journey was more cumbersome because there was a lot that needed to be transported back, after all.


    Yet, eventually, they finally reached their destination; the port town of Farund that they had set out from.


    Even from a great distance away, Rui could experience the familiar feel of the Kandrian Empire. The site of modern civilization, alone, felt relieving and refreshing. While living on Vilun Ind was an experience unlike any other, it was not familiar norforting.


    It had been only days since he had been relieved from his duties, yet Rui felt quite rxed andfortable. While the freedom that he got in his G''ak''arkan Tribe mission was great, the responsibilities; were not so much.


    Now, he was back to being just another Martial Squire.


    And that felt natural.


    (''I can''t wait to see everyone back in the Orphanage now,'') Rui''s smile grew more eager.


    He hadn''t seen his family for ten months. He had to admit, that he was sorely missing them.


    (''That reminds me, they said that they had a surprise waiting for me back home,'') Rui was curious about that. He wanted to know what it was that they were keeping in store for him.


    (''Well, post-mission protocols first,'') Rui groaned.


    The post-mission protocols for this mission were going to be painful, that was for sure. He highly doubted he could get away with just an hour of paperwork like he normally did.


    The second that they reached, he immediately leaped off, reaching the dock.


    He breathed deeply, taking in his first breath of the Kandrian Empire in a long time. The Martial Artists quickly followed suit, each getting off even before the bridge between the ships and the dock had been made yet.


    "You heading for post-mission protocols too?" Kane asked as he walked to Rui.


    "Yeah, best to finish it off as quickly as I can and then head home in peace," Rui nodded. "Let''s get going,"


    The two stepped into the air as they sky-walked at a swift pace, heading towards the Mantian Region and the town of Hajin.


    The two of them quickly passed through the familiar old security check-ups before letting them pass through.


    It wasn''t long before they began filling up the statements and reports of the entire mission.


    This was an extensive process for both of them. They had to go over ten months'' worth of events and they couldn''t skip out too many details.


    Although the Martial Union had received routine reports from all of the teams and departments of the settlement on Vilun Ind, they still required thorough details from the two of them.


    Rui had to describe the initial negotiation hearing between the Martial Union and the G''ak''arkan Tribe, the coldness of Senior K''ahru, and their swift rejection of any offer that Rui made in regard to them.


    He had to describe his actions and executive decisions during the settlement construction on the ind. This was the period that he was the most busy in. What followed was the decision to trigger a war with the K''ulnen Tribe. <novelsnext></novelsnext>


    There had been a lot of thought that had gone into the strategy and approach that they would employ with the K''ulnen Tribe. He especially needed to describe his battles in detail, which he had no problem doing.


    After that, Rui went on to describe the sess of the negotiation deliberation with the G''ak''arkan Tribe, and eventually the exchange of techniques and the training phases.


    About four hourster, he was finally done.


    Kane had long bade Rui goodbye because his report was far smaller and lesser than that of Rui''s. He was merely acting as a shadow-ss Martial Artist; a covert agent and an operative. He also had beenrgely free and jobless for much of the time that he had spent in this missionpared to Rui.


    "Ughh¡­"Rui groaned once he left the Hajin branch of the Martial Union. "At least I can go back home now."


    He didn''t want to waste any time.


    And he didn''t.


    He crouched with one leg stretched back before he dashed off at top speed towards the Quarrier Orphanage.


    In less than fifteen seconds, he had already arrived.


    A loud gust of wind announced his arrival to all of the members of the Quarrier Orphanage.


    "RUIIII!!!" Alice immediately greeted him the second she saw him, leaping to embrace him. "It''s been so long! You''ve grown taller!"C0ntent ? 2024 (N/?)velDrama.Org.


    "I''ve missed you too Alice," He earnestly returned her embrace. It took him a while before he could extricate himself from her tight hug.


    Soon enough, the rest of the adults came out to greet him.


    Farion, Mica, Myra and the many adults who had looked after Rui when he was just a little child couldn''t help but fawn over him after having not seen him for nearly a year. Lashara indulged herself by cupping his face with an affectionate expression, before embracing him gently.


    The children were no different in their enthusiasm to see him either. Most of them had begun to hit their growth spurts by now and were growing taller rapidly.


    "Big brother, you''re back."


    "You have to tell us about your adventure this time."


    Rui smiled. "Of course, I will¡­ By the way. Where are those two?"


    "Ah¡­ Max and Mana? They''re training in the woods right now at their usual spot," Lashara smiled. "Can you go call them? It''s about time for lunch. Besides, they have been dying to meet you and show you something."


    "Sure, not a problem," Rui put his belongings inside before taking off to the sky toward the training space that he had prepared for them nearly a year ago after their attempt in the Martial Union entrance exam.


    "There they are¡­" Rui smiled as he spotted their figures. Yet suddenly, his eyes widened. "Wait a minute¡­ This feeling? It can''t be that those two have¡­"


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 737 Surprise

    ?


    "This feeling¡­"


    How could he not recognize it? He had sensed it countless times in his life.


    "Martial Apprentice¡­" He murmured as he rapidly reached their location.


    The two of them paused their sparring match as their senses picked up his approach. They turned to meet him with smiles on their faces.


    Even before Rui could talk to them, he had already noticed how much they had grown. Their energy was calmer and moreposed. They had lost their childish and immature demeanor. Their eyes, which used to be filled with wonder and curiosity, were not filled with determination.


    Rui felt his heartache at the thought that he missed their breakthrough to the Apprentice Realm. It was a shame, but s, it could not be helped.


    STEP


    Hended before them.


    "The two of you¡­" He smiled. "To say that you have made me proud is an understatement. Congrattions, you are now Martial Artists."


    He ruffled their head in adoration, though perhaps they were getting too old for it, admittedly.


    "Thank you, big brother," Mana beamed at his praise.


    "Thanks, big bro!" Max grinned.


    "This must have been the surprise, eh?" Rui chuckled. "It''s not nice to keep secrets from your big brother, you know?"


    "Hehe¡­ We wanted to tell you about the news in person," Max smirked.


    The three of them shared a chuckle.


    "Now then, tell me about your Martial Paths," Rui instructed.


    Their expressions grew more serious.


    "My Martial Art is centered around dynamic maneuvering," She exined. "My style ofbat focuses on three-dimensional maneuvering for defensive and offensive applications. No attack must touch me, and no defense must restrict me."


    "Interesting¡­" Rui nodded.


    It made sense given how she had fought all this time. She always ced and timed her movements to position herself most appropriately. Thus he could see her Martial Path leaning in that direction.


    He turned to Max, he had a feeling he knew what his Martial Path was as well.


    "My Martial Art is cumtive momentum strikes!" Max grinned. "I rush, gather as much energy I can, and break my opponents with one big crash!"


    "As expected¡­" Rui nodded. Max loved rushing in and throwing every ounce of energy that he had gathered into a single crash.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    In a way, his Martial Path was pursuing the Flowing Canon technique that Rui used to have, to the extreme. Of course, this meant that his Martial Art was extremely narrow and extremely focused. This was not a bad thing.


    He knew of Martial Artists who had reached fearsome heights purely focusing on a singr specialty.


    The first one that came to mind was Hever.


    Hever had, to this day, only mastered a single technique. He had incorporated elements of other techniques into it to elevate the technique. But it was still considered part of one technique.


    Thus Rui did not dare look down on singr and focused Martial Art. It was because they gave everything to that one singr thing. Dedicated everything they had to offer in one direction, and they were able to aplish feats that were simply incredible.


    If Max kept pursuing a path to maximizing the lethality and dangerousness of his bullrush strikes, then he would no doubt be a fearsome Martial Artist.Property ? 2024 N0(v)elDrama.Org.


    "By the way, big brother?" Mana interjected his thoughts. "Our senses have grown so much better, and yet why can''t I still sense even a shred of your power?"


    Rui had still put on his human-level Mind Mask. He did not like drawing attention from others, after all. He had no interest in being the object of attention of normal human beings.


    This was especially the case when considering the fact that he had been walking around with the aura of a grade-ten Martial Artist for ten months!


    He had spent every day instantly attracting the admiration or fear of onlookers continuously for that long all because he needed to maintain the illusion of his strength. Now that he had returned back to the Kandrian Empire, he no longer needed to do that and could peacefully return back to not walking around as what was effectively a blindingly bright light to ordinary humans


    "It''s because I''m using a technique to suppress my power from being projected," Rui sighed replying. "It''s not something I''m fond of."


    "Enough talk brother. Let''s spar!" Max was really excited to spar against Rui ever since he had broken through to the Apprentice Realm.


    "Hehehe¡­ You have been dying for this haven''t you?" Rui smiled. "Who knows, even if you are Martial Apprentices, two against one might be too much."


    He tried getting their hopes up a bit, hoping they did not understand the disparity between the Apprentice and Squire Realm.


    "Don''t fool us, big brother," Mana pouted. "We fought our hardest against our Apprentice Verema. But we were utterly helpless against him!"


    "Ah¡­ right," Rui had almost forgotten that he had hired a number of Martial Apprentices of different Martial Paths to expose his two siblings to different kinds of Martial Art. To show them what was possible. "Haha, I hoped I could pull a fast one over you."


    The duo had been surprised at how helpless they had been against a Martial Apprentice, even if they were older.


    "The Apprentice Realm is wide. It is divided into grades, ranging from one to ten," Rui exined. "The two of you at this moment are not even grade one, as you have not yet mastered a single Apprentice-level technique. Your Martial Apprentice mentors and trainers are all around grade-five."


    "Is the gap between grade one and grade five that big?" She frowned. "It''s two on one you know!"


    They were still limited by their human experience. Generally, two-on-one between trained human-level fighters was a decisive victory for the two. Especially, if the fight was a fair duel. Humans did not have the ability to reach such high levels of skill that they could ovee a numbers advantage that also had skill themselves.


    The same was absolutely not true for Martial Artists, and they were sooning to learn that.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 738 Spar

    ?


    "Of course it isrge," Rui smiled. "The difference between the bottom of the Apprentice Realm and the peak of it is immense."


    The two of them were quite surprised by this.


    "So we have a long way to go before we can reach the Squire Realm?" Max heaved a sigh.


    Rui couldn''t help but be amused. These two did not have any idea about the difficulty of breaking through to the Squire Realm, clearly. He did not intend to divulge all of it, either. He had not been told about the evolution breakthrough process to the Squire Realm for multiple reasons, and he could understand why in hindsight.


    For starters, the power that it provided was too alluring, while Martial Apprentices were generally young and inexperienced, andcking in maturity. The evolution breakthrough gave the Martial Artist a Martial body; a body that had transcended the limits of humanity through Darwinian evolution. It was a dreamlike power that any normal Martial Apprentice would feel an immense amount of greed and lust for. There was the fear that if divulged too early, their greed for this power would warp their Martial Paths to revolve around their body, rather than molding their body to revolve around their Martial Path.


    That was why Martial maturity was one of the conditions for Squire candidacy. It was to ensure that the Martial Apprentice had developed their Martial Art to a certain degree and had set it in stone so that an excessive amount of corruption of it due to greed would not ur.


    Rui could appreciate this, even though he did believe that he would not have been corrupted regardless.


    There was another reason for not disclosing the secret of the breakthrough to the Squire Realm. The breakthrough to the Squire Realm was a man-made way to allow Martial Artists to climb higher Realms. It was not something that could naturally be obtained. Thus it was a way for the Martial Union to ensure that others did not get their hands on it by some young and immature Martial Apprentice spilling the beams by some foreign power like the Commonwealth Duchy of Vinfrana.


    He had faith that the Apprentice and Squire instructors of the Martial Academy would take good care of them. He was especially reassured by the fact that Headmaster Aronian was watching over them.


    "By the way, big brother," Mana drew his attention back. "What does it take to be a Martial Squire? Can you tell me? It could help us be stronger quicker."


    Rui smiled, shaking his head lightly. He reached out for the top of her head, ruffling her hair a bit. "Focus on your Martial Paths. Grow stronger. Make sure your Martial Paths truly belong to you and not to anybody else. Remember these words, okay?"


    They nodded solemnly. They had an immense amount of faith in their older brother. His words, especially regarding Martial Art, were


    He said thetter half with a pointed tone, making allusions to the concept of individuality. He had considered exining the concept of it to them but ultimately decided against it. Individuality in their Martial Path was not such a dire necessity in the Apprentice Realm.Content (C) N?v/elDra/ma.Org.


    Besides, the creativity needed to add individuality to your Martial Art by creating your own techniques with uniqueness and originality needed some foundation toe from. These two had not yet mastered a single technique, how could they be expected to create their own techniques? He did not want to burden them with information that they not only could not make use of in the short to medium term but would only serve as a thorn of insecurity as they grew stronger.


    "You''re not gonna tell us about what the breakthrough process for the Squire Realm is either, are you big brother?" Max remarked with an unsatisfied expression.


    "Most certainly not," Rui smiled pleasantly.


    "Figures. But I don''t care about that right now," Max shook his head. "I just want to fight you as a Martial Apprentice at least once."<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    "Hehe¡­" Rui smiled. "Alright, enough talk it is."


    He stepped ten meters away from them, before raising an arm and gesturing them to attack. "Come, let''s begin."


    The two of them did not even hesitate.


    Theyshed out towards Rui, Mana reaching him a beat earlier. Her sprint was efficient and rapid, she reached him in an instant beforeunching a driving kick straight toward his torso.


    WHOOSH


    Rui simply sidestepped gracefully as he twirled out of the way of the attack.


    Yet as soon as he finished that maneuver, Max had already arrived. His right arm was coiled beside his ribsshing forward as he channeled all of his momentum straight towards Rui.


    Rui''s eyebrows rose as he studied Max''s form in slow motion.


    (''This attack is good enough to match the Flowing Canon technique,'') Rui noted with pleasure.


    He wasn''t too surprised considering the concept of the Flowing Canon technique was what Max''s Martial Path was rted to. Max would be able to wield that technique, and techniques simr to that far better than Rui ever could due to his Martial Path''s affinity towards it.


    While Mana was outside of his field of vision behind him, he could sense that her agility and fluidity were much better than that of his when he had broken through, for the same reason; it was her Martial Path. She rapidly turned all of the missed momentum of her first attack aplete one hundred and eighty degrees before throwing it back at Rui once more from behind. The two had times their attacks that he would end up facing their attack from opposite directions simultaneously.


    (''Their coordination has improved yet again,'') He smiled as he leaped slightly.


    BANG!


    Their fists cleanly crashed into each other as the two of them grimaced.


    STEP


    Ruinded on both their fists gracefully, looking down at them from above with an amused, yet proud smile. "That was a goodbo, did you prepare it just to use it against me?


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 739 Accelerate

    ?


    A few hourster, the two of them were t on the ground, exhausted.


    "Man¡­ Huff¡­ We couldn''tnd a proper strike on you even after we became Martial Apprentices!" Maxined.


    "That too¡­ Huff¡­ He was moving slower than us¡­ And we still couldn''t even touch him," Mana panted. "How is that even possible?"


    Rui, who was enjoying the rare pleasant weather of spring, smiled at their words. "It''s a matter of timing and cement, my cute and adorable siblings."


    "What does that even mean?" Max furrowed his eyebrows. He was much bigger than he was before, and he disliked being treated like a child. Unbeknownst to him, Rui found this part of him to be the most adorable.


    "I can evade everything you throw at me because I can see iting, and because I pick and choose the right evasion move in response," Rui replied. "Which is why even if I dy my response and reaction time to be slower than yours, I can still handily evade you with ease for the most part. I see your attacksing sooner than you realize, thus I make the necessary preparations to avoid them sooner."


    "Does this have anything to do with your Martial Path, big brother?" Mana asked, curious. "Your Martial Path was¡­ adaptive evolution, correct? Are you adapting to us? Allowing you to do what you just described?"


    That was a nuanced question. Mana had always been smarter of the two, though she was more tactically indecisive inbatpared to Max.


    "My Martial Path is indeed adaptive evolution," Rui nodded. "But¡­ what I did now is not an application of Martial Art¡­"


    The truth was that his normal and natural insight had grown to a level where he could easily see through their moves even without using predictive models of those two. This wasn''t particrly shocking or surprising. Any decent Martial Squire with enough experience would be able to do that more or less. Their movements were far less refined than what he was ustomed to fighting.


    They stared at him dumbfounded.


    "Don''t look at me like that," Rui couldn''t help but feel a little proud of the admiration that they were showering him with. "When you go to the Martial Academy, you''ll meet even more amazing Martial Squires."


    "Even more amazing than you?!"


    "I''m not even all that special in the Squire Realm at this very moment," Rui shook his head, trying to downy himself. He didn''t want them to have an over-inted view of their brother. When they joined the Martial Academy, they woulde to learn that their big brother was a bit of a celebrity in the Martialmunities of the Kandrian Empire. Currently, Rui hade to find that almost all the people he hade to interact with within thismunity had heard about him, directly or indirectly. Fame from being the dark horse finalist of the previous Martial contest more than five years ago, fame from his win streak in the Martial Games, fame from killing a Martial Squire and achieving unprecedented power as Martial Apprentice that forced the Martial Union to re-evaluate their power grading system, and the man who had singlehandedly won the Kandrian Empire victory in the final battle of the Serevian Wars.


    He had never informed them, or anyone in the Orphanage about it, mostly because he was far too self-conscious to brag so tantly and because it did not truly matter. But now that the two of them would be going to be passing the Martial Entrance Exam that was less than a month away and attending the Martial Academy, he suspected that his reputation would be of use to them.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    "Anyways, the two of you had made great progress and have be remarkably strong¡­ remarkably quickly." He said that with a proud smile, but inside he was absorbed deep in thought.


    (''Did these two possess the talent needed to breakthrough at the age of thirteen?'') Rui couldn''t help but wonder. In reality, he more or less knew the answer to that question. (''¡­No, they did not.'')


    It was unfortunate, but they were above average as far as talent went. Yet, they broke through to the Apprentice Realm earlier than Fae had. Fae herself was a renowned talent, even if she wasn''t in the genius-level territory like Fiona, Kane, and Ian, who all broke through even well before they had begun to go through puberty.


    This made them very favorable prospects since they broke through nearly five years earlier than the average age to break through to Martial Apprentice.Property ? 2024 N0(v)elDrama.Org.


    So what had changed? They hadn''t shown dominant talents forbat from a young age, yet now they had broken through to the Apprentice Realm at the age of thirteen. Something had to have caused that.


    Rui already had a strong suspicion as to what it was.


    (''The VOID algorithm must have elerated their self-awareness since they got to witness themselves in me when I copied their movements with the predictive model, and when I showed them their strengths and shorings when I mildly adapted to them.'') Rui sighed.


    The breakthrough to the Apprentice Realm was one born from self-discovery. Self-awareness was vitally important and decisive among other things. Rui suspected that the VOID algorithm had facilitated the self-awareness that was needed to break through to the Apprentice Realm.


    (''First Crea¡­ Now these two¡­'') Rui noted.


    Back when Crea had abruptly broken out of seemingly nowhere in the middle of the Martial entrance exam, he had only suspected that perhaps the VOID training had something to do with it, but now he had two more cases.


    It was a lot more convincing and likely that his Martial Path could elerate the rate of discovery of other Martial Paths of aspiring Martial Artists. That made his Martial Path and Martial Art that much more valuable.


    (''If the Martial Union found out¡­'') Rui shook his head.


    The Martial Union was very careful about extracting techniques from Martial Artists. It had worked hard to develop a reputation for being fair.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 740 Consequences

    ?


    However, they found that Rui had a way of vastly increasing the number of Martial Artists in the country over a longer period of time by a factor of ten, then they would do anything and everything in their power to get that technique.


    The first thing that would happen would be that Rui would likely be secured by two powerful defensive Martial Masters. In the case that information about his ability leaked to the rest of the world and unscrupulous parties decided to try and kill him before he breaks the bnce of power, the Martial Union would definitely secure his life and well-being with their very best.


    It would not absurd for even a Martial Sage to take responsibility for protecting him.


    They would probably begin by trying topel him to voluntarily divulge the technique of his own ord. That way, a mutually beneficial deal could be established that satisfied both parties. Rui could end up obtaining a fortune worth of wealth with ease. He could end up gaining a huge number of highly beneficial privileges and status that only Martial Artists that stood at the peak of the nation could obtain.


    ¦Ñ¦Á§ád¦Á---n?¦Ía| §ãom The Martial extremists would start worshipping him since he had the ability to bring fruition to their ambitions and dreams in the long run.


    However, if he refused to divulge the technique, then things would take a turn for the worst very easily. Their policy of not forcing or coercing Martial Artists to divulge their techniques be damned, they would do everything they could get his technique. Rui highly doubted that they would not go as far as taking the entirety of his orphanage hostage topel him to divulge the technique.


    Regardless, they would get the technique. They would have Rui personally train as many trusted Martial Artists in that technique as they could, or develop new training technology based on the VOID algorithm. They would do everything in their power to be stronger through the new way that Rui''s VOID algorithm will have shown them.


    Rui probably would lose his freedom for a long time, and that absolutely was not something that he wanted.


    (''I cannot have any more of my pupils to break through to the Apprentice Realm,'') Rui shook his head.


    Three was already suspicious, but not unheard of. There were experienced mentors and teachers who''ve had far more pupils be Martial Apprentice. The issue might arrive due to his one hundred percent sess rate thus far.


    He needed to abstain from training pupils or at least ensure that he doesn''t use the VOID algorithm training for them if he does mentor them. These were the bare minimum precautions that he had to take.


    Eventually, the three of them returned back to the Quarrier Orphanage.


    "Rui, I told you to get them back immediately."Content held by N?velDrama.Org.


    "Ah, my bad. Haha¡­" Ruiughed with an apologetic expression.


    He had been caught off-guard by the breakthrough of the two siblings that he hadpletely forgotten that he had been sent to get them back in time for lunch that he ended up inadvertently missing as well.


    "Now now, I''m sure he must have been too absorbed by Max''s and Mana''s breakthroughs, let us cut him some ck," Julian smiled.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    "Right right," Rui turned towards Julian. "It''s been a while."


    Julian had gone to work, and Rui hadn''t seen them in the morning. The two of them exchanged a hug, they had always been particrly close with each other thanks to the many extensive conversations that they had with each other over topics that they hadmon interests. Julian engaged in research of all kinds, and he did specialize in the research of Martial Art as well. While Rui was a Martial Artist who had researched martial arts andbat sports for most of his life back on Earth.


    That gave them expertise and understanding over many areas that only they had in the orphanage.


    "How was your mission, Rui?" Julian asked. "This has been the longest mission that you have ever undertaken, correct?"


    "True," Rui nodded. "Honestly, it was quite difficult and tiring, but at the end of the day, I managed to seed."


    Julian''s eyes glinted with curiosity.


    Rui had informed him of the gist of what he was up to. When Julian heard that Rui had been chosen as an ambassador of the Martial Union to negotiate the deal with the native indigenous Martial tribes of a faraway ind, he couldn''t help but be surprised. Yet he was shrewd enough to immediately recognize the merits of the idea and why the Martial Union had made this decision.


    Although he had maintained correspondence with Rui, thetter had not been specific about the information that he had ryed.


    "Sounds like quite the adventure," Julian smiled as they took their seats opposite each other. "What were they like?"


    "They were barbaric and warmongering," Rui sighed. "They waged war against other Martial tribes on a daily basis. We had to carefully and delicately navigate them with scrupulous care, and it was tedious and patience-consuming, really. But quite satisfactory when we seeded in the end. I managed to learn one of their technique and be stronger myself, I even created a new technique on the ind."


    Julian knitted his eyebrows in surprise. "You had time to train when you were the leader of the entire diplomatic operation?"


    "¡­I delegated all the troublesome work to other more qualified personnel," Rui shrugged.


    Julian sighed with amusement and resignation. Of course, considering that Rui seeded, the Martial Union probably couldn''t care less, especially since he was a Martial Artist.


    "Tell me all you can about it," Julian urged Rui.


    He was not an anthropologist, but even he had a lot of curiosity regarding other Martial Artist models. The fact that the Martial Union had deployed Rui probably meant that the natives had Martial Squires, in that case, he was quite curious as to how technologically inept had managed to stumble on the breakthrough to the Squire Realm.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 741 Unsophisticated

    ?


    "Wait," Julian raised a hand. "You''re telling me that their version of the Squire evolution breakthrough process takes years toplete?"


    Rui nodded. "Their evolution breakthrough process, or their sacred Transcendence Ritual as they called it was spected to work with crude applications of some highly potent esoteric substances that can be found on the ind."


    The intelligence team assigned to the Vilun settlement had managed to collect information on the Squire evolution breakthrough process across the entirety of the duration of the mission.


    They hade to the conclusion that the procedure was absurdly long and required the Martial Squire to undergo a truly extensive process.


    "That might actually make sense," Julian nodded deep in thought. "Their technology is non-existent and they do not possess healing potions that rapidly heal grave injuries, which is one of the reasons that the Squire evolution breakthrough process of the Kandrian Empire is able to ur within a short amount of time."


    And still, it yielded inferior results despite taking exponentially more time. This was the difference that the sophistication in technology was able to cause.


    Regardless, the Martial Union did not have anything beyond curiosity surrounding the Squire evolution breakthrough process of the Martial tribes on Vilun ind, they had no desire to obtain a crude and primitive process when they had their own state-of-the-art and cutting-edge technology when it came to Squire evolution breakthroughs.


    The two conversed for some more time about a variety of matters, including Max and Mana breaking through. Rui was intrigued to know that Julian had already had a handful of discussions about the Apprentice Realm with them. He was happy to know that he had exercised discretion and controlled the amount of information that he gave them unlike with Rui, who he had far more trust in.


    Rui spent the next few days rxing with the family and taking care of the children. He had truly missed them and wanted to squeeze in as much time with them in a brief period of time.


    After all, he was going to get really busy real soon.


    STEP


    He stopped before the Hajin branch of the Martial Union.


    "Identity and purpose of visit?" The Martial Squire security guard asked him.


    "Squire Rui Quarrier," Rui replied calmly as he handed them his Martial license. "Purchase of information."


    "Alright," The guard nodded, returning his license and passing him through.


    ¦Ñ¦Á§ád¦Á---n?¦Ía| §ãom Rui navigated the Martial Union reaching the Martial exchange department and counter. "Excuse me."


    "Yes," An employee addressed him with a smile. "How may I help you today, sir?"


    "I would like to purchase all the information surrounding the Shionel Dungeon, please," Rui calmly requested.


    "Give me one moment, sir," She replied as she essed her terminal.


    "That will cost around fifty-two thousand eight hundred and ny Martial credits, sir," She replied straightforwardly.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    Rui winced inwardly at the enormous price but nodded. In reality, while the price is high, he was probably being given the information at a lower price. He did not think for a second that an outsider to the Martial Union would be able to purchase all the intelligence on the Shionel Dungeon at this price.


    "Please deduct the price of the information from my ount,"


    "Of course, sir. Kindly provide me with your Martial license please,"


    "Squire Quarrier, the transaction isplete. Is there anything else that you would like to purchase?"


    "Not for now, thank you,"


    "In that case, the information will shortly be avable on your ounter," She informed him. "Thank you for your purchase."


    Rui left the Martial Union heading back home. Unfortunately, he wasn''t allowed to directly share the information purchased from the Martial Union with other parties. After all, that became far too ripe for exploitation where they sell the information at a slightly lower price and end up attracting all of the customers of Martial Union while selling something that the intelligence department of the Martial Union had spent a lot of resources in obtaining.


    The funds that the Martial Union obtained from this little side business were one of the sustainable sources of funds for the intelligence department of the Martial Union. They could not allow themselves to be ripped badly.


    Thankfully, that rule did not extend to indirect and transformative distribution of the information. Meaning, Rui could read everything, understand and assimte it before conveying it to Kane and making their ns based on that information. Even the Martial Union understand it was stupid and impractical to try and restrict such application of information.


    He quickly reached home and secluded himself in his room with his ounter as he began scrolling through the information that he had purchased.


    "This is¡­" Rui''s eyebrow rose. "I can see why they charged that much for all this information."


    The information was more extensive than he had expected, though, in hindsight, he shouldn''t have been too surprised. The Martial Union must have bolstered its intelligencework in the Shionel Confederation once the discovery of the new dungeon hade to light. Thus it was no wonder that they were able to gather so much information regarding the matter.


    The information was divided into multiple categories, starting with the foundational information regarding the Shionel Confederation itself as a state.


    "Oh¡­?" Rui raised an eyebrow.Content (C) N?v/elDra/ma.Org.


    The Shionel Confederation was a state that was ruled by the Shionel Merchant Guild, it''s governmental structure could more or less be characterized as a corporatocracy. The state had been founded in a time and region of war between surrounding small kingdoms and tribes that were perenially in conflict with each other. Arge number of wealthy merchants and businessmen hade together and formed a guild that manufactured or purchased arms and ammunition, logistical resources, essential goods, and supplies and supplied it to external parties that were engaging in war with another party. They had bolstered just enough of a military to disincentivize an attack and had formed pacts with the forces that would go on to win the wars and be the established kingdoms of today.


    Today, the once humble opportunistic merchant guild had absorbed many merchants and businessmen, businesses, and corporations and had matured into amercial and economic state.


    A massive dungeon had been unearthed in such a ce.


    "Oh boy¡­" Rui couldn''t help but feel an ominous chill.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 742 Capitalism

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    It couldn''t be helped. It was clear that the Shionel Confederation was nothing more than a group of greedy businessmen who were only interested in umting more capital, one way or another.


    These greedy businessmen were untethered and unhampered by anybody but themselves, as the Shionel Merchant Guild served as the legitive branch of the Shionel government. As such, the legitions in ce were highly capitalistic in nature and were highly inviting for any aspiring merchant.


    They had signed several treaties and bterals with the surrounding sovereign states that gave them significant reductions and cuts in import tax and tariffs, as well as lowered regtions and a


    Now, what would such a group of people if a dungeon opened up in their nation?


    The answer was obvious.


    They would exploit it to their best to make as much money as possible!


    Senior Ceeran had already informed him that they were far too weak to monopolize the dungeon, thus they had no choice but to share it.


    If they did do that, then they would probably erect a system that would allow them tomercialize the dungeon to the greatest degree possible!


    "I hope those money-grubbing snakes haven''t turned their dungeon into the biggest market on this side of the continent!" Rui mmed his face.


    This made things moreplicated and dangerous, but at the same time, a little more interesting than they had been before. Still, Rui hoped that he would be able to simply explore a dungeon in peace with his friend and make away with as much plunder as possible.


    What he found interesting about the Shionel Confederation was its Martial Artist situation. Martial Artists were treated as mercenaries whose only goal was to aid with security and intelligence. By contributing to peace and security, they gained wealth and status that was proportional to their value and contribution.


    It made sense that a lot of Martial Apprentices and Martial Squires would be attracted by the wealth and status that the Shionel Confederation would be providing. It was harder to imagine how they managed to reel in Martial Artists of the upper Realms. They even managed to get their hands on a Martial Sage.Content held by N?velDrama.Org.


    (''So there are even Martial Sages who chase after wealth and status huh?'') Rui couldn''t help but sigh in disappointment. He had already long learned that Martial Artists were different from those that he would frequentlye across in the fictional media of Earth. Movies, anime, manga, and even novels would frequently portray martial artists as highly pure and idealistic warriors driven by profound philosophy that was deeply embedded in whatever martial art they practiced.


    Still, this was all just unrealistic and naive bogus in a world where genuinely powerful Martial Art existed. No more than childish romance.


    He kept needing to remind himself that Martial Art was viewed as power. A powerful means to an end. Most Martial Artists did not pursue their Martial Path for the sake of their Martial Path, or out of pure ambition to pursue their Martial Path to its end.


    Most people did it because they wanted something that Martial Art could give them. The mostmon being power, but there were a variety of reasons. Social status and money were also powerful drivers for people to aspire to pursue Martial power. And it appeared that there was one who wanted to status and power to such a degree that they were able to be a Martial Sage.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    It was a little depressing to Rui, who pursued his Martial Path for the sake of his Martial Path, for the sake of Project Water.


    ¦Ñ¦Á§ád¦Á---n?¦Ía| §ãom He shook his head, as he swept through the information that the Martial Union had gathered.


    Unfortunately, his suspicions were right.


    The Shionel Merchant Guild had created a Shionel Adventurer Guild that essentially served the same purpose that the Martial Union serving as a highly effective liaison between the consumer market for Martial services and Martial Artists.


    The difference was that the Shionel Guild''s Martial Artists were only interested in exploring and plundering the Shionel Dungeon. And the parts of the consumer market for Martial services that the Shionel Martial Guild catered to was the part of the market that had be invested in the Shionel dungeon.


    There were many merchants, businesses of all scales, and investors of all kinds that were interested in directly procuring a chunk of what the Shionel Dungeon had procured.


    The Shionel Martial Guild allowed for an easy way for Martial Artists to undertakemissions of all sorts from all kinds of people, rting to the dungeon.


    Of course, given that this guild was brand new and an infantpared to the long-established Martial Union, the two could not even bepared with each other. It was lot less credible and reliable, and its sophistication fell far behind the farrger well-oiled machine that was the Martial Union.


    Besides, Rui was not interested in undertaking a mission from the Shionel Martial Guild. If he was, then he would rather go ahead and take it from the Martial Union which was far more reliable and trustworthy in his eyes.


    This time, however, he wanted the goal to be open-ended. He and Kane could decide what to do when it came to exploring the Shionel Dungeon.


    He skimmed through the bits regarding the Martial Guild, mindlessly dumping the information into his Mind Pce. He would review itter in more detail, for now, he was interested in the dungeon more than anything else.


    "The Dungeon is measured to extend for thirty kilometers in any direction?!" Rui eximed out loud as read about the dimensions of the Shionel Dungeon. "That''s gigantic!"


    It made the Serevian Dungeon look like a tiny little kitten. The sheer vastness of the volume and area that the dungeon covered was mind-boggling. Furthermore, half of the volume of the Shionel Dungeon was below the ground, while the other half had risen over the ground as the Serevian Dungeon had in the Serevian teau.


    "Just what is it like inside...?"


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 743 Dungeonification

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    Rui read on with great amazement. It was formed when a tree underwent dungeonification after absorbing soil deep below the surface that was rich with highly powerful esoteric mineral resources. In a process that was not very well understood yet, the flora ergened and mutated, expanding as it absorbed more.


    What the schrs of this world had not quite understood yet was how flora was able to naturally integrate esoteric mineral ores into it and develop into all kinds of strange manners that utterly defied how said species of the n evolved.


    Some thought that the esoteric mineral ores were somehow slowly refined and naturally integrated into the biology of the nt, giving it strange and seemingly reality-defying properties and characteristics that created strange environments inside the dungeon.


    This was something even Rui wasn''t able to find an exnation for. It was part of the fantastical phenomena in this world that entirely defied what was possible in his previous life. He was unable to extrapte a satisfactory based on his scientific background.


    He shrugged. "No point in breaking my head over it."


    What he was more interested was in the further details surrounding the dungeon.


    The dungeon was equally divided into a tower above the ground and an underground dome that was both equally vast. There were a number of small andrge pockets of space connected by tunnels that were suspected to contain reservoirs of processed or raw esoteric mineral ores referred to as floors. Each of the floors was numbered to make it convenient for reference. The floor that was level with the ground level of the Shionel Great first that the dungeon was in was numbered as Floor Zero. Floors that went up in the tower were numbered with positive numbers, while floors that went down were numbered with negative numbers.


    "Fascinating¡­" Rui scratched his head as his mind shed back to some of the more modern anime that were around. "Isn''t this concept quite simr to some of the dungeons that ur in some anime?"


    He wasn''t entirely sure, he was an old-school anime fan, and he generally couldn''t really stand the newer anime and their more childish appeal.


    Regardless, it was quite fascinating to see such an otherworldly natural phenomenon and have the opportunity to visit it and even explore it.


    He went through the data collected on the floors of the dungeon, yet when he reached the mapped areas, his eyes widened.


    "Only a minority of the floors of the dungeon is mapped," Rui frowned. "And an even smaller portion has been cleared."


    p¦Ánd¦Á---no¦Í?1,§ão§® This was surprising to Rui. The dungeon had been open for more than three months now, how was it that such a small portion of the dungeon had been cleared?


    Even if the dungeon wasrge and dangerous, a huge number of Martial Artists were undoubtedly exploring it at the moment. They should have been clearing it at a rapid pace, with the sheer amount of powerful Martial Squires that would no doubt be joining from all across this chunk of the continent would no doubt be taking part in this grand opportunity. Property ? 2024 N0(v)elDrama.Org.


    After all, it was a fleeting opportunity that would no doubt allow


    "Ah¡­" Rui read on as heprehended the reason. "There are mutated beasts¡­ so-called monsters upying all of the floors¡­?"<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    The animals in the ecosystem that existed before the Shionel Dungeon were all integrated into the dungeon after having fed on the mutated vegetation, which in turn made the entirety of the food chain increasingly mutated.


    (''Mutation¡­ Does this have something to do with electromaic radiation?'') Rui frowned in confusion. (''Is this a process simr to the evolution breakthrough?'')


    He wasn''t sure. He knew for a fact that the highly potent esoteric mineral ores would have been entirely lethal to fauna life forms if consumed directly, but somehow when consumed when the esoteric mineral was integrated into flora directly or indirectly, it was for some reason not unstable.


    Of course, this did not mean it was entirely safe. There were still a huge number of animals that died regardless, while the remaining popted the dungeon. In that case, it was probably not safe for him, or for anyone else to consume any of the processed esoteric minerals integrated into the vegetation.


    He would need to make sure that he kept that in mind. Even if it was rted to the Squire evolution breakthrough in principle, it meant that it was particrly dangerous to Martial Squires, since they had hit their absolute limit when it came to radiation-induced evolution. Otherwise, the procedure could be extended for much longer if not for the limits of the brain.


    Regardless, he could understand why the exploration and clearance of the dungeon had taken so long. The explorer Martial Artists had run into a lot of hindrances, to the point that the exploration could not proceed. They had not even mapped out most of the dungeon yet!


    (''Not just that¡­'') Rui read through the remaining details listed in the intelligence procured by the Martial Union.


    (''It appears that sensory techniques are highly restricted due to the high concentration of esoteric substances that inste or disrupt the flow of energy that was often used in sensory techniques,'') Rui frowned.


    That was inconvenient.


    His long-range sensory techniques were dependent on air currents and seismic radiation. With those crippled, Rui would not be able to use those to sense past one floor to another, which would exin why much of the dungeon was simply shrouded in mystery.


    (''I need to find a way to bypass the sensory restrictions that prevent Martial Artists from being able to easily map out the dungeon¡­'') Rui''s eyes narrowed as thought of a few possibilities.


    Furthermore, with Kane''s abilities¡­


    (''It may not be impossible for us to clear the dungeon before any other force in the Shionel Dungeon¡­'') Rui''s eyes twinkled with interest.


    He continued to browse through all of the information that the Martial Union had collected for him. There was much to be studied.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 744 Goals

    ?


    Rui had spent the past few days going through all of the information that the Martial Union had gathered regarding the Shionel Dungeon. Thankfully, the Martial Union had organized and presented in a way that was quite user-friendly. Martial Artists were not known to be the brightest tool in the box, and intelligence management and processing was not their strongest point.


    Thus, the Martial Union first provided an extremely broad outline of all of the information present that was simple enough for even a child to understand. Theplexity slowly increased only if the Martial Union then further studied any particr aspect of the information provided.


    Of course, this was an unnecessary measure for Rui, but it did make things easier. He needed time to process all that information once he stored all of it in his Mind Pce. After all, memorizing it did not necessarily mean storing it.


    (''But before that, I should try and rify the goals and objectives of this little adventure¡­'') Rui narrowed his eyes.


    They weren''t going on a pic to the local hill, or anything like that. They were going to be partaking in an incredibly dangerous and risky adventure that could while stimting them and pushing them forward in their Martial Path, also take put them at grave risk and even kill them if they made a single mistake.


    Thus, they needed to make sure that they were aware of the risks and aware of what they were seeking.


    (''Kane doesn''t particrly seek anything asides from putting distance between himself and his family¡­ And he has a lot of trust in me so he''s willing to follow me along in pretty much anything I do. I shouldn''t take that trust for granted, and I should make sure that Kane not only doesn''t regret trusting me but also rejoices in doing so,'') Rui had resolved himself to make sure that would end up being the case.


    In which case, he needed to iron out exactly what their objectives were, and how they were going to achieve it.


    (''The first objective is to be the first to clear the dungeon after having explored the entirety of it,'') Rui smirked.


    Rui did not want to subject himself to a safer and more peaceful objective of simply exploring the dungeon at their own pace. That was boring and did not pressure him enough to gain meaningful experience or to stimte him to develop his Martial Art with even more individuality. He came here to get stronger, and only by holding himself to the highest standard could he possibly achieve that.


    This was not a light objective. He wanted to be the first to reach the extremities of the dungeon, both the tower dungeon and the underground dungeon.


    (''Second¡­ earn enough money to sustain long-term exploration of the dungeon¡­'') Rui concluded.


    Rui did not want to eat into his savings for months and months on end to sustain his little adventure, he wanted to make sure that he always had enough earnings from his little escapades, and then some. He wanted to make sure that he was earning as much as he would have had he been doing regr and normal missions.


    For now, these two objectives were good enough, and he wasn''t the only one who thought so either.


    "You want to be the first to explore and clear the entire dungeon?" Kane furrowed his eyebrows as he stared at Rui with scrutinizing eyes, looking for a hint of humor.


    ¦Ñ¦Á§ád¦Á---n?¦Ía| §ãom Even though he knew Rui was not joking.


    The two of them had agreed to meet at Kane''s little cottage in the town of Crene. Thetter did not feelfortable residing in the town of Hajin where his family''s main manor was. Although it wasn''t likely, if they got word that he was residing that close to them he would not be able to resist them.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    "That''s incredibly ambitious and incredibly difficult, you know that right?" Kane sighed, half resigned and half amused.


    "I''m aware," Rui nodded with a calm expression. "But that is the objective I have set for myself."


    "You do realize that you arepeting with many Martial Squires across the nation, right?" Kane sighed.


    "Of course," Rui snorted. "But we''ll win the race anyway."C0ntent ? 2024 (N/?)velDrama.Org.


    "Alright, I''m in," Kane shrugged. "You also said something about earning enough money to sustain our activities and still have enough to match the equivalent time spent inpleting normal missions?"


    Kane frowned. "That is really difficult, you know?"


    "We''re going to have to earn a lot of money, that''s all," Rui shrugged. "Shouldn''t be too hard considering how lucrative this adventure will be."


    Kane scratched his head as he thought about it. "Well, how do you n on doing that?"


    "There is the most straightforward way; we plunder a huge amount of esoteric mineral supplies and then sell them in the market."


    "Hmmm," Kane considered that possibility, before shrugging. "I guess that could work, but we''ll bepeting against people who will also be selling a ton of that stuff too, right?"


    "True," Rui admitted.


    In reality, he knew that there was a limit to how much they could earn with just the two of them. Yes, they could be considered geniuses, but at the end of the day, their actual Martial prowess was not shocking or anything of the sort. They did not possess too many advantages.


    "That''s one n that we could go with," Rui mentioned. "As of right now, I have another idea but¡­ it will take some time to confirm whether it is viable or it isn''t. I''ll also need toe up with a way to realistically achieve the first objective too so, this whole endeavor will require an immense amount of preparation, that is true without a doubt."


    Kane nodded. "I''ll work on a technique and grow stronger."


    "That is definitely on the list of things that I''m nning to do before we set out for the Shionel Dungeon," Rui nodded. "I have no intention of going there as weak as I am now.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 745 Monsters

    ?


    The two of them had settled on the basics of their objectives that meeting before Rui returned back to the town of Hajin quickly.


    He had a lot of work to do.


    (''I need to be more intimately familiar with the threats innate to the dungeon,'') Rui noted.


    He had memorized all the information about the various species that inhabited the floors of the dungeon. What he needed to do was intimately familiarize himself with them, their strengths and weaknesses, among other things.


    p¦Ánd¦Á---no¦Í?1,§ão§® ording to the information that the Martial Union had provided him, there were many powerful species living in the Shionel dungeon. There were triple-tusked catoblepas, a species that resembled buffalo that had fused with a dinosaur, warthog, and hippo. They were aggressive herbivorous creatures that aggressively attacked any threat.


    Their threat level was evaluated to be low-grade Squire level at most.


    However, their numbers made them difficult to deal with. ording to the information provided by the Martial Union, many a Martial Squire had fallen to their rampages due to an underestimation of them.


    One needed to deal with them with finesse rather than brute force unless one possessed a huge number of Martial Artists on one''s side.


    One of the species of the upper floors of the dungeon was the longfeather cinnamy bird species. These creatures tended to have a wingspan that was more than two meters long and were capable of rapid and swift flight thanks to it. They could even manipte the air currents to optimize their flight with their breathing in what eerily resembled a breathing technique.


    The problem was that these creatures were now much stronger than their previous baseline forms due to having consumed a lot of the esoteric substances making their way into the blood of the animals present through the food chain.


    What that meant was that Rui did not possess a good understanding of what was worth undertaking just yet by looking into the schrly literature regarding these species, at most, he would understand what the baseline performance of the monsters in the Shionel Dungeon would be.


    Most of the intelligence that the Martial Union provided was first-hand intelligence gathered by the internal Martial Squires of the Martial Union that were deployed to the Shionel Dungeon.


    These Martial Squires had fought the monsters of the Shionel Dungeon personally and had collected valuable information on their physical parameters, their lethality, and their approach tobat.


    Rui had an opportunity to study the avable data and chalk out solutions for them.


    Thankfully, it wasn''t as though each floor of the dungeon had its own brand new species, thankfully, that would be truly troublesome and would most likely stall the exploration of the dungeon by several extra years.


    That made his job of scouting the dangers of the dungeon easier since he had a lot less data to sift through to get what he needed. <novelsnext></novelsnext>


    He was doing this not only because it was better to be prepared than not to be, but also because it would be relevant to his next training phase and the next set of technology projects that he would be setting out to work on.


    Both Kane and himself hade to the agreement that they were unequipped to take on the Shionel Dungeon themselves at the moment. Thus they had both agreed to work on getting stronger so that they were more prepared to seed in their endeavor and able to handle the risks.


    Kane''s path forward was rtively simple. He was an evasive maneuvering specialist and used any and everything that could allow him to evade better, this included stealth. At the moment, the best thing he could offer was stealth. It was true that he had the VOID Step technique, as well as other stealth-oriented techniques to aid with his stealth, however, it was not invincible. Rui could still sense him, roughly to the degree that he had been able to sense him in their fight in the preliminary contest more than five years ago.


    Of course, Rui was special. His mind was vastly superior to every other Martial Artist, he possessed a cognition that was great enough to be able to resist Kane''s misdirection in addition to possessing three sensory techniques. Content (C) N?v/elDra/ma.Org.


    However, it was possible that there would be other Martial Artists that could sense Kane. He was not absolutely imperceptible even when this was taken into consideration.


    (''For example, if there is someone who has mastered the All-Seeing Eye,'') Rui noted.


    This was the only grade-ten sensory technique that he had evere across to this day. He had yet to meet anyone who had mastered it, the Martial Union did not sell such information, after all.


    Still, he would be a fool to assume that that was the one and only grade-ten sensory technique in existence that they could run to. Just how many countries were partaking in the Shionel dungeon exploration and raid?


    Who knows what kind of techniques mighte about?


    Of course, Rui was not too worried, even if there was a Martial Squire who possessed the ability to sense Kane, it wasn''t that big a deal. Considering how utterly titanic the Shionel Dungeon was in its size, the odds of Rui and Kane running into them were minuscule.


    Kane''s stealth was the key to mitigating their inability to confront too many monsters or hostile Martial Squire forces. Rui would have very little confidence in their ability to be the first to plunder and explore the rest of the dungeon without Kane.


    Still, there were other issues that Kane''s stealth would not be to ovee, he couldn''t possibly do everything himself.


    (''I can take it upon myself to ovee these issues,'') Rui nodded.


    He intended to on three more projects. This was his absolute limit to aplish in a standard training phase. He needed to make sure that each of the techniques that he would be developing would contribute to his Martial Art while staying true to his Martial Path and having high synergy, while also being geared to oveing the barriers and hurdles of the Shionel dungeon.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 746 Projects

    ?


    Would three techniques be enough to handle all of his problems? He wasn''t sure. He wasn''t able to predict the end oue of a project before he even started it. He could only do his best.


    So far, he had a seventy-five percent sess rate. Out of the four Martial Art projects that he had set out on, he had sessfullypleted three of them, while one of them had failed.


    That wasn''t too bad. He was sure that it was far higher than the average Martial Artist. He highly doubted anybody could create new techniques the likes of which no one had ever seen the way he did thanks to retaining the knowledge of his previous life.


    That was reason enough for confidence.


    He shook his head, putting aside such superfluous thoughts, before getting back to business.


    (''One of the biggest problems is the fact that Kane cannot maintain Void Step with two people forever,'') Rui sighed.


    Kane had once maintained it for twenty-four hours in their mission in the Commonwealth Duchy of Vinfrana in their mission to destroy the research on the Squire evolution breakthrough process. However, that was by himself. It was much more mentally strenuous to misdirect attention from not just himself but also Rui, who was also a Martial Squire.


    He would definitely need to take breaks in between. At that time, the two of them could potentially be overwhelmed by a peak Martial Squire or by greater numbers of Martial Squires, or monsters, since there were so many of them.


    Then there was also the fact that sensory techniques were hindered by the esoteric properties of the high-density esoteric mineral resources that were predominantly present across the entirety of the vegetation of the dungeon.


    He needed to find a way to ovee to obtain an unhampered sensory technique or some way of retaining his ability to sense through the sense-hampering vegetation.


    For that, he needed to figure out exactly why senses were being hampered.


    ording to the intelligence provided by the Martial Union. One''s sense of hearing was hampered the most. It was further revealed that sensory techniques based on air and the ground were also quite hindered inparison.


    Furthermore, sensory techniques based on perceiving heat were also highly hampered. The sense that was the most hampered after that was actually the sense of sight. For some reason, even peering through the tunnels was harder than it normally was and their range of vision had been reduced.


    ording to the Martial Union, the high density ofrge amounts of esoteric substances was disrupting the flow of energy through which senses and sensory techniques functioned.Content (C) N?v/elDra/ma.Org.


    (''The fact that even infrared vision and normal vision are being affected strongly suggests that the esoteric substances, or at least the ones that are present in this dungeon, can meddle with electromaic radiation,'') Rui concluded. After all, both those techniques relied on perceiving radiation.


    (''It''s quite likely that my Primordial Instinct will be hampered as well,'') Rui sighed.


    e¦Áglesnovel`c,om Primordial Instinct was a powerful technique that had great synergy with him. However, it was abat-oriented sensory technique, not a long-range technique geared toward surveince. Of course, it would still be immensely helpful in increasing his likelihood of survival, but he needed something else to be able to help gather information on the Shionel dungeon effectively. He could not afford to be able to go out in the dark inside such a dangerous dungeon.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    That was one area he could try and ovee with the help of a technique.


    (''Alright, that''s project number one,'')


    A project to develop a sensory technique that would allow him to surveilrger amounts of area despite the sensory jamming effect of the Shionel dungeon.


    (''As for the name¡­ Hm,'') Rui thought about it for a second. (''Let''s go with Project Eyespy.'')


    It was a cool quirky name that he took a liking to immediately.


    As for how he was going to go about this project, frankly, he wasn''t sure. This was the first time that he had started a project for developing a technique whose mechanics and principles he had not even a shred of an idea at this point in time. After all, this was the first time that he hade up with a project out of sheer need rather than an idea that could potentially lead to a project.


    This was the case even for his previous project.


    Project Wavp was born with a clear-cut idea for the mechanism of the technique. It relied on the ability to produce supersonic sound that allowed for two separate sound projectiles to meet and ovep in constructive resonance.


    The same could be said for his first three projects as well.


    For this project though, he had no idea what this technique was going to look like on any level. He just needed it toe to fruition.


    (''Well, I can work on it in a second after I figure out what I want to do with the remaining two project slots¡­'') Rui pushed it aside for the time being. He could work on it full-fledged once he began all three projects.


    The sensory issue was one of the biggest issues of the Shionel dungeon and was one of thergest contributing factors to why the exploration had stalled. With that out of the way, he could focus on handling another issue.


    (''The monsters,'') He sighed.


    The VOID algorithm was bad at counter monsters because the adaptive evolution model was not created to address non-human animals. He usually had to toss it out and rely on his ownbat sense and intuition as well as his reflexes and instincts to take them down.


    Considering that the Shionel Dungeon is infested with beasts and monsters, he could not afford to walk into such a dangerous ce with such a shoring. He needed a way to mitigate the threat of the beasts without the help of Kane''s stealth. Having a strong failsafe would greatly improve their chances of survival and sess.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 747 Success

    ?


    Thus, he decided that the goal of the second project would be to develop a technique that would allow him to drastically reduce the threat of beasts and monsters.


    It was a general goal, but it was vague as far as what he wanted the technique to look like. Even more so than Project Eyespy, after all, project Eyespy at least aimed to develop a sensory technique.


    He had no idea what category this technique would even fall into. It would require a huge amount of work regardless.


    As for the third project, he couldn''t necessarily think of anything too great right off the bat, the biggest two problems were already addressed by the previous two projects. While there were other smaller issues, there weren''t any that were on the magnitude of the previous two problems that he dedicated a project to.


    (''I should create a technique that is centered around maneuvering,'') Rui scratched his head, as he realized it had been a long time since he had improved his maneuvering.


    Thest time that he had improved his maneuvering was back when hepleted his first training phase in the Squire Realm a few years ago. He hadn''t improved his maneuvering since he had mastered Wind Breathing and Phantom Steps.


    His speed and agility were definitely more important in the Shionel Dungeon than his striking power or any other offensive parameter. Even his long-range offensive was not as important as his ability to outrun his enemies.


    (''Furthermore, if I''m too slow, I''ll hold back Kane as well,'') He sighed.


    Kane was extremely fast. Barring the absolute fastest creatures in the dungeon, none of the creatures would probably be able to keep up with him, especially when his stealth came around.


    However, this was not the case with Rui. He was not a particrly high-speed Martial Artist, as unfortunate as it was. And Kane was not the type to leave hisrades behind. Especially when it came to Rui, the two of them were really close and Rui knew that Kane was willing to die fighting by his side than run away by himself.


    It was precisely because of that that Rui had toe up with a way to ensure that at the very least he wouldn''t hold Kane back too much. He refused to be the reason that his best friend died, he would rather die alone.


    (''Thus a technique that improves my speed and agility is worth looking into,'') Rui nodded.


    He sighed.


    All three of these projects were born out of necessity, rather than an idea. This made them more difficult to go through with than his earlier projects.


    (''It''s hard to know where to begin,'') Rui sighed.


    Suddenly, hisms device began ringing.


    [Fae]


    Rui''s eyes lit up in delight. (''She made it!'')<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    While Rui and Kane had gone away for his mission, Fae had reached the peak of the Apprentice Realm before finally achieving the conditions for Squire candidacy and going for the Squire evolution breakthrough procedure during the end of Rui''s diplomatic mission.


    Rui had long supplied her with his customized Mind Switch technique that he had chosen to dub Hungry Pain, and after mastering it she had immediately gone for the Squire evolution breakthrough process.


    "Fae!" Rui greeted her with a delighted smile. "Long time no see, how did it go?"


    "Hello Rui," She smiled at him. "ording to the doctors, the process went wlessly, all of my tests and results havee back just fine with no issues orplications, it seems."


    Rui could sense the relief in her tone, he could sympathize too.


    The Squire evolution breakthrough process was not perfect. The possibility forplications, minor and serious, as well as death, existed. Furthermore, the Martial Artist was utterly helpless in this situation, and could only trust the medical team and hope for the best. A single stroke of bad luck could end a career.


    Rui took a good look at her new Martial body. Even though they weren''t face-to-face, he could sense tremendous power within her entire body. She most certainly chose a configuration that maximized her striking power, more than anything else. Furthermore, with the Hungry Pain version of the Mind Switch technique, she had ess to far greater power than a baby Martial Squire like her ought to have ess to. Rui had the power of a grade-two Martial body of his configuration from the very get-go due to the extra energy and power that the autophagy process had naturally supplied to the body.


    There was no doubt that despite breaking through to the Squire Realm extremely recently, her Martial body probably had the power of a grade-three body even as of this moment. When she finally got around to mastering techniques, she would probably blow the minds of everybody in her Martial Family, her status as the heir of the Duhan Family was guaranteed.


    "That''s great to hear," Rui nodded. "So what are your ns from here on out?"


    e¦Áglesn?¦Íel Rui was d to have contributed a little to her cherished dream.


    (''She''s grown more beautiful too,'') Rui noted. (''Good for Kane, hehe.'')


    "I have the need to master new techniques, of course," She replied. "But before that, I need to finish the Squire habilitation phase."Content (C) N?v/elDra/ma.Org.


    "Right, good luck with that," Rui smiled, noting her wearing the power suppression suit that she needed to wear for her training. "What about after that?"


    "I haven''t entirely decided, however, I do suppose the basics would be to start undertaking basic Squire-level missions, correct? I do need experience withbat in the Squire Realm, so I should focus on sparring a lot as well."


    "You''re going to need to develop your own techniques as well," Rui reminded her. "No more simply learning existing techniques verbatim, not if you don''t want your rate of growth to stall, and lose any chance of bing a Martial Squire.


    "True," She nodded at him. "I have learned of the importance of individuality in one''s Martial Art once one bes a Martial Squire."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 748 Idea

    ?


    "By the way, Kane told me that the two of you are nning on an outing to the Shionel Dungeon, though he also told me to keep it a secret," She told him. "I must admit that I''m rather frustrated at my inability to partake. Even if I finished my Squire habilitation at this very moment, I would be far too weak to even consider participating in the Shionel Dungeon exploration and plunder raid. Quite unfortunate, really."


    Rui raised an eyebrow. He didn''t know Kane was close enough to her that he would confide that in her. It seems that their rtionship was going better than he had expected.


    The two had always bickered back when they were all in the academy. Yet despite that, Rui felt that they always had an affinity for each other.


    "He told you that, did he?" Rui smirked. "Heh."


    "My, what is that supposed to mean?" She asked with a raised eyebrow.


    "Not much¡­ I guess he must really trust you," Rui smiled. "The two of you must have a close rtionship."


    "We do not," She inly stated.


    "Is that so, it seems I''m mistaken then," He smirked even more. "Not that it''s a problem of any sort, kids like yourselves ought to get along."


    "I''m older than you," Her eyebrows furrowed.


    "Ah right," Rui smiled wryly. "Still, don''t mind me. It''s just a nice thing to see."


    "What is?"


    "You know, his intimate trust in you¡­"


    "Listen here you. First of all, we don''t¡­"


    Ruiughed as she grilled him for it. Her exaggerated response only made her look more suspicious. No one would want to deny something this benign if it wasn''t true.


    Half an hour,ter, he managed to end the conversation,ughing all the way.


    "Alright, I need to get to work," He smiled.


    The three projects Eyespy, Monster Spray, and Keep Up With Kane were set in stone. He felt rather depressed looking at their names, but his creativity sucked when it came to things like this.


    He began with the first one.


    (''The intelligence of the Martial Union makes it clear that the Shionel Dungeon disrupts and jams flow of energy in general,'') Rui quickly analyzed all of it.


    Techniques like Seismic Mapping and Tempestuous Feel relied on currents and vibrations across the ground to infer information on their surroundings. This would naturally be quite suppressed if the Shionel Dungeon did not allow for kic energy to flow through its structure in the form of waves through the air or the ground. <novelsnext></novelsnext>


    Furthermore, techniques that involve perceiving temperature have also been reported to be suppressed, in addition to normal vision as well. From that Rui could infer that the Shionel Dungeon''s jamming of energy flow was not limited to just kic vibrations, but also included radiation.


    e¦Áglesn?¦Íel These covered an overwhelming majority of techniques. Only techniques that explicitly relied on sensing matter such as the sense of smell were less affected.


    (''Smellcks the precision and uracy at the Squire level to navigate the entirety of the Shionel Dungeon, unfortunately,'') Rui sighed.


    This made things really rough, there wasn''t a single sensory technique that he had evere across that did not rely on perceiving some form of phenomena that ultimately involved the flow of energy between the user of the sensory technique and the object being sensed by that technique.


    It was almost as though the Shionel Dungeon was the very antithesis of sensing itself. He was encountering a very difficult dilemma.


    There were almost no sensory mechanisms and principles that he could use to sense arge amount of area.


    (''I bet Martial Artists with immensely powerful smell and taste senses are probably being heavily sought after in the dungeon,'') Rui noted.


    However, he did not think that these Martial Artists possessed the ability to sense vast chunks of the dungeon by merely sense and smell. That was probably a feat that could not be achieved at the Squire level.


    (''Maybe there is some obscure grade-ten smelling technique out there that maybe one Martial Squire in the modern era has managed to master, but that individual alone is not going to be able to influence the exploration and raid rate of the entire dungeon by themselves,'')


    What he needed was something new that utilized his knowledge and mental ability to be able to sense despite the sensory jamming effects of the Shionel Dungeon.


    (''If it jams energy flow then¡­ perhaps I need a way of essing information of my target without a flow of energy from my target and myself,'') Rui mused. (''At the very least, there can''t be a direct flow of energy.'')


    Suddenly, Rui''s eyes widened as an interesting idea popped into his mind. A way that, if sessful, could hypothetically allow him to sense the entireyout of the Shionel Dungeon within a certain range. C0ntent ? 2024 (N/?)velDrama.Org.


    Yet his vigor immediately cooled down when he realized that his idea was probably far too crazy, it was frankly ridiculous.


    (''All mass and energy warp space-time ording to the General Theory of Rtivity¡­ if there existed a way to detect the warps in space¡­ then maybe I could use that to read theyout of arge chunk of the Shionel Dungeon.'') Rui wasn''t too enthusiastic about this idea.


    It seemed too insane, even for the Martial Art techniques of this world. What he was attempting to do was something that even technology back on Earth had not yet aplished. However, he knew that this principle was used in astronomy.


    If¡­ he had no idea how, but if he could somehow find a way to sense the curvature of space¡­


    (''It would be game-changing, frankly,'') Rui knew that.


    It would probably be one of the most revolutionary sensory techniques in the Squire Realm. He highly doubted that any other Martial Squire across the entire continent could possibly have such a technique.


    (''There''s a good reason for that, however,'') Rui mused. (''It is an insanely difficult challenge, one that I''m not going to find easy to ovee.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 749 Esoteric

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    Rui considered the matter deeply. Frankly, this was the only hypothetical way he hade up with at the moment. The task before him was so difficult that he couldn''t even begin toe up with a way that could allow him to sense the curvature of space. Even if he could, it didn''t necessarily mean that he couldprehend it.Content (C) N?v/elDra/ma.Org.


    He had taken the General Theory of Rtivity as an elective in his bachelor''s degree and had been fascinated by the subject. He had never had to the entirety of all topics that could fall under the umbre of the General Theory of Rtivity, but he had learned the core theory itself, and based on what he understood of it, it could hypothetically serve as a way of perceiving the world.


    The concept of the theory was simple in a qualitative sense. Einstein had one daye to the realization that if one were in an elevator with no windows or any way to perceive the outside world, then one would not be able to distinguish between uniform motion with a constant velocity, and being stationary. The only way we distinguished whether we were in motion or not was by looking at the outside world.


    He found that this could be extended to all kinds of motions in general. Who could say whether one was moving while the world was stationary, or whether one was stationary while the world was moving?


    Einstein was quite satisfied with the notion until he realized that it was not universally true. There was one phenomenon that disagreed; gravity, it did not adhere to this principle. One could not say that falling objects were stationary while the world was moving due to the fact that gravitational forces caused a squeezing effect due to what is known as tidal forces. Thus one could distinguish between being pulled by gravity towards a and the moving towards one due to the squeezing effect present in the former. Einstein wiggled his way around by stating that gravity warped space and time in a manner that squeezed nearby bodies, which exined the phenomenon well while still being consistent with the principle of rtivity.


    It was precisely this curvature of space and time that Rui was hoping to use to try and estimate the mass, volume, position, and distribution of mass.


    Still, he had no way at this point in time.


    (''I don''t have a way to sense space curvature, that is the biggest issue, if I could just somehowe to sense it, with my knowledge of the field equations of general rtivity, I cane to be able to understand and decipher it¡­'')


    e¦Áglesn?¦Íel Unfortunately, to this day, he still had no idea, even theoretically, how would one develop any ability to sense curvature in space? It wasn''t even as though there were any substances on the periodic table that were especially reactive to gravity.


    The periodic table contained every known element to mankind, and their susceptibility to gravity was not high enough for Rui to be able to aplish that. No known element on Earth would suffice.


    "Wait a minute¡­"


    Rui''s eyes widened as he realized he had discounted another possibility.


    (''Even if no element on the periodic table can work¡­ what about substances that chemistry from Earth cannot ount for?'')<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    There were such substances on the Panama Continent.


    (''Esoteric materials and substances fall outside the norm in all ways and manners!'') A grin formed on his face. (''This whole problem was caused by esoteric substances in the first ce! I can fight fire with fire, maybe I can solve this problem with other esoteric substances!'')


    Specifically, what he was hoping for was some sort of esoteric substance that was highly reactive to gravity or space curvature. He wasn''t sure whether such an esoteric substance existed, but he wouldn''t be surprised. These strange substances had already done things that defied physics before, or the field of physics that he was aware of at the stage it was on back when he was alive on Earth.


    Thus the possibility that there perhaps existed one kind of esoteric substance that would exhibit some kind of reaction to different kinds of gravity was not low.


    (''I need to consult someone on this,'') Rui immediately thought of Julian.


    Although Julian had focused on the field of research on Martial Artists, he had also spent a good amount of time on research in the fields of esoteric science, there was a good chance that he would be able to point Rui in the right direction.


    This was one of the best advantages of having someone like Julian around. Unfortunately, Rui was not familiar with esoteric science, he had no background in the field after all.


    He had never had an interest in pursuing it either, although he was fascinated by what these strange substances were capable of, as well as how and why, ultimately he was far too invested and dedicated to his Martial Path.


    Any time spent on learning esoteric science was time that was not spent on Martial Art, and to Rui, that was an uneptablepromise.


    Martial Art always had toe first. There was no point in general in learning about esoteric material science either since he had no intention of bing a scientist. Though, he knew that if he mastered esoteric science in conjugation with his existing general theoretical and non-esoteric science, in time he would be capable of wonders that could only be seen in science fiction movies. He could probably revolutionize the world into a level of technology that made even the cutting-edge engineers of the twentieth-first century of Earth look like primitive cavemen.


    But, he had no intention of going down that route. Perhaps he would have had Martial Art not existed in this world, but s, it did. And thus the fate of the world changed when Rui on the career choice that Rui made neen years ago when he arrived in this world.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 750 Help

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    "An esoteric substance orpound that reacts to gravity?" Julian frowned. "Such things do exist but¡­ Why on Gaia could you poss-"


    "They exist?!" Rui''s grin was wide.


    Julian frowned as he furrowed his eyebrows, taking a good look at his younger brother. Usually, he possessed quite aposed temperament. Even at an extremely young age, Rui demonstrated the serene patience that one would really only see in the elderly.


    The only exceptions were when a matter was rted to Martial Art, then for some reason, he became as excited as a child.


    Julian had no doubt that whatever this was, this had to be rted to his Martial Art. Not even all the wealth in the world could shake Rui''sposure as much as his passion for Martial Art did.


    "Yes¡­ They do, or at least that is what seems to be the case with many of them. As you know, we mostly test hypotheses with experiments, and there are esoteric substances where the only reasonable prevailing hypothesis is that they are especially reactive and susceptible to gravity," Julian exined.


    "Brilliant!" Rui grew absorbed in his own thoughts.


    "¡­Why exactly are you seeking esoteric substances that are especially reactive to gravity?" Julian raised an eyebrow, he couldn''t help but be curious.


    This was not the first time that Rui had consulted Julian before, yet he was usually a lot moreposed, even if energetic.


    Thest time that Julian had seen Rui exhibiting this kind of energy was when Rui had returned home from a mission after receiving a message informing him that Julian had finishedpiling his exnation and report on the research data that Rui had brought from the Commonwealth Duchy of Vinfrana and had tranted himself.


    "I''m trying to develop a technique that allows me to sense my environment through the forces of gravity that the environment generates," Rui sighed.


    When exining it to Julian, he used a different model of gravity; the Newtonian model of gravity which stated that gravity was a force and not a war in space-time like it was in Einstein''s General Theory of Rtivity.


    The reason for that was that he was absolutely confident that the theoretical physics of this world had not reached a stage where such a theory existed, so even if he told Julian, he would probably get a bewildered look.


    "Ick a fundamental way to sense gravity itself," Rui sighed. "If there are esoteric substances that are reactive to gravity, then it is possible for me to integrate them into a technique and figure out a way to use them to sense my environments."


    "That''s¡­ ambitious," Julian cautiously murmured. "It is possible that what you are going for may very well be impossible, you know?"


    "That''s always a possibility for every endeavor I undertake," Rui replied calmly, unfazed. "Now, can you help me out with these esoteric substances brother, please?"


    "Of course, it will take me a while because I don''t know all of them off of the top of my head since it is a little outside of my field of expertise, but I can get your data on them within a week for sure. From there you''ll be able to handle yourself, right?"


    "Of course," Rui grinned. "Thanks a ton, brother, you''re awesome. See youter."<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    "Good luck."


    And just like that Rui disappeared from his seat, leaving Julian chuckling. Usually, Rui didn''t use his super speed inside the house, since it was scary and startling to everybody.


    "He must be extremely excited¡­" Julian smiled, amused and resigned.


    He was right.


    Rui was quite excited to get his hands on the data that Julian had promised to get him. However, until then, he did not intend to sit still. He had other projects to work on.


    (''Project Monster Repent and Project Keep Up With Kane are not going to be easy,'') Rui sighed.


    He did not ask Julian about the former because zoology had never been a focus of his. Rui would need to do his own research on the matter.


    (''What I need is a technique that uses my strengths to grant me an effective solution against monsters of their caliber,'') Rui noted.


    His strengthsy in the parts of battles and techniques that employed mental faculties. Thus techniques that provided great results while having high demands of, or burdens on his mental faculties were what he was looking to create.


    (''The first issue is that there is a great variety in the fauna of the Shionel Dungeon, thus I cannot create a technique that is highly customized to focus on particr species, I need to exploit traits that these monsters all share. There are many species in the Shionel Dungeon, and trying to create a technique for only one of them is pointless, and creating separate techniques for all of them is highly impractical.'') Rui sighed. He needed to create something that was effective against all of the monsters. Even if it was less effective against each species than a technique that was created only to deal with one species, it was more useful to Rui.


    This means that he had to focus on a technique that used a mechanism that applied to almost all monsters.


    This narrowed it down considerably.


    (''Massively superhuman physical prowess, affected by esoteric substances in their bodies, and low intelligence¡­'') Rui immediately came up with three traits that matched all of them.


    If he could somehow use all of them against the monsters with a technique that requires a lot of brainpower to produce great results that he would not be able to reproduce always, then that would be extremely convenient.


    e¦Áglesn?¦Íel (''I don''t think I can really use their superhuman physical capabilities against them, those are inly huge disadvantages for me¡­ But the other two¡­'') Rui smiled as a few ideas came to mind.Property ? 2024 N0(v)elDrama.Org.


    The matter surrounding low intelligence was easier to exploit. Low intelligence meant it was easier to trap and fool, Rui absolutely intended to use it to whatever degree he could.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 751 Classified

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    For example, simple misdirection would be way more effective against almost all of them based on the intelligence that he had bought from the Martial Union. The kind of tactics that he would never use against an adult human because humans were intelligent enough to see through tantly obvious tactics unless they were mentally challenged.


    Thus Rui could be a lot less stringent on the quality of his tactics as long as he was cautious and careful despite that.


    Though he highly doubted their lowered intelligence alone was enough to develop a technique that allowed him to be extremely effective against them by itself.


    (''Which means I need to exploit the fact that they have somehow integrated esoteric substances into their bodies.'') Rui concluded.


    This would require some research on Rui''s part. One thing he needed to was gathered more detailed information on the esoteric substances andpounds that the beasts had ingested, turning them into monsters.


    If he was not wrong, then there likely was something about these esoteric substances being in their blood that he could exploit to use against them.


    eaglesnov?1,§ão§® STEP


    That was why he was currently standing before the Martial Union, once again. He needed the data they had on the esoteric substances that were abundant in the Shionel Dungeon and in the monsters of the dungeon as well.


    He quickly headed towards the Martial exchange counter after having passed the security check-ins.


    "Excuse me, but I would like to purchase esoteric material science information and data on the following esoteric substances andpounds," He addressed an employee before handing her a list of the following substances andpounds.


    She took the list, before turning to him.


    "May I see your Martial license, sir?"


    Rui obliged, before receiving it back after she verified his identity.


    "Unfortunately, this will take some time to confirm and procure, some of the data you have requested, while within your confidentiality clearance requires some due processing regarding approval," She informed him.


    Rui sighed.


    He had half-expected that. When it came to information that wasn''t rted to Martial Art and also around strategic matters, it wouldn''t be so easy to gain ess to information.


    Just based on her reply alone, Rui had inferred that the esoteric substances andpounds that were highly abundant in the Shionel Dungeon were probably quite important significant, and were of strategic importance.


    Basically, he was probably asking for something close to the equivalent of data and information on radioactive isotopes and their applications. Such information could allow one to develop nuclear technology which was detrimental to the one providing the information.


    Thus, he wasn''t necessarily surprised when he learned of the restrictions.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    "That''s unfortunate, how long will the process take?" Rui asked.


    "It should happen within twenty-four hours, sir," She informed him. "We will notify you if and when it is approved and you will be able to ess the information through your ounter,"


    "I see, thank you," Rui sighed before taking his leave.


    (''The first two projects are a little stalled by the dy of information, but it''s fine, I need to dedicate time towards the third project as well, after all.'') Rui noted.


    Project Keep Up With Kane was not going to be easy. Kane was extremely fast, even if Rui could not match his top speed, he needed to at least be able to keep up with Kane''s run.


    (''A technique that improves my travel speed is definitely worth it,'')


    Currently, his top speed was born from abination of Wind Breathing, Outer Convergence applied to run, and Parallel Walk, which he had managed to naturally adapt to the Squire Realm over the years. It was one of the first techniques he had ever learned and it had been with him for a long time.


    Yet even these three techniques were nothing but slowpokespared to Kane, he needed an extra technique that, together with the others, would allow him to keep up.


    He also had the advantage that his body was more mature in the Squire Realm due to having spent more time in the Squire Realm, though Kane''s Martial body is dedicated to speed and motion countered that advantage. That left theparison of techniques, where Kane would still win when it came to travel speed.


    (''I need to figure out the general nature of the technique,'') Rui mused. (''Unfortunately, in this case, I don''t think my mental faculties can possibly help me.'')


    Content (C) N?v/elDra/ma.Org.


    This was because running was not a mentally strenuous or demanding activity, thus there was really no area for his mental faculties to shine.


    (''That''s a shame, but my mind isn''t the only thing special about me,'')


    He had also inherited his scientific background from his previous life. This wouldn''t be the first time that he''s developed a technique centered around a scientific principle that wasn''t known yet in this world.


    (''Still, what principle can be applied here to create a maneuvering technique?'') Rui''s mind brushed through his scientific acumen, which took a lot of time due to how much of it he had.


    (''Maybe something from human anatomy or physiology?'') Rui frowned.


    Unfortunately, the relevance of his knowledge of human physiology and anatomy had lost a lot of its value ever since he had be a Martial Squire and had be an evolved human being.


    Unfortunately, the fact that he was no longer a homo sapien meant that he could not entirely apply the knowledge he had on homo sapiens to his body. At the very least, he needed to extensively test whatever it was that he hoped still applied to his body. Because any project based on human biology had a chance of failing miserably due to how evolved past human limits his body was at this point in time.


    It was a shame because there were a lot of cool techniques that he could think of at this point in time that could work really well with the human body with the experience that he had with creating new techniques. He found it to be a real shame.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 752 Drag

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    (''It really is a shame because had I possessed the knowledge and experience with creating techniques that I possess now, back when I was a Martial Apprentice, I would havee up with a lot more techniques that would have been quite amazing at the Apprentice-level,'')


    Unfortunately, in the Apprentice Realm, his familiarity with the concept of individuality was iparably lower than it was today as a Martial Squire. Back then he underestimated the importance of it as far as creating techniques that progressed one''s Martial Path due to the individuality and creating techniques that werepatible with his Martial Path and his Martial Body.


    Back then he had been too fascinated with the techniques that the Martial Union possessed and had still been exploring what Martial Art was even capable of in the first ce. By the time he had obtained enough experience and understanding of Martial Art and Martial Art techniques, he had already reached the peak of the Apprentice Realm when he created the Hungry Pain technique, his altered version of the Mind Switch technique.


    (''Maybe I can create techniques for Max and Mana,'') Rui shrugged.


    Given the fact that he had a good understanding of their Martial Paths and had already made updated predictive models for their Martial Art in the Apprentice Realm.


    (''I could potentially create techniques that have a high affinity and synergy with them but¡­'') Rui sighed


    They would gain zero individuality from such a technique, even if it made their immediate power jump, it would hinder their long-term growth.


    The Martial Academy gave them enough support and help, he did not want to give them anymore.


    After all, none of the Martial Families of the Martial Apprentices at school ever intervened to boost their growth at school. Not even Fae''s family, a prestigious and powerful Martial Family in the Kandrian Empire.


    (''Anyways, putting that thought aside, I should focus on getting the third project off while the first two stall,'') Rui focused. (''For now, I guess I can focus on exploring the potential ways I can improve my speed.'')


    He had ruled out biological mechanisms, which left him with physics for the most part. He highly doubted that there was anything in chemistry that could help him, he was never that good with it in the first ce either.


    (''Physics it is,'')


    Could he somehow increase the efficiency of the power used to elerate his body? It would result in a greater force that would increase his eleration and top speed.


    (''Hm, I can''t think of any good way to do that.'')


    It was true that the human body was not the most efficient, but his movements had already been quite refined as they would for quite some time, and no principle of physics he could think of could improve that at the moment.


    (''If I can''t increase the force that propels me forward, then maybe I can decrease the hurdles that hamper my speed,'') Rui wondered. <novelsnext></novelsnext>


    Friction was something that opposed all motion fundamentally, but it was actually not something that was bad in this case. It was quite necessary. Without the friction of the ground, people would not be able to even stand straight.


    However, that was not the only kind of friction that opposed movements. There was also the friction generated by the atmosphere known as drag.


    e¦Áglesnovel`c,om Drag was inconsequential to slower movements, that''s why normal humans did not notice it on a daily, but it became more relevant the faster one was. This was because the drag was proportional to the square of the speed of the body experiencing the drag. Meaning, if one became twice as fast as before, drag would be four times greater than before. If one grew to be thrice as fast as before, then drag would be nine times greater than before.


    Now, what would happen if a human ran one thousand times faster than before?


    Drag would follow through and be a literal one million times greater than what they would be experiencing before.


    That is the situation that Martial Squires had found themselves in. They experienced a drag that was millions of times greater than what normal humans experienced. What was a pleasant breeze to thetter, was an oppressive force and a wall that constantly opposed their motion.


    (''What if I created a technique that mitigated that?'') Rui''s eyes lit up with interest.


    If he could, he would be substantially faster due to theck of resistance. The only question was how would he go about manipting the air such that the air would no longer hinder him. The problem was that he didn''t know of a way to do that.


    (''Breathing techniques!'') Rui''s eyes lit up with excitement as he finally came up with an idea that was exciting enough to have him fully motivated. (''Breathing techniques allow for extensive maniption of the air!'')


    He was quite confident that it was possible to do what he was looking to aplish.


    (''What if I go further than just getting air resistance out of the way?'') The idea further developed in his mind. (''What if I make the air not just not hind my movements, but also propel me forward?'')


    This was where he was entering dicey territory, he had to admit that he had no idea whether this was possible or not for the most part.


    (''Then I''ll have to get to exploring and testing existing breathing technique models and see if it is possible to manipte the air in such a way that I can erase air resistance and instead, have the atmosphere propel me forward towards the direction that I want to move in.


    (''This probably still won''t be enough to beat Kane,'') Rui noted. As long as Kane had the Godspeed technique, he would forever be ahead of Rui as far as peak speed went and was still beyond Rui''s reach even without it, but Rui was content not being embarrassingly slowpared to him in travel.Content ? N?velDrama.Org 2024.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 753 Experimentation

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    Ironically, he figured out the mechanism and the principle of the technique of Project Keep Up With Kane earlier than he did the other projects despite focusing on itst.


    (''If I''m able to use a breathing technique to get rid of the air resistance, then that would be perfect. But really, the only way to get rid of air resistance is to get rid of the air or get rid of thews of physics,'') Rui sighed.


    Thetter was out of the question. Although Martial Artists seemed like they broke thews of physics on Earth, it had be clear to Rui that this was not the case. Just that thews of physics had an additional element beyond what he just knew that allowed Martial Artists to perform ridiculously superhuman feats without breaking thews of physics.


    Not even Martial Artists vited thews of physics, and not even Martial Artists could warp reality. At least, none that he had ever seen thus far were capable of such feats.


    Thus, for now, he could only think about the former.


    (''Getting rid of air in my path; in other words a vacuum,'') Rui''s eyes lit up. (''That''s definitely quite practical inparison. After all, all breathing animals do that to a certain extent.'')


    When inhaling, the part of the air closest to the nose or mouth would immediately be sucked in, and for just the briefest of moments, there would be a small vacuum or area with less air density before the atmosphere would refill the area and return it to normal air density.


    That was the limit to what ordinary humans could do, but that limit was irrelevant to Martial Squires like Rui.


    (''Creating a vacuum before me would not only help with getting rid of air resistance, it would also elerate me due to the pressure difference,'')


    The air was constantly exerting pressure in all directions, the reason it was rarely noticed was that the same air pushed back against itself in the opposite direction on the other side of the body, air on the opposite sides pushing against each other.


    Yet what would happen if the air in front of Rui was removed, and only the air behind him was pushing him?


    He would not only be unhampered by air but would also end up being elerated by it.


    (''Brilliant! I have to start immediately,'') Rui grew even more excited.Content (C) N?v/elDra/ma.Org.


    He needed to work out the mechanism that he would be using for the breathing technique.


    Normally, he would need to purchase a technique from the Martial Union that possessed principles and mechanisms somewhat to what he was looking for, then master them and then finally adapt and change them to be a fit building block for his new technique.


    This was time-consuming, he would also have to return to the Martial Union after just having returned from it. <novelsnext></novelsnext>


    Thankfully, he did not feel the need to do that this time.


    He mastered many breathing techniques throughout the years. Harmonic Breathing, Final Breathing, Wind Breathing, and the breathing techniques used in Tempestuous Ripple technique he had mastered as a Martial Apprentice, the breathing mechanism in the Sonic Bullet technique as well as the Mighty Roar sh st technique from the G''ak''arkan Tribe.


    Together, these had given him a good understanding of how to manipte the skies with one''s breath. As long as he dedicated enough time to trial and error and continued to make enough progress down this path, he was confident that he would develop a sound and viable breathing technique mechanism that suited his needs.


    eaglesnov?1,§ão§® As long as he wasn''t too unlucky anyway.


    He secluded himself in the forests of the Mantian Region as he dedicated himself to refining his breathing to learn to create the vacuum that he was looking forward to.


    He tried varying his inhtion between different speeds, forces, angles, and patterns, making observations regarding the oues of each experiment.


    (''Inhaling through the nose seems universally less effective than that of the mouth when ites to creating vacuums or areas of less air density,'') Rui noted as he ruled out the former. (''Which means that I''ll have to create the vacuum with my mouth.'')


    He had run into several issues when doing that. He wasn''t inhaling air swiftly enough while in motion to be able to create a sustained vacuum before him. Furthermore, he wasn''t able to iste it to just the area right in front of his body making contact with him, instead, he inadvertently created areas of less air density momentarily that were spread over a wider area.


    These were the two issues that he needed to focus on, otherwise, he had no hope of formting the technique that he was looking for.


    While he inhaled with his mouth for being able to create the vacuum the way he desired better, he exhaled through his nose, pushing the air down rather than forward. If he exhaled with his mouth, then he would generate a recoil pushing him back and obstructing his sprint.


    Pushing it downward would have no effect on his horizontal speed.


    He grew so absorbed in the training that he had secluded himself a for a week, relying only on food pills and Hungry Pain''s autophagy to sustain himself the entire time.


    In just a week, he had mademendable progress.


    (''This technique will take less time than the remaining two projects,'') Rui had already realized that. Not only had hepleted the theoretical structure of the technique fully, but he had also taken a step or two, albeit the easiest, towardspleting the technique. In fact, he was quite certain that Project Keep Up With Kane would take the least amount of time to bepleted in all the projects he had attempted.


    The other two projects were moreplicated, and most likely would require much more extensive research since they required knowledge outside of his knowledge base and would most likely require more extensive research and experimentation.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 754 Candidates

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    He was quite satisfied with the progress that the had made in a week. It was very rare that he would flush through so much of the process of creating a technique from the very get-go. The beginning was usually the slowest and the hardest, fleshing out the technique from a simple idea.


    He returned back home after a week, before heading straight to Julian''s room.


    "So you''vee back," Julian gave him an amused smile. "Right on time too, that''s why I assured everybody you would be back within the week. I know you wouldn''t want to dy getting your hands on this even by a single minute."


    Rui smiled wryly, not addressing that. "Thanks, brother. Much appreciated."Content ? N?velDrama.Org 2024.


    He took the documents that Julian handed to him.


    They were quite thick, all in all. Rui would need to spend quite some time reading them. It seemed as though Julian had not held back on the amount of information that he had extracted.


    Of course, this was no doubt that Julian was quite confident that Rui would have no problem absorbing all the information. Despite being a Martial Artist, Rui possessed the most powerful mind that he had evere across.


    Rui bade him goodbye before isting himself in his room and taking a good look at the documents present before him.


    It was quite likely that the information present in these documents would decide the oue of Project Eyespy. He highly doubted that there was any recourse beyond the idea that led him to get Julian topile data about esoteric substances andpounds that were highly reactive to gravity in some way or the other.


    Rui opened up the document at the top.


    "Oh¡­?" He raised an eyebrow. (''He''s given me a run down on esoteric material science as a field of science before actually diving into the information that I requested. That''s actually quite useful.'')


    The document spoke about the basics of esoteric material science. The field of science was essentially dedicated to substances, materials, andpounds whose properties and fundamental nature were aplete mystery.


    Thus, the only thing that all substances and materials that were deemed as ''esoteric'' had inmon were that they were strange in nature andrgely a mystery.


    (''That probably means that radioactive isotopes would also be considered an esoteric substance,'') Rui mused with intrigue.


    The world had many strangepounds and substances that had all kinds of strange and bizarre properties. Until they were understood, they would be considered esoteric substances.


    "Interesting¡­"


    The document then went on toy out the ways in which esoteric substances were ssified. It turned out the field was even more sophisticated than he had ever given it credit. They had truly approached it with the scientific method; the principle of scientific induction.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    Rui briefly familiarized himself with the basics before jumping into the empirical data surrounding the many esoteric substances, the information around which Julian had given Rui.


    [Freren Ore]


    Freren ore was an ore that was abundant across the continent. It was tough while still sufficiently ductile and malleable to have widespread applications in esoteric engineering. It was ssified as an esoteric substance because its state be increasingly less solid and tended towards bing a liquid, the higher it was above sea level for reasons that were not understood.


    It even turned into a gas at extreme altitudes.


    Rui''s eyes rose in interest. ording to the document, one of the prevailing hypotheses was that its state of matter was, for some unknown reason, tied to gravitational force. This would principally exin why its state of matter changed with altitude.


    It was previously suspected that air pressure was the reason for a change in its state of matter, yet when subjected to vacuum through Martial Art techniques, its state of matter remained unchanged. Since then, the hypothesis has been considered to be disproved.


    "Interesting¡­" Rui skimmed through the document. There had been many many such experiments that had been conducted for freren to disprove or provide evidence for many hypotheses and theories, at the end of the day, it seemed that gravity was the most likely exnation based on all the data and evidence there was at hand.


    "It''s interesting¡­ but, probably not usable," Rui sighed.


    e¦Áglesn?¦Íel Of course, this was not too disappointing. It would be awfully convenient if the very first esotericpound he ran into was the solution to all of his problems. He was a realist in that regard.


    There were dozens of such documents for dozens of esoteric substances.


    He intended to go through all of them very carefully and ensure that he had not left a single stone unturned. He did not want to read this more than once, after having already inputted all the information into his Mind Pce.


    [Grainer Pollen]


    It was an organicpound that was repelled by gravity, rather than being attracted towards it. This hypothesis was arrived at after many continuous experiments, the same as with Freren.


    It moved away from gravity regardless of temperature and pressure, this applied to both the gravity of Gaia and the Sun, but also other objects with their own minute gravitational fields. The second existing hypothesis was that it was repelled by radiation rather than gravity, but this was contradicted by the fact that it was repelled away from the Earth than it was from the sun. This strongly implied that electromaic radiation was not what caused it to have motion in the direction furthest away from the source of electromaic radiation.


    (''This one¡­ might be a little useful,'') Rui''s eyes lit up in interest. Although he didn''t think that this alone would be able to give him what he wanted, it was a good sign that he found something that was at least partially useful on the second try, it made his search more optimistic. As long as he could just find something that would give him the edge that he needed, he would be able to perhaps formte a sensory technique based on one of thesepounds.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 755 Steps

    ?


    Over the rest of the day, Rui rapidly consumed the many research journal documents that Julian had handed to him. Each of them was surrounding an esoteric substance orpound, and each of them was an esotericpound that was strongly suspected to be tied to gravity in some form or manner.


    Rui was quite impressed with the quality of the science, he didn''t think he would do too much better if he only knew what they did. He had to admit, his inner scientific curiosity was roused to a little extent after his desire to build a sensory Martial Art technique centered around gravity.


    He had to admit, esoteric science was fascinating, based on what he had seen. Had Martial Art not existed, he certainly would have enjoyed bing an esoteric material schr.


    Yet by the end of the day, he found himself closing thest of the documents that Julian had given him, before sighing and massaging his head.


    "Tsk," He tutted. (''Not a single one of them could fully give me what I wanted.'')


    It was unfortunate, but such was reality. They are all reactive to gravity in some way that could allow him to indirectly detect gravity, but they were allcking in the details that he desired.


    He specifically needed two parameters; gravitational field intensity and the many gravitational field vectors collectively known as the Ri tensor.C0ntent ? 2024 (N/?)velDrama.Org.


    e¦Áglesn?¦Íel These two parameters could allow him to figure out theyout of his environment, as long as he had enough data points and detail.


    (But even if a single one of them isn''t enough¡­ then maybe multiple of them will be!'') Rui''s eyes lit up.


    The many esoteric substances gave him iplete pieces of the puzzle.


    Individually, they could not help him, but if he used the best of them together, then it was possible that he would be able to acquire what he wanted.


    (''It''s not just a matter of picking the right selection of esoteric substances either, though,'') Rui sighed.


    No, that was just the first step. He needed to figure out exactly how he was going to use and apply these esoteric substances to be able to detect gravity itself.


    His organic biological sense organs were directly connected to his brain and directly supplied information through the nervous system. However, this obviously would never be the case with external and non-organic esoteric substances. He could not turn them into organic sense organs that were connected to his brain.


    (''Good thing I don''t have to,'')<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    These esoteric substances may not be connected to the brain or to the body, however, it was still possible for them to serve as indirect pseudo-sense organs. By carefully observing the way they reacted, he could make inferences about the gravitational space curvature field around and on him. Based on the gravitational space curvature, he would be able to infer theyout of his surroundings that produced said gravity.


    It was through this mechanism that he would be able to thoroughly improve his sensory range without caring about the sensory jamming of the Shionel Dungeon. This would give him a massive advantage in the Shionel Dungeon that he was absolutely certain that almost no other Martial Squire would be in possession of.


    However, he had not yetpleted even the first step of making his choices of which esoteric substances to choose, let alone the next few steps. He needed to figure out how to apply them to gain the maximum amount of information on the curvature of space.


    (''I can''t just carry them in my pocket, that would be useless¡­'') He snorted before his eyes grew more solemn. (''I need to figure out a way to integrate them into my body.'')


    This was a dangerous path, but it was the only way he could be sure to have ess to them at all given times.


    Of course, he did not intend to go extremely far with the invasive integration of foreign esoteric matter. Even light integration into his body would suffice. This was far less dangerous, and would still y their role and would allow him to perceive them through the sense of touch.


    Furthermore, his body was exponentially more tolerant to foreignpounds entering it. While Squire-level poisons had proven to be too much for the most part, no ordinary human poison or Apprentice-level poison technique was going to be able to harm his body.


    On top of that, Hungry Pain had given his body even greater nourishment for his body and his healing processes and made him healthier in general.


    He just had to pray that none of these esoteric substances were toxic enough to pose any meaningful threat to him in any capacity.


    However, even if all of it worked out, he still needed to figure out how and where he was going to integrate them into his body. He couldn''t just swallow all these exotics and hope that when the time came he would be able to sense their reactions inside his body. That would be extremely foolish, and extremely useless. He needed to design the integration of these esoteric substances into his body carefully, taking into ount Einstein''s gravitational field equations to maximize the ease of sensing.


    (''I need to turn my body into the equivalent of a gravitational radiation sensing receiver dish,'') Rui mused.


    And that still wasn''t the end of the process, even once he figured out the optimal integration into his body, he would still need to dedicate quite some time to learning how to interpret and analyze the many new sensations and feelings that he would develop across his entire body.


    Thatst step alone would probably take as much time as mastering an ordinary sensory technique from the Martial Union.


    (''However¡­ when I''m done, the technique that will be born from this project will be of a caliber that is almost unrivaled in the Squire Realm. My senses will be ever-present, and unextinguishable, not even Kane would be able to hide from them by the time I''m done.'')


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 756 Palace Sections

    ?


    He had spent quite some time absorbed in his thoughts regarding the esoteric scientific data that Julian had given him. While Julian did go through some effort in contextualizing the scientific jargon of this world to help Rui understand, it was still an immense amount of data. Even if he stored it in his Mind Pce, that merely got rid of the need to constantly ess the documents.


    Though, with his sophisticated application of the Mind Pce technique, there were definitely plenty more advantages. Martial Art techniques theoretically usually didn''t have an absolute upper limit to proficiency and degree of mastery, and the Mind Pce definitely fell into the category.


    Of the few Martial Artists that hadpletely mastered it, their application of it was limited to simple and straightforward storage, and nothing more.


    However, this was not the case with Rui. Rui''s mastery of the Mind Pce had reached a level that was entirely uncharted by human cognition in the history of Martial Art.


    He didn''t just merely store data. He distinguished, organized, and categorized data extensively.


    The size of his Mind Pce had now gone from just being the size of the Martial Academy that it was when he first mastered it to bing asrge as the town of Hajin. He had divided his Mind Pce into many different sections.


    The first Section was the chronological section. Any and all important and significant data was organized in order of his learning of it, he also made sure to document the time and ce of learning said data as well. This helped him remember what happened when and where.


    The second section was the same data but organized into categories surrounding their topics. For example, the information that he had just mastered fell into the esoteric material science category and the gravitational category that ovepped with each other at the avenue in his Mind Pce where he had stored the information.


    The third section was by lettering so that he could ess words and sentences as long he knew just a little about them. He had ''tagged'' the information in this section with the tags of the categories they were in, in the second section.


    The remaining sections had to do with different types of sensory data, as well as records of his own internal thoughts among other things.


    e¦Áglesnovel`c,om This was a level of application of the Mind Pce technique that turned his mind into a quasiputer. It was a level of mastery that no other being on the continent would even be able to begin to fathom.


    It was one of the reasons he excelled at data processing and management in his previous job. There were times when both the diplomatic and intelligence teams had grown utterly bewildered by his cognition.


    Yet, while all of this was useful, it was not helping him make much progress on things like progressing with his projects beyond these benefits. The core progress needed to be done.


    Still, he felt that it was very convenient, especially when he was gobbling down even more information regarding Project Monster Repent.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    This time also, he was processing the information that he had purchased from the Martial Union to assess whether he could exploit the fact that these esoteric substances were present in their body with a technique.


    These creatures were not evolved to handle such strange and bizarre substances running through their body, Rui was sure that there was some way to use that against them.C0ntent ? 2024 (N/?)velDrama.Org.


    What he was specifically looking for was violent, or unstable reactions that could potentially be applied to stop them.


    "Hm?" His eyebrow rose as he came across something interesting.


    [Grocher Iron whening into contact with heated Sentiol Gust leads into an exothermic and exovolumetric reaction where the Grocher Iron reactant expands instantly and rapidly. Its volume tends to increase by a factor of a hundred in less than a millisecond. This is suspected to be due to the¡­]


    His eyes lit up with interest as he tagged the information as a potential solution to developing an offensive technique that was extremely effective against the monsters of the Shionel Dungeon, and added it to the appropriate section of his Mind Pce.


    By scouring through the noted reactions of esoteric substances in contact with other reactants and in different circumstances, there was a wealth of data on all of these esoteric substances.


    (''Well well, this search is going easier than the search for appropriate esoteric substances for Project Eyespy,'') Rui noted optimistically.


    He was d. He had thought that after how difficult and troublesome the search for appropriate esoteric substances for Project Eyespy was that this would be just as difficult, but it turned out that this wasn''t necessarily the case.


    (''Well, the theory of General Rtivity is much harder than basic and elementary chemical reactions,'') Rui smiled.


    With this, he had taken steps for all three projects within the first week of officially beginning them. He suspected that these projects probably wouldn''t take as long as the projects that he had done when he first broke through to the Squire Realm which led him to create Flux Earther and the Pathfinder techniques.


    (''It probably won''t be too long before Kane and I are ready to undertake an adventure in the Shionel Dungeon.


    (''Hehe¡­ I can''t wait,'') Rui smiled as he quickly assimted the information that he had purchased from the Martial Union. What he was truly looking forward to was the actual implementation and practice of the techniques whose blueprints and conceptual functioning he will have fleshed out. He was already doing so with Project Keep Up With Kane, but that technique was much more ordinary and grounded to Earthpared to the remaining two techniques that he intended to create. Practicing those two would require a genuine amount of hard work and perseverance, probably even more so than the Flux Earther technique required. He suspected that both projects would yield something tremendously important and valuable to the world as long as he saw them to the very end.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 757 Freshmen

    ?


    Two months passed.


    Rui spent the time mastering Project Keep Up With Kane while he conducted extensive research with the remaining two projects, he had nearlye to an end with the theoretical and research phase and had almost fleshed out the entirety of all of the chinks of the technique blueprints.


    Project Keep Up With Kane on the other hand, had already nearly reached wless proficiency.


    Compared to the other two projects, he was able to master this technique at quite the pace since he first began.


    WHOOSH


    He dashed through the woods at top speed.


    "Fwuuuuu¡­" He inhaled with his mouth at just the right pace while his arm movements were positioned such that the resulting vacuum was formed right before him. His body posture was such that he maximized the volume of the vacuum.


    Suddenly, his speed more than doubled as he shot through the woods even faster! Theck of the oppressing drag caused by the atmosphere and the atmospheric pressure pushing him from behind led him to move much faster than he normally was limited to.


    "Fuuuuu¡­" He exhaled as he dispelled the technique allowing drag to slow him down and stop him


    STEP


    He paused as he looked at his pocket watch before turning back to look at the distance he covered.


    "That''s fifty in a row without a single collision, I guess that makes this a wrap. I''m d I was able to ovee the discrepancies between this technique and Wind Breathing," Rui casually remarked.


    The problem with creating a breathing technique to use when maneuvering was that he was already using Wind Breathing while maneuvering. It was not easy to use two breathing techniques simultaneously due to shing requirements of timing, frequency, and force among other things.


    Thus Rui had created a technique that waspatible with Wind Breathing, to the point where he ended fusing the two techniques to create a single maneuvering technique.


    Gale Bolt Breathing.


    (''I wonder how this corresponds with Ian Nepomniatchi''s Lightning Breathing,'') Rui casually pondered the matter.


    The Wind Breathing that he had mastered was actually merely a downscale of a much more potent version of the technique; Lightning Breathing, a technique that Ian had used in the Martial Contest.


    Rui hadcked the talent needed to master the technique and thus had resolved to master a more downgraded version to suit his needs.


    Now, having ascended to the Squire Realm, he had upgraded that technique by merging it with another one while it was in development.


    (''It''s not the same as his Lightning Breathing in principle, but I don''t think it''s that much weaker,'') Rui smiled.


    He was quite satisfied with the oue of the technique. Although this technique was not revolutionary, or enough to put him equal with Kane, he would at the very least not hold Kane back much when the two of them were in a situation that require escaping at top speed. It had served its purpose, and he did not want or need more than that from this technique.


    He had two other techniques that he wanted to work on.


    (''I''d like to get back to working on them this moment, but¡­'')<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    Today was the first day of the Martial Academy.


    Max and Mana had attempted the Martial Entrance Exam more than a year ago prior and had failed. The two of them had since then grown extremely driven to be stronger and had discovered their Martial Paths at the age of fourteen under the guidance of Rui and his special training.


    They had then attempted the Martial entrance exam just a month ago, dominating the exam and passing with flying colors as Martial Apprentices attending the exam always did. One monthter, today, they would be leaving the Quarrier Orphanage and would move to the Martial Academy and begin their training there.


    (''I''m going to miss them,'') He sighed as he reached home.


    At the entrance, there was arge congregation of children and adults in the front yard. They had gathered in a circle around Max and Mana, exchanging words and hugs. Rui patiently waited for Max and Mana to finish, yet even when everybody else had had their fill, Lashara was still quite stubborn, refusing to let go of them.


    "Mom¡­ We''re going to bete you know," Max murmured.


    Mana didn''t have the heart to refuse Lashara, having been quite emotional herself.


    "Be safe¡­" She cupped their faces in her hands before finally letting go. "Goodbye."


    It wasn''t long after they exchanged a final farewell with everyone else, that they managed to leave the house.


    "Are you two ready?" Rui asked as he studied them.


    They had changed a lot over thest year. Their first crushing defeat and disappointment had sobered them up and forged their determination. They had matured a lot in the past year as a result.


    The two of them nodded wordlessly with solemn expressions.


    "Good, let''s get going then."


    WHOOSH


    The three of them took off from the Orphanage, running as fast as horses. It only took them an hour before they reached the Martial Academy.


    "The extra traffic slowed us down, but we still got here well within time," Rui nodded.


    "Was it necessary to reach here this early?" Mana asked.


    "Not strictly, no," Rui shook his head. "But it''s best you get acquainted with your environment before things proceed. After all, you''ll be under a lot of pressure from your peers soon enough,"


    Max and Mana furrowed their eyebrows, giving him an odd look. "I still can''t believe how famous you are, big brother."


    eaglesnov?1,§ão§® "Hehe¡­"Property ? 2024 N0(v)elDrama.Org.


    When they attended the Induction Ceremony, they had been surprised by the sheer number of people that recognized Rui and went out of their way to greet him. Even the headmaster himself went out of his way to meet with Rui, even having an informal chat with their big brother. The aspiring Martial Artists stared at him with admiration and awe.


    Rui, on the other hand, felt a little awkward and embarrassed by the reactions of his siblings.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 758 No Choice

    ?


    "Well, looks like that gate has opened," Rui gestured. "I guess this is it."


    He nced at the two of them who had mixed expressions, sighing. "I know how it feels, but your future is your future. You will have plenty of time to spend time with your family when you graduate, if that is what you desire just like I am doing at the moment. So cheer up, okay?"


    The two of them smiled at those words, nodding.


    "Thank you, brother, we wouldn''t be here without you,"


    It wasn''t long before he could only watch their figures disappear into the massive crowd that was pouring into the Martial Academy.


    (''Well, their training is no longer something I will be guide,'')


    This wasn''t a bad thing. Martial Apprentices were meant to make their own decisions when it came to Martial Art. This was a sacred principle that not even the strictest of Martial families vited. Forcibly interfering once the Martial Path was absolutely detrimental to their progress. All influencing of the Martial Path was done prior to the breakthrough to the Apprentice Realm.


    The Martial Union even made it a crime that could be enforced and penalized over, by virtue of the judiciary authority they possessed ording to the jurisdiction of Martial criminality use of the Kandrian Martial Covenant, to try and force Martial Artists to change or alter their Martial Path in any way.


    (''The Squire mentors of the Martial Academy are highly qualified and experienced, they know what lines they ought not to cross,'') Rui smiled warmly as he fondly looked back at his time with Squire instructors Kyrie and Dylon.


    He had gained a lot more respect for them after having be a Martial Squire and having trained guided Martial Apprentices. He hade to understand exactly what it meant to be a Martial Squire capable of guiding Martial Apprentices to the Squire Realm while also being high-grade Martial Squires themselves.


    Rui, at the moment, could not be considered a high-grade Martial Squire. That was reserved for Martial Squires above grade six, which he was not, at the moment.


    "Anyways, time to head back ho-¡­ Ah," Rui smiled as recalled something. "I actually have something to check up on."


    He sky-walked, uncaring of the attention he drew as he navigated his way through the town of Hajin, before making his way to a weapons shop.


    The weapons shop was quiterge, featuring a great volume inside, and a great many weapons on the walls and on tabled beneath a ss cover.


    Arge crowd of people wandered about, looking at the weapons.


    Most of them were human, but some of them were Martial Artists, and only one of them was a Martial Squire. Rui ignored them as he went about his business.


    He made his way past the showroom as he went deeper into the building, his ears pricked as he heard banging sounds.


    BANG!


    BANG!


    BANG!


    Rui peered into arge workroom at the other end of the building from where a continuous metallic banging sound seemed to originate.


    Inside was a huge forge around a gigantic firece. The mes were a bright white, rather than orange, Rui could feel the prickling heat of the fire from outside.


    BANG!


    He turned towards the source of the sound.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    BANG!


    BANG!


    BANG!


    A gargantuan man swinging a big hammer down on a long piece of molten steel at a regr pace.


    "Mr. Derkean," Rui smiled, calling out.


    "Hm? Who''s disturbing my work?" He turned around, ncing at Rui with squinted eyes. "Ah, Squire brat. What do you want?"


    "I was just wondering how went the forging of two products that Imissioned you for," Rui smiled, amused.


    It was rare for a normal human being to treat him rudely, he hadn''t experienced anything of the sort in a long time and appreciated the nostalgic feeling of being treated like a normal human being.


    In the past two months, Rui hade to a realization while working on Project Monster Repent.


    "My body is too inadequate to be the basis of a technique meant to be extremely effective against the monsters of the Shionel Dungeon," Rui sighed.


    It couldn''t be helped. He already had resolved to stuff his body with a few esoteric substances for Project Eyespy. He couldn''t do the same thing for yet another technique simultaneously. It was too much, and the associated risks had exceeded the threshold that was his limit.


    (''If my body is insufficient, then¡­'')


    There was only one solution.


    Something other than his body had to serve as the basis for the technique that he was trying to create.


    "Weapons¡­" Rui had sighed.C0ntent ? 2024 (N/?)velDrama.Org.


    It wasn''t that he was extremely averse to weapons, certainly not. It was just thatpared to his understanding of unarmedbat, his understanding of armedbat was far underdeveloped. It couldn''t be helped, given his profession.


    But the world did not care about that. Although weapons were not ubiquitous for Martial Artists, they were still a relevant and significant field, and if he truly wanted to be able to adapt to all Martial Artists, then perhaps it was inevitable that he would need to lose his difort with them.


    There hadn''t been any strong incentive to do it thus far.


    Until now, that was.


    "In this situation¡­" He had sighed. "There''s no excuse. I don''t have too much of a choice. It''s either weapons or be helpless against herds of high-grade Squire-level monsters. And that''s not even a real choice."


    Thus, he had spent quite some time on exactly what kind of weapon he wanted, and what it was supposed to do, before taking the liberty ofmissioning a renowned cksmith in the town of Hajin to forge what he needed.


    "Weapons don''t just take half a month to finish, you think they grow on trees? Do you? HMM?" The man red at Rui with such aically exaggerated scowl that Rui had to exert himself to suppress a bout ofughter at the man''s hrious antics.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 759 Blade

    ?


    "I''m just inquiring," Rui raised his arms lightly. "I have no intention of pressuring you at all."


    "It''s taking time because you want such a bizarre esoteric like Tethered Bellhorn Steel," The man scowled. "Why on Earth would you want such a heavy esoteric alloy to fashion the de out of?"


    Rui smiled. "Everyone has their necessities."


    "Any why on Earth do you want a scabbard that cools it?" The man furrowed his eyebrows. "That does not help in battle!"


    Rui didn''t even bother gracing that with a reply, simply smiling instead.


    The man sighed exaggeratedly before shrugging. "Whatever, you''re paying a huge amount of money, so it''s fine I guess. There are all kinds of strange people in the world."


    Rui did not mind being perceived that way. He was not going to genuinely inform the man what his intentions were, after all.


    Rui had dug deep into the information surrounding the most ubiquitous esoteric substances andpounds of the Shionel Dungeon very thoroughly, going beyond just the information that Julian had provided him. He had found great detail on several phenomena and chemical reactions involving the Shionel esoteric substances as well as others that could potentially serve as the basis of the technique that he was looking to make.


    In his deep studies, he had somehow managed to run into one particr obscure journal of a now-dissolved small private research institute in the Kandrian Empire, detailing a series of experiments between one of the ubiquitous Shionel esotericpound Whitemane Dust and a rarer esoteric alloy known as Tethered Bellhorn Steel. The experiment revealed that a reaction between the twopounds in their natural states at low temperatures caused a violent exothermic reaction where the Whitemane Dust exhibited extreme phobic tendencies towards cooled Tethered Bellhorn Steel. The greater the amount and the lower the temperature, the greater the force with which Whitemane Dust repelled away from the cooled Tethered Bellhorn Steel.


    The reaction was so violent and exothermic that the procedural experimentation chamber that was isted from the observationb to protect the researchers was unable to contain the violent reaction. The Whitemane Dust subjected to cooled Tethered Bellhorn Steel sted away with such force that it breached the safety measures and the barrier between the observationb and the procedural chamber, almost killing all of the researchers in the process. The experiment was called off and the overarching project was deemed a failure and had thus been dismissed in the eyes of the esoteric sciencemunity.


    Rui had only found this after six weeks of scouring scientific literature for additional information beyond what he had been provided by Julian.


    Julian had given him a good ce to start, however, the solution that he sought wasn''t within the information that his brother had organized for him.


    He scoured every library in the country in the span of six weeks aggressively inputting, processing, and assimting all the information he hade across before finally running into something experiments hadn''t even heard of before.


    (''This is perfect,'') He had grinned when he came across the research journal. (''One man''s trash is another man''s treasure.'')


    To think that Whitemane Dust, an esoteric confirmed to have been present in the epithelial and blood of all of the species existing in the Shionel Dungeon, was so unstable in such a reaction.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    (''It''s just what I need,'') Rui nodded. (''What if a de fashioned out of cooled Tethered Bellhorn Steel pierces their flesh that is saturated with Whitemane Dust?'')


    The wound would be extremely exacerbated by the cooled Tethered Bellhorn Steel reacting to the Whitemane Dust in the flesh and blood of the monster, causing thetter to blow apart from it violently and magnifying the size of the injury while causing a ton of internal damage.


    Even if it was a high-grade monster, Rui strongly suspected that even a single swing would be enough to cause a lethal wound and a vast amount of internal injuries. It would allow Rui to exert a level of lethality within the Shionel Dungeon that would be unheard of for a grade-six Martial Artist like himself.


    (''On top of that, I have had plenty of time to prepare,'') He smiled mischievously inwardly. (''Which means the full power of the VOID algorithm could be unleashed.'')


    Rui had been working on expanding the scope of the Adaptive Evolution model by incorporating simplistic sword-based maneuvers.


    He had been scouring through the data collected on the approach tobat the various dominant species of the Shionel Dungeon and had formed basic adaptations to each species with abination of a thorough analysis of the data as well as somemon sense.C0ntent ? 2024 (N/?)velDrama.Org.


    While this was absolutely by no means a universal solution for all fauna, it was a small first step in that direction.


    "You better be practicing hard with that sparring replica I gave you," The man spat. "This sword''s center of gravity will be gonepletely to shit because you insist on using such a heavy esoteric substance as the main de," Veins had started popping on his forehead just thinking about it. "Any sword techniques you knew will bergely worthless with a sword like this. Tsk, it''s so horribly off-bnce that I almost want to hack at you with it when I''m done for forcing me to forge you this sword."


    Rui burst outughing. "You do realize I''m a Martial Squire, right? What you said just now could be interpreted as a threat, and I''d have the right to kill you without facing any persecution. Perks of being a Martial Squire within the Kandrian Empire due to the Serevian Covenant."


    Rui directed just a tiny bit of bloodlust at the man, yet to his surprise, the man was entirely unfazed.


    "You''re gonna have to do better than that, boy," The man scoffed.


    Rui raised an eyebrow. "Seems like you''re not just some old cksmith, are you?"


    "Maybe, maybe not," He turned back, returning to banging away at the molten bar of metal before him.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 760 Choice

    ?


    Rui bade him goodbye before sky-walking away. The de made out of Tethered Bellhorn Steel was one of his solutions to the problem of the monsters that he hoped to handle with Project Monster Repent.


    He hadmissioned a single-handed curved sword with a de fashioned out of Tethered Bellhorn Steel. The reason for this kind of de was rather simple, he would likely be putting himself in a situation where he would be facing multiple threats omnidirectionally, thus he needed a de whose application was flexible and versatile and could be rapidly adjusted to fit his situation.


    In this regard, shing was a more desirable means of attacking than stabbing or thrusting. The former was much more flexible as it had arge number of directions and angles of attack, and was lessmittal allowing the swordsman to return back to a guarded stance swiftly and easily. Stabbing and thrusting were more lethal, yet also required moremitment from the swordsman.


    Thetter style of swordbat was unfit for the circumstances of the Shionel Dungeon. He could not focus onmitting everything to a sure-shot way of killing a single opponent when his goal was to cope with the monsters in a situation where he would be facing many, not just one. Furthermore, he did not need tomit too much inflicting damage why thrusting thanks to the presence of the cooled Tethered Bellhorn Steel de that would magnify the damage his attack inflicted on the monster tremendously.


    Thus Rui decided to go for a basic shing-oriented sword style. Furthermore, he wanted to minimize themitment that he gave as far as his body went when wielding it, thus he decided tomission single-handed curved swords that were meant to be wielded by a single arm and were suited towards shing rather than stabbing or thrusting.


    He had even ordered a special scabbardced on the inside with a rare esoteric that constantly had a standard temperature many degrees below the freezing point of water. Even when heated, it would seemingly vite the Zerothw of thermodynamics and lose heat to its surroundings before reaching its standard temperature.


    Thus he had a natural cooling system for the Tethered Bellhorn Steel de, allowing him to ensure that it had a low temperature that was needed to obtain the reaction that he was hoping for.


    That was his first solution against the monsters. He had already begun training in basic swinging forms for the de with a replica whose size, shape, and mass distribution of the set of des that he wasmissioning.


    He knew his limits, of course. He was not arrogant enough to believe that he could master swordsmanship in a matter of months. Swordsmanship was a field deep and vast enough to be qualified to be the Martial Paths of Martial Artists.


    However, he had no intention of mastering the in a matter of months, what he was subjecting himself to was basically the Martial Foundation Stage equivalent of swords. He needed to make sure that, at the very least, his fundamental maneuvers with the sword were solid.


    The rest he could make up for to a great extent with the VOID algorithm which would allow him to predict monsters with remarkable uracy and depth, while his elementary and basic adaptive-evolution model would allow him to appropriately deal with them. Even if thetter was primitive inparison to the adaptive evolution model that he developed for unarmed humans, it still allowed him to make decisions quicker than if he had to process and make a choice each time.C0ntent ? 2024 (N/?)velDrama.Org.


    However, he also was nning to bank on Primordial Instinct which would help him test whether a counter is good or bad.


    These were the measures he hade up with for Project Monster Repent. The unique thing about this project was that, for the first time, he would be creating a technique that wasn''t actually a technique, not truly. Technically it was, but it wasn''t something he would ever use again after the Shionel Dungeon raid, realistically.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    On top of that, he was not interested in pursuing swordsmanship. It wasn''t that he particrly disliked it, it was just that it required exclusivemitment for the most part.


    Once one picked up the sword, all of one''sbat was centered around it. He would not be able to perform unarmed attacks anywhere nearly as well with a swordpared to without it. Punching and kicking became far more constrained when holding a sword since merely holding it was detrimental to the kind of bnce and maneuvering needed for unarmed attacks.


    He could effectively forget grappling if he ever decided to pursue swordsmanship. The number of times two swordsmen ever got into a wrestling match in the middle of a fight could probably be counted on one hand.


    Every other field became much harder to use if he pursued swordsmanship. It was because of this demand for exclusivity that he could never pursue the de seriously.


    That still did not mean that he was against the mastery of weapons in general, just not swordsmanship and simr weapons that demanded an exclusivemitment to them. He did not mind a smaller weapon that could be used in conjugation with his existing unarmed-based techniques.


    However, he had not felt the need to adopt such a weapon, nor had hee across a weapon that would suit his Flowing Void Martial Art.


    For the purpose of fulfilling the difficult goal of exploring and plundering the entirety of the Shionel Dungeon before all other forces, he was willing to adopt the sword for a limited amount of time.


    Yet that was not the only weapon he had readied.


    STEP


    Hended in front of the Martial Union.


    (''Time to procure the other ''weapon'' that I havemissioned,'') He thought to himself with an eager smile.


    He quickly passed through the security check-ins before heading straight towards themercial wing of the Union branch, walking over to one specific store.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 761 Pipe

    ?


    While the Tethered Bellhorn Steel de was one of his trump cards, it was not the only one.


    He hade up with two ideas when he finished his long research endeavor. These two were the most promising of ideas, and when it came down to it, he was unable to choose between them.


    The second idea after the de was something he had managed to dig up on another Shionel esoteric called Mercurite, a semi-solid esoteric substance known for its sticity. He had stumbled upon an experiment surrounding the substance that involved subjecting it to high pressures and to high-temperature air in a gas chamber. Mercurite, known for its sticity, would immediately grow rigid in these circumstances, developing a temporarily high tensile strength for the duration of the experiment and some a brief time even after being returned to standard pressures and temperatures.


    The fact that this substance existed on the skin of the monsters after being secreted along with sweat made it something that Rui could use.


    The question was how he could subject monsters to high-pressure and high-temperature air.


    (''The pressure is honestly manageable¡­'') Rui''s eyes narrowed his eyes.


    If he could adapt the Tempestuous Ripple technique from when he was a Martial Apprentice, he could subject the skin of monsters to high-pressure air, but he wasn''t sure about pressure.


    (''Should I just purchase a bunch of hot air grenades or something,'') Ruiughed, before shaking his head. There were too many impracticalities even if he took the idea seriously, which he simply couldn''t as a Martial Artist.


    Instead, what he had sought to procure was a device that could take in air, heat it rapidly and supply it to him if he needed it.


    (''I can inhale it and use the Squire-level version of the Tempestuous Ripple technique to st it into the monsters at a high pressure, but¡­'') Rui narrowed his eyes. (''It has limitations.'')


    The first problem was that the hot air technique would lose heat very quickly. Rui had already conducted several experiments that revealed the projectile was useless outside of roughly seven meters. Which was a lot less than the maximum range before it lost all force.


    Still, the ability to hamper the monsters within seven meters with ease was quite good.C0ntent ? 2024 (N/?)velDrama.Org.


    At the end of the day, when it came down to choosing between one of them to form a technique, he ultimately decided to go with both.


    (''I can use the Mercurite on their skin to paralyze or hamper them when they enter within seven meters before shing at them with the Tempered Bellhorn Steel de,'') Rui had spent quite some time refining his strategy and tactics.


    After nearly two weeks, he hade up with a model of solutions that allowed him to deal with a ridiculous number of monsters all by himself.


    (''If I''m not wrong¡­ not even high-grade Martial Squires will be able to match the efficiency that Project Monster Repent will give me when ites to killing monsters in the Shionel Dungeon,'')


    The only thing he couldn''t be certain about was grade-ten Martial Squires. He already knew that the Squire Realm was a wide ne, thus he couldn''t really figure out what grade-ten Martial Squires was capable of. <novelsnext></novelsnext>


    He had once been told that even a squadron of grade-five Martial Squires would get annihted by a grade-ten Martial Squire, thus he couldn''t be sure that he was more effective than those powerful Martial Artists who stood at the precipice of a higher Realm of power.


    "Ah, Squire Quarrier, wee back!" An employee of arge store greeted him the moment he walked in. "The product youmissioned is ready just like we informed you!"


    "That''s great to hear," Rui smiled in response. "I''d like to see it as soon as possible."


    "Of course, pleasee this way, just one moment,"


    Soon enough, she fetched a small box, bringing it over to Rui, before opening it up.


    Inside was a smoking pipe that looked to be made up of wood with a rtively ordinary design that wouldn''t really raise an eyebrow.


    In reality, it was the device that Rui had brought to heat air to extremely high temperatures and supply it to Rui on the inhaling end.


    Rui would simply need to suck in hot air and employ it in his technique. Anyone who saw Rui would only think he was being irresponsible by smoking on the job. No one would think that this was an instrument that would allow him to deal with the Shionel monsters with a level of efficiency that one simply could not fathoming from a grade-six neen-year-old Martial Squire like him.


    This way, he could keep his abnormal sess more inscrutable even if people started getting suspicious.


    Of course, he also intended to hide under the grade-ten Mind Mask he had created such that his sess would not be too odd. He had already fooled an entire ind of Martial Artists that he was a grade-ten Martial Squire, he was pretty confident that he could pull it off yet again.


    He quickly paid for the pipe before leaving with it for home.


    He wondered what the Orphanage would say if they saw it. He could already imagine the various funny and amusing reactions that would follow.


    Still, he didn''t intend to tell anyone about it asides from Kane.


    The many preparations that Rui was making were all starting toe together. With one projectpleted and the other project approachingpletion, he only had one project that was still a little past midway.


    Project Eyespy was definitely the most difficult project, in hindsight. Rui had been carefully forming a blueprint for the technique as he performed research while also working out what esoteric substances he would be using, how much, and where he would be integrating them into their body. Trying to optimize the end oue such that it reduced the difficulty and burdens of the technique was an extremely difficult process, even for someone like him.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 762 Sensing Mechanism

    ?


    The techniques yielded by Project Monster Repent were not really techniques as much as they were tactics and strategies. Furthermore, they were tactics and strategies that were exclusive to the Shionel Dungeon for the most part.


    They were quite different from what Rui would normally attempt, but his circumstances demanded that he go beyond hisfort zone and develop a way to make his objective of being the first to clear the Shionel Dungeon more realistic.


    In order to master the two techniques that were born from Project Monster Repent, he needed to engage in a decent amount of training. He had already been dedicating quite some time to mastering the foundations of a sword identical to the ones that he would bemissioning.


    On top of that, he had been subjecting himself to some light conditioning. Specifically, he wanted to growpletelyfortable with extremely hot air in his lungs. While he found out that his Martial body was durable enough such that even the more delicate tissue inside his respiratory system, it was still hot enough to cause a lot of difort and could cause burns or blisters over time.


    Thus he had been conditioning his respiratory system to handle the heat without experiencing any issues to any degree. He had to ensure that he was ready rapidly fire his heated air Tempestuous Ripples, which he also needed to focus on adapting to the Apprentice Realm.


    The project wasing along very well, he had already reached a stage where he was absolutely certain that the project would be a perfect sess. There was no ounce of uncertainty in that regard.


    However, the same could not be said for Project Eyespy.C0ntent ? 2024 (N/?)velDrama.Org.


    He had more or less figured out the esoteric substances that he would be using to create the foundation for the technique.


    Cryllin Stone and Grainer Pollen were two esoteric substances andpounds that individuallycked what he needed, but together, they could provide him with what he wanted as long as he applied them correctly.


    Cryllin Stone was an esoteric substance whose temperature was entirely a product of gravitational field strength. The closer it was to the source of gravity, such as a body of matter or energy, the colder it would get.


    Yet what ultimately made Rui go for this esoteric substance was the mathematical rtion that was empirically observed to exist between temperature and the distances between the stone and the source of gravity.


    It was observed through rigorous experimentation and observation that the temperature of the body was proportional to the fourth root of the distance between the Cryllin Stone and gravitational sources.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    What that meant was that if the distance was increased by twice, then it would not grow twice as hot, it would grow sixteen times as how. If the distance was increased by thrice, then the temperature would grow eighty-one times as hotpared to before it moved.


    It was precisely because of this radical rtionship that Rui had decided to use it. The fact that it was so sensitive to even the slightest shift in position and would react drastically, made it extremely useful to Rui who needed sensitive data. He could rely on the clearly radical shifts in the temperature of the Cryllin Stone inside his body to understand the distance between him and some body/object that was obviously producing gravity.


    However, while this told him the distance between him and his surrounding objects, it did not tell him what direction they were in. Without knowing what direction his surrounding objects were located, he could not pinpoint their locations, and thus could not form an image of his surroundings.


    This was where Grainer Pollen came in. This esoteric moved away in the exact opposite direction of the direction of the gravitational pull caused by the curvature in space. This meant that he could obtain the directions he needed.


    Together, he could find out both the direction and distance of the closest body or mass, and when applied to all directions, he would be able to picture his environment quite urately.


    The problem was that he needed to distribute the esoteric across his body in the right way, otherwise, it wouldn''t work the way he wanted it to. What he was applying was a principle of triangtion and the Parax Method, one that was frequently used in astronomy. Astronomers, when wanting to pinpoint the location of a celestial body, would record it with observatories from opposite sides of the. If the triangle formed between these two points and the celestial body was thin and sharp, then it could be concluded that the celestial body was very far away. If the triangle formed by these three was short and stout, then it could be concluded that the celestial body was closer.


    He was effectively applying this principle with all of his environment, using the distribution of esoteric substances across his body.


    It had taken him quite some time to design the distribution configuration of these esoteric substances. He couldn''t just blindly dump them all across his body, that would take a longer time to master and the sensory input would be too much. He needed to find exactly the optimal amount to ensure that he can still make out all of his environment precisely and urately without an excess of sensory input.


    It had taken him two months, but finally, he hadpleted the blueprint for the procedure. He hadpleted sensory details of the positioning of the esoterics within the body, he had gotten Martial doctors to overlook the procedure and vet it to ensure that it would not impact his health or life in any way. That alone had required him to revisit the blueprint several times due to some health hazard or the other. This process had happened several times until he had finally created a satisfactory blueprint for the space-curvature sensory technique.


    Now, all that was left was to undergo the procedure and begin training to master this new sense that he had given his body.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 763 Procedure

    ?


    Eventually, the time for the imntation procedure had arrived. As brilliant andpetent Rui was, he could notplete a medical procedure of such a scope by himself by any means. He needed help.


    Much to his surprise, the Martial Union swiftly proceeded with the process without too much dy. He had already been surprised that the Martial doctors were so easily offering their consultancy on the distribution configuration of the blueprint of his technique.


    However, in hindsight, it shouldn''t have been so surprising. While it was a little unusual for Martial Artists to create their own medical procedures to allow them to utilize a technique, it was not too unheard of. A system already existed in ce to help Martial Artists develop such procedures with the help of medical experts and implement them with the help of qualified surgeons.


    Though, based on the reactions of the consultants, it was rather clear that they hadn''t run into anything quite like what Rui had sought their consultancy over.C0ntent ? 2024 (N/?)velDrama.Org.


    "Squire Quarrier, pleasure to meet you. I am Dr. Dranim Vel, I will be the lead surgeon of the medical procedure that you''re scheduled to undergo, you''ve arrived just on time," A doctor bowed to him courteously when Rui reached the medical wing. "Please follow our team''s instructions to have you prepped for the surgery ording to our guidelines."


    Rui, who had just walked into the room, nodded. "Pleasure to meet you as well, doctor. I''ll be in your care."


    Thankfully, the preparations were limited. The main pre-op procedures had already beenpleted ahead of time. Rui had already had several tissue and blood samples collected to ensure that there weren''t any concerning issues surrounding hispatibility with the esoteric substances that he would be imnting into his body at the moment.


    Rui was guided into a separate operation chamber that was isted from the surgical team that would be operating on him remotely. Based on Seismic Mapping, there was a three-meter barrier between them constructed from low-grade Squire-level esoteric alloys. It could very briefly contain even high-grade Martial Artists.


    "Squire Quarrier, if you could please lie down on the operating table," The doctor courteously requested him.


    CLACK CLACK CLACK


    Several cuffs locked him into ce automatically the second he lied down.


    "We will soon begin the procedure," The doctor informed him. "Proceeding with the administering of a general anesthetic."


    Rui huffed, unsatisfied as a breathing masktched on his face, covering his nose and mouth before administering him a gas. Rui had objected to the administration of a general anesthetic but had ultimately had no choice when this was one of the iron-d guidelines for deeply invasive procedures like the one Rui was about to undergo.


    A dozen seconds passed since the gas had been administered to him, Rui just sat there awkwardly.


    "¡­Squire Quarrier, are you employing a Martial Art technique at the moment? Please desist from resisting the procedure. This vites the terms and conditions," The doctor''s tone was stern.


    "I''m doing no such thing, doctor," Rui furrowed his eyes in confusion.


    "Are you experiencing no side effects?" The doctor''s tone was incredulous.


    "I suppose I am feeling a little drowsy," Rui admitted.


    He was curious why he was able to resist it to such a degree. He suspected it had something to do with his enhanced neurological parameters, however this was much too outside of his area of expertise to be confident on.


    "¡­We will be administering an undiluted dose since the Squire-grade version does not seem to be effective on you. I''m afraid if even this doesn''t work, we may have to dy the procedure,"


    (''Damn, it''s at times like these my stranger qualities are a burden," Rui tutted.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    Suddenly, he felt a strong wave of drowsiness wash over him as the world went dark.


    ¡­


    "Mmm¡­" He got up with a bit of a headache, being greeted by a white ceiling.


    He got up massaging his forehead.


    His body felt strange.


    "Ah, Squire Quarrier, you''re awake?" A voice called out to him.


    "Hm?" Rui looked up.


    A nurse greeted him as she walked over to his side.


    "Your procedure was a sess," She informed him. "I just have to conduct some basic check-ups and then you can be discharged as long as there isn''t anything wrong.


    "How long have I been asleep?" Rui asked.


    "Around half a day. Please open your mouth," She began as she conducted a basic check-up.


    Rui couldn''t even voice out the surprise from knowing he had been asleep for that long. He closed his eyes he focused on the strange sensations within his body. The Cryllin Stone and Grainer Pollen inside his body stirred and shifted in position and temperature with his own movements. They were no different from his other senses which were also stirred by his movements, and the movements of the world around him.


    He tried focusing and applying the Gravitational Sensory System that he had developed applying the data of the two esoteric substances, the equations of rtivity, and the Parax Method to try and perceive the world through the curvature of space. But s, it was extremely difficult.


    It took him nearly two minutes, but eventually, he seeded


    Rui gasped as a ck-and-white image of the world formed in his head, mapping out the world around him. The room he was in, the nurse skimming through some paperwork, and the furniture.


    Even if it was his very first try, the time it took him as well as his range were very poor, but he intended to fix that over time.


    (''So this is what it feels like to sense space itself,'') Rui grinned.


    "There are no issues surrounding your health, Squire Quarrier," She replied. "Please sign these papers if you wish to be discharged immediately."


    Rui found himself leaving the Martial Union a few minutes,ter as he closed his eyes, trying his best to grow familiar with the new artificial sense that he had embedded in his body and the new stimuli that his brain was indirectly receiving.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 764 First Day

    ?


    Max and Mana felt a little strange with all the stares at them. Ever since their names had been called out when they were assigned their dormitories, a lot of the other students had been staring at them with amazement and awe, whispering to each other.


    "I heard that they''re HIS siblings¡­"


    "Do you think that maybe they''d let us meet him¡­?"


    "Uhm, why is everyone staring at us and whispering?" Max scratched his head feeling awkward.


    "Because they heard ourst name," Mana sighed.


    She had already realized that this wasing based on the experience of the induction ceremony, thus she had been moreposed.


    The two of them quickly headed to their dormitories, before unpacking their things.


    "Er, what should we do now?"


    "We have a mandatory sparring session with thebat Squire instructor," Mana replied as she went through their schedule.


    "Right, what was her name, again?"


    "Squire Kyrie¡­" Mana replied. "She''s been teaching in this academy for nearly fifteen years. They say she was one of the top Martial Squires in this town back in her prime. They called her the Berzerker of Hajin."


    "I remember big brother telling us about her," Max nodded, before grinning. "He said she was very strong! He said that he couldn''t beat her even after he became a Martial Squire."


    "She was a high-grade Martial Squire, apparently," Mana replied as she went through the rulebook of the Martial Academy. "Come on, we should get going for the sparring session already. We don''t want to bete on our very first day."


    The two of them quickly changed into their sparring attire before heading toward the Apprentice-level sparring facility.


    Inside were arge number of Martial Apprentices, either sparring with each other or waiting on the sides.


    Yet their attention was immediately drawn by a powerful presence at the center of the facility, overseeing some fights.


    She had a heavy presence, weighing down on the minds of all Martial Apprentices, including them. They instinctively felt that she was, at the very least, as strong as their brother, perhaps even stronger. Her aura oozed with the grizzled confidence that came with a lifetime of physical conflict. She did not hold back her mental pressure, uncaring for the chills she sent up their spines.


    "So you''vee," She nced at the two of them the second they walked in, sizing them up the second sheid her narrowed eyes on them. "Max and Mana Quarrier."


    "Squire Kyrie," The two of them bowed deeply. "We look forward to your guidance."


    "Get in the center ring," She instructed curtly. "We''ll be beginning soon."


    Soon enough, the two of them entered therge spacious ring along with nine other Martial Apprentices.


    The two of them ignored the stares of all the other Martial Apprentices, to the best of their abilities, yet there was one that refused to look away from them.


    A small petite girl looked at them oddly with intense eyes and a surprised expression.


    "Wait a minute," Max''s and Mana''s eyes widened as they recognized. "You¡­ were the one who beat us inst year''s entrance exam!"<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    Crea was about to open her mouth to address them when suddenly she was interrupted.


    "You don''t have time to chitchat with each other," Squire Kyrie sternly quashed the interaction. "From now until the end of this sparring session, you won''t have time to do anything other than fight me with everything you have."


    Her eyes sharpened as a heavy wave of pressure descended on all of the Martial Apprentices.


    Max and Mana gulped as they did their best to maintain their pressure. Rui always hid his mental pressure with the Mind Mask because he disliked the mixed looks of awe and fear that he got from everybody in the vicinity, especially because he did not want to subject his family to that pressure.


    The only time he didn''t was when he was training their mental fortitude.


    Yet it was clear that Squire Kyrie had no intention of doing that.


    She was merely oppressing their minds within reason.


    "Your goal is to defeat me making me leave this ring," Squire Kyrie exined impatiently. "I will be restricting myself to Apprentice-level parameters. Do your best."


    CRACK


    She cracked her neck, before continuing. "In the long time that I have been conducting sparring sessions, no one has managed to seed. Though¡­"


    She nced at Max and Mana pointedly. "¡­There was one Martial Apprentice who forced me to go all-out in his time here."


    Max and Mana''s eyes widened as they realized who she was talking about. The other Martial Apprentices stirred at those words.


    Forcing a Martial Squire to go all-out at their level? They would not survive such an aplishment, even if they managed to aplish it.


    "If you hope to have any desire to replicate his feat," She growled lightly as the pressure she exuded grew even more perilous. "Then push your mind and body to the absolute limit."


    She took a stance, causing the others to do the same, "Come."


    The battle broke out as all of the Martial Apprentices forced themselves forward,unching themselves at her.


    Squire Kyrie mercilessly beat them up for the next four hours calmly.


    Unsurprisingly, none of the Martial Apprentices managed to replicate the feat that that one Martial Apprentice she spoke of did. Squire Kyrie went around in rounds, thoroughly breaking down the weaknesses and blindspots that each of the Martial Apprentices had that they ought to work have worked on.


    In the end, she finally rounded up three Martial Apprentices separately


    "Crea Geringan. Max Quarrier. Max Quarrier," Squire Kyrie addressed them. "Given your age, time spent in the Apprentice Realm and stage¡­ I have no overt rmendations to pass on based on your performance. Train as you see fit. Martial Apprentices are genuine Martial Artists, unlike the foundational students. You must forge your Martial Path. I may only pass on my observations."Property ? 2024 N0(v)elDrama.Org.


    Crea did not look surprised, having already experienced this.


    Max and Mana were flummoxed on the other hand. "Uhm¡­ We just became Martial Apprentices¡­ Shouldn''t we be filled with weaknesses and shorings?"


    The mildest of smiles broke onto Squire Kyrie''s face. "Given who has trained you, I am not surprised in the slightest. I look forward to seeing how far you three will go."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 765 Priority

    ?


    Rui had taken the day off, something he almost never did. But he wanted to spend at least twenty-four hours gaining some basic limatization with his strange and new body. While the change wasn''t anywhere nearly as drastic as when he broke through to the Squire Realm, it was not insignificant.Content ? N?velDrama.Org 2024.


    "So, how was it?" Julian asked.


    Rui immediately reached home, spending time with his family, especially his brother.


    "The procedure was a perfect sess with noplications at all," Rui exined, sighing. "However, I have yet to grow ustomed to it. And as for mastering it, I don''t see it happening any time soon, unfortunately. It will definitely take time."


    "That is to be expected," Julian sighed. "The fact that you came up with such a technique surrounding something as immaterial as gravity. Even for you, this is truly remarkable. I''m d there are noplications, it''s a good thing you are a Martial Squire."


    A lot of the time Rui had spent on the technique had gone into verifying that his body was capable of taking in the two esoteric substances andpounds without any long-term health detriments. He had had Julian aid him to a degree with optimizing the amount of esoteric mass he would be imnting into his body.


    "Work hard to obtain proficiency with your new senses," Julian told him. "I too am curious to know about the end oue.


    "Don''t worry, I can''t wait to master it," Rui had replied.


    Unfortunately, the uing part of the training was something that he would ratherplete with the help of the Martial Union. While it was possible to train his new sense by himself, it was far more inefficient. The biggest hindrance was that his senses were too strong.


    At this stage, he had three sensory techniques and none of them were weak, his mind would not be able to increase its proficiency if he could not stop his existing powerful senses from allowing him to perceive the world. His mind was subconsciously too dependent on his existing senses to be able to use his newfound gravitational sense to its best.


    The Martial Union, however, hade up with the perfect solution. It had developed special training rooms and facilities that were capable of sealing off all of the normal senses that Martial Artists, as well as any of the sensory techniques that existed in the Martial Union.


    By sealing off all of the existing senses of a Martial Artist and throwing them intoplete darkness, it elerated their mastery of a new sensory technique significantly.


    The principle behind this kind of training was the same as the reason why a human being''s other senses grew far sharper once a person lost their sense of vision.


    Thus he hastily returned to the Martial Union, applying to book a training session with the resources needed for the special sensory training methodology of the Martial Union.


    "I''m afraid, we do not have the avable training rooms and slots needed to allow you six hours of daily training," The employee bowed her head when she checked up on his request.


    This had initiallye as a surprise, but in hindsight, it shouldn''t have. It had been five months since the discovery of the Shionel Dungeon, and not even a third of the dungeon had yet been explored to the waves of monsters and the heavily hampered senses within the Shionel Dungeon.


    It was only natural that the number of Martial Artists running to master sensory techniques would skyrocket. He wasn''t too surprised that even therge Martial Art training facilities were starting to run a little low on the avable training and growth resources that were avable at any time.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    "Is that so¡­" Rui sighed. "Please allow me to purchase all that is avable at the moment."


    "Of course sir," She nodded. "Can you please provide me with your Martial license?"


    Rui handed over his Martial license glumly. He was not happy with this development but there wasn''t much that he could do at the moment. He could simply make the best of what he had at the moment.


    "Ah¡­" The employee turned back to Rui. "It appears that you will be able to procure the daily six hours of training that you have requested after all, Squire Quarrier."


    "Hm?" Rui''s eyebrows furrowed. "Did the booked slots really clear up in the past ten seconds?"


    "Not at all, however, your profile has been marked with a priority tag over the goods and services of the Martial Union over a lot of other external Martial Squires," She exined.


    "What?" Rui frowned. "I''ve never heard of this before."


    "It is unusual for the Martial Union to be unable to meet the demand for its Martial Art services, after all."


    Rui considered her exnation, it was most likely correct. However, it was also likely that it had contributed to his speedy service with the Martial Union. His purchases were delivered as early as possible while any procedure he booked could be scheduled as early as a few hourster, at times.


    These were things that he had perhaps been taking for granted.


    "I see¡­" Rui nodded. "In that case, I''d like to go ahead and purchase six hours a day for the next three months, for starters."


    "Will do, sir," She nodded.


    Soon enough, Rui found himself in the sensory training facility of the Martial Union''s training wing.


    He quickly donned a special suit that suppressed the five natural senses of the human body. Rui had a lot more insight into how the suit functioned now that he had brushed up a lot on esoteric materials science.


    While the suit alone would take care of the five senses, as well as Tempestuous Feel in his case, the training room would take care of the Seismic Radiation.


    Primordial Instinct would naturally be suppressed with all of his other senses being suppressed since the technique wasn''t a form of physical sensing but highly enhanced danger sense.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 766 Training

    ?


    He wasn''t sure when he was given a priority status when it came to the goods and services, however, he was sure that this was reflective of the value that the Martial Union had in him.


    He had contributed a lot to the Martial Union in the nearly seven years that he had been a Martial Artist, he had also aplished a lot and made tremendous strides in his Martial Path and contributed to Martial Art in general.


    There was no doubt that he was a valued asset, and he had nopunctions about using his status to cut in line. If this was a line to the movie, he would respect public etiquette, but when it came to his Martial Art, he didn''t care. He would obtain what he needed.


    One small dose of a potent drug inhabited his instincts to suppress Primordial Instinctpletely, and soon enough he was inside the training room, in an absolute void.


    He could not sense a damn thing about his environment through his old senses.


    Yet the Grainer Pollen and the Cryllin Stone across his body stirred, changing in temperature and the internal force that they applied on him.


    Their reactions to their environment told him about their environment because he knew exactly how they reacted to everything. The only problem was that he had yet to master ''reading'' their reactions.


    That was what this was all about.


    He had begun the training with a simple moving environment. He was far from ready to apply this in abat situation. His current training environment was simplyprised of ordinary moving objects of different sizes and masses.


    His initial goal was to reach a stage where he could simply avoid them without ever getting touched.


    BUMP


    "Tsk," Rui tutted, having bumped into a small moving pir.


    He focused hard as he paid attention to the fluctuations of the esoteric substances inside his body.


    The Grainer Pollen were constantly shifting their directions of push due to the fact that the objects in their vicinity were also moving.


    Had they been stationary, the Grainer Pollen would also be less chaotic, although never stationary, since they had a wide range of senses.


    Soon enough, a rough image of his immediate surrounding formed in his head. It was low in rity since he still had yet to be able to read the details of the information that he was getting from the esoteric substances.


    STEP


    He moved aside as he avoided another object.


    He spent the first few hours simply growing absolutelyfortable with this simple exercise. Getting rid of the simple and elementary mistakes that he was making.


    Inbat, he wouldn''t have time to makeplicated calctions, this was different from the VOID algorithm. The VOID algorithm could afford a dy since it was not absolutely fundamentally necessary to hisbat every second.


    However, if he was in the Shionel Dungeon, then he needed a way to ensure that he could always rely on it at any given moment. He could not afford to sit around twiddling his thumbs while he ranplex calctions in his head just to sense his surroundings.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    The monsters were not going to be polite enough to wait for him to finish.


    He needed to reach a stage where he couldplete the ''reading'' of the Cryllin Stone and the Grainer Pollen in his body at any given moment subconsciously and reflexively.


    He simply was not at that stage at the moment.


    As time passed, he upped the speed of the movements of the obstacles. Of course, at this point, it was still at a stage where a fit human would be able to dodge them under normal circumstances.


    (''The tricky part is reading all of them at the same time, and thenbining the data from the two esoteric substances together,'') Rui tutted as he bumped into another obstacle by mistake.


    His mind was in full focus at the moment. He was not only absorbing everything he sensed subconsciously but was also documenting every moment of the training session rigorously into his Mind Pce.


    He intended to thoroughly revisit his experiencester inside the Mind Pce, allowing him to introspect and look back better. Furthermore, it would allow him to corrte the sensory reading he got from the esoteric substances and the actual phenomenon.


    Then, he would hammer it into his head until he could urately recount it even if he was drunk.


    In this manner, he could be able to maximize his rate of growth.


    (''I should consider increasing the amount of training time,'') Rui mused to himself, before shaking his head.


    He still needed to dedicate time to mastering the techniques of Project Monster Repent.


    Six hourster, Rui was finally done with his training.


    (''Not bad for a first day,'') He sighed.


    Still, he wasn''t too pleased. He usually progressed much faster with sensory techniques. However, what he was attempting at the moment was so ridiculously difficult that he couldn''t possibly speed through it like he had his previous techniques.


    "Phew," He wiped the sweat off his forehead as he left the training room having removed the suit.


    (''Woah,'') He was surprised by how many Martial Squires were crowding the facility. He needed to sky-walk over them at one point to get past the crowd.C0ntent ? 2024 (N/?)velDrama.Org.


    (''These guys¡­ They must be the people that I bypassed in line through my priority status in the Martial Union,'') Rui smirked inwardly, ignoring the few res that he got from the Martial Squires who saw him leave after hogging the training room for six hours.


    (''They must all be here in preparation for entering the Shionel Dungeon,'') Rui noted casually.


    The Shionel Dungeon exploration had stalled significantly, inviting long-term ns for Martial Squires who couldn''t enter immediately, since it was quite likely that the dungeon would not be cleared any time soon whatsoever.


    Thus he was not surprised to see a ton of Martial Squires equipping themselves with the necessary sensory techniques, after all, wasn''t he doing the same thing?


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 767 Not Average

    Four months passed soon enough.


    Rui spent the entirety of the four months training on the two remaining projects. His des and scabbard had been prepared and given to him in time, and he got to train with the real deal.


    His basic swordsmanship had reached a solid satisfactory level in the six months that he had spent training it, and he was confident of, at the very least, not failing due to ipetence. The sword was his close-range solution against the beasts and was really the only thing that was going to be protecting him from a horde of Squire-level monsters.


    The smoking pipe on the other hand had turned into a good long-range barrier that was able to freeze the monsters of the Shionel Dungeon in their spots when he used it against them. In the past six months, he had polished his anti-Shionel monster tactics and strategies as well as he could in the span of half a year.


    He hade up with numerous ways that he could take them down depending on the surrounding circumstances.


    On top of that, he still had Kane''s stealth. Not only was stealth especially effective in the Shionel Dungeon due to the hampered sensory prowess of the dungeon, but Kane had improved his stealth by mastering a few stealth-oriented techniques that he had altered to suit himself.Content (C) N?v/elDra/ma.Org.


    Rui had also considered improving his stealth, however, it was ultimately a redundancy with Kane around. They had no intention of splitting up by themselves at any given point in time, and it was better for Rui to contribute in a concrete way around issues that they would otherwise be helpless against.


    Being able to sense despite the sensory jamming circumstances of the Shionel Dungeon was a priceless contribution and one that Rui had struggled to make, but eventually seeded.


    Mastering the technique that was born out of Project Eyespy was difficult, far more difficult than any of the previous sensory techniques he had mastered thus far, eventually the technique that he came to call the Riemannian Echo was born. This technique''s range was even greater than that of his other techniques as well as a higher degree of rity, thanks to Rui''s meticulous eye for detail and precision as well as range when it came to the cement of the esoteric substances.


    While techniques like Seismic Mapping and Tempestuous Feel could still be hampered, so far he had note across anything that could restrain his Reimannian Echo.


    The technique was named after Georg Friedrich Bernhard Riemann, a mathematician of the neenth century who created the field of mathematics known as Riemannian Geometry that was absolutely vital to Einstein''s Theory of General Rtivity, and also for the creation and mastery of Rui''s gravity sensory technique.


    Rui was merely offering homage to him as a Martial Artist, and as a scientist.


    With the help of his Riemannian Echo, he was absolutely confident to saunter through the otherwise treacherous and inscrutable floors that had alreadyid im to many a Martial Squire who had dared to step in.


    He had once read what the Squire-level version of All-Seeing Eye, the only grade-ten sensory technique was capable of, and when hepared it to his Reimannian Echo, even putting aside his personal bias, there wasn''t any over superiority, purely based on the information that he possessed.


    Of course, he would refrain from judgment until he ran into the technique topare it to, but even then¡­


    (''If I''m not wrong¡­ My Riemannian Echo is not much inferior, if at all,'') Rui noted.


    At the very least, he was sure that it was impossible to fool his sense at the Squire, and probably even Senior Realm. However, the All-Seeing Eye could surpass his technique in other ways, potentially. For example, it was said to be able to give the user microscopic detail of one''s surroundings, this was definitely a parameter that the technique surpassed him in. Riemannian Echo was far below the level that was needed to aplish such a feat. <novelsnext></novelsnext>


    (''For now, at least,'') Rui mused.


    The best part of Riemannian Echo was that it was upgradeable, and the path forward to upgrading was quite straightforward and simple. He highly doubted whether the All-Seeing Eye could be upgraded nearly as easily.


    (''Regardless, I''ve obtained what I wanted,'') Rui mused as he closed his eyes, feeling his environment through the restless esoteric substances in his body, constructing an image of the entirety of his environment far and wide.


    "Kane, you''re here already," Rui noted as he greeted apparently thin air.


    For a few seconds, nothing happened.


    "Tsk tsk," Kane appeared out of thin air. "I spent half a year reaching a much higher level of strength, and yet you catch me so easily. It makes me feel like my efforts are useless you know."


    "Well, don''t worry, your confidence will return when your stealth dominates in the Shionel Dungeon," Rui scoffed lightly.


    It was true that with his other senses, Kane had reached a level where he couldn''t sense them anymore. However, with Riemannian Echo, it was as though Kane was not even using his stealth ever.


    (''Not even the formidable Void Step is able to escape my senses,'') Rui mused.


    At that point, it was probably impossible for anything in the Squire Realm to catch him off-guard with stealth alone. He highly doubted that anything short of a stealth-oriented Martial Senior could bypass his senses or anything of the kind.


    "So, what''s up?" Kane asked. "You were the one who called me out here."


    "We need to discuss our ns," Rui informed him. "We havepleted the necessary preparations when ites to our personal capabilities. However, that isn''t necessarily enough, I''m afraid."


    "Hm?" Kane frowned. "What do you mean? Can''t we just go to the Shionel Confederation and enter the dungeon and clear it? Isn''t that what the average Martial Squire is doing?"


    "You''re not wrong," Rui shook his head. "But you said it yourself, it is what the average Martial Squire is doing."


    "However," He turned to face Kane with a smirk. "We are anything but average, and unfortunately that necessarily entails doing things a little differently."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 768 Dilemma

    ?Property ? 2024 N0(v)elDrama.Org.


    "What''s that supposed to mean?" Kane raised an eyebrow.


    "It means that if we partake in ordinary measures in the dungeon, and aplish ordinary results, there won''t be any problem in going the ordinary route," Rui exined. "But have you forgotten our objective?"


    "Clearing the dungeon, right?"


    "Right, we want to explore the dungeon and plunder it before everyone else," Rui nodded. "The other objective is to earn enough money to fund all expenses, some of which are going to be a bit extravagant. However, while we have made sure to equip ourselves to outdo ourpetition in the dungeon, that doesn''t necessarily mean the same is true for all matters outside the dungeon."


    Kane''s eyes narrowed a bit, as he realized what he was walking about. "You mean Shionel Merchant Guild, and the market for the resources of the Shionel Dungeon?"


    "Right," Rui nodded. "Let''s say we do seed in achieving our first goal, we make greater progress than ourpetition and end up plundering all of the esoteric material resources from the dungeon for ourselves, and selling it ourselves, what do you think would happen?"


    "¡­We''d gain a ton of money, and the Martial Artists who would enter floors after we do would gain close to nothing?" Kane scratched his head.


    "Right," Rui nodded. "Do you think all the Martial Artists who have migrated from many ces from this section of the continent would simply sigh and shrug in resignation? What do you think they would do if they see us basically stealing all of their sess?"


    There were too many powers and entities with a personal vested interest in the esoteric resources that were being extracted from the Shionel Dungeon. The sudden supply of high-grade esoteric substances was capable of shifting the economy, industries, and sectors of society that revolved around the supply and demand of those esoteric substances and could shift the power dynamics between the various power blockspeting with each other across the entire section of the continent.


    Rui had long known that acting in a manner that was detrimental to these interests was nothing short of a foolish blunder that would get him killed on the spot.


    "They would probably take some kind of action against us," Kane''s eyes narrowed. "But that''s only if theye to know that it was us who managed to bypass monsters and plunder all the resources in the dungeon. With my Void Step, isn''t that basically an impossibility? How would they ever detect and confirm our identities as the ones who are plundering the dungeonpletely and leaving nothing for everybody?"


    Rui shook his head inwardly. Kane had always been shrewd, but hisck of understanding of how the world worked often held him back. <novelsnext></novelsnext>


    "There are other ways to trace the identity of people who have plundered arge plunder of esoteric extracts from the dungeon," Rui replied. "Just because we plunder it, doesn''t mean that''s the end of the story if we choose to sell it in the local Shionel market that has recently spiked in size for the demand of the esoteric supplies of the Shionel Dungeon, then it can be traced back to us. After all, if we do choose to sell it, then at some point, we need to hand it over to a third party in a transaction, be that a customer from the consumer market, a retailer, or arge-scale supplier. That cannot be hidden, and even if we use aliases that were different from what we used to register when entering the dungeon, that would still not be enough to fool the countless intelligenceworks that have probably infested the Shionel Dungeon at this point."


    There are simply too many logistical avenues for data leaks to ur if they handled things normally. Martial Art techniques only worked in avenues of physical conflict, they were not useful in the world of business andmerce beyond a certain point.


    Kane''s expression grew a little troubled at that. "True¡­"


    "On top of that, we have to submit twenty percent of our plunder to the Shionel Merchant Guild, unless you have ns of engaging in embezzlement," Rui sighed. "The tax alone makes it a dead-giveaway."


    "It''s a shame that the Martial Union isn''t employing external Martial Artists in a mission," Kane sighed. "That way we wouldn''t have to be too concerned with bacsh as we would have otherrades that would be with us. Any force picking a fight with us would mean picking a fight with the Kandrian Martial Union."


    "Perhaps, but the Martial Union would be too suffocating," Rui sighed.


    "Didn''t you manage just fine on ourst mission? You spent ten months as the ambassador of the Martial Union," Kane raised an eyebrow.


    "True, but it''s not quite that simple," Rui shook his head. "The purposes of the two missions were different as far as my objective went. My desire to explore the Shionel Dungeon is different from the reason that I epted the G''ak''arkan mission. I do not want to be constrained at all at this time while exploring the Shionel Dungeon as an adventurer, that wouldrgely defeat the purpose of going that far to the Shionel Dungeon. Orders, constraints, and reports. No thanks."


    Rui had epted the ambassador mission to be exposed to a foreign Martial philosophy, and because he was truly one of the few people capable of seeding in the mission. To arge extent, he was content observing the G''ak''arkan Tribe and interacting with them.


    The Shionel Dungeon, however, was an opportunity for an adventure, and for battle against monsters and power Martial Squires from across a chunk of the entire Panama Continent. He did not want to go to the Shioneul Dungeon for an internal mission of the Martial Union.


    "Well, then what''s our solution?" Kane raised an eyebrow. "Do we find a way to conceal our identities as the ones who cleared the dungeon, or do we look to find a way to gain the protection necessary to continue clearing the dungeon?"


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 769 Solution?

    ?


    "Both of those options individually are unviable," Rui shook his head. "Especially the first one. If all the esoteric supplies go missing from the dungeon, and suddenly a mysterious source appears on the market selling gigantic quantities of those very same esoteric resources appears, every force with a vested interest in the esoteric supplies of the Shionel Dungeon would investigate the matter aggressively. I''m sorry to say that not even your stealth is enough to save us from that predicament. Furthermore, even if you magically had the ability to evade investigation with your stealth, there are two entities who would we will most likely not be able to fool even then."


    "And who would that be?" Kane raised an eyebrow.


    "The Shionel Merchant Guild and the Martial Union," Rui exined.


    The atmosphere grew more solemn.


    "Do not forget that even the Martial Union is apetitor for the resources of the Shionel Dungeon, and the Kandrian Royal Family is one as well," Rui calmly exined.


    "But why those two specifically?" Kane asked.


    "They have too many ways to gain information on us," Rui exined. "The Shionel Adventurer Guild requires all Martial Artists to register in their guild as adventurers with valid proof of identity, even if we do not undertakemissions from the guild, to enter the Shionel Dungeon. That, along with the fact that they have information on all suppliers, consumers, and Martial Artists in the nation, means that it won''t be too difficult for them to narrow it down to us even if we have Void Step covering for us every second of every day. Their intelligence and ess to information will be the richest of all."


    "And why would the Martial Union find out?" Kane asked.


    "Because they have too much information on us," Rui sighed. "Even if we do our best to conceal our abilities, they will eventually notice patterns, starting with your Void Step."


    "I see, that actually makes a lot of sense," Kane nodded, absorbed in thought. "The Kandrian Royal Family doesn''t have either of those advantages though."


    "True, but we are still citizens of the Kandrian Empire," Rui exined.


    "Wouldn''t that be considered treason, then?" Kane frowned.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    "No," Rui shook his head. "Treason is the act of betraying one''s country by breaking one''s sworn allegiance to the state or one''s oaths and vows. What we would be doing is merely engaging in the verymon business of resource acquisition and sales, and we''d be simply doing it with an extreme degree of sess, at the indirect cost of everyone else. This is not an irregr urrence, and has never been treated as treason."


    "Are you sure?" Kane raised an eyebrow. He was rather intent on staying far away from that line.


    "Certain," Rui replied. "An example of this would be the DiVilier Martial Corp. He has severely restrained the Martial Union''s and the Royal Family''s share of the Martial utilities'' and amenities'' domestic and international market, yet he has yet to be charged with treason. The Kandrian Royal Family simply cannot justify adjusting the definition of ''treason'' to include indirect harm by sessful fairpetition against the state''smercial ventures. If they even dare to pass such a tyrannical and oppressive amendment to the Royal Constitution, the Kandrian Empire''s economy would copse due to the mass migration of businesses that are afraid of being charged with treason. The same applies to us, especially in the circumstances that we are in right now. Our identity as Martial Squires and member of interest of the Martial Union also makes this even more unlikely than it already very much is."


    "I see," Kane nodded. "When you put it that, that does make a lot of sense. Doesn''t seem like it''s that big of an issue though then."


    "We can''t be used of treason, but do you really want to be put in a situation where the Martial Union and the Shionel Merchant Guild know that we are acting against their interests by monopolizing the resources extracted from the dungeon?" Rui raised an eyebrow.


    "This wouldn''t necessarily be against the interests of the Shionel Merchant Guild, right? The amount of esoteric organic and mineral resources that they would get from the fee would not change regardless of who ends up plundering the resources," Kane pointed out.


    "That is true, however, if I''m not wrong, the Shionel Merchant Guild''s most important priority is not the fees of esoteric resource supplies that they are obligated to from all of the Martial Artists who plunder them from the Dungeon. As the ruling body of a corporatocracy,prised of the most powerful merchants in the state, they probably care more about the boom in business, both domestic and international, than they care about the fees that they extract from all Martial Artists. The former has far greater long-term benefits to thempared to the esoteric resource supplies themselves. This huge growth in the market is their greatest boon from the dungeon. However, what do you think would happen to their precious supplier market if a singr entity monopolized all of the esoteric supplies of the dungeon?"


    Kane''s eyes widened as he realized what Rui was getting at. "If we somehow monopolized even arge chunk of the esoteric resource supplies of the dungeon, then the supplier market would dwindle due to suppliers that are unable to get their hands on what we monopolized. That''s not something they want to see."C0ntent ? 2024 (N/?)velDrama.Org.


    "Correct. Especially when the one doing all the monopolizing is not a constituent of their guild or even a citizen of their nation. That would be highly undesirable to them," Rui nodded.


    "This is such a headache to even think about," Kane sighed with exasperation. "So we absolutely cannot avoid the eyes of the Martial Union or the Shionel Guild, and we also cannot earn their support because, as you said, we''re shing against their interests, or at least thetter''s interests. So what''s the solution? Because it sounds like there isn''t anything we can do."


    "Don''t worry," Rui smirked. "I wouldn''t have told you all of this had you all of this if I hadn''t thought of a solution."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 770 Map

    ?


    "The conditions for us are avoiding the eyes of the ones whose interests we are shing with, and two, to cate the interests of those whose eyes we cannot avoid," Rui exined. "As long as we can fulfill these two conditions, we can go all out without holding back in the Shionel Dungeon."


    "And let me guess," Kane smiled wryly. "You have a way of doing both, correct?"


    "Just right," Rui smirked.


    "First, regarding the Martial Union. We cannot avoid their eyes forever, but we can dy them," Rui exined.


    "And how would you go about that?" Kane asked.


    "We can create a red herring," Rui exined. "It''s not that difficult to nt false information and throw them off-guard for a while. Once you understand how information flows, manipting it bes far more feasible. Traveling to separate destinations, paying off information brokers, andmissioning copycats to take our ce from the local Martial Art group will hinder them to a certain extent."


    "That makes sense," Kane nodded. "Though what do we do when they get us eventually? Isn''t that back to square one?"


    "True, but we will have obtained at least some time without them breathing down our backs," Rui tutted.


    "What do we do then?" Kane wondered with a raised eyebrow.


    "We''ll have to buy their support," Rui smiled.


    "With the esoteric supplies?" Kane asked.


    "No, with information," Rui replied, calmly. "Specifically, an extremely detailed map of the entireyout of the Shionel Dungeon."


    "Hm?" Kane frowned. "Why would such a thing-"


    He paused abruptly as a thought entered his mind.


    "Seems you figured it out," Rui smiled. "Remember how shit the maps for the Shionel Dungeon are?"


    Rui plucked out and spread a folded piece of paper that turned into a map.


    "Look, they''re all extremely abstract since all the floors are represented with identical circles," Rui tapped on them.


    It was an obviously inurate representation of each floor since he already knew that they were not circr, and certainly not of the same size.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    "Look at the paths and tunnels leading to each floor," Rui tapped across the map. "They''re represented by straight lines, again exaggerated inuracy, and only one set of routes between floors are depicted despite the fact that there were countless tunnels mazing in and out. Furthermore, the distances between each of the floors is identical on map. None of this is meant to be treated seriously, on purpose."


    Kane nodded. "Despite being official maps that we purchased from the Martial Union, the actual information that this map offers is very little, which probably means they don''t actually have any urate and precise information on the locations of anything in the topography and geography within the dungeon."Property ? 2024 N0(v)elDrama.Org.


    "Exactly, and the reason for that is the severe hindrance that all senses face. I''ve heard that even the vastly superhuman eyesight of Martial Squires is reduced to less than that of human-level. Light is scarce too. How on Earth are they going to urately map the entirety of the Shionel Dungeon dome that''s sixty kilometers wide? The sheer volume of the dungeon is enough tofortably fit the poption of arge country. They cannot use sophisticated technology because Martial Artists are utterly ipetent at any technical matter, and technology would face the same problem as the Martial Squires. Nor can they rely on actual cartographers who create maps for a living since no ordinary human can enter the Shionel Dungeon," Rui smirked. "That means they''re desperate for urate and precise information on the Shionel Dungeon."


    "That makes sense¡­" Kane nodded. "But will that be enough? After all, even with the information that they have, the exploration process is still ongoing, it doesn''t seem particrly necessary."


    "You''re not wrong," Rui replied. "However, it could be elerated if they possessed urate and precise information of the entire dungeon. But that isn''t the true benefit of possessing such information."


    "What else could one gain from it beyond the exploration?" Kane asked with knitted eyebrows.


    "The Shionel Dungeon''s value exceeds just the booming business that it brings to Shionel Merchant Guild and the Shionel Confederation, and the esoteric organic and mineral resource supplies. It''s long-term value lies in its potential for real estate," Rui smirked.


    Kane''s eyes widened. "You mean once the entirety of the process of exploration and plundering is over?"


    "That''s right," Rui nodded. "It isn''t too verymon for a single nation to colonize a dungeon once cleared since they rarely spawn in the territory of a single nation and usually form in pieces and chunks of the Beast Domain that prate into the Human Domain. However, what happened to the Serevian Dungeon once the war ended?"


    "It was colonized by all the participating nations of the Serevian Pact," Kane replied as realization dawned.


    "That''s right," Rui nodded. "Dungeons are still useful as real estate, especially the Shionel Dungeon which has created a three-dimensionalplex filled with manyrge city-sized spaced interconnected with tunnels. Spanning sixty kilometers"


    "That''s¡­ a country inside a country. That''s priceless!" Kane gasped. "It''s huge amounts of free territory that increase the ''size'' of the nation the moment they ensure safety and habitability."


    "Right on. And the value of an urate and precise map of the Shionel Dungeon is instantly extremely precious," Rui smiled.


    "That gives a huge bargaining chip," Kaneughed out loud. "Since you are probably the only one who can sense extensively inside the Shionel Dungeon thanks to your Riemannian Echo!"


    "Correct," Rui nodded. "That''s the bargaining chip that can be used to negotiate with the Shionel Merchant Guild. Once I dangle that over their heads, I can get them to be a lot more pliable around me being a market monopolizer to a certain extent with a minor concession at most."


    "You''ll have to make concessions at all with something this important?" Kane frowned.


    "Well, our positions and capital are too different for me to act too tough. It would be risky to push it too far. I have no interest in ying silly games with them."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 771 Guildmaster

    ?


    Given that the Shionel Confederation was a through-and-through corporatocracy governed by the Shionel Merchant Guild, they were naturally involved in all kinds ofmercial trades and industries, and real estate was certainly part of it.


    Now, they had just been given the chance to acquire arge amount of uninhabited area if and when they cleared the Shionel Dungeon, given that the Shionel Dungeon fell inside their territory.


    Perhaps other nations would have treated it as a base of sorts, and armed into a national inventory for storage of military resources, among other things. Perhaps some would treat it as a shelter in times of disaster.


    But not the Shionel Merchant Guild. It would undoubtedly choose to make the bold and highly capitalistic decision of turning the Shionel Dungeon into a real estatemodity even after the dungeon had been explored and plundered.


    "But how do you know what their n with the Shionel Dungeon is definitely going to be turning into real estate?"


    "I studied the Shionel Merchant Guild''s history, and more important the history of the current guildmaster Bradt Partick," Rui exined. "Once you look at the decisions they''ve made in different kinds of circumstances, it bes rather clear what the decision they will make is going to look like."


    Rui had be even more certain of his prediction on Bradt Partick when he looked at the legitive bills he passed ever since he was elected as the guild master. The man was a ruthless capitalist. An absolute proponent of free markets, and economic liberty. It had very quickly be evident to Rui that this man viewed everything as money, and that he had no bottom lines. One of his first legitive acts as guildmaster was to leave the East Panamic Narcotic Drug Convention, a convention that had been ratified by forty nations, including the Kandrian Empire. This was directly based on his philosophy of individual libertarianism and free-market capitalism. The man had decided that if adults wanted to ruin their lives with narcotic drugs, they had every right to and that the state had no right to restrict that.


    He had revealed in a press conference additionally that, funds that were being funneled into the underworld through the ck market for narcotic drugs, would not be funneled intow-abiding manufacturers, suppliers, and distributors, thereby invigorating the economy of the nation significantly and dealing a powerful blow to the underworld and the ck market.


    That same year guild master also left the very Convention and legalized very within the Shionel Confederation, dering that even human lives were products that could be exchanged.


    Of course, this still needed to be abided by thew as forcibly enving a person through violent means was still a vition of thew, constituting battery and assault, as well as uwful very.


    He had set up an executive branch within the government that overlooked and regted very and ensured that the ve industry was not viting the manyws that it had the propensity to vite.


    "Those aren''t the only examples, the man has gone to levels you won''t believe when ites tomercializing and capitalizing everything into goods or services. I am very confident that regardless of what shape or form he and the Shionel Merchant Guild will find a way tomercialize and capitalize the Shionel Dungeon in some way or the other. I suspect they will find a bnce between turning some of it into government property while selling the rest free to the Shionel Confederation." Rui calmly analyzed the situation. "Regardless of what form it takes, they need urate and precise information on the Shionel Dungeon''s geography topography, andyout before they can make any venture with it," Rui continued. "Thus my ability to sense extremelyrge distances urately and precisely inside the dungeon, and also memorize it extremely urately thanks to my Mind Pce will be priceless in the eyes of the Shionel Merchant Guild. Amodating our disruptions to the market with some limits will be one hell of a deal for the Shionel Merchant Guild."<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    "Hm¡­" Kane scratched his head, deep in thought. "I gotta admit, you''ve thought this through incredibly well."


    "Thanks," Rui smiled.


    "I''m curious though," Kane continued. "Do you really need to drain each floor of as many esoteric substances as possible? I feel like if we just take a little, that wouldn''t be as much of a challenge."


    "The whole point of the venture is to push ourselves, Kane," Rui exined. "Why do you think I even set an objective as high as being the first individual to clear the dungeon? Do you think it''s for fame and money? No, it''s because being the first to clear the dungeon and its resources is extremely difficult, and it''s only because of the sheer difficulty of the objective that I managed to push myself to create extremely powerful techniques. You need to set high standards for yourself, otherwise, you''ll growfortable with lower standards. Acquiring all the esoteric resources and supplies of the Shionel Dungeon is a high-enough target, that has already aided in my growth."


    "That''s extreme, you know," Kane raised an eyebrow. "Are you really willing to go that far to get stronger?"


    "I''m willing to go that far to develop my Martial Art and go even further down my Martial Path," Rui corrected him before raising an eyebrow. "Are you perhaps having second thoughts?"


    "No, just curious," Kane shrugged. "Buting back to the main point, you intend to buy off the Shionel Merchant Guild with an urate and precise map of the Shionel Dungeon, to let you off the hook for disrupting the market?"


    "Among other things yes," Rui nodded.


    "And what about the Martial Union?" Kane raised an eyebrow. "They''re not going to be happy you threw them off the scent and are hurting their team of Martial Squires by being too sessful, right?" Kane asked.


    "True, at that point, I''ll have no choice but to cate them with an attractive price, we''ll probably make a bit of a loss, but it should be able to handle our expenses, I hope."? 2024 N?v/el/Dram/a.Org.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 772 Storage

    ?


    "Hope?" Kane frowned. "Our expenses are not going to be that extreme, you know."


    "That''s where you''re wrong, the covertness of our operations itself will require a lot of money, my equipment requires constant funds, and the portable dimensional storage device that we''re going to need to purchase to keep our loot hidden costs a small fortune."


    "Wait," Kane cocked his head backward. "You want to buy a portable dimensional storage device?? Do you have any idea how expensive that is? Why on Earth do we have to go for such extravagant and ostentatious means just to transport some goods?"Property ? 2024 N0(v)elDrama.Org.


    Kane''s reaction was not an exaggeration. Dimensional storage esoteric technology was extremely expensive and scarce. It was based on esoteric substances that had the property of making matter in contact with it seemingly disappear when its temperature rose too much. Numerous experiments revealed that matter it made disappear when its temperature exceeded its standard temperature would return unharmed, and also unchanged. The duration of the disappearance was dependent on the time period that the temperature was maintained.


    Further experiments that the ''disappearance'' of the objects was such that it did not affect change anything about the matter that disappeared. Objects whose physical and chemical states had been carefully measured prior hand had found to have the same physical state, to such a degree that it could be said that time did not pass for the disappeared objects. Food did not spoil or even grow colder, and corpses did not rot. Living creatures returned unharmed, and the first time a human subject had been used, it was found that even memories of the time they disappeared did not form.


    It was one of the most astonishing esoteric phenomena, even by the standard of esoteric material science. There were a lot of theories as to what was actually urring, with the most prevailing theory being that the esoteric substances were connected to a parallel space where time did not pass. Another popr theory was the information storage theory which stated that the disappeared objects were actually destroyed and only the information of the object was stored, which when released reconstituted the destroyed mass back to its original state based on the information stored.


    Regardless, it was an incredible phenomenon. At the time, it was thought that this would revolutionize the world, yet that quickly turned out to not be the case. The biggest problem was that it cost too much energy to keep anything stored for extended periods of time. This meant that transport, distribution, and storage could not be made easier with the help of dimensional storage. Any and all industries and sectors could not afford to turn this into their regr inventory system because it was simply far too expensive to maintain.


    Individual businesses would go bankrupt within merely one hour of usage of the dimensional storage for their inventory. While wealthier andrger businesses couldst longer, they too would suffer plummeting losses.


    It was simply not worth it. Thus what could have changed the world ultimately became an extremely extravagant and ostentatious that would end up being used in only a minority of circumstances.


    "It''s the only way to keep our identities as the ones who plundered all of the esoteric extracts of the Shionel Dungeon, after all," Rui exined. "While they are too expensive to maintain generally, that only applies to merchants and businesses who generally have small profit percentages and cannot afford to add another significant expense on top of that. Furthermore, once we''re sessful, we''ll easily be able to afford the dimensional storage and maintain it. We can store an overwhelming majority of our loot in there while we''ll walk out with a normal amount of plunder in bags and things of the lot. That way we''llpletely blend into the crowd without attracting any attention."


    "That makes sense," Kane nodded. "Though wouldn''t we use Void Step while exiting?"<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    "No," Rui shook his head. "That actually invited more suspicion. If anyone ever notices that we entered the dungeon but seemingly never exited, and then suddenly enter the dungeon the next day, that is what will truly invite suspicion. We need to be ordinary in every way that matters."


    "I see, that actually makes sense," Kane nodded. "Makes my life easier too."


    "Don''t worry, I don''t intend to rely on you alone and dump all the hard stuff on your shoulders. The techniques I''ve developed will ease your burden a lot, although your Void Step will definitely be crucial nheless."


    "I appreciate that," Kane nodded. "Although I don''t need to be coddled, I can pull my weight."


    "I don''t doubt that at all," Rui smiled at his determination.


    Kane was probably going to be one of the least experienced Martial Squires in the Shionel Dungeon, if not for his Void Step technique and the Godspeed technique, he would also be the weakest without a doubt. As far as Rui knew, he had yet to have the opportunity to develop an offensive technique. Which meant that his ability to take down his opponents was very low. To the point that he could forget trying to hurt Martial Squires who were above grade four.


    Rui knew that the road ahead was going to be difficult for him. Unlike Rui had knowledge and experience from another world and another lifetime, Kane did not have anything that would allow him to develop techniques as fast as Rui did.


    It would take a lot longer for him to the strides that Rui had taken.


    That was why Rui had decided it was absolutely paramount for him to develop means and ways to be able to handle himself just fine even if Kane faltered at some point. He already knew Kane could not maintain Void Step for extended periods of time when he had to expand it to other people.


    In the times that he couldn''t it would be Rui''s turn to carry them, metaphorically, while Kane caught a break for a while. Rui was confident that he would be able to fulfill that role.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 773 Preparations

    ?


    The two of them discussed some more details, before setting off toplete the preparations. The n Rui was proposing was not simple at all, and it required plenty of preparation and nning. Rui needed to make sure that he knew exactly what he was getting into, otherwise, things could easily fall out of his ns.


    The two of them needed to covertly acquire new masks and Martial attire. Using the Martial attire they got from the utilities and amenities department of the  Martial Union would be an incredibly foolish move.


    The two of them went on tomission a few sets of Martial attire from an internationalpany. Purchasing it from apany native to the Kandrian Empire would be no different from announcing that he was part of the Kandrian Empire. That would easily allow hispetitors to track his identity given time.


    He couldn''t help it with the weapons that hemissioned,missions for cksmiths could not be internationally for the most part.


    The biggest preparation he needed to make was throwing the Martial Union off for a while. Specifically, he needed to spend some money on the false propagation of rumors in a foreign nation, as well as someone who could cosy as him to spread the misinformation that he was hoping would be spread.


    It took him a week toplete the task. He left the country on a simple mission in the general vicinity he was looking to nt his red herrings, and quickly made all the preparations to ensure that he and Kane would not be on the list of suspects of the identities of those who disrupted the market of the Shionel Confederation.


    Rui had to rely on unofficial means tomission a people and a Martial Artist to make it seem like he was still in that foreign nation.


    The reason for that was the fact that the Martial Union probably kept a close eye on the happenings of all the Martial organizations in the geographic vicinity, and all matters rted to Martial Art.


    Otherwise, they would not have found the top-secret information of the researchb for the breakthrough to the Squire Realm in the Commonwealth Duchy of Vinfrana.


    What that meant was that Rui could not rely on any existing well-known organization in an officialmission. He needed to approach a Martial Squire individually and pay them off.


    However, most Martial Squires would not ept such a shadymission, thus Rui needed to research.Property ? 2024 N0(v)elDrama.Org.


    Finding an appropriate Martial Squire who was in need of arge number of funds took time, however, with the information of the Martial Union alone under the pretense of necessity for his expenditure, he managed to find the right Martial Squire for the job.


    Once the deal was sealed, Rui would simply return for the Martial Union, and go about his day like nothing happened.


    The biggest issue was the dimensional storage device.


    Rui could purchase that, but¡­


    (''It takes away almost eighty percent of my savings,'') Rui sighed.


    Still, he did not want to back down after everything he had been through. He wasn''t surprised that the Martial Union had the ability to sell him a dimensional storage item, but he was surprised that he was easily able to gain ess to it.


    It meant that his value to the Martial Union was enough that he could gain ess to their inventory that easily.


    However, he knew that he was investing an insane amount into this venture, but that only made him more motivated to go all out and seed.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    He quickly bought the item, which was a ring that he put on his finger.


    Once all of those preparations were finally made, the two were finally ready to leave for the Shionel Confederation.


    However, they couldn''t just straightforwardly travel to it, unfortunately. They needed to keep up with the act and extensively take a detour. They could even be seen leaving at the same time, thus Kane left the Kandrian Empire a few days before Rui did, heading in the opposite direction of the Shionel Dungeon.


    A few dayster, Rui also set out.


    "How long will you take this time?" Julian asked.


    "Hard to say, but probably quite some time," Rui replied.


    "Well, you''re nning to pull off some risky adventures, so stay safe," He bade Rui.


    He was the only one in the Quarrier Orphanage who knew the truth about where Rui was going and what his goal was. Rui felt bad for lying to his family, but he could not afford to spread the truth too much.


    Of course, they would never actively rat on him, but it was far too easy for the truth to be extracted from them in ways that they could not be able to fathom. Julian was definitely much more trustworthy in that regard, and would also have figured it out naturally with all the requests that Rui had made of him.


    "I intend to," Rui told him before bidding him and his family goodbye and heading off for the border. Like Kane, he too had chosen a nation in apletely different direction than the Shionel Confederation.


    It only took him a few hours to reach the border, when he was intercepted by the Kandrian Border Patrol Force and escorted for a formal exit of the country.


    "Purpose of transit?" The officer processing his documents asked him.


    "Personal venture," Rui smiled.


    "Destination?"


    "Including but not limited to the Kingdom of Vi,"


    Soon enough, he had left the nation.


    He began traveling onnd, heading to the transit port of the Kingdom of Vi. Normally, he didn''t bother entering a small nation legally, but this time he wanted his arrival in the Kingdom of Vi to be recorded. It would make it more credible if he was ever investigated.


    Yet he intended to leave illegally without using their formal port of transit, which would support the notion that he hadn''t left the nation upon a cursory nce.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 774 Reached

    ?


    "Wee to the Kingdom of Violis, sir," An officer smiled at him before passing him through.


    "Thank you," Rui nodded before leaving the transit port office and heading across the busy streets of the Kingdom of Violis.


    He didn''t want to keep Kane waiting, but he couldn''t just leave the nation either. Based on his understanding of the intelligence-gathering capabilities of the Martial Union''s intelligence department, the amount of information that they possessed on any given subject of any sort depended on the importance and necessity of that information as well as the difficulty of obtaining that information.


    He was rtively certain that the Martial Union would very soon find out that he had entered the Kingdom of Violis. Of course, they wouldn''t set up a tail or a spy on him, since the importance and necessity of his current whereabouts and intentions were not all that important.


    He intended to make sure that there was nothing wrong on the surface of the matter, thus he intended to use his Martial Union ount, which was widely epted as a valid form of payment to book a hotel and spend some money on some items here and there before setting out.


    It would not be enough to fool the Martial Union if they conducted a serious investigation, however, it was unlikely they would do this any time soon, they had no reason to, and the Martial Union, like all intelligence agencies, was probably very particr regarding what they could spend the resources of their department on. At the moment, Rui probably did not qualify.


    Half a dayter, it was time.


    STEP


    He quickly jumped over the fence that marked the border the nation, before heading away from the nation, as he traveled to the Republic of Henerin, where Kane was situated at the moment. They had agreed to meet outside the Republic before heading towards the Shionel Confederation.


    Thankfully, the distance was not that great, and it was only half-an-hourter that Rui met up with Kane.


    STEP


    "Hey," Rui greeted him,nding on the ground. "You are sure you followed all the steps, right?"


    "Yeah yeah don''t worry, I made sure that I did everything you said," Kane reassured him.


    Rui had given Kane precise instructions to ensure that the Martial Union would only find that he hadn''t moved from the Republic of Henerin, ever since he entered it.


    Of course, with Kane, however, there was also the matter of his family keeping an eye out for him, thus Rui had had him go through more steps to obfuscate his family from figuring out the truth.Content (C) N?v/elDra/ma.Org.


    If the Arrancar Family ever managed to catch wind of the fact that he was not where he imed to be, then they could raise an inquisition to the Martial Union and the Martial Union would quickly realize that the two of them had left theirst known locations.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    Rui could only do his best and create as much of an information illusion as he could. Still, he was not an intelligence agent, and he did not think that his efforts matched up to actual covert agents who sessfully fed foreign nations false information using more refined versions of the methods that he was using.


    "Alright, let''s head out then," Rui nodded before the two of them headed towards the Shionel Confederation in the shortest route that they could find on map.


    The two of them were wearing the indistinct Martial attire that they hadmissioned that purposely did not strongly attribute to any particr nation''s style. Their masks too were different from what they normally used in missions.


    The Shionel Confederation was quite far away from the Kandrian Empire, even with their remarkable speed, it would take them a few hours to reach their destination.


    "You''ve grown faster," Kaneplimented him with a surprised expression beneath his mask. "Much faster than I remember you being, is this thanks to the Gale Force Breathing technique that you developed?"


    Rui nodded. Kane was easily keeping up with him rxed while Rui was going all out with Gale Force Breathing, Outer Convergence, and Parallel Walking. Rui had known this, but seeing Kane casually keep up with him with a fraction of his speed was still quite revealing.


    "You''ve grown faster too, it seems," Rui huffed.


    "Well, stealth isn''t the only thing I''ve improved, I am an evasive maneuverer, after all," Kane replied casually. "At my current level, I can forget about facing the monsters of the Shionel Dungeon head-on, my only option is to avoid them, so I have been polishing my agility and speed to a higher level."


    The two chit-chatted on the way there, though that wasn''t too easy since Rui needed to maintain Gale Force Breathing which made it more difficult to converse with him.


    "There are floors in the Shionel Dungeon where your specialty is especially relevant," Rui informed him. "At that time, you''re going to be the one that will be leading the charge, my friend. Of course, I have made preparations for that as well myself, so I do not believe I''ll be left behind."


    Rui had extensively studied the intelligence of the monsters of the Shionel Dungeon, he had spent quite some time building predictive models on them, although they weren''tplete yet due to ack ofplete intelligence. Unfortunately, second-hand data did notpare to observing them first-hand.


    He pulled off the same trick with the K''ulnen Tribe of Vilun Ind, but at that time, he and Kane had spent quite some time observing their targets, allowing Rui to build a predictive model of their targets better due to more ess to more urate information.


    Of course, once he began observing the monsters in person, he would be able to develop better predictive models for them, that was one of the things that he was hoping for when they finally actually entered the Shionel Dungeon.


    Time passed as the two of them ran across the continent, due to the great distance between them as well as the many countries and other settlements in between they were unable to maintain their top speed the entire time.


    At longst, they finally reached the Shionel Confederation six hourster.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 775 Rush

    ?


    The Shionel Confederation was more than what Rui had pictured. He had initially thought that he would not be surprised or overwhelmed by what he saw since he lived near the town of Hajin, which was a popr and dense trade and Martial hub in the Kandrian Empire, but he was extremely wrong.


    "This is¡­" Kane murmured, his voice trailing off.


    "We haven''t even entered the nation yet," Rui''s eyes widened.


    The rush to enter the Shionel Confederation was absurd. Even outside the walls of the country, there were huge swathes of people trying to enter.


    Rui nced around them, scrutinizing the many people outside. Arge chunk of the poption seemed like a makeshift flea market. A lot of the market seemed like small-time merchants, making a living out of a small-time business selling a small set of goods or offering some basic manualbor services.


    There were also small housing units that offered stay to people who were trying to enter the Shionel Confederation, yet had failed, for one reason or the other.


    Rui''s eyes narrowed as he spotted a ton of Martial Squires as well, unsurprisingly enough. Their grade wasn''t too low, either, based on the sense of pressure and danger that they generated in him.


    "I''d read about this¡­ But it''s more than I had expected," Rui admitted as he took in the sheer poption of people outside of the borders of the nation.


    "How can the Shionel Confederation allow such arge proportion of people to stay outside its borders in this fashion?" Kane frowned. "Isn''t that, I dunno, not good for a nation?"


    "You''re not wrong," Rui replied. "It''s just that the Shionel Merchant Guild implemented a policy of taxing all these people for infringing on the domain of the Shionel Confederation."


    "Ugh, is there nothing that these people won''t extract money from?" Kane frowned.


    "No, actually. Not at all." Rui smiled wryly.Content (C) N?v/elDra/ma.Org.


    "Why don''t these people actually enter the Shionel Confederation and sell their goods and services there, rather than outside the nation? Seems like a weird choice to choose sell here rather than in there" Kane wondered.


    "That''s because it isn''t a choice," Rui calmly exined. "These people aren''t able to sustain their small-time sales in the Shionel Confederation. They''re people who got crushed and shoved out of the nation by more fiercepetitors that monopolized estate, supply lines, distribution capital, etc."


    "What does that actually mean?" Kane raised an eyebrow.


    "Every nation has a hard limit to the amount of resources and capital that can exist within the nation," Rui exined. "Normally, this maximum amount is extremely high and is usually enough that most of the supplier market can get a share of it. However, thepetition in the Shionel Confederation is so extremely high, that only the best can actually obtain the resources needed to sustain and allow their business to thrive."<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    "I see," Kane looked around. "So, all of these people couldn''t cut it inside their nation, so they''re losers who have no choice but to make do with scraps outside of the nation?"


    "That''s a harsh evaluation, but it is true,"


    "Wait, we intend on participating in thispetitivemercial environment?" Kane jerked his head back. "Are you sure this is going to work? How can wepete?"


    "The market for the esoteric resources is currently the biggest at the moment, any group of Martial Squires that achieves a reasonable amount of sess canpete fairly well," Rui exined. "On top of that, we don''t just intend to seed, we intend to dominate. There is absolutely no way that, as long as our ns in the Shionel Dungeon seed, we''ll fail."


    "If you say so," Kane shrugged. "Alright, what do we do now?"


    "We can enter the nation for starters," Rui smiled wryly. "We''ll have to go the legal way this time."


    "That would require registering with our actual identities, correct?" Kane frowned. "Wouldn''t that be too dangerous?"


    "Yes, but it''s inescapable unless you want to have our identities forged with a fake identity card," Rui sighed. "Not that it''s far harder for Martial Squires to fake our identities because we''re massively more high-profile than normal citizens. I can assure you that every nation in the geographic vicinity of the Kandrian Empire probably has a file on both of us."


    Kane''s head jerked back as he turned towards Rui, surprised. "Wait what?"


    "Did you really think countries didn''t keep tabs on the Martial Artists of other countries?" Rui nced at him with an amused expression. "We''re no different from walking weapons of destruction in the eyes of not just other nations, but also our own nation."


    "Damn," Rui murmured.


    "Yeah, so it''s better to just stick to our real identities for the paperwork," Rui noted. "Thankfully, the Shionel Confederation has been pressured by all nations participating in the Shionel Dungeon raid for a higher level of data security since the Shionel Merchant Guild did set up the Adventurer Guild that requires information about the Martial Squires of other nations. So it is unlikely that the documentation of our identities will spill easily, or be easy to acquire. The Shionel Merchant Guild is trying to create an attractive avenue formerce, and being able to enforce its own rules and its own data security is necessary for building up the trust in its services."


    "If you say so," Kane shrugged. He was content leaving the details of the n to Rui, without butting in too much. Had he been partnering with anybody else, he would definitely not have left his fate in their hands and would have involved himself deeply with the n. However, with Rui, he could trust his intentions, and most certainly hispetence and intelligence. Rui was cautious and careful, usually. And he certainly would not do something that would be detrimental to Kane for his own benefit.


    They quickly got into a massive line of people inside the transit port department. The process was even more rigorous than the entry to the Kandrian Empire.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 776 Time-Consuming

    ?


    "That took ridiculously long!" Kaneined.


    Three hours had passed since they went in for a transit registration, and they were finally out after an extensive registration process.


    "True," Rui huffed, massaging his head. The process had been as tedious and lengthy as the sheer amount of processing one went through when traveling internationally by flight back on Earth. He did not expect the immigration process would be so tedious in a rtively more primitive world where the concept or the equivalent of passports and visas did not even exist.


    The international immigration policy of nations on the Panama Continent was more primitive and relied on basic government-issued identification proof, and was closer to how things worked in the neenth century of Earth.


    "Yet they were so meticulous and rigorous," Rui sighed. "It must be due to the astronomical influx of migrants since the discovery of the Shionel Dungeon. I highly doubt that their system has always been this sophisticated. They probably needed to step up the security in their processing for national security, they cannot allow such arge number of migrants to enter without any security measures. However, that is only more relieving to me."Content (C) N?v/elDra/ma.Org.


    "Why so?" Kane turned to him.


    "Their interrogation room and identity check-ups were conducted in a separate room walled with the same kind of energy-jamming esoteric substances that prevent espionage and spying," Rui exined. "They have to, with the sheer concentration of Martial Squires in that facility. It''s the same thing that the Hajin branch of the Martial Union uses for important matters. That gives me an even greater assurance that our data will not be leaked."


    "Makes sense," Kane nodded, before scanning his environment. "So we''re here huh? The Shionel Confederation."


    The two of them took a good first look at the port town of Kanour of the Shionel Confederation as they stepped out of the transit port facility.


    The visage they captured could only be summed in a single word.


    "Chaos¡­"


    An ocean of people could be seen in the vicinity outside of the airport. A majority of them were people entering or exiting the nation, while the remaining people consisted of those who wanted to make money off of them.


    "Sir! Do you need a rickshaw? Come this way!" One man suddenly appeared out of seemingly nowhere as he began bombarding them with offers and praising self-promations about his rickshaw services, among other things in the international dialect. If one closed their eyes and took the words at face value, one would think he was offering a five-star carriage journey.


    "Sir!" Another man reached out to them. "Sire this way! I''ll offer you a discount!"


    "Nonono! Come this way, I know the best hotels in town!"


    Soon several rickshaw men began quarreling for them.


    "Enough," Rui''s expression grew cold as he exposed a portion of his mental pressure on all of them.


    Their expressions paled as they squirreled away.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    "Tsk," Rui tutted. "I normally dislike attracting attention, but it might be better to unveil my power to drive away scam artists who wish to exploit foreigners.


    "Hehe," Kane chuckled. "Where do you want to actually go though?"


    "First, we ought to head to the Adventurer''s Guild and register as adventurers. We have already decided to not undertake the mission from the Adventurer Guild''s library, but at the very least, we need to register in order to be able to enter the Shionel Dungeon." Rui reminded him.


    "Sounds like a n," Kane nodded.


    Rui had already memorized detailed maps of the Shionel Confederation and stored them in his Mind Pce, he did not want to handle cumbersome maps once he entered the nation. He quickly waded past the chaotic crowd, straightforwardly heading in the direction of the Adventurer Guild situated in the town of Kanour. Every town in the nation had a built Adventurer''s Guild that could ept new registrations, while also distributing missions.


    One branch of a guild would be unable to handle the sheer amount of workload that woulde with being the bureaucracy that was responsible for managing matters surrounding the Shionel Dungeon.


    "It''s convenient that you''ve memorized the map," Kane noted. "Now that I think of it, doesn''t that mean you know the entireyout of the entire country in your head right now?"


    "That''s right," Rui nodded.


    "Doesn''t that also mean you could do the same thing for the entire continent?" Kane looked at Rui with amazement.


    "It would be difficult, but possible, yes," Rui nodded as they jogged through the more remote parts of the town.


    He had no reason to go through the difficulty of doing such a thing, of course.


    "Still," Rui looked around as he absorbed the town of Kanour. "It''s even more busy than I''d heard. The migration must be causing such a spike in growth to the native markets and sectors of the Shionel Confederation that even rtively recent intelligence might quickly already be outdated."


    The town of Kanour was a bustling town ofmerce and business with an intensity that far surpassed the town of Hajin. The town was divided into ten wards, nine of them centering the first and thergest ward. On the outskirts of the wards were countless flea marketsprised of smaller-scale individual retailers and merchants selling a limited variety of products of services, while the center of the wards was infested with showrooms, shops, factory outlets, and even malls. The infrastructure was even better than that of the town of Hajin and came one step closer to resembling modern first-world rich cities of Earth, Rui could even see that the proportion of sky-scrapers was significantly higher than that of the town of Hajin.


    "Incredible," Kane murmured.


    "Yeah, I can see why this is one of thergest trade hubs in the easter section of the Panama Continent," Rui nodded as took his novel new surroundings. "Life here must be quite interesting."


    Kane snorted. "Yeah, interesting is a mild way of putting it. I wouldn''t spend a day in this country if it weren''t for the dungeon."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 777 Adventurers Guild

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    Soon enough, they reached the Adventurer''s Guild standing prominently in the central ward of the town. The rush and the poption density only grew, and Rui and Kane almost bumped into other Martial Squires despite sky-walking in the air!


    "This is ridiculous," Rui murmured. "I know that the Shionel Confederation probably has the highest Squire poption density, but still. They''re everywhere right now."


    The two of them squeezed their way into the Guild, making their way over the support counter.


    "Excuse me, we''d like to register as adventu-"


    "The adventurer''s registration counter is in the left wing of the guild," She curtly interrupted him. "Is there anything else I can help you with?"


    "No, thank you fo-"


    "Please move along, there are other customers who are waiting," She interrupted him yet again.


    Rui and Kane quickly shifted aside with surprised expressions. It wasn''t that they were entitled arrogant little brats, it was just that they were entirely unustomed to being treated with rudeness by a customer service employee of an organization.


    "Well, I suppose the value and esteem of a single Martial Squire have probably gone down ever since their poption has spiked in the country," Rui noted.


    "She must be dealing with hundreds of us every day," Kane chuckled.


    The two of them headed towards the left wing of the guild, joining yet another massive queue formed for the adventurer registration in the adventurer''s guild.


    "Ohe on," Kane groaned. "We just got out of a huge line prior."


    "Have patience," Rui sighed. "This is inevitable."


    The fact that several months had passed since the opening of the Shionel Dungeon, and there was still such a rush to register as adventurers meant that his predictions about the Shionel Dungeon were correct. The fact that its clearance rate after nearly half a year was still low meant that there was plenty of time before the dungeon actually ended up being cleared, and plenty of time that it would remain open.


    The fact that it wasn''t a fleeting matter like the Serevian Dungeon, as well as its open nature to all Martial Squires meant that the influx was far greater than one might normally expect in these circumstances.


    Rui and Kane spent nearly an hour before they finally got their turn. A copy of their transit pass obtained from entering the Shionel Confederation through the transit port was provided to ensure that the two of them didn''t migrate illegally before they were directed to separate isted rooms and provided thick stacks of paper constituting the application form.


    The questionnaire was remarkably thorough and made sure to record all the essential data surrounding his identity, followed by his purpose of application as well as the ''settings'' of his adventurer ount.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    Both he and Kane had already decided to not take any missions, thus he ticked the ''do not disy profile, or make profile publically avable'' option, which would ensure that the Shionel Adventurer Guild would not announce their presence in the Shionel Confederation.


    There was a promotion system in ce that promoted the presence of prominent and powerful Martial Squires as well as the most sessful ones. The system existed because there were a huge number of Martial Squiresing from a huge number of ces, and the market that would bemissioning these very Martial Squires. The unfamiliarity between the clients from across the East side of the continent and the Martial Squires across the East side of the continent was problematic, and thus the promotion system and the public profiles helped.


    Martial Squires, dubbed as ''adventurers'' were ranked from E to S. With Rank E adventurers referred to the weakest of Martial Squires, and Rank S adventurers referred to the strongest of Martial Squires.


    They had to undergo a brief ranking test where their rank would be confirmed and broadcasted on their public rankings page.


    Thankfully, Rui and Kane chose to opt out of the publicization system and didn''t need to undergo any test that would reveal their skills.


    (''Assuming the ranks scale linearly with the grading system of the Martial Union, then I would probably be ranked at Rank B,'') Rui noted. (''Kane would probably be ranked at Rank D, maybe Rank C.'')


    Soon enough, their application process ended, and both of them walked out of the guild with an Adventurer license in their possession.


    "Why do they deviate so much from the norm when ites to grading systems?" Kane frowned. "Seems redundant to not stick with the basic numeric grading system that most nations use universally. It''s what everyone is used to, right? Forcing people to adapt to this new bullshit is just annoying."


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    "It''s deliberate," Rui replied. "They''re trying to create a distinct system, and have the Martial Squires, who will probably be spending quite some time in the nation, get used to it."


    "Why do that when they''ll be returning home after?" Kane sighed with exasperation.


    "Because they don''t want them to," Rui replied. "Their goal is to culturally and normatively tie down at least a portion of the Martial Squires who have entered the nation from abroad."


    Kane''s eyes widened. "I see, the vast number of foreign Martial Squires who have entered the nation can be potentially poached. Thus they''re trying to create a distinct and unique system to get the Martial Squires familiarized andfortable with it, in hopes that some stay."


    Rui nodded. "Of course, I''m sure they''re well aware of the fact that this is a long shot. However, given that this was a low-effort measure, any sess at all can be considered a win. Not all Martial Squirese fromrge and powerful nations like the Kandrian Empire, there are many from smaller nations who could potentially be swayed by the Shionel Confederation. It is a Sage-level nation, after all. Besides¡­ It isn''t even that unique."


    "Hm?" Kane nced at him.


    "I heard that the Panamic Adventurer Guild that caters to the Beast Domain as a whole also has a simr system that the Shionel Adventurer Guild has copied to a certain extent.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 778 Inn

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    The Panamic Adventurer Guild was a continental organization that connected the market and demand for Martial services surrounding the core of the Beast Domain, and Martial Artists who frequented the Beast Domain.


    This gigantic organization catered across the entirety of the Panama Continent, and Rui suspected that due to being short on time due to the sudden discovery of the Shionel Dungeon, the Shionel Merchant Guild might have copied the Panamic Adventurer Guild.


    "Regardless, the ranking system doesn''t have much to do with us," Rui replied.


    "True," Kane nodded. "Now then, the next move ording to n is¡­"


    "Before that, let''s get some rest and a real meal," Rui sighed, wiping sweat from his forehead. "Best toplete the more important stuff when we''re freshened up. I''d rather not have to use a potion when it is unnecessary."


    "Makes sense," Kane nodded. "You wanted to avoid higher-end hotels, right?"


    "Hotels have more thorough registration and management faculty," Rui calmly exined. "There is a greater chance for a data leak to ur. I''d rather go to a more humble and smaller inn with no paperwork and upfront payments."


    "Aw, man," Kane sighed. "I really wanted to dive into some nice luxurious beds."


    The central district of Kanour was far too luxurious in the possible avenues to book rooms. The two found a small inn on the outskirts of the outer districts run by a family.


    "No need for registration, pay up-front and we''ll give you a key." The man smiled with a thumbs-up. "You can also get two meals a day for two bronze coins each. That''s quite the discount you know? My wife''s cooking is the best!"


    "Two rooms side-by-side please," Rui smiled.


    "Will do!" The manughed. "That''ll cost five bronze coins per day."


    Rui quickly took the amount from the Shionel currency that he had exchanged with the physical Kandrian currency that he had withdrawn from his savings. He did not want to withdraw it from his Martial Union ount directly as that would instantly alert the Martial Union of his current whereabouts.


    "Thank you for your patronage! Here are the keys, room numbers five and six," The man pushed two keys toward them.


    "Thank you," Rui and Kane quickly made their way to their rooms.


    They were both wearing ordinary clothes, and they both hid their presence as Martial Squires. Rui employed his Mind Mask while Kane employed a highly diluted version of Void Step where his presence was detectable, but his status as a Martial Artist was not.


    Rui quickly drew himself a bath in a tub, before sinking in.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    "Ahhhh¡­" He groaned with relief and rxation. "That hits the spot."


    He was surprised that even smaller-scale inns such as this possessed a bathtub, that was remarkably luxurious and something that only luxury hotels in the Kandrian Empire.


    (''That standard for all goods and services is several levels higher in the Shionel Confederation than it is in the Kandrian Empire,'') Rui mused as he gave it deeper thought.


    It made sense, there was a reason all the small-timers they ran into outside the Shionel Confederation were not even qualified to set up shop inside the Shionel Confederation. That meant that all those who were people who were able to staypetitive inside the Shionel Confederation. It was no wonder that the basic quality of goods and services was higher than even what he had seen in the town of Hajin.


    It was only after an hour that Rui managed to muster up the willpower to pull himself out of thefort of his bath, before dressing up and meeting up with Kane.? 2024 N?v/el/Dram/a.Org.


    "You all freshened up?"


    "Yeah, got a good bath and caught some rest," He nodded with a rxed expression.


    "Good let''s catch some dinner before talking about our ns," Rui suggested as the two of them headed down to the small little makeshift canteen that existed on the floor below the ground floor, before quickly collecting meals and retreating to their rooms.


    "No one''s nearby at the moment, regardless, speak extremely quietly," Rui told him.


    Being Martial Squires, even the mildest of whispers were extremely clear and audible to them, thus they could converse extremely lightly. Asides from remarkable esoteric wiretap technology, and another Martial Squire, Rui was rtively certain that their conversation could not be spied on. He was equally certain that neither option was the case here at the moment.


    The possibility of a wiretap that could pick up even the minutest of conversations was probably cutting-edge technology, nothing he saw from the intelligence team assigned to the Vilun settlement was capable of this. And his senses were extremely sharp and very few Martial Squires could possibly hide from his sharp sense.


    "So what''s the next move?" Kane asked.


    Rui considered the question for a few seconds, before replying. "Assuming our first dungeon raid goes as nned, we''ll gain a huge harvest from the dungeon. The question is what route do we ought to go with the plunder specifically. A solid minority of all Martial Squires raid and plunder the dungeon for missions from the Adventurer''s Guild. Another solid proportion of Martial Squires raid and plunder the dungeon for patrons in the city. A lot of the wealthier merchants and corporates in the nation directly approach powerful Martial Squire parties and make lucrative deals with them privately outside of the jurisdiction and purview of the Adventurer''s Guild. The remaining Martial Squires are deployed military or special forces or internal forces of the various nations'' militaries or organizations like the Martial Union. The smallest minority of Martial Squires sell their harvest and plunder on the open market, usually through some third-party organization in various forms."


    He looked at Kane. "We''re going to be falling into thatst group, for now, at least. We need a means to sell our harvest in the market. So, what that means is¡­ we''ll need to start a supplier corporation right here in the Shionel Confederation."


    "What?" Kane''s eyes widened as Rui grinned.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 779 Arrived

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    "You''re telling me that we have to be businessmen?" Kane frowned so hard that Rui burst outughing.


    "You don''t have to do anything, I''ll handle it," Rui assured. "But yes, we''re going to have to be businessmen. Specifically, I want to set up a nationwide supplier that can sell the esoteric harvests that we get from the Shionel Dungeon to the industries and sectors that require a supply of the esoteric resources of the Shionel Dungeon."


    "Isn''t that going to be extremely burdensome and tiring?" Kane groaned. "How on Earth are you nning on doing all of that by yourself? You have to manage all of the things that chairmen and presidents have to manage which is very much a full-time job! Isn''t it better to just get a singr patron?"


    Rui shook his head. "Patronage gives patrons some degree of control over the actions of those they are patroning. I do not wish to sell that right to others. What I want is a simple and effective way to distribute the plunder and harvest we get without empowering any one particr section of the consumer market."


    "And how exactly do you n on doing that?" Kane asked with an exasperated expression.


    "Don''t worry about it, I have a pretty good n in mind," Rui smirked.


    "Alright, I''ll leave all of it to you. I honestly have no idea what you''re talking about at the moment," Kane sighed. "So what is the next step that also involves me?"


    "Get some good sleep, then tomorrow, we''ll head to the Adventurer ring town," Rui replied.


    The two of them were currently quite far from the dungeon, which was on the other side of the country. The Shionel Merchant Guild had redrawn maps to amodate the creation of an ''Adventurer town'' that amodated all of the matters directly rted to the dungeon itself. The Adventurer Ring town was a ring-shaped town that circled the perimeter of the Shionel Dungeon. Thus, if one wanted to enter the Shionel Dungeon, one needed to go through the Adventurer Ring town.


    That was the n for now.


    "Alrighty, good night it is then," Kane shrugged.


    The two of them split up for the night before quickly going to sleep.


    That night Rui couldn''t help but grow excited. He was eager to jump into the dungeon and put his newly-created techniques to the test in the circumstances that they were created for.


    The night passed as Rui did his best to get a good sleep while suppressing his excitement. Thankfully, he was fatigued enough to fall asleep despite that.


    The very next morning, the two of them got up quickly before packing up and heading out quickly.


    "Not staying?" The innkeeper asked as the two returned their keys.


    "Unfortunately not," Rui smiled before bidding them goodbye and leaving the inn.


    Normally, Rui would not befortable sky-walking outside the Kandrian Empire for drawing far too much attention in an unsafe and unfamiliar environment, but there were so many sky-walking figures in the sky, that it was a futile worry, they would not be particrly eye-drawing among others, and it was quicker than wading through the highly dense streets of the town of Kanour.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    Even though sky-walking was much slower than racing on the ground, it still took them more than an hour to cross the distance.


    "I know we''re sky-walking but, damn, it''s unbelievable that we can see the dungeon tower from all the way back here," Kane murmured.


    Rui nodded.


    It was truly gigantic, standing farrger than even the biggest of mountains, dwarfing them inparison. It represented the volume of all the tunnels and floors inside the Dungeon, being the earth that was disced and removed to create the empty tunnels and dungeons.


    "No wonder it''s taking time to clear the dungeon, it''s huge!" Kane eximed, awed at the sight.


    "Indeed," Rui stared at it with anticipation. "I am d that I got to be part of this transient part of history. It''s not every day that a Squire-level dungeon opens up."


    They passed a myriad of Martial Squires on their way there, each staying above the chaotic and dense streets of the Shionel Confederation, they were all heading either to or from the Adventurer Ring.


    Rui scrutinized all of them, gathering more information about thepetition.


    "Most of them are inrger groups," He remarked. "Makes sense given thatrger numbers can partially mitigate the risks thate with the hampered senses within the Shionel Dungeon."


    An ideal party would beprised of the rightbination of Martial Paths of varying ranges and fields, thus Rui could see why Martial Squires decided to team up in groups of five to be able to deal with the various challenges in the Shionel Dungeon.Content (C) N?v/elDra/ma.Org.


    "It would be annoying if we ran into them," Rui mused with narrowed eyes.


    Half of his strategy and nned tactics would not work on Martial Squires as they were designed for monsters, which were the more prevalent and dominant threat. However, there were plenty of Martial Squires that shed with each other inside the dungeon.


    This was not prohibited either, nor could any prohibition of such a kind possibly be enforced by the Shionel Adventurer Guild.


    He needed to keep an eye out for all of them


    (''The good news is that I can see theming from literally a mile away, while they''re not gonna perceive me until Ie within a limited range where they can sense me, Kane will and I will be able to kill anybody who tries to pick a fight with us,'') Rui did not have any intention of attacking Martial Squires while they were plundering the dungeon, but he would dly kill anybody who dared to try and take their lives inside the dungeon. He was not arge-hearted man who could overlook attempted murder and forgive and forget.


    Soon enough, the two of them reached the Adventurer Ring town around the Shionel Dungeon, and it was finally time to raid the dungeon.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 780 Floors

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    The concentration of Martial Squires increased exponentially the closer they got to the Shionel Dungeon. There were many Martial Squires sky-walking at certain points that it became easier to travel throughnd!


    "Unbelievable," Rui grinned as he felt tingling excitement from the visage before him.


    The countless Martial Squires gathered in the town, the bustling markets dense with vibrant energy.


    It was only natural that this would infect even the most lethargic of people. Even Kane grew more energetic once they entered therge town.


    The outer ring of the town contained all of the markets and bazaars of all kinds. Many of the goods and services were catered to Martial Artists who were headed towards entering the dungeon, or towards those who had exited.


    Rui didn''t spare them a second nce. He already had everything he needed, the only thing they were looking for was an inn where they could reside in.


    (''We can look for thatter,'') Rui noted. (''For now, we can drop our luggage at the Adventurer''s Guild in our inventory thates with registering with the Guild.'')


    Property ? 2024 N0(v)elDrama.Org.


    The Adventurer''s Guild guaranteed protection and management of the personal belongings of the Martial Artists who chose to store them there, in exchange for a small fee.


    They quickly headed over to the closest Adventurer''s Guild office in the inner ring which was restricted only to Martial Artists, yet despite this, the rush in the office was remarkably high. It took another half an hour before they could finish their business and exit the Adventurer Guild.


    "Ugh, that was tiring," Kaneined. "Now I just want to go back and sleep."


    "We still have a dungeon to raid, can''t have you dropping dead already my friend,"


    "Ugh¡­" Kane stretched a bit before sighing. "Alright let''s get going already."


    "That''s the spirit," Rui chuckled, half serious and half sarcastic.


    Rui could feel dominant pressure originating from the very dungeon itself. It was no wonder that ordinary humans simply stood no chance ofing close to the dungeon without feeling a traumatic amount of fear and anguish from the Shionel Dungeon. Not only did the vegetation absorb the esoteric mine reserves to grow to form the dungeon and possessed an enormous amount of power that exerted pressure onto hapless humans, but the many monsters inside the dungeon also exerted a lot of pressure.


    The air grew somber as Rui and Kane walked toward the elevatednd with steeling expressions. The light-hearted mood from just a minute prior had all but gone, and the Martial Squires within this distance from the dungeon could feel that entering the dungeon was not a light decision to take.


    They soon reached the final barricade that separated the dungeon from the inner ring of Adventurer Ring. Rui could sense that many Martial Squires of the Shionel Confederation military manned the barrier, alert and ready to intercept any monsters that escaped the dungeon.


    Not all monsters peacefully remained in the transmuted environment of the Shionel Dungeon, there was a small proportion of monsters that emerged from the dungeon and migrated outwards. Part of the reason that Adventurer Ring town was created was to protect the rest of the Shionel Confederation from the outbreak of monsters.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    The inner ring was filled with Martial Squires both of the Shionel Confederation and of other nations. This strong presence ensured that no monster could ever get past a certain point and start wreaking havoc on the rest of the nation.


    Soon enough they crossed the final gate, and the elevatednd of the dungeon was just some distance before them.


    Rui could already feel his senses straining. All five of his senses, as well as Tempestuous Feel and Seismic Mapping, grew increasingly hampered the closer they walked toward the dungeon.


    "So this is the sensory jamming trait of the Shionel Dungeon, hm?" Rui narrowed his eyes. "If it''s this bad despite us not even having entered it yet, how bad will it be when we''re actually inside?"


    Thankfully, there was one sense of Rui that still functioned unperturbed. His Riemannian Echo allows him to detect the curvature of space and gravity generated by the Shionel Dungeon''s external and internal shapes andyouts, allowing him to generate an image of the structure of the dungeon unproblematically.


    At this point, Rui was truly grateful that he had taken the initiative to develop such an incredibly powerful and useful sensory technique. He couldn''t imagine how enormously difficult it would have been trying to clear the dungeon without it.


    "Damn¡­" Kane murmured, clearly diforted by his increasingly hampered senses. "This is going to be rough."


    "Ready?" Rui asked with a solemn tone.


    "Is it toote to go to the bathroom?" Kane smiled wryly.


    The elevatednd had an immense number of cave entrances emerging from its walls, most of them had not been mapped or entirely explored, as it was extremely dangerous to simply jump into the caves. One could potentially run into an unexplored floor and be swarmed by an army of Squire-level monsters.


    STEP


    What they saw atop was arge cave that had been marked and gated.


    "This is one of the known entrances to the first floor," Rui noted.


    The Shionel Adventurer Guild had marked all the known tunnels that led to the shallowest floor which had been marked as floor number one. This allowed adventurers to be able to follow known routes to known floors where they could pool their power with other adventurers that had also followed the same route.


    Although they would bepeting with them for resources, they would also be in the presence of other Martial Artists, thus the chances of being overwhelmed by sheer numbers were far lower. It was a safer bet for most Martial Squires who were simply looking to go for exploring and plundering that had less risk to it.


    "I don''t necessarily have intentions of sticking to the known path though," Rui murmured. "Floor one has long been cleared and the Shionel Adventurer Guild has even upied it to a certain degree so that discoveries of new floors can quickly be confirmed and routed."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 781 First Blood

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    The tunnels in the Shionel Dungeon were effectively no different from ''cracks that formed between each of therger spaces that had been dubbed as floors. What that meant was that there were tunnels that connected every floor with every other floor.


    However, there were also a huge number of tunnels that simply ended in dead-ends, sometimes extending for dozens of kilometers before still ending in dead-ends. What that meant was that anybody aspiring to enter the dungeon would need to risk an immense amount of failure, as well as losing track of where they were and how to get out.


    The Shionel Dungeon''s dangers were not limited to just the monsters. Even Martial Squired could get endlessly lost inside the dungeon if they were not careful. Content (C) N?v/elDra/ma.Org.


    Thus most Martial Squires ventured down known routes to known floors.


    The First Floor of the Shionel Dungeon had been quickly discovered once the dungeon was discovered, probably due to close it was to the surface of the elevatednd, and from there, numerous runnels leading to the first floor had also been reverse-tracked. From there, tunnels to other floors had been quickly discovered by Martial Squires who chose to venture further out.


    "As much as I instantly want to pick a new route, I think we should get ourselves ustomed to the Shionel Dungeon''s environment first," Rui told Kane. "It''s one thing to make preparations, it''s an entirely different to have experience and familiarity."


    Kane nodded. "I''m one hundred percent on that."


    He looked particrly relieved that they were not jumping some unknown cave tunnel right off the bat.


    The two of them quickly strode forward before taking their very first step into the Shionel Dungeon.


    "Woah," Rui''s eyes widened.


    "This¡­" Kane grew speechless as the two of them walked in deeper.


    Just stepping into the dungeon was a novel experience.


    Their senses all diminished drastically and continued doing so the deeper they stepped in, more so than they did on the outside due to being surrounded by the walls of the tunnels of the Shionel Dungeon.


    Rui couldn''t believe that his eyesight felt worse off than it was when he was a human!


    It grew deathly silent inside the dungeon as even sound was extremely dampened inside the dungeon.


    "Rui¡­ Are you still able to sense properly with that technique?" Kane asked, his voice growing a tad bit edgy.


    "Yeah," Rui nodded calmly. Even now he could feel theyout and the internal structure quite carefully. "It''s working just fine, as expected."


    "You''re absolutely sure, right?" Kane asked once more.


    "Absolutely," Rui nodded. "Trust me, I got you back."


    Rui turned back as he admired the tunnels. "They''re prettier than in the pictures."


    The esoteric mineral resources that were processed into the vegetation of the dungeon, as well as the earth, glowed with light. It glowed with its own light despite absorbing light from other sources that reached it or passed by it. Thus not only was vision hindered, but the little field of view that the Martial Squires had left was also infringed upon with the light that was given off by the esoteric vegetation and the earth.


    "Pretty, but goddamn annoying when you can''t see what you want to," Kane grumbled.


    "This is how humans feel all the time. Honestly, how do they even manage?" Rui sighed before his eyes widened.


    (''Wait, have I subconsciously disassociated with the human species?'') Rui wondered with incredulity as he heard himself utter something he never thought he would have.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    "We were human ourselves at one point you know," Kane murmured. "But that feels like a long time ago. Even though I''ve been human longer than I''ve been a Martial Artist."


    (''I''ve spent a whole lifetime as a human,'') Rui thought to himself. (''A crippled one at that. And yet, I identify less with those experiences than the five years that I''ve been a Martial Artist.'')


    The experiences of discovering the Martial Path, and discovering the Martial Body were both truly life-changing, which made for the less time Rui had been a Martial Artist.


    Rui shook his head. "Let''s focus on the matter at hand. For now, we''ll make our way down to thetest floors that are being explored and raided."


    "Alrightey," Kane nodded.


    The two of them cautiously headed down the tunnel as Rui paid deeper attention to his Riemannian Echo sense. The first floor was already within the range of his senses.


    (''Wow, there are a lot of people,'') Rui noted.


    That probably meant that there was nothing worth checking out there.


    He did something that he hadn''t yet applied practically, which was extending his Riemannian Echo in one direction.


    The way he did this was by diverting all his focus and mental energy on interpreting the parts of the distribution of the Cryllin Stone and Grainer Pollen in his body that are needed to sense in a particr direction, increasing the distance and range he can sense in that particr dimension due to processing more information.


    He could treat it as a less precise RADAR that swept across the entire dungeon. The range of the extended and focused sensory field was so wide that his sense enveloped not just the entire first floor, but also the second floor!


    Just as he was marveling at the first floors, his eyes widened as something rapidly entered his Riemannian Echo.


    SHING


    He drew his sword as a sole monstrous catoblepas jumped out of a tunnel beside Kane.


    SLASH


    A single light swing of Rui''s de cut at the monster''s skin, yet the ensuing wound was anything but proportional to the attack.


    SPLAT


    Blood gushed from a gigantic wound. That single swing had almost cleaved the monster, which resembled a fusion between a bull and several other beasts, in half.


    "Shit!" Kane swore as he nced at the corpse of the catoblepas with fear. "I hadn''t sensed thating."


    "You haven''t grown limatized to your new conditions," Rui exined. "You need to be more alert to sense things that you previously would have seening from a mile away."


    "Damn, you''re right¡­ Thanks, Rui, I might be dead right now without you," Kane thanked him earnestly. "Still, I can''t believe you almost cleanly split it with just a heavy nick!"


    "Hehe¡­" Rui grinned. "It was even more effective than expected. Let''s go kill some monsters, my friend."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 782 Second

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    Rui nced at the ice-cold Bellhorn Steel de in admiration and excitement, the de''s destructiveness to the Whitemane Dust present in the monster''s body was greater than he had imagined. He had gained a lot more confidence in dealing with the monsters of the Shionel Dungeon. He hadn''t had a chance to use the heating pipe that he had brought with him, but that was more meant for a situation when he was back up against the wall against arger number.


    Rui had to admit that he had grown a little too careless for a moment scanning distant locations away with his Riemannian Echo, that he didn''t notice a monster arriving that close to them for quite some time.


    He nced down at the heavily sliced corpse. "But a catoblepas, huh? I heard they were supposed to be annihted on the earlier floors, but I guess not entirely."


    It must have been a straggler that managed to escape into the countless tunnels that existed in the Shionel Dungeon. Unless someone ran into it, they would never know it survived since nobody asides from him could surveil worth a damn inside the Shionel Dungeon.


    "Come on, the first floor is just up ahead," Rui helped Kane up as they headed onwards, before eventually reaching their initial destination.


    "Woah," Kane muttered when he finally got a look at it. "It''s huge!"


    The first floor had clearly been cleaned up especially well, to the point that the Shionel Adventurer Guild permitted the temporary upying of it. Thus several patrons and merchants had set up outlets selling essential items like healing and rejuvenation potions.


    Rui could already see that the Shionel Merchant Guild was clearly trying to push in the direction of private ownership and upation of the Shionel Dungeon even before they started.


    He had not forgotten his n of selling map data of the Shionel Dungeon to the Shionel Merchant Guild, he had already been mapping the Shionel Dungeon in his head, carefully storing all the data that he had gathered with his Riemannian Echo in his Mind Pce.


    He intended to put it to good useter on. He had not only been measuring the distance that he traveled rtive to his own height which he had a precise measurement of, but he had also been documenting the ''footage'' of his Riemannian Echo sense into the Mind Pce, going as far as to timestamp it.


    "This does not feel like what I expected from a dungeon, I''m going to be honest," Kane scratched his head.


    The ovepping image of a rtively peaceful floor was juxtaposed with the scary and dark image he had inside his head.


    The Martial Squires on this floor was a tag bit more rxed, and there was even a level of security in ce, monitoring the tunnels to ensure that nothing came up and to warn the others if something did.


    "The second floor''s tunnel is that way," Rui gestured to a marked tunnel that let further down. "Let''s get going immediately."


    Rui kept Riemannian Echo up the entire time as they descended to the second floor.


    Yet the change was abrupt.


    The air grew more tense. Kane gritted his teeth as he felt his nerves tingling.


    Rui narrowed his eyes as he never stopped monitoring their environment with Riemannian Echo.


    "Monsters," Rui murmured.


    "What?!" Kane whispered back with urgency. "Where?!"


    "In all directions," Rui replied softly.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    "Are theying towards us?!"


    "No," Rui shook his head firmly. "They''re circting in the tunnels, but they aren''t moving towards us, they don''t even know that we''re here. They have the same limitations, after all. They cannot sense us as vividly."


    Rui concentrated as he spotted several monsters lingering around in tunnels in the distance. He wanted to make sure none of them could approach them.


    Soon enough, they reached the second floor, yet Rui stopped at a distance from them.


    "What''s up?" Kane frowned.


    "It''s time, get ready," Rui replied without expanding further.


    Yet Kane understood what he meant, they had discussed their strategy plenty of times in the past, and he knew exactly what needed to be done.


    He put his hand on Rui''s shoulder before they began moving. Yet both of them disappeared into thin air as they walked towards an entrance into the dungeon.


    Kane''s eyes widened as they were greeted by dozens of rabbit-like creatures, their eyes were blood red with no pupils of any kind.


    Rui and Kane quietly moved past them, without making so much as a peep. Kane looked quite nervous in contrast to Rui''s calmness. He knew that Void Step has extremely empowered in the dungeon thanks to senses being jammed, there was zero chance that the bloodfury rabbits would be able to sense their presence.


    "URGH!" Kane paused when a human voice grimacing reached them.


    The two of them nced over as they saw three Martial Squires bleeding profusely, being swarmed by the bloodfury rabbits.


    FWHOOSHProperty ? 2024 N0(v)elDrama.Org.


    SPLAT


    "ARGH!" The Martial Squire in the center grimaced as a bloodfury rabbit took a bite out of his leg swiftly.


    Kane exchanged a silent nce with Rui, but they never stopped, the technique only worked when they were moving. Rui shook his head and turned away from them.


    He generally tended to help people around him if they needed help before his eyes, but that did not apply in risky situations that the people themselves have put themselves in, knowing full well the risks that came with it.


    He could not afford to take the risk of helping the Martial Squires around him in the dungeon who may need help, especially when Kane''s life was in the bnce as well. He simply offered them a prayer as his eyes turned to their objective.


    The glowing fruits, rocks, and veins popped out of the floor walls. He had long trained to distinguish between all of them, a nifty skill to have if he needed something specific, he readied his dimensional storage ring as he and Kane executed the maneuver they practiced.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 783 Massacre

    ?


    The one w of the Void Step techniques was that the misdirection techniques were maneuvering-based. Kane misdirected attention in the opposite direction that he was heading, creating arge gap between where he was and where his opponents were directing their attention to.


    Thus, they could not be stationary when extracting the esoteric ores from the walls. Thus Rui and Kane had practiced a method where they extracted esoteric horizontally, line by line from top to bottom, requiring them to move left and right by a section while Rui used his tools to pluck them out of the wall and into his dimensional storage ring.


    He was initially surprised by how responsive the dimensional ring was. It operated based on a pretty nifty mechanism that could be activated at any given time.


    He didn''t spare the dying Martial Squires a second look, he did not want to concern himself with problems that were not his, nor ones he could afford to try and solve. ? 2024 N?v/el/Dram/a.Org.


    He extracted the toolset that he had procured discreetly to aid with the extraction of the fruits and the stones from the Earth. Thankfully, the process was rather simple. It was a matter of positioning the instruments, pressing a small lever that gained a grip on the stones and organic esoteric deposits in vegetation.


    CRACK


    He pulled out a giant glowing crystal, before tossing it into a portable bag that he would be filling before tossing into his ring. The two of them swiftly walked and sky-walked across an entire section of the huge floor for a few hours, filling up several giant bags worth of esoteric harvest.


    "Unbelievable¡­" Kane murmured to himself as they walked past nearly fifty Squire-level bloodfury rabbits thatpletely ignored their existence.


    He nced at the corpses of the three Martial Squires that were previously fighting for quite a bit. Roots from the ground had already emerged, pulling their corpses into the ground.


    Individually, each rabbit was at a low squire level. However, together, they were a menace that could overwhelm parties of weaker Martial Squires. Kane was not confident that he would be able to survive this floor without Void Step.


    This made him feel a tinge of nervousness because he could not maintain Void Step forever, and the time period he could maintain it was especially limited when he had to use it on not just himself but also another Martial Squire.


    "Rui, you have ten more minutes before I need a break," He panted before wiping some sweat off his forehead.


    Rui simply nced at him, unperturbed by his remark, nodding. "Gotcha. Let''s get to the ground then. I want to be prepared for when the exact timees."


    "You''re going to be alright, right?" Kane was worried.


    He knew that Rui was strong, especially when he extensively prepared for certain circumstances as he had done so for the Shionel Dungeon. But, at the same time, could he truly handle dozens and dozens of low Squire-level creatures all by himself?


    It was true that he had even seen one of Rui''s countermeasures personally, Rui''s sword attack possessed an absurd amount of lethality that one could simply not expect from seeing his swings.


    Rui did not even bother replying, instead, he closed his eyes and began focusing.


    A focused mind was vastly superior to a scattered one. And Rui could not afford to give anything but his very best.


    "Fuuu¡­" He exhaled.


    Kane was about to ask him again when his eyes widened upon a gush of pressure from Rui. Rui got rid of his Mind Mask as he drew his de and procured his pipe, putting it to his mouth.


    STEP


    He immediately leaped out of Kane''s reach all of a sudden, rushing towards the herd of bloodfury rabbits with his de drawn and poised to swing.


    "Wai-!"


    SLASH


    The initial attack killed five bloodfury rabbits in a single swing!<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    Unlike the bullish and massive catoblepas, the rabbits did not possess an outstandingly durable constitution. The second the freezing cold de pierced their flesh, it was as though a grenade had been set off inside their body, and the flesh on either side of the de sted away from the freezing cold tethered Bellhorn Steel violently as the de cleaved through the flesh of the monster like a knife through butter.


    SPLAT


    The remaining bloodfury rabbits did not even realize what had happened until after it had happened.


    "SQUEAK SQUEAK SQUEAK!"


    They aggressivelyshed out at him in their reactionary aggression. Yet they couldn''t help but falter when they senses his fearsome aura weighing down on them. His pitch-ck pupils inspired their fear of death, while his de caused it.


    The Bellhorn de ceased to be a de. It had be an arc of destruction, annihting every monster it so much as touched.


    "FUUU¡­" he exhaled cracklingly hot air at three rabbits before him, enveloping them in extremely hot air. Their fur grew a shade lighter as the Mercurite esoteric hardened, paralyzing their movements.


    SLASH


    Another three monsters to his right died.


    SLASH SLASH


    Four bloodfury rabbits in front of him were cleaved in half before he smoothly transitioned to swing to his left, stepping about his position to amodate the swings.


    "FUUUU¡­" He froze six rabbits on the spot before his de followed through a momentter, butchering the frozen bloodfury rabbits.


    Rui ceased being a simple Martial Artist, it was as though he had be a sphere of death. A sphere that killed anything that dared entered it.


    Every single bloodfury rabbitshed out at him.


    Every single one of them died.


    Soon enough, there were none left.


    SLASH


    Rui killed the final bloodfury rabbit of the herd before exhaling and turning to Kane who retained the ability to use Void Step for himself.


    "It''s done,"


    Kane was utterly speechless, staring at Rui with shock and awe.


    "Come on, we have work to do,"


    SHING


    He sheathed his de, walking back unperturbed at the carnage left behind.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 784 Carnage

    ?


    Kane had watched the battle with an increasingly bewildered expression. Rui had already caught him off-guard when casually leaped out of Kane''s physical contact, and outside of the influence of Void Step. He had almost had a heart attack.


    "Wai-"


    SLASH


    Kane''s eyes widened as Rui''s de disappeared and bloodfury rabbits split in half before his eyes. The battle abruptly began as the rabbit immediately pounced on the intruder that came out of nowhere and attacked their herd.


    Yet despite swarming him with all their numbers, everything that came within a certain range split in half. It was as though there was a forcefield around Rui that cut anything that dared to cross it.


    The domain epassed by his swinging range ceased to be ordinary space. Instead, it had be a field of carnage, gushing with blood and death.


    Kane observed Rui''s movements in bewilderment, yet he didn''t understand what was happening. Every time Rui inhaled from the pipe and exhaled onto his hapless would-be victims, they froze solid, before his devastating lethality annihted them. They were entirely powerless.


    Rui''s face was covered in a malleable mask attached to it, yet Kane could still sense a cold ruthlessness on it. His reactions to the rabbits were excellent, it was almost as though he could see the future and knew exactly where each one was, whenever. His attacks were all proactive, and his de never rested, whizzing around him smoothly, annihting anything that came close enough.


    Kane was impressed with how well Rui had honed his foundation. He did not use any fancy Squire-level sword techniques, but his basic passive application had reached a respectable stage in just a matter of half a year.


    His movements were stable, and the edge of the de was in perfect alignment with the direction of motion of the de at every given moment, ensuring that there was not a single avenue for wastage of energy an ill-angled de.


    Rui''s sword style at the moment had taken on the shape of a counter-offensive sword style, a fusion of offensive interception of attacks as well as evasive maneuvering. He engaged in just enough evasive maneuvering not to dodge and avoid attacks, but to put enough distance between himself and his opponent. The sword was generally not a close-quarters weapon and required a bit of distance at close range, thus Rui''s footwork and maneuvering were targeted to provide adequate distance between him and his target. Thus despite moving away from the swarm he was always on the offensive.


    "Unbelievable¡­" Kane murmured.


    SLASH


    Soon enough, the final rabbit had been felled. Rui nced at him despite him being imperceptible.


    "Come on, we have work to do," He casually remarked, walking past the death and destruction that he had just unleashed.


    "Right¡­" Kane smiled wryly. "Were you hurt anywhere?"<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    "Nah," Rui shook his head. "Thankfully, these are primitive creatures. Creating predictive models on them was easy due to how uniformly simple their patterns are. They just attack straightforwardly, with the same identical pace the second that they get a chance to. Predicting them and ensuring that they never touch me is not even a workout."


    Kane could scarcely believe that Rui just described a feat that not even a party of three Martial Squires could aplish before dying, in such a trivial manner. He realizes that when Rui had assured him that he was very well prepared to handle the threats of the dungeon¡­ He was not exaggerating in the slightest whatsoever.


    That was even more amazing. Kane had seen what Rui could do firsthand when he prepared for certain circumstances. He had taken down a powerful Martial Squire with a single attack on Vilun Ind, something that was only restricted to powerful high-grade Martial Squires as far as such feats went. Furthermore, he rapidly defeated a high-grade Martial Squire at the time in head-onbat!


    His ability to aplish feats far beyond his physical limits never ceased to amaze Kane. His faith in Rui being able to fulfill their objective in the Shionel Dungeon only grew after witnessing his remarkable performance against arge herd of bloodfury rabbits.


    "We still have tons of harvest to plunder," Rui smiled. Before pointing further down the city-sized space that was inhabited by even more herds of bloodfury rabbits and esoteric harvest. "There are a lot more monsters too, but as we''vee to see, that should not be a problem.


    Rui walked over to the bags in Kane''s hands, reaching out for them, before fiddling with his ring.


    FWOOP


    "Woah!" Kane jerked his head back in surprise when the bag disappeared. "That''s the first time I have ever seen one in action."


    "They''re extremely impractical cost and energy consumption-wise, but one cannot deny that they are also extremely useful," Rui smiled as all of the many bags of esoteric harvest disappeared into the ring one by one. "In our circumstances, they''re golden."


    "Hm," Kane nodded. "Alright, what now?"Property ? 2024 N0(v)elDrama.Org.


    "Let''s continue," Rui replied. "We''re going to plunder all of the remaining esoteric harvests on this floor."


    It was a mad thing for a single Martial Squire of a team of two to say, but Kane could not even deny it when it came from Rui, he scratched his head. "Alright, but I am surprised that there are so many reserves of esoteric minerals and organic harvest left, honestly. Why wasn''t this floorpletely cleared before heading to another floor?"


    "That''s because the difficulty ofpletely clearing a floor increases the more progress you make, and the reason for that is the ratio between monsters and plunder increases the more progress you make. The monsters grow cornered and then group up in big herds that we ran into," Rui exined. "It''s easier to just start on a new floor where the esoteric harvest reserves are more bountiful and ever-present."


    "Easier?" Kane smiled wryly. "Less insanely difficult you mean."


    Rui shrugged casually. "Same difference. Let''s not waste any more time, we''re clearing this entire floor of the remaining pockets of esoteric reserves before heading down deeper to the frontier floors."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 785 Incentive

    ?


    "Mam, are you sure that you want to focus on the second floor today? It''s not going to be easy clearing it at the moment. All the surviving bloodfury rabbits have grouped up densely rather than being more spread out than they were before. We would need to face hundreds, if not thousands, of bloodfury rabbits mam!"


    There were several Martial Squires in a room listening to a conversation between their manager and their leader.


    "It''s a more attractive prospect than going down deeper floors at the moment," The red-haired woman calmly replied. "Floors be exceedingly harder to clear for adventurer parties when most of the floor is already cleared, that is why everyone is avoiding the second floor and going straight down to the tenth floor, correct?"


    "Yes!" The grey-haired man whined, readjusting his spectacles. "There are more monsters herded together for less loot and plunder. It makes sense to go to deeper floors, that''s what every adventurer party is doing!"


    "It''s because that is what every adventurer party and every individual adventurer is doing that makes it clearly the universally recognized superior option!" The man desperately exined.


    "That is only true if you''re trying to earn more money," She replied, unfazed by his vigor. "There is far greaterpetition in the deeper floors because no one is interested in defeating thousands of bloodfury rabbits to gain ess to less plunder than you would gain ess to if you only defeated a hundred monsters in the lower floors. If we go to floors nine, ten, or eleven; the three frontier floors, then we would also have topete with other adventurers and adventurer parties!"


    "With your caliber as an S-rank adventurer, you should have no problem!" The man insisted.


    "Enough."


    The air grew chill as she expressed a portion of her mental pressure in response to his constant nagging.


    The man shivered as he straightened up, lowering his head reflexively, yet he managed to retain his voice. "S-Squire Fren, I am the liaising representative of Ridlen Mercurite Co. Your patron. Desist from engaging in this mental suppression. Our patron will be displeased to hear that you''re not going to be pursuing avenues of greater yield."


    Fren narrowed her eyes as she stared at him. Unfortunately, despite being a disgusting little worm in her eyes, he was right. The significant patronage that she had received from the Ridlen Mercurite Corporation was not something that she could simply ignore entirely.


    "There are also other reasons why I wish to pursue the second floor of the Shionel Dungeon," She continued. "First, the floor has not yet been cleared. Any adventurer or party that sessfully clears the floor will gain a significant amount of prestige and esteem, which will naturally funnel to our patron, given how exceedingly explicit his patronage of our party Saberstrike is. If we seed clearing the floor, then it would be of benefit to Lord Ridlen."


    She pointed to several ces on her Martial attire that bore the trademark of the Ridlen Mercurite Corporation. It was definitely the case that any attention directed to them would inevitably attention directed to the Ridlen Corporation.


    "Thirdly, I am a veteran beast hunter Martial Artist," She said with pride. "Our entire Saberstrike party isprised of experts who have experience against beasts and monsters. Thus we will simply perform better and mitigate risks. Entering a dungeon is not a pic, after all. I have plenty of sound reasons to go for the decision that I have chosen to go for. Please inform the president of the Ridlen Mercurite Corporation of that."Content (C) N?v/elDra/ma.Org.


    "Understood, Squire," The man bowed and readjusted his spectacles before leaving abruptly.


    "Haaaah¡­" The spectating Martial Squires broke their silence. <novelsnext></novelsnext>


    "Tsk, why are they getting all up in our business?" A gargantuan man with brown hair tutted. "We don''t tell them how to run a corporation, and they should stop telling us what to do after we enter a dungeon!"


    "That arrogant man dares try to order us just because he gave us money and resources, I ought to kill him right now," A purple-haired woman coldly remarked.


    "Calm down, Darbun, Seli," Fren replied, not losing herposure. "It''s the way things work here, things do not work here as they do in our homnd the Republic of Gorteau. Money is the heaviest currency in this nation, and we knew that before we came here. But to think that they would be this bold is a little out of my expectations."


    "Whatever it is, we managed to get our way this time, but it probably will be thest unless¡­" Another dark-haired Martial Squire remarked, drawing everybody''s attention before continuing. "Unless we seed in our ims and clear the second floor of the dungeon."


    "Fuuu¡­" She narrowed her eyes, as she steeled her will. "We will.


    The remaining Martial Squires shuddered as their hair stood up on end as a tsunami of pressure crashed into them.


    None of them were particrly weak, in fact, they were all A-rank adventurers in the Shionel Confederation ording to the Shionel Merchant Guild.


    But the might of an S-rank adventurer, a grade-ten Martial Squire, exceeded even theirs.


    "We will crush all those disgusting rabbits, and im the glory thates with clearing the dungeon," She sternly dered. "Failure, will not be tolerated. That goes for all of you as well as myself equally. That goes for us."


    The four members of her Saberstrike Party nodded solemnly.


    "If we''re sessful enough¡­" She continued. "We can break away from this patronage and obtain sess going solo. That is my ultimate goal."


    She gestured at the contract on the paper. "If we''re able to hit pinnacle sess without any patronage, then that is worth pursuing. At the very least we won''t need to give squirming weakling like that man the time of the day."


    That alone was worth pursuing this option for!


    The other reasons she provided were definitely true, but aiming for their current level of prestige and sess without patronage was the greatest incentive.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 786 Already

    ?


    "Alright, it''s time, let''s get prepped," Squire Fren instructed. "I don''t want to waste another second. The sooner we seed, the better."


    The other four Martial Squires nodded, exiting her room as they headed for their own to change into their Martial attires and adorn the necessary utilities and instruments.


    She sighed as she began preparing herself. As a hunter-ss Martial Artist, she was ustomed to carrying a lot of gear, equipment, and utilities along with her. She had arge set of tools that she could freely select to bring with her if she deemed them to be necessary.


    Soon enough, the entirety of Party Saberstrike was ready. They quickly left the Adventurer exclusive hotel situated in the outer ring of the Adventurer Ring town before quickly heading inwards


    "It never ceases to amaze me no matter how many times I look at it and feel it," One of her party members Seli said.


    "Indeed," Another, Darbun, replied. "A dungeon spanning sixty kilometers from end to end is something I hadn''t had the opportunity ofying my eyes on prior toing to the Shionel Confederation, and thanks to it I have had the pleasure of entering it."


    The pressure mounting on them grew increasingly high as they entered the inner ring and crossed the final barrier.


    "Focus," Squire Fren sternly ordered. "Anything can happen once we enter the dungeon."


    "Yes, leader," They replied to her as they grew increasingly wary.


    The sensory jamming of the Shionel Dungeon unnerved every Martial Squires that entered it, for it was a circumstance that they were highly unustomed to. The sense that they had honed their entire career as Martial Artists had now been taken away from them, and they had been left to fight in the dark, literally, without it.


    That was why despite their power and experience in the Squire Realm and with hunting beasts and monsters, none of them werefortable or particrly confident, despite their determination. As things currently stood, a hoard of one thousand Squire-level monsters could be rushing toward them at the moment, and none of them would have any idea about it ahead of time.


    The first floor was a bit of a safe space at the moment due to how extensively it had been cleared and upied by human forces. The space was city-sized, and Martial Squires had already upied a small portion of it, offering services to adventurers who were currently in the dungeon.


    This way, these adventurers who were currently in the dungeon had no need to exit the entire dungeon and return back to the outer ring of the Adventurer Ring if they needed to purchase any goods or services.


    Of course, they moved right past the first floor and headed down to the second floor, they had just entered and had no reason to take a break on the first floor.


    They took their time, they could afford to run at top speed when their senses of what they were running into were extremely hampered.


    STEP


    Squire Fren paused the moment they arrived at the second floor.


    "Take your stances, we might need to fight the second we walk in," She told them with a tense tone.


    The five of them readied themselves physically and mentally before jumping into the second floor with metaphorical guns zing.


    Yet they were greeted by a sight that they had not expected.


    "W-What is this?!" Squire Fren''s eyes widened in shock as she beheld a puddle of blood that reached her ankles!<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    Blood, gore, and cleaved rabbit corpses as far as they could see greeted them.


    "Hundreds¡­ No thousands!" Squire Fren surveyed her surroundings. "Did arge S-rank party make it their mission to destroy the bloodfury rabbits on the second floor?"


    "I almost feel sorry for the rabbits, they may be hideous monsters, but even that was not enough to prevent them from getting ughtered," Squire Seli remarked. "Arge number of Martial Squires must have beaten us to the punch."


    "No¡­" Squire Darbun murmured.


    Property ? 2024 N0(v)elDrama.Org.


    "Hm? Squire Fren turned towards him. "What do you mean by that?"


    "This was not done by multiple Martial Squires¡­!" Squire Darbun eximed. "I can tell based on the uniform simrities in the cuts that decapitated all these rabbits, this was all done by a single Martial Squire!"


    "What?" Squire Fren''s eyes widened.


    Squire Darbun was a swordmaster Martial Artist who specialized in hunting beasts, he narrowed his eyes as he scrutinized the wounds inflicted on the bloodfury rabbit corpses.


    "The force with which all these rabbits were killed is identical!" The man eximed. "These were all killed by a single Martial Squire!"


    The remaining members of Party Saberstrike were shocked and speechless.


    "All of these¡­ by one Martial Squire?"


    "Clearly, it''s a veteran S-rank adventurer," Janeson, the fourth member of the party, stated. "Anything less is absolutely impossible."


    "No, even for a grade-ten Martial Squire¡­" Squire Fren''s voice trailed off as she considered the scene at her feet. She turned forward before rapidly heading off ahead.


    "Wait for us!" They followed her hurriedly.


    "There''s more!" She murmured emphatically. "A single Martial Squire eradicated all these hundreds, no, thousands of bloodfury rabbits all by themself?"


    She was strong herself. Strong enough to take on many Martial Squires ande out victorious. She was known for having defeated ten Martial Squires, albeit low-grade, in a fight back in her home nation after all. She was very confident that with the party that she had formed with her trustedrades, they would be able to handle the bloodfury rabbits of the second floor. Their Martial Art and Martial Paths had great synergy, they had great synergy with each other as well as great trust. The bloodfury rabbits were decisively insufficient to take them out as long as they were careful and engaged in their strategic tactics.


    However, would she be able to clearly annihte so many all by herself, just running into a seemingly endless swarm of bloodfury rabbits?


    "¡­" She picked up her pace she surged forward at a tremendous speed, leaving behind giant sonic booms in her wake.


    (''Bloodfury corpses everywhere¡­'') Her eyes widened. (''Could it be that this floor is already¡­?'')


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 787 After-Effects

    ?


    That day, an odd tale spread across the Shionel Confederation.


    The thankless task of clearing the second floor which had only a portion of its yield left for proportionally a lot more monsters than the frontier floors of the dungeon where most adventurers spent their time plundering loot, had beenpleted.


    Not only that, word on the street was that it waspleted by a single adventurer!


    Yet, that wasn''t the strangest urrence.


    It turned out that whoeverpleted this feat, did not even bother iming credit for singlehandedly destroying a huge number of monsters all by themself, harvested all of the remaining esoteric harvests on the floor, and had simply moved on without bothering any further about it.


    The information came from a report from the party that discovered the state of the second floor; the Saberstrike party. One of the small proportion of adventurer parties that was led by an S-rank adventurer Martial Squire. The Saberstrike party is estimated to have arrived at the scene just fifteen minutes after the absurd feat was performed, based on the timelines estimation of the autopsies of the monsters. Property ? 2024 N0(v)elDrama.Org.


    The analyses of the expert hunters of the party were verified by expert consultants on media outlets, as well as the Shionel Adventurer Guild itself!


    This news sent a ripple across the Shionel Confederation. Especially the news that the culprit responsible was not yet found.


    "Culprit?" Squire Fren frowned as she read the official statement from the Shionel Merchant Guild just a few dayster.


    Two days ago, they had reported the clearing of the second floor of the dungeon, as well as everything knew about it. They had expected that one of the S-rank adventurers in the country presently would take credit for the clearing of the second floor of the Shionel Dungeon, yet, seventy-two hourster, the Shionel Adventurer Guild had not yet even indicated that the individual who had performed this feat or were even aware of the identity of the person.


    "It''s strange that they don''t know yet, and it''s strange that they''re calling him a culprit rather than a hero," Squire Fren frowned.


    "Honestly, it''s strange that they don''t know who it is yet. They surely would be able to find out from the tax paid, right?" Squire Seli asked.


    Because the culprit had cleared the dungeon of the remainingrge reserves of esoteric harvest, they would naturally be paying a huge amount of tax proportionally too, since the tax for being allowed to profit from the resources of another country was twenty percent of the yield.


    Thus someone who was walking away with hundreds ofrge bags of harvest would be paying dozens of bags of harvest as tax, the Shionel Dungeon ought to instantly know who the person responsible is.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    "The fact that they don''t know despite that means¡­" Squire Fren''s eyes widened. "That individual hasn''t paid their tax to the Shionel Merchant Guild! That''s why they are referring to that person as a culprit."


    The other Martial Squires'' eyebrows rose. That made definitely did make sense. It would also exin why the official statement of the Shionel Adventurer Guild is criminalizing that individual.


    "To not abide by the international agreements, as well as the contract that they themselves signed," Squire Fren''s eyebrow rose as she frowned. "It seems we''re dealing with a very powerful troublemaker. The Shionel Merchant and Adventurer Guilds are not going to be happy with this oue."


    The guilds did not care for minor skirting, pursuing minor matters to the end took more capital than it was worth, however, it definitely did care about being scammed of tons of esoteric harvest and yield.


    "How did this mysterious adventurer even manage to smuggle the esoteric harvest and yield out of the Shionel Dungeon?" Squire Darbun snorted. "It would surely be conspicuous,"


    "There are several realistic possibilities," Squire Janeson remarked. "I''m sure that the Shionel Adventurer Guild will be aggressively pursuing this matter."


    Squire Fren nodded. "I don''t know who the culprit is, but that person will not be having an easy time, they may be a strong Martial Squire, but that does not mean that that alone would be enough to evade pursuit. Honestly, it''s strange, why don''t they just plunder the dungeon honestly and legally? They could gain fame and glory without having to hide."


    None of them understood the motives of the perpetrator. This wasn''t their fault, they couldn''t imagine that the perpetrator''s ns were so much grander than just the clearance of the second floor, and would likely end up bing so disruptive, that publicizing their identity would be inviting danger to their life.


    The word spread across town as all of the S-rank parties, including Party Saberstrike, dered that they had nothing to do with the incident, which only sparked more uproar. After all, the only people capable of such a feat would be the various S-rankers in the Shionel Confederation. They had no intention of being used of tax fraud that they did notmit in the first ce, no amount of fame was worth that in the first ce.


    That meant that there was an unknown grade-ten Martial Squire in the Shionel Confederation that had cleared the second floor all by themself. That was extremely strange since grade-ten Martial Squires were not a dime a dozen, they were extremely rare and inherently high-profile. Nations maintained a tab on all of them since they were all Senior candidates. How could such a person go unnoticed?


    Squire Fren had initially half-wished that they had taken credit for it seeing as the real culprit wasn''ting forward, but after realizing how much trouble that would have gotten her, she had thanked her stars that she had initially decided to go with honestly and report everything, thinking that the person responsible would definitely take credit for such a feat.


    The adventuring industry and sector began referring to the person that cleared the second floor as the Voider, for how there was no information surrounding this person, to refer to them whenever they was brought up in discussions, or in media.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 788 Bradt

    Content ? N?velDrama.Org 2024.


    ?


    "HAHAHA!" Kaneughed out loud. "They''re calling you the VOIDER. This shit is hrious!"


    Kane leaned forward, caressing his ribs as heughed his heart out.


    "Very funny, Kane," Rui sighed with an amused smile as he let Kane engage in his typical teenage and juvenile humor. "I''m surprised I got an epithet at all. Seems that the gossipmunity for the dungeon and its adventurers has grown a lot over time."


    "Well, of course," Kane shrugged. "I think you forget that we are naturally celebrities in this world, Rui."


    "¡­Perhaps," Rui remarked. He didn''t particrly care about that, never had, and never would.


    "Though, maybe ughtering every single monster in arge town-sized area was a bit too much, if you didn''t wish to attract attention," Kane chuckled.


    That day the two of them sessfully bypassed the monsters with Kane''s Void Step as nned and harvested all of the esoteric yields from the floor. Yet Rui had had Kane return from the dungeon while he decided to annihte all the monsters anyway.


    "I won''t get that many chances to hone my skill without being detected huge proportion of Martial Squires on the floor in the future," Rui had told him back then. "I will push myself to kill all of them and gain more experience, you go back and book our rooms at a lowkey in the same way we didst time."


    Kane had tried to convince him otherwise, but Rui had been quite adamant. That dayter, Rui returned, having killed all of them.


    "Valuable experience is a valuable experience, Kane," Rui informed them. "Right now we''re behind the frontier of the dungeon, but that will not always remain the case, I intend for us to be far ahead of the curve, and this experience will only be useful then. The floors get harder the deeper we go, don''t forget that."


    Kane nodded. Now that Rui had proven hispetencies, Kane could only agree that he wasn''t in over his head, not that he had ever seen his friend be so. "Still, remind me why we didn''t pay the taxes. Are we thieves?"


    "For now," Rui straightforwardly admitted. "However, by the time we leave the Shionel Confederation, we will have given everybody what we owe them, and more. But we are contract vitors for now."


    "¡­You do know what you''re doing, right?" Kane grumbled.


    "Of course," Rui chuckled. "Several merchants of the Merchant, all of whom are bigshots, are ourpetitors in the esoteric supplier industries. The merchants of the Shionel Merchant Guild haveplete ess to the data in the Shionel Adventurer Guild''s database. If we pay our taxes legally at the moment, they''ll instantly know who we are, looking at the tax registration data. That''s not good for us, because they''lle at us guns zing when we inevitably disrupt the market and hurt their businesses."


    "Didn''t you say that they would inevitably find out?" Kane peered at him suspiciously.


    "I did," Rui smiled. "I also said that I would need to ''buy'' over some of ''them'' to our sides with incentives and benefits like the map, did I not?"<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    "Right," kane nodded, as he recalled Rui''s conversation. Frankly, the n was so sophisticated that he often forgot parts and bits of it, and needed Rui to keep reminding him about it. "Well, how do you intend to go about this?"


    "I intend to talk to the right people, or rather, the right person," Rui replied casually.


    "And who would that be?"


    "The most powerful person in this nation, of course," Rui replied. "Bradt Patrick. The guildmaster of the Shionel Merchant Guild, and the leader of the libertarian faction."


    "There are factions in the Shionel Confederation?" Kane frowned.


    "There are factions everywhere, Kane," Rui chuckled, shaking his head slightly. "It is fundamental to the human race to be divided on any and everything. Naturally, there will be power blocs struggling for power, with different visions, policies, and ideals regarding how things ought to be run in the country. The Libertarian Faction is one of them, and the leader of the faction is Bradt Patrick, he''s been the Guildmaster of the Shionel Merchant for quite some time now, and has been in the lead up until very recently."


    "You mean¡­" Kane''s eyes narrowed.


    "The discovery and opening of the Shionel Dungeon," Rui replied. "That is the variable that has shaken his dominant position."


    "How does that even work?" Kane frowned.


    "It''splicated, but the position of Guildmaster is earned through an internal election of the Shionel Merchant Guild," Rui replied. "Thus in order to win the position, you need the most number of votes. This means you need to persuade the most number of voters, each of whom is a stakeholder and shareholder of the nation, each with their own businesses and conglomerates in the nation and out. Meaning that you need to demonstrate that giving you more power is beneficial to them. Do you know how Bradt Patrick managed to do that?"


    "Not a clue," Kane replied, bored.


    "It was by tying up interests of the various groups in question with his own field of business, one which is absolutely central to the concept of business; distribution and transport."


    "You''re telling me the oh-so-mighty merchant Guildmaster of the Merchant Guild runs a measly distribution service?" Kane looked thoroughly unimpressed.


    Rui sighed with a troubled expression. "Don''t look down on him. Distribution of goods and services from suppliers and service providers is a fundamentally necessary and important avenue of business. The Bradt Distribution Network is one of the most reliable, fastest, most efficient, and also the cheapest avable services for the quality and reliability that it provides. Multi-nationalpanies all over the east side of the continent have contracted the Bradt Distribution Network for serving as a very firm channel between their customers, clientele as well as the market in general, to a level that they could forget about achieving by themselves. He managed to tie up enough interests by leveraging hispany to aid the stakeholders of the Shionel Merchant Guild, thereby buying their votes."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 789 Preparations

    Property ? 2024 N0(v)elDrama.Org.


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    In a world where awork like the Inte had not taken hold yet,munication and distribution were vital and scarcer services for business andmerce. Whilemunication technology did exist, it was not enough to facilitaterge-scale massmunication over great distances. Satellite technology, that on Earth allowed formunication from one end of the, did not exist in this world. Thus allmunication had significant bandwidth and range limitations.


    In such circumstances, how was one supposed to conduct extensive international trade over arge number of foreign markets?


    That was where the need formunication services allowed one to be able to connect to a market that is extremely distant without necessarily having to invest an impractically huge sum of capital into building one''s ownwork and power base in an entirely different nation.


    These services functioned by building a deeply entrenchedmunicationwork in the form of media promotion, showrooms, factory outlets as well as more informal manners of promotion.


    The distribution services followed after building a demand for a certain brand or goods and services, allowing for a smooth transfer of funds and goods and services between the market and suppliers and service providers.


    Bradt Patrick hade to dominate this sector with a giganticmunication and distribution empire oligopoly that was unrivaled within the market in the geographic vicinity of the Shionel Confederation. This was one of the reasons that he was able to see


    "Ok, but what does that have to do with the Bradt Patrick and the Shionel Dungeon contributing to the loss of stability in his power?" Kane wondered, scratching his head in confusion.


    "The reveal of the Shionel Dungeon has been good for everybody," Rui began saying. "Most sectors and industries benefitted from it, some more than others. And some, far more than others."


    He turned towards Kane. "Guildmaster Patrick''s business and trade falls into the category that hasn''t benefitted as much as, say, raw esoteric suppliers and the manufacturing sector."


    Of course, the increase in the sheer number of goods and services flowing inside the Shionel Confederation was definitely something that significantly benefitted his trade, however, not as significantly as the industries and sectors centered around the trade.


    "Mercurite and Whitemane Powder, two of the esoteric substances ubiquitously found in the Shionel Dungeon, are valuable esoteric substances in the esoteric technology sector. The prior scarcity of it meant that the industries and sectors surrounding it were malnourished, but now that that is no longer true, these industries and sectors have undergone a great rebirth," Rui exined. "Unfortunately for Guildmaster Bradt, one of his political rivals runs a conglomerate centered around esoteric technology development and manufacture. He''s dealing with a rival that has basically gotten a steroid injection or the equivalent Squire evolution breakthrough, and is growing ''stronger'' every day."


    "I see," Kane finally realized. "So Bradt Patrick, whose position used to be very secure and dominant, is now in trouble of losing his power due to the increasing growth in power of his rivals''?"


    "Correct," Rui nodded. "In such circumstances, if I were him, I''d be looking for any variable that could break the current ongoing trends, ore to the next election, he could very lose his position as Guildmaster. He would do anything to avoid that."<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    Rui smiled as Kane''s eyes widened when he fully understood Rui''s intentions. And he had to admit, the n was insane but could work. Though he had no idea about how Rui intended to execute that.


    "Leave the details to me, like I said, I have this under control," Rui exined. "Remember what I said about the map?"


    "Right," Kane nodded. "The Shionel Merchant Guild intends tomercialize the free real estate that would be left over after the Shionel Dungeon ispletely cleared."


    "Correct," Rui nodded. "And one of the many things needed to sessfully embark on such an endeavor is a map, which I can provide¡­ But also, it most certainly requires a highly robust distribution andmunicationwork to establish the infrastructure and a flow of capital and goods and services from within and out."


    "I see.." Kane understood. "So that means that Bradt Patrick will also be highly invested in ensuring that themercialization of the cleared dungeon in the form of real estate is a sessful endeavor."


    "That''s right," Rui nodded, grinning. "Now, I have to get to work, enough time has probably passed."


    "Enough time for what?"


    "For the search to have hit a dead-end," Rui exined.


    "The investigation has only been around for a few days, correct?" Kane frowned.


    "That''s right, however, the prospects of finding the culprit be evidently clear at the beginning of the investigation," Rui exined. "There is arge window for the possible entry and exit of the culprit from their point of view, the suspect pool isrge, and the means of smuggling the yields are unclear as well. They basically have no way to narrow down the suspects. They cannot engage in search warrants for all possible Martial Squires because that would piss off all the nations partaking in the Shionel Dungeon exploration, and as annoying as the theft is, making an enemy out of all the surrounding nations that contribute to business and are markets and clients of the Shionel Confederation is an infinitely worse oue that could go as far as causing a recession in the economy."


    "Right¡­" Kane tried following all of that. "So you''re saying that you intend to deal with them after it has be evidently clear to them that they have very little hope of catching you in the act?"


    "Correct," Rui nodded. "With that out of the way, I only need to provide them with a strong incentive to cooperate with me, or rather, him. As long as I can do that, I''ve won. And the two of us can go as all-out as possible with the clearing of the Shionel Dungeon. I have a lot of preparations to make before I can go ahead with that, thus I''ll probably be busy for a day or two."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 790 Conflict

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    "This is uneptable!" A man banged his arm on the table as he skimmed through a few documents.


    The noise drew the brief attention of many others, who red at him for the disturbance.


    "Order, Chairman Deacon," a calm deep voice suppressed the murmurs in therge hall, drawing everybody''s attention to the source of themand.


    The man stood at the center of the podium that overlooked the semi-circr array of chairs and tables, upied by many people.


    "The best we can do is look into the matter more extensively with our intelligence and Martialw enforcement agencies," The man replied with measured words.


    His every word seemed to stick to all those who heard him. He had an aged appearance, yet it wasn''t enough to hide the spark in his sharp eyes. The man''s demeanor, grace, and grooming conveyed a maic gravitas that nearly lulled all those who beheld him intoplying.


    "Guildmaster Patrick," Deacon gritted his teeth and stared at him with a frustrated expression. "I''m afraid those measures are clearly insufficient! The progress reports and forensic and psych analyses are clear, there is no trail of evidence that can be used to make meaningful progress in finding out who the tax-evading culprit, who annihted all the bloodfury rabbits of the second floor and plundered all of its loot, is. We need to do more!"


    "And what exactly would you propose?" Bradt Patrick looked at him with casual boredom. "Would you rather we dispatch an even greater number of agents on the case? Dump even more resources? Do we continue chasing after this mysterious ''Voider'' even if the expenses exceed what they stole from us? Are you suggesting we endeavor in making a loss?"


    His eyes sharpened. "Is that a befitting suggestion from a member of the Shionel Merchant Guild?"


    Deacon gritted his teeth as he stared at Bradt Patrick with a stern expression, reigning in his anger. In reality, they both knew perfectly well why the Guildmaster seemed to treat the issue as trivial, and why Chairman Deacon was taking it extremely seriously.


    In reality, neither one of them gave a single damn about this particr instance of tax evasion. Yes, it was a vition of the adventurer contract that every Martial Squire signed to be an adventurer, and yes, the Shionel merchant Guild was being stolen from. However, the losses were trivial to the capital that the Shionel Merchant Guild had. In a vacuum, both of them would certainly be on the same when it came to catching the culprit who evaded the tax, however, nothing ever urred in a vacuum.


    Things always urred within their surrounding circumstances. In these circumstances, chairman Deacon, Guildmaster Bradt''s biggest rival, had plenty of reason to be concerned by this particr instance of tax evasion, and the fact that it was untrackable. <novelsnext></novelsnext>


    The fact that this individual could clear the second floor by themself but also evade detection and could smuggle huge amounts of esoteric resource harvests without being detected was very troubling to him, who was in the esoteric mineral and organic supply industry. Based on the capabilities that the culprit had already revealed, it was entirely possible that a new force could take the supplier market of the esoteric organic and mineral ores, thereby reducing the growth that even someone like himself would experience, killing his greatest hope at bing the guildmaster of the Shionel Merchant Guild.


    Guildmaster Bradt Patrick, on the other hand, was in a trade that wasrgely unaffected by such an oue, regardless of who monopolized or dominated the supplier market of raw esoteric ores, the distribution andmunication service sector would be almost entirely unaffected. Thus, he had no issue in letting a new variable that could potentially harm his biggestpetitor take stal


    Chairman Deacon, on the other hand, needed to ensure that this did not happen, and that necessarily began by identifying the threat. That was why he was most invested in the oues of the investigation by the intelligence andw enforcement agencies. The second that they identified the culprit, he would deploy the entirety of the closest local branch and have the culprit imprisoned regardless of the international pressure that he would suffer as a consequence.


    Guildmaster Bradt had cleverly used the losing proposition of extensive investigation as a way to discredit Chairman Deacon''s desire to pursue the investigation as aggressively as possible. The value of a merchant was measured by their ability to make money, after all, any merchant that could not make money was not even a merchant in their eyes, and any merchant that made losses was even worse.Property ? 2024 N0(v)elDrama.Org.


    That was the attack that Guildmaster Bradt Patrick was implicitly levying against him.


    Still, he was not a member of the Shionel merchant Guild for nothing.


    "The only way one can conclude that it is a losing proposition is if one only looks at the past, rather than the future," He sharply retorted. "Surely, the great Guildmaster of our Merchant Guild is not foolish enough to believe that a thief that has already stolen once, will never ever steal again."


    Several murmurs could be heard in the hall. That was a valid point. What kind of thief engaged in this kind of heist only once? Especially when the end oue was a perfect sess?


    "The future can be spected, but never known," Guildmaster Bradt Patrick replied coldly. "What you are asking for is demanding this guild to allocate precious limited capital in an avenue that isn''t confirmed to be needed, versus the myriad of issues that need investigation and are of national importance. Is this little thief more important than national security? Background checks and identity verification? International espionage? Are you truly saying that, Chairman Deacon?"


    Chairman Deacon gritted his teeth, he had to admit, that was a really clever framing and retort. He didn''t have too much of an avenue for being able to bulldoze his way through to increasing the investigative capital for this particr case of tax evasion.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 791 Envelope

    Content ? N?velDrama.Org 2024.


    ?


    Of course, Chairman Deacon knew better than to argue and push for it any further than he already did. Guildmaster Bradt Patrick held the final say and had done far too good a job at painting Chairman Deacon''s proposal as unreasonable.


    (''That miserable serpent¡­'') He gritted his teeth. "Guildmaster Bradt, I am merely conveying a proposal centered around a potentially dangerous issue. It may be an unconfirmed fear, but I did not rise to the position and power that I possess today by having dull instincts and intuitions. I believe that this issue will escte, and merely wanted to nip it in the bud. However, seeing as you have denied my proposal, you will naturally take full responsibility for what ensues. I apologize for wasting the precious time of the Guild Forum, please, let us continue down with the remaining agendas seeing as how much time my paranoia has wasted."


    He could not hammer his proposal through, but, he intended to at the very least pin the me for anything that urred regarding this matter on the guildmaster. Furthermore, by self-deprecatingly pushing the matter away and moving the meeting along, he made it a little more inconvenient for Guildmaster Bradt to be able to strongly retort.


    Optics and perception mattered, if Guildmaster Bradt pursued the matter any more aggressively than he already had after that, then it would reflect badly on him and would send the message that he most likely has a personal interest vested in the matter.


    Guildmaster Bradt''s eyes narrowed ever so slightly before he nodded pleasantly. "Of course, Chairman Deacon, you''ve always been a man of reason. Let us proceed with the next matter, then."


    The rest of the forum proceeded along fairly smoothly and normally as the Shionel merchant Guild addressed the many agendas for the meeting. Several bills were passed, and several executive decisions were made before the meeting ended, and the many cab merchants constituting the Shionel Merchant Guild dispersed.


    That went for Guildmaster Bradt Patrick as well. His distribution andmunication empire was not going to run itself.


    He walked past the guards in the main branch of hispany, nodding the many guards that saluted him, before heading into hisrge extravagant office.


    "Hm?" his eyes narrowed as he noticed a conspicuous envelope sitting on his table in the center with all of his other tabletop items and documents shoved to the side.


    It was an iprehensible sight.


    He picked up the envelope with furrowed eyebrows.


    [To: Guildmaster Bradt Patrick


    From: The Voider]


    There was no address on the envelope, indicating it did not arrive by mail. That meant that someone ced it in his mailbox?


    (''No¡­'') His eyes narrowed as he looked at how someone had ced it bang in the center of the table, shoving the other things aside in a crude matter.


    It was to gain his attention and interest specifically.


    (''Someone unauthorized ced it here in that manner to do that, without a doubt,'') He realized as his eyes narrowed.


    "Guards!" he bellowed to them.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    "Yes sir!" They got down to one knee, bowing their heads.


    "Who entered this office in the time that I wasn''t there?"


    "¡­No one sir," the guards replied.


    "¡­" The guildmaster''s expression grew colder as he realized that either his guards were bought, or someone had infiltrated his office and ced the envelope there without any of his Squire-level guards noticing.


    Both oues were not good news.


    "Bring me Feliton at this very moment." He instructed them to summon his personal secretary and chief of staff.


    Soon enough, a short and petite woman entered the office. "You called for me, sir?"


    "I want the log of all those who entered the premises today, and those that entered the inner section of this branch immediately," Hemanded her. "Also, I want a detailed security check and a forensic analysis of this envelope, he gestured to it on the table.


    He was not a fool. Opening a strange envelope that was illegally deposited into his office on his table, addressed to him was not safe. There were plenty of ways this could pose a threat to his life if he opened it. Maybe it would release a poisonous gas that was concealed in it, maybe it was a highlypact bomb.


    He was the head of state and head of government. He could not afford to casually open such unknown items and objects in person. Assassination attempts on his life were routine, but this was a strange incident regardless.


    He was always apanied by Martial Seniors at all times, however, the culprit had infiltrated his office when he was away, along with the Martial Senior protecting his life.


    (''Is it really from the Voider?'') He narrowed his eyes. Given that the Voider was clearly an individual with covert capabilities having avoided detection and leaving nothing behind that they could use for an investigation besides that he wielded a weapon, most likely.


    He did not expect to be contacted by the person that had stolen from the guild that he was the leader of, that was something no criminal that engaged in this kind of crime would ever bother doing. There was a good chance that this was just someone impersonating him for some sort of scam.


    Still, he couldn''t help but wonder if this was the real deal. If it was, he could not help but be very curious as to why this person would go out of his way to not just contact him, but forcibly draw his attention in this manner.


    (''I should at least read it if it really is a letter and not some contrived way to try and kill me.'') He thought to himself.


    That possibility always was there, but he did not think that it was particrly likely. Making the assassination weapon stand out rather than blend in and catch him off-guard would be an extraordinarily foolish decision, and he did not believe that anybody who possessed the ability to infiltrate his office would make such a foolish decision.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 792 Contents

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    The presence of such an envelope stirred things up in his office''s security. The head of security couldn''t help but be extremely ashamed regarding thecking security measures in the office, and security was immediately doubled. A thorough search of the office had been conducted to ensure that nothing had been stolen or otherwise tampered with. It took a while before Guildmaster Bradt could return to working again under normal circumstances.


    Yet, he himself wasn''t able to, or rather, chose not to, yet.


    "Sir, the security check and the forensic analysis have turned up with nothing. There is no risk or threat from the envelope, and we weren''t able to gather any data on the sender or the infiltrator," His secretary, Feliton, informed him about the results of the two processes while handing the rted documents to him. "It has been deemed safe to open."


    It was a good sign to the guildmaster that the forensic analysis had been unable to derive anything from the envelope regarding the perpetrators. That suggested a good level of care and caution on the side of the sender, which meant there was less of a chance that this was an idiot who wasn''t worth his time.


    "Hm," Bradt took a good look at the documents before nodding and putting them aside. "Then, I shall take the liberty to read it in private."


    "Yes sir," She bowed before the letter was promptly delivered to him, and she left the room.


    [To: Guidmaster Bradt Patrick


    From: The Voider]


    (''I truly hope that''s true,'') He sighed while opening the seal and taking out the letter.


    [Dear guildmaster Bradt,


    I imagine finding this letter in your office must havee as a shock. And for that, I do apologize. I assure you, my only intention in leaving this envelope in such a conspicuous manner through, admittedly, duplicitous means was to draw your attention, interest, and perhaps even suspicion.


    After all, the chances that you would take this letter seriously had it arrived through the post and into your, no doubt,rge daily mail arrivals was close to zero. Unfortunately, I couldn''t be sure that you would even see such an envelope under normal circumstances, and even if you did, I don''t know if you would even pay it any mind.]


    Guildmaster Bradt had to admit, that while he certainly disdained and disliked the infiltration of his office, the words of the sender were true. He would not have taken such a letter or that envelope seriously. It seemed nothing short of a silly prank, and at best was someone taking the effort to engage in a scam by pretending to be the person who cleared the second floor.


    In that regard, he had a negative impression of the current chain of events that hade from the infiltration and the cement of the envelope on the table. Unless this letter ended up being positive and good news for the guildmaster, he would not be pleased with the choices that the sender made.<novelsnext></novelsnext>Content ? N?velDrama.Org 2024.


    [Regardless, I understand that my choices may have led to the souring of your impression of me, still, I believe that may change with the contents of this letter. I urge you to read this letter with an open mind. I believe you will most certainly be interested in what I have to say, what I have to offer, and what cane to be if you decide for it to be.


    The reason I have gone through such an effort to gain your attention and perhaps even your interest is simple.


    I have a proposal for you. A business proposal.]


    Guildmaster Bradt has suspected this, honestly. Now that the possibility of assassination had been dealt with, there were only a few realistic possibilities left. And they all fell into the category of the sender seeking something from him, while most likely offering something in return.


    He could imagine what the sender wanted if the sender was really the notorious Voider that had taken the adventuringmunity in the Shionel Confederation by storm, at least, as far as gossip went.


    He wasn''t necessarily averse to cooperating with the Voider, however, that doesn''t mean he would be open to any trivial arrangement that the Voider proposed.


    At the end of the day, the Voider was a criminal, and not just a small one either. As the head of the Shionel merchant Guild, he could not afford for any engagement with such a criminal to be exposed, it would mean the end of everything. He would at the very least lose his position as the Guildmaster of the Shionel Merchant Guild, byw. Even if that didn''t happen, he would lose the support of the stakeholders and shareholders of the Merchant Guild, and that was no different from losing the next election to that scoundrel Chairman Deacon.


    The matters at stake were not trivial, unless whatever business proposal this individual iming to be the Voider, something that wasn''t even proven yet, truly appealed strongly to his interests, he could not afford to engage in any shady deals at this point in time.


    He continued reading, with a mixture of interest, apprehension and even hope.


    [Allow me to begin with what I''m offering. I''m aware of your predicament as the current guildmaster of the Shionel Merchant Guild. I am aware that the discovery of the Shionel Dungeon, while generally a very positive event for the Shionel Merchant Guild and the Shionel Confederation, has not boded well for your previously unshakable position as the guildmaster of the Shionel Merchant Guild.


    I am aware that the dungeon has benefited your biggest rival and opponent, Chairman Deacon of Deacon Industries, far more than it has benefited you. The sudden and drastic increase in both the avability of esoteric resources as well as the corresponding demand has benefited the esoteric supplier market and the esoteric technology sector, both of which your opponent Chairman Deacon has an unshakable dominant position in. His rate of growth skyrockets, and there is very little you can do about that.


    Well, what if I told you that there was something you could do about it? What if I told you that I have the ability to break his dominance in the esoteric supplies market with an unparalleled harvesting capability? Thereby reducing his growth drastically, and allowing you to secure political dominance.]


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 793 Requirements

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    He had initially expected that the sender would fail to appeal to him strongly for him to cooperate with whatever the sender had in mind. However, the fact that the sender was able to pinpoint what was his biggest political problem at the moment was a good sign. I meant that the sender had a good understanding of the political situation of the Shionel Merchant Guild.


    This was quite impressive as the happenings of the Shionel Merchant Guild were not publicized, and thus the actual political maelstrom that existed at the moment was something an overwhelming majority of the populous was mostly unaware of.


    It showed that the sender had the right connections inside the Shionel Merchant Guild, or possessed an astute and shrewd mind, and was able to discern the politicalndscape of the Shionel Merchant Guild.


    This was good, it was further reinforcement that the person really was at least not an idiot that waspletely not worth cooperating with.


    [Before I jump into my proposal, I need toy out what I aim to seek from you rather straightforwardly. The first and foremost thing I seek is the ability to pay taxes anonymously and untrackably, I do not wish to thieve from the Shionel Merchant Guild, I simply wish to ensure that my identity will not be disclosed in the process as it inevitably would if I pay taxes ording to legal protocols. The reason for this has nothing to do with the tax, itself, I had made this decision to not disclose my identity as the one who solo-cleared the Shionel Dungeon long before I didn''t pay my tax, for reasons I''m sure you can understand why.]


    He could, it wasn''t hard to imagine why such an absurdly strong and capable Martial Squire, capable of singlehandedly clearing and plundering the second floor of the Shionel Dungeon would want to keep their identity mum for the time being.


    If the Voider intended to apply their remarkable prowess in clearing floors to the rest of the floors of the dungeon, then there could easily be another force that perhaps even surpassed the S-rankers that were currently partaking in the clearing of the Shionel Dungeon.


    However, doing so would earn him the ire of the many forcespeting for the clearing and plundering of the Shionel Dungeon. It would be no different from dering war against the established oligopolies that currently existed at the moment. That was an incredible burden and risk to life. If the identity of such a person was known, they would be fraught with covert and overt assassinations from all kinds of groups who would do anything against a person that was able to oupete them all.


    On top of that, their ability to clear dungeons was not proportional to their ability to fight against other Martial Squires outside of the dungeon. Sess in an environment as strange and different from the norm as the Shionel Dungeon was most certainly not the same as being able to seed against hordes of Martial Squire assassins if not even Martial Seniors.


    The fact that the Voider went so far out of their way to hide their identity was only proof that they knew very well that they could not survive such a scenario. Inparison to certain death, tax fraud was an extremely alluring choice.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    (''Seems consistent so far, still, this alone isn''t enough,'') Guildmaster Bradt Patrick calmly analyzed all the information at hand. (''They still have not proved that they are the Voider, so all of this is just meaningless until then.'')


    He did not get swallowed up in fantasies about any collusion with the Voider, as much as a fruitful endeavor was desirable, at the end of the day, he was a man who operated in reality and not in fantasy. There were still far too conditions that needed to be fulfilled and issues that needed to be cleared up, before he could even consider engaging in such a venture.


    Still, thus far the message that he was reading did not tantly disqualify the sender of the letter as a candidate for a partnership of some sort.


    [Secondly, I wish to be able to exercise my dungeon-clearing prowess without restriction. This may sound like a simple and trivial issue that already exists, but I''m sure you understand that any individual entity in the Shionel Dungeon that aims to dominate the supplies of the esoteric resources of the Shionel Dungeon without the corresponding political capital to do so without facing suppression, will not be able toe out unscathed. At the very least, I will be the target of many constituents of the Shionel Merchant Guild, I''m sure you have a far deeper understanding of this dynamic than I do.]


    He definitely did. The Shionel Merchant Guild did not want to see a single oligopoly which referred to a monopoly over the market, that too of an outsider, in the esoteric resource supplier market. This was true even for Guildmaster Brat Patrick principally. A market with no monopoly was generally more desirable. At the moment, the Shionel Merchant unanimously preferred thetter, when purely considering the interests of the nation.? 2024 N?v/el/Dram/a.Org.


    Of course, Guildmaster Bradt had his own interests to consider over the matter, considering his rivalry against Chairman Deacon and his desire to maintain his stronghold over the politicalndscape of the Shionel Confederation.


    The sender had realized this and had taken the liberty to present a demand that required the president to act against the interest of the Shionel Confederation, for the sake of his own interests, which were greater.


    [Thirdly, I wish to sign a partnership with Bradt Distribution Services to engage in the distribution of my esoteric harvest to the open market.]


    Bradt Patrick''s eyes widened at this condition as understood another reason why the sender, if they really were the Voider, had decided to contact Guildmaster Bradt Patrick and gain his cooperation over various matters. Guildmaster Bradt Patrick was perfectly in a position to aid the sender over his most difficult challenges.


    asionally missing content, please report errors in time.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 794 Heavy Demands

    ?


    In Guildmaster Bradt''s eyes, one of the biggest issues that the Voider, whoever that was, had was being able to actually sell and distribute the esoteric resources that they had harvested from the dungeon. This was practically impossible when one considered the sheer number of obstacles that came with trying to do while still hiding their identity as the person who was clearing the floors of the dungeon and illegally embezzling them from the dungeon.


    Forming apany in the Shionel Dungeon required registration of identity, among many other things. Although the restrictions and difficulty of forming apany whose goods or services were specifically rted to the Shionel Dungeon had been exclusivelyxed by Guildmaster Bradt Patrick himself, for the sake of increasing the number ofpanies and businesses formed around the Shionel Dungeon.


    Because there was an enormous amount of potential for business surrounding anything rted to the Shionel Dungeon in the Shionel Confederation, a huge number of people wanted to start a business venture surrounding it in the Shionel Confederation. The lowered restrictions and difficulty made it far more appealing and inviting for foreigners to migrate to the Shionel Confederation and start up a business.


    This change in policy allowed for a huge boom in any and all sectors that could even remotely be tied to the Shionel Dungeon, including things as distantly rted as cksmiths forging tools and weapons that were particrly useful in the Shionel Dungeon. However, despite this, registration of identity was required byw.


    This policy would definitely be very problematic for the Voider, who was clearly very determined to keep their identity secret. Guildmaster Bradt still hadn''t figured out how exactly the Voider intended to ovee that problem, but relying on the Bradt Distribution Services to handle the heavy lifting was definitely a clever idea, it would minimize involvement and prevent too much exposure.


    The only way they could bypass this was if they was specifically deployed by conscription from a nation and were decreed to supply all of the harvests back to the nation, thus the limitations of the market were not all that restricting to the Voider in that case.


    However, at this point, Guildmaster Bradt Patrick was around ny-percent certain that the Voider was acting alone, or at best with a few limited associates. The measures and precautions taken by this individual were too cautious for a person with strong backing and protection. Nobody would dare attack a Martial Squire from a power Sage-level nation with plenty of protection even within the nation.


    Assassinating such a well-protected superstar with Martial Squires would be damn near impossible and very costly, and deploying a Martial Senior is an extremely high-profile measure that would instantly expose the perpetrator behind such an assassination. Martial Seniors were far too high-profile. This applied to even the covert ones.


    The identities would be revealed very quickly once the Senior-level techniques were used to identify the Martial Senior, and if the nation that the Voider belonged to was a bigshot like the Britannian Empire, Kandrian Empire, Sekigahara Confederate, or the Republic of Gorteau then they would interpret it as a deration of war, and the perpetrating entity would have no choice but to brace themselves for their wrath.


    Thus he was sure that the Voider was not from these nations, or at the very least, was not being conscripted and deployed by them, or anything other nation worth its weight.


    [Specifically, I''m willing to concede half of all the profits to the Bradt Distribution Services for serving as a liaison between myself and the consumer market.]


    That was quite the concession, this further reinforced the fact that the Voider did not have any third-party backing or patroning them, for that entity would not tolerate the concession of half of the profits earned by them. He could see why this wasn''t enough.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    [I do have onest demand. I would like to request you pass a bill that allows for anonymous registration and creation of a supplierpany surrounding my esoteric resource harvests of the Shionel Dungeon.]Property ? 2024 N0(v)elDrama.Org.


    Guildmaster Bradt Patrick tilted his head as he frowned deeply, narrowing his eyes. Perhaps he misjudged the sender, maybe he was in over his head. Demanding the head of government to pass such a bill as a condition for cooperation that they themselves were proposing to him?


    "Fuuu¡­ And here I was getting a little interested and even excited to coborate with someone who seemed shrewd and sharp. What a joke," He shook his head with disappointment.


    The earlier bare basic terms and conditions that had been established were much more understandable and agreeable.


    The sender iming to be the Voider wanted anonymity as far as tax payments went, and cooperation with the distribution of their esoteric supplies to be handled by his distributionpany.


    In exchange, he would break Chairman Deacon''s dominance over the supplier market of the esoteric resources supplied from the Shionel Dungeon with his demonstrably high ability to plunder and clear dungeons, while also conceding half the profits made from this venture to the Bradt Patrick.


    This was a reasonable exchange of trades, however, thest condition was an absurd demand that far outweighed what he was giving Guildmaster Patrick in exchange. The leader of the Shionel Merchant Guild was not someone who allowed himself to be exploited and yed for a fiddle.


    "Hmph, to think he would demand such a thing given what he is offering," He snorted, a little irritated. He wanted to toss the letter into the bin, and immediately strengthen the investigation into the break-in, but maintained hisposure. He ought to at least finish reading the letter.


    In the following paragraph, the writer shamelessly described the condition for the bill that he had requested be passed, before finally moving on.


    [Ah, I have yet to mention the final thing that I am offering. What I am offering is a detailed, fully scaled, urate and precise three-dimensional map of the interioryout and structure of the Shionel Dungeon, featuring urate information and depiction of all the floors and tunnels across the entire dungeon.]


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 795 Shock

    ?


    That day the Martial Squire guards of the chairman''s office of the Bradt Distribution Services'' main branch experienced something that they had never encountered before.


    It was the Guildmaster raising his voice.


    "WHAT?!"


    The Martial Squires rushed to his office in shock and rm. They, who had witnessed the good guildmaster and chairman being nothing short of cool as a cucumber in extremely dire circumstances, could not imagine what could cause their target of protection to exim in such a manner.


    "Sir! Are you Ok?!"


    In just a matter of milliseconds, they had already formed a defensive blockade. While his most trusted chief of the security detail made sure that the guildmaster was not afflicted by any external influence.


    "Sir?" She asked with concern. "Are you alright?"


    "I''m fine. Fine. I appreciate your alertness and diligence but return to your positions," He quickly dismissed them before turning back to the letter with widened eyes.


    (''A fully detailed and urate map?'') He couldn''t help but be incredulous at such a im.


    As thergest gargantuan in the distribution andmunication sector of not just the Shionel Confederation, but also the local international markets, he knew the importance of urate and precise mapping more than anyone else within ten thousand kilometers.


    It was absolutely paramount.


    In a world where the inte, satellites, satellite world mapping, and GPS tracking did not exist, hand-drawn maps with high uracy and precision were no different from a strategic resource! Information was power, and maps most certainly fell into this category.


    He even prided himself in being one of the few elite entities in the world that possessed an updated,plete highly urate, and detailed Panama Continent map, including the five ind oceans and the seven ind seas.


    The only exception to this was the depths of the Beast Domain, but he did not give two hoots about the depths of the Beast Domain since there was no human civilization inside the Beast Domain that he could sell his distribution services to.? 2024 N?v/el/Dram/a.Org.


    This was a map that only the most powerful countries across the nation had the power to acquire or create. In the eastside section of the Panama Continent, he estimated that the only entities that possessed this information were the four powerhouse sage-level nations, and himself.


    This intelligence was part of the cornerstone and the foundation of his distribution empire that he had painstakingly built over thirty years. It took a considerable amount of skilledbor in the form of his cartography department, funds, and resources to not only obtain a highly urate and precise map of the entire continent that stretched for many, many dozens of thousands of kilometers in any direction but also maintaining it as time passed.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    Much of the continent was very much in chaos and flux, outside of the most powerful and stable nations.


    Huge oceans of people migrated, viges, settlements, and towns appeared and disappeared over time, and topography was constantly changing at varied paces due to the natural elements that afflicted the continent. Therger a map, the more frequently it needed to be updated before it be inurate and irrelevant.


    Yet it was worth it despite all of this difficulty.


    The profits, influence, and political capital that he made and gained were directly proportional to the size of the market that his Bradt Distribution Service had ess to. In turn, the size of the market that he had ess to was limited by the size of urate and precise maps that he was using.


    Hispany was only as big as his maps!


    That was why Guildmaster Patrick visibly shook when the author of the letter offered a detailedplete map of the internalyout and structure of the Shionel Dungeon with high uracy and precision.


    (''Just how many of my attempts to urately map even the most surface-level parts of the dungeon have failed or proved to be too taxing?'') he wondered. He had lost count by now. Human cartographers could not enter the dungeon, and there was no such thing as a Martial cartographer, even if they were somehow given the necessary training, themonly used instruments werepletely useless in the environment of the Shionel Dungeon. Even the most powerful and urate ofpasses were helpless against the jamming effects of the Shionel Dungeon.


    That left extremely primitive analog methods such as literally measuring distances, directions, and dimensions using many kilometers of rope!


    Such a primitive method of mapping would take decades toplete given that the Shionel Dungeon had a diameter and depth of sixty kilometers, effectively having the volume of a country inside of it.


    Thus he had all but resigned, with grave regrets and pains, in trying to map the Shionel Dungeon. When he saw the author of the letter casually throwing in this offer, he could not help but lose hisposure.


    The person on the other side of the letter had dangled one of his greatest desires and deepest regrets in front of him after making such a titanic demand from him like passing a bill that affected the entire country and the hottest economy on the East side of the Panama Continent.


    (''There''s no way a single Martial Squire can possibly map the entirety of the Shionel Dungeon,'') His rationality kicked in.


    The difficulty was so ridiculously high that singlehandedly soloing the dungeon was easier than mapping it!


    How could he possibly take such a statement, no, a deration, at face value? This had to be a scam!


    [I understand that you no doubt strongly suspect this to be a scam. I understand that at the moment that you are reading this, you have no evidence of any sort to suggest that my words are the truth. I can provide you with proof, as long as we iron out the intent to cooperate under the many conditions the two of us no doubt have. However, this cannot be done with remotemunication. Thus, I''d like to set up a meeting between you and me, face-to-face.]


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 796 Possibilities

    ?


    Guildmaster Bradt had to admit that this was one of the most novel letters that he had ever read in his entire life. It was truly an experience in and of itself.Content ? N?velDrama.Org 2024.


    He suspected that the author intended for it to be that way, they could have been a lot more cut and dry regarding this matter, but they chose not to. He had gone in-depth into a lot of the other conditions and offers but lightly added the most shocking offer in the entire letter. Which was the offer of a detailed map of the Shionel Dungeon that was highly urate and precise, allegedly.


    He still wasn''t convinced that the im was true. However, if it was true, there really was only one way that such a thing was true.


    "A Martial Art technique, hm?" He mused to himself.


    It was one of the more frustrating things about trying to predict the future of civilization as a merchant. While he possessed the ability to evaluate sociological, cultural,mercial and economic, and even technological trends to a certain degree, he possessed very little insight into Martial trends.


    This was because Martial Art, as a field and a sector, was far more prone to being influenced by individual influences than any other field of pursuit that currently existed. It was a highly exclusive field that denied entry and insight to those who were unworthy to enter this realm of Martial Paths.


    Unlike in the fields of science, where scientific progress was generally hoisted by the scientificmunity atrge, it was much easier for a Martial Artist to make radical progress by developing a powerful technique with high dissemination viability that shook up Martial trends out of the blue


    He could look at scientific fields and make much more urate gauges of their trends with some consultation, but the same could not be said for Martial Art. Sometimes he went to sleep afraid that some Martial Master would develop a revolutionary technology that would allow for instantaneous transport between great distances.


    He had no indication that such a thing was particrly unlikely, he could only handle them as they came.


    In this case, the sheer confidence with which this particr individual dered his ability to provide a highly urate and precise map of the Shionel Dungeon would probably be based on a Martial Art technique, rather than through conventional means. This was still assuming that there was truth to this im and it wasn''t fabricated lies and nonsense.


    [I''d like to set up a meeting in the Inner Ring of the Adventurer Ring town. Specifically, in the Guild office number thirty-two, at nine PM on the fortieth of Winter. I will offer you proof of my identity of the Voider, and proof of my ims regarding the map.]


    The Guildmaster frowned at that date. That date was special as it was five days from now and also was the day that the native Martial Squires of the Shionel military would be attempting to raid thetest floor discovered, the thirteenth floor of the Shionel Dungeon.


    Furthermore, the time of the meeting had been scheduled after the many Martial Squire adventurers of the Shionel Confederation would enter the dungeon.


    Guildmaster Bradt couldn''t help but feel suspicious. He also noted that the location of the meeting necessarily excluded the presence of Martial Seniors, since they could not be anywhere near the Shionel Dungeon. This was probably intentional and the reason for the location of the meeting since Martial Seniors would obviously catch him and Guildmaster Bradt would have an overwhelming advantage in any engagement that they thene to an agreement over.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    "Clever¡­" He narrowed his eyes.


    This was good because it meant that the person waspetent, which meant the probability of failure of any such endeavor was very low. However, it was not good in the sense that it would be difficult to force an agreement that was disproportionately beneficial to him. Still, it was overall a positive thing. He would still rather deal with an intelligent andpetent person than a careless idiot, especially when the person he was dealing with had a very important role in all of this.


    "Hm¡­"


    He had no choice but to go especially when proof of identities and proof of the dungeon map was guaranteed. Especially thetter, he absolutely could not allow a dungeon map to slip out of his hands under any circumstances whatsoever.


    Still, he had some preparations to make, so he appreciated the few days that he had for the meeting. He had many considerations to go over as well.


    For one, couldn''t he just capture the Voider with force in that meeting?


    True, the Voider was obviously powerful for soloing the second floor, however, could he really handle a huge number of Martial Squires outside the dungeon?


    Probably not.


    In that case? What was to stop Guildmaster Bradt Patrick from capturing them then and there once their identity had been confirmed under the charges of tax evasion and breaking and entering the guild master''s office illegally?


    Then he could use all forms of persuasion to use the Voider as he wished. Wasn''t that a less risky route to go? Than to trust some random stranger into keeping their word, and ensuring that they act carefully and cautiously at all times.


    He was not averse to engaging in such measures, certainly not for moral reasons. He had walked over a mountain of corpses, that he was responsible for, to reach where he was, and he did not mind adding one more to the list if necessary.


    If necessary, of course. Frankly, it entirely depended on the Voider. If it turned out to be the case that the Voider had arrived in person with no countermeasures against such a foreseeable oue, then Guildmaster Bradt Patrick was inclined to capture them alive than let such a moron run around freely.


    However, if it turned out to be the case that they had fully ounted for this possibility, then he would be a lot more reliable and credible in his eyes.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 797 Preparations

    ?


    STEP


    "Alright, this should be far enough," Rui nodded. "Thanks, Kane."


    Kane nodded, before sighing. "You sure you have this all figured out right?"


    "Of course I do," Rui nodded. "I appreciate your concern, but trust me, I have spent an enormous amount of thought into this."


    Rui had been extremely busy since they cleared the second floor, doing things that Kane couldn''t even imagine.


    He even had Kane help him a lot, even though his demands were quite shocking. Like when he asked Kane to deposit a letter crudely at the center of the table pushing everything aside and off after infiltrating the main branch office of the guildmaster of the nation. That was unnerving, but Kane had done a lot of such covert missions thanks to his Void Step technique. Even in Vilun Ind, he had been tasked with infiltrating the G''ak''arkan Vige to wiretap multiple locations despite the presence of a Martial Senior in the vige, albeit sleeping.


    Thus, it wasn''t that big of a deal for him to infiltrate the guildmaster''s office at all since there were only Martial Squires guarding the ce.


    What he didn''t understand was the necessity of such a measure when Rui could have simply mailed the envelope to the guildmaster''s office like a sane person. Still, he learned that Rui always had a reason for doing everything, so he simply decided to trust him with this matter.


    "Still¡­ Why the hell are you dressed in that manner?" Kane frowned. "It''s giving my senses a really strange and annoying sensation like in the dungeon.


    Rui waspletely clothed in a seemingly thick ck cloth that made it seem like he was wearing fouryers of clothes at the moment.


    "It''s all part of the n, my friend," Rui said.


    "Alright," Kane shrugged. "Good luck,"


    He vanished into thin air right before Rui''s eyes.


    "Fuuu¡­" Rui sighed before looking at all the things that he had brought along with him.


    To his left were several bags filled with the edges of the tails of the bloodfury rabbits that he had ughtered. He had barely managed to get them all before the Saberstrike Party happened upon the scene. He managed to escape with as many as he could having sensed them when they were kilometers away for him. He could not be caught off-guard by any being inside the Shionel Dungeon, it was absolutely impossible.


    The tail ends of the bloodfury rabbit corpses ought to have served as pretty solid proof of identity. Considering the estimated time of death through the autopsies and the arrival of the Saberstrike Party, it would be inconceivable for anyone else to have cut their tails off.


    Furthermore, only the Voider would feel the need to do such a thing. No sane adventurer would go through such a thankless task without an extremely good reason. Although there were still some potential objections that Guildmaster Bradt Patrick could raise, it was still prettypelling, as far as he was considered.


    Besides, he highly doubted that Guildmaster Bradt would be particrly pedantic about this point. Frankly, with the map offer in ce, he was mostly certain that Guildmaster Bradt no longer gave a damn about whether he was the Voider or not.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    If he was the Voider, and he did possesses a map, then Guildmaster Bradt would be eager to deal with him.


    If he wasn''t the Voider, and he did possess a map, then Guildmaster Bradt would still be quite eager to forge a deal with him.


    "Still¡­" Rui nced at the three books that he was carrying with him. Each book contained a folded map that formed its pages. Because the Shionel Dungeon was a three-dimensional structure, a single two-dimensional was inadequate to map it, since it could not ount for the third dimension.


    Thus, Rui had decided to create three maps, each map mapping the surface level of the Shionel Dungeon from two of the three dimensions. Together, they provided every ounce of information one could want from a map.


    Rui had spent quite some effort in creating, and among the many preparations he had made back in the Kandrian Empire when he and Kane had yet to leave was gaining a good foundation in cartography. Cartography was not a discreet field and required many skillsets and an understanding of other fields to learn it. Thankfully, the presence of his power senses and the Mind Pce allowed him to dismiss several otherwise necessary skill sets in mastering it.


    What he had particrly learned was the art of creating a map. With his learning cognition, it didn''t take long before he developed a sufficient foundation with that particr skill. His maps were plenty adequate as far as detail, proportion and scaling, uracy and precision went.


    And that was good enough.


    Soon enough, it was time. Rui pulled out a pocket watch, ncing at the time when he noticed some movement at guild branch number thirty-two. Several high-grade Martial Squires wearing the Shionel Confederation''s emblem had arrived at the guild in a high-profile manner.


    (''That must be them,'') Rui nodded.Content (C) N?v/elDra/ma.Org.


    THUD


    He leaped out of the dungeon cave he had been hiding in,nding on the ground before walking towards therge gate that separated the dungeon from the inner ring of Adventurer Town.


    Despite beingpletely covered in a thick ck fabric from head to toe, he didn''t draw too much attention. Surprisingly enough, that probably wasn''t the most ridiculous thing a Martial Artist had worn.


    He entered the guild branch, before simply taking a seat in the guest, picking up a newspaper while skimming through its pages, even though his entire face was covered with the unusually thick ck fabric. He drew strange looks, but he didn''t particrly care.


    "Excuse me?" A powerful high-grade Martial Squire approached him, eying him sharply. "I believe you have scheduled an appointment in this guild branch, correct?"


    "Oh, is it that time already?" Rui wondered aloud. "Time sure does fly."


    "Pleasee this way, we have made the appropriate preparations to receive you,"


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 798 Trap

    ?


    He could tell why the Martial Squires that led him to the meeting room eyed him carefully, frowning mildly. He had carefully stuffed this makeshift with the same insting esoteric substances that jammed sensing in the Shionel Dungeon.


    He was not stupid, he was certain that the Guildmaster of the Shionel Merchant Guild would make at least one attempt to figure out his identity. He was pretty sure that there existed Martial Squires that could track his identity or his location through their senses. Thus Rui had gone to great lengths to ensure that that was not possible. He had taken multiple measures to ensure that there was no way that they could figure out his identity otherwise.


    CLACK


    They opened the door, before gesturing inside. "The meeting will be conducted inside,"


    Rui found two other Martial Squires inside, as well as a strange and sophisticated contraption at the end of the room.


    There was no sight of Guildmaster Bradt.


    "Is this a trap?" Rui asked calmly and openly.


    The two stared at him for a moment before one walked forward, pressing a few buttons.


    FVOOM


    Suddenly the device projected an image of an elderly man sitting on a chair on the other side of the table.


    "If it was a trap, Voider, what would you do?" Guildmaster Bradt''s projection asked.


    (''Three-dimensional projection, eh?'') Rui''s eyes widened as he admired the technology. This was definitely extremely advanced esoteric technology that probably required rare and powerful esoteric substances. He wouldn''t be surprised if it had high-energy demands. That would exin why he had literally never heard of such technology before.


    Still, he wasn''t too taken aback. Three-dimensional technology was abundant in the vast fictional media industries of Earth.


    He had predicted that Guildmaster Bradt would not be personally arriving, that was extremely dangerous, to an unnecessary degree


    "Threaten you," Rui replied.


    Guildmaster Bradt narrowed his eyes. The obvious question that was presented was how Rui intended to threaten him if he wasn''t in the room, but it became evidently clear, that he was confident enough for whatever he had in mind.


    "With what?" Guildmaster Bradt''s stared at him sharply. "Are you hiding explosives under your thick full-body attire?"Property ? 2024 N0(v)elDrama.Org.


    "Hah, you already know that is not the case, don''t you?" Rui chuckled, before shaking his head. There was no way that he had already undergone covert security checks the second he entered the guild branch.


    "True," Guildmaster Bradt admitted. "It''s also curious as to why I shouldn''t order my men to capture you for tax evasion and breaking into my office illegally. Anything you have to say to me, I can hear after you''re at myplete mercy, don''t you think? I could legally make you my ve and force you to work for me against your will."


    "You could," Rui admitted. "But you would lose a lot in the process."


    "Like what? Enlighten me,"<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    "The Shionel Dungeon, and all of the Martial Squires inside," Rui replied.


    "What?" The man''s eyes narrowed.


    His expression did not betray much emotion, but Rui could feel the tension in the room instinctively.


    "Did you know¡­ that there are a lot of special Martial Art techniques in this world?" Rui asked lightly. "They can do all sorts of things, you won''t believe the kind of things that they allow us Martial Artists to do."


    "Get to the point," The man growled.


    "Among the many techniques that I have mastered. I have a technique that allows me to increase my projected power and sense of danger to other creatures that have an evolutionary sense of danger to them," Rui exined. "It allows me to project danger that exceeds  the limits of the Squire Realm."


    "You¡­" Guildmaster Bradt''s eyes widened.


    "Here''s a question, Guildmaster Patrick, do you know what happens to a dungeon, when it faces a significant enough threat?" Rui asked as a smile formed under his mask.


    The two Martial Squires grew increasingly tense as Rui began mounting a great amount of pressure reaching, reaching the peak of the Squire Realm. The sheer pressure he exerted was stronger than anything that they had sensed in the Squire Realm.


    "When a dungeon faces a perceived threat that is evaluated to exceed its eptable threshold¡­ then it triggers a retaliatory response, it throws everything towards the threat until it''s out of range, or eliminated. In doing so, it warps its structure, inevitably causing a lot of damage," Rui exined somemon knowledge as he noted the increasing tension in the room, turning towards Guildmaster Bradt. "It would be a shame if something like that happened right now, wouldn''t it?"


    Then, for just the briefest of moments, he put on the most powerful Mind Mask that he was possibly able to produce. The ten months of continuously using this technique during his time on Vilun Ind massively increased his proficiency with this technique due to the continuous usage of the technique.


    On top of that, he had grown much stronger than he was when he first joined Vilun Ind. Having mastered a technique and undergone strength training for the  G''ak''arkan technique that he had mastered as well as the development of the Transverse Resonance and the new set of techniques and tactics that he created had put him well above where he was a year and a half ago.


    If his strongest Mind Mask back then produce a grade-ten Squire-level aura, then what would his very best be currently?


    For less than a millisecond, a powerful Senior-level aura descended in the area. The Martial Squires in the area shuddered as they felt a sense of danger that transcended the Squire Realm!


    It disappeared as quickly as it appeared, yet before the Martial Squires could even feel relief, they felt a wave of light tremors through the ground.


    RUMBLE


    "You¡­!" Guildmaster Bradt''s expression had turned severe as he understood what had happened from the tremors, as well as the reaction of his Martial Squires.


    "Heh," Rui chuckled lightly. "That was dangerous. I only maintained it for the briefest of moments to prove I could do it, but it still reacted nheless. Looks like the Shionel Dungeon did not appreciate that. No sir, it did not."


    He turned towards Guildmaster Bradt, leaning forward. "Now then, what was that about making me your ve?"


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 799 Map

    ?


    Rui was taking a bit of a gamble with his bold brashness, but he knew that it would be impossible to earn the respect and fear needed for the guildmaster to take him seriously. Thetter was a tremendously powerful man with power, authority, wealth, and influence that far surpassed anything Rui could deal with in ordinary circumstances.


    And they both knew that.


    That was why Rui had decided that he needed to convey without a shred of doubt that this wasn''t one of those circumstances. Rui would not tolerate being pushed around unduly, or being threatened.


    Still, he put on a cool facade, but even his heart skipped a beat when the ground started trembling. He realized that he had underestimated how powerful the Shionel Dungeon was. Had he maintained for even half a second more, a cmity might have urred.


    "H¡­"


    "Hm?" He focused on the guildmaster again with furrowed eyebrows.


    "Haha¡­ HAHAHA," The man started guffawing.


    That made Rui quite nervous. He had expected that the man would grow unnerved, and would instantly put on a pleasant salesman facade to appease Rui. But instead, he not only seemed unperturbed but also emboldened.


    "It''s been a while since someone has had the balls to threaten me," He began speaking more informally as his toothy grin widened. He stared at Rui with an intense fixation reflecting in his bloodshot eyes.


    Rui''s eyes widened as he felt his nerves tingling.


    (''This man¡­ is able to pressure me?'')


    He wasn''t even physically present in the same room, he was supposed to be just a normal human that Rui eviscerate with ease. Yet that did not trante into the unshakeable confidence that Rui had with other humans, for some reason.


    "I have to say, I''m impressed," He settled down as he regained theposure that he momentarily lost. "Rest assured, brave Squire, I have no intention of enving you. Instead, I am quite intrigued at the prospect of cooperating with you. Still¡­"


    His eyes narrowed. "There are several issues that need to be addressed. First, your identity. That little trick earlier is noteworthy, but it cannot help you clear dungeons as spectacrly well as you im you can. Are you the individual who cleared the second floor of the Shionel Dungeon?"


    Rui replied by dumping the huge bags of bloodfury rabbit tail-ends on the table. "As you can see, I have collected proof for each rabbit I killed. You can conduct tests and verify that the time of death of the tissue is around the same as the time of death of the corpses, and I''m sure the missing tails have been noticed too."


    Guildmaster Bradt had clearly expected something of this sort, he did not show any immediate reactions to the matter.


    "I understand that this isn''t necessarily absolute proof. Though I''m sure it ispelling given the timeline that you have, no doubt, constructed as well as the fact that I even bothered going through such a tedious task at all," Rui shrugged. "Though I can always provide greater corroborating proof in the future if need be. This should not be a contentious issue, I''m sure."<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    "You''re correct," He simply stated. "Still, the fact that you went out of your way to gather this evidence when clearing the second floor, means that you had nned this well ahead of time, correct?"


    Rui shrugged, not replying.


    "Well, putting that aside," He said, seeing as Rui was not willing to talk about this matter. "I want to confirm the map."


    Rui could feel that he had grown a lot more intense and serious regarding this matter. If Rui messed up in this particr regard, he would notugh it off like when Rui pulled off that bold move earlier.


    Rui pulled out three books and he tossed them onto the table. The Martial Squires in the room moved forward as they opened the various books, unfolding the pages as they each formedrge maps that mapped the surface level of the dungeon and the vicinity of the first floor and second floors rather urately and in a detailed matter.


    The guildmaster''s eyes widened as he beheld remarkably detailed and precise maps. The tunnels were drawn to detail, showing their varying and fluctuating diameters and directions.


    The cardinal directions on the map allowed the man to know which dungeon was facing which direction, something that was almost impossible to do due topasses not functioning properly inside the dungeon.


    "This¡­" Guildmaster Bradt was unable to hide his greed and amazement. "¡­ Is far more detailed and precise than I was expecting while also abiding by the norms of the field cartography, I can see that you''re someone who is adept at cartography."


    Rui did not respond to that, it was not as simple as he made it out to be since he was using his remarkable mental faculties to skip half of the work that came with drawing maps. Still, he had no intention of revealing that to the guildmaster.


    "Still," he turned to Rui, staring at him with sharp eyes. "There is no proof these are urate,"Content (C) N?v/elDra/ma.Org.


    Rui chuckled out loud. "The only way to confirm for a fact that a map is genuinely urate is to verify it firsthand. You can keep those maps as a token of my sincerity. They constitute about two percent of the Shionel Dungeon, although it did take me quite a long time before I was able to make those, only then did I proceed to actually clear the second floor."


    That was a lie, and quite the believable one. He wanted Guildmaster Patrick to believe that he had been working on this particr venture for an extended period of time in the Shionel Confederation. This would throw off the investigation that Guildmaster Bradt would inevitably begin on finding out Rui''s true identity. Regardless of his evaluation of Rui''spetencies, he was still better off knowing the true identity of the person he was making such a significant deal with, than not.


    ***


    Author''s note:


    Dear tier non-priv readers, I apologize for the dy in chapters that urred due to a WN priv glitch that caused tier 3 priv to require 8 more chapters against my wishes. I spent the 1st and 2nd of June filling tier 3 priv up. I will publish 6 extra chapters this month topensate, so you will get what you paid for.


    Apologies for the inconvenience again, and than you for your support. :)


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 800 Verification

    ?


    Guildmaster Bradt was a powerful individual. No matter how capable andpetent Rui was at clearing dungeons, the second his identity was given away, he would be at a disadvantage when interacting with someone of his stature and power.


    He hadmand over the intelligence, military, and agencies of the Shionel Confederation. He could easily have Rui assassinated if he knew his true identity, and Rui did not want to put himself in that position.


    Thankfully, it seemed he believed Rui''s words, for the most part.


    "It''s quite impressive that you managed to make this within a reasonable timeframe at all," The man nodded. "You havepleted the task quicker than a team of cartographers from the intelligence department of mypany would have, and you seem unbothered by the jamming effect of the dungeon. That would exin your ability to be able to gather the information needed on theyout and structure of the dungeon without too much difficulty."


    He turned towards Rui, taking his eyes off the map.


    "That''s also why you have stuffed that ridiculously oversized attire with the esoteric substances of the Shionel Dungeon that also jam senses, correct?" The man gave Rui a knowing look. "I have been unable to gather any information on your appearance ever since you arrived at the guild branch."


    Rui didn''t reply, but his silence was an answer enough.


    "I''m quite optimistic about the maps that I''m seeing here," He said, turning back to give them another look. "Although it is true that I cannot verify their uracy this very moment, I cannot see anything that would cause me to discredit it, and the sheer amount of detail there is in it raises their value significantly if urate."


    He turned back to Rui. "All in all, I am quite appreciative of them as a token of sincerity. Now then, let''s get down to business. How confident are you in your ability to dominate the supplier market of esoteric resource supplies?"


    "I am quite confident of that," Rui shrugged. "I possess the ability to bypass monsters in the same way that I bypassed human surveince when I sneaked my harvest uncaught. Mybat ability is at the peak of the Squire Realm, and beyond those of any gathered here in the Shionel Confederation to raid and plunder the dungeon. I have already demonstrated what would take teams of Martial Squires to aplish, I can aplish by myself."


    He did not even hint at the existence of Kane and was quite careful to not drag him into this particr matter. He knew that his friend was exercising a lot of trust by giving him free rein on such a sensitive matter.


    "True, still, your ability is not as rigorously proven as I would be mostfortable with," Guildmaster Bradt replied.


    "Perhaps," Rui shrugged. "That''s an issue that can very easily be fixed, but regardless, it''s not an issue in the first ce."<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    "What?" The man stared at Rui.


    "I have already proven my ability to map the Shionel Dungeon, or will have proven the moment you have confirmed it," Rui exined it. "That is a powerful bargaining chip that is worth making the deal over by its own merits."Property ? 2024 N0(v)elDrama.Org.


    Guildmaster Bradt did not deny Rui''s words. In reality, he was already quite pleased with this meeting, regardless of what else he could make of it.


    "If my ability does not nearly pan out as I so im, you still gain a lot, after all, you gain fifty percent for handling all matters of ensuring that my esoteric harvests reach the consumer market and I get paid the remaining half. That''s quite a profitable deal in and of itself. You stand to make a profit in all scenarios. If I live up to my ims, then you make arge sum of profit, and you also hamper your political rival''s growth significantly, if I don''t, you still stand to make a profit off the deal. In both circumstances, you stand to gain."


    Guildmaster Bradt knew that that was true. "Yet your demands are not limited to distribution and transaction management, you also wanted a bill passed that allowed you to operate anonymously officially, and legally. That''s an extremely high demand to make, and I cannot simply do something like that in return for appreciable but ultimately trivial profits."


    "My condition for you to pass the bill is quite high, I admit," Rui nodded. "But would you truly say that the map is not worth it? That transaction exists separately from the transaction of obtaining fifty percent of the profits of the esoteric resource sales in exchange for managing distribution and the transaction itself. Thetter also has the added bonus of hampering your political rival, which is actually quite the benefit."


    "I still haven''t verified the map yet," He pointed out.


    "Then perhaps we ought to continue this conversation when you have verified the map," Rui shrugged. "Or to save time, why don''t we draft a conditional agreement that can proceed once you are convinced of the legitimacy of the maps that I have provided to you?"


    "That sounds agreeable, still, it will require convoluted conditions to objectivelyy out the conditions for whether the map can be said to be legitimate," He remarked.


    That was true, it was difficult to draw a clear line between whether the map could be considered legitimate or illegitimate. At what level of inuracy does the map be illegitimate? No one would say a map is illegitimate if its uracy is at ny-nine percent just because of the remaining one percent. However, everyone would agree that a map that is fifty-percent inurate was a worthless map.


    The question was where the line was between one percent and fifty percent.


    "I don''t need an objective criteriaid out," Rui rified. "As long as you''re satisfied with it, I''m also satisfied. I believe you are more than capable of evaluating a map''s value anding to the right decision regarding whether this deal is worth it or not."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 801 Evaluation

    ?


    Guildmaster Bradt narrowed his eyes. He understood what Rui meant. Rui did not need an objective set of standardsid out because he was confident in the legitimacy of his map, and confident that the guildmaster would willingly and voluntarilye to an agreement with him regarding all of these matters.


    He had to admit that Rui was actually right. As long as the map was legitimate, he had every incentive to cooperate.


    "Agreed," He stated.


    "I''m d we coulde to an agreement regarding this matter," Rui smiled underneath the full-body attire.


    "Only if your map is legitimate enough," The guildmaster snorted. "I have high standards. I need to, for my trade."


    The intent to fully cooperate had been established, which was a good development ording to Rui. The two of them went on to iron out the chinks in their agreement andy out all the terms and conditions for everything.


    It was best not to let anything be undefined or unclear. Rui specifically needed to make sure that he specified all the services that he was demanding from the Bradt Distribution Services, and he needed to make sure that he didn''t miss anything that could be used as grounds to screw him over.


    Thankfully, he had been quite prepared for this and had spent quite some time studying and researching the Bradt Distribution Services as well as the supplier market of the Shionel Confederation when he was nning everything out back in the Kandrian Empire.


    "Well then," Guildmaster Bradt eventually said. "Seems like we''vee to an agreement."


    "Indeed," Rui nodded.


    "I''ll initiate our agreement when I''ve verified the veracity of these maps," He stated.


    The two of them hade agreed that guildmaster Bradt had seven days to verify the legitimacy of the map and initiate the agreement by passing the bill that Rui had demanded him to. The bill that would allow Rui to operate ananymously while still being entirely legitimate. Once that was done, Rui could interpret that as the final seal of the deal nd the approval of the maps, and the terms of contract would continue as specified.


    ording to the terms and conditions of the contract, Rui would be responsible for burying his harvest in a specified location and providing the Bradt Distribution Services of the location of the harvests via a marked letter, as well as the specifications of how he wanted the esoteric harvests to be sold.


    The Bradt Distribution Services would dig it up and execute his instructions, ensuring that the esoteric resources that he harvested would be distributed in the manner that he specified.


    Another issue that needed to be resolved was how the money earned from Rui''s sales would be returned to Rui. Ultimately, an amendment was added to the condition surrounding the bill that Rui got Guildmaster Bradt to agree to, which allowed for the creation of anonymously registered financial ounts where Rui could ess his funds anonymously. It was the only leverage that Guildmaster Bradt had over Rui that ensured that Rui would not attempt to screw him in some way.


    One thing that the two of them fought over a bit was Rui revealing his true identity, which he refused in a heartbeat. His anonymity was the only reason that the Guildmaster did not have powerful leverage over him. He could not afford to simply give it up with no problems. It would give the guildmaster far too much power, and would slide the power dynamics to his favor.


    Guildmaster Bradt pushed for it, yet Rui was willing to not have the deal altogether if he was adamant about this condition.


    Inwardly, Guildmaster Bradt approved, he would have to reconsider dealing with Rui if he gave up his true identity so easily. <novelsnext></novelsnext>


    Eventually, two copies of a contract were drafted that both of them signed, Rui signed with his alias, of course. And finally, the deal was officiated.


    "I''ll be watching the news very carefully this week," Rui informed him as he left the guild branch. "I look forward to hearing news about the bill. I look forward to doing business with you."


    He quickly disappeared into the Shionel Dungeon.


    "Fuuu¡­" Guildmaster Bradt switched off the projection as he exhaled lightly.Content (C) N?v/elDra/ma.Org.


    "Hm," A small smile emerged on his face.


    Although the oue was not as perfectly ideally in his favor, it was still an extremely good oue. He could notin. He found a way to kill two of his biggest problems at once.


    (''And he knew that,'') Guildmaster Bradt''s eyes narrowed. (''He knew exactly what he was doing long before he walked into this. He must have long known that he had the potential to disrupt the supplier market, and had also correctly evaluated that rashly doing so was a bad idea. He must have extensively researched the politicalndscape of the Shionel Confederation before finding the perfect candidate to cooperate with; me.'')


    His opinion of this individual had risen greatly during their time together. He hade well-prepared. He even had the perfect counter for any threat of capture, with his little trick. It was another show of power, and it was him revealing that he had leverage that he would use if Bradt tried pulling some schemes that would push him too far.


    Now, Guildmaster Bradt was far more restrained if he wanted to try and exploit Rui in any way. He always had to know that Rui could ruin the blessing that the dungeon was, and turn into a curse if he wanted.


    That threat alone was enough to make Guildmaster Bradt forget any schemes that could potentially push Rui too far.


    (''It didn''t feel like I was talking to a Martial Artist,'') He noted.


    This was true, he did not treat Rui like he would treat a Martial Artist, he instead treated him as an opponent who was worthy ofpeting with him, and earning his respect.


    This was the first time he had met a Martial Artist whosebat prowess was not the most significant trait about them.


    ***


    Author''s note:


    Dear tier 1 priv readers, I apologize for the dy in chapters that urred due to a WN priv glitch that caused tier 3 priv to require 8 more chapters against my wishes. I spent the 1st and 2nd of June filling tier 3 priv up. I will publish 6 extra chapters this month topensate, so you will get what you paid for.


    Apologies for the inconvenience again, and than you for your support. :)


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 802 Outcome

    ?


    "Phew¡­" Rui exhaled deeply with relief when he entered the depths of the Shionel Dungeon. It was quite a strange reaction since most Martial Squires had the exact opposite reaction. Yet Rui felt quite secure in the dungeon, oddly enough.


    Because he knew that every other creature in the dungeon was extremely insecure about their safety. He was the predator in the dungeon.


    He considered the discussion that he''d just had with Guildmaster Bradt.


    (''A good oue, for sure,'') Rui nodded. Thankfully, it more or less went as he predicted, though he felt as though he had perhaps underestimated how much Guildmaster Bradt would look into his identity.


    This was rough, he shouldn''t have walked legitimately into the dungeon when he first cleared the second floor.


    (''Tsk, made a bit of a mistake,'') Rui tutted. Still, it was far from a blunder, just a sub-optimal decision that reduced the solidity of his n from as high as he''d ideally have wanted it to be.  ? 2024 N?v/el/Dram/a.Org.


    He would need to take more precautions when it came to entering the dungeon, for one, he could not enter the dungeon normally on the same day that he nned on performing an extreme feat like clearing the dungeon. That would simply further narrow him down as a suspect. He needed to frequently raid the dungeon normally, and he could not do anything extreme on those days.


    He also needed to make use of his regr ounts in the Adventurer Guild, and basically act the way the average Martial Squire did. He did not want to go too crazy.


    He would save that for when he covertly entered the Shionel Dungeon with the help of Kane''s Void Step. Thus no one would be able to tie him clearing floors to his true identity.


    Furthermore, he could get rid of any attempt of trying to track him via who enters the dungeon and when this way, thereby clearing removing any potential issues of him for coincidentally entering the dungeon when he first cleared it.


    Of course, new Martial Squires were pouring in every day, so it was frankly a meaningless coincidence and did not increase the probability that he would be found by any meaningful degree.


    Still, he did not want to take any chances.


    However, ultimately, he was quite satisfied with how this meeting turned out to be.


    "You''re finally here, Kane," He said abruptly said to seemingly no one.


    "Look," Kane appeared out of thin air. "I understand you can sense me, and I understand you can sense in the dungeon. But how do you do both simultaneously? Shouldn''t the difficulty of sensing me in the dungeon be astronomically higher? How do you still have no problem."


    Rui chuckled at the outburst. "It''s because I''m not directly sensing you. I''m sensing something inanimate that is reacting to you."


    "Huh?"


    Rui considered his words for a moment. "It would be like if you were walking on a very marshy in, leaving behind footprints while using Void Step. A normal person could not possibly sense you, but they can still pay attention to the marsh and the mud, and notice your footprints. Thus, they can track your location even if they cannot directly sense you. I''m basically doing the same thing but with space itself, rather than a marsh."


    "I have a technique with which I can walk without leaving footprints behind, though," <novelsnext></novelsnext>


    Rui furrowed his eyebrows as he gave Kane a pointed look.


    "Alright fine, that does make sense," Kane sighed. "So, how did your little meeting go?"


    "A sess," Rui replied calmly, getting up to his feet. "We''ll get the affirmation before the weekends."


    "Good to hear, but what''s taking so long?"


    "Well, he can''t just take me at my word regarding the map," Rui replied. "He''ll verify it, then we''ll get the message."


    "What message?"


    "A new amendment to the existing rules and regtions of the Adventurer Guild," Rui smirked.


    "That''s one hell of a message,"


    "Indeed,"


    The two of them walked out of the Shionel Dungeon freely with Void Step in effect. Rui did his part by suppressing his power to that of a normal human with the help of his Mind Mask.


    Later that week, his prediction came to be. He joined therge crowd at the center of the town where a giant equivalent of a press hearing was being held by Guildmaster Bradt on behalf of the Shionel Merchant Guild announcing the revisions and amendments to existing policy surrounding the necessity of identity verification and registration to startpanies and financial guild ounts.


    A huge uproar rippled across the nation at the seemingly abrupt change in policy as the Shionel merchant Guild surprisinglyxed its registration protocols, despite having set those in the first ce, for seemingly no reason.


    A lot of spection emerged around this as many theorized that the Shionel Merchant Guild was unable to withstand the pressure from foreignpanies regarding the high level of requirements needed to operatefortably in the Shionel Confederation in regard to any venture of the Shionel Dungeon. After all, this certainly benefited foreign Martial Squires more than any other group.


    Many spected that this was an initiative to allow for an even greater influx from those Martial Artists whose identities were quite tricky. After all, the Shionel Merchant Guild has signed extensive extradition treaties with all foreign nations in the geographic vicinity, it was the bare minimum that was required, and they were required byw to hand over any criminals who were fugitives from other nations.


    This new amendment made it a lot easier for people with less than clean backgrounds and histories to enter the nation and partake in the raid and plunder of the Shionel Dungeon and even operate in the markets legally thanks to the new anonymous registration policies.


    However, there was no genuine official reason barring meaningless diplomatic blubber, and there were only two people in the world who understand the reason for the significant and important event.


    "''I ept your deal''," Rui voiced out loud as he read the message that Guildmaster Bradt was conveying to him, and nobody else.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 803 Passed

    ?


    "All in favor of the proposed motion?" Guildmaster Bradt looked around the Guild Forum.


    A few members of the Shionel Merchant Guild raised their hands, while most did not.


    "All against the proposed motion?"


    This time, most members of the Shionel Merchant Guild raised their arms tall and straight.


    Guildmaster Bradt nodded. "The motion is firmly rejected by the forum with a majority of seventy-eight votes against twenty, with a voter turnout of ny-eight votes out of a hundred. Are there any objections to this oue?"


    He was greeted by silence before he proceeded with the meeting.


    "Then the motion to instate amendment C-16 into the constitution is hereby firmly rejected," He paused for a second, before continuing. "With the power vested me in as the Guildmaster of the Shionel Merchant Guild, I hereby choose to exercise my veto authority and my decision vote for the instation of amendment C-16."


    This sent ripples of shock across the Guild Forum. The current ongoing meeting was the legitive process of the Shionel Merchant Guild, where the one-hundred cab merchants of the Shionel Merchant Guild gathered to decide policy and address agendas for the day.Content ? N?velDrama.Org 2024.


    Policy was addressed in the form of amendment or addition proposals backed by at least ten members of the forum, which would be presented and argued by the proponents of the amendment in an open moderated caucus, and an unmoderated caucus, both of which were forms of discourse that urred in legitive bodies such as the Shionel Merchant Guild. Once extensive discussion and debate surrounding the policy proposal were conducted, the matter woulde to a vote.


    Any proposal needed more than sixty percent of the votes of the Guild Forum in order to be passed. Guildmaster Bradt''s policy proposal, which only had twenty, fell far below the necessary bar to be passed.


    That was why it was quite surprising to everyone in the forum to see the good guildmaster fully exert the veto authority and the decision vote that undid the oue of the votes and returned the proposal back to the discussion stage, and the deciding vote which of the Guildmaster which counted for sixty-one votes.


    Thetter was a privilege that could be used a limited number of times and excluded matters such as the electoral process. It was also limited to being used only once per Guild Forum atop all of that to ensure that it couldn''t be abused. Still, this particr policy proposal was one where it could be and was used.


    The fact that it was a limited ability meant that it was quite precious to the Guildmaster and was generally reserved for their most important and significant policy matters. No one had expected that Guildmaster Bradt would use one of his decision votes randomly in favor of an absurd policy like drastically rxing the identity verification and registration requirements.


    Guildmaster Bradt had never expressed any support for this kind of policy change in the past, he had not engaged in even a shred of political lobbying or campaigning to gather support from the constituents of the Guild Forum, which was an extremely basic and standard norm that all of them necessarily engaged in.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    What was especially surprising was that he was willing to go as far as to use his decision vote to overrule the votes of basically most of the Shionel merchant Guild for what was clearly his own self-interest.


    This was generally frowned upon and most guildmasters tended to avoid doing this as it would lose the support of these same constituents and voters when the next election came around. These were the checks and bnces that every guildmaster faced to ensure that they did not go too far with tyrannically using their veto privilege and their limited decision votes to tantly overrule the entire Merchant Guild on matters.


    Guildmaster Bradt Patrick himself was one who abstained from doing this too often and still won most political conflicts through excellent lobbying and campaigning. He was powerful, and extremely shrewd, and even without his authority, he was more than capable ofing out on top.


    Yet, this time he had diverged from that pattern and straightforwardly used both his privileges at once. The many cab merchants of the Shionel Merchant Guild could not help but be extremely surprised about this turn of events, they could not help but wonder what exactly was going on. Clearly, something had happened that had made Guildmaster Bradt impatient and extremely adamant on this matter.


    "Motion for an open-forum unmoderated caucus on the topic of Bill C-16 for a duration of ten minutes," Chairman Deacon loudly dered with a stern expression, drawing the attention of the entire forum to him.


    Guildmaster Bradt nced at him, nodding, before turning back. "All in favor?"


    Every single hand went up.


    "Motion is granted in light of unanimous voter support," Guildmaster Bradt dered


    An unmoderated and open-forum caucus was an informal meeting where the constituents of the forum did not need to abide by any norms while engaging in discussion with each other barring a few basic rules.


    "What is the meaning of this?" Chairman Deacon coldly demanded, speaking as soon as the motion was granted. He red at Guildmaster Patrick with burning eyes. Of all the people in the Merchant Guild, he was the one who had been the most vehemently opposed to this policy.


    The first reason was that he naturally opposed the policy itself. It would cause nothing but problems for the Shionel Confederation down the line, and even when judged purely on its merits, he could only evaluate it to be poor, at best.


    The second reason he opposed it was that it was against his own personal interests. It meant that if a person somehow disrupted the Shionel supplier market, he would have a far harder time tracking that person down and identifying them. This was something he was especially sensitive to, given that someone recently had singlehandedly shown the ability to disrupt the market. He could not help but feel that the guildmaster was partly passing the policy to hinder his own growth.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 804 Debate

    ?


    The final reason was that the policy came from hisrgest political opponent, and he was almost obliged to push back on the matter unless it was truly something that he ought not to oppose.


    "What do you mean?" Guildmaster Bradt replied nkly.


    "Don''t y dumb!" Chairman Deacon barked back. "What is the meaning of this policy? How could you force a policy that is ripe for exploitation from the underworld and criminals of all kinds? You''ll turn the Shionel Confederation into a breeding ground for criminals all across the continent!"


    "Criminals who are mostly criminals in other legalities," Guildmaster Bradt corrected. "Furthermore, these criminals will immediately be captured and deported to other nations where we have extradition treaties as per our international protocols, correct? At worst, they will be denied entry into our nation because the new policy that has just been passedxes identity verification registration only for legal and passed migrants after they have already joined the nation. It does not apply to immigration protocols, do not pretend as if you do not know this."


    Chairman Deacon gritted his teeth. Technically, he was not wrong. After all, it was true that any wanted fugitive would get deported, or at the very least denied entry into the country, however, that did not mean they could be stopped from entering the nation.


    "Those immigration protocols only prevent them from entering the nation legally," Chairman Deacon pointed out. "They do not stop them from infiltrating the nation. The borders of the nation are simply too far and vast to prevent all Martial Artists from entering them."


    "That''s an issue that has to do with border security and surveince than anything to do with the internal policies of the Shionel Adventurer Guild," Guidmaster Patrick frowned. "Why do you bring that up?"


    "Because the new policy allows for illegal immigrants to register with the guild anonymously and set up businesses anonymously," Chairman Deacon retorted coldly. "That used to not be the case, as only those who entered the country legally were allowed to register with the guild, this allows illegal immigrants to freely enter the Shionel Dungeon and register with the Adventurer Guild."


    This was a valid point that could not be denied.


    "That is true," Guildmaster Bradt nodded. He had already anticipated that somebody would bring this up. Denying such a thing with pedantic arguments would only reflect bad on him. "However, the solution to our inadequate security cannot be to mold every otherw to ount for that. We should instead strive to secure our borders as much as possible. Even without this new policy, it is still possible for illegally immigrated Martial Squires to engage in work surrounding the Shionel Dungeon due to fake identities and backgrounds that can be obtained from the underworld. We need to develop a far more rigorous and secure system that can ensure that we do not need to bow down to those who exploit the holes in our system. Your suggestion reeks of cowardice and fear, I instead aim to show the world that our country''s security is not a joke that can be treated lightly. That is why I intend to bring forth a motion to explore a higher budget and a greater allocation of resources to the Shionel Border Force that will allow our protectors to fulfill their duties better."


    This earned some approval from the cab ministers, Guildmaster Bradt had cleverly relied on a nationalistic sentiment to deflect Chairman Deacon''s criticisms of the policy that he had passed being harmful to the nation.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    "And if it doesn''t work out, are you willing to take full responsibility?" Chairman Deacon narrowed his eyes.


    "I have always taken responsibility for my decisions and actions," Guildmaster Bradt remarked, giving Chairman Deacon a knowing look that thetter did not understand. "In time, you will understand the true wisdom behind my actions."Content ? N?velDrama.Org 2024.


    Those were cryptic words, but people did not doubt them immediately when they considered the man uttering them.


    Who was Bradt Patrick? A man who came from truly nothing. He had risen to the very peak of the economy of the Shionel Confederation through his deeply shrewd and ruthless analytical insight and decision-making, before sizing.


    His credibility was extremely high, and it became clear to everyone that there were deeper considerations to this policy change that they did not quite understand yet.


    Chairman Deacon only grew more rmed at that realization. It brought him deep anxiety at not understanding his opponent''s actions and decisions. There was no doubt that this policy was in the interests of the guildmaster more than anyone else, which meant that it was naturally against his own interests.


    He didn''t know what to think about the matter, but he intended to get to the bottom of it.


    If he didn''t keep up, he would have the rug pulled out from under his feet, and he will have squandered the one opportunity that had presented itself in the form of the Shionel Dungeon to usurp his formidable rival. The Shionel Dungeon truly benefited him more than it did anybody else given the sector that hispany operated in was almost made for it.


    The previously hopeless gap between him and the guildmaster of the Shionel Merchant Guild had been shortening at a steady pace. The massive capital that he had gained as a result allowed him to sway more support from many of the cab merchants of the Shionel Merchant Guild, steadily building his political capital. His faction was slowly catching up to that of Guildmaster Bradt, and he predicted that there was a realistic chance of him winning when the next election, which was in over a year, came.


    That was why he was particrly paranoid about the timing of this policy change. A single policy change could cause a ripple effect that could snowball in that time and ruin his ns. He didn''t like that he was unable to understand the full depth of his opponent''s n, though he knew that it was by no means as innocent as it seemed on the surface.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 805 Show Off

    ?


    "Is that everything?" Rui asked from under a mask.


    "No, just a few more signatures here and here," A support staff member of the Shionel Merchant Guild replied, pointing to where he needed to sign. Rui quickly nodded, following through.


    "And that''s everything, Mr. Falken," She replied with a smile. "Congrattions, you are now officially a merchant of the Shionel Merchant Guild."


    "Thank you," Rui replied, smiling.


    "Here is the guild-issued key that will allow you to identify yourself as the owner of your newpany," She handed him a key. "Be sure to never lose it, otherwise your identity can be usurped and yourpany could potentially be taken."


    "I understand," Rui nodded. "I do appreciate  the warning."


    About three days had passed since Bill C-16 had been passed in the Shionel Confederation. A rush to anonymously create apany in the Shionel Confederation without the need for identity registration had formed. It was clear that, for whatever reasons, a lot of people hadpunctions about registering their real identity in the Shionel Merchant Guild, thus this new amendment was quite wee to all these people.


    Rui walked out, before running towards the inner ring of the Adventurer Town. He didn''t want to take any chances, in case Guildmaster Bradt managed to track his location, being near the dungeon increased his security since he could use it as a threat, and quite the effective one at that.


    "You''re here," Kane noted. "Is it done?"


    "Yep, I''m officially a merchant now," Rui grinned wryly.


    "A Martial Artist merchant," Kane scoffed.


    "They''re not even unheard of in this nation, quite strange, isn''t it?" Rui noted.


    "What''s going to happen to your newpany when we leave though?" Kane asked.


    "It''s going to die, of course," Rui snorted. "It will serve its use while I''m here, but I have no care for it once we leave the Shionel Confederation."


    The two of them disappeared into thin air before returning back to their inn in the outer ring o the Shionel Confederation.


    The dungeon served as a good gateway to lose any trackers or surveints since no Martial Squire could possibly track them with the Void Step and the Riemannian Echo, that Kane and Rui possessed, and Martial Seniors couldn''t go anywhere near the Shionel Dungeon without destroying it advertently.


    Thus, they could be rtively certain that nobody knew that they were associated with the identity of the Voider.


    "So, what now?"


    "Now, we finally go all out and begin doing what we originally came here for," Rui exined. "We have the cover for our identity as well as sufficient backing. We have the means of selling our harvests without anybody interfering, while Bradt Patrick handles all the distribution and sales on behalf of us."<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    "What''s the name of thepany, again?" Kane asked.


    "Esosale Suppliers," Rui replied, earning a frown from Kane. "That''s surprisingly down to Earth, I thought you would call it the ''Void Supplies Company,'' or something like that. Your naming sense genuinely sucks, after all."? 2024 N?v/el/Dram/a.Org.


    "Naming it Void is stupid, that would be a very direct association with the Voider and would fulfill the standards of probable cause for investigation, not even the guildmaster will be able to protect us in that case without being charged with obstruction of justice," Rui replied calmly. "Being lowkey is better in this case. Although some people will still figure it out, it won''t mean much since there is no avenue for starting an official investigation."


    "So that means that they arepletely unable to do anything to us?" Kane grinned.


    "It''s not that simple," Rui exined calmly. "They may be unable to use the resources of the guild and the state to track us, but they can still engage in their own investigations, the people who will be pissed off by us are not ipetent and incapable. Each of the hundred cab ministers of the Shionel Merchant Guild is a chairmen or president of the top hundredpanies of the Shionel Confederation across all industries and sectors. Including distribution, suppliers, manufacturers, firms, mediapanies, brokers, weapons contractors, Martial contractors, etc. These people possess a great amount of power and influence and usually have established investigative or intelligence departments or divisions inside theirpanies. Do not underestimate them, if we slip up, we''ll be caught."


    "Damn, and here I thought we could rx," Kane sighed dramatically.


    "That''s not true," Rui raised an eyebrow. "You knew that this would be far from a fun little trip."


    The two of them immediately began preparing for their next dungeon raid after they reached home. The time for politics was over, and the time for plundering the Shionel Dungeon in earnest had arrived. Even their previous dungeon raid could be considered to be a part of the preparations.


    But now, all preparations were done.


    "Ready?" Rui asked him when they were nearly done. He had equipped himself with his sword and his air pipe, as well as his dimensional storage ring.


    "Yep," Kane adjusted his attire, nodding. "Let''s head out."


    He put his arm on Rui''s shoulder, before inhaling deeply.


    The two of them vanished into thin air as they left their inn, heading for the Shionel Dungeon.


    No one knew that the two of them were inside the dungeon at this point in time, and thus no one could possibly suspect their true identities as the collective identity for the Voider, this was another safety measure that Rui hade up with, since he was officially always with Kane and the Voider was probably strongly suspected to be acting individually by Guildmaster Bradt. This way their real identities as registered in the Shionel Adventurer Guild would probably be removed from the suspect pool quite quickly by Guildmaster Bradt.


    "We''ve arrived," Rui noted as they crossed the inner barrier. "Let''s get to work immediately."


    "You said you didn''t want to go for the third floor, right?" Kane carefully asked.


    "That''s right," Rui replied. "We''re going to have to show off a bit more this time."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 806 Venom

    ?


    "The twelfth floor is the current frontier of floors," Rui told him. "We''re going to clear it."


    "If it''s the current frontier of floors, then that probably means that it''s going to take quite some time to harvest all those organic and mineral ores, right?" Kane asked.


    "Right," Rui nodded. "Your stealth is going to be quite necessary to keep our identities hidden."


    The two of them navigated through the many tunnels in the dungeon. Kane mostly followed Rui who confidently plodded through them without any hesitation.


    Suddenly, he drew his sword, swinging to his side.Exclusive ? material by N?(/v)elDrama.Org.


    SPLAT


    Kane''s eyes widened as a decapitated serpent copsed to the ground, still slithering while its head rolled away.


    "Careful, stay away from the head, it''s still alive and will bite anything that goes near it," Rui warned him, while carefully avoiding the snake. "The head can survive for days after its decapitation, and its venom is still extremely potent. Neither of us will survive a single bite."


    "Woah¡­" Kane murmured as he kept a healthy distance away from the head. "Is that a snake native to one of the floors of the dungeon?"


    Rui nodded in response. "It''s known as the Ind Shionel Taipan. A highly venomous species of serpent."


    "What floor is this from?" Kane asked.


    "The twelfth floor, of course," Rui replied before he sheathed his Bellhorn Steel de.


    "Which is our destination, correct?" Kane nced at him with a wry smile.


    "Correct," Rui nodded. "Let''s get going, we''re not that far."


    Because Rui had the ability to focus his Riemannian Sense in one particr direction, he could fully explore tunnels while alsomitting the tunnels to memory in his Mind Pce, forter use in creating the map.


    Thus he did not need to go down a tunnel in order to see what was at the end of the tunnel. That was something that no other Martial Squire could do, it would save him time when he would begin exploring and discovering new floors all by himself.


    STEP


    He paused, gesturing for Kane to stop and signaling for him to use Void Step.


    PAT


    "We''re here?" Kane asked as his eyes narrowed as they started walking to ensure the Void Step technique stayed active.


    "That''s right, look," Rui gestured as they entered the floor. "We''re in a really special ce."


    Kane''s eyes widened as he beheld the environment they had just stepped into.


    "I¡­ I thought we were underground?" Kane looked up high.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    "We are underground," Rui replied as he too looked up with raised eyebrows.


    "Then¡­ You wanna exin why we''re looking at the sky?"


    Where the dark ceiling of the dungeon was supposed to be was a clear blue sky, for some reason. It was an extremely bizarre sight that made them question their sanity for a second. Perhaps they were dreaming this all up.


    Rui had gathered intelligence on this before, thus he wasn''t too caught off-guard. "The reason is unclear, however, it is not the sky. The ceiling of the floor still exists, it''s just giving off a light that matches the sky, for some reason. Nobody has been able to study since only Martial Squire can enter here.


    "That''s really novel," Kane murmured.


    "It is, but it isn''t what we should be focusing on," Rui gestured around. "There are countless Ind Shionel Taipans infesting this area outside of eyesight.


    That drew Kane''s attention and he immediately began paying attention to his surroundings. The snake they killed earlier freaked him out a lot, thus he couldn''t help but be very much on guard even if he did trust Rui''s senses and alertness.


    Their environment was tall grasnds with grass that exceeded their height. It obstructed his vision and made it harder for him to sense things that could be a threat to him.


    Rui nced in a certain direction, before quickly pacing over to a certain location, dragging Kane with him.


    "This floor is the frontier as well, so, monsters aren''t the only thing we''ll run into," Rui said as he slowed down, gesturing ahead of them.


    There was a Martial Squire a few meters ahead of them lying on the ground unconscious. Her skin hadpletely turned purple, and in the immediate vicinity was the corpse of another big taipan.


    "Is she¡­?" Kane asked grimly.


    "She''s alive," Rui replied calmly. "But she won''t survive even if we did everything in our power to bring her back out of the dungeon, she''s going to die soon."


    Rui nced around at the shatteredndscape in the vicinity, indicating a fierce battle.


    "From the looks of it, she''s actually a high-tier Martial Squire," He noted. "The battle seems pretty onesided. She must have crushed the serpent swiftly, before making the mistake of turning her back on it thinking it was dead because of the severed body, and the still-alive serpent must have caught her off-guard with a single strike from behind, sinking its fangs into her chest, instantly injecting her entire chest cavity with its potent venom into all of her vital organs. Hence, it exins why the serpent''s body is so battered and wounded all over from being overwhelmed by her lethal attacks, and why she only has a single wound. I''m surprised she''s even alive, even if barely. She must have undergone poison resistance training, but that has merely prolonged her suffering all this time, even if she probably only has a few minutes left."


    He pointed at the two deep ck necrotic fang wounds visible above her chest.


    "So there''s nothing we can do, huh?" Kane sighed.


    "That''s not quite right," Rui replied, as he drew his sword.


    SPLAT


    Faster than the eye could see, the de effortlessly decapitated her. Rui swung his sword, ridding it of blood before sheathing it. Kane didn''t begrudge his decision. If there was no saving her, then ending her suffering was the least that could be done for her.


    "She overestimated herself and underestimated the dungeon," Rui replied with a solemn expression. "We should learn from her example. Always stay alert. Don''t let your guard down just because we have a powerful strategy."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 807 Gathering

    ?


    The two of them left the corpse of the Martial Squire behind, Rui had no intention of lugging the corpse back to the surface in order to return it to her dependents or friends. It seemed that she had entered the dungeon alone too, as opposed to being part of a party.


    "Alright, what do we do?" Kane asked, turning to Rui.


    "Our goal is to harvest all the esoteric ores of this floor," Rui exined. "The biggest threat on this floor is the bite from the taipan which would kill us. The simplest way to avoid them is by sky-walking, however, if we do that, we cannot get at the esoteric ores that are on and beneath the ground."


    Rui calmly analyzed the situation that they were in. "I would rather avoidbat with the serpents. This is different from the second floor where the rabbits, while very dangerous, were not extremely lethal. Here, even if I chop up all of the taipans, there is still the chance that I would get bitten by a surviving head hiding under the pile of corpses and flesh that I would leave behind. My Riemannian Sense is different from Primordial Instinct in the sense that its affinity forbat is not too great."


    Primordial instinct was simply his danger sense and risk evaluation sense highly trained to detect and counter threats based on the sensory data that he naturally gathered from all of his senses. Thetter was hampered, thus Primordial Instinct was also naturally hampered.


    However, that did not mean that the Riemannian Sense could rece Primordial instinct. It was not an instinctual sense and was actually closer to reading anguage than it was sensing his surroundings.


    "That makes sense," Kane nodded. "So it''s a simple n of harvesting the esoteric ores on the ground when we''re in stealth, and then moving back to the air when I time out, right?" Kane asked.


    "It''s a simple n but entirely effective," Rui replied. "However, we cannot go too high, I don''t want to be spotted by others even if their senses are hampered and it wouldn''t really matter."


    "Wouldn''t that mean that we''re within their striking range?" Kane asked.


    "Yes, but I am more confident of ensuring that I can''t be caught off-guard if I''m sky-walking. Because their decapitated heads would fall back to the ground and won''t be able to hurt me from the ground. Furthermore, all the attacks woulde from only one direction, down. Dealing with attacksing from one direction is vastly easier than dealing with directionsing from all directions, which is liable to be the case if you time out onnd and we''re in a snake-infested pit."


    Rui was confident that as long as he could turn his back up to the ceiling of the floor without fearing an attack on his back, he could handle even a barrage of snake attacks.


    "Let''s begin," He told Kane, who promptly nodded, putting his arm on Rui''s back before the two of them descended into the grasnds.


    Rui could see why this kind of environment was great for the snakes, theck of visibility as well as the sensory jamming meant that it was difficult for many Martial Squires to safely identify all of the snakes ahead of time. They would need to react after an attack was initiated, which wasn''t easy, albeit not impossible.


    Rui, on the other hand, not only knew the locations of all the snakes within a few kilometers of radius around him but also verified that they could not sense him thanks to Void Step. Thus the two of them were confident that as long as they were in any level of meaningful motion, they could avoid being detected.? 2024 N?v/el/Dram/a.Org.


    Rui was more than fast enough, by virtue of being a Martial Squire, to set up the instruments, apply them to extract both the mineral and organic ores from thend and from the roots of the dungeon and the grass, and put them in a bag, all before he walked a single step.


    There were even moments when he extracted mineral and organic ores right in front of the faces of a bunch of taipans, and they did not even so much as budge!


    (''What a remarkable technique,'') Rui grinned to himself


    PAT PAT PAT


    Kane quickly tapped him twice, indicating that he was about a minute away from his limit. Even though one minute was no different to a Martial Squire than an hour, Rui did not want to take any risks whatsoever. One minute was not worth risking their lives by identally not being prepared for the time-out in time.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    If it just so happened that they timed out when Rui was just digging, even he would not be able to draw his weapons and kill all of them before at least one of them gets a bite in, which would be game over for him.


    "Phew¡­" Kane elevated himself a meter higher than Rui.


    SHING


    Rui drew his sword from his scabbard before the technique was deactivated.


    Instantly, three snakes shot up from the ground, lunging meters high into the air.


    "SSSSK!"


    Their lunges were so extraordinarily fast that the atmosphere itself recoiled in a sonic boom as they shot forth with enough power to destroy an entire building.


    Yet, the second they reached Rui, the world suddenly went dark for them. They lost all sight, awareness, and even consciousness.


    SPLAT


    A single arc from his Hellborn Stell de cleaved past their skulls, splitting their eyes in half. Rui specifically make sure that he destroyed the brain, to ensure that the head did not retain consciousness where it could hurt unsuspecting Martial Squires.


    The two halves of their skull sted away from each other so faster that it was almost as though they were magically parting way for the de.


    SHING


    He immediately sheathed his de to ensure it reached maximum coldness once more. The only disadvantage that the de had was that it needed to be cooled, which meant he needed to periodically sheath his de in order to maintain its effectiveness over time.


    ***


    Author''s note:


    Dear tier 2 priv readers, I apologize for the dy in chapters that urred due to a WN priv glitch that caused tier 3 priv to require 8 more chapters against my wishes. I spent the 1st and 2nd of June filling tier 3 priv up. I will publish 6 extra chapters this month topensate, so you will get what you paid for.


    Apologies for the inconvenience again, and than you for your support. :)


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 808 Harvest

    ?


    Several more taipans gathered before lunging at them from the ground, yet all of them split apart like butter to a warm knife. Although the sheer quantity of taipans on the floor was not something that could be underestimated, each individual monster was not that strong, most of them were more or less between grade one and grade three, depending on their size.


    Every once in a while he would run into one with the speed and power of a grade-four Martial Squire, yet, it did not matter.


    "FUUUU¡­" Rui sted a snake with cracklingly hot air, paralyzing the snake the second the air hit its skin.


    SPLAT!


    A full-body swing of his de split it apart so forcefully that itunched the two portions flying away from each other.


    Rui nced at the greenish-ck blood on his de.


    (''The monsterified snakes have undergone a change in the color of their blood due to ingesting food in the dungeon,'') Rui noted as he swung his sword, cleaning it of all blood., before sheathing it to cool it down.


    "Alright, great job," Kane told him. "I''m ready for another round."


    Rui nodded. "Let''s begin immediately."


    The two of them went through the same process multiple times, as they scoured the grasnds. Rui made sure to take routes that avoideding in contact with other Martial Squires, though that wasn''t always easy.


    Many a time, they ran into parties of Martial Squires, in which case they would take a detour to return toter, or they would continue extracting resources if Kane indicated he had enough stamina to ensure that they wouldn''t have to reveal themselves by being forced to deactivate his Void Step while in their vicinity.


    "Argh!" Rui heard from a distance. "Who mined all the ores without killing the snakes first?! How is that even possible?!"


    "Did the snakes eat all the ores?! Where did they go?"


    It seemed as though a party of Martial Squires had juste across the area that Rui had finished mining from. Heughed to himself as he continued extracting all the esoteric ores that he came along by on his way.


    They continued scouring entire districts with a huge area beforerge chunks of the floor had beenpletely plundered despite the taipans seemingly intact.


    A general wave of confusion spread across the Martial Squires in the dungeon, this didn''t make any sense, after all. The Martial Squires began growing increasingly frustrated that despite fighting so many taipans and killing all of them in the vicinity, they ended up digging through only to find that the soil had already been dug up and ores had clearly already been extracted.


    Many had even had theirrades die due to a venom bite that killed them before they were able to get them to safety. And at the end of it all, they found that the sacrifice had been in vain. It was unbelievable.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    Everyone realized something was very wrong. This had never happened to date from the day that the Shionel Dungeon had been opened. In order to get past the monsters, you needed to kill them.


    Yet here there was someone who was able to bypass these rules!


    Half a day passed before Rui had reached his storage limit.


    "Damn, we had a good haul," Rui stretched his arms. The two of them inspected their goods before Rui quickly stored them in his dimensional storage.


    The two of them had stripped the floor of a considerable proportion of its esoteric ores. Even if the floor was as wide as arge town, two Martial Squires could get a lot of work done across half a day!


    They had worked extremely hard until they physically could not work harder.


    "Let''s get going, we cane back tomorrow," Rui told Kane. "Assuming the rest aren''t finished."


    He considered the fact that a lot of monsters had been left while the esoteric ores in their areas had been mined. What would that mean for the monsters?


    In time, he suspected Martial Squires would leave them alone at increasingly high rates. There were very few people that would be willing to fight and kill the monsters for no reward.Content held by N?velDrama.Org.


    That would probably slow down Guildmaster Patrick''s ambitions ofmercializing the dungeon and dominating it with the fact that he would be the only one who had a map on it and would be able to maintain stable operations in the Shionel Dungeon.


    However, if the dungeon was still infested with monsters that hadn''t been killed, then that would be quite problematic for him.


    Thankfully, Rui had not divulged the ways in which he intended to extract ores. Still, this would hurt his political opponent even more since getting people to extract ores would be harder now that the difficulty was also starting to rise now that Rui intended to go full throttle with his abilities.


    This meant that his remarkable growth climb would also be hindered by that fact. That was extremely desirable to the guildmaster, thus Rui was certain that he would be pleased by this oue. On the other hand, the number of esoteric ores in weight being mined and extracted from the dungeon would not decrease with Rui and Kane sweeping up the floors of the Shionel Dungeon, and thus there were little to no ways in which the distribution of these esoteric resources would negatively impact his own business endeavors.


    In fact, if Rui and Kane happened to work even faster, then Guildmaster Bradt would actually experience a boost in growth himself, even before he used the map to dominate themercialization of the Shionel Dungeon after all of it waspletely emptied and erased.


    "Still, there''s going to be a storm way bigger thanst time, that''s for sure," Rui murmured with a resigned smile. The mystery of the missing ores would be prime gossip in the Shionel Confederation and he knew that there was no way that he could possibly avoid inevitably bing the center of attention even if nobody knew who he was.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 809 Aftermath

    ?


    "Damn it! He got me!" Chairman Deacon mmed the table with his fist with gritted teeth.


    An outrage had erupted in the Shionel Dungeon with many Martial Squires suddenly reporting that esoteric mineral and organic ore deposits and extracts from the twelfth floor of the Shionel Dungeon had begun disappearing inrge droves without any evident cause for their disappearance.


    They were clearly dug and extracted, however, for some reason, this had happened despite the taipans, of the area over which they had been extracted, still being alive. It was as though the ghost had walked in and harvested all the esoteric ores and simply disappeared.


    That wasn''t all.


    The yield that was predicted for the day from all of the Martial Squires was far less than the norm. The Shionel Adventurer Guild published the daily amount of esoteric ores harvested and mined from the Shionel Dungeon. Since it was still early into the exploration of the twelfth floor, the industry experts had predicted a great increase in the supply of esoteric ore deposits, yet the opposite had happened, due to this strange phenomenon. The Martial Squires reported a stark absence of the presence of the esoteric ore deposits on the twelfth at an increasing rate as the day passed. As though someone was magically sucking them up without anybody else noticing.


    However, what followed was even more surprising, a brand-new supplierpany that nobody had ever heard about called Esosale Suppliers came out of nowhere and suddenly began selling quantities of esoteric resources to manyrge-scale manufacturers in the consumer market.


    What was even more puzzling was that thepany appeared to be in a heavy partnership with Bradt Distribution Services. The Bradt Distribution Services thoroughly and wholly liaised as a representative for any third party that wished to purchase supplies of esoteric resources from Esosale Suppliers.


    The only way to contact Esosale Suppliers was through the Bradt Distribution Services. Many purchasers scoured the nation looking for some sort of main branch or even a small office for Esosale Suppliers, yet not a single person could find any trace of thispany. Thispany did not have any presence in the economy in the form of employees, contracts and partnerships, a face for thepany, any sort of establishment, or any interaction with any of the sectors and industries that an esoteric resource supplierpany would inevitably get involved with. There was nothing out there in the nation for anybody interested in thepany to tangibly interact with. Nothing.


    In other words, it was what wasmonly referred to as a shellpany, apany that only existed in name, registered in the ownership of an anonymous merchant whose identity was unknown thanks to the policy amendment that the Guildmaster Bradt had passed with nothing else to it asides from a bank ount, also anonymously registered.


    This was a strange but ultimately inscrutable oddity to the market, and consumers quickly flocked to the Bradt Distribution Services to purchase substantial quantities of esoteric resource deposits from Esosale Suppliers, and the small imbnce that was caused between momentaryck of supply was stabilized.Content held by N?velDrama.Org.


    People could not help but venture to wonder where this ghost of apany was getting arge sum of money from. After all, it was an inescapable fact that arge number of Martial Squires were required to harvest esoteric resource deposits from the Shionel Dungeon. Where were these Martial Squiresing from? It would be impossible to hide dozens of Martial Squires working for apany since every Martial Squire that entered the Shionel Dungeon was registered to the Shionel Adventurer Guild, and it was possible to track the general affiliations and patrons of the various Martial Squires attempting to clear out the Shionel Adventurer Guild.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    Not a single Martial Squire registered with the Shionel Adventurer Guild was verifiably associated with Esosale Suppliers. Furthermore, there was no way they could enter the Shionel Dungeon without being registered to the Adventurer Guild anyways. So where exactly was thepany getting such arge supply of esoteric resource deposits?


    Furthermore, the timing of this was suspicious to many people who possessed greater information and insight. It seemed quite clear that it was highly likely that there was some connection between Esosale Suppliers and the missing esoteric ore deposits in the Shionel Dungeon on the twelfth floor.


    "It''s that bastard," Chairman Deacon''s expression crumpled with anger. "It has to be him."


    Chairman Deacon was not ipetent, the fact that Esosale waspletely represented and even managed by the Bradt Distribution Services was a clear indication to him that Esosale Suppliers was an empty shell meant to draw attention away from Guildmaster Bradt. He was rtively certain that Guildmaster Bradt was the one who created Esosale Suppliers anonymously, and he was the one pretending it was another third party.


    "That may have been why he passed that policy in the first ce. No, it must be rted at the very least," He murmured with a grim expression.


    The only question was what the precise reason that he needed to hide the registered owner of thepany was. Guildmaster Bradt had gone as far as to use his limited and precious decision vote to do so.


    He could have just straightforwardly created a public esoteric supplies division in hispany, or started a newpany without having to rely on such deception. In fact, it would probably bring him even more prestige which yields him more political capital. Yet he went out of his way to change policies to allow the creation and registration of apany to be anonymous, specifically, the Esosale Supplier Company.


    "The reason he didn''t do that¡­ is because he couldn''t? But if this was his idea, and he created the n and is also managing it then no one could stop him," He frowned, before his eyes widened. "Unless it wasn''t his n or his achievement in the first ce¡­"


    He felt as though he hade close to hitting the truth of the matter.


    asionally missing content, please report errors in time.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 810 Voidhunters

    ?


    The idea of some unknown entity conspiring with Guildmaster Bradt send a chill down his spine. However, his deductions were not without merit. If Guildmaster Bradt truly was the sole mastermind and the sole cause for the strange disappearances of the esoteric ore deposits as well as for Esosale Suppliers, then he would have had plenty of reasons and incentives to be more straightforward, open, and even shy about it.


    Yet he didn''t, even if it was very much for his interests. That means that he probably was not the sole mastermind responsible for everything rted to these recent events, if there was another entity that was also responsible for this with differing interests, then it would exin why Guildmaster Bradt has not acted on his interests alone. He has a partner who is aiding him with this. Maybe even more than one!


    (''But what exactly is that serpent gaining from this supposed partner or partners?'') He furrowed his eyebrows as he thought long and hard about it. Passing the anonymous registration policy amendment was not something that was to his benefit since being famous was better for garnering greater prestige and influence than being shady, thus the passing of the anonymous-registration policy amendment may have been for someone else.


    (''But wait, that hypothesis doesn''t make sense either,'') The man gritted his teeth as he grew engrossed deep in thought. (''Why would Bradt use his limited and precious decision votes to pass a bill for someone else, even if that person is a potential partner? Are the profits from the monopoly of esoteric supplies really worth it?'')


    Of course, Guildmaster Bradt would also gain the advantage of hampering his opponent, but just those two conditions alone couldn''t be worth passing the bill.


    (''There has to be something else,'') He couldn''t help but feel quite certain about this evaluation. There was just far too much that was off here. He couldn''t quite put his finger on it.


    (''No,'') He shook his head. (''It doesn''t matter. Regardless, what I must do wouldn''t change. I need to find the way that he is acquiring all those esoteric supplies through, and then destroy it, or at the very least render it obsolete.'')


    Regardless of what had happened behind the scenes, what he needed to do had not changed. He could not allow the one and only chance that he had to break away from the guildmaster''s stronghold over political power to be taken away from him.


    The appearance of the Shionel Dungeon was truly a blessing from fate, he intended to protect it at all costs.


    (''There''s only one way to gain ess to a huge supply of esoteric resource deposits,'') He noted to himself. (''Martial Artists,'')


    He was rtively certain that the guildmaster had not found a way to get around this limitation.


    (''Which means he''s using Martial Squires for sure, furthermore, they''re based here in the Shionel Confederation,'')


    This meant that he could find them. As long as they were inside the country, they were within his primary domain of influence and power.


    (''It''s unlikely that the guildmaster managed to gain all those esoteric resources using arge quantity of Martial Squires. That would have been noticed by now and is far too conspicuous to hide.'') He shrewdly noticed. (''Furthermore, even with the sense-jamming properties of the Shionel Dungeon, there is no way arger group of Martial Squires would have gone unnoticed on the twelfth floor.'')


    This strongly suggested that the guildmaster waspensating for ack of quantity with sheer quality.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    (''That means the number of Martial Artists he actually has is probably few, probably lesser than five if I had to take a guess,'') He tutted with a grim expression.


    The smaller the quantity of Martial Artists made it harder to find them, as opposed to a small battalion of Martial Artists that was far easier to find.


    (''It''s not going to be easy¡­'') His eyes narrowed. (''There''s really only two ways to go about this, from what I can see. I need either need to track their identity by narrowing down the possible list of suspects by eliminating Martial Artists who can''t possibly be them, or directly target them by catching them in the act.


    Both ways were going to be difficult. He could tell who were this or these Martial Artists were, they were either extremely powerful or possessed some powerful techniques that were extremely well suited to the Shionel Dungeon.


    Or both.


    In which case, simply deploying some Martial Squire to keep an eye on the floors of the dungeon wasn''t going to be enough in and of itself. Content held by N?velDrama.Org.


    (''Damn it all, that fucking snake,'') He gritted his teeth.


    This new development posed a big problem that would require a lot of resources and manpower to seed. This would hinder his growth since he would need to invest a lot of capital into killing those pesky Martial Squires who were working with Bradt Patrick.


    He was not worried about the legality of killing Martial Squires, he was far too powerful as far as his resources and political power to be perturbed by such a thing. Furthermore, killing Martial Squires inside the dungeon was not criminalized, thus if he assassinated them inside the dungeon, he could even brag about it.


    (''I need to get to work, otherwise, those Martial Squires will steal what is rightfully mine,'') His eyes became bloodshot with anger.


    "Maynar," he turned to his secretary standing before his table in his office.


    "Yes sir," The man bowed lightly. "Put together a team of veteran hunters together. I want the best of the best. All the S-rank and A-rank hunters. Promise them twice as much as their current contract and give them generous terms and conditions to join our hunting team."


    "Immediately sir, any details for the team?" He asked.


    "I''m going to call it¡­" He considered the matter for a second. "The Voidhunters. That sounds fitting for a group of hunter-ss Martial Squires that are going to be dispatched to take down a couple of their own kind."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 811 The Name

    ?


    He had no proof, but he couldn''t help but wonder if this incident was caused by the one who had been dubbed as the ''Voider'', as silly of a name he found it to be, was rted to this incident.


    There were somemonalities, the fact that both incidents had urred extremely covertly that not a single soul perceived. Furthermore, the taxes for both events had not been paid, though with the unregistered taxing, he didn''t even know if that was true or not.


    However, he did not care if the two were the same or now, they could be treated as the same, and he could use the infamy to lure them in with the prospect of glory and prestige for killing such a powerful Martial Squire.


    Soon enough, his secretary had set up an appointment between Chairman Deacon and the remaining Martial Squires that had taken interest in his offer. He was quite famous in the Shionel Confederation, and outside of a few powerhouses in the Shionel Merchant Guild, he could easily poach Martial Squires with simply far superior contracts with way better terms and conditions. He had even offered to fully pay their severance pay.


    The sum was a little too much for them to break the contract lightly, however, for someone as filthy rich as himself, it was not even with thinking about.


    Just merely a few dayster, his secretary had brought them along to his guest office. This was where he invited people when he wanted to show off a bit.


    There were sixteen Martial Squires In total that he had managed to gather using his offers to them. Sixteen was a decent number by his standards, but it was hardly enough in the long run, each floor was asrge as arge town, and the Shionel Dungeon itself had the holding capacity of a small country.


    Of course, for now, he would have to make do with this amount. He could not gather a hundred Martial Squires in a single day, that would take time.


    He wasn''t too good at evaluating thebat capabilities of Martial Artists himself and merely relied on the data he had been provided on them. Only one S-rank thus far, and the rest were all A-ranks, barring one B-rank.


    "Wee, adventurers," He told them. "I am Chairman Deacon, and I appreciate all of you taking the time toe all the way to meet me regarding my offer, and patronage."


    His voice was heavy and straightforward. He betrayed neither arrogance nor humility, he was willing to give them the respect that Martial Squires deserved, but they were not worthy of him bowing his head down to.


    Soon enough, all of them were seated and poised to begin the discussion.


    "As you all know," He began. "Recently, there was an event stirred up in the twelfth dungeon multiple times recurringly. Large swathes of esoteric ore deposits have been disappearing without the ind taipans upying the territories from which they were extracted from being exterminated."


    He paused for a moment. "There''s a lot that can be said about it in detail, however, those details will be provided to you separately. What I want to get across here is what I''m hiring you to do. The objective is simple. Find the people responsible for extracting the extremelyrge quantities of esoteric ore deposits in this fashion, and eliminate them."<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    The Martial Squires raised an eyebrow at that.


    "You will possess the full cooperation of the intelligence division of mypany that has already begun gathering all the intelligence surrounding the matter. You can even make requests that will be considered by the division and be processed ordingly," He exined, before continuing. "As promised, the remuneration is of no consequence, I''ll even double or triple it as long as you bring me the head."


    That earned a reaction out of most of the Martial Squires. The terms and conditions were extremely generous, and that was clearly the point. He wanted to buy them over and get them to go all out with generous rewards that were basically no different from bounties.


    "Those are some extremely generous conditions, chairman," One of the Martial Squires noted. "However, how are we supposed to engage in tracking measures inside the dungeon, it is difficult to engage in any kind of intelligence gathering."? 2024 N?v/el/Dram/a.Org.


    "I am aware of that," Chairman Deacon would not have gone out of his way to gather the best of the Martial Squires he could at the moment if this were such a troublesome issue. "Rest assured that you will have full support from my side, and you will bepensated hourly regardless of sess or failure."


    That rxed them, they were afraid that their rpense would be withheld if they did fail to track down the one or ones responsible for mysteriously draining a floor of much of its resources. However, if they would get paid even in the event of their failure for their efforts and pains, then there was quite the merit in undertaking this contract.


    "Out remuneration will also be rtive to our rank, correct?" Squire Fren, the leader of the famous S-rank party Saberstrike asked.


    She had been looking to cut her contract with her current patron after she failed to be the one who cleared the second floor, which gave the former even more power to try and exert control over her adventuring abilities.


    However, her severance fee was considerable, thus she had been quite interested when she heard of an offer that paid for her severance pay regardless of what it was.


    "Of course," Chairman Deacon nodded. "Merit will certainly be the foundation of your remuneration."


    "Can we opt for an open-ended contract with an hourly remuneration rate without a bare minimum amount of time spent on fulfilling the objective?" The only B-rank Martial Squire asked.


    Chairman Deacon frowned inwardly as he tried recalling the identity of the weakest Martial Squire in the room. "You¡­ what was your name again?"


    "Ah. The name''s Quarrier. Rui Quarrier,"


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 812 Clarifications

    ?


    It hadn''t been Rui''s intention to try and infiltrate a hunt targeting him, however, when he saw the offer in the Merchant Guild as well as agents of Deacon Industries trying to poach Martial Squires to join a hunting team to target the adventurers who had been responsible for the event, he decided to at least check it out spontaneously.


    It hadn''t been in his n to work as a spy, for himself that too, but now that had the opportunity to do so, he didn''t see any reason why he shouldn''t at least check out the Martial Squires assigned to hunt him.


    He had expected that Chairman Deacon would take some measure to stop Rui''s dominance on the dungeon floors, still, it hadn''t clicked that he could infiltrate it and keep tabs on it.


    He highly doubted that they had any chance of tracking him, but it was better to be safe than sorry. As long as it did not take much of his time, he did not particrly lose anything.


    "Hmph, it sounds as though you''re not verymitted to this, Squire Quarrier," Chairman Deacon sternly pointed.


    "I''m unable to dedicate all of my time to such an operation unfortunately," He scratched his head,ughing awkwardly. "But I am willing to aid the operation if that is not a problem."


    "Your remuneration will also be decided by howmitted you are, your contributions to intelligence, and the measures you''ve undertaken to aid with the objective, is that clear? You will stand to gain far less than those who are entirelymitted." He coldly rified.


    "I have no problems as long as I get what I worked for," Rui replied with a pleasant smile. "Will I still have ess to logistical and intelligence support even if I am not operating on this mission full-time?"


    "That will also depend on your merits," Chairman Deacon replied. He could not be bothered by a low-grade Martial Squire in the first ce, he was just answering his questions patiently because other Martial Squires might have the same issue or uncertainty.


    "I see," Rui nodded. "In that case, I''m more than willing to be a Voidhunter."


    Rui found the name to be amusing and ironic, but he didn''t let it show.


    "The formal terms and conditions of the contract can beid out in fullter on, however, the most important thing is that there''s a mutual understanding of what we expect from each other, and also what a lot of your work will entail," He informed them.


    "Murder is illegal in the Shionel Confederation, however, it is not illegal or even considered murder in the Shionel Dungeon, which is the most apt location to kill the target or targets," Chairman Deacon informed them.


    He actually didn''t give a damn about the location where they eliminated them, but he knew that he wouldn''t be able to get away with trying tomit murder. For all he knew, one of them would defect to Guildmaster Bradt, and if thetter found out that Chairman Deacon supported uwful killing, then he could use that to charge thetter with murder conspiracy, which couldnd him in hot waters if the guildmaster used his executive power to ensure that Chairman Deacon couldn''t wiggle his way out of a thorough investigation and would probably find him guilty. That would give Guildmaster Bradt the ground to use authority to cast Chairman Deacon out of the Shionel Merchant Guild.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    If there were a time when he had located and identified the ones responsible for cleaning up the Twelfth floor, and the ones responsible for clearing the second floor, and they were outside the dungeon, then he would straightforwardly deploy his own private Martial Artists to kill him rather than relying on hired mercenaries. There was no way he was going to untrust them if he had a choice.


    "Assuming that this entity will be engaging in the same activities for other floors, then there will be plenty of opportunities to find and kill him," Chairman Deacon exined. "ording to the Analytics Division of my Deacon Industries, covering as much area with as many Martial Squires in a floor that our target will definitely be aiming for at some point has the highest chances of sess."


    The biggest problem of the Shionel Dungeon was its sensory jamming that greatly limited the surveince range of the Martial Squires, otherwise, just fivepetent Martial Squires would be more than enough to surveil an entire floor.


    "Grid searching, maintaining surveince of arge area is our best choice at the moment," Chairman Deacon informed them. "The chances of youing into someone whose ability to harvest esoteric resources will be much higher, at that time, please record their appearances to the best of your ability with certain instruments we provide you. Of course, these instruments are also highly limited by the same sensory jamming effect of the Shionel Dungeon, but they will still be able to capture a rough appearance of our target, which instantly increases our chances of identifying them outside of the dungeon."


    The reason why the search for their target had stalled was because there was absolutely no tangible information on them, that was why there was no headway to be made.


    However, once they had an appearance about their target, then suddenly there was a lot that could be done.


    Height, weight, sex, body structure, race, and other factors could be gleaned which could drastically cut down on the pool of suspects. With the suspect pool narrowed down, he could use his considerable resources to then dedicate more thorough investigations into each individual suspect and would be able to further narrow down the suspect pool in time.


    That was why Chairman Deacon was willing to go big and aggressive right off the bat, the more he invested immediately, the likelier he was to gain some returns that would allow him to considerably increase the chances of finding and killing his target. He didn''t think he was likely to fail.


    ***


    Author''s note:


    Dear readers, especially priv, I do sincerely apologize for the dy in updating priv. There was an error and WN did not delete a new priv setting that I had discarded, and instead went with it. So I had to rush with publishing 8 new chapters when I had no stock pile.Content held by N?velDrama.Org.


    Regardless, I take full responsibility. I owe all of you 6 chapters, and I promise you''ll have them by the end of the month. Once again, sorry for the dys, hope you understand, and thank you for your support :)


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 813 Issue

    ?


    "I have another question," Rui raised his hand.


    "What is it?" Chairman Deacon couldn''t help but furrow his eyebrows in irritation.


    "What degree of coordination do you expect from us?" Rui asked. "And also, what level of autonomy do we gain?"


    This was a pertinent question in general since it was unreasonable to gatherrge groups of Martial Artists and expect them to coordinate with each other. Any n that relied on extensive coordination between the Martial Squires that Chairman Deacon was hiring was bound to fail.


    "I do not expect perfect teamwork between all of you, I am well aware that this is an extremely absurd thing to expect out of all of you," He rified, bringing relief to their faces.


    In truth, most of them would definitely have rejected his offer had he insisted on perfect coordination as demand from them for his ns. Most Martial Squires had strong individuality, especially at the higher stage, and it took many years of familiarity and trust for them to develop great coordination with other Martial Squires.


    "I do expect very basic things such as non-conflict, and some other rules that would effectively allow you to engage in basic coordination without the need to actuallymunicate with each other," He exined. "This is possible as long as everyone follows some basic rules and guidelines, which will be thoroughlyid out once the contracts are signed."


    He turned back to Rui. "As for autonomy, that can be decided by yourselves, however, your remuneration will be lesser if you wish to retain more autonomy, if you''re willing to follow orders, you will be given much greaterpensation than those that act entirely independently. Anyone who wishes to act entirely independently will only receive nominalpensation unless their contributions are great. While those that are willing to follow orders will be greatly remunerated regardless of the oue."


    That was quite fair, all things considered. The Martial Artists looked relieved at this, the fact that not only did Chairman Deacon intend not forcing orders on them, but also intended to allow them to choose what level of adherence they wanted to be subject to was quite relieving.


    Rui, on the other hand, was not pleased by this.


    (''He understands how to managerge groups of Martial Squires,'') Rui mused. (''Fitting for someone of his position who no doubt has arge number of Martial Squires under him. If he finds out even a sniff of my identity, then I''m screwed.'')


    That was why Rui was d that he had joined this meeting. He wanted to understand what he was going against, and he realized that perhaps his position was not as secure as he hoped.


    (''If they somehow manage to capture an image of Kane and me, even if it''s not clear, we''re screwed.'') He realized.


    Them being a pair would remove a lot of the suspects that would otherwise still be in consideration.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    (''I underestimated how much my sess would infuriate Chairman Deacon, and just how far he was willing to go. A hundred Martial Squires just to track one or manypletely unknown Martial Squires of whom there is no tangible information surrounding? That''s crazy,'') He sighed inwardly. (''Crazy, but notpletely ineffective.'')


    This changed how he would need to deal with other Martial Squires lingering in the surroundings. He could not make even a single mistake around them.


    The information that he gained from being part of this meeting alone had been worth the trip, but now, he had even more reason to at least stick around.


    "We can start with the twelfth floor, the mysterious disappearance of esoteric resources has yet to cease, furthermore, there are still sections of the twelfth floor that remain. Based on the information we have, it is highly likely that the Martial Artist known as the Voider will make an appearance to drain the remaining esoteric resource plunders of the twelfth floor, and aim to clear it," Chairman Deacon exined. "The fact that the floor is being cleared at arge rate leaves only a few districts'' worths of esoteric resources on the twelfth floor. That reduces the area over which the sixteen of you need to surveil and keep an eye over."


    That was indeed true, that made their job easier, although sixteen of them were nowhere near enough to surveil the entire floor, it was certainly a lot easier if they had to surveil a portion of the entire floor.


    The Martial Squires grew more optimistic with this n. They had initially walked in expecting that there was no chance in hell that they could possibly catch such an evasive person and simply were attracted by the terms and conditions that Deacon Industries had promised them.


    Rui also had a pleasant expression, but inwardly, he was frowning as he considered how to deal with this. Content ? N?velDrama.Org 2024.


    (''The biggest issue is that Chairman Deacon''s analysis is right, I was nning on sweeping up the remaining esoteric resource deposits in the Shionel Dungeon in one fell swoop,'') He scratched his head.


    It was tempting to simply avoid the twelfth floor now that he knew this. However, Rui knew better than to go for such a simple bone-headed n. There were problems with this. Firstly, the fact that Chairman Deacon''s analysis and predictions were solid meant that any tant inuracies would be suspected.


    Why would the Voider not appear when there was strong reason to believe he would? He certainly would finish the job like he did on the second floor. Unless, of course, he had reason not to. If he somehow came to learn of the trap that had been nned.


    In that case, that would make all of the Martial Squires in the Voidhunter team at the moment extremely suspicious. Since they would be the likeliest breaches of any information.


    While it was possible that some employee of his was an agent, the first avenue for investigation for Chairman Deacon would be all sixteen of them. Rui didn''t think he was a bad person, but he wasn''t generous enough to reduce the suspect pool to sixteen for his enemy.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 814 Terms

    ?


    This was Rui''s biggest problem, he could not avoid walking into a trap that he had just learned of, that would make Chairman Deacon too suspicious. Rui did not think this man was not smart enough toe to the conclusion that a potential intelligence leak had urred through the Martial Squires.


    In which case he could not possibly afford to make such a mistake. Such a mistake would only increase the probability that he would suffer tremendously.


    That meant that he needed to harvest esoteric mineral and organic esoteric resources with Kane while still partaking in this operation as a Voidhunter.


    (''This is going to be rough,'') Rui grimaced inwardly.


    He could make his life easier by not being part of the same operation, but he didn''t want to forsake an opportunity to get closer to the investigation.


    "What exactly is the strategy by which you hope to catch the Voider?" Rui asked. "You''ve only outlined a vague n."


    "That is true," Chairman Deacon did not deny this. "However, the issue is that none of you have signed the contract yet. I do not wish to go too deep into the n before ironing that part out."


    That was quite the valid and sound reason. In fact, he was extending quite the big of good faith and sincerity, and unfortunately for Rui, it seemed as though everyone around him was inclined to go with the offer.


    Chairman Deacon nced at his secretary, nodding. Immediately, thetter procured contracts for each of Martial Artists. They were surprisingly small, but Rui understood why he had done that. He wanted to ensure that the Martial Squires feltfortable with the contracts rather than submerging them in pages and pages of litigative jargon that they simply were not equipped to understand.


    Many of them would not be eager to sagree to something that they had no understanding of, and most of them did not havewyers with them when they migrated to this state, they did not necessarily trustwyers in a state to proof read a contract from someone with far more power than them.


    Chairman De seemed to be well aware of this dynamic, and clearly did not want to push them. Thus each yse was framed using as simplenguage as could possibly used without affecting their meaning.


    The contract specified an exchange of services and aid with the investigation, intelligence, surveince, tracking and potentially elimination of the individual or group of individuals that were responsible for the mass harvesting of esoteric mineral and organic deposits in the twelfth floor.


    In exchange, the Martial Squires would get remunerated at an hourly rate which was contingent on their rank, willingness to adhere to orders, and actual merits achieved. Content held by N?velDrama.Org.


    The remuneration included an immense amount of wealth, the sheer amount even a Martial Squire of his rank could earn made even his earnings from the Vilun Ind mission pale inparison. These were numbers that he would never be able to earn even if he spent years taking the most lucrative missions from the Martial Union.


    This alone was worth the contract in the eyes of most of the Martial Squires. Then there was the fact that there were other benefits promised, such as promotion which would increase the number of privatemissions they got, free ess to Martial Art techniques and other growth and training resources.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    This was also an attractive offer. All Martial Artists cared about Martial Art techniques, because techniques were the foundation of Martial Art. Thus, one could expect that Martial Artists were certainly attracted by the prospects of obtaining thise Martial Art techniques.


    Even if Martial Squires did not necessarily need existing techniques to progress, and ought not to solely master existing techniques to progress, they were still a useful resource in creating modifications and even new techniques.


    That wasn''t the only offer that was made, the contract even specified that Deacon Industries would subsidize and foot the bill for all expenses rted to the mission, including supplying the necessary gear and equipment and things like healing and rejuvenation potions.


    This was also attractive as those expenses piled up over the many months of constant dungeon raiding.


    What was especially alluring was the fact that yhe contract did not try to bond them in anyway, and Martial Squires were allowed to cancel their arrangements with Deacon Industries very easily, all they needed to do was give a formal notice one week ahead of time, and they could collect their remuneration and leave.


    They did have to sign a non-disclosure agreement with Deacon Industries surrounding their


    These was quite the generous terms and conditions. And this meant that there was no way that the Martial Squires could be worried about being trapped in some kind of ve contract.


    Rui noticed that the other Martial Squires had already signed it, he quickly followed suit as he intended to sign it from the very start, and he did not want to draw any attention by being the only one who had yet to sign it.


    "Brilliant," He smiled at all of them. "I look forward to our partnership. Now then, all of you are now officially Voidhunters of Deacon Industries. Thus, we can begin with our official nning session."


    His secretary handed him an extremely rough and inurate pictorial representation of the twelfth floor, with several highlighted sections.


    "This map is certainly not a literal and urate representation of the twlefth floor. As I''m sure you all know by now, no urate and precise map of the Shionel Dungeon exists. It cannot, due to the sensory jamming of the Shionel Dungeon the Voider cleanly sweeps the floor, section by section. The sections are numbered in the order they were cleared, and dated on the dates they were cleared. "


    He tapped on the map. The sections were squares, and each one was back-to-back with each other.


    There was a clear pattern, that Rui was starting to regret in hindsight. He had thought deeply about it, but he did not anticipate that Chairman Deacon would somehow manage to get such kind of information.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 815 Replicate

    ?


    This meant that Rui had underestimated the kind of information that Chairman Deacon was able to gather. Of course, this wasn''t a particrly deep fault on his end, but due to ack of understanding of how deep the intelligence-gathering capabilities of Deacon industries were. He remembered feeling somewhat simrly about Guildmaster Bradt Patrick, who had also exceeded his expectations. Perhaps he needed to reevaluate how he evaluated other normal human beings.


    (''At least I can be more careful from here on out,'') Rui mused to himself. It was a miscalction, but fortunately, it was the more benign kind rather than the damning kind. However, now that he saw that Chairman Deacon had ess to this kind of information, he could more or less figure out how he hade about such information.


    (''He must have extensively gathered the descriptive ounts of Martial Squires who have been to the twelfth floor, in abination with his own personal Martial Squires who must have done some basic scouting and surveince in the dungeon.'') Rui figured.


    However, he was once more in a predicament where he could not drastically cause any change in patterns without causing Chairman Deacon to grow suspicious about it.


    He would need to purposely fall for their traps to at least a minor extent, meaning he would need to abide by their predictions. He would need to ensure that he didn''t get an image of him taken, and certainly ensure that he didn''t get captured, that would be game over without any shred of a doubt.


    After he passed this ordeal, he would be able to more prudent measures, since this would not be strange given that the Voider would then know that someone was specifically targeting him. Thus any countermeasures that the Voider took after that would not be suspicious given his obvious awareness of some group actively hunting him in the Shionel Dungeon with a clearer understanding of some of his patterns.


    Chairman Deacon proceeded toy out the entire n before him. The sixteen Martial Squires were assigned particr areas in the remaining section of unharvested esoteric deposits on the twelfth floor of the Shionel Dungeon. Each of them had been instructed to ensure that they did not surveil ovepping areas with their peers in the Shionel Dungeon. In this case, they had to move away and ensure that there were no redundancies in the areas in which they were surveilling. They had to keep their recorders on standby and capture the images of all the Martial Squires who appeared in their vicinity and observe their harvesting. The Voider undoubtedly possessed an unparalleled ability to extract esoteric mineral and organic ore deposits from the Shionel Dungeon, thus any Martial Squire that extracted resources in a strange manner at a rate that far exceeded the standard means could be reasonably assumed to be the Voider. Their identity was to be captured and was to be recorded before the Martial Squire engaged with them.


    The reason for this was that any Martial Squire that would get into a fight with the Voider had a high chance of dying. The sheerbat ability demonstrated by them when they soloed the second floor was immense. Thus they were suspected to be an S-rank veteran Martial Squire with decades of experience, who was just on the very cusp of bing a Martial Senior. Thus it was too dangerous to try and provoke such a Martial Squire alone.


    After all, if they died in the process of picking a fight with them, then the data that they had recorded would also be lost. Sincemunications were also highly jammed in the Shionel Dungeon, any recording from recording devices could not be remotely transmitted. Thus, if they died in a fight, their bodies would be consumed by a taipan, and the recording device on their body was as good as gone.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    Chairman Deacon was more anxious about getting his hands on direct and tangible evidence and information on the Voider. There were a whole plethora of measures that could be undertaken when he had this information, and it was more important than gambling trying to take down a dangerous ability unprepared around his abilities. If the opportunity to fight and kill him presented itself in the very first operation, then it probably was the case that they would run into opportunities in the future where they would be more prepared.


    Thus at the moment, Chairman Deacon had stressed the importance of gathering as much information on the Voider than fighting them.


    "In fact," Chairman Deacon said. "I would rather you simply watch them even if they''re standing right in front of you with their back turned to you."


    That showed that Chairman Deacon valued information on the Voider more than just killing the Voider, at least at the moment.


    (''I see, he intends to try and replicate the means that I''m using to extract the esoteric resources of the Shionel Dungeon as fast and as easily as I do,'') Rui quickly realized this when he analyzed Chairman Deacon''s intentions.Content held by N?velDrama.Org.


    This was understandable. If he could somehow replicate Rui''s methods, then he would be able to achieve a level of dominance in the supplier market that would be absolutely unimpeachable. He would achieve a level of growth that would put his already high growth up till now to shame.


    If he managed to replicate Rui''s methods, then beating Guildmaster Bradt would certainly be very much a realistic probability based on the sheer amount of economic andmercial capital that he would have that would allow him to sway many constituents of the Shionel merchant Guild and allow him to buy their votes.


    (''Too bad for him that he cannot replicate my means,'') He shook his head inwardly. Even if he managed to capture Rui alive and tortured the methods out of him, he would not be able to replicate the means whatsoever. The circumstances and factors that came together to allow such a thing to happen were simply beyond his ability to replicate.


    asionally missing content, please report errors in time.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 816 Counter-Op

    Exclusive ? material by N?(/v)elDrama.Org.


    ?


    "Huff¡­" Guildmaster Bradt heaved a sigh as he leaned back on his chair. Ever since he had forged an agreement and a partnership with Rui, he had been tremendously busy with diplomatic and management work. Although it was true that the Voider was the fundamental reason for therge sales that Esosale Suppliers had made, it was also true that the services that he and hispany provided to Esosale Suppliers were considerable, they had almost be part of thepany itself while still maintaining themselves as separate partners.


    That was why Rui did not even try bargaining for more than fifty percent, it would be an insult to the Bradt Distribution Services, and more importantly, it would reveal that he didn''t think highly of them.


    However, that also meant that Guildmaster Bradt had received an abrupt increase in workload. He had quickly set up an entirely new department in hispany dedicated to Esosale Suppliers. This was a privilege that only a limited number ofpanies had, thesepanies needed to be big enough and deeply partnered enough for thepany to assign an entire division tasked to manage the affairs rted to onepany.


    Guildmaster Bradt had actively put thispany in that category immediately since he knew that thispany had the same merits as the ones that had their own divisions as well. He quickly foundpetent staff and assigned an experienced manager who would be able to handle the rush hour that he knew would being to Esosale Suppliers soon enough.


    And he was right, the moment he promoted Esosale Suppliers through the brand of his own Distribution Services, many customers immediately ced orders for supplies from Esosale Suppliers despite the fact that it waspletely unknown and a clearly a shellpany to anyone who had eyes and looked into it.


    Yet people still flocked to it and ced orders for supplies of esoteric resources, even going as far as to pay advances. All of this came from the Bradt Distribution Services'' credibility. People believed that the Bradt Distribution Services which had a truly ster reputation for credibility and reliability would not aggressively promote a scam. That would ruin their reputation forever.


    Of course, Guildmaster Bradt did not make promises that he could not be sure of, he may have had a working partnership with each other, however, neither side trusted the other, and both sides were aware of this.


    Guildmaster Bradt only made single-sale transactions with customers and expressed refusal to sign any long-term supplier contracts on behalf of Esosale Suppliers. After all, how could he be sure that Rui would continue supplying at a steady rate regrly? He could not.


    The Voider could very well abandon their partnership at any given time and vanish into thin air and Guildmaster Bradt most likely would not be able to do anything about it. After all, he neither knew his identity nor his location nor did he hold any major leverage over Rui barring perhaps his ie. However, that was not much leverage since Guildmaster Bradt did not want to sully his reputation, which would affect the reputation of hispany which was known for being credible and reliable.


    Thus he could not leverage it by tantly ckmailing Rui with money that hewfully owned. If Rui decided to go public, everything that Guildmaster Bradt had spent his life building would copse in a day.


    The revenue that Esosale SUppliers was not worth that, not even close.


    Thus he kept his distance and did not promise anything, all sales were made after Rui restocked the inventory by giving them the esoteric supplies that Rui had harvested, using the method that they discussed.


    Still, even with the reduced capital, his work load had increased, a lot causing a lot of his days to grow even more densely packed with matter he needed to handle.


    "Sir, there''s an urgent report from the intelligence department," His secretary informed him.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    "Hm?" Guildmaster Bradt turned to face her with narrowed eyes. "What is it?"


    "It''s rted to Chairman Deacon and his recent measures, sir," She replied, cing the documents on the table.


    Guildmaster Bradt immediately grabbed them and began reading through them, before making a preliminary analysis.


    "So¡­ he''s already charted out an operation to gather information on the twelfth floor," Guildmaster Bradt mused. "Once the Voider gets past the twelfth floor, and moves onto a newer frontier, it will be a long time before Chairman Deacon gets a hold on his position because due to the fact that there is only one target left," Guildmaster Bradt mused. "Sixteen Martial Squires are not bad, but there is only one S-rank, fourteen A-ranks, and even a B-rank, who is no doubt going to be entirely useless to them."


    He already had verified the sense of danger that the Voider gave off to his direct subordinate Martial Squires was corrted to the upper ends of what an S-rank martial Squire was capable of. That meant that only the sole S-rank hunter-ss Martial Squire of the Voidhunters at the moment had a chance of defeating the Voider, the way he saw it.


    And she probably didn''t stand a real chance was his prediction.


    Still, it was quite likely in his eyes that the Voider was unaware of these ns, and the two of them had decided that directmunication was to be used as sparingly as possible, Guildmaster Bradt could not simply choose to ignore this. He needed to find a way to ensure that this operation did not get the best of the Voider, therefore he could not avoid leaving this alone.


    "Draft up a new operation," He ordered his secretary.


    "Would you like me to register it in the books of the Bradt Distribution Services, sir?"


    "No, keep it unofficial, I don''t want word of this leaking out to that bastard Deacon."


    "Yes sir, as for the operation¡­"


    Guildmaster Bradt considered his words for a moment. "The objective will be to annihte the Voidhunters before the predicted time of the Voider.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 817 Measures

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    "So you''re telling me the super powerful merchant guy that we pissed off is forming a literal hunting team to gather information on us so that he can eventually take us out?" Kane frowned.


    "Right," Rui nodded.


    He had informed Kane about everything he had learned. After all, he couldn''t withhold such information that had an impact on Kane.


    "Alright, so what are we gonna do?" Kane asked.


    Rui smiled back wordlessly. He had entertained the possibility of Kane quitting which would not be unreasonable. But he appreciated his friend''s loyalty andmitment.


    "You don''t have to do this if you don''t want to," Rui reminded him, just to make sure. "You can just leave it to me if this bes too much at any given point."


    Although things would be far harder for him, Rui did not want to use this as a justification to pressure his best friend to tag along with him in crazy circumstances.


    "Don''t worry about it, I intend to see this through to the end," he lightly said. "So what is it that we are going to about this predicament?"


    "We cannot avoid it," Rui exined. "At least, now that I''ve joined the Voidhunters, any indications that the Voider learned of the ns to gather as much information on him as possible will put the sixteen Voidhunters in suspicion. That''s far too much suspicion on me, and I cannot allow that to happen."


    "So we''re going to continue with our ns to harvest the twelfth floor¡­ in the midst of sixteen Martial Squires that are literally there only to track us?" Kane scratched his head.


    "Don''t worry about it, they don''t stand a chance of detecting us with your Void Step, however, we need to be more careful about how we use it from here on out," He exined. "From here on out, you indicate your time limit warning three minutes ahead of time, then I will locate a ce where we can safely reach and dismount. Preferably even in tunnels and stuff like that. Going to such degrees is worth it, I don''t care if we''re slower, it''s better to be safe than sorry."


    "How will you even harvest esoteric resources if you''re part of the Voidhunter team though?" Kane scratched his head, confused. "Won''t they immediately realize since you wouldn''t be part of the team?"


    Rui shook his head. "There is no close-knit team, we need to surveil arge area, thus we''re spread out, there is absolutely no benefit to grouping in dense areas. Thus none of the Voidhunters will actually be sensing me, since we''re supposed to cover as much area as we can with no oveps, which requires being outside of each other''s sensory ranges. Although we have a general idea where each of us is supposed to be, they would not notice me gone."


    "I see," Kane furrowed his eyebrows as he considered the matter and all the issues surrounding it. "That makes sense."


    He turned towards Rui. "So you intend on sessfully harvesting all of the esoteric deposits from right under their nose? That''s something else entirely."


    Heughed. It was such a diabolical n, but it fit Rui.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    The two of them worked out the details of how they would handle this particr extraction mission, they had worked out a really good system prior and had even practiced, thus any changes to it needed to be made carefully and prudently.


    In the end, Rui increased the safety measures including the forewarning time, as well as the minimum distance that they maintained from every Martial Squire they came across. Exclusive ? material by N?(/v)elDrama.Org.


    With these measures, he reduced the probability that something that bad would happen. He needed to find a way to ensure that he didn''t screw up matters for himself. These measures aided in that and ensured that the probability of something going wrong was low.


    The downside was that their harvest was not going to be as great. Since they would be spending less time on mining the deposits from thend of the twelfth floor, but would also be reducing the area over which that they would be mining over.


    That was more than just an eptable trade to Rui, he was more than willing to allow that to ensure that there was no way that he could possibly be overwhelmed by these circumstances and that nothing went wrong.


    With that established, they had more or less made all the preparations that they needed to make as far as nning went.


    Rui, however, still wasn''t done. He was not one to be satisfied with basic half-assed measures as opposed to very concrete ways to improve their probability of sess.


    "What''s this?" Kane frowned as Rui handed him a tiny vial of a strange ck liquid.


    "It''s Festerine Venom," Rui exined. "It''s a powerful Squire-grade poison, that paralyzes a target extremely quickly and costs an absurd sum of money for just half a milligram of it. We''re going to equip you with a poisoned de with this coated on it. You''ll get a few uses to poison a Martial Squire and paralyze them and drop them on the spot."


    Kane''s eyes twinkled at the mention of that. This allowed his lethality to be relevant against the likes of Martial Squires, despite being a low-grade Martial Squire.


    "Poison isn''t really in-line with my Martial Path though," Kane murmured.


    This was true, his Martial Path was centered around evasive maneuvering, which was exclusive of a field like poison arts.


    "It''s not a Martial Art technique," Rui told him. "Just a temporary measure, there''s no saying what can happen in the circumstances that we''re going to be entering now, just take it for now, and use it if needed, you''ll thank me if you need to."


    "Well, that does make sense," Kane shrugged. "I suppose that is true, at the very least. Better safe than sorry."


    Now that the several preparations that they had made had beenpleted, they were both ready to ensure that this operation ended in sess.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 818 Joint

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    Rui''s own preparations were not necessarily done though, his prior measures were rted to their coordination and to their work. Now he had his own preparations to make.


    (''I need to gather information on the other Voidhunters,'') he noted to himself.


    His Martial Path was adaptive evolution. He gathered all kinds of information on his opponents through all means, including extrabat means. He did not necessarily need to fight them to be able to develop an adapted anti-fighting style to take them down. As long as he had enough information, it was possible.


    As for how he was going to procure all that information?


    "I''d like to purchase all thebat information on all fifteen of these Martial Squires," Rui stated to an employee in the information transaction section as he handed her a list of names


    He simply was going to buy it straightforwardly as Rui Quarrier. He didn''t need to use subterfuge, since learning about the people that he was going to be working on a dangerous mission and going to be trusting to a certain extent was perfectly reasonable, if umon. But there was no room for there to be any suspicion of him being the Voider based on this alone.


    Thus, he needed to own it and go ahead with making such a purchase. After all, in the eyes of others, if he was the Voider, would he truly be so crude in his attempt to learn more about his enemies? It was quite unlikely.


    "There you go sir, it will cost you about five thousand gold,"


    Rui winced slightly as he paid up.


    He lifted therge box of documents, carrying it home before studying it privately, opening the first document.


    [Squire Fren Burenha]


    "Hmmm¡­" Rui''s eyes narrowed.


    Squire Fren was an S-rank adventurer and was the leader of the S-rank party who had discovered that the second floor of the Shionel Dungeon had been cleared. Now she had joined the Voidhunters to hunt him down. He wondered if she held a grudge against him for clearing the second floor when it was clear from that incident that she had wanted to be the one to im that fame.


    Regardless, she was extremely strong. Rui had felt it even though she tried restraining her aura.


    It was heavy.


    It possessed a weight that simply could not be hidden. When he looked at her, he felt just the tiniest spark of what he sensed from the Martial Seniors when they fought on Vilun Ind.


    (''I can''t beat her as I am now,'') Rui shook his head.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    Her Martial Art, the Double Fist Binding Serpent Style was a grappling Martial Art meant to subjugate extremely powerful beings and beasts. Her Martial Path was Joint Submission. A Martial Path that focused on immobilizing their targets by putting them in positions where resisting would stress and hurt their own joints.


    Joints were almost universally the weakest points of animals and monsters possessing joints. Thus any position where a person was forced to apply force in a way that stressed their own joints would cause them to experience strain in their joints, and be unable to resist at all without dislocating it.


    "Interesting," He mused as he went through the intelligence on her quite thoroughly.


    Although joint-hold submissions were a very universal form of submissions back on Earth being featured in Aikido, Judo, Sambo, and even Shoot Wrestling, she had a very distinct full-body type submission joint-holds that reminded Rui of one style in particr.Content held by N?velDrama.Org.


    "Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu," He murmured.


    He could even understand why her Martial Art seemed to feature a whole lot of full-body holds.


    "She can''t putrge beasts into submission with just an arm or two, she needs to apply her whole body," Rui realized.


    She specialized in subjugating powerful Squire-level beasts that simply could not be subjugated through any other means. He could see why she had chosen to enter the dungeon with a party rather than by herself.


    "She''s not suited having to take on arge number of monsters that need to be killed rather than subjugated," He concluded.


    Of course, that did not mean she was useless, far from it. She was still more valuable than any grade-eight and most grade-nine Martial Squires. With her party, they could easily take down Squire-level monsters, and even beasts that surpassed the limits of the Squire Realm as far as physical parameters went!


    While she alone could not win, with her party Saberstrike, she could definitely be able to kill one as long as she was careful.


    (''I can''t beat her as I am now,'') Rui sighed, shaking his head. He held confidence in himself, but even he was not arrogant enough to believe that his Flowing Void Style could take down a grade-ten Martial Squire. There was far too much of a gap between them. If she was just one grade, maybe even two grades above him, he would be a lot more confident with good preparation, but now if she was literally four grades above him.


    He shook his head, putting the matter aside, as he quickly inputted her data into his Mind Pce, rapidly creating an iplete predictive model regardless.


    The goal of this was not to fight her but to be able to predict her movements. He had already memorized as much data on all fifteen of them when they gathered to meet Chairman Deacon and storing it in his Mind Pce, that in conjugation with this allowed him to create quite the imperfect and rough predictive models, but at the very least he would see any abrupt changesing ahead of time and not be caught off-guard by any strange movements that could potentially ruin his ns.


    He did the same for the others while also studying their Martial Art and adding all details surrounding it to his Mind Pce. These Martial Squires, while not as impressive as Squire Fren, were still highly relevant threats that he needed to keep an eye on as well when he entered the dungeon.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 819 Remind

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    Soon enough, the date and time hade.


    "Alright, I''ll meet you on the twelfth floor," Rui bade him goodbye.


    "Good luck, see you there," Kane replied, seeing him off.


    The two of them could not enter the dungeon together. Rui had to join the dungeon along with the Voidhunters, after all, to partake in their operation of finding and catching¡­ himself.


    He merrily made his way to Deacon Industries putting on a facade of casual calmness, when in reality he was quite tense on the inside. He needed to y this perfectly, otherwise, there could be irreparable damage done to his n.


    STEP


    Hended outside the gate to the main branch of Deacon Industries, greeted by two Martial Squire guards. They were quite strong from his senses, although Rui was confident he could beat them one-on-one. He wasn''t using Mind Mask at the moment, and the strength that he was portraying was very much the real deal, thus he could not act like he was a grade-ten Martial Squire


    "Squire Quarrier, the master has been expecting you," They addressed him, before letting him passage.


    "Rich bugger," He muttered to himself as he beheld the ostentatious main branch office of Deacon Industries. If wealth had to have a face, then this would be a good candidate for it. It was closer to a castle than an office.


    "Squire Quarrier," A man greeted Rui as he approached the main building. "Chairman Deacon awaits, among some of your other peers."Content ? N?velDrama.Org 2024.


    Rui recognized him as the secretary of Chairman Deacon, his right-hand man


    "Oh dear," Rui sighed. "Am Ite?"


    "Not at all," The man offered a courteous smile. "You are on time, pleasee this way,"


    Rui nodded as he spotted even more Voidhunters arriving. They all eventually bunched together as they headed towards the Chairman''s office.


    "Hmph, so you decided toe after all, little B-rank?" He heard a voice from behind him.


    "Hm?" He nced behind him with raised eyebrows as he beheld the gargantuan man who had insulted him. He recognized the man instantly, no, he already knew who he was.


    A-rank Adventurer Squire Darbun of Party Saberstrike.


    "Did you expect me not to? After I signed the contract?" He turned away from the man with a disinterested look.


    "Hah," He snorted. "A weak Martial Squire like you does not belong here. I''d suggest you leave and get the hell out before you die. Know your limits, weakling."


    Rui''s turned back and studied him with the strange kind of interest he would have if he came across a pre-historic caveman.


    "Darbun," A soft yet domineering voice spoke up, intervening. "Stop that, he is a member of our team and has chosen to be part of the Voidhunters voluntarily. There''s no need to respect him."<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    The red-haired Martial Squire nced at Rui. "I apologize for my party member''s rudeness."


    "Fren, there''s no need for you to apologize to someone like him!" Squire Darbun barked.


    "Enough," She red at him, quietening him down, and turning back to Rui.


    "There''s no need to apologize for someone else''s rudeness, Squire Fren," He smiled.


    "I am the captain of Team Saberstrike, thus I am obligated to take responsibility," She replied simply.


    She did not need to act extravagant. Rui felt a burden on his shoulder just being near her even when she was restraining her aura. She possessed a gravitas to her, unlike anything he''d sensed from a Martial Squire.


    Soon enough, they arrived at the dispatch facility of Deacon Industries


    "Wee," He said, spreading his arms. "I appreciate your punctuality. The dispatch time is upon us soon enough. You will be taken to the Shionel Dungeon in one of our most luxurious motorized carriages."


    This was strange, but they chalked it up to the hyper-consumerist lifestyle and culture of the Shionel Confederation. It was strange being taken to a dungeon in such a matter. However, Chairman Deacon had a brand to maintain, after all, as one of the richest and most powerful men in the Shionel Confederation.


    Soon enough, it was time.


    Arge carriage, big enough to host all of themfortably in it arrived. They quickly boarded it, admiring the quality. Such a means of transport was seldom seen in their respective nations. The Shionel Confederation was more than just a little extra when it came to how ridiculous its luxury standards were.


    Regardless they''d already forgotten about it by the time they reached.


    They drew a lot of attention from everyone around them, not just because they were arge group of Martial Squires, but because a lot of their equipment was provided by Deacon Industries and because of the extravagant carriage bearing the emblem of thepany.


    "Let''s get going," Squire Fren told everyone, unperturbed by the attention she received. All Martial Squires were treated differently, and while this was greater than what they were ustomed to, it was well within what they werefortable with.


    Although she was not the official leader, everyone deferred to her as she was the strongest out of all of them without any question whatsoever.


    They sped through the security measures before quickly heading towards the inner gate of Adventurer Ring town.


    The air grew more tense and serious, and it only grew heavier when they reached the Shionel Dungeon.


    "Remember," She turned towards all of them with a solemn expression. "Anything can happen in a dungeon. It doesn''t matter how strong you are. It doesn''t matter how experienced you are, or how talented you are. All of that doesn''t matter in the dungeon. Just a single moment of carelessness, just the slightest mistake, and you could be ambushed from the shadows by a monster you never sawing. Life is vulnerable in the dungeon, and we are no exceptions. Do not let down your guard for even a second, it may very well be thest thing you do."


    Rui had to remind himself that he was the only one who saw the Shionel Dungeon as a safe space.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 820 Intercept

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    He actually felt less tense the moment they entered the dungeon, but he couldn''t show that on his face, he needed to maintain a severe expression. His spatial senses swept across the dungeons as he noted the location of a few monsters in the general vicinity. A katoblepas, a bloodfury rabbit that appeared to have survived from the second floor, and even an ind Shionel Taipan.


    Rui had no problem with these monsters attacking their group, in fact, he weed it. It would be a good way to end this operation quickly if one of the members of this group were taken down early due to a surprise monster attack.


    In that case, he would be able to finish the twelfth floor without any issues whatsoever, and he would be just fine.


    Of course, he highly doubted that something like that would happen. The Martial Squires that had been gathered for the Voidhunter team were not amateurs, they were all Martial Artists who were nominally more powerful than himself. Most of them would not sumb to a surprise attack, even in circumstances like the Shionel Dungeon where their senses were hampered.


    They followed the scouted paths that were confirmed to lead to a particr floor. These paths were marked and indicated by the Shionel Adventurer Guild. Doing this ensured that Martial Artists could enter lower floors without getting lost, ensuring that Martial Artists didn''t have to try and scour the extensive maze of tunnels inside the dungeon. Every time a new floor was discovered, the Shionel Dungeon went through an effort of findingrge enough tunnels that connected existing floors to new ones that adventurers could use.


    Despite having a secured route, there was still a deep tension as they traveled through them.


    "Alright, we''ve reached the first floor, be sure to stay together while we go down to the second floor. Do not get lost, and do not break away from the group or from the scouted paths. Getting lost in this maze of a dungeon is suicide," She warned them once more.


    Rui suppressed augh. Being with a group of normal adventurers who raided and plundered the dungeon like normal adventurers did was so strange. He was starting to see the concerns and problems that normal Martial Artists had to face in a dungeon such as the Shionel Dungeon.


    Still, he couldn''t help but frown mildly at their sheer vignce so early on in their entry into the Shionel Dungeon.? 2024 N?v/el/Dram/a.Org.


    Being so wary before even crossing the first floor? The uppermostyers of the Shionel Dungeon were basically no different from a rxing hiding spot for Rui.


    Soon enough, they reached the second floor, when Squire Fren turned around and did a headcount. "Good, we''re all here. Let''s continue downwards."


    This was also a strange thing to Rui, he hadn''t realized that ordinary Martial Squires had to go through the effort of making sure that all the Martial Squires were there, from time to time.


    (''Imagine entering this dungeon without having some counter to the sensory jamming property of the Shionel Dungeon despite knowing of it ahead of time,'') He shook his head inwardly. (''Could not be me.'')


    Finally, they reached the twelfth floor. For ordinary Martial Squires, just getting to the twelfth floor was an ordeal while Rui may as well skip down the tunnels humming given how casual he was.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    "Alright, we''ve reached the twelfth floor," Squire Fren stated. "It''s unclear what direction thest remaining section of the floor is, but we''ll just have to reach the center, split up in all directions and locate thest remaining section of the floor, and meet up back here in five minutes, one of us will have definitely have found it. It''s unfortunate, but without a map, we cannot even navigate this floor without using such means otherwise, we''ll get lost."


    This was why a map was so incredibly valuable, yet so incredibly difficult to obtain. Even Martial Squires found it difficult to navigate the Shionel Dungeon even with marked routes, how on Earth would normal humans and merchantsmercialize such a ce to other normal humans without at least a map?


    Witnessing how serious and difficult this matter was even to a grade-ten Martial Squire convinced him of the value of his map even more. No wonder Guildmaster Bradt immediately passed a bill that affected the entire country on Rui''s demand once he verified that the maps Rui produced were actually very urate and precise.


    Rui had long located the remaining section of the Shionel Dungeon with his Riemannian Echo sense, but he had to y dumb and go along with this tedious n, he couldn''t just point them in the right direction, that would make him instantly suspicious.


    Soon enough, they split up in different directions after reaching what should have been close to the center of the floor. They wouldn''t be able to return quickly since the sixteen of them had to search across arge area, about asrge as a city.


    Thus Rui decided to simply go visit Kane, who had already reached the dungeon and was waiting in a tunnel just outside it where he had shifted around using Void Step to stay imperceivable. Rui had sensed him the moment he had entered the dungeon.


    STEP


    "Kane, you''re here," He smiled once he reached the tunnel, talking to apparently nobody.


    Kane appeared out of thin air, sighing. "It''s so stressful entering this dungeon without you. Is this how it''s always going to be from now on out?"


    "Rx," Rui shook his head. "It''s not going to be like this from here on out or anything like that. This will be thest time, I promise you."


    "That''s great to hear," He nodded. "Alright, what now?"


    "Come along with me, but make sure you''re using Void Step from the get-go, once we split up, we''ll immediately start harvesting this entire ce, right under and around their noses. They''re going to be shocked to realize that despite their best, they couldn''t catch a glimpse of us,"


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 821 Target

    Content held by N?velDrama.Org.


    ?


    He and Kane casually chatted while they returned back to where Rui was to scout, looking for the final remaining section of the twelfth floor. Rui was d that they had decided to split up, this operation would have been a lot harder if everyone stuck to each other like glue. Even though Rui was clever enough to still think of ways, it would be truly difficult, even for him.


    Thankfully, the sensory jamming and the loss of the natural sense of direction in the Shionel Dungeon made his job easier, since he could even say ''Oh, Ipletely lost my sense of direction and got lost'' and it would be extremely believable.


    Such a thing was a very regr urrence in the Shionel Dungeon, after all. Furthermore, it would be very believable considering Rui was only a young B-rank Martial Squire who had spent only under four years in the Squire Realm, thus his natural senses would undoubtedly be weaker than that of the others.


    Most animals relied on the maic field of the to gain some basic foundation for a sense of direction. This phenomenon was known as maoreception and was a very well-documented phenomenon back on Earth. It was by this very sense that animals were able to migrate urately across the entire world without ever losing their direction, following the same migration routes year after year.


    Normal humans did not possess maoreception to any meaningful degree, but the same could not be said for Martial Artists.


    However, in the Shionel Dungeon, even this maoreception sense waspletely jammed. It was why the monsters in the dungeon lost their way and ended up getting lost in the maze of tunnels of the Shionel Dungeon. It was why many Martial Squires had gone missing since entering the Shionel Dungeon despite their being pre-established paths that were marked. Their sense of direction had beenpletely sabotaged, causing them to takepletely different paths than the specified directions, or divergergely inrge broad tunnels where their sabotaged sense of direction made them make just one error in the choice of tunnels they chose to go.


    Eventually, it was time to get back to the group.


    "Be sure to keep the Void Step active at all times, without fail, got it?" Rui stressed the importance of this.


    If Kane just randomly revealed himself out of the blue, it would ruin everything!


    "Yeah yeah, I know, don''t baby me Rui," He grumbled.


    "Sorry about that, it''s just particrly important," He replied apologetically.


    He was not afraid that the Martial Squires would be able to sense Kane. Sensing Kane was something only a small proportion of Martial Squires could do outside of the Shionel Dungeon, but it would be absolutely impossible for almost anybody barring Rui to detect him inside the Shionel Dungeon.


    That was why he stressed the importance of not making any mistakes since that was the only way his presence could possibly be revealed inside the dungeon.


    "You''rete, Squire Quarrier," Squire Fren nkly stated.


    "Ah, sorry, I got a little lost on this floor," Rui meekly replied. He deliberately wanted to paint himself as a little clumsy. Once Chairman Deacon read the report, his evaluation of Rui as a threat would most likely be lowered a bit.


    And that was exactly what Rui was hoping for. He did not want to stand out a lot.


    "Hmph," Squire Darbun snorted, sneering at Rui. "This is why an ipetent weakling like you should not have joined the Voidhunters."


    Rui was about to respond when he suddenly froze. Something had happened.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    Squire Fren was sharp enough to have caught that.


    "What happened?" She asked, peering at him with her eyes.


    "Nothing at all," Rui managed to squeeze out. But his attention was diverted elsewhere.


    (''Is that big group of Martial Squires heading towards us?'') Rui frowned as his Riemannian Echo had just picked up arge group of Martial Squires, with fifty percent more Martial Squires than their own group moving toward their group specifically, despite just having entered the dungeon.


    This kind of trajectory was either arge coincidence or¡­


    (''Or they''re specifically moving towards us,'') Rui grew increasingly tense.


    He was not a fool, no group of Martial Squires moved in this manner towards another intentionally if their intentions were not malicious.


    Rui tracked the group of Martial Squires moving towards them with a growing tingling sensation across his nerves. Even his suppressed Primordial instinct was sensing grave danger.


    (''Damn it is an attack,'') He cursed.


    But who? Why would anyone randomly attack a group of sixteen Martial Squires? How were they aware of their location? Did they have an excellent grade-ten sensory Martial Squire who could at the very least sense their presence partially? Or¡­


    (''They had intelligence on us ahead of time,'') Rui cursed. (''That would exin it, that means there is an actual data leak to someone who really does not like Chairman Deacon and is opposed to them, and has the power to dispatch twenty-four Martial Squires on short notice.


    There was one name at the top of the suspect list that stood out to him.


    (''Could it be Gui- No wait! The identity doesn''t matter right now! I need to fucking survive,'')


    There was about half a minute''s worth of time before the two groups collided. Normally this would be far too little time to make a decision. Martial Squires did not possess elerated conscious thought outside ofbat-rted cognition and thought processes. Yet Rui''s mind far surpassed human limits even without the evolution that came with being a Martial Squire.


    His pupils dted as his mind furiously began processing his circumstances.


    (''The primary objective is Kane''s and my survival,'') Rui instantly established. (''The secondary objective is to ensure our identities are not revealed.'')


    Against twenty-four Martial Squires, Rui had absolutely no grand ambitions of fighting them head-on and winning. As long as he survived and their identities were not revealed, he would consider it a big win.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 822 First Blood

    ?


    The first thing he did was cough thrice into the back of his hand. "Man, this ce sure smells weird, it''s itching my throat."


    "Hmph, the air ispletely normal," Squire Darbun snorted. "You can''t even breathe normally, are you even a Martial Squire?"


    He could not be bothered to give the slightest bit of a damn about the overzealous insecure juvenile with a crush on his team leader. The three coughs were a signal to Kane that an unexpected danger was due.


    Since he knew he would not be able to directlymunicate with Kane, he had devised many actions that were coded signals. Scratching his head indicated that Kane needed to leave immediately and hide in some tunnel leading to the floor. A yawn meant that Kane needed to leave the dungeon. He had even devised fifteen separate coded signals that each told Kane which Martial Squire he needed to kill with his knife in some emergency.


    Kane immediately stiffened as he became even more vignt of his surroundings even as maneuvered around the group to maintain Void Step actively.


    (''Fifteen more seconds,'') Rui cursed inwardly. "I don''t want to waste any more time, so I''m going head to my assigned location. The rules have already beenid clearly, and remember, we don''t need to coordinate from here on out. Cough cough cough."


    Rui immediately sky-walked away from the direction that the intruders wereing at a rapid pace without trying to seem too suspicious, in a moment he had already moved a hundred meters away from them.


    Two more seconds!


    "Hey," Squire Darbun growled. "Where-!"


    BAM!


    A powerful Martial Squire shot into their sensory range, startling them as they bull-rushed into him hard. A huge swarm of Martial Squires immediately rushed the entire group.


    "!!!" The fifteen Voidhunters shook as they immediately entered battle mode at the sudden ambush.


    BAM BAM BAM!


    They had engaged in battle as a sh of fists between the two groups had immediately ensued! Thankfully, Rui had already moved to the edge of their sensory range thanks to hurriedly moving away from the group under the guise of wanting to begin their operation. This gave him great usible deniability for the timing since no one could possibly chalk it up to him having known in advance that they were going to attack and thus moving away from the target group at the right time.


    He nced at the battle even as he rushed away from it.


    Squire Fren was surrounded by a few Martial Squires who did not let her escape. The sheer amount of pressure that emerged from that battle made even Rui stiffen just a little.


    BAM BAM BAM!!!


    A grade-ten Martial Squire pummeled her guard with heavy blows. He twisted his body with each attack, generating remarkable power that shook the entirety of the atmosphere violently on the twelfth floor. Each motion he made tore past the sound barrier as they left several sonic booms in their wake


    Rui did not think that he would be able to take more than several blows of that caliber even with his Flux Earther technique before he was effectively as good as dead.


    He was outssed. There were simply no other words for it.


    BAM!!!


    Squire Fren grimaced as she withstood the blow with her guard, yet she had note out unscathed. Her arms were bruising heavily, even swelling visibly, yet they seemed to mend and subside quickly as her high-grade healing factor kicked in. It was clearly much faster than Rui''s and was healing wounds very rapidly.


    "RARGH!" the Martial Squire threw a powerful blow, at her face, aiming for a knockout.


    WHOOSH


    The blow hit empty air. Her body coiled around that of her opponent as she began strangling him hard. Her arms locked his arm around himself in a way that strained his shoulder joint extremely hard. <novelsnext></novelsnext>


    CRACK CRACK CRACK!Exclusive ? material by N?(/v)elDrama.Org.


    The man screamed in pain as her knee borrowed itself into the back of his ribcage from behind cracking it as she tightened her grip.


    SPLAT


    "ARGH!" She grimaced, gritting her teeth as her back was exposed to a de attack.


    She had no choice but to let go, but she didn''t intend to let him go free.


    Her legs uncoiled from around him, yet her arms tightened as she spun about using sky-walking before hurling him down in a wrestling-style throw. She employed several gripping techniques, torque techniques and several supplementary technique to throw her opponent down with as much power as she could.


    BOOM!


    A shockwave the size of a small district rippled across the atmosphere as her opponent shot down towards the ground faster than a bullet!


    Normally, this would not be a particrly lethal attack for a grade-ten Martial Squire like him. Yet they were not in normal circumstances at all.


    Not at all.


    "SSSK!"


    Several serpentsshed out, camouged below the ground Their mouths opened as their fangs emerged. Yet despite being rushed at with many Squire-level threats, the Martial Squire simply grunted.


    BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM!!!


    Seven strikes.


    Each with titanic power that sted literal holes in the bodies of the serpents.


    A veteran grade-ten Martial Squire whose Martial Path was centered around offensive rapid-fire could not be overwhelmed this easily.


    Yet, neither could the tenacious ability of the taipans to survive without a body. Just when he turned back up to return to his assassination target.


    SPLAT!


    "RGH!" He grimaced as the bodyless head of the serpent still midair, managed tond a single fang into the fleshy muscle above the cor bone.


    "AAAAARGH!" He screeched violently in pain unlike anything he had ever felt since the evolution apotheosis to the Squire Realm.


    BAM!!!


    The head of the serpent almost sted into fleshy confetti from just a single strike, yet the damage had already been done. The man lost strength in his muscles as the world went dark.


    Squire Fren had a vindictive expression in ce of her normally detached expression as she watched the man sumb to a potent poison.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 823 Turntables

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    Rui didn''t have time to spectate the fights of others as he ran away, yet it appeared that he had moved a second toote.


    WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH


    A Martial Squire chased after him rapidly.


    "Tsk," Rui tutted.


    He was faster than Rui. Rui ran away at top speed, using Outer Convergence to funnel muscr power from all of his muscle groups into eleration. He even used his newly created Gale Force Breathing, which made him more than twice as fast as before. Yet even that was not enough to outpace his opponent.


    BAM!


    Rui was forced to turn around and block a powerful attack with his guard. The two of them came to just a momentary standstill as the assassin seeded in his goal of preventing Rui from running away while Rui failed in his goal of getting away.


    The two of them faced off against each other. Neither of them got a glimpse of the other''s appearance since they were both masked, but considering that the enemies had information on them, he probably knew Rui''s identity as well. That was probably why he himself had targeted Rui thinking he was only an ordinary B-rank Martial Artist.? 2024 N?v/el/Dram/a.Org.


    They both radiated massive pressure brimming with hostility as they stared at each other, sizing each other up.


    It was just a moment in real-time, but to them, it was more than enough.


    "Go help the others. Make sure some survive," Rui said out loud. "I''ll be fine. GO!"


    His opponent didn''t respond but was incredibly confused. Was he insinuating that his fellow assassins were in need of help because the Voidhunters were so strong? But why did he say ''I''ll be fine''? What did he mean by ''Make sure some survive?''


    He didn''t know, but he didn''t linger on the matter for more than a moment, before rushing in aggressively.


    He threw a swift palm jab lunging right for Rui''s throat.


    A lethal attack aiming for a vital.


    Rui reacted immediately, raising an arm to intercept the attack and nullify it with Flux Earther while preparing his right fist for a follow-up attack. Yet;


    THWACK!


    The palm jab twisted and curved around his interception with inhuman fluidity and flexibility, before dashing forward and striking his throat regardless! It simply walked around Rui''s block and rushed forward uncaring the block that it made look stupid.


    "ACK!" Rui coughed some blood as he felt the wound on his throat bleeding. The surprise and shock did not help him gain his bearing either.


    The man did not give Rui a moment of respite as he rushed forward with a barrage of palm jabs. Rui guarded against them once more, with maximum vignce as he observed the iing attacks.


    The man''s bones seemed to detach from their joints as they avoid obstacles and barriers blocking their way in a wave-like motion.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    "RGH!" Rui grimaced as all of the attacks once more bypassed his guard like they didn''t even exist!


    flesh wounds had already begun bleeding steadily across his body, yet he wasn''t too concerned by them at the moment. His healing factor was good enough to ensure that they would be healed over the span of the fight, even if not immediately. The wounds would certainly not burden him.


    Instead, the confirmation of his opponent''sbat style and Martial Art were worth it!


    (''This¡­ His Martial Path must be centered around homing jabs. He takes an umon Tai Chi-like stance that is entirely centered around his palms.'') He swiftly analyzed. (''His Martial Art must have a paramount focus on granting lethality with each palm jab, while also granting him the ability to bypass any active defense with remarkable trajectory maniption through sharp muscle control and flexibility.'')


    The man rushed in with even greater victory at the sight of the sessful damage inflicted with his previous barrage as heunched another swift barrage of attacks. He had gone with the expectations of taking Rui down swiftly with just two, or at most three barrages of flesh wounds that would deteriorate Rui''sbat ability to the point where he could just kill him in an instant with a single attack.


    He did not expect to hit empty air.


    WHOOSH


    Where Rui was a moment ago, he no longer was as his image faded in the face of the assassin''s attacks.


    BOOM!!!


    CRACK!


    A devastating knee blownded on his ribs, cracking them. He rushed backward in shock and in pain as he witnessed Rui chasing him with a strange stance that was different from before. His elbows and knees flexed and raised, resembling a Muay Thai stance from Earth.


    Rui rushed after him without any moment''s dy, refusing to let him even a moment of respite.


    BAM BAM BAM!


    Each attack came from only half a meter away from their target''s body. The distance between them had shrunken to such a degree that a mere swing of the elbows and kneesnded square on the body!


    (''Sucks, doesn''t it?'') Rui continued pummeling him as he never once ceased focusing on his opponent, watching him incur more damage with each blow. (''This martial art from Earth is suited to taking you down.'')


    That was what he had concluded as he analyzed his opponent''s Martial Art with the VOID algorithm.


    He had already observed that every palm attack that his opponent hadunched, had struck when his opponent''s arm was fully extended and stretched out. Even when Rui shifted forward, he would shift back half a step to ensure that his arm would still be fully stretched when his attack reached Rui. He would even adjust the alignment of his body for each strike to ensure they were just perfectly stretched out when it hit the target. His arm needed to be stretched out, and thus at a particr distance.


    That was a pattern.


    And the VOID algorithm loved patterns. The pattern recognition protocols gobbled it up as it formed the prediction model, which when Rui analyzed with the adaptive evolution protocols resulted in abat style that deeply resembled two of his favorite martial arts!


    (''The super close range of Muay Thai and St from Earth is perfect for countering your Martial Art!'')


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 824 Part

    ?


    The assassin coughed blood as Rui pummeled him with close-quarter attacks with his knees and elbows. He struggled to get away but Rui did not let up even a moment of respite. Even as he did his best to block Rui''s attacks, he couldn''t help but wonder how he had even reached this level.


    His initial two sets of attacks were effective, and they bypassed his guard andnded on his vitals, piercing his flesh. Things had been proceeding ording to n, when suddenly, the target of his attacks had disappeared in the face of his attacks in an illusion, appearing right in front of him!


    Rui had used his trusty Phantom Step technique to feint a step back when instead dove forward with a flying knee kick. Phantom Step was a technique whose effectiveness also depended on its application. When the feints of the technique were used to show the opponent what they wanted to see and what they expected to see, then the technique was more than thrice as effective as normal!


    The resulting oue was a drastic shift in reality that entirely caught the assassin off-guard on top of the titanic damage that had been inflicted by a powerful attack striking his sr plexus. The fact that he had not seen even a shadow of the attack iing meant that he had not defended against it passively or actively. He took that attack purely with his raw durability, causing massive damage internally that left him reeling.


    Even though Rui had endured several bleeding flesh wounds, his movements didn''t indicate any sluggishness as his healing factor had already staved off the most debilitating parts of the wounds and was already on its way to recovering most of the damage he had sustained.


    On the other hand, despite having endured only a single attack, the damage was far more debilitating than anything Rui had endured. The fact that Rui''s opponent had not defended passively or actively means that he was basically withstanding the might of multiple Squire-level techniques with his body alone.


    Furthermore, his Martial body''s configuration did not ce too much weight on toughness and durability, as opposed to speed and flexibility. Thus, the damage it had withstood was tremendous. The biggest problem was the fact that Rui had struck his sr plexus with that attack, directly striking his diaphragm and shocking it so hard with damage that it had be paralyzed for precious several seconds. The assassin was literally unable to breathe at all for that duration, let alone activate a breathing technique to use inbat.


    Although it onlysted several seconds, that was a world of difference for Martial Squires. It was more than five minutes in the perspectives of both Martial Squires!


    By the end of those five minutes, the assassin was battered with bruises and wounds that had already begun to swell up even as Rui whaled waves of elbows and knees down on his opponent.


    "ENOUGH!" The man bellowed once he was able to activate his breathing techniques to outspeed Rui again. "My Curving Lance style will not be belittled! My attacks are as nimble as the winds, yet as sharp as lightning!"


    He rushed forward with far greater speed and power than before as he did not dare hold back. A dreadful amount of menacing pressure rose from him as he channeled his rage and fury from being pummeled like a punching bag for five minutes into his attacks. They were so fast they almost disappeared in the eyes of Rui!


    Yet that alone was not enough.


    CRACK CRACK CRACK!


    "Huh?" The assassin''s eyes widened before he even realized what had happened before he could even feel pain.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    An expression of horror rose onto his face as he nced at his fingers, which had been broken and twisted in a grotesque figure after shing with Rui''s elbow, getting crushed in the process.


    BAM BAM BAM!


    Rui exploited the moment of shock


    (''Your Martial body does not lend itself well to toughness conditioning. Your fingers are not too tough, and that is why you keep targeting vitals and softer fleshy regions of the body. If you hit a bone, your fingers will be severely damaged getting crushed by the power of your own attack,'') Rui mused as he relentlessly attacked his opponent.


    He had noticed that his opponent only struck softer parts of the body that were not reinforced by bone or tough muscles. This wouldn''t be done unless he had no choice, since it only restricted the number of striking targets he could strike, making him even easier to predict. The VOID algorithm greedily consumed this pattern with its pattern recognition processing protocols, creating a more fleshed-out prediction model.Content ? N?velDrama.Org 2024.


    Rui didn''t need to avoid his attacks. He needed to use his opponent''s speed against him by shifting at the veryst second to cause his opponent''s attack to crash into hard bone instead of a fleshy weak point.


    This was one of the counters and adaptations to his Martial Art that Rui hade up with. The adaptive evolution model was something that Rui himself had created and was nothing short of a crystallization of his expertise in understanding what worked against what styles, and how it could be used against them. While he had formallyid out an official adaptive evolution model for other fighters who were training in the VOID algorithm, it was for the sake of others. He himself did not need it. He was the adaptive evolution model, in a sense.


    He himself was part of the VOID algorithm himself.


    Rui''s eyes widened as he felt he came across a profound realization and epiphany.


    (''I am¡­ part of my Martial Art?'') The thought thundered across his mind.


    For a moment, the fight faded away from his mind as he immersed himself in his Martial Path.


    The boundless path extended seemingly eternally into the distance, yet he felt as though he had just taken a step forward deeper than he ever had before!


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 825 Epiphany

    ?


    The pattern recognition system of the VOID algorithm functioned with two models working side by side. The predictive model inputted any and all data on his opponent before outputting a statistical predictive model on said, opponent. Followed by the adaptive evolution model, which inputted the newly created predictive model to create a fighting style that was adapted and evolved to counter that opponent.


    He had spent many years creating the adaptive evolution model of the pattern recognition system. It had taken him years upon years, almost two decades'' worth of rigorous empirical research into all existing martial arts and unarmedbat styles. He hade to gain a level of understanding that very few humans in the history of Earth had evere to possess.


    Despite not being a fighter himself, John Falken hade to touch the essence of the most ideal form of applying one''s mind and body.


    The pinnacle of martial arts.


    "Be Water, my friend,"


    Yet he had created the VOID algorithm for everybody else.


    Not himself. Thus, even if he himself had achieved what was nothing short of enlightenment, it was useless.


    Project Water was a project that was for everyone else, not for himself. It was to give everyone what he could not have. The ability to practice the greatest martial art that his idol Bruce Lee hade in touch with


    How could he pass on his understanding to others? How could he allow others to replicate his thought process, harness his knowledge and understanding that came with a lifetime of learning and exploring?


    That thought was what led to the birth of the adaptive evolution model. A rigorous database system that outputted a counter for every input from the predictive model. It was the crystallization of his understanding of how to counter every predicted move in the most optimal manner possible.


    It was him, himself, was it not?


    He had always subconsciously treated it this way, it was one of the reasons he loved the VOID Algorithm. It contained the fruit that bore the blood, sweat, and tears that he had put into it. It contained nothing short of his very life itself.


    Yet, only now had he realized that perhaps this was not just a sentiment.


    Perhaps this realization¡­ this aplishment was a key to the higher Realms!


    "I am a part of my Martial Art and my Martial Art is a part of me."


    He had felt as though he had been blind his entire life and had truly opened his eyes for the very first time.


    At that moment, he felt boundless peace and serenity.


    And yet.


    He felt boundless energy and power.


    BAM!!!


    A titanic blow more powerful than any that Rui had everunched impacted his opponent''s gut like a meteorite.


    "ARGH!" he vomited blood as his broken ribs pierced into his lungs, that was what he violently spewed when Rui''s fist crushed his lungs t. "I''LL FUCKING KILL YOU!"<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    His body coiled to an inhuman degree as he umted a tremendous amount of potential energy, yet before he could even unleash it.


    THWOOM!


    An invisible st of sound crashed into him, sending him tumbling backward in the air. Rui had taken the liberty tounch the Might Roar sh st technique that he had acquired from Vilun Ind and st his opponent before he could execute his shy move. Because the attack could vastly surpass the speed of sound, he was able to strike his opponent before he executed a time-consuming attack.


    Rui immediately rushed after his opponent with Gale Force Breathing, Parallel Walk, and Outer Convergence, unwilling to let him any respite or let him escape. His opponent froze seeing Rui rush after him, before turning away, and running away as fast as he could. He was faster than Rui, thus he had some hope of running away from Rui at top speed.


    Yet, what he hadn''t taken into ount was the difference in their conditions. Rui had taken far less damage than he had and had haled more of his damage than his opponent had. As Rui had expected, that made all of the difference.


    CLASP


    Rui caught his shoulder, and a secondter his fist whaled down on his opponent.


    BAM BAM BAM!


    "ARGH! Let me go!" He struggled to escape. "Ack!"


    He choked when Rui''s coiled around his neck as he squeezed down on his carotid arteries that supplied blood to the brain. Martial Squires could hold their breath for a very long time, thus there was no point in shutting his airway down alone. However, all cells required oxygen supplied to them via blood, thus shutting down the arteries was quite effective.


    The man struggled desperately to break Rui''s grip over his neck, yet Rui refused to yield as he continued to squeeze harder.


    Eventually, the man''s resistance grew weaker, until eventually his arms dropped. His breathing stopped and his heart slowed down as well.


    It was done.


    Rui simply let go of the unconscious body, watching it fall down to the ground. Three meters before it reached the ground, two taipansshed out from beneath the soil before they dug their fangs into the unconscious Martial Squire''s body, before wrangling the body from each other.


    He would die very soon with all that poison coursing through his body.


    He sighed in relief as he relished in his victory. (''He was probably an A-rank Martial Squire.'')


    That meant that he was at least a grade-seven Martial Squire if not grade eight. However, Rui still managed to win, even if he was on the losing initially. His revtion mid-battle seemed to deepen his journey down his Martial Path as he felt a surge of power that aided him in battle.


    He had gotten stronger. He wasn''t sure if he would concretely count himself as a grade-seven Martial Squire at the moment, he didn''t entirely understand what he had experienced, after all. Still, he was sure that it was a positive oue.


    Of course, the entire battle would have ended instantly had he fought the Martial Squire with Kane, but ultimately he chose not to.


    There was a reason why he had gotten Kane to help some of the others.


    This chapter upload first at  Exclusive ? material by N?(/v)elDrama.Org.

 Chapter 826 Suspicion

    ?


    (''I cannot be the only one to survive this ambush,'') He knew this.


    Out of the sixteen Martial Squires that were ambushed out of the twenty-four, it would be far too suspicious if he, perceived to be the weakest Martial Squire as a grade-B Martial Squire, was the only survivor.


    Such an oue would be extremely hard to believe, and anyone who hears it will definitely find it very odd, even if they didn''t suspect anything immediately. He was sure that Chairman Deacon would be very suspicious. He was also sure that Guildmaster Bradt would be quite suspicious too.


    Chairman Deacon''s suspicions would be that Rui is either hiding his power or is a spy from the group that ambushed his Voidhunters. Guildmaster Bradt knew that Rui was not colluding with the assassins that he had sent, thus he would suspect that Rui is hiding his true power. Furthermore, Guildmaster Bradt also knew that Rui could project power greater than his actual power, a trick that Rui had been forced to reveal to hold a gun to Guildmaster Bradt''s head.


    This information was enough for the shrewd old man to grow suspicious of Rui being the true identity of the Voider, and that was something Rui would rather avoid being suspected of at all costs.


    Thus he needed at least one other, preferably two other Martial Artists to also survive, and thankfully Kane understood what he meant.


    This was purely out of self-interest. Rui did not give a damn about the Voidhunters personally, given that they were actually hunting him. If he could get away with being the sole survivor, he would have no problem doing so and abandoning the Voidhunters behind, but couldn''t. He was far too careful to make such a careless and short-sighted move.


    He scanned the ongoing battle with Riemannian Echo as he observed it.


    (''They''ll die soon, the only reason they''re holding on is that Squire Fren seems to have taken down that grade-ten Martial Squire. Currently, it''s twenty-two Martial Squires vs fifteen, and if not for Squire-Fren taking on three grade-nine Martial Squires, they would have been long dead.,'') Rui mused.


    Kane pranced around the battle intervening in dangerous moments just to ensure that they barely managed to avoid death in an inconspicuous manner. Rui approved of this, killing them with his poisoned de rashly would be a foolish move and his presence would certainly be realized even if nobody could even remotely close to sensing him.


    He considered his course of action from here on out. He was quite confident about surviving and not having their identities revealed. Thus, he focused on his third priority, which was ensuring that his survival was not strange and suspicious.


    (''Now then,'') He considered his options calmly. (''What to do?'')


    If arger proportion of Martial Squires survived the improbable attack, it became less likely that they were all spies. This was why he wanted more numbers, but there were other considerations on which targets he ought to have Kane protect.


    (''I should pick a survivor from each group may be,'') He wondered.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    That would also reduce the probability that the survivors were all in on a single scheme as opposed to if a single party survived. It was less likely that these parties all just happened to betray each other for the sake of someone like Guildmaster Bradt when many of these parties had been together for a long time before the Shionel Dungeon had even been discovered.


    Thus, if there was a survivor from each group, the probability of betrayal was just drastically reduced.


    (''All in all, four survivors including me, and three others from three other groups will make a lot of sense, and is probably the way to go,'') Rui mused as he coldly analyzed and calcted the oues and the aftermath of allbinations and permutations of survivors and victims.


    (''Alright, I''ve made up my mind,'') He decided. (''Squire Fren from party Saberstrike, Squire Cale from party Frontburner, S quire Meenal from party Trionel.'')


    He chose the strongest Martial Squire and the two weakest Martial Squires, as far as rank went, as the three survivors. This was the objectively best oue as far as oues go.


    Rui nodded, having made up his mind before carefully entering the edge of Kane''s sensory range while making sure to stay out of the sensory ranges of the others.Content held by N?velDrama.Org.


    "You made it!" Kane heaved a sigh as they both separated from the fight for a second. "I knew you wouldn''t lose, even to an A-rank Martial Squire. There''s just no way!"


    "You''re damn right I wouldn''t," He smiled goodheartedly before his expression turned more solemn. "Alright, I''ve figured out what you need to do. You need to nick the Martial Squire assassins fighting the grade-ten Voidhunter, that Voidhunter, and that one as well with your poisoned de. Ensure that it''s just enough that those three Voidhunters get an edge and win or escape. The remaining Voidhunters, you can poison them and ensure that they die."


    This would ensure that the three survivors'' Martial Squires would gain the edge that they needed to survive or escape. While the remaining Voidhunters would all die.


    He had no problem with the rest of them dying, they were his enemies, after all. Rui didn''t think he was a bad person, but showingpassion to people who epted an assassination contract to kill him?


    (''That''s not even a funny joke,'') He snorted, shaking his head.


    The Martial Squire battles had all spread out as each of the Voidhunters had tried scattering and escaping when the ambushunched, unfortunately for them, they did not have prior warning, nor did they have a headstart to escape like Rui, thus they were bogged down by their opponents.


    The only reason that the Voidhunters had survived even this long was that it was more difficult to kill someone who did everything in their power to escape and survive than someone who resolutely fought head-on even when they were at a disadvantage. That dyed the process of killing them.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 827 Plan

    ?


    Rui had no intention of making an appearance in the battle. That was highly unwise on his part. His intentions were to make a highly injured appearance at the Deacon Industries main branch after the other three survivors returned alive, giving off the impression he just barely managed to escape a bloody battle with his life intact.


    The only reason he was still waiting around and watching was to jump in and save Kane if anything happened even by mistake. Even though Kane was pretty much impossible to sense in the Shionel Dungeon, that did not make him invulnerable. Kane was so weak that even a single attack from any of these high-grade Martial Squires could kill him. If a single attack from these A-rank Martial Squires fighting all out hit a vital area, the sheer damage might instantly kill him.


    He was not a tanky fighter. He was an evasive maneuverer, his fighting style revolved around not being forced to withstand attack by ensuring he avoided being hit by them be it through speed, agility, highly efficient and effective footwork, maneuvering, and supplementary breathing techniques as well as powerful stealth techniques.


    Rui watched with a nervous expression as Kane did as he was instructed. Rui was even waiting below the fights happening hundreds of feet in the air with a healing potion in his hand. If Kane got hurt and fell, Rui would immediately catch him and heal him with a high-grade healing potion. He did not intend to let his friend die.


    He may not have given a damn about the Voidhunters whose team he was technically and officially on, but most certainly would do everything in his power to save Kane.


    Fortunately, Kane was good at what he did, abination of talent that was in the genius-level territory, as well as a lot of training and experience with covert missions meant that such an operation was well within his capabilities.Content held by N?velDrama.Org.


    FLICK FLICK FLICK


    He mildly nicked each of the three assassins fighting Squire Fren with just a minute amount of poison.


    He leaped about to find the others that Rui had instructed him to poison, nicking each of them with a minute amount of poison, not enough to instantly paralyze them, but enough to weaken them.


    "AAARGH!"


    "I.. feel weak,"


    "Urgh,"


    Each of the battles decisively folded in the oue that Rui ordained. All thirty-eight Martial Squires fighting in this section of the floor were dancing on the palm of Rui''s hand as he guided their battles.


    SNAP!


    Squire Fren mercilessly snapped the necks of her weakened Martial Squires, killing them on the spot. Though she couldn''t help but frown. She hade close to the verge of losing and dying when all three of her opponents suddenly grew weak, allowing her to easily overpower them as they lost a lot of their strength.


    Just before she could catch a break, the other assassins returned from their other fights almost simultaneously, almost as though it was timed like clockwork.


    "¡­! She''s still alive!" They were shocked. "Tsk, get her!"


    She did not even bother trying to fight back as she dashed away at top speed, while the assassins tried their best to catch up to her.


    (''She''ll escape,'') Rui nodded. (''She''s faster, and careful with her surroundings. Given the intelligence that she disyed earlier, she''ll probably realize that she can go into a random obscure tunnel, consume a healing and rejuvenation potion, and regain her full power. She''s also smart enough to realize her teammates are dead given that the assassins fighting them returned, and she''ll probably focus on surviving this ordeal more than anything.'')


    It was not her that he was worried about, it was the other two that he was worried about, he quickly reached their locations while keeping a tab on them.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    (''Tsk, she''s going to get caught even though Kane went through such effort of weakening her opponents,'') He tutted disapprovingly as he observed Squire Meenal trying to escape from her opponents. (''I''ll have to intercept at the right moment.)


    He went up high as he waited in the direction that she was frantically running away to, hoping to find a tunnel where she could perhaps escape to.


    He predicted the tunnel she would enter based on positioning and size, making sure he was at an elevation far greater where neither of them could sense him, while he prepared himself.


    "Fwoooo¡­" He sucked in a huge amount of air while he waited for the right moment. (''It''s been a while since I used this technique, so I definitely need to focus all out here.'')


    He waited as they reached the right ce at the right time before his mind kicked into action and began executing Transverse Resonance: Tier Four. He fired four Mighty Roar sh sts in rapid session, each slower than the one that came after it flying down at a speed that greatly exceeded sound beforebining into a single attack with four times more powerful than each of the individual attacks.


    BAM!!!


    An attack with power scraping at the peak of the Squire Realm crashed onto the head o the assassin that had almost gotten a hold of Squire Meenal, cracking and crumpling into his head on the spot while sting his whole body downwards.


    "SSSSS!" Arge mid-grade Taipan lunched out, swallowing his corpse whole.


    (''Well, there goes the evidence,'') He smirked as he watched Squire Meenal get away safely, very confused but very relieved as well. (''Nice, all three of them escaped.'')


    "So what now?" Kane appeared out of thin air.


    "Let''s leave," Rui calmly replied as he gestured towards the tunnels. "The n was aplete sess."


    "I can''t believe you created a n that turned something inconvenient into a benefit for yourself," Kane sighed with furrowed eyebrows. "Even an ambush isn''t enough to catch you truly off-guard."


    The two of them chatted while they reached the upper part of the Shionel Dungeon.


    "Alright, now what? We go home? I wanna go home and get something to eat,"


    "Now I y the role of a victim who almost died," Rui calmly replied as he summoned his sword out of his dimensional storage ring.


    SPLAT SPLAT SPLAT SPLAT SPLAT


    He gave himself significant gashes.


    "Woah!" Kane frowned. "But why though?"


    "To stave off suspicion," Rui calmly replied. "Here, take my utility belt and my dimensional storage ring with you back to the inn."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 828 Return

    ?


    "Why do you want me to take them?" Kane frowned.


    "I can''t have them taking the ring when they inevitably treat my wounds," Rui replied. "And I need a reason to justify why I didn''t drink my healing potion despite such wounds when I return back to the main branch office of Deacon Industries."


    "Ah, that makes sense, yeah," Kane nodded. "What about the assassins though, once you leave the dungeon, won''t you be targeted by them since they''d be on the lookout for the survivors who left? The moment you appear, they''ll be on your back to finish the job. Same with the other survivors too."


    "No," Rui shook his head. "Their goal was not to kill all the Voidhunter Martial Squires discreetly and covertly, as much as it appears to be so. They also can''t kill once we leave the dungeon, it would make them liable and turn thew against them, and everything thates with it. They were dispatched because someone doesn''t want the Voidhunters doing what they were going to do. Someone who has a strong vested interest in preventing the Voider from being caught. They want to discourage other Martial Squires from joining the Voidhunters after word of a targeted attack on the Voidhunters on their very first operation is spread, in addition to stopping the attack itself. Once the four survivors, including myself, inevitably me the obvious data leak on Deacon Industries and break away from our contract. Nobody will want to join the Voidhunters. Chairman Deacon will have to work ten times harder for the same result. That is the desired oue that ''he'' probably wanted."


    "He?" Kane tilted his head.


    "The one who nned the attack, of course," Rui replied. "Guildmaster Bradt has every interest and incentive to foil all of Chairman Deacon''s efforts to catch, interrogate and kill me. He is the only one who has the intelligence-gathering ability to learn of the Voidhunter operation today, while also calling twenty-four Martial Squires, including a grade-ten Martial Squire, on short notice. There is almost nobody else who has the ability and the motives to pull that off."


    "Mhm, yep. That''s what I was thinking too," Kane nodded earnestly, lying through his teeth. He felt too embarrassed to admit that he hadn''t even considered that the guildmaster was responsible, hell, he hadn''t even thought about it. In his mind, there was no way to figure such things out in the middle of a battle, obviously.


    But apparently, this was not a restriction that affected Rui at all.


    "Makes it all the more solid if we both came to the same conclusion independently," Rui remarked as he handed his belt and ring to Kane. "Alright, I''ve bled enough. Time to go, bye-bye."


    He quickly exited the tunnel, with a pained and exhausted expression as he panted out loud, while Kane disappeared into thin air before leaving the dungeon.


    Ruinded on the ground, walking slowly and unsteadily as if he no longer had the strength to sky-walk. He ignored the concerned and odd looks he got as he traveled to the main branch of Deacon Industries. The blood loss was bad, but he had carefully made sure that he wouldn''t be over-taxing his healing factor, but at the same time he needed to make sure that his wounds didn''t heal either. It took a precise understanding of how good his healing was to make sure to inflict the optimal wounds.


    STEP STEP STEP


    He reached the front gate of the main branch of the Deacon Industries. The guards immediately pulled out amunication device.


    "This is Squire Delmin reporting from the front gate. A masked Squire wearing attire matching one of the Voidhunters has just appeared before the front gates severely injured and bleeding," He hastily reported, listening to the replied instruction before nodding and heading forward to give Rui a hand.


    "Hey, you made it, the master has promised that you''ll be given the best treatment avable, so don''t worry," He put one of Rui''s arms over his shoulder before sky-walking carrying Rui along with him inside where he was quickly given emergency treatment and supplied all kinds of potions for an absolutely optimal recovery without any w on even a cellr level.


    Rui rested in a medical room, rxing peacefully, pretending to be asleep for several hours before finally getting up, acting all groggy.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    "Urghh¡­" He rubbed his eyes, shaking his head slightly as if to orient himself properly.


    "Squire Quarrier, you''ve been asleep for quite some time," A nurse nearby told him. "How are you feeling?"


    "¡­Where am I?" He frowned as if having a hard time remembering.


    "You arrived at the main branch of Deacon Industries on the verge of copsing, having lost a lot of blood. You must have been dizzy with the blood loss, causing you to not remember it all that well."


    "I see¡­" Rui murmured. "¡­What about Chairman Deacon? I strongly wish to have an extensive discussion with him."


    "The Chairman has invited you already, having heard of your awakening already," She replied as she essed amunication device. "You have been thoroughly treated and healed, and have made a full recovery, so don''t worry about your health."


    Rui nodded when a woman entered the medical room.


    It was Chairman Deacon''s secretary. "Squire Quarrier, Chairman Deacon has invited you for a dialogue with the other survivors."


    "Other survivors¡­?" He frowned. "How many died?"


    "All but four," She replied straightforwardly.? 2024 N?v/el/Dram/a.Org.


    His eyes widened. "You''re telling me that out of all the sixteen Voidhunters that left for the dungeon, only four, including myself, survived?!"


    "That''s correct, Squire Quarrier," She replied impassively. "Chairman Deacon is willing to amodate you at any time, given your previous health condition. If you want to postpone the mee-"


    "No," Rui shook his head as he got off his bed. "I wish to speak to him immediately."


    A steely look of determination rose on his face as the secretary bowed before escorting him to Chairman Deacon''s office.


    (''I''m not a bad actor, even if I do say so myself,'') He mused inwardly.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 829 Compunctions

    ?


    Rui knew what he had to do. He needed to y the role of the injured and tormented weak Martial Squire that had barely made it out alive. He needed to project righteous anger that anybody in their circumstances would have. In fact, it would be rather strange if he didn''t have at least some misgivings about what had happened, and would make him more suspicious.


    Soon enough, they reached Chairman Deacon''s office.


    "The chairman is awaiting you inside," The secretary bowed to him, gesturing inside.


    Rui nodded, walking in as he pushed open the doors to the office.


    "Squire Quarrier," Chairman Deacon greeted him. "Wee, I''m pleased to see that you''ve recovered well."


    Inside were Chairman Deacon as well as the only three survivors of the Voidhunters.


    Instantly, Rui could read the atmosphere. It was dark. The Martial Squires was furious, yet they were holding back, waiting for Rui to also appear so that all of them could discuss the most important matters together.


    Squire Fren in particr seemed to be on the verge of exploding. Her eyes were widened and bloodshot as she red at Chairman Deacon. She did not bother to hide her aura or her strength in her anger and grief over the loss of her Party Saberstrike. The pressure she exerted on Chairman Deacon was so heavy that his bodyguards needed to guard him against it with their protective auras, shielding his sense of danger and cooling it down.


    Rui had memorized her data, so he was aware that she had been with her party for nearly fifteen years ever since she met them after they had just discovered their Martial Path. Their loss must have been nothing short of traumatizing to her, so he couldpletely understand her state of mind being what it was.


    (''Should have stayed from the assassination contract,'') He shrugged inwardly. He empathized with her, but he wouldn''t change a single thing he would do if he got a chance to redo the entire thing.


    He quickly directed his attention back to Chairman Deacon.Exclusive ? material by N?(/v)elDrama.Org.


    "Thank you, Chairman Deacon," Rui coldly replied with a stern tone. "It''s frankly a miracle that I survived, in all honesty. When we were ambushed by a force of Martial Squires that outnumbered us significantly, I was shocked. If not for the fact that I had already begun to move into our assigned positions, I would have been locked in and would have certainly died instead of standing before you here today."


    "I am pleased to hear that you managed to get away," He nodded with a heavy tone. "If you don''t mind, can you give us a more detail-"


    "I do mind, Chairman Deacon," Rui coldly interrupted him.


    In ordinary circumstances, Chairman Deacon would not have tolerated such tant disrespect. It did not matter if Rui was a Martial Squire, a mere Martial Squire was nothing to him. He had many Martial Squires and even Martial Seniors under his directmand. No ordinary would even dare interrupt him in the middle of his statement.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    Still, these were anything but ordinary circumstances. He could not act heavy-handed when he was liable for the clear data leak that had urred when a group of assassins greatly outnumbering the Voidhunters, ganged up on them and ughtered twelve members of the Voidhunters, leaving only four to survive.


    In reality, he did not entirely know the point of the information leak. It could have been on his side, however, it could also have been on the side of the surviving Martial Squires. Of course, he did not think that all four of the surviving members were responsible for the leak, that was far too unlikely.


    In this situation, he needed to take responsibility regardless. If he didn''t, he could forget about trying to salvage what remained of the Voidhunters. That was his biggest issue at the moment.


    "We can talk about my storyter. That isn''t the most important thing at the moment," Rui coldly continued. "Fact of the matter is, someone sold us out, and instead of looking for a single adventurer, we were instead greeted by, like, twice as many assassins as our own group! I actually am having trouble believing that everybody else but we died!"


    That number was an exaggeration, but Rui didn''t want to appear perfect with the information he had. That would make him suspicious without a doubt, to Chairman Deacon at least.


    "I understand your anger," Chairman Deacon tried to say in a disarming tone.


    "No, you don''t," Squire Fren growled. "I lost the four most important people to me. SOMEONE SOLD THEM OUT."


    The other two Martial Squires that also survived nodded with stern expressions. "Those Martial Squires knew exactly when and where we would be. That''s not a coincidence. Someone supplied information to them about us."


    "I understand yourints and concerns," Chairman Deacon raised his hands. "I have alreadyunched a thorough investigation looking into the data leak and the perpetrator. And I will make them pay the second I found out who they are."


    This was a lie. Chairman Deacon was already aware of who the perpetrator was. There was no one else it could be asides from Guildmaster Bradt. Rui wasn''t the only one who coulde to this conclusion.


    Rui was pretty certain that Chairman Deacon had not only figured out the perpetrator but had also figured out why Guildmaster Bradt had chosen to sabotage this particr operation.


    (''He wouldn''t have be the economic and political powerhouse he is today if he did not have at least that much insight,'') Rui mused inwardly. "Chairman Deacon, the past is already the past. The question I want to know is what measures you''re going to undertake to ensure that this never happens again."


    Chairman Deacon''s eyes lit up as he finally got around to a point that he had been wanting to get around to, yet much to his dismay, he was interrupted once more.


    "I don''t care about what measures you''re going to undertake because you''ve already shown that you cannot be trusted and that you have powerful enemies that are willing to go to any length to hamper your agents. I''m quitting," Squire Fren got up after dering coldly, leaving the room.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 830 Bounty

    ?


    That deration came as a bit of a shock, but, in hindsight, it shouldn''t have.


    (''I can see why she wants to leave the ce whose negligence and enemies caused the death of the people she cared the most for,'') Ruipletely understood her decision.


    The other two surviving Martial Squires also followed suit when they saw that even the strongest Martial Squire among them refused to continue working under Chairman Deacon.


    "I think I too can''t afford to continue under this contract,"


    "I did note to the Shionel Confederation to get embroiled in some kind of political conflict,"


    The three Martial Squires left the room, leaving only Rui left.? 2024 N?v/el/Dram/a.Org.


    To his credit, Chairman Deacon did not seem fazed by them leaving. He turned towards Rui with a nk expression "What about you?"


    Rui considered his next course of action, he had not expected that the three other survivors would exit the equation this quickly, and that was a bit of an unexpected oue.


    At the moment, he could choose to stay or leave. Regardless of which oue he chose, he did not have much to say.


    "I''m not too inclined to leave just yet," Rui replied.


    "I''m surprised. You just saw three Martial Squires stronger than you leaving the Voidhunter team," Chairman Deaconmented.


    "I didn''t say I was going to stay yet," Rui added. "If I don''t like what it is to follow, I just very well might decide to leave as well. So, I suppose I am interested in hearing what you have to say. I also do have some conditions."


    "Like what?" Chairman Deacon raised an eyebrow with interest.


    "I do not wish to partake in official operations such as this anymore, since it''s already been made clear that you are unable to keep such things covert from your enemies, whoever they are. I don''t mind staying as a part of the Voidhunters if you are willing to grant some guarantees as a bare minimum. For one, I do not wish to partake in any official mission since it''s clear that whoever your enemy is, they can ess information through your people somehow. In which case, I would rather operate independently without informing anyone of my ns to allow for a potential leak in information," Rui exined.


    "That level of independence makes it pointless to even stay," Chairman Deacon snorted.


    "Don''t you grant independence ording to the contract?" Rui raised an eyebrow


    "We do, but at the very least, you''re registered as a Voidhunter in official documentation," He replied. "With this arrangement, you''re no different from a distant mercenary."


    "I think that''s a more viable way to go about this," Rui replied. "At the very least, I can''t be officially paraded around as a Voidhunter anymore after what happened."


    "¡­" Chairman Deacon sighed. "Alright, fine. But your remuneration goes down. And we won''t be covering expenses."<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    "Deal," Rui nodded. "However, I need ess to intelligence on the investigation in order to keep up. There''s no point in doing this otherwise."


    "That''s a given, I intend to be more liberal and reduce the level of coordination and partnership anyway, after this incident," He mentioned. "You can look forward to that."


    "Reduce the level of coordination?" Rui raised an eyebrow. "What exactly do you mean?"


    "To a certain extent, it''s simr to what you''re proposing, but the Voidhunter idea is a wed way to go about it," He replied. "A dungeon bounty is a better way to go about it, you might even be interested yourself."


    Rui''s eyes widened as he understood the man''s ns. "You n to gather more people with a more free and independent engagement. You can gather more people using a bounty, but you have far less control, you still can mobilize a greater amount of Martial resources. Furthermore, the legality is not a problem since it would be a bounty to kill the Voider inside the dungeon. Whoever is after you cannot possibly hamper so many independent agents."


    "It''s quite shrewd of you to have realized all of that in an instant," Chairman Deacon remarked, giving Rui a look of interest.


    Rui cursed himself inwardly as he realized he got carried away with his analysis. It was careless, however, he had been momentarily taken aback, losing his cool.


    "But you''re correct," Chairman Deacon continued, without giving it much further thought, causing Rui to sigh in relief. "Thus, if you want to work as a bounty hunter, that can be considered as well. It''s just that you won''t be a Voidhunter anymore. You can choose to go either way."


    He got up. "Give it some thought, you can contact my secretary directly and inform them of your choice. For now, we can put a pin in this discussion as I have some other pressing engagements."


    "I understand," Rui got up.


    "For what it is worth, I am quite sorrowful about what happened," He replied with a hint of emotion shing across his face for a moment before disappearing.


    "Thank you," Rui replied, before leaving the office entirely absorbed in his own thoughts.


    (''This isn''t good. He is handling this more prudently than I had expected,'') Rui tutted.


    Chairman Deacon quickly realized that the Voidhunter model alone wasn''t enough to seed, seeing as how Guildmaster Bradt had interfered heavily at a crucial juncture. Word of the devastating loss suffered by the Voidhunters would have undoubtedly spread, either naturally or forcefully by Guildmaster Bradt''s own doing.


    Once that happened, Chairman Deacon could kiss any chance of trying to reel people into the Voidhunters. It was a losing battle.


    He too had realized this and had decided to take another road altogether.


    By simply cing a gigantic bounty on Rui''s head, he could gather arge amount of manpower working to locate and track down Rui. Although these people would not be under their own direct control, which was certainly vexing to someone like Chairman Deacon, at the very least he couldn''t be hampered that easily anymore.


    (''Damn, it was a great move,'') Rui sighed. (''No wonder he is considered a rival to Guildmaster Bradt.'')


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 831 Rise

    ?


    "Tsk," Tui tutted. (''You''ve made my job harder, Guildmaster Bradt.'')


    Guildmaster Bradt probably thought he was doing a favor to Rui and to himself, and frankly, given that he didn''t know that Rui had infiltrated the Voidhunters, it made sense that he thought this way.


    However, Rui couldn''t even tell him to stop. Because even doing that would reveal that he was involved somehow. That would instantly make the four surviving martial Squires suspicious, two of whom were women.


    That would be no different from revealing that he himself was the Voider. Thus his hands were tied in that regard.


    (''On top of that, Guildmaster Bradt cannot stop Chairman Deacon from cing a bounty on my head,'') Rui knew that.? 2024 N?v/el/Dram/a.Org.


    After all, cing a bounty on someone inside the dungeon was legal, thus there was no avenue for Guildmaster Bradt to fight this with the power of the state. On top of that, he could not use his own power to fight back publically. Since that would be no different from announcing that he was associated with the Voider.


    That would mean that he was colluding with a criminal who had evaded tax at one point. That would be enough tounch a formal investigation against him, even if he was the Guildmaster. That would be damning.


    He couldn''t intervene from the shadows either, since his own private force could not possibly fight off all the people who epted the bounty. The losses were also not worth the gains.


    (''All of this means that I''m kind on my own,'') Rui''s eyes narrowed.


    Chairman Deacon indicated that he was considering publicizing the intelligence on the Voider. That would allow all the bounty hunters to track him more efficiently and with better awareness.


    (''That''s not all,'') Rui sighed. ("Chairman Deacon, Guildmaster Bradt. Those two are undoubtedly the two most powerful people in the Shionel Confederation. But they are not the only ones around, and they are not the only ones with power, and with interests that criss-cross with mine.'')


    There were many powerful merchants in the Shionel Confederation who were in the supplier industries that Esosale Suppliers was beginning to dominate. After all, the Shionel Merchant Guild wasprised of the top hundred most powerful and sessful merchants. Number one was without a doubt Guildmaster Bradt, followed by Chairman Deacon, yet while quite far behind, the other ny-eight were not weak.


    Many of them were undoubtedly wishing death on the Voider for disrupting the market. While none of them were as powerful as Chairman Deacon, they too could make their efforts into stopping Rui under the wing of Chairman Deacon''s publicized intelligence and the giant bounty that Chairman Deacon was inevitably going to be ced on his head.


    (''From the very start, the Voidhunters were merely the first step,'') Rui realized in hindsight. (''There are greater measures that he can and will take.'')


    Arge portion of the Shionel Merchant Guild would willingly lend their power to Chairman Deacon in the form of their privatized Martial Squires, and other resources.


    That would grant Chairman Deacon a titanic amount of power at his disposal.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    (''However, that''s not all,'') Rui narrowed his eyes. (''It''s not just the disenfranchised merchants that are on his side. He also has other stakeholders supporting him. But they''re just not from the country.'')


    The merchants of the Shionel Merchant Guild were not the only ones who had a stake in the Shionel Dungeon. The many countries participating in the dungeon raid and plundering process were all stakeholders as well, who were no doubt pissed off by the Esosale Suppliers gaining ess to a dominant share of the esoteric resources from the Shionel Merchant Guild would also most likely implicitly cooperate with Chairman Deacon.


    The reason for this was that it was pretty clear that the Guildmaster Bradt was a staunch supporter and partner of Esosale Suppliers. This meant that they would naturally support his rival if they wanted to hamper Guildmaster Bradt.


    So that meant that not only would Rui have to deal with the many frencer bounty hunters that would arise from the bounty, but he would also have to deal with the pressure from the many disenfranchised and disgruntled merchants of the Shionel Merchants that were quite powerful and rich themselves.


    On top of that, he would need to deal with the pressure that would emerge from the disgruntled nations that were each trying to carve out a portion of the Shionel Dungeon for themselves.


    "Not gonna lie," Kane said after Rui reached home and exined everything. "That''s insane."


    "Yeah, it seems we''ll have to be even more careful than we already are," Rui mentioned.


    "That we already are?" Kane emphasized with a surprised expression on his face. "Is that even possible? I haven''t been as careful in any of my past covert missions as I have been in this mission. The sheer number of things that we''ve gone through out of care is insane."


    "True," Rui nodded. "Still, it''s better safe than sorry. We''ll have to revisit some of our established rules and protocols and refine them even more."


    Rui needed to proceed with deep care and caution. "Honestly, avoiding already discovered floors with human presence is probably the only way to avoid all of this."


    "Hm?" Kane tilted his head.


    "I''m saying that existing and discovered floors are going to be infested by Martial Squires who are going to be looking for us," Rui calmly analyzed their circumstances. "While we could somehow still harvest. It''s too dangerous. A single mishap and it''s game over."


    This was true. They had gone through so much to try and keep their identities as the Voider a secret in the operation with the Voidhunters. The difficulty was only keep getting higher and higher.


    Rui didn''t think that it was wise to keep subjecting themselves topete with an increasingly hostile dungeon. They were not perfect, they would make a mistake at some point or the other.


    "Thus, we need to rise above thispetition and ensure they can''t reach us."


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 Chapter 832 Farlo

    ?


    "And now, please wee Professor Farlo Vernint of the Shionel Universities of Humanities!" Text ? by N0ve/lDrama.Org.


    A huge round of apuse ensued as an elderly man walked onstage, waving at therge crowd that had gathered that day, before proceeding to shake the hand of the man who announced and introduced him. The two men then took a seat, waiting for the apuse to die down before engaging in a dialogue.


    "Professor Farlo is one of the foremost authorities on the happenings of the Shionel Dungeon and its impact on the economy. He has published many research papers on the matter, as well as the bestseller book on the topic called the Dungeon Chronicles," The host cheerfully exined, before turning back. "Professor, thank you so much foring on tonight."


    "Thank you for having me," The professor smiled.


    "Professor Farlo, we have a lot of exciting things to delve into," The host energetically began. "For one, it''s been a year since the Shionel Dungeon was discovered and opened up. And rapidly soon after a supplier and consumer market quickly formed, surrounding the Shionel Dungeon and the untold resources that it could provide to the world. The sheer impact that it has had on our country is truly immense, is it not?"


    "Well, I think immense is an understatement, Jimmy," The professor began with an interested tone. "Frankly, I think the impact that it has had is nothing short of historical and revolutionary. The Shionel Confederation is a state that was formed on the basis ofmerce. Among all the nations in this section of the Panama Continent, our nation''s poption has the highest proportion of merchants and businessmen. We''re the only nation whose international consumer market dwarfs our domestic market, and we''re truly the only nation whose supplier market dwarfs our domestic consumer market. Meaning our economy truly runs on the countless merchants, businessmen, and entrepreneurs who offer goods or services. Commerce is the bloodline of our nation. That is why the discovery of the Shionel Dungeon, which is nothing short of an oasis of untold resources, is a boon to our nation. The world wants what it can provide, and we answer the call and supply the demand."


    "Indeed," The h0st replied. "You''re truly correct in saying that it isn''t short of revolutionary. The GDP per capita has increased by a factor of eight in the span of a single year! That''s an absolutely unprecedented spike in the economy since the very founding of the Shionel Confederation!"


    Professor Farlo nodded vigorously. "Furthermore, the GDP per capita has increased despite the poption also spiking up due to mass immigration. The annual GDP in the past twelve months has been the single highest recorded GDP in any continuous twelve-month period in the history of our great nation."


    "Not only has the discovery of the Shionel Dungeon invigorated our economy, but it has invigorated many parts of our culture as well," The host remarked. "This is one particr consequence that I am personally familiar with our little weekly discussion events. There''s so much to talk about that we have considered doubling the number of events we hold a week to get to all of it! The biggest and most exciting aspects of all of this are the countless Martial Squires that have taken part in the exploration and plunder of the Shionel Dungeon. Those are the most fun to talk about it."


    That earned an approving cheer from the crowd that strongly agreed with that sentiment. The crowd had basically begun to treat the most prominent Martial Squires that raided the dungeon as superstar celebrities.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    S-rank Martial Squires earned a lot of admiration and attention. It was to the degree that they had their own dedicated fanbases and fan clubs. For a brief period of time, Martial Squires had gained more prominence than higher Realms.


    Of course, this was very temporary, once the dungeon wasrgely raided and plundered, the artificially boosted value and prominence of Martial Squires would soon dissipate, and things would return back to normal. Every generation of Martial Artists would experience having their value artificially boosted temporarily, and also experience Martial Artists of lower Realms experiencing the same thing.


    "The cultural impact of the Shionel Dungeon on our nation has not been small," The good professor nodded. "If there''s anything to be criticized about the impact of the Shionel Dungeon, it would be the fact that the impact of the Shionel Dungeon has had an adverse effect on our culture. That is one of the strongest critiques that critics leverage against the Shionel Dungeon."


    "Oh, and what exactly is this so-called adverse effect?" Jimmy asked with curiosity.


    "I should rify that this isn''t my stance or my personal view," The professor prefaced. "But to characterize their argument, it is that the discovery and open policy of the Shionel Dungeon has invited far too much foreign influence into our country. It is generally not desirable to have an abrupt and huge amount of immigrants hailing from different cultures andnguages join and settles into the country in such an inorganic and unnatural fashion. It dilutes the original culture of the country and threatens to usurp the nation. Furthermore, it leads to a lot of cultural tension and even conflict. Multi-culturalism without a tying identity is generally undesirable. After all, the world is an example of that, and the world is at war."


    "I see," Jimmy frowned. "That makes sense, yet, I feel as though that doesn''t apply to a nation like the Shionel Confederation."


    "I agree," The professor nodded. "Any concerns regarding culture are, in my opinion, misced. The Shionel Confederation was not born out of a poption with a united culture. If anything, the original constituents of the originally established Shionel settlement were vastly more diverse than the current state of the Shionel Confederation. Yet there was one force and also one identity that was strong enough to unite them despite that. Do you know what that is?"


    Jimmy smiled knowingly. "Money. They were merchants."


    "Exactly!" The professor grew more animated. "Their identities as merchants, as people who employed resources, capital, and manpower to produce demanded goods and services to earn a profit is the fundamental identity that united them together to create a nation!"


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 Chapter 833 Culture

    ?? 2024 N?v/el/Dram/a.Org.


    The original Shionel settlement was nothing more than an attempt at earning more money. It was difficult for individual merchants, entrepreneurs, and skilledborers to be able to consistently receive a consistent demand for their goods and services and also be remunerated in amensurate manner in that era and region.


    The reason for this was that markets were nowhere near as sophisticated as they were today. There were no regtions or enforcement. Currency as a concept was still immature and in its infancy and the barter system was still in ce for the most part. Furthermore, the fragmented groups were too small to have any meaningful currency that could be used universally within a certain geographic region, or could at least be exchanged for other currency.


    This was why the many struggling merchants andborers gathered together in arge enough settlement to form the original Shionel settlement. Their sole aim was to unite their interests in one big interest groupprising thousands of merchants, entrepreneurs, andborers, and negotiate and bargain as arger and more powerful group that is better able to secure their interests and ess the existing demand for goods and services they were capable of providing.


    "In short, money was the unifying factor. Not shared culture or values. The only shared value is money. Money can transcendnguage, cultural, biological, and perhaps even species differences!" The professor grew increasingly excited. "The only way for the Shionel Confederation could ever lose its ''culture'' is if the state stops revolving around money. And that is why I respectfully disagree with my colleagues who are skeptical and or against the extensivemercialization of the Shionel Dungeon."


    This earned an apuse of approval from the audience. It seemed that his sentiment was quite attractive.


    "I see," Jimmy nodded. "That does make a lot of sense, I have to admit. It doesn''t matter what the dominant culture is, so long as the highest value is money. However, what we do care about is who the dominant adventurers are, and also who the dominant market yers are. The Shionel Confederation has be a melting pot for many powerful forces that arepeting to carve out a share in the Shionel Dungeon. It''s been exciting watching different groups bring out their best Martial Squires while also doing their very best to buy the best Martial Squires and parties to plunder the dungeon for them. What are your thoughts on that?"


    "Oh, it''s most certainly been quite fascinating to study the supplier market patterns of the Shionel Confederation in the past year. A lot of it has been more or less in line with my predictions. Deacon Industriespletely dominated a lion''s share of each floor''s yield, making him the strongest force in the supplier market. There are tons of sectors and industries that are consumers of the raw esoteric resource supplier industries, this directly gives Deacon Industries a giant amount of influence over all of them, which Chairman Deacon has surely put to great use in many ways. He was who I bet as the ultimate winning of the Shionel Dungeon, given that his stronghold over the market had been unbreakable for an entire year."


    "''Had been''," Jimmy offered him a wry smile. "Not anymore it seems."<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    "Not anymore, no," The professorughed good-heartedly. "Or, to be more precise, someone has sessfully broken his dominance on shares of the yield of the twelfth floor of the Shionel Dungeon. It has been all the buzz around town recently. The mysterious, unknown, and anonymously created and registered Esosale Suppliers that had very recently begun to be aggressively promoted by the Bradt Distribution Services have taken everyone by surprise. Frankly, for all my knowledge and experience, I had never predicted something like this happening even in my wildest dream, I have to admit. A random force appearing out of nowhere and dethroning the titan from its throne and suddenly supplying massive amounts of esoteric resource yields that had been disappearing from the twelfth floor? Such a thing sounds like a tale from a fictional novel, rather than a real event. Yet I have to admit that I was quite excited at this revtion as well. The world is full of surprises, without a doubt."


    "The sheer number of theories, spections, and conjectures that have been flying around leave my head spinning. I''m unable to tell what is true, and what isn''t," Jimmy sighed. "I was hoping you could shed some light on this strange phenomenon."


    "Haha, I can understand why it is so confusing," Jimmyughed goodheartedly. "Unfortunately, it is a very confusing oue frankly. Even I''m not entirely certain of my theories. But I can share with you some of my insights, hypotheses, and suspicions, if that''s alright."


    Jimmy nodded vigorously. "Most certainly,"


    It was actually the main reason that the professor had been invited in the first ce, instead of popr S-rank parties or other more shy guests. The Esosale Supplier phenomenon was so interesting and fascinating to literally everybody, that it was worth bringing on a more mundane and boring yet highly knowledgeable guest to shed some light on the matter.


    "There''s a lot of information to sort out here, so we might jump around a bit," The professor warned lightly. "Chronologically, the first outlying event was the clearance of the second floor anonymously, and the tax evasion. That was the first interesting event that gained temporary traction, but it was not all that significant since the second floor was a dead floor. However, the next shocking event was the drastic change in policies from Guildmaster Bradt that allowed for anonymity in a lot of areas in the Shionel Confederation that were previously impossible. This was a drastic amendment to protocols that were not on the agenda of matters that Guildmaster Bradt had based his campaign. It frankly still doesn''t make a lot of sense to us, but it could make sense under the hypothesis that the amendment was to allow for the anonymous creation and registration of Esosale Suppliers that Guildmaster Bradt aggressively promoted after."


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 Chapter 834 Know

    ?


    The lower echelons of society generallycked the information that the highest echelons of society possessed. This was a result ofcking authority to ess ssified information orcking means to ess information that only came with being rich and powerful. Thus, they were far morecking in knowledge that wasmon and basic knowledge amongst the upper echelons.


    In the halls of the Shionel Merchant Guild, the situation was mostly clear to all of the Cab Merchants. Chairman Deacon was Guildmaster Bradt''s greatest rival and had been undergoing massive amounts of growth that allowed him to shake the otherwise rock-solid political stronghold that Guildmaster Bradt had created by securing the interests and benefits of a majority of the voters.


    They had absolutely no misconceptions about why the Guildmaster had passed the bill, in hindsight. It was obvious that the passing of the bill had something to do with the anonymous creation and registration of Esosale Suppliers. It was no coincidence that this emptypany that he aggressively promoted somehow magically seemed to gain ess to huge amounts of resource yields that were then sold to the consumer market and was formed immediately after the bill he passed regarding the changes in protocols for identity registration and verification. There was simply none of them who bought this highly mysteriouspany that Guildmaster Bradt was aggressively promoting came right after he made it easier for everyone to be connected.


    It was clear to the Cab Merchants of the Shionel Merchant Guild that Esosale Suppliers was the reason that Guildmaster Bradt had passed that bill. Esosale Suppliers was Guildmaster Bradt''s solution to hampering the growth of Chairman Deacon.


    The only thing that was unclear to the Cab Merchants was the rtionship between Guildmaster Bradt and Esosale Suppliers.


    Some thought that Esosale Suppliers was created by Guildmaster Bradt who had employed the mysterious force that was able to harvest huge amounts of esoteric yield from the Shionel Dungeon. Others thought that it was created by an entity that had developed an incredibly revolutionary way of extracting resources from the Shionel Dungeon, but did not want to be targeted.


    Regardless, even this waspletely unknown to the public. An overwhelming majority of people had not worked out the connection between Esosale Suppliers and the poprly-dubbed Voider that was suspected to be the reason for the disappearance of the esoteric yields on the twelfth floor.


    "And so, I believe that this is most likely a move from Guildmaster Bradt who is eager to break Deacon Industries'' dominance in the supplier market. It would exin why Chairman Deacon created the Voidhunters team that has been said to have beenrgely wiped out in the dungeon by some group of assassins targeting them," Professor Farlo continued, after exining everything, absorbed in his own words. "Although we don''t have proof that the Voider, the individual responsible for mysteriously clearing the second floor is actually responsible for the disappearance of esoteric resources on the twelfth floor if Chairman Deacon believes it, then that probably means that he has some information that we don''t have."


    "Incredible!" Jimmy eximed. "That almost sounds like a crazy conspiracy theory, but it makes a lot of sense."<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    "In this case, unless we truly are missing a lot of information or are operating on misinformation, I think probably is not too far from the truth. The truth about Esosale Suppliers is most likely deeper than we can all imagine. There are likely powerful forces conspiring and fighting for political power, right before our very eyes, disguised in in sight, and we''re simply unable to see the truth."? 2024 N?v/el/Dram/a.Org.


    This was shocking to hear to the crowd that what they had simply treated as an exciting oddity and mystery was actually a deep political powery and conspiracy between the most powerful political leaders fighting for power through the Shionel market.


    "That is truly fascinating and incredibly terrifying to hear," Jimmyughed as he remarked. "Honestly, I don''t even know if I''ll be able to sleep at night. To think that the Voider has gone from being a rtively momentary gossip story to potentially being the key to victory in a political battle that will change the Shionel Confederation."


    "It most certainly will. Whoever emerges as a victor at the end of this debacle will most likely remain unchallenged for a very long time. Thus neither side is willing to cede easily. Chairman Deacon may have suffered a bad setback with his preliminary Voidhunter operation. But realistically, that doesn''t matter. The death of a dozen Martial Squires is barely a sting to such titans. That team was something put together on extremely short notice. The two of them can leverage their massive economic capital to pull in a much greater number of Martial Squires. I imagine you can expect a storm to ur in the Shionel Confederation and in the dungeon as well."


    This raised waves of murmurs from the crowds. Many of them were excited to see the two political giants duke it out and to see which one of themes out on top. The scale of this event was sorge and beyond that it didn''t have too much to do with ordinary citizens of the Shionel Confederation like themselves. Thus they could, to some, extent regard the situation with a certain level of detachment.


    "Of course," The professor followed up. "That''s just a theory. I don''t have any proof that this is the case. It could be the case that I''m reading too deeply into certain things or not reading deep enough into other things. I want to be clear that none of this is fact."


    It didn''t matter what he followed up with. The crowd was too excited with the information that he had provided to let it go this early and judge it objectively. They weren''t qualified to do such a thing in the first ce, and would just simply put their trust in his thoughts given that he''s an academic, and cheered on as they excited themselves on such a fascinating conspiracy theory.


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 Chapter 835 Bounty

    ?


    Soon enough, as Rui predicted, a bombshell dropped in the Shionel Confederation. Deacon Industries published an announcement in their media outlets and posted posters, and Chairman Deacon himself held a public press conference on the issue.


    Deacon Industries was issuing a public bounty on the Voider for ten million Shionel gold coins. This sum of money shook the nation, ten million gold coins was an astronomic sum of money to kill a single Martial Squire. This sum of money was unprecedented as a bounty for a Martial Squire.


    In fact, as far as everyone could tell, never in the history of the Age of Martial Art had a Martial Squire had such a gigantic bounty ced on their head. Such an enormous sum of gold was not trivial even for the mighty powerhouse that Deacon Industries was.


    Bounties in the Shionel Confederation were usually ced on criminals by the state as a way to mobilize frencer Martial Artists into aidingw enforcement. The reason they were otherwise illegal was that they vited thew and constituted conspiracy to murder and assault, and would normally instantlynd Chairman Deacon in prison and disbarred from the Shionel Merchant Guild.


    However, this was only under normal circumstances. The Shionel Dungeon was not subject to these constraints and restrictions, mostly because now could be enforced within the Shionel Dungeon.


    Chairman Deacon was exploiting that loophole to the absolute fullest. Killing the Voider inside the Shionel Dungeon was legal, and now would fetch one ten million gold coins.


    Of course, things weren''t as simple as that. For one, how did one verify that the individual, or individuals that were killed were the Voider?


    Such a thing was harder to gauge as their identity was unknown. Regardless, Deacon Industries hadid many conditions that would go into identifying whether the individual was actually the Voider, or not.


    For one, each bounty hunter was encouraged to purchase a recording device and record the individual suspected to be the Voider for whatever reason. Bounty hunters were also encouraged to procure the corpse or corpses and give it to Deacon industries that would analyze whether or not they were the Voider.


    The way to do this would be to analyze their means of harvesting, the identity of the corpse, the existing harvested yield, etc. The Voider had a very unique way of doing things when it came to the extraction of esoteric resource deposits, storage, and transport. These could be analyzed and could be used to verify this individual possessed the remarkable ability to harvest at titanic rates that the Voider was confirmed to have.


    This sounded a bit flimsy and not concrete at all, the conditions were subjective. However, the reward was absurd. The Shionel currency was weighted very heavily, each gold coin meant a lot when converted to most other currencies. Ten million Shionel golds were nothing short of a small fortune.<novelsnext></novelsnext>Text ? by N0ve/lDrama.Org.


    Furthermore, if this bounty was made by a smaller and less credible party, it wouldn''t have garnered much trust at all. However, this was the Deacon Industries. On top of all of that, they had made such a big and loud show about it attracting attention internationally, that they did not dare intend on betraying any bounty hunter that seeded!


    Credibility, reliability, and history were some of the more intangible variables, yet also some of the most important variables that merchants and businesses needed to pay attention to. In fact, these were variables that made or broke sess.


    It wasn''t because of moral reasons thatpanies worked hard to maintain honest operations, it was purely becausepanies that broke their word, deceived third parties, and generally engaged in shady operations were avoided like the gue. There were extremely practical reasons to ensure that one''s transactions and operations were clean.


    In that regard, Deacon Industries was extremely rigorous and solid. Its sheer credibility and reliability were huge reasons that it was able to reach the level that it had reached. If Deacon Industries dared to tantly cheat bounty hunters and break their word, the decades that had gone into building up its pristine credibility and reputation would be utterly annihted overnight. Prospective third-party clients, customers, and business partners would seriously reconsider the wisdom of coborating with apany that unhesitatingly broke its word despite making such a big fuss about it and announcing it to the world.


    Deacon Industries would rather lose ten million gold coins than their credibility and reputation. Losing thetter would cause far more damage in the long run, as would letting Rui run around. That was why Chairman Deacon did not hesitate to go big from the very get-go and offer a huge sum of money as a bounty.


    That was why the general sentiment and response to the bounty was quite positive, no one believed that this was a scam. A huge number of Martial Squires expressed interest and eagerness to hunt the Voider. A bounty meant that they could still get paid if they seed, and they didn''t need to abide by orders from Deacon Industries. As long as they seeded, they would get a huge bounty in return.


    On top of all of that, Deacon Industries was providing full ess to all of its intelligence surrounding the Voider, which was a huge help, since it allowed all the bounty hunters to gain a basic understanding of the Voider and made it likelier that they would catch the Voider. Without the information, they would be running blind and would have a much harder time catching even basic information about him.


    The intelligence of Deacon Industries would also be updated with all information on the Voider avable, meaning any time any progress was made. That progress would also greatly aid Martial Squires in the future allowing them to act on more updated information.


    The sheer number of bounty hunters acting with this information made people quite optimistic that the Voider would eventually be hunted.


    Soon enough, huge numbers of Martial Squires registered as bounty hunters inrge droves, looking to be the ones to catch the Voider.


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 Chapter 836 Trap

    ?


    "Hmmm," Rui hummed as he analyzed thetest happenings. "This is rough,"


    "Are we screwed?" Kane sighed. "It was a good run while itsted."


    "Rx, we''re not screwed," Rui replied. "However, we can forget about trying to explore already discovered floors. From here on out, we should avoid it altogether. We always nned to reach this stage, but perhaps we''ll have to elerate the process. There are too many threats around us. I don''t feelfortable with all of this."


    He got up, heading for the door. "I''ll be back,"


    "Where are you headed?" Kane asked.


    "I''ll register as a bounty hunter," Rui replied. "Get prepped, we''re going dungeon raiding soon enough."


    Rui headed towards Deacon Industries where the basic registration process was happening. What surprised Rui when he got there was howrge the crowd was.


    (''What the¡­'') He frowned as he got in line. (''Why on Earth are so many people joining? Surely most of these adventurers have other arrangements. Patrons, contracts, ces of employment¡­ How can they possibly also take up something as time-consuming as bounty-hunting when''-)


    His thoughts halted when he realized the answer. (''It''s because it''s an open-ended bounty that they can afford to register. Simply registering is not problematic since it does not convey any burdens or responsibilities. It simply allows them to ess the intelligence that Deacon Industries is offering to bounty hunters and allows Deacon Industries to keep score on the number of Martial Squire registering as bounty hunters for this mission.'')


    What that meant was that even if they did not find the Voider, or even try to, they would still have no problems, however, if they did find and kill him, then they could immediately provide his corpse to Deacon Industries without any issues.


    Furthermore, they could ess information on his more easily too. Furthermore, the nonmittal nature of the registration meant that there was no issue with spending as much or as little time whenever they wanted.


    It was quite convenient and there was no harm in registering.


    (''Hm, quite the good strategy on Deacon''s part,'') Rui mused with mixed feelings as he navigated the crowd.


    He only intended to register to be able to ess the investigative reports on himself, and nothing else.


    He was aware that he was probably giving himself away to a certain extent since Chairman Deacon could be sure that the Voider would register to keep tabs on his own investigation, but he had decided that this trade-off was worth it.


    Even if Chairman Deacon became more certain that the Voider was among this group, the number of Martial Squires that had already registered and would continue to register would make the suspect pool absurdlyrge and impractical. It was no different from having no clues whatsoever.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    Further, Chairman Deacon would also have to consider the possibility that the Voider was essing information through an associated third party, which further made his job harder.


    Ultimately, the negatives were not worth the positives.


    However, Rui was not naive enough to think that there was no scheme in any of this. While the world might simply think Chairman Deacon was simply trying to be good-hearted and help the Martial Squires. Rui was shrewd enough to make out how Chairman Deacon could exploit the fact that the Voider would be paying attention to the investigation for maniption.


    There were ways that he could potentially manipte the Voider by nting false information that would cause the Voider to act a certain way, or choose to make a certain decision that Chairman Deacon would be on the lookout for.


    For instance, if Chairman Deacon managed to convince the Voider that they had managed to develop a way that allowed them to narrow down the Voider''s positions through his Martial attire marked with some esoteric substance, then the Voider, if convinced, would naturally do his best to dispose of it and procure an alternative perhaps.


    In that case, Chairman Deacon could potentially notice any suspicious movements. Worst case scenario, if he kept tabs on all the Martial Squires, he might just be able to catch someone who would act exactly as they would if they were afraid of getting caught.


    Essentially, Chairman Deacon was also using this bounty to get into the mind of the Voider and manipte him to reveal himself using borate deception, traps, and even misinformation.


    Rui was pretty sure that this was the true intention of Chairman Deacon.Text ? by N0ve/lDrama.Org.


    Still, he wasn''t fazed. (''Neat, but that''s not going to work on me.'')


    Had it been any other Martial Squire, they would not be able to avoid falling into his trap and eventually revealing themselves. But Rui was probably the only Martial Squire shrewd enough to not only understand the true purpose of the publicized intelligence but also capable enough to avoid the traps and pitfalls that came with that.


    (''All he needs is a single slip-up to elerate his progress in his investigation,'') Rui narrowed his eyes as he eventually got to the registration part. (''We definitely need to discover our own floors and harvest esoteric resource deposits there. No amount of scheming will be able to get us if we''re there where they can''t reach us.'')


    Every time a new floor was discovered, the Martial Squires who discovered it informed the Shionel Adventurer Guild which rewarded them extremely handsomely for the discovery. This was to ensure that no Martial Squire kept new floors a secret when they discovered it.


    Thankfully, Rui didn''t give a damn about the measly rewardpared to the esoteric plunders of a whole floor. Thus, he intended to keep it a secret.


    When the floors that he would discover would naturally be discovered by other Martial Squires, they would only find empty floors that were infested with monsters but not a single deposit of esoteric resources left.


    There was no amount of scheming that would be able to make up for such a drastic gap in explorative and navigation capability, and Rui intended to show Chairman Deacon that he did not stand a chance.


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 Chapter 837 Future

    ?


    "Ready?" Rui asked.


    "Yep, this should be entirely very fun," Kane sighed.


    "Cheer up," Rui told him. "We''re going to see new sights."


    The two of them had already been in Void Step together for quite a while now. Yet it was only after they entered the dungeon that they stopped the technique. Inside the dungeon, nobody could sense them beyond a certain range anyway, thus it was better to let Kane save his stamina and use it when it was necessary, like when they were harvesting resources.


    "We''re going to ignore all of the established paths to the existing floors right?" Kane asked.


    "Yep, we''re going to randomly explore tunnels until we hit a new floor, or die trying!" Rui grew a little excited, eximing emphatically.


    "How about trying another day?" Kane asked ndly. "I''d rather fail than die trying to seed like, you know, a sane person."


    The two of them bickered as they randomly picked arge tunnel at a random part of the entry into the dungeon before following it down merrily.


    "Doesn''t this feel so much better though?" Rui asked Kane at some point while still being extremely vignt of their surroundings. If he got careless, they could very easily die from some lethal attack from a monster. If they got hit by a taipan, then they were dead for sure. "Don''t you enjoy the pure and sheer freedom thates with choosing your own path and looking for a new destination?"


    "It would be rxing if it weren''t for the fact that I''m basically blind to my Martial Squire standards standing in probably the most dangerous environment anywhere within ten thousand kilometers," Kane exined. "It''s a shame I can''t be as nearly at ease as you are. Hell forget ease, you''re basically beaming right now."


    "Yeah," Rui nodded with a smile. "Because this rough adventure has entirely been of my own creation thus far, no missions, no Martial Union, no clientele. It''s fun to do things for your own self than for others."


    "I suppose I can see that," Kane shrugged. "I''m pretty far away from the Arrancar Family, so I suppose that is definitely a plus. Furthermore, I have to admit, helping you set off bombs in the Shionel Confederation has been pretty exciting. More exciting than most things that have happened in my life."


    Rui gave Kane a knowing nce.


    Kane had spent most of his life trapped by the Arrancar family because of the dramatic talent for Martial Art andbat he had demonstrated even when he was a toddler. It had caused him to develop a deep hatred for his family, and a deep yearning to escape them and go far away from them in the world.


    It had been to the point that even getting into the Martial Academy had been one of the best things that had happened to him. Rui was sure that this was the first time he had even gone this out of his way for none other than himself. <novelsnext></novelsnext>


    "Heh, maybe you can stay here," Rui shrugged. "Build a new life here far away from your family."Text ? by N0ve/lDrama.Org.


    "Maybe," Kane replied nonchntly. "But they''d probably find me here as well. If I want them to not find me. I need to erase myself from their sights entirely. But I''m not strong enough to do that, for now."


    Kane''s family was a powerful Martial Familyprising many Martial Artists of all Realms, barring the sole Martial Sage of the family. The only reason he was able to stay away from them from the moment was the protection that came from his political affiliation.


    The second that he left the country forever, that protection was gone. The Lightning Martial Sect would not help a Martial Artist that was not going to aid their cause and even leave the country forever.


    "Not strong enough you say," Rui echoed his words. "Then for how long do you intend to wait?"


    Kane considered his thoughts. "I think if I even break through to Martial Senior, I''ll be able to use Void Step to such a level that they won''t be able to track me."


    "Hm," Rui considered the matter.


    The problem was that both of them knew too little of what Martial Artists of higher Realms were capable of. Rui had seen three Martial Seniors fight, but that did not mean he knew that Martial Seniors in general were capable of. Nor did that mean he knew what Martial Masters and above were capable of. These mighty beings were so beyond his reach that he genuinely could not fathom what they could do.


    Thus, as much as he would like to have affirmed the soundness of Kane''s n, he couldn''t do so, not in good faith.


    "There are several possibilities," Kane exined to Rui. "I could either stick with the Lightning Sect forever under their protection. I could grow stronger to be able to resist the Arrancar Family. I could gain the patronage of a powerful political force instead of the Lightning Sect, or I could polish my covert capabilities as well as my stealth, and n to leave the Shionel Confederation and set out to the other side of the continent. Far away from their sphere of influence. Frankly, I think thest n has the highest probability of sess when you consider the difficulty of execution, time period, and margin of error."


    "You''ve thought really this through deeply, haven''t you?" Rui remarked, impressed at the level of thought that Kane had given it.


    "Well, yeah, I kind of have to. It is my future and all," Kane shrugged. "I''m not as smart as you, but I''m smart enough to know that if I don''t n this out carefully and take into ount all variables, things could end extremely badly for me forever."


    "That''s quite prudent of you," Rui replied approvingly. "If you need any help with anything, you can definitely be sure to reach out to me and ask me for any help that you may need."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 838 Corpse

    The two of them had been walking for quite some time. There was no point in sprinting when they didn''t have a destination yet. Furthermore, Rui needed time to scan his surroundings and explore direction along all three hundred and sixty degrees around himself. He didn''t bother reading all the space curvature all around him within a certain radius. Instead, he focused all of his reading in one particr direction at any given moment, sweeping across his surroundings across time by individually scanning each direction to the maximum distance, replicating Radar mechanics.


    Thus he needed to take his time, if they traveled too fast, then he wouldn''t thoroughly be able to sweep his surroundings. The two of them chatted a bit more about lighter topics before Rui paused, abruptly turning his head forward.


    "What happened?" Kane grew more wary and vignt. "Is it a monster?"


    "Not exactly," Rui murmured. "I think I just happened across something interesting. Let''s check it out."


    He began picking up the pace heading towards the strange stimulus he felt in his sensory sweep.


    It wasn''t long before he reached it. He narrowed his eyes, as his expression grew more grim.


    Kane quickly caught up as well, his eyes widened as he too beheld what Rui had sensed. "Is that a human?"


    Rui nodded. "A corpse, but¡­"


    He didn''t even need toplete his words. The corpse had a sickly ck color to it, which immediately suggested poison or venom to Rui. That wasn''t what was shocking about this corpse to Rui, however.


    "This man¡­ was a normal human being, when he was alive," Rui''s expression under his mask morphed into one of shock.


    This should have been entirely impossible!


    Humans were unable to enter the inner ring of the Adventurer Ring town due to the sheer pressure that the dungeon exerted on their psyches. That meant there was no way for humans to enter the Shionel Dungeon without suffering traumatizing and crippling fear and stress. Many would even be rendered unconscious, while many would lose their sanity.


    There were very few humans that could withstand the pressure of the Squire Realm. The old cksmith that Rui had met in the town of Hajin, as well as some remarkable men in the Shionel Confederation were probably the only exceptions.


    The fact that a human being had made it so deep into the Shionel Dungeon was something that Rui was unable to wrap his head around.


    Was this human being one such remarkable person who possessed otherworldly mental fortitude?<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    "A normal human being?" Kane gasped, before cringing at the disgusting rotting odor while he knelt down to take a good look at the corpse. "You''re right, these remaining scraps of clothes are not those of the Martial attire of a Martial Artist."Text ? by N0ve/lDrama.Org.


    Kane keenly noticed that the surviving scraps covering the corpse were not those of a Martial Squire. Martial Squire attire was made out of very special esoteric fabrics that could at the very least survive their power, even if they could not offer any protection to the wearer.


    "Not only that," Rui murmured. "This body is most certainly not that of a Martial Squire. It''s not a Martial body, it''s that of a normal human."


    He grabbed a rock, kicking it at the dead skin of the corpse. The motion immediately opened up a tear in the skin.


    "Even a dead Martial Squire''s body would not be that fragile," he remarked with narrowed eyes. "On top of that, observe the muscle tone and definition and body fat to weight percentage, it deviates from Martial Squires. This person has never undergone the equivalent of the Foundation Stage of the Martial Academy. In fact, this person is most certainly not a fighter in any way."


    "That makes sense," Kane nodded. "That makes this discovery even more bizarre. How on Earth did a nonbatant human enter the Shionel Dungeon so deeply, and even die here?"


    That was the question that begged itself to both of them. Neither of them could understand how such a thing came to be.


    "This mystery isn''t exactly relevant to us, but it''s a shame that we cannot find out anything about this person," Kane sighed.


    "That''s not true," Rui refuted him as he keenly scrutinized the body. "This person most likely did not live in the heart of the Shionel Confederation, and most likely was part of the lowest ss of the state."


    "How can you possibly figure that out?" Kane frowned.


    Rui pointed to a scar on the man''s neck. "He was cut quite deeply on his neck, but the scar still remains, furthermore the wound was professionally stitched and healed naturally from the looks of it. That meant that there was no usage of potions during the treatment, which automatically puts a bar on the economic ss this person could have been a part of and also eliminates the possibility of being a resident of most ces in the Shionel Dungeon, given how widespread the application of potions in medicine is."


    He felt the fabric of the remaining scraps with his fingers. "Simple cotton. That''s not proof of anything, but still, it''s frankly hard to fathom what a person like this would be doing anywhere near the Shionel Dungeon, let alone go anywhere inside it, let alone go this deep."


    "What else can you deduce from this corpse?" Kane asked with interest.


    "Based on the degree of coagtion and rotting of blood I''d say it probably hasn''t been more than a few days since death," Rui pointed at the tear in the skin that he had created half a minute ago, before turning to the arms of the corpse. "The biceps and triceps are much more underdevelopedpared to the muscles of the forearm. That indicates a profession, job, or lifestyle that involved rigorous use of the fingers and hands, but not of the entire arm. Most likely no manualbor, but a manual skilled profession. This is also further supported by the fact that the nails on his fingers are uniform while the toenails are messier."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 839 Shock

    ?


    He lifted the corpse up briefly, paying attention to the hips. "An anterior pelvic tilt, which generally implies an unhealthy amount of time continuously spent in a seated position."


    He opened up the mouth of the corpse ncing inside. "A mouth-breather with ergened adenoids and constricted airways."


    "Regr grooming of facial based on the inclination of hair despite clearly not being groomed recently."


    "Deep calluses on the sole of the foot, indicating a lot of time spent barefooted despite rough environments."


    "Low of minute old scars on the finger, most likely from repetitive mistakes caused by using small, precise but sharp tools."


    "Long-time user of spectacles based on the subtle marks on the nose, most likely broken and/or lost in his time in the dungeon."


    "Married based on the ring indention on his ring finger with a lighter skin tone. But more importantly, that eliminates several possible geographic origins of such a person."


    "Lost a lot of weight recently, not just from being in the dungeon based on the stretch marks around his body."


    Content held by N?velDrama.Org.


    He continued to inspect and infer a great number of facts about the corpse, analyzing every inch of it as Kane watched with bewilderment. He had thought that he had made some sharp deductions, but Rui showed him how wrong he was about that as he seemed to conjure up information where there shouldn''t have been any information.


    "In conclusion, this man was a small-time married craftsman living on the outskirts, or even entirely out of the Shionel Confederation in a small vige or settlement, probably making a living selling small crafted trinkets outside the Shionel Confederation in the flea markets that we rank into when we were entering the Shionel Confederation," Rui concluded.


    "How are you getting all of this?" Kane furrowed his eyebrows.


    "The science of deduction," Rui replied while analyzing the corpse. "You gather all the pieces of information that you can and infer truths from them. But it''s not absolute, far from it. My conclusion could be wrong. And there are things that don''t really make sense."


    "Like what?" Kane asked.


    "It''s hard to judge because this sickly ck color of his skin is from poisoning, this is not natural rotting," Rui exined patiently. "I can also sense esoteric substances of this dungeon inside his body based on the fact that my ordinary senses are not able to sense through his body as clearly as they should. But the issue is that he hasn''t been dead for too long as established, yet it seems clear that he has been in the dungeon for much longer than he has been dead. What question naturally presents itself?"


    Kane''s eyes widened as he understood what was wrong. "How the fuck did he survive this long in the dungeon?"


    "Exactly," Rui nodded. "This is a revolutionary discovery. Frankly, I''m unable toe up with apelling hypothesis as to how this could possibly happen. What''s even more astonishing is that he did not die of a wound."


    "Which means that he wasn''t killed by a monster this entire time?" Kane frowned. "That''s impossible! Even Martial Squires die when they get lost in the dungeon. To other monsters."


    "Exactly, yet this fellow died due to an affliction with poison despite having clearly spent a lot of time in the dungeon based on the scraps that his clothes have been reduced to, the clearly overgrown facial hair among other things," Rui paused before continuing. "That just means that this man somehow survived this long in the Shionel Dungeon. Hell, he''s outsurvived even Martial Squires. There are loads of esoteric substances in his body. It''s actually a miracle that he did not die instantly."


    The two of them silently pondered about it for several seconds, before agreeing to give up. It was a fascinating curiosity, but ultimately not too relevant to them.


    "What should we do with the body?" Kane asked.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    "Not much to be done," Rui shrugged. "It''s a corpse. But I am interested in which direction came from. Maybe we can trace the man''s footprints."


    "Will they even be discernable beyond a certain distance?" Kane frowned.


    "Not too, but I can work with anything," Rui closed his eyes as he focused Riemannian Echo across the tunnel, following any traces of human footprints that he could. "It helps that this tunnel route is not subject to wind drafts, or other things traveling across it too much. Otherwise, it would be long gone."


    He opened his eyes. "I''ve found a brief path, but it stops at a certain point, might as well investigate it."


    Kane shrugged. "Sure thing."


    The two of them proceeded to swiftly follow the path that the corpse had taken.


    "It''s undiscernible beyond this point," Rui announced as they arrived at a juncture of many tunnels. They couldn''t tell which direction the man came from.


    "Well, why not just do a super long-range sweep anyway?" Kane suggested. "We can proceed normally from here on out.


    "True," Rui nodded, before extending his senses in one direction. "I doubt we''ll find anything worth-!"


    His eyes widened as his jaw opened up a bit.


    "What?" Kane noted his reaction, raising an eyebrow. "What is it?"


    "It''s¡­ It''s a new floor!" Rui grinned. "Let''s go!"


    He rushed forward before Kane could even respond to him, forcing thetter to break into a run to follow him.


    "Here it is," Rui stopped a few meters as arge tunnel opened up to an enormous cavity. "This is the thirteenth floor!"


    "Woah¡­" Kane peered in, squinting. He wasn''t able to see too much due to the vision range limits. "What''s it look like in there?"


    "Hold up, let me scan it properly first," Rui replied. "It''s pretty big. As for what inhabits it, I''m only seeing some-!"


    A genuine expression of shock and bewilderment suddenly upied his face.


    "What is it?" Kane grew more nervous at his even exaggerated reaction.


    "This can''t be," Rui murmured. "This should be absolutely impossible. How can there be even more humans on this floor?!"


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 840 Explore

    ?


    "What?!" Kane almost whispered as he nced back at the new floor.


    The ceiling of the floor was strangely lit up, as it usually was. There wasn''t much he could see on the ground due to the high density of esoteric resources that obscured his vision greatly.


    "There''s no mistaking it. They''re human beings. Some even have clothes on that are clearly man-made," Rui murmured, his eyes lost as he focused on his Riemannian Echo. "They''re not Martial Artists, I highly doubt that they are. Besides, that''s not all there is. This ce is unbelievable. We need to get to the bottom of this."


    He turned towards Kane. "You''re up. It''s time for us to vanish."


    Kane nodded as he put a hand on Rui''s shoulder as they began sky-walking down, vanishing into thin air.


    STEP


    They reached the ground, looking around vigntly as they walked forward in the direction that Rui directed them in.


    "You said that''s not all there was," Kane turned to Rui with a mixture of interest and concern. "What else is there?"


    Rui didn''t reply, instead choosing to gesture forward.


    Kane frowned as he turned forward squinting as arge object made its way into his hampered field of vision. Yet it wasn''t until after he actually realized what it was, that his eyes widened withplete shock.


    "Is that a¡­ building?!" Kane raised his voice.


    "Ssshh!" Rui told him to quiet down but nodded anyway. "You''re right."


    "That''s insane!" Kane couldn''t believe that he would run into a building on an undiscovered floor in the Shionel Dungeon.


    It was already a shock that there were non-Martial Artist humans on the floor, but to think that they were creating buildings? Inside a dangerous floor that had yet to be cleared? That was on another level of unbelievable.


    The building wasn''t particrlyrge, it was just a small single-story house, from the looks of it. Furthermore, its condition was extremely poor as he identified several ces of copse. It was hardly habitable, if at all.


    Still, that did not change how absurd the notion of a house inside an uncleared dungeon floor was.


    "Don''t shout," Rui urged. "You might attract their attention."


    "Their? The humans? If they''re alive we ought to help them. The least we could do is inform the Shionel Adventurer Guild. Why don''t you want to attract their attention?"


    "It''s better if I show you," Rui sighed as they walked forward.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    "Show me wha-!" He underwent his umpteenth shock for the day as he beheld a strange creature that entered his field of vision.


    No, not a creature.


    It was human, but it may as well have been a creature.


    The skin across her bare body was a sickly ck from head to toe, just like the corpse that they had encountered. Yet she wasn''t dead. She was very clearly alive. Her eyes were ckened too, where they should have been white.


    "What the fuck." Kane couldn''t help but whisper. He didn''t even care that she wasn''t a Martial Artist, he was not undoing Void Step. He could feel a sense of threat to him regardless of the fact that she wasn''t a Martial Squire.


    Her body retained its human figure even though her skin had taken a sickly ck creature that made her look like a walking corpse, her skeletal and muscr structure had remained unchanged. Her flesh too had retained normal human features, as did various features like her face, hair, and secondary sexual features and characteristics. It just appeared as though she had been rotting from the inside, rather than the outside.


    Kane abandoned any thought of trying tomunicate with the humans. It was very evident that such a thing was not going to work out.


    "She''s mindless, almost like a monster," Rui confirmed his own thoughts. "Dted pupils, incoherent noises,ck of awareness of surroundings or even self-awareness."


    The two of them watched speechless as she aimlessly seemed to wander about without purpose. It was clear that she had no conscious cognition of the world around her. From what Rui could see, she was not operating on even a primal instinct or drive. Her movements were slow andzy, as she was dragging herself forward.


    "What the hell is going on here Rui?" Kane asked, disturbed by what he saw. "What is that? Is that the same as the corpse we ran into? Was that man also like her? Are they all like her? Where in the world did the buildingse from if these people are all mindless? No, where in the world did these peoplee from? Are they monsters that deeply resemble humans? Is that it? Is that why they''re unaffected by the psychological pressure?"


    Kane had so many questions that he had no idea where to begin. He was witnessing multiple impossibilities unfold right before his very eyes!


    He had no idea how to even begin approaching analyzing such a thing.


    "Calm down," Rui told him with aposed voice, yet even his expression was very severe and grim. "Let''s gather as much information as we can before we make sense of this. There''s no point in trying to force ourselves to make do with less information."


    Rui already had some thoughts on the matter, but he refused to voice them until he was at least less incredulous about them. It felt far too absurd to voice out what he was thinking.


    "¡­You''re right," He sighed.


    They ignored her as they proceeded forward, exploring this strange new floor. The two of them ran across multiple buildings and even road-like pathways between them. Most of the buildings were homes, they were all extremely damaged with many being reduced toplete rubble.


    Rui''s eyes widened as he came across some normal human corpses in some of them. "These aren''t sickly ck like the others. It''s rotting the same way a normal corpse does."


    It looked to be about a year old and the corpse hadrgely deformed and the skeleton was visible.


    This chapter upload first at  Exclusive ? material by N?(/v)elDrama.Org.

 Chapter 841 Veril

    ?


    This was definitely a strange oue. There were corpses on the floor that clearly died of natural causes that rotted normally. Furthermore, the skin of many of these corpses was sickly ck.


    "So the skins of these corpses that rot naturally and have been dead for quite some time were not the greenish-ck like the others," Rui made an empirical observation. "That''s interesting¡­ That implies a corrtion between them."


    He nced at the buildings. "Furthermore, these buildings were not constructed after the Shionel Dungeon was discovered. Not only is the age of the exterior worn away to a degree that is impossible to ur within a year but there''s also an indication of erosion due to rain, which is absolutely impossible inside the Shionel Dungeon."


    "So you''re saying this isn''t some strange feature of the floor, but that these buildings were constructed before Shionel Dungeon even came to exist, but wouldn''t that mean¡­?" Kane frowned as the answer came to him.


    "The town of Veril was a town that existed right outside the outskirts of the Shionel Confederation," Rui exined. "It used to upy a ce that is now upied by the massive Shionel Dungeon. It was presumed that the town and all its inhabitants had beenpletely annihted when the Dungeon erupted, as not a single trace, not even so much as a single brick from the entirety of the town had been found. People assumed that this meant that the town was utterly annihted and crushed within the dungeon¡­ There was even arge memorial honoring the deceased town and townspeople even if wasn''t explicitly a part of the Shionel Confederation. However, if I''m not wrong, then this ce is probably¡­"


    Kane turned back to the corpse and the abandoned building with a dropped jaw. "And just like that, it became a dungeon floor? What are the odds, honestly?"


    "I don''t know," Rui admitted. "But it makes sense. The town would have had zero vegetation given that it was densely colonized, which meant that there was no vegetation in the vige whose roots eventually reached the deep subterranean mine of esoteric mineral deposits, absorbing them and undergoing dungeonification. Thus the town as a whole was not overrun with roots immediately and instead got absorbed into the dungeon as a single piece."


    Text ? by N0ve/lDrama.Org.


    "That''s unbelievable, honestly," Kane sighed. "It''s really hard to believe that despite being in the middle of everything, the town survived."


    "Well," Rui remarked. "Survived is a strong word."


    He gestured around to the broken building of which only the foundations were intact, the many long-rotted corpses that clearly died painful deaths. The corpses were mangled and broken, some corpses had heads that werepletely ttened by debris.


    "True," Kane nodded. "Still, that alone doesn''t exin everything. Even if this town is the town of Veril that somehow survived being absorbed into the Shionel Dungeon. How does that exin the state of all the surviving people? How the hell did they be mindless monsters."


    Rui considered the question, before sighing. "The same way all the animals taken into the Shionel Dungeon became monsters. I can''t believe it, but the mutations and physiological changes caused to the humans that survived ingesting esoteric substances into their bodies caused them to all be those sickly creatures."


    That was the only exnation that made sense to Rui, he genuinely couldn''t conceive of even a somewhat reasonable exnation asides from this. It also matched his senses being hampered when he tried to use them to gather information on the man''s corpse, thereby indicating the presence of the same esoteric substances that were ever present in the Shionel Dungeon.


    "So these poor people had consumed whatever they found, and inadvertently started bing like that?" Kane asked with a grim expression.


    "Most likely," Rui nodded, sighing.


    "Can they be helped?" <novelsnext></novelsnext>


    "¡­I can''t be entirely sure, but almost certainly not," Rui evaluated. From his understanding of esoteric medical technology, this level of mutation and poisoning of esoteric substances probably could not be aplished. "At the very least, if there does exist some solution out there. It almost certainly cannot be applied to humans on such arge scale as such a solution would include prohibitively rare and important esoteric resources. The Shionel Confederation would never spare such expenses and assets for low-ss citizens that weren''t even officially part of the nation."


    "I see¡­" Kane sighed.


    "Still, that doesn''t mean we can''t do anything for them," Rui replied. "All of them must be suffering horrendously on the inside, even if it doesn''t look like it. The least we can do is end their nightmare and put them to rest."


    "Yeah, I can definitely agree with that," Kane stood up. "Let''s do that before we plunder this entire floor."


    The two of them were under no obligation to do this. They could have followed their normal ns and harvested the floor of any esoteric yields that it had to offer. Yet, despite this, they both unanimously agreed to kill all the humans in the thirteenth floor and put them out of their misery.


    "Be careful, however," Rui warned him. "If I''m not wrong, these people are no different from monsters at this point, they''ll resist and fight back. They probably will disy aggression as well considering that even docile species when monsterified turn hyper-aggressive. We''ll have to fight."


    In Rui''s eyes, they were basically zombies.


    "No problem."


    The two of them stepped out in the open, releasing the Void Step technique.


    "Hurh?" Many wandering humans were in the vicinity as they noticed the presence of the duo. Their bloodshot, ck eyes widened and their pupils sharpened as their eyes seemed to regain focus and awareness. "AAAAAARGH!"


    They let out guttural screams as they sted forward toward the duo inhumanly fast with widened drooling jaws and arms stretched out.


    WHOOSH


    BOOM!


    Rui avoided a bullrush as the woman crashed into the ruins of the buildings that they had just exited,pletely destroying it with her remarkably powerful momentum.


    "They''re as powerful as low-grade Martial Squires," Rui noted, "Don''t let them bite or scratch you though. It''s probably highly toxic."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 842 Painless

    ?


    CLASP


    SHING


    Rui summoned his sword from his dimensional storage ring before drawing it rapidly as he was beset by zombies from all directions. Despite their aggression, Rui didn''t feel any hostility towards them. It was probably his imagination, but he almost could see the pain, suffering and the longing for it to end in their eyes.


    "You won''t feel any pain," He subconsciously murmured before they reached his striking zone.


    SLASH


    In an instant, the Bellhorn de arced through the air, disappearing in the eyes of the beholder for an instant.


    SPLAT


    The heads of the monsterified humans cleaved in two as their eyes instantly lose their light, and their bodies copsed like puppets cutting their strings. Rui made sure to destroy their brains to ensure that there was no possible way for them to suffer from his attacks. They did not experience any pain, their vision, senses, and even consciousness disappeared when the sub-ice cold Bellhorn Steep triggered the repelling effect of the esoteric substances in their tissue, destroying the tissue on a molecr level.


    Frankly, they didn''t stand a chance. Not only were they only as strong as he was when he evolved to the Squire Realm, but they also did not possess the ability to hurt someone as strong as him. Even without the Bellhorn de, he would have utterly massacred them, it was just easiest to give them painless deaths with the bellhorn sword as opposed to any other way.


    His offensive techniques would cause too much pain. Techniques such as Reverberating Lance, Flowing Canon, Sonic Bullets, Mighty Roar sh st, and Transverse Resonance would cause far too much pain as it would devastate their bodies, causing them suffering before they finally sumbed to my wounds.


    He didn''t even need to employ a single defensive technique. None of their attacks were able to reach him. They simply used straightforward attacks, and Rui simply killed them before they got the chance to kill him. The range given by his arm and the length of his sword meant that even if they stretched out their arms as much as they could in order to reach him, his de would always kill them long before they could.


    There was simply no attack that could even reach him for him to defend.


    He didn''t even bother employing the VOID algorithm this time around. Their attacks were so simple and elementary, even Max and Mana were less transparent than them.


    Not only were they not trained, but they were fighting primally, and to Rui their attacks were telegraphed long before they had even begun. He could even predict what they were going to do long before they had even begun the thought process to do it.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    The bellhorn de ceased being a simple sword. It became an arc of death that brought peace to the living that suffered a fate worse than death.


    He even had the leeway to focus his attention on Kane with Riemannian Echo. Unlike him, Kane did not possess the ability to solo battalions of Squire-levelbat threats head-on. He relied on Void Step to evade their senses while he madeunched his most powerful attack into their vitals which killed them swiftly enough.Content held by N?velDrama.Org.


    He did not have the kind of sheer offensive potency that Rui had, thus he needed to carefully time and ce his attacks. Swiftly, he killed the monsterified humans left and right at a rate that, while still much slower than Rui, was far higher than a Martial Squire of his youth in the Squire Realm should have been capable of. It was quite impressive that low-grade Squire-levelbat threats were this helpless against him even though he should have been a low-grade Martial Squire himself since it had only been a year and a half since he broke through to the Squire Realm.


    Yet he was already graded as a grade-four Martial Squire on ount of his phenomenal stealth-based evasion and remarkably powerful Martial Squire constitution thanks to having mastered the Hungry Pain Martial Art technique as a Martial Apprentice. His progress and rate of growth were only surpassed by Rui himself. Only Rui could handle him as easily as he did thanks to the highly potent Riemannian Echo that categorically bypassed the Void Step technique.


    In front of almost any other Martial Squire, his rate of growth was startling, as was the potency of his techniques. Yet it was only before Rui that he appeared ordinary.


    The two of them were killing the monsterified humans of the town of Veril at a rapid pace, yet their seemed to be no end. It appeared that more humans than Rui had initially expected had survived the eruption of the Shionel Confederation. The sheer number of monsterified humans exceeded the number of monsters in any of the other floors that Rui and Kane had cleared.


    (''We''re basically fighting against half arge town,'') Rui sighed.


    He was grateful that the monsterified humans were extremely weak Martial Squires, and were alsorgely mindless and primal.


    If they retained all of their human intelligence and rationality while still being hostile to Rui and Kane, they would be much more formidable. Many thousands of low-grade Squire-levelbat threats were a huge problem in theory, but their mindless irrationality made them simpler to deal with.


    This was why Martial Artists were, as a poption, not weaker than beasts and monsters despite being a much smaller group. Martial Artists were of a higher quality, Martial Art allowed them to apply their power better. Furthermore, in individual fights,bat parameters mattered more, but in arger-scaleparison, strategy, and tactics mattered more.


    That was why the Martial Squires in the Shionel Confederation clearing the Shionel Dungeon were making steady progress defeating the monsters despite possessing fewer numbers. Each Martial Squire could, on average, take down many Squire-level monsters by employing highly effective techniques applied in tried and tested tactics and strategies.


    This was part of the reason that Rui and Kane were dominating despite being so outnumbered.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 843 Mark

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    If the monsterfied humans realized that their current approach was an absolute failure and employed more sophisticated approaches that maximized the effectivity of their numerical advantage, they would have been vastly more problematic than they currently were to him.


    POW POW POW!


    Kane took down a monsterified human with lethal attacks to her vitals, before bing visible.


    "Huff¡­" He panted. "Let''s take a break."


    This was thest monsterified human in the area, thus two of them saw no problem with just sitting on two rocks.


    "It''s actually easier, but for some reason, it feels way harder than killing ordinary monsters," Kane sighed.


    "Probably has to do with the fact that they resemble humans pretty closely," Rui remarked. "It does feel like we''remitting acts of genocides, which we kinda are, technically, even if it is for a good reason. So it feels pretty messed up."


    "That, it does,"


    This whole floor had unlocked a new fear for Rui, of a giant dungeon spawning in the Kandrian Empire and swallowing the Quarrier Orphanage up. That would be something that he found to be too disturbing, and something that he was disturbingly powerless against. If that did happen, then they were as good as screwed. Even if they somehow survived, Rui highly doubted that they would be well by the time he found them.


    That was assuming that the dungeon was a Squire-grade dungeon that he could enter. If it was a Senior-level dungeon then he decided that he might as well give up.


    He shook his head, putting aside his silly paranoia. The two of them consumed rejuvenation potions, before getting back to work. They would rather finish this quickly rather than drag it out any more than they needed to.


    It wasn''t too long before Rui and Kane had hunted down every single one of them.


    "You sure there aren''t any more left?" Kane wiped sweat off his brow.


    "Yep, they''re all dead," Rui noted.


    "Great," Kane sighed. "Let''s proceed with the harvesting then,"


    "Yeah, about that¡­" Rui smiled awkwardly.


    "What?" Kane nced at him nervously.


    "The floor unfortunately doesn''t have as much of a harvest as a normal floor does," Rui replied. "The reason for that probably has to do with the fact that thend did not have the dense vegetation that could absorb from the esoteric mine and bring it to the surface needed for the esoteric substances to reach the surface. The amount is much less than a normal floor, but still far beyond any individual Martial Squire or even a party would normally get their hands on."


    "Hm, so we''re still short then," Kane hummed. "What do you want to do after we harvest all of the esoteric substances on this floor?"<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    "I think we still have plenty of energy left, also plenty of potions. We got a good nights sleepst night so we can handle mental rejuvenation potions for quite some time," Rui replied. "Let''s continue exploring the dungeon deeper and see if we can clear another floor today."


    "Only you could possibly say that and not be joking or lying," Kaneughed. "Soloing two floors in a single day? Oh if only the Shionel Confederation saw us right now. They would all lose their minds."


    "They would, before killing us after having discovered our identities," Rui snorted.


    "We have masks on," Kane pointed out.


    "Masks are too useless beyond a certain point," Rui reminded him. "It''s the whole reason I wanted to avoid getting a snap of me taken when the Voidhunter operation had been nned out by Chairman Deacon."


    The two of them quickly proceeded with harvesting the fewer deposits of esoteric mineral resources on the thirteenth floor. Given that they did not need to maintain Void Step as they normally did when harvesting esoteric deposits, meaning both Rui and Kane could work independently and gather esoteric deposits simultaneously, doubling their speed.


    "Look," Rui gestured to a structure as they reached the edge of the other side of the floor.


    It was a giant gate at the edge of the floor, and the town.


    "Is that¡­?" Kane squinted as he inspected it. The structure had a board with words of anguage Kane didn''t understand inscribed into it.


    "It''s the entrance gate to the town," Rui replied. "It says ''Wee to the town of Veril''. It must have survived being absorbed into the town. I have an idea what to do with it."


    "What to do with it?" Kane frowned.


    "Well, if we were normal adventurers, then we would just have to inform the Adventurer Guild of the floor. But we''re not. That would instantly give us away. Even if I used the discrete letters that Imunicate with Guildmaster Bradt through, it would give away too much. That man is exceedingly sharp, he might glean something I don''t want being gleaned. Still, I''d rather convey to the Shionel Confederation what happened somehow, I imagine that the destruction of town has ruined lives and caused untold suffering that gets swept under the fortunes and the boons of the Shionel Dungeon."


    "That''s a nice sentiment," Kane remarked. "What do you n on doing though?"Content held by N?velDrama.Org.


    "I can take the board and ce it on the first floor," Rui replied. "Maybe even mark a way to the thirteenth floor by digging up a deep line all the way to the thirteenth floor to indicate a path to get there so that the world finds out. It won''t take much time at all. We can immediately resume our exploration of the Shionel Dungeon."


    "You know," Kane paused. "You can be a pretty good guy sometimes."


    Rui snorted. "Thanks, I guess. I like doing what I can with things in front of me as long as its practical."


    He went through with his word, marking a path all the way from the thirteenth floor to the first floor while dropping the board in a ce that could not be missed on the first floor. Beyond that, he did not intend to do anything.


    The two of them immediately resumed their adventure.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 844 Reason

    Exclusive ? material by N?(/v)elDrama.Org.


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    That day, a shocking discovery was unveiled to the world. The world came to learn about the board that bore the words ''Wee to the Town of Veril'' inscribed on it. The previous assumptions that every shred of the town had beenpletely destroyed were now called into question.


    Another strange part of the report was the presence of a burrowed line that began from where the board had been found extending all the way down into one of the tunnels of the Shionel Dungeon. Almost as if someone had drawn a deep line with the board into the first floor before tossing it in a ce where people would eventually run into it.


    What followed was many adventurers and parties following the drawn line all the way to the very end. What they found shocked the entire nation.


    People could scarcely believe that after all this time, the town of Veril was still somehow not entirely annihted. The many citizens who had a connection to the town of some sort gained a shred of hope that the town was salvageable and that the citizens had survived.


    Yet, all those hopes were crushed painfully as the floor dubbed as the thirteenth floor came to be discovered, and the sheer carnage left behind shocked everyone. Arge town filled with corpses indicating that none of them died anything short of a gruesome death.


    What really shocked the world was that half of the corpses were natural and expected.


    Their dposition did not fall outside of the expected parameters, and there were no unexpected parameters. The other half, however,pletely ming-boggled them.


    The scene left behind by Rui and Kane thoroughly confused everyone thatid their eyes on them. The ghoulish corpses that had clearly died very recently were a bizarre anomaly that was hard to understand since they had not had ess to as much information as Rui and Kane had. Thetter had witnessed the corpses when they were alive and thus was aware of their tendencies when they were alive.


    The former had no idea what the monsterified humans were like when they were alive, which would have assuaged a lot of their doubts regarding what exactly these sickly greenish-ck corpses were like.


    Another mystery was how on Earth the board of the entrance gate to the town reached the first floor. While it was true that the dungeon was not exactly the most stable or normal environment, there was absolutely no way that such a thing could happen normally.


    The tragedy of the town of Veril was once more brought into the spotlight as the many people who had a connection to the town, be it having family members or having been born and brought up in the town of Veril. The many thousands of people who had lost loved ones, and their homes entered mourning as another day of remembrance was dered.


    On the other hand, Rui and Kane continued their adventure as the two of them ventured down the Shionel Dungeon. <novelsnext></novelsnext>


    "Why do you insist on exploring tunnels that end in a dead-end?" Kane frowned as they hit another dead-end. "You know that there isn''t anything worth here, yet you insist reach them to the very end."


    This was something that Rui had insisted on doing very frequently, earning the ire of Kane. He couldn''t see why Rui would go out of his way to do such a seemingly futile action. What was the point in exploring something one knew would not give one what they desired?


    "That map I owe Guildmaster Bradt isn''t going to draw itself," Rui calmly replied. "Have you forgotten that I''m mapping the entirety of the Shionel Dungeon? That means that I at the very least need to sense every nook and cranny of the entire dungeon at some point."


    "Ah, right, Still, that can be done organically when we eventually clear the entire dungeon, right?" Kane asked him. "You''re kind of being redundant wasting time exploring ces you would eventually explore anyway, so why not just give Guildmaster Bradt frequent updates of the parts of the dungeon that you''ve naturally mapped?"


    "Because that would also tell Guildmaster Bradt about our routes in the Shionel Dungeon," Rui calmly exined. "If I only give him information that I have mapped during our natural exploration paths, then he can figure out exactly what routes we''ve been using this entire time when he figures out the radius of my sensory range based on the limits of the information I give him."


    Kane hadn''t realized this. "That does make sense. But it''s almost impossible in a practical sense to actually use that against us."


    "You''d generally be correct," Rui replied. "But that doesn''t apply to Guildmaster Bradt. The man is fiendishly shrewd and devious. Furthermore, he had ess to practically endless wealth and power within the Shionel Confederation. All he needs is a single opening to exploit and he could very soon be on our asses."


    "Damn, that''s something I would rather avoid,"


    "As would I," Rui smiled wryly. "That''s why I''m going out of my way to explore other parts of the Shionel Dungeon so I can supply him with mapped information outside of our routes so that he won''t be able to exploit it. It''s worth taking such precautions. I''ve met both Guildmaster Bradt and Chairman Deacon in person, and trust me, there''s no such thing as being too careful when ites to tangling with those two."


    Kane nodded appreciatively. He knew that if he had been running this operation instead of Rui, he probably would have long been caught by Guildmaster Bradt and Chairman Deacon long ago. He was not qualified topete with these political titans of the Shionel Confederation. Hell, ordinarily, no Martial Artist would have anywhere near the necessarypetencies with them.


    But Rui was probably the only Martial Artist that defied this pattern. Despite being a young Martial Squire who had dedicated his life to Martial Art, in Kane''s eyes he possessed almost otherworldly insight thatpensated for hisck of a background in these fields.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 845 Discovery

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    "Besides," Rui shrugged. "Even if these are dead-ends, who knows? We might run into something interesting."


    "Yeah ri-" He paused when Rui suddenly stopped walking as he cocked his head and stared hard in a particr direction. "What is it?"


    "I sensed something strange at the edge of my sensory sweeps," Rui frowned. "Is that¡­ Is that a big tree?"


    He jogged a bit ahead, to extend his sensory range in that direction as his eyes wandered around, lost, as he was absorbed in the sensory feedback that he got from Riemannian Echo.


    "A tree? Is that all? That doesn''t seem exactly out of ce given that the dungeon is basically overgrown trees," Kane remarked.


    "It''s the size of a small mountain," Rui informed him with a surprised expression. "It''s inside a cavityrge enough to be a floor."


    "Wait, so that''s the next floor you discovered?" Kane''s grin lit up. "That''s awesome, we''ve finally run into something tangible after exploring this much."


    "Yeah, let''s get going," Rui nodded as he picked up the pace. "I think this floor might be special."


    "Because of the tree?" Kane asked.


    "Yeah, and also, I don''t sense any monsters on that floor. Everything is strangely stationary," Rui remarked as he ran forward with Gale Force Breathing. "Honestly, there might be nothing worth having there. It''s hard to tell from this distance. Regardless, let''s reach it first. The problem is, I can''t immediately detect a tunnel route to the floor immediately."


    The tunnels in the dungeon did not interconnect in an orderly fashion, instead resulting in messy mazes. The presence of these mazes was an additional reason why Rui''s maps were basically priceless, the ability to know which direction to go was special.


    Rui could either spend a lot of time trying to find a natural tunnel path that leads to the fourteenth floor, or he could try a more forceful method.


    "We could try breaking out way through to it, honestly," Rui scratched his head.


    It allowed them to create a direct path to the fourteenth floor and they didn''t need to waste time running around looking for a tunnel leading them to it. After all, there was no guarantee that such a thing existed. There was no rule that the dungeon abided by that said all tunnels must necessarily be connected to all floors. It could be that there were isted tunneling systems, and they were simply in the wrong one and would never get to the destination that they were trying to get to even if they ran around for all time.


    "Hm," Kane did not want to waste too much time. "How far away is it?"


    "About three kilometers in that direction," Rui pointed straight towards the wall of the tunnel. "It''s a bit much, isn''t it?"


    "Yeah," Kane concurred. "Not to mention, the walls of the tunnels in the dungeon aren''t weak, it''s going to take some effort getting there. Still¡­ I think I prefer the certainty thates with it."


    Kane did not want to spend any more time running around in the tunnels of the dungeon than they already had. Breaking holes into them instead was a fresh way of going about things.


    Unlike Rui, he could not sense beyond a certain range outside of his immediate vicinity. This was an incredibly diforting feeling that he would rather not subject himself to. The prolonged subjection to the sensory jamming could be stressful. Even though he had spent much longer time in istion on covert missions, at the very least, he hadplete awareness of his surroundings.


    "I concur," Rui nodded. "Let''s get started. We can do alternating strikes. I''ll start us off."


    Kane nodded as the two of them took their stances.


    Rui rushed forward as he used Flowing Canon as the main strike. All of the muscle groups across his body generated a tremendous power with which he smoothly empowered the strike. He breathed deeply as his fist shook, vibrating back and forth extremely fast, yet extremely mildly.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    The vibrating fist collided with the wall as the superhuman might of his Martial body empowered with Outer Convergence, Flowing Canon, and Reverberating Lance struck the wall.


    BAM!!!? 2024 N?v/el/Dram/a.Org.


    This one strike alone created a two-meter wide and deep crater that almost entirely sted a hole in the tunnel.


    "Tsk, so small and shallow," Rui tutted, unsatisfied with the result. "The walls of the tunnel must have some decent Squire-level esoterics protecting it."


    At his current level, every single strike possessed the ability to fragment buildings to pieces. Yet he still wasn''t able to blow a hole in the wall.


    BAM!


    Kane followed up with a swift piercing kick.


    CRACK CRACK CRACK


    A hole emerged in the wall. "Still, this might not take as much time as I feared if a singlebo can break a hole in it."


    "True, still, it''s three kilometers," Kane sighed. "Let''s not waste time dilly-dallying."


    Despite their fears, it took them only three-quarters of an hour before they broke through three kilometers of tunnels.


    BAM!!!


    "Finally," Rui grinned. "We''re here."


    Thest wall of the tunnel opened up into a huge space with a glowing ceiling that radiated sunlight. "That never fails to surprise me. Do you see the tree?"


    "It''s blurry as hell, but yeah, kind of. It''s freaking huge," Kane squinted his eyes.


    Rui on the other hand could clearly get a good image of it with his Riemannian Echo. "That it is, I still don''t see any monsters. Which is strange."


    "What about the esoteric resource deposits?" Kane asked.


    "Hehe," Rui grinned, "You''re not gonna believe where they are. Or rather, where it is."


    "It?" Kane raised an eyebrow.


    "The tree''s trunk is slightly elevated above the ground, meaning it''s uplifted by its roots that are dug deep into the ground, deeper than even my senses can reach," Rui exined. "And under the trunk is actually a small space, rtively speaking where a huge singr ore is sitting half buried in the ground. A big singr ore the size of arge building."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 846 Problems

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    "That''s huge!" Kane''s eyes widened. "Are you serious?"


    "Dead serious," Rui grinned. "Furthermore, there are no monsters. This is a gold mine it seems. Still, we should use Void Step regardless, I''d rather not go without it."? 2024 N?v/el/Dram/a.Org.


    "Sure thing,"


    Kane put his hand on Rui''s shoulder as he activated Void Step and the two of the sky-walked down in the direction of the tree.


    That was when it went wrong.


    The branches of the giant treeshed out toward the two of them at a shocking speed, rocking the very atmosphere of the floor as it shot toward them, reaching them in an instant.


    WHOOSH


    SPLAT


    "¡­!"


    The piercing power of the branches was high, and it surely would have impaled them effortlessly had it actually hit them. Yet it didn''t the two barely managed to avoid lethal, incurring only a few light flesh wounds.


    They immediately leaped back, shocked.


    Kane had reacted because evasive maneuvering was the very core of his specialty. His reflexes, agility, and speed greatly surpassed even Rui. He too had mastered Primordial Instinct a few years ago, and because of extremepatibility and synergy as well as Kane''s own inherently swift reflexes, the technique worked far more powerfully in his hands than it did in Rui''s even with the Mindmirror Symbiote.


    Rui, on the other hand, managed to avoid it, because, unlike Kane, he saw iting from much further away thanks to his Riemannian Echo. However, the Riemannian Echo was a reading technique rather than a sense, thus it was slower, which prevented Rui frompletely avoiding the attack.


    The two of them grimaced as they stepped back.


    "What the fuck?" Kane cursed as he covered his wounds.


    "That¡­ was unexpected," Rui''s expression turned grim. He didn''t bother with his wound, his healing would heal them up soon enough. "The tree has a protective mechanism, apparently. It does not allow people to get close by. That much alone is not shocking."


    Dungeons also possessed such a feature but it was limited to threat levels above a certain degree. Even the Shionel Dungeon possessed such a trait. It was the whole reason that only Martial Squires were able to enter the Shionel Dungeon while Martial Seniors and above weren''t.


    That wasn''t what shocked the two of them, really.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    "What is shocking is that it detected us while we were using Void Step!" Kane gasped.


    "Yeah, that''s really bad news," Rui grimaced. "Our model of sess relies on your Void Step quite heavily. Frankly, without it, we''re not that special."


    That wasn''t entirely true. Rui''s methods of fighting monsters in the Shionel Dungeon were very effective and there was no way that that would disappear with the Void Step being effective. In fact, Rui had developed those means of fighting the monsters in the Shionel Dungeon because of scenarios like this where they couldn''t rely on his Void Step.


    Although he hadn''t predicted this particr scenario, he had predicted that there would be instances where they would have to discard the technique. In those instances, the two of them needed to be able to handle themselves.


    "I don''t get it," Kane grew a little flustered. "How on Earth can it possibly detect us through Void Step? Are its senses just that incredibly sharp?"


    "No," Rui shook his head, having already analyzed the matter. "It''s because the tree probably doesn''t even have consciousness. Its defensive mechanisms are purely reactionary. It is closer to a machine than a sentient being. The Void Step technique relies on misdirecting attention and focusing in the opposite direction of the direction the user is moving in. However, that won''t work against something that does not have any awareness that can be misdirected in the first ce."


    "Damn," Kane cursed as he understood what happened. "So that means that it is super resistant to my technique."


    "Not even super resistant. It is literally categorically immune to misdirectionpletely," Rui told him. "Even if you were a Martial Senior, you would have no chance of sessfully using misdirection against that tree."


    "Damn¡­" Kane sighed. "Now what?"


    "Based on the fact that it only attacked us after we approached it, its defensive mechanisms are triggered by a range condition," Rui analyzed the circumstances that they were in. "I highly doubt that there is any route to the esoteric ore deposit sitting under the tree that avoids getting attacked. Still, we can definitely give it a try. There are probably several things that we should test in general before wee up with a way to get past the annoying defense mechanism system of the tree."


    Rui nced at his flesh wounds, verifying that they had nearly entirely healed.


    "That sounds like real fun," Kane remarked flippantly, feeling deted. He had been quite hyped that they had finally found a floor after half a day of searching and scanning. Yet the moment they did, it turned out to be a floor where he was entirely useless for the most part. He had no way of contributing beyond Void Step.


    He clenched his fists. (''I can''t be this weak forever.'')


    Of course, he was aware that given that he hadn''t even spent two years in the Squire Realm, his current strength and capabilities were quite impressive by the norm. Groundbreaking even, considering that Rui''s Hungry Pain had allowed him to achieve new heights that surpassed even what a prodigious genius like himself should have been capable of.


    But he long stopped caring aboutparisons to the norm. He wasn''t interested in the norm. When he looked at Rui, he couldn''t help but feel useless. Not only did he create brand-new powerful techniques on the fly like they were nothing, but his growth rate was staggering even whenpared to Kane. On top of that, the sheer amount ofpetence, knowledge, insight, and foresight that he had shown not just during their time in the Shionel Dungeon, but also during the mission on Vilun Ind.


    Although he wouldn''t admit it out loud, half the reason he grew stronger was to avoid being left behind by Rui.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 847 Choices

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    SLASH SLASH SLASH


    SPLAT


    Rui grimaced as he leaped back, caressing the wound on his neck. He had attempted to see whether his incredible sword-based offense was able to cut down the branches thatshed out at him when he triggered the defensive mechanism.


    Unlike the first time, where both he and Kane were caught greatly off-guard, he was prepared this time when he entered its range. He had just tried to see whether he could potentially make progress against the volley of branches that inevitably sted toward him.


    It was clear that the tree, like all living beings in the dungeon, had been monsterified with the esoteric substances running through its veins. This meant that the chilled Bellhorn Steel ought to be able to destroy the branches apart pretty easily, all things considered. What Rui was hoping for was the destruction to be potent enough to prevent the branches from actually reaching even as he proceeded moving towards therge singr esoteric deposit


    He just realized he couldn''t.


    (''It''s not a matter of my sword being too weak, my sword is cutting through just fine, the issue is that my shing frequency speed is not enough to prevent the branches from ever reaching me, especially when moving forward,'') He tutted to himself.


    It was harder to prevent the branches from striking him when he moved forward for multiple reasons, the first reason was, of course, he had less time to sh at them when he was moving towards the branches than if he was standing in one ce. The rtive velocity between them grew higher and the branches would only be moving faster from his perspective, making it even harder to cut them down before they could reach him.


    Furthermore, the number of branches attacking also increased the closer he got. He had hypothesized that each branch''s defensive system was autonomous to a certain extent, and they would simply attack whatever entered the radius. The closer he got to the tree, the more branches detected him andshed out at him, making it even more difficult than it already was.


    (''If it''s just standing stationarily at the edge of the range of the branch''s striking range, I can manage, so can Kane to a lesser degree,'') Rui noted. (''But that''s not enough,'')


    Another thing that frustrated Rui was the fact that there was really no scope for the VOID algorithm to seed. Although the VOID algorithm wasn''t strictly limited to humans, it was truly out of its element against a non-sentient tree that only had a single attack pattern; straight. Normally, Rui could drastically reduce his reaction times andg with the help of the predictive model, but even though he had already created a predictive model, it was nowhere near as shockingly effective as it normally was.


    The reason for this was that anybody could predict it, it was just that elementarily simple. The problem was that it didn''t really help, this was one challenge that required adequate amounts of speed and destructive power, and unfortunately, Rui''s Martial Art could not make up for the gap as easily as he normally did.


    "Damn," Rui cursed after hours of attempts. "This isn''t good news."


    "Yeah," Kane sighed. "We''ve tried basically anything. Hell, we''ve tried more than I would have had I tried doing this alone."


    "Honestly, this is the first real setback we''ve faced in the Shionel Dungeon," He said out loud, there have been a few headaches here and there, but this is the first time our winning strategy has been shut down this hard."<novelsnext></novelsnext>? 2024 N?v/el/Dram/a.Org.


    "True," Kane concurred, nodding. "What do you think we should do?"


    Rui considered his options. There were a few avenues to be considered. The first avenue was simply relying on themselves to slowly make progress and hopefully find a way to break through the tough defensive measures of the tree.


    It wasn''t that this method was without merits, but to Rui, it was simply far too inefficient. The two of them would have to spend a lot of time hacking it, and Kane was basically useless when it came to cutting down the branches, the only reason he could avoid dying was that he was an excellent evader, that was able to avoid critical wounds.


    There was another avenue that Rui was considering.


    "Maybe we don''t have to do all the hard work," Rui remarked.


    "Huh?" Kane tilted his head in confusion. "Like, abandon the floor and look for ones that we''re less ipatible with?"


    "No," Rui shook his head. "What I am talking about is the fact that we can literally get others to do all the dirty work for us."


    "How?" Kane frowned.


    Rui smirked. "There are ways to go about this."


    From what he could see, it required far too much effort and time for the two of them to slowly chop off all the branches that would attack them if they did try to extract the giant deposit under the hollow space beneath the trunk.


    Frankly, if he was not willing to, then he could simply get others to do it for him. Of course, no one would willingly do all the hard work and let Rui and Kane steal the fruits of theirbor.


    Willingly, being the keyword.


    If they were tricked, then Rui could get them to do it under deceived impressions of the fourteenth floor. Still, he needed to trick arge number of people, and that wasn''t easy. He couldn''t just pass out flyers with a map to the fourteenth floor and the location of the giant esoteric deposit on the fourteenth floor. That would instantly backfire in record time.


    It was practically impossible to manipte arge number of Martial Squires one by one and somehow convey the information to all of them through a hundred different ways, it was just far too impractical to go about such a crude of manipting Martial Squires. There were more efficient ways of manipting Martial Squires, and also more poetically satisfying ways of doing it as well.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 848 Buried

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    "You wanna go back?" Kane frowned. "Are you sure, after we haven''t even made any progress yet?"


    "It''s because we haven''t made much progress that we need to go back," Rui exined calmly. "Also, I''m honestly not even sure that we''d be able to fit that big esoteric boulder into my dimensional storage ring. At the very least, I''d need to empty out all the other stored goods and items in there. So even if we seed right now, we still need to go back."Text ? by N0ve/lDrama.Org.


    "Damn, right, I forgot about our inventory limits," Kane muttered. "Alright, let''s head back for now. I''m actually quite tired and could use a recharge honestly. Drinking rejuvenation potions works, but it''s not as satisfying as a genuinely natural period of rest."


    "True," Rui admitted. "Alright, let''s head back for now. I also am curious about the reaction of the Shionel Confederation to the board of the gate of the Town of Veril, honestly."


    The two of them had spent more than a day and a half in the dungeon between exploration and trying to break past the defensive countermeasures of the giant tree. It was finally time for them to return back.


    The actual travel back did not take that long. Even though Martial Squires could not run at top speed given that there were no straight paths for them to build up speed without slowing down, it was still quite enough for them to jog to quickly cover the diameter of the Shionel Dungeon. The reason that they didn''t was also because the tunnels formed aplex maze the path back to which was extremely difficult for most people to navigate. Thus most Martial Squires spent at least an hour both traveling to and back to new floors. Many a time, scouting teams that necessarily spent a lot of time in dungeons needed to spend a lot of time getting back because they were not going to known locations and were instead searching for new floors.


    None of this applied to Rui. He didn''t need to waste time like every other Martial Squire did when returning since he had memorized the way they came, and also could sense the easiest way out of the dungeon from any given point with just a short time spend scanning with Riemannian Echo.


    Within fifteen minutes, they hade out.


    Kane grew especially focused as he made sure he made no mistakes when they stepped out of the dungeon with his Void Step technique. This was arguably the most important role Kane yed, which was making sure that no one sensed them when they left the Shionel Dungeon. The reason this was extremely important was that the consequences of being spotted when leaving the Shionel Dungeon during one of their genuine raids were high. They never entered the dungeon officially when they went on one of their mass harvests of esoteric deposits, and instead used Void Step to enter the dungeon. What that meant was that they could never leave the dungeon normally either.


    After all, how could Martial Squires that never entered the dungeon magically leave the dungeon?


    Of course, most people would not pay much attention to such a thing, and most people would not care to be careful of such a thing.


    But Guildmaster Bradt, Chairman Deacon, and Rui Quarrier weren''t most people. Each of them was extremely aware of the sheer size of the role that logistical details such as this yed. The former two because of a lifetime of experience in the world of business andmerce and intelligence gathering, and thetter because of otherworldly shrewdness and intelligence. None of the three would miss an oddity such as Martial Squires magically exiting from a ce that they never entered, and none of the three were stupid enough to make such a mistake, especially when they were going against each other in a battle of information and intelligence gathering.


    If Kane made a mistake, then as far as Rui was concerned, it would be time to run and run away far.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    Thankfully, Kane was far too careful, and the two of them sessfully reached their inn discreetly.


    "Ahhhh," Kane sighed in relief. "I can''t wait to get into the hot tub."


    "You can go ahead and eat without me, I have the usual stuff to do," Rui told him.


    "Gotcha," Kane nodded nonchntly. This had already been the norm, thus he didn''t really see anything odd about it. "See youter."


    Rui left the inn as he headed toward a particr destination that was actually on the other side of the country. This location would serve as the location for the burial of the esoteric resource supplies that Rui and Kane had harvested, which they would be selling in the name of Esosale Suppliers through the Bradt Distribution Network.


    He needed to regrly restock the inventory of Esosale Suppliers, otherwise, the brand that he had built with the help of the guildmaster would be affected to a certain extent. Although he made sure not to shackle himself with such a thing, it was still something he was willing to consider when it was easy and affordable.


    It took him a little while to reach the other side of the nation, finally reaching his destination.


    "Alright, no one around for five kilometers, let''s get to work," Rui pulled a shovel from the dimensional storage ring, before swiftly digging up a huge hole with it that was six feet deep.


    THUD


    He brought out all the esoteric harvests that he had in his storage, dumping them all in the big hole that he had just buried, before hurriedly covering the hole up once more. He blew some hot air at the sand with his windpipe, getting rid of the moisture in the dug-up sand that darkened it, making itpletely indistinguishable from the dry sand around it.


    (''Let''s get out of here before I''m spotted by anyone,'') He quickly disappeared as he left behind a big sonic boom in his path.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 849 Letter

    ?


    The burying part was easy. What he needed to be more careful of was the envelope that he would send to Guildmaster Bradt that would inform him of the location of the esoteric resource supplies that he had just buried on the other side of the nation.


    This was a bit more dangerous since Rui needed to make sure that he didn''t by mistake clue Guildmaster Bradt in on his location or identity.? 2024 N?v/el/Dram/a.Org.


    He used the most generic andmonly avable and supplied kinds of paper and envelopes with the mostmon kind of cheap pen. This way, there ought to be no real way Guildmaster Bradt could possibly track him based on the kind of paper, pen, or envelope used. Some might say Rui was being paranoid, but Rui knew better than to assume that Guildmaster wouldn''t at least thoroughly look into this avenue once.


    He didn''t know the extent of the forensic investigative capabilities of this world, even if he knew it most likely was not on par with cutting-edge forensic investigation and analysis in the twenty-first century of Earth. In which case he had to be extremely careful not to leave even a speck of his DNA on the paper. He wore a head cap, a face mask, and gloves that went all the way up to his elbows among other things.


    He also used his left hand to write instead of his write one in case Guildmaster Bradt put his letters through a thorough graphological analysis, even using handwriting very different from what he normally used. In his paranoia, he artificially boosted the humidity and moisture in his room by vaporizing a lot of water with his hot air windpipe. This way if Guildmaster Bradt had some means to gauge the location the letter was based on moisture absorbed, he would be sorely thrown off.


    With all of these measures, born out of paranoia, in ce, even he finally felt confident to begin writing down his letter.


    It was a standard coded encryption cipher that the two of them had agreed upon in their meeting when they signed the contract, to convey the exact and hyper-precise coordinates of the buried supplies.


    That was the easy part. The hard part was deciding whether he should try and scam Guildmaster Bradt by telling him about the location of the fourteenth floor in the new pierce of the Shionel Dungeon map that he would also be sending to the man as per their agreement.


    He had already decided that he was not going to waste time trying to destroy the branches of the tree himself. Instead, he would rather get others to do the dirty work for himself.


    (''That''s not very nice of me,'') Rui mused.


    He was aware of that. Still, he surprisingly didn''t even feel anypunctions about using others to get to his goal. This surprised even himself.


    (''I suppose ites down to whether or not I deceived them directly,'') he considered.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    He did not intend to lie to anybody, or even misconstrue the facts. Hell, he didn''t necessarily have intentions of evenmunicating any information. He could just guide them to the fourteenth floor and let them make their conclusions and decisions, that too would work out in his favor. At the end of it, when they sessfully spend all the necessary time clearing the tree''s branches, he would then swoop in, store the thing in his dimensional ring, and then leave peacefully. That, he had no problem doing.


    There were no rules in the Shionel Dungeon, and there was a titanic amount ofpetition. Such a thing waspletely normal, expected, and implicitly consented to.


    Any Martial Squire who entered the dungeon did so aware of the difficulty, risks, and dangers, there was an awareness that such a thing could happen and was allowed to happen, and was expected to at least be attempted to make happen. That, to Rui, was consent to being subjected to such a thing. Of course, he expected resistance, but he knew he could ovee it.


    Although Kane''s Void Step did not work on the tree, it worked perfectly well on Martial Squires, and even more so in the Shionel Dungeon. Thus, there was nothing that they could do to stop them.


    The only issue he had at the moment was choosing how to get arge group of Martial Squires to work hard on tearing down the branches of the tree in the middle of the fourteenth floor. The manner in which urred needed to be organic and natural. He couldn''t slip a letter detailing the location of the floor and put it under the front door of his target''s house.


    He could go about it by directly individually informing arge number of Martial Squires about the location indirectly, and have them raid the floor, but the issue was that it was too impractical to do this one by one. Furthermore, one of them was liable to b and inform the Shionel Adventurer Guild about the location of the fourteenth floor in order to earn the huge bonus that came from doing so. Once that happened, the countless bounty hunters that were hunting for Rui and Kane would also flood the fourteenth floor, partaking in the raid but also keeping a close eye on anyone that could be the Voider.


    This was an undesirable sequence of oues for Rui.


    Why had he made the decision to seek out new floors and clear and plunder them before any other adventurer found them? It was precisely to avoid the hoards of bounty hunters that were greedily eying the extravagant hundred million Shionel Gold bounty that Chairman Deacon had ced on his head.


    He did not want to invite all of them there.


    But how on Earth could he get arge group of Martial Squires that weren''t part of the public that was infested with Voider bounty hunters?


    (''There are really only two forces that possess groups of private Martial Squiresrge enough for what I need,'') Rui''s eyes narrowed. (Guildmaster Bradt, and Chairman Deacon.'')


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 850 Target

    ?


    It was true that there were other people he could trick. There were other powerful merchants, such as the Cab Merchants of the Shionel Merchant Guild. Theseprised the hundred most sessful, powerful, and richest merchants and businessmen of the Shionel Confederation. These people possessed an immense amount of power and usually had private Martial Artists exclusively employed by them.


    Yet there were very few that possessed the sheer scale that Rui was looking for to clear the fourteenth floor.


    The two best candidates were Guildmaster Bradt and Chairman Deacon. These two people possessed the ability to quickly gather a huge number of Martial Squires and raid the dungeon swiftly and clear it. The rest were somewhat less reliable in his eyes.


    (''So either Guildmaster Bradt or Chairman Deacon have the be the victims of my little scam,'') Rui mused.


    Of the two of them, he was obviously more inclined to trick Chairman Deacon, but he wanted to make sure he considered all his options. Fortunately, the merits and demerits were obvious.


    Guildmaster Bradt may not be a friend, but he was a working partner with mutual interests with Rui. They each had what the other sought, and they worked together to get what they wanted from each other. Rui was able to peacefully sell his harvests with zero hassles, withplete state-guaranteed anonymity so that people like Chairman Deacon couldn''t just look at the Adventurer Guild registry and learn of Rui''s identity and then send a million Martial Squires, or a single Martial Senior, to assassinate Rui.


    Chairman Deacon was far from the only one who would love nothing more than to erase Rui''s very existence itself. Rui had inadvertently pissed off pretty much the entirety of the supplier market not just in the Shionel Confederation but also the surrounding and participating nations of the Shionel Dungeon raid as well.


    Without the bill that Guildmaster Bradt had passed, that amended the registration and verification protocols of the Shionel Merchant Guild and the Shionel Adventurer Guild, all these people would very easily be able to learn of Rui''s identity, and then it was game over for Rui. No matter how potent his Martial Art was, at this stage, he had no chance of surviving the second his identity was revealed.


    In the best-case scenario, he would essentially need to sell himself to the Kandrian Martial Union. The Martial Union was probably the only organization with the Martial and political power needed to protect him from the ire of all the surrounding countries. Although Rui would no doubt be on the cklist of all these nations, none of them would dare fight the Martial Union just to kill him. Rui was not worth waging a war against one of the most powerful Martial organizations on the east side of the Panama Continent.


    Still, Rui had willingly traded an urate precise three-dimensional map of the Shionel Dungeon in exchange for the anonymity amendments. Guildmaster Bradt had basically drooled at the prospect of a map that could allow him to smoothly travel in and out of the Shionel Dungeon withplete and precise knowledge of what route he could take and what was where.


    The two of them had a good working partnership, and although that matter was distinct from the matter of the fourteenth floor, Rui did not want to cause any bad blood to happen between them. It was just unwise, all things considered.


    (''That leaves us with our good old friend Deacon,'') Rui smirked. <novelsnext></novelsnext>


    It was decided, he would use Chairman Deacon to do all the hard work for himself. The question was how he ought to go about executing such a n. His goal was to get Chairman Deacon to try and monopolize the Shionel Dungeon, and invest energy into cutting the tree''s branches down so that they could safely ess the core.


    Once he finished clearing all the branches, Kane and Rui could sweep by with Void Step, pluck the giant esoteric ore deposit and drop it into their dimensional storage, and then simply leave.


    The issue was conveying the existence and location of the fourteenth floor to Chairman Deacon in an organic and unsuspicious manner. If he conveyed the information too tantly, then it would certainly arouse the suspicions of Chairman Deacon and he would be extremely careful and cautious. If he simply sent Chairman Deacon an anonymous letter, that would instantly trigger all the warning bells in the head of someone as shrewd as Chairman Deacon.Content held by N?velDrama.Org.


    Why would anyone give away such a treasure so easily for free? In what world did that make sense? Why was it sent anonymously through an unsigned letter?


    Such questions would be flying through his head and in his paranoia he would most likely excessive time investigating. In his paranoia, he might even make different decisions that would conflict with the way Rui wanted things to go.


    That was highly undesirable to Rui.


    (''Thus, I need him toe to learn of the fourteenth floor organically and naturally,'') Rui decided. That meant he could absolutely not convey the information himself, that wouldn''t really work out no matter the way he chose to go about it.


    (''The objectively best way to get him to organicallye to learn about the fourteenth floor is by discovering it himself,'')


    Rui knew that Chairman Deacon had an entire department in hispany dedicated to exploring and discovering new floors and ces inside the Shionel Dungeon.


    (''If that department happened to stumble upon the fourteenth floor, then that would be the least suspicious way for him to have gotten ess to that information,'') Rui just needed to figure out a way to make that happen. The issue was how he ought to go about it. He knew that Deacon Industries dispatched exploratory teams into the dungeon in different directions hoping to run into new floors, the best option he could think of was to somehow manipte one team into reaching the fourteenth floor. Though he hadn''t yet figured out all the specifics.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 851 Information

    ?


    "Should I just knock one of the teams out and toss them into the fourteenth floor?" He asked himself, amused.


    The idea wasn''t exactly without merit, even if it was an amusingly crude way of going about it.


    However, it definitely also had its demerits.


    (''If they get knocked out only to wake up and find themselves on a brand-new floor of the dungeon, that''s definitely going into the report,'') Rui sighed. (''In that case, it''s quite likely that Chairman Deacon will be suspicious nheless.'')


    Although he would be suspicious to a lesser extent than if Rui triedmunicating to him the existence and location of the fourteenth floor, it was still too iffy for Rui. What he needed was a concrete way to ensure that Chairman Deacon would greedily try to monopolize and clear it himself. This way, the only one suffering would be Chairman Deacon. He had absolutely no problems with that.


    (''Alright, now, I just need to n exactly how I''m going to get an exploration team of Deacon Industries to stumble into the fourteenth floor,'') Rui sighed as he considered all the avable options at hand.


    (''The most organic way would be them naturally finding the fourteenth floor without any intervention from me,'')


    The problem was that this was too unlikely and Rui couldn''t afford to wait around for the many days and weeks it would take for an event that may not even ever happen> he couldn''t afford to waste so much time waiting for them to stumble onto the fourteenth floor naturally.


    Furthermore, if the fourteenth floor came to be discovered by a non-Deacon Industries Martial Squire, then they would most likely disclose its existence to the Shionel Merchant Guild which would immediately mean that all the adventurers in the Shionel Confederation woulde to learn of it as well.


    That would defeat the whole point of avoiding the floors that the entire public hade to learn of. After all, he went looking out for new floors because he wanted to avoid the huge number of bounty hunters that existed among the normies. There were too many points of failure and the risk was too great to conduct his operations in their presence.


    (''I can''t sit around waiting for them to naturally discover it,'') Rui shook his head, sighing. (''I definitely need to intervene.'')


    He had already ruled out knocking them out and leaving them on the fourteenth floor unconscious.


    Thus, he needed a new way to guide them to the fourteenth floor.


    (''I basically need them to willingly choose the path that would lead them to the fourteenth floor,'') Rui considered the line of thought. (''What could get them to choose one path over the other?'')


    He could think of several possibilities.


    (''Unfavorable physical conditions,'') Rui mused. (''Maybe a path that poses an increased risk to their life as opposed to a in path. Paths that are detrimental to their primary risks such as their life, safety, and health as well as their objectives to explore a bare minimum amount of distance.'')


    Rui''s mind shed through a number of ns as he considered all of them. He could poison alternative paths to the paths that led to the fourteenth floor in an overt manner, causing the team to avoid those other paths and go right along the one that Rui wanted them to.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    He could leave signs of the presence of monsters that usually meant that one was getting close to a floor.


    He could fill the entrances to alternative paths preventing them from taking that path, leaving them with only one path to follow.


    (''That''s actually a good idea,'') Rui considered. ("Still, even if I do choose to that, that doesn''t mean that it will seed. Hell, before I can even flesh out the n, I need to learn more about the exploration department of Deacon Industries.'')


    Depending on how Deacon Industries went about their exploration and what methodologies they followed, Rui''s objectives could be anywhere between easy and difficult to execute.


    (''The problem is gaining all the information necessary,'') Rui tutted.


    He had no information on them to work on. Thus he needed to secure a reliable intelligence channel on all of it.


    Fortunately, he was not without options. Content held by N?velDrama.Org.


    (''Kane has a good amount of experience as a spy,'') Rui recalled. (''He should have the ability to infiltrate Deacon industries and gather information on their exploration department.'')


    He could definitely be of aid in getting Rui the information that he needed. Still, Rui was quite apprehensive about sending Kane on such a mission, since he knew that Chairman Deacon had contracted Martial Seniors. If Kane happened to infiltrate at the wrong time and ce, even with Void Step, he would be doomed, for he had no way of defying a Martial Senior.


    (''Besides, Kane is good, but there is a more secure and less risky way of obtaining more holistic information,'') Rui nced back at the letter before him.


    He was absolutely certain that Guildmaster Bradt had an enormous amount of information about Chairman Deacon''s operations. The two of them no doubt engaged in arge covert intelligence war that went on in the shadows.


    Not only would he be able to give Rui more information than Kane could get his hands on, but it was also a lot less risky. The only downside was that it obviously gave away Rui''s interests in Deacon Industries to Guildmaster Bradt. With that and future events, he would most likely be able to piece together what happened.


    (''Still, that''s not such a big deal, honestly,'') Rui shrugged.


    He was not friends with Chairman Deacon, but the fact that they were working partners with plenty of incentives to cooperate meant that Rui didn''t need to fear him gleaning insights into Rui''s general intentions and concerns.


    He quickly resumed writing the letter as he specified with an information request, adding that Guildmaster Bradt could cut the costs of purchasing the information out of Rui''s shares from the profits of Esosale Suppliers.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 852 Trap

    ?


    He quickly finished the letter, handing it to Kane. Kane had done this many times, so he didn''t need any exnations at all.


    The next morning Kane waited at the post office with Void Step active. The system that the two of theme up with involved putting the envelope meant for Guildmaster Bradt at the of the letter stack of the postman''s carriage.


    This way they didn''t need to register. Rui was not foolish enough to send letters following the systematic protocols in ce. That would give him away pretty easily. Guildmaster Bradt merely needed to identify the individual who posted a letter on the same day that he got a letter from the Voider, and he would have a small and manageable list of suspects for the Voider''s identity.


    Once he saw Kane or Rui on the list, it would mostly be game over since the two of them would probably be the only Martial Squires on the list.


    This way, there was simply no trace of the letter entering the system. Given that Guildmaster Bradt had no idea at what point the letter entered the system, it instantly became too impractical to pursue the avenue as a way to figure out who the Voider was.


    Rui simply needed to wait. He had already told Guildmaster Bradt to send him the information through their regr method.


    "He''s probably already deposited the information," Rui remarked, turning towards Kane. "Drop me to the Shionel Dungeon."


    "What for?" Kane frowned.


    "I purchased information from Guildmaster Bradt," Rui exined. "On Chairman Deacon."


    "Is this rted to your n of getting somebody else to do all the hard work on the fourteenth floor?"


    "Yep," Rui nodded. "I''ll tell you about it once I get all of the information."


    "Alright, let''s go."


    Kane and Rui quickly headed towards the Shionel Dungeonpletely undetected under the influence of Kane''s Void Step. They quickly headed to the first floor.


    "Sense it yet?" Kane asked, turning to Rui.


    "Yep," Rui nodded. He could clearly sense a box of documents buried at a remote edge of the first floor.


    This was the method that Rui had given to Guildmaster Bradt tomunicate with him. Every time Rui entered the dungeon with Kane with Void Step, he scanned the first floor at least once for any potential message from Guildmaster Bradt.


    Although this method was somewhat pointlessly borate, tedious, and crude, it gave Rui the home-court advantage. He simply did not trust himself to not be tricked by Guildmaster Bradt if they were to exchange transactions through normal means. Rui was incredibly intelligent and shrewd, but it wasn''t as though Guildmaster Bradt was a fool, worlds away from it. Rui did not think it was wise to tangle him in an arena that the old man had a lifetime of experience in winning in.


    That was why Rui chose a method of transaction where he had a dominant upper hand. The fact that he was undetectable in the Shionel Dungeon, and could sense everything when no one else could, was an advantage that he didn''t think Guildmaster Bradt could beat.


    "Here it is," Rui told Kane.Content held by N?velDrama.Org.


    "Alright, let''s dig it up," Kane cracked his knuckles.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    "Wait," Rui told him. "I have some preparations to make."


    "For digging something up?" Kane frowned. "Do you need a shovel?"


    "No, I need this," Rui pulled a full-body suit from his dimensional storage before donning it from head to toe.


    "What on Earth is that for?" Kane frowned.


    "It''s because I don''t trust Guildmaster Bradt," Rui remarked. "You should get away from here."


    Kane had no idea why Rui was being so paranoid, but he shook his head, following his instructions. Rui quickly dug up the box, pulling it out, and opening it up.


    "Hm?" His eyes widened as he the second he opened the box as he detected something strange.


    His normal senses only saw a bunch of documents, but his Riemannian Echo detected a gas with a far lower density being released from the box, curving space less, thus allowing him to sense it when he shouldn''t have been able to. If not for his Riemannian Echo, he probably would not have even realized something was wrong.


    (''This is either a kind of sleeping gas that would have knocked me out had I inhaled it,'') Rui realized. (''Or it would have served some way for him to locate me outside of the Shionel Dungeon.'')


    He suspected it was probably something like thetter. Guildmaster Bradt had probably thought there was a good chance that Rui would have fallen for it without realizing it, allowing him to finally figure out Rui''s true identity.


    "Fucking bastard," Rui cursed, yet he smirked. The full-body suit he had on ensured that he was not touched by it, and he had sent Kane away, so he sessfully foiled the trap.


    He put the box into his dimensional storage, before moving a hundred meters away from the area, and then putting his suit back into the dimensional storage.


    "Are you done?" Kane sighed. "Let''s go already.


    "No, wait," Rui shook his head. "I was right, Guildmaster Bradt did try pulling some trick, even though I''m not sure what the trick was."


    "What?" Kane''s eyes widened. "What do we do?"


    "I''ve got it covered," Rui put his thumbs up. "We cannot take the box outside of the Shionel Dungeon."


    "Why not?" Kane frowned.


    "There''s a good chance that we''ll be caught if we do," Rui simply replied as his mind sharply analyzed his circumstances and came up with several solutions, before quickly identifying the best one. "Here''s what we''re going to do. I''ll read all the documents here in the Shionel Dungeon, and memorize all the data from start to. Then I''ll thoroughly destroy the box and the documents, and then we''ll leave after that."


    This way, if the box had some way to be tracked, then it wouldn''t matter, since it could not be tracked in the Shionel Dungeon due to the jamming trait of the Shionel Dungeon.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 853 Winner

    ?Content held by N?velDrama.Org.


    Rui did not want to read the documents on the popted first floor where they could be run into by a random adventurer at any given point in time. He did not want to use read all the documents with Void Step because that was just a pain in the ass to do.


    Instead, the two of them went to the fourteenth floor where they were isted from the others.


    Rui gave Kane a suit this time as well since it would take some time. Soon enough, both of them hadpleted their preparations.


    "Alright, I''ll begin," Rui quickly opened the box of documents, beginning to go through with them.


    The first one detailed the basic background of the Exploration Department of Deacon Industries. ording to Guildmaster Bradt, Chairman Deacon had created the department within twenty-four hours of the discovery of the Shionel Dungeon. The moment he had gotten the news, he immediately realized that this would probably change the supplier-consumer markets of esoteric substances forever.


    As the most dominant force in the international market of manyrge esoteric supply industries and sectors, he needed to make sure that he did not lose the ensuing war that he had predicted would ur.


    Rui expected nothing less of Chairman Deacon, although the economic and political capital rued by this man was not on par with Guildmaster Bradt, he was still unquestionably the most powerful individual in the Shionel Confederation, and that was true for a reason.


    The following documents went deeper into the operations and protocols of the exploration department of Deacon Industries. Rui was impressed with the sheerplexity and sophistication of the system that Chairman Deacon hade up with.


    The man did not simply go for a bone-headed strategy where he simply dumped arge sum of money and resources into exploring every nook and cranny of the Shionel Dungeon mindlessly. No, the system that he had set up in ce worked heavily in tandem with the Dungeon Division of the Intelligence Department.


    This division was focused on gathering any and all information about the dungeon by gathering reports from contracted and partnered Martial Squire adventurers, as well as other Martial Squire adventurers that were involved with Deacon Industries. The division gathered a gigantic reservoir of information before conducting thorough data analyses on the stated reports, even managing to create highly rudimentary and imprecise maps of certain sections of the dungeon and timelines of certain events based on reports.


    The frequency and density of monster sightings were corrted with the presence of a floor and proximity to it.


    Based on this, the Dungeon Division of the Intelligence Department evaluated the avenues of exploration with the highest probability of being near an undiscovered floor. The Exploration Department would begin by evaluating the difficulty of each of the avenues of exploration, and sort out which avenues would receive how much of therge, but ultimately limited, explorative capital that Deacon Industries had.


    With that out of the way, the explorative operations would be devised by the department and the teams would set out to execute the operations. The results of the initial explorations would have the Exploration Department re-evaluate the allocation of capital before further exploration endeavors were conducted. This was a permanent cycle.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    What Rui was interested in was the actual methodologies of exploration that the dispatched teams of Martial Squires used. After all, that was what he needed to know if he was to manipte them into stumbling into the fourteenth floor.


    "Oh¡­? Interesting¡­" Rui murmured as he read through the documents. "Quite unique."


    Apparently, the exploration teams of the Exploration Department of Deacon Industries use markers based on extremely potent esoteric substances that allow them to track the exact paths that they already explored previously.


    "If the markers can be tracked even in the dungeon then they must be extremely potent to even partially resist the jamming effect of the Shionel Dungeon," Rui murmured.


    He raised an eyebrow as an interesting idea entered his head.


    "If the only bearings they have on what routes they were exploring are the markers, then this can be exploited," Rui smirked.


    The fact that the Shionel Dungeonpletely jammed the maic field of the meant that the natural internalpass that many species evolved to have waspletely shot. On top of that the highly restricted senses and the uniformity of the dungeon meant that it was extremely easy topletely get lost in the dungeon very easily, one could think one was traversing a path that they normally traversed, but in reality, they could be traveling in the exact opposite direction and they would never realize it.


    That was why the Exploration Department used cutting-edge path-tracking esoteric technology that would remain at least a little effective even despite the jamming nature of the Shionel Dungeon.


    "¡­It would be a real shame if someone relocated those markers to manipte the direction that the exploration team set out on, wouldn''t it?" A mischievous smile rose on Rui''s face. He didn''t think he would find his winning strategy to have the exploration team stumble on the fourteenth team so soon. As long as he got all the details right, he could easily manipte the exploration team to stumble on the fourteenth floor by removing the markers embedded into thend and cing them along a route that would lead to the fourteenth floor, or as close to it as he could.


    "They will naturallye to discover the location as long as I get them close enough," Rui noted. "Though I probably shouldn''t change the locations of the markers too drastically, that may evoke suspicion from the analysts of the Exploration Department of the Shionel Dungeon."


    Abination of making the other paths undesirable to explore and relocating certain key markers, he ought to be able to cleanly redirect one of the exploration teams to the fourteenth floor.


    "After that, we just have to kick back and watch as Chairman Deacon does all the back-breaking hard work for us," Rui smirked.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 854 Failed

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    "Are you done?" Kane asked once Rui finished the final document at the bottom of the box.


    "Yep," Rui nodded. "Just finished memorizing all this data. Now time to destroy the box."


    "Are you going to hack it to bits?" Kane asked. "That feels a bit pointless."


    "It would be pointless," Rui nodded. "But I intend to hack it and then burn it."


    He summoned his sword from the dimensional storage ring, swinging a hundred times in less than a second.


    Instantly, the box and the documents were reduced to pieces. Immediately, he pulled out his hot air windpipe, before inhaling deeply and exhaling a huge amount of air that was cracklingly hot, immediately setting the box and the documents on fire and incinerating them to the ground.


    "Can we take these annoying suits off now?" Kane asked impatiently.


    "Sure, let''s put some good distance between us and it first though," Rui replied. With a single step, the two of them were instantly hundreds of meters away from where they were before. They quickly removed the full-body suits before Rui put them into his dimensional storage.Content held by N?velDrama.Org.


    Rui had taken all the precautions he could to ensure that there was essentially no direct contact between him and the box.


    "We should very much be in the clear, let''s head back now," Rui told Kane, as the two of the left the fourteenth floor, and eventually returned home. Rui spent the rest of the day fleshing out his n as he revised all of the intelligence that he had stored in his Mind Pce.


    Meanwhile, Guildmaster Bradtter that day was notified of the disappearance of the documents that Rui had purchased from him.


    "Have youpletely verified this result? Is there truly no trail of Cenexeun Sawdust?" Guildmaster Bradt asked sternly.


    "Unfortunately not, sir," The man replied. "Senior Vellean has reported that there is no overt trail of the potent Cenexeun Sawdust emerging anywhere from the Shionel Dungeon nor anywhere else from across the Adventurer Ring town."


    "Hmmm¡­" the man stroked his beard. (''So he has either not yet left the dungeon, or has found a way to avoid my little trap.'')


    Guildmaster Bradt found the first option to be very unlikely, it had been nearly half a day since the documents had been noticed to be extracted. Why would The Voider spend half a day in the dungeon if his main task had beenpleted?


    (''Alternatively, it is possible he realized he fell for my trap and refuses to leave the dungeon out of paranoia,'') Guildmaster Bradt narrowed his eyes.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    He did not discount this possibility, this was the worst possibility. Since the Voider would refuse to leave the dungeon, and thus the supplies for Esosale Suppliers would never reach him. Still, this was particrly unlikely.


    However, it was thetter possibility that drew Guildmaster Bradt''s attention. If this was the case, then he would have to update his evaluation of the Voider''spetence, caution, and protective measures. This was a good thing in his opinion. If the Voider managed to foil this trap, then it would give Guildmaster Bradt an even greater degree of confidence in his mysterious working partner.


    However, if the Voider failed to detect and evade the trap, then the potent Cenexeun Dust that could be tracked by special animals and some Martial Seniors would allow him to eventually discover the identity of the Voider, giving him a lot of control.


    This was a trap that had positive oues regardless of whether it seeded or failed. Guildmaster Bradt simply could not lose. Though he wasn''t sure which oue had unfolded at the moment, he would definitely get confirmation over time.


    More importantly, he was quite curious as to why Rui had requested the information that he had requested from Guildmaster Bradt. He wasn''t entirely sure what Rui was going for here.


    However, there were several deductions and hypotheses he had in mind.


    (''There''s a direct sh of interests between the Voider and Deacon as they are the two most powerful forces in the supplier market and the two of them are going head-to-head,'') Guildmaster considered the information he had at hand. (''Given that he wants information on Deacon''s exploratory information on the dungeons, it is almost guaranteed that the reason he wants it has to do with a sh of interests between him and Deacon rted to the dungeon. Most likely, with the prospect of newer floors, and the fact that Chairman Deacon monopolizes new floors that his teames across.'')


    Guildmaster Bradt thought it was likely that Rui wanted to prevent Chairman Deacon from monopolizing floors that he came across in his exploration endeavors.


    Unfortunately, he simplycked the information to know how wrong that hypothesis was. In fact, it was the exact opposite of the reason why Rui wanted the information, but he couldn''t possiblye to that conclusion unless he learned about the problem of the fourteenth floor.


    Regardless, Guildmaster Bradt predicted that all of this would lead to a series of events that would certainly cause Chairman Deacon a lot of pain in theing future. He looked forward to kicking back and watching the Voider and Chairman Deacon going at it. He would simply do what he did best and exploit both of them to his benefit ande out on top as he had done his entire life.


    In that regard, he was happy to see the Voider take a proactive interest in learning more about Chairman Deacon for no doubt reasons that Chairman Deacon would curse him for. He had to admit, he was quite curious to see what all of this would lead up to.


    (''Hohoho¡­'') Heughed inwardly. (''What exciting times, indeed.'')


    The chaos and uncertainty that had been guing the politicalndscape of the Shionel Confederation reminded him of his younger days when he fought tooth and nail to enter the Shionel Merchant Cab and eventually be the guildmaster.


    Arge number of ns were unfolding in the background, unbeknownst to almost everybody else.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 855 Unexpected

    ?


    "Alright, prep up, both of you.," A man announced to two others in a dispatch facility. "We''re continuing yesterday''s exploration operation in route twenty-eight."


    The others nodded with steely expressions. Had one been in their presence, one would have realized that they were all Martial Artists, that too particrly strong ones.


    "Sigh, another day of exploring that dark and scary dungeon?" One of them sighed. "Can I quit?"


    "Tsk, as cowardly as always Suran," The man tutted. "Honestly, how on Earth did someone like you be a Martial Squire? It''s embarrassing to me that I''m in the same Martial Realm as someone as shamefully fearful of danger as you."


    "It''s because I''m so shamefully fearful of danger that I managed to climb up to the Squire Realm, boss," Squire Suran replied shrugging his shoulder.


    "How can you not want to explore the dungeon?!" Another chimed in. "It''s so exciting and otherworldly! You don''t see these kind of esoteric phenomena anywhere else in the Human Realm at least!"


    "Tsk, get away from me you adventure junkie," Squire Suran tutted with a look of disdain on his face. "It''s idiots like you that die first."


    "I''d rather die in an adventure than live like a coward!"


    "That''s enough, Suran, Crill," The team leader sternly ordered, putting an end to their bickering. "I said get prepped, both of you."


    Soon enough, the three of them had equipped themselves with all the gear and equipment that they needed for their exploration operation.


    "Let''s head out," The team leader instructed as they sky-walked to the Shionel Dungeon, before quickly entering it from a specific location.


    "We''ve reached the starting point of route twenty-eight," The team leader spoke into a device. "Time of entering the dungeon is precisely eight hundred hours."


    With that, the three of them entered the Shionel Dungeon through the tunnel. The team leader unfolded a portal device that extended downwards with a te attached to the bottom end of it. He waved it over the ground a bit before it glowed up in response.


    "Alright, the first marked checkpoint detected, let''s get going," The team leader announced.


    The mood among the three of them had grown a lot more serious and solemn. Even the excited Squire Crill who enjoyed exploring the dungeon maintained a highly alert state of mind. Although he loved adventures, he also loved his life, despite what he said. The Shionel Dungeon was simply too dangerous to go around walking without paying attention to where one was going, and to what was around one. Many Martial Squires had gotten lost in the dungeon without any idea or clue as to where they were. While plenty had sumbed to their deaths.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    It was a rare environment where even Martial Squires were in immediate danger. This was why the Exploration Department had assigned three Martial Squires to the team instead of one.


    The team leader would engage in the actual exploration while the remaining two were bodyguards of sorts. It was too dangerous for any Martial Squire, even S-rank adventurers, to be preupied with other matters when traveling the dungeon. The other two Martial Squires were there to cover the team leader while he engaged in the main exploration operation.


    The three of them traveled deeper while the team leader made sure that they were on the same path as before through the marked checkpoints. The markers were small spheres that were embedded into the ground and were the only way for the team leader to verify that they were on the same path as thest time that they scouted this route.


    Without them, the team leader would have absolutely no fathoming of any sort whatsoever whether they were anywhere near their old path. He only recognized the entrances and the starting ten meters. Beyond that, his senses were too hampered, his sense of direction of whirling around and the tunnels were all too simr for him to possibly distinguish between all of them.


    He had tried memorizing them using a sequence of numbers that told him which tunnel pathways to choose and which to avoid. However, he gave trying to remember all of them after the first fifteen numbers. There were simply far too many junctions in their way for each of which he would need a number. He was not capable of memorizing a hundred numbers in order, nor did he think any Martial Squire could possibly be capable of that.


    "SSSSKK!"Text ? by N0ve/lDrama.Org.


    BAM!!


    The team leader shook, startled when an Ind Shionel Taipanshed out at the ground from one of the tunnels beside them. Although he had been unable to react, Squire Suran intercepted the attack with a swift and powerful kick to the head that cracked its skull, killing it on the spot.


    "Huff¡­ Good job Suran, I would have died if it weren''t for you," The team leader sighed.


    "It''s just part of the job," Squire Suran shook his head. "Let''s get going and finish this operation as quickly as possible. I want to leave the dungeon as soon as possible today."


    "I agree," The team leader nodded. "We have already reached the end of the previously explored routes. Now we need to follow through and cover the prescribed amount of distance before we can head back."


    The team leader pressed a device that was hanging at his waist, a recording device that was just barely able to capture some data of their immediate surroundings under the oppressive jamming state of the Shionel Dungeon.


    The team leader truly did not expect to run into remarkable and special today, as always. He just wanted to finish his job and then get out of the dungeon as fast as he could. He, like Squire Suran, was not a fan of spending much time in the dungeon, especially when he needed to lower his guard when focusing on his operations and trust life in the hands of a coward and an adventure junkie.


    That was why he was speechless when he came across what was undeniably a new unexplored floor.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 856 Aftermath

    ?


    "Nice, they finally found it," Rui grinned from a kilometer away from their position. He had been waiting patiently for quite some time for these three to stumble upon the fourteenth floor.


    While the intelligence that Guildmaster Bradt possessed detailed the hos, whys, and whats of the exploration process, it did not give Rui precise data on what paths the Exploration Department of Deacon Industries was exploring. He needed to spend about three days finding the closest team that he could redirect to the fourteenth floor of the Shionel Dungeon.


    Then, with abination of sealing off alternative paths, and redirecting the path a bit by changing the location of the markers beyond a certain point to point them straight towards the fourteenth floor.


    And like clockwork, they walked right into the fourteenth floor. At the moment they were convinced that they hade about this by natural coincidence, however, they would not be able to begin to conceive the fact that they were dancing in the palm of the Voider.


    His job was done, now he just needed to sit back and wait, and bide his time until the moment was just right.


    Soon after, the team hurriedly returned back to Deacon Industries alive as they informed Chairman Deacon of their discovery.


    "A new floor eh? Brilliant," Chairman Deacon smiled. "Finally, fate is starting to smile upon me. Immediately begin standard floor securing protocols and measures. Make sure not a single damn foreign adventurer discovers that thing and gets away alive. I don''t even want the public to ever learn of the existence of this new floor, the fourteenth floor."


    "Yes sir," His secretary bowed, leaving his office to fulfill his new orders.


    "Hm," Chairman Deacon could not help but smile, pleased at this turn of events. It seemed that finally, he was having a stroke of good luck. The recent events surrounding the  Shionel Dungeon had been extremely unpleasant and had left a bad taste in his mouth. So much so that he couldn''t help but wonder if he had been infected with bad luck or something.


    "Of course not,"


    He was not a superstitious man.


    "With the esoteric resource deposits of this floor, I should be able to regain momentum in the supplier market, overthrowing Esosale Suppliers," He smirked. "It''s a shame I won''t be able to see the look on the Voider''s face when they realize that they missed an entire floor to explore."


    Unbeknownst to him, Rui had been watching the movements of Deacon Industries carefully. He watched as Deacon Industries dispatched nearly a hundred Martial Squires immediately after the report had been processed!<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    As always, Rui was highly impressed with the sheer number of Martial Squires that were employed under Deacon Industries. He knew that they were not messing around and were going to take full charge of the Shionel Dungeon, killing any Martial Squire that was inevitably going to discover it, by monitoring all the tunnels leading into the Shionel Dungeon.


    Of course, this was not enough to stop Rui. But he did not intend on entering the dungeon until it was time to steal the prize of the dungeon.


    (''I''m going to have to spend a lot of time in the dungeon just monitoring the progress of the Deacon Industries. If I''m even a split second toote, I can kiss any chance of stealing the giant ore deposit at the center of the dungeon beneath the tree goodbye.'') Rui narrowed his eyes.


    He had a very short window to act upon, otherwise, the nature of his operation risked being exposed far too much.


    (''Ideally, I need to make it so that they never even have a chance to witness the esoteric ore deposit at the center of the dungeon beneath the tree,'') Rui noted. This was a rough condition for him. But, if they never came in to direct contact with the ore deposited, then they could never know that something that big was stolen and disappeared right before their very eyes. This way, they would never realize the nature of Rui''s and Kane''s esoteric ore extraction operation.


    This would require extremely urate timing from Rui''s end. But he was confident that he would be able to aplish it.


    (''This is especially so since I''ll have plenty of time to build predictive models on all of the Martial Squires from Deacon Industries that will be partaking in the clearing of this dungeon floor,'') Rui mused.


    One good thing about sitting back and observing was that Rui could gather huge amounts of data from observing all of the Martial Squires of Deacon Industries shing and attacking the branches. This could allow him to develop predictive models for all the Martial Squires partaking in the clearing of the fourteenth floor of the Shionel Dungeon.Exclusive ? material by N?(/v)elDrama.Org.


    Thus, at the crucial moment of leaping in and stealing the prize of the fourteenth floor, he could operate with a very deep understanding of how those Martial Squires were going to act, and how they were going to react. With this, he could minimize the probability of something highly unexpected unfolding in the stealing of the giant esoteric ore deposit at the center of the fourteenth floor, throwing him off his ns.


    (''At theter stage of their clearing of the Shionel Dungeon, Kane and I will probably have to camp out here in order to make sure that we''re here for the right moment. Hell, we''ll probably have to follow them right behind their backs as they''re finishing the final set of branch attacks,'')


    There was effectively no other way to make sure that they would be able to time the heist just right. He could not possibly rush from within the tunnels leading right to the fourteenth floor all the way to the center of the floor before they managed to secure it.


    (''Hm, I should give this more thought and flesh it out. Better safe than sorry. If Chairman Deacon gets a hold of me, death will end up looking pleasant.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 857 Approach

    ?


    Author''s Note: Please clear your cache and reread thest chapter as I incidentally posted the second chapter of the day as the first. Apologies for the mistake


    *****


    Deacon Industries immediately began aggressively clearing the Shionel Dungeon as fast as it possibly could. It ceased all other exploratory endeavors and gathered as much Martial capital as it possibly could to the fourteenth floor. More than a hundred Martial Squires were cutting down the branches at any given moment, allowing them to make progress at a rate that was quite impressive to Rui.


    (''As expected, Kane and I could never hold a candle to this kind of progress,'') Rui sighed.


    In fact, in hindsight, he found that it was a good thing that Rui decisively made the choice to avoid trying to clear the dungeon floor all by themselves. If they made too much progress before deciding to reveal its existence to Chairman Deacon, then the exploratory teams clearing the dungeon would have noticed the progress and would have reported it to Chairman Deacon, who would most likely make some realizations.


    Progress made by a lone adventurer who did not bother trying to reveal the evidence of the floor to the Shionel Adventurer Guild, but also tried clearing it on his own before Deacon Industries happened to stumble upon the floor clearly reminded everybody of a particr adventurer; the Voider.


    However, this way, they did not suspect anything and truly were of the belief that Deacon Industries were the first to discover the fourteenth floor. That was what Rui was counting on to get them to drop their guard at the crucial moments.


    "Still, they sure are working hard and smart," Rui admitted as he observed them from the edge of the fourteenth floor. He had to admit that their efficiency and effectiveness were worthy of apany that stood at the top of dungeon exploration sess rates prior to the arrival of Rui and Kane to the Shionel Dungeon.


    Deacon Industries had chosen to focus their Martial capital as much as possible in one particr direction and portion of the perimeter of the tree''s striking range. Rather than distributing all of their Martial Squires across the circle, they were able to make deeper and quicker progress to the center of the dungeon floor.


    Close-range defensive and offensive Martial Squires formed the first line of interception and defended against and destroyed them as much as they could. The long-range Martial Squires from behindunched volleys of long-range attacks that also destroyed and weakened the branch attacks. This way, the entire squad was able to make decently-paced progress steadily without faltering even once.


    The branch attacks were harder to defend the closer they got to the core of the gigantic tree, as the number of branches also increased as they entered the trigger range of a new set of branches with every step that they took towards the trunk of the titanic tree. This would make it quite strenuous for the Martial Squires during theter stages of the dungeon clearance.


    (''It should take them no more than a week at most at this rate,'') Rui sighed. Although he and Kane made up for theirck of quantity with their highly effective strategies and techniques, there was a limit to that.


    Quantity had a quality of its own that no number of tricks could substitute orpensate for. That was a hard reality that Rui was faced with. After all, this whole n emerged from the fact that it was too impractical for two Martial Squires to solo clear the fourteenth floor. <novelsnext></novelsnext>


    If not for this n, Rui might even have thrown his hands up and moved onto another floor rather than wasting time on this floor. That was a much more practical and even more interesting oue.


    However, what if there were other floors that required arge number of Martial Squires to clear them as well? Was Rui going to spend his time redoing the same strategy over and over again? Let others do all the hard work and steal it from them just when they were about to im the fruits of their effort?


    That did not sit well with Rui, even though it could potentially be interesting as a challenge. He hade to the Shionel Confederation for a sense of adventure, freedom, and earnest challenge, not to be a highly effective and notorious thief.


    (''Forget it, I have no idea what the rest of the floors are like, they could be cleared by us two alone or they may not,'') He sighed. (''That doesn''t matter for now.'')


    He spent a close eye on the clearing team of Deacon Industries over the span of the week. Because the number of Martial Squires piercing through the volley of branches at any given time was constant, the Martial Squires were in rotations of contributing to the attack and getting off work.


    This meant that Rui could not truly stay away from the fourteenth floor for extended periods of time, if he was even slightly wrong, then he would miss a lot of crucial moments. He did not want to steal the ore deposit after Deacon Industries had secured it and transported it away. That was just in theft and robbery.


    "We''re going to have to take shifts, Kane," Rui sighed, informing his partner and best friend. "Thankfully, both of us possess the means to observe them well."


    Rui could simply stay perched at a safe distance and observe everything with Riemannian Echo, while Kane could go a lot closer without being detected.


    "I already figured as much," Kane replied, yawning. "We need to make sure that we''re prepped for whenever we estimate that they''ll be done at least an hour ahead of time."


    "True," Rui nodded. "Not to mention, we need to make sure that the other parts of the n are also in ce. Specifically our escape routes. Because things might get ugly if that is alsopromised somehow."


    The two of them had already analyzed efficient ways to escape. Kane''s high affinity for evasion, as well as his experience with covert missions that required infiltration and escape, meant that his insights were just as valuable as Rui''s.Text ? by N0ve/lDrama.Org.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 858 Broke

    ?


    Soon enough, the raiding team of Deacon Industries came close to reaching the center of the fourteenth floor. The shes between the defensive countermeasures of the tree and the martial Squires grew even more intense. At this stage, there were a few that were wounded extremely lethally and sumbed to their wounds before they could be fed any healing potions.


    However, most Martial Squires possessed a natural healing factor that allowed them to survive such wounds that were bing increasinglymon. However, while the loss of every Martial Squire was a regrettable loss of a powerfulbat asset, the individual losses, especially of the lower-grade martial Squires were not that burdensome to Chairman Deacon.


    Squire-level conflicts inevitably led to casualties among Martial Squires. This applied not just to Martial Squires, but also to any Realm of conflict.


    Soon enough, the time for Rui and Kane to act drew closer. The two of them were alreadypletely prepped and geared with everything that they could possibly need for the infiltration and extraction operation that they were about to embark on.


    The n they had ended uping up with was simple. Moments before thest set of branches were destroyed, the two of them would sabotage the senses of the Martial Squires raiding the floor with some special items that they had acquired, courtesy of Guildmaster Bradt.


    Rui had procured several smoke-screen bombs that would give them enough of a momentary distraction and obscuration of their senses.


    During this short moment, the two of them would rush in, store the gigantic boulder in the dimensional storage ring and then simply leave through the closest tunnel.


    It sounded simple, but it really wasn''t.


    (''The problem is that the energy consumption of the energy ring is going to be exponentially stronger than normal due to the fact that we''re carrying a mass far greater than we normally do,'') Rui narrowed his eyes.


    The dimension storage of the ring was far from limitless. The more mass that one wanted to store, the exponentially greater the energy required to store the mass. What that meant was that the esoteric energy cells that Rui frequently changed would burn through exponentially faster.


    What that meant was that with the limited energy reserve that Rui could carry at any given point in time. They could not afford to be bogged down too much, he could not afford to store too many of them in the ring itself because they took up too much space that needed to be freed for the building of an ore boulder that they would be storing in it.


    Rui had even located a site that he had already dug to bury the ore deposit for Guildmaster Bradt to find ahead of time. So that the two of them could quickly dump the ore deposit the second they reached the site.


    In fact, Rui had given the ring to Kane, because he was the fastest. It was his duty to rush to the site after they had left the dungeon and ensure that he reached it before they timed up.


    Although they didn''t have an extremely restrictive schedule, they most certainly did not have a ton of free time either.


    (''Still, it''s manageable,'') Rui sighed. Belonging ? N?velDram/a.Org.


    Soon, it was time.


    BAM BAM BAM!


    Martial Squires furiously shed against the finalyers of branches of the tree, which now appeared to be as though it was dead. They were very close, just a few minutes away.


    Rui and Kane immediately followed up and stuck behind the squad, using them as a protective shield to ensure that they didn''t hit by the branch attacks that were capable of detecting them despite the Void Step technique.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    Soon, it was time.


    BAM!!!


    A grade-ten Martial Squire of Deacon Industriesunched a devastating attack that destroyed the final remaining branches that attacked them.


    "Yes! We''ve seeded!"


    "Time to harvest the eso-!"


    BANG!


    Rui and Kane maneuvered over them as Rui dropped several special explosives that temporarily created a potent smokescreen that obscured the vision of even lower Realm Martial Artists. Although the smoke was extremely dense and heavy, and thus did not longer midair for very long, even the few seconds that it brought Rui and Kane were plenty sufficient.


    The two of them shot over to the esoteric ore deposit while the Martial Squires of Deacon Industries and Kane immediately put the rock in contact with the ore, activating the ring instantly.


    The esoteric ore deposit disappeared without an issue, instantly putting even more pressure on Rui and Kane as they were aware that they were now on a time clock before their existing cell was being consumed furiously by the ring.


    The two of the dashed toward the closest exit that Rui was able to manage. Rui was the limiting speed of their two-man group since Kane could easily outspeed him, but obviously didn''t because it would leave Rui exposed. Rui was aware of this, as he ran through the air at top speed with Gale Force Breathing, Outer Convergence, and Parallel Walking.


    Yet just as they crossed the final Martial Squire, reaching for a tunnel, something happened.


    They ran into another time limit.


    "RARGH!" A grade-ten Martial Squire bellowed as he unleashed a gigantic omnidirectional wind attack.


    This was outside Rui''s expectations. He had not expected any of the Martial Squires to execute such a wide-scale attack when so many of theirrades were around them.


    It was absolutely insane. It would severely hurt theirrades, potentially killing those who got hit in the vitals at close-rangepletely off-guard. That was why Rui had evaluated the probability of anyone engaging in such an act of self-harm.


    But Rui had simply failed to ount for the irrationality, and impulsive knee-jerk reaction of some Martial Squires in high-intensity circumstances.


    The powerful wind attack not only hurt all the Martial Squires of the Deacon Industries but also the much further away duo of Rui and Kane.


    And for just a moment, just before they could enter the tunnel, they broke apart.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 859 Analysis

    ?


    Rui was satisfied with the n that he hade up with under the constraints that he was forced to operate under, two of them, specifically. He wanted to make sure he extracted the giant esoteric ore deposit under the trunk of the tree before Deacon Industries became explicitly aware of its existence. He definitely would not consider taking it after they had already extracted it and begun transporting it.


    Which meant he had to act as soon as was humanly possible. Given that condition, the n he had created definitely maximized that oue. The second the finalyer of branches was being destroyed before they could reach close enough to get a glimpse of the esoteric ore, he distracted and obscured their vision with a few special smoke grenades before quickly extracting the boulder and immediately leaving the area. The two of them reached the tunnels they were headed for extremely swiftly without any hitch, just as they had nned.


    What they hadn''t ounted for was a crazy overpowered grade-ten Martial Squireunching a gigantic long-range and wide-area wind attack that ended up severely hurting many of his ownrades. It was an insane thing to do, and Rui did not think Chairman Deacon would overlook such a transgression.


    Still, it didn''t matter. What mattered was that even though it was diluted when it reached them, it was enough to disrupt the Void Step technique when it mmed into them.


    Rui and Kane almost reflexively got back together in a state of heightened alertness and adrenaline. Only a brief moment had passed when the Void Step technique was inactive, and the next moment, they had restored it.


    And yet, the damage was done.


    "What?!" One of the patrolling Martial Squires eximed as his senses just barely caught some figures appearing and disappearing into thin air. Deacon Industries had set up patrolling Martial Squires around the walls to ensure that any Martial Squire that entered the floor and happened to discover it would end up dying so that the secret would not spread.


    Even if it is for just a brief moment. Even if it was just the barest of silhouettes.


    Rui and Kane had been exposed.


    The two of them immediately dashed out off the floor.


    "Damn it!" Kane cursed. "That fucking psychopath! He probably killed the most immediate Martial Squires around him given how off-guard they probably were. What on Earth was going through his brain?! He definitely has a mental disorder! I''m putting all my savings on that bet."Text ? by N0ve/lDrama.Org.


    "Calm down," Rui said despite his grim expression and severe tone. He was forcing himself to keep hisposure regardless of how much they had been exposed. He was well aware that if there was one way to screw the situation up more than it already was, however bad that was, it was to begin panicking and make even dumber choices.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    He cooled his mind as he analyzed the situation.


    (''That Martial Squire who was a hundred meters away from us when Void Step was disrupted is really the only problem,'') He first concluded, before stopping in his tracks.


    "What are you doing?!" Kane urged him.


    "Calm down, Kane," Rui sighed heaved a sigh. "They''re not chasing us."


    Rui took the liberty to sit down on a boulder. "Frankly, we should have killed that Martial Squire then and there even if it was extremely risky. But everything happened far too quickly. It doesn''t help that we had specifically primed our minds toplete the operation without any superfluous thought processes to ensure we don''t dilly-dally. That hase back to bite us in the ass partially, even if killing there was a serious risk. That Martial Squire has almost certainly already regrouped with the others, and we cannot kill him now."


    Rui tutted with a frustrated expression. Had he known that there was a grade-ten Martial Squire vtile enough tounch a powerful attack on friendlies impulsively due to being subjected to a smoke screen, he would have altered his n, or at the very least, added preparations to counter it.


    But s, he did not possess precognition. There was no fathomable way for him to havee to know of the information of this unfortunate event ahead of time. Anyone who could have deduced the exact unfolding of such an event would probably possess a mind that utterly dwarfed even his.


    He quickly analyzed his situation, the information that he could be certain about, and the various possible oues that could eventually be yielded by this urrence.


    (''That man sensed us,'') Rui narrowed his eyes. (''His reactions when facing are direction are absolutely an undeniable indication of that. However, we were outside the range of rity of the senses of even particrly high-grade Martial Artists. Meaning, it is extremely likely that what he sensed was limited to noticing our existence, and not gleaning any specific details about our persons. At most, he may have noticed that there is more than one presence even if he had great sensory techniques. Unless he had a grade-ten sensory technique, there is a very little chance he actually sensed any of our physical traits.'')


    With that realization, he calmed down a bit. Unfortunately, that was the extent of the good news barring the fact that they had seeded in their operation. The bad news was that the core of their operation was probably revealed. Frankly, even if Rui sessfully managed to kill him there, the fact that a patrolling Martial Squire died to Martial Art techniques would still reveal the same amount of information more or less as it did now that he was alive.


    Essentially, the moment he vaguely sensed their presence, the damage had already been done. Now, Rui had to find a way to best navigate the consequences of this unfortunate oue. Should he and Kane continue to operate as always, or should the two of them change their modus operandi? He wasn''t sure, but he would need more information, and time to consider all his options.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 860 Eavesdrop

    ?


    "Kane, go dump the esoteric ore deposit in the hole that we dug up earlier," Rui informed him. "We''re running out of time."


    "Oh right, I almost forgot about that," Kane nodded.


    It didn''t take Kane too long to finish this task. Rui had wisely chosen the closest adequately deserted location to the Shionel Dungeon, as long as Kane traveled at top speed, he would be able to reach there in two minutes.


    It wasn''t long before Kane returned, Rui sought him ought since he was the only one who could navigate and detect him. Yet, the first thing Rui told him when they reunited puzzled him,


    "We need to head back to the floor, I need to know what''s going on," Rui told him.


    "You want to head back?" Kane tilted his head frowning. "We just barely got back from there. I thought you stayed back because I was faster without you. What if we get hit with another attack from that psycho again?"


    "Think about it Kane," Rui calmly exined. "That Martial Squire probably killed two or three Martial Squires and severely hurt the rest. Even if he is highly impulsive, he is not going to repeat a decision that he probably regrets from the bottom of his heart, most likely. Furthermore, Void Step broke because you were caught off-guard since you did not expect an attack to hit you. However, if you knew that you were going to get hit ahead of time, would your technique have still been disrupted?"


    "No," Kane shook his head. "Inbat, I adopt a mindset that prioritizes fortitude, and I can get hit without letting the technique break because I''m expecting it and can also see it happening usually. But that''s different from the mindset I have when we''re mining esoteric ore deposits, or pulling off extraction operations like that."


    "Right, the issue was just that there was a mismatch between what you had primed yourself for, and what ended up happening. We just need to be specifically prepared for anything to happen." Rui told him.


    "Sure, but why do you want to go back in the first ce?" Kane frowned.


    "I want to eavesdrop on their conversations," Rui replied simply. "The more we know, the better we''ll be equipped to make the right decisions ahead of time."


    "Won''t you need to get very close to hear what they''re saying since your hearing is jammed, and your Rieman-whatever Echo does not sense sound right?" Kane asked.


    "Right, but I can read their lips, tongues, and even theirrynxes to deduce what they''re saying to each other," Rui replied. "That''s why we don''t need to get too close to them, even a hundred meters is more than enough for me tofortably spy on all conversations happening around me at that range, thus the risk is minimized."


    Kane considered his words for a bit before nodding. "Alright sure, though they''ve probably finished whatever conversation you want to eavesdrop on."


    "The probability of that is quite low," Rui replied. "That report from the Martial Squire does not take priority over the fact that a few Martial Squires are probably dead while a hundred are injured from light wounds to critical injuries. Regardless, intelligence is intelligence."<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    Kane considered that rationale, it certainly made sense.


    The two of them quickly activated Void Step as they headed back the way they came. This time, both Rui and Kane prepared defensive techniques if anything simr happened this time as well.


    They soon reached the opening to the fourteenth floor, entering it very cautiously and abrasively.


    Rui''s predictions turned out to be spot-on. The patrol guards had closed up, forming a tight perimeter around the raiding team of Martial Squires that appeared to be quite injured, consuming potions.


    A little ahead were three corpsesid side by side. These were the Martial Squires who were closest to the grade-ten Martial Squire who recklesslyunched a powerful omnidirectional wind attack, resulting in their skulls being cracked, causing irreparable brain damage, and taking their life subsequently.Belonging ? N?velDram/a.Org.


    Some distance away was a Martial Squire who was surrounded by several figures. Rui recognized him immediately.


    It was the man responsible for all of this. He was standing with his head lowered surrounded by many Martial Squires who had taken their stances. Yet they didn''t attack.


    (''He''s probably going to be restricted,'') Rui mused, before ncing around at the entire site. He also happened to spot the patrolling Martial Squire who had sensed them, causing this whole problem to spring up, but as Rui predicted, he was in a position where Rui could not kill him. If there were only two, maybe three witnesses, Rui could still kill them with the help of Kane''s Void Step, but right now the perimeter had been tightlypressed to protect the recovering Martial Squires in this time of vulnerability. Even if there were no monsters sighted on the fourteenth floor, none of them dared lower their guard. The Shionel Dungeon was far too dangerous for them to do so. The uncertainty that came with highly restricted senses did not help them either.


    However, it appeared clear to Rui that he had most likely not made any extensive report to the head of the operation, who was preupied with far more immediately pressing matters.


    "YOU FOOL!" A Martial Squire wearing a particrly extravagant attire with the emblem of Deacon Industries bellowed at the Martial Squire who caused all this mess. "How could possiblyunch such a wide and powerful attack with so many of yourrades around?! We entrusted you to have our backs! Not break them! That too with a grade-ten wide-scale technique! You''ve done precisely that because of your impulsive reaction to the smoke screen!"


    "He''s the one in charge, clearly," Rui noted as the other Martial Squires stood a few steps behind him, clearly in deference to his status and authority. "He seems quite strong actually."


    "Sorry boss¡­" The Martial Squire lowered his head, gritting his teeth.


    "Sorry doesn''t bring back the dead you imbecile!" He screamed in the man''s face, despite thetter being a grade-ten Martial Squire.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 861 Aftermath

    Eventually, even the leader had enough of chewing out the ipetent Martial Artist, before moving away from where the man was instructed to be.


    "What have the scouts concluded regarding the tree?" The man asked one of his subordinates.


    "They found no traces of any esoteric ore deposits, sir," His subordinate replied nervously.


    The air grew tremendously heavy as his expression grew severe. "They found¡­ nothing?"


    "No ore deposits, sir. But their preliminary report does mention a giant hole size of a building in the ground beneath the trunk of the tree with traces of esoteric substances in the soil, indicating that there was arge deposit of esoteric ore in that location," The subordinate replied. "Apparently, it resembles the hole left behind when esoteric ores are extracted."


    "Then it is safe to assume that there were ores there at some point? At all? Ever?" The leader asked gruffly.


    "It is hard to say, sir," His subordinate shook his head. "The scouts were given very elementary training in the usage of instruments and in the execution of the protocols, we do not have any actual experts at hand. We''re all just Martial Artists. Frankly, we have no idea whatsoever what this floor is, or what that hole means. All we can be sure of is that there are no esoteric ores to be mined."


    The leader''s expression grew even more ugly.


    He did not like what he was hearing one bit at all. He was assigned to lead the raid of the fourteenth floor by Chairman Deacon himself. As the leader of the raid on the fourteenth floor, he held full responsibility for its oue. If he seeded, he would probably be a candidate for a promotion.


    However, the oue that he ended up with was far away from anything resembling sess.


    The actual objective of the operation had failed. It was certain that they would not be getting their hands onrge supplies of esoteric ore deposits. On top of that, they had been sabotaged by some unknown force that the scouts had still been searching for without any clue. Worst of all, all of their Martial Squires had been injured to varying degrees, while three of them had died, due to the impulsive reaction of a grade-ten Martial Squire.


    "What is thetest report on the smoke bomb situation?" He growled. "The scouts must have found something. Something at all. Anything! The Shionel Dungeon is feared for many reasons, but not because smoke bombs fall from fucking nowhere onto unsuspecting Martial Squires! Someone, somehow, is responsible for this! It must be somepeting Martial Squires. I have no idea why they would drop a smoke bomb if they weren''t going to attack us, but regardless, we were attacked."


    His subordinate paused for a moment, looking as though she was told to swallow her foot. "There has been no discovery by the scouts regarding this matter, sir. However, there is an earlier report by one of the patrolling guards who reported managing to get a glimpse of some figures leaving the fourteenth floor during Squire Harens wide-scale attack."


    "What?! Why didn''t you inform me about this sooner?" He red at her with a murderous expression as an avnche of pressure crashed into her.


    "S-Sir, you were the one who told us to refrain from bothering you with reports while the Martial Squires were being healed and saved," She managed to squeeze out.Exclusive ? material by N?(/v)elDrama.Org.


    In reality, he had told them to shut the fuck up before he killed one of them, but she decided it was better not to retort with the exact phrasing of hisnguage.


    "Hmph," he snorted, refusing to reply to that. "Bring that patrol guard to me, I want to speak to him myself."


    Soon enough, the Martial Squire had gleaned a glimpse of Rui''s and Kane''s presence.


    "Sir," The man bowed.


    "You said you spotted some figures leaving the dungeon floor?" The leader asked with a severe tone.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    "Yes sir,"


    "Did you see they carrying anything? Large bags or containers?" The leader asked.


    "No sir, I did not see anything like that."


    The leader frowned. (''So some rats entered and left empty-handed?'')


    "For how long?" The leader followed up. "How many were there? What did they look like?"


    "It was for just a millisecond, sir. Frankly, it was just a swift blur, I couldn''t make out any further details of any kind."


    "Tsk," The leader tutted. "Are you unable to recall anything else?"


    "¡­Unfortunately so, sir," The man''s tone became meeker as he felt the anger in his assigned leader''s tone.


    "Leave,"


    "Yes sir!"


    A few seconds passed as the man finally got a chance to consider all the information he had at hand for the first time. He had been extremely busy with the healing and recovery of the Martial Squires who had got mmed in the head and other vitals with a grade-ten Squire-level attack without the appropriate defenses prepared. If not for the fact that the attack weakened the further it spread out, many more may have died.


    His highest priority had been minimizing the losses to Deacon Industries.


    Now that the most immediate crises had passed, he was finally beginning to see just how bizarre the events that unfolded were.


    The smoke bomb.


    Theck of esoteric ore deposits.


    The report from the patrol guard earlier.


    (''Could they all be rted somehow? But what does it all mean? What in the world is going on?'') He frowned with a solemn expression. (''I need to inform Chairman Deacon of this right now. He''ll know what to do with this information.'')


    He wasn''t an analyst, he was mostly relying on his gut instinct regarding the bizarreness of what happened. The only thing he was sure of was that something felt very wrong. Though he wasn''t able to even postte what was happening, things were just so disconnected to him that he wasn''t sure what all of it meant.


    Regardless, he would need to report all of this to Chairman Deacon and pray he didn''t get fired.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 862 Determined

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    Rui sighed. The situation was far from desirable, but still quite salvageable. The leader may not have pieced all of it together, but Chairman Deacon certainly would. He had eavesdropped on the conversation that they''d had,ing to learn exactly what the patrol guard had seen, and what else they knew.


    Thankfully, it seemed that the part of Rui''s n that aimed to ensure that the raiding team never once got to confirm the existence of the gigantic esoteric ore deposit at the center of the floor below the trunk of the tree was aplete sess.


    Although there was some spection that the hole in the ground may have hosted some esoteric ore deposits, not a single person could fathom that there had been a huge deposit sitting there just seconds before they destroyed thest wave of branches of the tree. This gave Rui some breathing space as far as what they could infer from this, but it wasn''t enough.


    (''Chairman Deacon will, at the very least develop some suspicions in regards to the truth. He has enough clues. He has plenty of reason to suspect that the Voider is responsible for the sabotage, barring Squire Harens'' impulsive blunder.'') Rui analyzed their situation. (''Once that happens, the patrol guard''s report will confirm that the Voider isprised of more than one person, at a bare minimum. That will change how he handles the investigation. More importantly, it will also strongly support the idea that the Voider''s modus operandi highly relies on stealth more than anything. The only reason he can''t assume this to be the case is that a single patrol guard''s ambiguous report filled with uncertainty is notpelling enough. I should thank my stars that only one guard sensed our presence, if multiple guards reported the same thing, then it would be much more irond.'')


    Still, that wasn''t too much of a constion to Rui.


    (''Also, if he finds proof that there was a huge deposit in the center of the dungeon under the trunk of the tree, then things will get much worse,'') Rui sighed. (''Then he''ll know for a fact that we''re using some way to extract the ore deposit from the dungeon that allows me to ignore conventional carrying capacity since he knows that, at most, several people extracted a gigantic ore deposit and got it out of the dungeon even though it ought not to fit through the tunnels.'')


    All in all, Rui''s analysis allowed on the matter that at best, Chairman Deacon''s suspicions would be very close to the truth, and at worst, he''lle to figure out the whole truth.


    (''Thankfully, the discrepancy in our levels with the incredible might of the Voider will be a barrier that he will be unable to ever see past,'') Rui realized. (''The feats that we have aplished should be impossible in his eyes unless performed by multiple Martial Squires who are truly at the very pinnacle of the Squire Realm.'')


    This meant that Rui could takefort in the fact that even if Chairman Deacon went all out with an aggressiverge-scale investigation based on the new information. Rui was a grade-six Martial Squire, and Kane was a grade-four Martial Squire. It ought to be absolutely impossible by any metric of evaluation, based on avable information for the two of them to be part of the Voider group.


    Thankfully, Rui had maintained an extremely thorough front for their official records. Rui and Kane went on a highly normal and very average raid in the mostmon and popted floors, where they harvested esoteric ore deposits like very normal and average Martial Squires and sold it in the market the way very normal and average Martial Squires did. <novelsnext></novelsnext>


    Furthermore, Rui made extremely sure that the profits from their public dungeon endeavors were more than enough to cover their public expenses. The costs of food, housing, Martial equipment, utilities, items, and dungeon taxes and fees among other things could all befortably covered by their registered revenue and ie.


    After all, if the two of them splurged the money that they earned as the Voider, it would be extremely suspicious as the question of where all that money came from would naturally present itself. Rui was far from foolish enough tomit such a blunder, hell, he had thought of this the moment he had conceived of his n many months ago to participate in the Shionel Dungeon raid with Kane.


    This borate measure that Rui had taken consistently would decisively filter them out of any suspect pool.


    (''It''s a big country with a huge number of Martial Squires that have flooded into the country for quite some time now,'') Rui noted. (''Good luck finding us, and good luck knowing it is us. I''m not that easy of a person to pin down. This time''s incident is pure dumb luck for you, although it certainly came with its price.'')


    Rui''s determination to seed in his ambition of being the one to clear and plunder the dungeon had not shaken. In fact, it only grew fiercer now that the difficulty of it had risen slightly.


    (''Chairman Deacon will probably take some drastic measures after this,'') Rui analyzed the businessman, making predictions of how the man would react to this time''s event based on the profile that Rui had formed of him after a thorough analysis of any and all information that Rui was able to get his hands on the man.


    This allowed him to have a deep insight into the man''s modus operandi. He was an aggressive hound that pursued opportunities like there was no tomorrow. Although his acumen for business and politics was inferior to that of Guildmaster Bradt, his conviction and tenacity allowed him to achieve a level of sess that threatened Guildmaster Bradt''s dominance in the Shionel Confederation.


    Rui knew that the man would not let go of the boons of information that he would glean from this incident. He would let loose until he caught Rui, and then he would kill him.


    asionally missing content, please report errors in time.


    This chapter upload first at  Text ? by N0ve/lDrama.Org.

 Chapter 863 Realizations

    ?


    Rui was right.


    Rui and Kane retreated from the fourteenth floor, leaving the Shionel Dungeon after Rui confirmed the extent of the damage from the mini-fiasco that the operation had turned out to be. They returned to back to their inn undetected via Void Step, before spending the rest of the day taking a break.


    Ruipleted his chores such as writing a letter informing Guildmaster Bradt of the location of thetest supplies of esoteric ore deposits, while including an updated three-dimensional map of the Shionel Dungeon as per their agreement. Exclusive ? material by N?(/v)elDrama.Org.


    On the other hand, Chairman Deacon was not having such a chill day.


    In fact, any semnce of peace he was having that day had been upended when he read through the report submitted by the captain of the expedition team on the fourteenth floor.


    "WHAT?!"


    His bellow was loud enough to echo through the main branch of Deacon Industries, making all of his employees wonder what lit his fuse this time.


    For the next few hours, Chairman Deacon poured over every word in the report one by one, digesting all the information before he finally put away the documents, before frowning.


    His eyes wandered around as he sped his hands hands together.


    "Sir, the Chairman of Carlun Manufacturers has requested a meeting with you," His chief of staff informed him, breaking the silence.


    "Not now, I''m busy," He replied absentmindedly. "Have Vice-Chairman Dellia handle it, or postpone it."


    He dismissed her, wanting to think in peace.


    (''Smoke bombs¡­ Empty floor¡­ Appearing and disappearing figures leaving the Shionel Dungeon,'') His eyes narrowed as he parsed through all the information that the report from the leader of the expedition.


    There was a lot of information to process, but he quickly made strides in analyzing them as he considered everything that he had just learned. He began with what he considered to be the most interesting and significant.


    (''Multiple figures appearing and disappearing,'') He considered what it meant. (''It''s almost certainly not literally the case that they appeared and disappeared out of existence. No Martial Arti technique in the lower Realms should be capable of such a nonsensical feat.'')


    He quickly ruled out the possibility of it literally being a case of something like teleportation or something of the sort. There was no way Martial Squires ought to be capable of something of that sort.


    (''Given the sensory jamming traits of the Shionel Dungeon, it''s almost certainly the case of said figures eluding the senses of the patrol guard,'') Chairman Deacon quickly inferred some basic facts. (''It''s not imusible that they just temporarily entered his sensory range momentarily before leaving very quickly, giving him the illusion that they appeared and disappeared.'')


    He obviously did not take the ambiguous report of a single patrol guard as absolute fact and was open to the idea that the report was not reflective of what happened.


    (''However, the patrol guard was certain that their direction of travel was towards the tunnel, not away from him. Meaning they appeared and disappeared while the distance between them was more or less constant,'') He sharply noted. (''That reduces the probability that the man mistook them entering and exiting his senses as them appearing and disappearing into thin air.'')


    He considered another event that had happened within a very short time period from it.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    (''The smoke bombs¡­'') His eyes narrowed. (''Why smoke bombs?'')


    The answer, of course, was obvious.


    (''A smoke screen that could hamper even Squire-level sense momentarily. They wanted to sabotage the awareness of the expedition team. To prevent them from witnessing something.'') His eyes narrowed. (''Their goal had nothing to do with the expedition team. They didn''t mount an attack on the expedition team, they did not harm them anyway. Any damage that was done to them was actually done through friendly fire.'')


    His eyes narrowed. (''Was that part of the n? Is Squire Harens actually a secret operative colluding with the Voider?'')


    This was a possibility that naturally presented itself to him when he considered the facts. The timing was truly quite suspicious.


    Of course, he was quite familiar with Squire Harens. The man had been a trigger-happy Martial Artist for as long as he could remember. This reduced the probability of it being a conspiracy. However, the operation didn''t make sense if the attack from Squire Harens was the end objective. Such an objective was worthless by any means of evaluation. Use the smoke screen as a cover tounch an attack that ultimately only killed three?


    What for? What could that possibly achieve in the big picture?


    (''Nothing,'') Chairman Deacon''s eyes narrowed. (''Thus, it can be concluded, that regardless of whether Squire Harens is a colluder or not, that attack could not have been the main objective. There had to be another objective most likelypletely detached from the expedition team.'')


    What else could a third party be interested in those circumstances, if the objective had nothing to do with the team?


    (''The floor, there is literally nothing else it could be,'') He realized. (''And there is only ever one reason a Martial Squire might be interested in a floor.'')


    Esoteric resources!


    Why on Earth would any Martial Squire even step into that nightmare of a dungeon that hampered their senses to the point of being merely one percent of what it normally was? There were exceptions, but none of the applied here.


    (''They dropped the smoke bombs the moment the expedition team finished thestyer of defenses,'') He noted. (''That is not a coincidence. Did they use us to clear the tree? To try and gain esoteric resources at the center of the floor?'')


    His eyes widened as he stumbled across an even more shocking possibility.


    (''Did they discover the floor before us? Could they have manipted us into discovering the fourteenth floor?'')


    It was an astounding possibility that sent chills down his back. If true, it would mean he had severely underestimated their opponent.


    "No no¡­" He shook his head. "There''s no way that''s true. It''s too unlikely."


    Whether he truly believed that, or simply chose that for thefort of his heart was unclear.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 864 Bloodhound

    ?


    Chairman Deacon was far more intelligent and sharper than the leader assigned to lead the raid team. Unlike thetter, the man had quickly constructed several hypotheses and explored several possibilities based on his information and its veracity.


    He concluded that it was quite likely that the individuals spotted in question were the Voider, or had something to do with them. He came to the conclusion that their objective could not have had anything directly to do with the raiding team, and most likely had something to do with the floor, most likely having something to do with the esoteric resource deposits that every floor had.


    (''But no esoteric ore deposits were found,'') His eyes narrowed. (''Could they have possibly extracted and run away with it in that brief period of time?'')


    He wasn''t sure. It was also possible that there truly was nothing in the entire floor, and both the Voider and the raiding team were the ultimate losers against the Shionel Dungeon.


    (''If they did steal all the esoteric resources of the fourteenth floor, then the Voider''s ability to extract ore deposits from the Shionel Dungeon is even more powerful than I had ever expected,'') He grimaced. (''However, even if they didn''t steal anything because the floor truly was empty, they surely intended to steal it, right?'')


    The smoke screen only bought them a few seconds, they absolutely were aware of this, of course. Yet, they still used it to enter the floor. Content held by N?velDrama.Org.


    (''If their goal was to steal the esoteric ore deposits, then the fact that they used a smoke screen thatsted a few seconds means that they possess the ability to extract a gigantic amount of esoteric mineral and organic mass in those same few seconds,'') He inferred.


    This was the only conclusion that made sense to him.


    Of course, he was aware that Martial Squires lived through time differently than mere humans like himself. A few seconds may as well have been ten minutes to them. However, that also applied to the raid team.


    The raid team would not sit around for ten minutes, so it didn''t make sense.


    (''Unless Squire Harens attack on the raid team was intended to prevent them from intercepting the Voider in those ten minutes?'') He narrowed his eyes.


    It wasn''t a perfect theory by any means, but he once again could not deny it. He ultimately ran into two possibilities that he was unable to narrow down any further.


    Either the Voider was unable to extract the esoteric resources that was their objective, and thus needed Squire Haren to sabotage and hamper them with a powerful attack catching them all off-guard. Or, they had the ability to swiftly extract all of them and leave all in the span of a few seconds.


    He wasn''t sure which theory was true, but at the moment, they roughly held equal merit. However, he knew of a way to rify which theory was urate, and which theory was not urate.


    (''I''m going to investigate the living hell out of Squire Harens. I''m going to be subject to a level of intelligence gathering that no Martial Squire has ever been subjected to in history,'') He grinned widely.


    The oue of that investigation would most likely tell him which of the two final hypotheses that he had ended up with was the urate theory.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    Still, he couldn''t believe that he would end up looking positively on such a horrendous fiasco. Not only had the raid team ended up empty-handed but most of them had been injured, and three had even died, all to friendly fire.


    That was the very definition of a fiasco.


    Yet, he could tolerate it, the intelligence that he hade across as a consequence of these events was truly incredibly valuable!


    With this, he was no longer wandering in the dark, desperately trying toe across a shred of information on the Voider. He was actually quite shocked that he hade across it in the first ce.


    The events in recent times had left a poor taste in his mouth, but now it seemed that the goddess of luck had taken pity on him and given him an opportunity to turn things around.


    (''And turn things the fuck around I will,'') He could feel his blood boiling. He was not going to let go of this opportunity no matter what.


    He hadn''t been known as the bloodhound of the Shionel Confederation for nothing. Once he got a hold of his enemies, he never let go. He shredded them to death bit by bit. Almost none had tangled with him and made it out in one piece. Barring Guildmaster Bradt, no one had ever gotten the better of him in the long run.


    This modus operandi was in stark contrast to the guildmaster, who was closer to the Grim Reaper, a surgeon of a businessman who acted with precision and uracy. His enemies fell before they realized what happened.


    He lifted amunication device from his table, contact his secretary.


    "Arrange a meeting with all the major foreign stakeholders of the Shionel Dungeon, all twenty-nine of them. The purpose of the meeting will be the issue of the Voider, I intend to inform them of some information and propose a n that will be in our mutual interests.


    He rattled off a few more details before putting hismunication device away.


    (''I have already united the supplier merchants and businesses of the local supplier market in the Shionel Confederation under my banner against the threat that Esosale Suppliers and the Bradt Distribution Service together represent. Now, I ought to do the same with the foreign forces with interests tied to the supply of the esoteric resources from the dungeon,'') His eyes narrowed.


    He had no issue with harnessing all the help that he could get, even if it was an admission of defeat, it wasn''t as though the Voider was a business whiz who schooled him inmerce. They were in fundamentally different fields.


    "Let''s see if you can fight the world, little Squire."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 865 Gathering

    ?


    Rui and Kane returned to the dungeon, however, this time they returned to the twelfth floor, rather than setting out to search for more floors. Furthermore, this time, they didn''t use Void Step to mask their entry and exit into the Shionel Dungeon.


    This was one of their public endeavors as Rui and Kane from the Kandrian Empire, not as the Voider. Furthermore, Rui did not use his sword or his pipe to paralyze or annihte the ind Shionel taipans on the twelfth floor this time. Instead, he used his regr techniques instead.


    BAM!!


    CRACK


    THUD


    "Huff¡­" He heaved a sigh as he wiped a bead of sweat. "Man, this job is so much harder when we''re doing this normal Martial Squires. How do they even manage?"


    "True," Kane sighed as he finally defeated a taipan himself after an extensive battle.


    Doing this gave Rui perspective on what it was like for the average Martial Squire adventurer. It was moments like these that made him realize how detached from the norm he was.


    He was working almost one hundred times slower than normal!


    Normally he would just need to ignore all the ind taipans as he extracted all the ores in the area with Void Step, while asionally rising up when Kane needed a break, during that time he would easily annihte any serpents that attacked them having detected their presence. The sheer rate at which he normally extracted esoteric ore deposits was far lower than at his peak, although he was doing far better than any Martial Squire of his grade thanks to the fact that he had built extensive predictive models for the Shionel Taipans.


    "What are you thinking about?" Kane asked, noticing Rui absorbed deep in thought.


    "¡­ You remember how I told you a long time ago before we set out to the Shionel Dungeon that it was quite likely that the Kandrian Empire would eventually put two and two together in regard to our operations?" Rui asked him.


    "Yeah, what about it?"


    "I think that time is not so far into the future," Rui replied.


    "What makes you say that?" <novelsnext></novelsnext>


    "Well¡­ Abination of predictions drawn from analyses, as well as a little sprinkle of intuition, I suppose,"


    The recent event that had urred on the fourteenth floor led him to believe that it had elerated the inevitable event of the Martial Unioning to learn of the truth.Content held by N?velDrama.Org.


    He had reason to believe this.


    Simultaneously in the main branch of Deacon Industries, a rather historic gathering had taken ce.


    In arge magnificent hall in the foreign affairs wing, several dozen individuals had gathered. They wore lush and posh formal clothes, each bearing the insignia of a nation or arge conglomerate, or an independent organization.


    "Ladies and gentlemen, representatives and delegates," Chairman Deacon stood before them, wearing the most ostentatious and extravagant attire his personal groomers could put together for the asion. "Now that we have all gathered here, I would like to begin by thanking all of you for taking the time to ept my invitation. The matter that I wish to discuss with all of you today is one that affects all of us at the moment and one that I hope we cane to a resolution toe together and handle once and for all.


    Although the various ambassadors, representatives, and leaders all had perfectly trained stoic expressions, the atmosphere had grown heavier. Such was the magnitude of the importance of the matter that they were going to be focusing on finding a way to collectively tackle it.


    "Since the opening of the Shionel Dungeon, the supply of certain esoteric resources has spiked unimaginably. The reason for this, of course, is the many bounties that flow out of the dungeon every day. Each and every person has or represents a nation or a party that has a strong vested interest in procuring supplies from the Shionel Dungeon, formercial or private use. And without exception, every single person here has been significantly hampered by the Voider since his operation."


    None of them denied his words, mostly because they were undeniable. Nations that had deployed a huge number of Martial Squires to bring backrge supplies of powerful and strategic esoteric resources. It was far less taxing to procure the esoteric supplies through the dungeon directly.


    The reason for this was because the second they reached the hands of a third-party supplier, their cost was extremely high, despite the abundant supply. The reason for this was that as huge as the supply was, the demand was even greater. The list of nations,panies, and other organizations that needed these strategic and powerful esoteric resources was long, and not even the Shionel Dungeon could satisfy even a portion of the east-most section of the Panama Continent.


    That was why it was exceedingly costly to procure esoteric supplies through the marketpared to mining and harvesting ore deposits from the dungeon itself. That was the strategy that most nations,panies, and other organizations employed. They would either deploy private Martial Squires or act as patrons in the Shionel Confederation and gather arge number of Martial Squires through their patronage to supply them with the esoteric resources that they sought.


    And that is what they did do until things went for the worse and the Martial Squires began supplying them with increasingly diminishing returns. What had been an incredibly fruitful venture in obtaining precious resources had now be an extremely expensive and losing venture.


    The reason for this was because of the Voider, and Esosale Suppliers that suddenly began dominating the extraction of esoteric ore deposits to a level that was hardly imagination. None of them understood how and where the Esosale was extracting such gigantic amounts of esoteric resources. And it bode extremely badly for their businesses.


    "However, that will change," He informed all of them with a confident smile. "We have obtained precious intelligence on the Voider, and I have strong reason to believe that, with our power pooled together, we can root him out and eliminate him."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 866 Noticed

    ?


    Among the crowd of bigshots that Chairman Deacon had invited were two who were listening in rapt attention.


    The diplomat from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Kandrian Empire, and a rank-four Martial Commissioner from the Martial Union.


    The Kandrian Empire was certainly one of thergest foreign stakeholders when ite to the supply of esoteric resources from the Shionel Dungeon. Both the Royal Family and the Martial Union had dispatched a huge number of Martial Squires from the Royal kandrian Army and the internal members of the Union to the Shionel Confederation to obtain arge number of resources for them.


    Even though the Martial Union did not have as much of a heavy need for the esoteric resources of the Shionel Dungeon, it was still very important for the Union to maintain a foothold in every new shift in paradigms, in order to maintain their economic and political capital.


    Thus, the matter of the Voider had been irksome to the nation and the Martial Union, although neither side had any intention of pursuing the matter aggressively of their own volition. The reason for this was fundamentally due to therge distance between then the Shionel Confederation and the Kandrian Empire. The former was outside of thetter''s domain of influence. Although Martial Squires could cross the ten thousand kilometers that separated the two nations, it was still too much of a geopolitical separation for the Martial Union and the Kandrian Empire to throw a fit about getting dominated in the dungeon.


    Had the dungeon been within their domain of influence like around the Commonwealth Duchy of Vinfrana or the Kingdom of Violis, they would have taken a much more active and aggressive effort, but due to it being in the Shionel Confederation, they had to more or less make do and mitigate their losses.


    Distance meant that it was more expensive to transfer the necessary capital, resources, and manpower to the Shionel Confederation just to match the dominant forces in that part of the eastern side of the continent. They simply would not be able to oupete powerful nations within their home turf, for the same reason that those same nations could not oupete the Kandrian Empire within their domain of power.Content held by N?velDrama.Org.


    However, both the Kandrian Empire and the Martial Union were interested in what the Chairman of the second most powerfulpany and thergest enemy of the Voider had to say when he gathered them all there. They did not have particrly high expectations from this meeting.


    The Kandrian diplomat was intrigued by the intelligence on the Voider that Chairman Deacon went on to present to them but ultimately was not too stirred, though he didn''t allow his expressions to betray his reactions. Although there was a chance that whatever Chairman Deacon seemed to have in mind would pay out, the Kandrian Empire had already altered their expectations and ns in the Shionel Confederation, ounting for the suffocating sess of Esosale Suppliers backed by the Bradt Distribution Service.


    In reality, the Martial Commissioner of the Martial Union should have also been in a simr position, yet when he went through the intelligence that Chairman Deacon had done onto present them, he narrowed his eyes as something clicked in his mind.


    (''Appearing and disappearing Martial Squires?'') He raised an eyebrow. (''If that''s due to a technique, then¡­'')<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    As a Martial Commissioner of the Martial Union, he was extremely familiar with all the Martial Squires registered with the Martial Union. It was a necessity since he was required tomission Martial Artists of fitting internal missions from the Martial Union.


    That was why when he came across that detail in the intelligence he couldn''t help but recall the currently only existing Martial Squire in the Kandrian Empire that had mastered a grade-ten Martial Art technique that would allow him to do exactly what the Voider had done ording to the intelligence that Chairman Deacon had presented all of them.


    He didn''t even bother finishing his thought as he felt that the probability of it being true was extremely low. Still, he couldn''t help but feel as though he was onto something.


    (''I should look into this when the meeting is done,'') The Martial Commissioner narrowed his eyes.


    "As you can see, the intelligence clearly indicates that the Voider is a small group of Martial Squires that has some kind of potent stealth technique, that allows for evasion of monsters to a level that is unsurpassed," Chairman Deacon exined. "We gather that the Voider is most likely an unassociated, and unpatroned group of Martial Squires putting on a facade when they''re not in the dungeon. These, along with other pieces of clues that we have gathered or inferred, gives us enough of a foundation to conduct a genuine investigation that can significantly narrow down the list of possibilities."


    "That will most likely require extensive resources, capital, and manpower, more so than Deacon Industries alone can handle," One of the invited members remarked.


    "You are correct," Chairman Deacon nodded, not denying the woman''s words. "However, that is the reason that I have conferred this meeting. With aid from your nations,panies, and organizations, we can do what it takes to find and eliminate the Voider. I have already gathered support from the domestic stakeholder merchants and businessmen who have been shafted by the Voider, with your support, I am confident that we can take down the Voider."


    His words seemed to seed in a certain degree of persuasion, as by the end of the meeting, most of the members of the meeting tentatively expressed a willingness to participate.


    "The Kandrian Empire is willing to aid you in our mutual benefits depending on the proposed manner of operation," The diplomat of the Kandrian Empire gave a positive but flexible answer. There was no harm in participating as long as it wasn''t too much of a liability.


    "The Kandrian Martial Union will consider the proposal," The Martial Commissioner replied nonmittally.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 867 Clash

    ?


    Chairman Deacon went on to present a rigorous strategy that involved using brute force to eventually either find or kill the Voider inside the Shionel Dungeon, or identify the Voider, and assassinate him outside the Shionel Dungeon to minimize risks, or overwhelm him with numbers inside the Shionel Dungeon where murder was legal.


    He did note up with brand new revolutionary ways of going about the investigation and search. The intelligence that Chairman Deacon had gotten in thest operation on the fourteenth floor was a fluke and stroke of good luck. He had not gotten that information through his own merits.


    At the end of the day, the information made the search easier, and he had managed to rue enough political and economic support from various stakeholders that he had been gathering from the day he decided to take down the Voider. Brute force searching through all registered and non-registered Martial Squires and evaluating the probability of them being the Voider, aggressive exploration of the Shionel Dungeon to beat the Voider with an enormous flood of Martial Squires. Systematic capitalization and monopolization of dungeon floors with increased security to minimize the probability of the Voider harvesting from the floor.


    These were all measures that had now be extremely powerful given the sheer amount of capital and resources that he gathered from like-minded allies. While Chairman Deacon celebrated the meeting as a sess after it ended, the diplomat of the Kandrian Empire and the Martial Commissioner of the Martial Union exchanged words while returning from the meeting.


    "Why did the Martial Union not ept the proposal?" The diplomat of the Kandrian Empire asked with a slightly less formal tone.


    "We deemed that there may have been a potential sh of interests," Martial Commissioner Reze replied shortly.


    "A sh of interests with Chairman Deacon? Or is it perhaps the Bradt Distribution Service? The Kandrian Empire is aware of the Martial Union''s contract with the Bradt Distribution Service to ess the market for Martial Arts that is west of the Shionel Confederation," The Kandrian diplomat tried poking some information from his counterpart.


    "It''s a potential sh of interests, the Martial Union will handle the manner the way it deems most appropriate," Commissioner Reze replied vaguely.


    This drew some confusion from the Kandrian diplomat. Although the two of them had not conferred together prior to the meeting to rify their positions, he had thought that the two of them had a mutual understanding of each other''s interests and would most likelye to the same decision for the same reasons.


    However, it became clear that there was something had caused the Martial Union to question whether joining Chairman Deacon''s little anti-Voider club was the right decision.


    The diplomat attempted to gain more information in vain a few more times before the two parted ways to their seven-star suites in one of the most luxurious hotels in the Shionel Confederation, courtesy of the Deacon Industries.


    He quickly opened a portable terminal that was assigned to him as a rank-four Martialmissioner, before quickly looking into the most updated information that the Intelligence Department of the Martial Union possessed on one single Martial Squire.


    Kane Arrancar.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    He frowned as he went through the neatly organized and categorized information.


    "Current location¡­ Kingdom of Violis?" Martial Commissioner Reze read on with interest. "The veracity of the intelligence is rated a seven out of ten, so decent, but not entirely reliable. Hm¡­ The intelligencees from his border transit pass statements and a confirmed entry into the Kingdom of Violis through the official port of entry¡­ But has not been sighted since entering the nation originally¡­"


    He mumbled to himself as he went through the most updated information that the Kandrian Martial Union had on Kane Arrancar.


    "He''s researched the Shionel Dungeon before heading for the Kingdom of Violis¡­?" Commissioner Reze''s eyebrows rose as he looked through the information that Kane essed or purchased from the Martial Union and adjacent sources of information. (That''s extremely strange. Why bother with such extensive research if he had no intentions of going to the Shionel Confederation?'')Belonging ? N?velDram/a.Org.


    The Martial Commissioner had only decided to look into him out of a hunch and a whim, but he had stumbled across something suspicious.


    He quickly pulled out the officially registered Kandrianms device that had been issued to him. It was a special model that was capable ofmunicating even across the huge amount of distance between the Kandrian Empire and the Shionel Confederation.


    "Martial Commissioner Reze. Calling Directive 36F-41. Conduct an immediate and urgent verification of the location of Squire Kane Arrancar. Rmended point of investigation: The Shionel Confederation," He spoke into the device, before immediately closing it and putting it away.


    It could be that he was entirely wrong and this was just a misunderstanding. Perhaps Squire Kane had intended to go to the Shionel Confederation at one point, before changing his mind and instead heading to the Kingdom of Violis for whatever reason. However, he suspected that this may not be the case.


    Still, even if it wasn''t the case. What he truly suspected was so unlikely that he did not even bother uttering it out loud, he would feel far too silly of using Squire Kane of being the Voider.


    Still, there was a small connection, although it was possible that he was reading too deeply into it.


    (''Still, if there''s even a small possibility¡­'') His eyes narrowed, before shaking his head and focusing on the many other matters he needed to tend to. Regardless of whether it was true or false, the urgent investigation that he had had the Intelligence Department of the Shionel Confederation begin using his higher authority, would reveal the facts of the matter.


    He needed to remind himself that even if Squire Kane Arrancar was in the Shionel Confederation, that did not necessarily mean that he had anything to do with anything. He knew that Squire Kane did not have a good rtionship with his family, thus it was possible that these measures were taken to throw them off.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 868 Familiar

    ?


    Rui and Kane quickly bounced back from the incident on the fourteenth floor as they set out in search of new floors once more. Rui did not intend to sit around doing anything, and the second they returned from their fake public trip, the two of them set out in search of a new dungeon floor to explore and raid.


    At this point, about a little over thirty percent of the Shionel Dungeon had been fully explored despite nearly a year and a half passing by since the opening of the dungeon. Yet the pace of clearance of the dungeon was increasing significantly.


    Part of the reason was the impact that Rui had had. The twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth floors got cleared at an extreme pace now thanks to him harvesting most, or even all of it extremely quickly.


    And the two of them did not intend to stop any time soon. The two of them quickly set about into the dungeon, looking for new floors. Rui had resolved this time to stay away from any human presence. Last time''s fiasco taught him that he could never be too careful around other people especially when the stakes were high. Even if he made sophisticated andplex ns, he simply could not do anything about dumb luck. Thus, he resolved not even give luck a chance to mess up a n.


    The two of them set out as they explored the Shionel Dungeon for new floors.


    "I think it''s interesting how different floors are so different," Kanemented out of the blue. "Feels really strange when I think about it. Like, why is there no ovep in the monsters between all of the floors? Seems like every floor has a unique pattern that is never repeated."


    "True," Rui nodded. "It is strange. The floors are supposed to be pockets of space formed from areas that either didn''t have dense vegetation across them that was dungeonified when the roots of the species came across high-energy powerful esoteric mines."


    Still, it felt almost artificial to a certain degree how different species were perfectly isted to different parts of the Shionel Dungeon, although monsters did leave their floors often. He wasn''t sure how that could be the case.


    Wouldn''t one normally expect that animals get naturally mixed across the entire dungeon like how forests and jungles normally were?


    He wasn''t sure why this wasn''t the case inside the dungeon. Just as Kane was about to respond, he paused when he noticed that Rui had suddenly be a lot more alert.


    "What''s up? Is it a new floor?" Kane asked with a hopeful nce.


    "I''m not sure, honestly," Rui murmured. "Let me get a closer look."


    He began jogging forward, causing Kane to do the same as he kept up with Rui. Rui''s eyes wandered around, lost, as he used Riemannian Echo to keep track of his environment.


    He frowned as he didn''t quite seem to understand what he was witnessing.


    Then, they finally got close enough for Rui to get a full picture of what he was looking at.


    His eyes widened as he paused, speechless.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    "What is it?" Kane asked impatiently. It was clear to him that Rui was seeing something truly strange.


    "It''s a floor, alright¡­ But there''s only one monster the size of a portion of a district," Rui murmured.


    Kane''s eyes widened as his head cocked back in shock.


    "What?!"


    Districts were usually a few kilometers in length. For a monster to be the size of a district, its body would be enormously giant. Rui had trouble picturing just how big it was.


    The two of them eventually reached the end of a tunnel that opened into a gigantic cavity.


    "Holy shit!" Rui''s eyes widened. "It''s dead! Its head ispletely destroyed! Also¡­ this species. I know this species! It''s an Earthen Basilisk!"


    Rui''s mind shed back to many years ago when he undertook his first hunting ss mission as a young low-grade Martial Apprentice. Back then, he was extremely weak and inexperienced, yet had stumbled upon a dangerous subterranean beast that traveled beneath the ground and sensed through seismic radiation. Rui had employed clever tactics and strategies to corner and eventually kill the beast.


    He hadn''t immediately made the connection because of the missing head of the creature, but once his senses enveloped the entire corpse, he recognized it almost immediately.


    "But what the hell is one doing in the Shionel Dungeon, and how in the world did it get so gigantic?" Rui couldn''t help but be bewildered as he swept through the information that he had on the Earthen basilisk from his mission with it.


    The Earthen basilisk was a species that existed in the Beast Domain. He vividly remembered being told that the Beast Domain was so dangerous that even the Earthen Basilisk found the need to migrate away from the core of the continent and towards the outskirts, eventually leading it to the Kandrian Empire.


    He did not know that they were capable of growing that big. Nor did he know whether that actually was the case, or whether this one was an exception due to the strange environment of the Shionel Dungeon monsterifying it, causing it to grow more powerful.Text ? by N0ve/lDrama.Org.


    Rui felt goosebumps on his skin at the thought of the creature running amuck in the dungeon with its great size, or at the thought of it running amuck outside of the dungeon in the outskirts. It would be an absolute menace to put down since Martial Seniors were not allowed anywhere near the dungeon.


    Based on the sheer size of the Earthen Basiliskpared to the weak Apprentice level one that he fought many years ago, he had a hard time imagining how absurdly difficult it would be to take down. Its sheer size meant that even with his de and pipe, he was not going to be one-shotting it any time soon, although he was able to conceive of ways to take it down.


    "Speaking of which¡­ What on Earth happened to a creature this powerful? How did it die such a miserable death?" Rui couldn''t help but wonder.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 869 Lookout

    ?


    The appearance of a headless corpse of an Earthen Basilisk on a floor of the Shionel Dungeon came as a considerable surprise to Rui since he hadn''t read anything about them being spotted in the Shionel Dungeon.


    He also recalled being informed that Earthen Basilisks reproduced as much as they ate, thus it was extremely strange that the Shionel Confederation wasn''t filled with Earthen Basilisks running around killing humans considering that the Shionel Dungeon had been open for nearly a year and a half.


    On top of that, its size was truly shocking, Rui wasn''t even sure that this monster would be ssified within the Squire Realm. Perhaps only the most powerful Martial Squires had a chance of killing it because of its oversized vitals and weaknesses along with its big body that would probably make subterranean travel even harder.


    That begged the next question. What happened to its head?


    "It was eaten¡­" Rui murmured with shock. "By another creature."


    When he observed the open wound where its head used to be, he could see that the uneven length surface indicated that something had feasted on the creature''s carcass.


    "Furthermore, there are wounds across its body. ws and jaws have ravaged the creature."


    Based on the size of the wounds, Rui estimated the size of the creature to be around the size of a building, which was still much smaller than the size of the Earthen basilisk. Yet this creature was able to devastate and kill the Earthen Basilisk.


    Rui nced around as he observed thend of the dungeon floor. The earth was dug up, highly uneven, and there were evenrge holes.


    (''That means it definitely attempted to use its subterranean advantage,'') Rui noted as he analyzed all the data he had. (''Yet it still lost.'')


    Rui grew extremely paranoid as he swept his senses across the entirety of the floor once more, paying close attention to detail. For a moment, he thought that the predator might still be around. Exclusive ? material by N?(/v)elDrama.Org.


    He did not think that he would be able to beat a predator that mauled the Earthen basilisk so brutally. How on Earth could he? His little sword and pipe tactics probably wouldn''t help in the least at this moment in a one-on-one. The best he could do was escape with Void Step.


    (''That creature probably isn''t limited to the peak of the Squire Realm,'') Rui figured with a heavy heart. A creature that transcended the limits of the Squire Realm was something he wanted to avoid. Yet he couldn''t help but be curious as to how strong the creature was, and what kind of monster it was.


    "Woah!" He heard Kane exim. "Its scales are made out of esoteric substances!"


    Rui turned towards him, nodding. "The beast probably consumed an immense amount of vegetation containing dense esoteric substances in it. Causing it to grow and develop stronger scales. We can mine and harvest them from the corpse, I''ve verified that the area is safe, so go ahead."<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    "You''re not helping?" Kane frowned.


    "I''m keeping an alert eye on our surroundings with my Riemannian Echo," Rui told him. "If whatever killed it returns, I''ll react to it immediately, and we can use Void Step to get the hell out of here immediately."


    Rui refused to focus on anything else knowing that a creature this powerful was in the Shionel Dungeon and was even at their very location not too long ago. That was far too scary for him to ignore and he promptly took the role of a scout and a lookout. He did not mind if this may reduce their gains or lower gains, nor did he mind if took twice as long. He wanted to ensure that if the predator returned, the two of them would be able to Void Step away thanks to Rui''s alertness.


    "If I say red, then get to me reach out to me and use Void Step instantly, got it?" Rui told him, as he handed him the dimensional storage ring.


    "Gotcha," Kane nodded as he got to work.


    Although Rui did not help, he hovered very close to Kane at all times, to ensure that there was absolutely no dy in their reactions if Rui detected the approach of the predator. Kane immediately got to work as he quickly began extracting the scales and storing them in the storage dimension.


    Rui on the other hand was extremely mentally alert, to the point that he was even straining himself to the absolute maximum, using the Mind Pce technique to read space curvature to an evenrge degree than he normally could although it was quite tiring. He was determined to make sure that he made it in time in case anything happened.


    Eventually, a lot of time passed and Kane was finally done.


    "Now we just got to pop these over by the burying spot and we''re good," Kane replied.


    "Hufff¡­" Rui heaved a heavy sigh. "Yeah, man, we need to reconsider our risk evaluation if there are creatures like these in the Shionel Dungeon."


    He pointed to the Earthen Basilisk corpse, while also referring to the predator that killed it. "Floors have generally gotten harder the deeper we go. If there are floors that are even more dangerous, or infested with monsters this powerful, even we will have a hard time Kane."


    "Yeah that sounds way too much," Kane smiled wryly. He was quite weak physicallypared to normal Squire-level monsters, against final-boss Squire-level monsters, just a simple attack from them might utterly annihte him. A single grade-ten-level technique or two was not enough to give him confidence against such creatures. Thus he did approve of Rui considering being even more careful with deeper and potentially more dangerous floors.


    Rui, instead, was a little hopeful that these two creatures were outliers. A dungeon filled with such creatures was closer to a Senior-level dungeon than it was to a Squire-level dungeon, in which case Seniors would be able to approach much closer than they currently could, thus he wasn''t too very concerned.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 870 Aggressive

    ?


    The two of them had inadvertently spent an entire day in the Shionel Dungeon. It had taken nearly three hours of exploring the dungeon with Rui''s Riemannian Echo, and then the rest of the remaining day for Kane to finally extract all the esoteric resources himself from the corpse of the Earthen Basilisk.


    The two of them immediately left the fifteenth floor as they headed back home.


    On the way, back, Rui had much to think about. The floors of the dungeon were definitely diverging from the norm far more than he had expected.


    Generally, floors were pockets of esoteric resource reservoirs, monsters tended to coalesce because they wererge open spaces.


    Thus, Rui had expected that the floors would all be straightforward monsters that could very easily be dealt with simr strategies each time. Yet this, and previous floors showed him that he should not be certain of what to expect.


    After all, he ran into a town of monsterified living zombies inside a floor, things didn''t really get that much crazier than that.


    Rui suddenly paused as his senses picked up something strange.


    "What is it now?" Kane asked with dismay, having experienced this many times now. "Is it a monster or another floor?"


    "No, actually, it''s a bunch of Martial Squires in different groups in different ces¡­ They''re actuallying down the same tunnel system that we''re traversing," Rui murmured.


    "How many?"


    "A total of forty-three that I can sense," Rui frowned. "They''re spread out and heading in different directions, exploring the dungeon."


    "Wait, you''re telling me that the normies have begun catching up with us?" Kane''s eyes widened with shock. Rui''s Riemannian Echo gave him such an absolutely uncontested dominant advantage in the Shionel Dungeon. The two of them were much further and deeper down the Shionel Dungeon than any martial Squire had ever been because they possessed absolutely no fear of getting lost with Rui''s senses and memory.


    Most Martial Squires had to explore more conservatively due to this and required more manpower.


    Even Rui frowned as he found the presence of dozens of Martial Squire this deep below the surface to be quite odd. He was sure that they had been left quite behind in the dust.


    "This must have something to do with the recent surge in Martial Squires," Rui''s eyes narrowed.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    In the past week, there had been a sudden surge of Martial Squires into the Shionel Confederation, and the traffic in the Adventurer Ring had increased visibly.


    Rui had an idea as to what was causing this phenomenon, but there was nothing he could do about preventing it. He just needed to make sure that it did not change the oue.


    "Chairman Deacon sure is being aggressive, as predicted," Rui snorted. "The monopolization of dungeons has been his one and only semi-fruitful endeavor at beating me. He''s going to start aggressively exploring with the help of the capital and manpower of internal and external foreign stakeholders that he has surely united by now and beat me with sheer numbers."


    "What do his allies gain by helping him though?" Kane raised an eyebrow.


    "The same sess that they would have gained had I not participated in the Shionel Dungeon exploration and plunder," Rui replied. "Basically, they''re going to join their forces and overwhelm me with numbers to try and restore the bnce that existed before. He has internal and external support, and on top of that, he keeps increasing the bounty on my head that has also sessfully harnessed frencers and independents into hunting the nation for me. Furthermore, he is no doubt conducting extensive brute force investigations on all Martial Squires as well, as expensive as that is."


    Rui did suspect that he was probably one of the most wanted Martial Squires in recent history. What other Martial Squire had so many countless Martial Squires working against him or her in such a manner?


    "Sheesh, the man truly is fit to be called a bloodhound. The only reason that Chairman Deacon has not used his political power and governmental authority to leverage the state''s power against me is because Guildmaster Bradt is singlehandedly crushing any attempt at that with his political capital and authority, however, he''s doing that out of self-interest. And unless I can give him even more than I have given him, he is unwilling to do more," Rui murmured.


    Unfortunately for him, he couldn''t think of any bargaining chips that he could use to trade with Guildmaster Bradt to put an end to all this. Although Guildmaster Bradt did have the power to put an end to all of this by leveraging his enormous political and economic capital, it was extremely expensive and costly. Rui was aware that even with the precious map, and the profits of Esosale Suppliers, he would not be able to convince Guildmaster Bradt to put in even more work without some heavy concessions.


    This was on a whole other levelpared to asking Guildmaster Bradt to simply pass a bill amending somews and protocols.Belonging ? N?velDram/a.Org.


    "Hmmm¡­" Rui narrowed his eyes. "What to do indeed¡­ I can think of numerous ns. But for now, Let''s get the hell out of here. These guys will eventually discover the fifteenth floor and inform Chairman Deacon, or the Shionel Adventurer Guild about the fifteenth floor."


    Rui was curious about what the analysis on the fifteenth floor from the relevant experts would be. Every time a floor was discovered, eventually its details would be public, and arge number of experts who were unable to get a first-hand look would offer their insights on the floors of the Shionel Dungeon.


    Although he was quite confident in his deductions and analyses, it did not hurt to learn the insight of actual experts who studied stuff like this for a living. He was also quite curious about how his skinning of the corpse for esoteric resources would be interpreted. Would they also give him credit for killing the Earthen Basilisk?


    He hoped so, it would make his life easier.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 871 Controversy

    ?


    As Rui predicted, the fifteenth floor was soon discovered by the exploration team that happened upon itter than they did. The discovery eventually leaked to the public, causing an uproar. The thought of the fifteenth floor containing a single enormous monster was terrifying to most people.


    Yet there was also a lot of morbid curiosity into the matter. The fact that it was headless and that fact that its outer scales, strongly suspected to be made out of esoteric substances, were stripped from the body indicated human intervention.


    However, there was certainly some controversy over the matter.


    "The destruction of the head does not seem to be caused by a Martial Art technique," An expert stated in a discussion talk show. "For instance, Martial Art techniques, at the Squire level, at least, cannot erase matter from existence. Thus the theory that a Martial Squire, even if it''s the notorious Voider, was responsible for the destruction of the head is a bit dubious because it begs the question of where the head actually went. Even if he destroyed it, the destroyed tissue would still be present. However, the publicized reports do not indicate any such finding."


    "It is possible that the head was highly dense with esoteric substances," Another expert pushed back. "We also notice that the scales are missing, are they not? And were clearly extracted with care, not just ripped off by a beast. This would entertain the possibility that the beast was killed and all the parts of its body containing the desired resources, including the head and the scales."


    There was considerable controversy over the matter, and many people either fell on one or the other side. Most people, however, were fascinated by both possibilities. After all, regardless of whether it was some apex predator or the Voider that utterly demolished the Earthen Basilisk, it would not change the fact that they possessed the power to do so, despite the Earthen Basilisk being a living nightmare to most people.


    Most people hoped that it was a Martial Squire, rather than some unknown apex predator. After all, the former was fighting on the side of humans, while thetter was a threat. If it ever broke out, they would only be able to stop by employing Martial Squires unless it escaped outside of the range where Martial Seniors could not enter. In that case, the beast would be instantly annihted by any Martial Senior.


    Although people were awed by the beast, their faith in Martial Seniors was stronger. They did not believe that anything that emerged from the Shionel Dungeon was capable of challenging a Martial Senior.


    Rui was liable to agree, although, he wasn''t entirely certain that the predator responsible for killing the gigantic Earthen Basilisk was something Martial Squires could handle. The worst-case scenario was that it was beyond the Squire Realm, but just far enough below the Senior Realm that it did not trigger the defense mechanisms of the Shionel Dungeon. Meaning that there was a quasi-Senior level monster roaming around the dungeon, and the only ones who could deal with were Martial Squires.


    Just this possibility alone made not just Rui, but also other Martial Squires who were traversing the dungeon, a lot warier of traveling too deep into it. If they ran into such a creature during their exploration, then they were more than likelier doomed. Perhaps the only people who could handle such a monster were S-rank adventurers. Rui supposed that a group of S-rank Martial Squires could potentially take on such a creature and win.


    There were ways in which the strongest Squires of the Squire Realm could take on and potentially defeat something that broke the conventional limits of the Squire Realm.


    Still, he would rather not have to deal with that.


    KNOCK KNOCK.


    Rui''s eyes narrowed as he sensed a man standing outside their inn door.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    "Were you expecting guests?" Kane frowned.


    "No, just dreading them," Rui murmured as he recognized the emblem on the man''s clothes. He opened the door,ing face to face with a well-groomed man who had a butler''s attire on.


    The man immediately bowed deeply, before addressing Rui.


    "Squire Quarrier, forgive me for the disturbance, I have an important message to convey to you as the chief of staff assigned to aid Martial Commissioner Reze," He rose up from his gesture.


    Rui immediately narrowed his eyes as he considered the name. He had never heard of Martial Commissioner Reze, but that was because Martial Commissioners were generally not renowned individuals in the Kandrian Empire.


    The Martial Union only put a focus on its Martial Artists, all other humans were effectively relegated to the silent background even as they worked for Martial Squires. After all, it was an organization for Martial Squires, by Martial Squires, and from Martial Squires.


    The man pulled out the Martial Union card of the Martial Commissioner, featuring his name, identity, and even a contact number, offering it to Rui.


    The card specified that Martial Commissioner was a rank three Martial Commissioner, meaning he had the authority to craft Senior-level internal missions and deploy Martial Seniors in missions. This meant that he possessed a tremendous amount of power as far as Rui was concerned.Belonging ? N?velDram/a.Org.


    The fact that such a bigshot wanted to interact with him was even more confirmation of his suspicions. He had always known that it would be impossible to keep the Martial union on their back, and it appeared that there was a good chance that today was the day.


    "What message?" Rui asked nonchntly. "As far as I''m aware, I have no business with this Martial Commissioner."


    "Commissioner Reze wishes to speak to you and your partner Kane Arrancar about some very important matters in person," The man exined. "If you are willing, we have a carriage that can take you to him immediately."


    Rui considered the matter, before sighing. "Alright, we ept."


    Soon enough two of them left their respective rooms, appropriately dressed as they headed out, to be weed by a rather low-key standard carriage, which surprised Rui considering the fact that it was sent by an important dignitary of the Martial Union.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 872 Reze

    ?


    (''The fact that he doesn''t want to draw attention is a good sign,'') Rui mused. It indicated that the Martial Union wanted to keep whatever matter it wanted to discuss low. Sending in a Kandrian carriage from the local Martial Union embassy was probably not the most subtle manner to go about it. Such movements would obviously be noticed instantly.


    As for the topic that this Martial Commissioner Reze wanted to speak to the two of them, Rui already more or less knew what it was. He prepared himself mentally for a heavy conversation as the two of them reached the carriage.


    His eyes narrowed when he realized that his ordinary senses could not particrly prate the carriage effectively as they normally would. Although it looked like an ordinary multi-passenger carriage, it was clearly fashioned for more than just ordinary transport if it was equipped with sensory-jamming esoteric technology.


    Still, it didn''t pose any hindrance to Rui''s Riemannian Echo. Inside he sensed a man apanied by two subordinate staff members.


    (''Is that¡­?'')


    His question was answered when he entered the carriage along with Kane, sitting opposite him. It wasn''t until the door closed that the man sitting opposite them addressed the two of them.


    "Squire Quarrier, Squire Kane, I am Martial Commissioner Reze." The man disyed a sincere smile. "It is a pleasure to meet two of the most promising Martial Squires of your generation. I have heard much about the two of you, especially you Squire Quarrier. Tales of your feats and contributions to our Union have spread even when you were a mere Martial Apprentice. I''m happy to have met the two of you who will surely go on to be pirs of the Martial Union and our nation."Text ? by N0ve/lDrama.Org.


    The man''s attitude was weing and soft. Despite his far greater authority, he did not put on airs or look down on them.


    This was within Rui''s expectations. He already knew that the Martial Union''s code of conduct for non-Martial Artist employees, regardless of their rank, was strict. The Martial Union was an organization for Martial Artists through and through, thus it ensured that non-Martial Artists in power or otherwise would never use their position against the Martial Artists members of the Martial Union directly or indirectly. There were even strict guidelines against employing intimidation against younger and weaker Martial Artists such as Martial Apprentices.


    He had already experience withmissioner Derun. She too had treated Rui hospitably despite having greater power and authority than he did. All of the human employees he had ever dealt with always acted with deference towards Martial Artists regardless of how great or humble their authority was.


    It appeared that Commissioner Reze was no different.


    "You tter me," Rui replied perfunctorily with a mild smile, as Kane simply nodded in concurrence.


    He wasfortable being Rui''s hype man while Rui dealt with the Martial Union.


    "I''m sure you must be quite curious as to why I wanted to speak to you with such short notice," The man smiled amicably. "I will get right into it immediately. We have made some shocking discoveries recently. Discoveries pertaining to the two of you, you see."


    He paused for a moment, observing their reactions.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    Rui waspletely inscrutable. Commissioner Reze was impressed that he was able to mask his reactions so well, even if he knew that Rui had undergone diplomatic training. Kane on the other hand, also did well due to his background in covert missions which required some training in non-verbalmunication.


    "You see, this is ssified information, but I have been authorized to tell you that the Martial Union has been invited by Chairman Deacon to join an alliance that will cooperate together to take down the Voider, one way or another," The man replied amicably. "The Martial Union was provided with intelligence on the Voider by Chairman Deacon. It was only when we noticed some simrities between the techniques of the Voider and a certain external member of our Union, did we start looking into the matter deeply. Long story short, a full-blow investigation led us to a pair of individuals who have been evaluated by our Intelligence Department as extremely likely candidates for the identity of the Voider. Isn''t that amazing, Squire Quarrier?"


    The man smiled gently.


    Neither Rui nor Kane responded immediately.


    "Ah, this carriage possessed the finest anti-espionage esoteric technology, based on certain esoteric substances that you yourselves should be familiar with," The man exined. "Furthermore, I myself havee here through extremely covert means. Not even the Embassy is aware of my presence here. No one is, outside of these two staff members."


    He referred to the chief of staff and his secretary sitting beside him.


    "Do not be afraid of any data leaks either," Themissioner informed him. "We have taken extraordinarily prudent steps ahead of time to ensure that none one is aware of the information that I have just divulged here."


    He finally stopped, waiting for Rui to reply.


    Rui sighed. "I assume it was abination of the Void Step technique, as well as our transaction history and a deeper investigation into our locations that revealed something was off, correct?"


    The man raised an eyebrow. "That''s exactly it, actually."


    Rui sighed. Although he had done a good job throwing them off, he did not think that his preparations could be able to throw off the intelligence department of the Martial Union forever. The problem was that their intelligence-gathering ability was extraordinarily deep, and he would need to spend years preparing, and even expend a lot of capital if he wanted to truly throw them off. The measures he had taken were much more rudimentary inparison.


    "As for the high probability evaluation of those two suspects being the Voider, that probably came from rigorous tracking of our presence and movements, more than anything, correct?"


    "Right again," The man nodded. "Frankly, your counter-intelligence measures were impressive. You very correctly understood the protocols of the system of intelligence gathering of our Intelligence Department, and very cleverly exploited the limits of our passive intelligence gathering capabilities. The Intelligence Department has even made adjustments to its second-hand intelligencework systems in light of this event. We cannot afford to be fooled so easily, after all."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 873 Offer

    ?


    "Frankly, you surprise us time and time again, Squire Quarrier," The man began speaking a little more freely. "I have spent many years working with many Martial Artists, yet I have nevere across an individual like you. Frankly, if not for the confidential information that we had on you, we probably would never have even noticed. You most likely took this measure to throw off foreign parties who may be looking into the Voider, or even native Kandrian forces, and you most certainly aplished that."


    "You tter me," Rui replied simply. "You''ve made your point, Commissioner Reze. I admit to nothing as of this moment. However, I am interested in hearing what you are actually here for. I am aware that you did not go through all the trouble ofing here in such a ndestine manner only to brag about how you allegedly found us. Please continue on to the main point."


    Rui knew the Martial Union well enough to know that they would not any heavy-handed methods to stop him. The biggest reason for that is because that would cross lines that they themselves had set with the expressed intent of never crossing in order to build a reputation and track record of being trustworthy with their word and not overbearingly domineering.


    Forcefully halting the entirely legal international business ventures of one of its external members when it possessed absolutely no right or directive to was an extremely gross vition of a number of rights of a very gifted and promising Martial Squire. Even if they were willing to risk the credibility that they had painstakingly built over long periods of time, such a move could not be hidden from everybody and would spread like wildfire in many circles in the Kandrian Empire.


    This gave Rui a lot of leeway. He knew that even if they knew, there was nothing they could do to him.


    Or to be more precise, it was not worth shattering their credibility in a gross vition of his rights as an organization that was created to protect them. Even if they halted him, it wasn''t as though they would instantly start seeding in the Shionel Dungeon just because the Voider was gone.


    Even if they did, the material benefits would not be worth it.


    Of course, Rui was very well cognizant of the fact that everybody had a price. For example, if the Martial Union found out that he could exponentially increase the rate of breakthroughs to the Apprentice Realm, then the Martial Union would not even hesitate in the slightest to detain him.


    Still, this situation wasn''t anywhere nearly as extreme as that.


    They could not afford to use the stick, thus which left them with a carrot.


    "You''re perceptive, Squire Quarrier," The man smiled. "You are correct. The main reason that I am here today is to make you an offer."<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    "I am listening,"


    The man paused for a moment before his demeanor became more serious. "Things are going to get rougher for the Voider from here on out. Chairman Deacon has roped in all the frencers and independent Martial Squires with a bounty that growsrger almost every day. He has united the merchants of the esoteric supplier industry local to the Shionel Confederation in their mutual interests to get rid of the Voider that has infringed and dominated their sector, as well as foreign suppliers. He has also roped foreign stakeholders with a special interest in the esoteric supplies of the dungeon, such as nations interested in them for national interests, these are strategic substances after all."


    He paused for a moment. "Frankly, the probability that it is going to overwhelm the Voider, at one point or the other, is not low. Frankly, I''m still amazed by the sheer amount of sess that the Voider has achieved, it''s utterly baffling now that we havee across the true identities of the Voider. It''s even more surprising how they managed to lock in the biggest bigshot in the nation to partner with them, and even pass a bill for their sake. However, it''s clear that that connection will not be able to protect the Voider."


    "What if the Voider is extremely confident in their capabilities?" Rui shrugged.Content held by N?velDrama.Org.


    "We would be surprised, yet we would bid the Voider good luck," The man shook his head. "We do not act against one of our own. You may have a dim view of our motivations, but ultimately the Martial Union exists for Martial Artists and Martial Art. The proposal that we have to offer is truly in the mutual interests of both sides."


    Rui didn''t respond immediately.


    He had to admit that he was feeling the pressure recently. It was literally as though the whole world, or the parts of it close enough to matter, was against them. Asides from Guildmaster Bradt, it seemed as though everybody inside and outside the Shionel Confederation was his enemy and was hunting him alive.


    "I''m open to considering your proposal," Rui spoke openly this time, dropping the pretenses. "But that doesn''t mean I will take it. If I decide not to, then I won''t."


    "That is understandable, Squire Quarrier," The man smiled eagerly. "The proposal I have for you entails an exchange of aid, relief, and protection from the aggressive search for the Voider that Chairman Deacon has set out on, in exchange for a cut of the resources of your harvests, as well as some other minor conditions. We can get into the specifics if you want, but essentially, The Martial Union can ept Chairman Deacon''s offer and will join the alliance and engage in just the right amount of sabotage to guarantee that they never catch on to you without revealing themselves. We can drastically obscure your traces, misdirect their attention, confuse the investigation with well-timed misinformation, and engage in a lot of counter-intelligence sabotage. You can rest assured in the capabilities of our Covert Operations Department, we have excellent agents and Martial Artists, as I''m sure you know firsthand."


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    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 874 Concerns

    ?


    Rui did know. He made extensive use of the intelligence and covert operation teams assigned to him on Vilun Ind. That''s why he knew they were definitelypetent.


    Still, that didn''t mean it was going to be easy.


    "They are most certainly reliable," Rui replied. "However, the same can be said for the covert operatives and intelligence agents that are going to be employed by Chairman Deacon and his little alliance."


    "Most certainly," Commissioner Reze smiled, nodding. "However, let me remind you, our goal is to engage in just the necessary amount of targeted sabotage to ensure that they don''t find you. That doesn''t mean we need to sabotage every step of every endeavor they engage in, we''re concerned with those that are on the right track."


    Rui was already aware of this, and he had to admit, it made sense. Chairman Deacon and his minions would need to be juggling a vast amount of data on the matter, but the only data that the Martial Union would be focused on would be information surrounding Rui and Kane. They needed to engage in just the right amount of sabotage surrounding the most crucial parts of the investigation, and they could continue about normally for all other matters for the most part.


    "Still, this would require the full cooperation of the Covert Operations Department of the Martial Union, correct?" Rui asked, before continuing. "That means an entire department within the Martial Union is going to get involved, and the number of people who are going to be aware of the secret is going inte significantly, this is necessarily going to increase the risk that there will be a data leak and our identities will be revealed. And it is going to be the two of us who will end up paying the price, not the Martial Union."Exclusive ? material by N?(/v)elDrama.Org.


    It didn''t matter how careful the Martial Union was. The greater the number of people who were aware of the secret, the greater the probability that the secret would eventually spill. It could happen in a number of ways. It could be the case that the Martial Union had spies in it that could leak the identity of the Voider to one of the parties that had epted Chairman Deacon''s alliance.


    It could be that an operative of the Martial Union could be captured in the process of sabotage, and the data would be leaked, or it could be that the Martial Union''s sabotage as a whole would end up being leaked, and they would realize that the Martial Union had some kind of connection to the Voider, jeopardizing Rui and Kane even more.


    "Those concerns are also valid," Commissioner Reze nodded. "However, we will not be employing the entirety of the Covert Operations Department for this matter. That''s not only risky for the reasons you mentioned, but there are guidelines and protocols in ce as well as oversight from authorities who possess deep expertise in this field. Most likely we''ll employ a team of intelligence agents who will genuinely be tasked with earnestly aiding Chairman Deacon with finding a Voider, and there will be a separate highly ndestine team of covert operatives whose goal is to sabotage the intelligence agents of the Martial Union that will be aiding Chairman Deacon with the investigations as well as the entire process as a whole. This is a generallymon tactic that we employ in double-agent operations, to put it simply. It is exceedingly difficult to employ, but we have developed a sophisticated means of doing so thanks to the nature of our organization. The philosophy of fooling your enemies by fooling friends and even yourself is something we rigorously in sophisticated sabotage operations such as this."<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    Rui was impressed. That was definitely a lot more sophisticated than he was expecting from the Martial Union, although it didn''tpletely relieve him, it was definitely more assuring than if they engaged in more straightforward and scrutable manners of investigation.


    Still, that didn''t mean Rui had no more concerns left. He would be a fool if he let some nice words spoken in a short conversation put to rest all potential issues.


    "Even if it were the case that you could assure the security of our identities in this manner, that does not mean you''ll be given the chance to, Commissioner Reze," Rui replied.


    The man''s eyebrows knitted a little in confusion. "I''m afraid I don''t follow, Squire Quarrier."


    "There will obviously be a sh of interest for the Martial Union if the Martial Union investigates one of its own external members for being the Voider," Rui borated. "How can Chairman Deacon trust you to investigate your own members, especially if the investigation''s oues could lead to the death of said members? If I can see the conflict of interests, then surely Chairman Deacon can as well. No nation can be trusted to investigate the candidates of the true identity of the Voider that are in association with those nations."


    Commissioner Reze smiled. "Youck aplete grasp of Chairman Deacon''s perspective, I''m afraid, partly because you do not have as much of an ess to his intelligence as we do, nor his ns. Chairman Deacon is convinced that the while the Voider may be a citizen or a member of any of the nations or organizations that he has rallied, he has absolutely certain that the Voider is not being patroned, supported, or partnered with any of the nations and organizations that he had rallied. He has strong reasons to believe this."


    Rui immediately understood what themissioner meant. "If the Voider was backed by a nation, it would be in the Voider''s and the nation''s interests to publicize it as a form of deterrence. Since killing the Voider would be no different from a deration of war with that nation, which instantlyplicates things and significantly disincentivizes killing the Voider. This is especially for an organization like the Kandrian Martial Union, an extremely powerful sage-level organization and a bigshot anywhere within a ten thousand kilometers radius."


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    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 875 Haggling

    ?


    Rui understood the entirety of what Commissioner Reze was getting at and more with just a single hint.


    "So in Chairman Deacon''s mind, the way that the Voider has operated, colluding with Guildmaster Bradt and not using any backer''s power as a deterrence, is a very strong indication that the Voider is an independent entity that found a winning strategy," Rui continued. "He has plenty of reasons to think that the Voider has zero foreign backings, especially not a bigshot like the Kandrian Martial Union. The Kandrian Martial Union would openly dere the Voider as one of its own to prevent anybody from messing with the Voider. Barring the three other powerhouse nations, nobody has the balls to pick a fight with the Kandrian Martial Union."


    "Correct," The man nodded. "Not just that, but the fact that the Martial Union has materially suffered at the expense of the Voider''s dominant sess is also a strong reason to not doubt the Martial Union''s interests andmitment. Chairman Deacon believes that we would never support the Voider while incurring suchckluster sess ourselves, the best part is that he is correct, we would never have done such a thing. It is simply highly suboptimal and detrimental to us, and thus not our style, we would never have conceived of such a n."


    He gave Rui a gentle but pointed look.


    "I''m not liable. It''s not my fault you''re unable to keep up," Rui shook his head. "Send stronger Martial Squires next time."


    Commissioner Rezeughed in response. "Only someone like you has the capital to rightfully say that. Your absurd sess has put even our finest grade-ten Martial Squires to sess. Frankly, we''re still curious as to how you''re able to perform such amazing feats in the Shionel Dungeon. Would you be interested in divulging your techniques, strategies, and tactics to us? We will remunerate you appropriately for such valuable means to traverse the Shionel Dungeon."


    "You would not be able to use the most crucial parts of our modus operandi, I promise," Rui replied.


    He was also unwilling to sell his winning form to others even if they could replicate it, it was the means by which he intended to fulfill his objective, and giving to the Martial Union would not only make his job harder, it would make him less valuable since they would be able to replicate his sess on arger scale.


    "That''s a shame," Commissioner Rezemented, not pursuing it any further. "But that''s beside the main point. Regarding the agreement, I trust you have no more issues?"


    Rui wanted to object, but he had no more principal objections, at most they would haggle over the details. He had to admit that it was a sound proposal that benefited both parties significantly. His challenge was limited to the Shionel Dungeon and the hurdles thaty within. He had not intended to challenge himself in the political domain, certainly not to challenge himself against an alliance that contained tons of powerful forces all looking to hunt him.


    It would benefit him greatly if he could leave that part to the Martial Union''s assuring capabilities.


    "Alright," he sighed. "I tentatively ept your offer, but we still need to have out all the details. I refuse to go in blind. Exactly what proportion of the harvest are you looking to get?"


    "Well, we were considering fifty percent of the total haul," Commissioner Reze stated.


    Rui almost burst outughing at the absurd amount that the man cited.


    The fact that he demanded such a high amount for some basic sabotage was absolutely hrious.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    The money that Rui earned from his harvests was not low. The esoteric substances harvested from the Shionel Dungeon were sold in milligrams because of how expensive and valuable they were. Rui routinely dragged out gigantic boulders of pure esoteric ore deposits. He was earning major shares of what was essentially the equivalent of a major multi-billion dor industry in this world.


    Fifty percent of that was simply far greater than what he was getting back. However, the biggest issue was not Rui''s desire for wealth, the greatest factor was that he was already giving fifty percent of the wealth to Bradt Distribution Services. He could not give the remaining to the Martial Union even if he wanted because he needed it to fund the sheer expenses of his dimensional storage ring which required a huge amount of wealth to sustain. If not for the fact that he was earning gigantic amounts of wealth, he would not be able to sustain regr use of the dimensional storage ring due to how much energy it cost.


    He couldn''t give away all of it even if he wanted.


    "The services the Martial Union are providing materially are not worth more than ten percent and I''m sure you know that," Rui snorted.


    "Perhaps," The man did not deny Rui''s words. "However, I''m sure you realize that the reason we are demanding so much is that you need these basic services you im are only worth ten percent. That increases their value, and our bargaining strength."Exclusive ? material by N?(/v)elDrama.Org.


    Rui could not deny those words. He did want them a lot even if he didn''t explicitly need them, inparison, he did not mind if he was slightly less filthy rich than he currently was.


    "Still, I cannot give you fifty percent, it is actually impossible due to reasons I cannot specify. You can think of it as me possessing only fifty percent of what I harvest, marily speaking I think fifteen percent is appropriate," Rui replied.


    "Forty percent," Commissioner Reze lowered his precise.


    "Twenty percent,"


    "Thirty,"


    "Twenty-five," Rui retorted. "And that''s my absolute limit, I''d be making close to less than the Martial Union if I go any lower."


    Commissioner Reze nodded, agreeing to the matter. "Twenty-five percent it is, then. We can work with that."


    "You mentioned other conditions, did you not?" Rui recalled. "What exactly are they?"


    "Ah, well, really we have one condition. We would like for you to avoid supplying esoteric resources to these Kandrian Empire-basedpanies." He reached his hand out to his secretary, who pulled a document and passed it on to him.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 876 Underworld

    ?


    Rui frowned at the odd condition as he epted the document. "You want me to randomly not sell to thesepanies, individuals, and organizations? Why not?"


    "That is none of your business," Commissioner Reze shook his head.


    "I think it is,missioner," Rui narrowed his eyes. "I have enough enemies already, as it is. You''re asking me to make even more. I definitely have the right to demand to know why."


    This was definitely a good reason that Rui could use to push the Martial Commissioner. Commissioner Reze considered Rui''s words before, simply nodding. "Very well, I can inform you of the reason why. The reasoning is simple, it is because they are ours and the Kandrian Government''s biggestpetition and threat in thepetition for the esoteric substances of the Shionel Dungeon. Thus we wish to restrict them from being your customers entirely."


    Rui frowned even deeper.


    A bunch ofpanies, organizations, and rich patrons were the biggest threat to the Kandrian Government and the Martial Union?


    He failed to understand why, or even how.


    "You''re going to have to exin that, I''m afraid," Rui stated, more curious than anything. "How exactly are they, enemies of the government, and of the Martial Union?"


    The man considered his words for a few seconds before replying. "This has to do with the nature and structure of the power blocs within the Kandrian Empire. But to put it short, it is not the foreign nations that are our biggestpetitors, and our most pressing enemies. The biggest threates from within. The Royal Family and the Martial Union are the two most powerful entities in the Kandrian Empire, however, do you know what the third most powerful entity would be?"


    Rui''s eyes narrowed as he understood where this was going. "The Underworld."Text ? by N0ve/lDrama.Org.


    The underworld was a nket term for sectors, markets, and even industries surrounding goods and services that were illegal for a variety of reasons.


    Human trafficking, prostitution, moneyundering, smuggling, and sale of prohibited substances, etc, were strictly prohibited in the Kandrian Empire.


    Yet a fundamental rule of humanity was where there was demand, there was supply. The underworld epassed arge number of illegalmercial endeavors for which there were huge markets. These endeavors were so profitable that entire sectors and industries were established and maintained and hidden in secrecy. All of these were collectively referred to as the Underworld.


    "You catch on quickly," Themissioner smiled. "I should warn you, we''re entering extremely sensitive territory here. However, you are correct. The Underworld is the third-most powerful force in the Kandrian Empire as far as Martial and military power go, and they are collectively even wealthier than the Martial Union. They are the biggest thorns in the necks of both the Royal Family and the Martial Union."


    Rui wasn''t satisfied with that exnation.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    "I can understand why the Royal Family and the Kandrian Government hate them, but why does the Martial Union dislike them?" Rui wondered. "There should be no sh of interests as far as I''m aware."


    The Martial Union existed for the mutual interests of Martial Artists as a ss in many ways. The Underworld was simply the sectors and industries born to provide supply to therge demand for illegal goods and services. There was no overt sh of interests as far as Rui could see.


    "Ah but there are shes of interests," Themissioner smiled. "There is a ck market for any service that is criminalized¡­"


    Rui immediately understood what he meant. "Illegal Martial Art services. Martial violence."


    "Exactly," The man nodded. "Not everyone is happy with the Martial Union''s tame services inparison. We do not ept offensive missions that are restricted to within the nation, nor do we ept covert missions for the same. There are many who wish to be able tomission Martial Artists to hurt or kill other humans or even other Martial Artists."


    Rui considered some of the missions that he had undertaken in the past. The Martial Apprentice that killed Be Hier, his very first client, and the Martial Apprentice that had captured and trafficked humans, were both most likely part of the Underworld in hindsight.


    "The Underworld, being more profitable than the Martial Union gig, must attract some Martial Artists," Rui murmured. "That''s the sh of interests, they steal the Martial Artists that the Martial Academies worked hard to create."


    "Exactly," Commissioner Reze nodded. "Our interests are irreconcble, and we at the very least do not want to see them empowered. Particrly the Martial Don of the Six Dons of the Underworld, a Martial Artist who has assumed control over the entire ck market for illegal Martial Artist services across the entire Kandrian Empire."


    Rui''s eyes widened as he came across a lot of information that he had never across before. "I''ve never heard of that."


    "It''s something that isn''t public knowledge, but I have chosen to disclose the basics to you," Commissioner Reze informed him. "Buting back to your original question. The Six Dons of the Underworld have a strong interest in many of the esoteric substances that emerge from the Shionel Dungeon. For reasons I''m sure you''ve already figured out by now."


    Rui did have a good idea of what the man was referring to. "The sensory jamming properties of esoteric substances of the Shionel Dungeon. It makes surveince and monitoring much harder, and technology fashioned from it will greatly benefit the Underworld''s activities."


    "Exactly," The man nodded.


    "And the reason you want to ban thesepanies, organizations, and individuals from purchasing from my Esosale Suppliers is that they probably have some connection to the Underworld, correct?" Rui sighed.


    "Correct," The man nodded. "They arepanies and organizations that are entirely legal and cannot be targeted by thew enforcement of the nation, and they are controlled by the Underworld and are one of the biggest ways in which the Underworld is acquiring esoteric substances of the Shionel Dungeon. Thus, we would like for you to halt any sale to them."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 877 Acceptance

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    Rui was aware of the existence of the underworld and the mafia, however, he did not know that they were such a significant force in the Kandrian Empire. In hindsight, he should have known given the fact that it was almost human nature.


    He could see why the Martial Union disliked the Underworld. The Martial Union spent a lot of capital and resources on the sixteen Martial Academies that rigorously trained Martial Artists in hopes that each generation would join and empower the Martial Union. It must be a sore sight to see the Underworld reel in a minority of its investments for its own use.


    The unfortunate fact of the matter was that one could probably make more wealth through the Underworld, although there was a huge slew of detriments to doing that.


    Rui skimmed through the document listing all the third parties that the Martial Union wanted Rui to avoid servicing. The list was quite big, though Rui was sure that these third parties were not the only ''faces'' that the Underworld had through which they could legitimately purchase esoteric substances. Still, if Rui barred any sale from Esosale Suppliers to these third parties, then he was sure the Underworld would suffer a blow to a certain extent.


    That would instantly make him and Esosale Suppliers the enemy of the entirety of the Underworld of the Shionel Confederation. He was sharp enough to realize that the Martial Union was hoping for this, to a certain extent. Rui was cognizant enough to evaluate the Martial Union''s offer from the context of their incentives and interests.


    By having Rui agree to this agreement, they would forever cut away any possibility of Rui joining the Underworld, especially the so-called Martial Don. This would be a highly undesirable oue for the Martial Union, and one they might fear.


    The reason for this was that as much power wealth Rui could umte through legitimate means, he could probably gain even more if he joined the Underworld with the capabilities he currently possessed.


    Rui scoffed inwardly, although from the high-minded and distant Martial Union''s perspective, this may be a possibility to fear, to Rui at least, this was almost an impossibility. Rui disdained to inflict meaningless and needless suffering. He had the Orphanage to think about as well, he couldn''t engage in such activities by virtue of them simply existing.


    On top of that, having been born and brought up with many children, he hated people who inflicted suffering on children, and he knew firsthand that the Underworld was willing to sink to such depths. That alone was enough for him to never want to have any ties with them.


    And that alone was enough for him to ept this offer even if it meant antagonizing the Underworld.


    "Hm?" Rui''s eyes narrowed as he read a familiar name that was especially highlighted on the list of Underworld associates.


    DiViliers Manufacturers.


    "This¡­"


    He recalled this name. Charles DiViliers, the chairman and founder of thergest producers of Martial Art-rted goods, as well as services surrounding those goods. Hispany engaged in an immense amount of research and development on Martial Art-rted goods such as equipment, gear, utilities, training, and growth resources before selling them inrge numbers.


    His products were so effective that they were deemed of strategic value, and he was sanctioned from selling internationally in the interests of National security. Furthermore, both the Kandrian Military and the Martial Union valued his products so much that they signed extensive and lucrative contracts, turning him into the military contractor equivalent of the Kandrian Empire.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    Rui had already known that this man likely had ties with the Underworld. The reason for this was that he recognized the golden-haired and-eyed man that had engaged in banditry as one of his subordinates.


    "Ah, Charles DiViliers and Diviliers Manufacturers. They certainly are one of Esosale Suppliers'' biggest clients," Commissioner Reze nodded.


    Rui had not been aware of that. He simply let Guildmaster Bradt handle all the clientele in ce of Rui. This was the agreement that the two of them hade to. Rui simply pumped in all the juice while Guildmaster Bradt handled everything else that came with running apany like Esosale Suppliers.


    "I ept," Rui shut the document.


    Although Martial Commissioner Reze did not let his perfunctory smile so much as twitch, Rui could feel with Primordial Instinct that the man had been surprised that Rui had epted so easily. He could tell that the Martial Commissioner had been prepared to engage in some persuasion about how bad the Underworld was, and how it was a threat to Rui''s interests as well as that of the Martial Union.


    However, Rui was smart enough to have figured out all of that, and more, in an instant.


    "Wonderful," Martial Commissioner Reze smiled. "The Martial Union will surely reward you for your seamless cooperation. Now then, let us flesh out all of the details and sign the contract at another time. Today I merely wished to confirm your intent to cooperate with this deal. I will contact you in a simr manner very soon and we''ll meet up discreetly to finalize everything."


    "Sure," Rui replied simply.


    "Well then, I bid the both of you a good day," The man smiled as the door opened. Exclusive ? material by N?(/v)elDrama.Org.


    Rui and Kane bade him goodbye before heading back to their inn rooms.


    "I thought the Martial Union would be more heavy-handed, to be honest," Kane remarked nonchntly.


    "They probably would have engaged in more subtle intimidation if it were any other Martial Squire," Rui was rtively certain that they would have employed some convincing bluffs had it been any other Martial Squire in so far as subtly exaggerating the gravity and the consequences of what the two of them had aplished.


    But Rui would not have fallen for such tricks, and he knew that they knew that. They had to go for a more transparent approach when it came to handling him, and so they did. Rui looked forward to signing the contract so that he feels more at ease, if not for anything else.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 878 Delivery

    Text ? by N0ve/lDrama.Org.


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    Martial Commissioner was not kidding when he said that he would contact them very soon. Twenty-four hourster, Rui and Kane were greeted by one of Martial Commissioner Reze''s personal assistants, who conveyed to them the location of the meeting and requested the two of them visit the location discreetly.


    Thankfully, the location that Commissioner Reze had chosen was close enough to the Shionel Dungeon that no Martial Senior could be anywhere near it. Which was relieving to Rui, since he was not afraid of martial Squires.


    "There he is," Rui murmured as he used Riemannian Echo to detect Martial Commissioner Reze in a small building in a busy district, apanied by his bodyguards. "The location he chose is hidden in in sight, huh? No one would think that an extremely important and significant agreement would be officially signed here."


    Furthermore, once again, his normal senses had trouble detecting the depths of the building. He appreciated that they had taken measures to obscure the happenings of the building. Yet at the same time, it wasn''t too overt to draw attention.


    If they stuffed it with enough anti-sensing esoteric technology then they would definitely attract more attention. After all, any martial Squire running their senses through the area would notice the void that came with the sensory jamming technology.


    KNOCK KNOCK.


    Rui and Kane knocked on the door after subtly having deactivated the Void Step technique and blending into the crowd.


    The door opened as a Martial Squire carefully checked out their appearance before letting them in, through a few rooms before reaching a wide room with arge table at the center of it.


    Martial Commissioner Reze smiled. "Wee, Squire Quarrier, Squire Arrancar. I look forward to finalizing the agreement officially today. Please take a seat. I apologize for the obscure location of these talks, but I couldn''t greet you in the Kandrian Embassy for reasons I''m sure you''re aware of already."


    Rui nodded. He was sure that the Kandrian Embassy was hardly a safe spot for such talks as far as privacy went. If they did hold the meeting in the Kandrian Embassy, then the fact that Rui and Kane were present in there would be revealed pretty quickly, or at the very least, a highly confidential meeting from some visitors in-state was urring. Just the fact that it was the foreign embassy of the Kandrian Empire meant that the state would be paying a decent amount of surveince to it.


    "Now then, let us establish what we have already agreed to thus far," Commissioner Reze began. "We have established that in return for twenty-five percent of the harvest, we will engage in all counter-intelligence measures we can to sabotage the investigation from within the alliance that Chairman Deacon has put together, well as banning sale to the third parties that we have already provided to you. Do you have any objections to these?''


    "No," Rui simply replied.


    "Alright, then let us specify the means by which each side will fulfill our conditions," Commissioner Reze proceeded on. "Regarding the delivering of the esoteric ore harvests, we have several proposals in mind. Though, if you have any preferred method, then we may be willing to entertain that."


    Rui shrugged. "I could bury it at a particr spot every time I harvest it, leaving it for you guys to pick up."


    It was what he had been doing thus far, and it had worked fine thus far. Furthermore, given the fact that the Martial Union was already aware of his identity, he didn''t need to change spots each time like he needed to when delivering esoteric ore supplies to Guildmaster Bradt.


    Commissioner Reze considered the idea. "That could work¡­ it would depend on the location."<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    The Martial Commissioner was lessfortable with this method of delivery than Guildmaster Bradt was. The difference in power that the two of them had within the nation was drastic. Guildmaster Bradt was extraordinarily powerful within the confines of the nations, thus such a method was not problematic to him since he possessed the ability to mitigate all the risks that came with it singlehandedly.


    The same could not be said for the Martial Union when it came to matters so far from the Kandrian Empire in a powerful state where it did not have much foundation within at all. There were simply too many things that could go wrong, and they did not necessarily possess the ability to prevent it.


    "Rather than burying it, could you deliver it to a location simr to this, one that isn''t far away from the Shionel Dungeon and one that is under the implicit control of the Martial Union?" Commissioner Reze asked Rui.


    "That works fine too," Rui shrugged.


    This was actually more convenient, a live handover to the Martial Union was also now possible given that the Martial Union was aware of the identity of the Voider. This meant that there were a lot of conveniences that came with it.


    Martial Commissioner Reze went on to specify a few more details and establish some protocols regarding the handover.


    "I refuse to work with specializedms devices to alert you of my schedule and harvests ahead of time," Rui tly refused that condition.


    "Things will be a lot smoother if we do it this way," Commissioner Reze raised an eyebrow.


    "Once again, I refuse,"


    "May I know why?"


    "Because it adds another element of risk that is not within my control," Rui replied straightforwardly. "What if this specialmunication device ends up getting intercepted, or infiltrated? What if it is the reason that I draw suspicion to myself?"


    "I assure you that this such a thing is extremely unlikely," Commissioner Reze frowned mildly.


    "I appreciate that, but again, no," Rui shook his head. "Please have staff or personnel manning the drop location all day and night if that is what it takes. It''s hardly an extra expense."


    "Fine, we ept that condition," Commissioner Reze relented, seeing that Rui was unwilling to agree to this measure that he had drafted up.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 879 Planned

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    Soon enough, the two of them chalked up a simple but defined n for the drop-off of the esoteric ore deposits that he owed the Martial Union. However, there was still more that needed to be ironed out as far as Rui was concerned.


    "I want ess to all information surrounding the investigation with the Voider," Rui mentioned.


    Martial Commissioner maintained a straight face, but Rui could tell that he disliked what he was hearing.


    "This is not rmended, Squire Quarrier," Commissioner Reze informed Rui. "You should leave the matters surrounding the investigation to us, and have faith in our capabilities."


    "This isn''t a matter of not having faith in the Martial Union''s capabilities," Rui replied. "No matter how trustworthy your operations are, I find it more reassuring to also be informed on the happenings of the investigation. Should I feel that the direction of the investigation affects my interests, then I wish to be aware of that rather than not."


    There was a moment of silence as Martial Commissioner simply stared at Rui expressionlessly.


    Rui was actually aware of the reasons for thepunctions that the Commissioner had. He did not want Rui to make decisions based on the direction of the investigation. He was most likely afraid that Rui would simply quit the gig if he ever felt threatened by the direction of the investigation.


    He was also afraid that Rui would crack under extreme pressure if he realized the investigation was making progress towards him, and make moves that would be extremely suspicious and draw the attention of the investigation.


    He was probably also afraid that Rui would also make abrupt changes to throw off the investigation, but the timing of that would also be suspicious and alert Chairman Deacon of the fact that someone has ess to ssified information.


    These were all valid concerns, and if Rui were in his ce, he too would be concerned about these very matters as well. Still, Rui had disyed more than sufficientpetencies, which was the reason he couldn''t push back too hard using the excuse of Rui''sck of training in the handling of intelligence.


    What he truly wanted to avoid was any uncertain variables, which definitively came with Rui gaining ess to the investigation reports himself. Commissioner Reze simply could not be sure what he was going to do in certain circumstances.


    "Let me remind you, Commissioner Reze," Rui firmly spoke up. "That this isn''t an internal mission from the Martial Union. This is a partnership that the Martial Union approached me with, not the other way around."


    Commissioner Reze sighed inwardly, although he didn''t so much twitch outwardly. The problem was that Rui was right, the Martial Union was not the one with the highest bargaining power in the matter. Normally, such circumstances only urred with Martial Artists of the Upper Realms. Normally, only they possessed the might to speak to the mighty Martial Union on a more equal standing. Martial Squires did not possess this right as they simply possessed no bargaining power whatsoever,paratively speaking.


    Rui was the first Martial Squire of the Martial Union to have ever possessed such bargaining power with the Union. The appearance of the Shionel Dungeon artificially elevated the value of Martial Squires to closer to that of Martial Seniors, however, this single Martial Squire capitalized and dominated the Shionel Dungeon so impressively that he managed to break free from this pattern.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    He truly was unable to refuse Rui''s demand. It was reasonable given that this was a partnership, and it directly affected his interests thus he had every right to demand it, furthermore, he possessed thepetencies to ensure that he would not end up sabotaging himself by acting in an ill-advised manner.


    Commissioner Reze simply did not possess the capital to deny him.


    "Alright, Squire Quarrier," He nodded. "We ept that condition. Let us iron out the manner in which we should handle the delivery of the reports on the investigation. We would rmend that you do not carry hard copies of any reports back to your inn, that is highly ill-advised as that is liable to have you caught."


    "I''m aware of that," Rui wasn''t a fool. "I already have a solution. Bury the documents in a specific part of the dungeon. I''ll dig it up, memorize it, and destroy them."


    Commissioner Reze was aware that Rui had mastered the Mind Pce technique to a high level of mastery. So he wasn''t surprised by Rui''s ability to memorize it. Still, he had other issues with the solution that Rui had proposed.Content held by N?velDrama.Org.


    "How will you find it once you enter the dungeon? How would we know to bury it in that exact ce?" Commissioner raised an eyebrow. Rui acted as though the Shionel Dungeon was not a terribly difficult ce to navigate with highly hampered senses and messed up internalpasses and clocks.


    Rui straightforwardly confirmed this.


    "The Shionel Dungeon is transparent to me, I will be fine," Rui shook his head. "I''ll provide you with a map that will aid with directing you to the same ce each time."


    This time, Commissioner Reze''s eyes widened as a lot of oddities surrounding this entire case began making sense to him.


    The ability to map the Shionel Dungeon was nothing short of groundbreaking. Within the Shionel Confederation, it was a priceless asset, a national treasure. The one and only means to travel the Shionel Dungeon without spending stupendouslyrge amounts of time, or losing one''s way. In the mind-breaking maze of the Shionel Dungeon.


    He was starting to understand how Rui roped in the most powerful person in the Shionel Confederation as his business partner given this new information. He had to admit, he underestimated Rui''s capabilities. Given how long Esosale Suppliers had been active and how long they had been in the country, it meant that Rui had secured Guildmaster Bradt''s aid immediately. This suggests that he had been nning to do so for a very long time.


    Then when he considered the fact that Rui''s transaction history with the Martial Union indicated research into the Shionel Confederation almost six months before he left the Kandrian Empire, he realized that Rui had nned everything from the very beginning.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 880 Concluded

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    This realization assured that at the very least someone so shrewd would most likely not make blunders under pressure, most likely. That on top of the fact that Martial Artists were generally capable of retainingposure under the threat of life changed his mind about allowing Rui ess to the investigation being a bad idea.


    Shortly after, the two of them fleshed out the details of the agreements, as well as how the agreement would proceed in certain cases. Commissioner Reze negotiated for the ability to update the list of mafia-rtedpanies, as the Underworld would certainly adapt quickly to the bans and restrictions.


    In return, Rui obtained a promise to help him smuggle the wealth he earned from the Shionel Confederation back to the Kandrian Empire.


    Unfortunately for Rui, digital transactions were not really a thing on the Panama Continent. This meant that all transactions required a physical exchange of currency and goods/services to some degree.


    This was where Rui was in a pickle. He needed to somehow transfer all of the revenue he made in the Shionel Confederation to the Kandrian Empire. This was one of the few things the difficulty of which he hadn''t entirely foreseen. He had expected to rile up the market, most certainly, but he had underestimated how violent of a reaction there would have been. He most certainly did not expect a jaw-dropping bounty to be ced on him that early, nor did he predict Chairman Deacon literally forming a gigantic alliance as though the man was preparing to wage an all-out war.


    This vastly raised the difficulty of Rui withdrawing the fruits of hisbor and sessfully leaving the nation with it. The hardest problem would be using it anywhere. Thanks to the new system that Guildmaster Bradt had put in ce. He had the ability to withdraw money for his expenses thanks to the anonymous withdrawal in ce in the new protocols that Guildmaster instated with Bill C-16.


    However, withdrawing all of his ie in one go was not something that was easy to hide. He would need to be extremely careful with that, such a drastic reduction in Esosale Suppliers'' worth would not go unnoticed. If Chairman Deacon was really aggressive he could immediatelyunch a thorough investigation near the Merchant Guilds to gain a list of all people who were in the bank at the time of withdrawal.


    Meaning Rui would need to use Void Step to a certain extent when he did leave. On top of that, he would need to immediately evacuate to the dungeon.


    However, that was only the first problem. The second problem was how he would eventually get all of that wealth past the borders and finally deposit all that money in his own personal ount in the Martial Union with as few people realizing what had happened.


    These were all future problems that were bing increasingly difficult to solve. Furthermore, some of these problems couldn''t simply be solved by Martial Art techniques. What Rui needed was an organization to aid him with ensuring that the consolidation of his money could happen without alerting Chairman Deacon.


    "We can certainly aid you with that, Squire Quarrier," Commissioner Reze smiled. "Rest assured we can transfer the revenue you''ve made from the Shionel Confederation to your personal ount in the Martial Union without revealing your identity. This is a bit out of protocol, but we can amodate that in this particr case."


    The Martial Union had no qualms about aiding Rui to transfer the fruits of hisbor to his holdings ount in the Martial Union. Considering that Rui would basically be the effective equivalent of a billionaire once he sessfully consolidated all of his revenue, this would definitely impact the Martial Union in a positive manner.


    The details were hashed out rather smoothly from then on. Both sides had gotten what they wanted and proceeded to flesh out all the details of their agreement.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    Soon enough, it was time to draft the contract.


    "¡­ And there we go," Rui lightlymented as he finished signing the documents after Kane.


    "It''s official now," Commissioner Reze smiled. "We look forward to working with you, Squire Quarrier. As long as we both do our respective jobs, we will both mutually flourish."Text ? by N0ve/lDrama.Org.


    "I will strive to ensure that happens," Rui nodded, shaking his hand. "Now then, if there''s nothing else, we''ll take our leave. We have a dungeon to clear."


    Rui and Kane bade them goodbye as they Void Stepped away from the location, heading back towards their inn together.


    "Good thing we got the support of the Martial Union huh," Kanemented lightly. He simply let Rui hash things out, this whole thing had been his idea and endeavor in the first ce. Kane was just tagging along for the ride for a variety of reasons.


    "Indeed, but that doesn''t mean that our problems will all just disappear," Rui remarked lightly. Think about it, they''re just making it much harder for Chairman Deacon to find us, but we may run into new problems with this contract if we''re not careful."


    (''The Underworld¡­ They might be even more dangerous than Chairman Deacon, especially when I return to the Kandrian Empire after all of this is over,'') Rui narrowed his eyes.


    He wasn''t familiar with the Underworld of the Kandrian Empire and how it was, but if it was anything like how it was back on Earth, then he didn''t dare underestimate them. He needed to be even more careful now since he was effectively turning them into his enemies by continuously hampering them. The good news was that they were even much less likely to find Rui than Chairman Deacon was.


    "Are we going to head back to the dungeon immediately?" Kane asked.


    "Yeah, Chairman Deacon has been ramping up his exploration efforts," Rui remarked. "We need to work even harder to ensure that our exploration is always ahead of his. We have an edge due to a headstart with my Riemannian Echo, but that won''t remain forever. It needs to be maintained."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 881 Discovery

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    Rui didn''t immediately head to the dungeon, he had something important to do. He immediately whipped out a letter before writing down some instructions about banning certain third parties from transacting with Esosale Suppliers.


    He painstakingly wrote down all the names that he memorized from the document that Commissioner Reze provided, regretting that he didn''t ask for a copy. He considered Guildmaster Bradt''s perspective on the matter. He knew that the man would definitely have thoughts on the new directive that Rui provided.


    There was no way he wouldn''t notice that the restrictedpanies were from the Kandrian Empire. This would instantly tell him that Rui at the very least had something to do with the Kandrian Empire.


    He would, of course, immediately consider that Rui was from the Kandrian Empire. He would be foolish not to, this was the one of the possibilities with the greatest probability of being true. Though he would also consider that the Voider had been caught by the Kandrian Empire who, rather than selling him out to the alliance, made a deal with him.


    Neither of these was exactly untrue.


    Regardless, he would most likely not be pleased with the new directive. Unfortunately, Esosale Suppliers was not hispany, it was Rui''s, and Rui made sure that he retained full decision-making power over hispany during their agreement, he would stop the supply of esoteric resources at any time if Guildmaster Bradt failed toply.


    Furthermore, Rui was not worried about this being bad for business. The demand for the esoteric substance was greater than the supply, and he was not afraid of running out of business by isting even as many customers and clientele as he was.


    "Post this the same way as usual, and then we''ll head to the Shionel Dungeon immediately," Rui told Kane, handing him an envelope.


    "Sure thing," Kane nodded.


    The method by which they delivered letters to Guildmaster Bradt without being detected was simply inserting them into the stockpile of a delivery man about to be dispatched. Although this did involve not paying for the service, Rui prioritized being covert in this instance. He did make anonymous donations to the delivery service separately.


    It wasn''t long before Kane returned and the two of them quickly prepped up, ready to head to the dungeon.


    "Our biggest advantage is that Chairman Deacon is searching radially outwards," Rui mentioned. "This requires more manpower as time goes on since the radius will keep increasing further the further you go out. That makes his life much harder than it does for us due to the way in which he searches."


    By the time the two of them reached the inner ring of the Adventurer Ring town, the two of them widened their eyes at the sheer poption of Martial Squiresing in and out of the Shionel Dungeon.


    It was multiple times the size that it used to be. Rui recalled that it was much scanter and shallower when he first arrived at the Shionel Confederation.


    "Let''s go,"


    The two of them quickly entered the dungeon.


    "Alright, which path today?" Kane asked.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    "We''ll check out a different section of the Shionel Dungeon than before," Rui informed him.


    The two of them still had Void Step active since there were simply far too many Martial Squires in the vicinity. He did not want to be spotted by any of them. The sheer number of people on the first floor made him want to avoid it entirely. Though he needed to verify whether Guildmaster Bradt had left any messages for him.


    (''I should probably give Guildmaster Bradt a new location to bury anything to deliver to me,'') Rui sighed as he scanned the entire floor with Riemannian Echo, making sure he didn''t miss anything.


    He observed arger amount of infrastructure on the first floor, a lot of facilities, mostly storage while there were some shops run by Martial Squires on behalf of otherpanies, selling potions and other things of the sort.


    (''Looks like Guildmaster Bradt has already begun putting the parts of the map I gave him to good use,'') Rui noted with interest.


    He had always figured that the Shionel Dungeon would be used for its space, by him, even if it was unlikely to ever be turned into a residential area due to the sensory jamming aspects of it, though that too would reduce once all of the essible esoteric ore deposits were mined and harvested.


    From what Rui could see, Guildmaster Bradt would probably intend to turn the entire dungeon into a gigantic inventory or processing space that could be rented out or bought bypanies to use. As the sole person who possessed a map, Guildmaster Bradt would dominate as the one and only distribution service in the entire dungeon.Belonging ? N?velDram/a.Org.


    Rui shook his head. Guildmaster Bradt''s ns were irrelevant to him. He would long be gone from the nation by the time that time arrived.


    Rui and Kane ventured deep into the dungeon encountering fewer and fewer Martial Squires as time passed by. Yet Rui never let his guard down even once. It wasn''t the Martial Squires he was afraid of. He was most afraid of whatever apex predator it was that brutalized the Earthen basilisk that the extracted scales.


    That was something he did not want to run into. It made him more sensitive to any monster he came across. He did not want to grow too overconfident and go out of his way to fight a monster that turned out to be quasi-Senior level or something.


    The two of them carefully traveled the dungeon for quite a long time, exploring new sections of the dungeon that they hadn''t explored before until finally, Rui''s sense found what they were looking for.


    "New floor!" Rui announced triumphantly.


    "Nice," Kane nodded. "About damn time. Walking around these tunnels is nauseating. Which direction is it in? What''s it like? What kind of monsters are in there?"


    "It''s definitely weird," Rui frowned as he began walking closer towards it to get a better view of it with Riemannian Echo.


    "As for the monsters¡­" Rui murmured before his eyes widened. "Are these¡­ ants?!"


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 882 Fascinated

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    "Ants?" Kane raised an eyebrow. "Like, normal small ants? The type that are pretty easy to kill hopefully?"


    "I''m afraid to disappoint you, but¡­ these seem pretty non-standard," Rui murmured. "Come on, I found a pathway to it. We don''t need to break through a bunch of tunnels this time."


    The two of them quickly moved and followed a particr tunnel path that Rui guided him through before they eventually ran into an open wide space, yet it wasn''t entirely unupied.


    "Woah," Kane did a double take. "Is that¡­ an anthill?!"


    Even he could perceive the gigantic structure.


    "It''s an ant mountain, actually," Rui murmured as he sized up the gigantic structure. "It wouldn''t be the first time a floor has contained a mountain-sized structure."


    He recalled the sixteenth floor with the tree.


    "So how many ants are there in the colony?" Kane gulped.


    "Tens of thousands," Rui murmured. "On the low side as far as ant colonies go."


    Rui could feel the various ants trickling in and out of the holes in the ant mountain, he could roughly gauge their number as he swept through them counting them in groups.


    "You''re telling me we have to deal with tens of thousands of Squire-level monsters?" Kane raised an eyebrow. "We''re not Martial Seniors, just in case you weren''t aware."Belonging ? N?velDram/a.Org.


    "Rx Kane," Rui replied, smirking. "We don''t need to be Martial Seniors to take on Squire-level monsters. Monsters are not equivalent to Martial Artists. Otherwise, we would bepletely doomed since monsters outnumber Martial Artists immensely. Martial Art techniques are what make the battle fair. Monsters do not possess techniques, and they cannot leverage our physicality the way we do ours."


    Martial Art techniques were essentially trained routines that allowed for hyper-efficient and effective applications of energy and power to produce superhuman results. This was why even as a Martial Apprentice whose body was identical to a human, aside from the brain, he could perform feats such as shattering rocks.


    "So even if these ants possess the equivalent of a grade-five body, they''re basically as strong as a grade-two Martial Squire," Rui exined. "On top of that, they''re usually stupid as hell, and so when you include our strategic and tactical prowess, it''s even more overwhelming."


    "Still, that''s not always necessarily true, look at the Shionel taipans, a single bite from them is ending you even if they are much weaker," Kane pointed out.


    "That''s true," Rui nodded. "It is a nuanced matter, still, I''m pointing out a general trend. Regardless, I think we''ll be fine."


    It was why Rui was more afraid of the predator that hunted the Earthen Basilisk, which he evaluated to be on par with grade-ten Martial Squires due to its vastly greater physique. That was a monster he did not want to fight it.


    Inparison, despite their numbers, he didn''t feel much threat from the ants.


    (''Part of it also has to do with how easy they are to predict,'')


    Rui felt like he could predict them even without building a predictive model around the ants. Their movements and courses of action were so rigid, that he didn''t even need to employ his Martial Art to understand what they were going to do.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    Instead of even building predictive models, he was more interested in understanding how the colony worked.


    "Ants generally have a sophisticated system," Rui murmured. "I wonder if that''s true for them even when they''re monsterified."


    "I couldn''t care less about the science lessons," Kane scoffed. "Where is the bounty at?"


    "They''re deep within the ant mountain," Rui threw disapproving look at Kane''s materialism. "We''ll get them alright, but I am curious as to what''s going on here. They don''t ever leave the dungeon considering we haven''t run into one before, nor have there been any reports of ant monsters before."


    Rui curiously observed what the ants were doing.


    A good portion of the ants was on the ant mountain, working on the walls, seemingly gathering dirt from the floor while piling it on the walls with some adhesive-like substance from their mouth.


    Another proportion of ants was gathering esoteric ore deposits from the rest of the floor.


    This was what Rui found to be the most interesting. The ants were able to detect and mineral and organic ore deposits, before proceeding to extract them.


    Then they would scurry into the ant mountain deep into aplex array of tunnels, heading into the innermostpartment of the mountain.


    Rui''s eyes widened as heid discovered a giant room at the center of the mountain with an especially giant and more developed ant.


    "Is that¡­ the queen ant?!" Rui''s eyes lit up in interest. "So the ants are gathering esoteric ore deposits instead of normal food? That''s an interesting development."


    He wondered if perhaps the monsterification was what led to this change.


    "Maybe they evolved to be that way," Rui wondered.


    He could imagine multiple strains of ants undergoing different kinds of monsterification, only the queen ants that developed an innate hunger to consume esoteric ore deposits would produce offspring that inherited that gic proclivity, while the ones that sought food instead of esoteric ore deposits would remain more normal.


    "Just how many times its original weight did the queen ant worth of esoteric ore deposits did the queen ant have to consume in order to be that big?" Rui murmured as he focused on the building-sized insect. "I bet that the moment all the esoteric ore deposits arepleted, the ants will immediately leave the floor in search of more esoteric ore deposits."


    Kane shuddered in horror at the thought while Rui marveled at how fascinating it all was.


    "The tunnels being overrun with monster ants sounds like a nightmare,"


    "I wonder if there would be inter-floor wars between multiple floors, fighting for esoteric ores if that did happen," Rui wondered. "That would actually be incredibly entertaining. Imagine of these ants faced off against bloodfury rabbits, or Shionel Taipans, or that Earthen Basilisk, or that giant tree!"


    Kane just threw an odd look at Rui who grew fascinated by what he saw.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 883 Plan

    ?


    Such a scenario would definitely be horrible for all Martial Squire adventurers. Just traveling in the Shionel Dungeon would be a menace to all Martial Squires. Though he wasn''t sure how likely such a scenario was, he wasn''t worried either. With Kane''s Void Step and his Riemannian Echo and other tricks, the ants would never be a problem when traveling the dungeon.


    His eyes suddenly widened as a smirk formed on his face.


    "What is it?" Kane threw him a wary look.


    "You don''t sound pleased,"


    "You look pleased," Kane retorted. "Which, inside the dungeon, does not bode well for everyone else."


    "That''s nder," However, Rui''s smirk had not dropped yet. "I just had the most brilliant idea, Kane."


    "It''s simple," Rui turned back to the ant mountain. "These ants are gathering esoteric ore deposits as food from across the dungeon floor. Due to the fact that dungeon floors are abundant in esoteric ore deposits, they haven''t left the floor yet. However, if the esoteric ore deposits disappeared, then they would most likely leave the dungeon floor in search of more esoteric ore deposits."


    "That makes sense," Kane nodded slowly. "What exactly does this have to the n?"


    "If such a thing were to happen, then we would be the least affected, correct?" Rui asked him. "After all, we have Riemannian Echo and your Void Step. We can just sidestep any ants we run into."


    "Right¡­ So what exactly is your -" Kane paused as realization dawned on him.


    "Have you figured it out yet?" Rui smirked. "If the only reason they haven''t left the floor is because of a surplus of esoteric ore deposits then what do you think they''re going to do if all of the ore deposits in the floor and in their stockpile disappear¡­ like if we took them?"


    "They''ll probably leave the floor in search of more esoteric ore deposits¡­" Kane murmured. "Thereby causing a ton of problems for the other Martial Squire adventurers who''ll be frequently running into them in this section of the dungeon!"


    "Exactly," Rui smirked. "Problems for all the other Martial Squires, most of whom are either patroned by a force that is allied with Chairman Deacon, or is hunting us for the bounty that Chairman Deacon has ced on our heads. We ourselves won''t suffer much."


    "That''s a diabolical n," A mischievous smirk emerged on his face. "You don''t to purposely avoid killing even a single ant so that when we plunder and harvest every esoteric ore deposit in this floor, they''ll leave the floor in search of more esoteric ore deposits running into and shing with adventurers."


    "It will also hinder their exploration rate and we''ll be able to get much ahead.


    "Nice n," Kane nodded. "Let''s get going with it then."


    "Wait," Rui paused. "Let''s verify that the Void Step technique actually works with these ants."


    Kane frowned. "It might not?"


    "Maybe," Rui replied. "Misdirection only works on sentient beings with a developed sense of awareness. As for whether ants fully satisfy this condition¡­ is debatable."


    Rui was not an expert on ants as he had no background in them. He didn''t know if his concerns surrounding ants were sound, but it was because he had no idea about them that he wanted to make sure that they weren''t caught off-guard when they treated into ant territory.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    Thus, he wanted to take some precautions and verify its reliability.


    "There''s an isted ant there," He pointed in a direction. "Let''s go test it with that."


    "Makes sense," Kane nodded.


    The two of them sky-walked all the way across the floor in the direction that Rui pointed.


    "Woah," Kane murmured as he activated Void Step. "That''s bigger than I expected."


    The ant was evenrger than either of them.


    "Yeah, and at that size, it must insanely strong. Ants have one of the single highest physical strength-to-body mass ratios, meaning they can lift a weight that is exponentially greater than their own body weight. So this ant can probably lift a building with ease."


    That made Kane wary. He was aware that neither he nor Rui was that strong at their current stage in the Squire Realm. Martial bodies of Martial Squires naturally grew stronger due to the natural conditioning that came with mastering stronger techniques. The increased healing factor essentially meant that the natural strengthening that came with each round of healing made them grow stronger in the long run.


    But neither of them had reached the level of strength where they could casually lift buildings with just raw strength and no Martial Art techniques.


    Exclusive ? material by N?(/v)elDrama.Org.


    "Alright, let''s approach," Rui and Kane walked closer, keeping Void Step active.


    It was to their relief that even when they were one meter from the ant, it did not react.


    PAT PAT PAT


    "Even touching it is possible," Rui murmured as they kept moving to keep the technique active. "Good. I guess it does have a fully developed sense of awareness and self-awareness."


    The two of them backed away from it, distancing themselves from the ant.


    "Alright, so I guess that means we can begin with the same strategy as always?" Kane asked, ncing at Rui.


    "Same strategy for all the esoteric ore deposits that haven''t been extracted by the ants," Rui mentioned. "If we want to get the stockpile of esoteric ore deposits at the center of the ant mountain, then we need to make sure that we''re perfectly prepared to time that. If you run out of gas in the middle of the ant mountain, then you''re probably going to die. I don''t know if I can even protect myself, let alone both of us inside the ant mountain being swarmed by thousands of Squire-level ants."


    Kane''s expression grew severe. He appreciated that Rui was dead honest with him and informed him of the stakes involved.


    "Let''s finish all the remaining esoteric ore deposits before we handle the deposits stockpiled by the ants, then," Kane told him.


    "Agreed," Rui nodded as the two of them immediately got to work.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 884 Enter

    ?


    Rui grew fascinated by the ants as the two of them began vigorously extracting the esoteric ore deposits one by one. They aggressively went all out with picking and storing them in the dimensional storage ring.


    The reason for this was they didn''t have any time to waste. Unlike with the other dungeon floors, they were on a time limit. They had to get as many esoteric ore deposits as they could before the ants, despite their slow pace, found and extracted all of them.


    Unlike normal, the two of them worked till they were absolutely exhausted, before immediately consuming rejuvenation potions to bring themselves back to their peaks.


    It was only half a day before theypletely drained all of the esoteric ore deposits of the seventeenth floor, barring the stockpile at the center of the ant mountain.


    "Have another physical rejuvenation potion," Rui told him. "Also, have a mental rejuvenation potion too."


    "I just had a physical one a while back," Kane frowned.


    "I know," Rui nodded. "But it is best if you''re at your absolute peak for this, wasting a potion is better than dying."


    "Alright," Kane sighed before quickly consuming two potions in rapid session. "Now what?"


    "Your max time limit for a single rung of Void Step is twenty minutes," Rui told him. "That''s not enough time to get all of the esoteric ore deposits in the center of the ant mountain when you factor in the time needed to get in and out of the ant mountain."


    "What do we do then?" Kane frowned. "Do we go in for a second round?"


    "No," Rui shook his head. "We should be able to get around seventy-five or eighty percent of the esoteric ore deposits, we''ll leave the rest back here."


    "You want to leave behind that much?" Kane furrowed his eyebrows.


    Twenty percent may seem small, but given the sheer amount of revenue that the esoteric ore deposits of a single floor could yield, that was no different from leaving behind dozens of millions of Kandrian gold coins worth of esoteric ore deposits.


    "Yeah," Rui nodded. "The reason for that is because it is quite likely that the queen ant needs those esoteric ore deposits to reproduce andy eggs producing monsterified ants. Without it, she most likely will be unable to reproduce to rece the in ants that will run into Martial Squire adventurers."


    "Meaning¡­?"


    "Meaning the ants won''t be a permanent threat to the Martial Squires without it. If she has enough to reproduce the in soldiers in time for the new supply of esoteric ore deposits toe from the ants who returned after leaving the floor, then she''ll be able to maintain a rate of reproduction that matches the rate of the ants dying against Martial Squires, what that means is that unless the Martial Squires actually find the seventeenth floor and kill the queen ant, the ants will never stop being a threat and never stop being replenished. They will be able to hinder the other adventurers even more if we make sure to leave behind some esoteric ore deposits to ensure that the queen can sustain the poption."


    "So those esoteric ore deposits we leave behind are kind of like amission from us to the ants to hinder the other adventurers as much as possible. The ants are kind of like mercenaries, and we are the clients," Kane understood Rui''s n, likening it to a human analogy.


    "More or less," Rui chuckled. "Although the ants are unaware of this deal and aren''t exactly consenting. So it''s closer to us manipting them to get what we want. It''s an effective way to essentially convert a part of our profits into hindering our opponents."


    "And you''re sure that they''ll leave the dungeon to get more esoteric ore deposits?" Kane asked, with a dubious expression. "I thought you didn''t have that much knowledge on the ants."


    "You''re right, I don''t. But I have other ways to ascertain what they''ll do,"<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    Rui turned back towards them as he paid attention to the macro and micro-gestures that they made in addition to the sounds they produced.Belonging ? N?velDram/a.Org.


    It wasn''t every day he got to use his Fauna Flow technique, one that allowed him to urately interpret animalisticmunication and evenmunicate using that samenguage, but it was useful in times like these.


    FOOD


    FOOD


    FOOD


    FOOD


    FOOD


    That was the only thing these ants conveyed when he interpreted their auditory and non-verbalmunication. They were like drones, or robots with no other thought process at all. It was also why he was unsure whether these incredibly inhumane creatures were even susceptible to the Void Step technique.


    "Alright, if you say so," Kane shrugged. He was already ustomed to trusting Rui over matters like this, and so far Rui had an almost perfect track record.


    "Alright, you should make sure your mental state is absolutely ready for what we are about to endeavor on," Rui told him. "I honestly don''t mind if you take your time to center and focus yourself. It''s worth it."


    "Then I''ll take you up on that," Kane replied as he settled in a tunnel, cross-legged as he closed his eyes.


    He quickly employed a breathing technique that aided with concentration. Rui could feel the pressure that Kane was radiating increasing as time passed as he was bringing out everything he had.


    Fifteen minutester, a faint sense of pressure prickled at Rui as Kane opened his eyes. Kane was truly at his peak at the moment.


    "Let''s go," He told Rui simply, putting a hand on his shoulder.


    "Right," Rui smiled. "Activate Void Step when I tell you."


    The two of them immediately set out towards the ant mountain, before getting close enough to be spotted by the ants.


    "Now," Rui told him.


    Kane immediately activated the technique. The two of them immediately dived into a tunnel leading into the mountain as they disappeared out of the field of vision of the ants, who promptly returned to their jobs as if nothing happened.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 885 Screech

    ?


    Rui wasn''t afraid that the ants that were spotted would go back and report to the queen ant. The ants did not possess such a sophisticated system in ce. He observed that despite being monsterified and growingrger, they had not gained much, if any intelligence, at all.


    "Right¡­ Left¡­ Straight," Rui murmured as they sped through the contorting tunnels of the Shionel Dungeon.


    Rui couldn''t help but sigh at the tendency of the ants to construct a dizzying maze as opposed to just making straight paths from the outside to the core. That would make their job so much easier and reduce the risks by a lot.


    Still, Rui was quite confident. He had constructed extensive predictive models on the ants from the very moment he detected the cavity at the center of the ant mountain with the stash of esoteric ore deposits. Even if the ants were hriously simplistic, he was not going to hold back out of some sense of arrogance.


    This helped as he quickly extrapted the future movements of all the ants within his sensory vision. Avoiding ants that fell from the ceiling of the tunnel out of nowhere, or even being forced to kill them with the Bellhorn de and Pipe that he had at hand to use at any moment.


    "We''re close, you doing fine?" Rui asked, ncing at Kane.


    "Great," Kane replied simply, focusing on making sure the technique was wless. It was a mental technique, and when he concentrated on it fully, he couldn''t dedicate much of his attention to anything else, including conversation.


    "It''s just up ahead," Rui narrowed his eyes as they approached the giant queen ant, getting closer and closer. Rui had a feeling she was different from the rest of the mindless ants, just based purely on her movements alone.


    Soon enough, they entered the center of the ant mountain.


    The giant queen ant was just up ahead of them, menacingly looming over the entire cavity.


    Rui and Kane immediately felt a sense of threat emanating from the giant insect. Rui sensed that even with his Bellhorn Sword and hot air pipe, killing the queen bee would be extremely difficult. Primordial Instinct warned him not to go anywhere near the creature.


    There was a great amount of power hidden within her frame, without a doubt, but more than anything, it was her eyes that inspired fear.


    They were a grotesque fusion of insect eyes and mammalian eyes. Each of the little hexagons on her ant eyes was a mammalian eye with a sharp pupil at the center. It was an unholy fusion of the two, and Rui wasn''t even sure how she came to develop such eyes.


    For a second, he was afraid that her vision was sharp enough to spot them despite Void Step, which would be a disaster, but luckily Kane and his technique held strong as she didn''t so much as bat an eye, or eyes, at them.


    Rui was still extremely wary, however, just one look at her eyes and he could tell that the creature was intelligent. Each of her motions had a purpose, whether it was to adjust the many eggs behind her through which the silhouette of partially formed antrvae could be seen, or to consume more food, she most certainly was not a mindless insect like her offspring were.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    "Let''s get this finished as soon as possible,"


    Rui and Kane immediately dove into the treasure trove, before quickly storing esoteric ore deposits into his dimensional storage ring at a quick pace. He did not want to spend any more time here than he needed to.


    The best part of the Void Step technique was that it obscured objects with the domain of Kane''s technique''s influence, meaning as long as Kane and Rui were interacting with the esoteric ore deposits that they stole, it would not be noticed barring extreme cases. Text ? by N0ve/lDrama.Org.


    However, it would not be noticed directly, that did not mean it could not be noticed indirectly. Eventually, the stockpile''s size decreased greatly, and no amount of misdirection would be able to prevent the queen from noticing that. Thus, the two of them worked quicker.


    The best part was that the esoteric ore deposits were already extracted, they were simply tossed into a huge pile of other glowing rocks and biological matter.


    Thus Rui was able to store them at an incredible pace. It wasn''t long before the two of theme close to reaching the quota of the stockpile that they had.


    Unfortunately, before they quite finished. The ant queen who had been quite busy with the birthing process immediately realized something as gravely wrong when she turned to the stockpile to gather more servings of nourishment.


    Its many eyes ran back and forth across the entire cavity, getting closer to the stockpile to sense it clearly, due to the sensory jamming effect that hampered her senses from perceiving the fact that huge portion of the stockpile were empty.


    "KIEEEEEEEEERKH!" It released a deafening screech, producing a titanically powerful shockwave released from just its alone!


    "Argh!" Rui and Kane grimaced as the two of them immediately shot out of the room, being hit by a powerful Squire-level shockwave, causing the entire ant-mountain to tremble!


    Thankfully, Kane had prepared himself for this ever since this exact same thing had happened on the sixteenth floor with the trigger-happy grade-ten Martial Squire hitting them with a wide-area long-range wind attack.


    This time, he didn''t falter, due to having made changes to his mindset to be able to handle such a thing, and also because of the fact that he was at his absolute peak. He would not have been able to maintain his technique under such circumstances if not for these two factors.


    The two of them shot through the increasingly dense tunnels of the ant mountains as a surge of ants running towards the queen''s distress call began clogging the tunnels.


    There were so many ants that if they stopped for even a moment, causing the technique to forcibly break, they would be dead meat!


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 886 Escape

    ?


    Rui and Kane were shocked, but they forcibly suppressed their reactions as they focused everything they had on getting out. If the two of them made even a single mistake, it would truly be game over. Even Rui did not think he could survive an endless wave of Squire-level ants attacking him from all directions simultaneously.


    Both of them needed to do their jobs just perfectly. Kane needed to maintain Void Step and ensure that he never stopped, even if Rui did, since he was the one maintaining the Void Step technique.


    Rui, on the other hand, was responsible for navigating the way out. However, he couldn''t just pick the most straightforward path since a lot of these paths were getting clogged up with ants that were rushing in. He needed to not only find paths that were free enough for them to travel through but also paths that weren''t clogged up yet.


    Not only that but he pushed himself to the absolute limit as he used the singr predictive model he had on the ants due to how simr they were to predict which tunnels would not get clogged and blocked, leading them to most likely eventually be detected as they would probably lose any room to move at some point.


    SPLAT SPLAT SPLAT


    Rui and Kane endured the pain of being cut by the extended ws of the passing ants with grim expressions. Making it out alive was their highest priority at the moment, such wounds were inconsequential.


    "There it is! The exit!" Rui''s expression lit up as they shot toward the end of the tunnel leading outside, before finally exiting the ant mountain.


    The two of them heaved a sigh of relief amidst their pants.


    "What the hell happened?" Kane asked, now that they were finally safe.


    "The ant queen noticed the fact that most of their stockpile had gone when she came over for more supplies," Rui exined. "The ants simply responded to her call and immediately went rushing in towards her. That''s why the tunnels were being clogged with those ants rushing towards her."


    "I see," Kane nodded. "Well, I''m d we made it out of that mess. Dying there would have been quite painful. Shame we didn''t get the entirety of our quote though, there was still a bit left behind before she interrupted us."


    "It''s fine," Rui remarked calmly. "Let her have it. It''ll probably benefit us. Look."


    Rui gestured towards the mountain. The next moment, all the ants immediately emerged from the tunnels of the ant mountain before climbing out of the floor through the many tunnels.


    "These ants are heading out of the floor this quickly?" Kane raised an eyebrow.


    "Of course, the queen ant is agitated by a sudden shortage in their stockpile, she''ll no doubt be paying greater attention to them from here on out. Just now, she instructed the ants to find and bring her more esoteric ore deposits as soon as possible," Rui tranted her instructions to the rest of the ants.


    "I see, so we seeded," Kane smirked.


    He considered the n that Rui hade up with to be a little insane, but he understood that if Rui thought it worked, then it probably was a pretty good n.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    "Whoever runs into the queen is going to have quite a lot of difficulty," Rui remarked.


    "Hell yes," Kane eagerly agreed. "What kind of creature is able to scream that powerfully? How powerful would its actual attacks be? Its body is far more powerful than even a grade-ten Martial Squire''s body, if not for itsck of Martial Art techniques and its unwieldy size, it would be a force entirely unfit for the Squire Realm."


    "That''s quite urate," Rui nodded. "In my estimation, a grade-ten Martial Squire alone is going to be insufficient to take down the queen. Most likely one will require a powerful S-rank adventurer team to kill her. And that''s assuming that none of her ants are around."


    "True, man, taking on the entirety of all ten thousand ants, and the queen, that''s something only Martial Seniors can do, right?" Kane asked.


    "Yeah," Rui nodded. "No Martial Squire is taking on that floor. The dungeon as a whole is definitely a Senior level threat. Still, as for whether it would be able to beat a Martial Senior¡­"


    Rui did not dare say that it even could.


    He still deeply remembered the battle of the three Martial Seniors in Vilun Ind, the sheer power that each Martial Senior disyed made asting impression on him.


    "¡­ It probably can''t," Rui shook his head. "Not even this giant dungeon that is the target of my objectives, is a match for a Martial Senior. It does make me feel small."


    "Well, you''re just a grade-six Martial Squire," Kane shrugged. "Give it time, and I''m sure you''ll be extremely strong. You''re definitely going to reach the Senior Realm."


    Rui appreciated Kane''s vote of confidence, but given that he knew just as much or less about the Senior Realm, it wasn''t very reassuring. Content held by N?velDrama.Org.


    "What do we do now?" Kane asked.


    "Well, we''re done for now," Rui nodded. "We need to get the esoteric ore deposits back to the Kandrian Empire soon enough anyway. We can harvest anymore with the energy consumption and storage limit of the dimensional storage ring."


    "Right, let''s head back ande for the dungeon again?" Kane asked.


    "I want to spend some time looking into the effects of the ants scouring the Shionel Dungeon," Rui replied. "I am curious about certain things that might be relevant to our future ns¡­"


    Ants generally had an excellent sense of smell and could track food from great distances away, he was wondering if that could help them track different sources for esoteric ore deposits by virtue of esoteric ore deposits being their food. In that case, the ants might actually allow him to detect other floors with great ease. All he would need to was keep track of their path every time they got a new food source.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 887 East

    ?


    It seemed as though Shionel Confederation was unable to get a break from shocking news surrounding the Shionel Dungeon time and time again.


    Even prior to the first appearance of the Voider, things had been exciting and riveting, but that was because the Shionel Dungeon was still a brand-new novelty. Even the slightest bit of new news was extremely interesting.


    After a while, things cooled down as a bit of a routine entered the nation with the dungeon. It was hard remaining as extremely excited with the same stuff happening for the eleventh time in a row.


    Things had changed with the arrival of the Voider who made things exciting once more, with the various surprises and astonishing feats that they achieved.


    Thetest shock, however, didn''t seem to have anything to do with them. Many reports came in reporting of a flood of ants that assaulted many Martial Squires.


    This was new.


    Adventurer after adventurer began narrating tales of how they were trying to explore new routes before giant people-sized monster ants came their way and attacked them. Reports indicated that each individual ant was not much, but together they were a menace, an overwhelming majority of Martial Squires simply chose to not engage with the monsters unprepared and promptly retreated away.


    Many of the newer adventurers had arrived with thetest wave of iing Martial Squires into the nation, they werepletely overwhelmed by the ants, and many parties went missing or were confirmed dead.


    The country was shocked at the news of the many Martial Artists reporting the same nightmarish scene over and over. Many began specting what happened, looking into the information avable.Belonging ? N?velDram/a.Org.


    "It has to be a new floor!"


    "But monsters don''t leave their floors in such numbers, that doesn''t make any sense."


    "Maybe the monsters of the deeper floors are capable of leaving their floor and attacking those that get too close."


    "If that was the case, then we would have seen that before!"


    Many of theymen and civilians who were simply interested in new gossip and news that the Shionel Dungeon produced had no idea what it was, but the same could not be said for relevant experts, as well as those with greater ability to gather and ess information.


    "The initial encounters urred at the extreme east of the Dungeon," Chairman Deacon murmured in his office as he scoured through the many documents scattered on his table containing analyses and reports of all kinds surrounding the recent event. "On top of that, the location of the encounters began spreading out in all directions after the initial encounters. This¡­ This resembles expansion or migration. There must be a dungeon floor somewhere deep in the far Eastern side of the dungeon. The ants must have emerged from there for whatever reason and begun migrating outwards."<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    His eyes twinkled as he realized that, yet there was also a glint of suspicion. He was definitely going to look into that floor no matter what. However, he feared being the victim of the Voider''s designs once more. He could tolerate losing the prize of the sixteenth floor to the Voider due to the juicy information he learned about the Voider, but he could not allow it to happen again.


    What if the Voider aimed to steal his prize from him once more? If that were the case then he would have no choice but to take it as it came. He could not let suspicions of the Voider''s interference get in the way of finding and clearing the dungeon while plundering all the esoteric ore deposits.


    "This time I have a stronger army of explorers," He narrowed his eyes. "Just you dare show yourself. You got byst time, this time we''ll get you."


    One of the reasons he was tolerant of the loss sufferedst time was that he had developed a better solution. Squire Harens fiasco had shown him that the Voider operated with stealth, somehow, most likely one or more Martial Art techniques. Furthermore, the technique could be disrupted with a wide-area attack of enough magnitude of power.


    This caused him to develop a new set of positional strategic and tactical measures that would make them most equipped to deal with the Voider if he ever did appear. What he was hoping for was that Voider would appear, and he would nail him with a simr wide-area attack that would disrupt his stealth technique, which would cause the Martial Squires especially positioned to employ wide-scale barricading techniques to restrict their movement.


    In that time, the Voider would be bombarded with multiple grade-ten Martial Squires in close range.


    In his estimation, even if the Voider was a truly veteran-grade-ten Martial Squire, he did not think he would be able to escape this trap.


    He even partially hoped that the Voider would dare to appear and try to steal his plunder again, even if it was risky. It presented him with a chance to capture the pesky rat for once!


    "Oh, the things I''m going to do to you if I ever get my hands on you," An expression of murderous rage appeared on his face.


    First, he would extract all of the Voider''s secrets. It was a fact that his methods were extraordinarily sessful, and if Chairman Deacon managed to harness them, then his sess would grow to be titanic.


    After that, he would kill the Voider painfully.


    He sighed, shaking his head. His hatred for the Voider had grown as time passed. To the point that sometimes he would indulge in it too much.


    "Catch him first, then we can focus on all of that," He muttered before getting to work.


    He immediately intended to arrange for an expedition into the far eastern side of the Shionel Dungeon that would allow him to gain ess to a fresh source of esoteric ore deposits. He desperately needed supplies, otherwise, he would definitely begin losing some of the gains he made from the Shionel Dungeon, that was for sure.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 888 Inferences

    ?


    At the same time, in another part of the Shionel Confederation, another man was also engrossed in deep thought.


    "Hm¡­" Guildmaster Bradt went skimmed through the pages of a letter, narrowing his eyes.


    It was because he was one of the most well-informed men thanks to being in possession of the most sophisticated intelligencework in the Shionel Confederation, that he knew. He was able to tell with one nce.


    "These are all organizations and parties of the Kandrian Empire," The man frowned. "On top of that¡­"


    He knew were a fact that many of thesepanies were simply shellpanies that were simply a mask for the Underworld to operate through. Many of these were avenues for moneyundering and served as a legitimate ''face'' for ck money.


    He had minimized his interactions with the Underworld of human civilization, especially when the Shionel Confederation ironically had the least amount of illicit business urring within its borders.


    The reason for this was that the Shionel Confederation had decriminalized all goods and services when Guildmaster Bradt took office, implementing libertarian policies.


    He had avoided the Underworld in his nation this way, and that principle followed on to interacting with the mafia of other nations. He avoided them all like the gue, even though his services were highly desired by the Underworld.


    However, in order to avoid dealing with them, he needed to know who ''they'' were. Thus he had kept tabs on the various faces and masks that the Underworld employed.


    That was why he came to the suspicion that it wasn''t a coincidence that among thepanies he did recognize, all of them were shadypanies and individuals with shady ties.


    "Could it be¡­?" Guildmaster Bradt narrowed his eyes.


    When he initially read through the contents of the letter, he had been displeased by the decision to exclude arge number of organizations and individuals from the list of clientele that Esosale Suppliers would be interacting with. However, now that he had gotten a clue about the Voider''s identity, he wasn''t too miffed about this change.


    "The Voider is most likely connected to the Kandrian Empire somehow," He murmured.


    This was the first concrete piece of information that he hade across regarding the origin of the Voider.Belonging ? N?velDram/a.Org.


    However, there was always the possibility that this was a red herring. It could be that the Voider was just trying to throw him off by tricking him into investing an immense amount of time into looking for his identity in the Kandrian Empire. This was something that he could not deny and needed to take into ount.


    He knew for a fact that the Voider was quite intelligent andpetent. This meant that this was perfectly viable to be a trap.


    On the other hand, it didn''t click right for him. (''A trap would be much more alluring and inviting. This alone would not guarantee for him that I would fall for it.'')


    That was why he was a bit hesitant to spend too much on the matter.


    "I want the intelligence reports on Martial Commissioner Reze of the Martial Union and Ambassador Garton on their time in the Shionel Confederation," He immediately instructed his secretary.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    "Yes sir," She bowed.


    Soon enough, he came to be in possession of the files that he requested.


    "So Martial Commissioner Reze and the Kandrian Ambassador never left their hotel room even once?" He raised an eyebrow before huffing. Had he known the Kandrian Empire possessed a connection to the Voider he would have ced them under greater surveince.


    He tentatively trusted the report, though he made sure to consider the alternatives. He did not think the timing of the delegates from the Kandrian Empire and the Voider''stestpany directive was a coincidence. There was most likely some connection, but he was unable to figure out what it was.


    Regardless, he tried approaching it from another angle.


    (''Why would the Voider make such an initiative when he was happily executing what we agreed upon?'') He raised an eyebrow, surprised.


    There most likely reason was that he had a deal with interest groups with a severe sh of interests with the Underworld of the Kandrian Empire.


    There were only a handful of organizations with such interests that were powerful enough to entertain the consideration of acting against the interests of the ck market.


    That narrowed things down considerably.


    (''The Royal Family¡­ and the Martial Union,'') He quickly surmised.


    Had the Royal Family unveiled some legendary trump card that they were nning to dominate the Shionel Dungeon?


    He immediately tossed this possibility out of his mind, it was absurd that an apostle of the Royal Family would have to scramble to make a deal with him in the first ce. There was simply no way such a thing could possibly happen. Such a thing would be unnecessary if he was allied with either the Royal Family or the Martial Union in the first ce.


    (''Maybe¡­ they are allied now but weren''t from the start,'') Guildmaster Bradt postted. (''In which case, could it be that he was discovered by some Kandrian entity?'')


    He felt as though he wasing close to the truth. He couldn''t imagine that the Voider would approach the Kandrian Empire given how staunchly independent barring his coboration with Guildmaster Bradt.


    Although Guildmaster Bradt was certainly happier abouting closer to his mysterious partner''s true identity, he realized he needed to be more careful than before. Based on the fact that the Voider''s supply schedule and penchant to create chaos in the dungeon had not changed, Guildmaster Bradt spected that it was still the Voider handling all the dungeon matters.


    This meant that any agreement he had with the Kandrian Empire or Martial Union was most likely limited such that thetter did not infringe on the former''s operations. Most likely, thetter wanted a cut, in exchange for some extraneous aid.


    Still, this meant that he could not pressure the Voider as much even if he did learn of his ability, not with the Kandrian Empire looking out for its golden boy.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 889 Aimless

    ?


    "ARGH! There''s more of the antsing in from this direction!"


    "We''re boxed in!"


    "We need to find a way out, or else we''re doomed!"


    Many adventurers experienced a great deal of difficulty when it came to the ants. There were issues with the way in which they operated that influenced their choices. Many adventurers that used to explore individually, were forced to form makeshift parties with other adventurers in order to cope with the increased difficulty of even traveling in the dungeon''s tunnels.


    The ants'' concentration became less dense the more they spread out across the tunnels looking for esoteric ore deposits to extract and supply back to the queen ant. One of the possibilities that Rui had conceived of was the possibility that the ants would be able to use their sense of smell and easily locate sources of esoteric ore deposits.


    Name, floors.


    The reason he held this hope was because he knew that insects held obscenely powerful senses of smell. Their ability to track via scent was absolutely gigantic, given their size. Some insects could even track certain things from thousands of kilometers away!


    Ants were not at the top of the list in the animal kingdom but they were quite respectable in that regard. Rui hoped that there the ants would be able to track floors using their sense of smell, by smelling esoteric ore deposits. This way, he could track the ants tracking the esoteric ore deposits.


    With his Riemannian Echo, he would always be the one to detect the fact that the ants had detected a new dungeon floor. And thus he would always find that floor through the ants before anyone else.


    Thus, he would effectively turn the ants into his exploration team. That was his true ambition. If it panned out, his rate of sess would be tremendously higher. One of the things that he would be able to prevent wasting hours in the Shionel Dungeon searching for new floors.


    "Unfortunately¡­ It doesn''t seem like it will pan out," Rui murmured.


    The ants did not seem to have the ability to track esoteric ore deposits using their sense of smell. In fact, from what Rui could see. The ants did not even have the ability to retain their sense of direction due to the''s maic field being jammed inside the Shionel dungeon. Many of the ants that left the dungeon got lost and were unable to return home due to losing the path that they came from due to their sense of direction being sabotaged.


    Furthermore, they did not have a great amount of sess with finding esoteric ore deposits. For the most part, they spent their time finding minor ore deposits in the tunnels here and there, but the Shionel dungeon jammed senses too much for them to be able to track them across the entire dungeon,


    "Shame," He shook his head.


    "It''s not working out?" Kane asked. <novelsnext></novelsnext>


    "It doesn''t seem to be, no," Rui replied.


    The two of them had spent some time in the dungeon observing whether the ants could be used to track new floors, but Rui hade to the unfortunate conclusion that they would not be of use in the long run.


    "It''s fine, the ants have already done us a huge favor," Rui smirked.


    For the first time since the opening of the Shionel Confederation, the number of Martial Squires entering the dungeon daily had not only teaued but had also begun a mild downward trend despite the recent influx of Martial Squires into the Shionel dungeon.


    Although experts had predicted that this was only a temporary trend and that Martial Squires would begin exploring the dungeon once the situation with the ants had lightened and stabilized.


    However, it meant that a lot of frencers and independent Martial Squires looking for some small sesses in the dungeon were bing hesitant due to the increased risk and danger. While the contracted Martial Squires who were being patroned, or employed by certainpanies, renegotiated with their patrons and employers for greaterpensation for the greater risk being undertaken by them as they traveled the dungeon.


    Regardless, part of the threat by Chairman Deacon and his little alliance in aggressively exploring the Shionel Dungeon bybining all their forces together had reduced. They couldn''t deploy as many Martial Squire teams for exploration since the number of Martial Squires needed to protect each team had increased.


    Rui and Kane on the other hand were much less stressed about. Rui could see every anting from kilometers away, and Kane made it so that they would ignore them every time. Content is property of N?velDrama.Org.


    The two of them set out in the dungeon and began exploring new paths in the Shionel Dungeon. Although the ants had not directly led them to a new floor, Rui suspected the existence of a dungeon floor further downwards well below the ant floor. The reason for this was that he had observed several ants returning to the ant floor from lower depths with significant injuries.


    To Rui, this suggested the presence of a threat that was most likely static or fixed in one ce.


    Considering that monsters roaming around tunnels rarely stuck in one ce, Rui had keenly deduced that the cause of the injuries that these ants had suffered that one time was due to identally entering a new floor, and being attacked by a monster. That was the most likely exnation in his mind.


    "I''ve seen enough, the ants are useful, but this is the extent to which we can use them," Rui told Kane. "Let''s get started, we have our own exploration to begin."


    The two of them peered over arge tunnel that de-escted downwards extremely steeply for quite some distance. This would be extremely dangerous and risky for humans, and potentially dangerous even for Martial Apprentices. But the two of them simply sky-walked downwards as they made their way down the tunnel, looking for a new adventure while still being extremely wary of anything dangerous.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 890 Ecosystem

    ?


    The two of them proceeded down the dark tunnel that steeply led them into even greater depths. While twirling and contorting around as it drew them deeper into the dungeon. Rui had longe to ept and even disdain the dungeon''s tendency to have tunnels that curled around extremely as it led them around. The reason for this was that it made it impossible to move around at their top speed, or anywhere even near it.


    The same limitations that prevented humans from running at their top speed, when on a proper sprinting track, while climbing and trekking through a cave maze were the same limitations that prevented adventurers from traveling across the Shionel Dungeon at extremely high speeds.


    They simply couldn''t due to how much the tracks turned and curled around. There were also security concerns with moving that fast in such a dangerous and risky environment even if Rui could sense his environment thoroughly using Riemannian Echo. Thus the two, like all Martial Squires, had to move somewhat slowly and steadily.


    Still, it wasn''t long before Rui ran into something.


    "An ant corpse," Rui noted as he descended to the ground. "This is definitely not the work of a Martial Artist unless Nel became a Martial Squire and has been in the Shionel Dungeon all this time."


    The corpse was a mess, and most of its insides had been disemboweled and extracted. There was simply no need for any Martial Squire to go to this length against a monster. That, along with the previous injuries that he had seen from other ants led him to be more certain that he was probably onto something in this space. The two of them began traveling further before Rui''s eyes lit up.


    "It''s plundering time," Rui grinned. "I was right, there was a floor in this part of the dungeon."


    "This time we managed to avoid searching like crazy for hours," Kane remarked happily.


    "True," Rui nodded.


    The two of them hurried forward before Rui began being able to sense a greater portion of the dungeon the closer they got to it.


    "It has a lot of vegetation," He frowned. This wasn''t unheard of, Some of the earliest floors discovered in the dungeon had some amount of vegetation, furthermore, Rui and Kane had discovered the dungeon with thergest tree that they had ever seen before. Thus it wasn''t exactly unprecedented even if it was unusual.


    "Like, normal vegetation?" Kane asked with a raised eyebrow. "No freak-sized trees or anything?


    "Well it is big, but it feels like an ergened version of pretty standard vegetation. Like grass, shrubs, and trees," Rui exined.


    "What about the monsters?" Kane asked. He cared more about the threats than the scenery.


    "About that¡­" Rui''s eyes narrowed. "I¡­ I think there might be more than one kind of monster."


    "Huh." Kane frowned. "That''s new."


    Rui nodded as he considered his senses more deeply. "It''s hard to tell for sure from this distance. But I can definitely send distinct creatures across the entire floor."


    Rui had to admit that it was a little strange that there were different species of creatures on the new floor. There were very few ways in which such creatures could coexist. One of the reasons that there was no infighting between monsters of the same species within the Shionel dungeon was because of the fact that there was an in-species tribal instinct.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    This was an evolutionary trait that was baked into most species since species with a tendency to not cooperate and even fight would not survive in the long run.


    However, this tribal trait did not exist between different species. Different species were usually in conflict with each other, thus peaceful harmony was never impossible.


    (''In that case¡­ the obvious answer is¡­'') Rui paused as they finally reached the floor as he was able to sense it in its vast entirety. (''¡­an ecosystem.'')


    He grew immensely curious as his Riemannian Echo washed across the entirety of the floor at once, picking up all of the details.


    (''Birds, snakes, rats, insects, and various kinds of flora,'') He mused.


    This was a surprisingly normal and generic form of ecosystem. He had expected something far beyond the norms of normal with the Shionel Dungeon. However, it seems that tried and true paradigms in nature were prone to recurring.


    "Except this is a monsterified version of them," Rui murmured.


    "Hm?" Kane nced back at Rui.


    "This is quite incredible," Rui said out loud. "This is the first time that we have ever run into a floor that contains an ecosystem of monsters. This is definitely one of the mostplex floors that we have ever run into before."All content is property ? N?velDrama.Org.


    "Uh huh," Kane perfunctorily replied. "What of the esoteric ore deposits? That''s why we''re here, you know."


    "They''re everywhere," Rui muttered. "We got ourselves a real bounty this time. We won''t be able to drain the entire dungeon in a single go this time. This is definitely one of thergest floors that we have evere across."


    "Damn," Kane grinned. "There aren''t that many floors that we haven''t been able to clear in a single go, you know."


    "I suspect that this will continue being the norm," Rui spected. "It generally is a trend that floors are gettingrger, barring a few understandable exceptions."


    "Good for us," Kane shrugged. "Let''s get started."


    "No, wait, I want to do some basic recon on the floor. This may be a little moreplicated than the other floors, that''s for sure," Rui narrowed his eyes as he began collecting more information on all the creatures in the dungeon.


    He had been under the impression that monsters were nothing more than unviable mutations of existing creatures whose sustenance and survival were deeply wed and distorted. He had thought that it was impossible for such creatures to have sophisticated lives amongst fellow mutated creatures of their species and others in aplex ecosystem, but he had begun changing his mind on that particr topic with recent events.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 891 Sophistication

    ?


    The Shionel ind taipans and the bloodfury rabbits all led a rather simple life on their respective floors. They simply consumed organic ore deposits and other creatures that stumbled in like the adventurers. It had given him the impression that monsterified creatures were too sick in the head to possibly be more than aggressive mindless zombies.


    Seeing what had happened to the humans of therge town of Veril that had survived ingesting the esoteric ore deposits had only reinforced this notion.


    Yet the previous floor had had a perfectly viable ant society with functioning ants that worked for the sake of the colony and were led by the intelligent ant queen who was even capable of reproduction of monsterified ants.


    This was very different from the image of monsterified creatures that he had conceived of in his mind. He had to admit that his opinion on the matter had changed given that he was forced to acknowledge that monsters could engage in sophisticated cooperation and continued sustenance of their existences.


    This was especially the case when he came across an ecosystem that had sustained itself for presumably a year and a half since the dungeon had risen. It meant that this wasn''t a transient phenomenon.


    Rui narrowed his eyes as he focused on each distinct species.


    The birds that he had spotted were numerous and flew across therge floor. Their wide wingspan and beaks were those that predator birds like eagles and hawks possessed, thus he assumed that they were probably among the apex predators of the dungeon floor.


    This was especially the case when he could sense small creatures like mice, rodents, and even snakes slithering around in the ground.


    What he found when he inspected the snakes was that they were not like the Shionel taipans that he had previously ran into. In fact, given the size of their heads, he greatly doubted that they were venomous at all. It was much more likely that they were the monsterified version of rat snakes. They were not apex predators, he had watched National Geographic enough as a kid to know that those snakes were the kind of snakes that would get snatched up by the kind of big birds that were plentiful in the entire dungeon.


    The rats, mice, and rodents were next on the food chain when it came to such matters. They were most likely targeted by the snakes that he could sense across the entire floor, and they also had a greater poption than the snakes, based on Rui''s preliminary sense of the entire dungeon.


    Predators generally tended to be an order of magnitude less popted than their prey, for a sustainable ecosystem to exist, otherwise, predators would quickly overhunt prey into extinction and the ecosystem would be thrown for a toss. Thus Rui was quickly able to ascertain the food chains in the ecosystems this way.


    The ubiquitous herbivorous insects like caterpirs, grasshoppers, and crickets were probably the biggest source of food for them. Rui couldn''t even begin to estimate how many there were.


    "Really interesting stuff," Rui murmured.


    "Speak for yourself," Kane snorted. "When are we going to ransack this ce?"<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    "Now," Rui got up. "I''ve mostly learned what I wanted to. I don''t see any problematic elements. Your technique should work on all of them, so we''re good and dandy."


    Rui had wanted to make sure that there weren''t elements on the floor that would disrupt their stealth.


    "Though honestly, your technique is probably the least necessary in floors like this. Previously, all floors were basically united against us, and thus we needed stealth to make sure that we didn''t get constantly overrun. But frankly, given the fact that these creatures are far from united, and not liable to turn against us the moment they detect us, this may actually be one of the safer dungeon floors honestly," Rui remarked.


    This felt strange.


    Shouldn''t it have been the case that deeper floors were more dangerous?


    Then again, Rui realized that this wasn''t a video game, that, by design, got more and more difficult and challenging the further they passed. The dungeon had not been constructed with that in mind or anything like that, thus it shouldn''t be too surprising that such a pattern was not strictly followed.


    "I hope that we run into many such floors in the future," Kane nodded. Using Void Step continuously on not just himself but also Rui was stressful, especially on the previous dungeon floor where failing to use it would have gotten them killed pretty quickly. He especially hated the floor with the venomous taipan since he was also under a lot of psychological pressure due to how lethal the taipans were. If he slipped even a single time, then the taipans'' swift venomous bite would have killed them instantly.


    "Floors like this are nice because I get to chill," He remarked.


    "Hope you enjoy manualbor instead," Rui sneered. Content is property of N?velDrama.Org.


    "On second thoughts, leave the stealth to me,"


    The two of them stopped bickering before immediately getting to work. It was only when they actually trodded across the floor did they realize how big it was. It was as though they had been hit by a shrinking gun, and then gone to take a walk in a rainforest. Insects were half as tall as them while the other creatures were significantly bigger.


    This was surprising because thergest of creatures were huge. The monster bird''s wingspan may as well have been asrge as a city block. Thergest of the birds were definitely at the peak of the Squire Realm as far asbat prowess went. Rui and Kane definitely needed to avoid them since simply sky-walking would not be able to get them away from the birds. The birds were almost certainly faster than them due to the fact that their bodies were literally built for flight and motion through the air.


    "Maybe we should be more careful¡­" Rui murmured as he took a good look at a giant bird flying past them.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 892 Restricted

    ?


    Rui had to admit that the job was more difficult than he had given it credit. It wasn''t nearly as easy as he had expected. Although the floor wasn''t as diametrically as opposed to them as other floors were, the distribution of esoteric ore deposits was far and wide.


    They needed to tread far and wide in order to gain their fill of esoteric ore deposits. It took them an entire day before they were able to fill up their entire storage capacity.


    "Damn," Kane murmured. "We only finished like a quarter of the entire floor!"


    "Yeah," Rui sighed. "It''s crazy, honestly."


    The floor was quite gigantic, it would probably take them a few more days before they were ready topletely drain the entire floor of its esoteric ore deposits.


    "What do you think will happen to the floor by the time we''ve extracted all of its resources?" Kane wondered.


    "Most of the creatures will die out¡­" Rui shrugged. "But, I think that we might end up seeing an increasing number of monsters leave the dungeon in search of more esoteric ore deposits, especially organic ones."


    "That never really happened with most of the other monsters though," Kane scratched his head.


    "That is true," Rui nodded. "But that was because the monsters could still consume the Martial Squires that attempted to clear the floor. In this case, they don''t even have that. I''m definitely seeing at least some of the monsters on this floor leaving the dungeon in search of sustenance."


    "So they''ll end up causing even more trouble for ourpetitors and enemies," Kane smirked.


    "Right," Rui nodded. "Though I don''t know if we can keep doing that forever."


    "What do you mean?" Kane frowned.


    "Our ability to clear dungeon floors without killing a single monster, I suspect that we may have to stop doing that," Rui calmly exined.


    "But why?" Kane frowned. "It''s so broken and causes a huge problem for everybody else but us."


    "You just answered your own question," Rui replied. "It causes too much of a problem for the Shionel Confederation. Think about it. What is the Adventurer Guild going to do about the fact that there are so many monsters running around in the dungeon?"


    "I can see where you''reing from, but that''s what the Martial Squire adventurers are there for, right?" He asked, raising an eyebrow. "A huge number of Martial Squire adventurers from all across our section of the continent have poured into the Shionel Confederation. No matter how many monsters there are, they possess the ability to handle it."


    "You''re not wrong," Rui told him. "But why would they handle it, even if they have the ability to handle it?"<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    That seemed like an extremely bizarre question. It was what the Martial Squires did, they handled it. They assumed the role of adventurers, entered the dungeon, and killed monsters inevitably.


    "Because they''re paid to, or get paid by selling the fruits of their sess," Kane replied, furrowing his eyebrows in confusion.


    "And why do they get paid?" Rui turned towards him.


    "Because of the esoteric ore deposits that they extrac-" He paused abruptly as he understood what Rui was conveying to him.All content is property ? N?velDrama.Org.


    "Do you get it?" Rui turned back to the floor before him. "The one and only incentive for most of the stakeholders interested in the Shionel Dungeon is the esoteric ore deposits waiting inside. In order to get those, they''re willing to bear the cost of killing all the dangerous monsters in the dungeon. However, they''re only willing to bear that cost because there is a reward. What happens if there isn''t a reward? What happens if someone already took all of the rewards?"


    "Then there isn''t an incentive to kill all the monsters. Because there isn''t as much to be gained. Monster hunting, in general, is profitable, but the difficulty of hunting monsters inside the Shionel Dungeon is not worth it," Kane quickly realized.


    "Correct," Rui nodded. "So if this goes on, the Shionel Confederation will be left with a dungeon filled with monsters, but very few esoteric ore deposits left. This is a highly undesirable oue to the Shionel Confederation."


    "Yeah, but at the end of the day, the end oue is going to be all monsters dead, and all esoteric ore deposits extracted. Even if nobody wants to kill all the monsters if the ore deposits are gone, can''t the Shionel Confederation deploy its military and slowly clean them up as time passes?"


    "They could," Rui replied. "But they would end up being the ones that sacrifice the most if that does happen. If foreign Martial Squires were the ones to set out to kill the monsters, then it would be mostly foreign Martial Squires dying in the process," Rui exined. "Furthermore, the risk of letting the monsters run around the dungeon like crazy with no esoteric ore deposits. That''s dangerous. If the monsters break out of the dungeon, then that would be catastrophic, since Martial Seniors can''t go anywhere near the dungeon."


    "Ah, yeah, that does make sense," Kane nodded. "But you''re forgetting the fact that we have special backing. As long as Guildmaster Bradt has our back, we''re good."


    "That is if he does have our back," Rui snorted. "What do you think he is, a saint?"


    "No, but isn''t it in his interests to support us?"


    "Not always, not this time," Rui shook his head. "He wants the dungeon cleared as soon as possible, before the next election, at least. Extracting the esoteric ore deposits but letting the monsters dys that. He will most certainly be against it."


    "Hm¡­" Kane frowned. "But what can they even do? It''s not like they can stop us."


    "They cannot, but he can," Rui sighed. "He knows we need him and his Bill C-16. I predict that there will be¡­ measures taken by him to ensure that there aren''t too many monsters who should be dead running around in the dungeon. As for what form that takes, I don''t know."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 893 Medium

    ?


    It was only a few days before they cleaned almost all of the esoteric ore deposits on the neenth floor. The two of them duly took their time making sure to get as much as they could before finally leaving the dungeon floor.


    It turned out that Rui was right, to a certain degree. The insects were the first to begin leaving the dungeon and were probably leaving the entire ce. The rodents and other smaller creatures would probably follow suit soon enough.


    Rui wasn''t sure about how the big birds would fair, they were too big to fit into the tunnels and the fact that they relied on flight meant that they were probably doomed.


    Rui shrugged. He was pro-evolution and survival of the fittest.


    The two of them immediately set out for more dungeon floors in the Shionel Dungeon, they traveled further down the Shionel Dungeon. They still hadn''t reached the full depths of the dungeon, which extended sixty kilometers below the surface.


    Who knew what kind of strange sights they would see?


    Rui for one, was curious about what was there at the bottom of the dungeon, even if the path there was long and annoying. The tunnels wound about so much that even with Riemannian Echo it was extremely difficult to track down a path downwards.


    The two of them treaded around for half a day before they came across something interesting.


    "What is that?" Rui''s eyes widened as something strange entered his field of senses.


    "Finally, another floor?"


    "Is¡­" He stuttered for a second. "Is that water?!"


    "What?" Kane turned to him with widened eyes.


    "There''s no mistaking it," Rui murmured, as he strode forward to get a closer look at the new dungeon floor. "It''s a floor that has a huge body of water in it. A giganticke."


    Rui couldn''t help but be incredibly surprised. He didn''t understand how ake could form inside the dungeon, it made no sense!


    "Where could water evene from?" Kane frowned. "There''s no rain, there''s no influx of water, right?"


    Rui had some suspicions, but he wasn''t sure.


    It took a while before the two of them finally managed to reach the floor by picking the right tunnel. When they reached, their eyes widened as came across a startlingly beautiful sight.


    Theke was glowing.


    "No¡­ to be more precise, the esoteric ore deposits at the bottom of theke are glowing," Rui murmured as he ran his senses through the water.


    His senses detected rich and diverse life flourishing in theke. He quickly noted that this too was a floor with a developed ecosystem. His senses extended to the very bottom of theke as he examined the sheer amount of esoteric ore deposits there were at the bottom.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    "This is definitely another big find," Rui told him.


    "I''m just curious as to how thiske came here, honestly," Kane replied. "As for actually clearing this floor, I don''t know Rui, maybe we should sit this one out."


    Rui understood his sentiment.


    Neither of them was particrly adept in water, they didn''t have almost any experience in it. Rui had once hunted down a beast hiding in underwater back when he was a Martial Apprentice, but that was it.


    They werepletely out of their element, literally.


    His senses could tell him that these waters weren''t safe, either. He could sense a ton of creatures that he would rather not tangle with. From piranha-like fish to crocodilian creatures, none of these creatures looked like they were fun to hand out with underwater.


    Rui personally would be extremely hampered underwater, his attacks would be much weaker, and he wouldn''t even be able to use his hot air pipe underwater. They would also be much slower in extracting esoteric ore deposits.


    Then there was the matter of Kane. Maintaining Void Step underwater was going to be a nightmare of a problem. Rui truly did not think that he could pull this off without making a single mistake.


    Although he didn''t enjoy the fact that he didn''t trust Kane''s ability in this regard, it couldn''t be helped. The probability that Kane would fail was simply too high. Fighting underwater was an entirely different artpared to fighting onnd or in the air.


    The difference between fighting onnd and in the air was substantial, but the medium of the two remained the same: gas. Text ? by N0ve/lDrama.Org.


    The same could not be said for fighting underwater. The medium was fundamentally different, the inability to breathe, the increased pressure, as well as the vastly greater resistive force to motion that the medium provided made it far too different.


    A technique as delicate like Void Step required far too much precision and uracy, there was a reason it was a grade-ten Martial Art technique. Trying to fulfill the highly demanding requirements and thresholds of the technique in a medium that he had no experience in was extraordinarily difficult.


    On top of that, Rui couldn''t even imagine how long it would take to extract all the esoteric ore deposits even if they didn''t end up bing food for the sea creatures. How many days, if not weeks or months would they need to spend diving to the bottom of theke grabbing as many esoteric ore deposits as they could before eventually needing to get back to the surface.


    Martial Squires could hold their breaths for longer than humans, but not by too much, their need for oxygen was greater than humans, after all.


    And none of them had a single aquatic technique on top of all of that. Rui could not imagine handling this the normal way.


    It would most likely lead to their collective demise.


    "Still, I''m not in the habit of quitting that easily," Rui said out loud. "I came here to this nation to challenge myself."


    "You''re not actually thinking of going, are you?" Kane looked queasy at the very thought of it.


    "No," Rui shook his head. "But I do have another idea in mind."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 894 Gathering

    ?


    "Esosale Suppliers has refused to supply to us."


    In an underground facility that served as a nexus for a series of tunnels, six figures had gathered around a table.


    The atmosphere was solemn and tense despite their nonchnt demeanor.


    The source of pressure wasn''t the various Martial Seniors standing behind them serving as bodyguards.


    No.


    Each of the six seated figures appeared to be a normal human. Yet they seemed to draw more attention than even the formidable Martial Seniors. Such a gravitas did note from their fists'' power, but the power of their positions. It was a distinct sense of power that came with their position, one that wasn''t overt but could be just as scary.


    "I haven''t had time to go through the reports yet¡­" A woman sighed, maintaining a cold expression. "How many of our shells have been unable to purchase supplies from Esosale Suppliers?"


    "About eighty-six percent, give or take," A spectacled man replied. "It''s a rather shockingly high number, all things considered. Such a thing does not happen organically, especially when we can be reasonably certain that other legitimatepanies of a simr size to our shells have not experienced any sanction of any sort."


    He pushed his spectacles before continuing. "I have considered the possibility that Esosale Suppliers has perhaps adopted the policy of avoiding shellpanies that are clearly hollow or have very shady ties. However, I have seen no indication of other such third part partypanies experiencing the same restriction."


    "Then, what about the possibility that Esosale Suppliers has shunned shell fronts of the mafia in other nations as well?"


    "I see no indication that this is the case. The onlypanies that have received prohibitions are Kandrianpanies. The Bradt Distribution Service is seamlessly cooperating with other continues but has ceased all negotiation with our shell fronts."


    "In other words¡­" The woman leaned forward. "This is without a doubt a targeted restriction against the Kandrian mafia."


    "It can be safely concluded that this is the case, yes," The spectacled man nodded.


    There was a brief moment of silence in the room as each of the members gathered their thoughts on the matter. The weight of the air grew more tumultuous while the temperature seemingly dropped a few degrees.


    Each of them understood the gravity of the situation, it was truly an important enough situation to gather in person to address the matter.


    The woman turned to one of the men in the room. "This is a serious issue, where is Aggragor?"


    The man smiled perfunctorily. "Sage Aggragor instructed me to act in his interest, he told me to ry to you that he doesn''t care to wrap his head aroundplicated issues. He would rather engage in his Martial Art training."


    "Hmph," She snorted but didn''t dare say a word.


    It didn''t matter if they were fellow leaders of the ck market. One was a human. Another was a Martial Sage. The difference between them was that of Heaven and Earth. If not for the fact that Sage Aggragor disdained the responsibilities that came with his position, he may very well have assumed more power by dissolving the various segments of the ck market under his single-handed control.


    As it was, the ck market had six distinct sections.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    Human-rted goods and services. This included things like ves, organs, sexual services, manualbor, and darker indulgences that the consumers of this ck market possessed.


    Martial Art rted goods and services that were illegal and not provided by the Martial Union. Mostly entailed matters like assassinations and violence.


    Information. The sale of ssified information was one of thergest ck markets anywhere on the continent. Information was power.


    Smuggling and distribution. This was one of the foundations of the ck market, being able to deliver supplies of goods and services to the consumers, across borders, without being caught was the cornerstone of the ck market.


    Prohibited goods and substances. There was an enormous demand for conventional and esoteric drugs, as well as strategic materials and substances.


    Money-rted services. Managing the cirction of ck money was a requirement of its own, and the size of this market was proportional to the size of the rest of the ck market, thus this sector could never be left behind. Moneyundering and the production of currency were one of the mostmonly required services.


    "Putting aside the matter of Aggragor, this is more important," Another man said, turning to one of the other six figures. "I''m more concerned why Carnil, the leader of goods supply, has been silent about this matter so far."


    His eyes narrowed as he continued. "You''re supposed to be on top of this."


    Carnil moved for the first time, opening his eyes. "There is nothing to get on top. This matter is trivial."


    The other leaders narrowed their eyes. "Trivial?"


    "Did I stutter?" Carnil closed his eyes once more.


    "Is this a joke to you?" The woman''s tone grew ice cold. "Perhaps we ought to kill you and rece you."


    "Hah," Carnil expressed emotion for the first time, turning to the woman. "Give it a shot why don''t you?"


    The air grew heavier as the two of them red daggers at each other. Their bloodlust was so palpable that one could nearly feel it broiling in the air.


    "Enough," The spectacled man pushed his spectacles up, adjusting them. "Carnil, exin yourself."


    Carnil nced at the spectacled man, snorting. "Y''all are kicking up a fuss for nothing. If the shell fronts have been exposed. Then we create new ones. Simple as that."


    "You''re missing the core of the issue," Another elderly woman remarked. "The question is why is Esosale Suppliers refusing to work with shell fronts associated with us when it does not exhibit any abstinence for other shell fronts of different groups and mafia."Content is property of N?velDrama.Org.


    "I don''t give a fuck about that," Carnil snorted. "But if I had to guess, the Royal Family or the Martial Union got to Esosale Suppliers, probably the former. End of story."


    "Not, if anything, that''s just the beginning," The spectacled man replied sharply. "Have you forgotten? We need those esoteric ore deposits. The war of those esoteric ore deposits will impact the future of this very nation."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 895 Plan

    ?


    "How do you n on extracting all the esoteric ore deposits?" Kane asked, raising an eyebrow as he nced at Rui.


    "It''s simple, really," Rui told him. "The reason for the difficulty of extracting the esoteric ore deposits of this particr floor is because of the fact that there is a huge body of water between us and the esoteric ore deposits and powerful creatures who are extremely capable in water, correct?"


    "Right," Kane nodded, furrowing his eyebrows as Rui rehashed the obvious.


    "Then it''s simple," Rui smirked. "We just need to get rid of the water."


    Kane stared at him.


    "Here me out,"


    "That''s the dumbest thing I''ve ever heard," Kane scoffed. "''Oh there''s problem? Just get rid of it.''"


    Ruiughed as Kane mocked him. "I don''t mean figuratively get rid of the problem, I mean it quite literally. We''ll disce all this water and literally get it out of our way."


    "That''s insane," Kane replied with exasperation. "How are you going to disce all this water out of the way? Even if you had the biggest bucket, it''s too untenable."


    "We have a tool better than buckets," Rui replied with an amused smile. "We can use gravity."


    "Gravity points downwards, not upwards," Kane reminded him.


    "Exactly," Rui turned towards him with an amused grin. "So let''s just allow gravity to do its thing."


    "Except the bottom of the floor prevents that from happe-" Kane paused abruptly. "Oh."


    "Seems like you figured it out already. I''m thinking we can break open a hole at the bottom of the floor, drain all the water out, and then peacefully extract all the esoteric ore deposits from the now emptied floor."


    Kane''s eyes widened. "That''s insane. But¡­ it makes sense."


    Still, Kane couldn''t help but marvel at how simple but brilliant the n was. It wasn''t going to be easy, but it was straightforward and viable for Rui, even if it wasn''t viable for others.


    "Still," Kane paused. "That still requires you to go underwater, right? Depending on how deep it is you may have to stay down there a while, won''t you run into the same problems as you would if were trying to extract all the esoteric ore deposits from the bottom of theke?"


    "Only if we try to break it from the inside," Rui replied. "I n to st a hole into the floor from the outside, from under it."


    "I feel stupid for asking. But I suppose you are the only one who could possibly do that."<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    "You''re right," Rui nodded. "Only with my Riemannian Echo is detecting the right avenue for breaking a hole in the bottom of the floor feasible. Otherwise, it''s extremely difficult to evene around to the right spot."


    "I see," Kane nodded. "Also it''s not entirely risk-free, I''m guessing."


    "That''s also true," Rui nodded. "The hole needs to berge enough to drain theke in a reasonably short amount of time, but also, making itrger will flood the tunnel that I will be in at the moment it breaks through. This means the moment I break through, an extremelyrge flood of water will st out at extremely high speeds. The total force will be a threat to even Martial Squires, not to mention the Squire-level monsters that will flow out along with it. Getting caught by it will be extremely dangerous."


    Rui yed several scenarios in his head as he calmly analyzed the situation. Based on some rough estimates of the size of theke in conjugation with his knowledge of fluid dynamics from his bachelor''s degree in physics, he was able to understand just how dangerous this operation could potentially get.


    What if he broke open a hole, for the water to st out, hitting him at high speeds only for a giant shark toe through and chew his head off?


    The water pressure would be working against Rui in these circumstances, making it difficult to move, while the flood of water would aid the shark, allowing it to reach Rui in an instant where it would rip his head off, or at the very least cause him significant wounds.


    What Rui needed to do was ensure that the whole was big enough to drain the entire floor at a reasonably fast pace.


    It would take far too long if the hole was the size of a human, after all. What Rui needed was a muchrger hole. However, therger the hole, the more dangerous and risky it would be immediately afterpletion.


    Thus he needed to find a way to mitigate the risk as well.


    "Distance from the hole will greatly mitigate the risks," Rui noted.


    Thankfully, Rui had learned techniques that allowed him to put distance between himself and his opponent. Transverse Resonance was a technique that allowed him to hit above his grade as a Martial Squire. This meant he could hit with the power of a high-grade Martial Squire at range.


    Of course, there was a limit to the distance he could put between himself and the hole, given that he was not working on an open field but inside a cramped maze in a dungeon. The maximum distance he could achieve when considering everything was the height of the tunnel plus the thickness of the bedrock of theke.


    "It''s manageable, probably," Rui murmured.


    "Probably?" Kane raised an eyebrow.Content is property of N?velDrama.Org.


    "It depends, if I get really unlucky and have too many monsters, then I might get hit by one of them, though they''ll undoubtedly be frantic due to being sucked down by a powerful whirlpool. I don''t know if they''re strong enough to resist the sheer force of the downward pull at the lowest point.


    "Well, it''s a risk you''re going to have to take alone since I''ll be chilling up here while you''ll be doing all the hard work," Kane patted his back lightly, whistling humorously. "Let me know when you''re done."


    Rui chuckled. "Will do."


    He didn''t bother trying to get Kane to go along with him, he was right. This was something for Rui to do alone.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 896 Requirements

    ?


    The first thing Rui needed to do was find the right location under the neenth floor. This mattered a lot and would greatly impact his chances of getting away unscathed. The bedrock of theke was not evenly thick, thus it was probably best that he looked for the ce where it was thickest.


    Aiming for the thickest part of the bedrock may end up being the hardest and most time-consuming, but it would certainly be the safest. Thus he needed to pay attention to that, among other things.


    On top of that, he also needed to pay attention to the tunnels in the vicinity of the point where he was hoping to break through. If the tunnels all lead downwards, then that point was unsuitable. What he needed was a ce where there was a route upwards as well.


    The reason for this, of course, was the fact that the released water would rush through the tunnels and go downwards. Thus, if there was no way up, Rui was screwed and would need to spend quite some time in a wild escape for his life until he got far enough that the water would not reach him or found a way back up that wasn''t flushed with water.Text ? by N0ve/lDrama.Org.


    Thus a tunnel in the immediate vicinity leading him back up was definitely very important to him.


    Another condition that the hole he would create needed to satisfy was that it had to be at the lowest points of theke. If it was too high, then there would be a portion of theke that would not get drained due to being lower than the hole.


    On top of that Rui also needed to take into ount the debris that he would be creating by sting arge hole across the bedrock rtive to the size of the tunnel. He needed to make sure that the debris did not block off the tunnel, nor did it raise the height of the tunnel such that the distance between him and the hole was reduced.


    Water would travel faster through a narrower tunnel, and that was not good for him.


    A multitude of variables was within his consideration as he picked a tunnel downwards, scanning the tunnelwork below the neenth floor with his Riemannian Echo. Going down would allow him to sense everything better.


    Theke was surprisingly deep for its size. It was almost closer to a trench than it was to ake, from his perspective.


    (''That''s going to make the water st out with even greater speed,'') He murmured unhappily. Height corresponded with more pressure at the bottom, which corresponded with the speed at which the water would st out.


    Still, he wasn''t too concerned. The reflexes of a Martial Squire, when prepared, were quite remarkable. Although the water would st out at an incredible speed, he was not going to get caught unless he was truly unfortunate. What he was most careful about was the initial moment of breakage.


    Specifically, he needed to make sure that he timed it right, and was not caught off-guard. Furthermore, he needed to make sure that it wasrge enough on the very first shot, otherwise, he would need to escape even if it wasn''t, and would be forced to waste too much time


    He also needed to keep in mind that he could just peacefully go on hacking at the bedrock whistling away. Theke was also exerting a tremendous amount of pressure on the bedrock from the other side of which Rui was on. Meaning, at some point, theke''s own pressure would be enough to crack open a hole, he needed to ensure that it would be big enough.


    (''On top of that, I need to make sure that my attacks are sharp and precise. Else it is liable to cause cracks that will start leakingrge amounts of water ahead of time,'') Rui sighed. (''This is starting to be more of a pain than I had imagined it would be when I initially conceived of the idea.'')<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    It took him longer than he expected to finally settle down on an idea spot after extensive searching and filtering. He found a single spot that suited his needs.


    STEP


    "Hmm¡­" He inspected his surroundings when he reached his chosen spot. "Good thickness,rge tunnels, and straight tunnels where I can reach a high speed, and a decently close path upwards to avoid the water."


    He nced up. "Thirty-six meters¡­ give or take. Just barelyrge enough it should work."


    He heaved a sigh as he prepared himself. Breaking a ten-meter wide hole in theke was the bare minimum in order to drain theke in a reasonably short timeframe. If it was much smaller than this then it would take far too long to drain theke. Rui risked theke being found by other adventurers which he most certainly did not want. He definitely wanted to cleanly finish it before any external entanglement couldplicate matters.


    He was even warier of other Martial Squires after his fiasco on the sixteenth floor with Chairman Deacon''s raiding team. The man had no doubt taken the time to form some measures that hoped to replicate the stroke of good luck of having Rui and Kane detected that day.


    He closed his eyes as he gathered his focus. He breathed deeply as he honed his mind, gathering his focus and concentration.


    "Let''s begin,"


    He pulled out his hot air pipe. Although Transverse Resonance was a sound-based technique, not a wind-based technique, it was still best to heat up the initial air particles of the sound attack, even if most of that heat was lost in transit.


    He inhaled air from the hot air pipe deeply, before facing up.


    THWOOM THWOOM!


    He shot two rapid sonic sts one after the other, the second being considerably faster than the first one. The two sonic pulses ovepped in constructive resonance as they merged into a single projectile of sound.


    BAM!!!


    The first sonic projectile mmed into the top of the tunnel, causing a huge crater.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 897 Breakthrough

    ?


    The best part about the Mighty Roar sh st technique that he had gotten from G''ak''arkan Tribe, as well as the Sonic Bullet technique was that he could control the kind of damage that he inflicted on the ceiling of the dungeon.


    Thus he could control the projectile to ensure that the resulting crater was ten meters wide.


    He found it a shame that he couldn''t use tier four Transverse Resonance, where he ovepped four sonic projectiles in constructive resonance. Unfortunately, that required a distance that was far in excess of ten meters.


    THWOOM THWOOM!


    BAM!


    He kept striking at the ceiling, forming a deeper crater with each attack. The hot air pipe definitely helped, even if it wasn''t too significant. The heat made sure that the damage was more localized whereas impacts could spread unscrupulously


    Thend around him shook with each attack, so he hoped that Kane was aware that he had already begun. He wasn''t too sure, however, because esoteric ore deposits jammed all senses by inhibiting the flow of energy and matter. This included seismic radiation since even now he was unable to detect any external seismic radiation in the ground.


    Rui made steady but slow progress. Ordinarily, this would have been a matter of several attacks at most had it been ordinary bedrock. However, the Shionel Dungeon was reinforced with dungeonified vegetation and low-grade Squire-level esoteric substances. This astronomically increased their durability and thus the force needed to fragment the bedrock.


    THWOOM THWOOM!


    BAM!


    CRACK!


    Rui narrowed his eyes as his senses heightened, a small trickle of water had begun dripping through the cracks in the crater. The cracks had crossed across the remaining bedrock left. The fact that they were made out of Squire-grade esoteric and reinforced by the dungeonified roots of the dungeon was probably the only reason that the remaining bit of bedrock had not been utterly shattered by the sheer weight of the entirety of theke.


    Rui gathered energy across his entire body as his muscles tightened.


    His nerves tingled as he readied himself for what was about toe.


    His body brimmed with power as he positioned his feet ready for running, before inhaling from his hot air pipe one more time.


    THWOOM THWOOM!


    BOOOOM!!!


    A huge explosion of water sted through the newly formed hole at a shocking speed. The water elerated downward, pulled not just by gravity but also pushed down by the extreme weight of the entireke pushing down on all of it.


    The air rippled as the water sted through, sting downward with great speed.


    Yet Rui didn''t wait even the briefest moment to admire the sight. He immediately dashed away with Gale Force Breathing and Outer Convergence, running forward at top speed.


    The sheer speed at which he ran sted the air out of his way, leaving sonic booms in his way as he shattered the sound barrier.


    With Riemannien Echo, he could sense that there was no shortage of monsters in the water that was rushing behind him, eager to catch and swallow him up!<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    He could even sense what seemed like a Megalodon Shark!Text ? by N0ve/lDrama.Org.


    (''Ain''t no fucking way I''m dying in the jaws of that, hell no,'') He picked up the pace as he strained himself even more.


    He was almost there.


    STEP


    He leaped into the air as he sky-walked up a straight tunnel that led right up.


    It wasn''t that the water did not enter the vertical tunnel leading upwards either, but the pace was pitifully slow. Rui knew it was because the water had already begun traveling extensively through the convoluted maze of tunnels that was the Shionel Dungeon.


    Many of those tunnels led to lower levels, and they would be the first to be flooded.


    Rui considered the ramifications that this would have on the rest of the dungeon. The tunnels were actually quite smallpared to the volume of water, which meant that the tunnels were most likely going to be filled to the brim.


    The aquatic life that got swept away would not necessarily die immediately. They would instead live in tubes for a while until the water got absorbed into the bedrock of the dungeon and by the roots of the dungeon too.


    The water would umte in ces where the tunnels ended in a dead-end creating various pockets of water that could sustain some of the aquatic life.


    Funnily enough, he didn''t think most of the adventurers would be affected by this the way they were affected by the ants that were released from their dungeon just yet. The reason for this was that the water would get swept deep into the dungeon, ces that hadn''t been explored yet.


    (''Wait a minute, this will actually help us now that I think about it,'') Rui noted.


    The ces of the dungeon where the water clogged indicated a dead-end. Thus Rui and Kane could safely avoid such segments of tunnels the moment they entered his Riemannian Echo.


    It was only the tunnel systems that were empty that actually had paths forward.


    (''On top of that, this is an advantage that only Kane and I can enjoy because this water isn''t sticking around forever!'') Rui grinned.


    This would significantly cut down on their exploring activities by highlighting all the paths that they ought not to explore. Gaining even more of an edge on Chairman Deacon was music to his ears.


    (''They''re not even going to know what happened, hopefully,'') Rui smirked. (''Not unless they find the neenth floor, but it will probably be toote by then.'')


    Even if they did happen to find the floor, he would have long gone having taken all the esoteric ore deposits from the floor.


    (''Right, I ought to get back. Theke will take some time to drain though.'')


    Even if the hole was ten meters wide, theke was more than a kilometer in diameter. It was not going to get drained any moment now, they would probably get to watch how the aquatic life forms dealt with this new crisis.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 898 Choice

    ?


    "I was half-worried that the water would start pooling into these tunnels around us," Kane told Rui when he returned back to him.


    "Nah, don''t worry, I made sure that there was no way that that could happen, there are plenty of tunnels leading deep down into the dungeon, so we''ll be fine," Rui reassured him.


    He turned towards theke. "I knew that this was not going to happen instantly, but damn, it''s a ten-meter wide hole and the rate at which the water levels are receding is painfully slow."


    The water level was falling a few centimeters every second, which indicated just how enormously wide theke was, given that water was gushing out of a ten-meter-wide hole.


    "It''s just a matter of time now," Kane shrugged, before leaning against a tunnel wall.


    Rui could already see esoteric ore deposits slowly starting to emerge now that the water levels were receding. Though it still was too dangerous to try and extract them given the fact that they could still be attacked if they were close to the water.


    He ran his Riemannian Echo sense through the water as he studied the reactions of the various aquatic and amphibian monsters and creatures in theke.


    "They sure are panicking," Rui remarked.


    Most of them had grown erratically active, understandably. The many creatures had probably not encountered a time when the very medium they had existed their entire life pulled them downwards with such a great force. If they simply remained still, they would get pulled down.


    Thus each creature had gotten into a frenzy to stay as high up as possible. Fish began migrating higher and higher as theke was getting dragged down lower and lower. Many amphibian creatures had already begun moving out of the water in order to avoid the powerful pulling current, although none of them had noticed Rui and Kane standing at the entrance of a tunnel to the floor.


    Rui couldn''t help but feel curious about the psychology of these creatures. To them, was water truly no different from air? From their perspectives, were they effectively floating and flying midair when they swam around in the water?


    In that case, their circumstances would be even more inconceivable to them than he had perhaps suspected.


    Just as Rui was about to rx as he waited for the water to drain,  he noticed something strange.


    "Hm?" He furrowed his eyebrows. "Have the water levels stopped declining?"


    "I can''t really tell¡­" Kane squinted his eyes.


    "They have¡­" Rui mumured as he swept his Riemannian Echo technique at the bottom of theke where the hole was. "Wait a second, the hole¡­ is blocked!"


    Kane frowned. "By what? A rock?"


    "No," Rui shook his head. "A creature blocked it. It looks like a giant octopus."


    Rui could clearly sense arge octopus-like creature settling on top of the hole, squeezing down on it with its entire body. It used its tentacles to seal down the edge of the hole, making sure that no water could leak through the hole at all.


    Rui was impressed. The creature correctly identified the source of the problem and realized the gravity of the situation beforeing up with a quick solution.


    (''Octopi always have been clever creatures back on Earth,'') Rui recalled watching some videos on Youtube where an octopus would solve someplex problems and puzzles. (''It appears that those traits exist in this world as well.'')


    "A creature voluntarily blocked the hole?" Kane raised an eyebrow. "Are you sure that it isn''t just stuck?"


    "Yeah," Rui nodded. "For one, octopi have extremely flexible and ductile bodies. The notion of them getting stuck is practically impossible. For another, this octopus looks like it''s trying everything in its power to ensure that the hole doesn''t open up."


    "That''s not good for us, is it?" Kane sighed<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    "Not one bit I''m afraid," Rui chuckled, but there''s a pretty simple solution, although it''s a pain in the ass,"


    "Going back down and slicing him up?"


    "Yep,"


    Rui quickly returned back down to the tunnelwork where the hole was.


    Thankfully, because the octopus was blocking the hole, thus the tunnels were not filled with water. The were many creatures en route, that had been left in the tunnels when the octopus closed the hole. He sky-walked to avoid getting wet and the corpses, before reaching the hole.


    "That looks painful," Rui winced as he saw the octopus'' abdomen stuck in the hole.


    SHING


    He drew his sword. "Not as painful as this, though."


    SLASH SLASH SLASH


    Three rapid strikes created deep gashes in the body of the octopus. The octopus'' body internally cleaved apart as the cold bellhorn steel of his de repelled the esoteric substances in the octopus'' body on either side of the de in the opposite directions.


    Consecutively, the wound extended far deeper than the de''s length, killing the octopus on the spot.


    Rui immediately dashed away from the site as the octopus'' corpse fell through and the rush of the water flooded through, immediately reiming the tunnel as itpletely consumed it.


    Rui gritted his teeth as he barely managed to avoid it. This time, he was sky-walking instead of running onnd due to the fear of potentially slipping on the wet tunnels.


    SLOSH


    A small wave sshed onto Rui''s lower half as he escaped up into the tunnel.


    "Tsk," Rui tutted. "That was annoyingly close."


    He pulled out his hot air pipe, before inhaling and heating himself dry.


    It wasn''t long before he returned to Kane. The two of them waited as theke drained itself. Rui kept a sharp watch to make sure that there were no more creatures attempting to block the hole as before.


    It took about an hour, but theke was finally drained.


    "Alright, let''s get this over with," Kane was about to jump into the emptiedke.


    "Wait," Rui stopped him. "I think you should do the mining."


    "Huh?" Kane tilted his head in confusion.


    "I think I should explore the unclogged parts of the dungeon before the water is gone."


    This chapter upload first at  All content is property ? N?velDrama.Org.

 Chapter 899 Waterways

    ?Belonging ? N?velDram/a.Org.


    It seemed like an absurd suggestion. Kane did not even bother replying. His expressions fully conveyed the sheer magnitude of how unimpressed he was. "Explore the rest of the dungeon first before mining a floor that we just cleared, have you lost your mind?"


    "Hear me out," Rui cated him. "The water isn''t going to stick around for too long, it will eventually be absorbed into the bedrock of the dungeon. I told you the benefits of exploring the dungeon while the water was still there, right?"


    Kane nodded. "Tunnels systems that don''t really lead anywhere except for eventual dead-ends will be blocked off, while tunnel systems that lead to dungeon floors will be open because the water will be drained into the dungeon floors, rather than being blocked off inside the tunnel."


    "Exactly," Rui grinned. "So basically, the water is the best exploration team that we could possibly ask for."


    Kane''s eyes lit up as he considered Rui''s idea. He was sure that his friend''s idea was probably good this time because it was good every time, but he didn''t want to make it too easy for Rui. Questioning his ideas would at the very least make them more solid.


    Still, he had to admit that the way Rui framed it was very attractive.


    "The ants were not bad as an exploration team, but the problem is that they were able to detect dungeons, and they weren''t able tomunicate the existence of one to the queen even if they happened to run into one because they''re stupid," Rui exined. "But the water is perfect. Clogged tunnel systems are the tunnel systems that we ought to avoid exploring, and the open ones are the ones that are most likely to lead to something fruitful."


    "So you intend to run around as far as possible and memorize which ones are clogged and which ones aren''t?


    "Exactly," Rui nodded. "The sooner I start, the better my gains. If I start even an hour from now, much of the gains I could make will be gone for sure. That''s why I have to go. I promise I''m not just gonna kick back and rx."


    "Alright," Kane nodded.


    "You make sure that you''re using Void Step every step of the way, alright?" Rui warned him.


    Kane didn''t have Rui''s senses, he could be caught off-guard by surviving monster or another adventurer. The best way tobat this was to employ his stealth capabilities. No one would possibly catch him off-guard if he used it constantly. Unless of course it was something that wasn''t targeting him specifically, but such a thing was far too unlikely to hit him.


    Regardless, Kane could also use Void Step much more continuously without having to use it on another person as well. The fact that he had to use it on Rui in addition was the reason that he needed to take breaks so frequently.


    Thus, Rui was quite confident that he would be fine as he mined the esoteric ore deposits.


    "Some of the creatures are still alive," Rui nced down at some of the aquatic creatures flipping around. "The amphibian creatures like the crabs are definitely not dying, so make sure that you avoid them."<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    "Don''t worry, I know what I''m doing, you hurry up and make sure you get everything you need before it''s toote.," Kane reassured him before leaping into the emptyke.


    Rui immediately got to work, leaving the floor as he quickly hurried through tunnels, moving downwards as much as he could.


    At the same time, he paid a ton of attention to his surroundings with his Riemannian Echo, making sure to pay attention to clogged and unclogged tunnelworks while carefully inputting all of this information into his Mind Pce.


    The deeper he went, the more the water began eliminating all tunnel systems andworks. When he extended his senses as much as possible in a single direction, while rotating that direction across all three hundred and sixty degrees, he was able to cover a vast amount of area with his senses. It drastically cut down the amount of area that he had to explore.


    He prioritized going downward first before exploring radially outwards. The reason for this was that he would rather cover every existing primary route that was unclogged across the entire dungeon before he explored each primary unclogged route in order to further memorize which secondary and tertiary routes springing out from it were unclogged.


    "This is amazing," Rui murmured.


    Normally, running into deadends in the Shionel Dungeon was a frustratinglymon happening. Most Martial Squires experienced dozens to hundreds of dead-ends before they actually discovered a new path that actually led somewhere. The Shionel Dungeon was quite cruel.


    Only thirty percent of all possible paths at any given juncture actually led somewhere that wasn''t eventually a dead-end. Whenbined with the fact that tunnels very frequently and constantly intersected with each other in the dungeon, it meant that adventurers and explorers ran into many, many junctures as they traveled the Shionel Dungeon.


    The probability of picking paths that didn''t lead to dead-ends was anywhere from one in a thousand to one in a million. When these odds were stacked on top of the fact that losing one''s sense of direction and


    This was why even with a huge number of Martial Squires pouring into the Shionel Dungeon, the exploration of the dungeon took an immense amount of time. Rui was able to bypass this significantly thanks to his Riemannian Echo, but not even he could know which paths were right, and which paths weren''t. Not even he could pick the perfect paths correctly each time.


    Until now.


    The water from the giganticke had spread across all paths that went downwards, elucidating which ones were worth following, and which ones weren''t. Thatbined with his senses, he was able to pick an incredible number of just the right paths.


    Of course, this system wasn''tpletely wless, but it made life far easier.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 900 Another

    ?


    As Rui went down, he scanned the dungeon around him in every direction he could by extending his senses as far in all three hundred and sixty degrees one by one to create a circle. Doing this every split second as he traveled down led to the creation of a tube as he went downwards, mapping circle after circle on top of each other.


    Hemitted all this data to the Mind Pce forter revision, but he was essentially recording which paths within this mapped tube were unfilled and thus open.


    On top of that, he made a great amount of progress as he went downwards by simply following tunnels that weren''t filled. Covering distance that even he would not have been able to cover under normal circumstances.


    He was grateful that the dungeon bedrock wasn''t too porous. Otherwise, all the water would have been drained into the bedrock far too soon. Thankfully, because it didn''t allow water to single into it too easily, the tunnels would be filled for a few hours, to potentially half a day.


    Rui trekked across the tunnels for many hours avoiding the filled tunnels as he chose to stick to the most central part of the Shionel Dungeon he could. He wanted to map as much of the core of the dungeon as he could while he could thanks to choosing the right paths. He also wanted to map the core of the dungeon while the water showed him which parts of the core of the dungeon were worth pursuing and which weren''t.


    He was quite certain that future endeavors into the dungeon with Kane would be a lot more fruitful than their previous endeavors. They would be able to overtake theirpetitors and enemies to such a degree that no one would be able topare to them.


    Rui''s eyes lit up as his senses picked up on a familiar sensation.


    "A new floor!" Rui rejoiced as heughed out loud. "Hahaha, I''m a genius!"


    He didn''t always like tooting his horn, however, even he had to admit that the idea of using the fact the paths in which the water drained across the dungeon tunnels was brilliant. The rate of sess in finding new dungeons by following the right paths was incredible!


    (''I can revisit this dungeon floor when I''m done,'') Rui made a choice on the spot. (''Right now, exploring the unfilled paths before they dry or drain is most important because I have a time limit for that.'')


    Even if he found the new floor, what could he do? Kane was still mining the neenth floor, and even if Martial Squires were massively superhuman in speed, it would still take time given how big the floor was. There was no point in rushing up to grab him and rush down to clear a dungeon when they weren''t even fully done with the prior floor.


    This floor was not going anywhere, and the probability of an adventurer stumbling into this new twentieth floor was extremely low. Hispetitors were still fighting off the more than ten thousand ants that were running around at the higher levels of the Shionel Dungeon. Adventurers had be far more reluctant to simply wander off deeper into the depths of the Shionel Dungeon.


    It was far too risky. The ants were annoying because it was as though they didn''t even feel pain or fear. They justshed out in the most aggressive manner without any care!


    On top of that, their bites were toxic. The venom wasn''t anywhere nearly as potent as the ind taipan, but it caused a tremendous burning sensation atop debilitating swelling. Thus the risk of having a single attacknd on them was too great for them to saunter nonchntly looking for an adventure.


    While this certainly wouldn''t remain true forever, as the many highlypetent and powerful Martial Squires hacked away at the weakling ants one by one, they would definitely annihte every ant at a rapid pace.


    However, Rui was sure that it wouldn''t be happening immediately. Thus the probability of anyone stumbling into this new floor was extremely low.


    He surged forward with the reassurance that the new twentieth floor would remain a secret. He didn''t even bother trying to conduct a preliminary analysis of the dungeon floor, he could do thatter as well.


    He continued moving down to depths that probably not a single human had ever been to. Simplying here required a great amount of fortune without bizarre circumstances like the ones that Rui was in at the moment.


    It wasn''t until an hour or more descending that he ran into yet another floor.


    "Unbelievable," Rui murmured. "This is the life. This game is broken."


    He briefly considered whether he should turn this into his primary method of investigation from here on out. Perhaps he should store enormous amounts of water in his dimensional storage ring before dumping them down certain sections of the Shionel Dungeon?


    "It takes too much water," Rui shook his head.


    It was a fun and novel idea, but the only reason it was working this time was that he dumped a giganticke''s worth of water into the tunnel systems of the dungeon. Ake big enough that it took quite some time to drain out despite the hole being ten meters wide.


    He shook his head putting aside such superfluous thoughts.


    He didn''t have too much time left. He could sense that the water levels were growing shallower as time passed.


    He kept traveling deeper.<novelsnext></novelsnext>Belonging ? N?velDram/a.Org.


    He ran into another dungeon floor.


    And another.


    And another.


    And another.


    And another.


    And another.


    And another.


    And another.


    And another.


    And another.


    And another.


    Half a day had passed, and he had ended up running into twelve floors in total, eachrger than the next.


    Rui had almost be numb to the discovery of new dungeon floors, even if he was extraordinarily ecstatic. His joy reached another level when he discovered onest floor before the water was all gone. Yet just as he went deeper toward it¡­


    Something changed.


    Was it the air?


    The temperature of the air was the same. Yet it was the tone of the atmosphere that changed.


    He was familiar with this sensation, wasn''t he?


    His eyes widened as he experienced a titanic amount of pressure, unlike anything he had ever experienced.


    No, that wasn''t quite right.


    "No¡­" he murmured with a horrified expression. "This feeling¡­"


    He recalled this dread. The fear of a being in an entirely different Realm of power.


    The atmosphere only further chilled as he identified the origin of this sensation. Any joy and ecstasy he was previously experiencing melted away as an enormous amount of dread sped his heart.


    His nerves tingled as a chill crawled up his spine.


    Primordial Instinct begged him to run away, yet he steeled his expression, preparing himself.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 901 Discovery

    ?


    It wasn''t often that Rui ran into something capable of pressuring to this degree.


    It wasn''t often that Rui ran into something that transcended the Squire Realm.


    Yet, the fear it generated had not exceeded his bewilderment and confusion. The sheer dreadful avnche of pressure that washed over him had not deprived him of his rational thoughts.


    The first thought that shed through his mind was the fact that creatures that transcended the Squire Realm as far as threat level went were not supposed to be able to enter the dungeon without triggering its defense mechanisms. How on Earth was something like whatever it was that was emanating such a terrifying degree of pressure not being attacked by the dungeon?


    This utterly contradicted everything he understood about dungeonified vegetation. Dungeons were essentially mutated patches of vegetation that had monsterified after absorbingrge amounts of potent esoteric ore from mines far below the surface with their roots. They produced all kinds of fruit and other organic masses that drew in beasts that consumed them, monsterifying those animals and further animals ahead in the food chain into monsters. The vegetation massively evolved and grew to producerge structures with tunnels andrge cracks producing spaces generally known as floors.


    The defensive mechanism in ce was a violent outbreak against anything it sensed to be a threat to it.


    So why wasn''t it activating now?


    There were several possibilities, but Rui put them aside for now.


    He wasn''t in a position to engage in a long contemtive thought, not with whatever it was that was producing this pressure.


    His nerves, his instincts, every cell in his body insisted that he turn back and run away.


    But he knew he needed to at least get a glimpse of what he was dealing with here.


    Just a glimpse.


    He had evaluated the risk rather rapidly and had unfortunatelye to the conclusion that the risk of just gaining bare basic information on the creature was worth it.


    Not even he was brave enough to even begin conceiving of the idea of challenging this creature.


    He put on a Mind Mask that reduced his presence to the absolute minimum. Sensing him was far harder now given that his presence was no more than an ordinary human at the moment. On top of that, the Shionel Dungeon''s hampering of senses was extremely overbearing over such great distances.


    Inside the Shionel Dungeon, he bet he could sense more than even Martial Seniors could. The reason for this was that he bypassed the sensory impediments of the dungeon, while Martial Seniors would still need to ovee them.


    Thus, he evaluated the probability of being detected by the creature producing the devastating aura to be low enough for it to be worth undertaking the risk to gain some more information about what it was.


    STEP


    He took the gentlest of steps forward.


    Slowly.


    Carefully.


    STEP


    STEP


    STEP


    With each step that he took, the view of the dungeon became increasingly clear, what he saw shocked his senses once he began grasping more of what was within.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    A mountain worth of esoteric ore deposits.


    "What¡­" Rui couldn''t even begin to believe his eyes. (''That''s insane!'')Content is property of N?velDrama.Org.


    He couldn''t help but be bewildered that the Shionel Dungeon contained a floor worth of esoteric ore deposits. Who couldn''t have possibly imagined a mountain worth of esoteric ore deposits existed within the dungeon?


    (''This is inconceivable,'') Rui murmured. (''How can such a huge mine be inside the dungeon?'')


    It wasn''t until he got further and further that he realized what the answer was. His senses detected that the bedrock of the floor was quite different from all other floors so far. It didn''t contain any of the roots embedded across all of it, holding it together like the rest of the entirety of the dungeon. It was almost as if¡­


    (''As if this isn''t part of the dungeon,'') Rui''s eyes widened. (''I''ve hit the actual mine that the dungeon absorbed its esoteric ore deposits from?!'')


    It made sense.


    Rui had spent more than half a day traveling downwards.


    Normally, this wasn''t enough to get to the bottom of the dungeon, otherwise, everybody would have reached the bottom of the dungeon rather easily. The fact that most paths eventually led to dead-ends was the greatest reason that nobody made it very far, among other things.


    However, thanks to the water elucidating the way to the bottom of the dungeon, he had reached the very esoteric ore mine that had given birth to the Shionel Dungeon!


    (''No wonder there''s such a huge amount of esoteric ore deposits in this ce!'') Rui could already sense that he truly was examining the very crust of the tectonic te and not the floor of the dungeon.


    What appeared to be a floor was the extracted and absorbed part of the mine that had been assimted, purified, and then deposited across the entirety of the Shionel Dungeon, though mostly on floors.


    That was when something changed.


    The weight of the air grew even heavier than it already was!


    Suddenly, something entered his senses


    "Is that¡­" Rui frowned as he began steadily heading down towards the mine to get a better grasp.


    He got a better look at it, widening his eyes as he realized what it was.


    "It''s a root," He murmured. "A moving root!"


    The root moved in from somewhere outside of his sensory field, lingering over arge mass of esoteric ore substances.


    What followed was too fast for Rui''s Riemannian Echo to keep up.


    The root and the boulder disappeared, leaving nothing behind but a giant shockwave and a trail of dust.


    "What?!" Rui''s eyes widened.


    He walked down over at a faster pace, throwing away caution to the wind momentarily as he got closer and closer to sense more of what was happening.


    His senses came across more tentacle-like roots,shing out radially as they grabbed esoteric ore deposits at extremely high speeds, pulling them back towards the center. Rui rushed forward until he eventually froze as his Riemannian Echo finally reached the needed range to sense what was at the center of the floor.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 902 Root

    ?


    He froze.


    Not just because of what he saw.


    But also what he saw exerted so much pressure on his mind that it took actual physical effort to push his body forward.


    Not because there was a forcefield pushing back against him, no. But because his subconscious instinct to run away from the grave sense of danger was extremely high. He knew that he had to get away from there as soon as possible.


    Yet what he saw was shocking.


    He was unable to turn away.


    What pushed him away from it with fear also pulled him towards it with shock.


    It was as though these two emotions pulling and pushing at his mind were crushing his mind. It was painful on a psychological level.


    (''What¡­ is that?'') Rui wondered with horror as he stared at the center of the mining floor.


    It was a giant messy blob of wood and bark.


    Its upper half was connected to a multitude of rootsing from up above.


    Its lower half consisted of more roots than consisted of the one that Rui saw earlier, reaching for the esoteric raw ores across the entire mine.


    In between its upper half and lower half was a separation that opened up as the tentacles tossedrge unrefined ore deposits into the opening that shut close after the ore deposit fell in. Rui sensed a liquid sloshing around inside the mouth once it closed, slowly dissolving the unrefined ore boulder.


    (''Is that¡­ a mouth?!'') Rui''s eyes widened as he realized what was going on. (''The roots don''t directly absorb the esoteric unrefined ore deposits themselves. They feed it to that¡­ root mouth that absorbs the unrefined ore deposits, refines it, then sends it across the rest of the dungeon through the roots that connect it to the entire dungeon everywhere.'')


    Rui waspletely and utterly bewildered by this discovery. (''The vegetation mutated not just in size but also mutated to be able to absorb unrefined ore deposits faster and more efficiently.'')


    The root mouth was the size of a small mountain, surrounded by a mountain range of a mine. It made him sick just to look at it. It was grotesque and sickening. Yet he couldn''t help but watch in awe as it lifted esoteric ore deposits the size of a small city block with each root. That alone told Rui how much power it had given how many roots it had.


    "No Martial Squire¡­ No Martial Squires can beat that thing head-on¡­ That''s beyond the Squire Realm inbat power." Rui shook his head.


    He couldn''t picture even the many Martial Squires that Chairman Deacon had gathered taking down the Root of the dungeon.


    In fact, he found it hard to hard to picture himself not getting annihted by it. The most rational choice was to simply ignore it and pretend it didn''t exist.


    Belonging ? N?velDram/a.Org.


    (''But would I really be clearing the dungeon if I ignore all this treasure? This is basically a floor, and will be treated as such by everyone,'') Rui wiped swathes of sweat off his forehead.


    The pressure was more tiring than a whole day of slogging in the dungeon. He hadn''t even experienced it for more than ten seconds in real time.


    For now, he just needed to get away.


    He did not want to stay around any longer.


    He hade across some profound discoveries that changed his view of the Shionel Dungeon.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    Was the dungeon actually sentient?


    Given that its Root was literally a mouth that swallowed and digested food? Or was this perhaps like a carnivorous nt that could consume despite not possessing a consciousness?


    He didn''t entirely know.


    Perhaps every dungeon was like this at its Root? Perhaps it was necessary for dungeons to develop such a mutation to elerate their ess to nutrition.


    Regardless, it made him feel quite icky being inside the Shionel Dungeon. This was a new feeling for him. He normally felt quitefortable in the Shionel Dungeon because he knew that every other creature wasn''t. Thus it was quite rxing, to the point that he could even take a nap in the dungeon.


    Now, however, he felt quite strange being in the dungeon with the new insights that he had made from the new discoveries that he had seen.


    He quickly made his way back up, spending several hours back on the journey as he navigated through the dungeon, before finally reaching Kane.


    "Hey," Kane greeted him nonchntly.


    There was a huge pile of esoteric ore deposits that Kane had gathered. He hadn''t put it in the ring yet because he didn''t know when Rui would return and in all likelihood he would run out of cells if he kept it in the ring the entire time.


    "How did it go?" Kane raised an eyebrow. "Given the long face, I''m guessing you didn''t find a single floor eh?"


    He chuckled, patting Rui on the shoulder. "A for effort but life ain''t that easy, my friend. Let''s get going."


    Rui cracked a smile for the first time in what felt like a while. "Is that so?"


    He made sure tomit Kane''s expression to memory when he exined everything that he found.


    Who knew? If he ever mastered sketching in this world, he could make this world''s first meme, a popr form of humor amongst gen z that he never quite understood back on Earth.


    "Twelve floors?!" Kane recoiled in shock. "And an ore-eating mouth for a root?!"


    "Yep?"


    "You''re not messing with me, are you?"


    "Nope."


    Kane peered at him suspiciously, narrowing his eyes to a slit.


    "I''m serious," Rui shook his head. "Frankly, I have a hard time believing it myself. But, it is definitely real. I''ve memorized the locations of the twelve floors, so we can go get them the next time wee here."


    "Hmmm¡­ And what about this alleged Root floor?" Kane asked with a dubious expression.


    "Honestly," Rui sighed. "I know I came here for a challenge, but damn. I need to think about it."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 903 Resolve

    ?


    He hade here to challenge himself. Not toss himself into the jaws of death.


    Literally.


    He had gained plenty of stimtion and experience against bizarre and strange monsters under bizarre and strange circumstances. He had gained an epiphany about the nature of his Martial Art and its rtionship with him.


    He felt much stronger than he was when he first arrived at the Shionel Confederation.


    That was the whole point of challenging himself, it was to take him to high heights. He knew that there were very few things that made a person progress as well as stakes did. When he thrust himself into the dungeon, he was putting himself on the line, and he was putting his friend on the line as well, whom he dragged around.


    It had definitely helped him achieve his goal even as it was now, but he definitely intended to finish the objective of clearing the dungeon.


    He just wasn''t sure if he ought to throw himself at the Root.


    That was a suicide mission as he currently was. Was it really worth it to stick to his goal even if it almost certainly would cost him his life when the point of the goal had been aplished?


    (''Then again, does a goal really mean much if I''m willing to break it so easily?'') Rui clenched his fist. (''Can I really pursue my Martial Path and develop my Martial Art to the higher Realms with such a flimsy willpower and determination?'')


    Belonging ? N?velDram/a.Org.


    He instinctively felt the answer was no.


    (''Why do I pursue my Martial Path?'') A spontaneous question bloomed into his mind, and the answer popped into his head just as quickly. (''Project Water. My greatest dream and ambition.'')


    His ambition of developing a Martial Art that embodied the concept of Adaptive Evolution that Bruce Lee had alluded to in his time. At a time when such a school of thought did not even exist, his idol Bruce Lee hade across the profound truth and spread it to the world, changing the perceptions of martial arts forever.


    Another question immediately presented itself to him.


    (''Am I willing to die for my dream? For my Martial Path? For Project Water?'')


    This time, there was no hesitation.


    He didn''t even need to voice the answer.


    His fist clenched as he remembered the final days of his previous life. The medical staff had given up on him for he always refused to follow their strong rmendations of retiring and not straining himself any further.


    He had pushed himself closer to death, in a desperate attempt to realize his dream until his body literally copsed, unable to support his determination, unable to allow him to fulfill his dream, before eventually sumbing to death.


    (''Am I willing to die for my dream, was it?'') His eyes narrowed. (''I did it once, and you sure as hell bet I''m willing to do it again.'')


    At that moment he had inadvertently made up his mind.


    He did not think that a coward who broke hismitments to himself out of fear of death could realize such a lofty ambition. He did not think that such a person could reach higher Realms.


    He did not want to be such a person if that was the case.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    (''Besides, I''d feel toome if I gave so easily,'') Rui snorted, amused. (''I may not be as daring and insane as the likes of Nel, but I''m not a pussy either.'')


    He immediately began considering several things. The difficulty. Theplications. The actual objective, specifically.


    (''Well, for one, I don''t even know if the Root will attack me if I start grabbing the unrefined esoteric ore deposits,'') Rui realized, amused.


    What if he did end up exploring the Root floor, and the Root just ignored him as he went about his business mining the mine?


    In that case, it would mean the floor waspletely harmless.


    He would feel quite silly having grown all serious about something so harmless.


    However, he did not think that this was likely. It was quite likely that the Root would consume anything that moved if it shared even a remote rtion to the tree on the sixteenth floor with the tree.


    In that case, the difficulty was probably extremely high.


    Rui recalled the speed at which the rootsshed forward and snatched away giant boulders faster than Rui could even perceive with his Riemannian Echo.


    (''It''s absurdly fast,'') Rui sighed.


    And absurdly powerful as well. It would kill him on the spot, all before he could even realize it. He was outssed in speed and power.


    Although he still didn''t think the Root matched up to the sheer titanic demonstrations f power that Senior Ceeran disyed that day on Vilun Ind, it was still not something a Squire-level force ought to be able to handle.


    (''Still, that isn''t enough to stop me,'') Rui''s eyes lit up with interest and eagerness and several ideas, and courses of action popped into his.


    All of them, however, acknowledge one thing. (''I''m too weak as I''m right now.'')


    There was no conceivable n of action that he could even fathom when his ability to avoid death was so weak. He was simply too weak as a grade-six Martial Squire to resist such a level of power with his existing capabilities.


    That meant only one thing.


    (''I need to get stronger,'') Rui mused. (''It''s time for training arc.'')


    He joked as he felt a great deal of rity clearing the fog that had covered his mind since the discovery of the Root at the bottom of the Shionel Dungeon.


    (''I need to train and get stronger,'') His eyes narrowed. (''Strong enough to take down that damn thing and clear the dungeon like I set out to do so in the first ce.'')


    He felt more excited than he had in a while. He hade to realize in hindsight that he had grown bored of the Shionel Dungeon in recent times. He had be so good at it that it was no longer as fun as it was.


    Things were about to change now, however.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 904 Monitoring

    ?


    "Hey, did you hear me?" Kane knocked on Rui''s head who was deeply absorbed in thought. "Let''s go already."


    "Ah, right, my bad," Rui nodded, breaking out of his stupor.


    He felt a lot more refreshed after having decisively figured out what he wanted to do, and it reflected in his demeanor.


    The two of them quickly took the esoteric deposits from the neenth floor before heading back out of the dungeon, making sure to carefully use Void Step to make sure no one ever detected them before heading back to their little discreet inn just outside the Adventurer Ring road.Text ? by N0ve/lDrama.Org.


    While the two of them, especially Rui, would have loved to crash into bed and take a good long rest in their rooms, they still had some work to do.


    They immediately set out to a remote location in the Shionel Confederation that they had already scouted long beforehand. This would serve as the location of the drop point of the esoteric ore deposits for Guildmaster Bradt.


    They quickly buried the portion of the esoteric ore deposits in the ground, before covering it up meticulously to ensure that it was level with thend around it. Rui even used his hot air pipe to dry out the darker sand to erase any indications of it being dug up recently.


    The two of them immediately headed out to another location to make a second delivery, one of the rowdier and chaotic districts outside of the Adventurer Ring town, making their way to a single inconspicuous building.


    KNOCK KNOCK¡­ KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK¡­ KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK¡­


    The door promptly opened as the two shuffled in.


    "Ah, Squire Falken," A man arrived, greeting them. "I see you''vee for another delivery."


    "Indeed," Rui replied simply.


    "Pleasee right this way," The man led them deeper inside the building before they arrived at arge storage container. "In there will do just fine."


    Rui nodded, walking in before he released the huge amount of ore deposits that he had left, and walked away.


    "We have confirmed and received the delivery," The man nodded.


    Rui and Kane did not stick around for much longer and immediately activated Void Step and left.


    The longer they stuck around the esoteric ore deposits without the technique active, the greater the risk they were putting themselves in. It wasn''t long before they finally reached their rooms.


    "Oh man," Kane groaned. "I''m crashing. Don''t disturb me for half a day."


    "Get some rest," Rui chuckled before quickly changing and lying down on his bed.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    He was quite tired too, but he was far too excited about recent developments to be able to go to sleep. He could finally think about it extensively in peace.


    (''I can''t believe I found twelve more floors,'')


    It was surreal to him. For a brief moment, he even doubted his memories, wondering whether he had even conjured it up inside his own head and it was never real to begin with. After all, such a thing did not happen usually.


    Or ever, for that matter. It took the adventurers in the world nine months to discover and clear the first twelve floors. These things took an immense amount of time, after all. Discovering even one floor was something that was extremely rare for anybody.


    Rui had just gone on to discover twelve, which was probably record-breaking anywhere.


    (''The biggest issue is that Kane and I are unable to monopolize the dungeons effectively, this time,'') He sighed.


    He couldn''t monitor all twelve floors that he discovered, that was beyond impractical, it was downright impossible. His range limited him with the ability to monitor a single floor, and nothing else. He most certainly did not possess the ability to cover all twelve dungeon floors simultaneously.


    Such a feat was something he would only be able to do when he was a Senior, or perhaps a Master. He did not think that this feat was within the realm of possibility as a Martial Squire. Even when his Martial body and Martial Art did eventually be stronger as he reached the peak of the Squire Realm, he would be unable to aplish such a feat.


    The only other option to even attempt trying to monitor and restrict the dungeon to other floors would be to manually check up on all of them frequently.


    Which was just an absurd proposition. It took a ton of time to travel across all of them given the great distance between each of them, and he was incapable of it.


    Besides, even if he was somehow able to monitor all of them in a practical fashion, what was he going to do when Chairman Deacon''s teams ran into it? Many of them were simply far too many to kill, making it impractical and highly dangerous, and risky. Considering that these Martial Squires would love to run into him, it was not worth it


    This was the reason he had chosen to avoid other Martial Squires entirely, it was not worth engaging with all of them.


    If Chairman Deacon did run into one of the twelve dungeons that Rui had discovered, then he would simply have to ept it and move on.


    Regardless, he did not think it would happen too soon, so it didn''t matter either way. The ants still consumed their time, after all. Although he was quite certain that the other adventurers and Martial Artists would destroy every single ant without a doubt, it bought him at least a little bit of time for sure.


    (''With that out of the way, there is the other matter to consider,'') Rui mused.


    The Root floor, as Rui had dubbed it, contained more esoteric ore yield than any other floor in the dungeon, although they were unrefined.


    It was basically the final boss floor of the entire dungeon. And the monster upying the floor was the very dungeon itself, consuming, refining, and then distributing the refined ore outputs into other parts of the dungeon where there was space to store them; namely the floors.


    It was the final boss of the Shionel Dungeon, in a way.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 905 Information

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    Given that Rui had resolved to clear that floor, he had inadvertently put himself at odds with an extraordinarily powerful creature. Even if the Root of the Dungeon was not quite on par with Martial Seniors, it was still extraordinarily powerful and beyond the limits of the Squire Realm.


    Rui already knew that if he simply tossed himself in front of it, he would get smashed like a bug.


    Yet, he intended to confront it.


    He would rather thetter ur without the former. The only way for that to happen was to grow stronger.


    Which meant that it was time for another training phase.


    It had been three months since thest training phase that he had undergone to prepare for the Shionel Dungeon. The techniques that hee up with back then had resulted in him dominating the Shionel Dungeon extremely thoroughly, upending the stable deadlock that had existed prior, and uniting a ton of people who would very much like to see him dead as a result.


    Rui had confidence in his ability to craft techniques that would allow him to be capable of insane feats. He had strong reason to be confident with his scientific martial arts background, as well as a proven track record of developing highly effective techniques that were game-changing, be it the Hungry Pain technique that fundamentally strengthened the Squire Realm and made them significantly stronger from the very start which was one of the reasons that he was strong despite only having spent less than four years in the Squire realm.


    His Void Pathfinder had drawn the adoration of a prominent and powerful Martial Senior like Senior Ceeran as a way of oveing the limitations of uracy at great ranges and distances. He had opened up an entirely new paradigm of aim in his desire to gain uracy at huge ranges. Although he hadn''t used the technique in a while because of how useless it was within the Shionel Dungeon, it was still a valuable grade-ten technique.


    His Transverse Resonance technique allowed him to hit above his paygrade remarkably well, allowing him tounch attacks up to four times as powerful as his otherwise most powerful ranged attack.


    His Riemannian Echo could negate conventional sensory jamming technology as it operated on principles that he was quite certain was not used in sensory techniques, otherwise there would be a lot of Martial Squires replicating at least a part of his sess.


    That was why he was quite certain that he had a solid chance of being able to cleanly handle the Root''s terrifying ability to end him, as well as the herculean task of trying to kill the root in the worst-case scenario.


    He did not need to fight it head-on, necessarily. He just needed to clear the floor.


    For one, he did not think his regr tactic with him and Kane using Void Step to bypass senses would work. He knew that Void Step only worked on sentient beings with a sense of awareness and self-awareness.


    It had already failed to work on flora lifeforms like the tree on the sixteenth floor, thus Rui didn''t think it would be particrly effective against the Root. Unfortunately for Kane, or fortunately rather, he was going to have to sit out the raid of the Root floor.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    Unless he could grow massively stronger in a training phase by developing a technique that allowed him to be useful against the Root, but Rui highly doubted that this was possible. Kane had never even created a technique from scratch, and had only conducted a single major modification as far as Rui was aware. He knew that ordinary Martial Artists could not develop techniques as fast as he did. Developing an original technique from the start usually required a year, if not multiple, to do.


    This was the reason that Martial Squires spent many years in the Squire Realm before bing Martial Seniors.


    Rui, however, possessed a lot of confidence that he could do it within a much shorter amount of time. However, even before he could begining up with temtes, concepts, and theoretical frameworks for the techniques that he intended to develop, he needed toe up with the conditions needed to clear the floor, one way or another. He could not just create a technique for a specific purpose without understanding what was precisely needed of the technique.


    This would require him to build a deep understanding of the Root. He would need to spend a lot of time understanding its strengths and weaknesses before he could even think about taking on the giant creature of the Shionel Dungeon.


    For instance, if it turned out to be the case that it was weaker the closer Rui got to it, then Rui would immediately develop a technique that would allow him to close the distance between him and the Root. Or if it turned out to be the case that its vitals were extremely weak, then Rui would work on creating superior versions of the Reverberating Lance technique.


    He needed to know such information if he had any hope of clearing the Root floor, that was for sure.


    Regardless, there were some basic things he already knew. The roots of the Root were extremely fast and capable of exerting a tremendous amount of force. It had thousands of main roots emerging from it, and each of them possessed as much power as mid-to-high-grade Martial Squires.


    That was what he was contending with.


    Thus he needed to either withstand dozens of attacks of such power simultaneously altogether or he needed to possess means to evade them.Belonging ? N?velDram/a.Org.


    Or abination of the two. He couldn''t possibly have either.


    A multitude of possibilities shed through his mind, though most weren''t feasible for him. What he needed was a realistic way of mitigating the heavy advantages that the Root had against him.


    He considered going through an abysmal amount of conditioning, attempting a brute force method of toughening himself as much as possible, but he shook his head at the idea, he knew that that was not going to work.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 906 Spider

    ?


    In the following days, Rui dedicated only half the time he normally did to dungeon raiding and clearing.


    Given that they already knew the location of the twentieth floor, they didn''t need to waste time exploring for a day or so.


    "So this is the twentieth floor, eh?" Kane murmured. "I guess you weren''t lying out of your ass when you said that you discovered a ton of floors."


    Rui tutted. "I wouldn''t lie about such a thing, you know."


    "I know, but it was just so hard to believe, that I had to put on my suspicious face, you know," He shrugged


    The two of them bickered a bit before entering the dungeon.


    "Is that¡­?" Kane''s eyes widened.


    "Spider webs," Rui nodded, confirming. "Looks like we have just happened upon their of a spider."


    "I fucking hate spiders," Kane muttered, growing more wary.


    The floor was a bit of a novelty due to the fact that the entire floor had been transformed into nothing more than the nest for nearly endless spider webs crisscrossing across the entire floor.


    "Where the hell even are the esoteric ore deposits?" Kane frowned.


    "They''re in a nest at the bottom of the Shionel Dungeon," Rui replied. "And coincidentally, it also happens to be where the spider currently is at the moment."


    "What about all these webs?" Kane gestured at the manyyers of webbing between them and their objective.


    SHING


    A swift swing of his sword severed the webbing with ease.


    "The webbing possesses quantities of the esoteric substances that make my sword as effective as it is," Rui replied.


    It was rather convenient as they made their way to the bottom of the floor clearing out a path for themselves as they headed downwards, until, of course, the spider responsible for creating all the webbing noticed that something was wrong.


    TRTRTRTRTRTR


    It produced a strange clicking sound as it came rushing up toward the areas where the webbing was destroyed. What shocked Rui and Kane was the speed at which it waded through its own webbing. Like normal spiders, the spider seemed almost entirely immune to the stickiness of its own webbing, it didn''t get hindered like all other creatures normally would.


    It also possessed powerful limbs that allowed it swiftly shoot through its webbings, as it climbed across them faster than Rui could cut across them.


    Thankfully, the Void Step technique was active thus neither Rui nor Kane was directly detected by the spider, but that wasn''t entirelyforting. Rui was worried that the spider would be able to detect them indirectly.


    He deeply inhaledunched a powerful Might Roar sh st projectile, and followed up with three more, aimed toward the spider.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    The four projectiles were each faster than the previous, eventually merging into a single projectile as it struck the spider.


    The spider staggered at the sudden unexpected attack, yet the attack did no damage despite whatsoever catching the creature off-guard. Considering that tier four Transverse Resonance contained four times the attack power of a grade six Martial Squire''s distant attacks, Rui could see that this creature was far tougher than he had given it credit.


    He could tell that it was searching its surroundings for the source of the attack, confused at being unable to detect anything.Content is property of N?velDrama.Org.


    "Let''s go back," Rui told him. "We need to approach this a little differently."


    The two of the returned back to the tunnels that they hade from, while the spider quickly fixed all the webbing that Rui had severed.


    "What''s the issue?" Kane frowned, turning to Rui. "Your long-range attack was perfect. Everything was going well."


    "I think we should avoid entering the dungeon so long as the webbing is intact," Rui replied to him calmly. "It takes away our greatest advantage."


    Kane furrowed his eyebrows. "You mean my technique¡­?"


    "Yeah,"


    "But how though? It never sensed us,"


    "It never sensed us directly, it cannot," Rui told him. "But it can locate us indirectly. You recall what I told you about how my senses can detect you despite being in the Shionel Dungeon?"


    "Yeah," Kane looked up as he recalled Rui''s words. "Something about detecting me through where my footprints led you, rather than detecting me directly."


    A look of realization dawned on his face as he understood what Rui meant. "So this is what you meant. The severed webbing."


    "That''s right," Rui nodded. "The path of the severed webbing is the footprints in this case. By following the path of the severed webbing, it can arrive at our position at any given time. Obviously, this is not nearly that simple, but it reveals too much and is far too risky. Tarants have potent venom and I''m willing to bet that that monster is worse. We don''t want to get anywhere near it. We definitely do not want to give it an inkling of our position because of how fast it can navigate the web. We, on the other hand, are forced to move slower than normal because of the webs."


    It definitely made a lot of sense to Kane.


    "But at that point, we can''t even enter the dungeon floor, we''re just going to have to brave that risk, honestly," Kane frowned.


    "Not if we have a better way," Rui disagreed. "We don''t need to get close to kill the monster. We have me, after all."


    "Oh right," Kane pped his forehead. "Man, I forgot that we can attack the monster from extremely far away. That''s perfect. We normally don''t go for that route because sniping down every individual monster is absolutely an inefficient way of going about it when we have my Void Step."


    "Yeah," Rui nodded. "The problem is that it''s going to take a while alright."


    He walked over to the edge of the tunnel before he peered down. "The good news is that the ODA System solves the problem of range for us. The bad news is that this monster is tough as hell and killing it is going to require me to stack a ton of attacks.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 907 Requirements

    ?


    Rui''s concerns turned out to be true, it did take far too much time for him to take down the spider. He knew it would given the fact that tier four Transverse Resonance did not so much as cause the Spider to bruise.


    This highlighted the difference between him and the spider.


    (''Fitting for the sole monster of a floor,'') Rui mused.


    Generally, the more monsters a floor had, the weaker each monster was individual. Floors with a lesser number of monsters tended to have monsters that were individually stronger.


    This was almost certainly the case with the floor with the Earthen Basilisk. Just purely off of the size of the creature, Rui knew that its physicality was quasi-Senior level, though its actual threat level was probably at the very peak of the Squire Realm due to the fact that it was a beast with no techniques and tactical capabilities.


    In this case, Rui didn''t think the spider was nearly as physically tough as the earthen basilisk, but it certainly was more lethal offensively due to the poison.


    (''Pity it''s not going to save it here,'') He narrowed his eyes as he sessivelyunched four Mighty Roar sh st sound projectiles.


    THWOOM THWOOM THWOOM THWOOM


    The four supersonic sound pulses ovepped and constructive interference sessfully took ce as an extraordinarily powerful trajectory mmed into the spider''s eye.


    SPLAT


    As tough as the spider was, not even it could withstand such powerful attacks on such a vital spot. It shuddered in pain as it began bleeding from the wound, clearly bewildered.


    What it didn''t understand was from where and how such an attack was hitting it.


    (''Sensing sound projectiles are already hard to sense, to begin with,'') Rui mused. (''On top of that, in the Shionel Dungeon, sensing it is an absolute impossibility. If not for the fact that this technique is inconducive to be used in the environment of the Shionel Dungeon, this would have been one of my trump cards in addition to his de and pipe.'')


    The ODA System was also an important reason why this tactic was working in the first ce.


    Normally, using the ODA System along with Transverse Resonance was too difficult, since both techniques required an enormous amount of data when working with the VOID algorithm, which also quite mentally taxing.


    Thankfully, the spider was a creature that seemed extremelyfortable with remaining stationary. Which made his life easier as far as constructing predictive models went. He could rather easily know well ahead of time which way and how the spider was going to move.


    This reduced the burden from the VOID algorithm just enough that he could use it with tier-four Transverse Resonance.


    It took hours before he was finally done.


    THUD


    The spider''s body copsed after tons of attacks finally wounded it enough to make it bleed out to death.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    "It''s done," Rui sighed, copsing down as he rested on his arms in a sitting position.


    "Get some rest," Kane told him. "I''ll go mine all the esoteric ore deposits since I didn''t contribute to anything this time."Content is property of N?velDrama.Org.


    "Appreciate that," Rui nodded, left to his own thoughts while Kane descended downwards to the corpse. He didn''t even need to clear a path to the corpse since Rui''s continuous attack had already done that.


    Rui on the other hand considered the battle he had just undergone.


    (''That spider is probably exponentially less powerful than the Root,'') Rui mused. (''It''s uneptable that I can only kill it with such a great advantage.'')


    He considered the reason that he had to resort to a strategy that was no different from running away from the spider.


    (''Too slow, too reliant on stealth, too susceptible to poison, Too weak to inflict meaningful damage within a short span of time,'') Rui sighed.


    There were all reasons that he was unable to fight the spider head-on face-to-face. He would need to address all these reasons and more.


    (''That''s going to entail a lot of hard work, not to mention the creativity,'') Although Rui did have an exceptional track record when it came to developing techniques, it was by no means easy. He needed to push himself to the limit to develop powerful techniques. He didn''t just conjure them up out of thin air magically.


    He was consumed in thought surrounding the matter even until Kane was done, and the two of them returned from the dungeon, heading back.


    "Training?" Kane frowned. "You''re going to be training in the Shionel Confederation? Really?"


    "Yeah," Rui nodded. "That''s why I was hoping you could do the deliveries yourself. I need as much time to myself as possible considering all the dungeon raiding that we do."


    Kane wasn''t entirely sure why Rui was subjecting himself to training outside of the Kandrian Empire so far from it, but he simply nodded. "Gotcha, see ya."


    He left, disappearing into thin air, toplete the chores while Rui turned his attention back to himself.


    (''Before I can even begin training I need to develop a theoretical framework for the techniques,'') Rui knew that he couldn''t jump the gun. (''And for that, I need to identify what I seek out of my techniques.'')


    When he considered what he knew about the Root, there was one thing that he knew he sought the most.


    (''I need a technique that allows me to broadly cope with the absurd speed of the Root''s roots,'') He still recalled how he couldn''t perceive the root''s blinding speed with his Riemannian Echo.


    Of course, the Riemannian Echo was not a sensory organ that Rui sensed through as much as he was reading it, which made it slower. Still, it was fast enough that he would be unable to react to it had he been there in the flesh as well.


    This was most likely not a tenable state for winning. He could not allow for such a giantbat speed gap especially when there was also a giant power gap that came with it, he would be sted with critical injuries before he could even begin to react.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 908 Speed

    ?


    The reason he was particrly fixated on reducing thebat speed gap between him and his opponent was that he did not have faith in his passive defensive capabilities. If the speed gap between them was high, then that meant he would not be able to evade attacks, which naturally meant he would be forced to endure the attacks with his body.


    Given that the attacks were naturally fast enough to bypass his ordinary reaction time, he did not possess the ability to defend against them with active defensive techniques. Active defensive techniques like Inner Divergence and Flux Earther require being able to intercept attacks to some degree, which he could not do if he couldn''t react to the attacks due to them being too fast for him.


    This meant that if he could not react to the attack then he could only rely on passive defensive techniques such as his Adamant Reforging where his body was conditioned to be tougher generally against all forms of damage.


    However, Rui knew for a fact that a single Squire-level technique was not going to save his life against the power that the Root had exhibited. Which meant that he could not tank the attack unless one of his techniques was a passive defensive technique.Text ? by N0ve/lDrama.Org.


    "Mmmm¡­" Rui''s expression turned uneasy at the thought of that.


    Frankly, he wasn''t able toe up with much of any idea at all for a passive defensive technique. Unfortunately, the field of passive defensive techniques was a highly narrow field in so far as the principles and mechanics of the techniques went.


    All of the techniques revolved around conditioning. Conditioning was the one and only principle that mattered as far as this particr field went.


    Rui had rued rich scientific background across his long life, but he wasn''t sure whether he was able toe up with a brand new paradigm for passive defensive techniques at the moment. It was not easy, and certainly much more demanding as far as creativity went.


    He would rather focus on techniques that he was morefortable creating.


    (''A technique to mitigate the speed gap it is,'') Rui decided. (''That will be the first technique project.'')


    Now that he had made up his mind about the first project, he felt more rity and confidence.


    (''I also need a way to damage it,'') Rui mused.


    For this, he wasn''t even entirely sure if he even needed a new technique. He had existing means to hurt the Root, perhaps even critically, although definitely needed to verify his concerns.


    The problem was that he wasn''t even sure he could handle more than one project at the moment. Not only did he need to spend time clearing the dungeon as the Voider, but he also needed to keep his regr activities in the dungeon up as Rui.


    Those two took time, leaving him not much room for any other technique development project.


    Still, he hadn''t formed too many concrete ns as far as how to deal with the Root, the technique to mitigate the Root''s speed was the most basic condition, regardless of what tactic or strategy he chose to employ, he would needed to be able to handle that speed. He couldn''t conceive of a way to win without it.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    Thus the technique he was developing was merely him fulfilling one of the requirements to not dying, let alone it being the key to actually winning.


    That put into perspective how difficult the task that he had undertaken was.


    (''I can put the strategizing asides after I have gained more information, for now, the information I have is good enough to justify focusing on this development project,'') Rui closed his eyes as he began considering the potential principles and concepts that could help him mitigaterge speed gaps.


    He was able toe up with numerous ideas, but he was far from able to identify which ones were the best, or even viable.


    (''One additional condition for this technique is that it needs to be able to effectively boost my reaction speed and movements speed,'') Rui mused.


    The reason for this was that he would not be able to hang with the sheer speed that the Roots had demonstrated without both. If his movement speed was toocking, then he would not be able to actually move out of the way of an attack even if he could react to it as it came. If his reaction speed was toocking, then even if he was fast enough to move out of its attacks, he would not begin those movements in time because he would not be able to react in time.


    Thus he needed something that effectively boosted both.


    The problem was that reaction speed andbat speed both operated through different mechanics. Reaction speed was a product of the timeframes needed for the cognitive process involved with reactions.


    The senses perceived a stimulus, sending a message through the nervous system to the brain. The brain then received and processed the information, beforeing to a decision and then rying the decision to the body through the nervous system, causing the body to move.


    Movement speed was simply a product born from the force the body generated rtive to its body mass. The greater the ratio, the greater the movement speed.


    How was he able to create a single technique that boosted both these kinds of speeds? It was almost impossible considering how differently they function.


    (''Frankly, reaction speed isn''t as much of an issue as movement speed,'') Rui sighed.


    He had always been able to surpass his reaction speed thanks to the predictive systems of the VOID algorithm. By knowing how his opponents were going to move ahead of time, he could effectively bypass the need to react after the attack began, since he was already making preparations for it before it began.


    (''The problem is that it cannot bridge gigantic speed gaps,'') Rui sighed. (''At the very least, I am too weak to do that. Even if I construct a powerful predictive model for the Root based on observing all its patterns, it doesn''t matter if I cannot move out of the way in time.'')


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 909 Forestep

    Though the predictive model allowed him to bypass reaction speed by recing reactions and reflexes with predictions and foreknowledge, there were limits to this. It could not help him evade attacks that were far faster than him. At least, not as he and it were as they currently were.


    For example, even if he tried dodging well ahead of time due to having foreknowledge, the Root would most certainly alter its trajectory to match its dodge. If it could see him moving much ahead of time out of the way, then obviously it would not simply hit empty air, no, it would instead shift to attack the dodging Rui.


    This meant that he could not dodge too much ahead of time even if he knew it wasing well ahead of time. He needed to time the evasion maneuvers just right, it could not be too much of a headstart.


    However, because Rui was so much slower, he could not dodge it if he didn''t get a headstart either.


    Thus if he started too early, he would get hit because the Root could alter its trajectory and hit him to where he had dodged to.Text ? by N0ve/lDrama.Org.


    If he didn''t start early, then he would get hit because his body was too slow to move out of the way when they both started moving at the same time.


    That was why the predictive model was not enough. Damned if he did, damned if he didn''t.


    Rui had used the VOID algorithm to ovee speed gaps before, however, he had never seeded in doing so with such arge speed gap.


    The difference between his Martial Art techniques/body and the Root''s attacks was no different from the difference between a normal human and a speed bullet.


    The VOID algorithm was currently unable to bridge such a gigantic gap all by itself. Even if the VOID algorithm allowed his mind to keep up thanks to predictions, the physical restrictions of his movements were not something that the VOID algorithm could fix.


    (''What if I only focused on a technique that amplified movement speed and discard reaction speed?'') Rui''s eyes lit up in interest.


    Generally, this was not advised. A body that moved faster than the mind was dangerous in many ways. For one, if the body moved too fast for the mind, then the Martial Artist would be unable to react to their own movements. Thus, if they needed to stop a maneuver at a certain point, they might stop it a split secondter,pletely throwing off their momentum and bnce!


    In the worst-case scenario, they might end up killing themselves with their own techniques, and causing themselves harm was almost guaranteed.


    They might start to throw a single punch and the very next moment find themselves crashing into the ground.


    The body ought not to exceed the mind when it came to speed.


    Furthermore, inbat, the body moving faster than the mind would mean that the mind would be unable to react to its opponent''s movements in response to the body''s. That became extremely dangerous and would create openings allowing the opponent to exploit them and kill them.


    (''However, what if someone''s mind possessed an algorithm that allowed them to bypass mental speed with the help of foreknowledge?'') Rui''s eyes widened. (''What if someone''s mind acted on the future instead of the present?'')<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    In that case, the mind would be able to keep up with the body!


    Since the mind did not need to react to the body if it already knew exactly when what was going to happen.


    (''In that case, I can potentially focus on a technique that relies on maximizing bodily speed without any care of my reaction speed being left behind,'') Rui realized. (''Then I canpensate for myck in reaction speed with extensive predictions.'')


    Rui closed his eyes as he envisioned the mechanics of such a technique. A technique where he predicted an attack ahead of time, and prepared the movement speed supplementing technique, preparing exactly what movements to make ahead of time, allowing him to execute movements faster than his mind at the right time.


    His mind did not need to keep up with the body in speed to know what was going on since the predictions would already allow it to know what was going on, it merely needed to execute the movement supplementing technique at the right time.


    Thus it was not different from pre-programming his body to respond in a certain way at certain times ahead of time.


    Rui''s eagerly evaluated and simted such a technique inside his mind, conducting some preliminary analyses on whether the technique was viable, and if it was viable, whether was it worth investing in.


    (''It depends on what movement-supplementing technique I use to construct the technique,'') Rui concluded. (''It also depends on how solid my prediction model is of my opponent'')


    He also realized that he couldn''t use this technique unless he already had a super well-developed predictive model at hand. Which meant that he couldn''t use it at the beginning of a random encounter fight. He would simply get himself killed because he wouldn''t have any predictions at the beginning of the fight.


    (''What kind of technique should I incorporate for movement speed?'') Rui narrowed his eyes.


    He had several options. He could get a maneuvering technique that relied on uracy, precision, and application of speed rather than increasing raw speed, though it allowed the user to effectively move faster, even if actually faster. The techniques of this field were certainly quite powerful, Rui knew that for a fact.


    (''However¡­'') He shook his head, sighing. (''It''s not suited for my new project.'')


    Suddenly, a random thought entered his head. (''Speaking of which, I have yet to name this project.'')


    He considered a few names briefly before settling on one that had a nice ring to it. "Project Forestep."


    Should Rui seed, he predicted that his ability to engage with much faster opponents would rise much more drastically!


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 910 Convenient

    ?


    Rui grew incredibly excited at this new revtion!


    The reason for this was that he had inadvertentlye across one of the principles of Jeet Kune Do, a martial art that Bruce Lee himself had developed. The principle of intercepting one''s opponents'' attacks by moving before their opponent moved.


    (''How do youbat something that''s too fast for you tobat after it has begun? You defeat it before it begins,'') Rui hadn''t intended on it but had inadvertently stepped in the direction of one of Bruce Lee''s principles.


    After all, his technique relied on predictions to begin to move ahead of time with perfectly timed pre-programmed movements.


    (''It''s more than just that,'') Rui narrowed his eyes. (''My technique entails not just using predictions to gain foreknowledge on my opponent, and not just using that to move ahead of time. The timing matters the most. In a sh, I must aim to move before my opponents move, yes, but also after it is toote for them to change their movements.'')


    Once the decision-making process in his opponent''s head wasplete, the moment the brain transmitted a nerve impulse to be sent to the body, it was toote for the brain to change its decision. It was only after this point, that Rui could begin his movements before his opponents began moving without them reacting and altering their original movements.


    He had a narrow gap between before it was toote for them to change their movements, and before their actual movements began.


    (''That minute timeframe is within which I must time my technique,'') Rui narrowed his eyes.


    This was an exceedingly difficult demand. He had to admit, he was holding himself to a particrly high standard.


    (''Bruce Lee would have approved,'') Rui nodded.


    Theoretically, no attack could be a threat if it was crushed before it was evenunched. Rui had to remind himself to stop daydreaming so that he could get on with the formtion of the theoretical framework of the functioning of the technique.


    (''Now I just need to find a good movement speed supplementary technique and I''m set,'') Rui knew that this wasn''t going to be too easy.


    Supplementary techniques usually involved some breathing technique that would enhance certain functions or parts of the body through the breathing technique.


    One example was, of course, Rui''s Wind Breathing technique, and Gale Force Breathing technique.


    (''Those two aren''t bad,'') Rui noted. (''But they are not what I''m looking for.'')


    The two techniques, especially Gale Force Breathing were not strictlybat oriented enough. Wind Breathing ced an equal amount of importance on bothbat and travel speed, but Gale Force Breathing was a technique that Rui had developed specifically to move faster when traveling so that he could keep up with Kane if the two of them had to run away, and were unable to rely on their other trump cards.


    It certainly had helped in certain moments, like when they were escaping the ant mountain after the ants rushed in. Rui and Kane needed to escape, but Kane was limited to Rui''s speed, since he was faster, and could not move away from Rui, and the two needed to travel as fast as possible. Gale Force Breathing ensured that Rui didn''t drag Kane back too much.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    In fact, the fact that they were able to escape as quickly as they did was because of Gale Force Breathing, and it had probably saved their lives that day. Thus, Rui most certainly did not look down on the technique.


    That being said, techniques had their purposes. They were quite useful and powerful when used for their intended purposes, but not when used for other purposes.


    Not that Gale Force Breathing would be utterly useless when facing off against opponents while also using Project Forestep''s technique, but it could not serve as the main movement-based technique for Project Forestep.


    (''I need something stronger,'')


    The problem was that stronger techniques were simply of a higher grade of potency and difficulty. Based on experience, Rui knew that the technique that he needed was most likely going to be an extremely high-grade technique. Only a high-grade technique surpassing grade-eight difficulty and potency operated based on powerful principles could most likely satisfy his needs.


    The problem was that when it came to mastering high-grade techniques, affinity mastered and talent mattered. The techniques of the highest grades required the Martial Artist''s Martial Path to have some affinity with the field of the technique. On top of that, they certainly needed talent to be able to master such a difficult technique in the first ce.


    That was the biggest problem that stood in Rui''s way.


    The movement-based supplementary and maneuvering techniques that were viable for Project Forestep were most likely too difficult for him to master.


    (''At least, in their entirety,'') Rui''s eyes shed with determination. (''If I can just take what I need, then I''m good.'')


    He didn''t need to use every ounce of a technique, what he needed was the core mechanics of how they worked and there was a good chance that he would be able to make do with it.


    (As for the precise kind of movement-based technique I need¡­'') Rui gave it a considerable amount of thought. (''I need a focus on speed and agility, as well as fluidity.'')


    He would need to go through the Martial Union''s library unless, of course, he knew of a technique that he already wanted. It would be rather convenient for him to ess the Martial Union''s library so far from home.


    (''It''s not like I know someone with a super fast te-'') Rui cocked his head back as he immediately thought of someone with a technique who fit that exact description. The best part of it was that this person was also extremely close by, and had been extremely close by for a long time.


    Rui pulled out his pocket watch, ncing at the time impatiently as he swept his senses across his environment.


    "Tsl, when is Kaneing back?"Content is property of N?velDrama.Org.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 911 Difficulty

    ?


    It wasn''t for no reason that he thought of Kane. Kane was an evasive maneuverer, which meant that speed and maneuvering were extremely vital and significant to him. To him, speed and maneuvering were what the VOID algorithm was to Rui, it was central. If anyone could help Rui, it was him.


    On top of that, Rui knew exactly how he could help him.


    After all, Kane was still in possession of the most powerful speed technique that he had ever known in his entire life.


    "You want me to teach you Godspeed?" Kane looked at him incredulously when Rui approached him with his request. "You know you have absolutely no chance whatsoever? Like absolutely no chance in hell, or heaven, or anywhere else for that matter. Zero."


    "Thanks for the vote confidence," Rui retorted sarcastically.


    "Hey, I know you like it straight, and I''m giving it straight to you," Kane shrugged. "It''s not possible, you''re super talented, but youck the immensely strong affinity to both speed supplementary and maneuvering techniques that is needed to master it. In practice, that means the enhancements you got from breaking into both, the Apprentice and Squire Realms, do not match the necessary configurations needed to master the Squire-level version of Godspeed."


    He was, of coursepletely correct. Rui would be arrogant if he believed that he could simply master a grade-ten speed and maneuvering technique. Furthermore, the one thing Kane was wrong about was that Rui was talented. Of course, someone who didn''t know the truth about Rui would think he''s an absolute genius who simply bloomedter than people like Kane, Fiona, and Ian did.


    In reality, Rui was not talented in the conventional sense. He made up for hisck of innate advantages with his mind that had gone through two lives of growth, as well as the knowledge and memories he had inherited from his previous life. With these advantages, it appeared to others that he was just a genius who took some time to discover his own talent.


    He knew that he did not have the raw talent for Martial Art mastery, and in this case, he did not have an affinity for the technique that he was looking to master either.


    "I''m well aware of that," Rui replied to him. "What I want is to learn the principle and the mechanics of the technique."


    Kane considered his words. This was definitely a lot more reasonable in his eyes. There were grade-ten techniques of which much weaker and diluted versions were meant for other Martial Squires. Rui had even mastered one such technique; Wind Breathing which was a weaker version of the original Lightning Breathing.


    "Sure¡­" Kane shrugged. "I suppose that''s worth exploring if you really want to. But are you sure? Even if you master the core principles, they''re meant for people who have an affinity for movement speed techniques. The technique only improves your movement speed not your reaction speed. Because your Martial Path and your Martial body are not speed oriented and have no affinity for speed, you definitelyck the reaction speed necessary to use the technique properly."


    Rui smirked at those words. "Don''t worry, I have it all figured out, probably."


    Kane was a little worried for a second. But he did trust Rui''s judgment, even if it was a little scary at times.


    Besides, he was curious as to what Rui was hoping to achieve. After all, whatever Rui achieved with the Void Step, Kane ought to also be able to replicate.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    Although it would not further his own Martial Path by copying someone else''s techniques, he had no intention of doing that. After all, it would not deepen his Martial Path, nor would it help with his path to the Senior Realm.


    Still, it might help him with creating his own techniques. This is something he had an immense amount of difficulty over. He hade to learn that extremely gifted individuals like himself tended to face greater difficulty in the Squire Realm because they were far too ustomed to blindly mastering the techniques that they wanted to without any issues whatsoever, that the idea of creating their own techniques for their Martial Art was a much more shocking difference than it was for more ordinary Martial Artists.


    Kane even recalled the warning that Squire Kyrie and Squire Dylon had warned all the Martial Apprentices in the Academy of that. That talent was not decisive and mattered less the stronger they all became. All content is property ? N?velDrama.Org.


    He could feel that already.


    As a Martial Apprentice, he was much more dominant than he was as a Martial Squire. Now he had to work much harder to achieve lesser amounts of power.


    It was one of the reasons he admired Rui. For some reason, Rui only seemed to grow stronger faster as a Martial Squire than he did as a Martial Apprentice.


    It was utterly confounding to Kane.


    "Alright then," Kane agreed after deciding to take Rui at his words. "Let''s get started then."


    "You seem enthusiastic," Rui smiled.


    "I am, I''m curious to know what you''re up to with this technique," Kane pointed out. "Let''s get going. Where do you want to start training?"


    "We can probably use one of the empty sites that we would use as a deposit site for esoteric ore deposit deliveries for Guildmaster Bradt," Rui told him. "Let''s go,"


    The two of them set out for their location after quickly deciding it. The location for esoteric ore deposit deliveries was remote and uninhabited for several kilometers, making it easier to get away from prying eyes. They could also leave the nation temporarily since that wasn''t a problem with their speed.


    Regardless, Rui definitely wanted to make sure that he wasn''t being spied on. Although it was entirely andpletely normal for Martial Squires to engage in training, he was a little paranoid that something about his techniques would give him away as the Voider, still, he was willing to endure a little bit of risk to train and grow stronger.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 912 Speed

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    It wasn''t too long before they arrived, yet it was a while before they actually began. Rui''s paranoia caused him to sweep an extensive radius around them thoroughly with his Riemannian Echo and his many other powerful senses that were ineffective inside the Shionel Dungeon. He did not want to begin without making sure that there weren''t some spies assigned to him that were keeping tabs on him from a distance.


    It wasn''t until he found nothing he heaved a sigh of relief. He was not worried that someone was perhaps evading his senses with a powerful stealth technique if Kane could not hide from him inside the Shionel Dungeon, then no Martial Squire ought to be capable of hiding from him outside the Shionel Dungeon.


    "Are you finally ready now?" Kane asked exasperated.


    "All done, let''s get started."


    Kane sighed, before beginning. "Okay, so let me begin by going in-depth into the technique."


    Rui nodded attentively. He had always been curious about how the technique worked, but never actually cared to bother finding out because it never pertained to him. The same went for the other grade-ten techniques, they were all special but also highly irrelevant.


    Until now.


    "What is speed?" Kane asked simply.


    Rui considered the question for a moment before answering. "Speed is the resultant oue of force, varying based on the weight of the subject and how much force was applied."


    Kane nodded. "Right, speed is not a discrete thing that exists fundamentally and independently of everything else, it can only exist in a state be possessed by things, and whether one possesses or not depends on perspective. If you and I are moving equally fast, then can you truly say I''m moving? Especially if I got rid of the environment entirely?"


    "Whether something is moving, and how fast they are moving if they are moving, are all things rtive to the frame of reference of the observer, it is entirely subjective," Rui replied, talking about the principle of rtivity that was mainstream physics.


    Kane nodded. "Ultimately, putting aside the subjective nature of speed, speed is a product of force and mass. The more the force, the faster your maximum speed will be, the heavier you are, the slower your maximum speed will be. Speed is equally a resultant oue of both these quantities, thus in order to truly increase speed itself, both these quantities need to be altered to maximize speed. In order for a technique to qualify as a speed technique, it cannot just increase force, that is merely a strength supplementary technique, not a speed supplementary technique."


    Rui frowned a little. "But amplifying strength alone does amplify speed, how much does it matter at the end of the day? Results are what matter, do they not?"


    Kane shook his head. "You''re not wrong, the results will not change regardless of whether you call it a strength technique or a speed technique. The distinctiones from looking at what it primarily is, and what its purpose primarily is. A strength technique focuses its resources on amplifying the raw power generated, the increase in speed is a favorable consequence, but it is not the intent of a strength supplementary technique. However, a pure speed-supplementary technique focuses on both the quantities that determine speed. However, more speed behind an attack consequently results in more power, even though this is not the intent of the technique."<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    Kane paused, before continuing. "Speed for power, and power for speed. These are as different as they are the same."


    Rui''s eyes lit up as realization dawned on him. "That''s definitely insightful."


    This was one area where some biases from his scientific background and research inbat sports had held him back. Back on Earth, fighters inbat sports were divided between weight sses, what that meant was that weight and mass of their bodies were roughly equal all the time. Thus stronger opponents were also faster because their body weights were all the same.


    A stronger flyweight kickboxer was a faster flyweight kickboxer. The same went for heavyweights as well. While there certainly were other variables such as flexibility and wing span that also yed a role, this principle held true if all these variables were controlled for.


    Thus Rui had subconsciously retained that intuition even when he was reborn in this world, however, that intuition did not necessarily hold true in this world, where Martial Artists of different weight sses fought against each other and broke all themon sense rules of Earth as far as weight sses and speed went.Belonging ? N?velDram/a.Org.


    Kane had just shown him that certain vestiges of themon sense of thebat sports from Earth still remained in his head subconsciously without him thinking of it.


    He looked at Kane appreciatingly. He had to admit that the young man was more insightful and possessed a much greater depth of understanding of his own field than Rui had given him credit for.


    He looked forward to learning from him.


    Kane on the other hand found it extremely refreshing to be the one to share his understanding with Rui and correct ws in his understanding than the other way around. It definitely came as much needed boost for his self-esteem, given how much he had been deferring to Rui in recent times.


    "So tying this back to the Godspeed technique, which is a speed technique, it doesn''t increase speed by simply increasing the amount of force exerted, it also reduces the weight of the body temporarily," Kane continued. "It momentarily elerates the conversion of food into energy momentarily producing more power in exchange for some stamina, and then forcibly expels the resultant products out via breathing, along with other waste materials, thereby reducing the weight of the body. By increasing force and reducing weight, it truly increases speed," Kane exined.


    Rui''s widened. "That''s unbelievable!"


    Rui was truly stunned by the exnation that Kane offered.


    "By ridding your body of all the materials and substances that it doesn''t need at the moment, you can obtain speed beyond your wildest dreams," Kane smirked.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 913 Concerns

    Rui had to think about what Kane had just told him.


    "Increase speed¡­ by increasing power but also reducing body mass by exhaling matter that can be discarded for the moment? What in the world¡­?" He murmured with a shocked expression.


    It was an absurd proposition, frankly. It offended his sensibilities, even.


    How could one shed so much weight with a single technique? Rui knew that he had to be shedding a solid proportion of the weight of the body.


    Rui''s eyes widened. "Is that why you looked so starved every time you finished using the ability? You were basically incapacitated every time you used the technique."


    "It''s not an easy technique to use," Kane sighed. "As you have surmised, there are great drawbacks to using it. Just barely obtaining the power of a higher Realm, even if just for the briefest of moments, requires one to pay a great price."


    Rui was not surprised.


    As a Martial Apprentice, Kane could break the sound barrier and move as fast as a Martial Squire, and every time he used that move, he waspletely incapacitated by exhaustion.


    That was the price of using the power of a higher Realm!Content is property of N?velDrama.Org.


    Rui briefly considered the implications and impacts that this revtion had on him and his n. Knowing the technique that he was hoping to integrate into Project Forestep was quite useful and required him to consider the prospects of doing so more deeply.


    "Firstly, I''m not looking to achieve the speed of a higher Realm for the briefest of moments," Rui began.


    "You wouldn''t be able to achieve it either," Kane chimed in. "Even for me, my reaction speed is far too slow to be able to use it flexibly. That''s why I can only go in straight lines, and that''s why I need so much distance between myself and my target. Even with my highly heightened reflexes and reaction speed as an evasive maneuvering Martial Squire, I cannot fully keep up with the Godspeed technique."


    That made sense.


    In fact, Rui recalled a fight between Fae and Kane a long time ago. Kane had won the fight by using Godspeed, but Fae had managed to get in a hit regardless, despite being far slower. This was probably because Kane was unable to react to her strike Because of how fast he himself was moving, and did not possess the reaction speed to control his body and move in time either.


    "I''m not looking for something like that," Rui shook his head. "I do not want speed beyond my control."


    "Well, just by looking to master the Godspeed technique to a certain degree, you kind of are, you do realize that, yes?" Kane tilted his head, looking at Rui oddly. "After all, your raw neurological reaction speed is above average for a Martial Squire as old as you at most. And it normally ought to be average, but it''s above average only because of your Hungry Pain technique allowing for a stronger and faster Martial body."<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    Rui understood his concerns but knew that they were misced. The reason that he wanted to master the technique despite hiscking reaction speed was because he had long decided to rely on predictions in addition to reactions.


    "I have a n, don''t worry about it," Rui shook his head for the time being. "I don''t want the original version of the Godspeed technique, it doesn''t suit my technique, and I cannot master it due to difficulties due to ipatibility. What I want is a diluted version of the technique that can be used more continuously and fluidly."


    "That''s going to be difficult," Kane frowned. "I''m not even sure how to teach you that when I don''t know if I can do that myself. I''ve only learned the Godspeed technique, and the only alterations I''ve ever done are merging it with the Void Step technique."


    The mentions of Kane merging two grade-ten techniques into one were almost significant enough to draw his attention away from his important considerations, but he put that matter aside.


    "You can leave that part to me, I''ll begin the training for the conventional Godspeed training, and in my inability to master it, I will strive to discover alternatives. Lower intensity for more grounded, but more controble speeds," Rui told him as he grew increasingly excited.


    Imagining himself wielding a partial Godspeed technique while using the VOID algorithm topensate for thecking reaction speed, and even surpassing it, made him incredibly excited.


    He couldn''t wait to realize this ambition and obtain a tool to be able to keep up with the Root.


    "Alright, if you say so," Kane shrugged. "I''ll continue by exining the training methodology."


    "Will it require special equipment?" Rui raised an eyebrow.


    The issue with the needed equipment and training definitely was something that he was worried about. Given that the Martial Union had developed training equipment and gear for basically every technique that it sold, he was worried that he would need to somehow get his hands on a ton of different equipment and devices and instruments to train in the training regimes that the Martial Union had developed.


    In that case, it would make his training regime that much more cumbersome and problematic.


    He would need to contact Martial Commissioner Reze and discreetly purchase the necessary training equipment, devices, and gear. It was another matter of whether Commissioner Reze would agree to engage in such a risky deal. Rui was especially worried if the training for the technique entailed a ton of different training equipment and gear. Or if it required training resources that were simply impossible to transport all the way to the Shionel Confederation.


    For example, the training regimes for sensory techniques were much more demanding. It required controlled training rooms infested with all kinds of esoteric technology that muted any and all senses.


    Transporting an entire training room ten thousand kilometers away for Rui''s sake was far too impractical. If that was what was necessary, Rui could forget aboutpleting Project Forestep soon.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 914 Necessities

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    "Hmmm¡­" Kane gave it a thought. "Honestly, only two of them are truly necessary. The rest, I can teach you without them. They''re more optimizing training equipment."


    He turned towards Rui. "What you truly need are the Parymethia gas masks and the Franmulth drug system."


    "What?" Rui raised an eyebrow.  He did not like the sound of those.


    It wasn''t that he hadn''t undergone training regimes that required special esoteric substances, it was just that he hadn''t expected it for the Godspeed technique.


    "What kind of substances and what''s their purpose?"


    "The Parymethia gas masks are necessary to help you train the weight expulsion method and the Franmulth drug system is necessary to help you train the elerating of power generation and consumption of your body for the greater speed," Kane mentioned.


    "Is it possible to train the Godspeed technique without the training equipment?" Rui wondered.


    "Technically, it''s possible to train all techniques without their training equipment, it''s just way harder because these training systems make use of sophisticated esoteric technology to help you master them faster," Kane pointed. "In this case though, I wouldn''t rmend it, I have no idea how long it will take you to even reach the level that you seek to reach without the training equipment, definitely won''t happen within a short amount of time."


    "Hm," Rui nodded. "Makes sense. But if training equipment is needed for the most important parts of the technique, then why even begin the training?"


    After all, what were they supposed to do without the training equipment?


    "The training equipment is not needed for all stages of the training, especially not the earliest training stages," Kane told him. "You first need to master a breathing technique and learn how to apply it inbat."


    "A breathing technique?" Rui raised an eyebrow. "What for?"


    "It''s the breathing technique with which you will eventually use to expel mass and to speed up your energy consumption and generation for the extra power to be faster," Kane exined. "Once you''ve mastered the breathing style and are able to use it consecutively with the movements that you specifically want to apply the boost in speed too."


    "Movements that I want to apply the speed boost to?" Rui raised an eyebrow. "You mean that you cannot simply apply the speed boosts to all kinds of movements freely?"


    "I did tell you that your reaction and processing speed willg behind your movement speed, right?" Kane reminded him. "You need to build a certain degree of muscle memory of using the speed amplification of Godspeed with whatever movements you want to use them with. If you n to use Godspeed with a straightforward bullrush, you need to memorize the timings of the technique by reflex. Because the movement speed is so much faster than your reaction speed, you won''t have time for active coordination."


    "I see¡­" Rui frowned. "I n to use it as a general speed boost for all movements, so that means¡­"


    "You need to master timing that breathing technique with all movements with your muscle memory alone," Kane confirmed. "It''s usually because of that it''s the norm to apply it to a handful of movements like I do. For example, I have mastered applying Godspeed breathing technique to bullrushes, thus when I do use Godspeed to amplify my speed, I amplify a charge."


    Rui nodded. He did recall Kane always using Godspeed to cross distances between him and his opponents tond a strong strike.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    "If you want to use Godspeed to amplify the speed of all movements that you make inbat, then you''re in for an even rougher time than I was," Kane threw an expression of pity towards Rui. "It''s extremely difficult. Normally I''d say it takes too long, but your growth rate and speed of mastery have always been spectacr, so who knows, you may be able to pull off what I wasn''t able to, at least, with a diluted version of the Godspeed technique."


    Rui appreciated the optimism, but it only made him realize how difficult the venture he was seeking to go out on was.


    "Alright, let''s get started with the breathing technique," Rui told Kane.


    Kane nodded. "It''s best we came out here rather than did this in the inn since the breathing can be disruptive to the environment."


    Rui nodded.


    A normal person''s breathing was, of course, unproblematic. However, that wasn''t the case when Martial Squires. Their breathing was so powerful that normal people could even die to them just breathing at full power with breathing techniques.


    "The breathing technique ces a great amount of emphasis on the quality of exhtion," Kane exined. "After all, it is the manner by which you will be expelling mass to increase mass."


    This material belongs to N?velDrama.Org.


    Rui nodded, absorbing everything Kane conveyed.


    "Of course, as you are currently, you won''t be able to expel any mass," Kane continued. "But that''s fine, the point is to get you to memorize the form and learn to use it with your movements. Once you have that down, you can start training with the two training equipment and resources that I mentioned earlier, they will help you actually master the ability to expel mass via breathing and to be able to use it to trigger higher energy consumption and dispel mass using the breathing technique."


    He inhaled deeply, holding his breath for a moment, before suddenly exhaling.


    BANG!


    Rui''s eyes widened as Kane''s forceful exhtion sounded like a heavy-caliber gunshot. Given how heavy his breath was, it was not actually far from the truth at all.


    "That was strong," Rui murmured. "Is that what it''s like?"


    "That was just one breath of the technique, yes," Kane nodded. "You have to do this in rapid session and only then can you possibly be able to actually trigger the Godspeed technique."


    "I see," Rui nodded. "Well, let''s get this out of the way."


    Rui was eager to master the breathing technique. He had just learned that the road ahead of him was going to be tougher than he had expected, but he was up for a challenge.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 915 Next

    ?


    More than a month had passed since Rui began training the Godspeed technique, and Rui marveled at how different it was from any other breathing technique that he had ever mastered.


    It was the only technique that ced greater weight on the frequency of breaths and on the quality of exhtionpared to other techniques that focused more on the timing of inhtion. The timing of exhtion mattered a lot more with this technique than it did.


    The first thing he discovered was that it was ipatible with his other breathing techniques, of which he had three at the moment.


    Final breathing, Wind Breathing, and Gale Force Breathing.


    He discovered that their timings shed and that there was no way he could use any of them with the Godspeed breathing technique simultaneously. It was why he felt it was difficult to integrate it into his muscle memory, but he persevered.Belonging ? N?velDram/a.Org.


    His days had be jam-packed. He had to raid the dungeon as the Voider to supply the Shionel Dungeon and the Martial Union, on top of that, he needed to keep up appearances and clear the dungeon as Rui Quarrier as well so that he didn''t draw any suspicion from the investigations that Chairman Deacon hadunched into the identity of the Voider.


    He knew that the Martial Union was actively protecting him by sabotaging the investigation to ensure that he would never be caught red-handed. Considering that Chairman Deacon had yet toe to suspect him personally, he supposed that they were doing that job well. Still, there was no need to make life harder for himself and them by not keeping up the perfect appearances that he had kept all this time.


    On top of all of that, he needed to train hard as well. These three jobs took most of his time.


    It didn''t help that each of the dungeons that he had discovered kept getting progressivelyrger andrger.


    No longer was it possible to empty a dungeon in a single day. They began bing cumbersome week-long processes topletely clear and plunder. On top of that, all of the adventurers had finally destroyed all the ants that Rui had released into the entire dungeon. A powerful S-rank team had found the ant floor, discovering the ant mountain and, eventually, the queen ant before informing the Adventurer Guild. This resulted in arge crusade that ended up eradicating all the ants and killing the powerful queen ant as well.


    The increased dangers of the Shionel Dungeon above the norm had been alleviated, and the adventurers had begun to once more crawl across the entire dungeon, exploring the dungeon more fiercely than ever before. All of the many Martial Squires that had poured in from that local segment of the continent in more recent times as well as Ma


    Much to Rui''s dismay, they had discovered many as well. This had been within his predictions. Even though he considered his ability to explore to be greater than that of all of thembined, he did not, for one second, mistake thebined effort of many thousands of Martial Squire adventurers as trivial. With so many pouring through the dizzying maze of tunnels in the Shionel Dungeon, they were bound to discover new floors, including the ones that Rui had already found but hadn''t gotten to yet.


    The good thing was that once a floor was discovered, they immediately all flocked to that floor, putting aside exploration for a brief amount of time.


    Thus, a certain pattern had begun in the matters regarding the Shionel Dungeon as things seemed to reach a bnce. The conflict between the Voider and Chairman Deacon had certainly not ceased, but it was clear that they weren''t shing against each other.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    Chairman Deacon''s efforts were partially sessful.


    He had not seeded in finding the Voider, frustratingly enough, but he had managed to break the Voider''s monopoly and dominance to a certain degree.


    It turned out that as powerful as Kane and Rui were inside the dungeon, the same could be said for thousands of Martial Squires. Chairman Deacon''s efforts of uniting domestic and foreign stakeholders who were negatively affected by the Voider to obtain an incredibly powerful Martial Squire force that could cover a huge amount of ground exploration, and monopolize an entire dungeon, were sessful. He had managed to obtain severalrge floors all to himself and his allies, the contents of which they distributed based on their contribution to the alliances.


    Chairman Deacon, as the prime uniter and by far thergest contributor of capital, resources, and Martial power, received the lion''s share of benefits.


    Although it wasn''t quite as strong as his dominance prior to the Voider, it was still satisfactory, and he was able to regain a growing trend.


    Guildmaster Bradt on the other hand had benefitedrgely from partnering with Esosale Suppliers and had consolidated even more economic and political power, readying himself for the confrontation with Chairman Deacon over the position of Guildmaster in the Shionel Confederation.


    Rui had stopped concerning himself with those matters.


    He had unerringly dedicated an absurd amount of time to mastering the breathing technique.


    "Sleep is important you know," Kane watched with incredulity as Rui every single hour of every single day to maximum use. "You''re going to go insane if you don''t take a moment to breathe, holy shit."


    Rui didn''t even bother responding as he practiced the breathing technique with his other techniques and attacks.


    He needed to finish mastering the breathing technique with the many techniques of his Martial Art for starters as well as foundational moves and maneuvers.


    He didn''t have time to expand it to all possible moves that the human body could make, thus he settled for allbat-rted ones. He wasn''t sure he even needed to expand it to nonbat-rted movements.


    It took him a month and a half to master the Godspeed breathing form, and master its timing alongside other techniques and movements, much to Kane''s surprise. He was already ready to move on to the next stages of the training of the Godspeed technique.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 916 Uninterested

    ?


    "You wish to acquire the training resources needed for the Godspeed technique?" Commissioner Reze asked, raising an eyebrow. "Surely you do not n on training this technique in the Shionel Confederation?"


    "I wouldn''t be asking for them if I didn''t, now would I?" Rui calmly retorted. "Please transport the training equipment immediately. You can deduct the expenses for the equipment and other matters from my ount regardless of the price."


    Every second he wasted on other matters was one less second he could spend training. He did not want to wait too long for what he needed.


    "Alright, will do," Commissioner Reze nodded, goodheartedly, despite Rui''s colder tone. "I would advise you to be extremely careful though. Chairman Deacon has begun ramping up the investigation with even greater intensity. Furthermore, our intelligence also indicates that the Underworld is displeased with the sanctions from Esosale Suppliers. It has been a particrly difficult task to sniff out their new shell fronts as they have also been ramping up their investments in order to get a piece of the pie that is the Shionel Dungeon that we have restricted. The political alliance and they have both be a pain to our interests."


    "Ok,"


    "¡­"


    "So when can you get me my equipment?" Rui asked nkly.


    "¡­ I will endeavor to ensure that you get them as soon as possible," Commissioner Reze sighed in a resigned manner.


    Rui nodded before he and Kane got up and left.


    "It sounded like he was saying important stuff," Kane nced at him as they Void Stepped out of their ndestine meeting. "Maybe you should have paid more attention to what he had to say."


    "It''s the same shit as always," Rui snorted. "Chairman Deacon this and that, Underworld this and that. I don''t have time to spend chit-chatting about these matters. I am keeping an eye on the investigative progress of Chairman Deacon that the Martial Union is supplying me as per agreements. If I feel the need to take extra precautions, like if I discover they have begun a personalized investigation on me, then I will do so, but beyond that, I don''t care."


    Rui''s eyes narrowed in determination. "If I''m to master the technique that I aim to create, I cannot pay too much attention and energy to other matters."


    Rui knew that the path to a higher Realm of power could not be attained unless he singlemindedly dedicated himself to his Martial Path and Martial Art.


    In that sense, it was bad enough that he had to dedicate himself to dungeon clearing. But that was still an eptable and necessary expense since he knew that he didn''t have much choice. The technique was for the dungeon clearing which he had made a personalmitment to, and thus he did not want to sacrifice the goal for the means.


    It wasn''t long after that they received an anonymously delivered package soon enough.


    The Martialmissioner had understood Rui''s urgency and had respected it enough to ensure that he abided by Rui''s wishes regarding the speedy delivery.


    Soon enough, Rui and Kane arrived at their training location.


    Rui spent about ten minutes surveilling the area, before finally relieving his paranoia.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    "Ah, it''s been a while since I''ve seen these," Kane chuckled as he examined the gas mask and the vials of a certain drug.


    "It''s about time you exin how these work, Kane," Rui reminded him.


    "Right," Kane nodded. "Well, it''s simple, really."


    He reached for one of the vials that had been given to them. "This drug, known as Franmalth venom, inhibits energy production and consumption even for the likes of Martial Squires. It''s basically poison. You''re going to inhale it. And it will travel across your body and begin affecting it. Then you need to use the Godspeed breathing technique to increase the energy that your body generates against the inhibition of the drug. The rapid short and high-paced breathing will force the body to generate a lot of power, and that''s how you''ll counter the drug."


    Rui raised an eyebrow. "That''s¡­ actually quite an ingenious way to teach someone exactly how to force their body to momentarily generate more power."


    He immediately understood the purpose of the training. By introducing a drug that inhabits power generation into the body, they would force the subject to push themselves to their limits consciously and subconsciously to counter the drug by increasing cell power generation and consumption.


    Then with enough repetition, they would be able to reproduce the same effect when not under the influence of the drug, in normal physical conditions. In that case, without any drug-inhibiting cell power generation and consumption, the generation of power would increase significantly above the norm.


    "Then we just keep increasing the dosage, bit by bit," Kane exined. "Until you eventually reach your limits. And then the training for that stuff stops."Belonging ? N?velDram/a.Org.


    "Hm," Rui nodded. "What about the gas mask?"


    "That inhabits exhtion, it also forces you to learn how to expel the Franmalth venom in your body via exhtion. You need to learn how to expel temporarily unnecessary substances and matter from across your entire body, and the Franmalth venom basically acts as a substitute instead of your actual body mass," Kane continued. "Then once we get rid of the gas mask and the drug,


    "Let''s begin," Rui told Kane.


    Kane pulled out the gas mask, before fiddling with it himself.


    "You should probably read the instructions," Rui told him.


    "Rx, I''ve trained with these for two years. One year as an Apprentice and another as a Martial Squire. I''ll be fine," He reassured Rui as he swiftly calibrated, before nodding. "Alright, it''s done. You ready?"


    Rui breathed deeply before he steeled his resolve, narrowing his eyes. "Yeah, let''s get started."


    "Gotcha," Kane walked over with the gas mask at hand, handing it to Rui. "The dial on the right controls breathing difficulty, clockwise for increasing it, and counter-clockwise for decreasing it. The button on the left releases the drug so be sure to inhale when you hit it."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 917 Exhale

    ?


    Rui still recalled to this day the sensation of passing away.


    Unlike anybody else, he knew what the sensation of death was like having experienced it once himself.


    And now, he was being assailed by a sensation that was quite simr to it, for the first time in his entire life.


    (''Shit,'') Rui cursed mentally as he felt the energy of his body dripping as his consciousness began to blur ever so slightly.


    His vision began darkening.


    His muscles began rxing.


    His thoughts began iling around as mustering up conscious resistance became even harder.


    It felt strangelyfortable, as death had.


    But instinctually, he knew that this was not something he ought to be allowing to happen. Thankfully, the muscle memory he had burned into his body in the past many weeks kicked in.


    FUUU. FUUU. FUUU.Content is property of N?velDrama.Org.


    The breathing technique kicked in as he began breathing at an extreme frequency, almost like he was panting. His exhtions were forceful and remarkably powerful, more powerful than he had ever done them in his entire life.


    The vigorous and aggressive breathing technique that kicked in almost entirely due to muscle memory sent a jolt across the entire body.


    A ripple of power spread from the lungs across his entire body. A surge of energy woke Rui up from his stupor.


    He narrowed his eyes as he pushed even harder with the breathing technique, achieving a level of intensity that he hadn''t achieved yet. His body began to feel more alive as his breathing technique fought back against the influence of his drug, forcing the cells of his body to kick into action and push back.


    The energizing effect of the breathing, now that he was pushing himself to levels of intensity that he didn''t even know he could achieve, was overwhelming the effects of the drug, causing him to feel more active.


    "Great," Kane nodded. "It''s impressive you managed to seed with overwhelming the lowest dose on your very first try. You must have powerful breathing."


    Rui had actually gone through a strenuous training regime when training for the Mighty Roar sh st technique from the G''ak''arkan Tribe. Part of it had involved strengthening his lungs considerably. Thus he wasn''t surprised that he was able to do well with resisting the Franmalth drug in his system trying to show down his power generation.


    (''This drug must be some kind of substance the mitochondria somehow,'') Rui concluded as he became able to resist the drug with increasing ease, although his lungs were growing sore.


    "Now you need to expel the drug," Kane informed him. "You''re doing well in resisting the influence of the drug, but you don''t have endless stamina. Use the exhtion breathing form I taught you to expel the drug that you ingested, through your lungs."<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    Rui nodded as he packed in more force with his exhtions. He felt as though he was squeezing his blood dry of every ounce of the drug like twisting a drenched piece of cloth to squeeze out water.


    "Nice," Kane nodded as Rui expelled a purple gas from his nose. "You''re doing just fine."


    Rui continuously exhaled the substance as his breathing grew increasinglyborious. He knew that he wasn''t supposed to be able to have this much trouble, yet he realized how heavy the drug was in the first ce.


    (''It''s like a dense liquid, it''s like I''m trying to pump out water with my lungs alone,'') Rui gasped for air as he finally pushed out thest bit of Franmalth Venom from his body.


    He instantly felt much lighter, as though he had just taken off some weights from his body.


    "Great job man," Kane nodded approvingly. "I forgot how good you were with breathing techniques. I can''t believe you nailed both on the first try."


    "Yeah¡­" Rui panted. "It''s a shame that won''t be enough to master the full power of the Godspeed technique."


    "That''s correct," Kane nodded. "Your strange affinity for breathing is definitely going to help you get further than I expected you would, but the breathing technique exists for speed and agility, which you do not have enough affinity or talent for. However, I do think you may have the chance to master this technique to probably around forty-to-fifty percent of its grade-ten potency. Which is still quite impressive, really impressive."


    "I''ll take what I can get," Rui sighed getting up once he caught his breath. "You said that this was the lowest dose, correct?"


    "Yep," Kane nodded. "The most dilute version where the drug is still effective."


    "To think it''s going to be substantially harder," Rui shook his head. "You''re the amazing one for being able topletely master it."


    Kane shrugged. "I''m too good, what can I say?"


    Rui chuckled, yet inwardly he wondered if his Forestep technique would allow him to beat someone like Kane head-on. He knew that he would probably be morepetitive with Kane inbat when it came to speed and agility, what he was curious about was whether he could actually surpass Kane when ite to speed, agility, and maneuvering.


    Rui grew more excited now that he had a better inkling about where his current training was leading him to go.


    The training of the Godspeed technique was appearing to be more promising than he had initially predicted. On top of that, his insight into his target had grown in the past month and a half, increasing the quality of the predictive model he could build on the Root.


    He had spent a good amount of time observing its movements, ascertaining the patterns that existed between physical cues that urred with specific kinds of motions ahead of time. He had spent quite a lot of time memorizing these passive patterns that all existed within the movements of the Root.


    But unfortunately, he hadn''t yet gotten a chance to observe the active patterns that the Root had inbat. He hadn''t seen any other living interacting with the Root in any kind of fashion to trigger a conflict that he could use to collect data.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 918 Clash

    ?


    Rui did not feel confident enough to fight the root without data on, both, active and passive patterns of the Root.


    There was a difference between these kinds of patterns.


    Passive patterns existed in all movements of all living beings. These were patterns between involuntary and subconscious movements, including twitches of muscles and tendons, minute shifts in weight, respiration, perspiration, heart rate,plexion, and a dozen other variables. By analyzing these, Rui could predict the movements that a certain person was going to make by building a predictive model based on these tells and cues.


    These subconscious cues and tells were devoid of any conscious or voluntary intent and control. Not even the most intense body control that the best of diplomats and spies trained in could get rid of the micro-physiological phenomena that Rui could perceive thanks to his senses.


    Thus far, he had only collected passive patterns of the Root. He had spent many hours watching itsh out as it grabbed unrefined esoteric ore deposits. It had given him a good idea of the way it moved and would allow him to predict it to a certain extent.


    But it hadn''t been enough.


    (''I need to see it fight others,'') Rui narrowed its eyes. (''Extensively.'')


    One or two fights did not suffice.


    He needed hundreds if not thousands of fights to surveil.


    Fortunately, Rui had just the right idea of how to get the data that he sought.


    There were few ways in which Rui could possibly go about it, and he intended to spend time refining the n.


    (''For now, training takes precedence,'') Rui sighed.


    And train he did.


    He had underestimated the difficulty of the training of the Godspeed technique, even if Kane insisted that he had done quite well. He knew that it was going to be painful and difficult.


    Still, he intended to get past it andplete it.


    Months flew by as the monotony of the Shionel Dungeon truly began settling in for the first time since its discovery.


    Even back when it had originally begun bing normal after it had been discovered, Rui hade in and singlehandedly disrupted things, sparking a new wave of chaos that triggered even more vtile dungeon and political happenings.


    But things had truly calmed down as dungeon floors began being discovered at an elerated pace.


    The reason was simple. The number of Martial Squires clearing the dungeon had tripled since Rui had begun his activities as the Voider. Furthermore, he himself had elerated his own dungeon clearing.


    One by one, both sides began whittling down the floors of the Shionel Dungeon as they traveled deeper and deeper into the dungeons.


    That segment of the continent began discovering the many floors that the Voider had singlehandedly cleared. They couldn''t help but admire the mysterious being that had taken that section of the continent by storm.


    The election for the position of Guildmaster had begun approaching.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    The many merchants of the Shionel Merchant Guild would vote for one of the hundred merchants of the Shionel Merchant Council, as the next Guildmaster of the Shionel Merchant Guild.


    Normally, this was not as exciting of a matter.


    However, this time, things were different.


    The air across the nation was tense. Because people knew that for the first time in many years, the elections might break a pre-existing pattern that had stood strong for many years.


    The Bradt Distribution Service had an enormous amount of sway over all the voters in the Shionel Merchant Guild. Guildmaster Bradt had previously bought seventy percent of the votes by deeply entangling voters with the Bradt Distribution Services'' high-quality essential distribution andmunication services.


    That had been enough to sweep the elections every time despite Chairman Deacon''s best efforts.


    This time, however, things did not seem very clear.All content is property ? N?velDrama.Org.


    Chairman Deacon and Deacon Industries had grown astronomically more powerful and influential as time passed.


    He had exploited not one, but two massive opportunities to gain more power and more support.


    Yes.


    Two, not one.


    The Shionel Dungeon was God''s gift to him. It directly fueled his primary field and gave him unfathomable gains. He gained more than just wealth. He had gained economic dominance and political allegiances.


    The second opportunity hade in the form of the Voider, surprisingly enough. No one, not even Chairman Deacon, had predicted that the Voider would end up bing an avenue to gain more support. He united a tremendous number of stakeholders who had been negatively affected by the Voider''s absurd sess.


    This resulted in a frightening amount of political capital. He had gained more from uniting people and gaining their loyalty through mutual interests against amon enemy than amon boon.


    In some twisted way, Chairman Deacon was even partially grateful to the Voider for having arrived and united so many people against himself that Chairman Deacon had managed to splendidly harness thanks to the new gains that he had made from the Shionel Dungeon.


    Of course, what speck of gratitude he had for the Voider''s appearance was drowned by the endless hatred he had for the Voider. The sheer amount of trouble that he had given Chairman Deacon made him wish he could tear apart the little shit''s face.


    Still, he had shifted his attention away from the Voider for now. As much as he hated the Voider, the Voider was not his greatest enemy.


    The image of Guildmaster Bradt appearing in his mind alone stoked his temper, but he kept hisposure, grinning.


    He was confident. This time, he truly had the ability to win. He had exerted more capital and resources into campaigning than he had ever done in his entire career. The capital expended in this time''s election was greater than the sum of all the capital he had expended for campaigning ever before.


    He was truly staking everything on the line. The sheer amount ofmitments and expenditure of capital, resources, andmitments that had gone into buying as many votes as possible meant that Deacon Industries might copse if he failed!


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 919 Preliminary

    ?


    More than three months had gone by. Rui''s life had turned into an intense monotony of dungeon clearing, both as Rui and as the Voider, gathering information on the Root, and training with Project Forestep.


    Rui had dedicated the entirety of his mind and body towards mastering as much of the Godspeed Breathing technique, hoping to gain as much of this power as he could.


    Unfortunately, as good as he was with breathing techniques, he was not as good as Kane was with speed and thus was unable to reach Kane''s level of mastery of the technique.


    After more than three months of dedicated training, his growth had finally teaued at about forty percent of the full level of mastery.


    "That''s still pretty good all things considered," Kane told him. "If not for the fact that youck the reaction speed to keep up even with thirty percent of the full mastery of the Godspeed technique, you could use it withoutpunctions. I still don''t know how you n to get past that restriction though, honestly."


    Kane had not attempted to pry out Rui''s intentions regarding the Godspeed technique. Martial Art rted matters were deeply personal to each Martial Artist, and they were not light matters that were generally discussed without care.


    Rui on the other hand did not want to make ims that he could not support, and thus did not go too deeply about what he was trying to aplish. All Kane knew was that Rui was trying extremely hard to realize his ambition of applying the Godspeed technique.


    "I''m not entirely sure of much myself, Kane," Rui sighed. "I guess we''ll find out. Come at me."


    "What?"


    "I said,e at me," Rui stood still.


    "I''m confused," Kane frowned. "Have you actuallypleted the technique? I thought you  were going to spend time trying to look for a way topensate for yourcking reaction speed."


    "I thought of a potential solution to that problem even before I decided to learn the Godspeed technique," Rui replied.


    Kane tilted his head. "Huh. That''s unexpected, to say the least. Is there nothing you haven''t thought of a solution for? Leave some intelligence for the rest of us man."


    Rui smirked. "Well, let''s see if I was right. Thankfully, you''re the perfect test subject. Come at me with your fastest standard attacks. Let''s see how I do."


    Kane shrugged, taking his stance.


    His eyes narrowed as he generated a faint inscrutable pressure. His feet were centered, right beneath his torso, a position that was conducive to immediately begin moving in any direction. His heels were elevated, making it harder to read the moment of the start of his charge.


    The rest of his body was loose, yet it was because of theck of rigidity that he could move at astonishing speeds.


    Yet despite all of this, Rui didn''t feel any wariness. The problem for Kane was that Rui knew him too well. The prediction model he had on Kane was probably the most well-developed one that he had in his Mind Pce.


    He knew Kane too well inside out.


    Even without Project Forestep, the VOID algorithm could crumple Kane with well-timed movements that devastatingly countered him in the most effective way possible. Thebination of all his other techniques of his Flowing Void Style when applied through the VOID algorithm was simply too much.


    "You don''t intend on taking a stance?" Kane raised an eyebrow.


    "I don''t intend to use any of the techniques of my Martial Art," Rui replied calmly. "I''m going use only the technique I''m trying to create with Project Forestep."


    Kane raised an eyebrow. Had anyone else said that they intended topete with him with a single technique, he would strongly doubt them. Barring people like Hever who dedicated themselves to a single technique, or people in possession of an extraordinary grade-ten technique, it was not possible topete with him with a single technique.


    However, he knew better than to underestimate Rui, so he simply abided by his instructions.


    His approach was swift.


    In the eyes of Martial Apprentices and even low-grade Martial Squires, it would appear as nothing short of teleportation.


    WHOOSH<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    STEP


    In the tiniest of split seconds, he was already face to face with Rui, a swift blur of a jab flying to his face.


    THWACK


    Kane''s eyes widened.


    Where Rui''s face should have been was his hand, intercepting the attack.


    It came out of nowhere.


    Yet he swiftly changed gears as he spun,unching the opposite leg into a blindingly swift backward spanning roundhouse kick to the side of Rui''s head.


    WHOOSH


    Kane half-expected a block, but what he did not expect was his kick passing through Rui''s head, dispelling the empty image. He quickly stepped away.


    "I thought you said you weren''t going to use any other techniques," Kane folded his arms.


    He recognized the illusion that his kick had struck, he was sure it was the Phantom Step technique that created illusions inside the target''s head with extremely convincing and deceiving fakes.


    Rui smirked.


    "I didn''t,"


    Kane''s eyes widened at those words. Yet he didn''t even have time to respond as Rui resumed the battle.


    Yet this time, he was on the offensive.


    WHOOSHContent is property of N?velDrama.Org.


    FLICK


    Kane barely managed to dodge a palm jab as it nicked his cheek. He leaped back with an incredulous impression. (''He came out of nowhere! Was that Blink?!'')


    "You let your guard down,"


    Chills shivered down Kane''s spine as he heard Rui''s voice from behind him, as his mind instinctivelyshed away.


    WHOOSH


    Barely evading another palm jab from Rui.


    "Tsk. Missed twice," Rui frowned. "Preliminary results; quite effective defensively. Has much to be left desired as far as offensive application goes."


    Kane stared at him bewildered. "What as that?! How did you master the technique instantly? This is supposed to take time! No, wait. More importantly. How did you do all of that?"


    Rui smirked. "All in good time, my friend. Come, I have more tests to run."


    A chill crawled up Kane''s spine at those words.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 920 Real Deal

    ?


    The feeling of the prototypical preliminary application of the Forestep project was quite strange, to say the least.


    Rui did not expect it to feel in any particr way, but it was jarring when he did use it. It was as though he was manipting his own body like it was a puppet.


    When he used Godspeed with ordinarybat movements, he couldn''t react to his own movements. It was extremely difficult to control his speed and stop his movements in time. He basically needed to n every movement out ahead of time carefully, and then start and stop it at the right time relying purely on highly prepared reflexes.


    "WOAH!"


    BANG!


    He had crashed into a boulder when he had mastered the forty percent of the Godspeed technique.


    "I told you, you can''t react to it if you wait for the right moment, it happens too quickly. You don''t know what the right moment is, either," Kane had told him months ago when he had tried applying the Godspeed boost to hisbat movements.


    It wasn''t until the present day when Rui challenged him to a spar did he realize how wrong he was.


    "Come, I have more tests to run," Rui smiled.


    Kane got up with a bewildered expression. "You said¡­ you were using only one technique?"


    "That''s right," Rui nodded. "Preliminary applications of Project Forestep are highly optimistic. It seems that the substitution of reaction speed with predictions of my Flowing Void Style is feasible, upon initial observations."


    Kane''s eyes widened at those words. "You''re managing timings that you cannot react to by predicting them ahead of time!"


    "Yep," Rui nodded. "I wasn''t sure if it would work as well as I intended but¡­"


    Kane stared at him with a shocked expression. "You can keep up with me, no, overwhelm me, all with the help of one technique?!"


    "Well, we''ll have to see to what extent," Rui took a stance this time, hopping lightly on his feet. "Here Ie,"


    Kane''s hair stood on end.


    His nerves tingled as Rui tuned into a blurry sh even his evolved hyperkic vision.


    WHOOSH


    He ducked backward evolving sweeping kick to the waste.


    "Your reflexes truly are something else," Rui murmured.


    Had Kane had the time toin that he was struggling, he would have, but s, he didn''t.


    Even if the maelstrom of pressure that Rui began exerting on him didn''t push him back, his attacks sure did.


    Every active movement was empowered with his iplete Godspeed technique, much to Kane''s fascination.


    Rui''s movements began growing increasingly fluidpared to prior. His movements had been discrete and choppy, as though they had been put together by a robot, but they were starting to be increasingly human and natural as time passed.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    POW POW POW!Belonging ? N?velDram/a.Org.


    Ruiunched his first sessfulbo with Godspeed, something he had failed miserably to do prior. A look of joy could be seen on his face aftermath as if he himself realized itte that it had seeded.


    Which, he did.


    A confident smile bloomed on his face as he ticked one of the many boxes that he needed ticking in order for the technique to be considered aplete sess.


    Rui rushed forward as Kane reeled from the attacks. Rui had not even used any offensive or power supplementary techniques. His raw physical power without any Martial Art techniques was enough to hurt Kane because the nature of the Martial body, which ced the least amount of weight on its constitution, was not strong enough to resist even such limited power.


    This was one of the reasons that Kane was evaluated to be a grade four or five Martial Squire despite possessing two grade-ten techniques.


    His durability was simply far toocking. Even an idental hit from apetent Martial Squire could leave him battered and bruised, taking too much damage.


    Right now, Kane was more concerned with his inability tond a single attack on Rui.


    (''This is ridiculous,'') He went absolutely all out against Rui. (''Why can''t Ind a single attack on him?'')


    Despite the fact that Kane''s Martial body was far faster and more agile than Rui''s. Despite the fact that Kane had more speed supplementary and maneuvering techniques, he was unable tond a single clean attack on Rui!


    THWACK THWACK THWACK


    Rui cleanly redirected every single attack that Kane made despite the fact that thetter''s Martial body was superior as far as general motion went. Kane cursed because one of his biggest trump cards in this situation was the Void Step technique, yet it waspletely ineffective against Rui.


    When Kane looked at Rui''s expression, it became clear that Rui was unable to keep track of his own movements. His movements were extremely swift, yet they did not make Rui faster than Kane''s fastest motions. They were quite simr in speed, with Rui having a slight edge in raw speed with Kane having the edge in agility and fluidity.


    Yet there was a huge gap in their shes!


    It wasn''t until he paid closer attention to Rui''s movements that he noticed something.


    (''This isn''t because of speed,'') He noted with incredulity as Rui effortlessly dodged all of his attacks. (''He''s¡­ moving before I move.'')


    Kane was seeing it more often the more he paid attention. Just moments before Kane''s attack began, Rui had already begun to defend against it. The strange part was that it was always somehow toote for Kane to change his attack!


    (''This is absurd!'') Kane felt everything he knew about the Godspeed technique crumbling apart. Just a single technique allowed Rui topensate for a far slower body and far fewer techniques. Kane was employing two speed-supplementing techniques and three maneuvering techniques!


    Yet he couldn''t harm a hair on Rui''s body.


    Whatever technique Rui was using could singlehandedly overwhelm physical superiority and all of his techniques.


    (''Almost all¡­'')


    His eyes narrowed as he sharpened his resolve, leaping back, before crouching in a sprinting stance.


    "Oh¡­?" Rui raised an eyebrow as his smile widened. "Let''s see if I can match the real deal."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 921 Void Forestep

    ?


    Rui had limited himself to defense to explore the limits of his new technique, while familiarizing himself with how the technique felt in different counters.


    STEP


    (''Flying knee kick; 98.9% probability,'') He waited for only the briefest moment before activating Godspeed on a sidestep.


    WHOOSH


    He had half-dodged the attack before it had begun after it was toote for Kane to change his decision.


    This was not the most optimal counter to Kane''s maneuver ording to the adaptive evolution model. But that was fine. His intention was to grow familiar with using Godspeed to move before his opponents moved after it was toote to change their decision. His normal speed meant that against something of the Root''s caliber, even if he did begin moving ahead of time after it was toote to change the attack, he would be too slow to make it in time.


    ¡¤?¦Èm (''But with this¡­ I think I can-Hm?'') Rui''s attention returned back to Kane who was tired of being toyed with, taking a crouching stance.Belonging ? N?velDram/a.Org.


    Instantly, the air grew taut as Kane radiated danger. Yet Rui weed what was about toe.


    "Oh¡­?" Rui raised an eyebrow as his smile widened. "Let''s see if I can match the real deal."


    The original Godspeed that Kane had mastered was a grade-ten technique. When used, it could grant him speed that was theoretically crossing past the threshold of a higher Realm of speed!


    Even if barely.


    Could Rui''s improvisation match the original? Rui was excited to find out. Furthermore, this performance would allow him to gauge how potent the technique was.


    His focus sharpened as his mind unleashed an avnche of pressure as his demeanor grew more solemn and serious.


    And then it happened.


    BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG¡­!


    Kane exhaled one hundred times in one millisecond as his body weight plummeted even further below how light it normally was!


    A titanic surge of power flushed through his muscles.


    And then he was gone.


    WHOOSH.


    The atmosphere rocked violently as Kane entered territories of speed that almost no Martial Squire could even begin fathoming!


    The air recoiled as a shockwave the size of a small district violently expanded perpendicr to his motion, splitting all the clouds in the sky in half.


    Thend beneath his feat crumbled to a fine powder as the air around him was set aze.


    He crossed Rui in the tiniest of split seconds, stopping ten meters behind him.


    ¡­<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    THUD


    Kane fell to the ground, unconscious. A heavy bruise on his lower jaw began swelling immediately.


    "Argh," Rui copsed to one knee as he coughed some blood, much to his shock. "To think Kane could hit so hard with that technique."


    His fist was still clenched from havingnded a clean strike on Kane''s jaw. He had purposely avoided using Outer Convergence, given Kane''s constitution, the difference in power between them, and the power of the Outer Convergence technique, he knew for a fact that Kane would instantly die to an attack that powerful hitting his head.


    "Still, the oue is not perfect even then," Rui murmured with mixed feelings.


    He had predicted Kane''s exact movements, yet even Project Forestep technique was not fast enough to defend against the attack, which moved even faster than Kane himself did. Yet he had been able to knock him out with a well-ced and timed blow even while he incurred damage from failing to intercept the attack.


    He immediately hobbled over to Kane, even before he tended to his wounds, feeding him rejuvenation, nutrients, and healing potions.


    "Urgh¡­" He groaned as he woke up. "What in the world¡­?"


    "You alright?" Rui asked as he consumed his own potions.


    "What happ-" He paused as his eyes gained rity. "Oh. Right. I lost."


    "It was a good fight, I''ve never been hit by the Godspeed technique," Rui remarked. "I didn''t know how much it hurt, and that was after you massively reduced your mass too, unbelievable. That was on par with a grade-ten Martial Squire attack man."


    If not for the fact that his mass was reduced, Rui probably would have died. The reason Kane was able to obtain Senior-level speed with Squire level power was that he made himself incredibly light, to a far greater degree than Rui did. Otherwise, it would just be a Senior level attack and would st a hole in Rui.


    "What''s unbelievable is that you urately tagged me even though I was using the Godspeed technique," Kane shook his head with disbelief, sighing.


    "Well, I considered dodging but I knew I wouldn''t be able to get my entire body out of the way," Rui sighed. "Your speed is enviable."


    "I am not the one who should be envied between the two of us," Kane grumbled as he got up. "So that''s the trump card you came up with to handle the Root, huh?"


    Rui nodded. "The roots were way too fast for me to deal with, this technique will allow me to cope with things that are way faster than I am."


    The Project Forestep technique gave him speed on par with the average speed of peak grade-ten Martial Squires. It was far inferior to Kane''s Godspeed in this regard. The reason for that was because of Kane''s mastery and affinity to it, but also because Rui chose to spread the speed empowerment across time, rather than squeeze all of it in a single attack like the Godspeed technique normally did.


    "Got a name for this technique?" Kane asked casually.


    "Hm¡­"


    Rui considered the Project''s name, though it sounded too nd for such an impressively powerful technique.


    "Void Forestep," Rui replied.


    "Huh," Kane shrugged mildly. "That technique is insanely powerful, I bet the Martial Union would love to get its hands on that. It''s probably grade ten, given that it beat the Godspeed technique."


    Rui was inclined to agree, although the technique certainly was not short of its many drawbacks, that was for certain without a doubt. There were several drawbacks that it possessed that the Godspeed technique did not.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 922 Flawed

    ?


    To Kane, the Void Forestep technique may have appeared to have been wless, however, Rui knew that this was far from the truth. The truth was that this technique had several drawbacks and detriments.


    For one, the only reason it worked so exceptionally well this time was that Rui had an extremely well-built predictive model of Kane, with excellent depth into both his active and passive patterns. This predictive model was built over the many years that Rui knew Kane. He had an immeasurable amount of exposure to Kane in all the time that he had known him.


    It was unlikely that he would be able to replicate such an extremely well-developed predictive model for pretty much anyone else ever. Least of all the Root, to which he had the least amount of exposure.


    That was why he did not take the performance that he had against Kane as the norm.


    It was not.


    ¡¤?¦Èm It was quite likely that for any predictive model that he did end up building, he would not be able to replicate the level of prowess that he had just demonstrated against Kane.


    (''The biggest problem is that this can only be used after I form a predictive model,'') Rui sighed. (''Until then, it''s useless.'')


    That was also a rather severe restriction and limited the scope of the technique. That was a limitation that the original Godspeed technique did not suffer.


    This material belongs to N?velDrama.Org.


    On top of that, this technique could not be used lightly.


    Rui sighed as he nced at his malnourished body, he felt as though he had lost precisely half his weight, which seemed like an absurd proposition.


    (''Martial bodies are denser than normal human bodies, that''s why I can expel mass that isn''t immediately substantial and still retain most of myplexion,'') Rui nced at his body, which looked the same as always.


    Regardless, the technique left him weakened, he would need to consume a lot of nutritious food to regain all the expelled body mass back. Thus he could not use this with the expectation of fighting after he used it.


    He ought to reserve this technique for only when he truly needed it.


    These two restrictions were much more limiting than he had hoped, but they couldn''t be helped. It was as though nature was bncing the technique out by giving it such restrictive limitations.


    The technique was too powerful if Rui could use it freely without any detriments to himself.


    After all, even if Kane''s movement speed via Godspeed was much slower than any actual Martial Senior, it was still the speed of a higher Realm!


    Even though Rui wasn''t able tobat the attack, he had been able to uratelynd his own attack.


    That was something that no Martial Squire ought to be able to!


    If the Martial Union learned about this, they would go to any extent to persuade Rui to submit the technique to the Martial Union.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    Of course, Rui was under no illusion that this technique would be effective against an actual Martial Senior, not at all.


    An actual Martial Senior did not just possess movement speed surpassing Kane''s Godspeed technique, they also possessed reaction, cognitive, and processing speed on par with it. They would be able to observe Rui in slow motion, almost like he was a statue to them.


    Thus, Godspeed was only quasi-Senior level speed when one considered speed in a holistic sense.


    (''Even with that consideration, it''s quite insane,'') Rui knew that there probably were almost no Martial Squire, if any ever at all, was capable of such a feat.


    However, it didn''t matter if he could not get the information that was necessary to form a powerful predictive model on the Root. What he needed was more information. Although he probably would never be able to make a predictive model for it that was as good as the one he had for Kane, it would probably make a huge difference.


    He would at least be able to obtain a solid portion of the prowess that he demonstrated against Kane.


    (''I may have created a technique that, at least in preliminary tests, is satisfactory, but I haven''t made as much progress against the Root of the Shionel Dungeon,'') He sighed.


    It couldn''t be helped. Not a single other living creature in the entire Shionel Dungeon had run into the Root, as far as he was aware.


    (''This can''t go on,'') He sighed inwardly. (''If what I''m looking for won''t ur naturally, then¡­'')


    An interesting idea popped into his head.


    If the Root did not engage in conflict, then maybe he just needed to force it to. That could be the key to solving one of his biggest problems. It was unlikely such a thing would ur naturally on its own in the first ce because he was far ahead in the exploration of the Shionel Dungeonpared to anybody else.


    What that meant was that he would normally be the first one to undertake the final ''floor'' of the Shionel Dungeon to im all the ore deposits below the Shionel Dungeon.


    There were several potential solutions to gainingbat data for active patterns in the Root''s movements that popped into his head. Unfortunately, none of them were easy to realize in actuality.


    "Hm¡­" Rui narrowed his eyes. "Time to enter the dungeon again, Kane."


    "Like¡­ now?" Kane tilted his head. "I mean, we just employed the Godspeed technique, and are weaker than our normal power levels. This probably isn''t a good idea you know."


    "We''ll recover quickly, of course," Rui told him. "Our digestion system can extract all the necessary mass, as long as we eat enough. So we can bounce back after twenty-four hours of rejuvenation. Though this is quite inconvenient."


    He sighed.


    "You can see why I don''t use it regrly," Kane grumbled, "The ces I would be if I could use it without that drawback, I would be two grades stronger than I am, that''s for sure. Thebination of Void Step and Godspeed is super overpowered you know!"


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 923 Recover

    ?


    Rui had to admit, that thatbination did sound overpowered. He hadn''t even considered the fact that the two techniques were highlypatible with each other. He hadn''t even considered that they could be used together.


    "Nigh Senior level movement speed, and imperceptibility," Ruj shook his head. "That shouldn''t be allowed. No Martial Squire can possibly handle that."


    "Except you," Kane huffed as he turned towards Rui.


    Rui did not deny that. Even if Kanebined those two techniques and used them simultaneously, he could not defeat Rui. Void Step was fundamentally useless against Rui, and he had already beaten Godspeed. Using them together would not allow him to change those individual oues.


    "I''m probably the only one, and only because of extremely unfortunatepatibility disadvantages for those techniques of yours," Rui cated him.


    He couldn''t think of a single other Martial Squire he knew that could handle thebination.


    "If not for the fact that it can only be used against a singr opponent, you would be so much more of a threat," Rui remarked. "It''s actually interesting because your peaks are so much higher than the rest of your Martial Art, that makes you harder to gauge."


    These two techniques made Kane more of a threat than the rest of his Martial Art did, considering that they were grade-ten techniques.


    However, Kane did not spam Godspeed because of its drawbacks, and while he did use Void Step regrly, it was the reason he was even evaluated to be a grade four Martial Artist at all.


    ¡¤?¦Èm It was too easy to take him down because his defenses were no different from paper for a Martial Artist of Rui''s caliber. Any high-grade Martial Artist could kill him with even a fraction of their power. The reason for this was because of his Martial body was weak as far as durability went, and his defensive techniques werecking. He had yet to create a single defensive technique.


    "They''re so difficult to create," Kaneined. "How do you have even make original defensive techniques."


    The two of them chatted as they returned to their lodgings, proceeding to wolf down gigantic meals that looked like it wouldn''t fit inside their body.


    Rui already felt more energized half a dayter.


    His digestion was more potent. He was rather certain that his stomach acid was concentrated rather than the dilute version that normal humans had. A dayter, his body felt entirely normal, like all of the body mass that he had expelled was finally reced. The two of them fully recovered from all their exertion, before heading out into the dungeon.


    "How many floors are left in there anyway?" Kane asked. "Feel like we should be done, honestly. The dungeon is huge but ultimately finite. It''s been two years since it was first opened, and ever since, we''ve been making tons of progress, and all Martial Squires travel super deep into the dungeon to have any hopes of finding a new floor."


    "We''ve gotten most of them," Rui told him. "Considering we''re nearing fifty floors. That''s a huge amount of area within the dungeon, and will probably close to the limit. I suspect we have several more floors to go and then that''s that."<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    "And then we reach the floor below the dungeon," Kane said what Rui was thinking.


    "Right,"


    Kane already knew that he wasn''t participating in such a conflict. It was simply too much for him. He could die of the environmental side effects of fighting with a floor guardian like the one that Rui had described to him.


    "Look," Kane began. "I know your technique is super powerful and all, but it''s not enough to win, right? In the first ce, you created that technique to not die, not as a path to victory. So what do you actually have in mind for actually defeating the Root?"


    Kane had a very valid point.


    It was true that Rui had created the Void Forestep technique to survive andbat the speed of the Root, but that wasn''t the same as winning.


    "It''s not like your trick of the Senior level Mind Mask can work here given that you''re facing a singr opponent, and not an entirely hostile army surrounding you as you did in the Serevian Dungeon," Kane told him. "You can''t direct the roots at an opponent, only at yourself."


    "I know," Rui nodded. "I have an idea, but I''ll need to flesh it out by getting more data on the Root."


    "And how do you intend to do that?" Kane sighed. "You''ve been observing it for months, correct?"


    "Yeah, but this time, now that I havepleted my training, I intend to invest more into the matter than I did before," Rui informed him. "I need more data, and that is part of the reason that we''re heading into the dungeon today. We''re going to find ways toe up with more data."


    "So we won''t be looking for dungeon floors?" Kane tilted his head. This material belongs to N?velDrama.Org.


    "We will," Rui replied. "It''s a shame we finished all of the floors that I discovered that day."


    In the past half year, the two of them had cleared almost all of the floors that they had discovered in the past, and now they were back to ordinary adventuring. Of course, with Rui. It was anything but ordinary. With his enormously wide sensory range, they merely needed to go for a walk, and he would gain a deep awareness of the entirety of the surroundings within a radius of several kilometers of their position.


    The two of them quickly reached the dungeon with Void Step, before heading into its depths. Even ordinary Martial Squires no longer felt much danger from the upper-most levels of the Shionel Dungeon that had long been swept clean by the many Martial Squires that had traveled through its tunnels, the monster had been sighted in any of the upper levels in recent times.


    Everyone knew that the real adventure could only be found in the greatest depths of the Shionel Dungeon.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 924 Lure

    ?


    Rui felt strange as he began spotting an increasing number of Martial Squires the deeper they went. Given that the depth of the Shionel Dungeon was sixty kilometers, most Martial Squires were exploring tunnels at a depth of forty to fifty kilometers. Rui could normally rx the deeper he went since he didn''t need to deal with the annoying adventurers who were basically associated with Chairman Deacon, or the annoying frencers that epted the bounty that Chairman Deacon had put on his head, which had grown by a factor of eight since it was originally instated.


    Now all those annoyances were migrating to the ces that were normally devoid of human presence.


    Rui and Kane traveled deeper until they reached levels that weren''t too far from the Root floor at the bottom of the Shionel Dungeon.


    It took more than a day of exploring, but Rui finally managed to detect a new floor.


    "Finally!" Kane eximed. "This damn dungeon finally yields a floor!"


    Kane had truly begun to grow sick of the Shionel Dungeon. He couldn''t wait for him and Rui to have finally cleared it to that they never had to enter it ever again. Spending an entire day trudging through annoyingly contorting tunnels was not fun.


    "What kind of floor is it?" Kane asked, eagerly.


    "It''s a¡­ snake pit" Rui narrowed his eyes.


    "Urgh," Kane''s expression soured as he grumbled. "Why can''t it be something nice like a bunch of bunnies?"


    "It''s a little strange though," Rui frowned.


    "What is?" Kane raised an eyebrow.


    Rui didn''t respond immediately as he observed what he was seeing, moving closer toward the dungeon to get a better look.


    The snakes seemed to be constantly wrestling with each other to move toward the center of the floor. As if the rest of the floor would lead to their deaths


    "They''re not venomous serpents like the ind taipans, through," Rui told him. "They''re more like pythons. They''re constantly engaging in this huge wrestling war with each other as they''re piling on top of each other at the center of the floor. It''s strange, really."


    "And let me guess, the esoteric ore deposits are under that pile?" Kane sighed.All content is property ? N?velDrama.Org.


    "Yep," Ruiughed mirthlessly. "An advantage that we do have is that they seem really preupied with whatever their strange goal is," Rui shrugged.


    He didn''t have much of an idea as to why the pythons were doing what they were doing, but he had to admit that as long as it kept them distracted, he waspletely fine with that.


    "Let''s get started," Rui told Kane when they arrived.


    He drew his hot air pipe and sword, before inhaling a deep puff of air.


    THWOOM


    The crackling hot Tempestuous Ripple struck several pythons, making their flesh rigid and brittle, yet what happened had exceeded his expectations.


    Suddenly, every single python ceased their actions before turning towards Rui, and the targets of his attack.


    HIIIISSSSS!


    They all immediately abandoned what they were doing before immediately dashing in his direction.


    Kane immediately dashed away while Rui narrowed his eyes, preparing his sword, he intended on mowing them down as much as he could.


    Yet to his surprise, they did not go to him, they immediately stopped at their paralyzed siblings whose flesh had turned rigid after being hit by Rui''s hot air wind st attack. A whole wave of snakes began fighting and wrestling with each other as they all tried to reach the super-heated and paralyzed bodies of their siblings.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    "What¡­?" Rui frowned, confused as he sky-walked around the increasinglyrge pile of snakes, trying to reach the targeted pythons that got hit by his attack.


    In the meant time, the giant collection of esoteric ore deposits in the center of the dungeon floor was unchecked.


    Rui sky-walked down to them, ncing back at the pythons.


    He ought to have just taken the esoteric ore deposits, but unfortunately, his confusion and curiosity had peaked far too much.


    (''What''s going on?'') He wondered.


    He coulde up with a dozen theories as to why they were acting too bizarrely, but he wasn''t sure.


    "Hm?" He noticed that the esoteric ore deposits of this floor were strangely hot.


    He nced back and forth between the pythons and the esoteric ore deposits as his eyes widened.


    "Could it be¡­?" Rui murmured aloud.


    "Could it be what?" Kane asked as he reached Rui''s position.


    Rui didn''t reply, instead pulling out his hot air pipe, before inhaling andunching a heated Tempestuous Ripple at a random spot on the floor.


    THWOOM


    Instantly, the pythons ceased their wrestling, before ncing in the direction of the target of his technique, staring at it with their yellow eyes and flicking tongues.


    HISSSSSSS!


    They once again repeated the same old pattern.


    "Uh¡­ What''s going on?" Kane asked Rui, confused.


    "I think I figured it out," Rui murmured. "It''s simple really, but they just love heat."


    "What?"


    "They love really high temperatures, it appears that the hotter it is, the more they''re drawn to it," Rui exined. "That would exin their behavior pretty well."


    He hadn''t heard of any species that was so strongly attached to heat before, but it wasn''t oundish. Snakes had infrared vision, thus the means by which they detected heat was evidently clear.


    "I see¡­" Kane scratched his head. "So you can just lure them away from the esoteric ore deposits of the floor by leading them away with heat. Great. That makes life easier."


    Rui smirked. "That''s true, but we can do so much more than just lure them away from the esoteric ore deposits, you know."


    "Like what?"


    "Like lure them to the Root," Rui grinned. "After months, I have finally been blessed with the opportunity to direct test subjects exactly where I want them. I can use these snakes to gather more information on the Root of the dungeon as I watch the snakes engaging in conflict with the Root."


    "That¡­" Kane raised an eyebrow at that n. Luring away heat-loving monsters to take them to fight an opponent he couldn''t to gain more information was a n that he hadn''t even conceived of.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 925 Path

    ?


    "I swear¡­" Kane chuckled. "There has probably been no one in history who has been as creative with clearing dungeons as you have been."


    Kane couldn''t help but think back to the many remarkably creative and unusual solutions that Rui applied to get things done.


    The one that stood out the most, of course, was when Rui used the water of an entire floor to astronomically increase the rate of exploration of the Shionel Dungeon, discovering twelve dungeons in a single day. Who could possibly im to be able to do such a thing?


    "I need to trace a path from this floor all the way to the Root floor," Rui murmured.


    In order to lure them away with his heat, he needed to find a pathway that wasrge enough to amodate arge number of pythons that were aggressively eager to reach any heat. This wasn''t something he could do on the run after already luring them out, he definitely needed to n things ahead of time.


    "Alright, see ya," Kane nodded.


    Rui nodded before exploring his surroundings with Riemannian Echo, mapping the entire area with his senses.


    "That should do just fine," Rui murmured as he spotted a giant tunnel that seemed to be headed downwards, immediately sky-walking towards it.


    After a while, it appeared that his fears of the tunnel being a dead-end weren''t true, he soon began experiencing a familiar sense of pressure.


    (''I''m getting closer,'') Rui''s eyes narrowed.


    He had experienced this pressure many times in the recent past, having visited the Root Floor to get a good understanding of the capabilities of that part of the Shionel Dungeon.


    About a few hourster, he had found what he was looking for.


    He didn''t even need to rely on the Riemannian Echo to sense the Root.


    The frozen atmosphere told him everything he needed to know. The avnche of pressure that crashed onto him, warning him not to go any further, it told one everything one needed to know about the Root.


    (''I just hope that the heat my hot air pipe generated will be hot enough for the pythons to ignore the overwhelming sense of danger,'') Rui sighed. Though he wasn''t too sure how that would be true. He needed to get a solid grip over himself in order to stay put and ignore the warning sirens that Primordial Instinct was giving off inside his head.


    It was unfortunate, but there wasn''t much he could if it turned out that this wasn''t the case. There were only so many ideas that he coulde up with inside the dungeon with the limited resources that he had.


    "Welp, just gotta hope I''m lucky," Rui paused as he found a tunnel pathway that opened up to the Root floor. Havingpleted his objective, he immediately turned around and headed back up the way he came up, eventually returning back to the python floor.


    "Found what you were looking for?" Kane asked.


    "Yeah," Rui nodded. "You use Void Step to cover us, while I use hot air pipe to heat the path that I want them to follow. If all things go well, it should be smooth."


    Rui wasn''t as certain about that, but he didn''tment. The good part was that there wasn''t much to be lost, they weren''t particrly risking their lives or anything of the sort, not to a particrly high degree by their standards.


    Even if the pythons didn''t end up inside the Root Floor like Rui wanted them to, at worst, he would not gain something he hoped he would. He wouldn''t lose anything he had already gotten.<novelsnext>I think you should take a look at </novelsnext>


    On top of that, the esoteric ore deposits were theirs for the taking unless they got extremely unfortunate.


    "Alright, let''s begin," Rui nodded to Kane.


    Kane ced his hand on Rui''s shoulder and the two of them disappeared into thin air.


    Several secondster;


    THWOOM


    The pythons froze before cocking their heads in the direction of Rui''s target, before immediately dashing towards it.


    Rui and Kane promptly began moving away from the pythons as Rui continuously heated up a path for the pythons to swiftly follow the two of them guided all the pythons through the tunnels that Rui had found leading all the way down to the Root Floor. The tricky part for Rui was to keep lighting up the path as he guided the pythons to follow without facing the way they were going.


    Kane had to pay attention to the direction that Rui was moving too and adjust his technique to work in that direction. The misdirection of his technique was an active element and Kane needed to know what direction he was moving in, in order to use it.


    Thankfully, the two didn''t need to hurry and could take it slow, by Martial Squire standards, and slowly but thoroughly lure the snakes into the Root Floor.


    The bad news was that even when he was going at a decently fast speed, it took him several hours to travel the entirety of the path to the Root Floor. With the slow pace that they were currently traveling at, it took them nearly an entire day for them to get near the Root Floor.


    (''Nowes the rough part,'') Rui sighed inwardly. He could only hope for the best. The pressure from the Root Floor had already begun washing over him.


    He nced at Kane to reassure him that they were fine, but to his surprise, Kane was unperturbed.


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    "You seem to be handling it well," Rui told him before blowing out more crackling hot air.


    "Handling what well?" Kane raised an eyebrow.


    "You know, the pressure,"


    Kane furrowed his eyebrows, turning towards Rui with a quizzical expression.


    "The pressure from the Root Floor?" Rui asked once again with a confused expression. "You''re handling it like a champ."


    "What pressure?" Kane nced around briefly, before turning back to Rui.


    Now Rui was beyond surprised. "You don''t feel any pressure?"


    "I literally have no idea what you''re talking about,"


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 926 Pressure

    ?


    He had been prepared to reassure Kane when the pressure set in, but was surprised when Kane imed he didn''t even feel any pressure.


    Rui turned towards the pythons as he observed their bodynguage and demeanor. Given his Fauna Flow technique, he was able to easily read the pythons even if they didn''t have any facial expressions whatsoever.Content is property of N?velDrama.Org.


    It was clear that none of them were exhibiting any of the behavioral patterns that they would if they felt as though their lives were under threat.


    (''Neither Kane nor the pythons feel this pressure¡­?'') He frowned, incredibly confused. (''Did they conspire to pull a prank on me, or am I losing my mind?'')


    He wasn''t quite sure why they were unable to sense them.


    (''Especially pythons they should have a strong sense for survi-'') He paused as realization dawned on him. (''It''s the Shionel Dungeon''s sensory jamming.'')


    It made sense. However, it wasn''t the case that the Shionel Dungeon''s sensory jamming traits were jamming the pressure that the Root was exerting on everybody.


    No.


    Rui often had to remind himself that the pressure that he exerted and experienced wasn''t real. It wasn''t real in the same way that atmospheric or water pressure was.


    It was psychological pressure that the mind experienced when the subconscious evolutionary ability to evaluate risk and danger, evaluated a being to be extremely dangerous. This pressure was not some energy radiated by the dangerous being that traveled through the air and entered the mind. It was pressure generated by the subconscious fear that the mind produced.


    However, if the mind was unable to even perceive the existence of the dangerous being and thus unable to evaluate the danger of the being, one''s mind would not generate the feat or the pressure.


    That was what was happening right now.


    Rui was experiencing the pressure because he possessed the ability to actually evaluate the risks and danger that dangerous beings pose to him, the Root, in this case. The inability of the pythons and Kane to sense the Root at all meant they couldn''t experience the pressure.


    (''That''s great,'') Rui''s eyes lit up.


    He was quite happy that this was the case. His biggest concern was that he would be unable to lure the pythons into the Root Floor due to them backing out in instinctual fear of the Root, but he was d that that was not a problem in the first ce.


    "Let''s keep going," Rui began working with a renewed vigor when he knew that the biggest hurdle of his n was not there in the first ce.


    Within an hour, they had finally arrived at the entrance to the Root Floor.


    "So this is where it is huh?" Kane peered down the tunnel leading to arge hole. "I still can''t feel any pressure, and that''s honestly scarier."


    Rui and Kane put some distance between them and the tunnel leading down as he heated the tunnel walls with his technique and the hot air pipe.


    Rui grinned as the pythons did not even hesitate to slip down the tunnel into the floor one by one.


    He even spewed more hot air from the edge of the hole leading into the floor in the direction of the grotesque Root, which was still actively engaging in mining the mine that the dungeon was based on.


    He was grateful that the Shionel Dungeon was so good at hampering senses, otherwise, there was no way the pythons would have willingly jumped into that tunnel and hole.


    "Now what?" Kane asked.<novelsnext>I think you should take a look at </novelsnext>


    "Sshh," Rui was fully focused on what was about to unfold. Hepletely ignored Kane as he focused all his attention on the Root Floor. He had spent quite a lot of time waiting for what was about to happen, he did not want to even blink his eyes in fear of missing what was about to happen. Even though he wasn''t using his eyes to observe the battle.


    (''They''re moving closer to the Root from the edge of the floor, I wonder when the Root will attac-`) The furthest bunch of pythons suddenly got ttened into a gigantic crater faster than Rui could even react.


    He had been paying extremely sharp attention to them, but they died before he could react nheless.


    He sharpened his focus even more, focusing only on the Root floor and nothing else.


    The deaths of the pythons did indeed confirm that the Root did not tolerate what it perceived as a living creature or any motion in general.


    A split secondter a huge wave of pythons was absolutely ttened by devastating impacts.


    BANG! BANG! BANG!


    The roots of the Root ruthlessly ttened the pythons, leaving thetter unable to resist the brutality of the former. They were unable to even mount up an opposition due to how quickly they died. They didn''t even know they had an opponent on this floor.


    They simply died in droves like they were insects.


    It didn''t take too long.


    Soon enough, the Root returned back to its business while an entire floor''s worth of python monster ttened corpses had left a pool of blood in their area.


    "It''s done," Rui sighed.


    "That quickly?!" Kane cocked his head back in surprise. "That''s absurd! It''s only been thirty seconds."


    "Yeah," Rui sighed.


    "You''re telling me the Root did all of them in half a minute?"


    "Yep,"


    "And you intend to fight this thing?"


    "Yeah," Rui shrugged. "If it chooses to fight back, anyway."


    "¡­" Kane stared at Rui with a concerned expression. "Well, good luck."


    He bit back a lot of things he wanted to say, and Rui appreciated that.


    "Don''t be so pensive," Rui told him. "It may havested only half a minute, but I did manage to get a lot of important necessary data."


    Rui smiled. Even thirty seconds was more than enough time for a Martial Squire like Rui, and for the Root as well. A lot had been aplished in that time and a lot had been observed in that time.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 927 Patterns

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    "Like what?" Kane frowned. "What could you have possibly learned in such a short amount of time?"


    "Well, for one, the amount of time may have been short, but what you need to consider is what was aplished in this time," Rui told him.


    More than a thousand pythons had been annihted by the Root in half a minute. Rui had gotten enough data for him to get the active data patterns that he was looking for. He had even analyzed yet, and he had already noted several patterns.


    (''It does not attack until things move within a certain range from the Root,'') Rui concluded.


    It hadn''t attacked the pythons from the moment that they had entered the Root Floor from the edge of the floor. Furthermore, it only attacked them after they entered a certain range.


    Even now, when he observed the corpses of the pythons, their positions confirmed the pattern. It meant that simply entering the dungeon did not make you a target of the Root, you needed to enter the dungeon and then cross a certain boundary.


    That gave Rui a bit of relief. It meant that he did not need to leave the floor if he wanted to retreat from the attacks of the Root. It also meant that he could effectively control when the attacks would begin.


    That wasn''t the only thing he had noticed at first nce.All content is property ? N?velDrama.Org.


    (''The attack of the root begins from the base, before going up to the tip of the root.,'') Rui noted.


    This was an extremely significant discovery. It meant that he had discovered a cue and a tell that would allow him to concretely predict the attacks and movements ahead of time. It would serve as a strong basis for the predictive model that he had been creating for the Root.


    Predictions were the basis of the means by which he intended to resist the offense of the Root, and finding such a useful pattern in the manner in which the attacks of the Root evolved was definitely quite useful.


    He had been afraid that the Rootcked such concrete tells and cues that would allow him to predict the moment of attack. If such a thing really was the case, then Rui would be in quite the dilemma. But fortunately, his fears hadn''te to pass.


    (''After all, that isn''t the only significant pattern there is,'')


    He discovered that every time a root attacked, it would always be the closest root to the target of the Root. This might not seem like much of a pattern or an advantage, but it meant that at any given time, he knew where the attack wasing from, ahead of time, and even when it wasing.<novelsnext>I think you should take a look at </novelsnext>


    That was a huge gain, without a doubt. The prior pattern only established his ability to predict an attack from a root, now he knew which ones would be attacking him.


    Unfortunately, these were not enough in and of themselves.


    He needed more data in more varied situations and circumstances. He needed to know what would happen if it was forced to attack highly powerful grade-ten Martial Squires who could resist some attacks and potentially even hurt it. That was what he himself intended to do, so he definitely wanted data on that.


    A grade-ten Martial Squire wouldst far longer than the Squire-level python monsters that he had tossed into the Root floor did. Martial Squires at the peak of the Squire Realm could not bepared to mid-grade Squire-level monsters.


    All in all, the n was a sess, it definitely did yield the result that he was hoping for it.


    But, at the end of the day, Rui did not feel confident in dealing with the Root as he was now. The information that he had currently would allow him to use the Void Forestep technique defensively to handle the attacks of the Root to a certain extent, but he would die unless he had ess to even more information.


    "That''s the problem with relying on information on your opponent to perform higher than your limits," Rui sighed. "You need to go through the efforts of procuring it."


    Normally, he did that in the actual fight itself. Gaining more information on his opponent to form a predictive model on them was feasible, but only when his opponent wasn''t powerful enough to blitz and tten him with a single attack.


    This was the only weakness of the VOID algorithm, arguably. Its need to gather information could be quite a drawback in certain circumstances where the very act of obtaining information was extremely difficult and potentially even deadly.


    Of course, it wasn''t as though other Martial Art would fare better than his own. This was most certainly not the case. Rui''s VOID algorithm was the only Martial Art that he knew had the necessary potency and prowess to be able to bridge such a gigantic gap between the Martial Artist and the opponent.


    Still, it was most certainly not a bad thing to recognize and acknowledge the limitations of one''s Martial Art. It was actually quite a good thing and was also something Rui was actually ustomed to, in his former life, at least. He had spent most of thetter half of his career recognizing and attempting to get rid of the ws, drawbacks, and limitations of the VOID algorithm.


    The VOID algorithm had gone through multiple upgrades before, so he wasn''t averse to the idea by any means at all. It was just that he had absolutely no idea how to go about it at the moment. Conceptually, the VOID algorithm was extremely sophisticated, he couldn''t think of an avenue to improve it fundamentally.


    He shook his head. This was a matter for the distant future, certainly not something that he sought to achieve now, with the sheer amount of time and effort it would take, the Shionel Dungeon would have long faded into irrelevance by the time hepleted such a gigantic and ambitious endeavor.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 928 Plans

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    "Unfortunately, it''s not enough," Rui murmured aloud, informing Kane of his thoughts. "The good news is that I know how to get more data."


    "Do you intend to pull off the monster trick once again?" Kane raised an eyebrow.


    "No," Rui shook his head. "It''s unlikely that we can do something like that again. I got lucky with the python monsters being extremely heat-loving creatures, but there is certainly no way that we can possibly get that lucky again. Manipting monsters this easily is extremely difficult and the python monsters were the first set of creatures that we ran into that were so easily maniptable."


    Rui didn''t hold out any hope of being able to manipte other monsters the way he did the python monsters. It was statistically too unlikely that he would have a way to manipte the monsters of any other floors.


    "Then what?" Kane asked. "You''re not going to be able to get more data unless you figure something out."


    "Don''t worry," Rui replied. "Ironically, manipting humans is easier than manipting monsters."


    Kane took a second to process those words, before realizing what Rui''s n was. "You intend to use Chairman Deacon''s Martial Squires to get more data for you."


    "At this point, I don''t see much of another viable choice," Rui sighed.


    He had considered several other courses of action. He briefly considered the idea of manually knocking out monsters and dragging them to the Root Floor before dumping them in. Depending on their size, he could possibly get several in at a time with some kind of harness. But he quickly discounted that idea.


    "The problem with that idea is that it''s too impractical to try and incapacitate monsters as opposed to just killing them," Rui sighed.


    Due to their vastly differing physiologies from humans, he didn''t even know if he could even knock half of them unconscious. Furthermore, he didn''t even know if they would stay that way.


    On top of that, how was he supposed to harness them to himself? He didn''t want to just tie them and drag them across the tunnels of the Shionel Dungeon. If they somehow broke through, it would be over, and potentially even dangerous if they caught him off-guard.


    On top of that, they didn''t listen to threats, obviously. He couldn''t just tell them to shut up and obey, or they would die if they didn''t. Even if he used Fauna Flow to try and convey that, the technique could not make up for stupidity. He would be forced to kill them.


    He considered doing something to sabotage the entire floor, forcing them to leave, then sealing off every possible exit that did not lead to the Root Floor, making sure that eventually, they would be forced to enter the Root Floor for arger space.


    But this too was quite impractical, as he quickly realized. Firstly, sabotaging the floor in a manner that would force all the monsters to exit was quite difficult. He did not really have a way of doing that in a pragmatic manner. He considered setting an entire floor on fire, but even ordinary Squire-level monsters werepletely impervious to ordinary fire.<novelsnext>I think you should take a look at </novelsnext>


    They would not be forced to leave the floor just due to fires.


    Of course, there was the smoke, even monsters couldn''t get rid of their need for oxygen. However, they could just put out the fire with great. Martial Squires and Squire-level monsters could generate powerful shockwaves and gusts of wind with their movements that could easily kill humans, they were more than capable of putting out a fire across the entire floor.


    Of course, Rui could try and use an esoteric fuel that generated devastating infernos that would be impossible even for the Squire-level monsters to put out in time but the n had already started bing too convoluted. Obtainingrge enough amounts of such an esoteric fuel, then spreading it across the entire floor in a manner that didn''t kill all the monsters, while also securing their own safety, then making sure that the dungeon didn''t inadvertently burn down. This material belongs to N?velDrama.Org.


    It was far too impractical of a n.


    The smoke from such a fire would clog the tunnels, making breathing absolutely impossible, and this was something that would be detrimental to humans and Martial Squires equally, meaning it could be quite deadly.


    "Too much," Rui shook his head.


    That was why he had thoroughly ruled out trying to dump more monsters into the Shionel Dungeon. It was not a n worth following, he did not believe that there were ways in which he could realistically make the n more feasible and viable.


    "Well, humans it is then," Kane shrugged. "It''s ironic because humans ought to be harder than monsters to manipte, but it seems to be the opposite in this case."


    "It does feel counterintuitive," Rui concurred. "The issue is that monsters don''t y by certain rules. Benefits, incentives, and disincentives. They''re too primitive for them to serve as viable test subjects. They''re also too weak to give me the more rigorous testing of the Root''s capabilities that I desire. On top of that, they won''t be able to even weaken or injure the Root before my battle with it."


    Kane considered his words. "Ah, so you''re also hoping that the Martial Squires associated with Chairman Deacon will weaken the Root to make it easier for you? Feel like that''s unrealistic given how strong the Root is if it called all those monsters so quickly.


    "Don''t underestimate what a thousand Martial Squires and a hundred veteran high-grade Martial Squires can do," Rui replied. "Not to mention the dozen or so grade-ten Martial Squires that stand at the peak of the Squire Realm. Those elites leading the rest of them will be able to hold out for quite some time, I suspect."


    "Hm," Kane nodded. "When you put it that way, then yeah, I can definitely get it."


    "Still¡­" Rui continued. "They''ll lose. The Root has more than a thousand roots capable of expressing extremely high-grade Squire-level power. Theirck of preparation and understanding of their opponent will seal the deal."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 929 Lure

    Content is property of N?velDrama.Org.


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    "Unlike me, they will most certainly not possess a rich understanding of what exactly it is that they are dealing with it," Rui continued. "Like with all the previous floors that they have explored, they''re supremely confident in the quantity and quality of their raid force."


    The raid force and exploration teams of the Deacon alliance were quite powerful, and this gave them the confidence to be quite brave in the manner that they explored dungeons.


    There was an unshakable sense of confidence that came with so many powerful Martial Squires gathered densely within a floor to clear whatever monsters they ran into, and plunder all the esoteric ore deposits that they came across.


    It also came from the dominating victories that they had against the monsters of each dungeon.


    Of course, this didn''t mean they lowered their guards and acted sloppily, certainly not. At the end of the day, the Shionel Dungeon was an extremely unsettling ce for Martial Squires, just the very fact that their powerful senses were so hampered meant that they could never truly let their guards down in this ce. It meant that they could not grow too cocky, even if they tried.


    Still, Rui was sure that employing his enemy against his enemy to obtain more intelligence on both of them, but especially the Root, while also weakening it in the process as he cleared the dungeon.


    He wasn''t sure to what degree they would be able to weaken the Root, after all, hecked too much of the huge amount of data needed to predict that parameter. But he was certain about the end oue.


    "So you''re convinced they''ll lose, huh," Kane gave it some thought. "That makes the Root sound even more scary, how is what is basically a quasi-Senior level creature doing in a Squire-level dungeon, honestly."


    "It''s part of the dungeon, thus it bypasses the rule," Rui reminded him.


    "Yeah, but how is a Squire-level dungeon able to produce a quasi-Senior-level organ?" Kane raised an eyebrow.


    "You''re misunderstanding ''Squire-level'' for its physical capabilities," Rui shook his head. "It''s a Squire-level dungeon in the sense that only Martial Squires can enter without triggering its defense mechanisms. The actual life form that the fused vegetation has constituted as a whole is a Senior-level being. The Root, being a part of that, is a quasi-Senior level being. The same goes for the Serevian Dungeon, as a whole, the dungeon was probably a level or two weaker than I currently am."


    "That makes sense, actually," Kane had to admit. "So when do you n on executing this n, how will you even go about it?"


    Rui considered the matter. "I could go about it the way I didst time with the sixteenth floor with the tree."


    He had purposely lured them into the sixteenth floor by sabotaging the checkpoints that they had set up to be able to track their previous route. They achieved this by relying on technology that contained esoteric substances that were extremely radiative of energy, making tracking them quite easy.


    They were originally designed for long-range tracking over extraordinarilyrge distances, but within the Shionel Dungeon, they could only be tracked if one was within ten meters of them. That was the sheer degree to which the Shionel Dungeon''s energy jamming trait affected it. <novelsnext>I think you should take a look at </novelsnext>


    The exploration method of Deacon Industries involved employing thousands of these to cover massive distances and making sure that they could never lose track of their old paths.


    Rui had once shifted the checkpoint trackers and redirected them to a floor that he had wanted them to clear for him.


    There was a good chance that he could employ a simr strategy to lure them to the Root Floor.


    "Remember that the sixteenth floor that we did end up using this strategy to clear, did end up being a fiasco that ended up giving a lot of clues about our modus operandi to Chairman Deacon," Kane reminded him. "This operation is actually quite simr to that one as it involves using our enemies to trick them, so you do need to be very careful."


    "Yeah, you''re definitely right about that," Rui nodded. "I actually have a rule. I won''t be entering the dungeon until the Martial Squires of Chairman Deacon are all dead or gone."


    Kane nodded. This rule prevented the possibility of any Martial Squire ever perceiving him and thereby gaining more clues on him that could increase the probability of them being caught by Chairman Deacon.


    Rui definitely did not want such an oue to happen.


    With how much Chairman Deacon hated his guts at the moment, the second that the man found out his identity, he would deploy his formidable power to ensure that Rui gets exterminated. In the worst-case scenario, he might even use the Quarrier Orphanage as leverage, or just massacre them just to spite Rui.


    Even if the distance between the Shionel Confederation and the Kandrian Empire exceeded ten thousand kilometers, it was far from insurmountable if Chairman Deacon was willing to go to the lengths when it came to Rui.


    That was what Rui was afraid of the most when ite to this entire conflict. It wasn''t just losing the battle over the resources of the Shionel Confederation, it was putting himself, and the people he cared about in direct danger.


    Thus he intended to make sure that there was absolutely nothing that went wrong in whatever n he did decide to enact.


    "I don''t know if I necessarily need to sabotage their tracking and direct them to the Root floor immediately, anyway," Rui mentioned. "They''ll find it naturally eventually. Messing with their tracks is moreplicated because if the total distance that they have covered does not exceed the shortest distance from the starting point to the Root Floor, then it will be impossible for me to lead them to the Root Floor."


    "Why would it?" Kane raised an eyebrow.


    "Because distance needs to be conserved. The trackers need to be ten meters from each other regardless of direction so the total distance cannot change, thus if it''s lesser than I need it to be, there''s nothing that can be done."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 930 Reactions

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    This was part of the reason that Rui was somewhat inclined to get things done less aggressively and more patiently. Not only was there a lot at stake, but the difficulty of matters was higher as well.


    "In that case, it''s better to let things proceed more naturally, I guess," Kane replied.


    "That is what I intend to do," Rui nodded. "At most, that will change at the very end when I''m confident I can exert more fine control."


    And so he did.Belonging ? N?velDram/a.Org.


    For the next few weeks, he did not interfere with the exploration teams of Deacon Industries at all. The two sides minded their own business, or at least Rui did, the other side would loved to have gotten their hands on him for the juicy bounty that was on his head to this day.


    At that time, both sides had begun to explore the very final sections of the Shionel Dungeon.


    It had be increasingly clear to the entire world that this chapter in the story of the Shionel Confederation was sooning to an end.


    The response from the popce to this news was more mixed than Rui was expecting. Apparently, he had underestimated how many people were ready to move on, although the number was still lower than the number of people who reacted negatively to this news, it was quite surprising.


    A ton of people had gotten sick of the chaos that it brought to the nation. The Shionel Confederation had always been a nation centered aroundmerce, but there was a limit to how much they could tolerate. The past half year had flooded the nation with such an absurd degree of immigration andpetition in the market that many natives were simply unable to cope, and needed to end up leaving the nation. Those that could cope were entirely sick of the exacerbated conditions of the market.


    The sheer increase inpetitors made the market share that they usually had a im on, had dwindled down significantly, while the cost of production had risen dramatically. Raw materials and supplies had be a lot harder to source, and the price of owningnd, and the difficulty of maintaining even a spot for a stall had all be much more difficult than before.


    On top of that, the consumer market had not shot up in bnce to the increase inpetition in the supplier market. The reason for that was that most of the consumers interested in the Shionel Dungeon''s supplies bought fromrge-scale suppliers that could supply mass batches of supplies.


    Corporations like Esosale Suppliers and Deacon Industries sucked up all of the prizes. Small-scale businesses and retailers suffered the most.


    These were among the ones that were most relieved by the indications that the exploration of the Shionel Dungeon wasing to an end.<novelsnext>I think you should take a look at </novelsnext>


    The ones whose livelihood and day-to-day life that wasn''t negatively affected by the Shionel Dungeon were naturally in the camp that enjoyed the presence of the Shionel Dungeon in the nation and the exploration of it the most. Those that were positively affected by the Shionel Dungeon were also displeased by the news that the exploration of the dungeon was in its final stages.


    Regardless, there was nothing that could be done about it regardless of how one felt about the matter. Nearly two years after its initial discovery, it was quite surreal to many people that this chapter in their lives was finallying to an end.


    The Shionel Confederation was unrecognizable from how it used to be. Even on a map, its sovereign borders had been thoroughly rearranged. The appearance of the dungeon had not strictly fit inside the prior borders of the state thus it had to officially annex certain parts of the territory that contained the Shionel Dungeon. These were previously within the domain of influence of the Shionel Confederation but never officially a part of the nation.


    The GDP and GDP per capita of the nation had risen tremendously, and its economy had surpassed that of even the powerhouse nations in the general geopolitical vicinity of that section of the Panama Continent. It had be an economic powerhouse with the sheer amount of wealth and power that was pouring into the nation from the dungeon.


    The concentration and density of the Martial Artist poption had reached unprecedented heights. There was no other nation in the geopolitical vicinity that had such a high number of Martial Squires within such little area. None of them had ever experienced a state where there were more Martial Squires in the nation than there were Martial Apprentices!


    It sounded like an absurd andughable joke, but it was the actual reality, the Martial Squires in the nation had grown so numerous, they exceeded the Martial Apprentices. There were so many Martial Squires, that Martial Seniors and even Martial Masters were deployed across the entire nation, away from the Dungeon, to monitor the Martial Squires that had flowed into the Shionel Dungeon.


    If left unchecked, they could potentially destroy an entire town before the Shionel martial Squires of the military orw enforcement even arrived.


    The presence of higher Realm Martial Artists was one of the reasons that the shoving of suchrge numbers of Martial Squires into a single rtively small nation had not led to arge amount of conflict.


    However, the influx of Martial Squires had now slowly begun to turn into an outflux in recent times when word of the twilight of the exploration saga of the Shionel Dungeon spread around. There was no point in showing up to a party that was about to end. Furthermore, the two giants of the Shionel Dungeon had already carved out the spaces of the Shionel Dungeon as their own, there was no room for Martial Squires who was not associated with either as dominating and monopolizing dungeon floors had increasingly be normalized.


    As the significance of the Shionel Dungeon began to fade in the minds of the citizens of the Shionel Dungeon, another long-awaited event in the Shionel Confederation was going to arrive.


    It was soon going to be time for the election of the next leader of the nation.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 931 Factors

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    "I thought you didn''t care about the elections," Kane asked one day when the fateful day was arriving sooner, raising an eyebrow as he watched Rui reading one of the campaigning ads of Chairman Deacon.


    "I didn''t before, but¡­" Rui''s eyes narrowed. "That was because I thought Guildmaster Bradt had it in the bag without any shadow of a doubt."


    "You''re telling me he doesn''t?" Kane raised an eyebrow. "I thought Guildmaster Bradt was the most kick-ass merchant in the Shionel confederation and no one could possibly trounce him head-on."


    "These things don''t work like a Martial Art fight, you know," Rui replied, amused. "Political and economicpetitions are such that their personal capabilities matter less than you think. Yes, Guildmaster Bradt is extremelypetent as a merchant, but the same can be said for Chairman Deacon. They have their own strengths in the way that they operate. The differences in their personal capacities as merchants and political leaders are not going to be tie-breakers. There are other variables that are arguably far more important."


    Kane nced at him. "Like¡­?"


    "Circumstances," Rui replied shortly. "Opportunities. Even in old luck."All content is property ? N?velDrama.Org.


    "Circumstances like the Shionel Dungeon?"


    "Yeah," Rui nodded. "I bet Guildmaster Bradt hates the Shionel Dungeon ever appearing, given his nature, he had probably constructed an extremely borate long-term strategy to maintain political power over longer periods of time. The appearance of the Shionel Dungeon must havepletely ruined each and every single one of those ns. It also threatened to give Chairman Deacon exactly what he had wanted all these years; a wide-open opportunity to break Guildmaster Bradt''s unshakable political dominance."


    There were some things that nothing couldpensate for, and one of them was the sheer amount of unfathomable growth that Chairman Deacon was getting thanks to the Shionel Dungeon. The Shionel Dungeon empowered the man''s field and industries to a level that it did not boost other fields and sectors, especially not Guildmaster Bradt''s field.


    What was one supposed to do when faced with such a titanic disadvantage, when his opponent was highlypetent and would certainly exploit and abuse it to the very maximum?


    Without being willing to take extraordinarily bold risks, without willing to bleed for the sake of simply not getting trampled over.


    Yet even then, it most likely would not be enough in and of itself. The reason for that was that Guildmaster Bradt''s opponent was known to be a relentless bloodhound that never let go. He possessed the trait that Guildmaster Bradt needed to exhibit to maintain his increasingly tenuous position.


    Rui was nothing short of a godsend to Guildmaster Bradt, with his ability to steal Chairman Deacon''s dominance in the Shionel Dungeon, and his ability to create a dungeon map that allowed for efficient and swift dungeon travel, Guildmaster Bradt had found his opportunity.


    Even Rui had initially evaluated that the Guildmaster had the next elections in the bag when he had signed the deal with the man. What he hadn''t expected was how well Chairman Deacon would be able to cope and keep up even after the major setbacks that the Voider caused him.


    Chairman Deacon had not simply let the loss push him down, but instead, used the opportunity to gather support from merchants that he previouslypeted with. Previously, these merchants were raw esoteric ore deposits suppliers like he was, they were fiercepetitors and he was unlikely to have ever been able to gain their political support. After all, he dominated them in the market, they were certainly not friends with goodwill to each other.<novelsnext>I think you should take a look at </novelsnext>


    They were likelier to support Guildmaster Bradt, and that''s just the way that things were.


    But with amon obnoxious enemy that was obviously partnering up with the Guildmaster that was dominating all of them, Chairman Deacon had managed to win over his previous rivals andpetitors with amon enemy, buying more political capital.


    When he realized how much potential this strategy had, he went all out with it as he aggressively bought over foreign stakeholders to his side by uniting the many foreign and international elements that were dissatisfied with the Voider''s dominance.


    While these parties could not directly vote in the Shionel Dungeon, their cooperation could be used to buy off voters inside the Shionel Merchant Guild who had interests tied to them.


    And Chairman Deacon had not held back even one bit. He had employed his massive economic capital to gather as much of an advantage as he possibly could.


    And his efforts appeared to have paid off greatly.


    Rui''s eyes narrowed as a glint of uncertainty shed across all of them. "I''d like to be done with all matters surrounding the Dungeon as soon as possible, ideally before the resultse out."


    "What''s the hurry?" Kane''s eyebrows furrowed.


    "If Chairman Deacon bes the Guildmaster, it will be bad for us, that''s for sure," Rui narrowed his eyes. "The first thing he''ll do is undo the amendments to identity verification and registration requirements and get rid of all the anonymity that we have been relying on this entire time."


    Kane''s eyes widened as he realized the ramifications of this possibility. "We''ll be screwed big time if that happens, our entire operation relies on the legal veil of anonymity."


    "That''s right, I want to make sure that we''re prepared for the worst. Although it''s not too likely, Chairman Deacon does have a definitive chance of winning this election. I want to make sure that we''re prepared for the worst. Because I guarantee you that if he gets elected, the second he gets officially sworn into office, he will undo the bill and try to expose us."


    Rui knew that dealing with the Voider would be the very first order of business for the man, he needed to make sure that he had already consolidated all the wealth that he had made and made sure that he was ready to take them.


    It wasn''t that Rui cared for the actual sum of money, but he didn''t want to give Chairman Deacon any chance to seize the fruits of his efforts.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 932 Meet

    ?


    "But what if they don''t find and try to clear the Root Dungeon before the elections?" Kane frowned.


    "We can''t allow that to happen," Rui narrowed his eyes. "If pushes to shove then we relocate their checkpoint trackers and guide them to the Root Floor."Content is property of N?velDrama.Org.


    "I thought you weren''t for doing that though,"


    "Yeah, but I hadn''t considered the ramifications of Chairman Deacon being chosen as Guildmaster," Rui replied. "It didn''t seem nearly usible as it does today. In that case, I might need to elerate my ns."


    Rui went deep into thought. He had received regr updates on the investigation of the Voider from the Martial Union, but that wasn''t enough.


    (''Looks like I''ll have to ask Guildmaster Bradt for an update on the exploration progress of Deacon industries inside the Shionel Dungeon,'') Rui mused.


    If he was going to adjust the checkpoint trackers that Deacon Industries was using en masse, then he needed to know where they were before he could alter their trajectory. At this point, he could only pray that their paths were long enough that he could make them reach the Root Floor.


    If not, then he would have to use cruder means to get them to reach the Root Floor, even if it meant knocking them out by surprise, dropping them in a tunnel approaching the Root Floor, and then sealing off all routes except for one that led them to a floor that Deacon industries had already explored and cleared, to give them an idea of where they were. Since Deacon Industries already would know the location of the floor, the discovery of that tunnel would allow them to be able to reach the Root Floor any time they wants, and they would be able to quickly organize their powerful raid team where they would then engage in a war against the Root, just like Rui hoped they would.


    He took no guilt about subjecting them to that, nor being the cause of all their deaths. He was a firm believer in the concepts of agency and personal responsibility. The Martial Squires epted the operations, and became adventurers despite being fully aware of the many risks, even for high-grade Martial Squires, that came with being adventurers. There were multiple avenues where they could have abstained, yet they went for it anyway.


    Rui quickly drafted up a letter addressed to Guildmaster Bradt going through the whole process of making sure he didn''t leave even a speck of anything that could potentially help Guildmaster Bradt identify him.


    Still, at this point, he was least concerned about Guildmaster Bradt. The man needed Rui now more than ever, while Rui needed him less and less as the days passed. The map that Rui was giving him was crucial, and it was now mostlyplete, while Rui really didn''t care about what happened to his Esosale Suppliers anymore.


    "There," Rui sealed the letter. "Kane, could post this letter to Bradt in the usual manner?"


    "Sure, what''s it for?" Kane plucked the letter out of Rui''s hands.


    "It''s a letter requesting urgently the most updated intelligence on Chairman Deacon''s exploration routes and avenues," Rui exined. "We also need to speak with Martial Commissioner Reze."


    "Now why do we need to talk with him?" Kane frowned. "He''s just going to start droning on and on about the Underworld this and that."


    Rui smirked, amused. "You''re probably right. But I do need to warn him to ensure that no Kandrian Martial Squires partake in the exploration of the Root Floor, since all those who do, will die."


    Kane nodded. "That''s prudent, I hadn''t thought about that."<novelsnext>I think you should take a look at </novelsnext>


    "Commissioner Reze will know that I knew of the dangers of the Root Floor, if I don''t warn him about it ahead of time, I''ll be held liable for sabotage," Rui borated. "Also, the Martial Union is one of our few allies, so, we should probably look out for them, especially when it doesn''t burden us unduly in any way."


    Kane nodded. "Agreed."


    It didn''t take long for Kane to finish the posting before the two of them visited Martial Commissioner Reze.


    "Hm," The man, who wasmunicating remotely, considered Rui''s words. "We appreciate the warning, we will take It under serious consideration. However, I couldn''t help but notice that your words implied that you wouldn''t necessarily be taking the same precautions."


    "I intend toplete my objective, which is clearing the dungeon, one way or another," Rui replied impassively.


    Although Commissioner Reze did not so much as budge to the naked eye, Rui could sense and read his rm at a level deeper than ordinary human cognition could cover for.


    He did not like what he heard.


    "We strongly urge you to consider otherwise," Commissioner Reze insisted. "We are aware of your remarkable growth, and your unprecedented ability to create powerful new techniques with convenience. However, you''re subjecting yourself to great peril."


    "I know what I''m doing," Rui replied simply. "I will act as I deem fit."


    Commissioner Reze did not respond immediately. Unfortunately for him, he was unable to act too heavy-handed with Rui. The reason for this was that the Martial Union did not have the right to interfere so heavily in what were basically the private matters of a Martial Squire in a region entirely outside its jurisdiction.


    "Alright then, we wish you the best of luck," Commissioner Reze offered a courteous smile. "Ah, since you''re here, we''d like to provide you with the updates regarding the shell fronts of the mafia."


    He provided Rui with a thick document.


    Rui couldn''t help but raise an eyebrow. "It''s thicker than usual."


    "The mafia has grown more aggressive in their desire to obtain a greater proportion of the yields of the Shionel Dungeon," Commissioner Reze. "I am aware that you are disinterested in this matter, but you are not disconnected from it, and it does affect your personal interests."


    Those words were enough for Rui to take the matter more seriously, even if he knew that that was Commissioner Reze''s intent.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 933 Threats

    ?


    "Be specific," Commissioner Reze," Rui replied.


    "We have indications that the Underworld of the Kandrian Empire is working with Chairman Deacon," Commissioner Reze straightforwardly revealed.


    Rui''s eyes narrowed as he considered the Martialmissioner''s words carefully, perhaps he ought to be a bit more aware of the matter. "That doesn''t sound right. Chairman Deacon wouldn''t do something that would hurt his reputation. If ites out that he''s colluding with the mafia, then it would severely hurt his image amongst the poption¡­"All content is property ? N?velDrama.Org.


    Rui slowed down as he instantly understood what Commissioner Reze was getting at.


    Thetter smiled. "It seems you have already realized why that doesn''t matter."


    Rui paused for a moment, before nodding. "The Shionel Confederation is a rare example of a nation with a democratic electoral system where ordinary citizens are not allowed to vote. Thus their opinions don''t matter."


    "Correct," Commissioner Reze nodded. "Even if word spreads of his interactions to the merchant members of the of the Shionel merchant Guild, and even to the Shionel merchant Cab, the detriments will be rather limited."


    Rui nodded. "Because the Shionel Confederation has highly libertarian and capitalistic policies. No form of goods or services is illegal here. What would be part of the ck market in the Kandrian Empire, would simply be part of the ordinary market here."


    "Correct again," Commissioner Reze nodded.


    "But this isn''t too significant to me," Rui nodded. "At the end of the day, as long as my identity is not revealed, it doesn''t really matter whose on his side, or whose side the Underworld is on."


    "I don''t think you understand, given your limited awareness of how the Underworld functions in the Kandrian Empire," Commissioner Reze shook his head. "You yourself are not just at risk, everything you love and care about is at risk."


    Rui''s eyes narrowed. "What?"


    "I''m sure you have entertained the idea of what will happen to your family if you were to be revealed in any way," Commissioner Reze calmly continued.


    "I am aware, there is a non-zero chance that Chairman Deacon will go as far as to deploy operatives to kidnap and smuggle them to him to then employ them to leverage against me," Rui coldly replied. "Using them to get me, and then extracting my mining methodology in exchange for their safety, before killing me."


    "You have understood the risks associated with Chairman Deacon well," Commissioner Reze nodded. "However, he isn''t the biggest threat to everything you care about. At the end of the day, you are a member of the Kandrian Martial Union, an organization with Martial power that is nearly an entire order of magnitude greater than everything that Shionel Confederation can muster up. Chairman Deacon will be quite wary and restrained about what he can do to you. Make no mistake, he will get you killed. But he cannot do so in a manner that can be interpreted as an act of war against the Martial Union and the Royal Kandrian Family. He will not be willing to take such risks especially if he wins, representing the entirety of the Shionel Confederation."<novelsnext>I think you should take a look at </novelsnext>


    "I am aware of that," Rui nodded. "It''s why it''s a moot possibility. He''s a small fishpared to the Martial Union, and the Martial Union is already deeply exposed and involved with the investigation, he cannot do as he pleases. He can at most reveal my identity to give all the people who hate me a chance to get rid of me, and work to get rid of me swiftly and cleanly."


    "Correct, and among those people will be the Underworld," Commissioner Reze narrowed his eyes. "They do not y by the rules that the Shionel Confederation ys with."


    Rui realized where this was going.


    "The second they discover your identity¡­" Commissioner Reze paused for a second. "Your family has perhaps a few hours to live."


    He didn''t need to say more. For those words conveyed all of the severity of the risks involved. He almost reconsidered the matter surrounding the dungeon, before growing frustrated at that.


    This was the first time he felt like his family was an impediment.


    The very next moment, he felt like an absolutely horrible person for even conceiving that thought, but unfortunately, that did not mean it was without substance. This was the first time that his considerations of his family''s well-being had actually shed with his personal interests.


    He did not want to lead a subdued life. Perhaps it was because his previous life was forcefully subdued, a fate that made him heartache, but he almost felt as if he had to make up for his previous life''s suffering. That involved taking risks and shing against hurdles that stood in the way of his previously unfulfilled personal ambitions.


    Sometimes those risks and hurdles involved other people, who could end up dragging more than just him into a mess.


    This was the first time he had ever felt it so clearly. The stronger he grew, the greater the weakness his family represented.


    Perhaps it hadn''t affected him so much since he was alwayspleting personal missions andmissions. But the previous two major endeavors had intoxicated him with autonomy and independence respectively. The diplomat mission with the G''ak''arkan Tribe had shown him how freeing being in charge was, and had directly created the desire to embark on an endeavor that gave him that freedom, which was why he and Kane had set out for the Shionel Dungeon.


    And now that he had spent more than half a year fighting for his own ambitions, he couldn''t even imagine going back to undertaking ordinarymissions on a day-to-day basis.


    He would be acting as his own agent, but that also meant that any enemies he made would be his own enemies and not the enemies of his clients, or enemies of the Martial Union. That inevitably meant that his family was liable to be dragged in depending on the matter.


    And with enemies like The Underworld and Chairman Deacon, he needed to be quite careful.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 934 Crossroads

    ?All content is property ? N?velDrama.Org.


    Strangely enough, Rui felt as though he had arrived at a crossroads of sorts. The way he dealt with this would likely very well set the pattern for how he would deal with such an issue in the future.


    He nced at Kane, who was silently listening. He expressed concern, but that was purely for Rui. He had no personal interest at stake here.


    After all, he did not give a fuck about his family. He would probably grin in amusement if he did cause them any trouble.


    However, even if he cared for his family, he would not be worried. The Underworld was not crazy enough to mess with one of the most powerful Martial families in the Kandrian Empire. A family that was led by a Martial Sage, that had produced many martial Artists of all Realms, and who was also the leader of one of the most powerful Martial Sects in the nation.


    The actual military and Martial power of the Underworld paled inparison to the Martial Union in absolute numbers, which is why the Underworld didn''t dare to confront the former in a head-on symmetrical war, among other reasons.


    The Arrancar Family was powerful enough to take on the Underworld''s Martial forces by itself.


    The same could not be said for the Quarrier Orphanage. The thought of It was almost funny.


    Their many faces shed through his head as he thought of the ones that he was especially attached to. Julian, Lashara, Alice, Max, and Mana, among others.


    He sighed. "What''s your objective with bringing this up?"


    "Pardon?"


    "I appreciate the warning," Rui replied. "But you wouldn''t have gone this deep into the matter unless there was something in it for you. Get on with it."


    Martial Commissioner Reze smiled wryly. "You are correct. I shall do as you say. In light of what I have just brought up, I have an offer to make to you, Squire Quarrier."


    Rui remained silent, staring at him wordlessly as he already understood what direction this was going.


    "We can offer your family official full-time protection," Themissioner continued. "We can guarantee that basically no force will hurt them, be it either due to the active Martial Squire guards that will be guarding them at all times, or due to the passive protection that being under the protection of the Martial Uniones with."


    Rui frowned. "That means that they will constantly be apanied by Martial Squires, correct?"


    "Yes, it will be necessary to guarantee their safety," Themissioner nodded. "On top of that, there will be a security detail established at the orphanage''s property. They will be strictly protected at all times."


    It sounded great with a superficial consideration of the matter, however, Rui was not convinced that this was necessarily a good thing.<novelsnext>I think you should take a look at </novelsnext>


    "You''ll be disrupting their lives significantly, they''ll live every day under the fear of being targeted, and suffering in the process," Rui narrowed his eyes.


    "Those can be minimized, even if unavoidable," Commissioner Reze replied. "It''s a better oue to them being massacred, correct?"


    Rui could not argue with that, but that point made him all the more disillusioned by that. He loved his family deeply and wish only the best for them. He was willing to do much for them, he was even willing to go so far as to die for them if that ever came to be the need.


    However, he was unsure if he was willing to shackle himself for that. That was a line that the thought of crossing repulsed him to his very soul.


    (''Maybe I should use the phenomenal wealth that I got from the dungeon to have dozens of Martial Squires protect all of them from the shadows?'') He wondered, before sighing. Such means had limits. He could not possibly earn enough to pay for dozens of Martial Squires basically working full time, and eventually even his massive wealth would whittle down, regardless of how long it took.


    Furthermore, the more he went down such a path, the more enemies he would make and the more protection he would need to impart.


    He tried imagining what life was like for a famous and notorious Martial Master with arge family of ordinary humans, with many enemies who would love to make him suffer. The sheer anxiety of something happening to his family was something that he could not even begin to fully realize. He wouldn''t even be able to sleep with such fears guing his heart.


    (''Is this the reason that powerful Martial Artists tend to have Martial Families that are strong enough to defend themselves? Because having normal families is too much of a weakness and a liability?'') Rui wondered inwardly, trying to gauge the motivations of higher-ranking Martial Artists.


    The more he detached himself from humanity and transcended his limits as a Martial Artist, the more he found himself distinguishing himself from normal humans, psychologically.


    He shook his mind returning to the present as he considered Commissioner Reze''s offer.


    "I''ll think about it," He ended up saying, unable to choose in the heat of the moment.


    "That is understandable," He nodded in response. "I did not expect you to make your mind up on the spot. Take some time to consider the matter."


    The meeting soon came to an end before Rui and Kane left, returning back to the inn.


    "We should also stop by the Shionel Dungeon sometime today," Rui remarked. "Guildmaster Bradt will have likely already prepared the information and data that I am looking for. As long as things are fit, we canmence the n any time."


    After the conversation he had just had, Rui couldn''t help but strongly hope that the exploration teams of Deacon Industries had made deep enough progress into the Shionel Dungeon so that he could redirect their path leading straight to the Root Floor. In the worst-case scenario, he would need to take the checkpoint trackers of other exploration teams and add them to the route he was trying direct them to the Root Floor through.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 935 Redirect

    ?


    Later that day, Rui and Kane headed into the Shionel Dungeon, to the first floor. As always, Rui brought out an entire suit that covered his entire body, donning it before passing one to Kane.


    "Again?" Kane asked with an exasperated sigh.


    "Guildmaster Bradt is relentless," Rui insisted, digging up the box of documents.


    FSSS


    The sound of a gas escaping the box reached their ears as Rui paused. "Hah, I knew it. He would try the same old stinking trick again."


    Kane had to admit that Rui was right, shrugging.


    Rui quickly took the document to one of thetest floors that they had cleared that hadn''t been discovered yet, before Rui quickly skimmed through all the data in the documents, mindlessly inputting them into his Mind Pce to read properlyter on.


    Rui incinerated the documents and boxes to ashes before storing the suits in his dimensional ring as the two of them returned back to the inn.


    "So?" Kane asked once Rui had some time to parse through all the data that he had collected from Guildmaster Bradt.


    Rui grimaced. "It''ll take them too long before the closest adventuring team will have traversed far enough."


    Kane tutted as he went deep in thought. "So¡­ What do you want to do? Maybe we should just have faith in Guildmaster Bradt in winning the elections."


    "Nope," Rui immediately rejected the idea. "I do not wish to leave things in the hands of others I cannot trust. Guildmaster Bradt is definitively highlypetent, but that''s far from enough."


    "So what do you n to do?" Kane asked seriously.


    "I''ll have to go with one of my earlier alternative ns," Rui replied. "For example, Stealing checkpoint trackers from other exploration teams before using them to extend the path of one exploration team so that they could reach the Root floor."


    "That sounds like a lot of work," Kane muttered.


    Rui would need to travel calcte the amount of distance that he would need to add to an exploration team''s path, and then steal just the right amount of checkpoint trackers to add to the path.


    "Yeah," Rui sighed as he got up.


    "Where are you going?" Kane raised an eyebrow.


    "To get started of course," Rui replied. "No need to waste time. It''ll be quicker if I go by myself this time, so you can stay back and rx."<novelsnext>I think you should take a look at </novelsnext>


    "Alright, I''m notining," Kane shrugged as he reclined back. "Have fun doing all that tedious manualbor."


    Rui shook his head with a wry smile as he left the inn, heading for the Shionel Dungeon.


    He already knew everything he needed to do since he possessed a map of the Shionel Dungeon inside his head, while also possessing the exploration routes of the various exploration teams.


    (''There are so many of them that it makes my life easier. Thank god for Chairman Deacon being so aggressive in his exploration in his hopes of trying to match me,'') Rui was d that Chairman Deacon had invested this much into setting out hundreds of exploration teams on different exploration routes.This material belongs to N?velDrama.Org.


    Such arge number of exploration teams could effectively match Rui''s own explorative capabilities in the Shionel Dungeon. It was why they had managed to obtain sess that matched Rui''s own sess.


    (''Only took merging basically everybody into a single force,'') Rui snorted.


    The difference between their explorative capabilities was that they had greater range, but the quality of their exploration was low, while Rui had a more limited range, but could sense everything within that range.


    Rui quickly dove deep into the Shionel Dungeon as he swept across the many routes that Deacon Industries was exploring and stole checkpoint trackers from the very end of their routes.


    (''I need about a hundred and eight of them,'') Rui calcted the number he needed based on the maximum distance between the checkpoint trackers.


    He made sure to take only one tracker from each route so that he didn''t significantly shorten any one particr route. He also couldn''t take from routes where he found the exploration team still actively searching.


    All in all, he had spent more than half a day inside the dungeon, gathering everything he needed from as many exploration routes


    He quickly headed down to the exploration route that he had chosen to redirect, painstakingly relocating hundreds of checkpoint trackers in the paths that he deemed necessary and fit, allowing him to change their path into a tunnel that led them straight down.


    Then he stacked the extra checkpoint trackers to extend the route further and further down. The deeper he went, the more he began feeling an overwhelming sense of pressure as his Riemannian Echo could sense the creepy roots extending from the Root as it began digging up esoteric ores for consumption and delivery to the rest of the dungeon.


    He steeled his mind as he got further and further to the floor.


    Until he was merely fifty meters away. That was a good distance to drop them off, he then made sure to seal off any alternative routes that they could take that could detour them from the Root Floor, forcing them to go through the tunnel that would open them up to a massive cavity that was once apletely filled mine.


    Three-quarters of a dayter, his work was finally done. He steeled his will as he prepared himself for the final step in his preparation for taking down the Root, and iming the final floor of the Shionel Dungeon as his.


    The data that he would get from the Deacon Industries'' raid from the Root Floor would give him the final piece of the puzzle and would allow him to confirm what he had been wanting to know for quite some time now. Whether the n to take down the Root that he had devised would actually work or not.


    With this move, he had set into motion of series of events that would bring about the end of this saga, one way or another.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 936 Raid

    ?


    "Sir," A woman walked into Chairman Deacon''s office.


    "What is it?" he growled. "I''m busy."


    Before him was a wide array of documents that contained reports and analyses on any and all matters that pertained to the election.


    The elections were right around the corner, it was just a matter of days. At this moment in time, for the first time in a long time, the Shionel Dungeon was a secondary matter. Although he certainly paid attention to the matters of hispany, he was far more invested in the matters of the elections.


    Fortunately, his work in that regard was going well. The countless allies that he had united and supported in the battle for dominance within the Shionel Dungeon were all aiding him in the dungeon. He had already bagged at least forty percent of all the votes for certain. These included his allies, or people who his allies had bought leveraging their capital to get them to vote for Chairman Deacon.


    Given that his allies consisted of countless local merchants and corporations and many international powers, his support group was huge. Yet he wasn''t overconfident, he knew that Guildmaster Bradt had a gigantic supportwork that he used to leverage arge proportion of the voters.


    Right now he was simply looking at the ways in which he could leverage his capital to reel in more voters. This required knowing the people he was trying to reel inside out, and using his capital to appeal to their interests.


    This was an extremely difficult and rigorous process, one that he had already extensively gone through, he was just looking for any and everything that could tip the scales even more towards him.


    "It''s important sir," She insisted. "An exploration team has reported the discovery of a new floor."


    "That sounds standard," Chairman Deacon frowned. "Just execute standard protocols around it, no need to bring this matter to my attention."N?velDrama.Org owns all ? content.


    "Sir, the exploration team''s data has indicated that the floor is most likely the bottom-most floor of the Shionel Dungeon and that it is actually the mine that created the Shionel Dungeon in the first ce."


    Those words drew Chairman Deacon''s attention. "What?"


    "It''s true, sir," She confirmed as she handed him a document containing all the data that had been collected about it.


    "Hm," He quickly skimmed through the reports on the matter. "Fascinating.  Assemble the best Martial Squires we and our allies have, and put together a strong raiding expedition as soon as possible. I want us plundering this floor before that bastard Voider ever gets a chance at it."


    He turned towards her. "Handle it. I have my hands full with the elections, they take priority."


    "Will do, sir,"


    Within a few days, arge sum of Martial Squires had gathered in a facility in the main branch office of Deacon Industries.


    More than one thousand high-grade Martial Squires had gathered in the facility, each prepped and ready.<novelsnext>I think you should take a look at </novelsnext>


    Before all of them stood three Martial Squires.


    Each of the three of them exuded an avnche of sharp pressure that washed over all of the other Martial Squires.


    "I am the captain of the raid force, Ce Deacon," The man announced. "I will be leading our force into the Shionel Dungeon and into the recently discovered fifty-second floor. The n, the protocols, and the strategy remain the same as always. There is no need to fix what isn''t broken, and we will execute the winning form for clearing floors."


    He began quickly breaking down the strategy and protocols for each of the Martial Squires.


    Of course, by now, nearly all of them were intimately familiar with how to get things done in the Shionel Dungeon. The captain was merely going through all of it once for the sake of formality.


    "Normally, Chairman Deacon himself would be addressing all of us, however, the chairman is unfortunately preupied with more pressing matters," The captain exined.


    None of them had missed hisst name matching thest name of the chairman. The man was the son of the chairman, and a grade-ten Martial Squire as well, having received the best of tutge and training and growth resources from a young age.


    "Regardless, he needs us now more than ever. As all of you have been briefed, this floor is most likely the mine that the Shionel Dungeon was empowered from. This floor is the final and the lowest floor of the entirety of the Shionel Dungeon," He reminded all of them. "Whoever clears this floor, wins the race to the bottom of the Shionel Dungeon. They will be the winner. This victory will have great consequences for the uing elections. A victory could seal the chairman''s victory. While a loss¡­"


    He didn''t even bother finishing his words, wanting to avoid dampening the atmosphere.


    "Today, we fight for more than our victory, we fight for the victory of our patron," His eyes narrowed. "We shall win, no matter what it takes. Remember that."


    The captain was mindful to not attempt to make the speech more sentimental. At the end of the day, these Martial Squires were not soldiers, they were adventurers who were patroned by Chairman Deacon and reeled firmly into his side with remarkably attractive deals. They were not loyal personal warriors of the man like his own internal Martial Squires, like the captain.


    The raid force was soon dispatched. They marched through the sky in an orderly manner drawing great attention from the public.


    "Oh, that''s Deacon Industries'' raid force entering the dungeon again. Looks like they found another floor in the dungeon."


    "Chairman Deacon still diligently clears the dungeon despite the elections nearing."


    "It''s because the election is nearing that he diligently clears the dungeon, idiot."


    Arge number of people talked about the matter, gossiping to no end. One of the reasons that Chairman Deacon had his raid force sky-walk through the air in such a manner was essentially for a novel form of advertisement of himself, all in hopes of gaining more support.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 937 Arrived

    ?All content is property ? N?velDrama.Org.


    "Good," Rui nodded when he observed how quickly Deacon Industries had put together a giant raid force. "Still, captain ''Deacon'' eh? That was unexpected."


    It looked like Rui had underestimated how much the conflict between them could intensify.


    Rui shrugged, it wasn''t his fault that Deacon''s son was going to die. It would happen eventually given that Rui had no intention of clearing the dungeon before Deacon Industries got a shot at it.


    Thus, his son was doomed to die either way.


    More importantly, he paid more attention to the quality of the Martial Squires of the raid force, if they weren''t strong enough then Rui wouldn''t be able to execute the n in mind. He needed them to be able to pressure the Root enough for it to go all out. Otherwise, he wouldn''t get what he was looking for.


    Thankfully, it appeared that Chairman Deacon understood the consequences of failing at this stage, for the raid force consisted of Martial Squires that each appeared to be quite high-grade to his senses.


    There even were multiple grade-ten Martial Squires in the crowd, along with Chairman Deacon''s son who was serving as captain. These were Rui''s greatest hope in drawing as many active patterns out of the Root and allowing Rui to gain a greater understanding of the Root.


    One thing he was concerned about was his ability to keep up with the entire battle. There were more than a thousand Martial Squires present before him at the moment. Each one of them was going to be engaging one if not multiple, roots. Rui needed to not only perceive all of them but also make sure that he was consciously aware of what was happening with each of the one thousand Martial Squires of the raid force before him.


    It was no different from a normal human being trying to keep up with the one thousand human fights, all at once simultaneously.


    It was an absurdly difficult task that normally Martial Squire would be able to aplish.


    Except for Rui.


    With his mind that had gone through lifetimes worth of growth, surpassing human limits, and his extraordinary mastery of the Mind Pce, Rui estimated that it would be possible for him to at the very least record all the data that he wanted to record, and construct the predictive model based on the active patterns that he could extract from the data that he had collected.


    Still, he needed to make sure that he was at his very peak in order to actually aplish this, thus he had rested his mind extensively the night prior with deep sleep, so he would not only be at his peak but would also be able to return to his peak with a single high-quality rejuvenation potion.


    Soon enough, the raid force was dispatched. They sky-walked all the way towards the Shionel Dungeon in a high-profile manner, drawing all kinds 0f attention from civilians as well as other Martial Squire adventurers.


    "Hmp, show-offs," Kane grumbled.<novelsnext>I think you should take a look at </novelsnext>


    "He needs to show off," Rui replied. "Given how close the elections are, there is no other time that requires him to show off. If he does in fact end up clearing the Shionel Dungeon before the elections, then the sheer prestige thates with it will allow him to finally decisively surpass Guildmaster Bradt."


    What Rui didn''t bother mentioning was that there was basically no way they could happen. It was because he was certain that they couldn''t clear the Shionel Dungeon that Rui was confidently willing to take the first shot at the dungeon floor, without interfering in the battle in any way.


    The raid force dungeon quickly entered the dungeon, and soon enough, one of the disadvantages of Chairman Deacon''s method of clearing dungeons be evident.


    "Hauling all those people through the tunnels of the Shionel dungeon is an incredible pain in the ass," Rui murmured as he watched the more than thousand Martial Squires attempting to squeeze through the tunnels of the Shionel Dungeon with his Riemannian Echo. "I can only imagine how annoying this must get if their route ends up involving tunnels that are extremely narrow and can only fit one person through at a time."


    "Imagine if someone farts," Kane remarked, smirking. "That would kill half the raid force given how stuff the dungeon can get."


    "Thankfully, I made sure that the tunnels of the exploration route that I chose to hijack were wide enough to ensure nothing like that could happen," Rui remarked with an amused expression.


    The journey to the bottom of the Shionel Dungeon took longer than Rui had expected. Then again, given that the raid force was a thousand strong, it had to be expected.


    "Still, it''s been more than a day," Kaneined as he strutted forward with a hunched posture. "Can''t they pick the pace up?"


    Kane''s role in this entire n was minimal, he had absolutely no significant role to y, thus he was a little detached and disinterested. Rui was the only one who could perceive the raid force. He was also the only one who could thus track them, and observe the battle against the Root. Furthermore, he was the only one who was going to be taking down the Root.


    How he was going to do something that not even a thousand Martial Squires could aplish, Kane didn''t know. But he trusted Rui, and this was far from the first time that Rui had aplished insane feats.


    "Finally, they''re here!" Rui informed Kane with an excited tone. "Man, I''ve waited for this for quite some time. They''ve arrived at the end of the exploration route, leading to the Root. Let''s hurry up and get going."


    The two of them scurried forward as Rui eagerly reached a range where he could perceive everything with his Riemannian Echo. He had already scouted a perfect location to perceive the entire fight from without actually being close enough to get dragged into the crossfire.


    "It''s going to start soon," Rui murmured as he watched the Martial Squires entering the Root Floor one by one.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 938 Rally

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    Rui had to admit that his excitement was perhaps a bit distasteful. He was acting the way Zoomers back in his previous life acted when a new movie in their favorite franchise was released. A thousand Martial Squires were going to die soon, and that was certainly going to be a huge blow to the Martial Artistmunity, in their ss conflict against states.


    Still, he didn''t care about such far-minded topics at the moment. All he wanted was to obtain the data that he had been pining for in order to clear the dungeon.


    He watched with sharp alertness as the raid force entered the dungeon one by one, adopting an on-guard formation as they prepared themselves.


    "Any preliminary sighting?" Captain Deacon asked.


    "No, sir," One of the Martial Squires beside him replied as her eyes glowed. "I cannot detect a single monster as of yet."


    Captain Deacon frowned, narrowing his eyes wordlessly. This was a little odd since they normally ran into monsters the second they entered floors.


    They did not possess the stealth that Void Step gave Kane and Rui, thus they were always prepared to be attacked by monsters very soon after they entered the floor.


    His scout, a powerful high-grade Martial Squire withplete mastery over multiple grade-nine sensory techniques usually spotted several of them even as they entered the dungeon. She was one of the extremely few Martial Squires who wasn''tpletely hampered to the normal sensory range that normal Martial Squires were normally restricted to. Her ability to travel the Shionel Dungeon without beingpletely hampered had earned her an extremely attractive contract with Deacon Industries. It was why she had willingly volunteered for the mission.


    "This feels strange," She murmured. "I can vaguely sense movement and life in this dungeon, but I cannot sense anything in our immediate vicinity."


    "Stay extremely alert at all times, got it?" Captain Deacon sternly instructed her. "I don''t want any mistakes."


    "Yes, captain,"


    "Has the raid forcepletely boarded?"


    "Just now, sir,"


    He nodded, turning back as he approached extremely close to the raid force.


    "My fellow adventurers!" He addressed all of them with a loud voice, amplified by his superhuman constitution. "We have arrived at the final floor of the Shionel Dungeon. We have arrived at the very foundation of this dungeon. This isn''t our first rodeo. You know your roles. You know your positions. You know your duties. We will charge as a single cohesive unit into the heart of the floor, and we will not break apart. United we stand, divided we fall."


    He nodded to all of them, before turning back towards the floor.


    "CHARGE!!!" He bellowed loud enough for everyone to hear.N?velDrama.Org owns all ? content.


    The entirety of the one-thousand-strong army rapidly began moving forward at an equal pace, which was quite impressive for Martial Squires. Speed varied to far greater among Martial Artists than it did among humans. Not even Usain Bolt could run ten times faster than the average human, but people like Kane were capable of such a feat. The specialization of superhuman prowess in Martial bodies as well as specialized Martial Art techniques that bore a great amount of affinity towards the user allowed for such vast disparities.


    Thus getting a bunch of Martial Squires to charge forward at the same speed was a lot more difficult than doing the same for humans.


    Suddenly, the scout Martial Artist shivered as an expression of horror sprung onto her face.


    "Hm?" Captain Deacon noticed her reaction. "What is it, Fresca? What have you sens-"


    His words choked in his mouth as an overwhelming sense of pressure washed over him. His eyes widened as his sense of danger spiked.


    "DEFEND!!" He bellowed as he spread his arms wide, inhaling deeply before rapidly exhaling, pping his arms together. "TEMPESTUAL WHIRLWIND SHIELD!"


    A tremendous shockwave emerged expanding forward faster than the speed of sound. <novelsnext>I think you should take a look at </novelsnext>


    Yet it did not get to expand unperturbed.


    No.


    A blindingly fast projectile blurred into vision, charging toward them.


    BOOM!!!


    An enormous explosion of wind ensued as Captain Deacon''s wide area sound shield managed to negate the offensive impact of the attack, halting it in its tracks!


    (''Is that¡­ a root?'') His eyes widened. (''Are we fighting the dungeon itself?!'')


    He didn''t even have time to gather his thoughts, for less than a millisecondter, the sense of danger elevated even further.


    "STAND YOUR GROUND, WARRIORS!" He bellowed, trying to quash any copse of morale. "WE ARE MARTIAL ARTISTS. WE ARE-!"


    He choked on his words as something entered his field of vision, stunning him speechless.


    An avnche of roots crashed into them.


    BOOM!!!!!


    Captain Deacon gritted his teeth with a furious expression as a titanically powerful attack crashed into him. Each root struck with the power of a grade-ten Martial Artist.


    He did not possess the ability to protect all of his Martial Artist.


    "ATTACK ATTACK ATTACK!!!" He bellowed. "CUT THESE ROOTS DOWN BEFORE THEY CUT US DOWN!"


    He wasn''t sure how many heard him. He wasn''t sure how many were even still alive, but he had to hope. They were all high-grade Martial Artists, after all, they could withstand a few attacks peak-grade Squire-level attacks.


    Another wave of roots washed over the entire group from all directions.


    Captain Deacon gritted his teeth as he braced himself as eight roots chose to target him out of all people. He was the only one who could withstand the root attacks, being the sole grade-ten defensive Martial Squire in the entire group.


    Yet before the roots could strike him, some happened.


    A gigantic inferno intercepted the roots from the right. A man appeared to his left, deflecting them aside with his palm, while a woman simply caught roots approaching Chairman Deacon from the front with her body.


    "Don''t lose heart!" She told Captain Deacon. "We are not weak. We can lead our force to victory!"


    The several grade-ten Martial Squires, who each protected him, nodded, steeling their expressions as they took their stances


    Captain Deacon grinned, feeling a warm surge of will and euphoria emerge deep from within. "WE SHALL WIN!"


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 939 Outcome

    ?


    "Cough¡­ Cough¡­" Captain Deacon spluttered blood as he panted deeply.


    His body was a mess, riddled with deep wounds that refused to stop bleeding. His left eye was missing, causing him to take a stance that tilted his left side away. His Martial Art attire waspletely torn, yet he didn''t care. He stumbled as he moved forward.


    Each step he took sshed around the blood that submerged his heels, produced by all the corpses around.


    He nced around him.


    The grade-ten Martial Squires that had taken the lead of their wounded force in the battle against the Root were all dead.


    One of them was ttened, while the other one was severed in half, the third one had been throttled away. Considering he never returned, Captain Deacon that he was dead too.


    He was the only one left, half a dayter.


    The raid force had put up a brave fight, the grade-ten Martial Squires rallied the wounded Martial Artists into going all out against the roots. Hundreds of Martial Squiresunched long-range attacks one by one as the close-range Martial Artists rushed forward. They mustered every ounce of power they could to resist the nightmare that the roots were.


    The worst part wasn''t that they were crushed in the end.


    No.


    The worst part was that they weren''t crushed immediately.


    The worst part was that they even made some progress, believing they could win.


    Hoping they could win.All content is property ? N?velDrama.Org.


    The worst part was when the roots allowed them to hope, before crushing it mercilessly, leaving behind nothing but despair.


    Thousands of individual roots, each with the power and speed of grade-ten Martial Squires, crushed any and all resistance that the Martial Squires mustered up.


    In the end, only he, the most invincible Martial Squire, survived.


    Yet, he knew that it was just a matter of time. Yet, he didn''t care.


    No, that wasn''t quite right.


    He couldn''t afford to care, for the sake of his sanity.


    His heart ached as a Martial Artist, as a leader, as the son of his father for whom he was fighting.


    His heart had copsed into a bottomless pit of despair. He had sunk low not only because of his personal failures but because he knew that his personal failure would destroy everything his father had worked for.


    His father''s ambition to be guildmaster had begun more than a decade ago. He had sworn that he would do anything in his power to aid his father, who had raised him with love and faith, in achieving that goal.


    Yet now, he had done the very opposite. He had gone and suffered the greatest failure in his career at the worst possible time he could possibly fathom.


    Such a failure could not be hidden, and once his father''s allies realized the sheer magnitude of the catastrophe that they had suffered by losing the Martial Squires that they had contributed to the raid, that his father was responsible for, their alliance would surely fracture!


    Losing support just days before the elections was absolutely devastating. It was a political catastrophe of unprecedented detriment. It would cost Chairman Deacon the entirety of his political campaign, his one and only shot at bing the guildmaster of the Shionel Merchant Guild.


    He would rather die than look his father in the eye and tell him that his failure as a leader, as a Martial Squire, and as a son, was the reason that his life''s greatest ambition had copsed.


    He froze as his father''s image appeared in his mind.


    His father was a hard ass, yet it was certain that he loved his children deeply, going to great lengths to facilitate their dreams and ambitions. <novelsnext>I think you should take a look at </novelsnext>


    The thought ofmitting suicide just to avoid taking responsibility repulsed him. He owed it to his father to not kill himself because he was too weak to take responsibility for his failures.


    He gritted his teeth, before turning around and heading for the exit.


    BAM!!!


    He gritted his teeth as he withstood a root attack pummeling him as he left. He had gotten a brief moment of respite when he had copsed into the ground motionless, but as soon as he started moving properly again, the roots were relentless.


    He persevered as he endured their attacks on his body. If not for the fact that his Martial Body had grown stronger over twenty years of growth, and the powerful grade-ten defensive technique that allowed him to endure much damage, he would not have managed tost this long.


    A grade-ten defensive Martial Squire was not someone who could be put down as easily as the other grade-ten Martial Squires. Of course, they had inflicted far more damage than he had to the Root, they simply did not possess the ability to resist damage.


    Yet just as he was escaping, a figure appeared before him out of nowhere.


    SLASH


    SPLAT!


    A de struck at his exposed neck, leaving a wound that splurted blood.


    "To think that didn''t kill you," Rui murmured from behind his mask. "Grade-ten Martial Squires sure are impressive, it makes sense that you managed to escape despite being sted by the Root."


    Captain Deacon covered his wound, desperately trying to close the wound. He nced at the strange unknown Martial Squire before him with wary yet steely eyes.


    How could this Martial Squire know his position?


    How did he know that he had been enduring attacks from the roots?


    Who was he?


    His eyes widened as the answer came to him.


    He had no proof.


    Yet he hade to know, nheless.


    "You¡­" He managed to squeeze out. "YOU D-"


    SLASH


    A second sh finished the job.


    THUD


    The captain''s head copsed to the ground, rolling away.


    Rui turned towards the direction of the Root. He was still too far away to trigger its defense mechanisms.


    "Not for long," Rui murmured as he stepped forward.


    He was ready. Perhaps it was more prudent for him to wait, but he had already obtained everything he wanted and didn''t feel the need to wait.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 940 Observations

    ?


    Half a day earlier, Rui watched with excitement as the Deacon raid force shed into a wave of roots.


    Immediately, the Martial Squires of the raid force was overwhelmed suffering significant wounds. The only ones who were able to cleanly able to cope and handle the attacks were the grade-ten and grade-nine Martial Squires. Martial Squires weaker, unless defense-oriented, were simply unable to handle the sheer ferocity of the Root.


    He couldn''t help but admire Captain Deacon''s defensive prowess.


    "What a powerfulrge-scale defensive barrier," Rui murmured. N?velDrama.Org owns all ? content.


    Such techniques definitely existed, just like there wererge-scale offensive attacks, there were alsorge-scale defensive attacks of various kinds.


    As the battle progressed, Rui couldn''t help but admire Captain Deacon''s prowess. He used multiplerge-scale defensive techniques after defensive technique to protect his raid force as much as possible.


    From barriers to suction breathing techniques that attracted all the attacks to himself which he withstood with his superior defensive prowess. He had done a lot for his fellow adventurers.


    Rui definitely had to grant him that. Even if he did fail, he had exercised his duties as a leader quite well.


    One of the biggest reasons that the raid force did not crumble immediately was because of the five grade-ten Martial Squires that had been assembled. Rui was quite impressed by all of them.


    He even recognized one of them. "Squire Fren¡­"


    He remembered her, she was the leader of Party Saberstrike that was part of the Voidhunter squad. Her team members had gotten annihted by Guildmaster Bradt''s well-timed and ced assassins, with some assistance from Kane. She had denounced Chairman Deacon, but it seemed as though Chairman Deacon had managed to rope her back.


    Her grappling techniques were as powerful as ever, as she impressively caught root attacks with her arms, stopping them on the spot with sheer force.


    The others were also quite eye-drawing. One of them was a powerful heat-oriented Martial Artist, something that he hadn''te across in a long time. He thought back to one of the Martial Apprentices from nearly six years ago in the Martial Contest. She too had a me-oriented Martial Art, even if she was more than a thousand times weaker than the grade-ten Martial Artist that Rui was witnessing fight against the Root.


    Still, as much attention Rui paid to the Martial Artists, he paid even more attention to the Root as he mentally recorded everything in his Mind Pce.


    The Root''s active patterns came to life as the Root encountered a force that it wasn''t able to crush in an instant.


    Rui stared hard as he reaped the fruits of theirbor


    "The roots do not initiate an attack within ten meters of their target," Rui murmured excitedly as he noticed the first active pattern of the battle!


    He noticed that every time a root attacked a target, it attacked from a distance greater than ten meters.<novelsnext>I think you should take a look at </novelsnext>


    This by itself did not prove that the Root never attacked from less than ten meters away, but what did prove it is when the roots moved away from the target when it was less than ten meters away, and then charged back in after reaching ten meters away from the target.


    This indicated that there was an unwillingness programmed into the defensive mechanism to attack from less than ten meters.


    (''Probably to have enough distance to charge enough momentum,'') Rui''s widened.


    This meant that dodging Roots was highly effective against them!


    The fight was just getting started, and Rui couldn''t help but grow excited. Just this one pattern alone changed the game. He instantly felt a lot less uncertain about how he was going to deal with the offense of the Root.


    As time passed, the Root began overwhelming the raid force, revealing even more active patterns in its movements and attacks.


    (''It has zero defensive concerns despite this whole thing being a defensive mechanism,'') Rui realized. (''It acts as though it cannot get hurt, and rushes forward even if the root is extremely damaged.'')


    Another thing he noticed was highly critical in aiding his understanding. The grade ten and other high-grade Martial Artists had destroyed several roots of their stumps, yet Rui noticed that the stumps of the roots kept moving as though the roots were still attached to them,


    (''It doesn''t realize that the roots are destroyed?'') His eyes widened. (''The Root continues moving them as though they are intact!'')


    That revealed a lot about the nature of the Root.


    Firstly, it did not possess sentience or self-awareness. It did not possess an instinct for self-preservation. The defense mechanism that it had was highly primitive and resembled a programmed bot, rather than a sentient being.


    That gave Rui a lot more confidence that his method of taking the Root down would work, given what he had learned from the battle already.


    That wasn''t the only extent of what he was learning from the battle, because each Martial Art was unique, Rui got a wide array of empirical data surrounding how the Root handled them, and how effective certain approaches were against the Root in certain respects.


    Some Martial Artists were able to cope remarkably well rtive to their grade, while other higher-grade Martial Artists seemed almost entirely useless despite being higher in grade.


    Poison Martial Artists seemed almost impotent rtive to the Root as if they weren''t even Martial Artists in the first ce!


    The physiology of the monsterified roots was too different from the norm, and the mechanisms by which the poisons produced by the Martial bodies and techniques of poison-oriented Martial Artists were simply ineffective against the roots seemingly.


    The fight progressed as Rui gathered more information on all these traits as his predictive model began taking on a more distinctive shape and form, solidifying by the second. At this rate, it wouldn''t be too long before he was ready to aplish what he had initially set out to aplish, the whole reason he had gone through the efforts of setting all of this up.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 941 Begin

    ?


    Half a dayter, even Rui was starting to get a little bored as he hade to gather nearly all of the data he had wanted. There was nothing new or novel to be gathered from the roots pummeling down the Martial Artists.


    In fact, it was quite distasteful to watch. Those Martial Squires were certainly his enemies as warriors of Chairman Deacon but at the same time, they also were fellow Martial Artists. It was unpleasant for him as a Martial Artist to witness his fellow peers get absolutely demolished by a dungeon for Martial Squires.


    He definitely held pride amidst his love for his Martial Art, and Martial Art in general, thus he did feel affronted by the end oue, even if he had entirely predicted that it woulde to pass, even if he himself had set into motion the series of events that led to this devastating loss.


    "Don''t worry, I''ll get revenge for all of you," He said, without a single shred of shame. He didn''t even realize how shameless the statement was.


    Kane, however, did, looking at Rui through the side of his eyes with a skeptical expression. "I don''t think you of all people get to say that to them, you know?"


    "I don''t know what you''re talking about," Rui said, getting up.


    "Where are you going?" Kane asked.


    "The fight has ended, so I''m off to clear the dungeon, of course, and to ensure that a rat doesn''t escape," Rui replied.


    "Rat? No, wait, you''re going to clear it immediately?" Kane asked with a surprised expression. "Shouldn''t you, I dunno, prepare more or something?"


    "Nope, I''m good," Rui replied with a single word. "You shoulde along too, you won''t be partaking, but knowing you''re nearby does help."


    "Alright," Kane sighed.


    The two of them hurried down until they reached the Root floor, Rui swiftly entered the floor, while Kane stayed back behind.


    SHING


    Rui drew his sword, activating Gale Force Breathing as he rapidly appeared before Captain Deacon swinging hard.


    SLASH


    SPLAT


    Much to his surprise, he was unable to decapitate the man despite getting a clean shot at his neck!


    "To think that didn''t kill you," Rui murmured from behind his mask. "Grade-ten Martial Squires sure are impressive, it makes sense that you managed to escape despite being sted by the Root."


    The man grimaced as he red at Rui with shock and rage, yet his eyes widened as he seemingly made a realization on the spot regarding who Rui was.


    "You¡­" He managed to squeeze out. "YOU D-"


    SLASH


    A second sh finished the job.


    THUD


    His head hit the ground, rolling away.


    Rui had no interest in humoring him. His attention had already moved past the man, focusing on the Root.


    "We meet again," Rui offered.


    Unfortunately, the Root did not deign to return his greeting.


    Rui wasn''t afraid of being where he was at the moment. He had already discovered that while the Root was capable of attacking the target anywhere inside the floor after it had triggered the defensive mechanisms, one could not trigger the defensive mechanisms from just about any distance.<novelsnext>I think you should take a look at </novelsnext>


    Yet, before he began the battle, he swept his senses across the entire floor. There was something important that he needed to make sure that he wasn''t missing.


    (''Not a single one of them can be left alive,'') He made sure to thoroughly focus on every single body he came across, inspecting every single one of them to make sure that there was absolutely no chance that they could possibly be alive.


    After five minutes of a thorough scan, he was finally convinced.


    He closed his eyes as he breathed deeply. As dangerous as it was, he ceased his relentless attention to his surroundings, diverting his attention inwards. At this moment, the Root very well could attack him, and he wouldn''t even know of it, and would die on the spot.


    But he knew he would die if he didn''t get himself to his peak condition.


    It took effort, but he gathered his scattered awareness.


    He honed his focus.


    He gathered his concentration.


    He amassed his mind.


    He embodied his awareness. At that moment, everything could have ceased to exist, and Rui would not have noticed.


    It was difficult focusing every ounce of his conscious mind in a single direction, it required discipline and more perseverance than people realized.


    It felt like an eternity inside his mind, but it took only ten seconds in reality.


    Ten secondster, he was almost a different person entirely.This material belongs to N?velDrama.Org.


    The pressure he exerted was sharp, so much so that it was hard to believe he was the same person. Just standing near him would create a profound sense of peril even among high-grade Martial Artists.


    "Fuuu¡­" Rui opened his eyes, directing his honed mind toward his objective as he tossed his sword into his dimensional ring. He exhaled deeply, activating his various breathing techniques as he felt his body grow tremendously lighter.


    It began suddenly.


    Rui disappeared into thin air as he rushed toward the Root at an astronomically high speed. The sheer atmosphere recoiled as he tore through the air, leaving behind a gigantic sonic boom.


    Not even a millisecond had passed before what happened ensued.


    As fast as Rui was, he was still vastly slower than the sharp root thatshed out toward him with a titanic speed.


    The first confrontation between the Root and Rui hade to be.


    What followed would have blown the minds of all the Martial Squires that had fought against the Root prior.


    WHOOSH


    With the gentlest of sidesteps, Rui evaded the attack at the most crucial of timings, watching it blow right past him. His gracious movements were smooth, yet swift.


    It took him no more than a millisecond to detect cues and tells in the passive patterns of the Root, predicting the trajectories of four more root attacks.


    WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH


    Before he even realized it, he had already dodged them.


    And thus began the final battle. The oue of this battle would affect more people than Rui had realized at that moment.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 942 Profound

    ?


    All those months of preparation had paid off. The many months that he spent scraping up passive patterns in the Root''s movements and the tworge-scale battles in which he had spent gathering its active patterns had paid off.


    The predictive model that he consequently built was functional. Rui could see its attacksing from a mile away, sometimes literally. The passive cues and tells warned him of every attack, while the previous attacks and the positions and timings allowed him to see even further into the future.


    The predictive model he had on the Root was still not quite as powerful as the one that he had on Kane, but it was not too far behind either.


    The sheer insight he had on the Root''s future movements was quite remarkable, yet it became scary when those same movements became too fast for him to react to with his own reflexes. His own movements were on par with the faster grade-ten Martial Artists, his eyes could barely catch them, and they were almost entirely over before he could react.


    WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH!


    Rui somersaulted through the air at hypersonic speeds as he gracefully evaded five root attacks converging on his location. His mind had predicted eight more attacks from ahead, he swiftly prepared the appropriate Forestep movements, waiting for precisely the right moment, before mindlessly executing them with sheer and pure reflex, allowing him to surpass his normal limits when it came to execution speed.


    The battle from his perspective had be rather bizarre. One moment he was doing in position, moving in a certain way. The very next moment he was elsewhere entirely, moving in an entirely different way.


    It was a jarring experience, and one that he wasn''t entirely ustomed to in the middle ofbat, but he quickly got used to the sensation of applying it when his life was on the line.


    The morefortable he grew, the smoother he became, the more fluid his movements ended up being, and the greater the intervals at which he could maintain Godspeed. He couldn''t maintain Forestep continuously since his mind did not operate at that speed, with predictions, he could circumvent the issue, but at the end of the day, even predictions were limited by the speed of the predictive capability of the mind.


    Abination of predictions and seamless thoughtless reflexes allowed him to bypass thinking speed limits to a certain degree which allowed him to spend about half of the time inbat using Forestep continuously. Thus, half the time he was as fast as his normal self, while the other half he moved at speeds close to on par with grade-ten speed-oriented Martial Artists.


    In this manner, Rui coped with the onught of roots better than he had expected!


    The Rootunched attack after attack, and Rui dodged one after the other.


    (''Alright, preliminary ability to contend with Root offense confirmed,'') Rui thought as he evaded yet another attack. (''Initiating counter-offense as a solution to begin closing distance between target and myself.'')


    SHING


    SLASH


    He instantly drew his sword that he had previously stored, programming a Forestep sh to slice off an iing root attack. Much to his delight, it seemed that the overpowered offensive nature of his cooled Bellhorn steel de was effective even against the roots of the Root. Content is property of N?velDrama.Org.


    He hadn''t been sure if this would be the case, but the de managed to inflict remarkably heavy damage on the roots with a single attack. Only grade-ten Martial Squires were capable of such feats!<novelsnext>I think you should take a look at </novelsnext>


    "FUUUUU!" He exhaled crackling hot air onto a root, freezing its expansion before swinging at the root with Outer Convergence and Forestep.


    CRACK!


    Rui''s eyes lit up as he destroyed his first root!


    He was quite ecstatic a the fact that his previous tactics still retain their effectiveness against the roots. His current battle prowess was the result of his previous two training phases that gave him the necessary power to singlehandedly cope with an onught of attacks that ought to have been far beyond his capabilities as a Martial Squire who had only spent four years in the Squire Realm.


    He vigorously fought back with as much of his Martial Art as he could!


    Forestep, Outer Convergence, his sword techniques and hot air attacks, Mind Pce technique, and the VOID algorithm at the core of it all, chugging away furiously in order to cope with the onught that the Root was exerting against Rui.


    Many variables across many years came into y in this battle. A variety of factors pushed Rui forward, bit by bit, allowing him to aplish the impossible with what little he had. Rui felt a profound sense of culmination as he employed power that he had gathered across the entirety of his second life.


    (''No,'') Rui noted as he reflexively dodged a root with Forestep. (''Across two lives.'')


    He had persevered through some truly hellish times, and after seventy-nine years of being alive, he was here today. The power he had obtained was born out of seventy years of amassing.


    A giddy sense of jubtion and euphoria shot emanated through his body, giving rise to a remarkable surge of power as his movements grew swifter and sharper. He shot across the floor, twisting and twirling through the air as he narrowly avoided waves of root attacks, cutting them down as and when he could.


    Rui almost felt it was a shame that no one could see him at the moment, although he fought for himself, it didn''t hurt to be validated by fellow Martial Artists that walked their own paths.


    Suddenly, his eyes widened as his predictive model foresaw a problematic development. The number of rootsshing out at him doubled as the Root seemingly decided to increase the heat since it was unable to take him down swiftly.


    (''Shi-!'') Almost all his escape routes were cut off!


    More than a hundred roots piled in from all directions, threatening to absolutely crush his puny little body t!


    CRACK!


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 Chapter 943 Bounce

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    Perhaps Rui had gotten so immersed in the flow that he had actually reactedte when that flow changed abruptly. Perhaps, the change was extraordinarily abrupt that it was just that difficult to handle.


    Rui wasn''t quite sure.


    But there nothing was quite like the eminent threat of death that brought out the very best of one''s creative ability.


    CRACK!


    Rui grimaced as he intercepted the closest root attack with his sword, yet, rather than trying to slice or destroy it. He almost instinctively applied an iplete version of the Flux Earther.


    He intercepted the impact with his sword, his arms limp before progressively stiffening ad pushing back as the Root moved in closer to strike his body.


    Just like a spring pushed back harder whenpressed.


    And just like a spring, it pushed his entire body backward at a remarkably high speed. Rui didn''t try and ground the kic energy by using the second half of the technique with Reverberating Lance.


    CRACK!


    The Sword was unable to handle the impact, breaking in half before the impact had beenpleted.


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    PEW!


    WHOOSH


    Rui shot out of the target zone at an incredibly high velocity, crashing into the walls of the floor.


    BOOM!


    "RGH!" He gritted his teeth as he bore the pain that he felt.


    He didn''t have time to recover.


    WHOOSH


    BOOM!!!


    The roots were relentless, pursuing him even as he did his best to evade them with an aching body. Fortunately, the VOID algorithm, Forestep, and other elements were still in y.


    WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH!


    Rui dove through the air as he avoided five attacks. He had broken out of his little reverie as he began fighting more fiercely and seriously. A sharp expression upied his face as he evaded the various attacks that came his way with greater timing than ever before.


    (''umtive counter-offense is no longer viable,'') Rui had long realized.


    His broken sword meant that he no longer had any way of hurting the Root at the moment with regr attacks. Any hope of eventually umting enough damage to neuter the Root was gone.


    (''But that isn''t my only avenue for victory,'') Rui''s eyes narrowed as he perceived a path forward to victory. (''But I need to get close to the Root.'')


    Evading the Root was viable for Rui as he was now, but closing the distance as he evaded attacks was harder. The closer he got to the Root, the greater the number of roots that could participate in the attack against Rui.<novelsnext>I think you should take a look at </novelsnext>


    Rui was grateful that his injuries from earlier were not too severe, although he definitely endured damage, his healing factor was good enough to negate the effect it had on hisbat prowess.


    This too would not have happened if not for his Hungry Pain technique.


    Rui''s mind worked harder than it ever had before as he furiously processed the outputs from his predictive model before trying to chart paths that he could follow forward.


    However, it was difficult.


    WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH


    He evaded roots as he dashed forward. Yet just two steps in that direction and he was forced to take a step back!


    BOOM!


    A root mmed into the ground where he was about to step, forcing him to back off. He immediately spun through the air to the side as he evaded all kinds of trajectories from the roots.


    Moving through the roots was absurdly harder than simply evading them for more reasons than Rui had initially understood, not only did he enter the striking range of new shorter, and more distant roots the closer he got to the Root, but he also had less time to react to them due to the shorter distance between him and the inception of their attacks.


    Thankfully, the previous failure had taught him some lessons. Although it certainly did hurt him, it wasn''t without its benefits. Thest-moment solution that he had cobbled together to get out of the situation was definitely something that could serve Rui well.


    Rui''s eyes narrowed as he predicted a root attack from the side, instantly, he made the judgment to test out the viability of the n.


    WHOOSH!


    The root rushed forward towards Rui, yet this time, Rui didn''t evade it like he normally did, he partially evaded it, getting his torso out of the way before intercepting the root with his hand.


    POW!


    The root crashed into his stretched limp palm which stiffened and pushed back the more Root pushed against it.


    Just like a spring.


    Ruiunched himself forward towards the Root, by pushing and bouncing off a root like a spring. This was the application of the Flux Earther technique that he had devised in the middle of battle.


    He had always known that the Flux Earther technique could be used tounch himself at speeds much greater than his limit, but he hadn''t considered that it could be used as more than just a getaway, in certain circumstances.


    (''Circumstances like these,'') His eyes sharpened as more than a hundred roots converged on his location!


    Yet instead of relying purely on the evasion supplied to him by Forestep, he also employed abination of Forestep and Flux Earther with his arms to move maneuver across the floor at even greater speeds!


    Thus, even if Forestep alone was unable to cope with the increasing pressure of root attacks that came with getting closer to the Root, he could still manage by relying on the Earth Fluxer to move around in ways that would be impossible on his own. Instead, he could get the roots to help him avoid the roots!


    This was especially the case given that the roots were incapable of tactical adaptation to exploit the shorings of such a technique and strategy. This was the difference between Martial Artists and other creatures. Due to their inability to explore their full potential, they could never match Martial Artists who were exponentially weaker as far as raw power went.


    Rui grinned as the battle entered a new phase!


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 944 Home

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    Had a human been there to witness the battle, they would have seen absolutely nothing. The human eye was incapable of perceiving phenomena that happened in milliseconds. Had a Martial Apprentice witnessed the battle, they would have seen disconnected images shing all about in an incoherent manner. Still, this was nothing unusual for Martial Apprentices, but they would have very little idea of what was going on.


    However, a Martial Squire was different.


    Only a Martial Squire would be able to fathom the sheer absurdity of the feat that Rui was aplishing!


    Despite the avnche of roots. Despite the sheer power and speed of each individual root. Despite the sensory suppression of Shionel Dungeon.


    Despite everything that aimed to end his life, he did not fall!


    Each root was powerful enough to engage even grade-ten Martial Squires. Fighting even a single one of them was something that required power amassed across one''s entire life, it required power close to the limit of what Martial Squires could achieve!


    Yet here was a twenty-year-old young man, one who hadn''t even spent more than half a decade in the Squire Realm, taking on countless roots simultaneously!


    Rui closed his eyes as his mind instinctive honed sharper than it ever had in the entirety of his life!


    In the span of a single millisecond, he spun through the air, somersaulting over overhead crashes, sidestepping root jabs, and bouncing off of powerful root swings. The roots moved at speeds that beggared the mind, shredding the atmosphere with each movement. Every motion left behind numerous shockwaves that made even breathing impossible! Every attack ignited the very air!


    If not for the fact that Rui had already conditioned his lungs to be able to withstand extreme temperatures, he might very well have died after the very first attack!


    WHOOSH


    Rui gently shifted his head by ten centimeters, evading a titanic root aiming to crush his head. He swiftly bounced off the root''s momentum with his quasi-Flux Earther technique as he barely evaded a dozen roots, smothering the airspace that he was upying just a millisecond prior!


    Ruiunched himself forward, shortening the distance between him and the Root by about three hundred meters in a single go!


    Yet he didn''t have even a moment to acknowledge his progress, the very next second, a new wave of roots, the range of which he just entered, attacked him in addition to the existing roots that were already attacking.


    Before him was a hellish view of almost one thousand roots attacking him. simultaneously. Surely, any other Martial Squire would have fallen to despair under the nauseating quasi-Senior level. How many Martial Squires would be able to retain their confidence despite having a full understanding of the sheer magnitude of the monstrosity that the Root was?


    Rui on the other hand was not only not affected, but he had the audacity to grin.


    "Hah¡­ Haha¡­ Hahahahaha!" Rui couldn''t help but indulge his jubtion as he moved in ways that were almost entirely impossible almost any Martial Squire across the entirety of human civilization!<novelsnext>I think you should take a look at </novelsnext>


    In what felt like a long time, he was truly pushed to his absolute limits despite also fighting with his true potential unlocked with nearly half a year of preparation! This fight was like a confession, he bared his heart out, expressing deep gratitude to the grotesque root.


    "Thank you¡­" He whispered. (''Thank you for bringing out the VOID from deep within me.'')


    The power he possessed at the moment was the true power of the Flowing Void Style. Yet it was difficult to realize, difficult to obtain, difficult to manifest. It took more than half a year''s preparation. Unfortunately, there were very few circumstances worth obtaining this power. Either his opponents and enemies didn''t require this level of preparation, and thus weren''t worth it because they were too weak. That, or they did require this level of preparation, and weren''t worth fighting because they were too strong.


    Circumstances where they were worth fighting and worth engaging in extensive preparations, without which he would die instantly, were exceedingly rare. Among Martial Artists, no Martial Squire was that strong, and Martial Seniors, who were even stronger, were not people he would even consider fighting unless in the most dire of situations.


    This battle with the Root, a mindless and highly-wed quasi-Senior level creature that Rui had resolved to fight as a part of his ambitious objective, was one of the few rare rare circumstances where Rui could bring out his potential against a truly powerful being that he had resolved to fight nheless!


    Despite approaching death more than a thousand times every second as he narrowly avoided being crushed by the devastating attacks of the Root, Rui felt at home. He felt even more at home at this very moment than he did when he was in the Quarrier Orphanage!Content is property of N?velDrama.Org.


    His eyes widened at the profound realization.


    (''I see, the VOID is my true home,'')


    He instinctively felt that this realization would have deeper ramifications on the choices he would regarding extremely important and significant matters that he had recently been forced to confront in recent times.


    In the middle of the heat of the battle, he came to understand who he was a little better. He felt as though a deep fog had cleared in his mind.


    He gained more rity.


    He gained more peace.


    At that moment, a profound sense of serenity epassed his entire mind. He felt as though he had taken a step deeper into his Martial Path. Although it felt as though he had suddenly deted, his engagement inbat suggested the opposite.


    He had grown stronger!


    His movements grew sharper by the second as the predictive model in his mind kept improving with each exchange!


    Although he certainly did get an immense amount of data from observing the Root for all those months and the previous two battles, nothingpared to actually gaining data from fighting against the Root himself. However, it wasn''t just a matter of the quantity of data. With how close the roots were to him, he could also perceive the attacks of the roots with all his senses!


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 Chapter 945 Jump

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    This meant that the foundation of his predictive model grew richer and stronger as time passed.


    The difference was visible.


    He began drawing closer to the Root at a pace faster than before. Previously, the difficulty of advancing closer to the main Root had risen with each step because the number of roots that could physically reach him had reduced the closer he got to the Root, the main root that all other roots sprouted.


    But the strange strange mental boost he had gotten from the epiphany as well as the data that Rui had collected across their entire fight had empowered hisbat effectiveness against the Root tremendously.


    He had finally reached a stage where he could continuously close the distance between himself and the Root. He no longer needed to prance around while shortening the distance in bursts.


    WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH!


    TAP!


    Rui dodged four roots, propelling himself forward with the quasi-Flux Earther technique.


    He turned towards the Root with a grin. He had crossed most of the distance between them in the past few hours and was only crossing it even faster. Soon he would reach a distance where he would be able to perceive the Root with his physical eyes.


    The battle had begun its final act.


    During the entire battle, Rui had been the challenger. He had spent the entire battle thus far proving that he could avoid being inevitably taken down and overwhelmed by the sheer output of the Root.


    And proved he did. With every second that passed, he was attacked by nearly a thousand roots simultaneously!


    Yet despite using most of the roots that it had at its disposal, the Root seemed incapable of even hurting Rui!


    Any spectator would surely agree that Rui had done a fine job as the challenger thus far. However, that wasn''t enough to win a fight.


    Not dying was simply the first level. Just because it was an exceedingly difficult demand for any single Martial Squire did not mean that it was the only demand or even the most challenging condition to be crowned the victor.


    Rui had yet to inflict even a shred of meaningful damage on the Root. Yes, it was true that he did inflict damage on the Root with the help of his sword, but that was rather minusculepared to the total mass thatprised the entirety of the Root.


    The fact of the matter was that not even Kane had any idea how Rui intended to win this fight. Rui hadn''t been specific when Kane asked, always replying that he needed more time and data.<novelsnext>I think you should take a look at </novelsnext>


    By the time the fight came, Kane didn''t ask him. He figured that if Rui wanted to share the information with him, he would.


    In reality, even Rui hadn''t gained confirmation until very recently, although he had strong suspicions that the means to victory that he had chosen would, in fact, grant him victory, he had only truly be certain of it when he sensed the Root with his Primordial Instinct technique.


    (''It''s truly mindless¡­ It''s not even controlling the roots. The roots may emerge from it, but each root is like its own organ that is also mindless and little more than organic robots,'')


    In some ways, he was disappointed, but he was also relieved.


    It meant that his n to take down the Root was viable!


    He began advancing towards the Root bit by bit, evading and bouncing off the many roots that narrowly missed as he stepped out of the with his Void Forestep technique.


    He was reaching a stage where almost every individual root was sting attacks at him. The environmental damage was so great that the size of the floor had increased substantially, despite the floor already being absolutely gigantic.


    The damage was on par with the damage that Martial Seniors were capable of exerting, although the roots did take much longer than martial Seniors would, at least, Martial Seniors of the caliber of Senior Ceeran.


    Rui finally reached a stage where he could sense the Root with his other senses and techniques barring Riemannian Echo, but his rate of progress slowed down as the roots intensified. Not only was the number of roots the total number of roots that stuck out from the main Root, but the closer he got, the less time he had to predict the roots.


    Rui''s predictive model growing more and more powerful negated thetter, but the increasing number was still a pain in the ass.Content is property of N?velDrama.Org.


    One thing he notices was that it was as though the roots didn''t have any stamina limits. He realized that if he let the battle progress for too much longer, he would weaken from exerting himself to such a degree that he would decline before the roots did, he would certainly die before he could ever disengage to recharge his stamina.


    He nced at the Root''s ''mouth'', the cavity in which it crushed and ground all the raw esoteric ore deposits, before slowly dissolving them in some kind of acid and dispersing them across the dungeon. It would be extremely lethal if a person fell in that. An ordinary human, even Martial Apprentices, and even some Martial Squires would get crushed before eventually being dissolved by the digestive liquids of the Root.


    (''It would be extremely lethal and painful if I fell in there,'') Rui thought to himself with an inward sigh as he continued evading the root attacks.


    He could only imagine what kind of pain anybody who fell into the Root''s mouth would experience. Although it probably was not as bad as the pain Martial Squires felt in the Squire evolution breakthrough procedure, it was still most likely an abysmally excruciating pain. The more he thought about how much it would hurt, the uglier his expression became.


    He sighed, before going through with his n. He pushed himself to the very limit as he evaded every single root that blocked his way¡­


    Before jumping into the Root''s mouth.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 946 Crush

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    Had anyone witnessed what Rui did, they would be shocked beyond words. It was an absolutely bewildering choice. Some would even question whether he made a mistake, whether he tripped on a rock while running at top speeds, sending him flying into the Root''s mouth.


    Yet none of it was true. Rui understood what he was seeking to do, and why he was doing it, and did it anyway.


    This was the only way for him to take down something asrge as the Root. It was far toorge for him to take down with his regr attacks. This meant that he had absolutely no ability to take down the Root any time soon with his regr attacks. He would only be pricking the Root even if he used his tiny little sword or his strongest Transverse Resonance attack. The Root wasrge enough to make even the likes of Senior Ceeran use serious attacks to destroy it.


    Thus the question of destroying it wasn''t a question any sane Martial Squire would even fathom asking themselves.


    But Rui did.


    It was a question that he had struggled over for many months. How exactly was he supposed to take down the Root?


    Should he have filled his dimensional ring with a substance that was extremely lethal to the organic tissue of the nt kingdom? Maybe if he dumped enough of it, he could kill the Root. That was one of the first possibilities that he looked into.


    After months of consideration, he ruled out almost all possibilities.


    Except one.


    Although he had only just verified its full usibility in this battle, there was a huge cost that came with it. It, unfortunately, involved doing some rather crazy things.


    It was a gamble.


    The second he entered the mouth, its opening closed, leaving him trapped.


    Inside was a gap between the upper and lower roofs of the mouth. A gap that would closepletely in order to crush the esoteric ore deposits before releasing the digestive acids to aid with the breakdown and refinement of the esoteric ore deposits.


    That was where Rui had thrust himself into.


    Certain death.


    BOOM!


    The two jaws rapidly moved toward each other at blindingly fast speeds even for a Martial Squire, threatening to crush Rui!


    At the same time, something had already begun to change.


    It took the tiniest fraction of a millisecond, but the air changed drastically as the jaws began to close down on Rui!


    A titanic amount of pressure erupted from him, flooding the entire floor.


    Rui donned his most powerful Mind Mask, taking on the guise of a Martial Senior!


    In that microsecond, the entirety of the Shionel Dungeon perceived an existential threat from the exact location Rui was present, shaking violently as a multitude of the roots that spawned from the Rootshed out toward Rui the very next moment!


    The fact that the Root was in the way between them and Rui did not seem to matter to the roots. Thousands of roots struck at the main Root body that they emerged from!


    It took less than a millisecond, but s, it wasn''t fast enough.


    The Root''s jaws had already closed.


    "RRRRRGHH!!!" Rui gritted his teeth as he desperately balled himself up, trying to reduce the amount of area that his body covered.<novelsnext>I think you should take a look at </novelsnext>


    The sheer amount of force that the Root''s jaws exerted on him was greater than anything else he had ever been subjected to in his entire life!


    CRACK CRACK CRACK!


    He could feel his bones snapping like little twigs!


    His flesh was being wrung as it tore across all of his body.


    His internal organs were not exempt from the damage, all of the internal systems in his body have suffered damage!


    He had only one goal; keeping his brain intact. He positioned his body in such a manner that most of his body would have had to be crushed before his head suffered any damage.


    CRACK CRACK CRACK!


    In the span of a millisecond, he had already been put into critical condition!


    He experienced more pain at that moment than he had since the Squire evolution breakthrough process!


    It was a maddening amount of pain that would have driven any normal human being to absolute insanity!


    Yet he managed to keep his head intact the entire time. His efforts had paid off as his Mind Mask technique never broke.


    And that meant that the roots never stopped.


    The Root shivered as thousands of its own roots impaled it from all directions, inflicting a tremendous amount of damage to the Root.


    Rui had noticed that neither the roots nor the main Root possessed any consciousness or instinct of self-preservation.


    That was why he knew that this could work!N?velDrama.Org owns all ? content.


    Using the roots to defeat the Root was his n.


    RUMBLE!


    The Root opened its jaw as its wounds hindered its functions.


    Rui''s mangled body fell out,nding on the ground. His body was in so much pain that he struggled to have any coherent sequence of thoughts. The very first thing he did was use Final Breathing, his endurance-rted breathing technique to stabilize his condition.


    If it weren''t for the fact that he had an enhanced healing factor from his Hungry Pain technique, Rui knew there was a realistic chance that he would be dead right now!


    That didn''t mean he wouldn''t die.


    DRIP DRIP DRIP


    His wounds were not light. If he lost enough blood, he would not be able to survive. The worst part was that his body was so messed up, he couldn''t even use his dimensional ring to bring the high-grade healing potion that he had stored in it.


    For the moment, he focused on using his breathing to nourish his healing factor as much as possible. As long as he could contain the bleeding and restore enough of his body to ess his healing potions, he would be just fine.


    He half wished Kane was here, but Kane had already retreated like he was supposed to. Rui had told him not to enter the Root Floor, it was far too dangerous for him at the moment.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 947 Shock

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    Rui gritted his teeth as he repositioned his mangled body and closed off wounds with other parts of his body, preventing blood loss from debilitating him any further. Final Breathing minimized his energy and nutrition requirements, giving a bit of ammunition to his evolved healing factor, which furiously began working again to prevent his body from tending toward death.


    Wounds clotted soon after, as his healing factor began focusing on stabilizing the most vital organs.


    If even a single one of them failed, the probability of death rose exponentially. The bones, muscles, and damaged flesh were less importantpared to them, and far down the list of priorities that his body had at the moment.


    Fortunately, a trend of positive developments had slowly begun. It took an hour, but slowly, his internal organ systems had reached a point where they wouldn''t plummet any time soon.


    Soon, his healing factor began focusing on secondary interests as it began the healing of flesh, bones, and muscles.


    Unfortunately, the degree to which they had been damaged was beyond the abilities of even his evolved healing factor. He would not be able to healpletely with it alone.


    However, what he really needed was to gain enough stability, and control to ensure that he could regain the ability to operate his dimensional ring and summon his healing potion.


    That took much longer. His healing factor was good at performing the most essential of first aid rather swiftly, but more healing required more time.


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    It wasn''t three hours after initially falling out that he finally tried to reach for his dimensional ring.


    The very effort of the action caused him blinding pain. He felt as though he couldn''t even think, of how much it hurt to move.


    WOOP


    He managed to operate his dimensional ring after immense perseverance.


    The vial of potion fell to the ground underneath his hand. He wasn''t concerned with the potion breaking, but bringing the vial to his face was another pain.


    CLICK


    He released the potion in its depressurized gaseous state, deeply inhaling. He could feel the potion coursing through his blood as he took a deep breath in, swimming across his entire body as it restored tissue.


    Unlike normal, he wasn''t fixed in a few seconds. Despite working alongside his normal healing factor, it was a few minutes before he finally no longer resembled a meat sack.


    He had endured so much damage, that even the healing was tremendously painful as his bones were pushed back into ce by his mending muscles and flesh.


    "Oh god¡­" Rui gasped for air as he finally undid his Final Breathing technique after five minutes of elerated healing. He struggled to get up, feeling extremely weak. He had abused the Forestep technique, which meant that he had shed a lot of body mass. His healing had almost no ammunition and instead began drawing from his health.


    His body had be much thinner as if he was malnourished. <novelsnext>I think you should take a look at </novelsnext>


    Which he was.


    "Ugh¡­" He groaned as he struggled to get up.


    At that moment, he felt so weak that he wouldn''t be surprised if even a Martial Apprentice could defeat him.


    He turned, facing the Root. Although he could still sense it with Riemannian Echo, he hadn''t had time to care about the Root when his own body was failing, approaching death. It was only now that he finally could afford to pay attention to anything but himself.


    The Root hadpletely dropped, as had all the roots. Rui wasn''t sure whether or not they were dead, but they were clearly incapacitated.


    "Huh¡­" he shrugged weakly. "That actually worked. Crazy."


    He knew that he couldn''t hurt the Root with his own power. It was absolutely impossible. But if he could get the Root to hurt itself, then that would solve everything. But, of course, like Kane had reminded him. The Senior level Mind Mask drew roots to himself, he did not have the ability to control the roots and direct it to his opponent.


    That was why Kane had thought that the trick he had used in the Serevian Dungeon would be useless here.


    It was only Rui who considered the idea that perhaps it was possible to direct the roots towards himself, but hit his opponent instead. It sounded absurd, but became possible if Rui was inside his opponent.


    Normally, that, too, was an absurd notion, but in this case, his opponent was more than big enough for the unthinkable to be possible.


    The only issue was that there was a good chance that he would be chewed to hell, which is why he had spent months observing the force with which the Root broke down esoteric ore deposits.


    It was definitely far from sake, and could easily kill him if he made even a slight inuracy, let alone an actual mistake.


    After months of visual preparation of the measures to take to prevent getting chewed to death, he was finally ready to take the plunge.


    (''It was still worse than I had anticipated,'') Rui sighed. He had trulye close to the brink of death at several moments because he had underestimated the damage he would suffer. If not for luck and his enhanced healing factor, it may very well have been game over.


    (''I guess¡­ I''ve won?'') He scratched his head as he took his time burning the memory of the impaled Root. The sheer amount of biomatter that had escaped it with the many boring holes across its body.


    He could say with certainty that this was by far the greatest achievement of his entire life. To think he would not only take the Root head-on but also sessfully keep up and even defeat the Root, a quasi-Senior level being, as a Martial Squire, was something that he certainly had the right to be proud of.


    He turned around as he swept his Riemannian Echo across the entire floor as a standard safety check, when he suddenly froze, growing pale.


    "There''s¡­ one less corpse than there was!"


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 Chapter 948 Corpse

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    Squire Yuna Xeli was a native Martial Squire of the Shionel Confederation whose Martial Path wasrge-scale countersurveince. She specialized in covertly taking down Martial Squires after scouting them from further away than she could be scouted.


    In short, long-range senses were her specialty. She had mastered multiple grade-nine techniques that allowed her to urately and in a detailed manner scan.


    That was why she rejoiced when she learned about the special traits of the Shionel Dungeon, the fact that it could jam senses to an extreme degree may have seemed like it was her antithesis, but in reality, it made her services all the more valuable.


    She received an astonishingly luxurious contract with Deacon Industries, offering her powerful sensory services as a high-grade sensory Martial Artist.


    She wasn''t as incapacitated as the other Martial Artists in the dungeon, this made her extremely useful in dungeon raids and dungeon exploration.


    However, what others didn''t know was that she was also equally a covert operations-oriented Martial Artist as she was a sensory Martial Artist.


    Among the techniques that she had created was the Lying Corpse technique. A technique where she manipted her body such that she was indistinguishable from a corpse. Her body temperature lowered to match that of a cadaver, she reduced her heart rate and made her heartbeat motions extraordinarily slow so that they basically would not be detected unless someone knew to look for it.


    Her breathing was extremely slowed down as well, allowing her to sustain her body with oxygen in an extremely discrete manner.


    This was a technique she used to, literally, y dead. It helped in circumstances where she didn''t think she could get away alive.


    Circumstances like the Root floor of the Shionel Dungeon. Given that she served as the scout of a thousand-strong army of high-grade Martial Squires, led by five grade-ten Martial Squires? She didn''t think anything could possibly go wrong.


    She didn''t realize how wrong she was until the actual conflict began.


    It was overwhelming. The Martial Artists did their best to resist, and to their credit, didn''t take too little to defeat them, but she realized very soon that they were doomed. They stood no chance of victory whatsoever.


    Each root was as powerful and fast as a grade-ten Martial Squire, they were unquestionably weaker. And it became apparent very early on.


    Instead of choosing to die, she chose to literally y dead on the spot. She had considered running away, but that would single her out from a crowd, and the roots would definitely target her. As such, she had no choice but to feign death and fall to the ground as a corpse. She had no chance of defeating even a single root.


    Her senses did not cover the entire floor, far from it, she could only sense what was happening across a portion of the floor.


    She witnessed as the Martial Squires put up a vain resistance, dying one by one until thest one remained.


    Captain Deacon.


    He put an admirable and immensely powerful resistance, taking on more root attacks than she could count, but even he eventually retreated. He was the only one who could turn his back to the root, get struck, and still be able to continue running.<novelsnext>I think you should take a look at </novelsnext>


    Just as Squire Yuna thought that Captain Deacon would escape, a new figure arrived out of nowhere seemingly, killing Captain Deacon with two strikes.


    His words seemed to anger the otherwise calm and collected Captain Deacon.


    (''How was he able to sense him?'') She wondered with shock. (''For him to know that the battle has ended, and to know that Captain Deacon was escaping, he would have to have a huge sensory range¡­'')


    Blood drained from her face when she realized who this individual was as she felt a tremendous amount of fear.


    The Voider.


    Every Martial Squire in the Shionel Dungeon, and perhaps across the entire eastern side of the continent, had heard legends about them. A singr force said to possess unfathomable power within the Squire Realm, capable of equaling one thousand Martial Squires!


    As someone who had regrly been covered by international media for quite some time, his infamy had spread.


    She felt an immense amount of dread of actually seeing him, she had no doubt that she stood no chance against him inbat, given that he was said to be an extraordinary grade-ten Martial Squire.


    She was even terrified that he would detect her, but he didn''t even though he was extremely vignt.


    What followed next blew her mind away. He moved so fast that she couldn''t even perceive him. He, along with the roots, was too fast for even her to react to. But she could still sense the sheer magnitude of the feat that he was aplishing.


    Dozens, hundreds, and at one point even a thousand!


    His graceful movements allowed him to sharply evade every single attack that came his way!


    She could not fathom how a Martial Squire could possibly evade so many high-grade roots attacking him simultaneously. She grew entranced as she watched the sheer magic that she was witnessing. She understood that this was not somebody that could be defined by any semnce of normality. What he was aplishing was absolutely insane. He was either the world''s greatest genius or the world''s greatest fool.


    As time passed, she simply stayed put, hoping that she would eventually get out. She prayed that she didn''t get hit by a stray attack, fortunately, she was quite far away. She still didn''t dare indicate that she was alive.


    At some point, she felt a Senior-level aura, shocking her. She extended her senses as far as she could only to discover with absolute shock that the roots of the Root were harming thetter!


    Things soon calmed down after that, the roots fell t to the ground, growing inactive. She had no idea what had happened to the Voider, but she didn''t care, she had enough reason to get up and sprint out of the floor at top speed, even breaking into a sob after she realized she wasn''t dying.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 949 Leave

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    Rui almost felt his heart palpitating as he tried calming himself down. He was d that he was paranoid enough to memorize the position of every single corpse, otherwise, he would have never noticed that one of them was missing.


    (''Wait, calm down,'') He narrowed his eyes. (''The roots did damage this floor heavily, maybe she got buried deep under rubble,'')


    He immediately focused his senses deep underground, sweeping across the bedrock of the entire floor, praying that he found her.


    (''Shit¡­'') He realized that she was nowhere to be found.


    He had simply inputted the entirety of his spatial vision into his Mind Pce when he swept his senses across the corpses, thus he had also inadvertently memorized their physical traits and their appearances.


    He could clearly tell that one corpse was missing.


    (''But how?'') He narrowed his eyes. (''How could a corpse just disappear?'')


    The first possibility that came to mind was that she was faking her death and possessed some strange obscure technique that killed any and all physiological indication of life. That would mean that even if Rui spent a lot of time scanning her body, he might not have noticed that she was alive.All content is property ? N?velDrama.Org.


    "Shit," He cursed, he was in deep trouble if this was the case. The worst part was that this was the worst timing. He was extremely weakened and could not afford another fight until he regained his full power.


    He quickly summoned some physical rejuvenation potions, consuming them rapidly as he felt a surge of energy. He also summoned a bucket worth of heavy and highly nutritionally dense food pills, consuming them rapidly as well.


    It was sub-optimal, but he would be able to regain Squire-levelbat prowess at the very least, even if he was far from his peak.


    His evolved digestion system gulped up all the nutritional bio-avable mass, quickly integrating it into his body.


    He heaved a sigh of relief as he finally felt power in his body.


    First, he analyzed his circumstances.


    The worst-case scenario was that she managed to get away alive by faking her death, that was the scenario that Rui went with, for the time being.


    The consequences were not immediately dire, but she had probably seen him fighting extensively, thus she might have gotten a good description of his physicals. That alone would be quite dangerous. She probably saw him killing Captain Deacon, which, if Chairman Deacon found out, would exacerbate his hatred for Rui.


    If she saw his appearance in theter stages of the fight where his mask broke, then he had no words, he had truly fucked up.<novelsnext>I think you should take a look at </novelsnext>


    "I need to get Kane, and we need to get outta here," Rui murmured.


    However, they could not afford to return to their inn, which was courting death. Rui had already cleared the dungeon, thus his desire to stay in the Shionel Confederation was effectively down to zero.


    As long as he cashed out his consolidated gains, he was fine.


    (''Thankfully, Chairman Deacon is at the arguably most busy moment of his life, he does not have any leeway to focus on me at this particr moment,'') Rui was truly grateful that the timing of this was in his favor.


    Chairman Deacon was at the most important juncture of his entire life. He needed to focus everything on the elections and make sure nothing went wrong at the final moment. Even if he did take a moment to mourn the loss of one thousand Martial Squires and his son, he could not pay too much attention to the Voider, even if he would be burning at his very gut to do so.


    Still, Rui did not think that Chairman Deacon was the most rational man in general, he especially didn''t have any expectations when the man was grieving the loss of a son.


    (''It may be time to leave the Shionel Confederation¡­'') Rui narrowed his eyes.


    Without any further ado, he left the floor looking for Kane.


    "So you''re telling me someone who saw you fight is out there somewhere?" Kane grimaced once Rui found and told him everything. "Damn, what do we do?"


    "Well, just witnessing my fight does not mean the one who escaped knows my identity," Rui exined. "What that means is that our identity will not necessarily be revealed, it will make their investigation easier though. Even the Martial Union will have a hard time hampering the investigation. What we need to do is kill any incentive to investigate us, by leaving the Shionel Confederation forever."


    Kane nodded. "Alright, so we anonymously withdraw our revenue and then leave?"


    "We''ll need the Martial Union''s help with that, as specified in our contract," Rui nodded. "As long as we disconnect cleanly, we should be able to kill the investigation."


    "But Chairman Deacon knows you''re the one who killed his son," Kane made aplicated expression. "He''s not gonna stop investigating because of how much he''s going to hate your guts."


    "That doesn''t matter, his alliance is going to crumble because he got all of his allies'' Martial Squires massacred, he''s going to lose the election and lose support. People are going to stop caring about us because the only reason we were a problem is because of the Shionel Dungeon," Rui exined. "With the Shionel Dungeon being cleared, nobody''s going to care to put in the effort to investigate us since we won''t matter anymore. Chairman Deacon is the only one who''s going to care, and he''s much more limited in his own capacity than when he had the support of many domestic and foreign stakeholders who no longer have a stake anymore. On top of that, once all the Martial Squires began leaving the country in droves and returning home, trying to find the identity of the Voider will be basically impossible."


    Kane looked relieved hearing that, nodding in response to Rui''s words. "That makes sense, the threat isn''t acute, and won''tst long. Looks like there won''t be any problems at all."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 950 Report

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    The election had arrived.


    The Shionel Merchant Guild grew extremely busy, even more so than it was due to the Shionel Dungeon. The various branches and offices across the entire nation went through a multitude of logistical preparations for the event.


    All manners of campaigns decorated the entire country as the two most popr candidates by far fought for support from the various members of the Shionel Merchant Guild.


    The Shionel Merchant Guild included the most sessful and wealthiest merchants in the nation to the humblest of service providers. Any person who supplied goods or services to an open market was considered a merchant, within the nation, and they were all entitled to vote for a candidate for guildmaster.


    Thus, although the voter pool did not include non-merchant citizens of the nation, because of the sheer proportion of the country''s poption that technically and officially counted as a merchant, it still meant that many many millions of votes would be cast across the entire nation.


    Many people excitedly witnessed as the two greatest titans of the nation shed with each other. Guildmaster Bradt had previously domineeringly won every election despite Chairman Deacon''s best efforts. However, this time, things truly could go either way.


    The many electoral debates that the two of them had were intense, as the two of them challenged each other in an intricate battle for rhetorical and optical victories in the eyes of the voters. Content is property of N?velDrama.Org.


    All was going just fine for both sides until it wasn''t.


    News of the massacre of the one thousand Martial Squires associated with Deacon Industries spread like wildfire across the entire nation. It was an absolute shock, perhaps more shocking than any other news regarding the Shionel Dungeon that hade out prior.


    One thousand Martial Squires had all died on one single floor!


    It was shocking because it meant that there was a threat level in the Shionel Dungeon so profound that it could kill one thousand powerful Martial Squires.


    Many of the citizens naturally got scared by this, since Martial Artists of higher Realms could not enter the Shionel Dungeon, it meant that whatever was inside the dungeon needed to be resolved by Martial Squires, but it was powerful enough to wipe out one thousand Martial Squires!


    How many Martial Squires would be needed to take down such a threat?


    "I bet the Voider could do it,"


    "Don''t be stupid, a single Martial Squire cannot rival one thousand Martial Squires. The Voider is impressive, but they cannot handle this threat by themselves."


    "Maybe if the Voider and Deacon Industriesbine forces, they could take it down together."


    Despite the tragedy, it only served as a great source of gossip and entertainment to millions of people.


    Chairman Deacon, however, had not been entertained.


    "All dead¡­" He murmured, putting both hands on a table for support. "¡­ All dead?"


    Before him had stood an ashamed Squire Yuna, lowering her head as she nodded slowly. "All of them are dead."


    "And my son¡­" He murmured lightly as his expression quivered. "You said he¡­?"


    "He fought a valiant battle, sir," She spoke up with a forlorn expression. "Out of all the Martial Squires, your son fought to the very end. Even after all the other grade-ten Martial Squires perished, your son still stood strong, to the very end, he never gave up."<novelsnext>I think you should take a look at </novelsnext>


    She felt enormously guilty for being the only one to survive, that too through such cowardly means. She decided to embellish Captain Deacon to be greater than he was. She erased the part of him running away in the end.


    "I see¡­" Chairman Deacon''s mask fell as he looked down, hiding his sorrow. "And his death¡­ You said¡­"


    "He was attacked by an unknown figure," She confirmed. "He decapitated the captain from the back in a cowardly fashion, while the Captain was fighting the roots."


    The air in the room grew dark as Squire Yuna felt increasingly ufortable at Chairman Deacon''s tumultuous emotions.


    "And you said that¡­ he was the Voider? That he fought all the roots by himself and even radiated a Senior level aura?" Chairman Deacon asked with a shaking voice.


    Yet it was different from before.


    He wasn''t quivering with sorrow.


    He was shuddering with fury.


    Squire Yuna gulped as she experienced a tremendous amount of pressure from the center of his attention. "Yes, sir."


    "And he defeated the main roots by himself?" Chairman Deacon asked with sharp eyes.


    "¡­I cannot be sure, my sensory range is nowhere near wide enough to cover the entire floor," She replied with uncertainty. "But the roots flew back towards the center, and I sensed arge impact, the roots became weaker and weaker until they fell limp and everything calmed down after that, and that was when I left. I don''t know what happened, and I didn''t dare to try and investigate out of fear for my life."


    The sharpness in Chairman Deacon''s eyes had not disappeared.


    No.


    It only grew sharper.


    "Thank you for your detailed report, Squire Yuna," He spoke with an exceedingly calm tone that only sent shivers down her spine. "Your cooperation and sincerity are appreciated."


    "I''m once again sorry for my cowardice, sir," She bowed her head. "But I had no other choice."


    "I understand," He simply said. "You may take your leave."


    Contrary to her fears, Chairman Deacon was actually d that she was alive, she was a valuable asset.


    His eyes shed with rage as he clenched his fist, gritting his teeth. He knew in his heart that the Voider killed his son.


    Still, things had grownplicated now, there was a lot at stake and he didn''t even have time to mourn. The impacts that the loss of one thousand Martial Squires had on his alliance were severe. He did not have time to do anything but salvage the sinking ship and hope that it wouldn''t sabotage his chances of bing guildmaster.


    Once he became guildmaster, he would use his power to use the new information that he had for looking into the matter.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 951 Rui Quarrier

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    The effects of one thousand Martial Squires dying was not small, and it rippled across the entirety of the Shionel Confederation.


    Even as the elections arrived, Chairman Deacon spent his days cating the voters that he had already bought, doing everything he could in his power.


    In order to not lose many of the most disaffected allies by his side, he needed to bleed capital, truly draining himself to keep them from denouncing supporting him.


    However, he wasn''t entirely sessful, the number of allies on his side, both domestic and international, that had denounced was not insignificant.


    Even if many of them weren''t merchants who could vote, he had used their capital to buy many other voters.


    For example, he used the support of many foreign and international nations to get better deals for entire sectors of merchants in the Shionel Confederation in exchange for their votes. Now, some of those deals werepromised by the national stakeholders withdrawing their support.


    He desperately tried to fix all his problems by throwing more money and capital at them, while alsopromising more and making even more promises to disgruntled voters.


    Eventually, the three days of voting came to an end, and the votes were counted by the electoralmittee of the Shionel Merchant Guild before the results were eventually announced and published.


    [#1: Bradt Patrick: 428695 votes.


    #2: Deacon Vernes: 427989 votes.


    ¡­]


    Guildmaster Bradt had just barely managed to secure a win!


    The part that shocked and excited everyone was how close Guildmaster Bradt and Chairman Deacon were, the former was less than one thousand votes ahead of thetter!


    Although theyman didn''t understand what that meant, those who possessed greater ess to information and greater insight realized what this meant.


    Chairman Deacon may very well have won if not for the massacre of the one thousand Martial Squires associated with Deacon Industries.


    Of course, this wasn''t the only factor. Guildmaster Bradt had exposed a trump card shortly prior to the elections. The trump card that he had been saving for quite some time.


    The announcement of a single Shionel Dungeon map that covered the entire Shionel Dungeon had impressed the entire nation. But it was the merchants who were most shocked by this announcement from the Bradt Distribution Service.


    The many clever merchants of the Shionel Merchant Guild had understood what the announcement meant.


    It was Guildmaster Bradt fighting back with a well-prepared trump card to counter all of the titanic support that Chairman Bradt had amassed. It was just as powerful as a bargaining chip as the crushing of the Voider.


    Rui had inadvertently be the core of both Chairman Deacon and Guildmaster Bradt''s campaigning trump cards!


    The map that he had almost fullypleted for Guildmaster Bradt had served as a riveting turnaround that bought back much of the support that Chairman Deacon had stolen from him.


    That, inbination, with the devastating loss that Chairman Deacon had suffered had tipped the bnce, allowing Guildmaster Bradt to narrowly edge out a victory.<novelsnext>I think you should take a look at </novelsnext>


    THUD


    "DAMN IT!!!" Chairman Deacon struck his fists on his table as he continued banging them. "GOD DAMN IT ALL!!!!!"


    He screeched, venting all of the emotions that he had bottled up recently. He clutched his hair as he breathed hard, and unsteadily. His eyes were bloodshot, and there were dark bags under his eyes. He felt as though he was going to break, mentally, even if not physically.


    All the effort that he had put in thest two years had been in vain. Not only had they been in vain, but they were also detrimental since he had truly gone out on a limb with the measures that he had taken to win the elections.


    It meant that he was in quite the low, lower than he had been in the past ten years. He felt as though his heart was literally burning with the death of his son, and now the death of his ambitions to be guildmaster.


    "Sir!" His secretary walked in.


    He didn''t even deign to respond.


    "Sir I just received a report from the analytics team that you put into investigating the Voider based on the intelligence that Squire Yuna provided," She told him.


    That earned his attention.


    His hatred for the Voider had not waned.


    No.


    It had only grown.N?velDrama.Org owns all ? content.


    "What is it?" He growled with narrow sharp eyes.


    "The prevailing hypothesis was that the Voider was a Martial Senior capable of hiding his power, thus not triggering the rms of the Shionel Dungeon, and thus being the sole Martial Senior capable of exploring the Shionel Dungeon. It would exin the sheer amount of sess and dominance that the Voider has disyed in the Shionel Dungeon, and many other oddities."


    Chairman Deacon had alsoe to suspect that the Voider was a Martial Senior when Squire Yuna described a Senior level aura of a Martial Artist assaulting her, it would exin how the Voider could handle one thousand roots that wiped away one thousand Martial Squires by his lone self.


    It made taking him down much harder. Martial Seniors were not disposable, deploying them for anything that needed to be done after careful consideration. Killing a Martial Senior was an extremely risky and taxing mission. He either needed tomit a painfully costly amount of militaristic capital or deploy other Martial Seniors, which could not be done lightly for a smaller nation like the Shionel Confederation.


    "However, the analytics team hase up with an alternative possibility, and this possibility has been deemed to be of a remarkably high probability," She reported.


    "What is it?" He furrowed his eyebrows.


    His secretary pulled out a document, cing it on his table wordlessly. Chairman Deacon frowned at the solemn air that had taken hold as he reached for the document, opening and reading it.


    His eyes widened in time as he read through the analysis and report carefully, his hands quivered in shock as he swept through the pages of the report one by one.


    "Rui¡­ Quarrier?"


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 952 Considerations

    Content is property of N?velDrama.Org.


    ?


    Rui and Kane had decided to proceed with absolute caution. They abandoned their inn and all the belongings in it permanently. Rui had decided that it was simply not worth returning anywhere near that inn.


    Most of the time they traveled via Void Step, otherwise, they had retreated to one of the safehouses of the Martial Union for now.


    "Have you considered our offer?" Commissioner Reze asked, throwing a pointed look toward Rui.


    Rui didn''t respond immediately.


    Some time ago, Commissioner Reze had made an offer to Rui in the event that his identity was revealed. An offer to protect him and his family from the Underworld and Chairman Deacon, as well as the various foreign and international forces that Rui had pissed off.


    In return, Rui was to be an internal member of the Martial Union and offerplete subordination to the Martial Union.


    Rui was not stupid, he knew that the consequences of having his identity exposed were not something he could handle by himself.


    There was no Martial Art technique project he could embark on that would allow him to handle being targeted by so many powerful forces and nations. Not at the Squire level, at least.


    As a Martial Squire, he simply was powerless against too many forces.


    (''I need to grow stronger,'') He sighed inwardly.


    But until he was strong enough, he had a storm looming on the horizon that could hit him and the people he cared about the most at any moment. Martial Commissioner Reze offered him the protection of the Martial Union.


    Rui couldn''t dismiss the offer lightly.


    The Martial Union truly possessed the power to protect him from the many forces that had a bone to pick with Rui. Even if there were other forces of simr power, such as the four powerhouse nations, none of them would pursue him if he was under the protection of the Martial Union.


    It was not worth it. Although Rui certainly had pissed them off by depriving them of sess in the Shionel Dungeon, he was not worth provoking a war over against the Martial Union and Kandrian Empire. Especially when he was no longer relevant since the Shionel Dungeon was basically cleared at this stage.


    However, in return, he would basically have toe a few steps short of bing a ve of the Martial Union.


    Although Commissioner Reze had not phrased it this way, Rui was not a fool. He knew that epting this deal meant that the Martial Union would have a ton of power over his life. <novelsnext>I think you should take a look at </novelsnext>


    He was not eager to ept this arrangement. Especially after his time in histest venture in the Shionel Confederation. He had grown to like his autonomy and freedom far too much. There were little to no detriments to adopting such a lifestyle, and the number of factors that aimed to control his life were few.


    He had been satisfied with missions prior, but now that he had experienced what growing stronger for his own ambitions and goals was like, he felt missions were incredibly nd and boring. In fact, he never wanted to return topleting elementary missions again.


    Ideally, he would like to undertake ambitions that were extremely difficult that could also earn him money by providing viable service to society.


    Of course, with thetest amount of revenue that Rui had earned from the Shionel Dungeon, he was basically a billionaire of the Panama Continent. Thus he could forget about the mary aspects and focus on his Martial Art and Martial Path.


    It broke him from shackles that he hadn''t even noticed before. It was an intoxicating feeling. That was why he revulsed at the idea of being a ve to the Martial Union with every fiber of his being.


    Of course, it wasn''t that he thought that the Martial Union would abuse him or act against his interests. It was in the Martial Union''s interests that an extraordinarily brilliant Martial Squire as promising as Rui grew to actualize all of his massive potential to be stronger and thus be a greater asset to the Martial Union.


    It was quite likely that the Martial Union would be quite careful with how they treated Rui. They did not want to give him a reason to hate them otherwise he would no longer be on their side once he grew powerful enough.


    "I¡­ won''t ept your deal," Rui shook his head. "That''s not who I am, not back then, and certainly not now. However, I do appreciate the offer, and the acknowledgment of my value and potential to be willing to go that far for my family. However, I cannot ept that offer."


    Commissioner Reze stared at Rui deeply for several seconds before nodding. "If that''s the decision you have made, then the Martial Union will respect that decision and honor it. We just hope you don''te to regret this decision.


    Rui nodded. "I have been making preparations to move all my revenue from the anonymous holdings ount in the Shionel Confederation to the Kandrian Empire, I will be needing the Martial Union to help me smuggle it past the borders. Once that''s done, we can cleanly disengage with the Shionel Confederation, especially now that the elections have ended in the Shionel Confederation."


    Rui was quite relieved that Chairman Deacon had lost the elections. It would have made Rui''s life far harder if he got into office and was able to wield the might of the Shionel Confederation as a sovereign state to systematically hunt down the Voider. Thus far, Chairman Deacon had applied his power and the capital of Deacon Industries and its allies into looking into Rui.


    But it would be a whole different ballgame if the entire state and its various executive departments were doing their best to find Rui.


    For now, he was content with not making any radical decisions as he cautiously detached from the nation and left like a ghost.


    For now, he was a lot more confident that he ought to be able to avoid any repercussions.


    Or so he hoped.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 953 Find Him

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    "Rui¡­ Quarrier?"


    Chairman Deacon stared at the document containing a profile of a young Martial Squire with pitch-ck hair and eyes.N?velDrama.Org owns all ? content.


    At that moment, he felt a deep instinct stirring inside him.


    "Yes, sir," His secretary nodded. "He''s a B-rank Martial Squire residing in the Shionel Confederation, with average sess with the dungeon. Nothing too spectacr. But he is the one who won the war over the core of the Serevian Dungeon for the Kandrian Empire. The intelligence that our intelligence department dug up on him deeply indicated that he does possess the ability to project an aura that is characteristic of Martial Artists of a higher Realm. That is actually how the intelligence department found him, rather. By investigating the possibility of a Martial Squire responsible for the Senior-level aura that Squire Yuna sensed. Since then oddities have piled, such as the confirmed locations of the Martial Squires in the Shionel Confederation at the estimated time period that the Voider was on the final floor. Many names get cut. However, we were unable to locate him or his partner Kane during this time period, or at all, they haven''t returned to their inn yet. Also-"


    "Wait a minute¡­" Chairman Deacon''s eyes widened. "I¡­ remember him. Yes. He was a Voidhunter. One of the only four to survive."


    Chairman Deacon managed to remember his distinct features.


    "Yes sir," His secretary nodded. "The duo serving as the Voider has been found to match the data on the Voider obtained on the sixteenth floor where a glimpse of them was obtained. Multiple individuals serving as the Voider together is the trait that disqualified the theory of the Voider being a Senior. Also, the fact that the Voider waited for the raid force to clear the sixteenth floor disqualifies them from being a Senior, since Senior would have been able to destroy the tree as a whole with a single attack."


    "That makes sense¡­" Chairman Deacon nodded, bewildered. "On top of that, there is the fact that the Martial Union withdrew its forces from the raid force sent to the final floor!"


    His expression was saturated with raw unadultered shock.


    The Kandrian Martial Union was in on it!


    He could think of no other exnation for why the Martial Union would refuse to partake in the clearing of the final floor of the Shionel Dungeon. It made no sense. The only reason their otherwise inscrutable decision made sense was if they knew that deploying their internal Martial Squires on that operation would get them all killed


    In hindsight, it as absolutely clear that the Martial Union possessed foreknowledge of the disaster that was following through. He didn''t know exactly what kind of working rtionship Rui and the Martial Union had, but it was clear that they were working together.


    He gritted his teeth as his expression morphed into one of deep hatred and fury. His secretary felt the hair on her body standing on edge at the sheer sight of him.


    He nced back at Rui''s photo, closing his eyes as he did his best to recall the interactions he had with him.


    He could barely remember anything. It couldn''t be helped. Individual Martial Squires were a dime a dozen at his level of power. Grade-ten Martial Squires were worthy of more consideration, but even then, they were more valuable disposable pawns.


    Yet for some reason, even though he didn''t remember the words Rui exchanged with him, he recalled the impression that Rui had left on him.<novelsnext>I think you should take a look at </novelsnext>


    He had actually spent some time talking to Rui because the young man had made a subtle yet profound impression, he was highly intelligent and pertinent. He had a bright mind, and there was more to him than met the eye.


    He opened his eyes.


    He already knew. "It''s him."


    There was unyielding certainty in his chilly voice. His eyes narrowed as his eyes zed with fury and rage. "Find him."


    The secretary did not think it was a good idea to do anything rash without gaining absolute confirmation that they were the Voider. However, she knew that he was not going to change his mind. He would most likely gain more explicit proof after the two Martial Squires had been caught and interrogated.


    "Should I inform the alliance?" She asked.


    "No," He shook his head. "The Martial Union is a traitor to the alliance, but kicking them out will tip them off. Do it using the capital and resources of Deacon Industries. Task the entirety of the Intelligence Department on the search of Rui Quarrier and Kane Arrancar."


    "Yes sir," She bowed.


    "Oh¡­ One more thing," He paused. "Do a more extensive background check. Families and friends, I want a list of all of them. They can be of use."


    "Yes, sir," She nodded, before leaving the room.


    Chairman Deacon put aside the matter of cleaning up the mess that was still around due to his loss in the elections. At this moment, he was fully invested in the matter of the Voider. He would do everything in his power to find and kill him.


    "No, I''m going to torture him for stabbing my son in the back," He gritted his teeth as his nails drew blood from being clenched into his fist too hard. "I''m going to kill his entire family before his very eyes."


    He didn''t bother about making the same im for Kane. He recognized thetter''sst name quickly and knew that he could not dream about trying to make his family suffer even if he was guildmaster.


    (''Speaking of guildmaster¡­'') His eyes narrowed. (''Does Bradt know¡­?'')


    He got the feeling that he hadn''t known this entire time, for certain things would have gone differently. He knew his enemy well and knew that the man would never treat any Martial Squire as an equal. However, if he was working with someone who was anonymous and kept himself safe from Bradt''s power, then he could understand why Rui wasn''t firmly locked in the guildmaster''s palm and power.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 954 Tips

    ?


    "Remind me why we spent an entire day in advance for this meeting?" Kane sighed, crouching.


    "To make sure that they aren''t setting up a trap," Rui replied.


    The two of them were waiting inside a tunnel, near the entrance to it from outside the Shionel Dungeon. They had simply stepped a few meters into the dungeon after entering it. They had even blocked off the tunnel to ensure that nobody would enter it and run into them.


    Kane was bored, while Rui simply kept watch over a certain office branch of the Adventurer Guild near the Shionel Dungeon.


    As a caveat for the potential security holes that existed, it was stipted intow that the withdrawal ofrge sums of money required the verification and monitoring of individuals with a certain level of authority or above.


    That meant that Rui could not walk into the Shionel Merchant Guild, and simply extract all the money that he wanted and leave. That was why he hadn''t already withdrawn all of his revenue and run away from the Shionel Confederation.


    He had set up a meeting with Guildmaster Bradt, the only person who he was willing to engage with from the Merchant Guild over the matter.


    He and Kane had immediately perched themselves outside the meeting spot to make sure that Guildmaster Bradt didn''t set anything up as a trap before the meeting.


    Not that Rui believed that Guildmaster Bradt would try something of the sort. Rui had already shown that when he was near the Shionel Dungeon he was always holding a powerful bomb in his hands that could do a lot of damage.


    Furthermore, they both had enough to gain from finallypleting their long-drawn agreement and cooperation and would like to see a clean break where they had nothing to do with each other now.


    "Alright, it''s time," Rui nodded as he pushed aside the boulder, opening up the path to outside the Shionel Dungeon. "I''ll meet you after."


    "Gotcha, bye," Kane waved him away.


    Rui walked over to the branch, crossing therge gate that separated the Shionel Dungeon from the inner ring of the Adventurer Ring town, quickly heading over to the Adventurer Guild branch where he had insisted to hold the meeting.


    The two Martial Squires guards that stood outside simply nodded wordlessly at him when he arrived there, leading him inside.


    The branch was emptied out, for the meeting specifically, Rui supposed.


    What surprised him was that this time, Guildmaster Bradt had chosen to arrive physically, rather than through the projection likest time.


    However, he was guarded to the tooth with grade-ten Martial Squires. Rui sensed that they were watching his every move like a hawk, they would not allow him to harm so many grade-ten Martial Squires standing right around him while there was some distance between him and the guildmaster.


    "Finally," Guildmaster Bradt greeted him with a nod. "We meet in person."


    Rui had to admit that Guildmaster Bradt possessed a greater presence in real life than he did through a projection. The man somehow drew more attention from Rui than his impressive Martial Squire guards did. That was what impressed Rui, the man exerted a lot of presence on Rui despite not being a Martial Artists or a physical threat to Rui.


    It seemed that Rui''s instincts could sense the sheer amount of indirect pressure that the man possessed. He possessed more than enough power to get Rui killed.<novelsnext>I think you should take a look at </novelsnext>


    Especially considering that he was the guildmaster for the next four years of the Shionel Confederation.


    "Indeed, congrattions on being elected guildmaster, Guildmaster Bradt," Rui offered a perfunctory greeting.


    Guildmaster Bradt nodded. "I''d like to get things over with quickly."


    "Of course," Rui nodded. "I''d like to confirm the presence of the statement."


    Guildmaster Bradt waved his hand and one of his subordinates ced a document on the table, pushing it to Rui.


    Rui opened the sheer, reading an official-looking paper with the seal of the Shionel Merchant Guild, and Guildmaster Bradt''s own signature at the very bottom.


    The statement dered that any bearer of the sheet of paper was entitled to a sum of money that Rui was withdrawing from the ount. Thus, Rui could essentially treat it as a cheque. Rui intended to pass it through the Martial Union before it was deposited into his own bank ount. This way he could protect his own identity.


    Rui nodded, turning back to Guildmaster Bradt. This material belongs to N?velDrama.Org.


    The man immediately replied. "Now,plete your end of the bargain fully, after all this time.


    Rui nodded, before pulling out three books and dropping them on the table. Guildmaster Bradt''s eyes lit up as he opened each book, unfolding it one after the other. "Ah¡­ The final andpleted map of the Shionel Dungeon."


    Rui had spent a day or two drawing out the full map of the Shionel Dungeon, it grew to be more of a pain every time he did it since he needed to draw whole new maps with updated pathways.


    With this, their exchange and contract were over. Guildmaster Bradt had finally gotten what he wanted this entire time; theplete map to the entirety of the Shionel Dungeon. With this, he would be able to go ahead and convert the Shionel Dungeon into his exclusive distribution kingdom once hemenced his ns ofmercializing andmodifying the Shionel Dungeon. The Bradt Distribution Service would soon enter its golden era once he sessfully implemented this, in the same manner, that Chairman Deacon had entered his golden era during the exploration of the Shionel Dungeon.


    "This¡­?" Guildmaster Bradt frowned as he reached the bottom of the Shionel Dungeon on the map.


    "Ah, that''s the final floor of the Shionel Dungeon," Rui nodded. "I cleared it but didn''t care to mine all the esoteric ore deposits. I would suggest you get to it before Chairman Deacon does."


    Rui would rather see Guildmaster Bradt get it than Chairman Deacon.


    "I appreciate the tip," Guildmaster Bradt nodded. "Allow me to repay the favor."


    "Hm?"


    "You''re not as well-hidden as you''d like, Rui Quarrier."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 955 Deal

    ?


    Had it not been for the micro-expression control that he had been trained in, as well as the Mind Mask that he had put on, Rui didn''t think he would have been able to remain asposed as he appeared to be.


    He remained silent as he tried his best to maintain his calm and exposure, simply staring at Guildmaster Bradt from behind his esoteric ore-stuffed suit.


    "Not so much as a twitch, hm?" Guildmaster Bradt mused. "Remarkable, you''re not like the other Martial Artists, but I suppose that''s just preaching to the choir at this point, given the series of impossible feats you''ve pulled off."


    Rui stared at him, refusing to utter a word. There had to be a point to bringing this up.


    "More importantly, believe it or not, I didn''t discover your identity by myself. I actually stole it from a good old friend of mine, a few hours ago,"


    Rui''s eyes narrowed.


    "Someone you''re familiar with, Chairman Deacon," Guildmaster Bradt informed him. "He hasunched his entire intelligence department into a highly secretive investigation against you, and your little friend."


    Rui struggled to maintain hisposure as he reeled from the impact of what Guildmaster Bradt had just told him. Chairman Deacon had already discovered his identity?!


    Rui furiously thought about the means by which his identity was revealed, realizing that being exposed at the Root floor had probably been the tipping point, allowing the investigation to reach him.


    An immense amount of anxiety was born in his heart.


    His worst fears hade true!


    Now that Chairman Deacon was confirmed to know of his identity, the game had entirely changed. He desperately needed protection, not just for himself, but also for his family, especially for his family.


    (''Shit!'') He cursed as he realized how much trouble he was in. It wasn''t that he couldn''t think of any way to protect his family, he just was deeply unwilling to pay the price that the Martial Union demanded from him.


    Yet, at the same time, he couldn''t leave his family hanging. He loved them far too much to be able to not take great measures to protect them. But at the same time, he couldn''t shackle himself. He simply couldn''t


    (''I need another solution!'') He realized, returning his attention to Guildmaster Bradt.


    Although Rui hadn''t said a word to him, his silence was deafening.


    His senses, in addition to logical deduction, told him that Guildmaster Bradt was telling the truth at the moment. Lying to Rui, will all of his senses and understanding of patterns was almost impossible. On top of that, Rui knew that he had no reason to lie, and every reason to tell the truth. Chairman Deacon knew that Rui had a connection to the Kandrian Empire, the Martial Union specifically, it would be trivially easy for Rui to disprove his words if they were false.


    On top of that, it was in Guildmaster Bradt''s interest that Rui didn''t get caught. For Rui still possessed the map that he had given him. That map was most valuable to him when he was the only one who had received it from Rui. The more people got their hands on it, the less it was an advantage. He did not want to see Chairman Deacon get his hands on the map.<novelsnext>I think you should take a look at </novelsnext>


    Ideally, he would like to kill Rui himself, but in the course of their interactions, Rui had proven to be far too careful to allow for any opening. He couldn''t even manage to tag Rui with a highly detectable gas inside the dungeon, which showed careful he was.


    Furthermore, Rui never refused to meet anywhere else except extremely close to the Shionel Dungeon, which was no different from his natural guardian at this point. He couldn''t touch Rui even if he brought an army with him. Rui could do far too much damage, it wasn''t worth it.


    As soon as he had discovered Rui''s identity a few hours ago when his most entrenched spies deep inside Deacon''s staff had managed toe across the intelligence. He had immediately conducted furtive surveince for him and had been unable to find him anywhere, including the inn in which he resided.


    Rui''s mind was in a mess at the moment. Even with all his rationality, he struggled to know what to do in this situation. Even for Rui, it wasn''t easy being able toe to a decision immediately. He had been thrust into a crisis that was unlike any that he had ever dealt with before in either of his two previous lives, the sheer unfamiliarity of his circumstances with the high stakes and painful dilemmas almost drove him into a panic.


    Almost.


    He breathed in deeply as he calmed his mind down.


    "Well," Guildmaster Bradt abruptly broke the silence. "Good luck."


    He got up, yet even before he could take a step.


    "Wait," Rui finally uttered a word after what he had revealed to him.


    The man simply stared at Rui wordlessly.


    "I would like to offer you a deal," Rui narrowed his eyes behind his full-body suit. "I need your help and I''m willing topensate you handsomely.


    Rui waved his cheque statement before Guildmaster Bradt.


    He knew that he couldn''t hold back with money, he needed to use every ounce of capital he had in order to ensure that this crisis didn''t take the worst turn. That included using the seven-point-four billion Shionel gold coins that he had earned from all of his ventures in the Shionel. He had no qualms about using all of it as a germ of an idea formed in his head.N?velDrama.Org owns all ? content.


    He would not allow his family toe under harm.


    But at the same time, he would not disce his life into subordination by agreeing to the Martial Union''s offer. He could not stand doing that, and would rather die.


    "Oh?" Guildmaster Bradt raised an eyebrow with interest, curious about what Rui had to offer. Although the man had certainly been caught off-guard by news that he had heard less than a minute ago.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 956 Choice

    ?


    Rui left the office a few hourster rushing towards the dungeon as fast as he could, entering a tunnel.


    "Finally!" Kane sighed. "What took you so long? I thought it was supposed to be a simple final transaction."


    "The situation has changed," Rui narrowed his eyes. "Guildmaster Bradt knew of our identities."


    Kane''s eyes widened as his expression morphed into one of shock. "WHAT?!"


    "It''s true," Rui nodded grimly. "He even shared the source of his information which was through his sources in Deacon''s staff, just a few hours ago. This means that Chairman Deacon also knows, most likely extremely recently. He knows who we are, and we''re in extreme danger."


    Kane just stepped away as he stared at the ground with a dropped jaw. "We''re so dead."


    "No, we''re going to make it outta here alive," Rui put a hand on his shoulder, shaking him as he reassured him. "Regardless, this is my fault."


    Content is property of N?velDrama.Org.


    He sighed. "If I had been more insightful and careful, I might have been able to prevent this from happening. No, perhaps taking on so much in the first ce was a mistake."


    Kane shook his head. "I knew the risks of what we were signing up for after our first shocking sess. You even asked me back then if I was still willing to continue despite the risks and stakes, and I said yes, knowing full well that you and I were going to create a storm. I''m not saying you''re wrong, but at the end of the day, I always knew this was one possible oue, and it did end up happening."


    He smirked wryly. "If we do die, it''s been a fun ride. At least we can go down knowing that we made a mess of an entire country."


    He shrugged.


    Rui couldn''t help but appreciate Kane a lot at this moment. He could have chosen to me Rui for everything, and he had the right to since Rui was responsible for the catastrophe, even if he had been scrupulously careful and insightful about the way he went about the safety and security measures. The fact that they went nearly a year being effectively the most wanted Martial Squires anywhere in that little of the Panama Continent, and nobody had any inkling of who they were despite them being under everyone''s nose was an absolutely unbelievable feat.


    Kane knew that if he had let any other Martial Squire take Rui''s ce, including himself, they would have been caught and killed in the very first week of the Shionel Confederation. It was only through Rui''s extraordinary insight andpetence that they were able to survive an entire year under the scrutiny of countless powerful forces.


    However, in the end, it turned out that not even he could avoid making a mistake, or a sub-optimal decision.


    "Still, that doesn''t mean I''d rather die than not if we have a choice," Kane turned towards him with a look of determination.


    Rui nodded. "Don''t worry, I''ll get us out of this mess, I promise."


    "So, what''s the n?" Kane asked with an expectant look towards Rui. Knowing him, he had probably already thought of a dozen ns and had begun filtering them by how optimal they were, and their probability of sess.<novelsnext>I think you should take a look at </novelsnext>


    He wasn''t wrong.


    "Before I answer that," Rui paused, turning towards Kane with a solemn expression. "Kane, are you willing to cut all ties with everyone that you have ever known in order to get out of this?"


    Kane''s eyes widened at that question, it meant that Rui was seriously considering the ramifications of the n that he was considering, and they didn''t seem small.


    Much to Rui''s surprise, Kane did not immediately agree.


    Then he felt bad for expecting Kane to immediately agree, it made him feel entitled. But given how suffocating Kane felt in the Kandrian Empire, he was surprised Kane did not jump at the question.


    He made an uneasy expression. "Almost everybody¡­ Out friends¡­ Fae¡­"


    Rui raised an eyebrow. He realized that perhaps he did not possess the full picture of Kane''s rtionship with some of their mutual friends, especially Fae.


    He almost couldn''t believe that the two had gotten close, given how much they used to bicker back when they were kids in the Academy. It turned out he didn''t understand how they hade to feel about each other.


    Although, he did recall Fae telling him about spending time with Kane when he spoke to her after she became a Martial Squire.


    "It''s fine if you want to stay with her¡­ You can," Rui wisely did not opt for poking fun to some attempt to lighten the situation. "I want to make sure I''m not pressuring you into anything."


    Kane turned towards Rui. "Are you willing to cut away everything?"


    He knew that he was trying to have his cake and eat it, but he wanted to make sure that he understood everything that Rui had in mind before he made a decision about anything. Depending on how it went, maybe there was still a way to maintain correspondence with everything that was going on.


    He wasn''t too hopeful of that, however. Considering that Rui had even chosen to ask him such a serious question meant that the situation was quite bad and the most effective solutions to the crisis required such extreme sacrifices. He didn''t think he would be able to find a way to avoid it if Rui couldn''t.


    "Yes," Rui said with unyielding determination.


    Kane''s eyes widened at his unhesitating answer. He knew that everything Rui loved and cared about it was in the Kandrian Empire, thus he knew how painful that choice must have been.


    "It hurts, but it''s my fault, so I need to suck it up. Better I suffer than the people I care about, that is why I''m willing to make this choice," Rui steeled his expression. "Now what about you, Kane? I''ll respect your choice either way, and I''ll help you avoid this crisis. But we don''t have any time whatsoever."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 957 Commission

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    Listening to the sacrifices that Rui was willing to make to ensure the consequences of his mistakes didn''t hurt the people he cared about made Kane feel a little immature.


    "Alright, I''m in," Kane told him, ironing his resolve. "What''s your n?"


    "We need to get in contact with Commissioner Reze immediately," Rui replied. "There''s no time to waste, I''ll tell you all about it on the way."


    Kane nodded.


    The two of them left the dungeon, using Void Step as they headed towards the little base that the Martial Union ran. Unfortunately, they couldn''t just waltz into the regional Martial Union branch office just like that. Rui knew that Chairman Deacon was probably watching every publically registered site connected to the Martial Union with a hawk, he had probably deployed many Martial Squires, perhaps even Martial Seniors on watch.


    The two of them hurried, eventually making their way to the location.


    "That''s¡­ a bold n," Kane murmured when Rui finished exining. "Are you really willing to do that to yourself? You will suffer. Your family is not exempt from the pain this n will inflict on them. Isn''t it better to just ept Commissioner Reze''s deal?"


    STEPN?velDrama.Org owns all ? content.


    They reached the ground as they reached their destination.


    "I¡­ cannot. My Martial Path, my way of life is too important to me," Rui squeezed out with a grim expression, as he clenched his fist hard, drawing blood with his nails. "This means everything to me."


    Kane could clearly see that the decision to go through with the n was painful for him.


    Rui stepped forward and he knocked on the door in a particr pattern. The door opened as a man ushered them in.


    "Squire Quarrier, Squire Kane," The manager of the little secret drop-off base. "Pleasee this way to make the drop."


    "We''re not here to deliver esoteric ore deposits. We need to get in touch with Commissioner Reze urgently," Rui exined.


    The manager nodded. "We can arrange for an appointment like always."


    "We need to speak with him right now," Rui urged him. "It''s of absolute vital important and extremely urgent."


    The man frowned. "I''m afraid that is not really appropriate."


    "I strongly insist!" Rui raised his voice a little, exerting a little pressure on the man. He disliked doing this on normal people who hadn''t done anything to deserve it, but he didn''t have time and he couldn''t afford to waste time.


    "L-Let me see what can be done," The man winced, raising his hands. "I shall inform Commissioner Reze of your urgent need to meet him. If he deems to ept it, he may choose to agree to remotely contact you at the moment."


    "Thank you,"<novelsnext>I think you should take a look at </novelsnext>


    Five minutester, the two of them sat before Commissioner Reze.


    "Squire Quarrier," Commissioner Reze addressed him. "I deemed your urgency as a justified reason to employ this highly secure, but costing and limited means ofmunication. What is the matter that you wanted to meet with me over that was so urgent?"


    "I wish to purchase covert protection from Senior-level threats for as long as it is possible to purchase with six billion Shionel gold coins," Rui exined. "I''ll pay the full price for it right here and now, and I want the highest level of official guarantee that the Martial Union can provide that the contract will be honored even in the case of my death."


    Commissioner Reze''s eyes narrowed his eyes at those words. "Squire Quarrier, what exactly has happened?"


    "Before I exin everything," Rui told him. "I need this transaction to ur as soon as possible. I''m willing to pay whatever fees needed to speed up the process and ensure that ites into effect immediately."


    The man stared deeply at Rui for a few seconds before nodding. "Alright, the Martial Union epts yourmission. Fill out the form, and I will ensure that it is instantly put into effect, but it will cost you dearly since the fee is measured as a solid proportion of the total cost, so in this case, billions. Billions in order to obtain maximum expedition Are you willing to pay that price?"


    "Yes," Rui nodded.


    "Alright then," He nodded. "You will have to fill out the form though, nothing can be done before that."


    Rui nodded, and soon enough he was given a form which he promptly filled out as fast as he could. Thankfully things weren''t all thatplicated, thus it was rtively easy. He did not want to waste even a single minute. The more time passed, the greater the probability that his family would incur a catastrophe. He did not want to destroy their lives because he was too slow!


    "Done!" He dered, wiping a bead of sweat from his forehead. "And I have the cheque here."


    Commissioner Reze nodded. "Alright, have it scanned, and once it''s sent to me, I will immediately expedite the process and deploy Martial Artists needed to protect your family to the degree that you have purchased."


    "How long will the protectionst with the sum that I have purchased with six billion Shionel gold coinsst?" Rui asked.


    "No more than ten years," Commissioner Reze stroked his chin.


    Rui cocked his head back, surprised. "It''s six billion gold coins!"


    Six billion gold coins were a million times above what he had earned from basic Squire-level missions, even if Senior-level missions were one thousand times more expensive than Squire-level missions, it was still enough tomission thousands of Senior-level missions!


    "Covert protection is vastly more expensive than standard protection," Commissioner Reze exined. "Open protection also borrows the implicit protection of the Martial Union. Covert protection does not."


    Rui immediately understood what Commissioner Reze meant. Open protection from the Martial Union deterred a lot of people from even thinking of attacking the target. But covert protection did not have that, and thus could not deter anybody ahead of time. It also required more protection because the protection needed to happen without the target''s awareness.


    Still, Rui was willing to endure the cost if it meant that their daily lives would not be disrupted.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 958 Intention

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    "Fine," Rui sighed. "I ept the deal."


    He didn''t have much leverage beyond that. Regardless, he knew that six billion Shionel gold coins were not trivial, even for the Martial Union. The resulting protection wouldn''t be trivial, either. He did not think that anybody would be willing to go as far as to surpass the limits of the protection that he had bought for his family.


    After all, one would need to go as far as deploying Martial Masters to ovee the protection that Rui had purchased for ten years. He knew for a fact that nobody was going to do that.


    Even arger country with a poption of more than a hundred million people like the Kandrian Empire had less than a hundred Martial Masters. They were nothing short of strategic national war assets and would not be deployed unless the circumstances truly demanded them with genuinely important stakes.


    In fact, in truth, even Senior-level protection was generally overkill. Each Martial Senior was a precious tactical weapon and would not be deployed so easily. If anybody did want to harm his family, Martial Apprentices, and Martial Squires would be the limit that any force would be willing to dedicate to the matter. It was absolutely insane to send mighty Martial Seniors who had limited time on missions as trivial as kidnapping a bunch ofmoners living in the middle of nowhere outside a town. It was a horrible allocation of Martial Artist resources.


    The only reason Rui had purchased Senior level protection was that he did not trust Chairman Deacon to be in a rational state of mind to realize that deploying Martial Seniors was insane. His hatred for Rui prior to recent events had already been quite high, but still within rational limits. However, he assumed that Deacon had learned that he had killed his son, and thus could imagine the sheer venomous intensity with which he hated Rui.


    Perhaps he would be willing to go as far as deploying Martial Seniors to capture or at least kill his family. It was purely due to that that he was willing to go as far as to purchase Senior-level protection for his family.


    With the protection of a Martial Senior, not even a meteorite heading straight down toward them had any chance of harming them! This was an extraordinarily extravagant measure that most people could not dream of having.


    And Rui was fine with the Quarrier Orphanage never knowing about it. The worst thing he could do on top of subjecting them to risk of harm due to his ipetence was letting them know the extent of it. Not only would it thoroughly disrupt their lives, it would needlessly cause them immense emotional distress when there truly was nothing he could do about it.


    "I''ve just deployed a team of high-grade defensive sensory Martial Squires led by a defensive Martial Senior," Senior Reze exined once Rui had handed over the statement. "They have already arrived at the Quarrier Orphanage and have set up a covert defensive perimeter. All targets of protection are confirmed to be safe and unharmed."


    Rui heaved a deep sigh of relief as he felt a burden lift off his shoulders, before turning back to Commissioner Reze. "And this contract will remain active even if I die, correct?"


    "Correct, you have purchased the highest level of assurance that the Martial Union can offer in that regard," Commissioner Reze nodded. "Now then, are you willing to inform me what this is all about."<novelsnext>I think you should take a look at </novelsnext>


    "I''m sure you''ve already guessed,missioner," Rui sighed. "Chairman Deacon has learned of my identity."


    Commissioner Reze''s demeanor grew more serious. "And how did youe about to learn that?"


    "That''s not important," Rui shook his head.


    Commissioner Reze considered his words before falling into deep thought. "Squire Quarrier, I strongly urge you to ept our offer."


    Rui immediately shook his head. He was more certain of his decision to refuse the offer of protection in exchange for subordination, than ever. He truly did not want to live that way and was willing to go through great deals and make great personal sacrifices rather than be willing to live in that manner.


    Commissioner Reze heaved a sigh at Rui''s stubbornness, although he wasn''t entirely surprised. Rui had already expressed refusal before, and as a Martial Artist, he could be expected to be stubborn.


    "What do you intend to do, then?" Commissioner Reze asked. "At the very least, you must return to the Kandrian Empire at once. Once you are within the Kandrian Empire, it bes considerably more difficult for Chairman Deacon to do anything to you not just because of the physical separation but also because he is far from his domain of power. Just the presence of the Martial Union within the Kandrian Empire where we are at our most powerful will make him considerably more reserved and passive. We can arrange for amodations to smuggle you out of the country and take you to the Kandrian Empire."Content is property of N?velDrama.Org.


    "That won''t work," Rui shook his head. "Now that Chairman Deacon has figured out my identity, he''ll know the Martial Union was in on it considering that the Martial Union and the Kandrian Empire withdrew its Martial Squires from the battle of the Root floor. He''ll be watching the Martial Union like a hawk. You won''t be able to sneak me out from within the Shionel Confederation where he possesses considerable power."


    Commissioner Reze considered his words, nodding. "That''s quite keen of you, then what do you intend on doing?"


    "The Martial Union does not need to intervene," Rui shook his head. "I have made my own arrangements, all I need from the Martial Union is a guarantee that it will abide by themission even in the event that I die. I need that in writing."


    "As I have assured your previously, the Martial Union is not in the habit of failing to deliver inmissions. We cannot afford to be. Everymission ever undertaken in history has been fulfilled by us, and I can assure you with the highest level of guarantee that the Martial Union will abide by the contract regardless of your status. I bid you good luck. Do not hesitate to rely on the Martial Union for any matter, for we are an organization that exists for Martial Artists like yourselves."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 959 Targets

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    Rui discussed a few more matters before wrapping up the discussion and leaving. He didn''t have time to chitchat with Commissioner Reze about irrelevant matters. He knew that there were some things that he needed to do before he could fulfill his n.


    However, once they were done, he could immediately set out.


    Meanwhile, Chairman Deacon had not been sitting still either.


    With arge proportion of Deacon Industries'' intelligence department furiously scouring the entirety of the Shionel Confederation for Rui Quarrier, they had managed to cover arge amount of ground in a very short amount of time.


    On top of that, there were a lot of retroactive analyses conducted on existing data on the Voider when re-analyzed in context with Rui Quarrier being the prime candidate. It was difficult to find absolute and incontrovertible proof that Rui Quarrier was the Voider if he really was the Voider, however, if he wasn''t the Voider, then it would be a lot easier to prove that he wasn''t.


    It seemed counter-intuitive, however, someone who was the Voider would certainly hide evidence indicating that they were the Voider. Someone who wasn''t the Voider would not hide evidence that they were not the Voider.


    This key difference meant that the evidence for thetter was easier to find than evidence for the former, especially when the former was clearly good at leaving behind no evidence.


    Thus, if Rui Quarrier was not the Voider, chances were that there would be something or the other that strongly and reliably indicated that they were not the Voider.


    Deep down in his heart, Chairman Deacon knew that Rui was the Voider, but he still had retained enough rationality to trust his intelligence department''s verdict regardless.


    "However, we have found absolutely no indication that Rui Quarrier and Voider may not be the same person," The deputy director of the intelligence department of Deacon Industries informed Chairman Deacon. "This is rather odd since we have been able to disqualify almost all other B-rank Martial Squires from being candidates for the Voider even when we disregard the fact that they are too weak to be the Voider given how strong the Voider likely is. However, it truly is odd that we have been unable to confirm Rui Quarrier and Kane Arrancar''s presence outside the Shionel Dungeon during times when we know for a fact that the Voider was inside the dungeon."


    Chairman Deacon''s eyes narrowed. "That''s rather odd if they had no connection."<novelsnext>I think you should take a look at </novelsnext>


    "Yes sir. In fact, in the nine months that Rui Quarrier has been in the Shionel Dungeon, not once have we been able to confirm that he was anywhere outside the dungeon during times when we are certain the Voider was within the dungeon. Furthermore, the earliest confirmed Voider raid of the Shionel Dungeon urred just a few days after Rui Quarrier and Kane Arrancar entered the Shionel Confederation."All content is property ? N?velDrama.Org.


    "Hm," Chairman Deacon grew more certain of what he already knew. "Any other suspicious patterns?"


    "Yes sir, the number of hours that Rui Quarrier and Kane Arrancar have spent in the dungeon in nine months is lower than ny-nine-point-eight percent of all Martial Squires in the Shionel Confederation," the deputy director mentioned. "Now there isn''t inherently anything suspicious about spending only a few hours on average every day in the Shionel Dungeon, there can be corroborating circumstances with that, but the question does arise of what they do in the remaining part of the day. ording to the innkeepers of the inn that they have resided in, they''re gone for almost all of the day, most days."


    "And on top of that, they mysteriously did not return to the inn after the Voider left the final floor of the Shionel Dungeon, despite not having entered the dungeon ording to the logs," Chairman Deacon narrowed his eyes. "It''s been a few days since then, and they still haven''t returned. Furthermore, theirst log is that of them exiting the dungeon, thus there is no way they died in the Shionel Dungeon."


    The intelligence deputy director nodded in agreement. "True, sir. All these little unlikely coincidences that we have noticed in hindsight trulye together to paint the picture that you''re certain about. However, this isn''t absolute proof."


    "The only reason I insisted on a grounds-up analysis on the prospects of Rui Quarrier being the core behind the Voider was to see if I was tantly wrong, but everything I hear and see simply further confirms what I have alreadye to know," Chairman Deacon growled. "Given that Rui Quarrier has not been sighted since before the clearing of the Root Floor, and has seemingly mysteriously vanished, it would be exined if he was aware that he has somehow be exposed to us. In that case, searching for him may very well be futile if he has already left the Shionel Confederation. It will be exceedingly difficult to investigate his whereabouts, especially considering he has some form of stealth."


    The intelligence deputy director nodded. "I am inclined to agree, sir. Manual investigation given how little information we have is impractical. This is especially true considering the Voider has connections with Guildmaster Bradt Patrick, which means they do have an ally capable of evading our surveince."


    "In that case, we can focus on other methods," Chairman Deacon noted. "The background check revealed that he lives in an orphanage that he was born and brought up in, have our Kandrian office branch in the Kandrian Empire deploy our regional Martial Apprentices to abduct them covertly. Leave behind a covert message of sorts that he should understand. He''ll definitely realize what is happening, and given that the report indicates that he cares for them, he''ll be forced to bargain for them. I''ll make him suffer through them."


    Chairman Deacon found it to be a pity that Rui didn''t have a son, he would have been able to inflict the same that he had been subjected to by Rui.


    "Ah well," He growled. "A mother will have to do. I''m going to have his eyes pried open with force so he doesn''t miss the things that I do to her in front of him."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 960 Sightings

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    It wasn''t half a dayter that the report on the oue of the operation had already beenpiled and delivered to Chairman Deacon.


    "The Martial Apprentices got annihted before they could even reach the target?" The man frowned, narrowing his eyes. "Does the Orphanage have Martial Artists in it asides from Rui Quarrier?"


    "Our sources say there are two Martial Apprentices from the Orphanage who are currently part of the Hajin Martial Academy. There are no Martial Artists residing in the Quarrier Orphanage at this moment. The bodies of the Martial Apprentices were never found, it appears they were swiftly and covertly taken down. This points to at the very least a highly elite Apprentice-level covert guard detail, possibly a Squire-level detail," The intelligence director indicated. "Someone wants them protected."


    "It''s him," Chairman Deacon felt an immense surge of vindication.


    Now he wanted to abduct the entire family even more.


    "Send in half of all our Martial Squires at once, Also, send Martial Squires to the Kandrian Empire to reinforce our base." The man ordered with a furious expression. "There is no way that they can cope with that. Hurry it up, the more time we waste, the greater the probability that we won''t catch him."


    "Yes sir," the intelligence deputy director nodded. "Rest assured I do believe that even if it is a Squire-level detail, it is highly unlikely to be able to protect the Orphanage from the Martial Squires that we have at our base. I am quite confident in this assessment of mine."


    "Good," Chairman Deacon nodded. "Make sure you don''t fail."


    "Yes sir,"


    Chairman Deacon wasn''t happy when the operation failed another half dayter.


    "What''s going on?" Chairman Deacon growled. "How can every single Martial Squire disappear without a trace? There were high-grade defensive Martial Squires deployed among the ones that were sent to abduct the Orphanage. How can they disappear without any trace of a battle?!"


    The deputy director grimaced at his boss'' anger. "The level of protection the Orphanage has has exceeded my expectations. Frankly, for this level of covert protection, the protective detail must have either a plethora of grade-ten Martial Squires or¡­"


    "¡­Or a Martial Senior," Chairman Deacon gritted his teeth.


    He clenched his fist as they quivered with anger.


    BANG!


    "DAMN IT!"


    The deputy director was startled as Chairman Deacon mmed the table in a moment of rage.


    "Only someone who knows that his family is being targeted by someone with many Martial Squires would dare to go as far as giving his family this level of protection," Chairman Deacon gritted his teeth. "Deploying Martial Seniors¡­"<novelsnext>I think you should take a look at </novelsnext>


    He considered the prospect of doing that, but as angry and hateful as he was, he couldn''t easily choose to go with such a drastic decision. No entity could deploy Martial Seniors to other nations without incurring significant consequences. Martial Seniors were like tactical nuclear weapons.


    Sending Martial Seniors to another nation to inflict damage against that nation''s interests, such as killing a guard detail and kidnapping civilians was no different from one nation firing a nuclear weapon at another country.


    It was nothing short of a deration of war that couldn''t be hidden.


    As angry, hateful, and vengeful as Chairman Deacon was, he simply could not do something that would certainly be interpreted as a deration of war by the Martial Union, and the Kandrian Empire as a whole.Content is property of N?velDrama.Org.


    The Shionel Confederation was a baseline Sage-level nation, however, it stood no chance against a powerhouse like the Kandrian Empire. Chairman Deacon didn''t dare go too far. Martial Squires were one thing, they were small enough for it to be swept under the rug. But a Martial Senior was not something he could send.


    On top of that, he couldn''t afford the loss of a Martial Senior if the Martial Senior did end up falling in battle. Deacon Industries had suffered a huge blow recently, and although it was still much better off than before, he did not want to take any unnecessary risks that didn''t yield any material benefits.


    In fact, his vendetta was the only reason that the was pursuing this matter this much. But even that had limits.


    "Sir!"


    Chairman Deacon frowned as his secretary barged in, interrupting their meeting.


    "What is it?"


    "Sir, a ck-haired and a green-haired individual in full-body attire were briefly spotted in the western port!" His secretary immediately reported. "The eye-witness testimony of the individuals matches their description."


    Chairman Deacon''s eyes narrowed as his eyes bristled with anger. "Western port? That faces the Kandrian Empire and they would directly be on track to return home. Find out what wing they were in as soon as their identity verification is logged into the database! Send Martial Squires, no, our Martial Seniors to scan the entire transit port looking for them! I want confirmation on their identities as well!"


    He was not necessarily convinced that those were Rui and Kane, after all, ck hair was unusual, but could easily be faked.


    Chairman Deacon had no intention of letting them go if they really were who they were, fortunately, it appeared that they weren''t aware of exactly how acute their crisis was. Why else would they choose to leave the Shionel Confederation officially and openly?


    Chairman Deacon was rtively certain that, as long as they really were Rui and Kane, they would definitely be caught.


    "Send word to the border patrol agency," Chairman Deacon ordered. "Order them to engage in maximum surveince of the western transit port with the authority vested in me as a member of the Shionel Merchant Cab. Mobilize our personnel and swarm every wing of the transit port, I want teams of Martial Artists grid searching the entire facility. Send word to the transit security team to be on the lookout for those two. In the worst-case scenario, order a full lockdown of the entire western transit port. Those two are not leaving the Shionel Confederation alive!"


    He rattled off orders to his subordinates as he grew increasingly determined to capture Rui and Kane, in the worst-case scenario, he would ensure that at the very least they would die. What he could now allow was for them to get away alive, retreating to the Kandrian Empire.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 961 Impedance

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    In the western port, the many travelers entering and exiting the nation grew surprised as swarms of Martial Artists entered the various wings of the transit port facility, scouring the various travelers. They even began questioning the various travelers, trying to get some eyewitness testimony for where Rui and Kane might have gone in the vast facility.


    None of the travelers had any idea that this was an active manhunt for the infamous Voider!


    Back in the main branch office of Deacon Industries, things weren''t going so well.


    "Sir, the Border Patrol Agency has informed us that they cannot abide by your instructions."


    "We have received a simr response from the transit security team."


    "Transit port management team has also issued their refusal to yourmands."


    "What?!" Chairman Deacon gritted his teeth.


    "They have informed us that yourmands have been overruled," His secretary informed him.


    "On whose authority?!"


    "Guildmaster Bradt, sir," His secretary replied with a grim expression.


    "DAMN IT!" He banged his table hard. "I''M GOING TO KILL HIM!"


    It meant that Guildmaster Bradt was aware of what was going on and was protecting the Voider.


    This lent that much more credence to those two being the real Rui and Kane.


    "It''s fine, we still have our Martial Artists," Chairman Deacon growled. "Have them search for those two manually. Find them at all costs!"


    "Sir," The deputy director interjected. "I''ve just received a report that their identities were registered at the check-out counter. They''ve officially exited the nation!"


    "Don''t let them get away. Have our men scan every carriage that leaves the Shionel Confederation!"


    There were arrays of carriages that left the Shionel Confederation, many of them weremercial transport vehicles, while others carried goods and services traveling to other nations. Their targets could have either chosen to leave on foot as Martial Artists often did. Or they could take amercial transport vehicle.


    Chairman Deacon had enough power to stop and search ordinarymercial transport carriages, and he was fully prepared to do just that.


    In the meantime, Chairman Deacon couldn''t help but grow concerned about the fact that Rui and Kane had shown themselves at all. He knew for a fact that the two of them possessed remarkable stealth, the fact that they showed up at all was a bit suspicious. There were two possibilities, if they truly were not aware that he knew their identities, then he could understand their choices being more logical.


    However, if they were aware that he knew their true identities, then this was either a blunder, a diversion, or a trap of some sort.


    However, what he didn''t understand was why they would need to bother with traps or diversions if they knew that he knew of their identities. Why not just leave the country covertly using their stealth prowess among other things?


    He wasn''t sure. That''s why he was growing more and more convinced of the possibility that the two of them were not entirely aware of the deep shit that they were in. They must have tried to leave the Shionel Confederation peacefully, unaware that he knew who they were. And if not for Guildmaster Bradt''s timely intervention, they would have already been in his hands by now.<novelsnext>I think you should take a look at </novelsnext>N?velDrama.Org owns all ? content.


    "Sir¡­" His director drew his attention with a stunned expression.


    "What is it?" Chairman Deacon growled, narrowing his eyes.


    "Our Martial Artists arrived at the carriage bay, but¡­"


    "But what?!" Chairman Deacon snarled.


    "Almost all of the carriages present in the bay are of the Bradt Distribution Service!"


    "DAMN!" He cursed.


    The Bradt Distribution Service was one of the fewpanies that he couldn''t bully. However, considering that they hadn''t spotted Rui and Kane simply running or sky-walking away, it meant that Rui and Kane were likely upying one of the carriages that belonged to the Bradt Distribution Service.


    "How many carriages are there?" Chairman Deacon gritted his teeth.


    "Many thousands, sir," The deputy director grimaced. "And the worst part of it all is that they''re all heading towards the Kandrian Empire ording to our sources in the transit log department."


    "Have all our Martial Squires scan the carriages looking for two individuals," Chairman Deacon refused to give up.


    "Sir, it appears that¡­" The deputy director took a moment to gather his courage. "That all of the carriages are reinforced with anti-espionage esoteric technology. Our Martial Squires report being only able to sense hazes within."


    Chairman Deacon felt like he was losing his mind. Such a simple and easy task of apprehending Martial Squires at the transit port had grown moreplicated at first because Guildmaster Bradt overruled his authority and influence. Then the man actively sabotaged his investigation with preparations that made it difficult for his Martial Artists to conduct their investigation and mission.


    He couldn''t just bust down those carriages when they belonged to Guildmaster Bradt. The man was far too powerful at the moment, arguably more powerful than he had ever been. Having just entered a new guildmaster cycle, he could not afford to give Guildmaster Bradt any excuse to pick an open fight with Chairman Deacon.


    "What do we do sir¡­?" The deputy director asked Chairman Deacon.


    "Deploy Senior Verman on a covert mission," Chairman Deacon announced.


    "And¡­ what exactly will be the objective of this mission?"


    "The annihtion of all of the carriages of Bradt Distribution Services," Chairman Deacon replied with a determined expression.


    "Sir," His intelligence deputy director''s eyes widened. "That''s¡­ treason. If you''re caught, it will be the end."


    "I am aware of the risks," Chairman Deacon replied with a cold tone. "Equip him with the state-of-the-art anti-sensory technology on his person so that his identity cannot be traced. Of course, Guildmaster Bradt will know who it is, but if he doesn''t have proof, then it doesn''t mean anything."


    "Understood, sir."


    Chairman Deacon had made up his mind to not let Rui go even if it meant crossing a line and acting against the nation. He couldn''t do anything to Rui at the port where any attempt to destroy all the carriages would not only not be hidden from the country, but the border patrol force would intervene tobat his Martial Senior.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 962 Clash

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    Thousands of carriages took off, leaving the Shionel Confederation behind as they traveled forth toward the Kandrian Empire. They stuck to pre-established paths, picking up on speed as they elerated further and further.


    They traveled much faster than any domestic carriage that frequented the roads of nations and were pulled by powerful domesticated Apprentice-level creatures, powered by esoteric engines, or abination of both.


    How else could rtively quick travel ur between nations that were separated by gigantic distances?


    The carriages would reach the Kandrian Empire in just a matter of days.


    That was also why Chairman Deacon was a lot more confident with the execution of destroying all the carriages en route due to how far away the carriages would be from the Shionel Confederation. All content is property ? N?velDrama.Org.


    Soon enough, the day had arrived.


    A veiled figure stood high in the sky as he observed the convoy of carriages speeding through the international carriage paths.


    One moment he was standing still, the next moment, he dove down toward the convoy of carriages balling his fists as he tensed his body.


    Every sentient lifeform in the region quivered at that moment. The very seemed to begin boiling as the sky seemingly darkened.


    The surrounding world had changed.


    The animals pulling the carriages stopped in their paths as they froze in primal terror. Almost every single sapient being felt was paralyzed in fear and despair.


    Almost.


    Just before he reached them, ready tounch his attack, a second aura enveloped the entire convoy, soothing their addled hearts within the span of a microsecond. A woman leaped out of one of the carriages of the convoy as her body lit up with glowing red lines streaking across her body, she dashed upwards, racing to sh against the plummeting veiled figure.


    BOOM!!!!


    A devastatingly titanic shockwave emerged from their collision!


    In an instant, the st wave expanded ten kilometers, threatening to annihte everything in that radius!


    Yet, that was not to be.


    She narrowed her eyes as she deftly manipted the very sky with her Senior-level breathing technique!


    The shockwave simply disappeared before it could touch the carriages that she had been tasked with protecting.


    The veiled Martial Senior widened his eyes in shock. He recognized her, she was one of the Martial Seniors that was employed by the Bradt Distribution Services.<novelsnext>I think you should take a look at </novelsnext>


    Patroning a Martial Senior was far more expensive than doing the same for a Martial Squire, only the Cab Merchants possessed the ability to patron them, and only the richest cab merchants could afford to deploy them on such trivial operations, seemingly.


    He hadn''t expected there to be a Martial Senior protecting the convoy. This was not what Chairman Deacon had informed him.


    (''The intelligence may be wrong but¡­'') His eyes narrowed as he grew serious, radiating a skyrocketing sense of peril. (''That isn''t enough to stop me.'')


    What happened next caught him off-guard.


    A second Martial Senior appeared out of nowhere.


    BOOM!!!


    A thundering bolt of lightning crashed into his shoulder, instantly knocking him more than a dozen kilometers away! The sheer speed at which the impact blew him away ignited the very air.


    Yet he couldn''t feel the pain from being electrocuted as he was overwhelmed with bewilderment.


    He recognized both of them.


    The burly woman who gave one the impression of an unshakeable mountain was one of the most powerful defensive Martial Seniors of the Shionel Confederation. Her Martial Art, the Landborn Armor Style was a Martial Art that employed the power of muscle defensively at the point of collision to withstand impacts.


    The man who had struck him just a moment ago was a powerful close-range striking-oriented whose Thundering Lance style harnessed the power of lightning in its attacks!


    Both of them were part of the Bradt Distribution Service. They were both quite prominent in the Shionel Confederation, which was precisely why he was so surprised by their surprise appearance.


    (''The Thundering Sovereign and the Earthen Empress were both deployed to protect a measly Martial Squire?!'') He couldn''t believe what he was seeing.


    As a Martial Senior, he had never been bought into the hype of the Voider. No matter how strong, smart, or incredible a Martial Squire is, at the end of the day, they were still a Martial Squire. The Voider''s disproportionate value and importance were tied to the Shionel Dungeon because it only tolerated Martial Squires. That was the only reason that he momentarily gained more infamy and value than even Martial Seniors, now that the whole debacle surrounding the Shionel Dungeon hade to an end, and the Voider was fleeing, he was no different from any other Martial Squire weakling.


    That was why he couldn''t fathom the idea of protecting two Martial Squires, no matter how promising, with two Martial Seniors. The cost-benefit analysis didn''t make any sense at the moment, the Voider should have lost all value, or so he thought.


    He quickly put aside such thoughts as his mind returned to the battle considering the prospects of the fight momentarily. Fighting a close-range defensive Martial Squire and a close-range offensive Martial Artist as a close-range maneuvering-oriented Martial Artist was definitely not something that he should consider doing rashly.


    Frankly, it appeared that neither of them intended to actively pursue him. They stood their ground as they waited for him to make his choice. Each of them was aware of what they had to do, and what the other was considering doing.


    (''Retreat it is,'') He shrugged inwardly, sky-walking away at tremendous speeds. The intelligence that he had been briefed with on the mission was fundamentally wrong and egregiously wrong. The difference between standard protection, and being protected by two Martial Seniors was incrediblyrge, and he was well within his right to avoid fulfilling the mission.


    Ten minutester, he had already returned back to the Shionel Confederation at lightning speeds, covertly entering the nation through the channels maintained by Chairman Deacon, before heading back to the main branch office of Deacon Industries to report to Chairman Deacon.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 963 Diverging Path

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    "WHAT?!"


    Chairman Deacon''s angry voice reverberated through the main branch office. If Senior Verman didn''t know better, he would have thought the man was using a breathing technique.


    "TWO MARTIAL SENIORS?!" Chairman Deacon roared with shocked rage. "TWO? TWO!!"


    "Correct," Senior Verman simply replied.


    "That¡­" The deputy director of the intelligence department couldn''t help but be shocked. "That definitely proves that sightings we made were the real deal. Guildmaster Bradt would not deploy two Martial Seniors as a prank, those two really were Rui Quarrier and Kane Arrancar, most likely. The hypothesis that they made some deal with Guildmaster Bradt, likely using the colossal revenue made by Esosale Suppliers to purchase the highest level of protection that one could in order to get him safely back to the Kandrian Empire is the most likely possibility at the moment. However, within this theory, they seem to have most likely not realized that we knew of their true identities, otherwise, they would have never left so openly and through the official channels of departure. If not for Guildmaster Bradt''s timely interruptions, they would have been caught."


    "That fits all the avable information" Chairman Deacon murmured. "The presence of the convoy of carriages armed with anti-espionage technology, as well as two Martial Seniors for protection. That fits the cautious nature of the Voider that we have built, but theirck of knowledge on the exposure of their identity to us is likely why they let their guards down."


    The two of them grew increasingly, albeit tentatively, certain that the real Rui Quarrier and Kane Arrancar were on one of those carriages. It simply made too much sense.


    Chairman Deacon narrowed his eyes as he considered his options.


    Letting Rui go and live a peaceful life with the money made from the Shionel Dungeon was not an option. The very thought of that repulsed Chairman Deacon right down to his gonads. He would rather castrate himself than allow for such a thing to happen.


    However, aplishing it was not as straightforward as he expected.


    Normally, killing a Martial Squire was easy. With his power, it was no different from squatting a fly. However, Rui evidently possessed the power to move powers much greater than himself. Foiling elite Squire-level operatives, and obtaining the protection of two Martial Seniors was far beyond what he would be capable of with his own power.


    That was the annoying and troubling part with him. Content is property of N?velDrama.Org.


    "Order our Martial Artists and our agents to undertake surveince missions at the port of entry that the carriages will be entering, I want eyes everywhere. I want to detailed descriptions of everybody exiting the carriages. Deploy a Martial Senior to track the carriages and make sure that there isn''t any opportunity for Rui Quarrier and Kane Arrancar to split away from the convoy before they reach the Kandrian Empire. Make sure nothing goes wrong. Once they exit the carriages and enter the nation, I want the most scrupulously rigorous tracking of his every location every second."


    "Yes sir!"


    Chairman Deacon had already formted multiple short, medium, and long-term ns into aplishing his goal. It was quite likely that Rui Quarrier and Kane Arrancar had now be aware of the exposure of their identities, and the acute threat that he represented towards them.<novelsnext>I think you should take a look at </novelsnext>


    There were a number of possibilities that could unfold. Putting aside Kane Arrancar who belonged to a family that could easily withstand any attack that Chairman Deacon mounted on the, Rui Quarrier''s position was not quite as safe and secure. He had used his wealth to protect himself and his family.


    However, that would notst forever. Eventually, that protection would run out, and eventually, there woulde a day when he would lower his guard.


    (''I''ll be waiting for that moment,'') Chairman Deacon''s eyes zed with fury. (''You should have nevere to the Shionel Confederation. I will strangle the life out of you while I watch the light leave your eyes.'')


    He clenched his fist. (''If a Martial Senior is what it takes to kill you and your family, then I''ll do that as well, no matter what it takes. You will die at my hands. That is my oath.'')


    His expression softened as his eyes fell on a portrait of him and histe son.


    The very next moment, it hardened again, growing icier and chillier by the second. (''You''re dead!'')


    "¡­That''s probably what he''s thinking right now," Rui remarked as he stared at the ocean, standing beside Kane.


    The two of them had boarded a ship that was traveling across the Sojurim Ocean, one of the seven ind oceans of the Panama Continent.


    "So the whole point was to misdirect their attention?" Kane asked.


    Rui nodded. "Misdirect it towards me instead of my family, and where they think I am instead of where I actually am. If we simply disappeared into thin air, without leaving any inkling of my location, then he would have directed all his attention towards my family. And by having them focus on the Kandrian Empire, the one ce where definitely I won''t be, it opens up the rest of the world to us Kane."


    "It also puts us on a timer," Kane sighed. "This whole thing proved that he''s not letting go of his grudge against you. That protection willst ten years¡­ After that¡­"


    "After that, I must protect them on my own," Rui''s voice was soft yet firm. "After that, only with my own personal power will I be capable of protecting them. After that, If I''m not strong enough¡­ They simply die."


    Rui knew that he changed the course of his very life forever. Gone were the peaceful days at the Quarrier Orphanage where he could spend time with the people he loved. Gone were the days of innocently frolicking aroundpletingmissions from clientele. That was all gone forever. He highly doubted he would ever return to that in and boring lifestyle.


    "It appears that this is my diverging path," Rui pulled his hood down, revealing shining silver hair and eyes where there was once darkness.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 964 Negotiation

    "And what exactly do you have in mind, young man?" Guildmaster Bradt raised an eyebrow.


    Rui sighed from beneath his full-body suit. "I want to purchase your services and capital to help me get out of this mess."This material belongs to N?velDrama.Org.


    "I''m aware that you do not require my help to leave the nation, given the stealth prowess of your little friend," Guildmaster Bradt narrowed his eyes. "Thus, I suppose you wish to do more than just run away from the country."


    "That''s correct," Rui nodded. "His target is me, he may target my family, but at the end of the day, he only wants to get to me physically and psychologically. If I simply disappear, then he would rather spend greater resources on a target whose location he knows, like my family, than to waste resources on searching for someone who has disappeared without a trace."


    Guildmaster Bradt understood what Rui was worried about and intended. "You want him to focus his resources on you, and you only. In order for that to happen, he needs to be convinced of the merits of spending his resources chasing after you."


    "And that requires letting him believe he knows the country in which I am hiding from him," Rui continued. "If he doesn''t know that, then it won''t be worth focusing on catching me directly, he''ll turn towards trying to abduct my family to ckmail me to submit myself to him. That is an undesirable oue, thus I need him to believe with certainty that I am hiding in the Kandrian Empire."


    "This will also turn away his attention from where you actually will be since you evidently do not intend to actually return to the Kandrian Empire given that you want to fool him into believing it," Guildmaster Bradt stroked his beard. "A little rough around the edges, but a solid n. Still¡­"


    He turned toward Rui with a sharp gaze. "¡­What makes you think I''m on your side?"


    Rui narrowed his eyes. "As opposed to Chairman Deacon, your greatest enemy, and your biggest threat?"


    Guildmaster Bradt snorted. "Do not be conceited, boy. You are not my equal in this negotiation, not anymore. You can no longer enrich my business by giving me half your esoteric ore harvest since the Shionel Dungeon is nigh empty, you have already given me the full map of the Shionel Dungeon as well. Chairman Deacon may be my greatestpetitor, but I do not need to help you to suppress him. I have been doing that just fine by myself for nearly the past twenty years."


    Rui had to admit that he was right. Rui''s negotiation and bargaining power in this negotiation was far lower than it was when he first interacted with Guildmaster Bradt. Guildmaster Bradt, on the other hand, was more powerful than he had ever been in his entire life.


    "You seem to have forgotten the bargaining chip that you yourself handed to me five minutes ago," Rui raised the cheque statement that he had received from Guildmaster Bradt. "Seven-point-four billion Shionel gold coins is not a trivial amount."


    Shionel gold coins were a heavy currency internationally, and while they weren''t a world reserve currency within the local economy of the segment of the continent epassing the various nations that participated in the Shionel Dungeon raid, they were certainly valued far and wide. <novelsnext>I think you should take a look at </novelsnext>


    Guildmaster Bradt snorted. "Are you willing to bleed? Are you willing to watch a substantial chunk of that little cheque statement disappear in a heartbeat? The value of money reduces the more of it you have, it''s not enough to purchase my strategically valuable assets and services by itself."


    "It''s not just money I''m offering," Rui replied with a calm voice. "If you know my identity, then you know my potential. I''m asking you to invest in me in the form of your services, in exchange for a hefty sum of money, and a future Martial Senior for a friend, perhaps even a tentative ally."


    That earned a moment of silence from the guildmaster.


    "¡­That''s a bold assertion," Guildmaster Bradt narrowed his eyes. "You cannot guarantee that you will be a Martial Senior, nor will I take your word on your friendship."


    "You''ve surely studied any and all information you could get on me since you know my identity," Rui replied. "My potential should be self-evident. My rate of growth is nearly unprecedented as a Martial Artist, and my Martial Art is potent. Or did you think dominating the Shionel Dungeon despite thousands of high-grade Martial Squires is something that any Martial Squire can do?"


    "¡­"


    Guildmaster Bradt definitely had the upper hand in the negotiation, but not even he could dare deny the value that Rui represented as a potential ally, even if a distant one. The sheer feat that the young man had aplished was unprecedented in the Martialmunity and had sent ripples across more than just the Martialmunity in their segment of the continent.


    "As far as my word goes, I have a ster reputation of reliability and credibility. I cooperated with you even after your traitorous attempts to try and track me with your little tricks in your deliveries of the information I have purchased from you from time to time," Rui replied. "I have operated with good faith the entire time even in circumstances where it would have been easy for me to not do so. I am rtively certain you have the means to verify my sincerity, esoteric technology, and Martial Art techniques are capable of a lot. I am willing to be subject to any verification you want."


    Guildmaster Bradt didn''t even bother considering employing those means, he could tell Rui meant what he said with a single nce. Furthermore, lying when he knew that his lies could be proven was far too foolish a move for someone as insightful as Rui.


    "What do you want from me, young man?" Guildmaster Bradt asked, this time with a more inquisitive look in his eyes.


    Rui smiled. "I have a n that cannot be executed with your help."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 965 Destinations

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    "The ocean breeze is good," Rui sighed as he closed his eyes. "Quite soothing and rxing."


    Yet it wasn''t enough to soothe his emotions. Abandoning his family was one of the most painful things he had ever gone through. He would dly subject himself to the pain of the Squire evolution breakthrough another thousand times instead if he had the choice. But, he didn''t.


    He knew that he wasn''t truly abandoning them in spirit. He had gone to great lengths in order to ensure that they wouldn''t incur harm as a result of his failures. However, he knew that wasn''t what they would feel. He knew that in the years toe, they would wonder why Rui hadn''te back home.


    Just the thought of it made his soul ache.


    He couldn''t tell them the truth, that would be cruel. Informing them that the bigshot chairman of an international powerhouse of apany with Martial Seniors on retainer was doing everything in his power to harm them would shatter his family. He subsequently couldn''t exin the reason he left either, in addition to being afraid of Chairman Deaconing about that information and realizing that the entire chase of Rui and Kane he was on was an borate, and highly expensive sham.


    In the end, he asked the Martial Union to discreetly convey a simple message.


    ''I''m sorry.''


    Anything more, and the risks multiplied. His family would not understand the need for secrecy, nor could he trust their judgment in this matter, unfortunately, barring Julian. Given the number of immature kids in the Orphanage, it was not worth the risk.


    He opened his eyes, inhaling deeply.


    "So, where to again?" Kane asked, trying to dispel the gloomy mood that had beset Rui.


    "As far away from here as possible," Rui applied. "We''ll be traveling to the other side of the continent, to the other side of the world."


    Kane''s eyes widened as he realized what Rui meant. "The western end of the continent. We''re going to go to the very other side? That''s going to take forever!"


    "It''s not going to take a short amount of time, that''s for sure," Rui replied.Text ? 2024 N?velDrama.Org.


    "What are we gonna do once we get there?" Kane asked. "We''re going to need housing and food at a bare minimum. Are we going to have to undertake missions and stuff?"


    "Who knows?" Rui smiled wryly. "It''ll be a fun adventure, although I do have a few ces in mind."


    "Oh yeah?" Kane raised an eyebrow. "Like where?"


    "I have heard rumors of a ce in the western end of the continent that is said to be able to help Martial Apprentices and Martial Squires grow stronger. A sovereign territory said to belong to a powerful Martial Senior," Rui replied. "Unfortunately, I didn''t have time to do any research. I could have asked Guildmaster Bradt, but I didn''t want him to know what my intentions were."


    "Hm," Kane frowned. "A ce that helps lower Realm Martial Artists grow stronger? That sounds like a scam, honestly."<novelsnext>I think you should take a look at </novelsnext>


    "True. Still, I am a little optimistic. If it were a scam, I probably wouldn''t have ever heard of it. Martial Artists aren''t stupid, and they wouldn''t flock to such a ce, but who knows, maybe you''re right" Rui offered. "I''m considering visiting that ce at some point or another."


    "What''s it called?" Kane asked skeptically.


    "Ruohuan," Rui replied. "I don''t know anymore, unfortunately."


    "Ok, that''s one ce we could travel to," Kane shrugged. "What else?"


    "The Floating ind of Ajanta is also something I''ve considered visiting at some point," Rui told him. "Seems like a remarkable geological phenomenon, said to be mostly essible only to Martial Artists due to its extreme elevation. The higher concentration of Martial Artists definitely makes it a special ce."


    "That''s amon element in the previous location as well," Kane raised an eyebrow. "Is that what you''re going with?"


    Rui nodded. "We may be traveling, but that doesn''t mean we''re here to rx and have fun. I want to get much stronger in the next ten years, and that means we need to make the best use of the next ten years to grow stronger. That generally involves going to ces that are conducive to making Martial Artists stronger. One of the ways to find such ces across the continent is to simply observe where Martial Artists across the entirety of the continent go."


    "That makes sense. One such ce would have been the Shionel Dungeon," Kane noted.


    "That''s right. A ton of Martial Squires came from all over to partake in it since it was a good chance to challenge one''s self and hone one''s Martial Art," Rui replied.


    Rui did not intend to waste the next ten years. He was worried that simply traveling without actually pushing himself to grow stronger would lead to his strength stagnating. Exploring the tribtions of the continent was a great way to stimte yourself.


    "That reminds me," Kane remarked. "The Beast Domain is definitely one such ce, isn''t it?"


    "Yeah, there''s no doubt about that," Rui narrowed his eyes. "The difficulties of the Shionel Dungeon aremonce in the Beast Domain. It''s why Martial Artists often travel to the Beast Domain to forge themselves and grow stronger. It''s definitely on the list. However, I am keen on exploring Human Domain more before we enter the Beast Domain."


    "I am fine anyhow," Kane shrugged. "Just going far away from the Kandrian Empire is good enough for me."


    Rui hadn''t forgotten Kane''s desire to break free from his family. It appeared that he had effectively realized his objective, for now, at least.


    "What a strange turn of events," Rui remarked. "To think that you woulde to get what you want through such crazy circumstances."


    "Yeah, you''re damn right about that. It''s almost hard to believe myself," Kane concurred. "I wouldn''t have been able to achieve it myself. So, I do owe you a big thanks."


    Kane knew that he would have been caught by his family had he tried running away himself.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 966 Objectives

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    However, Rui changed the game. He had cooked a clever escape n that allowed them to get away tracelessly. What had been impractical before became quite achievable with his insights.


    "How strong do you need to be by the time the protection of the Martial Union runs out?" Kane asked out of the blue.


    "¡­I don''t think just being an ordinary Martial Senior is going to cut it, I''m afraid," Rui sighed. "He has more than one Martial Senior on retainer. I need to surpass the Martial Seniors assigned to protect my family. If he happens to get a Martial Master on retainer in the next ten years, then I''ll need to be even stronger."


    Rui had no illusions about the difficulty of his task. He was going to try and achieve the Senior Realm at what was most likely going to be among the youngest ages at which a Martial Squire has ever be a Martial Senior. But he did not intend on letting that stop him.


    He clenched his fist at the thought of how helpless he was when his identity was exposed. It showed him that his sess in the Shionel Dungeon was far from true power. They were targeted solutions that possessed an immense amount of affinity with the circumstances of the Shionel Dungeon. The moment he stepped outside of the Shionel Dungeon, he was just another ordinary high-grade Martial Squire. Granted, he could be far stronger if he had an immense amount of time for observation and preparation, but that was meaningless against opponents against whom he didn''t have such generous circumstances.


    And, in the real world, he didn''t have such luxuries. Most opponents weren''t like the Root, which would sit tight in ce, allowing Rui to observe them and gain data on their movements and allowing him to manipte them into fighting who he wanted, and choosing when their battle would begin.


    He needed to obtain the power he had against the Root in general, in all circumstances.


    (''I need far more than just that level of paltry power,) Rui recalled the one and only fight between Martial Seniors he had witnessed in his entire life. The sheer amount of power that the two Martial Seniors of the K''ulnen Tribe had disyed was shocking, yet the power that Senior Ceeran had disyed had truly shaken Rui. Up until that point, he hadn''t known how strong Martial Artists could get. His understanding of the limits of Martial Art was shallow and paltry.


    He yearned, from the bottom of his heart, to reach that level of power. If he was as strong as Senior Ceeran was, he would have much more confidence in his ability to protect his family. Senior Ceeran was definitely a high-grade Senior who could defeat most Martial Seniors.  <novelsnext>I think you should take a look at </novelsnext>


    In order to reach that level of power, he would not develop his Martial Art to an incredibly high degree. Thankfully, the Shionel Dungeon had given him a lot of inspiration for many things. The limitations that he had wereid bare against a creature like the Root, although the Void Forestep technique was powerful enough to mitigate the difference between them, it had too many drawbacks and requirements.


    What he needed was to strengthen Martial Art''s very foundation. He needed to develop powerful techniques with an immense amount of individuality and affinity with his own Martial body and Martial Art in all fields. At the moment, he had to admit that his Martial Art was probably leaning more towards long-range techniques than it was close-range. The Void Forestep technique was a supplementary technique that could be applied to all other techniques, although it tended to be more impact when paired with close-range techniques.


    He intended to bnce out the mild imbnces that existed in his Martial Art at the moment. He also intended to incorporate more fields into his Martial Art than just the fields that he possessed at the moment. There were plenty of fields of Martial Art that he did not possess a strong affinity with, but were still necessary if he wanted to build a Martial Art that was capable of adapting and evolving to anything.


    On top of that, he felt he was finally ready to upgrade the core of his Martial Art; the VOID algorithm. In the past few years, he had avoided touching the VOID algorithm himself because he didn''t feel like he was ready to embark on such an ambitious venture, but he felt that he had matured enough as a Martial Artist to take this step. It was time for him to take the first steps in truly adapting the VOID algorithm to the world that he had been reborn in twenty years ago.


    He wasn''t sure about exactly how he''d go about it. The VOID algorithm was aplicated system of protocols that were centered around advanced statistical techniques and methods and scrupulously detailed and rigorous empirical data collected on the best counters to all human movements.


    One thing he was aware of was the fact that he did not know what it took to be a Martial Senior, the breakthrough to the Senior Realm was aplete mystery to him. He had been informed of the traits necessary to fulfill some of the conditions necessary to be a Martial Senior, but the actual nature of the breakthrough was unknown to him.


    All he knew was that it was a spontaneous event, given that Senior Ceeran had once inadvertently let it slip that he had broken through in the middle of a battle, which was impossible if it was an artificial man-made breakthrough like the evolution breakthrough process to the Squire Realm.


    This was good news for him, it meant that he likely didn''t need to depend on the Martial Union or any other entity in order to break through to the Senior Realm. It would be incredibly inconvenient if he had to rely on external parties to provide him with the key necessary for bing stronger in the long run.


    asionally missing content, please report errors in time.N?velDrama.Org owns all ? content.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 967 Drive

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    With these objectives in mind, he realized that his motivations up until now had changed, and not just a little.


    Previously, he was driven solely by the desire to develop his Martial Art, traverse his Martial Path, and fulfill Project Water by creating a viablebat style that could adapt to and counter anything.


    He was what was known as a purist, someone who pursued Martial Art for the sake of Martial Art. N?velDrama.Org owns all ? content.


    Now, however, this wasn''t entirely the case. Although he still didn''t seem to lose any longing to realize his greatest ambition and dream, he was also motivated by the strength that came with Martial Art.


    This wasn''t particrly something he was dismayed about, it wasn''t as though purist Martial Artists were superior to Martial Artists who pursued Martial Art for reasons other than just for the sake of Martial Art.


    No.


    That was an elitist take that he didn''t believe in.


    At the end of the day, what mattered was the strength of one''s determination to pursue Martial Art, regardless of what the desire that served as the core of that determination was.


    (''In that regard, this might actually end up being a good thing,'') Rui realized. Having an additional desire to develop his Martial Art on top of his already strong desire to realize Project Water meant that this desire to develop his Martial Art was stronger at the end of the day.


    That meant he would be more motivated and determined, and thus would likely make more progress faster than if he had still been pursuing Martial Art for solely his original ambition.


    Regardless, he was notining.


    "Oh, looks like we''re arriving at our destination, the port town of Carmarl," Rui remarked as he saw the harbor in the distance. "Looks like we''ll have to make our decision soon enough. Where do you want to go of all the ces that I described?"


    Rui had spent some time telling Kane about the various ces that he had researched from data that he purchased from Guildmaster Bradt. The man''s whole business centered around connecting people and ces overrge distances. It was the very essence and core of his business model. He was truly the most apt person to purchase such information from.  Rui had gone with the intent of simply requesting to nce over the data once instead of actually purchasing it, but unfortunately, Guildmaster Bradt had seen right through the trick.


    "I have long deduced that you possess the ability to memorize data," He had snorted, unimpressed. "ncing at them will cost you the same price as purchasing them. And my maps are expensive."<novelsnext>I think you should take a look at </novelsnext>


    Rui had taken the L on that, but at least he had gotten what he came for. He had chosen to opt for purchasing data surrounding a greater number of ces rather than getting more details on a limited number of locations, the price of information rose exponentially the greater the detail, and he had already bled a lot to get Guildmaster Bradt to divert two Martial Seniors away from matters of national interest for a simple red herring.


    But, in the end, he hade to learn about Ruohuan, a ce for Martial Artists to grow stronger, as well as the floating Ajanta inds, a ce that only Martial Artists could seek.


    Mountain Drexeuelian whose base and foundation were said to be made out of a dense esoteric mist that supported the weight of the entire mountain. Martial Artists of the Lower Realms were said to temper their body by wading through the extraordinarily dense mist and bearing a portion of the weight of the mountain on their body. The deeper one went the more weight one bore.


    The Havas Field was said to be a special forest where Martial Artists trained in self-control. The forest was infested with a special species of flowers whose pollen acted as an aphrodisiac, drawing out lust and urge from within man, and driving them to uncontroble rampages where theymitted unspeakable acts. Women were said to avoid the forest, while men were strictly forbidden from setting foot anywhere within ten kilometers of the forest. The only exemption was for Martial Artists, who possessed far greater control over their mind and body and were much less likely to lose control.


    The Thundering Valley was said to be a ce uninhabitable to anybody but Martial Artists and Monsters. Billions of lightning bolts abused and scarred the valley every second, due to the rich presence of an esoteric that attracted lightning inbination with perpetually extremely stormy weather. The deeper one went towards the core of the valley, the likelier one was to get struck by lightning. It was said that Martial Artists used this ce to hone their speed and maneuvering, training themselves to be able to react to lightning bolts!


    The ce was so treacherous that not even Martial Apprentices were qualified to enter and cope, only Martial Squires and above could handle the Thundering Valley. It was said that even Martial Masters trained in the core of the valley, that was how challenging it was.


    Umiana Trench was a location in the ind ocean where they were currently traveling through that was said to be a trench in the ocean where the water never reached. The reason for this was rather unexpected and shocking.


    The reason the Umiana Trench was untouched by water despite being in the middle of the ocean was not because of some odd esoteric substance that kept the ocean away or anything of the sort.


    No.


    The cause of the trench was actually connected to a Martial Sage. ording to history, a vaunted Martial Sage traveled to the deepest part of the ocean in her pursuit of training.


    ording to lore, the sky roared, the Earth trembled, and the ocean died. Sage Sia created the Uminana Trench with pure force. Her sage-level technique at the deepest part of the ind ocean blew away the water surrounding her with unfathomable amounts of force that beggared the mind.


    In an instant, she had created a hole in the ocean with no water. A hole the size of a small country.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 968 Umiana

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    Her actions led to the loss of more than ten million lives. Smaller kingdoms on the coastline of the oceans ceased to exist as if they never were, while more powerful nations had shielded themselves from the wave with the help of powerful Martial Artists, and esoteric technology derived from esoteric sources that were nothing short of national treasures.


    She never ceased to practice her technique, keeping the hole open for nearly the next twenty years. The surrounding nations had already adapted to the elevated sea levels by the time her training phase had beenpleted. When she threatened to leave, the coastline nations realized that her leaving would leave the whole filled up once more, which could cause a disaster on par with the original disaster that she had caused.


    The coastline nations came together hours before her announced departure, and formed a treaty, known as the Umiana Treaty. Each of the coastal nations would not only deploy their Martial Artists to keep the hole that Sage Sia had created open but also create an open invitation for all Martial Artists to keep the hole open as a form of training in exchange for a training fee.


    That day, countless Martial Artists of several Realms from not just the coastal nations but even nations that were deeper ind were sent to the Umiana Trench to force back the water with their Martial Art techniques. Many Martial Artists from across the entire continent reveled in the opportunity to train in such a thrilling and novel manner that they flocked in great numbers to the Umiana Trench.


    In the end, the training service became so absurdly profitable that the coastal nations decided to indefinitely dy the process of slowly and gradually closing the hole. The demand for the training actually exceeded the supply of avable position ''slots''!


    It became one of the most popr training grounds for offensive and power supplementary techniques across the entirety of the Panama Continent!


    "I''ve definitely heard of the name, but I never knew about its backstory," Kane frowned. "What an absurd tale! Is that how fucking strong Martial Sages actually are?! That''s terrifying. Damn, maybe I should have been more careful when I escaped from my father. But I suppose it''s a testament to your ingenuity and my stealth that we managed to escape my father."


    Rui didn''t reply to that. He had had some suspicions about Kane''s situation, and those had only grown stronger as time passed, especially when he learned more about what the Martial Artists of higher Realms could do the more he was exposed to the world of Martial Art.


    If Sage Arrancar wanted truly wanted Kane to return under his family''s control, then he would never have been able to escape from him, ever. The Lightning Sect could be damned for all he cared, only another Martial Sage could stand in the way of Sage Arrancar, and it was clear that Kane had not earned the favor of the leader of the Lightning Sect.


    He wisely did not voice these thoughts aloud at the moment. Kane truly despised his family and his father, and it was best not to poke at those words with careless spection.


    Instead, he couldn''t help but heave a deep sigh of admiration for the Martial Artists that had managed to reach the Sage Realm. The simplest of courses of actions he went through from time to time like training, when done by them could affect countless lives and could rewrite maps.


    "You said the Umiana Trench was in this very ocean, right?" Kane nced at the surface of the ocean. "The sea levels are kinda shaky now that I look at it closer, but it is surprisingly stable."<novelsnext>I think you should take a look at </novelsnext>


    "Indeed," Rui nodded calmly. "But through Seismic Mapping, I can sense an unnaturally high level of seismic radiation being transmitted through the hull of the ship to our feet, when Ipare it to the seismic radiation I felt on the ship to Vilun Ind, which I assume is the norm or close to it."


    "I guess this is probably the closest location to us among the ones you learned about?" Kane asked. "In that case, might as well start there?"


    "That''s fine by me, we could make significant gains if we make the best use of this opportunity."


    "You betcha!" Kane grinned. "I can''t wait to see this hole."


    "Then the Umiana Trench it is," Rui smiled as the ship boarded the harbor. He couldn''t help but feel a wave of anticipation now that they had chosen their destination. The Panama Continent was inherently esotericpared to thendmasses of Earth, and farrger than all of thembined. That made for a variety of exotic and supernatural phenomena that Rui never thought possible.


    It made tourism across the Panama Continent a truly fascinating prospect. Although Rui had traveled outside of the Kandrian Empire many times for foreign and international missions, he had stepped into the international market that the Martial Union had managed to capture. He had never stepped into the more crazier and esoteric locations of the Panama Continent.


    (''When I get back, I''ll tell you all about the adventures that I had.'') Rui''s enthusiasm gained a tint of mncholy when he thought back to the members of the Quarrier Orphanage that he had left behind. (''I''ll tell you all about it, so do forgive me.'')


    VOOOOOOOOOOOOM!


    The ship''s horns blew as it slowly drew to a stop at a harbor in Caracol port town. The many passengers quickly formed a chaotic line as the boarding stairs unrolled, meeting the deck.Text ? 2024 N?velDrama.Org.


    Rui and Kane patiently wait in line even though they could have easily sky-walked down. Rui, however, wanted to avoid announcing that they were Martial Artists. If it was the case that Chairman Deacon did decide to look elsewhere, then any report of two Martial Squires having arrived from a ce that was in the direction of the Shionel Confederation might draw his eyes. Even if there hair was silver and blue, instead of ck and green.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 969 Dependance

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    The port town of Caracol was a simple town, barely a sovereign state if it could even be considered that. The town''s energy refreshed Rui, although it was a bustling and densely popted town, the air and the atmosphere felt rejuvenating. Rui could tell that the town''s entire economy was centered around the fact that it was a coastal town. Text ? 2024 N?velDrama.Org.


    A few steps into the town and he could already see a market selling sea products and rted services. The many harbors along the coast weed many boats and ships while bidding just as many away. It seemed like a popr checkpoint for sea travel.


    Rui and Kane indulged themselves with a hearty meal. Rui couldn''t even remember thest time he consumed food, he had been busy dealing with the greatest crisis of his second life that he had forgotten to engage in basic living things. Hell, he had even forgotten to breathe sometimes.


    "Oh mannn," Kane groaned as he heartily consumed some local seafood dishes. "I can''t get enough of this. This stuff is delicious! You have to try it out, man."


    Rui didn''t even bother replying. He was stuffing himself with so much food so fast that even his evolved digestion system was struggling to keep up!


    Kane was right.


    Food was godly when a person was starved of it.


    It wasn''t an hourter until Rui was finally satisfied, he was so stuffed that he felt as though he wouldn''t be able to sky-walk even if he wanted to. The two of them booked two rooms in an inn, before resting the entire day.


    It was until the next day that Rui regained an alert state of mind.


    (''Maybe falling dead asleep was not the best choice,'') Rui massaged his head, but he felt a lot more at ease after finally getting some rest now that the escape from Chairman Deacon had been a sess.


    He quickly bathed, freshening up as he left his room alone. He didn''t want to disturb Kane who was sleeping.


    Walking around town aimlessly in a serene manner was therapeutic and rxing. The Shionel Confederation had been quite stressful, in hindsight. Although it definitely made him stronger, the constant worrying about political enemies who had the power to crush him was tiring in ways that he didn''t even realize until he had finally removed himself from that situation.


    (''In hindsight, it felt like the battle against Chairman Deacon was harder than the battle against the Root,'') Rui sighed, shaking his head.


    He would rather avoid subjecting himself to something like that ever again, as much as he could again. He was not naive enough to believe that he could avoid it forever. However, next time, he should probably gain a better understanding of how bad things could go.


    Especially when his opponents were powerful enough to squash him like an insect.


    Pursuing his Martial Art and pursuing power without all this nonsense seemed much better. Ideally, he ought to focus on cultivating his Martial Art and pursuing his Martial Path in solitude, but in reality, he had needs that necessarily intersected with human civilization.


    For instance, while he could rely on himself to create brand-new techniques out of scratch, it was a lot more convenient to get the basic building blocks for his Martial Art by breaking apart existing techniques using certainponents from them. He had no interest in wasting time reinventing wheels.


    However, it wasn''t as though these techniques were engraved into mountains for anyone to be able to learn at any given point. He needed to seek out the people who did possess these techniques.<novelsnext>I think you should take a look at </novelsnext>


    That was never a problem before since he had the Martial Union, which seemingly possessed every single technique under the Sun. Even in the Shionel Confederation, he could rely on the Martial Union to provide him with everything he needed for mastering the Godspeed technique partially.


    However, now that he had distanced himself from them and intended to go far away, he could no longer rely on them when he needed to get his hands on certain techniques and other training resources.


    That necessarily meant that he needed to interact with other organizations and states that would be willing to perform exchanges with him. He would probably need to offer his services toplete a few missions for them.


    He heaved a sigh at the thought, but unless he built his own sovereign state that had garnered enough bargaining power or something like that, he could forget about simply gaining ess to them whenever he wished.


    (''Well, we can put that aside for now,'') Rui shook his head. (''Time to do some research on the Umiana Trench and what is necessary to get in on that action.'')


    He was sure that he would be able to find information from the locals on the Umiana Trench, though he wasn''t sure how many of them spoke the international dialect. However, given that this port town was on the ocean that the Umiana Trench was a part of, he could definitely find some information surrounding it.


    (''Ah, Kane worked up,'') His sense pricked as he noticed Kane waking up back at the inn.


    He quickly went to fetch his friend.


    "Eh, you want to leave?" Kane rubbed his eyes, yawning. "I dunno Rui¡­ This town is great. In fact, I dunno if I ever wanna leave. Maybe I could just get a house here, find a woman and make a family and live peacefully for the rest of my life."


    "Weren''t youining about how you wouldn''t be able to see Fae anymore the other day?"


    "Nobody''s missing her stuck-up ass," Kane snorted.


    "Riiight," Rui peered at him with narrow eyes, amused inwardly.


    "On second thoughts, let''s get going," Kane waved him away. "I wanna see what the hype surrounding the Umiana Trench is all about. You''re taking full responsibility if it doesn''t live up to the hype."


    "I didn''t make the trench," Rui shrugged. "Find the Martial Sage and make her take responsibility."


    "I''m good, thanks,"


    The two of them bickered as they made their way through town.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 970 Sight

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    "The Umiana Trench eh?" A bartender nced at the two of them skeptically. "That ce is not safe for normal humans, forget about it."


    Rui did not bother denying the obvious misunderstanding about who they were, he actually weed it. The two of them had been hiding their auras as Martial Artists using their respective techniques and were posing as normal human beings for a reason.


    "I heard that Martial Artists train there," Rui continued.


    "That, they do," The man sighed as he poured Rui and Kane a drink. "Martial Artists flock from all over, trying to join in on the training. The coastal nations decided to keep it open for that reason, but at what cost eh?"


    He snorted, shaking his head helplessly.


    Rui could sympathize with the man''s frustration. The people of the town depended on the sea significantly, which is why it was probably really scary knowing that the only reason the ocean didn''t recede was that a bunch of Martial Artists kept smacking away at it continuously. That would be scary if his entire life and livelihood were centered around the ocean which was so vtile.


    If the ocean receded, it would definitely be bad for the town, but Rui knew that it would probably give them peace of mind in the long run.


    "This whole problem was caused by a Martial Artist in the first ce," His eyes narrowed as his mouth curled with contempt. "Do you have any idea how many people died? The few Martial Squires in the old town struggled to hold back just the tiny portion of the wave hitting the old to allow as many people to escape. Yet it wasn''t enough."


    Rui could sense that he held a great deal of resentment towards the one who had caused the natural disaster in the first ce, and understandably so. He could only imagine how horrendous the disaster really was, and how much suffering it had caused to the locals. He didn''t expect them to look at the Umiana Trench in a positive light.


    "If you really want to go, then you need to find a fisherman willing to give you a ride most of the way," The bartender snorted, seeing that Rui wasn''t dissuaded. "Martial Artists just go over there through the air, normal humans ain''t got a way to get there safely. It''s dangerous to even try. Even the sea life knows to stay far away from the Umiana Trench. You''re going to have to pay the fisherman a whole lot of money up-front. They won''t get their money afterward if you die, after all."


    "I see," Rui nodded, relieved. "What about being able to actually train there? I heard that just reaching that ce isn''t enough."


    "Yeah, you got that right," The man nodded. "I ain''t ever been there to see it myself, but there''s actually an entire office setup belonging to the Trench Surveince Force that was set up by the coastal nations to make sure that the ocean level never receded or fluctuated too much. Martial Artists gotta purchase tickets for slots, it''s actually aplicated matter, or so I hear."


    "I see," Rui narrowed his eyes as he grew deep in thought himself.


    It was convenient that all of the matters could be handled in the trench itself. It meant that they didn''t need to reveal their Martial Artist status in this town, which reduced the probability of Chairman Deaconing across them by chance.


    "Appreciate the information," Rui dropped a gold coin on the table.


    "Woah, that''s too much!" The man''s eyes widened at the gold coin. "I don''t have change for a gold coin!"<novelsnext>I think you should take a look at </novelsnext>


    Rui cursed as he felt stares at him from around the bar. His titanic sess in the Shionel Confederation had warped his sense of wealth, and value of it. A single gold coin was insignificant, but to the average person, even a single amount of gold coin could significantly make their lives easier. To people living a simpler life, a gold coin was more than the entirety of their life savings!


    "Keep the change, appreciate the information," Rui dragged Kane out of the bar.


    "You wanna head there immediately?" Kane asked.


    Rui nodded. "I don''t want to reveal our identities as Martial Artists, so use Void Step to obscure our departure."


    "Gotcha,"


    The two of them took off from a remote location where nobody could see them from. Kane immediately activated Void Step, misdirecting the attention and awareness of everyone whose gaze fell upon their figures away.


    The two of them speedily sky-walked across the ocean.


    "You know the direction that we''re headed in?" Kane asked.


    "Yeah," Rui nced at the Sun. "I memorized the maps that Guildmaster Bradt sold me. You can undo the technique now, I don''t want anybody realizing we have this ability when we get there."


    The two of them traveled across the ocean speedily, Kane was unperturbed in his speed, while Rui sky-walked with Outer Convergence and Gale Force Breathing while he paid attention to the seal life that he was able to sense with his Riemannian Echo. He definitely felt there were some oddities that probably weren''t normally the case, although he was no oceanologist.


    The sea life seemed to grow scarcer the closer they got to their destination. In fact, it was far more dense closer to the coastal areas despite the strong human presence than it was in the direction of the Uminana Trench.N?velDrama.Org owns all ? content.


    The closer he got, the more his sharp sense could pick up the general energy radiating from the direction of the Umiana Trench. Not even the powerful aquatic monsters were willing to stray anywhere near it, from the looks of it.


    It wasn''t long before the view over the horizon changed.


    "Is that¡­?" Kane squinted his eyes as he noticed something at the edge of the horizon.


    "Yeah¡­" Rui''s eyes widened as his senses began touching the edge of the trench. "Truly unbelievable. To actually see it with my own two eyes ispletely different from just learning about it."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 971 Arrival

    Rui and Kane grew increasingly closer to the Uminana Trench they were able to sense it better, it wasn''t too long before they actually drew close enough to perceive the entirety of the diameter of the Umiana Trench.


    "What the hell¡­" Kane murmured as his jaw dropped at the staggering diameter of the Umiana Trench. "There is no way one Martial Artist did this by herself. No shot."


    "It''s even wider than the Shionel Dungeon!" Rui eximed as he grinned, awed at the size of the trench.


    They were still a good distance away, and even with their evolved vision, it was difficult to make out any individual Martial Artists. At the distance they were, the Umiana Trench looked quite bizarre to the eye. It was as if the ocean itself was hesitant to move in and upy an empty hole. It took a few steps forward in some regions but immediately walked away like it was scared. The waves seemingly danced back and forth onto thend and away, as though the trench and ocean were salsa dancing.


    It was a truly bewildering sight to Rui, reinforcing how bizarre and exotic this world waspared to Earth.


    "Woah¡­ You can see the Martial Artists at the edge of the trench if you look hard enough now," Kane peered.


    "Indeed," Rui nodded, he nced around at the ocean that they were sky-walking across at high speeds. "All the ships veer off a good distance away from the trench."Text ? 2024 N?velDrama.Org.


    He figured that ships in this ocean were equipped with the means to sense and locate the trench and be able to navigate around it. It was probablymon practice and protocol for the coastal nations in and around the ocean.


    As Rui and Kane got closer to the trench, they realized that they had underestimated how much infrastructure had been developed in the patch ofnd of the Umiana Trench. It seemed that they were truly confident in their ability to intent to keep the Umianan Trench. If the ocean ever overwhelmed the Martial Artists keeping it at bay, then all of the infrastructure would certainly be ttened by the iing tsunami.


    Rui paid attention to the Martial Artists who were using their Martial Art techniques to keep the ocean at bay. He realized that he had underestimated how many Martial Artists partook in the resistance against the ocean.


    Tens of thousands of Martial Artists of different Realms all came together in one ce and use their Martial Art to keep the wave at bay in shifts.


    The Martial Artists seemed to be segregated by Realm, grouping Martial Apprentices together, while Martial Squires and Seniors were also grouped together away from each other. What surprised him was that there also seemed to be a group of Martial Masters as well.


    Despite being exponentially fewer than the Martial Artists of the other Realms in number, their contributions were even greater as a grouppared to any other group, given that they covered more area than any other group.


    The distance between them and the trench had reduced to the point that Rui could see the many Martial Artists constantly entering and leaving. The flux was immense and immensely chaotic.


    "So what do we do from here?" Kane asked. "I''m guessing we gotta go visit the Trench Surveince Force or whatever that guy told us about?"


    "Yeah," Rui nodded. "We need to purchase training slots."


    "You know¡­" Kane scratched his head. "I think I''ll sit this one out."


    Rui raised an eyebrow. "You''re not gonna be participating in the training?"


    "What can I say?" Kane shrugged. "Offense-oriented techniques have never been my strong suit and I''m not interested in subjecting myself to the rigors of trying to push back this wave."


    "You''ll never be able to grow stronger if you don''t push yourself, Kane," Rui reminded him.


    "I''m an evasive maneuverer," Kaneined. "I''ll take on training that is to my field of expertise. Right now, my power is at the bottom of the Squire Realm, I''m just not suited."<novelsnext>I think you should take a look at </novelsnext>


    "You could take on multiple Apprentice-level slots if you''re not confident to handle Squire-level spaces," Rui smirked with a teasing tone.


    "That''s too embarrassing!"


    The two of them crossed the boundary between ocean and trench as they swiftly headed to therge town at the center of the trench, carefully avoiding the many Martial Artists sky-walking to and from it.


    "The town is so much smaller than the trench," Kane remarked.


    "It''s by design," Rui replied. "It''s not worth making it anyrger."


    After all, they were currently situated far from a safe space where there were no threats. A town was the limit of what they could invest into the trench, and only because it was necessary to handle the training industry that had formed centering the Umiana Trench.


    On top of that, Rui knew that Martial Artists like himself were best given the space they needed. It was unwise to keep any infrastructure around training Martial Artists.


    STEP


    "Hm," Rui grew interested in the bedrock of the Umiana Trench. "This is artificial."


    He examined the ground.


    "What makes you say that?" Kane raised an eyebrow as hended beside him.


    "The bedrock is far too porous," Rui replied. "It''s not something that would you see at the bottom of the ocean."


    Kane frowned. "But why would they do that?"


    "Probably to reduce the impact of the return of the ocean if it ever does reim the Umiana Trench, I''d imagine," Rui shrugged.


    "That makes sense," Kane nodded.


    The two of them turned back to look at the wall of the ocean being kept at bay.


    "It''s a lot less magical when you see what''s happening up close," Kane remarked, shrugging.


    It was nothing more than tons of Martial Artists hitting the water with their best techniques.


    "Come on," Rui headed towards the Umiana Town. "I want to see what the registration is like. I''m curious as to how they go about giving away slots."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 972 Measure

    ?


    The two of them quickly reached Umiana Town, and neither of them was surprised at how busy the town was. After all, asrge as the town was, they needed to be able to amodate many Martial Artists.


    Both Rui and Kane felt a lot more stiff and on guard naturally. They were surrounded by Martial Artists in all directions, they felt a lot less safe and secure than they normally did as Martial Squires.


    The sense of security that came with being Martial Squires wasfortable and was something that they had grown quitefortable with for quite some time. Now, suddenly, they were essentially reduced to normal humans walking in a normally popted area.


    Still, it wasn''t as though either of them were particrly worried about anything. The town signs constantly prohibited violence, which was stated to be punishable by death.


    No Martial Artist was interested in testing the resolve of the Trench Surveince Force to uplift thew. Thus, the Martial Artists made sure to keep some distance from each other, unwilling to get into any sort of conflict that could set the Trench Surveince Force on them.


    They knew that they would probably not be able to get away given that the Trench Surveince Force wasprised of the Martial Artists of all the coastal nations of the entire ocean. Rui highly doubted whether even Martial MAsters would be able to get away with breaking the rules.


    The town was quiterge, and a whopping half of it wasprised of offices belonging to the Trench Surveince Force. Each office amodated and handled transactions with the Martial Artists'' surrounding training with the ocean.Content is property of N?velDrama.Org.


    Each office had a line too, much to Rui''s dismay.


    The rest of the town served as housing amodations and infrastructure for other basic necessities. They were essentially incentivizing Martial Artists to stick around rather than return back to whatever nation that they were currently residing in. It was a lot more convenient to be nearby their training locations.


    However, the housing infrastructure was built with pure necessity and need in mind. It left much to be desired as far as luxury went. Furthermore, with the senses that Martial Artists possessed, privacy was simply not a thing.


    "It''s fine, we can make do," Rui shrugged as he entered one of the offices, immediately, he ran into a set of instructions written on a board on the wall behind the registration counter.


    (''You have to have your power evaluated before you purchase a slot, eh?'') Rui''s eyes lit up with interest.


    It made sense. The size of the area of the ocean they were assigned to as a training area could not exceed the Martial Artist''s capabilities, otherwise, the ocean would recede. Thus, it was prudent to measure the capabilities of each individual Martial Artist and ensure that they didn''t take on more than they could chew.


    There was another thing of note as well.


    "Ha, you need to purchase a training slot in order to get a room," Rui chuckled. "You''re out of luck it seems."


    "Aw man," Kane''s shoulder drooped. "Alright alright, fine. I''ll take part."


    The two of them made their way over to the evaluation facilities, waiting for quite some time before they finally got their turn.


    "Please take this numbered token," The employee offered them a badge each. "You can demonstrate any offensive technique of your choice against the target wall at any range. If you''re unable to maintain a uniform output, then your attempt will be registered as invalid, and you''ll have to go back to the line."


    She gestured towards the other end of the evaluation facility.


    Rui could immediately tell that the barrier on the other end was esoteric ore technology that was made out of some esoteric alloy that could probably withstand anything within the Squire Realm. It probably relied on the measuring of springpression to gauge the force exerted.


    "Please go ahead," The staff employee requested him.


    Rui briefly considered what technique to use. Given that he needed to be able to maintain it, he definitely couldn''t go for his most powerful attacks. None of them were attacks that he could continuously spam, let alone spam for longer periods of time.<novelsnext>I think you should take a look at </novelsnext>


    He decided to stick with a more grounded and easier technique.


    He took a stance, bracing himself as he inhaled deeply.


    THWOOM!


    BAM!!!


    The Mighty Roar sh st Technique mmed into the target barrier, forcing it back by about ten meters.


    Immediately, a number of measuring the force units appeared on the terminal that the staff immediately fiddled and typed about.


    Rui noted the resultant number, and thanks to his exposure to the foundations of a theoretical science of the Panama Continent, he recognized the units of force being used.


    (''About nine million tons of weight, give or take,'') Rui instantly calcted exactly how impressive his attack was in units. (''Not bad,'')


    "Now, please demonstrate your ability to maintain uniformity," She requested him.


    Rui inhaled once more, before firing off the Mighty Roar sh st consecutively one after the other.


    THWOOM THWOOM THWOOM¡­!


    "Confirmed," She nodded. "You have been evaluated. You are now eligible to purchase a grade-six training slot."


    Rui did not mind the grading too much, he knew that it was different from the grading technique that the Martial Union used for techniques, Martial Art, and techniques. It probably meant that his continuous uniform offensive power was in the middle. This wasn''t bad given that he wasn''t a specialist in that regard.


    "Your turn," Rui gestured as Kane heaved a sullen sigh.


    He didn''t possess a single long-range technique, thus he needed to be near the barrier in order to try.


    BAM BAM BAM!


    He relied on a basic striking technique.


    "Grade-one training slot," She confirmed Rui''s suspicions.


    "Damn," Kane murmured.


    "It''s fine," Rui reassured him. "Offensive power isn''t your Martial Path, as you said. And this is an opportunity to grow stronger. It''s not good to neglect one of the broadest and most fundamental fields ofbat."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 973 Framework

    ?


    Once the two of them had their evaluations done, Rui abstained from heading to purchase a training slot.


    "You''re not going to train?" Kane asked, frowning. "What was the whole point of getting that evaluation done?"


    "I don''t just want to jump into training for the sake of training," Rui told him. "I do intend to use this training opportunity to hone existing techniques, don''t get me wrong. Sharpening the use of my existing tools is definitely important. There was an incredibly wise and awesome martial artist who once said ''I fear not the man who has practiced ten thousand kicks once, but the man who has practiced one kick ten thousand times.''"


    "Ok¡­" Kane scratched his head. "So what''s holding you back?"


    "I would like to take this opportunity to aplish more than just honing my existing techniques," Rui replied. "I would like to take this opportunity to learn something new."


    Kane looked at him with raised eyebrows. "You intend to create a new technique? Here?"


    "Sure," Rui nodded. "You shouldn''t waste opportunities to explore your Martial Art."


    "How are you even going toe up with techniques without training resources?"


    "I''ve done it before," Rui shrugged.


    "You took like half a year with training resources and my help for learning the Godspeed technique," Kane pointed out.


    "True, but the Godspeed technique is grade-ten," Rui reminded him. "Not every technique needs to be grade ten."


    "That is true," Kane admitted.


    Rui had created multiple grade-ten techniques, and each of them was a hassle. They were huge projects of great difficulty and none of them were simple. Rui did not think that engaging in such a project was possible in these circumstances. Furthermore, he didn''t want to get dragged up into a mindset where he thought that techniques other than grade-ten techniques were worthless.


    This simply wasn''t true. The grade-ten technique certainly granted the user prowess above the conventional limits of the Squire Realm in some way or the other, without a doubt. However, they usually came with drawbacks and requirements that other techniques did not have. They also had grade-ten difficulty in mastery and utility, which meant that they were taxing to use.Text ? 2024 N?velDrama.Org.


    Furthermore, most of hisbat prowess came from more normal, albeit still high-grade Squire-level techniques that he had learned over time. If he had to choose between his more ordinary techniques and grade-ten techniques, he would choose the former. They were the ones that he used the most and the ones that constituted his normal fighting style.


    "You go on ahead," Rui told Kane. "I have some things to figure out."<novelsnext>I think you should take a look at </novelsnext>


    Kane nodded. "See you,"


    Once Kane left, Rui introspected. What kind of technique could he look into creating today?


    (''Obviously, it has to be an offensive technique,'') Rui mused.


    The next thing he had to figure out was whether he ought to create a long-range technique or a close-range technique.


    (''I have enough long-range technique unless I''m working on a brand-new concept that will give me an edge that my other techniques cannot, it''s just not worth pursuing at the moment,'') He shook his head inwardly.


    It had been a while since he developed a short-range technique. The Forestep technique ended up being a supplementary technique that was applicable to techniques of all ranges. Thankfully, he had already gotten a concept in mind from his time in the Shionel Dungeon. He had gotten inspiration for many techniques in the Shionel Dungeon. He hadn''t had time to realize them in his previous training arc, after all, he was focused on creating the Forestep technique that allowed him to deal with the Root, but even that battle had given him inspiration for new techniques.


    It was just that he didn''t have any time to consider the potential techniques that he hade up with ideas for. Immediately after the fight ended, he had been focused on not dying, and once he finally healed, he noticed the escape of one of the Martial Squires. Only now, several dayster, had he had the chance to think about new techniques.


    He recalled the time in his fight against the Root when he used the Flux Earther technique partially to aid his evasion of the Root. By converting the kic energy of the Root''s attacks into the kic energy of his own body in an stic collision, he could use the Root''s kic energy to propel him forward.


    That had him wondering about something.


    (''Can I use my attacks to propel my opponents away instead of hurting them using the same mechanics?'') Rui wondered.


    In his mind, he imagineunching a powerful attack at his opponent, but instead of hurting them, he instantly sent them dashing away at extremely high speeds like a rocket. Normally, he would be inclined to just hurt them with his attack rather thanunch them away, but there were circumstances where he couldn''t afford to waste time dealing with them, it was convenient to be able to simply get rid of them, giving him a chance to disengage and get away from them.


    (''It would also be useful in this situation,'') Rui nced toward the ocean that the Martial Artists were keeping at bay. It would be perfect if he could create a technique that used his power and efficiently converted it into kic energy for the water of the waves, exclusively propelling them backward.


    In fact, if sessful, he suspected that he would be extremely effective at dispelling the water of the iing ocean. After all, he would be efficiently converting all his power into momentum for the ocean water in the opposite direction. While other techniques would have to rely on instic collisions with water where the transfer of power was inefficient and ineffective.


    Rui grew excited at the prospect of it, now all he needed to do wase up with the mechanics of the technique and iron out the theoretical framework of the technique until it was ready to be applied in practice for the ocean.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 974 Disperse

    ?


    He quickly began formting the framework of the technique. Thankfully, he was already equipped with everything he needed to know for the technique. If it was just an inverse of the partial Flux Earther technique, then he probably didn''t need to learn any new techniques or principles, he just needed to apply what he could already do and do it well.


    (''I use my intercept attacks stically in the Flux Earther technique,'') Rui noted. (''I transfer power across all my body in the manner that I distribute it across my body by applying a principle from the Inner Divergence technique.'')


    The Inner Divergence technique was a defensive technique that he used to use before he created the Flux Earther technique. It was weaker, but it was also a little easier to use and apply.


    (''The question is how I uniformly distribute the kic energy transferred from an stic collision across the entire body,'') Rui wondered as he considered a number of potential solutions.


    The issue he was currently faced with was the fact that even if he used his arm to try and slowly pass the energy throughout the entire body of his opponent to universally elerate every inch of it, the fact of the matter was that his palm was going to be applying force to the outer flesh of the body first, this would cause damage before it would elerate the entire body. He simply could not elerate the entirety of the body simultaneously.


    (''¡­Unless I have a way to permeate the impact past the exterioryer,'') Rui''s eyes widened as a simple idea passed through his head. (''I can simply use the Reverberating Lance to pass the impact throughout the entire body as opposed to permeating it in one direction to do damage on my opponent or target.'')


    That meant that he needed to avoid hurting them in order to get this technique to work. Reverberating Lance worked by permeating a greater proportion, than normal, of an impact through the tough flesh, muscles, and bones into the more vulnerable internal organ systems of the body to cause more damage.


    However, this technique usually had one target as far as the permeation went. The internal organ systems of the body were the target of the body. If he instead increased the scope of the technique to include the entirety of the body, then he would be able to permeate the force of the technique across the entirety of the body, and thus elerate all of it seamlessly without actually hurting the target.


    It may seem a bit silly to actively ensure that you don''t hurt the target, but if he did try to hurt the target, it would reduce the eleration. He had a limited amount of energy, and he couldn''t do one to its very best if he also tried doing the other. He already had a technique for hurting people using vibrations, thus this technique was something he decided would be solely focused on the discement of the target instead of harm.N?velDrama.Org owns all ? content.


    He was already convinced that the technique was extremely viable, there was no question about that. What he was not entirely sure was about how effective it would be against the ocean. He narrowed his eyes as recalled the fluid dynamics and waves that he studied in his younger days back on Earth in college. The speed of transmission of vibrations through a particr medium depended on the sticity of the medium, which water certainly wasn''tcking. The issue was that ocean water was not molecrly bound as a whole in the way that a Martial Artist''s body was. That meant that there was no way to know whether his ability would work the way he intended to.


    For one, it would be difficult to make water disperse in the same direction since it wasn''t bound together like an object.<novelsnext>I think you should take a look at </novelsnext>


    (''Then again, that doesn''t matter in this case, I suppose,'') Rui shrugged.


    In this case, as long as the water didn''t cross a certain boundary, it didn''t matter, Rui supposed. They didn''t care about anything else.


    He closed his eyes as he pictured the implementation of the Reverberating Lance technique to disperse the impact across the entire body of the target. He needed to make sure to understand what that felt like.


    The original Reverberating Lance technique was not meant to be used to disperse an impact across the entirety of the body uniformly, diluting it in the process. It was meant to be focused permeation to ensure that the vibrations did more damage to the internal organs. He couldn''t just use the same principle in this particr training session, otherwise, only a tiny portion of the water would be dispersed to an extreme degree while most of the water would make it past him.


    Even in the Flux Earther technique, he didn''t bother dispersing the kic energy that he had absorbed in width, but depth.


    In this case, he needed to distribute the impact in all three dimensions.


    As much as he wanted to use the ocean for testing, he knew that he ought not to. Testing usually involved failure, and failure was uneptable in this particr case.


    (''I should make sure all the major problems are out of the way before I get to the training session¡­ but unfortunately, I can''t rent housing if I don''t book a training slot,'') Rui sighed. (''Guess I''ll have to skip to the training, I hope I''m not wrong. It would be quite awkward if I failed to hold it back on my first try.'')


    He wasn''t too concerned though. With Forestep, even if the technique failed he would be able to salvage it in time by using the Mighty Roar sh st technique. Given how fast it was, it should be able to fix his problems in time.


    He immediately headed towards one of the offices to purchase a training slot. He was pleased to know that he didn''t need to register his identity to the Trench Surveince Force.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 975 Record

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    The number that he had been given in the evaluation facility corresponded with the force evaluation of his technique.


    "You may purchase at most a grade-six Squire-level slot," The staff member informed him. "That corresponds to a section of the ocean roughly fifteen meters wide. Once you begin training you are responsible for ensuring the section of the ocean that you''re tasked with keeping at bay does not cross a certain boundary, you will be held liable, and you will be required to pay a fee for every time this urs. Please sign this statement if you agree to the terms and conditions."


    Rui nodded as he quickly signed before receiving a token indicating the grade number.


    "Head to the Squire-level section of the Trench," She instructed him. "The section manager and support staff will help you."


    It wasn''t long before he reached where he was supposed to be.


    Great gusts of wind came his way, the roaring ocean atop that made for a jarringly chaotic environment. It was quite novel and exciting, but it was also strangely unnerving given that there were stakes at hand. The ocean levels receding would be quite disastrous for all coastal nations.


    It wasn''t long before he ran into crews of normal humans wearing full-body armour. Rui could immediately sense that the armor that they were wearing wasprised of Apprentice-level esoteric alloys. Given that they were normal humans, they were putting a lot of trust in the Martial Artists holding back the ocean. Rui knew that they probably had high sries.


    "Pleasee this way sir," One of the staff members guided him once he showed him his slot tokens.


    He guided Rui until they were just a hundred meters away from a Martial Squire. "You''re to rece him, sir!"


    The man felt the need to shout due to how loud the waves were, but Rui could hear him just fine.


    Rui looked around as he saw an endless line of Martial Squires farther beyond the eye could see, farther beyond even what his eye could see.


    "Now!"


    The Martial Squire that Rui was to rece moved back after striking a section of the wave, giving Rui enough time to dash in and take his ce.


    He used Gale Force Breathing and Outer Convergence together as he dashed forward leaving behind powerful sonic booms in his wake.


    He gathered enough momentum with his dash as he readied his palm. Mentally, he had already prepared to execute the Forestep Technique with the Mighty Roar sh st Technique.


    However, he had a feeling he wouldn''t fail.


    STEP


    He had reached.


    RUMBLE!


    The ocean wave was right before him. It had rushed forward with tremendous speed due to the sheer pressure the ocean was propelling the water forward.


    Yet Rui drove his vibrating palm forward.


    SPLASH!<novelsnext>I think you should take a look at </novelsnext>


    He vibrated his palm the maximum as he gently pushed forward and upwards to target the upper segments of the wave, pushing harder and harder. Like a spring.


    BOOM!


    The impact permeated through the water as the wave blew back a dozen meters behind!


    Rui''s eyes lit up with ecstasy as he reveled in his sess.


    (''That has to be record time for creating a new technique!'')


    It wasn''t perfect however, he could feel that a decent chunk of his power was not being permeated correctly. All he knew was that he had plenty of room for improvement.


    (''I''ll iron out all the chinks in my time here!'') Rui grinned.


    He initially nned on ironing out all his offensive techniques, but he ultimately decided not to. He had more to gain by using this opportunity to iron out the technique that he had the least amount of refining with.


    The Martial Squires practicing their techniques on the waves were quite careful, they did not want to get in each other''s way and get hurt, but at the same time, they couldn''t be too distant from each other, otherwise, that would leave a gap between their technique causing water to rush through the gaps.


    His technique grew more refined in real time as he figured out the way in which he ought to permeate the impact across the entirety of the segments of the wave that he was assigned to. It was quite difficult to make sure that caught every part of the segment, he let slip a few giant blobs of water, but fortunately, that wasn''t an issue at all, thus he never got reprimanded for it. He realized the merit of such a training method.


    It was essentially a giant training facility that could even amodate Martial Artists of higher Realms. Rui couldn''t even imagine how much the whole thing would have cost, it could easily epass the Martial Artists of multiple nations. He wasn''t entirely sure if even the gigantic revenue he made from the Shionel Dungeon would be able to fund the creation of the training facility that this trench served as a whole.


    It was true that Sage Sia had caused an untold amount of suffering when she created the Umiana Trench, but it was also true that countless Martial Artists had benefited from it to this very day.


    BOOM!!


    He drove back the ocean wave nearly thirty meters backward.


    The feat was so impressive that the Martial Artists in the vicinity couldn''t help but turn their heads in his direction.


    The force that Rui had demonstrated had exceeded all of their techniquesbined. He was aplishing what only grade-nine or grade-ten Martial Squires did.


    Rui knew, however, that it was a matter of efficiency, his technique allowed for a highly efficient transfer of power, allowing for extraordinary results with the same amount of power that many other Martial Artists were aplishing.


    He spend quite some time sting away at the ocean until it was finally time for him to switch with the next Martial Squire.


    "Huff¡­" He heaved a heavy sigh as he wiped some sweat off his forehead.Text ? 2024 N?velDrama.Org.


    "Is that the new technique?" Kane asked, waiting for him. "Because I''ve never seen that.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 976 Extra

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    "It is," Rui nodded as he gazed at his palm. "I''m d it turned out well."


    "Wait," Kane brought his hands to the temples, confused. "You created a new technique in the time period between me leaving and you purchasing a training slot?"


    "More or less," Rui nodded. "Well, creating a new technique is a tad bit overselling it considering I just put together elements from certain techniques to create a new one. It wasn''t that hard, honestly."


    Kane just stared at him with a shocked expression. He couldn''t believe what he was hearing, but he had seen that strange new palming technique that Rui had used to dispel the water.


    Rui had been so sessful in dispelling the wave with his little palm technique that he had drawn the attention of many Martial Artists from him. They even started to look at him differently, considering him to be stronger than he was.


    Funnily enough, this was something Rui was ustomed to. He had gone through this for quite some time.


    Even on his mission to Vilun Ind, he had been perceived as a grade-ten Martial Squire the entire time, back then he had merely been posturing with the Mind Mask, of course. In the Shionel Confederation, he hadn''t actively tried to convince people that he was a grade-ten Martial Squire, in fact, he was just trying his best in the dungeon, and his preparations had allowed for him to exceed his normal level. The Shionel Confederation had naturally be convinced that he was a grade-ten Martial Squire at a bare minimum, given many of his feats.


    It didn''t feel out of ce when people treated him to be stronger than he really was, which was quite strange when he looked at it.


    "How did your training go?" Rui asked.


    Kane''s expression soured. "Let''s just say it wasn''t the most pleasant of experiences."


    Rui smiled, amused. Kane was quite averse to power-oriented striking techniques, his style generally did not utilize them, and he much preferred more lethal attacks that didn''t necessarily have more power but inflicted more damage.


    Such techniques were usually much harder tond or had some other shorings that Kane could bypass with his maneuvering techniques and techniques like Void Step.


    "Don''t worry," Rui assured him. "It''ll do you wonders in the long run. Unlike me, you have the advantage of knowing without any shadow of a doubt what is the most effective way to shore off your weaknesses."


    "I imagine that''s much harder for an all-rounder like you," Kane remarked. "Having to juggle and bnce so many things. Specialists like myself have it easy."<novelsnext>I think you should take a look at </novelsnext>


    "In some ways, true," Rui nodded.


    He had to admit the sheer number of things that he had to keep in mind when considering the bnce of his Martial Art was definitely a lot. At this point, he had mastered so many techniques of different kinds that it was not easy to create an urate picture in his mind about the bnce between techniques.


    However, he was d that he hade up with another close-range technique. He had been concerned that his long-range offensive power from the techniques that he had gained and created in Vilun Ind.


    The two of them headed toward the part of the town that was meant for housing Martial Artists. Neither of them was too eager to stay in a ce devoid of privacy, but they had to make do with it. Most Martial Artists did not have the ability to feel what was going on over longer distances, thus Rui could at least take somefort in knowing that he probably was not being watched nearly as much as being noticed. He hoped there was an unspoken agreement between the Martial Squires that they wouldn''t peek at each other, though he knew that there was nothing guaranteeing that.


    The housing section was divided between Martial Artists of different Realms. It appeared that Martial Apprentices got small rooms that only provided them with the bare basics of needs. Martial Squires each received a less bare room that contained additional facilities, while only Martial Seniors and Martial Masters received what could be considered luxurious.


    However, he highly doubted that any Martial Artist cared. No Martial Artist that came this far came for a sightseeing vacation, everyone here was serious about training, any Martial Artist thatined about theck of hospitality would only be making a fool of themselves.


    Rui considered his progress when he finally got a chance to rest for the first time since the training.


    (''It''s good¡­ but I still haven''t forgotten that the things I need to do for training have increased ever since my previous training phase,'') Rui sighed as he thought of the technique that he had created in the Shionel Confederation. The Forestep technique was powerful be it increased the difficulty of training all techniques from there on out. The reason for that was that he needed practice and to get used to applying the Forestep technique to supplement existing techniques. This meant that even after he mastered a technique, he still needed to train further to master it with the Forestep technique.


    This significantly raised the difficulty and time period needed to master techniques. If he could master new techniques in a matter of months, then perhaps from this point in, mastering techniques would take no less than a year.


    This meant that if he wanted to master ten new techniques, this endeavor might end up taking a decade to achieve.


    He wondered if simr circumstances were among the reason that Martial Artists of higher Realms took longer to develop their Martial Art than Martial Apprentices and Martial Squires did. Sage Sia, the Martial Sage who created the Umiana Trench, spent two decades creating a technique. He knew that Senior Ceeran had spent quite a lot of time developing his Martial Art as well.


    Perhaps the Squire Realm was thest Realm at which he could speedily develop a technique in a single day.


    (''I sure hope not¡­'')This material belongs to N?velDrama.Org.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 977 Warning

    ?


    The next day, Rui and Kane got back to training early in the morning at full force after quickly freshening up. The two of them were exhausted enough to fall asleep despite the roaring ocean many kilometers away on ount of their exhaustion.


    Even for Martial Artists of the same Realm, the weaker ones were divided from the stronger ones. It was too risky to put grade-one Martial Squires near grade-ten Martial Squires, the probability of thetter affecting the former was too low. It could result in the former being hampered, causing the ocean to leak through.


    That was why Rui and Kane were far from each other when they were training it was also why Rui was increasingly no longer fitting where he was supposed to fit.


    He closed his eyes, before activating the Godspeed breathing technique.


    BOOM!


    The sheer amount of mass that he exhaled quickly dispersed into the atmosphere due to the pressure difference. He opened his eyes as he came face-to-face with an ocean wave. The speed of the ocean wave was not to be underestimated, any ordinary human would instantly be swept up before they could even react. High-grade Martial Apprentices could react to it as long as they were alert. However, it was still very slow in the eyes of Martial Artists like Rui who had reached a stage where they could think in a millisecond.


    He activated Forestep, executing pre-programmed movements with absolutely thoughtless reflexes back-to-back. The Forestep movements activated the Palming technique that he hade up with.


    BOOM!!!


    Blinding fast movements tore a twenty-meter wide corridor before him extending for quite some distance!


    The vibrations conveyed the force generated by the sheer eleration of the Forestep technique across the entirety of the iing ocean, dispersing them backward with a remarkable impact.


    The sheer ravine that Rui resultantly generated surpassed anything that any of the nearby Martial Artists generated.


    The ocean instantly filled up the ravine from all directions as it rushed forward. Yet it was still quite slow in Rui''s perception.


    (''Not bad¡­'') Rui narrowed his eyes as he nced at his palms. (''Can still get better though,'')


    The Forestep technique was not particrly time or energy-consuming in this particr regard since he didn''t need to rely on the VOID algorithm this time.


    He needed to normally use the VOID algorithm because predictions were necessary to be able to use the Forestep technique urately inbat. However, he did not need the VOID algorithm to predict the ocean. Everybody knew how water moved. Just paying attention to the waves for a while would give one a good intuitive understanding of how the ocean moved in such circumstances.


    That was why he could conserve mental energy much better in these circumstances than when he used the Forestep technique on the Root floor.


    The surrounding Martial Squires grew remarkably surprised at why a grade-ten Martial Squire had randomly been ced among them. Rui''s dispersion of the ocean was so overwhelming, that it also began affecting the sections of the waves assigned to other Martial Squires.


    Because the ravine that he created filled up water from both sides to its right and left, it actually reduced the amount of water that the Martial Squires on his side had to deal with momentarily, making their jobs somewhat easier.<novelsnext>I think you should take a look at </novelsnext>


    By the time he was done, he was even reprimanded by the Martial Senior overseeing his section.


    "Underperforming during the evaluation test is frowned upon," The Martial Senior coldly informed him. "It can cause big problems and messes if you interfere with weaker Martial Artists due to stronger techniques. You will be let off the hook with a warning the first time, but the next time will result in being forbidden from training in the Umiana Trench, got it?"


    "¡­Yes," Rui could only lower his head with a sigh.


    How could he possibly know that he was going to get that much stronger? Sometimes even his incredible growth rate could be quite problematic. If such a thing happened again, he would be forbidden from returning to the Umiana Trench.


    It wasn''t long before he returned from the evaluation facility with a grade-ten evaluation. Thebined efficiency of permeating an impact with vibrations and the Forestep technique together allowed for a remarkable exertion and application of power.


    When Rui reached the grade-ten section after having purchased a grade-ten training slot, he had to say he was impressed.


    Grade-ten Martial Squires were certainly worthy enough to be called the peak of the Squire Realm. Each Martial Squire in this section emanated a powerful unique aura. Each of them was allocated a big section of the ocean as a training section, far greater than any of the training sections he had seen prior for the Martial Squires he was surrounding.


    Rui had made sure to opt for a much smaller timeframe since he did not have much stamina with Forestep as he did without it.


    Soon enough, he stepped in, recing a Martial Squire. He was faced with a wide area that he alone was supposed to defend.This material belongs to N?velDrama.Org.


    He widened his hand as much as he could as he rushed forward using all the power he could muster with Forestep and Outer Convergence.


    BOOM


    The impact permeated so powerfully that Rui could literally see the wave travel through the water at remarkably high speeds.


    He just barely managed to push back the ocean to the bare minimum necessary degree.


    (''Shit, at this rate, I mightst less than I had expected,'') Rui cursed as he activated Final Breathing to extend his stamina and endurance andst longer than he had expected.


    Still, he felt quite euphoric at the idea that he was able to stand side-by-side among the most powerful Martial Squires of the Squire Realm and keep up with them without relying on the VOID algorithm, and only on his techniques.


    That was quite refreshing since the VOID algorithm had always been his ticket to hurting people much stronger than him and performing feats that he could not otherwise.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 978 Next

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    A simple and safe routine had taken hold of their day-to-day life, something that was quite alien to the two of them had taken ce. Rui had almost forgotten what it was like to not be in a ce surrounded by people who would kill him in the first instance of knowing his true identity.


    Although they still had to now hide their real identities with prepared aliases, the Trench Surveince Force did not require Martial Artists to register with their identities, each Martial Artist was given a code, and their evaluations, training slots, and housing were all registered to the code.


    It was a system that allowed for all Martial Squires to maintain anonymity, which was how most Martial Artists preferred it. He had kept his mask on most of the time, he had no intention of revealing his appearance so freely even if he had changed his hair and eyes to silver.


    Had this been Earth, Chairman Deacon would have found him already. There were cameras everywhere and silver hair and eyes would not be enough to fool facial recognition software. Furthermore, the inte epassed pretty much the entire thus the data could be transmitted quite far.


    However, this was not the case here. Communication technology was highly nerfed in this world in so far as the bandwidth and the range, they were orders of magnitude weaker than that of Earth.


    Furthermore, the only information about Rui that Chairman Deacon could ever obtain on Rui was a detailed description, and that would not be enough to be able to tie him to the Voider.N?velDrama.Org owns all ? content.


    Rui had avoided using techniques that could easily be traced back to Rui Quarrier, thankfully, neither his new technique nor Forestep could be attributed to him due to how recent and unknown they were. There was absolutely nothing that tied him with Rui at the moment and he intended to keep it that way.


    It was the reason that he had decided to avoid using his most well-known techniques. They were too close to the Shionel Dungeon, rtively speaking, for him to take such risks. What if he used Mighty Roar sh st too many times and Chairman Deacon somehow hears the word of a Martial Artist with powerful mastery over sound, eh might choose to investigate.


    Of course, once they were far away from the Shionel Confederation, Rui had absolutely no qualms about using more techniques, but at the moment they were simply too close to the Shionel Confederation.


    Perhaps when they reached closer and closer to their destinations in the west, could he actually think about going all out without any concern.


    Regardless, Rui felt rxed in the environment they were in given that everybody around him wouldn''t him even if they knew his identity. It was rather funny because he felt more unsafe in the Shionel Confederation than he did in the Umiana Trench despite being surrounded by an ocean that threatened to swallow everything every second of the day. He felt morefortable sleeping in these circumstances than he did in the Shionel Confederation.


    That sensation was therapeutically rxing as he honed his mindset in a daily strict routine of discipline.


    And just like that, two months passed.


    After three months of honing the new technique he had chosen to dub Reverberating Dispersion in addition to Forestep technique, he had grown increasingly proficient with both techniques. Both of the two techniques were not techniques he had had too much experience with it, and the two months of constant use had increased hisfort with them.<novelsnext>I think you should take a look at </novelsnext>


    He also became able to maintain a grade-ten training section for much longer than he used to be able to do so before. However, it was still far less than the Martial Squires who were able to maintain their training sessions multiple times his maximum time.


    The reason for that was that it was truly their normal power while it was his limit. He could not possibly hit harder and get a better result, but they easily could if they wanted.


    It was a reminder that the gap between him and grade-ten Martial Squires under normal circumstances was not small. Although he had managed to perform feats that shocked even them, they were not weak by any means.


    In the past three months, Kane had also grown stronger as well. He had struggled with even the weakest Squire-level training sections that he could get, but two months of practicing his striking had at least caused him to gain a stronger foundation. In the past three months, he had managed to upgrade to grade-two training sections. A feat that he was inordinately pleased with.


    At the end of three months, Rui''s itch for adventure and color had finally umted enough for him to agree to Kane''s desire to leave. The Umiana Trench could grow tiresome as far as the atmospheric and environmental conditions went.


    The constant roaring of the ocean in the distance, the high humidity, and the perennial scent of salt water could grow irritating if one wasn''t ustomed to them.


    "Finally!" Kane heaved a sigh as they packed up and sky-walked out of the Umiana Trench. "I was so done with that ce!"


    "It wasn''t that bad," Rui shook his head disapprovingly. "For one, it got you to improve your offense, which is one of the few things holding you back from being a truly powerful Martial Squire, Kane."


    "Yeah yeah, let''s move on to more interesting ces, the trench has been a novel ce, but there''s only so much you can get excited about it."


    Even then, the two of them couldn''t help but admire how exotic and fantastic the phenomenon looked when viewed from high above. They still weren''t high enough to view the entirety of the trench as a whole, but even seeing a part of its curve as it disappeared over the horizon was an incredible sight.


    "So, where do you want to go?" Rui turned to Kane.


    "Some ce where we aren''t training power!"


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 979 North-West

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    The Umiana Trench had been quite fun and helpful to the development of his Martial Art, but ultimately it was not a ce that held Rui''s interest, and most certainly not a ce that held Kane''s interest. The two of them were more than willing to leave the Umiana Trench as they continued their little explorative voyage to the west.


    Rui considered it a good sign that Chairman Deacon hadn''te looking for them yet. They hadn''t met any Martial Squires that hade to the Umiana Trench looking for a ck-haired or green-haired Martial Squire.


    This was a good sign, it meant that the decoys that Rui hadmissioned from Guildmaster Bradt were doing a good job keeping Chairman Deacon''s sights fixed on the Kandrian Empire. The Martial Union was also aiding in order to make it look like ir really was them.


    However, Rui was not naive, he did not think that this would fool Chairman Deacon forever, that was impossible. Eventually, Chairman Deacon would figure out the truth, either before the protection ended, or after. Rui probably still had leeway as long as the protection of his family was kept around, however, he definitely could not take too long to be stronger.


    Chairman Deacon was not kind enough to wait for him to grow strong enough, after all. Furthermore, there were going to be two more guildmaster elections in the Shionel Confederation in the next ten years. Although Rui truly did not expect Guildmaster Bradt to lose in the long run, especially after he had consolidated the wealth that he gained from Esosale Suppliers and the power that he gained from being the sole possessor of a map of the Shionel Dungeon, he did not want to imagine what might happen if Chairman Deacon became the guildmaster of the Shionel Confederation.


    Rui shook his head, as he put these matters aside. He had already made his decisions in that regard, and there was already nothing more he could do in regard to these issues. All he could do was do everything in his power to grow stronger.


    "A destination where they don''t train power, you said?" Rui asked, turning to Kane. "We can do that. Where do you want to go?"


    "You remember that ce with the lightning?" Kane asked with an excited grin. "Let''s go check that ce out. I don''t know if I believe that a single valley can have a billion lightning strikes every second. That''s crazy!"Text ? 2024 N?velDrama.Org.


    "I mean¡­" Rui nced at the Umiana Trench. They were far away enough that they could no longer see individual Martial Artists even with their evolved sense of vision. Thus it looked like the ocean was magically staying away from the deep trench.


    "Alright fine," Kane conceded. "It isn''t too crazy by these standards, still, I want to see it in person."


    "We can go to Thundering Valley," Rui nodded. "I too am interested in that ce. It sounds like a good ce to challenge myself."


    His Forestep technique had been good enough to allow him to dodge nearly a thousand root attacks at one point in the Shionel Dungeon. However, was it fast enough to dodge lightning?


    It wasn''t for no reason that lightning was the prime hyperbole used when one wanted to convey that something was fast. Lightning was so absurdly fast that fast things were described as lightning-fast in order to exaggerate how fast they were. There was no other phenomenon in nature that received the same kind of treatment as lightning did. From primordial times, lightning was treated as one of the primary elemental forces of the gods.<novelsnext>I think you should take a look at </novelsnext>


    And now? They sought to challenge that very force.


    Both of them possessed strengths that allowed them to be more confident than other Martial Artists.


    Kane, of course, was an evasive maneuverer, the Thundering Valley was a ce where he could finally be challenged on his strengths, rather than being challenged on his weaknesses like he was in the Umiana Trench. He was quite curious as to whether he would be able to evade lightning, and if he wasn''t, then he definitely intended to train in the Thundering Valley until he seeded!


    Rui wasn''t entirely sure whether they could seed. Lightning moved at speeds that they couldn''t achieve at the moment. It traveled from the sky to the ground in just 0.00003 seconds!


    "It will be fun," Rui smiled at the thought of striving to ovee this challenge. Yet behind his nonchnt smile was a steely gaze, determined to grow stronger and obtain the power that he needed to protect his family from those that wished to harm them.


    "Alright, let''s get going," Kane nodded as he immediately began setting off away from the Umiana Trench, it wasn''t even a second before he came back to Rui. "Er¡­ Which direction is this so-called Thundering Valley again?"


    Rui chuckled as he nced at the sun before pointing North-west. "That way. It can be part of our journey to the West."


    Rui had already plotted numerous courses that they could take in their journey to the west, away from the Shionel Dungeon. He had purposely picked locations that were to their west as opposed to any other cardinal direction so that they wouldn''t have to suffer major detours and drastically dy their journey by quite some time.


    Kane nodded. "Let''s get started, we don''t have time to waste. How long does it take to get there at afortable sky-walking speed?"


    "It would take more than a month of near-continuous travel we sky-walked at a slow jogging pace the entire way," Rui replied. "It would take more than a week if we traveled onnd."


    Kane frowned turning towards Rui. "That''s far! We need to set out immediately and maintain a brisk pace or it''s going to take forever."


    Rui chuckled at his enthusiasm, nodding. The two of them blurred out of vision as they made forth toward the direction that Rui had pointed in. It appeared that Kane had no intention of spending too much time traveling.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 980 Distance

    Sky-walking was much slower than traveling onnd for many reasons. The human body was anatomically evolved to travel onnd, this fundamentally meant that they would travel throughnd faster than through any other means or medium.


    This remained true even for Martial Squires even if their Martial bodies were evolved past humanity. Most Martial Squires retained the basic anatomy of human beings. The shape of the body, the number of limbs, bones, muscles, and the locations of these body parts maintained at least a resemnce with baseline human beings. This material belongs to N?velDrama.Org.


    This meant that most Martial Squires also inherited humanity''s inclination towards travel throughnd via their legs.


    It couldn''t be helped, every Martial Squire was once an ordinary human. Their entire Martial Art in the Apprentice Realm was centered around the human being that they were anatomically, then their Martial Body in the Squire Realm was optimized to cater to their Martial Art and their Martial Path.


    This necessarily meant that the Martial Body could not be too diverged, evolutionarily speaking, from baseline humanity. Rui could not even imagine what kind of warped Martial Path would require such a thing to ur.


    On top of that, based on the analytical and summary reports on the breakthrough to the Squire Realm gained from the research of the secret research facility in the Commonwealth Duchy of Vinfrana that Julian had prepared for him long when he was in the Apprentice Realm, Rui knew that it was impossible for the Martial Body to diverge too much from baseline humanity.


    The breakthrough to the Squire Realm was an enhancement of the human body''s specs the configuration of which was suited to the Martial Art of the Martial Apprentice in question.


    Thus, an overwhelming majority of Martial Artists would always be more effective at traveling throughnd than through the air.


    "Alright, we''ve finally reachednd," Kane peered at the horizon, spottingnd after nearly four hours of sky-walking. "Let''s switch tond-walking when we get there."


    Rui nodded.


    He had no qualms about doing that. Sky-walking drew far too much attention in the first ce, far more than he wasfortable given the sticky predicament that he was in.


    "You''re going to have to use Void Step to cover our approach," Rui told him. "I don''t want people knowing that we even stepped foot into whatever that town is. That reduces the probability that we''ll be tracked by anyone looking for us."


    Kane nodded, putting his hand on Rui''s shoulder.


    The two of them disappeared into thin air as the technique took effect on all sentient and sapient beings in the vicinity.<novelsnext>I think you should take a look at </novelsnext>


    Soon enough, they had reached their destination. A simple port town that went by the name of Garanga. Rui took note of the cooler temperature of the town that they had just arrived in. The town that they were in was much further north of the continent than the previous port town that they had presided in for the time being. The air was also a lot less humid, certainly a lot less humid than the air in the Umiana Trench.


    The many people on the harbor wore denser and heavier clothes protecting their bodies as they went about their work.


    The energy of the town was a lot more restricted than the dense and bustling town that they had previously stayed in, making it feel more nd and dull.


    Not that it mattered to Rui and Kane, who had no intention of staying there.


    It wasn''t until they had entered a more remote ce that they undid the technique when Rui made sure that there was no one tracking them.


    A secondter, they had already disappeared, leaving behind sonic booms in their wake as they traveled throughnd swiftly.


    The following journey was one that was smooth, against all of Rui''s expectations. They did take longer than a week to reach their location, but that was because of rest time, among other things. The two of them continuously traveled North-west as Rui soaked in the sights of the rest of the continent. This was the first time that he was so far from the Shionel Confederation that many of the locals in the viges and towns that they had periodically resided in had never even heard of the Kandrian Empire!


    This was a shock to both Rui and Kane. The two of them were ustomed to everybody that they had ever interacted with knowing exactly what the Kandrian Empire was. It was one of the four powerhouse bigshot nations from the very far-east side of the Panama Continent.


    The fact that almost none of them had even heard of what the Kandrian Empire was showed Rui how much lower the flow of information was in this worldpared to Earth. Communication devices and remotemunication were not entirely normal to him, however, he hadn''t forgotten that prior to bing a Martial Artist, he had never even seen such amunication device his entire life.


    Only the upper echelons of society had ess to more robust forms ofmunication and information transmission through esoteric technology, most of the human civilization couldn''t use it, thus their awareness of nations far away from their homes was quite limited.


    This was probably the first time that Rui and Kane had gotten so far away from the influence of the Kandrian Empire and the Martial Union. At such distances, it was not easy for the Martial Union to intervene as strongly as it could within the domain of its control. Most of the time, they had never gotten out of the domain of influence of the Martial Union. Even on missions, they had usually gone to nations that were firmly within the grasp of the Martial Union.


    Even the Shionel Confederation, while still far enough to be out of the immediate domain of influence, was still subject to implicit constraints due to how powerful the Kandrian Empire.


    Even that minor condition wasn''t true here, although he still wasn''t as far as he would have liked to have been, it was a good first step.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 981 Encounters

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    The many sights that Rui saw were quite fascinating. He saw all kinds of people, cultures, nations, and environments.


    The esoteric and exotic nature of the physicalndmass was already known to him. It was the reason why crazy phenomena like dungeons, and floating inds were possible. In their travels to the Thundering Valley, they came across strange phenomena that they had never seen before.


    "Is that vige inside a tree?" Kane''s eyes widened when they stumbled across a huge tree with holes in and out through it while traveling through the Great Forest of Xar. An evergreen forest was said to be rich with esoteric flora and fauna.


    They hade across a strange tribe of people that lived inside a big tree with a vertically extending vige.


    Unfortunately for Rui and Kane, these tribe''s folk did not appear to appreciate outsiders.


    "Oh fuck me, they''re attacking us!" Kane groaned as he avoided a Squire-level bow and arrow attack.


    Rui on the other hand simply stood in ce as he gazed at the arrow with curiosity and interest. He could instantly tell that it was made out of extremely durable Squire-level material. The sheer force with which the archers wereunching them meant that they certainly were Martial Squires.


    "Hey! LOOK!" Kane shook him out of his stupor as a wave of arrows came flying right at them.


    WHOOSH


    The two of them just barely evaded, before disappearing into thin air as Kane activated Void Step with Rui.


    The two of them quickly scampered away from their original ce.


    "Stop dazing out when we''re being attacked!" Kane red at him.


    "My bad¡­ Still, bow and arrow Martial Art¡­?" Rui murmured. "That should be impossible¡­"


    He recalled a conversation that he had with Headmaster Aronian. The elder Martial Artist had told Rui that the fields that could serve as Martial paths were limited by how much of the intrinsic capability of human beings that employed. That was why operating esoteric technology that mechanically flung projectiles like muskets could never serve as a Martial Art, the power and the capabilities of such weapons did not emerge fundamentally from the human wielding them.


    (''That doesn''t strictly apply to these tribal Martial Artist archers, I suppose,'') Rui mused as he watched them cautiously investigating the ce where Rui and Kane had disappeared out of their senses. (''That is why they are able to pursue their bow and arrow oriented Martial Paths.'')


    It made sense. The power that fundamentally drove a bow forward came from the human being, after all. One needed to draw a bow with force, and that force would get converted into mechanical potential energy in the bow, which would then get converted into kic energy.


    Thus, even if instruments were being used to aid the Martial Artist, as long as the power came from the human being, it would most likely be a viable Martial Path that the Martial Artist could pursue.<novelsnext>I think you should take a look at </novelsnext>


    The same was true for other weapons as well. The source of power behind sword attacks came from the human being fundamentally.


    That made sense to Rui, but he still had questions.


    (''How in the world did these people be Martial Squires?'') He frowned.


    The breakthrough evolution process to the Squire Realm was not something that one could simply dream up on their own. It was an advanced scientific procedure that employed principles of Darwinian evolution in the human body.


    Rui remembered the chamber and the esoteric surgical machines that they had used in the process of him bing a Martial Squire. They were highly sophisticated machines and technology. Even if the tribe''s Squire evolution breakthrough method was more primitive and limited, how on Earth were they able to evolve human beings?


    "The same was true for the Martial tribes of Vilun Ind¡­" Rui recalled. "How do such primitive small groups have ess to such procedures."


    Even though he didn''t feel as though he had arge sample size, he couldn''t help but wonder if the reason theye about it was not natural, but something orchestrated by someone, or a group intentionally.


    If the reason that these tribes came to possess such a procedure was due to the intervention of a third party, it would be more believable than these tribes creating the procedure themselves.


    N?velDrama.Org owns all ? content.


    But that would imply that there was a group that was trying to spread the secret of the Squire Realm, secretly. That was also a bit far-fetched.


    Why even spread the breakthrough to the Squire Realm in the first ce? Groups that could produce Martial Squires were always above groups that couldn''t. That was why every nation had a strong vested interest in monopolizing the breakthrough to the Squire Realm. No nation was willing to spread or trade it under any circumstances.


    He hadn''t forgotten his mission in the Commonwealth Duchy of Vinfrana where he had to destroy a research and experimentation facility where the breakthrough to the Squire Realm was being conducted. That was a good example of a nation doing everything in its power to stop a nation doing everything in its power to obtain the secret of the Squire Realm.


    Rui shook his head, putting such thoughts away as he turned to Kane. "Let''s get going, no point in entangling ourselves with them.


    The two of them came across many more strange sights of different kinds of people and ces on their journey to the Thundering Valley. As well as a variety of strange phenomena


    They into clouds that were on the ground and rained upwards, for some reason. They ran into ake filled with blood, They ran into a ce of seemingly no gravity. Rui ran into a myriad of strange fauna and flora lifeforms that were straight out of a fantasy novel.


    Traveling through a great number of ces showed Rui that even after being around in this world for twenty years, he still didn''t understand what was, and wasn''t possible. If Martial Art weren''t a thing, he most certainly would have explored the fantasies of this world his entire life.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 982 Arrived

    After more than a week, the two of them had finally arrived at their destination. The Thundering Valley could be seen in the distance.


    What they saw left them speechless.


    A dark sky. One that nearly embodied the concept of night.


    An even darker valley. It was the abyss of abysses.


    Yet it was the myriad of streaks of blinding light connecting one to the other that truly stunned them into silence.


    It was such a surreal sight that it hypnotized those who gazed upon it. The countless shes of light were bright, capable of lighting up the entirety of the valley even better than the sun could. Rui could scarcely imagine the sheer amount of current flowing through each lightning bolt. The sum totality of all the power within the valley was so great that it would probably vaporize any Martial Squire on the continent!


    It was a magical sight.


    No words could possibly do the beauty of the dance of lightning any justice. No one could ever fathom what it was like unless they stood where they stood and beheld the magnificence of one of the most exotic phenomena in nature that Rui had ever seen.


    The Thundering Valley was loud. Each sh of lightning was followed by thunder. Considering that they were quite some distance from actually reaching the valley, it was quite surprising to Rui that they could hear it quite clearly.


    In fact, he suspected that it would end up being even noisier than the Umiana Trench once they actually entered the valley!


    "Man¡­" Kane finally managed to squeeze out a word. "This¡­ This is beyond anything I had imagined."


    Rui nodded. The Umiana Trench had left them feeling in a simr manner, however, the difference was that the Umiana Trench was a man-made phenomenon. Furthermore, it was a man-made phenomenon created by a Martial Sage of all people.


    The Thundering Valley, however, was a natural phenomenon. The climate of the region that they had entered was extremely stormy. The sun was seemingly perenially covered by the sun all the time, the environmental factors of the region were such that massive dense clouds were a staple.


    The region received heavy rains most of the year while receiving light rains when it didn''t receive heavy rains. On top of that, the valley was allegedly lined with an esoteric ore innd and soil that was extremely conducive to lightning bolts, every inch of soil served as a powerful lightning rod that pulled at the electrical charge in the cumulonimbus clouds, urging for the lightning bolt to fall.<novelsnext>I think you should take a look at </novelsnext>


    These two factorsbined resulted in an unprecedented phenomenon where a gigantic potential difference between the clouds and the valley created countless channels for electrical flow, resulting in countless lightning bolts that scarred away at the valley. N?velDrama.Org owns all ? content.


    The Thundering Valley was so dangerous that ordinary humans could not survive stepping foot in the valley. Some humans could survive being hit by one lightning bolt.


    Few may even be able to survive being hit by two. However, the Thundering Valley was infested with more than just a few lightning bolts or even a million of them. There were billions of lightning bolts across the entirety of the valley. Each lightning bolt was so close to each other that from a distance, it was too difficult to tell them apart! It just looked like it was raining lightning instead of water!


    Rui doubted that even Martial Apprentices could safely navigate the Thundering Valley. Perhaps they could handle being near the exteriors, where the lightning was said to be less,pared to the core where the intensity was too great even for Martial Squires.


    "Let''s get some rest in the closest town to the Thundering Valley," Rui told Kane. "We cane back after we have gotten some rest. We have been traveling all day, after all. I''d rather we be at our peak than not. I don''t want to waste potions frivolously now that we no longer have our wealth."


    Rui and Kane could have quickly regained their stamina with physical rejuvenation potions and some nutritious food pills, but Rui had no interest in using resources that were growing more scarce. It was at times like these that losing the wealth that he had gathered hurt. He had retained some of the money he made, but almost all of it had gone into purchasing protection for his family and the cooperation of Guildmaster Bradt.


    "Sure thing," Kane replied, never once taking his eyes off the Thundering Valley. "I wanna make sure I''m at my peak too¡­ I may have underestimated how difficult this thing is."


    It appeared that witnessing the power of the fastest and quickest natural phenomenon had had a profound effect and impact on him. He had been very eager to test his evasive maneuvering prowess against the lightning, but having finally witnessed it up close had shown him that he was still sub-par.


    Rui knew that, of course. Lightning moved hundreds of times faster than sound. They were no match for its speed at the moment. Perhaps Kane could close the gap significantly with Godspeed, however, Godspeed was not an evasive maneuvering technique, and he couldn''t use it to dodge continuously.


    On top of that, the reflexes needed to react to lightning were extremely also extremely high, which the Godspeed technique did not help with. That meant that both Rui and Kane were going to be put through the wringer when it came to evading the lightning bolts.


    It was quite likely, that at least at the start, they were going to have to remain stuck on the exteriors of the Thundering Valley, before slowly trying to make progress to the innernds of the Thundering Valley.


    Rui suspected that their time in the Thundering Valley would not be nearly as straightforward as their time in the Umiana Trench. For one, the freedom that they would have in the Thundering Valley alone meant that Rui and Kane could choose to train in any manner that they deemed fit.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 983 Lore

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    From what little research Rui had done, it was said that the Thundering Valley was used by Martial Artists from across the continent to test their Martial prowess. One thing Rui was relieved by was the fact that the Thundering Valley was not as densely popted as the Umiana Trench.


    Thetter necessarily needed a huge number of Martial Artists in it at any point in time. However, that made it more unpleasant for Martial Artists like himself. Most Martial Artists preferred to train in solitude, thus mass training was something most of them had not done in a long time; since before they even became Martial Artists in the first ce.


    Rui had to admit that the fact that training in the Thundering Valley was not regted by some organization was quite relieving. He knew that there wasn''t as much of an issue just entering and doing as he pleased without some Valley Surveince Force getting on his back for every little thing.


    Part of the reason for this, of course, was the fact that the Thundering Valley did not pose an existential threat to the surrounding nations. It was true that the prospect of entering the Thundering Valley was an extremely dangerous one, but it was true that the danger was almost entirely contained to the valley.


    The Umiana Trench, on the other hand, threatened to ruin the coastal nations a second time if it was allowed to be consumed by the raging ocean. The coastal nations had actively put an immense amount of effort into advertising it to draw Martial Artists from all over. This was one of the reasons that even Kane had heard of it despite living a great distance away in the Kandrian Empire.


    The same was not true of the Thundering Valley. There was no great sustained effort to promote and spread it. Thus it was far less popr than Umiana Trench.


    In fact, the only reason he hade to be aware of it was because of the information that he had gotten from Guildmaster Bradt who had thoroughly covered his bases, as expected of someone with his informationwork.


    "It seems that there isn''t as much of a rush of Martial Artists looking to get in, I see most of your customers are not Martial Artists after all," Rui remarked as the innkeeper served them some food.


    "We get Martial Artists¡­" She replied. "But most people whoe here are tourists who wish to observe the spectacle from afar. Martial Artists are scarce, so even if many of theme running, ordinary tourists outnumber them greatly."


    Rui nodded. This made sense. Ordinary people were essentially banned from entering the Umiana Trench. Reaching the ce through ordinary means was impossible as no ship or fisherman would be willing to take anybody anywhere near the Umiana Trench.


    It was too dangerous after all. The edge of the Umiana Trench was subject to an unfathomable amount of forces shing against each other. On one side, of course, was the ocean itself. The pressure that the ocean exerted on the water drove it forward with an unfathomable amount of momentum.


    On the other side were tremendously powerful Martial Squires who, at least from the perspectives of ordinary humans, were nothing short of cmities in human form. It didn''t take a genius to figure out that going anywhere near the edge of the Umiana Trench was courting death. That was why even getting anywhere near the Umiana Trench was essentially impossible for normal people.<novelsnext>I think you should take a look at </novelsnext>


    The Thundering Valley, on the other hand, did not have such perils. Ordinary humans could spectate and even observe it from a distance with some safety precautions. Thus it made more sense that the many surroundings inns around the Thundering Valley weed more normal people visiting the Thundering Valley from afar.


    "Are you two Martial Artists?" She asked warmly, turning towards them.


    "Ah¡­ We aspire to be," Rui smiled.


    The two of them had changed their Martial attire before leaving, while also suppressing their Squire-level aura with their respective techniques. Furthermore, they made sure that no one saw them, thus it was impossible for anyone in their current surroundings to know their identity.


    "Be careful what you wish for," The elderlydy sighed. "Martial Artists lead a perilous life fighting against other Martial Artists. It is true that they have power that transcends human limits. But it is also true that they are the most likely to die in conflict. The Martial World is a ruthless and dangerous world. I would hate to see two young men like yourselves get hurt."


    "We will take your words into consideration," Rui lied. Now he felt guilty for being a Martial Squire, which was a strange sensation. "Can you tell us more about the Thundering Valley?"


    "There is not much I can say beyond what you probably already know¡­" She spoke slowly. "The Thundering Valley is not a ce I have dared gone anywhere near, after all. However¡­ I have heard that the valley houses powerful beast species¡­ The raijus. Martial Artists who have visited the Thundering Valley have mentioned it from time to time. Apparently¡­ the Thundering Valley is a ce where creatures that can harness the power of lightning reside."


    Rui''s eyes narrowed as he considered that piece of information. "I see¡­"


    Considering everything that he had seen, it didn''t even sound all that crazy. It was entirely possible for there to exist beasts and monsters that could harness the power of lightning.


    It also made sense that they would reside in a ce like the Thundering Valley where they would most likely best be able to advantage of their surroundings and environment when creating lightning.


    "You must go anywhere near the actual valley¡­" She warned them with a serious tone. I know of people who have ventured close and never returned. No one knows what happened to them, they either fell victim to the lightning or fell victim to the beasts that reside in the valley."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 984 Enter

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    "Thank you for your concern," Rui smiled. "The food is delicious, by the way."


    The two of them refueled themselves with some food and rest. It wasn''t long before they sneaked out of the inn, and headed towards the Thundering Valley wearing their Martial attire.


    They couldn''t wear anything else, considering the sheer harshness of the environment that they were soon going to enter, any other fabric would be reduced to ash. Their Martial attire was made out of Squire-level fabrics that, while unable to offer any meaningful protection to them, were capable of surviving the immense rigors of Squire-levelbat for the most partrgely by simply evading being the target of most of the energy.


    All punches and strikes were seamlessly delivered to Rui''s body.


    For a brief moment, Rui considered the prospect of wearing full-body armor of some sort to deal with the lightning, before shaking his head. There was a reason that Martial Artists did not make use of suchbat gear regrly unless it was a significant part of their Martial Path. It was no different frommitting Martial suicide. Growing dependent on such gear and equipment was a sign that a Martial Artist had abandoned their Martial Path, there was essentially a zero percent chance that they would be able to grow stronger.


    It was why Kane was extremely hesitant of using a knife coated with poison in the Shionel Dungeon, and only did so for the briefest of times under life-threatening circumstances, before abandoning the weapon forever.


    Furthermore, Rui did not think they would need such defensive measures and equipment in the first ce either. It was rather unnecessary, although there was an extraordinary amount of current passing from the cumulonimbus cloud to the valley, it was spread across the entirety of the valley. Furthermore, the greatest amount was concentrated in the center of the valley where the distance between the ground and the clouds was at its minimum.


    As long as they proceeded cautiously, death by lightning strike was a remote possibility.


    Rui even made sure that both of their footwear was not made out of materials that conducted electricity, otherwise, dodging lightning was impossible.


    Unlikely how most people thought, lightning strikes did not ur in a simplistic straightforward manner where a current of lightning straightforwardly jumped from the cloud and hit the ground.


    The actual mechanics of lightning was a lot moreplex. The process began with two streams of charged particles emerging from the ground and the cloud respectively due to the strong potential difference between the clouds and the ground. It was only when those two streams touched each other in midair did the circuit beplete, causing a tremendous flow of current to ur through the path, striking the ground.


    That meant that if their footwear was conductive to electricity, then they very well could be part of that conductive circuit. If that did happen, then it would be impossible to avoid the lightning as the circuit would just follow them.


    Rui ensured that they would at least have a chance by making sure that their footwear attire would not be able to conduct electricity.


    "Was it really necessary to put some rubber in our footwear?" Kane murmured. "I dunno man, this feels really weird."


    "You''ll get used to it soon," Rui replied. "Trust me, you want them on."


    "If you say so, I guess."N?velDrama.Org owns all ? content.


    The Thundering got louder the closer they got, as did the lightning shes. At this distance, ordinary people would be unable to eveny eyes on the lightning. The two of them did not suffer any problems as they were able to withstand the brightness with their evolved vision.


    "Here we go!" Kane excitedly grinned as they finally reached the entrance to the valley.


    STEP


    The air changed rather sharply. Rui had never ever particrly wondered what lightning smelled like, but now he got to know. The only way he could describe it was¡­


    (''Electric,'') He sniffed the air lightly. <novelsnext>I think you should take a look at </novelsnext>


    Yet he didn''t have time to appreciate it.


    Before them was an ocean of shes of lightning, entangling through the air as they struck the ground with an astounding amount of heat and energy.


    Suddenly, a sense of peril overcame both Rui and Kane, both of them had mastered Primordial Instinct to differing degrees and proficiencies, Kane more than Rui due to a higher affinity for the technique and greater ability to master to Martial Art techniques in general.


    In a millisecond, the two of them leaped away.


    BOOM!


    A lightning bolt struck thend that they were there a moment ago!


    Rui nced at his hand unhappily, which had turned a little red. It had been too close to the lightning bolt. The temperature of a lightning bolt was easily tens of thousands of degrees Celsius, this naturally resulted in it heating the environment around to extremely high degrees. Thousands of degrees Celsius was not something that even a Martial Squire could entirely ignore.


    Rui had been a hundred microseconds toote,pared to Kane who had not only reacted much earlier but also moved far quicker than Rui had.


    "You good?" Kane asked.


    "Just the tiniest of burns," Rui replied. "My healing factor has already healed it."


    While his evolved healing factor took longer with more significant wounds, it could easily mend simple wounds like a really mild burn.


    "However¡­" Rui murmured. "I think we might have underestimated how difficult training in this ce is."


    "Speak for yourself," Kane grinned. "This is perfect! Also, that lightning bolt felt a little dangerous to me, but the damage it did wascking."


    He pointed to the tiny indentation in the ground caused by the lightning bolt. "That''s not even a Squire-level attack, that''s moreparable to the Apprentice Realm. It''s weird that it even felt threatening."


    Kane scratched his head, confused.


    Rui understood why he felt this way, but it was a misunderstanding. "Lightning is not a solid object, Kane. It did not collide with the ground like a meteorite would. It passed through the ground like water traveling in a river. It is tremendously energetic, but most of that energy is simply passing through, rather than inflicting damage."


    * * * * * * * * * *


    AN: Hey guys, Streak here, hope you''re enjoying the novel. I wanted to request non-priv readers to consider buying tier 1 priv, which is only 2 more coins more expensive than non-priv across the month, if possible. Bing a priv reader boosts TMU''s Win-Win score which gives this novel more features and exposure. So, please do support the novel this way if you are able and willing to.


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    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 985 Means

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    The two of them had stepped back behind at the entrance of the valley.


    "Wait, so the lightning is passing through the ground?" Kane raised an eyebrow. "How is it passing through solid ground?"


    Rui had long known that esoteric material science was quite developed in this world due to the presence of many fascinating esoteric substances that could do things that defied logic.


    In turn, a holistic and theoretical understanding of the more natural and day-to-day phenomena had taken much of a backseat,pared to Earth. It made sense that Kane did not know what lightning was constituted of, and how it moved, given that electricity was not really something that was a well-known phenomenon that was used widely. Rui highly doubted this world hade up with Maxwell''s equations.


    "Lightning is closer to a gas than it is a solid, it passes through things rather than colliding against them like a solid object," Rui briefly exined to him. "So do not be fooled by the mild craters they produce. The average lightning bolt isn''t a threat to Martial Squires but this¡­"


    Rui turned back to the ocean of lightning bolts in the distance that only grew denser the further away. "This is not average, this is at a bare minimum on the upper end of lightning bolts."


    He nced at the ground in the distance, noting the strange neon colors of the rock and soil. (''This esoteric substance is most likely a charged superconductor. It would exin the absurd voltage and potential difference between the clouds and thend, causing such a flood of current passing from the clouds to thend in the form of so many lightning strikes.'')


    "Well, whatever it is, I''m good," Kane cracked his knuckles and joints. "Forget dark dungeons that one can''t sense worth shit, or dumb training methods involving punching water like a dummy. This is what I''m about!"


    He dashed in swiftly with blurring agility before Rui could even reply. It was only a split second before he encountered his second overhead lightning strike.


    BOOM!


    A single step was all he took. He sidestepped a bolt of lightning narrowly yet cleanly, making sure to not get hit by the ambient heat as well!


    "Come on, Rui! Whatcha waiting for?" He called out before suddenly evading yet another lightning bolt.


    Rui couldn''t help but be impressed.


    Of course, he knew this did not mean that Kane was faster than lightning, or even as fast.


    Not even close, in fact. The reason that the two of them could conceive of dodging it was because the distance between the clouds was maximum at the edges of the valley. Tempestuous Feel told him that the clouds were three kilometers away from the ground. That was the reason that they were able to dodge it was because of the sheer distance that lightning bolts needed to travel before they reached Rui and Kane.


    Even ordinary humans could dodge a bullet from half a kilometer away.


    However, Rui could see that the clouds got increasingly closer and closer to the ground the closer one got to the center of the valley.


    Rui turned back forward as he watched Kane evade the lightning bolts with greaterfort every passing second. He had a confident grin as he swiftly and sharply danced past barrages of lightning bolts.


    It was definitely a stark contrast with his gloomier self in the Umiana Trench.


    Rui heaved a sigh as he considered how to go about the matter.<novelsnext>I think you should take a look at </novelsnext>


    (''I definitely need to use Forestep at some point, even if I have to dial it down a bit¡­ But the issue is that it won''t be anywhere near as effective as it was against the Root.'') He sighed.


    The reason for this was that against the Root, he already had a rigorous predictive model that served to be quite effective against the organ. The same could not be said here. Lightning paths did not have any discernible patterns. They were mindless, and what path they took was subject to near-quantum factors that he simply did not possess the ability to perceive or analyze.


    That meant that, for the time being, he could not predict lightning. That meant that he could not use the Forestep technique to its absolute maximum the way he did against the Root, or even in the Umiana Trench. The ocean was far easier to predict, even if intuitively than lightning was.


    (''I suppose I''ll eventually need to bank hard on using Forestep with Primordial Instinct,'') He noted to himself. Primordial Instinct was certainly not on par with the VOID algorithm as far as being able topensate for hiscking reaction time, but it was still better than nothing.


    He closed his eyes as he honed his mind briefly, focusing on himself. He could not afford to be scatterbrained.


    "Fuuu¡­"


    STEP


    He readied a running stance before quickly dashing forward.


    His skin tingled as it felt the sheer amount of energy that blew through the air. Just then, his instinct soared as he felt a threat from above.


    BOOM!


    This time, he managed to evade the lightning bolt cleanly and entirely. It was quite a thrilling sensation to do something that was thought to be utterly impossible back on Earth.


    Kane had already gone quite ahead in the distance, and Rui aimed to catch up with him as soon as possible.


    He closed his eyes as he activated Forestep with his breathing, suddenly, his body felt much lighter while a significant surge of power coursed through his body.


    WHOOSH!


    Rui dashed forward having grown multiple times faster.


    "You used Forestep eh?" Kane noted as Rui began catching up to him. "Be careful you won''t drain yourself."


    "I minimized the technique''s effect significantly," Rui replied. "It makes it easier on my mind to be able to process everything at this speed."


    BOOM BOOM BOOM!


    The two of them swiftly shifted from their spots as three lightning bolts threatened to fry them, cleanly evading the lightning as they surged forward into the Thundering Valley.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 986 Pain

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    BOOM BOOM BOOM!


    The air rippled with thunder as Rui and Kane evaded lightning bolts meticulously, being careful to avoid being within the vicinity of the lightning bolt to not get exposed to extreme heat.


    As they evaded lightning bolts, they also tried to move closer and closer toward the center of the valley. Although the two of them knew that there was no way they would be able to make it to the center of the valley as Martial Squires, they still wanted to push themselves and see how far they could go.


    Their progress was very wonky and chaotic. Rui felt strangely nostalgic as he thought back to his fight with the Root. He had been faced with a simr predicament back then as well. Back then, he had needed to close the distance between himself and the Root. He had needed to make marginal progress bit by bit, taking five steps forward, but four steps back.


    This was a simr situation. Instead of roots, there were dealing with lightning.


    Rui and Kane both froze for a moment as their Primordial Instincts screamed of great peril.


    The two of them dove from their spot as a lightning boltrger than they had ever seen struck the spot that they were less than a millisecond ago.


    BOOOM!!!


    "Rgh!" The two of them grimaced as they were unable to escape the heat. Their bodies were covered the light burns as the skyrocketing heat of the lightning bolt burned them lightly. Kane was better than Rui considering that he moved away faster and thus got further away, but their outer flesh had turned red.


    "What the hell was that?!" Kane asked even as he dodged a lightning bolt that struck his spot a secondter.


    "That was one of therger lightning bolts of the Thundering Valley that are moremon the deeper we go," Rui replied as the damage he took was healed by his body.


    "That one was way thicker than any other lightning bolt we''ve seen thus far!" Kane eximed. "If I actually got hit with that¡­"Text ? 2024 N?velDrama.Org.


    He didn''t even need toplete his words. His actual toughness and durability were extremely low, both of them knew that he was a goner if a lightning bolt of that magnitude hit him.


    Rui would probably fare far better than he did because his Martial Body''s configuration did lean more towards durability and defense. Furthermore, he had a stronger healing factor, and he had also mastered Final Breathing, which was one of the reasons he survived being chewed by the Root.


    "Maybe¡­ We should avoid biting off more than we can chew at the moment," Rui offered.


    "Yep,"


    Just as Rui was about to suggest returning back a bit, his eyes widened as he realized he made a mistake.


    "Sh-!"


    BOOM!


    A powerful bolt of lightning struck him.


    It hurt more than he had expected. Even more than the damage he had undertaken against the Root. <novelsnext>I think you should take a look at </novelsnext>


    A titanic surge of current passed through his body, and more importantly, his nervous system. It made him feel pain that wasparable to what he felt during the Squire evolution breakthrough procedure.


    "AAAAAARGH!" Rui grimaced as he fell to his knees. "¡­Damn!"


    "Rui!" Kane called out as he avoided lightning strikes on his way to Rui. "You okay?!"


    The actual energy of the attack was that of a low-grade Squire-level attack at most. The issue was that it caused pain far greater than the actual damage. It caused pain like every cell in his body was being devastated by a powerful attack.


    The reason for that, of course, he knew. The current had affected his nervous system, every nerve across his body was firing pain signals to his brain greater than what the damage actually was due to the current flowing through his nervous system.


    BOOM!


    Rui barely managed to dodge another lightning bolt, still reeling from the pain of the one that hit him.


    He quickly headed back momentarily, as he felt himself regaining proper control over his body.


    "Are you ok?" Kane asked with concern. "That looked pretty bad."


    "Yeah¡­" Rui groaned. "It hurt way more than it actually damaged my body."


    Rui flexed his muscles testing his motor control. The current has also introduced a mild paralytic effect that he was struggling to get rid of.


    "Let''s not get too ahead of ourselves," Rui finally said as he finally felt his body returning to normal. His healing factor was doing a good job mending the damage and the burns to his body. "Probably best to not venture in too deep. The lightning bolt that hit me wasn''t even that big. If it was therge one from earlier, that¡­ That would be brutal."


    Rui wasn''t sure whether he''d be able to survive a powerful lightning bolt thatrge striking him.


    "Yeah," Kane nodded, turning back to look at the ocean of lightning bolts. "If it did that to you, I don''t even wanna think what it would do to me."


    "The boundary that we went to is very close to our limit at the very moment," Rui murmured. "Maybe we can change that in our time spent training here."


    The two of them hade pretty close to their limits, especially Rui. His evasive capabilities without the VOID algorithm were not something that could be boosted immediately.


    The two of them had quite a lot to think about in this particr regard. Rui was determined to not leave the Thundering Valley without making some progress. Kane was determined to not leave the Thundering Valley because¡­ he liked it too much. He was in hisfort zone and his home court when it came to training like the one that they were doing in the Thunder Valley.


    "Alright, let''s get back to training," Ruimented as he bounced back up, heading towards the Valley again.


    "Are you sure about that?" Kane looked at him with a dubious expression.


    "Yes, I don''t want to waste the Forestep that I have already activated."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 987 Overcome

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    He had activated Forestep to a minor degree than he normally did, the Forestep technique boosted his movements to a much less degree than Kane''s Godspeed did because it inherently spread the boost over time and because Rui had only mastered the Godspeed amplification technique to a partial degree due tock of affinity and Kane''s talent.


    Even still, that almost entirelypensated for the significant gap between them, albeit Rui''s moves were still less fluid than Kane''s, his reaction was longer than his as well. He still did not want to waste this application of the Forestep technique.


    Even if he did not make much progress today, he was determined to gain more experience and then use that experience to identify what it was that he wascking, and what he could to do make it better.


    In time, he hoped to be more effective in dealing with lightning.


    The two of them immediately jumped back into training as they maneuvered across the outeryers of the Thunder Valley. Rather than just statically dodging lightning from ce to ce, the two of them decided a run course across the outer section of the Thundering Valley.


    This increased the difficulty of the challenge because they needed to dodge lightning while moving at high speeds. It was much more difficult to dash off in a direction perpendicr to one''s running than it was to do so when one was stationary. It allowed them to make it more challenging without increasing the risks too much by going too deep into the Thundering Valley.


    Kane had it easier as he had to hold back since he was still faster than Rui due to the Forestep technique being limited in order tost longer. Furthermore, Rui himself was acting more cautiously and carefully, since he was moving faster than what he was mostfortable with.


    BOOM BOOM BOOM!N?velDrama.Org owns all ? content.


    The two of them engaged in all kinds of maneuvers to evade lightning from all directions. One of the tricky parts about lightning was the fact that not only did it not follow a straightforward trajectory, but it was capable of moving in all kinds of wacky directions.


    Rui had to dodge a lightning bolt that seemingly was going topletely avoid them but then suddenly change trajectories and race towards them. Dodging such bolts was extraordinarily difficult.


    The first time they ran into a Martial Squire was quite surprising since they had forgotten that this was a ce where Martial Artists trained. As they circled around the valley, they ran into several Martial Squires. Thankfully, they each minded their own business. No one wanted to do anything that could be misconstrued as hostility and get into a fight in such an environment, that was concretely detrimental to both sides. It was not possible to fight all out here without getting hit by lightning bolts, thus all of them pretended the other did not exist.


    However, Martial Artists weren''t the only creatures they ran into.


    Rui''s eyes widened as something moving in the distance caught his attention.


    Most of his attention was focused upward since that''s where the lightning came from. He had purposely minimized his awareness of what was ahead given that he was preupied by the lightning, he only needed to make sure that he was tracking the terrain.


    It wasn''t until both of them felt a sense of threat that was different from the lightning did they direct more attention ahead.


    It was smaller than Rui had expected. About the size of a tiger, yet vastly more perilous. It resembled a fusion between a lion and a wolf, with one of the most eye-drawing traits being the fur coat that sparkled with lightning. In fact, the mane of the creature looked like it was made of lightning!


    "Is that¡­?" Kane''s eyes widened as he gazed at the fantastical beast ahead of him.


    "It''s a raiju," Rui paused in his paths, prompting Kane to do the same. <novelsnext>I think you should take a look at </novelsnext>


    The creature had intelligent eyes.


    It was a magnificent creature with an otherworldly appearance. It possessed a grace and a fierceness that co-existed. He knew that they were not going to be able to evade.


    [Outsiders. Leave.] It growled at them. Rui''s widened as he instinctively understood what the beast was telling them via Fauna Flow.


    BOOM BOOM BOOM!


    Rui didn''t need any more confirmation as he watched several lightning boltsnd on the creature without so much as fazing it. It appeared that it was truly immune to lightning!


    Before Rui and Kane could even turn away, the creatureshed out at them!


    "Shi-!"


    ZZZZT!


    "Rgh!" Rui and Kane grimaced as webs of lightning emerged from the creature''s fur coat, striking them. Their bodies burned as an immense sensation of pain enveloped their entire body, they struggled, before finally retaining control over their body.


    They both leaped away, dashing away from the creature as they did their best to avoid lightning bolts on the way back.


    THUD!


    "That¡­ HURT!" Kane cursed as he fell to his knees. The attack had done a number on him as he realized that he truly could have died there, due to his weak constitution. "Oof, what was that creature''s problem?!"


    "It grew impatient that we were still standing before it," Rui groaned. "This lightning is harder to deal with than I expected. We''re going to need to find a way to deal with it more concretely."


    Rui had alreadye up with a branch-new idea on how to be able to evade lightning more efficiently and effectively than normal. Their current rate of sess was simply too uneptable at the moment. Rui wanted to actually aplish something in their time in the Thundering Valley, make progress, even if it was only by one step and nothing else. He didn''t want to simply get bullied by lightning and leave the ce with unsatisfied grudges against the natural phenomenon.


    "What do you n on doing?"


    "What I''ve always done¡­" Rui narrowed his eyes. "I''m going to ovee it.


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 Chapter 988 Tools

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    "Let me guess," Kane raised an eyebrow. "You''re going toe with another technique in less than a day, and figure out a way to ovee this?"


    Rui turned to him with furrowed eyebrows. "Unfortunately, no. That technique was something I already had all the necessary tools for. That''s why I was able to deal with it so quickly. Otherwise,ing up with a technique that quick is normally impossible. In this case¡­"


    He turned towards the rain of lightning pouring down on the valley. "In this case, I just don''t have all the tools necessary. I''ll need to truly start from scratch."


    His thoughts immediately turned toward the Raiju. Watching it had given Rui some inspiration on the spot. This material belongs to N?velDrama.Org.


    Watching its form alone had given him some ideas, let alone the lightning attack that itunched. Rui wondered what the principles behind that were. It was possible that it simply directed an immense amount of charge at Rui, and the potential difference between Rui''s neutrally charged body and the immense negative charge from the raiju''s body caused the negative charge to bolt toward Rui.


    Though he wasn''t entirely sure, regardless, it had given him some ideas.


    Unfortunately, many of his more ambitious ideas weren''t something he could work on by himself in the middle of nowhere. He needed ess to resources that he would have had at the Martial Union.


    It was at moments like these that he recalled the benefits of Commissioner Reze''s deal. He wasn''t foolish enough to think that there were no upsides to the deal. Being an internal subordinate of the Martial Union meant that he could ess these resources any time he wanted.


    The Martial Union''s training resources were soprehensively vast and wide that these alone were quite a big plus to epting the deal.


    Still, he didn''t regret his decision all things considered.


    The Martial Union was a shackle to him at this stage. Although they wouldn''t do something as stupid as antagonize him, he could think of himself as a bonafide ve to their interests for the most part. A handsomelypensated and rich ve, but a ve nheless. The very thought of it made him want to puke.


    He shook his head, putting aside such thoughts, focusing on the situation at hand.


    He had what he had, and not what he wished he did. He needed to make do with what he had and make the best use of it.


    (''The biggest issue is that I have absolutely no fathoming of the trajectory of lightning,'') he tutted with frustration. (''It''s truly painful because I cannot make use of my Martial Art fundamentally.'')


    His Martial Art was fundamentally centered around adaptive evolution, which was his Martial Path. He fought by making motions and movements that were perfectly well-timed and ced on his opponent.<novelsnext>I think you should take a look at </novelsnext>


    Having insight into what his opponent''s movements were, one way or another, was extremely central to being able to counter them, it was almost impossible to be able to make the perfect counters in real-time when reacting to one''s opponent after they had already begun moving, there simply wasn''t enough time to process what the best option was after the movements he was trying to react to had already begun.


    That was why the VOID algorithm incorporated a predictive model function. Predicting one''s opponent was necessary when it came to being able to counter them well.


    It was rare that Rui was in a situation where his predictive model was ineffective, but unfortunately lightning had no patterns that he was able to discern, none that weren''t on the quantum level anyway.


    (''Does that mean my Martial Art just doesn''t work against opponents that wield lightning?'') Rui wondered as he considered the raiju that they came across yesterday.


    That was uneptable. He felt strongly about that in his heart, due to the fact that it meant that any opponent with this particr method of attack might very well be able to evade his predictions was something that he found uneptable.


    He could not let there be a means of attack that eluded him to such a degree.


    (''I need to find a way to predict, or at least gain more insight about the motion of lightning,'') Rui''s eyes narrowed as he considered the various option at his disposal.


    In a way, the fact that he didn''t have as many options meant that there were few ways in which the answer could even possibly lie.


    (''Being able to develop some sort of algorithm to sense lightning is most likely beyond me at this moment,'') He sighed, shaking his head.


    Not only were the factors that dictated the trajectory of the lightning bolt small, as in small on the quantum scale, but he also simplycked the means to perceive them and process them.


    Had he been able to do that, then he would be able to predict them. After all, lightning was dictated by four rather simple equations in Maxwell''s theory of Electromaism. He didn''t even need to use all four in order to predict the path that lightning would take.


    However, the issue was that he knew that quantum senses were something beyond him at the moment. The sheer amount of information that he would get from such a sensory technique would instantly make it grade ten. That level of detail surpassed even the few grade-ten techniques that he hade across.


    This was different from the Riemannian Echo as well, that technique had great range and was difficult to sabotage, but it was not good at being applied inbat, and did not have great detail either. Rui had to make do with what he had against the Root.


    (''Such a technique would take far too much time too, it''s far too ambitious,'') Rui sighed. He knew that this technique would probably take longer than Riemannian Echo did, which took around nine months. He didn''t want to spend that much time on a solution to gain better insight into the trajectory of lightning.


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 Chapter 989 Narrow

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    (''Last time, against the Root, I was able topensate forcking reaction time against the Root with the VOID algorithm instead of trying to create a technique that improved my effective reaction and reflex time,'') Rui mused. (''Maybe I should attempt thetter this time.'')


    The issue was that this too was an extremely ambitious project as well. Improving reaction time was one of the holy grails of Lightning Sect. Even for him, this was not something that could be done immediately.


    (''If pushes to shove, I''ll create techniques that allow me to sense on a quantum level and techniques that improve my reaction time somehow,'') He sighed. (''But is that really the only two paths forward? Is there no other simpler and easier solution that would allow me to ovee this obstacle easily?'')


    He reviewed everything he knew about lightning. An immense amount of charge is built up in a cloud with the excess electrons umting at the bottom of the cloud while positive charges migrate away to the upper portion of the cloud.


    This causes a positive charge to build up on the surface of the valley. Streams of electrons jump from the cloud reaching downwards, this negative streak was known as the stepdder. Simultaneously, streams of positive charges would emerge from thend moving upwards towards the sky, known as streamers.


    Because streamers and stepdders were of opposite charges, they would be attracted to each other and meet midair,pleting the circuit between the clouds and thend. An immense flow of current generating a lot of light and sound would ur from the cloud to the ground, that was the lightning bolt.


    It was a phenomenon for which a lot of unseen precurring events preceded the lightning bolt.


    (''Maybe¡­'') Rui''s eyes widened as an idea popped into his head. (''Maybe I don''t need to predict the trajectory of the lightning bolt after it has begun. What if I rely on observing the conditions before the lightning bolt has even formed?'')


    He realized that he was being too close-minded in regard to the manner in which he could predict the lightning. He didn''t need to predict its future trajectory based on the existing trajectory, that was exceedingly difficult.


    Not only could he not perceive the variables responsible for determining its exact trajectory, but the timeframe he had to predict before it was toote to avoid the lightning bolt was also small. He didn''t know how he was supposed to be able to do anything when the lightning bolt reached the ground within a millisecond.


    (''However¡­ if I am able to infer information about lightning before it even begins based on the preceding events that ur prior to it, then¡­'') He realized that this was a viable strategy. It was entirely possible for what he had in mind to be realized.


    (''If I can somehow use the streamer and the stepdder that ur before a lightning strike, then I will be able to gain crucial information on the lightning bolt,'') Rui replied. Content is property ? N?velDrama.Org.


    The streamer that emerged from thend, constituted of positive charges, could allow Rui to detect the destination of the lightning bolt ahead of time.


    (''I need to be able to sense the streamer,'') Rui''s twinkled with realization. If he could properly read the preceding conditions of lightning well enough, then he would be able to know the destination of the lightning bolt ahead of time!


    This meant the viability with which he could evade lightning was extremely high!<novelsnext>I think you should take a look at </novelsnext>


    (''This is much more practical than developing a technique that greatly enhances mybat cognition speed, or gives me quantum senses.


    Thetter was downright impossible whenpared to the grounded solution of analyzing the preceding phenomena of a lightning bolt to dodge it. That was why he was rather optimistic about his chances of creating some means to be able to gain information.


    He realized that he had been too fixated prior on specifically trying to predict the lightning bolt in a particr way.


    (''Subconsciously, I was getting too fixated on my prior sesses, and assumed that that was the only way to do things. I couldn''t be further wrong.'') He shook his head.


    The method that he had previously been trying to apply was simr to the ODA System, where he concretely predicted the future by analyzing the past. The ODA System was so sessful, that it was easy for Rui to fall into a self-made trap where he limited himself to an extremely narrow path of how he ought to go about things.


    (''But that''s not right. Information is information. Knowledge is knowledge. No matter where ites from, no matter how I got it,'') Rui mused.


    It was good that he found the opportunity to correct the facious line of thought that he had had prior.


    Now that he had figured out the broad solution by which he would aplish his goal, he hade to figure out exactly how he would apply the solution in real life. Sensing the stream of positive charges that emerged from thend was not going to be easy, after all, he couldn''t do it now, that meant he would need toe up with new mechanics by which he would be able to sense the positive upward stream from the ground.


    (''Think¡­'') He closed his eyes as he pressed his hands into his temples.


    The positively charged upward stream of particles was made up of charged molecules and atoms, and from what he understood, they likely weren''t super thin like electrons were. Perhaps if he developed a way to sense charge, then he would be able to sense them.


    However, not even Martial Squires possessed an active sense


    He nced at the ground as another idea popped into his head. (''If I simply am unable to even begin to sense a particr kind of phenomenon, then¡­ Maybe I can do what I did thest time I ran into that problem.'')


    He recalled how he ovee his inability to sense curvature in space to create the Riemannian Echo.


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 Chapter 990 Different

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    The Riemannian Echo was a technique to sense gravity that he had created by inserting esoteric substances that were sensitive to gravity and reacted in specific ways to gravity. He inserted them deep into his body so that he would effectively be able to treat them as sense organs inside his body capable of sensing warps in space-time.


    That didn''t mean that the esoteric substances merged with the cells of his body, or became connected to his nervous system like other sense organs did. No.


    It meant that he could sense their reactions to gravity inside his body and thus deduce the curvature of space based on that.


    Right now, he was in a bit of a simr situation.


    Just like back then, he was definitely unable to sense what he needed to. Considering that he overcame the problem with gravity, there was a chance that he could use the same solution to ovee that problem with the electromaic field.


    If he inserted materials in his body that allowed him to sense the electromaic field, then maybe he could give himself the ability to sense the electromaic field.


    However, there were issues with this solution as well. For one, he needed to do a lot of research into esoteric material science, just like he did back when he was working on the Riemannian Echo technique.


    Unfortunately, that was not possible. The Thundering Valley was in the Fenescin Region, a rather remote region with very little going on. It meant that he would have to go pretty far before he reached a ce that possessed the information that he needed. Then he would have to spend quite some time researching, looking for materials that reacted to the electromaic field.


    Then he would also need to conduct some experiments.


    It was simply too impractical an option at the moment. Had he been in the Kandrian Empire, it wouldn''t be an issue, but it was quite problematic in his current circumstances. Even if he did find a ce that had such information, it would not be enough, after all, acquiring them would still cost him.


    On top of all these practical issues, he also needed to be wary about gettingfortable inserting foreign substances into his body. He couldn''t just apply that solution each time. There were not only toxicity concerns that he wouldn''t be able to address in these circumstances, but also that there was a limit to the number of substances that he could keep track of inside his body. He couldn''t keep track of too many esoteric substances inside his body, they would simply be distracting beyond a certain point.N?velDrama.Org owns all ? content.


    (''For now, this isn''t a solution I can apply at this moment,'') He shook his head as his thoughts flew back to other options and considerations.


    These weren''t the only ways in which he could sense the upward positively charged stream of particles.


    Since they''re a dense stream of particles, it may be possible for me to sense them with Tempestuous Feel.


    He had never particrly tried sensing them since he was always focused in the opposite direction; upwards towards the sky.


    If he could sense the upwards drafts of the streamer with Tempestuous Feel, then he would be able to pinpoint the destination of a lightning bolt. As for whether it was possible, he would need to test it.


    It was possible that Riemannian Echo when focused on thend might be able to pick on the iing lightning bolts.


    He was eager to try both of them.<novelsnext>I think you should take a look at </novelsnext>


    He got up, leaving Kane a bit behind as he headed closer toward the entrance of the Thundering Valley.


    "Wait," Kane interjected. "Don''t tell me you n to go again."


    "No," Rui replied as he closed his eyes.


    First, he used Tempestuous Feel to sense thend. While he was it, he tried using Seismic Mapping.


    He wasn''t sure, but it was worth testing to see what the effects of using Seismic Mapping were. It was possible that the streams of positively charged particles leaving the ground would leave behind some seismic radiation that he could then use to identify them


    BOOM BOOM BOOM!


    "Tsk," He tutted in irritation.


    The seismic radiation from the lightning strikes was too loud, theypletely overshadowed any seismic radiation that the positively charged stream might leave behind.


    Tempestuous Feel was in a simr pickle, it was too difficult to make out any individual stream of particles. The reason for this was because the entirety of the Thundering Valley was a furnace for the atmosphere in a sense, the sheer amount of energy in the air meant that the particles were extremely excited, sting into each other. Had it been in an ordinary environment, perhaps his senses would have been able to sense the stream, but unfortunately these circumstances made it too difficult.


    (''Let''s hope this works,'') He prayed as he used Riemannian Echo to scan the valley.


    The Riemannian Echo technique was never one to distinguish detail, unfortunately. He was able to sense streams of energy muffled across the entire valley, but he couldn''t pinpoint their location. He was unable to sacrifice scale for detail. He could only choose which direction he directed the scale of his senses.


    The preliminary experiments with all three sensory techniques failed. He didn''t even bother using Primordial Instinct since it only detected threats within things that Rui could already sense.


    Just before he was about to consider other possibilities, a simple idea plopped into his mind.


    (''What if Ipare data from all three senses simultaneously?'') Rui wondered.


    Focusing on the feed of the three sensory techniques was mentally taxing though Rui was confident he could deal with it just fine as long as he didn''t spend too much time on it.


    It was no different from normal humans trying to pay attention to their vision, hearing, and sense of touch at the same time. It was extremely tricky and difficult, but not impossible as long as one was sharp.


    Rui had a feeling that something might go different this time.


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 Chapter 991 Success

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    "Oh?" Rui''s eyes lit up in interest as the oue of the experiment was better than he had expected. "This¡­ might work!"


    Using all three techniques simultaneously yielded a result that hadn''t urred when he used them individually.


    When observing the Thundering Valley, he felt some strange vague strange sensation that preceded a lightning strike. He wasn''t sure what it was, but it did not exist when he used all three techniques individually.


    (''Each technique was insufficient individually,'') Rui mused. (''But together, they could help close the gap that they themselves are unable to.'')


    Tempestuous Feel could help him identify the flux of particles in the atmosphere, but it wasn''t able singlehandedly able to identify the streamer.


    Seismic Mapping could help him identify the seismic radiation throughout the Thundering Valley, but he couldn''t identify the seismic radiation caused by the stream of positively charged particles flowing up to the clouds.


    Riemannian Echo could help him identify mass and energy, but he wasn''t able to distinguish the energy and mass of the positively charged stream of particles as opposed to all the energy in the atmosphere.


    Each sense was unable to lead him to where he wanted to go, they could only get him part of the way there.


    (''But together¡­'') Rui''s eyes narrowed. (''Together, they can allow me to see more than I would have been able to by myself.'')


    With Riemannian Echo, he would be detecting high-energy phenomena, with Seismic Mapping he would be able to distinguish those phenomena that produced seismic radiation, with Tempestuous Feel he would be able to distinguish drifts of particles in the air.


    Any phenomena that registered in all three senses in these manners was either a lightning bolt or the positively charged stream of particles from the air.


    (''And I can use my eyes to distinguish between those two,'') Rui realized as he applied all three of his senses to try and see if he could distinguish the positively charged upward stream.


    Unfortunately for him, he realized it was difficult distinguishing it from the ocean of information that bombarded his senses. He was able to distinguish hazes and sensations, but it wasn''t concrete enough.


    (''Still, this is worth pursuing!'') He realized, smiling. His proficiency could be improved with practice, so he wasn''t too concerned. (''Eventually, I''ll be able to handle being able to sense the destination of lightning all by myself.'')


    In the grand scheme of things, this wasn''t groundbreaking, but it meant that he had an out against lightning. He wasn''t sure how many Martial Artists were out there that used lightning-based techniques, but he would be able to detect the trajectory of any lightning if he ever ran into it in the future.


    As small as it was, it was a step down his Martial Path of being able to adapt and evolve to anything.


    "You look like you figured something out," Kane remarked.


    "I have," Rui nodded. "I think I found a way to be able to handle the lightning better than before."<novelsnext>I think you should take a look at </novelsnext>


    "Oh?" Kane raised an eyebrow. "Well, so did I."


    "What have youe up with?" Rui asked, intrigued.


    "Secret," Kane shook his head with a smirk. "Let''s have a contest, whoever''s solution is able to deal with the lightning the best wins."


    Rui snorted, amused. "Interesting, I''ll take you up on that."


    He didn''t mind a little fun and healthypetition. It was all fun and games, and a little rivalry would stimte their growth by pushing them.


    Besides, Rui was curious whether Kane would be able to outdo him in this regard. In general, he would be inclined to say that Kane wouldn''t be able to. He had surpassed Kane for quite a few years now.


    However, this wasn''t just any challenge, this was an area that was closely rted to Kane''s forte, his Martial Path. Rui did not for one second believe that it would be easy to outdo a Martial Artist in their specialty, especially one as talented as Kane.


    Although he often came off as ordinarypared to some of the things that Rui was capable of in some circumstances, the truth of the matter was that Kane''s rate of growth put an overwhelming majority of Martial Squires to shame. The amount of progress he made considering his youth in the Squire Realm was quite astounding. So much so that he didn''t fall too much behind Rui in his growth rate considering how much time Rui had spent in the Squire Realm.


    The rest of his friends most likely would not ever be able to catch up to the two of them, asides from perhaps Nel.


    "I''m going to need some training though," Rui added. "What I have in mind is not something that I can apply inbat straightforwardly."


    "Same here," Kane replied. "I''m gonna need tons of training actually. So you might actually beat me to it."


    The two of them returned back to the inn as they bantered back and forth. They both had a lot of things to think about and consider about their first experience in the Thundering Valley. Text ? 2024 N?velDrama.Org.


    Just the fact that they saw fantastic and exotic sights and even creatures alone gave them a lot of food for thought.


    Rui noticed that Kane was particrly in a thoughtful mood as he spent the rest of their day absorbed in a stupor.


    (''He must havee up with a truly interesting idea,'') Rui mused. He was d that Kane was getting into the groove of developing his Martial Art. All of the previous ces that they had visited weren''t exactly conducive to the growth of his Martial Art. He just didn''t have many opportunities where his Martial Path was directly challenged in regard to its strongest suit.


    Rui wondered if that was a factor that influences the rate of growth of a Martial Artist, being exposed to challenges that challenged their Martial Path sounded like an excellent way to confront the shorings and ws in the most important field to any Martial Artist, after all.


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 Chapter 992 Affinity

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    If that was the case, it would exin things. Rui was an all-rounder, furthermore, his Martial Art was adaptive evolution. It was centered around the concept of oveing by changing to ovee.


    Thus, any hurdle, obstacle, or impedance could serve to stimte his Martial Art. He would strive to ovee those problems by growing specifically to be able to handle them.


    This was what he had done his entire time as a Martial Artist. The most recent and greatest example of it is the Shionel Dungeon. He had set the goal of being the first clear the Shionel Dungeon, an almost insurmountable task that only the most powerful Martial Artists in the Squire Realm were capable of even considering taking on.


    The sheer number of Martial Squires thatpeted in the Shionel Dungeon back when he had yet to enter the Shionel Confederation was incrediblyrge. It was an abysmal herculean task to surpass all of them and clear the dungeon before all of them.


    Yet, setting this task for himself allowed him to surpass his limits to an extraordinary degree as he went above and beyond to fulfill this daunting objective. He ended up creating two grade-ten techniques in order to ovee them; Riemannian Echo and Void Forestep.


    Would he have created these techniques had he not subjected himself to the overwhelming difficulties of being the first to clear the Shionel Dungeon?


    (''Almost certainly not,'') Rui shook his head. (''Those techniques were created as a result of trying to ovee specific challenges that came only because I subjected myself to the original challenge in the first ce.'')


    The only reason that he ended up creating a technique centered around spatial sensing was because of the sensory jamming effects of the Shionel Dungeon.


    The only reason he ended up creating the Void Forestep technique was to be able to handle taking on the Root in the final battle. Had it not been for that one cause, perhaps the Forestep technique would have never been created, or perhaps he would have created the Forestep technique a decadeter.


    (''It''s not just the training decisions that one makes that will shape the way and rate at which one''s Martial Art progresses,'') Rui realized. (''The challenged one is subjected to in their circumstances also affect the development trajectory of one''s Martial Path.'')


    His eyes widened as he came across another realization. (''That''s also probably another reason the Martial Union organized Martial missions in such a sophisticated and rigorous manner.'')


    Organizing missions by their field; whether they were offensive, defensive, or any other kind helped not only because it allowed missions to bepleted by specialists who were especially qualified for the job, but also allowed them to face challenges that were relevant to their specialties, allowing for the conducive circumstances for growth.


    With Rui, things were different from an offensive or defensive Martial Art. He was an all-rounder, which means he wasn''t strictly limited to a particr kind of challenge for it to be effective. That theoretically meant that he could find opportunities for stimtion easier than other Martial Artists.<novelsnext>I think you should take a look at </novelsnext>


    However, did that mean all-rounders were superior?


    (''No¡­'') Rui shook his head.


    The degree of stimtion depended on many personal factors, but one of them was the affinity between the challenge and the Martial Art and the Martial Artist. All-rounders could take on all kinds of challenges, but they didn''t have a great affinity with any one particr type.


    Specialists on the other hand had great affinity with the challenges relevant to their field and could derive great stimtion and opportunity for growth.


    In that regard, he suspected that he was going to see something special from Kane this time. The training in the Thundering Valley was right up his alley, it was built for him, even. Following that logic, Kane ought to be able to develop much greater stimtion and opportunities for growth from these circumstances than Rui did.


    Rui certainly intended to make the most of this situation, however, that did not mean he could do it to the same degree as Kane. Granted, Rui also possessed an advantage at being disproportionately able to develop techniques and add individuality to his Martial Art with greater ease and effectiveness than any Martial Squire he had ever seen in his entire life, so he wasn''t sure if Kane would necessarily be able to exceed him.


    It all depended on what he had in mind. Rui knew that Kane didn''t have much experience with developing new techniques. In fact, this was most likely his very first time creating a technique fully from scratch.


    Rui wondered if making it apetition and keeping it a secret was a good idea after all. He could perhaps use some help from Rui in making whatever concept and idea he had in mind real, without necessarily losing any individuality. Rui was good at realizing extremely ambitious concepts, if he limited his help to that, it could prove to be of great use to him, all while Kane retained pretty much all of the individuality he would gain from adding the new technique to his Martial Art.


    (''Eh, if it doesn''t work out, I can always help him after,'') He shrugged individually. Rui didn''t need any reminding that, no matter how young he looked and felt physical, he was still iparably older than Kane. There was a sense of patience andposure that came with age and experience in him that Kanecked.


    In some regards, he could not treat Kane as an equal, he was still effectively a child from Rui''s perspective. Thus he decided to ultimately go about developing his own technique without being overbearing or intrusive.


    If Kane wanted help, he could just ask, he definitely knew that Rui would help him if he did that. Thus it was best to let him initiate that.


    The best oue was that it would end up being a smashing sess and he would truly surprise Rui with the results of all of his training.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 993 Results

    ?


    Rui left Kane to his own devices as he began spending his days mastering his new sense. He was initially having a little bit of difficulty with the new sensory technique that he hade up with. The reason was simple.


    Sensory techniques required the most amount of training resourcespared to other techniques in his experience. This had been true for every single sensory technique he had ever mastered in his entire life starting with the first one with Seismic Mapping all the way to histest one. All of them he had mastered using the special sense sealing esoteric technology of the Martial Union.


    Did that mean that it was impossible to create a new sensory technique without it? Of course not.


    But it most certainly showed Rui how effective some of the training that Rui had undergone with the Martial Union''s resources could be.


    Thankfully, the new sensory technique that he was creating borrowed from existing techniques, otherwise it would have been truly difficult for him to aplish what he had in mind with the technique. Text ? 2024 N?velDrama.Org.


    What he needed to use, each, Seismic Mapping, Tempestuous Feel, and Riemannian Echo partially only, while ignoring the rest of the senses.


    It was like using only a part of one''s vision, hearing, and smell, all while ignoring the rest of those senses when one didn''t even know which parts they were.


    Sensory data input did note fully organized, needed to sort through all that data and fight what he wanted.


    That was the issue that he was facing, it was an entirely mental problem.


    He spent his days meditating before the Thundering Valley.


    His training methodology was quite simple. He would apply his three senses to sense a small section of the Thundering Valley, while also storing all the sensory data that he got into his Mind Pce and organizing it.


    Every time a lightning bolt struck the section of the valley that he was sensing, he would immediately go scour through his memory and look for signs of the upward stream of positive charges from the location where the lightning bolt struck, looking for any patterns that could be used to identify whether there were the preceding events of a lightning bolt strike.


    One of the most annoying parts he found was focusing only on the relevant information and nothing else in such an environment. Although he had a sharp amount of control over his thoughts, it wasn''t easy being hyper-efficient in the way that his consciousness focused on important information.


    This was separate from more tertiary processes such as using the Mind Pce for storage and processing. He was really starting to see why the Martial Union had extravagant training resources for literally every sensory technique.


    As the days passed, Rui and Kane trained separately. Rui never saw Kane when he himself was training, and he respected Kane''s choice enough to not use Riemannian Echo to try and find him and spy on him.


    However, he couldn''t help but grow curious. He managed to notice that every time Kane came back from training, there was an unmistakable sign that he had been hit by lightning, even if he did do a decent job covering it up.


    He found it fascinating exactly what kind of training would require getting hit by lightning so often.


    Though he wasn''t sure if that was a necessity for the training or just a consequence of failures.


    He wasn''t sure if it was thetter, considering Kane''s demeanor was confident without a doubt.<novelsnext>I think you should take a look at </novelsnext>


    Rui couldn''t imagine what kind of technique would require being hit by lightning, as strange as it sounded.


    He recalled the fact that Kane had already thought of the idea for his technique after their first experience training in the Thundering Valley. That led him to believe that something about their first training session in the Thundering Valley led him toe up with whatever idea he was working on.


    He momentarily considered whether his own techniques had inspired the technique before putting the thought of the way.


    (''That''s arrogant. I should focus on my own training rather than ponder his,'') Rui firmly pushed away any thoughts surrounding them as he dove back into his training.


    Days turned into weeks, turning into months. The two of the grew into a rigorous disciplined schedule. They woke at around the same time, eating together before heading out to train in the Thundering Valley to train.


    It wasn''t long before Rui made a breakthrough in his technique.


    (''I''ve found it!'') He grew excited as he finally caught all the patterns that allowed him to identify the preceding events of a lightning bolt.


    He closed his eyes as he employed Seismic Mapping, Riemannian Echo, and Tempestuous Feel to the Thundering Valley before him.


    An immensely gigantic flux of information entered his mind, yet he resolutely threw away exactly what he didn''t need. Instead, his mind swiftly focused on what he hade to realize was the relevant and necessary information.


    SPARK


    (''There!'')


    BOOM!


    A millisecondter, a lightning bolt struck that exact location. He hade to peer through the veil of chaos that was the trajectory of a lightning bolt.


    No matter what crazy path a lightning bolt ended up taking, its destination was fixed due to the streamer''s origin point being fixed.


    This was the perfect way to estimate a lightning bolt without requiring abysmally powerful sensory techniques. He was quite excited by this result. He could now run around the Thundering Valley without care!


    "Well, that''s not true," He reigned his enthusiasm in. "A lightning bolt''s trajectory can still vary wildly and I can get by a lightning bolt that strays a lot if I''m not careful. Also, the inner regions of the Thundering Valley are definitely a no-no."


    The lightning in the inner regions was extremely dense from what little he had barely managed to glean using Riemannian Echo inbat. At that point, it was not longer speed training but defense or endurance training.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 994 Done

    ?


    Rui was ready to give his technique a new name.


    (''Though is it really a new technique if it''s just a result of using three techniques simultaneously?'') Rui wondered.


    That was an interesting question. Rui did not think that it mattered in the grand scheme. Regardless of whether he considered it to be a separate technique or not, it was something that expanded his Martial Art that also individuality.


    There was no point in specting too much.


    (''Still, it feels nicememorating it as a technique,'') Rui shrugged. (''Even if it can barely be considered one.'')


    Rui knew that he wasn''t missing much either way. Instead, he shifted his attention back to the Thundering Valley.


    It was time for a test. He wanted to see how much more knowing the destination of the lightning would help him avoid them.


    (''There''s a good chance I can use Forestep to a much higher degree, if not the entire way,'') He grew enthusiastic at the thought.


    He quickly got up, stretching as he warmed his body up. All that time spent meditating made him feel as though his body had gotten a little stiff. Not even Martial bodies were exempt from the requirement of activity to maintain their peak form.


    He stretched every muscle in his body to the limit, groaning infort as he felt the blood flow to the various muscle groups increasing.


    "Alright," He hopped lightly on his feet as he activated the Forestep breathing technique.


    "FUUU!" He exhaled deeply, immediately feeling his body grow lighter as a surge of power began flowing into his muscles.


    It was time, he activated his new technique, focusing on specific parts of the three constituting the new sensory technique. Immediately as he walked in, he could identify the patterns that corresponded with the presence of streaks of charged particles reaching up from the ground.


    BOOM BOOM BOOM!


    He spun through the air as he gracefully avoided them. He didn''t even feel the need to stress his mind by forcing his reflexes to keep up with his movements. The current system that he was working with, to a certain extent, mimicked what he had done against the Root. The difference was that he had straightforwardly used the VOID algorithm against the Root and built a thorough predictive model for it over the span of half a year.


    BOOM!


    (''Actually, there isn''t too much of a difference, now that I think about it in hindsight,'') Rui thought to himself as he casually dodged a lightning bolt.


    In the end, he was still predicting the lightning by analyzing patterns of preceding events. That was essentially how the predictive model of the VOID algorithm worked. He gathered data, noticed patterns, used those patterns to predict his opponent''s moves, and then used the best move to counter them.


    (''The difference is that this is a natural phenomenon as opposed to a person,'') Rui mused. (''The biases and patterns that normal people have are part of their individuality. However, the patterns in natural phenomena in nature are¡­ nothing short of thews of physics.'')


    This realization put Rui in a strange mood, even as he dodged lightning bolts with greater ease than ever before.


    "Does that mean my mind¡­ My Flowing Void Style¡­ My VOID algorithm can help me understand the nature of not just my opponent''s fighting styles, or strengths and weaknesses, but also the nature of reality itself?" <novelsnext>I think you should take a look at </novelsnext>


    STEP


    His eyes widened as he paused in his path. Just the fact that that possibility seemed like it might be real was absolutely insane!


    After all, the VOID algorithm was originally something that he had created for hand-to-handbat. That was all. Nothing more.


    (''But¡­ that doesn''t mean the same is true in Gaia, right?'') Rui wondered to himself before his eyes widened with an idea. (''Maybe it''s the case tha-!'')Content is property ? N?velDrama.Org.


    Just as he felt he hade on the cusp of something important, a deep and sharp sense of pain overtook his entire body.


    BOOM!


    "Rgh!!" He gritted his teeth, grimacing as he handled the mind-numbing pain coursing through his nerves. A big lightning bolt struck his entire body, he had failed to notice this one creeping up on him. "Damn it!"


    He immediately retreated back outside the valley, groaning in pain. "Note to self, store all epiphanies in the Mind Pce when in urgent situations before getting lost in a stupor."


    He had even forgotten the train of thought that he was on prior. It was as though the coursing lightning had burned the very thought from his brain when it flowed through his body.


    "Ah well, I got a general idea. If it''s important, it''lle again," He shrugged in resignation.


    He wasn''t content with the results of the test, so he immediately jumped back in, this time more focused on his gains than anything else. Rui knew that his previous failure was not an urate representation of his capabilities, he had just gotten a bit too distracted.


    BOOM BOOM BOOM!


    His sharp and well-timed Forestep movements allowed him to evade lightning bolt after bolt. Because he knew the destination of lightning bolts momentarily ahead of time, he need only pay attention to the ground, which was the opposite of what he was doing before where he directed his senses upwards since that was where the lightning bolt wasing from.


    There were times when he stopped at a standstill because he was surrounded by lightning, which was quite unnerving but something he managed to do because he had faith in his judgment.


    He spent his time running ap around the exterior of the Thundering Valley. Compared to before when he was stressing Primordial Instinct to the limit, he was moving smoothly and with ease.


    His thoughts were interrupted as he spotted a figure in the distance.


    "Look who finally decided toe out of his cave," Kaneughed.


    "My training was just about done, so it was time to put it to the test," Rui shrugged.


    "What a coincidence, so is mine," Kane grinned excitedly.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 995 Struck

    ?


    Rui noticed that he was incredibly confident and rxed despite their environment. That probably meant that he had achieved some sess. Furthermore, that also probably meant that he was quite eager to put himself to the test against Rui.


    Rui hadn''t failed to notice that he was barefooted.


    That was strange.


    Rui had told him that without the rubber that they were wearing, they were prone to getting struck by lightning.


    Before he could even ask Kane what he was doing, or what he had in mind in regards to their little friendlypetition, Kane had already made up his mind.


    "Whoever makes ap around the valley first wins!" Kane grinned as he shot away, getting a bit of a headstart.


    "That''s cheating," Rui grumbled lightheartedly as immediately pursued Kane swiftly.


    Rather than trying to overtake him, he made sure to maintain a constant distance behind him. This was difficult in and of itself, given how fast and speedy Kane was.


    However, he was more interested in observing the technique that Kane hade up with rather than trying to win the littlepetition they had going.


    What he came to see blew his mind.


    He noticed that Kane was about to run into an upward stream, meaning that there was a lightning bolt going to strike soon. He didn''t bother warning him since he had amply proven he was capable of dodging them even if he couldn''t sense and predict them like Rui.


    Yet, against all his expectations, when a lightning bolt did emerge from the heavens, streaking down in a sh of light, he deliberately did not evade it!


    He simply stopped on the spot as he nted himself in its path!


    "Y-!"


    BOOM!


    Before Rui could even get out a word, it had struck him!


    He immediately ran over to his friend, worried and confused. Yet Kane turned back, grinning.


    His hair spiked out as a light glow emerged from his entire body, his eyes had taken on a lighter hue.


    He seemed rtively unperturbed, despite being hit by a bolt of lightning. If anything, he seemed better than he did before!


    "Hehehe¡­ Try and keep up with the power of lightning if you can!" He challenged Rui as he changed directions and dashed deeper into the Thunder Valley.


    "Wait!" Rui called out. "Tsk."


    He followed Kane deeper, curious, shocked, and concerned.


    For one, Kane''sck of hesitation told Rui that this was something he was ustomed to without any doubt. He had been doing this for a few months, which exined his confidence.


    What boggled Rui''s mind was what was going on. Why did he let himself get hit by lightning?


    Why in the world did he look like an anime character?<novelsnext>I think you should take a look at </novelsnext>


    What was with his strange appearance?


    It wasn''t until Rui saw him dodging fourteen lightning bolts simultaneously that he understood what was happening.Content is property ? N?velDrama.Org.


    BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM!!!


    Not a single one touched Kane!


    He spun through the air like a hurricane, with movements that defied his previous limits!


    "Oh," Rui subconsciously murmured, feeling inadequate by what he witnessed.


    This was a rare emotion for him. The only Martial Artists who could make him feel were those from a high Realm.


    Yet Kane had done just that. Watching him dodge lightning like it wasn''t even a challenge made him feel like everything he had aplished in the field of maneuvering was sub-par.


    For a moment, he felt an old nostalgic sensation back to the days when he hadn''t even be a Martial Apprentice, back when he was still in the early stage of the Apprentice Realm. He used to truly be awed by Kane''s capabilities.


    For the first time in years, he felt that sensation once more.


    He felt that sensation as he watched Kane working wonders!


    His movement speed and his reaction speed had elevated to levels that were on par with what Rui had aplished against the Root!


    "No¡­" Rui''s eyes widened with shock. "He has surpassed me!"


    "FUUUUUUU¡­!" Rui watched Kane exhaling exaggeratedly, creating air currents with the sheer force of his breath.


    It was only then.


    It was only then that he was beginning to understand what was happening.


    "He''s using Godspeed inbat¡­ Simr to my Forestep technique," Rui murmured as he watched Kane grow faster. "But¡­ how?!"


    The reason that Rui could use the Godspeed technique in the form of the Void Forestep technique was because of the VOID algorithm''s ability topensate for his severelycking reflexes. Without that, if he dared to use the Forestep technique inbat, he would not be able to react in time to the speed ofbat urring, and would easily die to his opponent. Or he wouldunch himself flying due to not being able to execute certain movements in time due to his brain being able to keep up inbat.


    However, Kane did not have the VOID algorithm. Even if he had the VOID algorithm, it would not help him in this case for the same reasons that it wasn''t useful to Rui in this situation. He wasn''t able to create predictive models on lightning due to being unable to acquire the quantum data needed to create a predictive model of lightning.


    So how on Earth were his reflexes keeping up with his greatly enhanced speed?


    Rui recalled the strange sight that he had witnessed prior.


    (''He purposely let himself get hit by the lightning,'') Rui recalled. (''Bare-footed too, for some reason.'')


    He knew that Kane was no fool. He was actually decently sharp given his age and temperament, there is no way he would do something that foolish for no reason. Rui also had not forgotten the strange changes to his appearance after the lightning bolt had hit him.


    (''Could it be¡­?'') Rui''s eyes widened as an absurdly fantastical theory entered his mind. It was so detached from reality, even the esoteric reality that Rui was familiar with, that it made no sense to Rui. He didn''t even dare utter it out loud due to how embarrassing it was that he was even considering it.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 996 Winner

    ?


    It didn''t take Rui long to regain hisposure. Regardless of what the magic that Kane was performing at the moment was, Rui quickly grew sober after witnessing it a few times.


    On top of that, he was following Kane. That meant he had to sessfully deal with the same tribtions that Kane was dealing with, otherwise, he would get struck by the lightning himself!


    Rui''s eyes narrowed as he steeled his focus, honing his concentration and he gathered every bit of his awareness and brainpower to the hurdles at hand.


    He dashed to the left as he avoided the eight streamers that immediately formed into a lightning bolt. The density of the lightning bolts per unit area ofnd had increased substantially, so much so that even Kane no longer went deeper but had long since curved his trajectory sideways.


    (''He wanted to go deeper so that he could travel a shorter circle andplete ap around the valley quicker than if he stayed on the outer ring that would require traveling longer distances,'') Rui mused. (''Sheesh, he sure ispetitive.'')


    It wasn''t too strange. This was his field, his Martial Path. It made sense that he would hold back no punches whenpeting in a manner that centered around it, so Rui wasn''t worried.


    In fact, Rui tried imagining howpetitive he might get if he entered apetition centered around adapting and evolving.


    (''It wouldn''t even be funny,'') Rui knew himself well enough to know that he was not going to take such apetition lightly. He would push himself to the absolute limit if that was what it took to validate thepetitiveness and effectiveness of his Flowing Void Stylepared to the rest who walked simr Martial Paths.


    Seeing Kane go all out aplishing such dazzling results strangely motivated Rui more than he had expected. He thought he was above such juvenile games even if there was merit in friendlypetitions.


    (''Apparently not,'') He smiled as he exhaled deeply.


    Instantly, his body felt lighter. He decided that if he had any chance of winning, he couldn''t hold back!


    Instantly, a second surge of power enveloped his body as his body became even lighter.


    He felt as light as air, yet as swift as the wind!


    The full power of the Forestep technique was unleashed as he decided to take a little bit of a risk. He hadn''t yet tried using the full extent of Forestep with the new sensory technique that he had just created. That was why he was a little unsure, but he was willing to take a risk if that was what it took to keep up with Kane.


    WHOOSH!


    He shot forward at an incredible speed as his momentum tore through the atmosphere.


    BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM!


    He casually avoided five lightning bolts before they had even arrived!Text ? 2024 N?velDrama.Org.


    The Thundering Valley had turned from evading lightning bolts to evading obstacles, with those obstacles being the positive streams that were destined to be lightning bolts. It made life much easier as he was able to do a great job at maintaining top speed as he zipped through thend.


    "Finally going all out are you?" Kaneughed as he saw that Rui was no longer being left behind in the dust. "But that''s not going to be enough to catch up with me!"


    He was right, unfortunately.<novelsnext>I think you should take a look at </novelsnext>


    Rui knew this as well, it was just a matter ofmon sense.


    The Godspeed technique was superior to Rui''s Forestep. Furthermore, Kane''s Martial Body was most suited to maneuvering, speed, and agility. There was no way that Rui could match his movement speed.


    Thus, if Rui was going to catch up, it would be through the reaction speed department, but unfortunately, Kane had him beat in that aspect as well.


    Still, he intended to do his very best. At the very least, he could not embarrass himself by falling behind to the point that Kane''s figure had entirely left his field of vision.


    He persevered, pushing himself to the limit¡­


    But not even that was enough.


    "I win!"


    Kane leaped into the air, pumping his fist into the air.


    "Damn," Rui murmured with a resigned smile, appearing just some secondster. "Your win. Even if you did cheat."


    "Hehe," Kane grinned.


    Neither of them really cared. Kane had proven himself to be so much superior that even if he gave Rui a headstart, he would have still won.


    He had only been behind by a few seconds, which may not seem like much to ordinary humans, but it was the world to Martial Squires. From their perspective, Kane may as well have reached ten minutes earlier!


    The two of them retreated from the Thundering Valley so they could finally speak with each other without having to dodge the lightning that was constantly pecking away at the valley.


    "Exin," Rui simply uttered one word, but it conveyed everything he wanted to say to Kane.


    Kane smirked mischievously. "Oh man, you look like you''d strangle the information out of me if that was what it took to understand the technique."


    Rui didn''t even deny the allegation.


    "Well, I was always impressed with the way you applied the Godspeed technique," Kane began. "It actually suited my Martial Art just as much as it did yours, even if there were differences in the nuances of your application versus how I wanted to apply it. However, I was never able to apply the Godspeed technique as anything other than a one-time linear attack with pre-determined movements. I was quite miffed inwardly you know¡­ That was until we got hit by the lightning bolt of that raiju. That was when things changed."


    Rui recalled that incident. It had happened several months ago.


    "Although it did hurt, it also felt¡­ strangely energizing," Kane told him. "I felt as though my nerves were being turned to up to eleven. The rest of my body hurt, sure, but my nerves felt more alive than ever. So I began experimenting¡­"


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 997 Instinct

    ?


    "At first, I just wanted to feel that sensation again, so I began allowing myself to be hit by lightning. Ah, don''t give me that look, I took proper precautions and even had potions nearby," He cated Rui who furrowed his eyebrows when he heard of what Kane had been doing. "I soon discovered that my senses and nerves grew kinda super jumpy at everything. Like, I would overreact to simple stuff like thunder."


    He paused for a moment, before continuing. "The jumpiness disappeared after some time, but the more I did this, the longer itsted. So for the first month, I just subjected my body to lightning and¡­ just did that and nothing but that."


    Rui''s expression had already morphed considerably, conveying what he thought about all of this.


    "Okay, but hear me out Rui," Kane gestured with his hands before him. "By the time the second month came, the pain was minimal. I found that when I did it bare-footed, it didn''t hurt at all!"


    Rui''s eyes widened.


    That shouldn''t be possible!


    The human body was not a good conductor of lightning. That was the main reason why people got hurt; their flesh burned when lightning struck them. Electrical currents passed through mediums by recing the electrons of the atoms or molecules in that medium, and making those electrons part of the current instead. Thus the electrons that entered a medium were not the same electrons that exited.Content is property ? N?velDrama.Org.


    Mediums with high resistance towards electricity like rubber tended to get heated when a current passed through them.


    The human body was one such medium. It was an instor towards the current and did not conduct it well. That was why when electricity passed through the human body, it tended to heat up the human body significantly, causing it to burn due to this reason.


    However, the fact that Kane was able to reach a state where he wasn''t feeling pain with the electricity that passed through his body could only mean one thing to Rui.


    (''His body is able to conduct electricity extremely well!'') Rui realized with a shock. (''But how?!'')


    Although Martial Squires were certainly an evolved species of humanity, they still shared many simrities with the homo sapien species. In fact, they were more the same than they were different.


    That was why Rui couldn''t believe what he was hearing. It meant that Kane''s Martial body had evolved in a way that allowed it to be able to handle a flow of electricity far better than the ordinary human, or even his own Martial body.


    "And then the next few months were spent focusing on controlling my jumpy nerves," Kane casually continued like he hadn''t just dropped a bomb on Rui. "I had a feeling that my nerves had somehow managed to retain a portion of the lightning bolt that passed through me. I also instinctually felt that if I could just somehow control the effects it had on my nerves and reflexes, it might turn into something amazing. I had a feeling that mastering this lightning energy was definitely the way to go forward!"


    Rui was so surprised by this line of logic that he couldn''t help but do a double-take, jerking his head back as he furrowed his eyebrows with incredulity.


    Was this how normal Martial Artists developed techniques?


    (''If that''s the case, then I can definitely understand why normal Martial Artists take forever to create a technique!'') Rui couldn''t believe it. <novelsnext>I think you should take a look at </novelsnext>


    The thought process that Kane had revealed was so devoid of any logic or rationality that it actually hurt to listen to someone like Rui.


    Rui applied the scientific method when he went about developing new techniques. He usually went about it two ways. He either had an objective for a technique or a concept of a technique in mind.


    An example of the former was the Riemannian Echo technique, which he created to fulfill the objective of being able to sense the internalyout of the Shionel Dungeon. For these kinds of techniques, he took a scientific approach to thoroughly researching the possible means by which he could achieve the objective he wanted, starting with what was the likeliest.


    In the second case, he systematically established the core problems and hurdles he would need to ovee and researched the best way to actualize the technique by exploring different principles and mechanisms that he could incorporate into the technique, after creating a list of all possible broad solutions.


    He had never ever created a technique by relying on instinct and feelings!


    Instead, he applied his lifetime of experience with research and development to the creation of techniques.


    However, he knew that Martial Artists most certainly did not possess that, thus what else could they do? Most Martial Artists were sparingly literate. Being educated on the basics that were expected of every person in society was the limit, they had no concept of the scientific method!


    That was why they relied on their gut and intuition that they had developed as Martial Artists.


    Rui stopped listening to Kane''s vague and unspecific rambling as he got drawn into his own little stupor. He suddenly needed a lot to consider. He did not consider his way of doing things to be bad because they were different from the norm.


    If anything, given the sheer sess that he had achieved, he was probably training the superior way.


    However, he still couldn''t help but consider it. Would he have trulye up with this strange and fantastical technique that Kane hade up with had he been in his spot?


    (''Probably not¡­'') Rui shook his head.


    The very notion of getting hit by lightning so that he could somehow absorb a bit of its power and use that to stimte his nervous system and heighten his reflexes to be able to use the Godspeed technique was absurd to him.


    He would have never even considered it in the first ce. He was sure that he would havee up with another solution, and he did, with his new ability to sense the destination of lightning. But it was an inferior solution to that of Kane''s.


    That made him think.


    Could he be missing out because he only listened to his rationality than his instinct?


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 998 Duel

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    "Hey!" Kane jerked him out of his stupor. "Are you listening?"


    "Ah, sorry," Rui sighed. "I got distracted by something. Go on."


    "Pay attention," Kane huffed. "Anyways, like I was saying. It was only after that I regained full control of my body and my reactions that I actually began testing it out against lightning. It was amazing! It was as though my body couldn''t keep up with my nerves! It was after that that I got the brilliant idea of mixing it with the Godspeed technique! I just had a feeling that it would work, you see."


    Rui listened carefully as he went on to describe his application of fusing the Godspeed technique with his new lightning technique. He realized that there was actually quite a bit of difference between what they were doing.


    Rui utilized the predictions of the VOID algorithm to prepare movements ahead of time. He also moved within the time period that existed after his opponent had already decided to move before his movements began. In other words, he began his counter-movements at the earliest moment that it was toote for his opponent to move.


    Objectively speaking, the top movement speed of the Root was higher than his fastest Forestep, but because of this mechanism, he was able to greatly ovepensate for that speed gap.


    He used Forestep on pure reflex and muscle memory. This was simr to what Hever did with his Meteoric Throw technique. He had burned all those movements into his very blood, practicing to do them without any insight from his consciousness and thought whatsoever. He had reached an incredible point doing just that. His sheer mastery of what was a straightforward simple grade-six technique turned into a grade-nine technique.


    Rui had not reached that level. But, in six months, he had put him through excruciatingly tiring training as he dedicated his instinct to the technique. He refused to have any conscious thoughts, only focusing on his movements and breathing during that time. He was attuning his subconscious mind to the technique, ensuring that they would be able to reach the way he wanted them to.


    Kane did not do that. What Kane did was essentially reach a higher level ofbat speed by using two different paths. The first was through Godspeed, which solely amplified movement speed. The second was through this strange new lightning technique that amplified his reflexes.


    Together, he had essentially reached a different league ofbat speed.


    The former did not interest Rui that much, he was essentially doing something very simr, and Kane had gotten the idea from him. It was thetter that was truly incredible. Kane''s body had managed to retain a portion of the lightning that he had been struck with. Rui was starting to get an inkling of how that worked.


    As abat sports researcher, he was intimately familiar with avable and legal treatments and therapies that fighters were allowed to go through. He dug through his enhanced memory as he recalled a physical therapy that was centered around lightning, known as electromuscr stimtion. The therapy showed that the reaction speed of humans could be heightened in humans when they were subjected to mild electrical currents through their muscles and serves.


    It appeared that Kane''s technique was centered around a simr principle, however far superior in magnitude. However, even then, this technique would not be all that effective had Kane not been this suited to being able to handle electrical currents through his body.


    "How did you know you would be able to handle the lightning again?" Rui asked, curious.


    "Well, like I said," Kane shrugged. "It was instinct. Also, I am part of the Lightning Sect, so, you know, I felt that had to count for something."<novelsnext>I think you should take a look at </novelsnext>


    Rui stared at him with a frozen expression.


    An awkward silence ensued for a few seconds.


    "¡­What?" Kane shrunk under his re.


    "You thought you could handle lightning because you were part of the Lightning Sect?!" Rui rested his head in his hands as he groaned in disbelief.


    "Well, I just had a good feeling about it!" Kane grew embarrassed.


    Despite how silly his reasoning was, Rui couldn''t help but consider an idea that popped into his head.


    (''What if the evolution processes that he went through involved an electrical current flowing through his body?'') Rui wondered.


    In that case, only the cells of his body that were prone to being able to conduct electricity would survive, and only those cells would reproduce. If only Kane went through this more than Rui did, if Rui did at all, then it would exin why he could harness the power of lightning in this manner.N?velDrama.Org owns all ? content.


    That was just an unsubstantiated hypothesis, however, he had no proof that it was true. A piece of evidence against the hypothesis was the fact that he had literally never seen a Martial Squire with a Martial body simr to Kane exhibit a lightning technique simr to that. He had been exposed to countless Martial Squires in his time in the Shionel Confederation, and he had never seen anything quite like that.


    Then again, Kane only came up with this technique because of this environment. And unlike the Umiana Trench, this ce was not as infested with Martial Artists training. There were few that had heard of the Thundering Valley and had chosen toe to train.


    The odds that he would run into someone with the right Martial body who ran into the right circumstances and got the right inspiration to create aparable technique were quite low.


    "Incredible technique," Rui earnestly praised Kane. "Seriously, I never knew such a thing was possible. I am actually very much impressed with this technique and with you for havinge up with it."


    "Heh, it wasn''t much, really," He tried ying it off cool, but Rui could see that he was exerting control over his crooked smile. He turned to Rui with confident eyes. "We both know you''re stronger than me. But here¡­ with this technique, I think I might be able to beat you for the first time in a long time. So I challenge you to a duel."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 999 Genius

    ?


    Rui raised an eyebrow as an amused smile sprouted on his face. He felt bad, but his first reaction was one where he had a hard time taking Kane seriously. He was so far ahead of him on a general level that the two were no longer operating on the same scale.


    Furthermore, Rui grew stronger against opponents the more he knew about them, and he knew Kane really well. The predictive model he had on the guy was incredibly robust and sophisticated. It was better than any predictive model he had ever created in his life.


    What that meant was that Kane did not stand a chance against him ordinarily. Rui was confident that he would be able to fight three, or even five Kanes under normal circumstances.


    However, he quickly realized that his confidence wasn''t entirely unwarranted. The new technique that Kane had developed allowed him to develop multiple techniques that allowed him to fight people much stronger than himself.Content is property of N?velDrama.Org.


    (''No, it made him much stronger, period,'') Rui corrected himself.


    Kane had achieved what Rui couldn''t, and had truly attained another level of speed. Even Rui could not tantly dismiss his confidence against him.


    When Rui considered some of the best feats that he was proud of recently, he found that Kane wouldn''t necessarilyg too behind in regards to some of them.


    In fact, he would surpass Rui in some of them. For example, he would probably do a far better job avoiding the roots that Rui faced when he fought against the Root.


    That realization jolted Rui, but it made perfect logical sense. Kane was an evasive maneuverer, Rui could not surpass his pound-for-pound proficiency at evading attacks. Kane''s movement speed was considerably higher than Rui considering he now had the reflexes to freely apply Godspeed the way Rui applied it. Except he had mastered it to a much higher degree.


    On top of that, Kane didn''t need to burn the Godspeed technique into muscle memory since, unlike Rui, his reflexes could now keep up with the Godspeed technique thanks to this strange new lightning technique.


    When all these factors werebined, even with the prediction model, Rui wasn''t sure if he would be able to dominate Kane like he once would be able to do so.


    It was hard for Rui to get used to this shift, but he was reminded of a certain fact.


    (''This is why he is touted as a prodigious genius,'') Rui mused.


    Rui was not talented in the same way. His ''talent'' was inheriting his previous life''s memories from Earth, and being blessed with the opportunity to allow his mind to undergo a second round of growth in his new brain, improving all his mental parameters to significantly greater than they were in his previous life.


    Kane, however, was a true genius. His talent and affinity for Martial Art allowed him to discover his Martial Path at the tender age of eleven, about six-to-seven years earlier than the average.<novelsnext>I think you should take a look at </novelsnext>


    That was no different from a first-grade student being promoted to seventh or eighth grade due to their genius-level intellect!


    Rui became even more convinced that the reason Kane seemed to have stalled for a while was not being subject to the right circumstances. A theory that he hade up with many months ago. Martial Artists had the greatest opportunities for growth when they were confronted with hurdles and problems that challenged them in their Martial Path.


    This was sorely not the case on Vilun Ind, where he didn''t have much of a role to y, or in the Shionel Confederation where he did have an important role to y with the Void Step technique, but was never really challenged on impeded in that regard. The only time he had been challenged in that regard was on the sixteenth floor when they were confronted with the tree that was unaffected by Void Step, but that was not something he had trained to ovee.


    However, the same was not true for the Thundering Valley. It seemed like it was just the perfect ce to truly bring out the untapped potential within Kane, and based on the results, it had done just that!


    Rui silently resolved to make sure to take them to ces and subject them to challenges that would stimte not only himself but also Kane. So that they could both grow side-by-side. It would make his job moreplicated as the process of choosing ces would be increasinglyplicated, but he was willing to suffer this minor detriment to the benefit of his friend.


    "What do you think?" Kane smirked mischievously. "Scared you''ll lose?"


    "I''ll take you on," Ruiughed humorously. "But a duel, and not a spar. That''s interesting."


    "Spars are just light-hearted and restrictedbat training," He shrugged. "But a duel has an oue, a winner and a loser."


    Kane sighed as he turned towards the Thundering Valley with a wistful expression. "It''s a shame, but I need lightning for this technique, so I don''t think I will be able to use this technique away from here ever again. So before we leave, I do want to see how strong I ampared to you."


    It seemed that Kane was under the impression that he could never use the technique again, which surprised Rui, since he was able to think of multiple ways in which Kane could use the technique even away from the Thundering Valley. However, they all involved esoteric material science, which Kane basically knew nothing about as a Martial Artist, thus it made sense when he thought he wouldn''t be able to use it without lightning.


    However, Rui was willing to bet that there were esoteric substances that could help Kane get what he wanted!


    Although he hadn''t researched into this particr matter, he was more than willing to dive into the books if it meant allowing Kane to retain this wonderful technique.


    In fact, he already knew of one such esoteric substance!


    "Don''t worry Kane," Rui turned as he stared at thend of the Thundering Valley, and the esoteric that drew lightning from the clouds. "I have a feeling that this won''t be thest time you use this technique."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1000 Names

    ?


    "Is that so?" Kane''s eyes lit up. "Well, putting that aside. Let''s get started, since we''ve aplished our goals of creating techniques that can allow us to perform better in the Thundering Valley."


    He was right.


    "Speaking of which," Rui remarked. "What is the name of your technique again?"


    "I actually haven''t thought of one," Kane scratched his head. "I can''t think of anything good."


    "Neither can I,"


    "Then let''s name each other''s techniques," Kane suggested. "You gained the ability to sense lightning or something right? So your technique is Eye of Lightning."


    "¡­"


    "Ok, go, your turn," Kane insisted.


    Rui rubbed his chin as he tried toe up with a good name. "Let me see¡­"


    A technique that harnessed the power of lightning to boost his reflexes.


    "Fulminata," Rui murmured.


    It was a Roman name. Referring to the twelfth legion of Rome levied by Julius Caesar. The name literally tranted to ''d in lightning''. Rui felt that it was a suitable name for Kane''s technique.


    "What the heck is that?" Kane tilted his head.


    "What the heck is Eye of Lightning?"


    "That''s a cool name!"


    "Enough," Rui shook his head, sighing. "Let''s get back to our peaks. We''ve already used Forestep and Godspeed, which means we won''t be able to use them even if we do battle."


    "True," Kane had to agree.


    The two of them sat back down before beginning to consume dense nutrition pills. These pills were inedible to normal human beings, only the evolved digestion systems of the Martial Squires could handle the extremely dense nutritionalposition.


    It gave everything that any Martial Squire could probably require and more. The two of them also consumed some rejuvenating potions.N?velDrama.Org owns all ? content.


    It wasn''t too long before their bodies have reabsorbed the essential bits of mass that they had disced. Their digestion systems could break downpounds, absorb what they needed and distribute it across the body in the necessary ces. That was why they could bounce back to their peak without much hassle.


    Rui was rtively certain that this was done on purpose during the Squire evolution breakthrough process. After all, Martial Squires had enormous energy requirements. Their every strike generated more power than humans would consume in an entire month!


    That meant that the Martial body needed to break down food to a much greater degree than normal human beings. It absorbed every ounce of chemical energy that could be extracted from anything ingested, and it did it quickly.


    Otherwise, Martial Squire would need to wait months between each fight.


    Soon enough, however, the two of them were already ready.


    "Just to be clear¡­ You don''t want to fight in the Thundering Valley, right?" Rui asked with a raised eyebrow.


    "Why not?" Kane smirked mischievously. "Afraid you''ll get hit by lightning?"


    "Uh, yes?" Rui tilted his head.


    "Pussy," Kane shrugged.<novelsnext>I think you should take a look at </novelsnext>


    "Fine," Rui sighed with an amused smile. "Have it your way. Don''t think I''m going to go easy on you Kane."


    "I wouldn''t have it any other way,"


    Thus, the two of them agreed to fight in the Thundering Valley. There was also the fact that Kane couldn''t use his technique without the lightning, thus it was something Rui voluntarily agreed to.


    Soon enough, the two of them stood facing each other from a distance within the Thundering Valley. The valley roared in the background as the two of them faced each other.


    The air was tense. The atmosphere ground in the presence of two Martial Squires who had honed their mind. The sheer pressure that they exuded showcased their determination.


    Especially Kane''s.


    He had long been dissatisfied with his power when hepared himself to Rui. He had always felt the exact opposite his entire life. Within the Martialmunity of the Kandrian Empire, he had always been known as a generational talent. He had been nearly peerless.


    Things changed when he met Rui, though even then, he had been ahead of Rui for quite some time. His rate of growth after he became a Martial Artist was unlikely anything Kane had ever seen.


    It was awe-inspiring, and it pushed Kane to work harder. He wouldn''t admit it out loud, but Rui was, without a doubt, one of the reasons that he was where he was today, both literally and figuratively.


    However, he wasn''t content trailing behind anymore.


    He wasn''t content being inconsequentially weak anymore.


    He wanted to stand beside his friend, though he didn''t mind the prospect of exceeding him, if possible. Rui was not one to stay behind, himself, after all.


    He narrowed his eyes as he rid his mind of all superfluous thoughts. A profoundly deep yet faint pressure radiated from him.


    This was different from the dominant force of mind that Rui released.


    When one looked at Rui, one felt boundless power. One felt as though Rui would be able to ovee any hurdle, defeat any opponent, and endure any tribtion. It was honed, and directed purposeful power, and given time, it was seemingly endless.


    Kane, however, exuded an unknown peril. He was as fleeting as a cloud, yet as swift as a hurricane. No one could know what he was capable of, and no one did.


    Except Rui.


    But that didn''t ease his mind.


    No.


    It was because he knew what Kane was capable of, that he didn''t dare take it easy. All it took was one mistake, one imperfection, and Kane wouldsh out like a serpent, and it would be over in a moment.


    That was why he could not afford to hold back. Not here and against Kane.


    The two of them took their stances.


    Kane adopted his standard stance, his legs were centered and under his body. This allowed him to shift his body weight in any direction he chose to elerate in. His hands were loosely swaying before him as he lightly hopped and shifted between feet. A simple way of obscuring his advance.


    On the other hand, Rui adopted a closed kickboxing stance with equal weight on offense and defense. He did not want to get into a maneuvering contest with Kane, he knew that Kane would win that.


    * * * * * * * * * *


    Hey guys! This is the 1000th chapter of The Martial Unity, and I wanted to take this opportunity to say a few things. Frankly, if any of you had told me that I would have gotten this far back when I first started out, I don''t think I would have believed you. It wouldn''t have been possible without all of your support, and for that, I am deeply grateful. I''d like to thank all of you for supporting this novel throughout this journey, and I hope that you enjoy this novel to the very end. :D


    Thanks for reading, and as always, hope you enjoyed the chapter.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1001 Strong

    ?


    He was not a dummy who would simply spam Forestep to its absolute maximum in every single fight. In this case, he had already figured out that there was little point in trying to fight a symmetrical battle against Kane centered around maneuvering. The fact that Kane had more maneuvering techniques, a Martial body whose spec configuration was centered around motion, and the original and superior version of the Forestep technique meant that he was most certainly going to dominate Rui in a maneuvering battle where they both capitalized on speed and agility.


    Thus, Rui ruled out such a battle. This was the kind of logic that he had included in the VOID algorithm when he created it, however, he himself didn''t need to follow the protocols of the VOID algorithm that were meant to dumb down the process for fighters. He could produce a better result with his own critical thinking.


    Although it sounded fun to challenge himself against Kane''s strong suit, he didn''t want to when it came to a duel. He didn''t mind losing spars in such fashions, but not duels. Duels werepetitions where both sides were doing their best to win, and he did not want to diverge from that premise and norm.


    Thus rather than mirroring Kane''s own stance, he chose a stance that was most adapted to Kane''s style of fighting.


    Kane fought counter-offensively. He normally did notunch speedy offenses in most cases. He preferred to let his opponent attack him and counter by attacking through the chinks in his armor.


    That was why Rui chose a closed stance.


    A closed stance minimized the number of openings that Kane could exploit tond an attack. It also meant that Kane needed to move a greater distance to try and exploit the holes in Rui''s defense, which gave Rui extra time to avoid his strikes.


    However, even with the incredibly robust predictive model that he had on Kane. He did not think that alone would be enough to keep up with Kane.


    He had no choice.


    "Fuuuuu!" He exhaled heavily, activating his Void Forestep technique partially.


    Kane grinned, proceeding to do the same. "Let''s see which one is superior. Your Void Forestep¡­ or my Fulminata!"


    Rui wondered if Kane timed that, or if it was just a perfect coincidence, but a bolt of lightning struck him the very moment he uttered those words!


    BOOM!


    CRACKLE CRACKLE CRACKLE!


    His body took on a mild light glow while it began producing the sound of electricity crackling.


    At that moment, Rui''s eyes widened as he experienced something new.


    A new sensation.


    A depth of peril that was unlike anything he had ever felt from a Martial Squire!


    The battle had already begun.


    Rui narrowed his eyes as his expression steeled.


    From this moment on, victory was his only consideration.


    His concentration sharpened.


    He was ready.


    DASH!


    Heshed out forward at top speed with Gale Force Breathing, Outer Convergence, and his quasi-Forestep.


    In just a moment, he had arrived. The two of them exchanged a sharp nce for just the briefest of moments.


    A powerful flying knee kick amplified by the momentum of his approach flew towards Kane''s sr plexus.


    Right off the bat, Rui threw his most powerful Flowing Canon!


    However, he wasn''t pleased.


    He threw it knowing that it would be dodged effortlessly. <novelsnext>I think you should take a look at </novelsnext>


    WHOOSH!


    Kane casually side-stepped as he did a light twirl,pletely evading the attack. He bent forward as his right leg flew up in a swift high kick aimed at Rui''s head!


    POW!


    SWOOSH!


    Kane crouched as he evaded a simple punch from an unperturbed Rui whileunching a swift kick aimed at Rui''s crotch.


    THUD!


    Rui squeezed his knees together, barricading Kane''s kick while crouched a little.


    The stance was unshakable to Kane.


    This was the Sanchin kata. A stance from a branch of karate that was meant to make the practitioner immovable. It was one that wasn''t practiced in MMA, since strikes to the gonads were illegal in the UFC and kickboxing.


    Rui hadn''t expected that he would find a use for it in this life.


    However, Kane was hardly done. He blurred in Rui''s vision, almost disappearing with sheer speed. His leg retreated before shing forward at Rui''s face in a high kick to the jaw, hoping to knock him out.


    He knew that he couldn''t batter Rui with damage over time. Rui''s defense was too solid, while Kane''s offense, until very recently, was only at the grade-one level.


    Godspeed was primarily a speed supplementary technique rather than an offensive supplementary technique, the fact that his body mass reduced negated most of the boost in energy.


    Against Rui''s powerful passive and active defenses, he didn''t really stand a chance. That was why his targets were limited to ces that he could inflict damage on. He had no intention of touching any other part of Rui''s well-honed and conditioned muscr body.


    POW!


    Kane''s eyes widened as he felt the power of his strike disappear into thin air as Rui employed Flux Earther to dispel his impact into Gaia.


    WHOOSH!


    He crouched backward as Ruiunched a sweeping elbow attack.


    WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH!


    Kane evaded a barrage of swift and crisp blows as he look for an opening.


    BOOM!


    The two of them leaped backward as a lightning bolt converged on their very location!Content is property of N?velDrama.Org.


    Thus far, the battle had been a slow bnce. Neither side had revved up to their top performance as the battle steadily proceeded with both sides testing the other''s capabilities.


    It had been quite some time since the two of them had dueled each other. Several years, even. Thest time they had dueled each other properly was in the final battle of the preliminarypetition of the Martial Academy.


    Rui strangely recalled the time that Kane had made him promise that he would win. A promise that Rui had ended up fulfilling that day by winning.


    Something that he intended to do again.


    So far, he had been impressed with Kane''s new prowess. Anyone who knew him might have suspected that he was still holding back his core Martial Art.


    But this wasn''t true.


    Kane was just that strong.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1002 Sub-Optimal

    Rui had underestimated just how greatly the Fulminata technique amplified his reflexes. It was an entire order of magnitude above his baseline reflexes. His baseline reflexes were not unimpressive either, far from it. Even his baseline reflexes were significantly superior to Rui''s.


    That was what the VOID algorithm waspeting against. It was true that Rui had an incredibly robust predictive model, but the fact of the matter is, much of the power of the VOID algorithm went into bridging the gap between their reflexes.


    (''This is the power of two grade-ten techniques working together with high synergy,'') Rui couldn''t help but feel awed.


    He didn''t doubt for a second that the Fulminata technique was a grade-ten technique. There was no question. The sheer boost to his reflexes that it granted easily put it in the same Realm as Godspeed.


    Furthermore, the two techniques had an immense amount of synergy with each other and covered each other''s weaknesses with their strengths.


    Kane could use Godspeed without relying on pre-determined movements or muscle memory thanks to his reflexes being able to keep up with his movement speed. While his reflexes could aplish more with Godspeed being able to execute his reactions in time.


    Rui had recognized that there was a shift in the dynamics between them.


    It was no longer impressive for Kane to keep up with the Void Forestep technique, the reverse was not true. It was truly impressive that despite being slower in movement speed, and exponentially slower in reaction speed, he was still able to keep up with Kane with the power of Void Forestep.


    The VOID algorithm showed him what Kane was about to do ahead of time, he began moving the second he predicted Kane. He wouldn''t be able to make it in time for the counter if he waited anyter!


    The hardest moves to counter were the attacks where Kane changed his trajectory mid-air to counter Rui''s movements. That was quite the pain the in the ass for Rui to handle even if he was able to predict them.


    Kane on the other hand was not surprised. He always knew that Rui''s ability to somehow make the right move at the right time was inexplicable. He recalled how effective Rui was when he helped him train his Void Forestep technique.


    It was as though he didn''t even need to react.


    And he didn''t, Kane knew well enough that Rui was solely keeping up, despite his slow reactions, because of his predictions. That was mortifying, to a certain extent. It meant that Rui was able to see himing from a mile away, literally. Therefore even with his ability to cross a mile in an instant, Rui would be able to at least defend whatever he threw against Kane.


    However, that did not mean the battle was entirely equal. To theyman, the sh between the two of them may seem like it was equal as the two of them threw roughly an equal number of strikes, but that didn''t mean they were fighting equally with each other.


    It actually meant the opposite.


    Rui was an evasive maneuverer, he was not someone who took an active offense, as opposed to a counter-offense. Rui, on the other hand, had begun the battle with an aggressive approach, yet he ended up being forced to defend against Kane''s swift barrages to his vitals.


    The fact that he was forced to be less offensive, giving Kane the opportunity to be more aggressive than he normally was, meant that Kane had a mild advantage!<novelsnext>I think you should take a look at </novelsnext>


    "Tsk," Rui tutted with irritation as he closed off his body even more. (''The VOID algorithm''s predictive power isn''t able to do more than bridge the gigantic reaction speed gap. He reacts so absurdly quickly defensively and offensively that even the sheer depth of predictions cannot overwhelm him. But the gap in our movement speed isn''t nearly as much¡­'')


    He waspensating for the gap in their movement speed in two different ways. First, he relied on passive defenses to defend against Kane''s weaker attacks. Adamant Reforging was a solid passive defense. It meant Rui could tank Kane''s attacks to most of his body without any guard or block whatsoever.


    This wasn''t true for his crotch, neck, and several ces on his face.


    These ces required active defenses. He used Flux Earther topletely dispel more powerful attacks while using simple blocks to intercept normal attacks.Content is property of N?velDrama.Org.


    One thing that was annoying was the mild electric shock that he felt every time came into contact with Kane, even if he had predicted that that would happen. The issue was that there was no way to avoid it realistically.


    The good news was that it wasn''t debilitating.


    Regardless, he was defensively able topensate for the movement speed gap by moving lesser than Kane had to.


    However, that became difficult when Rui went on the offensive, putting Kane back in his element of counter-offense.


    Rui had yet tond a single attack on Kane. The problem was whenever he attacked, Kane easily dodged, however, even when he countered the dodge by having predicted it, Kane''s reflexes allowed him to negate whatever adapted counter Rui had by moving out of the way easily.


    The sheer reflexes he possessed at the moment meant that it was extraordinarily difficult tond a single clean blow on the man.


    (''This is sub-optimal,'') Rui''s eyes narrowed.


    Both sides were unable to hurt each other, and the battle drew into a stalemate, one that slightly favored Kane, but not enough to grant him any meaningful path to victory.


    BOOM!


    The two of them broke apart as a lightning bolt struck the spit that they were at just a moment prior.


    Rui''s mind furiously processed his circumstances as he came up with a means to victory. (''There are a few routes to go through.'')


    The first route was to leverage his stamina advantage. Kane did not have great stamina. However, the issue was that he wasn''t fighting with just his stamina this time.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1003 Strategies

    ?Content is property ? N?velDrama.Org.


    Under normal circumstances, Rui would most certainly have gone for the stamina victory. Not only did he possess better stamina due to having a more bnced spec configuration as far as his Martial body went, thereby cing a greater weight on stamina, but he also possessed the Final Breathing technique that would allow him to preserve much more energy in the long run.


    Furthermore, Rui''s Forestep technique, which he was now forced to use at a maximum was less energy-consumptive than Kane''s Godspeed technique due to it being imperfect.


    That meant that the battle would normally turn in his favor as time passed and Kane tired until he exploited an inevitable opening to end the fight.


    It wasn''t morous, or shy. But it was a surgically ruthless path to victory.


    The issue was that they were no longer fighting under normal circumstances. They were fighting under special circumstances.


    (''Under these circumstances, his Fulminata technique is essentially endless,'') Rui narrowed his eyes.


    The source of the Fulminata technique was not his own energy, but energy harnessed from lightning, stimting all nerves and neurons in his body. There was endless lightning around them, thus Rui suspected that Kane could use Fulminata for as long as he was conscious.


    (''That''s extremely troublesome,'') Rui tutted.


    Rui could not make use of the VOID algorithm forever. It was an extremely mentally intensive technique of the highest order of difficulty that he had ever seen. Asking him to use it continuously indefinitely was like asking someone to write high-pressure high-difficulty exams indefinitely.


    He could not do it.


    Of course, it was possible that the Fulminata technique stressed and strained his brain and nerves too much, causing him to be unable to use the technique for as long as Rui could use the VOID algorithm.


    However, that was a gamble at best. Rui did not enjoy gambling, he enjoyed certainty. (''For starters, I need to optimize my defenses even more,'')


    Kane''scking power was something he could exploit even further to simplify his defenses. There were very few things Kane could do to hurt Rui in any meaningful manner, which meant that there were very few things that Rui had to do to prevent Kane from hurting him in any meaningful manner, he wasn''t being as efficient as he could be.


    He nted himself in one spot as he shifted all his weight on his right leg, freeing his left leg for defensive and offensive measures.


    He took a tilted stance against Kane, with his torso facing away from Kane while he turned his head to watch Kane. His arms were brought really close to his body.


    Rui had already realized the futility of an active frontal assault. It was the most difficult thing for him in this fight, and it was not something that he could easily ovee. He knew that there were just far too few ways to go about it in a sessful manner, worst of all, it allowed Kane to fall back into his element.


    Thus Rui was content adopting a more defensive stance for the time being. If he could not reach victory by slowly inflicting damage on Kane, then there wasn''t any point in continuously attacking.


    WHOOSH


    Kane appeared before him throwing a palm jab to Rui''s throat.


    THWACK!<novelsnext>I think you should take a look at </novelsnext>


    Rui shifted his guard just a little, deflecting the attack off course.


    POW POW POW!


    Kane swerved to the side, squeezing into his striking range as heunched a swift flurry of strikes to Rui''s vital points.


    Rui barely managed to deflect them in time as he shifted his body and arms just the bare minimum amount of distance needed to defend against the attacks.


    Yet that created an opening. Kaneunched a blindingly fast attack upwards to Rui''s throat once more. This time, Rui''s guard was too slow to make it.


    POW!


    Kane''s eyes widened as Rui swiftly lowered his head, blocking the attack with his chin!


    Ordinarily, this would be a bad of defending and a good way to get knocked out. However, due to Kane''s weak offense and Rui''s passive durability, he could get away with pulling off such a tactic against Kane.


    Had he not done that, there was a good chance that Kane''s sharp attack would have pierced through his Adam''s apple, inflicting a serious wound.


    Kane grew frustrated at his inability to go around Rui''s defense!


    Rui on the other hand, was relieved, yet concerned.


    Kane was just an inch away from gaining a decisive advantage in this battle. Rui needed to quickly adopt a strategy that would put him on a path to victory.


    The frontal assault had already proven to be ineffective against Kane due to the sheer difficulty of even touching him. The stamina strategy was a gamble that Rui was not willing to take. The optimized defense evened the ying field, but it wasn''t enough, and if it failed, it would give Kane a dominant upper hand.


    (''The biggest issue is getting my attack to connect. This is the fundamental issue,'') Rui''s eyes narrowed. (''I possess the power to one-shot him, but touching him seems impossible. The fact that the predictive and adaptive evolution models are unable to allow me to even touch him shows how absurdly overpowered Fulminata is in this environment of the Thundering Valley.'')


    Within the Thundering Valley, Rui wondered how many Martial Artists could beat him. For one, most Martial Artists would not be able to ignore or handle lightning as easily as Kane did. Rui was able to do so thanks to his Eye of Thunder which allowed him to avoid them as easily as avoiding obstacles.


    But on top of that, the same lightning empowered Kane to a degree that surpassed any prediction Rui could have ever made regarding the matter.


    Was there any Martial Squire that could defeat Kane when they were fighting inside the Thundering Valley?


    He highly doubted that. In fact, Rui knew that if not for his deep familiarity with Kane, he would have long lost this fight.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1004 Awareness

    ?


    That realization gave him even deeper respect for Kane, yet it also drove him deeper into considering his paths to victory.


    One possibility that sprung to mind was altering the variables ofbat, such as range.


    He had powerful long-range capabilities that he could leverage. The ODA System allowed him to urately target his opponents from great distances away. It was particrly effective against close-range fighters as he could use it to barricade them from reaching him.


    Furthermore, he also had Transverse Resonance that allowed him to hit up to four times the power he normally could with a single attack, allowing him to inflict critical damage on his opponents.


    However, he quickly dismissed this strategy against Kane. Kane was far too quick and would close the distance between them extremely rapidly. As an evasive maneuverer, this was right up his alley, and ultimately a futile effort.


    It did not solve the fundamental challenge that was contacting Kane''s body with an attack.


    He considered trying to turn the battle into a grappling match, but he could tell that Kane was wary about being caught by Rui. Rui had used that exact same strategy against Kane far too many times in the past, it was simply not going to work when he was that cautious about it.


    (''Tsk, no long-term battle strategy will slowly lead me to victory. His reflexes negate such ns and refuse to give them the opportunity to make slow progress against him,'') Rui knew that a more ordinary standard long-term battle approach would likely be unable to hurt him. (''What I need is a tactic, rather than a strategy.'')


    The two words were used interchangeably, but there were nuances that distinguished them. Strategies were over-arching and long-term. A tactic was a more acute n that yielded oues sooner.


    Rui needed a tactic to catch him off-guard, allowing him to beat Kane due tonding a single blow in a critical moment.


    That was all he needed with Kane''s weak constitution.


    Of course, the first question was how he ought to ovee the reflexes problem.


    (''Surpassing his reflexes with raw speed is out of the question. But reflexes aren''t the only relevant variable,'') Rui''s eyes narrowed as he came up with a possible way out. (''He can''t react to what escapes his awareness.'')


    The human mind received a ton of information every second from all senses, information that it could not entirely process. Thus it often ignoredrge chunks of the information that came in, focusing on certain parts of it at any given moment.


    That was something Rui could exploit.


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    Appeared to Rui''s side, his finger flung forward as he aimed at Rui''s eyes.


    POW!


    Rui countered by shifting his head at the right moment, causing Kane''s attack to harmlessly bounce off his skull.


    Rui threw a short and swift jab, avoiding any wind-up movements to ensure that it could hit Kane straightforwardly, yet Kane casually evaded the blow.


    POW POW POW!


    Rui blocked three swift strikes, yet Kane switched up to a powerful blow to the throat, exploiting a gap in Rui''s guard caused by the previous three strikes. His palm jab shot forward unperturbed as Kane finally saw an opportunity tond a critical blow. Rui jerked back in a desperate attempt to avoid the attack.


    Yet he couldn''t!


    SPLAT!


    Kane''s finger punctured a hole in his throat, much to the former''s ecstasy. Yet, at that very moment, Kane felt a sharp pain in his foot.<novelsnext>I think you should take a look at </novelsnext>


    POW!


    "Rgh!" He grimaced as he nced down.


    His eyes widened as he saw Rui''s foot crushing his own, pushing it deeply.


    At the moment that Kane had struck Rui, Rui had crushed his foot with his own, holding him in ce.


    Kane struggled like a horse as he did his very best to wrangle his foot.


    And he did.


    For the rock beneath his foot could not hold a Martial Squire.


    But not before it was toote.


    BOOM!!!


    Ruinded the first strike of their fight!


    A powerful blow amplified with Outer Convergence with the impact permeated deeper into his body with Reverberating Lance.


    CRACK!


    The sheer force of the blow broke Kane''s ribs as itunched flying back.


    Rui, on the other hand, cradled his throat.


    He hade to the conclusion that the best way to distract Kane''s awareness in these circumstances was to give him what he wanted.


    Then, and only then, would he truly give Rui the opportunity to trap andnd a blow on him.


    However, he had to pay a price nheless. Although Kane''s piercing technique was highly primitive and would not have done any damage to Rui nearly anywhere else on his body, Kane had aimed for the one spot where he knew it would do damage.


    Yet he wasn''t too concerned. It was true that it was serious, but the injuries that he had inflicted on Kane were just as bad, if not worse.


    His body was not meant to endure great stress. Rui had not only struck him with his full power, but he had also used Reverberating Lance to make sure that Kane wouldn''t be able to get away with just a bad bruise.


    "Cough!" Kane spat out some blood on his knees, he turned towards Rui who was covering his throat but was otherwise fine for the most part.


    Just one look at him and Kane could tell that the man could fight quite well even in his state.  In fact, if this was a real fight, Rui would have already rushed over and kicked him in the head. The only reason that he hadn''t was because he knew that the fight was over. Kane had suffered far more damage and was far more debilitated than Rui, who was not that far from his peak even with a hole in his throat. His healing factor and Final Breathing meant that he could continue fighting for quite some time.


    "Damn¡­ Cough!" Kane cursed. "I really thought I had a good shot this time."


    "You actually did," Rui nodded. "Frankly, I was at a little bit of a loss as to how to beat you."


    He offered Kane a hand, pulling him up.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1005 Mindset

    ?


    The two of them quickly left the valley, heading toward a safer space, before quickly consuming potions. Rui found it hard to talk with a hole in his throat, after all.


    "Damn," Kane sat back down. "That''s a shame."


    "It could have gone either way Kane," Rui shook his head. "This is different from when I win because I am simply stronger. In this case, I was using my Flowing Void Style to the absolute maximum, and I still was unable to even gain an advantage. Furthermore, there were times when you were the one with the upper hand. That was what surprised me."


    "Yeah, but I still lost," Kane murmured, dissatisfied. "You just feel invincible."


    "I''m far from it," Rui chuckled. "The only reason I won this time was because of a clever trick. I simply applied my power a little better than you, at the end of the day. I suspect had you fought with a more open and flexible mind, you might have won."


    "Flexible?"


    Rui nodded. "Tell me, what was your n to win after you saw that I was able to handle your swift jabs to my vital spots?"


    "¡­" Kane considered the question as he understood what Rui was trying to convey. "I just kept swiftly moving around hoping to catch an opening."


    "I could see that," Rui noted. "In other words, you seemed to hope for victory, rather than doing everything you could to get it."


    "Hey, I wasn''t holding back!" Kane protested.


    "I''m not insinuating that you did buddy," Rui assured him. "I''m saying that going physically all out isn''t enough. In this instance, you continued going down the same old set of movements even when you knew that they weren''t going to work. Do you think that was the best decision you could have made in those circumstances?"


    "¡­"


    "For instance, you could have identified why you weren''t able to hit my vitals and tried getting rid of or bypassing one of those reasons," Rui pointed out. "For example, you know that my reaction speed is very slowpared to yours, especially whenpared to you in your Fulminata state. You know that Ipensate for those with predictions, right?"


    Kane nodded, having known that for many years now.


    "It means that my predictions were the only reason I didn''t instantly lose the fight," Rui pointed out. "What would happen if you get my predictions to fail? After all, predictions are just that; predictions. They''re not absolute. They''re not a superpower where I am actually looking into the actual future."


    "I hadn''t even considered that," Kane''s eyes widened as he fell deep in thought. "The more I think about it though, the more stupid I feel for not considering this."


    "Although it certainly is far from easy to disrupt my predictions, it is still an avenue of exploration that you didn''t even consider," Rui told him.


    What he didn''t mention was that even if Kane tried a simplistic way to disrupt his predictions, it would almost certainly be useless against Rui''s predictive model. His model was based on most subconscious active and passive patterns, meaning that his targets were not even aware of these patterns.


    That was why any conscious efforts to throw Rui off failed unless his opponent gained an immense amount of self-awareness abruptly.<novelsnext>I think you should take a look at </novelsnext>


    This was essentially impossible.


    However, what Rui was trying to instill in Kane was strategic considerations. Had Kane possessed a strategic mindset, which was different from strategic intelligence, Rui was sure that he would have had a far harder time winning against him had he possessed strategic considerations in mind.


    However, Kane stuck to a very static approach, hoping to rely on the power of his two grade-ten techniques side-by-side in order to overwhelm Rui with sheer speed and agility.


    That was, in Rui''s opinion, a fatal error.


    "But what if my strategic considerations lead me to fight in a manner that deviates from my Martial Path?" Kane asked with furrowed brows. "Like, my Martial Path is evasive maneuvering, right? But if it''s ineffective in a particr fight, and offensive maneuvering happens to be preferable to evasive maneuvering in that, should I abandon my Martial Path entirely in pursuit of what is the best strategic onlook?"Content is property ? N?velDrama.Org.


    This was not a simple question. In fact, what Kane was asking was something every Martial Artist asked themselves. And it was a question that was extremely difficult to resolve.


    If one''s Martial Path was sub-optimal in a given situation, should one abandon it and go for the more preferable approach?


    But wasn''t abandoning one''s Martial Path in a fight bad? How could one reach the higher Realms if one did that?


    It was quite the dilemma that gued the Martial Artmunity.


    Except Rui. He had long thought about it and had instantly arrived at an answer the very first time he did.


    The first reason was that this problem was not a problem for him. There was absolutely no contradiction whatsoever between his Martial Path and the principle of going for the most suited strategy and approach for a battle.


    In fact, thetter was part of the former!


    Part of Adaptive Evolution was choosing the best strategic approach to his opponent, no matter what it was. So in a way, Rui was simply bypassing this dilemma altogether. It was a non-problem to him.


    However, he also had deep insight into what the solution to the dilemma was even for others.


    He didn''t know if it was entirely the best decision to tell Kane about it, but ultimately, he relented. His friend was troubled, and he wanted to help him out.


    "The answer to your question is not objective," Rui replied. "The answer to your question is just another question. What is more important to you? Your Martial Path, or your life?"


    Kane''s eyes widened as he processed Rui''s words, understanding what he meant.


    "You''re torn about choosing between your Martial Path and the most strategically sound approach, but you have it all wrong. What you''re choosing between is your Martial Path and your life."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1006 Age

    ?


    "This was a simple duel between friends," Rui reminded him. "So your life was not in the line. But what if I was your enemy? What if I was trying to kill you?"


    Kane winced at the thought of it. He had always thought this, but especially so after their fight, Rui was not someone that he wanted to have as an enemy ever!


    He had the gut feeling that not even a Martial Senior would be able to protect him from Rui, should he ever decide to kill him.


    "I see what you mean¡­ If I stick to my Martial Path in a situation where my life is on the line, and where it isn''t most fit. I might die¡­ I definitely don''t want to die for my Martial Path, my Martial Path serves me, not the other way. It is my strongest suit, and both my brain and body are entirely centered and revolved around my Martial Path thus it will always be my preferred path in general," He felt a remarkable amount of rity on the subject after just a few words from Rui, which astonished him.


    This wasn''t the first time that he had considered the matter, so he had to admit, that he was quite surprised when Rui was able to dispel the fog of uncertainty that had clouded his mind with this much ease.


    Once more, his friend diverged from the norm in ways that he couldn''t even imagine.


    "I''m guessing¡­" Kane towards Rui with an intrigued expression. "¡­that you don''t feel the same way."


    Kane knew his friend enough to have a deep understanding of how he viewed Martial Art. He knew that his friend truly loved Martial Art unlike almost anything else, especially his own Martial Art. He already had a good idea of how Rui felt about the issue.


    "You''re right," Rui replied. "My Martial Path and Martial Art are the two most important things to me. I would rather die than forsake them."


    His voice was crystal clear. There wasn''t even the slightest hint of hesitation in it.


    Kane couldn''t help but feel even greater admiration for Rui, his resolve and conviction for his Martial Art and Path were truly worthy of respect. He couldn''t help but feel cowardly when hepared himself to Rui.


    "Everyone is different," Rui remarked, keenly noticing his reaction. "Everyone pursues their Martial Path for their own reasons. There is no better or worse reason, as long as you have fulfilled what you wanted by pursuing your Martial Path and obtaining it via your Martial Art, you have won."


    "That is a fascinating outlook," Kane couldn''t help but murmur. "That''s not how most people would judge who ''won''. Shouldn''t the Martial Artist that managed to go further down their Martial Path and reach higher Realms have ''won''pared to others?"


    "I don''t believe so, no. We aren''t talking about who would win a fight," Rui nonchntly replied. "A Martial Senior whose goal of pursuing their Martial Path happens to only be achievable with the Sage Realm is not necessarily better than a person who has aplished what they sought with the help of the power of the Squire Realm.


    Kane looked unconvinced. The fact that a Martial Senior could be said to have ''won'' less than a Martial Squire sounded extremely unintuitive.


    "Let''s say we had a man A who lived with his family in a forest infested with Apprentice-level beasts, and a man B who lived with his family in a forest infested with Master-level beasts," Rui began with an analogy, seeing that Kane was unconvinced. "Man A pursues his Martial Path to the Squire Realm to gain the power to protect his family from the Apprentice-level beasts. He sessfully protects his family and lives a life happily ever after. Man B, however, reaches the Senior Realm, and is still unable to protect his family from the Master level predators, and lives in grief for the rest of his life."<novelsnext>I think you should take a look at </novelsnext>


    He turned towards Kane. "Which man would you rather be? Man A or Man B?"Text ? 2024 N?velDrama.Org.


    That wasn''t even a choice.


    "Man A for sure¡­" Kane murmured, understanding Rui''s point.


    "Ah, but you have chosen bing a Martial Squire over a Martial Senior," Rui smiled.


    Kane was flummoxed once more. It was irrefutable logic.


    "There are many circumstances that aren''t too dissimr to the one I gave you," Rui borated with a calm tone. "Those Martial Artists who reach the higher Realms only do so because whatever they desire is so difficult and out of hand that they can only obtain what they want with extraordinary Martial Art. Rather than envying their power, it is best to establish what it is you want, and what it is you pursue your Martial Path for. Simple as that. Nothing more, and nothing else. Do not pursue power you neither want nor need, that is a recipe for an empty life that you''ll regret as an old man."


    Kane nodded, turning to Rui with an awed expression. "Man, this might sound weird but¡­ Sometimes I feel you''re not even my age."


    "Huh?"


    "How do I put it in words? It feels like you''re a sage who''s already gone through life, who knows all the answers," Kane murmured. "Either that or you''re just good at talking a good game. I really don''t know which one it is."


    "Well, I''m obviously a young man, just like yourself," Rui reasoned. "Thus, it is most certainly thetter."


    "So I can dismiss everything you just said?"


    "I wouldn''t rmend that,"


    The two of them chatted lightly as they headed back to their inn. They had alreadypleted everything that they wanted to, after all. Not just in the acute sense, but also in a broader sense as far as their purpose of stay in the Thundering Valley went.


    The two of them had already made immense strides as far as their ability to deal with lightning went. Rui made smaller and highly specific gains, while Kane made, literally, thundering gains that he was anxious to retain.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1007 Trust

    ?


    "I know we''re more or less done in the Thundering Valley, but¡­" Kane sighed as he looked out the window to the glowing storm of lightning pouring down from the clouds to thend. "I really don''t want to leave this ce."


    Rui didn''t respond immediately.


    He understood Kane''s sentiment very well, of course. Perhaps more than even Kane understood it himself.


    Rui tried imagining what he would do if he came across a valley where his Flowing Void Style and the VOID algorithm were both ten times stronger than they normally were.


    Of course, such a location could not possibly exist. The VOID algorithm was information in its purest form, there was no way there were esoteric substances that could affect something so abstract.


    However, if there was such a location, would he truly have the willpower to separate himself from that location? Forcefully abandon that ce and return to his, now, painfully weak ordinary VOID algorithm?


    He liked to think he would have such willpower, but in reality, he simply didn''t know.


    Those were the circumstances that Kane was in at the moment. He didn''t want to grandstand about discipline or other virtues to try and dispel such sentiments. Kane was already aware of them, and simply virtue signaling would irritate him.Content is property ? N?velDrama.Org.


    Instead, he wanted to offer Kane a real solution.


    "I think it is possible for you to retain the Fulminata technique even without the Thundering Valley," Rui told him.


    "You said that before as well¡­" Kane raised an eyebrow. "But how? The technique requires lightning, and the only source of lightning is the heavens."


    Rui did not want to get into the technical details of exining the distinctions between electricity and lightning, and how the former was what his technique was actually based on. It required far too much of a scientific exnation involving concepts that Kane had never even heard of before.


    "Trust me," Rui replied. "It''s possible. If you''re willing to put some faith in me, I think there''s a good chance that I can help you find a way."


    Kane stared at Rui before heaving an exaggerated sigh. "You make a hard case. What do you even have in mind?"


    "Even if your body does not have the ability to generate lightning, there are definitely materials that can," Rui informed him, turning towards the Thundering Valley. "Why do you think the Thundering Valleys thunders so much? It isn''t just the weather, I promise you."


    "And you want me to, what, carry this material around with me in a punch everywhere I go?" Kan raised an eyebrow in skepticism. "That sound sounds incredibly impractical, and outside my Martial Art and Path."


    "I''m not asking you to carry it outside your body," Rui calmly replied. "I''m telling you you can carry it inside your body."


    "Huh?"<novelsnext>I think you should take a look at </novelsnext>


    "I never did tell you how I created the Riemannian Echo technique, did I?" Rui remarked, murmuring. "Sensing the curvature of space isn''t something my body or any Martial Squire''s body for that matter is good at."


    "You''re telling me you inserted substances in your body that allowed you to use Riemannian Echo?" Kane''s eyes widened. "That''s¡­ wow. Huh. I didn''t expect that."


    He looked uncertain about the whole idea. "Are you sure that''s safe?"


    "Very," Rui nodded. "Martial bodies are immune to a certain degree of toxicity that would be instantly lethal to normal human beings. I made sure that the toxicity of the substances I inserted into my body is too little to be able to harm me."


    Kane looked more intrigued by this option at this point. How could he not? He knew how effective the Riemannian Echo technique was. It was one of the two elements that were responsible for the titanic sess that they had achieved in the Shionel Dungeon and was also the means through which Rui mapped the entirety of the Shionel Dungeon.


    Denying that the technique was anything but a resounding sess was disingenuous. Kane even grew hopeful that Rui would be able to follow up on his words, considering that Riemannian Echo was also a grade-ten technique just like his Fulminata.


    "I can only show you the way though," Rui informed him. "You''re going to have to put in the hard work once it''s time."


    "Try me," Kane''s eyes narrowed as they burned with determination.


    If it was just a matter of effort, then he would put in as much and then some more effort as needed. Whatever it took to get his hands on the Fulminata technique away from the Thundering Valley!


    "So what do we have to do?" Kane asked with a serious tone. "Can it be done here?"


    "No¡­" Rui shook his head. "It can''t. This ce doesn''t have what I need in order to do this. We''re going to have to travel to a ce where I can get ess to what you need."


    "Which is?"


    "Information on esoteric substances, and a certain degree of Martial Art training resources," Rui murmured. "Their esoteric medical technology also needs to be above a certain level."


    Rui closed his eyes as he pulled out the locations rted to Martial Art that he purchased from Chairman from his Mind Pce. "Hmmm¡­ There aren''t all that many. We may need to interact with a state to obtain what we need, but that is too improbable and also dangerous."


    Rui had no intentions of interacting with any sovereign states, at the moment. He knew that there were simply far too many risks associated with trading with a sovereign state. They were too strong, and this time, Rui and Kane would not have the protective veil of being untraceable, or the Martial Union to save him.


    Most importantly, Rui was perhaps just a tad bit traumatized by the fiasco at the end of his time in the Shionel Confederation, thus he did not want to get involved in any kind of business that stood to make him powerful enemies that could crush him if he made them mad. He was content fighting in his weight ss for now.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1008 Options

    ?


    "That is a good idea," Kane nodded when Rui exined his thoughts regarding interacting with states to him. "Frankly, let''s not put ourselves in such a stressful situation again. We can grow stronger even without resorting to such extreme measures."


    Rui couldn''t help but agree wholeheartedly.


    "What else?" Kane turned towards Rui.


    "There are multiple options," Rui murmured.


    The continent was vast, and Guildmaster Bradt''s information was decently vast. Rui had hundreds of ces that they could visit on their journey to the West. He had already begun searching for those with the means to give them what they wanted, and ces where the difficulty of obtaining what they wanted wasn''t too difficult.


    That narrowed his search down tremendously.


    Only three ces were left!


    "Damn, guess things aren''t that easy," Rui murmured.


    He had hoped that they would have a buffet of locations from where Rui could pick a ce where he could help Kane achieve the Fulminata technique permanently by inserting the necessary esoteric substances into his body.


    "What are our options?" Kane asked with directed interest.


    "We have three spots, I''ll let you pick," Rui offered. "The first one is a Martial Artist Church that is specifically meant for Martial Squires."


    "A Church?" Kane frowned.


    "Yep," Rui nodded, "A Virodha Church, a church of the Virodhabhasa Faith, said to be a ce of refuge for Martial Artists."


    Rui was a firm atheist and secrist, thus he had always turned away from religion across both of his lives.


    He just didn''t care. If there was proof of a God, then he wouldn''t even need anybody to show him the evidence, he would have run into it himself. Until then, he had no interest in mingling with it.


    The same was true in his second life. In fact, it was even easier to avoid religion in his second life. The Kandrian Empire was a secrist nation, something he was quite grateful for. Thus, he had seldom ever encountered religion.


    He recalled running into Martial missions in the Martial Academy''s and Union''s mission libraries, but he had always steered clear of them.


    "But, if they can give us what we want, then it is worth considering it," Rui murmured.


    The Virodhabhasa Faith was one of the most prominent religions across the entirety of the continent.


    It was dominant, so much so that even Rui had heard of it, and was cognizant of its poprity, although he had no idea what the religion was all about asides from the fact that it was a religion rted to some Martial Artist.


    He wasn''t too surprised by this.


    The origin of religion was one that was rooted in fear and hope for powers that surpassed what people could muster. That was why religions on Earth frequently deified the elements. These were entities that they feared, for they could unleash great suffering, but were also entities that could make life a paradise.


    In a world where Martial Artists were feared more than natural disasters, why wouldn''t there be religions centered around Martial Artists, particrly the powerful ones of higher Realms? <novelsnext>I think you should take a look at </novelsnext>


    In fact, he was willing to bet that every Martial Transcendent had a religion dedicated to them just due to how abysmal their power was. Martial Sages to a lesser extent were also in the same country, he could easily see a small nation deifying a Martial Artist like Kane''s father.


    Perhaps Martial Masters and Martial Seniors could feign as divine in insr and isted ces.


    As for Martial Squires like himself¡­ He would be lucky if he was treated as a god even in a small vige.


    The Virodhabhasa Faith was also a faith that was centered around a Martial Artist, that he knew, though he didn''t know who, and didn''t care.


    What he was interested in was the fact that perhaps this one church could offer them as far as their short-term goal of allowing Kane to use Fulminata at any point.


    Content is property ? N?velDrama.Org.


    The Virodha Church that he was referring to in particr was something that he brought up because he very clearly remembered the data that Guildmaster Bradt had shown him. It was a church that considerably aided Martial Artists in their growth, in exchange for joining the Virodhabhasa Faith.


    "You considered that to be not difficult?" Kane stared at Rui with a strange look.


    Rui grimaced. "Listen, it''s your choice, your technique. I''m just providing you with all options without rooting them away because of my bias. If you''re willing, this ce can help you get what you want."


    "No question," Kane shook his head, much to Rui''s delight. "I am not bing a part of the Virodhabhasa Faith. Next."


    "A development facility offering resources and services in exchange for Martial Squires serving as test subjects to experiments-" "Nope, next."


    Kane looked nervous as they came across the final option.


    "A small sovereign town dedicated to research on Martial Art offering training and growth resources and services in exchange for protection,"


    Kane paused for a moment, before nodding. "What''s the town''s name?"


    "Crexeet," Rui replied. "Crexeet; the town dedicated to Martial Artists."


    "Will we be able to find what I need?" Kane asked.


    "Without a doubt," Rui nodded as he recalled the basic data that he had purchased from Guildmaster Bradt. "The town was founded by a senior researcher who set-up up an institute in an extremely remote location. Furthermore, the research that the town does is mostly at the Squire level."


    That was why Rui had the confidence that this town could provide Kane with what he needed.


    "Alright, it''s a done deal," Kane nodded with a determined expression. "We''ll head to the town of Crexeet."


    He turned towards Rui. "How far, where, and in what direction?"


    "It''s about seven thousand kilometers from here, which is very close all things considered. In a remote region known as the Hiokin teau, and it''s South-west from here."


    Kane got up. "Let''s get going."


    Rui smiled, nodding. He was quite pleased to see Kane taking charge and striving for something that he truly wanted. The dynamic was usually the opposite between them.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1009 Arrival

    ?


    "You boys finally leaving, hm?" The innkeeper asked with a gentle smile.


    "Yes, Grandma," Rui smiled.


    They had grown close to her over the several months of their stay here.


    She sighed mncholically. "The Martial world is dangerous, stay safe."


    Rui raised an eyebrow.


    They had never disclosed their statuses as Martial Artists to the elderlydy.


    "Huhu, I may have grown old but I have lived a long life. I can see a Martial Artist from a mile away," She gently chuckled.


    Rui had aplicated expression. "Er, about that¡­ Could please keep our identity as Martial Artists a secret if anyonees around asking?"


    She smiled warmly. "What Martial Artists? I haven''t seen any around here."


    Kane smirked. "Thanks, Grandma, see you again someday!"


    The two of them left the inn after bidding her goodbye.


    "Alright, let''s go!" Kane immediately dashed away, leaving Rui behind.


    "Er¡­ Which way is West again?" He sheepishly asked aftering back with his tail in between his legs.


    Rui sighed, chuckling. "I get that you''re hyped, but follow the guy who actually knows where it is."


    "After you, navigator sir," Kane gestured dramatically. "And don''t hold me back. I tolerate your slowpoke travel speed wordlessly under normal circumstances. But this time I''m in a hurry!"


    "I''ll do my best," Rui mirthlesslyughed as he activated Gale Force Breathing, Outer Convergence, and a quasi-Forestep.


    By his calctions, they would be moving fast enough that the technique wouldst until they reached there as long as he consumed some potions.


    He truly did not want to be deadweight to Kane.


    And he was right.


    The two of them dashed through the wind at a riveting speed.


    It wasn''t two hourster that they reached their destination!


    Such was the speed of Martial Squires. Thousands of kilometers could be crossed in a matter of hours. It was only when they traveled across a portion of the continent could the journey take weeks, or even a month of travel even for Martial Squires like Rui and Kane.


    Rtive to that, the town of Crexeet wasn''t that far, in fact, it could even be said to be in the geographic neighborhood of the Thundering Valley!Content is property of N?velDrama.Org.


    It showed Rui how absolutely gigantic this continent and was!


    (''Just based on the size of the continent that I''vee to understand this is muchrger than even Jupiter!'')


    It was hard for Rui to imagine how life bloomed so vigorously on such a gigantic and spread so far. The conditions for life were fragile, and there were a ton of constraints thats were subject to in order for them to be able to host life.<novelsnext>I think you should take a look at </novelsnext>


    It was surely harder forrgers to do thatpared to smallers, given the harsh gravitational eleration thatrger and more massives tended to have.


    He had already verified that gravity worked the way he knew it because his Riemannian Echo technique functioned the way it would if gravity worked the way it did.


    Yet this begged the question, why did the gravity on this seem identical to that of Earth''s?


    Rui had never considered it before, but it didn''t make sense. Things fell at the same speed as they normally did on Earth. Thus, Rui hade to the conclusion that the eleration due to gravity was the same here as it was on Earth.


    (''Unless all humans here are stronger than their Earth counterparts and their perception of time is slower than that of the humans of Earth,'') Rui mused.


    "Hey!" Kane snapped in front of his face. "We''re here. Stop dazing out."


    "Cut me some ck," Rui grumbled. "I''ve been running with Forestep continuously, I''m tired."


    Kane ignored him as he turned back ahead, peering into the distance. "So that''s Crexeet town, huh? Looks¡­ disappointing."


    "It looks exactly like how towns are supposed to look," Rui grumbled. "You''re just spoiled by the excitement of the Thundering Valley and the Umiana Trench."


    Kane couldn''t deny that. Those two locations were special and fantastically exotic. Everything else came off as mundanepared to a hole in the ocean, and lightning for rain!


    "Oh, looks like we havepany," The two of them detected a Martial Squire along with some Martial Apprentices tagging along.


    This was immediately odd.


    Martial Apprentices had no ce in a confrontation between Martial Squires. Which is what this undoubtedly was. Rui could sense that the Martial Squire wasn''t there to have small talk with the two of them.


    "Who are you, and what is your purpose here?" The man gruffly spoke with a voice that matched his gargantuan body.


    The first impression one would get from the Martial Path was that he was almost certainly centered around power, offense, or defense. His incredibly buff and developed body simply got rid of a number of other possibilities such as a Martial Path centered around maneuvering or stamina or something like that.


    Rui analyzed the muscle spec configuration of his body, trying to gauge what his Martial Path was.


    (''The muscles of his forearms are thergest,'') Rui noted.


    That wasn''t necessarily anything of not by itself, however, stronger forearm muscles corresponded with more powerful hands and fingers.


    And his hands were menacinglyrge,rge enough to wrap around the entirety of Rui''s skull.


    Despite that, Rui didn''t feel too much of a threat from the man. He was at most a high-grade Martial Squire. If a fight broke out, Rui was confident that he would be able to take him down himself.


    "We''re traveling Martial Squires, and we wish to enter the town of Crexeet. We''re here to get stronger," Kane resolutely replied.


    The man furrowed his eyebrows. "So you aren''t from the Ferendel Duchy, or the Senten Kingdom?"


    The two of them exchanged a nce before turning back to the man.


    "Uh, no?"


    The man stared at them for a few more seconds before huffing lightly. "If you make a mess, you''ll be disposed of. Don''t forget that while you''re here. And wee to the town of Crexeet."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1010 Introduction

    ?


    Rui and Kane immediately followed him, relieved that they didn''t get caught in a new mess. Rui, however, was a little concerned by hisck of awareness of the circumstances of their new destination.


    Normally, whenever he reached a new location for a new endeavor, he was well-prepared ahead of time and knew everything that he needed to know.


    However, their previous encounter showed that this was most certainly not the case with Crexeet town.Text content ? N?velDrama.Org.


    For instance, he mentioned the Frenten Duchy, and the Senten Kingdom when inquiring about who they were. Why bring that up? He wouldn''t have done so if the two nations weren''t relevant to the town of Crexeet.


    If they were relevant, then what was their rtionship with the town of Crexeet?


    The intelligence supplied by Chairman Deacon most certainly mentioned that it was a sovereign town.


    (''That almost certainly means that the rtionship between the aforementioned states and the town of Crexeet is not good,'') Rui sighed.


    Given that a sovereign town was far weaker than a kingdom or a duchy, the power differential naturally meant that thetter would be in a dominant position over the other, and look to control and exploit.


    This was just the way things were, generally. The weaker submitted.


    The fact that the town of Crexeet hadn''t was something that Rui had found interesting but also was the reason that he was worried that the town that they were stepping into and looking to exchange with, in a mutually beneficial rtionship. He had managed to deduce the rough circumstances that of the town of Crexeet with just a few words from the Martial Squire who guided them into the town personally.


    Rui carefully observed the town once they entered it, taking note of all significant observations.


    What surprised him was that the town had a particr vibe to it, one that he was familiar with not in this life, but in his previous one.


    (''It has the air of academia,'') Rui mused.


    He had been bright enough in his previous life to finish his degree in reputed institutions withrge campuses that felt like their own little society. The vibe that he got from this town was quite simr to that.


    Most of the inhabitants wore attire or garbs that one would expect to see from those involved in fields of purely intellectual pursuit.


    Rui frowned.


    That was quite strange. Why was there a town like this in the middle of nowhere? Why did so many people who were clearly in the research fields flock to this remote region in order to be in this ce?


    Rui felt as though he could gain a lot of insights surrounding this town, but he wasn''t able to see through the core of it all.


    Another interesting observation he made was the fact that almost all of the Martial Artists he saw were Martial Apprentices.


    He saw very few Martial Squires, and he could not sense a single Martial Artist above the Squire Realm across the entire town.


    It was quite likely that the town did not have any such Martial Artists. That coupled with the fact that the town had managed to retain its sovereignty meant a lot of things. It meant that this paltry level of power was enough to assure the independence of the town.<novelsnext>I think you should take a look at </novelsnext>


    (''That automatically means that the power of the surrounding kingdoms isn''t all that much.,'') Rui mused.


    "We''re here, the Crexeet Institute" The man paused as they stopped before thergest array of buildings in the town. "Wait in the reception down straight ahead, and the mayor will see you in time."


    Rui recalled that the town was founded by a researcher, of all people. He found that quite strange, why would a researcher go through all that effort to found a single measly town?


    The fact that he was inside what looked like a research facility rather than a governmental office was quite strange too.


    The moment the two of them entered the gates and started walking down, they immediately attracted the eyes of various people. They had put on their Martial uniforms since they needed to reveal their status as Martial Squires, thus it was quite evident that the two of them were Martial Artists.


    That drew a lot of attention from the students and professors on campus for some reason.


    (''It is because this institute is apparently a research institute for Martial Art?'') Rui furrowed his eyebrows.


    Even the more ordinary employees showed them an excessive amount of deference.


    The two of them waited in the reception for nearly half an hour before an employee finally addressed them.


    "Sir Derr is ready to receive you," She informed them with a smile. "Please follow me while I guide you to his office."


    It wasn''t long before they had finally arrived, she gestured them in before walking away while they opened the door.


    "Ah! I''m sorry to keep you Martial Squires waiting! Pleasee in, have a seat," Derr greeted them cheerily. "I''m the Mayor of the town and also the head researcher and professor of the the head institute to the town! Haha."


    He was not what Rui expected from the leader and founder of the Crexeet town. He was short and plump with circled spectacles. He had a light and nonchnt attitude despite meeting with stranger Martial Squires for the first time.


    "Now then, I heard you traveling Martial Squires were interested in Crexeet town?" He nced between them with interested eyes. "What are your names."


    "I am Squire Norman, and he''s Squire Falken, and yes," Kane nodded. "We heard that the town contracts Martial Squires for defense and security, in exchange for training and growth resources."


    "Right you are!" The man pointed at Kane emphatically. "Are the two of you perhaps interested?"


    Rui couldn''t help but feel strange. This did not feel like a conversation between the leader of a town and two Martial Artists who were potentially able to be powerful assets of the town.


    "We''re interested," Rui replied this time. "We seek rather specific training resources and information, along with other basic necessities. In exchange, we are willing to lend you our Martial Art services."


    "Oh?" The man''s eyebrow rose. "Interested in specific training resources and information, hm? Just what might that be?"


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1011 Inaccessible

    ?


    "Nothing too extravagant," Rui shrugged. "The training resources entail basic training resources for the mostmon kinds techniques in all primary fields of Martial Art, specifically, maneuvering. As far as the information goes, we seek ess to your library of scientific literature on esoteric material science. We also wish to ess yourbs to conduct and engage in some research."


    This took the man by surprise. "Interesting, the former is no issue, it''s actually the standard. However thetter¡­"


    He made a difficult expression.


    "Is there any issue?" Rui raised an eyebrow.


    "Unfortunately, our libraries of scientific literature are only essible by those with a journeyman degree in the sciences," The man smiled apologetically. "I''m afraid we cannot grant you ess to the library."


    "Even in exchange for Squire-level services?" Rui frowned. "As far as I can see, your town doesn''t have the leeway to refuse extra Martial power, am I wrong?"


    Rui nced at the two Apprentice-level guards behind him.


    That alone spoke to the state of its defense.


    "You aren''t," He sighed as he took off his sses,ying them on the table. "But unfortunately, I cannot make an exception to this rule. I cannot dilute our standards under any circumstances."


    Rui raised an eyebrow as he considered the man''s words. "Are the standards of the institute more important than the survival of the institute and the town?"


    "They are the reason the town exists in the first ce," The man sighed, turning towards Rui. "That is why it cannot be forsaken, not even for the interests of the survival of the town."


    "I do not understand," Rui frowned.


    What did that even mean? All he asked was to ess their scientific library, it shouldn''t have been that big a deal.


    The man stared at Rui with a conflicted expression. Rui could tell that he meant what he said, but at the same time, he did not want to let go of the two of them.


    "I hope you understand¡­" He modestly remarked. "The standards of this town set the quality of what we offer. And the value of what we offer is what keeps this town afloat. People wouldn''t strive toe to this town without it, and without the influx of those who aim to be a part of this ecosystem, it cannot be sustained."Text ? 2024 N?velDrama.Org.


    Rui''s eyebrows furrowed. "You mean, your one source of funding is those who invest in an education here?"


    That sounded nonsensical.


    "I¡­ understand that it sounds absurd," The man sighed. "I do wish to establish some context."


    Rui sighed irritably. "If you cannot give us what we need, then I do not feel the need to indulge in this meeting anymore."


    "No wait!" The man cried. "Please, hear me out. I''m sure you''ll understand!"


    Rui wanted to p the man out of his self-centered mindset, he hadn''t even talked to the man for ten minutes, and he had already had enough.<novelsnext>I think you should take a look at </novelsnext>


    The reason he didn''t leave was because Kane was giving him a pointed look.


    Apparently, he believed that there was still something that could be done in this ce, an optimism that Rui did not share.


    Though it smelled more like desperation at the moment, since this was thest ce on their list.


    "Speak. Fast." Rui snorted.


    "Alright¡­ I hope to convince you of the reason that I cannot give you what you seek, and to offer you other forms of rpense," The man sighed. "The reason I cannot break this rule is that the credibility of the rigorous meritocratic institutions of this town is the reason that peoplee here seeking high-quality education and research. The reason this town even exists in the first ce is for two reasons. The first was to obtain a source of revenue for the wide-scale research resources that I needed, and the second was to get away from the controlling hands of those who sought to control my research in exchange for funding it."


    Rui''s eyebrows rose as he had an inkling of what the man was referring to.


    Research, especially pure research, was in constant need of constant funding. Scientists usually weren''t rich, and thus the expenses of research were not something they could incur personally.


    Naturally, they would resort to external sources of funding, in exchange for ess to the research and some directive over the research. Broadly speaking, there were four sources of funding that research got.


    Private.


    Commercial.


    Governmental.


    Militaristic.


    Each of these four sources had its own interests in investing in research, and would naturally seek to control the direction of the research to suit those interests.


    Rui had dealt with it many times in his previous life. In fact, his source of funding had always beenmercial since his research was centered aroundbat sports in amercial league.


    "I¡­ am one of the few people that had broken from this paradigm," He sighed. "I created this town with the personal fortune I had made from prior breakthroughs and created a scrupulously absolute meritocratic system of education and distribution of high-level knowledge. I moved all the way here in the middle of nowhere to escape the influence of powerful forces, and I fund all of this¡­"


    He gestured around. "With people are willing to pay a lot in order to be here."


    Rui was grudgingly impressed. He highly doubted that he would have been able to pull something like that off in his previous life even if he was healthy.


    "So you wanted a source of ie without selling agency to your research," Rui confirmed. "Why not just engage in research that more essible sources of funding are interested in that also oveps with your own interests?"


    "Because there isn''t an ovep!" The man banged the table. "Those power-hungry snakes do not care about peering into the metaphysical depths of the Martial Path because it does not immediately yield in any tangible increase in the power of Martial Art!"


    Rui felt like he was getting a headache listening to this man.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1012 Agreement

    ?


    It wasn''t that there was nothing about what he said that Rui didn''t understand and empathize with. As a researcher, he could understand the sentiments of wanting to avoid the grubby hands that came with funding. He could even understand wanting to pursue research that didn''t ovep with the interests of the sourcing of the funding for research. It was admirable that he went this far to keep his ambitions alive.


    However, what he didn''t understand was what all of this had to do with Kane and himself.


    The two of them hade here to ess the esoteric material science library of the Crexeet Town, and he had made amply clear that he could not forsake the rigid rules that were in ce in so far as who was allowed ess to the libraries of the Crexeet Institute. Then heunched a giant sob story about how his life as a researcher was so hard and the struggles that he had to go through in order to set up this town that was being sustained in part by those rigid rules.


    Did he really think that he could guilt-trip the two of them or something like that?


    If not for Kane wanting to stick around and hear what he had to say in hopes of somehow finding a way through despite his clear-cut rejection, Rui would have long left.


    "I understand everything you say," Rui coldly stated. "But we are not interested in anything else you have to offer unless it gets us what we initially requested."


    "I''m afraid¡­ that it cannot be done. I''d like to ask you to reconsider your requests," The man helplessly replied.


    Rui nced at Kane.


    His resolution to not give up was strong and hadn''t yet broken. It was foolhardy optimism, but also admirable in a sense, even if foolish.


    (''He really wants that Fulminata technique bad,'') Rui noted.


    There were plenty of other ces that possessed the information that they sought. However, they were excluded for the same reason that this town was not. They were subject to powers that would not offer them up without a costly price in return, they would be subjecting themselves to a transaction with a heavy power imbnce that was not in their favor.


    Rui sighed, turning back to the Derr. "What was the requirement to gain ess to your libraries again? Possessing a degree in general sciences?"


    "Yes," The man nodded.


    "How does one obtain that again?"


    "By passing the General Science Exam, of course," The man replied with an odd expression.


    "Is it possible to write that exam here?"


    "Of course!"


    Text content ? N?velDrama.Org.


    "Is it possible to obtain the study materials needed for the exam here?"


    "Most certainly, we offer some of the best studying resources," The man proudly replied.


    "Hmmm¡­" Rui considered it a bizarre idea. "So if I pass the exam, will I then be able to gain the degree and gain ess to the libraries?"


    The man hesitated. "Yes, but surely you don''t intend to¡­ It''s not possible for you to, given your field. No offense."


    "I didn''t ask for your judgment," Rui red at him. "I asked you if it was possible.


    "It is possible, yes, very much," The man nodded vigorously.<novelsnext>I think you should take a look at </novelsnext>


    "When is the soonest I can write the exam?" Rui asked.


    "You can schedule it at the earliest one week after the registration," The man replied with a confused expression.


    "Then schedule the exam for one week for me," Rui sighed, tired. "Prepare the degree ahead of time, I do not wish to waste any time once I pass."


    The man''s eyes widened. "It takes years of studying the basic and foundation sciences to be able to cross the minimum threshold to earn the degree. I believe that this course of action is foolish and-"


    "Is there a problem?" Rui red at him.


    The man gulped. "One week might be too soon."


    "Did you not, with your own words, confirm that one week was possible?" Rui was truly losing his patience with the man.


    "Yours is a special case, you''re a Martial Squire!" The man defended himself. "The credibility and the cheat-proof measures are going to take time to get in ce. I cannot do it without this."


    "Or you''ll risk losing credibility if I pass under normal circumstances?" Rui huffed.


    "Exactly," The man nodded.


    "Then get it done as soon as possible," Rui narrowed his eyes. "And get me all the studying materials as well. As long as I seed, I get what we came here for immediately without any fuss. In exchange, we''ll sign a contract offering our Martial Art services in return."


    "I-I understand¡­" The man wiped some sweat from his forehead.


    Rui nced at Kane, who had been grinning wildly for a few minutes now. Rui sighed helplessly as he turned back. If not for Kane, he would not be going through this little circus show.


    It was truly an absurd set of circumstances that he had found himself. He had expected that this town would be less exotic than their previous two destinations, but apparently not. It was special in its own way.


    Eventually, the two of them left the office and they headed out after ironing out all the details of the contract.


    "Ten days," Rui sighed.


    "Will you be able to pass it?" Kane asked, worried. He knew how smart and intelligent Rui was, and how powerful his mind was, but he wasn''t sure that even Rui could reach professional standards in a field that he never touched before. That sounded inhumanely impressive and probably was something that even Rui would struggle within his eyes.


    "We''ll see," Rui replied in a nonmittal manner.


    "Seriously man¡­" Kane sighed, as he stopped walking. "Thank you for going this far for me."


    Rui stopped, turning back. "Meh, don''t worry about it. You put your life in my hands by joining me in the Shionel Dungeon. This is nothingpared to that."


    The two of them left the institute as they talked with each other.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1013 Correspondence

    ?


    Rui didn''t know how, but word quickly spread throughout the town of the Martial Squire attempting to take the general science exam. Apparently, that was revolutionary news for some reason.


    Everywhere Rui went, he could feel the gazes on him from the people around him.


    (''Ugh, maybe this wasn''t the best of ideas,'') Rui groaned.


    He disliked being the center of attention, it was annoying and at the end of the day he would rather be left alone, but he decided to stick with the course of action that he had chosen for Kane''s sake.


    He could understand where it came from, of course. It came from the idea that Martia, Artists could not be adept at any intellectual field because it contradicted what it took to be a Martial Artist. And they were mostly right, Rui had dedicated most of his life exclusively to Martial Art and nothing else.


    The whole town grew absorbed in the topic as various opinions flew across the entirety of the little society.


    "I respect Martial Squires, but it is arrogant for him to believe that he could just take on an exam that we spent many years studying for and pass it with ten days of preparation."


    "It''s as insulting as if we schrs thought that we could fight and defeat a Martial Squire inbat after just ten days of Martial Art practice!"


    Text content ? N?velDrama.Org.


    "Do you think he''ll cheat? Since he obviously cannot seed? Martial Squires have extreme senses far beyond that of the human body."


    "I heard that there will be Martial Squires inspecting the exam in addition to other measures. Cheating should be impossible, right?"


    "Honestly, who cares why he wants to write the exam? He''s willing to stay here and serve as protection from the surrounding states. As long as he is willing to do that, I don''t mind entertaining his delusional intention of passing the exam."


    Many opinions flew across the people who came across the news. Rui even heard what many were saying because they underestimated how far he could hear.


    However, he didn''t care. For one, he didn''t fault them for feeling the way that they did. It was only natural, and he would have felt the same way.


    If, in his previous life, a mixed martial artist tried to obtain a bachelor''s degree in any major field despite a shallow educational background, with only ten days to write a general exam for the bachelor''s level, he too would have a simr reaction.


    He put aside what the people around him seemed to think while focusing on the hurdle at hand. He had gotten ess to the study materials needed for the exam so that he could thoroughly understand what it was that he was getting himself into.


    "Oh¡­?" Rui''s eyebrow rose up when he skimmed through the material.


    It was mostly high school-level sciences, which fit his suspicions due to thecking theoretical science in this world.


    (''There is some esoteric material science through,'') Rui noted as he skimmed through the study material.


    This was the one area that he did need to study since his previous life''s knowledge and background were entirely irrelevant and unhelpful. <novelsnext>I think you should take a look at </novelsnext>


    This meant that this was the one area that he needed to start from scratch.


    In ten days.


    This would normally be impossible, although cramming worked, it only worked when one had a foundation to support them.


    Rui did not.


    He had studied some esoteric material science, but these were hype niche research avenues that he had looked into when researching for the Riemannian Echo technique.


    He also had other considerations in mind in regard to his exam. He was a little worried about doing too well. That was problematic because he didn''t want to do anything that obtained a grave amount of attention.


    After all, he was technically in disguise and hiding. Although the probability that Chairman Deacon finding them through his sess in this exam was extremely low, he wasn''t keen on tempting fate.


    On the other hand, he discovered an annoying rule.


    "The score you get dictates your ess clearance to the scientific literature," The mayor stated. "Thus a lower score means less scientific literature."


    Rui wanted to strangle the man.


    He understood the doctrine, of course. It was just an extreme push in the interests of a meritocratic system. But it meant that in the interests of Kane, and anything that he wanted to pursue, he needed to do well in this exam.


    Furthermore, this was a good opportunity to build a small and initial foundation in the avenue of esoteric material science as well. The Riemannian Echo technique was proof that esoteric substances were filled with potential.


    Of course, he didn''t intend to turn into a fiend that relied on stuffing his body with esoteric substances, not at all. But Riemannian Echo as well as Kane''s Fulminata technique were proof that it was worth having such knowledge at hand.


    (''Especially when I won''t have ess to knowledge as easily from now onwards,'') Rui''s eyes narrowed.


    There was a reason that there were only three ces that offered such information within the limit of the direction that they were traveling in. Due to this fact, it meant that knowledge was a lot harder toe by.


    Regardless, he quickly acquired the study materials that he needed before diving deep into the subjects.


    The theoretical science was not developed well enough to have distinct categories at the level that he was studying at, thus they were simply divided into different topics that fell under general sciences as opposed to the various fields within science.


    Out of all the topics at hand, he found that thirty percent of the exam would be centered around esoteric science. Given that he had only ten days to go, he immediately began working at full pace. He had already decided to go all out and get the maximum possible marks he could, and gain ess to as much information so that Kane could regain his Fulminata technique.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1014 Esoteric

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    The field of esoteric material sciences was quite interesting as he began going through the foundational premise.


    The basic premise of the field relied on the distinction between normal and esoteric materials. Normal substances andpounds were thosepounds whose properties were understood by science. These included things like water, iron etc.


    Although not everything about these substances was entirely understood on a fundamental level, this was the case with all substances including esoteric substances as well.


    Esoteric substances were substances andpounds whose fundamental properties were not only entirely not understood but also seemed to defy the framework of theoretical sciences that existed so far.


    Rui was aware of this, but there was more that he wasn''t aware of. There were multiple scientific theories that tried to exin the existence of esoteric substances and why they were the way they were, and how they ought to be categorized.


    The Esoteric Singrity Theory stated that there was one single phenomenon that was responsible for the esoteric and often reality-defying properties of all esoteric substances. That a single phenomenon in nature gave rise to all these strange substances in nature.


    This was not merely a hypothesis, there were vague patterns between all esoteric substances that indicated amon cause.


    One such pattern was that esoteric substances andpounds became more prevalent as one went deeper into the continent, suggesting amon cause. For it would be one hell of a coincidence if each substance was more prevalent in the center of the continent for entirely different reasons.


    This was a reasonably viable hypothesis. Rui couldn''t help but think about the origin of all the esoteric substances as a result. If there was amon origin of all theses substances, then he couldn''t help but wonder what it was.


    A multitude of random hypothesis flew threw his mind. Unfortunately, he had no idea what the reason could possibly be. However, he couldn''t help but think that perhaps there was some global phenomenon that affected the a long time ago, producing all these fantastical phenomena.


    He recalled a thought he had once had when he was traveling to Vilun Ind. The Panama continent was surrounded by a archipgo ring of inds in all directions outside it. Rui recalled thinking how these ind were likely pieces of the continent at one point in time in the past.


    He remembered specting that there likely was some continent wide phenomenon that caused the outeryer of the continent to break away into small little pieces.


    Now, he couldn''t help but wonder if the two events were somehow connected, assuming that they had actually happened. As of right now, they were merely hypotheses.


    Still, it was quite interesting.


    There were other theories that tried exining esoteric substance, the Divergent Theory stated the exact opposite of the Esoteric Singrity Theory. Stating that the origin and mechanism of the esoteric substances were mutually independent and were not tied to a single cause. <novelsnext>I think you should take a look at </novelsnext>


    The few handful mainstream theories each had their own pros and cons, and were subject to wide debate across esoteric scientificmunity. Learning the ins and outs of each of the theories was one of the things that he needed to do as the exam would most certainly est his knowledge on that.


    The following sections of the esoteric material science study materials began to actually dive into the esoteric substances. It mainly began diving into many of the mostmon and widely used esoteric substances across human civilization, of which there were plenty of people.


    He knew that there were several ways that they could organized and categorized. By the nature of their esoteric properties, and what ways they defied current understanding of reality. They could also be categorized by their applications in esoteric technology, and the ways that humans find them useful.


    A good chunk of his study material was dedicated to exploring the theories and categorizations and organizations of esoteric substances.


    It was followed by the books and books filled with esoteric substances, their profiles, and properties, and the vast empirical data on them that he needed to memorize.


    Rui quickly understood that the hardest part about esoteric material science was the sheer amount of data that one needed to be familiar with. The concepts, and the methods amployed were not all that difficult.


    That''s why he was confident that he would extremely well. With his Mind Pce, all this data was forever something that he could ess at any given point.


    In fact, it wasn''t even an exaggeration to say that he was probably the most knowledgeable person on these study materials in the entirety of Crexeet town.


    That meant he would ace the parts of the test that tested pure knowledge, but the Mind Pce couldn''t help him with questions that required greater logical deduction and induction. It couldn''t help him with questions that required genuine thought.Content is property ? N?velDrama.Org.


    Of course, he wasn''t too worried. Sacrificing false modesty, he knew what he was doing even if he discounted his intellect. A lifetime of dealing with trickier exams had honed his theoretical problem solving abilities into a sharp knife.


    Still, Rui found the study material to be quite insightful. He wasn''t arrogant enough to believe that he was suddenly on par with the top researchers and schrs of esoteric material science who had dedicated their entire lives to the field while also having made many contributions, he did think he could match up to the average graduate most likely.


    When he considered the sheer depth of his knowledge on general sciences not pertaining to esoteric phenomena, he was probably heads and shoulders above anything in this world, most likely. Given how huge the continent was, it was possible that there was someone somewhere out there who knew just as much, or even more, but Rui had a hard time believing that.


    Regardless, he deftly mastered the study materials within a short amount of time, and ten dayster, the time for the exam had finally arrived.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1015 Result

    ?


    The entire town was in a bustle today, but Rui didn''t mind them as he made his way over to the exam center.


    "Please follow us this way, sir," One of the staff members guided him to a seemingly special room.


    Rui could instantly sense that his regr senses were quite halted when he directed them toward the room.


    He wasn''t surprised, he had already predicted this when he had applied for the exam. Martial Squires could gain information from their sense from great distances away from the source of that information.


    He was no exception. Thus it made sense to inhabit these senses in order to prevent him from cheating.Text content ? N?velDrama.Org.


    What they didn''t know was that these measures were ineffective at stopping Rui. While his regr senses were highly restricted, his Reimannian Echo was unperturbed. He didn''t expect the institute to seed in doing what not even the Shionel Dungeon as a whole could not achieve.


    "This will be the exam center, sir," The staff bowed as she gestured inwards. "Special measures have been put in ce to ensure that the test can be conducted beyond any reasonable doubts of the vitions of the rules, we hope you don''t mind."


    "It is of no consequence," Rui replied as he nonchntly entered, sitting at the sole table in the room.


    He hadn''t been informed of these measures even if he had predicted them. He could already figure that the reason this was the case was to test his reactions and see if he intended to cheat or not.


    Soon enough, the exam began.


    And soon enough, it ended.


    Rui felt quite nostalgic as he wrote the exam. It had truly been a long time since he her ever experienced this feeling. He recalled the younger days of his previous life where he would spend quite a lot of time studying. Back then, he was determined to get into a good university for college.


    And more than a lifetimeter, he was back in the same position. It was a profound feeling that made him look back on the journey that he had undergone thus far.


    It was a shame that he couldn''t write down all the answers in superspeed, but unfortunately, the cognitive boosts provided by the Martial Path were only applicable in tasks that were centered aroundbat, or close to elements of it.


    However, his evolved brain from the Squire evolution breakthrough allowed him to aplish some truly mind-blowing stuff. Thus, the timeframe of the exam was adjusted to amodate that.


    Furthermore, his pen and paper were also non-standard, thus they were able to withstand his writing as fast as he could.


    He was quickly done, even by Martial Squire standards.


    He left the exam hall and headed towards the cafeteria, ignoring the eying gazes of the various students and professors at the college.


    "How did it go?" Kane asked once Rui returned.


    "Easy," Rui murmured. "I''ll gain ess to those libraries for sure, and I''ll gain ess to as much as possible.


    Rui could hear waves of murmurs from the students in the cafeteria. He hadn''t bothered lowering his voice, so those that were able to understand that international dialect could understand what he said.


    There was an immense amount of skepticism from all the students, once more. This time, they were a lot more vitriolic.


    He couldn''t care less.<novelsnext>I think you should take a look at </novelsnext>


    Days passed, and soon enough the result was out.


    All results were publically disyed as per the day of the exam, ranked in ascending order of marks.


    At the top? Squire Falken with two hundred and forty-nine marks out of two hundred and fifty marks.


    The entire town broke in controversy to the news.


    A Martial Squire had scored almost a full score after just studying for ten days!


    "Congrattions!" Kaneughed as he patted on the shoulder. "I knew I could count on you."


    Rui, on the other hand, was displeased. For some reason, his score really bothered him even though he had already aplished everything that he wanted to aplish.


    (''Where did I lose that one mark,'') His eyes narrowed as he shed through his Mind Pce to look at his answer sheet.


    He wasn''t able to find a single mistake he made. Which was really bizarre to him. If he did expect to lose marks, and then did lose them, he wouldn''t be too surprised. But he could see not a single avenue where even a single answer would not yield him full marks.


    Even though the exam was genuinely unimportant to him, he still felt a little challenged at anything less than perfection with his current capabilities and gifts.


    "Oh cheer up!" Kane pped him on his back, you utterly dominated the entirety of all other contests in the entire institute.


    Rui nced at the names below him. The second highest was behind by more than a hundred marks!


    He had truly outshined every single participant whose results had been published. Furthermore, because he and the others had gone to the main notice board the second that the results were announced, he was actually standing among them.


    He could feel their skepticism. How could a Martial Artist like him possibly be able to beat them in a field that they had spent years studying?


    In fact, they weren''t the only ones that had gathered to take a look at his score. A whole crowd had formed behind him, murmuring loudly as word of his score began spreading like wildfire. Furthermore, given that he had just appeared before them, they could not help but talk to him.


    "Squire Falken! How did you get such a high score? Are you really a Martial Artist?!"


    "If anything, where did you lose that one mark?"


    "Did you obtain this score by using unsavory means? Do you have a powerful sensory technique that allowed you to bypass the sensory jamming features?"


    He did, but he had no intention of revealing that.


    "Shut up and move," Rui narrowed his eyes as he released a bit of hostility into his aura.


    The crowd obliged.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1016 Contract

    ?


    Now that his little exam was over, he was actually a lot more enthusiastic. He had already made sure that he would receive his degree almost immediately.


    "Congrattions on bing a journeyman schr," The mayor personally delivered Rui''s degree to him with a strained smile.


    Rui could tell that he didn''t like this one bit. The reason for that was obvious. It was clear to him that Rui was cheating somehow, and that the man had obviously not qualified to earn this certificate.


    In fear of this, they had put into ce many measures to prevent cheating. Not only was the best anti-sensory technology in ce to prevent cheating but also multiple Martial Squires with sharp senses were temporarily deployed in the exam sight to see if there was any way to use Squire-level senses to gain information for the exam.


    Yet, Rui still did extraordinarily well, so much so that mayor had been forced to sabotage him by deducting a mark so that he didn''t be part of the few schrs that managed to score all two hundred and fifty marks. He couldn''t allow such a thing to happen, it would irrefutably tarnish his reputation.


    Regardless, it wasn''t all bad. It meant that Rui could obtain what he came for, and thus two Martial Squires could stay at Crexeet Town and 0offer their Martial Squire services to the town of Crexeet.


    "We can now sign an agreement as per your initial terms and conditions," The mayor exined privately. "You gain ess to basic necessities, training resources, and ess to our scientific libraries. In exchange for your power."


    "What exactly is it that you need our services for anyway?" Rui asked with a little bit of interest. He hadn''t forgotten the words of the Martial Squire that led them into the city. Just based on that alone he had concluded that there likely were tensions in the city that the professors and students were unaware about.


    The man hesitated for a moment before relenting. "It''s rted to the fact that the surrounding kingdoms are interested in some of the oues in the research that we''ve conducted. I had chosen a region with underdeveloped Martial Art and technology, however, the surrounding nations in this region were not content with not taking advantage of Crexeet town and were especially unwilling to allow theirpetitors to gain control over our town. Thus there has been some¡­ conflict."


    "These are Squire-level states, correct?" Rui narrowed his eyes.


    "Yes, their strongest warriors are Martial Squires. I chose this region because of that," The man nodded.


    "It''s why you were so desperate to rope us in by any means possible, even after we made demands that you were unwilling to fulfill," Rui remarked.


    "¡­Yes, we need Martial Squires, the more the better. Only then can we match the hold off against the attempts to take control of the town by the surrounding states," The man helplessly replied.


    Rui could understand his sentiment quite well. Given that the states surrounding them were Squire-level states, it made sense that these states were interested in the rich research that the town of Crexeet had engaged in.


    "Sp specifically, you want us to iing Martial Squires and make sure they never get anywhere near the town?" Rui asked.


    "Yes," He nodded. "Most of the people within the town aren''t aware of the extent to which we feel pressure, but I do want to avoid them learning about it at any costs," He exined.


    "Ok," Rui nodded. "I''m assuming we''re naturally outnumbered, right?"<novelsnext>I think you should take a look at </novelsnext>


    "Of course," he nodded. "The extent to which, you can get the details from the head of defense Squire Ferilwal. She is much more intimately familiar with the state of the defense of our town. May I inquire about how long the two of you intend to stay here?"


    "A few months, most likely," Rui revealed as he considered the matter. "Alright, Let''s do the deal."Text content ? N?velDrama.Org.


    Considering that the town had survived for this long, it meant that they had enough defenses tost quite some time. It meant that the surrounding nations most likely couldn''t ovee the defenses of this town without dedicating significant portions of their military.


    Of course, this was not something that most of them were willing to do when they were currently in hostilities with each other. Meaning they couldn''t throw everything they had at this town, otherwise, they would be leaving themselves vulnerable to each other.


    "I suspect that you won''t be able toplete what you are here for in a matter of months," The man replied.


    "Why not?" Rui''s eyes furrowed.


    He did not want to be bogged down in this ce for more than that. They were here for one very specific desire, and he wanted to get that over as soon as possible.


    "Because you will be preupied with attacks, you''ll only have half the time to do what you wish," The man sighed.


    "Are the attacks that frequent?" Rui frowned.


    "They are," He nodded. "We intercept them quite some distance away from town, hence why they''re rtively unknown to the town. You''ll be more officially briefed once you sign the contract."


    Rui considered this new bit of information. He appreciated the man''s honesty, but it was annoying. It meant that their rate of progress was half.


    "I''d like to negotiate a new term," Rui added. "If I kill a Martial Squire, I get a free week with no deployment time, deal?"


    The man considered the matter, stroking his chin. "¡­Deal. But you have to do it by yourself without enlisting the help of other Martial Squires. I cannot have you facing a hostile Martial Squire with another friendly Martial Squire just because you want to get the kill credit. It has to be solely your own work."


    Rui smiled. "Deal."


    The two of them proceeded to iron out the remaining terms and conditions, before the deal was finally sealed.


    From this day forth, they would be fighting for Crexeet Town.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1017 Test

    ?


    "So you''re the new Martial Squire that the entire town has been abuzz of, hm?" A sharp-eyed woman remarked with a detached tone. "One of the few Martial Artists to have ever passed the general science exam to be a journeyman schr, that too only after ten days of preparation. Perhaps you chose the wrong field."


    Soon after they signed the contract with the town of Crexeet, they were quickly led to the Department of Defense, where they met with the head of defense Squire Ferilwal.


    "Pleasure to meet you, Squire Ferilwal," Rui greeted her, ignoring her remark.


    "Come along, there are some things that need to be done," She told them as she led the two of them into arge facility.


    "Erh, what exactly do we need to do?" Kane asked, breaking the silence.


    "Why, I thought that should be obvious, surely," She remarked as she turned towards them.


    "Uh, no?"


    "You''ll be proving your worth," She said as she led them deep beneath the facility, into arge facility. "Proving your worth as Martial Artists."


    "A Martial Artist who can crack schrly exams is worthless as a Martial Artist," She narrowed her eyes. "The fact that you possess a foundation to be able to pass that exam, and not just pass it, but get almost a full score makes me doubt your abilities as a Martial Squire. Your presence as a Martial Artist is scarce, too."


    She raised her arm, gesturing with her index finger. "Prove to me you''re worth something."


    Rui wasn''t even mad at her words. In truth, there was validity to what she was saying.


    He was a young Martial Squire, and although he didn''t disclose his identity, his youth was not something that could be hidden. The fact that he was able to perform well in a schrly field would normally mean an immense amount of effort in that field that wasn''t put into Martial Art.


    It was a reasonable conclusion that someone woulde to. He would have concluded that as well.


    "We''re in a Squire-level training space, you can go all out and not worry about damage," She continued. "Before we begin, what is your Martial Path?"


    "I am an all-rounder," Rui replied. "I do not wish to divulge my actual Martial Path."


    Rui was no fool. If he revealed his Martial Path, then it was possible for Chairman Deacon to somehow get word of a Martial Artist with ''adaptive evolution'' which is what Rui was known to have. Even if the probability of this happening was low from Rui''s perspective because themunication across the continent was too little, it was best not to tempt fate any further.


    Both he and Kane had already ensured that they did not need to disclose any personal information that they did not want to, and this most certainly included Martial Paths.


    "Hmph," She snorted as she red at both of them. "I''ll squeeze it out of you real quick."


    The tension in the air spiked for just a second.


    And then it began.


    She shot forward at incredible speeds, staring straight at Rui. Kane stepped away, clearly recognizing that she was beginning with him.


    Rui narrowed his eyes as he made a split-second decision.<novelsnext>I think you should take a look at </novelsnext>


    He chose to run away.


    The reason was simple. Her arms were positioned at her hips, and there was no torque build-up tounch a strike.


    It meant that she wasn''t a striker. Given the position of both arms coiled and ready tosh out, he was quite certain that she was a grappler. Rui did not want to face a grappler in her element, thus he made sure to maintain some distance between them.


    (''That''s why she chose this ce instead of an open field,) Rui mused.


    The closed space, no matter how wide, gave her the advantage, it meant that simply retreating to constantly maintain arge gap between them was not possible, at some point, he would need to switch strategies and do something else.


    Rui''s grappling had not kept up with his striking or his long-range techniques, something he was now regretting in hindsight. He would definitely need to rectify this error in the future, but for now, he could not engage her in this field.


    Thankfully, he didn''t need to.


    THWOOM!


    A powerful Mighty Roar sh st technique shot forward toward his opponent.


    BAM!


    She grimaced as the sound projectile mmed into her. She had barely recognized his mouthing position to be a projectile attack, immediately bringing her guard up. The sound was very difficult to directly sense, which was what made the attack tricky to deal with.


    However, it was most effective at longer ranges. At short ranges, the sharp sense of a Martial Squire could sense the powerful breathing technique being activated, as well as the distinct movements usually performed at theunch of the projectile.


    Ruiunched four more projectiles rapidly one after the other.


    Yet this time, she was more prepared.


    She swiftly evaded them one by one, before racing forward.


    STEP


    Rui paused as he tutted with them all behind him. He had reached the limit of the battle room, he could no longer avoid her. Furthermore, the predictive model that he had long begun collecting on her was only partially iplete. He could try running to either side, but he quickly abstained from doing.


    She had revealed to be faster than him in travel speed, which he wasn''t too surprised about. Being able to close the distance was extremely crucial to full-contact Martial Artists like herself when dealing with long-range Martial Artists. Running away on either side would most likely just prolong the inevitable and make him less equipped to deal with her when she did get in range.


    STEP


    He rushed forward as he decided to not only abandon evading but also actively approach her head-on.


    Squire Ferilwal''s eyebrows rose as a savage grin sprung up on her face. Veins on her arms popped as she prepared for a swift takedown.Content is property ? N?velDrama.Org.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1018 Respect

    ?Text content ? N?velDrama.Org.


    Rui, on the other hand, pulled his right arm back as he twisted his core, generating more power. He was practically telegraphing his attacks with such loud and predictable wind-up movements.


    When the two of them reached other, his palm shot forward, aiming for her face. Her arms shot upward looking to intercept his attack and get a firm of his arm.


    Yet when she reached for it, her hands just passed through, dispelling the image of it in her head. Rui''s hand, instead was still sitting back, not having moved forward.


    (''A feint!'')


    His Phantom Step technique had been quite sessful. It was a technique that he had learned as an Apprentice, and while it had grown less potent when he mastered it in the Squire Realm due to the fact that Martial Squires had sharper senses, it was still quite a useful technique when used in the right circumstances.


    Rui used it not to fool senses, but to fool expectations.


    Her futile sping attack had failed, leaving her momentarily open.


    BAM!


    His right leg crashed into her chest.


    She had already braced for an impact, yet to her surprise there was none. Instead, she felt as though a powerful mysterious force spread across her entire body, universally propelling her backwards like gravity.


    WHOOSH


    She flew backward at tremendous speed, leaving behind a few shockwaves. Rui had used the Reverberating Catapult technique to fling her backward, a technique that he hade to hone in the Umiana Trench. It was useful in circumstances like this where he could open up distances between himself and his opponent.


    SSSSSSKKKK!


    She finally managed toe to a stop before she finally got up, facing Rui.


    But it was toote.


    A tremendously powerful impact struck her in her gut!


    CRACK!


    She grimaced as a powerful sound projectile crashed into her ribs. What shocked her was the sheer power of the attack!


    It was something that far exceeded the limits of what a normal Martial Squires could possibly dish out.


    She had been hit with tier-four Transverse Resonance. An attack that was four times as powerful as his otherwise strongest long-range technique. The power of the attack firmly reached the upper limits of what Martial Squires could generally achieve, it was approaching grade-ten-level power.


    As much as she would have loved to take a moment to assess how many ribs she had broken from being ambushed by such a devastating attack, Rui ruthlessly spammed a barrage of long-range attacks.


    She gritted her teeth as she bore the pain in her chest, doing her best to avoid the attacks, yet to her surprise, the difficulty had risen!<novelsnext>I think you should take a look at </novelsnext>


    Not just because she was injured, but it was as though the projectiles were magically finding a way to hit her!


    The ODA System became increasingly viable the more Rui''s predictive model on her grew. The more data and information he had, the more he could use it to figure out exactly what the trajectory of the sonic projectiles ought to be.


    In short, she could not avoid him.


    Rui calmly, and ruthlessly buried her under an avnche of sonic projectiles each hard to evade than thest.


    Not every battle was climactic in its ending.


    BAM!


    "Rgh!" She grimaced as she fell t on the ground. "Cough!"


    She vomited blood, as she struggled to push herself up. But Rui targeting her broken ribs had caused a lot of internal bleeding that, while her healing factor did its best to fix, was continuously being inflicted far faster than she could recuperate with such injuries.


    STEP


    She nced up with a weak eye as Rui arrived before her with a detached expression, before kneeling and taking out healing potions. He quickly fed her one, waiting for the potion to course through her body and do its job.


    "Cough¡­" She got up weakly after half a minute, grimacing. "You¡­ are strong."


    It would be disgraceful for her to maintain airs after Rui soundly defeated her but also nursed her back to health with a potion. Furthermore, she knew how strong he was without a doubt. Their battle had been decisive, it wasn''t close. She had never been in a position where she felt like she had an advantage. From the very start, he quickly took control and created an opening that he then systematically exploited to suppress her with unquestionable dominance.


    The oue was crystal clear.


    He won, and she could even tell that he had won while holding back considerably. Not once any time had she gotten the sense that he was going all out with his power, or straining himself in any way whatsoever.


    The most embarrassing part was that she still wasn''t sure what his Martial Path was. That was humiliating because it was easy to tell what a person''s Martial Path was when fighting them because they would be forced to use that Martial Path to win.


    However, the fact that she couldn''t even hazard a guess as to what his Martial Path was meant that Rui had likely used a very small portion of his Martial Art and had only disyed a small amount of all the capabilities that he had.


    The fact that he was still able to dominate her so definitively despite not having gone anywhere near all out was absurd to her. It defied every expectation that she had held towards him.


    "Just¡­ who are you?" She couldn''t help but murmur.


    "Good fight," Rui replied, stretching out a hand as he ignored her question, pulling her up.


    "It seems I underestimated you severely," She replied as she regained herposure. "To think that you excelled at Martial Art more than you excelled at being a schr, that was outside of my expectation. You are truly strong."


    She was not someone who was distastefully egotistical. Even if she was the head of defense and someone that possessed a degree of authority over Rui in so far as how he was deployed, she still had to show him the respect he deserved by virtue of being stronger.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1019 Limited

    1019 Limited


    "There''s no doubt about you," She sighed, before turning to Kane. "But it''s your turn now."


    She needed first-hand knowledge of both of them, and that meant fighting Kane as well. Kane nodded, acquiescing, and the two of them quickly stood some distance apart from each other, before taking their stances.


    Kane, as always, took his light-footed stance, while Squire Ferilwal took her shoot stance.


    Rui watched with interest as he analyzed the battle.


    (''Their win conditions is straightforward,'') Rui mused. (''If Kane gets caught, he loses, if he can keep away for long enough, he''ll be able to win.'')


    Rui suddenly recalled something as he narrowed his eyes exerting some pressure on Kane to draw his attention. Kane nced at Rui with a raised eyebrow.


    Rui simply shook his head once. Content is property ? N?velDrama.Org.


    Kane stared at his him, nodding once, before turning back.


    Soon enough, the battle began.


    DASH!


    She shot forward, as was predictable aiming for Kane with her arms. Much to Rui''s relief, he casually evaded with visible ease.


    Rui sighed in relief. He wasn''t worried that Kane wouldn''t be able to evade her initial nce, he was just happy that Kane didn''t go all out.


    He didn''t use Void Step.


    He wasn''t sure how good Squire Ferilwal''s senses were. He wasn''t sure that she would be able to recognize the sheer potency of the grade-ten technique. Regardless, if Kane used it here, he would be expected to use it on the battlefield against the surrounding nations. It would expose his technique on a wide scale and thus, it would increase the likelihood that their identities would be discovered.


    All in all, it was just not worth it even if it would grant him the victory in this case most likely.


    Thankfully, Kane was smart enough to understand what Rui was referring to at that moment with that gesture, and also mature enough to agree. He wasn''t driven by colossal pride or a strong battle-lust.


    His thoughts were interrupted as sheshed out against Kane again,shing out at his lower half, looking for a lower takedown.


    Yet she wasn''t quick enough.


    WHOOSH


    Kane evaded by leaping into the air.


    POW!


    A swift kicknded on her gut, allowing him to push himself away from her.


    "Tsk," She tutted with irritation, annoyed by his speed. However, Kane could see that his attack had essentially done nothing against her.


    It was to be expected, he was only just barely grade two as far as striking power went. Unlike Rui, he did not possess the ability to inflict major damage on her with every attack. The best he could do was what he always did.


    Unlike Rui, he didn''t need to maintain a huge amount of distance between himself and Rui in order to avoid her shoots, he could be much closer, and avoid her much more narrowly than Rui could hope to without Forestep.


    However, he was still dealing with a decently powerful Martial Artist, Squire Ferilwal abandoned her aggressive shooting strategy the second she saw that it wasn''t as effective as she had hoped it would be. The way forward was not through recurring aggression.


    (''Not bad, she''s clever,'') Rui nodded.


    She didn''t stubbornly stick to a losing strategy that would only drain her stamina faster than Kane drained his.


    WHOOSH


    Instead. She stood her ground this time, making slower progress as she slowly covered the gap between herself and Kane. Rather than aggressively shooting in his direction, she chose to systematically close off the space he had in all three directions to make it harder for him to escape.


    (''Not the best approach with her toolset, but it is an effective strategy,'') Rui mused. (''Her maneuvering is greater than mine as a way to close the distance between herself and her opponent. She''s not going to be as easy to avoid as I am, Kane.'')


    Kane''s expression grew more strained as he too realized that. He was faster than her, but not to the degree where he could run circles around her. Furthermore, with her remarkablyrge wingspan, she was able to cover a lot of area at any given point in time.


    The fight turned into what appeared to be a strange game of tag, as Kane quickly realized that he was slowly but steadily getting cornered.


    Much to Rui''s approval, he eventually stopped running away and faced her head-on, preparing his palm for his jabbing technique.


    He rushed in, and in an instant, his jab shot forward to her sr plexus in just a moment.


    (''Tsk,'') Rui tutted.


    She bent backward just as his jab came into contact with her body, the strikended, but it wasn''t the only thing that did.


    CLASP!


    She managed to grab his waist with her long arms. Kane''s eyes widened, but it was toote. The very world shifted as she flung him over her while she fell to the ground.


    BOOM!!


    A resounding impact reverberated across the entire tire facility and beyond as Kane grimaced in pain.


    She immediately mounted over him,pletely incapacitating him.


    Thankfully, she stopped there. The fight was already over.


    "You''re not bad, but your offense sucks," She told him as she stood up. "That''s why I was able to ignore your offense as I grabbed you for a throw."


    Kane wasn''t bothered by the loss at all. He knew that he was stronger than her by virtue of his Void Step technique. Although he sometimes forgot how overpowered the technique was because Rui was able to deal with ease. The way in which he would go about things was rather simple with this technique. He would be able to guarantee tond vital attacks with it.


    "The two of you are definitely going to be very positive additions to Crexeet army," She replied. "Come, I''ll exin how things work, and what exactly your duties entail."


    She led them back out of the training facility and into arge room filled with people and documents of all kinds.


    Thanks for reading, hope you enjoyed that.


    Lord_Streak


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1020 Library

    "This is a map of the entire region." She pointed to arge map inscribed on a table. Surprisingly, most of the region was empty into a no man''snd and forest, while there were several small states littered here and there.


    In the center of the region was a small dot representing Crexeet town.


    (''That''s unfortunate,'') Rui noted the fact that the town at the center in a region with several states littered across it.


    "We have a surveince divisionprised of Martial Artists and long-surveince scopes operating throughout the day, all days," She said. "They inform us of any attacks ahead of time, we deploy Martial Artists and potion users tobat them ahead of time, to ensure that the conflict urs well away from the town so that the townsfolks aren''t any the wiser. If you possess the necessary sensory prowess, you can serve on the surveince division if you wish to."


    Rui probably had better senses than anybody in the town, and he was sure that he did not want to be part of the division. He had no interest in being perched in some hidden trench only to spend his day keeping an eye out. He would rather fight.


    Kane, on the other hand, wouldn''t mind joining the surveince division, but he didn''t have Rui''s sensory prowess.


    "I''ll take the front lines," Rui immediately replied.


    "As will I,"


    "Alright then," She nodded. "You don''t have to worry about hierarchy or position or anything of the sort. You will simply be given a set of orders and a few guidelines, and that''s that."


    This was probably to reduce mistakes due tock of coordination. Since the military by design included external warriors, thus they could not have an overly sophisticated system. It needed to be simple and straightforward enough so that the temporary foreigners would be able to integrate well enough.


    "You''ll be part of a squad, however, there are no squad protocols or anything like that barring basic guidelines, you''ll be moving independently, but the other members of the squad may also receive the same order simultaneously. You will be expected not to get in each other''s way, at the very least."


    She handed Rui and Kane small booklets containing some things that they needed to abide by.


    Rui skimmed through the guidelines. He had to admit that they were quite liberal and basic. The department of defense had made sure not to go overboard in this regard.


    "This is eptable," Rui nodded.


    "Did you read all of it that quickly?" She raised an eyebrow. "Then again given your schrly feats, it''s not that hard to believe."


    "Is there anything else?" Rui asked.


    "Here," She tossed them two devices. "You''ll receive your instructions through that."


    Soon enough, their meeting ended and the two of them left the department, heading back to their quarters in the institute.<novelsnext>I think you should take a look at </novelsnext>


    "Finally," Kane heaved a sigh. "We can get started on training now."


    Rui nodded. "You head back to your room, I intend to finally visit the libraries of the institute."


    "Gotcha," Kane nodded. "Good luck."


    The two of them split ways as Rui headed towards the library wing, quickly making his way through security with his newly administered high-clearance library pass.


    The second he walked in, the multiple students inside stared at him with intense stares. He sighed inwardly before checking out the library.


    It was extremely well-organized and neat, not to mention incredibly vast. Rui couldn''t even imagine the sheer amount of information that was stored inside. He felt a strange curiosity as to whether he would be able to store all this information inside his Mind Pce in the first ce. It was a seemingly impossible task, after all.


    He shook his head as he headed towards the applied esoteric material science section. Most of the literature in the institute was contextualized in regard to Martial Art since that was what the institute''s research was centered around.


    That was preferable to Rui, it meant that he didn''t need to spend extra effort into pruning out data that wasn''t relevant to Martial Art.


    His goal was quite simple, he was looking for a substance that could generate electricity that could also be integrated into the Martial Body.


    For now, his work simply entailed going over the literature bit by bit. He knew that this wasn''t going to take a short amount of time. He recalled how much time it took to research esoteric substances for his Riemannian Echo. It took more than half a year to create that technique.


    The esoteric material science was thankfully only a portion of the entirety of the library. However, he still needed to go through an immense amount of literature to find what he was looking for.


    Text ? 2024 N?velDrama.Org.


    As for whether it existed or not, he didn''t have any doubts about that. The reason for that was simple. The sheer variety of esoteric substances that he had seen, and what they were capable of made him think that there was far too high a chance for there to be an esoteric substance that could generate electricity.


    Much to his convenience, the esoteric material science section of the library was further divided into a variety of categories across different kinds of categorization. This was something that he had learned while studying for the exam, and it allowed him to skim through exactly what he wanted.


    [Esoteric Phenomena and Lightning]


    A simple low-level book that allowed him to get started on the subject and topic. From this, he could branch out in certain directions that seemed more promising than others, and systematically explore every topic that he came across.


    Because esoteric material science was argely data-driven and empirical field of science, it meant that it wasn''t something he could fly by just by thinking about it really hard, most of the work was going to be centered around pouring over data scrupulously whilepiling and organizing each time he filtered away at it.


    (''This is going to take a while.'')


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1021 Flow

    While it was going to take some time for the research to end, what wasn''t going to take too much time was their deployment.


    Soon enough, both Rui and Kane received stand-by summons from the department of defense. The two of them quickly scurried over to the edge of the town and quickly followed through with their instructions.


    Both of them were wearing masks, of course. Rui had no intention of letting hostilities take an image of his appearance.


    If it spread around, then it could potentiallynd in Chairman Deacon''s hands, and he would recognize Rui in a heartbeat, regardless of the color of his hair.


    Rui was relying on the poormunication facilities across the continent to get away with such a simple disguise. The further away they got from the Shionel Dungeon, the more Rui would rx, but for now, his identity needed to be protected.


    The two of them waited in a dispatch facility with a bunch of other Martial Squires that were loosely part of the same squad. The Martial Artists arranged themselves in the manner of their range, with the long-range Martial Squires taking a ce at the back of the squad and the close-range Martial Squires serving as the vanguard of the squad.


    Kane and Rui took a ce in the vanguard, The former because he was a close-range Martial Artist, and thetter because he wanted to stick with Kane.


    The squad was on immediate stand-by for whenever the rm for an iing attack was sounded.


    And it wasn''t long before it happened.


    "Eighteen Martial Artists approaching Crexeet town from six O''clock!"


    "Executing directive 8b!"


    Soon enough, the handler of the squad nodded at all of them. "You''re all up, you outnumber the iing Martial Artists, follow the protocols, and you''ll surely be able to overwhelm them."


    The guidelines in such circumstances were specifically meant to ensure that the squad members did not get in each other''s way and were able toplete their duties without any problems.


    The squad was quickly deployed once they were informed about the specifics of the attackers. Apparently, the Derous Duchy had set off another attempt to try andpromise the defense of Crexeet town. If it seeded, it could make invasions into Crexeet town a lot more feasible in the future.


    Thus the surrounding kingdoms routinely made sneaky attempts to try and stretch the defenses of Crexeet Town just far enough for significant holes to emerge.


    Soon enough, the attackers emerged into view. The enemy Martial Squires took to the air when they realized that they were going to be executed.Text ? 2024 N?velDrama.Org.


    Yet the squad did not intend to let them pass without any problems.


    THWOOM THWOOM THWOOM THWOOM


    Ruiunched multiple Mighty sh Roaring sts at several Martial Squires in the battle, uncaring for which one seeded in hitting and which one didn''t. It was merely a stalling move to ensure that they never got to Crexeet town.


    That was the goal of the deployment, to ensure that no harm came to Crexeet town, allowing this basic goal to ur would be quite disastrous.


    Rui''s attacks did slow some of them down, along with other long-range offense techniques.


    However, he wasn''t content with just this simple and mundane goal. He hadn''t forgotten the deal that he had with the mayor.


    As long as he killed a Martial Squire, he got a week off, It meant that he had more time to do what he wanted.<novelsnext>I think you should take a look at </novelsnext>


    It was for this reason that Rui was very motivated to kill a Martial Squire in this battle. His eyes ran around the entire battle who looked to be the weakest. It wasn''t easy making these evaluations when all of them were heavily clothed in attire and masks, but he could vaguely get a guess for all their power levels.


    For one, there was no grade-nine or grade-ten Martial Squires. He was extremely certain about that, his Primordial Instinct was something that could easily detect them had they been there.


    However, there were some high-grade Martial Squires. So much so that he felt quite an interest in fighting them. Fighting low-grade Martial Squires was easy, but it was also boring and highlycking in stimtion. Rui liked exercising his Flowing Void Style, more than the actual conflict itself.


    Low-grade martial Squires were simply far too weak to force him to use the VOID algorithm, he could dispatch them simply by applying just a few of the techniques of his Martial Art.


    There was no way that he needed anything more than that.


    His vision suddenly rested on one particr Martial Squire out of them, one that looked particrly strong.


    Rui had already made up his mind.


    "I''m splitting off here," Rui told Kane. "Be careful."


    "You too," Kane nodded.


    Rui rushed toward the man before swiftlyunching a powerful blow.


    The man did not react with surprise or panic, he simply faced Rui, slowly raising his hand up slightly.


    POW!


    He interception the attack gently, yet Rui''d attack did not break through.


    Rui''s eyes widened as the world twirled in his vision. It took him a moment to stop the rotation, yet he was already open.


    BAM!


    The man had exploited the opportunity tounch a blow against Rui''s gut, causing thetter to grimace.


    (''That was counter-offensive redirection'') Rui''s eyes twinkled with interest. (''His Martial Path is simr to aikido in the defensive aspect.'')


    In just a moment, Rui recognized and identified the core of his Martial Art''s defense.


    The man watched Rui for a second, before moving. Yet instead of attacking Rui, he dodged a blow from behind, stepping aside as he caught the fist. With remarkable movements, he twisted the flow of the power of his attacker to face Rui!


    The man flew forward towards Rui, much to his own shock.


    Yet Rui simply ignored him as he evaded the flying body before rushing toward his opponent with an excited expression. The man was a remarkable master of manipting the flow of power of his opponent, and Ruio was excited to test himself against the man.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1022 Outcome

    As far as Rui could tell, his opponent was the most powerful Martial Squire on the battlefield. At least, that was what his Primordial Instinct told him. The more time he spent in the Squire Realm, and the stronger he got, the better he became at gauging the power levels of Martial Squire with just a nce.


    His opponent had already demonstrated some powerful redirection techniques and a remarkable mastery over manipting the momentum and torque of his opponent.


    (''A close-range counter-offensive Martial Artist,'') Rui immediately deduced. (''He maniptes his opponent''s flow of power to cause them topletely destabilize their bnce and defenses. He exploits the openings he causes tond clean attacks.'')


    Rui was not unfamiliar with redirection, he had even mastered a redirection technique in the Apprentice Realm.


    Rui stepped away as heunched multiple Mighty Roar sh sts at his opponent. Much to his surprise, the man did not attempt to dodge the attacks, instead, he raised his palms, breathing in a strange manner, before spinning extremely fast!


    The spinning instantly caused a powerful spiraling pir of wind, Rui''s sound projectiles were seamlessly dragged into the tornado that he had caused, failing to hit him.


    Rui''s eyes widened in amazement. (''He redirected sound by manipting the air, the medium that sound travels through.'')


    Rui had simply lightly attacked him with a few long-range techniques to see how he would react, and whether he was able to effectivelybat long-range attacks. Much to his surprise, the man was fully prepared to redirect long-range techniques that relied on the atmosphere.


    Rui rushed forward as heunched a heavy Flowing Canon at the tornado, fully expecting to be able to break past it.


    The reason that his sound projectiles had been ineffective was that the man had entirely bypassed it altogether. It was simr to trying to move away waves on the surface of the water in a bucket, you could try tobat the waves of water themselves, or you could move the entire bucket itself, the waves of water would not be able to do anything about that.


    That was effectively what the man had done with Rui''s sound projectiles, a rather clever counter to such forms of attacks.


    That was why Rui immediately abandoned the technique as he adapted and returned to close-rangebat, throwing in a powerful Flowing Canon aimed at the spinning man. Much to Rui''s surprise, he immediately ceased the tornado technique before gently intercepting Rui''s punch, applying just enough force in the right direction causing Rui to fall off bnce.


    STEP


    Rui ceased his attack as he regained his bnce, yet the man had no intentions of just watching.


    BAM!


    A powerful weighted blow struck Rui, yet it was his opponent''s turn to feel surprised. The man visibly reacted as he felt the power of his strike seemingly disappearing into thin air as he impacted Rui''s body!


    Rui grinned as he seamlessly dispersed the man''s attack into the ground, beforeunching a flurry of short and swift blows.Text ? 2024 N?velDrama.Org.


    He had already begun adapting to his opponent. Attacks that took longer tond were easier to redirect, thus Rui had changed his approach entirely. He adopted a boxing stance as he threw short and swift jabs. By sacrificing power, he could make it much harder for the man to redirect them.


    He held off on kicking against such an opponent. Kicks were more powerful than punches, but in this case, they were not suited against such an opponent. Kicks took longer tond, furthermore, theypromised bnce more than blows did, in exchange for a much more powerful impact and greater range.


    Rui knew that carelessly throwing kicks against such an opponent would only allow his opponent topletely toy with Rui effortlessly.


    Rui wasn''t even surprised when the man managed to deal with his strikes quite well. Yet, Rui''s eyes were starting to ''see''.<novelsnext>I think you should take a look at </novelsnext>


    Everything had patterns, and this man was no exception.


    (''You need to intercept attacks at a ny-degree angle for your technique to work,'') Rui noticed. (''Furthermore, the redirection process must begin before the attack reaches you, you cannot redirect attacks point-nk.'')


    He quickly adapted further altering his attacks even more. For one, he employed blows with a curving trajectory, which made it difficult for his opponent to redirect them, it also made it more difficult for him to be able to intercept them as cleanly as before.


    POW!


    Rui smirked as hended the first clean attack on the man. Unfortunately, the blow wasn''t all that heavy. Everything came at a price, and curving his strikes in such a fashion sacrificed a bit of power to achieve.


    Still, it was a good start.


    BAM!


    Rui surprised him as he switched it up with a well-timed low kick to the shin, while simultaneously winding up a punch, allowing him to seamlessly follow through.


    POW POW POW!


    The man leaped back as he tried to put some distance between him and Rui, but Rui was not having any of it. He leaped forward with Outer Convergence and Gale Force Breathing, refusing to allow him any respite, all while spotting even more patterns in the man''s movements now that Rui had pushed him out of hisfort zone.


    BAM!!


    Rui managed tond an incredibly heavy Flowing Canon lower right hook.


    (''You leave a blind spot at the other end of your field of vision every time you redirect attacks.'') Rui mused as his attacks became more seamless and precise.


    The more he fought, the more patterns he caught, and the more he was able to predict. His reaction speed effectively went down to zero as he began making incredibly well-timed movements and counters,pletely devastating the man''s defense and offense.


    BAM!!!


    A powerful flying knee kick struck his sr plexus, leaving him entirely incapacitated for a few moments.


    POW!


    A swift straight kick to the jaw was enough. He had umted enough blunt-force trauma that his consciousness shut down.


    SPLAT!


    A simple stab to the brain through the eye socket, and he was dead.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1023 Considerations

    It was a good fight, Rui took a moment to appreciate the power that his opponent demonstrated.


    (''He had a mature Martial Art,'') Rui mused.


    He could feel that his opponent had spent quite some time refining his Martial Art. He had a strong foundation and expanded the effectiveness of his redirection against all kinds of attacks across multiple ranges.


    That alone probably took the man about a decade of creating or modifying techniques to possess the necessary individuality needed. That was the estimate that Rui had in mind when he considered how slow the rate of growth of the average Martial Artist was.


    Regardless, Rui got the impression that this man was closer to reaching the Senior Realm despite being weaker than Rui.


    Rui had not forgotten that the path to the higher Realms was not simply one of power, although power had a corrtion.


    He had failed to get an opportunity to learn of the exact conditions of the path to the Senior Realm, but as he grew stronger, it was almost as though he could intuitively sense what it could be.


    The Senior Realm was a natural phenomenon. This he knew because Senior Ceeran had carelessly let slip in a conversation long ago that he had broken through to the Senior Realm in the middle ofbat.Text content ? N?velDrama.Org.


    It was rather strange, the breakthrough to the Apprentice Realm was natural, however, the breakthrough to the Squire Realm was artificial and man-made. Then the breakthrough to the Senior Realm was natural once again.


    (''Does that mean the breakthrough to the Master Realm is also artificial?'') Rui wondered, before shaking his head. He didn''t feel like that was the case, although he certainly couldn''t know at this point in time.


    He nced back at the corpse before him grabbing by the arm before he headed back in the direction of Crexeet Town.


    He had alreadypleted his end of the deal and had killed a Martial Squire, thus he had quite some time free of defense duties, as per their agreement. Martial Squires were special in Squire-level nations, after all, as well as in general.


    One of the things that he hade to learn during his travels thus far was that the Kandrian Empire was truly an outlier. Based on his experience, half of all nations were only at the Apprentice level as far as Martial prowess went. The remaining half were nations that possessed Martial Squires, and even above, of course.


    It put things into perspective for Rui, and showed him that in most ces, Martial Squires like himself were quite precious. He could straight up negotiate with smaller and weaker Apprentice-level nations all by himself as a Martial Squire. It was unfortunate that these nations were simply too weak to provide him with anything that he wanted.


    However, even when it came to Squire-level nations, he was quite precious and valued. He was experiencing that with Crexeet town at the moment.


    Just by virtue of Kane and him being Martial Squires, the mayor had been quite motivated to retain their services no matter what.<novelsnext>I think you should take a look at </novelsnext>


    He nced around the battlefield as he spotted Kane. The man was evading attacks from what seemed like a piercing specialist. It wasn''t a bad match-up to Kane as the greatest capability of his opponent''s Martial Art could only be shown if an attacknded. If it didn''t then his opponent would not be able to show his true power.


    Rui nodded approvingly as he continued back to Crexeet Town.


    He had no intention of helping Kane out, it wasn''t good to stifle hisbat with overprotectiveness. It was best if Kane overcame this by himself.


    Besides, in the worst-case scenario, Rui was confident that he would be able to use Void Step to momentarily get away. Although they had agreed not to use it inbat, that didn''t apply when he didn''t have any chance and was on the verge of death or something like that.


    THUD


    Rui dropped the corpse before the defense personnel who let him back into the town. "Inform the mayor of this, will you?"


    He nonchntly made his way straight back to the scientific libraries of the Crexeet research institute.


    His deal unfortunately did not include Kane in it, meaning Kane would need to kill a Martial Squire for himself if he wanted a good chunk of time himself. This wasn''t entirely a bad thing as it would keep Kane busy and allow him to hone his skills in actualbat.


    After all, at least as far as the pure research part went, he would need to rely on Rui a lot, there was nothing that he could do beyond that at the moment.


    Rui immediately dug back into his research as he skimmed through several more esoteric substances, studying their properties. The search for appropriate substances showed him just how vast the field of esoteric material science was. It was also an excellent reason why conventional physics and theoretical physics were woefully underdeveloped. He couldn''t even me them.


    After witnessing what esoteric substances were capable of, he too would have been more inclined to spend all his research capital on esoteric material science. There were simply far too many things that one could do with them.


    Inparison, conventional physics centered around more normal and better-understood phenomena were rather boring. Furthermore, he could see that there was a good argument that esoteric material science and technology were superior to the conventional technology of Earth. The things that were possible in a variety of fields such as medicine and warcraft were greater than what conventional technology was capable of.


    The only field that thetter exceed the former was inmunication, information transmission, and processing sector. The inte far surpassed anything that the Panama Continent had ever aplished as far asmunication and information transmission went.


    Still, for what he had in mind at hand, conventional technology wasn''t really able to help him, he needed to find a solution buried in the myriad of esoteric phenomena of this world.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1024 Discovery

    Time passed a stable routine fell into ce. Rui would research, and get deployed.


    And then he would kill his opponent, and gain even more free time.


    Every time.


    Every time that he was deployed, an enemy Martial Squire died, and their corpse was brought back to Crexeet Town.


    Every time.


    Rui''s dominance was shocking to both allies and enemies alike.


    Word of his deeds spread like wildfire within Crexeet Town, albeit unspecific. The town was still unaware of the extent of the conflict that urred outside the borders, however, they hade to learn that Rui always killed a Martial Squire every time he fought.


    He was already quite famous because of his aplishment in the schrly fields, but he had also proven his worth as Martial Squire to the entire town. He was nothing short of a celebrity within the town, he had be the object of admiration and even lust.


    The mayor was thoroughly overjoyed by Rui''s dominating performance. He knew that the Martial Squires of this region were by no means of the highest grade, but there were plenty ofpetent Martial Squires, and even high-grade Martial Squires.


    Yet, Rui was never stopped.


    His sess was so impactful that the enemy nations had long taken notice of him. He was known as the ''one soul reaper'' in certain circles, for he only killed once every time he stepped onto the battlefield and no more.


    However, something had to give.


    These nations did not possess an endless supply of Martial Squires to merely be reduced as fodder for this new Martial Squire to consume. The loss of each Martial Squire was a tangible wound to these nations.


    That was why after the fourth domineering defeat, the various nations finally threw their hands up and decided to deploy multiple Martial Squires to at least neutralize him as a threat, even if they could not eliminate him as a threat.


    The fifth time Rui stepped onto the battlefield he was confronted with a defense-oriented Martial Artist and a long-range Martial Squire.


    This was the first time in a while that Rui had been subject to a longer and more intense battle. It appeared that his enemies had chosen well. The long-range Martial Squire was apetent Martial Artist with immense flexibility and maneuvering as well as power. She could rapidly alter the angle from where she attacked him in a manner that was simr to Senior Ceeran, albeit much inferior.


    The defensive Martial Squire, on the other hand, was a good tank with enough speed and wingspan, giving him the ability to barricade Rui from reaching the long-range Martial Squire who continuously bombarded him with powerful attacks.


    Thus, Rui was confronted with an unfair battle where he was sted with power offensive attacks that were quite difficult to evade, but unable to inflict any damage on either of them. The long-range Martial Squire was too far, he''d need to use his own long-range techniques, but also more importantly, the defensive Martial Squire kept tanking everything that Rui had to offer.<novelsnext>I think you should take a look at </novelsnext>


    Yet, Rui eventually prevailed yet again.


    He waited for the moment when the long-range Squire came closer to him than she ever had as he put on a facade of losing. Just when she got close enough, he used his Reverberating Catapult tounch the defensive Martial Squire straight at him.


    Yet she hadn''t realized that that was merely meant to be a momentary distraction.


    POW!!!


    A simple well-timed Flowing Canon from her blindspot took her down. She had been the kill for the fifth battle.


    The enemy nations hade to realize that they couldn''t simply keep him bogged down with just two mid-grade Martial Squires, thus they kept stepping up their efforts. It wasn''t long before they had increased the quality and quantity of martial Squires enough so much so that they were able to pressure him very hard.


    Yet, all it took was for Rui to exhale deeply in a strange manner. In the middle of the battle, he became vastly faster than he was before, he slipped through the Martial Artists that his opponents had made to suppress and kill him.


    Text ? 2024 N?velDrama.Org.


    The Forestep technique was not to be underestimated. Although the predictive model that he had created in this battle was far too unrefined for it to bring out the full power of the Forestep technique that he had demonstrated in his battle against the Root, it was still enough for him to win the battle against the Martial Squires.


    Time passed as this became the norm. A single Martial Squire seemingly turned the tide of war all by himself.


    Rui seemed to be the only one who wasn''t impressed. This wasn''t the first time that he had had wide impacts just purely based on his Martial Art performance. Compared to what he had achieved in the Shionel Confederation, this little conflict was nothing more than a quarrel between children.


    Not that he minded this in any way, in fact, he was rather relieved that this was the case. It meant that the enemies that he made were much more proportional in their threat level rtive to him.


    In the Shionel Confederation, the threat level of his enemies was off the charts. There were simply too many of them who were too powerful for him to possibly face head-on.


    The same was not true for the smaller and weaker local sovereign states that he had picked a fight with by doing such a good job protecting Crexeet town. The Squire-level nations did not scare him. Although they certainly were stronger than him, they were unable to simply crush him, or even defeat him without any exertion like Chairman Deacon was capable of.


    That was desirable. He had no intentions of making disproportionately powerful enemies yet again when he was already on the run from extremely powerful enemies in the first ce.


    Regardless, he continued his research until he finally stumbled across sess.


    "I''ve got it," He grinned. "This is it!"


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1025 Family

    ?


    Lashara sighed as she got up in the morning. Dawn had just cracked the veil of darkness, ushering in a new day. Mornings used to cheer her up, but these days, it only depressed her.


    She wasn''t the only one.


    A mncholic gloom had swept up the entire Quarrier Orphanage. An undertone of grief had upied everybody''s day-to-day life, much to her dismay. It didn''t help that winter was on its way, either. It meant cold and dark days for an entire season.


    Of course, the orphanage was doing much better these days financially. Rui and Julian had supported the orphanage a lot financially, nourishing the orphanage, and allowing it to expand and take in more children.


    It was farrger than it was just a decade ago due to this reason.


    This was a great blessing and one that she hadn''t even dreamed of before. She should have been happy, and she had been.


    That was until recently.


    It had been nearly two years since thest time she saw Rui. She recalled the day he left like it was yesterday. He had bid them goodbye with a smile as he went away.


    He hadn''t returned ever since.


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    About a year ago, an official letter from the Martial Union had personally informed them that Rui had passed on all his wealth to them out of the blue.


    Apparently, he had even sent them a message.


    ''I''m sorry.''


    Lashara felt as though the blissful life that they had had at the Orphanage hade to a grinding halt.


    She didn''t understand.


    What did this mean?


    They had been unable to get more information from the Martial Union. Not even Julian with his contacts had been able to find out what was happening with Rui.


    Every day, she prayed that he woulde home, and every day, she would be disappointed. It wasn''t until a yearter after that that it became evidently clear that Rui wasn''ting home.


    She didn''t even know what to think.


    She didn''t even know if he was alive.


    She could only hope, but she felt as though the uncertainty was driving her mad. She couldn''t help but fear the worst.


    On one hand, she knew for all her worries, Rui was verypetent and strong. However, that didn''t mean he wasn''t capable of befalling some danger that could take his life.<novelsnext>I think you should take a look at </novelsnext>


    On the other hand, if he had the chance to contact the Martial Union and tell them to convey a message, he couldn''t possibly be under any acute threat.


    Julian had thus concluded that Rui was most likely alive, and had made a decision to note back home for some reason. He suspected that Rui must have found himself in truly exceptionally dire circumstances that caused him to leave without saying more than a few words.


    He had had some suspicions as to what had gone on, but he couldn''t be sure. Although Lashara appreciated his intelligent insights on the matter, it only made her feel worse


    She got up earlier than the rest, preparing herself for a long day. She also quickly whipped up some food for Julian along with Myra. He headed to work at the Kandrian Institute of Technology quite early in the morning.


    "Thank you for the food," Julian smiled as he hugged Lashara goodbye.


    She was happy to see that he had recovered in the past year.


    He had taken quite a hit from Rui''s disappearance, but it appeared that he was finally making his way back to how he used to be.


    He was closer to Rui than most of them. They knew that the two of them had always enjoyed spending time with each other, partly because they were quite simr to each other in several ways. For one, the two of them were incredibly gifted mentally far beyond the norm. Lashara recalled how the two of them began speaking, reading, and writing at ages far earlier than normal children.


    They began being able to useplexnguage at the age of four.


    The two had gotten swimmingly well despite the age gap between them, something that she had always found odd, having conversations that none of the others could follow.


    Soon enough, the rest of the adult caretakers woke up as well, starting their duties and work early in the morning before the kids got up and swarmed them.


    The size of the orphanage had grown remarkably, thus there was a lot of work to be done. A year had passed since they learned of Rui''s message, most of the adults were in the same mind as her, they were simply unsure of what to make of the matter in the first ce.


    Nheless, they too had been quite depressed about it. However, their responsibilities with the young ones caused them to push it out of their minds for the most part, they couldn''t afford to be affected by it.


    This matter hadn''t been disclosed to the children, naturally. They were only children, after all. They did not need to be burdened with such matters.


    Lashara knew that it was only a matter of time before they realized something was wrong.


    Rui often did spend quite some time away from home, but never this long.


    The older ones had already begun to realize that something was off.


    Particrly Max and Mana, who were also Martial Apprentices in the Martial Academy. They had wondered why they hadn''t seen their big brother and teacher in so much time. However, they spent most of their time in the Martial Academy either training orpleting missions now that they had received their learner''s license.


    All in all, Rui''s disappearance had hurt the entire orphanage, but those who knew had no choice but to move on, and those who were too young to do so, didn''t know.


    Lashara didn''t know where Rui was, or whether he was even alive, but she prayed that he was safe, and she prayed that he would one day return.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1026 Lundenfire

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    Rui grinned as he finally found what he was looking for. Months had gone into scouring the database for the right kinds of esoteric substances, and suitable esoteric phenomena. It was unfortunate that he couldn''t do nonbat-rted tasks at super speed, such as research, which was why he needed a lot of time to finish all these tasks.


    However, his effort had finally paid off.


    [Lundenfire marble]


    This was a substance that was known to be able to cause a shocking sensation to those who touched it when it came into contact with another piece of Lundenfire marble. It had been empirically verified to be the same kind of phenomenon as lightning when experiments confirmed that substances behaved simrly to this phenomenon as they did with lightning.


    This could give Rui what he was looking for, it was the solution to Kane''s issue.


    Furthermore, that was not the only discovery that he made.


    He hade across a technique that he had never known before, a technique that was foundational in the field of poison.


    This technique allowed the user to permanently integrate a substance into their body without ever needing to replenish said substance. This was a highly advanced form of conditioning that made use of the special traits of the Martial Body.


    The Martial Body was an evolved species rtive to the human body, it was superior in almost all ways. One of them most certainly included the human body''s mild tendency to be able to adapt to grow more resistant to things that hurt it through gradually increasing prolonged exposure to it.


    There were humans on Earth who had be increasingly resistant and even immune to poison and venom after years of exposure to those substances. The body went through anatomical, and physiological adaptations that allowed it to resist them better, and perhaps even be able to integrate small portion of it into the body.


    The Martial Body had elevated this to another level, because of the enhanced healing factor of the body, the body''s ability to adapt to certain things became a lot better due to healed cells and tissue being able to deal with it better than before. The reason for this was because the cells that survived and healed would recover and heal, passing on their ability to survive and heal to the next generation of cells and tissue.


    Thus, dangerous substances could be introduced into certain parts of the body, and the body was capable of adapting to it.


    Furthermore, there existed ways to teach the body to ingest said substance to replenish it elsewhere into the body, or even produce the foreign substance in the body from scratch. The potential for this came from the appendix of the digestive system.


    The appendix used to be an organ for breaking down structures andpounds that were particrly hard to break down.


    The organ was now redundant in the human body due to major diet changes, causing the organ to have grown redundant.


    However, during the evolution of the body into the Martial Body, the organ also evolved. It became possible to do things that weren''t possible prior, such as teaching the body to produce or at least ingest and replenish certain substances into the body, things that it couldn''t do before.<novelsnext>I think you should take a look at </novelsnext>


    It involved a painful and long conditioning training technique that would eventually force the body to develop that capability in a manner simr to how it gained capabilities during the Squire evolution breakthrough process.


    It was essentially a smaller and downscaled version of the Squire evolution breakthrough phase without the radiation and the hyper-elerated healing process.


    Rui realized that this was a technique that was not only relevant to Kane for when he introduced the Lundenfire Marble into his body but also to Rui as well as due to the substances that he had introduced into his body when creating the Riemannian Echo technique.


    However, that was not all, after seeing how promising the results of his research were, he couldn''t help but feel the desire to use them not just for Kane, but also to benefit himself.


    In other words, he wanted to create his own technique incorporating these concepts in mind.


    Furthermore, he already had the perfect kind of technique in mind.


    (''I did recallmenting mycking grappling and wrestlingbat,'') Rui recalled. (''This is a good opportunity to handle that issue.'')


    In fact, a simple image popped into his head when he began considering the concept of the technique. It was an exceedingly simple and straightforward application of the research that he had done and the kind of techniques that he wanted to create.


    (''The individuality is great. I did all of this research myself, so there is no question of originality, and I''m willing to bet that it is very unique too,'') Rui mused. (''As for affinity¡­ Well, it''s not bad, though it''s nothing special in that regard.'')Text content ? N?velDrama.Org.


    That was fine. Not every technique could have a perfect affinity with his Martial Art as the ODA System and the Forestep technique. Regardless, it was a fine addition to his Martial Art and deepened his Martial Path nheless.


    He still needed to iron out some details to make sure what he had in mind, it wasn''t safe for him to just throttle forward at top speed.


    For one, it was possible that the Lunden Marble was too toxic to be able to integrate into their Martial bodies, in which case, there was simply no question. The worst part was ascertaining this, it would require a bit more time as Rui would need to conduct some more research on the substance and its viability as the foundation for some Martial Art techniques.


    He would need to borrow the research facilities of the institute to learn what he needed. Thankfully, he didn''t require much time, a handful simple and straightforward experiments would tell him everything that he needed to in this regard.


    (''Once that''s out of the way, we can finally get through what we came here for in the first ce,'')


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1027 Integrate

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    Much to Rui''s ecstasy, Lunden Marble was not too toxic and poisonous to the Martial Body. A week passed as Rui quickly all the experiments that would verify this.


    He subjected the substance to tissue from his body and other origins to test harmful the substance was to the Martial Body.


    It turns out, that the substance was instantly lethal to the human body, but only mildly to the Martial Body. That was quite the desirable oue.


    It meant that it could be integrated into the body with some degree of conditioning to limatize the body to the substance.


    "Lunden Marble¡­" Kane murmured. "You sure that this is it?"


    "Positive," Rui replied, nodding.


    "How does it work?" Kane asked.


    "You''ll have to integrate the substance into two parts of your body, bringing them into contact will charge your body in a simr fashion to the lightning bolts of Thundering Valley," Rui told him. "You''ll also have to undergo a conditioning training technique that will allow your body to naturally integrate Lundenfire Marble into your body if and when you ingest it, or its building blocks."


    "That sounds rough," Kane grimaced. "But if it will allow me to use my Fulminata technique, then I''m willing to go through with it."


    His Fulminata technique was something that he was deeply attached to and unwilling to let go of, the technique was the first technique that he had created from scratch. It not only turned out to have an incredible affinity with him and his Martial Art and Path, but it also turned out to be a grade-ten technique that allowed Kane to keep up with Rui going all out, something he never thought that he would be able to do.


    He was determined to get his hands on any way that would allow him to retain the technique.


    "I want to get started immediately," Kane told him.


    "Sure, I''ve already confirmed that the institute has enough of the substance that we can purchase with our services so that we can employ them in our techniques," Rui replied.


    "Oh," Kane raised an eyebrow. "You''re telling me you have use for this technique as well?"


    Rui nodded. "Not as much as you do, however, I do believe I can make good use of this technique.


    He had mostlye up with two technique projects.<novelsnext>I think you should take a look at </novelsnext>


    The first technique project was centered around a grappling and wrestling technique. His n was to employ lightning in a manner that allowed him to be able to impart a current and charge to his opponent to cause a certain degree of paralysis, weakening them in the process of grappling with him.


    Thus, evening into contact with him in a fight was unsafe in the first ce, he could paralyze weaker and lighter victims without any doubt. Only the stronger or heavier ones would be able to resist or negate the technique''s influence.


    Grappling in particr was a field ofbat that required constant struggle from the entire body exerting force every moment. Anypse in effort could cause one to instantly lose the battle as their opponent would be able to gain a dominating position and the fight was as good as done.


    This was Rui''s attempt at closing the shorings that existed in his grappling. Although it was not perfect, this technique made Rui confident of being able to engage in grappling in general.


    His next technique project was a close-range striking technique centered around the same principle as the previous technique. This technique employed lightning to paralyze his opponent by passing electricity through their autonomous nervous system through their nerves and pressure points.


    Unlike in the grappling technique, he did not have full-body contact with his opponent, which meant that he had a reduced surface area to work with. That was why he had to specifically aim for the nerves and the pressure points, otherwise, the technique would be meaningless.


    He considered trying to master the Fulminata technique through the same way Kane would be doing so with Lundenfire, but he ultimately decided against it, his body was evidently not able to sustain the same amount of current and charge as Kane was, for some reason. This was why Kane was able to reach a stage where lightning bolts did not hurt, but actually helped him.


    Rui, instead, decided to employ lightning in different ways. He decided to employ it not to empower himself, but actually to depower his opponents and weaken them mid-fight. This would create holes that he could exploit and win the fight.


    Of course, he was aware that there was a limited scope with this ability, he would not be able to one-shot any powerful Martial Squire magically, most certainly not. However, it would be a powerful tool when employed at the right time and ce.


    More than anything, it increased the versatility of his Martial Art. The solutions that he could not employ prior were not possible now that he had a depowering technique that could hamper and incapacitate his technique in such a fashion.


    Rui was quite excited to train and realize both these techniques, yet not nearly as much as Kane was to regain the Fulminata technique.Content is property of N?velDrama.Org.


    "It probably won''t be as strong as it was in the Thundering Valley," Rui warned him. "It''s hard to rece something that powerful this easily."


    Kane nodded. "I understand. I''m not naive enough to believe that everything will turn out perfectly, if I can gain a good chunk of the prowess that I had in the Thundering Valley, I''ll be happy."


    Even with a portion of that technique, Rui suspected that he would still be a lot more formidable than without it. It was a powerful enough technique that, along with Godspeed allowed him to fight Rui as an equal. As long as he lowered Godspeed''s output to match the resultant Fulminata technique, he would still be extremely powerful.


    "Heh," Kane grinned. "I can''t wait to fight those Martial Squires deployed by the surrounding nations after I remaster this technique."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1028 Tattoos

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    "You still have some nning to do," Rui told Kane. "As I told you, Lundenfire requires contact or extremely close proximity with itself in order to generate charge. This means simply integrating them into your body isn''t enough, you need to brush the two portions of Lundenfire in your body in order to charge your body with lightning."


    "In the middle ofbat?" Kane frowned.


    "It''s not going tost as long as the charge you got from the lightning bolts of Thundering Valley," Rui nodded. "You''re going to have to charge and recharge in the middle ofbat."


    "Hmm¡­" Kane considered his words. "Then it''ll be best to make the charging as easy and essible as possible."


    "That''s right," Rui nodded. "The charging will require gesture with you brushing the two portions of Lundenfire in your body together, so make sure to choose a rubbing motion or action that''s easy to do inbat."


    "Well," Kane nced at his arms. "Then I''ll go for my arms. My legs are far too important to be preupied with such matters. I need them unimpeded at all times."


    As an evasive maneuver, his legs were extremely important to his evasive maneuvering capabilities. He could not constantly detract from that by constantly having to perform some gesture that will allow them to perform more than what they could already do so far.


    "I n to do that for one of my techniques as well," Rui nodded. "What we can do is figure out which parts of our arms to graft the Lundenfire marble into based on the rubbing gesture."


    Rui and Kane spent some time figuring out what they wanted the gesture to be. It didn''t have that many restrictions, for starters. It only required both arms to make contact with each other.


    Thus, they could find the simplest and easiest gesture to make in the middle ofbat, and then simply graft the Lundenfire Marble into those parts of the arms that would make contact with each other.


    Thus, performing the rubbing gesture would bring the Lundenfire Marble in contact with each other, producing a charge and current that would travel to the entire body. Now, all they needed to do was get Lundenfire tattoos on their arms in the ces that they had already decided ahead of time.


    It was a good way of disguising the esoteric substance as art.


    "Why are your tattoos thinner?" Kane frowned.


    "It will generate less charge," Rui replied. "I can''t handle lightning with the ease that you seem to be able to. That''s why I''m using less Lundenfire Marble. I also can''t get the boost to my reflexes the way you do because my body does not conduct electricity like yours does."Content is property ? N?velDrama.Org.


    "What?"


    "Basically, I can''t do what you do, so I have to make the best use of what I can," Rui replied.


    The two of them quickly made up their minds about where they wanted to graft the Ludenfire Marble in the skin of their arm. The result was strange tattoos across their arm in different elementary designs since neither of them were capable of art to any meaningful degree.


    By the end of it, they had ended up with marks on their arms that highlighted the areas where they would inject the Lundenfire Marble, before recording it.


    After that, it was just a matter of the procedure, for Kane at least.


    "Wait, you''re not getting the injection done right away?" Kane frowned.


    "Yes," Rui confirmed. "I want to build up my tolerance for electricity with conditioning, otherwise there''s no point."


    For example, if he generated enough power to stun and paralyze his opponent, he needed to be able to resist it in the first ce himself. Otherwise, he would get paralyzed the second he charged his body up.


    He was envious of Kane, who was able to harness lightning without any side effects. <novelsnext>I think you should take a look at </novelsnext>


    Soon enough, Kane''s arranged procedure began with the trained professionals of the Crexeet Institute.


    Rui had chosen to overlook the entire procedure, as he did not trust anybody in that ce. This was not the Martial Union that he could at least trust not to be malicious or ipetent.


    The integration procedure looked exactly like what Rui expected it to. The machine looked like a giant tattoo device.


    It systematically dug into the flesh of Kane''s arms, spreading the Lundenfire Marble into his outer flesh.


    The procedure was surprisingly quick.


    Within an hour, all of the Lundenfire Marble had been grafted into his skin. Furthermore, he didn''t even need any caution time thanks to his healing factor healing the tissue that had been damaged, integrating the esoteric substance into his flesh.


    Within some time, he was as good as new.


    "You''re sure I can try it out now right?" Kane asked with an excited expression.


    "Go ahead," Rui told him.


    Kane nodded, before bringing his arms together and letting the tattoos on both arms touch.


    BZZT!


    His expression lit up as he felt a nostalgic sensation. His long lost technique had finallye back.


    "Hahaha!" Heughed. "This is great! It''s not nearly as strong as the lightning bolts from the Thundering Valley, but it''s still pretty good!"


    "FUUUU¡­!" He exhaled hard, activating his Godspeed technique partially, before immediately testing out his new technique like an excited child.


    WHOOSH!


    Rui''s eyes widened as Kane manifested arge portion of the formidability that he had disyed in the Thundering Valley. Rui would not be able to handle him without Forestep, that was true without a doubt.


    "Let''s spend the rest of the day sparring!" Kane grinned.


    Rui chuckled but shook his head. "I still have a lot of preparations to do for my training, so I can''t keep youpany, unfortunately. Still, you don''t need me if you want a fight."


    Kane''s head tilted quizzically.


    "Have you forgotten?" Rui smirked. "You''re participating in a war against actual enemies. Go fight them and prove yourself on the battlefield."


    "You know, that''s actually a brilliant idea,"


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1029 Menaces

    Content is property of N?velDrama.Org.


    ?


    In the days that followed, Kane stormed the battlefield, eager to test the limits of his capabilities against someone who wasn''t Rui.


    The reason for that was that Rui was arguably the worst person for him to test his strength against. The reason for that was because Rui possessed grade-tenbat power, if not more when he was facing off against opponents that he was very familiar with.


    Thus even though he had fought hard against Rui in the Thundering Valley, he still did not have a good intuitive feel for how well he would perform against normal Martial Squires.


    That was the issue with Rui, one that he hadn''t ovee yet.


    In the next few days, Kane eagerly took part in the Squire-level conflicts against the surrounding nations.


    And it went exactly as he hoped it would.


    He became a force to reckon with. Much to his delight, none of his opponents couldy so much as a finger on him!


    At one point he was fighting the entirety of all enemy Martial Squires as he ran around the battlefield, attacking all of them one by one.


    Rather than fighting one Martial Artist at a time, he decided to turn into a bit of a team battle as he simply ran around helping allies and friendlies win in battle.


    These speedy and sneaky attacks gave his allies an advantage allowing them to capitalize on it and win the battle as arge, driving away the enemy Martial Squires.


    Soon enough, Kane gained his own notoriety among the surrounding nations as the chaotic sh that dashed around the entire battlefield caused havoc, one that they hadn''t managed to evennd a scratch on.


    On days that both he and Rui participated, they were menaces on the battlefield. There were times when the enemy Martial Squires retreated from the battlefield just when they recognized the duo, for they were not equipped enough to handle the two of them at once.


    Rui and Kane had reached a stage where they could effectively keep up with the enemy squad with just the two of them alone, even if their allies failed to keep up.


    The one thing that Kane regretted was that it was impossible for him to use the Void Step technique simultaneously with his Fulminata technique.


    The Void Step technique was a very conscious technique, it was a technique that required the user to very consciously gauge and then misdirect the attention of the targets of the technique.


    The issue was that when he was using Fulminata, he was operating purely on enhanced reflexes. The current and charge only amplified his reflexes and thoughtless movements, not all cognitive processes. That meant that he was moving too fast for him to apply the technique when he was using Godspeed with Fulminata.<novelsnext>I think you should take a look at </novelsnext>


    Rui hadn''t expected him to be able to use the two techniques together either. It was simply too overpowered, it would give him a level of power so high, that Rui would probably be the one and only Martial Squire in the entire world who could take him down.


    Regardless, Rui was happy for his friend''s sess. He had managed to retain a good chunk of the original Fulminata technique. In a sense, it was probably good for Kane''s growth that he didn''t manage to retain it at its original power and capabilities. That would have been far too rapid for growth, it would have hindered him in the long run. It would have eliminated any need for Kane to develop techniques with individuality and probably would have stagnated his growth to the higher Realms consequently.


    Seeing Kane be and do fine put his mind at ease as he returned back to his own matters.


    He had been subjecting himself to electrical conditioning. Passing current through his body and fighting to retain control over his muscles was something he had found more challenging than he had expected.


    The current most certainly hurt, not only did it render his muscles obsolete, but it also burned due to how much it heated up his body. Unlike Kane, his body offered a lot of resistance to current, it meant that his body would heat up as a result. That was one of the reasons that he had minimized the amount of Lundenfire Marble that he would be inserting into his body to make sure that he wasn''t overdoing it.


    He couldn''t afford to overheat in the middle of a battle.


    During this time, both Kane and he had already begun training on the integration technique of the poison field. Subjecting his digestive system to the substance had slowly begun to cause it to be able to integrate the substance into the body over time.


    The reason the two of them had been subjecting themselves to this technique was so that they would be able to regenerate their tattoos if they were got damaged in battle, just by ingesting some Lundenfire Marble.


    Rui had also opted to have the same technique performed for the substances that he had used for the Riemannian Echo technique. Thus he would be able to naturally fix his Riemannian Echo technique just by ingesting the relevant substances.


    It took weeks for him to finally reach the level offort when subject to current before he was finally ready to get the procedure done himself.


    BZZT!


    "Woah¡­" Rui murmured as he felt the strange numbing sensation spread across his body. Previously, this would have been very painful, but he had managed to develop a degree of


    His procedure took even less time, and he bounced back out of recuperation very quickly. However, the job was not done immediately. Unlike Kane, he didn''t have pre-existing techniques that allowed him to know what to do with the current.


    He was finally at a stage where he could proceed with the two projects that he had had in mind. It was only now that he had gotten his own little lightning technique that he could fully realize the two techniques.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1030 Team

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    The grappling technique that he had decided to call Thundercoil was very simple and did not require muchplex theoretical sophistication.


    The whole concept of the technique was to add an electric buzz to basic grapplingbat. Meaning he didn''t need to do too much.


    The few things that did require adjustment and practice were maximizing surface area contact with his opponent to maximize the current.


    What he needed to do was to reinvent some of the basic maneuvers keeping that condition in mind.


    This part took him back to his days when he trained in jiu-jitsu and judo with his siblings, and thenter on in the Martial foundation. It was just relentless practice of basic moves until it got hammered into his soul.


    It was simple and straightforward unlike most of his techniques. Most of his techniques hadplex mechanisms and systems of function. Especially techniques like the ODA system were among the mostplex techniques that he had ever created and seen anywhere.Content is property ? N?velDrama.Org.


    Inparison, techniques like the Thundercoil were closer to the norm.


    His striking technique was not nearly as simple. He had already long begun to deeply familiarize himself with the nervous system of the human body so that he could target them urately.


    It required truly burning the image into your bones such that you always knew where to strike in order to strike a nerve.


    Unfortunately, he couldn''t use the Mind Pce as a substitute this time, the Mind Pce was a very conscious form of memory, what he needed was a subconscious form of memory, to know all the ces that he ought to aim for without any conscious thought.


    The reason that he could only aim for nerves was that the amount of current that he could pass with every strike was very little due to the limited contact time and area.


    However, if he passed that limited current through a nerve it could have a limited paralysis effect, limited in both degree and timeframe of paralysis.


    Thus his training continued week by week as he slowly began gaining mastery of both techniques.


    He first came to master the Thundercoil technique first, due to how simple and straightforward the training for this technique was. It was so easy, that it really didn''t even feel like training.


    However, the technique was not necessarily weak due to this, The reason for that was the fact that the technique was actually more effective than Rui had expected. He discovered that the technique massively increased the chances ofnding a rear chokehold on his opponent. There was no way that they could possibly do anything other than the tap.


    Or in this case, die.


    Rui discovered that this technique was in and of itself not very potent, but it allowed him to employ certain solutions that would give him the win.<novelsnext>I think you should take a look at </novelsnext>


    He took a bit of a break from training as he began testing the technique out against the enemy Martial Squires of the surrounding states.


    His sess rate at being able to take down opponents via grappling increased many folds as many of his opponents found themselves unable to muster up enough resistance to be able to handle what wasing next.


    Of course, every now and then he ran into a particrly defensive Martial Artist who simply possessed the ability to resist grappling.


    Much of his adapted grappling was a little useless in such circumstances and he got thrown off. That was an unexpected weakness surrounding he simply did not expect to encounter. It made the move a little risky.


    The striking technique took longer to master. He needed to be able to strike nerves properly with the Lundenfire Marble that he had grafted into his nails and the skin under his nails. It allowed him to convey current into the target''s nerves easier than if he just randomly struck them.


    He was particrly ecstatic to try the technique that he had named Thundering Tap. It was a name that conveyed the gentleness of the strike. The reason that it was a gentle technique was that it relied more on uracy and precision than it did on speed and power.


    In fact, power was just irrelevant in this technique, it just madending the correct strike harder since a powerful strike would be unable to correct course to adjust for the moving target.


    The good news was that it meant more variety and versatility for Rui, but he also couldn''t justbine this technique with his other technique to get an even more powerful striking technique as a result. They were simply antithetical to each other.


    That was fine by Rui, he would rather have more options rather than a single technique that was overpowered.


    The time hade to try both techniques inbat against the enemy Martial Squires from the foreign entities.


    Rui and Kane stepped onto the battlefield as the two of them were singlehandedly deployed against a small squad of enemy Martial Squires.


    Normally, such an uneven matchup was not something that the Department of defense would ordinarily create, however, it appeared that they were not in for an easy ride. The Department of defense had long since noticed the two of them exceptionally strong Martial Squires that also possessed an extreme amount of synergy and teamwork with each other.


    Particrly, Rui was extremely good at matching Kane perfectly. This was an unexpected application of the predictive model inbat.  Using the predictive models as a way to predict allies and friendlies, it would allow for an unheard-of level of coordination and teamwork.


    And that was exactly what Rui and Kane achieved each time that they entered the battlefield together and fought together. Rui would pull out one powerful technique after another tounch against his enemies while Kane stormed around the battle with his chaotic energy, disrupting their defenses while casually evading their offense effortlessly with his Fulminata Godspeed.


    Now it was time to see how much of a numerical gap they could handle.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1031 Quick

    ?


    "Five may be too much," Rui remarked.


    "We''ll be fine," Kane confidently reassured him. "Between you and me, we can handle them."


    "Just to remind you, I''m normally not as strong as I am when facing you," Rui told him. "My power depends on how familiar with my opponents I am. I grow stronger as the battle prolongs."


    "Yeah, I know that, if we don''t manage to take them down immediately, then we can rely on your adaptive evolution to ovee them," Kane nonchntly exined.


    Kane had grown much more confident ever since he regained his Fulminata technique. Rui often had to hold him back and ensure that he didn''t fall prey to his own self-confidence.


    Frankly, five was on the very limit of what Rui was willing to tolerate. If not for the fact that the reported squad wasprised of only mid-grade Martial Squires, he would have never agreed to that.


    However, the two of them were high-grade Martial Squires at this point. Rui especially had a rock-hard foundation while Kane had powerful trump cards.


    "Come on," Rui nodded. "It''s time to go."


    Because of the speed of Martial Squires, it was a very short time until the Martial Squires would reach the vicinity of Crexeet town. The department of defense mandated that all Martial conflicts were not to ur within a certain radius of the town as much as possible, which meant that Rui and Kane had to move quickly.


    The two of them immediately dashed away in the distance as Rui used all of his sensory techniques to track and surveil in order to make sure that they weren''t blindsided.


    "There they are," Rui narrowed his eyes after he spotted them after merely a minute of travel.


    Instinctually, he wasn''t threatened by any one of them. The Squire Realm was much wider and broader than the Apprentice Realm.


    The difference between high-grade Martial Squires and mid-grade Martial Squires was not small.


    Before they could even reach each other, Rui quickly used his Pathfinder technique,unching a powerful sonic projectile from quite some distance away. He didn''t have the pattern recognition systems of the VOID algorithm helping him at this point, but he aimed based on intuition.


    THWOOM!


    BAM!!


    It struck him in the abdomen, striking him well enough to copse him.


    Rui grinned as he already caught one of his opponentspletely off-guard with no active defensive technique. Because the activation of the Mighty sh Roar st technique was not something that could be perceived at a great distance, and because sound was far too hard to directly perceive at a distance.


    They didn''t know what hit them, literally. The damage inflicted wasn''t damning, but it was a great start as the remaining four rapidly moved forward after confirming that their ally was not in a critical condition.


    Closing the distance became a much greater necessity, as Rui was nothing short of a high-grade long-range specialist in their eyes. The worst thing that they could was give a long-range Martial Squire all that distance between them.


    They didn''t quite understand why this long-range Martial Squire was running straight at them, but they nheless weed it. The distance between them shortened in seconds, and the battle had begun before they even reached each other.


    THWOOM THWOOM


    POOW!


    Two of the enemy Martial Squiresunched projectiles toward Rui and Kane, and the two of them promptly avoided them while Ruiunched multiple sonic projectiles at them. Avoiding them from that distance was effortless, especially for Kane.Text ? 2024 N?velDrama.Org.


    However, much to Rui''s chagrin, his enemies had also wisened up with the initial ambush, they paid attention to his motions very carefully, dispersing in random directions the moment Rui gave any sort of indication that he was attacking.<novelsnext>I think you should take a look at </novelsnext>


    Without a predictive model, he couldn''t know which direction they were going to go in.


    Regardless, three Martial Squires immediately pounced on Rui.


    He was unsurprised. After all, it wasmon sense that long-range specialists were weak at close ranges.


    WHOOSH!


    Rui simply disappeared when their attacks connected with him, leaving behind an empty image.


    A simple feint from the Phantom Step technique.


    TAP TAP TAP!


    Rui exploited a blindspot as he employed his Lightning Ripple technique to send an electrical current down the nervous system of his opponent.


    "Rgh!" The man grimaced as he felt certain parts of his body lock up!


    POW!


    A swift hook crashed into his jaw. Not only was he hindered, but Rui also employed Reverberating Lance to permeate the impact as deep as possible.


    THUD


    The two of them Martial Squires were shocked, Rui had taken down one of them before they could realize it. Furthermore, he did it in close-rangebat. They were shocked that a Martial Squire could possess such great long-range capabilities as well as formidable short-range capabilities.


    Rui stepped forth toward them as he sted them with his most powerful strikes. The two hapless Martial Squires struggled to cope with the sheer onught that Rui unleashed. One of them tried matching his blows, yet was shocked when she failed. The other gritted his teeth as his guard rattled with every impact that Rui unleashed.


    He prepared for an iing strike, yet to his surprise, the impact was gentle.


    The very next moment he felt a tremendous force all across his body pushing him backward.


    "WAAAAAAH!" Ruiunched him flying with Reverberating Catapult.


    He turned to the woman, whounched a powerful weighted blow toward Rui.


    Yet before she realized it, Rui had spun behind her, winding about her as his arms coiled across her neck and head.


    He had swiftly exploited an opening to get her into a rear choke hold. Simultaneously, his charged body began sending a current across her body, partially paralyzing her muscles. Not only could she not breathe, but Rui''s Thundercoilpletely denied her resistance.


    Soon enough, the brain shut down, deprived of blood.


    Rui nced over as he watched Kane take down the fifth Martial Squire that Rui hadunched flying with his technique.


    Just like that, it was over. Rui was reminded once that most battles were anti-climactic.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1032 Departure

    ?


    "You two are back already?" Squire Ferilwal nced at the two of them with an expression of shock. "It hasn''t even been ten minutes!"


    She felt something was wrong. She recalled how strong the two of them were when she tested their prowess. Although Rui was strong, she didn''t get the impression that she was this strong. He was either holding back or had gotten stronger.


    She had a feeling it was both.


    However, what truly surprised her was Kane. Kane''s performance had long be known in Crexeet Town. What surprised her was that she recalled that Kane was definitely nowhere near as strong as he was these days back when she first tested him. He had grown much stronger in a very small span of time.


    Both of these Martial Squires brokemon sense in different ways, they were a pair that she was unable to understand.


    "Would you rather we took longer?" Rui snorted as he dropped the corpses of the enemy Martial Squires. "Inform the mayor that this is ourst deployment."


    "Eh? You''re leaving?" She asked with an rmed tone.


    "Yes, we have aplished what we came for," Rui replied. "And now we''re done."


    "But¡­" Her voice faltered as she realized that their remarkable prowess had been something that they had begun depending on to a certain extent.


    She considered trying to persuade both of them to stay somehow, but she quickly realized that that was hopeless that was.


    They did not need anything, nor was there anything particrly alluring to the two of them. Rui especially felt like he would fair just fine without the town.


    "Thank you for your services," She sighed.


    The two of them quickly gathered their things before leaving. Rui did not want to give the wishy-washy mayor of the town a chance to try and convince them otherwise. He was fine without having that conversation, even if it meant skipping out on the gratitude of the town and whatnot.


    "Where to next?" Kane asked with a cheery smile.


    "You seem happy to leave," Rui remarked. "Do you dislike the town that much?"


    "It has nothing to do with the town, I''m just d I aplished what I came to aplish," Kane replied. "It''s a great sensation of aplishment and satisfaction."


    Rui smiled, he could definitely rte.Content is property ? N?velDrama.Org.


    He had created multiple grade-ten techniques capable of incredibly great feats, and each he seeded, it was an incredible feeling of deep satisfaction. He had felt that way when he created the Pathfinder technique, the ODA System was nothing short of a highly sophisticated mental software that extrapted trajectory, allowing him to urately batter his opponents from ranges that were otherwise something that only a Martial Senior would be able to do.


    The greatest satisfaction he got was from the VOID algorithm, although he hadn''t entirely realized it. He recalled the first time that he had used the pattern recognition systems of the VOID algorithm, it was truly one of the most euphoric moments of his life.


    "Where do we go next?" Kane asked. "I know that it is further west, but surely we have somece to go before we hit the western end of the continent, yes? Traveling straight to the other end of the continent will take far too long even with our speed."<novelsnext>I think you should take a look at </novelsnext>


    "True," Rui nodded. "However, I do have some ces in mind. There are all the prior ces that I mentioned. We could start with those."


    "Ahhh¡­ the mountain where people go to endure weight in their body¡­" Kane made an odd face. "I''ll pass."


    "It''s a mountain that sits on mist though," Rui''s eyebrows furrowed. "That''s an unbelievable phenomenon, don''t you want to witness it?"


    "Witness, sure," Kane admitted. "But I have no interest in training my raw durability."


    Rui sighed, shaking his head, amused. "You can''t avoid training your body to be tougher forever Kane, you shouldn''t. I could save your life one day."


    "Hey, I''m an evasive maneuver, I avoid things that could threaten my life. I''d rather focus on that," Kane huffed.


    "Uh huh," Rui sighed, resigned. "Well, I have good news. I found a good ce where it will soon be a good time to be a Martial Artist."


    "Oh?" Kane nced at Rui with interest. "What do you have in mind?"


    "You remember the floating Ajanta inds?" Rui asked.


    "Yeah, I sure do," Kane''s eyes lit up in interest. "I would not mind going there at all, that sounds fun."


    "Indeed it does," Rui nodded. "That will be our next location."


    "Nice, anything to note about the ce?" Kane asked.


    "Plenty," Rui replied. "It is said that the gravity atop the ind is extremely high, making even standing atop the ind a form of training. It is said that air pressure is unbearable due to that, so it also serves as a ce to train one''s breathing techniques there."


    Breathing techniques were extremelymon across all fields in Martial Art. Breathing as an action was extremely fundamental to the sustenance of the human body. Thus the floating Ajanta inds were extremely attractive to all Martial Artists within a certain range of power.


    Just like the Umiana Trench, and the Thundering Valley, the ind was a ce that was restricted solely to Martial Artists due to the sheer inhabitable conditions of the ind.


    "Still," Kane shrugged. "That doesn''t sound very fun, honestly. That sounds like it could get dull very quickly, a boring ce beyond the initial awe."


    Rui furrowed his eyebrows as turned towards Kane with a disapproving expression. Perhaps it was because Kane was born in a fantastical world that such things were not nearly as shocking to him. His ''normal'' was fantastical and exoticpared to the things that Rui had been exposed to when he considered his first life. A floating ind was something that the people would have killed to see or have back in his previous life.


    "That''s not the only thing one will do in that ce," Rui told him. "The floating ind is not a ce of peace¡­ It is a harsh ce where even entering is said to be a challenge."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1033 Ajanta

    ?


    "And why''s that?" Kane asked with a curious tone.


    "The floating ind generally remains within a certain region, following a circr path of orbit," Rui exined. "There are many regions that are overshadowed and directly below the floating Ajanta ind. The states and nations in that region have many misgivings with the floating ind."


    He turned towards Kane. "They wish to take it down."


    Kane frowned. "But why?"


    "Because it''s an existential threat, of course," Rui replied. "The nations of the region cannot tolerate a giant rock floating that could fall. If it does, destruction is almost inevitable. Not just for any one nation, but all nations in the region will be wiped, out or extremely crippled."


    "I mean, if the ind has been floating for a long time, then is that a realistic possibility?"


    "Pieces of the ind fall all the time," Rui replied. "Not big fragments, but enough to kill people if theynd anywhere near them. The ind isn''t exactly the most stable structure there is. There is a very real possibility that the activity of the powerful Martial Squires atop the ind may cause it to be destabilized and then swiftly crumble into many fragments that will rain down upon some ce in the Kaddar region, causing mass devastation."


    "Makes sense, but I''m guessing the Floating Ajanta Ind has other ideas?" Kane asked.


    "It does," Rui nodded. "The people inhabiting the ind are exclusively Martial Artists. And the Martial Artists of the floating Ajanta Ind do not want the ind to be pulled down and destroyed. Therein lies the conflict."


    "Huh," Kane frowned. "So another war."


    Rui nodded. "The floating Ajanta Ind is ruled by the Floating Sect led by a powerful Martial Senior. It wees in any foreign Martial Artists but at the cost of being willing to defend the ind from the attacks of the nations of the Kaddar Region."


    "That reminds me of the circumstances of Crexeet Town," Kane murmured.


    "There are simrities," Rui nodded. "However, in this case, the nations of the Kaddar Region have a much stronger justification and reason for attacking the Ajanta ind."


    "You said entering it alone would be a challenge," Kane reminded him.


    "Yes," Rui nodded. "There is a limited number of Martial Artists permitted on the ind. Tens of thousands of Martial Squires could easily destabilize the ind with their power, after all. Thus in order to earn a spot on the ind, you need to challenge a Martial Squire and¡­"


    "Defeat them?"<novelsnext>I think you should take a look at </novelsnext>


    Rui shook his head. "Kill them. If the person you challenge is still alive, then you will have failed the challenge."


    Kane was speechless for a second. "For a haven of Martial Artists, they sure are cutthroat."


    "True," Rui nodded. "However, their circumstances are very different from that of the Uminana Trench and all the coastal nations. The Umiana Trench is something that desperately needs quantity of Martial Artists to man the perimeters of the trench, and it''s maintained to also earn an immense sum of money from the Martial Artists to justify the continued sustained existence of the Martial Squires. They need Martial Squires to join, Ajanta Ind does not need that, in fact, it needs the opposite."Content is property of N?velDrama.Org.


    Kane narrowed his eyes as thought about it. "I''m guessing it also means that the Martial Squires that do retain their spots on the ind are the bravest and the strongest. Which is what they need in their conflict with the nations of the Kaddar Region?"


    "Correct," Rui nodded appreciatively. "They''ve created a system that filters out cowards and weaklings, leaving them with true warriors."


    "That''s quite smart actually," Kane nodded. "It sounds like a fun challenge. But you said that the Floating Sect was led by a Martial Senior, right?"


    Rui nodded.


    "The fact that the Floating Sect has managed to resist the attacks of the Kaddar nations to take over the ind, I''m guessing that there isn''t a single Martial Master in the entirety of the Kaddar region?"


    "Not a single one," Rui confirmed. "The Kaddar Region as a whole is capped at the Senior Realm."


    "It''s interesting to see how incredibly rare Martial Artists of the higher Realms are in the rest of the continent," Kane murmured. "It really puts into perspective the sheer power of the Kandrian Empire and the Martial Union."


    Rui nodded. It was difficult to appreciate how powerful the Kandrian Empire was as a whole until Rui traveled across the entirety of the continent. The sheer number of Martial Seniors and Martial Masters that the Martial Union had made it an abysmally powerful force even by the standards of the entire continent. It was an absolute powerhouse, and even if every nation or state that Rui hade across after leaving the Shionel confederation came together, they would most likely be unable to match the might of the Martial Union due to the multiple Martial Sages that led the Union.


    However, Rui was also d to have left the Kandrian Empire, and the far east side of the continent because Martial Squires were limited in a ce where Martial Squires were not nearly as relevant as they were in other ces. It gave Rui far more breathing space than he had ever expected. There were few too shacklespared to the Kandrian Empire.


    "The Ajanta Ind will be breaking that pattern a bit since it is led by a Martial Senior," Rui murmured. "But oh well, it''s just one Martial Artist, it isn''t all that bad."


    He didn''t mind if there were a handful of Martial Artists of higher Realms. It could even help him learn things about the Senior Realm that he perhaps should have learned some time ago.


    The breakthrough to the Senior Realm became more and more relevant to Rui as time passed, as he grew stronger. It became increasingly prudent for him to learn the secret, and the path to the Senior Realm, for he came closer and closer to taking that step to a higher Realm.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1034 Caution

    ?


    Unlike theirst journey, the journey to the floating Ajanta Ind was quite substantial. They spent more than a week traveling west. They were constantly reminded howrge the continent was.


    Despite their remarkable speed, they needed many days of traveling to reach their location.


    Rui knew that there were means of transportation that allowed nations to match the speed of Martial Artists, however, he also knew that these means of transportation weren''t the norm. The norm was normal standard carriages pulled by rtively normal creatures or engines fueled by some esoteric substance.


    The upper ss of human civilization was able to engage in travel across vast expanses thanks to these solutions and means.


    However, even they were limited, ultimately. This was very different from his previous life in which a flight or two could take you around the world.


    Rui preferred the state of the Panama Continent over the state of the Earth. The sense of adventure and discovery had long but gone in the twenty-first century of his previous life.


    Back on Earth, not only had allnd been discovered, but it had been scrupulously mapped down to every street, and that map was essible to everyone who could ess the inte. Even if one tried their best, it was difficult to feel a sense of adventure in such circumstances.


    However, the same wasn''t true for the Panama Continent. An extremely minute proportion of elite entities and forces possess a map of the entirety of the Panama Continent. Rui knew that the Kandrian Empire was certainly one. It probably meant that the other three powerhouses also possessed that information.


    Text ? 2024 N?velDrama.Org.


    The same could be said for the Shionel Confederation.


    (''Actually, I suppose it only applies to Guildmaster Bradt, not the Shionel Confederation as a whole,'') Rui mused.


    Regardless, the fact that so few possessed a map of the entire continent showed how scarce that information was, and it also meant that a sense of adventure was still very much present in this wide and vast world.


    Rui was quite happy to be able to experience it. The two of them hade across all kinds of ces in their travels, although they probably hadn''t discovered anything that hadn''t been long since discovered and known by humans, still, it was quite thrilling nheless.


    Many dayster, they had finally been able to spot the floating ind.


    "Is that¡­?" Kane squinted as he peered off into the horizon.


    "Seems like it," Rui nodded. "Because the ind is at such a height above sea level, it can be seen far before the Kaddar Region would be."


    It was still just a small spec in the distance, yet it was clearly hovering above the horizon. It was a fascinating sight to see despite the fact that they hadn''t gotten there.


    "How is it doing that¡­?" Kane murmured, staring at it with interest as it got bigger.


    "Apparently the core of the ind is made up of some really strange esoteric substances weirdly," Rui waspletely absorbed into it.


    Unlike everybody else, he could sense the warps in space that constituted gravity. He was curious as to what his Riemannian Echo would sense from the ind.


    After that, it was merely a matter of time before they reached the Kaddar Region.<novelsnext>I think you should take a look at </novelsnext>


    The Kaddar Region was a region that was densely packed with human civilization. Many nations upied this little piece of the continent, and while they undoubtedly were in conflict with each other, if there was one issue that they were all united on, it was the matter of the floating Ajanta Ind.


    That ind had to go, there was no doubt about that in any of their minds. However, it wasn''t as though they could just deploy their Martial Squires and Seniors, as well as their long-range artillery weapons, and have them bombard the ind with attacks, that was suicidal, the ind would break and fall, with so much debris that it would be impossible to contain them.


    The sheer impact would be devastating for the Kaddar Region.


    They needed to take full control of the ind, gently begin mining it delicately and extract the esoteric substance that made it float, before slowly letting thendmass down a good distance away from the Kaddar Region in an uninhabited region.


    However, the damned Floating Sect refused to allow the nations of the Kaddar Region to do any of that. They were powerful enough to freeze any attempts to do so, which meant that the Kaddar Region needed to defeat the Floating Sect in order to do so.


    However, it appeared that the Floating Sect''s Martial prowess was great enough to be able to sustain their existence thus far.


    (''That''s not the only reason,'') Rui figured.


    Another reason was that the Floating Sect had a huge strategic advantage. The fact that they were upying the floating Ajanta Ind meant that they were fighting down, while the nations of the Kaddar Region were fighting up.


    Normally, they would simply be making a big target of themselves, but the Kaddar Region did not dare mindlesslyunch attacks in the general region of the ind, in fear of causing a destabilization that causes the ind to break.


    On the other hand, the Floating Sect had no problemunching attacks unrestrictively at the nations of the Kaddar Region.


    These advantages allowed the Floating Sect to sustain itself in addition to the inherent Martial power of the sect.


    Rui''s thoughts were interrupted as they finally neared the Kaddar Region.


    "Alright stop," Rui froze in his tracks, decelerating quickly.


    "What is it?" Kane frowned. "It''s too early to eat."


    "Not because of that," Rui exined. "But we ought not to enter the Kaddar Region."


    "Why not?"


    "Because we''re going to be going to the Floating Sec," Rui exined. "Do you really think the nations of the Kaddar Region will peacefully let us go to our destination and watch while their enemies gain reinforcements?"


    Kane realized what Rui was conveying. "That''s sharp of you to realize. It would have been a mess if we tried going to the Floating Sect after entering the Kaddar Region.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1035 Measures

    ?


    One of the ways that the Kaddar Region could make life harder for the Floating Sect was by greatly reducing the number of initiates and reinforcements they gained from Martial Squires interested in training under the special circumstances of the floating Ajanta Ind.


    Rui hadn''t received any information on this matter, however, he keenly analyzed the circumstances of the Kaddar nations and evaluated the probability of the nations taking measures to prevent more Martial Artists from joining the Floating Sect to be quite high.


    "In other words, the test to join the Floating Sect probably begins even before we enter the ind," Rui murmured.


    From patrolling Martial Squires to long-range Squire-level artillery weapons poised to shoot down any floating figure that was ascending to the ind, Rui could easily gain a good grasp of what they were dealing with.Content is property ? N?velDrama.Org.


    What amused Rui, even more, was that he highly doubted that the Floating Sect was particrly irked about it either. In fact, there was a good chance that they weed it. After all, the Martial Squires who were unable to get past a patrol, or were too scared to even try were simply not material for the Floating Sect. They would never be able to be a member of the Floating Sect even if they did everything in their meager power.


    It made their lives easier because it probably reduced the number of challenges they got at any given time, making managing challenges to be easy.


    However, it was not enough to stop Rui and Kane, not even close.


    "It''s time to use Void Step once more," Rui remarked, turning to Kane.


    "Easy peasy," He smirked.


    He put his hand on Rui''s shoulder as he breathed deeply, activating the technique. Rui couldn''t help but marvel at the technique each time he saw it. As amazing as Kane''s Fulminata technique was, his Void Step technique was what was truly sublime in Rui''s opinion. It could essentially erase them from everybody''s eyes and did not have a limit to the number of people it could affect either.


    Since Kane wasn''t actively manipting people''s minds, he was misdirecting their attention with his movements in the opposite direction of the direction that they were traveling, making people who saw itpletely miss him subconsciously.


    The two of them straightforwardly sky-walked towards the ind. While Kane focused on the technique, Rui focused all his senses outwards, extremely alert. The sheer range that he gained from Riemannian Echo and Tempestuous Feel was great, furthermore, his Primordial Instinct was at its peak alertness.


    He was looking to see if he could sense any Senior-level threats. His senses were extremely sharp, and it was too impossible for a patrolling Martial Senior to somehow miss his triggering all kinds of rm bells in his head.


    What he did find was what he had expected; multiple Martial Squires patrolling the skies. He hadn''t spotted them when he was on the ground because he was too far from the ind, but they were actually easy to spot. They weren''t trying to hide at all, in fact, they were making sure to disy themselves more openly.


    (''Deterrence is a far better option than ambushing,'')


    Deterrence minimized the amount of Martial Squires that joined the Floating Sect without incurring too many losses, however, ambushes would most certainly cost more as the rate of conflict would be near one hundred percent.


    The ind grewrger as the two of them got closer to it, it was roughly the size of arge town or a small city, with a t surface while the side facing the ground was roughly hemispherical.


    It made Rui incredibly curious as to how the ind hade to float, but that was not something he wanted to ponder at the moment.


    His Riemannian Echo began picking up extremely interesting readings from the ind.


    (''Incredible¡­'') Rui''s eyes widened. (''The space curvature around the ind is extremely abnormal!'')


    It was as though the ind curved and warped space only in part, on its surface. It was as though all the gravitation force that it experienced from the had all been absorbed and then used to create an enormously dense gravitational field atop the surface, where the space curvature created a titanic amount of gravitational force!<novelsnext>I think you should take a look at </novelsnext>


    The force grew stronger at the center of the ind than it was in the distant edges, Rui suspected that that meant that training at the center of the ind was more sought after. He wasn''t sure.


    Soon enough, they had reached.


    The two of them appeared out of thin air as they finallypleted their travel.


    And they could already sense it.


    The world was different.


    They felt as though they had gone back to being normal humans again, almost.


    It was as if shackles had wrapped around their bodies, pulling them down. It was as though they were carrying the weight of the sky.


    The air was extremely heavy, it stung their eyes and burdened their bodies. Every breath wasborious, they felt as though they had to pump air into their lungs.


    Yet their eyes widened when they inhaled.


    An incredibly fulfilling and uplifting sensation had passed through their body. A feeling of deep satisfaction permeated through their body with everybored breath they undertook.


    It was almost addictive.


    Before Rui could even gather his thoughts, a person had appeared before them.


    A Martial Squire.


    Of course, it was a Martial Artist, for even the strongest of humans would die before their brains could even begin to process it.


    "Ho¡­" A deeply masculine voice reverberated through the ocean of air. "Not a single scratch on either of you like I''d heard. Impressive."


    His body was diminutive, contradicting the image that his voice painted. Yet Rui was quite wary of him. Just a single nce, a single feel with his senses was enough for him to know.


    This man was a grade-nine Martial Squire.


    "It seems we have promising initiates," He remarked as he walked over.


    "¡­You are?" Rui narrowed his eyes.


    "I am Squire Veenioen," He replied. "The guardian of the Thirty-Sixth Chamber of the Floating Sect. The Floating Sect wees you to Ajanta Ind."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1036 Chambers

    ?


    Rui paused for a moment while his mind furiously processed all the information that he had obtained in thest ten seconds.


    Someone came to greet them almost immediately after Void Step had been undone. However, given that Rui had only sensed his approach before the exact moment that the Void Step technique had been undone, it meant that they had been sensed by someone who was able to observe them despite Kane''s Void Step. This was also supported by the fact that the Martial Squire noted that he was told that they were unharmed.


    That was unnerving.


    It was the work of an exceptionally high-grade sensory Martial Artist with powerful senses, or grade-ten sensory techniques, or more likely¡­


    (''A Martial Senior,'') Rui''s eyes narrowed. (''Tentative conclusion: A Martial Senior is most likely always surveilling Ajanta Ind and, more importantly, its surrounding air space. However, that also means that¡­'')


    It also meant that the ind almost certainly had more than one Martial Senior for it to be able to afford such extravagant protection. Rui was rtively confident that there had to be at least three Martial Seniors!


    The fact that they went through the efforts to go through such measures had even more implications for their experiences and circumstances. However, Rui was more focused on the man before them.


    He was exceptionally powerful without a doubt. He would have been a star had he formed a party in the Shionel Dungeon raids.


    He mentioned that he was the guardian of the thirty-sixth chamber.Text content ? N?velDrama.Org.


    Rui did not know what that meant.


    Unfortunately, unlike the prior ces that they had visited, the information about what exactly went on atop the ind was extremely scarce. This was unlike the Umiana Trench where Rui could easily dig up more information about it just by talking to the locals and the natives.


    The reason for that was that no human had ever set foot atop the ind, and the only ones that entered and left were Martial Squires. The ones that returned were either Martial Artists who had seeded in joining the Floating Sect and had rigorously trained in a sessful rtionship with the Sect and had no desire of selling the Sect.


    There were wimps who had merely stepped on the ind, refused the challenge, and left.


    There were none who actually lost the challenge and returned because everybody who lost the challenge died.


    Victory by death, or it was a loss. Thus the defending Martial Artists were ruthless and eliminated their challengers.


    That was why Rui had absolutely zero context on what the man meant by ''chamber'', but he could take a guess.


    (''He''s stronger, but he said he''s the guardian of the thirty-sixth chamber. It can be conjectured that strength inversely corrtes with the number, thus a smaller number would corrte with stronger Martial Artist,'') Rui''s eyes narrowed.


    He also couldn''t help but think about a certain movie that came to mind when he thought about those words.<novelsnext>I think you should take a look at </novelsnext>


    "Uh¡­ Thanks," Kane scratched his head. "I dunno what''s going on, but what do we do to train on this ind?"


    Sometimes Rui appreciated Kane''s approach.


    "There are a limited number of training avenues on this ind known as ''chambers''," The man exined. "The chambers arerge and rigorously include all manners of training Martial Art of all kinds. Training outside the chamber is prohibited because it risks destabilizing the ind outside of the chambers that were built to protect the ind''s bedrock from the power of Martial Squires."


    He paused for a moment, before continuing. "Thus, if you wish to train on this ind, you need a chamber. If you want a chamber, you need to officially challenge any Martial Squire upying a chamber to a death match and win by eliminating the defender, then you may upy their chamber after bing a part of the Floating Sect."


    Rui''s thoughts were more or less on the ball.


    "Come," The man calmly instructed them. "You must be wary from your travels, furthermore, this new environment must surely be jarring and disconcerting. You may stay in the outer ring as a guest of the Floating Sect. More will be exined in time.


    He immediately began walking away, and Rui and Kane quickly followed him as they tried to adapt to their new circumstances.


    "You mentioned a numbered chamber," Rui prodded him. "Does that corrte with Martial prowess? If it does, does that mean some chambers are better than others?"


    The man wordlessly turned back as he nced at Rui. "That is precisely correct. The infrastructure of the chambers is almost identical, however, what makes some better than others are their locations."


    "Chambers that are deeper into the ind are better due to the more extreme conditions of the ind leading to more intense training," Rui realized.


    "Correct," The man replied. "The two of you must have already realized, but the air here is more nourishing despite weighing down harder and making it harder to respirate."


    The two of them nodded as they still felt incredibly rich and empowering sensations each time they inhaled.


    "Our Martial bodies¡­" Rui realized. "Our capacity to take in air and the capacity of our blood to carry air to the rest of our body is far greater than that of normal humans. This sensation is simply our blood nourishing our body with greater amounts of oxyge-ahem, air."


    "Correct again," The man nced at Rui, sizing him up briefly before turning back. "They do not yield any boost to our short-term Martial prowess since the greatly increased effort it takes respirate, as well as the corresponding resistive force and weight we experience negate the boost we get from the more nourishing atmosphere. But it does benefit the Martial body greatly in the long term."


    That was truly alluring to Rui and Kane. At that moment, their motivation to be a part of the Floating Sect grew tenfold.


    However, Rui was too cautious to get caught up in all of the hype, he wasn''tmitting to anything until he understood what he was getting into.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1037 Member

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    "What does it mean to be a part of the Floating Sect?" Rui asked cautiously. "What are the obligations and duties of a member? What are the rules?"


    "Despite the name, the Floating Sect is not a singr cohesive group," The Martial Squire replied. "It is more of¡­ an association of those bound by some mutual interests. As for duties and obligations, the biggest one is that you''re obligated to fight to protect the Floating Sect from those that wish to destroy it in order to assume control over the ind. You''re also obligated to handle the initiation of neers every once in a while as I am doing to the two of you."


    "¡­That''s it?" Rui raised an eyebrow with suspicion.


    "That''s it," He replied. "Asides from that, you can train and live here for as long as you wish, assuming you can protect your chamber from those who seek to steal your position, and you follow the rules."


    "Since only Martial Artists can step onto this ind, how is the Sect maintained? With such infrastructure, as well as the acquisition of necessary goods and services, the training Martial Artists can''t possibly undertake such duties themselves."


    The Floating Sect sounded and looked like a ce that was difficult to maintain. Furthermore, the chambers sounded like they were taxing facilities that most certainly required constant maintenance and supplies.


    These were tasks that were maintained by logistical employees and specialists. They were not tasks for high-grade Martial Artists.


    "The Floating Sect''s management department isprised of ordinary humans and enved Martial Squires," Squire Veelioen replied. "They handle all of the necessary tasks in this regard."


    "Enved Martial Squires?" Rui''s eyes narrowed.


    "Yes," The man simply nodded. "Those that came here to undertake a challenge and failed, but were given a choice between death or servitude. Those that chose thetter became part of the staff."


    "And how long is their bondage supposed tost?"


    "Forever," He calmly answered. "Of course, they can end their servitude by trying to escape, in which case we will swiftly execute them before they are able to take a single step off the ind."


    "¡­"


    It appeared that the Floating Sect was even more cutthroat than the Shionel Confederation but for Martial Artists as opposed to merchants.


    "How do the human employees of the management department you mentioned survive in this environment?" Rui asked about another thing he had been curious about.


    "There are specialized facilities and infrastructure that are meant to create a human-friendly environment. They also have ess to special full-body suits that can temporarily allow them to step out of the human-friendly zones.," The man replied. "This is also something you need to keep in mind because causing damage to these particr facilities or to any human by mistake or by intention is punishable by death. Be sure to steer clear from them, both as a guest and as a member."


    Rui could actually understand the rationale behind this strict rule.


    Logistics, administration, and management were boring elements of any group or society that were overlooked, but they were actually extremely important.


    This was especially true for the Floating Sect, whose foundation was unique and extreme due to their environment. It made the duties of the management department extremely important. If a clumsy Martial Artist caused damage to the personnel or the infrastructure that was needed to sustain them, then it could end up being quite crippling to the Floating Sect. Given that they were so isted from the rest of human civilization, and even entering and leaving the Floating Sect was a challenge, it meant that if an emerging problem arose that couldn''t be solved by the personnel and the resources on the ind, fixing it would be extremely difficult.


    That exined why the punishment for causing any problems to the management department as a Martial Artist at least was heavy. Especially when there were many Martial Squires that treated human life as worthless. Capital punishment was needed to get the message through to psycho Martial Artists.


    "I''ve never heard about the envement part," Kane remarked.


    "That''s because not a single one of them has left Floating Sect ever since," The man smiled.Text content ? N?velDrama.Org.


    Soon enough, they arrived at a block of buildings.


    "This is the initiate block," The man exined. "It is your housing, for the time being, you may stay here for about twenty days before you are to initiate a challenge, or you will be required to leave the Floating Sect."


    It made sense to Rui that there was a time limit. Otherwise, someone would be able to stay in the initiate block indefinitely while benefitting from the environment and training all that time.


    "The staff inside will help you with any of your needs," The man replied. "Inside each room is a booklet containing all the information you will need in order for your time here in the Floating Sect, and in your venture to be a member of the Floating Sect. If you have any further questions, you may contact the support staff, and they will alleviate them."


    "Good luck," The man replied, before turning away and heading deeper into the ind.


    The two of them took a good look at the initiate block.


    "Not exactly the most hospitable," Kane murmured.


    "This isn''t a resort," Rui huffed. "Let''s get going."


    The two of them entered the guest block''s main entry. They were immediately greeted by reception staff equipped in what looked like futuristic space suits. The ones that Rui would constantly see in sci-fi movies that looked impractically small and perfectly sleek.


    "Wee to the initiate housing block of the Floating Sect," They bowed to the two of them with deference. "Pleasee this way so we may register a room for yourselves."


    Rui studied the suit carefully. His schr degree in general sciencesbined with all he had learned on esoteric material sciences allowed him to get a better idea of how the suit functioned.


    From what he could see, it relied on the same esoteric substance that made the ind float.


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 Chapter 1038 Means

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    In fact, it seemed to employ the same principles that made the ind float, to negate the ind''s gravity, allowing the humans inside the suit to experience normal gravity. It probably employed some esoteric substances that were highly phobic to gases to reduce the amount of air that entered the suit, ensuring that the pressure and density of air within the suit were normal.


    It was a respectable engineering application of esoteric material science.


    "May I know your names?" The staff member asked.


    "Falken."


    "Nake,"


    Kanezily switched around two consonants in his name, earning a disapproving nce from Rui.Text ? 2024 N?velDrama.Org.


    "We don''t have to provide identification verification, do we?" Rui asked.


    "Correct sir, we do not demand identity proofs," She smiled as she proceeded along.


    Rui had expected as much, even if it was still counter-intuitive as a person who was from Earth and had also lived his entire life in the Kandrian Empire.


    Back on Earth,munication technology was so powerful and essible, that it had spread across the entire world allowing all nations to create a universal system of passports, visas, and other forms of identity documentation. One could not travel to another nation without a passport which signified the native country''s approval of the citizen leaving the country through an official channel, or without a visa, which signified the approval of the country that the person was traveling to. Aplex web of protocolsid out through various international treaties allowed for a highly sophisticated system of identity and security verification and approval across the globe.


    However, such a system was utterly impossible on the Panama Continent for the time being. The sheermunication technology and framework needed to create and support such a system was just impossible.


    That was why most nations had a crude and unsophisticated system of protocols to handle immigration and emigration. They had no choice, there were no universal norms that could be relied upon. Far too many nations and states of human civilizationcked proper means of identification, and it was because there were far too many of them that it was impractical to bar them all.


    It meant cutting away a lot of trade that was far too beneficial to the nation.


    The Floating Sect wasn''t in the same position, but they had their own reasons for lightening the requirements for entry. Many Martial Squires came to visit the Floating Ajanta Ind from across the entire continent. They would be rejecting too many high-quality candidates if they demanded identity proof.


    "That was superx," Kane murmured, voicing his own thoughts on the matter. "How do they prevent the enemy Martial Squires from infiltrating the ind with suchx conditions?"


    That was actually a keen point to bring up.


    "It''s probably because they have information on all of the Martial Squires of the Kaddar Region that could infiltrate the Floating Sect," Rui replied.


    "How is that the case?" Kane frowned.


    "Given that the nations of the Kaddar Region are capped at Senior-level, it means every Martial Squire is prominent," Rui exined. "Even if the Floating Sect only knows their Martial Art and Paths, they will be able to weed them out."


    "Ah," Kane understood what Rui was trying to convey. "Because the infiltrating Martial Squires cannot hide their Martial Art and Martial Paths if they don''t want to die."


    "Correct," Rui nodded. "Even if the nations of the Kaddar Region deploy high-grade Martial Squires, they will most certainly be killed in the challenge if they do not fight seriously. And when they fight seriously, they will be forced to expose their Martial Art and Martial Path, making it much easier for the Floating Sect to identify them. If I''m not wrong, it''s likely that the Kaddar Region has lost powerful assets trying to infiltrate the Floating Sect, before they achieved any sess. It is an extremely high-risk option. Still, I suspect that there will be additional security measures if we so seed in our challenge and enter the Floating Sect."


    "Oh, these are our rooms," Kane remarked as they reached the end of the corridor. "Let''s get some rest, it has been a long day."


    "Make sure to go through the rule book," Rui advised him.


    "Yeah¡­ no, I''d rather just have you read it and exin it to me," Rui closed his door with a resigned chuckle.


    The hospitability was decent, and that was good enough, he didn''t expect a five-star treatment or anything of that sort.


    The bare furniture in the room seemed unaffected, but a quick sweep of the substances with his senses allowed him to analyze why they weren''t sumbing to the pressure. The materials weren''t all just Squire-level, in fact, he recognized some of the esoteric substances to actually be Apprentice-level with his newfound knowledge in esoteric material science.


    They were employed in brilliant ways to handle the enhanced gravity and air pressure. The enhanced gravity was countered by esoteric substances that bolstered evenly distributed pirs made up of esoteric alloys. While the air pressure was actually moreplicated. The furniture was actually filled with a powerful esoteric gas known as calconogen that exerted a tremendous amount of pressure disproportionate to its temperature or volume, countering the extreme air pressure from the outside.


    A simple yet sublime solution, one that even nature applied. Many creatures that existed at the bottom of the ocean many kilometers underwater were able to survive due to having a remarkable amount of internal pressure that countered the external pressure.


    In fact, even normal humans possessed a simr mechanism that allowed them to withstand standard air pressure without even feeling it.


    He began noticing these small things that he previously ignored due to not having the background and foundation to not entirely understand. It made sense that esoteric material science was at the forefront of research across the entirety of human civilization, it was also true that it had more potential than other fields of science as far as harnessing more power. It made Rui understand how technology is able to keep up with Martial Art.


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 Chapter 1039 Potential

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    Rui now had a unique perspective as a Martial Squire decently knowledgeable on esoteric material science. Furthermore, his background in physics also enabled him to gain a far better understanding of the ways that esoteric substances and materials could be applied in technology.


    All he could say was that he now truly understood how esoteric military technology was able to keep up with Martial Art, even if just barely. These esoteric substances were capable of some truly astonishing things, and if applied and engineered properly, could provide great results.


    Furthermore, these were just ordinary esoteric substances and alloys, he couldn''t even imagine what the high-grade esoteric substances were capable of.


    For instance, he wouldn''t be surprised if there were esoteric substances out there that had the power to annihte mountains, or perhaps even more.


    Still, he was rooting for Martial Art to maintain its superiority, more than anybody else. However, he understood the potential of science, probably more than anybody else on the continent.


    The human civilization of Earth did not have ess to these wonders of nature. They were limited to more ordinary substances instead. However, despite these limitations, the human civilization of Earth had aplished wonders using technology. He knew the power of technology better than anyone else, as well as the power of science.


    In his opinion, it was merely a matter of time before esoteric substances and materials ceased being so ''esoteric''. The scientificmunity would fully understand them, and they would no longer be esoteric.


    At that time, the full might of these substances would be harnessed, and technology would unleash a level of power, unlike anything that the world had ever seen, unlike anything he had ever seen.


    At that time, he didn''t know if Martial Art would be able to keep up. This directly affected him as a Martial Artist.


    Previously, he wouldn''t have been nearly as concerned. For he used to solely pursue Martial Art for the sake of Project Water.


    However, ever since the fiasco in the Shionel Confederation where he had been forced to make some extremely painful decisions, he had learned the feeling of the plight of the weak in a fantastical, but equally cruel world.


    He had developed a genuine hunger for power for the first time. Although he still mostly focused on developing his Martial Art and realizing his greatest ambition across lifetimes, he was more concerned with power.


    He hadn''t forgotten that he had a timer. It had already been a year since they had left the Shionel Confederation, which meant that he only had nine years left to go before the protection of his family was up.


    Of course, he had made significant gains in the past year, and had most certainly grown stronger, it didn''t mean he was anywhere near how strong he was to whatever he wanted to be.


    However, he had high hopes for the Floating Sect and the Floating Ajanta Ind. The sheer pressure that they put on Martial Artists stimted a tremendous amount of growth from the Martial Artists, causing them to train like their lives were on the line.


    And they were, if one wanted to continue training that was. Challenges were won and lost by death, thus every challenger duel was a death match where only one person could live unless the Floating Sect needed more ves.


    He nced at a small book ced on the table before reaching out to grab it and give it a read. He had sort of broken the rules in the Uminana Trench and had gotten a simple warning from a Martial Senior.


    Here, there were no warnings for major vitions, it was simply death. That was the kind of world that he was dealing with at the moment.


    The book first went into more basic information about the Floating Sect.


    There were a thousand and three chambers in the Floating Sect, a thousand of which housed a Martial Squire each that served as the guardian of the chamber. The thousand guardians were divided into ten sses, each ss containing one hundred Martial Squires. The tenth ss contained the top hundred Martial Squires of the Floating Sect, while the first ss contained the weakest hundred. The number of the ss corrted with the percentile of the Martial Artists of that ss rtive to all Martial Squires.


    Challengers were allowed to challenge any guardian from any chamber. However, they didn''t get to observe the guardians ahead of time to pick and choose the guardian that they were mostfortable fighting after spending a lot of time observing them.


    That gave the challengers far too much of an advantage.


    Rui was mildly resentful of the rule since it meant that he wouldn''t be able to prepare predictive models ahead of time but he quickly put that mindset aside.


    The real world wasn''t kind enough to allow him to construct predictive models before every fight. Power obtained through immense targeted preparation was not true power. Rui did not want to be selectively strong against some opponents.


    He wanted to be strong against everybody and everything.Text content ? N?velDrama.Org.


    Furthermore, even if he took down a strong guardian with the help of a prepared predictive model, he would put himself in a dangerous predicament where he wouldn''t have predictive models against those who challenged him.


    That meant he would have to contend with a level of strength that was perhaps above what he was capable of, meaning that he would probably die.


    (''I want a powerful foundation and a rock solid Martial Art, not just some borate preparations,'') Rui narrowed his eyes.


    It was one thing to employ such means against the Root toplete an established goal, but it made no sense to do so even when training to be stronger, it would only get in the way of real progress.


    At the moment, from what Rui could see, it was probably best for them to take on the lowest ss to be safe. He didn''t know how strong they were, but given how ruthless the system was, he highly doubted whether there was even a single non-high-grade Martial Squire.


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 Chapter 1040 Conditions

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    The Shionel Confederation exposed Rui to the powerhouses of the Squire Realm across the east side of the Panam Continent. He had thoroughly memorized the sensation of Martial Artists of various grades.


    That was he could tell that Squire Veelioen was a grade-nine Martial Squire, and a particrly formidable one. He probably wasn''t that far from being considered grade-ten, and the difference between genuine grade-ten Martial Squires wasn''trge enough to allow them to dominate him in a fight.


    He exuded a calm sense of power and security in his mannerisms, Rui was quite curious to see him fight, heck, he''d like to fight him as well.


    Given that he was the guardian of the thirty-sixth chamber, it meant that there were thirty-five Martial Squires that were stronger than him. With such a number, Rui had no doubt that the top Martial Squires undoubtedly were grade-ten Martial Squires.


    Rui had already decided to start off with the lower end of the spectrum before moving up to higher chambers in his time in the Floating Sect.


    With that aside, he quickly skimmed through the additional information provided in the book.


    "Oh¡­? Duels will ur under standard gravitational and atmospheric standards, it seems" Rui raised an eyebrow. "That''s interesting."


    Rui was surprised, he had thought that the battles would ur under normal circumstances, but apparently, he was wrong.


    In hindsight though, it made sense. The entire world experienced normal air pressure and gravitation, it made no sense to train to battle in an environment that simply did not exist almost anywhere else in the world.


    It reminded all the guardians to constantly keep in touch with normal environmental conditions in order to make sure they never grew to be unustomed to the normal world.


    Rui heaved a sigh of relief. He was a little worried about the terrain advantage that guardians would undoubtedly have if a battle ensued under the extreme conditions of Ajanta Ind. Content is property of N?velDrama.Org.


    The guardians, having spent a lot of time under these conditions, would undoubtedly be very familiar with it. He would definitely have an incredibly hard time against them under such circumstances.


    However, if the battles urred under normal circumstances, he would be a lot more confident.


    "Guardians are not allowed to refuse a challenge if they haven''t epted a challenge in the prior ten days¡­" Rui murmured as he read through the rules with interest. "So they can''t just get away with not epting. They''ll have to fight once every ten days if they''re inundated with challenges."


    The ten-day rule was to ensure that guardians couldn''t just hang on to their chamber by refusing all challenges. However, it also ensured that they weren''t bombarded with challenges, being forced to fight once every ten days was just the right frequency to keep guardians on their toes without taking away much time from their training.


    Ultimately, Martial Artists came to the floating Ajanta Ind to train, if that purpose could not be aplished then there was no point in entering the Floating Sect.


    Rui could easily imagine that the lowest ss of guardians received the most challenges for the same reason that Rui chose to go with the lower sses. If they were not allowed to ever refuse a challenge, they would never be able to train.


    "Interesting that the guardians themselves don''t have to die if they lose a match in a challenge against other guardians," Rui murmured.


    He could already figure out why this wasn''t the case with the guardians. It was to ensure that they were never too scared to challenge and risk death against stronger opponents perhaps when they already had ess to a good training avenue. <novelsnext>I think you should take a look at </novelsnext>


    Removing the necessity of death in duels between guardians at this stage incentivized them to challenge higher-ss guardians for their chamber, ensuring that no guardians grew toofortable in their chambers since they were all too afraid of each other.


    With such conditions, there was most likely a constant reshuffling and updating of the ranks of guardians through the thousand chambers.


    It meant that the current ranking was most likely extremely meritocratic and an updated ranking of all one thousand Martial Squires.


    "Oh?" Rui''s eyes lit up in interest. "It seems as though all challenges are publically viewable. That does benefit the challengers more than the guardians."


    However, he supposed it could be beneficial for guardians as well when he considered the fact that guardians could observe each other''s progress and capabilities.


    "So they''re incentivizing gauging your opponents before challenging them," Rui murmured.


    He wasn''t sure that he wanted to do that, because while others could make minute preparations, he did a lot more. He elevated his effective power by several grades depending on how intimately he was aware of his opponents.


    He had already resolved not to rely on the pattern recognition systems to build robust predictive models ahead of time in order to gain a level of strength he didn''t have due to how dangerous it was.


    He didn''t want to end up with a level of power that he could not muster when someone he didn''t know challenged him.


    (''No rigorous pattern recognition, then,'') Rui resolved.


    There were more rules and guidelines, but they were more detailed stuff such as some regtions to make sure that the duel waspletely fair, etc.


    "Nake," Rui said after knocking on his door, remembering to use hiszy fake alias.


    "What is it, Falken?" Kane emphasized Rui''s alias in turn.


    "Let''s go check out the schedule for uing challenges," Rui mentioned. "I want to see what kind of caliber of Martial Squires we''re going to have to pit ourselves against."


    Kane opened the door. "That actually sounds like a fun idea. I was getting bored of the rulebook."


    "I hope you read through it all."


    "Lazy skimming is what I did, but I didzily skim through all of it, but the retention was rather low, so I''m going to have to rely on your big brain to make things make sense," Kane yawned.


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 Chapter 1041 Played

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    The two of them quickly scuttled over to the dueling colosseum. Rui had to admit that it was definitely bigger than he had expected it to be. It took up a portion of the entire floating ind, and was much more than even a kilometer in diameter!


    (''This is the kind of arena that is fit to host Squire-level battles,'') Rui noted.


    Martial Squires, particrly higher-grade Martial Squires were capable of unleashing immense force. An ordinary colosseum would simply be destroyed and ravaged by a single Squire-level battle, let alone a whole series of them.


    Furthermore, a smaller colosseum would be a disservice to long-range Martial Squires who required range. Thus, this sort of colosseum was necessary to do justice to Martial Squires of all ranges. Given that these challenges decided which one of thebatants survived, they could not unfairly benefit one kind of Martial Squire more than the other.


    Soon enough, they entered the colosseum, passing through a section that isted the inside from the outside.


    "Woah."


    The two of them flew up into the air involuntarily once they returned back to normal gravity. The abrupt shift caused the to use too much force,unching a dozen meters into the air. Breathing also became significantly easier, but each breath was light and shallow, momentarily giving Rui the illusion of suffocation before he returned to normal.


    The colosseum was a gigantic dome isted from the outside, and the number of people watching was not few.


    Rui could see many Martial Squires seated across the entire structure. Many of them wore different Martial attires of different kinds.


    (''They are initiates that are scouting thepetition,'') Rui mused.


    That was obvious enough, but he was surprised that there weren''t just a few Martial Squires that wore Martial attires with the emblem of the Floating Sect on it.


    It appeared that guardians too were weary of each other''s progress.


    "Oh, looks like we just made it in time for a match," Kane remarked.


    Rui turned his attention to the battle arena, paying attention to the individuals that stood before each other.


    The guardian that wore the Martial attire of the Floating Sect was a mid-weight woman, while the initiate challenging her was a burly heavyweight man.


    "Take your stances," A Martial Squire serving as the arbiter of the match instructed.


    The woman balled her fists, pointing both of them toward her opponent. Her right arm was coiled to her side, with her fist tucked at her waist ready tosh out tounch a weighted blow.


    Her other fist was before, also pointed toward her opponent.


    (''Sort of like a ssical boxing stance,'') Rui mused as he nced at her Martial body with interest.


    The obvious conclusion was that she was an offensive striker, yet when Rui observed her Martial body, he couldn''t help but feel that this was the wrong conclusion. She didn''t have a Martial body that looked like it was tailored for boxing-stylebat.


    Rui frowned as he noticed an oddity. (''Her joints¡­ is that conditioning?'')


    Simultaneously, her opponent had taken his stance too. Guessing his Martial Path was much simpler. He was a power-oriented Martial Artist with a strong lean towards striking.


    (''Probably a Martial Art that is centered on drawing power from that ridiculously big gut of his.


    His abs were so big, they were popping out of his belly like biceps. Rui couldn''t even guess the sheer amount of power and torque he could generate, most likely he would be able to match Rui''s strikes without even using any Martial Art techniques.


    (''They''re both high-grade Martial Squires without a doubt.


    "Begin!"


    The battle had begun.


    "RAAAAARGH!" The man roared in stereotypical caveman fashion as he raged forward toward her, swinging his barreling arms toward her with tremendous force.<novelsnext>I think you should take a look at </novelsnext>


    Yet it was the woman who surprised him.


    His eyes widened as sheunched a strike to sh with that of her opponent, much to his shock. (''What?'')


    BOOM!!


    The woman went flying backward skidding while the man was unmatched. He grinned as he rushed forward ready to pummel her with another strike.


    Much to everyone''s surprise, she rushed forward as well, balling her fist to sh with her one more time.Content is property ? N?velDrama.Org.


    "Stupid," Kane murmured. "She''s clearly losing the striking game, she should fight more intelligently than just try to match him where she''s at her strongest."


    Kane expected Rui to agree, but thetter narrowed his eyes as he wordlessly stared at her.


    BAM!!!


    She once more got overwhelmed as she got pushed back.


    This continued without stopping. Each time the man swing, she chose to attack him head-on, and each time she got pushed back. The battle almost became monotonous as many of the initiatesughed at the woman.


    Yet Rui simply stared at her with hawk eyes as realization dawned on him.


    The man, on the other hand, stopped grinning as his mouth curled as though he was in pain.


    He balled and joined his hands as he swung them down on her. Yet again, she refused to dodge, instead balling up in a shield.


    BOOM!!!


    The entire colosseum shook as even the powerful esoteric substances that formed the ground of the arena broke!


    "Hah, is this a guardian? What a disgrace!"


    "Idiot, I thought she would definitely fight smarter than that caveman oaf."


    "She''s definitely done after that one."


    "Remarkable," Rui murmured with a knowing smile.


    The dust cleared, revealing a very much intact woman beneath the gigantic fists of the man.


    What shocked everyone was the pained expression on his face.


    As well as the swelling on the man''s wrists.


    "Rgh!" The man stumbled backward in pain as he nced at his wrists which were red and purple.


    "What?!" Everybody was surprised at why the man seemed to have taken damage despite being the one to pummel down on her.


    "Hahaha," Rui couldn''t help butugh. "He yed himself. She''s going to win this fight, he underestimated the power of a guardian."


    "Wait, what the heck just happened?" Kane demanded an exnation.


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 Chapter 1042 Conclusion

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    "She was about to get absolutely ttened by an attack that she couldn''t handle¡­ But then somehow the man took damage and backed off," Kane murmured, confused. "Is that poison, is she a poison-user?"


    The others that heard Kane''s spection seemed to be inclined to agree. It made sense, this kind of dyed damage that was inflicted without strikes and collisions was characteristic of poison techniques.


    "Not at all," Rui shook his head with an amused smile. "He just hurt himself."


    "Huh?" Kane tilted his head.


    "Take a look at her joints and bones," Rui gestured with his head.


    Kane turned back with furrowed eyebrows, scrutinizing her body. "They''re a much darker skin tone than the rest of her body, they also seem rougher and thicker¡­ They''re conditioned?"


    "Correct," Rui nodded. "The weak point of the skeletal structure of the human, as well as a Martial body are the joints. Joints are easier to break than bones. She simply exploited that principle to inflict damage on him using his own power."


    "I don''t follow, how can she even do that?"


    Rui paused for a moment as he considered how to exin it. "You can think of the skeleton as a chain. The human body passes power through each bone all the way to the fists and the knuckles that serve as the point of transfer of any impact of a punch. It''s a chain that carries over the power of an impact. This is simr to a chain pulling an object where the force passes from the first link to thest link until it reaches the object, pulling it along. However, what if there was a weak link among all these links that couldn''t withstand the force applied?"


    "It would¡­ break."


    "Correct," Rui nodded. "What she is doing is essentially removing the weak links from her chain, so that the weak links in his chains will break first in a tug of war. It doesn''t matter how much force he applies, human level, Squire level, or even infinite force. The weakest link will always break first in a tug of war, and the weakest links are all in his chain."


    Kane''s eyes widened as he understood the analogy. "So the shes between their fists are like a tug of war but in the opposite direction. Both of their joints are experiencing the stress from their sh, but her conditioned joints stay strong causing his joints to take all the damage."


    Rui nodded. "Ordinarily, the joints of both fighters will share the strain from the sh, meaning there is no difference. But in this case, it causes a collision where joints take all the strain because hers don''t. When he swung down on her, she simply guarded because his wrist was weaker than her rock-solid guard, meaning his wrist took damage before her guard, causing him to take more damage as a result. It was like trying to break a rock by hitting it with a ss rod, the ss is always breaking first no matter what."Content is property of N?velDrama.Org.


    It was a simple principle that exploited collision mechanics, yet it was quite remarkable. By conditioning not just her bones to be rock solid, but her joints to be equally tough, she could ensure that the sh would do the most damage to his joints than anything else.


    (''I knew she wasn''t an offensive striker. She''s actually a conditioning-oriented counter-offensive specialist,'') Rui mused. (''And she''s going to win this battle.'')


    BAM BAM BAM!!


    The man tried different kinds of strikes to see if he could bypass her strangely painful defenses. He even tried bull charging with his entire body, yet she keenly struck back, causing sharp intense pain to his joints.<novelsnext>I think you should take a look at </novelsnext>


    CRACK!


    His shoulder dislocated when he threw a wild haymaker. She swiftly rushed forward, throwing a flurry of strikes at his shoulder, exacerbating the problem.


    The rest of the fight was brutal. Rui and Kane watched as she utterly beat the man ck and blue, breaking his joints one by one, before then breaking his bones.


    CRACK!


    A heavy blow to the headunched him across the battle arena, smashing him against the wall, as he copsed to the ground unconscious, bleeding profusely.


    She didn''t even bother finishing him off.


    It was only a few minutester after the man breathed his final breath that the battle was dered over.


    She simply left the arena expressionlessly. Rui watched her with a raised eyebrow.


    (''She''s worthy of being a guardian,'')


    She ultimately did not even take any meaningful damage despite facing a high-grade power-oriented Martial Artist head-on. That was an extremely remarkable feat that put her above ordinary high-grade Martial Squires.


    The fact that she was among the tenth ss of guardians showed that the Floating Sect guardians were elites even among the upper echelons of the Squire Realm. Rui wondered what kind of guardian the number one ranked guardian of the Floating Sect was like. He couldn''t even imagine how strong he or she was.


    Rui nced back at the arena as he considered his prospects against the two that just fought. They were much closer to him than the number-one-ranked Martial Squire of the ind.


    Against the deceased man, he would probably fight like Kane. Evading the man''s haymakers was pretty easy with his capabilities, and exploiting the opening that he created to pepper him with blows.


    Alternatively, he would also be able to st him away from a distance with powerful attacks, although that was sub-optimal because his long-range attacks consumed more energy than his close-range strikes.


    His guardian opponent on the other hand was much trickier, but he didn''t think he couldn''t win, not at all. It made him confident that he could get into the ten ss of the Floating of the Sect, and bag a lower chamber. He just wanted to find an apt opponent without growing too reliant on the pattern recognition system.


    "We''re going to watch all fights that ur in this colosseum till the final date, and then pick candidates based on all of that," Rui remarked.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1043 Criteria

    Text content ? N?velDrama.Org.


    ?


    Rui realized that the Floating Sect was probably the most elite group of Martial Squires for their size anywhere on the continent. The Shionel Dungeon had attracted a lot of powerful Martial Squires, but too many of them weren''t high-grade.


    Here, however, just reaching here required fighting off multiple Martial Squires.


    Furthermore, those who were actually members of the Floating Sect had challenged and killed high-grade Martial Squires. Furthermore, they also killed all those who challenged them without even a single failure.


    They were elites among elite Martial Artists with consistent formidability.


    It reflected over the next few days as they witnessed challenges between initiates and guardians.


    Not a single initiate won.


    Rui was quite surprised. He expected that at least a few would be able to seed. Yet each guardian stood their ground, gaining victory one way or another.


    It made sense, of course. In order to stay as a guardian for long, it required surviving challenge after challenge for extended periods of time.


    It required being unable to be taken down by most people who came to challenge a Martial Squire.


    It wasn''t until Rui''s eight-day that he finally saw an initiate seed. A swift offensive maneuvering Martial Artist took down a defensive Martial Artist, iming her nine hundred and ny-second chamber for himself.


    (''A formidable grade-eight Martial Artist was the eighth weakest Martial Artist in the entirety of the ind,'') Rui sighed, impressed.


    The poption distribution of the ten grades of the Squire Realm was a sharp and exponentially declining curve. Most Martial Squires were low-grade, some Martial Squires mid-grade, and very few Martial Squires were high-grade.


    The reason for that was that simply mastering existing techniques did not make Martial Squires too much stronger.


    Affinities between the technique and the Martial Art, Path, and the Martial body were the three most important variables to the power that a Martial Art technique gave a Martial Squire inbat.


    An overwhelming majority of Squire-level techniques were overwhelminglycking in having an affinity with all three due to the Martial body''s spec configuration being unique and different from the normal human body. It was the difference infort and aesthetics between a custom-tailored suit versus an ordinary suit that wasn''t even the same size or for the same gender as the person in question. Thetter was far inferior to the former.


    Fewer and fewer Martial Squires possessed the drive and the brilliance toe up with techniques that were both individualistic andpatible with their Martial Art, Path, and body.


    It was why very few Martial Squires that came to the Floating Sect were even qualified to challenge guardians, and even fewer possessed the power to take one down.


    However, Rui hadn''t just spent all those days watching entertaining fights. He had been taking notes on the various guardians that he witnessed fighting. Although he abstained from employing the VOID algorithm''s pattern recognition, he still made sure to thoroughly analyze the strengths and weaknesses of their style.


    Much to his dismay, there were very few weaknesses. Martial Artists of this caliber were simply strong all around even if there were specialists.<novelsnext>I think you should take a look at </novelsnext>


    The few extreme specialists that did have shorings were so incredibly strong in their chosen field that their strength outshined their weaknesses!


    "Alright," Kane told him one day. "I''ve made my decision. I''m going to fight him."


    Kane gestured to a guardian who had just won a challenge.


    Squire Heviluo.


    The man was a hyper-offensive long-range Martial Squire that sniped his opponent from a distance, his only shoring was that he wascking close range.


    "Don''t underestimate him," Rui warned him. "His long-range offense truly is amazing, and I know he hasn''t shown everything he can do in this fight."


    "Yeah, I''ll keep that in mind."


    Rui was understandably concerned. The man had disyed long-range offensive prowess that significantly surpassed Rui, he had a wider range, and his normal offensive power was as good as Rui''s tier-four Transverse Resonance.


    That was quite surprising to Rui, it also meant that he could probably kill Kane with a single attack, and that was why he was concerned about Kane.


    However, he didn''t think Kane''s confidence was unfounded, or that his decision was foolish, which is why he didn''t stop him either. He knew how strong Kane had gotten recently, and it was certainly not something he could dismiss. He had the capital to challenge Squire Heviluo.


    "Have you made up your mind yet?" Kane asked.


    "¡­Not yet, but I have narrowed it down," Rui remarked.


    There were several guardians who he found easier to adapt to than others, and he was definitely going to pick his pick among them. He had no intention of pointlessly giving his opponent an advantage in a death match.


    There were several things that made adaptation to a style easier than others, and one of them was whether a particr style had a distinct disadvantage or shoring or not. All-rounders were much harder to be able to adapt to because their weaknesses weren''t obvious, and Rui needed to pay attention to their capabilities and pick the best way to handle each one individually.


    That was why his list of potential guardians to challenge were people whose weaknesses and shorings were self-evident. He would be able to adapt to them much quicker than normal, allowing him to put up a dominant disy.


    He also wanted a battle that wouldn''tst very long, it was simply not in his interests to get into a prolonged battle that would allow all the challengers watching to get a good grasp of his techniques and his movements.


    Though it was inevitable, he was not looking forward to contending with people who had more information on him than he had on them. That was why another condition was an opponent against whom he would need to use a minimal amount of techniques.


    With these conditions, he had narrowed it down to just a handful of Martial Artists, after that, it was just a matter of refining his n.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1044 Begin

    ?


    The days went by quickly and eventually, Kane''s match rolled up. Ten days passed by very quickly.


    "Rx, you''ll do just fine," Rui reassured him. "Your n is solid."


    "Fuuu¡­" He exhaled deeply as he tried rxing his nerves.


    It wasn''t every day that he was topete in a death match where only one person was allowed toe out alive. This was not the same as risking his life on a mission or on the battlefield.


    As an evasive maneuverer, he had great confidence in his ability to evade danger and death by simply removing himself from a given circumstance or situation. He was extremely fast and nimble, and it was difficult for people to tag him.


    This gave himfort and reassurance at the back of his mind.


    However, in this particr circumstance, he could not run away and remove himself from this particr circumstance. Once he stepped into it, it was already toote. He would need to kill his opponent.


    "It''s time," Rui mentioned.


    Kane nodded wordlessly as he loosened his joints, heading out of his quarters and towards the dueling colosseum.


    Content property of N?velDra/ma.Org.


    "Good luck," Rui wished him onest time as the two of them split up


    The spectators watched as he entered the arena, heading towards the arbiter of the match. Rui was quite nervous, but the rest of the colosseum did not echo his emotions, this was just another ordinary match to them.


    Soon enough, Squire Heviluo also arrived.


    He stepped up before Kane, locking eyes with him with a cold stare.


    It couldn''t be helped. Challenges from initiates were no different from a deration of the intent to kill. The man was not going to interact with someone who had expressed the desire to kill him.


    "Initiate Nake has challenged the nine-hundred and seventy-ninth guardian Heviluo," The arbiter announced. "Starting distance has been deemed to be fifty meters."


    The Floating Sect handled the starting conditions of the duels in an interesting fashion. The Martial Squires were to give the range at which they would want the battle to begin, and the average distance of the distance that they stated would be used as the range at which the battle would begin, in order to give bothbatants as close to an equal starting as possible.


    The average of their starting distances hade out to be fifty, which was not ideal, but not too bad for either side.


    "Take your stances," The arbiter instructed.


    Kane lightly hopped on his feet while his arms were loosely at his side, the man, on the other hand, inhaled deeply as he prepared a powerful punch with his right arm curled and wound back with his fist balled.


    "Begin!"


    Kane disappeared into thin air.


    Void Step had been activated, and no one could sense Kane anymore. It was at times like this that Rui was reminded of the true power of the Void Step technique. Because of how useless it was against him, it was easy to forget it. But, when he looked at the reactions that the others had, it was a good reminder that the technique truly was grade-ten.<novelsnext>I think you should take a look at </novelsnext>


    POW!


    The confused man felt an impact on his body that didn''t even hurt, it felt like a child hitting him. Yet his body shivered as he felt a deep sense of danger. He immediately cocked his head back.


    SCRATCH


    Kane''s piercing technique just barely missed his eyes, instead causing him to have a skin cut above his forehead.


    (''Remarkable instincts to recognize the danger despite his consciousness being unable to detect pain,'') Rui raised an eyebrow.


    The subconscious sense of self-preservation was the strongest, and it certainly was true even for the Martial body. It was easy for Kane to fool the ordinary senses of Martial Squires and even many of the techniques that they had to run circles around them, but when it came to more abstract senses like that it was much harder.


    In the Shionel Dungeon, Kane had been able to get away with it because the Shionel Dungeon greatly hampered all senses even further, but Martial Squires was not to be trifled with when the sense of self-preservation was triggered. It was not something that could be misdirected entirely.


    The man immediately leaped back as he covered his vitals, making sure that Kane couldn''t hurt them. The previous two attacks had shown him that Kane''s offense was not impressive. It was actually startlingly weak, he hadn''t even been able to make him bleed with a piercing technique while his strikes felt like those of an infant to the grade-nine Martial Squire.


    Squire Heviluo immediately realized that meant that there were a limited number of ways in which Kane could possibly take him down. As long as he covered for those ways well enough, it would be truly difficult for Kane to inflict much meaningful damage.


    However, just sitting passively would not get him to victory, it would only significantly dy defeat.


    And he was not interested in dying it, he was interested in preventing it from ever happening.


    There were a few ways he could go about that.


    He leaped back as he exhaled deeply activating a breathing technique as he began spinning at incredible speeds.


    WHOOOOOSH!


    Rui''s eyes widened as an enormous tornado erupted from his body, expanding widely in all directions. It was an incredibly powerful attack that attacked any and everything within the colosseum.


    "Rgh!" Kane groaned as the whirlwind struck him. He had managed to dilute the impact by running to the very edge of the arena, but the attack had struck him nheless, dispelling the Void Step technique for a brief moment.


    Rui narrowed his eyes, he had run into a simr technique in his time in Crexeet town, except that technique was purely defensive, while this technique was offensive.


    The man began firing wide-range sts in the broad direction of Kane.


    BOOM BOOM BOOM!!


    The powerful attacks crashed into a wide amount of area, yet Kane was nowhere to be seen.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1045 Abandon

    ?


    Rui had to admit, this was an unfortunate sequence of events for Kane. Not only had his initial ambush failed, but the man also just happened to have a gigantic attack that could fill up the entirety of the colosseum.


    Because it covered all avable battle areas, Kane could not avoid it with speed. Getting his by such an attack was inevitable. However, Kane had greatly minimized how much damage he took by moving to the very edge to withstand the impact.


    However, he had to admit, he was impressed. Although Kane was extremely fragile as a Martial Artist, hurting him by simply attacking everywhere despite the dispersed and diluted impact was quite impressive. Rui suspected that the technique he used was probably grade ten, or grade nine at least. He could not imagine such a technique being mass viable. It was a testament to his power and mastery over the winds to be able to unleash such an attack.


    However, at the same time, it was not something that he could keep using continuously for too long. However, the same could be said for Kane.


    It was one thing if he was simply using Void Step to disperse attention while traveling, but it was an entirely different thing to use Void Step actively inbat. Combat stress caused all physical and mental actions to be more draining than if they were done individually in a nonbat setting.


    Given the stress and strain that Kane was under, he definitely would not b able to maintain Void Step for too very long.


    The question was who couldst longer at the moment.


    If Squire Heviluo could maintain his wide-range omnidirectional attacks longer than Kane could maintain his Void Step, then he would be able to ensure that Kane would never be able to use his Void Step technique to try and sneak past his guard.


    However, if he couldn''t he would be able to stop Kane from sneaking and start bullying him Void Step the second that he ran out of stamina.


    The man stopped moving as he guarded his vitals as best as he could, standing in one ce.


    (''He''s waiting for Kane toe in,'') Rui narrowed his eyes.


    The closer Kane was, the more damage he would unleash with that tornado technique. Kane had been at the very edge of the arena when he had withstood that attack, that was why he had managed to get away with minimal wounds despite his weak constitution.


    (''However, he''s looking to get that next attack off, the second that he feels Kane''s attacks, or feels any sense of vague dread,'') Rui mused.


    This way, the attacks would hit Kane before they had traveled too much distance. The impacts would be far more potent, and would probably crush him.


    (''However, Kane seems to have realized that going in with just Void Step isn''t good enough,'') Rui kept track him of trailing around Squire Heviluo from a distance. (''The answer is right before you, Kane.'')


    Rui did not dare follow Kane with his eyes, but he was focusing on him. Kane''s condition for victory was being able tond blows on his vitals. At the moment, the man''s guard, as well as the threat of using a long-range and wide-scale attack to hit Kane were the obstacles that were in his way.


    What Kane needed to do was find a way to eliminate them from the equation at the moment for just enough time.


    There was only one way to do that, from what Rui could see.


    Kane smacked his arms together, ready to rub the tattoos on both of them against each other. He rushed forward towards Squire Heviluo, reaching him in an instant.Content is property ? N?velDrama.Org.


    Yet rather thanunching a strike at his body with Void Step active, he instead rubbed his arms against each other in one sweeping motion, triggering the tattoos to generate a tremendous amount of electrical charge that instantly covered his entire body.


    Instantly his reflexes and thoughtless motions grew significantly, the Void Step technique broke in that moment as his movements became governed by instinct and reflex, causing him to appear before the man''s eyes.


    Squire Heviluo was shocked but immediately activated his breathing technique to begin spinning to unleash his attack point-nk.<novelsnext>I think you should take a look at </novelsnext>


    At this range, the force would be deadly enough to instantly kill Kane!


    Yet, it never happened.


    BZZZZZT!


    Kane mimicked Rui''s Thundercoil partially as he shocked the man with a full-contact body charge, causing the man to freeze in ce as he vibrated a bit due to the current. He struggled to activate his technique, yet for several precious moments, his muscles did not move.


    And that was all that Kane needed.


    SPLAT!


    "RARGH!" The man roared as he finally activated his technique. A look of vindication appeared on his face as he was about to crush Kane point nk with his most powerful technique!


    ¡­


    ¡­..


    His eyes widened as he realized his technique failed to activate for some reason!


    DRIP DRIP DRIP


    Blood splurted out of a hole in his Adam''s apple.


    Kane had poked a hole in his throat, causing him to be quite unable to exhale through his mouth.


    Kane had crippled his breathing technique for that statement.


    He caught his throat with his hand, trying to seal the whole, yet that removed a guard from his vitals.


    Kane didn''t even think about it as his Fulminata Godspeed drove him forward tosh out at the man''s vitals. The neck, the eyes, the temples, the liver, the scrotum.


    He was unable to mimic Rui''s striking paralysis technique since Rui specifically aimed for the autonomous nervous technique since the contact of the entire.


    Yet he was still able to deliver strikes that hurt Squire Helivuo.


    Yet, the man wasn''t done. He ignored the strikes that Kaneunched as he immediately began spinning tremendously. Kane''e eyes widened as the man willingly abandoned guard of his vitals all to get a single clean hit on Kane.


    The whirlwind emerged one more time, this time with Kane right before it!


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1046 Persevere

    ?


    He had the briefest of moments to make a decision when he saw that his opponent abandoned defense to try and st him with his hurricane technique. His reflexes shed as he immediately began sprinting away from the man at the man desperately.


    WHOOOOOSH!


    The hurricane expanded fully engulfing Kane before he had the opportunity to reach the edge of the arena.


    "Urgh!"  He grimaced as mmed into the arena wall.


    The damage wasn''t little, this time, he hadn''t withstood at the edge, he had withstood much prior. He had taken a significant hit.


    Yet, Squire Heviluo wasn''t doing too well either.


    Although he had abandoned guarding his vitals with just a brief moment, Kane had gotten in a multitude of strikes. His speed was so high that he could strike the most vital points multiple times before the man had unleashed his technique.


    When the dust settled, he was bleeding out of several wounds. Furthermore, his eyes werepletely shut, bleeding profusely.


    (''He wasn''t able to finish the job in time,'') Rui tutted, narrowing his eyes.


    Unfortunately for Kane, the battle had not entirely gone the way he would have liked to. His initial n had been to use the Void Step to simply umte damage over time while avoiding any attacks that the man would dish out in an attempt to hit him.


    However, what neither of them had expected was this remarkably powerful technique that would allow him tounch a long-range wide-scale sorge that it epassed the entire battle arena.


    Furthermore, he was able tounch that attack not just once, but multiple times.


    (''Kane underestimated him,'')


    It was unfortunate, but it appeared that the Void Step alone wasn''t enough to take down elite high-grade Martial Squires, especially when the one using the technique had offense and defense that was as limited as Kane''s was.


    Kane couldn''t even use Void Step for a while, while Fulminata Godspeed was active, he would need to finish the charge that he had in his body before he could use the technique. The man rushed forward towards Kane. Although his vision wasn''t functioning, he could sense Kane using his other senses since he wasn''t using Void Step.


    (''He''s trying to get as close to Kane as possible when he uses that technique. That''s why he''s being as swift as he is,'')


    Kane, on the other hand, simply circled away from him, maintaining their distance. If he tried rushing in to inflict more damage, he would simply be hit by that powerful technique.


    It appeared that he was in no rush to continue fighting.


    However, Rui was concerned about the fact that Godspeed had time limits, he would be forced to use exclusively Void Step when he was done, and he would also be quite tired and weary when that was done.


    WHOOOOOSH!


    Squire Heviluounched another long-range attack, yet this time the attack actually failed to hit Kane hard.<novelsnext>I think you should take a look at </novelsnext>


    (''You''ve moved away from the center of the arena,'') Rui mused. (''Your attacks can no longer effectively upy the entire arena.'')


    Kane wisely realized that too as he made sure to never allow the distance between him and his opponent to go below a certain degree. Although he was within the range of the technique, he made sure to keep enough distance to ensure that he could run out of range of the technique.


    (''The technique is slower the further away it goes. You can only hit Kane with it when you''re at the center of the arena and your attack properly covers the entire arena.'')


    WHOOOOOSH!


    WHOOOOOSH!


    WHOOOOOSH!


    The man continued trying to tag Kane with the one technique of his that could. Rui frowned as he wondered why the man wasn''t using ordinary attacks now that Kane was visible.


    The only reason he had used this wide-scale hurricane attack was because he didn''t know where Kane was. Now that Kane was using Fulminata Godspeed, he couldn''t use Void Step for a while.


    Rui''s eyebrow rose. (''He hasn''t realized that Kane is unable to use Void Step with his current speed and movements! He thinks Kane will use it the second he tries attacking normally. He doesn''t want that to happen.'')


    Rui couldn''t even me him for thinking this way, but it was a good opportunity for Kane.


    Suddenly, Kane rushed forward towards him, surprising the man, he immediately unleashed a hurricane, sessfully hitting him.


    WHOOSH!


    Kane''s image faded the second the winds struck him.


    (''Phantom Step,'') Rui grinned. (''Good application of the technique. I''m d you realized it could be used this way.'')


    It showed that Kane had not beenpletely enamored by Fulminata Godspeed and Void Step. It was true that those three techniques were super powerful, but his Martial Art contained more than just those techniques.


    With extremely convincing feints, he was able to force Squire Heviluo to use the hurricane technique, otherwise, he would risk allowing Kane to reach striking distance. He did not want to get incapacitated by the electrical charge in his body leaving himself open for more attacks a second time.


    Kane began abusing the technique, forcing the man to either burn his stamina by using the technique every time that Kane appeared to rush in, regardless of whether it was real or a feint. Either that or the man would have to gamble on his senses.


    Normally, Rui did not spam the Phantom Step technique himself because the technique was most powerful when your opponent wasn''t expecting it. Spamming allowed for one''s opponent to get used to it and eventually be immune to it.Content is property ? N?velDrama.Org.


    (''But Kane has hampered his vision, and fried his nerves to a certain extent.'')


    It meant that he wasn''t exactly in the best condition to sense it. Furthermore, with Kane''s speed, he had very little time to judge whether it was a feint or not, since Kane could cover a lot of distance in a short amount of time, if it was real, then he would not be able to react in time if he made the wrong choice.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1047 Outcome

    As the battle passed, Squire Heviluo began exerting himself tremendously in his attempts to prevent Kane from entering.


    Eventually, it appeared he could no longer keep up.


    THUD


    He fell to one knee, sweating profusely. His exertion had also strained his healing factor. Even if he attempted to simply wait and recuperate, Kane would not let him. Every time he stopped using the technique, Kane would rush in and employ the Phantom Step technique, or he would attack for real, forcing the man to once again use a taxing technique.


    Both sides were exerting themselves, however, Kane''s Fulminata technique was fueled by the esoteric substances in his tattoos, while only his Godspeed technique consumed a lot of energy, however, it consumed it over time as opposed to an instantaneous consumption like the man''s hurricane technique.


    The Phantom Technique was a very light technique and did not require much energy, either mental or physical, to function.


    WHOOSH


    Kane rushed in for real, the man desperatelyunched normal attacks at Kane this time instead of his strenuous hurricane technique, yet he was challenging Kane in his technique. With Fulminata Godspeed, there was almost no chance that any wind could possibly hit him.


    BZZZT!


    Kane shocked him, incapacitating him momentarily.


    SPLAT!


    In the brief moment of time, he targeted wounds that he had already inflicted prior, allowing him to pierce much deeper than he would be able to normally.


    He shed at blood vessels, widened wounds, and inflicted more damage before leaping back, narrowly evading another attack.


    The man bled profusely, spilling copious amounts of blood.


    Yet he never gave up. Kane simply proceeded to rinse and repeat the existing strategies. His Fulminata Godspeed eventually ran out, yet even the exhaustion that beset him wasn''t enough of an opportunity for Squire Heviluo to get back into the game, especially since Kane could use Void Step for a brief amount of time even in his exhaustion.


    THUD


    The man''s body copsed in a pool of his own blood. Yet it wasn''t until his heart stopped beating that the arbiter dered the match over.


    "Squire Nake wins by death, officially bing the guardian of the nine hundred and seventy-eighth chamber!" The man announced.


    There was no apuse, of course. The spectating initiates did not care for either side one way or another. Kane was just another potential target for them from this day forth.


    Kane stumbled out of the battle arena in a daze.


    "Congrattions," Rui smiled offering him rejuvenation and healing potions as well as some food pills. "There were some incredibly close moments, but you managed to obtain victory nheless."


    "Yeah¡­ that was rough," He grimaced. "I broke a few ribs and some fingers even though I took small parts of the total attack."


    He quickly chugged down the potions and the pills when he was approached by a staff member.


    "Guardian Nake, allow me to guide you to your chamber."


    "Uh¡­" He turned back to face Rui.


    "God," Rui gestured. "I''ll catch up soon enough."


    "Definitely let me know ahead of time whenever your fight happens to be."<novelsnext>I think you should take a look at </novelsnext>


    "Will do."


    Rui turned back to the colosseum as he watched the next fight ensue.


    Unlike most challenges, this was one between two guardians.


    The guardian of the nine hundred and forty-eighth chamber had challenged the guardian of the nine hundred and first chamber.


    The difference between the two of them wasn''t that great, they were both highly powerful Martial Artists that were probably on the verge of being considered grade nine. Rui paid close attention to the two of them.


    ¦Ñ¦Á¦°d¦Ás¦­¦Ïvel The Martial Squire of the nine hundred and first chamber was a short and petite woman. The second Ruiid eyes on her, he couldn''t help but frown.


    (''There''s something off about her skin,'') He immediately couldn''t help but notice with the help of his sharp senses. The color waspletely normal, but what did draw his attention was the texture. It was just incredibly non-standard in ways he wasn''t fully able to sense.


    She took a wild stance, spreading her arms to her side as she crouched a bit.


    Rui couldn''t even understand the point of such a stance.


    Her opponent, inparison, was much more standard. He extended both arms forward with one arm facing her with sharp palms while the palm of the second hand was tucked at his elbow.


    (''A Wing Chun stance,'') Rui raised an eyebrow with interest. He most likely had a strong offensive close-range striking Martial Artist.


    "Begin!" The battlemenced as the two of themshed out at each other. The man rushed forward towards her in a normal fashion, but the woman, she did more than just that.


    Her arms lit up on bursts of fire every time she swung forward as she ran forward.


    Rui''s eyes widened with surprise. (''A me rted to Martial Art?'')Content is property ? N?velDrama.Org.


    POW POW POW!


    The two of them exchanged a spiral of strikes, and immediately, she gained an advantage. Much to Rui''s surprise, her opponent''s fists immediately began bleeding!


    Not only that, but every strike shended on him also tore away at his skin, leaving flesh wounds in her wake.


    The man grimaced with a shocked expression.


    (''Was he really not prepared?'') Rui furrowed his eyebrows. (''I suppose preparations isn''t nearly as much of a thing as it is when you''re an initiate.'')


    He immediately leaped back, yet she refused to give him any room to avoid her. She rushed forward, making wide extravagant movements as she beganunching me plumed at him with her every movement.


    FOOOM!


    The grimaced as his skin was singed by her attacks.


    Yet Rui had stopped paying him as much attention. He focused on the woman, analyzing her techniques.


    (''It''s¡­ friction!'') Rui''s eyes widened. (''Her skin is rough beyond all imagination. She can shear away at her opponent''s skin with just a simple brushing movement.'')


    Furthermore, the mes that she generated with her technique, were generated by heating up the air enough with just sheer friction alone.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1048 Considerations

    ?


    She most likely needed to reach a certain level of speed and force in order to generate mes with just friction alone, yet she seemed able to pull it off. Not only that, she also possessed a remarkable amount of control over the directions and intensity of the mes as well.


    POW POW POW!


    The battle was brutally one-sided, unlike a lot of challenges between guardians. It seems that the man had overestimated himself or underestimated her. Whatever the case, he most certainly messed up.


    It wasn''t ten minutes into the fight that he forfeited.


    "Woah¡­"


    "She''s strong¡­"


    "I''m not challenging her, that''s for sure."


    Rui heard a wave of murmurs from the spectators. He could definitely understand why they thought the way they did.


    Yet he didn''t share their sentiments.


    (''I wonder how well I can adapt to her,'') Rui couldn''t help but consider the matter. In actuality, her Martial Art was actually not that ill-suited to him. Her strengths were defined, and the resulting fighting style that he would create to adapt to her did not require most of his Martial Art, allowing him to get away with hiding most of his arsenal.


    Perhaps there were easier targets, but¡­


    (''But they''re not worth it,'')


    One of the ways that he could improve his ability to adapt was by challenging himself in new ways. Simply adapting to more normal Martial Art wasn''t very productive.


    After all, many Martial Art ended up having simr solutions when it came to adapting to them. Although they were all unique in some way or another, at their core, they followed the same concept.


    The predictive models were unique, but the adapted Martial Art that he ended up fighting wasn''t drastically unique.


    (''But she is strong,'') Rui noted.


    It reduced the probability that he would win, and thus the probability that he would survive.


    Yet, he didn''t mind undertaking the challenge. In exchange, he rxed his rule regarding the usage of the VOID algorithm. He got a decent grasp of her movements, however, it wasn''t enough to form a predictive model as the battle hadn''tsted long enough, and he hadn''t seen enough of her Martial Art.


    Yet he had made his choice. He left the colosseum heading back to the initiate housing block.


    "Friction and fire?" Kane raised an eyebrow when Rui told him about her. "That sounds scary as hell. I would not want to fight her."<novelsnext>I think you should take a look at </novelsnext>


    "You don''t have the bestpatibility with her, after all."


    Kane would be able to evade her pretty well, but he could probably forget about trying to inflict any damage on her. His constitution was much weaker than hers was, and even hitting her would probably bust his hand up. He didn''t even have a single genuine way hurt her.


    If he tried shocking her, just being in contact with her would probably rip open his flesh effortlessly.


    The same wasn''t necessarily true for Rui, not only was his body much more durable, but he had undergone Adamant Reforging that conditioned his flesh very well, allowing his flesh to be able to withstand a lot without breaking.


    However, that wasn''t the route that Rui intended to go through when confronting her. He couldn''t afford to rely on his conditioning to try and withstand her offense, that was a foolish move.


    Her friction and heat were her offense and what made her a high-grade guardian. Rui did not think that a simple grade seven technique would be able to do much against her offense.


    Instead, he intended to engage in a form ofbat where he could simply deny her the opportunity to ever evene in to take him down.


    He had a bit of leeway due to his decent healing factor being able to heal light wounds really well, but it didn''t give him too much rope, he was better off being able to ensure that she didn''tnd a hit on him ever.


    He quickly began cooking up an optimal game n in his mind. He hade to rue a lot of techniques in the past five years. It gave him an immense amount of versatility that he had the ability to choose from.


    He had the five techniques that he had initially re-mastered when he became a Martial Squire. Wind Breathing, Outer Convergence, Phantom Step, Adamant Reforging, and Reverberating Lance.Text content ? N?velDrama.Org.


    After that he hade to develop his first two techniques; the Pathfinder technique, and the Flux Earther technique. He had mastered the Sonic Bullet technique as a result as well. In his time on Vilun Ind, he had alsoe to master the Mighty Roar sh st technique and had developed the Transverse Resonance Technique as a result.


    He had developed Gale Force Breathing and the Riemannian Echo technique in preparation for the Shionel Dungeon and in his time in the Shionel Confederation, he had mastered the Forestep technique.


    He had then gone on to create the Reverberating Catapult, Eye of Lightning, Thundercoil, and the Lightning Tap in his subsequent travels after escaping the Shionel Confederation.


    Those were not a small number of Martial Artist techniques, not to mention the multiple Apprentice-level techniques that he had naturallye to adapt to the Squire Realm.


    However, he realized that the more techniques he mastered, the moreplicated it became to create the most optimal adapted Martial Art to any given Martial Art because he had to go through arge number of techniques before picking just the right ones that he needed.


    Of course, the resultant adapted Martial Art would be even more optimal than if he had fewer techniques.


    (''Unless the techniques are higher in quality than quantity,'') Rui noted to himself. (''Perhaps there is merit in focusing on creating a lesser number of high-grade techniques than it is to create numerous low-grade techniques.'')


    He shook his head, putting aside such thought for the time being. He had a fight to prepare for, and it wouldn''t be that long before he would be stepping into the arena himself.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1049 Outcome

    ?


    "Challenger; Squire Falken. Defender: Guardian Saiwal."


    The two of them stepped forward, bowing to each other. Rui locked eyes with her, and he could feel cold bloodlust in her eyes. He didn''t expect anything less, of course. By challenging her, Rui was basically saying that he wanted to kill her and was confident that he could do it.


    He couldn''t even deny it, since that was indeed the case.


    Kane had already joined the Floating Sect, and it was time for Rui to follow suit.


    "Take your stances,"


    She took a wide stance, crouching with spread arms and legs.


    Rui stood nearly fifty meters away from her, having chosen a long-range distance while she chose a short-range, with apletely neutral stance.


    He stared at her with a calm expression. Yet he exerted a faint pressure on her without making any threatening stances or res.


    "Begin!"


    She immediatelyshed out toward Rui, hoping to reach him in her initial charge. After all, her most effective range was when she was up close with her opponent, tearing off their flesh while she roasted them in her mes.


    Yet, she wasn''t surprised when Rui took to the air as he leaped back. Heunched a barrage of Mighty Roaring sh sts.


    THWOOM THWOOM THWOOM!


    Unfortunately, he wasn''t nearly at the distance where the creation of the technique could not be sensed. That only worked when he was hundreds of meters away. She was able to notice that he was manipting the atmosphere somehow when he created the sonic bullets, even if she couldn''t sense the sonic bullets themselves.


    BOOM BOOM BOOM!


    She somersaulted away as her sharp instincts told her to disrupt her travel path.


    Yet, it wasn''t enough.


    BAM!


    She grimaced as one of the sound projectiles struck her even after she moved away. Rui had aimed for her maneuver from the very start.


    Heunched a hail of projectiles at her, restricting her path forward.


    (''I knew it,'') Rui''s eyes narrowed. (''Durability isn''t your forte.'')


    Most of her techniques and training, as well as the spec configuration of her Martial body, it wasrgely devoted to maximizing her friction, and the utility of her friction. It meant that she wasn''t as strong at other aspects ofbat.


    Of course, her friction made up for it, but it didn''t help her get past Rui''s attacks. She wasn''t swift and nimble enough to evade all the attacks that he threw at her, nor was she durable enough to withstand all the attacks and just bulldoze through.


    However, it was his predictive uracy that was helping him out. With each passing second that went by, he grew better and better as he memorized her active and passive patterns that existed in her motion, growing more familiar with her evasion patterns especially.


    However, at the same time, Rui wasn''t going to be able to win this way. She wasn''t able to reach him, but that didn''t mean she was helpless when it came to dealing with his onught. His long-range offense wasn''t high-grade in power, thus he wasn''t able to inflict too much damage with each strike.


    Furthermore, long-range attacks were more power-consuming than close-range attacks, thus she would certainlyst longer at this rate.


    She had already fallen into afortable ce where she only spent enough energy avoiding his attacks while she waited for the right opportunity.


    He could try hitting her with a Transverse Resonance, but unfortunately, that was much more difficult tond because he needed to spend mental effort into ensuring that the four sound waves ovepped with each other. It made aim much harder.


    The battle fell into a brief stretch of monotony. She did her best to avoid his attacks while still trying to close in where and when she could. He, on the other hand, kept bombarding her with attacks.<novelsnext>I think you should take a look at </novelsnext>


    Until he decided to stop.


    He heaved a sigh as he seemingly took a moment of respite.


    Squire Saiwal had been waiting for this opening. She did not believe that he would be able to oust her with his attacks despite her much lower effort evasion. Sheshed out, itching to shred him to pieces and then roast him to ashes with her mes.


    Rui stepped backward as she reached him, yet that only fueled her aggression.


    BAM!!!


    Her eyes widened as her pupils dted in agony.


    CRACK CRACK CRACK!


    She felt several ribs cracking.


    "Cough!" She spat blood as her vision finally came into focus.


    Rui stood right before her, with his fist buried into her gut.


    Before she could even process what had happened.


    POW!


    A swift high kick crashed into her chin.


    THUD


    She copsed to the ground, unconscious.


    (''You tunnel vision every time youunch an attack,'')


    Rui had noticed herck of environmental awareness in her previous fight during particr moments of the fight. Thus he had exploited that by using Phantom Step to y into that shoring, misdirecting her awareness momentarily, before using that blindspot tond an incredibly clean body blow.Content is property ? N?velDrama.Org.


    His fist had mmed into her rough body with one of the most powerful attacks that Rui couldunch at that range. Furthermore, he had managed to catch herpletely off-guard, thus she hadn''t even protected herself with a single defensive technique. That single blow had caused devastating damage.


    After that, it was just a matter of finishing the job.


    CRACK!


    His leg cracked into her head, leaving open a sickly wound.


    After that, it was just a matter of time.


    "Winner; Squire Falken! You are now officially the guardian of the nine hundred and first chamber."


    There was a sharp silence in the colosseum.


    Of course, there always was since none of the initiates made any kind of noise either way, but this one felt strange.


    He could feel the nagging attention of all of the initiates. Many stared at him with bewildered expressions, as though they didn''t quiteprehend what happened there. Most battles against guardians were extremely difficult for the challenger, yet in this case, the opposite seemed to happen!


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1050 Application

    DRIP DRIP DRIP


    Rui nced down at the fist with which he had struck her.


    It was bleeding profusely. Justing into contact with her rough skin in a strike had caused not just the skin of his fingers and knuckles but all of the flesh topletely be shredded off.


    (''What a lethal Martial Art and body,'') Rui sighed as he walked away.


    It was just a single strike, yet she had already caused him significant damage. Unfortunately for her, the impact of a strike was conveyed through the bones of the hand and not the flesh.


    Thus, she wasn''t able to soften the blow any bit at all. He had struck her diaphragm with incredible force without any defensive technique protecting it. He debilitated her far more than the loss of flesh had debilitated him.


    "You made that look easy," Kane marveled at Rui. "Did you make a predictive model ahead of time?"


    "Not really," Rui shook his head. "I used the data from her previous match and this match to find a chink in her armor that I managed to exploit to the absolute very best with an incredibly well-timed and ced powerful blow. It''s all just applying what I had cleverly."


    Rui only managed to take her down so quickly due to his incredible observation skills, not the sheer potency of his techniques.


    Although his Flowing Canon was incredibly powerful, had she used even a single defensive technique, she would have been in the game, even if injured. Furthermore, with the injury that she had inflicted on him just by virtue of him touching her, she would certainly make it count. The entire fight had been Rui gaining more information by observing her and using that information to create the perfect opportunity to take her down.


    He knew that had he tried taking her down by simply brute forcing her with power, long range or short range, he would have been bleeding tremendously, just like her previous opponent had.


    "Here," Kane handed him a healing potion. "That wound looks nasty."


    "I''m d that I only took one of it," Rui sighed as he inhaled the potion. "She would have started eroding away at my bones and muscles had I continued hitting her."


    "Guardian Falken," A staff member stopped before him. "You have just ascended to your position, allow me to guide you around and run you through everything that you need to know.


    Rui nced at Kane, who shrugged, before turning back to her. "Sure, lead the way."


    Rui and Kane left the colosseum as they headed deeper into Ajanta Ind, following the staff member.


    Rui raised an eye once they reached a huge spiralingplex. Its overall shape was like that of a t spiral seashell. <novelsnext>I think you should take a look at </novelsnext>


    He recalled reading that the reason that it was in a spiral was that the deeper that went into the spiral, the better the training conditions of the training chamber because it was closer to the center of the ind. Thus all one thousand chambers had been arranged in a spiraling pattern inward and down into the ind.


    (''That way they can ensure that each chamber is the same size, eh?'') Rui immediately realized the significance of the architectural choices.


    ¦Ñ¦Á¦°d¦Ás¦­¦Ïvel Apparently, word spread about Rui''s match quickly, because the various guardians that they passed all nced at him strangely.


    It was rather strange because he did understand their incredulity. It was probably unheard of for a Martial Squire to be able to beat the nine hundred and first chamber of the tenth rank, and quickly take over.


    He had recalled that there were only five guardians spectating at that time, meaning only those five knew the way that the fight went down as far as the guardians went. There were plenty of initiates watching the fight, of course, but something told Rui that none of them were likely inclined to challenge him any time soon.


    That was a good development because Rui wasn''t interested in subjecting himself to death matches.


    As they passed through a spiral corridor that connected all the chambers, Rui found that the chambers were armed with anti-sensory technology. However, that wasn''t enough to stop his Riemannian Echo.


    Of course, what did stop his Riemannian Echo was the sheer gravitational field of the ind that increased the deeper they went. It became harder and harder to sense anything through the walls of the chambers or anything as they went deeper and deeper into the spiral of chambers.


    "This is your chamber, guardian Falken," She informed him. "Each chamber is staffed by a personal aid staff that will aid you in operating any parts of the chamber in any way you wish. As well as tending to your every need. Inside, you will also find a book that details all the rules and guidelines that all members of the Floating Sect are expected to follow."


    Rui nodded. "Thank you."


    "I''m d you''ve finally gotten your chamber." Kane grinned. "Come on. Let me show you around."


    The two of them stepped in as Rui took in his new personal quarters for the foreseeable future.


    "Spacious," Rui murmured. "No wonder they take up most of the ind."


    The chambers contained training avenues for all forms of training at all ranges, including long-range techniques that required hundreds of meters of space.


    He was quite impressed with the level of sophistication that he saw in the chamber''s training avenues. It was a robust and diverse avenue for training and provided everything that a Martial Squire would generally need.


    Rui could definitely feel its appeal now that he no longer had the Martial Union to lean on. In fact, most Martial Squires from most ces would probably find the chambers of the Floating Sect to be quite appealing, there was no doubt about that. This was a level of quality and extravagance that ordinary Martial Squires would not even be able to dream of having for themselves. That was why he was certainly pleased by what he saw.


    This chapter upload first at  Text content ? N?velDrama.Org.

 Chapter 1051 Training

    ?


    There were multiple long-range fields that allowed for all kinds of long-range training. As well as a myriad of training sections for different ranges, and fields. Rui could probably find ways to train any technique that he came up with.


    Furthermore, he knew that the Floating Sect also offered techniques to master. One could sell a Martial license of their Martial Art technique, allowing them to earn some merits in the process with which they could purchase their techniques.


    The techniques in the Martial Library of the Floating Sect almost certainly weren''t as wide and varied as the library of techniques of the Martial Union, but given how many Martial Squires were, and had been, a part of the Floating Sect, it was probably still quite the respectable amount.


    This was especially the case when all of those Martial Squires of the Floating Sect were all exclusively high-grade Martial Squires. Since reaching the upper echelons of the Squire Realm required techniques with individuality, Rui knew that they were probably going to be some really juicy stuff that he could break apart and incorporate elements of into his techniques.


    "Sweet stuff," Rui finally murmured after initially inspecting the entire chamber.


    "Sir," He was greeted by a staff of people in full bodysuits. "We are the staff manning the nine hundred and first chamber. Please allows us to be of aid in any way that we can."


    "Appreciate that," Rui nodded as he turned back to inspect the entire chamber. "This is good."


    He hadn''t forgotten that the reason he sought a chamber was to get a ce to train on the ind under its special circumstances. The gravity would serve as a natural conditioning training where it would cause his body to adapt to the pressure over time, allowing it to be tougher and stronger.


    While the denser air would nourish his body with the oxygen that it was able to sustain, causing growth to its capabilities the longer he was exposed to it.


    Of course, the longer the time he spent here, the slower his rate of growth, he couldn''t just keep getting stronger at the same pace indefinitely. He knew that there were few means that could give him such sustained natural growth.


    He intended to truly soar higher into the Squire Realm with the power that Ajanta Ind would give him.


    Unlike their previous destinations, Rui had no intention of spending only a few months training and working on a single technique. The reason that he had left his previous destinations was because the potential for training for far too limited in those previous destinations.


    For one, he could generally only train one parameter or field in those ces.


    In the Uminana Trench, the only thing to train was striking, and he did do that, but he couldn''t just spend an indefinite amount of time training only striking. Neither he nor Kane was a striking-oriented Martial Artist.All rights ? N?velDrama.Org.


    He trained in one game and made some gains with the Reverberating Catapult.


    In the Thundering Valley, one could really only train evasive maneuvering or durability if one subjected one''s self to the lightning.


    Both Rui, but especially Kane made great gains, but again, it was not a ce that the two of them could stay.


    Furthermore, Kane wanted to find a way to retain the Fulminata technique, causing them to go to Crexeet Town.


    Crexeet Town was probably the worst ce to spend extensive amounts of time to train. The Martial Squires of the region were mediocre, unlike the elites that gathered in the Floating Sect across the entirety of the continent.


    Furthermore, it was a town of academics, it wasn''t easy for Rui to truly feel a genuine opportunity to grow stronger in such an atmosphere.


    Of course, he most certainly did not regret the time that the two of them spent there. He was d that the two of them had long left the area.


    The Floating Sect was far better than all of their previous locations and destinations because of the fact that it wasn''t transient in the value and utility it could provide to the two of them. It was a ce that allowed them to train their body all around while also offering them great prospects for long-term training.


    A Martial Squire could spend their entire life in the Floating Sect, and there would be absolutely no problem, and no shoring that they could find with the ce.


    "Your chamber is the exact same as mine, right?" Rui asked.


    Kane nodded. "Theyout and the location of the various training sections are a little different, but everything else is the same for the most part."


    "Hm. So the true merit in trying to aim for higher chambers is to obtain a more beneficial training avenue so that the two of them could naturally be stronger even quicker," Rui murmured. "Thankfully, we still have plenty of time to train here before we feel the need to challenge Martial Squires of a higher chamber."


    Rui was confident that whenever that rolled around, he would be more than qualified to handle it.


    Rui couldn''t wait to be stronger and stronger in the Squire Realm. He had long missed the days when he was essentially invincible within his Realm from back when he was a Martial Apprentice.


    Furthermore, he was convinced that the Floating Sect was able to give him what he needed to be able to break through to the Senior Realm, which is what he was truly aiming for. Even if he did not break through on the ind, he was sure he woulde around to gaining whatever it was that was needed for the Senior Realm.


    (''Not that I even know all the things needed to break through to the Senior Realm,'') Rui sighed. He regretted not gaining that knowledge back when he was in the Kandrian Empire, but he hadn''t been in a rush for power as he was now.


    Hopefully, he would find the opportunity to learn it in his time on this ind.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1052 Bullies

    A few days passed as Rui began getting used to his new living quarters. He wasn''t particrly irked when he found out that his personal quarters inside the chamber weren''t luxurious or particrly hospitable. In fact, he would even feel guilty if he was given a five-star amodation. Like he was just rxing, having a vacation even though the protection for his family was running out every second.


    Word must have spread about the newbie that jumped to the nine hundred and first chamber directly because he could definitely feel fellow guardians sizing him up when they passed him when he asionally passed them. It meant that he went from being an amateur initiate to a superior to the ny-nine guardians who were below him at the moment.


    "Hoh¡­" A group of guardians bumped into him one time when he left his chamber to go meet Kane. "So this is the Martial Squire that beat Saiwal. You look young as hell."


    The three of them tried looming over him, scowling with contempt. "You don''t look like much."


    Rui simply ignored them. He couldn''t be bothered with these types, with an ego that surpassed their intellect, they were essentially bullies that tried to pick on those that they perceived as weak.


    "Hey, I''m talking to you," He scowled as he tilted his head as Rui simply shifted away from them.


    PAT


    "I said¡­" The man''s re intensified, as he stopped Rui with an arm on his shoulder. "I''m talking to you. Looks like reaching the nine hundred and first chamber has given you a bit of an ego, eh?"


    A wave of bloodlust arose from the man as he tried intimidating Rui with his aura.


    "I''d suggest you let me go."


    It was as though the atmosphere itself held its breath. The air chilled ufortably, growing icier by the second.


    Rui''s eyes sharpened into slits as a profoundly deep wave of pressure washed over the three of them.


    They leaped back, taking their stances instinctively as a bead of sweat trickled down their head.


    Yet, just a momentter, the pressure disappeared.


    ¦Ñ¦Á¦°d¦Ás¦­¦Ïvel "Physical conflict is prohibited outside a chamber or an official duel," Rui calmly remarked. "I''d rather not break any rules so soon after joining the Floating Sect. I''m feeling rather good today, so I''ll make this easy for you; leave, and I''ll forget this happened."


    Rui expected the three of them to scurry away with their tails between their legs. He had experience with bullies. One of the reasons that he had developed a strong love and admiration for Martial Art as a child was because he was bullied due to his illness, and yearned to be one of those martial artists that soloed groups of antagonistic mobs.


    Bullies targeted the weak to make themselves feel better, however, the more resistance and impedance that the target offered, the more inconvenient it became, and the likelier it was that the bully would just avoid the trouble.


    He had expected something simr to ur here, after all, he had projected a particrly powerful aura, partially with the help of Mind Mask, though most of it was authentic. He had shown them that he was not to be trifled with well enough with just that. Putting on a Senior-level mask was far too overboard.


    Yet to his surprise, the three of them didn''t back down and simply leave. Instead, the man who appeared to be their de facto leader smirked. "You''re right, violence is prohibited outside duels and chambers. So, why don''t we fix that?"Content is property ? N?velDrama.Org.


    "Hm?" Rui raised an eyebrow.


    "He challenges you to a duel." The man gestured to one of hisckeys.


    Rui furrowed his eyebrows. This was not proceeding the way he expected it to. Not only were they still sticking around for some reason, but they even made the affirmative gesture of challenging him to a duel.


    That was strange.


    A challenge was actually something Rui was going to do if they stuck around just to show he didn''t mind fighting and beating them. Most bullies were full of hot air and would not put their money where their mouth was.


    Yet they upended his expectations by challenging him to a duel.


    Now he was confused. Did they really think they could beat him? After reflexively distancing themselves from him when he flexed his mind back?


    He didn''t understand.


    "Are you serious?"


    "Hah!" The man who allegedly challenged him snorted. "What. Too scared?"


    Rui just frowned. "I ept."


    "Hehe, of course, you do. You haven''t epted a challenge in the past ten days, so you''re obligated to," The man grinned.


    "Don''t get the wrong idea," Rui remarked as his sharp eyes fixated on them. "I''d ept your challenge even if you challenged me right after a duel, or a heavy meal. There are no circumstances under which I''d run away from the likes of a group of pathetic losers thatpensate for quality with quantity."


    "You fucking bastard¡­" The man''s expression curled. "You talk that shit, we''ll see if you can back it up."


    "Come along, I''d rather get it done sooner thanter," Rui calmly retorted.


    "Eh, now?"


    "What''s the matter?" Rui teased. "You''re the one who challenged me. Now you don''t want to do it?"


    "Three days! The challenger gets to decide when the duel will ur, the duel will ur in three days."


    Rui shrugged as he left them behind, equally confused and amused. He wasn''t sure if they were just genuine morons that somehow managed to avoid dying to this point, or if they thought they were just trying not to lose face.


    (''Or are they trying to intimidate me by challenging me first?'') Rui scratched his head. (''This could be a silly little ploy of some sort too where they think they''re being devious and clever.'')


    He wasn''t sure. It was easier to predict the thoughts of an intelligent man than a moron, he realized. It all depended on how stupid and egotistical they were, really.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1053 Challenge

    "You got challenged already?" Kane frowned. "By an initiate?"


    "No, actually..." Rui sighed.


    He went on to narrate what happened to Kane.


    "That''s weird," Kane concluded.


    "It is," Rui nodded. "But the duel is in three days. It is what it is. They didn''t see me fight, so honestly, they probably know very little about me barring what they can learn from second-hand ounts."


    "What was the Martial Path of the one that challenged you?" Kane asked. He knew that Rui was freakishly good at estimating the Martial Paths of Martial Artists just by studying their bodies.


    After all, the Martial body was designed to bepatible with the Martial Path. Based on that Rui could infer what the Martial Path was to a certain degree of precision.


    "The muscles of his legs were disproportionatelyrger and stronger than those of the rest of the body. I''m guessing power-oriented Martial Artist that uses Martial Art techniques that are centered around drawing power from his legs. Given that the rest of his body was a lot leaner, I''m guessing that he will most certainly be a mobile fighter." Rui guessed.


    "Hm, sounds like you''ll be fine," Kane noted. "Was he strong?"


    "Sure," Rui shrugged.


    There wasn''t a single Martial Artist in the Floating Sect that was weak, and those three goons were no different. They were strong for having beaten a guardian to get their spot, and strong for having maintained their chambers for however long they did.


    Still, Rui had not experienced too much pressure from them. That probably meant that they were not too strong for him to defeat.Content is property ? N?velDrama.Org.


    "What about the Martial Art of the other two?"


    ¦Ñ¦Á¦°d¦Ás¦­¦Ïvel "One of them was definitely defensive, an active defense-oriented Martial Artist," Rui remarked. "As for the leader¡­ I couldn''t tell aside from the fact that he was an all-rounder. But he was definitely the strongest of the three. I find it strange that he did not challenge me himself."


    The more Rui thought about it, the more strange it was. Even if he dismissed the oddity of them pursuing him even after he showed that he wasn''t a target worth bullying, there was the fact that the leader spoke for the other Martial Artist as though he already knew that the man would agree.


    The one who he said would challenge Rui did not look surprised either. Which likely meant that this wasn''t something he hadn''t expected.


    From that, Rui could infer that they had likely done such a thing before. But why would that be the case? Were they really just trying to flex on him to satiate their ego or maintain face?


    He didn''t think so. The impression that he got from the three of them wasn''t that they were driven by a lot of pride and ego and had only challenged back because he made their pathetic attempts at intimidating look stupid.


    This looked a lot less impulsive and emotional but deliberate and intentional.


    There was also the fact that he was the guardian of a higher chamber, which meant that they did have something to gain if any of them did beat him in a fight.


    (''Still¡­ duels are one on one, so their numbers are meaningless, unless¡­'') Rui''s eyes narrowed.


    Rui was not worried about foul y, the Floating Sect was very rigorous in its check-ups, and he did not expect anything short of a bountiful morning. That was why he knew that the Floating Sect


    Three days passed, and the duel quickly arrived. Rui made no preparations of any kind this time since he obviously did not have any intelligence on his opponent''s Martial Art, he would have to start from scratch.


    "Challenger; Guardian Drevolus. Defender: Guardian Falken." The arbiter announced. "This match is about to bemenced, take your stances."


    The man stretched one leg back while crouching his other leg, One arm came forward bent, while the other shifted back, bent.


    It was a dash stance.


    His intentions could be clearer.


    Rui lightly hopped on his feet, keeping them centered, making it easier for him to dash off in any direction.


    "Begin!"


    BOOM!


    The man pushed the ground back with such force, a tremendous ripple radiated outward on solid ground!


    The atmosphere tore apart as it made way for the sheer amount of force that the man unleashed.


    Yet,-


    WHOOSH!


    -he was unable to hit Rui with his bullrush. Rui swiftly moved out of the way with Outer Convergence, Parallel Walk, and Gale Force Breathing.


    (''He didn''t even prepare an attack to hit me with it.'') Rui mused. (''His bullrush is his attack.'')


    Yet, the man wasn''t done.


    "RARGH!" He roared as heunched forward at Rui with tremendous power.


    Yet it wasn''t enough.


    WHOOSH


    Rui evaded him rather handily. In fact, the pattern recognition system loved what it was seeing because his bullrushes were easy to dissect and he had already noticed several patterns in the maneuver.


    "RARGH!" The man once more dashed forward. Yet Rui was already getting bored. The easiest way to adapt to such a strategy was simply to avoid it. Although he certainly needed to employ his speed because the man was no doubt fast, it did not mean much because he was consuming more power than Rui was in the long run.


    He would simply tire himself out, and then Rui could take him down swiftly after he had exhausted his stamina.


    Not every adaptation was shy, and it appeared this would be one of the more boring and mundane ones.


    Yet, it appeared that Rui had underestimated the man too much.


    RARGH!" Squire Drevolusunched himself forward a fourth time, yet, when Rui was moving out of the way, he kicked the ground in the opposite direction that Rui had moved in,unching himself straight at Rui.


    BAM!!


    A sessful hit on the fourth try!


    He should have been satisfied as he felt himself sting into Rui with a powerful impact.


    Yet he didn''t feel that. Instead, he felt as though much of his powerpletely disappeared!


    SHHHHHH¡­


    Rui paused at the edge of the battle arena, appearing unharmed.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1054 Clash

    ?


    "Tsk, you''re not as dumb as you look and sound," Rui offered while he rotated his palms, massaging them. "That hurt."


    He had managed to disperse most of the impact with a remarkably well-timed Flux Earther. He had to hand it to the grade-nine technique. It was damn good when he nailed the timing. On the other hand, the timing was everything with this technique, it wouldn''t be able to disperse even a grade-one technique, or even an Apprentice-level technique if one mistimed.


    If not for the fact that the patterns in his dash were easier to read, he would not have gotten the foreknowledge of how and when he needed to time it.


    That was the reason he could walk awayrgely unharmed from a powerful attack of a high-grade power-oriented Martial Art.


    It was a shame but he couldn''t possibly replicate this level of defense for every attack he ran into.


    Squire Drevolus on the other hand was bewildered. (''He''s¡­ a defensive Martial Squire? He has to be! No one can take my Meteor Dash head-on if they''re not specialized in defense or power. And he doesn''t look like he''s specialized in power!'')


    He felt as though this was an intelligent deduction, it was only a few secondster when his rationality caught up, and recalled that he had exhibited long-range techniques against Squire Saiwal.


    (''So he''s a defensive Martial Squire with strong long-range techniques?'') He frowned. (''But he hasn''t used them against me yet.'')Content property of N?velDra/ma.Org.


    There was a reason that Rui had abstained from using Pathfinder, or Transverse Resonance against someone like this. The Pathfinder technique was great because it allowed him to tag his opponent over great distances, preventing them from evading his attacks over long range, allowing him to prevent them from ever getting close to him with well-nailed shots.


    It did not do well against opponents who did not care to evade and simply rushed forward to evade. It was why he had used it against Squire Saiwal. She did not have great defense because she relied heavily on the counter-offense that her frictional skin brought her. Meaning she could not just rush through a barrage of attacks. Nor was she fast enough to wind through them.


    Those were the circumstances where his Pathfinder and long-range techniques were most useful.


    However, Rui could already tell this guy was the kind that would just bullrush past his attacks in an attempt to get to Rui. He could not overpower a power-oriented Martial Artist with his long-range attacks either, unfortunately.


    Thus he ruled out long-range offense as a way to adapt to him.


    (''Close-range it is,'') Rui took his stance as he exhaled deeply. Squire Drevolus also prepared for another bullrush.


    The two of them locked eyes momentarily, before dashing towards each other.


    The air grew tumultuous under the sonic booms that they produced as they coursed through the atmosphere.


    BOOM!


    Rui struck him with a powerful Flowing Canon, yet, much to his surprise, the man withstood the attack with the power of his bullrush. In fact, he was pushing forward.


    Yet, Rui simply grinned.


    He was just getting started.


    He spun out of the way of the pushing contest as he began delivering a barrage of swift blows to the man''s bodies. Abination of Wind Breathing, Outer Convergence, and Reverberating Lance, and his conditioning tough body with Adamant Reforging resulted in waves of powerful heavy blows that hurt the man to his core.


    "RARGH!" The man swiftly kicked Rui only to widen his eyes when Rui''s image disappeared.


    (''You bnce your weight between your legs too evenly,'') Rui mused with narrowed his eyes. (''Every shift in weight you make makes it easy to read your next move.'')


    He had already begun picking apart at such patterns, predicting the man with greater and greater ease. Rui''s movements became increasingly more fluid as he began growing more and morefortable with his predictions.


    He never ceased the onught.


    Squire Drevolus was subjected to wave after wave of heavy and incredibly swift blows that seemed to hurt deep in his body far more than the strikes should have for some strange reason.  Squire Drevolus threw powerful and swift kick after kick with enough to shake the entire arena.


    Yet what use was power if it never hit?


    Rui moved so sharply that Squire Drevolus could hardly believe it. He wasn''t able to put it in words, but it was as though¡­


    (''As though knows me better than I know myself¡­'') His eyes widened as his lip trembled.


    "RAAAARGH!" The man screamed in frustation as heunched flurry of kicks. Short and swiftbos, as well as powerful attacks that were thrown with tremendous umted torque and momentum.


    Yet, they nevernded.


    CLASP!


    Rui rushed in after the man threw a powerful high kick with ready arms that coiled around his neck and head. Kicks were powerful and hard, but they had their own downsides, and one of the was thepromise of defenses to prevent attacks and people from entering close-range.


    Rui effortlessly squeezed his arms around the man''s neck as he got him into a rear choke hold. He squeezed with Outer Convergence as he applied an immense amount of pressure on the man''s carotid arteries.


    Seven seconds of prolonged restriction of blood flow to the brain was all it took. Yet seven seconds was a ton of time to a Martial Squire, especially to those of their caliber.


    The final stretch of the fight began as the man thrashed around violently, truly putting Rui''s grip strength to the test. His powerful legsunched them around while he also kicked hard at Rui to the best of his abilities.


    Rui simply gritted his teeth as he withstood his body getting bruised by the man''s powerful kicks. Every attack rattled at his body as he realized just how much power than man held in his legs.


    CRACK!


    Rui felt a bone crack in his foot when the man simply stomped on it!


    Yet, sure enough, his body eventually weakened, before going limp.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1055 Scavengers

    ?All rights ? N?velDrama.Org.


    THUD!


    Rui tossed the man''s body to the side.


    (''Had it not been for Thundercoil, he would have been able to break through my grip,'') Rui grimaced as he looked at his crumpled and broken foot. The power that he had in his legs was something else entirely. A single stomp hadpletely cracked the bones in his foot.


    Thankfully, Rui managed to restrict blood flow to his brain long enough to cause his brain to shut down.


    "Winner; Guardian Falken!" The arbiter dered.


    Rui nced at the spectator stands in the colosseum. Much to his dismay, the little ringleader of the little group that bumped into him did not appear to be fazed at all, instead, he looked quite pleased.


    This was again, not something that he expected from a simple bully.


    Just as he walked out of the battle arena, he was greeted by Kane.


    "Good fight, good job," Kane did a thumbs up.


    Yet before Rui could even reply, he was interrupted.


    "Don''t get cocky, just because you beat Drevolus,"


    Rui nced over at him in dismay. This one was the second of the group that had bumped into him.


    Rui wasn''t stupid.


    There was something going on, but he hadn''t yet quiteprehended it. Why challenge him one by one, and why were they so cocky?


    Why did their little ringleader look pleased by the oue of his previous challenge?


    This wasn''t just some ssic bullying, they clearly were trying to achieve something. Given that numbers didn''t mean much when it came to retaining chambers and positions, he was unsure of what it was that they were trying to achieve.


    "Give me a break," Rui sighed. "I''ll take you on in an official duel right here and now and get this over with."


    "Three days," The man grinned. "See ya, have fun while you can."


    Rui sighed as the man left, he turned and nced at all of the guardians eyeing him with odd nces. (''Is this some kind of little test that the guardians put newbies through or something?'')


    He shook his head. They would probably not be this pedantic about it if there was such a thing. This was clearly something those three were doing on their own for the most part. Yet what they could gain?


    (''The only thing he could gain is information¡­'') Rui narrowed his eyes. (''Is the whole point of this simply to gain more information on me?'')


    "You seem to be having a tough time," A voice emerged from behind them.


    Rui turned back, getting a good nce at the man. He was a guardian, given away by his attire.


    "Just a bit," Rui cautiously replied.


    "You don''t have to be wary," The man cheerily replied. "Not all guardians are like those three scavengers. In fact, most aren''t. Those three are just nasty to deal with, especially if you''re new and higher than them."


    The man was short and sporting a small beard. "You get those types everywhere. So it cannot be avoided."


    "You are¡­?"


    "Ah, I forgot to introduce myself," The man remarked. "The name''s Serin. I''m the guardian of the eight hundred and twenty-second floor."


    The man boasted a strong presence that could not be ignored. He was certainly not to be trifled with.


    "Falken."


    "Nake."


    "It''s a pleasure to actually make your acquaintance haha," The man chuckled as he approached them. "It''s always fun meeting new guardians."


    "You called them scavengers," Rui noted. "What do you mean?"


    "This whole challenge thing," The man remarked. "It''s a ploy. To get your chamber."


    "So they expect one of them will defeat me inbat?" Rui raised an eyebrow.


    That was the only way to get a higher chamber in the Floating Sect, of course.


    "They do," The man nodded. "And unfortunately, their confidence is not unfounded."


    "Still, there doesn''t mean that there''s any point in grouping together when such tactics aren''t useless in the Floating Sect," Rui huffed.


    "Ah, but in this case they aren''t, I''m afraid," The man cheerily remarked.


    "What do you mean?"


    "You see the ringleader of those three scavengers actually possesses an interesting Martial Path," The man exined. "It is said that he possesses the ability to adapt to his opponents."


    Rui''s eyes widened in shock. "What?!"


    "It''s not that shocking, the world has tons of strange Martial Paths, you know?" The man friendlily exined.


    Rui couldn''t help but ponder his response with a bewildered expression. To think he would actually run into a Martial Squire with a Martial Path that was seemingly simr to his own.


    "Exin," Rui demanded.


    "Woah, you seem really wound up," The man remarked with an uneasy face. "Chill out man, it isn''t that serious. The man adapts to his opponents by choosing the right bnce between offense and defense needed tobat his opponent. Thus hisbat approach actually changes to adapt to his opponent''s fighting style. Kind of incredible, isn''t it?"


    "¡­" Rui was shell-shocked.


    Choosing the bnce between offense and defense was one of the first and most important to adapt to his opponents. The fact that someone had a Martial Path centered around this part of the VOID algorithm was just surreal to him.


    He had always assumed that he was the only one on the continent whose Martial Path was centered around such a concept. Yet for the first, time, he was being told that this perhaps wasn''t the case.


    It made him wonder what the actual number of such Martial Squires was, it was hard for him to imagine the sheer number of them in the first ce, the sheer difficulty of such a Martial Path was extraordinarily hard, so much so that he spent his first life on just creating the basis and foundation for it after eventually dying and then reincarnating in a new world causing him to finally put his previous life to work and gaining a Martial Path centered around it. He couldn''t even imagine how difficult it would be to start from scratch in a new world.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1056 Parallels

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    "¡­Are you serious right now?"


    "Hey! I resent that. Why would I lie? Just trust me."


    "We met less than a minute ago, you realize that, right?"


    "When you put it that way¡­" The man shrugged. "Unfortunately, it''s not like I can offer you proof or anything like that. You''ll just have to take my word."


    Rui raised an eyebrow. He obviously wasn''t going to do that.


    This man could easily be with one of those three scavengers that was pretending to be friends with Rui, before eventually feeding them misinformation. As imusible as it was.


    He could also be someone that knew of his true identity and was simply trying to tease him.


    However, it would exin things if that were true.


    "Exin."


    "There isn''t much to exin really," The man shrugged. "The offensive one you just fought is actually a way to gauge your movements and how effective you are against power and offense-oriented Martial Art. The man who just challenged you is meant to serve as a measuring tape for how good your offense is. Then Guardian Croxet will spend some time formting the basis for how to adapt to you and perfecting it before finally taking you down. In an official duel."


    This¡­ made a lot more sense.


    Rui could do a lot with foreknowledge and preparation, and it stood to reason that someone with a simr Martial Art could do just as much.


    "If you want, I can challenge him," Kane offered. "That way you can learn more."


    "That''s not necessary," Rui shook his head.


    Rui did not want to subject Kane and drag him into it. It was a small mess that was limited to him. It could potentially be dangerous for Kane if he had to deal with it. Rui did not want to endanger Kane for his own matters once more.


    "Why tell me this?" Rui asked out of curiosity.


    "Oh¡­ The man shrugged. "Honestly, those scumbags ought to be purged. And I''m inclined to believe that you could do it. A man with your proven capabilities, as well as a little guesswork on the part of my instincts, I''d say you are certainly capable of doing it."


    "Is that so?" Rui raised an eyebrow. (''I could say the same for you too.'')


    Rui could tell that the man was quite strong and capable. After all, one did not just stumble into the ninth ss of chamber guardians, he was most certainly highlypetent.


    "Anyway, I''ll leave you to prepare for your next challenge, good luck," The man waved them goodbye as he left.


    Rui appreciated the information unless he waspletely making it up. However, he actually had very little to prepare for.


    Instead, he simply returned to his chamber and began meditating in the center of the chamber. He was maximizing the benefits that he was getting from the special environment to the best degree possible.


    By subjecting his body to greater pressure, his Martial body grew stronger and stronger as he continuously nourished it with increasingly dense air. The extra gravity and air pressure over time caused his body to improve on multiple levels. The force forced the tissue to adapt its structure to be able to withstand such levels of force without any detrimental effects while newly reproduced cells were better able to handle the weight that was being exerted on his body.


    He could definitely feel the benefits of the environment of the floating Ajanta Ind as he trained. Each breath he took nourished his body as highly enriched blood traveled from his lungs to all cells in the entire body, transferring copious amounts of oxygen. He could feel each breathing invigorating the entire body from the ground up.


    He tried clearing his mind, focusing on his training, yet inevitably thoughts went back to what he had just learned about the three scavengers that had tried to bully him. Rui guessed that the man had witnessed Rui''s fight, and although he did beat Squire Saiwal straightforwardly and directly, he must have felt that Rui was easier to handle and wasn''t as much of a threat.


    That along with the fact that Rui had gotten the nine hundred and first chamber meant that Rui turned into an attractive target for someone like those three scavengers.


    However, what he was most consumed by was the fact that the leader of the three scavengers had a Martial Path that ran parallelly with his own Martial Path. He couldn''t help but be curious as to what the man''s Martial Art andbat approach looked like.


    He already knew that the man relied on preparations to adapt at least mentally and strategically to Rui. That was clearly how he was approaching this battle. He was doing what Rui recognized was not good for his own progress.


    He was a little dismayed that the first person he met with a Martial Path and Art that echoed his own was a scavenging bully. He was a man of poor character, furthermore, he seemed to only be willing to fight when he had certainty on his side.All rights ? N?velDrama.Org.


    (''He''s a coward,'') Rui tutted disapprovingly.


    That was why Rui was not as hyped as he would have been had the man been better, but s, it was a shame. He wouldn''t have minded talking to the man as they exchanged notes on their Martial Art and Martial Paths.


    Rui was curious about the adaptive evolution that he went through versus his own. It appeared that the man stuck only with the spec configuration adaptation and even his adaptation was limited to how offensively he would fight versus how defensively fight.


    That was why Rui was eager to fight the man and see for himself.


    (''An exchange of fists will surely surpass any exchange of words,'') Rui narrowed his eyes. He would abstain from judging the man until he experienced his Martial Art. He hoped he liked what he saw because if he didn''t, he himself wasn''t even sure how he would react.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1057 Ten

    ?


    Three days passed as the challenge issued by the defensive scavenger came up eventually.


    "Challenger: Guardian Fzartil. Defender: Guardian Falken."


    The two of them stepped forward as they faced each other.


    "Take your stances," The arbiter experienced.


    Squire Fzartil grinned as he took a closed stance, bringing up his arms before him in a guarding position. Furthermore, he had spread his legs crouching, anchoring him to the spot as the divided weight made it more difficult for him to be mobile, but it also gave his stance a lot more stability.


    (''He''s not going to be easy to move,'') Rui narrowed his eyebrows. (''Very well then,'')


    They had both chosen close-range distance, thus the two of them faced each other up close. Rui adopted a ssical boxing stance with both fists lower and pointing at his opponent. Such a stance was aggressive and offensive, and it showed Rui''s intentions of fighting to beat him down.


    "Begin!"


    Instantly, not even a moment after the fight began, Rui dashed forward,unching himself at the man.


    BOOM!!!


    Thebined power of Outer Convergence, Wind Breathing Reverberating, and a Flowing Canonon crashed into his guard as a huge shock wave arose from the collision.


    The man gritted his teeth as he almost certainly experienced a tremendous amount of stress on his guard. He was a passive defensive Martial Artist, and a lot of it involved that he was employing some form of conditioning.


    Rui could feel his Adamant Forging, pushing against a much greater degree of conditioning on the man''s flesh.


    POW POW POW!


    Rui never let up, bombarding Squire Fzartil with blow after blow. Each blow stung more and more, as Rui began employing the Reverberating Lance. It was the perfect tool to bypass external flesh.


    POW POW POW!


    The man had clearly not expected such a technique to work despite the sheer power that it was conveying deeper and deeper into his body.


    (''Your defense is far too passive,'') Rui mused. (''Because of theck of active defensive techniques, any pattern or limitation that exists in it bes much harder to get rid of in the middle of the fight.'')


    If an active defensive technique was not doing too well then one could simply cease using it. Yet this simply wasn''t the case with passive techniques like that.


    BAM BAM BAM!


    Rui sted him with blow after blow. He even threw him some Lightning Ripple techniques that shot through the man''s nervous system asionally. These caused brief periods of hampered and limited movements.


    He had experienced the lightning across his body, causing him to pause in the middle of the battle as his body suddenly experienced paralysis and numbness at certain moments.


    Rui rushed in after momentarily stepping back to crash yet another powerful Flowing Canon on the man''s guard.


    Yet he didn''t.Content property of N?velDra/ma.Org.


    Just as the attack was about engage, Fzartil brought his guard forward, ready to block the attack.


    Yet it never came.


    Rui simply twirled by.


    BAM!


    A swift attack to the exposed head was enough. Although the man had conditioned even his head, it was not enough for Rui to simply knock him out the way he did his previous opponent. The difference was far too much.


    But it was concrete progress. Rui wasn''t even using the Void algorithm for such an opponent. He did not need it against such a caliber of Martial Artists.


    The strategy was straightforward, and unless it failed, he had no intention of using it at all. There were bigger fish to fry, and if the ringleader of the three scavengers was watching, then Rui decided it was best not to divulge all cards.


    That was the issue because he was being watched and extensively prepared, he did not want to get carried away and show off.


    Thus far, in the Floating Ind, no one had truly forced Rui to use his Flowing Void Style to the absolute maximum. None of them had been able to push him all that far, and certainly, none of them had gotten him to use the Forestep technique be used to the absolute limit with the VOID algorithm.


    He wondered if the little gang leader would be the first one to force him to divulge his full power. After all, he was sure that in order to climb up, he would need to use the entirety of his Martial Art.


    Squire Fzartil gritted his teeth as the image of Rui that he attacked was a well-timed feint, leaving his sr plexuspletely open consequently.


    BAM!!!


    A powerful straight blow struck the man''s diaphragm. The sheer amount of force that he had outputted was severe.


    THUD


    Squire Fzartil.


    Rui nced at the leader of the three scavengers, the man still had a confident look on. Rui wasn''t sure where his confidence emerged from, but he was curious. After all, it didn''t seem like he was new to this ce.


    And if he wasn''t new to this ce, then it meant that he had been in the tenth ss of the Floating Sect for quite some time. It clearly meant that he wasn''t qualified to get to higher chambers and sses without this ridiculous song and dance of forcing an opponent to show some of the moves and then making more borate preparations to counter them.


    And even then, he hadn''t gotten too very far, though he probably was in the upper echelons of the tenth ss, which means he certainly would be paying attention to the highest-ranked Martial Artists of the tenth grade.


    Unfortunately, that was Rui this time. And Rui was not a hurdle that he could cross that easily.


    "Winner: Guardian Falken!" The arbiter announced once he saw that Guardian Fzartil was unable to continue fighting.


    Rui pointed at the man in the spectator standards. "I challenge you to a spar. Ten days."


    He went out of his way to challenge the man!


    He even gave him ten days to do his little preparations. He wanted to see how strong this man could be.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1058 Relax

    ?


    A small ripple spread through the lower sses of guardians of the Floating Sect. In hindsight, everybody was certainly aware of the ways of scavenger guardians. It had be evident to everybody that Rui had be their target from the moment he was challenged by Squire Drevolus.


    Rui came to learn that this pattern had urred multiple times in the past. The man in question, guardian Seronin, had slowly climbed up, chamber by chamber. Furthermore, Rui learned that he always had an offensive Martial Squire and a defensive Martial Squire fight his target, recruiting weaker Martial Artists and promising to help them reach higher chambers in exchange.


    Essentially, Guardian Drevolus and Fzartil were being treated as crutches to help him be stronger than he normally was.


    The more Rui heard, the more disgusted he became. It was gross to him looking at someone with a Martial Art in the same field being so pathetic that he needed to go through such a song and dance just to fight a duel. The idea that the man was so insecure in his Martial Art that he did not feel the confidence to win even a single simple duel against anybody, as well as the fact that he would go through such means to try and secure victory was almost offensive to Rui.


    He noticed his reaction was definitely leaning towards exaggerated, but apparently, he was touchy when it came to matters surrounding his Martial Path, clearly. Just thinking about the fact that this man had an adaptive Martial Art like him irritated him a lot.


    Normally, Rui would not have been too invested in a duel against a guardian of a lower chamber. But in the next ten days, he tempered his mind and body, preparing for the duel. He wanted to ensure that there was absolutely no chance of him losing the duel to guardian Seronin.


    "Aren''t you taking this too seriously?" Kane scratched his head as he came across Rui meditating under increased pressure.


    "Perhaps," Rui murmured as he opened his eyes. "However, it isn''t as though there are no stakes at all whatsoever. I will lose my chamber if I lose. I don''t to grow rxed."


    "Yes, but you seem like you''re going to kill the guy," Kane remarked. "Not that that''s an issue. That dickhead can die for all I care, but rx a bit."


    Rui considered his words. Perhaps he was right, he did feel a little stressed recently. Although his drive to be stronger most certainly grew ever since he left the Shionel Confederation, it also made the journey of developing his Martial Art less enjoyable.


    That was definitely a negative. But he hadn''t even noticed it thus far.


    "Fuuu¡­" Rui exhaled deeply, rxing every muscle in his body. Just that simple gesture alone made him feel more at ease. "Good advice."


    It was at moments like these that he appreciated Kane''s cool simplicity. He definitely had a point.Content property of N?velDra/ma.Org.


    Still, it wasn''t going to change Rui''s thoughts on the matchup. He did not intend to hold back against Squire Seronin.


    Ten days passed in the blink of an eye as the allotted time for the duel came.


    "Woah," Kane murmured once the two of them entered the colosseum. "There are a lot of guardians today."


    "Yeah¡­" Rui nced around the spectator stands briefly.


    It seemed that word of Squire Seronin aiming for the nine hundred and first chamber with his little tactics had spread. Rui getting the nine hundred and first chamber in the first ce directly as an initiate was quite exciting in and of itself, but Seronin trying to make a quick pass to reach the top of the tenth ss would be quite startling.


    Rui guessed that most of the guardians disliked guardian Seronin, after all, he was trying to beat them using tactics that did not trante to real strength. If he did end up beating Rui, he would be above ny-nine other such Martial Squires, many of whom were above him prior.


    (''Even if he does beat me, he''s going to get swarmed with challenges from these disgruntles Martial Squires who don''t approve of him,'') Rui mused.


    Either way, it was a lose-lose for him. There was no way he was going to be able to keep the nine hundred and first chamber regardless.


    (''This is what happens when you try substituting real power with cheap tricks,'') Rui snorted inwardly. (''If he spent all this time and energy on actually improving and developing his Martial Art earnestly, he would definitely be able to climb higher without needing to rely on such pathetic tactics. He would probably end up making more progress this way than otherwise.'')


    Of course, the fact that he retained his chamber for this long meant that he certainly wasn''t weak. He couldn''t prepare against initiates this way, and it meant that he certainly had some merit.


    But it was precisely because of that that Rui felt a little irked. If he was already this strong, it meant that he had to have worked to obtain that power. It meant that he was capable of developing his Martial Art with individuality.


    Yet, for some reason, he chose to go down this path.


    Had he been a weakling who had no choice, it would have been understandable, but that was not the case here. This mean could have been a peer to Rui, who could have been a valuable acquaintance.


    After all, in all the years that Rui had been exposed to Martial Art, he had nevere across anything remotely simr. It took him traveling across the continent to finally run into one in a ce where Martial Artists gathered. While other Martial Squires interacted with people with simr Martial Paths, this was Rui''s very first time and he should have been excited to finally meet someone he could perhapspare notes with or learn a thing or two, or at least gain a new perspective if nothing else.


    But unfortunately, things didn''t turn out that way.


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 Chapter 1059 Balance

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    "Good luck," Kane wished him as they split ways.


    "Challenger; Guardian Falken," The arbiter announced once Rui entered the arena.


    "Defender; Guardian Seronin."


    The two of them approached each other as they stopped two meters away from each other. Rui had declined to go for any particr range and offered his opponent to choose the range of the battle, who promptly chose a short-range battle.


    "Hehehe¡­" The man grinned. "Hope you''re ready to go down because that''s the only ce you''re going in this fight."


    "I''ve been wanting to ask¡­" Rui remarked, ignoring his little taunt. "Why?"


    The man snorted. "Naive little brat. This is the way of the world. I''m going to crush you because you don''t know that."


    "Take your stances." The arbiter instructed.


    Rui took a simple neutral stance that didn''t particrly ce much weight on any field ofbat.


    The man, instead, grinned as he put forth one arm forward defensively while the other was tucked by his side, coiled and ready to strike. He spread his legs partially, enough to have a good and strong foundation, but little enough to ensure that he could still maneuverfortably.


    It was a rather basic all-rounder stance, so Rui didn''t really look much into it.


    "Begin!" The arbitermenced the duel.


    Both men rushed in toward each other, and immediately unfolded a flurry of blows!


    POW POW POW!


    A barrage of blows wasunched from both sides!


    The battle elerated to top gear the very second the battle broke out, and yet it was only a minute into the battle that the shes began achieving a stable equilibrium despite the high intensity.


    Rui was pushed back on the defensive. He began throwing fewer and fewer strikes from the initial sh the moment the battle hadmenced, being forced to defend more.


    (''I see¡­'') His eyes narrowed. (''So this is his Martial Art, not bad.'')


    Rui immediately understood what was happening in just a moment. While he disapproved of Guardian Seronin and his tactics, he had to admit, they had merit as distasteful as they were.


    (''He''s understood the optimal bnce between offense and defense to apply when fighting in hand-to-handbat.'') Rui mused.


    Rui was stronger defensive in hand-to-handbat than he was offensive. The reason for this was simple, it wasn''t that he put more weight on defense than offense in his Martial Art, not at all. The reason for this was that his offensive capital was spread across multiple ranges, while his defensive techniques were applicable at all ranges barring a few circumstances.


    That meant that in close-quartersbat, he was easier to defend against than hurt. His defense had powerful techniques such as Flux Earther, Adamant Reforging, Inner Divergence, and Acute Edge. His offense in hand-to-handbat was not nearly as rigorous with Outer Convergence and Reverberating Lance.


    That was why Squire Seronin maximized effectivity by putting a greater weight on his offense while putting less weight on his defense.


    (''A good allocation of physical capital,'') This was part of what he did, analyzingbat distributions and choosing a distribution of resources that was most apt tobat it was one of the more fundamental steps when it came to adapting to one''s opponent.


    (''Still, it isn''t going to be enough for me,'') Rui''s eyes narrowed.


    A surge of pressure mounted on Squire Seronin as Rui focused, ring at him.


    WHOOSH!Content property of N?velDra/ma.Org.


    Rui disappeared in the face of an attack.


    A well-timed feint. He had used the fact that the battle, while intense, had reached monotony to catch him off-guard.


    TAP TAP TAP!


    Three swift pokes to his abdomen, striking the intercostal nerves on his abdomen caused momentary paralysis to several muscle groups.


    WHOOSH!


    Narrowly avoided a haymaker as he crouched, simultaneouslyunching a sweeping kick, knocking him slightly unbnced.


    He rushed in, charging in for a wrestling shoot maneuver. Yet Squire Seronin leaped back swiftly, determined to avoid Rui''s charge.


    (''So he isn''t confident of beating me in grappling,'') Rui swiftly noted. (''Most likely due to the recount of Thundercoil that he got from Drevolus.'')


    Grappling was a field with very little room for mistakes, it was a field of inevitability. If he was weaker, then he would certainly lose without many avenues to cope.


    (''Yet opening up the distance is not a good idea against me,'')


    THWOOM THWOOM THWOOM!


    Rui sted a barrage of long-range attacks, employing the ODA System to tag him even after he was some distance away.


    BAM!


    "Urgh!" He grimaced as one of them struck, surprised. He had been continuously moving so he hadn''t put much thought into deliberately avoiding since the uracy of such a great distance was hard, yet Rui managed to perfectly nail him on the head!


    Rui rushed forward as he continued his onught of sound attacks. Squire Seronin, however, did not just fool around. He unleashed a powerful wind st as a way to counter Rui''s attack.


    It was enough to somewhat stop his attacks, but not Rui''s approach himself. He rushed forward like a demon as he applied Gale Force Breathing and Parallel Walk to swiftly approach Squire Seronin from behind his attacks.


    (''And this is why simple adjustments ofbat approach are insufficient¡­'')


    BAM!!!


    Squire Seronin gritted his teeth as he blocked Rui''s Flowing Canon amplified with Outer Convergence, Adamant Reforging, and the momentum generated by Gale Force Breathing. The sheer impact was so high that it sent him skidding back several meters.


    (''¡­Dynamic fighters require dynamic solutions, you are far too simplistic.'')


    Squire Seronin returned to his aggressive offensive striking when Rui returned, yet Rui had no intentions of going back to the game.


    BAM!


    "Ack!" The man gasped as Rui cleanly avoided his swift leaning back as a swift kicknded on the man''s sr plexus. He gritted his teeth as heshed back with barrages of swift yet solid blows, hoping to force Rui into the defensive position that he was in prior.


    Yet Rui dodged every single attack with contemptuous ease, as though they weren''t even there!


    "What?!"


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 Chapter 1060 Break

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    (''All your attacks begin from a tucked position,'') Rui mused. (''Furthermore, because you have put a heavier weight on offense, none of your attacks begin within a certain range of me, allowing me to easily eliminate the possibility of an attack when they are within that range.'')


    Rui had already picked up fourteen such patterns in his movements, both active and passive, and they were already good enough to form the basis of a simple predictive model that was effective enough.


    And the difference was evident.


    "How is he evading all those strikes so well?"


    "Even though he was being pushed back at the start of the fight¡­"


    "Did he hold back?"


    Both initiates and guardians alike instantly noticed the difference in the quality of Rui''s movements. He timed his evasions just right, he began moving before the man''s motions began, but just a beat prior when it was toote to change his movements!


    This was Forestep in its core concept being employed without the speed boost of the Godspeed technique!


    However, Rui did not restrict himself to merely evading the man''s attacks.


    POW POW POW!


    Well-timed and ced strikes found themselves cleanly mming into Squire Seronin one by one.


    The same attacks that he defended against earlier were no longer something he was able to defend against anymore.


    Squire Seronin gritted his teeth as he abandoned defense, throwing himself, maximizing his offense to the absolute limit abruptly. If he could just catch Rui off-guard, he might be able to regain the advantage!


    At the very least, he was sure that he would be able to break the flow of the battle, and ''reset'' the initiative.


    In the best-case scenario, he would even be able to regain the initiative.


    It was his one hope.


    And soon, it became his despair.


    BOOM!!Text content ? N?velDrama.Org.


    "URGH!" He grimaced as he felt unyielding pain reverberating across his entire body from his gut.


    Rui had disappeared before his eyes, leaving behind an empty feint. His own tunnel vision had given Rui the perfect opportunity to feint away andunch a powerful blow into the man''s gut with his most powerful attack. Thebined might of Flowing Canon, Outer Convergence, Adamant Reforging, and Gale Force Breathing struck his upper abdomen.


    CRACK!


    He felt a sharp piercing pain as the sheer power of the strike broke his ribs.


    It was over.


    Yet, it didn''t end


    BAM!!


    Rui kicked him in the jaw. A wave of dizziness shed across his consciousness.


    POW POW POW!


    Rui pummeled him, sting him with attack after attack, breaking down the paltry defenses that the man put up reflexively.


    "AAAARRGH!" He threw himself at Rui, an expression of rage and pain crumpling his face. "I''m not done ye-!"


    BOOM!


    Ruiunched him hurtling across the entire arena with Thundering Catapult, rushing in immediately to follow up.


    Squire Seronin staggered to his feet.


    Something had broken.


    But it wasn''t just his body.


    Everyst bit of resistance had crumbled.


    Yet, his body healed, preparing him for battle. Yet, Rui was not done with him either.


    POW POW POW!


    Rui mercilessly beat him to a pulp. Bruises, cuts, fractures, and swelling had long made him unrecognizable from his appearance at the start of the battle.


    Yet it wasn''t the physical pain that hurt the most.


    Bodies healed, especially Martial bodies. Yet it wasn''t just his body that was breaking down.


    His attacks.


    His defense.


    His very Martial Art.


    Rui''s silver eyes should have reflected light, yet he saw endless darkness within them.


    An endless void that consumed everything it saw.


    "AAAAARRRGH!" The man cried in horror as he turtled up, tugging at his hair. "ARRGRGRGGRRGRRHEGEE!!!"


    The pain was too much.


    But not of the body, but of the mind.


    His body shivered as his eyes rolled up, and he began convulsing, dropping straight to the ground.


    "Huh?" Rui stopped, frowning as he stepped back, ncing at the arbiter.


    "Due to his opponent being unable to continue the fight, Guardian Falken is the winner!"


    The entirety of the colosseum stared in silence at Rui''s shocking performance. While Squire Seronin was far from being strong by the standards of the average guardian, Rui had crushed him with such dominance, that it was hard to believe that he was only of the caliber of the tenth ss. The sheer power that he had demonstrated was something only Martial Squires of much higher sses could possibly employ.


    Yet, unbeknownst to them, Rui hadn''t even gone all out. He had thought that he would need to use Godspeed to beat the man, yet it quickly became evident that a basic predictive model alone would suffice.


    (''He sure was confident,'') Rui huffed as Squire paramedics administered a powerful healing potion while strapping him securely to a bed. (''This is what happens when you have a wed understanding of what your opponent is capable of.'')


    Had Rui decided to use the pattern recognition systems, Guardian Seronin probably would have never even dared to challenge him in a fight.


    He had to admit that the fight was a lot closer without the predictive model, although Rui was confident that he would have definitely won that fight as well.


    Rui shrugged before turning and leaving the colosseum.


    "Great fight," Kane gave him a thumbs up. "Also, did you create a new technique that causes someone to¡­ have a mental breakdown?"


    "Obviously not."


    Kane threw Rui a dubious look in response.


    "I didn''t," Rui huffed. "I actually don''t really understand what happened there either. But he just went nuts in the middle of the battle. I might have caused some brain damage which caused a seizure of some sort. But they can easily fix that."


    However, much to everyone''s surprise, that did not happen. Although Squire Seronin recovered mentally, he was almost unrecognizable. His face was gaunt and pale, while his eyes were listless and dead.


    He announced the ending of his career as a Martial Artist before leaving the Floating Sect forever. It was said that he even needed someone to carry him down because he lost his ability to sky-walk.


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    There was a small buzz among the lowest sses of the Floating Sect. Rui''s domineering performance against Squire Seronin was quite attention-drawing to many Guardians.


    "It looks like his victory against Saiwal was not a fluke."


    "It seems that¡­ he probably won''t remain in the tenth ss for too long."


    "What a dark horse. We''ll have to be careful of him."


    Of course, any attention that he got was not positive. In the Floating Sect, Martial Artists that drew attention, drew attention for one reason only; Power. Within the Floating Sect, powerful Martial Artists were threats to other powerful Martial Artists, since they possessed the qualifications and the ability to take their chamber from them.


    Particrly, the ninth ss of Martial Artists had taken note of him more than others. Rui had already made his jump to the top of the tenth ss, thus the Martial Artists of the tenth ss were not worried about him, he had already gone above them, thus he wouldn''t aim for their chambers and thus wasn''t a threat to any of them.


    Instead, it was the ninth ss that was wary of him.


    Thankfully, Rui did not run into any more ''bullies''. Guardian Drevolus and guardian Fraztil avoided him like the gue, refusing to be anywhere near him. After all, not only did he beat them, he went on to crush guardian Seronin with a ferocious dominance unlike anybody else but those of higher sses could do so.


    Just when he was returning back to his chamber, he was stopped by a staff member. "Guardian Falken."


    "Hm?"


    "Senior Xanarn has summoned you. Please head to the central chambers of the ind as soon as you are able to."


    "I see¡­ Thank you for informing me." Rui murmured.


    Senior Xanarn was one of the three Martial Seniors of the Floating Sect. Rui knew about her because she was mentioned as a part of the necessary knowledge that all guardians needed to have.


    What he was confused by was what the Martial Senior wanted from him. At this point in time, he did not possess any particr significance. Sure, he had jumped to the nine hundredth chamber in one go, but that did not make him truly special. Thus far, his performances, while impressive, did not merit any personal attention from a Martial Senior.


    He was aware that the Martial Seniors interacted with the Martial Squires of the Floating Sect, mentoring them lightly, ensuring that they were on the right path to a higher Realm of Martial Art.


    However, he doubted that they looked at every Martial Squire individually. Even if they spent all their time doing that, they would not be able to do so for all one thousand Martial Squires.


    At most, the strongest and the most worthy of Martial Squires were worth their personal guidance.


    Nheless, Rui did not dare dy the meeting. He quickly traveled toward the center of the Floating Ind, traveling deeper into it than he had ever done so before.Content property of N?velDra/ma.Org.


    Naturally, the gravity and the air pressure got stronger and stronger, and the density of air had almost reached that of solid, so much so that even light was being hampered.


    The stress his body endured had increased greatly, yet each breath he inhaled became so much more nourishing and fulfilling. He could probably spend an hour with just one breath without feeling suffocated!


    (''So this is what the Martial Artists of the higher sses train under every day, huh?'') Rui winced a little as cracked his neck. (''Just standing is a form of training under these circumstances.'')


    Yet he put these matters away as his Primordial Instinct picked up on a profound sense of power emerging from a particr direction.


    The sensation was unmistakable.


    (''A Martial Senior.'') Rui mused.


    Although he held a great deal of admiration and respect for Martial Seniors, he did not have as much awe or incredulity at the thought of meeting one. He had met multiple Martial Seniors, he had even taught two of them his Pathfinder technique. Thus he had a more sober reaction to this opportunity.


    "Senior Xanarn," Rui bowed his head with respect and deference. "It''s an honor to meet you."


    "Guardian Falken¡­" Her voice reverberated through the room in a strange fashion. It reverberated through his body, inside out, backward front. It was as though her voice had a life of its own. She exuded a way of power that was different from anything he had experienced thus far. It was different from the feral ferocity of the Martial Seniors of Vilun Ind


    It was distinct from the deep stoic confidence of Senior Geringan.


    It was different from the piercing terror of Senior Ceeran.


    She was different.


    (''It''s her voice¡­'') Rui''s eyes widened as he stared at her supple lips, sizing her up. Her voluptuous proportions could not distract him from the pressure that they exert on him. He would have looked into her eyes if not for the fact that they were closed, for some reason. (''There''s something special about her voice.'')


    "It seems you''ve noticed already, you are as sharp as I anticipated," She spoke softly.


    Yet her voice was almost like a force in and of itself, pushing against him from within himself.


    "You tter me," Rui replied graciously. "I was informed that you summoned me, is there anything you need from me?"


    "Not at all," She got up and walked towards him. "I was curious about our newest guardian, one of the few Martial Squires who made it to Floating Ind unscratched, who then proceeded to demolish guardians of the ninth ss."


    (''She was the one who tracked our approach? It was a Martial Senior as I expected, no wonder Kane''s technique failed.'') Rui mused. "One of those three things is not of my merit."


    "I know," She smiled, her eyes still closed. "I was just wondering if you would take the credit to try and impress me."


    "It would be a disservice to my friend," Rui shook his head.


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    She smiled at those words. "You''re this mature. At your age too, interesting."


    "Everyone matures eventually," Rui modestly remarked.


    "I wasn''t talking about that, though there is that too, I suppose."


    Rui nced at her quizzically.


    "Your Martial Art possesses a depth that I have never seen from any Martial Squire in my entire life," She murmured as she stepped closer, circling around him as she sized him up despite her closed eyes. "Intriguing, really."


    She reached forward, sping Rui''s arm, lifting it up as she dropped it, almost like he were a toy.


    Rui, on the other hand, was unsure whether to feel awkward or amused.


    "Your Martial Art is formless," She remarked. "Yet you aren''t an all-rounder. Yourbat style changes and changes, like the water in an ebbing river."


    "¡­"


    "What is your Martial Path?" She asked with a hint of curiosity, as her soft yet deeply potent voice poured into his body.


    "¡­I believe I am not obligated to divulge that," Rui steadied his nerves as he refused her question in the least confrontational way possible.


    "That is true," She smiled, much to his relief. It appeared that she wasn''t the egotistical type. "Most Martial Squires would readily divulge their Martial Path regardless."


    "I have reasons to keep my Martial Art hidden, I''m afraid," Rui bowed his head in apology. "I hope you understand."


    "No worries," She smiled softly, putting a hand on his shoulder as she stood him straight. "Still, even if you don''t tell me, I can tell that it is a particrly potent Martial Path. The highest¡­ no, the second highest grade Martial Art I have ever seen in a Martial Squire, that''s for sure," She murmured, deep in thought.


    Rui raised an eyebrow. "Second?"


    "Hmmm¡­" She nodded, deep in thought.


    Rui furrowed his eyebrows. She couldn''t just say something like that and leave him hanging. Who was above him?


    But it appeared that she wasn''t paying attention to his reactions. She still hadn''t opened her eyes, which Rui was starting to find odd.


    "Uh¡­" Rui tried to draw her attention. "Is there anything else you need, mam?"


    He wasn''t sure why he was here. For the most part, it appeared as though she simply wanted to satisfy her curiosity.


    She broke out of her stupor as she red lightly at him, knitting her eyebrows "Don''t call me that. It makes me feel old.


    "How would you like me to address you?"


    "Let''s see¡­You can call me big sister."Content is property ? N?velDrama.Org.


    "¡­Right."


    "But the reason I called you here has nothing to do with what you can do for me," She smiled softly. "But what I can do for you."


    Rui raised an eyebrow.


    "You, you aren''t aware of the effect that your Martial Art can have on others, do you?" She asked with a serious tone.


    Rui knitted his eyebrows. "Excuse me?"


    "Squire Seronin." She replied, turning toward him with her closed eyes. "You broke him."


    Rui''s eyes narrowed. "I did not. I only struck with him normal strikes. His mental breakdown at the fight was not as a result of a technique of mine."


    "Not a technique, no," She murmured. "No technique can break a Martial Path."


    "What?!" Rui''s eyes widened. "I did no such thing!"


    "To think that you aren''t even self-aware of it," She murmured. "It looks like it was a good thing to bring it up to you. As a leader of the Floating Sect, I cannot have you breaking our assets every time you get heated and give your everything."


    Rui frowned as he stared at her with incredulity. "Mam, I pro-"


    He paused after a wave of displeasure arose from her, washing over him. "I mean, big sister."


    "What is it? Little Falken?" She smiled sweetly.


    Rui''s lips twitched.  He did not appreciate being babied, even if it was by a Martial Senior. "My Martial Art does not have anything that could allow for such effects, it''s more likely that he is being afflicted by a neurological disorder, the symptoms of which began disying themselves inbat. Acute blunt force trauma is a known contributing factor to the propensity of neurological behavioral symptoms. Alternatively, it is possible that some brain damage caused by my attacks triggered an underlying-" "-Enough"


    She interrupted him with a troubled sigh. "This is a dangerousck of self-awareness. You are too self-absorbed inbat. You certainly do pay attention to your opponent while deconstructing their Martial Art, yet you are unable to see what you do to their minds because your Martial Art requires you to tunnel vision on their Martial Art, and nothing else."


    Rui''s eyes narrowed. He reflexively felt the need to defend himself, but thatst statement was not wrong. "I don''t understand, where is thising from."


    "I inspected Squire Seronin after he physically recovered." She replied. "Yet I was unable to sense his Martial Path when I looked into his eyes."


    Rui''s eyes widened. A Martial Senior''s intuition and senses were definitely not something that could be dismissed out of hand. "¡­What?"


    "It''s true," She replied seriously. "I tried questioning him, but he simply did not respond. He was like a vegetable."


    She turned toward Rui with her closed eyes. "Until I mentioned you. Then he had another psychotic mental breakdown."


    Rui''s eyes widened.


    She turned away from him, walking towards her chambers. "Revisit your past. Look for it. You will find it. You did this, I''m sure of it."


    Rui''s eyes began wandering as he scanned through his memories. He froze as a memory from a long time ago surfaced in his mind. (''That Martial Apprentice bandit¡­ He broke down even though the fight was far from over.'')


    Several memories shed through his head, several oddities that he had never quite strung together and connected. But now that he did. He couldn''t help but feel shocked.


    Just how many Martial Paths had he destroyed? Just the thought of it sent a shiver down his spine. It wasn''t that such a thing was intrinsically never justifiable, not at all. It was just chilling to know that he had perhaps done it many times without his own awareness.


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 Chapter 1063 Offer

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    "As expected," She sighed.


    "But I have also sparred and fought many times where such a thing did not happen," Rui offered.


    She shook her head. "Your Martial Path is dangerous, Squire Falken. Defeat as many guardians as you like. Defeat them all, if you are able to do so in the first ce. But I cannot have you crippling them. There are no healing potions for the psyche."


    Rui understood why she had summoned him soon after his match with Seronin. This was not something she could simply let go of as a leader of the Floating Sect. While it was true that what he did, did not break the rules, it was also true that the way this was too disruptive to be ignored.


    The system in ce of the Floating Sect was designed to have a thousand highly qualified elite Martial Squires to protect the Floating Sect and offer their services in the interest of its survival. Ajanta Ind had a limited amount ofnd that could be divided into a limited number of highly desirable avenues of training. Each Martial Squire was a precious asset, especially the longer they stayed. The longer they stayed, the more they were trustable.


    That was why a destructive wild card that ran around crumbling the efforts of the Floating Sect, to whatever degree was not something she could tolerate.


    "As for how you can control this¡­"


    "Discipline," Rui sighed. He had already swiftly analyzed the situation now that he had be aware of something that had been hidden in his psychological blindspots. "Given that I haven''t broken the Martial Paths of friends, but also my Martial Apprentice students while using my Martial Art against them to varying degrees, I''m guessing my emotion for my opponents ys a huge role."


    "You most certainly bore hostility towards Squire Seronin, correct?" She remarked. "You need to be more mindful of this from now on if you wish to remain in the Floating Sect. Although there are plenty of powerful and strong-minded Martial Squires with remarkable fortitude that you probably will not be able to hurt, it is also true that the younger ones will be susceptible to breaking. Keep your Martial Art in check, or pay the consequences."


    Her smile had all but gone. A stern expression issuing a strong warning to him took its ce. He knew that she hadn''t called him for frivolous reasons. Martial Seniors had too much to do to waste their time on such trivial matters.


    "I will be sure to remember that," Rui sighed.Content property of N?velDra/ma.Org.


    He wasn''t even sure what to feel. He had certainly been exposed to the consequences of his Martial Path on other people. He hadn''t even fully processed all his thoughts, but he already had strong conjectures.


    Martial Paths were journeys fields of specialty that one was inclined towards due to the sum of all experiences of all kinds throughout their lifetime, or lifetimes, like in Rui''s case. It was possible for it to change, as he learned, but it would take a truly impactful event on their psyche for it to change, and even then it was practically impossible.


    However, if it could change, then surely it could¡­ just cease being their Martial Art as well.  What if they underwent such a traumatic experience centered around their Martial Path, that something in their head breaks, causing it to no longer be their chosen field?


    What if they underwent such a traumatically powerful experience, that itpletely overwrote everything they ever experienced, effectively breaking their Martial Path?


    He felt a small shiver climb up his spine. That was truly disturbing to think of. He did not like being a destroyer of Martial Art. He liked Martial Art. Even if he liked the Flowing Void Style the most out of all of them, he still enjoyed other Martial Art as well. He did not think that they deserved to be broken down.


    Even Squire Seronin, as annoying as he was, was not somebody that Rui wanted to break in such a cruel and inhumane manner. Hell, he would rather kill the man before subjecting him to something like this.


    At the very least, he would rather die a hundred deaths than have his Martial Path broken. Just the very thought of it gave him secondhand agony.


    He had only intended to beat him to a pulp, which, while painful, was something that could easily be fixed and reversed with no long-term detrimental effects.


    He found it quite strange to consider, considering that his Martial Path was not just destructive, it was also constructive when it came to other Martial Art. It had allowed Mana and Max to break through at extremely young ages.


    So depending on his emotions, he could choose to either destroy or create.


    (''I''d definitely rather create than destroy,'') He immediately decided. (''I am a Martial Artist, and ultimately I am part of the Martial Artist world. I don''t mind choosing to be a benefactor to it.'')


    Of course, as shocking as the news of Rui destroying Martial Paths would be, it would be even more shocking if the world found out what his Martial Art could do.


    He nced at her.


    Her soft yet mature features were encapsting, yet he knew that beneath her gentle expression was a strong-willed Martial Artist that had persevered to break through not once, not twice, but a total of three times, reaching the limit of the lower Realms. If she found out that he could pump Martial Apprentices out of ordinary kids, she would probably capture him at this very moment and extract all his secrets. If the secrety in a technique, she would extract one way or another, using perhaps a mental technique.


    "Still," She murmured. "I believe that you are an asset to the Floating Sect, and will be of great help to it in your time here. Allow me to offer you something that you are ready for."


    Rui raised an eyebrow. "Which is¡­?"


    "The conditions for the breakthrough to the Senior Realm."


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 Chapter 1064 Heart

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    Rui could feel his heart beating fast. A slight grin of excitement crept up on his face.


    It had been several years since he stepped into the Squire Realm, and today he was a high-grade Martial Squire without a doubt, he finally hade across an opportunity to learn about the Squire Realm.


    "Unlike with the secret to the Squire Realm, the truth about the Senior Realm is not something that is universally divulged at one particr stage," She began. "Different nations, organizations, and groups have their own ideas of what stage to inform Martial Squires about the truth of the Senior Realm. There are many who go to extremes in the opposite direction, some believe that Martial Squires never ought to be told about the truth. Others believe that all Martial Squires should be told everything the second they step into the Squire Realm."


    Rui raised an eyebrow at those words. That was quite interesting to know, he hadn''t expected that the Martial World would be so divided on this matter. He wasn''t in a position to have an informed opinion on the matter, but the two extremes did sound¡­ extreme.


    "Never telling versus telling all of them immediately," Rui pondered aloud. "Surely there has to be a reasonable middle in between."


    "I agree," She nodded. "As does the majority. Most nations and groups inform Martial Squires about the necessity of bing a Senior seed. I''m sure you have already been informed of this by whoever it is that performed the Squire breakthrough process on your body."


    Rui nodded. He recalled being informed of the importance of developing the individuality of Martial Arts as a Martial Squire. That it was the path forward to higher Realms. However, that was very vague and general advice. It was just enough to set them on the right path.


    "An even bigger controversy exists on whether Martial Squires should be told about the trigger to the Senior Realm," She continued.


    "That''s different from the truth about the Senior Realm?" Rui raised an eyebrow.


    She nodded. "Informing you about what the Senior Realm is about serves to increase your motivation to achieve it, arguably, but the trigger of how to reach it is a separate matter."


    "Hmmm¡­" Rui''s eyes narrowed. "And what do you intend to do?"


    She smiled, her eyes closed. She turned around, facing her back towards him.


    Rui''s widened as she began slowly undressing, taking off her one-piece garment.


    Rui liked to think that he had a lot of control over his body. But he soon realized he was overestimating himself a bit. His twenty-one-year-old body begged to differ.


    It had other ideas.


    Yet just as her garment lowered to her glutes, Rui''s eyes narrowed as he came across scattered scars on her lower back.Content is property ? N?velDrama.Org.


    They were light, as though time had eroded them away. They were messy and they crumpled her skin mildly, turning it into a darker shade than the rest of her body.


    "When I was fourteen, a great storm ravaged are vige, seemingly appearing out of nowhere," She began. "My grandmother and I escaped, trying to get as far as possible. Yet, unfortunately¡­ a tree copsed on my body, injuring me gravely¡­ Being the young girl that I was back then, I hadn''t even been able to so much as even budge the trunk an inch."


    Rui grew solemn.


    It wasn''t just the tragedy in the story.


    It was her voice. It carried over profound emotions in its gentle melodies, permeating through Rui''s body. It was as though she was imbuing her emotion into her environment with her voice alone.


    He couldn''t help but feel ovee with a sense of grave severity.


    "I should have died that day," She murmured with a soft voice. "Yet, I didn''t."


    She turned to Rui, facing him, uncaring for her inappropriate exposure.


    Yet Rui hadn''t even noticed.


    He was too busy staring into her open eyes.


    They werepletely white.


    (''She''s¡­ blind!'')


    "The injuries it gave me scarred my body, it led to the loss of my vision due to the injuries to my head. It should have led to my death as well. Yet, I didn''t die."


    Rui stared into her eyes with bewildered anticipation.


    He had so many questions.


    Yet he bit them back.


    He could feel it. It was as though the atmosphere had held its breath because of what was toe. What she was to say.


    "Do you know why I didn''t die?" She asked, pausing for a moment, before looking into Rui''s eyes. "Because my decrepit grandmother lifted the tree with her bare hands, and threw it away."


    "¡­What?"


    "It was an experience that shaped me into the warrior that I am today." She murmured. "Witnessing my grandmother lift a heavy tree off of me as though she was a Martial Artist, throwing it away, before picking me up and running away."


    Rui''s stared at her with an open jaw. "¡­"


    "Her arms and fingers had broken in the process, and she died soon after, but she saved my life by summoning power hidden deep within her. All to protect her granddaughter who she loved with all her heart, who she desired to protect with all her heart. Her Heart." She murmured. "She is the reason I became Martial Artist despite my disability."


    Rui''s eyes widened as realization dawned upon him. The reason she was telling this story, was the secret of the Senior Realm.


    It all came to him in a thunderous sh.


    "Oh, look at you," She giggled. "You have already figured it out, despite having yet to have it exined to you. I like intelligent men."


    "The secret to the Senior Realm is¡­" Rui whispered, shocked.


    She stepped forward, blushing a bit as she recalled she was naked.


    "That''s right¡­" She spoke softly as she stopped right before him, cing her hand on his chest, feeling his strong heartbeat. "The secret to the Senior Realm is the discovery of the Martial Heart. Every human possesses a well of untapped physical power within their heart that, in times of grave crisis, they are able to surpass their limits with great will and perseverance at a great cost.  That well of power does not vanish with the advent of the Martial body, nay, it is even stronger. However, it is difficult to ess, and requires many things, self-awareness, individuality, the ability to survive and endure the Martial Heart, and unfortunately; luck."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1065 Indulgences

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    BADUMP


    BADUMPAll rights ? N?velDrama.Org.


    BADUMP


    Rui''s heart beat harder and harder. It was this grand revtion and had motivated his heart to work harder!


    It sted against his chest, sending mind ripples through his body, into her slender arms, through her body.


    Rui just stared at her.


    Yet he wasn''t looking at her.


    His awareness was preupied with other matters.


    An explosion had permeated through his mind, shaking his Mind Pce and even his Martial Path!


    His mind furiously processed the information he had just received with such intensity that put evenputers to shame!


    (''No wonder!'') Rui eximed mentally. (''The glowing circtory system¡­ The abrupt rise in their power from their ''base'' forms¡­ It all makes sense. They were tapping into the hiddentent well of power within the human body, no, within their Martial body. The glowing veins are simply an oue of their heart pumping at exponentially higher rates than normal. This is tachycardia!'')


    Tachycardia was a state where the heart rate was greatly increased. A rush of power produced by a beating heart that was so great that it caused blood to glow, in the case of Martial Seniors and their Martial Hearts.


    Rui was far from unfamiliar with the concept of human beings aplishing feats that were otherwise impossible to them in times of crisis. The phenomenon was very well-documented in neurology.


    It was actually a collection of phenomena, not just


    The intense crisis causes unprecedented heart rate and levels of secretions of adrenaline, endorphins, and other hormones and agents that allowed for a human being to momentarily surpass the limits of their physicality. They exert a force that they would deeply unconsciously not exert due to the detriments it would have on their body, or due to thecking ingredients and phenomena.


    If the power was that great in normal humans, how great would it be in a super-evolved homosapien that is astronomically and categorically superior to humans in almost every aspect?


    (''It would be titanic!'') Rui grew excited as he closed his eyes.


    He reyed the mental video of the fight between Senior Ceeran and the leaders of the K''ulnen Tribe. The gigantic disys of power they exhibited were all thanks to the Martial Heart!


    (''That''s how they are able to do things that feel like shouldn''t be possible with such smallparatively small bodies!'') Rui had always felt as though the power disyed by Martial Seniors didn''t make sense fundamentally. Their bodies were smaller, and it wasn''t as though they could undergo a second round of evolution due to already being evolved to the limit before their DNA would break under the radiation.


    He had always wondered where the surplus of power emerged from, and now he finally knew.


    Rui began pouring through everything he knew about the Senior Realm. Senior Ceeran had already let slip that the breakthrough was spontaneous and acute, considering that he broke through in the middle ofbat.


    That meant the trigger could not be something that required time and active preparation, it was inconceivable that he had time to make active preparations in a fight where he was most likely pushed to his very limits.


    Rui could thus infer that the breakthrough was spontaneous and acute, but also subconscious to a certain extent, for the same reasons as above, he was in the middle of a pressing fight, and he most likely had no ability to do something that attention-intensive.


    (''The immediate possibility that came to my mind was that the breakthrough to the Senior Realm is the same as the conditions to humans tapping into their wells oftent power; persevering determination in grave crises but¡­'')


    But he had instantly dismissed that theory. Martial Squires subjected themselves to grave crises all the time. It was almost part of the job description. Martial Artists brushed against death and did persevere through them with determination.


    Yet, the breakthrough to the Squire Realm was extremely scarce. Despite so many Martial Squires persevering through life-and-death situations with determination, very few Martial Squires broke through to the Senior Realm. Many Martial Squires died before reaching the Senior Realm despite all their desperation.


    His time on the Ajanta Ind had shown him that. How many challengers had died to guardians without breaking through?


    (''All of them,'') Rui recalled Squire Saiwal''s ferocious resistance, yet she did not break through.


    (''Conclusion; The conditions to trigger the activation of the Martial Heart are higher than it is for humans to tap into their lockedtent power.'') Rui realized. (''It makes sense intuitively. Greater power, greater difficulty.'')


    Then what was the precise condition to trigger the breakthrough to the Senior Realm?


    "I know I''ve retained my figure, but it''s rude to stare, you know."


    Rui broke out of his reverie as her voice permeated through his body, grabbing his attention by force.


    "Oh¡­ I''m sorry," He averted his gaze as he realized he had been staring at her chest while lost in thought.


    "It seems you were lost in excitement at this revtion," She giggled softly as her eyes fell. "Excited in more than one way."


    Rui groaned as he felt an ufortable tightness in his groin. It was at times like this he cursed the youthfulness of his body. While his mind wanted nothing more but to explore the mysteries of the Senior Realm with his newfound understanding, it appeared that his body had other intentions.


    BADUMP!


    His roaring heartbeat shook the dainty hand that caressed his chest.


    "Perhaps¡­ you would like to apany me for some time."


    Rui didn''t even have any willpower to resist at that moment, he felt as though he had burned a lot of mental power in just a split second furiously processing a multitude of information about the Senior Realm.


    He ended up spending a few hours longer in her quarters that day. By the time he left, returning to his chamber, his thoughts were chaotic, on one hand, he was torn by his desire to return to the considerations he had prior, but on the other, the experience he had just been blessed with was an overpowering imprint, drawing away his attention from time to time.


    "I need to get some damn rest." He muttered, before retiring in his own personal quarters.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1066 Potential

    He had slept like aa patient, sleeping through the night and halfway through the next day.


    Kane stared at him with a bewildered expression. "What the hell happened? Did you sleep through?! You?!"


    "I don''t want to hear it, ''Nake''" Rui sighed as he felt incrediblyfortable and rxed after a good amount of rest. "Yesterday was crazy."


    "Where did you go?" Kane asked. "I tried looking for you to spar withst night but you weren''t there."Content property of N?velDra/ma.Org.


    "Yeah, I was speaking with Senior Xanarn," Rui sighed.


    "What did she want?"


    "Apparently, my Martial Art is dangerous," Rui said. "And she also told me about the secret of the Senior Realm."


    "What?" Kane''s eyebrow rose.


    Rui proceeded to exin the gist of what she had divulged to him. Although he considered keeping it a secret for his own sake, he ultimately decided against it. The fact that there was no consensus on when disclosure of the secret of the Senior Realm ought to ur meant that there were no truly correct or incorrect choices, otherwise, the world would probably be on one page like they were with the breakthrough to the Squire Realm.


    "Martial Heart¡­" Kane murmured. "Incredible. Did she tell you what all the glowing red lines and streaks we saw on Senior Ceeran were?"


    "No, but I long figured that out myself," Rui shook his head as he proceeded to exin it all to Kane.


    He withheld the fact that he had spent hours with her in the bed, of course. It was too personal, furthermore, he didn''t want to reveal it without the consent of Senior Xanarn. After all, she was way too old and mature to appreciate being the center of romantic gossip. It was just good practice to not divulge things that both partners hadn''t agreed to.


    Rui eventually returned to the considerations that had been guing him prior. He was determined to figure out the trigger.


    He had already concluded that it wasn''t the same as it was for normal humans. It was clear that the Martial Heart was its own beastpared to the more paltry power that humans gained when they tapped into their lockedtent power.


    However, even if the Martial Heart was far superior, and even if the conditions for triggering its activation were far greater, he couldn''t help but feel that they were probably conceptually the same.


    One of the conditions to reach the Senior Realm was ruing enough individuality, and Rui didn''t need Senior Xanarn to exin why.


    (''Individuality deepens the Martial Path, which corrtes to higher cognitive functions of the brain granted by the discovery of the Martial Path, and the physical functions of the Martial Body centered around the Martial Path,'') Rui mused. (''However, unlike the Squire breakthrough process, these enhancements are not transformative. They do not change the brain on any fundamental level¡­ It simply enhances our capabilities by allowing us to make use of what is there.'')


    The breakthrough to the Apprentice Realm did not cause mutations to the brain to enhance it. Rui knew from his talks with Julian that the brains of Martial Apprentices were indistinguishable from the brains of normal humans physiologically. It was impossible to distinguish the two brains empirically.


    To Rui, that was strong evidence that the discovery of the Martial Path simply mobilized the cognitive capabilities of the brain better, allowing the Martial Apprentice to performbat-rted cognitive functions far superior to before.


    The discovery of the Martial Path simply tapped into neurological power that existed in the brain, deepening of the Martial Path deepened the degree to which Martial Squires essed the untapped capabilities of the brain. This allowed Martial Apprentices to make extremely efficient use of every ounce of energy their bodies produced, converting all of it hyper-efficiently into speed, power, and durability.


    There should have been a limit to how much the Martial Path allowed one to tap into the potential of the brain and, indirectly, the body, after all, the brain was not infinite. Martial Apprentices too would eventually hit a ceiling in regards to how much of the cognitive functions of the conscious mind could be mobilized towardsbat, and how much of a boost it could provide to the body.


    (''That changed with the Squire evolution breakthrough,'') Rui realized. (''The Squire evolution breakthrough evolved the body in a process that could be survived by the fortitude granted by the Martial Path. It not only evolved the body but also evolved the untapped power that was within the body, the Martial Heart!'')


    This artificial manmade Realm inadvertently created more potential for the Martial Path to tap into just like it did with the breakthrough to the Apprentice Realm. Except, in this case, it tapped into the enormous well of power that existed in the Martial body.


    (''The Realms of Martial Art¡­ are they stages of tapping into different kinds and levels of potential that exist in the human body?'') Rui''s widened. (''The Apprentice Realm tapped into the potential of the conscious brain, the Squire Realm required tapping into the potential for evolution of the body, the Senior Realm requires harnessing the potential of thetent well of power that existed within the newly evolved Martial body. The Martial Path¡­ is a journey of uncovering all of the existential potentials within the Human Being through Martial Art!'')


    It made sense to Rui.


    After all, what was Martial Art as a concept at its very core?


    (''A system of movements and training designed to be able to maximize the potential of the human body inbat,'')


    Martial Art, and martial arts, as concepts at their very cores, were simply the process of realizing the potential of the human body in physical conflict. Anything, anything at all, that did that, was Martial Art.


    The Martial Path, in turn, was simply the journey of maximizing the Martial Art, which in turn was simply maximizing potential.


    The different Realms along the Martial Path were simply checkpoints for maximizing new kinds of potential. Cognitive potential, evolutionary potential, and Heart potential.


    Who knew what kind of potential would be explored in the higher Realms?


    Rui couldn''t even begin to fathom it, yet his desire to tread his Martial Path soared higher than ever!


    A maelstrom of chaos engorged his mind as a flurry of epiphanies rang amuck!


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1067 Opportunity

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    The discovery of the Martial Path, the Martial body, and the Martial Heart. These were three conditions to step into the three lower Realms. Three milestones of potential along the Martial Path, along the journey to maximizing one''s Martial Art to its perfect form.


    Rui suspected that he hade across information that he wasn''t supposed to know yet. However, that didn''t necessarily stop him froming to know more.


    (''I''ve already inferred that the trigger to the breakthrough to the Senior Realm is most likely a non-conscious acute process. Furthermore, I''ve already concluded difficulty of breaking through to the Senior Realm is harder than the conditions for normal humans to tap into their wells of untapped power.'')


    That gave him a lot of clues as to what exactly the precise trigger of the breakthrough to the Senior Realm was.


    (''Senior Ceeran mentioned that the strength of the desire that drives them to pursue Martial Art is what decides how far Martial Artists would ascend,'') Rui narrowed his eyes. (''Could it be that only the fundamental desire for why one wants to pursue Martial Art can be the trigger to the breakthrough of the Senior Realm?'')


    It would make more sense if that was the case, however, he couldn''t be certain of it. Rui couldn''t be too sure about it.


    "Hey, are you listening to me?" Kane asked.


    "Hm?"


    "I said let''s go grab something to eat," Kane remarked. "I''m hungry as hell after a morning''s training."


    "Sure,"


    Rui immediately understood what the goal of amon eating area was the second he learned about it. The Floating Sect was too impersonal to be called a sect, in reality. It was more like an¡­ association.


    That had its advantages, it drew in the truly strong in mind and body. However, it also meant that there wasn''t a sense of unity or belonging. It meant that these Martial Artists were less inclined to protect it than they would have had they had this sense of belonging.


    It also made it harder to deploy and use the Martial Artists for the sake of the Floating Sect. The Floating Sect, by design, did not demand as manymitments from its members as other Martial Sects and groups did. As long as Martial Squires were willing to participate in operations needed to protect the Floating Sect, they had nothing else to offer.Content is property ? N?velDrama.Org.


    That was burdening because the Floating Sect''s expenses weren''t small, they managed to handle the expenses byrgely being self-sufficient. Most of the workforce in the Floating Sect was permanently tied to the Floating Sect, either through bondage or deep lifemitments. The ind was able to produce food and energy, and they had already stockpiled the necessary goods and supplies needed to deal with most needs.


    The sect was forced to be self-sufficient because the cost of hauling things to the ind was too great!


    Ordinarily, the Floating Sect would be able to demand more from the Martial Squires for providing all these services, but Rui understood why it didn''t.


    (''The three Martial Seniors that lead the Floating Sect are not interested in creating a flourishing economy or society,'') He mused. (''They are Martial Artists who are chasing after greater power. Ajanta Ind is a good avenue to train themselves and progressively grow stronger. However, their training is threatened by the nations of the Kaddar Region, thus they need an army. That is the only reason the Floating Sect exists.'')


    They were interested in the quality of Martial Squires because Ajanta Ind had a limited amount of holding capacity. The ind was unfortunately fragile to a certain extent due to its structure and shape, which meant that special training environments needed to be created to protect the ind from the power of Martial Squires.


    However, due to the size of these training environments, only a thousand Martial Squires could be amodated.


    That was why the Floating Sect''s requirements ofmitments from its members were low. Powerful Martial Squires did not bow their head too easily, and they wanted the most powerful of Martial Squires since their holding capacity was limited to a thousand.


    If quantity was not obtainable, then they wouldpensate with quality. Rui could easily see that that was why the Floating Sect was organized the way it was.


    (''I highly doubt that those Martial Seniors were the ones who came up with all of this,'') Rui mused.


    He wasn''t calling them stupid, but statesmanship, management, and administration were far from their field of specialty. If they were tasked with creating the Floating Sect from the ground up, they would have undoubtedly screwed things up.


    (''They must have founded the Floating Sect with some highlypetent subordinates.'')


    Soon enough, they reached the cafeteria. It was a spacious area with many tables and chairs, enough to amodate all of the guardians individually. Yet most guardians sat with their peers.


    After all, the Floating Sect was a gathering of like-minded warriors who were willing to risk death multiple times in order to be a part of the Floating Sect. They weremitted to their training to grow stronger. It made sense for Martial Artists with simr Martial Art and Martial Paths to hang out with each other to exchange with each other.


    Rui could easily see that guardians that were sitting with each other were those that had simr Martial bodies.


    He even spotted a group of creepy guardians with strange appearances seated with each other.


    (''Poison-oriented Martial Artists,'') Rui briefly noted.


    "Hey, look," Kane drew his attention. "There''s a new notice."


    "Hm?" Rui nced over.


    "Apparently Senior Xanarn is going to be conducting sparring sessions with guardians one ss a day over the next ten days," Kane remarked. "We get to fight Martial Seniors!"


    That was indeed quite alluring.


    "Yet only Martial Squires willing to apply for extra field and operational work are eligible for the sparring," Rui smirked as he continued reading the notice. "They''re trying to squeeze more work out of Martial Squires in exchange for benefits like this."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1068 Incentives

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    It was not a bad n, not at all.


    (''Most Martial Squires do not get this opportunity,'') Rui mused.


    A good chunk of all Martial Squires was in nations with few or no Martial Seniors, the probability of them being able to earn a Martial Senior''s time was far too low.


    Even in nations that possessed Martial Artists of the upper Realms, it was not easy to gain the time and attention of Martial Seniors.


    That was why the leaders of the Floating Sect dangling that as a carrot was effective. There were Martial Squires who would most certainlyplete missions in order to get the insight of Martial Seniors.


    This was especially true for the Martial Squires of the Floating Sect, who were driven enough to go out of their way to do things that they believed would be beneficial to their growth.


    Martial Seniors were those Martial Squires who had sessfully broken through, and thus knew what it took to break through to the higher Realms. Their insights were invaluable to Martial Squires.


    "What do you say, ''Falken''?"


    "Sounds good, ''Nake'',"


    The two of them were most certainly interested in this. Rui especially didn''t mind spending more time with Senior Xanarn. She was definitely thoughtful and insightful, and she was definitely stronger.


    He didn''t mind getting closer to her either.


    The two of them quickly fixed themselves some food as they were about to sit down at an empty table.


    "Nake!" Someone called Kane out.


    Rui furrowed his eyebrows, turning in surprise.


    "Come here!" A young woman invited him to sit at a table with several others.


    "You made friends?" Rui raised an eyebrow.


    "Yeah, they''re fellow speed and maneuvering-oriented Martial Artists, what, are you jealous you don''t have anything inmon with anybody else asides from that one guy you broke mentally?" Kane smirked.


    "Ouch," Rui huffed with a resigned smile.


    The two of them proceeded over to the table.


    "Hey, Fera, mind if my friend ''Falken'' here joins us?"


    "Everyone knows his name, it''s no problem,"Content is property ? N?velDrama.Org.


    "Pleasure to meet you all," Rui offered.


    The two of them sat down while the conversation proceeded. Rui felt strangely nostalgic, this was something that he had experienced in the Academy, and also to a little degree in his previous life. It was like hanging out with friends at lunchtime.


    "Speaking of which," Fera interjected, drawing his attention. "Who''s going to apply for the round sparring training with Senior Xanarn?"


    "I am, I want to see how the new technique I modified does against a Martial Senior."


    "I also wanted to get her input as to why I feel like I haven''t been getting stronger."


    "I want to see if I can evade her attacks," Kane mentioned. "I might do better than almost everybody, maybe I''ll evenst the longest even if I do not contribute to the fight at all haha."


    "You probably will," Fera raised an eyebrow. "I believe you''re the only evasive maneuverer in our tenth ss, no?"


    "True¡­ But there are other guardians who can be truly troublesome tond a strike on," Kane nced at Rui meaningfully, throwing all the attention on him.


    All of the guardians at the table grew silent as they grew confused.


    "You''re not a maneuvering-oriented Martial Artist, are you?" One man spoke up.


    "I saw his fight against that bastard Seronin, he''s an all-rounder, I think."


    Rui sighed inwardly. He did not like being the center of attention. "Yes."


    "You''re selling yourself short," Fera turned back to Kane. "All-rounders are not specialists. He definitely is strong, but he cannot beat a specialist in their field of expertise."


    "Perhaps, but I have learned never to bet against him." Kane smiled wryly. "Anyways, what do you think about this new maneuvering technique idea that I came up with¡­"


    The maneuvering gang got absorbed into a conversation as Rui got absorbed into his thoughts. He did feel as though the stronger he grew, the less he was able to rte to other Martial Artists. The way he trained was different, the way he developed his Marital Art individualistically was different. His mental age was different from that of his peers, and correspondingly his maturity as well. On top of that, the depth of his Martial Art, and his entire thought process was just alienpared to theirs.


    He had already experienced how different he was when he had Kane exin the way that he created the Fulminata technique. Listening to these Martial Squires talk about Martial Art and techniques just further drove the difference between them for him.


    (''They''re kids,'') Rui sighed as he felt tired just listening to their energetic and juvenile banter. He felt like an uncle being forced to watch his nephew and friends ying. He just wasn''t able to get invested in their conversations, try as he might.


    He would rather spend this time talking with someone his own age, mentally.


    (''Someone like Xanarn¡­'') He couldn''t help but recallst night.


    She was still much younger than he was, of course, but she was still definitely leaning towards older nheless. Of course, she retained her youthful appearance by virtue of being a Martial Artist, so he wasn''t able to tell. However, just by being a Martial Senior, he knew that there was no way she was old.


    The conversations that they had were much more to his speed. His mind delved back into pleasant memories of the night just as he was interrupted


    "Hey, are you listening?" Kane poked at his head.


    "Hm?" He furrowed his eyebrows, turning towards Kane. "What."


    "Do you want to join them in a mission for the Floating Sect to be able to partake in the Senior sparring sessions?"


    Rui nced at the four Martial Artists around the table. They certainly weren''t weak, they couldn''t be by virtue of being part of the Floating Sect, so he wasn''t too concerned about that.


    "It depends," Rui shrugged. "If there is a mission that suits six Martial Squires of our Martial Art, then sure."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1069 Delivery

    ?


    However, he wasn''t sure if there would be a mission that would require five maneuvering Martial Artists and one all-rounder. That sounded like a rather strange mission for the Floating Sect.


    In the Kandrian Empire, he would find countless missions that fit the bill in the Martial Union, but not so much in the Floating Sect.


    The Martial Union had a huge load of missions from itsrge market and client that it supplied to countless Martial Artists across the entirety of the nation. The Floating Sect''s missions were almost certainly not services ormodities being sold to clients who were interested in purchasing the services of Martial Artists.


    Any missions from the Floating Sect would be centered around its own self-interest, especially the interest of self-preservation.


    (''Self-preservation from the nations of the Kaddar Region, which are its only threat.'') Rui mused.


    He did predict that most of the missions of the Floating Sect would be centered around the Kaddar Region.


    And he was right.


    Later after their meal, the six of them visited the deployment department, looking for work that they could do in order to be able to spar with Martial Seniors.


    The first thing that Rui thought of when he received a big book containing all the possible operations that they could engage in was that the system there was far less sophisticated than the system of the Martial Union.


    In hindsight, he couldn''t help but admire how great the system of missions of the Martial Union was. It cleanly took everymission from every clientele, processed it before then splitting them by Realm, field, location and geography, required skillset, estimated time, and even difficulty. Then the information of themissions was cleanly processed and assimted into small booklets; the mission bills, which were then organized by multiple factors, allowed Martial Artists to very easily look for a suitable mission.


    It was a sophisticated and robust well-oiled machine.


    Inparison, the Floating Sect was a lot morecking. The missions were not well-organized or sorted. Furthermore, the information that Rui got was not nearly as insightful as the information that he got from the mission bill of the Martial Union.


    Of course, he didn''t necessarily expect the Floating Sect to be nearly as good as the Martial Union in that regard. It was the literal and core purpose of the Martial Union versus a smaller department within the Floating Sect.


    "Hm, hunting for Dervin mushrooms in the Kaddar Everdes¡­" Kane murmured.


    "Protecting a supply shipment to the Floating Sect from the Kaddar Martial Squires surveilling the area¡­"


    "Damaging known long-range artillery weapons of the Darociouen Empire¡­"


    They sounded unsure to Rui, which made sense, admittedly. None of these missions were particrly alluring to them as they were maneuvering-oriented Martial Artists.


    "Hey, I found a good one!" Kane eximed. "Deliveries from and to the Floating Sect. This is right up our alley."


    The others nodded as they grouped up.


    Any back and forth between the Floating Sect and thend nations was rife with danger, and the best way to deal with it was simply to avoid it, which the maneuvering-oriented Martial Artists could certainly do better than anybody else.


    However, while this was certainly an alluring mission for them, it was rather boring to Rui. He would rather pick something that was more stimting and would also yield more merits that would allow him to gain more training time with Senior Xanarn.


    "I think I''ll sit this one out," Rui told Kane. "It''s not something I am inclined towards at the moment."


    "Damn¡­" Kane murmured. "Shame the two of us will have to choose something else then."


    "No, it''s fine," Rui shook his head. "You go with them. This mission will be good training for you, you can exercise your Fulminata technique andpare yourself with your peers."


    In hindsight, it was better for Kane to also spend more time with normal Martial Squires to gain a less skewed version of himself. Because of how extraordinary Rui was at times, it was hard for Kane to feel too aplished about himself. All rights ? N?velDrama.Org.


    Spending time with other normal Martial Squires would make him more aware of what normal looked like, and would probably boost his self-esteem and confidence.


    Furthermore, it was probably for the best that he could spend time with more normal-minded younger Martial Artists like the small friend group that he had made. Rui was basically a grandpa to him, and it did affect the conversations they had, as much as Rui tried not to allow it to happen.


    Furthermore, he didn''t want Kane to grow psychologically dependent or too attached to Rui either. The fact he thought of not going with the other four in order to go with whatever Rui wanted to be showed that perhaps it had already happened to a certain extent, especially after they left the Shionel Confederation.


    The five of them quickly picked the mission before heading out toplete it.


    Rui, on the other hand, took his time. He was in no hurry. Furthermore, he had a nostalgic feeling of skimming through missions looking for the best one from back in his early days.


    It had been many years since he hadst stood in the mission library, choosing a mission that he would swiftlyplete.


    It was nostalgic, but also quite mncholic.


    (''Things used to be a lot more simple back then,'') He sighed. It was true, of course, he wasn''t confronted with many hardships, and although it hadn''t been easy, it hadn''t been painful like it was now looking back on those memories.


    (''I swear to god, when I return to the Kandrian Empire, I''m going to pick a mission from the mission library of the Martial Union and then justplete it before heading back home to eat a good heavy dinner after a long day''s work.'')


    It was funny how back when he used to do that, he would yearn for more, and now he just wished he could experience that once more.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1070 Rejected

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    If he wanted to rack up some merits, it was probably best to undertake a mission that would allow him to rue as much of a contribution so that he could train with the Martial Seniors for longer and perhaps received greater tutge from them.


    He hadn''t yet entirely figured out what the ultimate trigger for the Senior Realm truly was, unfortunately, he was working with too much spection, unfortunately, to make reliable deductions.


    That was why he tossed aside more mundane missions like the ones Kane and his new-found acquaintances had chosen. The merits that they would get from such a mission were little.


    (''Then again, the Floating Sect does not have an objective system of merits,'') Rui mused. (''It doesn''t even have an internal currency despite being so isted from the rest of the world economically.'')


    The ind was remarkably self-sufficient, however, it wasn''tplex enough to warrant its own currency. After all, although Ajanta Ind was a small city in and of itself, it didn''t always feel that way because of how low the poption was.


    The chambers were huge structures hundreds of meters in length and breadth.


    They needed to be, in order to amodate Martial Squires of all ranges, and fit in the training environments and machines for all kinds of Martial Paths and Art.


    If there were just a handful or several of them, it actually would not be a big deal. But there were one thousand and three such structures, and the amount of area that went towards them was huge. The actual number of people residing on the ind was disproportionately lower than what you would expect from a ce of the size of the ind.


    Furthermore, with no open market of any sort, it was possible to manage without something as troublesome as a currency.


    However, even without an official credit or merit system, contributions would definitely be recognized and rewarded with how ruthlessly meritocratic the Floating Sect was. If they did not do that, then Martial Squires would not be incentivized to contribute extra work to the sect.


    [Deterrence operation: Conduct an attack on a patrolling guard of the Kaddar Region


    Operation summary: Kill, maim, or capture a patrol guard of the Kaddar Region meant to deter initiates from entering the ind. Any number of guardians may take on this operation taking on any number of patrols. Credit will be judged based on contributions based on the discretion of Senior Xanarn.]


    A simple enough operation, given that the guardians were not Martial Artists necessarily personally familiar with each other, their coordination was most certainly sub-par, it was meaningless to assign highly sophisticated missions.


    Missions like these were most optimal for the Floating Sect. All he would need to was kill a Martial Squire that was deployed by one of the Kaddar Regions to deter foreign Martial Squires from trying to join the Floating Sect.


    (''Meh,'') Rui dismissed it.Text content ? N?velDrama.Org.


    It was grunt work. Just a mission that was meant to keep the Kaddar Martial Squires from getting toofortable while they performed that duty, it was worthless. Even if he killed multiple Martial Squires, its impact wasn''t too noticeable.


    He came across several more missions like that, it was clear that most missions were like that, and Rui was able to instantly analyze the value of a mission just through a brief skim. Most of them were defense-oriented or offense-oriented missions.


    "Tsk,"


    He shook his head as he kept on reading through before he stumbled onto something interesting.


    [Espionage operation: The Graheria Kingdom haspleted a transaction with Frigga Industries, a major arms and military technology supplier, receiving arge shipment from the corporate supplier. The objective of this operation is to gain as much intelligence on the transaction and the purchased goods as possible.]


    "Hm," Rui''s eyebrow lit up in interest.


    He knew of Frigga Industries, of course. They were one of thergest clients of Esosale Suppliers from across the continent. This meant that they had purchased tons of esoteric ore supplies from Rui, ording to the sales data that he received from Guildmaster Bradt. As one of thergest suppliers of military technology, they had naturally fostered a deep rtionship with Bradt Distribution Services to supply their goods acrossrge expanses of the continent.


    "Interesting," Rui murmured. "This would be good to do with Kane but¡­"


    He didn''t want to pull him away after he told Kane there was no problem with him hanging out with more like-minded Martial Artists.


    "Ah, well¡­ it''s fine I guess," Rui shrugged. Although Kane''s Void Step would undoubtedly be of great use here, it wasn''t as though he was helpless without it.


    Rui possessed extremely powerful senses which made him quite good at espionage, surveince, and reconnaissance.


    And while he couldn''t be invisible like Kane could. He most certainly was capable of disguising his nature as a Martial Artist with a powerful Mind Mask.


    He quickly skimmed through the details that existed. Unlike the Martial Union which had a strict need-to-know basis of information disclosure and dissemination for the sake of client privacy, the Floating Sect freely shared all the information with the Martial Squires.


    (''Unsophisticatedpared to the Martial Union but understandable.'')


    The information provided featured a map of the Graheria Kingdom and the various locations where the package was spotted, and thetest known position believed to be the current location of the package.


    The location was in a militaryplex guarded by Martial Squires and Apprentices, highly fenced and armed to the tooth with long-range artillery weapons for all of those that attempted to try and raid the militaryplex.


    (''Hm, just based on the information provided here, infiltrating the through force is definitely impossible,'') Rui concluded. (''I''d be swarmed with Martial Squires, and Squire-grade artillery weapons. And reinforcements would definitely be on their way. That''s hopeless.'')


    Furthermore, he couldn''t brute force stealth his way through either. It was dangerous even with Kane, this wasn''t the Shionel Dungeon where senses were deeply hampered and there was no chance of anyone sensing Void Step.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1071 Tedious

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    If there was a Martial Senior anywhere nearby, it would be game over and the two of them would die in a heartbeat.


    (''This is going to require some finesse, unfortunately,'') Rui sighed. (''I can''t brute force my way through this with power or a grade-ten stealth technique. I''m going to have to be allowed in.'')


    Rui scoured through the intelligence that the Floating Sect had on the Graheria Kingdom''s military security and anti-espionage measures.


    Unfortunately, it wasn''t asprehensive as he wanted it to be, much to his surprise. He had expected that the Floating Sect would be ahead of the Kaddar Regions in the intelligence battle. After all, infiltrating the Floating Sect covertly was damn near impossible given how isted from the rest of human civilization it was. There was simply no chink in the armor to wriggle into.


    Except one. Trying to be a guardian as an initiate, but unfortunately, that was too difficult because it was impossible to disguise their prominent Martial Squires in an attempt to make sure they don''t get recognized. The Floating Sect forced Martial Squires to be transparent with their Martial Art, otherwise, they would die in challenges or lose their chamber.


    In order to sneak a Martial Squire into the Floating Sect that none of them recognized, they would need to break a brand-new Martial Apprentice into the Squire Realm after faking his death. Then they would need to make him secretly train from scratch and hope he has what it took to be a truly elite high-grade Martial Squire. Once they became an elite high-grade Martial Squire, they would then need to have this unheard and unseen


    However, because the training for Martial Squires was not something that could be normally elerated, this process would take more than a decade, to possibly multiple decades.


    Unlike Rui, and Kane to a certain extent, reaching higher grades in the Squire Realm was not something that less extraordinary Martial Squires could do in a matter of a few years. It was simply an unfeasible n.


    The Floating Sect could infiltrate the nations of the Kaddar Region more easily, however, not too well because of the istion and the distance, and it was difficult managing a spywork.


    Rui figured that he ought to be grateful that they were able to at least supply him with this much information.


    "Militaryplex G49," Rui murmured. "Heavily guarded military base and a research and development facility on the outskirts of the nation."


    A rigorous security system requiring every person who entered the facility to show identity proof, verify clearance level, and, if necessary, demonstrate the purpose of the visit. Aplex array of protocols, which was pretty standard for top secret nation security matters.


    "Hmmm, the probability of a Martial Senior being in the base, or in that region of the nation is not low," Rui murmured.


    He knew how fast Martial Seniors were. He recalled the matriarch of the K''ulnen Tribe crossing massive distances from the K''ulnen vige to the battlefield in seconds. Senior Ceeran in turn had also swiftly crossed dozens of kilometers before Rui even learned about it. If the Martial Senior was alerted, he was not going to take long to reach the militaryplex.


    "I really need to figure this out and make sure my n is rock solid, or else there will be consequences," Rui murmured. "The good thing is I don''t need to get too close to the package to be able to sense it."


    The best part was that he couldpletely bypass standard military anti-espionage measures. His Riemannian Echo was unstoppable barring special gravitic environments like the Ajanta Ind.


    However, given how absolutely gigantic theplex was, he wouldn''t be able to sense the package and gain information on it from outside theplex.


    (''Which means I definitely need to infiltrate and enter the militaryplex and get close enough to sense it properly before leaving.'') Rui mused. "I ought to do some personal reconnaissance and get a good understanding of the kind of security that they have going on rather than just trusting the intelligence of the Floating Sect, it''s better for me that I have a good personal understanding of the matter before I formte a way to enter the G49plex."


    And that was exactly what he did. He quickly packed some potions and the necessary supplies before adorning some of the typical attire of the Graheria Kingdom.


    Soon enough, he left Ajanta Ind heading towards the Graheria Kingdom, having memorized a map of the Kaddar Region and the Graheria Kingdom.


    Leaving Ajanta Ind was a pain in the ass because he needed to avoid surveince, thus he needed to maintain a high altitude and only descend after he left the Kaddar Region. After that, he needed to circle back and enter the Kaddar Region once more before finally heading towards the Graheria Kingdom.


    It was a time-consuming and tedious process that made him understand why Martial Squires didn''t leave the ind toplete missions.


    Regardless, his work only began once he entered the Kingdom of Graheria.


    The Kingdom of Graheria was a densely popted and ethnically diverse country, much to his delight. This made it easier to blend in as someone from the Kandrian Empire. It wouldn''t raise any questions or make him instantly identifiable as an outsider, necessarily.


    Furthermore, the poption density truly was a saving grace, it meant that as long as he had his Mind Mask on, he was basically invisible.All rights ? N?velDrama.Org.


    Furthermore, the protocols at the port of entry for arriving travelers were alsox due to this, he essentially just swooped through within five minutes.


    (''Alright, now I need to get to the south of the nation and get a good look at area G49,'')


    Unfortunately, he wasn''t able to speed through at top speed, not without killing people, and sky-walking attracted far too much attention, thus he simply walked as fast as he could. It wasn''t too long before he reached his destination, watching it from afar.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1072 Analysis

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    Thankfully for him, the military area wasn''t isted from the nation''s poption, like in the middle of a desert, or something like that. It didn''t stray away from the southern town of Derendal, and he could hand not too far from the military base without looking like an intruder or necessarily drawing attention.


    The base was absolutely massive, almost a small town in and of itself.


    (''And it has rigorous anti-espionage measures,'') Rui mused.


    When he tried sensing the happenings of the facility using Seismic Mapping and Tempestuous Feel, he couldn''t sense much.


    That was to be expected, anti-espionage esoteric technology was something he had run into many times. It was necessary given that one lived in a world with Martial Squires with greatly powerful senses.


    He sat in a bar not too far away from the establishment, as his Riemannian Echo kept a check of the front gate.


    He quickly began documenting the details of all those who entered and exited the facility with scrupulous care, before storing and organizing them in his head.


    He memorized the appearance of every person that entered the facility, giving them a codename, memorizing their attire, sex, the means of transportation they arrived by, the protocols that they underwent, and the words they exchanged. He also memorized every word that the security team uttered in the time that he spent there.


    Time passed, but by the end of the day, he had an extremelyrge reservoir of data that he had cleanly organized into relevant fields.


    (''Interesting,'') Rui murmured once he tabted the data. (''All people who entered the facility had to show proof of identification and verification of security clearance, except for the coachmen who drove the carriage into the facility. Their identities were never questioned, nor were they stopped.'')


    It meant that there probably were special arrangements for all the coachmen of the carriages and other aiding employees of the various people who entered the facility. That was one possible avenue of infiltration that Rui could explore.


    He had considered the possibility of sneaking into a carriage, but unfortunately, the security check-ups were not light. The carriage was thoroughly checked to make sure that there were no problems. Sneaking into the facility by hiding in a carriage was not possible. A sensory Martial Squire scanned the carriage with his senses every time to make sure that there was nothing off about it.


    This was one issue that Rui had to confront, among others.


    After heavy consideration, he temporarily ruled out faking authority or impersonation. He didn''t have the means and tools for that. In his evaluation, it had a particrly high chance of failure if anybody went an extra step to try and fact-check him.


    Furthermore, if he entered with authority, he would most certainly have to deal with someone else in authority, who would most certainly know he was full of shit.


    It would only work if he was highly familiarized with everything that he needed to know in order to make sure that the facade was maintained.


    Furthermore, if he didn''t ensure that the Martial Squire that vetted the carriages was incapable of sensing Rui''s true status as a Martial Squire. That was the biggest issue at the moment. It was too risky to just pray for the best and hope that the Martial Squire didn''t sense his true power.


    He needed to confirm that he could even survive being scanned by the Martial Squires vetting the carriages that passed through.


    (''Tsk, it''s a shame, but I''ll need to take a few small risks,'') Rui tutted. He wasn''t fond of it, but it needed to happen.


    However, for the time being, he was content just observing and gaining more data. It wasn''t until the third day that he found something new.Content property of N?velDra/ma.Org.


    (''Oh?'') Rui raised an eyebrow. (''It seems that there are those other than private coachmen who can get in without too much scrutiny.'')


    It appeared that low-level manualbor employees had a more basic check-up. Furthermore, delivery carriages also passed through without too much inspection by the deliverer. Partially because the deliverer wasn''t really allowed to go anywhere asides from wherever the shipped supplies would be unloaded and stored.


    Still, it was something that Rui could consider as a way to get in, but he wasn''t sure how far he would be able to get in using this method.


    (''I don''t have multiple attempts either, most likely,'') Rui mused. (''I will probably be recognized, or at the very least the risk is too high.'')


    He needed some form of identity that would get him as deep into the militaryplex as possible but without putting him in a position where he could potentially expose himself as a spy at the moment.


    Over the next few days, he thoroughly ruled out the possibility of impersonating regrs, the probability of failure was too high, he alsopletely ruled out the possibility of faking authority and clearance, the means by which he would obtain convincing fake documents was too tricky.


    Most nations used some form of esoteric uniqueness in such documents in order to verify that they were real, which means he would most likely need toe into contact with someone that can get him such documents nheless and is willing to purchase them.


    (''Such a person would be deeply entrenched into the underworld of the Kaddar Region, unfortunately,'') Rui sighed.


    He had no intention of going that far and undertaking a potentially dangerous solution. What he needed was a less risky, less demanding solution with fewer prone to risks.


    It was unfortunate but the simplest of means were also the least promising in so far as how close to the mysterious package purchased by the Graheria Kingdom.


    "Hmmm¡­" Rui narrowed his eyes. "All I need is intelligence on the package, and I''m set. Being able to sense the package directly definitely helps but I also will need context on what it is, which requires me to gain information from the documentation on it, or from people within revealing what it is."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1073 Reconnaissance

    ?Content is property ? N?velDrama.Org.


    A few days passed as Rui continued gathering as much data as possible. Although the first day more or less gave him everything he wanted, it was still better to get a sense of the routine before he made his move. He had evaluated all possible means of entry and had segregated them by the probability of sess.


    The least viable solutions were forceful entry either via brute force or stealth. He explored all possibilities, and it just didn''t work.


    Falsifying authorization was also too murky. He would need to somehow gain authentic documentation and security clearance. Furthermore, if they had any rigorous verification protocols, he would be screwed. Fooling those protocols was above his pay grade and far too removed from his capabilities as a Martial Artist.


    He also considered kidnapping someone who would know what it is and interrogating them. However, it was quite likely that the military followed a need-to-know basis, there were probably very few people that had ess to such intelligence if the transaction was that important. Furthermore, if the information disseminated, then the Floating Sect would have probably learned of the information by itself


    Thus, he had settled on disguised infiltration as his means of infiltration after considering all his options, he did not want to bother with trying to interrogate people. It was quite likely that the only people who knew were heavily guarded, and it would probably take him force to kidnap them, and he had already decided against that.


    That left him with infiltrating as a coachman, however, that would probably require a bit of authorization falsification to a small degree, albeit nothing major.


    (''But before I can even focus on all of that, I''ll need to verify that my Mind Mask is not detectable by any of the Martial Squires on carriage vetting duty,'') Rui noted.


    If they could see through the Mind Mask, then there would be no point in trying to even attempt the operation.


    He got up, leaving the bar he was in near the G49 militaryplex. His way of testing their senses was actually quite easy. He simply approached the front gate straightforwardly.


    The Martial Squire guards immediately focused on him as he approached them. They were fully on alert, maintaining a sharp watch on their surroundings. They tensed up a little as Rui approached them straightforwardly, drawing their attention.


    He did that on purpose, of course, he needed to test their senses while they were paying attention to him, otherwise, it wasn''t reliable, it was possible that he could slip their senses when they weren''t paying attention, but couldn''t do that when they were.


    In that case, when he did actually pose as a coachman, he would be instantly seen through. That was the problem with his current approach.


    "This is a restricted area," One of the growled.


    "Ah, I am aware," Rui smiled. "I''m not a threat to Martial Artists, I just wanted to inquire which way the local post office was."


    "It''s right around the corner near¡­.."


    Rui nodded his head as looked the man in the eyes, gauging his reaction and studying his every expression frame by frame.


    A minuteter, he walked away with a smile. (''Worked like a charm.'')


    While they were alert, it was simply the default standard alertness that they had as guards at the front gate of a militaryplex. They certainly did not act as though they were standing before a powerful Martial Squire, he was not a threat in their eyes.


    This meant that they could not sense his power past the Mind Mask technique.


    The reason for that was because of Rui''s powerful mind more than the grade of the technique. Although the grade of the technique was not too high, it was something that was boosted by his mind. It would take powerful senses to sense him despite the technique, not even a Martial Senior had been able to gauge his true strength, although the Martial Seniors of Vilun Ind were not the most well-rounded Martial Seniors.


    He had verified that his n was feasible, now all he had to do was ensure that he could fake being a coachman.


    He also needed to find a good carriage to be the coachman of.


    (''Unfortunately, I can''t be the coachman of a private carriage,'') Rui sighed. Those coachmen were privately hired by their employers, and even if he knocked them out and took their ce he would be recognized in a heartbeat.


    Instead what he needed to do was to take the ce of a delivery carriage supplying shipments to the militaryplex.


    (''I can intercept the carriage midway en route to the militaryplex and then pose as the coachman after I take his ce. Though I will need a fake license,'') Rui mused.


    He had paid a lot of attention to the coachmen that entered theplex, and the only thing that they needed to show was the shipment documentation, that the one he would be knocking out and recing would have, and a license that showed them that they were indeed the designated coachman.


    He already knew that there were designated locations and provisions for coachmen that were required to wait for their employers to return, they were probably strictly prohibited from stepping out of their carriages.


    However, as a delivery coachman, Rui did not intend to stick around after supplying the shipments.


    (''For now, I need to find the next shipment to the military base and get a fake coachman license. The Floating Sect can probably help me with this.'') Rui mused.


    Neither was too hard to get as long as one had a basic intelligencework set up in the Graheria Kingdom, unlike the details of the package that the Graheria Kingdom purchased from Frigga Industries.


    He quickly left the Graheria Kingdom as he made his way back to the Floating Sect through the tedious route before finally returning back to Ajanta Ind. A familiar immense sense of heaviness and pressure pressed on him the second he stepped back onto the ind.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1074 Preparations

    ?Text content ? N?velDrama.Org.


    "Where did you go?" Kane asked as soon as he met up with Rui.


    Rui had purposely left behind hisms device, it was too risky to carry it with him if he ever got stopped and searched in the Graheria Kingdom while he was ying as a normal human. Thus, he had been out of contact with Kane for the past few days.


    "Just working on a mission," Rui replied. "How did yours go?"


    "It was actually kinda fun. I ended up winning the race," Kane smirked.


    "Race?"


    "Yeah, we had a race to see who could get to the destination first, because were bored," Kane shrugged. "I avoided the projectiles and attacks better than any of them, allowing me to get ahead of them.


    "Well, as long as you had fun, I suppose," Rui chuckled, sighing.


    He was d that Kane seemed to be able to get along with his newfound acquaintances.


    "So what mission are you working on?" Kane asked, curious.


    "An espionage mission, I need to gain new information on this shipment that Graheria Industries sold them for a great sum of money," Rui exined.


    "That sounds right up my alley," Kane knitted his eyes.


    "Not this time, it''s a bit too risky."


    "Riskier than the Shionel Dungeon?"


    "Yes, actually," Rui mused. "The Shionel Dungeon was never truly a threat to us, with our capabilities, no one stood any chance of sensing you, and no one stood a chance of hiding from me. It''s just best not to rely on brute force stealth this time around."


    Rui quickly convinced him that it wasn''t worth it.


    He quickly left him behind as he headed to the mission affairs department, seeking help.


    "A coachman license matching the name of the coachman that will be driving a coachman at some point in the future?"


    "That''s right," Rui nodded.


    "We can procure this intelligence and service for you, but you need to purchase it unless it''s for the sake of a mission," The staff member informed him.


    "It is thetter, actually," Rui exined. "Mission code C48n139."


    She quickly referred to the code that Rui was talking about, before pausing abruptly. "I''m afraid this mission is beyond my clearance level."


    "Hm?"


    "You''ll need to speak to deputy director Feric Franmonth," She informed him.


    Rui frowned. "Can you not just fulfill my requirements?"


    "I''m afraid not, sir." She replied. "Do you want me to book an appointment soon?"


    Rui sighed. "Please do."


    He did not want to dy the process much, but he could not do anything about it for the moment. He definitely needed some help from the Floating Sect.


    Thankfully, it wasn''t too long before the deputy director was sitting across from him in his office.


    The man was a refreshing breath of fresh airpared to the rest of the ind, the entire office was part of the human wing with standard human conditions, so Rui had to quickly readjust.


    "So then," guardian Falken," The man smiled. "I heard you took on mission C48m139."


    The man gave off a different vibe from the rest of the ind, almost like he didn''t even belong. If anything, his vibe reminded him of the merchants of the Shionel Confederation.


    "I did," Rui nodded. "I require a coachman license with the name being the same as any coachman driving carriage to deliver a shipment to the militaryplex."


    "We can provide that¡­" He nodded. "But the militaryplex has sophisticated anti-espionage technology. The recent supply of esoteric substances that can jam energy flux really well from the Shionel Dungeon has caused a spike in anti-espionage measures. You won''t be able to gain any information just by infiltrating as a coachman, they won''t let you go anywhere."


    "I''m aware of that," Rui simply replied. "I have my ns, I just need assistance over this one matter, I do hope the Floating Sect can provide what I''m looking for."


    "Interesting, so you have a means of intelligence gathering that can evade anti-espionage measures," The man concluded with an expression of curiosity.


    Rui simply stared at him.


    "Don''t worry, the Floating Sect will provide you with everything you need. However, if you do employ the help of the Floating Sect, then you better seed, guardian Falken."


    The man promptly got up, prompting Rui to follow suit. "Good luck."


    Rui shook his hand before leaving his office. Now he just needed to wait.


    His n was to knock the coachman out and drug him for a while before proceeding to drive the carriage to the destination, the documentation was legit, so there were no problems. It would have the name of the coachman, which he would verify with his fake license. Once that check-up was through and they failed to notice his status as a Martial Squire, he would immediately st off his Riemannian Echo and figure out as much about the package as he could.


    Once he got in, the risks were considerably less, the only risks were at the entry of the militaryplex. That was why he was inclined to be most careful at that moment. He was prepared to instantly shoot off and escape if the n failed.


    Of course, he was quite confident that it wouldn''t but he was not someone who didn''t take precautions.


    He had already scoped the area and figured out the most optimal path of retreat. Running away at top speed would actually just draw attention. His escape ns involved running to crowded areas and blending into the crowds after putting on a Mind Mask, making it extremely difficult to single him out across the entire crowd.


    With that out of the way, he mostly everything covered, he had an external map of the entireplex memorized, and had taken measures to ensure that he would be able to maximize the amount of time he would spend in there to gain the maximum amount of data.


    Soon enough, all his preparations wereplete and he was ready to execute his n.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1075 Execution

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    Soon enough, the Floating Sect delivered. His fake license went by the name Frenklun, and that was also the name of the coachman that was scheduled to deliver a shipment.


    Rui had already memorized a map of the entire city, so he had already nned out at what points he was going to intercept the carriage.


    It was a remote street where there were hardly any people. He had also made preparations with the Floating Sect on what to do with the real Frenklun.Content property of N?velDra/ma.Org.


    Soon enough, it was showtime.


    Rui had long descended from Ajanta Ind as he made his way to the Graheria Kingdom through the tedious route yet again.


    He positioned himself at the interception point well ahead of time, waiting.


    And soon enough, the time came. A carriage turned into the remote small alley street, being pulled by two horses.


    Rui appeared in front of the carriage, stumbling, before copsing to the ground. Frenklun hurriedly stopped the horses before opening the door to his carriage.


    TAP


    Rui gently bopped his hand against the man''s neck. Yet even that little effort shook his brain enough to cause enough blunt force trauma to the brain, knocking him out in the process.


    (''Sorry about this, but I''ll need you to go to sleep,'') Rui felt guilt once he drugged the man. Soon enough, a Martial Apprentice arrived.


    "Guardian Falken,"


    "Take over," Rui nodded as he handed him the man. "Make sure you don''t hurt him."


    Rui felt guilty about hurting innocent people who didn''t consent to being hurt in an implicit fashion.


    He had far fewer qualms about doing the same against Martial Artists, the second they chose to stand and fight when they could lose their life, being fully aware of that, then Rui didn''t feel guilty.


    But hurting innocent random civilians was not something that he enjoyed doing. He quickly put such thoughts out of his head for the time being before he got into the carriage and started the horses moving once more.


    Although he had never once driven horses pulling a carriage, he had memorized all the actions that coachmen did when they drove the horses to do various actions. He was d that he wasn''t experiencing any difficulties with that part, that would be quite embarrassing.


    Rui scanned the storage carriage as he drove it, looking to gain a good understanding of what was there.


    (''Esoteric mineral and organic supplies,'') Rui mused.


    He recognized several popr esoteric substances andpounds that were ubiquitous in many industries for very basic and fundamental technologies.


    His knowledge base from getting a journeyman schr degree in general sciences meant that he gained a decent foundation on moremonly used esoteric substances.


    Soon enough, he had arrived.


    The guards walked up to him. "Papers."


    Rui handed over several sheets, which they thoroughly checked through and even verified were legit.


    "License."


    Rui fished out his fake license handing it to them nonchntly, a minuteter, he got both of them back.


    "Open the doors,"


    The two of them spent some time running their senses through the luggage and the goods.


    It was a minute before they were done and the gates were finally opened.


    "Go right ahead,"


    Rui heaved a sigh of relief as he giddied the horses, setting them forward on a trot. He immediately sted off his Riemannian Echo the deeper he got into the establishment. He knew that the storage docking section was deep enough into the establishment andpound that he would be within the range of things that he ordinarily wouldn''t get to be within the range. The military base was sorge even with his range he only got to see a small part of the wholeplex.


    That was why he had entered recording mode as he recorded every frame that his mind took before inputting it into his Mind Pce. He didn''t have time to consciously review what every person was saying in real time otherwise he would miss out on some data that he was too preupied to think about.


    "Record first, thinkter," Rui''s eyes sharpened as he sucked in information like a ck hole.


    His mind became aputer as it systematically sucked in information about his environment. The infrastructure, the technology, and more importantly the words being exchanged by people.


    Thankfully, because the military base was so big, it took quite some time for him to reach his destination. And throughout every inch of that journey, he had absorbed it all. As he reached the destination, his senses came across something interesting.


    A gigantic testing facility that went deep underground. It was almost outside the sensory range of the Riemannian Echo technique. It was the one and only such underground structure that he hade across thus far.


    Naturally, it drew his attention even if he did document all the information on everything. After all, why was such a ce built if the entire military base as a whole was highly inessible and had great measures in ce?


    That was why he continued paying attention to it even when he reached his destination.


    There were people within the underground facility, however, they were far scarcer than the people in the other buildings, sections, and infrastructure.


    Based on their attire, Rui surmised that they were either extremely important military officials or schrs of sorts, based on theb coat attire that many of them had on.


    "Open the back!"


    Rui was jolted back as he immediatelyplied with them. Much to his dismay, the men began removing and storing all the supply shipments in the storage facility at a quick pace. It wasn''t even ten minutes before all the supply shipments were quickly stored in the storage facility.


    "Tsk," Rui tutted. (''This is too quick. I need more time.'')


    He quickly thought of several possibilities. The first was to simply knock them out and wait.


    (''No,'') He shook his head.


    Surveince was not low and he would be caught quickly, he needed some other way.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1076 Discovery

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    He couldn''t disy Squire-level techniques, or he would certainly be caught. Knocking them out also would definitely put him on a clock as they would certainly be noted to be missing sooner orter.


    He made a split-second decision.


    CRACK


    One of the wheels of the carriage cracked a bit once Rui got onto the carriage. He timed the damage with a flick of his foot to make it look like the wheel had already been damaged prior and broke when he stepped back in.


    "Tsk, the wheel¡­" Rui murmured as he got off.


    "What happened?"


    "Seems like the wheel of the carriage has broken down a bit," Rui replied as he took a good long look.


    "If your carriage has issues, then you should report them," The man growled. "We don''t have anything here to help with that."


    "That''s fine, I have a spare wheel and some necessary tools, it will take me a bit, but I can definitely fix it,"


    The workers nced at each other before looking back at him. "Make it quick."


    "Will do,"


    Rui happily got to work as he took his own sweet time slowly elevating the carriage to a fixed position while patiently inspecting the wheel.


    Meanwhile, his mind was busy listening to all the information he could get from the underground area.


    "Sir, the quality checks have been¡­"


    "The royal family has invested¡­"All rights ? N?velDrama.Org.


    "The Felmakgium stabilizer will be functional as soon as¡­"


    Rui worked on his wheel as he documented all of the conversations. He also paid a good amount of attention to theyout, the infrastructure, the instruments, objects, and machines. He didn''t bother analyzing their words, for now, he only made sure that he documented everything.


    That was until he heard something that drew his attention from his menial wheel recement task.


    "The king has personally informed me to make sure that nothing goes wrong with the production process. This weapon is the key to taking down the Ajanta Ind, and destroying the Floating Sect."


    Rui paused for a moment as he processed that, still keeping up the documentation. Yet he couldn''t help but focus on that for a minute.


    (''It seems I underestimated how important this purchase from Frigga Industries was.'')


    He knew that the nations of the Kaddar Region were determined to take Ajanta Ind down, but he had thought that for the most part, they had given up because their hands were tied.


    After all, there wasn''t much they could do. If they tried destroying the ind, it would only bring about their own destruction since the debris would split up and rain down on the Kaddar Region in an unstoppable hail of meteorites. The destruction would be incalcble.


    The only way they could get rid of the threat was by taking control of the ind and gently moving away from the Kaddar Region, before destroying it, but the Floating Sect refused to allow that to happen.


    Although there were skirmishes from both sides, both sides avoided an all-out war because it would cause too much damage to the ind.


    They were basically unable to do anything.


    (''Yet it seems that they haven''t given up,'')


    Whatever this weapon was, it was something that was supposed to allow them to be able to deal with this issue.


    (''Persistent, aren''t they?'') He tutted to himself as he fitted the new wheel.


    He could understand why they were, of course. He had heard that the economy of a nation often hit a bit of a slump whenever the ind passed over it. The reason for this was that the citizens were paranoid about the debris falling from the ind.


    Apparently, this was not infrequent. The ind bottom often dropped rocks of varying sizes on nations, that had, in the past, resulted in anywhere from merely injuring a person to massacring schools of students. Although given the diminutive size of the indpared to the nation, it could not rain debris across the entire nation, it did not matter to the citizens. An understandably deep phobia and paranoia had developed in the hearts of the citizens despite the governments of the Kaddar Region taking measures to ensure debris didn''t reach the ground.


    (''It''s not just a hypothetical possibility of the ind dropping and wiping out the nations of the Kaddar Region,'') Rui realized. (''There''s a very detrimental impact it has on the nations even if it never falls.'')


    With that in mind, he could see the Graheria Kingdom going out of its way to purchase some kind of superweapon from one of the biggest weapons manufacturers across the continent to deal with the ind once and for all.


    (''It isn''t just the Graheria Kingdom,'') Rui realized as he picked up more from the conversations of the people in the underground facility. (''It''s the Kaddar Treaty Organization as well,'')


    The Kaddar Treaty Organization was an organization that was formed around the Kaddar Treaty signed by all seventeen of the nations in the Kaddar Region to put an end to the collective existential threat of Ajanta Ind.


    "Hey, how long are you taking?" One of the workers growled.


    "I''m almost done," Rui replied as he fitted in thest screw. "There we go."


    "Good, now get going, you''ve already been here for far longer than authorized!"


    Rui quickly got onto the chariots before setting the horses into a trot as he delved into his own mind and reviewed everything that he had just learned.


    (''The Floating Sect will likely undergo tumultuous times in the future,'') Rui narrowed his eyes.


    For a brief moment, he considered leaving the ind. If the superweapon was some absurdly powerfulser that vaporized the ind without leaving anything behind, then he did not want to get caught up in it.


    (''It''s unlikely it''s something like that.'') Rui mused. (''I don''t even know if Martial Master has attacks that erase the ind out of existence. They might be able to destroy it with a single attack, but it would still cause too much coteral damage.'')


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1077 Spar

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    He highly doubted that the Kaddar Region possessed the wealth to purchase a weapon that powerful, given that the nations weren''t exactly economic powerhouses in a broad sense, they probably did not have ess to the means to build or acquire such a super weapon.


    Since that was the case, Rui was inclined to stay. The benefits of the Floating Sect were great, he hadn''t even been there long but he felt as though his body had grown stronger after being strengthened and nourished under extreme conditions.


    One of the reasons he was especially determined to make the best of the Floating Sect was because of the reveal of the breakthrough to the Senior Realm. He now knew that one of the conditions for reaching the Senior Realm was having a body capable of withstanding the power of the Martial Heart.


    Blood did not glow naturally, it had no ability to glow, yet the Martial Heart caused it to glow. He couldn''t even imagine the sheer amount of energy that was pumping along with the blood for it to glow in that fashion.


    If the body could not withstand that power, then it would just explode under all that power. Although he knew the Martial Heart improved durability with the power supplied to muscles and flesh, it could not allow the body to sustain the power of the Martial Heart by itself.Content property of N?velDra/ma.Org.


    The body needed to grow to a certain degree and mature allowing it to withstand the full power of the Martial Heart.


    Ajanta Ind was definitely a ce that could greatly elerate what would otherwise be a lengthier process, which was Rui had grown a new-found appreciation for the location. The extra gravity forged his body into something stronger. The longer he spent there, the stronger he grew, the closer he reached the threshold of being able to withstand the power of his Martial Heart.


    (''Guess we''ll just have to weather through and fight for our chance to stay there,'') Rui mused.


    He didn''t mind that.


    Soon enough, he was well away from the military area. He simply stopped his carrriage some distance away, before simply leaving. It was half a day before he finally returned to the Floating Sect.


    STEP


    The moment he returned, the familiar sensation of crushing gravity, and liquid-like atmosphere returned to him.


    He quickly headed to the intelligence department of the Floating Sect, hidden away deep in the human environments of the ind.


    "A mission report, is it?" The staff member at the counter replied to him, before pulling up up some documents. "You can fill it out here."


    He was familiar with this process, the Martial Union had a simr albeit more sophisticated system going on.


    However, he certainly flustered the staff as he continued writing endlessly. He requested extra paper every five minutes.


    He was there for three hours.


    "Phew¡­" He huffed. (''That took forever, but at least it''s off my shoulders now. The Floating Sect isn''t ipetent enough to fumble the bag after the clear-cut information I''ve provided them.'')


    It wasn''t long before he finally left, immediately heading for the chambers.


    "You''re finally back!" Kane eximed. "That must have been one hell of an investigative missions.


    "Most of the time went into travel," Rui grumbled. "Because the Kaddar nations are so hostile to us Martial Artists, they indiscriminately force us to go through tedious paths."


    "Tell me about it. Deliveries are nightmares."


    They chatted about it a bit more, before Rui inquired about his attire. "You''re going somewhere?"


    "Yeah, the sixth ss'' sparring sessions with Senior Xanarn are about to begin," Kane replied.


    "Ah," Rui''s eyes lit up. "Right, we get to watch. I''m definitelying for that."


    The two of them quickly made their way to the arena. Rui could feel the pent-up power within the rtively small area. Dozens of Martial Squires, and one Martial Senior.


    (''They''re all strong for sure,'') Rui noted as he eyed the Martial Squires of the sixth rank. They possessed a sense of very solid power, the kind that would not budge easily. Rui wasn''t too confident whether he could many of the strongest ones.


    "Align yourselves," Senior Xanarn instructed simply.


    She wore simple Martial attire, her appearance was ordinary, barring the fact that her eyes were perenially closed.


    Yet she was without a doubt the strongest person there. Her power eclipsed all of them, and Rui subconsciously tensed up when he tried peering at the depths of her power.


    The Martial Squires arranged themselves quickly. Close-range Martial Squires were just meters away from her in every direction, while longer-range Martial Squires put considerable distance between themselves and her.


    Unlike duels, she allowed them to choose whatever distance they were mostfortable with.


    After all, it did not matter, they couldn''t beat her.


    "Take your stances."


    The tension in the room grew higher as all of the Martial Squires got ready for battle. Yet, Senior Xanarn still stood in ce nonchntly.


    "You know what this reminds me of?" Kane asked.


    Rui thought for a moment, before smiling. "Back when we were Apprentices in the Academy, training with Squire Kyrie."


    "Nailed it," Kane grinned. "Good old days."


    The nostalgia from the memories was heavy, he hadn''t thought about those training sessions in a long time, yet they bore an unmistakable resemnce to what he was currently witnessing.


    "Begin." She instructed them, and all hell broke loose.


    Ten Martial Squires rushed in towards her as the longer-ranged Martial Squires took to the air to bombard her with attacks from above.


    Yet none of them reached her.


    She breathed deeply, employing a breathing technique as she gestured a powerful wave of sound with her movements alone!


    The close-range Martial Squires looking tond some strikes werepletely swept away by the attack!


    They tried their best to resist, yet none of them could. The long-range Martial Squires began bombarding her from across the arena. Yet she gracefully evaded all of them as she began targeting all of the hapless Martial Squires one by one.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1078 Nuances

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    Barring the first attack which gave her space, Rui found that she actually fought remarkably reserved. That made sense, there was no point to a training session if she simply blew them away with the power of her Heart.


    (''In fact, she doesn''t even seem to be using her Heart.'') Rui''s eyes widened.


    That was incredibly impressive in his eyes. It meant that she was severely restricting herself to ensure that she didn''t devastate them with a single attack.


    Rui had wondered how strong Martial Seniors were without their Martial Hearts. After all, the power of the Martial Heart was the defining condition that separated the Squire and the Senior Realms. Did that mean that a Martial Senior without their Martial Heart was merely as strong as a Martial Squire?


    (''Surprisingly, that doesn''t appear to be that far from the truth,'') Rui realized as he watched Senior Xanarn fight. (''She''s holding back by fighting without her Martial Heart, yet with the limited power that she had availed to herself, it doesn''t appear to be too easy.


    Her movements were sharp and her expression was taut. She certainly was not at a lower hand, which meant that she was probably operating at grade-ten Squire-level power or perhaps quasi-Senior level power.


    Rui thought back to the Root, which was a quasi-Senior level threat. She definitely wasn''t operating at that level right now, given that she had sealed her Martial Heart. It also showed Rui that the Martial Heart was an overwhelming proportion of the power of Martial Seniors. Unlike when Squire Kyrie restricted her movements, this wasn''t as much of a restriction of her normal power, but aplete absence of it due to the Martial Heart not being activated.


    Squire Kyrie retained her toughness and reaction speed even when she held back because she could not hold those back.


    Yet Senior Xanarn could hold those back to a much greater degree.


    (''Interesting,'' this is so different from the power of the Apprentice and Squire Realms,'') Rui mused as he studied her movements with interest.


    The power of the Apprentice and Squire Realms were inducible, the core source of power never dissipated. The cognitive enhancements to the brain gained by discovering the Martial Path were permanent, barring extreme cases. The Martial body was certainly not something that could go away, it was a permanent change.


    Yet it appeared that the Martial Heart was different. It was almost closer to a techniques as opposed to a Realm, in a sense. Rui found that to be quite interesting, he wondered if the same was the case for the higher Realms.


    (''It seems that every Realm has something or the other that''s unique in the power that it gives to the Martial Artist.'')


    He watched Senior Xanarn''s movements closely. The total amount of force she had exerted was not all that great, yet she exerted them with a level of efficiency that could not be underestimated.


    He wasn''t too interested in the Martial Squires. While it was true they were powerful, he had seen many powerful Martial Squires, it was far from a novelty at this point in time.


    Instead, he focused on her movements as his mind rushed into work.


    He was building a predictive model.


    He abstained from doing so against guardians because he did not want to be dependant on pre-preparation to defeat people he ought to be able to defeat without preparation like fellow Martial Squires, and because he didn''t want to get a position that he couldn''t defend without preparation.


    Neither of those reasons were relevant here, since he was dealing with a Martial Senior who he could never possibly defeat in the Squire Realm, and since this was sparring training and not an official match.


    That was why he went all out as he observed the patterns in her movements and quickly recorded them into his Mind Pce.


    (''Her movements are pristine,'') Rui admitted.


    She evaded attacks with just the necessary amount of effort, and nothing more. She exerted a level of efficiency that was truly impressive.


    (''She''s a sound-oriented Martial Artist,'') Rui mused.


    Yet she wasn''t ordinary, her production and maniption of sound far surpassed Rui''s Sonic Bullets.


    She used sound for offense, defense, and even maneuvering!


    Furthermore, it did not even appear that she was strictly using specific Martial Art techniques. It was as though her intuitive understanding of sound was so great that she no longer even needed strict Martial Art techniques to manipte them!


    (''Is this what bes of Martial Art when one traverses to higher Realms?'') Rui wondered. (''Do techniques cease to have form and simply be concepts and principles?'')


    He wasn''t sure, hecked too much insight into the higher Realms for him to be able toe to that conclusion.


    THWOOM!


    She swept several Martial Squires across the floor with strange motions that generated pulses of sounds. Rui found her motions to be mesmerizing, almost, so much so that he almost forgot to memorize her movements. Content is property ? N?velDrama.Org.


    "She hasn''t opened her eyes even once," Kane murmured.


    "She''s blind," Rui replied. "She primarily relies on her hearing."


    "That''s incredible," Kane remarked. "I wonder why she chose that kind of Martial body."


    "She lost her vision even before she became a Martial Artist," Rui informed him. "She adapted so well to her disability, that it ended up giving her her strength and even defined her Martial Path."


    "She lost her vision before she became a Martial Artist?" Kane murmured with widened eyes. "That''s¡­ incredible."


    Although Martial Artists could cope without vision as long as they learned sensory techniques or trained existing senses well, the same was not true for normal humans. The fact that she became a Martial Artist despite having lost her vision was definitely shocking.


    Rui even guessed that the reason her Martial Path was rted to sound was because of her blindness, it was an instance of traumatic and significant events having an impact on one''s Martial Path when they did end up discovering it.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1079 Tokugawa Ieyasu

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    WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH!


    She hopped through the air as she evaded waves of attacks one after the other. Her graceful movements reminded Rui of a ballet dancer. Every step she took produced melodic notes, winding into an orchestra of sorts as she maneuvered across the arena.


    (''She''s using sound to propel herself forward,'') Rui admired her footwork.


    While the other Martial Squires were at a loss as to how she was doing that, Rui had already figured out the mechanism. Acoustic propulsion was a concept that already existed on Earth, although he wasn''t too familiar with it since it was something he had nced over back when he was doing his degree.


    The very atmosphere was nothing more strings of a guitar for her to y her melody over.


    (''Furthermore, she uses this trait to her advantage to produce sounds that actually impair her opponents!'') Rui winced as a painful frequency of sound bombarded his ears.


    It produced a neurological response that would get in the way ofbat. It meant that even as she dodged, she was attacking her opponent!


    (''This must be the first evasive-offensive attack that I have ever seen.'') Rui gaped.


    He had never seen an attack produced by avoiding an opponent, although had seen evasion and offense simultaneously, this was different.


    Some Martial Squires had already fallen to their knees, clutching their head as they shivered in repulsed pain.


    The stronger ones managed to weather through partially while they still retainedbat effectiveness.Text content ? N?velDrama.Org.


    (''I bet she could easily destroy their eardrums and knock them out unconscious, if not kill them if she wanted, but that would be going overboard, and it would be of no benefit and antithetical to the point of a joint sparring session as this,'')


    WHOOM!


    All Martial Squires leaped back, grimacing as she spun on her toe, radiating sound like the sun did light.


    (''Furthermore, there''s no doubt that Ajanta Ind is her home court!'') Rui realized.


    After all, the atmosphere of Ajanta Ind was like an ocean due to the extreme gravity pulling down on the air, making it as dense as a light liquid!


    It also meant that the speed and intensity of sound were much greater, and it was easier to produce sound through the atmosphere on the ind than onnd.


    (''She''s in her element,'') Rui realized. (''Even if she isn''t the strongest Martial Senior of the Floating Sect under normal circumstances, she''s probably extraordinarily powerful on the ind and unrivaled by fellow peers.'')


    Rui felt more confident about the prospects of the Floating Sect''s survival with Senior Xanarn keeping a watchful eye on it.


    (''I wonder who would win between Senior Ceeran and Senior Xanarn,'') Rui''s mind delved into the interesting hypothetical scenario.


    Senior Ceeran was without a doubt the strongest Martial Senior he had ever seen under normal circumstances, he was a high-grade Martial Senior who was working his way to the Master Realm. He fought off two grizzled Martial Senior warlords who had spent their entire lives waging life-or-death wars and decisively won against both of them.


    He did not believe that any of the Martial Seniors he had ever seen were his equals. However, Ajanta Ind was an overwhelming battlefield advantage for Senior Xanarn, she was an absolute nightmare to her peers, and he doubted whether Senior Ceeran would be able to win without a grueling fight.


    "It''s a shame she isn''t going to show her Martial Heart," Rui murmured as she began dowsing the final mes of resistance from the various guardians.


    "I did," Kane smugly responded.


    "Hm? I''m guessing she did a demonstration of it that I missed? Shame."


    "No, actually," Kane shook his head. "She did it in the middle of a sparring session against the first ss of Martial Squires."


    "What?" Rui frowned. "She said she wouldn''t use her Heart."


    "Yeah, but she broke her word," Kane replied.


    Rui raised an eyebrow, turning back to the fight. "Well, the first ss mustprise of the most powerful grade-nine Martial Squires and the veteran grade-ten Martial Squires, still, it''s incredible that they managed to force her to use her Martial Heart."


    "Actually, they didn''t."


    Rui turned back to Kane, perplexed.


    "The guardians of the first ss were incredibly strong, and they definitely pushed her extremely far, based on how much she was strained. But she beat almost all of them without using her Martial Heart."


    "Then¡­?"


    "It was the guardian of the first chamber, Tokugawa Ieyasu, that forced her to use her Martial Heart, all by himself."


    Rui''s eyes widened in shock. "You''re telling me one man forced her to use her true power?!"


    "Yeah, it was unbelievable," Kane sighed. "He waited for her to deal with all of them, and then fought her one-on-one. Her attacks that wore down dozens of grade-ten Martial Squires could not push him back. I did not know someone could be this strong while still being in the same Realm as me."


    Rui''s mouth opened, dumbstruck, as he listened to Kane issuing some serious praise!


    "By the end of it, he came this close to beating her, but then her body lit up with those red lines and it was over."


    "That¡­" Rui almost cursed himself for having been on a mission. "Damn."


    His curiosity spiked. Now he wanted to know everything about this Tokugawa Ieyasu.


    (''That sounds like a Japanese name, I feel like I''ve heard it somewhere back on Earth, to be honest,'') He considered it before putting aside the idea. (''If he''s that strong, I can see why he''s the number one.'')


    WHOOM!


    A widespread soundwave from Senior Xanarn blew away the few remaining guardians fighting, putting an end to the sparring session.


    She wiped some sweat off her forehead as she undid her hair. First aid teams immediately swarmed over the guardians at her instructions quickly healing the Martial Squires one by one. Many of them were merely injured and exhausted, though many were knocked out and some were even seriously injured.


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 Chapter 1080 Summon

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    "What was his Martial Art like?" Rui asked Kane, as the question popped into his head.Content property of N?velDra/ma.Org.


    "Funnily enough, it was eerily simr to that of Senior Xanarn''s," Kane remarked. "Actually, it was extremely simr to Senior Xanarn''s now that I think about it."


    Rui furrowed his eyebrows in response.


    That was indeed an odd coincidence, he wondered if Tokugawa was a disciple of Senior Xanarn. Perhaps he had inherited a good portion of her Martial Path that exined why his Martial Art resembled hers.


    He wasn''t sure if that was the case though. How could a disciple surpass the master when they weren''t even of the same Realm? Although it was technically possible that the man had absorbed Senior Xanarn''s teachings in a very brief period and then quickly surpassed her after learning everything, that was far more than just a little unlikely.


    Once the sparring session finished. Senior Xanarn spoke with all the guardians one-on-one to give them tips and areas of improvement, that was the true yield that the Martial Squires were looking for. The insights of a Martial Senior were the reason that they chose to partake in this sparring session.


    Rui smiled with excitement, he couldn''t wait for her to reach the tenth ss, and he looked forward to sparring against her with everything he had.


    "Sir?" A messenger from the management department addressed Rui.


    "Hm?" Rui turned towards her. "Yes?"


    "The deputy director of the intelligence department wishes to speak to you," She informed him. "Please head to his office as soon as possible."


    Rui had expected as much, nodding.


    The intelligence that he provided to the intelligence department on the superweapon that they hadmissioned from Frigga Industries was sure to attract a lot of attention. The only reason he hadn''t been summoned immediately was that the report needed to undergo processing by an analyst of the department before it would be categorized or organized by the protocols of the system.


    He suspected that the deputy director had immediately been alerted of the intelligence that Rui had supplied the second that the analyst had finished processing them.


    (''It''s quite fast and speedy of them,'') Rui mused as he got up.


    "Are you in trouble?" Kane raised an eyebrow.


    "No," Rui chuckled. "I''ll catch youter."


    He threw onest nce at Senior Xanarn before leaving the battle arena.


    It wasn''t long before he arrived at the office of the deputy director.


    Arge and prominent board featuring the name ''Feric Franmalth'' was on the door, greeting Rui.


    KNOCK KNOCK


    "Who''s there?"


    "Squire Falken, sir," Rui replied. "I believe you called for me."


    "Ah¡­"


    The door opened. Immediately, Rui was greeted by Feric, who was sitting at his table with a document that looked like the one that Rui had filled his report in.


    He nced at the two guardians that were in the room at the door, guarding it.


    This was one of the duties of the guardians, providing general security by taking on such roles every once in a while.


    Rui could immediately tell that they were grade-nine Martial Squires which meant that they were most likely in the higher ranks of the Floating Sect, perhaps the third or fourth.


    "Come in, guardian Falken, take a seat," The man ushered Rui in, having him sit down before him.


    "I was just going through your report here," He remarked as he skimmed through the many pages, before finally closing it and taking a good long look at Rui.


    His mouth curled in a smile, but it didn''t reach his eyes. "This is quite the report. You can imagine why I called you here."


    "To verify the veracity of the report, to gain more details, and to potentially employ my services on the matter to gain more information," Rui replied.


    "That''s¡­ actually exactly why I called you here," The man smiled. "Since you already know why you''re here, I will cut to the chase. Your report, if true, is of great importance to us. You have warned us of a significant threat well ahead of time, potentially even saving the Floating Sect, but¡­"


    He paused for a moment. "If false, it would be disastrous, we cannot afford to prepare for a war that isn''t going to happen."


    Rui understood where the man wasing from. A lot rode on the intelligence report being true, and currently, the only existing confirmation came from one low-ranked guardian who had very recently joined the Floating Sect.


    The deputy director would be a fool to take this report at face value without any skepticism. Even if Rui wasn''t a nted agent with malicious intent, he could still just be wrong, and that would be nheless bad.


    "Let us talk about the means by which you obtain this intelligence," The man began.


    Rui immediately knew that he wanted to know more about Rui''s sensory technique that allowed him to spy on conversations happening deep within a militaryplex armed with anti-espionage tech, from the outside.


    "It''s a powerful high-grade sensory technique that can entirely bypass anti-espionage technology," Rui exined. "It has good range too."


    "And how exactly does this technique function?"


    Rui paused for a moment as he considered whether he wanted to divulge. On one hand, he didn''t like divulging his hand, on the other, he kind of needed to if he wanted his work to be valued by the Floating Sect.


    He had a decision to make, and he made it quickly.


    "It works by sensing through gravity," Rui sighed.


    Although the Riemannian Echo technique was one of his greatest techniques, its relevance tobat in a day-to-day context was rather limited. He didn''t lose much by revealing it.


    "Gravity?" The man''s eyebrows rose. "I''ve heard that only Martial Masters are able to do such a thing. Do you take me for a fool, young man?"


    Rui''s eyebrows furrowed.


    This was the first time he had heard such a thing, he had inadvertently learned more about the value of his technique, and unexpected boon.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1081 Goal

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    "I can prove it if you want," Rui shrugged. "Not necessarily the gravity part but bypassing anti-espionage techniques with my technique."


    The man eyes him carefully. "I''ll take you up on that. The chambers of the Floating Sect are lined with anti-espionage technology. Are you able to peer through those?"


    Rui could suddenly feel the two guardians standing guard at the table had grown more alert and focused on the conversation.Content is property ? N?velDrama.Org.


    Of course, they would.


    If Rui could spy on all the guardians while they trained, that was a serious breach of their privacy that the chambers were supposed to secure.


    "No," He shook his head. "The gravity of the ind is extremely overpowered. It''s like trying to hear whispers in the middle of a hurricane. My technique is unable to function normally on this ind."


    "Making it unavable to be tested on this ind, seems rather convenient."


    "Given that it is true, I find it decidedly inconvenient," Rui retorted calmly. "I am willing to prove it onnd."


    "Hm," The man considered. "That offer will be taken into consideration. If we find that your technique and report are exactly as you say they are, then are you willing to aid us with a full-blown investigation of the alleged weapon?"


    "No," Rui shook his head unhesitatingly.


    "Why not?" The man''s eyes narrowed.


    "Because it will take away far too much time from my training," Rui simply replied. "I came here to grow stronger. I cannot do that if I am engaging in covert intelligence operations."


    "Even if it''s for the sake of the Floating Sect."


    "I came here for my sake, not for that of the sect," Rui calmly replied.


    "Hm," The man didn''t take any issue with that. "However, engaging in operations with real stakes can be of benefits that mundane training cannot provide."


    Rui cringed inside at the terrible attempt to persuade him. While the man appeared to be apetent intelligence officer, it was clear that his understanding of Martial Artists was not the best.


    "My Martial Art and Path are not centered around fields relevant to covert operations," He sighed. "I will not make any gains by simply executing such operations. Furthermore, I am aware that the Floating Sect does not require my aid beyond this point. Just the fact that the Floating Sect was able to acquire the intelligence that the Graheria Kingdom wasmissioning Frigga Industries means that the Floating Sect possessed an intelligencework that prated mid-level executives and officers of the executive government of the Graheria Kingdom. The fact that the Floating Sect was unable to find out what themission was means that it has not prated the level of clearance needed to gain information on themission."


    The deputy director remained silent. Yet his silence was loud, he could not deny Rui''s sharp deductions.


    "However, now that I''ve pointed you well in the right direction, it should be possible for you to gain more information to either prove me wrong or right, correct?"


    Rui had given them many details including locations, names, and details surrounding the transaction and the package.


    He knew that these details, while not something that the Floating Sect could have acquired by itself were something it could look to verify now that they had be aware of it.


    There were many things the Floating Sect could do with the sheer amount of detailed information that Rui presented to them


    The man smiled. "You appear far more impressive than I gave you credit for, guardian Falken. Between this, the sheer information density and volume that you somehow recorded and documented, and your smooth means of infiltrating and spying, you''ve been of great service to the Floating Sect. You are eligible for all the training and growth services from the Martial Seniors once we verify your technique off Ajanta Ind."


    Although the man was gracious, he still insisted on Rui proving his ability to sense past anti-espionage techniques.


    Rui was fine with that, it meant that he had achieved what he wanted and could now focus on the sparring training with the Martial Seniors of the Floating Sect.


    In the following days, the deputy director kept up his word and made sure to test the veracity of Rui''s senses. The test urred in the sky, distanced from the ind where Rui was asked to identify the objects within boxes that were heavily lined with anti-espionage technology.


    Rui easily answered all of them, giving detailed answers on the objects within the boxes.


    Once Rui had proven his technique, even the deputy director had to admit that Rui''s tale was far more credible and believable after that.


    The Floating Sect''s intelligence department moved in ordance as it mobilized to dig deeper into the truth of the matter.


    As far as Rui was concerned, he had washed his hands of the matter. The best thing he could do now was grow stronger. He intended to remain in the Floating Sect long enough to fulfill at least one of the conditions to bing a Senior.


    With that in mind, he entered the arena with a determined expression. Around him were dozens of Martial Squires of the tenth ss.


    At the center of the training arena was Senior Xanarn.


    "Position yourselves." She simply instructed.


    Various Martial Squires stood away from her at various distances. Kane stood closer to her while Rui chose to stand at medium range from her.


    Rui had prepared quite well for this asion, he had held nothing back as he adapted to everything that he saw about Senior Xanarn''s motions, developing a predictive model while also organizing all the counters that he had developed for Xanarn''s movements from the counter-adaptive model.


    Although the sound nature certainly threw the Earth-based system off, hepensated by recing the ipatibilities with more appropriate responses.


    He had but one goal for this sparring session; he wanted to see if he could force Senior Xanarn to use her Martial Heart, the way the guardian of the first chamber did.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1082 Begin

    ?


    Rui exhaled deeply as he closed his eyes, concentrating. His breathing evened out as he gathered his awareness and focus. Honing them towards their target.


    Senior Xanarn.


    He breathed deeply, opening his eyes.


    "Begin."


    Immediately, the guardians began bombarding her with attacks. As always, the close-range Martial Squires rushed in, hoping tond some attacks immediately as soon as the session began.


    Meanwhile, the long-range Martial Squire also rose up as they aimed at her, avoiding the close-range Martial Squires.


    Rui, on the other hand, did not rush in or attack from range immediately.


    No.


    He waited. He waited as he watched her with hawk eyes.


    She pirouetted through the air, releasing a tornado of painful melodies through the air, tormenting the Martial Squires.


    Yet even then, the moment he was waiting for had alreadye.


    (''Now!'') Rui sted out a tier Transverse Resonance.


    The supersonic sound bullet swam through the air, yet it wasn''t until thest moment that Senior Xanarn sensed the Sonic Bullet.


    THWOOM!


    The sound projectile dispelled as she breathed heavily, activating a breathing technique that generated a wall of sound, barely blocking his attack just an inch away from her body.


    "Tsk," Rui tutted. (''Her pirouettes are paired with some technique that produces a lot of sound of one particr frequency. If I can produce a sound projectile of simr frequency, then I can camouge my sound behind her sound. But it looks like it wasn''t that easy to get a free hit.'')


    Rui had noticed many patterns in her movements and had prepared extensively for a confrontation with her.


    She turned towards Rui with a surprised expression, before an amused smile reced her expression. Sheunched waves of sound against him, looking to incapacitate him.Content property of N?velDra/ma.Org.


    Yet, to her surprise, it didn''t happen.


    He had already made up his mind to rely on long-range attacks for as much as he could. The reason was simple, in order to adapt to her, he needed to be able to ensure that her incapacitating sound did not get in the way.


    Unlike all the other guardians, he actually had a way by which he could negate the effects of her sound on himself.


    THWOOM!


    Heunched Mighty Roar sh st before him, and the two sound waves interacted in a way that left him unharmed!


    (''Destructive superposition for the win,'') Rui smirked.


    This was the opposite of the Transverse Resonance technique that empowered attacks by relying on constructive superposition to superimpose two sound waves upon one another to produce a stronger resultant wave with the energy of the two waves.


    He had used destructive resonance to cancel out the annoying sound, furthermore, the best part of this little tactic was that it only required as much or a little bit more sound than the sound that the attack contained.


    Considering her attacks were often centered around hurting people with sound passively produced by her movements, Rui found it prudent to be able to handle them.


    She smiled mildly at that, yet she wasn''t done. She swirled through the air, releasing


    an enormous st wave of sound!


    The sheer power in every square meter exceeded even a high-grade Martial Squire''s ability to defend against with ease, only the strongest of defensive Martial Artists managed to withstand the attack.


    And Rui.


    This time, Senior Xanarn looked surprised that not only had Rui defended against the attack even though it seemed to have hit him, but he also seemed unharmed.


    (''Hehehe¡­ It worked,'') Rui smirked.


    What he had effectively done was release arge and diluted Mighty Roar sh st just moments before the attack reached him. Instead of focusing on a single pulse to form a dense attack, he let it expand in front of him just as her sound attack reached him.


    It was effectively no different from a shield as long as he timed it right and made sure it underwent destructive resonance. Furthermore, he burned less energy than she did, because she was constantly making wide-arearge-scale attacks that attacked many Martial Squires at once, this was a pattern that she had yet to break in the times that he had observed her holding back.


    It meant that he needed to defend against only a portion of her power, meaning he consumed less energy than she did.


    Ordinarily, he would have unhesitatingly gone all out with Godspeed, employing Forestep to get as much of an advantage as he could.


    But this time, he didn''t.


    (''I''m not fighting alone,'') He mused as he put distance between himself and Senior Xanarn. Rather than simplyunching huge barrages of attacks, he chose higher certainty shots and used tier four and sometimes even tier Transverse Resonance to make sure he hit her as hard as possible whenever he did.


    He was conserving stamina.


    Kane, too held back, exchanging nces with Rui as they confirmed their intentions with just simple nces, The two of them were extremely familiar with each other and didn''t even need to exchange a single word to understand each other inbat.


    Now was not the time for the two of them to use their most powerful trump cards. She was far too fresh, and the sparring battle was still far too chaotic for them to do so.


    One of the disadvantages of Rui''s Forestep technique was it relied on predictions to keep up with the movement speed of his Godspeed. What that meant was that the more he could predict in a given circumstance, the greater the risk he was enduring.


    Currently, the two of them were not facing Senior Xanarn alone, they were also fighting alongside many guardians who were going all out.


    Guardians that Rui could not predict, what if he ends up attacking one of them because he didn''t predict them getting in his way?


    Or worse yet, what if he himself ran into one of their attacks because he couldn''t predict them?


    He couldn''t use Forestep in such chaotic circumstances. Thus it was a better idea to let the sparring session die down a bit and let her burn her stamina while the two of them retained theirs.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1083 Coordination

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    A long and stressful game began for both Rui and Kane as they participated in the battle but with only a fraction of their full exertion. They fought just enough to not be noticed for not participating, but they made sure to retain their energy reserves.


    Kane didn''t even bother using Void Step to try and get her with stealth. He already knew that there was no way his misdirection was working on a Martial Senior, Martial Heart or not.


    Instead, he mostly stuck to asionally trying to get her in her blind spot whenever she was pressed heavily by many of the offensive heavy hitters.


    The battle slogged on and on for quite some time, however, Rui did not simply wait around conserving energy and getting in an asional strike. He also made his sound-canceling defenses against her attacks more subtle than before, he timed itter andter, and evenunched himself backward grimacing as though he had been struck or hadn''t been able to cancel everything out.


    To a certain extent, he could allow himself to get struck in order to make it seem more convincing too. His healing factor would mitigate lighter wounds by the end of the battle, so he carefully calcted how much he could let himself get hit in order to fake getting hurt.


    Of course, this wouldn''t entirely fool a Martial Senior with senses as powerful as hers were on Ajanta Ind, but that was fine, as long as he did not stand out like a sore thumb for clearly holding back, he was content.


    On top of that, he also spent more time refining his predictive model with the influx of data that he gained from this fight. Much to his delight he even ended up finding new patterns that he hadn''te across before.


    (''She disengages with the opposite foot of the direction that she pirouettes in,'')


    (''Her primary response to be attacked with a grappling maneuver is opening up distance beforeunching a sound attack,'')


    (''Her evasion is static as opposed to dynamic an overwhelming majority of the time against powerful singr attacks,'')


    It improved his ability to predict and adapt to her, making him more confident of taking her on when the time was right.


    The battle slogged on, but the oue was clear, the guardians were unable to take her down or evennd major damage on her.


    The sparring session went on for hours many of the Martial Squires who were partaking had already been mopped clean.


    Yet just as it seemed as though the battle was over.


    WHOOSH


    Senior Xanarn spun away, twirling through the air as she evaded two attacks simultaneously.


    "I knew you were stalling," She murmured without turning towards Rui. "Was it worth waiting? How are you going to fight me without the help of your peers?"


    Rui didn''t respond. "Fuuu¡­.."


    He exhaled deeply, sending a deep ripple through the dense atmosphere. She raised her eyebrow as she watched Rui employ a technique she hadn''t seen before.


    CRACKLE!


    He heard a sound of electricity chirping beside him.


    Rui and Kane exchanged nces.


    The next second, they almost disappeared. Their speed skyrocketed so high that the other Martial Squires raised their eyes in shock as they witnessed the two of them exhibiting speed that they had never seen before!


    Kane especially was truly bewildering, his Godspeed technique was perfect, and with Fulminata, he didn''t need to prepare reflexive pre-moves ahead of time as Rui did.


    In less than a millisecond, they had crossed the distance between them and her.


    WHOOSH!


    She barely evaded a flying knee kick from Kane with a shocked expression, yet what followed next was even more surprising to her.


    Rui''s foot was suddenly near her face.


    He had prepared the attack even before she dodged.


    BAM!!


    A powerful Flowing Canon kick armed with the might of Outer Convergence, Godspeed, Reverberating Lance, and Adamant Reforging crashed into her chin!


    Every guardian widened their eyes in shock!


    This was the first time anybody had cleanlynded such a powerful strike on her!


    A clear bruise appeared on her chin as she frowned in surprise.


    Yet, they refused to give her any breathing room at all. The two of them shed forward turning into hardly any more than blurs in the eyes of other Martial Artists.


    In just the briefest of moments, Kaneunched another strike, yet this time, she resolutely defended as she unleashed a powerful wave of pure sound!


    Kane immediately recoiled back, putting as much distance between him and the attack before it connected, yet Rui pushed past the attack like it was a ssh of water, canceling her sound with destructive resonance.


    He threw a full-powered strike at her, one that she evaded easily.


    Yet suddenly, his elbow was near her throat!


    POW!


    She barely managed to block the attack with a shocked expression on her face!


    It was as though Rui was attacking from the future!Content property of N?velDra/ma.Org.


    She realized that the previous attack had been a sneaky preparation for the next move from the very beginning.


    (''But that mea-!'')


    She couldn''t even finish a thought before an abysmally swift Kaneshed out at her once more, drawing her attention momentarily off Rui,


    That was a mistake.


    BOOM!!!


    She fended off a tier-five Transverse Resonance attack!


    Such an attack had already far surpassed his regr power, it was a whopping five times more powerful than his normal Mighty Roar sh st attack.


    Yet even before that attack ended Kane had already prepared another attack, while Rui immediately scurried over, preparing to counter her response!


    She wasn''t stupid.


    She had already realized what was going on.


    (''They''re using one another to catch me off-guard¡­ But it''s only possible because of him!'')


    BAM!!


    She nced at Rui, barely blocking an attack that seemingly reached her spot even before she reached it herself!


    (''He knows¡­ His insight into my movements is absurdly high for some reason. He doesn''t react, he preacts. There is not only nog, but there is negativeg!'')


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1084 Tough

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    The fundamental structure of the human consciousness was such that the human could truly ever focus on only one thing at a time. Even if one felt that they were thinking about multiple things at once, this was not true. It was an illusion, what was actually happening was that the mind was thinking about multiple things in extremely rapid session, making it seem like it was focusing on multiple things simultaneously.


    This was the same mechanism that processors worked through, they could only engage in one distinct process at once and switched between many in extremely rapid session.


    It was because of this that in the brief moments where she had to focus on Kane, Rui''s attack had almostpletelynded on her!


    As an experienced Martial Artist, she quickly realized the exact mechanics by which Rui was able tond powerful attacks on her bypassing her active defense due to effectively exploiting a momentary mental blindspot.


    Yet she underestimated what was happening.


    It wasn''t just her that Rui was predicting, it was also Kane!


    Kane was aware that Rui knew his movements inside out and was extremely flexible. So all he did was simply forget that Rui existed and went all out to be as much of a problem to Senior Xanarn as possible.


    Rui had an extremely deep predictive model for Kane, he stacked the predictive models on top of each other to predict what Senior Xanarn was going to do many beats into the future!


    This allowed him to prepare the most surgically adapted responses to her movements well ahead of time!


    Despite her operating at a level that significantly surpassed grade-ten Martial Squires, the two of them were able to push her into a defensive state as they went all out. Although they were unable to dominate her because even without the Martial Heart, she could easily withstand anything other than Rui''s most powerful attacks to her vitals, and Kane''s asional charged strikes to her eyes.


    The battle turned into a spectacle, unlike anything the guardians around them had ever seen. They became so captivated by the movements of Rui and Kane, that theypletely forgot that they were a part of the battle!


    Rui and Kane momentarily exchanged grins as they burned their power to pressure Senior Xanarn to the absolute limit.


    And it was working.


    She gritted her teeth as she did her best to st them back. Yet Kane was shockingly even faster than her in his Fulminata state. He could outrun her attacks until they diluted and weakened, while Rui efficiently canceled them a portion of the attack, that was going to hit him, out with very targeted sound attacks that functioned like sound shields.


    He withstood the rest of her attacks with his body, while his enhanced healing factor worked furiously to fix all the damage to ensure he retained hisbat effectiveness just enough.


    Frankly, it was not easy. Her attacks were incredibly heavy, there was a reason that she had utterly mopped the floor with dozens of high-grade Martial Squires even without going all out.


    Yet, Rui persevered. Because of the role that he was ying, he could tolerate not being in peak condition. His goal was tond more damage on her than she did on them.


    That was why he narrowed down all his offenses to Flowing Canons and tier five Transverse Resonance. Furthermore, he had the opportunity to make sure they allnded on more vital areas than areas that would not do as much damage.


    He aimed for her sr plexus, her liver, neck and above, and her diaphragm.


    Because she had such a hard time preventing those strikes fromnding, she most certainly suffered damage to her vitals.


    A race between the two began as she stepped up her efforts even more and had long exited the ''teacher'' stage of the battle, she was now focused on winning, and would not make it easy for either Rui or Kane.


    A profoundly intense battle began between the two of them as they pressured her over and over, achieving an impable sess rate!


    The two of them had gotten into afortable rhythm as they grew increasingly cleaner and smoother with their cooperation.


    Senior Xanarn on the other hand had been fighting continuously without even a moment''s break for hours, exerting enough power to overwhelm dozens of Martial Squires for hours on end.


    The source of power and formidability mainly came from their Martial Hearts, without which they were only above Squire Realm to whatever degree.All rights ? N?velDrama.Org.


    It meant that Senior Xanarn was truly running out of energy!


    Rui could sense it as he watched her streamline her movements and reduce efficiency and unnecessary energy wastage.


    Furthermore, she had changed her breathing technique to a gentler one, one that did not drain her power as much.


    Her eyebrows knitted as she took on a deeper intensity. A lifetime of experience inbat began to reflect in herbat as she began fighting like she long begun fighting extremely seriously.


    While she had a lot of trouble dealing with Rui, she was able to see through Kane with increasingly greater ease, as he was the least sophisticated fighter out of the three of them. She began reacting to his attacks more sharply, even ignoring his attacks unless they were genuinely threatening by aiming for her throat or her eyes.


    This was Kane''s greatest shoring because he could only exert meaningful damage if he struck her closed eyes, or her throat and neck, she very quickly became able to predict him with greater ease, since he only had a few options to make a difference!


    This increasingly minimized the amount of time that Kane drew her attention away from Rui, making it harder and harder for Rui tond powerful attacks on her vitals.


    WHOOM!


    She managed to blow Rui away before he couldnd a strike on her, trumping their teamwork for the first time in the fight.


    (''Of course she wouldn''t go down so easily,'') Rui mused as he exchanged a nce with Kane.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1085 Choice

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    "You''re truly strong," She murmured as the distance between them momentarily paused the temp of the fight. "It appears that you only disyed a small portion of your might against former guardian Seronin."


    "I don''t overdo things," Rui replied while he stalled to recuperate from the attack, allowing his healing factor to quickly fix the most essential parts.


    She paused for a moment, before bursting outughing. "You have the audacity to say that after what happened to him? Yet to think you''re this strong at the age of twenty-one¡­ Just how far will you go?"


    WHOOSH!


    He dashed forward, appearing before her.


    "I guess we''ll see."


    A devastatingly powerful Flowing Canon fist threatened to strike her, yet she elegantly evaded it.


    SPLAT!


    Kane''s piercing bolt sliced a cut on her neck, appearing out of nowhere!


    Yet before she could even express surprise, Rui had already released tier five Transverse Resonance at her. As an expert on sound, she was easily able to skillfully deconstruct and dissipate the attack!


    Yet;


    SPLAT!


    Kane inflicted another cut on her just as she shifted her attention to him!


    She leaped back as she realized what was happening.


    (''They''re switching ces! He became the distraction while the other brat targeted my vitals!'') She furrowed her eyebrows.


    Rui grinned. (''Because I can predict him, I can force you to run into his attack!'')


    The predictive model was not monolithic and static.


    When predicting actions, Rui calcted one oue using the predictive model, however, when it came to predicting reactions, Rui saw multiple possible futures!


    The reason for this was that she would respond differently to different attacks. A powerful kick would evoke a dodge, while lighter attacks were better off being blocked. Thus, depending on the action, there could be varied reactions.


    Thus Rui predicted Kane''s actions and then chose the right attack to force the correct reaction such that she would run into Kane''s attack while she was distracted by Rui''s attack!


    As an experienced Martial Artist, Senior Xanarn immediately realized what Rui was doing.Text content ? N?velDrama.Org.


    It was a feat that required an absurd amount of insight into both Kane and Senior Xanarn.


    She subconsciously opened her eyes, widening them in shock. (''Just how well does he know me?! We slept together just once!'')


    She was understandably flustered. She didn''t understand how Rui had such a deep insight into her movements, she felt transparent.


    She feltpletely naked under the profound depth of his eyes.


    She actually knew exactly how that felt, after all.


    It was a lot less pleasant thanst time.


    The abrupt shift in roles threw her off, forcing her back on the defensive.


    SPLAT!


    Kane inflicted another cut on the more tender parts of her flesh on her vitals. As he grinned, brought his arms together, before rubbing them away into his stance.


    Because the stamina for the Fulminata technique did note from his mind, he was doing better than both Rui and Senior Xanarn. He was thoroughly enjoying himself. He evaded all her attacks smoothly, before sneaking and exploiting an opportunity created by Rui, or creating an opportunity for Rui.


    The two of them switch back and forth between their roles. This constant switch threw Senior Xanarn off even more. Now she didn''t even know who was the decoy and who was the actual attack!


    It was just an endless wave of decoys and attacks thatnded on her almost before she even realized it!


    She gritted her teeth feeling increasingly pressured as Rui kept staying one step ahead of her. Her damage was umting.


    Her conventional stamina was truly reaching her limits.


    Her mental fatigue was finally stepping in.


    Yet despite the unpleasantness of the situation, she couldn''t help but be truly impressed with the two Martial Squires. The two of them were individually only as much trouble as grade-ten Martial Squires at most, as a quasi-Senior even without her Heart, she could handle them individually.


    Yet it was their phenomenal teamwork that elevated their threat level astronomically!


    It created a sum that was far greater than the parts, allowing them to reach power that could potentially take her down.


    Furthermore, Rui had wisely waited for her to drain her power with the rest of them, before unleashing a level of threat that he would have been unable to by himself.


    The battle had entered a profound rhythm, one that captivated all those who beheld it. It was as though it would continue on forever and forever.


    Yet, they were wrong.


    THWOOM!


    She dispelled a tier five Transverse Resonance attack, immediately looking to defend Kane''s attack.


    Yet it did note.


    CLASP!


    BZZT!


    Rui coiled around her body in the minute blindspot he had created while she shifted her attention, his arms curled around her neck, as he squeezed down in a vice, while applying Thundercoil!


    Rui had gone off the beaten path, breaking the pattern.


    He had not made this decision lightly. For one, he was nearing his limits. Godspeed was not a light technique, and it was one that he knew would burn him out soon enough. He didn''t just want to push her into a monotonous battle before losing.


    He wanted to push her past her limit.


    That was why instead of simply opting for the regrbo with Kane, he decided to go for a finisher.


    It was an ambitious risk, but this was a sparring session. He could afford to take such risks as opposed to a real battle where a loss meant it was game over!


    Fortunately, he did her job well.


    Catching her off-guard and drawing her attention to him momentarily.


    Momentarily incapacitating her with partial paralysis.


    He didn''t know if it was enough, for what followed exceeded his cognition.


    Kane burned all of his energy in one grand burst!


    He reverted back to the original Godspeed technique that made use of all of his voluntary stamina and energy!


    In less than a millisecond, he had long crossed the distance between them as two fingers rushed towards her eyes!


    ¡­


    BADUMP


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1086 Aftermath

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    BADUMP


    A profoundly deep avnche of pressure swept over Rui and Kane, yet it didn''t stop there. It rushed forward, untethered, bathing every sentient lifeform on the entire ind.


    THWOOM!


    A wave of sound blew Rui and Kane with overpowering force, expelling them helplessly.


    BOOM!


    Rui crashed into the arena walls, coughing some blood as he quickly used Final Breathing to increase his pain resistance.


    Yet he grinned as he beheld her Martial Heart.


    "Twice in a week," She murmured. "Sarak and Leonil will never let me hear the end of it."


    She sighed as she deactivated her Martial Heart, lessening the stress she exerted on the Martial Squires. "This sparring session hase to an end."


    Soon enough, several medics and nurses entered the arena, tending to the wounded guardians.


    Soon enough, Senior Xanarn went on a round speaking to all of them one by one. She did not ramble in her feedback and criticisms of all of them, she was concise and to the point, offering several short pointers before moving one.


    Although it wasn''t personally impressive to him, he respected the fact that she kept track of the various Martial Squires throughout the entire session.


    "My initial feedback to you was to participate more, but I suppose I ought to scrap that," She said once she reached Rui. "I truly did not expect you to be able to aplish forcing me to use my Martial Heart. Frankly, the level of performance you two demonstrated shows that you''re more than qualified for higher Realms."


    She wasn''t wrong, but what she didn''t know was the degree of preparation that went into the fight, not just for analyzing her patterns to build a predictive model, but also the deep familiarity he had of Kane.


    "Were you actually gaining insights on me when you came to spectate on my previous sparring training with other guardians?" She asked with curiosity.


    "Why else would I be there?" Rui raised an eyebrow as he got up, having consumed a potion.


    "¡­Never mind."


    "Any tips for me?" Rui asked.


    She made an awkward expression. She had just effectively lost to Rui, so she wasn''t even sure whether she had much of a footing to be able to coach him.


    But fortunately, she did have an idea pop into her head. "Your maniption of sound is rather rigid and unflexible. I''m surprised that a Martial Squire is able to merge sound, that too a Martial Squire that isn''t even specialized in sound."


    Rui nodded. He had also realized thatpared to Senior Xanarn''s more flexible maniption of sound, his was certainly more limited.


    However, he wasn''t too keen on addressing this issue at the moment. His long-range techniques were good enough for now, they were not at the top of his list.


    "Other than that, honestly, I don''t have much else to offer," Senior Xanarn sighed. "I did not realize how deep your insight was. I have almost nevere across such a degree of understanding of one''s Martial Art before."


    Rui raised an eyebrow. He recalled her saying something simr before, where she said that his Martial Art was the second most potent she had evere across.


    "Almost?"


    She smiled. "Almost. You''ll see for yourself when you reach higher sses."


    Rui considered her words, gauging what she meant.


    "Good luck," She turned around walking away, before suddenly pausing. "Ah, onest thing."


    "Hm?" Rui raised an eyebrow.


    "The Floating Sect can bring you infinitely close to breaking through, however, those thate from afar cannot break through just by spending a greater amount of time on this ind," She told him. "Be sure to remember that."


    Rui already knew this. The insights he had into the trigger that broke one through to the Senior Realm were enough to show him that simply training here on the ind was not good enough.


    It was a nexus and a haven that offered a ce of tranquil growth and empowerment, but he already knew that it could not provide the trigger to the Senior Realm.


    (''I only intend to stay here to reach the peak of the Squire Realm and nothing more.'') Rui mused.


    He didn''t want to take too much time doing that either. He only had nine years left before time was up.


    (''One thing that I can do to speed things up is upgrade to higher ranks as a guardian to get more favorable spots for training that will hasten the growth of my body as a Martial Squire.'')


    He did not intend to stay as rank nine-hundred-and-one forever. But there wasn''t an immediate urge to upgrade ranks at the moment, he did want to strengthen his Martial Art.


    (''More like broaden it, at this point,'') His foundations were rock solid in the Squire Realm, he was doing pretty well in all of the fundamental fields ofbat. However, in order to be able to adapt to all kinds of Martial Art, he needed to be able to counter all kinds of Martial Art. It meant that he had to go far beyond the basics to find counters to things that were beyond the basics.


    Fortunately, he already had several ideas about how to grow stronger. The environment he was in had given him several ideas on what he ought to grow stronger.


    Individuality was the name of the game, and it was a game that Rui was pretty good at.


    "Hey," Kane walked over to him with a crooked grin on his face. "We seeded. Good job."


    The two of them smacked their hands against each other in a high-five before heading back to their dorm.Content property of N?velDra/ma.Org.


    Rui expected a bit of peace from then on, intense training, yes, but monotonous and peaceful intense training.


    He was wrong.


    As they walked through the corridor to their chambers, they stepped to the side evading a crowd of guardians barging past them. The two of them exchanged a nce in confusion as they avoided getting trampled by the stampede.


    "Hey, what''s going on?" Kane stopped one of his new-found friends.


    "Didn''t you hear the news. The Kaddar Treat Organization has just dered open war with the Floating Sect!"


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 Chapter 1087 Motivations

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    Rui''s eyes widened. "What?"


    "How did you miss the news?!"


    "We just got back from training," Kane exined. "Are you serious?"


    "Guardian Hrinil actually acquired a notice published by the Kaddar Treaty Alliance. It''s all real!"


    The man scurried away as Rui and Kane exchanged surprised expressions.


    The nations of the Kaddar Region had never dered an open war on the Floating Sect, for reasons Rui had long realized. It could not afford to attack the ind for fear of destabilizing the core esoteric ore that held the ind together.


    While there were skirmishes and the nations of the Kaddar Region had most certainly tried to make life harder for the Floating Sect, that was the limit that they could do.


    Yet for some reason, that status quo had been abruptly upended.


    Rui and Kane followed the crowd of guardians out to the open where arge notice had been pinned on a notice board.


    [Ajanta Termination Act]


    The title alone made absolutely no mistakes as to what it could be. Just ncing at it Rui realized that the situation was not being exaggerated.


    [We, the constituents of the Kaddar Treaty Organization, invoke the fifth use of the Kaddar Treaty to levy war against the Floating Sect, hereby referred to as the Sect, in the light of the existential threat of Ajanta Ind to all life in the Kaddar Region.]


    Several seals and stamps of various insignias and emblems stood by each other. These were the official proofs of authorization of the various constituent states that were members of the Kaddar Treaty Organization.


    However, the notice wasn''t done. It went on to announce theplete sealing of airspace around Ajanta Ind!


    Not a single person or thing would be allowed to enter or leave the ind. This alone was big news, it meant that the Floating Sect would truly be cut off from the rest of human civilization. If it needed anything or came across any predicament, it could only rely on itself and not Martial Artists from outside the nation. In a war, this was a huge blow. Rui did not


    However, that wasn''t all.


    The nations of the Kaddar Treaty Organization announced the founding of a joint task force speared by the most powerful Martial Seniors and the best Martial Squires that the Kaddar Treaty Organization could muster.


    "What?" Rui''s eyes widened.


    That was not easy for Senior-level nations. Thousand Martial Squires were far more than what any of them could handle individually.


    (''Yet if they gathered them from outside of the Kaddar Region, then it is more feasible'') Rui''s eyes narrowed.


    He did not believe that the Kaddar Treaty Organization was so ipetent that they did not realize that the Martial Squires of the Floating Sect were far above the average Martial Squire. The fact that they had prepared a whopping one thousand-strong Squire-level task force meant that they felt this task force was qualified to take on the Floating Sect.


    (''Something isn''t adding up,'') Rui''s eyes narrowed. (''Why has the Kaddar Treaty Organization decided to dere an open war against the Floating Sect when it hadn''t done so all this time in fear of destabilizing the ind all this time?'')


    Unlike the other Martial Squires, he possessed a good understanding of statesmanship, geopolitics, and economics on top of his sharp intellect.


    The deterrence of causing damage to Ajanta Ind in a war, causing it to break and plummet was strong and one that should have still existed. Yet for some reason, the Kaddar Treaty Organization seemed remarkably bold and aggressive.Content property of N?velDra/ma.Org.


    Rui''s eyes widened as a possibility came to mind. (''The weapon that the Graheria Kingdom purchased from Frigga Industries!'')


    The Graheria Kingdom most certainly intended to attack the Floating Sect one way or another, however, he had expected them to employ some esoteric weapon that could bypass it, but he had not expected that they would partake in a head-on war.


    However, he was sure that the package that they had purchased from Frigga Industries would be relevant somehow. It was likely even the reason that the Kaddar Treaty Organization was this aggressive against the Floating Sect because this solution was perhaps a way by which they could bypass the threats of the ind copsing under the rigors of war.


    However, that wasn''t the only issue that came to mind.


    (''There is no way a Senior-level nation possessed the kind of wealth to gather so many powerful Martial Squires on demand without bleeding. More broadly, there is no way that this was isn''t making them bleed alive.'')


    War was an extremely taxing endeavor, while Ajanta Ind was a hypothetical existential threat that could do immense damage, there was no strong reason to believe it would fall, while the war was an absolute certainty in the damage it would to do the economy and the markets.


    (''It can''t just be that the ind scares them,'') Rui realized. (''There needs to be more concrete incentives or disincentives for waging war on top of the vague and undefined threat of it falling that can justify such high initial expenditures.'')


    Rui''s mind swum through all possibilities as one very real one stuck out to him.


    (''Is the ind an asset that can generate a lot of revenue or utility to the Kaddar Treaty Organization?'') Rui''s eyes widened. (''Could it be that their goal is not to bring down the ind, but to take over itpletely?'')


    If they used the ind to either generate revenue or strengthen their military, then he could definitely see how the war expenditure of gaining control of Ajanta Ind could bepensated by securing control over Ajanta Ind in the long run. There were many ways that it could be an absolute blessing to the nations of the Kaddar Region if they did indeed find some way to quell their fears of it crashing.


    After all, the ind was the very reason why the war was being fought in the very first ce. It would be nothing less of an international treasure!


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 Chapter 1088 Conflicts

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    Ajanta Ind was far more lucrative than the Floating Sect made out of it. Because the Floating Sect disregarded mary goals when it upied and developed Ajanta Ind, it did not earn much.


    It had instead put a lot of weight on creating an environment that could attract even the most powerful of Martial Squires, and give them a reason to staymitted to the ind even in the event of the war.


    Rui had long realized that the sheer quality of the free training chambers and their ability to luxuriously amodate all ranges, and also train all kinds of techniques and attributes relevant tobat was meant to strongly incentivize guardians to stay and continue training.


    And it seemed to have worked well.


    After all, the tensions between the Floating Sect and the nations of the Kaddar Region were perenially extremely high, their rtionship was hostile beyond diplomacy. Yet these guardians stayed in the Floating Sect despite the prospect of war not being too unlikely.


    The Kaddar Region wouldn''t need to employ such a strategy, thus it could make smaller chambers simply for engaging in basic training under the circumstances of the ind''s environment for a fee.


    That alone would generate an enormous market and would attract Martial Squires from all over as long as they publicized it well. It could effectively be like what the Uminana Trench was for the coastal nations of the ocean.


    (''In fact, they''re actually quite simr,'') Rui realized.


    The Uminana Trench and Ajanta Ind were both existential threats to civilization in their respective surroundings, yet humans profited off them nheless.


    Rui shook his head, dispelling such thoughts. Regardless of what their motivations were, it didn''t matter.


    The only thing that mattered was that they were in for a war.


    Rui nced around to gauge the reactions of the various guardians.


    While they were surprised by this remarkably abrupt development, he did not get the sense that any of them were considering ditching the Floating Sect to avoid being targeted by the Floating Sect.


    (''They can''t leave it even if they wanted to,'') Rui mused.


    The Kaddar Region was probably strengthening its grip on the ind even as they stood there.


    Rui heaved a deep breath before considering options.


    Unfortunately, there weren''t many.


    (''Besides, I''ve alreadymitted myself to growing stronger on this ind, I probably won''t have an opportunity to hone my body as well as I can on this ind.'')


    It was as though just existing here was a Squire-level training technique like Adamant Reforging.


    He immediately felt an urgency to get to higher ranks, an urgency that he did not feel before. The higher the rank of his chamber, the greater the rate of his growth.


    (''I wonder what measures the Floating Sect will undertake in response to this deration of war.'')


    He couldn''t help but notice that the notice from the Ajanta Termination Act did not mention anything about dealing with the three Martial Seniors of the Floating Sect.


    (''They''re being careful around the matter of the Martial Seniors.'') Rui realized.


    For Senior-level states, Martial Seniors were national treasures. Every time a Senior-level nation deployed a Martial Senior to a battle, they were risking losing their national treasure.


    This was starkly different from how stronger nations like the Shionel Dungeon treated them, hell, Rui had been able to purchase the services of Martial Seniors from Guildmaster Bradt.Content is property ? N?velDrama.Org.


    He absolutely would not be able to do that if Martial Seniors were the strongest Martial Artists of the nation.


    (''They''re a deterrence towards the other nations of the Kaddar Region,'') He knew that no nation would willingly volunteer their Martial Senior for war.


    The reason for that was deploying them for war would weaken their national security due to a deterrence being absent. Although the nations of the Kaddar Region were united on the matter of Ajanta Ind, that did not mean they were united in general.


    Many of them had major conflicts and grievances with each other, and there were always perennial conflicts of interest. It was just not something that the nations could ignore in favor of taking down the powerful and elite Martial Seniors of the Floating Sect.


    If they died, then the nations that lost their Martial Seniors would be devastated.


    (''Though if they all deployed their Martial Seniors altogether, then maybe¡­'') Rui considered the moment. (''No, that wouldn''t work either actually. Oh that would be devastating because of external threats.'')


    The Kaddar Region was not isted from the rest of human civilization, if the satellite nations of the region lost theirrgest deterrence, then the prospect of invasions became a lot more realistic.


    These two concerns were probably what was holding back the Kaddar Treaty Organization from deploying Martial Seniors. Not even the prospect of obtaining Ajanta Ind was good enough to make them take such a risk.


    Suddenly a wave of murmurs swept through the crowd as their attention was drawn in by a powerful presence.


    Rui instantly recognized the man as the Martial Senior he was.


    This was one of the three Martial Seniors of the Floating Sect, Senior Leonil.


    He didn''t say a word yet as he waited for the iing influx of Martial Squires to abate.


    "You''ve finally gathered here," The man calmly remarked once all one thousand Martial Squires had stood in the courtyard before him. "We do not tend to stand on ceremony here at the Floating Sect. We are all Martial Artists here, so I will be brief and sinct."


    He paused for a moment. "War is upon us. All of you have learned that the Kaddar Treaty Organization has dered war on the Floating Sect. They have spent an enormous amount of capital to immigrate overrge numbers of powerful Martial Squires for quite some time now in top secrecy in addition to their own Martial Squires. You do not have any choice, you cannot even leave even if you tried, you would be taken down before you could make it tond. Your only option is to win, or die."


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 Chapter 1089 Upgrade

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    Many of the guardians had already realized that this was the case. Yet, being told so straightforwardly by one of the leaders of the Floating Sect made the reality set in.


    Yet, thankfully, none of the guardians objected. They were all powerful martial Squires who chose to risk death in order to be a guardian and epted the prospect of fighting for the sake of the Floating Sect.


    It appeared that the policies to increase themitment of guardians to the Floating Sect were effective, thus far.


    "The details will be announced at ater time, but you will be deployed against the one thousand-strong Kaddar Task Force created by the Kaddar Treaty Organization to fight the Floating Sect," The man replied. "Fight hard if you wish to protect the ce that has no doubt made many of you stronger, and will make many of you stronger as long as it exists. Do not forget who all of you are, and what you''ve had to ovee to get here. Good luck. Dismissed"


    It was a simple and crisp announcement. He did not try to go overboard and evoke some sort of patriotic sentiment from the guardians. He was well aware that such a thing was not fit for the Floating Sect and the guardians.


    "Damn¡­ A war, huh?" Kane murmured with an uncertain expression. "I was hoping to avoid such trouble bying to Ajanta Ind."


    "You''re not strong enough to evade trouble like this just yet," Rui sighed. "Let''s get going."


    "What do you n on doing now?" Kane asked.


    "Train, aim for better chambers, get stronger," Rui replied with narrowed eyes.


    This was probably the most pumped-for training that he had perhaps ever been. Not only was he motivated by his ambition of Project Water, but he had also developed a desire for power to protect the people he cared about, and now he was being thrust into war, he needed power more than ever before.


    "Sounds fun," Kane huffed sarcastically.


    Rui was engrossed in his mind as he thought of ways to strengthen his Martial Art. That meant creating techniques, of course. Technique with lots of individuality.


    Yet, for some reason, he didn''t feel good about it, for some reason.


    (''I can create techniques endlessly, and they do make me stronger, and they do increase the individuality of my Martial Art but¡­'')


    He couldn''t quite put his finger on it. It just felt like like it wasn''t the best he could do. Now, when he was pressed for more power perhaps more than ever in his life, he felt the need to do the best he could.


    Perhaps other Martial Squires were satisfied with simply creating more technique with great individuality or any individuality¡­


    Not Rui.


    He wanted to live up to his full potential, especially when he arrived at the truth about Martial Art, and the truth about potential. He did not want to let a single bit about his potential go.


    But the next question immediately presented itself.


    (''What more can I do aside from just creating powerful techniques with a lot of individuality?'')


    This was a question that would not appear in the minds of an overwhelming majority of Martial Squires.


    They were not qualified to ask themselves that question when most of them struggled with ordinary individuality.


    Only a handful of truly era-defining Martial Artists could ever even ponder the question seriously.


    Rui was one of them.


    (''¡­The VOID algorithm,'') Rui narrowed his eyes. (''I have long put away its upgrade, but¡­'')


    It felt right. He couldn''t exin, but he felt he was finally ready to tinker with the masterpiece of his previous life.


    In the past, he had been extremely satisfied just being able to use it. After all, that had been the holy grail of Project Water, being able to make the VOID algorithm viable. He did that with the help of Mind Pce and basked in the satisfaction of having fulfilled that part of his ambition for quite some time.


    For seven years.


    Yet, he was no longer satisfied with just that. This world had shown him that while it would have worked fine on Earth, it was inadequate here. He needed to do more, he couldn''t just bask off previous sesses.


    (''It''s time to improve the VOID algorithm concretely,'') His eyes narrowed.


    Suddenly, he felt a deep sense of anticipation and excitement as a small smile creeped on to his face.Content provided by N?velDrama.Org.


    "What is it?" Kane raised an eyebrow. "You just thought of something."


    "I did, as a matter of fact," He smirked. (''The question is how am I going to upgrade it?'')


    He had built the VOID algorithm over many years with rigorous research and development. It was something that required ess to lots of research capital, a team, and time.


    He didn''t have any of the things that he had when he created the VOID algorithm, yet he knew that he was going to do it, somehow.


    However, he definitely needed a n as to how he was going to go about it.


    (''Perhaps I can improve one of its systems?'') He wondered with a skeptical expression.


    That sounded extremely difficult, he knew the VOID algorithm inside-out, improving its systems was a losing game of diminishing returns. It would take him many years just to make a one-percent improvement.


    Although he could perhaps find a new way to improve the existing systems given that the world was far less shackled by reality in his second life, it was still mostly a losing battle in his estimation.


    (''Well, I ought to keep an open mind in that regard, but it isn''t the first option,'') Rui had considered a brand-new idea. (''What if I add new systems to the VOID algorithm that will help me be able to better adapt to my opponents?'')


    His eyes widened.


    That sounded far more usible and realistic than trying to beat a dead horse. Furthermore, several ideas had already popped into his head in regards to how he could go about it.


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    There were many elements in this world that were beyond that of his previous life, they were things that Rui sometimes had trouble adapting against because the VOID algorithm couldn''t ount for.


    (''Martial bodies is definitely one of those,'') Rui sighed.


    Because superhuman physicality did not exist on Earth, the VOID algorithm was often stumped when it came to adapting to some truly oundish things. For instance, he knew that the VOID algorithm was often stumped when it came to adapting to such things. In such circumstances, he usually substituted for it with his own judgment which had worked out alright, but it was not ideal.


    (''If I do add a new system, it has to be based on a new parameter of mybat that can be optimally adjusted to be best able to handle my opponent.'') Rui mused as he considered the matter deeply.All rights ? N?velDrama.Org.


    The systems of the VOID algorithm were essentially all ways by which he could maximize the adaptation of one aspect ofbat, regardless of what it was. One of the simpler systems was the one with which he decided what kind of stance he would take against his opponent to have the best starting position to deal with them.


    Another System was based on range evaluations and would allow him to model his responses most aptly depending on the range that his opponent operated from.


    They were each centered around one, and only one element per system.


    Thus if he wanted to add a new system that would allow him to adapt to his opponent better, then he would find ways to deal with it.


    What that meant was that he needed to find an element or a parameter that could be altered or changed to adapt to his opponent, one that wasn''t normally adapted.


    "Hmmm¡­" Rui narrowed his eyes as he gave it considerable thought.


    He had given this same matter a lot of thought in his previous life many times, it was what led to the creation of many of the systems of the VOID algorithm. He had long hit a dead-end in regard to this matter back in his previous life.


    However, in this new life, in a world with many new possibilities, he did see hope to add new systems to the VOID algorithm and make it more powerful.


    Still, it wasn''t necessarily easy just because it was possible.


    He needed to continue going through the many new elements that existed inbat in his new life, that did not exist inbat in his previous life. Then he needed to explore the capacity for adaptation of those parameters to an opponent.


    (''What aspects of Martial Artbat did not exist in my previous life?'')


    Several answers immediately came to mind.


    The first one, of course, was the Martial Path.


    The Martial Path was the fundamental and foundational element that truly separated Martial Art from martial arts. Without the Martial Path, the martial arts of this world would be identical to the ones from back in his previous life.


    (''But it''s not adaptable or changeable,'') He shook his head.


    His Martial Path was adaptive evolution, but that did not mean that his Martial Path itself could change to adapt and evolve to his opponent.


    It wasn''t as though he could change his Martial Path from adaptive evolution to evasive maneuvering like Kane''s when he was facing a Martial Artist whose weakness was evasive maneuvering.


    His Martial Path was rock solid and absolutely could not be changed or altered in any way.


    The Martial Path was a reflection of the very being that the Martial Artist was in a sense. It was unique because people were unique.


    It was not something that could be altered to adapt to his opponent.


    (''Nor is it something I would want to change even if I could,'') Rui snorted.


    He immediately ruled out that possibility.


    The second possibility that came to mind was the Martial body.


    The evolution of the human body through Darwinian natural selection of cells was something that expanded the potential of the human body to be astronomically greater than it normally was. It also molded the body to be in line with the Martial Path of the Martial Artist for maximum synergy.


    Its spec configuration was unique from person to person, just like the Martial Path was, because the Martial Path was.


    (''It too cannot be cha-'') Rui paused, furrowing his eyebrows as a thought entered his head.


    He almost remarked that it couldn''t be changed, yet that wasn''t entirely true.


    The spec configuration of a Martial body was not as invibly constant as the Martial Path was.


    (''The Godspeed technique forcefully exhales mass from the body rendered unnecessary after squeezing it for extra energy,'') Rui mused. (''That turns the body into quasi-speed oriented Martial body temporarily.'')


    It meant that the spec configuration of the Martial body was something that could change in practice, and if it could change¡­


    (''Then it can be changed to be adapted to my opponent,'') Rui''s eyes widened in shock.


    He had juste across a realization that he had never even considered before. Yet¡­ It made sense. There were ideal spec configurations to deal with any given Martial Artist or opponent of any kind.


    Thus being able to alter his spec configuration towards the most ideal spec configuration would mean that he could adapt to his opponent by changing his body!


    It was a revolutionarily shocking idea that truly broke apart any norms or limits for adaptation that he believed he was inescapably subject to. It was so simple, yet it was absolutely game-changing!


    If he could realize this to be true, then it would probably be the case that this was the single greatest breakthrough in regards to the VOID algorithm since the creation of the pattern recognition system!


    (''No¡­ This new system has the potential to surpass the pattern recognition system in regards to how effective it is in regards to adapting to his opponent inbat.'')


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    Perhaps that was a bit of an exaggeration, after all, the pattern recognition system of the VOID algorithm was incredibly potent and could bridge huge gaps between himself and stronger opponents.


    However, if he could in fact add a system that allows him to manipte the spec configuration of his Martial body, it had the potential to massively improve his adaptive capabilities to his opponent.


    This was a level of evolution that probably far exceeded even Bruce Lee''s original vision. It would allow him to embody the concept of adaptive evolution. To be one with it!


    His mind started racing through many thoughts as he swiftly analyzed and processed countless potential possibilities in regard to his new idea.


    (''The Godspeed technique can actually serve as the first step of such a technique!'') Rui realized. (''It can allow me to adapt much better to people against whom the best Martial Path type is a maneuvering or a speed-oriented type.'')


    He needed to find ways that could allow him to do that to obtain the spec configurations of other Martial bodies.


    (''That''s not going to be easy,'') Rui tutted.


    That was, after all, the way to go about things. He wasn''t sure what form the solution would take, but it was definitely going to take a lot of time.


    The issue was that this was something that did not have a singr solution. It required most likely multiple techniques or training techniques, potentially multiple changes to his body.


    (''It''s a shame I didn''t have the option to make my Martial body of such a type.'') Rui sighed. But there was no option of creating a Martial body that could change its configuration back when he underwent the Squire evolution breakthrough process.


    (''No matter, I do believe that it can be done even without having a Martial body that focuses on it.'') Several ideas had popped into his head.Content provided by N?velDrama.Org.


    The first avenue of consideration was the integration of esoteric substances into the Martial body.


    This was an avenue that he had explored twice before and had gotten promising results back. That was why he was quite hopeful about this possibility.


    However, this wasn''t the only avenue to explore when it came to realizing his brand-new ambition.


    (''I haven''t thought about this in a while but¡­ symbiotes are a possibility as well,'')


    Rui had not forgotten the Mindmirror Symbiote in his brain. Although the utility it provided was lessening the stronger he got because his Martial body didn''t cater to it thus the amount of evolution that it could undergo was limited.


    Still, he appreciated the boost in processing that it gave him. Furthermore, he never discounted the value they provided. In this particr, he did think that there was the possibility that symbiotes could potentially fix at least a part of the problem.


    After symbiotes were external elements that granted new capabilities to the Martial Body did not intrinsically possess.


    In this case, the ability that he was looking for; to manipte his spec configuration, was not something that his Martial body had at all in the first ce. This was exactly the kind of thing that a symbiote could help with.


    (''It could even be a fusion of solutions from esoteric material science and symbiotes, honestly,'') Rui mused.


    He wasn''t sure about that, but it wasn''t impossible. As long as it granted him the capabilities that he wanted, he was fine getting power from anywhere.


    However, these were not the only ways by which he could get what he was looking for. It was possible that ordinary kinds of techniques would give him what he wanted. After all, that was what the Godspeed technique did.


    Regardless, he highly doubted that he would find one single technique that would solve the entire issue allowing him to manipte his body as he pleased. That was too oundish, He would most likely need to bring together many solutions to handle parts of the problem.


    However, when he was done, he couldn''t even imagine the sheer power that the result would give him. The sheer individuality of the resulting solutions would probably bring him to the very cusp of the Senior Realm!


    After all, this was probably something that nobody had even thought about, and it was probably entirely unique to him on the entire continent. Not only was his Martial Path rare and unlike almost any other Martial Art out there, but the goal that he was working towards was fundamental to his Martial Path, and thus probably not something that had ever been considered.


    Barring the creation of the VOID algorithm, there probably was nothing that could bring him nearly as much individuality.


    (''Alright, it''s time to begin,'') Rui narrowed his eyes.


    He had established a goal, and he was going to resolutely work towards it. In fact, he was somitted to it, he didn''t even care about normal techniques for the time being. He had lots of them, and it wasn''t as though he was particrly short on them.


    One unfortunate circumstance that he was currently in was the war that was about to begin ramping up. It meant that he would most certainly have to partake in war. This was something he wanted to avoid.


    His main two goals at the moment were strengthening his body under the powerful environment of the Floating Sect, and creating a new system of adaptation based on manipting the spec configuration of the Martial Body.


    (''All while fighting a war that I can''t avoid, wouldn''t want to avoid since it would mean not fulfilling the first goal of strengthening my body to ensure that it can withstand the power of my Martial heart, opening up the possibility of breaking through into the Senior Realm.'') He sighed.


    Things were about to get rough and stressful, perhaps more so than they had in the rtively rxing period that he had during thest year since he left the Shionel Confederation. That was fine, people conformed to pressure, and as long as he got through it, he would be stronger than he had ever been thus far.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1092 Impact

    ?


    The deration of war by the Kaddar Treaty Organization was something that sent waves not just across the Kaddar Region, but also beyond it.


    This was more than just a little shocking.


    More than a century had gone by with no major outbreak of war and that had all been disrupted and upended abruptly.


    Many people didn''t understand, the Kaddar Treaty Organization had avoided an outbreak of war due to the fact that it was too risky to wage war against the Floating Sect that was holed up on the ind, yet it had suddenly changed its tune.


    Was it no longer afraid of the ind falling?


    The destructive might of one thousand Martial Squires was immense, a conflict of such scale on both sides could easily bring about the ruin of the ind, and the Kaddar Region by extension.


    The deration of war had a profound impact on the nations of the Kaddar Region. For one, there was a small but noticeable decrease in imports and exports. Wars destabilized the participating nations, and generally, it was not worth investing in the markets of such nations in that case for many corporates that signed long-term contracts with suppliers or service producers from the nations.


    Yet the Kaddar Treaty Organization went ahead with the n without stopping at all, the Martial Squires that were going to be part of the Kaddar task force were soon in ce.


    The Kaddar Treaty Organization had not found it easy to obtain the Martialbor needed to take down the elite Squire-level army of the Floating Sect. Many funds had been expended into immigrating the Martial Squires into the Kaddar Region.


    After all, as a Senior-level region, the Kaddar Region was not necessarily swimming in Martial Squires.


    After all, the reason that they were restricted to the Senior Realm was that there weren''t enough Martial Seniors to have one of them eventually break through to the Master Realm. This necessarily meant that there weren''t enough Martial Squires for there to be enough Martial Seniors emerging from them.


    That was why they brought in more powerful Martial Squires from outside.


    The Martial Squires of the Floating Sect were far from run off the mill. They were powerful even among high-grade Martial Squires. If the Kaddar nations pit their own domestic native Martial Squires against them, they would get beaten so hard it wasn''t even funny. That was why there was a need to rely on stronger Martial Squires as well.


    The Martial Squires that they had gotten were not just temporary sub-ins for the war. They had made a strong attempt to ensure that they remained with the Kaddar Region even after the war, settling down permanently.Content provided by N?velDrama.Org.


    This would strengthen the nation in the long run, and increase the number of Martial Seniors that the Kaddar Region would have in the long run.


    The Kaddar Treaty Organization had yet to make any statement on the matter of the Martial Seniors of the Floating Sect.


    However, it was an unspoken rule that Martial conflicts were limited by the same Realm. If the Floating Sect retaliated with Martial Seniors, it would immediately escte the war, and the Kaddar nations would be forced to deploy their Martial Seniors.


    Many figured that the Martial Seniors of the Floating Sect did not want this oue. There were fewer Martial Seniors in the Floating Sect than there were in the Kaddar Region as a whole.


    The only advantage they had in that regard was that every nation was highly reluctant to volunteer their Martial Seniors for war. If the Kaddar Region was one nation then the Floating Sect would have never stood a chance to begin with.


    However, due to the sheerck of unity and trust between the Kaddar nations, the situation could be salvaged. The Floating Sect had not yet issued a public response, but nobody watching the situation had any doubts about what the response was going to be. After all, there was no way that the Floating Sect was simply going to surrender Ajanta Ind to the Kaddar Treaty Organization after all this time.


    Regardless, the situation grew increasingly tense by the day as the initial invasion could begin any moment. There was even a certain degree of migration observed in the Kaddar nations. Many of the citizens of these nations had long had enough and were on the cusp of leaving, and the deration of war was the final straw.


    The fear of the ind was something that was deep-rooted in many of the citizens. After all, Ajanta Ind had caused harm to the citizens of the Kaddar Region.


    Yet the prospect of war was also too much for them, and many left the region permanently, hoping to find a new home in a less chaotic and dangerous region.


    Of course, there also were many who were absolutely delighted with the decision and apuded the nations of the Kaddar Region for their decision. These were those who truly hated and despised Ajanta Ind and the Floating Sect that defended the ind.


    Yet there were those who disapproved of the deration of war. The Floating Sect was a haven for Martial Art, and many who were invested in Martial Art found the decision to be too much. They believed that the Floating Sect was an honored member of the Martialmunity for serving as a beacon of opportunity to grow stronger as a Martial Artist.


    Regardless of the various opinions flying around, none of them could change the oue. It truly appeared that the Kaddar Treaty Organization was deadset in its intentions to go through with the war. It was clear that something had changed, causing them to gain the confidence to go all out and get rid of the threat and detriment of Ajanta Ind to the entirety of the Kaddar Region.


    Those that remained often looked to the skies, wondering when the fireworks of Squire-level attacks would begin, and how safe would they be onnd as civilians.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1093 Weapon

    ?


    A more detailed announcement from the Floating Sect was released very soon. There were guidelines and instructions for guardians and how they ought to engage in the defense of Ajanta Ind.


    There were disadvantages that the Floating Sect had when it came to war, unfortunately. The first being that while the Floating Sect had a big army, they were far from united and able to engage in coordinated resistance.


    All of the guardians of the Floating Sect were highly individualistic Martial Artists. They almost had to be, in order to develop their Martial Art with individuality. Any attempts to try and act as a unit were bound to end in devastating failures.All rights ? N?velDrama.Org.


    The good news was that the Kaddar Treaty Organization was faced with the same problem to a certain degree. The Martial Artists that they had managed to get to migrate to their respective nations were not capable of suddenly jumping into an army of people they weren''t familiar with and begin coordinated efforts immediately.


    Of course, there were native Martial Squires that were part of the military, and thus were capable of doing that, however, this did not apply to most Martial Squires.


    Thus the war was projected to likely be a chaotic battlefield with most Martial Squires fighting one-on-one without much care for the bigger picture.


    The Floating Sect offered a few guidelines with that in mind. The first one was to ensure that one had all the space they needed to fight their opponent optimally. There was no need to get cramped between others, most Martial Squires needed a lot of space for their many techniques to work after all.


    Thus, making sure that one had all the space one needed to fight their opinion was crucial. The Floating Sect even encouraged distancing a battle from the ind to a certain degree.


    It could not afford to have two thousand powerful Martial Squires waging war that close to the ind. Thus the greater the distance, the better.


    Rui was sure that ideally, the Floating Sect would have loved to be the one to attack the Kaddar Region, however, that was not worth it. Although being the one to wage war would allow them to attack and make the battlefield the Kaddar Region, it was not a good idea because then the Kaddar Region would not hold back one bit whatsoever fearing for causing an ind to drop.


    Another guideline that the Floating Sect had instructed the guardians with was that some degree of coordination would be required during the arrival of the Kaddar Task Force. Long-range Martial Squires would need to get together and rain down on the iing army to cause as much damage to the Kaddar Martial Squires.


    There were also incredibly simple guidelines to ensure that there was no friendly fire or shes. These were some of the basics that the Floating Sect could simply not tolerate. Its supply of Martial Squires was cut off by the Kaddar Region, and that meant that guardians hurting each other inadvertently was something that could not be allowed to happen.


    There were also norms on ensuring that there was some basic level of efficiency, but beyond that, the guardians were encouraged to find an opponent and defeat them.


    If enough guardians defeated enough opponents, victory would fall towards the Floating Sect.


    However, Rui doubted whether it was going to be a straightforward all-out war from the very get-go. Given that the Floating Sect had an inclination advantage, it was not beneficial for the Kaddar Region to notunch straightforward charges to the Floating Sect.


    However, the most surprising piece of information was the intelligence that the Floating Sect released on the trump card that the Kaddar nations had got themselves. The announcement revealed that the Kaddar Treaty Organization hadmissioned a custom weapon that could be used to target the esoteric gravitational core and manipte it from a distance using someplex mechanism to employ the ind''s gravity to hold it together.


    This resultantly would apparently apparently would strengthen the bedrock of the ind, holding it together, and allowing it to withstand the rigors of Martialbat!


    This meant that Kaddar Martial Squires could attack the Floating Sect on the ind without any fear whatsoever.


    Rui''s eyes widened when he read that the weapon was purchased from a weapons manufacturing corporation known as Frigga Industries!


    He had been the one to obtain the intelligence on the weapon, it appeared that by doing so, he may have inadvertently triggered a war!


    (''Damn¡­'') Rui tutted


    If he hadn''t supplied that information to the Floating Sect, they wouldn''t have dug deeper to look into it and eliminate it which probably led to the series of events of the Kaddar Treaty Organization dering war.


    He shook his head, sighing. What was done was done, it could not be undone at this point, so there was no point even thinking about it at the moment.


    But this revtion did exin a lot. It exined why the Kaddar Region had boldly dered war, something it had abstained from doing prior. They had found a way to get rid of the greatest deterrence that the Floating Sect had on the Kaddar Region, and that was the prospect of the ind copsing back to the ground, ruining the Kaddar Region in the process.


    But now that they had a weapon that could prevent that from happening, it meant that there were fewer and fewer shackles in the Kaddar Region.


    It was ironic because the Kaddar Region was attacking and threatening the Floating Sect by actually protecting it with an incredibly powerful esoteric technological weapon. That was how bizarre the circumstances of the Kaddar Region and Ajanta Ind were.


    He was curious about the strategic limits of the weapon, but unfortunately, the Floating Sect did not appear to be in a position to have such intel, nor did he expect them to have it, since they would have learned about its existence without him had they been able to.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1094 Variables

    ?


    Now that Rui had established his short-term goals, he needed to find a way to go about achieving his goal of adding a new system to the VOID algorithm centered around the altering of the Martial body or its spec configuration.


    It was all good and fine to get excited by this ambitious new goal that would massively improve his adaptive evolution. But he needed an actual n about how he was going to go about that.


    The first issue was knowing what were the conditions and requirements for the mechanisms by which he altered the spec configuration of his body. If it turned out to be the case that altering his body to different types and changing his spec configuration was too difficult or cost too much, then it wasn''t viable.


    Furthermore, he couldn''t really ept if the flexibility of the mechanism was not high enough for him to gain at least various different kinds of the mostmon kinds of spec configurations.


    This included speed and agility-oriented Martial bodies like that of Kane''s that were highlypatible with maneuvering techniques. Power-oriented, defense-oriented, stamina and endurance-oriented Martial Artists were also the bare basic necessities.


    Then Martial bodies specialized for range, for breathing techniques, or other systems. Those were a secondary concern, it would be a nice bonus if he could pull it off.


    (''I should start by giving this project a simpler name,'') He considered the matter for a bit. (''Metabody¡­ Project Metabody.'')Content property of N?velDra/ma.Org.


    It wasn''t the best name that he hade up with in his time, but it worked. The goal of Project Metabody was to achieve a way of altering the spec configuration of his Martial Body most suited to taking down his opponent in viable and feasible manners.


    This would be the first project since Project Water whose end oue wasn''t going to be limited to a single technique. Although this project wasn''t nearly as ambitious as the entirety of Project Water, it was still far toorge to be limited to a single technique.


    Now that he had named the project, and identified the broad bare basic conditions for the resultant techniques of the project to be considered a sess.


    (''I should be able to specify and identify the variables of my physiological output that need to be manipted to alter my spec configuration.'')


    Spec configuration was simply the degree to which the Martial body had the primary parameters ofbat such as strength/power, durability/endurance, speed/agility, stamina, and healing. Although it wasn''t limited to these, these were the most basic and primary parameters, and different Martial bodies had them to different degrees.


    For example, the spec configuration of Kane''s Martial body was simple; extremely high speed/agility, low power, low durability, medium stamina, and medium healing.


    Normally, evasive maneuverers did not have any healing worth speaking of, but thanks to Rui''s Hungry Pain technique, his healing factor and stamina were well above what he would have been able to obtain otherwise.


    Rui''s spec configuration was evenly distributed across all parameters, he did not ce any particr weight on any one of them and instead distributed his physiological resources to all of the parameters of the body equally, thanks to the Hungry Pain technique, he too was well above how strong he would have been had he evolved without it.


    However, what he was focusing on was the underlying variables that decided how high a certain parameter would be.


    Strength was the simplest of them all, it was decided by muscle output. It was a straightforward parameter. Although there were different kinds of strengths, for now, Rui was focusing on the broad categories of the parameters before he focused on details. If he couldn''t get the basics right, there was no point trying to aim for more ambitious things.


    Stamina was a monolithic parameter, it corresponded with energy reserves with the rate of consumption of energy. Unlike strength, it depended on two variables across the board.


    High energy reserves and low consumption of energy corresponded with high stamina. Whereas having higher energy reserves but high energy consumption resulted in medium stamina.


    Low energy reserves and high energy consumption resulted in low stamina.


    The rtivity between the two variables was what decided stamina. If he wanted to alter his body''s spec configuration to higher stamina than he already did, he would need to find a way to physiologically cut down his energy consumption increase his energy reserves, or both, then he could increase stamina and obtain a Martial body that was more centered around it for the time being.


    (''To a certain extent, I do that with Final Breathing,'') Rui mused.


    It cut down his energy consumption and increased his endurance, though it wasn''t drastic enough to be considered body-altering, it did a decent job. What he was looking for was degrees of shifts that wereparable to the kind that he got from the Godspeed technique.


    Still, it was definitely much better than nothing.


    (''Speaking of stamina¡­ I wonder if she''s finally a Martial Squire,) Rui thought of an old friend that he hadn''t thought of in a long time. (''I''d given her the Hungry Pain technique, but I don''t think that helped her get closer to the Squire Realm since she got it from, thus no individuality from her own end.'')


    He would liked to have thought that Milliana surely would have reached the Squire Realm by now, but he wasn''t confident. It was unfortunate but, she never struck him to possess the qualities needed to eventually be a Martial Squire.


    The same could be said for Dalen, another old friend from his days in the Martial Academy.


    The harsh reality of the matter was that most Martial Apprentices did not make it to the Squire Realm. People like Fae and Kane were special.


    He sighed, shaking his head, as he continued focusing on the matter of the variables that he would need to focus on in order to change his spec configuration and alter the parameters of his Martial Body.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1095 Control

    ?


    Speed was both multi-faceted like strength and multi-varied like stamina. There were different kinds of speed just like there were different kinds of strength, and there were multiple variables that decided speed, just like they did for stamina.


    Speed could roughly be divided into three categories;bat speed, maneuvering speed, and reaction speed.


    Combat speed generally referred to the movement speed of the body when engaging inbat motions, like striking, charging, or dodging, and the many smaller and undefined motions that Martial Artists frequently make.


    Maneuvering speed referred to the movement speed when Martial Artists shift from one point to another inbat, including motions like sidesteps, shuffles, dashes, and sprints.


    Reaction speed referred to the speed at which the body can receive, process, and respond to external stimuli like an iing punch.


    Although these three broadly fell under the category of speed, it wasn''t because their underlying mechanics were all the same.


    Combat and maneuvering speed were both based on how fast the muscles of the body were able to elerate the body. There were even simple forme based on thews of motion and rotational dynamics that would allow Rui to estimate speed if he knew how powerful the muscles generated and the weight of the body.


    Thus if he wanted to increase or decrease speed, then he just needed to change the amount of energy generated and reduce the amount of mass the body had.


    That was exactly what the Godspeed technique did, and it was what led him to realize that the Metabody project was actually usible as a way of upgrading the VOID algorithm.


    So in a way, he had alreadypleted one part of the Metabody Project.


    Martial Squires weak to speed probably could not contend with him due to the fact that he was too much to handle when he activated Godspeed and used Forestep.


    (''One issue is that I can only use it after I make a predictive model, so it isn''t really the same as what I seek, but it is getting there.'') Rui mused.


    Furthermore, it could be applied to bothbat and maneuvering speed equally. However, it could not be applied to reaction speed.


    Unlike the other two, reaction speed was not something that he could improve with the Godspeed technique or by increasing his power output while lowering mass. In fact, the main issue he had with the Godspeed technique was that he could not improve his reaction speed to match hisbat speed.


    That was why he needed to rely on predictions to substitute for reactions. Kane had managed to improve his reaction speed to match hisbat speed with Fulminata.


    Even if his own solution wasn''t nearly as good, he was fine with it for now.


    One parameter that he had a much harder time working with was durability. How would he alter his Martial body such that the quality of his constitution improved onmand?


    Conditioning techniques were permanent improvements to passive durability. They were not reversible or changeable.


    Active defense techniques were not changes to his Martial body, they were just applications of his body to defend against attacks, like all active defensive techniques.


    (''Hm, this one is rough, I can''t even think of a concept of what I could do to temporarily amplify the defense of my body.'') Rui frowned.


    At least he had a specific goal and condition in mind to fulfill that would allow him to be able to obtain the Martial bodies ofmon Martial Paths. That was why he knew that there were little to no ways in which he could temporarily strengthen his body, off of the top of his head.


    He considered the prospects of adding substances to his body to strengthen it at the cost of other parameters, but how would he be able to undo it when he didn''t need it and it was not worth centering those resources on it?


    After all, that was what was the of altering his spec configuration, it was lowering some specs in order to increase another spec that was needed to adapt even better against his opponent.


    It was a more optimal redistribution of resources, an adapted redistribution of resources. He needed to figure out what was the best way of going about it, but he would need to explore his options more deeply.


    (''I''ll put it on the list,'')Content is property ? N?velDrama.Org.


    As for being able to increase stamina, he already had created a technique like that, the Hungry Pain technique, he generated extra stamina that way and then burned that extra stamina for higher all-round specs.


    (''Maybe if I exert more control over my Hungry Pain technique, I can use it to manipte the spec configuration of my Martial body,'') Rui''s eyes widened as he realized something that he hadn''t considered before.


    If he could somehow divert the energy and nutrients gained from the autophagy of Hungry Pain towards stamina and away from strength, he would be reducing his power output for the sake of higher stamina.


    Furthermore, if he could somehow gain enough control, he could increase his power output sacrificing stamina!


    After all, the Hungry Pain technique simply triggered autophagy, consuming dead cells, and converting them into energy and nutrients for alive cells across the body. It was an extremely efficient usage of power.


    (''It''s going to be extremely difficult to be able to control Hungry Pain like that though,'') Rui frowned.


    He could immediately tell it would probably take both a breathing technique and a mental technique to be able to manipte his metabolism like that.


    However, it was not impossible, not at all. It was just another thing that he could put on his to-do list of things to be explored as a potential way to achieve Project Metabody.


    He had just begun considering the matter very seriously, and he already had many things to do. It was going to take him more than just a little bit of time to get around to all of it.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1096 Healing

    ?


    He hadn''t even finished going through all the parameters that he wanted to be able to adjust, and he had finally arrived at thest on his list.


    (''Healing,'')


    This was normally not a parameter as it was a constant. Yet he didn''t think that it was something that was inescapable. It would be quite convenient for him if he was able to increase the rate of healing in times when he was gravely wounded. One time that immediately came to mind was the time when he was chewed out by the Root, allowing himself to heal at a much higher pace, recovering sooner.


    Who knows, if he had that ability back then he might have been able to catch the Martial Squire who left, leaking intelligence to Chairman Deacon that eventually led to the discovery of his identity.Content property of N?velDra/ma.Org.


    Regardless, one potential path forward in this particr parameter was the Hungry Pain technique, of course. But he didn''t want to bank only on that technique.


    (''Is it possible to increase the quality of my healing if I develop a technique that allows my body to consume living healthy cells to serve as fuel for new cells to cover up the wound quicker than it would normally do so?'') Rui''s eyes widened.


    In that case, he was essentially sacrificing some power output to increase the rate at which he was healing. If he ever suffered a grave wound, he could heal at a much higher pace as long as he sacrificed some stamina, power, and speed.


    It would be worth using to heal not just severe wounds, but also against Martial Artists with high damage output but low durability. Thus he would be able to take them down even if they gravely injured him.


    That was a deeply attractive prospect.


    (''Should I move beyond just the primary parameters and specs, or just stick with the basics for now?'')


    He had alreadye up with many ideas and was on a roll, who knew, maybe he would find something interesting in that regard.


    (''Ugh, let''s not oveplicate it for now,'') Rui shook his head.


    He already had more than enough on his te. It was a single project, yet it had already given him a lot of work to do right off the bat. He would rather have secluded himself dedicating himself to solving those problems, but he couldn''t even do that due to the iing war.


    (''Once I finish the basics, I can focus on improving it by focusing on details, but for now it''s unnecessary,'') He sighed.


    He closed his mind as he summed up his thoughts. He needed to explore the probability of Hungry Pain serving one of the mechanisms by which he manipted his Martial body as he pleased.


    He also needed to look into esoteric material science and symbiotes that could potentially help him achieve what ordinary techniques could not do.


    As long as he explored all the avenues and put all the pieces together bit by bit, he was sure that he could put together a solution that fulfilled his needs. For now, however, he was going to have to work out all the minor chinks out of the way step by step.


    Over the next few days, he began a preliminary search into both esoteric material sciences and symbiotes, just to get a good gauge of how easy or difficult a problem was.


    The difficulty of finding the solution depended on how much progress he could make at the beginning of the project. He was hoping that he would somehow get a little lucky and end up with a solution on the very first day of searching, but s, nothing came up.


    What he was grateful for was the knowledge base of the Floating Sect, it was clear that the Martial Sect had more than just knowledge about Martial Art techniques. He was d that they contained a decent amount of the knowledge that he was looking for.


    After all, given how isted the Floating Sect was from the rest of human civilization, they needed to be able to handle their own problems by themselves and needed to be able to raise loyal skilled workers of different professions, many of which had extensive knowledge bases that needed to be mastered before they were qualified.


    It was not practical to pick up and drop these people from the ind and back to thend, and then back to the ind. That was far from realistic to do.


    That was why the Floating Sect had the ability to train its own professionals, and that included having ess to the kind of knowledge that he needed to be able to fulfill Project Metabody.


    In just the span of a few days, he immediately judged that whatever he was looking for was something that wasn''tmon or something he could just run into. He had a schr''s degree in the general sciences, which meant that he already had a lot of knowledge on a lot of esoteric substances, and he was able to evaluate whether the various candidates that he hade across were able to solve his problem or not.


    He also gained a good understanding of how esoteric substances were categorized, and that allowed him to make more pertinent choices when engaging in research. He was able to avoid delving into vast oceans of information that simply wasn''t relevant to what he was looking for. Rather than just mindlessly reading everything he came across, he was able to look for what he wanted in the first ce.


    Over those few days, he did not even physically train at all as he surrounded himself with books. He didn''t even feel the urge to use the chamber all that much despite its many features and avenues for training.


    The time for that woulde, but for now, it was just a process of exploration until he stumbled into the necessary things needed to build whatever it was that he wanted to build.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1097 Tense

    ?


    While Rui merrily grew engrossed in his new project, the Floating Sect began growing more and more tense in the span of the following days. Surveince was tightened, and patrols were carried out by squads of guardians for extra safety.


    The Floating Sect had inducted the Martial Squires initiates that had arrived on the ind prior to the deration of war into the sect. After all, there wasn''t much else that could be done at the moment. At the moment, the Floating Sect was going to need Martial Artists more than it ever did for the war, furthermore, the Martial Artists that had arrived on the ind could not leave either.


    Thus the Floating Sect inducted them into the sect and allowed them to acquire the chambers of guardians as long as they beat them in a challenge.Content is property ? N?velDrama.Org.


    They did, however, prohibit killing and eliminated the death victory condition from the conditions to win.


    They could not afford members of the Floating Sect to kill each other at every opportunity that they got, that was not conducive to the Floating Sect''s current circumstances. Instead, they incentivized the initiates to fight for the Floating Sect even if they didn''t have a chamber with promises of one once the threat was ovee.


    The Floating Sect engaged in a lot of wartime preparations, important resources were relocated and secured, and infrastructure was quickly reinforced to whatever degree was possible. The humans of the Floating Sect were the most at risk. They were the most vulnerable group, and extra measures had been put into ce to ensure that they were likely to survive the iing conflict.


    Simple and effective evacuation ns were put into ce. rms would be rung well in advance of the arrival of the Kaddar Squire army, and there were undergroundplexes within the ind that served as shelters for the humans during this time.


    Many of the workers who were in suits were actually Martial Apprentices who were able to handle the environment better, they would be most equipped to handle things if an emergency urred and the guardians were busy. They could speed up the evacuation of the humans in the event of an attack.


    The Floating Sect released more guidelines that required Martial Squires of all ranges to be on standby, there were also groups of Martial Squires whose entire job was simply to maintain a hawk''s eye on the Kaddar Region and report the instance anything resembling an invasion spotted.


    The tension on the ind built up day by day.


    It wasn''t long before the first sh began.


    "Nearly a hundred Martial Squires spotted sky-walking at a high speed towards!"


    "Alert the Seniors!"


    rms rang on the Floating Sect when the patrolling Martial Squires just outside the ind spotted an army of Martial Squires surging up!


    The Martial Squires on standby were immediately deployed while the human personnel of the ind quickly evacuated to the shelters underground.


    Rui and Kane prepared themselves for the sh, as they were abruptly deployed. It wasn''t the case that all Martial Squires were immediately deployed. Nor was only one ss of Martial Squires deployed. Martial Artists across all sses were deployed.


    There was a bit of excitement amongst the Martial Squires.


    Rui and Kane were not exempt either. A war was not a light matter, nor was it as orderly as a challenge or a duel. Anything could happen in a war, even the slightest mistake or instance of carlessness could cause one to lose their life in an instant. That was why Rui knew that he needed to be careful and on his toes. Growing arrogant or overconfident about his Martial Art and his Martial Path would simply lead to death.


    What he truly regretted was that Project Metabody had just begun, meaning it was nowhere nearpletion. A war would have also been a perfect ce to test his new system. Arge number of Martial Squires would have been unwitting test subjects for testing the veracity of the new system of the VOID algorithm.


    Still, a part of him hoped that the war wouldst long enough for him to gain some degree of sess on Project Metabody to get in some initial data on how effective the system was in a war.


    Just as he was pondering such thoughts something caught his attention.


    Suddenly, the air changed.


    A heavy presence swept over them all. For a moment, Rui thought it was a Martial Senior.


    (''No¡­'') Rui frowned.


    Yet it wasn''t in the Squire Realm either.


    The crowd parted, pulling Rui and Kane along with it as a single man walked through.


    "It''s him¡­"


    "I cannot believe we get to fight side-by-side with the number one!"


    "I heard he forced Senior Xanarn to go all out."


    "Heh, those Kaddar Martial Squires are so screwed."


    Rui''s eyes widened as his eyes fell on the man walking through the parting crowd. He saw something for the first time in his entire life.


    The man''s ck hair was lightly groomed, and his ck eyes seemed to possess a depth that reminded Rui of what he saw when he looked into the mirror.


    He put immense pressure on all those around him, indifferent to their unease. Every step he took seemed to echo against the world itself.


    (''He''s stronger than me,'') Rui instantly recognized that. There was no question about it. Even if Rui had the opportunity to build a solid predictive model on the man, he would lose. It had been a while since Rui had felt so outssed. Just from the pressure alone, Rui could tell that this man was a greater hurdle than the Root and even Senior Xanarn when she wasn''t using her Martial Heart!


    Frankly, it was astounding. The only ones he had ever seen surpass the conventional limits of a Realm thus far to such a degree was¡­ himself back when he was at the peak of the Martial Apprentice. He created new standards of Martial Art throughout the Kandrian Empire as a Martial Apprentice.


    It appeared that Tokugawa Ieyasu was cut from the same cloth as him.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1098 Art

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    Rui did find it weird that the man''s hair was ck. That was a strange coincidence, but one that surely did not hold much significance. It was just hair and eye color, after all.


    Regardless, Rui took his time sizing him up.


    He could see why he was the number one guardian of the Floating Sect.


    (''Honestly, forget the Floating Sect, he might be the strongest Martial Squire¡­ period,'') Rui''s eyes lit up in interest and admiration.


    There were no Martial Squires that he had ever met that he would consider worthy of being considered the strongest. Until he met Ieyasu.


    (''I''m d I get to see him fight,'') Rui smirked just a little. (''I wonder what his Martial Path is.'')


    Rui immediately recalled Kane''s ount of the man''s Martial Art, he wielded sound just like Senior Xanarn did, or even better apparently.


    Yet he wasn''t foolish enough to believe that this was a mere coincidence.


    Either the man was a long-time apprentice of Senior Xanarn, or¡­


    Rui''s eyes narrowed. The alternative was so bizarre that he found it embarrassing to even parse the thought.Content property of N?velDra/ma.Org.


    (''We''ll just have to see,'')


    The crowd did not stall for more than several seconds in real-time. After all, an army was approaching Ajanta Ind, even if they couldn''t cross the distance in an instant when sky-walking, they were stilling soon.


    The Martial Squires soon enough aligned themselves at the edge of the ind before receiving instructions to be dispatched.


    More than a hundred Martial Squires plummeted into the air, diving down headfirst, as they elerated downwards sky-walking to gather as much momentum as possible.


    THWOOM THWOOM THWOOM!


    Both sides began volleying Martial Squire attacks at the other side, hoping to take as many down. Rui focused, narrowing his eyes as he put his ODA System to use, he began striking Martial Squires down far earlier than anyone else did!


    POW!


    He even managed to nail one Martial Squire in the head!, sending him tumbling back down towards the Kaddar Region.


    His heartbeat grew heavier as both sides drew closer to each other.


    The atmosphere grew taut with the maelstrom of pressure that wrung the air between them!


    Rui shifted as he avoided attack after attack,unching his own as both sides reached within the range of long-range attacks.


    Waves of attack fell on either side as the long-range Marital Squires began throwing everything that they had.


    Both sides began spreading out and taking space as the two sides got closer, something that both sides had nned ahead of time.


    No Martial Artist wanted to be caught by strays all because they were too cramped. That was the reason that all of them universally were more than willing and their opponents to gain enough space before they engaged in close-quarterbat.


    The defensive Martial Artists of both sides were ced closer to the front lines, as opposed to the rear.


    This was effectively a Martial Artist version of charging in with shields up in order to withstand the ensuing collision.


    And collide they did.


    The sheer power generated by all the various ensuing shes was so great that it changed the weather of the particr portion of the Kaddar Region that they were fighting over!


    The very skies shook as many powerful high-grade Martial Squires shed against each other, Countless fists and strikes were exchanged one after the other, as they fought with everything they had.


    BOOM!!!


    Rui evaded a strike from his opponent as he rushed forward with a Flowing Canon with all of the power that he had gathered from all of his descent!


    CRACK!


    The sheer power of the strike was so great that it broke the man''s cleanly, causing significant damage. The Martial Squire plummeted back to thend as he lost consciousness.


    Just one strike was all it took. The man lost consciousness as he began plummeting back to thend.


    Martial Artists had already begun to fall like flies.


    That was the intensity with which the war was being waged.


    He tutted as he dialed his Primordial Instinct to the very maximum. It was the best sensory technique inbat circumstances. The chaos around him was staggering, it wasn''t easy processing everything perfectly.


    He heaved a sigh of relief as he verified that Kane was okay. Yet, he didn''t have any more than a moment before he was bombarded with more attacks from an enemy Martial Squire.


    SPLAT!


    Rui evaded a serious strike from a piercing Martial Artist, ncing at her with a way expression.


    She had a bit of her blood on her fingers.


    (''She''s conditioned the fingers of her body to be especially sharp.'') Rui realized as he got a good look at them.


    Yet she didn''t give him too much time to gain his bearings. Sheshed forward, hoping to take Rui out.


    She formed her hand into a sharp palm, before rushing at him and swinging at him in incredible fashion. Her attacks were unquestionably difficult to avoid, and making even a single mistake would lead to Rui getting hurt a lot.


    Yet, that did not happen, much to her surprise. She frowned as he dodged all of her techniques with remarkable ease.


    Rui wasn''t even using a predictive model, he was merely dodging her with the merit of his own judgments bit by bit.


    Yet he swiftly began analyzing her Martial Art bit by bit. He had no mercy going into this, he was always of the opinion that Martial Artists ought to be able to bear the consequences of consenting to participate in a raging war.


    As the minutes flew by, Rui began changing bit by bit. His motions became smoother, his reactions also flew smoother, and his timing became increasingly perfect as he began adapting to her swiftly just like he had done so many times in the past to many of his opponents. It was almost a thoughtless process at this point, he could do it without the VOID algorithm. In fact, his mind was almost more preupied by his own shorings than that of his opponent.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1099 Imitative

    ?


    He couldn''t help but wonder how much quicker this would be if he had the right type of Martial body to counter his opponent. After all, his opponent relied on piercing attacks. How much quicker would he take her down?


    It was hard to know for sure, especially when she wasn''t strong enough to push his predictive model to the limit.


    CRACK!


    "Argh!" She grimaced as Rui clinched her fingers with a well-timed and ced fingerhold, breaking her fingers thoroughly.


    Having her primary weapon be broken so easily drew her attention, distracting her for a moment and drawing attention to the wound.


    Yet it wasn''t the time for that.


    POW!


    A swift kick to the jaw followed, causing her to undergo dizziness.


    POW!Content is property ? N?velDrama.Org.


    A swift but strong blow to the diaphragm followed it up, unable to help deal with the blunt force trauma that the attack gave her, she too lost consciousness as she ceased her sky-walking before plummeting from the sky.


    Two down.


    Rui wasn''t sure how many he ought to take down, but he just decided to do his best. One of the annoying weaknesses of the Floating Sect was that he couldn''t make predictions on all of them. Due to their current state and the fact that he was in the middle of the war, there was simply too much happening.


    Yet despite all that chaos, there was one that stood above all of them.


    One that drew attention to himself for the sheer spectacle that he was providing to everyone watching.


    A hoard of Martial Artists, struggling to fight a single man.


    Tokugawa Ieyasu. Rui watched as the man annihted hoards of Martial Squires with a simple gesture of his hand. That was why Rui knew that there were things about him that set him out to be far stronger than he was.


    The first was the most obvious enough.


    (''He''s not using sound techniques,'') Rui narrowed his eyes as he watched the man use all kinds of techniques left and right!


    Furthermore, they weren''t ordinary techniques either. They were all extraordinarily powerful, and not something that could be used by just anybody.


    (''Wait, so sound is not his Martial Path?'') Rui frowned. There was only one other possibility that could justify what he was seeing.


    The man used new Martial Art techniques extremely frequently. Yet Rui immediately noticed a pattern from the get-go.


    The man used the same Martial Art as his opponent!


    Rui''s eyes widened as one clear exnation popped into his mind. One that he had jokingly considered, but now seemed to be quite real.


    (''Is his Martial Path¡­?'') Rui mused with incredulity. (''Copying?!'')


    He didn''t even know that such a thing was possible at all. After all, it wasn''t every day that he ran into such a powerful Martial Art and Marital Path.


    Of course, when he considered his own Martial Art, it was more frequent, of course.


    Still, the very concept was something that Rui found quite strange, even if impressive.


    (''Martial Paths are a representative  of one''s uniqueness and individuality,'') Rui mused. (''How is he able to copy other people''s Marital Art and Paths?!'')


    That sounded like a bad joke, but it turned out to be real.


    Yet, unfortunately, he did not have the pleasure of being able to watch Tokugawa fight entirely and fully.


    He was in the middle of a way, he could not let his mind wander the way it normally did.


    Yet, it was hard to miss him. Tokugawa Ieyasu''s impact on the battlefield could be felt across the entire battlefield. He was so strong, that he was the sole reason that the Kaddar Task Force felt the need to send in more Martial Squires to reinforce theirpatriots!


    Just one man!


    Rui gritted his teeth as he got the news.


    The Floating Sect did not take this lying down. They sent their own guardians to reinforce the defending army of the Floating Sect.


    Soon enough, the battle quickly began to pick up more steam, allowing it to be evenrger and more chaotic than ever before.


    The sheer amount of area that all the Martial Squires actually upied with their battles was genuinely astounding, not even the smaller nations were enough to amodate all these powerful Martial Artists in their air space.


    The skies of the Kaddar Region quickly began lightning up now that the day grew darker and darker and dusk was arriving.


    The many Martial Squires were exhausted and tired for the day. Many of them had been fighting from the very first wave, like Rui and Kane, and they were dead tired!


    That was why both sides soon decided to withdraw their Martial Squires who were truly exhausted.


    It was dangerous to have them continue fighting beyond this point. They already had long gone past the point of safety. Forcing them to fight beyond this measure would likely cause all of them to cause each other or themselves.


    It was better for both sides to freshen up and catch a break so that they could return rejuvenated and fight a more meaningful conflict.


    To a certain, it was probably more profitable to just the Martial Seniors fight and the winner gets the ind, yet neither side wanted to take the perceived risk of losing their Martial Seniors, thus on the first day of war, not a single Martial Seniors rose from the Kaddar Region.


    Rui was actually somewhat nervous about the matter too, that was why he couldn''t keep too safe. He recalled when the matriarch of the K''ulnen Tribe just appeared out of seemingly nowhere, crossing a huge distance in a matter of seconds!


    If not for Senior Ceeran saving him from her wrath that day, he would have died on the spot.


    (''Well, even though there were no Martial Seniors, we did the closest thing to them,'') He quietly nced at the number-one-ranked guardian of the Floating Sect, recalling his performance during the first attack with interest.


    (''Imitative Evolution, eh? Most interesting,'')


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1100 Improvement

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    This was the first time he hade across a Martial Path that seemed to have as much depth as his own, it was astonishing.Content provided by N?velDrama.Org.


    Every Martial Squire he fought, he fought on their own turf. It wasn''t too long after the initial sh that he would be replicating their stance, their form, their techniques, and eventually their entire Martial Art!


    It was unfortunate that Rui could not focus on the man, after all, he had a war to participate in himself. He could only catch nces at the man, and that was why he only had a few details about how the man fought. However, based on the few nces here and there, Rui saw his fighting style continued to be closer and closer to that of his opponent. And sure enough, he went on to surpass him.


    Rui didn''t quite understand how the mechanics worked due to now being able to observe him in detail.


    Regardless, whatever he was doing, worked.


    Martial Squires fell left and right, so much so that he singlehandedly was causing the attacking army to incur unsustainable losses.


    Rui had to admire his stamina as well, for being able to maintain such a potent Martial Art for that long. One thing that Rui was quite curious about was the mechanics of how he not only copied a Martial Art but also somehow made it stronger.


    However, in order to be able to mimic any Martial Art, there were several conditions that he needed to be able to fulfill.


    (''For one, he needs to have the building blocks to be able to recreate Martial Art of any kind,'')


    This made sense. A Martial Art was made up of techniques, training, and principles; systems of movements, and processes that embody the Martial Path of the Martial Artist. He could not replicate the Martial Path without them.


    It was like copying a Lego building by building an identical building of the same fundamental building blocks. Tokugawa even went as far as to improve the building by making it bigger while still maintaining the same core philosophy, style, and principles of the building.


    (''Which means he must have mastered an enormous number of techniques in all fields!'') Rui realized.


    Of course, he realized that it was probably impossible for the man to mimic all fields. Martial Paths rted to poison, weapons, and symbiotes would be extremely difficult to aplish.


    Still, being able to copy most other Martial Art, was quite incredible.


    (''Though just having mastered all these techniques is not enough,'') Rui knew that.


    Just because a Martial Squire spent their entire life mastering all these techniques did not mean that Martial Squire would be able to suddenly copy techniques.


    The man possessed the ability to peer into the depth of a Martial Art to an extreme degree.


    That was what surprised Rui. This was the first time ever that he hade across someone who possessed as much insight into one''s Martial Art as Rui did.


    It was actually hard to believe for him. Rui gained the ability to acquire such insight into the depth of Martial Art after a lifetime of research, and then a second life undergoing neurological growth a second time.


    Furthermore, it took him mastering the Mind Pce technique to be able to store and organize all the data for swift processing, something that he wasn''t able to do without it.


    (''I don''t think he creates predictive models, but he definitely looks at the patterns of his opponent and mimics them,'')


    It made sense, they both had ess to the same information but used that information very differently. Rui adapted to patterns, and from what he could see, Ieyasu improved them, getting rid of ws, weaknesses, and inefficiencies.


    In a way, he showed Martial Artists their future self.


    Rui could copy patterns to a small extent like he did when training Max and Mana. This was why he was confident that Ieyasu did much more than that. He wondered how Ieyasu went about gathering information on his opponents, and whether it was the exact same way that Rui did.


    Rui learned more about the man the more he came up in conversations about his contributions to defending the Floating Sect.


    The man had been in the Floating Sect for nearly ten years. That was longer than Rui had been a Martial Artist. Yet, against all expectations, he did not rise up in the Floating Sect slowly and step by step.


    It was said that he became the lowest guardian of the Floating Sect, and remained there for quite some time, enduring challenge after challenge, and winning them all. He didn''t challenge another guardian for a higher-ranked chamber for years, until one fine day, he challenged the former number one guardian.


    He won, and it wasn''t even close.


    He shocked the entire Sect with his feat. So much so that for the next year he got bombarded with challenges from all guardians, fighting one nearly every day, sometimes multiple times a day until he defeated all one thousand guardians of the Floating Sect at the time.


    That was when even the greatest of skeptics had to concede that he was the strongest. It was undeniable, and yet shocking.


    No one had ever seen such a growth trajectory, though it had also appeared that he was cultivating his strength, and only challenged the guardian ranked number one when he felt that he had obtained the fruits from his training that he wanted.


    That was quite fascinating to Rui, and to a certain degree what Rui intended to do.


    He did not intend to challenge a guardian before he made at least some progress on Project Metabody, he didn''t feel the greatest need to chase after higher-ranked chambers. He would be able to make more progress in the long run if he grew stronger, before aiming for a spot that was much higher than he would have been able to obtain on his own, that was for sure.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1101 Underestimated

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    Many spectators to the war between the Kaddar Treaty Organization and the Floating Sect could not help but feel surprised at the oue of the battle.


    Of course, this was merely the oue of a battle containing around ten percent of all the forces at y, yet it showed that the guardians of the Floating Sect were not weak.


    The Kaddar Treaty Organization was aware of the fact that the Floating Sect''s guardians were elites among high-grade Martial Squires. After all, the process of bing a guardian, and then maintaining it was grueling. It filtered out the cream of the crop and ensured that even weaker high-grade Martial Squires simply never had the ability to be guardians of the Floating Sect due to simplycking the necessary resources.


    Yet even then, the performance of the Floating Sect was jarringly impressive. The guardians were powerful enough to win against their Kaddar counterparts.Content is property ? N?velDrama.Org.


    Especially the one that killed dozens of Martial Squires.


    It was absurd to the Kaddar nations that one Martial Squires killed so many others. In fact, the Kaddar nations had initially thought that he was actually a Martial Senior who had been deployed to wipe out their Martial Squires.


    It had taken them a while to realize that this wasn''t the case.


    The Kaddar nations immediately realized that they had underestimated the Floating Sect. It didn''t help that the Floating Sect''s contact with the outside world was almost non-existent. Gaining intelligence on the level of power of the Floating Sect on average was not easy. The Kaddar nations had naively thought that simply hiring decently powerful Martial Squires would be enough to seal the deal, but apparently, this was clearly not the case.


    Yet, it wasn''t the end of the world.


    While the Floating Sect had quality, the Kaddar Region had quantity. That was the reason that the Floating Sect was in a bit of a punch. Every guardian that they had lost, and would lose from here on out was going to stick.


    The flow of Martial Squires entering the Floating Sect had reduced, although it appeared that a particrly slippery Martial Squire appeared from time to time, entering the Floating Sect, and immediately bing a guardian.


    That was the only incentive to join the Floating Sect at the moment, there were vacancies that could definitely be filled with new blood.


    However, it was not enoughpared to the influx of Martial Squires that the Kaddar Region could bring in at the moment.


    This was what the Floating Sect had evidently prepared for when they focused their policies on attracting the strongest of Martial Squires, and making sure that the strongest of Marital Squires remained within was clearly paying off.


    The Kaddar nations needed to persevere and truly grind away at the Floating Sect''s problems.


    And grind away it did.


    The Kaddar nations could not gather, organize, and rece Martial Squires too frequently, but they were able to do it enough to ensure that they could attack the Floating Sect regrly. The Martial Squires of the Floating Sect held on strong, even on days when Rui wasn''t on the battlefield.


    Rui grew to cherish those periods. He could invest in himself significantly, and grow stronger naturally as a result. The best part was that he had a very clear-cut direction forward. After all, he had spent quite some time ironing out his n centered around his ambitions and goals. Now he just needed to refine them a bit and begin the exploration and training.


    In order to upgrade the VOID algorithm, he had chosen to add a new system based on changing the Martial Body in order to adapt a spec configuration to another kind of Martial Art.


    He had immediately begun with one of the more promising and essible methods that he had proposed in mind.


    The Hungry Pain technique, was not as though there was anything new to the technique itself, it was just that Rui realized that the energy consumed by the Hungry Pain technique could possibly be used for specific physical parameters as opposed to others.


    Doing this would allow him to manipte his spec configuration to a certain degree, although not entirely.


    There were other avenues that he already had his eyes on, like the esoteric material science solution, or the symbiote solution. However, those were more long-term projects that could not be resolved in any short amount of time. Not even he couldplete that research in any short period of time.


    Another thing that he hade to realize in recent times was the fact that breathing techniques were also a possible solution to realizing the new system that he wanted to realize.


    In fact, he recalled the breathing techniques that Ian Nepomniatchi used. The man''s breathing techniques allowed him to manipte his physical parameters. The only problem was that the breathing techniques used to do that did not manipte his Martial body in any way. They only supplied it with more energy and strengthened it in some ways, they did not grant the spec configurations of desired Martial bodies needed to counter his opponent.


    It meant that those on their own could not possibly be the solution to the challenge at hand.


    However, he did think that there was a good chance that they would be part of the solution as a whole.


    Regardless, he had multiple avenues of research. That was why he wasn''t too disheartened by the difficulty of the ambitious goal that he had undertaken. Furthermore, he was also confident because of his track record. Projects that he undertook generally seeded, and those many sesses allowed him to reach a level where he undertook projects with great confidence and dedication.


    Furthermore, this was no ordinary project, and he had been more excited about upgrading the VOID algorithm than he had been about any other technique project that he had ever tried to engage in before.


    With that in mind, he headed to the Martial library of the Floating Sect, taking his first step in realizing Project Metabody.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1102 Imperfect

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    The Floating Sect had a dedicated library for Martial Art and Martial Artist, and he wasn''t surprised to see that the quality of the institution was high.


    After all, the Floating Sect existed for Martial Artists. That meant that all things rted to Martial Art were done with care. That included creating databases of Squire-level techniques, among other things.Content is property ? N?velDrama.Org.


    Of course, it still wasn''t impressive by the standards of the Kandrian Martial Union. However, it was respectable. The number of techniques was broad enough, and the organization system was not as good as the highly sophisticated as that of the Martial Union, but it worked for what he had in mind.


    Although he immediately wanted to dive into the symbiotic techniques, he restrained himself. Symbiotic techniques were one of the few sses of techniques where the risks and dangers were high.


    He was not calling the Floating Sect ipetent, but if he was going to trust an organization''s information and skill with medical procedures and symbiotes with his life and potentially even his Martial Path, it needed to be an organization of the caliber of the Martial Union. He simply did not trust anybody else to not mess up, either by action or through information.


    The esoteric material science solution did not have that drawback, so he put it on the list of the things that he ought to consider.


    However, it was not at the top of the list. Esoteric material science was also an option that required a lot of ess to high-level knowledge, this meant that it wasn''t the best environment for him to study something that was unrted to Martial Art at its essence.


    Although he was applying them to a Martial Art context, this wasn''t a particrlymon or popr field of material science applications as far as he knew.


    The Martial Union had not batted an eye when he purchased its medical services to insert esoteric substances into his body when he was working on Riemannian Echo.


    Furthermore, he hade across paradigms from other Marital Artists that focused on applying esoteric substances to the body when he was studying and researching at Crexeet Town. Thus it wasn''t something he had pioneered, that was for sure.


    But it also wasn''t a super popr field, which meant that there was a chance that he himself would need to do a lot of the original legwork and research for Project Metabody. If not, there was no chance that there would be new things that could possibly be done about the matter.


    It was better to begin with the easiest avenues for solutions which, in this case, was the Hungry Pain technique.


    (''I need a technique that can allow me to manipte the energy and nutrients that my body gains from autophagy, and channel it to different physical parameters as per my wish.'')


    He already knew that even if he chose the easiest avenue for research, it was still quite challenging at a bare minimum.


    What he sought was a level of bodily control that he had never achieved before, nor had he ever seen before.


    Autophagy was the process of the body eating up dead organic matter, and recycling the energy and nutrients gained from that to sustain the body in times of great hunger. It was an extremely good resource because it was estimated that approximately one million cells died in the human body every second, nearly one point two kilograms of cells died every day!


    Yet, most of these cells were simply discarded without their resources being used for anything. It was an extremely inefficient process, but s, the body would not budge under any circumstances.


    Unless, of course, the body was starving and autophagy was activated. It was why Rui was able to heal light wounds in a short period of time, something that was certainly unusual for someone of his kind of Martial body to have a developed healing factor.


    It was also why his Martial body came out of the womb starting out at grade-two from the very get-go. That was because he was able to tap into a resource that existed within the body that was routinely discarded by the human body.


    If he could gain the power to control how his body applied that autophagy, then he would be able to dictate where that power was spent, allowing him to control his spec configuration to a certain degree.


    One shoring was the fact that while this was a lot more optimistic, it was also a lot less perfect.


    The mass of the body did not change when autophagy was applied, which meant that he could not really alter his specs to be that of a speed-oriented Martial body the way Godspeed did. He could not amplify strength either, since simply supplying more energy straightforwardly would not change anything by itself. He would also need to increase the muscle''s energy consumption of the increased energy to output greater results.


    In the same vein, it could not amplify the toughness of the body.


    However, it could massively improve stamina if he wanted. This meant that he could potentially match stamina and endurance-oriented Martial Artists if he seeded. He couldst an incredibly long time tost without sustenance.


    That wasn''t the only thing he could do if he seeded in gaining full control of the Hungry Pain technique.


    If he was severely injured, he could assimte and redirect the millions of cells that died every second to the wound, rapidly healing it up in real time as his evolved healing factor massively benefitted from the influx of building blocks and energy for new cells to quickly cover up the wound.


    He could obtain a healing factor that was on par with the Wolverine!


    It was true that it could not do anything about the primary fields ofbat such as strength, speed, and durability. But that was fine, he had already gone into this matter knowing that it was unlikely that he would get what he was looking for from a single solution.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1103 Breathing

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    The question was how he ought to go about gaining control over the energy and nutrients that his body obtained from the Hungry Pain technique. This was where the hard part began. All rights ? N?velDrama.Org.


    (''The issue is that cells deal urs uniformly across the body barring the brain,'') He sighed. (''This makes it hard for me to gather all of it and channel it the way I want to.'')


    Had, for some reason, all the dead cells that the Hungry Pain technique recycled all been concentrated in one location conveniently, then there would have been no problem for Rui toe up with some way to control it as he pleased because it was so conveniently rounded up for him.


    It would have just been a matter of engaging in some conditioning, both mental and physical.


    But he wasn''t sure how he could redirect all of the yield of Hungry Pain to whatever physical parameter he wanted.


    (''Well, unfortunately, I can''t really improve my offensive or defensive output with this or my maneuvering,'') He sighed. (''So it''s really a question of how do I control whether my Hungry Pain technique improves my stamina, or my healing factor at the moment.'')


    Just simply supplying more energy and nutrients to muscle cells would not make those muscles generate greater force. That was not how muscle tissue functioned. They weren''t steam engines that would generate more power the more coal was dumped into the furnace. They had upper limits, and could only burn so much energy to output some corresponding result.


    (''This is, of course, barring the Martial Heart, which can and does increase output.'')


    The energy and nutrients that his Hungry Pain technique provided was stamina at its core, it allowed him to fight far longer due to the recycling of energy. Thus he wasn''t too concerned about using it to improve stamina, that was what it did by default.


    Improving his healing factor, on the other hand, was something he needed to figure out how to handle. When the human body was wounded, the cells at the edge of the wound would immediately begin the division process, closing the wound with new cells over time. This required the body to slowly supply cells with the necessarypounds and nutrients to divide and form new cells.


    Rui narrowed his eyes. (''So if I find a way to dump all the energy and nutrients of Hungry Pain into my blood when I''m severely injured, then the cells healing the wound will be able to receive the required energy and nutrients to make new cells much sooner, allowing the production of a new cell to ur much sooner, and the process of the new one also growing quicker.'')


    That was an optimistic condition for him to set for himself. If he suffered a wound, then all he needed to was find a way to simply use the energy and nutrients of the Hungry Pain technique to enter the bloodstream after the wound was inflicted.


    He didn''t need to somehow control where it went after it entered the stream. Blood reached all ces in the human body, and dead cells were present everywhere in the human body, thus if he could get them to enter the blood when a wound was inflicted, the cells around the wound would naturally begin taking in the huge amount of energy and nutrients that would enter the bloodstream, thus healing faster.


    All he needed to do wase up with a conceptual framework of how the mechanism would work.


    (''Hm, I need some sort of principle that will push the energy and nutrients of the assimted dead cells into the bloodstream,'') Rui narrowed his eyes.


    It was not easy, after all, the only interactions between the blood and cells came in the form of the diffusion of gases. Every time one inhaled, one was essentially dissolving the gases breathed from the outside into the blood, while expelling the gases from the blood out, which was exhaled. The blood would then travel with the oxygen and other gases dissolved into it, before exchanging gases with cells.


    Rui''s eyes lit up as an idea popped into his head. (''Wait a minute, I can use air to wash out all the energy and nutrients stored in cells and tissue from the Hungry Pain technique.'')


    It sounded silly, but it might work. Cells received oxygen from blood and returned carbon dioxide. If the amount of carbon dioxide that exited it was great enough it could also allow for the removal of excess energy and nutrients in a cell from Hungry Pain.


    It was sort of simr to how water cleaned out a bucket when it was thrown out, in a sense. However, it only worked if the density of gas was enough to be able to hook along excess and non-essential nutrients with it like a fishing.


    (''In order to get such a dense fishing that will extract all the energy and nutrients, I need to inhale dense breaths.'') Rui realized.


    However, he didn''t fail to recall that he was on an ind where the atmosphere was naturally extremely dense.


    (''However, that''s not enough, it needs to be even more, and I also need to replicate it when I''m off the ind,'') Rui realized.


    He did not want a technique that was off the ind, and considering that the ind didn''t do the trick, he needed to find a way to make sure that he could inhale and exhale that much air at once.


    Thankfully, this was a much more manageable area. Breathing techniques were one of the most foundational bread-and-butter techniques of nearly every Martial Artist in the world. There was an enormous amount of research that had gone into the field, and he was sure that he would be able to find some technique the principles of which he could apply to his Hungry Pain technique to create a new technique that allowed him to enhance his healing factor.


    Rui grinned as he found the path forward to eventually realizing Project Metabody.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1104 Overlap

    ?


    However, that did not mean that there were no issues with the technique. It was not perfect.  Rui was already using the Hungry Pain technique on a permanently regr basis. After all, he had used the Hungry Pain technique to obtain a stronger Martial body that was grade two right off the bat.


    Because he was measured to have extremely high stamina before he became a Martial Squire, his evolution process evolved his other physical parameters to a greater degree than at the cost of stamina.


    Because he had chosen an all-rounder Martial body that was perfectly equally bnced between all parameters, the evolution process to reach that bnce needed to evolve his stamina less than his other parameters because his stamina was already high, and disproportionately higher than the rest of his body. Thus by evolving his stamina, he could achieve the perfectly bnced Martial body that he had at the moment.


    If not for Hungry Pain, he would actually be weak in stamina, so that meant that if he wanted to use Hungry Pain for something aside from stamina, it would cause his stamina to plummet.Content provided by N?velDrama.Org.


    Thus every time he wanted to elerate his healing, he was greatly hampering his stamina.


    That was something that he needed to keep in mind. He wouldn''t be able tost too long if he healed too much since his normal stamina simply was not up to par whatsoever without the Hungry Pain technique.


    He immediately headed to the breathing technique section of the Floating Sect''s Martial library as he began searching for what he wanted.


    It was at times like these were he could truly appreciate the Martial Union for its scrupulous order and organization


    The Floating Sect''s sections were more chaotic. Sections covered random and arbitrary fields, or multiple fields rounded into each other.


    Yet, in this case, it wasn''t too hard to find the breathing technique section.


    It was one of thergest section techniques of the entire library.


    That was what surprised him, although breathing techniques were extremely important and foundational. It was only one specific field as opposed to broader fields that were based on the fundamental aspects ofbat like offense and defense.


    In fact, another field that was nearly asrge was the section containing sound techniques. That was strange too, but then Rui recalled that Senior Xanarn was a sound-oriented Martial Artist.


    (''One of the Martial Seniors must be a breathing-oriented Martial Artist,'')


    That would exin why there were so many breathing-oriented Martial Art techniquespared to Martial Art techniques of other fields.


    Regardless, he wasn''tining. More options meant that there was a higher likelihood that he would be able to find what he was looking for.


    Even if he needed to go through every single, he was more than willing to do so.


    One good thing about the Floating Sect was that it allowed him to go through all of the techniques free of cost. That was quite the incentive for Martial Artists to remain on the ind and train.


    After all, training chambers were all well and good. But it was Martial Art techniques that really made them stay. After all these techniques served to help guardians grow stronger in the Floating precisely for times like these.


    Rui immediately began searching thoroughly going through multiple techniques.


    Many of them were supplementary in nature, after all, breathing techniques were quite conducive to supplementing life.


    It didn''t take too long to realize that he was not going to find a single solution that was going to be able to fulfill what he wanted. The very concept of what he was looking for was unknown to the existing paradigms.


    That was why Rui was starting to suspect that he wasn''t going to be able to find what he was looking for in one wrapped-up gift.


    However, there were still ways he could naturally meet expectations. He knew what he was looking for. He wanted a powerful breathing technique that was powerful enough to inhale great a amount of oxygen.


    There were several techniques that came close to finding ways for Rui to achieve this, and he had a particr interest in them.


    [Whirlpool Breathing]


    A breathing technique that focuses on increasing the flexibility of the diaphragm, allowing it to expand even further than it could normally do so. This resulted in deeper breaths that allowed for an even greater amount of oxygen to enter the blood.


    [Elephant Breathing]


    This breathing technique strengthened the diaphragm''s natural strength and evolved the skeletal muscr system that way.


    (''Why not both?'')


    Rui realized that because the two of them worked by principles that did not intervene or ovep with each other, it would not be problematic for him to master both of them. As for whether that would be enough for him to inhale enough air to be able to get the energy and nutrients of Hungry Pain from the cells and into the bloodstream remained to be seen.


    Unfortunately, it was not possible for him to know the end result before he actually mastered those techniques.


    Still, he was definitely on the right path.


    Even if these two weren''t enough, he simply needed to master enough breathing and supplementary techniques that would allow him to inhale enough quantity of air very rapidly.


    He immediately got to work as he procured copies of the two techniques from the library counter.


    He immediately went through both of them one by one, examining the training methodologies and the necessary equipment to master the two techniques. One good thing about the Floating Sect was that the chamber contained all of the necessary training resources. He simply needed to return back to his chamber and he could immediately begin training.


    (''Hopefully, I''ll get to test this technique in the war once I''m done with it,'')


    He was confident that he would get plenty of opportunity to test the limits of his new technique in the war against the Kaddar Region, it was not going away any time soon.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1105 Unsure

    ?


    Unlike a one-time battle, a war dragged on for quite some time. In this case, Rui did not expect any quick development in the war. It was simply too slow, long, and grueling. It was a contest of attrition versus themitment of the Kaddar Region.


    The war had entered into a stage of monotony to a certain extent. After all, the conditions were rather simple for the Kaddar nations and the Floating Sect. The Floating Sect simply wanted to survive and put up a stiff resistance.


    The Kaddar nations were not content letting the ind stick around, thus their assaults had been regr.


    The Floating Sect grew ustomed to the rms of war. After a while, it became increasingly normal for all guardians to get involved with the war due to their obligation to the Floating Sect, but aside from that, the guardians'' day-to-day life had not changed too much.Content property of N?velDra/ma.Org.


    In fact, the warpletely escaped Rui''s mind when he wasn''t participating in it. He had stopped caring about it after the first battle.


    He was too engrossed in training with the Whirlpool Breathing and Elephant Breathing techniques.


    After all, the two techniques were the most relevant matter to his Martial Art, he trained diligently to get to the level that he wanted.


    And he was making progress.


    The training n for the Whirlpool technique had Rui engage in all kinds of inhumane stressing and stretching training to loosen up his diaphragm. Lack of flexibility usually means the presence of fascia, a form of connective tissue that is meant to hold down the muscle system.


    He felt the training allowed him to breathe deeper than he would normally be able to do so, making every effort to maximize utility.


    The Elephant Breathing technique was a good old-fashioned and straightforward training technique. It tortured his diaphragm, he got stronger.


    He did not do anything other than train rigorously and endlessly, and he was fine with that.  Project Metabody was so ambitious and alluring that Rui did not mind a tedious and boring time outside of his technique in regard to that.


    His mind was constantly filled with possibility in regard to that. He wanted to know how he was going to realize the rest of Project Metabody.


    He also spent time looking into esoteric substances that, while not necessarily optimal, could help him point in the right direction, to begin with, and thus less time would be wasted in general.


    Hepletely detached from reality at one point as he furiously spent nearly every second of his time thinking about going about how he could get closer to fulfilling Project Metabody.


    It was addicting, almost. He couldn''t help it, it was the first time that he had gotten this excited about a project since Project Water itself.


    Much to Rui''s surprise, the training was progressing far quicker than he had expected. The reason for that was that he knew that having undergone conditioning of his diaphragm and lungs before made it easier for him.


    He had undergone pretty rigorous training on the Might Roar sh st technique and had trained his diaphragm in quite a novel manner that one would suspect that he already had.


    The Mighty Roar sh st technique had a very real possibility of being the most dangerous Martial Art technique that he had ever been subject to. He was literally on the verge of death many times during that bit of training on Vilun Ind, all so that he could gain the technique that served as the basis of Transverse Resonance.


    That gave him a much lower bar for him to cross because he had already crossed a lot of it. One of the challenges however was how different the training methodologies were, and why a lot of the gains he made on Vilun Ind were not one-to-oneparisons to the training technique of the movement.


    After all, human bodies were far too diverse and nuanced for there to be only one aspect of a muscle to be treated, although there wasn''t any ovep, there was still not enough of an ovep for him to rely on the training he did on Vilun Ind to be enough, it definitely helped.


    As time passed, his diaphragm grew stronger and stronger, and its ability to expand grew far greater than it ever used to be. He could that this not only would potentially help him realize his goal, but at the bare minimum, it would strengthen all his long-range techniques for good, his long-range offense would be even more lethal than it used to be.


    He could also feel that this would definitely have improved a lot of his other breathing techniques such as Gale Force Breathing, Wind Breathing, and Final Breathing.


    Thus even if this avenue of exploration did not seed, Rui had to admit that he definitely would have made enough gains from his training such that it would have been worth it. On the other hand, the benefits that he got from the nourishing atmosphere of the Floating Sect also increased naturally, since he could inhale a greater amount of air, his body received a greater amount of it.


    There were times when he simply did not leave his chamber except for when he had to be deployed, and the fights against the Martial Squires of the Kaddar Region allowed him to have a good gauge for how much stronger he had be.


    Though unlike with other techniques, he did not know exactly where he ought to stop because he was mastering them often for the sake of others. Yet he wasn''t sure if it was enough to do what he wanted. Thankfully, there were ways to test whether it was ready or not.


    After merely two months of training, he hadpleted the technique, and now it was time to check the results. Had he gained the ability to flesh cells of their excess energy and nutrients so that they could be used for elerated healing?


    He intended to find out.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1106 Outcome

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    He activated Whirlpool and Elephant Breathing. His lungs expanded farther than they ever had, swifter than they ever had. The abrupt and powerful expansion created a great pressure difference between his surroundings and the contents of his lungs, and a powerful wind draft entered into his lungs momentarily creating an extremely dense breath that diffused into his blood.


    SPLAT


    He cut himself with a swift and sharp swing, cutting open a deep gash on his body. Having not defended against it made it easier for him to seed.


    His eyes widened as the wound began closing up at a speed that was visible to the eye. Within seconds, the wound had been closed!


    "Nice!" Rui grinned.


    This was definitely a great first step forward in realizing Project Metabody. He didn''t have anyints about the end oue of the project.


    Given the speed at which he recovered, he was matching Martial Artists whose bodies were entirely specialized to heal. The fact that he could do it with just a few techniques was rather impressive.


    However, that did not mean that there were no shorings or downsides. In addition to burning through stamina much quicker, he could not always use his healing technique very easily.


    The reason for that was simple, it required a breathing technique to be used while he was breathing.


    This meant that he could not use Wind Breathing, or Gale Force Breathing while he was healing himself, because he could not breathe two different ways at the same time. It simply was not possible.


    In the same vein, he could not use Final Breathing for all that long because it simply could not be used simultaneously with Whirlpool Breathing, and Elephant Breathing.


    That meant that every time he wanted to heal, he could not use his speed as much. He also could not use long-range techniques, or at the very least, it would be too difficult to use his sound-based techniques rapidly.Content property of N?velDra/ma.Org.


    He had expected this. The point of Project Metabody was to be able to distribute the resources of the body across the body to be able to best adapt to his opponent. That necessarily meant that he could not do everything at once.


    Still, it meant that he would need to be careful about what he used when. This was something that was actually quite important to adapting his Martial body to his opponent.


    Just like techniques, he needed to apply the right body at the right time. The VOID algorithm had been created with a system to know what motion to use based on the predictions of the predictive model, however, it did not include how he should adapt his body.


    After all, bodies could not change to adapt to their opponent back on Earth. What Rui needed to do was create a new system that allowed him to pick the perfect body to adapt to his opponent each time.


    This was not going to be easy.


    He had put this off momentarily since he didn''t see the point in trying to create such a system when he hadn''t even seeded in altering his spec configuration. The system for changing his body just right to adapt to his opponent was something that needed to cater to the results of Project Metabody.


    If Project Metabody was a perfect sess, then he could be more ambitious with the resulting system for choosing what kind of body change to make to adapt to his opponent. If it was a partial sess, then the resulting system also needed to reflect that.


    (''I can actually begin building it now that I have taken the first step towards realizing Project Metabody.'') Rui mused.


    For the time being, he could focus on the progress that he had made thus far. He had already developed a ''healing mode'' for his body where the spec configuration of his body leaned towards healing at the expense of stamina.


    Thus, it would help him if he set up a system where he inputted variables about his opponent''s Martial body and the predictive model, and it would output what kind of body Rui ought to change to. Given that he had only figured out the healing body option, he could begin with that.


    (''Under what circumstances would a body that heals very well at the cost of other parameters be the most optimal kind of body to have?'') Rui wondered.


    It would, almost by definition, need to be circumstances where strength, speed, durability, and, stamina weren''t all that important while healing was.


    Rui immediately arrived at the fundamental condition for such a circumstance. (''When your opponent''s lethality exceeds your ability to prevent yourself from enduring damage.'')


    Hyper-offensive Martial Artists inflicted damage in ways or forms that were extremely difficult to prevent. If he ran across a Martial Artist with an extremely potent wide-range piercing offense that made it extremely difficult to evade, or defend, then he would rather spend his energy healing from the damage than defend against it.


    In such a circumstance, his opponent''s range would not matter. Furthermore, if his opponent waspletely focused on offense, then Rui probably did not need much offense to crack the man''s defense, or much maneuvering or speed to keep up with the Martial Artist who was not specialized in those fields.


    This was the core condition, but that was only the first step.


    At the end of the day, what he was hoping for was a rigorous system that would allow him to arrive at the perfect body adaptation with just simple inputs. He did not want to have to be distracted by too many thought processes on stuff that he could potentially automate.


    Rui continued to sharpen his timing with the breathing and the healing and making sure that he timed it just right rtive to enduring an injury.


    He found that it was actually much better to begin the breathing technique before he even endured the wound at all, doing that made sure that the healing seamlessly began the moment he endured the wound.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1107 Incompatibility

    ?


    This meant that the pattern recognition system of the VOID algorithm was also relevant to him timing of the healing technique. As long as he made sure that the energy and nutrients produced by autophagy were already in the bloodstream before the wound was inflicted.


    While Rui was quite enlightened by his training and tests on his new technique, he was not content with such tame experiments.


    (''I want to test it out in a proper battle,'')


    That was the best way to test the effectiveness of any new technique. To actually apply it inbat, particrly against a strong foe. Other forms of testing were not necessarily bad, but real-life verification was most certainly the best way to go about things.


    There was something else entirely about an opponent that actually struggled with everything they had to fight back that could not be replicated by testing in more controlled formats and environments.


    However, in this case, it was a bit more tricky.


    He needed the right opponent. If he just picked any opponent, he would not even use it against them because it was not the most optimal solution. He needed to find a guardian with a dominating lethal offense that was nearly difficult to avoid.


    (''Looks like I''m going to have to do some scouting.'')


    And so he did. However, it was not the way one would have expected him to. The Floating Sect did not publicize details surrounding the Martial Art of the various guardians. Thus Rui had only three ways to gain such information.


    The first was through second-hand testimony from other guardians. He could ask around since many of them knew many of them for quite some time. The guardians at the bottom sses of the Floating Sect were generally in flux. Many came and many went.


    The reason for this was that most initiate challengers challenged the weakest of guardians. However, once one went up the ss, the less likely it was to be challenged.


    Thus they were also less likely to die,  as a result of failing.


    Thankfully, duels between guardians were still allowed since battles between guardians did not require death as a win condition.


    Another way that he could find out what he was looking for was by simply duels between guardians firsthand.


    He was more favorable to this option. He did not want to rely on gossip, it was unreliable, and it felt wrong to do in the first ce. Thus, he was inclined to get the information that he sought all by his own ability.All rights ? N?velDrama.Org.


    However, even that wasn''t necessarily the best option.


    He had a better option in mind, one that was quicker and more efficient.


    (''Scouting them when we defend the Floating Sect from an attack from the Kaddar Treaty Organization.'') He mused with a mischievous grin.


    Many Martial Squires would be partaking in protecting the Floating Sect from the Martial Squires that were aiming to weather down the guardians and whittle down their numbers. That meant that there was a good chance that Rui would find what he was looking for if he scouted for who he was looking for in war. That was the best part of the solution. He did not need to do much at all.


    However, it dide with risks. He needed to scout while fighting off the attackers from the Kaddar Region.


    (''I''ll have to make do with getting the most basic and easy details,'') He sighed.


    It was not possible for him to focus on his fellow guardians if he too was partaking in a life-or-death fight. He could not afford to make a single mistake, a single mistake could result in death.


    Still, as long as he got the basic details needed to make the judgment he needed to make, he was actually quite satisfied.


    (''The best case scenario would be if my opponent also happens to be the type where my healing body turns out to be the best way to counter them,'')


    That would be perfect, but s, it was not something that was very realistic. He needed an opponent that could push in just the right way for him to show the cards that he had just created.


    The reason that he wanted to test the technique in a fight so much was because, unlike other techniques, this one was nearly as simple, he needed to make sure that it was practical and viable in a fight.


    (''The good thing about the new healing technique is that it can be halted the second I stop Whirlpool and Elephant Breathing,'')


    This was something that could not be said for the Godspeed technique. Once it started, he could not undo it. That was troubling because it meant that he needed to be extremely certain that that technique was the right choice for the circumstances that he was in.


    If he made the wrong choice, it would be very bad.


    (''Also, I cannot use Godspeed and the healing technique in the same fight,'') Rui tutted.


    The reason for this was because a lot of the mass that was removed from his body through exhtion was, in part, dead cells that were used for the Hungry Pain technique. Thus if he used Godspeed in a given fight, he would not have the necessary dead cells left for recycling that could be used for his new healing technique.


    That was a big issue that he needed to keep in mind whenever he was about to use either technique, just using them in a fight wasmittal, and he needed to make sure that he never came to regret it either way.


    Of course, while using Godspeed made super-healing impossible, the other way around wasn''t nearly as strict as long as he used it to a minor degree and did not drain as much as his recycled cell reserve.


    (''Ah, I ought toe up with a name for the new technique,'') Rui mused, giving it some thought.


    It wasn''t long before he settled on one.


    "Weaving Blood."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1108 Opponent

    ?


    It made sense because blood was the carrier of the energy and nutrition needed for the wounds to heal, from the rest of the body. He spent some more time estimating the limits of his healing.


    Even before he got into the experimentation, he could already theoretically project some of the limits of his healing.


    Given that his healing was limited by the amount of energy,pounds, and nutrition that was needed to build new cells.


    (''That''s several kilograms of flesh,'') Rui mused.


    Martial bodies were much denser and heavier than normal human bodies, which was why the Weaving Blood and Godspeed technique could work for Martial Artists, and not for normal humans. However, even with increased mass, Rui estimated the limit for the amount of tissue that he could heal and regenerate was limited to several kilograms at most.


    This was important because he needed to track how much his body had healed at all times. It could end up being a disaster if he somehow miscalcted how much more damage he could handle. That could up with him being severely damaged in a particr scenario but unable to heal because he thought his healing factor was still super-enhanced.


    Rui conducted several tests to verify his limits in practice, and much to his surprise, he was actually capable of healing more than he had initially projected.


    There was more to the body than just recycled cells, and he hadn''t ounted for additional sources of energy andpounds.


    Testing out Weaving Blood was an ordeal that took days, he did not want to miss a single detail. From healing volume to healing speed among other variables, he needed to ensure that he understood everything there was about the technique.


    It was only after he was done that he volunteered for a deployment. The Floating Sect allowed guardians to volunteer for a defense deployment if they wanted to. There were many guardians who saw the war as an opportunity to forge themselves and grow stronger as a result.


    Rui was not one of them, although he did not disagree with the idea, and would have been a part of them in different circumstances, he was too consumed with his newfound project to care about gaining more experience as a Martial Artist in war.


    The only reason he was entering today was to find a Martial Artist that was suitable for him to challenge.


    He did not intend to make a predictive model, of course. Nor could he, when he was focused on fighting his opponent.


    "You''re volunteering?" Kane frowned. "All because you wanna find a suitable opponent to challenge to test your new technique?"


    "Yes,"


    "That''s some dedication alright. Why don''t you ask around? It''s easier and it doesn''t require having to partake in a battle." Kane suggested.


    "I already considered that," Rui replied as he began gearing up. The next attack was projected to appear any time soon, and he was expected to be on standby if he was going to partake in the war.


    "Well, good luck. Have fun."


    It wasn''t long after he was waiting on standby. rms rang as another wave of Martial Squires was reported arriving from the Kaddar Region. Nobody panicked, and everybody went about responding calmly with the relevant and established protocol.


    Rui and the many guardians on standby began dismounting from the ind as they dove down. Although the enemies were able to secure the safety of the ind with some sort of advanced esoteric technology that used the gravitation of the esoteric substances that caused the bind over the ind to grow stronger temporarily making it harder to destroy and crumble to the ground, it was still best for the Floating Sect to distance the battle away from the ind as much as possible.All rights ? N?velDrama.Org.


    Because it meant that the Martial Squires of the Kaddar Region no longer had anypunctions about wreaking havoc atop Ajanta Ind.


    (''They''re here,'') Rui narrowed his eyes.


    His instincts sharpened as he focused his mind, dedicating most of his concentration to the enemies, while also keeping a bit of an eye on his fellow guardians.


    Soon enough, they entered range for distant artillery exchanges. Both sides rained the other side with long-range attacks.


    Most Martial Squires simply spammed attacks from such arge range with the hopes of randomly hitting a few before the battle entered the mid and close-range quarters. T


    Not Rui, he did not simply attack with the hopes of hitting an opponent.


    He attacked with the knowledge that he was going to hit his opponents.


    He masterfully applied the Pathfinder technique and Transverse Resonance tier five parallelly. The two grade-ten techniques worked wonders as he managed to kill a Martial Squire or two from just afar!


    They didn''t even know what hit them, literally.


    However, once he got closer, they were able to sense the creation of the sound projectile even if it was hard to detect after it wasunched.


    Rui, however, was not entirely focused on his hapless victims. He momentarily paid attention to the progress and fighting styles of his peers at range.


    There were several standouts, although he did not know who they were. But it did seem as though they had the qualities that he was looking for. Wide-range offense with a focus on lethality, because this was not an overly niche field, there were several guardians who appeared to possess the necessary traits in their Martial Art and style ofbat that could bepatible for Rui to be able to use his Weaving Blood technique to the fullest when they returned to the Floating Sect where he would promptly challenge them to a duel.


    BOOM BOOM BOOM!


    Explosions and sts rippled through the atmosphere as the two armies finally collided and countless battles between the guardians and Kaddar Martial Artists ensued. Rui was immediately confronted by a close-range Martial Squires with a de in his hands.


    (''Oh¡­?") Rui''s eyebrow rose. (''A swordsman¡­ Interesting, interesting indeed.'')


    He did not back down.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1109 Weapons

    ?


    Rui had seldom fought against weapon-oriented Martial Artists in his life. The reason for that was that they were quite rare barring the right circumstances. It took an extreme amount of brainwashing and conditioning for it to be the Martial Path of a Martial Artist.


    Not only that but there were logistical constraints to their emergence as well, especially for weapons centered around a de or sharpness. It took an extremely durable substance to withstand the full power of a Martial Artist through the tiny edge of the de without breaking, cracking, or being damaged significantly.


    The reason that humans could wield swords without such a problem was that the high-carbon steel used for normal swords had a tensile strength that far exceeded what humans were able to break. That was why there was no fear that such a de would crumble in the middle ofbat. Not even the strength of a thousand men could break such a tough alloy.


    The same could not be said for Martial Artists.


    For an alloy to be as overwhelmingly superior to a Martial Artist, it would have to, at a bare minimum be of a grade that corresponded to the Realm above the Martial Artist, sometimes even two Realms above the Martial Artist!


    It was simply impractical, and had it been the norm, would pose serious hindrances to Martial Artists as they grew stronger.


    Rui was aware that there were more philosophical reasons why the orthodox Martial Sects andmunities around the world rejected weaponry.


    That had to do with dependence and reliance on science and technology to provide them with apt weapons. That was something that many Martial Artists eschewed. Science and technology were not in their control as Martial Artists, it was usually in the control of the private sector and the governments to a certain extent.Content property of N?velDra/ma.Org.


    Growing dependent on it would be no different from growing dependent on them. Many Martial Squires feared that an overdependence could cause the age of Martial Art toe to an end and return Martial Artists to an era where they were not weak enough to resist the power of the state.


    It was bad enough to them that the Squire Realm was impossible without such technology, but Martial Artists had long since secured a stronghold over it to ensure that they would not grow dependent on non-Martial Artist sources.


    Furthermore, the orthodox Martial Sects did not have much regard for unorthodox fields that involved external elements, like poison-oriented Martial Art, symbiotic Martial Art, or the weapon-oriented Martial Art.


    Yet despite all of that, the power of weapons could not be disregarded.


    Prior to the advent of Martial Art, humanity was exclusively a tool-wielding species. Even today, one of the biggest checks on Martial Art were big and powerful weapons that relied on size and powerful esoteric substances that allowed weapons to exert enormous power that could hurt and kill even Martial Artists.


    While the weapons wielded by Martial Artists were not of the same nature as these super-weapons, the principle was still the same. Humans wielding tools were superior to humans without, and that principle did not diminish entirely when it came to Martial Artists wielding tools versus Martial Artists without tools.


    That was why Rui did not underestimate the man before him wielding a de that resembled a katana. Rui did not need another look at it to know that he could not afford to get hit by that de even a single time.


    He could handle normal piercing techniques that involved using the body as a de. While those left open wounds and could be very dangerous if they hit a vital, they were not insurmountable when it came to defending against them.


    Rui knew that that probably would not be the case when it came to sword techniques. He did not stand a chance at defending against a de that was created to cut Martial Artists. If Rui tried to block a full-powered swing with both arms, then his arms would cleanly fall off before he even realized it.


    This was the difference in the quality of the technique. He could almost certainly exert a level of lethality with every blow that made Rui envious.


    In just the briefest of moments, while they approached each other, Rui analyzed him. The first thing he noticed was the man''s profusely sharp sense of pressure. Just based on the peril that the man emitted to all those who beheld him, Rui could tell he was either a grade-ten Martial Artist or one who was extremely close to being considered one.


    This meant that his fight was not going to be easy.


    (''Body mass to muscle mass ratio indicates a Martial Artist focused on speed rather than power,'') Rui narrowed his eyes. (''The structure and shape of the de, as well as the size of the hilt indicates a single-handed de. Thus it can be inferred his sword style is centered around speed rather than power.'')


    Rui froze on the spot, before immediately diving back. (''That means confronting him in close-quartersbat is highly ill-advised.'')


    He took a deep breath, sucking in an enormous amount of air.


    THWOOM THWOOM THWOOM!!


    The best part about having learned Whirlpool Breathing and Elephant Breathing was that they could be used to massively improve his long-range offense in addition to being the key to activating Weaving Blood.


    The resulting sound projectiles he fired were enormously powerful and were reaching the quality of high-grade offensive Martial Artists!


    Yet, Rui''s jubtion whithered when his opponent''s sword flew out of its scabbard, cleaving every attack one by one with a single ordinary swing!


    (''What?'') Rui''s eyes widened.


    He had underestimated the man''s offensive power. A single swing was able to cleave and disperse his Mighty Roar sh st technique. It appeared that he had profusely underestimated his opponent''s ability to cope with long-range attacks.


    However, his opponent was evidently not content with simply cutting Rui''s long-range attacks either. His eyes narrowed as he rushed forward, looking to kill Rui in one shot.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1110 Arrived

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    Rui watched as the man swung his de against the empty air before him, before rushing forward at an incredible pace!


    (''His sword swing created a vacuum ahead of him, and a high-pressure zone behind him, allowing him to sky-walk at a faster pace than before!'') Rui narrowed his eyes as he immediatelyunched more attacks to slow him down. (''This is a simr principle to my Gale Force Breathing, except that he applies it with sword swings instead of a breathing technique.'')


    Rui tutted as he watched the man cleave his Mighty Roar sh st techniques before resuming rushing forward!


    He could not allow the man to close the distance between them.


    A wave of pressure exuded from Rui as he inhaled so powerfully, that he altered the wind patterns in the general area!


    THWOOM THWOOM THWOOM THWOOM THWOOM!!!


    Heunched a barrage of attacks one by one.


    Yet they rapidly merged into one single attack. Rui had used tier five Transverse Resonance as each of the five sound projectiles merged into one incredibly powerful st toward his opponent.


    The man''s eyes widened as activated a powerful breathing technique, inhaling deeply. Just as the attack was about to reach him, his de shed into action. Six sword wings were executed nearly simultaneously in a strange pattern.


    BOOM!


    The attack waspletely dismembered, yet the resulting explosion pushed him back a bit. He turned back to Rui with a murderous expression.


    The two Martial Artists stared at each other for just the briefest of moments.


    The pressure they exerted on each other may very well have wrung the air before them.


    One moment they were motionless.


    Yet the very next, they were fraught with struggle.


    Rui''s eyes narrowed as his mind furiously processed his circumstances. In just the briefest of moments, many considerations flew through his head.


    (''This¡­ may not be viable,'')


    While the current shes between them appeared to be able to reach a stalemate, he knew it did not mean that they were equal.


    One of the disadvantages of long-range attacks in exchange for their great range and scope was their high energy consumption rtive to their outputpared to striking-based attacks. The reasons for this were straightforward. Long-range attacks required delivering power to media between them and their opponents, to in turn deliver an attack to their opponent. Striking-based attacks delivered attacks directly, this preserved a greater amount of the original output since there was no energy loss that naturally came with delivering power through different media.


    Thus while Rui seemed to be able to hold him off with his long-range, he did not have faith in his ability to oust his opponent.


    In fact, without Hungry Pain, he would have zero chance whatsoever. It was not even a question.


    However, even with Hungry Pain, the prospects of being able to oust his opponent were slim. Rui truly found it hard to believe that the man consumed a greater proportion of his energy reserve than Rui did with his Transverse Resonance.


    (''But it doesn''t matter if I cannot oust him,'') His eyes sharpened as he increased his output against his opponent. (''I just need tost long enough.'')


    He wasn''t just mindlessly pummeling the man with his attacks, while he did that, his mind was observing.


    Observing his opponent.


    Yet he didn''t just observe.Content property of N?velDra/ma.Org.


    He saw. He could see the many patterns that governed the man''s motions.


    (''His upper torso is always curled away from the direction that he''s swinging to generate more torque,'')


    (''Even while moving, all attacks ur only when his left foot is behind and acts as a crutch and a boost to his swinging power.'')


    (''The trajectory of a swing decides whether there will be an ensuing swing as well as the trajectory of the follow-up swing.'')


    (''All swings begin with the arm eitherpletely stretched orpletely folded.'')


    Rui''s mind raced through various patterns as the construction of the predictive model was well underway, now, he only needed to ensure that he kept his opponent at bay with his long-range offense, while also using his long-range offense to probing him more and gathering more data on the man.


    Eventually, the predictive model would beplete at this rate without any problems.


    Yet the man was not willing to let that happen.


    An ugly expression arose on his face at his inability to close the distance. Rui''s eyes narrowed as his breathing pattern changed.


    WHOOSH!


    The man rapidly rushed forward, and Rui promptly reacted byunching several attacks at him. He expected the man to pause as he shed at them, allowing Rui to get even more attacks underway.


    Yet he did not pause.


    SHWING!


    He did swing his sword.


    Yet it didn''t hit his attack, instead, he abruptly dashed sideways avoiding the attack.


    He swung once more, abruptly dashing forward towards Rui.


    Ruiunched a flurry of Mighty Roar sh sts at the man, yet each time, even as the man rushed forward in the face of the attacks, he suddenly managed to sharply swerve out of the way at thest moment.


    (''He''s killing his inertia with abination of a breathing and sword technique.'') Rui frowned. (''This allows him to abruptly stop, elerate and change directions,'')


    This new technique made him extremely slippery! He was able to make rapid progress towards Rui even as many sound projectiles were fired at him.


    His eyes fixed on Rui as he managed to reach the ten-meter mark!


    At this range, pushing him back was going to be damn near impossible for Rui.


    They both knew that.


    He rushed forward as he prepared one of his most lethal techniques.


    Rui, on the other hand, began firing attacks in a far more desperate manner. It appeared that he would do anything to open up the distance between himself and his opponent.


    Yet it wasn''t enough.


    The swordsman resolutely used his sword-based maneuvering technique to weave past all of Rui''s attacks.


    Soon enough, he arrived right before Rui.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1111 Constrict

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    It should have been game over. After all, the swordsman''s opponent was clearly a long-range Martial Artist.


    There were long well-established paradigms and conditions for battles between close-range and long-range martial Artists.


    The condition for victory in such a battle for close-range Martial Squires was simply being able to close the distance between themselves and their long-range opponent. In ny-nine percent of cases, this meant death for long-range Martial Squires.


    Conversely, being able to keep their close-range opponent at bay by inflicting damage from a distance was the win condition for long-range Martial Squires.


    To the swordsman, it was clear to him that he was the one who had sessfully fulfilled his conditions for victory.


    That was why he resolutely used his most powerful technique aiming to cleave Rui in half so finely that even his own cells would take a moment to realize that they had been sliced in half. There was no way Rui was going to survive that attack.


    Or so he thought.


    SWING!!


    An incredibly powerful attack rushed towards Rui. The sheer potency behind the swing was so great that it cleaved the clouds across the sky in half.


    Yet when it hit Rui¡­ It didn''t.


    Rui''s retreating image that he cut simply faded.


    His eyes widened.


    It was a feint.


    CLASP!


    BZZZT!


    Before the man could even react, Rui''s limbs tangled across his own from seemingly nowhere!


    His arms coiled around the man''s neck, pressing down like a vice as though he wanted to crush it with his bare hands.


    The man didn''t even understand what happened!


    He was supposed to have won.


    He was supposed to have shopped Rui into a perfect half.


    Yet not only did Rui somehow manage to perfectly time his dodge neither toote nor too early, but he also managed to feint just ahead of time, to trick his mind.


    The Phantom Step technique that Rui had used was actually not that potent a technique. It was a good trick that could be a little challenging to handle at times, but any high-grade Martial Squire would eventually be able to handle them one way or another. It was far from invincible, and not a technique that was too significant at the highest echelons of the Squire Realm.


    It was for that reason that Rui only used it at the most appropriate moments. He only used it to show people exactly what they wanted to see, what they expected to see.


    And that was why they fell for it.


    The man''s expression was furious. He tried unwrapping himself out of Rui''s grip, yet breaking out of a rear chokehold was too difficult if the two were in the same league of strength.


    Yet, the man wasn''t done. Even if his arms were bound by Rui''s legs, his hands weren''t. His wrist was free.


    Including that of the hand that held his sword.


    SPLAT!Content provided by N?velDrama.Org.


    He inflicted a deep gash on Rui''s leg, causing him to begin bleeding profusely.


    Yet Rui was prepared.


    He quickly activated Weaving Blood, and instantly, the wound healed in just a second!


    The man''s eyes widened in shock!


    He had thought that Rui was the average long-range Martial Squire, but then he not only managed to avoid his fastest technique, but he also feinted with such impable timing that he didn''t notice until after the swing wasplete.


    Furthermore, he then grappled him, paralyzing him partially with some strange technique, weakening his resistance.


    He then healed a deep dash on the spot with an absurdly impressive healing speed.


    What long-range Martial Squire did that?


    Regardless, he didn''t ponder the matter at all. It didn''t matter. The only thing that mattered surviving. As long as he survived, he would be happy.


    He swung his hand as he could, hoping to cause as much pain and damage as he could to Rui to get him toe off.


    But s, Rui did not yield. Even without Weaving Blood healing the damage that the man inflicted with his sword, he would not be able to hurt Rui all that much in the short term.


    The reason for that was that he could only use the muscles in his forearm to swing because the rest of his arm and body were too restricted.


    He began panicking when his vision blurred, going red. But that only made it even worse.


    And he lost consciousness before he even realized it.


    Yet Rui didn''t stop. He continued restricting blood flow to the brain for as much as he needed to without going out of his way to take any risks.


    It wasn''t long before the man''s heart ceased beating.


    Rui dropped him, allowing the corpse to plummet back to the Kaddar Region.


    "Huff¡­" Rui sighed as he wiped away his sweat. "That was tiring."


    Still, he was quite satisfied with the oue of the fight, obviously. He was happy that he managed to beat such a powerful Martial Squires. He had inadvertently achieved his goal of using Weaving Blood in a real fight, and it had worked like a charm.


    Still, he didn''t use it as a Martial body to adapt to someone, he had only used it to heal some wounds at the end of the fight.


    What he wanted to do was test the ability of Weaving Blood to serve as a way to adapt his body to a Martial body focused on healing. In this case, he didn''t get to do that. Simply healing some wounds that frankly were not too much of a threat was not the same as adapting his body to permanently using Weaving Blood.


    He hade across a powerful opponent, and he hadn''t been able to fulfill his n of scouting for powerful guardians whose Martial Art was such that Weaving Blood was the way to adapt to them. He had been far too busy with fighting to also be able to do that.


    (''No matter, I can do that now,'') Rui expanded Riemannian Echo to epass the entire battlefield.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1112 Scan

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    The battlefield was huge. Martial Artists from both sides congregated over arge area. You could not squeeze two hundred Martial Squires fighting in a stadium, or even a small town.


    Especially when they were all high-grade Martial Squires. Nothing short of a city-wide area wasrge enough to amodate all these Martial Squires going all out.


    Rui''s Riemannian Echo was finally functional now that he was off Ajanta Ind, he was able to sense everything that was happening within the entire area. It felt good to stretch his senses this far after quite some time.


    Ajanta Ind was his nemesis, and he was unable to have the kind of unperturbed range there as he did in the Shionel Dungeon.


    Of course, his Tempestuous Feel was also a good sensory technique. Furthermore, it was a technique that experienced a boost on Ajanta Ind.


    Because the ind''s atmosphere was so dense, it became easier to sense through itpared to normal air.


    Still, because it was a normal sense, it couldn''t bypass anti-espionage technology the way that Riemannian Echo did.


    Regardless, he was able to use the Riemannian Echo just fine outside of the ind, and he did put it to good use.


    He quickly scanned all the guardians briefly one-by-one categorizing their Martial Art based on the little information that he glimpsed in a hurry.


    He did not want to miss out on anything by taking his time potentially missing a lot of action if fights ended before he got to them.


    Thus he briefly made sure to get to know their Martial Art on a basic level so that he could have an easier timeter verifying whether they could give him what he wanted in a duel.


    With that out of the way, he began scanning through all of them in a more detailed manner. Specifically, the offense-oriented guardians.


    Not that what he was looking for couldn''t possibly be granted through any other kind of Martial Squire. But what he was looking for was an offense that inflicted wounds on him despite his defense and maneuvering.


    It was possible for Martial Artists of different fields to be able to inflict damage by pursuing both their defense and maneuvering. But most Martial Artists that were capable of that would probably belong in the offense category.


    That was why Rui began scanning the offensive ones to maximize the probability of running into one.


    He was quite fascinated by the offense-oriented guardians of the Floating Sect, none of them were standard.


    (''Then again, you can''t be a standard Martial Squire if you want to enter the sect,'') Rui mused.


    Even the most normal ones that were centered around moremon kinds of striking-oriented Martial Art had very abnormal and non-standard elements to them that made them quite deviant.


    Rui came across a grappling-oriented Martial Squire that relied on friction to increase her lethality.


    (''Oof,'') Rui winced. (''I do not want to be on the receiving end of that,'')


    Much to his dismay, she was a good candidate to test out his Weaving Blood technique. Her strategy relied on inflicting as much damage by shearing off his flesh.


    Yet he already knew that the experience was going to be excruciatingly painful.


    (''Well, to be fair, if I''m looking for a guardian that''s going to inflict so many wounds on me that I''m going to have to rely on Weaving Blood to make it out, then it''s going to be excruciatingly painful no matter what.'') He sighed.Content provided by N?velDrama.Org.


    He had good pain tolerance, of course, every Martial Squire ended up getting superhuman pain tolerance after experiencing the horrendous nightmare that was the Squire evolution breakthrough.


    Still, that did not mean that pain was fun or desirable. It still hurt as bad as ever.


    Regardless, he added her to the list.


    He continued scanning, hoping to find more Martial Squires that had an overabundant focus on lethality at the cost of everything else.


    Thankfully, he was not too disappointed. Martial Artists that focused on lethality to such a great degree were not too umon.


    Offense was one of the fundamental aspects ofbat, and there were many who pursued it at the cost of everything else, obtaining a level of lethality that was simply overwhelming and could not be stopped barring the most defensive of Martial Artists.


    He was able to add several more to the list.


    A poison-oriented Martial Artist who caused cell death with a kind of poison that he transmitted both through airborne and contact means.


    Rui was able to identify the poison because he recalled seeing something simr in one of his earliest projects where he tried creating a technique that employed poison.


    Rui almost felt a little evil for choosing this man as a target. Weaving Blood was such an incredibly hard counter to this poison of his that it wasn''t even funny.


    After all, Weaving Blood employed Whirlpool Breathing and Elephant Breathing to flush out the assimted energy, nutrients, andpounds out of cells and tissue and into the bloodstream where they would be absorbed by the cells near the wound that needed the supply.


    Thus an attack that wounded tissue by killing cells only gave him the supply that he needed to recycle and heal the wound that had been inflicted with cell death.


    It meant that against this particr guardian, Rui may as well have had limitless healing and regeneration. It was the most perfect counter that was so brutally perfect to taking down that poison, that it wasn''t even funny.


    While healing would work terribly for most kinds of poison, in this case, it was actually quite perfect. He most certainly could heal from the wound, and he could gain more energy thanks to his opponent''s attack.


    That was why Rui looked forward to this fight. He hadn''t even created a predictive model to keep it fair, but even without that, he felt quite confident about taking these guardians on in a challenge and taking their chamber as a result to get a better ce to train.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1113 Weaken

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    The battle eventually ended in a somewhat unclear draw. The iing invasion had been impeded and halted from entering Floating Ind, but it had cost both sides a lot of Martial Squires.


    A small proportion of the guardians of the Floating Sect had perished in battle.


    Floating Sect had grown weaker. Every battle chipped away at its strength. Although not many died, and although it would not be easy to deplete the guardians of the Floating Sect, it was still something that would take a toll on the sect.


    Especially since the sect could not replenish the lost Martial Artists. Every Martial Squire lost was a permanent loss.


    The reason for this, of course, was the heavy restriction from the Kaddar Treaty Organization. They had deterred Martial Squires from entering the ind in the past, but it had never been an absolute barricade as it was this time.


    In the past, there was no way to wagerge-scale wars against the Floating Sect. The proximity of conflict near the ind causing just enough damage to destabilize it and trigger a chain reaction that would lead to the ind copsing and plummeting was too high for the risk to be taken.


    In that case, enacting a permanent restriction that prevented any Martial Squires from entering the ind was not worth it because it they would need to maintain it forever since the ind would be around forever since they could not do anything about the it at the time.


    However, things had changed.


    Now, with a some long-range weapon that had been customized to employ the gravity of the core of the ind to stabilize the ind, they could not wage war against the sect without fear. In that case, the replenishment of guardians that the Floating Sect gained from the iing Martial Squires was too great.


    It would stall the way forever.


    If they wanted the war to end, at all, they needed to prevent the Floating Sect from healing.


    While it was true that the quality of Martial Squires of the Floating Sect was higher than arguably anywhere else, everything had a limit.


    Waves after waves chipped away at the strength of the Floating Sect. They drained the power of the sect, and eventually, it would be over.


    Of course, Rui was aware that what truly decided the oue of the war was not the Martial Squires of the Floating Sect, but actually the Martial Seniors.


    However, he also understood that as long as the Kaddar nations had not yete to a consensus on exactly which nations'' Martial Seniors would be deployed to counter the Martial Seniors of the Floating Sect, they would not escte the level of conflict to that degree.


    For the same reason that no nation on Earth would willingly give up its nukes for the sake of the continent with the risk of losing their nuclear weapons forever while their neighbors retained them, none of the nations of the Kaddar Region were willing to deploy their Martial Seniors on such an operation lightly.


    This had originally been a little strange to Rui as these nations did not shy away from deploying them for other operations. After all, it wasn''t as if these Martial Seniors whiled away their time doing nothing. They trained or worked in the field.


    Yet there was a valid reason for why the nations of the Kaddar Region were reluctant to deploy them against the Floating Sect.


    (''The Senior guardians of the Floating Sect are too strong on the ind,'') Rui mused.


    He already knew that Senior Xanarn was on her home turf in the environment of the ind. She could at least take on two Martial Seniors on at the same time, potentially three if she fought extremely defensively.


    Furthermore, he had inferred that another one of the Martial Seniors also had a huge home turf advantage because the library had an abundance of breathing techniques like it did sound, suggesting that one of the Martial Seniors was specialized in breathing techniques.


    Which meant they too were most likely greatly empowered by the environment. If Rui assumed that the reason these three Martial Seniors of the sect, clung to it so tightly was because of how much it empowered their Martial Path, then the Kaddar Region would need anywhere from six to nine Martial Seniors just to match them.


    They would need more if they wanted to win, and even more if they wanted a decisive victory.


    Regardless of who won, it was a given fact that Martial Seniors on both sides were going to die.


    Twelve Martial Seniors did not just go all out in a conflict that ended with not a single casualty.


    This was what the Kaddar nations were afraid of.


    Thus, until they made up their mind and resolved to send all Martial Seniors at once, they could not help but try and win the Squire-level battle first.Content provided by N?velDrama.Org.


    Especially when Rui had now learned that Martial Squires could potentially take down a Martial Senior if their Martial Heart burned out, returning them to their base forms. The Kaddar Region had already witnessed the supremely elite Martial Squires of the Floating Sect, especially monsters like Tokugawa Ieyasu.


    Getting rid of them meant that the probability of losing a Martial Senior in battle was much lower.


    Rui''s attention returned to the battlefield as the battle between both sides came to an end as both sides retreated towards their respective bases, wary of anything funny from the other side.


    Rui, too, followed suit as he retreated back along with the guardians of the Floating Sect with a satisfied grin on his face.


    The Floating Sect had recently instated the policy of rewarding Martial Squires of taking down Kaddar Martial Squires. The stronger the Martial Squire, the greater the reward. Considering that Rui took down a Martial Squire that was definitely top hundred material when it came to the guardian rankings, he was sure that he earned more training time from the Martial Seniors.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1114 Ego

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    He was not wrong.


    Rui''s contribution ended up being in the top ten percent of contributions, by taking down a powerful weapon-wielding Martial Artist down, he received much appreciation from the sect when he reported back.


    However, he wasn''t too interested in sparring with Senior Xanarn, it was not fun to fight the same person over and over, nor was it particrly beneficial to his growth as a Martial Artist.


    It was actually the opposite. He needed to exercise his ability to execute the VOID algorithm, not grow content and becent with predictive models that he had already created in precious instances.


    It''s why he didn''t go out of his way to spar or duel with Kane very often.


    Of course, he wouldn''t mind sparring against one of the other two Martial Seniors, he wondered if he had the ability to beat them in the manner that he beat Senior Xanarn with Kane''s help.


    That certainly would be interesting.


    But he was more keen on victories that were won fair and square.


    When they beat Senior Xanarn, she was already sufficiently drained enough against dozens of high-tier Martial Squires. That was why that victory did not mean too much to Rui. It was a cool aplishment, but he didn''t put too much stock against it.


    What he was more focused on instead was beating his peers who were within the same Realm as him, and taking their chamber to better forge his body in a stronger environment within the Floating Sect.


    He had already identified several candidates, and now he simply needed to pick one for his Weaving Blood in a more borate fashion. He had specifically chosen Martial Artists where he would certainly be forced to use it more extensively while adapting.


    It would not only allow him to gain data on the actual effectiveness of the solution that he had created.


    It was one thing for him to daydream about how powerful and effective it would be, it was another to actually have proof that would add weight to the spection of how effective it was.


    It was also important because it would set expectations for how much he could expect from Project Metabody.


    That was also something he didn''t have any idea of how to quantify. He had thought about it to no end, but at the end of the day, he had nothing. He had retained the approach of a scientist and a developer, which caused him to be skeptical of things until there was empirical data that suggested otherwise.


    In this world, he could not conduct a research and development project with external test subjects inrge sample sizes to verify things that he needed to know, he could only rely on his own experience since he was the only avable test subject in the entire world.


    That was why he was scouting multiple Martial Artists that he could gather data from. Now that he had done that, he was ready to conduct the actual test.


    "Huh?" Squire Drekiole''s eyebrow twitched. "You? You dare to challenge me?"


    "That''s right," Rui calmly replied.


    He had not minded the insulted expression that the man had on his bearded face because he found it rather hrious. He also somewhat understood where the man wasing from.


    Rui was of the lowest ss of guardians of the Floating Sect. While Squire Drekiole was of the fifth ss, middling out among the sses and ranks in the Floating Sect.


    He was decisively stronger than the Martial Squires of the lowest ss.


    "Ah¡­ I remember you," The man growled. "You were the kid who beat Serokin. Did you really think you''re qualified to beat me just because you took down that snake, and got in a few lucky hits against Senior Xanarn?"


    Although many in the lowest ss had seen Rui and Kane taking on and beating Senior Xanarn, many Martial Squires of the higher sses simply could not believe it. It simply was too hard to believe that two Martial Squires of the lowest ss could possibly hurt her let alone beat her.Content provided by N?velDrama.Org.


    Even if they did believe it, they assumed it wasn''t because of their merits but due to other factors. The cognitive dissonance that came with refusing to believe that someone who was supposed to be far below them was actually quite strong, was quite strong.


    Senior Drekiole was an example of such a case.


    Rui didn''t care either way. He was not doing this for his pride or for respect.


    "Do you ept the duel?" Rui ignored his question asking him again. "Might I remind you that thest duel to undertook was more than ten days ago, thus you are obligated to ept my duel."


    "I''ll ept your little duel, alright," He growled. "I''m going to skin you so badly you wouldn''t even be able to resign. You''re dead!"


    "Then let''s get going," Rui replied simply, turning around and heading to the colosseum.


    "What¡­ Now?" The man furrowed his eyebrows.


    He couldn''t understand why Rui was so eager to get his ass kicked by someone stronger than him.


    Regardless, he was pissed off.


    "Very well, if that''s what you wish, then that''s what I''ll give. Don''t me me when you lose. I already warned you."


    "Yes yes," Rui sighed.


    He didn''t understand how people had an ego that was bigger than their heads. Where did these people get such an immense amount of pride from?


    He wasn''t even as impressive in the Floating Sect, he was decisively average by their standards. Furthermore, he was of the Squire Realm, just like Rui was.


    The Squire Realm was only the second of six Realms of power. How could someone remain so arrogant when confronted by the fact that they were not even in the upper Realms?


    Hell, they weren''t even at the top of the lower Realm. It was just a bizarre sight for someone like Rui. If he ever did gain such pride, it would certainly not be as a Martial Squire.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1115 Bleed

    ?


    While it was true that half of all nations, states, and groups of humans did not have ess to a Martial Squire, or the Squire Realm. Thus from the perspective of humanity as a whole, Martial Squires were not abundant, and thus they were a precious resource to a certain extent.


    Yet, to Rui, the Squire Realm was just one of the earliest and lowest checkpoints in his Martial Path and journey. He could never grow super prideful or arrogant on his current level of power when he knew that Martial Seniors could squash him with ease, and Martial Masters were so powerful that they could probably blink him from existence.


    He didn''t even need to say anything about Martial Sages or Martial Transcendants.


    The two of them quickly made their way to the colosseum. Rui focused himself as he ignored the bravadoing from Squire Drekiole.


    "You''re dead, dead, you hear me?" The man snarled.


    "Why are you getting so worked up?" Rui sighed. "It''s just a duel. The Floating Sect has prohibited killing, so I''ll make sure not to cross that line, don''t worry."


    The man only barked back louder in response to that.


    They finally reached a sparring colosseum that was not being upied at the moment. The two of them quickly filled out the basic paperwork, and soon enough there was an official arbiter that presided over the match.


    "Challenger; Guardian Falken!"


    Rui stepped forward.


    "Defender; Guardian Drekiole!"


    The man stepped forward, eying Rui from top to bottom.


    He was a lot older, like almost all Martial Squires were, and a lot taller. Yet he didn''t look nearly as old as he was thanks to being a Martial Artist.


    Yet he was still mentally younger than Rui was.


    Psychologically, he was probably a child, given his juvenile mannerisms thus far.


    "Take your stances," The arbiter instructed.


    The man spread his arms, crouching a bit.


    Rui, too crouched as he took an open arm position.


    Squire Drekiole''s eyes narrowed at the sight of that. "You bastard¡­"


    Rui knew that Squire Drekiole was a grappler. He was a grappler whose offensive lethality came from the friction that his skin generated against his opponent.


    Rui wasn''t able to directly observe it since they were too small, but he strongly suspected that the man''s skin was riddled with spikes that would tear into the skin of his opponents. Moving would instantly inflict wounds on his opponent''s outer flesh.


    Furthermore, the wound was such that it maximized bleeding. He could cause his opponent to bleed out very quickly, losing the fight.


    He was not weak, he most certainly had earned his ce as a guardian, and one that was as high-ranked as he was.


    However, Rui ignored his barbs and threats and did not get personally involved.


    He recalled Senior Xanarn''s words. He could not cripple the Floating Sect in these circumstances by making one of their guardians an invalid.


    That was why this was not personal to him, he simply did not invest himself in the fight. It was just a duel, it was an experiment to measure the effectiveness of Weaving Blood as a means to alter the spec configuration of his Martial body to adapt to a Martial Squire with high lethality.


    "Begin!"Content provided by N?velDrama.Org.


    The two of them rushed forward, executing a shoot maneuver, immediately crashing into each other as they put their hands on their opponent''s shoulders, trying to control their bnce.


    They immediately noticed each other''s techniques.


    Rui grimaced as he felt his skin peeling off at the points of contact with his opponent.


    It appeared that he had underestimated how painful they would be. The man had straight up ripped up Rui''s skin like it was nothing despite his Adamant Reforging conditioning technique.


    It appeared that whatever training he had trained in making the lethality of skin far greater than what a single passive defensive technique that he had bought, not created, was capable of granting him.


    Adamant Reforging was not a technique that he had great synergy with because it didn''t contain the synergy with his Martial body and Path that techniques that he created naturally had.


    Adamant Reforging was one of the first techniques that he had mastered in the Squire Realm back when had just broken through. It was a useful passive defensive technique that had served him well enough. But Rui today realized that it wasn''t anywhere near enough at the highest echelons of the Squire Realm.


    His passive defense was falling back.


    Thankfully, Weaving Blood was quick to pick up the ck as it quickly began healing Rui''s wounds even before they were fully inflicted.


    They wrangled a bit before pushing each other away.


    Squire Drekiole looked surprised at Rui, noticing that the wounds that he had inflicted were already disappearing.


    His expression darkened. "Is this why you were so confident? You''re an endurance-oriented Martial Squire eh? Well, let''s see just how much you can endure."


    Heunched forward with another shoot maneuver, which Rui matched. The two engaged, as they began wrangling each other once more.


    BZZZT!


    The man frowned as he felt a portion of his power freezing.


    CLASP!


    Rui lunged in, gaining a good and dominant position against him, exploiting the opening. However, even that gesture caused him to lose some skin, bleeding instantly.


    Yet he forged on, relying heavily on Weaving Blood to fix his wounds.


    And it did.


    However, Squire Dekriole was not satisfied with just ying a passive position. He quickly lunged back, bear-hugging Rui, hoping to rip off huge swathes of flesh with this gesture. It was one of his killers.


    He employed many strength techniques, making it extremely difficult to escape.


    TAP TAP TAP TAP!


    His arms suddenly went limp momentarily as his eyes widened. Rui had simply struck at them lightly with his index finger, yet he felt as though they disappeared, bing numb as they plummeted midair.


    BAM!


    Rui struck him in his gut with a flying knee kick, striking his diaphragm, and making it difficult to breathe.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1116 Outcome

    ?


    "Argh!" The man snarled as heshed back at Rui, lunging at him.


    WHOOSH!


    It was a feint.


    BAM!


    Rui''s foot flew, crashing straight into his jaw in a high back kick. He made it nearly impossible for the man to even get a good sense of his bearings.


    Yet every time he attacked, he bled.


    It didn''t matter if Squire Dekriole did it with intention or not.


    It simply was the case that every time Rui touched Squire Dekriole, he bled. Even if he was the one attacking Squire Dekriole, he got hurt.


    Yet he kept going.


    He wanted to see whether the rate at which he was getting hurt could be handled by Weaving Blood, and the initial results were quite promising.


    Every wound that he gained from simply making rough contact with Squire Dekriole was promptly healed by Weaving Blood, even the most painful wounds quickly disappeared like magic as his cells worked overtime gaining the necessary energy andpounds that would serve as the building blocks for the new cells.


    Despite the immense amount of damage he suffered with every strike that hended on Squire Dekriole, his healing returned it back to its normal state.


    POW POW POW!


    SPLAT!


    Rui sted him in the face with abo, yet his own hands started bleeding profusely before his healing factor kicked in.


    Squire Dekriole, on the other hand, was frustrated. Although he was hurting Rui, Rui was outying him. He avoided his attacks cleanly beforending multiple attacks, and then healing the damage he took by making contact with his body.


    Yet he didn''t allow Squire Dekriole to get in a single attack.


    With each passing second, he found that it became increasingly harder and harder to actually even touch Rui with his own attacks!


    Of course, to a certain extent, this was his style, a counter-offensive style that caused anybody who even brushed against him to get hurt.


    Yet that did not mean that he relied solely on these means to hurt his opponent. He also was a very aggressive striker who squeezed his opponent in a vice or whaled on them with heavy blows.


    Yet in Rui''s case, he wasn''t even able to get decent hits in!


    "Your patterns are so simple even a child could read them," Rui murmured at some point.


    BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM!


    He was bombarded with five heavy blows before he could even process those words. Those blows were so heavy that he ended up forgetting what Rui even said to him in the first ce.


    He nced back at Rui, as his eyes widened with shock.


    His clothes were in tatters, yet his skin and flesh were just perfect aside from being bathed in his own blood.


    Squire Dekriole gritted his teeth as he snarled in bloodlust,unching himself forward hoping to take Rui out with the hopes that he would be able to get some kind of position where he would be able to leverage his raw power to rip Rui to shreds!


    Although his Martial body was most certainly meant to be a tank that hurt others who even tried attacking it, Rui was not making it easy.


    With Adamant Reforged fists, as well as Outer Convergence, and Reverberating Lance crashing into his abdomen, he felt like puking with every strike that he endured.


    Normally, his opponents didn''t really strike him that hard because it would cause them damage, causing their flesh to peel off and start profusely bleeding. Nobody wanted to deal with that, thus nobody would go that far.


    Except Rui.


    POW POW POW!


    He pummeled Squire Drekiole with even more blows, yet at this point the man simply brought his guard up as he defended his gut, gritting his teeth.


    He realized that the difference between them in skill was not even close, it wasn''t even funny. He thought he was skilled, butpared to the surgical crackdown of Rui''s offense, he struggled to maintain any foothold.


    BAM!!!


    A titanically heavy blow crashed into his guard, bruising them heavily with just a single blow. His arms parted for a moment as he shook them to deal with the pain.


    POW!


    A simple yet swift kick to the jaw rang his brain back and forth, the sheer impact from the strike triggered acute blunt force traumas, enough of it to not just feel dizzy but also lose consciousness.


    THUD


    The man copsed to the ground, bleeding from some open wounds, copsing unconscious.


    It was a decisive and dominant victory.


    Many of the spectators frowned. They had seen Rui fight before, yet he hadn''t seen this sort of healing technique before.


    Many couldn''t help but feel as though Rui had some kind of healing potion tucked away in his pocket or attire somewhere. Content is property ? N?velDrama.Org.


    To a lot of people, that was the only way he could have gained such a healing potion in a short amount of time.


    Yet, of course, such a thing was not the case. Both fighters had been checked, and Rui hadn''t inhaled anything other than air since the start of the fight.


    Many had realized that Rui had either been holding back this ability all this time or had somehow recently gained it in the span of two months.


    Many of the guardians of the lower sses were awestruck, while guardians of the higher sses regarded them with wariness.


    The fact that Rui jumped from the tenth ss to the fifth ss showed them that Rui had nopunctions about wildly aiming above his ss to get to better training chambers as opposed to going the traditional route of growing stronger to climb higher and higher bit by bit and using the better training conditions to further grow stronger.


    No.


    Rui had simply shot himself forward uncaring for such matters. Although it wasn''t unheard of, he was one of the rare ones that arrived at the Floating Sect already able to tangle with stronger guardians of the sect.


    People came to believe that he held back his true strength for some reason, and that had always been that strong.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1117 Impatience

    ?


    Yet little did they know that this boost came from just two months'' worth of training.


    "Winner: Squire Falken!"


    Rui simply walked away from the arena, heading back towards his chamber. He needed to shift to his new chamber before he considered doing anything else.


    "Honestly, should I just get them all out of the way?" Rui scratched his head.N?velD(ram)a.?rg owns this content.


    He had been nning on rapidly challenging the few guardians that he had identified one after the other until he finished all of them.


    He did not intend to lose.


    Thus, would it not be better if he switched chambers after he beat all of them?


    Otherwise, he would need to switch chambers after every fight, why do that when he could just do it after he beat everyone he nned on challenging?


    (''Makes sense, but I should see whether they''re free first, they may have already epted a challenge within the past ten days, in which case it is better I shift first.'')


    He approached guardian Herea, one of the guardians that he had identified to possess a Martial Art that was just apt for testing his Weaving Blood technique.


    Unfortunately, what he feared came to pass.


    "I already partook in a challenge three days ago," She replied to him with an intrigued expression.


    "I guess I''ll have to wait a week then." Rui sighed.


    "Not unless I ept it voluntarily."


    The ten-day rule only applied to being forced to ept a challenge. Guardians could ept one thousand challenges in a single day if they so pleased.


    It appeared that guardian Herea was willing to take him on in a duel.


    "You know, I''ve heard a lot about you," She said. "I look forward to battling you."


    Rui was d that not all guardians were egotistical jerks.


    She amodated his request to begin the challenge immediately too, much to his delight.


    It wasn''t long before the two of them were standing before each other in an arena. They had quickly handled all the paperwork to officiate it, and the sect had already sent an arbiter to oversee the fight.


    "Challenger; guardian Falken."


    Rui stepped forward.


    "Defender; guardian Herea."


    She stepped forward, as well.


    "Take your stances." The arbiter instructed them.


    Rui took a neutral stance at the moment. He didn''t feel any need to particrly lean in any one direction.


    She, on the other hand, unbandaged her arms and limbs, revealing green skin.


    She was a poison user, the one that Rui identified as being able to cause rapid cell death.


    She was one of the handful that Rui intended to challenge to test Weaving Blood against their lethal offense.


    "Begin!"


    Sheshed out forward immediately, it was clear that she was a close-range fighter.


    Ordinarily, Rui would be inclined to take on someone like her from range, but he decided against it even if it was a more optimal choice.


    "Fuuuu¡­" She exhaled deeply by the time she reached Rui, exhaling a dark gas right near Rui''s vicinity.


    POW POW POW!


    Rui blocked her attacks with a guard.


    Her strikes were actually quite light, yet he knew that their danger did note from the force she exerted.


    Poison-oriented Martial Squires did not care about normal physical damage. They were one of the very few Martial Artists that didn''t care about the conventional damage.


    Most Martial Squires relied on the same principles of inflicted damage, collisions, and impacts that delivered enough concentrated force to cause damage to their body. This was the most fundamental means of inflicting damage on an opponent.


    Martial Artists like poison-oriented Martial Artists strayed away from this paradigm greatly because they inflicted damage through many other principles. They integrated toxic and powerful substances into their body, while then applying those substances against their opponents'' bodies to cause them to experience many detrimental symptoms as a result.


    This method of inflicting damage and taking down their opponents bypassed all conventional defenses.


    No passive defensive technique like Adamant Reforging, and certainly no active defensive technique like Flux Earther could protect Rui from poison. That was one of the greatest advantages that poison users had.


    It was no different from being forced to withstand the attacks of a striking-oriented Martial Artist without any defenses whatsoever, with just the toughness of their Martial body.


    Of course, poison-oriented Martial Artists were not entirely unrestrained like that. For one, poisons did not discriminate, they did not abstain from trying to wreck their host''s body just because their host was a poison-oriented Martial Artist.


    Even poison-oriented Martial Artists had to condition themselves hard if they wanted to be able to withstand their own poison and not sumb to it. That was a limitation that other Martial Artists didn''t.


    Furthermore, poison-oriented Marital Artists could not use poison defensively. Poison was fundamentally offensive and lethal, thus they needed to train their defense the normal way. However, because their Martial Path and Body did not have any affinity for normal defensive techniques, they often had difficulty in that regard. Techniques. They were not known for being tough.


    BAM!!


    Rui struck Squire Herea hard, pushing her back with a single attack. Outer Convergence and Reverberating Lance rattled her body quite heavily.


    "Hm?" Rui frowned when he noticed that the color of his knuckles had changed.


    He immediately activated Weaving Blood. He wanted the dying cells to immediately be assimted and turned into energy,pounds, and nutrients for new cells before they underwent necrosis. This would also give his healing factor more fuel in the long run.


    Rui''s eyes widened as an interesting idea popped into his head.


    (''What if I use this poison on myself to increase the amount of fuel that my body has caused by the cell death ?'') Rui wondered with an incredulous expression.


    In the middle of a duel, he had gotten an epiphany from his opponent!


    "I am not so weak that you can afford to daydream in the middle of our battle," She glowered.


    It appeared that Rui taking his eyes off her for just a moment had offended her.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1118 Outcome

    ?


    Even if she said that, and was angry, Rui was actually quite grateful. She had helped hime across an idea to strengthen his Weaving Blood technique, and he looked forward to actually trying it out.


    Currently, he mostly sacrificed strength, speed, and stamina when using Weaving Blood for extra healing. Fundamentally he burned energy reserves, but burning energy reserves required him to reduce his energy consumption, which reduced his energy output in the form of lowered strength and speed.


    However, his defense did not suffer all that much.


    His passive defensive techniques like Adamant Reforging werepletely unaffected by Weaving Blood. His active defensive techniques like Flux Earther and Inner Divergence did not suffer all that much because they were not super energy consumptive in the first ce.


    Thus his defense as a whole was barely affected by Weaving Blood.


    However, with this poison, he could create a way to empower his Weaving Blood at the cost of defense and durability. He could apply small doses of the poison to his outer flesh, causing it to


    Of course, this wasn''t something that he would do every time, or even sometimes. However, if he ever came across a Martial Artists where he truly needed his healing and regeneration skills more than anything, then he had no problem using it in such circumstances.


    More than anything, it helped him make his first step in fulfilling Project Metabody much more fulfilling. If he could tap into this idea, he could fully be able to acquire a Martial body centered around healing.


    Rui nced at Squire Herea with gratitude, confusing her.


    "I apologize for that," He replied. "I am grateful, nheless."


    Suddenly, his pressure and aura red.


    An immense amount of peril radiated from him, so much so that it seemed to grind the very atmosphere between them.


    "Allow me to fight you with everything I have,"


    Rui raised his hand, showing his knuckle to her.


    Her eyes widened as she saw that the area that she had poisoned was already returning to its original skin tone!


    Somehow, Rui was able to deal with the symptoms caused by her poison. It was an incredible achievement, but it was one that she didn''t quite understand.


    How was he doing that?


    Did he somehow already have some amount of resistance to the poison that she was using?


    That sounded too absurd. Martial Artists generally did not go out of their way to gain resistance and immunity to random poisons. There were far too many, and while it was possible to gain resistance against broader categories of poisons, that was even more difficult, a process that took years.


    Yet, here Rui was, able to handle the main kind of poison that she employed inbat.


    Yet Rui did not even give her any time to think about it. He rushed forward with a surge of energy.


    BAM!!!


    A powerful Flowing Canon, armed with the power of Outer Convergence and Reverberating Lance crashed into her guard!


    CRACK!


    She gritted her teeth as the sheer impact cracked her bone.


    (''Her defense is quite weak, I''m guessing she relies on her lethal offense ending the game against her opponent because they can cause too much damage against her.


    In a way, an extremely lethal offense could serve as a powerful defense. Her poison techniques were powerful enough to either take her opponents down quickly or deter them from going anywhere near her.


    POW POW POW!


    Rui pummeled her with powerful blows, uncaring for his greening hands.N?velD(ram)a.?rg owns this content.


    He was probably the first Martial Artist that she had ever met that made contact with her so carelessly, and didn''t seem to suffer any consequences at all.


    Each blow rattled her defense.


    What was probably truly astonishing to her was that his Martial body seemed to be too overpowered.


    His raw power and speed were high despite his incredible ability to heal from the damage caused by her poison.


    Normally, Rui would have low power and speed when using Weaving Blood, but in this case, his energy reserves and stamina were being bolstered due to the fact that the autophagy activated with Hungry Pain was eating up the cells killed by the poison before quickly converting them into energy,pounds, and nutrition.


    That was why he could employ his power and speed more unscrupulously in this battlepared to his normal battles.


    However, his defense was weakened due to his passive durability being lowered due to the poison killing cells in his outer flesh.


    Had she mounted any offense on him at that point in time, it would have been effective, but her problem was that that was her offense, she did not use anything other than poison, and that technique alone was supposed to be quite lethal to normal Martial Artists.


    Unfortunately, it was ineffective against Rui, he simply could not be bested so easily.


    That left her with simply no cards to y whatsoever. And while she tried, the battle ended much more abruptly than she had thought it would.


    POW!


    A swift kick to the jaw ended the fight, knocking her out unconscious.


    "Winner; Guardian Falken!"


    Rui nodded, before leaving the arena without paying her a second look. He had nothing else to do with her, after all.


    Instead, he was more interested in the gains that he had made while fighting her. It wasn''t very often that he made epiphanies in the middle of a battle but it appeared that each and every single one of them was quite valuable and significant.


    In a way, the battle was a filter against bad ideas. After all, only the truly good ideas were so good that they could drag away your attention for just the briefest of moments. Rui intended to go all and fight all the Martial Squires that he had taken note of in the previous battle one by one, before setting out to explore this new idea that he hade up with.


    (''Ah¡­'') He paused as he turned back. (''I should ask her for the details first.'')


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1119 Rush

    ?


    Rui did not stop there. He went on to challenge three more guardians in the following days.


    He defeated all of them, but not a single one of them was able to defeat him.


    Many of the sharper guardians that had been following his streak had managed to notice some patterns in these duels.


    They noticed that he was indeed aiming for guardians with lethally offensive Martial Art, but also, he had also gained some new healing abilities that allowed him to heal from the lethal attacks that they dealt out.


    Many put two and two together and realized that the reason that Rui had chosen them was merely to test something new, most likely.


    That was even more surprising than if he just fought them to get to higher and higher chambers.


    It showed that, unlike most guardians, Rui did not necessarily conform to the norms. He didn''t make slow increments, increasing his rank bit by bit.


    Rather, he seemed driven by progress in his Martial Path more than progress in aiming for higher chambers.


    However, it became clear to many that Rui was holding back from the very start, it also corroborated the rumors that many had heard about him being one of the two guardians that had managed to beat Senior Xanarn in her base form.


    It appeared that there was more to him than met the eye.


    It was clear to everyone present that Rui would most likely be one of the top Martial Squires of the Floating Sect.


    The feats that he had managed to pull off were so surprising and shocking that it really was hard to actually imagine how strong he was.


    It also begged the question to many why Rui did not immediately aim for higher sses when he first arrived at the Floating Sect.


    He had spent more than two months at the chamber that he had first won. Due to that, many had assumed that he simply did not have any confidence to go higher, nor the caliber.


    Now, it was clear to everyone that they were wrong.


    No one knew for sure how he would rise, but it was pretty clear to most people that he was at least going to end up in the first ss of the sect eventually.


    However, it appeared that Rui was satisfied after reaching the second ss of chambers after defeating a total of five opponents very rapidly. He no longer challenged anyone and simply secluded himself in training.


    Many frowned at this, it did not appear as though he had particrly struggled against any of his opponents. Instead, he had gone as far as to take them down rather decisively.


    So why had he stopped?


    Not only had he stopped, but hepletely disappeared, seeming to have buried himself away inside his chamber.


    Unbeknownst to them, Rui was exploring a new element to add to his most recent technique Weaving Blood.N?velD(ram)a.?rg owns this content.


    Technically, the project wasn''t over because he was still only testing the technique''s effectiveness as a way to control his spec configuration to produce a configuration that was nted toward healing.


    This meant that he was still in the development phase after the initial testing phase. This was how he had conducted the original development of the VOID algorithm, thus he wasn''t unfamiliar with the process at all.


    It was rarely the case that a development project only had one testing phase. Usually, it required quite a lot of trial and error to eventually get to the end result. If anything, it was his other technique projects this time that had sailed by smoothly.


    However, it appeared that Project Metabody was going to be a much more long-term project than he had expected.


    While he certainly had always known that it would take quite some time to get there, he hadn''t suspected that his progress would be this slow.


    Weaving Blood was just one small piece of what he was trying to aplish with Project Metabody.


    However, he was quite satisfied with the progress he had made thus far. For instance, Weaving Blood was so good that he was able to beat his opponents quite soundly without even using a predictive model for several of them.


    That was quite amazing to him. He was this strong without the predictive model, after all. Just how strong was he when he used Weaving Blood against the perfect opponent along with a predictive model?


    The sheer quality of his adaptation would be way higher in such circumstances. Furthermore, once he finished Project Metabody, the end result would be truly beyond shocking. It would be as though Rui''s very existence would adapt to his opponent''s existence.


    That was a profound thought to consider.


    What would it look like if his very existence adapted to take down his opponent? Just the pattern recognition system alone was very powerful, he couldn''t even imagine how devastating he would be if he could adapt everything about himself to defeat an opponent.


    (''Embodying your Martial Art¡­'') Rui considered the idea. (''I wonder if that is one of the pre-requisites for the higher Realms.'')


    Rui recalled an epiphany that he had quite some time ago in the Shionel Confederation. A profound realization that his Martial Art was, in some sense, him, his life''s work.


    He thought about it for a few seconds before shrugging. (''Too abstract, let''s get back to work.'')


    He had managed to procure the details of the poison that Squire Herea used, and now he was interested in seeing how he could integrate the poison into his body in some way to trigger the same kind of cell death that it did when she used it against him so that he could elerate some cell death to give more fuel to his Weaving Blood, allowing it to grow stronger. It would mean that in a time where he truly needed Weaving Blood to save him, he would be able to empower as much as was needed, allowing him to survive what he would have otherwise not been able to.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1120 Empower

    "The poison is known as Reaper''s Dew." Squire Herea told him. "It''s ck in its natural state, though your skin turns green when you condition your body to handle it."


    "Interesting¡­" Rui narrowed his eyes. "And I can get that poison and that technique in the Floating Sect, right?"


    "Certainly," She nodded. "I trained it further when I came here thanks to the abundant growth resources."


    She turned towards Rui with a raised eyebrow. "Why are you interested in the technique, though? You aren''t a poison-oriented Martial Artist, and you negated that poison like it was nothing so I don''t expect you to care for it."


    "I''m an all-rounder," Rui replied ndly. "I dip my toe in all fields, in theory, and principle anyway."


    "You''re no all-rounder," She furrowed her eyebrow at his words. "No all-rounder would have been able to handle my poison as well as you did. I don''t how your healing countered Reaper''s Dew so well, but that is not something an all-rounder can do. Furthermore, you were stronger and faster than me, but not to the degree an all-rounder of the same grade would have been. Your spec configuration would have been."


    Rui smiled at her words. He had no intention of spreading around what his Martial Path actually was, not only would it perhaps give people an opportunity to counter him.


    (''Maybe that''s a good thing,'') Rui mused.


    Perhaps if he spread the word about his Martial Art and made a bunch of the guardians work hard to find a solution should Rui ever challenge them, then he would find Martial Artists who spotted shorings or ws in his Martial Art and worked hard to try and exploit them.


    In doing so, he just very well mighte across another avenue of improvement, one that he missed because he was unable to see the forest for the trees due to how closely involved he was.


    In that case, he might be able to indirectly speed up the rate of growth of his Martial Art and gain strength in ways that he would never have been able to do so.


    That was one positive. It was actually quite exciting for Rui.


    (''All my life, I''ve adapted to others to take them down, perhaps now it ought to be the other way around for once,'') Rui mused.


    The guardians above him will at least consider the matter and how they would go about handling his Martial Art.


    The guardians below him will probably consider the matter for if they ever challenged him for his chamber.


    Maybe he could have the entire Martial sect hyped to take down his exotic Martial Art.


    On the other hand, he was afraid of Chairman Deacon somehow getting word of someone with Rui''s Martial Art appearing out of nowhere and then sending someone to investigate the matter


    Of course, this was particrly unlikely, especially given the circumstances that they were in.


    The Floating Sect was essentially inplete lockdown martialw. There was basically zero flux of information between the Floating Sect and the outside world at the moment.Content is property ? N?velDrama.Org.


    The probability that word would spread after the war was over was truly minuscule. There was essentially no way that Chairman Deacon could gain information on what was going on within the ind.


    That was why Rui seriously considered disclosing his Martial Path.


    "My Martial Path is adaptive evolution," Rui casually revealed.


    She frowned, turning towards him. "What?"


    "Adaptive evolution is essentially the process of evolving and growing stronger by adapting to one''s opponent," Rui simply replied. "So I am an all-rounder but not a static one. I change to adapt to my opponent."


    Her eyes widened.


    This was a Martial Art, unlike anything she had ever seen. But it also made sense when she recalled the ease with which he overcame her Martial Art.


    Yet what she hadn''t realized was that Rui hadn''t even used the entirety of his Martial Art, he just used Weaving Blood alone.


    (''Would I have been able to beat her without the full scope of the pattern recognition, before I created Weaving Blood?'') Rui pondered.


    That was difficult to answer. But even if he could, he would not have done it as well as he did with Weaving Blood.


    In essence, Weaving Blood almost allowed him to adapt to her as well as the pattern recognition system did.


    That was an incredible discovery.


    It meant that had he used the pattern recognition system and Weaving Blood simultaneously, he very well may have been able to adapt twice as much as he could have with just the pattern recognition system alone.


    That was quite the breakthrough, it meant that he was right when he wondered whether Project Metabody had the potential to rival the pattern recognition system in terms of adaptive evolution. It was actually on par with it if all the other body adaptations were as perfectly suited to their opponent as Weaving Blood was against Squire Herea.


    Furthermore, this was before Rui came up with the idea of improving his adapted Martial body of Weaving Blood with an element of poison.


    (''I wonder how the Martial Heart will interact with my Martial body,'')


    He knew that the Martial Heart empowered the body in a way that was best suited for the Martial Path because the body''s spec configuration was already attuned to the Martial Art from the get-go, any empowerment to that would ultimately also bepatible with that.


    However, how would it affect him now that he had the ability to change that spec configuration to a certain extent? Once hepleted Project Metabody, how would the Martial Heart empower it?


    Would it empower it in the manner of his original spec configuration, or his adapted one?


    Rui preferred thetter, but it was possible that the former would ur.


    (''I should consult Senior Xanarn about it sometime,'') He mused.


    He put the matter aside for the time being and focused on the issue at hand.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1121 Suit

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    One of the challenges that Rui had at the moment was that he didn''t have the bestpatibility for poison. He recalled when he tried creating a technique that involved poison but failed because his aptitude for poison techniques was not the best.


    It was unfortunate, but Rui did not know what constituted poison aptitude. He had temporarily been resigned to this limitation but did not abandon the possibility of using poison techniques.


    As someone who aimed to be able to adapt to defeat any foe in the world, he needed to have poison techniques. After all, there almost certainly was a Martial Artist out there who, perhaps, could only be taken down with poison.


    In that case, Rui would be unable to adapt to them without a poison technique.


    That was uneptable to him.


    Of course, Reaper''s Dew was not a poison that Rui intended to use offensively. Rather, he intended to use it supplementarily.Content is property ? N?velDrama.Org.


    After all, the technique was such that it did not require much in the first ce. Furthermore, Rui did not need to go out of his way to condition himself to be unaffected by the poison the way Squire Herea did. After all, he wanted to get affected by the poison. That was the whole point.


    He needed the poison to affect him, or he wouldn''t be able to generate the needed fuel to ensure that his healing factor was not slowed down due to ack of avability.


    (''Adding the poison element to Weaving Blood will turn the technique into a cell redistribution system.'') He mused.


    After all, it was killing cells in certain parts of the body to turn into fuel for new cells in a wounded part of the body.


    That was no different from transporting cells from one part of the to another.


    It was interesting that the technique that allowed him to do this, Weaving Blood, was essentiallybining a total of four different techniques that handle different parts of the mechanism to allow for the entire technique to function as a whole.


    He immediately dived back into the Martial Library of the Floating Sect, looking for the poison technique in question.


    Yet he couldn''t help but skim through the various poisons and techniques surrounding the poisons.


    Poisons were not limited to just one technique, a poison could end up providing multiple techniques to offer, depending on how versatile it was.


    Rui found that Reaper''s Dew was a poison that had only one technique it could be applied through. It was a technique where the poison was introduced into the epithelial tissue, would be passed on to anyone that the user touched, and would immediately begin causing cell death.


    (''Hm, I don''t want that to happen.'') Rui frowned. (''I''ll have to edit that part out. Otherwise, it will be too much of a pain in the ass.'')


    He did not want to pass on the poison to those he touched like a poison-user. He wanted to use the Reaper''s Dew for his own body, not for his opponent.


    He quickly opened the technique book as he scoured through the training method.


    (''¡­Interesting.'')


    Many poison-oriented techniques involve conditioning the body to be able to handle a poison without any ill-effects, but also to host, and contain the poison. The principle by which this was aplished was actually quite interesting to Rui.


    It was sort of a highly washed-down version of the evolution breakthrough process to the Squire Realm in a way. It did rely on a certain degree of small scale and limited evolution of the cells to be able to amodate a new substance to the body.


    It was nothingpared to the sheer amount of evolution that the breakthrough to the Squire Realm gave the body, but it was still just enough to change how the body interacted and reacted to a single poison.


    Because that was the only change that urred, it was possible to make it ur with rtively limited means.


    (''Interesting¡­ So poison-users rely on the potential to use poison techniques to grow stronger.'')


    He had recently had some epiphanies about the Martial Path, and he was able to understand poison-oriented Martial Art better than he had been able to before.


    Humans possessed immense potential, and the Martial Path, among other things, was a journey to actualizing that potential through Martial Art. Even as a Martial Apprentice, every technique that one learned maximized the efficiency and effectiveness of the energy generated by the human body.


    For poison-oriented Martial Artists, that probably meant the potential of the human body to employ poison by sessfully withstanding it. Once the poison element was incorporated into the body, it too had the potential to be used through poison-oriented Martial Artists.


    It was just an unusual form of potential that most people did not possess, but those that did ended up having a Martial Path andter on, a Body, that was attuned to poison.


    Rui immediately began going through it in detail, he wasn''t too concerned withpatibility with the poison. He could just minimize the dosage that he would be incorporating into his body, regardless, he just needed to be able to release it into his flesh whenever he needed to get an extra boost for stamina or healing.


    Because it would cause cell death across his epithelial tissue, it would naturally mean that his flesh would be getting weaker, but it woulde with the benefit of better regeneration, and more stamina.


    He immediately took a copy of the technique before heading back to his chamber, ready to train the technique immediately. The sooner he mastered it, the sooner his Weaving Blood technique would perfected, and the greater the step forward towards achieving Project Metabody.


    Thankfully, the training was a lot less uncertain than he had expected and hoped for. It was training such that as long as he had endurance and perseverance, he would be able to seed in it just fine eventually. All he needed to do was figure out how to alter the training best to suit his needs.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1122 Conditioning

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    The conditioning technique was a little different from the ones that he had seen in the Apprentice Realm.


    As far as he could seem, the reason for this stemmed from the fact that the Martial Body was able to limatize to stimuli that were harmful to them far better than the normal human body could. This too was a trait that the human bodycked, but the Squire evolution breakthrough process was one of the few things that could grant the body this ability even if it didn''t have it before.


    By subjecting certain parts of his body to the poison over and over again, using both healing potions and his own innate healing factor, he could eventually create a generation of cells in a localized area that possessed the ability to resist and contain the poison until the time he wanted it to.


    As for the exact mechanics, he would have to work things out, but as long as he achieved a basic mechanism for releasing the substance into his flesh whenever he felt the need to amplify his healing or stamina, he would be fine.


    Rui quickly got to work as he worked out the chinks of the technique.


    Much to his surprise, there actually was quite some depth on how he ought to trigger the poison or where to store it and what the mechanics were.


    This was not an umon problem, based on the degree of choice that he had in customizing this part of the training method.


    Many poison-oriented Martial Artists stored their body in inactive pockets inside their body until it was time to use them.


    This allowed them to deploy their poison if and when they felt like it.


    People like Squire Herea did not necessarily employ that solution though. Given that she felt the need to bandage her arms, it was clear that her poison was active all the time.


    Rui definitely did not want to go that route. He couldn''t afford to have the poison active all the time.


    Even putting aside the fact that it would weaken his constitution too much all the time, something that he did not desire. He wanted to be in control of when it happened rather than simply allowing it to happen all the time.


    The whole point of the Metabody project was to allow him to choose and control what his Martial Body would look like, he could not tolerate something that could not be controlled or directed.


    That was his biggest issue.


    Thankfully, it was something that could be avoided.


    He began training immediately after he finished refining how he wanted the technique to look and function.This content provided by N(o)velDrama].[Org.


    The poison was stored beneath most of his skin such that it couldn''t possibly be applied to his opponent upon contact. As for the trigger, he managed to find a way to set the trigger of deploying the poison with a simple electric shock, which would loosen up the pockets created by tissue, allowing the poison to escape.


    It was effectively no different from a normal nerve impulse instructing muscles to move in a certain way.


    Once he had established that, it was simply time to begin that process as soon as possible. He began the conditioning and limatization process of the training immediately. This involved subjecting targeted parts of his body to Reaper''s Dew. Specifically, he only wanted enough of a specific area of tissue to gain immunity towards Reaper''s Dew so that those areas could store and host the poison.


    The process was actually more painful than he had imagined. It seemed like the initial big exposures of his body to Reaper''s Dew made it quite susceptible to pain and damage, as well as a lot of death.


    It was one of the hurdles of the training process, it required the body to undergo an immense amount of pain and death in order to eventually be able to handle the introduction of poison substances into his body.


    Rui had undergone a simr procedure when he was getting esoteric material substances inserted into his body, as well as that of Kane''s, in order for them to be able to wield their lightning techniques.


    However, that substance was not anywhere nearly as toxic or poisonous as an actual poison, and thus neither of the two of them had had too much trouble eventually learning the mechanics of the technique very quickly after that.


    He hoped it would be the same for poison techniques, but s, it didn''t seem to be nearly as easy or quick as it was thest time.


    (''Oh boy, this is not going to be easy,'') Ruki mused one day when he began coughing blood up due to overexertions.


    Poisons were not to be messed with. He realized that getting enough resistance to the poison such that it could be contained and ensured that it would not harm his performance while it was contained was not going to be easy.


    Formting the technique was actually easy for some of his caliber once he understood what could or couldn''t be controlled, but mastering a poison technique when it was clearly outside of his specialty meant that he was going to have a much harder time mastering these poisonspared to a poison specialist.


    This was true even when he was a Martial Apprentice, poison-oriented Martial Artists had a far better time adapting to poison than non-poison-oriented Martial Artists did even at the Apprentice Realm even though their body was that of a normal human body.


    Rui had suspected that the subconscious brain was the reason, those with a Martial Path centered around a field like poison, their bodies were prone to suffering to poison as well, but their brains exerted an influence on the body as far as the endocrine system went, regting hormones and other things that would allow them to handle an external intruding substance that was highly toxic substance.


    This meant that their bodies dealt with poison itself before the pain kicked in.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1123 Result

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    Thankfully, he got to skip one of the hardest parts of integrating poisons into one''s body, which was general resistance. Because he needed the poison to work, he couldn''t gain general immunity or resistance against it.


    Thus, his training time was greatly shortened due to the removal of this step.


    Despite that, it took quite some time. Mastering poison techniques took longer than he expected because of the time it took to master a new poison technique because not only did the technique surrounding them need to be mastered, but the poison itself took time to be integrated into the body.


    With normal Martial Art techniques, only the technique itself required mastering. It canceled out with the reduction in training time that Rui got by skipping a step.


    In the end, it was only four monthster that he finally mastered the poison as well as the technique that allowed him to deploy the poison into his own body when he needed to.


    One of the biggest hurdles was conditioning his body cells to release the poison when he sent enough of an electric shock through his own nerves.


    By setting the trigger for the deployment of the poison as the Lightning Tap technique, he could make sure that he didn''t inadvertently release the poison when he didn''t need it. That would be quite catastrophic, if he ever was facing a Martial Artist against whom the defense was extremely important, activating the Reaper''s Dew poison into his body would weaken his constitution, and therefore his defense.


    That was why he spent extra effort to ensure that such a thing could not happen.


    After a lot of time and hard work, his efforts finally paid off.


    After four months, it was finally time to test his technique.


    He exhaled deeply, trying to calm his anticipation.


    TAP!


    His thumb flew to the side of his neck, sending a pulse of current into the auricr nerve on his neck. For a moment, he partially felt the brief effects of Lighting Tap, numbness, and mild paralysis.


    In the next moment, he felt a surge of pain across his entire body as the trigger was activated and Reaper''s Dew was released across his epithelial tissue.Content is property ? N?velDrama.Org.


    (''And now¡­'')


    SPLAT!


    He rxed the muscles of his left arm¡­


    SPLAT!


    ¡­Before inflicting a deep gash into it with a swing of his right arm.


    What ensued happened so quickly that he almost didn''t even react in time.


    The wound began healing before it was evenpletely inflicted!


    The starting points of the gash were already finished in their healing by the time the wound waspletely inflicted.


    "What?!" Rui blurted out in surprise.


    He hadn''t expected it to be so effective. It hadn''t even been this effective when he fought guardian Herea.


    (''Then again, Squire Herea did not actually inflict any physical wounds for me to see the visible speed of tissue regeneration.'') Rui realized.


    Because the Reaper''s Dew poison was something that she used routinely and was her only way of inflicting damage, he hadn''t actually gotten wounded at all.


    Still, even he felt that his technique was a bit too sessful!


    Wounding him was like trying to wound the surface of water, even if one struck at water very hard, the disced area would be restored with water before the motion was even over.


    (''It''s incredible,'') He realized. (''This is only possible because of thebination of autophagy and the Reaper''s Dew poison. These two together can essentially replicate the mechanics of a healing potion!'')


    This meant that with the addition of the Reaper''s Dew poison in his body, he effectively had a healing potion in his body permanently.


    The implications of this were massive. For one, he probably didn''t strictly need to carry healing potions ever again. It also meant that if he ever came across a Martial Artist whose Martial Art was focused on hyperlethality at the cost of everything, he would simply be able to adapt to him with extreme perfection simply by activating Weaving Blood.


    He didn''t think that there was any offense in the Squire Realm that could possibly overwhelm his healing and regeneration.


    If he stacked the pattern recognition system of the VOID algorithm onto that body, then it would be game over.


    It took half a year, but he had finally finished the first step of Project Metabody.


    (''Currently, at the moment, I have a Martial body centered around super-healing, as well as one centered around super-speed.'') Rui noted.


    Both Weaving Blood and Void Forestep were his strongest techniques. And in hindsight, he realized that it was for a reason.


    He hadn''t created Void Forestep with the intention of it being a piece of a muchrger and more ambitious project, but he now understood why it was so effective.


    The technique itself was powerful, no doubt, but what made it so powerful was the fact that the technique had immense synergy with Rui''s Martial Path and Flowing Void Style. It fundamentally catered to the idea of changing to adapt and evolve.


    He just hadn''t realized it.


    The technique changed his spec configuration to adapt to the Root, and in turn, allowed him to beat it.


    Weaving Blood was also simr, in concept as well as potency, of the same caliber of technique as Void Forestep.


    Now, he needed to find simr techniques for offense and for defense. Once he got those two Martial bodies out of the way, he would havepleted the first iteration of Project Metabody.


    He didn''t necessarily think that this would be the end of Project Metabody forever, everything had areas for improvement after all. He didn''t just dere Project Waterplete when the first iteration of the VOID algorithm rolled out. Many iterations of the VOID Algorithm came out even after the first iteration that were improved and far superior to their predecessors.


    Perhaps Project Metabody would also be the same.


    Regardless, he did look forward to the day that he seeded with the first iteration, even if it wasn''t necessarily thest.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1124 State

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    In the past six months that Rui had set out to master Weaving Blood, and then improve it with the Reaper''s Dew, much had changed on Floating Ind.


    The war had not ceased, nor had it ended. The Kaddar Treaty Organization had rolled out assault after assault chipping away at the strength of the Floating Sect


    They deployed nearly a hundred Martial Squires each time, forcing the Floating Sect to deploy a simr number of Martial Squires each time to defend and prevent the Kaddar Martial Artists from reaching the surface of the ind.


    The conflicts around the ind often affected the ind, yet it never destabilized or showed any concerning signs as the Kaddar Treaty Organization deployed their mysterious long-range weapon that affected the esoteric substance that served as the gravitational core of the ind to hold the ind together, making it impossible to destabilize.


    The Floating Sect didn''t even need to bother too much with active surveince because they already knew that the Kaddar Treaty Organization wasing ahead of time. Every time the gravity on the surface of the ind fluctuated and reduced, they knew that the Kaddar Treaty Organization had employed its weapon to get rid of one of the greatest deterrences that the Floating Sect had against the Kaddar Region; the copse of the ind onto the Kaddar Region.


    The Floating Sect had considered the possibility of getting rid of the weapon once and for all with a targeted covert attack. But unfortunately, that was almost impossible to do. The Kaddar Region would see such an attacking from a mile away.


    Covert operations required bypassing awareness by definition, and there was simply no way for the Floating Sect to hide their approach to the Kaddar nation at this point. The fact that it was so physically, economically, and socially isted from the Kaddar Region meant that there was no way to disguise its operations to the Kaddar Treaty Organization.


    That was why the n to destroy the weapon was temporarily put off.


    It wasn''t as though there was absolutely no way this was possible whatsoever or anything, after all, there existed people like Kane who would be able to bypass even the intense surveince of the Squire patrols that the Kaddar Treaty Organization had set up to ensure that nobody could enter or exit.


    It was unfortunate, but the Floating Sect was running out of options. It was forced into a defensive position where it could not do much.


    A war against the Kaddar Region on its own soil was out of the question. The military power of the Kaddar Region far outstripped the Floating Sect when it came to their home turf, the Floating Sect would suffer a devastating loss if they moved out of their home turf and attacked the Kaddar nations on their home turf.


    All they could do was weather the attack and make it extremely costly for the Kaddar Region.


    As long as they could make the disincentives much greater than the incentives when it came to waging war against the Floating Sect, they could deter the Kaddar Region from waging war against the sect.


    There were considerations on how to go about this.


    One of the ideas that they had was simply escting the battle to the Senior level. Perhaps one day when the Kaddar Region had sent a particrlyrge toon of Martial Squires with some of their most powerful Squires, the Floating Sect could choose to annihte them all with a Martial Senior.Content provided by N?velDrama.Org.


    This would put the Kaddar Region in an extremely difficult position since it was clear that they were unwilling to escte the battle to this level easily.


    The internal division, as well as external pressure from states outside but around the Kaddar Region, were one of the weaknesses that the Floating Sect could exploit this way, it meant that they would have to make a strong decision then and there, whether to bite the bullet and move forward, or whether to give up and end the war.


    It could work, but if the Kaddar Region decided to go all out and deploy all their Martial Seniors, then there would be big trouble. Three Martial Seniors simply could not defend against the might of more than a dozen Martial Squires, regardless of the environment.


    However, those three could kill a few Martial Seniors each at the worst, even if they did lose.


    It was fear of that oue that was the biggest reason that the Floating Sect did not escte.


    It was a messy situation where both sides were limited and restricted, and both sides were bleeding due to the war. Yet the Kaddar Region refused to give up so easily.


    From the very start, it was the Floating Sect''s victory if they could make the Kaddar Region cease. As long as they could do that, it would not only be a victory for this war, but it would also make future wars more unlikely.


    If the Kaddar Region could not get what it wanted despite the presence of a weapon that got rid of the deterrence of the ind, then there probably was no way for the Kaddar Region to ever get what it wanted.


    Unless, of course, they got a Martial Master, in which case it would be game over.


    Regardless, the Floating Sect spent half a year gritting its teeth and putting up a heavy guard to withstand the assaults from the Kaddar Region.


    Guardians died inevitably. Every attack and every assault killed many guardians inevitably, as a result.


    Unfortunately, there wasn''t much that could be done about that. They increased the number of Martial Squires that fought back in order to give their guardians a numeric advantage, but the Kaddar Region simply threw even more Martial Squires to attack the sect, forcing the Floating Sect to bleed even more as huge chunks of the sect were forced to go out there and defend against the iing waves of attacks.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1125 Offense

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    Rui, however, didn''t mind the war all that much. Whenever he wasn''t fighting deployed, he simply trained.


    Now that he had obtained three spec configurations for healing, stamina, and speed, he was looking forward to expanding that offense and defense as well.


    These two were arguably the hardest of them all.


    The reason for this was because both offense and defense were too broad. Offense included collision-based techniques like strikes, throws, and projectiles. That could further be divided into two exclusive categories blunt force and piercing. It also included other forms of inflicting damage such as heat, friction, mental techniques, sustained pressure-based techniques like holds and locks, blunt force brain trauma, etc.


    It also included a wide variety of ranges from super-close-quarters forms of offense with grappling and wrestling offensive maneuvers to close-quarters striking, to long-range attacks. It included damage based on external elements such as poison, symbiotes, or weapons. There were also different media of damage such as one''s own body, as well as the atmosphere.


    There were manyyers, and dimensions of depth to offense as a broad category or concept.


    It was far from a monolithic concept, and far more of a loosebel that simply referred to any and everything that could be done inbat to hurt one''s opponent''


    It was simply far too broad of a concept for him to develop a single Martial Body that universally catered to all of the forms of offense that existed at the moment. It was impossible because the Martial Body needed to cater to forms of damage that were either mutually exclusive or even principally opposed to each other, like heat and cold.


    That was why forming a Martial Body that was principally catering to the offense as a whole was impossible.


    (''I''ll need to narrow it down to my offense,'')


    Although he did n to eventually epass all fields, for now, he needed to cater only to the main forms of offense that he relied on.


    Striking.


    Long-range air-based attacks.


    Grappling offense.


    If he needed to amplify these by altering his body in some way, then he needed to either find three different mechanisms to amplify each of them separately or one mechanism that amplified all of them.


    (''There are advantages to both,'') Rui decided.


    If he picked three different mechanisms for all three forms of offense, then he would probably end up being able to adapt better to all of them.


    On the other hand, it increased the difficulty by at least a factor of three. Furthermore, it was highly suspect whether it would be possible to use in one Martial Body.


    (''Separate Martial Bodies for sub-categories of offense is something I should save for future iterations.'') Rui decided.


    For the first iteration of Project Metabody, he had decided that it was best to stick with being simple and straightforward, rather than trying to oveplicate things


    (''One mechanism to amplify my offense in general¡­'') Rui narrowed his eyes.


    He needed to identify a way in which he could amplify all offense. It wasn''t so straightforward, as they relied on different ways to inflict damage.


    (''The only thing that they have inmon is inflicting damage with a great power output¡­'') He noted.


    That didn''t make it easier. If anything, it made it harder. It was true that those means of offense relied on the power output of his body, but it also meant that if he wanted to empower all of those forms of offense, he needed to increase his power output.


    Void Forestep appeared as if it increased his power output, but the decrease in mass was perfectly bnced out by the increase in speed, so it amplified speed for the most part, as opposed to power.


    As for how he was to increase power? He had no idea at the moment.


    He had gotten a bit lucky with Weaving Blood in that he didn''t need to do much research for means and ways to find a way to empower his healing. It worked out with the knowledge that he had and techniques that he could easily ess.


    But he had the inkling that this was going to be much harder.


    For one, he didn''t really know how he was supposed to massively improve the power of his Martial Body. He knew it couldn''t be an ordinary supplementary method because that didn''t alter his spec configuration, it just gave minor upgrades to his power.


    However, he wasn''t interested in obtaining that at the moment.


    What he wanted was a way to alter the spec configuration of his Martial Body, a simple power supplementary technique like Fire Breathing was not going to do that. Just like how Wind Breathing could not be the speed Martial Body, only Void Forestep could.


    If he wanted a Martial Body that was focused on power, he probably needed a technique, or multiple techniques like in the case of Weaving Blood, that improved power by increasing his body mass.


    Martial Bodies with greater power output usually had an immense amount of muscle mass. It was that mass that gave rise to their great power. If there was a way to improve his power without increasing mass, he didn''t mind using it, but the point of Project Metabody was to sacrifice physical parameters that he didn''t need like speed and agility, for parameters that he did need, like power from extra muscle mass that would slow him down.


    For now, he had no idea how to go about the increase in power. Sure, he could think of some usible avenues to explore, but he had nothing concrete the way he did with Weaving Blood.


    This was going to take some good old-fashioned research. He couldn''t just idly think his way through this one. And he had never expected to be able to, he always knew that Project Metabody was going to be a long-term project that was going to take some serious ground-up effort by the time he was done with it.


    This chapter upload first at  N?velD(ram)a.?rg owns this content.

 Chapter 1126 Conditions

    Time passed as the war waged on.


    Rui''s life began to quickly fall into a routine.


    He partook in the war, doing his part in defending the Floating Sect, he trained in his high-ss chamber, reaping the benefits of the environment of Ajanta Ind, while he also researched ways in which he could create a Martial Body whose spec configuration was nted towards power.


    He realized he couldn''t rely on a solution that increased specific kinds of power or only worked in some ways. He needed something that could universally amplify muscle output.


    Once he got that to work, he would be doing quite fine in regards to making a Martial Body centered around power. Given that all of his attacks relied on power from different muscle groups, it needed to be a universal solution.


    He had already begun exploring the Martial library for supplementary techniques that could help in being one part of the total solution. He had also begun exploring the symbiotic Martial Art techniques as well, but he hadn''t found anything just yet.


    He considered conditioning techniques that could help as well.


    He had also put his knowledge of esoteric substances to good use as he explored substances that could potentially help with the solution as well.


    During the remaining parts of the day, he made sure to train hard under the environment of Ajanta Ind.


    He had already decided that he wasn''t leaving Ajanta Ind until it strengthened the foundation of his body enough that it could handle his Martial heart.


    He was at the stage where he was seriously thinking about his path into a higher Realm of power.


    He knew what it was, he also knew what was required for the most part.


    He needed a strong body that could handle that power, but that wasn''t the only thing. In order to actually even possibly activate his Martial Heart, he needed a Martial Art with enough individuality that had enough of a synergy with his Martial Body to bring out its true power.


    Reaching the necessary individuality threshold was important, techniques with individuality were naturally synergetic. And synergetic techniques were able to bring out the true power of the body while a non-synergetic Martial Art could not.


    It was simr to how sports athletes would not be able to bring out their best if they wore attire that was not suited to their physical frame. The individuality of the techniques progressively brought out the best of the Martial Body, the more the individuality, the greater the synergy, and the greater the power of the martial Body the technique could extract and use, including the Martial Heart.


    He had already deduced that Martial Art was simply the process of actualizing human potential through a system of movements and training. The Martial Heart also has the potential for power that the human body could not tap into ordinarily. Thus Martial Artists used Martial Art techniques, with individuality and synergy, to tap into the potential of the body and eventually dig up the deeply hidden potential of the martial Heart.


    However, Rui knew that just individuality wasn''t enough. It was necessary, in that it built the path down to the Martial Heart, allowing the Martial Artist to reach it, but the Martial Heart was locked behind a final door even if one reached it. The key to the lock in this analogy was the trigger to the breakthrough to the Senior Realm.


    Senior Xanarn had refused to go in-depth into it, but Rui had already made inferences and deductions about what the trigger to the Senior Realm was.


    (''A strong force of desire that pushed them to be Martial Artists¡­ and dire circumstances that push a Martial Squire to the limit by threatening that desire¡­'')


    It made sense given everything that he knew about the Senior Realm and the fact that it was the evolved version of the hidden true strength of humans that havee into light in the face of a crisis.


    He was certain that, unlike for humans, the conditions for activating the Martial Heart were high. Its power had evolved with the Squire evolution breakthrough process, but so had the difficulty of tapping into it.


    Given that Martial Artists used Martial Art techniques to unearth the potential of the Martial Body, only if their desire for Martial power was strong enough could they cross the boundary and unearth a whole well of hidden power.


    It all depended on why they became Martial Artists and how strong their desire for Martial power was. It was only that desperate desire for power, in circumstances that threatened one''s desire, could possibly be able to tap into the full potential of the Martial Body; the Martial Heart.


    If those circumstances didn''t ur, then the intensity of their desire for power would not reach the needed levels. Rui suspected that only the sheer mental distress, as well as the extreme physiological parameters that came with being mentally distressed, could trigger the tachycardia that unleashed unprecedented power hidden within the Martial Heart.


    It made sense with multiple different lines of logic, and he suspected it was probably true even if he didn''t receive any confirmation on it from Senior Xanarn.


    If that was the case, then he could certainly see why so few Martial Squires broke through to the Senior Realm.


    Just how many Martial Squires had a burning desire for power for whatever reason? and just how many of them could craft individualistic techniques that could deepen their Martial Path, and unearth hidden potential within their body like the Martial Heart, bringing them closer to the Senior Realm the more the full potential of the Martial Body was unearthed? Just how many of them would run into circumstances where their underlying motivation for more Martial power was challenged such that the intensity of desire reached a critical threshold sending the body into a hyperactive overdrive state to trigger the Martial heart and unleash new power? Just how many Martial Squires would acquire a body that could withstand the power of the Martial heart?This content provided by N(o)velDrama].[Org.


    (''Very few,'') Rui narrowed his eyes. Most Martial Squires could not fulfill even one of the four conditions.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1127 Challenge

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    Rui intended to meet all of the conditions for bing a Martial Senior, and he had a n for almost all of them.


    He wasn''t far too concerned with the condition of building up enough individuality to be able to bring out the true potential of the Martial Body; the Martial Heart. Individuality was something he rocked at as a Martial Artist for various reasons.


    A lifetime of experience, a lifetime of knowledge from another world, and a particrly sharp mind meant that he could exercise his creativity and produce something that was not only original but quite unique as well. It meant that as long as he didn''t grow overconfident orzy, and continued applying and exerting himself to add more individuality to his Martial Art, he would certainly cross the threshold where his Martial Heart would have been unearthed, and needed to only be triggered.


    As for the condition of the body, that was to ensure that the Martial Body was strong enough to withstand the flood of power that would released by the Martial Heart. Rui recalled the story that Senior Xanarn had told him about her grandmother. She performed incredible feats to save her life but died very soon after.


    This was because her body was simply unable to withstand that power. In fact, that was the reason why the untapped well of power was hidden and locked away. It was because it would severely harm the body if used, and could even lead to death in the worst-case scenario.


    That was why he needed to improve the internal constitution of his body. This would normally be impossible for the human, but the Martial Body was an evolved form of the body and could do almost everything the human body could do to a far greater degree.


    This included a passive adaptation factor of healed tissue to old stimuli that damage tissue. It was like how bones could be strengthened under sustained pressure, damage, and force through repeated conditioning.


    Over time, the Martial Body would simply grow stronger, and it''s ability to improve under stress had also evolved.


    Thus, as long as a Martial Squire never ceased to train and fight, they would probably eventually obtain a body that was capable of withstanding the Martial Heart.


    (''Is that why all Martial Seniors are quite old?'') Rui wondered.


    It made sense, they simply were unable to activate their Martial Hearts at all prior to reaching that level of internal constitution.


    Rui had taken the initiative to remain on Ajanta Ind to hasten that process, thus he wasn''t worried about the Martial Body condition either.


    He was driven enough in his pursuit of his Martial Path as well, he was not unmotivated, and he had a tremendous drive towards pursuing his Marital Path.


    He was driven by both his desire to fulfill Project Water, and also his desire to protect his family.


    Both of those were powerful force drivers.


    The one that he couldn''t control was being put in circumstances where that would challenge those strong desires. He couldn''t do that, nor did he want to do that, it would require putting the objects of his desire at risk.


    In order to challenge his desire to protect his family, circumstances where they were put at risk were necessary, and required. However, he did not want to willingly put his family at risk just to trigger the breakthrough to the Senior Realm.


    (''If I was willing to sacrifice them to get more power¡­ Then protecting them wouldn''t have been such a big deal at the moment.'')


    That was why he didn''t even consider putting his family in danger on purpose and then challenging himself to protect them as some way to trigger the activation of the Martial Heart.


    That was the biggest problem, he simply didn''t know how he could be sure that he would run into some circumstance that would somehow challenge in him in exactly the right way for his Martial Heart to be triggered.


    That seemed like it relied entirely on luck. And that was something he seriously disliked. He did not want the probability of his breakthrough to hinge on dumb luck, that was something he did not want to tolerate.


    One of the things he had been pondering recently was whether he ought to find a way to trigger the Martial Heart actively and voluntarily.This content provided by N(o)velDrama].[Org.


    The very thought of it made him grow excited. Yet he wasn''t sure if it was achievable at all. After all, he was sure that many people had tried increasing the rate at which the breakthroughs urred at all Realms, but for the most part, no one had seeded.


    The reason he could be sure of this was that only a small minority of the Martial Artists of each Realm broke into a higher one. Had anyone made any major breakthrough in that regard, it would have been quite different.


    (''Unless they chose to hide it, like I did,'') He mused.


    He had not forgotten the fact that he had discovered a way to increase the probability of breakthroughs in the Apprentice Realm through his Martial Art. He wondered if it was possible to do with higher Realms.


    He sighed, putting the matter aside for now.


    He had too much on his te to think about such matters for the moment. Project Metabody was currently his greatest project, and it took a lot of his time and attention, such that there was little to no way he could possibly focus on an ambition of such a magnitude.


    Just as he was about to return to working on Project Metabody, he heard the bell outside the chamber ringing, someone had arrived.


    "Oh, Kane, what''s going on?" Rui asked when he opened the door only to find Kane outside.


    "Uh, something very strange happened to me just now," Kane replied with a confused expression.


    "Hm?"


    "Guardian Tokugawa Ieyasu challenged me to a duel," Kane revealed. "Honestly, I have no idea what to make of it at all."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1128 Motivation

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    "What?!" Rui frowned with incredulity, widening his eyes.


    "Yeah, I couldn''t believe it myself when I first heard him, but he made it quite clear," Kane sighed, tired. "But he approached me when I was eating lunch in the cafeteria. And then he challenged me out of nowhere from the blue."


    "And then?"


    "Well, I had to ept since I hadn''t epted any challenge in the past ten days at all," Kane replied. "I''m so d that killing has been prohibited ever since the war began, I would be a lot more nervous if it wasn''t."


    Kane had seen Ieyasu fight and had absolutely no intentions of ever getting into a fight with the man if he could just ignore and reject his challenge.


    But unfortunately, he simply couldn''t.


    "But why?" Rui frowned for a moment before he arrived at an answer almost immediately.


    "I don''t know, honestly," Kane replied, sighing. "Why would the number one guardian challenge me, who''s not even in the first ss? Why even challenge anyone at all? It makes no sense."


    (''His Martial Art is imitative evolution¡­'') Realization dawned on Rui almost immediately. (''Could it be that he wants some of the techniques that Kane has?'')


    If that were the case, it would make a lot of sense. After all, some of Kane''s techniques were highly unconventional, and also extremely powerful.


    Kane had disyed both Void Step and Fulminata when he first challenged a guardian for their spot.


    Could it be that word had finally traveled to Ieyasu, who wasn''t present there, and was extremely isted in the matters of the lower?


    Perhaps he had be interested in what he had heard about Kane and wanted a piece of it.


    This was pure spection at the moment, but he could not think of another reason for why the man would be challenging Kane. Kane was not a threat, he had nothing to gain from beating Kane in a duel.


    He had nothing to gain from beating anybody in a duel, he was the highest-ranked guardian at the moment.


    So the fact that he still challenged Kane meant that he was gaining something from fighting Kane, something or the other. Rui considered various intangible potential benefits that he gained from fighting Kane, but almost none of them were realistically viable.


    However, if the man''s goal was to copy Void Step and Fulminata.


    That was quite ambitious on his part if that really was the case.


    If that was the case, then it meant that he had the confidence to break down powerful grade-ten techniques as easily as he did other techniques.


    However, Rui was actually skeptical of him being able to copy Fulminata.


    That technique not only required an esoteric substance that could generate charge and current and integrate it into one''s body, but it also required having an affinity for a technique like that, for lightning.


    Which meant that the only thing that he would be able to copy and improve was Void Step. However, in order to be able to copy the technique, he needed to be able to sense it in the first ce.Content is property ? N?velDrama.Org.


    That was not something just anybody could do. The only reason that Rui could thoroughly sense Kane despite the technique was because his senses were extremely powerful, having a mind powerful enough to resist the misdirection, and having a technique that bypassed the mechanism of misdirection.


    That was why Void Step was simply never effective against him. He could deal with it even though other Martial Squires seemingly never could.


    The question remained to be seen whether he would even be able to sense past it, and whether merely sensing Kane would be enough to replicate the technique that he was using at the time.


    Unfortunately, Rui did not know much about the mechanics by which he copied techniques, and improved upon them. Until he learned about that, he did not know whether he would be able to copy techniques like the Void Step technique.


    Regardless, he was quite curious about how the fight would go.


    It was unfortunate, but it was quite unlikely that Kane would be able to beat him if he managed to get a chance to fight him during such a fight.


    It wasn''t that Kane was weak, certainly not.


    It was that Ieyasu was just monstrously powerful, capable of putting people of Kane''s caliber down.


    However, nheless, he was quite interested in seeing how it went down. It was always interesting to see two powerful Martial Artists got at it.


    Regardless, Rui had underestimated how popr Ieyasu was.


    The entirety of all guardians had gathered to witness the man fight against Kane.


    That was something that blew Rui''s mind. The fact that everybody was willing to drop whatever they had just for this was honestly shocking.


    That was the kind of attention that Martial Seniors might receive from Martial Squires, but it was absolutely unprecedented for Martial Squire to be able to gain such kind of attention unperturbed.


    The two of them got into the arena


    Kane put on an extremely serious expression. It appeared that despite his prior confusion and uncertainty, he was able to project his severity.


    The two of them stood at a distance from each other.


    "Challenger; Guardian Ieyasu."


    Ieyasu stepped forward.


    "Defender; Guardian Nake."


    As did Kane.


    "Take your stances,"


    Kane adopted his usual light maneuvering stance.


    Ieyasu adopted a simr stance, much as Rui had predicted. If he was going to copy someone''s Martial Art, he needed to begin with their stances.


    Stances were the opening position with which Martial Artists began a battle through, they were quite important and usually were the best possible position to seamlessly execute their Martial Art.


    Although he was worried for Kane, he was quite hyped to see Ieyasu hopefully demonstrate the manner in which he coped with techniques that were different. This was something he had missed in Senior Xanarn''s sparring session rounds where Ieyasu had beaten her relying on his own prowess.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1129 Information

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    He actually wondered if that was how Kane entered his sights, through the story of the two of them beating Senior Xanarn the same way he did.


    If that was the case, Rui could definitely understand why the man had turned his attention to both Rui and Kane.


    (''Does he intend to challenge me next or anything like that?'') Rui''s eyes narrowed.


    Of course, he didn''t mind it.


    In fact, he intended to challenge guardian Ieyasu at some point himself. However, he did not intend to do so immediately. For now, he was still in the middle of his journey of getting stronger, once he achieved the first iteration of Project Metabody.


    Once he did that, the VOID algorithm would have undergone a qualitative upgrade that would allow him to adapt with a degree of proficiency that was unlike anything else before.


    However, he wasn''t confident that even the pattern recognition system alone was enough to deal with someone of this caliber.


    Part of the reason definitely had to upgrade the VOID algorithm was because the man''s Martial Art was simply toorge and too potent. Rui knew that he was in trouble because he could notpete against the sheer number of techniques that he waspeting against.


    He had a feeling that if the two of them had the same quantity and quality of techniques, there was a chance that he could win with a more potent Martial Art, but it didn''t matter because the man almost certainly had more and stronger techniques and a stronger Martial Body.


    (''For now, let''s observe,'')


    Rui had to truly push down the temptation to form predictive models based on the movements and patterns that he saw from Ieyasu down.


    To a certain degree, it was a bit useless given that the man copied Martial Art, and presumably the patterns he would use came with the patterns of the original users of the Martial Art that he copied from.


    His attention was drawn back to the arena as Squire Ieyasu narrowed his eyes. A maelstrom of pressure rose from him as it washed over every single Martial Squire in the stadium.


    Many of the guardians shivered with horrified expressions on their faces.


    This was not peril within the Squire Realm.


    Rui was the only one who could replicate this, and he could do it well. He could to a much degree with the power of cultivation of the technique.


    (''He''s the real degree,'') Rui grinned.


    Rui did not know whether his aura was based on real power, or whether it was a projected image or a projected impression through some kind using a mental technique. Regardless, it didn''t matter.This content provided by N(o)velDrama].[Org.


    "Begin!"


    Kane immediately rushed forward.


    He immediately activated the Fulminata technique. He generated a change in his body using the esoteric substances that Rui had introduced to the body.


    He deeply exhaled, getting rid of redundant mass while increasing the sheer speed at which he moved.


    The Fulminata technique had been activated.


    Kane shed across the battlefield at speeds that beggared the minds of many who bore witness to it.


    Kane moved at speeds that they didn''t think was possible within the Squire Realm. Not even Tokugawa exhibited such speed.


    That was why he wanted to obtain the Fulminata technique, or so it seemed that way to Rui.


    Kane''s attacks were well-timed and well-aimed.


    Yet, they were ineffective.


    They simply did not hit him.


    WHOOSH!


    Squire Ieyasu moved so fast that he disappeared in the face of an attack, appearing right behind Kane immediately after. The two of them proceeded to have almost a childish back-and-forth about who could go back and forth on who could get the other''s back.


    Rui wasn''t sure if it was more impressive for Kane, or for Ieyasu, but the level of speed that he was witnessing was absurd.


    The two of them were no different from blurs in the eyes of everyone else.


    Still, that did not mean they were equal.


    (''he''s holding back on other parameters and aspects of the fight,'') Rui narrowed his eyes.


    He hadn''t had the opportunity to pay too much attention to the man''s fights during the war, but he knew that he was not short on offensive lethality, and passive defense.


    He did not need to allow the match to proceed in this fashion, but he did.


    This convinced Rui even more that the man was after Kane''s techniques, as opposed to seeking victory.


    If he wanted to win, he could have been able to kill Kane with a single lethal attack and it would have been game over.


    Yet he deliberately chose to engage in a match where both sides employed speed to their best. They evaded each other''s strikes while looking into possible avenues of opportunities and weaknesses.


    Kane could not spot a single thing. Both Rui and Ieyasu were able to spot several ws, shorings, mistakes, and problems in Kane''s movements. Rui was able to do so because of the sheer depth of the predictive model he had on Kane. This was the most robust and deep predictive model that he had ever made, after all.


    As for how Ieyasu seemed to operate, he wasn''t entirely sure. He did not have the degree of limitations that he would have faced had he been relying on a system that focused on gathering information in the middle ofbat.


    This was quite interesting to Rui because it meant that he may very well be relying on an entirely different form of gathering information. If that was the case, then Rui was even more curious about how he got the information that he needed to mimic or imitate.


    He wondered whether it was possible for him to ovep such a method with his own way of gaining information. It was possible that this could potentially solve one of the chronic problems of his VOID algorithm which was the time it took to adapt and evolve to its opponent, shortening it was a new area that he hadn''t yet touched.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1130 Show

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    While Rui was absorbed in his thoughts about the fight, the reactions of the crowd were not nearly as calm and collected.


    Everybody was shocked.


    Guardian Ieyasu had not challenged anyone ever since he challenged his predecessor, taking his spot as the number one Martial Artist.


    He didn''t feel the need, there was no one in the Squire Realm above him. He was the target of challenges.


    Yet very few people challenged him, he was too powerful, and he showed no mercy. His opponents simply died.


    The only one who did challenge him and managed to survive without dying was the second-ranked guardian, formerly the first-ranked.


    Yet for some reason, Guardian Ieyasu had gone out of his way to challenge a guardian. Not only that, but the guardian that he did end up challenging was actually a really low-ss guardian who was in the tenth ss.


    Of course, many knew that the truth about guardian Nake wasn''t nearly as weak as his rank and ss would suggest. It was said that he along with another ss-ten guardian had managed to force Senior Xanarn to use a portion of true power as a Martial Senior. Something only guardian Ieyasu had managed to do prior to that.


    Many of the lower ss Martial Squires did not know that much about the most powerful Martial Squire of the Floating Sect. After all, not all guardians had been there five years ago when he imed the title and status of the strongest.


    Very few actually had a good understanding of what guardian Ieyasu did. Those who had a first-hand ount of what he did, had already gained a good understanding of what the motivation behind guardian Ieyasu''s actions were.Property ? of N?velDrama.Org.


    Nobody dared to blink while Ieyasu and Kane shed against each other.


    They shuffled, dashed, and darted around at incredible speeds!


    So much so that many of the low-ss Martial Artists were unable to even perceive their movements beyond hazy blurs.


    In just the briefest of moments, both Ieyasu executed hundreds and thousands of movements in a matter of seconds. Their speed was so high, that they left after-image clones across the entire battle arena!


    Yet the Martial Squires that were able to follow and were qualified to evaluate the battle all quickly came to realize something.


    (''Kane is losing,'') Rui tutted.


    It was a matter of just a single beat, but he was decisively inferior to Squire Ieyasu despite using Fulminata to his absolute best.


    He did his best to evade Ieyasu''s offensive maneuvering, but step by step, it was not working out well for him.


    Rui could not help but admire Squirwe Ieyasu''s maneuvering prowess. He had sealed off all the other Martial Art that Rui had seen him use and limited himself to the one field where Kane was incredibly powerful, and he was outperforming him in that regard.


    The arena was silent as everybody who could or couldn''t, did their best to keep up.


    WHOOSH!


    Kane gritted his teeth as he barely managed to evade a powerful kick. He was sweating profusely, bruised all over his body as he did his best to avoid all of Squire Ieyasu''s attacks with mixed sess.


    Yet he wasn''t able to hurt his opponent whatsoever.


    Whether hended a strike, or whether he didn''t. It was clear that he was not a threat to guardian Ieyasu.


    He knew.


    He had always known. Any man who could aplish by himself what had taken the full power of both himself and Rui was not someone he could take on by himself.


    He knew.


    Yet, he didn''t.


    He was able to understand the fact on a logical level, but only now was he able to actually feel it.


    It was a distinct sensation. How small he was before the might of Tokugawa Ieyasu.


    He felt deeply disturbed every time he looked at the man. His ck hair and eyes eerily reminded him of Rui.


    It wasn''t just their feature that they had inmon. They were probably the only two Martial Squires in the world that could make even Kane feel inadequate.


    (''Are people with ck hair and eyes just overpowered?'')


    The thought left his mind as quickly as it had entered.


    He couldn''t afford to get distracted.


    POW POW POW!


    He grimaced as guardian Ieyasu blitzed him,nding three swift short jabs on Kane.


    Yet they were light, lighter than Kane''s strikes.


    Kane had the sinking feeling that Ieyasu could have easily killed with just a single strike but chose not to.


    Was it out of kindness? Why even challenge him if he was going to hold back as much?


    "Argh!" Kane coughed as he quickly leaped back, expecting Ieyasu to exploit the opening.


    Yet he didn''t even bother.


    Kane gained his bearings, catching his breath for a moment before gazing back up at guardian Tokugawa Ieyasu with knitted eyebrows.


    He simply stared at Kane before opening his mouth.


    "Is that all you can do?" He asked with a strange ent that Kane had never heard before.


    "What is that supposed to mean?" Kane stalled, catching his breath.


    "You have more," He murmured. "Show me more."


    He walked nonchntly towards Kane. "Show me everything."


    "Hmph," Kane snorted.


    "If you don''t¡­"


    The world around them grew perilous.


    Every guardian felt an abysmal sense of dread.


    The air grinded to a halt as the atmosphere was wrung taut.


    Bloodlust.


    Kane gritted his teeth as he did his very best to maintain hisposure.


    The sheer magnitude of pressure that he experienced from the man before him was almost unlike anything he had ever felt.


    At that moment, he knew that the threat was real, he could feel it. The man would probably kill him if he didn''t oblige.


    "Jerk." He muttered under his breath as he deactivated Fulminata.


    The technique was quite powerful, but it could not allow him to defeat guardian Tokugawa Ieyasu.


    He considered resigning, but he had already realized that the man probably would not leave him alone if that did happen.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1131 Voidspeed

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    (''Tsk, he has too much power,'') Rui tutted.N?velD(ram)a.?rg owns this content.


    That statement was true in many ways.


    Not only was guardian Tokugawa stronger than he had expected, but he also probably had a lot of power and influence within the Floating Sect.


    Being the strongest guardian meant that he did have a lot of influence within the sect, second to only the three Martial Seniors.


    Furthermore, the Floating Sect was in a state of absolute war, people like Tokugawa Ieyasu were absolute treasures whose value was second only to, again, the Martial Seniors of the sect.


    That was why Rui knew that he could probably get away with killing Kane if he wanted to. The Floating Sect was not going to punish the only individual Martial Squire that was a threat to Martial Seniors without their Martial Heart during the war.


    This was the kind of influence he gained from being that strong.


    And strong he was, Rui had to admit. The man was able to outpace someone as powerful as Kane in maneuvering while clearly not going all out even when it came to maneuvering. If he was even remotely as powerful when it came to offense and defense as he was with maneuvering, then his true full power was far beyond any Martial Squire that Rui had ever seen. The man''s power was era-defining.


    Regardless, it wasn''t enough to deter Rui. He immediately got to the edge of the arena.


    If he saw anything that indicated that the man was going to move in to kill Kane, he absolutely would intervene without any doubt. There was no way that he was going to just stand by and watch his best friend die, regardless of what the rules were.


    It appeared that Kane was unwilling to resign since it was clear that guardian Tokugawa Ieyasu was clearly not done with whatever it was that he wanted from Kane. If Kane resigned, it was unlikely that he would give up so easily. He would most likely challenge Kane again, and they would be back to square one.


    He nodded in approval when Kane deactivated Fulminata.


    He could not use Fulminata and Void Step simultaneously, unfortunately. The reason for that was that the Fulminata technique ran on reflexes while the Void Step technique required conscious thought.


    Kane immediately leaped into action, disappearing into thin air.


    That earned a reaction from all the guardians. Each of them had decently powerful senses, and many of them had particrly powerful senses.


    Yet none of them were able to sense Kane, barring two of them.


    CLASP!


    Tokugawa caught Kane''s attack, forcing him to stop maneuvering as he didn''t let go of his attack.


    POW!


    He smashed Kane away without inflicting too much force on him.


    Kane grimaced as he retreated. Yet, rather than simply returning to the normal Void Step stance, he paused, crouching as he took a sprinting stance.


    Rui immediately realized what he was going for.


    (''He''s using the original Godspeed technique.'')


    He actually approved of the choice. The Fulminata technique allowed him to control the speed of Godspeed to a far greater degree than he could without it. However, it was far slower than Godspeed as a result.


    He had already used it extensively against Tokugawa, and it most certainly wasn''t enough.


    In fact, Rui highly doubted that the original Godspeed technique was enough to even possibly have a shot against someone of the caliber of Tokugawa.


    However, these three techniques weren''t the only powerful techniques that Kane had. Rui knew that he had one more technique. The technique that had given him enough individuality to allow him to be a Squire candidate.


    It was a technique that he had worked hard on, yet one that wasn''t used nearly as ubiquitously due to how limiting it was.


    Yet it was also the most powerful technique in his arsenal.


    "Fuuu¡­" He exhaled deeply, going all out as he activated Godspeed at its absolute maximum.


    A profound sense of pressure exuded from him, stirring even his opponent


    Just the briefest whisper escaped his lips subconsciously.


    "Voidspeed."


    He disappeared.


    The technique was the only ce where he couldbine the power of Void Step and Godspeed for just the briefest of moments through trained pre-programmed movements.


    He would disappear in the senses of everyone around him, while also using Godspeed to cross the distance between them.


    Yet¡­


    THWACK!


    ¡­It wasn''t enough.


    Kane appeared ten meters behind Ieyasu, motionless for a moment.


    THUD


    He copsed to the ground, unconscious.


    For several seconds, no one said a word.


    No one had even understood what had happened. Only Rui and Ieyasu possessed a full awareness of what had transpired.


    Kane had crossed the distance between them with Godspeed and Void Step, yet before he could evenunch an attack, Ieyasu struck him hard on the neck, knocking him out.


    He didn''t stop as a result, only copsing after he fully lost consciousness.


    The fight was over.


    Rui heaved a sigh of relief. He could hear that Kane was just fine when he examined him with Seismic Mapping and Tempestuous Feel. His heart was beating, and he was breathing just fine.


    He turned his attention back to Ieyasu with narrowed eyes.


    (''The fact that he knocked Kane out¡­ He got what he came for.'') Rui tutted inwardly.


    He didn''t know if Ieyasu had already mastered the technique, or had simply gotten everything he needed from Kane to master the technique however he wanted.


    He suspected that the truth was probably closer to thetter than the former. It was too absurd to be able to skip months of training just because his Martial Art was an imitative evolution.


    It made more sense that he needed time to digest and improve what he saw, to varying degrees.


    (''Or perhaps easier Martial Art can be replicated quickly, while harder ones take longer?'')


    Rui didn''t know what his limits were, but whatever they were, it did not take away from the fact that he was extremely powerful as a Martial Artist.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1132 Considerations

    ?


    "Urgh¡­" Kane groaned as he woke up on a bed in the medical bay.


    "You feeling ok?" Rui asked.


    "Hm?" Kane blinked a few times before he recognized Rui. "What¡­ happened?"


    "You tried Voidspeed and he shut it down, knocking you out in the process." Rui briefly exined.


    "¡­Oh yeah," Kane sighed. "Well, I knew I couldn''t beat him."


    "You probably did far better than an overwhelming majority of guardians though." Rui offered, aiming to console him.


    Kane shrugged. "He''s not someone that can be taken down very easily, not even by you honestly."


    Rui couldn''t disagree. He needed to grow stronger, that was for sure.


    "Still," Kane sighed. "It''s not fun being beaten, but for some reason, I''m always running into the greatest Martial Artists of my generation, and of my Realm."


    He referred to Rui in the former, and Ieyasu in thetter.


    Thetter was far older than both of them, he was a middle-aged man who was far older than both of thembined.


    Physically, at least.


    That meant that he had spent decades as a Martial Artist,pared to Rui''s nine years. In that respect, Rui and Kane were definitely ahead. The two of them had far more potential as Martial Artists.


    Rui, his rate of growth after bing a Martial Artist was unprecedented. He had started offter than average, but he had be a Martial Squire extremely quickly after bing a Martial Apprentice. Though he wasn''t the youngest Martial Squire, he was one of the fastest growers when it came to his growth from the Apprentice Realm to the Squire Realm.


    At the rate that he was going, Kane had a sinking feeling that he might break a record for the youngest Martial Senior in history.


    Martial Seniors were not young, the youngest one became a Martial Senior at the age of thirty.Content provided by N?velDrama.Org.


    It couldn''t be helped, forging an immense amount of individuality into one''s Martial Art was extremely difficult and was not something that was very practical to be able toplete in the span of years.


    This was something that could be forgotten when one spent too much time beside Rui, who was overflowing with seemingly limitless individuality. However, Kane was far slower than him when it came to innovating and developing new techniques from scratch or from other techniques.


    And yet, he knew that he was far better than the average Martial Artist,rgely thanks to Rui''s influence on his thought process when it came to growing stronger.


    The average Martial Squire struggled with individuality,rgely because they didn''t have the necessary life experience, both in regards to quality and quantity, to be able to apply themselves to create individualistic techniques.


    Yet Rui just rolled past them and developed his Martial Art like it was an ordinary task and not something that most Martial Artists struggled with and it was the reason that most Martial Artists did not make it to higher Realms.


    "Do you n on challenging him at any point?" Kane asked.


    Rui considered the question for a moment, before nodding. "He''s a good standard to hold myself to. The more I push myself, the stronger I''ll be. He also has an extremely exciting Martial Path."


    Rui turned towards Kane. "Also, I now have the incentive of avenging you."


    Kane snorted as he got up, cracking his neck. "I''m not dead, y''know."


    The two of them returned back to their chambers after bantering for a bit.


    Rui urgently wanted to return to his training and research. He was even more motivated to find options for the offensive Martial Body.


    However, at the moment, he hadn''t made any headway, which was rather disappointing. However, he realized that he had gotten pretty lucky with Forestep, Hungry Pain, and Weaving Blood.


    He realized that Project Metabody was probably not going to be something that he could speedrun if he simply singlemindedly dedicated himself to the matter. It might even turn into a long-term project the way Project Water did.


    This did not sit well with him. He did hope to finish it sooner thanter, not only because he wanted to gain the power to beat guardian Tokugawa, but at the end of the day, he also had not forgotten the broader goals that he had in mind.


    The long-term goal of gaining enough power within ten years to be able to protect his family, the sub-goal of bing a Martial Senior well within this period, and then further sub-goals like Project Metabody came after that.


    However, it was important nheless. He did think that Project Metabody would give his Martial Art the necessary individuality to be able to unearth his Martial Heart. With enough time, he would have achieved a body that could handle the power of his Martial Heart.


    He shook his head sighing. He still had some ways to go before he finally got to that stage. For the moment, he just needed to focus on individuality and his body, everything else came second.


    However, he considered taking a break from Project Metabody if it stalled too much. Unlike normal techniques, Project Metabody was not something that he could finish in a short amount of time, especially when he was restricted to a particr location that did not have the best learning resources when it came to things like esoteric substances or any of the other avenues of research that he had been looking into for a solution to be able to manipte his body the way that he was hoping for.


    (''Maybe I''m not thinking far and wide enough,'') Rui considered.


    There was more to the world, especially this world, that he didn''t know about. Part of the issue was that he was stuck on the ind unable to leave it or go further beyond the information that he had.


    It was a shame that the war hampered his ability to leave the ind. Even if the Kaddar nations allowed people to leave, they would not allow them to rejoin.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1133 Virus

    ?


    The search for a solution was actually harder than Rui expected. The Floating Sect''s library wasn''t bad, not at all. Because they were so isted from human civilization, they had grown to be developed in all fields beyond what a normal sect would.


    This included having a decently flourished library with information on various topics. If they ever happened to be in need of information and needed to scour through the literature of any field, they could do so with better ease.


    This specifically applied to the various professionals of the Floating Sect that had important upations that weren''t centered around Martial Art. Thus there was just enough literature for him to not be dissatisfied.


    However, the library had a greater breadth as opposed to depth.


    It contained literature from many fields but did not go too deep in each field.


    In fact, Rui had already gone through all the literature on esoteric material science, but he had recently realized that the depth of the literature of the Floating Sect was not enough for him to find a solution to all of his problems.


    That did not mean that there was no solution to the problem anywhere in the field of esoteric material science. It was an incredibly broad field with many seemingly fantastical solutions.


    It took about a month of digging to realize that the literature on esoteric material science in the Floating Sect library was not going to lead him wherever he wanted to be.


    "Does whatever you''re looking for have to be in esoteric material science?" Kane asked after Rui told him about his recent problems.


    It was an interesting question.


    "Of course not," Rui replied. "In fact, I''ve been going through considering symbiotic Martial Art techniques as well."


    "You haven''t had that much sess there either, right?" Kane asked.


    "No, unfortunately."


    "Then maybe you should just look elsewhere," Kane replied. "Like, just go through the entire library. It would be impossible for anybody else, but for you, it would actually be quite feasible. Who knows, you might find something."


    That was actually not apletely bad suggestion.


    While it was true that he did expect to find his offensive Martial Body in the esoteric material science fields, he ought not to hold on to those expectations very strongly. Especially now that he had already confirmed that the extent of the literature on those two fields had not yielded the results that he wanted.


    It was better than nothing, even if the probability of dinging a solution was lower.


    Still, he wasn''t even sure how far he ought to take that. He definitely did not think reading the entire library was an idea worth spending time on, but stepping out of the two primary fields that he had focused on was worth considering.


    At the moment, it was the only thing he could do, he could not leave the Floating for the time being, so he didn''t have ess to any other avenue of information. He could only work with what he had.


    However, he was not going to read an entire library, that was simply not worth the time that would go with


    "I''ll do just that, I suppose," He sighed. "Appreciate the advice."


    He began with esoteric medicine, just because it was closest when it came to the human body. He went into it with very little to no expectations about whether it could possibly help him or not.This content provided by N(o)velDrama].[Org.


    His expectations were overturned.


    A month into the research, he came across something truly fascinating.


    [Herenal Disease]


    This was a strange and rare disease where the patient was afflicted with a herenal bacterial infection. This virus triggers rapid muscle hypertrophy, causing them to growrger and more dense, disproportionately increasing the energy consumption of the body, causing weakness due tock of nutrition, and causing the afflicted organism to eventually die.


    Rui grew more interested based on his initial impression.


    Just based on the first paragraph describing the disease, it was weird, but there was potential there strangely enough.


    The bacteria was spected to consume some of the products produced by muscles. Thus organisms withrger and more powerful muscles were ideal for the virus, that was why it had evolved to cause temporary muscle hypertrophy in patients afflicted by the bacteria in the first ce.


    It was simply a way to generate more sustenance for the bacteria in the first ce.


    Rui read on as he grew increasingly fascinated by the matter. Yet in his head, the idea of employing a bacterial infection to allow him to partially achieve the offensive Martial Body was something that was not possible.


    However, it was only then that he began putting aside his bias and considering the prospect of a virus being the solution to his problem.


    That was the wildest part of all of this. As insane as the idea sounded, he was not able to see a particrly strong logical argument for why this would necessarily be a bad idea.


    There was the possibility that this disease could affect him severely, but ording to the data that he came across, it primarily affected normal humans, and Martial Squires was an extremely upgraded version of normal humans.


    In fact, there was a realistic possibility that his immune system would just annihte the virus. That was not something that he desired, and he needed to make sure that this truly was a viable option rather than just a pipe dream.


    That meant that he had a lot of studying and researching to do. It was no different from jumping into a brand-new field since that was what was happening.


    (''I can also consult experts in the field.'') He knew that the Floating Sect had a robust and rigorous medical department with professionals that could be of aid to him in his endeavor to potentially weaponize this disease and make it a part of his Martial Art. He was going to need all the qualified help that he could get, that was for sure.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1134 Escalate

    ?


    "I''m sorry, did you say that you wished to weaponize the Martial Art and make it a part of your technique?" The man before Rui stared at him with a bewildered expression. After all, it wasn''t every day that a Martial Squire approached him looking for aid on how to turn the Herenal''s Disease into a weapon for himself.


    "It''s technically possible, correct?" Rui asked him.


    The man reluctantly nodded. "It is technically possible based on the n that you have brought forth. However, the probability of sess is rather low. Unfortunately, the Martial Body is just too strong and very difficult to harm with diseases that harm normal humans."


    "However, an increased dose, one that would be lethal to humans, would induce the same effect in Martial Squires that normal doses in humans do, correct?"


    "Yes¡­" The man hesitated once more.


    Rui couldn''t me him for his reluctance or hispunctions.


    He had probably never heard of a Martial Art technique that involved willingly bing diseased.


    Neither had Rui.


    That was why he was also skeptical of it.


    The fact of the matter was that this wasn''t even a symbiote that evolved with the purpose of cooperating.


    This was a disease, it evolved to harm the body for its own sustenance. There was no question that if he did something wrong, the virus would do what it was supposed to and would either harm him a lot or potentially even death in the worst-case scenario.


    (''Then again, I inserted a poison that causes literal cell death, into my body.'') He mused.


    How much worse could it get?


    That did not mean he was willing to try it out no matter what.


    What he needed was more data and information on the virus and its effects on Martial Bodies for him to be absolutely certain.


    Unfortunately, such data was almost certainly avable at the Floating Sect. There was absolutely no way that they had any literature on such a niche topic. That was why he needed to go to a ce that would have a more in-depth on the matter.


    (''Tsk, it''s a shame that I didn''t make these breakthroughs in Crexeet Town.'') Rui tutted.


    He was quite certain that ce would have the research that he was looking for.


    Of course, he was aware that he would not have made the breakthroughs in Crexeet Town had he spent all this time there than on Floating Sect.


    Thetter exposed him to argemunity of elite high-grade Martial Squires, it pushed him forward in ways that Crexeet Town simply couldn''t. The pressure that he experienced in Crexeet Town was non-existent.


    The conflicts that he and Kane were obligated to partake in were rather inconsequential to Rui, especiallypared to the conflict between the Floating Sect and the Kaddar Treaty Organization.


    He and Kane could nearly singlehandedly mop up the entirety of their opposition in that it was insignificant,pared to the both of them.


    Ultimately, humans were creatures that conformed to pressure, and it appeared that not even Martial Squires were exempt from this.


    In recent times, his growth rate had been greater due to the fact that he had been subjecting himself to a lot of pressure. The Shionel Confederation and the Shionel Dungeon had made him grow stronger unlike anything else did.


    His growth rate during the time when he was simply fulfilling missions as he tried to garner some experience and cash. He made decent progress, but it simply wasn''t enough nheless.


    (''I would have never arrived at Project Metabody had I continued leading that kind of life.'') Rui tutted as he roasted his previous lifestyle. (''But in exchange, I can''t see my family until I be not just a Martial Senior, but also a strong one at that.'')Property ? of N?velDrama.Org.


    He also would have never stumbled open the need to introduce a disease into his body voluntarily. That didn''t mean it was either or bad.


    It all depended on what the data said.


    (''Again, Crexeet Town,'')


    He might revisit the ce once the war ended briefly, just to get the information that he needed, before getting back.


    However, just information wasn''t enough, that means he needed to actually get his hands on the disease. That was one of the reasons that this would be very difficult even if everything worked out and was possible. After all, if a disease was rare, that meant actually getting hands on the actual disease was not going to be easy.


    What he needed was a swift way to not only get his hands on it but also ensure that qualified professionals handled the procedure.


    However, that couldn''t happen for as long as the war between the Floating Sect and the Kaddar Region raged on. As long as it raged on, he wouldn''t be able to leave Ajanta Ind.


    That was frustrating.


    It was frustrating because the war did not seem to be ending too soon.


    There were too many Martial Squires, and neither side deployed enough to be able to speed up the process of the Squire-levelbat, but not good enough for Rui.


    Unfortunately, there was simply nothing that he could do about it at the moment. That was the biggest issue.


    (''Time to fight harder.'') He narrowed his eyes.


    He wasn''t sure how much help it would be, but as long as he fought harder for the Floating Sect he could marginally impact the rate at which the Squire-levelbat phase of the war could speed up so that there were little to no ways that he could possibly be stalled for any longer than even a single second.


    Literally too, because Martial Artists possessed far superiorbat cognitive speeds. They were not going to miss that gap even with martial Artists. One of the things that Rui knew was that there was little to no way he wasn''t going to do everything in his power to ensure that he could to Crexeet Town as early as possible, and get everything that he needed.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1135 Change

    ?


    Unfortunately, the war raged on for longer than he had hoped. Month after month, a few dozen Martial Squires would die inevitably.


    Given that the scale ofbat was ratherrge, it was actually a small number that was lower than predicted.


    The reason that it was lower than normal was because the duration of the battle was shorter.


    The reason for that was that the weapon that the Kaddar Treaty Organization used actually appeared to have a time limit. It could not be used continuously without any limitations whatsoever or anything like that.


    The weapon''s time limit had long been measured by the Kaddar Treaty Organization. That was the reason that each conflict between the Floating Sect and the Kaddar Treaty Organisation did not reach its true natural conclusions, and was in a way cut short before they could reach their proper climax.


    This was probably something that frustrated both sides, but was also probably not something that either side could possibly deal with with ease. That was the reason that the shes were so frequent.


    If each shsted as long as they would organically havested had it been a normal war. And many Martial Squires would have passed away with each battle, that was the trade away. It would also finish quickly.


    At the rate that things were moving, it would take quite some time before both sides had bled enough.


    Regardless, he continued to fight in the war, fighting like a demon as he defended his current temporary training ce.


    Rui''s performance was eye-drawing. While it wasn''t nearly as overwhelming as Squire T0kugawa Ieyasu, he was still performing extremely well.


    That was one of the reasons that Rui''s fame in the Floating Sect continued to escte.


    It was often the case that he would take down the most powerful Martial Squires standing on the field. Rather than taking down many smaller fries, he focused on taking out the heavy hitters of the Kaddar Treaty Organization. That was why Rui knew that the best way to contribute to the war was by taking down the peak of what they had to offer.Content provided by N?velDrama.Org.


    Furthermore, fighting powerful grade-nine and grade-ten Martial Squires was a good exercise for him.


    Every once in a while he would end up fighting a Martial Artist whose Martial Art was just perfect to get countered by one of the three Martial Bodies that Rui had created.


    That on top of the pattern recognition system meant that every time Rui managed to nail the Martial Body, he would be able to counter them to a degree that not even he had seen before.


    After all, these instances were quite endearing and made the weight of the battle lighten up for him, allowing him to make the most of the battle with a calm and rxed mind.


    Floating Sect had always had a small advantage, but it was as though that small advantage had been magnified by the very existence of Rui going all out during battles.


    He even volunteered for these defenses against the Kaddar Treaty Organization every time because that was what would help speed up the war.


    That was why Rui was shocked that the Kaddar Treaty Organization made an announcement.


    It announced that it was going to be deploying Senior-level military assets in the physical conflict between the Floating Sect and the Kadar Treaty organization.


    This came as a shock to everybody. The Kaddar Region had been hesitating about deploying Martial Seniors because the nations that deployed them would be weakened, and the nations of the Martial Seniors that passed away inbat, would bepletely devastated.


    In a region where the peak of Martial Art was Martial Seniors, each and every Martial Senior was nothing short of a national treasure.


    No nation wanted to be the one that prematurely was parted from their Martial Seniors, and worse, be the ones that lost them permanently.


    That was why Rui was shocked that the Kaddar Treaty organization had finally managed to get its shit together and actually present a proper united front when it came to Senior-levelbat against the Floating Sect.


    That meant that the three Martial Seniors of the Floating Sect were finally in turn to do their part in the battle against the Kaddar Treaty Organization.


    Though many people probably found it stupid that the Kaddar Treaty Organization went out of announcing the fact that they were deploying Martial Seniors, Rui actually understood why they had done so.


    The war was taking a toll on their economies and their societies. This was one avenue where the Floating Sect had an advantage over the Kaddar Region. The Floating Sect was a singr group with a very direct chain ofmand, and its members were employees who were all coerced into being a part of the group and remaining a part of the group. The guardians were Martial Squires who were aware of the incentives and disincentives and still chose to be a part of the Floating Sect despite that because the benefits outweighed the detriment.


    That meant that the Floating Sect did not have an economy or a society that could be dissuaded from remaining there just because of a war.


    The same could not be said for the civilian poptions of the Kaddar Region, that meant that had the war dragged on too much, then many civilians would have simply gotten sick of the war and moved house from the Kaddar Region to another Region outside it.


    A mass emigration of those exiting the country was not something that any of the governments of the nations of the Kaddar Region wanted.


    That was why the Kaddar Treaty Organization had announced that the dire situation had forced several key members into finally acquiescing and partaking in the war against the Floating Sect much more wholeheartedly.


    The announcement of the Martial Seniors assault was something that greatly reassured the citizens of the Kaddar Region that the war was going toe to an end, one way or another.


    *****


    AN: Sorry for thete chapter.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1136 Summon

    ?


    The announcement came as a shock to the Floating Sect, many of the guardians were rather startled by this. Given that for more than half a year, the conflict had been restricted to the Squire Realm, the prospect that the war would escte to the Senior Realm seemed low.


    Yet, the Kaddar Treaty Organization had decided that enough was enough and that it was time to finish this once and for all.


    This was unnerving to all of the guardians of the Floating Sect because it meant that they were now part of a conflict where their strength was no longer going to be deciding the oue.


    Of course, given that the strongest forces of both sides of the war were at the Senior Realm, it could be said that they never truly were the deciding oue.


    Of course, Rui had note to learn that Martial Squires was not as irrelevant in battles pertaining to the Senior Realm as he had expected.


    The reason for that was because the Martial Heart was the thing that truly separated Martial Seniors from Martial Squires. Without the Martial Heart, theirbat prowess would fall off from the Senior Realm and plummet well below.


    It was possible forrge groups of powerful Martial Squires to make a difference in the oues between Martial Seniors.N?velD(ram)a.?rg owns this content.


    Or one extremely powerful Martial Squire.


    Regardless, it would exin why the Kaddar nations would have liked to mow down the guardians of the Floating Sect.


    And it wasn''t as though they hadn''t been sessful about that whatsoever, it was just that although they had mowed down a lot of guardians, they had suffered an even greater loss in exchange. They had suffered tremendously in their efforts to kill the Martial Squires of the Floating Sect.


    The Martial Squires of the Floating Sect were special, they were the cream of the crop. Not only were they powerful Martial Artists, but their mental qualities were also very high.


    They had ovee many life-threatening obstacles to reach where they had gotten to, and to maintain where they had gotten to required a strong mentality that could not be found in the average Martial Squire.


    Even if the Kaddar Treaty Organization did its best to gather the best of the best that it could, it simply couldn''t beat the years of filtering initiatives and the refining of guardians. On average, the Floating Sect simply had a higher quality of Martial Artists.


    The Kaddar Treaty Organizationpensated for the gap in quality with sheer quantity, throwing seemingly endless waves of Martial Artists at the Floating Sect.


    This led to an extremely costly expenditure on maintaining the war effort. The Floating Sect did not have such expenditure, and that was one of the advantages that it had over the Kaddar nations.


    All of the guardians fighting for the Floating Sect fought in exchange for the privilege of training at the Floating Sect. The Floating Sect did not have to go above and beyond to bring them over only for them to die, it had already amassed highly elite defenders.


    That was probably one of the reasons that the Kaddar Treaty Organization eventually relented.


    Trying to win the war in the Squire Realm was untenable.


    The same could not be said for Martial Seniors. The Martial Seniors of the Floating Sect were most certainly not at the peak of the Senior Realm the way that the guardians of the Floating Sect were.


    However, they did have the home-court advantage. It meant that as long as they fought anywhere above-board the ind, the Martial Seniors of the Kaddar Region were going to have to struggle even if they arrived with a numerical advantage.


    However, this did not mean that the situation wasforting for a lot of the guardians because it meant that they would have to be too close to Senior-levelbat. While all of the guardians were confident about fighting against their peers, it was an entirely different matter when Martial Artists of higher Realms were involved.


    Regardless, it meant that things were changing, but not necessarily for the better.


    As soon as Rui had learned that the war had escted to the Senior Realm, he knew that he would probably be called by the three Martial Seniors


    He also predicted that Kane and Ieyasu would also be called.


    And he was right.


    Shortly after the sect spread the message about Martial Seniors, both he and Kane were instructed to meet the three Martial Seniors of the sect in the main office.


    "Do you think we''re in trouble?" Kane asked as the two of them walked towards the main office.


    "Probably the opposite," Rui replied, before pausing to reconsider his words. "Well, actually, we might be thrown into troubling circumstances."


    Kane was surprised to see Tokugawa Ieyasu already standing in the office.


    In front of him were the three Martial Seniors of the Floating Sect. The three of them were not actively flexing their aura, but the pressure that they exerted on the three Martial Squires was not little. It was pressure that came with a whole other Realm of power.


    "You''re finally here," Senior Xanarn let out a small smile.


    "We were instructed toe here to meet with you," Rui replied.


    The office was quite raw and bare for a main office. The three Martial Seniors were seated on the other side of the table.


    "Now that all of you are here, we can begin," Senior Sarak stated with aposed tone.


    He was seated in the middle, between Senior Xanarn and Senior Leonil.


    Rui''s senses told him that he was the most powerful Martial Artist in the room.


    "As was announced earlier today, the Kaddar Region had decided to cease holding back," Senior Sarak began. "The battle has escted, and while the Kaddar Treaty Organization will not cease deploying Martial Squires, the focus of the battle will soon be on the battles between Martial Seniors like ourselves. The three of us will have to take our part in the war."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1137 Qualified

    ?


    "How are you going to win if there are only the three of you?" Kane asked out of the blue. It was a refreshingly straightforward question.Property ? of N?velDrama.Org.


    "We have our ways," Senior Leonil snorted, knitting his eyebrows. "The numerical advantage is indeed insurmountable had we been fighting outside of Ajanta Ind, but there is a reason that the three of us have dedicated many years to the sect atop this ind."


    Rui remained silent, but he already knew what he was referring to. He knew that of the three of them, Senior Xanarn had a Martial Art centered around sound and had inferred that one of the other two had a Martial Art centered around breathing techniques.


    Their Martial Art greatly benefited from the environment, and he was certain that this was one of the reasons that they chose to reside on an ind like Ajanta Ind.


    Otherwise, their decision to stick so strongly with Ajanta Ind did not make much sense. Why would three Martial Artists spend so much time and energy on maintaining their stronghold over an isted piece ofnd that floated in the sky, isted from the rest of human civilization that could only be reached and survived by Martial Squires and above?


    It made no sense unless the boost that their power got made it was vastly greater atop the ind than on the ground.


    He understood their motivations, but he did not feel the same way.


    In a way, the three of them had essentially fallen into the same trap that Kane had beenpelled to in the Thundering Valley. His newest technique greatly benefited from the environment of that ce, so much so that even Kane felt tempted to never leave that ce due to how powerful he felt there.


    In there, not even Tokugawa Ieyasu would be able to take him down easily with how powerful the Fulminata technique was in that environment.


    Regardless, this boost in power was definitely the reason that the three of them were confident enough to take on the Martial Seniors of the Kaddar Region.


    "Furthermore, we do not need to gain a decisive dominant victory," Senior Sarak continued. "We simply need to demonstrate enough power to serve as a powerful deterrent. As long as we demonstrate that we are powerful enough such that the cost of killing us and taking over the ind will not be worth the price, we can force this war to end."


    Rui was d that Senior Sarak seemed like a particrly rational and logical man. He did not hold any unrealistic expectations of being able to defeat all of them in some epic sh. He had a very down-to-earth idea of how to get the war to end without a loss for the Floating Sect.


    "Oh¡­" Kane briefly shrugged.


    "May we know why you''ve called us here?" Ieyasu calmly asked.


    "We''ve called the three of you because¡­ We believe that the three of you are qualified to partake in the battle against the Martial Seniors of the Floating Sect.


    Both Ieyasu and Kane expressed surprise, only Rui had been able to predict what the man was about to say.


    "What?" Kane frowned, ncing at Rui. "How are we relevant to the battle against Martial Artists who are a whole Realm above us?"


    "You have already defeated Martial Artists a whole Realm above you, haven''t you?" Senior Leonil asked, throwing a yful expression at Senior Xanarn.


    "She was not using her Martial Heart," Ieyasu replied. "Not even I can hold a candle to a proper Martial Senior using their power properly."


    "We do not expect you to fight against a Martial Senior at their most powerful," Senior Xanarn replied. "What we do need is to be able to take them down after their Martial Heart is drained, and after they have lost the source of the power that makes them Martial Seniors."


    Both Kane and Ieyasu quickly caught up to what the Martial Seniors were proposing.


    Kane looked uncertain while Ieyasu appeared to be a lot less hesitant to take part in such an operation. Although he, rightfully, was concerned at the prospect of fighting Martial Seniors without any caveats, he was not too concerned about fighting them without their Martial Hearts, all because he was too strong.


    "I don''t know¡­ This sounds a bit too much." Kan scratched his head.


    "Did you not defeat Senior Xanarn head-on in conjunction with your friend here, managing to force her to use her full power?"


    "Yeah, but that was just a spar," Kaneined. "This is the real thing."


    "It may even be easier than when you faced off against Senior Xanarn, since you''d only be deployed when the Martial Seniors will have emptied out during the entirety of the fight," Senior Sarak said. "Thus you do not have to worry about facing some Senior-levelbat threat, that is not realistic at all."


    The fact that they would be deployed only after the Martial Seniors had exhausted their Martial Heart meant that they were not going to deal with these Martial Seniors while these Martial Artists were particrly at the peak of their power, was reassuring.


    Even Kane was less unwilling to partake in such an operation.


    Still, there were some unanswered questions left surrounding the matter.


    "Why not bring in the other peak experts among the guardians?" Ieyasu asked.


    "They''re not good enough," Senior Sarak shook his head. "We have considered numerous candidates, however, only the three of you were able to take down a Martial Senior without a Martial Heart."


    This seemed to surprise Tokugawa Ieyasu a bit. Yet he did seem to understand nheless. The rest of the conversation seemed to pass on without too much more of a broader contention of disagreement. There was a lot to execute such an operation lightly, there were tons of reasons that it could easily have gone wrong if the rules and guidelines were not fully exined without going in-depth into the matter and ensuring that everyone was on the same page.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1138 Impacts

    ?Content provided by N?velDrama.Org.


    The ns that the military department came up with a strategy were centered around an endurance-based battle. One of the issues that the Floating Sect was facing was that if the three Martial Seniors of the sect fought the Martial Seniors anywhere except Ajanta Ind, then the loss woulde very quickly.


    The only way that this could possibly be evenpetitive at all was on Ajanta Ind where they could capitalize off of the advantages that they had.


    However, fighting on the ind could easily mean that the infrastructure was under grave threat due to the battle of the Martial Seniors urring in super-close proximity. The chambers, among other things, were at risk.


    Thankfully, Senior Xanarn reassured him that she was going to be on rigorous defense. Due to the sheer range of her technique, she had the ability to protect the things on the ind as well as the ind itself for the duration of the fight.


    One thing that definitely came in handy this time was the fact that their time limitations also opposed themselves and hurt them more than it hurt the Floating Sect.


    It meant that they had a limited amount of time before they could take down the Martial Seniors of the Floating Sect and win the war. This was no doubt an infuriating factor for the Kaddar region.


    However, the bad news was the fact that the Kaddar Region waspensating for theck of time by sending in as many as they could. The greater number almost certainly gave them a realistic chance that they could take them down.


    However, the Martial Seniors of the Floating Sect were not just going to defend against the invaders, although they were going to fight conservatively, their goal was to drain the Martial Hearts of their opponents so that they could deploy their peak martial Squires like Ieyasu and Rui.


    As for the matchups, the three of them were expected to team up and fight a single Martial Senior if it was necessary.


    Of course, Rui did not think that was a good idea. Rui and Kane worked extremely well together but that was because they were quite familiar with each other.


    Especially Rui when it came to Kane, he had the most robust and sophisticated understanding of Kane''s fighting style among other things. He did not have that understanding when it was Ieyasu for obvious reasons.


    Furthermore, Rui needed to have a good understanding of not just his teammate, but also his opponent.


    He had studied Senior Xanarn for quite some time before they actually sparred, allowing him to fight against her far better than he would have had he fought against her without any of those preparations.


    Without those preparations, he would have been weaker, he may not have been able to defeat her.


    Still, he did have time to build predictive models on the Martial Seniors, but not nearly as much as he would have liked, but he was to only intervene after the three Martial Seniors of the Floating Sect were done fighting them with their Martial Hearts. He could use that time to thoroughly analyze them.


    Furthermore, he had gotten substantially stronger since his fight with Senior Xanarn given that he effectively had three different kinds of Martial Bodies under Project Metabody. If he ran into a Martial Artist whose Martial Art was best countered by one of those Martial Bodies, then he would do extremely well.


    It took him a while to convey all of that nuance to the three Martial Seniors.


    "Hmm¡­" Senior Leonil narrowed his eyes as he considered Rui''s words. "In that case, it is best that we don''t initiate this n immediately. We want to introduce you as a variable that can potentially lead to the takedown of one or two Martial Seniors."


    Personally, Rui found the idea of fighting against Martial Seniors to be quite exciting. That was the reason that he was actually quite inclined to partake in this operation. Fighting against Martial Seniors, even if they were exhausted and without the Martial Heart, was more stimting than fighting any Martial Squire.


    (''Well, almost any Martial Squire,'') Rui nced briefly at Ieyasu.


    There was no doubt that that man was also more than capable of making an impact on a battle between even Martial Seniors at thetest stages of the battle when one has already exhausted all of their Martial Heart.


    Rui was eager not to fall behind. It was a shame that the war limited his ability to develop Project Metabody any further due to theck of the necessary learning and training resources. However, he still intended to make the very best of what he had.


    Rui had advantages that only he could bring to the table. He intended to employ the VOID algorithm to make as many predictive models on as many relevant people as possible, including both allies and enemies.


    In fact, he suspected that he could y a broader role in aiding the Martial Seniors taking down their counterparts across the entire battlefield. Rather than fighting hard against one person, it was possible that Rui was taking a more general form of aid that would allow him to disrupt the battlefield at opportune times, intervening mildly in different fights at different times.


    This was something that he doubted Tokugawa Ieyasu would be able to do nearly as well as him for the most part.


    Regardless of what role Rui yed, just the fact that a Martial Squire like himself was able to partake in a battle of a higher Realm was probably unheard of.


    After all, the level of power that he could effectively observe when he had preparations and was able to achieve a level of teamwork that produced a result that was far greater than the sum of parts when the parts alone were so incredibly powerful. Tokugawa Ieyasu was also of the same kind, and they were among the few Martial Squires that did not lose their relevance even in higher Realms.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1139 Pointers

    ?


    Yet the Martial Seniors frowned when Rui voiced his thoughts about his limitations and conditions.


    "Requiring firsthand data on them ahead of time is troubling but not too hard to amodate," Senior Xanarn murmured. "But the idea that you can partake in many battles at once is one that I find troubling to ept and allow. It is already pushing it to allow you three to take on Martial Seniors once their Martial Hearts have been burned out."


    Rui shrugged. "It was just a suggestion. It would be easier for me to partake in a single battle at a time, so I don''t necessarily mind going this route."


    Rui was happy that they found him qualified to partake in Senior-level battles, even if there were heavy caveats.


    None of the other guardians had been treated this way barring the ones in the room. It meant that the Martial Seniors were put the three of them above the rest.


    Of course, In the case of Rui and Kane, it was partly because of how overpowered the teamwork that they demonstrated against Senior Xanarn was.


    In the case of Ieyasu, he was powerful enough in his own right.Content provided by N?velDrama.Org.


    "We will require you to be on standby, avable at any moment to jump into the battle." Senior Leonil added. "We can''t afford to send a signal to you while we''re in the middle ofbat, you''ll have to use your own judgments about when it is most apt to jump into the fights, but it definitely has to be after we have drained the Martial Hearts of all the Martial Seniors at hand."


    This definitely made sense, given how intense the battles were going to be. The three Martial Seniors were going to bepletely consumed with fighting against their enemies. They could not dedicate any attention to coordinating the attacks of three Martial Squires.


    "One thing that you ought to know about Martial Seniors and Martial Hearts is that it isn''t as though the Martial Heart switches on and off like a switch, it isn''t binary." Senior Sarak exined. "The Martial Heart slowly declines in power across time, much like how one''s normalbat power declines over time as one continues exerting one''s self and draining one''s stamina."


    That made sense. The physical power of any Martial Artist, or any human or beast naturally declined over time due to continuous exertion in a fight, it was never a sharp decline, and it made sense the same would be true for the Martial Heart, as the Martial Heart was merely a hidden and locked extension of the full power of the Martial Body.


    "Pay attention to the physical indications of the Martial Heart," Senior Xanarn told them. "The glowing blood vessels are one thing for sure, the Martial Heart cannot be used without such a thing happening. Furthermore, once thebat speed of the fights is something you can keep up with, then you can be sure that all parties havepletely exhausted their Martial Hearts at that point."


    This was also a good pointer.


    Martial Seniors were far too fast for any individual Martial Squire to keep up with when they were operating with their Martial Hearts, once the three of them could actually keep up with the Martial Seniors, then that was a good sign that the two of them.


    "Given that two of you have Martial Art that grows stronger in battle with time, it is best that you only observe the first battle between us and the Martial Seniors of the Kaddar Treaty Organization." Senior Leonilmented.


    Immediately, Rui and Ieyasu exchanged a nce.


    Both of them knew that Kane was not included in that statement, and they immediately learned more information about each other.


    (''Well, I always figured that his copying took time,'') Rui mused.


    There was no way that he could do it instantly at the start of the battle, that would be absurd.


    (''But can''t he just use other Martial Art that he has copied in the past?'') Rui wondered.


    After all, he fought Senior Xanarn and copied and even evolved her Martial Art, couldn''t he just use that Martial Art in the battle against the Martial Seniors?


    The fact that Senior Leon stated that he required time most likely meant that for some reason he could not, since that wouldn''t have required any time.


    If so, that was a limitation that Rui hadn''t expected. It was interesting to know that his imitative evolution wasn''t wless and perfect.


    This made Rui a little more confident about beating him in the future once he trained enough and became strong enough to.


    Regardless, that wasn''t on his mind at the moment.


    He had just been asked to fight Martial Seniors, as a Martial Squire. Martial Artists who were all an entire Realm above him were going to attack and try and kill him, yet he didn''t feel despair.


    If anything, he actually felt excited. Testing his adaptive evolution against the very limits of what he could possibly handle was definitely something he felt a great amount of anticipation for. It was a testament to how powerful his Martial Art was at the end of the day. Just the fact that he had been called in for consideration in regards to how he could impact battles that were a Realm above him at this point in time was a testament to the power of his Martial Heart.


    The same was true for the Martial Art of Kane and Ieyasu, the two of them were most certainly quite powerful too.


    "The attack will being soon," Senior Sarak warned them. "We have begun evacuation protocols of the staff members, and cautionary guidelines for the guardians. Use this opportunity to get a good understanding of the Senior Realm as well as your opponents so that you can take them down when the timees. The key is to utilize the element of surprise that wille with your initial participation in a Senior-level battle.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1140 Considerations

    ?


    Rui and Kane were long thinking about the words that the Martial Seniors shared with them long after the two of them had been dismissed. Squire Ieyasu went his own way immediately after, seemingly uninclined to speak with either of them.


    "Oh man," Kane sighed. "This might be our toughest battle yet."This content provided by N(o)velDrama].[Org.


    Rui nodded. "This is going to be harder than my battle against the Root because I''m not dealing with a mindless drone, I''m dealing with a sentient being. Not just any sentient being, but expert Martial Artists who are extremely skilled and have decades of experience as Martial Artists."


    While Kane couldn''t help but feel anxious about what was toe, Rui simply smiled as he thought back to the discussion that he had with the Martial Seniors.


    For the first battle, they only needed to observe, it was only in the second battle that they would participate.


    Rui understood that they were hoping that sudden additional elements into the fight could throw the Martial Seniors of the Kaddar Nation off, and potentially even cause a few casualties and yield a highly desirable oue.


    Rui wasn''t sure whether he would be able to produce the desired result, but he did intend to do his best. The debut mattered the most since it was the only time that they would be able to catch the Martial Seniors off-guard.


    After the first time, the Martial Seniors would be prepared for the three of them, and there would be a lot less that they would be able to aplish. Simply being aware of an iing threat and being prepared for it could cause a radical change in the oues.


    Rui had many thoughts on how to make the most of how to make the most of his debut, for one, he was convinced that he needed to pick his targets appropriately.


    He only had Martial Bodies for healing, stamina, and maneuvering, thus he only ought to pick Martial Seniors against whom these spec configurations would be the most effective.


    "Martial Seniors are extremely fast, right?" Kane asked out of the blue, drawing Rui''s attention to him. "They would be able to cross the distance between thend and this ind rather quickly. We won''t be able to do everything in time if they cross the distance quickly and attack us swiftly, right?"


    Rui shook his head. "The Floating Sect definitely has eyes and ears everywhere in the Kaddar Region, and it is particrly difficult to hide the movements of high-profile Martial Seniors, it simply cannot be done."


    "So they predict the timing of the attack by looking at the movements of the Martial Seniors of the Kaddar Region?"


    "Yes, and they take precautions well ahead of time to make sure to ount for margins of error in the prediction of the timing of the attacks," Rui exined. "Thus we''ll no well ahead of time when the attack is in-bound. Considering that the Martial Seniors called us and did mention an iing attack, it is likely that they have already gotten the intelligence indicating that the attack would being soon. I predict that the civilian members will soon be evacuated to the underground shelters that are deep within the ind."


    "Will they be safe there?" Kane wondered. "It is Martial Seniors who are attacking after all."


    "Yes, but don''t forget the gravitational reinforcing weapon that the Kaddar Region is employing to reinforce the ind to be able to withstand the rigors of even Senior-levelbat," Rui replied. "Given that the Kaddar nations are soon going to dispatch Martial Seniors, we can be certain that whatever that the Kingdom of Graheria purchased is probably a Senior-level weapon that can allow the ind to endure Senior-levelbat in its vicinity."


    "I dunno, that sounds rather extreme for a single machine," Kane remarked.


    "Don''t underestimate the power of science and technology," Rui replied. "They can aplish wonders. In this case, the Kaddar nations would not have even started the war if their weapon could not cover Senior-levelbat. The fact that they even decided to wage war in the first ce means that they were certain that the ind would be reinforced enough to handle the rigors."


    The Kaddar Treaty Organization was not stupid. They would not wage a war that could directly result in a catastrophe that wipes out most like in the Kaddar Region.


    Furthermore, it wasn''t as though the device that they would be using would be the only thing protecting the ind.


    The Martial Seniors of the Floating Sect were undoubtedly going to fight a defensive game, they could not afford to be hyper-aggressive. Their goals were to have a drawn-out stalemate where they were able to maintain a stable defense to ensure that there was as little of a loss as possible.


    Although ensuring that there was no loss was probably impossible, they could do their best to ensure that nothing was damaged and no lives or lost, but that was unrealistic.


    Especially because the Martial Seniors of the Kaddar Region were going to be aggressively on the offense. There was no doubt that they would beshing out to kill the Martial Seniors of the Floating Sect with everything that they had.


    Each of them had limited windows of opportunity to root out the looming threat of Ajanta Ind forever, they were not going to let up so easily. As residents of the Kaddar Region that had grown up with the threat of Ajanta Ind terrorizing them and their loved ones, Rui was certain that each of the Kaddar Martial Seniors had a bone to pick with the Floating Sect, they were going to vent their grudges on the three Martial Seniors of the sect.


    One side was going to be absolutely defensive for the most part, while the other side was going to be absolutely offensive.


    Just as Rui concluded his thoughts, an rm rang across the entire ind.


    Evacuation protocols were underway.


    An attack was inbound very soon.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1141 Begun

    ?


    The Floating Sect had a remarkable amount of shelters that were meant to protect the civilian members of the sect from such cmities. In many ways, the civilian workforce of the Floating Sect was just as important as the guardians. They were the backbone of the sect, doing all the invisible non-shy background work that was absolutely vital to maintaining the Floating Sect.


    Furthermore, unlike how it used to be with the guardians, there was no constant supply of skilledbor to the Floating Sect.


    The Floating Sect was not concerned too much about the guardians because there was an influx of highly qualified Martial Squires into the Floating Sect every day. There were different filters that ensured that only qualified elites entered the ranks of the Floating Sect out of the surplus influx of Martial Squires.


    However, there was no surplus of an influx of skilledbor into the Floating Sect. It was actually quite difficult for the Floating Sect to acquire skilledbor and get them to join the sect.


    For one, they required members to permanently be a part of the Floating Sect andmit everything to the sect. This alone was a difficult condition that would turn ny percent of the workforce away. Yet it wasn''t only the deepmitment that was expected of any member, but also the fact that once they joined the sect and entered the ind, they could essentially forget ever leaving the ind.


    Due to the fact that the ind was so isted from human civilization, the same would naturallye to be the case for its members. It was simply too expensive to be able to facilitate frequent trips back and forth for its non-Martial Artist members who could not sky-walk.


    Furthermore, the human members of the sect would be expected to reside and work in an extremely hazardous environment for the human body. Direct exposure would lead to instantaneous death on the spot.


    Although there were many precautions, safe areas, and fail-safes, the sheer stress of being in an environment that would kill you in less than a heartbeat was something that ordinary people could not handle.


    These conditions filtered out an overwhelming majority of the workforce in the Kaddar Region to even consider applying to the Floating Sect. The sect had actually gone through a lot of difficulties and had to bleed a lot to be able to obtain the skilledbor that they needed to build a fully functioning and self-sufficient sect from scratch.


    Thus the workforce that they had at the moment was extremely precious, thus the Floating Sect had not skimped out when it came to the shelters that were designed to protect them in exactly these circumstances.


    Rui extended his senses as he watched the hordes of people migrating downwards into corridors that would lead to heavily reinforced bunkers.


    The guardians, on the other hand, did not evacuate. Unlike the civilians or even the Martial Apprentices, they were not frail enough to die just by being in the presence of a Senior-level battle. In fact, they would be on a cautionary standby. Although most of them were not strong enough to fight against a Martial Senior even when their Martial Hearts were exhausted, they could not afford to be treated as frail ss vases that needed to be protected.


    They were called guardians for a reason, they were expected to step up to protect when the time came, even if their resistance was futile.


    This was not pleasant, however, he did not see the kind of resistance he was expecting. Then again, the Martial Squires of the sect were cut from a different cloth, no one who was that averse to stepping up even if it meant death could make it past the challenger trial to be a member in the first ce.


    Pussies were filtered around even before they entered the sect. Even snakes like Serokin were not that cowardly.


    A brief amount of time passed as the two of them prepared for the iing attack. Having adorned their Martial attire, they quickly ensured that they were at their peaks, having consumed rejuvenation potions and extremely nutrition-dense food pills.


    "When we get back to the Kandrian Empire, we have stories to tell alright," Kane murmured as he stretched a bit, loosening his body up.


    "True," Rui mused with an indulgent smirk. "You can impress Fae when you tell her how you hunted down a Martial Senior as a Martial Squire."


    Kane red at him.N?velD(ram)a.?rg owns this content.


    "Kidding," Rui chuckled, he was about to make another joke at Kane''s expense, yet suddenly, something changed.


    The two of them froze as their Primordial Instincts felt a faint wave of peril.


    The world grew icier as a profoundly deep field of pressure began to wring the very air around them.


    The fauna and flora on the ind shivered as all sentient beings could sense a tremendous amount of unadulterated power.


    Rui used Tempestuous Feel to extend his senses extremely deep across the entirety of the ind trying to gauge what was happening.


    Even if he knew.


    The pressure was unmistakable. It was overwhelming. Domineering.


    It also reminded him of the sheer magnitude of what he was undertaking by agreeing to fight them. They were monsters from his perspective, and feeling the bloodlust that he was feeling reminded him that it was not a joke.


    He could very easily die in the blink of an eye. Just the sheer sensation made the confidence that he had gained from forcing Senior Xanarn to use her Martial Art dete a bit. He didn''t feel hopeless, far from it, but it certainly tempered his assessment of the risks associated with fighting Martial Seniors.


    The two of them quickly scrambled in the direction of the pressure as Rui expanded his senses to be able to perceive the battle to the best of his abilities.


    RUMBLE


    Tremor rippled through the entire ind as the very bedrock of the ind began shaking!


    "They''ve begun," Rui murmured as his eyes narrowed.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1142 Paltry

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    The Kaddar Treaty Organization was busy.


    It was not easy gathering the top strategic assets from the many important things that consumed their day-to-day lives. Just being the most important assets of the nations of the Kaddar Region meant that these distinguished Martial Artists were always preupied with the most important matters to themselves or to the nation.


    Many were deep in training or in other personal pursuits. Exercising their power to obtain the things that they had pursued Martial Art to obtain.


    Many were entrusted with important duties and objectives for the betterment of their nation. Just patrolling the border of a hostile nation was an important job, even if a bit mundane.


    Deterring enemies from attacking was an important job, after all.


    Many of the Martial Artists of the Kaddar nations possessed political power, and often exercised it regrly, and were often preupied with their responsibilities.


    That was why it took a bit of time to gather the nine Martial Seniors who were going to assault the Floating Sect.


    In a secret location in the Erionel Kingdom, the nine of them had finally gathered.


    They contained the pressure that they naturally radiated as Martial Seniors as much as they could to avoid drawing attention as much as possible.


    The nation that they were in was the location above which the Floating Sect was hovering far above in the sky at the moment.


    "I trust each of you is prepared." A tall dark-skinned woman remarked, addressing her fellow Martial Seniors.


    Her Martial attire was far from ordinary. It was shy, woven from a golden silk that shined ostentatiously. An intricate emblem of golden, white, and blue of the Erionel Kingdom prominently shined on the chest.


    "Everyone had long been prepared for quite some time, Duchess Lioma." Another man in a grim militaristic Martial attire snorted.


    "General Derftar is correct, we have all been waiting for this day for a long time." An old man with a long flowing white beard spoke. "Not just us, but many citizens of the Kaddar Region have waited for this day for a long time."


    His words reminded all nine of them of the significance of the operation that they were about to undertake. This operation was so important that even various Martial Seniors upying various posts and statuses in rival and even enemy nations were firmly united on this matter. This operation was a manifestation of the sheer grudge that the Kaddar nations bore against the Floating Sect.


    That was why nine Martial Seniors had been deployed just to fight three Martial Seniors. It was a little embarrassing to them that they needed such an overwhelming numerical advantage to be confident of victory, but s, such were the circumstances they were in. The three Martial Seniors had already been documented to be far more powerful on, or even near the environment of the Floating Sect due to their Martial Paths being extremelypatible with the environment.


    Furthermore, many years of having upied Ajanta Ind had almost certainly led them to develop extraordinary techniques that could only function in the environment of the ind. They simply could not defeat in a one-on-one match, and that was a pill that they had to swallow.


    "It''s time." Duchess Lioma dered the hidden facility, that they were to be dispatched from, opened up.


    The nine of them immediately took to the air, sky-walking at a fast and uniform pace as they soared towards Ajanta Ind. The sheer speed at which they shot upwards was enough to cross the distance in merely a minute!


    They knew that the Martial Seniors of the Floating Sect had almost certainly noticed their presence by now. They didn''t even bother hiding it, there was no point.


    Yet they didn''t activate their Martial hearts to shoot up to the ind in merely a fraction of the time. They did not want to waste their precious Martial Hearts on something as unimportant as travel.


    Every second of the Martial Heart active was precious and ought not to be wasted. They did not want to waste their fuel on anything other than taking down the Floating Sect.


    The closer they got, the deeper the sense of pressure they felt. The deeper the pressure they radiated. The atmosphere was wrung back and forth between the two groups of Martial Seniors.


    They could sense each other before they saw each other.


    And then they saw each other.


    The nine Martial Seniors immediately ran into the three Martial Seniors standing at the edge of the ind and nine of them rose up to approach.


    For a moment, nothing happened.


    None of them initiated aggression.


    They simply stared at each other, except Senior Xanarn, whose eyes remained closed.


    Duchess Lioma took the initiative to initiate dialogue. "The Kaddar Treaty Organization offers the Floating Sect an opportunity to unconditionally surrender."


    Senior Leonil snorted with contempt.


    Senior Xanarn smirked.


    Senior Sarak met her sharp gaze calmly.


    "The Floating Sect refuses to surrender."


    "I was hoping you would say that." She muttered under her breath as the profoundly deep sense of peril radiated from her.


    The very next moment, her blood vessels began glowing visibly from beneath her dark skin. She resembled a mountain with cracks ofva across its body, ready to explode.


    She crouched midair, as her muscles quivered with tremendous power.


    BOOM!!!


    Sheunched herself forward with abysmally powerful momentum!


    A titanic sonic boom the size of an entire town radiated outwards from her starting position. The sheer amount of friction that her momentum generated was so great that a great inferno enveloped her body.


    She shot herself towards the three Martial Seniors of the Floating Sect like a living meteorite!This content provided by N(o)velDrama].[Org.


    And yet¡­


    BOOM!!!


    An enormous shockwave rippled across the entire ind!


    When the dust settled, Duchess Lioma''s eyes widened as she realized she had been stopped in her tracks.


    She felt arge hand on her head, holding her in ce.


    Her bullrush had been halted by a simple gesture!


    "Your paltry power cannot ovee my defenses," Senior Sarak dered coldly, his Martial Heart zing across his body.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1143 Counter

    ?


    All hell broke loose after the first shots had been fired.


    The remaining ten Martial Seniors instantly activated their Martial Heart.


    A maelstrom of pressure unlike anything before washed over the Floating Sect, dousing everything and everybody in the glory of their might.


    Thebined bloodlust of twelve Martial Seniors was a sight to behold.


    Every sentient lifeform below the Squire Realm quivered in fear.


    It was as though the very ind itself had held its breath.


    Duchess Lioma leaped back with an incredulous expression. She truly knew that the Martial Seniors of the Floating Sect were beyond strong due to their environment, yet it was an entirely different thing to feel that strength, especially for the first time.


    She had used a powerful technique, yet Senior Sarak had stopped her attack with a single hand, furthermore, he didn''t even leverage his body''s power in a better position. He was standing upright and normally.


    The gap between them was painfully clear.


    However, there were nine of them for that very reason.


    Senior Sarak narrowed his eyes as two more shot forward appearing at his side, andunching powerful attacks at him. One of them appeared to be a rare heat-oriented Martial Artist,pletely enveloped in mes while the other Martial Artist wielded an axe.


    And yet¡­


    BOOM!


    A shockwave emanated from his body rippling through the atmosphere, pushing both of them away from him.


    The two of them leaped back, shocked.


    He had just casually withstood the attacks of two Martial Seniors with seemingly no damage whatsoever!


    "Not a single scratch¡­" Duchess Lioma gritted her teeth as she activated another technique.This content provided by N(o)velDrama].[Org.


    He simply brought his hands together in a praying gesture, ring at them with sharp eyes. "You are not qualified to harm me."


    It could have been dismissed as an empty boast¡­


    Yet they weren''t able to.


    The three of them gritted their teeth as they began coordinating their attacks, looking to pierce his seemingly invulnerable defense.


    "Together!"


    The three of them sted forward, tearing through the very air as they shot towards their target.


    BOOM!!


    "Urgh!" The three of them were sted away with a titanically powerful shockwave that his body released.


    The sheer power of the shockwave shook the very ind to its core!


    "He didn''t even move!"


    "He''s too tough!"


    (''What is happening?'') Duchess Lioma paused for a moment, ring at him. (''Not only do our attacks not do any damage, but every time we strike him, his body releases that annoyingly powerful shockwave even though he didn''t actually make any motions to activate it.'')


    It was absurd that he was able to handle three attacks so well with seemingly such little effort.


    Furthermore, he did it in that ridiculous stance with a praying gesture.


    (''If his muscles aren''t moving¡­ then that means that power ising from somewhere else¡­ but wh-'') Her eyes widened as she realized the truth. "He is absorbing power and turning it into fuel for his own attack!"


    Senior Sarak did not respond, but inwardly he was not pleased that they discovered the principle of his technique that easily.


    His Abyssal Mirror Style was a counter-offensive style that was highly monolithic and centered around absorbing his opponent''s power even before they reached him, through the dense air of Ajanta Ind, before absorbing it and radiating it back in the form of a shockwave through the air.


    He applied a breathing technique to make the density of air around him grow progressively higher, making it function as a form of a cushion that allowed him to absorb the impact better. His Martial Body had evolved in a way that could permeate power from one end to the other remarkably well, allowing him to release a shockwave with the power that he absorbed.


    In an environment like Ajanta Ind, both the absorption part of the technique as well as the release of the shockwave were greatly empowered by the dense atmosphere.


    On top of that, after having grown deeply familiar with the environment, he had been able to increase the power of the technique to far higher heights by optimizing the technique to his surroundings.


    It meant that just the task of hurting Senior Sarak was absurdly difficult, even for powerful Martial Seniors.


    "He can absorb impacts¡­?"


    "If so, it''s going to be extremely difficult to get him."


    "It''s three Martial Hearts versus one. Aim for his vitals." Duchess Lioma growled. "Pound at him till he bleeds."


    The three of them threw themselves at him with fierce determination. They were determined to take him down before their time was up. They did not want to end up in a situation where they would have been unable to even harm him by the end of the battle!


    Fortunately for them, not everything was negative. The fact that the man seemingly had no active offensive prowess was definitely a positive to them, it meant that they did not need to be very worried about active attacks from him. In fights between Martial Artists, both sides needed to be very wary about the active offensive prowess of their opponents, and thus needed to dedicate attention, and power to making sure they were ready to defend at all times. They also couldn''t abandon defense to rush into an aggressive offensivesh-out without any bacsh from the involved parties at the very least.


    However, in this case, they could to a much greater degree. Just knowing that any offense he had was counter-offensive and woulde in the form of a shockwave even the timing of which was known meant that they could do a lot more.


    Senior Sarak silently gritted his teeth as he prepared himself for a beatdown of his life. He had no intention of winning, he just needed to stall long enough.


    He wasn''t suited to eliminating his opponents, that was a job that he had already appointed to others who were not on the battlefield at the moment.


    (''Those three better make good use of this battle.'')


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1144 Banshee

    ?


    In the meantime, Senior Xanarn took another approach as she engaged with her opponents in another fashion.


    She maneuvered through the air with graceful movements. Every step she took produced a note of sound, her maneuvering weaved the notes together into a symphony that reverberated across the entire ind.


    Her opponents chased after her.


    "You''re not the only one who can wield the atmosphere." General Derftar dered as he breathed in a certain pattern, exhaling powerfully as he swung his arms together, pping with great force.


    An incredibly powerful gust of wind roared towards her. Yet she merely opened her mouth.


    VMMMM!!!


    A painful pulse of sound escaped her lips, reverberating through the atmosphere, the moment it made contact with the gust of wind that his opponent had released, they both simply disappeared.


    "She canceled it out using as little power as possible," General Derftar tutted. (''She''s focusing on reducing her power consumption¡­ That makes sense, she wants to make sure that her Martial Heart does not give out before ours.'')


    All three of them could tell that Senior Xanarn was adopting a very conservative fighting style.


    She also strayed away from the infrastructure of the ind, taking the battle to less popted areas of the ind.


    The three of them rounded around her, looking to pick at her and tear her down as soon as possible.


    Suddenly one of them rushed in with an incredible degree of swiftness. She instantly knew that he was an offensive maneuverer.


    She was unable to avoid him as she threw a flurry of sharp jabs at her vitals.


    VMMMM!!!


    A devastatingly loud st emerged the moment his attack came anywhere near her body, a strange cacophony of notes reverberated through the air.


    "A sound shield huh?" The man muttered.


    She didn''t even have time to respond.


    SWING!


    She pirouetted through the air, dodging a swift de that swung right at her. She heard the crinkling noise of metal even as she evaded the attack.


    The third Martial Senior caught his chain axe with a grin. "Not bad not bad."


    Senior Xanarn had managed to deal with their attacks thus far, but they were only getting started.


    (''My defensive prowess isn''t nearly as high as Sarak''s'') She mused. (''I can''t afford to be as passive as he is. One advantage we have is that they are not ustomed to the environment on top of not being able to make the best of it or having techniques that aren''t suited.'')


    Martial Artists that first stepped onto the ind were not entirely ustomed to fighting in such an environment. Of course, the more experienced and skilled a Martial Artist was, the less time it took to adjust, still, that was undoubtedly an advantage that worked in favor of the Senior guardians of the Floating Sect.


    However, that advantage would disappear as the fight went on and their movements became more refined.


    That was why Senior Xanarn decided to exploit that advantage as much as she could while itsted.


    Her eyebrows furrowed as she opened her eyes, taking a deep breath in.


    The three Martial Seniors of the Kaddar Region immediately felt a deep sense of peril as they leaped back immediately.


    She opened her mouth, and what followed was a sound that was so potent, it was nothing short of pure force.


    She unleashed a scream that was so incredibly loud that it affected the very light that the sound passed through, causing the world to appear shaky!


    A wave of pure destructionrge enough to swallow an entire town crashed into the Martial Seniors.


    "Argh!"


    The three of them were shocked that a single Martial Senior could release such power.


    "Now wonder they deployed nine!"


    The Kaddar Region was a rtively young Senior-level region. It did not have many Martial Seniors and thus did not have any high-grade Martial Seniors.


    The Martial Seniors of the Floating Sect were not truly high-grade either. Yet, because of their environment, they were able to effectively wield the power of a high-grade Martial Senior.


    The three Martial Seniors that had attacked Senior Xanarn realized that they needed to be careful.


    Especially the offensive maneuverer, he needed to be careful about when he chose to close the distance between himself and Senior Xanarn.


    If he mistimed it or dragged it a bit too much, she would unleash that powerful scream attack and crush him with sound.


    "Keep our distance for now," The chain-axe-wielding Martial Senior told them with a solemn expression. "Feril and I will attack her from range. Dennis, you maneuver around and attack the moment you gain an opening to exploit."


    "Will do," Dennis nodded as he began circling around Senior Xanarn.


    The remaining two split up as well.


    (''They''re avoiding grouping up so that I won''t be able to use my Banshee Whisper against them.'') She tutted inwardly.


    That attack took too much, it was very difficult to maintain any defense whenunching an attack that powerful.Property ? of N?velDrama.Org.


    Furthermore, by splitting up in different directions, she could not afford to focus so much power in a single direction, if she did, the other two would quickly jump in and exploit that opening against her.


    While she was defending against the two of the mid and long-range attackers, she was most concerned about the offensive maneuverer. Her defense was active in nature, and her passive defense wasckluster.


    What that meant was that if she was ever caught off-guard by him, then he would probably be able to hurt her even if he did not specialize in offense. Her body''s constitution was not enough for her to be able to withstand attacks without active techniques covering it up.


    She could tell that he was circling, doing his best to hide his presence with abination of reducing his perceptibility, while also relying on minor misdirection to make his presence fleeting.


    She needed to focus, otherwise, he would slip her mind while the other two did their best to draw her attention away.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1145 Choice

    ?


    While Senior Sarak and Xanarn fought against their respective foes, Senior Leonil had gotten entangled with several Martial Seniors himself.


    His Martial Heart zed with power as he inhaled deeply.


    What followed shocked the three Kaddar Martial Seniors.


    His lungs turned into a ck hole of air as he inhaled deeply. The air above and even beyond the ind shook as he seemingly consumed the atmosphere voraciously.


    A single breathing technique disrupted the weather patterns across the entirety of the Kaddar Region.


    The sheer amount of air that he consumed caused low-pressure regions to develop above the Erionel Kingdom.


    Yet that wasn''t all.


    The low-pressure zones above the Erionel Kingdom elerated the formation of cumulonimbus clouds.Content provided by N?velDrama.Org.


    The sky''sposition changed as a result.


    Senior Leonil''s Martial Art was so powerful that its after-effects would bring about a rainstorm in the middle of the dryest parts of summer for the Erionel Kingdom. Heshed forward attacking them with the might he gained from the breathing technique.


    "Incredible," Rui murmured as he observed all three fights between the two sides from a safe distance with the help of Tempestuous Feel and Seismic Mapping.


    The three Martial Seniors of the Floating Sect were even more impressive than he had given them credit for. The sheerbat prowess that they were disying at the moment was on par with what he witnessed from Senior Ceeran on Vilun Ind against the two Martial Seniors from the K''ulnen Tribe.


    Senior Sarak was an immovable pir, he reminded Rui of Hever, someone who dedicated themselves to a single technique and a narrow field. Like Hever, this man was a counter-offensive specialist. However, his Martial Art had a greater emphasis on a passive defensive element while Hever''s Martial Art was a bit more active and offensive.


    Rui was rather impressed with how the man literally never moved from his ce and fought despite being stationary and unmoving in a prayer position. It was a novel way of fighting and one that he did not see everywhere.


    Senior Leonil''s Martial Art was quite astonishingly powerful and yet had fallen within Rui''s expectations. His deduction was correct, his Martial Art was centered around breathing. He was quite simr to Ian Nepomniachtchi. Rui was not very fond of him, but he did have to admit that his breathing techniques were quite powerful.


    Senior Xanarn''s true prowess was one among the three that had fallen the most within his Martial Art. Partially because he had the best understanding of her Martial Art. Although she had used nowhere near her full power when she sparred against Rui, it was also true that she had exploited her Martial Art to the very best barring her Martial Heart. His predictive model was still decently effective despite it. He needed to strain his Tempestuous Feel and Seismic mapping to the limit to sense her despite that.


    Thankfully, the former was especially empowered on Ajanta Ind. It allowed him to get a good view of the battle, especially of techniques centered around the air through which he was sensing the battle.


    However, even then, he truly had difficulty sensing the initial parts of the battle. He needed to focus every ounce of his attention on their movements to properly register them. Furthermore, it definitely helped that he was perceiving them from a distance. It was always easier to perceive motion from a distance due to the fact that moving objects shifted less in one''s field of perception.


    It was one of the reasons that humans could perceive rocket take-offs or the revolving moon that all moved at speeds that were far above what the mind could perceive and process under normal circumstances.


    That was the reason he was able to keep up with their movements despite their blindingly high speed.


    He did his best to keep track of all battles but soon realized that it was almost impossible for him at this stage.


    After all, he wasn''t just keeping track of them, he was also analyzing them, rooting out their patterns, and building predictive models.


    However, even for Rui, building nine predictive models, that too that of Martial Seniors who were each quite challenging and consuming to keep track of, was too much.


    Furthermore, because the fights were happening in locations separated from each other, it was best for Rui to focus on one set of Martial Seniors at a time. He didn''t fault them for doing that, it made sense to split up considering that their Martial Art all relied on the environment of Ajanta Ind, they could not make the best use of the environment if all three of them were doing so in extreme vicinity of each other.


    They would only get in each other''s way.


    Regardless, he decided to pick one of the three to observe at this point in time.


    (''Senior Xanarn it is.'')


    He didn''t pick her just because he liked her, but also because he already had a predictive model on her, which made it easier for him to keep up with the fight. The better he could keep up with the fight, the quicker he would be able to form a predictive model on her opponents.


    It was objectively the best option at hand. Unless the Kaddar Treaty Organization randomly subbed out those exact three Martial Seniors next time, it would pay really well.


    Rui analyzed her opponents deeply. This was the first time he hade across a chain-axe user, so he paid special attention to him. The other two possessed more mundane Martial Paths, and he wasn''t too concerned about being caught off-guard there.


    The fight progressed, and it became easier and easier for Rui to form predictive models on the three of them as their Martial Hearts burned their energy throughout the fight, causing them to lose the explosiveness that they possessed at the beginning of the fight.


    As it became easier and easier, he did his best to strengthen the foundation of the predictive models before the fight ended.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1146 Retreat

    ?


    Given that he knew that he had the element of surprise in their next battle, he was especially on the prowl for patterns that could help withunching an ambush.


    Specifically, he paid attention to the patterns in their attention distribution, which was something he didn''t always do since he would not have the element of surprise in a head-to-head battle.


    However, he wanted to tailor his predictive model to be the most useful in making the most of the element of surprise when it came to taking down a Martial Senior or two. After all, that was his task.


    His job became easier after an hour when the Martial Hearts truly began wearing off and he was able to perceive all of them with ease. That was the one thing that he knew was going to do well.


    BAM!!!This content provided by N(o)velDrama].[Org.


    Senior Sarak skidded back, coughing blood, and panting heavily.


    His opponents were not doing too much better. Their bruises were heavy, and several of their bones had been broken.


    Duchess Lioma was about to rush forward to continue their assault when suddenly she felt a special device vibrating on her belt.


    "Tsk, stop!"


    The two of them heeded, they too had been issued the same device.


    It was a signal indicating that the gravitational stabilizer was going to deactivate soon, having reached its limit. They were given a forewarning five minutes ahead of time, enough time for the Martial Sneiors to extricate themselves from their circumstances and retreat.


    A murderous glower crawled onto her face as she red at Senior Sarak with unrestrained fury.


    Senior Sarak smiled despite the blood trickling from his mouth.


    "Smile while you can. I''ll have your head next time!" She snarled as she and herrades drew back, exiting the ind as they headed back to the Erionel Kingdom.


    Senior Sarak sighed in relief as he witnessed the other groups of Kaddar Martial Seniors leaving the ind as well, taking a moment to sit down and lie down t to rest


    It wasn''t long before the other two Martial Seniors joined him.


    "d you two are alive," Senior Sarak remarked.


    "Hmph," Senior Leonil lightly snorted. "As if you couldn''t sense us."


    "d you two are doing just fine," Senior Xanarn smiled as she sat down beside Senior Sarak. "Though I see you lost a hand Leonil."


    "He got a lucky hit in." Senior Leonilined.


    "Keep making excuses like that and you''ll never set foot in the Master Realm, Leonil." Senior Sarak remarked.


    Senior Leonil red at Senior Sarak wordlessly.


    "It''s ok, Leonil, A for effort." She cajoled him, patting his head.


    "Don''t patronize me," He growled, smacking her hand away.


    "Did you get shy with big sister Xanarn patting your head, how cute."


    "You wanna go a round?" He growled.


    "You''d probably lose even if you a hand." Senior Sarak remarked, amused.


    "He''s right, what was our score again?" Senior Xanarn put her finger on her chin in an exaggerated motion.


    "Who even remembers stuff like tha-"


    "-I believe it was three-hundred to eighty-seven?"


    "It''s two hundred and ny-three to ny-two!" He barked at her.


    "Ahaha~ so you do remember."


    Three more individuals approached the Martial Seniors while the two of them bickered.


    "I hope you got everything you needed." Senior Sarak said as he got up, facing Rui, Kane, and Ieyasu. "As you can see, nine is close to our limits. However, the Kaddar Treaty Organization possesses more Martial Seniors. If they do decide to send even one more next time then¡­"


    He met their eyes individually. "You''re our only hope."


    His words weighed heavily on the three of them.


    Rui''s eyes narrowed. He understood the predicament quite well.


    The Floating Sect was screwed. It was actually quite the miracle that the three Martial Seniors pushed back nine Martial Seniors.


    However, this was their limit. Even a single extra Martial Senior would be game over for the Floating Sect.


    One of the Senior guardians of the Floating Sect would fall in battle.


    Even if the other two were able to push back their opponents, it was still a lost war. The next time that they returned, the two of them would not be able to survive being taken on by five Martial Seniors each.


    Rui found it quite admirable that the three of them hadn''t so much as faltered despite knowing this. As expected, the psyches of Martial Seniors were different. As people who had discovered their Martial Heart, their drive was necessarily of a high caliber. This was a quality he did not see very often in the Squire Realm.


    (''And that''s one reason why so few Martial Seniors emerge from the Martial Squires.'')


    "I will not let you down," Squire Ieyasu replied with a calm andposed voice.


    Yet it was reassuring.


    The three of them knew what he was capable of as a Martial Artist. He was not someone to be underestimated. He was as strong if not a little stronger than them without their Martial Hearts.


    His confidence meant a lot to them.


    Yet, what Rui said went even further.


    "I hope to win us this war."


    The three Martial Seniors raised eyebrows at those words.


    Those were bold words. A Martial Squire could not win a war that involved Martial Seniors, that wasmon sense. The three of them had allowed Ieyasu, Rui, and Kane to partake in the battle because they were special, but it was understood that their impact could not exceed that of a Martial Senior.


    The three of them were puzzled why Rui would make such an arrogant statement but refrained frommenting. It appeared that he was serious about contributing to the war, thus they simply epted his words.


    "There''s plenty of work that needs to be done, you''re dismissed." Senior Sarak to the air as he headed back to the Floating Sect main office. As one of the three leaders of the Floating Sect, he had many duties to fulfill even if he just fought a war.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1147 Concern

    ?


    All of them dispersed, they each had things that they were preupied with various things.


    The Martial Seniors had to unfreeze the Floating Sect andmence the workings of the sect.


    Meanwhile, Rui returned to his chamber as he considered his gamen


    The reconnaissance phase was up, he had gotten everything that he needed, and now he needed to make the most of it.


    (''Most likely the Martial Seniors of the Kaddar Region will not change the pairings.'')


    Based on what he saw, it was clear that the Kaddar Treaty Organization was aware of the Martial Art of the three Senior guardians of the Floating Sect. The pairings were decently effective against the Senior guardians.


    The reason they weren''t able to create pairings that were perfectly suited to counter their opponents was that they didn''t have arge pool of Martial Seniors to select from. This was due to ack of options, and many of the existing options being preupied with other important matters.


    This meant that Rui could most likely proceed with the assumption that Senior Xanarn would be facing the same opponents next time.


    He ounted for the fact that the Kaddar Treaty Organization would likely be deploying one or perhaps two more Martial Seniors next time.


    The probability of them sending three more was low, if they could muster up three more, they would not have sent as few as they did, there was no point in using only seventy-five percent of their avable Martial Seniors on such an important war.


    Rui estimated that they would probably take no chances and deploy more than eighty-five percent of the Martial Seniors that they could deploy.


    Thus one more Martial Senior was guaranteed, two more just to be safe.


    That meant that two of the three Senior guardians would have to face an extra Martial Senior.


    Regardless, Rui had only prepared to face off against the three Martial Seniors that Senior Xanarn fought, he could not do anything if they targeted one of the other two.


    For now, he was just focused on things surrounding Senior Xanarn.


    Ideally, he hoped she wouldn''t be the one to get hit with an extra Martial Senior, but he needed to be prepared if the unfortunate oue did ur.


    Especially since it was likely to ur. The probability that she would be hit with an extra Martial Senior was two in three. Actually, by Rui''s estimation, it was most likely higher since the extra Martial Seniors were likely to be deployed against the two weaker ones, as opposed to the strongest one, since that was where the greatest impact of an extra Martial Senior.


    Senior Sarak was so tough, that perhaps not even four Martial Seniors could fall him before the time limit of the gravitational stabilizer timed out.


    However, the same could not be said for Senior Xanarn, and especially Senior Leonil. Those two were not surviving an assault from four Martial Seniors. That was why the Kaddar Treaty Organization was likely to toss the number advantage against those two, hoping to kill them off, leaving only one Martial Senior defending the sect.


    The war would be as good as over.


    Thus he immediately began nning for his strategies in both scenarios, but especially in the scenario with four Martial Seniors.


    In the event that she was hit with four Martial Seniors, she would probably abandon offense and dedicate all Martial resources toward defense. Rui analyzed the information as his mind raced through the predictive models that he had on Seniro Xanarn and the three Martial Seniors she fought. With those, he was able to extrapte dozens of potential broad oues based on the Martial Path of the extra Martial Senior, and how it would impact the fight.


    In all of those models that he extrapted, she died.


    She held on for quite some time, but she most certainly ended up dead, and she also failed to take a single Martial Senior down with her.


    It couldn''t be helped, it was four-on-one.


    This was bleak, however, his calctions were not entirely negative. By his calctions, she survived all the way until all of their Martial Hearts were drained. Of course, she was brought close to death at that stage in his model of the fight, severely wounded while her opponents were essentially unharmed.


    However, the fact that she survived the deactivation of the Martial Heart was highly optimistic news. Because once the Martial Hearts were out of the picture, Rui could intervene.


    However, she needed to survive at that time. He couldn''t do anything if she died before. Before any further nning, he needed to make sure that she understood that.


    That was why he paid her personal quarters a visit that night.


    "I didn''t expect you toe," She murmured when she saw him at her doorstep.


    Rui paused for a moment. Her light home attire threw him off since he normally saw her in her Martial attire.


    "I wanted to talk to you about the next fight," Rui replied.


    She considered his words for a moment, before nodding.


    "Come in."


    Her personal quarters were modestly decorated yet homely, she didn''t seem to care too much about furnishing it.


    "Would you like something to drink?" She pulled out arge bottle of alcohol. "A single drop would kill any human, it was made specifically to intoxicate the Martial Body."


    "Er, no thanks," Rui refused. "I wanted to discuss your approach tobat tomorrow."


    "Hm, what about it?" She asked with a curious expression.


    "Please do everything in your power to survive," Rui replied.


    She chuckled. "As opposed to what?"Property ? of N?velDrama.Org.


    "As opposed to trying to protect the sect''s infrastructure or any other considerations," Rui replied. "Your Martial Art works best medium and long ranges, however, those ranges make the sect susceptible to suffering damage, that is why you reduced your range today, correct? You cannot afford to do that. You need to make it past the Martial Heart stage no matter what happens to the sect. You must live. No matter what"


    She felt her heart skip a beat as he could not hide the depth of his concern from her.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1148 Drive

    <h4>Chapter 1148 Drive</h4>


    As someone whose primary sense was hearing, she was able to read sound to a far greater degree than normal Martial Artists. She could peer into the depths of voice to a much greater degree than anybody else could.


    She could see that this wasn''t merely a request to help fulfill his task, he truly wanted her to survive.


    Yet, while his concern touched her, that did not mean she would just go with what he said.


    "I am a guardian of the Floating Sect, I fight to protect the Floating Sect." She replied with a more serious tone. "I cannot, I will not abandon my duties."


    Rui furrowed his eyebrows. "What do you mean? I''m not asking you to abandon them."


    "I will need to if I prioritize my own life over the safety of the sect."


    Rui raised an eyebrow. "That''s a rather heavy interpretation of being a guardian. I do not hold myself to that standard, nor do the other Squire-level guardians."


    "That is because you are not the ultimate protectors of the Floating Sect," She replied. "You are subjects that we protect."


    Rui stared at her. "Does the Floating Sect really mean that much to you? Do you have family here or something?"


    She shook her head. "The Floating Sect is a ce that I havemitted myself to protecting. Thus I will protect it, simple as that."


    Rui realized that he was listening to what was probably her Martial drive. This was the desire that drove her forward to be stronger, perhaps what drove her forward to bing a Martial Senior.


    He didn''t know. He didn''t know her well enough, and he didn''t want to try and pry open her heart forcefully. He felt a little awkward.


    Their rtionship wasn''t tonic. However, Rui did not have a good idea of how to build rtionships with women non-tonically. He wascking in experience even in his first life, and he didn''t even have much of a reference point because the media he used to consume was centered around Martial Art.


    "I appreciate your concern," She smiled, walking closer to him.


    She stood on her toes, kissing him softly on his cheek.


    It was the softest of gestures, yet it made him feel warm inside.


    "You don''t have any objection to fulfilling your duties as a guardian and surviving, I presume?" Rui asked lightheartedly.


    "Of course not, silly." She giggled softly.


    Rui enjoyed making her smile. Property ? of N?velDrama.Org.


    For a brief moment, Rui considered spending the night with her. He could tell that if he made the move at the moment, she would not refuse him.


    He wanted to.


    Badly.


    Yet he exhaled deeply, reigning himself in. Tomorrow was an important day, he could not afford to get distracted and lose his focus, nor could she.


    She was waiting for him to make a choice in her silence.


    "Well¡­" Rui sighed. "It''s gettingte, I should get going. Tomorrow is going to decide the fate of the Floating Sect, after all."


    She smiled ruefully. "Of course. Get some rest, you''re going to need it."


    Even after he left, his thoughts lingered on her.


    Her voice.


    Her scent.


    Her skin.


    (''I need to focus,'') Rui narrowed his eyes.


    He hadn''t forgotten the sheer difficulty of the task that he was responsible for tomorrow.


    He felt a strange sense of protectiveness over Senior Xanarn. This was weird because she was a whole Realm of power above him.


    Yet he felt the drive to protect her from things he wasn''t even qualified to fight against.


    Regardless, it worked in his favor as he was more driven to ensure that he seeded.


    He spent quite some time fleshing out his ns, he created multiple ns for multiple different circumstances based on various possibilities on whether or not Senior Xanarn would be forced to face an extra Martial Senior and the kind of Martial Path that an extra Martial Senior would have.


    It took an immense amount of mental and psychological preparation before he was confident about fulfilling his role tomorrow.


    However, it wasn''t just enough for him to create good ns and be done with it. A lot of his ns involved Kane, and he needed to bring the man into them in order to make sure that they were on the same page.


    Thankfully, Rui had the most developed predictive model on Kane that he ever had, and it meant that his ns were highly tailored to include Kane seamlessly. He did not need to spend any time on what he was or wasn''t capable of.


    In fact, he knew better than Kane what he was most apt at!


    Rui didn''t even sleep that night, relying on mental rejuvenation potions to keep his brain fresh. Thankfully, he had slept the night prior, so he didn''t have to worry about not being at his peak due to too much potion abuse.


    "Finally," Kane copsed into a chair. "Are you satisfied with your preparations?"


    Rui nodded. "They''re definitely not bad."


    Kane stared at him with an incredulous expression. "You''re kidding, right?"


    "What makes you say that?"


    "You just spent half a day working on those and optimizing them!"


    "Like I said," Rui replied seriously. "Not bad."


    Kane just stared at him with furrowed eyebrows even as Rui delved into his own world about the uing fight.


    He was serious when he said that he intended to win the war.


    And he actually had a very concrete n that would allow him to trigger a chain of events that would result in that.


    There were some tricky elements and hurdles that he needed to get past, but once he did, it was actually smooth sailing after that. There were several key elements that he needed to focus on in that regard.


    And luck. He did need a bit of luck to pull it off, unfortunately. But such was life. There were always going to be things that were out of his control, the best he could do was his best.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1149 Predicted

    <h4>Chapter 1149 Predicted</h4>


    By the time the next day arrived, the Floating Sect''s rms had already begun ringing across the entirety of the sect as the news of yet another assault from the Kaddar Treaty Organization was discovered.


    Many people realized that this was not viable in the long run. They could not afford to keep evacuating the civilians day in and day out. It was too disruptive to the regr functioning of the Floating Sect.


    Something needed to change, otherwise the sect was doomed in the long run.


    Thankfully, this time the evacuation measures were executed smoother thanst time, and the Floating Sect members were tucked safe and sound by the time the Martial Seniors of the Kaddar nation were deployed.


    The civilians were far more calm and collected than they could have been. However, the fact that the Floating Sect had been in a state of war for nearly a year meant that they had gotten used to the sense of war that had overtaken the sect.


    They did not know the sheer impact that the battle would have at the moment


    Those in the know of the dire circumstances of the Floating Sect were tense.


    The Martial Seniors of the Kaddar Region wereing, they were soon going to find out how right or wrong they were.


    Rui and Kane were already in hiding, close enough for Rui to observe everything and move in when he felt it was appropriate.


    Of course, that wouldn''t be any time soon.


    Suddenly, he felt profoundly deep pressure.


    "They''reing," He narrowed his eyes, as his body tensed.


    Suddenly, many figures rose into his sensory field.


    Specifically, eleven of them.


    (''Shit,'') Rui cursed. (''This is going to be rough.'')


    Rui had predicted that the Kaddar Region could potentially have two more Martial Seniors that they could squeeze out and deploy, and unfortunately, it seemed that his estimation was on point.


    It meant that two of the three Senior guardians of the Floating Sect were going to have to face a whopping four Martial Seniors at once.


    He had also predicted which ones would. The addition of an extra Martial Senior would be most effective against the weakest two Martial Seniors of the sect.


    "Damn¡­" Rui murmured.


    None were more pressured than the three themselves as they stood before the three guardians of the Floating Sect.


    "I told you, didn''t I?" Duchess Lioma said as she red daggers at Senior Sarak. "That your head would be mine."


    Senior Sarak did not even bother quipping back. Their circumstances were too dire.


    He could only hope that they would survive the Martial Heart phase of the battle, and he could only hope that Ieyasu and Rui could make enough of an impact to salvage their situation.


    For some odd reason, Rui''s bold deration of ending the war popped up into his mind.


    The atmosphere fluctuated. As if the mere presence of so many Martial Artists at the peak of the lower Realms could affect the world around them.


    It could.


    If one listened closely, one could almost hear tremors across the ind.


    As if it was shivering.


    Shivering in fear of the carnage that was about to ensue.


    BADUMP


    Fourteen Martial Hearts zed into power as glowing lines ebbed across their bodies.


    BOOM


    Instantly, they split into three groups as the three Senior guardians immediately leaped back and away, guiding the chasing Kaddar Martial Artists.


    Splitting up was not only a desire of the Kaddar Martial Artists so they didn''t interfere with each other''s exploitation of the atmosphere, but it was also in the interests of the Kaddar Martial Seniors to split up. All for the simple fact that there were eleven of them versus three, it was far likelier that the Kaddar Martial Seniors would suffer friendly fire as opposed to their opponents.


    As both sides readily and willingly split into three groups, Rui''s attention immediately turned towards Senior Xanarn as he had nned to do so from the very get-go. The first thing he needed to do was assess the new variable that had been introduced to the equation of the fight.


    Rui studied the new Martial Senior.


    Her body was wrapped up in a lot of individual fabrics of cloth, and only her face and hands were visible.


    This already gave Rui a bad feeling. Property ? of N?velDrama.Org.


    (''Neutral Martial Body, yet low physical parameterspared to her peers,'') Rui grew more tense. (''Don''t tell me¡­'')


    FSSSS!


    She exhaled a green gas at Senior Xanarn!


    (''Damn!'') Rui cursed. (''A poison-oriented Martial Artist!'')


    Rui couldn''t help but feel deep dread crawling into him.


    Poison Martial Artists broke a lot of paradigms that normal and more orthodox Martial Art did not. Conventional active and passive durability were usually useless against the offense of these Martial Artists.


    It meant that Senior Xanarn couldn''t pull off the passive defense leading to a stalemate that she didst time.


    Yet even as Rui was tense, he could not help but feel curious as well.


    How did the Martial Heart benefit poison Martial Art?


    After all, poison Martial Artists were not centered around speed, power, or durability. They relied on the toxicity of the substances that they introduced into their bodies to inflict damage on the bodies of others.


    Yet a Martial Heart could not empower poison because the poison was not organic tissue that was part of the body. It was non-living substances that did not have blood passing through them, obviously.


    So how did the Martial Heart empower their Martial Art?


    (''The very nature of a poison-oriented Martial Body is very different from ordinary Martial Bodies.'')


    Rui was certain that poison-oriented Martial Bodies dedicated their evolution not to speed, power, or durability.


    No.


    They dedicated the evolutionary resources to the ability to produce, sustain, and inflict poison. That was what their Martial Bodies focused on, in the same way that a speedster''s Martial Body was focused on speed.


    It also meant that thetent untapped potential hiding within their Martial Body was also centered not around power, speed, or durability.


    It was centered around poison.


    "Argh!" Senior Xanarn coughed blood as she began bleeding from her eyes inexplicably.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1150 Bypass

    <h4>Chapter 1150 Bypass</h4>


    It didn''t take Rui more than a few moments to deduce the impact of the Martial Heart on a poison Martial Artist''s power. It most likely empowered their ability to survive their own poisons and deploy greater concentrations and amounts of it, it also most likely empowered their ability to handle higher degrees of potency and toxicity. It allowed them to deploy these poisons against their opponents with greater ease.


    Rui could see firsthand how effective the Martial Heart was in this regard.


    It hadn''t even been a minute, and the poison user had already wounded Senior Xanarn without any help from herrades.


    (''She was caught off-guard.'') Rui gritted his teeth. (''Not just that, but her defense isn''t as effective against poison.'')


    The reason for that was simple. It had to do with the mechanics of airborne poisons.


    They were basically gases.


    Senior Xanarn''s sound was certainly tremendously powerful, however, her sound traveled through gases.


    The keyword was ''through''.


    In this case, her sound barriers seamlessly traveled through the poisonous gas the same way that it traveled through normal air.


    That was why she had been unable to defend against the poisonous attack whatsoever.


    It meant that she had basically withstood a Senior-level attack on her Martial Body without any defense whatsoever.


    Rui clenched his fist as he observed the ongoing fight.


    She had immediately switched up strategies wisely, she focused half of her power sting the poison-oriented Martial Senior with concentrated sound attacks to keep her at bay.


    Thankfully, it was effective enough.


    The fact that the Martial Body of a poison-oriented Martial Artist was not centered around speed or durability meant that she could not handle being bombarded with Senior Xanarn''s offense very well.


    However, it also meant that she needed to handle her original three opponents with just half her full power.


    That was not good.


    Because originally, those same Martial Seniors were able to force her to a stalemate with her full power.


    Half her power could aplish that.


    BOOM!


    Senior Xanarn gritted her teeth as she did her best to guard against an attack that she was unable to defend against entirely with her sound shield.


    She reduced the amount of power she dedicated against the poison user but made sure that it never went below one-third. She needed to find the exact most optimal distribution of power. She needed to use the bare minimum needed to ensure that the poison user was kept at bay while diverting the rest towards maintaining a pure defense against the other three.


    One good thing was that this time her only focus was survival, whilest time she had dedicated some amount of power towards dishing back with her Banshee Whisper as much as the damage they inflicted on her.


    This time, however, she didn''t give a damn about putting so much as a scratch on her opponents. She only cared about surviving.


    Specifically, surviving past at least the Martial Heart phase.


    She knew that she could not survive if the fight proceeded uninterrupted. Four Martial Seniors, that too one that could bypass her sound as if she was created to counter her, was far too much for her to survive against, even if it was in the environment of Ajanta Ind.


    Her only hope of survival was¡­


    Her thoughts briefly drifted towards Rui.


    She felt less tense when she remembered that she was not alone.


    Rui, on the other hand, only grew more tense.


    (''Damn, she should especially be focusing on opening up the range as much as possible, but she''s too worried about the poison potentially affecting the civilians or the Squire guardians of the sect.'') Rui could instantly notice the shifts in patterns and infer the psychological reason behind all of them.


    This was actually something that Rui was not too afraid of. The gas poison that the Martial Senior employed was one that did not appear to linger at all after deployment, it seemed to disintegrate into the air harmlessly given how the green-colored gas did not seem to mix into the air, merely disappear in a strange and unexined fashion. Property ? of N?velDrama.Org.


    It made sense that she had adopted poisons with such a trait among others because otherwise she was too much of a liability to be around, and was prone to causing more damage to her allies than her enemies if her Martial Art ended up passively killing everybody around her. Even if she was a Martial Senior, nobody would ept such a person as an ally. Regardless, it didn''t matter here because it appeared that she had quite the amount of control over her Martial Art, and Senior Xanarn simply couldn''t apply the best solution to dealing with her.


    She was toomitted in her drive to protect the people that she had made amitment to protect.


    Thankfully, it appeared that she had kept in mind what Rui had told her. She made sure that she did not waste her Martial heart for anything other than surviving and making them burn their Martial Hearts.


    The quicker that she could force all of them to burn the stamina of their Martial Heart, the better it would work out for her in the end.


    Rui too approved of this. He had been refining his predictive models on the three original Kaddar Martial Artists with the new data that he had ess too while building a predictive model from scratch from the poison Martial Senior.


    The refinements in his predictive model made him less uncertain about the n that he hade up with. It made him more confident in executing it as time passed.


    Yet it was hard for him to watch Senior Xanarn suffering. Ultimately, she simply could not contain the rush of attacks from four Martial Seniors entirely. Over the course of the battle, she had been wounded many times, so much so that even her healing factor simply couldn''t keep up with the amount of damage that she took, they kept piling wound after wound on her body.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1151 Dire

    <h4>Chapter 1151 Dire</h4>


    Yet, she wasn''t the only one who was having trouble. She wasn''t the only one who had been forced to fight four Martial Seniors at once.


    Senior Leonil gritted his teeth as he rushed away, desperately trying to avoid the hail of attacks that he was being bombarded with.


    He was nowhere near as aggressive as he wasst time, just like Senior Xanarn, he had been forced to avoid even bothering with offense if he had any hopes of surviving.


    However, unlike Senior Xanarn, he didn''t have anypunctions of protecting the Floating Sect with his life. Of course, he was willing to defend the Floating Sect if it was in danger as he was doing so at the moment, but he did not care to sacrifice his life for the sect.


    He was one of the Martial Seniors who was on the sect for more selfish reasonspared to someone like Senior Xanarn.


    His fight was more destructive to the sect than Senior Xanarn''s fight was. He didn''t even mind if he ended up killing the Squire-level guardians as a result.


    Senior Sarak was in the middle between them, however, he couldn''t help but feel as though he had ended up bing the most useless of the three despite being the strongest. It was frustrating because he desperately wanted to join hisrades and relieve them of their predicaments, but s he wasn''t able to.


    He wasn''t fast, so he wasn''t able to juke his opponents and join his fellow Senior guardians.


    He wasn''t power or offense-oriented, so he wasn''t able to force his way through and get to hisrades.


    All he could do was stand there like a pir, feeling stupid and useless.


    He felt an immense amount of self-loathing, but his strength was centered around counter-offense, with a heavy nt towards defense more than anything else. Every time he tried to juke his opponents and move towards his allies andrades, he would fail.


    He wasn''t too concerned about his own well-being.


    Of the three of them, he had been the only one who was stronger than his all of opponentsst time, and that hadn''t changed.


    All eleven Kaddar Martial Artists went all out.


    They had an advantage, and they knew they had an advantage. Senior Sarak''s opponents knew that they couldn''t take him down, so they made use of every ounce of their energy to keep him where he was.


    It was easy too.


    All they needed to do was attack and force him to use the one technique in his Martial Art that he had, which he was best able to do while stationary.


    The stage had been set and the n executed by the Kaddar Martial Seniors was going on track.


    Senior Xanarn coughed some more blood as his expression tightened.


    The addition of a poison-oriented Martial Senior turned out to work wonders for the Kaddar Martial Seniors.


    Not only did the presence of the extra Martial Senior make things much harder for Senior Xanarn naturally, but also, the Martial Artist being centered around poison was the best way to make her feel that extra Martial Senior when battling.


    Rui''s expression grew increasingly more tense as the battle proceeded, just as her condition did. Property ? of N?velDrama.Org.


    None of the original three Martial Seniors she fought had actually inflicted much damage at all. They merely focused on burning all their power to ensure that their poisonous friend would be able to bypass her defenses really well.


    Rui did his best to analyze the kinds of poisons being employed, but he wasn''t able to. Still, she did have a few broad kinds of poisons.


    She seemed to have an anti-coagnt drug that made each wound bleed and take a bigger toll on Senior Xanarn.


    This was particrly bad for Senior Xanarn, and it burned her healing factor because of the lost blood in addition to wounds. It meant that Senior Xanarn may very well not survive until the end.


    Even if she did, she was going to be in a horrible condition.


    (''That isn''t all,'') Rui''s eyes narrowed. (''She''s also attacking Senior Xanarn''s senses.'')


    He could see that she was having a harder time registering her opponent''s attacks. Her ears were also bleeding and had taken on a strange hue.


    She was far from doing well.


    And she only got worse.


    Her breathing grew very ragged.


    Her wounds grew more severe.


    Her blood loss grew untenable.


    She was in circumstances that were beyond dire.


    Yet she fought fiercely. Even in her circumstances, she refused to allow her condition to get in the way of her duty of protecting the Floating Sect. She still minded her environment and made sure that she didn''t take the battle near the chambers, or near the entrance to the shelter in an effort to ensure none of the members of the sect were put at risk even as she was literally dying.


    Rui couldn''t help but feel immense admiration for her.


    It was easy to talk, but it wasn''t easy walking the talk right down to the T. She truly wasmitted to protecting those she vowed to protect, even if it came at the cost of her own health and life.


    Inparison, Rui''s Martial drive was a lot more self-centered. Hergely was driven by personal ambition, as well as a desire to protect his family. But aside from that, he wasn''t selfless.


    It was in moments like these that he truly felt humbled.


    He did not think he was wrong to have self-centered ambitions like Project Water, not at all. But he did admire people who dedicated themselves to others. He did not mind lending them his power if and when he could.


    Especially when he was attracted to them.


    His body tensed as he and Kane prepared themselves to act.


    The Martial Hearts had been zing for more than an hour and had now begun diminishing by the minute.


    Any time now, Rui, Kane, and Ieyasu could jump out and turn the tables!


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1152 Monster

    <h4>Chapter 1152 Monster</h4>


    The question was whether they would make it in time.


    "Argh!" Senior Xanarn copsed, drenched in blood.


    Her bnce was unstable, she seemed to be struggling to breathe.


    Her bronze skin has taken on a sickly skin tone.


    And yet¡­ She did not give up.


    She struggled back onto her feet, quivering as she took her stance.


    Yet the battle was all but over.


    She knew it.


    Her four enemies knew it.


    Rui and Kane knew it.


    And yet¡­


    The moment came sooner than Rui expected.


    It happened abruptly.


    The skin of the four Martial Seniors returned to normal.


    They were all extremely tired and strained, fighting Senior Xanarn on Ajanta Ind was truly a herculean task.


    Their Martial Hearts had already run out of juice, but that was fine, they no longer needed it against Senior Xanarn in her current condition. Even a Martial Squire could probably kill her in her current condition.


    That was why they were relieved.


    Overjoyed.


    The Floating Sect''s defensive prospects were operating on razor-thin margins. The copse of a single Martial Senior was the end. They were already at the final line.


    Senior Xanarn activated another sound-based technique, but it was merely the final resistance of a dying prey, they ignored the fluctuations of her sound-based technique as they prepared to kill her.


    It was over.


    They were certain.


    And it was because they were certain that they were surprised when the poison-oriented Martial Senior''s eye exploded.


    SPLAT


    "¡­Eh?"


    The three of them grew rmed at the sudden wound.


    Even Senior Xanarn opened her eyes in shock at the sudden urrence.


    DRIP DRIP DRIP


    Blood began pouring out of her eye like a river.


    Pure unadulterated horror sprung onto their faces as they noticed it wasn''t just blood.


    Cerebral fluid could clearly be seen mixed into it.


    A brain injury.


    For half a moment, they were frozen.


    Not even the vaunted reflexes of the Senior Realm availed them as their brains struggled to process the spontaneous events that seemed to defy causality.


    "HEALING POTION!" General Derftar screamed as his senses immediately swept through the area.


    That was when he saw them.


    Right before him with a heavily hidden presence.


    BOOM!!!


    Ruiunched the heaviest blow he had ever thrown in his entire life!


    General Dereftar gritted his teeth as did his very best to block the attack, the sheer momentum of the attack was such that he was blown away by it.


    He nced back up with a shocked expression, looking at his attacker. A young man with silver hair and eyes, with a bruised and wounded body seemingly.


    His bewilderment was palpable.


    What just happened?


    Just moments ago, they were about to kill a Senior guardian of the Floating Sect.


    Just moments ago, they were about to win the war against the Floating Sect.


    And now, he could hear that the heartbeat of hisrade had stopped due to an inexplicable attack that sted her through the eye and into her brain.


    What happened?


    Was it the two Martial Squires that he saw at the moment? But how did they do that? What was happening?


    Yet, his mind switched gears in less than a millisecond.


    He was a warrior. A Martial Artist. It was not easy for anybody to shake the mentality of one like himself.


    The three of them eyed Rui and Kane with daggers.


    A maelstrom of bloodlust boiled the very air about them as their minds sharpened.


    Any other Martial Squires would have frozen in terror.


    "Hmph." Rui snorted, his expression crumpled with rage as he unleashed profoundly deep bloodlust.


    Deeper than ever.


    It washed over them.


    Their hair stood on end as chills crawled up their skin.


    Their jaws dropped as they came to a shocking conclusion.


    "You¡­" The man stammered. "Martial Senior¡­!"


    The Senior-level aura could not be mistaken!


    Rui had pushed himself to the absolute limit, having constructed the most powerful Mind Mask that he ever had in his entire life.


    "You''re damn right I am." He exhaled deeply, feeling his body lighten astronomically as he felt a surge of temporary energy.


    WHOOSH!


    Rui moved so fast that he almost blurred in the eyes of his opponents!


    Yet, he wasn''t fighting ipetent fools. General Dereftar''s eyes narrowed as his expression grew graver.


    POW!


    He blocked Rui''s attack.


    Yet Rui simply grinned.


    SPLAT!


    The man felt a stab in his back out of nowhere!


    Kane drove his knife as deep as he could.


    "Dereftar!" One of hisrades shouted as heunched a powerful attack that moved so far that Rui wasn''t able to avoid it!


    BAM! Property ? of N?velDrama.Org.


    The attack was so powerful that it sted a hole across Rui!


    For a moment, Rui had forgotten that he was dealing with Martial Seniors.


    Yes, their Martial Hearts were gone.


    Yes, they were extraordinarily exhausted and stressed and far away from their peak performance, enough for Rui and Kane to cope the way they did against Senior Xanarn.


    But they were Martial Seniors nheless.


    They could st past his defenses like he was made up of paper.


    BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM!!!


    Rui ran away as he struggled to avoid them despite Void Step!


    Both their sheer speed and power were truly astonishing. Rui could feel that his body offered as much resistance to his attacks as cardboard did to bullets!


    Yet, it didn''t matter.


    FWOOOP!


    The wounds healed instantaneously.


    The three Martial Seniors froze on the spot in shock!


    "What¡­" Senior Xanarn murmured in shock.


    Was he immortal?!


    They grew more grave as theyunched more attacks at him, pushing their already exhausted bodies to the absolute limit.


    And yet, he simply ran forward, evading half, while the other half peppered holes across his body, and yet¡­


    They disappeared.


    "RARGH!" Rui yelled as heunched a supremely powerful tier-five Transverse Resonance attack while following it up with an immensely powerful Flowing Canon!


    BOOM!!!


    He pushed them back, oveing all their defenses and pushing them back with his two most powerful attacks!


    At that moment, they had a tteringly terrifying impression of him.


    An abysmally swift, powerful, seemingly immortal monster!


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1153 Destiny

    <h4>Chapter 1153 Destiny</h4>


    Perhaps this would have been worth pursuing in their peaks, but they had already pushed themselves beyond their limits.


    "Retreat!" General Dereftar coughed blood as he gritted his teeth. "The operation is a failure!"


    Rui watched as they rushed away from him, hoping to get as far away from the demon as possible!


    They could only grit their teeth and cut their losses. Internally, each of them was cursing. It was humiliating to run away when they were in such a dominating position.


    They were Martial Seniors. They were national treasures of a warrior each.


    Yet, they failed.


    Miserably.


    That alone was humiliating, and yet it wasn''t even the full extent of their embarrassment.


    Not only had they failed, but they had failed despite having a four-on-one advantage!


    An inexplicable Martial Senior came out of literally nowhere!


    It was mind-boggling.


    The intelligence of the Kaddar Treaty Organization was as clear as the brightest daylight. There were only three Martial Seniors in the Floating Sect.


    There had been only three Martial Seniors of the Floating Sect.


    And there would almost certainly be only three Martial Seniors of the Floating Sect.


    And yet, there was a fourth.


    His aura was that of a Martial Senior.


    His Martial prowess was easily on par with Martial Seniors in their base forms. He was paired up with an assistant Martial Squire who was incredibly powerful for his Realm. And he was frankly overwhelming all three of them almost alone.


    "Why didn''t he use his Martial Heart?" General Dereftar wondered as he thought back to when Rui appeared.


    He had appeared wounded and bruised.


    (''He must have already burned his Martial Heart out prior given his appearance¡­'') The man''s eyes narrowed. (''Maybe one of their guardians broke through and exhausted their Martial Heart and was not able to use it this battle. It would also exin why he didn''t show up earlier. He could not contribute if his Martial Heart was exhausted.'')


    That made a lot of sense to him in many ways.


    Yet he wasn''t happy.


    Not at all.


    It meant that not only had they failed despite their sheer advantage.


    But also, they lost a Martial Senior!


    General Dereftar''s heart burned as he thought of the death of Senior Ferin, the poison user. They were from the same nation, and they had just suffered a tremendously heavy blow due to his death. N?velDrama.Org owns ? this.


    But that wasn''t everything.


    The fact that the Floating Sect gained a new Martial Senior, but also an incredibly capable one meant that the difficulty of taking down the Floating Sect was significantly higher!


    They would need to bring several more Martial Seniors to have the probability of sess that they did have in this fight.


    General Dereftar didn''t know how he was going to look into the eyes of the emperor and tell him the extent of the humiliating defeat that they had suffered.


    "Hehe... They ran with their tails tucked between their legs!" Kane smirked.


    They had managed to kill one Martial Senior. That alone was momentous.


    "Great job Rui. You really did a number on them." He turned towards Rui with a wide grin.


    He froze.


    His eyes widened in horror at what he saw.


    DRIP DRIP DRIP!


    Blood.


    Everywhere.


    Rui inexplicably began bleeding from his eyes, ears, nostrils, mouth, and from hundreds of different ces across his entire body.


    He bled so much that even the gravely injured Senior Xanarn seemed healthypared to him!


    "Damn¡­!" Rui vomited blood as he fell to his knees.


    "RUI!" Kane yelled in shock and sorrow as he rushed to him.


    "Just thirty-four seconds¡­ Pathetic¡­" He murmured before losing consciousness.


    Kane desperately tried feeding him a healing potion.


    Yet, it didn''t work very well, much to his shock.


    He was able to stop the bleeding, but the wounds did not heal.


    Unbeknownst to him, Rui had used two Metabody techniques at once. Something that he had never done before.


    He used Void Forestep at the start of the fight.


    Then he used Weaving Blood immediately after.


    That was the reason, that for at least half a minute, Rui was able to push back three Martial Seniors, albeit exhausted and stressed as they were.


    Unfortunately, power did note free of cost.


    Using one''s Martial Body was extremely stressful on the body. It literally altered the spec configuration by force. The Godspeed technique was irrefutably unhealthy because it got rid of healthy and essential body mass for a boost in power, the negative consequences of which would be felt after the technique wore off.


    The same was true for Weaving Blood.


    It literally triggered mass cell death across the body.


    Now, what would happen if both techniques were used together?


    Rui had plotted many graphs and models based on empirical data he collected on them as well as his own theoretical extraptions, having arrived at many answers.


    Now he knew.


    If he used Void Forestep and Weaving Blood together, he would be invincible for thirty-four seconds.


    And he would die immediately after.


    If not for Kane''s Fulminata allowing him to react swiftly and administer potions on the spot, Rui would have undoubtedly bled to death.


    Hell, his condition was so bad that he would die before he even bled to death.


    The damage done to his body was so deep, so fundamental, that not even a high-quality healing potion could heal his wounds.


    The loss in body mass, the mass cell death that the Reaper''s poison has caused, was too great. The potion struggled to prevent his body from plummeting towards death.


    However, Rui had a small smile on his face even as he lost consciousness. He had seeded in protecting Senior Xanarn.


    Furthermore, he had gone and done far more than just that. Even as he lost consciousness, he knew the ramifications of his most recent aplishments would not be mild, he knew that some of the things that he had aplished were nothing short of historic.


    Yet it was not something that moved him, it wasn''t the first time.


    Or the second.


    Or even the third.


    By the time the dust settled, Kane couldn''t help but wonder how far his destiny stretched.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1154 Report

    <h4>Chapter 1154 Report</h4>


    The impacts of the second Senior-level conflict between the Kaddar Treaty Organization were vast. Far more vast than anyone partaking had expected.


    "What did you say?" A deep masculine voice boomed across arge throne room adorned with ostentatious decorations.


    The throne room was adorned with many seats, each more extravagant than thest the further towards the opposite end of the entrance they went.


    The king of the Graheria Empire sat on the giant gold and silver throne at the very end.


    General Dereftar gritted his teeth and endured the reproachful eyes of the many royal dignitaries who presided over the meeting.


    "General Dereftar," The king addressed the Martial Senior. "I asked you a question. How did Senior Ferin perish?"


    "¡­A fourth Martial Senior of the Floating Sect killed her before we realized it." The man clenched his fist as he squeezed the words out of his mouth. This content provided by N(o)velDrama].[Org.


    "I''m afraid I don''t understand," The king replied simply. "How did the three of you fail to notice an attack from the enemy until after it killed Senior Ferin? How did Senior Ferin fail to miss such a lethal attack?"


    Yet the general knew that the king''s mood was anything but simple.


    Or perhaps it was simple.


    Simply furious, that was.


    "It was¡­ a sound-based attack, your majesty," The general straightforwardly.


    "And¡­?" The king was not impressed by that statement, it meant nothing to someone who wasn''t deeply familiar with the intricacies of Martial Art techniques.


    "Sound-oriented Martial Art techniques are difficult to detect after execution," The man exined. "We usually rely on sensing the inception of the technique rather than the sound itself. For us to have not noticed it means that the Martial Senior could not haveunched it within half a kilometer of Senior Ferin, otherwise our senses would have alerted us to it."


    "That means that the Martial Artist that killed Ferin had to be a truly gifted marksman, correct?"


    "Yes, your majesty," General Dereftar nodded gravely. "Certainly something that only a Martial Senior could do. To hit a bullseye from that far without the Martial Heart¡­"


    He hesitated.


    "What is it?" The king asked, narrowing his eyes.


    "I would normally chalk it up to a long-range Martial Art, however, that man was also extremely powerful at close-range, and had absurd endurance and healing. I suppose it''s possible that he was an all-rounder, but all-rounders aren''t supposed to be that powerful in each individual field, so I can only specte that the fourth Martial Senior is extremely capable, just like his peers.


    "So not only did you all fail in your operation¡­" Pure fury could be heard in the king''s voice. "But a Martial Senior of our kingdom was killed, resulting in the loss of one of our precious few national treasures. On top of that, the Floating Sect now has an extra Martial Senior out of nowhere. Is that right?"


    General Dereftar winced inwardly, the reproach from the king was crystal clear.


    "Answer the question." The king sternly demanded.


    "That is correct, Your Majesty."


    The king inhaled and exhaled deeply, allowing the truth to finally settle in.


    It took him every ounce of self-control to burst out screaming in anger and frustration in a manner that was simply unbing of the ruler of the Graheria Kingdom.


    What he was forced to deal with was one of the worst oues possible. The probability of such a thing happening had been estimated to be extremely low.


    The thing that drove him mad was the one who had assured him that such a thing was impossible was the same man who was now telling him that that very impossible thing had somehow unfolded.


    He truly wanted to get up from his throne, walk down there, and chew him out face to face, yet he abstained.


    He could not go too far. Martial Seniors were too precious to the kingdom for him to even risk going too far with his aggressive criticism. He did not want to risk losing another Martial Senior due to having left him feeling disenfranchised.


    This was the problem with Martial Artists.


    They weren''t just weapons, they were also people. If they were disenfranchised, they would simply leave.


    Of course, Genera Dereftar would not leave so easily, because he was a loyal member of the military. Loyalty was something that was well-trained in the military. He had risen through the ranks as a Martial Artist and had been treated quite well by the nation.


    "General Dereftar." The king addressed him.


    "Yes, your majesty?"


    "Do you take responsibility for what happened?"


    "I do, Your Majesty."


    Regardless of what happened, they had ended up failing miserably. Someone needed to take responsibility. Even if General Dereftar was as much of a victim as everyone else, he needed to be a bit of a scapegoat.


    Of course, he would not suffer materially in any way, however, the Graheria Kingdom would not forget the stain on his record.


    Regardless, the failure of the mission would send ripples across the Kaddar Treaty Organization.


    "How many Martial Seniors would it take to ovee Floating Sect''s defenses? And feel free to be more cautious this time," The king red at him.


    "¡­Given the prowess of the fourth Martial Senior in his base form¡­ I would say he too at least requires three martial Seniors."


    The king''s expression darkened. "Does that not mean that a total of twelve Martial Seniors are required from the Kaddar Region''s end to match the might of the Floating Sect?"


    "Yes, Your Majesty."


    Yet again, the king''s formidable self-control was tested. He wanted to strangle the general with his own two hands but managed to refrain. Not only was it unbing of him as a king, but as a human, there was no way he could possibly strangle any Martial Artist, let alone a Martial Senior!


    All he could do was his very best when it came to dealing with the consequences of this fiasco and mitigating the losses.


    (''Even then¡­'') He clenched his fists. (''The war¡­'')


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1155 Outcome

    <h4>Chapter 1155 Oue</h4>


    The impact of this loss was not small. This was not a normal war. Ordinarily, the loss of onebatant was not enough to seal the deal.


    However, the Kaddar Treaty Organization was not in the best of circumstances. It had to squeeze and bleed thoroughly just to get as many Martial Seniors as it did get to defeat the Martial Seniors of the Floating Sect.


    However, not only did the number of Martial Seniors in the floating Sect increase by thirty-three percent, but the Kaddar Treaty Organization had lost one of its own precious Martial Seniors in battle.


    A devastating oue, and one that proved to be too much for the Kaddar Treaty Organization to ovee.


    Their decision to cease their war effort was not a light one, and certainly not a painless one.


    How could it be?


    The Kaddar Treaty Organization wasprised of the nations of the Kaddar Region, especially the ones that had suffered the most from the presence of Ajanta Ind. It was only in this generation of leaders that they had managed to trulye together, find a solution, and ultimatelymit to that decision to remove the scourge that was Ajanta Ind.


    And now, that decision hade crashing down.


    They could not afford to even maintain the attack anymore. In order to have a fair battle, they would need a whopping twelve Martial Seniors when they only had ten Martial Seniors on standby.


    They could not afford to tear away even more Martial Seniors from their current duties. Many of those duties were truly crucial and important, even whenpared to the war.


    That was why the Kaddar Treaty Organization ceased all war efforts immediately.


    They had lost the Kaddar-Ajanta War.


    Yet, despite never having officially exited a state of war against the Floating Sect, the entirety of the Kaddar Region and beyond hade to learn about the Kaddar Treaty Organization''s defeat in shock.


    Not a single person had expected the Kaddar Region to lose.


    After all, the biggest reason that the Kaddar Region had never been able to subdue the Floating Sect was that they could not wage war against the sect without potentially destabilizing or breaking the ind as coteral damage.


    The Kaddar region as a whole, was farrger than Ajanta Ind. Although it was true that arge portion of its capabilities could not be applied against the Floating Sect due to its altitude in the sky, it was also true that the Kaddar Region had enough capital and wealth to dwarf the sect astronomically.


    That was why almost no one expected the Floating Sect to be able to effectively resist the Kaddar Treaty Organization. The disparity in size was too great for anybody to imagine the sect seeding in resistance.


    That was why when the death of Senior Ferin was announced, everybody was shocked!


    The Kaddar Treaty Organization had made a big song and dance about deploying Martial Seniors to fight the Floating Sect because they had been very confident that they would have been able to win.


    However, that confidence was closer to arrogance, and the Kaddar Treaty Organization suffered a heavy blow due to their arrogance!


    That meant that the Floating Sect was genuinely superior to the Kaddar Treaty Organization, did it not?


    After all, the Kaddar Treaty Organization was unable to ovee the sect in any Realm of battle. The war of the Squire Realm was too costly to win, and the Senior Realm was simply one that the Floating Sect was objectively superior at!


    What shocked everyone was that the Kaddar Treaty Organization even let go of the no-entry perimeter that they had set around the Floating Sect.


    That meant that Martial Squires could enter the Floating Sect as they pleased!


    This revtion singlehandedly caused a movement across the Kaddar Region!


    Many umitted Martial Squires looking to grow stronger had immediately packed the bare minimum of their necessary belongings and set out towards the Floating Sect.


    This war had been the greatest publicity stunt for the sect, it served to advertise the sheer might of the Floating Sect, and more importantly, it highlighted the power of the Martial Squires within the sect.


    It gave immense confidence to all Martial Squires that the Floating Sect would be able to make them stronger.


    The Floating Sect had already been renowned as a location that made Martial Artists, Martial Squires at least, stronger. That was the reason that there was little to no way in which they would not benefit from the Floating Sect in some way or the other.


    Even from thend, tiny dots forming streaks heading towards the ind could be seen.


    This could not be undone.


    The Floating Sect had lost many guardians over the past year, a solid chunk of its entire guardian poption. Those spots would soon be filled up with eager and powerful Martial Squires not just from the Kaddar Region but also from beyond the Kaddar Region.


    After all, Rui had originally learned about the ce from Guildmaster Bradt who provided him with information on avenues for Martial Squires to grow stronger. It already had a reputation for being a ce where Martial Squires could grow stronger, and now that reputation would be strengthened greatly. Many Martial Squires woulde from even further beyond to join it.


    This meant that the overall quality of guardians of the Floating Sect would greatly improve.


    It meant that the Kaddar Treaty Organization would never ever be able to challenge the Floating Sect in the Squire Realm ever again, and it already was decisively inferior when it came to the Senior Realm.


    The Floating Sect even had the audacity to send out parties to encourage more Martial Squires toe,pletely unafraid of receiving retribution from the Kaddar Treaty Organization.


    A new dawn had begun shining on the Floating Sect. N?velD(ram)a.?rg owns this content.


    Yet, the circumstances of the Floating Sect were more dire than anyone had ever expected it to be, given their victory.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1156 Coma

    <h4>Chapter 1156 Coma</h4>


    "Ugh¡­" Rui groaned, opening his eyes slowly.


    A white ceiling immediately greeted his blurred vision. Other sensations began returning to his body by the second.


    Pain.


    "Ugh¡­" He grimaced as he felt it.


    It felt as though every cell on his body was on fire. His muscles ached, his bones screamed, and his flesh was burning.


    (''Note¡­ Never ever do that again.'') He sighed.


    He had not expected that the bacsh would be so overwhelming, he did expect to be crippled momentarily, but a preliminary scan of his body with his senses revealed that his condition was far more dire than he had expected.


    He had actually nearly died.


    He had already told Kane to carry a high-grade potion with him and to be ready to administer it to Rui at any moment. After all, this was not something that he could afford to y around. Kane had acquired the best healing potion that the sect had to offer, under the authority of the three Martial Seniors.


    However, it appeared that not even that potion was enough to ovee the sheer severity of the condition that he had inflicted upon himself.


    In exchange, however, he got to wield power that could only be stopped by a full-fledged Martial Senior wielding the power of the Martial Heart. Nothing else could stop him for that half minute.


    He was so strong that he could easily fight multiple Martial Seniors without their Martial Heart and even dominate them for that timespan.


    He could imagine what the three Martial Seniors that he fought off thought about him. There was no doubt that they thought he was a Martial Senior, and a particrly powerful one at that, on par as a threat with the other three.


    (''¡­That was the n, after all.'')


    The reason Rui had opted to exploit the element of surprise to kill Senior Ferin and then use the Mind Mask as a way to masquerade as a Martial Senior was to convince them that the Floating Sect had a fourth Martial Senior.


    Furthermore, he had stressed the ODA System to the absolute limit to nail Senior Ferin''s eyeball with the most powerful tier-five Transverse Resonance attack he couldunch.


    Not even a Martial Senior could block such an attack with their eyeball.


    He had hidden the sonic fluctuations of the activation of the Transverse Resonance technique behind the sonic fluctuations of Senior Xanarn''s technique. That was also one reason that literally not a single one of them had seen iting.


    All of it required Rui to time the attack just perfectly to disguise the activation of his technique from afar under the influence of Void Step.


    Yet, he had managed to nail it.


    The result?


    The instantaneous death of a Martial Senior in a dominating fashion that nobody could ever fathom a Martial Squire was capable of made them not even consider that he was a Martial Squire.


    It did not even enter their minds as a possibility.


    He grinned, he had already estimated a series of potential oues based on this. He didn''t have enough data to predict the exact result, but none of the possibilities were bad for the Floating Sect.


    "Guardians Falken," He heard a nurse addressing him as she approached. "You''re awake, that''s highly optimistic. How do you feel?"


    "Was my condition that bad?" Rui raised an eyebrow.


    She smiled. "The possibility of an indefinitea was on the table. You have been asleep for three days. However, now that you have woken up, there are no more risks. Your recovery will take a bit of time, but you will be fine."


    "Sheesh," Rui muttered.


    He couldn''t help but feel nostalgic all the way back to his days in the Martial Academy. He had been hospitalized a lot before he obtained his Martial Body.


    "Please do not push yourself," She insisted. "You need rest, more than anything." Property ? of N?velDrama.Org.


    Rui could only imagine how bad his condition was for the nurse to say that.


    Using two Metabody techniques at once was now something that he reserved as a forbidden technique.


    That made him chuckle.


    To think that he would actually have a ''forbidden technique'', like this was some kind of action fantasy webnovel.


    He shook his head, putting aside such silly thoughts.


    "What¡­ happened?" Rui asked her.


    If three days had passed, then there was no doubt that a lot had happened. He wanted to know everything immediately.


    "I have notified the Senior guardians of your awakening," She replied. "They will brief of you of everything that hase to pass."


    Rui raised an eyebrow, nodding. He felt that there was something ominous about that, but shook off the feeling.


    Soon enough, Senior Sarak walked into the room with a mncholic smile on his face. "I''m d you''re okay. We were truly afraid that the worst woulde to pass."


    "I''m tougher than I look," Rui jokingly said as he shrugged.


    "Oh, believe me, young man, I know," He said with a serious tone. "I may be a Martial Senior, but I would rather make an enemy of a Martial Master than you."


    That was high praise.


    "I''m sure you''re curious to know what has happened," He sighed.


    Rui furrowed his eyebrows.


    That was not the attitude of someone who had gotten everything he hoped to achieve.


    "What happened?" Rui asked with more severity this time.


    The air grew tense as Senior Sarak met Rui''s strong stare with mncholic eyes.


    "What happened?" Rui repeated himself.


    Senior Sarak exhaled deeply. "Xanarn has fallen into an indefinitea. The doctors have informed me that it is unlikely she will ever wake up."


    Rui''s eyes widened at the revtion. His fingers quivered as he tried topose himself. It would not do him any favors to get worked up in his condition.


    "What happened?" Rui asked for a third time


    "Her actual injuries were not as bad as yours¡­" He borated. "But it''s the poison. It has entered her brain and is crippling its ability to stay conscious. She is in a highly delicate state where she could suffer brain death. I''m told it is unlikely that she will wake up."


    "I thought the Floating Sect had excellent medical facilities due to how self-dependent it was," Rui gritted his teeth.


    "We do¡­ We actually have among the best." He sighed. "But it''s not enough. A solution does not exist within the sect, we need to one from the outside."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1157 Confused

    <h4>Chapter 1157 Confused</h4>


    The air grew solemn.


    Rui needed to process what he had heard.


    Senior Xanarn was in aa.


    For a brief moment, he almost did not know exactly how he ought to feel.


    They hadn''t known each other for too very long, nine months at most. They had had on-and-off hookups every once in a while.


    He enjoyed herpany. She was a quirky person with a surprisingly childish sense of humor for someone of her age and experience. Still, for some reason, he found it endearing.


    He looked forward to the times that he spent with her, especially when they had fun together at night.


    Their rtionship provided him with warm physical intimacy that soothed his soul in a way that was different from anything he had ever experienced in both lifetimes.


    Yet when confronted with these circumstances, he almost didn''t know how to feel.


    It had hurt him when Senior Sarak had told him what had happened.


    And yet, there was also a cloud of uncertainty.


    It was as though his heart did not know how sad he ought to have felt.


    Should he have felt as much grief as if she were just an ordinary friend? Or perhaps a close friend? Or a best friend like Kane? Or¡­ perhaps a lover?


    He didn''t know.


    He didn''t like that he didn''t know. Yet he didn''t know what to do about that. What did people do in such circumstances?


    He put the matter aside for a moment as he turned his attention back to Senior Sarak, narrowing his eyes. "A solution from the outside¡­? Are there any possibilities or rmendations from the medical department?"


    "I am told that there are potions and esoteric medical treatments out there that can help, but they are exceedingly difficult to procure," He sighed. "In ordinary circumstances, I would have set out myself in order to acquire them to wake Xanarn up but¡­"


    "You can''t go in these circumstances," Ruipleted his sentence.


    Senior Sarak nodded. "That reminds me, you haven''t heard about what has unfolded regarding the kaddar-Ajanta War, have you?"


    "Not at all," Rui replied. "The nurse informed me that you would brief me."


    "Allow me to exin what has happened in the past three days," Senior Sarak continued. "The battle ended soon after you drove away the three Martial Seniors. The members partaking in other parts of the fight also swiftly retreated when they learned about the death of one of their peers."


    Rui nodded, which had fallen well within his predictions.


    The reason he had foretold that was because he had already gotten deep insight into the psychology of the Kaddar Treaty Organization.


    To it, victory was only the second most desired oue. The number one most desired oue was the survival of all their Martial Seniors.


    Rui hade to that realization long ago when he carefully analyzed the number of Martial Seniors that the Kaddar Treaty Organization versus the amount of time it took for them to finally grow a spine and deploy Martial Seniors


    That was also why they sent three or even four Martial Seniors for every Senior guardian to fight the Floating Sect. They did not want to lose a national treasure. None of the individual nations wanted to be the one to bear that cost.


    After all, even if the Kaddar Treaty Organization won at the cost of a Martial Senior, it would mean that the nation that lost the Martial Senior essentially sacrificed a national treasure for the sake of all other nations in the Kaddar Region.


    No nation was willing to make that trade, obviously.


    That was why when the Kaddar Martial Seniors learned of the death of their peer, they didn''t spend too much time on the ind. They had probably received strict instructions on what to do if one of their peers died, and one of those steps involved retreating immediately.


    After all, if they lost a Martial Senior despite their numerical superiority, what''s to stop them from losing another now that they are numerically weaker and even more vulnerable?


    That was the thought process that upied the minds of the nations that deployed the Martial Seniors.


    One of the reasons they stayed for a bit against Rui was because they were on the very edge of having killed Senior Xanarn and they didn''t want to squander that opportunity.


    "I''m guessing Senior Leonil was gravely injured but Ieyasu managed to intervene and the two of them were able to survive till the very end," Rui continued.


    Senior Sarak nodded. "That is exactly what happened. Once the battle ended, Leonil and I mostly focused on the sect, hoping to make more in-depth preparations for the next wave of Martial Seniors, but something happened that made that n irrelevant."


    "The Kaddar Treaty Organization must have withdrawn from the war, if we''re especially lucky they might even recognize the Floating Sect''s im over Ajanta Ind as legitimate, although that is unlikely," Rui spected. N?velDrama.Org owns ? this.


    An expression of surprise shed across Senior Sarak''s face. "You already know¡­ So you mean to say you truly meant what you said back then?"


    "Hm?"


    "You know, when you said you would win the Floating Sect the war," Senior Sarak exined, his expression growing more incredulous. "Did you¡­ Did you predict that this would happen?"


    Rui smiled. "Maybe, maybe not. It doesn''t matter at the end of the day. What else happened?"


    The man stared at Rui for a few seconds, before sighing. "The Kaddar Treaty Organization did not officially announce the end of the war, however, they withdrew the prohibition of entry into Ajanta Ind. Furthermore, based on our sources, the Martial Seniors we fought that had been on standby for the next assault have been dismissed and deployed elsewhere by their respective nations."


    Rui nodded. "They don''t want to publically admit that they lost to us. I imagine that in the past forty-eight hours, a huge influx of Martial Squires has greeted the Floating Sect."


    "Indeed," Senior Sarak nodded with an ted smile. "It has been wonderful to see waves of enthusiastic Martial Squires join our sect."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1158 Choice

    <h4>Chapter 1158 Choice</h4>


    Rui could tell that Senior Sarak truly loved the Floating Sect. He had given the Floating Sect his heart and soul and possessed a genuine passion for the organization that he led. Property ? of N?velDrama.Org.


    He could also tell that this was distinct from Senior Xanarn''s drive surrounding the Floating Sect. She protected the Floating Sect because she hadmitted herself to protecting the sect as a guardian.


    Her drive to protect the Floating Sect was not as driven by sheer love for the sect as it was driven by the standard of protecting what she had vowed to protect, no matter what.


    Rui listened to the man go on and on about how new eager and enthusiastic Martial Squires had finally entered the Floating Sect impressed by the sheer Martial might that the sect had disyed in the long war against the Kaddar Treaty Organization.


    He could tell that just watching the newly inducted guardians upy their chambers and begin training was something that he man lived to see every day.


    "The future of the sect is bright¡­ Or it would have been had Senior Xanarn has been around to see it," The man sighed. "Regardless, this wouldn''t have been possible without you."


    "Hm?" Rui raised an eyebrow.


    "I am not a fool, young man." Senior Sarak gave him a knowing smile. "The act of killing a Martial Senior, that Senior-level aura that you disyed, pushing back the three Martial Seniors that you had been fighting. All of that led them to believe that the Floating Sect had gained an additional Martial Senior. I''m sure that yed a role in our victory in this war. The Floating Sect owes you an unpayable debt."


    Rui shook his head. "I was just doing my duty as a guardian of the Sect."


    The man smiled. "We are blessed to have a Martial Squire like yourself. Although you certainly have a long road ahead of you due to how young you are, I am certain that you will be a Martial Seniors one day. I look forward to that day, your training here will surely aid you in the process."


    Rui did not believe that he was as far away from the Senior Realm as Senior Sarak projected, but he put that detail aside for now.


    "About my training here¡­" Rui began. "I intend to leave the sect."


    This rmed Senior Sarak visibly.


    In his eyes, Rui had be an asset that was on par with the likes of Tokugawa Ieyasu. Rui was not someone that he could let go if he had any sense in him.


    He considered his words carefully for a moment.


    "¡­Is there anything that is not to your liking?" The man asked with care. "We are willing to go out of our way to amodate your inclinations."


    "It''s not that," Rui shook his head. "I appreciate the Floating Sect, I truly do. However, I cannot take the steps that I need to take in order to be stronger, here. The Floating Sect can help me fulfill one of the conditions of the breakthrough to the Senior Realm, yes, but it is not enough. Furthermore, I have already spent close to a year here and have already experienced a lot of growth, enough to get me close to the threshold of fulfilling one condition. The more time I spend here, the lesser the growth of the fortitude of my body. Rather than simply sitting idly here. I can grow stronger by growing the individuality of my Martial Art in a manner that extracts all of the potential of my Martial Body so that I may one day discover my Martial Heart."


    The man stared at Rui, before slowly nodding. "You have a good understanding of what it takes to be a Martial Senior. Very well then, I bid you good luck and farewell. Of course, given that your wounds have yet to heal, you''ll most certainly be spending time here until you have been restored to your peak. After that, please do as you wish."


    Rui nodded. "However, that isn''t the only reason I wish to leave."


    "Hm?" The man raised an eyebrow. "What else is there?"


    "Senior Xanarn¡­" Rui hesitated a bit, before steeling his expression. "I will find a way to heal her. If there is a solution out there, then I will find it, and I will heal her."


    The man''s eyes widened. "You¡­ care for her that much?"


    Rui remained silent. "That is what I wish to know."


    Senior Sarak did not understand what that meant. Regardless, he did not dare deny Rui''s help. Even if Rui was a young Squire, he knew that he was capable of fulfilling his word.


    In the very brief time that he had known Rui personally, the man had proven himself to be beyond anything he had ever expected.


    The man possessed a sharp intellect and a depth of insight that Senior Sarak frankly found intimidating, furthermore, and the tender age of twenty-three, he had already reached the upper echelons of the Squire Realm.


    Furthermore, he killed a Martial Senior and then pushed back three Martial Seniors so hard that they thought that he was a Martial Senior himself.


    Senior Sarak was fifty-two, and yet, he had never seen anything quite like Rui in the thirty-five years that he had been a Martial Artist.


    As far as raw untapped potential went, Senior Sarak suspected that not even Ieyasu was his match, although he knew that Ieyasu was stronger.


    (''To think that our sect would be blessed with two generational talents with monstrous potential¡­'')


    "Then in you, we''ll ce our trust," Senior Sarak replied. "The Floating Sect needs time to heal before we can restart our external operations. Many guardians have perished, and our foundation has be riddled with holes. If you are willing to undertake this burden, then we will entrust you with it. You have proven yourself to be worthy of our trust and faith. Know that you''ll always have a home in the Floating Sect."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1159 Split

    <h4>Chapter 1159 Split</h4>


    Senior Sarak did not trouble Rui for much longer, leaving to allow Rui to get the rest that he needed and deserved.


    Rui on the other hand, had plenty of time to think about what he needed and wanted to.


    He thought about his current circumstances.


    (''Complicated¡­'') He sighed.


    He had not forgotten his original predicament that set him on the path in the journey to the west. He needed to be strong enough to eliminate the threats to his family and himself. In order to do that, he needed to at least reach the Senior Realm at a bare minimum. Otherwise, he could forget trying to kill Chairman Deacon.


    That was why reaching the Senior Realm well within the time limit of ten years was his sub-goal.


    That was why he traveled to ces like the Umiana Trench, Thundering Valley, Crexeet Town, and the Floating Sect. These ces all made him stronger in some fashion or the other.


    However, for the first time since then, he would be traveling for a reason other than Project Water, and gaining more power.


    He sighed deeply as thought about Senior Xanarn. He didn''t know how much to feel what he was feeling.


    He didn''t even know how far he was willing to go.


    (''I guess we''ll find out.'')


    He disliked the strangeck of rity he felt in his heart when it came to matters surrounding her. It was unlike anything he had ever experienced in his life.


    He hated uncertainty, especially when it came to his own self. Thefort of rity was something that he had grown used to across two lives. Now he was confronted with emotions that he did not know what to make of.


    It became the third reason for his journey.


    A journey for ambition.


    A journey for power.


    And now, a journey for self-discovery.


    (''I wonder if-'')


    "Rui!"


    His thoughts were interrupted.


    "Kane," Rui smiled.


    "Oh my god, I''m so goddamn happy you woke up!" Kane eximed with genuine relief appearing on his face.


    "Was my condition that bad?" Rui smiled wryly.


    "Bad? BAD? It was HORRIFIC. Your SKIN was falling apart! Don''t you EVER do that again!"


    Rui sat in ce as Kane chewed him out for another five minutes.


    "Ok ok¡­" Rui gestured for him to stop with his hands. "I get it. But the only reason I did that was because I had faith in you."


    "Well don''t. That shit is too heavy for me," Kane snorted, earning an amusedugh from Rui in response to his candor.


    "Huff¡­" Kane sighed as he calmed down, regaining hisposure. "Well, I''m d we can get back to normal. The war ended so we don''t need to be on edge anymore."


    "About that¡­" Rui began. Property ? of N?velDrama.Org.


    "Hm?" Kane knitted his eyebrows, staring at Rui with sharp eyes.


    Having spent much time with Rui, he hade to recognize Rui''s penchant for chaos and trouble.


    "I''m nning to leave the Floating Sect," Rui told him.


    "What?" Kane frowned. "Why?"


    Kane didn''t understand.


    Rui had told him how Ajanta Ind could elerate the speed at which they fulfilled one of the conditions to break through to the Senior Realm. He had told him how he intended to remain in the sect for as long as was needed to fulfill that condition.


    Had he fulfilled that condition?


    "The new technique that I am working on requires resources that cannot be found in the Floating Sect."


    "¡­I see," Kane sighed. "It''s a shame, but we''ll have to leave then."


    At that moment, those words gave Rui an insight.


    "This time, I believe it is best if I go alone," Rui exined. "I do intend to return to the Floating Sect when I have found what I am looking for. Frankly, you''ll simply be wasting time apanying me. It is better if you grow stronger here on the sect."


    Rui nced at the knife hung in a scabbard by his belt. "After all, I believe you have experienced some epiphanies."


    Kane looked ufortable as Rui noticed what he had been meaning to talk to him about.


    "You don''t disapprove?" Kane put his hand on the hilt of the knife. "I thought you would remind me of my decision to never wield one ever again and tell me to throw it away."


    Kane looked uncertain.


    At that moment, Rui felt a deep sense of regret hearing those words.


    (''We are not peers. I am old enough to be his grandfather,'')


    It did not help that Rui was deeply insightful. It warped their rtionship and the influence that Rui had on Kane was great.


    At that moment, Rui realized that Kane had be psychologically dependent on him.


    "Kane," Rui narrowed his eyes as he spoke with a solemn tone. "Your Martial Path is yours, and yours only. No one, not even the mightiest of Martial Transcendents can tell you where it leads. What you do with your Martial Art, and where you take it, are matters that are yours to decide, nobody else''s. Listen to your heart, that is the only way we can awaken our Hearts."


    Kane nodded slowly.


    "You don''t have to make a decision immediately," Rui told him. "You could, but you don''t have to. Just make sure that whatever choice you make when you do make it, is your choice, and nobody else''s."


    Kane nodded wordlessly again.


    "I think it''s best if you take this opportunity to remain in the Floating Sect working on your Martial Art rather than follow me around as I work on my Martial Art," Rui informed him. "It''s just a temporary split. We cane back stronger."


    "Alright," Kane nodded slowly as his eyes wandered around giving what Rui said some deep thought. "So we''re going to be splitting up for a while. How long will you take?"


    He looked at Rui with anticipation.


    "Hard to say," Rui replied with a nonmittal tone. "It could be as little as half a year to more than a year. I really cannot make precise estimates."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1160 Recover

    <h4>Chapter 1160 Recover</h4>


    The issue was that he didn''t quite know how long this would take. The goal was too open-ended.


    At least when he left the Shionel Confederation, he had a very clear idea of what his timeframe was and the difficulty of the task. Ever since he met Senior Xanarn, he also knew the conditions it took to break through to the Senior Realm, which made him more able to plot out the difficulties in oveing the hurdles before him.


    But when it came to finding a solution to her conditions, that was something he could not estimate the timeframe for. He couldn''t even establish any meaningful conditions for him to satisfy.


    "That''s quite some time¡­" Kane replied.


    "It''s not all that much," Rui shook his head. "It''ll pass before you know it. Especially when you have all your work cut in front of you.


    Rui referred to all of the introspection and experimentation that Kane needed to do before he incorporated daggers into his Martial Art. There was no strict reason to not do it, but generally, people were careful about adding weapons to their Martial Art unless they were absolutely certain that their Martial Paths were relevant enough to it to do so.


    The reason for this was varied. It was not easy to create weapons for Martial Artists of higher Realms and grades due to the requirement of materials whose tensile strengths and properties were well above the limits of their Realm.


    However, that was not the only reason.


    Weapons were toomittal. Even the smallest of weapons impacted Martial Art across the board. The presence of weapons changed how one would engage in all aspects ofbat too much.


    That was why Rui had not yet added a weapon to his Martial Art. If he got a sword, then he could not be anything other than a swordsman. Trying to be a wrestler or a striker while carrying a sword was the dumbest decision anyone could make. N?velDrama.Org owns ? this.


    However, in Kane''s case, he could see that this decision made sense. Kane was an evasive maneuverer that focused on evading his opponent''s attacks and attacking the openings in their movements created by attacks. Given that he focused so many bodily resources on evasion, it was best to use an external element to amplify his offense.


    A simple dagger or two made him more lethal as long as he was willing to sacrifice more conventional offense like striking.


    This was also an eptable trade-off as Kane actually hated working on his offense more than anything. Rui couldn''t help but recall how much of a fuss he made in the Umiana Trench because it was centered around offense.


    If Kane dide to adopt daggers, Rui was sure that he would be able to execute it just fine. It would make him a much more dangerous Martial Artist.


    The only thing he would need to be wary of was the fact that individuality surrounding his offense was going to be difficult toe up with.


    The two of them spent some more time chatting with each other before Kane left Rui to rest.


    Rui spent a few more days in the clinic recovering bit by bit as he brought his body back to peak health. It took some time to make for the cell death and the lost mass in his body that truly ended up putting it on the verge of death.


    Such a thing could not be healed easily, even for the Martial Body. Had an ordinary human suffered such a degree of harm and damage without dying, they would have never ever recovered naturally through ordinary treatment. Yet Rui''s Martial Body healed itself in less than a week even with its crippled healing. Martial Bodies were foundationally superior in every regard.


    Soon after Rui made a full recovery, he actually spent several days simply breaking into his recovered body, ensuring that his physical parameters had not been affected by the horrible condition that he had afflicted himself with.


    Thankfully, his recovery was fine. His muscle and bone strength had not declined in any way, and while his body did feel a little stiffpared to normal, his flexibility had not suffered either.


    His stamina had returned back to its base degree soon enough as well. His body had regained all the mass it had lost and replenished all the cells that had died, he finally looked the way he was before.


    "Huff¡­" Rui sighed lightly afterpleting an intensive workout exercising his body. (''Everything is optimal. It''s time to leave.'')


    He had already gathered some light portable belongings and bare basic necessities simr to what he would carry on a long-term mission.


    Among the many things he did while he was preparing to leave was visit Senior Xanarn. He had needed special permission from Senior Sarak to be able to visit her just once. She had been ced in a quarantined ICU and Rui needed to undergo a round of sanitization to visit her.


    He didn''t like what he saw.


    Her skin was sickly ck, many shades darker than her bronze skin. It was not a human skin tone, closer to the color of tar, a color that no human ever ought to be.


    He could smell the poison inside her skin.


    Countless syringes connected to tubes gued her body, it was hard for Rui to even look at them without wincing.


    He walked closer to her.


    Her breathing was controlled mechanically. So much so that Rui was rtively certain that she would die on the spot if not for the machines that looked nothing short of vital life support.


    He exhaled as he held her hand, ying with it. As if that would rify the tumultuous storm of emotions that he felt about her.


    It wasn''t long before he left, heading straight towards his chamber to gather all his belongings and step off the ind, heading out to find solutions to the many problems that gued him.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1161 Answer

    <h4>Chapter 1161 Answer</h4>


    "Take care man," Kane sped his hand in a partial hug. "Don''t get lost."


    "Will do," Rui smirked. "Figure out your path forward."


    "I will," Kane nodded. "Good luck.


    Just like that, the two of them split ways. Kane was number one on the list of two people that Rui would be seeing off.


    "You have collected all the documentation you need, correct?" Senior Sarak asked.


    Rui nodded.


    He was referring to information surrounding Senior Xanarn''s condition. Rui had memorized all the information surrounding her condition, but he also had a copy of the information in case he needed it to have a third party verify that whatever solution he was considering on acquiring was actually able to treat and cure Senior Xanarn.


    "Good, before you leave, I have something for you," Senior Sarak noted as he reached for a drawer in his desk, pulling out a well-crafted badge with the symbol of the Floating Sect engraved on top of it.


    "This¡­" Rui murmured as he studied it.


    "It makes you an official ambassador of the Floating Sect," Senior Sarak smiled. "It means that you may wield the name of the Floating Sect to fulfill the objective centering Senior Xanarn."


    Rui raised an eyebrow.


    That was a considerable amount of trust. Senior Sarak was giving Rui a lot of power that could be misused to bring harm to the sect. For example, if Rui ran around making powerful enemies in the name of the Floating Sect while wearing that badge, the Floating Sect would suffer greatly as it would end up gaining more enemies for absolutely no fault of its own. Property ? of N?velDrama.Org.


    This kind of power was normally given to highly qualified and trusted diplomats.


    Rui hadn''t ever disclosed to anyone that he had undergone diplomatic training and had been deemed a qualified foreign service officer by the standards of the Kandrian Martial Union, so Senior Sarak did not have much of a foundation to ce such trust in Rui.


    However, Rui wasn''t a fool. Although it seemed as though this gesture was one that indicated deep trust, it was actually the other way around.


    It was to get Rui to trust the sect with this gesture.


    He could tell that Senior Sarak was keen on making Rui join the sect on a more permanent andmitted basis. However, the Floating Sect by its nature was loose. It was scarily meritocratic and the cost of not being aspetitive as externalpetition that sought a spot in the sect was death.


    It meant that it was hard to get guardians to truly consider the sect their home. Home was not a ce that watched its residents die at the hands of outsiders.


    That was no home, that was a battlefield.


    It was that trait that hampered emotional investment.


    And for the most part, it was fine for the sect and functioned just perfectly. It was a highly effective way to maintain quality standards and was one of the reasons that the Floating Sect was unshakable in the war when it came to Squire-level conflict.


    However, there also were talents who shined so bright that they were worth anchoring to the sect no matter what.


    Tokugawa Ieyasu was one such guardian who was worth investing in the ind. Rui was most certainly another of simr value. Rui was sure that Kane too fell in this category.


    He had made sure Kane understood this and was entirely cognizant of the manners in which they would try to integrate him into the sect.


    He wasn''t sure how well Kane would be able to handle such things without Rui''s presence, but he had already decided to distance himself from Kane for some time and let him handle his own problems by himself.


    Regardless, trying to get Rui to have greater faith in the Floating Sect for expressing so much trust in him when they handed him the keys to their political capital. By giving him that power, he was sort of conditioning him to get used to it and normalize possessing and using that power, making him less inclined to leave the sect in fear of losing that normalized power.


    He didn''t necessarily fault Senior Sarak for employing such means to try and get Rui to be attached to the sect. At the end of the day, the man was a leader of a powerful force and had to look out for its interests, including but not limited to securing incredible talents.


    It was simply unfortunate for him that even this degree of maniption was too crude and elementary to work on the likes of Rui.


    "I appreciate the aid and trust that you are showing me by giving me this power," Rui replied with a smile. "I will make sure to use it to help Senior Xanarn."


    The man nodded. "I look forward to that. Good luck."


    That was thest person on the list that he was supposed to see off.


    Yet it appeared that there was one person who wanted to see him off before he left.


    "I believe this is the first time we''ve actually spoken, guardian Ieyasu," Rui offered the strongest Martial Squire of the Floating Sect a nod.


    The man had interrupted Rui just before he was about to leave the ind.


    "What do you want from me?" Rui asked impatiently.


    The man stared at Rui silently for a few seconds.


    Rui had to admit that his passive aura possessed a depth that he found hard to understand. It was no wonder that he had momentarily mistook him for a Martial Senior the first time they stood in each other''s presence.


    "Uhh¡­" Rui tilted his head at the silent man. "How can I hel-"


    "You¡­ are the answer," He spoke softly.


    Rui''s eyes widened as he unleashed a maelstrom of pressure.


    Ieyasu''s eyes narrowed. "You are the answer. You are the final piece of the puzzle. You are the final step I must take to reach a higher Realm of power."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1162 Challenge

    <h4>Chapter 1162 Challenge</h4>


    The Floating Sect grew rmed for a moment as two auras that did not seem to fit in the Squire Realm boomed atop the ind.


    The temperature seemed to chill a few degrees.


    The air between them grew taut, wrung by the pressure that the two of them exerted.


    Rui''s eyes sharpened. "You speak much."


    "I have much to say," Ieyasu stared into Rui''s eyes with his dark eyes. "All these years¡­ All that patience¡­ It seems my prayers have been answered. A Martial Art with a depth that eludes even my eyes."


    His passive tone grew more intense. "Don''t you see? You are the key."


    Rui stared at him with a sharp expression, silent.


    Suddenly, the air changed.


    The pressure disappeared.


    "Grow stronger," He turned around. "The stronger you are, the greater the final step you will be. Your Martial Art will serve as the gateway to my Martial Heart. Your death will baptize my journey into a higher Realm."


    He nced back at Rui. "I, guardian Ieyasu, challenge you to a duel upon your return."


    "I ept," Rui snorted.


    The man simply walked away at those words.


    Rui simply stared at his retreating figure with a sharp stare.


    He did not refuse this.


    He did not aim to prevent it.


    In fact¡­


    "Hmph," the edge of his lip curled up in a brief mild smirk.


    He looked forward to it.


    Imitative Evolution versus Adaptive Evolution.


    Which one would prevail?


    They shared many parallels, yet their cores were decisively in conflict.


    This was not just a conflict between Martial Artists or Martial Art.


    At its core, this was a battle between ideologies.


    The loser would lose more than just the fight.


    Rui had a feeling that the loser would lose something far more important than that.


    He had dedicated his heart and soul to adaptive evolution. So much so that his Martial Path was a manifestation of his drive towards adaptive evolution.


    What would it do to his psychology if he realized that the very essence of his Martial Art as an attempt to fulfill Project Water was fundamentally wed?


    (''That would break me¡­'') He narrowed his eyes.


    He believed that Bruce Lee''s philosophy, the philosophy that formed the foundations of Project Water and the Flowing Void Style was the way to the ultimate Martial Art. That core belief had not only been the basis of his Martial Path and Art but also who he was as a being.


    Losing that fight would invalidate that. It would invalidate who Rui Quarrier was.


    Would he be able to pursue his Martial Path after that?


    "¡­" Property ? of N?velDrama.Org.


    He knew the answer to that question, even if he did not want to admit it.


    He suspected that the exact same thing was true for Ieyasu.


    That was why his challenge was so solemn. Even though he didn''t have anything to materially gain such as a better chamber, this fight was probably more important to him than any other he had ever had.


    If they lost, they may very well cripple their Martial Path.


    If they won¡­ Then the very opposite may very well happen.


    The sheer existential validation they would get in their Martial Path would deepen it by leaps and bounds perhaps.


    Neither of them knew.


    It appeared that Ieyasu was confident that fighting Rui could activate his Martial Heart. Meaning that he believed that Rui could challenge his Martial desire, the desire that drove him down his Martial Path. Rui had already concluded that only circumstances where one''s prime desire for pursuing one''s Martial Art was challenged, could the Martial Heart be triggered provided the other conditions were aplished.


    In that case, he was actually simr to Rui.


    Rui wanted to create a supreme Martial Art that could adapt to everything


    A Martial Art that truly threatened to fundamentally negate that premise such as imitative evolution, could potentially drive him to lengths that he had never been pushed to before. Part of the reason for this was because he had never run into a Martial Path that conceptually challenged his own.


    He had run into powerful and talented Martial Artists, but none of them had a Martial Art that contradicted the premise of his own.


    Kane''s Dancing Wind Style was certainly not something that attacked the premise of his Martial Art since evasive maneuvering was something that could be adapted to, conceptually. The same was true for the Martial Art of his friends.


    But imitative evolution denied the premise of his Martial Path. After all, it was premised on the axiom that all Martial Art could be imitated, and all Martial Art could be improved. How could one adapt to a superior version of one''s self?


    Then again, how could one imitate what was evolved to defeat imitation?


    One of these was true, and superior to the other.


    Neither of them was willing to concede that spot.


    (''Well, I''d lose the fight as I am now,'') Rui shook his head.


    They both knew that.


    This wasn''t because his Martial Path was weaker, this was simply because he, the Martial Artist, was weaker. He hadn''t developed his Martial Art as much as Ieyasu had.


    That was understandable to both of them.


    Rui was far younger than him.


    That was why Ieyasu had told him to grow stronger. It was why he challenged Rui to a duel after he returned.


    He wanted Rui to not return until he was truly confident that he could defeat Ieyasu.


    Rui had obliged. He would not return until he finished the first iteration of Project Metabody.


    They had exchanged few words, yet a mutual understanding had formed between them. They had much to gain from the defeat of the other, and much to lose from the victory of the other.


    Neither of them could back down, backing down was the same as admitting that they weren''t confident in the core premise of their Martial Path. They both instinctively felt that if they admitted that, the Upper Realms would forever be out of their reach.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1163 Unknown

    <h4>Chapter 1163 Unknown</h4>


    Rui realized that he didn''t know a thing about Ieyasu, about who he was and where he came from.


    That was normal, of course. They were merely part of the same impersonal organization. They had been included in the same operation against the Martial Seniors of the Kaddar Region.


    But they had never actually even interacted prior to this moment.


    (''Whatever,'') Rui shook his head. (''It doesn''t matter for now. I just need to focus on what I''m setting out for.'')


    Soon enough, he stepped off the ind, sky-walking away.


    Instantly, the weight on his body plummeted, as the air thinned.


    He heaved a sigh of relief as he treaded through the airfortably.


    All this time in the Floating Sect had truly increased his physical prowess, everything felt iparably lighter than before. The passive training that came with simply living in the Floating Sect was something that could not be dismissed, and he could definitely feel the effects of it on his body.


    The constitution of his body was fundamentally stronger. He was probably already very close to achieving the threshold needed to be able to survive the activation of the Martial Heart. This was much quicker than the rest of his peers, and the reason for that was because having turned into a Martial Squire at an extremely young age had meant that his Martial Body was still undergoing growth to reach the prime of its physical life, and had undergone a lot of growth during puberty.


    Having obtained it earlier, it underwent growth quicker than those who became Martial Seniors.


    The average age for breaking into the Squire Realm was around the age of twenty-five, and Rui had done so at the age of seventeen. Five years of growth in the Squire Realm meant that his body progressed towards meeting the threshold of the Martial Heart earlier than those that became Martial Squires after their bodies had fully matured into adulthood.


    Still, that did not mean that he was on the very cusp of bing a Martial Senior even if his body was close to reaching the necessary threshold. N?velDrama.Org owns ? this.


    After all, many guardians of the Floating Sect had spent many years in the Floating Sect having strengthened their bodies to meet the threshold.


    Yet almost none of them were considered to be genuine a candidate for the Senior Realm. The reason for that was simply because the body was the most basic necessity, yet also the least challenging part of the sheer difficulty of breaking into the Senior Realm.


    The sub-par individuality, theck of a powerful enough drive, and theck of circumstances that could serve as the trigger for the Martial Heart were the biggest reasons that the one thousand guardians of the Floating Sect were still Squires and not Seniors.


    He recalled what Senior Xanarn had told him about the sect.


    The sect could help them fulfill the body condition with ease, but could not otherwise improve their ability to break through.


    The more time he spent in the sect, the more true her words rang. The sect, as an environment, was too detached from the drives of the Martial Artists who traveled far and wide to train in the sect.


    That was one of the reasons that he had made the decision to leave. He did not want to be psychologically entrenched in the Floating Sect.


    There was a vast world out there that he could indulge in while he searched for a solution for both Project Metabody and Senior Xanarn''s condition.


    He made sure to avoid the Kaddar Region like the gue, sky-walking far above sea level and the clouds, using Mind Mask to minimize his presence to make sure that he did not even earn their attention.


    Just because the war was over, it did not mean that the Kaddar Region''s hatred for the Floating Sect was gone, if anything, it was far worse than it had ever been.


    The Kingdom of Graheria in particr would do everything in their power to take him down if they learned how much they had suffered because of Rui.


    Not only had Rui infiltrated one of their military bases and gotten valuable intelligence on their superweapon, but he had also killed one of their Martial Seniors.


    That''s why he went well out of his way to ensure that he was well above even the clouds until he had put some distance between them and the Kaddar Region.


    Ajanta Ind could still be seen in the distance due to how big it was, and even it was a small dot in the sky.


    STEP


    Rui returned tond for the first time in nearly a year.


    "Huff¡­" He sighed. (''Time to get going.'')


    He actually had multiple possible destinations in mind.


    Back when he was looking for destinations that could allow Kane and him to be able to gain the resources needed to master their lightning techniques, he had narrowed down on three locations that could give them ess to the resources they needed in exchange for Martial services without any long-termmitments.


    They had only visited one out of the three of them; Crexeet Town.


    Rui had seriously considered going to Crexeet Town to look for what he needed. He had already built up a positive reputation there, and he would probably be weed back with open arms.


    However¡­


    He shook his head. (''They don''t have what I''m looking for.'')


    Crexeet Town was highlypetent when it came to Squire-level Martial Art research and development, however, it was increasingly limited when it came to matters that exceeded the Squire Realm.


    He was not confident that they would have what he was looking for when it came to his Metabody technique due to how powerful the technique was.


    He knew for a fact that they would not have the means to deal with a Senior-level poison, especially when the Floating Sect''s medical department had already pronounced her condition to likely be permanent.


    In that case, he had no choice but to turn to the other two possibilities.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1164 Powerful

    <h4>Chapter 1164 Powerful</h4>


    Of the two of them, a branch of the Virodhabhasa Faith was the one that Rui had set out to approach, mostly because it was the closest of the two destinations, or rather the least further away. However, it meant going even further west of the Floating Sect, he would have to travel a considerable amount of distance even at the speeds at which Martial Squires traveled.


    However, he was confident that there was a good chance that he would find the things that he was looking for there. He recalled what he had learned about the Virodhabhasa Faith from the bare basic information that he had purchased from Chairman Deacon.


    All he knew was that it was a faith centered around a Martial Artist known as the Virodhabhasa. As far as Rui knew, there were no Martial Artists who went by that name or that moniker. He had searched for Martial Sages and Martial Transcendents with that name, and he couldn''t find any.


    Chairman Deacon had assured him that no Martial Artist in existence was recognized as the Virodhabhasa by the Virodhabhasa Faith.


    Regardless, the fact that it was a faith centered around Martial Art meant that it was a great avenue for Martial Artists to gain ess to resources that they would not be able to obtain otherwise.


    Furthermore, the religion was wide and powerful, one of the four major religions that had spread across the entire continent. So he was sure that the religious organization would have what he needed, even if was visiting one Martial church that was closest to him. Thatbined with the fact that the religion worshipped Martial Art in general, he was sure that he would simply be able to negotiate a deal that allowed him to get what he needed.


    This was especially the case when he had been entrusted with the official backing of the Floating Sect. It made it much easier for him to be taken seriously by the church branch of the faith that he was going to.


    It was located in the Seonmun region, a rather remote and small purpose.


    Nothing special, but enough for his intents and purposes.


    From the research that Rui had done, it was a ce that gathered Martial Artists, especially Martial Squires, which was Chairman Deacon had shared with him in the first ce. It was a Martial church that was meant for Martial Artists to receive the grace of the church, different from ordinary churches that catered to the average person.


    Based on the information that Rui had gotten from Chairman Deacon, the church mobilized the power of Martial Artists across the entirety of the continent and employed that power for the betterment of the church.


    It made most of its earnings through donations from diehard religious zealots from all sses of society that believed in the so-called Virodhabhasa, it also engaged in a modest amount of Martial Art brokership services simr to the Martial Union, connecting Martial Artists to consumers of Martial Art services.


    All in all, it didn''t strike Rui as anything particrly special aside from how widespread it appeared to be.


    Rui didn''t really see religion in the Kandrian Empire, which was a little unusual in hindsight. Monarchies usually enforced their power with religion, with concepts like the Divine right of kings, which stated that monarchs received their right to rule through God and could not be held ountable to humans.


    Yet the Kandrian Empire was surprisingly secr.


    Not that he wasining, he disliked religion, but he did find it strange.


    Regardless, the outside world did not follow suit.


    And so Rui would be interacting with religion for the very first time in his second life.


    He was not excited.


    He was actually wary.


    Not just because he disliked religion as a concept, but also because he knew how dangerous religion could be.


    Especially powerful religions.


    They were not to be messed with. Rui was not conceited enough to believe that his power as a Martial Squire was relevant against enormously far-reaching and powerful organizations. This was no different from thinking his power as a Martial Squire was enough to take on the merchants of the Shionel Confederation.


    There was a reason that he had hidden his identity while he acted as the Voider in the Shionel Confederation.


    Because he was far too weak to be able to stand up to them on the merit of his own power.


    It was why he had run away from the Shionel Confederation in the first ce.


    He was extremely determined to not let such a thing happen here. He intended toe to know everything that he needed to know in order to make sure that he never did anything that resembled making an enemy of the powerful religion.


    In fact, the first thing that he needed to was get to the bottom of the religion and make sure he understood what the religion was all about. Most religions had a holy book that contained the scriptures and doctrines of the religion, as well as the stories surrounding it.


    He intended to memorize all of it.


    He intended to memorize so well, that not even the most esteemed religious leaders of the religion would be his match.


    The worst thing that he wanted was to do something that waspletely fin and innocuous in a general context but was an incredibly rude and offensive gesture to the Virodhabhasa religion and gets persecuted for that!


    This made them more annoying than dealing with merchants. Merchants like Chairman Deacon and Guildmaster Bradt were far easier for Rui to predict because their interests and their ability to fulfill those interests were both something that Rui could deeply predict.


    However, the same was not true for religious folks. He had absolutely no idea how they would act in any given situation, it was much harder to predict what the more delusional and irrational members of a religion would do in any given situation.N?velDrama.Org owns ? this.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1165 Familiarize

    <h4>Chapter 1165 Familiarize</h4>


    That was why he didn''t even mind signing up for a crash course on the Virodhabhasa faith. After all, he had no idea what the framework of the religion was. He intended to make sure he knew all of it inside out and backwards front.


    This was all to ensure that he did not say or do anything that could remotely be the basis for being cklisted by the Virodhabhasa Faith.


    The Martial church was arge town that drew in martial Squires from all over the continent that were interested in gaining more power, being cklisted.


    Rui spent the next two weeks traveling. The distance to the Seonchun Region was quiterge, and for one, Rui wasn''t too much in a hurry to cross it at full speed.


    He hade to appreciate the moments when he enjoyed the diversity and beauty of the world. There was just something that hit differently about a world with very little pollution.


    The breeze and the wind hit differently, entirely. Property ? of N?velDrama.Org.


    Rui found himself indulging in these moments from time to time when he truly felt that he hade across something that was truly worth appreciating.


    It made his journey that much more pleasant.


    Yet felt as though thest two years had all been gone in a blur under all the stress that he was experiencing.


    Growing stronger for the sake of his family, while important, was actually a drive that made him a lot stronger in exchange for poor mental health due to all the stress that came with it.


    It put an immense amount of pressure on Rui to make sure that they wouldn''t get hurt due to him being ipetent.


    Yet when he traveled in such a manner, he was a lot more rxed and able to take in positive experiences better than when he was confined to a single location.


    Sometimes he had to remind himself that the smaller things across his journey could be important to him, perhaps even the most important to me for him barring his Martial Art, and family.


    Even as he traveled, he made a realization. (''I have been traveling regrly for quite some time now¡­ I''ve grownfortable with this manner of living.'')


    That was a strange feeling.


    He had spent most of his life rooted in the Kandrian Empire, and he had beenfortable with that for most of his life.


    However, in hindsight, that was because he hadn''t realized that the world was filled with so many wonders.


    Of course, in hindsight, he should have. When things like Martial Art and esoteric resources should have tipped him off that the world was probably filled with supernatural phenomena and was worth traveling to experience.


    Furthermore, now that he had spent quite some time actually living in such a fashion. It had be what was normal to him.


    And it had.


    Frankly, he could not imagine being crammed into a single ce for an extensive period of time anymore.


    He had begun to truly enjoy the very process of traveling.


    Yet, all journeys needed toe to an end.


    After two weeks of traveling, he had finally arrived at his destination.


    The Seonmun Region as a region was quite bare and empty by itself. It appeared that the region wasrgely empty barring one solitary town in the middle of what appeared to be otherwise barren and uninhabited.


    The town itself was decentlyrge rtive to the intelligence that he had gotten from guildmaster Bradt. Furthermore, what surprised Rui was that the town was remarkably well constructed and engineered, in contrast to what he had been made to expect.


    (''Did the old man lie to me?'') Rui narrowed eyes.


    Then again, nearly two years had passed since he got the intelligence from guildmaster Bradt, it was unreasonable to expect such outdated intelligence to remain to still be urate after all this time.


    "Still¡­" Rui frowned. "This¡­"


    It was quite incredible to watch as he bore witness to the fine and splendid town that was entirely dedicated to one religion.


    Now, it was time to actually get there.


    The Seonmun Region was a valley with very narrow cliffs. In a way, they acted as a way to filter out all the Martial Apprentices or even normal humans who tried getting in somehow. Only Martial Squires and above were qualified to gain what they wanted from this particr Martial Church.


    And he could imagine why Martial Churches did not cater to Martial Artists of too many Realms, it became progressively harder, and it just was an unwise application of resources.


    After all, there were regions that were too barren or poor enough that it did not make sense to house a Senior-level Martial Church, for example. In these cases, the Virodhabhasa Church was a ce that had Martial Artists that corresponded to the state of Martial Art in various ces.


    Eventually, Rui reached the church town on foot.


    At the official entrance to the town, Rui ran into two strong Martial Squires guarding the entrance into the town.


    "Purpose of entry?" One of them asked him, growing wary.


    "¡­Trade," Rui replied simply.


    "¡­Come this way¡­ You will be processed." The man replied, ushering Rui into a building adjacent to the gate into the town.


    Thankfully, the process was not too rigorous or demanding. It did not demand any paperwork or identity verification. It truly acted as an open church to any and all that sought to enter it.


    Once he did enter it, it was something else entirely.


    It was as though he had stepped into a whole new world entirely.


    The first that he noticed was that the sheer quality of infrastructure was quite impressive for a religious organization.


    This only made him more nervous though.


    Any religion with that much wealth and power was something that he was not inclined to let his guard down around, especially now that he had entered it willingly and was subjecting himself to it willingly.


    Regardless, the first order of things was to familiarize himself with his new circumstances.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1166 Transcendent

    <h4>Chapter 1166 Transcendent</h4>


    Soon enough, he was led into a building and into a wide hall with a counter of staff members who immediately supplied him with forms and statements to sign.


    Thankfully, it was nothing that proved to be too difficult. Most ces on the Panama Continent had light immigration protocols, and the Seonmun branch of the Virodhabhasa Church was no different.


    Once Rui entered the town, he took the opportunity to gather as much information as he could.


    The first step was, of course, simply observation.


    The architecture of the town reminded him of Vatican City. Every avenue of art, engineering, and architecture was given a religious tone. He saw various sculptures and artwork decorate the streets and the buildings of the town. It was in sharp contrast to any other ce that Rui had ever visited before.


    Although this town did serve to attract Martial Artists towards the Virodhabhasa Faith, it did have a fair bit of normal residents. Yet they were anything but normal. They all wore ethnic attire that bore religious inclinations, and it seemed as though everything in the town revolved around religion.


    Furthermore, he could tell by the bodynguage and demeanor of all the people that this wasn''t just an upation, this was a way of life for them. They ardently devoted their entire day to the religion.


    Rui felt ufortable.


    The town was truly beautiful, but the heavy religious inclinations of the people of the town creeped him out. It was one thing to believe in a God, it was another thing to center your entire life around such a belief.


    Of course, it wasn''t as though Rui expected too much more from a church town dedicated to faith. Still, he disliked religion and he hated cults.


    Furthermore, it wasn''t as though the entire town was like that.


    For instance, the second that Rui stepped into the town, he sensed countless Martial Artists.


    In fact, it was not an exaggeration to say that half of the poption wasprised of Martial Artists.


    He senses countless Martial Apprentices, many Martial Squires, and even some Martial Seniors!


    Furthermore, when he sized the few of them he could immediately see, he could tell that they were not necessarily as religiously inclined as the ordinary townsfolk.


    (''They''re visitors, just like me.'') Rui mused.


    ording to the information that he purchased from Guildmaster Bradt, the town was a Senior-level town that possessed a great many resources that he could ess.


    What surprised him was the fact that such a heavily religious town was also highly sophisticated Martial Arts and technological sectors centered around Martial Art, potentially able to provide him with the information that he sought.


    This was something that ran contrary to what he knew of societies with heavy religious inclinations. Usually, such societies were technologically behind more secr states. As far as Rui knew, cultural liberalism was the hallmark of a religious society taking its first step towards bing a technologically sophisticated society.


    Yet it appeared because of the heavy focus on Martial Art, and all fields that were useful to Martial Art, the Virodhabhasa Faith had managed to maintain religious dogma while also bing a more sophisticated religion that did not fall behind on the times.


    (''Interesting¡­'') Rui mused as he came across arge bustling religious shoppingplex. (''Fancy.'')


    It appeared that being religious did not stop them from making the best use of those who visited the town.


    He stepped in, taking a good look around.


    A majority of themodities sold were trinkets, products, or idols that were meant for personal consumption devotion or religious rituals.


    "Wee, young man," An elder woman smiled, greeting him with a gentle beckon. "Do you have an interest in joining the Virodhabhasa Faith?"


    Her entire body was armed with religious attire. Rui had no illusions that this woman was probably the most religiously indoctrinated person that he had ever met in his entire life!


    Yet, she exuded warmness and grace that was sincere.


    "I was just interested in learning about it," Rui exined.


    "Then you havee to the right ce," She smiled even more. She plucked a book from a table in the store.


    It was a dark leather-bound book with a symbol that he had seen everywhere in the town.


    "I''m guessing this¡­" Rui muttered.


    "This is the Virodhaveda," She exined with a deeply reverential tone and demeanor. "This is the holy book of our religion, one that was promulgated by our progenitor the Astral Sovereign."


    Rui''s eyes widened as he recognized that name.


    The Astral Sovereign was a Martial Transcendent, and one of the most ancient Martial Artists alive. It is said that the man had been alive for nearly half millenium, since the Age of Martial Art had begun.


    That was the reason that Rui had been taken aback.


    He had no idea that the Virodhabhasa Faith had been started by a Martial Transcendent of all people.


    He narrowed his eyes in confusion.


    That didn''t make any sense. Why would a Martial Transcendent of all people start a religion?


    As far as Rui was aware, the birth of religion was rooted in ignorance, fear, and hope. These three human traits were the core reason that religions came into existence.


    Why would a Martial Transcendent, a being who was so far detached from the human condition, begin a religion? Property ? of N?velDrama.Org.


    It didn''t make sense.


    Rui''s first suspicion was that this was made up.


    After all, being supported by a Martial Transcendent would make their religion insanely popr. So perhaps the true religious leaders of the religion had collectively fabricated a lie that the Martial Transcendent had given birth to their religion, just to gain his implicit endorsement.


    Spreading the lie that their religion was created by a Martial Transcendent would also make their religion more pliable to Martial Artists like himself. After all, as a religion centered around Martial Art, their biggest target audience was Martial Artists like himself. Especially younger ones of lower Realms like himself.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1167 Revelation

    <h4>Chapter 1167 Revtion</h4>


    Of course, regardless of whether that was true, regardless of what the conspiracy behind the religion was, the woman standing before Rui was certainly not a nefarious conspirator. She was probably a native who had been born and brought up in the Seonmun Church town and had been indoctrinated into the Virodhabhasa Faith their entire lives.


    She probably believed that she was doing something that was truly good.


    "This holy book, the Virodhaveda, was written by a Martial Transcendent?" Rui asked, trying to hide the skepticism in his voice in order to avoid pissing anybody off.


    "Indeed," She smiled, regarding the book that she had passed on to Rui with a reverential expression. "If is said that two hundred and fifty years ago, when the Astral Sovereign reached the Transcendent Realm, he received a prophesy from the very world itself."


    Rui narrowed his eyes.


    "He received Divine Revtion that warned him of a cataclysm that would consume the very foundation of the world," Her voice quivered. "One that would erase all life across all dimensions of this beautiful world. One that no ordinary force could possibly halt."


    Rui furrowed his eyebrows as he watched the elderly woman grow emotional, choking up as her eyes teared up.


    This woman was beyond help, she was so heavily indoctrinated that her religion had taken a deep hold of her and her emotions.


    "As the Martial Transcendent despaired, the Divine Revtion revealed that not everything was lost," Her plummeting emotions suddenly took a turn for the better as she began smiling again. "The Divine Revtion spoke of a savior. One unlike any other the world had ever seen."


    Rui''s eyebrow rose as the woman expressed pure blissful devotion.


    She did not entertain, for even a second, that she might have been wrong.


    No.


    "This savior was an otherworldly being. A being who obtained power from another world. A being born in another world, a being that came from another world."


    Rui''s eyes widened in shock!


    Ordinarily, he would have been more than happy to dismiss her words as religious delusion. It was all too easy, after all. Many religions made supernatural empirical ims of all kinds. Most of them were wacky and obviously false, but that was the way that things worked.


    Yet, Rui wasn''t able to dismiss this im.


    Not at all.


    How could he possibly scoff at the notion of a being emerging from another world when he himself was a being from another world?


    As a resident of Earth, and then a resident of Gaia, he knew full well that there were other worlds out there either in this universe or another, and he knew that under some circumstances it was possible for their consciousness to travel over from one world into this one.


    To this day, he did not have even the slightest shred of understanding or insight into how his reincarnation had urred. The only thing he knew was that it had indeed urred.


    That was why he couldn''t dismiss her words lightly.


    The atmosphere grew heavy as the delusional indoctrinated woman spouted what a reincarnated man knew was not entirely nonsense.


    "This savior was said to be a Martial Artist. Yet no ordinary Martial Artist. A Martial Artist said to possess unprecedented power. Power, unlike anything that the world has ever seen."


    She paused, taking a moment to bring her hands together in prayer as she muttered a few chants under her breath, before turning back to Rui.


    "Do you know what Virodhabhasa means, young man?" She asked with a gentle tone."


    "¡­I''m afraid not."


    "The world Virodhabhasa is a word from the native dialect of the region that the Astral Sovereign is from," She exined with a loving tone. "It means ''antithesis''. The Virodhabhasa is a being with a Martial Art that is said to be the antithesis of all forces in the universe! It is the harbinger of destruction to all Martial Art, monsters, and weapons in the world! A Martial Art said to be the anti-existence to everything that dares to oppose it!"


    It was once again Rui''s turn to be shocked.


    The ims she made, to any rational being, were ones that could easily be dismissed as the nonsense of religious fervor.


    Yet, once more, Rui could not dismiss her words.


    Because the Martial Art of the Virodobhasa was what he hoped to achieve with Project Water. If he made fun of that Martial Art as something that was impossible, would he not be insulting Project Water and his idol Bruce Lee?


    That was he could not muster up even a hint of rejection, if only to not invalidate his own Martial Path.


    Just then, for a brief moment, a strange thought entered his mind.


    He quickly shook his head. (''Not everything is about you.'')


    He didn''t want to grow arrogant with such thoughts. His attention quickly returned to the woman before him.


    "Our Lord and Saviour, the Virodhabhasa is the only being that can protect us from the cataclysmic destruction of the world!" She insisted, taking a moment to pray as she muttered a few more chants.


    She turned back to Rui. "This Virodhaveda that you hold in your hand contains the tranted Divine Revtion that the Astral Sovereign received from the world. Why don''t you give it a read with an open mind?"


    "¡­I''ll be open to that," Rui replied. "Thank you for indulging me."


    "Not at all, young man. Thank you for gracing me with your attention." She bowed. "All Martial Artists are sacred. It is thanks to all of you that are civilization stands strong."


    This was where the fanaticism for Martial Artists came from. Rui was not aware of the extent to which this went, nor the nuances behind it and its rtion to the Virodhabhasa. This content provided by N(o)velDrama].[Org.


    However, he had gotten what he needed to get. He quickly paid her the sum in gold before heading deeper into the town.


    The architecture was just as beautiful as it had been before, but it had taken a different undertone to Rui.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1168 Speculation

    <h4>Chapter 1168 Spection</h4>


    The various paintings, sculptures, and other artwork that he saw decorating the town made more sense.


    There was a central faceless Martial Artist within all of these works, a Martial Artist that was often pictured in a divine light.


    That was the so-called Virodhabhasa, the deity central to the Virodhabhasa Faith. For some reason, the im that the religion was founded by a Martial Transcendent no longer sounded too absurd for some reason.


    He couldn''t help but feel weird about all of this. He had traits that the Virodhbhasa Faith would be very interested in hearing about.


    What would happen if they learned that he was a being from another world? Property ? of N?velDrama.Org.


    What would happen if they truly understood the depths of his Martial Art, and his ambitions for his Martial Art?


    He shuddered.


    That would not end well.


    They would either lock him up for a religious inquisition, or they would begin worshipping him.


    Or, they would dere him an enemy of the faith for trying to usurp the position of the Virodhabhasa faith.


    There were a multitude of possibilities, but Rui wasn''t sure which one would ur. He found it hard to predict religious fervor, after all.


    Regardless of which of those oues happened, he would be in a world of trouble as they were all terrible oues that he would rather not ur.


    That was the reason he was wary of this religion now.


    Frankly, this was worse than what would happen if he revealed that his Martial Art could exponentially increase the rate of breakthroughs. The Virodhabhasa Faith was far more radical and irrational than the Martial Union.


    It was also undoubtedly more powerful. He truly was a mere speck before such a powerful religious organization, and that was the reason that he began feeling increasingly wary of the circumstances that he was in at the moment.


    He began increasingly regarding his surroundings with greater caution and wariness. Of course, this was a bit paranoid, as it was impossible for the Virodhabhasa Faith to ever find out that he was a reincarnated being from another world unless he himself divulged it.


    There was no way that he was ever going to do anything that stupid.


    As long as he acted as any other Martial Squire did, he would be fine, there was no reason for any problems to ur.


    For now, he needed a ce to stay. He quickly booked a simple room in an inn that he would be residing in for the time being.


    "Huff¡­" He sighed, tired, ncing at the Virodhaveda that he had just purchased.


    The holy book wasn''t too thick, but it was still far toorge for it to be a single prophecy.


    (''That prophesy must have taken a long time if it was truly conveyed all of this,'') He picked up the book, opening the first page.


    The first page contained a statement that was allegedly from the Astral Sovereign himself.


    I write this with a solemn heart. The revtions I received that day on the day of Reckoning were profoundly moving. Nothing has ever been the same ever since. The Virodhaveda contains all of the insights and knowledge that I gained that day from the very world around us. Open your heart to the wisdom of the world, and pray for the Virodhabhasa, for they are the only beings that can bring us salvation. As children of the world, we must find the Virodhabhasa. That is the Divine mission of the Virodhabhasa Faith.


    Rui raised an eyebrow.


    If this was actually from a Martial Transcendent and not something the religious leaders of the religion cooked up, then it certainly was quite shocking.


    Rui wondered whether a Martial Transcendent would allow their name to be improperly used by a religion that was spread around across the entire world to spread all kinds of religious dogma.


    (''Probably not,'')


    If he was a martial Transcendent and he heard about a religion trying to use his name to endorse their nonsense, he would instantly put an end to that bullshit.


    The fact that two hundred and fifty years had gone by and Astral Sovereign hadn''t taken a single step to deal with this probably meant that they weren''t simply making stuff up about his involvement with the religion.


    In that case, it would mean that the Martial Transcendent was involved, the question would be to what degree.


    Had he truly experienced a divine revtion?


    Or was this something that he had fabricated to create a religion that he could lead to gain more power and influence around the world than he already had?


    Religions were tremendously powerful in more than one way. They could radicalize people and create a poption of brainwashed extremists who would essentially be willing to die for the sake of the religion that they believed in.


    This served as a powerful force. Perhaps even a Martial Transcendent found it useful to employ the power of religion to bring even more power to himself.


    However, that begged the question of why he didn''t create a religion centered around himself. The Virodhabhasa Faith was a religion whose central deity was not the Astral Sovereign. Thetter was merely a prophet in this religion that had received divine revtion from the very world itself.


    Had he turned himself into the central deity, he would be able to wield power far more directly and in an unrestricted manner.


    That led Rui to believe that he probably did not fabricate the religion to gain more power unless he was as stupid as he was creative.


    However, even if he didn''t do it for power, it did not mean that the religion was not fake. Rui was an atheist scientist. He held extremely high standards of evidence and proof for the extraordinary ims made by religions, and he was not so inclined to take anything for their word.


    Yet there were several things that he simply couldn''t deny due to the fact that he knew to be true, and strived to make them true himself.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1169 Familiarize

    <h4>Chapter 1169 Familiarize</h4>


    Rui gained a more thorough understanding of the Virodhabhasa Faith the more he studied it. The religion was actually a lot simpler than the religions he knew of back on Earth. Those religions were much older and had a far greater expanse of mythologies and religious stories and texts.


    Many religions had pantheons that were infested with countless gods each with their own set of mythological stories.


    Even religions with a single deity epassed an ocean of stories, doctrines, and other information relevant to the religion.


    The Virodhabhasa Faith was a lot simpler in that regard. Its holy book mostly contained the absurdly lengthy divine revtion that recounted many details that Rui considered to be extra fluff to spice up the myth of the Virodhabhasa Faith. There were chapters filled with metaphorical hyperbole adding more details to embellish the existence of the Virodhabhasa.


    Yet even as Rui grew bored reading them, there were some excerpts that drew his attention.


    Epassing Creation and Destruction, the universe bows before their splendor.


    With a wave of their hand, Martial Paths may rise above or fall under.


    Rui couldn''t help but wonder what that alluded to, but he felt strange about this particr small excerpt. The strange parallels that ran between his Martial Path, and what he hoped his Martial Path to be and the Martial Art of the Virodhabhasa.


    Of course, that did not mean he was convinced that he had any rtion to this religion or the deity of the religion, he just found the parallels to be eerie.


    However, he aplished what he had set out to do, he gained a good understanding of their beliefs, principles, and customs.


    They revered Martial Artists as beings blessed by the Virodhabhasa. Beings that came to rise only because the Virodhabhasa created Martial Art, and aided them in the discovery of their Martial Path.


    This was a view that probably did not sit well with Martial Artists who weren''t indoctrinated into the religion prior to bing Martial Artists.


    After all, every Martial Artist, no matter how humble and modest, took pride in being a Martial Artist. It was difficult to be a Martial Artist, and there was usually nothing that truly stopped one from being a Martial Artist except one''s self.


    Regardless, he wasn''t concerned by that at the moment. He was reassured that it was not likely that he would be ill-treated by the Virodhabhasa Faith. The reverence of the Virodhabhasa Faith meant that it took extreme circumstances with which they could antagonize and persecute Martial Artists.


    Still, there were some taboos that not even Martial Artists could get away with.


    Defiling or ruining artwork that contained any depiction of Virodhabhasa was strictly criminalized within the town and was considered a sin.


    Assaulting a religious leader would be punishable by death, no matter the Realm of the offender Martial Artist.


    There were a number of strictws and lesser strict guidelines that Rui made sure to absorb without anyint.


    As long as he followed suit, he would not be in any trouble.


    One thing he was d about was that the Virodhabhasa Faith was a religion that stringently pursued open-mindedness and eptance. It was a sin to employ force or unwee coercion to force or manipte someone to join the Virodhabhasa Faith.


    This was another thing about the religion that relieved him. He would be very troubled if it came to light that the religion forcefully converted everybody who tried to enter the town. However, that was something that the Virodhabhasa Religion strictly refused.


    Rui suspected the reason for this was to ensure the religion did not sh with more secr states or states with their own ethnically dominant religions.


    Gaining the reputation of an evil cult was something that wasn''t worth employing coercion. N?velDrama.Org owns ? this.


    The religion never used the stick to gain more followers, instead, it was extremely proficient in applying the carrot to gain more followers. Especially Martial Artist followers. It applied the massive earnings from brokeringmissions and receiving donations from across the continent to create facilities and resources for training, growth, and the development of Martial Artists across a remarkable number of Realms, thereby attracting flocks of Martial Artists their way.


    In that regard, Rui couldn''t help but admire the religion, because it was so dedicated to its religious cause, that it funneled an overwhelming majority of its profits into the expansion of the faith allowing it to fulfill its religious cause with even greater effectiveness.


    Seeing all this capital being expended ultimately for its religious cause made Rui curious about it. The Virodhabhasa Faith sought to find the Virodhabhasa in order to have him protect them from a cmity in the distant future.


    Did they really think they could find one person on this continent?


    The Panama Continent was gigantic. It''s surface area far exceeded the surface area of the of Earth, and correspondingly the poption of humanity upying the continent was also far greater than the poption of Earth during his time.


    Searching for one individual, that too with such vague and unspecific qualifiers, was far harder than searching for a needle in a haystack.


    Still, it appeared that the Virodhabhasa Faith was rather determined to seed nheless.


    Regardless, now that he had gained a better understanding of the Virodhabhasa Faith, he could now avoid pissing off the religious folks of the town, and make it out just fine.


    He ventured out of his little inn, taking a stroll across the town once more. He had yet to take off his mask in public, and he didn''t intend to do so. It was ultimately better that he kept his identity, even his false one, a secret one.


    He walked slowly, taking in the town, yet he wasn''t aimless.


    He was heading to the central church of the Seonmun Church Town. It was the church that connected all seven hundred and eight churches built across the entire town as the center of a gigantic web and was also the headquarters of the entire town.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1170 Festival

    N?velDrama.Org owns ? this.<h4>Chapter 1170 Festival</h4>


    Rui truly felt the size of the town when he walked across from the outskirts from where his inn was towards the center.


    (''It''s even bigger than the town of Hajin, what the heck?'')


    It was an extremely wide expanse that made use of the fact that the Seonmun Region was a rather empty region with a lot of space for grabs.


    Rui found it curious that the Virodhabhasa Faith decided to open up such an extravagant town in such a remote location. Yet he could understand the rationales for doing so.


    For one, building a town like this was easier in more remote regions as opposed to more popted regions.


    For example, they would face far more difficulty in trying to aplish such a thing in the Kaddar Region which was already jam-packed with nations, and also had to deal with a floating ind that was in political conflict with the entire region.


    Furthermore, there were two ways to interact with outsiders as a religion. Either go to them or get them toe to you.


    The Seonmun Church town was probably an attempt at thetter. It was easier to attract Martial Artists with suchrge concentrations of the Faith''s resources, allowing for facilities useful to Martial Artists that could only be found in ces like that.


    It made it easier to umte fame and reputation, which ultimately helped in dragging in nomadic or traveling Martial Artists.


    After all, due to ack of a powerful informationwork like the inte, word of mouth or more indirect manners informationmunication was the way in which they could spread information. It meant that the town needed to gather enough of a reputation before it could attract traveling Martial Artists.


    That was why such a costly endeavor was needed.


    (''However, it''s probably worth it,'')


    If the Virodhabhasa Faith wanted to indoctrinate Martial Artists, creating such centers that could attract traveling Martial Artists was the best option.


    Nomadic or traveling Martial Artists were a group of Martial Artists that did not have anymitments to any particr organization and were the easiest to rope in.


    These Martial Artistsprised warriors who chose to notmit to their native ce. This was generally due to ack of opportunities to exercise their Martial Artist and ack of avenues for training and growth. Many Martial Artists came from humble backgrounds that were simply too shackling or limited for them.


    Leaving their home in search of a greater destiny was not umon.


    Technically, Rui too came from a humble backgrounds, however, he was born in the Kandrian Empire, a powerhouse Sage-level nation that had a highly meritocratic system that made sure that people with potential were able to realize their potential as long as they had merited it.


    It was only after Rui traveled the Panama Continent did he realized how precious the Martial Academies were. He had been blessed with opportunities that many would have killed to have.


    But they couldn''t, that was why ces he had visited thus far were popr.


    The Umiana Trench, the Thundering Valley, the Floating Sect, and the Virodhabhasa Faith were all open avenues for growth.


    They were effective ways to reel Martial Artists in.


    It wasn''t long before he reached the central district of the town, and he came across some interesting¡­ things.


    A gigantic billboard towered beside the giant main church.


    [The Virodhabhasa Martial Festival!]


    Rui''s eyes widened at those words.


    He felt as though those words had unlocked some long-forgotten memories that he hadn''t thought about in many years.


    (''The Martial Festival¡­'') Rui''s eyes zed over as his mind shed back in time with nostalgia.


    Thest time he had partaken in the Martial Festival had been around nine years ago back when he was still a wee little Martial Apprentice in the Martial Academy.


    He recalled the preliminary tournament held within the Martial Academy, and then the final Martial Contest that hadter on been held across the entire nation. It had been one of the peak moments of his time at the Martial Academy.


    The amount of stimtion he had gotten from the Martial Contest of the Kandrian Empire was not something that could be underestimated. He would not be the person he was today if not for the rigors that he had undergone back then.


    He nced back at the billboard-like sign that proudly announced the Martial Festival being held by the Virodhabhasa Faith.


    He would be lying if he said he was not interested.


    As a powerful widespread religion across the continent, any festival held by this particr religion was bound to be tremendously impactful.


    He recalled how impactful the Martial Festival of the Kandrian Empire was, he couldn''t even imagine the sheer magnitude of the Virodhabhasa Martial Festival.


    He was immediately curious about the details of the festival.


    Surely, a festival held by the Virodhabhasa Faith was bound to be special.


    As for whether he wanted anything to do with it or not¡­ He was torn.


    On one hand, his rational side said it was best to stick with the n and train and look for a solution for Senior Xanarn.


    On the other hand, his irrational side, the same irrationality that drove him forward and down his Martial Path begged to differ.


    Rui tried weighing the pros and cons of it, but he had too little information.


    (''I guess I''ll have to take a peek if only to learn more,'') He convinced himself as he headed down towards arge counter right underneath the billboard with arge number of staff employees.


    "How may we help you, sir?" He received deep reverential bows from the two staff members who stood at the counter.


    "I wished to learn more about the Martial Festival," Rui replied.


    "Why, of course!" She smiled, before grabbing several booklets, and pamphlets, handing them to Rui. "These contain all the details of the Martial Festival. However, I shall be taking this opportunity to go through the broad matters surrounding the Martial Festival, if you are so inclined."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1171 Reign

    <h4>Chapter 1171 Reign</h4>


    "Please do," Rui nodded while simultaneously opening up the information guides that she had provided him.


    "Very well," She nodded with a pleasant smile. "The Martial Festival of the Virodhabhasa Faith is held once every two years, it is a continent-wide festival where we celebrate the blessings of Lord Virodhabhasa in the form of a festival. After all, it is only thanks to Lord Virodhabhasa that Martial Artists even exist in the ce, he is the one who decides which Martial Path shall continue, and which ones shall be destroyed¡­"


    Rui sighed inwardly as he already began ignoring her. He should have known that these religious devotees would make everything about their lord and savior.


    He instead quickly speed-read through the booklets provided.


    The Virodhabhasa Martial Festival was celebrated with Martial Art. After all, what other forms of celebrations were necessary?


    It did not deign to celebrate it the way other festivals across the entire continent were celebrated, not through special decorations across the entire town, nor through song and dance, or special ethnic cuisine, or ethnic attire.


    No.


    Only through Martial Art, or Martial-centric fields.


    That was far more extreme than the Kandrian Martial Art festival which allowed for such forms of celebration.


    However, the more he read, the more he grew engrossed in what he read, making several realizations.


    (''The Kandrian Martial Union copied the Virodhabhasa Faith,'') Rui couldn''t believe his eyes.


    He came across something extremely nostalgic and familiar.


    The Virodhabhasa Faith had been hosting Martial Contests since its very inception!


    This far preceded the first Martial Contest held by the Martial Union.


    It meant that what the Virodhabhasa Faith was doing was so viral that even the Martial Union did not feel any shame in copying it.


    It was so simr to the point that even the structures were simr.


    There were several contests divided by Realm.


    A preliminary contest urred at every Church town across the continent electing a single delegate who would then go on to be the representative of their particr Church town, they would then go on topete across the entire continent with other representatives before a final winner was chosen as the Virodha Martial Champion.


    Given the sheer magnitude of the contest, the Martial Champion could be dered as nothing short of the strongest Martial Squire across the entire continent!


    Rui could only imagine the kind of monsters that would bepeting in the Martial Contest. With the sheer number of Martial Squirespeting, he highly doubted whether even being a grade-ten Martial Squire was enough to have a real chance of bing the Martial Champion.


    Most likely the Martial Squire that would be the Martial Contest would be an abnormal freak the likes of which were unlike anything the world had ever seen before.


    Rui could see someone like Tokugawa Ieyasu bing a Martial Champion, unfortunately, it seemed as though the man would most likely not be participating in the Martial Contest this year. He seemed all but content training on Ajanta Ind as he grew stronger, taking a step to the Senior Realm.


    That was rather curious.


    Why didn''t he partake in the Martial Contest and challenge himself with the strongest Martial Squires in thend?


    He said that he had been waiting for someone like Rui to appear. But wouldn''t the best ce to look for the strongest Martial Squires be in a Martial Contest like this one as opposed to the Floating Sect which, while powerful, only had one thousand Martial Squires?


    He wasn''t sure but put aside the matter of Tokugawa Ieyasu for the moment, that man wasn''t relevant until Rui returned back to the sect.


    There were great incentives for the Virodha Martial Contest, winners at every level of the contest were rewarded with incredible benefits of their choice.


    They could opt to cash out and earn a huge sum of money.


    They could opt to procure powerful exclusive training and growth resources and facilities that would allow them to travel further down their Martial Path and develop their Martial Art in ways that no one could.


    They could even opt to convert into more abstract rewards such as political capital. The Virodhabhasa Faith would back any political venture that a Marital Artist made. One could even begin the ruler of a nation with the backing of the Virodhabhasa Faith, within limits, of course. Trying to take over powerhouse Sage-level nations was impossible, but taking over nations limited to the lower Realms was quite easy for the Virodhabhasa Faith.


    That was a tremendous amount of power that the religion possessed in all domains and fields meant that Martial Champion could do anything they wanted and would obtain incredible results.


    A thought shed through Rui''s mind.


    (''Maybe I could¡­'') He narrowed his eyes.


    If he partook in the Virodha Martial Contest, then it was possible that he would be able to obtain what he needed for Senior Xanarn''s treatment. He did not think that the Virodhabhasa Faith would be incapable of healing her condition. If they could not heal her condition then no one could, probably.


    (''Wait, I''m getting ahead of myself.'') He shook his head. (''If I can acquire the medical services or products to heal her without such extra measures, then I don''t have to go to such lengths.'')


    Although his soul quivered in excitement for a continent-wide Martial Contest, he did not lose rationality. His circumstances were not the most optimal for such endeavors. This content provided by N(o)velDrama].[Org.


    Firstly, he was in hiding, running away from Chairman Deacon. Secondly, he was here to fulfill Project Metabody, and thirdly he was here to find a solution for Senior Xanarn''s condition.


    Jumping into a Martial Contest such as this would make more sense if he didn''t have more than one of those constraints, though ideally zero.


    As he was right now, he could not afford to lose focus on what was important. His primary goal at the moment was to verify whether the Virodhabhasa Faith could help him with Project Metabody and Senior Xanarn''s condition, and if so, what it took to obtain those services andmodities.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1172 Difficulty

    ?


    Regardless, he didn''t necessarily resist learning more about the Martial Contest.This content provided by N(o)velDrama].[Org.


    The contest was limited to the Lower Realms. The difficulty of holding a contest grew astronomically with each Realm.


    Martial Apprentices were by far the easiest to hold a contest surrounding due to how grounded and shackled by conventional human limits they were. This meant that important aspects of the nning such as infrastructural constraints, observation viability, spectator safety, battlefield volume, etc., were all much easier to handle. You could have arge number of spectators fit in within a reasonable amount of area that was reasonably close to the battle arena, and they would be able to follow the fight to just barely enough of a degree where they would be entertained. It was possible to shield even arge audience from the Apprentice-level techniques and ensure their safety with ease.


    With Martial Squires, that was increasingly more difficult to achieve. Martial Squires fought over increasinglyrger ranges, and overrger areas. An ordinary battle arena was not enough for them.


    That was why even the battle arenas of the Floating Sect were more than a kilometer in diameter to be able to amodate all ranges of Martial Squires. Normal humans couldn''t even perceive the entirety of such a battle arena at once with their senses. Furthermore, spectator safety was much costlier.


    It meant that the number of spectators who could even afford to witness the battle between Martial Squires was limited to wealthier and upper-ss connoisseurs of Martial Art.


    If the Apprentice-level contest was treated as an event formoners and middle-ss folks, then the Squire-level was for the wealthy.


    The Senior-level contest for even more so. It was for the top one percent of society.


    The Virodhabhasa Faith did not even bother with Martial contests for the upper Realms. It simply became far too unviable to be able to actually execute in practice. Rui couldn''t even imagine trying to set up a Martial Contest for Martial Masters.


    He had no idea what Martial Masters were actually capable of, but if the previous gap between Realms was capable of an indication of anything, then they were bound to possess a level of strength that Rui ought to find impossible to even wrap around his head.


    Regardless, he was most interested in the Squire-level contest out of all three. ording to the information provided by the guides that the staff member had supplied him, there were one thousand Virodhabhasa Church towns, just like this one across the entire continent!


    That was a staggering number, one that made Rui double-take in shock.


    That would mean the Virodhabhasa Faith had infested the entire continent from end to end.


    (''No wonder Guildmaster Bradt did not list all Virodhabhasa Church towns, that would been a redundantly long list.'') Rui mused. He was grateful that the man had referred him to only one Church town.


    Regardless, that meant that there going to be a huge number of representatives at the actual contest. This was unexpected as when Rui had partaken in the Kandrian Martial Contest, he had only had to face fifteen other representatives from the different Martial Academies spread throughout the Kandrian Empire.


    It turned out that while the Martial Union copied the Virodhabhasa Faith but to a much lesser degree.


    (''This is going to be far harder than the Kandrian Martial Contest was,'') Rui mused.


    The sheer pool of Martial Squires from which the champion would emerge meant that whoever the champion was would have the capital to be the strongest Martial Squire. It was a task of extraordinary difficulty.


    Yet the results and rewards from the victory were bound to be absolutely phenomenal. No force would want to yield a Martial Squire that powerful to anybody else. After all, power as a Martial Squire corrted with synergy between technique, Martial Body, and Martial Path, which came with creating or customizing techniques for one''s self, or individuality, which was necessary for the higher Realms.


    Thus the strongest Martial Squire was also the likeliest Martial Senior in the future, especially in a setting like this. It wasn''t guaranteed, of course, there were other variables that affected whether a Martial Squire would be a Martial Senior.


    Still, aiming for the high-probability crop was the best way to get one''s Martial Seniors. Rui learned that much of the audience of the Squire-level contest were scouts or third parties that were interested in buying the most promising Martial Squires.


    The majority of the Martial Artists that wandered into a Virodhabhasa Church Town were generally traveling nomadic Martial Artists who did not have fixed inclinations, and thus could potentially be swayed by interested employers and patrons.


    That was one of the reasons the Virodhabhasa Faith received a flood of spectators every time it held a Martial Contest during its Martial Festival at the Squire and Senior levels.


    "When is it being held?" Rui asked out of the blue, interrupting her long religious spiel.


    "It will be held a little over a year from now," She exined, smiling reverentially.


    "And there are stands advertising it already?" Rui frowned.


    "We wish to spread the message to as many Martial Artists as possible so that they learn of the contest and choose to partake," She exined with a well-meaning smile.


    That was quite some dedication to the event, it meant that they were extremely interested in ensuring that all the Martial Squires in all of the church towns partake in the Martial Contest.


    Rui shook his head. "I see, I appreciate the information but I shall take my leave for now."


    He left the stand as he headed towards the main church that half functioned as a ce of worship but also served as an official ce to house the management of the town. After all, no amount of faith was going to run a town and manage the many things that needed to be managed.


    Regardless, he was there to actually evaluate what it would take to achieve what he wanted to achieve.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1173 Cost

    ?


    "How may we help you?" One of the staff members catering to inquiring Martial Artists asked Rui when he approached the counter inside.


    "I wish to procure medical services andmodities of the Virodhabhasa Faith," Rui replied.


    "Then you havee to the right ce," She gave him a reverential smile that he hade to see on the faces of literally any native that he spoke to. "The Virodhabhasa Faith possesses developed medical capabilities capable of healing the wounds and conditions that Martial Artists are afflicted with, and help them survive and also get back to into form!"


    Rui smiled, he had expected this.


    He highly doubted that a Martial religion that was centered around Martial Art would not have such measures. It appeared that he was right to give this religion a shot.


    "What kind of medical service would you like?" The staff member asked courteously. "We have services that we offer free by virtue of you being a Martial Artist."


    This was thanks to the reverence that members of this religion had for Marital Artists. It meant that Rui could probably get all regr wounds and minor conditions fixed for free, but unfortunately, what he was dealing with was far beyond that.


    "I have medical records of the condition that I would like a treatment and a cure for," Rui replied, cing the document on the counter.


    "We understand," She nodded. "We will send this information to the medical department where it will be processed and the prospects of a cure and treatment will be evaluated, as well as the price of the treatment."


    Rui nodded. "By when can I expect a response?"


    "It will most likely get fully processed within a day," She replied. "Please fill out this form, and you will be issued an application number and a token."


    Rui quickly filled out all the relevant details that were most centered around means to contact him, more than anything.


    Rui quickly filled in all the relevant details before submitting the application and receiving a registration token.


    Now all he could do was wait. He had already submitted a copy of the medical details of Senior Xanarn''s condition with her personal details redacted to the medical department, having made sure that there was absolutely no way whatsoever that her identity could be traced from the medical details that he had submitted.


    He was about to leave when he recalled that this wasn''t the only business he had with the Virodhabhasa Church. After all, the main reason that he had sought to leave the Floating Sect was because he would not be able to fulfill Project Metabody if he remained there.


    "I also wish to consult relevant experts surrounding the topic of the Herenal''s Disease, and its effects on the Martial Body," Rui requested.


    "Please give me a moment, I will look into that request," She replied graciously before fiddling with her terminal. "¡­Currently we have three experts tagged with having expertise in the fields that cover the topic you specified, fortunately, consultancies with non-inner members of the faith are free of charge to Martial Artists, thus you will not be charged with a fee."


    Rui raised an eyebrow, smiling. He disliked religion as a concept, but he had to admit, that the Virodhabhasa Faith was good at buttering up Martial Artists.


    Still, he was keenly aware that this was a maniption tactic to make his impression of the religion positive. Although it was ineffective against him, he could definitely see the average Martial Artist allowing himself to develop a good impression based purely on the deference that the religion showed Martial Artists. Not aware that the deference that they showed in circumstances such as this was actually worth less than the goodwill that they built in Martial Artists.


    He could easily imagine that there were Martial Artists who would grow fiercely attached to the faith of the brainwashed members which genuinely treated them with devotion and reverence. It was probably a plot cooked up by people higher up.


    If they could earn the loyalty of a Martial Senior through these seemingly over-the-top deferences to Martial Artists, especially powerful Martial Artists, then it was worth all the trouble and hassle.


    "Your appointments have been scheduled in five hours," She told him, handing him some cards that specified the time and location of the appointments, as well as the individuals whom he would be consulting.


    Rui left the main church with everything that he needed. (''That went decently well, they really are good at sucking up to Martial Artists.'')This content provided by N(o)velDrama].[Org.


    He shook his head.


    If they thought that this would increase the probability that Rui would remain in the town or be attached to the faith, then they were sorely mistaken. Rui was leaving the second that he got what he wanted.


    However, there were some things that he needed to consider. For example, Senior Xanarn''s treatment and cure were almost certainly not something that he could get away with for free. He would certainly be charged something, the question was what he ought to do then. He did not have much wealth at the moment, he had some gold coins that were the remnants of the massive revenue that Esosale Suppliers had generated in the Shionel Confederation, but they would surely not be enough to afford the treatment of cure that he would have to cart off to Senior Xanarn.


    (''Missions it is¡­'') He sighed.


    The Virodhabhasa Church also offered brokerage services to Martial Artists and the market. Meaning the Virodhabhasa Faith could connect Rui to those that wanted tomission him for his Martial Art services and use those earnings to pay the fee, while also working on Project Metabody.


    If the cost was too prohibitive, he might have to work extra long, but other than that, his n was set and everything was actually proceeding surprisingly smoothly. He spent the five hours before his appointment wandering around therge town and taking in all of the things that it had to offer.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1174 Myostatin

    ?


    Soon enough, it was time for his appointment.


    [Doctor Greniluo


    Virologist


    31st main road, 42nd crossroad, L-342]


    Rui quickly found the location of the office of the doctor that he had an appointment with. He had arrived before a humble but sizable professional building.


    KNOCK KNOCK


    "Who''s there?"


    "I am Squire Falken, I believe I booked an appointment with you through the Church," Rui said.


    The door suddenly opened and a short bald man stood before Rui. "Ah, Squire Falken, wee! It is an honor to be consulted by a Martial Artist."


    He uttered something that was typical of the religion Rui''s experience, but Rui also was able to judge that this individual was not sincere in his expressed deference to Rui, which suggested that he truly wasn''tmitted to the faith, but yed along for whatever reason.


    (''Probably to avoid getting into trouble,'') Rui mused. (''As one of an intellectual field, he must have a hard time dealing with all of this nonsense.'')


    "Now then," The man began. "What is it that you wished to consult me about, Squire Falken?"


    Rui paused for a moment, before starting. "I wanted to consult you regarding Herenal''s Disease, and its effects on Martial Squires like myself, how detrimental is the disease to the effective physical prowess of the Martial Artists infected with the virus?"


    "Interesting question," The man furrowed his eyebrows. "Herenal''s Disease is a disease that causes hyper muscle hypertrophy very rapidly, increasing muscle volume and density, subsequently increasing energy consumption to such a degree that it causes death to the organism. Death by exhaustion. The exact mechanism by which the virus functions is not known, but we suspect that it affects a gene that is rted to the regtion of muscle mass. However, there has been no empirical data proving this."


    (''Not bad, that''s actually close to the mark.'') Rui apuded him mentally.


    Later on after his initial education back on Earth, he had increasingly familiarized himself with human anatomy and physiology which became increasingly more relevant when he created the VOID algorithm. This gave him a pretty decent background in biology, one that had been rejuvenated when his mind''s ability to recall grew significantly in his second life.


    (''The Herenal''s Disease almost certainly is one that messes with the MSTN gene that is centered around the production of myostatin, a protein that halts the growth of muscles.'') Rui mused.


    One of the breakthroughs that he had made as a researcher was discovering the optimal weight ss, in the UFC, of an MMA fighter based on their myostatin count which told him how much muscle they would be able to build easily.


    Someone with too much myostatin production was not suited to bulking for the heavyweight division. Conversely, someone with too little myostatin production was not suited to the lightweight division.


    There was even a condition known as Myostatin-rted muscle hypertrophy that gave someone twice as much muscle mass as they would normally have.


    Here in this fantasy world, it appeared that there were even fewer limits as to how far this could go in this world. After all, patients with Herenal''s Disease rapidly came to resemble a certain green rage monster whose name he could not utter due to copyright.


    (''And with the Martial Body whose limits far surpass that of the normal human body, I cannot imagine how much power I can gain from it,'') Rui narrowed his eyes. (''I just need to make sure that it is safe.'')


    "I see," Rui replied. "I believe that one of the treatments for the Herenal''s Disease is a constant supply of nutrition sustenance to the body."


    "Correct," He nodded. "We insert tubes into the bloodstream and supplyrge amounts of all the necessary nutrients andpounds to sustain the massively increased energy consumption rate."N?velDrama.Org owns ? this.


    "However, I believe during this time, the patient retains the increased muscr output, correct?" Rui asked.


    "That is correct, yes," The man nodded, furrowing his eyebrows.


    He was no doubt quite confused as to why a Martial Squire randomly booked an appointment to consult with him, only to ask him questions about a rare disease.


    "I wish to gain your input on a hypothetical," Rui continued. "Let us say a patient infected with the disease possesses an excess of thepounds and nutrients that are normally needed by the human body. Let us say by a factor of ten, how would you project the rate of deterioration of the condition of the human patient in these circumstances? Will the timeframe leading to death also be increased by a factor of ten?"


    The doctor frowned as he considered Rui''s words. "It''s hard to say in such a hypothetical, but it is quite likely that the timeframe leading to death would substantially increase in such circumstances, as for whether it would increase by a factor of ten, that''s a bit hard to say. Frankly, it depends on many variables, but generally the greater the amount of time the patient is alive, the greater the hypertrophy of muscles. Thus the consumption also increases as time passes, though the rate at which it increases would also decrease."


    "Presumably due to the stic limits of fascia holding the muscle together," Rui remarked. "It would serve as a powerful counter-bnce to the muscle hypertrophy caused by the Herenal Virus."


    "Indeed, the research on the matter is-" The doctor suddenly, paused doing a double take, ncing at Rui with confusion. "I''m sorry, you are a Martial Artist, correct?"


    "Very much so," Rui replied, deep in thought.


    The doctor stared at Rui with confusion. For a moment, he felt as though he had been discussing with a peer of his as opposed to a Martial Artist, who was probably illiterate to a certain degree as they usually were in his experience. But Rui so seamlessly kept up with him even when he was talking about his field of expertise that it threw him off for a moment, he forgot who he was talking to.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1175 Refine

    <h4>Chapter 1175 Refine</h4>


    The virologist sized Rui multiple times, furrowing his eyes in confusion. How was a Martial Squire so adept on the hypothetical symptoms of Herevan''s Disease under the hypothetical that he had provided?


    For a second he considered whether Rui lied about being a Martial Squire, however, his passive aura as a Martial Squire denied any possibility of Rui not being a Martial Squire.


    "You mentioned that the timeframe before death would be greatly extended," Rui continued. "Would that not mean that within that timeframe, the patient woulde to possess muscr output that is far greater than their baseline?"


    The doctor hesitated. "Theoretically, yes, but the fact of the matter is unless the body receives continuous Myostatin treatment."


    "However, Martial Squires will be able to maintain theirbat prowess, correct?" Rui asked. "Martial Squires retain much more power even at low white blood cell counts, correct?"


    The doctor could see where this was going. He wasn''t stupid, Rui''s questions all pointed in one direction.


    And the direction is pointed in was pure madness.


    The doctor had never heard of a Martial Art technique that involved diseasing one''s own body.


    "You''re not wrong," The doctor carefully mentioned. "However, that will be very momentary. Once this brief period of power passes, the patient will pass away. Or at best, they will be terminally ill and will spend the rest of their life bed-ridden and in need of constant myostatin treatment."


    One way to counter the myostatin-inhibiting virus was to continuously supply the body with myostatin protein to make sure that the body could stay normal. However, that meant hooking the body to tubes connected to instruments that would continuously supply myostatin to the bloodstream of the patient.


    That would severely restrict the patient for the rest of their life.


    "What if that same patient was afflicted with a condition where they naturally produced a surplus of myostatin?" Rui asked. "Would it not be the case that the patient would be free from shackles and would be able to live life normally?"


    The doctor frowned. "That is true, however, in that case, that would be no different from being perfectly healthy in the first ce, rather than having a condition counter a virus."


    "What if the patient was able to control the myostatin, turning it off when needed so as to tap into the powerful muscles granted by the Herenal virus?" Rui asked with a smile.


    "¡­" The doctor stared at Rui with an incredulous expression. "I''ve never heard of such a condition in my entire life."


    "It does not naturally exist, no," Rui shook his head. "However, the Martial Body is far less shackled than the human body. A condition that causes a surplus of myostatin¡­ is hardly the craziest thing a Martial Body has done, am I wrong?"


    "No," the doctor sighed. "However, it would be better to go for a Martial Body that is centered around strength in the first ce."


    "What if you want a Martial Body centered around strength only sometimes?" Rui shrugged. "Regardless, I do wish to thoroughly discuss the details of this hypothetical¡­"


    He spent the next few hours grilling the hapless doctor, going into the nitty gritty details about his supposed ''hypothetical''.


    By the time the session had ended, the doctor looked equally excited and resigned.


    "Why are you nning on subjecting your Martial Body to this?"


    "I never mentioned subjecting myself to this," Rui smiled.


    "¡­"


    "Thank you for your consultance, doctor," Rui got up. "This has been most illuminating."


    He did mean those words. The doctor pointed out certain minor problematic elements that Rui hadn''t considered due to theck of depth of knowledge and experience.


    He wasn''t upset that he missed those. It was arrogant, even for someone of his caliber, to think he could match specialists, that had dedicated the entirety of their lives to their field, in their field. He had gotten exactly what he needed, and was actually happy that the doctor had pointed out issues in the n for the strength Metabody that Rui had cooked up.


    If the doctor had been unable to discern even a single issue, then Rui would have doubted his qualifications since the probability that Rui could nail the intricacies of a field in that he had a shaky foundation at best was low.


    He took his leave, gathering his thoughts on the way back. This consultancy had helped him refine the n for the offensive Martial Body quite well. He had already developed the core of the idea of the Floating Sect but unfortunately was unable to verify or proof check the details.


    Furthermore, he had confirmed with the doctor that the Seonmun Church town did in fact possess samples of the Herenal virus in containment. This meant that he could obtain it, potentially for free, but certainly for some services.


    However, he hadpleted the theoretical framework of the strength-oriented Martial Body fully.


    (''It needs a name¡­'') Rui mused. (''Hm, how about¡­ Hypertrophic Surge¡­'')


    Rui had already exhausted all his creativity in creating a great technique, it appeared he had too little for a great name. Property ? of N?velDrama.Org.


    (''Not to mention, I still need to create one more technique,'') He sighed.


    He hadn''t forgotten that he had yet to create a defensive Martial Body technique. He had saved it for thest because he felt as though that was the hardest technique without a doubt, out of all the Martial Bodies. He had yet to figure out an idea as to how he would make the constitution of his body stronger, and it was definitely something that was going to take a lot of thought and creativity.


    Regardless, it meant that he was that much closer to sessfullypleting Project Metabody. All he needed to do now was to find the appropriate training resources and then immediately begin training, going all out.


    Rui visited the other two experts on Herenal''s Disease, consulting them as well to make sure that he didn''t leave a single stone unturned when it came to his new ambition technique.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1176 Diagnosis

    <h4>Chapter 1176 Diagnosis</h4>


    The other two experts were also equally bewildered by what Rui told them, and he couldn''t me them for it.


    Rui was probably the very first Martial Artist in the world who was about to embark on training a technique that involved purposefully diseasing the body with a virus.


    The prospect of this moved the three experts that he consulted once they managed to realize his intentions. It wasn''t every day for them that entirely new grounds were being breached when it came to the already vast and deep field of Martial Art.


    It wasn''t every day for Rui either, no. It did happen once a season, however.


    Rui was entirely ustomed to creating techniques the likes of which simply did not exist prior. He had done it so many times that it had frankly begun to grow normal and mundane. If he did create a revolutionarily groundbreaking and unprecedented, he would shrug and move on. But if he didn''t create a technique that was not of such a caliber, then he would be somewhat disappointed.


    Of course, any other Martial Squire would be overjoyed even with the lesser techniques that Rui created. Rui himself, however, merely treated them as nothing worthy of much note. His standards for himself had reached so high that only with grade-ten techniques like Void Forestep, Weaving Blood, Hungry Pain, and now Hypertrophic Surge could he truly feel moved. And only with projects like Project Water could he possibly feel genuine and unabashed excitement. Project Metabody as a broad overarching Martial Art technique was so powerful that it far surpassed any grade-ten technique that he had ever seen in his life.


    It was going to be his magnum opus, in the Squire Realm. He highly doubted that he would produce anything that surpassed during his remaining time as a Martial Squire. Of course, he didn''t say anything about the higher Realms. From what he could tell, the higher Realms probably required different kinds of techniques with different focuses, which was why it was possible for him to surpass Project Metabodyter on.


    Regardless, an entire day passed, and he was notified of the results of the medical services andmodities that he wanted to purchase.


    The Virodhabhasa main church summoned him for an appointment with a member of the medical department who would go over what medical services he would need to purchase in order to treat and cure the condition of the patient that he had shown them. They would probably make numerous prescriptions for various potential oues, and Rui would have to make an informed decision on which treatment to go forward with.


    However, he was happy that a meeting was arranged in the first ce. If the church designed to go that far, then that meant that probably was enough of a report to be made that was worth having a professional exin it all to Rui.


    If it turned out to be the case that Senior Xanarn''s condition was just impossible to heal, then they would have straightforwardly revealed that without any wasted time.


    The fact that they had called him meant that there definitely was a solution that he could afford!


    "Nice!" Rui grinned.


    This was turning out easier than he had expected. He had expected that the search for a solution would be much harder and longer, but thankfully, it merely took some travel and the very first destination had a solution at hand.


    (''The Floating Sect made it sound so impossible,'') He snorted as he headed into the meeting.


    "Ah, Squire Falken," A man smiled at him when he entered the room. "Pleasee in, we have much to talk about, have a seat. I am Doctor Derol, and I am here to provide you with the possible medical treatments and cures for the patient and the data of whom you provided us."


    "Pleasure to meet you, doctor," Rui courteously greeted them in exchange.


    "Not at all, the honor is mine," The doctor bowed deeply and reverentially to Rui, which Rui had nowe to recognize as the telltale sign of Virodhabhasa Indoctrination. This content provided by N(o)velDrama].[Org.


    "Allow me to begin by informing you that we have found several possible solutions to the poisoned condition of your patient," the doctor smiled. "However, before we go into those and their pricing, allow me to begin by elucidating the condition that she truly is in at the moment, for the report that you provided us actually undersold the severity of her condition."


    Rui''s eyes narrowed. The man''s words implied that the Floating Sect actually failed toprehend how dire her condition was.


    That was not good.


    Rui had been under the impression that while recovery was difficult, at the very least her condition had halted in its deterioration and was stable. He had assumed that she wasn''t in a position where she could pass away at any moment.


    "The poison has taken root in all of the blood capiries and vessels in her brain and has also infected her cerebral fluid to a minor degree. We have identified the poison as Cereneon Nectar, an airborne poison that dissolves in fluids to an extreme degree. Every time her heart beats, pumping blood to her brain a minute portion of the Cereneon Nectar, a high-grade Senior-level poison, is extracted from the blood, increasing the amount of poison in her brain, and increasing the probability of abrupt brain death or organ failure."


    Rui''s eyes widened in shock as he gritted his teeth. "That means she could potentially die any second!"


    "Correct," The man nodded. "Normally, poisons do not affect the brain all that much because the brain cannot be conditioned physically as much as the rest of the body, which means that any poison employed by a Martial Artist cannot affect the brain too much because they themselves need to be able to withstand it without ill-effects, which cannot be trained due to the inability to condition the brain."


    Rui nodded. "That means that poison Martial Artists cannot host poisons that target the brain if they do not want their own brains to sumb."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1177 Solution

    <h4>Chapter 1177 Solution</h4>


    "Indeed," The man nodded. "Thus, poisons employed by Martial Artists are carefully curated for their viability in regard to this condition. The conditions under which poisons employed by Martial Artists actually end up harming the brain of their opponent are scarce."


    He turned to a copy of the details that Rui had given them for evaluation.


    "Unfortunately, it appears that this particr patient has suffered those circumstances."


    Rui felt a sharp weight on his heart, tugging at his optimism, festering anxiety.


    He took a deep breath, inhaling and exhaling.


    "It appears that this patient had suffered brain injuries, most likely due to blunt force trauma to the skull, while simultaneously being poisoned with the Cereneon Nectar," He continued with a matter-of-factly tone. "This has allowed the poison to severely affect the brain when it would not do so under normal circumstances."


    Rui narrowed his eyes as he grimaced, recalling the fight that she had had with the four Kaddar Martial Seniors.


    She had indeed suffered many head injuries and had bled profusely from her head despite her healing factor due to how many injuries that she had suffered there.


    Those injuries were bad enough by themselves, but now it appeared that the presence of poison in those circumstances was far worse. It had crippled her brain, forcing her into aa that she would not be able to wake up from under natural circumstances.


    "From the data that you have presented, it appears that she consumed multiple healing potions as early as she could, yet it was toote. Poison has already upied several lobes and sections of the brain. It is unclear what functions of the brain have been affected just by looking at the parts of the brain where the poison upies, I''m afraid."


    Rui recalled that this world had not made as many deep breakthroughs into the structures, systems, and divisions of the brain.


    He looked at some of the images that the doctor provided him. He could already tell that it affected many parts of her cerebrum and cerebellum, parts that corresponded with the conscious mind, as well as mental faculties and cognition surroundingbat.


    "With that brief summary of her condition and why it is the way it is, let us begin talking about the solutions," the doctor continued.


    Rui''s attention perked up as he began paying more attention to what the doctor had to say. What followed would greatly impact whether he would see Senior Xanarn alive ever again.


    "As I mentioned at the start, there are solutions," He smiled. "The first solution is simple and straightforward blood recement therapy. This is a special form of treatment where we take a sample of blood and produce identical blood to it before passing it through the patient''s body. The intoxicated blood from any given patient is extracted out in exchange for the fresh blood that the patient will be flooded with, allowing it to extract toxins from across the body and flush them out."


    Rui stared at him silently, waiting for him to issue his judgment on the matter.


    "This solution is sub-optimal," the doctor immediately began. "However, it is the cheapest out of all three. It will most likely wake her up from hera within ten hours."


    Rui cocked his head back in surprise.


    The actual evaluation of her condition sounded extremely dire. Yet the solution was remarkably effective if it was able to wake her up within ten hours of the administration of the treatment!


    "Huh¡­" Rui tilted his head.


    Something felt off.


    "The restoration of consciousness will ur within half a day, and the rehabilitation of her body won''t take too long either, given that she has a Martial Body."


    Rui''s face lit up in a smile. N?velDrama.Org owns ? this.


    This was extremely optimistic, and it meant that there was a good chance Rui would be able to ensure that she woke up.


    "The only thing you''ll have to take care of is the post-traumatic stress disorder once the truth behind her condition sets in," The man replied.


    Rui''s eyes narrowed. "What condition would that be?"


    The doctor turned towards Rui with a resigned sigh. "The condition of being a cripple instead of a Martial Artist."


    Rui''s eyes widened in shock. "You''re telling me she will lose the ability to practice Martial Art in her current condition?!"


    The man nodded. "That''s right, this treatment cannot extract all the poison in her brain. The greater the heart rate she experiences in such a condition, the greater the damage the nested poison inside her brain will do to her. A high heart rate will stress the blood vessels and neurons of the brain, allowing the poison to harm the stressed tissue, causing oues such as the shutting down her consciousness once more. A second time will be more fatal and hard to ovee."


    "So you''re saying that she can not only never utilize her Martial Heart if she is healed through this method, but she will also be unable to ever do anything that is physically strenuous?"


    "Indeed," The doctor nodded simply, giving Rui time to process what he had just heard.


    "That¡­" Rui murmured.


    He couldn''t even imagine how hellish and horrific it would be for a Martial Artist, a Martial Senior, to never again be able to practice their Martial Art or even fight at all despite an intact Martial Path and Martial Art.


    It would drive him absolutely insane. He would lose his sanity very quickly if that ever happened, h did not trust himself to be able to endure such a horrific punishment for a Martial Artist.


    He knew Senior Xanarn well enough to know that her identity as a Martial Artist and a Martial Senior, in particr, was central to who she was today. If she ever woke up with those two elements gone from her, she would very well begin unraveling.


    She might even hate Rui for waking her up to such a terrible hell as opposed to letting her fall asleep and eventually die.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1178 Expensive

    <h4>Chapter 1178 Expensive</h4>


    Rui quickly ruled out this solution in a heartbeat.


    Treating Senior Xanarn only to bring her back as a cripple was something that Rui was absolutely certain she would hate from the bottom of her heart. He did not want to hurt his favorite Martial Senior in such a way.


    Nothing less than a perfect solution was eptable.


    "Let us move on to the other solution," Rui impatiently told the doctor.


    "Understood," The doctor nodded. "Then let us move on to the next treatment option. In addition to blood replenisher, we will also treat her with a high-grade esoteric detoxifying agent that will extract the poison riddling her brain to a much greater degree. She will practice Martial Art once more and even engage inbat again with some constraints and restrictions."


    "What constraints and restrictions?" Rui raised an eyebrow, refusing to get excited too early.


    "She may never employ her Martial Heart ever again," The doctor informed him.


    Rui''s eyes widened. "That¡­"


    "The remnant poison will be little enough to allow her heart rate to reach ordinary peaks, but activating the Martial Heart will be lethal due to the minute poison deteriorating the constitution of the blood capiries of her brain. She will suffer a cerebral aneurysm if she activates her Martial Heart even for a second, even with the healing factor of a Martial Senior, she will perish."


    Rui''s expression grew more severe. Waking up Senior Xanarn while preserving her ability to practice Martial Art was definitely better than turning her into a cripple who could not exert herself. However, being deprived of the ability to activate her Martial Heart was still too much. Being woken up only to be told that she was effectively demoted to the Squire Realm was something that would crush her spirit.


    Rui did not want that to happen either.


    He shook his head. "Please present the next solution."


    The doctor threw a deep look at Rui, before nodding. "The third solution is simple, instead of a mid-grade esoteric, we can treat her with a particrly high-grade esoteric detoxifying agent that willpletely extract every trace of poison within her system, allowing her topletely recover from her condition.


    Rui''s eyes lit up in interest. "This solution sounds perfect. How much would this particr medical treatment and service cost?"


    "It will cost you about seven million eight hundred and fifty thousand virodhanas," The man replied.


    Virodhana was the currency used by the Virodhabhasa Faith. The fact that the religion had be sorge and powerful that they had their own currency was a testament to their size and power. Furthermore, the currency had its own weight as well, while it wasn''t as heavy as the Shionel gold currency, it was still quite respectable on the international stage.


    That was why seven million virodhanas was not a small amount.


    Rui cocked his head back in surprise. "That''s more than just a bit expensive!"


    The doctor smiled wryly. "The raw esoteric substances and materials needed to prepare the detoxifying agent were procured by the Martial Masters from dangerous zones deep within the Beast Domain." Property ? of N?velDrama.Org.


    "Oh¡­" Rui murmured.


    He quickly shut up. The price was actually reasonable when the difficulty of obtaining the necessary ingredients was considered.


    For the first time, he regretted not having the wealth that he earned from Esosale Suppliers. It had made him the effective equivalent of a billionaire. He would have easily been able to afford the treatment with no dent in his wealth.


    But s, it was all gone.


    He briefly considered going back to the Floating Sect and seeing if they had enough funds. However, he quickly realized that this was a futile exercise. The Floating Sect did not have liquid wealth. It did not have any internal currency either. That did not mean it was worthless, it still had valuable capital and assets that were worth a lot, but most of its economic capital was solid and untransferrable, making it extremely difficult to do anything about it.


    It was impossible to sell any of the powerful chambers of the sect to the church, it was impossible to sell most of the assets to the church due to the nature of the assets asmodities.


    Furthermore, the Floating Sect was not in a good state economically speaking. The two battles between the Martial Seniors had caused damage to infrastructure across the ind. Senior Xanarn had done an admirable job minimizing the damage inflicted to the surrounding infrastructure, the same could not be said for Senior Sarak and Senior Leonil.


    Senior Sarak certainly cared and tried, but the nature of his counter-offensive Martial Art was such that he couldn''t protect his surroundings and environment even if he wanted to. He had to be resigned to the fact that he couldn''t avoid damaging the Floating Sect.


    Senior Leonil was one who could help but didn''t nheless because he cared too much about his own life.


    It wasn''t as though he didn''t care about the sect, he just had too strong a sense of self-preservation to let caring for the sect get in the way of not dying.


    That meant that the Floating Sect had to dedicate a lot of resources to restoring the sect at the moment, it did not have room for additional expenditure.


    (''Especially with a new wave of Martial Squires rushing into the Floating Sect.'') Rui mused.


    He briefly considered bringing over one of the Martial Seniors of the sect here to do missions and earn the necessary funds, but ultimately put aside this n as well. The Floating Sect was actually incredibly dire straits as far as its security went.


    Two Martial Seniors were already not enough to defend the sect if the Kaddar Region ever resumed its assault against the sect, taking away one of the two pirs that protected the sect and upheld the organization was actually more damaging to the sect than even Senior Xanarn''s condition.


    (''No, I''ll need to solve this problem myself.'') Rui''s eyes sharpened.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1179 Considerations

    <h4>Chapter 1179 Considerations</h4>


    The issue was that seven million Virodhanas were not something a Martial Squire could earn in a short amount of time. He used to only earn the equivalent of a few thousand Virodhabhanas back when he waspleting missions in the Kandrian Empire through the Martial Union.


    (''Tsk,'') He tutted.


    He was running out of options. He didn''t want to spend years grinding on missions through the church, he simply wanted to make sure he got what he wanted as soon as possible.


    Unfortunately, he saw very few ways to make it happen.


    He briefly considered selling some of his techniques. It was possible that he could earn millions if he sold all of them.


    But he instinctively decided against that. His techniques, especially his grade-ten techniques, especially his Metabody techniques were something he was too possessive of to sell to outsiders at the moment. He would need to sell his entire Martial Art if he wanted to close that gap, just selling grade-ten techniques that he was less caring towards such as the Pathfinder and the Riemannian Echo would be far from enough.


    (''I could probably close the gap if I offered the service of causing breakthroughs and creating Martial Apprentices with my Martial Art.'') Rui mused.


    But this option he instantly dismissed. Revealing this was as good as signing off his freedom for the rest of his life. The Virodhabhasa Faith would never let him go if he revealed he was capable of such a thing.


    It''s why he was quite wary about voluntarily divulging the depths of his Martial Art and its techniques. It was one thing if the Virodhabhasa Faith merely observed his Martial Art with no greater context, it was another thing entirely if he revealed that his Martial Path was something that easily fit the description of the Virodhabhasa. Things could end either too well or too bad depending on his luck.


    It was yet another reason why he ruled out selling techniques for now. It''s not that he was principally opposed to spreading his work, barring Project Metabody for now, but it was too risky and massively increased the amount of insight they would get into his Martial Art than if they just observed him. The probability that they would interpret his Martial Art as one that is connected to the Virodhabhasa was not low enough for Rui to ignore it.


    It didn''t help that Rui was from another world too. If they found that out with a mental sensory technique, it was game over.


    He would rather do such trades with an organization that has more credibility and one that he had greater trust in, such as the Martial Union rather than a delusional, but incredibly powerful Martial religion.


    He would rather engage in something that was more innocuous and one where he could be more assured that the Virodhabhasa Faith was not inclined to cross lines.


    "Is there anything else you would like to ask about the patient, Squire Falken?" The doctor asked.


    Rui nced back at him.


    All of these thoughts had shed across his mind in just a moment, no time had passed from the perspective of the doctor.


    "This is a bit out of the purview of your briefing, but¡­ if I perform well in the Virodhabhasa Martial Contest, then will I gain enough favor from the Virodhabhasa Church to gain ess to the treatment."


    The doctor reacted with surprise. He did not expect to be asked non-medical questions. Still, he maintained hisposure and graciously answered it. This content provided by N(o)velDrama].[Org.


    "Yes," The doctor. "However, such a feat will be extremely difficult, the Martial Squires that partake, to my knowledge, are among the best of the best."


    "¡­I see," Rui sighed.


    The choice became more alluring by the second.


    He had already been attracted to it from the very start, but as every second passed, he couldn''t help but consider the choice increasingly seriously.


    The prospect of being able to test himself against the best Martial Artists in his Realm was something that Rui couldn''t resist.


    He had finally reached a stage where he could fight against the very best of his peers head-on and potentially prevail nheless.


    Had sort of experienced something like that in the Shionel Confederation, however, back then the circumstances heavily favored him over every otherpetitor. With the Riemannian Echo and Kane''s Void Step, he was invincible in a game where the rules worked heavily in his favor and heavily against all of hispetitors.


    This allowed him to far surpass what he, and everybody else, was otherwise capable of.


    However, this would not be the case in the Virodhabhasa Martial Contest, he would have to face all hispetitors in a fair setting head-on without any advantages of any kind.


    And frankly, he looked forward to such a contest.


    Needing to rely on extraneous elements to dominate was the same admitting he couldn''t do it on his own merit.


    Perhaps he was fine with that when he was a grade six Martial Artist walking into the Shionel Confederation, but that was no longer the case.


    More than three years had passed since he had first set foot in the Shionel Dungeon, and he had grown tremendously since then. He hadn''t gotten officially checked, but by his own estimation, he was probably a baseline grade-ten Martial Squire.


    However, once he finished Project Metabody¡­


    He didn''t think grade ten would be able to do his power justice.


    As long as he finished the defense and offense Martial Bodies of Project Metabody, he would achieve a level of power that would be breaching new territory within the Squire Realm.


    Rui nced up at the doctor. "Thank you for your services, doctor."


    "Not at all, Squire," the man bowed.


    Rui had plenty of thinking to do now that he parted ways with him. He had much to consider and think about. His circumstances and situation had grown moreplex than anything he had ever experienced before, he needed to make sure that he properly thought things through instead of just giving in to his urges.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1180 Decision

    <h4>Chapter 1180 Decision</h4>


    He strongly desired to partake in the contest after all, that was how he felt. Itpromised his ability to consider whether it was a good decision or not objectively and rationally. That was why he needed to put extra effort into his considerations.


    The first thing he looked at was his long-term priorities of reaching the Senior Realm well before the ten-year period ended.


    When that goal was considered, the Virodhabhasa Martial Contest was an absolute plus. The only thing he needed to be very careful of was the fact that he was dealing with religion that he unfortunately could be interpreted to have ties rted to.


    However, even that was fine as long as he did not give the Virodhabhasa Faith any reason to act against his interests. That meant that at the very least he should prevent them from getting to the core of his Martial Path, and prevent them from learning that he was a reincarnated being.


    These two were manageable, Rui''s Martial Path and Art were highly nuanced, especially now that he was adding anotheryer ofplexity to it with Project Metabody. One could not simply decipher its depths just by observing it for a brief period of time. Especially if he was doing everything in his power to make sure that he didn''t divulge his secrets.


    As long as he made sure that the core nature of his Martial Path was inscrutable, then the Virodhabhasa Contest was filled with positives when his goal of reaching the Senior Realm


    For one, it was the best way to stimte his potential, more so than any other option he took to get his hands on the medical treatment necessary for Senior Xanarn, this was the one that would him the closest to the Senior Realm.


    Another benefit was that it was the absolute best way for him to refine Project Metabody. Even if hepleted the initial iteration of Project Metabody, he would not use it as smoothly and as well as he would if he subjected himself to testing against many martial Squires.


    That was what was necessary for him to gain mastery over it. Experience.


    However, just quantity of experience was not enough. Simply fighting arge number of Martial Squires would not help if they were low-grade and not diverse enough.


    What he needed was quality of experience and diversity of experience in addition to quantity.


    The best way to get the highest quantity, quality, and diversity of experience using Project Metabody was by subjecting himself to a powerful group of Martial Squires.


    He could not think of a more fitting avenue for it than the Virodhabhasa Martial Contest. Literally, even if he turned back and returned to the Floating Sect, it would not serve him as well as this contest did.


    (''Another condition I need to be very careful of is my appearance,'') Rui narrowed his eyes.


    He had not forgotten that he was on the run from a man who knew what he looked like. He had changed the color of his eyes and hair, yes, but that was obviously not going to make him unrecognizable.


    He needed to make sure that his appearance was masked at all costs. N?velD(ram)a.?rg owns this content.


    However, an ordinary mask was not going to suffice. He hadn''t forgotten what had happened when he relied on an ordinary mask to protect his identity back when he was a Martial Apprentice in the Kandrian Empire, and it had backfired badly, leading to the destruction of his own mask and disclosure of his identity.


    That absolutely could not be allowed to ur again. Rui would kill himself if he was ipetent enough to not take the strictest of measures to ensure that this never urred again.


    (''A Senior-level mask grafted onto my skin with an adhesive so tough that it will need to be surgically extracted from my face after the contest,'') Rui dered.


    That was the standard to which he would hold himself. Only with such a mask could he be confident that it would not break or fall off. Only with such an extreme measure would he be willing to participate in such a high-profile event that was bound to draw a lot of attention from across the entirety of the continent.


    Many considerations like that continued to fly around in his head as he thoroughly considered the pros and cons of his options in regard to the long-term and short-term goals that he had set for himself.


    The ones that shed through his head the most were his long-term goals of bing strong enough to eliminate the threat of Chairman Deacon and protect his family. Frankly everything else, including Senior Xanarn, simply paled inparison.


    That did not mean he was forsaking her, the primary reason he was entering the contest was for her sake. As long as he performed well enough the Virodhabhasa Faith would generously waive the cost of the medical treatment. The better he performed, the more he would gain.


    (''It''s set then,'') Rui steeled his will as he made his decision. (''I shall partake in the Virodhabhasa Martial Contest.'')


    The decision was heavy. Just making him feel as though the air had grown heavy around him. Either that he was experiencing even more pressure.


    (''The contest is only one year away.'') Rui narrowed his eyes. (''I need to finish Project Metabody before it arrives.'')


    That was a tall order. Finishing ordinary techniques within a year was quite easy for Rui, but Project Metabody was a different beast altogether. The techniques of these projects were so challenging that even normal grade-ten techniques like Transverse Resonance and Pathfinder were easier inparison.


    However, it also made him optimistic that it would give him what he needed to achieve his many goals, from procuring the treatment that Senior Xanarn needed, to gaining the power to eliminate his enemies and protect the people that he loved.


    He quickly headed back to the Virodhabhasa main church to enlist for the contest.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1181 Choice

    <h4>Chapter 1181 Choice</h4>


    Now that Rui had decided to partake in the Virodhabhasa Martial Contest, he needed to make sure that he was properly equipped for it. Otherwise, he would not only not achieve what he needed to, but he would embarrass himself too.


    Given that he had decided that Project Metabody needed to bepleted before the contest began, he had a lot of work to do. One year was not a luxurious amount of time given the magnitude of the difficulty of the task that he had assigned himself.


    He had developed the conceptual basis of the Hypertrophic Surge technique, the technique he developed to serve as his offense-oriented Martial Art.


    Now he needed to develop a practical training technique for it, which was its own challenge. Injecting the Herenal''s Virus into his body was not the hard part. That was actually the easiest part, the hardest part was training his body to normally release enough of the myostatin protein to ensure that there was little to no way that the Herenal Virus could cause his muscles to undergo rapid hypertrophy unless Rui allowed for it to happen.


    He wanted to be able to trigger the ceasing of the production of myostatin so that the virus could quickly gobble the protein up and elerate the growth of his muscles very rapidly due to that.


    Normally, this would be quite challenging to do, after all, how could he possibly control the production of myostatin when it was or wasn''t convenient? This content provided by N(o)velDrama].[Org.


    It was only then that he came up with a solution to his dilemma. A technique that he had used in the past a long time ago. The same mental imprint technique that he had used to create the Hungry Pain technique.


    The Hungry Pain technique was a technique that triggered autophagy every time the user felt pain, regardless of the will of the user of the technique after the training wasplete every time they experienced hunger.


    This was because the technique was a self-hypnosis technique that hypnotized the user into associating a sensory stimulus as the trigger for whatever metabolic or neurological phenomenon was to be triggered.


    In the case of Hungry Pain, it was triggering autophagy with pain. In the case of Hypertrophic Surge, he would need to develop a unique trigger to cease the production of myostatin which in turn would make all the myostatin in his body disappear due to the virus consuming the protein, which would remove the limiter on muscles, causing them to inte significantly.


    In order to sustain the massive consumption of energy that would follow, he would need to use the Reaper''s Dew poison to cause cell death to provide enough energy for the inted muscles.


    Thus he would be sacrificing defense, and stamina for power as a result. He would also be sacrificing speed since his mass would grow faster than his power output making his body less agile and average and peak speeds much lower than normal.


    All in exchange for offensive power. Rui predicted that once he got the Hypertrophic Surge technique to function properly, he would be so powerful that every attack of his would be incredibly heavy and devastating.


    He predicted that his normal sonic bullets would be on par with his Transverse Resonance attacks each. That would mean that he would be capable of unleashing an onught that was multiple times more powerful and potentpared to what he would be capable of on his own.


    He definitely couldn''t wait to start working on the training. He would begin by employing the mental imprint training technique to associate some action or the other as a trigger for theplete ceasing of myostatin production while training his body to produce far more myostatin on average to counter the virus that he would be introducing inside his body.


    (''It''s definitely going to be a tough training regime,'') Rui winced.


    Conditioning his body to produce more myostatin than normal was normally horrible for his development. Myostatin inhibited muscle growth, adding more to one''s body would destroy one''s gains. Not only was Rui going to add more of it, but he was also going to force his body to be the one adding more of it, which would only be bnced out by the virus after he added it to his body.


    (''It''s ironic how the virus will be the cure as opposed to the disease by the time it is added to my body.'') Rui mused.


    That was one of the reasons that he was sure that this would work out. He was only going to add the virus into his body by the time the training waspletely finished, and by then his body would have changed to need the virus, making sure that none of the things that happen with virus infections would happen this time.


    He could not afford to get a permanent fever due to Herenal''s Disease, and the only way to do that was to ensure that the virus was merely a piece of a puzzle by the time he introduced it into his body.


    He also needed to consider the fact that he needed to purchase a sample of the virus, and he also needed to purchase training resources to ensure that he had everything that he needed to make his Hypertrophic Surge, which would certainly note for free.


    (''¡­Missions¡­'') Rui considered the prospect of doing missions to fuel his training.


    Unfortunately, he recalled his days in the Kandrian Empire where he would phase between missions and training, training was expensive enough that it required many weeks'' worth of missions to fund months of training in the Martial Union.


    If the cost of training was simr here, then it probably meant that it would take months'' worth of missions before he could begin training for the rest of the remaining year before the Martial Contestmenced.


    (''That''s too much,'') He shook his head.


    Fortunately, he had a much better idea. (''Selling my lesser techniques is the better solution this time. They cannot purchase the absurdly expensive potion, but they can purchase me a year of training.'')


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1182 Overskeptical

    <h4>Chapter 1182 Overskeptical</h4>


    However, he had to set very hard rules and boundaries for what he sold.


    (''Nothing rted to the VOID algorithm.'') This was a no-brainer. If the Virodhabhasa Faith found out anything about the VOID algorithm, Rui could not even begin to imagine the sheer scale of the shitstorm that he would be bringing to himself.


    That was why techniques that were necessary for it like the Mind Pce were things that he disqualified off the bat. As well as constituent techniques like the pattern recognition systems that he built the predictive model through, or the adaptive mode which he adapted to them.


    He did not even want to hint that there was aplex mental aspect to his Martial Art. This was something that people could never actually find out unless he himself told them, after all, it was happening inside his mind outside the sight of other people.


    (''Definitely nothing rted to Project Metabody either,'') Rui noted to himself.


    Project Metabody was also something that would give him away if people understood the depth to which it aligned with the Virodhabhasa Faith, so he crossed any technique from there off the list as well.


    However, unlike the VOID algorithm, the execution of Project Metabody could not be physically hidden from spectators.


    His speed physically increased through the Void Forestep technique, or his stamina lengthened through the Hungry Pain technique, or his healing elerated through the Weaving Blood technique, or his offense visibly increased with the help of Hypertrophic Surge, or his defense visibly strengthened with whatever technique that he would be creating for it.


    Still, that did not mean that the element of adapting to the optimal Martial Body to adapt and evolve to his opponent was something that could be detected, thus he was still fine.


    Regardless, spreading the VOID algorithm and Project Metabody techniques was an absolute no-no.


    This left the rest of his Martial Art techniques that he had developed from scratch himself. N?velDrama.Org owns ? this.


    Flux Earther, Gale Force Breathing, Pathfinder, Transverse Resonance, Riemannian Echo, etc.


    These were all mostly grade-ten techniques barring Gale Force Breathing and Flux Earther which were grade-nine.


    Regardless, he knew that grade-nine and grade-ten techniques were extremely prized and valued. There was absolutely no way that he wouldn''t get many concessions from the church when it came to these techniques.


    He immediately got to work, purchasing some booklets and some basic stationery as he began extensively documenting these techniques one by one, creating training manuals as well. He made sure to organize the data that he needed to convey as efficiently and concisely as he could.


    At the end of the day, it was quite likely that the Virodhabhasa Church measured a technique''s value the same way that the Martial Union did, or in an extremely simr way as it did.


    The Martial Union looked at originality and uniqueness, which together constituted individuality. It also looked at potency grade, difficulty, and dissemination viability.


    Thetter were variables that were ideally as minimal as possible, but unfortunately, those were not something he could reduce too much.


    His techniques were difficult, this was true without a doubt, they were also difficult to spread since they had such low dissemination viability in the first ce.


    Still, this was not far from the norm, so he did not think it was much of a negative. It wasn''t every day that genuinely new and genuinely powerful individualistic techniques came to the doorstep, thus he was sure that the church would at least be appreciative of the fact.


    He quickly finished writing the technique and training manuals for each of the techniques that he had deemed not dangerous for selling or spreading, before heading to the church.


    "How may we help you?" A staff member greeted Rui by bowing to him when he reached the merit redemption counter of the church.


    This was where martial Artists could apply to sell personal contributions to the church in an easy and effective member.


    "I''d like to sell some techniques to the church and earn some merits or Virodhanas."


    "Understood, have you familiarized yourself with the protocols in ce for submitting Martial Art-centric contributions to the church?" She asked courteously.


    "I have," Rui nodded. "I need to demonstrate the technique that I''m selling while also presenting an eptable method of training to the church, the judgment of which is up to the discretion of the Martial Artists of the church."


    The staff member looked surprised that Rui had nailed it smoothly on the first try. It was clear to him that she was ustomed to having to exin it to Martial Artists from top to bottom each time a technique was submitted.


    It was remarkable that she still was able to maintain a strong sense of religious faith towards Martial Artists despite having to witness their idiocy and thick-headedness day in and day out.


    Regardless, thanks to him being prepared so well, the process went smoothly and he quickly began demonstrating technique after technique as he was led to different facilities where he could show off the full power of his techniques one by one without having to worry about anybody else.


    And he did.


    The supervisors who were tasked with recording and thoroughly documenting the oue of the techniques were unable to hide their shock at some of Rui''s techniques.


    Like when he retained his perception of the heaviest anti-espionage measures that the church was able to muster up using Riemannian Echo, sending a small rm through the church as they realized a single grade-ten technique could bypass all their measures of privacy.


    They were also beyond shocked when Rui began hitting bulls-eyes on targets that were more than two kilometers away from himself!


    The supervisors needed to verify on three different asions whether he truly was a Martial Squire and not a Martial Senior ying as a Martial Squire, and they were still not satisfied with his words or the results of their own investigations.


    Everything pointed to Rui being a normal martial Squire, but his feats were simply too shocking to believe that.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1183 Bishop

    <h4>Chapter 1183 Bishop</h4>


    Rui sighed as he stood in ce after having finished the final technique that he was selling.


    Much to his surprise, the Virodhabhasa Church deployed a Martial Senior to verify the veracity of his techniques and his identity.


    It took many a stubborn hour before they were finally tired of investigating the same matter, and ceased the issue as a whole.


    "How much will I be remunerated for my techniques?" Rui asked the supervising head of the evaluation team in addition to the Martial Seniors that had been brought to evaluate Rui''s technique. "How long will the evaluation take?"


    The supervisor twitched his face. "I do not know how much you will be remunerated, nor do I know when you will receive your result."


    Rui frowned.


    What was the point of having a supervising team that was also doing such basic tasks regrly if they couldn''t even supply him with such basic answers?


    "How long does it normally take?" Rui asked.


    "A few hours," The man replied. "However, sometimes it can ur sooner."


    "Good," Rui nodded.


    "However, your is not a normal case, so I cannot say. The verification of your Realm is still being concerned"


    Rui sighed with exasperation. "This again. I just want to sell my techniques, is that too much to ask?"


    Apparently, it was.


    The church genuinely suspected that Rui was a Martial Senior trying to masquerade as a Martial Squire due to the resulting techniques appearing stronger in grade, and thus trying to fake a high-grade Squire-level technique, instead of an ordinary Senior level technique that would not fetch him as many prices as possible.


    What irked him the most, however, was what cameter; days of nothing.


    He waited a total of four days with absolutely no insightful response from the church.


    He was starting to think that he had perhaps the church was scamming him!


    After all, they took themodity that he was selling, and then they did not remunerate him. Then essentially ignored him when he asked them for what he owed.


    Yet, he kept patient.


    He did not think the church was ipetent, nor did he think it was so shamelessly deceitful.


    And he was right, on the fifth day there was finally a change.


    "Squire Falken," A messenger one day reached out to him. "I am pleased to inform you that the technique application that you have submitted extremely recently." N?velD(ram)a.?rg owns this content.


    "And?" Rui asked impatiently. "What was the result?"


    "I''m afraid that is not something that I am here to convey," The man shrugged. "I am here to convey an invitation by Bishop Master Deivon."


    "What?" Rui frowned.


    "Bishop Master Deivon is the bishop of the Master Realm that oversees this town and its management."


    Rui narrowed his eyes with some nervousness.


    This was not a simple invitation. It may very well have been a summon. Regardless of the decision made, defying a Martial master in a room where they had actual authority. A Bishop Master was a Martial Master within the religion that had an immense amount of political power and influence over the religion.


    He was a man who possessed power that was just one step below the Cardinal Sages, Rui could not even imagine the sheer amount of effort and time it must have taken for the Martial Master to reach this spot.


    He suspected that even bing a Martial master was not enough to be eligible for such a role. It most likely was something that took an immense amount of power and loyalty, more than anything.


    "May I refuse?"


    The man simply stared at Rui.


    "¡­Never mind,"


    "You are invited today, approximately fifteen minutes from now."


    "You could have told me earlier," Rui snorted as he quickly prepared himself, epting the invitation envelope before immediately begin traveling to the specified location.


    The resulting ce was one of the most gorgeous residences that Rui had seen anywhere in the town. It was extremely luxurious, yet it wasn''t so absurdlyrge to make it egotistical as a choice.


    Yet it was heavily guarded.


    The first thing he came across was powerful Martial Seniors serving as guards at the entrance.


    Yet they easily let him pass once they verified the invitation that he had received.


    A set of servants quickly ushered him to take seat in the guest room.


    The ce was luxurious enough to quickly elucidate the sheer amount of wealth that the religion received. It made him more weary of the religion even if it could benefit him.


    That was when he felt it.


    A profound sense of pressure. One that did not weigh down on his senses as much as it did on his psyche.


    It was a pressure that pierced through a veil that he had never even noticed before.


    It was a pressure that seemed to brim on a level that he had never experienced before.


    It was as though the pressure from the Martial Senior existed across three dimensions while this particr pressure was one that existed across four dimensions.


    It was just unfathomable.


    "Squire Falken," He heard a soft butmanding tone.


    Rui turned to meet the source of the greeting.


    "¡­Bishop Master Deivon," Rui bowed his head, expressing respect to a fellow Martial Artist who had managed to break through a total of four times and had pierced into the upper Realms.


    "Raise your head, Squire Falken," The man smiled. He had a sense of serenity and peace to him one would perhaps not expect from a Martial Artist, especially a Martial Master.


    Rui stood straight as he got a good look at the first Martial Master he hade across in a long time.


    Thest time he stood before a Martial Master was when he was a Martial Apprentice and a Martial Squire. Headmaster Aronian was thest Martial Master that Rui had interacted with before leaving his home.


    And now he stood before one again, he came to realize that he had never truly captured the magnificence of a Martial Master back then.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1184 Origin

    <h4>Chapter 1184 Origin</h4>


    It wasn''t that Masters did not exert more pressure than Seniors. They most certainly did.


    However, today, Rui was able to distinguish the origin of the aura.


    What he meant by that was the fact that the fear that Martial Seniors were able to inspire from Martial Squires was something that came from the power of the Martial Body. Rui could sense that the origin of the fear that they inspired from lesser beings was the power of the Martial Body and the Martial Heart buried deep within it.


    Of course, their Martial Paths, and Art too inspired a great amount of fear, but that was something that was true even for Martial Squires, what set them apart from Martial Squires was thetent sense of pressure that the presence of the Martial Heart exerted. That was what made the auras of Martial Seniors distinguished from Martial Squires.


    However, Rui was unable to identify what it was that set apart Martial Masters from Martial Seniors.


    They were scarier, sure.


    Just standing before one made the hair on Rui''s body stand up. Rui could truly sense that the bishop could erase his life with contemptuous ease if he wanted to.


    But where did that powere from? Where was the deep sense of peril that not even Martial Seniors hading from?


    (''It''s¡­ not his body,'') Rui concluded.


    Primordial Instinct, in addition to his ordinary senses, allowed him to gain a lot of insight into the man''s Martial Body.


    Was it stronger than any of the Martial Seniors he had evere across? Most certainly.


    However, was the difference in the power between his Martial Body and those of the Martial Seniors he had met massive?


    Surprisingly, the answer was no.


    (''The Martial Heart is proportional to the power of the Martial Body, if his Martial Body isn''t too much stronger, then his Martial Heart also cannot be much stronger than a Martial Senior.


    Yet Rui knew from his instinct and senses that this man was vastly more formidable than any Martial Senior he had ever met.


    Rui had reached the stage where he was no longer psychologically suppressed by Senior-level aura due to how strong he had be.


    Yet when heid eyes on the bishop, he felt as though someone had put a gigantic boulder on his head. There was no doubt that this man was the single most powerful Martial Artist Rui had met in a long, long time.


    It was because of his strength that Rui couldn''t help but be mystified by the source of the strength behind his aura.


    Martial Apprentices had their Martial Paths, Martial Squires had their Martial Bodies, and Martial Seniors had their Martial Hearts.


    What did Martial Masters have that put them so much above the Lower Realms?


    Was there another well of power that was hidden even deep inside the heart and the rest of the physical body? Property ? of N?velDrama.Org.


    Instinctively, Rui knew this was not the case.


    The human body did not have limitless power. Neither did Martial Bodies. The Martial Heart was the well of untapped power, and the true might of the Martial Body locked away inside. There was nothing left in the body after the Martial Heart was depleted.


    So where else could the sheer power of the Master Realme from?


    Rui didn''t know. Of course, this wasn''t a surprise. How could he possibly figure out the nature of the Master Realm just by studying a Martial Master for a few seconds?


    It was impossible, the best he could do was specte.


    He had a feeling that there was a profound difference between the fundamental natures of the Upper and Lower Realms.


    He just didn''t know what it was.


    "You''re quite the curious one, aren''t you?" Bishop Master Deivon threw an amused smile at Rui. "Trying to peer into Realms far beyond reach, are we?"


    Rui''s eyes widened in shock.


    He had made sure to disy no outward sign of inspection, yet the Martial Master saw right through him and even called him out on it.


    For half a second, Rui worried whether his thoughts were exposed. He immediately put on a Mind Mask ofposure. He hoped that it would hide his surprise, and also perhaps make him more difficult to read.


    "That''s a nifty little trick you have there," The man smiled even more. "You''re an interesting man, Squire Falken."


    "Thank you¡­ sir bishop," Rui warily responded. It appeared that he was easily able to observe the technique, which was quite impressive because the technique was executed inside Rui''s mind.


    He felt that he had underestimated Martial Masters, perhaps it was because Headmaster Aronian was always quite gentle.


    "Hah," the man snorted. "You can address me with my Martial Artist honorific, young man. Nowe, we have much to discuss."


    Rui cautiously sat beside him on the couch. "What is it that you wish to discuss with me, Master Deivon? Is this really just about the techniques?"


    Frankly, it was a little absurd for the effective mayor of the town to personally look into the techniques sold by a Martial Squire. While Rui certainly was selling some impressive techniques that the Virodhabhasa Church would certainly love to get their hands on, it was not something that warranted the personal attention and intervention of a Martial Master like Master Deivon.


    Yet the fact of the matter was that a Martial Master had not only sought to intervene in the matter but also personally sought out Rui himself.


    Rui had instantly realized that this was more than just about the techniques. There was no way that a Martial Master would lower himself to personally handle a case about techniques that were two Realms below him.


    "Sharp," The man smiled appreciatively. "You''re actually right, your techniques have been approved as legitimate Squire-level techniques, since I have just confirmed that you are indeed a Martial Squire and not a Martial Senior. That means those impressive techniques of yours are epted by the Virodhabhasa Faith."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1185 Proposal

    <h4>Chapter 1185 Proposal</h4>


    Rui frowned inwardly.


    Then why did the Martial Master summon Rui if the verification was that simple?


    He schooled his body strictly despite his confusion. The Martial Master had already demonstrated a scary amount of insight with his remarkable observation skills.


    "You must be confused as to why we''re even speaking in this manner if the verification was that simple," The Master remarked. "It''s simple really, I came to learn about your techniques by coincidence, and happened to look into the profile of you that we created, and I have to say, I''m impressed."


    He studied Rui with interest. "So young, yet so strong, so individualistic. I have never ever seen someone of your youth with a Martial Path as deep as yours."


    He leaned forward. "This depth¡­ It far surpasses anything I''ve ever seen from any Martial Squire ever. Th depth of your Martial Art given your age, is profound!"


    Rui recalled Headmaster Aronian remarking the exact same thing many years ago when he was still a Martial Apprentice.


    Could it be that Martial Masters in general were able to gain an immense amount of information from any and everything with just a simple nce?


    He didn''t know, but that only made him more nervous.


    The air grew more tense as Rui grew deeply ufortable under the prative eyes of the Martial Master. It appeared that he was quite interested in whatever about Rui''s Martial Path.


    Rui was caught a little off-guard. He wasn''t entirely sure yet whether this was a positive or a negative thing. It was a shame that he couldn''t just get up and excuse himself from the ce. But s, what happened had already happened.


    For now, he remained silent. He had already asked, and the Master had already replied. Right now it seemed that he was quite content simply observing Rui and learning more about him that way.


    He grew more moved by the second, his eyes widening with amazement. He didn''t make any effort to hide his emotions.


    Rui winced as waves of pressure pressed onto him, making his head ache painfully. He had already grown ustomed to Senior level pressure, able to handle it with no pressure. But the pressure that the Master exerted on Rui was far harder to resist.


    In fact, if not for the fact that his mind had undergone two rounds of rapid growth, and his Martial Path was quite deep, as the Master pointed out, there was a good chance that Rui would have experienced far more negative effects from the pressure that the Martial Master''s emotions and exerted on Rui.


    Rui felt even more ufortable as the man eyed him from top to bottom. It took him a while before he finally looked Rui in the eye.


    "I have never seen someone like you," The Master spoke with a more serious tone. "The hidden power that you lock behind that mask, the depth of your Martial Path, the sheer amount of individuality in your techniques, that too merely the ones that you have chosen to supply to us. It''s frankly unheard of."


    His eyes narrowed.


    Rui on the other hand gritted his teeth.


    A new wave of pressure washed over him, as though itpelled him to answer that very question.


    "What is your Martial Path, son?" The man asked straightforwardly.


    Any ordinary Martial Squire would have wholeheartedly responded with the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.


    But not Rui.


    He shook his head. "I''m afraid I cannot divulge that."


    Normally, he would have considered lying. Perhaps he could lie that his Martial Path was centered around a dynamic Martial Body, but he ultimately decided against that.


    This Martial Master had proven to be an extremely sharp individual. Lying to him was probably impossible for Rui as he was now. He would most likely instantly see through any shallow lie that Rui cooked up while also proving to be a pain in the ass once he learned that Rui had lied to him.


    "I see. That''s a shame, but no matter," He shook his head with a resigned smile, much to Rui''s surprise. It appeared that he was gracious enough to acknowledge and ept Rui''s unwillingness to divulge too many details about himself. "Those were interesting details that I just discovered. I did wish to talk to you about something else entirely, though these new insights I have made are relevant to what I called you here for."


    "And what exactly would that be for, sir?" Rui asked with curiosity.


    "You have registered for the Martial Contest, haven''t you?" The Martial Master asked.


    Rui narrowed his eyes. "That''s right."


    "I believe you are also interested in obtaining a high-grade esoteric detoxifying agent, and the surrounding medical treatments, correct?" The man asked.


    Rui was not shocked that the man had ess to this information. After all, he managed the entire town, which meant he could ess any and all information within it, including the few interactions that the Church had had with him. That would exin how he knew what Rui was after.


    "If I had to hazard a guess, you intended to partake in the Martial Contest in order to win enough times to gain enough of a favor from the church to redeem that potion and that treatment, correct?" The Martial Master asked. N?velDrama.Org owns ? this.


    "¡­Yes," Rui sighed.


    He wasn''t surprised that the Martial Master had gone as far as to figure even this out.


    "Then I have a proposal for you," The Martial Master smiled. "Allow me to be your patron, and in turn, I will lower the threshold of sess you need to aplish in order to get your hands on the medical treatments that you need."


    Rui frowned.


    That was not what he expected. It appeared that the Martial Master found Rui worth bargaining a seemingly mutually beneficial deal with. Ruicked too much context to even understand the true meaning of what the man was saying. What he did know was that he was interested in pursuing a working rtionship with Rui.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1186 Sharp

    <h4>Chapter 1186 Sharp</h4>


    "I''m afraid I do not understand what it means to be your patron," Rui frowned.


    "It''s simple, really," The man began exining. "It just means that I will be acknowledged as one who is partially responsible for your sesses and your failures to a certain extent, and it means that I will be contributing to your performance by lending you the wealth and resources you need in order to be stronger."


    Rui narrowed his eyes as he considered the man''s words. What he said sounded strange to Rui, like it made no sense. But he thankfully appeared to have been able to withhold his incredulity this time.


    "So simply by epting your patronage, you get to im a portion of the credit for my sess?" Rui frowned. "On top of that, you''re going to lower the difficulty of me getting my hands on the treatment that I need?"


    The man nodded. "You''ll still need to win considerably, but don''t worry too much about that part. As long as you do well enough, you''ll be fine, most likely. At the very least you need to win in the Preliminary Contest of this church town to pick a representative for the town. If you cannot even do that much, then I''m afraid you simply were not cut out to be able to earn the rewards that you spoke about."


    Rui was absolutely confident that he would be able to get past any kind of preliminary contest. Preliminary eliminations and filters were meant to scout yers who were capable of doing much more and filter out yers who were simply unworthy of going any further.


    As strong as he currently was was enough to make sure that no preliminary event could possibly be able to hold the likes of Rui back.


    They both knew that.


    Rui because he obviously knew what he himself was capable of, and the Martial Master had also learned about Rui in a small amount of time, just enough to know that such a thing couldn''t possibly stop Rui.


    "What exactly do you gain out of all of this?" Rui asked with a suspicious question.


    From what Rui could tell, there was very little to no benefit when it came to offering to be someone''s patron.


    Thus there had to be a good reason that someone like a Martial Master was going this far to try and get Rui as a patron.


    He knew that Martial Artists who had patrons generally did better than Martial Artists who didn''t have any patrons. He would gain rich ess to many growth and training resources that he would otherwise be forced to eitherpromise and avoid, the tests directly, However, Rui did not have ess to such goods andmodities.


    One thing that Rui needed to make sure that he fully understood was why this man was choosing him.


    "I am firmly of the opinion that you will make it remarkably farther than anyone would normally admit," The Master immediately rified.


    "I appreciate the vote of confidence," Rui grew more serious. "However, how does that help you in any material fashion? You''re a Martial Master and someone with a pretty high position all things considered. Why in the world would seek to be my patron even if you think I will make it far?"


    "Because the Virodhabhasa Martial Contest is special, young man," The Master continued. "Its purpose is not just an avenue for Martial Artists from across the world to join and show off their Martial Heart."


    Rui frowned. "I''m afraid I don''t get it."


    Yet he understood what the martial Senior was going to say immediately after, and why he was going to say it immediately after uttering those words.


    "This Martial Contest isn''t just for the people have fun watching," The Martial Master clearly stated. "It is an endeavor that our Faith takes to further our Divine Mission."


    Rui''s eyes narrowed as the Martial Master essentially confirmed what Rui had sharplye to realize on his own.


    The Divine Cause of the Virodhabhasa Faith was to find the Virodhabhasa before the catastrophe destroying humanity even has a chance to materialize. He could imagine how the entire Virodhabhasa Martial Contest was simply an attempt by the church to be able to keep an eye on promising Martial Squires and offer them to join the church early on. This way if they were the Virodhabhasa, they would most likely have already indoctrinated to not betray the faith no matter what.


    "Religious leaders are allowed to be patrons of various contestants, aid them with preparations and growth and other variables, before then allowing them to apply them into the contest. If it turned out to be the case that one of the bishops patroned the actual Virodhabhasa, then your status within the Virodhabhasa Faith would be absolutely boosted. That is something that I strongly desire, thus I am asking for your aid."


    Rui briefly considered the implications of his statement with widened eyes.


    "Are you saying¡­?" Property ? of N?velDrama.Org.


    "No," The man smiled. "Of course, I''m not saying that I think you''re Lord Virodhabhasa. However, there are some Martial Artists who possess Martial Paths and Martial Art that superficially resemble the Martial Art of Lord Virodhabhasa ording to the Virodhaveda. They are considered to be seeds of the Virodhbhasa, this can work out as long as you demonstrate a dominant victory."


    Rui narrowed his eyes. "Seeds of the Virodhabhasa?"


    "That''s right," The Martial Master nodded. "They believe that Martial Artists that possess Martial Paths that are effective against all kinds of Martial Art and Martial Paths, are blessed by the Virodhabhasa and are Virodhabhasa seeds that have the potential to be the object of the Divine Mission of the Virodhabhasa Faith."


    Rui picked up something that stood out to him from the way he spoke about this.


    "Master¡­ Can I ask you something?"


    "Why, go right ahead," The man smiled.


    "Are you truly a devotee of the Virodhabhasa Faith?" Rui asked with a suspicious expression.


    The man smiled. "Sharp, aren''t you?"


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1187 Progression

    <h4>Chapter 1187 Progression</h4>


    In the brief time that Rui had spent here, he had already spotted patterns of traits in the behavioral psychology of those indoctrinated by the Virodhabhasa Faith. This allowed him to develop models that predicted not only whether someone was indoctrinated by the faith, but also allowed him to predict to what degree they were indoctrinated.


    This was partially based on the same principles of the predictive model of the VOID algorithm, thus he was able to effortlessly execute it even though it had been the first time that he had done this.


    Of course, the uracy and precision left much to be desired, and it was not wless. But it worked well enough.


    Although he wasn''t super confident about how effectively he would be able to read Martial Artists that had ascended to the Higher Realms, it appeared that at the very least, he could tell when a Martial Master wasn''t the most devoted subject of a faith.


    "You''re not entirely wrong," The man grinned. "I am not the most loyal follower. It''s not that I denounce the faith or anything that extreme, it''s just that I''vee to be more agnostic about it. I''m open to anything, and it helps that I do not reject the Divine Revtion."


    He shrugged nonchntly as if that wasn''t a big deal.


    Rui furrowed his eyebrows. He was confused. How could someone who wasn''t even a believer in the faithe to be a bishop in the religious organization? How did someone even be part of the religion, let alone ascend to such a high-level position?


    "Surprised, are you?" The man smirked, amused. "It''s because the allure of the power of a Martial Master is just that high, young man. Not even a religion asrge and powerful as the Virodhabhasa Faith can reject the might of a Martial Artist who has transcended the Lower Realms."


    Rui furrowed his eyebrows.


    That did make sense. He knew that even the Martial Union treated its Martial Masters as strategic nukes. The sheer amount of value and utility that these beings offered to any organization was so high that even significant transgressions could be forgiven if it meant retaining their power.


    With that context in mind, Rui could easilye to understand why the man was so high and sessful within the Virodhabhasa Faith despite not being the most theistic.


    It was sheer and raw power. As long as the man did not tantly act against the theistic faith, the Martial Sages that ran the Virodhabhasa Faith were most certainly inclined to overlook hisck of personal religiosity.


    "Still, you should be careful, young man," The man remarked. "Your tone and line of questioning can be considered quite offensive within our Faith. A more dedicated and serious religious leader would have you executed for the question that you asked me. You''re fortunate that I am not one of them."


    "That is why you''re the only one that I''ve asked this question to, Master Deivon," Rui replied nonchntly. N?velDrama.Org owns ? this.


    "Hmph," The man snorted with a hint of amusement and annoyance.


    "Besides, with all due respect, Master" Rui continued. "You''re the one who desires my cooperation, something you haven''t yet convinced me of necessarily."


    The man stared at Rui with an intent expression. "It was a miscalction on my part. I did not expect that you would not have sumbed to me by now. I have never met a Martial Squire who has been able to maintainposed resistance before a Martial Master like myself."


    Rui simply stared at him.


    "Then allow me to cut straight to the point. I am willing to offer you the very best of the growth and training resources we have. We have means to elerate your growth and allow you to fulfill one of the key and easier conditions to breaking through to the Senior Realm," The man began.


    Rui narrowed his eyes. "You mean the durability of the constitution of the Martial Body needed to withstand the power of the Martial Heart?"


    "Ah, it appears you have been informed about the Senior Realm and the conditions needed to break through. Good. You have most certainly reached the stage where that information is relevant to you," He remarked. "But to answer your question, yes. My senses tell me that your body is significantly closer to the threshold internal durability needed to withstand the Martial Heart. You''re ahead by almost ten years, in fact, it''s actually ridiculous."


    Rui shrugged, refusing to borate on it. The reason for this was that he did not want to prematurely reveal his connection with the Floating Sect since it was the environment of Ajanta Ind that allowed him to achieve such rapid progress in the strengthening of his body.


    However, there was also a deeper reason for why this was the case.


    The Hungry Pain technique that he had mastered as an Apprentice allowed him to achieve a stronger body well ahead of his time. He had essentially started out with a grade-two body when a grade-two body usually took a couple of years to achieve.


    That along with the nourishing growth from Ajanta Ind had helped him achieve a rate of growth of his body that was incredible. The same was true for Kane.


    These were things that Rui was unwilling to reveal to the Martial Master. The Hungry Pain technique had widespread implications for Martial Art. Being known as the creator of the technique would involve him in a storm with powers far greater than what he was capable of handling.


    He would enter the eyes of predators so powerful, that even Chairman Deacon would pale inparison as a threat.


    This was not true for his other grade-nine and grade-ten techniques. They were powerful as well, but their low dissemination viability and high difficulty meant that only a highly limited number of Martial Squires could master them, this limited the impact they had on society. This is why they were quite valuable, yet notpletely groundbreaking.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1188 Conceal

    <h4>Chapter 1188 Conceal</h4>


    The same was not true for Hungry Pain. The difficulty of the technique was grade-six. It took immense perseverance, but any Martial Squire had the ability to master the technique fully. Meaning it could instantly boost all future Martial Squires by forty-fifty percentpared to the previous generation.


    That was massive for a single technique.


    Rui was willing to share it with the Martial Union even as a Martial Squire because he had a greater amount of trust in the organization. He understood it well enough that it was, by design, remarkably meritocratic. The Hungry Pain technique was just valuable enough that it would massively increase his value to the organization, but not to the degree that it would be harmful to him.


    This was in sharp contrast to elerating the breakthrough rates of Martial Apprentices. Rui did not trust anybody with that information. It was beyond revolutionary.


    Thankfully, it appeared that Bishop Master Deivon respected his privacy as a Martial Artist. This was the norm within the Martial World, as one''s Martial Path and Martial Art were deeply personal to Martial Artists. It was an unspoken rule that one did not cross any lines when inquiring about them.


    "Regardless of the cause behind the abnormal progression of the Martial Body, it is not quite yet at the stage where it can withstand the power of your Martial Heart," The man exined, before smiling. "We can aid with that."


    Rui grew interested in his offer, just like Master Deivon had hoped he would. Power was everything to Martial Artists, after all. Offering to bring Rui one step closer to a higher Realm power was something that he could not ignore.


    "Go on¡­" Rui relented.


    The bishop grinned. "We have potions capable of elerating the progression of Martial Squires. You''re close enough that we can get you past the threshold in one go. Once that happens, you may very well break through any time. They are quite valuable and expensive and are made from ingredients that are acquired by Martial Seniors and Martial Masters from high-danger zones across the continent and in the Beast Domain, we generally do not sell them outside of the faith all that much since they are too powerful a resource. But I am willing to arrange some for you if you agree to be my heritor in the Martial Contest."


    Rui stared at him with a deep expression.


    He had to admit, that that was a deeply alluring offer. Of course, he was aware that he did not need the potions to break through and be a Martial Senior of his own merits. Still, that did not mean that he was unwilling to save time.


    He didn''t know how much time it would take for him to naturally reach the threshold. Perhaps Ajanta Ind could dramatically reduce the time period, however, even then, diminishing returns were something that was very real when it came to conditioning treatments. The first remaining ten to twenty percent of the journey couldst almost as much as the time it took to reach eighty percent. N?velDrama.Org owns ? this.


    That was why the potion was alluring, it would allow him to skip through all of that time, and allow him to avoid wasting a few years.


    He was always cognizant of the fact that he was running out of time.


    Roughly two years had passed since he escaped from the Shionel Confederation. He had made a lot of progress in those two years, no doubt, but it did mean that he only had eight years left before it was game over for his family.


    At that time, he needed to be strong enough to protect his family with just the fear of his power. He was far away from reaching that stage.


    Even breaking through to the Senior Realm wasn''t going to be enough in and of itself. He was simply going to be a newborn Martial Senior. He knew that Chairman Deacon was guarded by two Martial Seniors at all times, a single young Martial Senior was not enough.


    He would need to take strides even within the Senior Realm until he was finally ready to return and put an end to the saga that drove him away from his home in the first ce.


    Rui heaved a sigh as he considered the matter.


    "That''s not all," Master Deivon keenly recognized that he was close. "You may have unrestricted ess to the Squire library of the Virodhahasa Faith."


    Rui''s eyes narrowed.


    That was a considerable offer as well. He was rtively certain that the Virodhabhasa Faith surpassed even the Martial Union when it came to collecting reservoirs of techniques. It wasrger, and more widespread, and had a far greater number of Martial Artists in it. That was saying much since the Martial Union was better than basically every other organization that he had ever seen. He could be assured that the quality of the techniques was remarkably high and they were probably well-rounded in every field of Martial Art there was.


    Of course, he did not intend to mindlessly master techniques created by others. The fact that they were not created by him meant that they could not make the most efficient use of his body and Martial Art, they were sub-optimal.


    However, they could serve as powerful building blocks for new techniques that Rui would build in the future.


    It was the final straw.


    "Alright, fine," Rui sighed. "I''ll agree for now. I wish to hash out the details to make sure that there are no devils in them."


    "I knew you''d make the right choice," The Master grinned. "You wille to see the wisdom in the choice that you have made soon enough."


    Rui hoped so. He was still a little nervous due to his perceived connections with the Virodhabhasa Faith. He knew that he had nothing to do with it and it was all an unfortunate coincidence, but it didn''t matter if the religious cultists disagreed and tried to shackle him.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1189 Seed

    <h4>Chapter 1189 Seed</h4>


    Before Rui fully epted the patronage of the Master, he had several issues to rify.


    "You mentioned something about me being a seed of the Virodhabhasa Faith. Can you please rify that? I am very paranoid about getting deeply involved with a powerful religion for reasons I''m sure you can understand. I hope you can rify what this is all about"


    "Of course," The Master nodded understandingly. "As you are aware, the Divine Mission of the Virodhabhasa Faith is to find the Virodhabhasa before the urrence of the Great Catastrophe. However, while the religious zealots of this religion are very motivated, it is quite the tall task to find the so-called religious deity."


    Even for the Virodhabhasa Faith, the continent was toorge to make such a task anything short of herculean in difficulty.


    "Even when we limit our search for our deity to Martial Artists, it is almost impossible to do aprehensive search through every Martial Artist, for obvious reasons. Martial Artists do not take kindly to being thoroughly scrutinized, and our quite secretive about their Martial Paths and Art. That is why we take a more hands-off approach."


    He paused for a moment. "The head of the religion may be a sincere devotee, but he is not stupid. He has created an incentive structure for the many leaders within the religion to find candidates that can potentially be the Virodhabhasa. They are known as Virodhabhasa seeds. The condition for being known as a Virodhabhasa seed is to have a Martial Art that is roughly speaking equally effective and sessful against all Martial Artists. The more seeds that a religious leader like myself finds and patrons, the greater the appreciation from the religion."


    He grinned. "Of course, that appreciation does manifest in material gains."


    Rui understood what was going on.


    The religion was essentially leveraging the desire for material gains and other resources of the religion to make the leaders of the religion like Master Deivon actually out effort into finding the Virodhabhasa Faith.


    (''Interesting, that means the Astral Deity is truly serious about finding the Virodhabhasa.'') Rui mused.


    It appeared that the Astral Deity understood that simple religious devotion was not enough to push the leaders of the religion to their very best to find the Virodhabhasa. He understood that simply faith was ultimately hollow. If he wanted leaders to exert themselves, there needed to be concrete benefits and incentives to get them to go all out.


    This was especially true for the Martial Artists that were not as religiously motivated, such as Master Deivon.


    Yet the fact that Master Deivon was fulfilling his duty showed that the incentive structure in ce was working.


    (''That isn''t the important part though,'') Rui narrowed his eyes. "I want to know how this affects me. What does it mean to be a Virodhabhasa seed? How will my life be impacted by this?"


    Rui was very nervous about being restricted by the Faith due to his status.


    "Rx young man, bing a seed does not mean you are halfway to being epted as the Virodhabhasa. It''s not even ten percent of the way. Hell, it''s barely one percent of the way, if not being a seed is one billionth of a percent," The man exined. "It just means that your Martial Art is appreciated by the religion as holding a very minute amount of potential of being what the Virodhabhasa Faith is looking for. There are many, many seeds in existence. Thousands in the Apprentice Realm, hundreds in the Squire Realm, and dozens in the Senior Realm. There are too many to make a fuss every time a new seed is discovered. You do not need to be worried that your life is going to be derailed. All the other seeds have gone on their own way and are living lives untouched by the Virodhabhasa Faith. The religion merely hopes that the seeds will naturally bloom, that''s all."


    Rui rxed a bit more. If he was one of the few seeds or something like that, he would definitely be more apprehensive about this development. But if even half of what the man was saying was true, then he probably didn''t have much to be worried about.


    "I want proof," Rui insisted, narrowing his eyes. "I cannot take your word on this.


    He observed the Master''s demeanor.


    "It''s all public information," The Master shrugged. "You can find proof as well, we have had publicized events featuring them."


    This made Rui even more relieved. He would not utter such a lie if it could be disproved with contemptuous ease. He intended to fact-check it nheless, but he was inclined to take him at his word for now.


    "One more thing," Rui was not done. "A Virodhabhasa seed is merely someone with a Martial Art that is supposed to be equally effective against all fields, right? Then how do you know that I am, or could be a Virodhabhasa seed? How can you even have a basis for suspicion if you do not know what my Martial Path or Martial Art are?"


    Rui had not revealed any information about the nature of his Martial Art. He did not confirm that he was a Virodhabhasa seed. Thus he was curious about why the man concluded that he was a seed.


    "The techniques you submitted," The Master smiled wryly.


    "Ah¡­" Rui immediately understood. "The techniques I sold were varied across many fields. It can be inferred that I am a very diverse Martial Artist."


    "Sharp," The man nodded.


    Is that the basis for your concluding that my Martial Art is equally effective against all fields? That''s a bit contrived."


    "Perhaps," He did not deny Rui''s words. He turned towards him, smiling knowingly. "But I have a strong feeling that I am right to suspect you as a seed. Do not underestimate the instinct of a Martial Master, young man."


    Rui duly noted that. It appeared that while Martial Artists of the Lower Realms were mostly blockheads, the same could not be said for Martial Masters.N?velDrama.Org owns ? this.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1190 Details

    <h4>Chapter 1190 Details</h4>


    Once Rui got those main concerns and issues out of the way, he was much less resistant to the idea of being patroned by Bishop Master Deivos. They quickly sorted through all the details, making sure they both got out of it what they wanted.


    Rui quickly realized that what Master Deivos was getting out of their deal was rather flimsy, most certainly not as concrete as the benefits that Rui was getting. At first nce, it seemed like Rui was gaining more from the deal than the Master was, however, it was also true that Master Deivos was hardly losing anything.


    The training and growth resources that Rui was gaining from the Virodhabhasa Faith were quite palpable, but they were also not that big a deal to the church. The losses were well within eptable limits of what a Martial Master like Master Deivos could probably exercise with his power.


    If Rui was indeed a Virodhabhasa seed, then it was worth every ounce of resource that the religion expended on Rui, if it helped him bloom and be a more powerful Martial Artist.


    It was true that Rui was a Martial Squire, and there were many seeds in the Squire Realm when one considered the number in a vacuum.


    However, in the grand scheme of things, with the number of Martial Squires that the faith constantly came in contact with, the fact that there were less than a thousand Virodhabhasa seeds meant that it was umon enough for a new seed to be found.


    This was especially true in the Senior Realm. There were less than a hundred Virodhabhasa seeds in the Senior Realm, it made each of them quite precious.


    Master Deivos knew that Rui was very young, even if Rui hid his appearance and face with a powerful anti-sensory mask that he had procured from Guildmaster Bradt back when he was leaving the Shionel Confederation.


    The fact that Rui had reached the very upper echelons of the Squire Realm in his early twenties was an especially optimistic sign. That was one of the unspoken reasons that Master Deivos was interested in Rui.


    Most Martial Squires that had reached the upper echelons of the Squire Realm were long past their youth. Rui had not missed the fact that he and Kane were by far the two youngest Martial Squires in the Floating Sect. Even Tokugawa Ieyasu, whom Rui sought to surpass, had achieved his power after spending more than a decade in the Squire Realm alone.


    Rui had only been a Martial Artist for nine years in totality. This is the property of N?-velDrama.Org.


    It made both Rui and Master Devos quite optimistic about his chances of breaking through to the Senior Realm.


    "And¡­ with that, we''re done," Master Deivos and Rui signed a couple of documents each after spending an hour hashing out all the minor details of their agreement.


    Master Deivos directed a smile at Rui. "I am now your patron, young man. I expect you to work hard to justify the investment of resources that I''ve invested in you."


    "I always strive to make the best use of what I have," Rui replied. "I cannot promise anything about being qualified as a Virodhabhasa seed, but I will perform to my very best in the Virodhabhasa Martial Contest."


    "Good," The man smiled. "Do you know how you are going to spend the next year training?"


    "¡­I intend toplete an ambitious project that I have set out on," Rui reluctantly exined. "As long as I can sessfullyplete it, I will be far stronger."


    The Master nodded. "You have disyed an abnormally high degree of productivity when ites to developing the individuality of your Martial Body, that is a great sign. Developing individualistic techniques that make the very best use of the potential of your Martial Body is the key to bringing out the very best from your Martial Body; your Martial Heart. You do not necessarily need too much out of your way, but do not neglect it."


    "I understand."


    "Furthermore, given that I have invested in you as a patron. I don''t mind aiding in your training if you are so inclined. From insights to corrections, a Martial Master is not to be underestimated."


    Rui paused for a moment, before shaking his head. "I am not doubting you at all. However, I simply do not require such aid. I am ustomed to oveing problems with my own merits. It is not beneficial to me if I develop a psychological dependence on external aid to ovee any problem."


    To his credit, the Master graciously nodded in approval. "Spoken worthy of someone who has progressed their Martial Art at such a young age. Regardless, this option is always avable."


    The two of them discussed a bit more before they began wrapping their meeting up.


    "I hope the Virodhabhasa Church will deliver the stabilizing treatment potion to the Floating Sect immediately," Rui pointedly told Master Deivos.


    This was one of the agreements that Rui had managed to secure for Senior Xanarn. The church was to give the Floating Sect what it needed to make sure that she didn''t inadvertently die before he got the actual treatment to heal her. This was something that Rui was guaranteed regardless of the uing Martial Contest.


    "Of course, young man" Master Deivos nodded. "I will have that done immediately."


    Rui nodded. "I suppose that concludes our business here. I appreciate your solicitation and your patronage."


    The bishop smiled, getting up. "You most likely will not see me for a while, I have some external operations to tend to. However, the priests of the church will be made aware of our agreement. You may ask of them what you would of me during that time."


    They bade farewell before Rui left his residence, heading out.


    The streets were filled with Martial Artists across the three Lower Realms.


    (''Now that the annoying stuff is finally out of the way, I can focus on getting stronger,'') Rui sighed.


    He had sold some of his techniques to gain training and growth resources in the first ce, and now that he had gotten it. It was time to focus on growing stronger.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1191 Commence

    <h4>Chapter 1191 Commence</h4>


    The first step he was to take now that he had already entered his training phase was to begin training his body to produce an excess of myostatin to counter the Herenal Virus when he infected his body with it. Myostatin limited muscle growth, thus training his body to produce an excess of it to counter the virus that consumed the protein was necessary to maintain his natural physique when he wasn''t using Hypertrophic Surge.


    The best way to do this was to simply train his body to be able to counter the virus in his body. Specifically, training it to produce excess myostatin to counter the shortage of myostatin caused by the virus. Only when the excess canceled out the shortage would his body be able to maintain its natural physique.


    That was the first step. Introducing the virus into his body and ensuring the body learned to coexist with the virus by simply canceling its negative effects. The virus would eat myostatin, while the body would continuously produce it. This would create the bnce allowing his body to remain as it was.


    The second step was learning how to switch off the excess production of myostatin from the body.


    After all, the Hypertrophic Surge technique required all the myostatin in his body to be gone. With that protein gone, the muscles would no longer be hampered and could grow bigger and stronger. That was the essence of the Hypertrophic Surge technique after all. It made his muscles growrger and denser by getting rid of all the myostatin in the body by allowing the virus to eat or destroy all of it.


    Thus, he needed a way tomand the body to stop producing extra myostatin to counter the myostatin-eating virus, only then could the Hypertrophic Surge technique be activated by the virus eating up the myostatin.


    This sounded extremely difficult, but he had found a viable solution for this in training methodologies that involved associating triggers with the desired triggerable effect. Unfortunately, this part required either the proficient use of self-hypnosis or hypnosis from another Martial Artist.


    Rui definitely intended to learn hypnotic techniques in the future, but for now, Project Metabody took precedence. Thus he relied on the patronage of Master Deivos to get a Martial Senior to hypnotize Rui for him.


    "Senior Cayne," Rui greeted the Martial Senior. "I appreciate the aid with my training."


    "I wouldn''t be doing it if not for Master Deivos'' instructions," She grumbled. "Let''s get this over with."


    Rui smiled wryly. "It won''t take more than a single execution of the necessary hypnotic technique."


    The technique in question was simply a technique that put Rui in a mental state where he was open to mental suggestions that could take root in his mind. Subjecting himself to this technique would allow him to create new mental associations between trigger and effect events.


    This could allow him to create a way to associate a trigger with theplete ceasing of the production of myostatin.


    All he needed to was experience the trigger concurrently with the desired triggered effects while under the influence of the mental hypnosis technique that made him extremely open to epting new associations subconsciously.


    This meant that both the trigger and the desired trigger effects needed to be artificially generated simultaneously while under the effects of the hypnosis technique.


    The trigger was a very specific breathing pattern. He found this to be the best kind of trigger. After all, he needed the trigger to be something that he could not pull by mistake. Because if it was something that could be triggered by mistake, then it would be disastrous mid-fight.


    It was especially bad if it activated while he was using a different Metabody technique. He had already witnessed the oue of using two Metabody techniques once. The idea that he could kill himself by mistake was uneptable. Thus, he made sure to choose a breathing pattern that was extremely detached from normal breathing or any of his breathing techniques.


    That covered the trigger part, but also needed to generate the zero-myostatin state in his body simultaneously to get it associated with the trigger.


    That was why he was going to infect himself with the Herenal Virus, in order to create zero-myostatin states to associate with the trigger.


    The two of them were in a training room with a seat armed with shackles and straps. A medical team stood nearby expectantly.


    "We can begin," Rui nodded as he changed into special garments that were extremely flexible and could easily adapt to any size. Comfortably.


    CLACK CLACK CLACK!


    Rui heaved a sigh as the restraints on the seat strapped his body against the seat tightly. These were Squire-level restraints meant to be able to shackle even the strongest of Martial Squires.


    Rui nodded to the medical team, they immediately procured a small syringe containing a translucent fluid in it.


    This was the virus.


    He held his breath as one of the doctors injected the fluid into Rui''s blood before the medical team withdrew instantly. Property ? of N?velDrama.Org.


    Rui held his breath as if nothing happened for several seconds.


    The tension in the air remained for a few minutes.


    That was when it began.


    "Urgh!" Rui grimaced as his body felt a ripple across it. His muscles began burning in pain as his flesh began screaming, as though it was being torn apart from the inside.


    Yet he bore the pain, turning towards the Martial Senior.


    "Please begi-!" CLAP!


    A sound noise she produced before he even finished talking shook him, catching him off-guard, by the time he even fully became cognizant of what just happened, her technique had already taken effect.


    Hypnosis as a field attempted to pass suggestions to the subconscious mind, bypassing the conscious barricades that existed in the way. Back on Earth, people were only capable of bypassing the conscious barrier to the subconscious mind if the targets allowed it to happen. However, Martial Artists were not bound by such limitations at all.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1192 Drawbacks

    <h4>Chapter 1192 Drawbacks</h4>


    Rui soon fell into a trance-like state as his subconscious mind absorbed his normal state as ''normal''.


    Powerful gears began turning deep in his mind as the mental imprint technique by Senior Cayna took effect with full force. Both the trigger and triggered were in ce, and the establishment of a causal connection between them in this new state was rapidly being formed.


    Rui on the other hand became self-absorbed in his own body. The new state of his body hadpletely drawn his attention.


    He could see what was happening to his own body. The oue was shocking and terrifying, yet also highly exciting and promising.


    His muscles grewrger step by step. This alone was one hell of a sight to witness. Every muscle group grew rounder and rounder as a result of the virus going haywire inside his own body. He could practically feel the virus consuming the myostatin reserves in his body while triggering rapid muscle growth.


    He hadn''t experienced pain like this since the Squire evolution breakthrough procedure. Frankly, he was shocked by the difference in his body. Out of all the Metabody techniques that he had created thus far, this one had surprised him the most. He had not expected it to be so jarring.


    One moment he went from a body that was just muscr enough to have decent power, but also light enough to not be slow.


    However, all of that went out of the window as he began resembling a mini-Hulk. He felt physical power that was unlike anything he had ever experienced in his life.


    Yet at the same time, he felt heavier than he ever had in his entire life. He felt as though someone had strapped every muscle in his body with incredibly heavy boulders, forcing him to slug them around with every movement that he made.


    It was tiring and energy-consuming. He felt his stamina slipping away like someone had poked a hole in the bottom of a bottle of water. If not for the fact that the autophagy of Hungry Pain supplied the body with vastly greater energy reservespared to his normal base state, he would be exhausted extremely quickly. Content from N?velDr(a)ma.Org.


    He bore the pain and the alienation of his new state with a heavy mind. He felt as though he wouldn''t like the Hypertrophic Surge technique more so than the other Metabody techniques that he had created.


    However, its merits could not be ignored.


    It was true that this Metabody technique offered him insane physical power. Just the sensation of his new muscles growing at the cost of the rest of his body told him that he was capable of unleashing power that was unlike anything that he was previously capable of as far as power went.


    However, it came at the cost of defense, speed, and stamina. Just like the other Metabody techniques, it sacrificed the other attributes of his physicality in order to get a boost in the desired physical parameter.


    (''This is going to be rough.'') Rui grimaced inwardly as he felt the onset of a fevering.


    His temperature rose dramatically as his body began fighting back against the viral infection in a way that ismensurate with how the human body deals with such infectious diseases.


    Yet even as he began feeling delirious, he still maintained the abnormal breathing pattern that he had set as the trigger. In his current hypnotized state, he needed to make sure he didn''t stray off-beat even a single time to make sure that his mind registered the trigger exactly the way he wanted to.


    That was why despite his increasingly deteriorating health, he focused as much of his attention on ensuring that at the very least, the mental imprinting technique was not disrupted in any way.


    It was a true test of patience as he suffered horrific pain, but also an increasingly stressed mind that did its best to deal with the failing mental conditions that came with severe infections and other things of the like.


    (''Ugh, I absolutely cannot allow myself to go through this every time I want to use Hypertrophic Surge.'') He groaned inwardly.


    If he grew mildly delirious and had a burning fever every time he had to use Hypertrophic Surge, then there were big problems at hand. One of the things that he needed to was deal with the fact that there were consequences to allowing a viral infection to infect the body.


    Thankfully, he had long foreseen these oues. He had also naturallye up with solutions to them, but these would take time to implement. It meant that for the time being of the technique, he would need to suffer thoroughly in many ways in order to make sure that he nailed the technique.


    The first sessionsted six hours. He naturally broke out of the hypnotic state himself. He quickly injected his body with some myostatin to quickly stabilize his situation and return his body to its original state.


    "Huff¡­ Huff¡­." He panted heavily, wiping away his sweat-drenched body.


    If a single trigger establishment session took this much of a toll, then it meant that he was in for truly rough times if he wanted to seed in his goal.


    Yet by the time Rui had finished recovering, all signs of dissatisfaction had all but gone. Hypertrophic Surge was most certainly a very powerful technique. Rui couldn''t wait to perfect it and get rid of all the minor issues so that he could amplify his raw power to the very pinnacle of what the technique could offer and begin training in that form so that he could learn to exercise the devastating raw power that Hypertrophic Surge supplied him with. He couldn''t wait to try out techniques like Flowing Canon and Transverse Resonance.


    Both those techniques were extremely powerful even when they were used ordinarily, however, just how much would he be able to aplish when they were amplified with Hypertrophic Surge, increasing their physical power much greater than their norm?


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1193 Scale

    <h4>Chapter 1193 Scale</h4>


    Now that the first session with the mental imprint had ended, he immediately shifted to the next step of the training. Which was ensuring that his body learned to ept the virus without making too much of a fuss, the kind of fuss that the human body normally made when it was infected by a virus.


    He had already begun to experience it now that the virus was injected in his body. What he needed to do was make sure that his body did not kill the virus through its immune system. The Squire evolution process evolved all of the aspects of the body, including the immune system of the Martial Body.


    What Rui needed to was make sure that the body adapted to the presence of the virus instead of fighting back.


    Unfortunately, this would take quite some time. Until then, he was going to suffer. The biggest issue was getting the body to normalize the virus in it. Fortunately, such a thing was not unheard of.


    In reality, this would not be the only instance where the human body cooperates with microscopic organisms. In reality, the human body greatly depended on a variety of bacteria that inhabited the body. A variety of metabolic processes would not ur, or would not ur as well as if these good bacteria were not present in the body.


    The body had essentially evolved to engage in a symbiotic rtionship with the bacteria inside it. Rui was merely trying to expand that to the Herenal Virus.


    This meant purposefully not letting the virus be suppressed by the immune system. He needed to subject himself to some medication that would lower his immune system just enough to make sure that the virus was not wiped out by the body.


    After that, it was just a matter of waiting for the body to naturally adapt to the effects of the virus and counter it with heightened myostatin production returning the muscle mass of the body from its hypertrophied state back to how it was naturally.


    Once hepleted both halves of the training, his body would be returned to normal because it would naturally counter the virus, until Rui executed the trigger, causing the body to stop negating the virus, allowing the virus to increase the muscle mass of his body.


    Once that was done, the technique would effectively beplete.


    Now that he had begun the training procedure for his offensive technique, he also needed to consider his defensive Martial Body. That was the final Martial Body technique in the Metabody project.


    Unfortunately, he had yet toe up with even a concept for the technique. He intended to, soon. The issue was that he didn''t have an idea in mind that he could work towards yet. That was the starting point for all technique projects.


    For now, all he could do as scour the library of the church for techniques that were suitable for him. He didn''t have too much time left, less than a year before he needed to be prepared with Metabody.


    The issue was that he could not afford to finish the technique at the twelve-month mark. The fact of the matter was that he needed some experience practicing with the technique. He also needed to be proficient with partial execution of the techniques that he was developing.


    The reason for this was that not every opponent will be most aptly countered by one of the Metabody techniques perfectly. That was simply not the case whatsoever. The fact of the matter was that most opponents required abination of parameters to be adapted to. It was possible that some Martial Artists were more optimally countered by abination of strength and speed than they were by even greater strength alone or even greater speed alone.


    Rui needed to be able to use more than one technique to a lesser degree. He could not afford to use two Metabody techniques at once. He had already recently experienced the consequences of that. They were not pretty. If he tried pulling something like that off under normal circumstances, he probably would die on the spot.


    Thus, mastering partial activations were also on the agenda as far as he was concerned. All of this needed to happen before the Martial Contest arrived.


    (''This is going to be a rough schedule.'') Rui grimaced.


    Aside from that, he had looked into the Martial Contest format, hoping to gain an understanding of its structure and rules. If there were any especially aberrant rules, he needed to make sure that he looked into that as well. One of the things that he was not the most inclined for was how long it was, but given the sheer size and scale of the contest, he was not surprised.


    He waspeting against nearly a million Martial Squires!


    Each town had many hundreds of Martial Squires, and there were nearly a thousand church towns of the Virodhabhasa Faith across the entirety of the continent. That meant that whichever Martial Squire came out on top of this contest would have effectively beaten all of the other Martial Squires thatpeted.


    It meant that whoever won this contest would have the capital to im to be the strongest Martial Squire in the entire continent. Although this was not the only contest of this magnitude, and it still certainly did not include all Martial Squires in existence, it was still an extremely prestigious contest. Many people from across the continent woulde to see it.


    (''Ah, I should follow through with Master Deivon about the mask that Imissioned as a part of my condition.'') Rui mused.


    Rui had asked for a mask with extremely high-grade anti-sensory properties. One that was armed with the most potent esoteric substances to ensure that it never fell off his face, or broke, and concealed his appearance to make sure that no one recognized him.


    The Virodhabhasa Faith understood that drawing attention at this level was something that many Martial Squires were notfortable with, and permitted the usage of masks and aliases.


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 Chapter 1194 Outcome

    <h4>Chapter 1194 Oue</h4>


    His training began to get into a rhythm as time passed and his body got increasingly ustomed to its new circumstances. That was a desirable oue, as it meant that his body was slowly canceling out the effects of the Herenal Virus through changes in the metabolism of the body. It had almost entirely returned to a normal size a few months into the training.


    That was a good sign.


    It meant that it had learned to counter the presence of the Herenal Virus without making a big fuss, metabolically speaking. Soon enough, it was time for him to move to the next phase.


    "Fuuu¡­" Rui closed his eyes as he began focusing.


    In the past few months, he had been religiously working on the mental imprint technique for the past few months and had been associating the breathing pattern that he had developed with the state of zero myostatin count. It had taken some, but he had eventually gotten everything that he needed, mentally speaking, to begin testing the Hypertrophic Surge technique.


    Rui concentrated, gathering his mind and honing it in one direction. He also had a medical team on standby, courtesy of Master Deivos.


    (''Alright, here we go.'')


    He executed the breathing technique strongly, making sure that everything was in order. Instantly, he could feel a profound change rippling across the entire body. He knew this sensation quite well.


    He had subjected himself to it.


    Then, it happened.


    "Urgh!" Rui gritted his teeth as his muscles began slowly expanding in both volume and density. It was a slow but painful process.


    Thankfully, the evolution breakthrough procedure to the Squire Realm had given every Martial Squire a remarkable degree of pain tolerance that they didn''t possess prior. It came naturally after subjecting themselves to the hellish suffering that was the Squire evolution breakthrough procedure.


    It didn''t take even a minute for the entire transformation to ur, and it was still a sigh to behold.


    It was hard to imagine that such a thing was possible!


    None of the other techniques made such a dramatic transformation to the body barring the Void Forestep technique. Even that did not feelparable to the transformation caused by the Hypertrophic Surge technique


    Rui clenched his fist hard once the transformation wasplete.


    POOF!


    A shockwave emerged just from the gesture alone.


    (''This¡­'') Rui stared in amazement. He was utterly speechless by the sheer magnitude of the enhancement to his physical by the Hypertrophic Surge technique. It was unbelievable to him that a single technique could cause such a titanic difference in the raw physical power generated by the Martial Body.


    Giddy excitement washed over his body as he got ready to test it. Of course, he did not intend to go all out right off the bat. That was not safe, and it was best to take a more systematic approach to analyzing the boost given by the technique.


    He needed to make sure that the technique did not have any unintentional side effects. If it did, he needed to make sure that he addressed them early on as opposed toter. This was essentially a sort of ''systems check-up'' and a ''debugging'' phase of creating a technique. It was impossible to ount for every variable that came into y with the creation of the technique. There were generally going to be some oversights, especially when it came to moreplicated and sophisticated techniques that deal with moreplicated sophisticated matters such as the metabolism of the human body.


    However, Rui soon discovered that while there were some elements here and there that were slightly off. For the most part, this technique worked the way he hoped it would.


    RUMBLE!


    Many pedestrians outside the training facility frowned, freezing on the spot as they felt tremors running through the ground, shaking them on the spot.


    "Is this an earthquake?!"


    "We need to get away from all infrastructure if it is!"


    "Damn! This region has almost never experienced earthquakes! Where is this oneing from?!"


    The entire district began panicking a little as minor, but definitely visible, tremors spread through the entire district. The town guard force even began mobilizing ording to protocols, ready to evacuate if the situation escted! N?velDrama.Org owns ? this.


    How could they have imagined that this was not caused due to seismic activity, but by the power of a single Martial Art technique?


    "Hahahaha¡­" Rui chuckled subconsciously. "This¡­"


    He gazed with widened eyes as he studied a target barrier in the distance. It was a barrier with circles on it and a bullseye in the center, a barrier meant for target practice. Rui had been informed that the barrier was constructed out of quasi-Senior level esoteric alloys, and thus he did not have to worry about destroying it and could go all out.


    "Hahaha¡­" Heughed weakly as he stared at the gigantic hole that he had sted into the barrier. The same barrier that had withstood countless Squire-level attacks over many years had crumpled immediately under the sheer destruction that Rui unleashed against it!


    He had just activated Transverse Resonance tier five. His most powerful long-range techniquebined with Hypertrophic Surge had resulted in destructive power that was so utterly titanic that itpletely overwhelmed the limits of the training facility that he had been assigned.


    It was an unofficial statement that Rui had exceeded the limits of the Squire Realm. Even by the standards of the Virodhabhasa Church, Rui had exceeded a certain level that the church had never thought possible. Otherwise, the facility would have been designed to amodate such power.


    "Damn¡­" Rui scratched his head as he executed the deactivation trigger, returning his myostatin production to its heightened standard, immediately triggering muscle atrophy, bringing them back to the norm.


    He heaved a sigh. He would love to immerse himself in his technique, but unfortunately, his actions had consequences. While the training facility that he was in was meant to be air-tight with its anti-espionage measures, all those measures were irrelevant in the face of Riemannian Echo, he could easily sense the consequences of his technique outside the facility.


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 Chapter 1195 Valued

    <h4>Chapter 1195 Valued</h4>


    "Tell me you are a Virodhabhasa seed without telling me that you are a Virodhabhasa seed." Master Deivos remarked with a wry smile as he gazed at the barrier that Rui had destroyed.


    Soon after Rui had destroyed one of the long-range target practice barriers of the training facility that he had been assigned, he had immediately been stormed by the town guard force.


    He did not like being treated heavy-handedly, but this time even he cooperated with the elite Squire officials who suspected an attack within the town.


    However, they did not believe him when he said he had been the one to destroy the target practice barrier. Rui almost wanted to cry when they simply refused to believe the simple truth that he, a young Martial Squire had destroyed the barrier. This is the property of N?-velDrama.Org.


    "Cease these lies. We will find you in contempt ofw if you continue spouting that nonsense. Our record states that while you are abnormally strong for your age, you are only a twenty-three-year-old Squire. The estimated output that we see here is not possible from a Martial Squire."


    "I can prove my statements." Rui dered.


    And, he did.


    It took Rui every ounce of self-control to stop himself from bursting outughing after he saw the expressions of the Squire official heading the investigation.


    The man''s jaws dropped in a cartoonish fashion, dropping any and all elegance and bearing that he had been putting up.


    Yet he quietly epted everything Rui said with a humble expression, simply nodding and not saying a single word.


    Thankfully, it wrapped quickly, and they left him alone after giving him an official warning for the public disturbance before retreating.


    The incident could not be covered up. Nor did they particrly have any reason to. It spread like wildfire across the entire town instantly.


    The tale of Martial Squire that busted up a quasi-Senior level barrier spread through the town. Squire Falken instantly became a legend in the town. What shocked people was that the officials of the town guard were the source of the rumors, it made the rumors quite credible as these were not untrustworthy actors.


    Rui knew that the situation had gotten out of hand when Master Deivos stood before him half a dayter.


    "I had to cancel some engagements and appointments when I heard the news," He remarked as he stared at the barrier. "To think that it was not exaggerated even in the slightest¡­"


    He turned towards Rui. "Is the technique you mentioned you had been working on?"


    Rui nodded. "Yes sir."


    "Hm," He scratched his chin. "Unless the circumstances of the technique are truly exceptional and non-replicable. I am certain that you''ll easily be able to win the preliminary contest for the representative of the town, based on this technique alone. This is the kind of power that only Martial Seniors at their peaks, without their Martial Hearts, can possibly exert."


    "Do you think I''ll be able to win the main contest as well?" Rui asked with a curious expression.


    "I can''t say," The Master shook his head. "Trust me when I say that there are some monsters out there. The current reigning champion will be participating again this year, and she is nothing short of a monster in human form. She is not the only one that is beyond the norm."


    He turned towards Rui. "My instincts told me that you are of the same caliber, and my instincts were correct."


    The man looked appreciative of Rui''s capabilities.


    "I appreciate that," Rui ndly responded. "¡­What about my training facility?"


    "Ah," The man considered the matter. "That''s right, this is no longer fit for you to train. You''ll just destroy everything eventually. Hm."


    The man was immersed in thought, before eventually sighing. "No choice, I guess we''ll have to assign you a Senior-level training facility."


    Rui''s eyes widened in shock. "But surely the Martial Seniors of this town are upying them.


    "They are," He nodded. "But it''s fine, I''ll kick one of them out and give their facility to you."


    That was not a small gesture, Rui knew that. Master Deivon was attempting to convey that Rui was currently more valuable to him than a Martial Senior.


    That was not a small gesture. While it did not mean that Rui was stronger, equal, or even remotelyparable to a Martial Senior employing their Martial Heart, it did mean that Rui served greater utility to the Master than a Martial Senior did.


    The only reasons this was true was because of Rui''s potential for growth, and the gains that he could bring not only Master Deivon but also the entirety of the Seonmun Town by performing well in the Martial Contest.


    Motivating the bishops and the various religious leaders to find powerful unique Martial Squires that were also Virodhabhasa seeds with resulting rewards was something that Rui already knew that the religion did.


    Rui could not help but wonder what they were dangling in front of Master Deivon. Considering that the man was a Martial Master, he highly doubted any ordinary resources were enough.


    (''Could it be¡­ something that would help him be a Martial Sage?'') Rui wondered. He couldn''t help but feel that he was right on the mark.


    At the Master Realm, he was sure that the difficulty of making any progress was probably much more difficult than in the lower Realms, if not for no other reasons barring the fact that resources were scarcer, and there were fewer reference paths with established paradigms that aided people to get to higher Realms.


    It was possible that the whole reason Master Deivon stayed in the church was because it was powerful enough to gather resources that could help Martial Artists in all Realms grow stronger. He could then imagine that the true Martial Contest was not between the Martial Squires, but actually between all of the religious leaders that patroned them!


    The one who found the best warrior to patron was the true winner, they would probably make gains that exceeded that of the Martial Squire.


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 Chapter 1196 Priorities

    <h4>Chapter 1196 Priorities</h4>


    "¡­You''re giving my training chamber to a Martial Squire?" A Martial Senior stood up with a furious expression.


    His aggressive fury washed out from his demeanor and expression. An immensely deep wave of pressure radiated outwards from him, washing over the man sitting in front of him.


    "Did you not hear me the first time?" Master Deivon calmly asked as he sipped a cup of tea.


    "HOW DARE YOU INSULT ME?!" The man roared. "ARE YOU SAYING THAT MARTIAL SQUIRE IS OF GREATER VALUE TO YOU?!"


    "That is exactly what I''m saying, Senior Dreynil," Master Deivon replied. "I''m d you have finally caught on."


    The in apathetic disrespect that Master Deivon that showed the Martial Senior bewildered him. No one had shown him this much disrespect ever since he entered the Senior Realm.


    "You¡­ Don''t you dare treat me this way or else¡­"


    "Or else what?" Master Deivon threw a calm yet steely nce his way.


    It was at that moment that the Martial Senior recalled who he was talking to. He had forgotten the difference in their Realms, power, and status. Master Deivon was a man who was superior in almost every measurable regard.


    "Forgive me for my impropriety, Master Deivon," He immediately bowed his head. "However, I believe that if I''m being reced by a Martial Squire, I at the very least deserve to know why. I am entitled to that as a Martial Senior, am I not?"


    Master Deivon sighed inwardly. He almost wished the man had lost his cool, he would be easier to deal with that way. Yet it appeared that that was asking for too much.


    "It''s a matter of immediate utility as well as future potential if you must know," Master Deivon replied. "That man is important to me and to the faith. His needs take priority over yours. It is as simple as that."


    The man gritted his teeth as he bore the humiliation of being told he was less valuable than a simple Martial Squire.


    This was nothing short of an insult.


    "Potential¡­ eh?" A dark thought entered his mind. (''If it''s just potential then¡­'')


    Suddenly, a profoundly deep and perilous wave of pressure washed over him. A shiver ran up his spine as his hair stood on edge.


    This was the fear that only those of a higher Realm could generate!


    "Don''t even think about it," A dangerous glint shed in the Master''s eyes.


    Yet the pressure didn''t cease.


    It only rose.


    "Urgh¡­!" The man grimaced as he cowered.


    His body did not experience any pressure.


    Yet, he felt as though a mountain had been dropped on his shoulders, pushing him down to his knees.


    "If you go so much as a kilometer anywhere near him¡­" The Master growled. "I will not even kill you. No. I will cripple you as a Martial Artist. I will drive you to such depths of despair. You will take your own life for me. You will try to, rather."


    His re turned sharper as the Senior cowered even more. "I won''t let you. Put so much as a scratch on the boy, and what had otherwise been a blessed life as a powerful Martial Artist will turn into Hell itself. Not even the Lord will be able to save you."


    The Martial Senior was already on his knees due to how much the fear crippled him. He whimpered pitifully.


    Suddenly, the pressure disappeared.


    "Huff¡­ Huff¡­ Huff¡­" The man panted desperately as he finally gained respite.


    "Have I made myself clear?" Master Deivon asked, looking down at him.


    "Y-Yes Master! Forgive me!"


    The man bowed deeply before scurrying away from the office.


    "Hmph," Master Deivon snorted in contempt. "Azazel."


    Suddenly a hooded figure appeared out of nowhere before the Master, bowing down on one knee. "Yes, Master."


    "Follow him," Master Deivon instructed. "I don''t trust his word for even half a second. Make sure he goes nowhere near the boy, and keep me updated on his movements and actions. Ah, and do not intervene if he tries anything. Inform me and wait, I''d like to dispatch that rat myself if he dares. It will be good stress relief."


    "Understood, Master," The hooded figure disappeared as swiftly as he appeared.


    "Huff¡­" The Master sighed as his thoughts went back to the subject of their little dispute.


    A smile broke out onto his face as he recalled what had recently happened.


    He had been in the middle of a Council meeting in the Central Panamic headquarters of the Virodhabhasa Foundation. He had gone well out of his way to make it back as soon as possible and suppress any news of what Rui had done.


    He hadn''t been able to make it in time to prevent it from spreading within the town, but he had just barely managed to ensure that it wouldn''t spread any further. At the very least, he had ensured that his peers andpetitors would not learn of this development.


    "Hehehe¡­" He chuckled with a tinge of excitement. Previously, he didn''t have much hope for any of the three Martial Contests that would be held during the Virodhabhasa Martial Festival. His town did not have any Martial Artists that were of the caliber necessary to make it into the top hundred, let alone win the contest. The strongest Martial Squire had been a grade-ten Martial Squire, but unfortunately, grade-ten Martial Squires were a dime a dozen at the continental stage. It was the bare minimum, and anything less would be embarrassing for a town representative. Property ? of N?velDrama.Org.


    That was when he came across Rui. A young man who sold brilliant techniques, three of which were grade ten and two of which were grade nine. This had been gged in his notification system and immediately had drawn his interest. This was almost unheard of. Creating even a single grade-ten technique was normally a lifetime achievement. These techniques were techniques that pushed the very boundary of what it meant to be a Martial Squire, after all, Developing even a single one of them was of absurd difficulty, and usually took several years at a bare minimum.


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 Chapter 1197 Reflection

    <h4>Chapter 1197 Reflection</h4>


    Yet this man had three on hand that he imed to have created himself. This was hard to believe, yet, on the off chance that this was true, it would be of great value to him.


    He recalled the first time that he set eyes on Rui. It was a novel experience.


    Normally, Martial Squires were transparent to him. Their Squire-level Martial Art usually were individualistic and were synergetic with their Martial Bodies, which in turn was synergetic with their Martial Paths. It meant that their Martial Bodies possessed a lot of information about their Martial Art and Paths.


    That inbination with their ticks, demeanor, personality, temperament, and movements allowed experienced Martial Masters like himself to see right through them.


    Yet when heid eyes on Rui, he was unable to see through anything. He was as opaque as a mountain.


    No, not quite a mountain as much as¡­


    (''¡­An abyss¡­'') He narrowed his eyes.


    It was as though he was staring at a limitless void. His eyes, despite being silver, reminded the man of two swirling vortexes, vortexes of information that saw the world for what it truly was. He felt as though he was the one that was being judged.


    He had only ever felt that way when he interacted with Martial Sages. He couldn''t believe what he was seeing. He hadn''te across anything like this in the ny-three years that he had been a Martial Artist. Thankfully, it appeared that Martial Seniors were not perceptive enough to notice the oddities surrounding the young Martial Squire, since he was the only one who seemed to notice them in the first ce.


    That was a boon since it meant that hiding the young man as a trump card was easier since no one noticed how much of one he was.


    It wasn''t clear whether the young man himself was aware of just how much of an aberrant he was. He casually talked about how he developed grade-ten techniques with ''quite some difficulty'' in just a year, as though that wasn''t an absurdly herculean task to expect out of any Martial Artist.


    The technique evaluation department responsible for testing and grading techniques that were offered for sale strongly suspected that these techniques weren''t developed by him, not that they reduced the value of the techniques, and that he was lying to impress them. Yet Master Deivon knew better. He could sense the sheer amount ofpatibility between him and those techniques and the individuality that the young man had imbued in the techniques by virtue of creating them from scratch.


    It was an incredible sight to behold.


    Master Deivon needed to contain himself and y it cool as if it wasn''t too big a deal. But in reality, he was willing to go to great degrees to get to Rui. Unfortunately, it appeared that Rui had long deduced the advantageous position he was in, and continued pushing for more advantages when they were hashing out the finer details of their contract.


    Unrestricted training resource privileges, a remarkable amount of growth resources, a custom high-grade Senior-level anti-espionage mask that would conceal his appearance and would not be damaged in the Martial Contest, stabilizing treatment for the Martial Senior for whom he had negotiated the detoxification treatment for with the highest guarantee of covertness.


    He had also attempted to ask for the assassination of an international powerhouse in the esoteric supply and esoteric technology sector of a sage-level corporatocracy nation, but that was too far as much as Master Deivon wanted him. One Martial Squire was not worth making an enemy out of a Sage-level nation. The Virodhabhasa Faith had strict guidelines of not entering political disputes frivolously, as doing so would make too many enemies that would significantly hamper its reach, and thus its Divine Mission.


    Thankfully, he realized how absurd the demand was, and relented with what he had managed to get. Content from N?velDr(a)ma.Org.


    In the short time that they had conversed, the boy had revealed an incredibly sharp intellect and managed toe out the winner in negotiations. However, it wasn''t as though Master Deivon was losing. The resources were of the church, not his. And the more time he spent with the young man, he was sure that his performance in the contest would be something special, and would earn Master Deivon enough credit to make it a win-win.


    And to his greatest joy, his hopes had been validated yesterday when Rui destroyed equipment that was expressly designed and manufactured with the express intent of not being destroyed by any Martial Squire.


    He had done it and even replicated it after to prove that he was the one responsible for themotion. Master Deivon did not know how Rui had managed to aplish this, but he truly looked forward to seeing it in action in the preliminary contest and the Martial Contest.


    "If I''m not wrong¡­ this young man is cut from the same cloth as the previous reigning Virodha Champion," Master Deivon murmured, recalling the most powerful Martial Squire that he had seen prior.


    (''Even if he isn''t¡­ He''s still a great catch.'') The man shook his head. He had the pleasure of being acquainted with the most powerful known Martial Squire, one who had been the previous reigning champion prior to the current one. One who had given up his title because it wasn''t even worth guarding it.


    "Hehehe¡­" Master Deivon grinned again. "This year''s Martial Contest is going to be a st. I predict that the Squire-level contest is going to be the most entertaining out of all three Martial Contests that are going to be held during the Martial Festival."


    He was sure that many people were going to lose their minds when they saw Rui bust out his Martial Art and Path. He himself felt the excitement that he hadn''t felt from a Martial Squire since the previous reigning champion of the Martial Contest.


    If things went well, then there was a good chance that be able to get ess to the Celestial Soul Mirror pill. A Master-level esoteric drug made out of esoteric ingredients procured by Martial Sages, capable of aiding Martial Masters in their journey to the Sage Realm.


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 Chapter 1198 Considerations

    <h4>Chapter 1198 Considerations</h4>


    "This is it¡­!" Rui murmured.


    He was sitting in the Martial library of the Virodhabhasa Church., surrounded by scrolls and heaps of books.


    His hair and clothes were a mess. Dark bags could be seen under his eyes. Yet, an expression of ecstasy shed across his face as he read through a scroll in his hand.


    [Earthen Fortress Blossom]


    This training technique subjects the body to an acid that kills cells below a certain degree of cell wall thickness. The acid is applied to the flesh of the Martial Squire, immediately killing off all the inferior cells and tissue, leaving only the most durable cells intact. Thus, when a healing potion is consumed after a training session, the flesh that is healed and restoredes from the cell division of the surviving cells, which happen to be the strongest and most durable. Over time, this significantly increases the durability of the user, albeit requiring a long time, and is prone to diminishing returns.


    It was a grade-seven technique that gave a decent boost to the toughness of the Martial Body. Nothing too shocking, but a solid technique.


    Yet, in Rui''s eyes, it was a hidden treasure.


    There were conditions that he had for whatever defensive Martial Body he created. They also applied to all of the Martial Bodies in general.


    First, whatever techniques he ended up creating for the first iteration of Project Metabody needed to be techniques that could be activated and deactivated at will. They could not be permanent passive techniques. Nor could they be techniques that were entirely active and dependent on constant attention and focus from the user.


    They had to be techniques that were passive for as long as the user needed, and then entirely inactive once the user deactivated them. N?velDrama.Org owns ? this.


    This limited the kinds of techniques that he could create. Most techniques were ipatible with the toggle on/off feature that Rui needed for his Metabody techniques.


    That''s why even though he came across many fantastic grade-eight, nine, and even grade-ten defensive techniques, they were not suitable for what he wanted.


    Of course, Rui was not capable of mastering many of these techniques in the first ce. But even still, even if he could master them, he wouldn''t attempt to use them for the Metabody techniques, because they were notpatible.


    That was why this technique worked so well. The thickening of the cell wall was something that could be feasibly elerated to begin and end quickly within a certain timeframe as long as he applied the right principles. He just needed to make sure he did some research, and consultation, and found the right way to cause rapid cell wall thickening.


    Furthermore, he knew that autophagy and the Reaper Dew poison were elements that could significantly boost the power of the technique, making it a lot more worthy of being a Metabody technique.


    After all, all the other Metabody techniques that he had created were easily grade-ten. Void Forestep allowed him to handle the likes of the Root that overwhelmed an army of Martial Squires. Weaving Blood allowed him to negate the damage inflicted by Martial Seniors as though they were nothing. Hungry Pain itself served as the stamina Metabody technique, especially when he paired it with the Final Breathing technique allowing him tost for an absurd amount of time. The most recent Hypertrophic Surge had given him offensive power beyond anything he had ever imagined.


    Although it hadn''t been his original intention, it turned out to be the case that all of the Metabody techniques were grade ten, thus he couldn''t let the final Metabody technique not follow suit as well, could he?


    It would crumble the bnce of the initial iteration of the Metabody Project, something he simply could not tolerate. Thus he went all out in his to construct a technique that was of the same caliber as its peers.


    That meant that he could not use the Earthen Fortress Blossom technique in its current state even if he ignored thepatibility issues. That was the reason he needed to employ the principle of the technique but nothing else, otherwise, it wouldn''t be as potent as he needed it to be.


    The reason that there were diminishing returns was because the body most likely did not have ess to the necessarypounds and nutrients in the blood flow to build a thicker cell wall, as well as the fact that it probably could not be maintained for too long beyond a certain point.


    The grade-seven technique that he was looking at intended for the technique to be a permanent passive technique, while Rui did not require a permanent passive technique, and instead was fine with a technique that had a time limit. All the other Metabody techniques barring Hungry Pain had a time limit that he definitely needed to be very aware of.


    That was the reason he was confident that he could make a grade-ten defensive Metabody technique. As long as he sacrificed the permanence that he wanted to get rid of, he could easily elevate the potency of the technique and increase its ability to defend himself from people who sought to hurt him.


    All he needed to do was find the right form for increasing the potency of the boost in technique in exchange for making it short-lived, while also finding the most effective way to trigger the technique. He could trigger it using a physiological trigger like it was for the Weaving Blood technique or a psychological trigger like it was for the Hypertrophic Surge technique. Or he could even do abination of both.


    Regardless, he was quite confident of the resulting technique that he would develop as a result, he would most likely be able to keep up with his other techniques. Once that was done, he would havepleted the most challenging parts of the first iteration of Project Metabody. He was on a tight schedule since he only had a little over half a year before the Martial Festival would begin.


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 Chapter 1199 Result

    <h4>Chapter 1199 Result</h4>


    By now, Rui had gotten used to the process of creating Metabody techniques. These techniques were distinctly different from normal techniques. If nothing else, they were much more difficult to create than normal techniques, that was for sure. That alone meant that they were a challenge, unlike nearly anything Rui had faced before. The sheerplexity of the techniques, as well as the standards of quality that he reserved for them, was very high from the get-go, and this was unlike any other technique that he had ever mastered before where he was more open-minded about the oue.


    And yet, Rui managed toplete the defensive Metabody technique well before the Martial Festival arrived. Ordinarily, such technique projects were easily one-year long projects each, just like many of his older technique projects had each taken nearly a year sometimes, these Metabody techniques were not something that could normally be finished this quickly.


    Yet, this time it was.


    The reality of the matter was that due to being constrained by a rough deadline, Rui pushed himself more than he would have had this been an open-ended project. The fact of the matter was that no matter how dedicated one was, human beings were fundamentally creatures that adapted to pressure. As long as there was enough pressure to aplish something, it would happen, including finishing two Metabody techniques well within the year ended. It wasn''t that Rui or other Martial Artists were otherwisezy or not dedicated, not at all.


    All it was, was that the sheer hasty desperation that arrived when one was subjected to heavy pressure was something that simply could not be artificially generated without that pressure in the first ce.


    In fact, it had been a little under three years since Rui left the Shionel Confederation, and ever since then, he had noted that the rate of growth that he had experienced as a Martial Artist was visibly higher than the rate of growth he had prior to entering the Shionel Confederation.


    He was subjected to a lot of pressure within the Shionel Confederation as well as after he left it, and this pressure had helped stimte his potential unlike anything could when he was simply training freely.


    Just the growth that he had made in the past year was probably much higher than anything he had ever experienced in the past. Two grade-ten techniques in less than a year were something that Master Deivon was surely bound to be excited about.


    Not that Rui intended to tell him. He didn''t want to disclose information that he didn''t need to. Of course, Master Deivon had already gained an inkling of the previous grade-ten technique that Rui had made, Hypertrophic Surge. But he did not know of thetest one.


    "Huff¡­" Rui exhaled, sending a small shock across a specific nerve in his navel while breathing in a certain pattern.


    When faced with the choice of creating a physiological trigger or a psychological trigger for the defensive Metabody technique that he had created, he ultimately decided to go for both to make it as distinguished from his other triggers as possible. One thing that he was paranoid about was identally triggering a metabody that he did not want to trigger.


    That was he made sure to distinguish and differentiate them as much as possible.


    His flesh grew thicker and thicker and denser while growing darker and darker. He felt as though he was wearing an imprable armor that could protect him from any and everything.


    "Please begin the final preparations," Rui instructed the assisting staff team that was assigned to aid him with utilizing the more sophisticated andplex training systems that required external aid to operate.


    The staff head hesitated for a moment, bowing deeply. "Sir¡­ Are you absolutely certain of this? May I ask you to reconsider? This is madness. These systems are meant for Martial Seniors. Even if we significantly lower their output to well below the Senior Realm, they are still far beyond Martial Squires!"


    Rui sighed. "This again? I told you, did I not? You will not be held liable for anything that happens to me. I even signed a statement stating that. Don''t worry, I am not that easy to kill."


    The man gave a resigned sigh, nodding. "Very well then."


    "What is the energy output of a baropresser?" Rui asked.


    "We''ve set it to eighteen liters of Darion condensate."


    That was an explosive that wasmonly used as the equivalent of energy. N?velDrama.Org owns ? this.


    (''About nine hundred tons of TNT, roughly speaking.'') Rui mused, exhaling deeply. It was an intimidating number, but he was confident in his estimations of what he could handle.


    He immediately began walking in a certain direction, entering a gigantic hemispherical dome chamber.


    "Alright, get started," Rui called out.


    "Yes, sir,"


    He grounded himself, making sure to bnce himself perfectly before exhaling.


    VMMMMM!


    He heard a vibrating sound from the dome.


    "Pressure st iing in ten¡­ nine¡­ eight¡­"


    Rui focused himself as the man counted down, even though the defensive metabody technique that he did end up creating was passive after activation, he still felt the need to make sure he was in a sharp state of mind.


    "¡­One."


    BOOM!!!


    Rui gritted his teeth as he experienced a titanic st of pressure crashing onto him from all directions!


    The sheer amount of force that he was subjected to far exceeded anything that he had ever experienced in his entire life!


    Not even the Root attacks, not even Senior Xanarn''s attacks, not even the barrages unleashed by the three Martial Seniors of the Kaddar Region matched the amount of force that this chamber exerted on him.


    Itsted for just a few seconds, yet it felt as though it hadsted an eternity.


    THUD!


    Rui fell to his knees, panting.


    His body was covered with bruises all over.


    He nced at his arms and legs. A few bruises, he also twisted his ankle a little, and he felt a little dizzy.


    (''But nothing aside from that!'') Rui grinned in amazement. (''This technique is a perfect sess!'')


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1200 Nemean

    <h4>Chapter 1200 Nemean</h4>


    The staff that had been monitoring him had long prepared high-grade potions and other esoteric first-aid treatments whose goal was solely to keep him alive no matter what. The staff did not know why Rui was so confident about surviving, but for some reason he was. Even if he did survive, they were certain that he would at the very least be gravely injured.


    That was why their jaws dropped when they saw that the only wounds he suffered were superficial blunt-force flesh wounds. It was as though his flesh was able to reflect all of the pressure that the training facility had subjected to him.


    "This¡­" The staff head murmured in shock.


    Only now did he understand why the Martial Senior that they had been serving prior had been reced with this Martial Squire.


    "He''s a monster¡­" The man murmured.


    To think that a Martial Squire could actually justify the decision to ce him in this training facility. The man had heard of the Martial Squire that caused the small incident in the Squireplex by being too strong for the facility, but to think he would be this far out of the norm.


    "Sir?" One of the assistants assigned to his team broke him out of his reverie. "He isn''t gravely injured, but we should still do a check-up on him."


    "Ah, right,"


    It wasn''t long before Rui walked out of the training facility refreshed, taking a break.


    "I''m finally done with constructing all the techniques needed for Project Metabody," He sighed. "Man, it''s been a rough few years."


    The total time spent on the project was weird to estimate because he conceived of Project Metabody farter than he did the initial technique of the project. It would have been a little under two years since he conceived of the first technique, and it would have been four years since he created the first technique that became part of the project.


    (''Actually, even longer if I consider that the stamina metabody was basically using two old techniques simultaneously,'') He mused.


    Regardless it was done.


    Hungry Pain.


    Void Forestep.


    Weaving Blood.


    Hypertrophic Surge.


    (''Ah, I need toe up with a name for the new technique.'') He realized, sighing.


    He wished he could hire someone for this part because he sucked at giving names.


    "How about¡­ Nemean Blossom?" He muttered.


    He had derived inspiration from Greek mythology, specifically the tale of the Nemean Lion that Hercules fought and defeated. The Nemean Lion was said to be a beast with a hide that was absolutely invulnerable to all weapons. Even Hercules had allegedly had immense difficulty fighting the beast.


    It was as good a name as any.


    (''Nemean Blossom it is,'') Rui sighed.


    Unfortunately, his work wasn''t entirely done yet. He still had two smaller steps to take, which was mastering the simultaneous partial triggering of two metabodies. He definitely needed to find a way to be able to partially empower two parameters as opposed to greatly empowering one parameter because a lot of Martial Artists would be most optimally countered by abination of two fields, as opposed to one.


    That was managable and Rui had alreadyid the seeds for that in the triggers that he had developed, ensuring that it was possible for his body to be trained to activate two techniques to a minor degree.


    The final step wasing up with a way of knowing exactly what the best configuration of techniques to counter a given Martial Artist. He wasn''t foolish enough to go with the brain-dead oversimplification where he automatically activated the Nemean Blossom every time he was facing an offensive Martial Artist, or the Hypertrophic Surge every time he faced a defensive Martial Artist.


    This was a sub-optimal application of the techniques.


    (''Ideally, the best way to apply them would be to seamlessly magnify the anti-styles that the VOID algorithm develops.'') Rui mused. Property ? of N?velDrama.Org.


    Every time he used the VOID algorithm, he developed an anti-style that was designed to counter his opponent. This style was usually not an all-rounder style equally focused on all parameters. It was usually nted in the direction of one or two fields ofbat. Like primarily maneuvering and speed, and secondarily offense. Or primarily defense, and secondarily endurance.


    The best way to apply the Metabody System was to amplify those fields of the anti-style. Thus he would use Hypertrophic Surge if the produced anti-style was a pure offense-oriented style, or Nemean Blossom if the resulting anti-style was purely defensive. Or both, if the resulting anti-style was equally defensive and offensive.


    At the end of the day, the Flowing Style was a Martial Art that was centered around adapting to one''s opponent. He needed to use the Metabody in a manner that corresponded with that as well.


    (''Well, in that case, only truly powerful Martial Artists can possibly force me to use it. Nothing short of a grade-ten Martial Squire.'') He sighed. Furthermore, the only reason that the pattern recognition system may not be enough on its own was that grade-ten Martial Squires were Martial Squires who had spent many years in the Squire Realm umting many powerful techniques over a good chunk of their lifetime. Rui''s base Martial Art was actually far inferior to their highly solidified and well-developed Martial Art.


    The pattern recognition system of the VOID algorithm bridged thatrge gap and the Metabody System allowed him to surpass that gap massively. It meant that the only Martial Squires that could defeat him were the true pinnacle of the Squire Realm.


    That was depressing.


    It wasn''t as though he wanted to show off. It was actually closer to the desire that a child might have for a brand-new toy that he or she had been desperately begging his parents to get for years.


    Still, it wasn''t that bad, because if powerful Martial Squires were what it took to force him to go all out, then the Virodhabhasa Martial Festival was probably the one ce that he would find what he was looking for.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1201 Target

    <h4>Chapter 1201 Target</h4>


    The Virodhabhasa Martial Festival was impending, and it could be sensed.


    The Seonmun Church town was a highly religiously-inclined location in the first ce, but that vibe was magnified significantly, and only grew more by the day as the Martial Festival rolled around.


    The town had begun the major preparations for the Virodhabhasa Martial Festival, and the festive atmosphere that had spread across the town was so palpable that one could smell it even if one closed their eyes. It was an incredible morale boost for the entirety of the town.


    It was as though the town''s infrastructure as a whole was adjusting and making way for the massive festival that wasing soon.


    Unlike most festivals around the continent, the greatest attraction was not the regr kind of festivities that urred in normal festivals. Decorations, and various artforms like paintings, dance, music, and food were present, but they were not the central focus.


    No.


    A Martial Festival was centered around Martial Art.


    Various tforms and arenas had been built across the entirety of the town for the sole purpose 0f Martial Art demonstrations. While Martial Art was purposed for conflict, it was possible to utilize it as a unique art form without too much difficulty. The church town became increasingly busier and denser by the passing day as the town greeted an immense influx of tourists from outside of the region.


    The region was hard to prate due to the topography, but it was easy enough to surmount for people with the means and wealth.


    Given that this festival was only held once every two years, it was novel enough for the upper ss of society to expend some wealth to go out of their way to partake in this festival. The Virodhabhasa Faith whilerge and powerful deliberately maintained an open and weing stance to outsiders, which made it an alluring ce for vacations and things of that sort.


    "Everybody sure is going all out," Rui remarked from atop an elevated terrace.


    "It is an asion that does note frequently, after all," Master Deivon replied with a smile. "It is an important week for us, so we go all out."


    "The Martial Contest will be held during the second half of the festival, correct?" Rui asked.


    "Indeed," The man nodded. "I hope you have familiarized yourself with all the rules and norms of the contest. Make sure you are aware of everything that needs to be known."


    "I have done just that,"


    Rui did indeed look into the format contest recently. He had been quite curious about how the contest would be conducted, and exactly how the winners would be decided.


    After all, the Martial Contest needed to filter through hundreds of thousands of Martial Squires throughout the entire continent!


    That was an absurdlyrge number. Just how in the world did they n to extract a winner out of this immense poption?


    Well, actually, the manner in which they did was quite reasonable, all things considered. The most convenient part was that they got to filter out the top one percent of the entire poption through the preliminary contest of each town.


    This was where things became rough as far as Rui was concerned. The Martial Contest was confined to the Martial festival, which meant that it could not take too much time toplete. Nor could it be too tedious since there was an element of entertainment as much as it was meant to be a pure meritocratic procedure. The event was funded by a portion of the pay-per-view spectator revenue that the event would earn.


    They could not have a standard elimination tournament since that would take far too long with the sheer number of Martial Squires participating in the preliminary contest of each town.


    Thus cruder and less urate means had to be employed in the interest of time.


    Rui actually physically heaved a heavy sigh when he recalled the means of electing the town representative of the town.


    A royal rumble featuring all of the participating Martial Squires. This was something that he did not choose, but could not avoid.


    It was such an incredibly crude way of choosing a victor that Rui highly doubted that the uracy of the results exceeded thirty percent. The sheer number of variables that skew victory away from the actual strongest Martial Squire was too high. It was pure entertainment and could hardly be considered a genuinely rigorous evaluation of the Martial Artists in question.


    On the other hand, it was the quickest way to extract a winner out of all the participating Martial Squires of each town, and also the cheapest way, not to mention the most thrilling and exciting format to watch.


    This way, many other interests overtook the interest of uracy.


    However, that wasn''t the worst part about it.


    "You probably don''t know but¡­" Master Deivon began. Content from N?velDr(a)ma.Org.


    "I know," Rui sighed. "I have a high profile in this town even with an alias and a mask. I will be a target."


    Martial Squires weren''t stupid. The ability to evaluate threats was a basic instinct, intuition, and thought process that every Martial Squire possessed. Rui had already gained a reputation for his formidability when he aplished things that Martial Squires weren''t supposed to be able to aplish, such as destroying training infrastructure that was supposed to be impervious to Martial Squires. Or managing to gain ess to Senior-level training facilities due to Squire-level facilities being insufficient.


    Master Deivon has done his very best to quell rumors, but s, the nature of the system in ce made that basically impossible. His status as a Martial Master wasn''t able to help, it wasn''t as though he could destroy information with a Master-level technique.


    "It''s not going to be easy," The Master remarked. "This format is already unfair to the strong since it gives the weak the opportunity to fight back with numbers by targetting the strong. But it''s going to be especially unfair to you. The ambitious Martial Squires who wish to at least be the town representative will not sit back and fight you fairly."


    "I am prepared," Rui narrowed his eyes, replying calmly.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1202 Potion

    <h4>Chapter 1202 Potion</h4>


    Rui did not need the Martial Master to inform him of the challenges that he alone would face due to the high profile that he had rued. He knew that many ambitious Martial Squires who sought to gain the favor of the powerful religion as well as earn the interest of powerful spectators would use unfair means to try and negate Rui as a threat.


    Of course, he knew that these weren''t truly unfair within the confines of the rules, which is why he was sure about what was toe. It was one of the reasons that Master Deivon had personally traveled on foot to return to the Seonmun town at incredibly high speeds, crossing in hours what Rui would take weeks, to try and contain the information, but it was simply too impractical.


    Furthermore, even if he did get there in time, his authority over the Seonmun Church town was not that of an absolute dictator or anything of the sort, containing the information was simply too difficult.


    "I have managed to contain the information within the town," Master Deivon remarked. "That means while you will be a target within the preliminary contest of this town, that will not be the case in the main contest."


    "Thank you, Master," Rui replied with a hint of relief. "In that case, it may very well be the case that the preliminary contest will be a greater challenge for me to emerge the victor in than the main contest will be."


    "No, you''re sorely mistaken, I''m afraid," Master Deivon shook his head. "While a majority of towns will not be too much of a threat to someone of your caliber. I can say withplete confidence that the main contest will be of a greater challenge." Property ? of N?velDrama.Org.


    Rui raised an eyebrow before a grin crept on his face. "That sounds reassuring. I cannot wait to test my Martial Art against the pinnacle of the Squire Realm."


    Rui deliberately avoided revealing the name of his Martial Art. He would be stupid to do so,? he had long revealed the name of his Martial Art as Rui Quarrier in the Martial Contest of the Martial Union. It would instantly reveal his identity, and Master Deivon would immediately get immense leverage over Rui once he figured out his identity as the Voider.


    Although Master Deivon had been sincere in their partnership thus far, Rui did not think the man was a friend. He was an ambitious Martial Master who still chased for power even at his age and Realm, which automatically made him someone Rui was very wary about.


    "By the way, it is time for the final dose of the Core Bloom potion," Master Deivon informed him. "It will behoove you to take it as soon as possible so that you can adjust to the minute difference that it will make before the contest arrives."


    This was the potion that Rui had received in their exchange. A potion that would elevate his Martial Body above the threshold of being able to withstand his Martial Heart.


    "I look forward to it," Rui replied. "I have to say, I didn''t expect that the potions would not increase my ability to withstand damage."


    Although Rui had treated his body slowly over the span of a year so that he didn''t need to waste any time for limatization, he had noted that this potion did not allow him to withstand more damage although it was supposed to allow him to withstand his Martial Heart.


    The Martial Master shook his head. "That''s not how it works. Damage inflicted by attacks generally works on a very macro-level with respect to cells and tissue. The damage that the Martial Heart will do to your body will ur on a sub-cellr level, the metabolic processes that ur within the cell are delicate and that is what the potion reinforces. They operate on entirely different realms of scale. That is why your body is unable to withstand attacks better despite the potion. However, once you consume the final potion you will be eligible to activate your Martial Heart and break through to the Senior Realm."


    An intrigued smile arose on his face. "Who knows, perhaps you will activate your Martial Heart during the contest."


    "That would be ideal, but¡­"


    He was not too sure about that. The reason he was entering this contest was to heal Senior Xanarn perfectly. But that was not his drive as a Martial Artist, he did not think he could activate his Martial Heart for her sake.


    "It''s just an unlikely possibility" Master Deivon. "It would make you the youngest Martial Senior alive, so saying it is unlikely is an understatement. It would take truly remarkable circumstances for the current record for the youngest Martial Senior to be broken."


    What Master Deivon did not mention was the fact that the circumstances which Rui represented himself were more than just a little extraordinary. Rui was the second Martial Squire that he had ever met, after the previous reigning champion of the Martial Contest, that could break the current established record.


    However, it was just a possibility. Whether it would actually unfold and ur was a possibility that remained to be seen.


    "Have you decided how you''re going to deal with the challenges that you will face in the preliminary contest?" Master Deivon.


    "Don''t worry, I have some things that can make it easier for me to deal with," Rui spoke with a hint of confidence.


    It was clear that he did not intend to divulge what those means were. In general, he had been quite secretive and possessive of his capabilities. Master Deivon''s confidence in him came from the techniques that he submitted, as well as the feats that he had aplished. Without those two, he wouldn''t have been nearly as confident that Rui was not only a Virodhabhasa seed, but also would perform well in the Martial Contest that would soon bemenced.


    He did look forward to it more than he ever had.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1203 Eyes

    <h4>Chapter 1203 Eyes</h4>


    The Martial Festivalmenced in its full glory the very second dawn broke on the first day of the week-long festival. The energy of the town skyrocketedpared to the average day as the citizens went all out in participating and enjoying a festival that urred only once every two years.


    Rui, on the other hand, was actually quite jobless.


    He had finished his training, and there was absolutely no improvement to be made in the span of three days. He spent the day taking in the festival, enjoying a rare asion as much as he could.


    He even visited the colosseum that would host the preliminary contest.


    "Woah," Rui did a double take when he realized howrge it was. "That''s¡­ generous in its size."


    It was big enough tofortably amodate all the participating Martial Squires of the town in a single match. Ordinarily, it would be too big for any human to possibly view in its entirety while also being able to follow the battles of all Martial Squires. It was basically impossible for ordinary humans to follow Squire-levelbat in the first ce, these conditions just made it even more impossible than it already was.


    However, Rui knew that certain measures would be taken to ensure that the audience would be able to keep up with thebat. Rui had heard that each ticket also came with a potion that could allow the cognition of ordinary humans to reach a level that would allow them to follow what was happening.


    Rui had been shocked when he learned of that. However, it wasn''t the existence of such potions that shocked him. He knew that potion users existed, and could keep up with Martial Artists inbat. Thus potions that could allow humans to process Martial Artistbat were hardly a shock, it was actually a step below.


    What was shocking was that the Virodhabhasa Faith was willing to produce so many potions of such a kind all for the frivolous purpose of allowing an audience to be able to keep up with the spectacle.


    What was just as astounding was the fact that there were god only knew how many people who were willing to pay an absurd amount of money for a single ticket that included the price of the potions, all so that they could have the experience of watching Martial Squires fight.


    (''Rich people¡­'') He snorted.


    He was among the richest for a brief period of time before he purchased a decade''s worth of services from squads of Martial Seniors ensuring that no Senior-level threat could hurt his family and the services from Guildmaster Bradt, but even then he wouldn''t spend money in such a vain manner.


    (''I bet this is how it will be for the Senior-level contest too,'') He snorted.


    He couldn''t even imagine the price of a single ticket. The number of people who would pay for such tickets was also probably substantially lower. However the price one a Senior-level ticket was probably a hundred times higher than that of a Squire-level ticket, thus the profits were not low either.


    Yet the potions weren''t the only things that drew his attention and interest.


    It turned out that the execution of the contest was enough to keep him entertained until the fourth day of the Martial Festival when it was finally time for the preliminary contest.


    By the time the fourth day arrived, the excitement of the town had reached what would probably be the very peak of the entire festival. After all, once the preliminary contest waspleted, the contest would escte far beyond the confines of the town, and head to the colosseum in the central headquarters of the Virodhabhasa Faith. Property ? of N?velDrama.Org.


    Thus it was only today that the three contests would make the town livelier than ever.


    Rui still had quite some time before it was his turn, so he decided to purchase a ticket for the Apprentice-level preliminary contest.


    This was in stark contrast to how he would handle such events in the past. In the past, he probably would have spent the whole day trying to enter his absolute best state through meditation. But he had reached a stage in his Martial Path where he no longer needed to go to such lengths to enter his peak mental state.


    The more time he spent as an active Martial Artist, the easier it became to enter the zone where his mind entirely focused on the task at hand. He found that it was actually easier to let it arise naturally rather than trying to brute-force it.


    Rather than stressing himself out, he decided to rx and watch the kids of the lower Realm duke it out in an identical fashion as the Squires and Seniors would. It was also the only ticket that he could afford at the moment.


    It helped him rx and not needlessly force him to consume extra mental and physical energy. It also helped that he had made sure that he was as close to his peak as possible by carefully measuring his diet and sleep.


    It wasn''t long before it was time.


    The participating contestants were supposed to report to the contestmittee three hours prior to the kick-off of the contest. Thus Rui had the pleasure of facing his fellow contestants before the match even began.


    "Contestant #342; Squire Falken."


    STEP


    He paused once he entered the giant hall hosting hundreds of Martial Squires, heaving a sigh.


    (''Give me a break guys¡­'')


    Each and every Martial Squire was staring at him. He could practically see the wariness, as well as the predatory hostility within their eyes. It didn''t take a genius to figure out that they were not thinking nice things.


    Rui couldn''t help but curse the organizers who forced all of them into one room. This was just an attempt to bait drama. Although there were two Martial Seniors to ensure that a conflict did not prematurely erupt in the hall, it was clear that anything else was fine.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1204 Deceive

    <h4>Chapter 1204 Deceive</h4>


    Rui sighed visibly as he took his ce among his fellow contestants. They did not cease observing him. It was actually embarrassing to be the object of scrutiny of an entire crowd that he was forced to be with.


    However, this wasn''t entirely inconvenient. It meant that he could already begin executing one of the strategies that he hade up with to handle the fact that he was going to be a target due to how high-profile he had be.


    The reason he was a target was because he was perceived as the greatest threat.


    That was something he could alleviate to a certain degree. Among Martial Artists, strength could be perceived, sensed, and intuited. Although the substantive rumors surrounding Rui were not things that could be dismissed, most Martial Artists were most confident in their own senses.


    That was something he could work with. By utilizing a Mind Mask, he could reduce the amount of threat he conveyed to his fellow peers.


    Because of his enhanced mind, his Mind Mask was powerful enough topletely suppress any sense of danger and threat he evoked, turning him into a normal person, or even less than a normal person despite not having a strong affinity for stealth.


    However, he knew that in these circumstances he could not go that far. His fellow contestants were not stupid, they knew that he was a Martial Squire, if they could not at least sense a Squire-level aura, they would be even more afraid and determined to take him out because it meant that he could effortlessly conceal his power despite it being immense. That would only make them more concerned.


    Instead, he did not reduce it all the way down, or even most of the way down. Trying to make himself a grade-one or grade-two Martial Artist was too much of a bluff. They would definitely be suspicious as no contestant participating at the moment was low-grade. They were all high-grade Martial Squires, many of whom had arrived at Church town for the sole reason of partaking in the contest.


    Death was not forbidden in the contest, thus low-grade Martial Squire would have to be suicidal to consider participating in the contest.


    That was why he decided to lower his perceived grade from as incredibly high as it was to grade eight. The power he was at more than three years ago.


    Grade eight was as low as he could without the bluff being too suspicious. It was high enough for the participating Martial Squires to put more faith in their senses and intuition than in some rumors. Content from N?velDr(a)ma.Org.


    After all, rumors could be falsified and grossly exaggerated. The severe exaggeration of the power level of a grade-eight Martial Squire wasn''t even the most egregious example of why crazy rumors could not be trusted.


    Rui heaved a sigh of relief when he saw that his n was partially effective.


    Many of the stronger Martial Squires immediately dismissed him as a threat when they realized that their senses didn''t even perceive him as a genuine threat.


    Yet there was a good chunk of Squires who remained wary, albeit to a lesser extent. That was fine by Rui, he would take everything he could get.


    He knew that this underestimation was temporary. Eventually, the contestants would realize that he was even more of a threat than the rumors indicated the longer the battle prolonged. The Mind Mask technique would not be of much avail once they actually saw him fight.


    Rui had many thoughts on how he ought to fight in this contest. The most dangerous parts of the contest were actually the earliest phases of the conflict. This was when the greatest number of Martial Squires would fall by far. The colosseum wasrge enough to give the Martial Squires enough space to fight at whatever range they wanted, but that was it. It was still congested enough for there to be enough chaos for many Martial Squires to fall like bowling pins.


    In fact, the ones that would survive the earliest phase were the ones that could handle the chaos the best.


    (''Kane would thrive in this contest. He would have a very serious chance of winning if he participated in my ce.'') Rui mused.


    The Void Step technique was simply too overpowered, generally speaking. He would simply need to zip around and stab people in the back, literally.


    Rui could not do that, so he decided to take another route. Surviving the chaos was his greatest priority. Unfortunately, there was too much chaos, such circumstances were where the difficulty of executing the VOID algorithm was the greatest. There was simply too much data for him to be able to process and create predictive models for. It was one of the aspects of the VOID algorithm that needed to be improved. The VOID algorithm was created for one-on-one hand-to-handbat, after all.


    Although Rui had used it against multiple Martial Artists in the past during the Serevian War, that was limited to single-digit numbers. This was on an entirely different level of difficulty.


    Therefore, his greatest priority was tost despite being targeted until the situation became less chaotic.


    (''Looks like I''ll have to rely on the Metabody System earlier than I expected.'') Rui mused. (''I can forget about offense in the earliest phase of the contest. My focus issting, so I''ll have to choose between the remaining Metabody techniques.'')


    He considered Void Forestep, before dismissing it. It relied on the VOID algorithm too much out of all the Metabody techniques.


    That left Nemean Blossom, Weaving Blood, and Hungry Pain plus Final Breathing.


    He could see cases being made for all three techniques. Which probably meant that he would employ all three techniques to a partial degree. The question was figuring out to what weightage he would give to each technique. Activating them to equal degrees was probably sub-optimal. He needed to figure out which one was most important, and how he could make the best use of the new-found resources that he had.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1205 Analysis

    <h4>Chapter 1205 Analysis</h4>


    Of those three techniques, Rui needed to make sure he used them to the most optimal degree. Fortunately, there were ways through which the most optimal distribution could be analyzed.


    (''It alles down to which is the most energy-conservative way to ensure that Ist through the initial chaotic phase,'') Rui narrowed his eyes as his mind furiously processed through all the avablebinations and permutations.


    The most energy-conservative Metabody technique was Hungry Pain plus Final Breathing. However, this technique would not guarantee him getting past the initial phase where he would be targeted by a good number of Martial Artists. Given that it decreased his output with the intent of preserving stamina, he could be sure that this technique alone would not get him through.


    Nemean Blossom was definitely something that would ensure that he would get past the initial phase. The technique made him so tough by sacrificing power, speed, and stamina, that it could easily allow him to withstand anything they threw at him. The Earthen Fortress Bloom technique that this technique was based on was tough alone, and had been enhanced by the Hungry Pain technique that enhanced the thickening of the cell wall of cells had already proven itself when he tested it. It was an absolute guarantee that he would make it through.


    (''But it''s not the most energy conservative way of getting through,'') Rui knew that.


    Each Metabody technique truly drained him, they sacrificed everything for the sake of amplifying one parameter, and once he was done, he would be weakened. So even if he got past the initial chaotic phase, he could very well end up in trouble in theter phases due to being drained from maintaining the Nemean Blossom technique which would be draining away at the biochemical and nutritional resources of the body and Hungry Pain. It had a definitive time limit from the moment it was used.


    (''In that case¡­ Weaving Blood is definitely more alluring.'')


    Weaving Blood did not have a time limit the same way that the other techniques did. The reason for this was that Weaving Blood did not constantly consume energy and biochemical resources every second the way Nemean Blossom or Void Forestep did. Instead, Weaving Blood''s energy consumption was entirely dependent on damage.


    If there was no damage done, then Weaving Blood would not consume any energy. Stamina would be preserved in this case.


    If there was tons of damage done, then Weaving Blood would consume tons of energy. Stamina would not be preserved in this case.


    In fact, unlike the other techniques, it was possible to deplete and finish Weaving Blood in just a matter of seconds as long as the damage was high enough. This was not the case for Nemean Blossom.


    (''This means that if I use Weaving Blood, as long as I stay sharp and keep my reflexes up, I can get past the initial chaos phase with zero energy consumption as long as I don''t take any damage.) Rui''s eyes lit up. This was an alluring oue. Weaving Blood was the only technique that could allow him to get away with no extra energy consumption despite using the Metabody System.


    (''However¡­ it also means that if I do happen to get hit in the head and suffer blunt force trauma¡­ It''s game over.'') Rui sighed.


    Weaving Blood could not heal blunt force trauma, it also could not heal being knocked out. These were not conventional wounds to cells and tissue that could be healed with cellr division.


    Of course, if he didn''t get hit hard in the head, then there would be no problem. But the issue was that if he did, it would cost him his life.


    (''In which case, it will be better to have a bit of Nemean Blossom to ensure that this doesn''t happen. Sure, my energy consumption will increase a bit, but it''s best to make sure that even if I get caught off-guard, I don''t lose anything.'') Rui mused.


    Nemean Blossom made his flesh so tough and resistive to impacts that he would not get knocked out by pretty much anything any of the Martial Squires within the room he was in had to offer.


    (''So, twenty-percent Nemean Blossom, eighty-percent Weaving Blood.'') Rui decided.


    Now that he had made that decision, he was mostly done with all the considerations that he had about the contest.


    He did, nheless, take his time to scan all of his opponents. Part of the reason that they were all put in the same ce before the contest officially began was to put their ability to gather information on their opponents to the test. As well as their strategic and tactical intelligence in the test. Property ? of N?velDrama.Org.


    Rui smiled a bit.


    He didn''t get full of himself, but he was absolutely certain that he was the best at this out of all hispetitors by far. It was unfortunate that they weren''t really moving or doing anything physically rigorous because he would have been able to build elementary predictive models on them.


    However, even if he could not do that, he could conduct basic threat analysis on all of them, while also building profiles on them containing as much information about their Martial Bodies and Art.


    While all the Martial Squires were engaging in basic analysis, Rui was the only one who turned it into a system that operated within the confines of his massive Mind Pce.


    Of the several hundred Martial Squires, he could detect only three grade-ten Martial Squires. These three were the three greatest perceived threats, only because Rui was able to conceal his threat level well enough. There was no doubt that these three were also going to be heavily targeted and would be focusing on making sure they didn''t go down while being attacked by many Martial Squires.


    It was ironic because the strongest Martial Squires including himself and those three would be on the defensive while the most aggressive ones would be the ones immediately below them, hoping to surpass them with numbers to im the spot of representative for themselves.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1206 Commencement

    <h4>Chapter 1206 Commencement</h4>


    The colosseum that was had long been specifically constructed for the sake of the Martial Contest was now teaming with people. Spirits were high as the citizens of the Seonmun town gathered to see an exciting spectacle that they had the opportunity to witness only once every two years.


    Rui learned that despite worshipping Martial Artists, the members of this religion did not see anything wrong with tossing hundreds of them inside a rtively congested area where they could not get away from each other and watching them brawl it out. There was no doubt that many of the contestants were going to die, it was inevitable, yet there did not seem to be any concern in that regard from the spectators.


    It appeared that while the members of the faith decisively ced Martial Artists above normal people such that it was uneptable for thetter to transgress against the former, there were no problems as long as it happened between Martial Artists.


    The tensions in the hall kept escting as the event had already begun.


    "Welcooome brothers and sisters!! To the seventy-second preliminary Martial Contest of the Seonmun Church town¡­!"


    "We wee you today to an exciting battle featuring the finest warriors of the Squire Realm that this town has gathered¡­!"


    "Only one will prevail! Only one warrior will remain standing, being bestowed with the title of the strongest! The title of the Seonmun Champion!"


    The crowd cheered in a frenzy, growing increasingly excited by the second. The pair of dynamicmentators simply stoked the fires that had already been burning, hoping to get everybody even more hyped.


    Rui could only sigh in response. Yet his attention pricked when his senses caught all the seated spectators being served a potion that they all quickly consumed. He could feel their minds and cognition speeding even from this distance.


    "Now that you have all been given the means to enjoy the spectacle that is to follow, let us begin without any further ado!"


    It was then that a man entered the hall that all the Martial Squires were in.


    "Warrior," He addressed them. "I am the contestant manager. I am here to inform you that it is time. Follow me, and good luck."


    They all made their way through the paths that he had them go through before pouring through the entrances into the colosseum battle arena.


    Instantly, they were greeted by the bellowing cheers of the spectators.


    Every Martial Squire could not help but be amazed at the sheer number of people that had gathered to witness them fight. They could not help but feel ambivalent about it.


    On one hand, it was an honor that so many people were willing to bear high expenses to watch them fight. On the other, it was also a little insulting that the contest to decide the strongest had been turned into an entertainment show where they were essentially clowns of the circus.


    Regardless, none of them let it dwell on their minds for more than a bit of time.


    It was what it was, and there were more important things to focus on.


    The crowd became more subdued as waves of pressure washed over them.


    The Martial Squires were focusing.


    The sheer amount of pressure that they collectively exerted was immense. Many of the spectators grew nervous even though they weren''t involved.


    The Martial Squires were on edge.


    Sharp.


    Alert.


    Willfully pushing their minds and bodies to the limit.


    It wasn''t long before they formed an equidistant perimeter along the edge of the colosseum.


    "And without any further ado. BEGIN!!!"


    Rui immediately activated the three techniques Metabody technique to a partial degree in rapid session.


    His skin grew several shades darker as his cells began thickening their walls, they also stockpiledpounds and nutrients needed to immediately divide and form new cells to heal any wounds that his body would incur.


    Yet by the time he did that, all hell had already broken loose.


    What happened when you grouped up several hundred powerful Martial Squires and told them only one could prevail?


    If anybody didn''t know before, they sure did now.


    RUMBLE!!!


    A maelstrom of chaos the likes of which the spectators had never beheld before overtook the entirety of the colosseum as nothing short of a war erupted.


    All of the cheers and screams ceased.


    Not a single one of them dared to raise their voice as even their enhanced minds struggled to keep up with the carnage that promulgated.


    BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOOOOOM!!!


    Waves of attacks, waves of maneuvers, waves of actions and reactions all shed across the colosseum just milliseconds after the match hadmenced!


    Just as Rui had predicted, the three grade-ten Martial Squires had be the greatest targets. He also predicted the barrage of attacks that many Martial Squiresunched his way. It appeared that while the grade-eight Mind Mask had reduced him from bing everybody''s target, there were still some people who thought he was too much of a threat. N?velDrama.Org owns ? this.


    "Tsk."


    Rui sprinted at top speed, avoiding powerful sts that barely missed him!


    He pushed his reflexes and senses to the limit, heightening his alertness to the very zenith. Primordial Instinct was his greatest friend through the initial phase of chaos.


    He activated Outer Convergence and Gale Force Breathing as well as Phantom Step, dashing away at incredible speeds while weaving through warring Martial Squires.


    The battle had long escted into the air, epassing the entirety of the three dimensions within the colosseum. Rui zig-zagged through the air, and the ground, avoiding attacks that crashed into other Martial Squires taking them out.


    He felt relieved as he witnessed the three grade-ten Martial Squires struggling under volleys of attacksunched by the grade-eight and grade-nine Martial Squires that worked together to take them down. Although those three were the strongest, that did not mean that they were capable of handling so many attackers that were just a grade or two below them. Rui could have easily suffered their fate had he not concealed his power.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1207 Late

    <h4>Chapter 1207 Late</h4>


    The spectators watched with ckened jaws as Martial Squires copsed one after the other. The earliest phase of the match was so chaotic that Martial Squires attacked those they didn''t mean to attack and got hit by attacks that weren''t meant to hit them.


    It was just that things changed so quickly that by the time an attack wasunched and began traveling, in close-range or long-range, the things in its path had already changed. Many Martial Squires were inadvertently taken down by attacks meant for someone else.


    It was too much to follow!


    Thankfully, with each falling Martial Squire, things became easier to follow. Being knocked out, killed, or incapacitated were grounds for elimination, and those Martial Squires were swiftly extracted through esoteric means without interrupting the battle.


    It wasn''t too long before a lot of the riff-raff were filtered out. These were Martial Squires who, while they weren''t weak, simply stood no chance at iming victory against all odds.


    It wasn''t too long before only the grade-eight, nine, and ten Martial Squires, and Rui remained.


    Rui had spent this brief and initial phase of the preliminary contest on the run for the most part. He kept his energy consumption low enough for the most part. While some attacks did hit him, especiallyrge wide-scale attacks that covered a lot of area, his partial Nemean Blossom handled them perfectly for the most part.


    "Get him!"


    "Tsk! He''s too slippery!"


    "Surround him!"


    "RARGH!" One grade-nine Martial Squire appeared in front of him, managing to cut him off while throwing his most powerful attack at him.


    CLASP!


    His eyes widened as he felt his power disappearing the second that Rui caught his fist, as though it was being drained away into a void. Not even a powerful grade-nine Martial Art technique was enough to ovee thebination of Flux Earther and a partial Nemean Blossom.


    BZZZT!!!


    At the same time, Rui activated Thundercoil, sending a buzzing and paralytic sensation through his body.


    For just a brief moment, he couldn''t move.


    And that was enough.


    BAM! POW!


    A swift kick to the jaw rocked the man''s head, driving him dizzy before a final blow to the sr plexus armed with Outer Convergence and Reverberating Lance hammered the final nail in the coffin.


    THUD


    The man crumpled to the ground, unconscious.


    This paused his pursuers, as they froze.


    Wasn''t he just a grade-eight Martial Artist? How did he take down a grade-nine Martial Artist so quickly?


    Suddenly, a profoundly deep sense of peril emerged in their hearts.


    Something was wrong.


    A grin cracked onto Rui''s face. "Time''s up. Should have been quicker. Now it''s toote."


    His skin lightened, returning back to normal. He felt less solidpared to before.


    Yet for some reason, they only felt greater pressure when they beheld his figure walking towards them.


    Rui put away the defense. Now that the most chaotic parts had passed, and only continued passing, he no longer had to y defense. This is the property of N?-velDrama.Org.


    Before they could even gather their wits, Rui had alreadyshed out, racing against them.


    "HYAH!" An aggressive offensive Martial Squire bellowed,unching a powerful kick to Rui''s head as he approached him.


    WHOOSH!


    The man''s eyes widened as his attack crashed into an empty image.


    A feint.


    BOOM!!!


    He coughed blood as Rui''s most powerful attack crashed into his ribs. The full might of Flowing Canon, Outer Convergence, Reverberating Lance, as well as the momentum rued by Gale Force Breathing crashed into the man''s abdomen in the brief window that his guard was down due to the feint.


    Yet, much to his credit, he only fell to a knee, trying his best not to lose. Unfortunately for him, it was far from enough.


    POW!


    A swift kick to the skull knocked him out, putting him out ofmission.


    Yet he couldn''t even revel in any sense of victory as he was immediately attacked from four directions.


    It appeared that his targeters had realized that he could not be taken down one-on-one after watching him dust two high-grade Martial Squired with little effort.


    Yet, they simply did notprehend. They did notprehend the depth of the power that Rui was hiding; the depth of the VOID.


    WHOOSH


    A simple step here.


    A shift in weight there.


    A palm over there.


    Rui made the simplest of adjustments, and all of their attacks failed. Half of them were dodged, and some of them were blocked.


    None of them reached him.


    Yet he was not content.


    His eyes shed over to the closest Martial Squire, a maneuvering-oriented expert, sending chills down his spine.


    Rui threw a swift kick in his direction, a short and crisp blow with little power. And yet, the man effortlessly dodged the attack with his high speed.


    Or so he thought.


    BAM!!


    The kick resolutelynded on his face, breaking his nose. Yet the shock he felt surpassed the pain.


    (''I dodged, but¡­ his attack swerved in this direction even before I began dodging!'') Even though he was quicker, Rui moved earlier, just early enough topensate for the lower speed, justte enough that his opponent could not change the decision that his body was already executing.


    How could he do that? It was impossible!


    Unless¡­


    (''Unless he knew ahead of time,'') The man''s eyes widened.


    "You shouldn''t get distracted."


    A chill crawled up his spine.


    BAM!!!


    Ruiunched an attack from his blindspot into his vitals.


    CRACK CRACK CRACK!


    "Cough!" The man vomited blood even before the attackunched him flying, barely retaining his consciousness.


    Yet he already knew that his wounds were too severe.


    He turned back to Rui in rm and fear, yet Rui had already dismissed his existence. "You should withdraw before it''s toote."


    Three Martial Squires down. Three seconds in real time.


    It dawned on his targeters.


    No, not just them.


    It dawned on everybody in the colosseum.


    Maybe, just maybe¡­ the rumors surrounding Squire Falken were not fiction.


    Still¡­


    "Like I said," Rui narrowed his eyes coldly. "Toote."


    A wave of peril washed over everybody. A sense of pressure that didn''t seem to quite fit in the Squire Realm drew everybody''s attention.


    He removed his Mind Mask entirely.


    It was no longer necessary.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1208 Turnaround

    <h4>Chapter 1208 Turnaround</h4>


    They were arrogant words at face value, yet one could tell Rui was not merely grandstanding.


    He meant every word.


    That was why many could not help but believe him.


    Perhaps it really was toote. Perhaps they should have taken him down sooner, and no longer had any chance of doing so.


    Almost as if to prove a point, Rui moved, rushing forward toward them.


    His eyes were fixed on the Martial Squire closest to him. Heshed forward,unching his most powerful attack!


    A powerful Flowing Canon flew in the direction of his closestpetitor. Ordinarily, an attack from so far away would be easier to dodge.


    Yet Rui knew he wouldn''t dodge.


    The man he was targeting was a powerful defensive Martial Artist with a body that was nted toward passive defense.


    "Come!" The man firmly nted his feet into the ground, while adopting a defensive stance.


    He was confident that at the very least, he would be able to handle Rui''s raw power, if nothing else.


    It wasn''t that his confidence was misced. His analysis was actually quite reasonable. When one considered Rui''s weightpared to his, as well as the fact that his Martial Body did not seem nted for offense, and neither did his Martial Art, then the conclusion was quite reasonable.


    Yet unfortunately for him, Rui did not fit into standard models of Martial Artists.


    He was a deviant. And the man would find that out the hard way.


    TAP TAP TAP!


    Where he expected a powerful strike that he had braced his abdomen for were mild finger pokes.


    Yet it was only when he couldn''t move anymore for a brief moment that he felt a deep sh of dread.


    SPLAT!


    Rui struck at his eyes with his fingers at the very moment that he was unable to move. He had baited the man into adopting a passive defensive stance meant to withstand a powerful blow, and switched up at thest moment, opting to instead for a choice that could not be defended against with conventional passive defense and paralyzing him for a moment as a result.


    After that, it was simply a matter of choosing which vital to attack. He went for the eyes because they were the easiest.


    Four Martial Artists. Four seconds.


    The others gritted their teeth with grim expressions when they witnessed how quickly Rui took down their one and only defensive powerhouse.


    That was more than just a little discouraging. They hoped that a defensive Martial Artist would be able to hold out for longer. Ideally, if he had been able to stall him by weathering all of his attacks, then this would have been easier for them. They would be able to gang up on him with the defensive Martial Squire throwing himself in front of Rui to use himself as a shield to take all of his attacks.


    Unfortunately, that turned out not to be the case. Rui had long predicted that the man would be able to withstand his attacks in base form, aside from perhaps Transverse Resonance tier five. Rather than wasting energy on taking him down the hard way, he simply made full use of patterns that the elementary predictive models had been created from.


    Someone who was prone to tanking offense passively probably still relied on some amount of active defense to cover vital spots. Rui simply got rid of that active defense for a moment through Lightning Tap.


    While the others couldn''t help but be shocked at how quickly a defensive Martial Squire fell, Rui was rather nonchnt.


    This wasn''t the first time, and it most certainly wouldn''t be thest.


    He rushed forward.


    "Cocky bastard!" Three Martial Squires rushed forward,unching three attacks.


    WHOOSH


    Not a single attack touched so much as a hair on his body. One moment he was in front of them, within the range of their attacks.


    The next moment, he disappeared. They couldn''t even sense him.


    No¡­ That wasn''t quite right.


    (''Shit! He''s behind us!'')


    Yet by the time they turned around, thest thing they saw was Rui''s mouth opening as he exhaled.


    BOOM!!!


    A titanically powerful sound attack crashed into all three of them,unching them away. This was the most apt way to use the attack, to use it to take down as many Martial Squires at a time as possible.


    Getting past them was simple for Rui. He had simply employed Phantom Step at exactly the right moment to slip into their blind spots. Phantom Step worked the best when it was used to show one what they wanted to see when they wanted to see. Yet using that to crouch into their blind spot into thest moment required deep foresight of their positions.


    It was something that could only be aplished with a deep amount of insight into their fighting styles.


    It was not something that just about anybody could do.


    Seven Martial Squires. Seven seconds.


    Although a greater amount of time had passed from Rui''s perspective, only seven seconds had passed since he began fighting back.


    And in that time, seven Martial Squires had already fallen.


    Rui turned around with a nd expression, eying those who remained.


    Yet those that remained wanted nothing more to do with him.


    "Shit, he''sing!"


    "Get away!"


    "I forfeit!"


    The spectators, who had been silent and shocked since the turnaround had urred, beganughing at them and cheering for Rui. Unlike the Martial Squires, the spectators did not know who he was. The names of each Martial Squire were not tediously announced before the contest began, thus their identities were known.


    Rui was just another Martial Squire who appeared to be targeted for some reason. He did not make much of an impression prior,pared to the grade-ten Martial Squires that had been valiantly fighting back since the start of the contest.


    That changed in the past seven seconds, as Rui almost became a different person in their eyes, taking down Martial Squires as though they were ordinary civilians was a shocking yet entertaining sight to see.


    This chapter upload first at  N?velDrama.Org owns ? this.

 Chapter 1209 Opponents

    <h4>Chapter 1209 Opponents</h4>


    "Woah, who is that guy?"


    "Whoever he is, I hope he wins. I''m rooting for him."


    "Man, to think that even monsters like him are participating. Even the preliminary contests go hard!"


    "If he wins, I''m going to purchase a ticket to the main contest in Li."


    The crowd only grew more excited when Rui unveiled a portion of his true power. Yet, in reality, he was a little bored.


    Ordinary Martial Squires were not able to excite him anymore. This had already begun being true even before he began Project Metabody.


    But now that he hadpleted it? He couldn''t even pretend they were entertaining anymore.


    When he looked into the eyes of those who sought to eliminate him with numbers, he knew he wouldn''t lose despite the numeric disadvantage.


    Those who returned his gaze also knew that.


    And he knew that they knew.


    And they knew that he knew that they knew.


    That was why they retreated.


    Rui couldn''t even be bothered to chase them.


    What he proceeded to do drew gasps from the various spectators. His actions were stunning to those who witnessed him.


    In the middle of an ensuing rumble, Rui had the audacity to sit down on the ground.


    It was a statement.


    A deration that this contest was not worth his full effort.


    Or that was how the spectators interpreted it.


    In reality, Rui couldn''t be bothered with such frivolous forms of show-off. His actions were more innocent than people were willing to believe. His attention had already turned in directions that actually held his interest. The three grade-ten Martial Squires.


    A smile crept on his face.


    "Strong."


    This was undeniable.


    Rui carefully watched and analyzed all of their Martial Art as he continued building predictive models on all of them. He began the moment the fight began, dedicating a portion of his attention to those he knew were the greatest threats in thispetition, and now, he could dedicate all his attention to them in a full-fledged manner.


    The one that drew his attention the most was the one with a Martial Art that he had never seen before. It was a shocking fighting style that he didn''t even think was possible. She sashayed around the arena, those that crossed her path were left frozen on the spot. The ground she treaded upon hardened as frost began covering it. The air around her chilled. Rui couldn''t help but widen his eyes in shock as he watched tiny snowkes form in the air around her.


    She had a Martial Art that was centered around freezing!


    It was an absurd tale at first, one he would have found hard to believe had he heard it through second-hand sources.


    Yet now that he was seeing it ur in real-time right before his eyes, he could not deny that it not only existed but was incredibly powerful. N?velDrama.Org owns ? this.


    (''Her lethality is off the charts!'') Rui watched in rapt attention as everything she touched or even came near froze. (''She doesn''t generate ice, she lowers the temperature of her body as well as her environment and the targets of her strange cold techniques. How does he do it?'')


    Although it very clearly appeared to everybody as though she generated a thinyer of ice on top of her targets to freeze them from the outside in, only two people realized what was actually happening.


    One of them was Rui.


    (''She''s freezing them from the inside out!'') An amazed smile appeared on his face. (''She''s freezing the water inside the Martial Body, causing them to freeze on the spot and die.'')


    It was an instant death with no hopes of recovery. Furthermore, this form of offense bypassed all passive and active defense.


    Tough flesh, tough skin, tough bones. None of it mattered. None of these things could possibly prevent the rapid lowering in temperature that she caused within their body. Furthermore, the healing factor that a lot of these Martial Artists had was alsorgely ineffective against cold. The damage was done across the entire body on a molecr level. Seventy percent of the human body was simply water. That reality made her attacks absurdly lethal.


    (''Damn¡­'') Rui tutted, yet he couldn''t hide the excitement on his face. (''Nemean Blossom and Weaving Blood are either entirely useless or simply not worth it against her.'')


    He had already concluded that the only way tobat her was to keep her well out of range. If she got within five meters of him, it was probably game over. She had nopunctions of freezing his brain over, killing him on the spot.


    Unlike the other two, she actually appeared to be in her twenties, albeit well on thetter side. She had reached the conventional peak of the Squire Realm through the sheer potency of his Martial Path. She had more inmon with Rui and Kane than the other two older men who were her peers.


    Of course, the other two were, by no means, weak.


    Rui nced at the next most interesting among the three grade-ten Martial Squires.


    One man stood stationary at one spot, with his legs firmly nted on the ground. His attackers moved in, rushing in with attacks from all directions, yet he was unperturbed. Any attack that entered within arm''s length of him, however, immediately regretted that decision as they were twisted into oblivion. Skin stretched and spun, bones crumbled into gravel, and muscle tore as fibers resisted the force as much as possible.


    Only to fail.


    The end result was almostical. Hands were twisted into sharp spiral noodles with the sheer amount of force the man generated.


    (''A Martial Art centered around torque eh?'') Rui gazed with interest. The man''s primary offense was torque, he used torque to inflict damage in a manner that was entirely different from normal collision-based offense that an overwhelming majority of Martial Artists used to some degree. It was closer to the locks and holds of certain grappling principles, but the man had elevated them to an entirely different level.


    He was like a more lethal version of Hever.


    His body was gigantic and his muscles were loaded. He looked like he could give Hypertrophic Surge a run for its money on raw power, but unlike with Hypertrophic Surge, he didn''t have any strict time limits. He used a principle simr to Outer Convergence to draw power in from across the entirety of his body to his hands, allowing him to twist his opponent''s arms with great ease.


    (''That''s not enough to exin this absurd twisting effect.'') Rui narrowed his eyes as he analyzed the man''s Martial Art deeper. (''He also likely has hyper flexibility in his arms from the shoulder down. That''s the only way he can possibly twist his opponent''s arms to such a degree.'')


    It was a truly incredible solution.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1210 Finale

    <h4>Chapter 1210 Finale</h4>


    If Kane had been here, he would have been able to see through the technique with his incredible kic vision. Rui however, like everybody else, was having trouble even seeing what was happening.


    (''Definitely a formidable opponent. It seems all three of them are quite fancy.'')


    Rui turned to the final grade-ten Martial Squire. One nce at him and Rui could tell that he was employing incredibly powerful breathing techniques. It was as though the very atmosphere shook when he breathed. He rapidly shifted across the battlefield in an extremely strange manner.


    It took Rui a minute to figure out what was happening. (''He''s controlling his movements through the atmosphere via his breathing techniques!'') Content rights by N?velDr//ama.Org.


    Rui couldn''t help but furrow his eyebrow as he noted that the speed and power he exhibited did not match the weight and size of the Martial Body. It appeared that he had strengthened his breathing to such a degree, that he could use to manipte his entire body like a puppet, where the strings were the air around him.


    He shed around the battlefield at a blurringly high speed, Martial Artists fell left and right as he struck them with swift and incredibly powerful blows that they were simply unable to defend against. His offense was incredibly diverse as he employed a variety of principles against his opponents. Blunt force, piercing, grappling, vital targeting, and even wind and sound-based attacks.


    Unlike the other two, his Martial Art was not hyper-limited to a singr field.


    (''I definitely need to form a substantial predictive model on him,'') Rui narrowed his eyes as he analyzed all his movements.


    The other Martial Artists no longer even mattered to Rui, they may as well have already been disqualified while Rui was merely watching demonstrations from each of his opponents.


    And he was impressed with what he saw.


    Each of them faced an even greater amount of numerical disadvantages as several squads of Martial Squires led by grade-nine Martial Squires,prised of grade-eight Martial Squires leaped on each of the grade-ten Martial Squires. Yet despite these oppressive circumstances, not a single one of them fell.


    They withstood. They resisted. They pushed back.


    And in the end, they prevailed.


    At the end of it all, there were only four Martial Squires left.


    The three of them and Rui.


    The three of them regarded each other with respect and acknowledgment. This was the oue they hoped for. While each of them pursued their Martial Paths for different reasons the stemmed from entirely different pasts, one thing they each had inmon was that none of them wanted to see the truly strong ovee by an army of pathetic weaklings.


    This was the oue they had hoped for, and the oue that they had predicted. That they would crush any and all schemes that the weaklings cooked and would face each other in the end to decide which one of them would be the Seonmun Champion.


    There was just one variable that they had not expected.


    Rui.


    It wasplicated. Each of them had heard of the monster that apparently was too strong for the Squire-level training facilities. As Martial Artists who each used those same facilities and had no problems, that was not something that could be ignored, if true.


    If true, that was.


    When they actually saw Rui, they realized that those rumors were insubstantive. A Martial Squire who was a few notches below them could not possibly aplish such things. They had immediately dismissed him as a threat. They were each other''s onlypetitors.


    Then, Rui stopped holding back. The power he disyed drew their attention even while they were under immense pressure. It was clear that they had failed to evaluate him properly, or he had the ability to hide his strength. This wasn''t an unheard of ability, many Martial Artists developed a simr ability, and it was mostmonly seen in covert fields. They just hadn''t expected to see it from Rui since he was clearly not someone in that field.


    Regardless, it didn''t matter.


    The fact of the matter was, he was among the final four, and he had earned his way there. Not even they could deny that.


    However, Rui wasn''t entirely pleased with the circumstances. The three of them had sustained a few injuries, having faced much greater oppression from thepetitors. Rui, on the other hand, was unharmed.


    He got up, walking towards all of them.


    "Squire Falken," One of them regarded him. "I had heard tha-!"


    BOOM!


    Ruiunched a powerful Mighty Roar sh st, at him. Yet even he couldn''t help but crack a smile when the man dispelled the attack with ease.


    "Impatient, aren''t you?" The older man tutted.


    Yet that attack had already served a green light of sorts. The spectators held their breath as the four strongest Martial Squires abruptlyshed out intobat, with the four of them battling against each other.


    It was supposed to all four of them against the other three.


    Yet, much to their shock, this wasn''t the case.


    Much to their shock, one of them managed to gain an edge against all the other three.


    Rui grinned as he went all-out, partially activating Hypertrophic Surge and Void Forestep at fifty percent intensity each.


    His power and speed skyrocketed.


    The three of them froze as they felt chills crawling up their skin. Their expression grew more severe as Rui exhibited pressure that didn''t quite seem to belong within the Squire Realm. A profoundly deep sense of peril grew within their hearts as they witnessed his body undergoing changes that they didn''t understand.


    Yet one thing they did understand.


    Whatever he was, he needed to be stopped before he trampled all over them.


    The three of them ceased their conflict with each other as they each turned to face Rui with grim expressions, surrounding him from all directions.


    The spectators grew stunned as the three grade-ten Martial Squires joined forces to fight Rui!


    The battle had taken an extreme turn as Rui began experiencing an immense amount of pressure from all directions!


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1211 Divide

    <h4>Chapter 1211 Divide</h4>


    The battle unfolded in a direction that not a single person had expected it to, especially to those partaking in the battle.


    Squire Isin Keelia and her Whispering Winter Style.


    Squire Draxel and his Hurricane Shredder Style.


    Squire Varay Meenia and his Breathing Marite Style.


    Each of them had expected to face the other two in the end for the title of the Seonmun Champion.


    That was why they were shocked when they realized that they were not the prime candidates for that title.


    Once that moment of realization came, they made their decisions quickly.


    They circled around Rui, drawing in close towards him to finish him off quickly with a numeric advantage.


    It was humiliating, yes, but there was too much at stake for each of them. Unlike Rui, they had been eying the Virodhabhasa Martial Contest for a lot longer than just a year. They had even participated multiple times before.


    Although they despised the fact that they had to employ the same cowardly strategy that had been employed against them, it couldn''t be helped.


    Even as they surrounded Rui, their expressions were ashen.


    And yet, their opponent did not seem displeased in the slightest. Not only was he not displeased, they could even pick up hints of ecstasy. They couldn''t help but frown when they saw him grin.


    His mouth opened, and a single word escaped it.


    "Hypocrites."


    It pierced through all the noise their techniques, reaching not just their ears, but also their hearts. It made their expressions deteriorate. It was hard for them to deny the usation. They had shamelessly resorted to a strategy that they had looked down upon from a moral high ground just minutes prior.


    Yet something about the way he said it was off. The sensation he gave off was strange. It was almost as if he wasn''t condemning them. They didn''t sense resentment or rage.


    No.


    He was conveying a different emotion.


    Their eyes widened as they understood. They understood what he was conveying. This is the property of N?-velDrama.Org.


    It was gratitude.


    He was thanking them.


    In the middle of a battle. Despite being targeted by them collectively, Rui had the audacity to express gratitude.


    (''Thank you for pushing me to my limits.'') Rui exhaled as hepleted his Metabody transition to a half Hypertrophic Surge and Void Forestep body.


    His body shifted beforeshing out.


    The battle had begun in earnest.


    A maelstrom of pressure crashed into them as Rui rushed forward, racing towards Squire Varay at blinding speeds!


    BAM!!!


    The verynd beneath them shook as Rui dished out a powerful Flowing Canon.


    Squire Varay gritted his teeth as he exerted himself to the limit blocking the attack. The very act strained his joints, threatening to snap them. Yet Rui did not let up even as the powerful impact sted the man away.


    The expressions of the other two grew grim as they pursued Rui aggressively, and for good reason.


    They already knew.


    They knew that Rui could not be allowed to face any one of them alone. With the sheer amount of peril they felt from his monstrous physique, it would be game over if one of them fell, leaving the other two to face him alone.


    They rushed forward, hoping to get within close quarters where their Martial Art were effective within.


    Yet Rui did not stop moving, ever. Even as he chased after the retreating Squire Varay who was reeling from his attack, he never paused in his steps.


    There was good reason for that.


    (''I can''t engage in close-quartersbat with the other two.'') His eyes narrowed.


    It was frustrating, but it was the truth. Squire Isin in particr was the biggest problem. He had already determined that both Nemean Blossom and Weaving Blood were entirely ineffective against her. That was why he didn''t even bother using them, sticking to Hypertrophic Surge and Void Forestep. If she ever entered striking range of him, it was already over.


    And because he was forced to abandon Nemean Blossom and Weaving Blood was the match, it also meant that it was unwise tobat Squire Draxel at close quarters as well. Because only through Nemean Blossom''s defense, or Weaving Blood''s recovery would he be confident of handling his torque-centered counter-offense. The two techniques he wasn''t using due to the icedy.


    It was frustrating to be that vulnerable, but it was a good reminder that he wasn''t yet at the stage where he could wlessly adapt to all techniques and Martial Art. He was certain that there woulde a day when he would be able to directly negate her freezing head-on.


    But today wasn''t that day.


    If he couldn''t let her enter striking range, then that logically left only two solutions.


    The first solution was to move away faster than she approached.


    The second solution was to barricade her from reaching him, from a distance.


    Rui could do both.


    (''I''ll fight this one in hand-to-handbat.'') Rui stared deeply at Squire Varay even as he pummeled him with incredibly powerful and swift blows. (''While constantly moving around chasing him to ensure that the other two cannot even reach me.'')


    A simple, yet effective n. Both Squire Isin and Draxel were hyper-specialized in offense and counter-offense respectively. They did not excel in maneuvering, catching up with the much faster and motion-inclined Squire Varay and Rui was a challenge in and of itself. They would waste energy trying to hit him with their Martial Art, while Rui happily took down Squire Varay with the predictive model he had on the man on top of Hypertrophic Surge and Void Forestep.


    Yet it appeared that his opponent was not as strategically ipetent as Rui hoped.


    Squire Varay took a sharp turn as he rushed in the direction of the two Martial Squires who had been looking to reach and pressure Rui.


    His impromptu teammates were trying to reach Rui, but Rui was avoiding them while chasing and beating him down. He realized that all he had to was constantly move the battle in the direction of his slower peers and regroup, allowing them to fight him as a group once more. As long as he maneuvered correctly, he could always ensure that Rui would not be able to ignore the other two.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1212 Targets

    N?velDrama.Org owns ? this.<h4>Chapter 1212 Targets</h4>


    "Tsk." Rui frowned. (''Not ipetent, are you?'')


    His eyes narrowed as the three of them managed to regroup. Their eyes turned towards him, shing with a predatory glint.


    They immediately began moving in his direction with Squire Draxel and Isin in the lead and Varay trailing a little behind. This slowed them down quite a bit. Rui was fast enough to outpace them as long as they tried moving as a group, but that was a strategy that would not lead to his victory.


    He was the one who was on a time limit, not them. That strategy would simply lead to him tiring out, and them taking their time to take him down.


    Squire Isin and Draxel had cleverly inferred that Rui did not want to engage with them in close quarters, which is why they chose to lead the charge, hoping to try and confront him while Squire Varay trailed behind to make sure that Rui couldn''t use the strategy he did before.


    Rui had hoped to take them down with a divide-and-conquer strategy, but it appeared that the three of them were smart enough to not fall for that.


    Unfortunately, they were underestimating him if they thought that such simple measures were enough to curb his strategy.


    (''If I cannot divide you by with tactics, then I will divide you with technique.'') Rui inhaled deeply, pursing his lips.


    When his mouth opened, two powerful sonic bullets flew out, flying straight toward Squire Isin and Squire Draxel. The two of them froze in their tracks in surprise as the two attacks forced them to use all their defensive measures to block it. Squire Draxel employed his technique to dispel as much of the power as he could, Squire Isin merely blocked, skidding back.


    Yet Rui was not done, he continued firing sonic bullets at only the two of them, and not Squire Varay. Everybody watching furrowed their eyebrows as they witnessed Rui switching his target from Squire Varay to the two Martial Squires that he had been trying to avoid. The two targeted Martial Squire gritted their teeth at the onught.


    Even if it was only to half the full potency of the technique, Rui was using Hypertrophic Surge, which meant that the sheer amount of offensive power that every individual attack contained was enormous. Squire Isin was a pure lethal offensive Martial Squire, she did not have a particrly strong defense.


    Her defense was her offense. She was ustomed to killing many Martial Squires in an instant by freezing all the water in their bodies to extremely low temperatures. Yet this lethality could not be applied defensively to aid in a situation where she was being pummeled from a distance.


    Both she and Squire Draxel retreated a bit. uracy of aim reduced exponentially over distance, this was a known principle that could be employed against mid-range Martial Squires. As long as they could make Rui waste enough energy by making him relentlessly attack and miss in an attempt to keep them away, they would win in the long run.


    They were like sharks, looming in the distance, waiting for an opportunity to swoop in for the kill once Rui no longer had the energy to keep them at bay while most of his attacks would fail to reach them due to the greater distance that opened between them.


    It was a fine strategy in theory, Rui evenmended them for half-decent strategic considerations.


    There was just one issue.


    Every single attack reached them.


    It didn''t matter how far they went, or how much they moved around. Every single attack that Ruiunched crashed into them, no matter the position, direction, and inclination they were at rtive to him. They hoped that he would have to waste a lot of energy to ensure that the two of them didn''t reach close quarters and kill him, either through freezing or through the torque twister.


    Yet Rui did not waste any energy at all.


    No.


    His attacks were not desperate barrages from a man who was cornered. Instead, they were surgically precise and urate actions performed with the bare minimum amount of energy.


    The entire audience realized that they were witnessing something unprecedented.


    Squire Isin and Draxel had already distanced themselves by more than a kilometer from Rui.


    Yet every single attack continuously struck them!


    It didn''t seem to matter how and where they moved. It was as though Rui''s attacks were destined to strike them!


    How on Earth was Rui striking them so perfectly from such a distance without even looking at them?!


    Only one man understood what was happening.


    (''This¡­ This is his Pathfinder.'') Master Deivon''s eyes widened in amazement. He only knew because Rui had sold them the technique.


    However, there was something off.


    (''The Pathfinder technique is meant for static and stationary targets. Yet he''s sniping them perfectly despite their rapid and sharp movements to throw him off.'') His eyes narrowed. (''The only way he could do that is if¡­'')


    The deep insight that came with being a Martial Master led him to the answer that befuddled all other spectators.


    It was only then that he understood the profound depth of his Martial Art.


    (''No¡­ I''m just barely uncovering the surface¡­ I don''t understand. Just how¡­?'') His thoughts trailed off as he watched in rapt attention as Rui disyed astounding prowess.


    Squire Draxel and Isin rapidly began suffering greater wounds as their dodging and distancing measures miserably failed against the Void Pathfinder technique. At this point, even if they wanted to step forward and close the distance, they couldn''t. Rui pushed them back with stronger attacks every time they attempted to close the distance.


    Yet, he only enjoyed this advantage for no more than a few seconds in real-time.


    Squire Varay appeared behind him in his blind spot with a furious expression and a charged attack.


    (''I won''t let you have things your way!'')


    Heunched a blindingly fast attack at Rui''s back, hoping to disrupt him just enough to allow the other two to close the distance and kill him in that timeframe.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1213 Underestimated

    <h4>Chapter 1213 Underestimated</h4>


    s, he too underestimated Rui.


    WHOOSH!


    Where Rui was a moment ago, was nothing besides an empty image. His eyes widened in shock as he realized that Rui had side-stepped him with ease.


    (''He dodged me despite attacking them?'') He gritted his teeth. "Damn you!"


    Heunched a barrage of powerful and swift blows, breathing deeply as he manipted the entirety of the air behind to push his body forward, increasing his speed and power tremendously.


    Yet all of them failed to reach Rui. He evaded them with a degree of proficiency that only Kane could surpass.


    Yet it wasn''t the failure of the attacks that hurt Squire Varay the most.


    It was the fact that Rui wasn''t even looking at him.


    Everyone could see that he had firmly turned his attention back to the two Martial Squires that he had been targeting.


    That was a statement.


    A statement that Squire Varay wasn''t even worth acknowledging.


    Hardly anyone could believe what they were seeing. Two grade-ten Martial Squires were being surgically bullied by powerful attacks from a ridiculous distance away, while the third couldn''t even touch him despite being right in front of his face.


    He couldn''t even get Rui to acknowledge his existence.


    His eyes grew bloodshot as an expression of pure rage covered his face. He prided himself as someone who stood at the very epitome of the Squire Realm. While there were Martial Squires stronger than him, he was not weak by any means.


    Yet standing before Rui''s gargantuan figure that refused to even meet his eyes, he felt as though he had gone back twenty years ago when he fought a Martial Squire for the first time after breaking through to the Squire Realm.


    "YOU WILL NOT DISRESPECT ME!" He bellowed as he went all-out.


    He used every limb tounch attacks at Rui, hoping to simply ovee him with effort, making it untenable for the young man to ignore him or continue dodging him with ease.


    It was then that something changed.


    Rui''s movements began growing slower and lesser.


    Yet his dodges became cleaner and smoother.


    His movement speed began reducing as his muscles began growing even bigger and denserpared to before.


    Squire Varay''s eyes widened. He didn''t fully understand what was happening, but he managed to grasp the gist.


    (''He''s sacrificing speed for power¡­!'')


    For a moment, he was just speechless.


    Here he was doing everything in his power to actuallynd a hit on Rui, yet the man had the audacity to not only ignore him but also lower his speed as though evading him wasn''t challenging at all.


    The fact of the matter was that Rui didn''t need the speed of Void Forestep anymore. His predictive model on Squire Varay had already reached a point where he could avoid the man without enhanced speed. Instead, he turned on Hypertrophic Surge to the maximum, doubling his offensive power, and causing even more damage as he urately struck both Squire Isin and Draxel with even more powerful attacks. Content from N?velDr(a)ma.Org.


    Squire Varay on the other hand, felt and looked like a fool as Rui effortlessly dodged attacks that he predicted via the many passive and active patterns that he had spotted in Squire Varay''s movements.


    At that moment, Squire Varay snapped.


    "RARGH!" He abandoned all wariness and defense as he simply rushed forward, determined to strike Rui no matter what. His fist moved so abysmally fast, that the friction with the atmosphere caused the air around it to ignite!


    Yet not even that reached Rui.


    WHOOSH!


    Rui evaded a hook with a step forward, closing the distance with a charge.


    He was looking straight at the shocked man with a smirk, meeting his gaze for the first time.


    He had been waiting for that moment.


    It was then that Squire Varay realized that the entire time, he had been the real target, not the other two Martial Squires.


    Unfortunately, it was thest thought that shed through his mind before the world went dark.


    BOOM!!!


    A powerful Flowing Canon amplified with the full power of the Hypertrophic Surge technique, as well as Outer Convergence and Reverberating Lance, crashed into the man''s ribcage.


    CRACK CRACK CRACK!


    The attack left a deep dent in the man''s chest even as itunched him across the entire colosseum.


    BOOM!!!


    A giant crater was formed at the end with Squire Varay''s mangled body at its epicenter.


    For a moment, everything was silent.


    Nobody moved.


    Nobody could move.


    It took a moment for them to understand what had happened. But once that moment passed, all hell broke loose amongst the spectators. The gravity of what happened fully dawned on all those who bore witness


    Not only was Rui fighting three grade-ten Martial Squires simultaneously, each of whom formed a temporary coalition against him, but he pushed back, resisted, and was decisively winning, going so far as to take down one of them despite fighting all three at the same time!


    Squire Isin and Squire Draxel gritted their teeth with grim expressions on their wounded faces. Their entire body was slowly healing, but it wasn''t fast enough.


    Rui''s mouth had already pursed, ready to continue bombarding them with even more powerful attacks.


    Just the sight of him sent shivers crawling up their skin.


    "I FORFEIT!" Squire Isin screeched just before Ruiunched his attacks.


    Rui''s eyes shed towards Squire Draxel, his final remaining opponent beforeunching his attack.


    THWOOM!


    (''You bitch!'') Squire Draxel cursed with venomous hatred. "Wait! I forfe-!"


    Unfortunately, it was toote.


    BOOM!!!


    The verynd hoisting the entire colosseum shook as Rui''s tier five Transverse Resonance crashed into Squire Draxel.


    The man gritted his teeth, activating his most powerful Hurricane Jab to minimize the damage as much as possible.


    Yet he was swept away by the attack nheless.


    The Squire-level barriers beneath the spectator stands broke as the attack sted through them, leaving the colosseum entirely along with Squire Draxel''s corpse.


    The attack generated tremors that reverberated across the entire town.


    Just enough to be noticed, not enough to do any harm.


    The battle ended as everybody witnessed what was nothing less than a shadow of the power of the Senior Realm within the Seonmun Champion.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1214 Afterword

    ?


    The entirety of the colosseum was shell-shocked.


    The oue of the final fight within the preliminary contest was nothing short of absurd. Initially, everybody had expected that all four of the final Martial Squires would be matched roughly equally. After all, their performances up until that point had all matched roughly equally.


    However, it turned out that this rather easy and expected prediction could not be further away from the truth. A single Martial Squire was able to not only match but also ovee all opposition all by himself.


    Furthermore, the power he disyed at the end. Many people did not even know that Martial Squires were capable of such things. That alone changed people''s perception of what was possible in the Squire Realm. And that in turn made other Martial Squires feel weaker and less aplished.


    Regardless, the oue was so surprising that even thementator forgot to end the match and dere the winner for several seconds.


    "And this exciting and shocking contest hase to an end,dies and gentlemen! The seventy-second Seonmun Champion is none other than Squire Falken!"


    ¡­


    There were no cheers for a second. It appeared that people still needed some time to process what had happened.


    However, eventually, reality set in.


    "Woooooo! Go win the main contest too!"


    "GOOD LUCK! YOU WERE AMAZING!"


    "Damn, now I just have to go witness the Martial Contest that will be held in the town of Li."


    Although Rui would have liked nothing more than to leave now that the contest was over, he still endured enough to make sure that he received his little prize and cup. Though even he wasing to regret that decision when they asked him to give a speech.


    There he stood before tens of thousands of people. He was d that the mask that hemissioned from Master Deivon also altered his voice to ensure that nobody could possibly track his voice to Rui Quarrier.


    "I appreciate the support from all the spectators, as well as my patron." Rui began. "I do not have much to say, so I will keep this crisp and short. This contest was challenging to win, however, it was far from the limit of what I was going to achieve. I will achieve victory even at the main Martial Contest, and I will bring glory to this town."


    As he predicted, that earned him a huge round of cheers and apuse despite how short and crisp it was. He figured nobody wanted to hear a long boring speech after an exciting battle. He himself would loathe to give a long boring speech.


    He had a Martial Contest to prepare for.


    At the end of the match, he was greeted by his final two survivingpetitors. Squire Isin and Varay stood in a corridor that he walked down once he left the colosseum.


    "Congrattions on your victory," Squire Isin offered with an impassive tone.


    "Likewise, congrattions," Squire Varay added.


    "Thank you, it was difficult to achieve," Rui replied graciously.


    "Really?" Squire Varay regarded him with dismay. "I don''t think we pushed you to your limit at all."


    Rui sighed. "What''s this about? Is this some sort of intimidation tactic"


    "Is it possible for us to intimidate you?" Squire Isin asked with a bitter smile, shaking her head. "We just want to wish you luck. You defeated us, so you must not lose easily in the Martial Contest. It will besmirch our honor."


    Rui shrugged. "I will do my best not to."


    It was an odd request, and one Rui would not make himself. However, he could tell that they really cared about it. This was almost concerning because the odds that the two of them were from some high Martial family were actually not low. People from prestigious backgrounds tended to care about stuff like that.


    A hint of wariness entered his eyes. He could only hope that this wouldn''t be something annoying in the future. Thankfully he had a particrly powerful patron, so he was not too worried.


    Speaking of which, he was almost certainly going to have a word with him after this, so he directly headed to the man''s office in the church.


    "Master Deivon is not in the office right now," The bishop Master''s secretary informed him. "He is currently training in the Virodha cathedral."N?velDrama.Org owns ? this.


    "Ah, never mind then, I''ll visit himter," Rui shook his head. "He knew better than to disrupt the training of a Martial Artist, one of the Master Realm, that too."


    "He expressed interest in meeting you nheless," Thedy informed him. "You may visit him if you are so inclined."


    Rui furrowed his eyebrow. "In the middle of training?"


    That was odd.


    Then again, it would be worthwhile to witness a Martial Master training. Who knew? He may very well gain information that he didn''t know otherwise.


    He wondered what kind of training a Martial Master of all people could possibly do in a cathedral. Any Master-level technique would annihte any ordinary infrastructure after all.


    Regardless, the cathedral was gigantic, with a capacity to hold tens of thousands of people.


    And yet it was devoid of people barring one person.


    Master Deivon sat cross-legged at one end, under a section of artistic architecture with many religious connotations. His eyes were closed.


    He was immersed deep in meditation.


    He paused, furrowing his eyebrows.


    The pressure that he felt was more than anything he had ever felt in his entire life. Master Deivon was not just a Martial Master, but a particrly powerful one. Unlike always, he donned simpler and humble Martial Artist attirepared to his more officious religious attire. He presented a different picture of himself until now.


    "You''re here," He spoke to Rui from the other side of the cathedral, opening his eyes.


    "You called for me, sir?"


    "Indeed," The man smiled. "Congrattions on your victory, it was well-earned. You are the most powerful Champion in the history of this town. I have no doubt about that."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1215 Involved

    ?


    "Thank you, Master Deivon," Rui nodded. "However, you didn''t need to disrupt your training just to thank me. You could have summoned meter."


    "That''s not entirely appropriate, given the fact that I am your patron," Master Deivon spoke. "Besides, training at the Master level is not always intensive like you might expect. As you can see, I am able to train in such a location as well."


    He gestured around him.


    Rui frowned, furrowing his eyebrows. Content rights by N?velDr//ama.Org.


    His words implied that this wasn''t something that was strictly limited to him.


    "Does this have something to do with the Master or Sage Realm?" Rui asked with burning curiosity.


    It had been a long time since he came across someone who actually knew anything about these high-end Martial Art matters.


    "The answer to that question is something you are far too young to know," Master Deivon replied with a smirk. "The Upper Realms are quite different from the Lower Realms. The means by which you gain more power are different."


    Rui already expected that he would not receive the answer to his question. "I see. Honestly, I didn''t expect to see you training. It seems as though you were too preupied with your position as bishop."


    "I restrict myself to overlooking all the broad decision-making," Master Deivon replied. "I delegate all the smaller matters to reliable subordinates who have the necessary qualifications to execute them well. Outside of decisions that require the input of high-level authorities within the church like myself, it is ultimately unnecessary for me to be personally involved in the bureaucratic and management workload and protocols. I am a Martial Artist before I am a bishop. Martial Artists must fight, it''s as simple as that. Regardless of why you fight, or what you pursue power for, we cannot grow stronger without dedicating ourselves to our Martial Art in training andbat."


    Rui agreed with this sentiment. The paradigms that he was talking about were also not unheard of to Rui. Senior Ceeran had conveyed something simr to Rui as well. Within the Martial Union, he was actually quite important and powerful. But he did not waste the entirety of his day working and fulfilling his duties as a deputy director. His work was limited to handling oversight at most, aside from that he simply trained in a manner that contributed to the research and development of Martial Artists.


    One of the things that Rui needed to keep in mind was the fact that the only reason these mighty Martial Artists were in ces of power was to ensure that organizations and groups that were centered around Martial Art remained centered around Martial Art. It was to ensure that the power they had gathered as Martial Artists would never leave their hands just because they were too distant from it.


    That was why even the Martial Sages of the Martial Union were involved in the organization. If all Martial Artists only trained solitarily and distantly while leaving all the legitive and executive power of the organization in the hands of humans, then it was only a matter of time before an organization that was created for Martial Artists would cease to fulfill that role.


    The interests of ordinary people and Martial Artists not only diverged but often shed, thus leaving Martial organizations in the hands of the former was not a good idea.


    This was true of both the Martial Union and the Virodhabhasa Faith.


    "Regardless, that''s not particrly why I wished to speak to you," Master Deivon told Rui. "The format of the main Martial Contest is out."


    Master Deivon gestured to a simple sheet of paper on a nearby table in the church.


    Rui raised his eyebrows when he read through it. "Hm¡­"


    "The format changes every contest simply to switch things up and ensure that extremely targeted preparation is not a factor in what decides the victor. We want this to be a contest of power and not a contest of preparation."


    That was quite wise of the higher-ups. The Martial Contest was too prestigious and high-profile for there to not be a huge number of people who would spend a lot of time engaging in hyper-specific training meant solely to ovee the tribtion of the contest. If the format was revealed well ahead of time or constant and never-changing, then that would undoubtedly happen.


    Thus, changing the format every year and revealing it only shortly after it actually happened was a prudent decision.


    "What do you think?" Master Deivon asked him as he read through it.


    "It''s a more urate measure of the strongestpared to the crude format of the preliminary contest that I have just won," Rui replied. "The preliminary contest was simply too chaotic and allowed for too many variables that could potentially ensure that someone who wasn''t the strongest would win. Just the fact that the weak can group together and fight the strong makes it an unreliable manner of measuring the strongest. Not that the participants are actually weak, given that everybody was a high-grade Martial Artist."


    "And yet, the strongest did prevail, didn''t he?" Master Deivon smirked at Rui.


    "Because he fought smartly, not strongly," Rui replied. "If I had gone out guns zing from the very start, I would have attracted all the heat in the stead of the three top-tier Martial Squires. Every single Martial Squire would jump on me simultaneously and I would be forced to go all out to ovee them while my three opponents could simply wait for me to exhaust myself and conserve their own strength for when they would fight me. There''s a very good chance I would have lost had I done so."


    His Hypertrophic Surge timed out very shortly after he won, almost before he deactivated himself. It showed that although his victory appeared to be dominant and unshakeable, he was cutting it a bit close. Even he couldn''t say what would have happened if he decided not to hide his strength at the start.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1216 Format

    ?


    His eyes turned back to the format at hand.


    He definitely liked it more than the preliminary contest.


    It actually consisted of many rounds. A total of six rounds would determine who the strongest Martial Squire was. Each round actually served as a way to filter a fraction of the Martial Squires in the contest.Content rights by N?velDr//ama.Org.


    The first three rounds each filtered out eighty percent of the contestants, leaving only twenty percent of the contestants to move on to the next round. By the time the fourth round is finished, only zero-point-two-five percent of the contestants would remain. A total of eight individuals would remain after the third round.


    From there on, an elimination tournament of three rounds would go on to decide the next Virodha Champion.


    Because of the multiyered filtering, Rui found that it was definitely much better than throwing all one thousand into a rumble where thest man standing wins.


    "What kind ofpetition are the first three rounds going to be?" Rui asked.


    He noticed that that hadn''t been specified. It was particrly important too, since the first three rounds would eliminate more than ny percent of the contestants.


    "You will find that out just as you''re about to take on thepetition," Master Deivon informed him. "It''s not something I can divulge. Still, you''re smart enough to gain deeper insight."


    Rui narrowed his eyes. He already had plenty of ideas of what they could be. It was easy for him to make inferences and deductions once he looked into what the goal of the first three rounds was.


    The goal of the first three rounds was to eliminate and filter out all the contestants who definitely had zero chances of winning the Martial Contest regardless of the format simply because they weren''t strong enough.


    This did not mean that they were weak in a general sense. They weren''t, since they could be considered the top one percent of the Squire Realm. However, when it came to grabbing the title of the strongest, ny-nine percent of them were simply insufficient.


    The first three rounds sought to eliminate all those who simply weren''t worthy of even being considered as a candidate of the strongest.


    With that goal in mind, there were several inferences and deductions that could be made. There were bare minimum standards that one could expect from anybody who was worthy of the title of the strongest. Bare minimum as far as basic parameters such as offense, defense, and maneuvering. Even if the truly strongest Martial Squire, regardless of who that was, was a specialist, that person would still need to be above a certain level in these parameters.


    An offensive Martial Artist could never be considered the strongest if they were pathetically fragile as far as their defense went. Because a single attack would be able to take them down, and there would almost certainly be faster Martial Artists that would take them down by capitalizing on their weakness.


    The same could be said for other kinds of Martial Artists. Specialist or not, there was a bare minimum in every category that one needed to be above in order to even possibly be the strongest.


    Given how strong the strongest would need to be, that bare minimum was actually quite high and could serve as a good criterion to knock out many people from consideration, leaving behind only those who were truly worthy of being considered the strongest.


    Thus it was quite likely that the the first three rounds would serve as a basic parameter test, among other things.


    He wasn''t entirely sure but he did look forward to facing each challenge and oveing it. He hoped it wouldn''t be like the preliminary contest with masspetition which he wasn''t the mostpatible with.


    "You should also pack up and get ready. You will be headed to the town of Li in the Virodha Theocracy, the only state that operates in the name of the Virodhabhasa Faith." Master Deivon informed him. "All one thousand representatives will be gathered there before the main contestmences."


    Rui nodded. "I''ll do that. By the way¡­"


    "Hm?"


    "About our agreement, we didn''t have the format when we made our agreement, but we do now," Rui told him.


    "Ah¡­" Master Deivon immediately understood. "You''re concerned about the use of performing well enough to earn enough credit to purchase the medical treatment that you seek."


    Rui nodded.


    Their agreement had been that Rui did well in the Martial Contest as someone patroned by Master Deivon, earning thetter some credit as officially being the one to scout Rui.


    "If you get to the final tournament of the Martial Contest, you be able to redeem the highest quality of medical treatment guaranteeing a full recovery with noplications," Master Deivon exined. "Ordinarily, you''d have to go further. But you''re patroned by me which lowers the barrier as I''d mentioned when we first signed our agreement. Furthermore, you have been designated a Virodhabhasa Seed."


    Rui furrowed his eyebrows.


    It was not that he didn''t expect that to happen. He actually did. His Martial Art matched with the description of the Martial Art of the Virodhabhasa; the Antithesis, far too well.


    The two of them simply stared at each other in silence.


    "To be honest¡­" Master Deivon began. "While I suspected you might be a Virodhobhasa Seed as I mentioned a year ago, it was a solid possibility that I was willing to bet on because it was a win-win regardless. However, today I got to witness you fight for the first time¡­"


    The man stared deeply into Rui''s eyes.


    The very action caused Rui to experience a tremendous amount of pressure.


    "Out of all the so-called seeds that I have evere across in the past, half of them were questionable. Many people in authority hand out the title a little too easily because they stand to gain by contributing by finding seeds," Master Deivon candidly exined. "Yet you¡­"


    The atmosphere intensified.


    Rui''s eyes sharpened as the air chilled a few degrees.


    Master Deivon''s expression grew more severe.


    "Your very existence makes me wonder if the Divine Revtion isn''t entirely full of shit."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1217 Return

    <h4>Chapter 1217 Return</h4>


    Rui grew nervous for a second.


    It was one thing to be a Virodhabhasa Seed, a title that had been bestowed to many before him. It was another thing altogether to be suspected of being the Antithesis himself.


    The fact of the matter was that if people found out the truth about Rui, it would be very easy for powerful religious leaders within the Virodhabhasa Faith to prop him up as their figurehead for their personal and religious agendas.


    He had reached a bit of an important juncture. He needed to navigate this with greater care and caution.


    He considered activating a Mind Mask technique to help him present himself in exactly the way he wanted to but ultimately decided not to.


    Martial Masters had already demonstrated an immense amount of insight when it came to Martial Art. There was a good chance that Master Deivon possessed the ability to detect the activation of the Mind Mask technique.


    If that were the case, using the technique would be counterproductive at this juncture. It was best to avoid it.


    Thankfully, Rui had received some pretty in-depth training for about half a year on non-verbalmunication when he was preparing for his diplomatic outreach mission to the G''ak''arkan Tribe.


    A minute amused smirk cracked on his face, just enough to be detected, but small enough to be considered a slip. A tick that looked quite authentic and genuine instead of an exaggerated expression.


    "So you''re saying that you''re genuinely considering the possibility that I waltzed over to this world from another world, and am patiently waiting and growing stronger for the Great Cataclysm?" Rui asked with a hint of amused incredulity.


    "I''m saying that your Martial Art, from what I''ve observed, is shockingly in line with what one would expect from the Martial Art of a being touted to be the Antithesis," Master Deivon exined with an impassive expression.


    "I mean, hey, feel free to consider me to be the Virodhabhasa," Rui shrugged nonchntly. "As long as that means that the powerful religion will serve my every beck and call, it doesn''t sound so bad."


    He jested in a humorous fashion.


    People tended not to engage in humor around topics that they were highly sensitive, anxious, and concerned about. Rui was essentially trying to manipte him into believing that he considered the matter to be so absurd that it was nothing short of hrious to him.


    It wouldn''t disqualify Rui from being the Virodhabhasa, no. But it would intuitively make it harder to believe that Rui was aware of any deeper connection between himself and the Virodhabhasa Faith.


    "Would being considered the deity of this religion make me able tomand Martial Masters like yourself?" Rui wondered with a hint of a mischievous grin. "If so, where do I sign up?"


    Master Deivon snorted. "Don''t get ahead of yourself, young man. I only said that your Martial Art bore remarkable resemnces to what one would expect from the main deity of this faith."


    "I see, shame."


    In reality, Rui was pleased with how the conversation was going.


    Master Deivon shook his head with a little bit of exasperation. "Regardless, start getting prepared, we will head to Virodha Theocracy as soon as possible."


    "That''s closer to the center of the human domain, right?" Rui asked, recalling the location of the ce on the continental map that he had seen and memorized during the trip to Vilun Ind.


    "Indeed, we''ll be traveling there in a high-speed airborne carriage that will take us there in a day." Master Deivon said. "Normally, I could reach there much faster on foot myself, but you''re unable to do that, and I need to be there with you when you arrive."


    "And why''s that?" Rui asked, raising an eyebrow.


    "Because I am your patron," Master Deivon simply replied. "This is already known, and it will send the wrong message if you arrive without me. You will only be a target."


    Rui sighed, furrowing his eyebrows in resignation. "That sounds fun. Will they really attack me out in the streets if you''re not there with me?"


    "Well, no, you''re not going to be a target of physical violence. But they will try to intimidate you," Master Deivon exined. "Especially when they find out what you''re capable of."


    "But how will they know that ahead of time before the Martial Contest begins?" Rui wondered.


    "They need only take one look at you at you," Master Deivon exined. "At our level, we see with more than just eyes. Martial Squires may as well be transparent. The fact that you are not transparent will only draw more attention. This is something you should be aware of when dealing with Martial Artists of the Master Realm in the future."


    "Right¡­" Rui narrowed his eyes as he gathered more clues on what the secret to the Master Realm was. It would be relevant to him once he became a Martial Senior. "I''m d I got this mask ahead of time. You''re sure it will be effective, correct?"


    "Do not worry," Master Deivon reassured him. "The mask isprised of Master-level anti-sensory esoteric substances that I have procured from the Beast Domain myself."


    Rui''s eyes widened. "You didn''t have to go that far¡­"


    The man chuckled. "I didn''t procure it to fulfill your request specifically, they were sitting in our inventory part of a harvest that I had done myself a few years ago."


    Rui raised an eyebrow. The value of such esoteric substances was extremely high. He highly doubted he would have been able to procure this mask if not for the patronage of Master Deivon.


    "I appreciate your generosity," Rui bowed his head lightly.


    "Hmph, it isn''t a donation. Remember, I expect you to perform quite well in the Martial Contest, got it?" N?velDrama.Org owns ? this.


    "I intend to excel," Rui confidently replied.


    He had regained the feeling of power and domination that he felt long ago when he was at the end of his time as a Martial Apprentice. He was almost entirely peerless within the Apprentice Realm, and it appeared that that would soon be the case from here on out as well.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1218 Concerns

    N?velDrama.Org owns ? this.<h4>Chapter 1218 Concerns</h4>


    Their conversation soon ended as Master Deivon returned to his meditation while left to prepare for the journey to the Virodha Theocracy.


    Which actually was remarkably brief.


    He had very few belongings in the first ce and had packed lightly to make traveling easier and more convenient.


    He had to get some identification in order, even if it only was limited to an alias, in order to take part in the main contest.


    Fortunately, he found that the administration was remarkably cooperative and helpful, providing him with an identity card that bore his alias and even his mask. It appeared that the Virodhabhasa Faith was remarkably practical about allowing Martial Squires to hide their identities.


    It couldn''t be helped.


    There were plenty of reasons to be concerned about doxing one''s self on such an incredibly high-profile stage. There were bound to be powerful Martial Squires who were not just powerful in their Martial Art but also happened to have powerful connections or backgrounds that made them really scary to mess with.


    The possibility of drawing the ire of powerful third parties backing certain representatives was very real. Nobody wanted to be assassinated after the Martial Contest simply because they defeated the grandson of a Martial Sage or something like that.


    In addition, the concept of patrons also made the matter even messier. Martial Artists of the higher Realms generally tended not to meddle with matters pertaining to lower Realms. It was not worth their attention and was usually too low for them.


    However, that changed when they had personal interests vested in matters pertaining to the lower Realms.


    Rui was not naive enough to believe that Martial Artists of the Upper Realms were all benevolent and gracious.


    No.


    All of them sought power to an extreme degree. After all, one could not break through to the Upper Realms unless one truly chased after power with an intense desire. Such a desire was not particrly conducive to a gracious attitude that promoted generosity to their juniors. It was simply too much to expect all Martial Masters to be like Headmaster Aronian.


    That was why the choice to hide one''s identity was instated, it was the only way to ensure that the Martial Contest would not be tainted by implicit threat and maniption beyond an eptable degree.


    Thankfully, unlike his previous Martial Contest, he was not without powerful backing.


    He wasn''t entirely clear on how powerful Master Deivon was within the religion, but given that he was the religious leader of one of the church towns established by the Virodhabhasa Faith, it was quite likely that, at the very least, he was not low on the totem pole.


    That, along with the powerful mask that Rui had gotten, was good enough.


    The only thing Rui was concerned about was whether his performance would actually reveal his identity to certain people.


    Given how high-profile the event was going to be, Rui had no doubts that both the Kandrian Empire and the Shionel Confederation would most certainly not be aware of it, but may very well be involved in it as well. After all, it was entirely possible for any of the thousand representatives that had been gathered across the entire continent to have connections with both states.


    Even if that wasn''t the case. Rui knew for a fact that the event would most certainly be documented by both states, as well as the Martial Union.


    Was it possible that they would recognize him?


    Unfortunately, he could not guarantee that it wouldn''t happen.


    This was especially true for the Martial Union. Much of his Martial Art was constructed from building blocks that came from techniques that the Martial Union sold. Furthermore, the Martial Union had the most information on his Martial Art out of all the parties.


    He would be naive to think that they would not notice a remarkable statistical ovep between himself now and the profile that they had on Rui Quarrier. They were toopetent to not at least do that much.


    However, he was not concerned about that. The Martial Union was firmly on his side. He was the most promising rising star of the Kandrian Empire, and they had offered to fully suppress any and all intent of retaliation from Chairman Deacon. Furthermore, he had already established an understanding with the Martial Union that there would be a firm lockdown on any and all intelligence gathered on possible spotting of Rui Quarrier outside of the Kandrian Empire.


    They were currently maintaining false information that served as a red herring for Rui being in the Kandrian Empire hiding from Chairman Deacon. Any real information on Rui was firmly buried deep beyond where spies or other forms of information infiltration could reach. Thus even if they did learn that he was Rui Quarrier, no one could ever possibly learn of it.


    In fact, it wouldn''t even be that bad if they did identify him. The fact of the matter was that they were in charge of absolutely protecting every individual member of his family from Senior-level threats. This was an extremely expensive form of protection that would guarantee Senior-level protection to all of them even if they all individually split up every second of every day for an entire decade straight. That was why he had essentially gone broke despite being a billionaire.


    The Martial Union did not offer this kind of protection easily. Money alone couldn''t purchase such services. After all, as an organization centered around Martial Art, money was not the most important goal of this organization.


    Yet Rui had been able to purchase it nheless. That was an implicit statement from the Martial Union that they valued him.


    By performing well in the Martial Contest, he was giving them even more reason to value him for the first time in three years. If nothing else but to ensure that his family got the protection that they deserved, he was determined to show that he was worth going to great lengths to earn the favor of.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1219 Departure

    <h4>Chapter 1219 Departure</h4>


    That was why, after careful consideration, he was not concerned about the Martial Union finding out.


    The truly bad oue would be other parties finding out.


    Specifically, the Shionel Confederation.


    Specifically, Chairman Deacon.


    Thankfully, it was almost entirely impossible for such an oue to ur when he logically and rationally evaluated the probability of such a thing happening. Firstly, his Martial Art past the Squire Realm was not public. The reason for this was that he actually hadn''t done many public missions before being assigned as a lead diplomat in the diplomatic expedition to Vilun Ind. Soon after he headed to the Shionel Confederation to partake in the dungeon raids.


    Thetest truly public information on him was his performance during the Serevian Dungeon War. However, not only was that information outdated by about seven years, but it was actually misinformation when it came to extrapting what his Martial Art was like now. Many of the prominent techniques that he used back then were no longer things he used today.


    Things like the Stinger, Mirage Step, or Tempestuous Ripple. These were techniques that he used to use all the time back then, but had long abandoned once he reached the Squire Realm.


    Most of the techniques that he used these days did not even exist back then. Pathfinder, Flux Earther, Gale Force Breathing, Lightning Tap, Thundercoil.


    These were techniques that he had created, many of which he created from scratch. Furthermore, with the addition of the Metabody System to the VOID algorithm, his Martial Art bore absolutely no resemnce to his old Martial Art in the Apprentice Realm because it was just so different fundamentally. It was easy to mistake the Metabody System being the core of his Martial Art. This was a mistake that even someone as insightful as Master Deivon made.


    It was just too easy to assume that his Martial Art and Path were fundamentally centered around some form of body modification. And since that would be the prevailing theory on what his Martial Path was, he was actually quite safe for the most part. This is the property of N?-velDrama.Org.


    Of course, he had a bit of a paranoia when it came to Chairman Deacon discovering nheless since he had already managed to discover Rui''s identity before when he didn''t expect it to happen. Even if it happened because of dumb luck for the most part as opposed to merit, it was still something that left an impression on him and made him analyze the situation over and over again.


    However, he was still quite sure even after all that his precautions were more than adequate.


    It wasn''t even several hourster before he was summoned to the main church for departure. He carried a bag that contained everything that he needed when it came to traveling elsewhere.


    "Ready?" Master Deivon asked him.


    He had servants carrying all his belongings for him into a strange-looking carriage.


    "Yeah, I packed everything I need, so I''m good." Rui nodded.


    "I meant whether you were ready to fight in the Martial Contest," Master Deivon smiled. "Frankly, even if you tossed that bag away right now you would be fine, you know? Each representative will be assigned luxurious quarters and will have ess to the finest services andmodities."


    Rui shrugged. "That''s all well and good, but I am attached to my belongings."


    "Suit yourself. Let''s get going then."


    The two of them boarded the strange yet remarkablyrge carriage. The luxurious vehicle was divided into multiple sections, two of which were personal quarters for Rui and Master Deivon. It was almost like a single train bogey but shaped like a carriage.


    "I''ve never been in such a fancy carriage," Rui remarked.


    "It''s a form of transportation we use for fast and effective travel over long distances. This carriage is going to elerate at remarkably extreme speeds by relying on some particrly potent esoteric technology. It will move far faster than what even Martial Squires like yourself can achieve. It''s only because of technology like this that travel over long distances if feasible for non-Martial Artists." Master Deivon exined.


    Rui knew that carriage technology was quite developed and ubiquitous among the upper ss of society.


    He recalled the Shionel Confederation where the carriages were also empowered with esoteric technology that allowed them to cross the many thousands of kilometers between the Shionel Confederation and the Kandrian Empire in less than half a day. The average long-distance carriage was capable of that level of speed and distance, let alone specialized carriages meant to carry VIPs like Master Deivon.


    Rui got to enjoy a rare luxury as he had servants tending to his every need. This was something that he would never go out of his way to get, he simply found it too pretentious to have a staff of people do basic tasks like pouring him a ss of water. However, it appeared that Master Deivon was entirely ustomed to such treatment that he didn''t even think twice.


    "Nervous?" Master Deivon asked while he was reading through some documents.


    "Right now I''m just bored," Rui replied once the carriage reached its top speed, zipping through thend. "Hopefully I''ll feel excited by the time we reach our destination and run into my opponents. I have high expectations from the champions of other towns."


    "There will be a banquet one day prior to the Martial Contest that will feature all contestants, patrons, and other sponsors and investors." The Master exined. "You''ll get a chance to interact with all of them, including the current reigning champion."


    Rui groaned. "This is a Martial Contest, not a party. Why bother with such things?"


    Master Deivon smiled, amused. "I agree with the sentiment, but it is an important event for the Virodhabhasa Faith. This religion does not and cannot exist in a vacuum. Events like these are not for the contestants but for our various partners, benefactors, and dependants. At the end of the day, we exist in an ecosystem that helps us sustain ourselves, and measures like this are necessary to maintain it."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1220 Arrival

    ?


    Rui whiled away his time in various ways. He appreciated how smooth the carriage moved despite moving at incredibly high speeds, even faster than what he could aplish by himself on foot. His senses told him that the carriage had actually begun levitating off the ground in order to maintain its high velocity.


    Not only could they not feel the motion, but even the eleration to top speed had been incredibly smooth and painless as though there were inertial stabilizers that allowed them to not experience the adverse effects of such extreme eleration. While he and Master Deivon would have been just fine due to their Martial Bodies, the human staff would certainly die due to the sheer amount of stress this would ordinarily cause.


    "This carriage sure is incredible," Rui admitted at one point. "The Virodhabhasa Faith is quite adept at esoteric technology if it is able to develop such fantastic solutions."


    "These were not developed by us," Master Deivos shook his head. "The only forms of technology that the church has invested in is technology that is relevant to Martial Art. We generally are not bothered with other forms of technology."


    "Then¡­?"


    "This ss of carriage technology that we are in right now is actually acquired through our partnership with our various partners. Veline Motor Co., the Esocline Institute of Technology, Bradt Distribution Services, and other international powerhouses with specialization in this sector."Content from N?velDr(a)ma.Org.


    Rui exercised perfect control over his non-verbal expression at the mention of Bradt Distribution Services.


    It turned out that the man truly was an extremely well-connected business magnate. It certainly made sense that hispany possessed a great foundation in regards to carriage technology. Since the sole point of hispany was to distribute information,modities, products, and services to incredibly distant destinations, it was no surprise whatsoever that the man had invested immensely in developing powerful and viable auto-carriages that could reliably transport things overrge distances.


    Suddenly, a thought entered Rui''s mind.


    (''Wait, he just mentioned that the Bradt Distribution Services was a partner of the religion,) Rui narrowed his eyes. (''Earlier he said that the banquet that would be held would include not only the contestants and their various patrons, but also the partners, benefactors, and sponsors of the Martial Festival. Doesn''t that mean¡­?'')


    There was a non-zero chance that Rui might run into an old acquaintance there at the banquet. That was something he hadn''t considered before.


    (''Actually, no, it''s too frivolous of a reason for Guildmaster Bradt to personallye over to the Virodha Theocracy.'') Rui shook his head.


    Guildmaster Bradt was the head of state and the head of government of the Shionel Confederation. It was an incredibly powerful and important position, it also meant that he could not lightly attend these kinds of functions, away from his duties, unless there were strong reasons to. Considering how many business partners the man had, he would be drowning in such events if he chose to attend each of them personally.


    This was especially the case when the business deal was with the Bradt Distribution Services and not the Shionel Confederation as a whole.


    Thus it was most likely that he would send an envoy, or a high-level executive or director to the banquet instead.


    That was more relieving. Not that it was bad if he got recognized by Guildmaster Bradt, since the two of them currently had a working understanding with each other. He just did not like the idea of getting recognized when he had gone to such great lengths to hide himself.


    However, he knew he was just being a little paranoid about this. Even if Guildmaster Bradt was personally arriving, and was not someone that was aligned with Rui, he did not possess the qualifications to identify Rui based on his Martial Art.


    He was not a Martial Artist. He did not possess the ability to gain deep insight into a Martial Art just by looking at it, he was not a Martial Master or anything like that.


    That was why Rui put aside these concerns.


    Half a day passed, and Rui was mesmerized by the view that came with such incredibly rapid travel that he didn''t even realize that they had arrived at their destination.


    "This is your first time here, correct?" Master Deivon asked when the two of them got out of their carriage.


    Rui nodded as he took his first look at the Virodha Theocracy.


    He immediately felt the need to adjust his standards. He had previously thought that the Seonmun Church town was a particrly religious ce in so far as its architecture and people. But it appeared that it was only a pale imitation of the Virodha Theocracy.


    The town practically radiated religious fervor.


    At a short distance, he could see the transit port of entry that they were supposed to pass through. The officers wore uniforms with a heavy nt toward religiosity. Furthermore, Rui definitely recognized the religiosity in their eyes. It was more of the same as what he saw in Seonmum Town.


    The line to enter the transit port of entry was quite long. However, Master Deivon casually walked past the line before pulling out a shiny insignia with certain symbols and showing it to the guards.


    Their eyes widened as they bowed more than ny degrees at him. "Wee back, Bishop Master!"


    "He''s with me," Master Deivon gestured towards Rui even as he entered the port, not even deigning to respond to their gesture.


    With every step that Master Deivon, people within the port, regardless of whether they were officers or staff members, or travelers and citizens, all bowed down, paying their respects to a Martial Artist of the Upper Realms.


    Rui had to admit, he did expect to see such devotion from the regr popce to a Martial Master, still, it was a bit freaky how feverous their devotion was. Master Deivon on the other hand could not be bothered acknowledging each and every single person, he simply walked past all of them briskly, going about his business.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1221 Begun

    ?


    Thanks to his authority, they were able to speed past all the protocols that were in ce for those who were entering the country. It wasn''t even five minutester when they emerged on the other side, finally stepping into the nation with a group of helpers tending to their every need.


    Rui, on the other hand, took in the Virodha Theocracy.


    (''They sure love theirrge and tall architecture.'') Rui mused.


    Yet this was different from therge and tall architecture of first-world countries back on Earth. The sky-scraper architecture of Earth was designed to maximize the efficiency of the utility of volume and space in an ever-growing poption and economy.


    The giant and tall architectural structure of the Virodha Theocracy, on the other hand, did not seem to care about efficiency and standardization. They wererge and tall simply becauserge and tall art was better than smaller and short artistic architecture.


    Buildings had intricate and three-dimensional art chiseled into them, pictorially representing stories, or conveying things that Rui recognized to be specific sections or portions of the Virodhaveda, the holy book of the Virodhabhasa Faith.


    He did have to admit, it was certainly beautiful. He couldn''tment on its functionality, its ROI, or its utility of any sort. But, at the very least, it was beautiful and gave the entirety of the port town he was in an otherworldly luster.


    It was as though he had stepped into a fantasy civilization.


    This was especially the case because of the martial Festival that was in full rage at the moment across the entirety of the Virodhabhasa Faith.


    This most certainly included the Virodha Theocracy, especially because the Martial Contest would soon be held in here.


    Not only was there an absurd amount of decorative art that colored the already lustrous town but there was an incredible energy among the dense and bustling poption around them.


    "We will have to part ways here," Master Deivon turned towards him. "I have important matters and duties to attend to. I have arranged for an official guide and manager who will handle all troublesome affairs for you. For now, you may settle down in the hotel room that you have been assigned to. You may tour the town and the nation if you wish, but you will be escorted by guards at all times. Make sure you don''t consume any alcohol or other intoxicating substances of any kind if you do decide to tour the ce."


    Master Deivon gestured to a fancy carriage that had arrived before them, a man in crisp business attire bowed toward both of them. He looked out of ce in the religious setting they were in.


    "If you need anything from me, you can send a message to me through him. We''ll meet again for the ceremony and the banquet. Good-bye."


    Master Deivon disappeared as though he teleported. Yet the faint, but rapid wind gusts that he generated indicated that he had used a Master-level maneuvering or supplementary technique. Yet it was so fast that it looked like nothing short of teleportation even to Rui''s impressive senses.Content from N?velDr(a)ma.Org.


    "Contestant Falken," The man bowed to him. "I am assigned to be your guide and manager, I will endeavor to handle any and all problems and issues that you might face. This includes protocols in regards to the contest, rights, and freedoms that you will be guaranteed within the Theocracy, and guidelines for your time here in this state."


    Rui nodded. "I appreciate that. I haven''t had the time to equip myself with all the knowledge needed to navigate my time here prudently, so I will be relying on you. Master Deivon mentioned something about a hotel, will we be going there first?"


    "Indeed, after that, we will introduce you to your assigned training chambers and other facilities that you have been given unlimited ess to." The man mentioned.


    "I''m looking forward to it," Rui nodded.


    Thankfully, he didn''t have to waste time with any annoyingly long tours over long distances. The establishment that he was going to be residing in included all the facilities that he would need, from housing quarters to food, training facilities, medical aid, and even entertainment facilities.


    It was a giantplex that was meant to house all the contestants across all three Martial Contests of the three Lower Realms.


    He narrowed his eyes once they entered. His powerful senses immediately detected innumerable powerful Martial Squires across the entirety of the establishment. Powerful Martial Apprentices, Squires, and Seniors all appeared to be at the peak of their respective Realms.


    The overall quality of Martial Artists was leagues superior to the preliminary contests of the Seonmun Church town.


    He wasn''t surprised, of course. Each of them was a winner who had ovee many obstacles to reach this point.


    The thousand Martial Squire contestants were undoubtedly among the strongest Martial Squires ever. While they perhaps were not one-to-one the strongest Martial Squires in humanity at the moment, since there were other truly strong Martial Squires like Tokugawa Ieyasu or Kane who were not participating.


    (''I wonder why he isn''t participating in this contest,'') Rui wondered. He had implied he had been looking for a truly powerful opponent. In that case, wouldn''t it make more sense to look for it in a contest like this as opposed to sitting aloof atop a floating ind?


    He shrugged, he wasn''t sure. Regardless, it didn''t matter.


    He wondered if putting them all in the same spot was just a matter of convenience, or whether there was something more to it, for when he walked into the luxurious restaurant for a meal, he instantly drew the attention of various Martial Artists.


    The contest had already begun.


    Unless the organizers were ipetent, they would have to know that putting the contestants in such close proximity could allow them to gain intelligence on theirpetitors well ahead of time, allowing preparation to be a small mild factor. The fact that this arrangement still persisted despite them knowing that meant that it was tacitly approved by the organizers.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1222 Elder

    ?


    A simr circumstance had urred in the preliminary contest, where he was grouped with hispetitors ahead of time in a single big room.


    For some reason, he had a feeling that the organizers just liked drama.


    Regardless, he did not intend to indulge in drama.This is the property of N?-velDrama.Org.


    He simply ignored all of them before heading grabbing himself a quick meal from the luxurious buffet that had been arranged for all of the contestants.


    While he did not bother making eye contact with any of the contestants, but inwardly had already begun monitoring them with his senses.


    That was true for most of them, with their senses, they did not need to make any overt gestures indicating surveince. At their level, most of them had pretty decent sensory techniques. Furthermore, the Martial body possessed inherently powerful senses to start off with.


    Rui possessed particrly powerful sensory capabilities with his many sensory techniques, even a grade-ten technique, and he intended to put them to good use.


    The most important sense that he had at the moment was his Primordial Instinct which allowed him to get a good gauge of the power levels of his opponents.


    He had long applied a Mind Mask to his true power, just like he had during the preliminary contest. The difference, however, was how much he lowered his strength. Back then he had nerfed his aura to that of a grade-eight Martial Squire, but that was too low here. He would actually draw attention for being that weak.


    Instead, he reduced himself to a grade-ten Martial Squire. That was just strong enough that he would blend in without drawing too much attention.


    In the meantime, he had already begun conducting scans on all of them. The average level of the Martial Squires was so high that he long realized that he could not be as carefree as he was in the preliminary contest after unveiling his strength.


    In the preliminary contest, he knew he would be fine no matter what once the initial phase had passed. He was simply too strong, and he had correctly estimated that not even the three grade-ten Martial Squires together would be able to ovee him.


    However, that was not the case here.


    There wasn''t just one, two, or even three grade-ten Martial Squires.


    There were hundreds!


    It was truly an eye-opening circumstance. Although he had expected this to be the case, it was actually another thing experiencing the sensation of being in a room with so many powerful grade-ten Martial Squires. It was an unprecedented experience for him.


    He had been in ces where the quality or quantity of Martial Squires exceeded the norm before. Vilun Ind had an abnormally high Martial Artist breakthrough rate from normal humans due to how war-obsessed and martial their culture was.


    The Shionel Confederation became the gathering haven for more than ten thousand Martial Squires at its peak, each of them partaking in the intensepetition for the treasures found within the dungeon.


    Even after he left the Shionel Confederation, he ran into ces that attracted lots of powerful Martial Squires to them such as the Umiana Trench and Ajanta Ind.


    However, none of thempared to the quality of the warriors that the main Martial Contest of the Virodhabhasa Faith attracted. The weakest Martial Squire that he could detect was a particrly powerful grade-nine Martial Squire. That was the floor of the contest; a Martial Squire who could easily waltz into the first ss of guardians of the Floating Sect.


    Even if he was stronger than many of them, he needed to be careful, because if they identified as a threat, he would not be able to ovee the numbers that they had.


    He had managed to pull a victory against three grade-ten Martial Squires. But if he had faced four, or five, it probably would have been game over. Not even he could guarantee victory under such dire odds. That was why he was inclined to take prudent measures to hide his strength to ensure he didn''t draw extra attention.


    (''Extra attention unlike that old woman,'') Rui spotted an elderdy with long flowing white hair and wrinkled skin.


    She looked like an ordinary grandma, if not for the ever-flowing sense of peril she emanated. It appeared that the other contestants shared his opinion as they eyed her warily. She was definitely in the upper echelons of the tenth grade, for sure. He could instantly tell that she was stronger than any of the three grade-ten Martial Squires he faced in the preliminary contest.


    He could also tell that her power came from the sheer amount of experience that she had as a Martial Artist, and as a Martial Squire particrly. He definitely admired her persisting for many decades, but couldn''t help but wonder how someone like her hadn''t be a Martial Senior yet.


    Of course, the conditions for bing a Martial Senior were difficult. Just the individuality aspect was quite challenging. Rui had be uniquely aware that he was far from the norm when most of the Martial Squire contestants were middle-aged men and women at the youngest. Many had salt and peppered hair that clearly indicated that they were not in their youth anymore.


    Forming enough individuality to reach the Martial heart was an incredibly difficult process for an overwhelming majority of Martial Squires. One could go their entire life trying to reach it, and simply never would. There was a reason that only ten percent of Martial Squires discovered their Martial Hearts.


    It appeared that this granny was not among them. Yet despite that, one nce into her eyes told him that she was not resigned to her fate despite her age.


    That was something that earned his respect and admiration. He hoped that his fortitude would match hers if he ever ended up at her age stuck at a bottleneck that he had failed to ovee in many years.


    She wasn''t the only Martial Squire that drew his attention, the entire contest was filled with warriors that were monsters in their own right.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1223 Scouting

    <h4>Chapter 1223 Scouting</h4>


    There were several Martial Squires that were particrly stronger than even the other grade-ten Martial Squires,Rui could tell that even as they were trying not to stand out, they could not hide their threat level the way that he did.


    The grandma that he was watching turned, ncing at him.


    (''Oh? She noticed my attention?'') Rui mused as he ignored her.


    It was quite remarkable that she had managed to catch him focusing on her when he was merely using his senses and not even looking in her direction. She had a remarkably sharp intuition if that really was the case.


    Rui had to give credit where credit was due; the Martial Contest indeed lived up to the hype in general. The many people who were certainly going to be paying exorbitant prices were not going to be disappointed. Rui didn''t even need to do that much, the show was going to be hyped with or without him.


    He quickly finished his meal before leaving the restaurant. He had already seen everything he could. He momentarily considered going to the training area so that he could start building predictive models on his opponents ahead of time, but ultimately shook his head.


    He didn''t need to, and he didn''t want to develop a mindset where he was constantly dependent on such measures to win. He had abstained from doing sost match and had won quite dominantly nheless.


    When he returned to his room, he found a guide in the room that described all the events that would be urring during the Martial Contest, and during his stay in the Virdoha Theocracy. Today was merely considered a bit of a rest day as every Martial Squire traveled from across the entirety of the continent in order to partake in the Martial Contest. Because of the vastly varying distance differences, they arrived at different times, and an entire day was necessary to adjust them all.


    The next day was the opening ceremony as well as the banquet.


    Rui frowned. (''An entire day dedicated toward just those events? Meh.'')


    Rui hated ceremonies, and he generally disliked banquets. The banquet in particr did not seem alluring to him especially given that he was on the run and did not want to allow people to get too much of a close-up view of him. But s, he owed Master Deivon this, so he would just have to put trust in the super high-grade mask that he had procured for Rui specifically for the sake of protecting his identity.


    The next day twenty-four hours after that would be fully dedicated to the Martial Contest.


    The first three rounds would be held in rapid progression, and the tournament would be held immediately after the first three rounds once the final eight contestants were decided. Rui knew that passing the first two stages was the bare minimum for him for the conversation of Senior Xanarn''s medical treatment being in question. The first two rounds filtered out barring the final forty Martial Contestants from whom only eight would be selected.


    However, he did not intend to stop there. He intended to win the entire Martial Contest.


    The tournament would, of course, decide the victory of the entire Martial Contest.


    That should have been the end, however, when Rui flipped to the next page, he realized that there was more. N?velDrama.Org owns ? this.


    (''¡­A second banquet?! Come on!'') Rui groaned. He highly doubted that Martial Deivon would allow him to skip that either. It was highly unlikely, especially if he won the tournament as he intended to.


    However, he could understand the purpose of the banquet. Given that many of the guests were people who were interested in procuring powerful Martial Art services etc., he could definitely be sure that the second banquet merely served as a way to connect the contestants and those who were interested in procuring their services.


    The Martial Contest was essentially a talent show for a low of people that disyed lots of talents across the entire continent. There was always a little sh between people when it came to gaining the favor of the particrly powerful or talented ones. He had a sneaking suspicion that he would be forced to deal with lots of annoying businessmen, representatives of states, ambassadors, leaders of powerful families, and a bunch of other powerful and influential people who had vested interests in taking the initiative to contact and buy out powerful Martial Squires.


    It wasn''t that the Martial Squires themselves were extremely valuable, or at the very least that wasn''t entirely the case. Half of the reason that many of these dignitaries would be fighting over earning the services,mitment, and loyalty of people would be because each of these Martial Squires was potentially a Martial Senior in the making.


    It was usually toote, or at the very least, extremely difficult to purchase themitment and loyalty of Martial Artists after they broke through to the Senior Realm. Most groups, states, and organizations would do everything in their power to reel in new Martial Seniors that broke through recently.


    It was much easier to find Martial Squires who had a chance of bing Martial Seniors and reel them in when they were still Martial Squires. Once they broke through, they would have already been firmly within the organization that bet on them. As long as the organization did their best to pull them deeper in their grasp with contracts, or simple generosity with helping them stronger, the Martial Squire would remain with them even after they became a Martial Senior.


    That was why he knew that he wasn''t going to have a simple time if he won. People could tell that he was on the younger side even if he hid his face. That would mean that he won despite his youth against monsters of the Squire Realm that had spent multiple years in it, training for this very event!


    That would absolutely draw massive attention from many of the guests who had the opportunity to interact with the contestants.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1224 Ready

    <h4>Chapter 1224 Ready</h4>


    (''That''s not all.'') Rui mused. (''I''ll probably be approached outside the Martial Contest as well.'')


    Not everybody was on good terms with the Virodhabhasa Faith. Certainly, not everybody was a partner or a benefactor of the religion. There were those who sought to scout Martial Squires who weren''t going to be part of the banquet. They would certainly try to approach Rui outside of the banquet.


    Of course, he highly doubted that they would dare try using unsavory means to establish contact with him within the Virodha Theocracy given that he was a treasured contestant of the Martial Contest and the Martial Festival.


    In that case, he would still have to be more careful since these people were less willing to y by certain unspoken rules and guidelines that the others who were partaking in the banquet would. N?velDrama.Org owns ? this.


    Regardless of what they did though, Rui already knew what he needed to do.


    (''Polite nonmitance.'')


    He definitely could not agree to anything, but it probably wasn''t wise to outright refuse them. They would probably offer means tomunicate with them if he said he would consider whatever lucrative deal they were trying to get him to agree to. All he needed to do was make sure he didn''t piss anybody off. That was definitely something worth striving to avoid, but aside from that, he had not intention of epting any of their offers.


    Once he returned to the Martial Union as a Martial Senior, hopefully, he would have everything he needed. The powerful organization did not lose even whenpared to international powerhouses across the entire continent, and he probably didn''t need anything else except it.


    Regardless, everything was set, and he knew what he needed to do in order to get what he wanted to get. He spent the rest of his day simply wandering around, trying to make himself grounded andposed.


    He even trained, but it wasn''t to grow stronger. It was just that the discipline behind his routine helped him focus and enter a state of concentration very easily.


    He also spent some time lightly traveling around the Virodha Theocracy. It was a pleasure to subject himself to the beauty of the ce, especially since he knew he probably wasn''t going to be back here for a long time.


    Eventually, enough time passed and the next day arrived. It was time for the event to begin. The opening ceremony was soon tomence. Rui was content wearing his regr Martial Art attire, but apparently, the organizers had a different idea.


    "¡­Really?" Rui raised an eyebrow.


    "Yes, sir," His guide and manager bowed. "You may wear whatever Marital Art attire you please for the Martial Contest, however, the opening ceremony is an important ceremony, and you will be expected to wear dignified attire worthy of the event. You will also need to be groomed appropriately."


    Rui sighed, before him was a group of women who were equipped with all kinds of tools that he had no understanding of. "Alright, let''s get this over with. I''m not taking my mask off for even half a second, I''m letting you know that now."


    The mask took care of his face, keeping it clean despite it never being taken off his face. It was equipped with esoteric substances that drained sweat while exfoliating his skin and ensuring that it was clean, furthermore, it made sure that his skin tone did not lighten and matched that of the rest of his body. It was quite a handy mask.


    "Do not fret sir, they have been trained to deal with Martial Artists that do not wish to disclose their appearance as you do. They will work around this limitation."


    Rui sighed. The three women escorted him to a bath where they began to brush and rub at him like he was a dirty statue that needed to be restored to its sparkling clean state. Rui did not enjoy even a bit of that, or the fashion part of their grooming session where they took measurements of his body before procuring a fancy ostentatious Martial Art attire with a symbol of the Seonmun town on it, signifying that he was in fact the champion of the Seonmun town.


    He had to admit, the end result was pretty good. Viting as they were, the women knew what they were doing. He probably looked better than he ever had in his entire life.


    It wasn''t long before he found Master Deivon at his doorstep, waiting for him.


    "Good, you look fine," Master Deivon nodded.


    He too looked particrly well-groomed with an especially ostentatious attire that made him look especially important.


    "Was this really necessary?" Rui grumbled. "We''re Martial Artists, not fashion models."


    "The opening ceremony is an important and significant ceremony. The image that it presents will affect the image of the Virodhabhasa Faith, and the Virodha Theocracy. If we allow you Martial Squires to wear your worn out, torn, and patched up Martial Art attire during this ceremony, it will reflect badly on us."


    "I don''t have to wear this during the actual Martial Contest, correct?"


    "Correct, you will be provided high-quality custom-fitted Martial Art attire of any style and sort of your choosing so long as it doesn''t involve working parts that aid inbat."


    "I''ll take you up on that,"


    Master Deivon immediately took to the air once they walked out. "Come, we don''t need to use carriages to get there, and I personally prefer traveling by myself rather than a carriage."


    "I thought it was at the center of the nation." Rui raised an eyebrow.


    "We''ll be fine unless you''re especially slow for a Martial Squire," Master Deivon burst forward, forcing Rui to exert himself to keep up.


    It wasn''t long before they reached the site for the opening ceremony. Instantly, they drew many eyes to them as theynded in therge colosseum. Thankfully, Rui still had his Mind Mask on so he did not draw any special attention from the contestants. Master Deivon, on the other hand, drew attention from the Martial Masters around.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1225 Sage

    <h4>Chapter 1225 Sage</h4>


    There were plenty of Martial Squires, each wearing ostentatious Martial Art attire. Some of them were apanied by Martial Artists of the Senior or the Master Realm.


    "Deivon," One Martial Master addressed him the moment he arrived. "I''d heard that you actually chose to patron a contestant this year. It appears that that was not false."


    She appeared to be even older than he was.


    "Ria," Master Deivon replied back to her.


    She turned her attention to Rui for a brief moment, before her eyebrows furrowed as she frowned.


    "He¡­"


    She turned to him with a concerned expression, Master Deivon in turn had a smug knowing smile.


    This little interaction with Rui confirmed that Martial Masters had the ability to gain deeper insight into people. He was quite sure that it didn''t operate on the same principles that he operated on when it came to gathering insights into people. A systematic way of gathering and processing data to gain even more data on them.


    It appeared that they had some form of sixth sense that allowed them to peer deep into others. Based on her non-verbalmunication, Rui could see that the two of them were able to gain insights into him that they shouldn''t have been able to.


    This was the same kind of thing he experienced with Headmaster Aronian as well.


    He didn''t think that they could explicitly gain information about his Martial Art or Path. It was quite clear that Master Deivon had been surprised by Rui''s performance in the preliminary contest.


    "Looks like you''re serious this time," She mentioned with narrowed eyes.


    "Heh," Master Deivon grinned. "You better hope you''ve found the best contestant to patron."


    Rui wished he wouldn''t draw attention to them, but it would be rude to interrupt their conversation and chastise him too.


    Although Master Deivon was remarkably grounded in his ego, it would still affect his honor if he got talked back to by a Martial Squire that he was patroning.


    Rui looked around as he noticed several Martial Masters ncing at him warily. This made him extremely ufortable due to how much stronger they were. He could feel that each one of them was extremely powerful and could erase him with a simple gesture. It made his hair stand on edge being the object of their attention.


    Thankfully Master Deivon stood by, reassuring him, the protective strength of the man was certainly quiteforting. He shot a sharp re at all the other Martial Masters, who promptly heeded the unspoken warning.


    "Hmph, don''t mind them," He grumbled. "They''re just jealous because they realize that they can''t beat me in our little contest."


    Rui smiled wryly under his mask. "And here I thought my Mind Mask technique would be enough."


    "That technique is not bad," Master Deivon remarked. "But it ordinarily is only opaque to people in the same Realm. In your case, it can fool even Martial Seniors for some reason. Your imaginative power is so great that any mental image you conjure can fool Martial Artists even a Realm above you."


    Master Deivon turned to him with a look of interest in his eyes. "But it''s not effective against me, or my peers."


    "¡­Damn. So you all can sense how strong I actually am?" Content from N?velDr(a)ma.Org.


    "We can do more than that," Master Deivon smiled with a half-smug, half-wry smile.


    "¡­I did not anticipate Masters to have such powerful insight. It was a slight miscalction, I shall be much more wary next time I approach one in the future."


    "Hahaha!" Master Deivonughed out loud at that. "Fear not, you have me. I may not be the most powerful or influential Master around, but I can hold my ground well against any of them."


    "That''s reassuring to hear," Rui replied. However, he didn''t miss the subtext in the man''s words. It appeared that the man already considered his rtionship with Rui not to be a temporary one once the Martial Contest.


    It appeared that he was already intent on investing in Rui regardless of the oue of the Martial Contest. Rui did not me him for this at all, in fact, it made sense.


    Rui knew his value, especially as he was right now.


    "It''s starting," Master Deivon gestured, his expression growing severe, as a procession of guards took their ce on the podium at the center of the colosseum.


    Suddenly, everything changed.


    It happened faster than Rui could even fathom, but the very world around him shifted!


    The air grew immensely thick. The atmosphere froze in its ce. Thend rumbled beneath his feet.


    Every hair on his body stood on edge. His skin shivered as chills crawled up through it. He broke out in a cold sweat as he sensed a level of power that he had never ever sensed in the entirety of his life!


    "Please wee, Her Excellency Honorable Cardinal Sage Sariawar."


    Rui''s eyes widened as a single figure descended from the sky.


    His jaw dropped as he beheld her figure. It was as though the very sky was gently lowering her from the heavens above, prostrating in the process.


    A Martial Sage.


    This was the very first time in his entire life that he had actually beheld the presence of a Martial Sage.


    Unlike everybody else in the colosseum, her clothes were not ostentatious. She wore a simple single cotton cloth that wrapped across her entire body.


    She didn''t need extravagant attire.


    The aura that she released was more than anything fashion could ever hope to match. It was as though her body was glowing like she was of heavenly origin. Her very aura seemed to bend the the sky and the earth.


    Instinctively, Rui bowed.


    He didn''t even think.


    No, that wasn''t quite right.


    He couldn''t even think about it. He didn''t have the opportunity to!


    By the time he realized it, his instincts already prostrated his body, offering respect to a being that was just one Realm below Transcendence.


    "Ah¡­" She murmured, ncing down at all those who bowed. "Rise."


    The world obeyed hermand.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1226 Pursue

    ?


    Rui immediately got up, beholding her form once again.


    He couldn''t help but almost feel that she was out of ce in this very world. It was as though she was just one step away from breaking out of it.


    Power beyond his wildest fathoming radiated from within her being, power that put to shame anything else he had ever sensed in the past. He couldn''t even understand how a single being could possess so much individual power. It was though the very world was broken to allow an individual to ascend to such heights.


    The Upper Realms in general seemed extremely inscrutable to him. Where was all this powering from? He got the feeling that the Squire and the Senior Realms were a lot more transparent and easier to understand.


    Regardless, he was unable to gain any insight into her power, her Martial Art or Path, or even the nature of her being.


    "Today wemence the seventy-second Virodhabhasa Martial Contest," She spoke.


    Her voice radiated beyond the medium of air, almost as if it wormed its way into everybody''s heart. Almost as if the very information that she conveyed with every word engraved itself into his mind, unwilling to ever let itself be forgotten.


    "Today, wemence the seventy-second attempt to scour our very world in hopes of finding the object of our worship and devotion," She spoke with a greater hint of severity. "Today wemence the seventy-second avenue of opportunity for the leaders of the Martial World of tomorrow to shine and show the world the very essence of who they are."


    Her eyes went over each of the one thousand contestants briefly. "Today is your day. The entire world is watching. The power, the valor, the conviction, the heart that you show today will be engraved in history forever."


    She paused, letting the contestants absorb her message.


    They couldn''t help but grow more severe.


    "Bare yourselves," She instructed. "The path forward is one of great tribtion. Give everything you have; your body, heart, mind, and soul. Throw all of it out for the sake of moving forward, and you just may very well do so. The Martial Path we tread is one bestowed upon us by His Divinity himself, yet he demands sacrifice, and the investment of the entirety of one''s self to the Path. The true winner is not the one that ends up with the cup in their hands, a medal around their neck, and the title of the strongest. The true winner is the one that used the pursuit of those to squeeze their potential to take even one more step down their Martial Path."


    Her message made the Martial Squires reconsider their priorities.


    Each of them had partaken in the Martial Contest to win the event itself. There was much to be obtained through victory. Capital, support, aid of all sorts, wealth, political power, and influence. It could easily set up one''s life forever.


    While some did consider the benefits of challenging themselves against the strongest of the strongest in general, very few considered that this aspect may very well be the most important part of the Martial Contest.


    Rui too couldn''t help but think about the driving force behind his action. Unlike the others, he wasn''t doing this for material reasons, he did it to help someone he cared about while he was out and about training himself.


    While he most certainly reveled with the three of testing the Flowing Void Style against his peers and growing stronger, he never considered that this very well could be the greatest benefit he gained.


    If this little event could push him down his Martial Path even further, then he did not intend to let go of that opportunity. He would be a fool to let go of that opportunity.


    His eyes sharpened as he looked at the Martial Contest not just as a means to get what he wanted for Senior Xanarn, but also as a way to train himself.


    Sage Sariawar smiled at the response from the Martial Squires, nodding. "I shall take this opportunity to witness what you have to bear. I look forward to seeing what you will show me. I look forward to seeing what you will show yourselves. I truly look forward, as should all of you."


    She disappeared all of a sudden, leaving the colosseum entirely.


    "Good luck." Her voice reverberated across the world they upied even after she left.


    Rui couldn''t help but gain a deep sense of admiration for the Martial Sage, as well as the Sage Realm in general.


    "Amazing, is she not?" Master Deivon sighed with admiration and envy. "Every Martial Sage is like this; inscrutable, profoundly powerful, and deeper in the essence of their being than any of us. Just a step away from the absolute pinnacle of power."


    Rui nodded slowly, still reeling from the impact of that encounter.


    "Still, now is not the time to think about it. I have a contest to win."


    "Good, I was afraid you''d let yourself get distracted," Master Deivon nodded with an approving smile. "Alright, now the ceremony itself will continue."


    What followed were rather standard practice events. Each of the contestants was given a badge that identified the name or alias they went by, and the town they represented. There were even pledges to fair y, among other things. It was all too convenient to cheat by taking potions that could enhance physical prowess. Of course, the Martial Contest organizers will have almost certainly taken great measures to detect any foul y of any sort. He had no doubt that the Virodha Theocracy was more than capable of finding out whether or not a Martial Squire was engaging in any kind of foul y either through its own technological prowess or technology outsources from other sources like the carriage technological sector of the religion.


    The ceremony was also thorough to sure to shout out the sponsors and the partners of the event. It appeared the promotion sponsorship deals were not a foreign concept even in the world of Martial Art.Content from N?velDr(a)ma.Org.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1227 Familiar

    ?


    "That was unexpectedly not tiring," Rui murmured when the ceremony ended.


    "There are too many people to keep waiting for too long," Master Deivon exined. "We Martial Masters alone make it not worth stretching the entire event for too long. Our time is too valuable, when we''re not training, we''re still working on important matters and fulfilling our duties."


    "Then that means this so-called banquet is also not going to take too long, right?" Rui asked with a hopeful look.


    "Ah, I''m afraid I might have to disappoint you," Master Deivon smirked. "The banquet is a part of our duties, so our time is well-spent."


    Rui sighed. He had been fine with the banquet before, but after listening to what Sage Sariawar had to say, Rui didn''t want to bother with such boring stuff. In fact, he wanted to skip forward to the Martial Contest immediately. He felt quite impatient to push himself against his peers, especially after listening to what Sage Sariawar had to say.


    But s, he was not the organizer of the Martial Festival, unfortunately. He would have to make do with it.


    The banquet hall was gigantic, bigger than any other he had ever seen, not that he had been to many banquet halls in the first ce.


    An entireyout of food was present, and an absurdly luxurious buffet had been organized for all of the guests. Many began pouring into the hall, most of them being contestants who looked forward to having a hearty deal.


    Rui couldn''t help but feel sympathetic to the Martial Squires who didn''t manage to get a patron that could increase their appeal to scouts and potential employers. These contestants would have a much harder time trying to find attractive organizations or individuals to be employed by.


    For most Martial Squires, the challenge of finding a powerful organization that possessed the resources to help Martial Squires grow stronger was quite great for most Martial Squires. Many Martial Squires were born in parts of the continent that did not have many Martial Seniors, meaning that the region they were in did not possess the resources to make reaching the Senior Realm particrly viable.


    The Kaddar Region was actually one such region. Martial Squires in that region were not foolish enough to believe that their chances of reaching the Senior Realm were high. There was a proportion of them that left the Kaddar Region to seek superior parts of human civilization, much to the dismay of the Kaddar nations.This is the property of N?-velDrama.Org.


    They sought more powerful organizations that were capable of giving them the training and growth resources they needed like the Martial Union of the Kandrian Empire or the Virodhabhasa Faith.


    And there were those who merely used the contest as a way to advertise themselves to the guests. The main contest didn''t even need to strictly begin, the fact that each of the thousand of them had managed to ovee hundreds of Martial Squires in a chaotic rumble was proof that they were worth employing.


    Most of them were grade-ten Martial Squires, and the minority that were grade-nine were cut from a different cloth from other grade-nine Martial Squires.


    Regardless of who won the contest, the thousand that were attending the banquet were the best of the best. It was just that those with patrons would receive far better opportunities than those without patrons.


    Soon enough the various non-Martial Artist guests began pouring in. Businessmen and women, envoys, representatives, delegates, directors, and even heads of state began pouring into the banquet hall.


    Each of them had impassive facades but Rui could easily sense that they were keenly scouring through all the contestants, looking for ones that they had already targeted.


    Rui''s eyes narrowed as he actually spotted some familiar figures.


    Commissioner Reze.


    He did not dare make eye contact or show any special attention to the man. It wasn''t that he was opposed to the man finding out, he had already decided that that was a trivial oue, but he did not want to tip anyone off that he was connected to the Martial Union. There were too many powerful people in here for him to dare take such a risk.


    If they did interact, it would have to be in a subtle manner. At the very least, Rui could not express any intention to want to speak to themissioner.


    A faint feeling of suspicion welled up within him. The Martial Union had countless envoys, diplomats,missioners, and other officials and dignitaries, any of whom could have been picked to attend this event.


    Why Commissioner Reze? Why was the same Martialmissioner that Rui had interacted with three years ago in the Shionel Confederation present here? If the chosen dignitary was randomly selected amongst those qualified to represent the Martial Union in such a big event, then what were the odds of Commissioner Reze being selected?


    Rui narrowed his eyes. Of course, he had realized the truth the moment heid eyes on the man.


    His being chosen wasn''t a coincidence.


    It was a message from the Martial Union that they were aware of him, a message that only he could possibly understand.


    He had expected this, of course. The Martial Union would be ipetent not to notice, thankfully, the Martial Union understood the risks and the predicament that he was in, thus they did not try to contact him directly. Instead, they chose the risk-free method of simply sending Commissioner Reze to send a message.


    Of course, the man had not even so much as nced in their direction. Instead, he began chatting up with other important dignitaries and some contestants who were worth scouting and stealing away to the Kandrian Empire. The Kandrian Martial Union was definitely one of the most powerful Martial Art organizations in the entire event, second perhaps to only the Virodhabhasa Faith. Bing an internal member of the Martial Union was nothing short of a dream for many of the contestants.


    Very soon, a small crown of grade-ten Martial Squires formed around Commissioner Reze, each interested in earning his favor and approval!


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1228 Familiar II

    ?


    Any ordinary man would be in a cold sweat being surrounded by so many intimidating grade-ten Martial Squires, that many would have fainted on the spot.


    Yet Commissioner Reze did not appear to experience even the slightest hint of difort. His pleasant perfunctory smile was unperturbed in the face of the powerful Martial Squires that could end his life with the slightest exertion.


    Of course, he knew such a thing would never happen.


    Any Martial Squire that killed a high-grade Martialmissioner like Commissioner Reze was dead. They would die before they even left the building. They might as well kill themselves to at least die painlessly.


    Rui knew the Martial Union well enough to know that they would never tolerate such an offense, least of all by a measly Martial Squire.


    Furthermore, the Virodha Theocracy would also never allow such a thing to happen. Not only would all of the Martial Masters within the banquet hall notice such a thing and stop it, but the many Martial Senior guards in ce who attentively scanned the entire crowd would never allow such a thing to happen.


    He firmly spoke with each of them making offers, rejecting requests, negotiating terms and agreements.


    He wasn''t the only one. Many of the other dignitaries had already begun speaking to contestants one by one, trying to win them over.


    It was hard to say who waspeting for who.


    Were the contestantspeting for patrons, or were the patronspeting for contestants.


    (''I suppose both are true to a certain extent.'') Rui mused while watching them. "I''m d I don''t have to deal with this."


    "Don''t be so sure about that," Master Deivon smiled as he turned towards a man that had been approaching them. "Ah, it truly has been a long time, Sir Guildmaster Patrick"


    A shockwave exploded inside Rui as he beheld a man he thought he wouldn''t see.


    (''Guildmaster Bradt¡­!'')


    He had been too fixated on Commissioner Reze to miss the man among the next wave of guests.


    (''But why? Why is a head of a powerful state visiting a trivial event like this?'')


    The Martial Festival was important to the contestants, it was decently important enough to other powerful organizations to send some envoys. It was important enough for the heads of smaller and weaker states to send their heads to personally try and scout powerful Martial Squires.


    But such an event was beneath Guildmaster Bradt''s personal attention. Martial Squires were pebbles to the guildmaster. The only reason Rui had been able to earn his attention and cooperation was that Martial Squires were extremely valuable for some time due to the Shionel Dungeon, and because Rui offered him a map to the Shionel Dungeon, something he doubtlessly had been putting to good use in the past three years.


    "Master¡­ Deivon, I believe," Guildmaster Bradt didn''t even bother hiding that he didn''t strongly recall his name. "It has been a while, indeed."


    "We are honored by your personal presence, the Theocracy has gone out of its way to increase both the security and the luxury arrangements of the event in your honor." Master Deivon smiled. Content rights by N?velDr//ama.Org.


    "Hm," The man nodded, acknowledging him. "I didn''t intend to personally attend, however, I was already in the Theocracy negotiating and finalizing the Bradt-Virodha Dungeon Treaty with Her Excellency, so I decided it was worth attending the event since I was already here."


    He uttered those words rather nonchntly, however, neither Rui nor Master Deivon missed the significance of what he had just said.


    (''Her Excellency? As in Sage Sariawar? He''s been negotiating with a Martial Sage?'') Rui was amazed. (''Also, did he say Dungeon Treaty? The Shionel Dungeon raid isplete since all floors have beenpletely scouted. That means that any agreement does not have to do with esoteric ore deposit harvests, but the actual dungeon itself.'')


    Rui realized that he genuinely had been making the best use of the three-dimensional map that Rui had made for him.


    "Ah, yes, I did hear about that from Her Excellency," Master Deivon courteously smiled. "We of the Virodhabhasa Faith will never forget the Bradt Distribution Service''s favor for selling an entire floor of the new Shionel Dungeon City to the Theocracy for upation and religious practice."


    Rui needed to exert himself to ensure that his reactions did not leak out into his demeanor or his movements when he heard that.


    (''He sold an entire dungeon floor to the Virodha Theocracy?'') He gaped. (''Also, ''Shionel Dungeon City''? The man made a literal city out of the entire Shionel Dungeon?!'')


    That was an incredibly ambitious and bold n that would have required immense capital investment. However, he couldn''t even imagine the sheer amount of profit that he would have gained from selling an entire city to the Virodha Theocracy.


    He couldn''t help but be impressed with him. It was true that this wouldn''t have been possible without the map that made the transport and travel through and in and out of the dungeon viable in the first ce, however, it appeared that Guildmaster Bradt had squeezed both the map and the dungeon for maximum value, utility, and benefit. He could hardly imagine himself doing even aparable job with the man, considering that just three years after he received the map, he was already signing such gigantic deals with international powerhouses across the distant continent.


    "Ah, allow me to introduce the Martial Squire that I have been patroning, Squire Falken," Master Deivon smiled. "It isn''t official yet, but I can inform you that he is a Virodha seed."


    Guildmaster Bradt directed a look towards Rui for the first time. It appeared that Rui did not even register in his mind until Master Deivon pointed him out.


    It wasn''t pleasant, but Rui recognized that this was reality. The only reason that he had been able to speak with Guildmaster Bradt even remotely as an equal was that Rui was able to offer him some extraordinary benefits due to the circumstances of the dungeon and his personal abilities rtive to it.


    Now that that was gone, the two of them were far away from each other.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1229 Offer

    <h4>Chapter 1229 Offer</h4>


    In fact, the fact that Rui was ever able to speak to him as an equal was a feat that was actually far more impressive in hindsight.


    "He must be quite impressive if you have chosen to patron him," Guildmaster Bradt remarked.


    Rui made sure to control his demeanor and non-verbalmunication. He did not want the man to even consider the possibility that he was someone he knew. As far as Rui was concerned, they were just two strangers that had never met before, and that was how he should act about it. Unless he did something incredibly stupid, there was no way for the guildmaster to know what he was up to.


    "He indeed is," Master Deivon smiled back. "I am certain he will perform extremely well in the Martial Contest, and given his age, he has a lot of future potential."


    "Hm," The man considered Rui with a hint of interest. "If Master Deivon is vouching for you, then you must surely be quite impressive. What do you say, young man? Are you interested in working for me in the Shionel Confederation?"


    This took both Master Deivon and Rui and aback momentarily. Rui did not think the man would openly try to poach a Martial Squire given his status and power. It was like an arms manufacturer that manufactured tanks, fighter jets, and battleships trying to negotiate a deal for a simple gun.


    This was especially true when Master Deivon had already pretty much expressed that Rui was his heritor, it was almost disrespectful. He did not think Master Deivon would have tolerated any of the Martial Masters trying to poach him, but when Guildmaster Bradt did it, even someone as powerful as him had no choice but to tolerate it.


    Guildmaster Bradt was apanied by Martial Masters protecting him, he also had the ability tomand the Martial Masters of the Shionel Confederation and had the ability to persuade the Martial Sage of the nation.


    Furthermore, he was important to the Virodha Theocracy even based on what little Rui had gotten from this conversation.


    Regardless, that didn''t matter now. The man openly expressed an offer to Rui that shed with Master Deivon''s interest.


    "I am honored that someone as high as yourself has personally sought me," Rui bowed. "However, I am already patroned by Master Deivon. Thus, it would be inappropriate for me to ept your offer. I hope you understand."


    There were no pleasing both sides, but he already had a decently good rtionship with the guildmaster. He would instead be stifling his rtionship with Master Deivon if he epted the man''s offer.


    "Hm," The man nodded with approval, turning towards Master Deivon. "It seems you have found yourself a good seed."


    "Indeed," Master Deivon smiled. "We hope you will consider attending the Martial Contest if you haven''t already."


    "I will attend it," Guildmaster Bradt replied decisively. "I intend to partake in the rest of the Martial Festival in honor of the greater ties that have recently been established between the Bradt Distribution Service and the Virodha Theocracy."


    Rui found thisment to be particrly illuminating.


    (''Greater ties between the Virodha Theocracy and the Bradt Distribution Service, instead of the Shionel Confederation?'') Rui considered those words. (''He also mentioned the Bradt-Virodha Treaty¡­ That too is specifically him, and not the Shionel Confederation as a whole.'')


    With just these subtle clues, Rui sharply pieced together a story that matched the truth of what was happening.


    After Rui defeated the Root, it was quite likely that the Shionel Dungeon died. The Squire-level aura would most likely have disappeared, and given that most monsters were dead, the dungeon would have been open to more extensive exploration and colonization by human forces. At that point, the question of what to do with the dead and benign dungeon as a resource would most likely have arisen.


    Ordinarily, it would have been owned by the governing body of the state and be used for national interests.


    Ordinarily, that is.


    The Shionel Confederation was a bit extremepared to the norm. It was essentially arge association of merchants of all sizes that ownednd and had a poption. Thus naturally, the dungeon would most likely have beenmodified. Given how libertarian and capitalistic the society was, the notion of government ownership and intervention was highly unlikely. ording to Rui''s estimation based on the profile he created of the Shionel Merchant Guild, the probability that the Shionel Confederation opened up the dungeon for colonization and was probably high.


    In the past three years, it was likely that a new phase of dungeon colonization simr to the Serevian Dungeon would ur. N?velDrama.Org owns ? this.


    Guildmaster Bradt most likely weed this since he had a gigantic advantage over others thanks to the map that Rui gave him. He could not only monopolize an overwhelming majority of the floors of the Shionel Dungeon but also offer specialized transportation services to other colonizers that would allow for smooth back and forth through a giganticplex maze that was dark to the senses ordinarily.


    That would exin why he had ownership over the floors of the dungeon privately instead of the Shionel Confederation and was able to sell one of the floors to the Virodha Theocracy. The question was why would he give up such a powerful strategic resource within the Shionel Confederation that could be used to ensure that he never loses against any other merchant?


    (''It''s definitely not for mundane exchanges like wealth, ordinary goods and services, and other regrmodities.'') Rui narrowed his eyes. (''He said he was negotiating with ''her excellency'', most likely referring to Sage Sariawar¡­ Could it be?'')


    Could it be that he had procured the permanent service of an additional Martial Sage for the Bradt Distribution Service?


    Rui narrowed his eyes, he had a strong suspicion that this was indeed the case. Sage Sariawar, based on the brief time he witnessed her, was someone who was wholeheartedly dedicated to the cause of the Virodhabhasa Faith. It was quite likely that she was willing to sell her services entirely if it meant furthering the reach of the Virodhabhasa Faith.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1230 Impact

    <h4>Chapter 1230 Impact</h4>


    If that was the case, Rui could easily understand why he was willing to sell a precious floor from the Shionel Dungeon. The services of a Martial Sage were strategically great enough that they were worth parting from giant city-sized pockets of space that inherently possessed remarkable anti-espionage functions.


    The Shionel Confederation possessed only one Martial Sage, and that Martial Sage was the only reason that the state was considered a full-fledged Sage-level nation. It meant that the Martial Sage was extraordinarily powerful within the Shionel Confederation, most likely on par with the guildmaster himself given the sheer amount of leverage he could have as the greatest military asset that protected the Shionel Confederation.


    He could get his way quite easily.


    That was probably frustrating to someone like Guildmaster Bradt. However, with the presence of an additional Martial Sage who was willing to offer her services as a Martial Sage much more sincerely, the Merchant Guild did not have to rely on the Shionel Sage as much. It restrained his power.


    (''It also makes the Shionel Confederation stronger as a whole against external influences.'')


    He had not forgotten that the original reason that the Shionel Dungeon had been freely opened to the whole world was because it was too weak to resist the pressure from the outside.


    If the same dungeon had opened in the Kandrian Empire, or any of the other national powerhouses, they would have been able to monopolize the dungeon without having to cower to external militaristic forces. It would have been able to charge much more extensive prices and concessions for entering the dungeon than the measly tax that the Shionel Confederation was limited to.


    That was what the sheer might of the Martial Union and the Kandrian Royal Familybined could achieve.


    With an additional Martial Sage in their midst, the Shionel Confederation would slowly be taking a step towards that level of power and security.


    That wasn''t all, there were so many benefits to it, that Rui couldn''t help but feel that he had stumbled onto the truth.


    Rui nced at the guildmaster. He didn''t expect anything less from the deviously shrewd merchant. The man was not to be underestimated.


    Regardless, it appeared that he wasn''t too interested in talking to the Martial Master and Rui beyond that point. He simply bid them farewell, before taking his leave.


    Master Deivon immediately turned to Rui with an appreciative smile. "Frankly, I did not expect you to reject his offer for me. You do realize what kind of opportunity you''ve missed out on? Guildmaster Bradt is one of the most powerful international business magnates. Earning his interest is something that other Martial Squires would kill to have."


    Rui shrugged. "It is not that big a deal."


    He was speaking from experiencing. Dealing with Guildmaster Bradt and Chairman Deacon during the same period was one of the most stressful periods of his life.


    Rui simply surveyed the banquet as even more guests had poured in.


    He didn''t expect to see so many familiar faces.


    He saw a royally attired man speaking to several Martial Squires and even a Martial Senior.


    (''That¡­ is the King of Graheria.'') Rui mused.


    It was the same man whose country Rui had infiltrated to learn of the gravitational stabilizer weapon that the Kaddar Nations had used to assault the Floating Sect.


    Rui had also killed a Martial Senior of his nation.


    It appeared that the Kaddar Nations were more desperate for Martial Artists after the war for the king to personally bargain with Martial Artists himself. He was, no doubt determined to sway at least a chunk of the Martial Squires to his nation due to the acute shortage of Martial Squires after the war had either killed them all, or the Floating Sect had poached them all.


    (''Speaking of the Floating Sect¡­'') Rui nced in the direction of another dignitary with an emblem of a floating ind on her top.


    It appeared that even the Floating Sect wanted a piece of the cake. This did make sense as the Floating Sect was mostlyprised of Martial Squires, thus they were certainly interested in upgrading the quality of their Martial Squires after much of it had deteriorated due to the deaths of the guardians in the war.


    It was amusing for Rui to see so many familiar organizations and people that he hade to be acquainted with over the years partake in the banquet. It showed the sheer influence and reach of the Virodhabhasa Faith, it also showed that he had perhaps underestimated what it meant to be a seed of the Divine in such a religion.


    But, it also showed the sheer number of people he had impacted in his journey as a Martial Artist. This was something that he had never really considered before. But the fact that he knew so many people on such arge stage and event said something about how much influence Rui had had on the state of the world.


    The Serevian Dungeon War, Vilun Ind, Kaddar-Ajanta conflict, the Shionel Dungeon raid, and the oue of the election.


    And now the Martial contest. A contest he intended to win.


    The rest of the banquet proceeded smoothly. For the most part, Rui was content standing around and observing while indulging in the luxurious food of the banquet. While he was approached by several dignitaries, he politely refused all of them.


    He found it interesting that Commissioner Reze never strayed anywhere near him despite speaking to all of the other contestants who had patrons. He did appreciate the gesture. It showed that the Kandrian Empire was willing to stay their hand and avoidplicating things for him.


    If her performed well during the Martial Contest, then there was a much greater avenue for speaking with them, he would have such a high profile that not even Master Deivon''s patronage would be enough to stop him from at least speaking with the more important guests. This is the property of N?-velDrama.Org.


    Once he won the Martial Contest, he would have the opportunity to speak to Commissioner Reze and gain a better understanding of what had happened in the three years that he had been away.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1231 Mental

    <h4>Chapter 1231 Mental</h4>


    The banquet soon came to an end.


    The time for ceremonies and formalities was over.


    The Martial Contest was tomence soon. The schedule had been adjusted such that the first three rounds would ur that day itself, and the remaining final tournament would ur on thest day.


    Rui wished that they could have spaced out the entire contest over a longer period, but s, the Martial Festival did notst an entire month. The Martial Contest was an event that was meant to be held during the Martial Festival. That meant that it needed to end within the remaining three days.


    "The three rounds will each be overseen by a senior bishop Master of the Theocracy," Master Deivon exined. "Their power and influence are far greater than a bishop Master like me or my peers that have also patroned contestants. They do not y such games and are powerful enough to be entirely above it, which is why they are chosen as organizers of the rounds of the Martial Contest since they can be trusted to be as unbiased as can be. If bishops with a vested interest in the oue were chosen, then we could make the contest be extremely favorable to any particr contestant."


    "Hmmm¡­" Rui nodded. "That makes sense. Have the contests for each round been announced yet?"


    "No," Master Deivon shook his head. "However, we do know the identity of the bishop Master that will be responsible for the first contest. Master Carian Fara is one of the eldest bishops of the Theocracy and joined the Theocracy one hundred and forty-two years ago. He is an extraordinarily powerful Martia Master, both in terms of his Martial Art prowess, as well as his authority and influence within the religion."


    Rui raised an eyebrow with an impressed expression.


    "His Martial Art, the Psychic Cmity Style, is a powerful offensive mind-oriented Martial Art that seeks to destabilize or even cripple his opponent psychologically and mentally, as well as neurologically in the middle of battle. Many Martial Artists have fallen to him," Master Deivon informed Rui with a hint of admiration.


    "Mind-oriented Martial Art¡­ eh?" Rui narrowed his eyes.


    He had certainly not forgotten about his own affinity for mind-oriented techniques. Content from N?velDr(a)ma.Org.


    However, it was unfortunate that it was difficult for him to find the right time to delve into this powerful field. For a good portion of his career as a Martial Squire, he had been rounding out his Martial Art. Because he essentially needed to start from scratch again, it meant that he had a lot of work to do. Furthermore, this task had be much more difficult than in the Apprentice Realm, because of the need for individuality-basedpatibility for the techniques.


    Thus began a long journey ofing up with original and unique techniques for all primary fields ofbat to round himself out.


    Perhaps he had a brief opportunity to develop mental techniques once he settled down on the Floating Sect, however, he had ultimatelymitted to Project Metabody which took a little under two years toplete the first iteration of from that point.


    However, now that was also out of the way. His foundations were solid, and he had sessfully managed to implement a major upgrade to the VOID algorithm with the Metabody System addition.


    It meant that his training itinerary was actuallypletely free.


    (''I suppose it''s time then,'') Rui mused. (''It is logically the most apt next step now that I have solidified offense, defense, maneuvering, and other primary and secondary aspects ofbat. It is time to expand outwards towards other fields.'')


    Mind-oriented techniques were something he was quite interested in, and also a little wary about. Mind-oriented Martial Art techniques were not something that existed back on Earth, furthermore, his foundations in physics were not particrly applicable. He did not know too much about the brain or the mind.


    Still, it would be criminal not to enter this field. His mind benefited from the rapid growth to adulthood twice. He had always been very bright in his previous life, and the second round of growth had elevated his mind to genius-level territory.


    His propensity for mastering techniques that required the power of mind was incredibly high. This could be reflected in how powerful his Mind Mask technique was. While ordinary Martial Squires could only make themselves appear stronger by several degrees of grades, Rui could express the appearance of the power of a Martial Senior with the same technique not because of how powerful the technique was, but because of how powerful his mind was.


    The same could be said for the Mind Pce technique, it was originally the most elementary method to remember several facts about the mission for Martial Artists who weren''t all that bright. But Rui had elevated it from that to what was effectively a grade-ten technique that functioned as a databank capable of storing massive amounts of sensory data and organizing them through a dozen different parameters, he had even developed a tagging system that allowed him to scour through his Mind Pce the way a search engine did. He also had developed ROM and RAM within it!


    It was the same as how a skinny lightweight Martial Squire using Outer Convergence simply could notpete with a muscr heavyweight Martial Squire using the same technique. The foundation of what the technique relies on is of an entirely different level in thetterpared to the former.


    (''Well, I''ll think about itter,'') Rui shook his head. (''Time to win the Martial Contest and heal Senior Xanarn first.'')


    He exhaled deeply, spending the rest of his time focusing himself away from all the distracting thoughts he had been having.


    He didn''t know what the first round was going to be, but it was going tomence soon. The organizers were anxious about finishing the first three rounds today so that the tournament featuring the final eight could be held tomorrow and the post-contest banquet could be held on thest day of the festival.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1232 Pressure

    ?


    The contestants were given some time to recenter themselves after the banquet. Most of them ate lightly if not nothing. It did not make sense to eat a hearty meal before a contest. They spent the time after the contest focusing on themselves. The banquet certainly was important to most of them, but it was over and it didn''t make sense to linger on it before the contest was to begin.


    There was another banquet after the contest that would segregate them into different levels of losers, and a single winner.


    The final eight who qualified to be in the tournament that was to be held tomorrow were going to earn the most amount of solicitation and scouting from the various third parties involved with the Martial Contest in some fashion or the other. The top forty were also hotmodities and targets. While the remaining round-two and round-three winners would receive the least amount of solicitation.


    While the pre-contest banquet was a lot more equal for each Martial Squire, the post-contest banquet was going to be a lot more unequal.


    The champion may very well get more attention than all the other Martial Squiresbined.Content from N?velDr(a)ma.Org.


    That was why the pre-contest banquet was a lot more light. The various third parties were waiting for the Martial Contest to end before making anymitments because they wanted to get a good understanding of the caliber of the Martial Squires involved. That was the reason that they could not afford to conclude any agreements with any of the warriors outside of the bare minimum given that there was a minimum guarantee of strength from each of the contestants.


    Rui spent his time meditating. He grew immersed in his breathing entering a state of deep concentration.


    Unlike the preliminary contest, there was a lot that could go wrong this time. He could not afford to growcent. A lot could go wrong if he ever ended up in a simr situation to the final sh of the preliminary round where a bunch of grade-ten Martial Squires ganged up on him.


    He managed to beat three, but if five, seven, nine, or eleven jumped on him together then there was a good chance that even he would fall eventually, if only because his Metabody System had time limits.


    "Fuuu¡­" He exhaled deeply.


    His attention honed, sharpening into ance.


    His Mind Mask rattled in his mind, struggling to contain the perilous pressure that his mind would otherwise be radiating. He promptly tossed it away, none of the other Martial Squires could detect him through the walls fortified with heavy anti-espionage technology.


    He had instructed the servants to wait outside.


    He did not want to injure them with his aura.


    Regardless, time eventually passed, and they knocked on his door when his manager came for him.


    "It''s time," The man informed Rui.


    The two of them traveled to the hearnd of the Theocracy remarkably swiftly, Rui didn''t even notice by the time they arrived. A swarm of contestants had already gathered and continued gathering until it was time for the first round.


    Anticipation tingled the air.


    Even the contestants felt it. It could not be helped, they weren''t even risking their lives all that much, but they felt more pressured than any life-risking mission that they had ever taken. The scope of this contest was beyond anything else that they had ever gone through in their entire lives.


    Very few had gone through other events withparable severity. Rui was one of the few contestants that was trulyfortable in such a circumstance


    The colosseum was infested with spectators, and the noise they caused spilled over onto the battle arena, reflecting the mood of the setting.


    Soon enough, a powerful figure overshadowed everybody, drawing all attention.


    A powerful Martial Master.


    He slowly descended from the sky,nding on a podium in the center of the colosseum. One could feel the depth of his age just by looking at him. He was a remarkably aged and elder man both at face value and in his demeanor.


    "Contestants," An aged voice escaped his mouth. "Wee to the first round of the Martial Contest. Each of you has ovee much to reach this point, and each of you must ovee the challenge that I have prepared for you if you wish to go further.


    He narrowed his eyes.


    "The first round in all Martial Contests of this scale has but one purpose¡­" A grave tone apanied his voice. "To root out the ipetent. To root out the unfit. To root out the weak. Rest assured if you cannot ovee this challenge, you never have any chance of entering the final tournament that is to be held tomorrow."


    He paused for a moment, letting those words sink into them.


    "All of you have unique Martial Paths and Art with their own strengths and capabilities. They will most certainly be put to the test in this contest, but¡­" His tone grew sharper. "Not this time."


    Many Martial Squires raised an eyebrow.


    What were they going to be tested on if not their Martial Paths and Art?


    "What you will be tested on is¡­ Your fortitude!" His eyes widened as an extraordinary amount of pressure crashed into them. A titanic amount of weight pressed down on their shoulders, threatening to crush them.


    "Ovee this¡­" The man''s eyes narrowed. "Ovee me¡­ Those who fail will be disqualified."


    Yet the pressure did not exist in the material realm, it existed in their minds. He was unleashing a maelstrom of mental pressure on all of them.


    More than half of the Martial Squires instantly buckled, copsing to their knees despite their greatest resistance.


    It was game over for them.


    Yet the dropouts didn''t stop there, the initial wave alone copsed many of them. Yet it appeared that the quality of Martial Squires wasn''t just for show as many Martial Squires resolutely bore the pressure with incredible tenacity.


    There were those who not only bore it but were unperturbed.


    (''Surely this isn''t it¡­ right?'') Rui scratched his head as he rxed within his Mind Pce. Even without that technique and the Mind Mask that he was wearing, his evolved mind was not something that could be ovee with a paltry wave of pressure.


    But with both those techniques activated, Rui almost couldn''t feel anything.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1233 Dream

    ?


    Rui was almost confused. The initial wave bounced back from him like a beach ball against a steel wall.


    It couldn''t be helped, he was twenty-four now, and his brain had almost finished the entirety of the growth to adulthood. The fortitude of his mind truly spiked past ordinary limits, every parameter of his mind was far beyond what someone his age could have possibly been capable of.


    In fact, when he looked around, he had noticed that there were only grade-ten Martial Squires left, that too the older and more experienced ones.


    He was by far the youngest one there, the youngest after him seemed to be a woman in herte twenties or early thirties.


    Soon enough, the initial wave eliminated the weakest of Martial Squires. It became clear to them and everybody else that they were not of the same caliber of Martial Squires as those standing, and were promptly removed from the battle arena.


    "So many simply from the initial wave, how disappointing," The man snorted contemptuously. "Is that all the Martial Squires of this generation have? Hm?"


    He directed the question towards those remaining. "It may very well be the case that we may have to skip a round or there won''t even be eight Martial Squires left by the time the third round ends."


    (''He''s trying to get onto everybody''s nerves¡­?'') Rui wondered with an amused expression.


    Regardless of what he said, it was clear that such a degree of pressure was not enough to take them down.


    "All of you seem confident about oveing the initial wave¡­" The man remarked with an amused expression. "Let us see if you can maintain that attitude."


    Many stumbled as the pressure began escting even more. The sheer amount of mental force that he was exerting had far exceeded that of baseline Senior-level pressure. Not even the Kaddar Martial Squires had exerted such pressure on Rui even at their peak.


    Many of them began sweating profusely.


    They gritted their teeth.


    They clenched their fists.


    They pushed against thend beneath them as they felt chains emerging from the ground, wrapping around them, threatening to drag them to the depths of the underworld.


    The clouds darkened growing thick and dense as they descended from the skies, ovepping the very world, threatening to consume those that resisted!


    Of course, this did not happen, at least, not in the real world.


    That didn''t mean their perception was as unperturbed as material reality was.


    "...Urgh!"


    "¡­Dammit!"


    THUD!


    They copsed to the ground one by one.


    They resisted.


    They fought back.


    Yet most failed, copsing to the ground with expressions of frustration.


    It was not a pleasant sight.


    Yet in the middle of what ought to have been a profound tribtion, there were some who were looked out of ce.


    Rui simply stood there, feeling awkward.


    He felt like he should at least pretend to be pressured, if not for no other reason than not to offend the Martial Master. It wouldn''t make do for him to make a powerful enemy who thought he was insulting him by making a mockery of his challenge.


    He nced around, trying to get a gauge of what the average Martial Squire looked like, yet he did spot some anomalies.


    He even recognized a few of them.


    The olddy that he had spotted in the dining hall was also unperturbed. He had felt that she was strong back then but he now realized that she was even more formidable than he gave her credit for.


    There were a few others that were fine even after the extensive boost in pressure exerted by the man.


    "Hm¡­" The man hummed as he saw that even the added pressure stopped knocking down any more contestants.


    The Martial Squires simply silently endured the pressure, yet the same could not be said for the huge crowds of spectators.


    Many of them cheered for the standing Martial Squires. It appeared that they had been fed potions that gave them enough of the fortitude needed to endure the pressure without mentally copsing, allowing them to feel the nervous tension and the sheer thrill of the perilous fear that the Martial Master evoked in them.


    "WOOOOOO!"


    "This shit is lit!!!"


    "Is that the best you got, old man?!"


    Of course, certain spectators were removed because of their disrespect to a vaunted figure of the Theocracy.


    Nheless, it was in sharp contrast to the incredibly resilient Martial Squires who bore the tribtion silently.


    "It seems I''ve underestimated all of you¡­" The Martial Master spoke.


    His tone was severe.


    His eyes narrowed.


    A sadistic smile spread on his face.


    Something was off.


    They could all sense it.


    "¡­But were you under the impression that the challenge had actually begun?" The man asked with the most innocent voice.


    Their eyes widened.


    A chill crawled up all their spines.


    The man''s arms and hands began moving.


    It was a simple movement, smooth and slow.


    They watched silently.


    Their expressions grew vacant.


    Their attention lulled.


    "Psychic Cmity Style¡­" The man murmured, indicating the arrival of the actual challenge.


    Two words escaped his mouth.


    "Heavenly Pathos."


    The man pped as a strange sh of light spread across the colosseum for a brief moment.


    Opaque barriers momentarily appeared in front of the spectator stands, isting them from the scope of the powerful technique.


    The contestants froze.


    Content ? N?velDrama.Org 2024.


    Their pupils dted.


    THUD


    They all copsed one by one.


    Silence spread across the colosseum.


    The spectators were stunned speechless.


    "¡­What happened?"


    "Why did they all copse?"


    "¡­Are they all dead?"


    "Don''t be stupid! He would never kill them!"


    "They are not dead, obviously," The Martial Master rified to the spectators. "The Heavenly Pathos technique is a powerful mental technique that has a wide area of effect, and arge scope. The technique hypnotizes the targets and causes a hallucination that allows them to live their greatest dreams, paradises, and ideal lives. Only those with powerful fortitude can break out of it. It is a Master-level technique, but I have reduced its intensity so that the Martial Squires have a faint possibility of oveing this challenge most likely starting from within the next hour."


    He nced back at the unconscious contestants. "The first two hundred contestants that break out of the illusion and wake up will pass through to the next round."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1234 Wrong

    ?


    Rui opened his eyes.


    Barely.


    He woke up, but the pleasure that enveloped his body was deep.


    He wanted to close them again.


    "Hmm¡­" He heard a sleepy moan.


    He nced down.


    Senior Xanarn was asleep next to him, resting her head on his bare chest.


    For a moment something felt off.


    Something was deeply off.


    Yet before he could even consider it, a wave of deep serenity and satisfaction washed over him, soothing his mind.


    He nced around the room.


    (''This¡­ This is my room in the Quarrier Orphanage,'')


    Suddenly, another pang of uncertainty struck his heart.


    Something was wrong.


    Yet his mind rxed before he felt the need to investigate further.


    "Mmm¡­ You woke up?" Senior Xanarn murmured sleepily.


    "Did I wake you up¡­?"


    "The change in your heartbeat did," She murmured sleepily.


    She opened her eyes, staring straight at him. "Did you have a nightmare?"


    Rui tried recalling what he dreamed.


    "Just now¡­ I was in the first round of the Virodha Martial Contest," Rui murmured. "You know, the one that I won and became the champion of to secure your treatment all those years ago?"


    "No? I don''t remember that," She said with a hint of mischief. "Are you talking about the one that you told me about more than a hundred times until I became deaf in addition to being blind? That one?"


    "Funny,"


    She giggled as she hugged him sleepily. "Did you have a dream about that?"


    "¡­Dream?" Rui murmured.


    A deep sh of fear struck his heart.


    Something was off.


    "Hey," She nced at him with concern as she detected the change in his heartbeat, embracing him closer. "Are you ok?"


    The warm soft skin of her body pressed against his as she wrapped her body against him, soothing him.


    "Yeah, something like that," Rui nodded.


    "Rui! Why don''t the two of youe for breakfast?" A voice called out to him.


    He became aware of his surroundings again, recalling where he was.


    This was Mayra''s voice. She was in charge of the kitchen and meals, and she often scolded the members of the orphanage for beingte to a meal.


    "You should go," Senior Xanarn murmured sleepily as she untangled herself from him.


    Rui nodded as he got up, putting on some clothes before heading out.


    The familiar corridor of the Quarrier Orphanage leading to the main staircase was one that was burned in his mind. It was exactly how it always was.


    "Good morning everybody," Rui wished them, receiving an equally enthusiastic wish from the children and the adults.


    "Is Xanarn noting yet?" Lashara asked, pulling Rui into a deep hug.


    "No, she''s still a little tired and sleepy," Rui replied.


    "Hehe, you two must have gone at it all night," Maxughed.This is the property of N?-velDrama.Org.


    "I can hear you two at night, you know," Mana murmured, blushing.


    BANG!


    Rui dropped a fist on both their heads.


    "Ow!"


    "What was that for?!"


    "Learn tact," Rui firmly instructed.


    "You didn''t have to hit us that hard!"


    "Stopining," Rui tutted. "You''ve broken through to the Squire Realm and recently gotten Martial Bodies, you should be able to handle this much."


    He froze.


    Another wave of uneasiness washed over his heart.


    Something was off.


    "Bullying children is not nice, Rui," Julian drew away his attention with an amused smile.


    "They''re Martial Artists before they are children," Rui snorted.


    Lashara directed a pointed gaze at him.


    "¡­Of course, they''re your children before they''re Martial Artists," Rui sighed, conceding.


    "Hehe, mama to the rescue!"


    Rui chuckled, admitting defeat as he took a seat at the table.


    His eyes narrowed as he sensed Martial Artist presence in the vicinity. "¡­So many Martial Seniors¡­"


    "They''ve been around for years," Alice remarked. "You were the one that hired them to protect us from Chairman Deacon all those years ago, remember? Honestly, you should get rid of them since you''ve already killed that man."


    Rui froze.


    Another profound surge of uneasiness washed over him.


    "What''s the matter, dear?" Lashara asked with a concerned expression.


    She had managed to sense his emotions even without the super hearing of Senior Xanarn.


    It was a testament to how much she loved him.


    His uneasiness washed away.


    "I was just thinking about that¡­"


    "Are you still feeling guilty for what happened back then?" Lashara sighed, asking with a concerned expression. "We''ve all told you, haven''t we? We''ve long forgiven you for that. You left us in order to protect us. How could we ever not forgive you?"


    His heart beat heavier as the profound sense of uneasiness returned.


    He nced around the table.


    Everybody was happy and merry.


    It should have been everything he ever wanted for his family.


    Yet despite that, he couldn''t shake this deeply unsettling sensation in his heart.


    Something was wrong.


    "I think I''m gonna take a walk outside¡­" Rui replied. "Need some fresh air."


    "What about breakfast?"


    "It''s fine, I''m not that hungry anyways," Rui replied as he took to the air, sky walking away at top speed until he reached the town of Hajin.


    "Hey, Rui!" He heard Kane calling out to him out of nowhere.


    "What are you doing here?" Rui asked with a surprised expression.


    "We were all waiting for you," Kane told him.


    "We?" Rui''s eyes widened as he suddenly spotted Fae, Nel, Hever, Milliana, and Dalen.


    "You were going to train us, remember?" Kane asked. "On the VOID algorithm."


    "What?" Rui asked with a shocked expression.


    "Did you forget?" Kane tilted his head. "You perfected the VOID algorithm, you sessfully finished Project Water, and you created the ultimate Martial Art that embodies the very essence of Bruce Lee''s philosophy to the core."


    It was no longer just a wave of uneasiness.


    Something was wrong.


    Not with him, however.


    Something was wrong about the very fabric of this world.


    "Ipleted¡­ Project Water?" Rui asked.


    The uneasiness turned into a terror as he made a realization.


    "No¡­ I did not," Rui''s eyes narrowed. "I know I did notplete Project Water."


    "You''re wrong Rui," Kane stared into his eyes.


    "No, you''re wrong," Rui grew more certain by the second.


    He turned around looking at the world around him. "This world is wrong!"


    CRACK CRACK CRACK!


    The very fabric of reality began cracking like ss, beforepletely shattering.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1235 Reality

    ?Content rights by N?velDr//ama.Org.


    The moment the contestants were affected by the Heavenly Pathos technique Master Carian employed to put all the contestants in a dream of their ideal lives led to an interesting circumstance for the spectators.


    All of the remaining contestants had fallen to the ground unconscious then and there. No efforts had been made to cushion their fall given that such an impact was not at all a threat to the like of Martial Squires.


    Many expected to get bored watching the contestants simply lie down on the ground unconscious, after all, where was the fun in that?


    Yet it soon became evident that the contestants were literally acting out their actions in their dreams on the ground, it appeared that they retained full control of their bodies even while they were in this dreamlike state.


    What unfolded was an amusing set of circumstances where the unconscious contestants began putting on a bit of aedy show for the spectators. There were some whose actions revealed exactly what they were dreaming about, and they were not safe for work, to say the very least.


    The Martial Master had mentioned they could break out of the illusion in a brief amount of time, thus many expected that this would continue for a while.


    That was why the first break-out surprised everyone.


    Their eyes widened as they noticed Rui opening his eyes, groggily getting up to his feet in just a matter of two minutes!


    Master Carian furrowed his eyebrows, clearly surprised.


    Although he had drastically lowered the intensity of the technique to even allow the Martial Squires to break out of it, it was still something that should have been far from easy.


    As Rui came back to his senses, he red at Master Carian. At that moment, he did not care about the man''s identity, status, or power, he was about to rebuke the Master with strong words when something drew his attention, interrupting him.


    Another Martial Squire got up just seconds after he did.


    Rui narrowed his eyes as he recognized her.


    She was the youngest Martial Squire contesting after him.


    The youngest two Martial Squires had seeded far earlier than the rest of them did for some reason apparently.


    She swept her long flowing hair aside as she realized Rui was already standing, before pouting mildly. "Second¡­ How not beautiful¡­"


    Rui did not know what that meant, but he did not particrly care.


    He turned back to Master Carian, with a unpleasant expression behind his mask.


    "You seem truly displeased by this test, young man," The Martial Master remarked unperturbed.


    "With all due respect, I believe there are less invasive and humiliating ways of testing fortitude," Rui replied with a measured tone.


    "That is certainly true," The Master nodded, willing to entertain Rui''sints. "But do you think reality cares about whether the tribtions you face are invasive and humiliating?"


    Rui considered the question for a moment.


    "Reality will break you down much more harshly than this illusionary technique will, young man," The Master snorted. "The only difference is that the stakes will be much higher when reality does it,pared to this harmless first round. Here you lose a bit of dignity, but reality will take your life, and the lives of everyone you care about. Ask yourself if you are prepared for the hard reality of this world if you feel the need toin about such a trivial matter."


    Rui paused, reconsidering his stance. He knew that the man was right. He had already experienced it after the fiasco of the Shionel Confederation. His own life and the lives of his family were at stake.


    He sighed, his expression softening a bit.


    Compared to that predicament, this first round was nothing, objectively speaking.


    He just felt angered because the illusion that he had been shown touched more than just a nerve. It rubbed more than salt in his wounds, it was nothing short of acidic in its pain. It showed him everything that he wanted, that was so far away. He often coped by not thinking about it deeply and focusing on developing his Martial Art, walking his Martial Path, and pursuing power.


    But the illusion forced him to confront it.


    "Still," the Martial Master smiled, regarding both of the contestants who had woken up just two minutes after the challenge had begun. "The two of you have done well, there is no question that you have faced much, and ovee much. I am not surprised that you, Squire Meera, managed to aplish this feat as the reigning champion of the Martial Contest. But you¡­"


    He said a lot of things that Rui would have drawn Rui''s interest ordinarily, but not this time. Master Carian studied Rui with piercing eyes. Rui immediately grew wary as he recalled what Master Deivon informed him about the insight of Martial Masters.


    Unfortunately, there was nothing he could do at the moment.


    He could only watch as Master Carian took his time, his eyes widening as he observed Rui.


    "You¡­" The man murmured. "Incredible. I have almost never seen anything quite like this in the Squire Realm. I can see why Master Deivon, someone who seldom patrons Martial Squires, has decided to go all-in with you."


    "Your eyes are beautiful," Squire Meera walked over as she remarked with a jovial expression, agreeing with Master Carian.


    "Uh¡­ Thanks."


    "It''s a pity I can''t see them over whatever it is you have done to disguise them." She casually remarked with a hint of mncholy. "That silver does not reflect you. Thatcking fit is not beautiful."


    Rui immediately narrowed his eyes.


    This was the first time that someone had seen right through his disguise. He had purchased a bunch of rare drugs that could change the color of his eyes and hair and never had anyone realized.


    Until she did.


    It appeared that not even Master Carian had made that insight.


    "You said¡­ reigning champion?" Rui regarded her with wariness, recalling what Master Carian had said about her.


    She simply nodded. "I am the seventy-first champion of the Virodha Martial Contest, Meera Froulia. "


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1236 Incoherent

    ?


    Rui was rather surprised that she had managed to break out at almost the same time that he did. He managed to aplish this with the help of his reincarnated mind and his strong dedication to his Martial Path.


    She managed to aplish the same feat without the former advantage. That was an incredible feat, worthy of the reigning champion of the Martial Contest.


    He evaluated her with his Primordial Instinct. He was incredibly ustomed to getting a good gauge and grasp of Martial Squires with his mind and senses. He could usually easily understand their power, and decipher their Martial Art and Martial Path.


    His eyes narrowed as he felt his nerves tingle.


    Something was profoundly wrong.


    He wasn''t able to even fathom what her Martial Art was.


    That wasn''t the most disturbing part of her power level.


    (''This¡­'') Rui''s eyes widened. (''This isn''t even incoherent. The impressions she gives rapidly fluctuate every second!'')


    One moment she was weak.


    The next moment she was extremely strong.


    The next moment she grew even stronger, giving off a quasi-Senior level strength!


    ¡­Before returning to an average power level.


    He didn''t understand. How could a Martial Squire''s power fluctuate as if it were the readings of a seismograph? How could that even make any sense?


    It Rui even more wary than if she was just inly strong. He had dealt with that many times in his life and was confident that he could ovee it after understanding its depths.


    What he truly was wary of was a Martial Squire whose power was incoherent. That was much more of a problem to him than an ordinarily strong Martial Squire.


    "I wouldn''t bother if I were you," Master Carian smirked. "The true depths of young Meera here are inscrutable to even my eyes. Then again¡­"


    His eyes narrowed as he stared at Rui. "¡­The same can be said of yourself, can it not? You''re birds of the same feather."


    Just then, the third Martial Squire contestant got up after having broken out of the illusion that the Master had conjured.


    Rui recognized her as well, it was the old grandma that he had spotted multiple times up until now.


    It appeared that he had truly not misjudged her, she was certainly quite impressive to break out of the illusion this soon after it had been cast, trailing third behind Rui and Squire Meera.


    People watched with interest as more and more began breaking out over the next hour. The ones that held their interest the most were the first eight that broke out of the illusion. They had the highest probability of making it to the final tournament as far as everybody was concerned.


    The fact that the current champion of the Martial Contest was among the eight certainly lent credence to this theory.


    However, Rui wasn''t entirely sure how true that was. Mental fortitude did not corroborate with Martial power in a one-to-one fashion. Surely there were weaker Martial Artists with incredible mental fortitude, and there were prodigiously blessed Martial Squires with weaker fortitude.


    However, it was true that mental parameters corresponded with the depth of the Martial Art, which, in turn, corresponded with Martial power, thus the correspondence was not bad, even if not perfect.


    In reality, there was no way to root out the strongest in an absolutely perfect manner with a single test. It would take incredibly rigorous testing over extensive periods of time, pitting all Martial Squires against all others to evene close to having a hundred percent uracy on who the strongest was.


    However, this was not practical in such an event. This event was in celebration of a festival in its nature, and the event needed to reflect that.


    That was a rather simple and unsophisticated format was chosen.


    "It is time," Master Carian announced once the two-hundredth Martial Squire woke up. "The two hundred of you standing at this moment have sessfully passed through to the next round. Congrattions, and good luck."


    He pped his hands, yet the noise it produced was an incredibly strange resonating tone that reverberated across the battle arena.


    It was only after the remaining Martial Squire began waking up groggily to that trigger that Rui realized that he had deactivated his technique.


    "You may be confused, so allow me to exin," Master Carian kindly informed. "You have all failed to ovee the challenge of the first round. You have been eliminated from the Martial Contest, we appreciate your participation, and we wish you good luck for the next time."


    The losers of the first round quickly left the colosseum, heading out while the victors remained.


    "The second round will begin soon, once again, good luck," Master Carian smiled as he sky-walked away.


    The two hundred victors remained in ce as they waited, unsure of what was toe next. Yet even before the next round could begin, a pair of potions suddenly appeared before all of them.


    "Drink them," An incredibly elderly voice instructed them.


    They all saw a powerful Martial Master descending from the sky onto the podium.


    The next Martial Master responsible for the second round was an incredibly aged grandma, she made even the grandma Martial Squire feel young. Content rights by N?velDr//ama.Org.


    She was so old that she even needed a cane!


    Of course, Rui was not stupid.


    There was no way an especially powerful Martial Master needed a cane to bnce or walk. It was either part of her Martial Art, or she simply carried it for some other reason.


    Regardless, he followed her instructions, consuming both potions.


    Instantly, his mind was rejuvenated, though his body remained the same. It appeared that the potions only refreshed the brain. That did make sense considering they did not physically exert themselves, only mentally. Rui did not even need any rejuvenation given that he had spent very little time in the dream world.


    Yet the same could not be said for everybody, especially the lowest-ranked contestants who spent a lot more time breaking out of the dream world.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1237 Storm

    ?


    "It is time for the second round tomence," The new Master announced once everybody had been rejuvenated. "I am Bishop Uma, and I am the organizer of the second round."


    She snapped her fingers and a ring table appeared around her on the podium.


    Rui noticed a bunch of paper slips on the table that she was the center of when he studied it.


    "As you can see, there are about forty passes on this table," She exined mundanely. "Each pass guarantees a contestant a spot in the third round. The forty of you who manage to get your hands on a pass, one way or another, will pass through to the next round, the rest will all be eliminated."


    The Martial Squires frowned when they heard such a strange contest, the passes were right there in front of them, were they not?


    Didn''t that mean the fastest of them would get the passes first? Was she trying to filter away the slowest Martial Squires out of thepetition?


    Many of the heavier power or defense-oriented Martial Squires looked upset at this possibility, the contest was supposed to judge who was the strongest, not who was the fastest.


    The part about the objective of getting a pass or item to select the winner was not unheard of. It was not an umon way to have a more open-endedpetition where contestants had much greater freedom and choice on how they wanted toplete the objective of the contest.


    "I haven''t finished," She sternly remarked. "I have no interest in wasting time overlooking this round, thus I have decided to resume my training even while the round is underway. The contest will begin once I have begun my training technique. Note that there is no strict need for there to be forty winners."


    This was another thing that stumped them. Were the rounds supposed to filter away only eighty percent of the contestants?


    "I have already corresponded with the organizer of the next round and have obtained an agreement for reducing the number of victors to any degree if need be," She informed them with a stern expression. "If none of you pass through, then that''s that. The Martial Contest will end right here."


    That evoked considerable surprise from the various contestants.


    (''I underestimated how much power these bishop Masters have,'') Rui narrowed his eyes. (''It seems they have absolute authority to organize the rounds however they wish to please with no checks or bnces. That makes sense, I guess, considering they are below only the Cardinal Sages and the Transcendent Prophet.'')


    "If you can survive and ovee the tribtions to obtain the passes, you will pass through, if not, you won''t. Regardless, I shall engage in my training no matter what the oue.'')


    That was even more of a strange thing to say. Why was she the organizer if she did not even intend to oversee the second round?


    She did not feel the need to exin any further.


    Instead, she simply took her feet off the ground, sitting midair as her cane settled on herp.


    (''Is she really going to train in the middle of a contest round after organizing such a silly contest?'') Rui frowned as he crouched, taking a sprinting position.


    He almost activated Godspeed, which would guarantee that he would reach the table before anybody else.


    But he abstained after thinking about it for a moment.


    He did not want to make a choice that was difficult to undo. Something was off, and he did intend to at least gain a greater understanding before making any choice in regards to how he ought to go about oveing this rather simplistic challenge.


    It turns out, that was a good choice.


    "Fuuu¡­" She activated a breathing technique.


    Immediately, everybody rushed in.


    Only a handful of people stepped away.


    Rui was among them, as was Squire Meera, and the grandma Squire and a few others.


    (''They''ve noticed as well¡­'') Rui mused as he fixed his eyes on the Martial Master. (''¡­of the storm that is about toe.'')


    WHOOOOOOOSH!!!


    Suddenly a gigantic tornado was born around the table the moment she began her mysterious meditation training with her breathing technique. The sheer intensity of the tornado blew away all of the Martial Squires who were caught off-guard by it, not having had their defenses propped up in time.


    "Waaah!"


    "What the hell is this?!"


    "Rgh!"


    Only the ones that had stepped away at the start were unscathed.


    The training technique she was engaging in was so powerful, that its aftereffects generated an abysmally powerful storm.


    (''This is merely the side-effect.'') Rui could not help but sigh in amazement.


    It was no different from the tiny gust of wind that a punch generated. Except in this case, the training was so powerful that even that tiny after-effect had been magnified to an absurdly intense tornado.


    Many were still in shock, but Rui had long realized the truth.


    (''This is the challenge,'') He narrowed his eyes as he guarded against the winds. (''It''s not a coincidence that the tornado formed just outside of the table. It''s clear that if we want a pass, we''re going to have to wade through what is effectively a Senior-level technique.'')


    The power that he felt from the tornado that was generated from the remnants of her training technique was clearly in the Senior Realm, he had experienced that power many times by now to be able to identify it instantly.


    It appeared that all of the contestants hade to terms with reality and had begun focusing on how to get their hands on a pass, and how to ensure they don''t lose the pass after they get it, either to the storm, or to their fellow contestants who had no qualms with killing and prying the pass from their cold dead hands.


    The contestants rushed forward, using different means to try and ovee the tornado. The longer they waited, the lower the chance they had. Just standing in the tornado took a lot of energy!


    This chapter upload first at  Content ? N?velDrama.Org 2024.

 Chapter 1238 Observe

    <h4>Chapter 1238 Observe</h4>


    He already knew this but, Master Uma was quite different from Master Carian. Thetter was a lot more considerate and kind towards younger Martial Artists like himself. The former was a lot more ruthless and rough than her colleague.


    She didn''t care to actually oversee the actual challenge itself. She was so averse to wasting her time on younger and inferior Martial Artists like them that she decided to integrate her training into the contest''s challenge so that she did not waste any time on them and could train while fulfilling her duties.


    He found it interesting that she had the ability to essentially bypass her duties using such loopholes, but did not possess the authority to reject her duties. After all, if she did not want to be here, then why didn''t she straightforwardly reject her duty as the organizer of the second round?


    That made Rui conclude that the duty was assigned to her by someone with enough power and authority that she couldn''t reject it. Especially since he could already tell that she was most certainly a zealot of the Virodhabhasa Faith.


    Regardless, none of that mattered at the moment.


    Rui narrowed his eyes as he considered the challenge before him. He analyzed the tornado she produced carefully, gauging as much information about it as possible.


    It was not a natural tornado, obviously. That meant that there was a good chance that it did not strictly behave the way a natural tornado did.


    And he was right.


    (''The wind is not uniform,'') Rui narrowed his eyes as he felt the fabric of the tornado with his Tempestuous Feel. (''Rather thanyers of flowing wind, it''s more like a group of discrete gusts moving in one direction with gaps between them.'')


    It reflected the nature of the breathing technique that she was using, it was most likely not a simply continuous breathing pattern, but rather something shorter and more frequent.


    Unlike the others, he could verify this through the storm despite it jamming all senses. Riemannian Echo waspletely unperturbed. He could clearly sense Master Uma meditating at the center of the storm, and it turned out that he was right.


    Her breathing was like the pping of the wings of a bee. It was so frequent and rapid, that it was almost imperceivable. Each exhtion was short, extremely momentary, and swift. It generated a spiraling linear gust of wind that revolved around her.


    She exhaled so many times per second, that the sheer number of individual gusts of wind essentially formed something that resembled a tornado.


    For a moment, he couldn''t help but actually appreciate how remarkably fair the test was to Martial Artists of all three primary fields ofbat. The nature of the challenge allowed for offensive, defensive, and maneuvering-oriented Martial Artists to each try and ovee this incredible hurdle in their own ways.


    Defensive-oriented Martial Artists could simply employ their Martial Art and Martial Body to weather and shield themselves from the power of the tornado, although it depended because certain active techniques like Flux Earther were less effective against the likes of wind.


    Maneuvering-oriented Martial Artists could aim for the particrlyrger gaps in the gust of winds that appeared from time to time. As long as they were fast and agile enough, they could navigate the artificial tornado well enough.


    Offensive Martial Artists could simply fight back against the storm and push back against the winds in order to make progress.


    It was clear that the others had also realized that Rui could see Martial Artists falling into the three categories attempting these three broad approaches.


    The question he needed to answer was what approach he wanted to go for. Since he had the Metabody System, he could try all three approaches if he wanted.


    (''I need to choose the least taxing solution out of all three,'') Rui narrowed his eyes. He wasn''t sure if the potions that the contest would supply would necessarily return him back to peak condition if he pushed himself with the Metabody System, that was just how taxing the technique was.


    It wasn''t easy determining how he ought to go about it because he wasn''t immediately able to gauge which of the approaches would conserve him the most energy. Even within each approach, he had multiple choices. Like within the offensive approach, he could choose to apply his power through physical strength or through potent projection of wind with techniques like Mighty Roar sh st or Transverse Resonance.


    Furthermore, he could also use Weaving Blood to simply heal all the damage he endured while he was wading through the storm.


    And of course, he had not forgotten thest way either. He could just steal a pass from one of the contestants who did manage to get their hands on one. He was not opposed to this choice either out of some silly sense of honor.


    This was part of the contest, Master Uma herself had specified that passes could be obtained in any way. That was an indication that attacking pass-holders for their passes was a perfectly legal tactic that perfectly fell within the rules of the contest.


    It was a requirement that contestants be able to not only acquire a pass but maintain it to the end of the round.


    With so many options at hand, Rui was a little at a loss. He wasn''t sure about what the likelihood of their sess were.


    The other Martial Artists were generally a lot more specialized than he was which meant they had only one option to consider, making the choice a no-brainer. It was only he who had the luxury of choice, who also had the burden of choice.


    That was why he decided to do something that drew the attention of all the spectators and even the contestants.


    (''Nothing like a good sit in the middle of a contest,'') Rui mused as one legy t on the ground, while the perched on its foot, folded. Content ? N?velDrama.Org 2024.


    If he did not have enough data, then he simply needed to gather it.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1239 Considerations

    <h4>Chapter 1239 Considerations</h4>


    "Look at that guy, he has the audacity to sit down in the middle of thepetition!"


    "He''s either confident or cocky."


    "Tsk, who does he think he''s fooling? He''s just waiting for an appropriate target to get a hand on a pass, and then steal it from them!"


    Rui did not care for the smallmotion he drew. It was easier to resist the storm when he was more anchored to the ground and the colosseum wall behind his back, allowing him to conserve more energy from the storm.


    That was the reason he went out of his way to do that, it had nothing to do with anything else.


    (''Hm, so far, only fifty percent of the contestants are making actual efforts in trying to get their hands on a pass. The remaining fifty are clearly opting to go for the robbing route.'') He noted.


    This made sense since not everybody waspatible with trying to ovee a tornado like this. Poison-oriented Martial Artists, for example, were extremely ipatible with non-living threats. They could be exceptionally dangerous as long as their opponents were alive, but that was no longer true if they were dealing with forces of nature.


    In such a circumstance, they could not aplish anything against a tornado. It made sense to wait until a contestant got their hands on a pass, and then poison them and take their pass.


    If Rui chose to go for obtaining a pass from the table, then he would certainly be forced to deal with those predators that were simply waiting for an opportune moment. However, being the predator did not strictly sound fun either, each contestant was going to defend their pass with everything they had, and he would be forced to reveal a lot of his power to all the other contestants if he chose to fight.


    That was an undesirable oue. This was not just apetition for passes, it was also apetition for information. The one that gained the most information had the highest chance to seed.


    Of course, that did not mean Rui ought to immediately begin developing predictive models for all contestants.


    That was stupidly inefficient, not to mention impossible given that there were two hundred contestants and the fact that he also needed to focus on the challenge more than anything else.


    He only collected some preliminary data to try and figure out which approach was the best. He had been observing the sess rate of the various approaches being employed by the contestants. The results left him feeling admiration.


    Not for the contestants, but for the examiner.


    (''All three approaches are equal in their progress rates,'') He mused. (''That''s not a coincidence. It means that Master Uma has perfectly manipted the resulting storm to give all three fields ofbat an equal chance to seed, so as to not unfairly give any one category of Martial Artists an unfair advantage.'')


    It appeared that she was not as uncaring as she portrayed herself.


    Still, that did not mean she was lenient.


    Not a single Martial Squire had seeded yet.


    There were some who had made far more progress than the others.


    Rui noted that the elder granny had made a lot more progress towards the table than most. She breathed in a particr manner, taking slow but measured steps in the direction of the table, which was certainly an impressive feat.


    Rui nced over, looking for a particr individual out of all the others. Content from N?velDr(a)ma.Org.


    "Hmmm¡­" Squire Meera stared at the storm with an impassive expression. "Pushing through the storm like a coolie, or letting my attire get battered by the winds¡­"


    Rui narrowed his eyes.


    The depth of peril she radiated spiked all of a sudden!


    Her demeanor emanated displeasure.


    Three words escaped her mouth.


    "How aesthetically unappealing."


    Rui tilted his head in confusion.


    She wasn''t done, however.


    "I refuse such an oue." She leaped into the tornado without activating a single offensive or defensive technique.


    Rui widened his eyes in amazement as he watched pirouette through the gaps of the storm in an elegant fashion, unperturbed. It wasn''t long before she came with a pass in her hand.


    Her actions had not gone unnoticed by the other contestants.


    They all couldn''t help but gape at her in shock as she walked into the storm one moment, and exited a short whileter with a pass in her hand.


    She was the first contestant to get her hands on a pass!


    Rui had to admit, her maneuvering prowess was quite impressive. Her attire and her neatly groomed hair were nearly unaffected by what she had done, which was astonishing given that she had just walked into what was effectively a tornado!


    It meant that she had somehow managed to smoothly exploit the gaps in the tornado to find a way to the passes and back unperturbed.


    However, it was bizarre because it didn''t feel like she was a maneuvering-oriented Martial Squire in the first ce. Furthermore, it had sounded as if she had actually considered the offensive and defensive approach, which meant she had the ability to at least attempt those approaches, but had ultimately rejected them because they were too ugly.


    He didn''t quite understand that part. However, when hepared some of her previous statements, he had begun to get an inkling of what that was all about. She may very well have the most remarkable Martial Art that he had ever seen.


    Unfortunately, that was not the only challenge she faced. She also had to ovee the hoards of hyenas that converged on to her to get her pass.


    Rui briefly considered trying to take her pass, before shaking his head. Competing with all the Martial Squires who were incapable of dealing with the challenge while also trying to fight the champion under these circumstances was not the best way of going about it. As long as the two of them kept winning, they were bound to sh in the near future.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1240 Idea

    <h4>Chapter 1240 Idea</h4>


    Rui knew that going for a pass wouldnd him in a simr situation as she was in right now, being targeted for a pass. Not that he didn''t have experience being targeted. But the quality of Martial Squires in the second round was vastly higher than that of the preliminary contest.


    If he was ganged up on here, then he had a very real probability of losing. Not even he could handle so many grade-ten Martial Squires for too long.


    However, being the one to attack pass-gainers also meantpeting with not only them but also the Martial Artist who gained the pass in the first ce.


    Furthermore, they would most certainly use the storm as a shield. Since the contestants would have long passed through the storm to acquire their own passes if they could.


    (''Tsk, such a pain,'') Rui snorted. (''Surely, there must be a way to acquire a pass without the hassle of other contestants one way or another.'')


    His eyes widened as he came up with an interesting idea, breaking out into a grin. This is the property of N?-velDrama.Org.


    He had a n.


    He quickly began the preparations as he rapidly began building a predictive model for the tornado and the Master''s training technique.


    What he was trying to do was map out the corresponding oues of the Master''s breathing patterns and the resulting tornado. He needed to focus his mind to the absolute limit to be able to detect the patterns of her extremely rapid breathing.


    Thankfully, she wasn''t especially trying to confound anybody with her breathing patterns, it was clear that she was simply indulging in her own training. What the training was, Rui had no idea, after all, if the tornado were what the technique was all about, then it would be a Master-level technique and they would have all long been dead.


    As it was, it was equivalent to a Senior-level technique, which was an entire Realm above them, and below her. Although they were Realm below it, the reason that they weren''t all straight-up dead was because the power of the technique had been distributed over an extremelyrge amount of area and volume. Meaning each Martial Squire experienced only a tiny fraction of the full power of the Senior-level tornado.


    And the fact that getting the pass was still an insurmountable task to most of them spoke volumes of the power of the Senior Realm.


    Regardless, Rui was just barely able to keep up with her blurringly-fast breathing patterns that generated the tornado. He quickly formed predictive models that allowed him to predict the future state of the tornado based on her breathing.


    He got up. Yet this time, no one paid him attention.


    Just as he hoped.


    "Fuuuuu¡­" He exhaled deeply, activating the Godspeed technique. Instantly his weight reduced massively as he felt a surge of power.


    His eyes were fixed forward, yet it wasn''t the storm he was watching.


    It was the Martial Artist producing that storm. Riemannian Echo barely kept track of her movements, but it managed. After all, this was the same technique that allowed him to sense, predict, and dodge the Root.


    (''Now!'') Ruished forward at a blinding pace.


    He bobbed and weaved through the narrow gaps of the storm, putting his acrobatic ability to the absolute test. He shed forward, squeezing through narrow pockets that he predicted ahead of time watching Master Uma breathe.


    It was quite unnerving because he wasn''t even paying attention to the winds.


    He couldn''t afford to.


    Had she generated sound instead of wind currents, then he would have been able to use the ODA System to predict how it would all unfold. Unfortunately, he could not do that, thus he had to restrict himself to analyzing the source of the storm to see through it.


    He simply trusted in the predictions he made, without so much as faltering, one misstep and he would get blown away with ease, especially with VOID Forestep.


    The other Martial Squires noticed the powerful technique in y and immediately prepared themselves.


    It appeared that there was another who coulde to possess a pass very soon. Since that was the case, they intended to pounce on him the second he appeared!


    Squire Meera heaved in respite as her burden lightened with some of her attackers choosing to wait for Rui.


    Everybody held their breath in anticipation for the second pass-holder to appear.


    It had be quite evident that Squire Meera was impossible to steal from. She kept muttering something about being ugly and had managed to protect her pass with remarkable sess.


    If she was too much, then they would have to settle for the next one. They definitely had no intention of letting Rui as well as the few others that had been able to ovee the storm and gain a pass.


    They waited, poised in action for Rui to appear.


    They waited, impatient.


    They waited, frustrated.


    And they simply kept waiting.


    "Where did he go?!"


    If he had been blown away, he would have appeared outside by now. If he got a pass, he would have appeared by now. What other oue was there?


    "Their perspectives are too limited¡­ Wouldn''t you agree?" Rui remarked, smirking as he clutched his pass, turning his head towards the woman seated midair right before him.


    The two of them were in the only pocket inside the tornado that was devoid of winds. The immediate area around Master Uma inside the ring table.


    She opened her eyes, sharply paying attention to the young man who was grinning at her, sitting right opposite to him. She simply studied him with her piercing eyes, continuing her breathing technique all the while.


    Suddenly, he heard her voice.


    She had but one question.


    "What are you boy?"


    Rui raised an eyebrow as he realized that she hadn''t opened her mouth. She had manipted the winds to produce a sound that identically matched her own voice verbatim!


    That was an extraordinarily fine maniption of the air, but it was the words she conveyed that held his attention.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1241 Regards

    <h4>Chapter 1241 Regards</h4>


    He wasn''t sure how he was supposed to answer that. Of course, he most certainly recognized that it wasn''t a literal question, even though he was tempted to reply with ''male homosapien'', he did not think that the aloof Master would find that amusing.


    "I''m not sure what that means," Rui replied. "I''m a Martial Artist, just like any other."


    "Cease your lies," Her voice reverberated in his ears. "I have lived dozens of times your life. I have seen more than you could possibly even begin to fathom. I know how to differentiate between things that are like any other and things that aren''t."


    It seemed that she wasn''t willing to buy his bullshit.


    Rui grew more wary. She seemed a lot less down-to-earth than Master Deivon, who did not act so arrogantly with him all the time despite being two Realms above him. However, her status and power were far greater than even Master Deivon''s. Perhaps it was too much of him to expect to be able to be rxed around her.


    If she found out his secrets, especially the one of being from another world, he did not think it would go well. Even if the best possible oue happened and she worshipped him instead, that was still a terrible oue in his eyes. He did not want to be the object of devotion and worship of a religion as powerful as the Virodhabhasa Faith.


    "I don''t know how to answer that," Rui replied. "As far as I''m concerned, I am a Martial Artist who pursues his Martial Path out of personal ambition and love. My Martial Path is¡­ powerful and obscure, but it''s not as though there aren''t other Martial Paths like that out there."


    Tokugawa Ieyasu existed, after all. Furthermore, if he wasn''t wrong, Squire Meera was also certainly cut from another cloth as well. He had a decent idea of what her Martial Path was, and it was arguably even more absurd than his.


    She simply stared at him with her sharp eyes, not so much as changing a shade.


    Rui grew nervous, but he hoped that being a Virodhabhasa Seed, and Master Deivon''s heritor would ensure that she does not cross a line.


    Instead, she simply closed her eyes and continued training.


    "I''m allowed to be here?" Rui asked with curiosity.


    She did not bother responding, but it appeared that she did not intend to kick him out. Thankfully, just like Rui had predicted, she could not do anything to him because it did not vite the rules that she herself had announced, which most likely meant that she could not put so much as a scratch on him.


    That was good, because if she did kick him out, then his entire n would have failed.


    He did not want to expose his power, after going through all the possible ways in which he could acquire a pass, he sharply realized that hiding in the pocket of air around Master Uma within the table was the only possibility that ensured that he mostly hid his power.


    Of course, he exposed Void Forestep, but that much was inevitable, the other oues of returning with a pass, or trying to steal a pass exposed his power much more.


    Even now, Squire Meera was fighting off several grade-ten Martial Squires, and much to his admiration, she defended her pass.


    Of course, her burden had lightened considerably as other Martial Squires also began getting passes to the next round, bing easier targets than someone with an absurd Martial Path like Squire Meera.


    One by one, candidates reached the table, gaining a pass before heading back. Unlike Rui, they were unable to sense the pocket of air that could serve as a good hiding ce because they did not have Riemannian Echo.


    Once the supply of passes became greater, the individual burden that each pass holder had to bear reduced considerably. Allowing them to be able to withstand the pressure.


    Unlike when Rui faced three grade-ten Martial Squires, these Martial Squires did not have to actually defeat, ovee, or even push back their opponents.


    Soon enough, the fortieth candidate got their hands on the pass, serving as a signal to Master Uma.


    WHOOSH!!!


    The storm disappeared.


    "Woah!"


    "Oof!"


    Several Martial Squires lost their bnce, having been resisting the storm this entire time, the disappearance of the storm caused them to momentarily be imbnced.


    Each of them nced at Master Uma. Content rights by N?velDr//ama.Org.


    And each of them furrowed their eyebrows in surprise as they saw Rui rxing opposite her.


    Rui smirked mischievously under his mask as they furrowed their eyebrows in anger.


    Why did he get to avoid all thepetition while also spending time with the esteemed bishop?


    "All forty passes have been acquired," Master Uma announced. "Thepetition has ended. Those who possess a pass in their possession at the moment of the conclusion of this round will go on to the next round. The one whostpletely possessed the pass will be the one to pass out of whom both have a hand on the pass of this moment."


    This meant that those the few who were engaging in a tug of war over the pass could not all pass, the challenger would not go to the next round unless he actually fully gained control of the pass.


    The forty winners quickly gathered while the remaining one hundred and sixty were eliminated.


    Of course, that did not mean their battle had been in vain. As part of the top two hundred out of a hundred thousand Martial Squires, they could be considered to be the elite out of the elite. Any organization below a certain level of strength would fight to have them.


    However, it was undoubtedly the case that the forty winners who made it to the third round benefited far more.


    Rui could sense with his Primordial Instinct that each of the forty Martial Squires was cut from an entirely different cloth than standard grade-ten Martial Squires. Even the three grade-ten Martial Squires that he overcame from the preliminary contest could notpare to these forty Martial Squires.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1242 Abyssfeeder

    <h4>Chapter 1242 Abyssfeeder</h4>


    Master Uma nced at Rui once more time with a deep stare before disappearing from his very senses.


    (''Oh man¡­'') Rui sighed. (''I just hope that she isn''t going to make trouble for me.'')


    Regardless, now was not the time for him to think about such matters.


    Each of the contestants was supplied with rejuvenation and healing potions. Rui''s body slurped them up doing its best to restore itself to its peak. He was grateful that it was able to fix the burdens on the body caused by Void Forestep. Thankfully, rejuvenation potions were extremely dense and heavy in their nutritional content.


    While the others would not need to eat for a while, Rui only returned to his previous state, the potion made up for a shoring, but it did not increase his reserves due to that.


    Regardless, he got away with almost entirely with hiding his power. The same could not be said for everybody else. The forty that passed most certainly exposed their power to each other. Rui was the least known out of them all.


    The only thing that they knew about was his super speed, however, that was such iplete information that it would actually work in his favor. There was a high chance that many of them assumed that he was a maneuvering or speed-oriented Martial Artist.


    That was something that could be used against them potentially.


    Suddenly, another Martial Master appeared before all of them.


    Unlike Master Uma, this one looked remarkably young.


    "Contestants, I am bishop Greminga," He smiled warmly. "The forty of you havee far. You have ovee obstacles that hundreds of thousands of your peers have failed to ovee. It is not an exaggeration to say that those of you who are still standing here will go on to be among the Martial Art leaders of tomorrow."


    It appeared that this Martial Master was a lot more receptive to the importance of the Martial Contestpared to Master Uma, who uttered the bare minimum of words.


    "The challenge you shall face this time is not light," The man exined. "Only eight of you will pass this round and go on to enter the final tournament that will be held tomorrow. It is my duty to ensure that those eight of you truly are the most fit, and the most powerful out of all of you."


    He smiled, before waving his hand.


    Forty strange boxes appeared in a circle around him.


    "Within these containment units lies your challenge. Within them lies what many consider to be the bane of Martial Art, or at least, an element of it."


    That evoked a reaction from the contestants. It was a strange thing for someone like him to say.


    The bane of Martial Art?


    That was an extraordinary im to make when so many diverse and powerful Martial Artists existed. An extraordinary im that would beughed at if not for an extremely esteemed Martial Master making the im.


    It was especially odding from a bishop of the Virodhabhasa Faith. The bane of Martial Art?


    (''That sounds an awful lot like what the Virodhabhasa, the Antithesis, is supposed to be.'') Rui narrowed his eyes as he studied the boxes.


    Unlike the others, he could actually peer into their depths. He carefully studied their contents.


    (''Is that a¡­ seed?'') Rui frowned.


    The man waved his hand, and the containment units opened, dropping their contents to the ground.


    They were indeed what looked like seeds.


    Suddenly, they moved.


    A dense pitch-ck web emerged from the seed, spreading out into the air and into the Earth. It was such an eerie and alien sight that the Martial Squires could not help but put some distance between them.


    "How disgusting," Squire Meera murmured.


    "This is Relenia Varasa," The man exined to the confused contestants. "Also known as Abyssfeeder. It is a species that is found in particrly vtile and chaotic environments and ecosystems within the Beast Domain, areas that are entirely uninhabitable to species below a certain level of power."


    They all stared at him, waiting for him to continue.


    "It is one of the few monster species that can survive in danger zones that are a Realm entirely above it," The Martial Master generously exined. "Generally, danger zones are graded by the bare minimum power level a creature needs to be to survive for extensive periods of time as opposed to dying quickly. A Senior-level danger zone is a danger zone where only Senior-level creatures and above are able to sustain their lives. Anything less is simply prey, fodder, and sustenance for the entire ecosystem to consume and predate. This species, however, is one of the few species in existence that can defy that. It can exist in danger zones graded an entire Realm of power above it."


    They narrowed their eyes at that statement. If that was the case, then there was no doubt that the species was capable of a lot. Such a species would be extremely dangerous to find oneself aligned against.


    "It does this by rapid physiological evolution that we don''t fully understand yet," The man exined. "In extremely hot environments, it rapidly evolved with highly efficient heat absorption and resistance systems as well as incredible cooling systems. In extremely cold environments, they develop remarkably effective heat generation systems. They have been shown to adapt to all kinds of temperatures, atmospheres, extreme geologies, and extreme ecosystems of all kinds. Including¡­"


    He paused for a moment. "¡­Martial Artists. They are omnivorous and are fully capable of treating even Martial Artists as prey to consume. They change the foundation of their bodies to adapt to Martial Artists and their Martial Paths, evolving their biologies to them, and consuming them. They are considered a highly dangerous species, with a danger potential evaluated at S-ss by the Monster Evaluation Department of the Security Council of the Transpanamic Consortium." Content from N?velDr(a)ma.Org.


    That spread a wave of shock among all those who heard it. Not many understood the full implications of what the man just uttered, but it was clear that this lifeform was not to be underestimated.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1243 Clash

    <h4>Chapter 1243 sh</h4>


    Rui couldn''t help but be surprised while the others were rmed.


    He did not know that there were creatures out there that embodied his Martial Path as a gic trait. That sounded incredibly difficult to achieve. Evolution worked by the principle of survival of the fittest. The fittest survived, and the fittest reproduced. It naturally meant that any species that evolved maintained a coherent and constant physiology as a result. He didn''t understand how a creature that evolved to evolve could possibly exist. Content rights by N?velDr//ama.Org.


    Then again, he knew that his framework of evolution was based on Earth, which was a much more grounded and less fantastical. The presence of esoteric substancesplicated any and everything. Every ounce of scientific theory was no longer applicable one-to-one to the world of Gaia due to its presence. The more Rui learned about what could be done with esoteric substances, the truer this simple fact became.


    If it was possible for life to evolve to evolve, then it was only possible because of the supernatural capabilities of esoteric substances. Only they could exin why such an insane thing coulde to be.


    As excited and amazed as Rui was about the existence of such a species, and the relevance of their existence to him and his Martial Path, now was not the time to lose himself in a reverie in this line of thought.


    He quickly pulled himself together as he returned his focus back to the contest at hand. He most certainly needed to ovee this challenge if he wanted his goals foring to be achieved.


    All of the Martial Squires were fully on guard as they realized that the third challenge revolved around this extremely dangerous creature. They needed some time to process how they were going to handle such an aberrant threat.


    It appeared that Master Greminga was more than willing to give them that time as he disclosed more information about the threat that they were going to face.


    "The Abyssfeeder is almost entirelyprised of an extremely precious and rare esoteric substance known as primordial seed. An extraordinary esoteric substance that can be anything when subjected to the right stimuli. It is an exceedingly difficult esoteric substance to manage and engineer and is a popr area of research and development. That is believed to be what allows the Abyssfeeder species to evolve so well."


    Rui''s eyes widened as he instantly developed an extreme curiosity about the substance in question. It sounded like primordial seed was an extraordinarily high-grade esoteric that was extremely valuable. It also fell in line with his prior expectations of an esoteric substance being responsible for the remarkable capabilities of the Abyssfeeder species.


    He even felt the vague itch to get his hands on some.


    "Now then, I have given you the context behind the challenge, as well as some time to consider it," The man generously exined. "It is time to actually talk about the objective, rules, and conditions for victory. As I''m sure you''ve realized, you will all be facing a specimen each.? Each of them has beenrgely starved in the past few days when they were ustomed to consuming sustenance regrly in a Lost City danger zone where they were found. Thus they will seek out sustenance to consume, one way or another. Their raw physiological prowess is well within the Squire Realm, however, as I said, their ability to ovee hurdles and tribtions far exceeds their conventional limits. Your objective is to defeat them. The first eight to win will move on to the final tournament."


    The containment units fully released the growing Abyssfeeders, before disappearing. Immediately, their webs began spreading even more into the ground and the air.


    The man smiled when he saw all of them stiffen. "Good luck."


    He, too, quickly disappeared, leaving but a small gust of wind behind.


    The contest had already begun.


    The forty Abyssfeeders continued to growrger andrger, growing in a sickly and alien manner.


    For a moment, none of the contestants knew what to do. Instinctually, none of them wanted to get close to the strange lifeforms. Given what they knew about it, it seemed rather unwise to barge in head-on.


    Rui, however, begged to differ. He had a little more insight into the shorings of adaptive evolution.


    It was the strongest after it evolved, but not before.


    If there was any time that one ought to focus on when aiming to take them out, it was before they evolved.


    He quickly activated Hypertrophic Surge, growing in size and density, uncaring for the eyes he drew. Defeating an abyssfeeder early was easily worth the price of exposing another ability of his.


    He activated Transverse Resonance tier five,unching his most powerful attack.


    Nearly every Martial Squire widened their eyes in shock as the ground shook in response to the technique. Heunched five incredibly potent attacks, each faster than the previous one. By the time the first one crossed half way through, it had already ovepped with its four faster sessors, engaging in constructive superposition, merging into one singr titanically potent projectile that warped light itself.


    BOOM!!!


    The colosseum rumbled, reeling in shock.


    The contestants gritted their teeth as they turned towards Rui with a wary expression. His performance was so abrupt, and so abruptly shocking, that they regarded him as a greater threat than any of the Abyssfeeders!


    They were not strictly wrong.


    Yet Rui''s attention was fixed on the Abyssfeeder that he had struck.


    In fact, the same could be said for the other specimens that all froze in their spots, almost as if wondering if their brother was still alive.


    RUMBLE


    The ground suddenly shook as the dust cleared.


    Rui narrowed his eyes.


    He didn''t even need to see it to know that he had failed.


    He watched as a t thin sheet of ckness emerged from the ground, slithering through the rubble.


    It was unharmed.


    Rui focused all of his senses on it as he realized what had happened.


    A grin broke out on his face. "It would be a joke if that was enough¡­"


    Both of themshed forward at the same time. The Abyssfeeder faced off against the Voider.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1244 Water

    <h4>Chapter 1244 Water</h4>


    His eyes narrowed as he studied the damage that his attack had inflicted on the Abyssfeeder specimen that he had attacked. It wasn''t that he hadn''t done any damage at all to its second inspection, he just realized that it was harder to tell because its anatomy was so undefined and hard to gauge.


    But it was clear that it was not entirely ineffective. And yet, he was a little wary of the fact that his strongest attack did not even hurt it all that much. One of the biggest points of concern was the fact that it didn''t even need that much time to begin adapting to a certain offensive.


    (''It''s adaptation timeframe is absurdly little.'') Rui tutted.


    When hepared it to his adaptation, at least, the adaptation speed of the Abyssfeeder species was much higher.


    Of course, Rui adapted to opponents as a whole, not to a single attack. Their adaptation also worked on fundamentally different principles.


    His Flowing Void Style employed the VOID algorithm, which reliedrgely on data analysis starting from simply physicality and stance analysis to pattern recognition to create predictive models and did the actual adapting through the adaptive evolution model, picking the right counters based on what the predictions were.


    It used to be that, but he recently added the Metabody System which allowed him to change his physical parameters to the most optimal to counter his opponent. He essentially altered them toplement his adapted fighting style.


    Together, this formed the core of his Flowing Void Style.


    (''But this creature¡­ It doesn''t even seem to have a sophisticated mind,'') Rui sharply analyzed based on their movements. (''It''s adaptation is purely physiological.'')


    His attention focused even more as it approached. It had for some reason be an extremely t sheet of ckness instead of the web that it was before. It began approaching Rui, which is when he sensed something was off.


    (''Wait a minute¡­'') He frowned. (''I can sense it through Seismic Mapping, but not Tempestuous Feel.'')


    That meant it sent vibrations through the ground and not through the air.


    (''Which means¡­ I see, so that''s how it handled my attack.'') He tutted as he understood what had happened. (''Acousting air absorption. That''s how it dealt with my attack.'')


    It somehow had managed to alter its body in a way that would permeate the impact of the air particles through it in a manner that exploited the fact that gases are not bound together the way solids were. It would also exin why it didn''t register on his Tempestuous Feel.


    Just as Rui was starting to get a better idea of how this creature fought.


    Itshed out at him swiftly.


    It appeared that the other Abyssfeeders had also waited enough.


    The other contestants grew graver by the second as they each sought to deal with the strange creature in their own ways.


    Rui simply stood in ce as the one that he had attacked reached him. He did not want to avoid confrontation because he needed as much data on this creature as he could get. The entire philosophy behind his Martial Art was data-driven adaptation, without data, he couldn''t fight at his peak.


    Another reason he not only stood his ground but rushed towards the Abyssfeeder was because this was not just a sh between man and beast.


    It was a sh of philosophies.


    Of course, he was cognizant that the abyssfeeder certainly not conscious or sentient enough for theplex thought needed to have philosophies. However, despite that, it was undoubtedly the case that there was a sh between the philosophies of himself and his monster of an opponent.


    What was the best way to adapt and evolve to one''s opponent in a physical conflict?


    This was the avenue where they diverged almost entirely.


    The creature''s physiology was the foundation of its ability to adapt and evolve, its body was the foundation of this ability.


    Rui, on the other hand, did not adapt nearly as much through the body. While it was true that he had the Metabody System which did alter its body to adapt to his opponent, the fact of the matter was that the degree to which he altered his body paled inparison to his opponent. While he used autophagy, the hyper-enhanced flow of nutrition and cell-buildingpounds, the Herenal Virus, cell wall thickening, and such principles to alter hisbat physical parameters, these were rather minor changes inparison to the drastic changes that the Abyssfeeder went.


    The creature did not even resemble its original self whatsoever.


    Unlike it, Rui relied on the adaptation and evolution of thought. The VOID algorithm allowed him to make exactly thebat and hand-to-hand decisions that were perfectly suited to countering his opponent. The foundation of adaptation and evolution relied on the mind, rather than the body.


    Rui narrowed his eyes as his expression intensified.


    He felt his heart growing warmer.


    He could not afford to lose this battle. The loss threatened the dominance of the philosophy that he had dedicated himself to.


    Be water.


    One might never expect it out of an instruction consisting of two words, but it had changed Rui''s life.


    No, that wasn''t quite right.


    It had changed both his lives. He had interpreted those words as referring to the state of one''s mind. Back on Earth, that was the only interpretation that made sense.


    Yet, this wasn''t Earth.


    In the world of Gaia, those words could mean a lot more than just the state of mind.


    After all, he was looking at a creature whose body may as well be water. It had started out as a shapeless mass of webs, and now it was rushing towards him in the shape of a mat, was it not water in spirit?


    Which water was superior?


    Mind or body?


    One could not say.


    Yet even as the true battle was about to begin, a single thought flowed through him.


    I won''t lose.


    He couldn''t lose. For other battles, the loss was not absolutely intolerable.


    But not this battle.


    Mind of Water was the foundation of his Martial Path. He had dedicated everything to it. It was almost who he was as a person.


    Losing that¡­ That was no different from dying in mind.


    He would rather die in flesh than let that happen.


    I will win.


    Rui''s expression intensified.


    His expression crumpled with severity.


    His muscles brimmed with power as his mind honed itself sharper than it ever had. Every cell in his body roared as they came together, the sum totality of his being dedicated itself to this battle.


    Deep within him, his heart stirred.


    BADUMP!


    This chapter upload first at  Content ? N?velDrama.Org 2024.

 Chapter 1245 Omen

    <h4>Chapter 1245 Omen</h4>


    Many Martial Masters had deigned to spectate the first three rounds of the Martial Contest. Most that did only did so because they had patroned a Martial Squire. Very few Martial Masters were genuinely interested in the Squire-level contest. If they did choose to spectate the Martial Contest, it would be the Senior-level contest. It was usually a lot more interesting to them, given that it was only one Realm below them.


    Yet those who did choose the Senior-level conflict wouldter regret the choice once their fellow peers informed them of what happened.


    Every Martial Master heard a heartbeat.


    There was plenty of noise, the attacks from the contestants, the crowds going wild. Yet none of them missed it.


    Master Deivon widened his eyes with an expression of shock as he watched Rui.


    (''This¡­'') He could hardly believe what he was seeing. (''¡­The Heart omen, he has arrived at the precipice of the Senior Realm? At the age of twenty-four?!'')


    Contrary to what many believed, the fulfillment of the Martial Body condition was not a sign that one was ready to enter the Senior Realm.


    No.


    The Martial Body condition was the absolute bare minimum. Most grade-ten Martial Squires had fulfilled the Martial Body condition, yet most grade-ten Martial Squires never became Martial Seniors. Only a minority did.


    There had been Martial Squires who had fulfilled the Martial Body condition decades ago and had still not advanced. It was not a sign of anything, much to the dismay of Martial Squires.


    There was a more distinct sign that one was truly at the precipice of the Senior Realm. It was one that Martial Masters did not reveal to Martial Artists of the Senior Realm.


    Even as Master Deivon beheld Rui, he could sense that Rui was different from normal. He didn''t know why, but he could clearly see it.


    Mind and body had ovepped, coordinating in a symphony of melody and rhythm.


    A symphony that only Martial Masters were qualified to hear.


    BADUMP


    At that moment, it rang in their ears. It could not be impeded by mere noise, it almost rang on a different ne of reality, one only they could sense.


    The many Martial Masters in the audience frowned as their eyes shifted away from that of their peers and towards the source. It didn''t matter even if their heritors were on the losing foot.


    It was a rare opportunity to behold something that was hard toe by.


    BADUMP


    Master Gremingar, whose duty was to carefully oversee the entire battle, couldn''t help but divert his attention away from others as a hint of confusion shed across his trained face.


    Master Uma opened her eyes for the first time from her meditation in her VIP seat. Her eyes slowly turned towards Rui as she stared at him expressionlessly.


    An amazed smile slowly emerged on Master Carian''s face as he paid even more attention to a Martial Squire who had already earned his interest.


    BADUMP!


    Unbeknownst to everyone else, their eyes were fixed on Rui with rapt attention as they beheld the inception of a battle that may very well allow them to witness a spectacle that was too rare to be missed.


    Rui, however, didn''t know.


    Even if he did, he would never care.


    After what seemed like an eternity, it was time.


    The true battle had begun.


    WHOOSH!


    Rui sharply avoided an attack from the Abyssfeeder. A ck spike had emerged from Abyssfeeder,shing out towards Rui out of seemingly nowhere.


    Yet it appeared that it wasn''t done.


    WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH!


    Rui somersaulted away as he evaded the ck spikes. He did not want to let them pierce his flesh, he was rather wary of any potential venomous attacks. If the creature could adapt its entire body on a fundamental level to handle any environment, then poison was a very realistic possibility.


    (''I can''t take any damage, it''s too dangerous to fight at close range.'')


    He had already begun adapting. He quickly concluded that hand-to-handbat was futile, if only because it did not have hands, and fought by generating spikes from its body, at least for now. But that made it harder to predict while making it easier for him to get hit at that range. The only way to dodge a barrage of spikes was to move back, there was no space in between spikes.


    He also couldn''t attack it with strikes very easily, if his fist ran into a spike, it would not end well, he had already decided to avoid the spikes, making close-range attacks impossible. Grappling was absolutely out of the question, he would die if he tried that.


    (''In that case, it''s better to open up the distance entirely.'') Rui''s expression sharpened.


    THWOOM THWOOM THWOOM!


    He fired away three powerful Mighty Roar sh sts at the creature.


    BAM BAM BAM!


    "Tsk," Rui narrowed his eyes as they were less effective even when he considered the fact that they were much weaker than the tier five Transverse Resonance that he hadunched earlier.


    Itshed forward like almost nothing happened. It began changing form, going from being t to returning to a blob-like shape. Rui narrowed his eyes as it began taking a concave or hemispherical shape. Content ? N?velDrama.Org 2024.


    (''The inner hemispherical surface matches the shape of the sound attack, this increases the area of contact, reducing the pressure.'') His expression grew more grave. (''Furthermore, by increasing its surface area, it has a higher chance of getting a good grasp of my body in close quarters.'')


    It rapidly shifted across the ground, relying on a wheel-like mechanism to seamlessly chase after him.


    Rui immediately began sky-walking as he continuously observed the creature''s changes and shifts. He was starting to get a good idea of how the creature functioned effectively. The fundamental metabolic processes that the body underwent were still arge mystery to him, but the principles that guided the change were bing more transparent to him.


    Immediately the Abyssfeeder took to the air, and Rui studied it more intently.


    (''Air absorption and expulsion thrust.'') He quickly concluded.


    It sucked in air andunched it downwards extremely powerfully, using Newton''s thirdw to propel itself towards him.


    Not even taking to the skies could shake its determination to consume him!


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1246 Adaptations

    <h4>Chapter 1246 Adaptations</h4>


    Rui continued increasing the intensity of his long-range attacks from a distance, spamming barrages of sonic bullets, trying to slowly gather damage while keeping it away from him at a distance, while also sky-walking at top speed.


    Ordinarily, this would be difficult for any grade-ten Martial Squire to ovee. Rui''s long-range offense was quite respectable even without Hypertrophic Surge, furthermore, with Gale Force Breathing, and Outer Convergence he could shift around the air quite swiftly. Catching up to him was a remarkably heavy task.


    Yet, the Abyssfeeder simply shifted its form. From a concave hemisphere, its shape shifted to that of a disk.


    (''Coefficient of drag reduced by ny-six-point-eight percent.'') Rui''s expression grew more severe. (''It''s adapting to aerial maneuvering by bing more aerodynamic because I took the battle to the air.'')


    Now, the earlier equation no longer held true. The Abyssfeeder zipped through the air at a much greater speed than Rui could. The human body was not aerodynamic, and there was a limit to what Martial Art techniques could do in that regard.


    Nothing beat literally changing the shape of one''s body to cut through the air effortlessly, even particrly useful techniques like Gale Force Breathing were not enough. The Abysfeeder shot through the air towards Rui faster than any of the contestants could hope to outrun or tag with attacks, that was why most of them quickly returned to the ground.


    But not Rui.


    BOOM!


    Many widened their eyes.


    Rui sharply tagged the shing disk with a tier three Transverse Resonance out of seemingly nowhere, disying remarkably high uracy that far exceeded the conventional limits of the Squire Realm!


    While others had troublending attacks from a distance on the Abyssfeeder midair, every single attack that Ruiunched struck it.


    (''Your propelling trajectory is transparent.'') Rui narrowed his eyes as the ODA System worked tirelessly to give Rui incredible uracy. Because the creature mindlessly became increasingly efficient and energy-consumptive in its trajectories, Rui could easily predict which direction it was going to go even without relying on a predictive model.


    Despite zipping toward him at incredible speeds through the air, Rui continuously nailed it with every attack, refusing to allow it to enter close range to him. Furthermore, due to the fact that the sound bullet could not be easily perceived once it wasunched, it simply was not equipped to dodge him. It could try and gauge his aim from physical cues, but that required not only being sentient and intelligent but also having an understanding of human behavior.


    Rui had ruled out both possibilities. He became more and more certain of his understanding of this creature the more he fought it. He became more and more certain that it embodied the concept of the body of water as opposed to Rui''s mind of water.


    (''Its adaptation and evolution are not guided by adaptation rules baked into its DNA,'') Rui narrowed his eyes as he continued firing away at it, not allowing it to reach him. (''It''s more like individual cells undergo random rapid gic changes or mutations in the face of an environmental problem or hurdle. Cells with sessful changes most likely serve as a blueprint for the rest of the cells in the body, while cells with unsessful changes either continue changing or copy the sessful changes. Thus the entire creature adapts to any given problem or hurdle in this manner.'')


    As for how these changes urred? Rui had gained insights into that as well.


    He narrowed his eyes, staring at its fluctuating body. (''¡­RNA editing.'')


    RNA executed the gic information stored in DNA. However, unlike DNA, it could be edited by the body throughplicated biochemical processes. It was through RNA editing that octopuses edited their brains and bodies to be able to adapt to different temperatures during different seasons.


    It was clear to Rui that the creature most likely used an extreme version of this process to adapt to much more than octopuses could, along with the presence of primordial seed in the creature''s body. Together, he understood why it came to be known as the bane of Martial Art. Its ability to adapt was almost unparalleled.


    BOOM!!!


    Rui sted the creature with a tier five Transverse Resonance, knocking it off trajectory a bit.


    While the audience and spectators looked impressed at Rui''s absurd aim allowing him to constantly knock away the aerodynamic disk from entering close range from him, Rui knew better than to be satisfied with the course of the battle.


    BAM BAM BAM!


    Three powerful sonic bullets struck the disk this time, and yet¡­


    (''It didn''t even budge this time¡­It grew even faster!'') Rui narrowed his eyes as his expression grew more severe. (''It''s adapting quickly!'')


    Its external appearance had not changed, yet Rui''s powerful Riemannian Echo revealed the truth.


    (''It''s shifted all of its mass to the core of its disk body, its external structure had be porous and hollow¡­ a sponge to suck air better than it ever did before.'') Rui clenched his fist. (''A disk form for aerodynamic maneuvering, a porous and hollow exterior to facilitate greater absorption of air not just to propel itself forward, but to increase the power of its acoustic absorption to be almost immune to sound attacks. It has literally molded itself to be the perfect counter to my long-range techniques.'')


    It was not fun to see techniques that even he, as modest and grounded as he was, prided himself in to be crushed so overwhelmingly. Its air and sound absorption properties made it extremely difficult to keep it out of range.


    Yet¡­


    (''I''m not going down that easily.'') Rui activated Hypertrophic Surge as he empowered a tier five Transverse Resonance. Content rights by N?velDr//ama.Org.


    BOOM!!!


    The sudden surge in power clearly caught the abyssfeeder off-guard, knocking it away. Yet Rui''s expression grew more severe when he saw that it could only knock it off-trajectory, it did not suffer any damage.


    Just looking at that, he knew that it was a matter of time before even this powerful attack becamepletely negated.


    Yet the fire in his eyes only grew more fierce as his thoughts raced furiously, formting his final n.


    If this failed, then he would lose a lot more than just the third round.


    Both his mind and body knew that.


    The totality of all his mental and physical power raced to even greater heights as he truly pushed himself to the limit.


    To the limit¡­ and beyond.


    BADUMP


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1247 Choice

    <h4>Chapter 1247 Choice</h4>


    He narrowed his eyes as he prepared himself. He had been analyzing the abyssfeeder deeply, gaining insight into it with every movement it made. There were several things that he found out about it.


    Its patterns were actually incredibly simple, as a creature that adapted and changed in the same manner that nts naturally sought out sunlight, it did not possessplex thought that caused some incrediblyplex patterns in behavior.


    That sounded well and good, but it came with a deep problem


    Its patterns were simple, it was just that the patterns continued changing as the body did, undoing a bit of his progress every time he changed it.


    It was frustrating because it was in a way adapting to his adaptation by making it difficult to adapt to him. Of course, he knew that this wasn''t actually the case. This was an unintended consequence of the nature of existence as opposed to an active adaptation measure that it took to counter his adaptation.


    Nheless, it had been effective. He was not able to form a perfect predictive model because, by the time he did, it had already formed a different body that mostly invalidated the predictive model he had built before. That was the reason he needed toe up with something new.


    He refused to believe that the VOID algorithm had be obsolete. This was the first time that something had refuted his predictive model so definitively.


    However, he was firm in his belief in the pattern recognition model of the VOID algorithm. The universe and all of reality were made up of all kinds of patterns on every level. Why would a single monster defy that rule?


    It didn''t, he just needed to expand his scope.


    If the patterns of its movements keep changing with its body then¡­ Rui''s eyes had narrowed. I''ll just have to create a predictive model to predict the future changes in its body, based on the past!


    That was the goal he had established for himself early on in the battle.


    Since he knew that the adaptive choices made by the abyssfeeder were not as a result of thought, but more of a result of biochemical processes that followed a whole bunch of patterns such as thews of physics and the principles of biochemistry.


    All he needed to do was pay attention to the right parameters and begin noting down parameters.


    Unfortunately, unlike a predictive model for movements, Rui had never actually created a predictive model for physiological and anatomical change.


    He needed to create a new framework then and there.


    A horrifyinglyplicated task that needed to be aplished perfectly in the middle ofbat against the abyssfeeder.


    Furthermore, that wasn''t enough. Content ? N?velDrama.Org 2024.


    He needed to create a predictive model that would not only predict what kind of body it would have but also the predictive model that would be necessary for the body.


    Ordinarily, predicting future movement predictive models for predicted bodies just by looking at the body would be impossible.


    Predictive models predicted movements by scouring through an incredible number of patterns and evaluating what oue had the highest probability. They required time and effort because each person was an incrediblyplex individual.


    Each person that was.


    Abyssfeeders were entirely different, they were much simpler. They were not too different from automated toys in a way, the only issue was that their body kept changing due to the physiological changes.


    Still, it was a massive undertaking nheless, not only would his body predictive model need to predict what kind of body it would have in the future, but it would also need to give him the elementary predictive model for the movements of that body.


    Every Martial Squire would not even know where to begin.


    It was an absurd proposition, barely within the realm of possibility for a Martial Squire.


    And yet¡­


    "Heh¡­"


    Rui did not even notice the smile that had crept up on his face.


    I will do it.


    His body pushed itself to the absolute.


    I will aplish it.


    His mind sharpened, honing itself into a razor that cut through the fog of uncertainty. His vision fixed on the abyssfeeder.


    For a moment, he was under the illusion that he couldmunicate with it.


    I beg you¡­


    An earnest request surged up in his mind.


    ¡­Don''t fail before I seed.


    A butterfly that broke through a cocoon without its own effort would never fly. The very act of breaking through a hurdle was the foundation of growth.


    In that moment, the Martial Contest, the final tournament, the predicament of Chairman Deacon, even Senior Xanarn''s treatment¡­


    They all faded away.


    They may as well have not existed. They no longer even sat at the back of his mind, they simply ceased.


    His mind was focused on more important matters.


    Mass distribution, range ofbat, coefficient of drag, linear and angr velocity, also, surface area to mass ratio¡­ He immediately beganputing the variables needed to create such a predictive model, furiouslyputing together a rough statistical and data analytical process topute all the information and yield a predictive model that would output predictions based on the current data on the abysfeeder''s body which he collected using his powerful senses.


    It was a race.


    If he seeded before the creature fully adapted to his long-rangebat, then he could turn the battle around.


    If he failed, then it was game over. He didn''t think he would die at this stage of the contest, but he would rather die than fail.


    He had already reached a state of mind where his life no longer mattered to him. He fought not even for victory in the Martial Contest.


    He only fought to validate his Martial Art. The failure would mean that he was unable to ovee something that was the antithesis even of his Martial Art. It would be a severe blow to his spirit.


    Such a thing must not be allowed to happen. Every cell in his body roared with agreement as he pushed himself to the absolute limit.


    BADUMP


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1248 Clash

    <h4>Chapter 1248 sh</h4>


    The audience watched the contestants fighting with shocked expressions.


    Almost none of them werepetitive!


    It was terrifying to see what a single creature could do to Martial Artists of all kinds. There were only two Martial Squires out of the forty who were able to not get overwhelmed.


    One was the reigning champion, Squire Meera. She had ended up getting locked in a stalemate with the abyssfeeder.


    Their battle was hard toprehend, it was almost incoherent. Both sides seemed to change rapidly, so much so that nobody could make sense of what was happening to them.


    Inparison, the battle that Rui was undergoing was a lot moreprehensive.


    He sted away at the abysskeeper from afar with everything he had, refusing to allow it toe closer.


    Rui narrowed his eyes as he realized that his tier Transverse Resonance was increasingly less effective with each attack. He knew that it was not going tost long based on the rate at which it was progressing.


    Thankfully, it seemed as though its rate of adaptation against the powerful attack was lower inparison. It appeared that the stronger the attack, the proportionally slower its progression was.


    THWOOM THWOOM THWOOM!


    Rui somersaulted backward as heunched three power tier four Transverse Resonance attacks in rapid session.


    BOOM!


    The abyssfeeder quivered under the sheer amount of power that Rui was outputting.


    It was as though it could hardly believe that a single Martial Squire could output such power!


    Transverse Resonance tier four and tier five were already in the grade-ten territory, furthermore, they were amplified by the titanic power of Hypertrophic Surge.


    On top of that, Rui was urately nailing every single attack perfectly on the dot to ensure maximum impact. The ODA System of the Pathfinder was something that made the already daunting task of approaching Rui even more perilous.


    That was why the fact that it continuously made progress against him was even more impressive.


    It continuously focused more and more of its body mass at its core, shifting all vital and vulnerable tissue deep inside, while the tougher and harder tissue upied the exteriors of the disk-shaped creature. The exterior looked extremely solid but in reality, it was light and extremely porous and web-like, perfect for absorbing air and sound and using it to fuel its own eleration.


    If not for the fact that Rui strategically used the ODA System to attack it in angles that were perpendicr to the direction that it wanted to go in, it would have been a lot more sessful in using his power to elerate towards him. However, Rui continuously used many tricks and tactics to slow it down.


    Slowly but surely he was adapting to the adaptation of abysskeeper.


    The only question was whether it was fast enough.


    If it wasn''t, the Abyssfeeder would continuously make progress towards him, and eventually reach a close range and attack him from there. It would be unlikely that he would be able to switch to Nemean Blossom, or Weaving Blood fast enough.


    Furthermore, even if he did, it would most likely be game over at that point.


    Rui''s eyes sharpened as he resolutely pushed himself even further. His movements became more and more efficient as he resolved to increase his uracy even further.


    There were several measures that he took to make it harder for the creature to absorb his attacks.


    Power is not what makes absorbing them more difficult, not truly. He realized. What does make it harder is the energy density.


    A lot of power spread across a wide attack was easier to absorb, less power focused across a much smaller area was much more difficult. The sheer amount of energy focused across a small area made it more difficult for that portion of the creature''s organs to absorb the attacks.


    This way, he could reduce the energy he consumed, while also making it more difficult to absorb and negate his attacks.


    The distance between himself and the abyssfeeder served as a measure of who was winning. This is the property of N?-velDrama.Org.


    If the distance was reduced, then it was only because the abyssfeeder was winning.


    BOOM BOOM BOOM!


    Rui bombarded the creature with attacks as he continuously applied Gale Force Breathing and Outer Convergence to speed away.


    His eyes widened as the abyssfeeder resolutely followed. The predictive model that he was constructing allowed him to see what wasing ahead of time.


    It''s adapting once more. He narrowed his eyes as he ran calctions. It''s growing smaller.


    The abyssfeeder began reducing its disk size as it began squeezing even more mass into its super-dense core. It appeared that the primordial seed was so flexible that it could freely be squeezed into a small dot, increasing its density seemingly limitlessly with no resistance!


    BOOM BOOM BOOM!


    The very atmosphere shuddered as Rui unleashed his most powerful long-range attacks one after the other.


    Yet the truth became increasingly clear to those who watched.


    "It''s getting closer¡­"


    "Damn, can no one beat that thing?!"


    "Do your best!"


    Yet, words of encouragement were just that.


    Words.


    They did not impact reality; the fact of the matter.


    The fact of this matter was that even with all the measures and tactics that Rui came up with to adapt hisbat style based on the predictive model he was developing.


    It was not good enough to keep the abyssfeeder away.


    BADUMP!


    The abyssfeeder raced in towards him sleekly. It did not cause so much as a ripple through the air as it approached him.


    The time was nigh.


    Rui''s eyes sharpened as he exerted himself to the absolute limit, yet it appeared that his long-range offense had finally truly died.


    WHOOSH!


    Fifteen meters.


    The abyssfeeder was arriving.


    Every cell in his body felt intense danger.


    BADUMP!


    Ten meters.


    His eyes intensified.


    It was not over.


    He refused to let it be over.


    He would die before he let it be over.


    BADUMP!


    Five meters.


    The time had arrived. It seemed clear that the gambit had failed.


    Or it should have.


    Yet in that moment, where he should have experienced the height of despair¡­


    "Heh¡­"


    ¡­He had the audacity to grin.


    BADUMP!


    Every muscle in his body brimmed with raw unadulterated power.


    Every cell worked together as Outer Convergence converged more power than it ever had.


    BOOM!!!


    The final sh ensued.


    Only one could emerge victorious.


    And only one did.


    SPLAT!


    The spectators widened their eyes in shock.


    "Eh¡­?"


    Rui waste to notice.


    He nced down at his arm.


    Only then did the pain register.


    The pain of having an arm chopped off.


    The abyssfeeder had brutally chopped off his uppercut at the shoulder joint.


    BADUMP!


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1249 Insufficient

    <h4>Chapter 1249 Insufficient</h4>


    BADUMP!


    Rui''s arm flew across the colosseum arena.


    The air plummeted.


    A vague impending sense of despair and doom radiated across the battle arena.


    None of the contestants had failed to notice despite their own losing battles. Many of the contestants had been disqualified, having been saved from absolute death. Those who still held on were severely wounded, even more so than Rui.


    Yet, it appeared that Rui followed suit.


    The colosseum was silent. Even the noise from the other battles seemed to melt away into the background as an overwhelming sense of defeat seemed to fill up the spectator stands.


    That was when it happened.


    THUD!


    The abyssfeeder that took Rui''s arm plummeted to the ground, forming a heavy crater when itnded.


    BADUMP!


    Everybody watched, shocked.


    And confused.


    The creature took off Rui''s arm in the sh, why had it suddenly copsed?


    No one knew.


    It began shifting in its crater, quivering as its body began shifting.


    It was healing.


    Or it would have, had it been allowed to.


    BOOM!


    Rui broke the silence as he sted it with a tier-five Transverse Resonance.


    A solemn expression emerged on his face.


    He faced the abyssfeeder head-on.


    Two words escaped his mouth.


    "Mind wins."


    They cut through the fog of defeat as he made his deration to the world.


    His expression intensified as he called upon every ounce of power within his body.


    His eyes sharpened.


    His bleeding body mourned as it pulled itself together.


    Yet it bled.


    He didn''t seem to care. A glint of madness shed across his eyes as his offense grew even more aggressive.


    The spectators watched, frozen, as Rui went into a frenzy as he unleashed every ounce of power onto a crippled creature.


    They watched his figure, his movements, his attacks.


    A single emotion radiated from him.


    Frustration.


    It was iprehensible.


    They didn''t understand.


    What happened?


    How could such a clear defeat morph into such a clear victory?


    What was even more iprehensible was the frustration that was visible on his face.


    What kind of Martial Artist grew frustrated after they started winning a losing battle?


    Only the Martial Masters understood the true depths of that emotion.


    He was close. Master Deivon sighed.


    Even now¡­ He''s pushing himself to cross the precipice to a higher Realm. Master Gremingar shook his head.


    But¡­ It''s toote¡­ Master Carian closed his eyes. The Martial Heart only heeds the call of need, not the call of frustration.


    Master Uma stared at him impassively, before closing her eyes.


    They had all seen what had happened. Unlike the spectators, the truth of circumstances had not escaped them.


    Just before his arm was taken off, he struck the abyssfeeder with an uppercut. Master Gremingar narrowed his eyes. That single attack did more damage to the abyssfeeder than all of his previous attacks. It did more damage than even the loss of an arm.


    He used vibrations to permeate the impact all the way to the core of the creature. Master Carian mused. Ordinarily, that is nothing special but¡­ Content from N?velDr(a)ma.Org.


    But the difference was that the abyssfeeder had been adapting to Rui''s long-range attack by protecting all of the vital tissue of its body by shoving it deep inside the core of the body.


    The Martial Masters were not the only ones who knew this. Rui was the only other one who had also recognized the truth.


    And he had capitalized on it.


    He had continuedunching more attacks from a distance. He had continued making it harder and harder for the abyssfeeder to absorb the attacks.


    In response, the abyssfeeder continued shifting more of its vital tissues to the core of the body while the exteriors became freer to absorb the sound through acoustic air absorption.


    It was the perfect counter to Rui''s long-range.


    He had known that.


    He had forced it to continue using that adaptation with even more powerful attacks.


    He had been waiting for the moment the abyssfeeder would inevitably cross the distance between them, reaching him.


    Everything had been for that moment.


    In the moment they shed, he hadunched his most powerful Flowing Canon throwing as much raw power in a single strike as he could.


    Yet it wasn''t the power that he was focused on.


    It was where that power went.


    He activated Reverberating Lance to a degree that he seldom did, pushing the technique to its absolute limit.


    All so that he could permeate the impact past the exterior and to the core of the creature.


    Protecting vital tissue in a core from external attacks was the perfect counter to distant attacks.


    Yet what was the perfect counter against one, was the perfect weakness to another.


    Against the Reverberating Lance technique, it was no different from baring one''s vulnerability openly.


    The impact permeated through the creature, striking the vital weak tissue within its core. It was no different from Rui striking the neck of a Martial Artist without any defensive techniques protecting it.


    It was overwhelming.


    The abyssfeeder had managed to take his arm off before that happened. But once the impact struck the core and did its damage, it couldn''t even maintain its body shape anymore.


    It had turned into a ck puddle within a crater, one that was now continuously being assaulted by Rui.


    It tried to heal the damaged tissue, but Rui refused to allow it to.


    It tried to adapt, but the damage was too great.


    Its movements became slower and weaker with each attack.


    It kept struggling¡­ until it stopped.


    It stopped moving.


    Every sign of life faded away.


    Yet Rui didn''t stop.


    He gritted his teeth as an expression of frustration upied his face.


    Get up.


    His other hand subconsciously reached his chest as he felt his heart rate slowing down.


    Get up!


    The trigger condition for the breakthrough to the Senior Realm was a battle that pushed one to the limit challenging the driving force behind one''s Martial Path.


    He had instinctively sensed that this battle may very well have been the key.


    Yet it was insufficient.


    He was too strong.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1250 Both

    The silence drowned out the noise.


    No one understood why he radiated more despair than when he was losing against the monster. His actions looked absurd to all spectators aside from those who came to be aware of the source of his frustration. Not even the contestants understood why he took such a strange victoryp.


    Regardless, what was done could not be undone. As much as he wished that the creature was still able to continue fighting to push him to the Senior Realm, it was dead. He was just going to have to ept this simple truth and move on.


    For a brief moment, he considered attacking other abyssfeeders to see if he could get the same stimtion once more, but he shook his head, sighing.


    It was clear to him that that probably would not work. He could feel his raging heart calming down, and that meant that he would have to go through an incredibly stressful battle from scratch. However, even if he did do that, it would still not be enough.


    He had already proven himself stronger, he had already proven that the VOID algorithm was the better adapter, and the biggest drive to win had already gone. He had also already qualified for the next round, so there was not even a necessity for such an action.


    He instinctively knew that such a paltry attempt at trying to stoke the mes once more was simply not going to work.Content ? N?velDrama.Org 2024.


    He heaved a sigh as he calmed down, but his mood had already soured. Not even the victory and the prospect of getting to the final tournament tomorrow was enough to cheer him up. It couldn''t be helped, he hade close to getting something far more valuable. He didn''t even strictly need to go any further considering that his agreement with Master Deivon required him to reach the final tournament, and nothing more. Senior Xanarn''s treatment had already been secured.


    What he was most focused on right now was the opportunity that he had just lost; one that would take him to a higher Realm. He had already found a sessful blueprint for it. A Martial Artist who could push the core of his Martial Art to its absolute limit. An opponent that could challenge the foundations of his Martial Art to its absolute limit. An opponent that could challenge the driving force that drove him down his Martial Path of adaptive evolution.


    Unfortunately, there were very few opponents that could do that.


    Just being strong wasn''t enough. Had that been enough, he could just challenge a Martial Senior to a serious fight, and break through in the process of fighting their Martial Heart. But the driving force of his will to fight and pursue his Martial Path was not victory itself. He fought for his ambition of fulfilling Project Water and creating a Martial Art that could adapt and evolve to all opposition in the world, and bing a Martial Artist who could do that.


    Only an opponent that could threaten the sanctity of the choice he made with creating the VOID algorithm; whether that chosen path to fulfilling Project Water was the right choice, could truly rile up his Martial Heart. An ordinary Martial Senior that he knew he would be able to beat if he was in the Senior Realm simply did not intersect with the core driving forces of his Martial journey.


    These insights were the sole constion to the failed opportunity of breaking through to the Senior Realm. Before, he did not know what kind of battle could serve as a viable trigger. But now, he knew what kind of circumstances an opponent would need to create to force him to take the final step.


    The other alternative was the threat of hurting his family. He did not even need for this to pan out to know that he would be driven to insane degrees if his family was ever being hurt in front of him, but he did not even consider trying to purposely put them in such a circumstance. That would be sick, and if he was willing to do such a thing in the first ce, then he wouldn''t be so driven to protect them, so it was even contradictory.


    As for helping Senior Xanarn, he didn''t even feel bad in admitting that she probably couldn''t serve as a trigger. He liked her but it didn''t even begin topare to an ambition that spanned across two lives and a family that he grew up with.


    "Huff¡­" He shook his head, returning to reality as he finally took stock of what was going around him.


    "Hm?" His eyes narrowed as he noticed that there were only ten contestants including himself left in the colosseum. "Where¡­? Oh."


    He was so detached from reality he didn''t even realize that they had all been disqualified. Most likely because they were about to die at the hands of the abyssfeeder. Which made sense to him, grade-ten Martial Squires were no different from canon fodder to him while the abyssfeeder was powerful enough to take his arm out before dying. It was cut from a different cloth, literally.


    In fact, now that he had satisfied his desire to preserve the sanctity of the choice he made, he actually no longer felt threatened by the physiological adaptation evolution that the abyssfeeder had. In this particr battle, it was mind versus body, however, that did not mean that they had topete for the rest of his life.


    Why couldn''t it be mind and body? He had already begun to go down that path with the Metabody System. Sure, when he originally created the VOID algorithm adapting and evolving the body was not part of the n, but that was because it was not possible back on Earth. Had it been possible, there is no way he would not use it. Adaptive evolution was adaptive evolution, regardless of mind and body.


    With that in mind, he actually nced over at the corpse of the abyssfeeder. It had already turned into separate puddles of ck goo. A glint of greed shed across his eyes.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1251 Stalemate

    He had not forgotten about the esoteric substance primordial seed. ording to Master Gremingar, it was a substance that could be anything. That was rather remarkable and clearly was something that held true given what the abyssfeeder disyed to him. It demonstrated many esoteric abilities that it developed on the spot to counter Rui, if he could tap into even a bit of that seemingly limitless power, perhaps he could be much stronger than he currently was.


    He couldn''t even imagine the sheer difficulty of such a task. This was an absurd hurdle that could not be ovee without immense effort and time. This was on a whole other level from simply grafting an esoteric substance deep inside his body.


    Furthermore, it was essentially impossible for him to ever reach the abyssfeeder''s level, but that was fine, he did not need to get to that level to make a satisfactory application of the primordial seed substance.


    Regardless, it was a project that he would have to shelve for the future. Perhaps he could look into it after he broke through to the Senior Realm.


    "¡­And contestant Feron has been disqualified on the basis of being unable to prevent death." Master Gremingar helpfully announced, drawing Rui''s attention.


    He saw a Martial Senior with an active Martial Heart standing in front of a severely injured Martial Squire. The man had lost a hand and an arm and had many holes impaled into him across his body.


    In front of the Martial Senior was a stationary abyssfeeder that had nted itself into the ground and had taken the shape of a tree with long and sharp whips sticking out of the tree trunk. It was a strangely adapted form and one that was quite different from the disk shape that it had taken against Rui. He could even tell what kind of Martial Squire the target was based on these adapted traits.


    Regardless, the Martial Squire had done an admirable job holding on this long, but it appeared that he was unable to make it into the top eight, just missing the cut-off by two ranks.


    Rui nced at the other Martial Squires.


    Almost all of them were gravely injured, and very few were in a genuine fighting position.


    Only one had managed to stalemate the battle.


    None of them had defeated their abyssfeeder specimen.


    In fact, now that Rui thought about it, he was pretty sure that none of them were supposed to defeat the abyssfeeder. Although Master Gremingar had said that the first eight to win would pass, that was most likely to trick them into believing victory was possible, getting them to go all out rather than fight passively.


    In reality, thest eight standing were the ones that would go on to the next round. Victory most likely was out of the question.


    In fact, the more Rui became cognizant of his environment, he actually remembered that there was an audience.


    He began cognizant of the many eyes that he felt fixating on him even though his battle had ended.


    Oh well, I''m sure that Master Deivon will handle this situation well.


    "¡­Contestant Veriole had been disqualified. With eight Martial Squires left in contention, the third roundes to an end." Master Gremingar resolutely announced. "Contestant Reese, Contestant Yiu, Contestant Feoul, Contestant Frinjschia, Contestant Falken, Contestant Dreemont, Contestant Nik, and Champion Meera, I congratte all of you on passing the third round. Each of you had proven your power, perseverance, and will in making it this far in a contest that originally held hundreds of thousands of your peers. Each of you has the capital to be considered the pinnacle of the Squire Realm. No matter what happens tomorrow, know that your achievements will ring across the Martial World. I wish you all the best of luck, may the best Martial Artist win."


    The colosseum erupted in apuse as the Martial Squires copsed in relief receiving immediate emergency medical aid. The abyssfeeders had been incapacitated and returned to containment immediately the moment Master Gremingar began his announcement.Content rights by N?velDr//ama.Org.


    Only one Martial Squire was able enough to not require emergency medical care. Even Rui needed people tending to his arm.


    "That was a beautiful fight," Squire Meera offered with a good-natured smile.


    Rui turned towards her, observing her body.


    Bruises, a few cuts here and there. That was all he spotted.


    He wasn''t sure what was more impressive; stalemating an abyssfeeder with that little damage, or winning after losing an arm.


    At the very least, he did not feel an overwhelming sense of superiority because he managed to take down an abyssfeeder and she did not. His victory had been close, even if he did ount for that. Had the abyssfeeder been even a beat quicker, it would have torn off his arm before he could nail the final strike, and that would have been game over.


    Perhaps the difference in this oue reflected the difference in their mentality. Rui was willing to take risks if it meant victory. Perhaps he too could have harmlessly stalemated the creature had he chosen a less extreme solution to fight it, but he ultimately decided that that was not enough.


    But more importantly, the fact that she did manage to stalemate it meant that it was possible that she could serve the same role that it did to Rui in this battle.


    A glint of desire shed in his eyes as he regarded.


    Unfortunately, she misinterpreted it.


    "I know I am beautiful, but could you please not lust after my body in such an open fashion? It is inappropriate." She remarked, yet he could see that she was hardly offended


    He frowned. "I was not lusting after your body."


    "You did, I saw you."


    "I did not."


    "Did too."


    Is she a narcissist or just an airhead?


    He wasn''t sure, but frankly, he didn''t care.


    It didn''t matter, every Martial Artist this strong had strange quirks. Rui couldn''t pretend to have an ordinary temperament or personality himself. As long as she could potentially serve as a whetstone to his de, he didn''t care what her personality was.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1252 Unsatisfied

    His desire to find Martial Artists who could push his Martial Art and the ambition that served as the driving force for his Martial Path to the limit became much greater. He could see that Squire Meera qualified as one of them.


    However, there was another Martial Squire who also qualified. He had not forgotten about Ieyasu, the man was quite incredible and easily qualified to be champion material in continental contests such as this. None of the other six Martial Squires could hold a candle to a man who easily defeated Martial Seniors without their Martial Hearts. He had actually managed to fend off the four Martial Seniors targeting Senior Leonil. The fact that thetter survived despite being weaker than Senior Xanarn who almost died spoke volumes about his prowess.


    Unless some other circumstances shifted the game, these two Martial Artists were his only hope as far as Martial Artists went.


    If that failed then he wasn''t sure how viable it was for him to find the challenge he sought within human space.


    If they fail then¡­ perhaps the Beast Domain will be my only hope. His eyes narrowed. He had seriously considered entering the true Beast Domain at the heart of the continent during his decade-long journey away from the Kandrian Empire if need be.


    It was thetest frontier. A region of nature that was so perilous that humanity had decided it was too difficult and costly to endeavor fully exploring and colonizing. This actually spoke volumes of just how absurdly dangerous the Beast Domain was. He knew what Martial Seniors were capable of, and when he extrapted it to Martial Masters and Sages, the fact that the Beast Domain could fend off the likes of those monsters meant that it was quite formidable.


    Furthermore, the abyssfeeder arose from the Beast Domain, perhaps he would find simr challenges to ovee.


    Where did he say these Abyssfeeders were found? A Lost City Danger Zone? What in the world is that? Rui frowned.


    Regardless, this option was only if no Martial Squire in the human domain could do the job. He could only cross his fingers and hope for the best.


    The event ended as the injured contestants were taken away for more extensive medical aid. Many of the Martial Artists required quite extensive treatments to restore them to their peak for tomorrow.


    The medical aid alone took some time, thankfully, it appeared that his arm had been preserved when it was chopped off, something he was grateful for. Healing his old arm was a much better solution than regrowing a new arm. The powerful medical treatments ensured that the arm was surgically reattached to his body without any problems.


    "Congrattions," Master Deivon said to him, smiling before his expression became a tad bit more sullen. "¡­And I''m sorry for your loss."


    Rui wasn''t even too surprised that the Martial Master seemed to have figured out exactly what had happened during the fight with the abyssfeeder.


    He shook his head. "I will have other opportunities."


    Master Deivon looked pleased that Rui had not let this miss dishearten him. He decided to offer some good news to Rui to help cheer him up.


    "I have prepared a medical and surgery team equipped with all the medical instruments, machines, medicine, and potions that they will need to nurse your patient back to perfect health," Master Deivon informed him. "I made sure to deploy the best of the best. They will be able to restore her, just as we agreed. You have fulfilled your end of the bargain, frankly, you have over-delivered. I am already satisfied with the capital that I have gained as your patron."


    Rui had not forgotten that he had fulfilled his part of the agreement.


    "Please keep me posted on all the updates in regards to her medical treatment," Rui replied. "I need to get some rest."


    "You don''t need to fight in the main tournament tomorrow, you know," Master Deivon informed him. "You can if you want to, but you don''t strictly have to."


    Rui shook his head, and a hint of determination shed through his eyes. "I will fight. Fighting her on such a grand stage may give me what I need."


    Master Deivon immediately understood who and what he was talking about. "Champion Meera is most certainly a worthy opponent. Still, it''s a shame you weren''t here two contests ago."


    "Why do you say that?" Rui asked with a raised eyebrow.


    "The previous champion¡­ was cut from a different cloth entirely," Master Deivon sighed with admiration. "He defeated the current champion four years ago, it''s a shame he never participated after that. He may very well have been the perfect solution to your predicament, as would you be his."


    "Hm?" Rui raised an eyebrow. "Considering Meera is champion, I''m assuming she beat him two years ago?"


    "She didn''t. He didn''t appear for the tournamentst year, or this year for that matter. No one knows where he is or what he''s doing. Perhaps he''s dead, perhaps he''s already a Martial Senior. Or perhaps he lost interest because he was too strong, much like yourself."


    A faint possibility entered his mind.


    Unlikely. Rui shook his head inwardly. There are more than a million Martial Squires in the world, it could be literally anybody...


    Regardless, he could only work with what he had before his eyes. He hadn''t felt it before, but the third round really put things in perspective.


    He had arrived. He was ready. Evidently, the individuality of his Martial Art and its ability to squeeze out the best of his body had already reached a stage where he could reach his Martial Heart. He needed to seriously start considering his breakthrough. He had entered the tournament with a more ambivalent and ambiguous attitude, still riding the high from havingpleted the Metabody System, satisfied with its enormous sess. But this third round washed away all of that.


    He was no longer happy with just that.Content rights by N?velDr//ama.Org.


    He was at the cusp of a higher Realm of power, he could almost taste it. He was not going to be satisfied until he imed the power that rightfully belonged to him.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1253 Martial Participation

    Chapter 1253 Martial Participation


    He had the rest of the day to rx and prepare for the main tournament. It was a tournament with three rounds, each round eliminating half of the contestants in four one-v-ones. The matchups of the rounds had not been decided ahead of time. This was probably to prevent any preparation on the part of the Martial Artists or their patrons. At the end of the day, it was preferable that the fights reflected their regr strength and capabilities.


    Rui was actually quite impatient for the next round, unlike a lot of the contestants.This is the property of N?-velDrama.Org.


    However, there was an entire half day before the next day arrived. He didn''t feel the need to delve into any further optimization of his mind or body at this moment.


    Instead, he consulted with Master Deivon over some matters that he was interested in.


    "I had a feeling you would ask me about primordial seed and the abyssfeeder species," Master Deivon smirked, sitting opposite Rui. "It makes too much sense for you to be interested in it."


    "Well?" Rui asked. "Can I get ess to some research data on it?"


    Rui considered asking for actual samples of the substance but ultimately decided against it. There was no point in asking for things that he simply was not ready for. It was better he at least started to understand the nature of what he was trying to meddle with so that when he decided to tackle the project of integrating primordial seed into his Metabody System, he would have a strong foundation.


    "That''s not too problematic," Master Deivon replied. "At least, as far as low-grade information is concerned."


    "What about high-grade research information?" Rui asked with a raised eyebrow.


    "That is a bit moreplicated," Master Deivon informed Rui.


    "I thought the whole point of you being my patron is that I get benefits I wouldn''t ordinarily be able to get in exchange for giving you the religious political capital for finding a virodhabhasa seed that excelled in the Martial Contest." Rui raised an eyebrow.


    "You have already expended a good bit of the capital you get by getting patroned by me with the stabilizing treatment, the actual expensive medical treatment, the Senior-level training chambers, the Master-level mask, and the potions we supplied that helped you fulfill the Martial Body condition of the breakthrough to the Senior Realm," Master Deivon pointed out.


    Rui could not argue with that. Denying Martial Seniors a Senior-level training chamber and instead giving it to him was something no Martial Squire would ever be able to get from an organization. After all, no sane organization or person would debilitate their own Martial Seniors for a Martial Squire.


    Master Deivon simply had the luxury to afford to be able to piss off a Martial Senior, it was still quite the boon to Rui to be able to gain high-quality training chambers that could contain his power.


    He could deny the value of it, he would not have been able toplete Nemean Blossom without it. Furthermore, he would not have been able to refine the Metabody System without it either. Which meant he would not have performed anywhere nearly as well in the Martial Contest without it.


    Given how close the battle against the abyssfeeder was, he may not have passed the third round without the generosity of Master Deivon.


    "I appreciate all of what you have done for me," Rui began by saying. "I would have taken a lot longer to reach my current stage if not for the aid that you have provided even before the Martial Contest began. Thank you for all of that."


    "But¡­?" Master Deivon shed an amused smirk.


    "But I know my value, and I know that the impact I have had is significantly greater than you anticipated," Rui remarked. "For example, in the third round. Nobody was supposed to defeat the abyssfeeder, correct?"


    A hint of appreciation appeared on the Master''s face. "Indeed. Master Greminga originally intended for nobody to ovee the abyssfeeder. But it appears that he underestimated you. Then again, everybody did."


    Rui figured as much. The strength of the abyssfeeder was too high for Rui to believe that the possibility of anybody oveing it was intended.


    "Still, it is not nearly as simple to gain ess to research into primordial seed," Master Deivon exined. "For one, for better or worse, the Virodhabhasa Faith does very little to explore avenues of research that do not directly benefit Martial Art. Primordial seed is an exciting esoteric that can be anything, it is not considered an esoteric substance that is generally relevant to Martial Art as much as it is to esoteric technology. It is much easier to apply it to thetter than the former."


    Rui sighed as he considered the matter. It meant that the Virodhabhasa Faith simply was not invested in the matter to possess what he needed.


    "Furthermore," Master Deivon continued. "Even the shallow foundation we possess in regards to research into this inscrutable substance is not something that can easily be supplied to you even considering my patronage."


    "Why not?" Rui raised an eyebrow. "It''s just data."


    "Don''t y dumb, you know full well that exclusivity is the only reason information is valuable, young man," Master Deivon tutted. "Furthermore, because of how inscrutable the substance is, we have employed extravagant means to learn more about it, increasing the value of the information obtained from these extravagant means."


    "Extravagant means?" Rui raised an eyebrow.


    "Martial Masters¡­ and even a Martial Sage," Master Deivon revealed, smiling at Rui''s reaction.


    "What?" Rui furrowed his eyebrows. "You''re telling me a Martial Sage participated in a research project?"


    "Does it sound that strange?" Master Deivon exined. "Knowing you, you must have already figured out why."


    Rui threw him a knowing look. "Given that a Martial Artist''s senses, intuitions, and instincts seem to grow stronger over time, and much stronger across Realms¡­ I can only imagine the sheer amount of information that a Martial Sage is able to derive by studying esoteric substances. They are incapable of engaging in the scientific method, but their insightsare probably incredibly helpful."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1254 Dependence

    Chapter 1254 Dependence


    "Correct," The man nodded. "This is not an umon approach among powerful organizations and nations that have a Martial Sage on retainer. Primordial seed is an extremely bizarre and absurd substance that is highly inscrutable, and difficult to understand. I do not possess a good understanding of the current state of research, but from what I understand, there still isn''t a single consensus on what exactly is happening with this substance or a leading theory. That is why the scientificmunity turned to the power of Martial Art to aid them where their own capabilities failed them."


    There was a smug expression on his face.


    Rui understood his sentiment. It was good to know that the scientificmunity depended on Martial Art instead of the other way around.


    "So the information that the Virodhabhasa Faith does have on the primordial seed is derived partially from a Martial Sage''s insights? Hence making it extremely valuable?" Rui raised an eyebrow.


    "That is correct," The Master nodded. "Much more valuable than if the information was acquired through more grounded means."


    "I see¡­" Rui sighed, shaking his head. "It''s fine, I guess it will have to wait. I did not know that Martial Artists yed a role in the upper echelons of esoteric material science."


    Master Deivon smirked. "It is one of the ways that we strive to gain and maintain leverage over theb geeks and nerds, you see. Many discoveries and breakthroughs have only urred because of the aid of Martial Masters and Sages."


    As someone who has spent his entire previous life as one of thoseb geeks and nerds, Rui was unable to partake in the humor.


    "Well, it is good that we have some form of leverage, because there is no doubt that they have a lot of it over us," Rui remarked lightly. "The Squire evolution breakthrough process is a marvel of technology, and improving it is also a field of technology, not Martial Art."


    Master Deivon sighed with aplicated expression, betraying the the severity of the issue within the Virodhabhasa Faith.


    "It is unfortunate that the Martial Path ends at the Apprentice Realm without this wonderful technology," Master Deivon sighed. "One of Theocracy''s greatest fears is that there maye a day where it may be used to control Martial Apprentices across the world. Gaining such leverage so early will forever allow one side to dictate the rtionship. Ensuring that such a future does note to pass is one of the missions that the Virodhabhasa Faith has undertaken. We have employed many secretive and hidden measures that serve as a failsafe to ensure that Martial Artists never lose control of the breakthrough to the Squire Realm."


    Rui nodded, when he recalled something prudent.


    "Hidden measures like¡­ Spreading the Squire evolution breakthrough to insr Martial Art oriented groups that are disconnected from the greater human civilization?" Rui asked, raising an eyebrow.


    That immediately drew Master Deivon''s focus. "How did you know that? It is clear that that was not a guess."


    Rui couldn''t believe that he actually hit the mark on the head.


    "I''vee across some groups like that in the past," Rui exined. "I was rather surprised that such primitive and insr groups possessed the breakthrough to the Squire Realm. I had always felt this was a bit engineered."


    Rui did not specify that he had visited Vilun Ind, there was a good chance that that would give away his identity.


    Considering the good rtionship between the Shionel Confederation and the Virodhabhasa Faith, he did not want to risk a data leak to people he had made an enemy out of.


    "Hm," Master Deivon considered his words before nodding. "We do spread the breakthrough to the Squire Realm to certain groups to ensure that they don''t get controlled by an organization that does possess the breakthrough method. If we allow technocratic powers to manipte Apprentice-level forces, then we will be sowing the seeds of our destruction, they will be able to manipte and indoctrinate an entire generation of Martial Artists."This is the property of N?-velDrama.Org.


    Rui was actually d that the Virodhabhasa Faith took this possibility seriously. Prior to the age of Martial Art, Martial Apprentices were strong enough to be assets, but too weak to resist being controlled by the power of many; militaries, states, and organizations. He did not want this rtionship to ever return.


    The only way Martial Artists could ensure this never happened was through dominant power and independence, and both of those were not easy to achieve. Martial Art was quite powerful, but he knew better than anybody else what science was capable of. In a way, the people of Gaia were actually restricted by esoteric substances because it made it difficult for them to formteprehensive scientific theories about the nature of reality that allowed for truly sophisticated technology.


    Earth''s technology could aplish things that the esoteric technology of Gaia could not, due to the difference in the sophistication of technology. Earth was much more limited and was forced to make the absolute best of what it had, squeezing the most utility and potential out ofpounds and elements because of how limited they were. Gaia, instead had too much, there was no drive to make the absolute best out of every single esoteric substance when there were so many esoteric phenomena that the scientists of Gaia could barely keep up.


    It was not inurate to say that the world was still in a phase of exploration rather than refinement.


    When Rui thought about the wonders that would be possible if one fused the sophistication of Earth with the magic of Gaia¡­ He could not help but be worried whether Martial Art would be able to keep up in such a hypothetical scenario.


    If it could, it would be left to the Martial Artists of the Upper Realms. It would be up to Masters, Sages, and Transcendents to prove that Martial Art could keep up with the growing powers of esoteric science.


    Ideally, he preferred a civilization where they were equally bnced and cooperative given that he still retained his scientist mindset to a certain degree, but the sh of interests made it hard for such a thing to be truly feasible.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1255 Priorities

    ?


    "If the Virodhabhasa Faith does not have the information I seek, then who does?" Rui asked, out of curiosity.


    "Powerful technocratic organizations, institutes, as well as nations with powerful technological foundations," Master Deivon offered. "The one organization that most likely possessed the most information on it is the Esocline Research Confederation."


    This was not the first time he had mentioned that name. "If I remember correctly, that was one of the partners of the Virodhabhasa Faith that you mentioned was responsible for the carriage infrastructure of the Virodhabhasa Faith."


    "Correct," Master Deivon noted. "It is a special organization, one that is quite rare in the modern world."


    "Why is that?"


    "It is one of the few states thatpletely rely on esoteric technology and eschews Martial Art," Master Deivon replied with aplicated expression.


    "What?" Rui''s eyes furrowed. "There exist states like that?"


    The man nodded. "Yes, for better or worse. The state evolved from what was initially an association of research and development organizations that were looking for a foundation. Due to certain circumstances, they were unable and unwilling to rely on external Martial Artists. These led to the increasing amount of self-sufficiency and independence, allowing them to be one of the few truly powerful states with no Martial power."


    Rui couldn''t even believe what he was hearing. Rejecting Martial Art in the age of Martial Art absurd, it was like trying to reject technology back on Earth while still trying to bepetitive as an organization.


    It was not possible, technological supremacy reigned the world.


    The same was partially true for Martial Art in the Panama Continent, it was unthinkable for a nation to reject it.


    "What''s it like?" Rui asked with curiosity.


    "I have found it to be a strange and alien ce, personally," Master Deivon replied with a wry smile. "It''s rather ufortable, but they truly are independent."


    "The Virodhabhasa Faith has an organization that eschews Martial Art for a partner?" Rui raised an eyebrow. "That sounds unexpected."


    "It is indeed controversial," Master Deivon admitted. "There are factions within the religion who wish to alienate or even vilify the research confederation, but they are mostly outweighed by more sensible voices that it is against our interests to pointlessly make an enemy of one of the greatest technological powers across the continent. Instead, the majority of us have agreed to develop a sort of symbiotic rtionship with the confederation."


    Rui raised an eyebrow. "I thought they eschewed Martial Art."


    "Within their own power blocs, yes," The Master nodded.


    "But given that you mentioned cutting-edge research often employed the aid of Martial Artists of the Upper Realms, it is unwise for them to refuse such a service from the Virodhabhasa Faith." Rui quickly inferred.Content rights by N?velDr//ama.Org.


    "Indeed, however, it should be noted that they are much less dependent on Martial Art research aid than other research and development organizations."


    "I would imagine that bolstering their researching prowess is one of the greatest avenues of research to the nation to minimize independence on Martial Art." Rui mused.


    "We can only hope that they never seed," Master Deivon shook his head. "Thankfully, even if they do make progress, it is not as though we are stagnating in regards to the capabilities of Martial Artists. You have contributed to our cause in that regard, and the Virodhabhasa Faith recognizes that."


    Rui immediately deciphered what he meant. "You mean the Riemannian Echo technique, and its ability to allow Martial Artists of the lower Realms to gain senses that they never could otherwise."


    "Indeed," Master Deivon nodded. "The principle of the technique is, frankly, unbelievable. It is difficult for us to conceive that a Martial Artist came up with this technique himself. If not for the fact that we have confirmed that this technique is truly yours alone, we would not have believed it."


    He threw a curious look at Rui.


    Rui shrugged. "Just got some spontaneous inspiration, I guess."


    "Right," Master Deivon smirked. "Regardless, we keep making progress in this field, ensuring that they never stop depending on us."


    Rui shrugged. He didn''t particrly care about the high-minded stuff, especially when he wasn''t at a stage where it mattered to him, or he mattered to it.


    All he wanted to know was if he could get what he wanted.


    "Is it possible for the Virodhabhasa Faith to negotiate a deal to get the information from them?" Rui asked.


    "That is going to require the expenditure of genuine capital, more than you have earned even from my patronage," Master Deivon shook his head.


    Rui sighed. It was at times like this that he missed the convenience of the Martial Union. As an external member of the Martial Union who had contributed to them in ways more than any Martial Squire could, he had earned its goodwill and a pretty decent rtionship with them. Especially when he was an extraordinarily gifted Martial Artist from their perspective with immense potential.


    I bet the Martial Union has a lot more information to offer.


    It had quite respectable research and development capabilities even on the international stage. The only issue was that it too was a Martial Art organization.


    Maybe I can persuade Julian to help me negotiate a deal with the Kandrian Institute of Technology when I return.


    If that did end up being the n, then he could put it aside for now since it wasn''t a thing for the near future.


    "Are you that eager to get your hands on it?" Master Deivon raised an eyebrow.


    "It''s not the most immediate priority. I know that I have fulfilled all the conditions to break through to the Senior Realm any time now. My highest priority is triggering the activation of the Martial Heart. Throwing myself against hurdles that challenge the core of my Martial Art and Path is the best way to go about it for me particrly."


    Master Deivon nodded. "You have your priorities right. You have an immense amount of momentum on your side, it is best to ensure that it doesn''t die in front of the barrier to a higher Realm."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1256 Drive

    <h4>Chapter 1256 Drive</h4>


    Seeing that his options for gaining information were limited, Rui ultimately decided to set it aside for now. It truly was looking to be a long-term project, given the difficulties of even obtaining information on the topic, let alone the actual substance itself.


    He wasn''t too eager to set out on a massive undertaking such as this. The Master was correct, he had momentum on his side, and he didn''t want to stall it with a project that was probably as difficult as his initial Metabody System, and would take a few years toplete at minimum.


    "You''re right," Rui shook his head. "I do not intend to drag this out. I truly hope the final tournament will be enough to push me to my limit."


    In particr, he had high hopes of one particr Martial Artist that would bepeting tomorrow.


    Master Deivon knew exactly what he was thinking about. "She is a Virodhabhasa seed as well, you know?"


    Rui raised an eyebrow in surprise. "That''s¡­ interesting.


    He wasn''t too surprised even. He could feel that her incredibly strange and esoteric Martial Art had the potential to be a Martial Art that could ovee all others. It was no wonder that the Virodhabhasa Faith dered her as a seed when it saw her Martial Art.


    "As for her Martial Art¡­" Master Deivon paused when Rui shook his head, putting his hand up.


    "I don''t want to know. It is already hard enough for any Martial Squire to pressure me, the more I know ahead of time, the harder it will be for her to pressure me enough to trigger my Martial Art."


    Rui firmly declined any information from Master Deivon surrounding her Martial Art, it was also why he avoided paying too much attention to her Martial Art. He was almost afraid that he would subconsciously create predictive models if he spent too much time observing her.


    "I must say, that is quite the step to take," Master Deivon remarked. "That decision may very well cost you victory against her. Your Martial Art has be a lot less opaque to Martial Masters like myself, as well as the one that is patroning her. I can promise you that she has already learned much about your Martial Art. Especially the body morphing techniques that you have disyed."


    Rui shrugged. "If that increases her ability to pressure me, then that''s fine. I have already secured the medical treatments that I originally came here for. And now that that matter is out of the way, winning the Martial Contest is no longer a genuine prioritypared to bing a Martial Senior."


    Master Deivon couldn''t help but smile at the determination that Rui demonstrated. Yet at the same time, he couldn''t help but marvel at the ripples that his breakthrough would send across the Martial world.


    If Rui broke through any time soon, he would be the youngest Martial Senior in history, and it wasn''t even close. He would break the pre-existing record by a whopping decade.


    Rui had informed Master Deivon that he had broken through to the Squire Realm at the age of seventeen. While this was certainly a highly impressive and optimistically young age, it was not groundbreaking. The youngest known Martial Squire ever was merely twelve years old, after all.


    However, the path to the Senior Realm after bing a Martial Squire was long and difficult. One needed to continue developing a tower of individuality that would eventually reach high enough to touch the skies; the Senior Realm. Ordinarily, even an ounce of individuality required considerable exertion.


    Rui was the only Martial Squire he had ever met who breezed through this process with ease in a matter of seven years.


    "Assuming you seed¡­ What do you n to do when the contest is over?" Master Deivon asked.


    Rui considered the question. "¡­Bid the Floating Sect farewell and then make preparations to grow even stronger."


    "¡­Why do you fight?"


    The air grew a little heavier.


    "You originally came here to procure a treatment for that woman. But you have acquired what you want. So what is it that drives you forward?" Master Deivon couldn''t help but be curious.


    Rui remained silent. This was the first time that Master Deivon inquired about such a personal topic. He wasn''t sure whether to humor it or not.


    Then again, Master Deivon had been afortable patron this entire time. It wasn''t necessarily a bad thing to reduce the distance between them just a bit. Content from N?velDr(a)ma.Org.


    "I¡­ fight for ambition. My Martial Path is my greatest ambition and dream. And I fight for my family, to acquire the power needed to protect them. I am far too weak as I am right now," Rui''s voice grew more solemn.


    Master Deivon''s powerful senses and intuition managed to gain a much deeper understanding of his circumstances.


    Unbeknownst to Rui, Martial Masters also possessed the ability to evaluate the quality of the breakthrough procedure performed on a Martial Squire. While the core basics were often the same, the more sophisticated procedures from more powerful organizations and nations resulted in a more powerful Martial Body.


    Rui''s Martial Body was incredible. More naturally powerful for his age than any others, he could match older and more powerful Martial Squires, as well as other Martial Squires that had consumed a lot of performance-enhancing potions, despite having consumed only one in his entire life, ording to the analytics of his blood that Master Deivon had had the medical department conduct.


    Such a Martial Body could only emerge from a particrly powerful nation or organization, almost certainly a sage-level nation.


    If he truly was from such a powerful nation or organization, then it begged the question of why he wasn''t relying on them for the female Martial Senior''s treatment. Furthermore, his native organization or nation never seemed to be an option when it came to fulfilling his needs such as his most recent one centered around primordial seed.


    This allowed Master Deivon to piece together a rough and ambiguous hypothesis that wasn''t far from the truth.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1257 First

    <h4>Chapter 1257 First</h4>


    "I see. Know that you can consider me as someone you can depend on," Master Deivon informed Rui. "I don''t know what your circumstances are, but I''m willing to wager I have the power to offer some assistance if the need ever came."


    Rui smiled. "I appreciate that. I will be sure to keep it in mind."


    He didn''t intend to enlist his aid, however. Assassinating an important political figure of the Shionel Confederation was not something Rui could expect him to help with since the Shionel Confederation was a political partner and ally of the Virodha Theocracy.


    And that was fine, he had always intended to do the deed himself.


    He was actually quite eager to do the deed himself.


    Chairman Deacon was one of the few people who could evoke genuine bloodlust from Rui.


    Eventually, their conversation came to an end as Rui headed to his assigned training chamber.


    Many tens of thousands of people were dying to witness the final tournament with their own two eyes.


    The first three rounds were exciting, but ultimately, they were merely a setup for the finale. The eight finalists were eight of the truly most powerful Martial Artists that Squire Realm could possibly offer. They were the cherry on top of the cream of the crop. The best of the best.


    The winner had the capital to im to be the strongest of them all.


    "Who do you think will win?"


    "It''s gotta be Champion Meera."


    "I put my money on the dark horse."


    "He''s going to lose."


    "He already beat her twice, you know."


    "Hah, those littlepetitions are notparable to actualbat," One man snorted. "Just you see, my Meera will prevail!"


    Regardless, many people had a strong vested interest in witnessing the conclusion of the finale of the contest.


    Rui found seven Martial Squires waiting for him in the contestant stand-by room. Once again, he would be forced to wait for the contest to unfold with hispetitors just around the corner.


    There was no reason to make things so tense, yet he was convinced that the organizers simply wanted to milk the drama to get as much out of it as possible.


    Most of the contestants were stoic andposed, though none of them could miss the tension in the room.


    The only one who seemed immune was Squire Meera, who actually had the audacity to apply some final touches to her makeup in front of everyone.


    Rui found her to be quite iprehensible. She was quite the deviant as a Martial Artist, it took one to recognize another, after all.


    He had long noted her incessant obsession with aesthetics, he had long spected that it was tied to her Martial Path. Content from N?velDr(a)ma.Org.


    A Martial Path centered around her own subjective sense of aestheticism. It pushed the boundaries of the kind of things that could be a Martial Path. Before this day, he had thought that Martial Paths were limited to fields ofbat, they could not be centered around fields that had nothing to do withbat.


    Not even Tokugawa Ieyasu or Rui himself broke these rules. Imitative evolution and adaptive evolution would be considered fields ofbat even if Martial Artists did not exist.


    She, however, broke this rule. The fact that one''s subjective sense of beauty could be a Martial Path showed that there were no strict limitations. She was so deviant from the norm that she fell outside of known paradigms.


    It was probably the reason that she was made a Virodhabhasa Seed.


    Even at this very moment, while his mind was at its absolute peak, he was unable to gauge her true strength.


    Shockingly, she felt like she was a low-grade Martial Squire at the moment, but he would be an ipetent fool to even consider that she would perform at that level in the tournament.


    From what he could tell, it wasn''t that she was trying to actively hide her power like a more stealth-oriented Martial Squire like Kane. It was more likely that her performance was greatly affected by her sense of beauty.


    He had no idea how it worked. He had a feeling he would never be able to peer into the depth of her Martial Art.


    Her weak facade actually made him more wary.


    He nced around at the rest of them.


    He couldn''t help but smile when he saw the grandma from day one standing among them. He was urate when he felt like she was one of the strongest. She was also probably the only Martial Artist there who was truly older than him even mentally.


    Her eyes reflected depth.


    One could very well lose themselves in the depth of experience that she had gone through as a warrior. The amount of time she had traversed her Martial Path was many times greater than the eleven years that Rui had been a Martial Artist.


    She was the next most significant contestant in Rui''s eyes. He did not underestimate the power of experience. The insights and prowess that her mind would have internalized likely surpassed his imagination.


    That did not mean the rest of them were not eye-drawing.


    They each possessed depth that could onlye with the perseverance to self-actualize the potential thaty buried deep within the Squire Realm.


    "Ladies and gentlemen!" An announcer cried. "We have arrived! This is the day that you have all been waiting for. The final tournament to decide the strongest of the strongest! The contest to decide the next champion of the Virodhabhasa Contest!"


    The crowd cheered loudly. One could almost taste the excitement that seemed to manifest radiating from the crowd.


    Multiplerge boards were pulled into the colosseum around the announcer''s podium, facing every segment of the audience.


    "Without further ado, I present to you the tournament matchups and brackets!"


    The boards were unveiled, revealing a pictorial representation of the matchups and rounds.


    The contestants paid attention to the live feed that they existed within the room.


    Rui narrowed his eyes as beheld his match.


    His match was the very first.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1258 Challenger

    <h4>Chapter 1258 Challenger</h4>


    [Contestant Falken versus Contestant Ran Al Venin]


    Rui nced at another figure in the room.


    She met his gaze briefly, before closing her eyes. She too was a masked contestant like he was, it appeared that he was not the only one who found the fame and attention to his identity troubling.


    But unlike him, she did not go to great lengths to conceal her identity by procuring a Master-level mask that could hamper even the senses of Martial Masters. He was able to sense her appearance through it.


    But it wasn''t her identity or appearance that he was concerned about. He quickly studied her Martial Body.


    Powerful lower body.?He immediately noted.


    That alone allowed him to rule out many possibilities.


    He definitely did not get the sense that she was an ordinary Martial Artist as far as her Martial Path was concerned.


    There definitely were clues that she most likely was not a simple offensive, defensive, or maneuvering-oriented Martial Artist.


    He recalled that she had been quite close to being eliminated by the abyssfeeder creature. That did not give him a good impression of her, but he didn''t necessarily underestimate her because of that.


    He didn''t even bother considering the other match-ups at the moment, the tournament would soon begin, and he was going to have to face her inbat, he did not have the luxury to care about other people''s match-ups.


    "¡­And with that, it is finally time to begin! We now call upon Contestant Falken, the dark horse of the Martial Contest! A man who came out of nowhere, participating in the contest for the very first time, and reaching the top eight out of nowhere! Will he be able to ovee his opponent, a dangerously powerful warrior, and veteran of the Martial Contest known as the Unearthing Dancer?!"


    The crowd cheered.


    The two of them headed out toward the colosseum together.


    The tension was ptable.


    So much so that one may very well have been able to cut it with a knife. He could feel her wariness tingling on his skin.


    It couldn''t be helped. His performance in the previous round was domineering. He was the only one who defeated the abyssfeeder. He was also the first one to break out of Master Carian''s technique.


    Her muscles were taut with tension.


    Her eyes were sharp.


    She couldn''t even hide her gritted teeth from him.


    Rui, on the other hand, was a lot more nonchnt.


    This couldn''t be helped either.


    Even though he was a neer to the Martial Contest while she was allegedly a veteran, neither of them had any doubts about the power dynamics of their fight.


    She was the challenger.


    It was up to her to prove that herparativelyckluster performance against the abyssfeeder was not an urate measure of her formidability. The abyssfeeder was an oppressive challenge that made many Martial Artists look weaker than they actually were.


    She was not the only one who was determined to show the world what she was made up of.


    Barring Rui and Squire Meera, each of them had something to prove in their uing matches.


    "I look forward to a good fight," She abruptly broke the silence.


    "Likewise," A small smile broke on his face.


    "But I will win."


    Her deration was as strong as her tone. Rui could even feel the conviction in her voice.


    He didn''t even bother responding.


    They had arrived at the entrance of the colosseum.


    Words no longer mattered.


    "Wooooo!"


    "Go Falken!"


    "Kick his ass girl!"


    The crowd erupted in cheers as the two of them entered the colosseum heading toward the center.


    By the time they had arrived, the colosseum was already prepared for the battle. The podium and the boards were all gone. Even the announcer andmentator was gone.


    A single Martial Senior awaited them at the center.


    "I am Senior Priest Deril," The man informed them. "I will be serving as the arbiter of the tournament."


    The two of them bowed to him, expressing the deference that a Martial Senior was worthy of.


    "Repeat after me¡­ ''As a contestant of the Virodhabhasa Contest, I solemnly swear not to ¡­"


    Each of them was made several oaths regarding fair y and abide by the few rules that there were.


    "It''s time," The man informed them. "Take a distance from the center of your pleasing, and take your stances."


    She chose to take a close-range distance, clearly indicating that she was a close-range Martial Artist.


    All eyes were on Rui. People expected him to take a long-range distance given the long-range prowess that he demonstrated in the previous round.


    Yet Rui merely smiled, walking towards her, and standing right in front of her.


    This sent a wave of murmurs across the crowd even as Squire Ran narrowed her eyes.


    "Underestimate me at your peril," She coldly remarked.


    "I consider myself proficient at not underestimating," Rui replied.


    She replied by taking a strange stance. She stood on her toes, like a ballet dancer, before lifting one folded knee up, like a Muay Thai stance. Her hands balled into fists, propped before her.


    She did not so much as shift a millimeter despite bncing on the edge of a single toe. This is the property of N?-velDrama.Org.


    Her bnce is abnormal. Rui noted


    He closed his eyes, honing his mind. "Fuuuu..."


    He propped his arms with equal weight towards offense and defense with an evenly distributed weight open to maneuvering or nting himself at any time.


    It was a simple and flexible stance, the mostmon stance there was.


    Yet, what was abnormal was the peril that Rui radiated.


    The very air seemed to curl as Rui honed his focus on her.


    Thend beneath them seemed to rumble beneath his weight.


    A maelstrom of pressure crashed into her, threatening to crush her.


    Yet she gritted her teeth, as her eyes shed with determination.


    "Begin!"


    She immediatelyshed out at him violently. "RARGH!"


    She threw a spinning kick at him, an attack empowered by immense torque generated by the entire body crashed into him.


    BAM!


    Rui narrowed his eyes as he applied Flux Earther to dispel the impact.


    BAM BAM BAM!


    She continued to st him with spinning attacks one after the other.


    BOOM!


    She pushed him back a bit with a charged kick, drawing the cheers of the crowd.


    "That''s right, beat him up!"


    "He can''t even do anything!"


    Yet she wasn''t pleased. "Tsk."


    He was unharmed.


    He simply stared at her.


    He didn''t utter a word or so much as twitch, yet she understood what he was saying.


    Show me what you have.


    Her eyes red with indignation.?Careful what you wish for.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1259 Balance

    ?


    Rui simply waited impassively.


    He had, of course, already begun creating a predictive model on her. One that he was quite optimistic about given the fact that she had many vibrant patterns in her attacking.


    Too many patterns, even.He narrowed his eyes.So much so that there is no way she does not notice them.


    He didn''t quite understand, but he continued studying the strange rhythm in her movements that existed in the undertone of her movements, blocking every attack with Flux Earther.


    He didn''t feel the need to use the Metabody System. There was no need to divulge his cards if he didn''t need to. Although people had seen Void Forestep, and Hypertrophic Surge, he had managed to hide Nemean Blossom and Weaving Blood.


    He calmly took a neutral stance once more, simply challenging her to do more.


    She was not pleased by this oue. Her body twisted even as she splendidly bnced on the edge of a single toe, generating an immense amount of torque as a result.


    BAM BAM BAM!


    She continued to bombard him with a barrage of powerful kicks. Each attack was quite heavy and struck him hard.


    Yet they did nothing.


    Rui always managed to effortlessly disperse and drain the impact away with Flux Earther. It had been more than five years since he hade up with the technique, and his proficiency with it only kept growing and getting smoother. It didn''t matter if she had a supreme sense of bnce that allowed her to effortlessly employ rotating attacks with immense torque.


    Rui resolutely dispersed every single attack with even better timing.


    She threw ferocious attacks, yet every time they touched his hand or arm, she could feel them growing weaker and weaker until their power waspletely gone.


    BOOM!


    Rui effortlessly dispersed another attack, furrowing his eyebrows inparison. He had to admit that he was a little surprised by the level of power that she was disying.


    He was not impressed. She made such a big deal about challenging him that he thought she would be capable of a lot more.


    Still, she is hiding something.He could tell that much.


    She was preparing something that was probably different from the attacks that she had been hitting him with.


    BOOM!


    He couldn''t help but wonder why she was maintaining the monotony of these kinds of attacks when he had already proven that they didn''t work against her.


    Yet even he couldn''t help but feel something was wrong. The patterns that she disyed tugged at his mind. He strangely felt like he was watching a kaleidoscope.


    Something was off.


    BOOM!


    Rui didn''t even budge when he caught her kick in his hand. "Is this the best that y-"


    Rui froze when he looked at the bottom of her foot.Why is the bottom of her foot a dark purple color?


    He immediately leaped back, wary, wiping his hand.<novelsnext>I think you should take a look at </novelsnext>


    Poison.


    Yet even before he could do anything, he felt something strange stirring within him.


    A ferocious grin sprung up on her face. "Toote."


    Suddenly, the world shifted in Rui''s vision and senses.What?!


    He couldn''t help but stagger on his feet in surprise. The very world around him rocked like a ship traveling through a storm! It spun and rotated, he could feel each of his senses detecting a torque that seemed to emerge with this strange rotation.


    No, it''s not. This is the effect of the poison.


    It was not an ordinary poison. It affected all five of his normal senses in addition to Seismic Mapping, Tempestuous Feel, Primordial Instinct, and even Riemannian Echo!


    BOOM!


    A powerful attack collided against him as he barely managed to put up his guard, blocking the attack. Squire Ran grinned as she managed tounch Rui flying back, rolling across the ground.


    "Woah!"


    "What just happened."


    "She suddenly began beating up on him."


    Rui, however, maintained hisposure even as she began unleashing a flurry of attacks against him. His mind began swiftly analyzing this predicament as he judged the nature of what she was doing.


    It''s not just poison.He felt his mind being burdened by another element.She''s also employing a bit of hypnosis. That was why she had so many patterns. They weren''t ring holes in her kickingbos, she was sneakily setting up an offensive mental technique toplement the poison!


    He was starting to get a clearer picture of what was going on. Yet he could only grimace as the world began shifting against him. He felt like he was a normal human trying to ride a bull. The sheer amount of torque that his senses experienced made it difficult for him to make any movements.


    Let alone movement, he could barely stand in ce.


    BOOM!This is the property of N?-velDrama.Org.


    Squire Ran roared triumphantly as sheunched him flying. He was unable to leverage his strength to maintain his footing because of how messed up his sense of bnce was.


    Yet despite his predicament, his insight had already begun gaining ground.


    This isn''t an ordinary poison.Rui''s eyes narrowed.It doesn''t function by targeting sense organs. Riemannian Echo is being targeted, and it doesn''te from a sense organ. Furthermore, the Primordial Instinct exists within the mind rather than a sense organ in the body. Which means...


    The unpleasant truth had arrived.It''s a poison that''s inhibiting the part of my brain that generates my sense of bnce.


    Yet he had not forgotten what he learned about poisons that targeted the brain. They were extremely difficult to condition one''s self to, that included the user. Thus, there was only one conclusion to draw.


    She''s not unaffected by it herself.His eyes widened.In order to ensure that almost nobody could possibly resist it, she chose a poison that affected the brain rather than any other part of the body. In exchange, she herself is affected by the poison. But...


    He had not forgotten the splendid sense of bnce that she had disyed. Every single attack sheunched wasunched bncing on the verge edge of her toe, she performedplex pirouettes, spins, and all kinds ofplicated maneuvers within milliseconds, generating immense energy and torque without so much as twitching even a micrometer off trajectory bncing at the edge of a single toe.


    Rui''s eyes widened as the truth about her Martial Art fully dawned on him. She isn''t a poison-oriented Martial Art or an offensive Martial Artist. She''s a bnce-oriented Martial Artist who has forcefully turned this into apetition of bnce! Apetition that she cannot lose.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1260 Challenge

    ?


    Rui hadn''te across too many, but most bnce-oriented Martial Artists were supplementary in nature. They simply focused all their efforts on strengthening their bnce to the absolute maximum to gain as much of a boost from it inbat as possible.


    It allowed them to stabilize theirbat to the absolute maximum, increasing their offensive prowess by allowing them to maximize the rate at which they attacked without any need to worry about bnce all that much. It increased their maneuvering considerably, allowing them to attack and evade in ways that other Martial Artists were unable to.


    It also improved their aerial maneuvering where bnce became considerably more important. Martial Artists did not float in the air by leveraging some special energy to keep them stationary in midair. They pushed down against the air by stepping on it, thus bnce was always and especially important when sky-walking.


    It was in these ways that bnce-oriented Martial Artists generally leveraged their strength.


    However, it appeared that Squire Ran was not quite satisfied with passive supplementation. This was the first time that Rui had seen someone leverage bnce in such a manner.


    He could instantly gain insights into her character and personality for developing such a Martial Art and having such a Martial Path.


    An aggressive desire to dominate her opponents with her greatest strength.Rui mused even as she beganunching an aggressive offensive against him.


    The nature of bnce was not intrinsically offensive. Yet she was determined to leverage it offensively and leverage it to dominate her opponents.


    It appeared that she had settled on a bizarre solution.


    She decided to forcefully turn the battle into a battle of bnce!


    And she did that by poisoning both her opponent and herself. It was an absurd notion, but it did seed. At the moment, Rui was struggling to retain his sense of bnce even while she did her best to pummel him to the ground.


    Had she been a poison-oriented Martial Artist, perhaps she would have found a way to sabotage only her opponent''s sense of bnce, but she wasn''t a poison-oriented Martial Artist, and thus the potency of the poisons she could integrate into her body was limited.


    Thus, she settled on a guaranteed mutual sabotage by employing a poison that targeted the brain and changed the settings of the fight, such that bnce became the most important parameter by far.


    Such was the nature of bnce. It was incredibly important to not just Martial Art, but all coherent physical movement. It was absolutely foundational. However, its significance decreased the more proficient it became over time. It offered diminishing returns the greater bnce one possessed. Thus it was rarely trained above a certain level.


    However, by guaranteeing a sessful sabotage of his sense of bnce at the cost of her own, both of them had lost that high-level sense of bnce, reducing them to a fraction of their original bncing capabilities. It became less important the more proficient at it one was, but conversely, it became more important the less proficient at it one was.


    And they were most certainly not proficient at it any more thanks to the poison, meaning it became the most important parameter in the battle.


    One in which she still held an overwhelming advantage against him.


    And it reflected.


    BOOM!


    Sheunched him flying across the colosseum even while he guarded his head. He could not afford to let her get a clean attack on his head at this juncture, it would simply mean a clean KO.


    Never before had he gained such an appreciation for bnce. It was only in situations like these that one remembered how important something that they took for granted was.


    Everybody knew the importance of breathing. Yet only an asthmatic patient felt the value of breathing every second.


    He knew that from experience.


    BAM!


    The crowd cheered as she gained a decisive advantage against him. Rui stood up uncertainly, relying on muscle memory for the time being. She swiftlyshed forward without any inhibitions, he cautiously tried to throw an attack, only to sorely regret it.


    WHOOSH!


    His attack missed her wildly but she ignored it, stepping forward to st him with some more powerful kicks.


    BAM BAM BAM!


    Tsk, this isn''t going to work.Rui grimaced as he brought up his guard, sloppily dispersing them due to his messed-up bnce. He felt like he was stuck in a quagmire, every movement he made, let alone techniques he executed, was severely hampered.


    It became clear that if he let this go on, it would be game over. He needed a practical solution.


    Nemean Blossom and Weaving Blood came to mind.


    Too costly, too ineffective.


    They did not solve the root of the problem, they simply put a bandaid on the symptoms. A bandaid that had a time and energy limit.


    He needed to find a solution that targeted the problem head-on.<novelsnext>I think you should take a look at </novelsnext>


    I need to regain my bnce.


    Could he somehow get rid of the poison?


    No. I don''t have any means to do that at the moment.


    His eyes narrowed.


    There was only one answer.


    His Martial Path was adaptive evolution. Thus, he needed to adapt to it.


    This isn''t something that the VOID algorithm can help me with.


    The VOID algorithm could not allow him to ovee an inhibited sense of bnce, it only allowed him to predict and time extremely well-adapted movements against his opponent.


    For this... I need something new. His eyes narrowed.A ground-up, systematic approach to adapt to the inhibitions she had inflicted upon me.


    It was a tall task. In the middle ofbat, he would need toe up with a new system of thought to be able to adapt to his new inhibition.


    Right here.


    Right now.


    In the middle ofbat. In the middle of being attacked by his powerful opponent, in the middle of the disorientation and the mental torture of a shaking and rumbling dystopic world.


    All while simultaneously developing the predictive model for when he did return to normal.


    It was an absurd notion.


    If he did seed, then the odds would be even, and he would also be adapted to her.


    If he failed, then it would be game over.


    Had it been anybody else, failure was a guarantee.


    Yet, before Rui, even the most insurmountable of barriers was reduced to a fun challenge.


    "Heh... Haha..."


    A chuckle escaped his mouth.


    Squire Ran felt a shiver crawl up her skin.Content rights by N?velDr//ama.Org.


    She didn''t understand.


    Wasn''t she winning?


    Hadn''t she been pummeling him around for thest minute?


    Anybody with a brain and eyes could tell that she was winning.


    Yet her stomach churned when she stared into his eyes. A dark void seemed to emerge from behind his silver iris.


    Three words escaped his mouth.


    "You are strong."


    Yet, those words only made her feel weaker.


    In that moment, a single instinct reverberated across her mind.


    I need to finish this... before it''s toote.Her eyes shed with determination.


    The battle escted as Squire Ran pushed herself to the absolute limit.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1261 Crack

    ?


    The battle escted in intensity. The spectators cheered every time Squire Ran bashed Rui with her powerful kicks!


    "Go get him!"


    "Tsk, all that hype and this is all he''s amounting to."


    "Man, I wish she would suffocate me in between her legs."


    Yet, while the normies mindlessly consumed the entertainment, the Martial Artists frowned.


    Something was off.


    She was winning, but the air of the battle was strange.


    It was the opposite.


    Her gritted teeth. Her desperate aggression. Her increasingly fatigued appearance.


    Rui, on the other hand, simply stared at her. His body was wounded, he had yet tond even a single attack on her.


    Yet when people saw the look in his eyes... They couldn''t bring themselves to bet against him.


    A variety of different opinions, judgments, and evaluations flew through their minds, yet none of them mattered.


    Certainly not Rui.


    His mind had already kicked in top gear.


    The margins of error caused to my sense of bnce by the poison is no longer skyrocketing like it was when the poison was kicking in. He sharply noted.  Diminishing returns. She cannot endlessly poison me, it has already reached a saturation limit. Especially given that she does not specialize in poison.


    That meant that as bad as things were, they were unlikely to get worse. This was a good thing, this meant that he did not have to worry about a developed solution being too outdated due to the problem escting.


    Focus. Rui''s eyes narrowed as he finished evaluating the problem.


    A sense of bnce was the ability to measure the torque that a body was experiencing. It was simply a measure of the forces acting on a body. If a person held weights in only one hand, there would be an imbnce of force on that side, and the sense of bnce would allow one to perfectlypensate by shifting one''s body weight to the other side to ensure that the person did not fall over.


    It was this sense that was being disrupted by the poison.


    Objective; creating a system of thought to help me adapt to inhibited bnce. His eyes narrowed.  I have already verified that the inhibition is static. The next step is to measure the degree of inhibition of bnce. Given that I know that the disorientation in my bnce is a chemically induced illusion inside my brain, I can measure the degree to which it urs byparing how disoriented my sense of bnce is even when I perform movements I know are bnced based on muscle memory.


    There were some movements that Rui had executed so many times that he mastered them in and out. He knew for a fact that these movements and maneuvers were perfectly bnced because he had performed them for nearly ten years.


    Content from N?velDr(a)ma.Org.


    These movements alone weren''t enough to ovee the deviation in his bnce, but they allowed him to measure how much his sense of bnce was being deviated when he performed those movements. It was no different from weighing objects against known weights to find out how heavy they were. These short muscle memory movements with perfected bnce served as a measure of how messed up his sense of bnce was.


    Once he knew to what degree his sense of bnce was being deviated, he could essentially calcte a correct sense of bnce by looking at his poisoned sense of bnce.


    It was simple subtraction. Subtract the deviation from the deviated sense of bnce, and one was left with a pure sense of bnce.


    If it turned out that his bnce was being disrupted by fifty percent, then he could ount for that calcte what his normal sense of bnce would be, and make sure that his movements matched up to the calcted correct sense of bnce.


    The issue is the means and the reliability of measuring how much my sense of bnce is messed up. Rui narrowed his eyes.I''ll essentially have to rely on my own senses since I do not have an objective measuring tool.


    The process had already begun. Even as he defended from her attacks, he threw in maneuvers,bos, and other short-burst movements that he knew he could trust and simply observed the chaos that his sense of bnce was.


    He swiftly measured and registered the deviated readings, beforeparing them to his perfected-bnce movements.


    It''s being deviated by a factor of four-point-eight. His eyes widened.


    Such high deviations required massive overcorrections. Furthermore, different movements resulted in different deviations in his sense of bnce,plicating the matter even more


    He would need to process an immense amount of information in a short amount of time. A hopeless task for any sane Martial Artist.


    Yet Rui didn''t even hesitate.


    He felt a sense of excitement. An enormously challenging and interesting mental exercise with exciting constraints was something he enjoyed more than most.


    Even as his mind raced, a grin broke out beneath his mask.


    Yet, Squire Ran did not intend to make it easy for him by any means.


    BAM BAM BAM!!!<novelsnext>I think you should take a look at </novelsnext>


    She pummeled him with powerful attacks,unching him across the colosseum.Yet she didn''t intend to let up in the slightest. She immediately shot after him,unching an incredibly powerful kick to his head.


    If she couldnd even a clean kick to his head, it would be game over.


    WHOOSH!


    Her eyes widened.


    Something had changed.


    Rui sessfully evaded an attack cleanly for the first time.


    "Not too bad eh?" Ruiughed as he nced at Squire Ran.


    Squire Ran''s expression grew more severe.


    She knew more than anybody else the significance of what had just unfolded.


    BOOM!!


    Her body coiled as she gritted her teeth, propelling her leg forward with extraordinary momentum, crashing into Rui. She didn''t stop bombarding him with attacks.


    She couldn''t.


    Not when Rui began sessfully dodging even more attacks. A trump card that had gotten her to the top eight of the Martial Contest was more hollow than she had ever imagined.


    A trump card she had dedicated everything to.


    Yet... it was more hollow than she had ever realized.


    Fear and frustration gripped her heart like a vice as Rui returned to form, curbing her ruthlessly.


    WHOOSH!


    Rui cleanly crouched,unching a swift and crisp low-sweeping kick.


    How can he ovee it so easily?!


    With each passing second, his maneuvers became sharper.


    With each passing minute, his blocks became cleaner.


    With each passing attack, he grew morefortable.


    What took her years to aplish, he seemed to aplish in a matter of minutes. An attack that confounded every single Martial Squire that it had ever worked on, was slowly being consumed by him.


    She knew how difficult it was to ovee it. She herself had subjected her to it for years before she regainedpletebat proficiency.


    It was more than just a technique.


    It was the core of her Martial Art and Path.


    She gritted her teeth as an overwhelming sense of despair emerged deep within her.


    "HAH!!" She roared as sheunched a furious attack on his temple. A heavy attack empowered with torque generated with every cell of her body.


    BOOM!


    A resounding impact reverberated across the colosseum.


    Rui''s fist buried itself in her gut as a powerful Flowing Canon crashed into her.


    His first attack of the fight.


    She gazed into his eyes even as she coughed blood. Cruel eyes that saw right through her. Eyes that saw right through her as though there was nothing to be seen. Her Martial Art, her Martial Path may as well have been nothing.


    His attack may have struck her sr plexus, yet it hurt something much deeper.


    CRACK!


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1262 Restraint

    Chapter 1262 Restraint


    Master Deivon''s eyes widened in shock as his sharp senses managed to detect what was happening. He got up, stunned in silence at the magnitude of what he was just witnessing.


    He was not the only one.


    The three Martial Masters overseeing the Martial Contest stirred as they beheld something they had never seen before.


    The invisible cracks in the Martial Path were audible to the ascended senses of the Martial Masters!


    At that moment, Master Deivon''s expression turned grave. He didn''t need to even look at Master Uma, Carian, and Greminga told him that they were each having the same thoughts.


    It was hard not to.


    I''m going to need to have a word with him.Master Deivon''s eyes narrowed.


    The four Martial Masters hadn''t even exchanged a single nce, yet their senses were not to be underestimated, not only had they noticed, but they knew that their peers noticed.


    The four of them were the only witnesses to what happened. An air of tension emerged between only them, unbeknownst to anybody else.


    Master Deivon clenched his fist as his eyes sharpened


    He just hoped that this wouldn''t escte the situation.


    Down in the colosseum, a fifth person followed suit. Rui''s concentration broke when he detected a familiar hint of despair. Images of the same hint of despair in the eyes of his opponent shed through his mind


    The signs were the same. They were no different from thest this had happened. Unlikest time, he actually had an awareness as to what this actually meant.


    He refused to let it happen.


    He gritted his teeth as he made a swift decision.


    BAM!


    A clean swift kick to the jaw knocked her out on the spot. His expression grew severe as he feared for what had happened. He wasn''t sure to what extent the damage had urred. It had only happened for a moment before he knocked her out to ensure that she was no longer conscious.


    He didn''t know what else to do, he had a feeling that no matter what he did, he would have only made things worse, thus he simply ended it by knocking her out. One could not experience conscious despair if one was not awake.


    He could only hope that by the time she woke up, she would be fine. Or at the very least, able to continue practicing Martial Art.


    The crowd watching this, of course, did not understand what had happened. They simply mindlessly cheered as Rui seemed to make an abrupteback before knocking his opponent out.


    "And the winner of the first match of the first round is Contestant Falken!"


    He couldn''t even be bothered with his victory as he headed back to the contestant hall with a pensive expression.


    This was not how he wanted to win. As a Martial Artist, he had a great amount of appreciation for other Martial Art. In his opinion, all Martial Art were a blessing to the world and were things that ought to be celebrated. Abilities like destroying Martial Paths, he did not want such a thing, he wished it did not exist.


    It was frustrating because it made him have to be careful about going all out. It made it hard to enjoy a fight with a Martial Artist weaker than him because he realized that he needed to be careful about getting too emotionally invested in the fight. Even if those emotions were positive, it did not bode well for his opponent for Rui to feel this way, unfortunately.


    That was something that he had to contend with, he had forgotten about it after Senior Xanarn had informed him about it. But now that he had be the strongest, he needed to be wary of it. back then he was just a high-grade Martial Squire who was a cut or two below grade ten. However, he was much too strong now.


    Furthermore, he had added the Metabody System to the VOID algorithm, making it much more powerful than it used to be back then. If the VOID algorithm was the cause of this strange psychological phenomenon, then it certainly was going to be even more dangerous than it used to be.


    Thank god I didn''t use the Metabody System.Rui shook his head, sighing as he walked back to the contestant hall.


    In a way, she was lucky that she was too weak to force him to use it. The oue would have been much worse than just the pattern recognition system alone.


    I hope she''s okay.He truly did. The reason he knocked her out the moment he realized what was happening was to sort of push the kill switch on the strange mental phenomenon.


    He just hoped it had worked.Content ? N?velDrama.Org 2024.


    I guess I''ll go check up on her when she wakes up.


    He nced at the rest of hispetitors with a careful nce. Thankfully, it didn''t appear that they had realized what was happening.


    For now, he returned his focus to the tournament, looking at the rest of the matchups properly for the first time. He hadn''t gotten a chance to properly consider them before.


    Interesting...Rui mused as he saw that Squire Meera was on the other side of the tournament, in the final bracket while he was in the first. It meant that they could only meet in the final round.


    He would not be surprised if that was done on purpose. It didn''t take a genius to figure out that they were the two strongest out of all of the eight, thus the most suspenseful tournament ranking was one where their fight was settled only after the others.


    Regardless, it didn''t matter all too much. He was going to fight her at some point, and he didn''t intend to hold back. She was not weak enough for him to have to worry about her.


    "And in the next match, we have Contestant Frinjschia, the oldest veteran of the Martial Contest and a consistent top ranker in the Virodhabhasa Martial Contest! Her elder experience gives her a massive edge over herpetitors!"


    Rui watched the remarkable granny getting up. It appeared that he would be getting to watch her fight.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1263 Prince

    Chapter 1263 Prince


    "And on the other hand, her opponent, a prominent figure from the Kandrian Empire, the seventy-sixth Kandrian prince, Contestant Reese Von Kandria!"


    Rui was btedly d that the gargantuan man was too focused to notice his reaction because he had been caught too off-guard to hide it.


    He had, of course, noticed the man with golden hair and eyes, if only for his strength, but he had not realized that the man was a prince of Kandrian Royal Family!


    Even when his name had been called when he passed the third round, only his first name had been used. Rui was not familiar with all the various Kandrian princes and princesses to recall the man''s face and name.


    Shit...


    The presence of the prince indicated the presence of the Kandrian Royal Guard, it certainly meant that there was a lot of attention from the Kandrian Empire. That made him nervous. It wasn''t that the Kandrian Empire was his enemy, certainly not, but it made him nervous nheless.


    Thankfully, the Kandrian Royal Family did not have the kind of information on him as the Martial Union did. He knew that the two organizations weren''t the best of buddies, and even had conflicts of interest. The Martial Union did its absolute best to conceal the confidential information on the profiles of each of its Martial Artists since these Martial Artists were its only militaristic power.


    Furthermore, ever since Rui became a Martial Squire, he had undertaken a lot of missions under various aliases, courtesy of the safety measures for Martial Artists to protect their identity from potentially hostile clients and enemies they made while fulfillingmissions. He had alsopleted most of them outside of Kandrian territory.


    Immediately after that, he served a little under two years as a diplomat for the Martial Union at Vilun Ind where he grew much stronger after having mastered several new techniques. The Kandrian Empire certainly was not exposed to his growth there either.


    Furthermore, the Martial Union most certainly would not reveal the growth that he had undergone in the Shionel Confederation to the royal family either.


    And there was no way they had any idea how much stronger he was in the past three years he had spent after leaving the Shionel Confederation.


    This means they would have absolutely no idea who Contestant Falken was. They would simply be too unequipped to possibly link him back to Rui Quarrier. Especially if he used techniques like the Metabody System, which would give anybody apletely misleading impression about what his Martial Path was.


    He grew more rxed as a result of making those insights. He didn''t need to be nearly as fearful as he was. Furthermore, even if the Kandrian Empire found out, they were most certainly no friend of Chairman Deacon. Selling out its own military assets to the grudge of a weaker foreign power was not something that it was willing to do.


    Once Rui calmed down a bit, he studied the matchup. He wasn''t sure who would win, but he would face the winner of this match in the second round.


    He was unable to discern who was stronger out of the two of them based on his evaluation of their threat level, it was too close.


    This means that we''re going to get a good fight.


    The two contestants walked side by side as they headed towards the centre of the colosseum.


    It wasn''t too long before they hadpleted all the initial formalities.


    "Take your stances."


    The Kandrian prince took a rather strange stance, he crouched, stretching one leg as far back as he could on the ground while the fingers of both hands touched the ground before him.


    His sharp eyes fixated on Squire Frinjschia.


    Interesting... Rui''s eyes lit up with intrigue. An offensive Martial Art that relies on umted momentum to inflict damage?


    Not the most unique or creative Martial Art he had ever seen, but it certainly was a formidable offense. Its clear downside was the fact that it was inflexible and more predictable, but its upside was that its offensive power was almost certain to be unmatched. Every collision would be damning, especially given the weight ss and the muscle mass of the man. Rui wouldn''t be surprised if he was capable of fighting Hypertrophic Surge head-on.


    Squire Frinjschia, however, was unperturbed. She simply adopted a neutral stance, much to Rui''s surprise. She''s an all-rounder? Interesting.


    That made him even more curious about her Martial Art.


    The air grew more tense as the Senior priest let the atmosphere mull for a moment.


    And soon, it was time.


    "Begin!"


    RUMBLE!


    Rui''s expression lit up with an impressed smile as the Kandrian prince sted forward, the sheer amount of force he exerted shook the very ground beneath him as he propelled his gargantuan body forward at incredible speeds!


    The sheer amount of power in his attack was undeniable!


    Rui would need both Nemean Blossom and Flux Earther at maximum effort to be able to eat attacks like that head-on. As expected, the final eight were not to be underestimated.


    They were different from the rest of their peers.


    He shot forward, boiling the air with the sheer friction he generated, arriving at his opponent in an instant!


    And yet, she had already departed.


    WHOOSH!


    His eyes widened as he swept across an empty image. He swerved to the right as his instincts warned him of an iing attack.


    BAM!


    Her elbow crashed into his neck as she spun, bolstering her attacks with as much torque as she could generate. Yet, her eyes widened as her elbow could barely dig into his extraordinarily dense and tough muscles.


    A single word escaped his mouth.


    "Weak!"


    He swung wildly, throwing a wild haymaker, yet his attack missed its mark as she effortlessly evaded it, stepping away.


    The first bout ended as the two of them momentarily paused, sizing each other up.


    The crowd, however, loved every second of it!


    "Woooo! Go, Prince Reese! st her away!"


    "Show him the younglings the power of experience, granny!"


    Rui smiled, for once, he agreed with every sentiment they expressed.


    This chapter upload first at  Content from N?velDr(a)ma.Org.

 Chapter 1264 Risk

    Chapter 1264 Risk


    The two of them had already gained a lot of insight into their opponent based on the first exchange.


    She''s fast.Prince Reese narrowed his eyes.It didn''t feel like in speed.


    His defense is as high as his offense.Squire Frinjschia stared at him with an impassive expression.Hurting him is going to be difficult.


    It hadn''t taken more than a single exchange for the both of them to not only get a foundational grasp on their opponent but also a good grasp on the dynamics of the battle.


    Unless she has some absurdly powerful grade-ten defensive techniques, she cannot withstand more than one attack from me. Prince Reese realized.My win condition is getting a single hit on her.


    His circumstances were a lot more straightforward and simpler than hers. Specialized Martial Artists were usually less flexible than all-rounders, but it meant that they did not have the predicament of choice. There was a much lesser probability of making the wrong choice because they had very few choices in the first ce.


    It was different for all-rounders. By definition, they had all the choice in the world. It gave them more flexibility than any other ss of Martial Artists. But it also meant that the difficulty of choosing the right choice was greater.


    This was something that every all-rounder had to tangle with.


    Rui regarded her empathetically. Of course, he had an entire system of thought that he had personally researched and developed that dealt with this dilemma, in addition to his extreme strategic intelligence, so he didn''t suffer due to that problem all that much.


    He nced back between them. He had an inkling of what her Martial Path was, but he would need to see a little more for confirmation.


    At the moment, she had two choices on how to proceed strategically. She could either choose to aim to take him down by umting damage with countless strikes over a longer period of time, or she could hope to rely on particr circumstances with her most powerful technique and knock him out in one go when she got the opportunity.


    Both options had their merits and demerits. The former offered stability and lowered the risk of loss while executing it, but it also had a lower probability of victory.


    Unfortunately, weight sses mattered, it dictated raw power barring truly exceptional circumstances. She would need to umte minute damage bit by bit over an absurd amount of time and effort. It was a herculean task, but as long as she relied on the maneuvering capabilities that she had demonstrated, it was not impossible. It also made it more difficult for him to take her down.


    Knocking him out in one go required a lot less effort. This was because the mechanics of being knocked out were fundamentally different from damage to tissue. It caused blunt force brain trauma, causing a forced shutdown of the conscious brain.


    It didn''t require as much damage as hurting his absurdly tough body enough to take him down with actual injured. But this approach required her to be a lot less passive, she would need to fight more aggressively and take more risks in order to exploit more openings and create a circumstance where she couldunch her most powerful attack at the right ce and time.


    That moment would not arrive if she went with the conservative strategy of statically trying to umte damage.


    The two strategies werergely mutually exclusive with each other, making it mostly impossible for her to try abination of both. She would merely tire herself out while not executing either strategy properly.


    The air grew taut as a pivotal point of the fight had already arrived.


    The decisions they made here would likely decide the oue of the fight. They were too close in overall prowess, a wrong choice would give their opponent an unshakable advantage.


    Rui watched in rapt attention. He too did not know what was the right choice, the issue was that he didn''t have a good grasp of what either side was capable of. It all depended on how confident she was on her strongest attack, and whether she was evaluating his defense urately.


    Soon enough, the moment arrived.


    Interesting...Rui realized her decision before everyone else.


    WHOOSH!


    She shed forward with incredible speed, racing straight at him fearlessly!


    He smiled enthusiastically.


    She had chosen the high-risk, high-reward strategy!


    This was an unexpected choice to Rui, given her age, he had expected her to be a lot more conservative andposed in her approach. Yet she didn''t seem to care about such considerations.


    She wanted to win!


    Even at her age, she was not resigned to losing to her juniors who were in the prime of their lives.


    Instantly, he had gained a lot more respect for her. It took a truly unshakable conviction and drive to push through for decades without losing her fire. She was cut from a different cloth from the Squire instructors back in the Martial Academy. While he respected Squire Kyrie and was quite grateful for her training and tutge, she did not have what it took as a warrior to even be worthy of the Senior Realm.


    Squire Frinjscia, on the other hand, was perhaps the most worthy candidate for the Senior Realm. He had initially spected that it was herck of drive that prevented her from entering the Senior Realm.


    But now he knew that was nonsense. That meant that there was another reason, perhaps her body was too weak?Content rights by N?velDr//ama.Org.


    He shook his head.No.


    Then it could just be horrible luck that she didn''t run into the right challenging circumstances that pushed her enough?


    Perhaps.


    Or it could be an issue with the individuality of her Martial Art. The stronger he got, the more he realized that individuality was important. Techniques needed to be individualistic because the Martial Path and the Martial Body were individualistic, the same source of individuality was needed to bepatible, synergetic, and attuned. if there was an element of ipatibility, then it could not draw out the true power of the body; the Martial Heart.


    He had a feeling he knew what it was.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1265 Thoughtless

    Chapter 1265 Thoughtless


    Regardless, he wasn''t too sure about it. It could be one of the two, and it was unlikely that he would find out just by watching her fight. At the very least, he would need to fight her himself in order to figure out whether it was just a matter of bad luck of not being forced to ovee the right kind of challenge, or whether it was an issue in her Martial Art.


    Regardless, Rui put the matter aside as it was not particrly relevant. His attention was already fixed on the fight ensuing in the colosseum.


    "RRGH!" The Kandrian prince swung at Squire Frinjschia as she approached.


    WHOOSH!


    She narrowly avoided a blow to the head, using her momentum tond a powerful blow into his gut in a fashion simr to Flowing Canon.


    POW POW POW!


    She followed through with a series of swift blows to the rib, before throwing a powerful doubles-fist strike at his jaw.This is the property of N?-velDrama.Org.


    She didn''t hide her desire to knock him out.


    BAM!


    "Tsk." She tutted, leaping away to avoid an attack after hers failed.


    Yet she wasn''t done. The very next moment, she raced forward yet again, fearlessly entering his striking range.


    Yet the Kandrian prince could only grit his teeth in frustration when every attack he struck her with cleanly missed!


    He found it unnerving that she could avoid him so well, despite her raw speed not being too impressive. How was she able to avoid him so well and move so sharply?


    Not many people were able toprehend the underlying mechanics behind her movements.


    ''It''s her Martial Art.'' Rui realized. ''It''s not that she''s fast... It''s that she''s managed to eliminate thought as a time-consuming variable in her movements by relying on muscle memory alone.''


    Rui recognized this because he had seen a simr case before. ''Hever.''


    Hever too had mastered his technique to such a point, that he could perform them using muscle memory alone. Of course, this was not a feature of his Martial Art, it was something that he inadvertently aplished with incredible single-minded dedication and focus.


    Thought was something that apanied all movements before, during, and after they urred. It was needed to time the movement, coordinate, and pace it appropriately.


    However, it could be reced with muscle memory, when the movements werepletely and totally baked into the blood of the body, such that it could be aplished with little to no effort, and nog from thought.


    It was the difference between someone typing on a keyboard for the first time, and a proficient typer with many years of dedicated practice and hard work.


    Thetter was always far superior. But was it because the anatomical speed of their fingers was superior to that of the former?


    No.


    The only difference was that thetter could type without needing to perceive, process, and decide when it came to typing, getting rid of an important element that hampered the former.


    That was why while Squire Frinjschia''s movements were not the fastest, she could effectively move as fast as a speed and maneuvering-oriented Martial Art.


    ''Furthermore, she could go much more extreme with it than Hever ever did, because her Martial Body is obviously attuned to her Martial Art.'' Rui narrowed his eyes.


    That meant that she definitely had fewer constraints and restrictions. At the very least she could achieve greater results for the same amount of effort that Hever did.


    However, unlike him, she applied to a much broaderbat style, while Hever had hyper-specialized in counter-offensive grappling, making his task easier and more pliable.


    As far as Rui could see, her entirebat style made use of muscle memory recing thought. Every single movement, every single set of movements,pletely eliminated thought as a shackle.


    ''Impressive.'' Rui regarded her with respect. She moved so fast that even Rui had to exert his attention to keep up with all of her movements. ''She can pressure even the likes of Kane when ites to maneuvering.''


    That was especially impressive because she was not a maneuvering-oriented Martial Artist. She was an all-rounder, and her offense, while much weaker than the Kandrian Prince''s titanic offense, was consistently solid.


    He hadn''t gotten a chance to see her defense since the Kandrian Prince had yet to put even a scratch on her, but he was quite confident that it too would not fall behind. He could already tell that she relied more on passive defense with extensive signs of conditioning across her aged flesh.


    It made sense, since active defenses often required thought, or at least were heavily reliant on it. It was a lot more difficult and risky to eliminate thought in techniques that required thought. Thus it was entirely logical to rely on conditioning.


    Regardless, it appeared that she wouldn''t particrly be relying on it this fight.


    BAM BAM BAM! WHOOSH!


    She struck his liver with a swiftbo of knuckle strikes, striking him with the second knuckle on the index finger, before just barely evading a swift sweeping haymaker from him.


    POW POW! WHOOSH!


    She barely managed to squeeze in two strikes to the vital points of the floating ribs before sharply ducking to avoid a powerful swift blow from the Kandrian prince. She somersaulted away cleanly, and yet...


    FLICK


    It was just the tiniest of nicks with the knuckles on his fist, and yet, a wound was a wound. A small cut appeared on her cheek.


    It was nothing worth mentioning, yet it spoke for itself.


    She was cutting it close, extremely close. This was the downside of her approach, it certainly allowed her to be more aggressive in pursuing opportunities tond that finishing blow that she was looking for, but it also came with risks.


    Had she chosen a more conservative approach, this most like would never have happened.


    STEP


    He crouched once more into a sprinter''s position, beforeunching himself at her.


    BOOM!


    He propelled himself forward with tremendous momentum only to be effortlessly evaded by his opponent.


    Yet it appeared that he wasn''t interested in repeating the same song and dance in vain.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1266 Difference

    Chapter 1266 Difference


    The moment she stepped away, he too shifted. His legs immediately changed directions, nting themselves into the ground, as he managed to conserve momentum, altering his direction towards her.


    Her eyes widened in shock as he once again shot himself against her, this time nearly point nk!


    POW!


    What followed unfolded so fast, that even Rui had trouble keeping up. Heunched himself at her nearly point-nk range.


    In an ordinary case, victory was but guaranteed. But not against an opponent that seemed to have eliminated thought!


    POW!


    He grinned as he felt the impact!


    Yet his expression soured when he turned back.


    She was conscious. Her arms were intact, yet they were bruised visibly. And she had already rushed back towards him with a powerful charge!


    ''She mitigated the impact with a well-timed retreat and shift.'' Rui mused. ''That would have been impossible without her ability to move without thought. She would have been too slow and he would have broken her arms and mangled her body, to say the very least.''


    The battle escted to a higher echelon of intensity as the Kandrian prince refused to let the battle return to its previous state!


    Letting his opponent take all the initiative was something he could not allow. While he was confident in his defenses, he had to admit that he had admitted her ability to hurt him. Letting that continue with as little resistance as before was no longer an eptable choice.


    "RARGH!" He rushed forward with a determined expression.


    And yet, much to everyone''s surprise, the elderdy,unched herself at him fearlessly.


    While many others would have chosen prudent passivity in her ce, she rushed forward in the face of an attack that could cripple her without even the slightest hesitation of inhibition.


    WHOOSH!


    His attack missed her face by a millimeter!


    Yet hers didn''t.


    BAM!


    A powerful knuckle punch dug itself into his sr plexus. An expression of pain shed across the Kandrian prince''s face as stepped back to charge at her with his entire body.


    Yet his eyes widened in shock when she refused to let him open the distance even a slight inch!


    Every step he took, she took, almost before he himself did. Her movements were not inhibited by thought, and her reactions were always at the peak of her reflexes at all times.


    He could never open up the distance before she kept up with him every step of the way.


    "GET AWAY!" Heunched a sweeping attack with both hands.


    And yet...


    WHOOSH!


    She was already behind him having casually evaded it!


    POW POW POW!


    Three strikes to the kidney and the cyx were only the beginning.


    The battle entered a new phase where the Kandrian prince was unable to even open the distance between himself and her.


    She refused to let him!


    She boldly stood right in front of his face. Boldly avoided every single attack just a moment before it struck her to maximize the amount of striking time she had!


    Her knuckle punches abused his vitals. They were the only areas where she could hurt him, after all. She overcame all of his paltry attempts to crush her, growing more aggressive with her attacks by the second.


    She was searching for an opportunity to end the battle even harder than at the start of the battle!


    Rui only grew more impressed as he watched her fight. The difference between the two warriors was stark.


    She was a fighter who had truly done her absolute best to squeeze the potential of not just her body but also her subconscious mind.


    Rui did not know what the conditions for the higher Realms were, but he had a feeling that she was most likely on the right track.


    It was unfortunate that she was still stuck at the Squire Realm.N?vel(D)ra/ma.Org exclusive ? material.


    Rui narrowed his eyes.


    The more he watched her, the greater the suspicions he had on why she hadn''t broken through despite being such a fierce warrior whose determination had persevered for a lifetime.


    It was a pity, but it made sense if his hypothesis was true.


    Inparison, the Kandrian Prince''s ws were more ring and visible.


    ''You have a powerful body. Yet you suck at maximizing its potential.'' Rui shook his head.


    The act of developing a Martial Squire''s Martial Art with individuality was the same as squeezing the most out of the potential that the body had to offer.


    ''Yet, instead of maximizing the potential of what your Martial Body has to offer. You have only explored its most basic application in regards to your Martial Path.'' Rui shook his head.


    While it was true that his Martial Path was probably centered around momentum, that did not mean that that was all his body was capable of. The closer Rui got to the Martial Heart, the more he realized just how much it took to ess the Martial Heart.


    Every part of the Martial Body had to be put to good use. The fullbat potential of one''s Martial Body needed to be realized in order to ess the hidden power buried deep within it.


    Until one did that, one was unworthy of the Martial Heart.


    That was the difference between the two of them.


    And that difference proved to be just enough.


    POW POW!


    Squire Frinjschia lunged forward, jamming her thumbs at the base of his ears.


    The Kandrian prince''s eyes widened as he felt a wave of dizziness wash over him for just a moment. The world turned upside down as it spun to his senses.


    For a moment, all the muscles in his body rxed as his guard dropped when his attention was drawn away from her.


    That opening was all she needed.


    Her eyes sharpened as she activated a special breathing technique.


    BOOM!


    An incredibly powerful impact rocked his jaw as her high kicknded squarely on hisx jaw. The blunt force trauma it caused just barely exceeded the threshold.


    And yet it did.


    His eyes rolled backward as his body went limp, copsing


    THUD


    For a moment, everyone was stunned. It urred so abruptly that it caught many people off-guard. It took a few seconds for thementator to remember that he was hired for a job.


    "AND WE HAVE A WINNER! SQUIRE FRINJSCHIA PASSES TO THE NEXT ROUND AFTER A STUNNING VICTORY!"


    Rui smiled. She was to be his next opponent, and he was itching to fight someone of her caliber.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1267 Religious clash

    Chapter 1267 Religious sh


    He was d that she was the one who won. She was a more sophisticated fighter than the blockhead who wielded his Martial Body like a caveman. Furthermore, he would rather avoid fighting the Kandrian prince.


    He might get into political hot waters if it came to light that a Martial Squire of the Martial Union crushed a Kandrian prince. These kinds of Martial Artists were particrly vulnerable to Rui due to theirck of sophistication. In fact, Rui would need to be extremely careful to ensure that he didn''t annihte the man''s Martial Path, or else he would be used of treason.


    He didn''t exchange any words with her when she returned. There was time for thatter.


    "And for the next round, we have Contestant Janeu Meren! A powerful Martial Squire native to the Virodha Theocracy, known as the Fangfeeder! His opponent will be a junior monk of the Daeshun Temple, Contestant Xaesha representing Daeshunism!"


    The crowd cheered loudly as a wave of excitement spread through them.


    ''Oh boy, a religious conflict.'' Rui sighed, shaking his head inwardly. ''Because those always went well back on Earth.''


    Yet it appeared that the people of the Virodha Theocracy were quite enthused about this matchup. It appeared that they looked forward to a battle between their own representative of the Virodhabhasa Faith versus a representative of Daeshunism.


    This was a religion that Rui did not know much about.


    Yet the junior monk did indeed resemble what Rui pictured when he imagined monks.


    ''Maybe Daeshunism was like the Buddhism of this world and the Daeshun Temple is like the Shaolin Temple of this world.'' Rui spected.


    He wasn''t too interested though. Getting entangled with one religion was enough of a headache for Rui.


    It appeared that there was indeed friction between the two of them.


    "This isn''t the soft and peaceful Daeshun Temple old man," Squire Janeau smiled viciously. "If you are soft, you''ll get consumed."


    "May Gaia take pity on your being," The man emphatically replied. "I shall excise you who has surrendered yourself to the beast."


    The crowd roared in approval as the two of them were firmly opposed to each other.


    Rui could already tell what their Martial Art were without even needing to look at their stances or theirbat style. Squire Janeau had absurdly sharp canines for all his teeth, looking like a mutated beast version of a human.


    Furthermore, the nails of his hands and feet were thick and long, curling into razor-sharp ws. Rui could see that he had conditioned his elbows into a sharp edge as well when flexed. The same had been done for his knees.


    Only a fool would not be able to gauge his Martial Art at first nce. However, that did not mean it was weak. It was quite likely that his Martial Body had been adjusted to amodate such conditioning with greater ease and less resistance if not outright granted with them from the start.


    He could not imagine what kind of conditioning could change an incisor or mr tooth to a canine.


    The monk''s Martial Art was also quite obvious with the long spear that he held in one hand.


    "Take your stances!"


    Squire Janeau took the most beastly stance that a human could possibly take standing on two legs. Rui was sure that the man would rather have been born a predator beast or monster than a human, at this point.


    The monk, on the other hand, took the most natural and expected stance of a spear that one could expect from a spear wielder.


    What was unexpected was the weight of the pressure that he exerted.


    It was silent, ordered, and honed.


    On the other hand, Squire Janeau resembled a hungry predator eying its prey.


    "Begin!"


    Squire Janeaushed forward with a wild grin. His hands turned into ws, one reaching for the monk, while the other was pulled back, coiled, and ready tosh out.


    Rui had already predicted the paradigm of the battle even before it began.


    If the spear wielder failed to take him down, or at least ward him away, before the beast entered close quarters, then he would lose.


    There was no way a Martial Artist dedicated to the spear was oveing a lethally offensive close-quarters Martial Artist at that range. He needed to ensure that it never got to that point.


    And it appeared that he had no intentions of letting that happen.


    The second that Squire Janaeu entered the range of the spear, the spear shed forward at blinding speeds!


    FLICK!


    If anything, Rui was impressed that Squire Janeau managed to evade that with only a small scratch. Yet, he was not deterred.


    He rushed forward again with a wild grin, unperturbed. Yet, he hadn''t gone in without a n, unlike the impression he gave.


    WHOOSH!


    He grinned as he managed to duck in time, evading the spear.


    It was a simple tactic. Spears were an inflexible weapon, it meant that they generally had limited attack patterns, in exchange for offering the user solid range. Thus they were easier to predict than weapons such as swords that were much more unrestrained.Content rights by N?velDr//ama.Org.


    He rushed forward with a wildugh. "You''re dead!"


    ''Fool.'' Rui shook his head.


    BAM!


    Just the briefest moment after he evaded the spear, a foot had already crashed into his face,unching him away.


    ''Expecting a spear wielder not to have taken measures topensate and mitigate for the most basic weakness of a spear is stupid.'' Rui mused. ''Then again, the Kandrian prince did not have any real measures with his Martial Body to mitigate the weakness of his Martial Art and Body.''


    Both of them were short-sighted. It was always best to assume, or at least be prepared for, the worst at their level.


    The monk had already begun the kicking motion even before the spear attack had been fully evaded. Rui could instantly tell that that was one of manybos that the man had mastered to an extremely high degree of perfection. In fact, the spear attack was half-intended to be a set-up for the kick.


    Oveing such a defense was not going to be easy.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1268 Awaited

    Chapter 1268 Awaited


    Yet it appeared that he wasn''t one to give up so easily, either. He immediatelyshed out, rushing in towards the spear wielder. The moment he stepped into range, the spear shed forward racing to impale him.


    Yet Squire Janeau leaped diagonally to the side, avoiding the spear, and closing the distance a bit.


    Because spears had lesser flexibility, they could not easily attack targets that weren''t directly ahead within their striking range. This was what Squire Janeau hoped to use to close the distance between them.


    Yet, it appeared that he was still underestimating the monk.


    The moment thetter saw the maneuver, the spear as he rapidly shifted it from hand to hand towards the approaching Squire Janeau.


    THWACK!


    The powerful weapon mmed hard into Squire Janeau. The man gritted his teeth as he blocked the powerful weapon with both arms, only to beunched backward with the force of the impact.


    "I won''t let you get your ws on me that easily, beast." The monk dered confidently.


    Squire Janeau gritted his teeth. "I''m going to tear you apart!"


    Rui watched with vague interest as the two of them continued their fiercepetition. Squire Janeau continued applying as many possible solutions to getting past the man''s annoying counter-offensive and defense. The monk instead did everything he could to keep Squire Janeau away.


    Rui had to respect how far he had taken spear-wielding. Every time he moved the spear, it almost disappeared in Rui''s vision. It was incredibly fast, and even more lethal. The edge of the spear was sharper than Rui could even sense. He doubted that even Nemean Blossom would be able to withstand the offense without taking any damage, the offense was too focused, powerful, and lethal for that to possibly happen.


    Squire Janeau, on the other hand, reminded Rui a lot of Nel. The two of them had the same wild aggression that resembled what one would expect from a predatory monster as opposed to a Martial Artist.


    He knew better than to underestimate someone like that. The man''s speed was incredibly high, allowing him to dodge the spear routinely. Rui didn''t even want to imagine what it felt like to get hit with either those razor-sharp ws or the fangs in his mouth.


    However, as much of a wild beast the man seemed like he was, he did disy a respectable amount of strategic and tactical intelligence. He didn''t just blindly stick to one approach even if it failed. He showed that he was capable of adapting his approach if that was what was necessary.


    It was an interesting fight, but not one that was too important as far as he was concerned. He almost certainly would not be fighting either one of them in the final round. They would need to ovee the winner of the next match to reach him.


    He had a feeling that that was not going to happen.


    Regardless, the oue did catch him by surprise.


    SPLAT!


    The spear pierced through the top of Squire Janeau''s shoulder... but that wasn''t enough to stop him from ripping off a good chunk of the monk''s forearm.


    "Rgh!" The monk grimaced as he immediately tried to contain the bleeding.


    Squire Janeau, on the other hand, was ecstatic. "Hehehe..."


    The piece of flesh that he bit off, fell from his mouth. "I told you didn''t I...?"


    The man appeared to be unperturbed by the spear wound. "...This ain''t your little Daeshun Temple. You''ll get torn apart if you''re soft!"


    What followed was inevitable.


    The size of a spear meant that it needed to be wielded by both arms. It could not be used to anywhere near its full potential with only one functioning arm. With one arm losing a huge chunk of its forearm, the man could not effectively use it to manipte his spear.


    He had brought this upon himself.


    ''Why would you not take measures to protect your arms?'' Rui shook his head.


    If the arms were the most important part of the Martial Body when it came to one''s Martial Art, then Rui would most certainly have gone to extensive means to protect them. At the very least, he would have conditioned them to hell and back.


    ''Then again, it''s highly doubtful that anything short of a full-fledged defensive powerhouse could stop that man''s fangs and ws.'' Rui shrugged.


    "I forfeit!" The monk eximed once Squire Janeau''s ws were just an inch away from his throat.


    "We have a winner! Contestant Janeau of the Virodha Theocracy passes on to the second round of the Martial Contest!"


    The crowd cheered ecstatically as much of it wasprised of the natives of the Virodha Theocracy.


    Rui grew more attentive as the next round soon arrived.


    This is what he had been waiting for.


    "And in the final matchup of the first round, we have Contestant Feoul, the renowned Breathless Demon of the Feriung n at the frontier of Human Domain! A powerful neer to the Martial Contest!" The announcer eximed, before pausing for a moment. "And on the other hand... We have the champion of the Martial Contest! The Devil''s Beauty herself! Will the neer be able to dethrone the queen of the Martial Contest?!"


    The crowd cheered loudly as two women appeared in the colosseum. Rui watched carefully, unwilling to miss even a moment of the fight. He had already resolved not to make predictive models on any of them to give himself as much of a challenge to potentially trigger his Martial Heart, but that did not mean he would not take ordinary measures when it came to observing them.


    "Take your stances!" The Senior priest instructed them once the formalities ended.


    Contestant Feoul took a low crouching stance with her hands ahead of her, poised for action.


    ''Grappler... Interesting.'' Rui nced back at Meera, who simply stood there. ''And on the other hand... stanceless.''


    Squire Feoul released a tremendous amount of pressure, one that would any Martial Squire on edge. It appeared that she was as impressive as one would expect from a first-timer entering the top eight of such a wide and powerful contest. One look at her, and Rui knew that if he wasn''t careful, it wouldn''t end well.Content ? N?velDrama.Org 2024.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1269 Heart

    Chapter 1269 Heart


    Meera, on the other hand, did not exert any pressure. She truly was a confounding Martial Artist. The pressure that Martial Artists, or any entity for that matter, exerted, simply arrived from the threat of their existence being conveyed once they expressed it by taking a stance and focusing their minds.


    Yet, one could not feel any overt threat when one looked at her. One would never have guessed that she was the champion of the Martial Contest at first nce.


    Yet despite that, Rui felt vaguely more diforted at the sight of her than any of the other Martial Squires. Perhaps it was the fact that she could hide her strength so seemingly well that made him feel wary.


    "Begin!"


    STEP!


    Squire Feoulunched herself at Meera with a shoot maneuver, her arms positioned for a takedown even before she reached her.


    Yet, Meera did not move.


    Squire Feoul''s eyes widened when the two of them locked eyes.


    Despite being a moment away from being part of a takedown, she was rxed.


    She may very well have been rxing atop a hill overlooking a valley, taking in the view.


    Her body was rxed.


    Her stance was unperturbed.


    And yet, at that moment, Squire Feoul felt a boundless chasm of power lurking deep behind Meera''s sparkling eyes. She gritted her teeth as she forcefully paused her maneuver, leaping back, putting some distance between them.


    "Oh? Squire Feoul has pulled back! Could it be she saw something that we didn''t?" Thementator wondered.


    "It appears that I underestimated you," Squire Feoul spoke with a grave tone.


    "Eh?" Meera tilted her head in confusion. "I didn''t even do anything."


    "I am not a fool," Squire Feoul coldly retorted, before adopting an even deeper crouch than before, reducing her size even further.Content ? N?velDrama.Org 2024.


    Her expression intensified as the air drew towards her, growing taut.


    Literally.


    Rui''s eyes widened as he felt something strange with Tempestuous Feel.


    Something was off.


    The air around her gravitated towards her... before disappearing into her?


    ''What?'' Rui''s eyes narrowed as he studied what was happening.


    Tempestuous Feel could feel not just the air around her, but even the air from the skies above drifting towards her, before eventually disappearing into her being!


    ''What is this?'' Rui watched with shock.


    It was as though her body was consuming the very atmosphere itself.


    Tempestuous Feel was unable to tell him what was causing this. Neither was Seismic Mapping or Primordial Instinct able to inform him on what exactly was happening.


    It was only when he peered into her body with Riemannian Echo, that he understood what was happening.


    ''She''s breathing in the atmosphere through her skin.'' Rui''s jaw dropped as he beheld something he had never seen before. ''Skin breathing. But this is not supposed to be possible in mammals.''


    It appeared that her body continuously grew heavier as she absorbed an immense amount of air within her body. The atmosphere seeped into her at a drastic pace, even the size of her body grewrger in response.


    Rui''s eyes narrowed.


    Whatever she was doing, it was something big.


    Even as she made preparations, her sharp eyes were fixed on Meera. She refused to lose sight of her even once. Her body began bloating in an unsightly monstrous manner, erasing her femininity.


    It was a choice that Meera disapproved of.


    "How disgusting," She murmured.


    the air grew tumultuous.


    The audience froze.


    Something had changed.


    Thementator was at a loss for words.


    The remaining contestants narrowed their eyes.


    An avnche of pressure had erupted from Meera, crashing into all of them. It had a darkness to it that one would never expect looking at her.


    Yet only a fool could miss the bone-chilling malevolence that vored her power.


    "No one is going to steal your heart as long as you wield that technique, you know?" Meera murmured.


    "You can have both your heart and your victory stolen." Squire Feoul snarled coldly.


    She was ready.


    "Poor thing..." A smile that didn''t reach her eyes formed on her face.


    Squire Feoul deepened her shooting maneuver, leaning almost t on the ground.


    "If no one is going to steal your heart, then..." Meera continued like nothing was happening.


    Squire Feoul had no intention of letting her ramble on any further.


    BOOM!!!


    Rui''s eyes widened in shock as sheunched herself at a speed that was second only to Kane''s Godspeed technique!


    The tremendous velocity she leaped towards Meera at should have incinerated the very air around her. She should have torn apart the very atmosphere with the momentum of her shoot.


    Yet nothing happened.


    She seamlessly sped forward, employing her normal breathing to inhale air from the front before exhaling it backward with her skin breathing.


    Air resistance did not exist in her vocabry.


    Not only did the air not impede her, it propelled her forward.


    In just a small fraction of a millisecond, she had already arrived.


    And then, the world went ck.


    Her chest felt cold.


    So cold.


    Ordinarily, she would have charged into Meera, grabbing hold and never letting go.


    Ordinarily.


    Rui had witnessed many ordinary things in his life.


    What he saw next concretely fell into the extraordinary category.


    Shepletely flew past Meera crashing into the other side of the colosseum.


    No one understood.


    Why hadn''t she charged into Meera? Or grabbed a hold of her?


    Why did she fly past her?


    The answer presented itself.


    BADUMP


    ...


    BADUMP


    ...


    "...If no one was going to steal your heart then..." Meera blushed as a bashful smile appeared on her face. "I hope you don''t mind if I do."


    The bloody heart she held in her hand continued beating even after Meera extracted it from within Squire Feoul''s chest cavity.


    Nobody moved.


    Nobody wanted to.


    Everybody stared at Meera with a mixture of horror and shock.


    A medical team had already appeared on the colosseum, quickly administering a whole slew of healing potions to the copsed Squire Feoul. They disappeared away from the colosseum along with Squire Feoul as quickly as they had appeared.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1270 Choice

    Chapter 1270 Choice


    Rui didn''t even know if she could be saved. Losing a heart was usually a nigh-instant death. It all depended on how good her body''s endurance and healing were. Those were the factors that would determine whether the medical team made it in time.


    He turned back towards Meera with narrowed eyes. ''She''s a lot less sane than she looks.''


    It was an eerie realization.


    Earlier, she had struck Rui as a quirky and entric Martial Artist. Now she was clinically insane in his eyes.


    However, her strength was real. Squire Feoul''s technique was easily grade ten. She was an incredibly powerful Martial Squire who definitely belonged in the top eight based on the power she disyed.


    Rui was confident he would have been able to definitively defeat her, it was still extremely impressive for Meera to be able to take her down so quickly.


    Her match had impacted all those who witnessed it.


    This was the strength of a champion, one who stood at the very pinnacle, above hundreds of thousands of Martial Squires.


    It was overwhelming.


    Almost none of the remaining contestants possessed the confidence to win against her. Not even Squire Janeau''s aggression seemed to be able to retain its vigor after witnessing that overwhelming performance.


    Only one of them retained his confidence.


    Not only did he retain his confidence, he retained his hope. It even grew stronger after witnessing that performance.


    Rui''s hand inadvertently pressed against his chest as he felt his excited heartbeat. It was a reflection of his true emotions on the matter.


    ''If anyone can push me to the limit...''


    He eyed her longingly.


    Yet, he had another obstacle to ovee before he could reach her.


    It was only after several seconds that the announcer once again recalled what he was hired for.Content ? N?velDrama.Org 2024.


    "And the winner is Champion Meera! She moves to the second round with a shocking performance!"


    Meera simply turned around as she simply returned to the contestant waiting room, unperturbed by the eyes that fixated on her.


    Rui, however, no longer focused on her.


    His attention had turned back to his next opponent.


    "And now we move on to the semi-finals! We have four remaining contestants. Squire Falken! Squire Frinjschia! Squire Janeau! and Champion Meera!"


    The crowd roared with approval and enthusiasm.


    The fights thus far had been quite special. Not a single person in the spectators wished for a refund. They got to witness shocking spectacles that they would seldom get to witness otherwise!


    "Without further ado, let us jump into the first match of the semi-finals!" The announcement eximed. "We have the domineering neer Contestant Falken! and the eldest veteran Contestant Frinjschia!"


    Rui and Squire Frinjscia headed towards the colosseum together.


    "May I ask you something?" Rui asked, politely.


    She nced at Rui. "...''Why do you persevere after all this time?''"


    "...Yes."


    She faced the colosseum ahead of them. "It''s all I have ever known. It''s all I know to do. It''s all I will do until I pass away."


    Rui raised an eyebrow.


    That was unexpected.


    He thought she would have persevered for a specific goal of some sort. Maybe she had a family she wanted to obtain the power to protect, or maybe she wanted to obtain the power needed to extend her lifespan a bit.


    But it appeared that he had a wrong read on the situation.


    She did not need a reason to persevere.


    She needed a reasonnot to.


    ''Behavioral inertia.'' Rui mused inwardly.


    Certain behaviors, when religiously engaged in over extremely long periods of time, became highly ingrained within a person.


    Her words indicated that she had dedicated her entire life to persevering for power singlemindedly. If that was the case, then he could see why the very act of pursuing power was the reason she pursued power.


    Perhaps it was the only normal she had ever known. Perhaps this was the only thing that could bring herfort and happiness, regardless of the sess.


    ''But is it enough to break into a higher Realm of power?'' Rui wondered.


    He didn''t know, he still didn''t understand the most detailed nuances of the breakthrough to the Senior Realm.


    Was pursuing power because it was the only way of life that anchored her mind and staved off despair strong enough of a desire to activate the Martial Heart?


    He didn''t know.


    ''It could also be that it is strong enough, but that she simply hasn''t met anything that could challenge that threaten and challenge that desire. After all, the worst thing that could generally happen in a fight is death.'' Rui mused.


    He turned back towards her. "Do you fear death?"


    "Hmph," She snorted mirthfully. "I fear life. Death is peace."


    ''Figured. So even the threat of death or loss isn''t enough to challenge her Martial Heart. No wonder she is still a Martial Squire after all these decades.''


    He started to understand her predicament. She was just in an unfortunate position of pursuing her Martial Path for a reason that was particrly difficult to challenge. It didn''t help that she didn''t seem to have a strong attachment to life on top of that.


    ''For a circumstance to help her activate her Martial Heart... It would need to threaten her ability to pursue her Martial Path without actually killing her.''


    A grave thought entered his mind.


    He was inadvertently faced with a choice. One that he had never expected he would be faced with in his entire life. He didn''t know which one of them was the right choice to make. He could consider the choice as rationally as he wanted, but unfortunately, he was unable to separate his emotions from his considerations this time.


    He entered the colosseum with a clouded mind, his eyes wandering in uncertainty.


    "Take your stances."


    She adopted the same neutral stance she didst time.


    "Focus." She instructed him with a sharp re. "You cannot ovee me with a scattered mind, young man."


    Rui stared at her for a moment, before a small smile bloomed on his face.


    He made up his mind.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1271 Clash

    Chapter 1271 sh


    The difference was startling.


    Squire Frinjschia''s eyes narrowed as she felt a profound sense of peril unlike anything she had ever felt.


    She always felt the faint pressure of death from particrly powerful Martial Squires. Even if she did not mind dying, her body was still cognizant of the threat of death that particrly lethal Martial Squires and Martial Artists of a higher Realm exerted on her.


    Yet, this was different.


    She felt a bone-chilling terror from Rui as if death was not the worst he could inflict on her.


    Her instincts could sense it clearly.


    The perils the depth of his eyes conveyed were beyond her fathoming


    Instantly, her wariness spiked as she honed her focus.


    He took a neutral stance, just like she did. The two faced each other in close quarters, facing each other eye to eye.


    "Begin!"


    She did not even hesitate. Instantly, sheshed out at him with her remarkable agility, throwing a number of jabs at his vitals.


    POW POW POW! WHOOSH!


    Rui dispersed their impacts only to have his own blow dodged with ease.


    BAM BAM BAM! WHOOSH!


    He narrowly turned, managing to block and disperse the impacts of her strikes with Flux Earther yet again, only to have his own blow dodged.


    He had to admit, her evasive maneuvering was splendid. Even Kane would have been quite impressed had he been here to witness it. Landing a single blow on her was quite difficult because muscle memory reflexes felt more impressive in person than when he was watching it from the contestant stands.


    Yet it was far from enough to deal with him.


    WHOOSH!


    Her eyes widened as her blow crashed into an empty image that faded immediately.


    BAM!


    She gritted her teeth as a Flowing Canon immediately crashed into her, pummeling her with all of his momentum.


    Rui raced in towards her, looking to build upon this momentum, yet it appeared that she was too wary of his offense.Content rights by N?velDr//ama.Org.


    ''Strange, she was more aggressive against the Kandrian prince than against me.'' Rui noted as he continued to pursue trying to find openings as the two of them exchanged.


    He wondered if she had gained an inkling of what he intended to do. he thought he had hidden his intentions well behind a Mind Mask, but perhaps he had underestimated the intuition of a Martial Artist who had been training and fighting literally the entirety of the normal human lifespan.


    He could sense a degree of reluctance and wariness from her movements when hepared it to the bold decisions she took in her previous fight.


    ''Well, if you''re not going toe to me, then don''t mind if Ie to you.'' Rui mused.


    He hadn''t been merely going back and forth with her. His predictive model had already made substantial progress as he gathered increasingly more data.


    BAM!


    His fist collided straight into her face with unerring uracy as heunched her away.


    She managed tond on her feet, skidding away with a look of surprise on her face. ''I thought I dodged at that, but he instantly altered its trajectory in the direction I was moving in even before I had begun!''


    Something was off.


    Rui began exerting a greater sense of threat than he did before. It was unnerving.


    She had already seen hisrger form against the abyssfeeder, and had seen a hint of his capability for extreme speed in the second round yesterday. She knew that his current capabilities were far from his limit.


    Yet she was not resigned. Against someone like Rui, she had already determined that taking him down quickly in the short term was the most optimal course of action.


    That required her to be aggressive against him, but for some reason, she found it particrly difficult to actually go ahead with the n.


    Her eyes narrowed as her fists clenched. ''Getting bogged down isn''t like me.''


    She made up her mind, rushing in beforeunching a barrage of strikes and blows. Her balled fists morphed into knuckle punches as she aimed to inflict greater damage with each strike and make it harder to disperse her attacks.


    One could imagine her shock when he blocked all of them with greater ease than he did before.


    CRACK!


    She grimaced as Rui managed to cleanly break one of her knuckles with a well-timed counter.


    Yet he was far from done.


    WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH!


    Her eyes widened as Rui effortlessly evaded her muscle-memorybinations as if he long knew how they were going to unfold. His movements began growing smoother and smoother as he grew morefortable in dismantling her muscle memory offense.


    Yet it wasn''t only her offense that waspromised.


    Evasive maneuvering was one avenue she was better at than the others because it paired really well with a muscle memorybat style.


    Yet even that was denied.


    WHOOSH!


    She sharply evaded a swift blow cleanly, shifting to the side


    Yet it was toote to dodge the kick that had already arrived where she had just reached.


    BAM!


    She grimaced as it crashed into her ribs unguarded, flinging her away. She sky-walked away, hoping to get some respite.


    But Rui had no intentions of being merciful.


    ''Ovee this,'' Rui mused as he braced himself tounch a barrage of Mighty Roar sh sts, activating the ODA System of the Void Pathfinder. ''Ovee this, and you shall thank me for the rest of your life.''


    THWOOM THWOOM THWOOM!


    He mercilessly shot her down from the air with perfectly well-timed and ced sonic bullets. Barrage after barrage crashed onto her.


    Her ferocity began revealing itself after she realized the dire predicament she was in.


    She had assumed that Rui''s greatest threat came from the abysmal power and speed that he had disyed in the three elimination rounds previously, but it was only now that she fought him that she realized that that was less than half the story!


    It was icing on the cake.


    If she wanted to win this battle, she needed to fight with her life on the line!


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1272 No

    Chapter 1272 No


    Her expression intensified as she abandoned her reluctance.


    She abandoned her misgivings.


    She abandoned her qualms andpunctions.


    She unshackled herself as she ceased treating this as a tournament match. She treated this like a life-and-death scenario.


    Yet little did she realize that it was worse than that.


    ''His long-range offense is absurd. I need to close the distance.'' Her eyes narrowed as she employed several techniques.


    "Oh...?" Rui''s eyes glinted with interest as several clones of Squire Frinjschia appeared. ''Interesting... A muscle memory version of Phantom Step eh?''


    He had to admit that her Martial Path was potent. Potency as measured by how strong a Martial Artistparatively was when one pitted them against another Martial Artist with the same quantity and quality of techniques.


    Rui had to admit that her Martial Path was certainly potent. Their ability to enhance the technique''s efficiency and effectiveness was super impressive. While the impact of her Martial Path on her strength was not as exaggerated as his own, it was not a reasonable standard to hold her to in the first ce.


    Rui tried his best to snipe the real one down with his Mighty Roar sh sts, but even with his predictive model, the technique was too honed.


    She ultimately managed to close the distance between them, even if barely.


    "HYAH!" She threw her most powerfulbos, hoping to overwhelm him for just a brief moment.


    And yet...


    WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH!


    Rui effortlessly weaved through her attacks like they didn''t even exist.


    BOOM!


    She failed to dodge a powerful Flowing Canon as Rui corrected the attack trajectory to ount for her predicted evasion trajectory.


    "Rgh!" She grimaced, coughing blood as Reverberating Lance permeated the attack deeper into her body.


    Yet, she had aplished what she intended to.


    CLASP!


    Her arms and legs were firmly coiled around his arm.


    ''She knew that I would tag her despite her evasion.'' Rui immediately engaged his whole body in the fight, lest she break his arm with the full power of her body. Grappling was a bit too different from striking, thus Rui made sure to verify his predictive model to make sure that there were no instances of failure due to that.


    The two of them wrangled on the ground trying to get a more dominant position on the other.


    He understood her intentions.


    Timing was everything in striking. Timing could bridge differences in strength and speed. All it took was one well-timed strike to the temple or the jaw, and a smaller striker could feasibly knock out arger striker.


    The same was much less true for grappling in general. Grappling was much more a contest of effort and perseverance much more than it was a contest of timing.


    Obviously, that did not mean timing didn''t matter.


    However, Squire Frinjschia was hoping she could diminish the spectacr all-around timing and cement that Rui had demonstrated by turning the battle into a grappling contest.


    ''You are also diminishing the weight of muscle memory... but if you can get rid of my predictive model by sacrificing your muscle memory, then it is worth it I suppose. Still...''


    Rui''s eyes narrowed. "You underestimate me."


    Her eyes widened at those words. She shifted her weight momentarily, trying to get a better position.


    But Rui had predicted that.


    Instantly he rolled with that motion at the right moment, destabilizing her as he gained a dominant mounted position.Property ? 2024 N0(v)elDrama.Org.


    BAM BAM BAM!


    He raised fists before raining down on her mercilessly with Outer Convergence and Reverberating Lance. Squire Frinjschia grimaced as she barely managed to defend against Rui''s barrage.


    Rui was doing this the hard way.


    He could have used Thundercoil to momentarily gain a clear opportunity to get a rear chokehold on her. She would be unable to break out from his grip and would lose consciousness quickly.


    But he didn''t.


    ''Knocking her out or killing her will not awaken her Martial Heart.'' Rui''s eyes narrowed her as he continued pressuring her to her limit.


    He had to admit, it didn''t feel nice. He didn''t enjoy torment.


    ''I''m sorry.''


    BAM!


    He broke a tooth with that strike.


    She grimaced with a sh of ferocity in her eyes.It appeared that she was done being used as a punching bag.


    Her hands sped into a p.


    Rui''s eyes widened as he leapt away.


    BOOM!


    An explosion of wind sted from her. It appeared that she was willing to harm herself if it meant getting Rui off of her.


    Yet it appeared that she wasn''t willing to give up.


    Or at least, that was what her sharp eyes conveyed.


    Blinding fast jabs shot towards Rui, each faster than thest one. He narrowed his eyes as he exerted himself to the limit to cleanly evade all of them. Yet it appeared that she was far from done. Her movements grew sharper and sharper by the second, she flowed smoother and smoother as she pushed her body and mind to the very limit of what she could bring out from within her.


    Her muscles burned.


    Her bones strained.


    Her joints creaked.


    Yet she resolutely suffered.All in order to elevate herself to a level where she could defeat Rui. The sheer amount of damage she was inflicting upon herself by disregarding her own wellbeing was inconsequential to her.


    She was willing to give her life if that was what it took to ovee Rui.


    Yet even that fell short.


    WHOOSH!BAM BAM BAM!


    Rui cleanly evaded a powerful blow as he simultaneouslynded three swift jabs from her blindspot. She grimaced as sheunched herself forward with the ferocity of a tiger, throwing a flying knee kick to his face.


    WHOOSH!


    Rui side-stepped it with ease,unching a powerful palm jab into her ribs inflicting a deep bruise.


    Every attack sheunched failed.


    Every defence she mounted crumbled.


    Every manoeuvre she made was outpaced.


    The sum of her life''s aplishments fell, one by one.


    His merciless eyes pierced through everything she offered. She may as well have been transparent. He killed every hope of victory she had.


    Yet the one thing he refused to kill was her.


    She hadn''t failed to notice his aversion to killing her. With the power that he had demonstrated, he could have done so had he wished to. He could have also knocked her out.


    Yet he chose to destroy her Martial Art.


    She felt a deep pain within her heart.


    Something important was about to break.


    When she closed her eyes, a familiar sight entered her mind.


    A path.


    One that she had treaded her entire life.


    Yet horror and despair dawned upon her as she saw what was to be of it.


    A dark formless void had descended on the path she treaded.


    When she gazed into the abyss, the abyss gazed back into her. Its depths were deeper than anything she had ever seen in this world.


    It loomed over her Martial Path.


    Scratches had already appeared.


    Soon they would turn into cracks, and eventually fragments.


    A Martial Path that she had tread her entire life.


    Gone. Erased. Nonexistent.


    A life as a cripple would await her. A life without Martial Art. A life without pursuit of her Martial Path.


    Something stirred deep within her. Deeper than she had ever reached.


    Was she willing to live such a life?


    Was she willing to be cripple?


    Was she willing to lose pursuit of her Martial Path?


    A single word escaped her mouth.


    "No."


    BADUMP!


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1273 Historic

    Chapter 1273 Historic


    Rui''s predictive model only grew stronger and stronger as he dealt with everything she threw at him while tormenting her with the best of what he had to offer without winning on the spot.


    The one thing he did hold back was the Metabody System. It was detrimental to his goal. The pattern recognition system was all that he needed in this case. Time passed slowly as he methodically and surgically deconstructed everything that she threw at him.


    She was a powerful semi-finalist, yet before even a fraction of his full power, she was powerless.


    Of course, a part of this was because she had badpatibility with him. Pattern recognition was the antithesis of pre-programmed muscle memory.


    Well, pattern recognition was the antithesis of nearly everything, but her Martial Art was especially vulnerable.


    Rui''s hopes began getting doused as time passed and his dominance grew despite his opponent pushing herself to self-destructive extents to ovee him.


    ''Maybe I was getting a bit too full of myself.'' He sighed as he prepared a Flowing Canon to knock her out. ''It''s best to end this before I cause damage to her Martial Path.''


    That was when he heard it.


    His heart heard it.


    A single word escaped her mouth.


    "No."


    Terror arose from deep within his gut.


    RUMBLE!


    The verynd hoisting the colosseum shook.


    A maelstrom of power surged forward from her elder body.


    The very sky shivered as sharp red streaking lines emerged from her chest, spreading to the rest of her body.


    The world seemed to wee the birth of a new Martial Senior.


    Her eyes opened, sparkling with newfound power.


    They turned, fixating on Rui before her.


    They were focused.


    Too focused.


    In that moment, Rui already knew.


    She forgot about the tournament.


    She forgot about the Martial Contest.


    She forgot about the rules.


    She forgot that Martial Seniors weren''t allowed to Martial Squires.


    No, whether she even knew about her ascended state itself was in question.


    She was evaluating him.


    At that moment, Rui felt the weight of a mountain weighing down on him.


    His instincts warned him of what was toe.


    He barely managed to activate Nemean Blossom at thest moment.


    Her eyes narrowed at the sight.


    She had made her decision.


    "NO!" Senior Priest Deril rushed forward, activating his Martial Heart.


    Yet he was too far.


    BOOM!


    A Senior-level attack crashed into Rui point nk.


    The ground broke.


    Every inch of the colosseum shattered.


    The bedrock,prised of esotericpounds and alloys meant to endure even the best of what the Squire Realm had to offer, crumbled instantly.


    The gusts of wind her attacks used to generate as a Martial Squire had turned into infant tornados.


    CRACK CRACK CRACK CRACK CRACK!


    One moment his formidable guard, which remained strong and steady before all forces within the Squire Realm, was intact, and the very next microsecond, it wasn''t.


    The paltry dispersion of the Flux Earther crumbled before the sheer amount of force that she imparted into his body.


    Rui''s body wasunched across the colosseum with such an extraordinary velocity that the very air around him incinerated in an inferno.


    BOOM!!!


    Rui experienced the single greatest impact of his life as he sted past the giant walls of the colosseum underneath the spectator stands, stopping outside.


    His body was misshapen. So much so that Kane would have thought he had used multiple Metabody techniques at full power at once, again.


    He was bleeding from more orifices than one could count.


    His body was broken in more ces than he could count.


    Yet, the moment passed, and he did not die.


    His constitution managed to survive.


    His brain barely managed to retain consciousness as he had shielded his head with the entirety of his body in a curled position.


    It was not great. But it was enough.


    He barely managed to inhale in a specific manner as he activated Weaving Blood in ce of Nemean Blossom.


    A sharp pain enhanced the already intense agony that he was experiencing as the Reaper Death poison kicked into action and quickly enriched his blood with the ingredients for cellr division.


    The wounded tissue desperately epted the gift and began healing.


    In just a second, his muscles healed.


    In the next, his flesh healed.


    His bones followed suit as his muscles propped them into ce before they were quickly reattached.


    His arm particrly strained Weaving Blood due to how immense the damage was.


    A medical team immediately had already seemingly teleported at his location from seemingly nowhere as a surge of spectators try to get as good a look at him as they could.


    Master Deivon immediately appeared out of nowhere too with a grave expression. The three other Martial Masters also followed suit.


    Each of them was prepared to see what they expected.


    Each of them was prepared to have their faintest hopes utterly crushed.


    Yet they were not prepared to see what they saw.


    The sight they beheld was so utterly mind-boggling that every single one of them froze in shock.


    Even the mighty Martial Masters who had witnessed much across their lengthy lives watched with unadulterated shock.


    The sight of Rui Quarrier stepping out of a massive crater unharmed. All his clothes had long been incinerated.


    His mask had crumbled, revealing the wildest grin he had ever donned. An almost maddening glint of excitement and ecstasy shed across his eyes.N?vel(D)ra/ma.Org exclusive ? material.


    They watched with tumultuous emotions, they watched a moment that would forever be seared in history.


    Yet no moment couldst forever.


    Master Deivon was the first to act.


    He activated a breathing technique, snapping his fingers.


    Rui disappeared, and a subtle gust of wind upied where he once stood.


    That action snapped everyone back to reality. Waves of murmurs washed over the crowd as they struggled to process what they had just seen.


    A Martial Senior struck a Martial Squire.


    The oue of this event should be nothing short of either crippling critical wounds, or death, depending on how casual the attack was, and the rtive power gap between the two of them.


    In the case between an infant Martial Senior''s very first attack that would undoubtedly be their weakest ever, and one of the most powerful Martial Squires ever, it was conceivable that the Martial Squire might survive if he was lucky.


    "Then why the hell was he unharmed?"


    This was a question that upied everybody''s minds


    The impact of such an event could not be understated.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1274 Tell Me

    Chapter 1274 Tell Me


    Squire Frinjschia suddenly snapped back to reality when the impact of Rui crashing through the contest barriers shook her, both physically and mentally. Only then had her current reality be cognizant to her.


    Yet, she didn''t even have time to celebrate or even process her breakthrough to a higher Realm.


    "What have I done...?" She murmured with a grave expression as she too hurriedly headed for the crater that had been created in the distance outside of the colosseum.


    What she saw shocked her to her very core.


    The sight of a silver-haired and silver-eyed man walking out of a crater unharmed shook her to her very core.


    For just the briefest of moments, she wondered whether she had actually broken through to the Senior Realm.


    She couldn''t be med for indulging this thought.


    That was the sheer magnitude of the feat that the man before her had aplished. The dust clouds from the crash had yet to fully settle, so ordinary people were unable to make out his appearance, but she could clearly sense every detail on his body.


    There were no wounds.


    He was unharmed.


    He stood there, and an excited grin shed across his face.


    She wanted to immediately head on over, if only to make sure he was okay, and apologize for attacking him as a Martial Senior.


    ''And also to express gratitude.'' Her eyes softened.


    She was not foolish.


    She may not have been the brightest, but she had spent an entire lifetime fighting. She knew what true malevolence looked like. She had lost count of the number of demons who tried to inflict as much suffering, misery, and despair on her, that she she had ovee.


    Rui was not one of them.


    This she knew with certainty, especially now that she hade to her senses. He pushed her to her very limit, and just the tiniest bit.


    Just far enough to trigger her Martial Heart.


    But close enough to ensure he didn''t inadvertently cripple her before that happened.


    It was surgical.


    She knew that he was holding back an overwhelming amount of power within him. A strangely muscled form that supplied raw power that overcame even the mighty abyssfeeder. The astonishing speed and agility he demonstrated when he acquired a pass in the second round yesterday.


    It had be evident to her that inflicting untold pain and suffering on her would have been trivially easy for him. Yet, he didn''t and had chosen the strangely time-consuming path where he carefully pushed her bit by bit, methodically and systematically forcing her to and past her limits.


    She was certain that he had blessed her with an opportunity to ovee her limits, a priceless boon that she had yet toe across her entire life. She needed to confirm it. She needed to hear it first-hand herself.


    Yet before she could even reach him, his patron exhaled deeply, snapping his fingers and seemingly teleporting Rui away.


    "Senior Frinjschia."


    She felt chills crawling up her skin as a profoundly deep pressure pressed down on her. Senior Deril''s expression was schooled, yet she could feel the fury that he was emanating.


    "I will have to detain you," He coldly informed her. "For the unauthorized assault on a Martial Squire and reckless endangerment of tens of thousands of people."


    His Martial Heart had long zed into fury. It was much deeper than her own.


    "I rmend you submit obediently," His eyes sharpened. "However, I do not mind giving you an early lesson on the power gap between a veteran and a novice Martial Senior if need be."


    She would be lying if she said she wasn''t curious about that. Yet she had far too much sense to dare to do something like that. For the first time in a while, she valued her life and well-being. She did not want to forfeit her life right after bing a Martial Senior.


    "I submit," She bowed her head lightly, deactivating her Martial Heart.


    "You made the right decision," Senior Deril calmed down, yet he refused to deactivate his Martial Heart. "Follow me. Don''t try to do anything stupid."


    Senior Frinjschia nodded, before ncing back at the crater. The three Martial Masters had already disappeared. An evacuation team had already kicked into action, safely extracting spectators from thepromised structure.


    Her newly enhanced senses quickly scanned the site.


    She was unable to spot a single corpse.


    She heaved a sigh. It was a miracle. It was also due to the fact that the colosseum barricade was extremely high and the spectator stands were abnormally high due to Martial Squires fighting in the air.


    Thus Rui had crashed through a pure wall.


    She was fortunate to not have sullied the greatest moment of her life with manughter. As long as she navigated the consequences of her action head-on with earnestness and sincerity, she coulde out with this as an overall positive moment.


    "What''s going to be of the Martial Contest?"


    "I am merely a priest, I do not have oversight on such important matters," Senior Deril spoke. "However, I suspect that the Virodha Council will decide to elerate the restoration of the colosseum with extreme measures. This is one of the rare instances where such measures are justified. The price of doing so will be dozens, if not a hundred times greater than if it were restored at a normal pace."


    The weight of her actions became more evident. It did not take a genius to guess that she was most likely going to be required to repay the Theocracy for that price.


    "What... will be of me?"


    "Again, I am a priest, I cannot say," He said officially, before his tone lightened. "However, if I had to guess, you will have to serve the Theocracy for a number of years."


    That was a lot more ptable than she had expected.


    "May I speak to Squire Falken at any time?" She asked.


    "You do not have the right to request anything," He stated. "However, I can convey your desire to Squire Falken. Ordinarily, a Martial Squire shouldn''t be able to visit convicts in an unauthorized manner but..."


    He heaved a sigh of admiration. "...If he wins the Martial Contest, his status will be high enough that such a matter will be trivial."


    She smiled. "Please do, that is all I request of you."


    He didn''t respond. Finally, they arrived at a remote location. She frowned as she felt something was off.


    "Where are we? Who am I going to speak to?"


    He didn''t humour her with a reply. He gestured to a church before her with a grave expression. She nced back, scanning the ce with her senses. Her senses were unable to pierce the church.


    She frowned. ''What kind of church has such intense anti-sensory measures?''


    Her instincts warned her of a profoundly deep sea of power. Deep within the church.


    It wasn''t until she entered the church, closing the door that she realized who she was beholding.


    A single person meditated within the church.


    The very sky and earth seemed to amodate her existence. Her being seemed almost out of ce in reality.


    Almost like she didn''t belong.


    She hid her powerN?vel(D)ra/ma.Org exclusive ? material.


    Yet her power couldn''t be denied.


    "Cardinal Sage Sariawar," Senior Frinjschia''s voice quivered as she fell to a knee, lowering her head.


    Sage Sariawar smiled. A serene gesture that seemed to brighten the world around them.


    It was as though nature itself prostrated before the emotions of a Martial Sage.


    A single sentence escaped her mouth.


    "Tell me..." Her smile grew wider. "Tell me about Squire Falken."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1275 Compromise

    Chapter 1275 Compromise


    Four Martial Masters stood among the heavens, deep in the sky.


    The depth of the sky of Gaia was much like the world beneath it.


    Nigh endless.


    The depth of sky that a Martial Artist could reach was often considered a measure of their depth as a Martial Artist, in some Martial philosophies and disciplines.


    The depth that the four Martial Masters had reached was greater than anything any Martial Squire or Senior could ever hope to reach.


    However, that wasn''t the only measure that they had taken to iste themselves.


    Beneath them was a barren mountain range inhospitable to most life.


    Ordinarily, a cool wind current flowing across the continent would have graced them as it passed the entire region by.


    Yet, no such thing could be felt.


    Rather, the air was almost frozen.


    Taut.


    Ground to a halt.


    Imprisoned in ce.


    The pressure that the four Martial Masters generated seemed to almost bend the world with the sheer force of mind.


    "My fellow Masters..." Master Deivos broke the silence. "To what do I owe this pleasure?"


    "Cease your futile facade," Master Uma spoke. "Each of us knows precisely why we are here. We know what we saw."


    "I find myself agreeing with the Decapitating Witch this time," Master Carian concurred, turning to Master Deivon with an inquisitive expression. "It is rather insulting that you would even try such paltry attempts at dying the matter at hand."


    "If anybody has an exnation to disclose..." Master Greminga continued. "It is you, is it not?"


    "The only thing I wish to disclose is my displeasure at having my colleagues and peers meddle in my affairs," Master Deivon narrowed his eyes. "Since when did bishops interfere with the heritors of their peers?"


    The three of them narrowed their eyes wordlessly.


    It could not be denied. They were doubtlessly crossing a line that they would never dare to cross under any other circumstances. It was a taboo to meddle with the heritors of other Martial Masters.


    "...''Since when''...you ask?" Master Uma spoke with a graver tone. "Since one of those heritors turns out to be the Antithesis himself!"


    Her deration was heavy.


    Too heavy.


    So much so that the world beneath them was unable to bear its weight.


    RUMBLE!


    The ground shook.


    "Master Uma..." A dangerous edge appeared in Master Deivon''s voice. "I would rmend you reconsider your words. He is a seed, not the Virodhabhasa himself. Spouting such nonsense can be constituted as lesser sphemy."


    "I told you to cease your futile facade," Her tone grew sharper. "We know what we saw. Against the abyssfeeder. Against the two finalists in the first and second rounds. That was nothing short of divine providence!"


    She spread her arms. "Destruction of Martial Paths in one hand. A divine ability said to belong to Lord Virodhabhasa himself. Creation of Martial Paths in the other hand."


    "He did not create a Martial Path!" Master Deivon snarled. "Your delusions do notport with reality. Surely the two of you do not agree with this insanity!"


    Master Carian and Greminga looked uncertain.


    They were in between Master Deivos and Master Uma, the former was an agnostic, while thetter was a devotee.


    They did not know what was the truth.Content ? N?velDrama.Org 2024.


    "He may not have created a Martial Path but..." Master Carian murmured.


    "...He did empower it with his own Martial Art, propelling it to a higher Realm of power." Master Greminga agreed. "Furthermore, the destruction aspect of his power is undeniable. We witnessed the inception of the destruction. Yet he was benevolent enough to cease it just in time before any permanent damage was inflicted."


    "That does not mean that he is the Virodhabhasa." Master Deivos narrowed his eyes. "This is not the first time that a Martial Artist has had their ability to practice Martial Art crippled in a fight due to some reason or the other. Are we going to round them all up and call them all by the name of the Antithesis?!"


    That was apelling argument. It appealed to the sensible nature of Master Carian and Greminga.


    Yet it only fueled the rage of Master Uma.


    Too much.


    For a moment, the inferno exceeded her rational restraint.


    She did not even bother responding to him. She had already realized that she was not going to convince those two that he really was the Virodhabhasa.


    She knew it in her heart.


    And her Heart promptly acted. Streaks of red lines flowed through her body.


    Yet that wasn''t all.


    She employed a much higher force.


    That day, a sight that was engraved into the soul of thend beneath them was witnessed. Every remote beast, monster, and creature gazed towards the skies.


    What they witnessed was indescribable.


    Master Uma''s form had taken the visage of a sharp de.


    Where lesser beings once witnessed an elderly woman was a de that shined with a lustre that defied their fathoming.


    It was as though the de was the true form of her existence. Yet it could also have been an illusion that barred the unworthy from beholding her true power.


    They were unable to distinguish.


    The expressions of the three Martial Masters grew severe as Master Umamitted the greatest of sphemies.


    Treason.


    She rose up, flicking a single finger at Master Deivon.


    Master Deivon''s eyes widened as an enormous wave of vacuum flew towards him, rapidly activating his Martial Heart, raising a single finger.


    One moment, nothing happened.


    The next moment...


    BOOM!!!!


    Every lifeform within a thousand kilometers quivered.


    An act that transcended lesser beings had unfolded before their very eyes.


    A mountain had been cleaved in half.


    It had withstood aeons of geophysical activity, aeons of ecological activity, aeons of human activity.


    Yet before the might of a Martial Master, it was nothing.


    SPLAT


    A small cut opened up on Master Deivon''s finger, bleeding mildly.


    The attack had been unable to ovee his defence.


    The air boiled as Master Deivon appeared to take the form of a fortress.


    His eyes zed with fury. "You havemitted treason by attacking a fellow bishop without authorization."


    "You havemitted treason by hiding the Virodhabhasa." She used with equally intense eyes.


    Master Carian and Master Greminga had tilted to one side. Philosophically, they were neutral.


    However, treason was where they crossed the line.


    "Master Uma..." The two of them red at her as they activated their Martial Hearts. "Cease. Or we will follow through on the protocols of dealing with pshemers."


    Master Uma''s expression grew more grave.


    She could take on Master Deivon. She could even win.


    But she could not take on all three. That was suicide.


    Yet she would rather die than be branded a traitor for her devotion.


    The air intensified.


    She was on the edge.


    Master Deivon narrowed his eyes as he saw an opening.


    Four words escaped his mouth.


    "I offer apromise."


    It did not reverse the situation. However, he had earned their patience, even if for a moment.


    "...As the aggrieved party, I will not follow through on the religious protocols, as long as you swear a blood oath on not meddling with that boy." He spoke with a surprisingly calm voice.


    Her expression did not change.


    Yet her intensity softened.


    "Think about it..." Master Deivon spoke with a smile. "The four of us are the only Martial Artists of the higher Realm that witnessed this round, the other Martial Masters went away since their heritors were disqualified."


    The three of them understood what he was trying to convey.


    "The four of us should be the only ones who know the depth of that boy..." Master Deivon spoke. "If he does turn out to be the Virodhabhasa, then I don''t mind sharing the credit to the three of you when we present our discovery to the Transcendent Prophet. Imagine the grace that His Holyship will bestow us with forpleting the Divine Mission."


    Master Uma''s eyes widened, before swimming around in uncertainty.


    The merits to this agreement were clear, while there were hardly any demerits at all given her position.


    It was either die or be branded a traitor. Or gain partial credit for someone who she truly believed to be the Virodhabhasa.


    She sighed, deactivating her Martial Heart.


    A decision had been made.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1276 Consequences

    Chapter 1276 Consequences


    "Woah..." Rui murmured as the world around him suddenly changed. "Handy technique."


    He nced around, immediately noting the medical nature of the room that he was in.


    It was clearly a hospital.


    A medical team entered the room soon enough,prising of a doctor and several nurses.


    "Contestant Falken," The lead doctor smiled. "I am Doctor Veena. I have been instructed by Master Deivon to conduct a thorough evaluation of your health status."


    Rui realized that Master Deivon was probably paranoid that Rui was either not as good as he looked, or had paid some price to heal the damage that Senior Frinjschia had inflicted.


    ''Well, he''s not wrong.'' Rui nodded. "Ok."


    "Please wear this," She smiled, handing him a patient garb.


    It was only then that he realized he was fully naked all this time, in front of an all-female staff.


    "Master Deivon has also instructed me to provide you with this," She supplied him with a mask that resembled his previous one with Master-level anti-sensory esotericpounds.


    Rui was grateful that Master Deivon noticed how much Rui cared about protecting his appearance and catered to it. He was just afraid that it was not as useful as before.


    ''Thankfully ordinary people would have been too far to make out the details of my appearance. But the Martial Artists, barring Apprentices, will have gotten a good look at myface.'' Rui sighed.


    It was a predicament, but at the same time, it was almost a relief.


    Until now, he hadn''t realized how much of a psychological burden the constant hiding of his appearance had be. It had taxed his resolve more than he had expected.


    Divulging it in front of all those people had felt therapeutic. This was also in addition to the satisfaction he felt from aiding the breakthrough of a Martial Senior, and then proceeding to eat a single attack from said Martial Senior. That was arguably the greatest aplishment of his life as far as sheer difficulty went.


    Just thinking about it put a smile of satisfaction on his face.


    It was a shame that he didn''t get to speak to Senior Frinjschia, but he would have time for thatter.


    Regardless, he had to deal with the consequences first.


    The issue was that he didn''t even know what the consequences were. Thest time Rui had made a public appearance without any intel suppression was during the Serevian Dungeon War.


    It was more than seven years ago. Since then, his missions have been incognito, or in remote isted locations such as Vilun Ind with total information istion from the Panama continent.


    Thest time he had openly disyed his appearance in front of such arge audience was nearly a decade ago in the Martial Contest of the Kandrian Empire. He had grown a lot since then, even having gotten a stubble since he had long reached adulthood.


    His measures of changing his hair and eye colour were a good final line of defence for his identity.


    Unlike back on Earth, digital technology was far from prevalent. Had this been Earth, his image would have been all over the inte as articles, news segments, YouTube videos, and threads on various forums would have all analyzed his appearance to hell and back.


    Intelligence agencies of various countries would have run simple facial recognition software and it would have been ''GG'', as the kids back on Earth would say.


    Thankfully, such a thing was impossible here in the world of Gaia. Digital technology was not only very primitive but also highly resource-intensive and required a regr supply of valuable esoterics.


    Digital data management was even more primitive and restricted, which is why libraries still relied on scrolls and books.


    Thus he knew the probability of someone tracing his appearance to the identity Rui Quarrier was highly unlikely, especially given that he was several tens of thousands of kilometers away from the Kandrian Empire. Finding a needle in a haystack was a dream job inparison to this task.


    Still, he had paid the price for getting too overconfident in the Shionel Confederation.


    ''Fight Meera, and then get the hell out of here as soon as the banquet is over.'' Rui resolved himself.


    In fact, he would have run as soon as he fought Meera, if not for the fact that the champion not attending the banquet held for his victory was an act of disrespect to the Virodha Theocracy.


    Rui had no interest in potentially provoking powers much greater than Chairman Deacon. It was too risky.


    ''Damn girl, you better be worth all this trouble.'' Rui sighed.


    The health check-up waspleted seamlessly, they found that his constitution held up a lot more poorly than he looked, due to the Reaper poison. Thankfully, it took several potions and he was back to normal.


    It wasn''t long before he got to meet Master Deivon in a heavily secured meeting room.Content ? N?velDrama.Org 2024.


    Master Deivon regarded him with silence for a moment.


    It was as though he didn''t even know where to begin.


    "Has anyone figured out my identity?" Rui asked.


    "We''re trying," Master Deivos replied withplete honesty. "So far, we haven''t had even the faintest of leads."


    "That''s unnaturally honest."


    "You deserve that much, at least," Master Deivon smiled briefly.


    "...If I deserve that much, then do I also deserve not having my identity looked into?"


    Master Deivon shook my head. "Even if I did my best, I do not have the power to stop that."


    Rui sighed, having expected that. With how many internal powers were interested in Rui, he didn''t think a single bishop had the power to cease all investigations into him.


    "What will be of the Martial Contest?"


    "The Theocracy will employ powerful artifacts and esoteric resources to ensure that the colosseum will be restored in an hour," Master Deivon readily exined.


    "What?" Rui raised his eyebrows. "That''s absurd."


    Master Deivon shed a proud smile. "Do not underestimate us, young man."


    "I''m d to hear that," Rui grinned. "I would be deeply unsatisfied if I couldn''t obtain an opportunity to the Senior Realm."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1277 Analysis

    Chapter 1277 Analysis


    They spoke for a bit more, and Rui was cheerful and relieved that the Martial Contest would go on.


    Inwardly, however, he had already begun sweating.


    He wasn''t stupid. Perhaps other Martial Artists would have continued on about their day, but he had already realized something was wrong.


    The first thing off was Master Deivon''s tension. He did not look like someone whose heritor had yielded him good things. If anything, it felt like the opposite. Rui felt like he had gotten him in trouble, almost.


    It was a pity that he didn''t have any evidence to work with aside from the way Master Deivon presented himself.


    Rui had also noted that the man had yet to congratte him for winning the first and the second round.


    These were small things, but Rui''s sharp and keen eyes hadn''t missed them. This was particrly odd for someone like Master Deivon who absolutely would have gone to at least uttered a few words of encouragement and congrattions.


    He also didn''t mention Rui''s feat of surviving an attack from a Martial Senior. Almost as if it wasn''t worth mentioning or was something that had already escaped his mind.


    One reason that would be the case was if something even more important had happened. Given the timing, the probability wasn''t low that it was rted to Rui. If it was rted to Rui, then the probability that it had something to do with the Martial Contest was actually quite high, since Master Deivon was doing just fine before the contest had begun.


    Another elementary deduction one could make was that if it had something to do with Rui and the Martial Contest, then it had to do with Rui''s matches. That would imply that something rted to Rui''s match had caused the tension that Master Deivon was experiencing.


    He felt a wave of dread as he immediately realized what the only three possibilities were.


    Of course, he realized that he couldn''t actually dismiss his surviving a Martial Senior''s attack as a possibility, however, that was not something that would cause Master Deivon to disy the behavioural traits that he was disying at the moment. He had seen how exceptionally powerful Martial Squires like Meera were treated. When Rui had outperformed Meera in two rounds of the Martial Contest yesterday and indicated that he was potentially above her, Master Deivon had not batted an eye. He had weed such a development.


    Rui found it particrly odd that he seemed pensive now.


    ''No, it''s most likely not me surviving a Martial Senior''s attack.'' Rui''s intuition told him that that line of thought was most likely inurate.


    That left two options.


    Somehow, he had managed to gain an understanding of what happened during the first and the second rounds.


    But that was impossible, the only way he could do that was if Martial Masters were much more impressive than he had indicated to Rui in the past.


    "Is everything okay, Master Deivon?" Rui asked straightforwardly. "You seem preupied and tensed."


    Master Deivon stared at him for a moment wordlessly, before sighing. "Yes... you''re correct. I have been dealing with a headache."


    Rui stared at him impassively. He went so far as to effectively create a quasi-predictive model on the man''s behavioural patterns. He wanted to know more, and it would help to know how far he could go.


    "Is that headache rted to me perhaps?" Rui asked straightforwardly with a light tone.


    Master Deivon nodded, resigned. "I suppose that can''t be denied."


    The air grew a bit more tense. "Is it rted to what happened in the first and the second rounds?"


    All it took was a moment.


    A single look into Master Deivon''s eyes was all Rui needed to know that he was right. If someone didn''t know what he was talking about, then the first match was the most mundane match. He fought a bnce-oriented Martial Artist, was losing at first, but then won.


    However, just a single nce into Master Deivon''s knowing eyes told him that he was on the money.


    Rui exhaled as his eyes swum around, considering the confirmation that he had just received and its implications.


    "How many people know?" Rui asked him.


    "..."


    "Master Deivon, please answer my question." Rui narrowed his eyes.


    The tired man sighed. "About four people. Myself, and the three Martial Masters overseeing the contest, responsible for the three rounds."Content ? N?velDrama.Org 2024.


    Rui raised an eyebrow. That statement alone told him a lot about the politicalndscape of the Virodhabhasa Faith. It appeared that the political cohesiveness within the Virodhabhasa Faith was low, otherwise, the information would not be restricted to four people no matter what happened.


    "...And what exactly have the four of youe to think about the first two matches that urred?" Rui asked with a raised eyebrow.


    Master Deivon simply stared at him. If it was any other Martial Squire, he wouldn''t have even bothered gracing that question with a response. But somehow he couldn''t shake himself off of Rui''s piercing gaze.


    "At least one of us believes that..." He paused, sighing.


    "...that I am the Virodhabhasa?" Rui asked with a grave tone.


    Master Deivon didn''t respond.


    Yet his silence was deafening.


    "What are the consequences?" Rui asked, narrowing his eyes.


    Master Deivon shook his head. "I have managed to quell the situation. No one will being after you."


    Rui narrowed his eyes, staring at him. "Quelled the situation, you say?"


    Master Deivon nodded. "For now. But..."


    "But...?"


    He sighed once more. "I don''t know for how long I can keep them at bay. If not for the other two, Master Uma would have overwhelmed me. If the other two change their mind then..."


    Rui realized the gravity of the situation.


    "Listen to me," Master Deivon instructed. "Once you''re done with the Martial Contest, you need to go away from here. Go away. Far away and... don''t return until you''re strong enough."


    Rui sighed deeply.


    A deep sense of weariness set into him. All he wanted to do was pursue his Martial Art, yet it seemed the forces of the world were unwilling to let him peacefully go about his life.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1278 Fame

    Chapter 1278 Fame


    He nced at Master Deivon with a careful expression. The man had been remarkably upfront about the circumstances that Rui was in.He didn''t need to do that, really.


    It was an act of good faith.


    He was trying to signal to Rui that he was still on his side without being too direct to scare Rui away.


    He appreciated that. He would have actually panicked a bit more if Master Deivon had aggressively insisted that he was there to help Rui.


    Instead, he chose honesty and let Rui make his own evaluation.


    "What is your opinion on the matter of what happened in my two matches?" Rui asked with a careful tone. "Since you are an atheist, you must have a more sober view of what happened, correct?"


    For the first time, Rui detected true uncertainty from the Martial Master. The fact that the Master did not respond immediately was telling in and of itself.Property ? 2024 N0(v)elDrama.Org.


    "I... don''t know what to believe." He admitted with remarkable honesty. "I used to think that the Divine Prophecy was a bunch of gish-gallop that a powerful Martial Transcendent had fabricated to create a powerful religion that he could cease control of, but... I have increasinglye to believe that this may not be the case."


    Rui''s eyes widened.


    He almost felt honoured in a twisted way.


    ''You''re getting full of yourself, Rui.'' He immediately disapproved of himself. That was not the right reaction to have in this moment.


    "Surely you don''t believe I''m a deity from another world with the power of Creation and Destruction of Martial Art in two hands?" Rui jested, hoping to get the Martial Master toe to his senses.


    Yet he remained silent.


    Rui raised an eyebrow, realizing the man was serious.


    "I don''t know where you came from," The elder Martial Artist replied. "Regardless of whether you are a deity in making or not. I believe that you are destined for greatness. I believe that you are important to the future of Martial Art, perhaps the future of the world. I believe that... you are not someone who can or should be contained by a mere religion that is a lot more rotten than it looks."


    Rui remained silent as he carefully studied the man with all his senses.


    "I hope to have made a positive impact on your Martial Path and your journey to the pinnacle. As for the Divine Mission... I have chosen to reject that calling. It is one that is incentivized by purely selfish incentives within the Faith. I have made my own choice. Once you finish the Martial Contest, I will obscure your departure to the best of my ability. Leave, and obtain the power that you are surely destined to have. Once you be a Martial Master, the ability of the forces of this world to infringe on you is far more limited." The Master spoke with an increasingly determined voice.


    It was as though uttering his conviction was the final step inmitting himself to it.


    The magnitude of this was not something Rui had missed. He was missing out on a lot if he chose to indulge in less extreme solutions.


    Rui was actually prepared to inform him that the Kandrian Martial Union had a vested interest in him had Master Deivon decided to take a more unsavoury approach.


    Then it would be a question of whether it was worth making an enemy out of many Martial Sages and Martial Masters, all for Rui.


    Thankfully, he didn''t need to go this route.


    "I appreciate your graciousness. Thank you for not infringing on me with the justification of religious providence," Rui bowed to him slightly.


    The man shook his head. "It isn''t that great a deed. Now go, the reconstruction will be done soon."


    Rui smiled, nodding, before departing.


    He had a lot to think about, but for now, he wanted to focus on the reason that he was even remaining in this tournament.


    An opportunity to break through to the Senior Realm. Three years had passed since he departed from the Shionel Confederation, and he was getting increasingly impatient and unsatisfied.


    His psychology had started shifting too. He didn''t even feel like a Martial Squire anymore. He truly felt he was ready to break through to a higher Realm of power. There was one person who perhaps possessed the ability to push him to break through.


    If that didn''t happen, he would leave the Virodha Theocracy and the Faith and head to the remaining person who could push him through.


    What he was truly worried about was if he didn''t break through even there. He would have to spend a lot of time searching for someone or something that could force him to break through. In fact, it would even be the case that he would have to stop actively developing his Martial Art, lest he became too powerful for any Martial Squire to even challenge.


    That was a horrible scenario.


    It was why he was determined to break through against Meera.


    When he arrived at the colosseum, it had already been restored and an absurdly huge crowd was waiting outside the structure.


    They even noticed Rui sky-walking to the structure with conspicuous Squire-level guards meant to assure his safety while he was a contestant.


    "It''s HIM!"


    "I''m your biggest fan!"


    "Are you a Martial Senior in secret?!"


    It was only then that Rui realized that he was inadvertently a celebrity within the Virodha Theocracy.


    ''I suppose it can''t be helped.'' Rui sighed in resignation. Given what he had aplished, he wasn''t surprised.


    His story had spread like wildfire across the entire nation and beyond. He had been too preupied to care before. But now that he had seen his fame manifest in such an overt manner, he found it to be overwhelming.


    Still, it was probably a good thing. The more famous he was, the harder it was to act openly against someone that had earned the admiration of so many. The public''s approval was an important stakeholder interest that every power block needed to be careful around.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1279 Terror

    Chapter 1279 Terror


    He noticed the presence of many more Martial Apprentices and Martial Seniors amongst the spectators as well. It appeared that the Squire-level contest had attracted so much attention that even the other two groups with their own scheduled contests could help but gather to witness the famed Martial Squire who ate a blow from a Martial Senior and got up.


    He also noticed the presence of many Martial Masters in the VIP zone. It appeared that not even they had been able to resist their curiosity.


    However, their presence had made him more wary. He had already underestimated Martial Masters once. Master Deivon had made it clear that their insight was disproportionately higher than what he could extrapte from their estimated power.


    ''I need to be extremely careful. I have already learned that Martial Masters are basically irvoyant in their ability to gather information.'' Rui narrowed his eyes.


    No Martial Path destruction shenanigans.


    No Martial Heart Awakening shenanigans.


    Even if Meera was on the verge of bing a Martial Senior, as she probably was, he did not intend to push her through.


    Unlike with Squire Frinjschia, he didn''t feel an ounce of sympathy or pity for Meera. Her circumstances were entirely different from Senior Frinjschia. Thetter had truly hit a barrier that she was unable to ovee, all mostly due to bad luck. Her perseverance had earned Rui''s respect and admiration, and he wanted to give her the opportunity that she most likely would never receive ever again, considering her age and steadily declining condition.


    Meera, on the other hand, was quite young. She wasn''t nearly as absurdly young as Rui was for their level of power. She would have many, many opportunities over a long period of time. She didn''t need him. She didn''t inspire any desire in him to help her either.


    ''I''m going to push myself to take her down as soon as possible.'' He dered to himself. ''No messing around.''


    It took some time, but the spectators had returned to their seats.


    The energy of the crowd was a lot more vtile and charged. The spectators seemed to be osciting with energy and excitement.


    It appeared that the anticipation of seeing Rui fight and the experience of witnessing a historic event was enough to quell the outrage of having their securitypromised.


    ''That''s actually insane.'' Rui mused to himself. ''Just how much do these people love and revere Martial Artists?''


    He noticed that even the people perched in the VIP seat seemed to be absorbed into the tournament, as opposed to socializing with each other.


    Various Martial Masters, heads of state like Guildmaster Bradt, ambassadors like Commissioner Reze... all of them obediently sat in their seats quietly.


    Rui almost forgot about the two of them. Regardless, now was not the time to ponder about them.


    He returned to the contest stands.


    There were only two people inside.


    Squire Janeau, who immediately regarded him with wary eyes.


    And, of course, Champion Meera, who appeared to be highly absorbed in maintaining her nails.


    "Ladies and gentlemen!" The announcer began. "We will soon resume the Squire-level Martial Contest now! Here''s a fun fact that not many know; There was actually a controversy behind the scenes of whether this should even considered a ''Squire-level'' contest anymore! That is the magnitude of the events that have preceded this resumption!"


    The crowd went wild as it cheered loudly.


    "And now, we will continue to the final match of the semi-finals! Whoever wins this will go on to face Squire Falken in the finals! Are you excited?!"


    The crowd roared in approval and enthusiasm.


    Not a single person could wait!


    "Without further ado! The final match of the second round features Contestant Janeau facing off against Champion Meera!"


    The two of them immediately got up, heading out in the colosseum.


    Rui immediately took note of the atmosphere between them.


    Meera was as impassive as always, she simply gazed at Squire Janeau with an ordinary expression.


    Squire Janeau waspletely different from how he was in the first round.


    Gone were the wild behavioural tics.


    Gone was the barely restrained aggression.


    Gone was the bloodlust.


    He merely stared at her with a mixture of wariness and apprehension. His head was inclined downwards as his eyes seemed to look up to her, despite being taller than her.


    This was in sharp contrast to the prior battle where he tantly looked down on his opponent.


    Rui understood the difference, yet he couldn''t help but disapprove. ''All it takes is a single stronger opponent to douse that fire? Tsk, it''s an insult to Nel topare you to him. He would have gotten even more excited and his battle-lust would have grown even higher.''


    Meera simply stared at him like he was a meal on her te.


    A single nce at her eyes was enough for the truth to be evident.


    He was a trivial existence in her eyes.


    He was not someone who could stir her.


    "Take your stances," Senior Deril instructed.


    Squire Janeau crouched, centering his legs together close.


    A preparation to run, if needed.


    Meera didn''t so much as twitch as her eyes were fixed on him. Yet she didn''t gaze into his eyes.


    Instead...


    ''She... Is she staring at his teeth?'' Rui wondered.


    "Begin!"


    Squire Janeau leaped back warily, a drop of sweat trickled down his head.


    Meera didn''t move initially.


    She continued staring at him.


    She didn''t exude any overt pressure. Yet the air around her seemed to chill a few degree nheless.


    STEP


    She took a step.


    ...


    STEP


    STEP


    STEP


    Squire Janeau, to his credit, didn''t run away immediately. His expression intensified as he tried putting on a brave front.


    "Bring it on, you bi-!"


    He froze as he felt a profound wave of malevolence radiating from her, unlike anything he had ever felt.


    Malevolent, yet innocent.


    "Before we fight..." She murmured. "May I do you a favour?"


    Her tone was soft, yet earnest


    She meant every word with sincerity.


    Yet something was profoundly wrong. He could feel that in the depths of his heart.


    "...What?"


    His voice was stiff.


    "...Ah, it''s not much," She smiled. "There''s something wrong with your teeth, you see."


    Her words were ordinary, yet the horrifying sense of peril growing inside his heart disagreed.


    "My teeth?"


    "Indeed..." She murmured, her eyes fixating on them. "The problem with them is that they are..."Content ? N?velDrama.Org 2024.


    Her presence grew heavier.


    A single word escaped her mouth.


    "...disgusting."


    He felt a shiver crawl down his spine.


    "Before we fight... allow me to get rid of them for you."


    Pure horror gripped his heart.


    He leaped back, dashing away at top speed.


    Yet, the very next moment, she appeared before him.


    She didn''t even care to look into his eyes.


    No.


    Her eyes were fixed on his sharp canines.


    CLASP!


    Her body coiled around his faster before he could even process what happened.


    One moment he was standing.


    The next? His head was in herp. His right hand buried under her feet, while his left shoulder was firmly gripped between her legs. She herself squatted on the ground, hold his shins firmly to the ground with her knees.


    Her hands were on his face.


    "We can fight after I get rid of them, okay?" She murmured, almost in a trance as she fixated on his teeth.


    "Wait! I resi-!"


    "Ssshh," She pried his mouth open with both hands.


    His eyes widened with horror.


    "Don''t speak, you''ll only make this harder for both of us."


    Her tone wasposed.


    She resembled a dentist who truly wanted the best for her patient.


    "AAAAAAARAARRHRGRHRG!LSKSHLSS!!!" His body shivered as he felt a horrifying pain sh up his skull.


    Every muscle in his body revolted.


    He exerted every grappling technique.


    Every supplementary technique.


    Everything he had.


    To break out of her grip.


    Yet he felt as though his body was cast in Senior-level esoteric alloys.


    He couldn''t even budge.


    "There we go," She said with an encouraging tone as she tossed one canine away. "Thirty-one left to go... Oh?"


    Squire Janeau shivered as his instincts warned him of what was toe.


    "Your teeth heal and regrow?" She murmured unhappily.


    The following words she uttered reminded all those who witnessed the battle, if it could even be called that, of the terror that was the champion of the Martial Contest.


    Her hand caressed his face.


    A troubled expression appeared on her face.


    "No choice... I guess I''ll have to keep pulling them out until they stop regrowing."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1280 Commence

    Chapter 1280 Commence


    A shocking spectacle had unfolded. The entirety of all the spectators watching had frozen silent.


    Not even thementators had much to say after a while. At most, they tried to keep the atmosphere from deteriorating too much, but they couldn''t do much in that regard.


    Many had thought that Rui''s fight against Senior Frinjschia would go down as the most shocking and impactful fight in the Martial Contest.


    Yet, many had already begun to question that.


    "AAAAAAAAARGHRGRHRGRHRGRHRGRHRG!" Squire Janeau screeched in agony as Meera pulled out another canine from his mouth. Her powerful body had entangled with Squire Janeau in such a way that she had immobilized him with just the lower half of her body effortlessly, leaving her hands free to focus on extracting his teeth.


    She never once gave him a chance to forfeit, unwilling to let him go.


    It was a sight that had seared itself into the minds of the horrified spectators.


    ''She''s a fiend.'' Rui watched as she extracted yet another tooth. ''I''m actually surprised at the fact that there are no measures in ce to ensure that this kind of stuff doesn''t happen.''


    Senior Deril had an impassive expression on, yet Rui felt like he was itching to end the fight, looking for a valid reason ording to the rules.


    Yet it appeared that he didn''t find any.


    This meant that everybody watching had to watch what was nothing short of torture.


    Besides was a ratherrge pile of teeth. All of which had been spawned by Squire Janeau''s body. Rui had already realized that his healing factor most likely borrowed from a reserve ofpounds and nutrients specifically meant to aid with his fang regeneration.


    ''On top of that, it most likely borrows from his bone density once that reserve ends.'' Rui sighed. ''No wonder this hasn''t ended.''


    Yet watching her had given him a better understanding of what kind of person and Martial Artist she was.


    ''She isn''t cognizant of her insanity.'' Rui concluded. ''Even now, she''s merely acting on her aesthetic sensibilities. She cannot help but do so. Apulsive drive to act on her aesthetic sensibilities is nothing short of a mental disorder.''


    It would exin the incongruence between how she was in normal interactions and how she was when acting on her aesthetic sensibilities.


    His thoughts were interrupted by a new development in the battle arena.


    THUD


    Squire Janeau''s body has been tossed by the side, unconscious. An open mouth revealed that his teeth had finally stopped regenerating. It appeared that she had finally hit the limit.


    "Mmmmm..." She stretched her hands in the air as an expression of satisfaction appeared on her face. "Finally done..."


    "Winner; Champion Meera." Squire Deril sighed, finally getting to end the match.


    Not a single person pped.


    Not a single person cheered.


    It appeared that even her most hardcore fans could not find it in themselves to support her after what she had done.


    A few potions were magically supplied to her out of nowhere via some esoteric transportation system as she restored herself. Not that she had exerted herself much at all, but every bit counted.


    Unlike the previous time, she did not leave the colosseum.


    "And this brings us to the final match of the Martial Contest! The shocking neer Squire Falken will join Champion Meera in the finals. This is it! This is the pinnacle! Whoever wins will have the capital to call themselves the strongest!!!"


    This evoked a reaction out of the ground as fiery passion resurged, and a loud roar resounded across the colosseum.


    Not even Meera''s macabre acts had prevented the sheer excitement of the sh between the two most powerful Martial Squires of the Martial Contest.


    STEP


    Rui drew the colosseum''s attention as he stepped into the battle arena. The entirety of the spectators roared in excitement and enthusiasm. Meera''s previous sight had set a horror in them, a fear that she was too strong.


    Yet the sight of Rui reassured them. Just one nce at him, and even the most Martial-illiterate person would be able to see it.


    Power. Sheer unadulterated power emanated from Rui.


    Nearly every single person who beheld him couldn''t help but feel awe at the sight of him.


    STEP


    He had arrived. The spectators had already begun going giddy at the sight of the first eye-to-eye confrontation between Rui and Meera.


    They simply stared at each other unperturbed.


    Neither one of them seemed bothered by the other''s actions and capabilities.


    Had any other Martial Squire of the Martial Contest been standing before either of them, they would have been unable to keep their cool. Yet the two of them were unfazed.


    "Take your stances." Senior Deril instructed.


    Neither of them moved.


    Meera smiled at Rui. "I had a feeling this would happen when I first got a look at you."


    "...Is that so?"


    Ordinarily, the spectators eschewed any dys to a fight. Yet not a single person dared to hasten this one.


    "Mhm. I just had a feeling." She nodded. "...A feeling simr tost time, where the same thing had happened."Content ? N?velDrama.Org 2024.


    "...?"


    She shook her head with a smile. "Are you interested in making a wager?"


    Rui tilted his head in confusion. "Wager?"


    "If I win... I''ll do you one favour." She nodded. "But if you win, you must do me one favour."


    "That''s generally not how wagers work."


    "I''m d we havee to an agreement..."


    "Enough," Senior Deril cut Rui off before he could retort with a stern expression. "Do not make me repeat myself. Take your stances."


    "I''m good as is." Meera replied.


    Rui stared at her deeply for a moment before adopting his ssic neutral stance.


    "Begin!" Senior Derilmenced the match.


    The final battle of the Martial Contest had begun. The spectators held their breath, waiting.


    Neither side made the first move.


    They simply stared at each other.


    Nothing happened.


    Something had to give.


    Rui sighed. "...Fine."


    He rushed forward,shing out at her with a powerful Flowing Canon strike.


    The first attack of the battle had beenunched.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1281 Invalidate

    Chapter 1281 Invalidate


    THWACK!


    Meera spun, gracefully redirecting his Flowing Canon attack with the back of her hand, elegantly pirouetting away.


    Yet Rui was unperturbed. He keptshing out, refusing to give up.


    POW POW POW!


    A flurry of swift and powerful strikes amplified with Outer Convergence and Reverberating Lance flew at her.


    Yet not a single one of them reached her.


    Her every movement was captivating. Her grace earned the admiration of thousands who beheld her beautiful form.


    Not Rui, though.


    It took more to impress him.


    "Hm?" Meera raised her eyebrow as Rui changed. His hand had changed form, morphing into various different striking forms. From a chop to a knuckle punch. He adapted the form of his hand to the location that he was striking, to try and inflict as much damage as possible, and also to make it harder for her to redirect them.


    This was Vital Pressure. One of the Apprentice-level techniques that he had ever learned in his entire life. He hade to naturally adapt this technique to the Squire Realm.


    He pushed forward as Meera needed to exert herself to redirect all of his strikes.


    "Hey..."


    "Yeah..."


    "She''s getting pushed back."


    STEPContent rights by N?velDr//ama.Org.


    Meera stepped back as she continued redirecting all of Rui''s strikes.


    STEP


    Another step back.


    The spectators watched as Rui''s barrage of attacks had begun overwhelming her. They stared, absorbed, as they watched the bnce shift.


    What was the difference?


    What was it that gave Rui an edge?


    POW!


    His fist firmlynded on her abdomen, pushing her back a bit.


    The first strike of the battle had beennded!


    ''Your weight shifts in the direction of the flow of power just a beat ahead of thestrike.'' A knowing glint shed in his eyes.


    His mind had begun creating a predictive model as soon as the battle had begun. He had resolutely avoided any preparations ahead of time. It wouldn''t have worked in the first ce. She was so strong that she had basically not revealed any of her capabilities in the previous two fights.


    Rui''s n was simple.


    He would create a predictive model. Force her to show her best. And hopefully, she would be good enough to force him to activate his Martial Heart.


    Yet so far, that n had not been going as he hoped.


    BAM BAM BAM!


    The bnce immediately broke as Rui gained an advantage in their little scuffle.


    And yet...


    "Elegant," She muttered.


    Rui''s eyes widened as he felt a wave of peril.


    CLASP!


    She caught his fist with just two fingers as her body twisted.


    BAM!


    She had intercepted his strike, throwing him down behind her from over her shoulder.


    BOOM!


    He narrowly avoided a powerful dropkick as he leapt away.


    The first bout had ended.


    "Falken," She addressed him. "Your Martial Path... It''s adaptive evolution, isn''t it?"


    He narrowed his eyes. It appeared what Master Deivon had said about her getting aid from a Martial master on the analysis of his Martial Path was true.


    "A truly beautiful Martial Path..." She smiled. "At longst, I have finally found someone who can help meplete the promise I made that day."


    Rui had no idea what she was talking about.


    "I wonder if he''ll ept me now..." She murmured to herself, getting lost. "No... only if you are suitable. If not..."


    ''She''s insane...'' Rui watched her rambling on incoherently.


    "Focus." He instructed her. "This is important."


    She was one of the two people with whom he had hope. He had hope in her power. He had hoped that she would be able to push him to a higher Realm of power.


    Yet, so far, she hadn''t been doing a very good job at that.


    Then again, the battle had just begun.


    His expression intensified as he swiftly prepared several Mighty Roar sh sts.


    "...You''re right," She murmured. "This is important."


    THWOOM THWOOM THWOOM!


    The attacks were powerful supersonic sound bullets that were extremely difficult to sense once released.


    Yet he could only widen his eyes in shock as she weaved past them in a manner that partially defied his predictive model!


    The peril that she exerted on him began growing.


    For the first time in the battle, she went on the offence. She rushed forward with a speed that beggared the imagination.


    BAM!!


    A powerful blow crashed into Rui''s guard. He gritted his teeth as he used Flux Earther to disperse her impact to the ground.


    Yet she wasn''t done.


    POW POW POW!


    His guard rattled as her strikes continued growing stronger and faster!


    Ecstasy shed across her face as she continued hammering him with incredible blows!


    Rui watched her with the eye of a hawk.


    Her weight shifted.


    His eyes narrowed as he predicted a lower hook in two beats.


    POW!


    His eyes widened as the attack a lot sooner than it was supposed to!


    BOOM!


    He grimaced as he barely managed to block an absurdly swift flying knee kick. Yet just a momentter, a powerful high kick flying at his head threatened to knock him out.


    FLICK!


    He leapt back. The edge of her foot had struck his forehead, cutting it open with the sheer friction it generated.


    The wound itself didn''t matter. His healing factor had already clotted and was slowly mending it.


    What mattered was the fact that she hadpletely bypassed his predictive model.


    Sure, it wasn''tplete by any means, yet she invalidated it like it had been wrong from the very get-go.


    This had happened before as well.


    Somehow, she invalidated the prediction of his predictive model.


    ''However... She''s only invalidating the timing.'' His eyes narrowed. ''Not the actionpredicted. In other words, she simply underwent an inexplicable boost in speed on a fundamental level.''


    He had noticed that he predicted the hook, the flying knee kick, and the high kick. The only thing he had gotten wrong was the timing.That could be fatal. If not for Primordial Instinct, he may very well have gotten knocked out then and there.


    His sharp mind had noticed another pattern.


    ''She invalidated the timing of my prediction after the pressure and threat she radiated underwent a spike...'' Rui''s eyes narrowed.


    A germ of an idea entered his head.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1282 Eyes

    Chapter 1282 Eyes


    The entirety of the colosseum watched in rapt attention as the vtile battle ensued.


    They didn''t understand.


    They were unqualified to.


    The battle has begun rtively even.


    Then it had shifted in Squire Falken''s favor.


    And now, it had shifted in Meera''s favour.


    What had changed?


    BAM BAM BAM!


    Meera''s eyes were fixed on him as she pummeled him with a series of kicks.


    Rui''s eyes narrowed as he barely managed to deal with them.


    Her weight shifted.


    He rapidly leapt back, avoiding a predicted swift front kick.


    And again.


    POW!


    He gritted his teeth as he barely blocked the early attack.


    BOOM!


    She spotted an opportunity as she rushed forward, pressing both her palms into Rui while rushing forward a blinding pace.


    WHOOSH!


    "And Champion Meeraunched Contestant Falken into the distance!" Thementator eximed. "Is Contestant Falken simply unable topete?!"


    The crowd''s sentiment sunk as they watched Rui increasingly overwhelmed by Champion Meera.


    After the previous fight, nobody wanted the champion to win the Martial Contest.


    Many people had begun rooting for Rui in earnest.


    It had not been pleasant to watch him get overwhelmed.


    Rui, on the other hand, wasn''t paying attention to the spectators. They may as well have not existed to him.


    His eyes were focused on a single person.


    He had expected her to be quite powerful, but this was different.


    He had not expected that his pattern recognition system would fail. it was a blow that he had suffered twice in the Martial Contest. Yet it was understandable for a creature like the abyssfeeder to be able invalidate it.


    But a human? That too a fellow Martial Squire.


    He hadn''t expected toe across something like that.


    Thankfully, it wasn''t aplete invalidation. What she did was invalidate his timing.


    Not that that was a good thing, timing was extremely important in general, but especially so when it came to adaptive evolution.


    He needed to time his movements just precisely right when countering someone, or their effectiveness was greatlypromised. That was why despite predicting the actions, he was unable to counter them well because she made his timing go to shit.


    The realization that this was the first human to invalidate his predictive model so directly was not light. It was a psychological blow. Project Water was founded on the premise that people had core patterns that could not be changed it was a manifestation of who they were as beings, in a sense. They were the shape of one''s identity.


    His eyes widened.


    He gazed into her eyes as a chilling realization dawned on him.


    ''Her very identity as a being is incoherent.'' His expression turned grave. ''The root of her mind is in a greater state of flux than even the body of an abyssfeeder.''


    That was the source of the chaos within her. That was what allowed her to defy his predictive model.


    How could such a being exist? It was said that the sum of one''s life was what gave rise to a Martial Path.


    What kind of life could have resulted in a monster like her?


    He didn''t know.


    He didn''t understand.


    Yet, he didn''t need to.


    ''I just need to win.'' His eyes narrowed he steeled his determination.


    His body brimmed with power responding to the force of his will.


    ''I need solutions.'' He quickly thought even as he defended himself from her onught. ''Metabody System?''


    It only took him a second to decide.''...No.''


    Just like against the abyssfeeder, it was not something that couldpensate for the failure of his pattern recognition system. It was too short-lived. It was meant to press an advantage on top of the pattern recognition system.


    His eyes narrowed.


    There was only one option left.


    Yet it wasn''t something that he could implement immediately.


    His stance shifted.


    One leg shifted back, bolstering his body.


    His arms drew closer.


    One did not need to be a Martial Artist to see what he was going for.


    A fortress-style defense.


    He had abandoned offense.


    A sensible decision.


    Yet the spectators couldn''t help but feel disappointed.


    Wasn''t that the same as admitting defeat?


    It appeared that Meera was less than amused.


    "...Is that it?" Her eyes narrowed.


    BOOM!


    She sted him with such a powerful attack that the ground itself shook!


    Rui grimaced as he did his best to mitigate the impact as he wasunched away.


    "Is this the best you can do?" She asked as she immediately arrived in front of him.


    Yet, she felt a strange sensation when she looked into his eyes.


    They were fixed on hers.


    He never once broke eye contact.


    It was deliberate.


    He was...watching.


    She felt a profoundly faint sense of peril. It was as though his eyes captured more than just her body.


    It was as though they could pierce right through her.


    The profound disconnect between her instincts about him and the state of the fight was disorienting.


    Something was off.


    His eyes never left hers. Even when sheunched him away, he positioned himself to ensure that he never lost sight of her eyes.


    It was diforting.


    The same kind of difort one would feel if one was naked in public.


    That was what she was before his eyes.


    It was unpleasant.


    "Your eyes..." She murmured.


    A horrifying wave of pressure radiated from her.


    The spectators watching shivered.


    Chills crawled up their skin.


    "...are viting."


    Pure unadulterated malevolence emanated from her being.


    Yet they were nothingpared to the words she uttered next.


    "So don''t mind if I pluck them out of your skull."


    Hardly anybody could maintain theirposure at her words.


    And yet, Rui was one of them.


    He may as well have not heard her.


    No, that was not true.


    A small smirk emerged on his face behind his mask.


    He felt his heart stirring. If losing his eyes was the price of activating his heart, then he wouldn''t mind it.


    And yet...


    "Take my eyes..." They bore into hers. "...If you are able to, that is."


    One moment, nothing happened.


    The next?Content ? N?velDrama.Org 2024.


    RUMBLE!!!


    The very world around them shook as all hell broke loose.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1283 Uncertain

    Chapter 1283 Uncertain


    One thing had be extremely clear to Rui the moment he felt her aura surge up close while uttering her ominous threat.


    He had underestimated her. Not by too much, but he undoubtedly had.


    Perhaps it had been because of his string of dominant victories recently. Or perhaps it had been because he had beaten the previous two top eight contestants without using the Metabody System.


    Regardless, he had gained a wave of overconfidence, that nothing within the Squire Realm could ovee him.


    That was the sort of attitude that was the downfall of Martial Artists.


    Thankfully, once he recognized it. It had only taken a moment to correct it.


    He immediately activated the Metabody System.


    Previously, he had abstained from using it since it didn''t have great stamina unless he used Final Breathing and held back a lot. However, now he realized that he didn''t have much of a choice. In fact, the very notion that he could ovee her without the Metabody System was rather overconfident at best.


    She was a warrior who managed to stalemate the abyssfeeder without letting it gain an advantage. What made him think he could beat her without it?


    When sheshed out at him, he unhesitantly activated all of the Metabody System except for Hypertrophic Surge.


    The time for offense woulde, but for now he needed to address the issue of the failure of the pattern recognition system.


    BOOM!


    Her fist crashed into his guard with a powerful impact leveraging her momentum, yet to her surprise Rui managed to calmly deflect it away, standing his ground unperturbed.


    ''It''s that thing again...'' She mused to herself. ''He has that powerful body technique.''


    Her eyes sharpened. Her muscles brimmed with power as she unleashed the entirety of all her power.


    BOOM!!!


    The powerful impact crashed into Rui, propelling him a good distance away. It looked impressive and shy, but they both knew that it wasn''t nearly as effective.


    All that had happened was that Rui had lost some leverage, he didn''t suffer any real damage.


    A sh of displeasure appeared on her face.


    His eyes narrowed he felt her power fluctuating.Content ? N?velDrama.Org 2024.


    She activated a maneuvering technique, rapidly shifting towards Rui as she left behind a series of afterimages.


    WHOOSH!


    Rui casually evaded her attack with Forestep, his predictive model predicted three swift kicks to the chest.


    Her expression grew more ugly.


    Her power fluctuated even more than usual.


    POW POW POW!


    Rui''s eyes widened as her attacks deviated from his predicted model even more than usual!


    The three kicksunched him into the distance as Meera rushed in immediately to exploit the opportunity to extract his eyeballs.


    A dangerous circumstance.


    He knew that.


    And yet...


    "Heh..." A smile appeared on his face. "I see. I understand now."


    Her emotions fluctuated.


    Then her power fluctuated.


    And then the timing of her attacks deviated from his initial predictive model.


    This had happened fourteen times in the short time that had passed after the initial invalidation of his predictive model.


    The process of scientific induction was the derivation of a conclusion through propositional logic in conjugation with empirical data, the principle of uniformity of nature, thew of causation, and am''s razor.


    This was a fancy of way saying one could could learn things about the world around them by applyingmon sense to the things that they observed.


    Fourteen times now, her emotions fluctuated, as visible by non-verbal cues, followed by a fluctuation in the pressure she exerted, followed by a greater deviation of her timing from the predicted timing.


    There was only one conclusion to be drawn.


    ''They''re connected.'' Rui grinned. ''Her emotions are unstable. This seems to cause an instability in her expressed power affecting all her physical parameters. This fluctuation in her physical parameters invalidates my predictions of her timing. An attack slower than the one I based my predictive model on will have ater timing. A faster attack will have an earlier timing. Because that speed keeps changing, my predictive model isuseless.''


    His eyes narrowed as he nced at her.


    The more he fought her, the more he realized that she was a deeply disturbed individual.


    Either she had been born with a cerebral deformity that caused her to exhibit traits that were otherwise humanly impossible or...


    ''Or she suffered an extraordinarily traumatic event early on in life causing severe PTSD and other extreme symptoms.'' Rui tried to quash those thoughts.


    It did not bode well to feel pity for an opponent he was at a disadvantage against.


    He did not know what caused her to be such a damaged human being, but there was one thing he did know.


    A grin emerged on his face.


    "Hah... Hahaha!" Augh of pure mirth rang across the colosseum. ''I can ovee this. I will ovee it!''


    Normally, emotions did not affect the metabolic power outputted by the body, yet, in her case, it happened.


    Then there was only one thing that needed to ur.


    ''I need to alter the predictive model to include her emotions as avariable!'' Rui grinned.


    By inputting her emotional state at any given point, he would be able to predict her metabolic output, which would allow him to correctly predict her timing.


    And finally, the predictive model would return to being as effective as before.


    ''I can measure her emotions via the pressure that she exerts.'' Rui noted sharply as his eyes narrowed, focusing on her.


    Her emotions altered, both, the output of her body and the pressure that she exerted. He wanted could use the pressure she exerted as a measuring device for the magnitude of her emotions.


    ''However, I still need to measure the exact corrtion between her emotions and her output.'' He noted. ''Just knowing that they are connected is not enough. I can do this. But can I do that before the Metabody System times out?''


    For the first time in a long time, Rui felt uncertainty about the oue of a battle.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1284 Time Was Up

    Chapter 1284 Time Was Up


    The spectators watched, dumbfounded. The battle had been raging on for quite some time, immersing them in.


    Many had gripped the armbars of their seats for stability andfort


    That was how intense the seismic radiation of the battle grew.


    "Hey..."


    "Yeah...?"


    "We''ll be alright, right?" One man asked with the quivering tone of uncertainty.


    BOOM!!!


    The seismic radiation near them intensified, scaring the already-shaken spectators.


    "Oh my god!"


    "Protect us, Lord Virodhabhasa!"


    Neither Rui nor Meera cared about the mental health of the spectators.


    Meera rushed forward at a blinding speed towards Rui.


    Her hand reached out, her fingers uncurling towards Rui''s.


    Yet they were unable to reach.


    THWACK!


    Rui pped them away before guarding his eyes, still staring into hers.


    Her expression darkened.


    Her pressure spiked to a greater level.


    Her pacing elerated.


    She had ascended to an even higher level of power.


    Her palm rushed forward, striking his abdomen with a blinding speed.


    Rui''s eyes widened.


    BOOM!!!


    He grimaced in pain as sheunched him to the other side in the briefest split second!


    Yet she had already arrived before he did.


    Her palm blurred, curving towards him.


    SPLAT SPLAT!


    Rui''s expression grew grave.


    Two deep gashes appeared across his abdomen.


    The contemptuous ease with which she bypassed his partial Nemean Blossom was more than concerning. Even if it was at partial strength, the fortitude of the technique far surpassed what grade-ten Martial Squires could harm.


    Yet it may as well have not existed in Meera''s eyes.


    Yet, her displeasure grew more palpable as the partial Weaving Blood had already kicked into action, quickly healing the deep gashes at a remarkable pace.


    Rui leaped away, his eyes fixed on her, absorbing every ounce of information it could. Greedily. Overwhelmingly.


    One could only see two unending abysses within his irises.


    Meera''s displeasure only grew.


    As did her metabolic output.


    SPLAT SPLAT SPLAT!


    Three more gashes appeared on Rui''s body faster than he could defend.


    And yet, they healed faster than they were deeper.


    She wasn''t done.


    Rui continued leaping back at an extremely swift pace with a partial Godspeed, hoping to reduce as much time he was in contact with her. Yet, her output had already reached a speed that was not perturbed by the powerful grade-ten technique.


    Her eyes radiated a malevolence that was unlike anything he had ever felt as a Martial Artist.


    She was beyond determined to blind him.


    And it reflected in her movements.


    Her handsshed out like whips, carving on the flesh of his body. Every time she hurt him, he felt his body growing weaker. Both Nemean Blossom and Weaving Blood relied on the Hungry Pain technique amplified by the Reaper''s poison.


    It actively harmed him in order to protect him from even greater harm. Yet it was a technique that was fundamentally meant to adapt to his opponent, it was iplete so long as the predictive model was not functional.


    That was why Rui was sacrificing the Metabody System.


    All so that he could obtain the power he needed to fix the predictive model. There was no point in relying on a power whose foundations were faulty due to external disruptions. It was best to use that power to fix the foundations and rely on the foundations to fight.


    The Metabody System almost came alive in a way that it never had before.


    It pushed forward as if epting its role.


    The partial Nemean Blossom and Weaving Blood worked in tandem as they did everything in their power to stave off the lethality that Meera threw against them. Godspeed did its absolute best to keep him away from her for as long as possible.


    Yet there was a limit to everything.


    With each wound Meera inflicted on his body, Weaving Blood grew slower. With each wound, Nemean Blossom grew softer.


    The difference was minute.


    Not even Rui knew how many wounds it would take for the many minute differences to sum up into arge difference. He did not know how much time he had left.


    His mind was not focused on the matter in the first ce.


    It raced at an incredible pace as he furiously processed all the information he was gathering from Meera.


    Within his mindscape, the Mind Pce quivered as it was pushed to its absolute limit.


    And yet, the long battle was now reaching a critical point.


    SPLAT!


    A wave of gasps rippled through the spectators.


    Rui was almost a second toote to realize it.


    He nced down. Her arm was at his abdomen.


    He wasn''t able to see her hand.


    That was because it had emerged on the other side of the body.


    She had impaled him.


    "Rgh!" He coughed some blood, instantly leaping back as he extricated himself away from her.


    His wound had already begun mending, even if much slower than before.


    Yet, she didn''t seem to care.


    Her eyes were fixed on his.


    She activated a breathing technique and she stepped forward with a maneuvering technique. The very sky and earth seemed to propel her forward as she instantly reached him despite his best evasive efforts.


    WHOOSH!


    Rui gritted his teeth as he evaded her attack with Phantom Step and Gale Force Breathing stacked on top of the partial Godspeed. Yet her follow-up was even quicker.


    SPLAT!


    It couldn''t be helped. He couldn''t use Forestep because Forestep was Godspeed in conjunction with the VOID algorithm. Until he fixed the predictive model, his reflexes would not entirely be able to keep up with even a partial Godspeed. Primordial Instinct could only partially mitigate this factor.


    The VOID algorithm was at the center of hisbat style, when it waspromised, everything built upon it also suffered.


    Rui''s eyes widened as her hands blurred, sweeping at him. He leaped back as fast as he could.


    And yet...


    SPLAT!


    His bodygged.


    His flesh broke easily


    The wound healed slowly.


    Time was up. Godspeed, Nemean Blossom, and Weaving Bloodmitted their final contribution before leaving.


    Time was up.


    He was not the only one who realized this.


    An expression of innocent ecstasy bloomed on her face as her fingersshed out towards his eyes.


    Nothing stood in her way anymore.


    Time was up.


    And yet...Content rights by N?velDr//ama.Org.


    WHOOSH!


    Her eyes widened as he disappeared at her attack.


    Time was up.


    "Your time... not mine."


    His voice behind her sent shivers up her spine.


    BOOM!


    A powerful attack mmed into her from behind,unching her away.


    This was the second attack of the battle thatnded on her.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1285 Deja Vu

    Chapter 1285 Deja Vu


    Not a single person watching was unperturbed.


    Every man, woman, child, and pet.


    Every civilian and every Martial Artist.


    Every atheist and every theist.


    Every spectator and every staff member.


    All of them watched.


    With shock and awe. And most of all...


    Unadulterated admiration.


    Not even the many Martial Masters that had gathered for this historic fight could maintain theirposure when they witnessed what happened.


    He was pushed. Pushed into a corner. Beaten down. His plummeting speed, power, and fortitude did not escape the ascended eyes of the exalted Martial Masters.


    His defeat was nigh.


    Time was up.


    And yet...


    WHOOSH!


    "Your time is... not mine."


    BOOM!


    A powerful Flowing Canon crashed into her back,unching her away.


    He should have been weak. Weaker.


    And yet, they could tell.


    He was stronger than ever.


    An aura of invincibility radiated from his being.


    Master Deivon grinned with excitement.


    Master Carian and Greminga watched with expressions of awe.


    They had been agnostic about Rui''s status previously.


    Now, the bnce had shifted ever so slightly.


    Master Uma was different from them all.


    Had anyone noticed, they would not have failed to catch the devotion that she radiated from her entire being.


    As well as the glint of madness within her eyes.


    Rui didn''t notice.


    He couldn''t.


    They truly did not exist in his mind.


    His mind was honed on one, and only one, person.


    Meera skidded away as shended on her feet. Her wide eyes turned towards him with a sh of displeasure.


    STEP


    STEP


    STEP


    Rui walked towards her nonchntly.


    Six words escaped his mouth.


    "The nigh pinnacle of individual power."


    Her eyes narrowed.


    "I recognize your power." His calm voice reverberated across the colosseum. "Your power. Power born at the altar of madness. I cannot begin to fathom the circumstances that have culminated to result in your being."


    His admiration was earnest.


    "Yet an incoherent heart will never give rise to the Heart."


    A profound sincerity had apanied hisposed confidence.


    "You have sacrificed not just your mind, but also your Heart." Rui dered. "For as long as you live, you will never ascend to a higher Realm of power. For as long as you live, you will live shackled to the Squire Realm. The same madness that brought you to the peak is the same madness that will forever shackle you away from greater heights. Not even the Virodhabhasa can free you from the prison of your own power."


    An expression of pity appeared on his face.


    Two words escaped his mouth.


    "How ugly."


    Meera stared at him.


    Frozen.


    For a moment, the entire world was frozen in shock at his words.


    His eyes.


    For a moment, all she could see were his eyes.


    She felt more than naked


    She felt transparent under his gaze.


    She may as well have not existed.


    Her mind shed back to a distant memory.


    A man with pitch-ck eyes and hair had stood over her.


    ''Do you see your Martial Path in myeyes?'' He had whispered. ''Do you see how broken it is? As broken as your soul is. How can one tread where there is nary a Path? You will remain at its edge forever. Unmoving. Realms of power await you. Yet you will be unable to take so much as a step forward. Not even the Antithesis can help you.''


    A cold expression of contempt had appeared on his face.


    ''How grotesque.''


    One moment, there was peace.


    And in the next.


    Her expression crumpled into pure unadulterated rage. Pure malevolence radiated from her being.


    "AAAAAAARGH!"


    Sheshed out with a velocity that beggared the mind.


    So much so that Rui''s eyes couldn''t even see her.


    And yet.


    WHOOSH!


    By the time she reached him, he was not. Her attack crashed into an empty image.


    BAM!


    Rui''s fist crashed into her head, sting him away.


    Yet, she simply twisted, redirecting her impact. Her elbow spun towards him with an incredible amount of torque.


    Yet he was already gone before she had begun.


    POW POW POW!


    His strikes were not fast.N?vel(D)ra/ma.Org exclusive ? material.


    Nor were they heavy.


    Yet every time she tried to dodge them, they struck her nheless. Every time she blocked, they hurt nheless.


    It was as though he knew where she was going to go ahead of time.


    It was as though he knew how she was going to move ahead of time.


    It was as though he knew what she was thinking.


    BOOM!


    A powerful kick crashed squarely into her throat, flinging her away.


    She grimaced in pain.


    Rui had already prepared his next attacks.


    THWOOM THWOOM THWOOM!


    His attacks crashed into her one by one. Now that his predictive model was fixed, he could use the Pathfinder technique to its absolute limit. The ODA System kicked into gear as he unerringly nailed her with every attack no matter how she maneuvered.


    If she rushed forward directly towards him, hoping to weather his attacks as she reached him, then he simply increased his intensity.


    If she tried to useplex maneuvering trajectories to try and juke his aim, she found that he simply urately struck her vital points nheless.


    No matter what she did, he mercilessly sniped her or bombarded her with attacks.


    Wounds began umting on her body one by one. Her active defenses failed before his uracy and prediction, and her passive defenses were not strong enough to withstand his offense in the interest of beauty.


    BAM BAM BAM!


    She gritted her teeth as she pushed herself to the very limit.


    Her bones cracked under thebined weight of his attacks, and her stubbornness. Her joints groaned, threatening to be disced. Her muscles burned. Her flesh bled.


    And yet she persevered.


    She refused to let this happen a second time.


    Yet try as she might... she was unable.


    The end was nigh.


    BOOM!


    A powerful tier-five Transverse Resonance crashed into her, flinging her against the colosseum walls. She resolutely exerted herself and yet...


    "Eh?"


    THUD


    She fell back into the ground.


    She was unable to even stand up.


    STEP


    Rui appeared before her, a palm jab flew forward with Flowing Canon.


    She closed her eyes.


    ...


    Yet nothing happened.


    His palm stopped just an inch away from her throat.


    She opened her eyes to find him staring at her with a pointed look.


    Only a momentter, her voice announced to everyone watching.


    "I forfeit."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1286 Wager

    Chapter 1286 Wager


    Not a single person was unperturbed.


    How could they be?


    For they had just witnessed the birth of the new Virodhabhasa Champion, after all.


    One moment, everybody was silent.


    And the next, the entire colosseum erupted in cheers.


    "WOOOOOHOOOO!"


    "MY MAN! I knew you could do it!"


    "I''m so d he beat that crazy freak!"


    The colosseum released of all sorts and a festive day broke in the Virodha Theocracy.


    "And we have a winner, folks! Squire Falken is the seventy-second Virodha Champion!" Thementator eximed with bubbling energy. "Stick around to hear what he has to say!"


    Rui, on the other hand, simply stared at Meera, offering her a hand.


    She sighed for a moment, before epting it, struggling to get up under her failing body.


    Thankfully, a medical team had already been transported to their locations, supplying them with several potions.


    "Congrattions on your victory," Meera wished him with a pensive tone.


    "Thanks."


    Yet Rui didn''t seem as pleased as everybody else.


    In fact, he seemed quite displeased now that he had actually won the final match and be the Virodha Champion.


    It couldn''t be helped. After all, he had fought this battle for the sole hope of gaining the opportunity to activate his Martial Heart. But s, it turned out that this would not be that opportunity.


    Meera simply stared at him.


    Her impulsive anger had been beaten out of her by Rui''s overwhelming power, but she hadn''t forgotten his words. She felt a profound weariness in her heart when she recalled what they were. He was just being honest, but the truth was much too painful for her.


    She had no idea what to do after this. Should she continue training for the Virodha Theocracy? Even though she never made too much progress?


    She didn''t know. Yet she didn''t want to simply sit around waiting another two years so that she could participate in the seventy-third Virodhabhasa Contest.


    She had a lot to think about.


    "Ah..." She murmured when something popped in her head. "That reminds me. You owe me a favor."


    "What?" Rui tilted his head, consuming a potion.


    "Remember our wager?" She smiled. "Now that you have won, you have to do me a favor as per the agreement."


    "I never agreed to that absurd wager." Rui snorted. "Don''t even try."


    "I need you to go to a certain ce, and fight a certain somebody," She said, ignoring his words.


    Rui frowned, about to retort, yet her next words froze him.


    "Ajanta Ind in the Kaddar Region. Squire Tokugawa Ieyasu." She told him.


    Rui stared at her with furrowed eyebrows.


    "...What is your connection with him?"


    "He was the champion of seventieth Virodhabhasa Contest," She easily revealed.


    Rui had had a gut instinct when Master Deivon told him about the previous champion who defeated Meera, but he had dismissed it as a possibility after some logical consideration.


    There were millions of Martial Squires across the wide continent, and the probability that the champion was Ieyasu Tokugawa was the champion was extremely low.


    And yet, lo and behold.


    It turned out that his gut instinct was right all along.


    "Why do you ask this of me?" Rui raised an eyebrow.


    "Well..." She began. "When I faced him in the finals, I made him a wager. If I won, he would marry me. That was my condition."


    Rui furrowed his eyebrows "Marriage was your condition?"


    "His Martial Art was beautiful," She sighed unabashedly.Content rights by N?velDr//ama.Org.


    ''His Martial Path is imitative evolution though.'' Rui frowned.''So she basically fell in love with her own Martial Art reflected in him? That''s so narcissistic.''


    "He epted the condition." She continued with a wistful expression. "His condition was that I would continue to participate in the Virodha Contest, and send anybody who defeated me his way. He himself went and perched in himself in the Ajanta Ind, waiting."


    Rui''s eyes widened at those words.


    Ieyasu had essentially converted the second-strongest Martial Squire he knew into a scout for powerful Martial Squires and filtered out the good ones, sending them his way.


    It was a genius idea. This way, he didn''t need to participate in the Martial Contest each time. He just needed to wait.


    Perhaps he had done this for other avenues where strong Martial Squires gathered. Maybe he had scouts all over the ce scanning the world for a powerful worthy opponent.


    The fact that he had reached that level of power was truly amazing. Rui could rte, if not for Ieyasu, he too wouldn''t have an opponent strong enough to force him to break through.


    He would have to go hunting in the Beast Domain


    Rui recalled what Ieyasu had said to him when he left the Floating Sect. His words back then implied that he had been waiting for an opportunity to break through into a higher Realm of power.


    Rui heaved a sigh as he realized that this had beening for some time. It was almost as though it was providence.


    "I ept your demand," Rui replied.


    "Wait, really? She raised an eyebrow. "I expected you not to care. I was going to contact him myself and inform him of thetest developments. So that he could track you down himself if need be."


    "No need for that," Rui got up with a determined expression. "I''ll fight him."


    Thetest revtion hadpletely drawn Rui''s attention. The events that followed the immediate conclusion of the Martial Contest were a bit of a blur.


    He received a trophy from Master Deivon himself while the other contestants received medals indicating them to be of the top eight.


    The roars and apuse from the spectators were deafening. They reverberated through the sky and earth. Yet they may as well have been silent.


    He even gave a humble speech that seemed to earn the approval of the Virodha Theocracy.


    It took a long time before he could extricate himself.


    Much happened once the Martial Contest had ended, and he heaved a sigh, walking back with Master Deivon.


    WHOOSH


    Three people sky-walked in front of them, stopping them in their paths.


    The three Masters that overlooked each of the first three rounds the previous day.


    Suddenly, he felt as though the air had grown silent.


    Ominous.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1287 Surrender

    Chapter 1287 Surrender


    Rui stared at the three Martial Masters with apprehension.


    There was the fact that he knew the three of them had confronted Master Deivon about Rui.


    And one of them apparently even believed that he was the Virodhabhasa.


    He didn''t even need to ask which one of them it was.


    One look into Master Uma''s eyes, and he could literally see the feverous devotion oozing out of them.


    She gazed at him like he was destined to be the deity of her worship.


    He should have felt ttered.


    Honored that such a being worshipped him.


    Yet he didn''t feel anything other than terror.


    ''When she sees me, she doesn''t see me, Rui Quarrier.'' His eyes narrowed. ''She only sees the Virodhabhasa. I am a vessel of the divine or something, not a sovereign individual.''


    "Congrattions Champion Falken," Master Greminga smiled.


    "You have exceeded every expectation I had of you when I first met you," Master Carianughed good-heartedly.Content ? N?velDrama.Org 2024.


    Thankfully, Rui detected theirposure and calmness. It appeared that they were still not deep down in the rabbit hole. He didn''t want to stick around to indulge them.


    "Thank you, Masters," Rui bowed. "I appreciate your kind words, as well as the fact that you''re taking time out of your day to speak to me. However, I am exhausted, and I wish to rest before what is surely going to be a tiring banquet."


    Master Carian and Greminga nodded goodheartedly.


    Yet Master Uma simply stared at him, before opening her mouth.


    "ept your destiny."


    The air grew ominous once more as the three Martial Masters stiffened at her tant disregard for polities.


    "I''m sorry?" Rui stared at her as his apprehension escted.


    "You cannot hide forever," Her tone, while still reverent, became sharper. "You are a Godling. Destined to be the Antithesis in His full glory. You cannot hide your shine with a Master-level mask for much longer."


    "What?"


    "Master Deivon cannot protect you forever either." She spoke with sincerity and earnestness despite the edge of her words. "Rather than running away from the inevitable, ept it. Allow me to guide you. I will help shape Your Godship to the best of my ability, and mold you in the image of the Antithesis that the Transcendent Prophet spoke of. Surrender yourself to me, and I will help you realize your destiny."


    "Enough." Master Deivon gritted his teeth.


    "Do not interrupt me." She didn''t even bother looking at him. "I am speaking to him. You are not his sovereign, you cannot speak in his ce."


    Master Deivon stiffened at those words.


    He did not want Rui to get the impression that he was trying to control him by speaking in his ce. He had taken great caution and care while interacting with Rui to not rm the young man that he was out to turn him into a pawn.


    He simply turned towards Rui with a cautioning nce.


    Rui turned back towards Master Uma with furrowed eyebrows.


    "I cannot ept your offer. I am not the object of your worship. I am no object at all. I am my own person with my own goals and ambitions disconnected from this religion. I cannot heed your words," Rui spoke with a determined tone.


    "If you do not ept your destiny, then it will force you to. We will force you to. When we discover you naturally once more." Her tone was uncharacteristically soft. She was sincere in every word she uttered. "You cannot live a life of normality, you must not. You are destined for greatness. I implore you. For your own sake, for the sake of the world. Forfeit the life you have forged, the life that you will forge, and dedicate yourself to your destiny as the greatest Martial deity."


    "Your words go too far!" Master Deivon snarled.


    ''She''s insane. She reveres me as the sapling destined to be the Antithesis. She is willing to burn away my life if that is what it takes. I bet she wouldn''t mind ughtering my entire family if that is what it took.'' Rui realized.


    Rui realized that she was a bigger threat to him than even Chairman Deacon. At least Chairman Deacon had political constraints that prevented him from going too far. He hated Rui, but he was sane about the way he went about exacting his revenge.


    Master Uma, on the other hand, did not have such considerations.


    ''If we were alone... She would kidnap me without any hesitation. I am an object in her eyes. A gemstone in the rough that needs to be polished toperfection.'' A chill went down his spine as he narrowed his eyes.


    Master Deivon and perhaps the other two Martial Masters were the only reason she had yet to make a move.


    "Your Holyship... Please consider my words deeply." She said with a lingering hint of mindless devotion, before disappearing the next moment.


    ''Oh hell no.'' Rui shook his head. ''This is why I dislikereligion.''


    The sheer amount of irrationality that she spouted made his stomach churn. The Virodhabhasa Faith had already begun morphing into a threat in his eyes. He highly doubted that Master Uma was the only religious zealot who was also a Martial Master.


    ''I need to get the hell out of here.'' Rui realized. ''I need to get stronger. Way stronger. My current level of power isn''t enough. Not even being a baseline Martial Senior is enough.''


    He clenched his fist.


    "Champion Falken, please do not fret." Master Carian tried to quell his growing anxiety.


    "We will personally ensure that Master Uma does not engage in anything untoward during your time in the Virodha Theocracy. I swear this on my honor as a Martial Master and as a bishop of the Virodha Theocracy." Master Greminga concurred.


    Rui nced at the two of them warily.


    He didn''t trust them.


    But, it was better than nothing.


    Truthfully, he wanted to leave right here and now. He wanted to run for his life. Far away from the Virodha Theocracy.


    Yet he did not want to earn the ire of the religious state by shirking the entire nation during one of its most important banquets, in front of all its important guests. That could not be interpreted as anything other than an insult.


    He might even get into more trouble doing that than he would by being the so-called Virodhabhasa.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1288 Trust

    Chapter 1288 Trust


    ''...Besides, there''s still something I have to do during the banquet.'' Rui narrowed his eyes.


    Once hepleted that, he would have no qualms about running as far away from the Virodhabhasa Faith as he could. Finally, the angsty meeting with the three Martial Masters ended as the remaining two also disappeared, wishing him a good day.


    Rui heaved a sigh with furrowed eyebrows, ncing at Master Deivon.


    He took looked weary. "Master Uma is not all up there. But she was right about one thing..."


    He nced at Rui. "I cannot protect you forever. You need to grow stronger. Gain power. Higher Realms of power. Only then can you exert your sovereign. The only reason you could even engage in a dialogue with her is because I was standing beside you. In the future, you must be able to do that by yourself."


    Rui understood this dynamic quite well.


    It was no different from caretakers and other staff assigned to care of an infant heir of a powerful emperor, tasked with shaping him into a powerful person worthy of seeding the throne.


    They essentially revered him as the future emperor, but they nheless would not amodate his autonomy in order to nurture and train him to shape him to be exactly what a nation needed.


    The resistance of a child was futile, in that regard.


    Rui knew that something simr was going through the mind of Master Uma at the moment. A twenty-four-year-old Martial Squire may as well be a child in the eyes of a grandma who had lived for more than two centuries. She had addressed him as boybefore she came to believe he was the Virodhabhasa.


    ''Power is all that matters in this world.'' Rui narrowed his eyes.


    Ever since he left the Shionel Confederation, his desire for power had grown. And now he could feel the true importance of it, especially in his circumstances.


    A part of him yearned to go back to the simple days when he pursued his Martial Path purely for the sake of Project Water. But it was undeniable that he was a lot more driven now that he pursued his Martial Path for more than just the ambition of his previous life.


    It meant that he would grow a lot more stronger than he would when he pursued his Martial Path for purer reasons.


    But s, this wasn''t a webnovel. The real world was brutal. He needed to traverse it practically.


    "Get some rest..." Master Deivon told him, earning a nod. "Ah, and onest thing..."


    Rui nced at him.


    "No matter what happens. I am proud of what you have aplished." Master Deivon smiled. "I am honored to be your patron. Not because of your connection to our religion, not because of your status. But because you are one of the most extraordinary Martial Artists I have ever seen. Your dedication to your Martial Art is inspiring. Your determination to tread your Martial Path is admirable. The individuality you have generated to propel yourself forward is humbling. Your devotion to those you care about is heart-warming. You have truly earned my respect and my admiration as Falken, not as the Antithesis. So long as I am alive, I will not allow the Faith to take you against your will."


    Master Deivon smiled, closing his eyes before walking away.


    Rui stared at his retreating figure as he felt a surge of sentiment gripping his heart.


    ''I must be losing my rationality these days.'' He sighed as he made a spontaneous decision after scanning the limits of the full-range Riemannian Echo for any espionage technology or spies, before whispering in a voice so soft and muted that even Martial Seniors would be unable to hear. "Rui Quarrier."


    Master Deivon froze on the spot, turning ever so slowly. "...What?"


    "That is my real name," Rui told him.


    The man simply stared at Rui for a moment before his eyes widened in realization. "You... I see. I understand now..."Property ? 2024 N0(v)elDrama.Org.


    "Please don''t make me regret this decision," Rui smiled wryly, before heading his own way.


    "I will endeavor not to," Mastger Deivonughed mirthfully. It appeared that the trust that Rui had extended to him had truly brightened his mood.


    Rui went about his own day, as he prepared for what was shaping up to be a tiring banquet.


    He copsed into his bed staring at the ceiling, lost in his thoughts before slowly falling asleep.


    Rui slept like aa patient. He had truly stressed his mind to the limit in the tournament. He had gone above and beyond just the VOID algorithm in two of the three fights he fought, and while he most certainly enjoyed every minute, it did take a toll.


    Especially when he had abused techniques like his increasingly powerful Mind Pce.


    Thankfully, he managed to wake up in time with the prompts of the staff whose only task was to ensure that he was on time with the protocols that he was to fulfill.


    "We have a grooming team ready to prep you for the banquet." His manager told him.


    Rui sighed as he endured the torment of several men and women scrubbing him in a bath to their satisfaction, before dressing him up from nude. By the time they were done, he didn''t even look recognizable despite the recognizable mask that he wore.


    He wore an absurdly ostentatious garb that projected glory and power. It was so high-profile that Rui felt embarrassed to wear it. Yet this was one of the few things that the manager was unwilling topromise on.


    It was uneptable for one of the most shocking and impactful Virodha Champions in the history of the Virodhabhasa Martial Festival to look anything short of resplendent!


    His attire was so eye-drawing that every single one of the thousands of guests that had gathered turned towards him when the announcer announced his arrival at the banquet hall.


    STEP


    Rui paused, gazing into the eyes of the guests.


    One moment, he was by himself with Master Deivon at his side.


    The very next, he drowned in the sea of guests who wanted to speak to him!


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1289 Developments

    Chapter 1289 Developments


    He had known it would be intense. He had even taken some measures to handle it, preparing himself psychologically.All text ? N?velD(r)a''ma.Org.


    Yet nothing could have prepared him for the waves of people that bombarded him with all kinds of absurdly long greetings.


    "The Royal Ambassador of the Jaerun Kingdom greets the Virodha Champion..."


    "I bid you congrattions on behalf of the Dreemont Consortium..."


    "On behalf of the East-Panamic Alliance, we celebrate your victory..."


    Rui briskly and swiftly dealt with each statement as well as he could. Many offers came his way, and many were declined. He couldn''t afford to give due consideration to all of them.


    However, he did give consideration to some of the more powerful guests. The reason for that was not because he was actually interested in joining or partnering with them.


    He just wanted everybody watching to think he was.


    All so that when he did ept a private talk from a certain individual, it would not look suspicious.


    "Champion Falken," A familiar voice greeted him with an unerringly polite tone and a perfect smile. "I am a Martial Commissioner of the Kandrian Martial Union, Commissioner Reze. I would like to discuss certain offers with you privately away from the banquet hall for just some brief time."


    Rui stared into the man''s eyes for a moment, as if considering the Martial Union''s offer. "...Alright, I look forward to hearing the offers of the vaunted Kandrian Martial Union."


    He nced at Master Deivon, who gave him a knowing nod, before walking away from the banquet hall and towards an absurdlyrge and ostentatious carriage that pulled up right before the entrance.


    It had the familiar and nostalgic emblem of the Martial Union.


    Rui''s senses couldn''t so much as enter the carriage. To his shock, even Riemannian Echo waspletely sealed. The only time this had happened was when he was on Ajanta Ind due to its naturally bizarre gravitational field.


    THUD


    The door was closed on them, and a strange hum ensued. He instinctively felt an enormous amount of energy surging through the carriage.


    "I personally arranged for a particrly high-grade sage-level anti-espionage system. It is an extremely precious resource." Commissioner Reze''s formal tone was reduced in its stiffness. "It was extremely difficult to arrange this on short notice when our intelligence department detected your trace in the Seonmun Church town..."


    Rui simply stared at him.


    "So you can be yourself without fear, Squire Quarrier." The man smiled.


    Rui heaved a broken sigh that quivered in relief.


    Being called addressed by his true identity sted him with a wave of nostalgia and sentiment that had been silently umting for three years. He hadn''t realized how much he missed being addressed by his actual name, who he truly was.


    "It''s been a long time... Commissioner Reze," Rui replied, gathering hisposure.


    "...Indeed."


    For a moment, there was silence.


    "How is my family?" Rui''s eyes narrowed.


    This was the first question that he had decided to ask the Martial Commissioner if they ever did get to speak again.


    "Alive and well," Themissioner promised with a firm tone. "They are unaware of the truth to this day."


    Rui heaved another quivering sigh.


    All this time, he didn''t know the status of his family. He hoped they were well, and had taken some powerful measures to ensure that they were well, but he didn''t know that they were well.


    Now that he had gotten confirmation that nothing bad had happened in the past three years, he could go to sleep easier.


    "How many attempts at kidnapping them in the past three years?"


    Commissioner Reze paused for a moment. "... Twenty-six."


    Rui narrowed his eyes, clenching his fist.


    Twenty-six times, he had tried to harm his family.


    A surge of energy threatened to break out of his control, requiring his full effort to control.


    "...That''s too high. He hasn''t given up."


    "Yes, he hasn''t." Commissioner Reze sighed. "It is naive to expect him to give up."


    Rui nodded with a grave expression, recalling the moniker that the man had earned in his years as a businessman.


    The bloodhound.


    Once he chose a target, he would chase them to the end of the world. Once he got a hold of them, he would never let go. Once he took a bite out of them, he wouldn''t stop until he devoured them.


    A perseverance that verged on madness.


    That was the reason that he had risen to the highest echelons of the Shionel Confederation.


    He had risen to power in his industry after spending nearly fifteen years dogging after his rival, the previous oligarch of the esoteric supply and technology industry. He tore the market away from him, tore away the stakes and stocks of hispany before the man mysteriously disappeared after losing everything to Chairman Deacon.


    Inparison to that, three years was nothing. Especially when he had the means to extend his lifespan beyond human limits. It would take far more to even consider making him give up.


    "Give me an update on everything relevant." Rui narrowed his eyes.


    "Very well..." Commissioner Reze nodded. "Once you left, he immediately began hunting the Kandrian Empire for the two doppelgangers that he believed were you and young master Arrancar. Simultaneously, Guildmaster Bradt applied more pressure on him when he proposed and sessfully ratified the Dungeon Estate act of the year 426 PMA, which allowed for free colonization of the dungeon floors for private ownership. It forced Chairman Deacon to dedicate his burdened resources towardspeting in what is now known as the colonization war within the Shionel Confederation."


    Rui nodded, this made sense. Rui had already deduced most of this after deeply analyzing the few words that Guildmaster Bradt had exchanged with him.


    "Because he was forced to employ much of his own capital towards the silent war within the Shionel Confederation, he was unable to employ much capital towards his personal vendetta towards you in the Kandrian Empire." Commissioner Reze exined. "He managed to ovee this impediment by forging agreements and partnerships with several industrial powerhouses and oligarchs within the Kandrian Empire with aplex set of agreements with many terms and conditions. However, they basically boil down to this..."


    He paused for a moment, before continuing. "In exchange for the real estate within the Shionel Dungeon that Chairman Deacon managed to monopolize with his own capital, they would aid with helping Chairman Deacon build a powerful and solid foundation and base within the Kandrian Empire."


    A look of horror emerged in Rui''s eyes. "...It will allow him to conduct operations within the Kandrian Empire with greater ease, it may even allow him to shift power bases in the long run away from the oppressive guildmaster and closer towards his target..."


    "...All so that he can hunt you down and kill you and your family." Commissioner Reze dered,pleting his thoughts.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1290 Throne War

    Chapter 1290 Throne War


    Rui''s heart sank when he learned about this development. He knew that Chairman Deacon hated his guts, but he didn''t think that he would be so proactive in his efforts to ovee the security detail that Rui hadmissioned from the Martial Union.


    Not only had the man not given up in the past three years, he was taking big strides in the hopes of exacting his vendetta.


    "What about his investigation into me?" Rui asked with a grave tone.


    "We have sessfully led him to believe that Rui Quarrier is within the Kandrian Empire for the past three years, you can rest assured of that." Commissioner Reze spoke with a smile.


    "That is quite relieving to learn. I thought that there was a good chance that he would have figured out that I am not in the Kandrian Empire by now." Rui murmured.


    Ultimately, it wouldn''t have taken too long for him under ordinary circumstances. It was too great of a fact to keep hidden, and someone aspetent as Chairman Deacon would have noticed the incongruencies.


    "Do not underestimate the Martial Union''s ability for covert sabotage," Commissioner Reze conveyed just a hint of pride. "With our Martial Artists, throwing an investigation off your scent by convincing them that you''re in the Kandrian Empire is very much possible and feasible."


    "That is quite relieving to know," Rui nodded. "Please continue with it. One of the reasons he hasn''t noticed me is because he is not looking for me outside of the nation."


    It was a good thing to know that the Martial Union possessed the ability to sabotage his investigation for three years straight. It meant that they could do it longer as well. Giving him the time he needed to umte his personal power.


    "Tell me more about the measures that Chairman Deacon has taken as far as building up a base and foundation in the Kandrian Empire," Rui asked.


    "He hasrgely increased sales of esoteric ore supplies, as well as manufacturing operations of esoteric technology." Commissioner Reze exined. "He has purchased arge showroom in the town of Hajin featuring his products while manyrge manufacturingplexes further down south in the poorer parts of the nation for lower taxes." Property ? 2024 N0(v)elDrama.Org.


    "Damn..." Rui''s fist clenched.


    The town of Hajin was extremely close to the Quarrier Orphanage. He could cross the distance in a few seconds, it was far too close for him to be at ease.


    "Still, this is a lot of progress in just three years. When I left the Shionel Confederation, Deacon Industries was starting to crack and fall apart due to the heavy blow that he suffered due to the catastrophe within the Shionel Dungeon. You''re telling me he fought a colonization war within the Shionel Dungeon thereafter, and then proceeded to aggressively expand into Kandrian soil?" Rui raised an eyebrow. "That is very taxing and burdening. You mentioned that he had received the aid of several industrial powerhouses within the Kandrian Empire, who are you referring to?"


    "There are several, but the most prominent among them is Charles DiViliers and the DiViliers Industries." Commissioner Reze exined. "He has formed an irond partnership with Chairman Deacon."


    Rui''s eyes narrowed.


    Charles DiViliers. He knew that name. This was the same man who held those Martial Artpetitions known as the Martial Games at the Apprentice level. Rui had participated in the Martial Games many years ago, representing Nartha Freiers He was also the man whose champion was a bandit that Rui had fought many years ago. A golden-haired and golden-eyed bandit who had tried suppressing trade between two different towns within the Kandrian Empire by conducting bandit raids on traveling merchant supply convoys.


    "Charles DiViliers... That man has ties with the underworld." Rui narrowed his eyes as he voiced a conclusion that he hade to a long time ago.


    Commissioner Reze raised an eyebrow in surprise. "That is true. However, it is not public information."


    "I feel extremely ufortable that those two are colluding with each other." Rui narrowed his eyes. "Is the only reason that this is happening is that Charles DiViliers wants some real estate within the Shionel Confederation?"


    "Well, no, not entirely..." Commissioner Reze admitted. "Of course, estate within the Shionel Confederation is quite valuable. Thepetition for estate within the Shionel Confederation is unlike anything else as I''m sure you remember."


    Rui nodded. He and Kane hade across entire flea markets outside the Shionel Confederationprised of small-time merchants who were unable topete with the merchants within the Shionel Confederation, unable to own even a square foot ofnd due to how intense the demand was.


    Owning an entire city, in the form of a dungeon floor, within the Shionel Confederation could make one rich unlike anything else.


    "However, Charles DiViliers is most focused on the Kandrian Empire rather than the Shionel Confederation." Commissioner Reze exined. "The dungeon is good, but what he really wants is a powerful political ally, and a lobbyist so that he can increase the political capital he has. All for the sake of the impending war."


    "Impending war?" Rui furrowed his eyebrows, tilting his head in confusion. "What are you talking about?"


    Commissioner Reze paused for a moment, before sighing. "The war for the throne, of course. The war for power over the Kandrian Empire."


    Rui''s eyes widened. "What?"


    "Emperor Rael Di Kandria... is bedridden." Commissioner Reze revealed with a grave tone. "He has been suffering from an extremely lethal terminal illness for the past two decades. Many a doctor has examined him, and while solutions have been provided, they are extraordinarily difficult, dangerous, or costly."


    Rui stared at him with a stunned expression. "...What?"


    "In the past three years, his condition has worsened," Commissioner Reze exined. "And from all the experts that we have consulted, it is projected to get worse. His time is nigh. In the next few years, perhaps a decade at the absolute most, he will most likely either announce his abdication or sumb to his condition, leaving the throne vacant."


    "And a war that will engulf the entirety of the Kandrian Empire will break out..." Rui murmured.


    Commissioner Reze snorted. "It will engulf the entirety of East Panama."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1291 Throne War II

    Chapter 1291 Throne War II


    Rui needed a moment to process what he had heard.


    He had not expected this. Kandria had undergone significant shifts in the time that Rui had been away from it.


    He didn''t even need Commissioner Reze to exin any further after providing this bare basic contest, he quickly gathered all the facts, organizing them properly before analyzing them and deducing conclusions premised on them.


    "DiViliers Industries is a powerful supplier of restricted technology, I believe," Rui recalled. "Charles DiViliers is unable to supply to restricted strategic Martial technology to anybody asides from the Martial Union and the Kandrian Military. If he is as much of a businessman as I remember, then these royal sanctions probably frustrate him. Which means..."


    It meant that he had an interest vested in whoever was the next ruler of the Kandrian Empire. He would much rather the next ruler of the Kandrian Empire be a libertarian than anything else, removing the sanctions that were currently on him.


    "Not just that... With the amount of power that an industrial powerhouse like Charles DiVilier has... He can y kingmaker to a certain extent. At the very least, he can bolster any one of the princes and princesses vying for the status of ruler and give them a real shot at ascending the throne."


    "Correct," Commissioner Reze nodded. "Chairman Deacon will be a powerful ally. Obtaining his support means gaining the full power of the Deacon Industries as well as the support of the alliance and political power base that Chairman Deacon has steadily built over decades. That will allow Charles DiViliers to much more effectively bolster a Kandrian Prince or Princess of his choosing."


    Rui finally understood the big picture. Chairman Deacon was still focused on killing Rui and his family. He had failed to find Rui and failed to kidnap his family, thus he decided to increase power within the Kandrian Empire to aplish those. He did that with extensive support and aid from Charles DiViliers, in exchange for an entire dungeon floor and Chairman Deacon''s political support for the Throne War.


    "What a mess..." Rui sighed.


    Rui did not particrly care about the Throne War. He was not a prince, after all. As long as the next ruler was not a psycho, he didn''t care who it was.


    "Indeed," Commissioner Reze sighed. "The Throne War has already begun tearing apart the nation into factions. Not even the Martial Union has been able to resist being torn apart. Different factions have chosen to support different princes and princesses based on their interests or political ideologies. The entire organization has be more disunited than it has ever been since its inception."


    Rui could easily under why that had happened.


    He had already been introduced to a few of the factions within the Martial Union over time. Senior Colonel Geringar was part of the Merger Faction that sought to dissolve the boundaries between the Kandrian government and the Martial Union. To dissolve the boundaries between the Royal Family that ruled over Kandria and the Martial Council that led the Martial Union.


    He had also met Commissioner Derun of the Martial Supremacist faction who had deployed him to Vilun Ind. Her faction was diametrically opposed to the Merge Faction. This faction would probably choose to support a Kandrian prince or princess who was a Martial Artist.


    He wouldn''t be surprised if there was a Martial Artist prince or princess who had chosen to join the Martial Union, that had earned the support of a good chunk of the Martial Union.


    He wouldn''t be surprised if several princes or princesses had attempted that.


    The one to ascend the throne would be he or she who had umted as much power as possible. Political power. Support of powerful stakeholders. This included people with high authority in high offices within the government or the military. It included economic andmercial powerhouses like Charles DiViliers. It included international powers with a presence inside the nation and geographic proximity to the Kandrian Empire. It included all Martial Artists, the higher than rank, the higher the political power. It included the underworld and the powerful Kandrian mafia. It even included the civilian poption.


    The strongest one would be able to wring over the highest amount of support of the relevant stakeholders thatprised the nation, bing the next ruler. Property ? 2024 N0(v)elDrama.Org.


    Just thinking about the conflict gave Rui a headache. Now, he was almost happy that he had left the Kandrian Empire for a while. Compared to such a dangerous mess, he would much rather be traveling to ces of significance to Martial Artists that could help him grow stronger.


    However, he had his family to think about. If not for them, he wouldn''t mind leaving the Kandrian Empire for a decade before returning after this storm had blown over.


    For now, the only thing he could do was grow stronger. Bing a Martial Senior was the bare minimum, and the ideal was to be much stronger. To protect his family from Chairman Deacon, and to protect his family from the storm that was brewing over the Kandrian Empire.


    "ording to our analysis of your performance in the Martial Contest, you have reached nigh unprecedented levels of power within the Squire Realm." Commissioner Reze smiled at him. "We did expect that you would grow stronger, but this is beyond our wildest expectations. We estimate that you are on the very brink of bing a Martial Senior, a shocking discovery considering your youth, but one that is true nheless."


    "I will break through." Rui dered with aposed yet confident voice. "I do not intend to remain in the Squire Realm for long. For the sake of my ambition and the ones I care about."


    "We have faith that you will." Commissioner Reze smiled. "By every measure and analysis, you truly possess the capital to ascend to higher Realms. We hope your journey to the Senior Realm will be unhindered."


    "No hindrance can stop me. I will ovee every impediment no matter what."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1292 Contribution

    Chapter 1292 Contribution


    The two of them continued discussing a few more matters. It had been a while, and Rui was curious to learn everything that he had missed.


    "Your siblings are doing well," Commissioner Reze informed him. "Our intelligence indicates that they were distressed at your disappearance, but havee to terms with reality. They voluntarily graduated from the Martial Academy a few months ago, and have begunpleting open Apprentice-levelmissions."


    Rui smiled mncholically when he heard that.


    Though his heart ached when he heard about the pain he had caused them, he was still pleased to hear that they had been doing well.


    "I''d like to make a contribution to the Martial Union." Rui pulled a small booklet from a pocket in his gaudy attire. "I prepared this for you when I saw you at the first banquet."


    Commissioner Reze raised an eyebrow with interest. "Oh? This is unexpected."


    "This is Hungry Pain. It''s a powerful Apprentice-level technique," Rui exined. "It substantially increases the power of the Martial Body produced by the Squire evolution breakthrough process. I want you to give this to Max and Mana, and get them to master it before they be Martial Squires."


    Commissioner Reze''s eyebrow rose. "That is a bold im, we would need to see substantial evidence of that."


    "I do have evidence." Rui grinned. "If you recall, my Martial Body started off at grade two."


    Commissioner Reze narrowed his eyes. "There were statistical anomalies and discrepancies with the predicted performance parameters and your actual power. Are you suggesting..."


    "Yes," Rui affirmed. "It was thanks to this technique."


    "Do you have proof of that?" Commissioner Reze asked with a hint of skepticism. "The Martial Union has a high standard of evidence for confirmation of the capabilities of a technique. Not even the Martial Sages can bypass this with their words."


    "I have proof," Rui smiled. "You told me that Nel and Hever broke through to Martial Squire a few years ago, right? They will have used this technique that I shared with them indirectly. Their Martial Bodies are also a product of this technique, I''m certain that their Martial Bodies also started out at grade two."


    Commissioner Reze looked intrigued and surprised. "To think you had been nning this for so long. You are far-sighted as ever, Squire Quarrier. I am not intimately familiar with the profiles of your friends as I am yours, so I will need to verify that their Bodies are as you im them to be and that they actually used this technique. However, as long as there are no problems, then we will ept your contribution."


    He epted the booklet, skimming through it. "...If this technique is as powerful as you im, then this will be a truly significant contribution. A single grade is a significant boost, and in the long run, it can increase the power of the Martial Union by eight percent, possibly nine percent. Truly incredible. For the Martial Union, even a single percent of Martial growth is extremely precious, that is how powerful we have be."


    A look of genuine appreciation appeared on his face. "We were not wrong to invest in you. You have proven your value to not just us, but to the entirety of the field of Martial Art. You can consider the Martial Union your staunch ally. We will not allow so much as a hair of your family to be harmed. Naturally, we will ensure that your siblings master this technique."


    "I appreciate that, Commissioner Reze." Rui smiled. "I''d love to chat more, but I should be getting back to the Banquet before people think there is more going on than meets the eye."


    "That is prudent," Commissioner Reze agreed. "Good luck, Squire Quarrier. We sincerely wish you the best of luck in your endeavors and journey. I hope that the next time we meet, it will be in open circumstances."


    After the two bid farewell amicably before Rui quickly returned to the banquet. Commissioner Reze declined to return immediately, most likely pouring through every detail of the brief yet dense technique exnation and training methodology. Thankfully, Rui had been able to pass on the technique quickly because it was based on an existing technique, so he didn''t need to exin much.


    The moment he returned, he was once again crowded with all kinds of important dignitaries among the guests.


    Rui was gracious enough to perfunctorily give them nonmittal answers while epting their offers of means ofmunication. He only got some space to breathe when the first wave of dignitaries were satisfied and left him alone.


    "Congrattions on your victory, Champion Falken." A familiar voice behind him wished him.


    "Squire Ran..." Rui murmured with a surprised expression behind his mask as he turned to get a good look at her.


    "I am not surprised that you won the tournament. I was certain that you would after fighting you myself," She remarked.


    Rui simply stared at her with eyes of concern, studying her. "Have you... recovered?"


    She didn''t respond immediately. "...No. But I am working towards it. I do not bear any resentment towards you, Champion Falken. I came to the Martial Contest prepared to lose my life as a risk. You took mercy and prevented a much worse oue from unfolding."


    Rui''s eyes lit up. "So that means that you''ve still retained your Martial Art?"


    She nodded with a weary smile. "Broken bones heal to be stronger. I intend to follow their example when ites to my Martial Path. I will ovee this challenge and be a stronger warrior. Rest assured, neither I nor my n intend to cause any problems for you."


    It was only then that Rui recalled that she was some famous Martial n. It was good to know that he didn''t make another enemy. Content ? N?velDrama.Org 2024.


    She briefly chatted with him before leaving him alone.


    Yet it appeared that she wasn''t the only familiar voice to reach out to him.


    "Champion Falken, I have something important to convey to you." Senior Frinjschia''s grave voice spoke from behind him.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1293 Departure

    Chapter 1293 Departure


    "Senior Frinjschia..." Rui smiled with a puzzled expression. "...You seem in a hurry."


    "Listen to me, young man." She whispered. "You need to leave this ce. You have drawn too much attention. There are powerful forces beyond yourprehension that have taken interest in you."


    Rui narrowed his eyes. "...What?"


    This was not how he pictured their reunion.


    "I''m saying this for your sake." She narrowed her elder eyes. "After our match, I-"


    She froze.


    Rui narrowed her eyes.


    They both experienced a wave of targeted pressure in their direction.


    Senior Frinjschia nced in a direction over Rui''s shoulder. When he followed her gaze, he found the source of pressure.He spotted Senior Priest Deril warning her with his gaze and aura.


    "...I can''t say anymore. I am deeply indebted to you so please, just heed my advice and don''t remain in this ce for much longer. If I were you, I would ept the offers made by one of the powerful organizations that are soliciting you at this banquet. Pick a powerful sage-level organization or nation. Goodbye. May we meet again."


    Rui''s eyes sharpened even further as his danger instinct spiked.


    Why would he need to pick a Sage-level nation as opposed to a Master-level nation?


    The answer was obvious, especially to Rui.


    Just this knowledge was enough to terrify him.


    Yet he managed to retain hisposure. The series of events that had unfolded after he won meant that nothing was going to happen while he was riding his glory and attention as arguably the greatest Virodha Champion.


    If anything dared to happen to the honored Virodha Champion who was supposed to be wholeheartedly supported and uplifted by the Virodhabhasa Faith, then the credibility of the entire religious state would take a heavy blow.


    Martial Artists would heavily reconsider participating in the contest ever again. If an honored champion was not safe, then they had no business putting so much faith in the Theocracy''s measures.


    ''<nulli>That''s not going tost for long. Trying to forcefully convert me before or during the banquet is definitely political <nulli>suicide.'' Rui narrowed his eyes. <nulli>''However, the more time I spend here, the greater the likelihood that something will change. I need to leave. I have spent enough time here, I have humored enough people and shown enough <nulli>deference.'' N?vel(D)ra/ma.Org exclusive ? material.


    He nced at Master Deivon who immediately noticed his gaze. A single nce conveyed everything that he wanted to. The two exchanged a brief nod before heading out and into a special carriage that belonged to Master Deivon.


    "It seems you''re done." Master Deivon remarked once they both got into the carriage.


    "Yeah, I don''t want to stick around." Rui sighed. "Even if I am the celebrated champion, this ce has be too dangerous."


    "Mmm, prudent," Master Deivon nodded. "I''m getting an ominous feeling as well. It''s a shame you''ll have to forsake all this power."


    "Political power is a means to an end. Nothing more," Rui shook his head. "I have no need for it now. I came here for medical treatment and stayed for an opportunity to break through. Now that I am done, I want to head back to the Kaddar Region."


    Rui didn''t feel even the slightest shred of regret for abandoning the power bestowed upon the Virodha Champion. It was said that the Virodha Champions gained enough political power from the state to take over an entire nation, even if a small one.


    ''<nulli>Besides, once I get strong enough to secure my own safety, I can return and use it if need be,'' Rui had a lot of patience when it came to these matters.


    Master Deivon nodded. "I have prepared an extensively obscured route and means to the Kaddar Region to ensure that it will be almost impossible to track you after the fact. I will also keep my senses to their limit to make sure that we are not being trailed."


    Rui nodded. "That is quite reassuring."


    A Martial Master''s senses were extremely powerful. Only a Martial Sage or a stealth-oriented Martial Master could evade his senses. And the probability that either one of those would was astronomically low.


    The carriage began elerating at top speed as it left the town, the region, and eventually the nation. It moved at extraordinary speeds, so much so that even Rui would be unable to hold a candle to it on foot.


    It was only after an hour into the journey that Master Deivon felt safe enough to strike up a conversation.


    And even then, he was discreet.


    "Your true identity was a shocker to me," Master Deivon remarked, careful not to say his name. "I didn''t do any direct research since it was too dangerous, but what I discreetly uncovered by doing research on rted topics was rather shocking."


    Rui smiled wryly, taking off his mask. "It isn''t all that special."


    "Not to you, perhaps," Master Deivon remarked. "But by any reasonable standard, you are a monster by all measures. The Apprentice who won the Serevian War with his own might. The Apprentice who defeated a Martial Squire. And most recently... The Voider."


    Rui did not react. He partially expected Master Deivon to learn about that.


    It was also an experiment. If Master Deivon had learned about his true identity, then it meant that Chairman Deacon had been extremely aggressive in his efforts to find Rui, so much so that his targets could not be hidden. If Master Deivon didn''t know about it, then it meant Chairman Deacon was being more discreet about it.


    He was essentially using Master Deivon as a litmus test to measure Chairman Deacon''s aggression. That was one of the motivations for revealing his identity to Master Deivon, one that he preferred keeping silent about.


    ''<nulli>This doesn''t bode <nulli>well,'' Rui concluded. "So you managed to learn about that."


    "It seems that you anticipated this," Master Deivon raised an eyebrow.


    "Partially. It was a pretty big event, after all." Rui sighed.


    "You''ve been on the run ever since the Shionel Dungeon exploration ended three years ago," Master Deivon concluded. "Looking to gain as much power as you could to protect yourself."


    "What can I say? People don''t seem to be willing to leave me alone these days," Rui sighed wearily.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1294 Escape

    Chapter 1294 Escape


    The two of them continued conversing for some more time. It was the first time that Rui had truly opened up to Master Deivon. It was just a shame because the two of them knew that this would probably be thest time they would meet in quite some time.


    Rui would not return until he gained the power to protect himself from crazy Martial Masters, most likely. It was too much of a threat and Master Deivon couldn''t protect him at all times.


    That was why Rui had an earnest back and forth with the good Master. Ordinarily, he didn''t trust people all that much, but Master Deivon had proven himself. Rui wasn''t entirely sure what the reward was for finding the Virodhabhasa, but it could not possibly be small.


    Anybody who found the Virodhabhasa would likely attain a religious status that was on par with the Transcendent Prophet.


    Nigh limitless political power. It was an enchanting deal, anybody in their right mind would have sold Rui out in a heartbeat if there was even a ten percent chance that he was the Virodhabhasa.


    Master Carian and Greminga were highly agnostic and were far too unconvinced that this Martial Squire was a Martial deity to act on it, but Master Deivon knew him more intimately and had spent more time around him.


    Furthermore, he hade to learn about Rui''s true identity and had ess to greater knowledge that only bolstered how astonishing a person he was.


    Yet he chose to forgo the possibility of extraordinary political power for what he believed was right.


    That was a concrete course of action that could not be denied. No number of sweet words or empty talk could match up with silent action. That was why Rui was willing to be more candid about himself.


    "...I see," Master Deivon murmured with an incredulous expression. "So you already have met the seventieth champion."


    "That''s right," Rui narrowed his eyes. "He challenged me to a death match upon my return before I left. I epted, and I intend to see it through."


    Master Deivon heaved an impatient sigh. "It''s a pity that I can''t be there. I would loved to have witnessed that fig-"


    He froze.


    Rui furrowed his eyebrows. "What''s the matter?"


    The next moment, he disappeared.


    "Urgh!" The carriage shook as a gust of wind washed over Rui.


    For a moment, there was silence.


    Then, an extraordinary wave of horror washed over Rui.


    It possessed a depth that was unlike anything Rui had ever experienced in his entire life.


    It possessed an intensity that he didn''t understand.


    One he wasn''t qualified to understand.


    His heart shook.


    The hair on his body stood on edge.


    His nerves tingled electrically.


    His knees felt jittery.


    He breathing strained, almost as if he was in a vacuum. N?vel(D)ra/ma.Org exclusive ? material.


    His vision blurred dizzily as he felt himself losing his bnce.


    <nullb>BOOM!!!


    <nullb>"Urgh!"


    <nullb>An extraordinary explosion of titanic magnitude erupted. It was so extraordinarily loud that it left him deafened with ringing ears.


    Rui couldn''t even begin to fathom how much power it possessed. It was as though someone had set off a nuke in the vicinity!


    He got up groggily, opening the door of the now stationary carriage, before peering out.


    "GET OUT OF HERE!" Master Deivon bellowed with a fierce tone.


    Rui''s eyes widened at what he saw.


    Master Uma stood high up in the air peering down at Rui.


    Master Deivon positioned himself exactly in between Rui and her.


    "Master Uma..." Rui''s eyes widened with shock.


    "I originally didn''t intend to do this," She spoke with an impassive tone. "But after witnessing your final fight, I had a change of heart."


    "What...?"


    "I realized that guiding you to your destiny is more important than my well-being." She spoke. "If I get beheaded for attacking a fellow bishop without authorization, then it is an eptable oue so long as I get to mold you in the shape of the Antithesis before that happens. It is a worthy sacrifice, and it is one I am willing to make."


    "I''VE HAD IT WITH YOU AND YOUR INSANITY!" Master Deivon bellowed as he activated his Martial Heart.


    It zed into power, shining with an intensity unlike anything that Rui had ever seen from a Martial Senior.


    "I have memorized every word, every sentence, every chapter of the Virodhaveda," She said to Rui, ignoring Master Deivon. "I have read all the existing theological literature on the Holy Book. I have spoken with the Transcendent Prophet, and gain insight directly from His Holyship himself."


    She peered deep into Rui''s eyes. "There is nobody more qualified to guide the Virodhabhasa, Your Godship. ept my guidance with an open heart."


    "RUN AWAY!" Master Deivon instructed him. "I''LL HOLD HER BACK!"


    "I won''t allow that!" Master Uma narrowed her eyes.


    Rui had already begun turning.


    Yet he stopped.


    He couldn''t help but stop.


    What else was he supposed to do when he saw a Martial Master activate a power that he didn''t quite understand? What was he supposed to do when her very being morphed before his eyes?


    One moment, he saw an incredibly elderly woman gazing at him with determination and devotion.


    The next?


    Her entire existence seemed to change, bing a pure de in his eyes. A de made up of wind.


    Master Deivon narrowed his eyes as he followed suit. His form altered, bing a mighty fortress in Rui''s eyes.


    ''<nulli>What... What is <nulli>this?'' Rui gaped in wonder. ''<nulli>Is this the power of the Master Realm?''


    He couldn''t believe his eyes. What he witnessed was so absurd that it was straight out of a fairy tale!


    It didn''tpute with his understanding of reality.


    "I SAID GET AWAY BOY!" Master Deivon bellowed impatiently once more. "I CAN KEEP HER TIED UP HERE. DON''T WORRY ABOUT ME AND GET OUT OF HERE!"


    His words jolted Rui back to reality. His wonder for Martial Art was one of the strongest emotions he felt, yet now was not the time to let it ovee his rationality.


    He gritted his teeth as he turned around, before activating Outer Convergence and Gale Force Breathing and sprinting away at top speeds.


    He didn''t know what was going to happen. Master Deivon had told him that he was weaker than Master Uma, but had reassured him that he could hold his ground.


    He could only hope that that was true.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1295 Weakness

    Chapter 1295 Weakness


    He didn''t know how long the battle would continue, or who would emerge victorious, but he did know that if Master Deivon fell too quickly, it was game over. Martial Masters operated in a different dimension of speed and cognition.


    Master Deivon had traveled the distance between the Virodha Theocracy and the Seonmun town in less than half a day, a distance that Rui would take weeks to travel.


    That meant that he needed Master Deivon to stall Master Uma for quite some time if he wanted to have any chance of getting away. He had already known that Martial Masters possessed sensory ability that was extremely powerful. Their senses were to Martial Seniors what thetter''s were to Martial Squires. They were two orders of magnitude higher than Rui, at bare minimum.


    Thebination of their speed and their senses meant that running away and hiding from them was essentially impossible for Martial Squires unless they had an enormous headstart.


    Rui was worried that even a day''s headstart would not be enough. She could cover that distance in less than half an hour.


    ''<nulli>I just need to have faith in Master Deivon.'' Rui gritted his teeth, clenching his fist. "Damn it. Damn it all."


    He hated everything about what had just happened.


    He was running away.


    Again.


    All because he was too weak.


    So what if he was the strongest Martial Squire? So what if he was the Virodha Champion?


    Those titles were worthless.


    They simply meant that he was arger ant than the rest of his peers.


    But ant was an ant nheless.


    He hated it.


    He hated every second of it.


    He hated being forced to leave behind people he cared for because of his weakness.


    He hated his inability.


    He hated his insignificance.


    ''<nulli>I need power.'' His eyes zed with furious determination and desire.


    Never before had he yearned for power in the way that he did at that very moment.


    In fact, at that moment, he hardly cared about anything else.


    He realized that Project Water was a luxury.


    A luxury of the strong.


    This was not Earth.


    This was Gaia.


    In a cruel world filled with violence and war, the weak had no right to pursue such lofty ambitions. Only the strong did.


    ''<nulli>If I want to protect myself, my family. If I actually want to fulfill an ambition inherited from another world and another life. Then I need power.''


    Every cell in his body roared in agreement as he pushed himself to an absolute limit.


    His furiously kicked into action as he rigorously analyzed the most optimal course of action for the current circumstances.


    Running away was a mindless action of fear and panic. But to Rui, it was a problem that had an optimal solution. Content ? N?velDrama.Org 2024.


    If he was to get out of this predicament he needed to do everything he possibly could.


    ''<nulli>I need a course of action that maximizes the probability of not getting caught by Master Uma regardless of how long Master Deivon manages to stall her.'' He sharply analyzed. ''<nulli>That requires not ever being in the same vicinity as her, since she will be able to distinguish me as a Martial Squire even with a Mind Mask on even if am in disguise.''


    Master Deivon had noticed Rui''s Mind Mask technique when he was in close proximity to Rui. Thus it stood to reason that Martial Masters possessed a high ability to sense mental techniques at close proximity.


    Of course, there was the possibility that they could sense it from much greater ranges as well.


    ''<nulli>They also managed to detect Squire Ran''s Martial Path cracking.'' Rui narrowed his eyes. ''<nulli>Thus the hypothesis that they can sense abnormal mental phenomena within a radius of a kilometer or so stands to reason.''


    It did not mean that they were limited to that, but it was also true that when they did sense the Martial Path cracking, they were already focusing on Squire Ran since their fight was ensuing. That likely made it easier to notice. Based on his interactions with Master Deivon, the nature of the rtionship between awareness and consciousness did not change in Martial Masters, they would be too inhuman psychologically if that was the case.


    ''<nulli>With that condition set, I need to maximize ways to ensure that she doesn''t identify my either through mental means or physical means.''


    He nced at his attire. ''<nulli>This needs to go.''


    If she did manage to eventually defeat Master Deivon and manage to reach close enough to detect Rui, his attire would be a dead giveaway.


    ''<nulli>Ironically, this mask needs to go <nulli>too.'' Rui noted. ''<nulli>It''s a liability.''


    She knew that he wore a mask that could hamper even Master-level senses. She would be looking for someone who wore that mask.


    ''<nulli>I also need to change my hair color, again.''


    Those were good measures that he could take to prevent her from identifying him immediately if the worst-case scenario did happen and he did end up within her sensory range.


    However, he also needed to take measures to ensure that he didn''t end up within the range of her senses in the first ce, which meant ensuring that his direction and location eluded her.


    ''<nulli>This is much harder.'' Rui narrowed his eyes.


    At this moment, he was still within the senses of both Master Uma and Master Deivon. He was rtively certain about that.


    If he chose to go in a permanent direction at this point, Master Uma would merely need to follow that directionter on at top speed.


    Thus, whichever direction he did decide to go, he needed to make sure that he chose to go in that direction after he exited their sensory range. Until then, it was best to just keep running as perfectly straight away from them.


    It wasn''t until he was a thousand kilometers away a little under fifteen minutester that he finally paused in a dense jungle, panting as he caught his breath.


    Running at the absolute pinnacle top speed that he could muster was very exhausting.


    He heaved a sigh, he had a decision to make, and he needed to make it quickly.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1296 Measures

    Chapter 1296 Measures


    He was quite certain that he was well outside their sensory range. Furthermore, Master Deivon was fighting her head-on, she needed to dedicate attention focusing on him if she did not want to lose.


    Still...


    RUMBLE


    He nervously nced at the quiveringnd beneath him. He already knew what was the cause of this seismic activity. Two cmities in human form had begun shing a great distance away, and the indirect remnant ripples of their power reached him more than a thousand kilometers away.


    It was absolutely incredible.


    Yet now was not the time to marvel at them.


    ''Now, it''s time to choose what to do.'' Rui narrowed his eyes. ''I need to pick a course of action that will minimize the probability of her detecting me even if she does chase after me.''


    One thing that was an advantage was the fact that he roughly knew where he was and even the broader geography of his surroundings. He even knew the directions to the Kaddar Region because he had memorized its location as well.


    ''The good thing is that she doesn''t know that my destination is the Kaddar Region.'' Rui mused. ''Since Master Deivon had chosen to obscure that fact, he was able to make sure that she couldn''t learn that. This was probably why she attacked me before he obscured our travel through some convoluted path or means.''


    That meant that as long as he got to Ajanta Ind, he won.


    ''I need to plot a straightforward path to Ajanta Ind if that''s the case.'' Rui noted. ''It''s best I take some precautions if she does somehow manage to end up tracking mytrail.''


    Based on the map inside his Mind Pce, there were many suitable locations along the way, as well as suitable trading paths where he could disguise himself while traveling.


    What he was truly afraid of was that if he took a remote path with no other human presence, she would easily identify him if she happened down a path where he would enter her sensory range.N?vel(D)ra/ma.Org exclusive ? material.


    If he could get rid of his attire and the mask, and perhaps alter his appearance with some sort of appearance mask, that would be perfect. Even if her senses detected him, she was likelier to miss him as a traveler among many.


    ''Alright. So the next destination is directly Ajanta Ind. Will travel there directly and fast, but will take measures to ensure that she will have more difficulty identifying me even if she detects me down thispath.'' Rui decided.


    He immediately began running in the general direction of the Kaddar Region. There were many general traveling paths that he could get on to travel to the region. But his first stop was certainly going to be amuting town along the way. His attire was way too attention-drawing.


    He still hadn''t even gotten rid of the fancy attire that he was expected to wear as the Virodha Champion. He would draw way too much attention in it.


    The good part was that it was multiyered, so he could get rid of seventy percent of it and still have clothes on that were still less ostentatious.


    BOOM!


    He dug a huge hole, tossing in the absurd fur coat among other things, before covering it up.


    "And now that that''s done..." He murmured.


    He quickly traveled to the closest town along the way a few thousand kilometers away. He ignored the attention he drew walking in.


    He knew that he looked like the lost and stranded son of a noble of some sort. That needed to change.


    "I need new clothes that will help me blend in as a traveler," Rui spoke the moment he entered what looked like a cheap clothes shop.


    "Ya sure are in need of them," The shopkeeperughed before providing Rui with a set of clothes.


    "Thanks," Rui told him after donning them before putting a Shionel gold coin on the table. "Keep the change."


    The man''s eyes widened. "That''s too much!"


    Yet Rui was already gone. He came and went like the wind. He didn''t speak with anybody else, or leave any other trails. The greater the impact of his presence, the greater the likelihood that something would go wrong.


    That was the reason that he had already moved on from the town, minimizing his presence with Mind Mask. The technique wouldn''t work on Martial Masters, but it worked fine against normal people.


    Rui continued traveling in a straight line toward the Kaddar Region with an absolutely unerring momentum. He didn''t take rest stops or slow down for anything. He just continued sprinting at top speed in the direction of the Kaddar Region without caring for anything.


    The initial journey was the most important. More important than any other phase. The Kaddar Region was a considerable distance away from the Virodha Theocracy, even on a continental map scale.


    He knew for a fact that even a Martial Master could not possibly search a whole continent. That was the kind of absurdity that he would expect from a Martial Sage or the mysterious Martial Transcendents.


    Which meant that as long as he got even halfway through, he knew he had sessfully gotten through.


    His rationality was in overdrive as his mind furiously evaluated and analyzed circumstances looking for anything that could make his circumstances more favorable in his regard.


    So much so that he disregarded his emotions.


    His heart had been beating heavily and furious ever since Master Uma showed up. The thought of being caught by her and bein brainwashed and trained to be a religious deity made him sick to his stomach. He would rather kill himself than to allow that to happen.


    He hated everything that she stood for. But he also feared her power, the power that he saw the two of them wield was beyond his understanding. But what he did understand, and truly felt in his bones, was that he was insignificantpared to her.


    No wonder she didn''t care to respect his will. He was too weak for it to mean anything.


    ''One day I will be a Martial Master. And when I do...'' Rui narrowed his eyes.


    He was going to have a little chat with her that day.


    Until then, he needed to make sure that he evaded her eye. Thankfully, that wasn''t too hard. The continent was absolutely gigantic, just its size was greater than Jupiter. On top of that, it was highly disconnectedpared to the human civilization of Earth. There were many ces to hide where she could never find him.


    That was why she had chosen to attack them before it was toote and before Master Deivon obscured Rui''s path through whatever means.


    It was a race, and it was one that he could not afford to lose.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1297 Shackled

    Chapter 1297 Shackled


    RUMBLE!


    Thend shook. It may very well have been the end of the world for the people in that region given its intensity. The dark heavy clouds that formed in the skies above the region were ominous as well. The storm that had risen out of seemingly nowhere was a source of great terror to the mortals that were, unfortunately, enough to be in the region.


    Yet none of thempared to the forces at the epicenter of all the maelstrom. A de made up of wind rested in the skies as if it belonged there. It was an unbelievable sight. If the residents of the region focused hard enough, they could swear that they caught an image of an elderly woman through the illusion, yet it was difficult to say.


    It didn''t help that their attention was divided between it and the opposing fortress in the sky.


    None of them understood what was happening.


    No, they could only helplessly pray that the gods ceased their wrath.


    Master Uma inhaled deeply as she activated a breathing technique, before timing her exhtion with seemingly strange arm movements. Her arms churned against the wind drifts that her powerful breath created, creating countless sharp des of wind that coalesced to form what resembled a hurricane in its totality.


    One moment, it merely loomed over them. A momentter, it surged towards Master Deivon as though it hade to life.


    Yet he was unfazed.


    His eyes narrowed as he straightened his stance, shielding himself with arms with balled fists while his legs nted themselves into the sky, unyielding.


    BOOM!!!


    The attack crashed into him, generating a mighty wind st that spread as far as the eye could see. The sheer force of the generated wind sts shredding everything within a five-kilometer radius.


    Had they not elevated their conflicts to the skies high above them, it would wiped out all life within a certain radius. Yet the two Martial Masters abided by the unspoken rule of the higher Realms to not tangle ordinary humans into their conflict. It was beneath them.


    The dust cleared and the oue became evident.


    Master Deivon''s stance had not so much as budged. Had Rui been there he would have recognized the stance as the Sanchin Kata, a stance in many styles of Karate that focused on stability of defense. Back on Earth, it was a stance that was only suitable under highly specific circumstances and was obsolete in the UFC, but here in Gaia, Master Deivon had made it the foundation of his defensive Shackling Fortress style.


    Master Uma narrowed her eyes with a displeased expression. She had not expected Master Deivon to be able to withstand that attack that well.


    "It appears that I underestimated you," She murmured. "The gap in our status within the Theocracy is greater than the gap in our Martial prowess."


    "ttery isn''t going to get you anywhere." Master Deivon coldly remarked. "You''re going nowhere. You will remain here, as long as needed to ensure that the boy ispletely out of your reach. I will personally hold you here even if costs me my life."


    Master Uma stared at him impassively as she considered her circumstances.


    It was unfortunate, however, that she was at a disadvantage when it came to the Virodhabhasa.


    She was confident that she could defeat Master Deivon by the end of their battle. There was no doubt about this, they both knew that she was stronger. The issue was that this was not a Martial Contest. She did not give a damn about winning against him.


    She was there to collect His Godship and iste themselves as she maximized his potential and molded his mind to match the Virodhabhasa, even if it came at the cost of his current self.


    He was fighting to prevent that from happening. The inevitable oue of the battle did not matter to either of them. What mattered most was whether she would be able to ovee him in time to catch His Godship.


    ''I won''t... Not at this rate...'' It was frustrating to admit, but Master Deivon was more than strong enough to prolong the battle for quite some time. She estimated that it would be quite some time before she overcame his defenses and put him down. As Martial Masters, they tapped into power beyond merely the body, they could on for much longer than Martial Artists of the Lower Realms.


    This was a highly undesirable oue.


    With every step that Rui took away from her, the area within which he could be increased exponentially. If she took too long to ovee Master Deivon, then by the time she began chasing after Rui, the possible areas within which he could be at the moment would have far exceeded what she could realistically search and hope to find him within.


    She had seen the speed at which he sprinted away. If he could maintain even half that speed for even a portion of an extended fight, then the area within which he could possibly be would exceed that of multiplerge countries put together.


    She had already tried taking down Master Deivon with powerful extravagant attacks, but his defenses were solid enough for him to ignore the wounds. She did not want to test his ability to be a meatshield all day long.


    Instead, she chose the more pragmatic approach of simply bypassing him altogether.All text ? N?velD(r)a''ma.Org.


    BOOM!!!


    A powerful hurricane made up of slicing wind converged into Master Deivon once again, releasing an extraordinary wind st.


    Yet Master Uma didn''t even care to register the oue.


    She immediately activated her greatest maneuvering and supplementary techniques, elerating to speeds that exceeded even that of lightning itself.


    And yet...


    BAM!


    Master Deivon speedily appeared before her, using her own momentum to inflict damage on her as she crashed into him.


    She red at him in anger. "Get out of my way!"


    "Hehehe..." Master Deivon grinned wildly. "I''m afraid not. My Martial Art is centered around the concept of an oppressive defense. Hard to hurt. Even harder to get rid of. I shackle my foes with my defense and take them down after I have thoroughly worn them down."


    Master Uma gritted her teeth as she unleashed an onught of power to take down the tenacious Martial Master as quickly as possible!


    The battle scarred the region as it escted in intensity.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1298 Shift

    Chapter 1298 Shift


    As time passed, a greater vice gripped Rui''s heart. The endorphins from the initial attack of Master Uma had long passed, and now he was feeling a lot more stressed than before.


    His mind constantly went back to the fear of Master Uma appearing out of nowhere he couldn''t help but be on edge at every moment. He hated it, but he knew that it was too arrogant of him to not be afraid of a Martial Master.


    Even as an hour passed, he was unable to lower his guard. He didn''t possess the capital to rx. He continued running mindlessly, pushing his body to the absolute limit.


    He applied Final Breathing together with the Reaper''s Poison, allowing him to sustain his stamina for incredibly long stretches at a time even if his speed was reduced. It was more important to spend every second traveling as far away from the two battling Martial Masters as possible.


    The journey was almost mind-altering.


    Perhaps it was because he had been exposed to fear that stemmed from his own weakness and inability that it caused a shift in psychology. Being forced to confront his weakness every second for hours on end was nothing sort of torture.


    He couldn''t ignore it. He couldn''t focus on anything else. He was confronted by the fact that he was insignificantly weak, and was forced to run in fear because of that.


    It was maddening.


    He had yet to notice the intensity of his eyes.


    His eyes, within which one could once get lost, had turned sharp.


    They could see only one thing.


    The power of a higher Realm.


    That was the only thing they sought. Nothing else mattered at the moment. Nothing else could matter at the moment.


    He discovered that he was unable to rx even once the implicit pressure of Master Uma started declining.


    Half a day passed. He had been running for half a day and had covered an enormous amount of distance. It would be an extreme challenge even for a Martial Master to find him under these circumstances even if they had already begun. There were too many possibilities after a day of travel.


    Yet even as the pressure of the Martial Master inside his mind decreased, his mentality was unable to return to what it used to be.


    It was as though that sustained pressure had already left its mark on his mind while it was there. It was as though he had already been molded by it, like a sword being shaped by the pressure that the hammer exerted on it with every strike


    It didn''t even feel unnatural.


    Rui Quarrier. Hungry for power. At all costs.


    It didn''t used to fit. Yet now it was the most apt description. It could be seen in his eyes. He didn''t like how he felt, but it felt natural. Inevitable.


    How could he possibly maintain his pure frolicking exploration of his Martial Art after experiencing everything that he had experienced in the past three years?


    The fiasco of the Shionel Confederation had been the first step, but even something asrge as that had not been enough. It had caused a dent. The passage of time made his deadline arrive sooner and sooner, putting more pressure on him.


    He had briefly been satisfied with his progress after the Metabody System, yet all that satisfaction had long gone away after the Martial Contest and the emotional experience of feeling how insignificant he was, happened.


    All of these factors culminated in the mental shift that he experienced today. Only an uncaring fool could possibly not be affected by what he had experienced. He had initially set out to procure medical treatment because if concern and care for Senior Xanarn.


    Yet he increasingly cared less. The treatment had long been procured, and it had already escaped his mind. An entirely different, and much deeper desire and hunger had taken root in his mind.


    That was why he didn''t even feel relief as time passed.


    Hours. Days. Two weeks.


    He crossed towns, countries, mountains, valleys, ind oceans and seas.


    He never once stopped for more than the briefest respite, consuming all the portions that he had.


    Master Uma never once appeared.


    Yet he never once heaved a sigh of relief. If he did feel relief, it was buried somewhere deep under his frustration.


    STEP


    Rui paused as his eyes fixed on a small figure that floated in the sky.


    An ind.


    He had finally arrived at the Kaddar Region after a long journey across the continent.


    He took to the air, as he briskly sky-walked to the floating ind, making sure that he was well away from the territory of the Kaddar nations. He didn''t know what happened since the year he went away, and wanted to make sure that he didn''t make any careless mistakes.


    His impatience only grew the closer he got. Admittedly, it was not just because the opportunity to gain the power he sought, but also to meet his best friend after a year of staying away.


    STEPProperty ? 2024 N0(v)elDrama.Org.


    A familiar weight burdened his body, a rich and nourishing atmosphere invigorated his breathing.


    "...I''m back..." Rui heaved a sigh.


    He sensed an approaching presence, feeling deja vu.


    "Wee to the Floating Sect, I am Guardian Rel-Ivon of the two hundred and fiftieth chamber." A woman addressed him.


    Yet she froze when she nced at Rui''s eyes. She felt a deep sense of peril just looking at him. In that moment, she knew that she stood no chance against him in a fight, he would crush her effortlessly.


    A nervous expression overcame her face. "...The Floating Sect doesn''t ept Martial Seniors."


    The smallest of grins cracked at the edge of his mouth.


    Suddenly, an incredibly swift figure moved in their direction from deep within the ind. One that radiated far deeper power than even Rui.


    STEP!


    "It is a pleasure to have you back..." Senior Sarak smiled. "...Squire Falken."


    Squire Rel-Ivon''s eyes widened when she heard that name.


    She recognized it.


    She stared at him with awe.


    "Come..." Senior Sarak said as he got a closer look at Rui. "It appears that we have much to talk about."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1299 Reunion

    Chapter 1299 Reunion


    In the battle arena of a colosseum, stood a man.All text ? N?velD(r)a''ma.Org.


    A man surrounded by many Martial Artists.


    All of them were unconscious.


    All but one.


    "You''ve truly grown stronger," He murmured softly.


    His pitch-ck eyes peered at the blue-haired Martial Artist wielding two daggers, standing before him amidst a sea of bodies. "Then again... you did manage to be the guardian of the second chamber in just a year..."


    Kane stood before him, panting. His body was heavily bruised and cut, in sharp contrast to his opponent. Out of all the one hundred guardians of the first ss, he was the only one who had managed to remain standing.


    In the past year that Rui had left, Kane had resolved to develop a powerful foundation with daggers. It turned out that his previous inhibitions with the issues that came with adding an element thatpletely altered a Martial Art were unwarranted.


    He experienced a shocking growth in lethality. Especially when he chose a dagger made out of esoteric substances that could conduct electricity, allowing him to employ the current that his Fulminata technique generated.


    In the past month, he had challenged guardians one after the other, he had even managed to usurp the second-ranked guardian in an extremely intense fight. The sesses had validated his choice. The lethality that his dagger presented him allowed him to be a major threat to others without needing to learn powerful techniques.


    Of course, just holding a dagger prevented him from being able to use other forms of offense, but he wasn''t an all-rounder like Rui, so he didn''t care if his flexibility fell. Ultimately, the decision turned out to be worth more than its weight in gold.


    And yet.


    ''He''s too damn strong!'' Kane gritted his teeth.


    He had managed to just barely get the better of the grade-ten Martial Squire that used to upy the second rank, but against Ieyasu, he was helpless.


    Ieyasu paused, turning his head as he peered in a particr direction with sharp eyes.


    A small smile broke onto his face.


    "Let us put an end to this battle. I do not care for this dull battle anymore." Ieyasu turned his back towards Kane uncautiously, heading towards the exit.


    "What, you''re just gonna walk out and let me nder you instead of just beating me?" Kane frowned.


    "An important development has just urred. Important to both you and me. If I were you, I would ept this mercy gratefully. Your friend would not be pleased to find you battered and bruised the moment he arrives." Ieyasu spoke. "Then again..."


    He turned towards Kane, almost whispering. "Maybe that is all the more reason to kill you."


    Kane''s eyes widened as he felt his hair standing on edge, chills crawled up his spine as saw himself in the ck of the man''s dark eyes.


    Pure peril oozed out from the man, clogging the air around them.


    "Do not make me repeat myself." He turned around, walking towards the exit.


    Kane heaved a sigh as he rxed, furrowing his eyebrows. ''Friend...''


    His eyes widened as he btedly realized who he was talking about, feeling stupid. The bloodlust had overshadowed his words there for a moment, dying Kane''s realization. A grin emerged on his face as he shot out of the battle arena himself, rushing out the battle arena.


    Meanwhile, Rui was getting up to speed on the circumstances of the Floating Sect. Much had happened, and Senior Sarak had begun exining everything to Rui withoutpunctions "The medical team did their due diligence alright, I made sure of that. If not for the fact that they bore the seal that I gave you. I would not have allowed them to operate on Senior Xanarn."


    "And the result?" Rui asked.


    "See for yourself." Senior Sarak smiled as they entered a chamber.


    Rui briefly smiled when he saw a lone figure standing at the center of the chamber.


    Her Martial Heart zed into life as streaks of glowing red lines coursed throughout her entire body from her chest. The power of a Martial Senior radiated from her unabashedly.


    The sight of it was bittersweet for Rui. He was happy that she had regained the power that she had earned with her own efforts. But he was not in a state of mind where his burning desire for it could be prevented from clouding his happiness.


    She maintained it for several seconds before switching it off, heaving a deep sigh.


    She opened her eyes, which was uncharacteristic for her. The two of them gazed at each other wordlessly.


    "Ahem, I shall give you some private time." Senior Sarak smirked as he closed the door to her training facility, leaving them alone.


    Yet, neither uttered a word.


    "In the many years that I have been a guardian of the Floating Sect..." She began. "I have stepped forth to protect it many times. I have stood guard over it for many, many years. It is not a duty that I will shirk away from. Yet as a result... I have almost forgotten what it feels like to be protected."


    A smile bloomed on her face as she bowed deeply. "Thank you for protecting me. Thank you for saving my life, and more importantly, my ability to pursue my Martial Path... Words cannot convey the weight of my gratitude."


    Rui could sense that.


    He shook his head. "Don''t worry about it. I did it because I wanted to. That''s all."


    For a moment there was silence.


    She didn''t know what to say.


    She walked towards him, putting her hands on his cheeks and leaning in until their foreheads touched. "...What happened?"


    "Hm?"


    "You... have changed. Your voice has grown sharper." She murmured. "So much so that it almost hurts to listen to. Like a chalk on a ckboard."


    "Ouch," Rui murmured. "Ruthless."


    She smirked in response.


    "You''ve grown stronger, too."


    "Hardly." His eyes sharpened.


    Her smile fell.


    She didn''t know what to make of those words.


    "Do you yearn for power that much?"


    "More." Rui''s voice came out sharper than he intended. A mncholic expression upied her face.


    "I do not know how to help you with that," She murmured. "However, now that I have regained my power... you can treat it as your own. All of it belongs to you. My life would have ceased had it not been for your efforts, it may very well belong to you. That... is the weight of my conviction. Only then can I possibly pay off my debt."


    She leaned in, nting a soft kiss on his lips.


    It was a soothing gesture, one that he reciprocated with greater vigor than he had expected to be able to muster up. As much as he wanted to head out and fight Ieyasu to the death, he was too tired after a week of non-stop travel. He couldn''t help but indulge in the soothing relief that she offered him as their bodies entangled.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1300 Reunion II

    Chapter 1300 Reunion II


    Rui woke up, feeling a touch of peace that he hadn''t experienced in what felt like forever.


    Yet it wasn''t enough.


    His eyes hadn''t lost their edge.


    Senior Xanarn did not fail to notice that.


    "Woken up yet?" She asked with a mncholic tone, her head resting on his chest. She had hoped to be able to soothe his mind, yet she had underestimated how deep his dissatisfaction was.


    It was not something that could be resolved with the pleasures of the flesh.


    "How long was I asleep?" Rui asked.


    "About nine hours." She replied softly. "You must not have slept in days."


    "A week." Rui heaved a sigh, getting up.


    "Are you still not going to tell me what happened?" She asked.


    "..." Rui paused for a moment before he shook his head. "It''s not something I wish to recount just yet. I came to understand how insignificant I am. That''s all that matters at the end of the day."


    She pouted unhappily. "What do you intend to do?"


    "Gain power." His words were sharp as his eyes narrowed.Content ? N?velDrama.Org 2024.


    An air of peril formed around him.


    It was vtile. Yet Senior Xanarn could only watch unhappily as he refreshed himself before leaving.


    His fist clenched as the intensity in his eyes only grew.


    He itched to rush over to Ieyasu and unleash an intensity of bloodlust unlike anything he had experienced before, but there was something that came before that.


    STEP


    He paused as he arrived at the second chamber of the Floating Sect. He almost couldn''t believe it when he had been informed Xanarn, yet even he couldn''t help but smile. Time and time again, Kane proved that he was a genius in Martial Art.


    "Kane." Rui called out to him before simply waiting.


    Suddenly, the door opened.


    "Rui!" He grinned as the two sped hands, exchanging a hug.


    "You''ve grown stronger," Rui smiled. His words were kind, yet his tone betrayed his true thoughts.


    Power within the Squire Realm didn''t matter to him anymore, and it was hard for him to hide that.


    Especially from someone who had known him for more than a decade.


    Kane stepped back, furrowing his eyebrows, as he sized Rui up. "...Are you okay?"


    "I''m sorry for noting to see you sooner." Rui apologized with sincerity. "No matter how tired I was, I should havee to see you. But I was with Senior Xanarn and I ju-"


    "Hey," Kane cut him off with an expression of concern. "...It''s ok."


    Rui''s expression softened as a mncholic smile sprouted on his face. "...Thanks."


    Their friendship was too deep for such superficial issues to possibly put cracks into it. Kane needed only one look in his eyes to realize that his friend was deeply disturbed.


    "...What happened?" Kane asked with uncertainty. "You were gone away only for a year, and I know for a fact that you definitely spent an overwhelming majority of that time training."


    He didn''t have the heart to brush Kane off. Once the two of them gained some privacy, Rui recounted the entire story from the very start, not missing out on a single detail.


    Kane''s expression grew increasingly more incredulous as Rui continued.


    "...And so I was forced to run away yet again while Master Deivon held back that crazy bitch." He needed to exert visible restraint to control his anger. "I ran for an entire week before finally arriving at the Kaddar Region. And now here we are."


    Kane stared at him with an expression of shock. He was stunned speechless, his jaw had long dropped with incredulity.


    He turned away, blinking for a few seconds.


    He knew that Rui had been through something intense, but the story that he had just narrated exceeded every expectation that Kane had.


    He actually felt a little guilty for feeling a little bad that Rui hadn''te over to visit him immediately. Especially now that he learned about the tribtions that Rui had ovee just to get back to the Kaddar Region in one piece.


    It was no wonder.


    He didn''t even know what to say. The magnitude of the story he had just told him was more than what he could handle.


    "...At the very least, we can be certain that she cannot get you anymore, right?"


    "Nothing is certain. However, searching for the smallest needle in thergest haystack would be a trivial task inparison, statistically speaking," Rui nodded.


    "...Now what?"


    "Now I grow stronger." Rui narrowed his eyes.


    He had divulged everything to Kane, giving Kane a greater context to understand what he meant by that.


    "I''ve fought him many times over the past year," Kane sighed. "He only defeats me with greater ease each time we fight, even though I have only grown stronger. Frankly, his Martial Art has helped me grow stronger. It''s like I''m looking at an ideal version of myself in a way."


    Rui raised an eyebrow at that. He would have brushed that off in the past, but now he had greater context on the man.


    He was the seventieth Virodha Champion. Which meant that his Martial Art was undoubtedly exposed to the Virodhabhasa Faith. Could it be that he had endured simr issues due to possessing a potent Martial Path himself?


    Perhaps one of the reasons that he ordered Meera to serve as a scout for people capable of forcing him to awaken his Martial Heart was because it was too dangerous for him to be in the presence of the dogmatic religion.


    "What do you intend to do if it doesn''t work out?" Kane asked.


    "...I don''t know."


    He got up.


    "Where are you going?"


    "There is only one thing left to do," Rui replied.


    "Now? You want to fight him right away?" Kane raised an eyebrow.


    Suddenly, his eyes widened.


    Almost in reflex.


    Unadulterated dread gripped his heart as a chill crawled up his spine.


    Power.


    Pure refined power emanated from him.


    Kane''s jaw dropped with shock when he realized that the gap between them had grown despite his own growth.


    ''How can a Martial Squire be this strong?'' He didn''t understand.


    Only one other person had made him feel this way.


    A nervous grin appeared on his face as he realized that he and everybody in Floating Sect were going to witness something historic.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1301 Protagonists

    Chapter 1301 Protagonists


    The air on Ajanta Ind grew heavy.


    Heavier than it already was.


    A strange sense of turmoil put everybody on edge.


    The reason for it had been obvious.


    Everybody had heard tales of the Martial Squire who killed a Martial Senior. Everybody had heard tales of the Martial Squire said to be chosen alongside the strongest and second-strongest guardians to fight off the Martial Seniors of the Kaddar Region. Everybody had heard tales of the Martial Squire that defeated Senior Xanarn alongside the second-ranked guardian.


    Yet no one had seen him in more than a year.


    Many of the new guardians that had emerged from the new influx of Martial Squires to the Floating Sect had never seen him. They did not know what weight these rumors held. It was easy to dismiss them as exaggerations.


    A Martial Squire killing a Martial Senior? What kind of nonsense was that?


    What really shocked many guardians was when Nake, the second strongest guardian swore on his life that this mysterious Martial Squire was stronger than him, and not by a small margin.


    Such was the legend of Squire Falken in the Floating Sect.


    And now, that legend had returned.


    All of the guardians listened in rapt attention as guardian Rel-Ivon gushed about her meeting with the famed Martial Squire.


    "I''m serious! Senior Sarak himself came all the way to greet Squire Falken!" She insisted.


    The other guardians narrowed their eyes. "...A Martial Senior personally traveled to greet a Martial Squire?"


    "Not only that..." Squire Rel-Ivon continued with an excited expression. "I have only seen Senior Sarak that respectful with Guardian Ieyasu."


    She paused for a moment, as she gathered her words. "I can see why too...They look nothing alike, but they did have one thing inmon."


    She clenched her fists. "...An unfathomable depth of power. One that could easily be mistaken for a higher Realm if one was not careful."


    Her words were grave.


    Their severity could not be denied.


    The guardians stiffened at those words. They wanted to refute them, however, she was, unfortunately, a credible source as a high-grade Martial Squire. Her words could not be dismissed easily. All of the guardians wondered what was going to happen now that this famed figure had returned to the Floating Sect.


    Coincidentally, it had been announced that Senior Xanarn had finally exited her year-long isted deep training session, making her first public appearance in a year. Many couldn''t help but wonder whether the timing was not a coincidence. Many were convinced it was not.Property ? 2024 N0(v)elDrama.Org.


    It became evident that Squire Falken was so important that even Senior Xanarn exited her isted training session to greet the Martial Squire.


    The very next day, a shocking bracket on the scheduled fights had been revealed.


    [Guardian Tokugawa Ieyasu versus Challenger Falken]


    The entire sect stirred in the wake of this fight.


    Many had suspected this would happen, eventually.


    No one had expected that this would happen less than twenty-four hours after Squire Falken''s return to the Floating Sect.


    For the first time in the history of the Floating Sect, all one thousand guardians gathered together in the colosseum.


    For the first time in the history of the sect, all three Martial Seniors also stood in witness.


    For the first time in its history, a duel would be arbitrated by Senior Sarak himself, and not a standard arbiter.


    Even the most braindead fool could tell that what was to ensue was nothing short of historic.


    That was when the air shifted.


    Every guardian froze.


    Squire Rel-Ivon nced down at her arm.


    Her hair stood on edge.


    Her skin tingled.


    "Guardian Ieyasu..." Senior Sarak did his best to contain the excitement in his voice when he announced the man in.


    STEP


    STEP


    STEP


    The guardians watched as he entered the colosseum with widened eyes.


    They had seen him many times.


    And yet, it was as though they were seeing him for the first time.


    Energy brimmed where they were ustomed to seeing bored lethargy.


    Sharpened intensity where there was dull emptiness.


    A de honed to its very edge.


    Honed for this very day.


    For this battle.


    This moment.


    He would not be denied.


    Instinctively, they knew that if anybody dared to stand in his way, it would be thest mistake they made.


    "Challenger Falken..." Senior Sarak was unable to reign in his anticipation.


    STEP


    STEP


    STEP


    The guardians watched with shock as a profoundly sharp sense of peril washed over them.


    At that moment, a profound realization dawned on everybody.


    The rumors did not exaggerate.


    No.


    They understated.


    Every movement he made.


    Every inch of his body.


    The intensity of his eyes.


    They conveyed an otherworldly depth.


    It was as though a deity in human form had graced them with his presence.


    As the two powerful Martial Squires arrived before each other, their presence ovepped. A weight that had long broken through the shackles of the Squire Realm emanated from the center of the colosseum.


    At that moment, everyone felt insignificant.


    They were spectators... but not just of the duel.


    But of their lives. The lives of two protagonists. Protagonists of the world. Everybody else was a spectator.


    They were envious of the two of them.


    And yet...


    The two of them didn''t care.


    Their eyes were fixed on each other.


    The world may have ceased to exist at that moment, and neither would notice. Not even such a cmity was worthy of their attention at that moment.


    Ieyasu recognized the newborn sharpness in Rui''s eyes.


    It was the same sharpness he saw in his own when he looked in the mirror.


    "You have arrived." A whisper escaped his mouth.


    Only Rui understood that he wasn''t referring to the match.


    He was referring to the cusp of a higher Realm of power. Just the tiniest step away from the Martial Heart.


    All it took was one step.


    Yet that one step was greater than the sum of all others that came before it.


    A greater hurdle.


    "Maddening, isn''t it?" Ieyasu''s soft voice quivered, uncharacteristic of him. "To be so close, and yet so far from a higher Realm."


    "...More than I imagined." Rui''s voice betrayed the intensity of his anguish.


    "Then, you understand." Ieyasu''s voice grew severe. "If your death is the price to pay... then it is a price that I will dly extract from you."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1302 Discovery

    Chapter 1302 Discovery


    Rui simply stared at him with sharp eyes.


    He did understand. To a certain extent, he felt the same way.Property ? 2024 N0(v)elDrama.Org.


    He was not going to hold back.


    He couldn''t. Not if he wanted to break through to a higher Realm of power.


    The Martial Heart was a power that could only be essed if he was pushed beyond the limit of what his conventional power could aplish. This meant that holding back was antithetical to the very nature of the activation of the Martial Heart.


    That was why not only was Rui not going to hold back physically, but he had already psychologically conditioned himself to not hold back mentally even in the slightest.


    That meant no mercy.


    Nopassion.


    No empathy.


    If his opponent''s death was a consequence of that, then he wouldn''t feel any guilt over it either.


    Rui had always maintained the philosophy that if one knowingly chose to partake in something where their life was at stake, as a Martial Artist, which was an upation where lives were always at stake, and was willing to undertake those risks voluntarily after fully understanding them, then they had consented to the possibility of having their lives taken.


    Not only did Tokugawa Ieyasu consent to this, but he had been the one to initiate it when he originally challenged Rui. Even though Rui was challenging him now since he wasn''t a guardian and was a challenger all over again, they both knew that Rui had not made the first move.


    Neither of them had even the slightestpunctions of taking each other''s lives as a consequence of pursuing their Martial Heart.


    Rui even had a n as to how he was going to do it. It was quite simple.


    Form a predictive model as soon as possible.


    Win.


    That was all.


    "Take your stances." Senior Sarak instructed.


    Both Rui and Tokugawa took simple neutral stances.


    Their weight was well-bnced, catering to offense, defense, and maneuvering simultaneously.


    It should have been the most ordinary of sights.


    A trivial urrence.


    And yet every single guardian watching could only stiffen.


    An absurd amount of invulnerable peril could be felt from them.


    A stone in the hands of a master was said to be more dangerous than a sword in the hands of a novice


    The simplest of stances used even by non-Martial Artists were nothing short of armed fortresses in the hands of those who had mastered them to the limit and beyond.


    Their minds honed even further as they focused on each other.


    Everything else ceased to exist.


    They themselves ceased to exist.


    They existed only in the reflections of each other''s eyes.


    A single word escaped Senior Sarak''s mouth.


    "...Begin!"


    The guardians widened their eyes.


    One moment they were there.


    And then they weren''t.


    They blurred in the eyes of the guardians, shing forward toward each other with incredible agility.


    BOOM!!


    The first sh of the battle had been levied.


    A ripple of shock washed over the spectators.


    A ripple of power spread through thend and sky.


    RUMBLE


    Merely a single strike had been exchanged, yet the floating ind seemed to groan under the weight of their power.


    Yet the battle continued.


    It had to.


    POW POW POW!


    Tokugawa took the initiative as three incredibly powerful and swift attacks shed against Rui''s guard. A powerful and swift fist flew forward, threatening to crash into Rui''s abdomen.


    WHOOSH!


    Rui ducked, cleanly avoiding the attack as he threw a low sweeping kick at the man''s legs


    Yet Ieyasu was unfaltered.


    He leaped forward, narrowly avoiding the sweeping kick as he simultaneouslyunched a flying knee kick to the crouching Rui.


    WHOOSH!


    Rui leaped back in a summersault, sharply avoiding the flying knee kick whileunching a kick with the upward motion of his legs. A swift kick to the chin could threaten a knockout, yet Ieyasu surgically avoided it as he leaped back.


    STEP


    They both paused for a moment,nding several meters from each other.


    Several thoughts furiously shed through their mind.


    They had a basic understanding of the other''s Martial Art. Rui was aware that Ieyasu copied Martial Art by acquiring a deep amount of information on their opponent and reconstructing a superior one from the same building blocks. Ieyasu was aware that Rui constructed the most optimal counter to a Martial Art after deeply analyzing his opponent.


    That was the extent of their knowledge.


    Yet that was enough.


    Neither of them knew how their Martial Art would interact with the other. Both Martial Art was quite esoteric and deviant from the norm, it wasn''t entirely obvious what would happen when they shed.


    A number of possibilities shed through both their minds. Regardless, there was one thing that was clear.


    The faster one would win.


    Unbeknownst to everyone else, a race had begun.


    Whoever won the race would gain an undeniable advantage in the fight. If Ieyasu managed to copy Rui before Rui managed to adapt to him, then there would be a brief window where he would be dominant over Rui. If Rui adapted faster than he copied, then he would undoubtedly gain an edge in the battle himself.


    It was a logical conclusion.


    Yet something was off.


    Rui couldn''t quite put his finger on it. For some reason, his pattern recognition was being dyed. He had hoped to make some progress from the initial exchanges, but he had been unable to.


    It could have been merely bad luck.


    Yet his instincts warned him that something was off.


    Both sides leaped into action, determined to be the winners. Rui''s mind honed itself as he intensified his search for patterns. The quicker he found them, the sooner the predictive model, the likelier his victory.


    He rushed forward as heunched a Flowing Canon with the full power of his gathered momentum.


    A titanic blow surged forward toward Ieyasu, threatening to crush him.


    And yet;


    WHOOSH!


    He crouched, narrowly avoiding the attack, beforeunching a powerful double-fist upward blow.


    A maneuver he hadn''t used yet.


    Rui''s unease escted.


    Rui narrowed his eyes, searching for patterns as he used Flux Earther to negate the blow beforeunching a swift high kick to the man''s jaw.


    A blow that threatened to knock him.


    WHOOSH!


    Ieyasu spun, avoiding the kick narrowly as an immensely powerful roundhouse kick flew at Rui.


    BAM!


    The attack crashed into Rui, yet he was unmoved. Flux Earther had negated the impact.


    An immensely swift kick retaliated flying straight towards Ieyasu.


    The most optimal choice was to dodge.


    Yet...


    BAM!


    The attack crashed into his guard, flinging him away roughly.


    A sub-optimal choice.


    An edge had been conceded. It should have been a joyous gift to Rui. Yet anyone who looked at Rui''s eyes could see his confusion.


    A realization had dawned on him.


    He frowned, staring at Ieyasu with open confusion.


    Horror even.


    ''You... don''t have any patterns? '' Rui stared at him in shock.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1303 Devoid

    Chapter 1303 Devoid


    Every move he made was brand-new, and divergent from every move he made before.


    There were no patterns.


    He had no inclinations.


    No preferences.


    No inclinations.


    No biases.


    He was a nk te.


    This was what his instincts had warned him about. Yet it was only after he began going all out with the pattern recognition system that he realized what was wrong.


    The man''sbat style was devoid of patterns.


    Rui didn''t understand.


    The patterns in a person''s movements were part of who they were. It was the essence of one''s being manifested inbat.


    They were inevitable. The sources of one''s strengths and weaknesses.


    He gazed into Ieyasu''s eyes.


    They were hollow.


    Empty.


    Two endless abysses of nothingness.


    ''No...'' Rui''s eyes narrowed.


    That wasn''t quite right.


    He saw himself. Reflected in the man''s pitch-ck eyes.


    WHOOSH!


    Rui''s attention was pulled back into the battle as Ieyasu surged forward with renewed momentum.


    What followed was even more surprising.


    His fist flew forward as he employed Flowing Canon, empowered with the full might of Outer Convergence, Wind Breathing, and Thundering Lance.


    Every shift.


    Every twitch.


    Its timing and cement.


    Even his expressions, demeanor, and breathing.


    They were identical to the original.


    Rui''s eyes widened in shock as he witnessed a mirror image of his most powerful close-range attack.


    He knew that this would happen.


    It was inevitable.


    Yet actuallyexperiencingit was something different.


    His reaction was momentarily dyed.


    BOOM!!


    Rui grimaced as the powerful attack crashed into a hastily conjured guard, flinging him away.


    He narrowed his eyes, quickly honing his mind.


    Yet Ieyasu was not done.


    The man activated Wind Breathing and Parallel Walk as he surged forward toward Rui with remarkable velocity.


    POW POW POW!


    He hammered Rui with Vital Pressure, looking to optimize the damage that he inflicted on Rui.


    Rui managed to guard against the attacks with Flux Earther, yet the biggest blow he suffered was psychological.


    It was unnerving.


    One could easily mistake Ieyasu for Rui if one was not paying attention to the battle. That was the degree of resemnce that Ieyasu had managed to generate. Rui''s expression grew severe as heshed out forward, throwing a powerful Flowing Canon kick to the man''s head.


    A knockout blow.


    And yet...


    WHOOSH


    It crashed into an empty image.


    A feint.


    Phantom Step.


    BAM!


    Rui barely managed to block a powerful side kick, negating the impact with Flux Earther.


    The guardians gaped in amazement as the battle evolved.


    It was no longer Ieyasu versus Rui.


    It was Rui versus Rui.


    If Rui had maintained his original hair and eyes, then it would have been impossible for them to tell which one was which. The battle evolved into something else entirely as the two forces furiously shed at each other.


    BAM BAM BAM!


    Ieyasu blocked a furiousbo of attacks with a solid guard, negating their impact with Flux Earther.


    The very sight of that gripped Rui''s heart, squeezing at it.


    His expression grew severe as he grew determined to ascertain the limits of Ieyasu''s copying. His index fingers pointed out as heunched several Lightning Taps.


    This was a technique that Rui had developed with the presence of a special esoteric substance that could generate electric currents.


    It was not something that could not be copied with movements.


    Or so he thought.


    Yet Ieyasu impassively replicated the motions.


    TAP TAP TAP!


    Rui froze as several momentary spikes of paralysis shed through his body.


    ''How...?'' Rui stared at him with shock.


    He didn''t understand how the man had managed to replicate a technique that made use of substances that he didn''t even have. There was absolutely no chance that the man had the necessary esoterics, yet he had managed to fully replicate even Lightning Tap.


    BAM BAM BAM!


    Rui felt like he was standing in front of a mirror.


    The two of them moved in unison.


    They maneuvered in unison.


    They struck in unison.


    They defended in unison.


    Almost everything was identical.


    Almost.


    Two Flowing Canons crashed into each other.


    BOOM!!


    Rui grimaced as he leaped back with a reeling fist.


    His expression grew severe.


    A realization had dawned on not just him, but everyone.


    Ieyasu surged forward throwing a powerful set ofbos. Rui pushed his body to the limit as he retaliated.


    BAM BAM BAM!


    The one difference between them became evident.


    Ieyasu was stronger.


    They appeared to be equals, yet he appeared to grow stronger as he copied Rui.


    No one understood why, but it didn''t particrly matter.


    "Rgh!" Rui leaped back again, opening up the distance between them.


    Yet Ieyasu did not intend to give him a break. He immediately surged forward, appearing before Rui.


    Yet another powerful Flowing Canon crashed into Rui.


    WHOOSH!


    The attackunched Rui flying far away. Farther than anyone thought possible.


    Yet Ieyasu''s eyes narrowed as Rui grinned.


    He had used a partial Flux Earther to use Ieyasu''s momentum tounch himself away, opening a massive amount of distance between them. Ieyasu rushed forward, hoping to get him in time.


    But it was toote.


    The very skies quivered as Rui inhaled deeply, preparing his most powerful attack.


    THWOOM THWOOM THWOOM THWOOM THWOOM!


    The Pathfinder technique kicked into action as Ruiunched his most powerful attack. A Tier five Transverse Resonance rushed forward Ieyasu under he guidance of the ODA System.


    Yet Rui''s eyes widened as Ieyasu replicated every movement side by side,unching his own Transverse Resonance.


    The two attacks met midway between Rui and Ieyasu.


    BOOM!!!


    A titanic explosion with immense power washed over the entire colosseum, shaking the entire structure.Property ? 2024 N0(v)elDrama.Org.


    Not even Rui''s most powerful attack was safe from Ieyasu''s Martial Art.


    And yet, an expression of peace and calmness appeared on Rui''s face.


    "I see... I understand now." Rui spoke to him as his eyes narrowed.


    ''You... can read my mind, can''t you?'' Rui stared directly at Ieyasu.


    Ieyasu froze, before the smallest of smirks appeared on his face.


    "You are the first Martial Artist to have ever realized that..." His voice plummeted to a whisper audible only to his opponent. "...Rui Quarrier."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1304 If you can

    Chapter 1304 If you can


    Rui narrowed his eyes as he heard the man respond to his thought while revealing his name.


    It was a shocking conclusion.


    One no one could have possibly ever realized.


    One surely no one would evere to know. There were many who had tried, yet they had all failed to grasp the true core of his Martial Art.


    Ieyasu had intended for it to remain that way.


    Yet, seeing Rui easily discover his greatest secret made him feel trivial. The arrogance that had long developed within him, centered around this secret, began unraveling.


    He had run into the one Martial Artist who was capable of learning the truth with just the sheer brilliance of his mind.


    Rui stared at him impassively.


    The ODA System was a technique that wasrgely mental. It was not something that could be replicated simultaneously with Rui''s first use of it in the battle just by copying his mind.


    If he simply copied Transverse Resonance, he would not have been able to aim, simultaneously with Rui, at his attack and cancel it out.


    That meant that he had to have ess to Rui''s aim, which existed within his head. He need only reverse the aim since he was on the other end of it. That inevitably meant that he was a Martial Artist who could read minds. That was most likely the source through which he copied people''s movements so well.


    "Yet just because you know the truth, doesn''t mean you can do anything about it." Ieyasu whispered as he rushed forward with greater speed and power than before. "You are not my equal."


    The air grew taut with peril as he drew closer.


    Rui closed his eyes.


    An opponent with a physicality that seemed to grow stronger the more he copied his opponent, which he did through mind reading.


    Rui now fully understood why he was so invincible. Trying to defeat him was almost impossible for those within the same Realm as him.


    Almost.


    Ieyasu rushed forward,unching a powerful Flowing Canon straight at Rui''s head.


    A knockout blow.


    BOOM!!!


    Rui grimaced as he barely managed to block it in time. Yet not even thebination of Flux Earther, Inner Divergence, and Adamant Reforging was enough to dispel the impact of Rui''s attack.


    The attackunched him far away, crashing across the battle arena.


    Yet Ieyasu ruthlessly rushed forward, racing to finish Rui off.


    BAM BAM BAM!


    He pounded Rui with a barrage of powerful blows.All text ? N?velD(r)a''ma.Org.


    Each attack rattled Rui harder than the previous one.


    Each motion he made was quicker than the previous one.


    Ieyasu grew more and morefortable in the visage of Rui.


    Bing Rui.


    One could stare at him, and yet, one merely saw Rui.


    A stronger Rui.


    A faster Rui.


    A superior Rui.


    The atmosphere of the battle shifted.


    Everybody watched with grave expressions.


    They clenched their fists.


    Many of them had been beaten down by Ieyasu in a simr manner. He had be an unending source of trauma to most of them. Some had even be crippled as Martial Artists after facing him.


    They had held a faint hope.


    That maybe...


    Just maybe... the mighty Squire Falken would be able to ovee him.


    Yet it appeared reality was to crush their hopes once more.


    The oue seemed to be clearer with every maneuver.


    The air grew chillier.


    Darker.


    They could feel it in their bones.


    The end was nigh.


    ''Rui...'' Tears started to fill Kane''s eyes.


    THUD


    Rui fell down to one knee.


    A powerful kick flew towards him, threatening to knock him out.


    It was game over.


    And yet.


    WHOOSH!


    Not a single person could contain their shock as Ieyasu found himself kicking empty air.


    Rui had disappeared.


    BOOM!!!


    A mighty impact shook the colosseum, crashing into Ieyasu''s back as it flung him away. Every single witness froze in shock as the sight of Rui flinging Ieyasu away shattered every expectation of what was to unfold.


    His eyes drew all others''. They were gravitic. Not a single person was able to look away.


    They were silver.


    And yet...


    They were not.


    A limitless void emerged from deep within them.


    He stared at Ieyasu, opening his mouth.


    Three words escaped them.


    "Not your equal...?" He started walking forward. ''You... are not capable of reflecting me.''


    Ieyasu narrowed his eyes at that deration.


    He didn''t bother retorting.


    He didn''t understand what had just happened.


    Yet he didn''t have time to understand.


    Rui had already arrived.


    BOOM!


    He evaded a powerful high kick from Rui as he stared into the man''s eyes, peering into his mind.


    Deeper.


    Further.


    He stressed his Mind Eye technique to the absolute limit as he pushed himself to read Rui''s mind to the absolute limit.


    His eyes widened as he came across a pce.


    A titanic pce spanned many kilometers in radius, epassing many things.


    It included ces from all over Gaia.


    As well as other strange ces.


    Alien ces.


    ces from another world.


    ''You...''His eyes widened as a shocking realization dawned on to him.


    All kinds of images, sounds, smells, numbers, and other strange symbols were stored across the strange structure. They surged towards the center of the pce, converging in a single ce.


    At the center of the pce sat Rui, meditating. A vortex of more information than Ieyasu could ever imagine surged into the figure that consumed all of it voraciously.


    Like a void.


    He opened his eyes, staring at Ieyasu.


    "Read all of this if you can."


    BAM!


    An attack in the real world crashed into him, flinging him away. As Rui surged forward, throwing a barrage of powerful attacks.


    BAM BAM BAM!


    Ieyasu''s expression grew grave as he defended himself with Flux Earther. His eyes narrowed as he threw a swift kick, hoping to knock Rui out in an instant.


    And yet...


    WHOOSH!


    BAM BAM BAM!


    The two of them shed identically.


    A beautiful symmetry unfolded.


    Every soul witnessing the battle wished from the bottom of their hearts that the battle would continue forever.


    Endlessly, for all of eternity.


    And yet...


    The bnce shifted quicker than anybody could have ever imagined.


    SPLAT!


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1305 Kill Myself

    Chapter 1305 Kill Myself


    Rui had never encountered a battle where nearly the entirety of the VOID algorithm was countered by something so antithetical to it.


    The pattern recognition system was countered by ack of patterns.


    The Metabody system was kept at bay for fear of being copied and improved.


    The two most powerful elements were simultaneously sealed.


    Not even Meera or the abyssfeeder had invalidated the core of his Martial Art so well.


    Rui gained a brief respite by increasing theplexity of thought through the Mind Pce, confounding Ieyasu.


    And yet...


    SPLAT!


    A single attack killed his momentum.


    The atmosphere plummeted.


    The jubtion.


    The energy.


    The high.


    Ieyasu cut through all of it in a single strike.


    Rui grimaced as he fell back, feeling a gash on his chest created by the sheer friction of an elbow swipe.


    He nced back at Ieyasu, narrowing his eyes.


    The guardians watched with abysmal shock as Ieyasu instantly crushed a reversing trend.


    They shivered as an enormous amount of peril and bloodlust radiated from the core of his being.


    He stared at Rui with dark abysses for eyes.


    "I''m you."


    His eyes intensified.


    "I''m a you that you will never be."


    His body shook with power, adopting a stance.Content ? N?velDrama.Org 2024.


    "A you that you will be too dead to be."


    WHOOSH!


    Rui''s eyes widened, barely managing to throw together a guard.


    BOOM!!!


    A powerful blow crashed into him at a speed that Rui could barely perceive. He grimaced as itunched him to the other side of the colosseum.


    ''He''s absurdly faster and stronger than before!''


    At the start, their performance parameters were equal. Yet no one had missed Ieyasu''s continuous esction in output.


    No one had been able to gauge the reason for it.


    No except Rui.


    BAM BAM BAM!


    Rui grimaced as he defended himself from an incredibly swift and heavy barrage of blows, leaping backward. ''Patterns increase your predictability but...they also increase your output.''


    Choosing the best course of action out of the many possible options generally led to patterns, yet it was still stronger than if sub-optimal choices were made. Ieyasu was currently replicating the patterns that Rui had cultivated and refined throughbat and his mind his entire life. The more he did that, the more he was able to bring out of himself.


    Ieyasu rushed forward with a blistering speed, reduced to nothing but the haziest of blurs even in the eyes of the most powerful guardians.


    WHOOSH!


    He crossed the distance between them in an instant, throwing a blindingly fast blow aimed at Rui''s head.


    A blow meant to end a fight.


    WHOOSH!


    Rui barely avoided the strike as he leaped backward. Yet Ieyasu had long read his mind, refusing to let the distance open up by even the slightest bit of an inch.


    WHOOSH!


    Avoided by the sharpest of edges. Yet avoided nheless as Rui crouched in evasion before rushing backward. He avoided having too many dominant conscious thoughts. Which was difficult for him, since his mind normally furiously raced with thought.


    Yet old habits died hard. Especially when they carried over to another life after having already died once.


    ''How do I adapt and evolve a man that copies everything he sees?''


    Until he answered that question, he would not be able to win this fight.


    After all, in this fight, Ieyasu was Rui. A statement that not even Rui could deny after seeing how identically the man copied him.


    He was Rui.


    ''He is...me?''


    His eyes widened.


    The simplest of thoughts entered his mind.


    ''Then I just have to crush myself.''


    Nobody missed the switch.


    Not the Martial Seniors.


    Not the guardians.


    Not Kane.


    Certainly not Ieyasu.


    ''You...'' His eyes narrowed.


    "Hehe. Hahaha."


    Chills crawled up the skin as innocent euphoricughter contrasted with the intensity of the battle that unfolded before them.


    A disturbing sight.


    ''If killing myself is the price of victory. Then so be it.''


    If one looked into his eyes, one would see a glint of madness.


    Yet if one looked deeper, something much darker could be seen.


    An endless void.


    Those eyes fixed on Ieyasu as he ruthlessly began picking apart his own Martial Art.


    Every w.


    Every inadequacy.


    Every imperfection.


    These patterns represented who he was. The culmination of the essence of his being manifested in war.


    Yet he didn''t care.


    He tore them apart with cruelty.


    The very act of doing so hurt him deeply.


    Deeper than he ever imagined.


    The void inside him threatened to consume his own Martial Path like it had done many others.


    Yet he pushed forward.


    He rushed forward.


    For the first time in his life, he would be forming a predictive model of himself in real time.


    It was something that could only work if Ieyasu fully copied Rui.


    And now that he had, this course of action now became a real possibility.


    ''I can do it. I will do it. I will crush you and myself if that is the price to be paid!''


    This was the realization that Rui had made a while ago. He couldn''t use the pattern recognition system against someone who had no patterns. Yet the moment he copied Rui''s movement decision-making, he was no longer an empty abyss. He was a reflection.


    A reflection of Rui himself.


    Then it was himself that he needed to be the counter to.


    He had already confirmed that Ieyasu couldn''t copy the core of his Martial Art. The VOID algorithm, among other things, was contained in the massive information database and processor that was the Mind Pce.


    An abysmal amount of information shed through the Mind Pce in ways that Ieyasu was unable toprehend. Yet it did not strictly matter as long as he could continue copying Rui''s movements.


    His ability to read his mind allowed him to foresee his attacks in addition to borrowing his strength.


    A Martial Art that not only replicated power but elevated it with his own innate physicality, while giving him the ability to read their minds.


    A Martial Art that many would easily regard as the pinnacle.


    BAM BAM BAM!


    Ieyasu''s expression sharpened as he exerted himself to st Rui with powerful blows. Rui leaped away, looking to gain a moment of respite.


    Yet it was not to be.


    BOOM!


    He sted Rui with a powerful tier-five Transverse Resonance, inflicting massive wounds on Rui''s body.


    "I won''t allow you to kill yourself."


    One could feel the cruelty in his words.


    "Your death... is reserved for my Martial Heart."


    The battle soared in intensity as both Martial Artists fought for more than just the oue of the battle.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1306 Arrived

    Chapter 1306 Arrived


    Not a single person could maintain theirposure.


    Not the Martial Seniors.


    Certainly not the guardians.


    A smile nothing short of maniacal epassed Rui''s face.


    A myriad of emotions radiated from him heating up the atmosphere.


    And yet.


    Ieyasu only grew colder.


    His eyes narrowed.


    His expression frosted.


    He dedicated the entirety of his mind and body to one thing and one thing only.


    Oveing Rui Quarrier with everything had.


    Not a single word was exchanged.


    They didn''t need to.


    BOOM BOOM BOOM!!


    Ieyasu''s eyes fixated on Rui as he hunted him down with Transverse Resonance attacks.


    Rui sprinted at top speed, propelled by Gale Force Breathing, Outer Convergence, and Parallel Walk. He shed around the colosseum with Phantom Step, all while doing his best to obscure his thoughts in a giant mess of information within the Mind Pce, increasing the difficulty of reading his mind.


    And yet.


    BOOM!


    An attack crashed into him, sting away.


    Yet he didn''t so much as flinch.


    His eyes were fixed on Ieyasu.


    His mind shed as he furiously processed every iota of information he could get his hands on.


    A predictive model slowly came to life.


    Itspletion was inevitable.


    Yet Ieyasu had other intentions in mind.


    POW POW POW!


    Waves of attacks crashed into Rui. The full might of Outer Convergence, Reverberating Lance, and Vital Pressure empowered with his own innate superior output crashed into Rui''s Adamant Reforging and Flux Earther.


    RUMBLE!


    The verynd beneath them shook as Ieyasu mercilessly pounded Rui''s guard with every ounce of power he had.


    BOOM!


    A powerful kickunched him flying across the colosseum and into its walls.


    Yet before Rui could even breathe...


    WHOOSH!


    Ieyasu had arrived.


    For a moment, their eyes met.


    A dark mirror reflected an image of the void that stood before it.


    WHOOSH!


    Rui barely managed to avoid a powerful kick as he leaped away.


    Yet his eyes never once shifted away from Ieyasu.N?vel(D)ra/ma.Org exclusive ? material.


    BOOM BOOM BOOM!!


    Ieyasu unleashed an avnche of blindingly fast heavy blows. His body creaked in the effort that he exerted, yet his eyes only sharpened with even more determination.


    He was to crush Rui before Rui crushed himself.


    That was the only thing that mattered at the moment.


    Every other consideration was secondary.


    If he held back, he was unworthy of the power of a higher Realm.


    An innumerable number of strikes continued to st Rui even as he shed away from Ieyasu at top speed. The sheer number of attacks that he had endured with his body wasn''t low.


    Every attack did more than just meaningful damage. They shook his body with a powerful impact that significantly damaged his body.


    Yet Rui''s eyes were unshakable, unshakably fixed on Ieyasu.


    His mind was unperturbed.


    He didn''t care.


    Yet his body begged to differ.


    He was bleeding all over.


    He was deeply bruised all over.


    The Martial Body was resilient, not indestructible. Both of them knew that a critical point in their race was arriving.


    The decisive moment. One that would make or break the battle.


    BOOM!


    Yet, it arrived sooner than either had expected.


    Rui gasped for air as Ieyasu cleanlynded a powerful blow to the sr plexus, cosping to the ground. An incredibly powerful kick crashed into Rui,unching him across the colosseum.


    BOOM!


    He crashed into the colosseum walls, almost destroying them entirely.


    His body screamed in pain.


    WHOOSH!


    Ieyasu arrived before him ncing at him while his attack surged forward with tremendous momentum.


    His eyes were closed.


    BOOM!!!


    RUMBLE!


    The entire colosseum shook.


    Not a single person was able to draw their eyes away from what followed.


    A single figure wasunched to the other side of the colosseum by the powerful impact.


    It was Ieyasu.


    He nced back at Rui with eyes of shock.


    Rui''s kick still lingered in the air.


    His head was tilted, having avoided Ieyasu''s attack. He stared at Ieyasu with impassive eyes.


    Six words escaped his mouth.


    "So close... And yet so far."


    He had arrived.


    RUMBLE!


    Rui stepped forward with such force that the entire colosseum may as well have shifted back as a result. He sted forward, pushing his wounded ability to the limit as he rushed forward with incredible velocity.


    His fist surged forward as the most powerful Flowing Canon of the battle emerged.


    Yet Ieyasu had read his mind.


    WHOOSH!


    He avoided the blow, swerving to the right at the right moment with sheer reflex.


    Or so he thought.


    BAM!


    A kick had already arrived at the new location of his face. Ieyasu barely managed to read his mind in time, hastily blocking the attack with Flux Earther.


    Yet an attack had already arrived at the opening created by a mind-heavy technique like Flux Earther.


    WHOOSH!


    He barely evaded the swift kick, turning to Rui as he read his next move.


    And yet...


    BOOM!


    A powerful blow had already struck him. The attack cleanly crashed into Ieyasu,unching backward.


    The second clean hit that Rui had evernded on Ieyasu.


    It should have been a meaningless aplishment before the many clean hits that Ieyasu hadnded on him.


    The difference in their conditions was transparent.


    This should have changed nothing.


    This was not a webnovel.


    Reality was cruel.


    Fights did not magically undergo a turn of tables at the very final moment for the protagonist.


    Every single person knew this.


    And yet...


    When they looked at silver eyes, they only saw limitless darkness. An artificial luster could not hide the growing void.


    An all-consuming abyss that consumed any and everything before it.


    "I told you, didn''t I?" Rui murmured, taking his ssic stance. "Your reflections are shallow. They cannot reflect the depth of the void you see before you."


    Ieyasu stared at him, mimicking Rui''s stance to thest millimeter. "A void that consumes itself is not enough to ovee me."


    The very world around them quivered under the weight of their raw emotion.


    Their eyes sharpened,shing forward with abandon.


    The battle escted to even greater heights as their fists shed!


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1307 Die

    Chapter 1307 Die


    Everybody could feel it.


    They could feel it in the depths of their bones.


    In the depths of their soul.


    Fate had converged on this day.


    Somehow they could tell.


    The oue of this battle would ripple far beyond this ind.


    Somehow. Somewhere. Somewhy.


    They knew


    The oue of the battle would impact the entire world.


    Rui shed forward throwing the umpteenth Flowing Canon of the battle, aiming to crush Ieyasu in a single blow!


    And yet.


    WHOOSH!


    Ieyasu resolutely swerved away from it, preparing his own attack.


    Rui had predicted this.


    That was why a swift kick had already arrived at his dodged position.


    And yet...


    CLASP!


    Rui''s eyes widened as Ieyasu caught Rui''s kick with casual ease, staring deep into Rui''s eyes.


    Not a single word was uttered.


    Yet Rui understood everything he said.


    Inadequate.


    BOOM!


    Ieyasu smashed Rui into the ground, flinging him away.


    Rui stared at him ''Something has changed.''


    Ieyasu chased after him with greater vigor than before.


    Every cell in his body pushed forward.


    The sum totality of what he had to offer bore itself against Rui.


    BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM!


    A blindingly swift exchange of blows ensued. The two of them elevated to a higher level of Martial Art untouched by any Martial Squire before them.


    Every attack.


    Every defense.


    Every maneuver.


    Every motion gained unprecedented rity and flow.


    Not a single wasted motion.


    Not a single wasted thought.


    Ieyasu sharpened his Mind Read technique to the absolute limit, hyper-focusing it. Rui''s conscious mind wasrger and deeper than anything he had ever seen in his entire life.


    It hurt every cell in his body to admit, but he was incapable of reading it.


    He was not qualified to.


    That was why he focused on one and only one thing.


    Rui''s movement decisions.


    Everything else could go.


    His thoughts.


    His memories.


    That absurdly gigantic pce at the center of his conscious mind.


    They didn''t matter.Content ? N?velDrama.Org 2024.


    His Mind Read technique sharpened, fixating on one and only one thing.


    His movements.


    WHOOSH!


    He clearly avoided Rui''s attack with much greater ease than before. He rushed forward, matching Rui blow for blow. The two of them exerted every ounce of power that they had, squeezing their bodies for every ounce of potential they had.


    Every guardian reacted with pure shock.


    They were inches away from each other.


    And yet...


    WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH!


    Not a single blownded on them!


    They were so close.


    Yet so far.


    An endless ocean of attacks flew at both of them and yet, not a single one touched them.


    Their eyes were fixed on each other.


    Very few realized the truth of their battle.


    It was not a battle of fists.


    It was a battle of depth.


    Ieyasu read Rui''s mind.


    And Rui read Ieyasu''s mind by reading his own.


    Neither side was able to gain an edge on the other.


    ''No, that''s not quite right.'' Senior Sarak was the only one who saw the truth.


    FLICK


    Ieyasu''s eyes widened as Rui''s nicked his cheek.


    Yet, Rui was not done.


    FLICK


    FLICK


    FLICK


    FLICK


    It was tiny. Invisible to nearly everybody watching.


    Thinner than a hair''s strand.


    And yet, Rui had begun gaining an edge in battle. He surged forward even as his body screamed in pain, snowballing his momentum.


    POW!


    A clean strikended on Ieyasu''s face, shattering his nose.


    Rui''s eyes intensified.


    A dam had broken.


    BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM!!!


    He unleashed everything he had to offer as he sted Ieyasu with every ounce of power he had to offer!


    Ieyasu grimaced as he was firmly pushed back.


    Not a single person could maintain theirposure.


    None of them understood.


    Why had the bnce shifted in favor of Rui when he was in a worse condition?


    Not even the Martial Seniors were able to fathom the cause for this imbnce.


    Only Rui and Ieyasu understood the truth.


    Rui''s patterns were built around the VOID algorithm. They were built to amodate and empower the VOID algorithm from the very start, from his very origin as a Martial Artist more than a decade ago.


    His patterns could only live up to their full potential when used with the VOID algorithm.


    They could only show their full might along with the VOID algorithm.


    That was why they failed Ieyasu against Rui. No matter how urate his imitations of Rui''s movements and techniques, they both knew he was incapable of imitating the VOID algorithm at the core of Rui''s titanic Mind Pce.


    It gave Rui an overwhelming advantage. An advantage that was just slightly superior to Ieyasu''s advantages of superior output and a better health condition.


    Just the tiniest edge.


    And yet, it was superior.


    BOOM!


    Ruiunched Ieyasu across the colosseum chasing after him with unerring initiative.


    He pushed himself to the absolute limit.


    He had to.


    He did not enjoy a massive advantage where he could exert anything less than his absolute maximum effort.


    If he cked up even a little bit, he would lose all of the snowballed momentum that he had built by leveraging the tiny advantage he had managed to secure over Ieyasu''s strengths.


    His mind honed sharper than it ever had ever before.


    The sum totality of his being honed sharp.


    It focused on one thing and one thing only.


    The mirror before him.


    Instinctively, he knew. The mirror before him was perhaps the only thing left that could awaken his Heart.


    BOOM!


    Ieyasu fell to his knees as the most powerful Flowing Canon of the entire fight flew towards his head.


    A finishing blow.


    It should have been the end.


    And yet...


    SPLAT!


    ...


    Every single soul watched with primal shock.


    "...Eh?"


    It took Rui a moment to process what just happened.


    DRIP DRIP DRIP


    Blood dripped from a hole in his abdomen.


    A hole that had Ieyasu''s hand buried deep in it.


    In a single motion, a piercing attack had impaled Rui faster than Rui had been able to react.


    But the Flowing Void Style did not have such an attack.


    Rui''s eyes widened in shock as the truth dawned on him.


    A whisper escaped Ieyasu''s mouth. "You were right... I could not reflect the depths of your void. And yet..."


    His eyes peered deep into Rui''s.


    The world around them chilled under the frosty darkness that Ieyasu radiated.


    "...I don''t need to. I just need to win." He whispered as his next attack surged forward.


    The sum totality of the thousands of Martial Art that Ieyasu had ever copied weighed down on Rui even as his body grew colder.


    "Die."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1308 Execution

    Chapter 1308 Execution


    BOOM!


    Ieyasu''s attackunched him away at blinding speeds, crashing into the other side of the colosseum with a titanic impact.


    BOOM!!!


    Yet he wasn''t done.


    Not just yet.


    He mercilessly dashed forward, racing to the other side while his next attack surged forward through the dust, towards Rui''s figure.


    Every person who bore witness could not help but grit their teeth.


    Their fists clenched.


    Many did not understand what had happened.


    Yet one thing was clear.


    A glint of triumph shined in the darkness of his eyes, a darkness that reflected the image of Rui.


    Tokugawa Ieyasu had reimed the battle.


    And now he sought to im one more thing.


    The air turned grave.


    The skies darkened.


    The world grew silent as it bore witness.


    His palm jab drove forward towards Rui''s heart.


    A death blow.


    SPLAT!


    A ssh of blood unfazed him.


    His hand dug deeper and deeper, piercing his heart.


    It struck true


    And yet it wasn''t the only thing that did.


    At that moment, another attack had already surged forward, uncaring for the severity of the situation.


    BAM!!!


    Every spectating soul widened their eyes in shock as Ruinded a powerful blow on Ieyasu.


    A powerful blow...


    But at what cost?


    He had already been mortally injured, and now his gut and heart were impaled.


    He was doomed to copse.


    Any moment now.


    The air grew taut as they waited for the fated oue.


    And yet, once more, Rui defied expectations, stepping forward defiantly.


    Not a single person could contain their shock when they saw what had be of him.


    How could they?


    It was almost magical.


    Every wound on his body had already disappeared.


    Every scratch.


    Every bruise.


    Every cut.


    Gone.


    It was an iprehensible sight.


    Only Senior Xanarn and Kane understood what had happened. They had borne witness to the battle he had fought more than a year ago against the Martial Seniors of the Kaddar Region. They had watched as Rui healed with an almost magical healing ability, allowing him to negate the immense damage that the Martial Seniors had inflicted on him.


    Ieyasu''s eyes intensified at the sight. He hadn''t gotten a good look at the technique, but he didn''t need to.


    It was unnecessary.


    There was only one thing left to do; win.


    So what if Rui could heal?


    ''My eyes reflect the might of a thousand Martial Artists!'' His eyes narrowed.


    They grew darker.


    Colder.


    A single whisper escaped his mouth.


    "You may have ovee yourself but...can you ovee the Floating Sect?"


    The ominous question sent chills crawling down the skin of the guardians as they realized what was about to happen.


    The sum totality of everything that the Floating Sect had to offer.


    That was what Rui had to ovee.


    No sane Martial Squire would dare to even try.


    Rui didn''t say a word.


    And yet, they could only watch with utter shock as he took his simple neutral stance.


    A single word escaped his mouth.


    "Come."


    Their eyes sharpened.


    For a moment, nothing happened.


    And the very next...


    RUMBLE!


    The verynd beneath them shook as the two raced forward with abandon.


    A single thought emanated through the sum totality of their being.


    A single desire resonated across their existence.


    Victory.


    At all costs.


    POW POW POW!


    A powerful barrage of swift blows struck at Rui''s guard, each swifter than the previous one, flinging him backward. Ieyasushed out forward, and a sharp swift palm jab flew towards his throat, aiming to sever it.


    WHOOSH!


    It crashed into an empty image.


    A feint.


    Rui had leaped back, watching him with the fixation of a serpent. His eyes were fixed on Ieyasu. The void within the consumed everything it beheld.


    An unpleasant sensation.


    Ieyasu narrowed his eyes as he immediately followed through,unching a barrage of color arm maneuvers with sharp palms.


    An offensive Martial Art that carved their opponent up like a butcher.


    "Th-That''s my Martial Art!" A guardian in the spectator stands eximed with shock and amazement. "It''s smoother and cleaner than mine!"


    Not a single one of them was surprised. A grave expression underlying a hint of despair shed in their eyes.


    This battle affected them, and yet they were helpless.


    THWACK! POW!


    Rui calmly deconstructed the colorful movements with a single swing,nding a swift blow on Ieyasu. Ieyasu narrowed his eyes. His arms blurred, hoping to chop Rui up with the lethal copied Martial Art.


    And yet...


    WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH!


    Rui casually evaded every blow with knowing eyes.


    The void had already consumed this Martial Art.


    Hardly five minutes had passed, and yet it was already dead.


    "No..." The Martial Artist watched with a look of horror as Rui tore apart not just his Martial Art, but a superior manifestation.


    An overwhelming sense of despair washed over him.


    One had effortlessly copied and elevated his Martial Art, while the other effortlessly read and evolved to destroy it.


    He could do nothing about it.


    He was helpless, and yet the battle continued.


    Neither of the two of them cared.


    It was an insignificant oue.


    BAM!


    Rui''s eyes widened as a fundamental shift in Ieyasu''s patterns allowed a strike to cleanly st him away.This time his stance resembled a Muay Thai stance, emphasizing his elbows and knees.


    He rushed forward as Rui raced backward, hoping to maintain the open distance. Close-quartersbat with such a style was detrimental.


    FIEW FIEW FIEW!


    Rui narrowed his eyes as Ieyasu''s elbows tore through the air, releasing waves of vacuum flying straight towards him.


    WHOOSH!


    "I never thought my Martial Art could have such power at that range!" Another guardian eximed with amazement.


    Yet his emotions did not defy the pattern.


    POW!


    Rui imbnced Ieyasu with a swift roundhouse kick,pletely disemboweling the style minutester. Amazement turned into despair as yet another guardian felt their heart crushing at the hands of both the monsters warring in the battle arena.


    Every guardian watched with grave despair.


    What was toe had already been established. They prepared their hearts one by one.


    Ieyasu had only be as strong as he was after entering the sect more than six years ago. He had mostly fought guardians after that time period. That meant that an overwhelming majority of the copied Martial Art in his arsenal belonged to them.


    It was a mass execution.


    Ieyasu was the prosecutor.


    Rui was the executor.


    Together, they butchered Martial Art after Martial Art.


    They had be monsters in the eyes of the breaking guardians.All text ? N?velD(r)a''ma.Org.


    A duo of despair.


    Harbingers of destruction.


    The reapers of Martial Art.


    Yet there was nothing that could be done.


    The battle would continue.


    They could only watch.


    The battle grew darker as the melody of a mirror and a void rung through the colosseum.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1309 BADUMP

    Chapter 1309 BADUMP


    Ieyasu''s eyes intensified gravely.


    This was beyond his expectations.


    Through the first two stages of the fight, he had inflicted immense damage on Rui across his entire body.


    Then he impaled his gut, sted him away with an attack, and then impaled his heart.


    And yet, all of that had disappeared into thin air.


    As if it hadn''t been there in the first ce.


    Of course, he knew that this was not truly the case. He sensed a slump in Rui''s other performance parameters as a result.


    The price of the technique.


    And yet, it was worth the price.


    In the first ce, they both knew that his greatest asset was not his physical prowess.


    It was his mind.


    As long as his body was healthy and functional, then he would be able to wield the power of thought to the best that he could.


    BAM BAM BAM!


    A barrage of powerful blows crashed into Ieyasu, flinging him away. A deep darkness within Rui''s eyes fixated on him.


    Yet another Martial Art had been adapted and evolved.


    Rui raced after him. A mighty Flowing Canon surged forward.


    And yet;


    BOOM!


    Rui barely managed to guard against a powerful attack from a new Martial Art, grimacing as it flung him away.


    Ieyasu raced forward with a surge of furious determination.


    He had already discovered that the transition to a new Martial Art after Rui adapted to the previous caught Rui off-guard, creating an opening that he could exploit. It only worked if Rui adapted to the previous one, growing a littlefortable with all his predictions before Ieyasu made a deep fundamental shift in his mind, in his being, throwing Rui off with a new copy.


    It was only in these transitions that he could regain dominance in the battle.


    And yet.


    WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH!


    Without fail, Rui''s responses would grow cleaner.


    Smoother.


    Like a gentle ebbing stream of pure water from a spring.


    How many times could this happen?


    He didn''t have endless Martial Art.


    Sooner orter, he would run out.


    He knew this.


    He knew Rui knew this. He could sense his awareness with his Mind Eye technique.


    One thing became clearer as the fight ensued.


    No Martial Art was his equal.


    Everything fell.


    To the VOID in his eyes.


    His expression grew severe.


    His muscles burned as he exerted himself to the limit.


    His bones creaked as he pushed himself to the absolute limit.


    He brought out pattern after pattern that he had etched into his mind from countless different Martial Artists.


    He brought out technique after technique.


    Martial Art after Martial Art.


    He unleashed everything he had to offer.


    Everything he had ever seen in the sum totality of his time as a Martial Artist.


    All of it.


    And yet.


    WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH!


    Rui cleanly weaved through the man''s attacks, preparing a powerfulbo.


    Yet Ieyasu read his mind.


    POW POW POW!


    The attacks crashed into his guard harmlessly. Ieyasu instead surged forward with a powerful blow.


    Yet Rui simply ignored it.


    BOOM!


    Ieyasu fell backward, grimacing as he nced at his opponent.


    The wound was already gone.


    Ieyasu, on the other hand, had already endured a ton of prior damage atop this new wound.


    Hended on his feet, hoping for a moment of respite.All text ? N?velD(r)a''ma.Org.


    Yet his Mind Eye technique already knew Rui would not allow that.


    WHOOSH!


    He evaded a powerful kick from Rui, swerving to the side.


    And yet...


    BAM!


    A strike had already arrived at him before he himself did, knocking him off bnce.


    An opening had been created.


    One that Rui did not let up.


    BAM BAM BAM!!!


    He pummeled Ieyasu with incredibly swift and powerful blows. His fists knew exactly where to go, navigating the man''s guards and maneuvers andnding cleanly on his vitals.


    "Rgh!" The man coughed blood as he leaped back.


    Yet he was sluggish.


    A beat too slow.


    BOOM!


    A powerful kick had already surged forward, crashing into the man, andunching him away.


    Ieyasu barely caught his breath, yet a chill crawled up his skin as he read Rui''s mind.


    Rui had already arrived, refusing to give him even a moment of respite.


    A wave of emotion stirred through the crowd.


    A realization slowly dawned on the various spectators. Not even the despair of having their Martial Art torn apart was enough to obfuscate an emerging truth.


    Rui was winning.


    No one could feel this more clearly than his opponent.


    Ieyasu panted heavily as he struggled to catch his breath.


    His body bled, peppered with wounds.


    A myriad of wounds covered every inch of his flesh.


    His muscles burned.


    His flesh screamed.


    His bones creaked.


    His joints groaned.


    And yet...


    "RARGH!" A titanically powerful blow surged forward, racing towards Rui''s head!


    And yet.


    CLASP!


    Rui cleanly shifted, evading it as he caught it, before rapidly pulling it down over his shoulder with his entire body.


    BOOM!


    "Rgh!" He coughed blood, grimacing.


    Yet Rui wasn''t done.


    His Mind Eye knew that.


    Yet knowledge was not action.


    BOOM!


    Ruiunched him away with an immensely powerful kick.


    "Urgh...!" Ieyasu coughed more blood.


    He staggered unsteadily.


    His body faltered, falling down to one knee.


    THUD


    The skies darkened with certainty.


    Thend beneath them shook.


    The end was nigh.


    It was as certain as day.


    And yet...


    His eyes steeled.


    Every ounce of his mind gathered.


    Every shred of focus converged.


    Every iota of will surged.


    Every cell in his body roared together.


    The sum totality of his being worked together.


    The void in the depths of Rui''s eyes threatened to consume the mirror of his own.


    A sight that had brought despair to many a Martial Artist, and yet...


    It only strengthened his will.


    It broke the limits of his mind.


    Of his sanity.


    And yet, the powerful Flowing Canon surged forward towards him didn''t care.


    A finishing blow.


    Everyone sensed the arrival of the climax.


    Everyone sensed the air.


    Everyone sensed dusk.


    It was the end.


    ...


    .....


    BADUMP!


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1310 Power

    Chapter 1310 Power


    Rui''s mind had entered afortable bliss.


    Itforted him.


    Eased him.


    Soothed him.


    And yet, a voracious hunger consumed him.


    It drove him.


    Spurred him.


    Frenzied him.


    Two opposing forces acted on his mind.


    His being.


    An existential tug of war.


    Perfectly bnced, as all things should be.


    He felt released.


    From the world.


    From the shackles of the Human nature.


    An endless peace surged within him.


    Nothing mattered anymore.


    Master Uma. Chairman Deacon. The Virodhabhasa Faith.


    They ceased to exist.


    Nothing mattered to him.


    He was at peace.


    And yet, a voracious hunger consumed him.


    Hunger for victory.


    For power.


    Ambition.


    He didn''t understand.


    He didn''t care to.


    he didn''t think to.


    He simply didn''t think.


    There was only one thing he cared for. His mind grew fixated on the opponent before him. A mighty weight pushed down on his mind at the very sight of him.


    The weight of a thousand Martial Art.


    No Martial Art was beyond his reach.


    Everything was his.


    And yet, he offered them to the void within Rui.


    One by one.


    The battle raged as the void consumed every single Martial Art that he had to offer.


    Until there was nothing else.All text ? N?velD(r)a''ma.Org.


    Yet Rui was not satisfied.


    His eyes intensified.


    His hunger intensified.


    RUMBLE!


    The very world trembled in peril as Rui surged forward, consuming the one thing that the man had left to offer.


    His life.


    Endless hunger surged forward.


    And yet...


    WHOOSH!


    The attack crashed into empty air.


    One moment, Ieyasu was down on a knee.


    The next moment, he was gone.


    The object of his hunger disappeared.


    His body felt a deep sense of peril behind him.


    BADUMP!


    A powerful Martial Heart zed into life as the aura of a Martial Senior radiated across the ind.


    He opened his eyes, beholding Rui


    A single word escaped his mouth.


    "Die."


    The three Martial Seniors broke out of their reverie as they raced forward, their Martial Hearts zing into action.


    Yet they were too far.


    Ieyasu''s attack surged forward.


    And yet...


    Rui''s eyes zed with hunger.


    Time slowed down as his pupils dted.


    A zingly-swift Senior-level attack was reduced to a slow lull.


    A lull that threatened to end his life.


    Yet Rui didn''t care.


    Life?


    Such a thing did not matter.


    He refused to run away.


    He refused to cower.


    Not again.


    ''Never again.''


    A surge of emotion flushed through him.


    The frustration of weakness.


    The Ambition of Water.


    The love of a family.


    The hunger of the void.


    Yet he couldn''t validate any of them.


    He was too weak.


    Too weak to protect his family.


    To fulfill his ambition.


    To ovee death even as he stared it in the eyes.


    A single desire radiated through the sum totality of his being.


    ''Power...'' His eyes widened. ''Power...!''


    His sanity unraveled as his mind chanted the word.


    And yet, his Body roared along.


    Every cell in his Body quivered as it joined the chant.


    The hymn reverberated through the totality of his existence.


    ''Power...!''


    It was his heart that roared for power.


    And yet...


    It was the Heart that heeded the call.


    ...


    .....


    ....


    BADUMP!


    An ocean of power surged from deep within his body.


    His heart elerated into a tachycardia. His blood seemed to nearly incinerate, glowing with power. Glowing red lines emerged from his heart, spreading through the rest of his body.


    His cells quivered as his metabolism elerated.


    Unprecedented amounts of adrenaline and endorphins poured into his blood.


    His mind and body revved into a frenzy leaping into action!


    He felt the root of his being ascend to a higher Realm of power.


    Power of a higher Realm surged through his body as he surged forward with the might of a true Martial Senior.


    The world weed the birth of yet another Martial Senior.


    Two Martial Seniors locked eyes for the briefest microsecond.


    And then locked fists.


    BOOM!!!!!


    A titanic sh ensued. Power beyond anything the two of them had ever experienced converged in a single impact.


    RUMBLE!!


    The ind violently shook to the very core of its existence.


    A shockwave the size of a mountain emerged from the convergence of their attacks.


    It destroyed everything.


    Everyone.


    Or so it should have.


    WHOOSH!


    The three Martial Seniors managed to activate their breathing techniques in time.


    Senior Xanarn generated a titanic wave of sound that canceled out the energy radiated from the epicenter of the stwave, protecting the ind.


    Senior Leonil generated a power gust of wind that protected the guardians.


    Senior Sarak activated a breathing technique that expelled the two infant Martial Seniors from the ind a great distance away.


    Yet neither of the two of them noticed.


    Nothing else existed besides them.


    Endless euphoria washed over them as they experienced the intoxicating power of a high Realm.


    A single emotion radiated from the two baby Martial Seniors.


    Pure and unadulterated satisfaction.


    Yet, they weren''t satisfied.


    Power was useless if it didn''t grant them victory.


    Their eyes fixed on their opponents.


    The mirror and the void surged once more.


    BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM!!!!!


    Titanic amounts of power surged forth from both sides.


    Ruished out at Ieyasu with the full might of Outer Convergence, Reverberating Lance, and Vital Pressure channeled through the most powerful Flowing Canon he had everunched in the entirety of his life.


    And yet...


    BOOM!!!!!


    Ieyasu retaliated with a mirror image of the same attack. The mirror in his eyes reflected the void in Rui''s.


    The two of themshed forth without abandon as a familiar sight took ce.


    Yet, a familiar oue did not unfold.


    BOOM!!!!!


    Ieyasu held his ground fiercely, refusing to allow Rui to im even the slightest edge unlikest time!


    Rui narrowed his eyes.


    The difference became evident.


    ''His Martial Heart is stronger.''


    They both could feel it.


    Ieyasu had gained a slight edge.


    Yet it was enough to counter the slight edge that had granted Rui victoryst time.


    The two inhaled deeply.


    The gesture created a titanic vacuum that singlehandedly affected the weather of the Kaddar Region.


    THWOOM THWOOM!


    Two massive tier-five Transverse Resonances surged forth, colliding with each other!


    BOOM!!!!!!!


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1311 Outcome

    Chapter 1311 Oue


    At some point in the fight, the spectators hade to resent the two monsters that had fiercely shed in the fight.


    It couldn''t be helped.


    Try as they might, they were unable to look away.


    Try as they might, they were unable to take their eyes off what ensued.


    Try as they might, they could not bring themselves to be anything more than invisible spectators.


    It was a prison.


    ''Free us...!''


    It seemed their prayers had been heeded.


    Squire Falken had begun gaining an edge even as Squire Ieyasu unleashed the might of a thousand Martial Art.


    One by one, he overcame all of them.


    Each time he did, he had gained a small edge on Ieyasu.


    Each time he did, he hade one step closer to winning the fight.


    And soon enough, the decisive moment arrived.


    Not a single person had moved.


    Not a single person had so much as twitched.


    They couldn''t so much as blink or breathe.


    In just the sh of a moment, Rui surged forward with a mighty attack.


    It was to be the end.


    And yet...


    WHOOSH!


    Every single Martial Squire quivered in bone-chilling terror and shock at the miracle that unfolded in the colosseum.


    Little did they know it was not the first one.


    A titanic Senior-level attack surged forward towards Rui.


    "Die."


    What ensued happened so quickly that they were unable to bear witness to it.


    One moment, his strike surged forward.


    And the next?


    A ground-shattering collision ensued, and the world shook as a mighty st erupted from the epicenter.


    For just the briefest moment, The guardians managed to behold the cause of the explosion before it erupted.


    What they saw shook them deeper than any shockwave could.


    Where there were two Martial Squires, there were now two Martial Seniors.


    BOOM!!!!!


    The ensuing shockwave would have killed most of them if not for Senior Xanarn and Senior Leonil.


    Yet, none of them cared.


    Even as the ind shook, the guardians sky-walked into the air to bear witness to the battle between two newborn Martial Seniors that now took ce in the distant skies.


    And yet, just momentster, the weather changed.


    The collision between two-tier five Transverse Resonance resulted in an even greater explosion.


    The three Martial Seniors of the Floating Sect were put to the test yet again.


    They shed out of the ind, their Martial Hearts burning at full power. Instantly, they hade up with a course of action.


    Senior Leonil and Senior Xanarn activated their breathing techniques manipting wind and sound respectively as they converged the section of the shockwave moving towards the ind towards Senior Sarak.


    Senior Sarak activated his defensive technique, preparing to withstand the weight of the iing shockwave.


    BOOM!!!


    He gritted his teeth, narrowing his eyes. ''This is not the power of ordinary newborn Martial Seniors!''


    Yet, he was much more experienced than any of them, or his own peers. He cleanly absorbed the power, before dispersing it in a more harmless manner.


    And just when he thought he was done, a simr explosion ensued.


    BOOM!!!!!!!


    Rui and Ieyasu stood before each other,unching their most powerful tier five Transverse Resonance attacks.


    Over and over.


    Neither side had been able to gain an edge.


    And yet, neither of them was able to conceal the smiles that had emerged on their faces.


    The power of the Senior Realm was intoxicating. Not even the aloof detached Ieyasu was able to contain the pure mirth that he felt after obtaining the power he had been dreaming of for six years.


    Yet, something had to give.


    And something did.


    BOOM!!!!!!!


    A crucial threshold had been crossed. The brain could only handle so much blunt force trauma.


    The world went dark as their consciousness dimmed.


    Two lone figures plummeted from the skies.


    CLASP


    Senior Sarak appeared catching the two of them with a sigh of relief.


    He could hardly believe that he was holding the two youngest Martial Seniors in history.


    Ieyasu shattered the record by a whopping five years at the age of thirty.


    For a matter of microseconds, he truly was the youngest Martial Senior in history. An incredible feat that would spread his name across the entire Martial World, and beyond.


    And yet, Rui had immediately shattered his record by a margin of six years and was now the undisputed youngest Martial Senior at the absurd age of twenty-four.


    In less than a millisecond, the world record had been shattered twice.


    Senior Sarak was certain that such a thing had never happened before. He, and everybody else at Floating Sect, had the honor of witnessing the two most talented Martial Seniors in existence.


    As a Martial Senior, he had mixed feelings. He had been considered talented when he broke through to the Senior Realm, even if he was nowhere near the record of Sage Serei, the youngest Martial Sage in existence, yetpared to the two Martial Seniors he was holding, he felt like an antiquated relic.


    Each generation of Martial Artists surpassed the previous one, the world of Martial Art constantly evolved.


    Better techniques. Greater insights and understanding. Better training and growth resources. Greater heritage and guidance.


    Even still, there was no doubt that Rui and Ieyasu were at the very pinnacle of what the young generation of Martial Artists had to offer.


    Senior Leonil and Xanarn appeared before him, deactivating their Martial Hearts.


    "The guardians are fine," Senior Xanarn informed him. "They''re shook, but they''re fine. Many of them wanted to start training vigorously immediately. It seems that the fight truly highlighted their mediocrity. Their titles and statuses as guardians within the Floating Sect are meaningless before the pinnacle of power that they witnessed in this fight."


    "That is good," Senior Sarak remarked, nodding. "I predict we will see a surge in the growth of the guardians."


    "The ind is fine. But I swear it was this close to breaking apart." Senior Leonil grumbled. "It is best to get some reinforcing work done to its foundation nheless though. Better safe than sorry."


    This chapter upload first at  N?vel(D)ra/ma.Org exclusive ? material.

 Chapter 1312 Technique Principles

    Chapter 1312 Technique Principles


    "Have the staff contact the PrimaInfra corporation," Senior Sarak replied calmly, never taking his eyes off Rui and Ieyasu. "They were the ones that helped set up the ind for continued habilitation in the first ce. Have the staff contact the Bradt Distribution Services as well, only they can transport the massive amounts of supplies needed to do any civil maintenance."


    The two of them nodded at those words before their eyes fell on the two unconscious Martial Seniors.


    "Incredible, aren''t they?" The man murmured, as he turned, taking the two of them back to the ind "It''s a shame that they''re going to leave."


    "You don''t know that." Senior Xanarn murmured.


    "Don''t I?" Senior Sarak raised an eyebrow. "I know you promised Falken that you would devote yourself to him to repay your debt. But hoping that he would remain here is a pipe dream."


    He nced back at the two of them. "They''re destined for so much more than being the guardians of an ind. This ind will only stifle their potential."


    She opened her eyes. "Even so, I am prepared."


    Silence brooded between them.


    It was not a pleasant topic for the other two Martial Seniors, but s, what could they do?


    It was true that she was indebted to him. It was also true that they couldn''t force her to stay.


    "Let''s leave those matters forter."


    They swiftly returned to the ind, promptly having the two Martial Seniors diagnosed in the medical department.


    "They have merely suffered a concussion, they will wake up soon."


    And wake up, he did.


    Rui groaned as he opened his eyes.


    He had a splitting headache. Yet not even that could prevent a smile from emerging on his face as he took a long deep breath in.


    ''I am a Martial Senior.'' It was actually embarrassing that he couldn''t stop smiling about it.


    But how could it be helped? After everything that he had gone through, breaking through to Martial Senior was everything that his soul and sanity needed.


    It was soothing.


    He hadn''t lost his desire for power, certainly not, but it did not eat away at him the way it did when he returned to the ind the day yesterday. He was no longer weak, or at least, he was exponentially stronger than he was before. Just that knowledge alone was like a deep massage to the mind.


    He felt as though his rationality had returned. He would be lying if he had said that he was in the most rational state of mind in the past few weeks.


    He was not aputer, though he hade to be a lot closer to one than anyone could possibly imagine. The depths of the inner workings of his mind were beyond anybody''s fathoming.


    ''Ah... That''s not entirely true.'' Rui narrowed his eyes as he thought about the man he had just fought.


    Tokugawa Ieyasu. He was perhaps the only man who understood the depth of Rui''s mind.


    Rui didn''t entirely understand how the man''s mind-reading technique worked, but there was no doubt that it was the most powerful mental and sensory technique that Rui had ever seen. It was definitely more potent than the All-Seeing Eye, and Riemannian Echo, two grade-ten techniques, as far as its potency went. Easily one of the most impressive techniques that Rui had ever seen.


    ''He''s reading brain waves caused by neural activity.'' Rui narrowed his eyes.


    Brain activity was nothing more than an enormous set of electrical impulses flying from neuron to neuron inside the brain. Traveling charges generated electromaic fields, ording to Maxwell''s Theory of Electromaism. These two facts together meant that the brain generated an extraordinarily weak electromaic field that was uniquely affected by thoughts, emotions, and other neural processes.


    It was not impossible to gain insight into those neural processes through the electromaic field generated by those neural processes. In fact, it was easier than one might think.


    Back on Earth, this technology had already made rather impressive progress by the time he was an old man in the twenty-first century. There were already many research teams that had developed prototypes of various products that employed mind-reading technology in them.


    Of course, they were far from sophisticated or refined, but they were very much possible.


    As far as he was aware, such technology did not exist on the Panama Continent, however, with all the things that Martial Art had aplished, a mind-reading technique was not absolutely impossible. It would be extremely difficult, but not impossible.


    He couldn''t imagine how much difficulty Ieyasu had gone through to create that technique.


    In fact, Rui had a feeling that was probably the only technique that had Ieyasu''s individuality in it. It was probably the only technique that was his. Every other technique that Ieyasu had thrown against Rui was someone else''s.


    It meant that one technique alone was enough to singlehandedly give his Martial Art all the individuality needed to extract the Martial Heart and be a Martial Senior. The only thing on par with that level of individuality Rui had was the VOID algorithm, and that was something that took two lives to realize.


    ''What absurd talent. He has raw talent on par with Fiona, and a Martial Path pretty much on par with mine.'' Rui shook his head.


    Fiona, as a Martial Apprentice, had the raw talent needed to master every field she came across. Ieyasu most likely had simr talent. It was necessary. How else could he replicate all kinds of Martial Art techniques of all fields on the spot and execute them better than their original wielders?


    He had a deep foundation in all of those fields. At the age of thirty.


    ''At my age actually, if I take into ount the fact that he was already at the pinnacle six years ago when he became the number one ranked guardian of the Floating Sect.'' Rui sighed in admiration.


    He was d that they met. Who else could have possibly broken each other through?


    He was d that they both managed to live. Although he had resolved to mercilessly butcher with all his power in order to make sure he didn''t sabotage his chances of breaking through by holding back, he didn''t enjoy killing.


    This chapter upload first at  N?vel(D)ra/ma.Org exclusive ? material.

 Chapter 1313 Intelligence

    Chapter 1313 Intelligence


    Furthermore, there was no point in trying to kill each other now.


    The battle was over. The core reasons for their bloodlust; the desire to break through, had also gone.


    If anything, Rui valued him. He was probably the one man who would never be anything less than extremely difficult for Rui to defeat, no matter how many times they fought.


    Rui''s Martial Art was such that once he fought someone, they would never be able to defeat him ever again under ordinary circumstances. This happened with Kane, who lost to him even on a battlefield where he essentially had limitless stamina for a powerful grade-ten technique fueled by the environment around them. Not even such overwhelming situational advantages could allow Kane to defeat Rui.


    The VOID algorithm when adapted was too powerful, and it never forgot.


    Yet, against Ieyasu, this was not strictly true especially since the man did not have any patterns. A feat that Rui still did not entirely understand, though he did get the core reason for why it was necessary.


    ''A mirror that bears its own image can never truly reflect any other.''


    It meant that Ieyasu needed to abandon who he was, in a sense, to pursue his Martial Path.


    Yet a Martial Path was a reflection of who one was. It was a confusing paradox with only one solution.


    It meant that his very psychology must have been extremely warped around others for such a Martial Path to manifest from it. Rui could not even begin to imagine what he had been through to develop such a Martial Path.


    Regardless, it was a very valuable training resource. Just sparring against him would probably allow Rui to make improvements and grow stronger. A strange thought entered his mind when Rui remembered that Ieyasu also had connections to the Virodhabhasa Faith as a fellow Virodha Champion.


    He scratched his head, shrugging. It didn''t matter if that truly was the case. In fact, it would actually be beneficial if that truly was the case. He could present Ieyasu to Master Uma and get her off his back.


    His mood immediately plummeted as he thought about Master Uma.


    ''I''m definitely going to make her pay. But the time for that day has not yet arrived.'' His eyes narrowed.


    A newborn Martial Senior had no business considering fighting and beating a Martial Master.


    ''One step at a time.''


    Master Uma would need to get in the queue for matters that he needed to attend to. Chairman Deacon was at the front of that line, having pre-booked it ahead of her.


    Rui had reached a stage where he needed to seriously consider exactly and precisely how he was going to get rid of Chairman Deacon. When he first left the Shionel Confederation, he never paid any serious mind to make a decision when it came to how he was going to resolve this threat.


    At the time, he was a high-grade Martial Squire at most, furthermore, he had a full decade ahead of him. He had simply focused on bing a Martial Senior since that was the bare minimum strength he needed to be at before he could actually think about tackling this looming problem.


    And now, he had arrived. Furthermore, his deadline had been reduced by three years. He had a little under seven years left to fix the problem.


    ''First, I need to ascertain the difficulty of taking himdown.'' Rui''s mind entered a state of rational consideration, flowing smoothly, uninterrupted by the emotional irrationality that had gued him in the past few weeks.Property ? 2024 N0(v)elDrama.Org.


    In order to ovee a problem, he needed to ascertain its difficulty. This was the very basics of problem-solving.


    Yes, it wasmon sense that killing Chairman Deacon was going to be a monumentally difficult task, buthowdifficult? What were the various impediments that would prevent him from doing so? Even if he did seed, he needed to consider where there were there oues of killing Chairman Deacon that would be so unfavorable that they would be not worth killing him.


    For example, he might unleash an even bigger storm on himself and his family if he killed Chairman Deacon and was identified as the culprit. That was highly undesirable. A more unlikely one was suicidal measures to ensure that any killer of his would die along with him. Considering how vicious the man was to those who transgressed upon him, it was not impossible.


    In general, there was too much he didn''t know.


    ''I need intelligence. Detailed high-quality strategic intelligence on theman.'' Rui narrowed his eyes.


    Funnily enough, he had many sources.


    The Martial Union. Guildmaster Bradt. The Virodhabhasa Faith.


    Yet each option was problematic.


    The Martial Union was ideal if not for the fact that Chairman Deacon undoubtedly was searching for any sign of Rui, and his greatest area of investigation was the Martial Union. Most likely, he had dedicated an enormous amount of investigative capital purely to finding any signs, even the tiniest hint of Rui Quarrier through the Martial Union.


    That was why Commissioner Reze did not approach Rui during the first banquet when he was just another contestant.


    It was too dangerous to do so at that moment in time.


    It was why he had waited for Rui to perform extremely well so that an extremely good justification existed for Commissioner Reze to want to speak to Rui without drawing any suspicion. Everybody wanted to speak to the strongest Virodha Champion that had ever been seen.


    ''I should have used that opportunity to ask for as much investigative intelligence on Chairman Deacon as possible instead of the basics.'' Rui groaned. ''Instead, my mind was fully and solely focused on breaking through and nothing else. You''re stupid. Stupid. Actually stupid.''


    He chastised himself mentally, shaking his head, and sighing. ''Regardless, I would be stupid to approach the Kandrian Empire in any way, let alone the Martial Union. If I was a powerful stealth-oriented Martial Artist, then it would have been a different case, but Mind Mask is not enough.''


    There were too many avenues of information slip-up. Entire surveince teams across the country trained to identify his body type. Massive spyworks covertly gathered ssified intelligence from relevant organizations such as the Kandrian Border Patrol Force, the Kandrian Bureau of Investigation, and even the Martial Union.


    It was too risky to be worth it. He needed to consider other options.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1314 Conversations

    Chapter 1314 Conversations


    The Virodhabhasa Faith was an absolute no-no for obvious reasons. He would be more than just a fool if he dared to go anywhere near the religion''s bases. The religion was spread quite far, but it was quite benign in most ces, limited to worshippers who had no real power in the Faith or the Theocracy.


    He definitely needed to steer very clear of any of the church towns.


    Guildmaster Bradt undoubtedly had a lot of intelligence on Chairman Deacon, but thetter most likely paid just as much, if not even more attention to him than the Martial Union since they were in the Shionel Confederation where Chairman Deacon''s primary power base was.


    All three options were untenable for now.


    He would need to find another source of intelligence, and then purchase that intelligence from them. This was not going to be easy as any strategic intelligence on Chairman Deacon was undoubtedly valuable, and would not be handed out for free.


    Still, this was not nearly as much of a problem as it was before.N?velDrama.Org: text ? owner.


    ''After all, I am a Martial Senior. Heh.'' Rui smiled, before feeling embarrassed.


    He couldn''t help it.


    It was almost too surreal.


    ''But the services of a Martial Senior are not trivial.'' Rui mused as his expression straightened. ''It makes my bargaining capital greater.''


    Senior-levelmissions were quite expensive, orders of magnitude above what he got as a Martial Squire. He still remembered that even the titanic revenue he earned from the Shionel Dungeon through Esosale Supplies bought him merely ten years of Senior-level protection when that same sum was enough for a millennium of Squire-level protection.


    Of course, an organization that had gathered the strategic intelligence on Chairman Deacon that Rui was looking for was certainly not a weak organization that he could easily charm with his status as a Martial Senior.


    ''Finding the right source and negotiating the right transaction is not something that can be done quickly or easily. So I should keep it as a general agenda in mind for when I leave the Floating Sect.'' Rui mused.


    He had developed an affection for this little sect perched atop a floating ind, but it had served its purpose. It could not make him grow stronger as a Martial Senior, he was sure about that.


    Of course, there were things that needed to be settled before he left the ind. He needed an initial destination to travel to, to begin making progress on a long-term n to solve his problem. He could definitely count on the Floating Sect to at least point him in the right direction to help.


    ''I need to speak to Xanarn about...our future.''


    Rui sighed. He felt awkward with thosest two words.


    Neither of them hadmitted to each other romantically, though he was attracted to her and enjoyed herpany. She had promised to dedicate her life to him to repay her debt.


    But that was not the kind of rtionship he wanted. Although a Martial Senior like Xanarn would certainly be a useful asset, he didn''t like thinking about her in that light.


    ''Kane...I would love to keep traveling with him with him but...'' He sighed.


    They were too far apart now. As a Martial Senior, Rui would be making endeavors that would make use of his power as a Martial Senior or challenge him as a Martial Senior.


    He would be leading the life of a Martial Senior, and that was not a life that a Martial Squire could be a part of. If he ever went to a training region simr to the Umiana Trench or the Thundering Valley, but for Martial Seniors, the region would be so perilous that Kane wouldn''t even be able to enter.


    If he ever went on Senior-level operations, Kane would have to be left behind.


    Not only would he be nothing more than a burden to a Martial Senior, but he himself would not be able to aplish anything productive unless they happened to be in a ce that offered Squire-level training and growth resources.


    These matters were clear to Rui, but he didn''t know if he had the heart to tell Kane the truth when he would meet him again. He might just cave and take Kane along if Kane expressed a lot of enthusiasm foring along with him.


    In addition to Kane and Xanarn, he needed to speak to Ieyasu. The man knew Rui''s identity, that was something that they needed to speak about.


    If Ieyasu expressed even the slightest hint of revealing his identity or using it against Rui in any way then...


    ''I''ll kill him. I have no choice.'' Rui narrowed his eyes.


    This was a different bloodlust from the one he had in their fight. One was for the sake of power, the other was to protect his core interests and his family from a threat that had malicious intent. There was going to be no duel in this case. Rui had no qualms about killing him with a powerful poison if those were the measures he needed to take.


    "Ah, you''re finally awake, Senior Falken." A nurse greeted him, entering his medical room before bowing deeply. "How do you feel?"


    "I had a splitting headache but... now it''s gone." Rui murmured, noticing that he felt clear-headed quite rapidly.


    "That''s expected. You did sleep for three days, after all, the brain needs a brief moment to limatize to being awake again." She replied as if it was nothing out of the ordinary.


    "Three days?!" Rui frowned. "I know I wasn''t injured that badly."


    "Do not fret, sir," She replied with a smile. "It is an expected oue in the medicine industry after the breakthrough to the Senior Realm. It is said that the body needs an additional amount of time to limatize to the power of the Senior Realm."


    "... ''It is said...''?" Rui asked.


    "Well, the power of the Senior Realm is quite confidential, and the medical industry is not entirely exempt. I do not personally know the cause, but we have made sure to follow the rigorous protocols for such cases to the T." She replied.


    "I see..." It appeared that the forces that ruled the Martial World made sure to maintain tight grip on the secrets of Martial Art.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1315 Key

    Chapter 1315 Key


    It wasn''t long before Rui was discharged after a health check-up. He found that special clothes.


    "Hah..." Rui chuckled as he recognized the Senior-level attire that the three, now five, Martial Seniors of the Floating Sect wore. They were made out of fabric from esoteric fauna that could survive the extensive rigors of Senior-levelbat.


    "It suits you." Senior Sarak''s voice remarked as the man approached Rui.The two of them sized each other up momentarily for the first time since Rui broke through.


    ''Strange, I don''t feel like I''d lose.''


    "Congrattions on being the youngest Martial Senior in history. Your fight was a spectacle unlike anything I have ever seen in my entire life." Senior Sarak smiled. "You''re going ces. That, I know for sure."N?vel(D)ra/ma.Org exclusive ? material.


    "I''d hope so," Rui replied with a brief smirk. "I can''t remain here for too much longer."


    "I am aware." Senior Sarak remarked. "Walk with me, there are some things that you should know now that you have ascended to the Senior Realm."


    The two of them strolled across the Floating Sect leisurely. They would run into a guardian every now and then who would bow with profuse admiration. Rui could feel the difference in his status now that he had be a Martial Senior.


    He had top-level authority within the sect as a member of the Floating Sect, only the three Martial Seniors of the Floating Sect could overrule his word now, due to higher seniority.


    It wasn''t long before they arrived at the highest peak on the ind atop arge hill.


    "Well?" Rui asked. "What is it that you wanted to tell me?"


    "Have you tried activating your Martial Heart since you became a Martial Senior?" Senior Sarak asked calmly.


    "...No, there''s no point in knocking out the medical staff with the mental pressure, not to mention the risk of a power that I don''t know how well I can control," Rui replied.


    "Prudent, still, you can''t hurt anyone here. Give it a shot." Senior Sarak coaxed it.


    "Ok..." He didn''t know where the good Senior was going with this, but he obliged.


    He closed his eyes, dedicating his senses deep inside his body.


    Deeper than he had ever gone.


    It was as though barriers had been erased.


    It was as though the fog had disappeared.


    He came across a mighty ocean.


    An ocean of pure power. Power that greatly dwarfed anything he had possessed as a Martial Squire.


    It was right there in front of him.


    He could reach out at any moment.


    And he did, fully expecting to be able to harness it effortlessly.


    That was why he was horrified when he wasn''t able to.


    A final barrier of some sort was preventing him!


    It didn''t respond no matter how much effort he put into it.


    "What?!" Rui eximed with a terrified voice. "Why can''t I activate it?!"


    "Calm down," Senior Sarak stated with aposed voice. "The Martial Heart is a hidden well of power within the Martial Body. You have gained ess to it through the Martial Path, treading down that Path to your Heart by developing your Martial Art to maximize the potential of the Martial Body. In other words, the Martial Path is the bridge that gets you to the locations of the Heart, while the Martial Art is the key that opens the door to it."


    Rui immediately understood what Senior Sarak was conveying without needing any further exnations.


    He activated a breathing technique that was a part of his Martial Art, before reaching out to his Martial Heart again.


    BADUMP!


    A Senior-level aura radiated through the Floating Sect caressing every sentient lifeform.


    It demanded acknowledgment.


    It demanded attention.


    It demanded respect.


    His heart roared into action as his heart rate spiked. Blood itself seemed to begin boiling, shining brightly as it coursed through the Body. Glowing red lines streaked throughout the entirety of his Body from his heart.


    His mind grew sharper as well. Time itself seemed to slow down to a crawl. Everything was frozen before him.


    His ascended senses granted him an otherworldly awareness. Both its reach and its depth soared to uncharted territory.


    He felt all-knowing.


    Everything was within his awareness.


    Everything on the ind, living or non-living, was subject to his mind. Nothing could hide from him. He could peer into the depths of the world with greater ease. Surfaces that used to appear smooth now appeared incredibly rough and bumpy. Things that used to appear stationary were actually quivering and shifting ever so slightly.


    A whole new world opened up to him.


    It was intoxicating.


    "See? It works just fine. The Martial Heart can only be activated through the Martial Art. Always remember that. You should bake that into your memory so that you don''t dy the activation of the Martial Heart at crucial moments." Senior Sarak advised. "This is something that all Senior absolutely must know. It is better to learn it from me than to learn it the hard way."


    Rui deactivated his Martial Heart, nodding with a look of appreciation. "Thank you for informing me. The psychological shock of not being able to ess my Martial Heart would lead to momentary openings that would undoubtedly get me killed."


    "Mmmm," Senior Sarak nodded. "Another thing and this is something you already know for the most part, but it is to make sure that you temper your attitude as a Martial Senior. I understand just how confident and powerful you must be feeling with the power of the Senior Realm. It is precisely because of that that I need to warn you..."


    He paused for a moment, turning to look Rui in the eye.


    "Do not grow arrogant. The power of the Senior Realm is different from the power of the Squire Realm, it is not a permanent passive fixture of your Body that will never fade. It is something that runs out, and once it runs out, it truly brings you closer to your limit. It is because of this that Martial Seniors are not invulnerable. Never forget that."


    Rui nodded with a solemn expression.


    He understood this better than anyone. After all, he himself had been able to kill a Martial Senior once their Martial Heart ran out, and their guard was lowered. Of course, basically, no Martial Squire he was aware of could replicate that feat, since Ieyasu had also be a Martial Senior.


    However, the point remained. Bloating his ego and arrogance with the power of the Senior Realm was a good way for a young Martial Senior to get himself killed.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1316 Price of Power.

    Chapter 1316 Price of Power.


    "As long as you keep this in mind, you at least won''t die due to newfound arrogance." Senior Sarak concluded, satisfied with Rui''s response. "One more thing. For the time period that the Martial Heart is active, your body will age much faster than the normal rate."


    Rui''s eyes widened with shock. "...What?"


    "Did you think that power came without a price just because you earned it?" Senior Sarak raised an eyebrow. "There is no such thing. The price of the Squire Realm was maddening suffering and the risk of death. The price of the Senior Realm is not acute, it is chronic. For every second you spend with the Martial Heart active, your body will have aged many seconds."


    "...I wasn''t made aware of this beforehand." Rui narrowed his eyes.


    "Neither were any of us. Besides, none of us ever expected you to break through at the age of twenty-four." Senior Sarak smiled bitterly. "But knowing you, I''m sure you''ve already figured out why we withheld this."


    Rui simply stared at him silently.


    The knowledge of that was probably detrimental to the probability of breaking through. If Martial Squires knowing of this drawback reduced their enthusiasm and desire for this power, then the reduced intensity of their desire would mean a reduced probability of breakthrough.


    In that case, the number of Martial Seniors emerging from Martial Squires would visibly plummet across the continent.


    This was nothing short of a disaster.


    "In fact, and this is also something I should inform you now that you have be a Martial Senior." Senior Sarak stated. "Informing a Martial Squire of this truth is a transgression that is actually punishable by death by the Panamic Martial Federation. So even if I wanted to, I could not inform you ahead of time."


    Rui raised an eyebrow at those words. The Panamic Martial Federation was, in some ways, the international version of the Martial Union. It served as a broker between Martial Artists and the international market. However, it only catered to Martial Artists of the Upper Realms.


    The international organization was so absurdly powerful that even Martial Seniors were unworthy of it. In many ways, it was said to act as a body that enforced some fundamental rules that were considered taboo to Martial Artists in the Martial World. It also generally acted to protect the greater interests of the entirety of the Martial Artist ss across all of human civilization.


    He had never ever actuallye into contact with an official, or seen a public office of the Panamic Martial Federation in the Kandrian Empire, or anywhere really.


    That supported the notion that it operated at echelons that he was still unable toe into contact with himself. Regardless, he did not intend to vite its rules. The revtion of the elerated aging was unpleasant, but he understood why it was concealed.


    It was worth the price. Easily.


    Especially when Martial Hearts did notst toolong. Especially when Martial Artists had increased lifespans, anywhere from decades to centuries. Furthermore, life-prolonging potions existed on top of that.


    Furthermore, if a Martial Senior truly had such a great problem with the price, then all they had to do was not activate the Martial Heart.


    It was as simple as that.


    Thus, it made sense to conceal this fact from Martial Squires.


    "Huff..." Rui heaved a sigh. "Understood. I appreciate being informed of that."


    "Mmm..." He nodded. "The Panamic Martial Federation also expects Martial Seniors to begin to bear responsibility of Martial Artists. You have reached a stage of power where you are able to create impacts that aren''t entirely irrelevant. You will be expected to follow certain norms and guidelines."


    "Like...?"


    "Malicious and targeted bullying of Martial Squires and Apprentices without cause is something that is frowned upon. It is not dered a Martial sin by the Panamic Martial Federation, but is is best you do not earn their disapproval. As a Martial Senior, you are expected to live up to the name and rise up. If youe across a Martial Squire who has reached enough maturity, then you may inform them about the truth of the Senior Realm and the conditions that they need to fulfill." Senior Sarak exined.


    Rui raised an eyebrow as a realization dawned on him. "Is that why Senior Xanarn told me about the Senior Realm out of the blue that night?"


    "Indeed." Senior Sarak nodded. "She was fulfilling her responsibility and honoring a tradition that we ourselves have benefitted from. Imagine where you would be if we did not inform you of the truth. Do you see? Just this modest effort responsibility can nourish Martial Art significantly. There are too many impoverished Martial Apprentices and Squires who do not have proper guidance and offer wander aimlessly."


    Rui nodded. "No problem with this either. I am not ungrateful or selfish. I will be sure to fulfill it when the timees."


    It didn''t hurt to strengthen Martial Art. It may have been the age of Martial Art, but states and other human organizations would still love nothing more than to subjugate Martial Artists and turn them into obedient weapons like how they once were. Unless doing so directly affected him negatively, it was worth offering guidance to some younglings. He already enjoyed the art of guiding young Martial Artists and aspirants, so he had nopunctions about this norm either.


    "Well, that''s about it." Senior Sarak concluded. "I have passed on what I am obligated to. Be sure to do the same if youe across one like yourself."


    Rui nodded. "I did want to inquire about something. I wanted to know if you knew anything about the Master Realm."


    "Haha... no." Senior Sarak shook his head with a mirthlessugh. "I have long given up on the Master Realm. My drive isn''t strong enough, and I am too content."


    Rui simply stared at him.N?velDrama.Org: text ? owner.


    He sighed. "I...was actually one of the first Squire-level guardians of the Floating Sect long ago. Back then a now-deceased Martial Senior used to be the sole Senior-level guardian. I inherited his responsibility and obtained the power needed to protect and oversee the Floating Sect. I do not have any ambition for a higher Realm power. Now that the Kaddar Treaty Organization has been beaten back practically permanently, I look forward to spending the rest of my days overseeing and guiding these more youthful and ambitious Martial Artists."


    It was a sentiment that Rui did not understand nor share, but it was one that he respected nheless.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1317 Wider

    Chapter 1317 Wider


    "One thing I do know is that the Master Realm is probably very different from anything before." Senior Sarak added.


    Rui nodded. Now that he had be a Martial Senior, his suspicions were confirmed. He was certain that the Master Realm did not tap into an even greater resource of physical power within the body.


    There was none left, the Martial Heart truly was the absolute pinnacle and limit of physical power. Then it begged the question of exactly what potential the Master Realm tapped into.


    He didn''t know, but he wasn''t too concerned with knowing about it for now. Of course, he was curious about what exactly it was that allowed Master Deivon and Master Uma to portray themselves in such strange forms to him. He wasn''t even sure about what was going on. He would be extremely surprised if they actually physically warped their bodies into a de of wind and a fortress.


    Martial Art was capable of many things, but that sounded too nonsensical. Regardless, even if he didn''t know the exact conditions, he knew what he had to do. He was going to stick with developing his Martial Art with individuality, there was no way that he could possibly go wrong with that.N?vel(D)ra/ma.Org exclusive ? material.


    He had already deduced that the nature of the Martial Path was one of a journey of self-maximization. Maximizing the potential of everything that he had to offer by attuning his Martial with him by imbuing it with his individuality.


    There was no way he could go wrong in doing that, and it was most likely one of the conditions of breaking through to not just the Master Realm, but perhaps all Realms.


    "One more thing." Senior Sarak told Rui. "Given that you''re a new Martial Senior, it is best to get the basics out of the way. I would rmend you spend some time sparring with the Martial Heart and getfortable with it. It is an extension of your power so you do not need to enter a long limatization period with it like you did with your Martial Body when you broke through, but it best to psychologically get used to it."


    Rui nodded. It was an additional variable that made battle even moreplex. he would not ustom himself to always considering it.


    "Alright, that''s about it," Senior Sarak remarked. "I don''t think I missed anything... But you''ll be fine even if I did."


    Rui smiled wryly at those words. "Is Ieyasu still here?"


    "Of course," Senior Sarak replied. "He was up an hour earlier than you. He doesn''t have anybody to spar with, so he would be interested in sparring with you as well."


    Rui raised an eyebrow. "Doesn''t he have you guys?"


    Senior Sarakughed mirthlessly. "No, he doesn''t. He has already copied our Martial Art very thoroughly years ago. Now that he has developed the Martial Heart, the difference is overwhelming. The same goes for you, though you haven''t fought Leonil or myself, so you still have two shots."


    Rui knitted his eyebrows. "...But we''re newborn Martial Seniors, it doesn''t really make sense for us to be able to beat experienced Martial Seniors."


    "That logic only applies to the Apprentice and Squire Realms, things work a little differently in the Senior Realm." Senior Sarak replied as a realization dawned on him. "Ah, this was something I forgot to exin to both of you. Thank you for reminding me. But not everybody starts at the same starting line in the Senior Realm. This was true even in the Squire Realm, due to different standards of Martial Bodies, but it is especially true in the Senior Realm."


    "...Is it because we retain our Martial Art as is?" Rui realized. "The Squire Realm required everybody to start from scratch, but I was able to use my Squire-level technique seamlessly as a Martial Senior."


    "Correct," Senior Sarak replied. "The Martial Art does not need to be rebuilt from the ground-up. Thus, the power level one was at within the Squire Realm has a great impact on what level of power you start at within the Senior Realm. I''ve known a grade-eight Martial Squire who broke through to the Senior Realm and started out as one of the weakest Seniors that I have ever seen. Then again..."


    He nced at Rui. "I have alsoe to know Martial Squires were quasi-Seniors. I imagine that they will undoubtedly be well above a baseline entry-level Martial Senior."


    Rui was pleased to learn about this. It meant he did not start off as dirt-weak within the Senior Realm, he was already above a proportion of Martial Seniors that had spent quite some time within the Senior Realm.


    His mind shed back across his memories as he revisited all the Martial Seniors he had ever met.


    ''Senior Geringan and Senior Ceeran are the only two Martial Seniors I know from the Kandrian Empire and...'' Rui heaved a sigh. ''They would probably be able to beat me up thoroughly.''


    He wasn''t entirely sure he could beat the Martial Seniors of Vilun Ind, but he was a lot more confident against them than the previous. He had superior techniques and body, but they had an overwhelming amount of experience against him. It would be an interesting contest.


    It was a shame he couldn''t go back and test himself against them, it would mean exposing himself to the Martial Union office stationed there, which most likely meant exposing himself to Chairman Deacon.


    "Remember this, the strength of the Martial Heart is what determines the raw output of any Martial Senior regardless of their Martial Art. This applies even to more esoteric fields such as poison techniques and mental techniques." Senior Sarak stated. "Both Martial Body and Martial Heart are now the variables that determine raw output. This is why the Senior Realm is even wider than the Squire Realm, it simply has much greater variance due to the introduction of a new variable."


    This was another insight that was very significant to Rui.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1318 Acceptance

    Chapter 1318 eptance


    Rui appreciated the time that Senior Sarak took to exin all these matters to him. It was definitely quite insightful and did not leave him stumbling in the dark.


    "If the strength of Martial Heart is a variable, then does it grow stronger over time?" Rui asked.


    "Of course, this happens with or without the activation of the Martial Heart." Senior Sarak exined. "The Martial Heart is an umtion of hidden power slowly created by the body trickling energy into across the lifetime. That does not suddenly stop once you activate it."


    "I see..." Rui murmured. ''That probably exins why my Martial Heart was weaker than Ieyasu''s.''


    In which case, older Martial Artists were probably significantly stronger than he was. Although he understood the reason behind this rule, it was still an unpleasant realization. He did not want to wait decades to reach that level of power purely because his body''s natural growth could not keep up with him.


    He wasn''t too concerned, however. He suspected that there almost certainly were ways to shorten or even bypass these long wait times just like he had with the esoteric drug treatment that he had gone through in the Seonmun Church Town.


    "Alright, I have shared everything I need to share." Senior Sarak eventually said. "I''m sure you have many things to do, so get going."


    He did.


    "Thank you." Rui bowed to him with respect and gratitude, before leaving.


    He immediately activated his Martial Heart.


    BADUMP!


    His awareness widened and deepened as he scanned the entire ind looking for Kane.


    "Tsk tsk, you''re like a child who got his hands on a new toy." Senior Sarak tutted. "Don''t use the Martial Heart so frivolously. It''s a precious limited resource that you need to preserve."


    Rui smirked at theparison. He would be lying if he said it wasn''t true when it came to things rted to Martial Art. He was just looking for excuses to use the Martial Heart. "I''ll keep that in mind."Property ? 2024 N0(v)elDrama.Org.


    He deactivated it, immediately heading towards Kane''s chamber. Kane had already moved into the first chamber of the Floating Sect since Ieyasu was now a Martial Senior and automatically forfeited his im to it.


    It wasn''t long before Kane opened the door to his bell, widening his eyes. "You''re back!"


    "Back, I am," Rui smirked.


    "How did it feel to wake up knowing you''re a Martial Senior?" Kane smirked as the two of them began wandering aimlessly.


    "It was surreal." Rui heaved a sigh. "Almost too much to believe."


    "I can imagine. I bet you''re itching to activate your Martial Heart and abuse it to the limit, huh?"


    "You know me too well," Rui smirked. "But there are more important and urgent things."


    He nced at Kane who had a knowing mncholic smile.


    "...I get it. You don''t have to worry." Kane shook his head. "I am not a kid who cannot ept reality."


    "I haven''t even told you what it is."


    "Like I said... I''m not a kid."


    He may as well have been a kid from Rui''s perspective, but he was actually an adult in his mid-twenties. In some ways, he was even more mature than Rui was, especially when it came to Martial Art.


    "You probably worried about actually breaking the news to me, so I''ll cut you some ck and state I don''t have a problem with it." Kane stated clearly. "I understand it''s highly impractical for a Martial Squire to apany a Martial Senior, especially one like yourself who is bound to get wrapped in ces and matters that simply are far beyond my power to impact. It''s probably the best for both of us."


    Rui heaved a sigh. He hade to appreciate Kane even more, he truly was worth someone to be around. "I hate it even more than you do... But it is best for both of us. You''re not too far from fulfilling the conditions to the Senior realm. If you spend a few years solely to developing your Martial Heart, I strongly suspect that you will have reached the cusp of it, however..."


    "I know," Kane sighed. "Nobody breaks through to the Senior Realm in the Floating Sect, aside from you two monsters. This ce is too detached from people''s Martial drives."


    Rui nodded. "If you want to break through, you most certainly will need to leave and expose yourself to the world."


    Kane nodded. "I... think I will return to the Kandrian Empire."


    Rui''s eyes widened at those words.


    "In the first ce, we both know Chairman Deacon was truly after you, not me as much," Kane spoke. "I''m sure he hates my guts as well to a lesser degree, but he probably does not want to do anything to me."


    They both knew why.


    "My father is an aggressive violent offensive Martial Artist who is looking for an excuse to pick fights." Kane sighed. "Nobody will dare to put so much as a scratch on me in the Kandrian Empire. Sage Arrancar, the Raging Devil, is one of the nine Martial Sages of the Kandrian Empire. It is both physical and political suicide to kill his prodigious genius son outside of a fair fight."


    Rui nodded. This was the good side of being born in the Arrancar Family. Chairman Deacon was an insect before the might of the Arrancar Family. The Martial Sage of the Shionel Confederation answered to the interest of the national security, he did not answer to Chairman Deacon.


    If Chairman Deacon did something stupid like provoking a war with the Martial Union by antagonizing one of its very highest leaders, then the Shionel Confederation would rather watch him get gobbled up than fight a losing war.


    Chairman Deacon was known as the hellhound, but he was not stupid. Once Kane entered the Kandrian Empire, his biggest threat was the Arrancar Family, not Chairman Deacon.


    "But your family is going to shackle you the moment you get back. Probably by force..." Rui''s voice faltered as he realized that that was what Kane was looking for.


    One of his greatest driving forces was breaking free from the Arrancar Family, by subjecting himself to them, he was giving himself a chance to break through to the Senior Realm by trying to forcefully ovee any Squire-level apprehended they sent him.


    "That is extremely risky. If it doesn''t work out, you''ll be captured on the spot." Rui narrowed his eyes.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1319 Refusal

    Chapter 1319 Refusal


    ?


    "If the Senior Realm was that easy to break through to, I wouldn''t have to go through this." Kane sighed.


    Yet his eyes were filled with determination.


    Rui understood his sentiment, though. The breakthrough condition for the Senior Realm was harsh. One needed to be subjected to a challenge that threatened the object of the desire behind one''s Martial drive. In Kane''s case, that meant his freedom from his family needed to be challenged and threatened.


    On top of that, the challenge also needed to exceed what Kane could handle with his existing power. Meaning he needed to be apprehended by multiple powerful Martial Squires or a grade-ten Martial Squire even higher than him, but not too much higher. Just higher enough to push him past his limits and activate the Martial Heart.


    It was an exceedingly niche and difficult condition to fulfill. Certainly not something that he could fulfill sitting within the rtively safe environment of the Floating Sect. Of course, he would have to risk his life against challengers who sought the first chamber, but the risk of death was bread and butter for Martial Artists, it was far from enough.


    That was why Kane wanted to return to the Kandrian Empire, a dangerous ce for him, and risk his freedom. All for the sake of breaking through to the Senior Realm.


    "However, that means you have an additional drive for power itself, not just freedom since you''re willing to risk freedom for power," Rui noted.


    "Yeah..." Kane agreed, refusing to borate further.


    It was a bit embarrassing for him to admit that he wanted to be strong enough to be able to apany Rui.


    "Besides, I look forward to meeting our friends. Fae..." He sighed.


    Rui smirked. "It''s a shame I won''t be able to see that reunion."


    "She''s going to be super mad." Kane snorted.


    "Don''t forget to sell them the lie that I am still in the Kandrian Empire," Rui reminded him. "Definitely don''t mention the Floating Sect or any of the things we did after leaving the Kandrian Empire."


    The two spent quite some time bantering and chatting some more as they wandered around the Floating Sect, since they would be parting ways once Rui was ready to leave the Floating Sect. Rui even sparred with Kane to test his progress with the knives.


    WHOOSH!


    "Wow," Rui murmured as he evaded a blindingly swift flurry of shes. "No wonder you got to the second chamber. Daggers give you a level of lethality that you would have to waste too much time to attain otherwise. Thatbined with your speed and agility, you''re an incredible threat."


    "Hehe, this isn''t my limit. Watch what happens when I use it in conjugation with Fulminata!"


    Rui had to admit that Kane had grown truly formidable. He even suspected that Kane could possibly be able to reach the final eight of the Virodhabhasa Contest. He was probably above Frinjschia but below Meera.


    It wasn''t long before the two of them wrapped their sparring session.


    "We gotta do this more often," Kane remarked.


    "It does sound fun," Rui replied. it was true as long as he did not create a new predictive model for Kane''s new twin-de offense and also did not use his Martial Heart.


    "Well, you better get going," Kane told Rui out of the blue. "I''m sure you have a lot of important stuff to do and n knowing you. So don''t worry about me."


    Rui smiled mncholically. "Same time tomorrow then."


    The two of them parted ways.Kane was just the first person on the list of people he needed to talk to.


    "...Is now a bad time?" Rui asked when Senior Xanarn opened the door to him.


    "Is it ever?" She asked with a strange smile. "Wee back. Congrattions on breaking through to the Senior Realm."


    Rui smiled as she ushered him in. The two of them already knew what they needed to speak about, making the air a little awkward unlike normal.


    "...I''m going to be leaving soon," Rui told her straightforwardly.


    "I''m aware," She replied with a mncholic smile. "I''m sure you''ll be able to aplish more with another Martial Senior by your side."


    "You''re not wrong... but I don''t want you toe with me," He stated clearly.


    She opened her eyes, looking straight at him wordlessly.


    "I know that you feel extremely burdened with debt." Rui continued. "But I don''t want to see you leave the ce that you have dedicated yourself to protect for my sake. I know you love the Floating Sect, it doesn''t bring me any joy to tear you away from it."


    "I get to decide what I do with my life." Her tone grew a little sterner. "I appreciate your concern, but I live by my principles."


    "I don''t want to control you," Rui shook his head. "It''s the opposite. It is because I don''t want to control you that I don''t want you to abide by me to repay the debt you feel burdened by."


    "You saved my life." She dered.


    "Then repay me by actually living it." Rui retorted.


    Those words took her aback.


    "Because you won''t be if you follow me out of principled obligation," Rui stated. "You''re invalidating it if you follow me purely because of obligation. The kind of life I will be living is very different from the peace that you have found on this ind. This..."


    He gestured around them. "...isn''t for me. Three years ago I was given a choice to choose between this at the cost of my freedom to pursue my Martial Path and life freely, and I firmly chose thetter. I''m doomed to live a life of perilous chaos, and I''m fine with that. I have powerful enemies, and I do not want to expose you or the Floating Sect to them. I enjoy forging my own path. But it will be torturous for someone who is ustomed to and yearns for peace."


    She shook her head. "I refuse. I still must repay my debt."Property ? 2024 N0(v)elDrama.Org.


    He narrowed his eyes. He could not allow that to happen.


    The idea of Master Uma or Chairman Deacon learning about her importance to him by traveling with him if he ever got exposed was too scary. He already had enough of a headache with Chairman Deacon essentially holding his family hostage, he did not need the Floating Sect to join the list.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1320 Solution

    Chapter 1320 Solution


    Rui stared at her. He knew that she was stubborn enough to refuse to simply let it be. In that case, he wished he had anticipated this and asked Senior Sarak to tell her that the Floating Sect had procured the treatment. That way, everything would be fine.


    He enjoyed herpany, but he didn''t want her along. Although she was probably a bit stronger than him in a general sense due to her many years in the Senior Realm, she too did not have the drive to reach the Master Realm and had not made too much progress since hitting the Senior Realm.


    It couldn''t be helped, many things could be aplished since hitting the Senior Realm, and the three Martial Seniors hadrgely found what they wanted with its power.


    Unfortunately for Rui, that meant that she was going to be a liability in the long run. Not only was he not going to stagnate like she did, he was going to maintain his highest efforts to continue pursuing his Martial Path.


    Project Water was waiting. Furthermore, even greater power than he already possessed was waiting as well.


    She would be left in the dust rather quickly. He especially did not want to involve her in matters where she was likely to be hurt, like in his eventual operations against Chairman Deacon. Thus bringing her along with him was out of the question, he cared too much for her.


    Unlike Kane, she did not have an affinity for these kinds of operations indicating that she would excel at them like Kane did with his Void Step.


    However, he knew that she wouldn''t listen and would follow him no matter what. The only way he could possibly avoid that is by leaving the Floating Sect like a thief when she was asleep without bidding her goodbye or knocking her out if she tried following him.


    As painful as it was, he was tempted. The issue was that they led fundamentally different lives, and it made their rtionship shaky. What they needed were partners who would not pull them out of their own lifestyles.


    He did not want to settle down and live a peaceful monotonous life. She did not want to lead a chaotic and dangerous life like he did, traveling from ce to ce.


    There had to be a way for him to satisfy her principled obligation to repay her debt without dragging her into a life she did not wish to be in, while also not running away from her feelings.


    His mind quickly scoured through all the possibilities until it arrived upon one that was quite interesting.


    "If... I asked you to protect my family, could do that for me?" Rui asked with a serious expression.


    She opened her eyes staring at him. "...This is the first time you have opened up about your personal life."


    "I normally can''t afford to trust people enough to." Rui narrowed his eyes. "I told you. I have powerful enemies. It will be better for you if you just close your eyes and forget about me."


    "I am not a child." She sternly retorted. "I understand and ept the tribtions thate with repaying my debt to someone who leads a life like yours. If it is your family, then I will protect them. I swear that I will do everything in my power to ensure that no harm will befall them."


    Rui simply stared at her. "...You will have to leave behind the life that you have cultivated in the Floating Sect for quite some time. Years."


    "Then so be it." She dered.


    Rui smiled.


    At that moment, he couldn''t help but think about how exquisite her beauty was.


    "I know this isn''t any of my business, but why don''t you protect your family yourself?" She asked earnestly.All text ? N?velD(r)a''ma.Org.


    He shook his head. "I only recently became a Martial Senior. And not even a Martial Senior is not enough, not a weak one anyway. I need more power. Furthermore, I need to eliminate the root cause of the threat rather than just protect my family from it. I have taken other strong measures to protect them, but an additional Martial Senior will not hurt."


    "I see... Is that why you''re traveling around?"


    Rui nodded. "Among other reasons."


    "In that case, I promise you can entrust your family to me until you return." She smiled. "How do you want me to protect them? You''ll need to be more specific so that I don''t mess this up."


    Rui nodded as he began describing the situation of the orphanage and how she was to go about it.


    Initially, he considered having her join the Martial Union as an external member and partake in the Senior-level security detail that the Martial Union had gathered for him. But that was not going to add much of a deterrence since it was too indistinguishable.


    He wanted to make a visible change.


    He wanted to remind Chairman Deacon that he was not going to let his family be hurt.


    He also nned to have her inform his family that not only was he alive, but he was always thinking for them.


    And most importantly, he was sorry.


    Of course, there were many issues that needed to be cleanly handled. For example, if Chairman Deacon managed to track her background down, he might be able to figure out that Rui was part of the Floating Sect.


    His mind coursed through many potential oues as he thought of a variety of solutions to avoid negative ones.


    "Hey..." Her hand brushed across his cheek. "It will be fine. Your family is blessed to have someone like you to protect them."


    He gazed into her eyes with a mncholic expression. "If it weren''t for me, they wouldn''t need protection in the first ce. It would have been better for them if I was not born into their family."


    Her expression fell. She leaned forward, bumping her head into his. "I don''t think they would feel that way. So why should you? When I tell your family of the lengths that you have gone through to protect them, they will understand."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1321 Debate

    Chapter 1321 Debate


    He spent more time with her than he had anticipated. By the time he had left her ce, his hair and clothes were in a mess.


    He sighed with a mild smirk on his face as he left her personal quarters.


    He had one more person to speak with before it was time to leave.


    He activated a breathing technique while activating his Martial Heart.


    BADUMP!


    The breadth and depth of his senses spiked as his mind came to behold the entire ind. He immediately spotted Ieyasu, who was actually quite some distance away from the ind in the sky.


    He activated Gale Force Breathing as he took a single step forward.


    WHOOSH!!!


    Instantly, the world around him shifted as Xanarn''s personal quarters disappeared into the distance in an instant.


    He had reached the edge of the ind with a single step.


    The second step brought him right to Ieyasu.


    He turned back, looking at the ind that he had already left well behind in the distance. In just a matter of seconds, he had traveled dozens of kilometers.


    ''Incredible...'' He couldn''t help but marvel at the power of the Martial Heart before deactivating and turning towards Ieyasu.


    The two of them simply stared at each other for a few seconds.


    They didn''t entirely know how to regard each other. They weren''t friends, but they weren''t exactly enemies either. They simply recognized that they were useful tools to each other that could facilitate their breakthrough to a higher Realm.


    The assumption was that one of them would die in the process, and that was a risk both of them were willing to endure.


    The possibility that not only would both of them survive but also would break through to the Senior Realm was essentially non-existent.


    Yet it happened.


    "...I have some important matters to speak to you about." Rui began. "You know my identity. I have no doubt that you have managed to glean some other information about me, to what extent, I don''t know. However, here''s what I do know..."


    The air curdled as a profoundly faint bloodlust arose from Rui. "...Should you use that information maliciously... I will kill you. It won''t be a fair fight. it won''t even be a fight. It won''t be an honorable death. One day you''ll be sipping tea only to find yourself coughing blood uncontrobly. One day, you''ll be taking a shit only to find a de sticking out of your chest."


    His eyes narrowed. "Do not give me a reason to make you my enemy. It will not end well for either of us, but especially not you."


    The man stared deep into Rui''s eyes, his own reflecting the void that loomed deep within Rui''s eyes.


    "You seem to be under a grave misconception." He remarked, never removing his fixed stare from Rui. "You... do not matter. The only reason your existence had meaning and value to me is because you served as a means to an end. Now that those ends have been acquired, you have already left my cognition."


    "Who you are... Where you came from... None of that matters to me." He dered. "Within a few months, I will have forgotten what you look like. Within a year, your name will have escaped me. I have more important things to dedicate my mind to. Nothing is worthy of my malice, not even you. Take your irksome paranoia and get out of here before I change my mind and finish what I promised I would do to you."


    Rui simply stared at him with a pointed look, as if he was trying to convey something.


    "...What are you doing?" Ieyasu frowned mildly.


    "Well, you can read my mind right?" Rui tilted his head. "So you should know what I am thinking."


    "I do not have that technique activated at all times, it is quite burdensome and I don''t care for people''s thoughts outside ofbat," Ieyasu stated.


    "Interesting..." Rui''s eyes grew clouded with interest.


    "Don''t make me repeat myself." Ieyasu''s eyes narrowed. "You have already dyed my training enough."


    Rui nced back at him with a cautious expression. "You swear you won''t divulge my personal information?"Property ? 2024 N0(v)elDrama.Org.


    "I don''t swear lightly." He replied coldly. "I don''t care whether you believe me or not."


    Rui simply stared at him in silence for a few moments. "...Well, I guess I''ll have to take you at your word for now. Especially since I can''t kill you."


    "Of course, you can''t." Ieyasu snorted.


    "What''s that supposed to mean?"


    "Exactly what it sounds like. You cannot kill me, I am superior."


    "Our battle was a tie." Rui protested.


    "My Martial Heart is stronger," Ieyasu stated.


    "My Martial Art is stronger." Rui retorted. "Besides, I''m younger, I have greater potential and quicker growth than you, so I will surpass you."


    "Only because you had me to help you grow stronger. My Martial Art has that effect on people who can survive it."


    "You had me to help you grow stronger. My Martial Art does the same thing too. So I still end up having more potential and growth than you."


    "You had me at the age of twenty-four when you reached the peak of the Squire Realm." Ieyasu narrowed his eyes. "I had nobody when I reached the peak of the Squire Realm at the same age six years ago. I had to spend five years searching for someone who was cut from the same cloth as me, and then I had to wait an additional year for you to mature and reach my level."


    Rui paused.


    That was actually a good point. Rui did indeed luck out meeting Ieyasu at the right time.


    "Imagine how long it would have taken to break through to the Senior Realm if you did not have me." Ieyasu narrowed his eyes. "You would have had to wait for years on end for a suitable candidate, you would have easily reached my age without having found an opportunity to break through. You broke through earlier than me because you were luckier than me. Nothing more."


    Rui snorted, yet he remained silent, wordlessly conceding that point.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1322 Competitive

    Chapter 1322 Competitive


    It would be disgraceful for him to deny the convenience of his breakthrough. Things could have unfolded much worse if Ieyasu did not exist. Considering that his family very well may have been saved by Ieyasu helping Rui breakthrough so early, Rui decided not to pursue that line of argument.


    He was being weirdly childish, in hindsight.


    They both were. A debate about who was superior where they tried flexing on the other was uncharacteristic of both.


    Rui did not enjoy bragging about his superiority to other Martial Artists. He couldn''t but feel like a jerk picking on the weak when he did that. In general, he disliked demeaning others due to theirck of talentpared to his spectacr growth.


    But with Ieyasu, something was just a little different. He was on par with Rui, so apetitive spirit that Rui had almost never experienced before welled up.


    ''...When was thest time I felt thatpetitive?'' Rui couldn''t help but wonder.


    Not even Meera had made him feel thatpetitive, he mostly felt pity for her in thetter half of the fight.


    The abyssfeeder came close, but it was too non-sentient.


    Before that...


    ''It was when I fought Kane in the Martial Contest preliminaries.'' Rui mused, as his mind shed back to an ancient memory.


    Now he found an equal who he did not need to worry about falling behind or hurting his feelings due to clear superiority. They were basically of the same generation and they had many things inmon.


    "If you have nothing else to say then leave me alone while I train," Ieyasu remarked.


    "Now now, don''t be so quick to dismiss me," Rui smirked. "You''re going to be training to test your limits in the Senior Realm, aren''t you? I have yet to do the same thing and what better way is there to go about it than against an equal?"


    Rui took a simple stance mid-air, facing Ieyasu.


    "You are annoying but..." Ieyasu turned to face him. "...Your suggestion does have merit."


    "It''s just training too," Rui smirked. "No need to bepetitive."


    "Indeed," Apetitive glint shed in Ieyasu''s eyes as he took his eyes. "No need to bepetitive."


    It soon became apetition.


    BADUMP!


    The two of themshed forward at top speed as their Martial Hearts zed into action.


    The very air around them incinerated with the sheer friction from the speed of their charges.


    POW POW POW!!!


    A flurry of blows was exchanged as they immediately rushed into action.


    The very skies shook in the wake of their onught.


    Both Ieyasu and Rui immediately activated their most powerful Martial Art techniques. The VOID algorithm zed into action as Ieyasu activated his Mind Eye technique.


    Rui was determined to win this time.


    He was confident too. After all, in their previous fight, Ieyasu heavily benefitted from the damage he had inflicted on Rui early on in the fight before Rui adapted to his own mirror image.


    That damage would not exist anymore, and it would give him the edge that he didn''t havest time.


    His mind raced into action as he observed Ieyasu closely. He didn''t know which Martial Art he was going to go with, however, he had developed predictive models for all of his copies, including the one of his own.


    Yet his eyes narrowed as Ieyasu raced forward with Gale Force Breathing, Outer Convergence, and Thundering Lance coupled with a Flowing Canon. It appeared that Ieyasu had chosen to fight Rui with his own Martial Art for the third time.


    "I told you, didn''t I?" Rui narrowed his eyes. "You cannot copy the true power of my Martial Art."


    "I don''t need it." Ieyasu snorted. "The true power of my Martial Art is superior."


    "We''ll see about that." Rui activated Hypertrophic Surge.


    In a symmetric battle, the stronger one won. Last time, he had needed to use Weaving Blood at full power just to undo all the damage he had initially suffered, this time he could channel those resources towards a more offensive means of end.


    Rui''s predictive model matched Ieyasu''s Mind Eye. However, his patterns served him less well because he didn''t have the VOID algorithm, he had previously bnced that out with a stronger Martial Heart, making them dead equal.


    But with Hypertrophic Surge entering the equation, Rui could finally gain an edge on Ieyasu even in the Senior Realm.


    Ieyasu shifted to the left as his right arm twitched ever so slightly.


    ''Right hook; Ny-nine-point-eight percent certainty and uracy.'' Rui ducked,unching an uppercut, looking to knock him out.


    And yet;N?velDrama.Org: text ? owner.


    BOOM!!!


    He barely managed to block a powerful kick, flinging him away, and ncing at Ieyasu. He was using a kicking Martial Art that he had copied from one of the guardians.


    He narrowed his eyes, rushing forward. Rui immediately recalled the predictive model that he had built for the kicking Martial Art.


    And yet;


    BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM!!


    A flurry of elbow and knee blows crashed into Rui, throwing off his predictive model yet again. He rushed forward this time, using the patterns of yet another new Martial Art, throwing Rui''s predictive model again.


    "I see," Rui narrowed his eyes. "That''s clever."


    "Did you think I would make the same mistake again?" Ieyasu snorted. "You underestimate me."


    None of Ieyasu''s copies were effective against Rui. The best was his copy of Rui''s Flowing Void style, but even that was no longer enough now that Rui could use Hypertrophic Surge to gain an advantage in what was an equal sh.


    Thus he had decided to use all his copied Martial Art in rapid session, chosen randomly. Because, unlike everybody else, he had the ability to alter the fundamental core of his being to change his patterns, he could invalidate Rui''s pattern recognition model.


    And yet;


    BOOM!!!


    Rui''s fist crashed into his abdomen, flinging him away, and leaving him grimacing.


    "That''s only a partial solution." Rui snorted as he raced forward. "I still can predict all your Martial Art, you can only dy the progress of my adaptation by a single attack."


    Yet he understood that that was all that Ieyasu needed to bridge the gap between them. The two of them raged forth in a battle that rang across the Kaddar Region.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1323 Plans

    Chapter 1323 ns


    Senior Leonil sky-walked up behind Senior Sarak who stood in the sky, looking away into the distance.


    "How long have they been at it?" Senior Leonil asked, yawning.


    "A few hours now," Senior Sarak replied, sighing.


    "It''s impressive that their Martial Hearts are not giving out." Senior Leonil remarked. "Still, they should be keeping careful."


    "They''re far toopetitive for that," Senior Sarak snorted. "It can''t be helped given the rivalry that they have. The pinnacle of talent and potential. The most powerful Martial Paths that I havee across, and the opponent against whom they broke through in a battle that ended up being a draw. Expecting them to regard each other as an ordinary sparring partner is unrealistic."


    "Haha, true. More importantly..." Senior Leonil gazed over with interest. "...Who''s winning?"


    "So far, all their battles have been stalemates." Senior Sarak stated. "They end up in a draw when their Martial Hearts run out and they''re in their base forms."


    "At this point, they''re just fighting each other to win. They probably have long forgotten about any notion of simply limatizing themselves to the power of the Senior Realm."


    "There''s no doubt about that." Senior Sarak chuckled. "Still, I am not averse to them fighting out in the open where the Kaddar Treaty Organization can see."


    Senior Leonil narrowed his eyes as he caught the man''s drift. "...You''re using them as a deterrent."


    Senior Sarak nodded. "If Kaddar nations think we have gained two extra Martial Seniors on retainer, then they will never even dare to think about attacking us again."


    "Makes sense." Senior Leonil nodded.


    "The Kingdom of Graheria has already backed out of the Kaddar Treaty, along with a few others." Senior Sarak remarked. "If we can get a few more key nations to walk out, then Ajanta Ind will finally be safe forever."


    The two of them watched silently as Rui and Ieyasu shed with each other in the distant sky.


    POW POW POW!


    The two of them furiously exchanged barrages of blows against each other, looking to gain an advantage.Rui narrowed his eyes as Ieyasu shifted his weight ever so slightly.


    WHOOSH!


    He managed to avoid a surprise spinning high kick from a rapid change in Martial Art, having predicted it.


    Over the past few days, he had managed to develop a predictive model to predict what Martial Art Ieyasu would choose, allowing him to slowly ovee the small advantage that Ieyasu had gained by chaotically shifting the Martial Art that he used.


    POW!


    Rui grinned as he managed tond a clean hook to the face, knocking the man backward.


    Yet Ieyasu was not sitting still either.


    BOOM!!!


    Rui grimaced as he leaped back from a sh.The two of them panted as they took their distance, pausing momentarily. Their Martial Hearts were nearly out, the battle had nearlye to a close.


    Rui''s eyes furrowed. "Damn, you did manage to copy Hypertrophic Surge. Or something approximating."


    "I don''t need to have the exact technique replicated," Ieyasu remarked. "As long as I understand the output of the technique, I can replicate using my own principles. In this case, you are simply sacrificing other performance parameters for more strength. I can replicate that principle with ease."


    Rui sighed as a hint of pride appeared on Ieyasu''s face. "Guess today is a draw as well?"


    "There''s no point in continuing without the Martial Heart, it defeats the purpose of the sparring," Ieyasu noted. "We have grown smoother and cleaner in our movements."


    "True, yet the rate of growth has been reducing, so we''ve probablye very close to being limatized considering diminishing returns," Rui remarked. "My time on this ind ising to an end."


    He nced at Ieyasu. "What do you n on doing from here on out? You''ve been at the Floating Sect for six years."


    "That is none of your business." Ieyasu snorted.


    Rui heaved an exasperated sigh. "I meant how are you going navigate your path to a higher Realm?"


    Ieyasu paused for a moment, before relenting. "...I n to return to my Master and gain some insights before setting on another journey to gain more power."


    "You have a Master?" Rui raised an eyebrow.


    "What about it?"


    "Nothing... Just didn''t expect you to have one. I thought you would be too prideful."


    "I am not. I merely state fact. People interpret that as pride." Ieyasu dered in a detached manner. "There is nothing wrong with seeking guidance from a Martial Artist much further down their Martial Path and in a much higher Realm of power. It allows you to grow stronger much faster."


    "Hmmm..." Rui simply stared at him with an interested expression.


    He had a few Master acquaintances.


    Headmaster Aronian. The good elder Master had always served as a guide, without being too overbearing. However, the distance between them was too great. Greater than Rui had ever imagined.


    Of course, he understood that Masters were unimaginably stronger than Apprentices back when he was an Apprentice himself. But it was only now that he had reached the Senior Realm that he understood how astronomically superior Masters.


    Even today, after all the power that he had rued he was helpless against Masters. He had felt their power up close and knew that it truly was in a Realm above.


    He suspected that the jump between Senior and Master was probably quite important. There was a fundamental difference between the Upper and Lower Realms, and he had a feeling he knew what it was.


    Now that he had activated his Martial Heart, he could truly feel that his body had nothing left to offer. There were no further deeper wells of physical power that he could reach to ess even greater power.All text ? N?velD(r)a''ma.Org.


    Whatever the Master Realm was based on, it was not physical power. Perhaps he too ought to get himself a Master to gain a bit of guidance on the Master Realm. It was truly a shame that he didn''t get to hang out with Master Deivon as a Martial Senior.


    The man would be truly proud of Rui when he learned about his breakthrough to the Senior Realm.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1324 Beggars Sect

    Chapter 1324 Beggar''s Sect


    "Had your fun with your new friend?" Senior Sarak smiled as he sat down in his office, offering a seat to Rui.


    "I wouldn''t say we are friends," Rui replied. "But yes, it was fun. The power of the Senior Realm is intoxicating."


    "Indeed, every Martial Senior feels that way at the start." Senior Sarak remarked. "Now then, what is it that you wanted to speak about?"


    "I wanted some help from the intelligence department of the Floating Sect," Rui stated. "I was hoping they could point me in the right direction. Specifically, what I am looking for is strategic intelligence on the chairman of the international corporation Deacon Industries. His security measures, schedule, travel patterns, etc. Any and everything that one might need to kill him."


    Rui didn''t mind exposing this to Senior Sarak. There was enough trust between the two that the man would not use the intelligence in an untoward manner.


    Senior Sarak had the sense to not ask why Rui wanted such information. He merely fell into some thought.


    "Well, for starters, you can consult forces within the Shionel Confederation." Senior Sarak stated. "There are a lot of people within the nation who have reason to plot against Chairman Deacon, they will have the intelligence you''re looking for."


    "Let''s say that I can''t go anywhere near the Shionel Confederation due to various reasons." Rui shook his head.


    "Hm, in that case, it''s best to contact the surrounding nations in the geographic vicinity." Senior Sarak thoughtfully responded. "They too will have collected such intelligence."


    "I am aware," Rui replied. "I am also aware that the further away I go from the Shionel Confederation, the lower the probability that I will find the intelligence I am looking for."


    "In that case..."


    "The issue is that I want to be as discreet as possible. I do not want to ring any rms, which is not impossible considering the surrounding nations are only Master-level at most, and it is quite likely that chairman has enough influence to detect someone snooping for him." Rui informed him.


    "Is that so? Hmm... I am a little out of my depth here."


    A few minutester, the deputy director of the intelligence department himself entered Senior Sarak''s office.


    "You summoned me, sir?"


    Rui recognized the man. This was the same man who had summoned Rui after Rui discovered the gravitational stabilizer weapon that the Kingdom of Graheria had procured.


    It wasn''t long before he was filled up on that matter.


    "You are correct, Senior Falken." The deputy director stated. "It is not improbable that you will trigger rms in the Deacon Industries'' intelligence department. The best intelligence divisions do not suppress information about their organization but rather ce spies within variousworks that sell that information to see who is interested in purchasing such information."


    Rui nodded.


    If he haphazardly contacted a surrounding nation that was not diplomatically on the best terms with the Shionel Confederation, then there was a good chance that it would get leaked and Chairman Deacon would be notified of a Martial Senior targeting him.


    "What you require is something more distanced from the influence of Deacon Industries with high-quality information-gathering abilities." The deputy director exined. "However, the more distant they are, the more powerful they need to be to be able to gather strategic intelligence on Chairman Deacon from afar. Furthermore, the price for such information will also be higher due to the distance. It won''t be easy to negotiate with such a powerful force even as a Martial Senior and the price will also be considerable."


    Rui narrowed his eyes as he fell into thought. His own conclusions more or less agreed with the deputy director''s analysis, though he may underestimated the difficulty a bit.


    "...If I had to rmend an endeavor based on my knowledge and experience. then it would have to be approaching the Beggar''s Sect." The director stated.


    Rui narrowed his eyes.All text ? N?velD(r)a''ma.Org.


    It wasn''t that he hadn''t heard of that name before, but it was not something he knew much about.


    "The Beggar''s Sect is perhaps the most unique intelligence organization in existence." The deputy director stated. "The reason for this is because it is an organization that is almost exclusivelyprised of low-ss individuals. Workers andborers and even literal beggars. They are everywhere and are among the most invisible ss of people, while also forming the most important substrate of human civilization. Farmers, manualborers of all kinds as well as low-skillborers for processing and transporting goods and services are a universal necessity. This gives them power. Together they have eyes and ears everywhere in the Human Domain in totality."


    Rui grew more curious about this organization.


    Not only did they sound quite interesting, but it did sound as if they could get him what he needed.


    "Furthermore, they do all of this without employing extravagant espionage technology or Martial Art." The deputy director stated. "They are an embodiment of the power of quantity, as opposed to quality. They have ten thousand ordinary men, women, and even children for every elite intelligence agent that most organizations have. The sheer quantity of information they deal in is staggering."


    The more the director spoke about them, the more Rui was willing to give them a chance. The fact that they did not employ esoteric espionage technology or Martial Art was not a negative point as long as they could get the job done.


    It was actually a good point, it meant that as a Martial Senior, he would be able to offer services that they otherwise could not ess. Even if they were managed by regr people, there were things that no amount of quantity could possibly substitute. A Martial Senior was not low in value, and he did not have extravagant prices, all he wanted was intelligence on Chairman Deacon, that''s it.


    "Where can I meet them?" Rui asked with raised eyebrows.


    "That is a bit...plicated." The deputy director smiled wryly. "Because they do not have ess to anti-espionage technology or the resources to build highly concealed and secure bases, they have mastered to the highest degree the art of hiding in in sight as opposed to concealing themselves entirely. They have also mastered the art of using chaos to obscure their presence. Finding them is impossible if they do not want to be found."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1325 Capabilities

    Chapter 1325 Capabilities


    He had already decided.


    It was a more alluring option than approaching any conventional intelligence organization, or states and other organizations with intelligence divisions and departments.


    "There are many publically known channels to reaching the Beggar''s Sect, actually. Locations where it is said that one can approach them."


    Rui frowned. "That doesn''t sound like hiding in in sight."


    The deputy director shook his head. "Trust me, you''ll understand if you actually visit those ces. For now, I can prepare a list of public channels to meet. However, there are some things that you should keep in mind if you do decide to go for this option."


    "Ok..." Rui listened carefully.N?velDrama.Org: text ? owner.


    "Firstly, they''re going to identify you as a Martial Artist long before you step into that ce. I am aware that you have remarkable disguising ability based on your covert operation in the Graheria Kingdom, but it is far from sufficient to fool the eyes of the Beggar''s Sect. It is best if you do not try too hard to fool them because the only thing you will aplish is informing them that you want to deceive them. That does not leave a good first impression. They are very distrusting people."


    Rui expected as much. He highly doubted Mind Mask would be anywhere near sufficient to fool them into thinking he was just an ordinary person. Just suppressing his aura wasn''t enough.


    They had most likely mastered the art of observation to the highest degree humanly possible. It was their only means of gathering information, after all.


    "One more thing to keep in mind is that they are not purely amercial intelligence organization," The director told Rui. "They are an organization that isprised of ordinary people, by ordinary people. Naturally, their agendas lean toward themon folk as well. They lend their intelligence capabilities to forces whose interests at the very least do not conflict with themon folk. That means if the reason you want the information you seek is against the interests ofmon folks, then they will not only find out but also refuse to cooperate with you."


    "Interesting..." Rui''s eyebrow rose.


    Thankfully, he did not intend to harm the interests ofmon folk. Taking Chairman Deacon was probably in the interests ofmon folk. He had formed an oligopoly in the esoteric supply and esoteric technological manufacturing sector that not only aggressively crushed smallerpetitors run by more ordinary people but also squeezed the maximum utility out of hisborers and workers for as minimal ofpensation as he could get away to maximize profit margins.


    Although he didn''t cross the boundaries of illegal, what was legal in a country as libertarian as the Shionel Confederation was probably considered hical everywhere else, including the Beggar''s Sect.


    Thus he highly doubted that they would be displeased to learn that he was targeting Chairman Deacon. if anything, they would be pleased to deal a heavy blow to the Shionel Confederation if possible.


    "And you do vouch for their ability to gather the information I seek?" Rui raised an eyebrow. "If they can''t do that, then there is no point. If they can, then I am willing to amodate a lot of things in exchange for the intelligence I need."


    "Oh, there''s no doubt that they''re capable of that. There are many times that they have proven themselves. The most recent being their operation regarding the Kandrian Empire of the far East."


    "...Can you borate on that one?"


    "Well, you don''t know, but there is a conflict brewing in the Kandrian Empire." The deputy director continued blissfully. "It is known as the Kandrian Throne War in political and intelligence circles across the continent. With the current emperor in visible decline, a civil war between the princes and princesses vying for the throne will most likely break out within the decade. The Kandrian Empire is so powerful that this is an issue that affects everybody, and thus everybody has been trying to influence it by supporting more desirable candidates or sabotaging less desirable candidates."


    "And the Beggar''s Sect was involved too?" Rui narrowed his eyes.


    "Of course," The deputy director. "They recently sabotaged Princess Raemina who seeks to implement a nationalisticmunist program that essentially exploits the citizens for the sake of the nation. They managed to infiltrate into her faction and got their hands on the entirety of all of her ns for political expansion, before selling them to another prince who used it to shut her down. An incredible feat that impressed the entire intelligencemunity."


    "..." Rui didn''t even know what to make of that.


    This was the second time the Throne War had popped up in a conversation in recent times, and it gave him an ominous feeling. It appeared that the Kandrian Empire was truly in for a storm that could very well tear the entire nation apart in a decade.


    He shook his head inwardly.


    Now was not the time to worry about that. Chairman Deacon was definitely number one on the list of priorities. If anything, Rui ought to focus even more attention on killing the man sooner so that he wouldn''t be bogged down by him if the Kandrian Empire did undergo tumultuous times.


    "Alright, if they can do that to a Kandrian princess then that means that their espionage capabilities are at the highest level," Rui concluded. "They are certainly capable, probably willing, and definitely not going to lead to the chairman being aware of my intentions. I''ll choose to reach out to them, please give me all the relevant information on them."


    "Most certainly, Senior Falken." The man bowed his head. "Rest assured that they do not have ess to any intelligence on this ind. Due to theck of technology and Martial Art. Physical impossibilities like reaching this ind are actually the best ways to hamper the Beggar''s Sect."


    Rui nodded. That was also good news. It meant that they most likely had no cognition on Squire Falken, and certainly none on Senior Falken. It meant he wouldn''t be at an intelligence disadvantage.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1326 Derimont Bazaar

    Chapter 1326 Derimont Bazaar


    The more Rui heard about the Beggar''s Sect, the more interested he grew. It appeared that not only could they get the job done, but there was a good ovep of interests between Rui''s goal and the interests of themon folk. Furthermore, as a Martial Senior, he was sure that he could provide them with valuable services that they would have difficulty aplishing independently as an intelligence organization of baseline humans.Property ? 2024 N0(v)elDrama.Org.


    "You are correct in your estimation that they extract Martial Art services from Martial Art clientele." The deputy director stated. "You will most likely have toplete a task of some sort I imagine. It''s not going to be a short or easy one either."


    Rui nodded. "That''s fine by me. Please provide me with all the relevant information on them."


    "I will be sure to do that immediately." The deputy director confirmed.


    "I appreciate the aid," Rui turned towards Senior Sarak.


    "It wasn''t much." He smiled. "I bid you good luck on all your endeavors."


    Soon enough, the meeting broke up as Rui returned to his newly assigned quarter. He had spent more time thinking about his journey after he left the Floating Sect. The time for action had finally arrived, and it was no longer enough to aimlessly wander around simply looking to be stronger.


    Over the next few days, Rui made his final preparations to leave.


    He even went as far as to procure the Master-level mask that he got from Master Deivon that he had tossed away when Master Uma had been chasing him. Thankfully, he knew exactly where he buried it and after taking some precautions, he was able to extract it and leave.


    He constantly looked over his shoulder, afraid that Master Uma would pop out of nowhere. However, such a thing had never happened.


    The mask was too valuable, after getting its look and appearance refitted by the Floating Sect, it would be just as useful as before in concealing his appearance. And it was something that he couldn''t afford to let go of.


    He was also confident that it would be useful when dealing with the Beggar''s Sect. He did not want them to glean his appearance, and he highly doubted they could. Their biggest advantage was their numbers and the fact that they were almost everywhere in the Human Domain, but aplishing feats that required extraordinary means was probably their greatest deficiency.


    It wasn''t long before Rui received a list of locations and the information on them that he began nning his first step.


    He was surprised at the sheer number of locations that they could be reached through. An ordinary intelligence department or division that was part of a much bigger nation or corporation would not need to do such things since one needed to approach the parent organization in order to make use of their intelligence capabilities.


    He skimmed through the list of locations that he had been provided ncing at their coordinates before instantly running some calctions in his mind.


    "This one is the closest to the Shionel Confederation," Rui murmured.


    He couldn''t pick one that was too distant otherwise the price of information would rise, or they would straightforwardly refer him to closer branches.


    "The Derimont Bazaar, eh?"


    ording to the intelligence, it was an enormous town in the Saiful region that was close to the Beast Domain at the heart of the continent. It was said to be awless zone that was outside the territory of the nations surrounding it, a no man''snd where an open market that sold just about everything existed.


    That was the Derimont Bazaar.


    Apparently, although the Saiful Region contained Senior-level nations that together possessed the military power needed to overrun and erase the Derimont Bazaar, it was said that none of the nations dared to do anything to the market.


    The reason they abstained was rather simple.


    Fear.


    The reason they were too afraid of doing anything to the Derimont Bazaar was because the bazaar belonged to the Beggar''s Sect. It was said that the Beggar''s Sect created the bazaar nearly a century ago, and not a single force dared to stand in their way.


    This was what happened when billions of people across the continent came under one cohesive organization with disciplined order and the will to sacrifice their lives to aplish their goals and secure their agendas.


    You ended up with a powerful continent-wide force that nobody wished to make an enemy out of.


    Rui couldn''t help but admire the Beggar''s Sect. Despite not relying on the power of Martial Art or esoteric technology much, if at all, they ended up bing a force so powerful that their deterrence matched with other powerful forces like the Virodhabhasa Faith.


    All while almost entirely relying on the power of themon man and woman.


    It was an admirable feat worthy of his respect. There were probably very few intelligence organizations thatmanded the kind of fear and respect that the Beggar''s Sect. Rui would much rather face a Martial Art organization of a small number of powerful Martial Artists than billions and billions of hidden spies that he was unable to identify.


    Thetter was much scarier to him.


    He actually looked forward to going to the Derimont Bazaar, the issue was that it would probably take quite some time. Although he was definitely an order of magnitude faster than he was as a Martial Squire, that was with the Martial Heart.


    Senior Sarak had already warned him about using the Martial Heart frivolously. If he did something as stupid as use it for mundane travel, then he would end up vulnerable to other Martial Seniors if and when he was to face them inbat. That was an uneptable trade-off.


    "The sooner I get started, the sooner I reach." He murmured.


    He quickly began gathering the resources he would need while finalizing arrangements with his friends and acquaintances. He would not be returning for a long time, if ever, so it was best to get all of the things that could only be done here, out of the way.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1327 Departure

    Chapter 1327 Departure


    A few dayster, Rui stood at the edge of Ajanta Ind, facing the ind. His belt was heavily equipped with everything that he would need for a long journey. Before him were the four most important people to him in the Floating Sect.


    Kane and the three Martial Seniors of the sect.


    "Don''t worry about me." Kane smiled as he shook the man''s hand. "I''ll catch up to you in no time. You''re not getting rid of me that easily."


    Rui chuckled. "Take your time. You''ve chosen a difficult path forward with many tribtions. It is best to be as prepared as possible. When the timees, just give it your very best."


    He nodded seriously. The two exchanged a knowing look with each other.


    Kane had chosen a particrly risky and dangerous path to the Senior Realm. His determination to seed in it had only grown ever since he decided on it. All Rui could do was give him some tips and hope for the best.


    Senior Xanarn smiled as they exchanged an intimate hug and a brief soft kiss.


    "You''re going to have to tread carefully when Kane is ready to return to the Kandrian Empire," Rui warned her. "Don''t forget everything I''ve told you about the Empire and the Martial Union as well as Chairman Deacon."


    "Oh you, stop worrying so much," She giggled. "It will be fine. I''m actually a little excited to travel to the Kandrian Empire and meet your family. I''m going to learn everything about you, including all the embarrassing stories about you from your childhood!"


    "Right..." A wry resigned smile appeared on his face. "I''m d you have your priorities in order."


    "Why thank you, kind sir." A hint of fake pride welled up on her face.N?velDrama.Org: text ? owner.


    Rui had ultimately decided to have her travel to the Kandrian Empire along with Kane. The probability of something going wrong was much lower with Kane guiding her to where she was to go.


    In the first ce, the Martial Union would not dare to allow an unknown Martial Senior to go anywhere near his family. It would be an ipetent organization if it did. The second she approached even a few hundred meters of the Quarrier Orphanage, the Senior-level security detail would intervene and not only barricade her from reaching it but also strongly ''encourage'' her toe in for questioning.


    The Martial Union took its job far too seriously for anything less than that. That was the reason that it had cultivated an image of absolute reliability and credibility across East Panama.


    That was why Rui had decided it was best for her to go with Kane, along with an unsigned letter that he had prepared for Commissioner Reze. The letter was not only unsigned but also contained his fingerprint in his blood at the bottom. The Martial Union which undoubtedly had his samples would be able to verify that it was his blood. As long as Commissioner Reze was extremely discreet, no one would be able toe away with more than the truth.


    He had also thoroughly prepared ndestine means of entering the Kandrian Empire while concealing Kane''s identity. He would back up the letter that Rui had prepared for Commissioner Reze, adding more credibility to Senior Xanarn, which would eventually allow her to join the Quarrier Orphanage. He had painstakinglye up with a sophisticated andplex multiyered n to ensure that Chairman Deacon would not be able to use Senior Xanarn to locate him.


    From taking an extremely obscure route devoid of human settlement such that there would be no records of their travel, to covert entries into the Kandrian Empire with the cooperation of the Martial Union, to having her reside in the Kandrian Empire for a while before abruptly joining the Orphanage one day to give the impression that she had been by Ruimissioned after entering the Kandrian Empire.


    All of this to not only avoid giving Chairman Deacon the impression that Rui was outside the Kandrian Empire, but to reinforce that he was in the Kandrian Empire. After drilling the convoluted n into both their heads, he was finally satisfied to leave it in their hands.


    "Thank you for this. Really. You have no idea what it means to me." He whispered to her as a mixture of guilt and gratitude appeared on his face.


    She leaned forward, bumping her forehead against his. "Thank you for saving my life."


    He smiled before his voice reduced to the softest of whispers. "I... love you."


    A cycle of abashed embarrassment was visible on her face. They felt like teenagers despite being far older and more mature.


    "I love you too." She managed to squeeze out as her cheeks reddened.


    The two of them separated as Rui turned to the other two Martial Seniors of the Floating Sect who were at a distance out of respect and consideration.


    "I am grateful for everything that the Floating Sect has done for me. Should the Floating Sect ever need me, you need only contact me and I will return immediately and do my best to defend it. This sect has already be akin to a second home for me."


    Senior Leonil nodded. "We appreciate that."


    Senior Sarak smiled. "The Floating Sect will aid you in your endeavors as much as it can. Do not hesitate to rely on us."


    Rui nodded. "Alright then, farewell to all of you."


    He bid them goodbye before taking off into the air, escting in height until he reached a level where he wouldn''t be spotted by the Kaddar nations. Senior Sarak had requested him to obscure his departure so that the Kaddar nations would be under the impression that the two extra Martial Seniors of the Floating Sect were still a part of the sect.


    That would serve as a powerful deterrence for a long time.


    It wasn''t until he reached quite the height that he actually began striding forward. He had to admit, the temptation to use his Martial Heart was high, but it was probably because of that that Senior Sarak sternly warned him against doing so right after he became a Martial Senior in order to prevent him from developing any bad habits and set him straight from the get-go.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1328 Growth Considerations

    Chapter 1328 Growth Considerations


    In the time that he spent crossing the Kaddar Region, his thoughts wandered aimlessly, jumping from topic to topic.


    He wondered what the Beggar''s Sect''s founder was like.


    He wondered how Master Deivon was doing these days.


    He wondered where Ieyasu was.


    The man had left well before Rui did without so much as making a peep. Rui did not go see him off either. He was right when he stated that they weren''t friends. They were tools to each other at the very most.


    It was unlikely that they would ever meet again. That was how gigantic the Panama continent was. Thus, Ieyasu did not see any point in meeting Rui one final time.


    "Shame." Rui remarked.


    Rui enjoyed the feeling of someone who was truly his equal. Kane was a prodigious genius who broke through to the Apprentice Realm at the age of eleven, six years earlier than the average, yet even he struggled to keep up with Rui.


    That was not the case with Ieyasu.


    Their spars had always been stalemates where neither side was able to gain a meaningful advantage. It was enjoyable to have someone he could rte to. There were many parallels between them. It was rather unfortunate that Ieyasu was extremely detached, though Rui suspected that it was that trait among others that led to the development of such an absurd Martial Path.


    Regardless, they would meet if they were fated to. The chances of it happening increased the stronger the both of them got.


    His superfluous thoughts came to an end once he finally left the Kaddar Region and began heading to the east side of the continent.


    Currently, he was on the west side of the continent, having been traveling west for the past three years away from the Kandrian Empire. The fact that he was heading east for the first time since leaving the Shionel Confederation was also a milestone in and of itself.N?velDrama.Org: text ? owner.


    It was a sign that he was finally returning to handle unfinished business. In his mind, a long-term n had already begun forming.


    The first step as he already surmised was gaining all the relevant information he needed to evaluate the nature and the difficulty of killing Chairman Deacon. This alone was not going to be easy because he doubted that the Beggar''s Sect was going to be too easy to deal with. He doubted that gathering all of the information he needed was going to be easy either.


    Regardless, he had a little under seven years left. He didn''t mind if the intelligence part alone took a few years if that was the price of being extremely thorough and careful.


    Besides, it wasn''t as though he could immediatelye up with a n and execute it even if he did get every ounce of the information he needed. He was still not strong enough, although he had taken massive strides in power recently. He estimated that several years of training and developing his Martial Art were needed before he was qualified to undertake this task.


    Years of intelligence gathering while building up his personal power and cooking up a n so that he could decisivelynd a death blow on Chairman Deacon before the decade-long protection ended.


    From here on out, he would need to demonstrate a lot of patience and dedication. The times for frolicking around the continent from ce to ce with his best friend were over.


    Another thing he had given a lot of consideration to was his growth trajectory from here on out.


    He needed to grow stronger, but he also needed to pay attention to how he grew stronger. The stronger he got, the less clear the path to greater power was.


    For much of his time as a Martial Artist, his foundation was iplete. When he started out as a Martial Apprentice, he spent a few years building up his Martial Art, covering all bases.


    By the time he truly built a solid foundation in all fields, it was time to break through to the Squire Realm, and all his progress had been undone. He needed to start from scratch. It took even longer in the Squire Realm to reach a state where his foundation was solid. He estimated that he had reached that state shortly after he left Crexeet Town.


    Then he undertook the Metabody System which took a few years itself.


    And now, he broke through to the Senior Realm. Thus it begged the question as to what path he was going to take forward to greater strength.


    Fortunately, there were several possibilities.


    The first possibility was exploring primordial seed. The wonderful substance that he hade across in the third round of the Martial Contest was of great interest to him. The powerful substance had limitless possibilities as it could turn into anything. It allowed abyssfeeders to adapt extremely well despite theirck of minds. He had grown extremely interested when he first learned about it.


    Another possibility was developing techniques that were suited to taking down Chairman Deacon after he gathered some intelligence on his security and protective measures and failsafe. Stealth techniques and assassination techniques, among other kinds of things. That was also an option worth considering.


    The third possibility was exploring mental techniques. This had always been an area of interest to him. One that he wasn''t able to explore due to having an iplete foundation. His Martial Path required him to be able to adapt and evolve to all other Martial Art, and that necessarily meant being good at offense, defense, and maneuvering, while also being good at all ranges ofbat. Those took precedence over a less fundamentally important field like mental techniques. There were fewer Martial Art he could precisely adapt and evolve to using due to them not being primary, thus they were less important.


    But now that he had an extremely powerful and solid foundation, they were worth considering as an option especially since he had an affinity for them.


    He could also consider doing all three to certain degrees if he wanted to, but that would take more effort, so he wasn''t sure if that was a good idea.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1329 Ferendul

    ?


    All three options had their allure.


    He had yearned for the capabilities of the abyssfeeder the second he learned about them. Their ability to adapt themselves to basically everything was truly impressive and extremely relevant to him.


    Of course, he was aware that he would never be able to fully replicate the abilities of the abyssfeeder, but that was fine. Anything he could get was something he would wee greatly.


    The second option was also a pretty good idea, but it was a little bit more controversial. He didn''t know if it was a good idea entirely to shape the development of his Martial Art over the next few years around a single person. Of course, there was the point that he was generally improving techniques that would be useful in many other circumstances.


    He just needed to make sure that he didn''t get too one-track-minded in the development of his Martial Art.


    The third option of mental techniques was something that he had in mind for quite some time, and he was finally at a stage where he could afford to focus on it. He didn''t want to miss this chance to get some powerful mental techniques in the bag.


    The next question was that even if he wanted to go for any or all these paths, where would he get the foundation and resources needed to develop powerful techniques in any of the three chosen paths?


    Unlike normal techniques, these techniques were not techniques that he could delve into without any foundation or experience. Even when he developed other techniques, they were usually predicated on principles or elements of techniques that he had mastered or based on principles of physics and human anatomy.


    Mental techniques firmly fell outside the foundation of knowledge that Rui had. Thus he most certainly needed a source of foundational information and a knowledge base.


    ''I''ll probably have to rely on the Beggar''s Sect to get what I need.'' He was already relying on them to get the intelligence on Chairman Deacon. Inparison, asking for help with avenues of Martial Art training was a lot less dangerous.


    Time passed as Rui swiftly crossed the continent, heading back to the east. He crossed mountain ranges, valleys, ind oceans, and other topographies for nearly two weeks before he finally reached the Saiful Region, overlooking it from atop arge mountain.


    "Super t," Rui murmured as he gazed at it.


    It was an incredibly t teau spanning thousands of kilometers in diameter. He knew that the Derimont Bazaar was somewhere in the center of the region, but at this distance, not even his enhanced vision was able to spot it, not without the Martial Heart anyway.


    Dim lights glowed across the Saiful region in the darkness of dusk.


    He had heard that the Derimont Bazaar was the most active at night, thus he decisively chose to begin his search as soon as possible.


    He swiftly leaped off the mountain cliff side, plummeting straight towards the Saiful Region headfirst. However, he was sure that he would be able to get away when he was spotted because these nations, like the Kaddar nations, did not possess too many Martial Seniors. He ultimately decided it wasn''t worth it, bing a vignte the moment he entered the Saiful Region was not worth it.


    He did not want to give the Beggar''s Sect the impression that he was a force of the chaotic evil faction.


    That was why he actually went out of his way to enter through the official port of entry, something he didn''t really need to do with his skills. Crossing a border was far too easy for him.


    Thankfully, the process was not too lengthy. He concealed the fact that he was a Martial Artist with Mind Mask, and had simply registered under his newest alias ''John''. He did not want to use the name Falken since it too had bepromised. Master Uma would undoubtedly be searching for any traces of records that bore that name.


    In that regard, he was d that the Floating Sect was informationally isted from the rest of the world. That would certainly make his life easier than if it wasn''t.


    "Wee to the Republic of Ferendul."


    Rui stepped into the nation with a rather surprised expression on his face once he entered the nation, before ncing back.


    ''How eerily quiet.'' The port of entry was dead silent. It seemed that basically no one was entering or leaving the nation.


    It was ominous.


    Yet not nearly as disturbing as the things he saw once he actually entered the nation.


    Themercial area that greeted the port of entry was silent, which was universally umon formercial areas. Grocery stores, small shops, stalls, and carts were shabby and half-empty. There was basically nothing to sell, and what was left was so bad that it was better off not being purchased.


    The few people that he saw manning these shops didn''t even react as he walked past their humble establishments.


    They didn''t so much as twitch.


    Their eyes were dark and hollow, devoid of light. Their bodies were skinny with bones visibly sticking out under the meagre amounts of flesh that clung to them. They were poster children for malnutrition.


    Measly scraps of clothes did a poor job of covering their bodies and providing them warmth from the cold winds that stung them.


    The infrastructure was probably the worst that Rui had ever seen in any country he had ever traveled to. There wasn''t a single fully intact building. Holes peppered the walls and the roofs. Many buildings weren''t even in a single piece.


    What particrly tightened his heart was the state of the children. He had always had a soft spot for children given that he grew up with them in the orphanage, seeing them in their malnourished state was definitely not something that he could spectate passively.


    It was in moments like these that Rui was truly grateful for the privilege of being born in a sound powerful nation like the Kandrian Empire. There could have been many ces that would have led him to lead a much darker and harsher life. Although he wasn''t particrly brought up in the best financial condition, he couldn''tin sine he was given three square meals, shelter, and a family that showered him with love.


    This chapter upload first at  Property ? 2024 N0(v)elDrama.Org.

 Chapter 1330 Evaluation

    ?


    He hadn''t even spent more than ten minutes in Ferendul, but he had managed to gain a good understanding of the nation with keen observation and his sharp intellect.


    He nced at the ravaged infrastructure. ''This isn''t due to poor civil engineering. The structures are extremely simple, it is harder to mess them up than to get them wrong in the first ce. Furthermore...''


    He nced at the ground. ''This nation is blessed with a solid bedrock that tly extends indefinitely across the entire nation and even region. It is highly conducive to infrastructure and civil engineering.''


    There was only one conclusion to be drawn. ''The cause of the infrastructure was ruined by man. I suppose it could be an earthquake, however, the port of entry was unharmed and pristine inparison. So that doesn''t make sense.''


    Thatbined with the state of the people of the nation and it was painfully evident that the reason for the state of this nation was definitely abination of political and economic.


    He wagered it was the former. The state of the nation indicated ack of governmental aid of any kind whatsoever. He had already judged that the buildings were not recently ruined or damaged, and yet he was unable to spot even the slightest bit of disaster relief governmental initiative whatsoever.


    That indicated a corrupt or ipetent government.


    VROOOOM!


    Rui hid as he detected the first motorized carriage in the nation.


    A military carriage carrying a bunch of soldiers bearing elementary muskets traversed the roads vigntly. Their uniforms were pristine inparison to the tattered clothes of the citizens of Ferendul.


    ''A military dictatorship...?'' He did think he was on the money. There was no shortage of that on Earth throughout its history. Militaries could overwhelm any resistance through force and could not be stopped as long as they were unified under a single leader.


    His senses caught another presence approaching their general area.


    A Martial Apprentice.


    Also in military attire.


    ''A Martial military dictatorship eh?''


    The fact that the government bothered on patrols of these sorts that did nothing more than enforce their authority in the minds of the citizens when they were suffering so much due to deprivations of basic fundamental needs told Rui everything he needed to know.


    Most likely, this was a nation where Martial Artists were integrated into the military. The Martial Senior of the Ferendul nation probably rallied the military and tried to take over the nation in a coup leading to civil war that ravaged the nation, leaving the citizens in this state.


    That was a guess. Several details could easily be different, but he understood the core gist of the matter.


    Regardless, perhaps he should have skipped this nation. He was concerned about leaving an impression that he didn''t care about themon folk if he used force simply to barge through anybody who stood in his way. He was sure that the Beggar''s Sect would learn about everything.


    ''I should just focus on getting to the Derimon Bazaar.''


    Rui quickly weaved through the many alleyways as he avoided attention. He did not want to get into any trouble.


    However, he needed some information.


    "What''s the matter? Don''t have any money? Tax fraud is a serious crime you know?"


    Rui paused as he heard a certain voice, extending his senses in that direction.


    "Mama!"


    "P-Please spare us. T-There''s no money anywhere in town." He heard a woman''s quivering voice as she hid her son.


    "Then how do you n to pay the taxes? You have to pay the taxes you know?" The man asked.


    "T-That..."


    All text ? N?velD(r)a''ma.Org.


    "If you can''t fess up the money up-front, then... you''ll have to pay with your body." The Martial Apprentice grinned as he started taking off his belt. "Taxes need to be paid, you see?"


    One moment, the woman was preparing herself for the worst under his sickly gaze.


    The next moment.


    THUD


    He fell, unconscious.Behind him loomed an even bigger masked figure.


    The woman and her son stared dumbfounded. He didn''t have the horrifying sense of peril that Martial Artists generated in her. Yet when she looked into her eyes, instincts told her that he was profoundly more powerful than any Martial Artist she had ever seen.


    "You ok?" Rui spoke in the internationalnguage, hoping she would understand


    She nodded profusely, before bowing. "Thank you. Thank you so much. but..."


    "Don''t worry," Rui reassured her, ncing at the Martial Apprentice. "This one will disappear forever. They won''t know what happened."


    "...I don''t have any money to pay you. Please forgive me." She remained bowed, profusely apologizing.


    Rui understood her misunderstanding. It wasn''t surprising she expected him to squeeze her for money in exchange for saving her if she lived in a country with these kinds of Martial Artists. She was probably terrified that Rui would pick up what the Martial Apprentice was about to do to her.


    "I don''t need money," Rui told her. "Though I could use some help. Information. How do I contact the Beggar''s Sect in the Derimont Bazaar?"


    She winced at that name with a mncholic expression. "...You do not find them. They will find you. If you are looking for them then they already know. If they are interested in contacting you, then it will happen. otherwise, it won''t ever happen."


    Rui recalled that the Beggar''s Sect was pretty muchprised of ordinary people. He couldn''t help but wonder if the woman before him was a member of the sect. Although the sect as a whole was very powerful, individual members could not leverage the authority and power of the sect, so maybe she was as helpless as the other citizens.


    He doubted he would ever know if she was a member of the sect.


    "I see..." Rui murmured. "Thank you. You should get out of here."


    He suddenly disappeared from her vision leaving but the slightest gust of wind behind. The Martial Apprentice had also magically disappeared as well.


    She heaved a sigh of relief as she lifted her child before running away from the area. A knowing glint shed in her eyes as she narrowed them.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1331 Saiful Abyss

    ?


    Rui sighed.


    What he did perhaps wasn''t the wisest, but he hadn''t been able to muster up the willpower to stop himself from acting.He red at the Martial Apprentice in his left hand.


    ''Got his hands on a little bit of power and thought he could do anything he wanted. It''s because of monsters like you that ordinary people are fully justified in being terrified of us.'' Rui narrowed his eyes as he flicked the man''s skull softly.


    CRACK!


    A deep indentation appeared on his skull, killing him instantly. Rui made sure to hold back immensely in order to prevent the skin from breaking, leaving no blood behind that could be used to gain a better understanding of what happened. He would have to bury the Martial Apprentice somewhere far away.


    He sighed as he thought back to the words that the woman had told him.


    You do not find them, they find you.


    If that was the case, he just hoped that they would find him worth contacting. He didn''t think he would be able to find them, based on her words and the intelligence of the Derimont Bazaar that he had been provided.


    He quickly spread through not just the Ferendul nation, but also through the legal ports of entry through all the other nations that stood in his way in the Saiful region.


    He was pleased to see that not every nation was in as bad a condition as the Republic of Ferendul, but he had not been able to make any headway on how to contact the Derimont Bazaar when he asked around.


    Ultimately, he came to the conclusion that it was a futile exercise. Not a single person knew anything, and even if they did, he got the sense that they wouldn''t talk even if he tortured them, which he would never do in the first ce.


    It took him a while since he had decided to go through the official port of entry, but eventually, he managed to reach the center of the Saiful Region; the Saiful Abyss.


    A no man''snd that no country dared to try and conquer and colonize. None of them wanted to dere war against the most powerful organization of ordinary men and women.


    He breathed deeply as he got his first proper look at the Saiful Abyss, narrowing his eyes.


    He was being watched.Property ? 2024 N0(v)elDrama.Org.


    He could feel it, though he wasn''t able to spot anybody.


    It was dark.


    Abnormally dark.


    And yet the endless sea of trash, debris, and empty infrastructure was as clear as day. A dense forest packed with disposed garbage and abandoned huts and buildings. It was filled to the brim with crowded waste.


    It gave the beholder an impression of endless worthlessness.


    This overflowing ocean of wasted garbage and wasted space was the home of the Derimont Bazaar? The market that was created by the Beggar''s Sect as an evanue to approach them?


    An ordinary person would scorn with disdain and contempt at the mountain of waste thaty before them and yet...


    Rui''s eyes widened with shock as he beheld the Saiful Abyss.


    ''Why...'' He stared, stunned. ''Why are my senses being hampered?''


    This sensation reminded him of the Shionel Dungeon. It wasn''t nearly as extreme as the Shionel Dungeon, yet even with its reduced intensity, Rui could never possibly forget this sensation in his entire life.


    Both Tempestuous Feel and Seismic Mapping were heavily crippled, giving him extremely blurred and disrupted readings. He even recognized the very specific sensations when he focused in particr directions.


    ''These are the same esoteric substances that I dug out of the Shionel Dungeon!''


    Having spent a year and a half in the Shionel Dungeon, Rui hade to be able to identify the ''vors'' of disruptions of the various esoteric substances of the Shionel Dungeon.


    He sensed vast amounts of their presence in the bedrock of the Saiful Abyss. Yet they were just below the surface, this was not a natural urrence.


    A shocking realization dawned on him.


    ''You''re telling me that the Beggar''s Sect umted half a floor''s worth of esoteric substances from the Shionel Dungeon for the sole reason of creating a zone of sensory disruption in the Saiful Abyss?''


    Furthermore, it had been integrated such that it would disrupt senses onrge scales, not short ranges. Thus Martial Artists trying to engage in espionage overrge ranges would be extremely hampered while everybody would still be able to sense over shorter ranges, allowing them to function normally.


    It was a zone that the Beggar''s Sect created to be the antithesis of both esoteric sensor technology and Martial Artists. A zone where the ordinary man functioned better than either of them.


    He instantly knew that the Beggar''s Sect had probably been one of his biggest customers when he sold supplies of esoteric ore deposits from the Shionel Dungeon. Of course, given that he didn''t see their name ever, they were certainly discreet enough to use shell corporations and other fronts while purchasingrge quantities from him.


    He essentially made this happen.


    ''...It doesn''t matter. It happened so long ago that it is irrelevant. Thankfully, not even such extravagant measures are enough to stop me.'' His eyes narrowed as he extended his Riemannian Echo into the distance.


    He had created this technique for precisely these circumstances, though he never expected he woulde back to these circumstances ever again.


    He focused his senses specifically across the surface of the Saiful Abyss, allowing him to extend his senses further across that particr sliced section as opposed to all directions.


    His eyes narrowed


    There were surprisingly many scouts that were extremely well hidden and even camouged within the ruins and the heaps of garbage. They carefully watched the edge of the Saiful Abyss with monocrs, whispering into remotemunication devices continuously while fiddling with a bunch of other devices.


    He could even sense the ones ahead of him and closest to him staring straight at him unperturbed as they continued their tasks.


    They were most likely the Beggar''s Sect''s patrol scouts to keep an eye on all activity at the edge of Saiful Abyss and were probably under the impression that he was unaware of them.


    His senses further extended into the Saiful Abyss as he took note of everything he saw. The deeper into the Saiful Abyss''s surface his senses went, the more people he could sense. Just as he reached the limit of his senses focused along the surface of Saiful Abyss, the poption density spiked heavily.


    He smiled.


    He had found the Derimont Bazaar.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1332 True Depth

    Chapter 1332 True Depth


    ?


    It was just barely at the edge of his Riemannian Echo, but he was able to sense the edge of what looked like it should have been the Derimont Bazaar. It was obscured from in view behind the heaps of abandoned buildings and garbage, yet it was as clear as day to him.


    ''I probably shouldn''t run. That might rm people.'' He had sensed plenty of Martial Artists in the time that he had scanned the ce with his senses. That was the reason he was rather cautious about doing anything that could be interpreted as an attack or a raid.


    He calmly began walking in the direction of the Derimont Bazaar, despite the amount of time it would take given the distance into the Saiful Abyss it was in. The were plenty of nts, moles, and scouts across the entire Saiful Abyss. He was sure that together, they could provide the Derimont Bazaar with the information needed to have a real-time view of everything happening in the Derimont Bazaar.All text ? N?velD(r)a''ma.Org.


    It was quite a remarkable ce, he understood why the Beggar''s Sect used this ce as an open avenue for outsiders to contact; it was a ce over which they hadplete control.


    And yet, it was only an hourter when he grew closer to the Derimont Bazaar that he came to truly understand why this ce was chosen. He froze on the spot as his senses managed toe across something stunning.


    If not for Riemannian Echo, he would have nevere across this most likely.


    ''There is more.'' Rui noted with an incredulous tone. ''There is more...beneath the surface.''


    His senses managed to detect multiple wide underground cavities beneath the Derimont Bazaar!


    His shock only grew the more he explored this new discovery with his Riemannian Echo. Massive spaces that weren''t that much smaller than the bazaar atop the surface, were stacked on top of each other likeyers of an onion, each hosting millions of people in a bazaar that was connected to the bazaar atop the surface through tunnels.


    They werepletely hidden away beneath the surface. One could spend their entire life there and never know!


    He quickly understood what the existence of these hidden underground bazaars.''The bazaar on the surface is most likely nothing more than a superficial cover to hide the true bazaars and markets in underground towns below the surface of the Saiful Abyss.''


    The deeper his senses went, the moreyers of the Derimont Bazaar, each with its own underground markets saturating the wide cavities beneath the ground.


    Rui waspletely staggered. The fact that the Beggar''s Sect went to these extents to obscure their presence in the Derimont Sect was truly astounding to Rui. It showed a dedication to remaining hidden, the likes of which he probably had never seen before, even from himself.


    ''To think they dug those up just so finding them is basically impossible.'' Rui heaved a deep sigh, shaking his head. His task had just been significantlyplicated. He actually didn''t even know if he would find the Beggar''s Sect at this rate.


    The words that that woman had told him rang in his mind.


    You don''t find them, they find you.


    It appeared she wasn''t exaggerating. Finding a covert intelligencework embedded in the Derimont Bazaar in its multiyered entirety was probably much harder than finding a needle in a haystack. It was just absurd.


    At this rate, he might literally never meet them. He was concealing his identity as a Martial Artist, and most certainly his identity as a Martial Senior. Even if they figured out the former, they surely couldn''t be certain of which Realm he was of. That meant that his importance in their eyes was probably minimized.


    ''Tsk.'' Rui tutted inwardly. ''My earlier n of maintaining a low profile will backfire if the difficulty of finding them is going to be so high.''


    He had initially expected that he would be able to gain a meeting with them even if he did not bear his status as a Martial Senior, but that was starting to be increasingly suspect.


    Then again, he couldn''t just activate his Martial Heart then and there on the spot. That would be interpreted as a sign of hostility, and entering into a dialogue with the Beggar''s Sect would be that much harder.


    ''...For now, let''s just explore this ce and give it my best shot.'' Rui sighed as he forged forward.


    Eventually, he finally arrived at the massive bazaar at the center of the Saiful Abyss. It was asrge as the town of Hajin in the Kandrian Empire andprised a dense market of all kinds of things.


    It gave off a single impression.


    Chaos.


    He quickly entered the bazaar, instantly transitioning from heaps of garbage and abandoned buildings to a dense market in a single step, getting his first up-close look at it. A strange mist hade about in the air, obstructing vision slightly. The deeper he walked into the bazaar, the denser it grew.


    It couldn''t hamper his Riemannian Echo, but it did give the entire ce an eerie edge.


    His eyes swum around, taking the entire ce. The bazaar appeared to be divided into multiple sections, rings, and segments that each focused on a particr kind of product ormodity. A surprisingly thoughtful arrangement by the Beggar''s Sect.


    The outer-most ring featured all kinds of products but there was a clear theme; written or printed articles. He saw various storekeepers walking around, lugging all kinds of printed articles from street to street and store to store. Books of all kinds, newspapers, scrolls, parchments, and various other things were on disy as storekeepers chaotically and spuriously hawked to the people around them.


    Yet nobody cared. They merely ignored them and walked on deeper into the Derimont Sect.Nobody went out of their way to go to a ce as dangerous as the Derimont Sect to buy some measly books.


    Rui was actually surprised they even bothered to sell books in this kind of ce. It made no sense to him at all.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1333 Market

    Chapter 1333 Market


    ''Judging people by their appearances is generally something to be avoided if possible but...'' He nced around at the various people walking in and around the Derimont Bazaar. ''These are not the kind of people to be interested in buying books.''


    Most of them carried visible weapons, and all of them carried concealed weapons. Daggers, swords, muskets, and other dangerous weapons apanied every single normal human. Most of them had rugged and tattered appearances, torn clothes, bruised flesh, and scarred skin.


    They were warriors.


    Most of them chose to conceal their appearance in some way or the other. Those that didn''t simply draw more attention. Regardless, they were not the type to visit a bookstore.


    STEP


    Rui paused as he felt a strangely soft sensation beneath his foot. His eyes widened as he realized he was stepping on the corpse of a man submerged in the dirt and grime.


    SHOVE


    "Move the fuck out of the way." A rough female voice behind him snarled as a woman shoved into him, walking past him. "Fucking tourists."


    Nobody noticed that there was a dead body there.


    No, that wasn''t quite right.


    They simply didn''t care.


    Rui studied the ground and the streets carefully, noticing their faint red hue as he narrowed his eyes as a faint stench tickled his nose.


    Blood.


    So much blood had been spilled on the soil of the Derimont Bazaar that it had actually changed the color of the soil. If that was the case, then no wonder that a single corpse did not even earn the slightest nce from any of the passersby.


    Rui was not squeamish with cadavers or blood, but it was a little disturbing to see so many people in a single area be so apathetic. Regardless, there was nothing that could be done about so he quickly moved on, heading deeper into the Derimont Bazaar.


    The market shifted more the deeper he went, and the mist continued thickening as he went deeper. It grew more silent and yet more dense as people flocked to stalls, carts, and spreads, looking to purchase the products at sale.


    Weapons, alcohol, narcotic drugs, forbidden substances, even hard copies of pornographic material, funnily enough. Rui had already expected to see such things, yet he wasn''t even that deep into the Derimont Sect, and the more controversial stuff had already begun.


    "Hey there," A woman called out to him in an alleyway with a seductive smile. She had skimpy clothes, smoking a pot. "Interested in spending time with me?"


    "No." Rui continued on his way as he continued gathering information on the town.


    He had long begun storing every ounce of information all his senses picked up on in the Mind Pce, including Riemannian Echo. He had already grown ustomed to doing so in the Shionel Dungeon when he was working on the three-dimensional map that he had made for Guildmaster Bradt, thus it wasn''t anything new.


    He would review the entirety of the footage once he returned if he failed. Suddenly, he paused with narrowed eyes as he nced at an establishment to his right. It was the only intact multi-storeyed multi-block building that he hade across in the Derimont Bazaar thus far.


    It drew his attention because Riemannian Echo picked up hundreds of corpses within the establishment. Most of them were neatly packed in body bags and were isted in the basement in a cooled unit. Their bodies were dissected and he even managed to pick up that their bodies had been emptied of their contents the deeper he looked.


    ''Organ trafficking.'' Rui noted, furrowing his eyebrows.


    Not every ailment problem could be solved with healing potions, most couldn''t, in fact. The demand for organ donors was just as high, if not higher due to better esoteric medical technology that made the process more perfect.


    And demand would always be met with supply, even if it was illegal and prohibited in most ces across the continent. It appeared that the Derimont Bazaar catered to any clientele that wanted to procure an organ transnt even at the cost of innocent lives.


    He heaved a deep sigh, before heading on forward, looking for signs of the Beggar''s Sect. He did not want to stick around the Derimont Bazaar for long, it was an unpleasant location.


    Yet he couldn''t help but pause when he came across a district that literally had the wordsAssassin''s Guild carved messily into the buildings around the edge of the district. Apparently, the deputy director of the intelligence department of the Floating Sect was not kidding when he said that one could find just about any and everything in the Derimont Bazaar. Not only could assassins be hired for murder, but there was literally a guild inside the Derimont Bazaar.N?velDrama.Org: text ? owner.


    He could even sense innumerable Martial Apprentices and Squires within the depth of the district. He wasn''t even surprised that this district was one of the most crowded districts that he hade across in the Derimont Bazaar. He knew that these services were quite epidemic across the entire world, there was nothing he could do aside from walking deeper.


    The mist grew denser.


    As did the crowd. Many people umted around a particr stall, bustling with energy. He actually needed to push through to see what it was.


    Yet Riemannian Echo had already given him a good idea of what it was. A grim expression appeared on his face as his body stiffened.


    A man heralding a group of children in shackles smiled as he disyed them.


    "Three hundred on the blond cutie-Can I get a three-twenty? Three-twenty? Three-twenty for this little cute boy-Oh and we have a three-twenty-Can I get a three-fifty? Three-fifty anybody? No? Three-twenty going once. Going twice. Going thrice. And sold! To the elder gentleman in the overcoat!"


    Rui strengthened his Mind Mask, struggling to contain his vtile fury. It took every ounce of willpower to maintain hisposure. He needed to muster every shred of discipline that he had cultivated to hold back.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1334 Composure

    Chapter 1334 Composure


    This had happened before. He was unable to maintain his calm when it came to matters surrounding children. It was a psychological weakness that had, thankfully, yet to be exploited by an enemy. The most optimal course of action was to ignore and go about his business simply.


    Yet it was one he struggled to take.


    He briefly considered activating his Martial Heart andunching an omnidirectional Transverse Resonance attack, before restraining himself.


    He would probably die very quickly if he dared to do that. He would be making a sworn enemy out of every single person in the Derimont Bazaar, and he had no doubt that he would be confronted by multiple Martial Artists, even Martial Seniors, and that would be it. And yet, when he looked at the terrified expressions on all those girls and boys, he felt his restraint slipping.


    STEP


    He walked away with a grave expression. ''I''m sorry...''


    He wasn''t strong enough to save them then and there.


    However...


    ''They willpay.'' Rui swore as he narrowed his eyes. ''I swear they will. Everyst one of them.''


    He recorded the appearances of all the sellers and providers and their staff. Killing themter on would have been too impractical and dangerous as a Martial Squire, but that was no longer the case anymore.


    He was a Martial Senior, he could butcher them all with casual ease in the briefest of moments so short in time, that time would essentially have been frozen for everyone else.


    His expression grew severe as he recalled what he had heard about the Beggar''s Sect. That it was a sect that existed of and by themon folk, and naturally as a result, it existed formon folks as well.


    ''What a joke.''


    It was not even funny when they were the ones who allegedly created an abysmal cesspool like the Derimont Bazaar that spread so much suffering.


    Or so he felt.


    In reality, his rational side knew that the truth was a lot darker. It wasn''t that the Derimont Bazaar created this misery.


    No.


    It merely collected existing misery, and gathered it in a single ce. Even if the Derimont Bazaar was disassembled and destroyed, the number of people and children suffering would not be reduced.


    The demand for these heinousmodities and services would still be rife in the Saiful region, and scum who wanted to make money wouldmit unspeakable acts to fulfill that demand. Nothing would change.


    A Martial Senior did not have the power to make it change. Hell, he doubted that Martial Masters or even Martial Sages possessed the power to change that. It was a constant in the fabric of human civilization.


    If anybody possessed the power it would be...


    ''Martial Transcendents.'' Rui''s eyes clouded in thought.


    He couldn''t even begin to fathom what kind of power that beings an entire Realm above Martial Sages possessed. However, whatever it was, it had most likely reached the level where it could impact all of human civilization by itself to a certain degree.


    He would probably need to reach such a stage of power to erase the evils of humanity from the world. Yet the Martial Transcendents that possessed the ability to endeavor on such a path, hadn''t.


    ''Those that care don''t have the power, and those that have the power don''t care.''


    He shook his head, putting the matter aside.


    He needed to focus on the things most important to him, and the things that he did have the power to save. Unfortunately, for now, that amounted only to his family. When he grew stronger and entered the upper Realms, he would have the capital to start considering more grandiose ventures.


    For now, he needed to focus on finding the Beggar''s Sect so he could gain the information he needed to eventually eliminate the threat to his family.N?velDrama.Org: text ? owner.


    He had yet to spot even a single ce that bore the crest of the Beggar''s Sect, something that was actually publically known, interestingly enough. But no person or stall bore that crest.


    He even spoke to some local information brokers, yet all of them simply stopped speaking to him, going their ways as soon as the name of the Beggar''s Sect escaped his mouth. It appeared that the Beggar''s Sect had a tight, yet invisible grip on the Derimont Bazaar.


    It took him quite a long time, the entire night, yet he eventually concluded that there were no signs of the sect anywhere in the Derimont Bazaar.


    Or at least, in the surface bazaar. He was sure that the underground bazaars would provide more information about the Beggar''s Sect.


    "M-Mister?" A young girl called out to him, drawing his attention.


    She looked to be no older than sixteen. An adult in most nations on the Panama Continent, yet nothing more than a child in his eyes.


    "What is it? Do you need something?" He asked her with a gentle tone.


    "I-If you want, I can serve as a guide for you in the bazaar." She stuttered as she averted his gaze. "It will only cost 3 copper coins per hour."


    That was not what he was expecting. He thought she was lost and needed her help, but it turned to out to be the reverse.


    "Guide eh...?" He nced around, noticing that nobody else needed one.


    "B-Because it clearly is your first time here and so I thought y-you might want some help." She murmured, still not looking him in the eyes.


    Rui cracked a smile for the first time since arriving at the Derimont Bazaar. "Do I stick out that much?"


    "L-Like a sore thumb...sir." She responded meekly.


    "Is that so?" Rui chuckled. "Well, I don''t have any copper coins but..."


    He pulled a handful of the remaining reserve of gold coins that he had left.


    "E-Eh...! That''s too much! P-Please put them back!" She urged him with a panicking expression as she nced around worried with a panicked expression.


    ''Ah right...'' Rui noticed the hungry stared from the people around him. ''They don''t know that I can annihte all of them with the slightest exertion.''


    "It''s fine," Rui reassured her as he put three gold coins in her palm instead of copper coins. "Take this, and in return tell me how I can get to the true depths of the Derimont Bazaar."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1335 Bumped

    Chapter 1335 Bumped


    "E-Eh..." Her expression paled at the mention of the underground bazaar.


    "If you cannot get me there, then that''s fine as well," Rui told her. "Use that money to get out of this ce and go far away."


    She stared at him with a befuddled expression. "Is that why you gave me these...?"


    Rui nodded as he kept an eye on the crowd around them. If any of them tried something, he would swiftly kill them on the spot. He believed in self-defense, after all.


    "You are kind," She murmured with a soft tone as her nervous energy reduced a bit. "Thank you. I... can take you to the true depths of the Derimont Bazaar if that is what you wish. However, y-you should be warned. They aren''t fond of outsiders down there."


    "Is that so...?" Rui wondered. "Well, I''ll make do. I need to meet the Beggar''s Sect at all costs."


    "Beggar''s Sect?" She tilted her head in confusion.


    Her reaction told him that not everybody knew that the Beggar''s Sect was the one that had created the Derimont Bazaar. Perhaps the information was less well-known than he had initially expected, he did get his information from an actual intelligence agency that was dedicated to gathering information so it wasn''t impossible at all.


    "Never mind," Rui shook his head. "Just get me to underground bazaars."


    "I can do that." She nodded vigorously. "Follow me."


    "Where are we going?"


    "I know a ce."


    She held his hand, pulling him forward as she navigated through the crowd, leading him. Contrary to his expectations, she dragged him away from the inner depths of the bazaar and back to the outer districts, taking quite some time to retread all the paths that Rui had already walked.


    Rui did his best to ignore all of the things that he had toe across once more, making sure that she didn''t catch any hint of his emotions.


    THUD


    A Martial Apprentice stepped right into his path, mming right into Rui as he halted him.


    "Watch where you''re going, punk!" He snarled with an aggressive demeanor. "Who''re you trying to mess with?"


    Rui nced at him. "You clearly bumped into me intentionally."


    "What did you say?! You must not be from arou-"


    THWACK


    Rui couldn''t be bothered to humor arrogant Martial Apprentices. He swiftly struck at his neck, knocking him out then and there at a speed faster than the human eye could even begin to process.


    Rui had already disappeared with the girl in his arms, having sped away before anybody could have possibly attributed the Martial Apprentice falling unconscious to them.


    He had been incredibly swift with it, and thankfully there were no Martial Squires in the vicinity that could have noticed the maneuver, even if slightly. A clean strike and getaway, as far as he was concerned.


    ''Martial Apprentices sure get full of themselves these days.''


    He found the prior urrence rather odd. The Martial Apprentice had clearly bumped into Rui on purpose, literally stepping in the middle of his way out of nowhere. He was trying to pick a fight with Rui, which wasn''t particrly umon for the thug types, but Rui still found it odd for something like that to unfold.


    "Uh m-mister..." She murmured. "Can you put me down?"


    Rui nodded, lowering her. "Let''s get going. Where is this ce? Why have we been leaving the depths of the bazaar and returning to the outskirts?"


    "Don''t worry, you''ll see." She said, growing more confident.


    Eventually, they returned to the books section that Rui recalled seeing when he first entered the Derimont Bazaar. They formed the outermost ring of the Derimont Bazaar, being the first to greet anybody who entered.


    They were also the emptiest stalls and spreads anywhere in the entire Derimont Bazaar. No one cared to buy books among the masses that entered and exited the Derimont Bazaar. That didn''t seem to deter thergework of various hawkers who ran around offering newsletters and other written articles to as many people as they could.


    Yet she quickly entered one of the ruined buildings holding a slew of booksellers, pulling Rui along with her as they headed deeper into the building, beforeing across a bookseller that had covered the entire ce with books on sale.


    A man standing by the door nced at them with piercing eyes. "What do you need?"All text ? N?velD(r)a''ma.Org.


    "W-We need to go down." She said, standing in front of Rui.


    He snorted, waving her off. Yet she persisted, taking out one of the gold coins that Rui gave her and handing it to the man who promptly epted it with a greedy expression. He opened the door beside him, gesturing them in.


    Inside was a small tunnel that declined significantly into the ground.


    "Come on, let''s go quickly." She insisted, pulling him along as they both went down the tunnel.


    Eventually, they had gotten to the bottom of the tunnel, stepping into a massive open space underground. They were instantly greeted with a wave of bustling noise from the chaotic crowds that navigated the first underground bazaar.


    "So this is the undergroundplex..." Rui murmured. "Incredible."


    "Where do you want to go?" She asked, now that they had arrived.


    "For now, I just want to explore the entire ce and see if I can find what I am looking for," Rui replied as his eyes shed around the entire ce with determination.


    He nned on scouring the entire ce looking for the crest of the Beggar''s Sect, and he began doing exactly that. The first underground bazaar turned out to be not all that different from the one atop the surface. The only difference was that the one that he was in right now was a lot ssier and catered to upper-ss clientele.


    He could see hoards of well-dressed individuals each of whom was apanied by Martial Apprentice bodyguards as they navigated the bazaar. themodities being sold at the underground were also slightly different, but just as unptable to Rui as the bazaar atop the surface of the Saiful Abyss.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1336 Bumped Again

    Chapter 1336 Bumped Again


    Themodities sold in the first-level underground bazaar were fancier, more extravagant, and more expensive than the ones atop the surface, yet Rui found them just as unptable as those of the surface.


    "Oh, what a wonderful work of art!"


    "Haha, it was created by the great artist Heretio. The brilliance of this painting is that it makes use of some rare esoteric substances to ensure that she never dies and it keeps her mind fresh, allowing this painting to capture her suffering forever."


    Rui nced to his right, his attention drawn by the rising murmurs from a gathered crowd. He thought he had grown used to the horrors of this ce, but it turned out that he hadn''t even seen anything yet.


    Even he couldn''t help but pause his search as his eyes widened at what he was beholding.


    A painting featuring a woman in distress.


    Yet instead of a painted figure of a woman, there was a real woman grafted into the painting. An expression of horror and despair had molded on her face, yet it only served to entertain.


    "What an incredible authentic capture of emotions. I have never seen another painting this impacting." One man remarked as he twirled his well-groomed mustache.


    "And now, we will begin the bidding. The starting price is five thousand gold, can I get a five thousand one hundred?..."


    Rui simply stared, dumbfounded at the cartoonishly horrific scene that he was watching unfold before him. For a moment, he reconsidered his previous considerations ofunching an attack and killing everybody.


    ''Stop, you have work to do.'' Rui shook his head, exhaling deeply and heading about his way.


    Yet as he stepped forward, he experienced a wave of deja vu.


    BUMP


    Yet another Martial Apprentice intentionally shoved him, furthermore, this one was apanied by other Martial Apprentices.


    "I heard what you did to my brother, tough guy." The Martial Apprentice growled.


    Rui stared at him, confused. "Who...?"


    "Word on the streets is that you my brother out on the surface." The man snarled. "Don''t even y with me, everyone says they saw you."


    ''No they didn''t.'' Rui frowned.


    "You think you''re tou-"


    POW POW POW POW POW!


    Rui knocked all of them out, disappearing before anybody could even realize what had happened. This time he made sure that nobody was or had been paying attention to him.


    Yet when his mind considered those circumstances, there were many things about what he said that didn''t add up.


    "Are you okay?" He nced at the girl in his arms.


    She nodded, fiddling with a bracelet on her wrist. "You sure are strong, mister..."


    "Let''s get going."


    The two of them scoured the entire bazaar, and yet Rui was unable to spot anything that resembled the Beggar''s Sect even in the underground bazaar. Something that was bing increasingly frustrating to him.


    "Let''s go even deeper." Rui shook his head, sighing.


    "Ok." She nodded, before guiding him to yet another bookstore, for some reason.


    ''Are bookstores the only way to travel between bazaars, or is that the only way that she uses?''


    Rui didn''t know, though he could find out with Riemannian Echo, his biggest advantage was that, unlike everyone else, he could sense everything. That was why it was particrly frustrating for him to search with no yields, not even the slightest clue.


    He had been told that the Derimont Bazaar was an avenue that had been created to interact with the Beggar''s Sect and purchase or sell information from them.


    ''They sure are making it extremely difficult to even meet them.'' Rui snorted inwardly as the girl secured ess to the third and final floor with the same song and dance as before.


    As he had predicted, it was even more high-end than the previous two floors. It was also a lot smaller with fewer clientele. On the other hand, he could already tell this was an even wealthier ss of people that purchased shopped for even more messed up stuff.


    He simply ignored them as he went about his task of looking for any signs of the Beggar''s Sect, given that they had reached the final floor, surely he would be able to spot the crest of the Beggar''s Sect.


    BUMP


    Rui heaved a sigh as he underwent a familiar experience yet again. This time, it was a Martial Squire.


    "Punk." He growled. "I heard you knocked my friends out. Pick on some your own si-"


    THWACK!


    The Martial Squire copsed, unconscious.


    This time, Rui didn''t even bother trying to flee the scene. It had failed thest two times, for some reason.


    ''First, a Martial Apprentice bumps into me very intentionally and starts a fight. I knock him out and disappear in a millisecond before people can even notice him falling over. And immediately after a group of Martial Apprentices not only finds me, but insists that everyone saw me knock himout.'' Rui narrowed his eyes, turning to the unconscious Squire. ''Then this clown also somehow finds me despite the fact that I made sure no one saw who knocked him out.''


    His alertness peaked as he swiftly analyzed his circumstances. These were not natural sequences of events.


    No.


    He was being targeted.N?velDrama.Org: text ? owner.


    First, a Martial Apprentice, then a group of them, and finally a Martial Squire. Did he make an enemy out of someone?


    ''No, that doesn''t make much sense.'' Rui shook his head inwardly. ''I may not be a native, but the same could be said for plenty of people in the bazaar. I minded my own business and literally did not interact with pretty much anybody. I would have seen far more simr violence around me if this was all it took.''


    His eyes narrowed. ''It could just be my paranoia but. A Martial Apprentice, a group of Martial Apprentices, and then a Martial Squire. Following the pattern, I should expect to see...''


    "Hey," A man growled behind him. "I saw what you did there."


    Rui turned, before smiling wryly beneath his mask. ''...a group of Martial Squires.''


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1337 Exposed

    Chapter 1337 Exposed


    There were fifteen of them, and surprisingly all of them were high-grade.


    "You think you can just beat my buddy up and-"


    Time slowed down as Rui activated his Martial Heart for just a millisecond. He activated a breathing technique while carrying the girl, ensuring she wouldn''t get hurt. It would have been impossible to fight in such circumstances, but that was only when he was fighting an equal.


    POW POW POW POW...!


    Martial Squires were so weak that even such a handicap was not much of a handicap at all. He swiftly knocked all of them out within a millisecond, before leaping away to a distant isted part of the bazaar.


    The girl fiddled with her bracelet in shock. "Y-You''re so strong...!"


    Rui narrowed his eyes as he stared into her eyes with a piercing stare.


    Three words escaped his mouth.


    "Drop the act."


    "E-Eh?" She tilted her head in confusion. "W-What do you mean sir?"


    The air chilled by a few degrees.


    "Did you think I wouldn''t notice?" Rui asked her with a calm, yet steely voice. "I only began being targeted by Martial Artists after you began leading me around. No matter how cleanly I knocked them out, making sure to do so at a moment when no one was watching us, they always found me and always knew what had happened despite the fact that I ensured that there were no eyewitnesses."


    He paused for a moment, considering her. "It couldn''t have been esoteric surveince measures, because not only was I specifically wary of exactly that, but the entirety of the Derimont Bazaar is an anti-sensory zone. It couldn''t have been a Martial Artist tracking me for the same reasons. And yet they found me despite no surveince, no tracking, and no eyewitnesses.


    He paused for a moment. "...No eye-witnesses except you."


    He had initially thought that she was the one being targeted by various Martial Artists. But if that were the case, they would have told him to leave her while he had the chance. There was no point in acting like he bumped into them and picking a fight with him instead.


    He nced at her bracelet, channeling Riemannian Echo deep into it. The technique''s greatest strength was its range and its ability to bypass anti-sensory means, however, its shoring was detail and depth. It required active mental exertion for Rui to sense deep detail, Rui needed to want to, otherwise, he couldn''t sense it, and he also couldn''t do it while focusing on the range like he had been this entire time.


    "You have an interesting bracelet there," Rui murmured.


    "It''s thest thing my mother left me before dying." She replied.


    Yet she did not stutter despite the pressure Rui exerted on her.


    "Yes, I''m sure that story is true." Rui snorted. "Is that why there is a micro-transmitting device at the center of the beads hidden under ayer of anti-sensory esoteric substances?"


    She didn''t respond.


    There was silence for several seconds.


    "In all the time that I survived the bazaar, I haven''t noticed a single guide. I haven''t seen a single hawker offering guides. Guiding is not a thing that people do here." Rui continued. "I highly doubt that it is something you do either. It was an excuse to approach me. You specifically wanted to approach me particrly."


    His eyes narrowed. "You were targeting me. Yet you weren''t out to rob me in coboration with these Martial Artists. I gave you a handful of the few gold coins freely in the first ce, so it would be redundant and ineffective. Furthermore, approaching me one after the other is also inefficient."


    Several more seconds passed.


    "I was being tested," Rui remarked. "Each hurdle was marginally stronger than the previous one. Step by step. That is quite unnatural."


    She didn''t respond to that either.


    Several seconds passed.


    "Who are you? What do you want? Why did you do all of this?" Rui asked.


    Several seconds passed before she finally moved.


    A smile bloomed on her face. "Impressive, Senior John. You are the first seeker to have seen through me this cleanly. Your deductive ability has far exceeded our expectations."


    Rui narrowed his eyes at the girl.


    He had never told her his alias, yet she addressed him by that name. Thest time he had used that alias was many days ago when he resided in an inn where he registered under that name.


    An inn that was many thousands of kilometers away from the Saiful Region.


    "We apologize for these transgressions," She bowed her head slightly. "We did not expect you to learn of them in the first ce. We did not mean to harm you. We merely wished to test you. Your Martial prowess and your character."


    "...''We''...?" Rui asked.


    "Surely you have figured out the answer to that question." She smiled mischievously.


    Rui''s eyes narrowed. He did, indeed. There were too many clues in her words.


    "The Beggar''s Sect?" Rui whispered.


    She smiled, getting up. "We are interested in why you seek us. I had been instructed that I may grant you an audience if there was merit in your solicitations."


    "So this...All of this...was just to test me? To learn more about me?"


    "We are not in the habit of indulging in transactions where we do not have the upper hand in information." She remarked. "Follow me."


    He simply stared at her figure from behind, before sighing and following her. He had expected to be the one to approach the Beggar''s Sect. He had never expected that the Beggar''s Sect would take the initiative to do so.


    She led him through a series of hidden tunnels, returning back to the bazaar atop, which earned an expression of surprise from him. He had already scoured the entire bazaar atop and had especially paid attention to the centermost part of the bazaar where he had expected them to be hiding.


    Yet he was only further surprised when she headed for the outskirts of the bazaar, where the empty book market was.They entered an abandoned building that was densely packed with books that nobody wanted to pack.


    Arge array of people writing in books were seated across a wide array of tables


    "We have arrived." She remarked. "Be careful about what you say out loud. We can''t have you spilling secrets due tock of caution."


    "This ce is the...?" Rui murmured with surprise.


    "Yes," She remarked. "A trivial market at the forefront of everything. The first thing that anybody sees when they reach the Derimont Bazaar. We are out in the open for the entire world to see, which is why nobody sees us."


    Rui''s eyes widened as he realized the ingenuity of this arrangement. An open base of operations that was entirely out in the open under the simplest of disguises. Everybody who came to the Derimont Bazaar looking for the Beggar''s Sect assumed that the ndestine and furtive intelligence agency was located deep within the bazaar, perhaps even in the underground bazaars hidden deeply from the light.


    It was precisely because of that every single person dismissed the outermost, forefront, and most exposed market and section of the Derimont Bazaar that was entirely out in the open. Not a single person even remotely considered that such a horrible hiding ce could possibly be the base of operations of the secretive Beggar''s Sect.All text ? N?velD(r)a''ma.Org.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1338 Commission

    1338 Commission


    Still, he couldn''t help but be surprised that they had managed to pull it off so well. They had mastered the art of hiding in in sight. This was what it meant to disguise, as opposed to conceal.


    However, these measures weren''t all they took.


    Rui quickly noticed something strange when they entered the building to find rows of people scribbling away on books.


    No one exchanged a word with another.


    Even the girl that led him in did not actually utter a word. They just seemed to stare at each other in silence.


    ''No... Rui narrowed his eyes as he paid attention to their body. "This is non-verbalmunication. They''re relying on subtle body movements and twitches to convey what they''re saying!


    Had it not been for the fact that he had mastered Fauna Flow, he would not have been able to detect this in the first ce. However, he was clearly able to see it thanks to his background in non-verbalmunication and his senses.


    However, even if he knew, he had no idea what was beingmunicated.


    ''I see, rather than developing an extreme dependence on high- grade esotericmunication technology, they use simpler and more humble means tomunicate without it being intercepted! Rui realized.N?velDrama.Org: text ? owner.


    "How were our sales today?"


    "Not bad."


    "Do we have anything to drink? I''m quite thirsty."


    "There''s some punch in the cupboards."


    ?


    "Did you get good sleep?" "Not at all, I''m afraid."


    Rui simply listened to an incoherent exchange with furrowed eyebrows. ''Codednguage on top of non-verbalnguage!


    Apparently, she had learned what she needed to. She turned towards him, nodding at him simply. "Follow me."


    They went deeper and deeper into the abandonedplex that had now been turned into a mini book bazaar, before taking him into a small room with a table, two chairs, cupboards, and shelves filled with documents. "Have a seat."


    She closed the door behind them, and immediately, he felt a powerful familiar field of sensory suppression.


    A measure to ensure the privacy of a conversation. Yet Rui found it to be rather dangerous


    "Setting up a powerful anti-sensory field is no different from announcing that something important is happening here," Rui remarked. "Martial Artists nearby will easily be able to detect the field hampering their senses, creating a small area that they cannot sense."


    "That is why we have activated tens of thousands of simr and even stronger fields across the entirety of the Derimont Bazaar." She remarked impassively. "Making this one insignificant."


    "..." Rui was actually left speechless by such extravagant measures to ensure that they didn''t draw any attention.


    "Let''s begin without further ado," She dered. "Let me begin by stating that any disclosure of valuable information of the Beggar''s Sect that you have already learned will be interpreted as an act of hostility. Do not think you can get away with doing so. We are everywhere. Every time. We know everything. Betray us, and you will die. Not only will you die, but everyone you care about in the


    ?


    Floating Sect will also die. Fast."


    Despite the fact that she was a sixteen-year-old girl sitting before a Martial Senior, she didn''t disy even the slightest bit of difort as she boldly threatened him.


    More importantly, she knew that he was from the Floating Sect. He felt like he should be shocked, but he wasn''t. They were living up to their hype, so in actuality, the impact of this revtion wasn''t even that great.


    The deputy director of the intelligence department who reassured him that the Beggar''s Sect could not gain ess to the Floating Sect had actually entirely underestimated who he was dealing with. No, it was possible that he himself was a spy for the Beggar''s Sect. The very existence of the Beggar''s Sect actually shattered Rui''s ability to trust normal people.


    "...It''s hard to believe that you''re a sixteen-year-old girl." Rui sighed.


    She smiled. "That''s because I''m not. I''m old enough to be your grandmother, this appearance is the result of esoteric cosmetic surgery. I am Sian, a senior member of the foreign affairs


    department of our Saiful branch. Ah, you don''t need to introduce yourself, Senior Falken."


    Rui cocked his head back in surprise,pletely stunned at the multiple revtions that she had dropped on him. "You had mepletely fooled."


    "It is what I was trained for, after all." She spoke. "Now then, I''m sure you have some questions. You can ask them and get them out of the way."


    Rui stared at her for a moment. "Those tests earlier... they were to ascertain my capabilities?"


    "Just as a rough minimum." Sian nodded. "We also wanted to verify the intelligence that imed you broke through to the Senior Realm."


    "...I presume you already know why I have reached out to the Beggar''s Sect?"


    She simply stared at him for a moment, before responding. "We are aware that it has something to do with the chairman of Deacon Industries based in the Shionel Confederation; Deacon Vernes. One of the reasons we chose to approach you was that we wanted to gain rification on what exactly it is you wanted to purchase from us."


    The moment had arrived.


    "I want any and all strategic intelligence on the measures, failsafe, and contingencies that Chairman Deacon has taken to protect himself from threats to his life." Rui narrowed his eyes. "I want to know every single challenge I will face, right down to every detail, if I were to mount an assassination or an assault on him."


    Rui didn''t even bother hiding his intentions. They were too obvious in the first ce, there only ever was one reason that anybody would require such kind of information on another person.


    She simply stared at him for a few seconds, considering his response. "Intelligence on Chairman Deacon is not easy to obtain. His corporation and intelligence department have adopted the strictest of a need-to-know basis policy, making it difficult to gain all the intelligence you seek through our modus operandi."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1339 Price

    1339 Price


    She paused for a moment, before continuing. "We certainly can supply you with the intelligence you seek, however, it will take quite some time before we are able to arrive at our bare minimum degree of certainty and verify its veracity to the highest degree. Furthermore, the intelligence that you have specifically requested from us not only is very broad but also high in its requirement for depth of detail. We will need additional time in order to collect all of it as per your specifications, and even more time in order to guarantee its authenticity."


    Rui simply stared at him. "How long?"


    She got up from her chair, before heading plucking some documents from the many shelves of them across the room.


    She sat down before him, carelessly opening it right in front of him uncaring for whether he read it or not. And he could see why.


    [The sun was red, but the bunny still ensured that there was no grass left. That was why the river washed away the dream and left only biscuits behind before a mountain bounced atop the cushion]


    It was incoherent.


    ''Coded script! His eyes narrowed. ''No wonder they''re so nonchnt about this information!


    She drew his attention when she closed the document, pushing it to the side. "It will most likely take a year or two before we have rued every ounce of the intelligence you seek while also being able to guarantee its uracy to the highest degree. If you wish to purchase this information sooner, you will have topromise on the amount and the depth of detail, or the degree of authenticity, if you are willing."


    That was certainly much longer than Rui had expected. Yet her?tone did not make it seem like her answer reflected poorly on the Beggar''s Sect.


    ''It''s the opposite!'' Rui realized.


    Sage-level nations were extremely powerful in every regard, including their intelligence-gathering capabilities and their ability to conceal strategic information. An enormous amount of capital and funds was dedicated to training agents of the highest caliber and developing the best anti-espionage technology that existed. Given that the world knew of the existence of the Beggar''s Sect, it could be expected that powerful nations woulde up with systems of intelligence safekeeping that were specifically designed to counter the Beggar''s Sect''s modus operandi.


    With that in mind, Rui could understand why not even the Beggar''s Sect could just wave their hands and pull that information out of nowhere as they did with himself and the Floating Sect, a Senior- level organization with much more limited resources.


    The fact that she still confidently guaranteed that they would be able to provide him with the intelligence he wanted showed that the Beggar''s Sect was confident in circumventing all the anti- espionage measures that Chairman Deacon had in his corporation and personal executive staff.


    He probably would not find another organization that was not only as incrediblypetent and effective as the Beggar''s Sect but was also so open to selling information to him. He would be a fool to refuse this deal.


    "I don''t require the information immediately," Rui replied. "A year or two sounds fine to me. I ept that offer!"


    Sian smiled at him. "We are d that you are willing to ept that offer. However, I''m sure I don''t need to remind you that this is a transaction, not a donation. The intelligence that you seek tomission from us will require a lot of time and an enormous amount of human resources that took an enormous amount of time and capital to set up in the first ce. The price for these services is quite high, even for Martial Seniors."


    "Name your price." Rui simply remarked.


    "Given that you are a Martial Artist, we won''t name a mary price," She remarked. "Instead, we willmission your Martial Art services by having you engage in various missions or operations that are relevant to your skill set. We will even allow you to choose the kind of operations or missions that you want to engage in. You can focus on targeting more difficult and higher-value operations or focus on easier and lower-value missions, the former will allow you to fulfill your payment to our sect much sooner than thetter."


    Rui considered her words.


    He had expected that it woulde down to this. He had nothing else to offer but his power, which was a lot. The only way he could possibly engage in transactions with a powerful organization like the Beggar''s Sect was by paying with his Martial Art.


    He wasn''t averse to this option.


    Instead, he actually weed it. As a Martial Senior, he was extremely inexperienced. Spars with Ieyasu, no matter how intense, as well as spars against the guardians every now and then were all he had.


    That was far from enough.


    He needed real experience in the Senior Realm, and while his general experience as a Martial Artist was most certainly very relevant, the paradigms of the Martial Heart and how it impactedbat was something that he needed to understand and master.


    The only way he could do that was through sheer and raw experience. He needed to throw himself into adversity against other Martial Seniors and Senior-level threats and forge himself as a


    ?


    Martial Senior, and missions were the best way of doing that while also earning some money and making the payment for the intelligence that he was going to purchase from the Beggar''s Sect.


    He knew they were the best way since he had used missions to hone himself when he entered the Apprentice and the Squire Realm.All text ? N?velD(r)a''ma.Org.


    "How long would it take for me to fulfill my payment to the Beggar''s Sect through these means?" Rui asked.


    "Several years at bare minimum, could very well be much longer." She replied immediately.


    Rui wasn''t particrly pleased to hear that. He knew how valuable the services of a Martial Senior, it went to show the sheer value of the services that he was purchasing from the Beggar''s Sect.


    Thankfully, he was not short of time. He had a little under seven years left before it was game over for his family. He was certain that he would be able to fulfill his payment to the Beggar''s Sect before that timeframe ended.\


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1340 Path Forward

    Chapter 1340 Path Forward


    "I ept that offer." Rui nodded.


    Sian smiled in return. "We are pleased to hear that."


    "But I do want to iron out the details of our agreement." Rui insisted. "I want to make sure that there is absolute rity on precisely what the transaction is."


    He did not want to end up in a situation where he inadvertently agreed to conditions that he would never have wanted to, all because he didn''t pay attention.


    Over the next few hours, the two of them dug deep into the details of their agreement, pouring over every detail, each side making sure that their interests were not disenfranchised.


    It wasn''t long before the deal was sealed, and the two of them signed an extensive contract detailing every use that the two of them hade to agree to.


    "Pleasure doing business with you, Senior Falken," She smiled at him, shaking his hand. "As long as you fulfill the payment of yourmission, I can promise you that you will not find uscking."


    "I look forward to that day," Rui nodded. "Ah, one more thing. How much payment would it take for the Beggar''s Sect to not sell any information on me to anybody?"


    Rui was particrly concerned with this matter. Although their contract included a confidentiality use that disallowed the sale of any information pertaining to the contract, they still had plenty of sensitive information on him that could be sold.


    Just the fact that they were aware of his Falken alias was too much. If Master Uma ever chose to shop at the Beggar''s Sect for information on Squire Falken, then she might end up acquiring information on him.


    That was definitely an oue that he needed to avoid allowing to unfold.


    "That will add more time of additional service provision on your part and it will only apply to the information that we have gathered at this moment." She calmly replied. "If you want to prevent the sale of your information, and hamper our business, then you''ll have topensate us ordingly."


    She didn''t even bother hiding the fact that his information would be sold if someonemissioned it. That was something that could not be denied and not something they cared to deny in the first ce.


    "I ept that price." Rui nodded.


    Another session of contract forming ensued before both sides were satisfied with the second auxiliary agreement.


    "Well then," She remarked. "If you do not have any further matters of business with us, then we can conclude this meeting. I believe I haveprehensively exined the system by which you can begin fulfilling yourmission payment."N?velDrama.Org: text ? owner.


    Rui nodded.


    Essentially, the Beggar''s Sect had a system simr to the Martial Union, where he could pick and choose certain operations and missions to partake in. This system was quite effective and was universally adopted by many organizations in many ways. He would need to go to a particrplex establishment in the book section of the Derimont Bazaar where operations that he could choose to engage in were held.


    Unlike the Martial Union, however, these operations were notmissions from other clientele but were operations from and for the Beggar''s Sect itself. It gave him insight into what the Beggar''s Sect''s interests and agendas were, as well as what their needs were, so he wasn''t averse to this arrangement.


    The Beggar''s Sect probably relied on the Martial Art services provided by Martial Artists who purchased information from them to fulfill operations that were too impractical and impossible for ordinary humans. It was a bit of a symbiotic rtionship, he came to realize.


    That was one of the reasons he wasn''t too concerned about the sale of his information, this rtionship was very valuable to the Beggar''s Sect, they most likely would rather avoid alienating Martial Artists by selling their intelligence to foreign parties.


    All in all, Rui was quite content with the arrangements that they hade to, the Beggar''s Sect struck him as a no-nonsense highlypetent organization that got straight to business.


    "From now on, I will be your point of correspondence with our sect," Sian informed him. "I''ll be responsible for providing you with updates on yourmission, while also being responsible for ensuring that you fulfill yourmission payment. I look forward to working with your, Senior Falken."


    "As do I."


    "You may begin your fulfillment of avable operations and missions to undertake immediately if you wish." She remarked. "I can help guide you as you limatize to this system. You may let me know if there are any particr kinds of missions that you are interested in."


    Rui considered her words for a few seconds. "I wanted to undertake some assassination operations. Particrly, assassination operations on targets that are protected by Martial Seniors."


    These kinds of missions were relevant to taking Chairman Deacon down.


    She narrowed her eyes. "Those kinds of missions are generally reserved for higher-grade Martial Artists who are able to ovee multiple Martial Seniors to assassinate those targets. I''m afraid we cannot entrust you with those yet."


    Rui nodded. He was aware that he wasn''t entirely qualified for more difficult Senior-level missions. He still needed to gather more experience and develop his Martial Art even more to be even stronger. It didn''t help that his youth meant that his Martial Heart was certainly on the weaker side as well.


    Training to grow stronger was just as important as experience. What he wanted was to bnce both of them out from here on out. That automatically meant that he couldn''t pick missions that would take away too much of his time. It was best to go for missions that he was mostpatible with and that he couldplete quicker than other Martial Seniors by relying on his many strengths.


    He also had to pick a path forward in regard to the three choices he had when it came to developing his Martial Art.


    He nced at Sian. "How much can the Beggar''s Sect help me with growing stronger and developing my Martial Art? Can you provide me with learning and growth resources when ites to Martial Art techniques in specific fields like mental techniques, and assassination techniques? Can you procure information on powerful esoteric substances such as primordial seed?"


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1341 Inadequate

    Chapter 1341 Inadequate


    She considered his words for a moment, understanding what he meant.All content ? N/.?vel/Dr/ama.Org.


    "We do possess ess to techniques in the fields of mind and assassination, however, those techniques require training and growth resources that we do not have ess to," She exined. "As for primordial seed, I do not recognize the name, however, I have already transmitted a message to gather all the information we have on it."


    Rui considered her earlier words. "So you''re saying the techniques you have are not of much use by themselves?"


    She nodded. "We can still provide you with them if you want, however, it would be a challenge to make use of them."


    "Then... can I also purchase information on ces across the continent for Senior-level growth and training resources?" Rui asked. "I intend to train and develop my Martial Art alongside the operations and missions Iplete for the Beggar''s Sect."


    Ideally, he hoped to travel around to different ces where he had the opportunity to grow stronger, simr to what he had done as a Martial Squire after leaving the Shionel Confederation while alsopleting missions in these various regions. That would be the best approach in his opinion.


    It was definitely far better than sitting in one ce andpleting the same kinds of missions over and over again while trying to squeeze his creativity to pump out good techniques over and over without giving it any inspiration of any kind.


    A wealth of experiences was the foundation for good imagination and creativity, it served as ammunition for good ideas. On top of that, he wanted to expose himself to what it was actually like to be a Martial Senior in this world, something he had yet to truly do.


    "You have the freedom to go about how you intend toplete yourmission payment however you want," She noted. "But the intelligence that you requested will only be delivered after youplete yourmission payment in its entirety. We do not mind supplying the other pieces of information you have requested pre-payment, but that does not apply to the intelligence surrounding Chairman Deacon."


    Rui nodded. "That''s reasonable."


    It was essentially to make sure that Rui didn''t just renege on their deal if he got the intelligence he wanted, while the other pieces of information were less important and valuable inparison, thus there was no harm in supplying them to him before he made the payment for them.


    It wasn''t long before the door opened another person stepped in with documents, handing them over to Sian before leaving.


    "These documents contain the information you were seeking." She remarked, handing them over to Rui. "But you''ll have to sign another contract before we can hand them over to you."


    Thankfully, many of the terms and conditions could be carried over from the previous one, which allowed both sides to get done with their business.


    "It was a pleasure doing business with you," Sian shook his hand as they got up. "Please prepare a list of your generalpetencies and areas of expertise so that we can tailor and rmend operations and missions to suit your strengths and capabilities. Of course, you''re free to reject them and pursue other operations and missions as long as you arepetent enough in the necessary and relevant fields, but you will be able toplete missions fastest if you abide by our rmendations."


    Rui considered that, shrugging. "I am not averse to that, but I do intend on expanding my skillset during my travels, so I may choose to go against your rmendations."


    "That is your prerogative." She remarked lightly. "Now then, if you do not have any further business, our meeting here has concluded. Once again, it was a pleasure doing business with you."


    Rui nodded. "I have onest question."


    Sian simply stared at him, waiting.


    "When you said you were tasked with evaluating my power and my character, would your judgment of thetter have impacted the willingness of the Beggar''s Sect toplete transactions with me?" Rui wondered with curiosity.


    "Of course," She replied. "We do not engage in business with individuals who cannot be trusted as well as unstable elements, or parties that we are in a hostile rtionship with. On the other hand, we wee independent Martial Artists who are willing to provide services that we need in exchange for information and intelligence that only we can provide. We judged you to be of thetter sort, hence the smooth transaction."


    Rui figured there was more to it. it was probably the fact that he disyed a calm andposed temperament despite having much to be frustrated by while he was guided by her.


    Too many Martial Artists were unstable and thus untrustworthy, people like him were probably breaths of fresh air to organizations like the Beggar''s Sect.


    Rui bid her goodbye, carrying the documents with him as he left the book market. and the Derimont Bazaar atrge without anybody disying even a hint of suspicion towards him. The book market was as ignored as always, and the foreign affairs department of the Saiful branch of the Beggar''s Sect continued to operate in broad daylight without anybody ever realizing their presence.


    It was actually incredibly impressive.


    ''Just how many people enter the Derimont Bazaar with the same interest in the Beggar''s Sect as me only topletely walk past it and ignore it when they first reach the Derimont Bazaar, thinking that the Beggar''s Sect would be buried deep within the Derimont Bazaar?''


    Probably all of them, seeing as how the book market had probably yet to be exposed as a base for the sect.


    Based on thepetencies that they had disyed, he now understood how the sect managed to foil a Kandrian princess of all people in a nation that held intelligence gathering safeguarding to extremely high standards even across the nation. He was also certain that they would seed in bringing him the information he sought so that he could kill his greatest enemy.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1342 Guidance

    Chapter 1342 Guidance


    He retreated to a simple inn in one of the more ptable nations in the Saiful Region. He didn''t want to spend any extra time in the Derimont Bazaar that he didn''t need to, after all.


    He also had some reading to do, with him were documents that he needed to read fully, they featured a lot of ces where he, as a Senior could grow stronger.


    He had specifically asked Guildmaster Bradt for ces that could help Martial Squires go, most of those ces were now irrelevant to him since he was a Martial Senior.


    Furthermore, unlike before, he didn''t just want to head to random ces and improve random parameters, he had specific goals in mind. Mental techniques, assassination techniques, and techniques based on primordial seed. These were his goals.


    The issue was that there weren''t too many avenues to train those the same way there were for more foundational fields like offense, defense, and maneuvering.


    There were absolutely no ces to train primordial seed techniques since such techniques did not even exist. He needed to familiarize himself with primordial seed, and then develop a framework around it. This was why he first needed information on it, and then samples of the substance just to begin the process of experimentation.


    Mental techniques and assassination techniques on the other hand were a lot more prevalent, but still much less so than the primary fields ofbat. There were almost no equivalents to Thundering Valley or the Umiana Trench for mental and assassination techniques.


    What there were, however, were powerful Martial Artists who were known for epting Martial Artists of the Lower Realms as disciples. Whether out of generosity or out of principle, they aided and guided Martial Artists of the lower Realms in fields that they had mastered.


    Rui was not strictly averse to seeking their help. He disdained relying on others when it came to the core of his Martial Art, but he didn''t hold such strict principles when it came to aspects of his Martial Ar that were not a part of the core of his Martial Art.


    He had refused Master Deivon''s offer to help him with the Metabody System precisely for this reason, it was too important to the core of his Martial Art; the VOID algorithm and hence it was something that he had to handle by himself.


    However, he looked forward to getting some guidance from powerful Martial Artists of the Upper Realms when it came to mental or assassination techniques. Naturally, he still intended to create his own techniques, but in order to create techniques he needed the appropriate building blocks.


    That was where these mentors or guides could help him out, providing him a foundation to create a powerful mental technique with.


    He nced through the various reports and profiles that the Beggar''s Sect had neatly organized for him.


    [Master Zeamer Ger-Vil]


    Rui''s eyebrows rose as he came across an interesting profile. ording to the avable intelligence, Master Zeamer Ger-Vil was a renowned Master of mental techniques. He was known moremonly as the Hypnomaster, a master of hypnotic techniques of all sorts. Getting epted as a disciple by him was a dream for many, yet it was also an unattainable dream since the man was said to be extremely picky with whom he epted.


    ording to the information provided by the Beggar''s Sect, he had no students under him at the moment, finding the entire crowd of applicants to be unworthy. Thest student was said to be a Martial Squire and had left his tutge six years ago.


    Rui was quite intrigued by this. He had known another Master who was also a master of hypnotic techniques; Master Carian. His Heavenly Pathos technique had put Rui in an illusion that even he was unable to break out of easily. This was despite Rui''s powerful mind and symbiote.


    Rui had grown intrigued by the potential he had in this field.


    He just knew that he was truly capable of wonders now that he had finally finished solidifying the foundations of his Martial Art and could dedicate more energy to esoteric fields.


    [Master Reina Cara]


    Known as the Silent Shadow, she was said to be one of the most notorious assassins in the Martial World, having been extremely active for almost two centuries before finally stepping away from the world.


    However, even when she retired from the pinnacle of the assassination world, she still decided to pass on her skills and experience, having given rise to many feared killers in the world.


    However, she had extremely high standards for whom she epted as a disciple. It was said that only the most driven and talented Martial Artists were worthy of her consideration.


    Rui was determined to learn as much from them as he could from them, the sheer wealth of experience and mastery of their respective fields they had were far better than anything he could possibly get from techniques he purchased from the Beggar''s Sect.All text ? N?velD(r)a''ma.Org.


    As for the Primordial Seed, the Beggar''s Sect supplied him with a decent amount of information to start with. He would gain ess to more once hepleted the initialmission payment for them.


    He was fine with that arrangement. Ever since he learned that research into the substance required the aid of Martial Masters or even Martial Sages, he knew that getting his hands on it as a Martial Senior was not going to be easy at all.


    Though he probably could have exchanged the favor he got as Virodha Champion for full ess to the research, he didn''t have the opportunity to do so for obvious reasons.


    Regardless, the information provided by the Beggar''s Sect gave him several directions to go in for the next phase of his voyage. He would explore these various options in time, growing stronger as he did while simultaneously fulfilling hismission payment to gain the information he needed.


    Once he grew strong enough in his travels as a Martial Senior andpleted hismission payment, it would finally be time to eliminate Chairman Deacon once and for all.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1343 Coup

    Chapter 1343 Coup


    That wasn''t the only information that Rui got from the Beggar''s Sect. A separate document that he had received from Sian was rted to the avable missions in the Saiful Region to get him started.


    Although the contract that he signed with the Beggar''s Sect gave him remarkabletitude in regard to the schedule at which he wanted to fulfill hismission payment, he understood that it was best to reinforce their agreement by beginning immediately. It was a way of demonstrating that he was fully serious about their transaction and that they needed to get started on fulfilling their agreement of the deal.


    Furthermore, he hadn''t forgotten that the most important thing to him at the moment was gaining some experience as a Martial Senior. That priority trumped all others at the moment, thus fulfilling some missions was also in his general interests.


    He opened the document only to find that the first page warned him that the document would incinerate itself the moment that he closed it.


    ''Strict.'' Rui mused.


    The Beggar''s Sect needed to take such measures to ensure that its secrets never got leaked. Unlike the previous document which only contained the information that Rui purchased, this document contained sensitive information about the internal missions and operations that the Beggar''s Sect needed toplete. They could not allow this information to spread.


    Rui didn''t mind the measure. Once he read it a single time, he would never need to read it ever again. Thus he quickly skimmed through it, before closing it.


    FSSSHHH!All text ? N?velD(r)a''ma.Org.


    It instantlybusted into strangely transparent mes that didn''t burn anything else,pletely turning the entire document into trash.


    Thorough, as expected of the Beggar''s Sect.


    ''Now then.'' Rui''s eyes clouded in thought as he revisited al the data that he had just stored.


    [Assault mission; Ferendul coup mission]


    The title intrigued him, already revealing to him what the mission was going to be about. He recalled the Ferendul Republic, having visited it when he first entered the Saiful Region. A broken nation with impoverished and oppressed citizens who were ruled by a tyrannical military.


    ording to the intelligence provided by the Beggar''s Sect, the Ferendul Republic apparently used to be a kingdom ruled by a Martial Senior queen. The queen had a son, the crown prince, who had gone on to be a Martial Artist as well. All was well until the queen announced her intentions to abolish the monarchy and instate a democracy in the Ferendul Kingdom at the end of her reign.


    Her announcement had angered many in power.


    ording to various reports, the crown prince was also furious at this announcement, having grown to believe that he was destined to inherit the throne and rule Ferendul as the next Martial ruler.


    He had refused to ept her decision, and instead, chose to usurp the throne from her hands.


    There was only one issue; He was a Martial Squire, while his mother was a Martial Senior.


    He was powerless before her, he would not be able to sessfully defy her. That was why he had hatched a n.


    He waited for years patiently.


    Waiting for the day that his mother grew pregnant once more so that he could attack her when she was vulnerable.


    Ordinarily, even the burden of pregnancy was not enough to bridge the gap between the Squire and the Senior Realm.


    Not even close.


    However, in order to wield the full power of the Senior Realm, she would need to activate her Martial Heart.


    In doing so, the Martial Heart would kill her unborn baby violently. Every Martial Senior possessed a body that was fundamentally and foundational able to withstand and wield the ferocious power of the Martial Heart.


    The same, however, could not be said for a fetus who depended on the sustenance from the mother''s blood. Instantaneous death was inevitable.


    Ordinarily, not even this heavy restriction was enough to bridge the gap between the Squire and the Senior Realm, which is why the queen had never activated her Martial Heart.


    Yet, her son did. Defying the odds, the crown prince managed to break through to the Senior Realm just moments before his mother defeated him, catching her off-guard.


    The surprise breakthrough, as well as the extreme reluctance to harm her own unborn child, ensured that her Martial Heart had never activated that battle. She died on the spot, along with her unborn child.


    The Ferendul Kingdom had gained a new ruler that day.


    Yet the new king did not intend to follow through with his mother''s promise. Instead, he chose to go in an even more authoritarian direction, imposing martialw, and ruling the country with the military.


    Many of the queen''s loyalists had fled the nation, taking refuge deep within the Derimont Bazaar that no nation dared to antagonize. With the help of the Beggar''s Sect, they rued power for several years and were now only one step away from returning to the Ferendul Kingdom tounch a civil war against the current establishment.


    There was only one thing that was necessary; a Martial Senior.


    They needed a Martial Senior to take on King Albus and defeat him.


    That was where Rui woulde in if he did decide to ept the mission.


    "Sure, why not?" Rui mused.


    He had nopunctions against killing the king. A son who would dare to kill his own pregnant mother was someone who he could kill without feeling even the slightest shred of guilt or remorse. He would even feel vindictive in the process.


    Furthermore, the king was not too experienced as a Martial Senior either, having been in the Senior Realm for only several years for the most part, and being consumed with his position as king. He was the perfect opponent to baptize Rui as a Martial Senior.


    He immediately epted the mission, it was convenient and allowed him to fight a death battle with a Martial Senior with rtive ease, and would allow him to repay the Beggar''s Sect, for whom the Ferendul Republic was a strategically important intelligence gathering base as it served as a bridge for all those who wanted to enter the Saiful Region looking for the Beggar''s Sect.


    They had gained information on Rui in the same way as well, after all.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1344 Meet

    Chapter 1344 Meet


    The decision-making process this time was remarkably quick. He epted the first mission that he came across pretty much unhesitatingly, and quickly headed over to the Derimont Bazaar to not only register with the operation but also to meet up with the coup force that sought to dethrone King Albus.


    It wasn''t too long before he arrived back at the inconspicuously conspicuous book market, heading in where he received a private meeting with his point of contact with the Beggar''s Sect and exined his choices.


    Sian nodded. "We are d to see that you havemenced yourmission payment immediately. The Ferendul Coup mission is certainly a good ce to start. We shall connect you with the coup force that resides in the Beggar''s Sect."


    He was given a small map that marked a spot in the Martial Art section of the Derimont.


    Apparently, the Ferendul coup force had been recuperating in the Derimont BAzaar whilepleting Martial Art missions for various clientele to gather capital to build up their forces.


    It was said that they essentially had everything they needed except a Martial Senior, which meant they most likely had built up a number of Martial Apprentice and Martial Squire forces that could earn a lump sum of money.


    "Anything I should know before I meet them?" Rui asked.


    "Their biggest concern is whether you will be able to defeat King Albus." Sian pointed out. "As long as you can convince them of that, you will be fine."


    "I presume that the Beggar''s Sect is going to help with that," Rui remarked. "You are aware that I am stronger than younger Martial Seniors. The power one possessed as a Martial Squire very directly carries over to the Senior Realm, and impacts your starting point in the Senior Realm. The fact that King Albus needed to break through to the Senior Realm to defeat a pregnant Martial Senior who could not activate the Martial Heart means that he is decisively weaker than me when ites to his Martial Art."


    Rui had defeated Martial Seniors without their Martial Hearts. A pregnant Martial Seniors was simply not an opponent that could take him on even as a Martial Squire. Unless the gap in their Martial Hearts was sorge that it could bridge the gap in them as Martial Artists, Rui was rather confident that he was up for the task.


    "We are aware that you are abnormally stronger for your age and for someone with your youth in the Senior Realm," Sian remarked. "We have passed this information on to the Ferendul coup forces. However, it is quite likely that they will seek confirmation of this by themselves. This matter is far too important to them, after all."


    Rui could definitely understand that. Their battle would decide the oue of the entire civil war, even if the coup won the Squire, Apprentice, and human-level battles, it would all be for nothing if Rui lost the Senior-level battle.


    It wasn''t long before his brief meeting with Sian ended and he immediately headed to the Martial Art market of the Derimont Bazaar. It was most certainly one of the most popted markets in the Derimont Bazaar, naturally. Martial Art services were extremely popr in almost all ces in the world, and the Derimont Bazaar served as a natural broker between consumers and the Martial Artist suppliers themselves.


    He attracted a lot of attention as he walked through the market. The normal humans sensed that he was an incredibly powerful Martial Artist, while the Martial Apprentices and Martial Squires recognized that he was a Martial Senior.


    They all steered clear out of his path. Not a single person wanted to mess with a Martial Senior, such was the deterrence that Martial Artists who were just one step away from the Upper Realm possessed.


    KNOCK KNOCK


    Rui knocked on arge warehouse. This was supposed to be the disguised hidden location of the Ferendul coup force in the Derimont Bazaar. A few secondster, a man cracked open the door with a wary nce, flicking his head up a little in a gesture to question what Rui wanted.


    Rui didn''t even bother responding, he simply provided the man with an envelope that Sian had supplied him as a way to confirm his identity.


    The door closed as the man epted it, heading inside, only to return in a minute.


    "We''ve been waiting for you." He remarked. "Come in."


    Inside were innumerable Martial Artists, most of whom were in the Apprentice Realm. Yet he even saw a few dozen Martial Squires, most of whom were low-grade.


    The man led him deep into the warehouse until he stumbled upon a smallpartment with anti-sensory measures blockading it. Inside was a man he recognized from the information provided in the mission briefing.All content ? N/.?vel/Dr/ama.Org.


    The former king of the Ferendul Kingdom. A man who became the king having married the queen after she seeded the throne. He had been the first to rally the Martial Artists that refused to ept King Albus'' reign as legitimate.


    "Wee to our humble abode, Senior John. I am Farun Ferendul" The man greeted Rui with grace. "It shames me that I am unable to arrange for greater hospitality for the Martial Senior that has chosen to aid us in our plight. I hope you found ourmission payment satisfactory."


    "I have a separate arrangement with the sect," Rui remarked. "But rest assured, I am satisfied with it. I have nopunctions about aiding you with your operation."


    "I am d to hear that." The man replied, nodding. "In that case, I hope you don''t mind if we evaluate whether your prowess meets the satisfactory range, then. Although the sect has given us many reassurances, it behooves us to evaluate your nheless as a measure of caution."


    "Do what you must." Rui simply said. "I don''t have anypunctions with that, and am more than willing to cooperate."


    "Good. Then I hope you don''t mind demonstrating your skill against our Martial Squires, without the use of the power of the Senior Realm, that is."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1345 Demonstration

    Chapter 1345 Demonstration


    Rui smiled underneath his mask. "Of course."


    A bunch of low-grade Martial Squires were so weak that they might as well have been Martial Apprentices to him, he probably wouldn''t even notice the difference. Apparently, Farun didn''t understand just how strong Rui was despite what the sect informed him. He would have picked a greater challenge if he did.


    Nheless, Rui found himself facing all of the Martial Squires of the coup force in the Saiful Abyss which was far away from the direction that the Ferendul nation was.


    They surrounded him, taking their stances. Rui simply stood in ce, unable to feel even the slightest hint of pressure. He had reached a stage where he could simultaneouslyfortably mop up multiple grade-ten Martial Squires with ease when he was a Martial Squire himself. High-grade Martial Squires were nothing short of weak, and he didn''t even notice low-grade Martial Squires anymore.


    "Any time." Rui remarked.


    Those wordsmenced the spar as all the Martial Squiresshed out forward, yet they were so slow that Rui needed to actually wait for them to arrive. He didn''t even bother wasting any time when they did.


    POW POW POW POW POW.....!


    One by one, all of them fell to swift and powerful blurs that knocked them out before they even realized what happened.


    In less than a second, he had knocked all of them out.


    Sometimeter, he found himself before Farun once more, who looked at him with an impressed expression. "It appears that the sect waspletely urate in their evaluation of you, as always. You are more than qualified to fight Albus. My apologies for doubting you, however, I need to be skeptical of everything in order to ensure that nothing goes wrong."


    "Don''t worry about it." Rui casually replied. "When does the operation begin and how do you want me to coordinate with your forces."


    "We will begin the operation in a week, which is the soonest now that we have confirmed a Senior-levelbat force." The man replied. "Your role is simple. We will attack when Albus is away from the throne and far away from our conflicts on the other side of the Ferendul. All you need to do is be there at that time and ce, and kill him when he tries to return to the throne in the wake of conflict."


    Rui nodded, wordlessly.


    It was a simple operation on his part, and Rui appreciated that. Although he was ustomed toing up withplex and sophisticated ns that had the highest probability of seeding, he did appreciate simplicity as well.


    Especially when he wasn''t the oneing up with all the ns.


    "Albus spends the night of the full moon away from the throne on one of the countryside mansions," Farun exined. "All you need to do is assault him there, potentially ambush him, and take him down then and there."


    He made sure to mark the point on the Ferendul maps of differing detail, honing in on the point, while also specifying the time and date. He even offered Rui a pocket watch that counted down to when Rui needed to be there.


    It appeared that he didn''t trust Martial Artists very much.


    It wasn''t long before Rui''s business was concluded with the man, he simply took his leave returning to his inn. There wasn''t much left for him to do. A week of time wasn''t enough to guarantee that he could finish another mission before this one was due, so he avoided taking the risk.


    He simply spent his days meditating as he brought himself to his peak mentally. Although he didn''t think that such measures were necessary, he did them anyway.


    It was his first fight in the Senior Realm. The information provided by the Beggar''s Sect had extensively covered his Martial Art, yet Rui had decided to avoid looking into that information.


    He didn''t care if it lowered the probability of sess, he wanted a genuine test of his ability as a Martial Senior. He was not interested in preparing for this battle since that would make him much stronger than he normally was inbat.


    Furthermore, he looked forward to a genuine fight in the Senior Realm, not just spars or duels.


    He had yet to gain a good understanding of how strong he was as a Martial Senior. He knew that he was definitely well above the average starting point for Martial Seniors, but he also knew that he was on the weaker end of Martial Seniors, as well. Meaning that across the wide scale of grades, he was most certainly on the lower sight.


    He hoped that this uing fight would give him a better understanding of how own position.


    After a week of excruciatingly long waiting, the day had finally arrived. Rui corresponded with Farun for a bit before it was time for him to depart for the Ferendul Republic. He could have simply activated his Martial Heart and rushed for the spot, but he recalled what Senior Sarak had told him quite well.N?velDrama.Org holds this content.


    The Martial heart was too important and significant to be made use of in such a frivolous manner. It would also weaken him against King Albus, and while he wanted a fair fight, he did not want to sabotage his normal standard power.


    Thus he did it the hard way, taking his time as he crossed multiple borders to reach the Ferendul Republic. Once he entered the nation, he needed to be even more discreet, making sure to avoid the military carriages that patrolled the streets for seemingly no reason.


    He had arrived a little ahead of time, choosing to remain at some distance away from the mansion that Albus would allegedly visit when the night came. He kept the pocket watch he received at hand, watching it tick as time passed.


    The night grew solemn and grave as the air grew heavy. It was as though the nation held its breath in trepidation of what was about to unfold.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1346 Is That All

    Chapter 1346 Is That All


    The nations in the Saiful region were aware of what was unfolding. Many of them possessed strong diplomatic ties to Farun Ferendul, the previous king, and did not like the militaristic regime that had been instated by the usurper.


    It was in their interests to not only not convey the intelligence, but also hide it and prevent the current militaristic regime from learning of the impending coup. They even aided the coup force by supplying resources and funds, which Farun vowed to repay when he ascended the throne.


    When the night came, many forces and nations watched with attention.


    Rui, however, didn''t know or care about the various developments that unfolded in the Saiful region. He didn''t even care to ask about their n to take over the Ferendul Kingdom, oveing Albus'' base of power.


    He didn''t care all that much.


    He was simply interested in fighting and killing Albus. He had a good impression of Farun, thus he did not think the man would fail if he decided it was time tomence the coup.


    BZZZZT!


    The pocket watch vibrated as Rui watched it.


    It was time, he tossed it away as heshed forward toward the mansion in the distance at top speed. He instantly rmed the Martial Squire security detail that instantly took their positions, yet he abstained from killing them, at Farun''s request.


    These Martial Artists were merely doing their jobs.


    Instead, he activated his Martial Heart while emitting a sh of bloodlust. Glowing red lines emerged from his heart, spreading across the entire time body.


    THUD


    The Martial Artists crumpled down to their knees with a shudder. The Martial Squires of this region werergely too weak to be able to maintain their wits in the face of Senior-level pressure.


    Furthermore, it was a signal to the man in the mansion.


    A challenge.


    Rui waited for a moment on guard as nothing happened.


    Yet the very next moment.


    BOOM!


    A powerful explosion shook thend around them as the wall of the mansion facing Rui exploded as a figure with a Senior-level aurashed out toward him with remarkable speed.


    BAM!


    Their fists shed, and an enormous explosion swallowed up arge patch of the forest.


    "Hahaha!" Senior Albusughed with a wide grin. "Looks like I''ve finally gotten my first assassination attempt!"


    The man had donned a simple attire that bore the crest of the Ferendul Republic. His flowing brown hair swept with the wind as heshed out.


    "It will be yourst," Rui remarked.


    POW POW POW!


    The two furiously exchanged fists, uncaring for their environment. Rui had already known that this ce was devoid of any settlements, thus he had nopunctions about going all out with his Martial Heart.


    RUMBLE!


    The verynd beneath them shivered.


    The skies howled in pain.


    Yet the two Martial Artists shed, zing with the power of the Martial Heart that coursed through their body, uncaring for the world around them.


    WHOOSH!


    Rui evaded a hook, throwing a flurry of body blows at his opponent.


    POW POW POW!


    His opponent blocked with a wild grin. "Not bad!"


    His fists blurred into motion as he threw a seemingly endless flurry of jabs at Rui''s body, making it incredibly difficult to dodge them.


    POW POW POW!


    Rui narrowed his eyes as he had already begun creating a predictive model of his opponent. The man was a striking-oriented Martial Artist with an emphasis on swift and short blows.


    Nothing special, but nothing weak either. He didn''t need powerful blows to knock Rui out.All content ? N/.?vel/Dr/ama.Org.


    A single well-timed blow to the jaw or head would do the trick.


    Yet Rui had no intentions of allowing that to happen.


    BAM!


    Ruinded a powerful blow to the man''s gut after avoiding a swift uppercut. The full weight of Reverberating Lance and Outer Convergence elevated to a higher Realm of power crashed into man''s gut.


    Yet before he could even gather himself, Rui''s second strike had already begun flying at him. He swerved to the right, dodging it, and yet;


    BAM!


    It struck him nheless, adjusting course even he himself did.


    Almost as if Rui knew where he was going to go.


    POW POW POW!


    A barrage of heavy blows crashed into him. Yet guard as he might, each blow cleanly navigated through the chinks of the man''s defenses, and each blow cleanly struck him despite his dodges.


    His offense began crumbling rather quickly, even as his defense may as well have not existed. Every strike he threw increasingly erred, either falling t before Rui''s defense or simply cleanly missing him from a mile away.


    BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM!


    It hadn''t even been ten minutes, yet Albus was swiftly reduced to a punching bag as Rui hammered away at him with his most powerful blows and attacks.


    BOOM!!


    A powerful blow crashed into his gut, squeezing away his breath as he struggled to breathe.


    BANG!


    Ruiunched him across a forest with a swift. The sheer speed at which he flew ignited the air as he shed through it. Rui put out the mes with powerful Transverse Resonance attacks that flew towards Albus, burying him under barrages of attacks.


    His body had already begun incurring some serious wounds, yet Rui wasn''t done. Rui rushed forward at top speed even as he sted him with sound.


    BOOM!!


    A powerful Flowing Canon crashed into the man''s guts, stacked with Outer Convergence, Reverberating Lance, and Gale Force Breathing.


    "Rgh!" The man spat some blood as he fell to his knees.


    At that moment, Rui''s mood fell.


    He clenched his fist, gritting his teeth. "...Is that all?"


    Albus looked up to him with an expression of fear. His two silver eyes seemed to hold endless voids that raged in hunger.


    "Is that all?" Rui repeated himself. "All these years that you were a Martial Artists, and this is all that you''ve aplished?"


    Rui had hoped that the man would at least force him to use the Metabody System, but s, that was not to be.


    "Tsk. Worthless. To me and to this nation." Rui''s eyes intensified as his attack surged forward.


    BOOM!!!


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1347 Next

    ?


    1347 Next


    The battle between Rui and King Albus was the most important battle of all, everything hinged on it. Although the Ferendul coup forces led by the former king of Ferendul had gained a small measure of Rui''s capabilities and had been impressed, it was not strictly enough to say that Rui would definitively win against King Albus.


    When Farun heard that Rui had openly challenged his son, he couldn''t help but grow immensely upset. He had hoped that Rui would exploit the element of surprise to the absolute maximum, gaining an advantage early on in the battle. Ideally, he hoped that Rui would kill Albus before thetter could tap into the power of the Senior Realm, but he knew that Martial Seniors could not be killed in such a manner.


    The worst oue, however, waspletely surrendering his element of surprise and evening out the battle. Now the battle truly could go either way, bing a variable that Farun could no longer control or predict.


    He had been receiving updates from a Martial Squire who observed the battle from quite a distance to make sure that he avoided the sheer destruction that the two Martial Seniors left behind. While the coup was shaping up to be sessful on his part due to his careful nning, he only felt increasingly nervous as the Senior- level battle proceeded.


    "...Eh?"


    "What is it?" Farun urged the man. "Did something happen to John?"


    "It''s the sinner, sir. He..."


    "Speak dammit!" Farun cursed.


    "He''s dead."


    ?


    Farun''s eyes widened. "What?!"


    "I''m moving in closer to get a better look sir, but there''s no doubt about it. King Albus is dead!"


    Farun simply stood there dumbstruck. To think that the most difficult part of his ambitions tounch a coup was handled so quickly.


    It had barely been ten minutes since the battle had begun.


    Now all he had to was seed on his part, and they would have won.All content ? N/.?vel/Dr/ama.Org.


    "Bring his head over here as quickly as possible!" Farun grinned excitedly.


    Unlike him, Rui was not having a good day.


    He had hoped for a riveting battle, one that would challenge him deeply and help him grow stronger. But he had been incredibly disappointed in how shockingly weak his opponent was.


    It wasn''t even funny, the man was a lot weaker than leyasu despite being in the Senior Realm for much longer and being much older in general.


    Rui wasn''t entirely sure if it was a matter of his opponent being too weak or him being too strong. Part of the reason he had fought this battle was to gain a good gauge as to where he was in the Senior Realmpared to people who broke through not too long ago.


    Yet the result left him a bit too confused.


    It was at times like these that he missed the Martial Union. They graded him quite urately, such that he never felt confused about where he was in the Apprentice or Squire Realms


    Now, however, it appeared that it would take a while before he learned how strong he was, he would probably need to fight a lot more battles before he could develop an inkling of his power level rtive to his peers.


    "Tsk, what a pain." Rui simply tutted before leaving the area, heading towards the Derimont Bazaar.


    If fighting several Senior-level battles was what it took to gain a better understanding of his own power standing, then that was exactly what he would do. Thankfully, he had plenty of ways to fight Martial Seniors, and the Beggar''s Sect had plenty of operations for him to fulfill.


    He intended toplete as many as he could to not only get a good gauge of how strong he was but also bolster his experience when it came to fighting Martial Seniors.


    He didn''t bother corresponding with Farun anymore, the man had a coup to win, and with Rui''s victory, it was as good as guaranteed as long as he wasn''t ipetent.


    His mind returned to the various missions and operations that the Beggar''s Sect had offered to him toplete.


    One of them in particr, drew his interest.


    [Assassination mission: Xavier Minneson]


    The Beggar''s Sect hadmissioned him for a hit on a Martial Senior who was apparently the head of the biggest human trafficking ring in the Saiful Region. Senior Minneson had used his personal Martial power to set up an organization that systematically captured and kidnapped people for them to be sold in the Derimont Bazaar.


    It was said that at least half of the supply of humans in the various markets, whether it be ves, sex ves, organ donors, or child ves were all from the Minneson trafficking ring.


    "These missions are quite convenient," Rui murmured. "They''re so easy to choose."


    Unlike when he was in the Kandrian Empire and often had trouble choosing a mission, these two missions had both been no-brainers.


    His eyes narrowed when he recalled what he had seen in the Derimont Bazaar. "I told you I''d make you pay."


    Since Senior Minnson probably used his Martial power to hold his organization together, killing him would probably cause it to unravel on the spot, a highly desirable oue as far as Rui was concerned.


    "It''s settled then, I''m going to do my good deed for the day."


    Of course, he knew that his actions were not going to get rid of human trafficking in the Saiful region. He also knew that eventually another organization would probably pop up and pick up the ck that the Senior Minneson would leave behind if he died.


    Such was human nature, if there was demand, then supply would always meet. Without fail. It was the strongest force, and it could not be stopped. Rui needed only to think back on the war on drugs, or the war on human trafficking back in his previous life to know that this was true.


    The only way that he could do something about it was if he became strong enough to impact all of humanity. And as prodigious as Rui''s growth rate was, it was most likely going to take a while to get to that power level.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1348 Wider

    Chapter 1348 Wider


    "Your problem is actually not umon amongst newborn Martial Seniors," Sian remarked once Rui exined his predicament to his liaison in the Beggar''s Sect. "Many Martial Seniors have no idea how strong they are until muchter in their time in the Senior Realm."


    "Well, given how the Beggar''s Sect prides itself on information and data analysis, shouldn''t you be able to give me an urate overview of my power rtive to my peers?" Rui asked with a resigned expression.


    Sian immediately shook her head. "We are not a Martial organization like the Panamic Martial Federation or the Virodhabhasa Faith. While we do have some amount of internal Martial Artists, we rely on the power of the invisiblemon man, woman, and child. We do not possess the off-hand expertise to give you an urate gauge of your Martial prowess. In the same way, we do not possess the off-hand expertise to evaluate any and all technological advancements or inventions properly. Wergely outsource such matters to trusted allied partners who do possess the relevant expertise."


    Rui sighed dejectedly. He had expected such an answer, of course. In the first ce, only another Martial Artist or an extensive observationboratory with relevant Martial schrs and scientists were qualified to evaluate him. The Beggar''s Sect did not carry around such resources in the base of operations of their foreign affairs department.


    Sian was most certainly not qualified to give him an urate gauge of his power in the Senior Realm, either. It looked like he would have to figure it out the hard way after all.


    "What I can tell you is that because the starting point of Martial Artists in the Senior Realm arepletely different and because that consequently results in an extremely wide range of power levels within the Senior Realm, it is actually not easy for even Martial Art organizations to urately evaluate the power level of an unknown Martial Senior." She replied. "Theyrgely rely on the power that the Martial Senior possessed before breaking through to the Senior Realm to gauge how strong they would be as a Martial Senior. Thus even if you visited a Martial organization, they would find it much more challenging to evaluate you if they do not have ess to a thorough record of your history and background."


    This was, of course, uneptable to Rui. Still, he appreciated the free tidbits of information that Sian was giving to him.


    "Because the Senior Realm is divided into fifteen grades in most Martial Artist evaluation and grading systems, such problems naturally arise." Sian casually revealed.


    "What?" Rui blurted out in surprise. "Fifteen grades?"


    Sian nodded. "I assumed you were aware of this."


    He had not been. He had heard from multiple sources that the Senior Realm was even wider than the Squire Realm, but only now did he realize that they weren''t exaggerating in the slightest. The fact that organizations felt to add an extra five grades to the Senior Realm evaluation system showed that the gulf was truly gigantic.


    "Damn..." He couldn''t help but subconsciously murmur.


    No wonder only a fraction of Martial Seniors took several decades at the bare minimum to reach the Master Realm, the path forward was truly long and could easily take the average Martial Senior half a lifetime to cross.N?velDrama.Org: text ? owner.


    "It is not easy crossing the barrier between the Lower and the Upper Realms," She remarked. "I do not know the details as the few beings that do possess the information are extremely secretive about it, but it is said to be among the hardest of hurdles to ovee for Martial Artists.


    The Martial Artists who ascended to the Upper Realms had already transcended mortality to a certain extent. It wasn''t just that they were far stronger than Martial Seniors, which they also were. However, in addition to that, Rui also felt as though they had ascended to a higher state of life.


    They were simply cut from a different cloth from ordinary mortals. Rui got the impression that their vision and understanding of reality were simply higher than his own. Their minds seemed to be able to see things that no Martial Artists of the lower Realms could.


    Rui couldn''t even imagine what it took to evolve to such a state of being.


    "It can''t be helped. I''ll figure it out on my own." Rui shook his head. "I appreciate the information. Now then,ing back to business, I wanted to undertake the mission rting to Senior Minneson and the Minneson drug trafficking ring."


    She considered his words for a moment, before nodding. "Given your crushing performance against Albus, it is safe to say that you are at least qualified to take on Senior Minneson. However, be warned that he is much stronger than Albus. It was said that when Albus tried to confront the Martial Senior to put an end to the man''s trafficking operations in the Ferendul Republic, he was forced to retreat, having almost died against him."


    Rui nodded. It appeared that at the very least, Senior Minneson wouldn''t go down too easily. "That''s just fine by me. I''m looking forward to a challenge. Can I gain ess to all the intelligence rted to the case?"


    She nodded, fiddling with the beaded bracelet on her wrist. "I have already arranged for it to be delivered to you."


    It wasn''t long before Rui not only gained ess to all the documents that detailed the reports and analyses on the man''s movements and locations, but also memorized it, before leaving the book market empty-handed.


    The gathered intelligence on Senior Minneson was vast. It appeared that despite his best efforts to limit data leaks, the Beggar''s Sect was still easily able to gather immense strategic information on him. It once again solidified the Beggar''s Sect''s capabilities in his mind.


    More importantly, however, Senior Minneson was a lot more formidable than Senior Albus from the avable reports. He had once fought off two young Martial Seniors from a nation in the Saiful Region simultaneously and emerged victorious in the confrontation.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1349 Awaited

    Chapter 1349 Awaited


    The Saiful Region underwent a significant shift in geo-political dynamics now that the militaristic regime of Senior Albus had been brought to an end.


    The entire nation rejoiced when the shocking revtion of King Albus'' death spread across the entire country. A wave of vindictive satisfaction rippled across the impoverished and oppressed people of Ferendul who had suffered under the tyrannical rule of King Albus.


    Farun Ferendul quickly began reforming and reorganizing the government once the former king''s supporters surrendered after his death was confirmed. He had already rescinded the exploitative system of taxes, fees, and tariffs that had been imposed by King Albus that drained the nation only to empower a bloated military. Furthermore, he issued subsidies and distributed umted resources reserved for the military to kickstart the recovery process of the economy and the nation.


    The nation inhaled a breath of fresh air as the market began regaining a few signs of vitality. Of course, it would take some time before it made significant progress towards a full recovery.


    Hardly anyone could believe that the notorious tyrant who had be nothing short of the greatest source of dread and horror in the hearts of the citizens had died a dog''s death just ten minutes after the coup wasunched.


    It was jarring. It made them feel as though the anguish that they had been put through was trivial.


    The Martial Senior who executed King Albus drew a lot of curiosity and attention from not just the citizens of the Ferendul Republic but the entirety of the Saiful Region.


    In most ces on the continent, Martial Seniors were absolute powerhouses that were game-changing strategic weapons. The Saiful Region was no exception, most of the nations of the Saiful region possessed one, or at most, a few Martial Seniors.


    Thus, the presence of a new Martial Senior in the region could significantly impact the political bnce of the region. Many wondered if the new Martial Senior had already joined the Ferendul Republic to be its new Martial Senior guardian.All content ? N/.?vel/Dr/ama.Org.


    Many nations sought to pull over the new powerful asset to their nation. The new Martial Senior had be the most highly desired target in the Saiful Region.


    Yet Rui didn''t care. He had simply focused his attention on the new mission that he had undertaken, going through the intelligence once more. Tracking the man that he was looking for was not as simple as it was when he fought Senior Albus.


    Senior Minneson was a lot more careful and discreet. None of his subordinates were privy to his location most of the time, and because he even went as far as often using his Martial Heart while traveling to avoid being tracked by anybody, it was quite difficult to pinpoint where he was at any given location.


    Rui knew that this measure was probably because he was afraid of the Beggar''s Sect. The Beggar''s Sect relied on the sheer quantity and variety of intelligence of ordinary people to gain a deeper understanding of the state of affairs. Senior Minneson was probably relying on his Martial Heart to avoid beingpletely transparent to the Beggar''s Sect.


    This was an expensive price to pay to throw the Beggar''s Sect off his tracks. This was only partially effective, it appeared.


    The Beggar''s Sect was not able to pinpoint his exact location at any given moment, but it did possess a good grasp of his movements and all his bases of power, which was the next best thing.


    Rui had decided it was best to go for a brute force method of tracking him. He simply decided to camp near one of his most important bases of power for the human trafficking ring.


    Rather than waste time on more sophisticated methods to predict where he was, Rui estimated that simply using Riemannian Echo and waiting for signs of the man''s arrival was at least twice as likely to be sessful in locating him.


    As soon as he found him Rui would immediately challenge him to a fight. He was most certainly aware that he could resort to more covert ways of gaining an advantage even before their fight started. But he wasn''t interested in these ways as they impeded a pure fight that would allow Rui to test himself against other Martial Seniors


    Although Rui''s desire to cripple the human trafficking ring was definitely strong, his desire to test himself was even stronger. At the end of the day, he was not a saint, and his own personal interests outweighed that of his moralpass.


    Still, he was confident that he would win.


    The most important base of power of the Minneson human trafficking ring was actually in the Ferendul Republic. The man had shifted there once the previous queen fell due to how exploitable the oppressed poption was. Thew enforcement and military did not protect them, they merely exploited them. Thus they were left to fend off for themselves, which made them easy targets.


    That was quite convenient for Rui.


    "If you are able and willing, we would have bottomless appreciation for you if you sessfully expel that scourge from our country." Prime Minister Farun bowed his head to Rui once he exined his intentions. "Unfortunately, we do not have a Martial Senior tobat the head of the trafficking ring. Please do not be concerned about the coteral damage to the region, it isrgely devoid of poption for the most part."


    With the blessing of the new head of government of the Ferendul Republic, Rui set out to the southern region of the nation argely abandoned region after the previous king had taken over.


    It wasn''t long before he perched himself in the center of the broken town, lying down on his back, facing the sky as he monitored the entire area with Riemmanian Echo.


    A few days passed by. Rui simply sustained himself with dense nutrition pills that he got from the Beggar''s Sect while taking simple daily measures and utilities to cleanse himself as the days passed. Long waiting periods were not umon, thus there were several utilities that made the wait more managable.


    At longst, Rui''s senses picked up a an incredibly swift figure discreetly entering the region.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1350 Commence

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    ?


    1350 Commence


    Rui didn''t even bother hiding.


    What need was there to?


    WHOOSH!


    He simply activated his Martial Heart as he rushed forward to the Senior-level figure that he sensed in the distance.


    In just a moment, he had already arrived.


    Yet it appeared that his opponent had sensed him as well. They took a moment to size each other up when Rui closed on him.N?velDrama.Org holds this content.


    The man was gargantuan, he clearly possessed a body that was certainly attributed to offense or defense, or both.


    BOOM!


    Rui rushed in with a powerful Flowing Canon that crashed into his powerful guard. Instantly, an immensely powerful wave of destruction arose from their sh, erupting until it engulfed a massive amount of area.


    Yet Rui could only widen his eyes when the man guarded the attack solidly. His guard held strong, hardly yielding any ground even under the weight of Rui''s strongest close-range attack.


    BAM!


    Rui barely blocked an immensely swift haymaker swing, flinging him away a good distance.


    "Which nation are you from, boy?" He gruffly inquired as he walked towards Rui. "You have the weakest Martial Heart that I have ever seen. Is it defective? Hahaha!"


    He mocked Rui as he took his stance, a look of realization emerged on his face. "Ah now that I think about it, you must be the one that took down Albas, eh?"


    Rui didn''t respond, simply analyzing him to the best of his abilities. "Not bad but...allow me to show you...allow me to show you just how much of a gap there can be between Martial Seniors!" He charged forward with an incredible velocity.


    The very air around them burst into an inferno as the sheer friction this man generated with his charge was enough to trigger a congration. Rui''s eyes widened as he blurred in his vision, crossing the distance between them in an instant.


    BAM!


    A powerful zing-hot blow crashed into Rui, scorching his guard. Yet the man wasn''t done, his arms shed into motion as they hailed down on Rui, barely missing him.


    WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH!


    Rui barely dodged the attacks with an incredulous expression, yet the persevering efforts of the giant eventually paid.


    BAM!


    Rui grimaced as the powerful blowunched him away, burning his flesh. His eyes narrowed as he took a greater measure of the man''s capabilities. Despite beingrger and heavier than Rui, he was actually much faster as well, it broke known paradigms that Rui had been ustomed to in the Squire Realm.


    The reason for this was because the Martial Body used to be the most important variable when it came to the performance parameters of Martial Squire, in addition to their Martial Art. A heavier body had better offense or defense but was slower than a lighter Martial Body.


    However, due to the introduction of the Martial Heart, this was no longer strictly true. A stronger Martial Heart could bridge the gap in speed just by supplying greater force and thus greater eleration.


    ?


    His Martial Heart zed into action as it propelled a wave of burning blows forward at even greater speeds. "Eat my Burning Fist style! Hahaha!"


    Heughed mirthfully, expecting to roast Rui slowly across their battle.


    And yet, that did not happen.


    WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH!


    The man''s eyes widened as Rui smoothly evaded his blows, surging through the chinks in the man''s armor before-


    BOOM!


    Beforeunching a powerful blow to the man''s sr plexus. The sheer weight of a Flowing Canon on a vital point caused the man to snarl in pain, before unleashing an even greater congration with his movements.


    FWOOSH!


    Rui''s eyes widened as he leaped away at top speed, activating Gale Force Breathing and Outer Convergence as he leaped away at top speed.


    Yet the mes were even faster!


    They engulfed not just him, but everything within a hundred meters of the man. A giant fireball congration erupted as it engulfed a chunk of the abandoned town they were in.


    Rui grimaced as many burns appeared on his skin. He didn''t bother too much with the damage as his elerated healing quickly took care of the burns. His mind was consumed with his opponent.


    A Martial Artist that generated heat through friction. This was not something he hadn''t run into before, but the level this mean wielded it at was vastly far above the paltry mes that the Martial Squire he fought generated.


    ?


    The worst part was that Flux Earther was a technique that could disperse impacts, but could not disperse mes. That meant that the only defense that he had was Adamant Reforging.


    ''Insufficient! Rui noted. ''Most optimal choice is to switch to a form ofbat that evades the mes as opposed to withstanding!''


    Given that the mes were too wide-range, an evasive fighting style was also not really feasible.


    That left one option.


    Rui leaped back, crossing many kilometers in a second as he inhaled deeply.


    WHOOSH


    The sheer force with which he inhaled caused a region of low pressure to develop across the entire region, elerating the development of cumulonimbus clouds.


    The skies darkened as thunder crackled.


    THWOOM THWOOM THWOOM!


    Rui fired dozens of hypersonic projectiles one after the other. The man sensed the activation of the technique even if the hypersonic projectiles themselves were hard to track.


    "Hahaha!" Heughed. "How are you going to hit me from that far a-!"


    BOOM BOOM BOOM!


    His words were cut short as several powerful impacts struck his abdomen, catching him off-guard. The sheer potency of the impacts was so high that theyunched him flying many kilometers away, destroying entire city blocks as he finally killed his momentum.


    His eyes burned with fury as he began charging forward, this time guarding himself with his arms while also generating enough mes around him to mark the approach of the sound projectiles while weakening them before they struck him.


    And yet;


    BOOM!!!


    His eyes widened as a mighty impact vastly stronger than before crashed into him, flinging him even further away than before. he flew across the region as he caught a glimpse of Rui in the great distance.


    Yet he lookedpletely different!


    An extremely buff and muscr figure had reced the otherwise bnced stature that the young man had.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1351 Clash

    ?N?velDrama.Org: text ? owner.


    Rui had activated Hypertrophic Surge as he banked everything on his long-range offense. It had the highest probability of ending the fight,rgely because the man was unable to evade the heavy attacks and could only withstand them.


    And it appeared that his estimations weren''t too far away from the truth.


    RUMBLE!


    The verynd around them shook violently as the two Martial Seniors punished it with the power of their conflict. Senior Minneson gritted his teeth as he did his best to weather everything that Rui threw at him, yet it was clear that Rui''s power had exceeded his expectations.


    He had not expected the younger Martial Senior to be able to output such ferocious power continuously. Given the fact that his Martial Heart was dimmer than any other he had ever seen, it meant that this power was a product of his Martial Art rather than his Martial Heart.


    Senior Minneson couldn''t imagine how strong Rui would go on to be if continued to grow stronger and delved deeper into the Senior Realm.


    Instinctively, he came to a conclusion.


    ''He needs to die before he grows even stronger.'' Senior Minneson narrowed his eyes.


    Especially since there would be a grudge between them if his opponent survived. It was possible that if they faced each other in the future, his opponent will have reached a level of power that would allow them to beat him.


    "Hyah!" The man yelled as he resisted Rui''s onught, closing the distance between them at an ever-increasing pace.


    His powerful Martial Heart and Martial Body forged forward as they endured the many impacts that Rui inflicted on them.


    Rui, on the other hand, was having trouble facing a shift in mentality. He was not ustomed to the Metabody System not only not getting the job done, but also being overwhelmed by anybody who wasn''t also the strongest in the Realm.


    However, he had experienced this twice in the past, entering a new Realm meant that he was quite weak from the start all over again. This time, of course, he didn''t start at the absolute bottom, however, it was clear that he was still well below the norm if someone like Senior Minneson was able topete against his Metabody System.


    The surrounding town that they were in had already been leveled to the ground, andpletely wiped out. The infrastructure wasn''t the best in the first ce and with two Martial Seniors fighting off a raging battle, it was no surprise that the entirety of the town had already been reduced to rubble.


    That included the man''s base of operations, but it didn''t appear like he cared about that anymore, if ever.


    "RAARGH!" The man snarled as he increasingly gathered momentum and heat, rushing forward towards Rui.


    Every step he took shook thend they were on.


    Every swing of his arm generated a wave of mes.


    His body steadily made its way to Rui as he weathered down the power of his Hypertrophic Surge-empowered attacks. Rui narrowed his eyes, increasing his limits as heunched his most powerful Transverse Resonance attacks.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    And yet.


    BOOM!!!


    Attacks that used to be devastating were only effective at most. Senior Minneson gritted his teeth as he bore the brunt of everything that Rui had thrown against him.


    It was at this juncture that Rui had a consideration. If he wanted, he could ensure that the shootout fest wouldst till the end of the battle, but the issue was that he didn''t know if he could actually take down the gargantuan giant down in this manner.


    It appeared that as powerful as Hypertrophic Surge was, it was not necessarily strong enough to win him the battle. At most, Rui was sure that he could deal severe damage to him over time.


    However, the man also had a healing factor, which meant that the worst of the damage would most likely get mitigated and he would retain a good chunk of hisbat prowess despite the wounds.


    If Hypertrophic Surge ran out before the man did, then Rui would be in no position to take him down. The Metabody System drained him too much. He certainly did have his Martial Heart, but it was simply not enough to ovee the man''s powerful Martial Heart.


    Rui had not forgotten that his ordinary attacks did little to no damage against the man''s extraordinarily powerful physique.


    Rui narrowed his eyes as he made his choice. He stopped backing away from the man, instead standing his ground as the man closed the distance between them at an increasing rate.


    He rushed forward, with a wild grin on his face. "What''s the matter? Don''t want to continue this little contest for much longer? I can do this all day!"


    His burning fists sted through all of Rui''s attacks as he seemingly exerted himself to the absolute limit.


    Rui suddenly ceased attacking as he adopted a crouching position beforeunching himself forward at an extreme pace towards the man. Before the man could even question the decision, a change had already urred.


    "Fuuuuuu...!" Rui exhaled deeply as he activated Godspeed, deactivating Hypertrophic Surge.


    The man''s eyes widened as Ruished forward in a blur, the momentum that he had gathered from charging forward with Hypertrophic Surge was still there, so he had momentarilybined the power of both techniques. Yet Rui gritted his teeth as the mes burned his flesh unperturbed and with greater ease.


    BOOM!!!


    A swift and incredibly heavy Flowing Canon crashed into the man''s vitals before he could even react. The man staggered, bending forward reflexively disoriented. Yet even as Rui''s flesh charred, his foot flew to the man''s jaw at an extreme velocity.


    BAM!!


    A powerful impact struck the disoriented man''s unguarded jaw, permeating through it with the help of Reverberating Lance. A wave of shock rippled across the man''s face. shes of dizziness rung in his vision. He staggered unsteadily, trying to maintain his ground and regain his rity. He reflexively generated even more heat with friction, trying to keep Rui away.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1352 Opportunities

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    Yet Rui bore all of it as he sted the man''s head with even more attacks, doing his best to inflict as many strikes as he could.


    BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM!


    Even as he bombarded the already dizzy man''s head with strikes, his flesh had already burned off entirely.


    Yet he didn''t stop.


    BOOM!


    A powerful drop kicknded on the man''s head, sending yet another impact permeating through his head.


    The man''s eyes rolled up as his body went ck.


    The umted blunt-force trauma crossed a critical threshold, causing the man''s brain to shut down.


    THUD


    The man''s unconscious body fell to the ground. Yetpared to his much better body, Rui''s charred body was unrecognizable. He copsed to his knees, quickly deactivating Godspeed and his Martial Heart as he pulled out rejuvenation and healing potions that had managed to survive within his Senior-level garb, before inhaling them deeply.


    An incredibly soothing sensation spread through his body as his body began recovering at a pace that was visible to the eye. Yet the potion did work much slower than it did when he was a Martial Squire.


    Healing the body of a Martial Senior''s body was perhaps harder than that of a Martial Squire.


    It wasn''t until a minuteter that he was finally fully recovered. Yet an incredible wave of exhaustion hit him harder than it did when he was a Martial Squire. Martial Squires were capable of exerting great power, but they required even rejuvenation and sustenance to return to their prime.All content ? N/.?vel/Dr/ama.Org.


    Ordinary amounts of ordinary food were usually not enough.


    It appeared that was even more true for Martial Seniors who not only exhausted the body''s ordinary power but also a good amount of his Martial Heart. In order to restore both these reservoirs of power, the amount of food that he would need to eat would be extremely high.


    He immediately felt a deep amount of hunger welling up within him.


    Thankfully, this was a problem that already had solutions, from dense food pills, and supplements that could be added to regr food. Rui routinely traveled with the former, quickly consuming them as he gave himself some momentary respite.


    His eyes drifted to his unconscious opponent. In hindsight, as painful as it was, he made the right decision. Had he chosen to go along with the stalemate sh, he most likely would not have had the fuel to finish the job in this manner.


    Before any further ado, he quickly walked over to the unconscious man, raising his leg high before activating his Martial Heart.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    BOOM!!


    CRACK!


    Without the Martial Heart amplifying defensive techniques, the attack effortlessly crushed his skull.


    He heaved a sigh. "That was too close forfort."


    He hadn''t really had such a close battle since his battle with Ieyasu. However, because Ieyasu had also been the peak of the Squire Realm with him before they broke through, he didn''t feel the fact that he entered the lower echelons of the Senior Realm.


    But the fact that this random Martial Senior almost roasted him to death was an indication that he had yet to fully readjust his mentality as a young inexperienced Martial Senior who was no longer at the peak of his Realm.


    Of course, he generally felt more secure since he was vastly stronger than before, but he knew that he would be subjecting himself to even greater forces in the Senior Realm as opposed to the Squire Realm from here on out.


    He shook his head, leaving the man''s corpse behind. He knew that the Beggar''s Sect probably already knew of his victory and his sess in taking down the Martial Senior.


    It was a good feeling knowing that, at least for a while, the human trafficking sector in the Saiful region would go down. It wasn''t long before he had returned to his quarters, before resting in his bed and heaving a deep sigh as his mind flew through the many thoughts that had been budding.


    He had gotten a better understanding of how strong he was, given that Senior Minneson had been a Martial Senior for twenty-five years after breaking through to the Senior Realm at the age of sixty-one.


    In other words, despite being much older, and having two and a half decades of experience in the Senior Realm, Rui had managed to ovee him with everything he had. The fact that he had been pushed to his limits was a good thing because only when he was could he determine where his limit was.


    The fact that he was able to ovee someone who had spent so many years in the Senior Realm despite just having broken through a few weeks ago showed that he most certainly had started remarkably high in the Senior Realm.


    However, the fact that the Senior Realm was fifteen grades wide showed that even if he started several grades above the bottom, that was still quite far away from the peak of the Senior Realm and from being a high-grade Martial Senior.


    Given that Martial Seniors seemed to stall for a long time in the Senior Realm before they broke through to the Master Realm, Rui could estimate that making progress in the Senior Realm was most certainly harder than making progress in the Master Realm.


    His eyes narrowed. "I should wrap up my limatization period and quickly begin moving on to reaching greater heights. It''s not as though the Saiful Region has too much to offer to Martial Seniors in the first ce."


    Like the Kaddar Region, the Saiful Region only had a few dozen Martial Seniors at most. It wasn''t rich with the opportunity to fight other Martial Seniors. In his, estimation, he would most likely have to leave the ce and head to greater avenues of opportunity to grow stronger.


    His mind shed back to the list of ces across the continent where one could grow stronger Martial Seniors that he got from the Beggar''s Sect. He would definitely have to pick a ce from the list soon, and continuepleting operations and missions for the Beggar''s Sect as he traveled the continent, growing stronger.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1353 Disqualify

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    1353 Disqualify


    The Derimont Bazaar experienced almost an immediate drop in the human trafficking sector of the market. The Minneson human trafficking ring fell almost immediately after Senior Minneson passed away.


    The entire organization had been held together by his own personal strength, various conflicting people and modus operandi all held together by the power of a Martial Senior, they immediately crumbled from within, unable to sustain any cohesion that allowed them to perform arge number of operations.


    Those in the upper echelons of the Saiful Region who were in the know could not help but heave a sigh of relief. Although they all had various conflicting interests, they could all agree that the Minneson human trafficking ring was a nightmare for the entirety of the Saiful region.


    That was the reason that many rejoiced when it copsed, and many grew even more curious about the force that caused the copse of the human trafficking ring. Perhaps it was because of the grace of the Beggar''s Sect, but the fact that Senior John had been the one to take him drew the interests of many powers.


    No one knew whomissioned him, but someone had, and he was strong enough to take down the leader of the trafficking ring. Many wondered if this was a sign that Rui was going to involve himself in the matters of the Saiful Region and be a staple of the Martial powers of the region.


    Yet, in reality, the opposite was true. Rui was already preparing to leave the Saiful Region while hepleted a few more mundane operations.


    There simply wasn''t much it had to offer for Martial Seniors.


    In the first ce, there weren''t many Martial Seniors that warranted a mission to target them in the first ce. The number of missions and operations within the Saiful Region that could truly challenge him was too limited.


    That was the reason he immediately consulted Sian about the options that he had for his next operation.


    "The perfect execution of your mission is appreciated," Sian remarked. "The missions and operations that you can undertake after leaving the Saiful region depend on where you want to go."


    "I''m heading towards the east," Rui replied with a hint of determination.


    The time for running away was done. It was time for him to begin his journey back home.


    "Specifically, I wouldn''t mind missions and operations that can bepleted while also training in the various avenues of opportunities for growth for Martial Seniors," Rui replied. "That would be ideal for me."


    Sian considered his words for a moment. "It''s not going to be easy to arrange potential missions and operations for you with a vague schedule and vague destinations. Rather than having me prepare missions for you, it will be ideal for you to approach the base of operations of our foreign affairs department that is closest to the location that you wish to remain at for a while andplete their operations with you."


    Rui considered her words, nodding.


    They had merit. It was probably best to just interact with the branches of the Beggar''s Sect across various regions and nations than to continue corresponding with Sian across such a distance.


    "I''d need locations of the various branches, though," Rui said. Sian nodded. "We''ll give you the broader general locations of the various branches across your journey to the east."


    ?


    Rui raised an eyebrow. He didn''t expect her to agree so easily. The locations of various bases of operations of their foreign affairs department were strategic intelligence that could be used to potentially harm them.


    "Naturally, we won''t be informing you of their precise locations," Sian remarked. "However, we will equip you with the means to be contacted by our various branches should you seek to find them." "How will that work?" Rui asked, curious.


    "We will equip you with a simple and inconspicuous badge." She replied. "If you wish to make contact with our foreign affairs branch at any given region. Then you merely need to wear the badge in that region, and it will be interpreted as a desire to make contact."


    That was not only discreet and clever but also showed just how cohesive the Beggar''s Sect was despite being sorge and widespread. The more Rui interacted with this mysterious group, the more he was determined to never make an enemy out of them.


    Even if their intrinsic militaristic power was not that high, the sheer amount of influence they wielded was off the charts.


    "That works for me as well." Rui nodded.


    The two of them hashed out some more details before their meeting ended. Rui was supplied with the badge before he left the book market of the Derimont Bazaar.


    ''It is pretty unremarkable! Rui mused.


    It was made out of ordinary steel, there wasn''t even a shred of esoteric substances in it. In a way, it was representative of the Beggar''s Sect that was able to hide in broad daylight under an unremarkable disguise.All text ? N?velD(r)a''ma.Org.


    He pocketed it, heading back to his personal quarters in the Zerendul Republic before quickly gathering his few belongings before leaving.


    ?


    He hadn''t even decided where he was going to go. All he knew was that he needed to leave the Saiful Region before his momentum stagnated in this dull region.


    He had a decent array of options at hand. It all depended on which of the three paths of growth and improvement he wanted to go down first when it came to his Martial Path.


    It wasn''t easy, but at the very least, he knew which one it wouldn''t be to start off.


    ''Primordial seed is definitely the hardest among them all! Rui mused. ''Even getting started in this field is too hard.


    Because he was trying to treadpletely new paths, the difficulty of sess was much greater. With mental techniques and assassination techniques, although he would be most certainly developing techniques from scratch, or at the very least modifying existing techniques significantly, he would still be working on a pre-existing foundation.


    He didn''t need to invent mental or assassination techniques.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1354 Shadow Isles

    Chapter 1354 Shadow Isles


    It wasn''t long before Rui exited the Ferendul Republic and began traveling east. He had already ruled out primordial seed. However, now he needed to choose between mental or assassination techniques.


    He recalled the two Masters that were documented in the intelligence that Sian had documented for him.


    He was particrly interested in them above the other potential avenues of growth.


    The issue was that not only were there not many alluring avenues to train mental and assassination techniques like there were for primary fields ofbat, but in addition, Rui was unfit to train in them.


    It was no different from an amateur who didn''t know how to properly throw an attack trying to train in the Umiana Trench. One needed to have a foundation before one could even think about going to a ce like the Umiana Trench.


    That was why he was interested in building up a foundation before he considered going to these training avenues. The best way to do that was to develop some mental and assassination techniques and add them to his Martial Art.


    Being trained by some of the greatest authorities in those fields that he could possibly have ess to was definitely better than trying to purchase some random mental techniques without the corresponding training resources for that technique, trying to piece their core principles together to create a new technique.


    Of course, it wasn''t going to be easy at all.


    The intelligence documents detailed that it was exceedingly difficult to be epted as pupils by either Martial Masters, and that was to be expected. Considering how few they chose as pupils versus how many tried to get epted as pupils, the sess rate was a milli-percent at most.


    Still, Rui had reason to be confident in himself.


    The only question was which field ought he try first. He was conflicted. He had a greater affinity for the field of mental techniques, but he had a more urgent need for assassination techniques.


    He was going to assassinate Chairman Deacon, after all, not challenge his security measures to a duel. Still, he knew just howpatible with mental technique he was.


    ''Well, I do n to do both. So I guess I''ll start with the Silent Shadow since her reported location is closer to me than the Hypnomaster.'' Rui mused.


    The Silent Shadow, Master Reina Cara, was a highly renowned Martial Master who had spent nearly two centuries as an assassin. It was said that the number of people she had assassinated was enough to popte an entire country. It was not an exaggeration to say that across her life, she had impacted the course of human civilization through her many assassinations of many powerful and influential figures.


    She was currently residing in the Ghana Archipgo, also known as the Shadow Isles, a group of inds in the Sirana Gulf of the Vanema Ocean. Yet despite the public knowledge that the notorious and feared Martial Master resided in the Shadow Isles, nobody knew where she was.


    Many people and Martial Artists who were part of the covert and assassination world came to the Shadow Isles in hopes of being epted as a pupil by the legendary assassin, yet an overwhelming majority of people failed.All text ? N?velD(r)a''ma.Org.


    People could not even find her, let alone try to persuade her to impart even a fraction of her mighty prowess to them.


    When Rui heard that, a single thought entered his mind.


    "It''s a test."


    Assassins eliminated their targets. Those who could not even find their target were assassins unworthy of her tutge. Given that she was a Martial Master assassin, hiding would be effortlessly easy for her. She could adjust the difficulty of finding her to whatever degree she wanted to set the standards as low or high as she wanted.


    And he was absolutely certain that her standards were extremely high.


    The reason that he knew this was because not even the Beggar''s Sect had been able to locate her in the Shadow Isles.


    "Our modus operandi has proven to bergely ineffective in locating her. Thus, her general location is all we can offer, I''m afraid." Sian had shaken her head.


    That was extremely high indirect praise from the Beggar''s Sect, which had thus far seemed almost nigh-omniscient when it came to matters across the continent. The fact that Master Reina Cara had managed to sessfully evade the omnipresent Beggar''s Sect showed just how absurdly high her skills as a Martial Master were.


    Of course, in a sense, she was sort of cheating. The Beggar''s Sect harnessed the power of human civilization itself to gather intelligence. Thus, simply cutting one''s self off from human civilization was the best way to avoid the Beggar''s Sect.


    Still, he knew that this was only partially effective. The Floating Sect was almost entirely disconnected from the human civilization below. He knew that Senior Sarak had prohibited unauthorized contact from the human members of the staff to the continent, and the Floating Sect had still effortlessly pierced through those measures and learned about him before he even left the sect.


    Thus the fact that the Silent Shadow had managed topletely befuddle the Beggar''s Sect spoke highly of her prowess. She had most likely taken these measures specifically to evade the Beggar''s Sect and the broader intelligencemunity in general. It was also an indirect advertisement of her skill to all those who came to the Shadow Isles looking for her.


    She was the real deal.


    If anybody could give Rui the foundation he needed to be able to kill Chairman Deacon despite the heavy security measures that thetter had undoubtedly taken to protect his life, it was her.


    Once he gained what he needed from Master Reina Cara, he could be on his way to the Hypnomaster, who was much further east than her.


    "I also need toplete a really big mission or multiple small missions in the Shadow Isles," Rui murmured. He had not forgotten about hismission payment for the Beggar''s Sect''s services.


    It was going to be challenging to keep up both those tasks at the same time, but it was a challenge that he was willing to take.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1355 Targeted

    Chapter 1355 Targeted


    ording to the briefing that the Beggar''s Sect had provided him with, the Shadow Isles were in the Sirana Gulf, surrounded by the east coast of the Derschek Region.


    Since he was approaching the Shadow Isles from the east, he would need to pass through the Derschek Region to get to the Isles.


    ording to the intelligence from the Beggar''s Sect, the Derschek Region was one of the most vtile war-ridden regions in its geopolitical surroundings. The reason for it was actually quite simple.


    ess to incredibly cheap covert and assassination services.


    The Shadow Isles that were surrounded by the Derschek Region on three sides were filled with quality and elite covert operatives and assassins looking to gain the tutge of the Silent Shadow. During their stay on the Shadow Isles in search of the Silent Shadow, these covert operatives and assassins made a living by doing what they did best.


    Their market was predominantly that of the Derschek Region, the only region that was by far the closest to the Shadow Isles.


    Consequently, the Derschek Region had an overwhelming supply of frencer covert operatives and assassins from the Shadow Isles.


    When supply exceeded demand, prices deted. This meant that it was far easier to hire genuinely elite Martial Artist assassins in the Derschek than arguably anywhere else on the continent.


    On top of that, the Derschek Region was an inherently highly divided region with many nations and settlements. This bred a lot of conflict, which was only exacerbated by the ease with which assassins could be hired.


    The consequence? An unending ocean conflict fueled by endlessmissioned assassinations that never allowed for any kind of peace or stability to ever be fostered.


    A maelstrom of chaos, war, and blood.


    It was the ideal ce for assassins. So much so that it had eventually be half the reason operators and assassins even came to the Shadow Isles, on top of searching for the Silent Shadow.


    Was there a better ce to hone his ability to kill a target? He could hardly think of any.


    It took him a week of nigh-continuous travel to reach the Derschek Region, overlooking the entire coast from arge mountain from afar. To the ordinary eye, it appeared to be nothing more than an ordinary coastline that extended for many hundreds of kilometers, bordering the Vanema Ocean.


    Yet, Rui felt like he could sense the maelstrom that brewed in the Derschek Region just looking at it.


    Regardless, he persisted, keeping a low profile with his Mind Mask as he de-elevated his way to the Derschek Region. It wasn''t long before he arrived at the first human settlement in the Derschek Region.


    [Arabaor Town]


    A town that weed neers to the Derschek Region allegedly.


    Yet even before he could enter the open town, he was greeted with corpses that were uncaringly tossed and littered around the outskirts of the town. The air was saturated with the pungent odor of rotting flesh. Yet the locals were clearly unbothered by it, given that the corpses were not even buried.


    It was a greeting that Rui had never experienced when entering a new ce, but it didn''t stop him.


    He walked in, ncing around as he took in the noisy and chaotic ce. Despite the clearly high death rate, the ce was as densely packed as ever. Most of the establishments were small bars, pubs, or mess halls where many people gathered.


    His senses swam through the crowd as he sensed an unusually high poption density of Martial Artists, mostly restricted to Martial Squires.


    POW!


    "Urgh!" A young boy grimaced, falling to the ground.


    "Little brat -hic- thinks he''s all grown up." A drunk obese man staggered over the fallen child with balled fists.


    Behind him stood two Martial Apprentices.


    "You stole from me!" The boy protested.


    The man grunted, racing his fist once more.


    Rui''s eyes narrowed as time slowed down to a crawl. With one step, he had arrived beside the man.


    TAP


    A simple poke to the man''s chest with Reverberating Lance permeated an impact that sunk in deep before striking the heart. Unlike a Martial Body, his weak flesh was unable to offer an impedance.


    Given how drunk and obese he was, a cardiac failure would be written off as a result of poor health. Rui did need to hold back immensely to make sure that he didn''t tten the man''s heart by applying just a little iota of more effort than he should have.


    STEP


    The next moment, he was already a hundred meters on the other side.


    "Hngh!" The man clutched his chest with a pained expression, staggering a bit before falling down. The Martial Apprentices reacted with shock, rushing over to his side.


    Yet what Rui paid attention to was not the man himself, but the reaction of the crowd.


    Nobody even noticed.


    The few that did immediately went about their day, as if they just spotted a leaf falling or any other mundane event that did not warrant their attention.


    Aplete and total apathy and indifference to death.


    It reminded him of the Derimont Bazaar. However, the Derimont Bazaar was an artificial creation of the Beggar''s Sect of the darkest parts of humanity. The Ajaor Town was merely the beginning of the Derschek Region, it was the weing mat of the entire region.


    What was the rest of the region like?


    He shook his head.


    He wasn''t interested in the rest of the region, he was here for the Shadow Isles, and more specifically, the Silent Shadow. Everything else didn''t matter. He maintained a tight Mind Mask while traversing the macabre town, minding his own business.


    Yet suddenly.


    WHOOSH!


    Rui calmly dodged a de lunging towards him from behind. A passerby had randomly attacked Rui with a Squire-level attack when they crossed each other.


    CLASP! THWACK!


    Rui swiftly caught the man''s arm, disarming him before throwing him to the ground and putting his foot on the back of his head.All text ? N?velD(r)a''ma.Org.


    "Urgh!" The man grimaced.


    "Talking will make this less painful." Rui coldly informed him. "If you''re honest, I just might let you li-!"


    His eyes widened in surprise as the man''s eyes had already rolled backward, his mouth had already begun foaming as he choked. Rui just watched with shock as the man ingested poison, dying right there on the spot.


    It took his mind just a moment to swiftly infer and deduce everything about him that Rui needed to.


    ''He was not a thug looking to steal from a dead corpse.'' Rui''s eyes narrowed sharply. ''He''s an assassin. An extremely professional one based on how quickly and unhesitatingly killed himself.''


    There was only one conclusion to be inferred.


    ''Someone has already put out a hit on me?''


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1356 Destination

    Chapter 1356 Destination


    ?


    It was a shocking conclusion, but he didn''t see any other truth. This was clearly a professional assassin targeting him instead of a thug, that was for sure. Which certainly meant that there was amission or hit out on him as professional assassins only worked for money.


    ''How long has it even been since I got here?'' Rui frowned. ''Why would there be a hit out on me so quick?''


    He wasn''t sure. However, he had a few guesses.


    ''Maybe someone saw me kill that man.'' Rui mused.


    After all, the man did have some wealth, maybe Rui pissed off someone who wanted to teach him a lesson. Rui hadn''t used his Martial Heart since it was a waste to use it against a normal human.


    This meant that a Martial Squire would be able to perceive what happened. Perhaps that information wound up in the arms of some third party that decided they wanted to get rid of him.


    Or, it could be a third party trying to test him as well. Sending in a single Martial Squire assassin after that demonstration was not exactly the most fitting, but it could simply have been someone trying to confirm his capabilities.


    Rui was concealing his true status with Mind Mask, he didn''t want to draw eyes in a region that was known for being infested with covert attacks. Although he did have a lot of faith in his senses and mind, he also had a lot of faith in assassins.


    Ultimately, it was best not to get into trouble against them if possible. Yet he had already failed at doing that.


    He sighed, shaking his head. ''The Derschek Region lives up to its reputation. All I can hope is that whoever targeted me did it for mundane reasons and isn''t persistent enough. I don''t have time for this.''


    He had to go out there and immediately begin searching for the Silent Shadow in the Shadow Isles. Regardless, getting out of here was probably a good idea. Given how quickly he was found andmissioned, whoever put out a hit on him probably had a base of power in the town of Albaor.


    This person or organization must have not only received a surveince report on Rui being a Martial Artist but also quickly hired a hitman to take Rui out. Which required some foundation of a base of power to get things done that quickly.


    However, it begged the question as to why people would establish a foundation of power in the town of Albaor, an outer town with no real power that is merely meant to wee outsiders traveling to the Derschek region for the first time.


    The only real answer was that being outsiders didn''t necessarily exclude them from potentially being targets.


    In fact, perhaps it was because they were outsiders that they were definitely not excluded. After all, an outside element could disrupt the bnce of power within the Derschek Region. It was best to nip such an element in the bud.


    However, if that was the case, it allowed him to deduce and infer even more information about the ones who targeted him. If they decided he needed to go after witnessing that simple disy of power, then they were most likely from a weaker group or nation where that level of power could make a critical difference.


    After all, the Martial Squire assassin, while remarkably professional, was weak. Even if Rui had still been a Martial Squire, he would have effortlessly folded him without feeling the slightest hint of danger.


    Perhaps stronger assassins would be sent after him, but Rui doubted it instinctively.


    Besides, even if stronger assassins were sent after him...


    ''I''m strong.''


    He was a Martial Senior. Not the strongest, not by a long shot, but anybody who wanted to take him down needed to be willing to indulge in expensive expenditure if they wanted to get rid of him.


    Given that the Beggar''s Sect had divulged that the Silent Shadow was the only Martial Master in the Derschek Region and the Shadow Isles, it meant that the strongest forces were Martial Seniors.


    That already meant that he was a powerhouse as far as the forces of the Derschek Region were concerned.Of course, that didn''t give him impunity to do as he pleased, but as long as he kept to himself, no one would bother him.


    In that case, perhaps broadcasting the fact that he was a Martial Senior was not the worst idea. In these circumstances, deterrents were better than trump cards. But the n could backfire if he didn''t deter them, since they would send forces specifically to take down a Martial Senior.


    ''Well, let''s just keep a low profile for now while I reach the Shadow Isles.'' Rui narrowed his eyes.


    He also needed to meet up with the branch of the Beggar''s Sect in this region. There was a good chance that they could supply him with relevant information. He quickly plucked out the badge from within his robes, pinning it to his attire.


    Less than a minuteter, he was stopped by a street fortune teller.


    "Ah... young man. I see that you are destined to go to a certain ce." The old man told him. "Allow me to help you fulfill this destiny."


    The man gave Rui a slip of paper.


    Only two words were written on it.


    [Libraries of Gehu]


    "This Beggar prays that you find what you are looking for." He bade Rui farewell as he went about his way.


    A momentter, the piece of paper turned to ashes, flying away. Rui raised an eyebrow as he watched the man go away.


    ''Sian wasn''t kidding when she said that they would find me when I put this badge on...'' Rui mused as he went about his way.It had happened sooner than he had imagined.


    His mind turned to the location that the old man had passed to him.


    The Library of Gehu. He hadn''t heard of it, but it was without a doubt the base of operations of the Derschek branch of the Beggar''s Sect.All text ? N?velD(r)a''ma.Org.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1357 Gehu

    Chapter 1357 Gehu


    "I''d like to see a map," Rui told a storekeeper. "Where can I find the Libraries of Gehu?"


    The storekeeper rolled out a map, pointing at a spot on it. "About several hours of travel through carriage."


    Rui nodded as he quickly scanned the map carefully and thoroughly, before leaving the store empty-handed. It wasn''t long before Rui found himself near the Library of Gehu in the town of Veran within the Cerxeun Duchy.


    In his time traveling through the Derschek Region, he hadn''t been the victim of yet another assassination attempt. It led him to believe that it was most likely closer to a general measure as opposed to someone targeting him.


    Or if someone did target him, they were either too weak to deal with the level of power that he had disyed, or their desire to take him out wasn''t worth the price. In either case, it led him to believe that he was probably not special in any regard.


    However, what truly drew his attention was the vtile atmosphere of the Derschek Region as he traveled through it. It wasn''t that this region was impoverished, no. It was just that he got the sense that life was fleeting in this region.


    The citizens lived as if they could die any moment anywhere. There was an immense air of wariness from themon folk, and he couldn''t me them.


    He saw many corpses on the way to the Library of Gehu. He even witnessed a live murder and plenty of smaller acts of aggression. It was a ce that did not convey even a shred of stability.


    He sensed countless Martial Apprentices, most of them were hiding their Apprentice-level auras, not drawing attention to themselves. Rui figured most of them were frencer assassins for hire given how they shadily brooded in alleyways. It reminded him of the Derimont Bazaar.


    They were essentially cheap hitmen for hire. He bet that in the Derschek Region, unlike in the Kandrian Empire wheremon folk were too poor to hire Martial Artists for anything other than the simplest of tasks, even middle-ss folks could easily hire assassins to kill any other ordinary people they wanted.


    This led to the birth of a society where nobody was safe. The ordinary conflicts between normal people used to be generally harmless, since ordinary people were too weak to have an impact, were now quite problematic since they could just hire an assassin to take out someone that they didn''t care about.


    This was a direct consequence of the Silent Shadow turning the Gaha Archipgo into her Shadow Isles, and drawing assassins from across the continent.


    The Cerxeun Duchy where the Library of Gehu was located was actually a lot more stable than the rest of the small states and settlements that Rui had traveled through to get there, which did exin why the Beggar''s Sect chose to settle there.


    "Wow," Rui murmured when he arrived at the Libraries of Gehu.


    It was different from what he had pictured. The cluster of libraries was rather wide and expansive with impressivelyrge infrastructure and architecture supporting it. It was extremely different from the shabby image of the book market of the Derimont Bazaar.


    It appeared that the Beggar''s Sect did not use the same cover to hide behind all the time. Evidently, they were also capable of masquerading as a cluster of elite libraries. The impressive establishment was in stark contrast to what he had witnessed thus far.


    ording to the information that he had gathered, the Libraries of Gehu was actually a joint endeavor of the Gehu Consortium, a consortium of powerful corporates that each set up a library together within a single cluster.


    Given that he knew this ce was the base of operations of the Beggar''s Sect, it meant that the Beggar''s Sect also basically controlled the Gehu Consortium, or at least one constituent. which didn''t surprise Rui. If it needed to interact with the world, then it could not do so openly, and always had to rely on shell fronts.


    When he ran his Reimannian Echo through the establishment, the sheer volume, density, andplexity of theyouts and the assortment of literature meant that it served as the perfect ce to hide a library of intelligence within.


    Just the absurd amount of information within the library meant that it was just too easy to bury intelligence documentation well within the ocean of information. He had to admit, they nailed their hiding spot just likest time.


    He nced around, studying the people who entered and exited the library. Surprisingly, it didn''t justprise of posh upper-ss people. He could see that people of all backgrounds freely entering and exiting the libraries.


    It wasn''t until he entered and inquired about the fee that he understood why.


    "Free of charge?" Rui frowned.


    "Yes sir," The receptionist smiled at him. "The Libraries of Gehu are free of charge for all those who wish to ess our vast repositories of knowledge. This whole establishment is an endeavor of public charity from the Gehu Consortium to allow anybody of all backgrounds tooo gaaaaaaaaiiiiiiii..."


    Time slowed down to crawl in Rui''s eyes, as he studied the entirety of the vast establishment.


    The elements of the establishment required a constant supply of energy from esoteric sources.


    The number of hired staff that were clearly skilled and qualified.


    The sheer number of books and documents.


    All of this was free?


    Such a thing was almost impossible to believe. In reality, Rui was certain that the Beggar''s Sect was using some of the immense revenue they made from selling intelligence to keep this ce afloat.All text ? N?velD(r)a''ma.Org.


    The reason it was free of charge was so that the number of people across the entire establishment as well as those walking in and out would increase dramatically, making it almost impossible to spot the Beggar''s Sect and its business amidst the genuine library affairs.


    It was a good way to hide in in sight as the Beggar''s Sect modus operandi went.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1358 Dismantle

    Chapter 1358 Dismantle


    The more Rui looked at the libraries of Gehu, the more he came to like it. Unlike the Derimont Bazaar, the libraries of Gehu had a positive impact on society. Here, one coulde to freely learn as much knowledge as they wanted to, potentially to change their life for the better. It was an avenue of opportunity for the average person.


    Rui simply walked in, sauntering around nonchntly.


    He was wearing the badge that Sian gave him, so he was sure that soon enough, he would be approached by someone.


    For the moment, he was curious about the inventory and catalog of the entire library. There was so much information here that he was actually intrigued and curious about it.


    This ce held his interest even outside of being the base of operations of the Beggar''s Sect. He could use it to quickly gain tons of relevant and important information that would help him if he stored it in the Mind Pce. He could even gain more intelligence on substances like the primordial seed. It was definitely something that was worth considering.


    lightsn¦Ïv¦Ål However, the books weren''t the only things that drew his attention. All of the libraries and their various sections had a public sitting area that extended far and wide, amodating many people, as well as private amodations for the wealthier who wished to have more privacy andfort.


    Rui could sense anti-sensory technology in these privatepartments, making them increasingly difficult to sense. Some had managed to even hamper his Riemannian Echo, which was quite impressive.


    Looking back at his visit to the Derimont Bazaar, he knew that the purpose of these privatepartments was simply to hide the use of anti-sensory measures of the Beggar''s Sect, so that people didn''t grow suspicious, or use it to locate members of the Beggar''s Sect since nobody would be able to distinguish them.


    "You seem rather interested in this particr section, sir," A staff member drew his attention. "If you wish, I can bring you to a qualified expert who can rmend an assortment of relevant literature that will surely be of interest to you."


    Rui nodded. "Please do."


    She smiled courteously. "Pleasee this way."


    They walked down the many halls and corridors of the expansive establishment before she guided him to a mundane office with shelves stacked with all kinds of documents. Inside sat a short man in formal attire, and round-rimmed sses engrossed in writing.


    "Professor Carl, we have a guest who wishes to consult you."


    The man didn''t respond as he continued to obsess over the document he was working on.


    "Professor Carl."


    "Hm?" The man furrowed his eyebrows, looking up at Rui. "What can I do for you?"


    "I came here to make a payment," Rui replied. "I was hoping to gain your help with it."


    It wasn''t long before the door closed behind them and powerful anti-sensory measures were taken.


    "Sian did inform me that you mighte, Senior Falken." The professor spoke first as his entire demeanor changed. "It seems that the Derschek branch of the Beggar''s Sect has been graced with your services."


    "Yes, I do intend toplete a portion of themission payment in this ce," Rui noted. "I also wanted to consult an on-site expert of this branch in particr."All text ? N?velD(r)a''ma.Org.


    "You''re searching for the Silent Shadow." The professor replied expectantly. "Many are, but almost none seed in finding her."


    "Sian did inform of that." Rui nodded.


    "Then you are aware that we are unable to supply you with her location and identity." Professor Carl remarked impassively. "The intelligencemunity atrge has failed in finding her. We estimate that only a powerful Martial Master with especially powerful senses would be able to sniff her out. While our modus operandi gives us many significant advantages that conventional intelligence-gathering approaches do not have, it is not particrly effective when ites to cases like the Silent Shadow."


    "I understand, rest assured that I do not expect the Beggar''s Sect to lead me to her," Rui remarked. "However, I was still hoping to learn about the information that you have managed to collect and the insights that your sect has made while investigating her."


    Even though the Beggar''s Sect had already made it clear that they could not lead Rui straight to her, he was sure that the results of their efforts would be useful to begin with.


    "I also would like to get a general overview of the broad state of geopolitical affairs of the Derschek Region, as well as the Shadow Isles," Rui said.


    He could definitelye to learn of these matters with his own efforts, of course. But it was just far easier to get it from the Beggar''s Sect.


    "That is trivial information," The professor remarked. "We can disclose that to you free of charge, consider it a token of our goodwill. However, the results of our investigation on the Silent Shadow will cost you."


    "That''s not an issue. I will pay for it whilepleting operations in this region." Rui replied casually.


    "That''s your prerogative." The professor nodded before nodding to the silent staff member who immediately left the room. "It will take a bit of time to gather and organize. Is there anything else that you would like to purchase?"


    "That will be it for now." Rui shook his head.


    "Then let us talk about yourmission payment operations." The professor eagerly remarked. "Unlike the Derimont Bazaar where there are numerous operations catering to numerous agendas. Our branch only has one."


    Rui raised an eyebrow, surprised.


    The professor''s demeanor grew more severe. "We will enlist your services to dismantle the hitman market of the Derschek Region."


    Rui''s eyes widened with surprise.


    He didn''t know that the Derschek branch of the Beggar''s Sect had only a single, yet incredibly ambitious agenda. Based on the brief amount of time that Rui had spent in the Derschek Region, the assassination industry was deeply rooted in the very fabric of its civilization.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1359 Dead Horse

    Chapter 1359 Dead Horse


    "Of course, we do not expect you to undertake this operation on your own." Professor Carl rified. "However, as a Martial Senior, you can make significant contributions. You possess the ability to eliminate the most powerful assassins in this region."


    "You want me to eliminate Martial Senior assassins?" Rui raised an eyebrow.


    "Of course." Professor Carl nodded. "We wouldn''t mind if you eliminated assassins of all Realms."


    Rui considered the mission.


    It was not outside his capabilities. Despite hiscking experience, he was a pretty decent assassin thanks to his extraordinary long-range capabilities as a Martial Senior with the Pathfinder technique.


    However, what he was more curious about was why the Beggar''s Sect had such an ambition in the first ce.


    "It''s a matter of the reliability of our operations." Professor Carl replied, noting his curiosity. "Not even war disrupts the smoothness of our operations as much as mass assassinations, each unrted to the other. That is something that does tend to sabotage our operation a lot, unfortunately."


    Rui raised an eyebrow. That made sense. War was more orderly and followed patterns and could be seening from a mile away, especially with their intelligence capabilities.


    However, arge number of unrted assassinations was something that was far more inscrutable and unpredictable. That was the reason that they were so disruptive to intelligence operations, it was what made this region so chaotic and vtile in the first ce. The fact that it was almost impossible to see all of theming was something that probably irked the Beggar''s Sect to no end.


    "We wish to restore some stability to the region so that intelligence-gathering bes it is easier for our modus operandi that way." Professor Carl.


    Rui nodded. "I believe I canmence these operations at my leisure, correct?"


    "As long as you''re not using that leeway to try and deceive us, of course." Professor Carl nodded. "I wouldn''t rmend that."


    Rui had no intentions of doing that. The Beggar''s Sect was scarily powerful, he would be foolish to try and renege on his agreement.


    lightsn¦Ïv¦Ål "Can I get the intelligence I purchased ahead of time?" Rui asked.


    Professor Carl considered his words, before nodding. "We''re willing to extend this favor to you. However, be warned, even with a report on our investigations on the Silent Shadow, your probability of sess is extremely low."


    That was obvious enough. He heard that the Silent Shadow only sparingly epted the best of the best. Still, he had enough confidence to consider it at least worth trying.


    He already had many considerations as to how to go about trying to be epted as her pupil.


    For one, he didn''t need to actually find her.


    He just needed her to choose him as a pupil. That did not necessarily require Rui to find her, that just required Rui to be worth epting as a pupil, and it required her to be aware of him.


    Thetter was not a problem. She was a renowned Martial Master assassin, he wouldn''t be surprised if she was aware of everything that happened on the ind. If that was the case, then finding her was probably not relevant to his desire for her to be epted as a pupil unless she specifically made it her condition.


    The reason most people sought to find her was because they probably thought that finding her was necessary to convince her to ept them.


    But Rui wasn''t convinced of the merit of such a case. The fact that nobody had found her when she didn''t want to be found told Rui that such a thing was probably futile in the first ce. She had not been found, but she had epted pupils.


    That shed against his initial theory that stated that finding her was the test in and of itself.


    In the first ce, assassins were not detectives. Their skill sets did not revolve around investigation, so why would she set such a condition for finding her pupils in the first ce? There was absolutely no corrtion or ovep.


    ''Assassins are not hunters.'' Rui narrowed his eyes. ''The assassins that came to this ind hunting for her have probably already failed the test.''


    Assassins had only one job. They eliminated their target. Thus, most likely, the criteria for being epted as a pupil by the Silent Shadow were probably closer to the core fundamentals of what an assassin was.


    Rui heaved a deep sigh as he considered what that would be, and how that would rte to his objective.


    But his first guess was that he had to eliminate one or many targets to find her.


    Definitely not anyone, otherwise, everybody would be worthy.


    He narrowed his eyes. ''Is there a specific person she wants to be eliminated?''


    It wasn''t impossible. Perhaps half the test was figuring out who the target was, and then assassinating the target. If that was the case, then maybe he would be epted as a pupil.


    "Who are her pupils?


    "From before she retired. There are many, like the Harvester, the Boloxeun Beauty, and the Nighteater. All renowned assassins within their Realms." Professor Carl replied.


    Rui frowned at all those monikers.


    "Are any of her pupils after she retired known?" Rui rephrased.


    "Ah, no, not at all, unfortunately." The professor replied, throwing a knowing nce at Rui. "Of course, it seems you understand why this is the case."


    If people looked into the candidates who seeded, it wouldn''t be too difficult to find patterns that can be used to figure out what one needed to do to be epted by her. The fact that none of the identities of her epted pupils were disclosed proved that she most likely took measures to prevent it from happening.


    Which only reinforced his theory. If it was just a matter of figuring her location and identity out, then there would be no reason not to disclose the identity of her disciples.


    He had the sense that he was on the right track, there was no point in beating a dead horse.All text ? N?velD(r)a''ma.Org.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1360 Reports

    Chapter 1360 Reports


    If that was the case, then he just needed to refine his ideas a little bit more and tie them back to the observations he made.


    "Ah, the intelligence you requested has arrived." Professor Carl remarked as the staff member entered the office, with a pile of documents.


    Rui''s attention was drawn towards them. Even if they did not contain information on those that were sessfully epted, he could look at those that definitely failed, and avoid making their mistakes.


    Those that failed seemed to continue going down that path. From their point of view, theirck of failure was due to the difficulty of the test, not because they were going down the wrong path.


    Their lust for obtaining a legacy of one of the most renowned Martial Master assassins in the world was extremely high, it had clouded their judgment, making them choose to go about it in ways that were perhaps unbing of an assassin in the eyes of the Silent Shadow.


    Or at least, that was what Rui hade to suspect after giving it some deep thought.


    "I should mention that you cannot take these documents away with you." Professor Carl remarked, drawing his attention. "They contain too many sensitive details of our investigative process. You may refer to them here at any time, or you may rely on that handy memory trick of yours."


    Rui did not recall ever having disclosed that he had a handy memory trick, but he wasn''t even surprised that the Beggar''s Sect hade to learn of this. They had proven their ability to learn information many times at that point.N?velDrama.Org holds this content.


    "That''s not a problem," Rui remarked, before taking therge pile of documents over to a different desk as he began scouring them.


    The Beggar''s Sect had systematically begun searching for her through various means and avenues, each assigned its own division. There was an entire division dedicated to gathering and analyzing second-hand intelligence of all kinds, from other intelligence brokers to even rumors and testimonies of various individuals on the Silent Shadow.


    There was another division dedicated to profiling every individual in the Shadow Isles and evaluating the probability of them being the Silent Shadow in disguise. Rui''s eyes widened in shock as he read through the details and the degree to which the Beggar''s Sect looked into every single person who was in the Shadow Isles.


    They had systematically looked into millions of individuals within the Shadow Isles and conducted analyses on every single one of them. The sheer manpower needed to even dare to go to such lengths was something that was probably unique to the Beggar''s Sect.


    Thankfully, they hadn''t included a report of every single individual inside the Shadow Isles. As big as his Mind Pce was, not even he was sure if he could contain that much information in it.


    They also dedicated an entire division to an extremely precise and urateyout of the Shadow Isles as a whole. Based on the investigative reports that he was going through, the Beggar''s Sect allegedly had mapped every square meter of all the Shadow Isles.


    Another absurd feat, yet one that also did not yield any clues about the location of the Silent Shadow.


    It showed the degree to which the Silent Shadow had obscured herself, making it impossible to find her using brute force unless one possessed especially potent resources.


    Perhaps there was an exceptionally powerful Master-level esoteric resource, or another Martial Master or Martial Artist of a higher Realm that decided to exert themselves to locate her in one go, then it was not something that could be brute forced.


    If the Beggar''s Sect truly wanted, they could probably find her by expending such powerful means. But the issue was that it probably wasn''t worth it. In the first ce, the Beggar''s Sect predominantly relied on the power of ordinary people. Esoteric or Martial resources were reserved for matters that were both important and were impervious to their main modus operandi.


    The case of the Silent Shadow fulfilled thetter condition, but it did not fulfill the former condition. There was no burning need for the Beggar''s Sect to find her. The reason that they were collecting intelligence in the first ce was because this was their business.


    They collected intelligence and sold it for a profit. Given how much work went into it, the intelligence on the Silent Shadow would have been worth a fortune, and given the sheer number of powerful assassins in the Shadow Isles that desperately wanted it, they could have made an even greater fortune selling it.


    But s, the failed venture did not justify using strategic resources. It didn''t matter anyway, since Rui himself would never gain ess to such resources as he currently was.


    Besides, even if he did use them to find her, he highly doubted that she would ept him as a pupil. There was nothing alluring about a Martial Artist who relied on esoteric technological artifacts instead of his own personal capabilities.


    He put those thoughts aside as he skimmed through the detailedpiled progress reports over an established timeline. Essentially, the Beggar''s Sect tried many approaches to finding her and came to the conclusion that she may as well have not existed on the ind.


    It also gave him an overview of the state of progress of other aspiring candidates. Interestingly enough, the various Martial Artists that came to the Shadow Isles had tried many approaches themselves. Many had decided to show off powerful techniques by eptingmissions. Most decided to go on an active search for the Martial Master, under the impression that not being able to find her was the reason that most people failed to be epted.


    Most Martial Artists sought to find her through their own efforts, while some banded together in order to pool their efforts. All the whilepletingmissions from the Derschek Region to sustain their investigations.


    Rui noticed that the intelligence mentioned kept mentioning a name in all their reports.


    Area Crina.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1361 Ideas

    Chapter 1361 Ideas


    Area Crina was an area at the center of the Shadow Isles and as well as the name of an intelligence organization in that area established by the Crina Foundation. An organization set up by a wealthy businesswoman who had made it her life''s goal to find the Silent Shadow. She set up a cooperative and charitable intelligence agency that cooperated and partnered with Martial Artists who also sought the Silent Shadow.


    Apparently, most assassins that came to the Shadow Isles partnered with Area Crina to find the Silent Shadow.


    No one why Chairwoman Crina cared so much to find the Martial Master, but she in a sense led the collective effort in the Shadow Isles to find the Silent Shadow.


    Rui found this to be incredibly strange. Nheless, it was the truth. She was probably the reason that so many Martial Artists veered towards hunting for the Silent Shadow.


    It took him quite a lot of time, but he finally reached the end of the totality of the investigative report and meta-analysis provided by the Beggar''s Sect.


    It gave him a good idea of what not to do.


    In fact, he hade up with several rules.


    First, he needed to forget about finding the Silent Shadow. It was hopeless. He was not arrogant enough to think that his individual efforts were enough to outmatch countless assassins, the Beggar''s Sect, and Area Crina.


    Second, he needed to get a good understanding of what it was that the Silent Shadow sought from her pupils. He was certain that she had some criteria, and it most likely wasn''t just a matter of being a powerful assassin.


    ording to the Beggar''s Sect, many particrly powerful assassins of even the Senior Realm had arrived at the Silent Isles nearly a decade ago and had yet to find the Martial Master.


    If it was simply a matter of being powerful, then one would expect the top assassins in the Shadow Isles to be skimmed off as pupils regrly, but no such thing urred.


    He highly doubted it was a matter of age, experience, or any other specific performance parameter based on the data that he had just gone through.


    There were many excellent Martial Seniors, Squires, and Apprentices across the Shadow Isles who had spent a long time searching for the Silent Shadow.


    Yet not even the best of them that had spent a long time had been epted.


    That indicated a fundamental disconnect to Rui. ording to his evaluation, the probability was not low that, as opposed to them being inadequate, there was a fundamental criterion that they had failed to satisfy.


    Something that all of these elite assassins were failing to get right. At least, as far as the Silent Shadow was concerned.


    His mind went back to his earlier hypothesis.


    Assassins assassinated. They were specialists who were entirely dedicated to eliminating their targets.N?velDrama.Org holds this content.


    Perhaps, true assassins ought to resort to their craft to solve their problems. Perhaps a true assassin ought to eliminate all the hurdles that impeded their path, rather than take a different path. Perhaps true assassins ought to aplish their goals by eliminating those whose elimination would allow for their goals to be fulfilled.


    "Professor, what was the Silent Shadow like when she was an active assassin?" Rui asked.


    "That''s going to charge you."


    "Just put it on the tab."


    "She was insane." The professor casually remarked without looking up from his work. "It was as though she was a thoughtless killing machine that could do nothing but kill. That did nothing but kill. That would always kill no matter what, who, when, where, or why."


    He paused for a moment, recollecting. "There was once where she had caused a client some problems by killing too much, causing the client to suffer hostility from many powerful parties. Do you know how the Silent Shadowpensated for this problem?"


    "...Did she kill everybody who had a problem with her overstepping?"


    "Indeed. She even once tried to kill a Martial Sage who tried to pressure her into refraining from killing." The professor replied.


    "I''m surprised she''s still alive," Rui remarked.


    "What is an even greater mystery is why she retired after two centuries acting as an assassin." The professor noted. "It doesn''t make sense based on our profile on the Martial Master."


    Rui narrowed his eyes. Regardless of why she retired, the professor''s words about her modus operandi while she was active lent credence to his theory. An assassin who solved every single problem through assassinations probably would not approve of assassins not using their crafts to solve every problem.


    lightsn¦Ïv¦Ål However, the issue was that even if he did stumble onto something resembling the truth, how was it useful to him?


    How could he possibly use assassinations to get closer to being epted as a pupil by Master Reina Cara?


    He highly doubted mass indiscriminate assassinations were effective. Based on what he heard, the Silent Shadow didn''t kill if she didn''t need to. That meant every killing needed to be purposeful.


    In this case, full of the purpose of increasing the probability that he would be selected as a pupil.


    Otherwise, the many assassins eptingmissions from the Derschek Region would all be worthy. But they weren''t, those assassinations simply gave them the funds they needed for basic purposes.


    They were not directly tied to being epted by the Silent Shadow.


    If his hypothesis was right, he needed to assassinate them with the direct purpose of finding the Silent Shadow or being epted by her as a consequence of the assassinations.


    ''Maybe I should just assassinate all the assassins who seek to be her pupil.'' Rui mused.


    This way, there would only be one candidate for her to ept as her pupil. If she wanted to ept pupils, and she clearly did, then he would be guaranteed a spot.


    ''No, even better.'' Rui smiled as an amusing thought entered his mind. ''Maybe I should kill everybody in the Shadow Isles. Thest person standing will be the only person in the Shadow Isles I cannot kill; the SilentShadow.''


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1362 Considerations

    Chapter 1362 Considerations


    It was an insane thought. Yet it was one that he considered nheless.


    "How many innocent civilians are there in the Shadow Isles?" Rui asked.


    "Hah," The professor snorted. "None. The Shadow Isles has be an infestation for assassins and all activities rted to assassinations. There are managers, agents, representatives, bureaucrats, and others who specifically ensure that themissions for assassinations all reach the assassins quickly and smoothly."


    "Hmm..." Rui considered that. He would have been very hesitant if the man had said that there were plenty of peaceful viges and settlements across the entire archipgo. But Rui''s moral consideration tended to plummet if the people who would be victims to his ns were not good people.


    He wasn''t sure if he would go ahead with the n nheless, it was maybe too extreme.


    Still, eliminating hispetition was definitely the best way to use assassination to fulfill the objective of being epted by the Silent Shadow as a student. Furthermore, doing this would also simultaneously fulfill hismission payment to the Beggar''s Sect.


    Thus it was a course of action that had double the benefits.


    If he did choose to go that path, however, he would need to ensure that he was up to the task of sessfullypleting it. Because assassinating and eliminating an entire archipgo worth of assassins was most certainly an extremely difficult task. He didn''t think he would be able to fulfill it that easily.


    For one, the biggest issue was the Martial Senior assassins of the Shadow Isles. Getting rid of them was going to be the hardest. The moment he got rid of them, he would be able to get rid of all the other Martial Artists with ease.


    "How many Martial Senior assassins are there in the Shadow Isles?" Rui asked.


    "About thirty-seven." The professor replied.


    That was not a small number for the total number of Martial Seniors. It was actually quite dangerous for Rui to try and kill every single one of them, especially given that he was quite new to the Senior Realm. There were probably several who would be able to crush Rui in a fight just due to how much greater their umtion was.


    Thankfully, assassinations were not fair fights. The goal was to kill, not to win. He could use preparation, exploit vulnerabilities, and aim for moments and ces where their guards were lowered. Rui especially was extremely good at exploiting preparation to output performances that were far superior to his natural capabilities.


    The issue was the means of killing. While Sonic Bullets were quite overpowered in the Squire Realm due to an absolute inability to sense them, he had already seen that that wasn''t entirely the case in the Senior Realm. Senior Minneson had been able to briefly sense them with his Martial Heart.


    Given that Martial Seniors could reflexively and automatically activate the Martial Hearts in emergencies, it meant that he couldn''t leisurely snipe them from a great distance away with a powerful attack.


    At the very least, at full power, it was no longer something that could be hidden too very well. It was no longer something he could rely upon to kill his targets without them ever seeing iting.


    Unless he found a way to ovee this hurdle, of course. He was not willing to abandon this assassination tool. It was just too useful. The Pathfinder technique was a grade-ten Martial Squire technique that could snipe its targets from great distances away. It had allowed him to replicate Senior-level feats as a Martial Squire.


    Now that he was a Martial Senior, he would be able to strike Martial Artists from an even longer distance away.


    "Say professor, would the Beggar''s Sect aid me with free intelligence if I were to help the sect dismantle the assassination industry in the Derschek Region by killing assassins?" Rui asked. "Or would I have to pay for that intelligence as well?"


    "We are not impractical." The professor replied briefly. "Rest assured, we will help you help us free of charge."


    Rui smirked. That meant that he could rely on the Beggar''s Sect to gather intelligence on all his targets free of cost, while he prepared predictive models on them. This greatly simplified his task.


    The issue of finding a foolproof method of killing them or upgrading the Mighty Roar sh st technique still remained.


    His mind scoured through the physics of the technique, revisiting ssical wave theory and harmonics as he looked for ways to upgrade the technique in regard to its capabilities as a tool for assassination.All text ? N?velD(r)a''ma.Org.


    "Can the Beggar''s Sect get me one of those musical training sets that musicians use to train their pitch?" Rui abruptly asked out of the blue.


    The professor frowned. "We are not a delivery service. Why would you need such a thing from us in the first ce?"


    "It''s relevant to the operations you want me to do for getting rid of the assassination sector," Rui replied.


    "That''s absurd."


    "I''m serious." Rui heaved a resigned sigh. "I''d find it myself, but that could take quite some time. You can it put it on the tab along with some considerable interest."


    "We charge a high markup for our services. Do notin if you find out that you have an unpayable debt due to how liberally you borrow from us. Do not think of defaulting on us, either. We will find you and we will kill you."


    The professor''s tone was uncaring and unforgiving despite the fact that he was a normal human and Rui was a Martial Senior. This was the power that came with being an official of a foreign affairs department of a powerful continental force.


    "Rest assured, I don''t have any intentions of doing that. In fact..." Rui smirked. "By the time I''m done here, it will be Christmas for the Beggar''s Sect."


    "What is that?"


    "Don''t worry, you will. For now, I would appreciate if you could help me with that, and in turn, help yourselves."


    "..." The professor stared at Rui with sharp eyes. "...We will oblige. However, the more you rely on us, the greater we expect you to perform. Do not forget that, Senior Falken."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1363 Inspection

    Chapter 1363 Inspection


    ?


    Thankfully, it wasn''t long before Rui got his hands on what he needed. The Beggar''s Sect did not inquire into how he intended to use them, but he did not forget the stare from the professor as he left the Libraries of Gehu before heading to an uninhabited location where he could train without being spied on, a location he got from the Beggar''s Sect as well.


    Deep within a cavework in a mountain range in the Derschek Region, Rui sat down as he worked with the new toys that he got from the Beggar''s Sect.


    There were many parameters and phenomena rted to sound that he had yet to explore. Techniques like Transverse Resonance make use of constructive resonance and superposition between two sound waves to ovep two sound waves into a single stronger sound wave.


    However, there were other phenomena that could be used as the basis of new techniques.N?velDrama.Org holds this content.


    Rui activated his Martial Heart, never once taking his Mind Mask off, before firing off a Mighty Roar sh st.


    THWOOM!


    BOOM!!


    The attack annihted half arge hill in the distance, leaving a cleaved structure standing with its other half missing.


    However, it wasn''t the destructive power he was paying attention.


    "Tsk," Rui tutted. "Too attention-drawing."


    His senses and sensory techniques, when passively empowered by the Martial Heart were able to detect the sound wave.


    This was without the Riemannian Echo technique, too.


    Furthermore, this was with a younger and weaker Martial Heart.


    Senior Sarak had already informed him that Martial Seniors could tap into the Martial Heart with techniques to empower those techniques. This meant that Martial Seniors with passive sensory techniques could not be truly caught off-guard since those sensory techniques could always be active, and thus were always tapped into the power of the Martial Heart passively.


    He himself had the same ability with Primordial Instinct. No Martial Squire assassin could catch him off-guard because Primordial Instinct was always passively active, and passively empowered with the Martial Heart.


    It was one of the reasons he had easily been able to foil a well-hidden assassination attempt with ease despite the stealth techniques that the Martial Squire assassin had employed.


    Unfortunately, it worked against him when he wanted to assassinate Martial Seniors. By the Senior Realm, he was certain that pretty much every Martial Artist had at least one sensory technique. Even if they didn''t before, when they realized how dependent they were on the Martial Heart, they would master at least one sensory technique that could passively be empowered by the Martial Heart to ensure that they would be able to better sense iing ambushes and activate the Martial Heart in time.


    This meant that Rui''s previous thoughts were right. The Mighty Roar sh st technique was no longer an effective covert assassination tool against Martial Seniors. Unless there was a foolish Martial Senior out there who had yet to master a single passive sensory technique, Rui could forget about relying on it to easily assassinate his targets.


    A Senior-level attack was too powerful to hide from them.


    However, as Rui hade to realize, that only applied to Senior-level attacks. Weaker attacks were harder to notice since they had less energy.


    Rui carefully adjusted the power of the attack to half, before firing again.


    THWOOM


    ''Still too easy to sense.''


    Thwoom


    ''Better, but still far too attention-drawing.''


    He continued significantly reducing the power of the Mighty Roar sh st technique before finally reaching a stage where he couldn''t sense the attack after it moved further than ten meters away.


    There was one predicted problem, however.


    ''These attacks possess less than three percent of their original power.'' Rui sighed.


    This was the price of making it undetectable; making it incredibly weak, so much so that it had entered the Squire Realm. Martial Seniors were easily quasi-Senior level even without the Martial Heart, such attacks were not a threat to them even if they were too weak to be detected.


    This was the predicament in which Rui found himself.


    If he made sound attacks strong enough to kill Martial Seniors without their Martial Hearts, they would be too strong to be undetected.


    If he made the sound attacks too weak to be detected, then they were also too weak to kill Martial Seniors.


    He highly doubted that he was the only Martial Senior to stumble into this predicament. Sound was not too rare as a form of offense at his level. There was a reason that Martial Seniors were not assassinated left and right all the time, there were many practical constraints that prevented Martial Seniors from assassinating their peers too easily.


    However, Rui was not content with abiding by this restriction. He needed the power to assassinate his peers with unerring sess. Unlike his peers, perhaps unlike anybody in this world, his theoretical understanding of the nature of reality was better than any of his peers.


    On a theoretical level, he understood sound much better than even Xanarn. He recalled how shocked and dumbfounded Senior Ceeran was when the man first learned about the Pathfinder technique and itsplex mechanics. It had taken him eighteen months and much handholding from Rui to master the most elementary version of the grade-ten technique.


    Rui had had much evidence in his time on Gaia to know that his scientific background gave him huge advantages over his peers.


    Impossible hurdles that impeded his peers were not so hard to ovee for him. It would not be the first or thest time since he aplished such a feat.


    One of the reasons that he had begun focusing on pitch training was to test a hypothesis. A potential means by which he could ovee this hurdle. As he continued training his ability to identify and replicate pitch, his mind shed back to a memory in his mind a long time ago back on Earth.


    A teacher had put two tuning forks on a table at a distance from each other, before banging a metal rod against one, causing it to vibrate significantly. Magically, the other tuning fork also began vibrating energetically all of a sudden.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1364 Sympathy

    Chapter 1364 Sympathy


    "This is an example of sympathetic resonance." The professor had instructed back then with a mundane tone. "Measure the distance, frequency, and amplitude and note them down in a table in yourb journals."


    If anybody had told young John that he would one day be using this principle to create a fighting technique to kill other Martial Artists, he would have looked at them with a strange expression before moving away.


    But it came to be.


    Rui''s idea was simple. The principle of sympathetic resonance allowed for one to pass on vibrations to a target through sound as long as the frequency of the vibrations matched the innate vibrating frequency of the target. Every object had an innate vibrating frequency, it was possible to vibrate an object and even cause it to generate force as long as said was exposed to sound of the same frequency.


    In fact, this was the same principle that was used in MRIs,sers, and even electrical circuits.


    ''And also, in Martial Art techniques. Hopefully.'' Rui mused.


    It was one of the reasons he was trying to improve his pitch control in the same way that musicians trained their pitch.


    His goal was simple. If making sound attacks too weak to be detected also made them too weak to hurt Martial Seniors, then he could bypass thetter using sympathetic resonance.


    Every object, including Martial Bodies, had an innate vibration frequency. If he couldunch sound attacks with the same pitch as the innate vibration frequency of his opponent, then he couldpletely bypass their defenses by causing their bodies to vibrate, inside and out.


    Their durability or defenses would be helpless since the innate vibration frequency could serve as a clear chink in their armor, allowing Rui to propel his sound attack right past their defenses with no problem.


    Once the sound attack traveled past their exterior, he could use it to attack particrly vulnerable ces like their heart or brain. If he could do that, then...


    ''It would mean instant death, most likely.''


    Through this way, he could make Squire-level attacks bypass quasi-Senior level defenses, and bypass passive baseline Senior-level senses.


    The principle of this technique was simr to that of Reverberating Lance. However, there was a crucial distinction. Reverberating Lance produced vibrations, not sound.


    Not all vibrations were sound, and sympathetic resonance only urred through sound.


    In reality, it was extremely difficult to use Reverberating Lance to generate sound in the air. Even for the Martial Body, moving his fist back and forth so rapidly that it was indistinguishable from intense sound, passing onto the atmosphere as sound, was impossible.


    ''Though I haven''t tried doing that with the Martial Heart yet.'' Rui noted.


    He immediately put it on his to-do list.


    A lot of technique ideas that were perhaps impossible to aplish in the Squire Realm were now potentially possible with the power of the Senior Realm. It was perhaps possible to upgrade other techniques in such a manner.


    For now, however, Rui was content with developing a technique that could allow him to assassinate Martial Seniors with ease. The issue was that it was not going to be easy, and certainly not going to be without its own constraints.


    One big impediment even if he did seed in developing such a technique was the fact that he needed to not only know what the innate vibration frequency of his opponent was but also needed to master the ability to be able to generate that same frequency with his Mighty Roar sh st.


    Those two conditions required him to gain a deep understanding of pitch. Which was why he had immediately begun mastering pitch. Once he gained perfect pitch, then he could focus on identifying and mastering the right frequency for each target.


    ''Still, this is not very practical inbat. It is exclusively an assassination technique.'' Rui mused.


    Finding out a person''s innate vibration frequency in the middle ofbat was an extremely difficult task unless he created a sensory technique specifically to detect such a thing, it would take a long time.


    Thankfully, he didn''t need to worry about that. His goals were assassinations, not fights, thus the technique project was fine for his current needs as it was.


    lightsn¦Ïv¦Ål ''I need toe up with a project name for this new technique.'' Rui gave it some thought before settling on a name. ''Project Death''s Sympathy.''


    It sounded a bit cheesy to his ears, but it was fine. Unlike some Martial Artists, he didn''t scream out the name of his techniques when using them, so no one would ever find out.


    He intended to master the technique as soon as possible. In his estimation, it would serve as an incredibly powerful killing tool that could kill Martial Seniors as long as they didn''t use their Martial Heart. It was limited to quasi-senior level targets, like Martial Seniors without their Martial Hearts.


    That, inbination with the Void Pathfinder, would ensure that nobody would be able to directly detect or see him or his attacking. The two techniques were extremely powerful in their own right, whenbined, their synergy would produce an extraordinary result that very Martial Seniors would likely be able to replicate, if any at all.


    Given that Project Death''s Sympathy was a technique that was shaping up to be grade ten, he couldn''t wait to master the technique. The excited feeling of anticipation and enthuse was something that he hadn''t felt in a while, he realized btedly.


    Thest technique that he had created was the Nemean Blossom, which felt like forever ago.


    Part of the reason was that he focused on quality instead of quantity. If Rui wanted, he could easily create numerous mid-grade or even high-grade techniques. But he would rather create one powerful grade-ten technique, or at least grade-nine technique, than many inferior techniques.


    It meant that each project took time and effort, not to mention inspiration. It also took powerful circumstances.N?velDrama.Org: text ? owner.


    Powerful circumstances like trying to eliminate all assassins in the Shadow Isles.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1365 Training

    Chapter 1365 Training


    He was sure that the difficulty of the circumstances would push him to develop a powerful technique, and it appeared that he was right. He still hadn''t found a solution to all of the problems, but he knew he was thinking in the right direction.


    If things went right, he was bound to be one of the most remarkable sniper Martial Seniors out there.


    As Rui worked on the technique across days and weeks. He had to admit that part of the reason why it felt like he hadn''t created a technique in a long time was partly because it had been a while since he purely felt the joy of developing his Martial Path.


    The power was great, but expanding his Martial Art''s capabilities was something that he truly enjoyed, especially when he got in the groove and started building momentum up. Regardless of whether this technique would be enough to take out all of the assassins that he was targeting or not, he looked forward to the result regardless.All content ? N/.?vel/Dr/ama.Org.


    However, he did hope that it would be enough for his purposes.


    Several weeks of pitch training eventually allowed him to master identifying frequencies and generating them himself. The world of Gaia had developed its own music scale based on different systems and mechanics as the octave scale of Earth. However, it didn''t really bother him since he had never had a music background back on Earth.


    The pitch training was the easy part, unfortunately. The hardest part was identifying the innate resonance frequency of his targets. However, it was moreplicated than that.


    Human and Martial Bodies were not uniformly made up of a single substance. They were constituted of a myriad ofpounds and substances in differentyers of the body. Even if he focused on the head alone as a target in typical sniping fashion, there were still three differentyers of matter before one reached the brain.


    Flesh, bone, and cerebrospinal fluid. Each of theseyers had a different innate resonance frequency. Thus a single frequency was not enough for all threeyers.


    ''I''ll have to master using Transverse Resonance to stuff three different frequencies inyers within a single attack.'' Rui tutted.


    This made his task moreplicated, but still quite viable all things considered. That was the reason that he was still quite confident.


    All he needed to do was get theyer that wrapped around the brain to vibrate hard. Vibrating objects generated force on other objects touching them. As long as he could get the cerebrospinal fluid to vibrate, it would naturally crush the brain with Squire-level force.


    That was game over even for Martial Seniors.


    ''So not only do I need a way to detect the multiple innate resonance frequencies of my target, but I also need to generate all those frequencies simultaneously.'' Rui narrowed his eyes, deep in thought.


    Furthermore, Martial Bodies surely had unique frequencies. The reason for this was that there was much greater anatomical and physiological variance amongst Martial Bodies than amongst normal human bodies.


    Detecting frequencies did not have to be as difficult a task as he needed it to be. He could scout his target ahead of time to generate sounds of all frequencies near his target and notice which one his opponent''s skull responded to.


    Or he could do the same thing from a distance using an extremely soft attack from a long range away, both solutions were viable to his ns. He was not too concerned about the fact that the two of them required preparation ahead of time.


    Assassination as a practice generally involved immense preparation, so this was par for the course. The most difficult targets probably required more preparation than Rui imagined. He was getting off easy by relying on powerful techniques.


    Still, he had his own target that was going to be quite difficult to cleanly eliminate, so he was sure he would experience firsthand just how difficult it was.


    ''Regardless, I''m reaching the difficult part of the technique.'' Rui mused. ''I need to immediately get to mastering stuffing an attack with three frequencies inyers.''


    And he did.


    It was more difficult than he had hoped. The biggest issue was rapidly ensuring constructive resonance between three sound pulses while also making sure they had the right frequencies, while also ensuring that the aim through the ODA system was perfectly fine.


    The ODA System was a burden in and of itself, although he had gotten smoother and increasingly proficient at it over the years, it still did not reduce the difficulty of the task. Transverse Resonance was also mentally burdensome, ensuring that multiple sound attacks were just timed right and each fast enough to constructively superimpose on each other to form a single wave was not easy.


    Now, the issue of getting the frequencies right was yet another burden, and it was perhaps leaning towards being too much. At the very least, he would need a lot of practice before he got it right.


    THWOOM


    "Tsk," Rui tutted. "Aim and constructive resonance were fine, but the frequencies were wrong."


    THWOOM


    "Damn, the frequencies did not ovep well."


    THWOOM


    "Got it tight, but it''s taking too long. I won''t have such a luxurious timeframe all the time."


    The fact of the matter was that there was an additional burden which was the moving target. Which meant he also needed the VOID algorithm to create a predictive model of his opponent.


    All in all, he had several months of work ahead of him before he reached a stage where he could execute it properly. Rui wasn''t particrly concerned about spending a lot of time on the training. He wasn''t under a harsh due date where he needed to begin paying his debts immediately.


    He had six years and then some, which meant he could take his time in developing tools that would also be useful against Chairman Deacon.


    He wasn''t too concerned about hismission payment to the Beggar''s Sect. By the time he mastered this technique, he would be quite a capable assassin.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1366 Ready

    Chapter 1366 Ready


    The progress Rui made was unsteady, but it was definitely there. He made remarkably quick progress at certain stages while stalling for longer than he would have liked at other stages.


    However, he definitely made progress, he was sure that.


    While he was mastering his technique, he came up with his modus operandi for how he was going to take down his target. The most important part of the execution of the assassinations was ensuring that no one ever caught on to the cause of death.


    The medical technology of Gaia was quite impressive, however, that wasrgely due to the fact that they had magical substances that could aplish magical feats with rtively little ingenuity and rigorous science from the people who used them.


    Based on everything he had seen, he was not only certain that they did not possess the ability to determine the cause and the time of death but also that there were no magical substances that could help them out this time.


    Esoteric substances could not analyze and process information and spit out the answer, as magical as they were. Neither could the medicalmunity of humanity.


    Thus as long as he took them out at discreet moments, they would essentially never find out how he died. As long as Rui did not go overboard and turn the brain to mush, he just needed to cause enough damage inside it, which was enough to do the trick.


    The worst-case scenario was that they might detect that the cause of death had something to do with the brain. However, that still wouldn''t give them insight into what actually killed them.


    He refined his modus operandi as he came close to perfecting Project Death''s Sympathy over the span of several months. Because of how little the tolerable margin of error was, he could not allow for any mistakes or imperfections.


    It required him to spend extra time refining every motion until he had truly achieved an initial level of mastery over it.


    By then, half a year had already passed.


    THWOOM THWOOM THWOOM


    Rui fired three Mighty Roar sh sts in rapid session. They flew across the fly at extraordinary speeds, crossing more than a dozen kilometers in a split second as they merged into a single multiyered attack.


    BAM!


    It struck arge spherical target.


    Yet the target didn''t crack despite being hit with a Squire-level attack, it simply shuddered, vibrating at incredible speeds, blurring in the eyes of anybody who beheld it.


    Rui activated his Martial Heart as he crossed the distance in a single step, arriving at the target, before splitting the sphere open with a single swing of his arm, before smiling. At the center of the sphere was a crumbled rock, one that should have been perfectly intact.


    "Nice." Rui grinned as he picked up the sphere, inspecting the multipleyers to it. This was a simple construct that he had requested from the Beggar''s Sect to practice his technique.


    The sphere''syers were perfectly intact and fine, just as they were supposed to be.


    He nced at the fifty other cracked spheres thaty in a neat line to the side, nodding.


    "I think I''m done."


    He heaved a sigh before leaving the barren region and heading towards the Derschek Region once more.


    He had left the Derschek Region once his training began intensifying. He did not want any chance of being spied on so he actually went quite a way, even using the Martial Heart discreetly to throw any potential trackers off his tail.


    However, it was time to return and get on with his job. He was actually looking forward to wiping out all of the assassins in the Shadow Isles.


    The issue was that it was possible could get into trouble with the Panamic Martial Federation if he wiped out Martial Squires or Martial Apprentices. Although Senior Sarak did say that it wasn''t prohibited, it was frowned upon.


    Rui did not want to get into trouble with the organization.


    ''Oh well, I could just get them to leave and nevere back.'' Rui shrugged. ''Or the Beggar''s Sect will intervene with the lower Realm Martial Artists.''


    Regardless, he didn''t care to bully Martial Squires or Apprentices. Not only was it meaningless to him as experience, but it wouldn''t even count as very heavy as amission payment.


    Besides, he did agree with the principle. He was d that he never had to fight a Martial Senior as a Martial Squire beyond a single strike.N?velD(ram)a.?rg owns this content.


    It wasn''t long before he found himself back in the Libraries of Gehu, scouring through random books in the educational section that was closest to the corridor leading to the professor''s office.


    [The Case of the Missing Stars]


    [The Gaia Theory]


    [The Diablo Trench]


    "Sir." A voice drew Rui''s attention as he randomly scanned through the various books. "The professor is ready to speak with you."


    Rui nodded, following her to the familiar office among many. "Professor."


    "Ah,e in." The man remarked, not taking his eyes off his work.


    It was only after the doors shut and Rui felt the oppressive subjugation of his senses that the two of them got to business.


    "What will it be this time? Another hundred sets of those multiyered spheres?" The professor sarcastically remarked.


    Rui smiled, havinge to grow familiar with the strange professor over the months. Unlike Sian, the man wasn''t unshakable professional in their interactions, which made Rui suspect that he wasn''t a part of the sect for arge portion of his life or for too long, or that being of the Beggar''s Sect was central to his identity.


    Still, he appreciated it more than Sian''s courteous facade.


    "I don''t need any of those this time." Rui shook his head. "I''m ready to begin."


    Professor Carl raised an eyebrow. "Is that so? Then we''ll get you started off immediately if that''s the case."


    "No problem. I need a list of potential targets in the Senior Realm with relevant information. I''ll choose after I go through all of them."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1367 Join

    Chapter 1367 Join


    The Beggar''s Sect was clearly eager to get him to work because he got the information that he sought immediately.Rui narrowed his eyes as he scanned through the various Martial Seniors present in the Shadow Isles.


    The number had gone up in the time that he had been training, increasing the difficulty of wiping them all out.


    "Can you get ess to their assassinationmissions?" Rui wondered.


    "Of course." The professor snorted. "That''s trivial."


    That was good news. It meant that he could target them while they were outside the Shadow Isles. He had been concerned about trying to assassinate Martial Seniors in a ce infested with Martial Artists, it seemed extremely difficult to actually aplish.


    But, if he knew what their assassinationmissions were in the Derschek Region, then he could target them while they were operating in the Derschek region which was muchrger and less densely packed with fellow assassins.


    That was part of the decisions he made while considering exactly how he was going to execute the mission.


    Another good thing about the intelligence that the Beggar''s Sect provided him was that it detailed many relevant matters, including their stealth capabilities and their sensory ability.


    Thetter was especially important to him. He had pretty good sensory capabilities; he highly doubted that there were many Martial Seniors with better senses, to the point where they could potentially sense the attack. However, he couldn''t afford to be careless.


    "I''ll take him first." Rui tossed a sheet on the table, drawing the professor''s attention.


    lightsn¦Ïv¦Ål [Sam Sevian]


    The man was a low-level Martial Senior who hadn''t been in the Senior Realm for too long. His senses weren''t the best ording to the information provided by the Beggar''s Sect. That meant that he was the ideal target for Rui to begin taking down.


    As long as he took him down, he could proceed to take down stronger targets. If something did go awry, then the consequences would be minimal in such circumstances.


    Thankfully, there were no high-grade Martial Seniors in the Shadow Isles. It made sense because high-grade Martial Seniors were most likely not that attracted to the tutge of a Martial Artist of the higher Realm.


    He wasn''t sure if he would be able to kill a high-grade Martial Senior. That seemed like an incredibly daunting task considering how wide the Senior Realm was.N?velDrama.Org holds this content.


    "I''ll begin immediately." Rui nodded. "I need his current location."


    "Our agents in the Shadow Isles can supply you with that." The professor remarked.


    Rui nodded. He was going to have to spend quite some time stalking the man while building a predictive model on him. He was also going to have to determine the man''s innate resonance frequencies.


    Rui immediately began heading to the Shadow Isles. Funnily enough, it was his first time heading there. He exchanged away his Martial attire for something less attention-drawing, though he highly doubted it mattered.


    The Shadow Isles were for assassins.


    He even avoided sky-walking to the Shadow Isles to avoid drawing attention, going out of his way to take a ferry ride over to the archipgo.


    The Shadow Isles were a collection of dozens of numbered inds in remarkably close proximity to each other. The inds were connected withrge sturdy bridges to allow for smooth travel back and forth between them.


    It wasn''t long before arrived at Ind One, before tipping the ferry rider and making his way through the town.


    Instantly, one could feel the darkness. Metaphorical darkness, given that it was in the middle of the day.


    Yet not even the Sun was able to hide the sombre edge of the entire town. It gave an eerie sensation that one was not entirely able to ce their finger on.


    The infrastructure of the ind was really good, it was not a rundown ce, which made sense to Rui, given how much assassins earned from their variousmissions. There werevish buildings that tantly announced their purpose.


    [Aramin Assassination Association]


    [DAP Assassin''s Guild]


    Organizations formed with Martial Artist assassins that catered to clientele and served as brokers between clientele and assassins openly did business in broad daylight on the ind.


    There was not shortage of people who walked into those buildings, either. Yet Rui recognized that nobody who had the wealth to go to the Shadow Isles andmission a Martial Artist did it in person.


    All the people he saw walking in and out of these establishments were most likely not the actual clients, but rather people that served as representatives for the true clients. The actual clients did not want to be caught on the ind, probably because they had enough wealth to the point where their image mattered.


    Yet Rui highly doubted that it was anything less than an open secret. It was the norm in the Derschek Region and had been the norm for quite some time, ever since the Silent Shadow had arrived at the Gana Archipgo, turning it into the Shadow Isles as a result.


    He bet that if he revealed his identity as a Martial Senior, he would immediately be scouted by various organizations to sign a contract with them and be a member of their organization.


    He knew that he probably was already being scouted the moment he entered the ind. The fact that he didn''t have any aura was meaningless, hiding their attention-drawing aura as Martial Artists was a basic ability for assassins, it was the bare minimum.


    It would actually be better if Rui pretended to be a Martial Squire than a normal person, the former more believable for people residing in the Shadow Isles.


    Furthermore, he didn''t want to draw any attention by being too suspicious either, thus perhaps it wasn''t a bad idea to join an organization like the average assassin that came to the Shadow Isles did. He wouldn''t stand out if stuck with the herd.


    The issue was that he would need to use a different style of assassination than the one that he intended to kill Martial Seniors with if he did do that. He had some difficult choices ahead of him to make.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1368 Tracking

    1368 Tracking


    Rui made his way through the ind with his badge pinned to his chest, making it clear to the Beggar''s Sect that he was looking for them.


    A child walked up to him, handing him a slip of paper. "I believe you wanted this, mister."


    Rui sighed, epting the slip before watching the child scamper away mncholically.


    On the slip of paper were numbers, one corresponding to the ind number, and the other corresponding to the area code of the ind. He also got more specific street coordinates, ensuring that he could pinpoint the man''s location.


    ''Ind Fourteen, and area twenty-nine! Rui noted, before immediately heading in the direction of the area.


    He had memorized a map of the entirety of the Shadow Isles, thus he was perfectlyfortable walking through the archipgo. The deeper he went into the archipgo, the denser the activity got. Despite it being a collection of inds, he didn''t see a single fishing boat or line from people along the coasts.


    It appeared that they had been scared off by the various assassins that increasingly began dominating the archipgo. He also couldn''t feel any degree of political control from the Derschek Region. He suspected that that hadn''t always been the case.


    Prior to the arrival of the Silent Shadow, the region would have undoubtedly been a strategic location that could serve as a powerful outpost location for maritime trading and seafare.


    Yet the im of a notoriously powerful Martial Master assassin made the entire archipgo immediately lose all its allure. No one in the Derschek Region had the capital to make an enemy of out of a Martial Master.


    ?


    As Rui made his way through, he came across endless groups of assassins offering assassinationmissions. Yet he couldn''t feel any of the spirit of exploration that he had expected from a group of people searching for the Silent Shadow.


    It appeared that the entire area had been turned into an open assassination industry.


    He could see why assassins would be content with this alone. It was very rare that something like an assassination industry could be fostered out in the open. They were outright illegal in most parts of human civilization and thus needed to operate in the shadows.


    The same way that they did in the Kandrian Empire, forming the underworld of the empire.


    However, here in the Derschek Region, they could set up shop and even hand out flyers. Perhaps many assassins hade to grow more attached to that than he had thought. Perhaps most of them were here because of that rather than finding the Silent Shadow.


    If so, Rui felt pity for the Silent Shadow. She had gone through all this effort simply for it to fall t.


    It wasn''t long before he arrived at the specified location, before spreading Riemannian Echo across the entire ce. There were plenty of anti-espionage measures taken, but they didn''t stop him. Eventually, he found a man who resembled the image that Rui had seen of him.


    His target; Sam Sevian.


    The man was currently inside a residential building, lying down on a bed. Rui felt like quite the stalker, but he doubled down, taking a seat inside a simple bar while observing the man.


    What he was doing was getting a gauge for his Martial Body and paying attention to how it responded to sound. Although he himself couldn''t produce sound of different frequencies and measure how his opponent was going to respond to it, he could rely on existing sound and noise to, at the very least, rule out what it wasn''t.


    It was a thankless and tedious process, but it couldn''t be helped. Until he found out what the man''s innate resonance frequencies were, he wouldn''t be able to assassinate him.


    What followed were long periods of supervision over the man, ruling out frequency by frequency as he paid attention to the acoustic dynamics within the room. It was especially difficult because Riemannian Echo had great range and prative ability, but it was not good with detail.


    Thus he had some difficulty making do with it until the man came out, much to Rui''s relief, before heading off somewhere sky- walking.


    "Tsk! Rui tutted as he followed him on foot. He was far too unwilling to reveal his status in front of his target. Thankfully, now that the man had exited, Rui could also use Tempestuous Feel to get a much better understanding of how his body responded to various sounds.


    However, when the man finally stopped sky-walking to enter arge establishment. Rui paused as he read the name of the establishment.N?velDrama.Org holds this content.


    [Area Crina]


    Rui narrowed his eyes with suspicion as he read that name carefully. Regardless, it appeared that the man was part of the collective hunt for the Silent Shadow. Or the alleged hunt for the Silent Shadow.


    Regardless, the organization was not his target this time. He focused on Sam Sevian, keeping tabs on the man throughout the day as he tracked his various movements.


    It wasn''t half a dayter until the man finally left the Shadow Isles, before heading towards the Derschek Region with a suppressed aura and simply disguise.


    He had received amission.


    Unfortunately, it was too risky for Rui to follow him this time. On the Shadow Isles, he could blend in much better, but that changed the moment he started following the man to ces outside of the archipgo.


    He would need to wait for the man to return.


    He followed this routine for the next few days, always making sure to keep a huge distance between himself and his target. He didn''t want to get caught. His life was not at risk, being a Martial Senior himself, but he did not want to lose his anonymity or cover.


    It would be extremely difficult to start over if he did.


    ''Maybe I should hire a musician to y some music near his ce! Rui wondered.


    That way, he could elerate his understanding of the man''s innate resonance frequencies.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1369 Assassination

    1369 Assassination


    Senior Sam Sevian had been on a rolltely. Frommissions to assassinating important individuals in Senior-level nations in the Derschek Region to eliminating one of the powerhouses of a kingdom.


    He had been getting a lot of good money, which he funneled into the Crina Foundation and Area Crina.


    His goal was to gain the tutge of the Silent Shadow and be a Martial Master himself. He didn''t know what the conditions of the Master Realm were, but he hoped to learn that in addition to gaining the wisdom of a powerful Martial Master.


    The search for the Silent Shadow had been making steady but slow progress. The fact that even the Crina Foundation was having such a difficult time tracking her down in such a small ce showed just how capable the Silent Shadow.


    From what he had heard, even the legendary Beggar''s Sect had failed in tracking down the vaunted Martial Master, which was a testament to the assassin''s remarkable capabilities.


    He left his residence, before taking a moment to nce at the recent eyesore.


    A traveling musician hade all the way to the Shadow Isles to y music for donations.


    Why a poor musician would want toe all the way to an assassin''s den to y music, he didn''t know. The man may as well have been trying to earn the ire of the assassins given how chaotic his music was. It was as though he was trying to hit every note there was all within a single piece.


    Sam heaved a sigh before shaking his head and sky-walking to the Crina Foundation. He quickly checked his inbox, looking for any personalmissions towards him in particr.


    [Assassination target: King Verkens]


    Sam widened his eyes in surprise at that name. King Verkens was one of the most powerful and influential figures in the Derchek Region. Assassinating him would be a worthy challenge.


    He quickly epted themission, before immediately essing the intelligence of the Crina Foundation on his target''s security measures, locations, and other relevant information.


    Such an assassination could not bepletely nned in a single day, it would take days, if not weeks of nning for him to cleanly nail the assassination in order to avoid being caught by the Martial Seniors of the kingdom.


    He spent several days looking deeper into and memorizing the basic information as he created a n to try and take King Verkens out.


    He was a poison specialist, thus all he had to do was slip into the Royal Kitchen and poison the man''s food. It was a lot simpler and less risky than trying to kill the king directly.


    He quickly made ns based on the information he had ess to, he even went on scouting operations to get a better understanding of theyout and the various challenges that he would face.


    Not too longter, it was finally time to put the assassination into y. He left the Shadow Isles, before heading to the kingdom. It wasn''t long before he had arrived at his little makeshift base, putting on his worker disguise while preparing his fake permit into the Royal Pce.


    Yet before he could even leave his base.


    THWOOMN?velDrama.Org: text ? owner.


    He never even felt an impact. The world simply went dark as his corpse hit the ground. The brain damage had been instantaneous, and instantaneously brutal. There was nothing anybody there could have done to save him, even if they did find him immediately.


    And they did find him and even identified him correctly as the notorious Toxinist. They also found the falsified Royal permit and the disguise that he intended to wear.


    Immediately, a minor uproar arose in the Derschek Region. An uproar arose only because it was the king himself who was clearly the target, and it was minor because assassinations were toomonce in the Derschek Region.


    What truly shocked everyone was not the fact that the Martial Senior was targeting the king.


    No.


    Being a powerful figure in the Derschek Region meant that attempts on your life were part of the daily routine. The king hadn''t even so much twitched or disyed a hint of tension when he was informed of the once-imminent assassination attempt.


    However, what did evoke great surprise was when he was informed that the Martial Senior passed away before he could execute the n.


    Something or someone had gotten to him first, killing him before the man could kill the king.


    "Is it possible that he could have died of a natural disease?" The king murmured. "Perhaps a heart attack?"


    "We are not seeing any obvious signs of any particr cause of death, Your Majesty." The Royal healer exined. "We can rule out some possibilities, of course. He certainly was not killed in a fight, the condition of his body is far too pristine for that. We can also rule out the possibility that he sumbed to poison. We have not detected the presence of any substances that his body wasn''t clearly resistant to. There are no overt signs of any health conditions whatsoever that would clue. We see no signs of struggle whatsoever. It''s as though his body just died on the spot."


    It was inexplicable.


    A Martial Senior just copsed over, dying instantly seemingly out of nowhere, to nothing.


    It was a shocking event because Martial Seniors had an air of invincibility to them. They were walking cmities capable of leaving immense destruction in their wake. They were merely one step away from ascending to a higher state of life.


    They were not beings who simply died, falling over. The ripples of this event spread beyond just the kingdom, as the entire Derschek Region came to hear of the surprising incident.


    Yet the ce where the news made the most waves was in the Shadow Isles. The Martial Artist assassins could not believe what they were hearing.


    Literally, they did not believe it. They initially thought it was fake news. However, eventually, reality proved them to be wrong.


    Yet none of them imagined that this was merely a prelude of what was toe.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1370 Prelude

    Chapter 1370 Prelude


    The air was tense. Rui heaved a deep sigh as he narrowed his eyes, focusing. He was on a rooftop in the Verkens Kingdom, about sixteen kilometers away from his target; Sam Sevian.


    It had taken some time and a member of the Beggar''s Sect, feigning as a street musician, but he had grown certain of the man''s innate resonance frequencies, while also having developed a predictive model of the man over time.


    He had everything he needed.


    Now, all he needed was the earliest opportunity when Senior Sam left the Shadow Isles and headed towards the Derschek Region toplete thetestmission that he had undertaken from a rtive of King Verkens.


    As time passed, Rui grew increasingly sharp.


    It wasn''t long before the moment had arrived. Rui heaved a deep sigh before activating his Martial Heart.


    BADUMP!


    Instantly, all of his senses peaked to the maximum as they received active empowerment from the Martial Heart. Streaks of glowing red lines emerged from his head spreading across his flesh as he resembled a mountainden with streams ofva, ready to erupt at any moment.


    He focused his senses on his target as he activated the Void Pathfinder technique


    THWOOM THWOOM THWOOM


    Rui fired three Mighty Roar sh sts of three different frequencies and speeds that shed across the air, crossing the distance in less than two seconds.


    It was nigh instantaneous, yet from his perspective, it took forever. He waited incredibly long to watch his attacks cross a huge distance. He didn''t want to deactivate his Martial Heart since he needed it to make a quick getaway if he did get caught.


    Thankfully, he didn''t need it after all. The attack hit true and center, smoothly passing through his skull before his eyes rolled backward and his body went limp, falling over.


    THUD


    The corpse of the Martial Senior copsed.


    Rui grinned with jubtion as he witnessed his first sessful assassination with Death''s Sympathy. As much as he wanted to celebrate, he knew that he needed to get out of here without being identified.


    Thankfully, the man''s body was only discovered after Rui left the kingdom, eventually reaching the Beggar''s Sect before proudly dering the first operationplete.


    Yet it appeared that the professor was already aware of his sess.


    "Remarkable." The man murmured, dumbfounded. "If it''s this easy for you to kill a Martial Senior then..."


    What truly surprised Rui was how big of a deal it became in the following days. ording to the reports from the Beggar''s Sect, the assassinationmunity atrge was shell-shocked at the abrupt death of a Martial Senior.


    Although Senior Sam Sevian was not the strongest Martial Senior, he was still a full-fledged Martial Senior.


    He was not someone who could be killed by anything less than a Martial Senior. No one bought the idea that a Martial Squire could have done him off before his Martial Heart activated. All the Martial Seniors knew that his Martial Heart would have long kicked in reflexively, preventing him from dying due to ack of it.


    None of them bought the idea that he had sumbed to some health condition. The Martial Body was extremely hard to kill through disease orpromised health. Furthermore, Senior Sam was not known to have such conditions.


    There was only one conclusion that the assassinationmunity atrge came to.


    He had been assassinated.


    Not killed, but assassinated. The fact that he was taken out when he was about to begin working on amission showed that he was specifically being targeted.


    That immediately ruled out the forces of the Derschek Region, since there were almost no native Senior-level assassins. Most of the Martial Senior assassins that operated in this region resided in the Shadow Isles, and all of them were people who migrated to the Shadow Isles looking for the Silent Shadow.


    Thus, whoever assassinated Senior Sam, was most likely a Martial Senior assassin of the Shadow Isles.


    None of the Martial Seniorsined. They were not friends and werepetitors, in fact. Yet the sheer inexplicability of his death was something that many of them found unnerving.


    Every assassin had a signature. A manner of killing that wasrgely unique to them.


    Poison, decapitation, strangtion, suffocation.


    Although their identities as assassins were inscrutable to many, they were a smallmunity and kept an eye on their peers.


    The fact that the cause of Sam''s death had not been identified was surprising. The fact that there were no signs of struggle, no signs of resistance, no signs of conflict was especially unnerving.


    It meant that whoever took Sam out was so far superior to him that they could get it done instantly without any ws or imperfections.


    The ideal assassination.


    Had one asked any of the Martial Seniors whether they were capable of killing Senior Sam that perfectly and cleanly, none of them would have been able to say yes if they were being perfectly honest.


    Assassinating a fellow peer was possible, but it was almost always a messy operation that almost always resulted in a battle.


    "Yet, ording to the many reports that we have gathered, such a thing did not ur even in the slightest." A man reported. "Not even the windows or tiles were cracked. It is inconceivable that any conflict ensued."


    The man paused, before ncing to his right. "What do you think,dy Crina?"


    Many had gathered in a meeting around a table.


    Many waited as they gazed at the elderly woman at the table.


    She opened her eyes.


    Eyes that hid an unfathomable depth to them.


    A single word escaped her mouth.


    "Interesting."


    Many people in the Derschek Region and the Shadow Isles had many questions regarding the incident. Yet there were no answers to be provided. They could only move on and eventually forget about the incident.


    At the end of the day, although the assassination was extremely strange and bizarre, an assassination was an assassination. It was far toomonce in the Derschek Region. Once people got over the novelties of this particrly mysterious case, it was destined to be buried.


    Unless, of course, it was merely a prelude to what was toe.N?velDrama.Org holds this content.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1371 Offer

    ?


    1371 Offer


    "The perfect assassination." The professor murmured. "Incredible. This is game-changing"


    Rui smirked. He was quite proud of the technique that he hade up with. This technique project had reminded him of the satisfaction of developing powerful techniques from scratch and developing his Martial Art.


    It had been therapeutic and refreshing to develop his new technique from scratch. He didn''t even care if it was something as dark as assassination techniques, a sess was a sess.


    "So, next target," Rui remarked.


    "Wait, we have something to discuss." The professor remarked. "My superior wishes to speak to you."


    Rui raised an eyebrow. "About what?"


    "About your recent assassination, of course," The professor snorted. "He has invited you to a meeting."


    Rui considered it for a moment, before shrugging. "Sure."


    The professor nodded, before nodding at a library staff member stationed in the room. "She will guide you to the meeting."


    Rui left the room following the woman down the many corridors deep into the Libraries of Gehu, before eventually reaching an enormous lecture hall of sorts. Rui wondered what was even the point of having such a thing at a library.


    Perhaps they invited genuine guest writers from time to time and had them give speeches on their literary works.


    Regardless, there was a man who sat down alone in the front row of the lecture hall, reading a book. The staff member shut the door behind them as he felt his senses being strongly hampered.


    ?


    Rui nced at the man, taking note of his physical appearance. He had an incredibly aged appearance, one that conveyed the wealth of his experience.


    "You''re here." The man remarked. "Good,e have a seat."


    "I heard you wanted to speak with me."


    "Of course." The man remarked. "Why wouldn''t I?"


    Rui walked down the declining stairs as he propped himself over beside the man silently.


    He wasn''t the one that sought to talk.


    "You know this book, right here?" The man closed it, showing Rui the cover.


    [The Birth of Darkness]


    It had an unsettling cover, one that couldn''t have possibly been meant to draw in readers.N?velDrama.Org holds this content.


    "It''s a meta-analysis on the impacts that the discovery of misdirection Martial Art techniques had on the world in the year ny-seven." The man remarked. "It had many impacts, but it first and foremost gave rise to a whole new branch of assassination techniques. It gave rise to a whole new breed of assassins. The first assassin who mastered these techniques was Transcendent Frin, and he changed the world."


    The man''s eyes narrowed. "Because he wielded the most powerful techniques of his era. He became the greatest Martial Art assassin of not just his era, but all eras toe after. It all started with him being the first one to truly grasp this field."


    Rui silently listened.


    It was an intriguing story, but he wasn''t sure why he was called here.


    "I was rereading this book because I was recently reminded of it."


    ?


    The man remarked. "Another assassin who came to grab hold of a field that may very well have the same impact on this world."


    He nced at Rui, making eye contact for the first time.


    "You tter me but... I''m not an assassin." Rui shook his head. "I just have someone I need to kill."


    "I''m aware," The man remarked with an amused expression. "And in the process developed an unprecedented technique based on unseen principles and mechanics."


    Rui shrugged. "I don''t do things half-heartedly."


    "Yes, we havee to increasingly learn that in our correspondence with you." The man broke a smile. "If you don''t do things half-heartedly, then perhaps you would like to consider a decision that requires full-heartedmitment."


    Rui simply stared at him, waiting for him to get to the point.


    "Join us, Senior Falken." The man remarked. "We could use a man like you."


    Rui narrowed his eyes. "That wasn''t what I was expecting."


    The man shrugged. "Life has a tendency to be unexpected."


    "I''m assuming that if I do ept membership, it will be the permanent kind."


    "Correct." The man remarked. "You will not be able to operate as a free agent anymore. You will serve the sect."


    "You''re not making your case look more alluring."


    "I''m simply stating the truth," The man looked amused. "I don''t want to insult your demonstrated intelligence by trying to pull off little psychological tricks to try andpel you in vain."


    "Yes, but you could at least try making a deal that looks attractive." Rui snorted.


    ?


    "We''ll kill Chairman Deacon the moment you ept." The man remarked.


    Rui narrowed his eyes. "It''s that easy, huh?"


    "Well, killing him the moment you eptis a bit much, admittedly." The man smirked.


    "Though we can arrange that as well if you want."


    "In exchange for lifelong service to the Beggar''s Sect," Rui remarked. "Was my assassination that alluring?"


    "More than you realize." The man replied. "I am the regional manager of the Derschek branch of our foreign affairs department. I took the liberty to meet with you personally as a token of my value for you and your capabilities."


    Rui considered it for a moment, before shaking his head. "I''m fine. I''ll kill him myself. Worst-case scenario, I''ll exchange this service formission payment. Work for Beggar''s Sect for a time to have Chairman Deacon. But I will not be subservient to any force!"


    This was no different from the deal that the Martial Union had offered him, in effect. If Rui pledged his undying loyalty to the Martial Union, they would undoubtedly get rid of the variable that threatened to eliminate their newfound operator.


    Both the Beggar''s Sect and the Martial Union were powerful enough to get rid of even someone like Chairman Deacon. Both of them demanded a price that Rui was unwilling to fulfill.


    "Is that so?" The man remarked nonchntly. "Shame. Let Carl know if you ever change your mind, we''d wee a man of your talents, a man of your talent."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1372 Sus

    Chapter 1372 Sus


    Rui exited the lecture hall as the staff member waiting outside immediately guided him back to the professor''s office. He was deep in thought. He found it a shame that people who had the power to kill Chairman Deacon and even made the offer to take him out only were willing to do so at the price of Rui''s servitude.


    It was just too much.


    Besides, he would rather kill Chairman Deacon himself. It was something he needed to do himself.


    He immediately returned to the professor''s office, closing the door behind him.


    "Shame to know you won''t be joining us." The man remarked. "We could do a lot with someone like you amongst our ranks."


    Rui shrugged. "You''ll have to make do without me. besides, I''m sure there are other brilliant Martial Seniors out there. High-grade and peak Martial Seniors. Surely they can replicate what I did through their own innate capabilities."


    "Do you have any idea how few Martial Seniors there are that managed to reach the highest echelons of the Senior Realm?" The professor snorted. "Besides, being the youngest Martial Senior in existence and already being this potent and effective means that you will be a monster when you have time to mature and grow. Are you sure you don''t want to join our sect? You''d get quite the privileged position within our ranks you know."


    Rui shook his head. "It was not even a remote possibility."


    "Shame." The man remarked.


    "Let''s get back to the matter at hand," Rui said. "I may not be joining the sect, but I will help you clean up the Derschek Region."


    Rui went over the list of Martial Senior targets one by one before making his next choice.


    "Her." Rui pointed to his choice.


    [Sele Friun]


    Another person who was rtively young for a Martial Senior. He needed to start out slow and steady to make sure that he didn''t overstep.


    Because the Senior Realm had fifteen grades, it meant that the difference between himself and the high-grade and peak Martial Seniors could be substantial. Although there were no truly notable Martial Seniors in that range in the Shadow Isles, he still did not want to underestimate them given that even reaching the mid-grade of the Senior Realm would still be impressive considering the size of the Senior Realm.


    It was possible that Martial Seniors of higher grades would not be such easy targets to kill, he did not want to find out the hard way if that was true.


    "Senior Sele it is." The professor nodded. "I''ll have a more in-depth report on her prepared for you."


    lightsn¦Ïv¦Ål "That will be much appreciated." Rui nodded.


    It wasn''t long before Rui got deeper ess to the data that the Beggar''s Sect had prepared on her.


    "Interesting..." Rui murmured. "A grappling-oriented assassin is something I didn''t expect, I have to confess."


    "There are all kinds of assassination philosophies." The man remarked. "I''ve seen even more bizarre ones, trust me."


    "Herck of range makes her a good target." Rui mused. "The consequences of failure will be minimized. I should get started."


    "Be careful, she''s a founding member of Area Crina, they will not take her death lightly."


    Rui''s eyes narrowed at the mention of that name. "I don''t trust Area Crina. That name... You know what it''s an anagram for, right?"


    "Of course, we do," The professor snorted. "Do you have any idea how much manpower and a variety of other resources have gone into investigating it? We spent seven years conducting the most thorough investigation on Area Crina, the Crina Foundation, and its founder Skia Crina. After a particrly lengthy investigation, we have concluded that it is a coincidence."


    Rui furrowed his eyebrows with skepticism.


    "We found nothing particrly suspicious about them. Lady Crina was born well before the Silent Shadow retired and gained her wealth before that happened. We even know why Lady Crina seeks the Silent Shadow. It truly is an unfortunate coincidence that happens to be overlooked by most people."


    The Beggar''s Sect''s operations were extremely solid, so the fact that they didn''t find anything off was a pretty solid vote of coincidence.


    However, it wasn''t absolute.


    He wasn''t able to bring himself to trust the Silent Shadow.


    He shook his head. Regardless, he was confident in his n to use assassination to find her. It made a lot of logical sense and was a n that he cooked up after looking at all the avable information and facts at hand.


    Regardless of whether the anagram was a coincidence or not, he had only one task.


    Kill.All content ? N/.?vel/Dr/ama.Org.


    He was to kill all of them.


    At least, all of the Martial Seniors. He didn''t want to piss off the Panamic Martial Federation, thankfully, he didn''t need to kill them to find the Silent Shadow or destroy the assassination industry in the Derschek Region.


    Both of these things were things that could be done without such extreme measures.


    He immediately got to work, tailing Senior Sele around in the Shadow Isles. Because of his enormous sensory range even in his passive state, he was able to tail her without drawing her attention, though he did need to take strange detours to make it look like he wasn''t following her in case she did sense him.


    Thankfully, she never once detected him. The dense crowds certainly helped, however, part of it undoubtedly came from the fact that she was a Martial Senior. Seeing that made Rui want to remain more alert, the worst thing that could happen was that he would grow secure in his power and end up dying as a result.


    In actuality, he felt more vulnerable, although he would be able to activate his Martial Heart before any force in the Senior Realm would be able to kill him thanks to a passively empowered instinctive reflex and senses, it was still unnerving when he wasn''t using his Martial Heart.


    The Squire Realm was the perfect upgrade, and while the Senior Realm was proportionally superior, it had more shorings than the transition to the Squire Realm did.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1373 Judgment

    Chapter 1373 Judgment


    A few days passed as Rui did his best to gather all the information that he needed on his target smoothly. He had to admit, the musician was definitely a good idea. Having y pieces that hit all notes across audible and inaudible ranges conveniently allowed her to elerate the process of figuring out her innate resonance frequency.


    It wasn''t long before he got the rightbination of the triple frequency in the rightyers to bypass theyers of the head to hit her brain.


    As always, he chose to assassinate her when she herself was out and about fulfilling amission.


    The best time to strike his prey, was when his prey was about to strike its prey. Their minds were consumed by their target, making it less likely that they would detect threats to their own life.


    That was why one moment she was walking on a bridge towards her target, a famous public figure with Squire-level security detail, and the next moment, her consciousness faded and her body copsed, falling into a rapid river below the bridge, before being swept away beneath the powerful rapids.


    Nobody bothered to try and save her, not even the Martial Artists who could.


    That was within Rui''s calctions.


    After all, this region just wasn''t that kind of ce.


    Two Martial Seniors down, several dozen more to go. He was satisfied with his progress. It had been ten days since he returned from training and two of his assassination targets were already dead.


    That was progress.N?velDrama.Org holds this content.


    Funnily enough, because nobody knew that the disguised woman who fell into the river was actually a Martial Senior, nobody had known that she had died.


    She just disappeared.


    "Tsk, Damn Sele. She didn''t even finish hermission. She''s making us look bad."


    "We have received aint, a demand for a refund, and appropriatepensation."


    "But where did she go?"


    "Maybe she left the Shadow Isles to go somewhere else. She was ranked close to the bottom of Martial Senior assassins after all."


    Suddenly, a Senior-level aura washed over the two conversing members of the Daelgul Assassination Service.


    "She did not abandon us." The Martial Senior narrowed his eyes. "She was taken out. She would have been back now even if she failed in hermission which she wouldn''t have."


    This drew a gasp from the two of them. "Could it be...?"


    "Yeah. It''s that same bastard who took out Sam."


    Many hade to suspect the connection between the two cases. It wasn''t hard to link them. After all, there were somemonalities. For one, once again, they were killed before they could put up a fight or resistance.


    "Furthermore, Sam was definitely the weakest of all the Senior assassins in the archipgo, Sele may not be the second weakest, but she is very close to the bottom nheless. We may see some more of the bottom-ranking Martial Seniors be targeted, and that will definitely confirm the connection."


    And confirm it did. In theing weeks, several more Martial Seniors either disappeared or just apparently died out of nowhere.


    It could no longer be denied. It could no longer be spected around. The truth was clear to anyone with any intelligence. Someone was targeting Martial Seniors. From the bottom, making their way up the totem pole.


    Many knew that it was probably time to nip the problem in the bud. In a room with many dignitaries, Martial Seniors, and a single woman at the head of the table, that was exactly what was being discussed.


    lightsn¦Ïv¦Ål "It''s the beggar''s sect." On Martial Senior spat with an angry expression. "Maybe I should massacre all the humans on this ind that no doubt hide many of their spies just to shove it to them."


    "Please abstain from doing that, mam." A high-level executive in the Crina Foundation sighed. "Not only would I rather not die, but you would be dering war against the Beggar''s Sect. It is possible that they may very well upgrade the Shadow Isles to a priority issue and deploy one of their few and scarce internal Martial Masters to wipe us all out. I highly doubt that the Silent Shadow wille out of hiding to protect us if and when that happens."


    Although they resisted the Beggar''s Sect, everybody in that room knew that the Beggar''s Sect in its totality possessed the power to wipe them out. This was an organization that had led to the fall of a Martial Sage,rgely through their ability to manipte human civilization. A bunch of pesky Martial Seniors were no different from insects if the Beggar''s Sect summoned its full might.


    Thankfully for them, the Beggar''s Sect was spread extremely thin since they made it a point to involve themselves in any and all matters across the continent. Which meant that they could only summon a smidgen of their full power for any one issue in a given region.


    "That is the only reason that they haven''t wiped out the Shadow Isles." One executive of Area Crina remarked. "They have deployed Senior-level forces against us before but..."


    "Interesting." Skia Crina murmured at the head of the table, drawing everybody''s attention. "Fighting fire with fire. Assassinating assassins with assassins."


    A soft smile arose on her delicate elderly face.


    An inscrutable emotion rang deep in the depths of her unfathomable eyes.


    "Wait, we don''t even know if the Beggar''s Sect is involved." One Martial Senior remarked with a nervous expression. "I don''t know if I want to fight them."


    "Tsk, don''t be a wimp." Another Martial Senior remarked contemptuously. "I don''t care who is behind this. I care for the actual individual or individuals who eliminated Sam, Sele, Bayron, Gilles, and Artor. Whoever this is, it''s clearly an elite veteran high-grade Martial Senior who has dedicated their entire life to the art of killing."


    Many nodded across the table in agreement. The sheer quality of the assassinations meant that there were only a few candidates at the highest echelons of the Senior Realm.


    "A veteran who has dedicated their entire life, hm?" Skia Crina murmured, drawing everybody''s attention. "Is that really what you all see?"


    Nobody knew how to respond to that, even as a knowing smile spread on her face.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1374 Plans

    1374 ns


    Several waves rippled through the Derschek Region and the Shadow Isles. For the first time in a long time, the Shadow Isles experienced more emigration than immigration. The Martial Squires and the Martial Apprentices weren''t dumb.


    Five Martial Seniors were assassinated back to back, roughly once every five days. There was nomon pattern in the allegiances or loyalties of the Martial Seniors as far as the organizations that they had joined went. There were nomon patterns in any regard except for the fact that they were at the bottom of the informal rankings among the Martial Seniors.N?velD(ram)a.?rg owns this content.


    Many subscribed to the hypothesis that an assassin was targeting all the Martial Seniors of the Shadow Isles. Many further extended that subscription that the assassin was targeting all assassins and was beginning with Martial Seniors. Perhaps if and when this assassin seeded in killing all the Martial Seniors, they would move on to the Martial Artists of the lower Realms.


    If that were to happen, they were undoubtedly screwed. That was why there was a group of particrly fearful Martial Artist assassins that actually chose to leave the Shadow Isles.


    Unfortunately, they didn''t know that Martial Seniors were not allowed to unscrupulously bully particrlyrge numbers of the Apprentice and Squire Realm unless in retaliation to a provocation or an antagonization.


    Funnily enough, while the Panamic Martial Federation enforced this rule, it also enforced a rule that prevented Martial Apprentices and Squires from learning of this rule.


    Martial Seniors were to be respected and feared.


    Thankfully, it worked in Rui''s favor.


    What didn''t work in his favor was the fact that the Martial Seniors?began finally waking up to the threat that Rui represented after the fifth victim.


    The biggest issue was that despite retaining the corpses of three bodies, a cause of death had still not been established. Rui''s incredibly delicate care ensured that he dialed down the force even further to prevent the truth from being discovered.


    He had managed to walk an incredibly thin line sessfully, optimizing the oue in his favor.


    Without knowing the manner in which he was killed, the other Martial Seniors could not be on the lookout for this particr manner of assassination. They couldn''t take the appropriate measures to protect themselves.


    The only other pattern that existed aside from the Martial Seniors being at the bottom of the totem pole was the fact that they were killed when they were out on assassinationmissions.


    The moment this pattern was discovered, several Martial Seniors took an indefinite hiatus from undertaking assassination operations, much to the dismay.


    "Tsk, what a pathetic excuse for a Martial Senior you are, Sonel." One woman snorted when she heard of this.


    "You only get to say that because you''ve been in the Senior Realm strong enough to not be immediately targeted, Riya." The man replied coldly.


    "If you''re that terrified, then why don''t you partner up with another Martial Senior?" Riya asked. "That way, you''ll have more of a reassurance. Some of us have already begun doing that."


    "I don''t trust anybody else to protect my life."


    The fear of being assassinated had already begun hindering the


    Shadow Isles.


    "Things are unfolding within my calctions," Rui remarked calmly as he read through the transcripts of confidential conversations held between important individuals in the upper echelons of the assassination sector of the Shadow Isles.


    "It is?" Professor Carl asked as he organized several more documents for Rui.


    "Death is powerful, but fear of death is much stronger," Rui replied. "Getting rid of Martial Apprentices and Squires without killing them would have been a challenge if not for the fact that they are terrified of Martial Seniors, as they should be. The best part is that the fear is affecting the Martial Seniors as well."


    "What did you intend to do about the Martial Seniors that have ceased undertakingmissions?" Professor Carl inquired with a curious expression.


    "I''ll kill them, of course," Rui replied with aposed tone. "Not immediately, it''s more convenient to eliminate the Martial Seniors that still have the courage to undertakemissions. It will be a little challenging if they do partner up with another Martial Senior. But I can''t indicate that this is any sort of hindrance, otherwise, they will all start relying on this method."


    "And how do you intend to fulfill your end goal of learning out the assassination sector all by yourself if they rely on grouping up with each other.?" The man inquired.


    "I will create an environment that is simply untenable," Rui replied calmly. "I''ve looked at all of the profiles that the Beggar''s Sect has prepared on all the Martial Seniors. Each of them is deeply individualistic. Not just in a Martial Art sense, but also in a conventional sense. They are solo yers and are unustomed to grouping up for amon goal. The fact that there hasn''t been a single joint operation in eight years only proves that. They are not the type that can handle being paired and grouped in groups of more than two."


    The professor understood where Rui wasing from. "So you don''t need to kill them if you end up making it better to leave than to stay."


    Rui nodded. "That''s the most convenient way to rely on assassination to wipe out the entire assassination industry. Furthermore, by not touching those who decide to leave the Shadow Isles and the Derschek Region forever, I am making leaving a clear and attractive option. Eventually, they''ll be inclined to."


    "That''s a very level-headed and practical n." The professor murmured. "All the internal Martial Seniors we have deployed, all the external ones we havemissioned. And to think this annoying problem is shaping to be solved by a single Martial Senior." Rui shrugged. "It''s not that big a deal."


    Professor Carl simply stared at him. Memories of the many years that he and his colleagues had to deal with the disruptions to their operations by the indiscriminate assassinations flooded back to the man''s mind.


    Such a nightmarish problem that seemed impossible to solve without deploying a Martial Master was now very thoroughly being beaten back by a single Martial Senior. He began to understand why the regional head had personally beckoned Rui to join the Beggar''s Sect. Given the sheer ability of a Martial Senior as young as him, he would very well be an incredibly powerful asset in time.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1375 Plans II

    <h4>Chapter 1375 ns II</h4>


    The dynamics of the Derschek Region shifted as a small chunk of the lessmitted assassins left the region and the Shadow Isles, unwilling to get tangled up by what was clearly a veteran Martial Senior assassin targeting them.


    The supply of assassins was reduced by a little, increasing their scarcity and driving up the prices of the assassination services.


    "We have already measured a nine-percent decrease in the number ofmissioned assassinations per capita across all Realms across a ten-day time period." The professor eximed.


    "That''s good, but it will need to plummet much more than that," Rui remarked. "Still, considering that the median prices of assassinations across all Realms have experienced a slump after only five assassinations. It has given me a good picture of how entrenched the assassination industry is. Unfortunately, for my next targets, killing a single Martial Senior will not be nearly as effective as it was the first five times."


    "What do you n to do then?" Professor Carl asked.


    "I eventually n to take out the few Martial Seniors that have grouped together in a pair in hopes that that will deter me from killing any of them," Rui replied as his tone grew sharper.


    "I will show them that they cannot deter me with such a trivial measure. If they want to hinder me, they''ll need to huddle up like they''re homeless on a freezing winter night."


    "Isn''t there a chance that one of the duo might be able to survive your assassination attempt and reveal the manner in which you kill your targets?" Professor Carl asked.


    "It''s impossible to kill both within the same assassination," Rui admitted. As much as he wanted to im that such a thing was trivially easy for him, he would be dishonest in doing so. "However, I can definitely kill one of them."


    "So you''re saying that it is inevitable?"


    "Yes. I haven''t reached a level where I can continue preventing them from learning anything about my assassination style for too much longer." Rui replied. "I''ll take out as many individual Martial Seniors as I can, but once I reach the duos, the secret will spill, unfortunately."


    "How will that affect your n?"


    "I''ve already ounted for it." Rui calmly reassured him. "Once I whittled their numbers down, and also demonstrated that simply pairing up is not going to save them. One of them will die, and the other may escape for a while, but not for too long."


    "What if the one that survives pinpoints your location and then decides to attack you?" Professor Carl. "Because you''re the youngest Martial Squire, your Martial Heart and Martial Body are probably going to be weaker."


    "Ordinarily, you''d be right in saying that this would be a severe threat. However..." Rui smirked. "I am not an assassin. Despite my recent aplishments, I''m at my strongest in a head-on fight. On top of that..."


    His eyes narrowed. "...I''m at my strongest when I''m prepared for my opponent."


    Although Rui had avoided doing this in recent times, he was far stronger than his baseline power level when he had a predictive model on his opponent built from the get-go. He could massively outperform his usual strength and was truly a menace to deal with in such a case.


    On top of that, his opponent was an assassin, someone who specialized in covertly eliminating targets through preparation.


    Assassins thus weren''t as good at head-on unpreparedbat as they were at assassinations. Thus even if Rui killed one of the two people in a pair, and the second surviving Martial Senior managed to pinpoint the location using that assassination. Rui was not nearly as concerned because they would be forced to confront him in his specialty, while he was fully prepared and at his strongest.


    "Once I seed in assassinating one of the two that belong in a pair, and defeat the second one in head-onbat. They will understand that they cannot survive me without extreme measures." Rui calmly concluded. "Of course, in most cases, the second surviving member of a pair would rather not fight their assassin head-on because thetter is prepared for them while the reverse isn''t true. But even still..."


    It was enough.


    "So you''ve nned everything."


    "Close to." Rui shrugged. "It''s not possible to ount for every variable, but I''ve processed every iota of data within the sect''s library of intelligence on the assassination industry of the Shadow Isles and this is the best n that I can think of. It''s impractical to try and kill every assassin one by one. Scaring most of them off with an unspoken ultimatum and threat to their life is the most efficient and effective path forward."


    Professor Carl nodded. "The regional head has authorized full-fledged cooperation of the branch with you and your operations. We havemissioned many Martial Seniors before. None have managed to make anything more than insignificant progress before leaving because they werepromised or killed. This is unprecedented."


    Rui smiled as the excited professor rattled on.


    His thoughts turned to his true objective in the Shadow Isles.


    The Silent Shadow. She left hints of it every time she epted a new pupil, a sign here or there. It was a way of reminding people that she was still alive and still judging those who sought her. N?velDrama.Org holds this content.


    She hadn''t epted a pupil in quite some time, ording to reports. And Rui grew increasingly convinced that it was thecking qualities of the assassins who sought her. If a true assassin eliminated the hurdles in their way, then Rui as he was right now was the poster boy for such an archetype.


    If not even that was enough to gain her approval then...


    He shrugged inwardly. ''I tried.''


    He shook his head before getting up and leaving.


    "Where are you heading off to now?"


    "To kill my next victim, of course," Rui calmly remarked, donning his mask before heading out.


    That day, yet another Martial Senior fell, stoking the mes of the crisis that had beset the assassins of the Shadow Isles.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1376 Off

    <h4>Chapter 1376 Off</h4>


    "This is why I told her to pair with me!" One Martial Senior gritted his teeth. "But she said no, and went and got herself killed! How many Martial Seniors must fall before it bes clear that we are dealing with a high-grade Martial Senior?!"


    The man''s words rippled across the table. A table featuring high-level executives, chairmen, directors, and Martial Seniors.


    High-grade Martial Seniors were rare. Because the depth of the Senior Realm was considerably greater than the Squire Realm, the difficulty of reaching the high grades was as proportionally high as the difficulty of bing a grade-ten Martial Squire.


    Just because there were five additional grades above the tenth grade did not change the fact that grade-ten Martial Seniors could dominate any Martial Senior below them. A high-grade Martial Senior assassin was a terrifying foe to face if one was not that deep within the Senior Realm.


    "For now, I believe it is prudent for all remaining Martial Seniors to start pairing up." A director of Navar Assassination Guild spoke. "Although it does not bolster defenses too much considering this assassin has bypassed the senses of a Martial Senior in their passive state indiscriminately, it does serve as a greater deterrent."


    "Unfortunately, it is constrained by the fact that an assassin can prepare for retaliation from the remaining Martial Senior as well." Another high-level executive sighed. "In that case, it is better to increase the number of Martial Seniors huddled up together. Perhaps three or four in a group. Ideally five. In fact, it is best to have all the Martial Seniors of each assassination organization stay together at all times."


    "I don''t tolerate my peers well." One Martial Senior hissed coldly. "I operate solo. Always have, and always will."


    "He''s right." Another remarked. "I don''t do ''together''. I only joined a guild so that annoying menial management work can be taken care of by skilled people."


    "I don''t trust them." Yet another remarked. "I don''t trust any of them. I would rather rely on, at most, one person that I have personally vetted."


    "Speak for yourselves. I don''t want to die!"


    This sentimentrgely continued to echo around the room with little exception. The powerful egos, distrust, and entrenched solitary temperaments typical of assassins prevented them froming together and huddling up without caring for silly things like pride.


    The normal humans in the room could only sigh in resignation. Although they were heads of the top assassination organizations of the Shadow Isles and the Derschek Region, they did not have any power over the Martial Seniors of their respective organizations. Being too antagonistic with them could potentially cause them to leave and join one of the top assassin organizations in the room.


    Although they had gathered in the room to deal with amon enemy, they were not friends.


    "Lady Crina." One man remarked. "Please, talk some sense into them."


    Everybody in the room nced at the elderly woman sitting at the head of the table. She appeared to be the gentlest grandmother anybody could ever hope for.


    The type that would gently tuck their grandchildren into bed.


    Yet there was a depth in her eyes that they did not notice.


    A depth deeper than what they were capable ofprehending.


    "I am not an assassin," She remarked gently, sipping some tea. "I trust assassins to know how to deal with their fellow peers better than anyone else."


    She nced around at everybody at the table with a soft smile. "Why don''t we trust them to do what they do best?"


    The many human officials of the various organizations did not look satisfied with her response, yet the Martial Seniors around the table expressed approval.


    "As expected of you, Lady Crina. You understand us best." N?velD(ram)a.?rg owns this content.


    "We should endeavor to find a way to assassinate this upstart."


    "Ha! That is the only thing we can agree on."


    The Martial Seniors were delighted that they did not end up being pressured into measures that they did not wish to take. They would rather find and kill their targeter themselves than huddle up with others that they did not trust to protect them.


    The various officials in the meeting could only sigh helplessly as their Martial Seniors drove them down paths that they did not wish to go down, yet were powerless to help.


    "I propose we set up a joint intelligence task force to gather information on our target." One official suggested. "Even if the Martial Seniors refuse to cooperate too deeply. Our organizations can pool our resources to find andbat amon enemy."


    The other officials in the room nodded thoughtfully. "This is a prudent measure. Given that we unanimously agree. Let us finalize the matter in this meeting while we are gathered here."


    Soon enough, the Shadow Intelligence Task Force was constituted. Awork of intelligence-gathering resources and manpower was soon put in ce, and its operations began.


    Yet, it wasn''t long before Rui got a hold of the transcripts of the entire meeting.


    "What do you think?" Rui asked the professor calmly. "You''re senior intelligence analyst. How good is this SITF that they have set-up?"


    "It''s shit." The professor snorted. "At least, by our standards. It''s pretty decent otherwise."


    "Hmmm..." Rui nodded. "Things more or less went as I expected except for a margin of error of around seven percent. Namely..."


    His eyes narrowed. "Lady Crina... Based on the conversational dynamics, her soft and hard influence is extremely high. She could havepelled the Martial Seniors to go for the sensible route and work together and defeat amon enemy. Yet she didn''t... For someone whose alleged goal is to find the Silent Shadow, she was remarkably hands-off about the entire issue. Almost as if she actively did not want to interfere even though I am surely a threat to her goal."


    "What are you trying to get at?" Professor Carl asked.


    "You said that the Beggar''s Sect conducted a thorough investigation on her thatsted seven years, right?"


    "Indeed. I was personally involved in that investigation." Professor Carl remarked.


    "And there was nothing suspicious about her?"


    "Not at all. We found nothing."


    Rui narrowed his eyes. Not only were her actions not logically consistent with her alleged agendas and profile and the model of behavior that Rui had constructed on her, but even his instincts told him something was off.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1377 Final Stage

    ?


    1377 Final Stage


    Time passed on, one way or another. Rui continued to prove the threat that he posed to the various Martial Seniors of the Shadow Isles. The ones that refused to pair with even a single person, let alone an entire army, simply died.


    Rui hunted them all, one by one. Whether they left their homes or not, as long as they were alone, they turned into targets for Rui. Once every five days or so, a Martial Senior fell without fail.


    The SITF kicked into full force as the investigative body scoured through the Shadow Isles and the Derschek Region, looking for any clues about the mysterious Martial Senior that had been eliminating the assassins of the Shadow Isles.


    And yet, they failed at every step of the road. They were unable to discover the means by which their Martial Senior assassins fell. They were unable to discover a smidgen of the identity of the person who eliminated their assassins.


    The individual Martial Seniors who didn''t partake in a pairing system all died. The only exception applied to those who left the Derschek Region permanently, which a few of them did. It appeared that leaving the Derschek Region was a clear-cut way of escaping being a target of the mysterious assassin.


    When they learned of that, the Martial Seniors of the Derschek Region would have been lying if they hadn''t considered it.


    A few months had passed and it wasn''t long before every Martial Senior who didn''t rely on the pairing system had passed away. Half of them disappeared.


    The other half died inexplicably.


    No clues in the surroundings of the corpses. No sign of resistance, conflict, or struggle. No clue about the means of assassination.


    ?


    Nothing.


    The Martial Seniors who had hoped that the SITF would uncover the truth about the force that was targeting them had their hopes crushed. The truth never came out, and ultimately, nobody ever found out.


    It was truly the ideal killer, and they were truly the ideal murders.


    The impact of the death of the various Martial Seniors on the Derschek Region was immense.


    For the first time in decades, the region experienced momentary stability and peace as the prices of assassination services rose significantly.


    The reason for this was that while some Martial Seniors didn''t have the courage to be around any longer, the same was even more true of Martial Squires and Martial Apprentices.N?velDrama.Org: text ? owner.


    The logic was simple. If there were threats to their kind that even Martial Artists of a higher Realm were unwilling to face, then they had no business sticking around. If the Martial Senior ever decided to wipe out the Squire or Apprentice poptions, they stood no chance.


    The event was so significant that it even got its own name.


    The Shadow Boycott.


    Word of the Shadow Boycott spread through the Derschek Region and even beyond. The assassin that had reaped so many of his kind drew even more attention.


    The assassinationmunity beyond the Derschek Region grew interested in a powerful figure that came out of nowhere. Because of how few Martial Seniors reached high grades, many organizations and groups within the assassinationmunity that documented the powerful and prominent assassins that had a particrly notable impact created a new profile for thetest?assassin to join those ranks.


    The Voidreaper. He who reaped and left nothing behind.


    Rui narrowed his eyes when Professor Carl informed him of that name.


    For some reason, he always got hit with an epithet that had the word void in it. When he was in the Kandrian Empire during the Martial Contest, he had been dubbed the Voidbringer.


    When he was in the Shionel Confederation, he had been dubbed the Voider.


    And now, he was being called the Voidreaper.


    In this case and perhaps even the previous one, neither of those names even made sense when people didn''t know about his Martial Art in both cases. If people didn''t know that his Martial Art was called the Flowing Void Style, there would be no reason to call him the Voider or the Voidreaper.


    Yet they did.


    It was a strange phenomenon.


    Almost as if somebody ordained it to be that way.


    Still, he wasn''tining. He didn''t mind it given that it did match with the theme of his Martial Art.


    Regardless, he didn''t have time to focus on such matters. Three months had passed and he had executed his n with perfect uracy and precision like a well-oiled machine.


    Develop a predictive model.


    Discover the innate resonance frequencies.


    Eliminate.


    Over and over.


    He came to discover that every Martial Senior had different a unique set of innate resonance frequencies, much to his dismay. However, humans possessed very simr innate resonance frequencies due to the rtively minimal divergence in human bodiespared to Martial Bodies.


    That made his job more challenging, but he didn''t let it hamper him nheless.


    At the end of three months, he had killed eighteen Martial Seniors. They were the stubborn individualist types who refused to be intimidated to leave the Derschek Region or pair up with their peers.


    He had reached an important stage. Taking out the paired-up Martial Seniors would be necessary for eliminating thepetition and cleaning up the assassination industry.


    If he couldn''t, then as crippled as the assassination sector was, it would still survive.


    However, if he did sessfully assassinate them despite the pairing security system, then he would push them beyond a certain limit.


    The limit that they were willing to tolerate to stay within the Derschek Region. If he could prove that not even a buddy system was protecting them, then he was sure, based on the models that he had created from the intelligence profiles that the Beggar''s Sect had on them, that they would leave the Derschek Region, unwilling to take even more unpleasant measures to survive, and unwilling to die.


    Having purposely left the option of leaving open, it would seem like the only option.


    But only if he could seed in this final stage. The most difficult part.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1378 Double

    <h4>Chapter 1378 Double</h4>


    Senior Jeanno and Senior Kaylin got into position as they focused on their target. A well-protected duke apanied by a Martial Senior.


    It was time.


    BAM BAM!


    One of them appeared before the guards stealthily distracting them for just a moment with an attack, while the other appeared behind the target.


    SPLAT!


    The target''s head fell off in a matter of microseconds. The two of them disappeared as the Senior-level guards were stunned both by the appearance and their failure to protect themselves.


    They immediately retreated, racing away together.


    Ordinarily, they would undertake such a mission alone, but they had been one of the first Martial Seniors to pair up when the Voidreaper began killing their peers a season ago. They had faith that being together would ensure that the Voidreaper would not dare attack them for fear of revealing his means of killing.


    "Good job." Senior Jeanno nced at Senior Kaylin with a smile sometimeter.


    It took merely a millisecond for that smile to turn into an expression of horror. Senior Kaylin''s eyes were rolled back, and his head and body were already on their way down copsing.


    His heart was not beating.


    The emergency reflex passively boosted by the Martial Heart kicked in within microseconds, activating into full glory out of pure reflex with passive techniques. Senior Jeanno instantly activated a breathing technique to barricade himself.


    THWOOM!


    The man''s eyes widened as he felt a soft sound projectile crashing into his Senior-level defenses harmlessly, aimed at his head.


    ''Sound...?''


    He realized he may have inadvertently figured out the most important secret of the dreaded Voidreaper.


    His survival instinct kicked into full force.


    He needed to survive.


    He needed to survive no matter what.


    His Martial Heart zed at full power as he maintained his air defenses before sprinting away at to speed. He employed a maneuvering technique that allowed him to sharp turns and curved trajectories without much of an impact on his top speed.


    And yet.


    THWOOM THWOOM THWOOM!


    "Argh!" He grimaced in shock and pain as three Senior-level attacksnded on him with the precision and uracy of a surgeon. Yet despite his swiftest efforts to get back andsh back into retreat.


    WHOOSH


    His eyes widened as he beheld Rui''s figure stepping before him. A soft grace apanied his movements. A calm aura of power radiated from him as his Martial Heart burned from within.


    The man''s Martial Heart was dimmer than his own, yet Senior Jeanno instinctively knew.


    He felt it in his heart.


    ''I can''t win.''


    And yet he couldn''t run.


    He wasn''t allowed to.


    BAM!


    An incredibly swift kick to the head dizzy.


    BOOM!!!


    A remarkably heavy blow to the gut with Reverberating Lance crippled his ability to breathe.


    POW!


    And yet, the finishing blow was a swift uppercut, crashing into the man''s jaw.


    THUD


    The man copsed to the ground, losing consciousness as the blunt force trauma to the brain exceeded a critical threshold. Yet Rui was not content, he used Death''s Sympathy to push it further, crushing it from the inside out.


    Instantly, he disappeared.


    As much as he would have enjoyed sticking around, he couldn''t. His sharp senses had already picked up vague hints of a flurry of Martial Seniors converging on their location. He immediately activated his Mind Mask, before quickly heading to the nearest poption collection.


    He had purposely worn ethnic attire that wasmon to this region so he would not have any problems blending in. He had also avoided his mask because it would draw too much attention.


    Thus there were risks taken. However, they were calcted risks, and the probability that he would seed was high enough to warrant taking the risk. And it turned out that he was right. N?velD(ram)a.?rg owns this content.


    Not only had he prepared a solid predictive model, but the state of mind of his opponent in addition to the fact that he was not strong in head-on straightforwardbat allowed Rui to dominate even though he was younger in the Senior Realm.


    Just minutester, several Martial Seniors had arrived at the scene.


    Some of them bore the emblems of assassination organizations in the Shadow Isles, and some of them bore the crest of the duchy whose duke had just been assassinated.


    They regarded each other with hostility.


    Yet, they stayed their hand.


    None of them wanted to get into a meaningless brawl at the moment. The Martial Seniors from the duchy inspected the corpses of the assassins who killed their duke with vindictive satisfaction.


    The assassins of the Shadow Isles happened to be not too far away, by Martial Senior standards, and hade to check up on the conflict that had ensued, in hopes of having struck gold and run into an assassination attempt from the Voidreaper.


    Yet, they merely ended up with the worst oue. They stared at Senior Jeanno''s corpse with grave expressions, and their senses picked up Senior Kaylin''s corpse some distance away.


    This was bad.


    Really bad.


    The Voidreaper didn''t appear to care even the slightest that they had grouped up together.


    Not only did he not care, but he had the power and the ability to kill both Martial Seniors in a remarkably short timeframe. It wasn''t just the fact that he was good at assassinations, it also meant that he was incredibly strong inbat.


    They immediately began racing in the direction of the Senior-level pressure and vibrations. And yet it had onlysted a few seconds. In a matter of seconds, the assassin confronted Senior Jeanno, beat him down, and then killed him.


    This meant that there was an incrediblyrge gulf between them in overall power. The theory that the Voidreaper was a powerful veteran Martial Senior held even more credence. They knew that none of them were capable of defeating and killing Senior Jeanno that quickly and dominantly.


    It meant that the assassin was an extremely powerful Martial Senior who had taken decades to hone himself in all regards.


    "Damn..." They gritted their teeth as they considered the consequences of this event.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1379 Unworthy

    <h4>Chapter 1379 Unworthy</h4>


    Unfortunately, they couldn''t do anything. They quickly headed to gather the corpses of their peers.


    Yet the Martial Seniors of the Duchy had other ideas.


    "Those corpses belong to us." They growled. "They will be disyed to our people."


    "You think we''re just going to give you them?" A Senior assassin snorted. "You''re lucky we''re not killing you."


    The tension spiked between the two forces.


    "How about we each take one?" One of the Martial Seniors from the duchy proposed.


    This wasn''t an unattractive idea. None of them wanted to fight at the moment. The assassins from the Shadow Isles were most afraid of the Voidreapering for them at any moment.


    The buddy system proved to be entirely useless against the Voidreaper as he couldfortably demolish duos. Even if he couldn''t kill both of them in a pair, one was guaranteed to die, which meant that there was a chance that any of them could die at any moment.


    This was especially the case since he wasn''t that far from this location.


    Perhaps he was watching them right now, preparing to take a shot.


    Just the thought of it sent a chill down their spines. It made them want to end this conflict and get out of there.


    "Deal." The assassins remarked. "We''ll take this one. Nopromises there."


    They quickly collected Senior Jeanno''s body before heading back to the Shadow Isles in a hurry.


    Rui heaved a sigh as he felt the distant presence retreating.


    His mind immediately surged into thought as he analyzed and processed his current circumstances, extrapting and predicting the future.


    The first inevitable oue was that they would learn more about Death''s Sympathy.


    This was within his predictions of inevitable oues. There was no way to kill both Martial Seniors in a pair without giving away some hints about the limitation of his technique.


    With just some deductive reasoning, one could conclude that his technique could not be fired too quickly in rapid session, since he wasn''t able tond a Death''s Sympathy before the man''s Martial heart activated.


    Another clue that could be derived was the fact that he could not cleanly assassinate his opponent using Death''s Sympathy when they had active wind-based defenses up. This was a little bit moreplex, but they most likely knew that Senior Jeanno had an active wind-based defense. N?velDrama.Org: text ? owner.


    Unless there weren''t any seductively intelligent analysts, it wouldn''t take them long to conclude that those wind-based defenses kicking into action were most likely what protected Senior Jeanno from being assassinated. Either that or the Martial Heart.


    From there, it could be further inferred that the technique was exclusively an assassination tool and not something that worked against someone inbat mode. That also exined why the Voidreaper needed to engage Senior Jeanno and beat him down before killing him with the technique.


    Rui had modeled hundreds of potential tactics and strategies to prevent the disclosure of this strategically important, yet none of them allowed him to prevent his targets from learning at least this much.


    However, he wasn''t too concerned.


    ''What are they going to do?''


    They couldn''t keep the Martial Heart permanently active, that was extremely impractical. They also couldn''t keep up a wind-based defensive technique all the time either. That was quite impractical as well, even with potions.


    It was like asking someone to keep jogging for the rest of their life in order to stay alive.


    An absurd demand.


    One possibility was keeping up wind-based defenses around their residential area. However, that protected them only while they were inside their homes. The second they stepped out, they were walking targets.


    There was no practical solution.


    Nothing they did, or could do could allow them to remain and maintain a normal meaningful life.


    There was one solution, of course.


    "Leave and nevere back." Rui mused.


    He had avoided putting so much as a scratch on the assassins that left the Shadow Isles. The ones that stayed back knew that their former colleagues and seekers had gotten away harmlessly and relocated to start working somewhere else.


    it was an attractive choice if there was anything that held them back, it would be the reason they came to the Shadow Isles in the first ce.


    The Silent Shadow.


    Yet when was thest time they actually thought about the Silent Shadow? When was thest time they actively exerted themselves to earn her approval?


    They had all long be dependent on relying on the efforts of Lady Crina. They simply dedicated a portion of their earnings towards her investigations and forgot about it.


    Instinctively, most of them had alle to recognize the truth.


    They were unworthy.


    It was harsh, but there wasn''t much else to conclude. Especially when some of them had been around for quite a long time. It was clear that this simply wasn''t working out.


    The reason that they stayed nheless was because the Derschek Region was a boost to their ego.


    In the Derschek Region, assassins were kings. They were at the top of the food chain. They decided who lived and who died. They were the main characters.


    This was not the case across the continent where assassins had a more discreet and ndestine presence.


    They came for a boost in power, they stayed for a boost in ego.


    Perhaps the only assassin of their Realm that hadn''t followed in their path was the Voidreaper. An assassin who didn''t care for the glory of being feared and respected like a ruler.


    Whatever his goal was, he was aplishing it by assassinating, as assassins did. Compared to them, he was cut from a different cloth.


    Perhaps, if they were like him, they might have been able to earn the approval of the Silent Shadow. Even now that they hade to make this insight, they still didn''t have the drive or the fire to implement it. They would rather run away from the mess than do what they did best to ovee tribtions.


    And that was why they were unworthy.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1380 Exodus

    <h4>Chapter 1380 Exodus</h4>


    At a meeting around arge table, a tense atmosphere brewed at the recent set of events.


    "So not even a pairing system can make the Voidreaper even hesitate." One woman heaved a sigh. "We need to increase the number of people huddling up. The more people stick together, the harder it bes to assassinate."


    This time, the Martial Senior assassins didn''t find it nearly as easy to p back. The actions of the Voidreaper had shocked them all. They didn''t expect that he would tantly jump into actualbat.


    Not only did he do that, but he also crushed one of them with an incredible dominance that was deeply intimidating. Yet when they thought about having to bunch up together like pathetic weaklings, more than they already had, a deep sense of unwillingness rose in them.


    Was there truly no other way to avoid bing a victim of the Voidreaper?


    Actually, there was.


    "I wanted to take this opportunity to announce to all of you that I will be leaving the Dangan Assassin''s Guild..." One Martial Senior announced to the entire room, surprising them.


    A Martial Senior leaving an assassin organization was not a matter relevant. Assassination organizations frequently fought over Martial Artists, especially Martial Seniors, and the announcement of leave was an opportunity for the others to swoop up and im the prize.


    "...And also the Shadow Isles forever."


    Thest part turned the atmosphere grave. The Shadow Isles had already bled a lot of assassins to emigration due to the initial wave of terror that the Voidreaper had caused.


    The ones that were in the room at the moment were the ones that had resisted and had remained in the Shadow Isles despite that. The fact that some of them were beginning to throw in the towel was not a good sign for the assassination industry.


    "Now now..." One man coaxed them. "Let us think this true, Senior Srira, perhaps you haven''t given this all the due consideration it needs. It may be best to-"


    "Sorry, but I also intended to leave." Another Martial Senior remarked, interrupting the man. "The Shadow Isles has been one of the best regions that I have worked from and in. However, the Voidreaper is not a threat that I can ignore, nor a threat I can protect myself from. It is true that we have learned more information about the Voidreaper, but what we have learned only scares me. It may sound pathetic to all of you human officials, but I didn''t reach the Senior Realm by picking fights I can''t win."


    His voice was decisive and firm.


    Unfortunately, his reasons were irrefutable. It was true that they had learned more about the Voidreaper based on the fact that the assassin had engaged in head-on fights. It was also true that they had gained more reason to fear him.


    One of the prevailing presumptions was that as long as they could find the Voidreaper, their Martial Seniors could crush the assassin with numbers. However, the sheer dominance and speed at which Senior Jeanno was defeated indicated that this assumption was not necessarily true.


    It significantly constrained their potential solutions. The only real solution was heaping up all Martial Seniors together, but even then, how could they the assassination?


    The Voidreaper could simply take them down one at a time even if they were heaped and simply retreat if they tried tracking him. That was why it wasn''t really feasible to deal with him this way.


    Unless they could figure out a way to defend the Martial Seniors from the man''s assassination, there wasn''t really a viable game n at hand.


    "Wait, we can hire an external third party that specializes in anti-assassination measures." One official stated.


    "And embarrass ourselves as assassins by relying on anti-assassination security groups?" One Martial Senior snorted. "No thanks. On top of that, if that measure was enough, then we wouldn''t be in such a tough ce at all."


    "It''s also not viable financially," Another official sighed. "These security groups usually cater to the wealthiest ss. It''s going to eat away at our profits making the very business of assassination unprofitable. We might as well pack up if we decide to rely on this measure." N?velDrama.Org: text ? owner.


    "At the end of the day, there is only one truly alluring escape to this predicament." One Martial Senior remarked. "Leaving. Those that have left this region are still in contact and are perfectly fine. The Voidreaper has not pursued them. I don''t want to die, so I too will be leaving."


    This sentiment made its way across the Martial Seniors on the table. Not many were able to resist it this time.


    "You''re all pathetic!" One Martial Senior dered. "Are you all so eager to throw away your pride as Martial Artists? Hm?"


    The man drew attention as stood up, chastising his fellow peers. "I will resist the Voidreaper and ovee this tribtion!"


    He radiated confidence and power, giving the human executives of the various assassination organizations some hope.


    Two other Martial Seniors also nodded in approval. "We too will stay. The rest of you losers can leave."


    The others simply shook their heads before getting up and leaving the room. "Good luck."


    Many chairs were left vacated as they followed through in a mass exodus. The various human executives and leaders of the assassination organizations could only heave deep sighs.


    This was a cmity. It was a catastrophe for the assassination industry that they had collectively developed. Decades of progress had been undone as their greatest foundation grew undone.


    "Shame..." Lady Crina murmured as regret seemed to beset her. "Perhaps we could have done more."


    One human executive shook his head. "No, mydy, we have done everything we can, for the most part. What matters is what we do from here on."


    A wave of agreement spread across the various leaders. Although the emigration of assassins was a huge setback, it wasn''t as though the world was over. There were still a lot of assassins left in absolute numbers.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1381 Unite

    <h4>Chapter 1381 Unite</h4>


    "But what can we do?" One chairman sighed. "Our organizations are falling apart."


    "We can''t afford topete with each other." Another remarked. "No, we can''t even afford to operate separately anymore."


    That was a strange remark. "What do you mean?"


    "I''m saying that we must merge our organizations into one." The man resolutely dered, sending a wave of surprise across the many human leaders. "Rather, we must dissolve our respect assassination organizations and create a single brand new one from scratch. By pooling our remaining resources, inventory, territory, and manpower, we can sustain the assassination supply market. We can own it! We can rule the Shadow Isles together."


    This radical idea would have been preposterous to suggest in the past and would have earned him the scorn of everybody in the room.


    Yet this time, everybody remained silent in consideration. Their circumstances had deteriorated to such a degree that even such a radical idea seemed rather tame inparison.


    "There are some shorings but...it is not without merit." One man remarked.


    "The fact of the matter is that there is a massive demand for assassination services in the Derschek Region." The man boldly continued. "The Voidreaper does not change that. However, due to the decrease in the number of Martial Artist assassins, especially Martial Seniors, supply of assassination services has grown scarcer. Which means we can charge significantly more for everymission. Our profit margins will skyrocket. If we merge into a single organization, then we will be able to maintain prices as high as we need them to be without having topete with each other for prices."


    This was true. The fact that the market could very easily switch from purchasing any one of them and purchase from theirpetitors had always been one of the biggest reasons that each of them had to be careful about their prices.


    This was no longer true if there was only one assassination supplier in the Shadow Isles. They could regte the prices however they liked without any conflicting considerations.


    That was why many of them were seriously considering the option. Right now, their greatest priority was damage mitigation. As long as they could mitigate the damage by the Voidreaper, they could slowly work on developing their assassination industry from scratch.


    They just needed to make sure that they had a good foundation under them. N?velDrama.Org holds this content.


    All of the human officials continued to discuss the n as they slowly established a skeletal structure for their new singr organization. By the end of the meeting, all of the leaders of the various assassination organizations hade to a unanimous agreement on the new initiative.


    "The three of you are also important to our ns." One of them informed the three remaining Martial Seniors that had chosen to stay back while the others didn''t. "You will be the pirs of our new organization. You must be the new pirs of the assassination sector of the Shadow Isles."


    The three of them nodded, taking their roles seriously. Inwardly, they gloated at their peers who had departed, allowing them to take such a central role.


    The meeting concluded. All of the members left the meeting in a hurry. They had a lot of work to do, after all.


    It wasn''t easy creating a brand-new organization that was effectively the fusion of many other smaller organizations. A lot of matters and tasks had to bepleted and fulfilled before they could seed at this grand undertaking.


    They would also have to flesh out the details across numerous meetings, tackling matters such as division of power and hierarchy, efficient and effective assimtion of the workforces of the various organizations, and most importantly their own positions within the new organization.


    In the meantime, word of yet another wave of Martial Seniors emigrating spread across the Shadow Isles. It did not take an intelligence agency to figure out that fact.


    This instantly cut away the confidence that many Martial Squires and Apprentices had in the Shadow Isles. Although the Voidreaper had yet to target Squire-level and Apprentice-level assassins, they knew that they would be massacred if he ever did.


    And if he did, it would be toote to run away then.


    In the following week, many of them, too, left the Shadow Isles, leaving the assassination supply market in a greater predicament than it had ever been since the dawn of the market when the Silent Shadow announced that she was joining the Shadow Isles.


    It was an unprecedented event in the region, drawing attention from not just all over the Derschek Region but also beyond.


    It was said that King Hermen of the Varion Kingdom in the Derschek Region, one of the greatest customers of the Shadow Isles had actually gone as far as to file aint against the Voidreaper to the Panamic Martial Federation for bullying Lower Realm Martial Artists while being a Martial Master.


    "Goofy." Rui shook his head, amused. "They don''t actually think I''m a Martial Master, do they?"


    "No, they''re just hoping to inconvenience you in some way." Professor Carl replied. "King Hermen got to power and maintains said power by relying on the Shadow Isles. You are a source of great inconvenience to him."


    "I see. Makes sense." Rui nodded. "Will this inconvenience me in some way?"


    "No. The Panamic Martial Federation does not intervene lightly." The professor remarked. "More importantly, the pieces of the assassination sector are nning to group up and rise as one. How do you n to deal with this?"


    "They are at their most vulnerable now," Rui replied as he calmly analyzed the information. "Their assassin member count has all plummeted considerably, they are unable to fulfillmissions that they have already epted. It''s going to make them bleed when they refund andpensate unless they want to shatter their credibility and earn the ire of many powers in the Derschek Region. They are just barely hanging on after the mass exodus. Merging is actually a really good idea, probably the only one that saves them."


    "And yet..." Rui narrowed his eyes. "...It will fail. Because I won''t allow it to seed."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1382 Race

    <h4>Chapter 1382 Race</h4>


    "The sooner Ind a death blow, the likelier that they will be unable to recuperate. If I act after this new united organization is created and settled in, then eradicating the assassination sector will be that much harder." Rui keenly concluded. "What''s the timeline for the development of this new organization?"


    "About two weeks." Professor Carl. "That is abnormally fast, but they are aware that they don''t have much time left before everythingpletely unravels and falls apart. They''re choosing decisiveness over caution, they can''t really afford the luxury of thetter at the moment."


    "Hm... It''s a shame because that''s a tad bit insufficient." Rui winced a little. "Manageable though. I''d need to start making preparations immediately. Are they holding a sort of inauguration ceremony?" N?velDrama.Org holds this content.


    "Just a small announcement speech. They''re not big on ceremony, you see."


    "Well, are the three Martial Seniors who are sticking around going to be there?"


    "Well, yes." Professor Carl replied. "Why?"


    "That''s perfect," Rui smirked. "I need to go, I have preparations to make."


    Two weeks was barely enough time to make super-solid predictive models, it was actually a day short. But Rui was sure he could make do with that slight inadequacy.


    He needed to get to work immediately.


    In all the reports that he had gotten from the Beggar''s Sect, none of them talked about any measures taken to protect the three Martial Seniors from the Voidreaper, aside from temporarily prohibiting them from any operations in the Derschek Region.


    ''Ah, I see, they think I''m working only in the Derschek Region since I only assassinate in the Derschek Region.'' Rui mused. ''Well, they''re up for a nasty surprise.''


    He needed to turn the Shadow Isles into a ce that was truly dangerous to the assassins that it held. And he was going to aplish that by violently killing all three Martial Seniors.


    In front of everybody.


    He didn''t mind if a fight broke out. That was actually desirable. He needed to cause as much damage to as many unsuspecting assassins and others involved in the assassination industry.


    He needed to show them.


    Show them what would happen if they continued to remain a part of the sector.


    Thankfully, he was a Martial Senior. Causing harm was a specialty he excelled at. The full power of a Martial Senior could do untold damage to a region across a fight. Furthermore, this would be coteral damage, thus the Panamic Martial Federation would have no issue either.


    The restrictions that Martial Seniors faced were against active, intentional, and unprovoked hostility against Martial Artists of the Lower Realms. It did not aim to hamper Martial Seniors in pursuing their own peers by also prohibiting coteral damage.


    Rui''s n was simple.


    Assassinate as many as he could, kill the remaining in a fight. He was not too bothered by the oue either.


    Even a partial sess would still most likely aplish the goal. Even a single assassination would be crushing, because it would mean that Rui could assassinate them even in their own domain of power.


    Pursuing the other two and causing mass damage was something that would forever crush any sense of trust, reliance, and dependability of the Shadow Isles. It would disy just how weak and vulnerable.


    However, this was only as long as he could prepare as much as he possibly could in the next fourteen days.


    ''Ah, I should warn the Beggar''s Sect to withdraw its agents from the Shadow Isles for the time being.'' Rui mused.


    He did not want to inadvertently harm the Beggar''s Sect''s people, potentially souring his rtionship with his new business partner. Thankfully, they could leave the Shadow Isles without revealing their identities since many people were already leaving, making it easy for them to blend in.


    The only issue left was if he could only assassinate one was forced to confront the remaining two.


    "Manageable..." Rui murmured.


    They were not as weak as Senior Jeanno, and there were two of them. On the other hand, his dominance over the man was extremely high. Not only because he started off at a particrly higher level within the Senior Realm than normal Martial Seniors did, but also because the VOID algorithm was too powerful.


    As long as he could form one on both of them, he could potentially defeat both of them at the same time.


    Killing three Martial Seniors at once while damaging the Shadow Isles was the best way topletely destroy the assassination sector to its very core. It was already in a very precarious situation, and this would be no different from a death blow.


    One good part was that it wasn''t as though the three Martial Seniors had great teamwork or anything of the sort.


    No. They just happened to be the only three who had decided to stay when everybody else was gone. They didn''t have great teamwork which increased Rui''s chances of sessfully defeating both of them.


    Furthermore, the fact that they were primarily covert assassins rather than head-on fighters also worked in his favor. This gave him a solid advantage over them since he was very much specialized for fighting more than he was at assassination.


    He had his work cut out in front of him. He just needed to go all out and hope nothing went wrong.


    Time passed as the executives and officials of the various organizations furiously worked day and night to get things done in time. Two weeks was an extremely rushed schedule, and they knew it.


    It was actually impossible to get everything done even with an insane work schedule. However, they could get just about enough done to present a strong and renewed image to regain control of their depleting assassin reserve then, they would have taken the first step towards stabilizing their situation.


    It helped that the Crina Foundation provided them with the support and aid they needed with its seemingly bottomless reserves of wealth and resources. Lady Crina earnestly supported them, allowing them to somehow make it past the hurdles they were beset by.


    Soon enough, two weeks passed.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1383 Speech

    <h4>Chapter 1383 Speech</h4>


    The assassination organizations of the Shadow Isles worked furiously in the span of two weeks as they continued to form the foundations of a new organization. Months of work were either crammed into the span of two weeks or were skipped as the basics of an organization came together.


    One of their biggest problems was that the remaining assassins in the Shadow Isles hadrgely lost their faith and trust in the ce as a ce where they could make the most of their services while looking for the Silent Shadow, while also selling their services within the giant assassination market.


    This problem was even more acute than the Voidreaper himself.


    There needed to be something tangible that they could do to regain their grasp over the assassin popce, and pooling together the strengths of their copsing organizations was their only way forward.


    Only two weekster, they had managed to get just enough done to pull themselves together enough for a strong face to show to the Shadow Isles and the Derschek Region.


    Thankfully, the fact that they had an intimate understanding of not just their own organizations but also their former rival organizations made it easier for everyone toe together and make a transition that was a lot smoother than the challenges one would have expected from such an undertaking.


    Although there was much to be refined, a functional organization was all that they needed at the moment.


    A brief inaugural speed from the new organization was soon to be conducted, which was very much unlike an assassin organization, but the Shadow Isles was a ce where the regr norms about assassins and never drawing attention werepletely upended.


    The many assassins on the ind decided to attend before deciding whether they too ought to leave the Shadow Isles or not. If things were looking up, it could be worth it to stay.


    The day drew closer until it was finally time. A simple podium set up withrge banners and gs with the crest of the new assassination organization was established. The many organizations of across the Shadow Isles also changed their various crests to the crest of the new organization, surprising all of the assassins enough to be curious to attend the new announcement.


    Arge crowd had gathered,prised of many assassins on the central ind of the Shadow Isles, and an borate security detail was set up to ensure the safety of the key members that were presenting themselves.


    They were surrounded by assassins, after all.


    "I would like to begin by thanking all of you for bearing witness to an important moment in the history of the Shadow Isles. Wee to the inauguration of the Shadow Association!" The speaker confidently spoke, exuding an aura of power.


    The name caused many eyebrows to rise. It directly drew from the name Shadow Isles and the fact that it was an association indicated it was a gathering of many working together formon interests.


    "As everybody is aware, a cmity has swept the Shadow Isles in the past few months. We have had many of our best Martial Senior assassins fall to an unknown assant who has managed to set us back significantly. That is why we are here today." The speaker continued. "In order to revitalize the Shadow Isles, the various assassination organizations that once resided over the archipgo have together and pooled our enormous power in its totality to form a single assassination organization that is stronger than the sum of its parts. Stronger than we were when were fragmented!" N?velD(ram)a.?rg owns this content.


    That wasn''t technically true, given the decline in the number of assassins, especially Martial Seniors, however, that was not the point.


    "No longer will there be a waste of resources inpeting with each other. No, these resources will be used to revitalize the assassins of the Shadow Isles. We will strive to ensure that the catastrophes of the past will not shake us as much as they did the first time. However, while these are catastrophes for the assassination industry atrge, they are not necessarily curses for each of the various assassins in the Shadow Isles."


    The speaker gave the various assassins in the crowd a knowing smile. "In reality, the demand for assassination services has not reduced even in the slightest. The vast consumer market of the Derschek Region still exists. What had changed, however, is the fact that the number of avable assassins to fulfill the demand has gone down. That means that those remaining are that much more valued and important than they were ever before. All of you are that much more significant than before!"


    That deration drew the interest of the various assassins who had gathered. It was certainly true, and it gave them a pretty solid reason to stick around rather than pack their bags when things were looking up for them personally, even if not so good for the Shadow Isles as a whole.


    While it didn''t singlehandedly wipe away all of their concerns, it did make them feel more secure about the decision to stick around.


    "In the two waves of emigration, we have seen a steady incline in the averagemission fee for an assassination." The man continued. "ording to even our most conservative estimates, the number will continue to incline until it is at least triple the value that it is at the moment."


    That certainly was pleasant to hear as well. And while it did make progress, it wasn''t enough to alleviate all their concerns. At some point, the Shadow Association needed to address the elephant in the room, one way or another.


    The officials of the assassination industry were clever enough to recognize that.


    "Of course, many of you must be wondering what our solution is to the crisis that has swept the Shadow Isles." The man continued. "Many of you must be concerned with this matter more than anything else. Rest assured, we have a solution at hand. A solution that can satisfy all parties and conflicts of interest."


    That drew the interest of all the listeners.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1384 King

    <h4>Chapter 1384 King</h4>


    The official of the Shadow Association imed that there was a solution that could satisfy all the parties at hand. That was rather hard to believe for most listeners, given that the Voidreaper seemed to bear some sort of grudge against the Shadow Isles.


    Yet the speaker appeared confident.


    "The hierarchy of assassins in the Shadow Isles is dependent on the strength of the various assassins within the sector. Better assassins make better money, power, influence, and living. They also have greater prestige." The speaker exined. "You might be wondering why I''m exining something that is so basic and well-known to all of you who are a part of the Shadow Isles and have been for quite some time."


    They undoubtedly were. No one was sure where he was going with this.


    "While all of you know this. Someone who isn''t a part of the Shadow Isles may very well not know it." The man exined. "Someone like the Voidreaper."


    The name mulled in the air like the calm before a storm. No one was sure what wasing.


    "An assassin with their skills is an extremely powerful one. There is no doubt to anybody that the Voidreaper is a powerful assassin of perhaps the highest caliber within the Senior realm. There is no doubt about that." The representative of the Shadow Association continued. "Thus, we invite the Voidreaper to join us, and ascend the throne of the Shadow Association as the Assassin King!" Content provided by N?velDrama.Org.


    A ripple of shock spread through the audience. None of them expected that the Shadow Association would go down such a route and try and recruit the very assassin that had caused them such a headache, to begin with.


    It was almost shameless on their part considering the suffering that the Voidreaper had put them through.


    Yet at the same time, it waspletely grounded and highly practical.


    They were not in a position to fight back against the Voidreaper. They hadn''t been in a position to fight the Voidreaper even when the Shadow Isles was in its prime. with dozens of Senior-level assassins.


    What were they going to do against him now? They were much smaller and weaker and had only three Martial Seniors left.


    Conflict against him was fundamentally a bad idea. Instead, they chose to woo him with incentives and have him join them. That was the idea that the various leaders within the association decided to bet all their chips on.


    That was why they offered him a title as extravagant as the Assassin King!


    It was a rather strong attempt to kiss his ass as well as they could. None of them actually gave a damn about the Martial Seniors that had fallen anymore. The past was the past.


    These individuals were money-driven businessmen. They hade to the Shadow Isles because they smelled the potential for profit in the archipgo. With some help from the Crina Foundation, they managed to set up incredibly profitable organizations that sold assassinations or served as a broker between clientele and assassins.


    They hated the Voidreaper for killing their profits, but once the realization that he could bring them even more profits set in, they were more than willing to forget their grudges as long as he joined them.


    The Martial Seniors who were part of the security detail had grim and severe expressions on their face. They had been informed ahead of time and had even thrown a bit of a tantrum, but the decision was finalized.


    They could either live with it or leave.


    Or die.


    Ultimately, they chose to stick around. Being the only Martial Senior assassins still remaining meant that they would be forgoing enormous benefits that came from being in demand if they chose to leave.


    None of them wanted to leave just when it was the best time in the market to be a Martial Senior. The only downside was the Voidreaper hunting them, but even that would go as long as this n went through, which is why they tolerated it.


    "The position of Assassin Kinges with many benefits and positives." The representative of the Shadow Association spoke with great confidence. "There are far too many to go into this speech but rest assured ites with unrivaled status, privileges, benefits, wealth, authority, and opportunities. As the most powerful Senior-level assassin in the Derschek Region we invite the Voidreaper to join the Shadow Association and take on the mantle of Assassin King, a title given only to the strongest assassin in the Shadow Isles!"


    Many be keenly aware in regards to what the representative is doing at the moment.


    He was speaking directly to the Voidreaper. There was no contact between the Shadow Isles and the Voidreaper, thus they didn''t have a way of reaching out to him. This was essentially a public address directly to the Voidreaper rather than the audience.


    They were hoping that he was willing to put aside his continuous targeting of the assassination industry and ascend the throne to take over it that they had created just to please him.


    To the many assassins, this actually had a solid n of working. For if they were in the Voidreaper''s stead, they would have epted the offer in a heartbeat. There was no question to it.


    "The Crina Foundation has also supported this initiative as one our greatest partners and allies, and has agreed to prioritize the Assassin King''s interest in the search for the Silent Shadow." The representative continued. "Not only will the Assassin King reign over the Shadow Association but also over his peers."


    The man gestured to the three Martial Seniors behind him. Just as he was about to continue, he heard a sound.


    A noise that interrupted his flow.


    A noise that came from behind him.


    THUD


    A wave of shock shed over the audience before him as he turned around to see what all themotion was about. His eyes widened in shock as he beheld the corpse of a Martial Senior, copsed some distance behind him.


    The many Martial Artists in the audience could sense it.


    He was dead.


    No one knew how.


    But everyone knew?who.


    All hell broke loose as the Voidreaper struck again.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1385 Finale

    <h4>Chapter 1385 Finale</h4>


    Rui was amused.


    No really.


    He was truly amused.


    He had to admit that the offer to make him Assassin King was probably the best move that they could have made. He had wondered exactly what the n of the Shadow Association was.


    Apparently, the Shadow Association had taken the most extreme and absurd of precautions to hide their intentions for this one speech not even the Beggar''s Sect had managed to get him a copy of the speech ahead of time the way that they normally did.


    This was the first time that he himself had heard of this. After having a good heartyugh in response, he could see the merits of the n and why it was a good idea on their part.


    Unfortunately for them, he didn''t give a damn about wealth. He didn''t feel much even when he became equal to a billionaire on Earth in terms of assets. He simply didn''t care about money.


    He didn''t care much about any of the other things that woulde with being an Assassin King.


    That was why, while it wasn''t a bad n, it simply was ineffective against Rui. Theycked a real understanding of what their tormentor was like, which is why they didn''t know he didn''t care.


    Of course, in their defense, it was unexpected that he would bepletely unmoved by any of these benefits. In their experience, the only assassins who didn''t care were the loyal types who had already dedicated themselves to serving a master.


    The Voidreaper hadn''t struck them as being associated with any powerful force. Thus they had hoped that he would be moved by their offer.


    But he wasn''t.


    And, he had just found a good opportunity to demonstrate that he hadn''t.


    He took aim as the man continued rattling on about the benefits of the Assassin King before inhaling deeply and activating his Martial Heart. He was so far away from the speech podium that he had decided to take a shot from another ind entirely.


    He activated Pathfinder as the ODA System booted up within his Mind Pce. he carefully expanded his senses as far as he could piling in all the relevant data into the ODA System before calcting the trajectory of the projectiles as an output.


    THWOOM THWOOM THWOOM!


    The three sound pulses of different speeds and frequencies flew toward his target at incredible velocities, crossing the distance between himself and his target in a matter of seconds.


    His victim experienced Death''s Sympathy for the first time.


    It was also hisst time, coincidentally.


    The man''s eyes hollowed out as the life within them dissipated. His corpse went limp before falling forward, crashing into the ground.


    THUD


    It was so shocking that it even disrupted the speech. The representative of the Shadow Association looked horrified when he realized what had happened. The brilliant n that he and his colleagues had cooked up excitedly had crashed and burned in the worst conceivable way possible.


    Yet it was toote.


    Rui had alreadyunched himself into action, shooting from the location that he had perched himself in, heading straight towards the inauguration ceremony in a sh.


    In just a dozen seconds, he had already arrived, crashing into the disrupted ceremony.


    BOOM!!!


    The entire ind rumbled from hisnding. The sheer raw power of a Martial Senior came into full disy had a gigantic hemispherical crater emerged at his crash sight, spanning dozens of meters in diameter,pletely annihting the bedrock at the site of the crash.


    The loss of property and life was immense. Yet Rui didn''t care about the deaths of people who spent their lives profiting from mass murder.


    In fact, he was grateful.


    ''If not for the fact that all of you are quite scummy, I would not be able tomit the atrocities that I am about to.'' He mused as his eyes shot towards the two Martial Seniors.


    They burned with murderous rage. Their Martial Hearts had already erupted in full power.


    They didn''t even care anymore.


    In fact, they were d that things had been forced to unfold this way. Bowing down to the Voidreaper after the humiliation they suffered was painful, but they didn''t have too much of a choice.


    Now, they got to fight back and didn''t have much of a choice either since the path of peaceful resolution had already been ruined.


    That was they emptied their minds of all thought.


    They beheld their tormentor for the first time. A masked Martial Senior with a Martial Heart dimmer than their own.


    "YOU DARE APPEAR IN FRONT OF US!" They roared as their Martial heart zed with energy.


    A maelstrom of power and bloodlust erupted from the three of them.


    It washed over everything.


    The Shadow Isles seemed to quiver as the full might of the Senior Realm bloomed.


    Countless humans across the Shadow had already fainted.


    Martial Apprentices shook, struggling to maintain their wits. Martial Squires gritted their teeth as they escaped, fearful for their lives.


    None of them wanted to experience the wrath of the Senior Realm!


    And yet, that was a possibility that was outside their control.


    "ARGH!" The two remaining Senior assassins of the Shadow Realms leaped at Rui simultaneously at incredible speeds. The sheer velocity that they hadunched themselves into incinerated the air with friction.


    One lunged at him with twin sabers, the other rushed forward with knuckle fists.


    And yet;


    WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH


    Rui gently shifted and curved, avoiding their every attack with the simplest of efforts.


    As if he knew when and where they were to be.


    His mind rushed into action behind his calm eyes, predicting their every move with surgical uracy and countering with the best possible maneuver at hand.


    A grace unlike anything that the two assassins had seen in the Senior Realm apanied his every movement. N?velDrama.Org holds this content.


    Yet, he wasn''t content with merely defense and evasion.


    BAM!


    His fist crashed into one of them, flinging him away, while he evaded the sabers of the other, before pirouetting through the weaving des of his opponent and sping the man''s shoulders.


    BOOM!


    A powerful throw ttened him to the ground leaving him without an opponent for a moment.


    "Come." Rui calmly took his stance once more.


    The two assassins gritted their teeth as they realized the caliber of abatant that they were dealing with.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1386 Outcome

    1386 Oue


    The battle momentarily paused.


    For a moment, nobody moved.


    The two assassins got a good look at the Voidreaper for the first time. It was actually quite bizarre, for he was not as they envisioned him.


    They envisioned a grizzled veteran assassin, someone who had been around for many decades or so.


    And yet, the man before them was definitely on the younger side. All this time, they had been fearing a man who was most certainly not a veteran assassin. That just made them feel worse. To think that they had been bullied so hard by someone who was clearly their junior based on his body and Martial Heart.


    And yet, they didn''t dare underestimate him because of that. Had he not killed their peer right in front of them?


    Furthermore...


    ''He''s strong! Senior Mah narrowed his eyes as took a stance with his twin sabers. ''I don''t understand. But somehow he is casually outdoing us despite having a younger Martial Body and Martial Heart. It''s not like we''re out of our prime or anything like that either!


    ''He dealt without attacks with less than a third the effort and power! Senior Friken shaped his hands into knuckle fists.


    Although they would have liked more time to take this slowly, Rui did not spare them more than a moment.


    BAM BAM BAM!


    Heshed out forward exchanging a flurry of blows with the striking-oriented Martial Senior, cleanly bypassing the man''s defenses while evading the saber wielder.


    "Rgh!" Senior Friken grimaced as Rui''s attacks curved past the chinks in his defense,nding on his vital spots. His own attacks cleanly missed Rui even as he simultaneously evaded the saber wielder.


    WHOOSH!


    Senior Friken avoided a blow from Rui, swerving to the right.


    And yet...


    BAM!


    A kick had already arrived at his new location, flinging him away.


    WHOOSH!


    Rui leaped back as he evaded a series of swings from the saber wielder. Although weapons were not as deadly in Martial Artist battles as they were in human battles, he still did not want the de to pierce his skin given that it could very well be poisoned.


    The best way to handle weapons was to bypass their optimal range. Weapons usually offered a lot of lethality, but they generally made the wielder more inflexible inbat.


    des generally had only a meter or two of optimalbat range. Furthermore, they had more openings than unarmed humans did. WHOOSH!


    Rui narrowly evaded a double swing, spinning to the side as he managed to bypass the sword.


    BOOM!


    Heunched a powerful blow onto the man''s ribs,unching him away as the very ground around them shook from the impact.


    Senior Friken appeared behind Rui simultaneously, looking to catch him off-guard as heunched his most powerful attack.


    ?


    "DIE!" An immensely powerful double-fist thrust shot forward, aiming for a vital pressure point on Rui''s back. Each step he took shook the ground around them violently as his attack brimmed with power.


    And yet...


    WHOOSH!


    The man''s eyes widened as his attack crashed into an empty image.


    A feint.


    BOOM!


    Rui''s fist crashed into his unguarded sr plexus,nding a crippling blow that left him reeling.


    Yet he wasn''t done.


    BAM BAM BAM!!


    Rui continued to pummel with blow after blow as they unerringly ignored his guard crashing into his vitals one after the other. Attacks that should have been weaker than they were felt heavy and powerful as Rui managed to make the most out of them, producing impacts that felt heavy because of the urate timing and cement.N?velD(ram)a.?rg owns this content.


    BOOM!


    A powerful kick crashed into the man''s skull cleanly. A wave of dizziness flooded his consciousness as he staggered. Yet just before Rui could evennd a finishing blow;


    WHOOSH!


    He somersaulted backward, evading incredibly swift swings from the saber wielder,nding behind him.


    CLASP!


    His body coiled around the man''s as he cleanly got into a chokehold that crushed against the man''s carotid arteries. Senior Mah immediately tried cutting Rui with his sabers, and yet...


    BZZZT!


    A small current ran through his body, inducing a paralytic effect that hampered his output. Rui''s legs pulled against the man''s arms, refusing to allow him toplete a swing, He sent a shock into his own body in a particr manner, activating Hypertrophic Surge. "...!" Senior Mah''s eyes started bleeding based on the sheer pressure that Rui was exerting on his neck. He could not breathe, nor was his head receiving any blood. He struggled with all his might, yet Rui had had himpletely immobilized.


    In circumstances where the arm couldn''t swing, sabers were entirely useless. That was why Rui had waited until he could create circumstances where the weapon was ineffective. They had gone from assets to liabilities.


    Rui didn''t let go, not even when he saw Senior Frikening in for an attack.


    "LET GO!" The man bellowed as heunched a flurry of attacks on Rui''s immobile figure.


    Yet Rui simply tolerated them, incurring damage. He wanted to finish the job with Senior Mah, coiling even harder than before, so much so that the man couldn''t even let out even the slightest sound.


    It was only after Rui felt his heart stopping that he let the man go, tossing his corpse aside.


    "Ouch.." Rui murmured as his body was covered all over with ugly bruises and deep cuts that had begun healing.


    "You sure did a number on me. But...


    His eyes glinted with amusement as he nced at Senior Friken. "You couldn''t take me out."


    ?


    He activated Weaving Blood, instantly healing all of his wounds. Senior Friken gritted his teeth. He had bombarded Rui with his attacks one after the other, inflicting a lot of damage, but it had instantly been undone. Furthermore, he didn''t even have any support from his teammate this time.


    There was only one option left.


    He turned around and began sprinting away at top speed. Rui inhaled deeply as he activated the Void Pathfinder technique, taking aim before releasing three sound waves back to back with Transverse Resonance.


    Death''s Sympathy unfolded, flying straight towards its target.


    THUD


    The man copsed to the ground, dead.


    <strong></strong>


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1387 Presenceless

    Chapter 1387 Presenceless


    For the first time in many years, there were no Martial Seniors on the Shadow Isles. They had all been assassinated one after the other, while the rest had chosen to leave the Shadow Isles forever.


    Rui heaved a sigh as he nced around them. The sheer damage that they had spread throughout the battle had been immense, it would take the Shadow Isles a long time to recover from this if it ever did.


    Now that he had finally aplished his goal, he only felt relief.


    ''Well, I still have some stuff to do.'' Rui mused as he activated his Mind Mask. He created the most powerful mask he could, exuding an abysmal amount of power within the Senior Realm as he radiated as much bloodlust as he could.


    "AAAAAH!"


    "Monster! It''s a monster!"


    Hoards of people immediately began leaving the ind one after the other. Martial Apprentices dove into the ocean, Martial Squires sky-walked away as they mass-abandoned the Shadow Isles. None of them wanted to stick around a ce that was so chaotic and dangerous.


    It wasn''t too long before the Shadow Isles were devoid of Martial Artists entirely.


    Rui stood in ce, ncing around. ''Now what?''


    He wasn''t sure what to do now that he had fulfilled his goals to try and pass the Silent Shadow''s implicit test.


    Perhaps he should just wait around to see if she stops by.Content provided by N?velDrama.Org.


    "Meh. I don''t have time to waste." Rui shook his head as rose to the sky, reactivating his Martial Heart. A Senior-level aura spread across the ind as the glowing redlines streaked across his body from his heart. A surge of power empowered every cell in his body.


    "If she isn''t here, then I don''t want to waste my time." Rui mused. "I''ll just confirm it and then leave."


    He inhaled strongly, causing a brief vacuum of air that deprived the Shadow Isles momentarily, before using his most powerful long-range attack; Transverse Resonance.


    This time, he even went as far as to try to reach the sixth tier, which meant releasing an attack that was six times as powerful as his normal Sonic Bullets. It was particrly difficult and even time-consuming, not something that he could use in the middle ofbat.


    His mind not only had to calcte the trajectory to the ind with the pathfinder technique but also urately stack six sound pulses on top of one another in perfect harmony to achieve constructive superposition and resonance.


    ''If you''re not here, then don''t mind if I sink this entire ind,'' Rui murmured as he gazed down at the central ind of the Shadow Isles.


    THWOOM THWOOM THWOOM THWOOM THWOOM THWOOM!


    Six powerful Senior-level attacks shed downward, quickly ovepping into the most powerful attack that Rui had ever conjured up, heading straight toward the center of the ind.


    As long as he did enough damage to the core of the ind, he was sure to destroy it as a result. Truly eliminating everything that stood in the way of not being epted as a disciple. Worthy of an assassin.


    WHOOSH!


    Rui''s eyes widened as his attack suddenly disappeared before it hit the ind, not leaving so much as a scratch on its target.


    "Alright, you''ve made your point. Sheesh." The voice of an elderly woman from behind him remarked.


    Chills went up his spine as his senses intensified and scanned his surroundings.


    He was shocked by what he sensed.


    No, he was shocked by what he couldn''t sense.


    He couldn''t sense anything. He turned his head slowly, ncing behind him.


    "They say you should never meet your idols." Skia Crina remarked. "Perhaps you should have adhered to that wisdom."


    He stared at her.


    He could see her, yet none of his senses could pick up on her. Not even Reimannian Echo could detect her existence, yet he was still somehow able to see her.


    It was as though she didn''t exist.


    And yet, she clearly did, he could clearly see that.


    ''No...She''s allowing me to see that.'' Rui narrowed his eyes.


    "Then again..." She murmured as she sized Rui up. "I''m no idol of yours. For you are no assassin."


    "I knew it," Rui murmured. "Area Crina... Reina Cara."


    "I enjoy teasing people, you see." She smirked mischievously. "It''s not even that hard to figure out. And yet... not once has a single person confronted me despite many having noticed. They all allowed themselves to get lost in everything Area Crina offered them, never once realizing that they would never reach me that way."


    "You''re revealing yourself to everybody if you''re going to dispel a Senior-level attack and then sky-walk out of nowhere, you know?" Rui muttered, not knowing how to respond.


    It felt surreal.


    "Ah, don''t worry about that." She nced down. "I knocked everybody in the Shadow Isles unconscious before your attack reached the ind."


    Rui''s eyes widened with shock as he nced down at the Shadow Isles, expanding his senses across the ind. Every single remaining person was conscious. These were non-Martial Artists who hadn''t managed to get off the ind as easily as the Martial Artists did.


    They had all been knocked unconscious without exception.


    ''She knocked all of them out before my attacknded before dispelling my attack?''


    That was absurd. Rui stared at her in disbelief.


    "Besides... that''s just a precaution, only you can see me ." She remarked. "Only you are allowed to."


    Rui simply stared at her.


    She not only did not possess any aura, she didn''t even possess any material presence. She may as well have been a ghost. A ghost that only he could see. She could kill him any time and he would never see iting.


    It was a terror that was different from what he experienced with Master Uma.


    "Let''s change ces shall we?" She patted Rui''s arm.


    Suddenly, they had returned back to thend, inside a building. He wasn''t even surprised, even Master Deivon did such things, it appeared that Martial Masters was a different breed entirely.


    She sat down at a table baring her alias, before gesturing at a seat on the other side. "Have a seat."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1388 Commence

    Chapter 1388 Commence


    Rui wasn''t sure what to make of his circumstances. He hadn''t expected his first meeting with the Silent Shadow to go this way.


    He expected a dark hooded figure with a brooding air about her and a severe tone. After all, all the intelligence from the Beggar''s Sect indicated that she had been a madwoman who was hellbent on solving all her problems by killing.


    Yet she seemed remarkably... not insane.


    "I have to say, I appreciate the effort." She smirked. "Thanks to you I''ve had the most interesting three months. You''ve brightened my days, I thought I would die of boredom in those stuffy boardroom meetings about the fake progress on finding the Silent Shadow that I would cook up to appease those idiots."


    "You''re wee, I guess," Rui replied cautiously.


    Being in the presence of a Martial Master put much more pressure on him than when he was a Martial Squire, ironically enough. This was because he instinctively understood a greater portion of their true power.


    One who had reached the clouds understood the depths of the sky better than one who had never gotten off the ground. Despite having broken into the Senior Realm and even started off much stronger than most of his peers, he understood how vastly she dwarfed him.


    "What''s the matter? Scared of a retired old grandmother?" She remarked sarcastically. "Young men these days aren''t much, it seems.


    Rui simply stared at her.


    "It''s a shame you''re not as immature as others your age." She remarked. "Then again..."


    Her eyes turned towards him with a glint of interest. "There are no Martial Seniors your age."


    Rui narrowed his eyes.


    Had she figured out his identity?


    "Martial Masters can learn much about a person with a single nce. More than you would think." She remarked. "It would behoove you to keep that in mind."


    He knew. He had learned that lesson the hard way.


    "Now then, enough chitchat." She leaned forward, nting her elbows on the table. "You wish to learn from me, yes?"


    Rui nodded. "That is why I came here. I wish to be more capable in the art of killing."


    She stared at him for a moment.


    Rui found himself lost in the unfathomable depths that seemed toy within her eyes.


    "There are two kinds of people whoe to me." She remarked. "Assassins...and people who seek to kill."


    She stared at Rui. "You are no assassin. Though you have done a better job at faking being a true assassin than actual assassins actually are. However, you are not an assassin."


    Rui didn''t disagree.


    He was a warrior. Pursuing his Martial Path, pursuing Project Water, the ambition of being able to adapt to everything. Assassinations were, at most, a constituent if he was being generous.


    lightsn¦Ïv¦Ål "Which means you wish to kill." She continued. "Tell me. Who do you wish to kill? And more importantly...why?"


    Rui narrowed his eyes as she broached a sensitive topic. "I wish to kill he who threatens to end my family."


    "I''m d you decided not to lie." She replied. "However, in pursuit of me, you have already sharpened your ability to kill."


    Rui knew that that was true. He had be a much more capable killer on his own without requiring aid from anybody else.


    However, there were limits to that. He had managed to make the most out of existing techniques, by fusing different principles and trying to target low-hanging fruits.


    However, it would still help if he gained a powerful foundation from someone like the Silent Shadow.


    "I have powerful enemies," Rui replied. "I can use some help."


    "Hm," She considered his words. "Alright, I ept you as a pupil."


    Just like that, he had aplished what he came for. After six months of training, and another three months of rapid back-to-back assassinations, he had finally reached his goal.


    And it happened just like that.


    It happened so quickly, that he almost couldn''t process it.


    "Well..." Rui murmured. "Thanks."


    "I have some rules." She replied. "No telling the Beggar''s Sect that I am the Silent Shadow. You won''t believe the absurd lengths I had to go through to evade being discovered by the Beggar''s Sect. Honestly, those ruffians are far too annoying!"


    She grumbled even as she casually revealed that she knew he had been in coboration with them.


    "I can''t have you ruining years of building up this alias and disguise." She sighed.


    "I ept that condition," Rui replied.


    "You also cannot reveal that you were epted as my pupil." She said. "If people find out, then everybody will try to pull the same stunt. It will be annoying to distinguish genuine assassins from people who are trying to copy you."


    "Understood, I''ll keep that in mind as well." Rui nodded. "Anything else?"


    "No, you can do whatever you want as long as you keep these two things in mind. Of course, I will also help ensure that you do, it will directly hurt me if you don''t, after all. Hmmm... I don''t think I''m forgetting anything else, am I?"


    Master Reina narrowed her eyes as she grew absorbed in thought.


    ''She seems like a bit of an airhead.'' Rui mused.N?velD(ram)a.?rg owns this content.


    It was not what he expected or imagined from the legendary Silent Shadow.


    "Hm, that''s about it. I think." She murmured. "I hope. Anyways, let''s get started."


    "With the training?" Rui raised an eyebrow.


    "No. With the sex." She sarcastically replied, furrowing her eyebrows. "Of course, it''s the training. I have a new pupil and I need to whip you into shape so that you''re worthy of being my pupil!"


    "...Right. But where are we going to train?"


    "Right here, of course." She replied as she stood up. "Why do you think I took over multiple districts and made it mine and mine alone? So that I would have a giant ce all for myself. Follow me."


    She walked briskly as Rui followed her with a skeptical expression. He could destroy the entirety of Area Crina with a single attack, he didn''t see how he could train in here.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1389 Theory

    1389 Theory


    Rui wasn''t sure what to make of his first meeting with Master Reina Cara. She had shattered his impression of the legendary Silent Shadow one that nearly everybody had formed about her.


    Still, she was the real deal. Knocking out everybody in the Shadow Isles manually just before the attack struck as an additional precaution to make sure that nobody saw her was an absurd feat that Rui had trouble wrapping his mind around.


    It was worth partaking in anything she had to offer for him as an assassin.


    He followed her for quite a while within the vast infrastructure of the Area Crina organization before she finally reached an empty room.


    In its centery a hatch on the ground which she promptly opened with a breathing technique.


    Rui''s eyes widened as his senses peered into an enormous cavity underground that the hatch led down to. However, he hadn''t been able to sense the cavity underground with his regr senses at all. It wasn''t that it was being jammed with anti-sensory esoteric substances, he would have been able to sense the jamming, his senses had previously sensed pure bedrock until she opened the hatch and a giant underground gravity was revealed.


    "Incredible, isn''t it?" She smirked.


    "But how...?" Rui murmured.


    "It''s actually lined with an esoteric substance that, to the senses, ''acts'' like bedrock." She exined. "Anyone below a certain level who tries to sense the cavity will sense pure bedrock. It''s being disguised rather than concealed. You won''t believe how difficult it was to create this cavity without anyone noticing, but it''s the perfect ce."


    Rui''s eyes narrowed as he grew immersed in thought. That was an incredible way of hiding something that big. He had a degree that covered esoteric material science thus he had heard of substances that warped one''s perception of reality, however, this was his first time actuallying across them.


    He followed her down the hole, sky-walking until they hit the ground.


    "Tada." The elderly woman gestured with her arms. "What do you think?


    The underground cavity turned out to be a remarkably wide open space equipped with all kinds of esoteric machines as far as the eye could see. It was like a super training chamber.


    "Quite incredible that you managed to get this done without the Beggar''s Sect finding out." Rui nodded.N?velDrama.Org holds this content.


    "Heh." She smirked with a hint of pride.


    "So where do we begin?" Rui asked. "What kind of technique are you going to teach me?"


    "Impatient, aren''t you?" She tutted. "Before we begin with the training. I have several questions I have for you."


    "Ask away."


    "You already know the truth about the Master Realm, do you?" She asked with a knowing nce.


    "No," Rui shook his head.


    "Really?" She furrowed her eyebrows, confused.


    "Yes."


    "Hm, that''s strange."


    "Why would that be strange?" Rui sighed. "You''re the first Martial Master I''ve met since breaking through to the Senior Realm."


    She simply stared at him with her unfathomable eyes, peering into the depths of his.


    "Quite incredible."


    "Will you inform about the breakthrough to the Master Realm?"


    She stared at him for a few moments, before shaking her head. "No, I''ve decided against it for now. There are many things that I need to pass on to you while you''re here, I can''t have you being absorbed in such an important matter, I''ll leave that burden for someone else." "Right." Rui sighed. "What do you wish to pass on to me?"


    "A proper foundation, you see." She remarked. "You have already developed a powerful assassination technique. However, that does not mean you are a solid assassin. You''re closer to a one-trick pony who has yet toe across someone truly stronger than you. There''s a lot more to the art of killing than having a powerful technique."


    Rui furrowed his eyebrows. He knew that she wasn''t wrong. Death''s Sympathy hardly covered all bases as an assassin. He had a lot of gaping wide holespared to assassins.


    "Spending a week tailing your target from a distance while having musicians y songs with all kinds of notes near them to test the responses of their bodies to the sound..." She paused, ncing at him. "Do you really think you''ll get to do that each time you want to kill a target? Particrly powerful, well-protected, and obscured targets? Hah, if only life were so convenient."


    She paused for a moment. "Most powerful individuals wear ndestine protective gear based on esoteric technology that can protect them continuously. Martial Artists don''t do that, of course, since they generally don''t need to, except in niche cases like yours. That was why you were able to get away with killing them continuously. Not only did none of them suspect that you were killing them with a truly esoteric Squire-level technique, but none of them had ess to such protective gear even if they dide to know. It''s quite rare and expensive to procure."


    Rui narrowed his eyes. "That''s news to me."


    "That''s because you haven''t even gotten around to trying to kill someone powerful." She replied. "The point I''m trying to make is that you crafted the technique for these circumstances, and they work fine in these circumstances. But once circumstances change, your technique bes less effective and practical. For one, you shouldn''t underestimate the senses of Martial Seniors who are close to the peak of the Senior Realm, I would be surprised if you could get away with them what do you did with the Shadow Isles."


    She paused for a moment before continuing. "Assassination is not exclusively a field of Martial Art, it''s a field of operations that involves much more than Martial Art. If you want to kill whoever you want to kill, you should develop the foundation of what it takes. Given how quickly you developed a powerful technique to kill the Martial Seniors of the Shadow Isles, you are adaptable enough to build upon that foundation to take out whoever you want, so that should be enough."


    Rui nodded. "Alright then, where do we start?"


    "Theoryes before practice. There are things that you need to know before we can begin."


    <strong></strong>


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1390 Classification

    Chapter 1390 ssification


    Apparently, Master Reina took her duties of teaching him seriously. She put on a pair of spectacles, changing into a more formal attire while taking Rui to a ssroom set-up.


    "Now then," She remarked, pushing up her spectacles. "Let us begin. Please begin noting."


    "I''ll be fine."


    "Very well, but I will not be pleased if you are unable to follow." She told him with an officious tone.


    Rui sighed. "Do you really need to do all this?"


    "What are you saying? I take my duties as a teacher very seriously!" She insisted, pushing up her spectacles.


    "Right."


    "Now then... What is assassination?" She asked, writing the word ''assassination'' on the board.


    "The field of killing."


    "Very good." She nodded, drawing an arrow before writing down his response. "Now what is an assassination?"


    "Any intended elimination of a target," Rui replied.


    "Also correct." She nodded, writing that down. "Now... What is the difference between murder and an assassination?"


    Rui considered the question for a moment. "Murder is uwful killing, while assassination can be murder or not. There is arge intersection. Assassinations are generally murders that are authorized ormissioned, while murders alone are willful of the murderer''s own intentions."


    Following that logic, his killing of Chairman Deacon would fall under murder rather than assassination. He was notmissioned or authorized by any power, and he was doing it for his own person.


    "You are not an assassin." She said, almost reading his thoughts. "Not by definition, anyway. You are still a worthier assassin than others in philosophy, but even the Martial Seniors of the Shadow Isles were your targets for your own personal gain. At most, you also fulfilled some debt to the Beggar''s Sect I imagine."


    She stared straight into Rui''s eyes. "You are not an assassin. You are a murderer."


    The words struck at Rui for some reason. It wasn''t that he wasn''t aware of the definition and how he technically fell under it, it was just something that that never really hit him or clicked the way it did when she bluntly told him.


    It was almost as if he had subconsciously disassociated himself with murderers, but in reality, he was a textbook example of a murderer. Perhaps that was the reason she had started out with such a silly dive into the basics of the concepts surrounding killing. Perhaps she had sensed that he was subconsciously not facing the truth as it was.


    Being around the Shadow Isles and constantly hearing about assassins and assassinations may have made it easier for him to avoid the association.


    "Martial Artists kill." Rui shrugged. "It''s the way of the world, especially the Martial World. Anyone who delves into this world knows the risks and still goes in, that''s no different from consenting to the possibility of death as far as I am concerned."


    "It''s interesting you interpreted that as an usation." Master Reina smiled. "Regardless, it is good to be cognizant of the truth."


    Rui narrowed his eyes.


    "Don''t look at me like that. It''s part of your training. Self-awareness is important to Martial Artists, I can promise you that. Also, it''s a shame you didn''t break down in guilt. That''s always fun to watch." She smirked before returning to the whiteboard. "Now that we''ve gotten that out of the way, let us begin with an actual dive into the technicalities of assassinations. Assassinations can be divided into many categories based on certain parameters such as directness, range, and explicitness. A good assassin is capable of engaging in all of the categories since there will be times when you''re forced to rely on only one of them..."


    Rui listened as she continued adding more detail to the ssification of assassinations, turning it from simple categories into more borate divisions.N?velD(ram)a.?rg owns this content.


    Directness, range, and explicitness turned out to be among the most prominent parameters of ssification.


    Directness was a measure of how direct the cause of death of the victim of the assassin was. Did the assassin directly drive a knife into the victim''s heart, causing them to die? Or did they cause a certain chain of actions that eventually led to the death of the victim?


    Things such as poisoning food were one step removed from killing the victim. Manipting circumstances or people to unfold in such a way that it led to the death of the victim was also several steps more borate than simply driving a knife into the victim''s heart.


    "Do such assassinations even happen enough to warrant creating a separate category?" Rui raised an eyebrow.


    "Of course." Master Reina nodded. "Many assassins rely on indirect assassinations. Whether it be poisoning one of the ingredients that would eventually be cooked to find its way into the victim''s food. Or triggering cmity that would kill the victim. Or causing circumstances that would cause someone else to do the dirty work. There are advantages to relying on such indirect manners of assassination. Why don''t you tell us what advantages such manners of assassinations have, for the sake of the ss?"


    Rui nced around at the empty ssroom, turning back to her. "Such forms of assassination can be much harder to prevent than direct assassinations. It is much more difficult to detect such an assassination because the assassin is so removed from the cause of death. Compared to simply guarding the target from a stabber, it is much more difficult to vet all the guards, to check all the food, to scout all the paths to ensure that there is nothing that can kill them."


    She nodded, pleased. "And what are the disadvantages of such a form of assassination?"


    Rui paused for a moment, before replying. "Just as its harder to prevent such an assassination, it''s also harder to sessfully pull off such an assassination. Because the assassin is further removed from the actual cause of death, there is a greater margin of error. It is possible that a victim may just decide to not eat food that happened to be poisoned, or not go down a path where a carefully nned set of events were meant to kill them. It surrenders initiative to fate, and various events and variables can cause the entire n to go off-rails."


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 Chapter 1391 Affinities

    Chapter 1391 Affinities


    "Correct, indirect manners of assassinations can be remarkably effective at circumventing security and protective measures, but they are much more difficult to n, and have a much greater margin of error." Master Reina echoed his words. "Under what circumstances is one more preferable than the other?"


    Rui had already arrived at the answer. "Indirect assassinations are probably preferable when the defensive measures of the target exceed thebat capabilities of the assassin. A Martial Artist has no need to go through the tedious andplex preparations and measures to assassinate a normal human who isn''t even protected. However... if the target is protected by powerful Martial Artist bodyguards, then a direct assassination is likely to fail."


    Master Reina nodded. "You mentioned you had powerful enemies. Assuming that the man you wanted to kill is among them, then you might want to consider an indirect assassination."


    Rui hadn''t given the actual manner of killing Chairman Deacon too much thought. After all, he had already decided to wait until the Beggar''s Sect had gathered the information that it needed before making a n.


    But now that Master Reina had helped him get a slightly better understanding of the paradigms of assassination, her suggestion was definitely quite ptable. Chairman Deacon was undoubtedly a difficult target to target and kill.


    Although Rui had quite some time to grow stronger, he may not reach a level of strength where he could directly assassinate Chairman Deacon past the man''s security and defensive measures.


    The Shionel Confederation may not be a powerhouse like the Kandrian Empire, but it was still a Sage-level nation. That meant it almost certainly was capable of raising and attracting incredibly powerful Martial Seniors. Certainly more powerful than the likes of those in the Shadow Isles which was a Senior-level region, barring the Silent Shadow.


    Could Rui cross the vast gulf of the Senior Realm before his time was up?


    If he could, then it was possible for him to consider a direct assassination where he attacked Chairman Deacon and his security detail and convoy to kill the man himself. But if he couldn''t... then the only way to go about it was to rely on indirect assassinations.


    There was another thing that made him consider it too.


    "The probability of sess of an indirect assassination isrgely contingent on the quality of preparation," Rui noted. "Which means I''m probably more suited to indirect assassinations than direct."


    "That''s a smooth way of calling yourself intelligent indirectly. You really do have a talent for it.." She noted thoughtfully. "I shall keep that in mind the next time I want to brag without actually bragging."


    Rui heaved an amused sigh. "I thought you were supposed to be the teacher."


    "A good teacher learns from her student."


    "I see. Can we get back to the main topic now?"


    "Can we? Yes, but will we? That depe-"


    "Perhaps I should have looked into more indirect forms of killing," Rui murmured interrupting her. "Indirect forms of killing don''t directly make use of Martial Art techniques. And as prone as I am on relying on rigorous analysis and nning, I rely on Martial Art even more."


    "Indirect assassinations can make use of Martial Art techniques just as much as direct assassinations do." Master Reina continued. "It is very difficult to poison someone well-protected without powerful poisons or good stealth-oriented techniques, as a Martial Artist."Content provided by N?velDrama.Org.


    "Hmmm..." Rui noted. "That convinces me mory that my mind makes me more suited for indirect assassinations, if not for my Martial Path, that was."


    Rui''s Martial Path was centered around adaptive evolution in a direct confrontation setting. That meant although his extreme analysis, deductive, and preparatory ability would normally make him more suited for indirect assassinations, he had applied those three mental parameters toward directbat in the form of the VOID algorithm.


    His ability to analyze, recognize, and predict was something that fully employed his cognitive parameters to the highest degree inbat in the form of the VOID algorithm. He has also applied it to his assassinations as well.


    "My direct assassinations have as much preparation as indirect assassinations do," Rui murmured.


    Master Reina nodded. "The level of preparations of your assassinations was quite unusual for a direct assassination. Usually, the only preparations that direct assassins need are ascertaining security measures, finding a good time and ce, and securing an escape route. That isn''t nothing, but it doesn''tpare to the level of preparation you went through for each assassination, although you did make it look easy."


    She turned back to the whiteboard. "Regardless, let us get back to the lesson. You can ponder your own course of action and potential endeavors after I have finished."


    Rui put aside his thoughts for the moment before paying attention to her. He hade to appreciate the simple rity that came with the distilled wisdom she offered. It hadn''t even been fifteen minutes into the lecture on assassination theory and he had already found it to be quite informative and relevant to his own considerations.


    He highly doubted that the information she provided was standardized information. Most likely, these were perspectives that had been born from her own experience as an assassin.


    That meant that they were priceless. Who knew how many decades or centuries of experience had been distilled into these exnations and insights. Although she did lighten the atmosphere with her silly teacher cosy, she waspletely serious about passing on as much as she could to her pupils.


    "Assassination is a field that has existed as long as humanity has." She momentarily interjected. "Furthermore, it is not a standardized field for Martial Artists since Martial Artists pursue solitary paths. What that means is that there is no existing theory for how assassination ought to be approached. Martial Artists simply hone their Martial Art and do their best with their assassinations with what they have. The reason I have developed a broad and deep outlook on the paradigms of assassination is because of my all-rounder nature and my many years of experience in the field. Be sure to absorb as much as you can."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1392 Lacking

    1392 Lacking


    The lecture continued as she began delving into greater detail bit by bit, as time passed. Rui kept up with every word she uttered, actively using the Mind Pce to store and organize information in a manner that made it the easiest to ess at any given time.


    The value of the lecture kept unfolding as she went in-depth into the paradigms of assassinations, conveying the very essence of her experiences to Rui in apact information package.


    "I''m surprised you have been able to keep up so well," She remarked by the end of the seminar. "Most people are lost by this time even with notes. This usually takes some time to digest."


    Rui shrugged. "I''ve always been good with handling a lot of information."


    "Then again, I suppose I shouldn''t be surprised, considering how powerful your mind is." She remarked. "Regardless, we''ve finished the boring theory. Now it''s time for me to actually begin training you."


    "What exactly does that entail?" Rui asked with a glint of enthusiasm.


    "I told you, didn''t I? I''m going to provide you with a good foundation that will allow you to kill the person you want to." She said. "There are some foundational techniques that I can impart to you, better than any other you''ll find out there. Once you have mastered them, you won''t be as limited and will have many options at hand if you want to kill someone. That said...


    She nced at him. "You are a Martial Senior, which means that there is a limit to what I can pass on to you directly. In the Senior Realm, techniques need to cater to both the Martial Body and the Martial Heart, both of which vary from Martial Artist to Martial Artist."


    ?


    Rui understood her predicament. Techniques squeezed the untapped potential and power from within a person. In order to do that, they needed to be attuned to the person. Techniques for someone with a lightweight body were going to be very different from those with a heavyweight body.


    "That is why what I intend to pass on to you are principles rather than the techniques themselves." She exined. "You can apply those principles yourself and form your own technique surrounding them, and it will naturally be attuned to you. You can even y around and diverge from it if you think it will suit you more."


    Rui actually preferred that.


    Not that he was strictly against the Silent Shadow of all people teaching, he was against being denied the opportunity to imbue his own Martial Art techniques with individuality and attuning them to himself.


    He had also grown far too ustomed to developing his own techniques, it was far too difficult for him to diverge from that and simply engage in mindless training.


    "Now then, based on our lecture. Tell me what youck when ites to being well-rounded for assassinations?" She asked.


    Rui thought for a moment. "Range versatility. Although my long- range technique is powerful, it has its limitations because of the fact that it needs to be undetectable. Thus against those with passive defenses, it is powerless."


    The fact of the matter was that if someone had extrayers of protection, especially at the Squire level, the difficulty of assassinating his target with Death''s Sympathy rose significantly since the technique relied on there being only threeyers of protection around the skull.


    Because of the range, the undetectability significantly constrained its power and thus its ability to kill well-protected individuals who actually invested resources into their immediate and passive protection.


    It also couldn''t work in a close-range setting since the activation of the Mighty Roar sh st technique was something that drew a lot of attention, making it difficult for the technique to actually catch the target off-guard and cleanly if they were protected by Martial Artists.


    "Good point." She noted. "You are almost constrained and impotent in a close-quarters encounter with a well-protected target. That''s not a good thing. I can impart a number of principles to allow you to bypass defenses with close-quarter techniques."


    Rui didn''t disagree, but he had other ideas in mind. "I actually have a technique temte of my own for a close-quarter assassination technique. I would rather realize it than rely on something provided by someone else."


    She nodded. "That''s fine as well. If you think you can develop an effective killing weapon for close quarters, then it will be better to rely on yourself entirely. However, remember that assassination techniques are not the same asbat techniques. Assassination techniques maximize killing potential in exchange forbat practicality, man assassination techniques require forehand knowledge, or preparation, or an element of surprise in order to have a higher probability of sessfully killing."


    Rui nodded. "I do intend to create an assassination technique, not abat technique."N?velD(ram)a.?rg owns this content.


    Simply developing a lethal attack in close quarters was not enough to call it an assassination technique didn''t work. Any technique that viably could be used inbat normally was abat technique.


    "Good." She nodded. "Now, putting aside range versatility, what else do youck?"


    ?


    Rui considered for a moment. "Stealth. Not being identified as a threat by your target is fundamental to exploiting the element of surprise that every assassin has."


    She nodded. "Not being identified as a threat allows you far more flexibility in both direct and indirect assassinations. Every assassin must learn stealth, being it avoiding detection or identification, in order to effectively assassinate. You have already learned a technique that allows you to disguise your perceived threat level to a target, haven''t you?"


    Rui nodded. "I create an image of weakness out of imagination and embody that image in my consciousness and unconsciousness. It allows me topletely mask my power!"


    "Hm, that technique is actually not a stealth technique." Master Reina noted. "It''s a technique meant to misguide the uracy of your opponent''s evaluation, causing them to underestimate you inbat. However, because your consciousness is so powerful, you are able topletely hide your power. It ispletely different from the principles of normal power-concealing techniques."


    <strong></strong>


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1393 Disguise

    Chapter 1393 Disguise


    "Well, it doesn''t matter what technique principle I use as long as can sessfully conceal my power, right?" Rui asked.


    "That is true. As long as the objective is aplished, the means are irrelevant." She nodded. "Still, with such a powerful mind, you are suited to learning mental techniques."


    "I do intend to learn mental techniques as well," Rui remarked. "However, learning exclusively assassination techniques is quite important to me."


    "Assassination and mental techniques have quite the ovep, you know," She twirled her hair. "It will be exciting to see what kind of assassin you be."


    She smirked at Rui with a glint of interest. "When you do set out to assassinate the person you want to, be sure to invite me. I don''t mind witnessing an incredible spectacle."


    "I''ll be sure to book front-row tickets."


    "My, what a kind pupil. I shall do my best to be worthy of such affection."


    Rui nced at her. "Maybe you could kill him for me, then."


    "Hahaha!" Sheughed, bending. "And deprive myself of an exciting tale of revenge? I think not!"


    Rui heaved a sigh. It was worth a shot. He couldn''t ask Master Deivon since the Shionel Confederation was in an allyship with the Virodha Theocracy. As valuable as the Virodha Champion was, he highly doubted they would be willing to break a partnership with a sage-level nation over a Martial Squire.


    "But,ing back to the main point..." She said. "Simply concealing your true power isn''t always enough. Especially when your target knows who you are. Or in circumstances where you can''t approach your target regardless of your perceived power level."


    Rui nodded. Chairman Deacon knew of him and had probably done a lot of research on the past data that he had on Rui. Even if Rui had grown, he was not going to get past the man just by concealing his power level.


    The man had probably memorized every single facial feature that Rui had after hunting for him for almost four years now.


    "I could use both stealth and disguise." Rui mused. "I don''t mind learning both."


    It was not going to be that easy to infiltrate the Shionel Confederation using stealth. It was a sage-level nation and thus their defenses were much better than those Senior-level nations that Rui could easily bypass.


    In that case, it was better to infiltrate via disguise.


    "Alright, so we have a close-range assassination technique, a disguising technique, and a stealth technique." She nodded. "You''ve already decided to take care of the assassination techniques. So why don''t we begin with the disguise and stealth techniques?"


    Rui nodded. "I am looking forward to that."


    "Follow me." She got up, walking across the training chamber. "The art of disguise and stealth are as old as human warfare. However, only after the age of Martial Art were they elevated to a much higher level. Prior to the age of Martial Art, they were a lot more primitive and harmless."


    Without the power of Martial Art, techniques, in general, were much more limited. That applied to disguise and stealth as well.N?velD(ram)a.?rg owns this content.


    "However, when the power of Martial Art empowers them..." Her palm rose to her face, swiping across her face. "They can be something else entirely."


    Rui''s eyes widened as her appearancepletely changed. Her skin color, facial features, and even bone structure shifted. It was an almost magical transformation that Rui didn''t even entirely understand.


    "Impressive, isn''t it?" She smirked. Even her voice changed, before returning back. "This is a result of years worth of training and experimenting. I can mimic any and every appearance."


    "I''m supposed to master that technique?" Rui asked with a dubious expression.


    "No, like I said, I''m simply going to impart some principles," She replied. "You can make use of them however you like. You don''t need to master such an extreme technique for your purposes."


    This was true, Rui did not need such a high-level disguise ability. She had reached an extraordinary level of impersonation. What he needed was anything that allowed him to make him harder if not impossible to identify.


    "Such a thing can allow me to travel without a mask too," Rui noted.


    The Master-level mask that he continuously wore drew him more attention than he liked. Anybody who hid their appearance was someone who had a reason to hide their appearance.


    That was also part of the reason that Rui was interested in the disguise in addition to not having to worry about being detected by Chairman Deacon.


    "However, I do also want a stealth technique," Rui noted. "There''s a good chance I''m going to need it to kill my target."


    "We can work with that. The only question is finding out what principle of stealth suits you the most." She wondered as she stared at him.


    "What kinds of principles are there?"


    "Oh several. One of the moremon principles of stealth is misdirection. Given your affinity for mental techniques, that''s probably the best route to go through. Though there are other principles that involve camouge, not generating anything that can be perceived by sensory techniques." She said as she took a single step, seeminglypletely disappearing from reality as her figure escaped Rui''s senses entirely.


    Rui narrowed his eyes as he tried sensing her with all his techniques. He even activated the Martial Heart, actively empowering them, yet he still wasn''t able to detect her existence.


    "Incredible," Rui murmured. "I didn''t even know such a level of stealth was possible. You canpletely erase your existence from people''s senses and minds!"


    "Heh." She reappeared, smirking with a hint of smugness. "Very few assassins possess that level of stealth. It takes many many years of training to achieve something like this."


    "I have a friend with a simr technique." Rui was reminded of Kane by her disy. "Except his stealth technique required him to keep moving."


    "That technique relies on maneuvering topensate for misdirection." She replied. "Misdirecting one''s attention in one direction while moving away from that direction to separate one''s self from the target''s awareness creates the illusion of the user disappearing. However..."


    She narrowed her eyes, before disappearing from Rui''s awareness once more. "If one''s misdirection is powerful enough. They do not need to rely on such a crutch."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1394 Misdirection

    Chapter 1394 Misdirection


    "I believe that you have the aptitude for wielding the power of misdirection effectively." She said. "Although you have also disyed an extremely unusual talent for tapping into the principles of reality with your technique."


    She threw him a look of interest.Content provided by N?velDrama.Org.


    Rui knew that she was referring to Death''s Sympathy. Considering it was a technique that relied on the knowledge he gained from his bachelor''s and master''s, it was a technique that would almost certainly never be born naturally given the sorelycking theoretical framework into reality.


    Even for a Martial Master like the Silent Shadow, a technique based on sympathetic resonance and constructive superposition was probably something well beyond what she could understand and replicate. He would probably need to hold her hand for more than a year the way he did when Senior Ceeran tried to learn Pathfinder.


    "Regardless, let us go with misdirection." Rui''s eyes lit up with interest.


    This was not the first time that he would be learning a technique based on the principles of misdirection. He had mastered a lesser version of Kane''s Void Step back when he was an Apprentice; the Shadow Step technique.


    It was a good example of what happened when techniques were not attuned to the user. The Shadow Step technique was a technique that also relied on maneuvering to amplify basic misdirection.


    Because the technique''s principle focused more on the maneuvering part rather than the misdirection part, Rui wasn''t able to reach Kane''s level. Kane had an affinity for maneuvering techniques while Rui did not.


    Rui had an affinity for techniques that rigorously made use of the mind. Thus had he developed his own technique that relied more on the mind than a technique that relied more on maneuvering, it would have been more attuned to his strengths, allowing him to reach a much higher level of stealth than he had reached back then.


    Unfortunately, he hadn''t been informed of the importance and need for individuality back then. But he was aware of its importance now, and he didn''t intend to make the same mistake. Rui fully believed that he could reach Kane''s level when it came to stealth purely based on his affinity for misdirection.


    "Misdirection is a principle that relies on the shorings of the fundamental nature of human consciousness." Master Reina began. "The human consciousness receives an influx of information from a variety of senses. The fact of the matter is that it is impossible for the human mind to process all of the influx of information thates in. It decides to choose and pick what information to focus on and what to throw away..."


    She paused, looking at Rui. "In other words, consciousness is simply the brain processing the information it has decided to keep and process."


    Rui nodded. In reality, the truth was more nuanced. Although Rui was far from an expert on neurology, the field of science had made far more progress in mapping out the brain and its rtionship with consciousness. Consciousness was not discrete, nor was the processing of information so simplistic.


    Regardless, the overall point was on track, so Rui didn''t bother trying to interject with unnecessary details.


    "Our brains have evolved a prioritizing system that decides what information to focus on and what not to." She continued. "Misdirection exploits the vulnerabilities in that subconscious system. By engaging in physical, verbal, and non-verbal cues, we can trick the prioritizing system into prioritizing something else and shifting its attention away from us, allowing us to escape the cognition of the user to varying degrees."


    Rui nodded. "The same subconscious information sorting system that evolved to protect us from threats by prioritizing elements that seemed threatening and thus attention-drawing is now a weakness that can be exploited."


    The brain focused on significance because only significant events could impact the human negatively, thus insignificant events naturally fell back to the background and were ignored.


    "That is why part of misdirection involves minimizing your perceived significance." She said. "Concealing your powerpletely is vital, and the good part is that you have already achieved that with your Mind Mask technique. However, there is still the other half."


    "The actual misdirection itself. Reducing your presence is only a prerequisite for misdirection techniques." Rui guessed.


    She nodded. "The question is how do we misdirect other people''s minds and attention? How would we know exactly what physical movements, cues, and micro-actions to execute to precisely misdirect the human mind when we do not understand theplexity of the human mind entirely?"


    Rui had already arrived at the answer. "The goal isn''t to understand the human mind, but merely to know how to trick it. One we can do that is by tricking our own minds."


    "And why would that work?" She raised an eyebrow.


    "There aremon evolutionary elements across our entire species. That includes the danger and priority evaluation systems of the mind at its core. These are fossils that won''t change, and even if they do, they will change over enormous periods of time that dwarf the Age of Martial Art." Rui continued. "In other words, by tricking ourselves, we will react in a way that tricks others as well. This way, we don''t need to understand theplexities of the human mind."


    Rui wondered if he could create a predictive model for the subconscious human mind, and themonalities of the human mind across the entire species. If he did that, then he would be able to peer into the mind of evolution. He would gain an understanding of humans that was unprecedented.


    Who knew what kind of power he would obtain if he seeded in such an ambition? It would be akin to a new field of Martial Art, one that only he could tap into.


    ''It''s a super difficult project though.'' Rui mused.


    It couldn''t be helped, yet he wasn''t able to shake off such a thought whenever he thought about it. It could evolve his Martial Art to heights that may very well have never been touched.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1395 Strengths and Weaknesses

    1395 Strengths and WeaknessesContent provided by N?velDrama.Org.


    "To truly misdirect others, you must master the art of misdirecting yourself." She exined. "You will need to push yourself to the limits of your capabilities even with your Martial Heart and Martial Body. There is a reason why this is a Martial Art technique and not a technique that non-Martial Artists can pull off ordinarily, do you know why?"


    "...I suppose because the misdirection would need to be executed within a millisecond, at a bare minimum, in order for it to be effective against Martial Artists." Rui thoughtfully replied. "Martial Artists have an extremely brief reaction time and our reflexes operate at even shorter timeframes. The longer that a particr misdirection maneuver takes to be executed, the harder it is to misdirect a Martial Artist since their reaction time and reflexes is short enough for no human to possible finish a maneuver within those timeframes. That''s why only Martial Artists can misdirect the awareness of Martial Artists."


    "Correct," She nodded. "That''s why you will need your Martial Heart if you want to misdirect the awareness and consciousness of Martial Seniors also using their Martial Heart. Otherwise, you will be far too slow in their perspective to pull off a misdirection micro- maneuver."


    She paused for a moment, before continuing. "Thebat effectiveness of a stealth-oriented misdirection technique depends on how mentally consuming it is. One needs to be extremely aware duringbat, and misdirection can make one much more prone to dyed reactions due to the constant mental activity."


    Rui nodded, that tracked with how Kane dealt with Void Step, it was only worth using if it actively granted an advantage, but like how it was the case against the Martial Artist he challenged to enter the Floating Sect, it was not always worth using inbat all the time.


    It would be much more true for Rui if he mastered a full-fledged misdirection technique that relied fully on misdirection alone and not maneuvering. It would be a very mentally consuming fight to constantly abuse such a powerful misdirection technique all of the time.


    This was especially true because Rui already engaged in a lot of mentally consuming activities and matters across the fight. He used the Mind Pce technique to store and process data that he collected from observing his opponent''s fight, before creating a predictive model that constantly required inputs throughout the fight.


    Then he also had things like the Pathfinder technique and its ODA System that also required mental energy. Having a mentally consuming misdirection technique on top of that would probably be quite stressful, even if worth the price.


    This wasn''t as much of a problem with Kane who relied on maneuvering more than misdirection to disappear in people''s senses.


    ''Still, it is worth it to have such an option at hand nheless! Rui nced back at Master Reina. "What does the training entail for such techniques?"


    "A lot of mental training," She exined. "Misdirecting your opponent''s awareness entails knowing how to move to convey to the subconscious processing system that there are more important things to pay attention to. You need to learn to know how to act as if such a thing is true, your micro-maneuvers and micro-actions need to be spot on, and only then can you trick their minds momentarily."


    Rui nodded. "That sounds fine to me. What about the disguise technique?"


    ?


    "That is actually moreplicated." She replied. "It''s also a Squire- level technique since it does not require the Martial Heart."


    "That''s fine, I care more about the utility than the Realm."


    "That is a good mindset to have," She nodded. "Far too many Martial Seniors scorn Squire-level techniques because they don''t use the Martial Heart, however, what they don''t understand is that having more Senior-level techniques makes them more dependant on the Martial Heart."


    Rui nodded. "In the first ce, the Martial Heart amplifies the parts of a body involved in a given technique at any given point, so Senior-level techniques are not functionally different from Squire- level ones. One needs to merely ensure that a technique is able to properly use the Martial Heart at most."


    "I''m d you aren''t arrogant about being a Martial Senior." She remarked with appreciation. "The disguising technique that I showed you is not something you can master rtively soon. It is a genuinely time-consuming technique and is actually an amalgamation of many smaller disguise techniques that I have developed over my life. I can teach you a few principles to manipte your appearance so you can get rid of that mask."


    Rui nodded. "Alright, let''s get started."


    "Hold your horses," She paused. "There is still something you need to do before we can get started."


    Rui raised an eyebrow.


    "You need to convince the Beggar''s Sect that you have failed in finding me," She exined. "I can''t have those plebeians learning that you are my pupil and that you did find me using your little public stunt move."


    "Ah...hm," Rui did recall that the Silent Shadow obscured her students so people couldn''t spot patterns in regards to how to be epted by her as her pupil. "How would you have me do that?" "Just leaving this area is fine." She exined. "I have prepared measures just for this. Listen carefully.."


    She began to exin aplex series of actions that would eventually end with Rui returning back to the Shadow Isles.


    "This as an absurd amount of length to go to just to throw off the Beggar''s Sect." Ruiined when she was done.


    "Hah. If you don''t do at least this much, those annoying peasants will see right through you." She snorted. "I''ve worked for and against them many times in the past, and I''vee to gain a good understanding of their many capabilities and few shorings. This will work as long you don''t mess up. Now go, get started. I''m not teaching you a damn thing until you get this done right."


    Rui sighed as he got up leaving Area Crina discreetly as he immediately began executing the n that she had provided to him.


    <strong></strong>


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1396 Aftereffects

    <h4>Chapter 1396 Aftereffects</h4>


    Rui could only suppress his reluctance as he executed the series of actions, traveling around, changing rides, and changing attire, among other things. The entire process took a few days in total, but eventually, he made it back without a single person possibly noticing his return.


    The measures that the Silent Shadow had taken were tedious andplex, but Rui could understand why they could fool even the Beggar''s Sect. They were the kind of measures that were extremely difficult to instate and could not be done more than once.


    It was only dayster that he finally found himself back in the Shadow Isles and Area Crina.


    The Shadow Isles were still recovering from the damage that he had inflicted on it. However, almost none of the assassins who left the Shadow Isles came back. It appeared that the Martial Squires and Apprentices simply couldn''t stay in a ce where they didn''t have any agency.


    Rui had also mentally tormented them with his bloodlust amplified with the Mind Mask. He had non-verbally conveyed to them that as long as they remained here, they were forever going to be his target.


    He told them to leave the entire geographic region.


    Most of them obliged, not willing to die. ording to the Beggar''s Sect that he had spoken to briefly before pretending to leave the Derschek Region, which had been part of Master Reina''s n, the majority of assassins that Rui had driven had gone on to leave the Derschek Region as a whole, putting as much distance between them and the Shadow Isles as possible.


    "Your n has been a mighty sess." Professor Carl noted. "Clearing away the problem that has gued our branch of the foreign affairs department of the Beggar''s Sect is a massive contribution to the Beggar''s Sect."


    "How much of a dent does it put in mymission payment to the Beggar''s Sect?" Rui wondered.


    "A lot. You have cleared half of yourmission payment, roughly speaking. We can show you the actual bills and receipts if you''re a stickler for detail."


    Rui shook his head. The Beggar''s Sect had worked hard and long to cultivate reputations of fairness, trustworthiness, and credibility, they would never squander decades if not centuries of hard work by deceiving their benefactor just for some paltry extra profits. The intelligencemunity as a whole would learn of it very quickly if Ruiined and their reputation would suffer.


    "Still... half, huh?" Rui murmured.


    He wasn''t sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing. He had put in a ton of effort and achieved extraordinary results, and yet that had been only half of the payment he made.


    "It''s a good thing, the intelligence that you have requested can only be obtained through the system we have in ce that was created over centuries of development behind it. It is actually a little bit shocking that you have managed to repay half of yourmission payment in just six months. At this rate, you could potentially be the first Martial Artist of your age to repay such a bigmission payment so quickly. Half a year is nothing for Martial Artists like yourself." Professor Carl exined.


    Rui left it at that. As long as hepleted the payment and got the strategic intelligence on Chairman Deacon that he needed.


    "So I assume that the Beggar''s Sect will regain control over the region?" Rui asked.


    "Of course, we have begun not only stabilizing our influence but also ensuring that the assassination industry never entrenches itself back into the Derschek Region." The man dered.


    The entire had begun to have tales and legends spun around it, making it a taboo for assassins. The Beggar''s Sect delightfully hastened that process with its ability to control public opinion and cognition as well as it did.


    Regardless, Rui didn''t care about the state of the Shadow Isles and the Derschek Region. He had seeded in achieving the objective that he hade to achieve and nothing else really mattered to him.


    "Oh, you''re finally back?" She mused when he had re-entered the secret training chamber externally through a hidden entrance that Master Reina had managed to conceal even from the Beggar''s Sect. "You better have not made any mistakes. I would spank you if you did. Don''t think I''m joking. I''ll do it."


    "Tempting," Rui sarcastically replied. "But I''ll decline. let''s get started with the training."


    It wasn''t long before they found themselves in certain sections of the training chamber, ready to embark on a training voyage. Rui had chosen to begin with developing his own disguise technique.


    "As I mentioned before. The disguise technique that I showed you is based on an amalgamation of many different mechanisms and principles, which is unusual for a single technique. It is impractical for you to master all of them unless you truly intend to live a life where impersonation-level disguise is very important and significant. A handful of principles and mechanisms is enough to make you unrecognizable."


    "What kind of principles would you rmend I master? How many options do I have to choose from?" Rui asked.


    "Oh there are many things you could master," She remarked. "You could, for instance, master the principle of adjusting the water retention of your flesh, changing the volume of your flesh." Content provided by N?velDrama.Org.


    She closed her eyes, activating a breathing technique. Her face slowly grewrger and more bloated, changing her appearance to a certain degree.


    "You could focus on adjusting skull structure and shape by manipting the individual bones thatprise it."


    "Or you could focus on changing secondary features like facial hair or eye color."


    "Or you could focus on changing skin color by adjusting pigmentation."


    "You could alter your perceived height and perceived body shape with pelvic tilts and spinal extensions or contractions, a low-grade technique but actually quite effective."


    Rui watched, amazed and disturbed, at the proficiency at which she altered her appearance so well. "I don''t need too many, just enough to make me unrecognizable."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1397 Mechanisms

    <h4>Chapter 1397 Mechanisms</h4>


    "In that case, it''s better to minimize the number of mechanisms and techniques you go for." She remarked. "There''s no point inplicating things more than they need to be."


    Rui nodded. "I think the head reshaping, the skin volume, and color-altering principles work for me."


    "Only three?" She mused. "That may not be reliably enough."


    "I have my own application in mind," Rui mused as he considered the prospects of developing his own appearance-manipting disguises. "I will create a fourth of my own."


    The application that came to mind was one based on Hypertrophic Surge. Hypertrophic Surge bloated his muscles, and if he could figure out how to selectively and partially apply it only to his facial muscles, then he would be entirely unrecognizablepared to his normal appearance whenbined with the other three facial-altering mechanisms.


    "It''s not easy developing such a principle." She warned. "One reason that there aren''t so many such techniques floating out there is that it requires an intimate general understanding of the mechanisms of the body. Although we still haven''t peered past the depths of the cell much, if at all, we still have a remarkably detailed overview of the functioning of the human body. You require possessing that knowledge and understanding to develop disguise techniques."


    Rui tried his best to suppress a smug smile that threatened toe on his face. He was far from a qualified biologist, but he did have an extensive education in the field of biology not just throughout school, but also in his bachelor''s and diploma. Not to mention, the decades ofbat sports study and research that came after, that did work with the human body.


    Although this level of biological expertise was trivial back on Earth, that was not the case in Gaia. He would be surprised if there was anybody who could match his knowledge and understanding.


    "I think I''ll be fine."


    "If you say so."


    "Though I suppose just altering my facial appearance isn''t enough. It''s best to involve an element that changes my body figure as well." Rui mused. "That makes it so that there are little to no ways in which people can recognize me just by analyzing my body figure."


    Something like the pelvic tilt and spinal extension and contraction sounded fine and easy enough.


    It was easy for most people to make identifications based on body figures. In fact, from a distance and from many angles, body figure was the first thing that was used to recognize people.


    The ability to no longer need his mask and to be able to freely travel without any worries about being identified was something Rui yearned for reasons beyond just the applications in assassinations and stealth operations.


    The fear of being found by Chairman Deacon or Master Uma was always annoying, and the need to wear an annoying mask all the time that only drew more attention to him was also not pleasant.


    This was a technique whose greatest benefit was increasing his daily quality of life. The fact that it didn''t need the Martial Heart was quite good too.


    "Since you''ve made your choices, I won''t dy the training any further." She nodded. "These principles altogether will take some time to master, but they shouldn''t be too difficult, I will begin by exining how the principles of these techniques work."


    She paused for a moment before getting out a set of documents from a shelf outside of the section of the training chamber. They contained various anatomical diagrams of the body and the face, disying several physiological systems of the body in the face.


    "Let us begin with the flesh thickness maniption principle. This principle is based on increasing the amount of water retained in the skin and flesh by increasing the amount of salt in your blood. There are broader temtes for manipting bodily functions by associating mental triggers to them, this can be applied to trigger the mechanism of increasing the amount of salt released in your bloodstream." She exined.


    Doing such a thing was dangerous for normal humans since it increased blood pressure, and the rapid increase in salt without giving the body the time to limatize could be dangerous for the heart.


    But such risks did not exist for the Martial Body.


    Rui nodded. "That trigger mechanism works fine, though I could create physiological triggers rather than psychological triggers for the techniques if needed."


    "That also requires a good understanding of the human body, so I would be careful if you did decide to go that route." She advised. N?velDrama.Org holds this content.


    Rui wasn''t too concerned with that, but he did appreciate psychological triggers more since they didn''t require him to alter his body too much. They were much cleaner than what he did with Thundercoil and Lightning Tap.


    "The skull shape-altering mechanism was something I developed after paying attention to skull structure and realizing how fragmented it it. They are held together by little stitches that can be changed at certain locations by rapid micro-damaging and healing, this particr technique does require the Martial Heart for the rapid healing part." She exined. "It will not be easy and the training can be dangerous if done incorrectly, thus I will supervise the most dangerous parts myself."


    Rui nodded. The mechanism sounded rather fascinating, but he didn''t find the danger amusing. Manipting the fibers that held together the skull that protect the brain was obviously dangerous, and not something that one ought to embark on lightly.


    "The pelvic tilts and the spinal extensions and contractions are centered around muscle maniptions and alterations to fascia, the connective tissue that binds the entire human body together." She exined. "The various principles are simple and as are the oues. However, when put together, they can allow you to disappear into the background such that nobody can find you."


    Rui nodded. The entire continent opened up to him now that he had ess to these techniques. Entire parts of the continent that he had constrained himself from visiting because they were too close to Chairman Deacon or Master Uma were now open for travel.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1398 Range

    <h4>Chapter 1398 Range</h4>


    The disguise technique was quite new, unexplored territory regarding techniques as far as Rui was concerned. The triggering mechanism was something that he had delved into before, but the actual techniques themselves were quite unlike anything Rui had learned before.


    He had never heard of a skull-altering disguise technique before. Nor had he heard of disguise techniques that allowed one topletely impersonate another person without any problems.


    That was why he was rather certain that most of these principles were probably something that Master Reina had developed herself over her long career as the Silent Shadow.


    With such a powerful technique, he couldn''t imagine just how many extraordinarily well-protected people she had managed to sessfully assassinate. The numbers surely had entered the quintuple digits by this point.


    Just thinking about it left Rui in awe. All content ? N/.?vel/Dr/ama.Org.


    "Can I ask you something?" He said to her out of the blue.


    "Can you?"


    "Why did you retire?" Rui wondered. "I doubt it was because your ability had deteriorated and I bet there are countless people who are willing to pay a lot of money tomission your services."


    She paused from the book she was reading, ncing back at him. "Well, if you must know, I got bored."


    "Is that all?"


    "Well, you try doing something for centuries and not get bored." She snorted.


    "Hm." Rui could understand the sentiment, but he got the feeling that she was hiding something. Regardless, he didn''t pry. If she cared to reveal the truth, she would in time. It wasn''t that big a deal even if she didn''t.


    Time passed as he dedicated his time to training.


    In addition to the disguise technique, he was also working on two additional techniques. The misdirection technique and the close-range assassination technique.


    He had refused help from the Silent Shadow because he was sure that he could do something about it on his own. He had even developed his own ideas for it when he was mastering Death''s Sympathy.


    A close-range version of Death''s Sympathy was definitely a good idea. Although he could technically use the long-range version at any range, it was impractical at close range due to the time it needed to beunchedpared to close-range attacks and the inefficiency of the attackpared to close-range attacks.


    In exchange for vast range, long-range attacks were generally less efficient than close-range attacks and less powerful. The reason for that was the fact that long-range attacks generally relied on a medium to inflict attacks through, namely the atmosphere, there was inevitably some proportion of energy loss from generating an attack through the atmospherepared to if that same power had been directly inflicted on the opponent.


    In this case, of course, the power didn''t really matter too much since the whole point of Death''s Sympathy was inflicting damage to an extremely vital organ such as the brain, which was so delicate that it did not take much power to kill the target.


    Rui had considered the possibility of relying on Reverberating Lance to generate the resonance frequencies needed to bypass exterior defenses and strike an extremely vital organ.


    Reverberating Lance had never been able to generate sound back in the Squire Realm, but he hadn''t tried doing so in the Senior Realm yet.


    BADUMP!


    He activated a breathing technique along with the Martial Heart. An immense wave of power epassed his entire body, invigorating all of it. The Martial Heart empowered the Martial Art rather than the Martial Body, for it was the Martial Art that actually unearths the Martial Heart and squeezes out the potential energy from deep within the body.


    This meant that only the parts of the body being employed in a Martial Art technique would be empowered by the Martial Heart. Of course, thanks to breathing techniques in passive defensive techniques, the entirety of the body was under the influence of the Martial Heart when activated.


    However, for this technique, Rui was only interested in his arm.


    He began vibrating his arm back and forth, and immediately, the Martial Heart aided him, increasing the vibration frequency and the osciting speed to far greater heights.


    VMMMM!


    A smooth yet loud humming sound arose from the Reverberating Lance as it seemed as though Rui had two right arms thatrgely ovepped with each other. He nced up at a target that was uniformly made up of a certain Senior-level alloy, beforeunching a powerful attack.


    VMMMM!


    The impact was heavy, but most of the momentum was permeated away straight through the target without resistance.


    "Wow," Rui murmured.


    The principle of sympathetic resonance was extremelypatible with the principles of Reverberating Lance. The two were a match made in heaven and had great synergy with each other.


    "It''s a shame that this isn''t abat-oriented technique in the first ce." Rui sighed.


    It took him days, along with the help of a musician to figure out what his target''s multiple innate resonance frequencies were. This was not something he could aplish in the middle of a fight, within the fight.


    However, it was a great assassination technique. All he had to do was begin mastering the pitch of the Reverberating Lance the way he had mastered it for the Mighty Roar sh st, and then he would be able to precisely target the innate resonance frequencies through the technique, allowing him to assassinate his target in close-range with no imperfections.


    The best about this project was that its sess was all but guaranteed because he was relying on principles that had been proven to be effective and were well within hisfort zone, what he was really doing was making the best out of the avable resources.


    With this technique, he would be deadly at all ranges as an assassin. Even those assassinations that he was unable to aplish at long range due to power and sensing constraints could be easily executed at close range with this technique. It reduced the prospects of his target surviving an assassination attempt from himself.


    ''Including Chairman Deacon.'' Rui narrowed his eyes.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1399 Progress

    <h4>Chapter 1399 Progress</h4>


    While the training of the close-range Death''s Sympathy and the disguise technique went well, the misdirection training under Master Reina had alsomenced.


    "You need to master the image." Master Reina instructed. "The stronger the image, the more effectively your subconsciousness will be fooled. The more effectively your unconsciousness is fooled, the more effectively your opponent''s subconsciousness will be fooled."


    Rui visualized the image of a grave threat, like Master Uma, while minimizing his own. He visualized every detail that he could recall, picturing her determined self out to hunt him down so that she could indulge in her crazy delusions of grandeur when it came to Rui.


    The threat was very real. His body had not forgotten the first time it experienced the sensation of the true power of a Martial Master. The deep terror that one who was, at the time, two Realms above him was not something even Rui had been able to brush off.


    As the image in his mind grew increasingly detailed and realistic, he could feel a portion of that anguish returning. His subconscious mind followed suit and his body shifted, twitched, and made a number of micro-actions that would subconsciously convey to any sentient being the threat of Master Uma, causing them to look in the direction that Rui had created the mental image in, within his mind.


    When the image was created, almost every cell in Rui''s body recoiled as if Master Uma had manifested in real life ten meters away from him, threatening to capture him. Anybody who looked at him at that moment would undoubtedly have be convinced that there was a much graver threat that was much more important to pay attention to, causing them to divert their attention away from him.


    At that moment, Rui would be insignificant in their minds while their minds subconsciously diverted their attention to the threat of Master Uma.


    A non-existent threat.


    Master Reina''s eyes widened as she momentarily felt a mild urge to do the same. The sheer magnitude of his misdirection was something that beggared the mind.


    Literally.


    ''Incredible.'' She narrowed her eyes. ''What an extraordinary mind to conjure up such a powerful image so easily and early on.''


    "Fuuu..." Rui heaved a sigh, opening his eyes.


    "It''s impressive that you managed to create such a powerful image in your head without any extended practice." She stated. "Now all you need to do is be able to conjure up that image on demand instantly. You cannot afford to waste minutes on conjuring up such an image when working on an assassination. However, this will take a long time. You will need to do this over and over until the image is burned in your mind since you obviously cannot store that image in your mind otherwi-!"


    Her eyes widened as she abruptly stopped talking as Rui instantly replicated the misdirection, tugging on her attention.


    "You mean like this?" Rui asked.


    She stared at him. "...How did you do that so quickly? You took five minutes to reach that level before."


    "I just recalled it from memory."


    "...You memorized a detailed image enough to replicate it perfectly?"


    "Yeah, I just stored it in my Mind Pce," Rui replied.


    "Mind pce? Ah, that technique. I don''t understand, that technique is limited to memorizing a lot of words and numbers. It is entirely unable to store detailed images." She frowned.


    "Images are information," Rui replied. "I broke down the detailed image I conjured for the misdirection technique into one million smaller images and stored them all in a million adjacent locations in my Mind Pce. Every time I want to recall that image, I just swoop past all of them in a line and put them together in a particr algorithm to restore the original image. That way, I don''t need to create the image from scratch. It''s much easier to reconstruct a simple puzzle than to paint a painting."


    "..."


    "It''s really not that big a deal." Rui shrugged. "Honestly, I thought Martial Masters could do that too."


    She simply stared at him with sharp eyes.


    It was an expression that Rui recognized. It was the same expression that he had seen on the face of every Martial Master he had ever met since bing a Martial Squire.


    As if they somehow saw something that they had never seen before. Master Reina had done a good job hiding it, but apparently, Rui had crossed a line.


    She heaved a sigh. "Talent really is an eyesore. To think that you would aplish months of progress in five minutes. Absurd. But ironically enough, that only makes your path to the Master Realm much more difficult."


    Rui furrowed his eyebrows narrowly. "What?"


    She shook her head. "Never mind. Let''s continue. At this rate of mastery, you will have an incredibly powerful misdirection technique ready by the time we''re done."


    "I want to go back to what you said before."


    "Don''t read too deep into it. You have enough on your te already. If you''re too distracted by other matters, your progress with the misdirection technique will slow down drastically." She remarked. "Let''s continue, I''m actually quite excited to see what kind of stealth you will achieve."


    Rui stared at her.


    "I said don''t read too much into it. You''ll be fine, just fine. Now get started." She remarked. N?velDrama.Org holds this content.


    "...Fine. But when we''re done with training, I''m going to have you exin."


    She considered his words, before nodding, much to Rui''s surprise.


    "You promise? No going back on your words."


    "What do you want? A blood oath? I said I''d do it. Just get started already!"


    Rui put aside thoughts as he continued his misdirection training. His powerful imagination refined the three-dimensional image of Master Uma that he had conjured up, increasing the quality of the image, and making it easier for him to grow immersed in the image and fool his subconsciousness into thinking it was real, which would in turn fool others and misdirect them as a result.


    He meditated quietly with a sagely appeal, having be a artist who was embellishing his work, when an idea popped into his head.


    "What if I create a video instead of an image? Wouldn''t that lead to a much more technique?"


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1400 Video Project

    <h4>Chapter 1400 Video Project</h4>


    The idea set off an explosion inside his mind, blowing away the image that he was refining in his head.


    "What''s the matter?" Master Reina asked. "Why have you stopped cultivating the image for the misdirection?"


    Rui ignored her question as his eyes swum around,pletely lost in his thoughts. ''Videos are probably easier to get immersed into since they are identical to the manner in which our minds interpret vision. As a series of chronological images.'' Rui realized. ''That means that if I use a video or?GIF instead of an image, won''t the misdirection be much more effective on my targets and opponents because it''s much more effective on me?''


    His mind worked furiously as he extrapted the oue of a video in ce of an image for a misdirection technique, modeling the response of the human conscious and subconscious mind.


    "It works!" Rui eximed, excited.


    "What are you doing?" She frowned.


    He had been wondering how he could leverage his evolved mind to create a more powerful misdirection technique beyond simple applications when he logically arrived at this simple answer.


    Perhaps creating a three-dimensional simtion video of a hostile Martial Master was impossible for Martial Seniors, but it was within the Realm of possibility for Rui. If he could achieve this, just how absurdly powerful of a misdirection technique would he be able to create?


    "I have never been ignored to such a level in my life, barring misdirection techniques."


    ''However, while the output of the technique will be much higher than any ordinary misdirection technique, the burden on the mind will also be proportionally higher.'' Rui realized.?''Normally, this isn''t such a big problem, but the issue is that my mind is already filled with other burdensome things.''


    The VOID Algorithm, the ODA System, Transverse Resonance, and Death''s Sympathy. Each of these was a technique that required a lot of brainpower. The ODA System was something that Senior Ceeran had managed to reluctantly partially master after more than a year of hand-holding from Rui personally. There were times when Rui used all four simultaneously, like when assassinating his targets.


    To add on top another mentally burdensome technique on top of all of them was too much even for Rui.


    ''At least, it''s too much for the video misdirection technique.'' Rui realized. ''It''s manageable for an image misdirection technique.''


    In that case, perhaps it would be better to create two misdirection techniques.


    ''To be more precise, two levels of the same misdirection technique.'' Rui noted. ''One for when my mind is unburdened. And the other for when my mind is consumed by other things. Still... this is indicative of arger problem.''


    He was starting to reach a stage where even his mind was starting to have trouble juggling all the techniques that he wasing up with. It was like aputer with too many programs running, consuming the processing speed of theputer.


    ''The only way to go forward is to find a way to resolve this.'' Rui realized.


    He wasn''t sure how, but it was not an acute problem. ''I definitely cannotpromise the VOID algorithm. Everything else will have to make do.''


    It was possible to use the video-misdirection technique if he was only using the VOID algorithm and nothing else. Thus, there was still plenty of room for him to use the misdirection technique since the other mind-consuming techniques were a lot more niche.


    The resulting technique would be extraordinarily powerful if he employed it with the VOID algorithm, however, its utility inbat in directbat would be much more restrained because of how much it would dy his reactions and reflexes.


    ''Kane''s Void Step doesn''t nearly suffer from the same problem because it relies more on maneuvering than misdirection and maneuvering is a fundamental part ofbat while misdirection isn''t.'' Rui realized enviously. ''Oh well, I will have to live with the fact that my stealth will far exceed his by the time I''m done even if it isn''t smoothly applicable inbat.''


    Nheless, the impacts of this technique would be absolutely staggering!


    "I exist, you know, at some point, you have to acknowledge me." Master Reinained.


    Rui couldn''t imagine just how absurd his misdirection ability would be when he mastered the technique that he sought to master. If Void Step was any indication, Rui could practically consider himself undetectable within the Senior Realm entirely with such a technique.


    While he had yet to meet a high-grade Martial Senior, but he was willing to wager that not even they would be resistant to his new idea.


    He grinned excitedly as he immediately began working on his idea. He needed to quickly establish the goal in concrete terms.


    ''A long video may be unnecessary, it''s much more practical to work with medium-sized video that will y in a loop as a GIF in my head.'' Rui''s eyes swam as he grew immersed in his mind. ''Also, it may be worth it to rely on my memories to form the temte of the GIF in my head. I can significantly ease my burden andplete the project within remarkably reasonable timelines.'' All content ? N/.?vel/Dr/ama.Org.


    These kinds of video graphics and CGI projects would take months back on Earth even when highly skilled people had actual high-qualityputers and premium software.


    Rui was going to do the same but with nothing but his imagination and memory. An absurd feat that would be absolutely impossible to evenprehend for anybody except Rui.


    And yet, to him, it was not only possible but inevitable. He forged forward with confidence as streams of thoughts shed through his mind.


    ''Let''s set the epicenter as the perspective of the three-dimensional simultation. Let''s keep the framerate at about sixty FPS from my perspective. Let''s set three parallel information tracks, one for vision, sound, and touch to get a better sense of realism for the misdirection to be more effective. That should be a manageable project.''


    BAM!


    "Ouch!" Rui groaned.


    "I said stop ignoring me!"


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1401 Mind Matters

    Chapter 1401 Mind Matters


    The project was incredibly ambitious, but that only excited Rui even more. Whatever would be born from this technique project would most certainly be a different kind of beast entirely. At the very least, he doubted he would see such a technique anywhere in the Senior Realm.


    The reason for that was that the sheer raw cognitive parameters needed to achieve this level of imagination and memory were probably something that no other Martial Senior could achieve. Not only was Rui''s mind entirely enhanced far beyond the norm, but he also had the Mindmirror Symbiote which also gave him a boost in the form of parallel processing when Martial Art techniques were concerned.


    Thus, whatever misdirection technique unfolded as a result of fully using his capabilities to the best would be cut from an entirely different cloth.


    "Ah..." Rui murmured. ''I came to Master Reina to learn assassination techniques, not mental techniques.''


    Well, it was clear that there was a significant ovep between mental techniques and stealth techniques, so he shouldn''t have been too surprised.


    "That''s a stupid thing to be bothered by." She snorted. "Besides, you said you were going to go to the Hypnomaster to learn more about mental techniques right? You''re not going to learn about misdirection-based stealth from that man, he doesn''t like hiding his presence. You''re better off learning those principles from an actual expert like me. The quality of my stealth training is unrivaled! Right? Right?!"


    "...Right." Rui heaved a sigh.


    "So don''t be too concerned about the small stuff."


    "You sounded like you know him, Master Reina."N?velD(ram)a.?rg owns this content.


    "Ah, we''re friends, though I haven''t seen him for thirty years." She remarked. "I actually met him thanks to an assassinationmission."


    "How did that happen?" Rui frowned. "You don''t seem like the type to make friends during missions."


    "Well, you see..." She had a difficult expression. "He was my target at the time."


    Rui''s eyes widened with surprise. "Really? I''m surprised he is still around."


    "I had befriended him for a few months before finally getting to the actual assassination part, catching him off-guard but..."


    "But...?"


    "..."


    "..." Rui tilted his head at her difficult expression.


    "He was too strong." She sighed, managing to squeeze out the truth.


    Rui''s eyes widened with shock. He had experienced firsthand just how impressive the Silent Shadow''s stealth was. Even his grade-ten Riemannian Echo was powerless before her as if she had erased her very presence from space-time itself.


    "...What?" Rui remarked with surprise.


    "Don''t get the wrong idea. He almost died and was even severely wounded!" Sheined.


    "You failed? You?" Rui furrowed his eyebrows as he thought about what kind of Martial Master could ovee an assassination attempt from the Silent Shadow.


    "Stop fixating on that."


    "How did he manage to make you fail though."


    "You''re ignoring me again."


    "He must be quite incredible at what he does to have made you fail."


    BAM!


    "Ouch!"


    "Hmph, that''s what you get." She snorted. "...But yes, his Martial Art was magical. I didn''t understand what happened or how he pushed me back to this day, hmph."


    "Woah," Rui murmured. "That sounds incredible. How did you guys be friends after that?"


    "Well, he has a soft spot for women. So he forgave me to use that opportunity to get in my pants. That''s the kind of person you''re trying to learn from. You''re much better off learning from me. So don''t go to him ok? Stay here."


    She put her hands on Rui, unwilling to let go.


    "He sounds like an entric person," Rui murmured. "I''m looking forward to meeting him."


    "Hah!" She snorted. "That''s if you seed in getting epted by him. You see, he isn''t as kind as I am when ites to anything not rted to women. The tribtions he poses to those who wish to gain his tutge are much harsher than my own."


    "I do not intend on allowing that to stop me." Rui calmly replied.


    A quiet confidence brimmed from within him. He truly believed that he would be able to ovee any test that a Martial Master put up as long as they were seriously willing to take in pupils for tutge.


    "Well, you do have a genuine affinity for his field, so who knows?" She shrugged. "But...you shouldn''t underestimate the tribtions you''ll face. It won''t be quite like the cakewalk you had with the Shadow Isles. Do you know? The tribtions he put in ce were so hellish for those who undertook them that he was formally reprimanded by the Council of Masters of the Panamic Martial Federation? You should have seen his face when I was the one that served him the official statement! Hahaha!"


    Sheughed heartily at the Hypnomaster''s expense, yet Rui found her tale to be interesting more than funny.


    "When you say tribtions, you''re referring to the Great Forest of Hypnonarak, right?" Rui asked as he essed the intelligence supplied by the Beggar''s Sect. It contained the ce that the Hypnomaster regarded as his abode. It was said that those who reached his abode at the center of the Great Forest of Hypnonarak would be epted as his pupils.


    "Indeed. A danger zone, as ssified by the Panamic Ecological Association." She remarked. "The funny part is that that bastard created that danger zone artificially by spreading certain dangerous monster species of fauna and flora from different danger zones and Lost Cities from within the Beast Domain into the human domain creating what is regarded as a pocket extension of the Beast Domain. Countless people died in the creation of the forest, which is why he got in trouble with a lot of forces."


    Rui knew of this thanks to the information that the Beggar''s Sect had supplied. Still, he found it interesting that Master Reina was connected to the Hypnomaster, his next target to learn from. It was unexpected, however, he expected the world of Martial Art at the upper echelons of the Martial World to be much smaller. There were only so many Martial Masters and it was not a surprise that many hade to develop connections with each other over the many years.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1402 Difficulty

    Chapter 1402 Difficulty


    "Why did he go out of his way to do such a thing?" Rui wondered. "It sounds like a lot more effort than is really needed. Why is it that both of you can''t just choose pupils like normal teachers would?"Content provided by N?velDrama.Org.


    "Hah!" She snorted at his question. "Do you have any idea of how many people mor to be epted as our pupils? I don''t have the time or energy to sort through all of them to find the best one."


    "I''m aware, but Martial Masters possess a lot of insight, don''t they? Isn''t it easy for you to make instantaneous evaluations of people youy your eyes on?"


    "I can''t be bothered with all of that." She shrugged. "I much prefer something more exciting like setting up a challenge, like finding me in the Shadow Isles, though that had be stale until you arrived. He has his own version of that."


    "Hmmm..." Rui considered her words.


    It was precisely because he nned on learning from the Hypnomaster that he wanted to gain as much information from someone who knew him more intimately than the Beggar''s Sect.


    Of course, the Beggar''s Sect''s intelligence was valuable as well, they provided a much more thorough and rigorous overview than Master Reina did. He wanted to gather as much information as he could have.


    "He epts students less frequently than I do, you know." She remarked. "I think thest time he epted a student was perhaps nearly six or seven years ago? Something like that. So it''s not going to be easy. Not even for you."


    Rui had no doubt about that. From everything that he hade to learn, the challenges he would need to ovee to reach the Hypnomaster were overwhelming in and of themselves.


    That was fine as far as he was concerned. It has been a while since he had truly pushed himself to the limit in regard to a specific ambition or goal.


    "Enough chit-chatting, get back to training." She instructed.


    Rui obliged, closing his eyes as he returned to the newly-created misdirection technique project.


    ''I need to give it a better name.'' Rui mused, before giving it a thought. ''Project Phantomind.''


    A simple fusion of two relevant words was good enough for Rui. He was not proud of his naming sense, but it couldn''t be helped. He usually named a project after he squeezed his creativity to create powerful technique temtes, thus, there wasn''t much creativity left for the actual name.


    However, he immediately began chugging away at the project, making progress every second. One of the biggest issues that he had was project management. Theplexity of this project was not different from that of popr animated productions, and he needed to manage everything inside of his head.


    He had fixed up the smaller details such as the framerate, definition, perspective, and data tracks, now he needed a broader overview.


    ''The ultimate goal is to thoroughly trick my subconsciousness into thinking that Master Uma is actually on the battlefield and is attacking both me and my opponent or target.'' Rui mused. ''I should add an element of customizing the mental simtion to ovep my environment perception to the project. That will make it even more convincing.''


    The more convinced he was, the more convinced his targets or opponents would be.


    He immediately began creating the three-dimensional mental simtion, putting away the two-dimensional image that he was working on for the time being. Time passed as he used his imagination as a premium graphics, video, and audio software to embellish his three-dimensional simtion of Master Uma.


    It helped that his fear of Master Uma was quite real. He did not need to fake it, force it, or induce it.


    He just needed to remember.


    While the Silent Shadow was also terrifying, even more so, she was not hostile to Rui.


    In fact, the two of them had started growing more informal and casual with each other. She had earnestly passed on the principles of assassination that she had herself developed and created, passing on much of her wisdom within the field of assassination.


    It also helped that she had a remarkably easygoing personality with a somewhat dry, often crass, sense of humor. Though they hadn''t grown truly intimate because of Rui''s hidden identity, among other things, it wouldn''t work if he tried to imagine her instead of Master Uma.


    He sifted through unpleasant memories, using them as foundational temtes for the three-dimensional simtion. It also helped that he saw her as a de of wind once she started to fight seriously against Master Deivon.


    ''Speaking of which, I still don''t know what the hell that was.'' Rui mused. Considering that Master Deivon had done something simr, it was definitely rted to the power of the Master Realm.


    He highly doubted that they actually physically transformed into a literal sword and fortress. That was far too absurd even for the Master Realm. Most likely it was something else. He didn''t know what it was, of course.


    ''Maybe Master Reina will tell me that along with whatever she meant when she said I''d have a harder path.'' Rui hoped.


    That was additional motivation toplete his training. He wanted to know more about the path ahead to a higher Realm. Intuition and inference told him that the path to the Master Realm was not the same as anything he had gone through before.


    Regardless, time passed as he continued his training with the three techniques that he trained with under the guidance of the Silent Shadow. He hadn''t been consumed with three projects in quite some time, which lengthened the training session well beyond any others that he had ever been through.


    The totality of the training period stretched well beyond a year until he finally wasplete with everything that he had set out to achieve. Perhaps he could havee out earlier, but hisrge ambitions and his perfectionist side forced him to stay until he was entirely satisfied with the oue.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1403 Execution

    Chapter 1403 Execution


    Eighteen months breezed by as Rui secluded himself in training. This was not outside of Rui''s expectations when he had first set up the three projects that he was going to work on while under the Silent Shadow''s guidance.


    Thergest consumer of his time was, of course, the Phantomind Project. There wasn''t the slightest shred of doubt in his mind that this project was going to be one of his most powerful techniques to date.


    It didn''t take a genius to figure that out. Not only was it attuned to Rui''s strengths. not only was it an entirely unique concept attuned to the knowledge of his past life, but it was a highly individualized technique that only he could use.


    To say that he expected much from the technique was an understatement. The ordinary version of the technique that he had set out to create alone took nine months, while the beefed-up version took an additional nine months.


    Countless hours of imagination and self-programming and even a certain amount of self-programming went into forging the technique in his mind. His Mind Pce had needed to be extended a bit, so he relied on absorbing the Shadow Isles into his mind as a part of the Mind Pce to amodate the massive amounts of data that needed to be stored for the technique. The volume of the data exceeded even the VOID algorithm.


    It took what felt like forever to create the technique, meditating for countless hours as his mind furiously chugged away.


    After a long year and a half, he had finally arrived.


    With three new techniques at hand.


    Lycanthropic Mask, the disguise technique that he had mastered.


    Sympathetic Death Lance, the close-range version of Death''s Sympathy.


    And the Phantomind Void technique.


    "Fuuu..." Rui exhaled deeply as he stared at a fortress in the distance.


    Its walls were scarred with wounds. Wounds from conflicts of the past. Yet it stoodrge and tall, ominously looming over a desertedndscape.


    The Draekean Fortress, home to one of the most powerful warlords of the Derschek Regions, was said to be the most impregnable stronghold anywhere in the entirety of the Derschek Region.


    It was said to be one of the few locations that not even the assassins that once scourged the Shadow Isles could prate. Now that even they were gone, it was said that there truly was nothing that could threaten it anywhere in the Derschek Region.


    Rui simply stared at the domineering stronghold with soft eyes. The eighteen months of training in darker arts after his cleansing of the Shadow Isles and another half year of training in darker arts had had an impact on the impression he gave.


    He still did not give off the dark aura of a cold-blooded assassin, yet he seemed to have grown sharper. A darker glint apanied the superficial silver in his eyes.


    One moment, he was standing motionlessly.


    The very next, he had disappeared, rushing towards the stronghold head-on.


    The area around the fortress used to be a forest and had been cleared out to deny a foe any chance of approaching the fortress with cover, without being spotted.


    Yet Rui didn''t seem to care.


    He rushed in, heading straight towards the fortress at top speed.


    lightsn¦Ïv¦Ål Yet the extensive Martial Artists on guard and patrol didn''t seem to care either.


    No, that wasn''t quite right.


    They didn''t seem to see him in the first ce. Not only did they not see him, they didn''t seem to hear him either.


    That wasn''t the extent of it either.


    The various sensory Martial Artists of the Lower Realms seemed to not notice him despite him rushing toward them at extremely high speeds.


    They seemed unable to even grasp his existence.


    No, instead, they even seemed to avert their gaze from him to the opposite direction, frowning.


    Almost as if they saw something else that drew their attention much more forcefully.


    Rui saw what they saw.N?velD(ram)a.?rg owns this content.


    He was the one showing them, after all.


    In his eyes, the silent fortress stood in the distance.


    In his mind, Master Uma was assaulting it from the other direction that he was approaching it from. A giant de of wind loomed over the fortress threatening to wipe out not just the fortress, but the entire region and reshape the topography with a single attack.


    Such was the power of a Martial Master.


    It was a power that they subconsciously could not ignore, almost reflexively gazing in the direction that Rui misdirected it. Inparison to Master Uma, a normal weak human approaching the castle was hardly of notice.


    WHOOSH!


    He breezed past the guards whose gazes were still subconsciously misdirected away from Rui by the information that his motion, micro-maneuvers, micro-actions, and non-verbalmunication conveyed to their subconsciousness.


    ''Look away.'' He whispered to their subconsciousness. ''There''s much more important stuff and bigger threats to pay attention to than little ol'' me.''


    And they obliged, only to find nothing. Yet by the time they looked back, Rui was already gone, and they were left none the wiser. He breezed through the walls of the fortress unseen and unnoticed by those who manned and patrolled them.


    He swept through corridor after corridor until he finally reached the core of the fortress, an especially well-guarded section of the fortress with much more intense security.


    Clearly, he was not to be there.


    That''s why he knew he was in the right ce.


    Yet despite ten times the security, he weaved through them effortlessly until he reached the object of their protection; Warlord Fekibaya''s personal chambers. the old warlordy in bed, slumbering peacefully.


    Until Rui struck him with Sympathetic Death Lance, poking the man''s head with a single finger. His flesh, skull, and cerebrospinal fluid sac vibrated powerfully, crushing just a portion of his brain, leaving much of it untouched.


    It wasn''t long before he swiftly made his way back, unnoticed.


    That day, warlord Fekibaya died, and not a single person noticed. For Rui had crushed his cerebral cortex, annihting his consciousness forever, while still allowing his heart to beat and his lungs to breath to prevent his personal guards from noticing.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1404 Path Forward

    <h4>Chapter 1404 Path Forward</h4>


    Rui heaved a sigh when he returned to the cliff from where he had embarked on the mission. The mission was a perfect sess. Not a single guard had noticed him even as he ran right past all of them.


    It was magical.


    A genuinely surreal experience. N?velD(ram)a.?rg owns this content.


    He came and went.


    He was there and he wasn''t.


    The murder was so perfect that not only did nobody notice it, but nobody would ever know that the warlord was assassinated instead of contracting a disease that prevented him from waking up.


    "Good job..." A voice from behind him startled him.


    He nced back to find Master Reina behind him.


    To this day, he was unable to sense the substance of her body. It was as though she was a hologram. And it was only because she allowed him to see and hear her that he could.


    While his newfound stealth with the Phantomind Void was incredible, he was still humbled by her ability to evade the mind and the senses. It was on another level entirely.


    "...If not for the fact that you didn''t kill him." She frowned. "Why is he still breathing? Did you go all that way to give him a good night''s kiss?"


    Rui smiled wryly before shaking his head. "I crushed the part of his brain that serves as the seat of the consciousness, he''s as good at dead. I left him breathing and his heart beating because they''re specifically looking for that while they monitor him. Now he''s still dead as a sentient human being, and no one will know I killed him."


    "Hmmm...there it is again," She noted keenly. "Your absurd familiarity with the human body. As far as I am aware. Not even the best researchers and schrs have learned the rtionship between the brain and the mind. Why do you know the answer to the biggest questions, assuming you''re not bullshitting?"


    Rui nced at her. He couldn''t just tell her that neurology hade to a pretty certain consensus on the matter back on Earth.


    "You''ll see whether or not I''m bullshitting soon enough. Anyway, Ipleted the test you gave me. We''re done here, right?"


    "...I suppose we are." She nced back at the fortress. "You have exceeded my expectations. Return for now, we have much to talk about."


    She disappeared right before Rui, who immediately headed back for the Shadow Isles, passing through the Derschek Region as he did.


    The Derschek Region experienced a period of stability once the assassination industry copsed a year and a half ago. Rui could feel the increased sense of security in the air as he traveled through.


    The many Martial Seniors, Squires, and Apprentices had either left the Derschek Region to escape the Voidreaper or had died at his hands. Either way, the Shadow Isles had be a barren wastnd that wasrgely devoid of any activity.


    This allowed the forces of the Derschek Region time to breathe and catch their breath as the endless chain of assassinations of political leaders and their sessors hadn''t ceased since it began until eighteen months.


    On one hand, many forces found it a shame that they lost ess to a powerful weapon that could be used to get rid of their political enemies, while also being relieved that the same weapon could not be used to get rid of them.


    Rui''s actions led to the emergence of peace and stability in the region. Yet he didn''t particrly care about that moment. He had arrived at the end of his time under the guidance of Master Uma with this.


    She had given him a test to measure his capacity to kill, a particrly difficult assignment for even Martial Senior assassins. Not only had hepleted it, he would have gotten an A+ had he been graded on the matter.


    That signaled the end of their time together, yet Rui was rtively unperturbed. Although he did enjoy the time that he spent being guided by her, it would be time to move on very soon.


    It wasn''t long before he found himself in the secret chamber below Area Crina.


    "You''vee, sit." She instructed. "You''vepleted my assignment perfectly. It''s almost time for you to leave. There are still some things I have to say and give."


    "This is proof of your pupige under me." She said as she presented him with a simple locket with a crest of darkness on it. "Only those I trust wholeheartedly know that about it. And it cane in handy should you ever run into them. You can choose to wear it or keep it aside, regardless."


    Rui nodded, epting the locket. "Thank you for this, I will cherish it."


    She nodded. "And now, the thing that I''m sure you have been dying to know about for nearly a year and a half now."


    Rui''s eyes narrowed as he instantly grew more attentive.


    "Tsk tsk, impatient, aren''t you?" She tutted at the sight. "Rx, I''m not going anywhere."


    Rui simply stared at her. He did not want to dy what was toe by replying.


    "The truth of the Master Realm." She stated. "I know you''ve been wanting to hear about it for quite some time now. The fact of the matter is, just as Martial Seniors are entrusted with the duty of informing qualified Martial Squires of the truth about the Senior Realm, so too are Martial Masters. It''s an even more important duty. The Master Realm is such that breakthrough rates to it will plummet substantially if Martial Seniors don''t know about the truth."


    She paused for a mind. "As you may have realized, the body has nothing else significant left to offer. As powerful and packed with potential as it is, all of that potential has been squeezed out and manifested with the Squire evolution process and the activation of the Martial Heart. While it will grow stronger, slowly and steadily, over time, that is not something that can be hastened or drawn out by additional techniques."


    She stared deep into Rui''s eyes with her own. "That begs the question that gued all Martial Seniors at the time. What was the path forward?"


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1405 The Secret of the Master Realm

    <h4>Chapter 1405 The Secret of the Master Realm</h4>


    "Naturally, many of them were not resigned to these limits. Yet it was a clear fact that there was nothing left within the body." She exined. "No matter what they did, they were unable to squeeze out any more wells of power hidden deeper within the body beyond the Martial Heart. Such things do not exist."


    Rui listened in absolute rapt attention. N?velD(ram)a.?rg owns this content.


    "It was an unprecedented period in Martial history. After all, the path forward had always been to strengthen the body through training techniques or master new techniques that squeezed the potential of what the body had to offer," She exined. "However, when they reached what was the peak of the Senior Realm back then, none of these options were of any avail. The reason for this was simple. Martial Art techniques at that time period centuries ago were shit. Their Martial Bodies were also weaker and had less to offer. The development of techniques was far, far harder to do than it is today."


    Rui could understand why. In his generation, there was an ocean of principles and techniques that served as the building blocks of new techniques. The number of principles and concepts discovered and explored were enormous, and the sheer number ofbinations and permutations of those principlesbined in single techniques was dizzying.


    It was just much, much easier to develop at least partially original and unique techniques because of the massive depth of the foundation that they could build off.


    This was especially true when the quality of training and growth resources were higher than they had ever been, eliminating many of the barriers and hurdles that would otherwise impede this process.


    "Centuries ago, when none of this existed to this extent, the Martial Seniors of the time, havinge to the realization that there were hard limits to power, had begun making better use of the power they already had. Thus, theirbat styles grew moreplex and mindful. They pushed their minds to the limit thinking about how they could better apply their power. Strategy. Tactics. Analytics. Judgement. Cognition. These became increasingly moremon and deeper than they had ever been."


    She paused for a moment "That''s not to say that they were particrly stupid orcking in strategy or tactics, it just was not the focus prior due to the options of simply bing stronger, furthermore, Martial culture was much different back then. They each raced to make more thoughtful applications of their power. Instead of just outputting power, they made more effective use of power. Thoughtful applications. Strategic decisions. Tactical choices. Analytical outlooks into their opponents."


    "They did grow stronger, naturally." She exined. "Of course, their actual body and techniques werergely the same or only grew stronger in a natural sense over long periods of time, but they also grew visibly stronger when theirbat became more mindful and thoughtful than it ever had been before. They hade to realize the power of mind and thought. Previously, it was something that had only been applied to creating individualistic techniques attuned to their Body and Art. Now, it was something that was actively applied in actualbat much more than it had ever been."


    "Unbeknownst to them, however..." She tapped the side of her head. "They had already begun traveling down the path to the Master Realm. Particrly, the best of them had taken a step further. Not only did they apply their power more mindfully and thoughtfully, they had even attuned their mindfulness and thoughtfulness to their Martial Art, Body, and Heart. They created systems of thought that could specifically elevate their styles ofbat to much higher levels than they could aplish before. Over time, their thoughts and minds had be so borate that they actually exceeded the depths of their consciousness."


    She paused for a moment. "A critical threshold had been reached. One fine day, the strongest and oldest of Martial Seniors fought a battle that threatened his life. It threatened to kill him and all the power that he had cultivated. The battle pushed not just his Martial Body and Heart to their limits, but also his mind. On the verge of death, that Martial Senior changed the world forever as his mind broke past its limit, activating what we now know as the Martial Mind. He became the first Martial Master."


    Rui''s eyes widened. "...The Martial Mind?"


    "The Martial Mind is not a well of physical power like the Martial Heart. Unlike the Martial Heart, the Martial Mind does not exist."


    "What?" Rui''s eyes sharpened.


    "It is as I said." She calmly dered. "The Martial Mind does not exist. Not naturally. Not until one actually creates it from nothing."


    Rui simply stared at her with sharp eyes as his mind furiously tried piecing together the information she had revealed. "You''re not being fully transparent."


    She smirked at his words mischievously. "I''m sure you''re smart enough to figure it out nheless. The mind has a lot of untapped potential you know? Although we haven''t mapped it, it is suspected that we use only ten percent of our brains."


    Rui stared at her with a nk expression. Manyymen back on Earth also believed that humans only used ten percent of their brains.


    There were even movies that operated on that premise.


    Unfortunately, it was an urban myth.


    Almost entirely misinformation.


    The truth was a lot more nuanced. The fact of the matter was that different parts of the brain were used for different processes during different time periods. Most of the brain was used all of the time.


    The reason that it was only almost entirely misinformation, and not entirely, was because it was true that the consciousness upied a small part of the brain, and it was also true that there wastent, untapped potential across the organ.


    "However, there is no doubt that the Apprentice Realm taps into most of that potential," Rui argued. "The increase inbat-oriented cognitive parameters of the Apprentice Realm matches the very limit of the most generous evaluations of the untappedtent potential in the brain. In other words, Martial Apprentices have fully realized the potential of the brain."


    "Correct, however, that was true only before the brain underwent the evolution process." She smiled. "And it was true only before the brain grew empowered by the Martial Heart. The untapped well of power within the body grew onlyrger after evolution. Why would you think that wouldn''t be the same for the mind?"


    Rui widened his eyes. "Are you saying...?"


    "Yes. Rejoice, as powerful as your mind is, it still has the potential to grow far more powerful than you could possibly imagine. Now sit, while I exin the rest of it."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1406 Difficulty

    <h4>Chapter 1406 Difficulty</h4>


    N?velD(ram)a.?rg owns this content.


    Rui had many uncertainties. If the Martial Mind was simply the part of the mind that was untapped, then why did Master Reina say that it didn''t exist? Why did she say that he needed to create it?


    That didn''t make sense. Which meant his understanding wascking.


    Of course, he recognized that she was enjoying his frustration. He had grown ustomed to it over the past eighteen months.


    "Alright, stop ring at me like that. I''ll exin." Sheughed, before her demeanor grew more serious. "You have a deep understanding of the brain and mind, yet let us visit it once more. The brain and mind are not synonymous, though they are deeply intertwined. The brain is a vessel for the mind, while the mind is like water that fills the vessel. Now, what if I told you that there was an adjacentpartment of the vessel that was not filled with any water? What if I told you that thispartment of the vessel was empty?"


    Realization dawned on him. "Then you could fill thatpartment with water. This way, you could have more water. You could have more mind."


    "That''s right." She nodded. "The evolution process of the Squire breakthrough process has created thatpartment, or at least made it bigger than it was. Right now it is empty and thus useless. So how does one fill it? How did the Martial Seniors centuries ago fill it?"


    Rui''s eyes swam around as he was lost in his thoughts. "...With the power of thought."


    She grinned. "That''s right. The Martial Seniors created the water to fill thepartment with the power of thought. They created thought that was so deep,plex, and sophisticated that they managed to fill thepartment to the brim. Yet, that alone was not enough to fully tap into its power. A final push was needed. A push to break the barriers between the sidepartment and main vessel."


    Rui''s eyes widened. "The fight that pushed them past their limits, allowing them to discover their Martial Mind. This part is identical to the breakthrough to the Senior Realm!"


    "Correct." She nodded. "The difference is that the Martial Heart is more convenient, it is already created, just waiting to be harnessed. The Martial Mind does not exist until one fills that empty sidepartment with water. Only then does itpletely exist. That is why breaking through to the Master Realm is much harder than breaking through to the Senior Realm. That is why there is a distinction between the Lower and the Upper Realms. It is harder, yet the rewards are worth the effort."


    Rui''s mind furiously processed what he had just heard. "Wait a minute. If the vessel is the brain, and the water is the mind, then what is the Martial Heart in this analogy?"


    "..." She simply stared at him, before scratching her head. "I have never been good at analogies. However, the Martial Heart is needed because thought is a very costly action. It requires a lot of energy. Much of the energy of the human body is consumed by the brain because of how costly cognitive processes are. I suppose the vessel-water analogy isn''t a good one because there is no ce for the Martial Heart."


    "It''s fine." Rui had a better analogy. An analogy that was far more urate and relevant.


    The untappedtent potential of the brain could be treated as aputer without an operating system. In order to use theputer, one needed to install an operating system. In order to switch on theputer, one needed a power source.


    ''The operating system is the Martial Mind. The power source is the Martial Heart. Theputer is thetent and untapped part of the brain that evolved after the Squire evolution breakthrough process.'' Rui mused as his mind furiously processed all the information at hand. ''In other words, Martial Seniors need to create operating system software, the Martial Mind, and then install it into theputer, the untapped part of the cerebrum, and then need a power source, the Martial Heart, and then need to switch on theputer, the trigger.''


    The Martial Seniors before the first Martial Master did not know that they were inadvertently creating the Martial Mind when they began extensively employing the power of thought to better apply their power inbat. The first Martial Master had inadvertently created his Martial Mind after decades of refining systems and frameworks of thought, strategy, tactics, analytics, and many other cognitive processes that could help inbat.


    "So that''s the big reveal." She huffed, leaning back. "If you want to be a Martial Master, then think, young man. Think. You need to think more. Think deeper. Only the power of thought can elevate you to a higher Realm of power."


    She paused for a moment. "Well, the truth is more nuanced. Thought is not the only kind of cognition or mental process. But ''power of cognition'' doesn''t sound as profound as the ''power of thought'', does it?"


    Rui caught on to something there. "Meaning that one can create a Martial Mind out of subconscious processes?"


    "Of course. It all depends on how conscious versus subconscious your Martial Art inherently is." She exined. "Some Martial Art are quite subconscious in nature, in that case, they ought to create a Martial Mind that reflects that."


    Rui thought Frinjschia had a Martial Art that relied entirely on thoughtless muscle memory. It appeared that she too would be able to create a Martial Mind.


    "To answer your original question that led to this discussion...the reason you''re going to have the hardest time reaching the Master Realm is that the difficulty of creating the Martial Mind is directly proportional to the power of the Martial Mind. And the power of the Martial Mind is proportional to the power of the mind." She smirked mischievously. "Do you get my drift?"


    Rui heaved a sigh, understanding what she was conveying. "I''m going to have a much harder time because my mind is too powerful."


    "The Martial Mind gives me a powerful and vast awareness, especially when ites to other minds. That''s why I can clearly see it. Your mind is like a swimming pool if the average Martial Senior is like a bathtub. Good luck trying to fill that up!" Sheughed. "...Still, if you do fill it up, then I can''t begin to fathom how powerful you will be."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1407 Quality

    Chapter 1407 Quality


    The greater the power, the greater the tribtions. Based on what Master Reina was telling him, the depth of his mind would mean that he had a greater amount of work to do. Based on that, he could estimate that it would truly take a long time for him to be a Martial Master.


    He would have to spend decades, perhaps even a century under normal circumstances to create his Martial Mind.


    ''If not for the fact that that I have already done that once in the past.'' Rui inwardly grinned.


    He had alreadye to the realization that the VOID algorithm was a part of the Martial Mind. The many years that he spent creating a framework and a system of thought to create a system of thought that would allow the user to adapt to any and allbat styles.


    The VOID algorithm was the fruit of Project Water, his Martial Path. He had always known that it was the core of his Martial Art.


    However, only now did he understand where the VOID algorithm fit within the framework of the Martial Path of Gaia. It would be his nascent Martial Mind, one that he had been born with. One that he had spent his life forging. One that he had inherited from another world.


    The efforts that he had gone through back on Earth. The perseverance. The dedication.


    All of that allowed him to be probably the only person to be born with a nascent Martial Mind buried deep within his mind.


    Rui suspected that he didn''t need to spend nearly as much of the immense time in the Senior Realm building his Martial Mind as Master Reina suspected. He suspected that she didn''t know the sheer extent to which he had made progress with the Martial Mind.


    ''If I subtract the decades that I spent working on the VOID algorithm from the even longer amount of time I have to spend on fleshing my Martial Mind out, then the remaining time bes much less borate.'' Rui realized. ''Of course, it''s not that I''m unwilling to dedicate a normal human lifetime to creating the Martial Mind. I basically did it once, and I''m more than willing to do it. Especially in this world of Martial Art where it means so much more.''


    Still, sooner was better. There was no doubt about that. He had be a Martial Senior at the age of twenty-four, allowing him to begin working towards the Master Realm much sooner than his peers. The only one who couldpare was Ieyasu, and he was still behind Rui because Rui was rtively sure that he didn''t have a system of thought that could be considered a Martial Mind.


    lightsn¦Ïv¦Ål His copying worked based on recreating the nerve impulses that the brain passed through the autonomous nervous system. He recreated techniques by essentially reconstructing them from the core principles that he had already copied.


    During his fight with Rui, he disyed the ability to master the core principles of many different fields, including primary ones like offense, defense, and maneuvering, but also many esoteric ones such as friction, heat, cold, and even electric.


    For him recreating a Martial Art was like building a Lego structure that was identical to another. As long as he had the building blocks and the blueprint, he could recreate the exact same Lego building. He improved them by simply having better building blocks.


    ''Perhaps the only aspects of rigorous thought or cognition in his Martial Art are when he doesn''t have the same building blocks. Though even then, it didn''t seem all that deep.'' Rui mused. ''Regardless, I have a remarkable advantage thanks to thebors of my previous life. I would have put in even more effort had I known that it would pay off in such a way.''All content ? N/.?vel/Dr/ama.Org.


    Regardless, this boon would cut the time he spent in the Master Realm significantly. It didn''t mean he was going to break through any second because of how high the initial hurdle was, it still made his life much easier.


    "I''m sure you have much to think about, but listen up." She interrupted his train of thought. "You can take all the time in the world to mull on these matters after you are gone from here."


    Rui immediately put his many thoughts aside as he paid full attention to the Martial Master.


    "The quality of the Martial Mind is something that you should keep in mind as well," Master Reina remarked. "Your system of thought needs to be not only effective in raising your effective power level but also need to be attuned to your Martial Art and Body, though thatst part will ur naturally as long as it is imbued with the same individuality that characterized your Martial Art. In essence, only you can create your Martial Mind. If you create a weak Martial Mind that fills up thepartment of the vessel, you will be a weak Martial Master."


    Rui narrowed his eyes. "So you''re saying it is possible to fill thepartment of the vessel with... low-quality water?"


    She nodded. "Some Martial Seniors in the past had been under the impression that they can try breaking through to the Master Realm with a poor Martial Mind that does nothing for theirbat in hopes that they can ''update'' their Martial Minds after entering the Master Realm. Well, reality isn''t that convenient. The quality of the system of thought thatprises one''s Martial Mind is what decides the boost the Martial Mind gives you. Can you guess what happened to them?"


    "I would conjecture that they were either unable to update their Martial Minds due to some reason or found that the boost of power they gained from breaking into the Master Realm was iparably weaker than their peers," Rui replied thoughtfully.


    "Both of those happened. ''Updating'' the Martial Mind after it has been realized and your conscious mind has already expanded to it is like trying to fix ws in the de of a sword after it has already cooled down," She exined.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1408 Mentality

    Chapter 1408 Mentality


    "It''s extremely difficult and takes a lot of time. And while it takes time, you will remain extremely weak, so much so that you''ll be considered a quasi-Master at best. Do not go down that path, it''s a horrible fate that will drive you to madness." She pointedly noted at Rui.


    Rui nodded. "I have no intentions of cutting corners with my Martial Mind. It will be the most powerful Martial Mind, pound for pound, that the world has ever seen."


    "Hah," She snorted. "That''s ambitious. I have seen some truly powerful Martial Minds. Including my own. There''s a reason I am so powerful. I have created unseen systems of thought that allow me to kill. Kill far, far better than my rivals. Hardly any of my peers are my match."


    "I have a lot of respect for you Master, but I have no intention of even stopping at the Sage Realm, let alone the Master Realm. By the way, can you tell me what the truth about the Sage Realm is?"


    "You wish," She threw him a dubious expression.


    "How does the process of creating the Martial Mind work in practice?" Rui asked. "Are there special things Martial Seniors need to do to initiate the creation of the Martial Mind?"


    "No," She shook her head. "Just create,mit to memory, and use the systems of thought that you wish to create a Martial Mind out of. Nothing else is required."


    "And how do I know when I have created the Martial Mind, and only need to discover it in battle?" Rui asked.


    "You don''t, I''m afraid," Sheughed. "That''s not something you possess the ability to introspect, unfortunately. You''ll need to keep throwing yourself into battle in order to ensure that if you have fully created the Martial Mind, you will hopefully awaken it."


    "I see... That inconvenient," Rui murmured. "The uncertaintyplicates things a bit. Could I get a Martial Sage to look into my progress?"


    "yes, but it''s not nearly as easy." She shook her head. "The Martial Mind is a reservoir of mental power that belongs to the Upper Realms. it is a lot more inscrutable to Martial Sages than martial Seniors like yourself are to Martial Masters."


    "Hm, what about Martial Transcendents?" Rui asked, curious.N?velD(ram)a.?rg owns this content.


    "..." She paused for a moment, before shrugging. "Having met one of them only once, I would not dare to say anything is impossible for those beings."


    "You''ve actually met a Martial Transcendent?" Rui''s eyes furrowed with surprise.


    "Indeed." She nodded. "...They were beyond my wildest fathoming. Worthy of the title of Transcendent. But we''re not here to talk about them."


    That was true, though Rui couldn''t help but be curious nheless.


    "I suppose I''vergely quelled the many questions you have regarding what Martial Seniors need to do to reach the Master Realm," She remarked. "Still, ask away."


    "You said earlier that the Martial Mind needs to exceed the consciousness," Rui remarked. "Can you borate on that?"


    "...You can think of it as filling up the sidepartment of the vessel by overflowing the mainpartment with water. The overflowing water with nowhere else to go naturally falls into the sidepartment," She exined. "The Martial mind is simr. In the first ce, you need to create systems of thought that exceed what your conscious capacity is capable of processing all at once."


    "So only the overflowed water is considered a part of the Martial Mind?" Rui frowned.


    "Yes, but that''s just because of our terminology, don''t be concerned by that. The end goal is to gain more processing power to be able to wholly apply the Martial Mind. It doesn''t matter what falls where as long as your mind and Mind can take all of it together. The end oue will be the same."


    "Makes sense. What if you create more water than can be filled in either the main or the sidepartment?" Rui asked.


    "That generally tends not to happen." She exined. "You''d be able to cut away what you don''t want and keep the best parts in such a case. That would be the way to resolve that, I suppose. Though most Martial Masters discovered their Martial Mind shortly after creating it, I don''t think I''ve heard of anybody going way beyond the limit creating a Martial mind too powerful for even thetent untapped potential of the brain."


    "Hmm..." Rui fell into silence as he processed all the information at hand. She was right when she said that he had a lot to consider. "Interesting. I can see why Martial Seniors struggle to break through to the Master Realm."


    Being able to create systems of thought that were so powerful that they could elevate theirbat level significantly higher just through thought or cognition alone was something that was unthinkably difficult for Martial Seniors.


    In general, Martial Artists had not exercised the power of thought much, if at all. The reason for this was that the Lower Realms were primarily centered around body and movement.


    It was only when one reached the peak of the Lower realms that those truly no longer had anything left to offer. The body had been pushed to its limits, and techniques, that applied the power of the body through movement, had also been pushed to the limit.


    ''For any soaked sponge, there is a limit to how much water you can squeeze from it. Techniques can only do so much." Rui mused. ''However, when one has mindlessly squeezed the sponge their entire life to grow stronger, they are unable to continue that growth once the sponge runs out of water.''


    In other words, having spent decades, even centuries, growing stronger by exploiting the power of the body, it was considerably difficult for Martial Seniors to alter their mentality at its root and begin applying the power of thought to more than just creating individualistic and attuned techniques amidst training.


    Rui couldn''t help but think back to the Martial Seniors of Vilun Ind. They were a highly martial set of people whose lifestyle and evenbat philosophy were entirely ipatible with the mindset needed to progress one''s Martial Art.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1409 Affinities

    Chapter 1409 Affinities


    ''It''s no wonder that the Martial tribes of Vilun Ind don''t have a single Martial Master.'' Rui realized.''They fight with emotion rather than thought. At this rate, they will never be able to break through."


    He thought about K''M. She was particrly bright and had even managed to partially master the Pathfinder technique. Rui had put a huge amount of effort into making sure that she grasped the highly distilled mathematics, making sure she learned the bare minimum.


    Perhaps she was the only one who had a chance of breaking through to the Master Realm if she understood the power of thought.


    Regardless, the cards had beenid out in front of him, and he had to say, that he was quite pleased with them. He had been dealt a good hand. Of course, that wasrgely a consequence of a lifetime of effort, but it paid off nheless.N?velD(ram)a.?rg owns this content.


    "If I have a great affinity for the Master Realm, then that also means people can have great affinities for other Realms, right?" Rui asked. "I can imagine that some Martial Artists will gain more of a boost in power breaking through to the Squire and Senior Realmpared to breaking through to the Master Realm. In a broader sense, different Martial Art have different affinities for different Realms."


    When Rui thought about people like Nel, it was clear that Nel would probably gain more power from the Squire and Senior Realms than the Master Realm. The man was so philosophically inclined towards making the best of his body that it was a wonder of whether he could break through to the Master Realm with that attitude.


    "That''s quite astute of you. This is a higher-level concept that Martial Artists only get in touch with in the Upper Realms, but you have managed to arrive at it nheless." She remarked. "Different Martial Art have different affinities for different Realms, they are rarely equally attuned to all Realms. The Martial Path is also not equal in the Realms that it passes through. Some Martial Paths are inherently more powerful within some Realms than others. It is believed that every Martial Artist has a unique configuration of affinities for the different Realms along the Martial Path."


    "Hm, that makes sense since every Martial Path has a unique trajectory," Rui mused. "In my case, I definitely have the highest affinity for the Master Realm, I''d imagine. Though my affinity for the Squire and Senior Realms is not low either."


    Originally, he would have had only an affinity for the Master realm, but the creation of the Metabody System gave his Martial Art an affinity for the Squire and Senior Realms as well. It was a technique that did not inherently make use of thought and made use of Body and Heart instead.


    Furthermore, it was quite powerful, close to on par with the rest of the VOID algorithm itself. That was good because it meant that he could make use of the Senior Realm much better than if he only had the pattern recognition system and the other systems of the VOID algorithm.


    "One more question. I need to umte the power of thought to reach the Master Realm, however, I have still not reached the limit of what I can squeeze out of my body, unlike the original Martial Seniors before the first Martial Master." Rui exined. "Doesn''t that mean I can also grow stronger in the Senior realm by squeezing out the most of my body along with my mind?"


    "Yes, but squeezing out the potential of the body does not bring you closer to a higher Realm," She pointed out. "Though it is also true that is easier to develop techniques that make the most out of the body than the mind, generally speaking. There is no right or wrong, objectively speaking. You have been provided with all the information, and you have been informed of the oues and consequences of all your avable courses of action. You yourself must choose how you wish to progress from here on."


    Rui nodded.


    In the first ce, he wasn''t even sure if her statement of making the most of the body being easier than the mind was true for him. He had created several grade-ten techniques that harnessed the power of thought or cognition.


    The ODA System, the Riemannian Echo, Death''s Sympathy/Sympathetic Death Lance, Transverse Resonance, and his most recent creation; the Phantomind Void.


    The VOID algorithm, of course, went without saying.


    He had no problem harnessing thought. In fact, his greatest magnum opus was centered around harnessing thought. His affinity for Mind was definitely stronger than his affinity for Body.


    Part of that was a relic from Earth. On Earth, there were much harder and concrete limits to everything. It was impossible to embody Bruce Lee''s philosophy of Water through the body. The Metabody System was absolute fiction on Earth.


    The only way to embody Bruce Lee''s philosophy of water was through mind, through adapting strategies, tactics, and decision-making to perfectly counter his opponent with perfect moves at the perfect time and ce.


    That was why he had chosen to create a system of thought to embody Water. That was the only way to embody the philosophy of Water on Earth; through mind.


    However, that was not strictly true in Gaia. He had already embodied the philosophy of water through the body with the first iteration of the Metabody System.


    Perhaps there were ways he could do this beyond just body and mind. After all, he still had two more Realms above even those that probably tapped into a different kind of potential from the body and the conscious mind.


    ''I should stop clinging to thought and mind as exclusively as I have.'' Rui realized. ''To be more urate, I should cling to everything else deeply as I do with the power of the mind.''


    His Martial Path was adaptive evolution, not cognitive adaptation. His Martial Path epassed more than just his mind. It would be a disservice to Project Water if he limited it to predominantly the mind.


    ''Still, while I am in the Senior realm specifically, it makes sense to focus on the mind.'' Rui mused. ''I can maintain bnce by working on my body if it''s too lopsided afterward.''


    He had many ideas on how to improve his Metabody System to ensure that the adaptive evolution capabilities of his body did notg behind those of his mind. Things like Primordial Seed opened up paths of limitless potential.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1410 Next

    <h4>Chapter 1410 Next</h4>


    Having decided to mostly focus on the mind whilst in the Senior Realm, his path within the Senior Realm wasid out.


    Of course, he didn''t intend to abandon the power of Body, or Martial Art techniques that brought out the power of Body. However, it was worth it to focus on reaching a higher Realm of power, especially the Realm of power that he had most of an affinity for.


    Rui continued to ask various pertinent questions to Master Reina, making sure that he got everything he needed to know out of the way.


    "Mental techniques do not necessarily count as the Martial Mind, correct?" Rui asked. "Since the Martial Mind is the power of thought more than it is the power of mind."


    "That''s urate," She replied. "Mental techniques make use of mind rather than thought, however, mind-oriented Martial Art still have much more of an affinity for the Master Realm than any other kind of Martial Art does barring Martial Artists like yourself, I suppose."


    "Hm, that does make sense," Rui nodded.


    "However, the difficulty of the Master Realm remains quite high, worthy enough to separate the Lower and Upper Realms," She remarked.


    "I can understand why that''s true, but I find that hard to believe in a personal sense," Rui remarked. "Do Martial Artists really have that much of a trouble thinking?"


    "Hah, you''re overestimating the lot of them." She snorted. "You''re too divergent from the norm. The current thought process you undergo at the moment may as well berger than some Martial Minds."


    He understood why that was the case on a logical basis. Having only used intelligence for imbuing their techniques with individuality during training, they were much less unustomed to engaging in sophisticated systematic thought.


    Of course, that was an over-generalization, and there were plenty of exceptions, but it was true to arge degree for the broader majority of them. In general, using the power of thought to massively elevate their effectivebat level was something that was probably unthinkable for most of them.


    For Rui, however, it came to him as naturally as breathing these days. He was from a different world entirely.


    Literally. N?velD(ram)a.?rg owns this content.


    He just couldn''t resonate with the experience of not being able to employ the power of thought to elevatebat.


    He thought back to his fight with Ieyasu, one of the ways he hampered the man''s mind-reading was by flooding him with all the information of the VOID algorithm that was being processed through the Mind Pce.


    The fact that a process that was starting to verge towards bing subconscious or reflexive had proved too much for Ieyasu''s conscious mind showed that Rui''s standards were probably beyond anything this world had ever seen.


    He was not surprised that the VOID algorithm was at the level of aplete Martial mind of some Martial Seniors, if not most, but unfortunately, it was not sufficient for Rui''s Martial Mind.


    ''Even if it was. I still need to expand it.'' Rui mused. ''I also need to update it and fully adapt it to this world. That remains to be true even if it is enough to be Martial Mind or not.''


    He had made some solid progress toward Project Water with the development of the Metabody System. However, he was still far from a point where he could cleanly adapt to everything this world had to offer.


    There was Martial Art that was obscure and esoteric enough, even for him, such that none of his techniques could handle them very well. One good example of that was the freezing Martial Art that he encountered in the preliminary contest of the Virodha Martial Contest.


    By relying on the secondw of thermodynamics, she was able to create a freezing Martial Art to cause instant death to those who were hit by her attacks, including Rui.


    He couldn''t adapt to her as cleanly as he wished he could, and that needed to be changed at some point.


    There also were non-human threats and elements that he was less able to handle. the adaptive evolution model of the VOID algorithm was also simply unable to tell Rui how to adapt to and counter these kinds of techniques.


    Which was another problem that Rui would need to confront sooner orter. The adaptive evolution model was growing increasingly obsolete over time. Rui either needed to update it or bypass it to a certain degree.


    Fact of the matter was that Rui''s experience had reached a stage where he could rely more on it to know what was the best adaptive counter to the more fantastical elements of this world.


    He needed to solve that issue, he didn''t mind what the solution was, but the redundancy and the inefficiency were no longer tolerable from this point forward. The reason for that was because it was extremely difficult to ''fix'' the Martial Mind after bing a Martial Master, it was better to get things right in the first go.


    This meant that he had arrived at a level where the refinement of the VOID algorithm was going to start taking priority.


    ''I''m going to have to give it some very serious thought very soon.'' Rui realized. ''It''s not a matter that I can leave be for too much longer.''


    "Anything else?" She asked.


    "...No, I think that''s about it," Rui murmured. "I appreciate you taking the time to help me. No, I appreciate everything that you''ve done for me. I won''t forget the debt I owe you, Master."


    He stood up, bowing his head deeply.


    "You don''t need to be so stiff," She remarked. "It has been a pleasure, all things considered. You have been the most entertaining pupil I''ve epted."


    "I''m d I could stave off your boredom," Rui smiled wryly. "But unfortunately, it''s about time I leave. I have things I need to do."


    "Mmm, you nned on visiting Zeamer, right?" She remarked, referring to the Hypnomaster. "Well, good luck. Don''t forget what I told you. The tribtions that he inflicts on those who seek him are not as easy as my challenges."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1411 Mind-consuming

    <h4>Chapter 1411 Mind-consuming</h4>


    This was not the first time that she had mentioned that to him. The Hypnomaster resided in a forest known as the Great Forest of Hypnonarak. The man had surrounded himself with a hazardous forest that was actually quite dangerous to enter and exist within.


    Rui had ess to the intelligence that the Beggar''s Sect had supplied him with, he knew what he was getting into.


    However, soon enough, it was time for him to leave the Shadow Isles.


    He had achieved everything that he came here for. He had be an incrediblypetent assassin in one go and was confident that he had acquired the tools that would allow him to kill Chairman Deacon.


    He was half tempted to run over to the Shionel Confederation, sneak past all the security, and kill the man on the spot. However, even he knew that it was wiser to wait for the intelligence supplied by the Beggar''s Sect. There was no harm in learning everything there was to learn.


    He could take his time to n out the perfect assassination, perhaps even one that satisfied him if he had that leeway. Regardless, that would take time, and it would also require him to fulfill hismission payment to the Beggar''s Sect. Clearing out the assassination industry cleanly wiped out a huge chunk of the payment, easilypleting many years'' worth of normalmissions and operations in one go.


    Even the Beggar''s Sect''smission payment for their services was rather manageable if Rui maintained this rate. All content ? N/.?vel/Dr/ama.Org.


    He would need to find a good way to pay off the remaining with some operation in the region of the Great Forest of Hypnonarak.


    It wasn''t long before it was time for him to bid farewell to Master Reina.


    "Kill him good." She threw him a thumbs-up.


    "I will. Goodbye, Master." Rui bowed his head before taking his leave, exiting Area Crina.


    He immediately activated the basic version of Phantomind Void, quickly making his way through the people as he made his way through the Shadow Isles. It was annoying that he couldn''t just sky-walk away, but that would give himself away to the Beggar''s Sect.


    He intended to abide by his word to Master Reina and ensure that no one learned that he had gained the tutge of the Silent Shadow.


    It wasn''t long before he made his way out of the Derschek Region.


    "Alright then..." Rui essed a map in his Mind Pce. "Time to get going."


    He had no reason to dy his trip to the Great Forest of Hypnonarak. It was located further east of the Shadow Isles, and it would take a while for Rui to get there.


    Yet even as Rui began his journey towards his next target, his mind essed the intelligence of the Beggar''s Sect, sifting through what he had learned from them as well as Master Reina.


    The Great Forest of Hypnonarak was an artificial danger zone that Master Zeamer Ger-Vil had created to obscure his abode. Just that fact alone told Rui that this Master probably had a few screws loose.


    Then again, Master Reina created an infested assassination industry in the Derschek as a consequence of her choices.


    It appeared that Martial Masters were incapable of just epting students like normal teachers, for some reason.


    Regardless, the Great Forest of Narak was an especially strange kind of danger zone because it was graded abnormally. Normally, danger zones corresponded with Martial Realms to convey how strong a Martial Artist needed to be to not be in danger of dying.


    However, things wereplicated with the Great Forest of Hypnonarak. It didn''t have a standard grade. Martial Artists across all three of the Lower Realms could survive and thrive in it.


    Apparently, the danger that a Martial Artist experienced in the forest was dependent on their Realm. Martial Seniors experienced more danger than Martial Squires, who experienced more danger than Martial Apprentice.


    Rui initially had trouble understanding how such a thing could naturally unfold. But the intelligence documents he had stored in the Mind Pce actually contained the reason for how such a thing was possible.


    It had to do with the reason why the forest was graded a danger zone in the first ce.


    Most danger zones were ssified as danger zones because the threat level of the flora and fauna had reached a level where normal humans could no longer sustain life. In the case of the Great Forest of Hypnonarak, the forest appeared to be engineered to contain a kind of threat.


    The threat to the mind.


    The Great Forest of Hypnonarak was dangerous because it afflicted the minds of all creatures within the forest. It was said that the flora of the forest consumed the mental energy of all those who entered the forest.


    This also made Rui scratch his head. Mental energy existed in a colloquial sense when talking about mental stamina, but it was not a kind of energy that existed in a physical sense like kic energy or heat energy.


    ''Maybe it absorbs or inhibits bioelectric phenomena or just electromaic phenomena in general.'' Rui mused as his interest in the forest grew.


    ording to the intelligence of the Beggar''s Sect, creatures with greater mental energy experienced proportionally greater consumption and consequent suppression of mind, which was why Martial Artists did not experience any difference in the suppression they faced from the forest regardless of the Realms they belonged to.


    From that Rui could infer that whatever was causing the consumption of mental energy was not a static phenomenon. It was neurodynamic, it changed depending on the neurological parameters of the target.


    It could either be an evolved trait in the flora of the forest that the Hypnomaster had put together, or it could be due to an esoteric substance whose absorption of bioelectric activity increased exponentially the greater the bioelectric activity present in any given creature.


    Rui''s scientific mind kicked into action as he curiously reread all the intelligence that the Beggar''s Sect had given him.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1412 Danger Zone

    <h4>Chapter 1412 Danger Zone</h4>


    The Beggar''s Sect was kind enough to also include scientific literature on the Great Forest of Hypnonarak, including confidential internal evaluations and reports of the Panamic Ecological and Environmental Association.


    The fundamental mechanism and principle of mental energy consumption were entirely unknown to researchers and schrs who had looked into the matter.


    ''That''s because they don''t understand the phenomena of thought from a perspective of physics or chemistry.'' Rui mused.


    However, they had nheless done a lot of due diligence when it came to the scientific method of inquiring into the Great Forest of Hypnonarak. They conducted many experiments examining the corrtion between the neurological parameters of a subject and the effects of the forest on it.


    They found that both quantity and quality mattered. Larger brains experienced proportionally high suppression due to the consumption of energy while greater intelligence and cognition also corresponded with greater suppression.


    ''That does exin why it has a greater effect on Squires and Seniors.'' Rui mused. ''Higher Realm does correspond with more powerful bioelectric activity. After all, stronger Martial Artists tend to have much greater senses which requires a correspondingly greater mind to process.''


    The result was such that mind-consuming flora weeded out a lot of fauna. Life was rather unviable for them as the very nature of the flora was hostile to their state of being.


    The greatest threat of the Great Forest of Hypnonarak was not giant beasts like phoenixes or dragons that could tear one apart. The greatest was actually the silent nts, shrubs, and trees that silently fed on thought.


    The Hypnomaster had apparently taken his time selecting a wide variety of various nt lifeforms from across the Beast Domain that had such predatory traits and then decided to shove them all in one ce. N?velD(ram)a.?rg owns this content.


    ''Man, I don''t know how much I''m looking forward to meeting him.'' Rui sighed.


    The mind-consuming traits of the Great Forest of Hypnonarak were not its only threats. The forest was apparently infested with Noremin, Clel, and Dresatone.


    These were esoteric flora species that produced and released substances that had a hallucinogenic and stimnt effect on the nervous system and the brain, causing the victim to enter an intoxicated state of mind.


    In other words, there were nts that naturally produced narcotics to cause the victim to lower their guard, eventually causing them to die, turning them into nutrients for the flora over time.


    While Rui found the scientific insight into that interesting, what he was more interested in was the effect that the Great Forest of Hypnonarak had on human civilization in its geographic vicinity.


    It turned out that a substantial proportion of the drug trafficking industries in the broader geographic vicinity of the continent were actually sustained by the supply of narcotics harvested from the Great Forest of Hypnonarak.


    Rui tutted when he reread the reports on the flow of narcotics from the Great Forest of Hypnonarak to many ces around the continent, including the Kandrian Empire.


    Humans were going to human regardless of which world it was. The drugs that could artificially generate the experience of blissful happiness and joy were naturally mored for by countless people, desperate for the alleviation from the horrors of reality that these narcotic substances provided them.


    And, of course, there were countless people willing to take advantage of that. If one could gather an abysmal amount of wealth by harvesting some nts, processing them a bit, and then selling them for substantial profit margins over enormous scales, then why wouldn''t they?


    Unfortunately, Rui couldn''t even me them even if he disapproved of the entire business. At the end of the day, the market for these products not only existed but was quiterge.


    People wanted these drugs and voluntarily went out of their way to purchase them despite knowing the long-term effects that they had.


    It would be one thing if drug dealers and trafficking rings forcefully shoved it down their throats, but such a thing did not happen. Those that never sought it, would never be affected by the drugs or those that sold them.


    Rui was a believer in personal responsibility. If an adult voluntarily and actively went down a self-destructive knowing the consequences of their actions full well, then the responsibility on any third party that facilitated that path was drastically lessened.


    Regardless, of his views on it, there wasn''t much he could do about it in the first ce. He was under no illusion that he could cripple the narcotics industry, that was a force that he was not strong enough to confront. It was a whole other beastpared to a local assassination industry like the Shadow Isles of the Derschek Region.


    Regardless, because of how profitable the narcotics industry was, gathering the various nts needed to produce the narcotics products was also an extremely profitable endeavor.


    Naturally, a market formed around the harvest of Noremin, Clel, and Dresatone nts. Martial Artists and even humans weremissioned by various organizations and patrons to gatherrge amounts of the drugs. There were even broker associations formed that allowed clientele to easilymission raiders to harvest narcotic nts.


    Yet, the reason the raiding profession was profitable wasn''t just because of the demand, it was also because the supply was fraught with risk and danger. The Great Forest of Hypnonarak was a forest that hampered the mind in many ways. Entering it immediatelypromised the greatest and most important survival asset that a raider had, their mind.


    Furthermore, the forest was extraordinarilyrge, exceeding even countries in its total area. It was said to contain many especially esoteric and exotic phenomena within its murky depths.


    Strange and bizarre creatures that had adapted to the circumstances.


    Fantastical phenomena that beggared the imagination.


    Sights that were said to be otherworldly.


    Many people swarmed the forest, be it Martial Artists looking for the Hypnomaster, or even the Martial Artists looking to generate wealth as forest raiders. Many a raider set foot into the forest, seeking.


    Yet regardless of what they sought, many perished within the forest nheless. Regardless of strange quirks, a danger zone was a danger zone.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1413 Arrived

    1413 Arrived


    Out of the many Martial Artists who chose to traverse the Great Forest of Hypnonrarak, a solid proportion of them died. What was surprising was that the rate of death of Martial Apprentices, Squires, and Seniors was not nearly asrge as one would expect.


    Rui felt like he understood why this was the case. Given that the Hypnomaster had created the forest, he assumed that this was an intended oue.


    ''Is he trying to equalize the difficulty for all Martial Artists thate to seek him?'' Rui wondered. ''Maybe he wanted to make it fairer for Martial Artists of all Realms so he didn''t weed out worthy Martial Artists of the Lower Realms.


    He wasn''t sure, but that didn''t change the challenges that he had to ovee. The journey to the Great Forest of Hypnonarak was long and tedious. Rui had to cross many nations, mountains, forests, seas, and even an ocean as he made his way to the forest.


    The forest was in a region of the continent known as the Gereign Region. The Gereign Region used to be a rather lowly popted and rural part of the continent before the Hypnomaster came along and created the forest that served as his abode.


    The eventpletely changed the fate of the Gereign Region, turning it from a ce within nothing in the middle of nowhere to one of the biggest supplies of narcotics drugs.


    ording to the intelligence supplied by the Beggar''s Sect, most of the ck markets across many nations directly got the supplies they needed from the Gereign Region, which was there were a lot of vested interests.


    If not for the fact that the Hypnomaster was said to be a particrly powerful Martial Master who had imed the entire forest and surrounding region as his domain, Martial Masters would have also been deployed by many forces to enter the forest.


    However, the reason that this did not happen was exactly due to the fact that they would be infringing on his domain. While the Martial Master apparently tolerated Martial Artists of the Lower Realms trying to gain his favor, he had killed Martial Masters over that offense.


    ''Interesting... Rui mused in thought as he revisited the intelligence. ''Finding him may be a challenge, I should probably gather more intelligence from the Beggar''s Sect. Speaking of which, I hope they have a good branch in the Gereign Region!


    He still had the badge that Sian had given him in the Derimont Bazaar. It was the only way he had to actually contact the Beggar''s Sect without any hassle. He also had to undertake operations from the Beggar''s Sect to repay the remaining part of hismission payment.


    However, given that the Gereign Region was infested with matters surrounding the Great Forest of Hypnonarak, he was sure that whatever missions and operations he was assigned would also be rted to the forest.


    Still, he wasn''t entirely averse to it.


    ''If I''m not wrong, I should have an advantage in the Great Forest of Hypnonarak. Rui mused.


    He wasn''t entirely sure because the mechanics of the more dangerous effects of the forest were unknown to him, but he ought to have a better time against those than his peers.


    In a broader sense, there was a reason that the Hypnomaster created a forest like the Great Forest of Hypnonarak. It didn''t take a genius to figure out that it was most likely to filter out people who didn''t have powerful minds or an affinity for mental techniques since his specialty was hypnosis.


    If that was the case, then surely Rui stood a better chance of clearing the entire forest and reaching his objective. Once he did, he could freely learn mental techniques from the Hypnomaster.


    However, he wondered how appropriate that was now that he had learned the truth about the breakthrough to the Master Realm. Mental techniques did not corrte with the Martial Mind. He wasn''t sure how much he ought to invest into it now that he learned that they do not further his path to the Master Realm.


    ''I possess far too much of an affinity for them for me to reject though. Rui mused. ''Besides, while mental techniques don''t inherently corrte with the Martial Mind, that doesn''t mean I can''t create a system of thought that is centered around the application of a given mental technique!


    He wasn''t sure how that would end up looking, but he was confident that he could do it.


    ''In a sense, one needs to expand their Martial Art in order to develop their Martial Mind. Therger your Martial Art, the more ways it can be applied, and thus the greater the ease with which the Martial Mind can be developed!


    With that out of the way, it would probably be greatly beneficial to him if he added an extrayer to his Martial Art, it would increase his flexibility and versatility. With that extra element at hand, the permutations andbinations of the various applications of his Martial Art would rise greatly.


    Furthermore, it would probably give him the final set of tools he needed to be truly confident in taking down Chairman Deacon. The assassination training he got from Master Reina certainly helped as well, but whatever training he would get from the Hypnomaster would be sure to improve his power on a qualitative level. Content provided by N?velDrama.Org.


    Much time passed until Rui finally reached the Gereign Region, overlooking it from atop a mountain.


    The murky forest at the center of the region was absolutely gigantic, and also extremely dense and thick.


    A strange mist upied the inscrutable forest, giving it an eerie edge. Yet the regions surrounding the forest felt much more lively and energetic to Rui''s instincts. While the dangers were certainly difficult, there were all too many people who were willing to risk it to strike it big.


    ''Alright, time to see what the hype is all about!


    Rui was curious about what all the hype about the forest truly was like in person. There was a difference between reading and experiencing for one''s self.


    <strong></strong>


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1414 Distribution Enterprise

    <h4>Chapter 1414 Distribution Enterprise</h4>


    It didn''t take long before Rui entered the surrounding regions of the Great Forest of Hypnonarak. The region was not divided into nations or any other political entities.


    There were no kingdoms or even duchies, and certainly no empires. The reason for that was that the natives had been limited to viges and towns even before the forest was created.


    However, once the continental forces learned about the forest and what it had to offer, the poor natives never stood a chance. They werepletely overrun by forces that colonized and settled around the Great Forest of Hypnonarak.


    Thus the only thing that Rui found was argemercialized area that was entirely centered around the harvest and supply of narcotic flora. There weren''t even divisions across the establishments throughout the region such as towns or viges.


    Apparently, nobody cared for such things. And why would they? None of them cared to create an economy or a society. Each and every one of them were only there to make money.


    Either off of raiding the forest and harvesting narcotic flora. Or making money by taking harvests, processing them, and supplying them to relevant markets elsewhere.


    ''Wow.'' Rui took in his first nce at the establishment around the Great Forest of Hypnonarak.


    A broad borderless andrgelywless sea ofmercialization.


    Poor civil engineering, infrastructure, and a dense poption. Furthermore, an odd odor characterized the air. It came from therge stacks of nt harvests he saw being carted around by various people.


    ''Tsk.'' Rui crinkled his nose, before walking into therge establishment that seemed to stretch forever. He already had an unpleasant impression of the entire ce at first nce but got worse the more he walked in.


    It reminded him of the Derimont Bazaar, though that ce was far worse in his books.


    At least it wasn''t nearly as noisy.


    "Hey! Move along!"


    "Get out of the way!"


    "A hundred silvers per kilogram?! That''s outrageous!"


    "Raider for hire!"


    Rui sighed as he made his way past the crowds, ncing at all the establishments.


    [Veyron Raider''s Guild]


    [Felethunder Raider Party]


    [Vinfranian Noremin Processing Factory]


    He wasn''t even surprised that most of the establishments were centered around the narcotics sector. It was just far too profitable to expect too much else. However, it wasn''t as though there was nothing.


    [Ecological Survey Corps]


    [Environmental Commission]


    There were apparently some groups centered around other aspects of the forest.


    [Clues into the Hypnomaster]


    [History of the Hypnomaster]


    "Interesting," Rui murmured as he strolled past several establishments that looked into the Hypnomaster who actually created the entire forest. of course, given that he had purchased a lot of information that looked into the forest and the Master, Rui didn''t actually need any aid, but it was good to know that there were plenty of people who still cared about gaining the tutge of the vaunted Martial Master.


    ''In fact, I''d say most Martial Artists here are actually here for the Hypnomaster.'' Rui mused. ''The forest raiding is just a good way to sustain them while they''re here.''


    The Martial Artist poption of the region was not scant.


    Even as he walked through the dense poptions, he could sense arge number of Martial Apprentices, many Martial Squires, and some Martial Seniors. They gave him an entirely different vibe from the assassins of Shadow Isles.


    For one, purely off of a first evaluation, he did not get the sense that they were here formercial purposes. Most of them were Martial Art attire and uniform, and most of them did not reek of narcotics in the way that only people who consumed them did.


    Those clues alone were enough for him not only to infer why they were here but also to gain a broader understanding of the dynamics of Martial Artists in this region.


    The assassins of the Shadow Isles had lost sight of their original objective under the highly favorable circumstances of the Shadow Isles. This ce was one of the few ces where assassins could safelye out of the shadows and practice their profession out in the open.


    It was inherently attractive to them.


    However, the same could not be said for the Martial Artists of the Gereign Region and the forest raiding and harvesting. There was nothing attractive about cutting and gathering nts, it was menialbor. Content provided by N?velDrama.Org.


    The Martial Artists that remained here were those of deployed forces from various organizations and mafias around the continent who were interested in the narcotics supply of the Great Forest of Hypnonarak, or they were people who were interested in the Hypnomaster.


    In fact, Rui could go as far as gauging which of the two any given Martial Artist fell into. Martial Artists associated with organizations usually had emblems or crests of their respective organizations on their Martial Art attire.


    Independent Martial Artists were less well-equipped.


    "Ah, young man. I have a letter for you." A postman stopped him, giving him an envelope.


    Rui narrowed his eyes as he opened it.


    [Gereign Distribution Enterprise]


    "...I see." Rui mused ''This is the Beggar''s Sect''s foreign affairs department in the Gereign Region.''


    A distribution service sounded like a good cover for the base of operations of the foreign affairs department. He didn''t even know such a thing existed, but such things tended to blend into the background, which was good for the Beggar''s Sect.


    He immediately headed towards the address specified, leading him to the closest executive branch of the distribution service.


    It wasn''t long before he was waiting side to be approached by a man.


    "Ah, Senior John, we apologize for the wait, we have some matters to discuss regarding yourmission payment, can we talk about it in a more private setting?" A man asked.


    "That''s fine by me."


    He didn''t mind the tant exposure of the matter he was here for, since anybody listening would obviously assume that it was amission payment for a transportationmission, rather than an intelligence one.


    He was interested inpleting the payment as soon as possible so he would have ess to the intelligence as soon as possible.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1415 Seal

    <h4>Chapter 1415 Seal</h4>


    It wasn''t long before he found himself in an office that was sealed off with anti-espionage measures.


    "Senior Falken, please have a seat." An executive gestured.


    The man was a mid-level executive within thepany, officially at least.


    "A book market, a library, and now a distribution service," Rui remarked. "The Beggar''s Sect sure is diverse in its covers."


    The man smiled. "Thank you. It''s a safety measure, you see."


    "Even if a single base ispromised, it won''t turn into a point of failure for the entire sect because all the various bases of operations of your foreign affairs department," Rui guessed.


    "That, and more. However, I believe you''re not here to discuss this topic," The man continued. "Considering that you have already purchased the intelligence you sought on the Hypnomaster back in the Derimont Bazaar, I suppose you''re not here to purchase information."


    "Well, it has been more than two years since I visited the Derimont Bazaar, but yes, I''m here for opportunities for mymission payment, and to confirm the status of mymission," Rui replied.


    "Yourmission has already beenpleted, Senior Falken." The man remarked. "We have gathered an extensive amount of information on the security measures undertaken by Chairman Deacon at all times, as well across his entire regr schedule and for all considered circumstances. We will supply you with it the very moment youplete yourmission payment."


    That was good news. Rui had been concerned about the results of their efforts, but it would appear that the Beggar''s Sect


    "I''m d to hear that mymission has gone well," Rui replied. "However, I do have to say that I am a little concerned with how inted themission payment is."


    "Hm? Please borate."


    "In particr, I''m concerned about the value of themission payment versus the value of the contributions that I''ve made to the Beggar''s Sect," Rui remarked. "The contributions I made to the Derschek branch were rather enormous, don''t you think? I cleaned out an entire assassination industry, killed many Martial Seniors, andpletely got rid of a problem that had be a headache for even the Beggar''s Sect. Inparison, the general value of the intelligence surrounding Chairman Deacon seems much lower."


    "You''re not wrong, Senior Falken," The man smiled, earning Rui''s surprise. He didn''t think that they would concede that point so easily. "However, the reason that the intelligence of Chairman Deacon is high is because of the seal ced on the intelligence."


    Rui tilted his head in confusion.


    "You yourself have ced a seal on your information, have you not?" The man asked.


    "...You mean paying the Beggar''s Sect not to sell my information?"


    "Correct," The man nodded. "That ces a seal on your information, making it much more expensive to purchase your information. Chairman Deacon has ced an even greater seal on his information, thus themission payment to purchase it is naturally very high."


    Rui understood the system, it was quite a simple but ingenious way for the Beggar''s Sect to earn an enormous sum of money from various wealthy tycoons across the continent.


    He was willing to bet that every nation and powerful or influential individual put a seal on their information. He couldn''t even begin to fathom how much the Beggar''s Sect was profiting from the arms race of intelligence that they themselves had put into y.


    ''No wonder they can afford such extravagant bases like the Derimont Bazaar.'' Rui mused.


    The Derimont Bazaar was obscured by a huge amount of anti-espionage esoteric materials that he recognized to being from the Shionel Dungeon. Considering that he had made many billions off of Esosale Suppliers, he knew just how expensive the creation of the Derimont Bazaar must have been. Content provided by N?velDrama.Org.


    ''Tsk. It''s a game everybody is forced to y, a game where they are the gamemaster.'' Rui tutted inwardly. "Increase the seal on my information ten-fold."


    The man smiled. "Are you sure about that? That will cost you. You will most likely have to make an equallyrge contribution as you did in the Derschek Region."


    "Yes, I''m sure," Rui replied.


    Although he highly doubted that someone as pious and stuck-up as Master Uma would lower herself topletemissions for the Beggar''s Sect, he did not want to take any chances. As long as he could increase the difficulty of her getting to him, that was good enough.


    It would not do for her to appear out of the blue one day while he was minding his business and then abduct him.


    "Alright then, I''ll be sure to initiate that immediately. Normally, we do so after the payment has been made, however, our working rtionship with you has been quite pleasant thus far, so we will make an exception." The man replied. "However, I believe that still isn''t the primary reason why you''re here."


    "I''d like to fully pay off all of mymission payments in one go," Rui replied. "I have no interest in running aroundpleting small missions and operations to umte mymission payment over a long time."


    "That is how most Martial Artists pay it back, it''s more convenient for them that way, but we understand," The man replied. "You have demonstrated truly impressive abilities. Particrly, your ability to assassinate is truly astonishing for a Martial Senior as young as you are, as demonstrated by your feats in the Shadow Isles."


    ''Oh, you have no idea.'' Rui mused. "I am a highlypetent assassin, yes. I am confident I can pierce through to anybody not protected by Martial Masters."


    Although he wasn''t too fond of the idea that hisbat skills were not as valued marily as his assassination skills, it couldn''t be helped. Eliminating targets was just too lucrative. Adaptive evolution was nice and all, but it didn''t earn him the huge amounts of wealth he needed.


    "I believe I have just the perfect operation for you," The man remarked. "If you canplete these, then I believe yourmission payment will beplete."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1416 Requirements

    <h4>Chapter 1416 Requirements</h4>


    "And what might that be?" Rui asked. "I hope you''re not going to ask me to shut down the supply chain of the entire narcotics industry centered around the three drugs found in the Great Forest of Hypnonarak this time. Forget about it. It''s not going anywhere."


    "We are aware that that would be an absurd demand of any Martial Senior," The man smiled. "We do not require you to destroy the narcotics industry, the only thing that we would like for you to do is to strain it."


    "...Strain it?" Rui tilted his head.


    "That''s right, we would like for you to increase the risks and dangers associated with harvesting narcotics flora," The man exined. "As long as you can do that, you will be able to significantly diminish the supply chain for a brief period."


    Rui frowned. "Yes, but it''s only going to be temporary and momentary, the second I stop, it''s going to end. There will be absolutely no long-term impact. You surely are aware of that, so that implies you''re simply looking for a window of time, rather than a permanent oue."


    "Correct," The man smiled. "We are aware that there is no long-term or permanent impact on temporarily causing a lot of deaths. However, there are still things that can be done while you''re active in suppressing forest raiders."


    Rui analyzed the man''s words as his mind got to work. ''If there were something that they want to aplish while I strain the narcotics supply chain, then it can be inferred that it is something that can only be done while it is strained. In which case...''


    "...Are you trying to phase out narcotics from regions particrly afflicted by drug addiction, or are you trying to cripple drug trafficking rings with razor-thin margins?" Rui wondered. "Straining the supply chain manifests only in its impact on the supplier and consumer, so I can only infer that one of the two is your goal. I would deduce that it is thetter, considering that an epidemic of assassinations was disruptive to your intelligence-gathering operations, an epidemic of drugs in a given region is probably worse."


    "That was astute of you," The man remarked, smiling. "Since you have figured out the truth, I shall not hide it any longer from you. We are currently engaging in an effort to stabilize our intelligence stronghold in certain particrly drug-afflicted regions not too far from the Great Forest of Hypnonarak. Unfortunately, the supply of narcotics in these regions is far too high and the price is far too low. If we are to instate stability, we will need a brief period of time where the cost of production rises far more than it currently is. We need to reduce the amount of narcotic drugs flowing into the region."


    It was just as Rui had figured. In a sense, the agenda for the Gereign branch of the Beggar''s Sect was simr to the Derschek branch''s. In general, the Beggar''s Sect''s greatest priority was always intelligence, thus anything that threatened its ability to gather intelligence was always a threat. Tremendous instability was the kind of thing that they seemed to avert in order to restore order so they could resume their intelligence gathering.


    In the first ce, because there were so many agents of the Beggar''s Sect across the entire continent, it meant that they had a lower threshold for failure. Any region that was in too much chaos would disrupt its operations. Because they had to maintain the covertness of their vast intelligence operations, their intelligence supply chains were more fragile than those of other organizations that relied on highly trained agents and sophisticated esoteric technology.


    This allowed them to maintain intelligence supply chains even in chaotic socio-economic regions.


    The Beggar''s Sect could not rely on such means. It was impractical to train every single one of their agents into a highly skilled elite covert operative. It was also impossible to equip every single one of them with covertmunication technology.


    These things made it much more difficult to cope with chaos and instability, even if not impossible.


    Still, that wasn''t any of Rui''s business.


    "Such a thing will take an immense amount of time and energy," Rui narrowed his eyes. "I did not juste here to fulfill mymission payment."


    "We are aware of that, Senior Falken," The man remarked. "We do not intend to attempt to prevent you from training under the Hypnomaster. You canmence the operation before, after, or even during your training with the Hypnomaster, if you do seed in finding him."


    Rui considered the man''s words for a second. "How long do you require me to be active for?"


    "For about half a year," The man replied. "By then we can provide crucial aid to drug-afflicted regions, detox them, and focus on reducing the demand for these drugs while increasing the stability of the region. These narcotic drugs inhibit the nervous system in a manner that causes the user to be likelier to engage in violence. However, the detoxification process is much easier than one would expect, so long as one has the necessary means and measures, which we do. But it only works if the user no longer has ess to these drugs."


    "So you n to detoxify entire countries of these drugs and also reduce their demand in the time that I keep the narcotics supply greatly hampered?" Rui asked with a skeptical expression. "If it not for the fact that the Beggar''s Sect is as powerful as it is, I wouldugh at that n."


    Perhaps it was because he had seen the effects of narcotics on his home nation in his past life, but he found himself skeptical that erasing such a problem could possibly be so easy. N?velD(ram)a.?rg owns this content.


    "It is because we are the Beggar''s Sect that we can undertake such operations with remarkable chances of sess," The man smiled with a hint of pride. "However, we do require the aid of someone highly adept at elimination. You''ve already proven yourself to be a highly elite assassin, and thus we believe you have what we need."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1417 Mafia

    <h4>Chapter 1417 Mafia</h4>


    The Beggar''s Sect expressed a lot of confidence in Rui''s capabilities, however, Rui wasn''t sure whether their confidence was justified or not.


    "The circumstances of the Great Forest of Hypnonarak arepletely different from those of the Shadow Isles," Rui narrowed his eyes. "First of all, the size of the narcotics supply operations is vastlyrger than the assassination industry of the Derschek Region. That alone makes even straining all of it much harder than taking out the assassination industry. Second of all, the Great Forest of Hypnonarak is a dangerous ce even for me, and I can''t afford to focus on hunting others in it."


    "We do not require you to work against the entirety of all drug trafficking rings that harvest supplies from the Great Forest of Hypnonarak, Senior Falken," The man replied. "We require you to work against a specific number of drug trafficking operations. As long as you oppress them, we will gain what we need."


    The man procured a document from a shelf, before passing it to Rui. "These contain the list of the organizations and nations whose mafia we require you to suppress."


    Rui grabbed the document before opening it, looking to scour through the list and add it to his Mind Pce. Yet his eyes froze on the first name.


    [Carnil Mafia; Kandrian Empire.]


    Below the title was a list of organizations and their locations in the region surrounding the Great Forest of Hypnonarak. Apparently, these organizations were a shell-front for the Carnil Mafia that was based in and operated out of the Kandrian Empire.


    "...Carnil Mafia?" Rui murmured, this was the first time he had heard of the name.


    "It''s the part of the Kandrian underworld that is ruled by Don Carnil Reoulia," The man exined. "The Kandrian Empire''s underworld is divided into six distinct mafias centered around a specific ck market or set of ck markets. Don Carnil oversees the mafia surrounding prohibited substances and products. The mafia under his rule is known as the Carnil Mafia."


    Rui stared at the name with narrowed eyes. "I was not aware that the Commonwealth Duchy of Vinfrana, the Republic of Gorteau, and the Kandrian Empire had suchrge drug trafficking problems."


    Rui threw in a bunch of names in addition to the Kandrian Empire to obscure his interest in that nation in particr. The man exined the situations of the mentioned nations, before arriving at the Kandrian Empire.


    "The Kandrian Empire is our most important target," The man remarked. "In particr, the Throne War of the Kandrian Empire has long entered its cold war stage as the various powers of the Kandrian Empire are bracing for what may very well be a civil war within a decade."


    "What does this have to do with that?" Rui asked, narrowing his eyes.


    "The underworld of the Kandrian Empire is highly invested in the oue of the throne war. What they seek is a libertarian ruler who will get rid of prohibitions and restrictions, allowing them to legitimize themselves under thew, increasing their market capture." The man exined. "For that purpose, they have been taking many measures to increase their political capital by spreading narcotic drugs across more impoverished parts of the nation. Smaller towns, viges, settlements, orphanages, that sort of thing."


    It took a lot of effort and all his diplomatic training to ensure not a single trace of his internal reaction to the word ''orphanages'' leaked out. However, he was tremendously displeased by what he heard.


    "By increasing the demand for narcotics, the new ruler, whoever they are, will be immensely pressured by many stakeholders to either eradicate the narcotics industry or legalize it," Rui mused. "Eradicating it from within the country is basically impossible."


    The man smiled. "The Kandrian Underworld is a powerful force. Its military might makes it the third most powerful entity of the Kandrian Empire and it is protected by Sage Aggragor, who is also a don of the underworld. Attempting to erase it will take immense resources and wealth, even by the Royal Family''s standards. Furthermore, the resulting conflict will weaken the country."


    Rui narrowed his eyes at those words.


    "However, increasing demand isn''t the only extent of their efforts. We believe that they have a prince or princess."


    Rui already understood what direction this was going. "They have someone who bears royal blood. So they can fight for the throne themselves."


    "Correct." The man nodded. "The narcotics trafficking ring is just one part of a muchrger political lobbying effort. This is their only chance to legitimize themselves and thus avoid persecution. It is an oue that the Beggar''s Sect would rather avoid, thus we intend to oppress their operations."


    ''He''s being remarkably candid.'' Rui mused inwardly. ''He''s hoping I have some connection to some of the nations on this list, such that I may be persuaded to agree to this operation.''


    Unfortunately, it was working. He had heard about the throne war from multiple different sources by now, and unfortunately, that was not something that could be avoided. N?velD(ram)a.?rg owns this content.


    However, for the first time, he realized that it was harming his interests directly.


    "Alright, I ept," Rui sighed. "But I don''t intend toplete this operation until I train under the Hypnomaster. The Great Forest of Hypnonarak is an extremely dangerous ce, and if I intend to operate within it, then I want to make sure that I have everything that I need in terms of my Martial Art."


    The man nodded. "We understand, that is a prudent measure. We hope for your sess in finding the Hypnomaster and gaining his tutge. Some of the most powerful mind-oriented Martial Artists are those who have gained tutge from the Hypnomaster. Your chances of sessfullypleting the operations we need from you will also significantly go up if you do gain his tutge."


    It appeared that the Beggar''s Sect had been impressed with how cleanly he had wiped out the assassination industry of the Derschek Region, hoping that he would be able to partially replicate the feat temporarily in the Great Forest of Hypnonarak.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1418 Threats

    <h4>Chapter 1418 Threats</h4>


    Rui hadn''t expected that he would be indirectly entangled with the Throne War in such a fashion.


    The Beggar''s Sect was basically hoping that he would wage war against the Carnil Mafia inside the Great Forest of Hypnonarak.


    That was something that Rui was not sure was too good of an idea.


    The Kandrian Underworld was a force that Rui was not qualified to take on under normal circumstances. However, the narcotics operations of the Great Forest of Hypnonarak were sort of limited to the Senior Realm, even if its importance exceeded that Realm.


    The reason the limit existed was because the Hypnomaster did not tolerate other Martial Masters in or near his domain. ording to the intelligence supplied by the Beggar''s Sect, this was enough of a deterrence to prevent any force from deploying Martial Masters.


    "He once eliminated four Martial Masters in a single fight," The executive exined. "In the first ce, the Hypnomaster is a highly experienced and powerful Martial Master over four hundred years old. Furthermore, the Great Forest of Hypnonarak is his domain not just in a political context but also in a Martial Art context."


    Rui had alreadye to figure that part out. "A stronger mind will prevail in a battlefield that weakens the mind. This ce is perfect for him."


    The man nodded. "That is why you can rest assured that you won''t be running into Martial Masters and certainly no Martial Sages." Content provided by N?velDrama.Org.


    If that was the case, then the n was a lot more viable than he had expected. Although he was quite wary of the powerful Martial Seniors of the Kandrian Underworld, he was also confident in the recent gains he had made under the tutge of the Silent Shadow.


    He was not afraid of them discovering his identity thanks to the Master-level mask, and the disguise ability that he had gained. Furthermore, his Phantomind Void technique was something that would work well in the forest. Although the technique was not as smoothlybat-applicable as Kane''s Void Step due to the much greater mental burden, it was still something that would be highly useful when eliminating his targets.


    "Alright, that''s enough on that matter," Rui heaved a sigh. "I want all the intelligence that the Beggar''s Sect had gathered on the Hypnomaster and the Great Forest of Hypnonarak, just put the price on my tab."


    "We will be sure to procure that for you." The man smiled before fiddling with his terminal.


    It wasn''t too long before Rui got his hands on arge stack of documents. he quickly took his pile away, before scouring through the detailed reports and analyses.


    The intelligence that he had purchased from Sian in the Derimont Bazaar was preliminary, to give him a good idea of what he was going up against, but it wasn''t everything.


    The intelligence offered by the Beggar''s Sect was quite detailed and pertinent, as he had expected. It went into even greater detail than the information he had prior. It went into the many challenges that all of those who sought to travel the expansive forest in search of the Hypnomaster.


    There were special monsters and creatures in the Great Forest of Hypnonarak that had specifically adapted to the mind-consuming nature of the forest, allowing themselves to be sustained in its depths. They were few and far between, but it was true that they were quite powerful.


    [Illusionary Dragon]


    This was a special species of dragon, one of the apex predators of the Beast Domain that had the ability to generate illusions by manipting both, the senses of its victim as well as its environment. It was capable of applying its ability to generate illusions to obscure itself in a stealthy manner, or to confuse its target inbat while also exploiting openings to kill its target.


    it was particrly dangerous within the environment of the forest thatpromised the mind.


    [Nightmare Oases]


    Apparently, even the water sources in the forest werepromised with mind-suppressing and hallucinogenic esoteric substances. Drinking water from these sources was highly inadvisable, yet they had a strange psychological effect of greatly increasing the physiological urge and thirst for water, causing people to be unsuspecting victims of it, only to be consumed by the surrounding predatory flora.


    Rui wondered what possessed the Hypnomaster to create something that cruel. It appeared that Master Reina was right when she said that the Hypnomaster was not as kind as her.


    This was especially the case when the intelligence provided by the Berggar''s Sect went into great detail as to how nearly every species of flora within the forest was predatory and carnivorous in nature.


    The sheer amount of meat that the entire forest as a whole needed to consume meant that unless it got a regr supply of food from the outside, it was not something that could be sustained very easily.


    ''Ah, that''s why there is so much narcotic flora.'' Rui realized. ''He wanted to incentivize as many people to enter the forest in search of the drugs, or him, and thus feed the forest''s voracious appetite.''


    It was the only way to sustain such arge carnivorous forest. If that was the case, then the Hypnomaster was truly a ruthless man who had no qualms about the misery that inevitably unfolded from his desire to have a convenient system in ce.


    He especially felt so as he skimmed through the intelligence on the various threats that existed within the Great Forest of Hypnonarak.


    From a rtively small number of creatures and species that had managed to adapt to the conditions of the Great Forest of Hypnonarak, the Hypnomaster''s own residence was apparently something that was not constant and changed every day, making it harder to track him based on existing information.


    Furthermore, the forest as a whole caused one to lose their sense of time and direction within sufficient depths due to the mental energy consumption, causing people who were otherwise capable of surviving to die due to being unable to gather their bearings and get out.


    It was a forest that had imed the lives of many a Martial Artist, including Martial Seniors.


    "Great, sounds fun," Rui murmured unhappily.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1419 Considerations

    <h4>Chapter 1419 Considerations</h4>


    The forest was quite fiendish, yet Rui couldn''t help but be curiously drawn towards the many strange things that were said to be present within it. There were many traits and properties of the forest that contributed to its overall threat level.


    One of the consequences of the mental consumption of the predatory flora of the forest was the fact that it affected the sensory capabilities of all people who entered the forest. It didn''t actually affect the senses of the victims, however, suppression of the mind led to suppression of the senses indirectly, for the mind processed senses and understood the world around them through that.


    As a result, the range of senses decreased remarkably, leading to an increased difficulty in the search for the Hypnomaster''s location.


    ''That''s probably also on purpose since the sensory range of Martial Seniors would otherwise be able to allow them to scour the entire forest within a reasonable timeframe.'' Rui mused.


    The issue was the fact that there were little to no ways to elerate the search, not even with the Martial Heart, it appeared. That meant if Rui wanted to find the Hypnomaster, he would need to get exploring like every other Martial Artists who hade to the Gereign Region.


    One of the options that he could explore was joining an adventurer''s guild. Allegedly, there were guilds centered around the exploration of the forest, disconnected from the narcotics industry.


    These guilds fostered cooperation between Martial Artists, allowing them to work together to find the Hypnomaster. However, Rui highly doubted that the Hypnomaster approved of such means to reach him.


    He also doubted their effectiveness when it came to locating the Hypnomaster. From the avable information, the Hypnomaster did not ept too many pupils. Allegedly, thest pupil he had epted had been from more than eight years ago.


    From that Rui could infer that there were obstacles and impediments to finding that couldn''t be ovee with teamwork alone. The Beggar''s Sect had done a remarkably good job at collecting all the pertinent information surrounding the Great Forest of Hypnonarak.


    As far as Rui was concerned, it was good enough for him.


    It wasn''t long before he hadpletely stored and organized the data provided by the Beggar''s Sect in his Mind Pce.


    "I appreciate the aid," Rui told the executive. "I will keep in touch and inform you when I''m willing to begin my operations."


    "That will be appreciated," The man smiled. "We wish you good luck in your endeavors." Property ? of N?velDrama.Org.


    It wasn''t long before Rui found himself traversing the messy streets of the Gereign Region, considering his next move. Although he would have loved to jump right into the forest right away, he decided it was probably more prudent to ensure that he was at his absolute peak physically and mentally.


    Although he certainly wasn''t exhausted, it was true that he had spent quite some time traveling.


    "I''m going to have to actually live in this ce," Rui tutted disapprovingly. He found the Gereign Region to be genuinely unpleasant and filthy, it was even more undesirable than his living quarters in the Derschek Region.


    While the Derschek Region was more chaotic and highly assassination-prone, it was otherwise fine, definitely much less unpleasant than the Gereign Region which reeked of narcotics substances and was generally more degenerate due to that.


    However, he managed to find a decent inn and secured a room for himself. He didn''t think his circumstances were secure, however, he was confident in defending himself if the time ever came.


    As hey in bed, trying to rx, his mind drifted across many thoughts. He wondered what the orphanage was up to. He wondered what Master Deivon was up to and how he had handled the aftermath of Master Uma''s ambush.


    He wondered what Master Reina was doing now that he was gone.


    ''She''s probably super bored.'' He mused. In the first ce, she used Rui as a way to alleviate her boredom, but now that he was gone she didn''t really have all that much to do.


    ''Furthermore, the assassination industry is gone too.'' Rui noted. ''So she''s probably just lying around bored to death.''


    The thought of it brought a wry smile to his face. ''She shouldn''t even bother anymore. The whole business of epting pupils seems tedious and tiring in the first ce. I don''t know why Masters even bother.''


    There had to be a reason that Martial Masters like Master Reina and Master Zeamer went out of their way to put in all the effort to filter out pupils throughplicated means. There had to be a reason why in both cases.


    Regardless, he was grateful that they did. Master Reina''s distilled insights and training in regard to assassination were far more valuable than any training technique scroll that he could have purchased from some organization.


    He probably would have nevere to develop a powerful technique like the Phantomind Void had he not been trained under her.


    It would definitely be incredibly useful when he began crippling the narcotics supply to specific regions, like the Kandrian Empire.


    His eyes narrowed at the thought. He thought back to all the information that he had gotten his hands on from the Beggar''s Sect regarding the narcotics supply. He was going to be facing off against the Carnil Mafia of the Underworld of the Kandrian Empire. It was a scary prospect, he did not underestimate the power of the mafia just because it was below the Royal Army and the Martial Union in terms of militaristic and Martial power.


    It was still at a level where it could crush him effortlessly. However, within the Great Forest of Hypnonarak, it was quite limited in many ways. The fact that they could not deploy any Martial Master without provoking a violent response from the Hypnomaster was definitely quite the hurdle. They didn''t have as many Martial Masters as the Martial Union did, each Martial Master was an extremely precious and strategic resource.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1420 Commence

    <h4>Chapter 1420 Commence</h4>


    Eventually, the flood of thoughts in his mind dimmed as his consciousness darkened, before he fell asleep. He hadn''t been concerned about his vulnerable position given that the inn was hardly a secure ce, but he had confidence in his passive senses and emergency reflexes. This content ? N?v/elDr(a)m/a.Org.


    If his subconsciousness felt threatened, then his Martial Heart would ze into full power. Of course, he would do a lot of damage to his surroundings inevitably, but it was much more eptable than allowing any harm to befall him.


    Regardless, he was finally ready to get started. It wasn''t long before he had freshened himself up and was ready to get started and head on to the Great Forest of Hypnonarak.


    STEP


    Rui stepped past therge fence that separated the rest of the Gereign Region from the forest.


    Arge eerie and murky forest stood before him. The forest was silent in sharp contrast to the bustling human domain behind him. It reeked of the same odor that could be smelled across the human domain of the Gereign Region. The same narcotics that were harvested and processed in the Gereign Region may as well have been omnipresent in the Great Forest of Hypnonarak.


    One of the reasons that the narcotics supply sector was viable despite the danger of the Great Forest was because one did not have to go in deep to harvest the narcotic flora.


    The only ones who chased deeper were the Martial Artists. While the dangers of the forest were not low, the rewards of seeding were worth it. Furthermore, to a certain extent, Rui felt his inner adventurering out.


    While the allure of the unknown wasn''t something that Rui was too driven by, he was not immune to it. This had also been the case when Rui had explored the Shionel Dungeon. A nightmarish ce to others had been much more adventurous to Rui.


    "Alright then," He heaved a sigh, before heading into the forest. The moment he approached a certain radius of the flora, he had already begun experiencing pressure on his mind, which continued to rise until he fully entered the forest.


    A sort of fuzzy weight that clouded his perception of the world and his mind. On top of that, the odor of the narcotics flora grew even stronger. Although his body and mind were too resilient to be affected by it, he could see why so many were addicted to it.


    Furthermore, he knew that the odor was only going to get stronger from there on out. It was one of the ways that the flora of the forest predated visitors of the forest.


    He could feel his sensory prowess diminishing as he traveled deeper into the forest.


    ''I wonder if I could create a stealth metabody based on the principle that the flora suppressed the mind and senses.'' Rui wondered.


    It was an interesting thought, but he quickly pushed it out of his mind. He didn''t have much leeway to focus on much else now that he had entered the forest.


    As diminished as his senses were, his range was stillrge enough to perceive hoards of people cutting away at nts and cing them withinrge crates. The outermostyer closest to the human domain was filled with people cutting away at the flora of the human domain.


    The quality of the narcotics flora increased the deeper one went, yet the dangers and risks also spiked as one went deeper. Higher-quality narcotics could only be found when one went deep enough into the forest, a job that only Martial Artists were qualified for.


    The pressure and the odor continued mounting on Rui even as he traversed the forest, heading in deeper and deeper. As powerful and vibrant as his mind was, even it had a limit. Although his limits were far higher than those of his peers, it was definitely going to push him to his absolute limit.


    The flora of the forest continued growing more colorful and vibrant the deeper he went. It went from the familiar green that he was ustomed to, to a strange myriad of colors that shed across the entire forest.


    It was alien, and yet it was beautiful, even he couldn''t help but stop and admire the breathtaking sights that he beheld standing on a cliff that oversaw a vast section of the forest that extended far beyond what the eye could see.


    He came across many little creatures that had somehow managed to adapt to the hostile flora environment of the Great Forest of Hypnonarak.


    "Chirrup chirrup," A strange squirrel-like creature with wings and six limbsnded on his hand.


    Rui''s eyes narrowed as he activated his Martial Heart to actively empower his sensory techniques as he tried to gauge how the creature had managed to survive in such a hostile environment.


    The close-range scan from his senses revealed some interesting revtions.


    ''The neurobiology of this naraceen isn''t based on a bioelectrical system.'' Rui''s eyes widened with surprise. ''It has evolved to develop a consciousness and cognition without relying on bioelectrical phenomena.''


    It was a truly shocking revtion, but his sharp senses told him that it relied on a chemical system to process and store information.


    ''That''s shocking.'' Rui noted as he studied the docile creature with interest. The intelligence supplied by the Beggar''s Sect had mentioned the creature, however, it hadn''t mentioned this trait.


    ''Then again, the Beggar''s Sect has no idea how the brain actually works.'' Rui mused. ''Still, for there to be creatures that have developed an entirely different gic... That''s incredible, it shows that the biodiversity of the Panama Continent is vastly greater than that of Earth.''


    Of course, this wasn''t surprising given how muchrger the continent aspared to allndmasses of Earth. However, it was still shocking when he saw how that manifested.


    ''Back on Earth, all intelligence and cognition in the animal kingdom was entirely based on a bioelectrical neurotransmitter system.'' Rui thought as he continued studying the creature. ''Even octopi, which developed remarkable cognitive capabilities in an entirely different line of evolutionpared to mammals, still rely on a bioelectrical system for cognition.''


    He set the naraceen away, watching it scurry away before turning back, and heading deeper into the forest. He had initially wondered if he could develop a Martial Art technique based on the principles of the naraceen resisting the mental suppression of the forest, but that proved to be impossible.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1421 Grow

    <h4>Chapter 1421 Grow</h4>


    As much as he would have liked to mimic the naraceen''s ability to avoid the mental suppression of the Great Forest of Hypnonarak of bioelectrical phenomena, bypletelycking those phenomena in their bodies, it was not viable.


    There were limits to Martial Art, he couldn''t alter the fundamental mechanisms upon which the foundations of the human mind were built on. He would have to settle for resisting the mental suppression of the forest with his own powerful mind.


    And yet, the path forward was long. The Great Forest of Hypnonarak was gigantic, easily asrge as countries, and not the small kind either. Ordinarily, this would not be an issue for Rui.


    Rui could zip through countries at extremely high speeds. The issue was that because his senses were hampered, he was quite hesitant to travel at high speeds.


    The faster one traveled, the better one''s senses needed to be. This was a basic rule of all travel and lotion. The reason for this was that the faster one traveled, the longer it took to avoid crashing into objects. Furthermore, the easier it was to fall prey to predator ambushes due to all the attention that he would attract traveling at high speeds.


    In order to avoid both of those oues, one needed extremely sharp and wide senses that would allow one to detect any and all hurdles and threats to it.


    In addition to that, traveling at high speeds with hampered senses substantially increased the probability that he would miss the Hypnomaster even if he passed the Martial Master''s abode. This was because the amount of time things spent in his field of senses was much less than before.


    STEP


    Rui frowned as stopped, ncing around, confused and disoriented.


    ''Have I lost my sense of direction and time?'' Rui frowned. His innate sense of direction waspletely spiraling out of control, he could be walking back to the human domain for all he knew and he would not be able to tell the difference.


    If not for the fact that he was storing his path forward on a map inside the Mind Pce, he would bepletely lost. His sense of time had beenpletely shattered, he felt like he had been walking for at least a few days when the time ticking in his Mind Pce revealed that it had only been an hour.


    ''No wonder many people nevere return after heading into the depths of the forest.'' Rui mused, before suddenly stiffening as his eyes caught something in the distance. N?velD(ram)a.?rg owns this content.


    His eyebrows furrowed as what seemed like a bunch of light floated towards him, looking to envelop him. Rui avoided them, taking to the air as he studied them.


    ''Hypnospirits.'' Rui narrowed his eyes. ''They cause hallucinations involving one''s memories.''


    His eyes turned forward as he spotted an unconscious figure, lying on the ground, surrounded by the hypnospirits. Her body was already entrenched on the ground, covered by roots even as she appeared to be in deep sleep.


    What was disturbing was that the surrounding flora had already begun absorbing her despite the fact that the Martial Apprentice was still alive. He didn''t bother trying to save her.


    Not only could he not afford to focus on helping other people, but he didn''t want to get anywhere near the hypnospirits. Although he was quite confident in his ability to break out of hallucinations, he did not want to even reach a stage where he was afflicted by them, having to waste precious mental energy to break out.


    The forest tried to consume his mind and body in so many ways that he was keenly aware that he was in a delicate situation.


    The probability that he would find the Hypnomaster on his first try was quite unlikely. That meant that his exploration of the Great Forest of Hypnonarak was most likely going to take some time.


    He needed to make sure he was able toe back safely and soundly after maximizing the amount of area that he covered. That involved making sure his mental stamina did not entirely run out by the time he set back home, which would be quite disastrous.


    ''I ought to save my Martial Heart for emergencies then.'' Rui mused. If he ever was low on mental energy, then it probably was best to activate the Martial Heart to supply a boost to the mind, and then quickly make his way back.


    It was a little frustrating how the forest made light of the formidable power of Martial Artists. but unfortunately, most Martial Artists did not have the ability to defend their mind the same way that they could defend their bodies.


    With the exception of mind-oriented Martial Artists. Rui was still better than nearly everybody who tried to enter the Great Forest of Hypnonarak. The Mind Pce technique that he originally purchased was only a grade-five technique when he first purchased it. But after countless upgrades and improvements over more than a decade, it had reached a level that astronomically dwarfed its original iteration.


    It allowed Rui to resist the effects of the Great Forest of Hypnonarak much better than he would have been able to had he not had it. The same could be said for the Mindmirror Symbiote that had increasingly integrated with his brain over the many years.


    With those two advantages in mind, he surged forward heading deeper and deeper into the flora of the great forest. As he did, the density of and thickness of flora of continued increasing.


    Furthermore, the size of the flora also continued growingrger. Trees and nts, their branches, leaves, and trunks also continued growingrger, reaching extraordinary sizes and heights. This made his job much more difficult because the vast branches of the various trees intermingled at various levels forming tforms for various fauna lifeforms to upy.


    He couldn''t be sure that the Hypnomaster would necessarily be at ground level, that meant that he needed to expand his search to the third dimension. The sheer volume that he would need to search had grown significantly.


    ''No wonder so few people have managed to find him.''


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1422 Garden

    1422 Garden


    The difficulty of the task was much greater than if the forest was merely two-dimensional. But s, it was not to be that easy. He definitely understood that this was a feature of the challenge, not a w.


    In order to find the Hypnomaster, one needed to possess a powerful mind, or one needed to possess extraordinary perseverance and determination. In both cases, there was a good chance that the Hypnomaster would ept them based on those traits, so it made sense that there was a challenge the key to which were such traits.


    Rui didn''t spend too much time dwelling on too many thoughts despite how out of character that was for him. Thought consumed mental energy and within the Great Forest of Hypnonarak, mental energy was a precious and vital resource that dwindled by the second.


    He forged on forward heading deeper and deeper into the forest. At this point, his senses had long lost their ability to determine which direction he was walking on. The worst part was thatpasses also seemed to malfunction in the forest due to the electromaic disorientation caused by the same phenomenon that caused bioelectrical suppression.


    Yet he knew which direction he was walking in thanks to documenting his travel in his Mind Pce. The biggest hurdle that Martial Artists were seeking to travel deeper into the forest was maintaining geographic and directional awareness.


    Once these two key things were lost, the bad stuff followed after. Getting lost meant that the probability of returning home before your mind was drained was low, and this was the reason that most missing Martial Artists did not return.


    Rui had greatly improved his chances of survival by cleanly avoiding this pitfall. Not only did he have several rejuvenation potions that he could use in an emergency, but he also knew where he was rtive to the human domain of the Gereign Region and the forest as a whole.


    ''Hm?''Rui narrowed his eyes as something entered his senses. He froze, growing alert as he tried to figure out what it was.


    "Hel..." The figure uttered at it stepped into Rui''s sensory field.


    His eyes widened as he saw Martial Squire step in front of him. Yet there was something very disturbingly wrong about him. Flowers had begun growing from every inch of his body, even his eyeballs were missing as beautiful daffodils had sprouted from within his eye sockets.


    The man''s mouth opened, yet his body copsed before he could utter a single word.


    Rui narrowed his eyes. Thankfully, the Beggar''s Sect had not disappointed and he even knew what he was dealing with.


    "The Garden of Nightmares," Rui murmured as he sky-walked to a certain altitude, rising high as he got a good look at what was ahead of him.


    A dazzlingly beautiful and awe-inspiring array of flowers greeted his eyes. It drew an immense amount of joy from him, such that he almost couldn''t focus on anything else.


    ''Is this some sort of evolved passive hypnotism or is there some odorless airborne substance that makes it extremely difficult to draw away my attention from the garden of flowers?'' Rui narrowed his eyes.


    Yet the flowers weren''t the only thing that caught his eye. There were numerous corpses scattered across the Garden of Nightmares, each of them had flowers growing out of it as roots could be seen spreading across the entirety of their bodies.


    it was a particrly grotesque sight that gave him the creeps, that along with his resistance to its strange effect on the mind and he managed to steer clear of the entire area.


    ''Brutal.'' Rui murmured inwardly. One of the things that he didn''t necessarily like about the Great Forest of Hypnonarak was that the forest attacked Martial Artists in ways that they were unustomed to incurring.


    Although mental techniques were used by a decent number of Martial Artists, they were rarely used as the actual attack itself. They were generally used as a way to augment other attacks, specifically in their execution, against the opponent.


    Most Martial Artists were unustomed to being attacked mentally directly, and that was true for nearly all kinds of Martial Artists. Unfortunately, it was rarely the case that mental attacks were exchanged in battles.


    This was true even for Rui, he had only been truly hit with offensive mental techniques during the first round of the main Martial Contest in the Virodha Theocracy.


    Thus to go from very little experience to being thrust into an environment that was infested with such things was too drastic a transition for most Martial Artists. That was the reason that there were so many ways in which one could fumble such matters so badly.


    If not for the fact that Rui had an edge in this aspect, he wasn''t too sure that he wouldn''t have fallen for the various sprung traps even with the knowledge of the Beggar''s Sect.


    The disturbing sight of the many corpses littered across the field was in sharp contrast to the flowers atop and around them. It was brutal, yet such was nature. It was eat or be eaten.


    Rui had to admit that it truly was an entirely different thing to experience these dangers in the flesh than to read about them in a carefully curated report from the Beggar''s Sect.


    Rui carefully evaded the Garden of Nightmares, avoiding it from a high altitude. Yet he didn''t want to get too high either.


    His eyes narrowed as he gazed up into the dark clouds that were uncharacteristically close to the forest. Unlike normal forests, not even the skies of the Great Forest of Hypnonarak were safe.


    BZZZ!


    Rui grew alert as he heard mass fluttering in the clouds of the forest. He didn''t like the sound of those, based on what he knew about the forest, the skies weren''t too much safer than the forest itself. N?velD(ram)a.?rg owns this content.


    BZZZZZZZ!


    Rui''s eyes widened as an enormous wave of angry hos flew towards him, ready to surround and consume him in one go.


    <strong></strong>


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1423 Kinshroom

    <h4>Chapter 1423 Kinshroom</h4>


    One of the particrly nasty parts of the Great Forest of Hypnonarak was the fact that Martial Squires and Seniors couldn''t simply sky-walk as carelessly as they could before. The ability to sky-walk usually helped Martial Artists in a forest setting, allowing them to evade thend was a good way to avoid threats on thend.


    However, it appeared that the Hypnomaster had not wanted to make it so easy to conveniently evade the danger of his forest. Thus he had allegedly bought a species of ho monsters from the Beast Domain that made their hives inside and from clouds.


    It was said that the specimens he had brought over were beyond the Senior Realm in terms of threat level.


    He had found it hard to believe, but apparently, the cloud hos nested their hives in the clouds, making it particrly difficult to spot them. They ambushed prey in the sky, limiting their prey to animals with the capabilities for flight.


    Rui immediately turned around and dashed downwards with his Martial Heart, narrowly keeping away from the flux of cloud hos that chased after him.


    BOOM!!!


    The man crashed into the ground at top speed, unable to break his fall, causing an enormous crater the size of a hill to be created in the spot that he had fallen into.


    "You okay, man?" Kane asked with concern.


    "I''m fine," Rui groaned.


    "Maybe going in alone was not the best idea," Kane remarked. Content provided by N?velDrama.Org.


    "It''s not like I have anybody else," Rui dusted his clothes, getting up. Although the impact was quite titanic, it was nothing for a Martial Senior like him.


    "Ouch," Kane muttered. "That''s a rough way of saying that you can''t rely on me."


    "Well, you are a Martial Squire," Rui replied. "Be a Martial Senior and then we can think about tha-"


    Rui''s expression froze, growing grave as he suddenly leaped away from the spot getting a good look at what he had been talking to.


    There had been nobody there despite the fact that he had been clearly talking to Kane for several seconds. He nced at the crater that he had just created, some bits of the trees and the nts remained.


    ''Is that...'' Rui narrowed his eyes focusing on a small object. ''...a kinshroons?''


    ording to the intelligence given by the Beggar''s Sect, they generated hallucinations specifically centered around bonds and connections that the victim had.


    ''Damn, it must have got me the second I crashed into this part of the forest.'' Rui cursed. ''I can''t believe it is so potent and fast-acting. It basically got me instantly.''


    They weren''t all thatmon, but they were known for their potency and it was said that once trapped in their hallucinations, breaking out was almost impossible without external aid.


    Rui apparently managed to break that rule, even if he cheated to a certain degree by destroying in his crash. That meant that he didn''t have to deal with its effects past the initial intoxication.


    However, Rui''s mind had managed to break through merely seconds into the hallucination, preventing his mind and body from being entranced by the hallucination for hours, reducing his probability of surviving.


    And yet, Rui was displeased.


    ''I can''t believe I didn''t see through that instantly.'' He clenched his fist. ''My inhibitions were far too lowered. Is that also merely due to the kinshroom?''


    He wasn''t sure, regardless, he didn''t like how things had unfolded.


    ''I need to be more careful.'' Rui narrowed his eyes. ''I let my guard down too much.''


    He decided to reduce his pace and take his time evaluating and oveing threats. While it would increase the amount of time he would need to take to find the Hypnomaster, it certainly was worth it.


    He had made sure that he had enough high-quality rejuvenation potions to aid him in his search for the Hypnomaster.


    It hadn''t even been too long since he had begun his exploration into the Great Forest of Hypnonarak, and he had to admit that he had alreadye to understand why the forest was so feared and notorious. There were just too many ways that one could die.


    In terms of danger levels, it was to Martial Artists what the Shionel Dungeon had been to Martial Squires. The entire forest was filled with predatory flora that desperately was hunting for prey, and the Hypnomaster along with the lucrative narcotics flora was the bait to draw in raiders and Martial Artists seeking one of the two of them.


    In order to create a stable filtering system that would ensure only the worthiest Martial Artists of the Lower Realms would reach him, he hadn''t hesitated to create a brutal ecosystem where humans were at the bottom of the food chain and sustained the entire forest.


    He knew for a fact that the creatures of the forest that had adapted to the forest were certainly not going to create enough of the supply of sustenance for the forest. Thus Martial Artists like him who werergely doomed to fail if they kept braving the dangers were meant topensate.


    ''It''s a shame because my Phantomind Void technique is effective against nts.'' Rui tutted. ''Misdirection, at my level at least, is ineffective against flora. I doubt I''d be able to evade its effects even if I could misdirect the source.''


    Rui heaved a deep breath before focusing himself. If he did not gather his mind and bring out his absolute best, he would not be able to ovee the tribtions of the Great Forest of Hypnonarak.


    It wasn''t long before he set out once more, heading towards the center of the forest, in search of the Hypnomaster.


    The forest was remarkably diverse in its flora, unusually so for a forest. It was almost as though the Hypnomaster had put in extra effort to gather as many species of flora as he could to make sure that he didn''t let any aspiring students get off the hook easily if they managed to figure out the trick to negate one particr species.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1424 Rest

    <h4>Chapter 1424 Rest</h4>


    As Rui continued traversing the forest, he couldn''t help but wonder the increasingly ring question that begged itself.


    ''How in the world did the Hypnomaster create this forest?'' Rui furrowed his eyebrows. ''Not only that, how in the world did he manage to create such a viable ecosystem that was stable enough to neither expand in territory nor die out? As amazing as the Martial Mind is, I highly doubt that it allows you to figure out how to construct a perfect ecosystem out of many species sharing a simr form of nutrition acquisition.''


    In the first ce, surely going this far to create such an enormous and fantastical forest that was also a nightmare to be trapped in was not worth the effort?


    ''Is it also because he''s more effective on this battlefield, I wonder.'' Rui thought to himself. ''It would be like Kane and the Thundering Valley. Or an aquatic Martial Artist and a water reservoir.''


    If that was part of his intentions, then it was more understandable. He was already a powerful Martial Master, and if he could gain a domain advantage, then he would be extraordinarily dangerous within the Master Realm.


    It was no wonder that even the Silent Shadow had been unable to assassinate him.


    Still, that only answered the why, and not the high. This was especially true when his specialty was mental techniques. Techniques that were exclusively impactful on the mind, and not on non-sentient phenomena.


    Rui concluded that there were probably many things that he still did not understand about the Master Realm. They seemed to breakmon sense to a certain degree with the feats that he witnessed.


    Just the fact that there were things nearly every square meter of the forest that posed some degree of a threat to Rui across this entire forest was a testament to the capabilities of the Hypnomaster; that he could treat even this forest as merely a test for his students.


    One more thing that Rui hadn''t missed was that Great Forest of Hypnonarak was constructed out of species from the Beast Domain.


    That spoke a lot about the Beast Domain.


    It made Rui regard the mysterious core of the continent that was uninhabited by humans with much more wariness. If the Beast Domain possessed threat levels that were simr and even much above, then it was not to be trifled with.


    ''Hm?''?Rui narrowed his eyes as he spotted something in the distance.


    He quickly crouched activating Phantomind Void for good measure nheless. Even if it wasn''t effective against flora, it was effective against fauna.


    He expanded his senses forward, trying to get a good gauge of what was going on. Property ? of N?velDrama.Org.


    His eyes widened as he came across a shocking sight. A bunch of humans and Martial Apprentices had had their skulls broken open as a strange creature wriggled inside, consuming a part of their brains. Momentster, the skull and flesh healed, as the bodies were restored to their previous states.


    What was even more disturbing was that the bodies woke up momentster, with wide eyes and inhuman glint within them.


    ''Mariote worm...''


    "Help! Help! Help!"


    "Somebodye here, I found something."


    "Come this way, we found an exit!"


    The humans and Martial Apprentices made a bunch of noise drawing attention to themselves, spouting out words that only humans could. It was a horrifying sight to witness humans and even Martial Apprentices being mind-controlled in such a fashion.


    It was most likely a tactic to draw in more humans. They were apparently able to manipte parts of the brain to manipte the human''s actions.


    Rui narrowed his eyes. Although these were known creatures who were already marked to be dangerous, but not fatal, he knew that he couldn''t let them go on. This was actual inhumane torture and it was not something that he was willing to tolerate.


    He didn''t even need to activate his Martial Heart.


    SPLAT SPLAT SPLAT!


    The sheer force of his attacks smashed them into confetti killing them on the spot. He made sure that the potency and speed were high enough that even the Martial Apprentices would have died before feeling even an ounce of pain or realization.


    Yet he immediately turned his attention to his surroundings, warily. His actions drew attention and he needed to make sure that he didn''t suffer inadvertently from them.


    ''Damn, maybe I should have taken lessons from a hunter Martial Artist before entering a forest this dangerous.'' Rui tutted, ncing at the evening sun. ''Time sure does fly if it is already approaching dusk.''


    He needed to find shelter so that he could get some rest. Of course, when he first heard that it was even possible to find shelter in the forest, he was surprised. But apparently, it was true. One could find shelter in very specific niche ces in the Great Forest of Hypnonarak.


    Rui sky-walked a little as he activated his Martial Heart, trying to spread his senses as far as he could to get as much of a gauge as he could of the surrounding topography.


    It wasn''t too long before he found what he was looking for.


    A gigantic boulder devoid of any flora or vegetation on it, extending far past the surrounding forest. Rui quickly made his way to it as he began climbing the boulder.


    Yes, climbing. This was to avoid distinguishing himself as a target to any potential cloud ho nests that were lurking amongst the clouds.


    The idea was to dig a hole deep into solid rock in a boulder at a high enough elevation and create enough of a space for one to inhabit, as long as he could do that and find himself a decent ce to get some rest, he would be fine.


    As long as he could handle the ufy living conditions, he would be fine. Hard rock was nothing to a Martial Senior, after all.


    As long as he could get that out of the way, he would be able rest while keeping away from the threats of the forest for the time being.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1425 Hunting

    <h4>Chapter 1425 Hunting</h4>


    Rui did not want to run into a swarm of Senior-level hos. The fact that they had almost caught up to him prior was quite a close shave. Unlike in the Shionel Dungeon where he hade up with specific targeted solutions towards the monsters, he didn''t have that here.


    His goal wasn''t to massacre monsters in the first ce, it was to avoid them while he searched for the Hypnomaster. Wiping out monsters and animals the way he had in the Shionel Dungeon would merely drain his energy for no real purpose, even if he did have the means.


    He was sure that his Phantomind Void technique would work on the hos but it was not a viable long-term solution. Furthermore, he figured it was best that he didn''t rely on any particrly mind-consuming techniques. In an environment where mental stamina waspromised, mental energy was something that he ought to avoid spending.


    Another thing that worried him was the fact that because of the mental energy loss, the time taken for mental energy to be restored was quite long, longer than normal. That included necessary sleep time to rejuvenate the brain.


    Rui heaved a sigh as he made himself, as one could be, inside the little hole that he had carved for himself inside the gigantic boulder. He heaved a tired sigh as he closed his eyes, drifting away almost instantly.


    His mind jumped at the opportunity to rest, entering a deep slumber very rapidly. Even the part of his mind that was trained to remain alert even when sleeping was more subdued, even if still active. Rui refused to go to sleep without knowing that his body and Heart would awaken at the first hint of danger. N?velD(ram)a.?rg owns this content.


    Regardless, many an hour flew by before he finally woke up, much more rxed and fresh.


    ''Well, it appears that I''m not quite dead yet.'' Rui mused, getting up before taking out some things from his utility belt. One of the things that Martial Artists carried with them was a means to cleanse themselves without having to make themselves vulnerable by relying on an unknown source of water in a dangerous ce or making themselves more vulnerable while they cleansed themselves.


    A simple and convenient tool that allowed him to rub off any and all sweat and dust across his body rather conveniently. While it was not as satisfying as a shower or a bathtub, it got the job done.


    Rui immediately continued his journey to the center of the Hypnonarak forest. It was a simple objective and the best way for him to find the Hypnomaster at the moment. It was believed that the Hypnomaster resides within the core of the forest, even if he avoided the exact center.


    The probability of him being found randomly by chance simply rose remarkably the further away from the center he was, for the density of Martial Artists in the forest increased exponentially the further away from the center he was. It wouldn''t matter how much his home migrated across the forest, even if the actual number of Martial Artists that made it into the inner section of the forest wasn''t all that great, each Martial Artists possessed superhuman senses to varying levels.


    Thus in order to maximize the difficulty of finding him, he needed to stay within some distance of the center of the forest.


    Rui walked for quite some distance. He took every step cautiously as the strain on his mind and the odor of narcotic drugs rose significantly. So much so that even he felt like he was being affected by the drugs at hand.


    That was astonishing considering that he was a Martial Senior, but it exined why being a Martial Senior did not increase the probability of finding the Martial Master all that much.


    One thing that Rui was constantly mindful of was his food supply. The food pills that he had stockpiled were quite handy and nutrition-dense, but they were insufficient to sustain him the entirety of the long journey to the center of the Great Forest of Hypnonarak.


    Since that was the case, Rui needed to start hunting soon enough. He didn''t even want to wait for his reserve of food pills to finish. The reason for that was that it would be quite convenient if he was unable to hunt for some reason. It was best to save the easy and convenient source of food for when he genuinely needed it when there were other options at hand.


    This was especially true since he had be a remarkablypetent and flexible assassin. Although there were crucial differences between hunting and assassination, there was enough of an ovep that the skills of one transferred over to the other.


    It wasn''t long after he had begun traveling that he decided to procure some food. Thankfully, the information that he had gotten from the Beggar''s Sect distinguished which of the small critters and other animals were safe to eat and which one was something that he ought to have avoided even as a Martial Senior.


    Once that was done, it was but a simple matter to hunt them and take them out effortlessly with the Phantomind Void and a Mighty Roar sh st. The only issue was that he needed to fulfill his voracious appetite of a Martial Senior, requiring him to hunt much more than he had expected.


    He normally ate food pills, and they were universalized dietary supplements avable both in shops and stores as well as in most ces that served food. They usually cost as much as a hundred normal meals, though.


    He didn''t have those here, however, but it didn''t particrly matter since he did have an abundance of avable prey that he could target to eat. He made do with simply roasting them over a fire to cook them, leaving a giant pile of bones behind him when he was finally finished.


    The difference in the size of the meat he ate versus the size of his stomach were quiterge, yet he hardly felt heavy.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1426 Giant

    <h4>Chapter 1426 Giant</h4>


    As Rui continued traveling deeper into the forest, he came across some truly bewildering sights.


    ''Is that a tree?'' His eyebrows furrowed in surprise. ''No, that''s a nt. But it''s huge.''


    Up ahead in distance were almost entirely ordinary nts, with the most ssical stem, and leaves and a fresh shade of green. The only abnormal part about it was that it was enormous, asrge as a building. Furthermore, behind it was a huge sea of sea of giant des of grass.


    What Rui found incredible was the fact that there were actual trees past the bed of grass. A forest of trees that resembled a magnified version of the one he was in spread out in the distance.


    ''Damn.'' Rui couldn''t help but gape at the sight. The flora didn''t appear to be the only thing that had been magnified in the distance. He could sense that even the fauna had grown proportionally in the distance.


    Furthermore, thend seemed to depress downwards further into the forest, almost as if trying topensate for the elevated height of the forest.


    Rui had heard of this ce. The information provided by the Beggar''s Sect mentioned something about a Forest of Giants. The information that it covered was scarce, indicating that there weren''t enough reports on it for the Beggar''s Sect to provide him with information from.


    It was a section of the Great Forest of the Hypnonarak that couldn''t be avoided allegedly. This meant that one could be sure that one was going to run into it if one was trying to reach the core of the Hypnonarak.


    Rui felt like a little critter or arger insect inparison to therge forest. Many of the creatures within the Forest of Giants were clearly of the same species as those within the normal parts of the forest that Rui was upying at the moment.


    He could see giant naraceets in the distance that moved in manners that were identical to their smaller counterparts. Furthermore, based on the size of the creatures, the average creature was probably an Apprentice-level beast at a bare minimum.


    Rui heaved a deep breath before taking a step into the giant forest with an expression of apprehension and curiosity. One thing that immediately struck him was how much stronger the mental consumption.


    ''Interesting,'' He mused with curiosity. ''Is that because the flora has grownrger, or because of a greater presence of an esoteric substance that consumes bioelectrical energy?''


    Of course, there were a myriad of different possibilities, but the differences were meaningless and trivial, they were represented within the two possibilities that Rui did choose to take into consideration.


    He simply stood there for a few minutes, taking in the novel existence of being small rtive to most other significant beings of the forest.


    He found himself to be part of the myriad of insect life in the forest. Because insects possessed cognition that was quite little rtive to their size, they were spared from the forest''s mental consumption for the most part.


    They served as the food source for the small critters that had evolved to be able to avoid mental consumption. Unfortunately, he was now an insect in the eyes of the many creatures that inhabited the forest.


    He found it amusing that many werepelled to look down on him due to his size. He immediately lowered his Mind Mask, unleashing the aura of a Martial Senior.


    Instantly, a lot of insects and other creatures in the surrounding area scurried away.


    ''I wonder how the Hypnomaster created such a strange forest.'' Rui found himself thinking for the umpteenth time. He had to admit, that for the most part, he had found his journey into the forest to be quite the exotic experience. It was a preliminary sample experience of the Beast Domain.


    Of course, he also knew that the Beast Domain was far too diverse and vast for it to be summed up by a single experience of a niche kind of environment and ecology.


    Regardless, it was experiences like these that reminded him how different this world was from Earth. The more time he spent in this world, the more he learned that there were little limits to what was possible and what could be.


    Inparison, the human domain was less awe-inspiring and wonderous. If there was one thing that did not change from this world to thest was that human greed and fear shaped human civilization. A race for wealth, territory, resources, power, and influence created a world that Rui was all too familiar with from Earth.


    He had distanced himself from it in his previous life. Yet in this life, he found himself entangled with matters of the human domain far more than he had with those of the Beast Domain.


    ''Maybe I should change that.'' He wondered. The Beast Domain was more dangerous, but it probably was a lot simpler than the human civilization. Society wasplex and even Martial Seniors needed to be careful even if they had no reason to fear ny percent of human civilization.


    Yet the times that they did could be quiteplicated, especially if one chose to wade the swamp that was known as politics. Inparison, the kill-or-be-killed nature of the beast domain was a lot simpler, even if a lot more dangerous.


    He paused for a moment as he spotted a creature eyeing him deeply with a glint of hunger.


    A serpent.


    The creature was enormouspared to him. Furthermore, not only was it not intimidated by his passive aura, it''s own intrinsic threat level matched his own.


    ''A senior-level beast, huh?''?Rui''s eyes narrowed, as he crouched, ready to engage at any moment.


    Yet, the moment had already arrived. Content provided by N?velDrama.Org.


    "Hiss!" The snakeshed at Rui with a shing lunge, incinerating an enormous amount of air with the sheer velocity of its charge. Snakes possessed extraordinarily fast striking speeds, putting this one''s velocity particrly high even within the Senior Realm.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1427 Giant II

    <h4>Chapter 1427 Giant II</h4>


    If not for Rui''s subconscious reflexive emergency activation of the Martial Heart, his ordinary reactions wouldn''t have been able to perceive the lunge.


    BADUMP!


    Time slowed down to a crawl from his perspective as an invisibly fast motion was reduced to a normal attack.


    BOOM!!!


    The titanic momentum of the serpent crashed into empty grass. The sheer power of the attack was so high that it sted past the surface, leaving behind a hole that could amodate arge hill.


    Yet its attention had already shifted, its body turned as it faced Rui who had managed to avoid it cleanly as he circled around the creature observing it with sharp eyes.


    ''Hm, an incredibly fast lunge. It would be dangerous to try and take that head-on. it''s not just the speed but also the fact that it''s venomous.'' Rui noted as he studied the beast. He had not missed the two fangs that precisely aimed at him despite the small of a target he was.


    Its body coiled in turns, gathering energy as its muscles tightened and tensed, ready to propel the snake forward at titanic velocities.


    "Hiss!"


    RUMBLE!


    The very world around them shook with the sheer momentum of the serpent. Itshed out with a zing velocity as its mouth opened unveiling ferocious fangs that threatened to sink the two menacing fangs into Rui''s body.


    And yet...


    WHOOSH


    Rui merely leaped into the air, avoiding the attack altogether. Yet he was no longer content with merely dodging.


    THWOOM THWOOM THWOOM!


    Heunched a barrage of Mighty Roar sh sts at the retreating serpent midair even as he put some distance between himself and his opponent.


    "Hiss!" The snake shook as the powerful attacks crashed into its body, breaking and tearing its scales as they battered and cut the flesh. The angry creature coiled again, ready to strike.


    Yet Rui had no intention of even allowing it to attack.


    ''You shouldn''t attack prey that you can''t reach,'' Rui mused as he ensured that he was well outside the snake''s range of attack. ''Shame you won''t be alive to learn from your mistakes, oh well.'' N?velD(ram)a.?rg owns this content.


    The snake btedly realized that Rui was actually a flight-capable creature, the type that the snake tended to avoid due to the maneuvering disadvantage. Yet it was toote for it to undo its choice.


    THWOOM THWOOM THWOOM THWOOM!


    Rui rained down a maelstrom of attacks one after the other, mercilessly battering the poor creature as it began bleeding profusely from many orifices across the entirety of the snake''s body.


    Snakes weren''t built with defense and toughness in mind, they were incredibly fast and agile in their attacks, allowing them tosh out and sink their fangs into the target in the tiniest fraction of a second. The attack happened so quickly that most prey would be entirely unable to react in time.


    Martial Seniors didn''t fall into that category, unfortunately, or at least Rui didn''t. Not only could he fight the snake head-on with Primordial Instinct or predictions, but he had chosen the cleanest and the most suited fighting style topletely crush the snake with absolutely no possibility of victory.


    ''It''s so easy to adapt to beasts and monsters that I could do it even without the VOID algorithm.'' Rui mused.


    Because their minds were not sophisticated enough, theirbat styles werergely set in stone by their biology. That meant that there were very standard temtes for defeating a species. They had pronounced strengths and weaknesses and it was boringly easy for Rui to see through them and instantly figure out the best counter to them.


    It wasn''t long before the snake perished under a hail of powerful attacks that it could neither defend nor avoid.


    ''Alright, time to eat you up to replenish my Martial Heart.'' Rui mused as he returned to his normal state. The Martial Heart was a reservoir of immense umted energy. It demanded a lot of sustenance whenever it was used.


    What followed was another long session eating session as he dissected and roasted snake meat.


    ''Oof,'' Rui crinkled his nose as he nced at the fangs up close as they leaked some of the snake''s venom. ''That''s a powerful anti-coagnt toxin. It''s a good thing I didn''t let that anywhere near me.''


    He would start bleeding from all orifices if he let that enter his body, he would probably die very quickly if not for potions and Weaving Blood. yet as long as he could avoid the snake''s most powerful weapon. Its offense was not a threat at all. Its blunt force was not that much of a problem even without the Metabody System.


    ''Humans are much moreplex and tricky.'' Rui mused. ''If not for the fact that the adaptive evolution model has not been adapted to beasts, they would be far too easy to adapt to him.''


    It was easy for him to develop strategies and tactics for dealing with specific creatures, the problem was with countering every individual move that a beast made with the perfect individual counter. He had yet to ovee that problem, and that was probably something that he would need to fix before he became a Martial Master.


    He was deeply concerned about breaking through with a wed Martial Mind and then taking forever to fix that w.


    ''First let''s find the Hypnomaster, one thing at a time.'' Rui shook his head, before heading deeper into the forest after consuming his meal. The remaining corpse meat was bound to attract predators and scavengers, so he quickly moved on, heading deeper into the forest.


    He had long entered the depths of the forest, making sure to avoid as many creatures as possible. If he used his Martial Heart, then he would have to go through the pain of hunting and eating whatever made him activate it, being bogged down once more. This was something that he would have liked to avoid.


    Yet his eyes widened with shock as he came across something truly shocking.


    "Is that... a giant human?" He murmured, shellshocked as he came across a giant corpse on the ground.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1428 Departure

    <h4>Chapter 1428 Departure</h4>


    ''...What in the world?'' Rui narrowed his eyes as he approached the giant corpse. It was a giant male corpse that was approaching the size of a small hill, which was absolutely astounding. With just a single nce, his mind had alreadyputed several anomalies besides its size.


    ''The visual signs of decay don''t match the expected smell profile.'' Rui immediately noticed.


    The flesh had long sung and begun eroding in a sickly green and ck, the teeth and the nails had already begun falling out, which indicated several weeks had passed. But the odor was much more tame and not as overwhelming as he would expect from a rotting corpse asrge as the one before him.


    ''That''s not all,'' Rui sky-walked to get a better perspective. ''Why haven''t the scavengers taken to feasting on this body when it had first died?''


    Rui instantly noticed that the corpse was not mangled or torn apart like he would have expected from the scavengers. That was an inconsistency. Property ? of N?velDrama.Org.


    ''They either couldn''t or didn''t.'' Rui concluded, before ncing back at the corpse. ''The question that begs itself the most, however, is what the size of the corpse means.''


    Nothing in the intelligence supplied by the Beggar''s Sect indicated the existence of a giant human species native to the Great Forest of Hypnonarak.


    ''No, in the first ce, I have never heard of a human variant species at all ever, especially one so big. A species that big would be an existential threat if it had the same psychogic traits and the fertility of the human species.'' Rui sharply analyzed. ''Furthermore, the Great Forest of Hypnonarak is an artificially created danger zone. If this were a natural native species to the Beast Domain, then it would mean that the Hypnomaster brought it along with him.''


    Unless Rui somehow had had a massive blindspot and some just missed all information pertaining to this human species.


    ''No, that''s absurdly unlikely as such a species would be an enormous threat if it were a sized-up version of the human species. There is almost no way I could possibly miss such a thing.'' Rui narrowed his eyes. ''Especially given that this man was certainly an intelligent being. If he was a different species, it would mean the entire species was as intelligent as normal humans. They would be an enormous threat''


    Rui had already deduced that this man was an intelligent being based on hints of a sophisticated tattoo that was nearly erased. It would mean the species was intelligent if they were a different species. The standard human of this species would be much stronger than Martial Apprentices possibly even Martial Squires, and if such an enormous species had Martial Artists then...


    ''Then we would be doomed. We aren''t doomed, therefore the probability of this being a separate species is extremely low,'' Rui mused. ''Thus the next most reasonable conclusion is...''


    That this was a person of his own species who had experienced some phenomenon that made him grow muchrger. He had already concluded the existence of a connection to the Forest of Giants the moment heid eyes on the corpse and the probability of that simply rose the more he observed and analyzed the corpse.


    ''The fact that the Beggar''s Sect was unaware of this informs me of a lot.'' Rui mused. ''I can safely conclude that this was most certainly an extremely rare fluke phenomenon.''


    The Beggar''s Sect gathered intelligence from nearly every facet of human civilization which made their intelligence-gathering capabilities remarkably high. Thus Rui could deduce almost as much information from theirck of information on this phenomenon as he would have had they actually possessed knowledge on the absurdity that he was witnessing.


    ''I can conclude that nobody who has seen it has made it back out of the forest,'' Rui deduced. ''If they had, then they would have most likely made a report to somebody. If they were searching for the Hypnomaster and were independent like me, then they would have no reason to return at this point in their journey in the forest.''


    That deduction told him much about the limits of raiders and the difficulties thaty ahead. Rui had inferred a lot of information from the fact that this corpse had been rotting for a month and nobody knew about it.


    ''Still, that doesn''t answer what happened to this man for him to be so big.'' Rui mused. ''However, the probability that it is connected to the size of the Forest of Giants is high, which...''


    Rui quickly essed the documents that the Beggar''s Sect had provided him on the Forest of Giants. The Forest of Giants was asrge as it was not due to design from the Hypnomaster, but rather due to a ring section of the foresting into contact with some powerful esoteric substances deep underground with its roots.


    The esoteric substance had apparently caused the massive expansion of life leading to the Forest of Death. The phenomenon was simr to dungeonification, however, it had taken this route instead of dungeonification.


    Rui thought back to one of the floors in the Shionel Dungeon where an entire town had been swept up by the dungeonification, wiping out most humans except for a handful who managed to survive the poisoned food of the dungeon warping their bodies and minds.


    ''Is this a simr case?'' Rui narrowed his eyes. ''No, if eating anything in the Forest of Giants caused people to overbloat and die or something like that, then it would be well known to avoid doing such a thing.''


    All logical considerations pointed to this event being a fluke or a random event that had caused the expansion and death of the male.


    ''It was the other way around most likely,'' Rui realized. ''This person may very well have undergone mass expansion after death rather than before. If the mass expansion does not increase the amount of organic matter despite increasing mass, then it could exin why scavengers haven''t feasted on it, or why its smell profile doesn''t match its actual dposition.''


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1429 Lava Golem

    <h4>Chapter 1429 Lava Golem</h4>


    The exnation made sense, but unfortunately, he didn''t have any evidence or proof either way. But it certainly made him feel more concerned about remaining in the Forest of Giants. He didn''t want to trigger whatever caused this to happen, regardless of how low the probability it was.


    ''I''ll have to make sure I leave the forest as soon as possible,'' Rui narrowed his eyes before activating his Martial Heart.


    BADUMP!


    This was one of the few times that he could approve of using the Martial Heart travel. His body quivered with power as streaks of red lines spread across his body. Heunched himself into motion, propelling himself across the forest at incredible velocities.


    Every step he took generated an inferno of mes with the sheer friction the speed caused as he shed past the giant trees and vegetation. At that speed, it wasn''t too long before he reached crossed the Forest of Giants, and reached the inner section of the Great Forest of Hypnonarak.


    Very few Martial Artists made it this far. The reason for that was that most of them could not maintain their minds and thoughts for too long and suffered from the many mental detriments of the Great Forest of Hypnonarak. A good part of Rui''s progress was thanks to the fact that he didn''t need to be too bothered about his mind failing due to all the consumption of mental energy.


    He had plenty of it.


    Yet when he came out on the other side of the Forest of Giants, the mental suppression merely continued to increase.


    Yet he could only widen his eyes with shock when he came out on the other side. Gone was the beautiful scenery of the forest that he had had the pleasure of experiencing before. An apocalyptic scenery of ash andva greeted him on the other side as he avoided stepping on arge stream of blistering hotva.


    It wasn''t that theva could hurt him, especially with his Martial Heart bolstering his cell walls by elerating the metabolism that produced them, but even then, he wanted to avoid any harmful esoteric substances that could be contained in it. The entire environment became hostile as a result.


    RUMBLE


    Thend beneath him shook slightly in a periodic fashion. Rui wondered if some seismic activity had caused this entire area to be annihted byva. How else could trees be reduced to ashy dead trunks?


    That was when he turned his vision into the distance, staring at a hill formation that oozedva.


    He didn''t realize it wasn''t a hill until it shifted in its ce, readjusting forfort. Its respiration caused its body to expand and contract a little, causing thend around it to shiver.


    ''Is that... ava golem?'' Rui gaped. ''You''re telling me it wiped out this entire region with itsva?''


    Rui stared at it with a mixture of incredulity and awe. He had read about this strange species made up of rock andva, but only now had he actually beheld one in real life.


    Lava golems were creatures that were almost entirely inscrutable to humans. Nobody understood how a pile of rocks coulde together and be alive and conscious. The only thing that was understood about these esoteric creatures was the fact that they generatedva within their body by crushing rocks together, heating and melting them with friction, and then spewing them out.


    Because their bodies constantly producedva, they constantly needed to consume rocks as a result to sustain their beings, yet they sought out all kinds of energy-high things that could increase the amount of energy in their being. This content ? N?v/elDr(a)m/a.Org.


    That included powerful esoteric substances, powerful monsters, and, of course, powerful Martial Artists. Suddenly, the creature''s eyes opened.


    Its eyes were rocks, but its pupils were burning embers. Rui could hear rocks grinding at its eyes turned towards him.


    ''Ah shit,'' Rui turned off his Martial Heart immediately, hoping to not attract too much more attention, but s, things didn''t work out the way he hoped for them.


    Martial Artists were among the few beings that had such an enormous amount of power concentrated within such a small body. The sheer energy density readings of a Martial Senior with an active Martial Heart must have been higher than anything else it had sensed in monsters or animals.


    RRRRAAAARRRRGHRGR!


    Its roar sounded closer to a volcanic eruption than an actual voice. Yet Rui''s expression sharpened as he reactivated his Martial Heart.


    He was going to need it.


    BOOM!


    A massiveva eruption exploded from within its mouth, spewing an enormous wave ofva that would have ttened a city.


    Yet Rui was unperturbed.


    He inhaled deeply, causing the very skies to quiver, before releasing his technique. Several Mighty Roar sh sts burst forward, sting enormous holes in the tsunami ofva.


    BOOM BOOM BOOM!


    The golem roared as even moreva began to spew from its body from multiple orifices. Its arms dug into the ground, gathering enormous of rock and directly absorbing it through its limbs.


    Apparently, it didn''t need to eat rock through its mouth to consume it. Yet Rui had no intentions of leaving it be.


    He rushed forward at top speed activating Gale Force Breathing and Outer Convergence, zing across the battlefield within a single moment. The verynd behind him cracked and broke under the sheer weight of his steps.


    BOOM!!!


    Rui threw his most powerful attack with his full power as the Flowing Canon crashed into the golem with the full power of Outer Convergence, Adamant Reforging, and Reverberating Lance, as well as the entirety of the momentum that he rued crashed, crashed into his target.


    RUMBLE!


    The world around them shook as the sheer impact of the attack sted away the entire golem to smithereens.


    Rui heaved a sigh as he deactivated his Martial Heart immediately. "It''s a shame I had to fight him. I can''t even eat him to grow stronger. Tsk, I should have deactivated my Martial Heart before I exited the Forest of Giants."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1430 Lava Ecosystem

    <h4>Chapter 1430 Lava Ecosystem</h4>


    Rui found it particrly stupid that theva golem even bothered trying to eat him in the first ce. This content ? N?v/elDr(a)m/a.Org.


    ''The power of the Martial Heart is not something he could harness even if he ate me.'' Rui tutted. ''It is vast reserves of biochemical potential energy that can only be harnessed with human metabolism and the Martial Path. You''re not going to be able to harness it just by eating Martial Artists.''


    It was what separated Martial Artists from monsters and beasts. The source of the power of the former did note from their mass or volume. The source of their power was the various untapped potentials that every living being possessed, a potential that only humans had the sophistication of mind to unlock.


    It was why Martial Artists could fight beasts and monsters that were astronomicallyrger than them and stille away victorious as Rui had. Martial Artists had too many advantages over too many unwieldy beasts. Most of the continent was part of the human domain, and only the core and the central sections of the continent were part of the Beast Domain along with many secondary patches and streaks here and there.


    Rui heaved a sigh before forging on forward through the ashyva territory. One thing he realized he was wrong about was the assumption that a singleva golem was responsible for all of this.


    Apparently, he was wrong. The entire region was filled withva golems.


    ''Tsk, I can''t afford to get into a battle with every single one of them.'' Rui tutted. ''For now, I''ll avoid using the Martial Heart and use the lesser Phantomind Void technique to avoid garnering attention.''


    He quickly activated the technique, misdirecting the golems away from him as he briskly crossed the entirety of theva forest. One thing that surprised him was that the vegetation grew to be more and more dense and alive as he passed through this territory.


    Trees, shrubs, and even grass started to form again in thevadennd. Rui''s face shed with surprise as he studied the trees that not only seemed to survive despite theva but also actively seemed to revel in it.


    His eyes widened with shock as he saw streaks and small streams ofva flowing up the barks and the wood of the trees all the way from the roots.


    ''The trees are consuming theva!''


    He hadn''t heard of any flora that was capable of absorbingva as a part of the nutrients it needed to sustain its existence. But at this point, he was used to being surprised by the fantasies of this world.


    However, if there were species of flora that requiredva to survive, then Rui could understand how these trees could flourish in an environment like theva domain of the Great Forest of Hypnonarak.


    The most annoying part of these otherwise incredible species of flora was that they still consumed mental energy. Rui groaned as he felt the tug on his mind, weakening him minutely with every passing second and minute. As expected, although the Hypnomaster seemed to prefer the diversity of life, the theme of the forest had not yet changed.


    Only someone strong and powerful in mind could possibly survive the sheer amount of mental energy drained throughout the journey to the center, a curse that only grew more powerful as time passed.


    ''However, it makes sense,'' Rui realized. ''The golems do not have organic electrical phenomenon sustained by biochemical metabolism. They too would be drained had they possessed such a biology.''


    The longer he traveled the more he came across a rich and biodiverse ecosystem that was centered around the abundantva and magma that theva golems regrly generated and spewed out. Rui couldn''t make much progress in understanding the biophysics and biochemistry of such vegetation.


    Thevaden biodiversity was a sight to see. Every flora lifeform wasva-stridden across their trunks, stems, branches, and leaves. It appeared that these lifeforms no longer relied on sr energy seeing as he couldn''t spot any chlorophyll. Instead, they werergely ck to contain as much head as could be harnessed.


    He could sense small reservoirs of gatheredva within each of them, being used to heat up a variety of different substances and chemical reactions with their heat. It suggested that the principle was to employva as a source of heat rather than directly as fuel.


    Perhaps it could generate biochemical energy from great sources of heat. Rui could imagine an endothermic reaction that required a lot of heat to produce a chemical product simr to the human ATP, the molecule responsible for all human energy, that could generate energy in a simr manner.


    He had a sinking suspicion he was on the right train. Unfortunately, his background in biochemistry and organic chemistry was woefully shallow. Although his enhanced mind allowed him perfect recall of all the knowledge he had ever known in his previous life, he had never delved into the field all that much.


    Regardless, he had no doubt that the strange and magical materials and substances of this world undoubtedly allowed for such a thing to be possible in the first ce. He was rtively certain that such lifeforms would have been impossible back on Earth.


    Regardless, as fascinating as all of this was for his mind, it was not very amusing to his body that could not consumeva and magma to survive. He wouldn''t be able to eat a single thing within this domain to fill up his stomach.


    ''Not good.'' He had already used his Martial Heart twice, and the expended energy would need to be fully restored.


    His body would immediately begin the process of restoring the Martial Heart from his conventional stamina if needed, thus not having a source of food after using the Martial Heart extensively was not a good idea.


    He picked up the pace, bursting through theva forest at speeds that far exceeded that of even sound, weaving through trees, and rocks, at top speed, uncaring for theva that harmlessly sshed on his attire and flesh.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1431 Aberrant

    1431 Aberrant


    Theva ecosystem was an incredibly interesting experience, Rui would have even taken the time to study the biology of harnessingva in other circumstances. The issue was that theva ecosystem could not feed him. It was unfortunate, but he could neither eat rock norva. His digestion system was far stronger than that of a human in every parameter, but not to the degree that he could digest inorganic materials and substances without care.


    He also wanted to avoid using his Martial Heart any longer than he needed to, thus he had been carefully avoiding any and allva golems in the area through Seismic Mapping, traveling across the area at a rapid pace.


    One thing that Rui needed to be careful about was the fact that there were little to no ways in which he could possibly handle any more power than he already had.


    RUMBLE


    Rui froze suddenly. Loud warning rms rang in his head as his Martial Heart activated before he could even react out of subconscious reflex.


    BOOM!!


    An enormous tsunami of white-hotva erupted before Rui''s eyes.


    It dwarfed a mountain, so much so that Rui couldn''t even see the sky. Yet it was incredibly swift, so much so that had he been a Martial Squire, he would have died. Yet thanks to his subconscious Senior-level reflex, he managed to activate his Martial Heart in time as his mind kicked into gear.


    Rather than undoing his progress by going as far as to run out of the enormous range of theva attack, he instead leaped towards it, preparing a Mighty Roar sh st.


    THWOOM!


    The attack surged forward swiftly, sting an enormous hole in theva tsunami. Rui swiftly jumped through it, securing an easier escape route from the attack. He would rather have avoided taking that attack, given how absurdly hot it was.


    In fact...


    ''This isn''t justva.'' Rui''s eyes widened as he turned his attention from it to the source of the attack.


    Only to grow more surprised.


    In the distance, there were enormous bouldersden withva.


    And yet none of them were intact.


    Atop a mountain of broken dead golem corpses was a single small figure. A single humanoid figure made up of rocks andva stood atop all of them. Yet what truly surprised Rui was the size of the creature.


    It was notrge.


    ''It''s human-sized.'' Rui''s eyes narrowed. ''How did a human-sized golem destroy all those other gigantic golems?"


    Its color was different from the norm as well. It didn''t resemble the rocks that the others were made up of. It was jet ck in sharp contrast to theva so hot that sparkled white.


    Rui grew immensely curious.


    And yet, so did the golem. Its neck creaked as it turned towards Rui, tilting its head in interest to the creature that survived its attack with its strange rock eyes. Rui didn''t even bother turning his Martial Heart off, the creature had seen his little maneuver.


    ''Besides, this one is too intelligent for such a trick to work.'' Rui narrowed his eyes as gauged the creature''s interest in him. He was able to sense thought behind its rocky eyes and blinding pupils.


    Suddenly, its body shifted, creaking asva boiled and bubbled within its core. Rui''s eyes widened at the gesture.


    ''Strong''


    His expression grew grave as he understood what the creature conveyed.


    ''Power:''


    ''Energy.''


    ''Hungry!''


    ...Eat.''


    A glint of predatory bloodlust sparked within the depth of its fiery eyes. Rui had mastered Fauna Flow many years ago on a whim, and it came to be of use in the strongest of times and ces.


    The air grew taut even as it boiled.


    Literally. The creature was so hot that the air crackled and sparked. Theva on its body glowed like a shlight, reaching extraordinary temperatures, sparking and crackling with lightning.


    ''That''s not justva.'' Rui took his neutral stance. ''...That''s sma.''


    sma was the fourth state of matter generally attained when gases reached a temperature so hot that the very atoms began shredding and tearing apart into a cloud of hyper-energetic charged particles. Yet before Rui could even take a proper look at the state it was in, it was toote.


    RUMBLE


    The ground shook as the creature''s body began glowing.


    ''Damn! Rui cursed as heshed out, leaping at the golem with such furious velocity that the very air around him ignited into an inferno. The ground broke underneath the weight of his leap as the very skies recoiled from the massive sonic booms that he left in his wake.


    His fist blurred, surging forward as he initiated a powerful Flowing Canon.


    And yet...


    BOOM!!


    An enormous eruption of white-hot matter sted out from the golem just before Rui''s fist reached it. The sma andva surged forth, washing Rui with its enormous power.


    And yet.


    CRACK CRACK CRACK!


    Rui''s fist crashed into the creature, crumbling a huge chunk of the rock into pure sand with the sheer power of his attack.


    And yet he was not unharmed himself.


    "Rgh!" He leaped away grimacing at the third-degree burns that enveloped his entire body, leaving him smoking. ''It''s far quicker than I expected! Other golems are practically statuespared to it.''


    He hadn''t expected it to be able to not only react to his approach but also release an attack before Rui could get in his. Yet he knew that he couldn''t give any time for the golem to gain its bearings.


    based on his observations of the previous golem, these creatures had immense stamina, while he didn''t. That already set the win conditions for bothbatants.


    His body had already begun healing his burns rather quickly, there was nothing to wait for.


    WHOOSH!


    He sprinted forward with Gale Force Breathing, elerating forward at tremendous speeds.


    Yet the creature appeared to be more prepared this time. It''s body began glowing before Rui could even reach halfway through, releasing yet another enormous eruption in Rui''s direction.


    BOOM!


    And yet...


    WHOOSH!


    began glowing before Rui could even reach halfway through, releasing yet another enormous eruption in Rui''s direction.


    BOOM!


    And yet...


    WHOOSH!


    <strong></strong>


    This chapter upload first at  Content provided by N?velDrama.Org.

 Chapter 1432 Crucible

    <h4>Chapter 1432 Crucible</h4>


    Dodging was a basic part of humanbat and Rui had no qualms of using it against the golem. However, he got the feeling that the concept was slightly new to the golem as it didn''t react the way one would if one were ustomed to this foundational basic maneuver.


    Generally, long-range Martial Artists maintained some measures against the capacity to dodge. Whether it came down to increasing the speed of their attacks or increasing the number or area of effect. However, it was clear to Rui that the golem had yet to make such measures.


    ''....despite being intelligent. It can be deduced that it hasn''t been alive for very long, or hasn''t faced any opponent other than golems.'' Rui concluded.


    Golems were far too unwieldy andrge to engage in any amount of evasion, especially from a smaller target.


    WHOOSH!


    Rui evaded another wave of the fieryva-sma mixture with Wind Breathing before racing forward towards the golem, closing a bit more of the distance before the creature sted away another attack.


    The ground beneath them sunk as the creature began consuming more rocks from thend to fuel its attacks.


    Even as he dodged the creature''s volcanic attacks, he studied its body.


    ''The damage that I inflicted on its body is already gone.'' Rui narrowed his eyes as he side-stepped yet another volcanic eruption.


    He hadnded his heaviest attack which certainly had crumbled the esoteric ore rocks in its body to sand in a single impact.


    ''The issue is that it restored itself by melting the sand to rock.'' Rui noted. ''An interesting way to use its heat to heal from damage.''


    It was stronger, faster, and even more resilient than ordinary golems while also much smaller, making it much harder to target.


    ''It''s like an evolved version of ordinary golems.'' Rui realized. ''Is this a statistical anomaly, or is this some sort of growth path for ordinary golems?''


    He didn''t know.


    Unfortunately, he wouldn''t be able to find out any time soon.


    He had already used his Martial Heart twice before, so he hadn''t even gone into this fight at full power. Furthermore, not only did golems have great stamina, but this one seemed particrly adept at absorbing its environment to st him with attacks.


    Something needed to give.


    And something did.


    "FUUUUU!" Rui exhaled forcefully and deeply as he activated Void Forestep. This metabody was the only one that could not be used without the VOID algorithm, which made it harder to use than the other metabodies, however, it was also the least taxing out of all of them and the most longsting out of all of them.


    Theva golem seemed taken aback as Rui ran literal circles around it at speeds that it was clearly unable to even perceive, for its attacks had all but stopped.


    BAM BAM BAM BAM!!!


    Rui shot concentrated attacks impacting a single point to inflict damage as deep into it rather than wide. He had already learned from his previous mistake and had adapted to negate its strengths.


    BOOM!


    CRACK!


    A powerful blow from him exposed the innards of the golem; a massive crucible. He had already figured out the mechanisms of how golems generated heat to heat up rocks intova, and now, sma. This content ? N?v/elDr(a)m/a.Org.


    It was pressure. The strange geobiology of the golems most likely included esoteric substances that caused the rocks to push and crush against each other with immense force. If the force was great enough, it would reduce the rocks at the center to smithereens and eventually sand before heating it up until it began melting.


    That would exin why golems seemed to permanently and passively generate and releaseva and magma. It would exin why the entireva-stridden region he was in at the moment never seemed to run out ofva.


    The cores of their bodies had be powerful crucibles that didn''t fall much behind genuine active volcanoes in terms of power despite their smaller size.


    ''Incredible. And yet...''


    It was not enough.


    BOOM!


    Rui sted another hole into its core with a concentrated blow, creating another release valve for all the heat and pressure to escape.


    ''You can''t generate the high heat with high pressure if there is an escape route for all that heat to be expelled into the environment.''


    It was simr to all the air in a balloon rushing out the moment a hole was poked into the balloon. The crucible needed to be a closed system where it could apply immense force from all directions.


    Once that was disrupted, it could no longer generate heat, making it impossible to spew outrge amounts ofva.


    Rui circled around the golem at lightning speeds, sting it with powerful concentrated attacks, damaging the crucible at the core of its body, crippling its offense.


    Without itsva, it had nothing.


    BAM BAM BAM!!!


    A myriad of concentrated blows that dug deep crashed into the golem. Rui focused on cleaving apart the dense and heavy tough material that constituted its body.


    CRACK!


    A powerful kick literally chopped the golem into halves, reducing it to rubble.


    Rui copsed to the ground once he confirmed that the battle had been won, exhausted. On top of using yet another substantial amount of the Martial Heart for the third time, he had also used the Godspeed technique, tiring himself out even more.


    He quickly pulled out a dense food pill quickly consuming it with a little relief, before ncing at the golem rubble beside him.


    "If you just knew martial arts, let alone Martial Art, you''d be extraordinarily strong," Rui murmured.


    The golem was that strong based on its intrinsic ability alone. Rui couldn''t even imagine how powerful it would be had it been actually skilled atbat. Though he was grateful that it wasn''t skilled, he would be dead if it possessed even a fraction of the skill and technique that he did.


    His mind immediately dwelled back on the oddities surrounding this particrva golem and why it was so much different from the rest of them. There was much that he didn''t know.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1433 Evolution

    <h4>Chapter 1433 Evolution</h4>


    It was superior to other golems in a qualitative sense. It wasn''t just bigger and meaner than other golems, it possessed much greater power for much fewer ws and limitations.


    Furthermore, based on the insights that Rui had logically deduced and inferred, he had gotten a much greater understanding of how it hade to be than when he first saw it.


    ''Smelting.'' Rui mused. ''Based on the inferred model of its geobiology, it most likely smelts a Senior-level esoteric substance from rocks and ores that it heats and melts in its crucible, before integrating that substance into its body.''


    That would exin how the golem came to possess a body made up of this substance. The process of smelting was something used by cksmiths and mass production factories to extract desires substances from a mixture or an ore, relying on the differences in density of the melted ore and the desired substance.


    If the golem used smelting as a way of giving itself a tougher body, then it would exin how it came about to be.


    ''It would also exin why it shed away its giantrge body.'' Rui realized. ''In order to heat something by relying on the pressure generated by contact force, the substance doing the pressuring needs to be tougher than the substance being pressure.''


    One could not rely on weak substances to pressure and heat strong substances, thus he wouldn''t be surprised if the golem shed them away for this newpact form that was entirely constituted of a far superior substance.


    ''It''s essentially reconstructing its physiological foundation through umtion. It''s cultivating its body.''


    It was a natural form of self-evolution. It would also mean that this creature most likely wasn''t some sort of freak mutant but merely a golem that had managed to take a step in evolution.


    ''An active self-guided form of self-evolution.'' Rui mused with interest. ''How fascinating, I wonder if other species of monsters and beasts have something simr.''


    There certainly was nothing about it in the basic schr''s degree that he had gotten at Crexeet Town. Content provided by N?velDrama.Org.


    ''Which most likely means it''s a higher-level topic that I haven''t touched upon yet.'' Rui mused. ''Interesting.''


    Rui definitely intended to do some research on the matter when he returned back to civilization.


    Which probably wasn''t going to be too soon.


    Regardless, it was something that he firmly ced on his to-do list. Despite having lived in this world for twenty-five years, there was still much he hadn''t even heard of ore into touch with.


    One reason, was, of course, the size of the continent. It absolutely dwarfed Earth enormously. The sheer amount of information across the continent was beyond even his fathoming. The second reason was theck of ease of ess.


    There was no inte across the Panama Continent. That crippled his ability to learn things as someone who had taken the inte for granted back on Earth. Information became far more valuable than it ever had been, as evidenced by the lengths that he had to go to in order to purchase intelligence regarding Chairman Deacon.


    Still, he didn''t necessarily dislike this. If anything, he found it refreshing many a time. It brought back the spirit of adventure and exploration. If he wanted to learn about things, he needed to go out there and find out for himself. One way or another.


    ''Or payplete tons of missions and operations for the Beggar''s Sect as amission payment.'' Rui mused, shaking his head as he sighed, getting up.


    His body was still sore and weak. Yet he still made sure to use the lesser Phantomind Void to make sure nothing came his way, he just hoped that he wouldn''t have to deal with yet another tsunami ofva.


    ''Damn, and I still have quite some ways left to go just to reach the center of the forest, let alone actually find the Hypnomaster.'' Rui groaned as he stretched. His wounds had greatly healed and he avoided consuming a healing potion to preserve them for truly dangerous moments where his life was on the line.


    Still, he could understand exactly why finding the Hypnomaster had been an extremely difficult challenge.


    Rui once again wondered how exactly the Hypnomaster had created such an environment and ecosystem, and how many more challenges awaited him. Thankfully, he was most of the way through. He just hoped that whatever awaited him would not get worse.


    He walked over to the rubble of the evolved golem, studying it carefully. He had figured out how theva-generating systems and the evolution systems of the golem worked, but he had yet to figure out how a pile of rocks hade to gain consciousness in the first ce.


    Yet, just like with the other remains of the species, he was unable to detect anything that would exin how the rocks came to be sentient. He would have to chalk it up to the mysteries of the continent and leave it at that. He didn''t really have any other choice to make.


    Regardless, he continued on with his journey, heading towards the core of the forest. Thankfully, he had documented all of his maneuvers during the entire fight in his Mind Pce, allowing him to figure out which direction was which. Ordinary Martial Artists would bepletely helpless in such circumstances since it was too difficult to keep track of the exact direction that they were traveling after losing track of it even once.


    However, that wasn''t the case for Rui. He resolutely continued on towards the core of the continent even as his body healed and recuperated from the damage and energy expenditure that he had done in his time in theva domain. It wasn''t long before he reached the end of theva domain, weaving and avoiding all threats and anything that would drain a lot of energy from him.


    Thankfully, a forest that resembled what forests could be spotted in the distance as the terrain and environment began gradually shifting away from theva-stridden systems that the golems had created.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1434 Blind

    <h4>Chapter 1434 Blind</h4>


    Yet once Rui left theva domain and entered a normal forest once more, the mental suppression he experienced only grew in time. He was starting to truly approach the core of the Great Forest of Hypnonarak, and it wouldn''t be too long before he would enter the core of the forest.


    Yet the tribtions seemed to spike up, as if in preparation for that. A strange mist was ever present within the forest. He couldn''t prove it, but he felt as if just breathing the mist in hampered his mind as well.


    The radius of his sensory range also reduced significantly. Because it wasn''t directly hampering his mind and hampered his senses instead, not even Riemannian Echo was spared.


    For the first time in a long time, he truly got to experience what it was like to have his senses hampered, especially since he hadn''t experienced that in the Shionel Dungeon.


    The true threat of the Great Forest of Hypnonarak seemed to begin from here on out. Rui had a lot of respect for anybody who could make it this far, especially if they weren''t of the Senior Realm.


    He reduced his traveling pace significantly, he couldn''t afford to travel so fast when his senses were hampered. He also began scanning the environment for prey that he could hunt and eat.


    He quickly sky-walked to a low degree, scanning his surroundings as well as he could. He found that his vision was the least affected out of all his senses. It had been a long time since he had relied on it over all other senses.


    ''There''s a cave over there. Maybe I shou-'' His eyes widened as he suddenly leaped off the tree, somersaulting backward.


    BOOM!


    He nced back at the spot that he had been just a moment ago, it had beenpletely blown apart by some collision. His eyes shed around, catching merely a glimpse of the projectile that did it.


    It had wings.


    As well as a body covered in white scales.


    Furthermore, it had an undeniable reptilian tinge to it.


    Rui''s eyes widened as the glimpse he caught matched that of a creature recorded in the database of fauna that the Beggar''s Sect gave him.


    ''An Illusionary Dragon!''


    Apprehension and incredulity shed across his face. This was the first time that he hade across a dragon in this world, and he sure hoped that it wouldn''t be hisst.


    Dragons.


    In most fictional settings, dragons were at the top of the food chain, the apex predators. Gaia, too, had followed suit. Dragons were extraordinary apex predators that were nigh unmatched, barring other fantasy apex predators that also existed in this world.


    That already made Rui quite careful and cautious about having tangled with such a creature. Normally, he should have done his very best to keep away from such a creature and get away as far as he could.


    ''But...I wonder if I can adapt to it.'' Curiosity sparked in his eyes. His rational mind knew that retreat was objectively the best decision. But the Martial Artist side of him refused.


    "ROOOOOAAAAR!" The dragon bellowed out a haunting roar that echoed across the mist forest. Yet what Rui found strange was that it wasn''t just an ordinary roar, it was a roar that seemed to harness the power of the mist. The mist that had been stagnant suddenly shifted rapidly along with the powerful roars of the dragon.


    Rui didn''t know what that meant yet, but he did know that the IIllusionary Gragon targeted the mind. Unfortunately, he had no experience with mind attacks. He did break out of an illusion in the Virodha Martial Contest, however, that had been weakened to the point to allow a Martial Squire to break through.


    He didn''t think the Illusionary Dragon was going to be nearly as kind and considerate.


    And he was right.


    One moment the world around him was just fine and dandy.


    The next moment?


    It was gone.


    He was in a bottomless void of darkness.


    It was a powerful illusion, and yet;


    WHOOSH!


    Rui activated his Martial Heart, leaping to the left.


    "ROOOOOAAARR!" The creature bellowed as Rui evaded its charge. It stared at Rui with its reptilian eyes, clearly surprised that Rui had been able to evade it. It was sure that it had cleanly managed to make Rui fall for its trap.


    And yet...


    WHOOSH!


    Rui leaped away once more as he avoided yet another charge, avoiding being shredded by the dragon.


    A grin emerged on his face. "Man, I''m so d I decided to go to the Shionel Dungeon. I bet you''re pissed, huh, dragon?"


    "ROOOAAAR!" The dragon roared as it circled back for yet another charge, determined to shred histest prey like he had done so to the countless prey that came before him.


    Rui grinned even more.


    Rui couldn''t actually hear or see the dragon, yet he knew the dragon was undoubtedly angered.


    Here he was,pletely caught in the spell of the mental illusionary technique of the dragon, and yet it was unable to eveny a w on him as he casually avoided it. N?velD(ram)a.?rg owns this content.


    He couldn''t see it, but imagining the dragon helplessly chasing after him was incredibly humorous.


    "Hahaha!" Rui''s mirthfulughter echoed throughout the forest, enraging the dragon even more.


    "RROOOOOOARRR!" The dragon''s eyes shed with anger, before inhaling deeply and exhaling a strange drag gas with such force that it spread through the entire forest in a mighty shockwave.


    BOOOM!!!


    Suddenly, the dragon began to emit light, emitting such bright light that it spread across the forest, entering the eyes of all creatures in the forest.


    "AARRGH!" Rui cursed as extraordinarily excruciating pain shed all over his body, almost crippling with how severe it was. he hadn''t experienced something this horrific since the evolution process of the Squire breakthrough.


    However, unbeknownst to him, he was not the only one.


    The entire forest began wailing as countless animals began screeching in agony.


    "CHIRP CHIRP CHIRP!"


    "Rooooaaar!!"


    "KREEEEEE!"


    However, animals were not the only ones who suffered. Humans, too, fell prey to the dragon.


    "AAAAAAAH!"


    "WHAT IS THIS?!"


    The entire forest turned into an uproar as the Illusionary Dragon seemed to cast a spell that caused unfathomable agony to all those within the range of its effect.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1435 Drive

    <h4>Chapter 1435 Drive</h4>


    The sheer range and magnitude of the pain-induction ability that the forest had been drowned in was enormous. It was an ability that didn''t even seem to belong within the Senior Realm.


    ''This isn''t real!'' Rui gritted his teeth as he calmed down. ''I can feel my own body, and there is nothing that could cause this much pain, the damn dragon is casting an illusion of pain by messing with my nervous system!''


    It was the dragon''s turn to gloat.


    And, gloat it did.


    "ROOOOOOAAAR!!!" The dragon released an enormous bellow that echoed across the forest. It arrogantly took a moment to pause its hunt as it inspected its work across the entire forest, deeply satisfied by all the creatures that had fallen prey to its ability, before turning to Rui, looking down on him.


    It had initially hunted Rui for food, but now it no longer cared about that. Now its main motivation was killing the creature that dared to dishonor its pride.


    "ROOOOAAR!" It pped its mighty wings, rushing down at Rui with its jaws wide open. it would instantly eat him whole in a second, it even nned to undo the illusion so that it could experience Rui''s despair and suffering as it chomped down on him.


    And yet;


    WHOOSH!


    Rui sidestepped the charge at thest moment before.


    BAM!


    A powerful blow crashed into the creature''s neck, containing more force than the creature had expected from someone as small as Rui. The impact permeated deep, passing through the outer scales, and striking its more vulnerable tissue and flesh.


    "RROOOOAAR!" The creature grimaced in rage and pain.


    "Hehe..." Rui took a neutral stance before removing his Mind Mask, and unleashing his Senior-level aura, instantly catching the creature off-guard. "Man, I''m d I created this technique."


    He would be dead had he not created Riemannian Echo. While the technique had not been immune to the dragon''s sensory ckout, it was not entirely sealed. The reason for that was that the Riemannian Echo was not connected to Rui''s nervous system.


    ''From the pain illusion and the fact that the dragon could entirely seal Riemannian Echo, I can logically infer that its illusions are more based on the nervous system or the part of the subconscious parts of the brain that process the input from the sensory organs.'' Rui concluded. ''The fact that I can feel my own body proves that it isn''t absolute. It cannot get entirely rid of my sense of self.''


    Riemmanian Echo was not based on any sensory organ. It was based on Rui''s ability to internally sense his own body, which had not been suppressed since Rui was able to sense himself even though all his other senses were voided.


    ''Furthermore, as long as I have the ability to indirectly sense through the partially functioning Riemannian Echo, Primordial Instinct will be able to function as well.'' Rui grinned.


    Primordial Instinct was not a sensory technique. It was merely a technique that emerged from putting the subconscious danger sense of the mind through extreme training, improving its effectiveness and capabilities to an extreme extent. As long as Riemannian Echo was partially effective, he could rely on Primordial Instinct to help him avoid danger.


    That was why he was able to avoid the Illusionary Dragon''s charges towards him. Yet, that was all he was able to do. Property ? of N?velDrama.Org.


    "ROOOOAAAAR!" The dragon lunged at him. The sheer force and speed of the physical attack were remarkably high.


    And yet;


    WHOOSH


    Rui calmly evaded the attack distancing himself from the source significantly. And yet, by the time hended, he felt a deep sense of danger acutely to his left.


    WHOOSH!


    He somersaulted backward, avoiding the dragon''s powerful sweep. Yet the creature was not done, not by a long shot. Rage filled its prideful eyes as it raised both its forelimbs, before bringing them down on the ground with tremendous force.


    BOOM!


    An enormous crater the size of a hill emerged as an entire chunk of the forest was instantly leveled. The ground beneath Rui shook and erupted in a vtile manner, throwing him off the ground and off-guard.


    Yet, his face coiled in rm as he felt a spike of dangering from the forward direction.


    THWOOM!


    "RROOOOOAARR!" The dragon bellowed in pain as a powerful sound projectile flew into its wide-open jaws, crashing into its throat before it could reach Rui. Rui panted as hended away, relieved at narrowly avoiding death.


    ''This isn''t viable in the long run,'' Rui gritted his teeth. ''I can sense danger from the vestiges of environmental information that the suppressed Riemannian Echo supplies me, but I can''t sense theyout of my environment. If I leap back to avoid an attack and there''s a mountain impeding my path, It''ll impede my maneuver and I''ll die on the spot.''


    He knew that as long as he continued simply maintaining this stalemate, such a thing was going to happen. It was not statistically unlikely that his environment would get in the way, causing him to make mistakes that would get him killed.


    It was just a matter of time before he would die. In the first ce, it was miraculous that he was still alive. Had it been any Martial Senior of the same power level, they would most likely be dead.


    Unable to sense the environment.


    Unable to sense the opponent.


    Under the spell of excruciating pain.


    Victory against such a perversely powerful creature should have been nearly impossible.


    Only a handful of those at the pinnacle of true power were qualified to pursue victory.


    What the dragon didn''t know was that Rui was one of them.


    ''You''lle to learn why.'' Rui''s closed his eyes as a boundless drive rose from deep within his heart. He couldn''t even suppress the smile that cracked at the edge of his mouth. ''If you think robbing me of all perception and drowning me in pain is enough, you''re kidding yourself.''


    His mind furiously raced into action as he disconnected his consciousness from his pain, employing the principles of the Mind Mask technique to minimize the impact of the pain on his mind as he began furiously analyzing and processing his circumstances toe up with a n.


    It was a race against time.


    A battle against a dragon.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1436 Strategy

    <h4>Chapter 1436 Strategy</h4>


    WHOOSH!


    Rui evaded yet another attack from the dragon. ''Think.''


    WHOOSH!


    He somersaulted away, narrowly avoiding a swift w swipe.


    ''I''ll need to prioritize acute problems that threaten defeat before tackling chronic hurdles towards victory.'' Rui thought as hepiled a list of all problems before sorting them in a priority list based on this criteria.


    WHOOSH!


    He evaded yet anotherteral swipe, crouching with a split.


    ''First priority, minimize the probability of environmental disruption.'' He thought. ''The greater the area I cover with my evasive maneuvering, the greater the probability I run into a sturdy tree or another beast, or a mountain that hampers my path. Therefore, I need to minimize the area I cover.''


    WHOOOSH!


    "RROOOOAAR!" The dragon raced after him in frustration.


    ''Do not cover new ground. Stick within a certain amount of area that I have already maneuvered through before and know that I can. This reduces the probability of environmental disruption by an order of magnitude.'' Rui concluded as he immediatelyputed a solution for the environmental problem.


    By sticking to known and vetted areas, free of environmental hurdles, he could reduce the probability of a sh with his surroundings. It also helped that the dragon leveled the area.


    ''I could alsounch more omnidirectional attacks to level things myself, but that''s far too energy-consuming. Let the dragon do all the work for you. That is optimal efficiency.'' Rui''s mind swiftly processed through as it mitigated the highest priority issue.


    WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH


    Rui evaded a barrage of wide w swipes, because of the size of the dragon, he needed to maneuver more, yet he made sure not to delve into uncharted area as much as possible. He would rather face a dragon than an unsensable unknown environment because Primordial Instinct could only help against the former.


    WHOOSH


    He pirouetted away from a direct charge, cleanly avoiding it.


    ''Next, stamina constraints. Minimize movements, make sure that the dragon expends more energy than I do.'' Rui noted. ''Use the stamina metabody to a partial degree.''


    Rui partially activated the Reaper''s Dew poison before activating Final Breathing, this was enough to alleviate his energy concerns for now.


    He heaved a sigh, before his eyes narrowed. "Now then, time to work towards victory rather than just avoiding defeat."


    He needed to kill the dragon. That much was clear. The dragon''s pursuit of him was obsessive, which matched the personality profile of the creature that the Beggar''s Sect''s intelligence contained. It was not going to let him go. The only way this battle would end was if one of them died.


    ''Assassination is... not viable.'' Rui tutted as he avoided yet another blow. ''Phantomind Void is not advisable without a good grasp of environmental and opponent location.''


    Sympathetic Death Lance and Death''s Sympathy would be extremely difficult to use inbat even without the sensory hamper. In these circumstances, it was absolutely impossible. Content provided by N?velDrama.Org.


    ''That means I''ll need to rely on normal attacks to pepper it. Or get in a good hit on an extremely vital spot with Flowing Canon or Transverse Resonance.''


    WHOOSH!


    He evaded yet another attack, swerving to the side rather than retreating away, making sure that he didn''t leave known territory.


    ''Which means I need to know its exact position and orientation.'' Rui tutted. ''Since I can''t sense it, I''ll either need to work on dispelling this illusion, or...''


    His eyes narrowed. ''...Or I''ll need to create a predictive model.''


    Had anybody, from Earth or from Gaia, heard that thought, they would haveughed at him. Even his research team would have burst outughing at the idea of applying the VOID algorithm to an opponent that could not even be perceived. Not even the cutting-edge AI software that they employed in theirbs running on all the processors and servers in the facility would be able to aplish such an absurd feat.


    It was categorically impossible.


    And yet...


    ''I can do it.'' Rui grinned. ''I will do it!''


    The air grew taut as a wave of determination wrung the very atmosphere.


    An enormous amount of pressure erupted from Rui''s sheer drive.


    His mind spurred on with powerful drive as he began analyzing andputing his circumstances. ''In order to create a predictive model, one needs a lot of empiricalbat data on the opponent. However, I do not have that empirical data since I cannot observe my opponent. I can only sense the vague direction of iing danger. Thus, it is logical to conclude that a predictive model cannot be concluded due to ack of empirical data.''


    Yet a glint of excitement shed in his mind. ''But... what if I predict the empirical data that is needed for a predictive model?''


    If he could not observe his opponent collect the empirical data like he normally did, then he could predict the empirical data that he could not observe.


    ''It''s not so much as predict as much as eliminate all possibilities except for the truth.'' Rui mused. ''Every time I sense danger, I know it''s an attack. However, there are limited possibilities as to what the attack could be since my opponent is a dragon.''


    Dragons had w attacks of all kinds, wing attacks, tail attacks, jaw attacks, and bullrushes.


    Those were a lot of possibilities every time he sensed danger, but it was not too much to keep track of. As long as he kept track of all of them, he would be able to develop many possible predictive models based on the many possible permutations of possible empirical data.


    Yet out of all the possible predictive models born out of all the permutations andbinations of possible empirical data, only one predictive model was correct. Every individual had only one truly urate predictive model, be they Martial Artist or beast. That meant that Rui could begin eliminating incorrect predictive models byparing the predicted oues of the possible predictive models with the actual oues.


    If a prediction didn''t match with reality, then the predictive model was wrong.


    if it matched with reality, it was?possibly?correct.


    Only after he eliminated every single possible predictive model except one, could he be sure that the final predictive model was correct.


    WHOOSH


    Rui avoided another powerful attack, rolling to the side.


    ''It''s going to be enormously tiring, but it is possible, especially as long as I reduce the precision requirements of the predictive models, making them easier to developpared to my normal predictive models. I can refine the correct one after I''ve found it by eliminating all other possible predictive models.'' He narrowed his eyes, as he retreated. ''However...''


    It was going to be extremely taxing.


    A race against time. He knew that the dragon would kill him if it got even a single strike in. Although he was slightly faster than it, its power was far greater than his own.


    Combined with his highlypromised state, it would be game over.


    And yet, he had no intention of giving up.


    On the contrary, he couldn''t even hide his mirth.


    It was as though the intensity manifested in the air, washing over everything around them.


    "Come," Rui challenged. "Let''s see who reaches victory first, dragon!"


    "ROOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAR!!"


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1437 Clashes

    <h4>Chapter 1437 shes</h4>


    WHOOSH!


    Rui twirled backward as his mind raced into action, furiouslyputing possible predictive models based on all the possibilities that the attack he just dodged could be.


    BOOM BOOM BOOM!


    "RROOOOOAAAAR!" The dragon bellowed a roar as its powerful physical attacks swung all over, aiming at Rui only to miss him.


    Rui hade to avoid attacks one after the other with increasing proficiency and smoothness as time passed. The dragon was more than intelligent enough to notice. It roared with frustration and rage as Rui managed to avoid its best efforts at killing him.


    A small smirk emerged on Rui''s face. ''It can''t do anything other than physically attack. All of its special abilities are centered around the mind. Its only means of physical attack is through its body.''


    He was able to deduce this because he had yet to encounter a wide-range or long-range attack. The reason he knew that he hadn''t encountered those was because of the angle between consecutive attacks.


    If the distance between himself and the dragon was high, then the angle between consecutive attacks as Rui avoided them would be low, but if the distance was low, the angles between the attacks would be low.


    It was thanks to this that Rui was able to deduce that the dragon had yet tounch a single long-range attack. Thanks to that, he could conclude that it was unable to. There was no reason to hold back its abilities so much when it was struggling to get a single hit on him. Content provided by N?velDrama.Org.


    TAP


    Rui avoided an attack even as he ced his hand partially in the way to get a feel for the dragon''s body and gain more information about its movements that way. He could speed up his elimination of possibilities this way.


    That was one of the many tactics that Rui employed to speed up the process of developing a predictive model of his opponent.


    He was actually impressed by the dragon''s relentless fortitude to keep pursuing him. Surely, from the perspective of a predator, he was not worth chasing to this extent. Predators usually sought meals with the most amount of energy for the least amount of effort.


    It waspletely illogical to continue attacking Rui to this point, and any normal predator would have left him alone.


    But apparently, the Illusionary Dragon was too proud.


    Unfortunately, it was also intelligent. Although it was incapable of fathoming the sheer magnitude of information that Rui was processing, it understood that Rui was ying the long game where he nned to improve as time went on until he was no longer restricted to defense.


    Unfortunately, it had run out of options. The problem was that it didn''t understand how Rui could proficiently avoid its attacks so well in the state that he was in. It was utterly iprehensible to it. Ordinarily, it could effortlessly hunt creatures that were much physically superior to it thanks to its sensory ckout and pain induction mental abilities. These two abilities rendered even the most powerful apex predators vulnerable.


    Yet even though it didn''t understand how Rui was able to avoid its attacks so proficiently, one thing it understood well was that every creature had its limit. And Rui was certainly not an exception.


    SPLAT


    Rui grimaced as he somersaulted back, putting his palm to his chest as he felt a light flesh wound caused by the creature''s w.


    "ROOOOAAAAAR!" The dragon bellowed triumphantly at finally having drawn first blood.


    ''Tsk, looks like the dragon has a stamina advantage over me even with a partial stamina metabody active,'' Rui tutted. ''The issue is the Martial Heart''s limits.''


    Because the gap between his power with and without the Martial Heart was so enormous, it meant that when his stamina wore off, he would weaken much more than other creatures who didn''t nearly have as much of a gap between their exhausted state and peak.


    BAM!


    Rui narrowly evaded yet another powerful attack as he increased the degree of the stamina metabody to preserve his remaining strength better. Thankfully, the predictive model deductions were going well. By having reduced the precision of the predictive models, it was several times easier to create them. He was also quickly getting used to the rigor.


    Furthermore, he had purposely avoided sky-walking. A winged creature would have an enormous advantage in a fight midair against a Martial Artist, furthermore, it was easier


    His predictions of the dragon''s attacks were getting increasingly more urate and precise. This allowed him to evade the dragon better with less effort than he did before.


    The question was whether he would make it in time regard to his stamina. They had been fighting for a long time now, and while the dragon was certainly strained with his stamina, Rui would suffer a lot more than he was.


    STEP


    Rui''s eyes widened as his bnce crumbled, where there was supposed to be hard ground, was a gaping hole, preventing him from stepping back at a crucial moment.


    BAM!


    Rui grimaced as a powerful w swipe crashed into his guard, flinging him a huge distance away. The actual damage done by the attack was certainly painful, but he was worried about a lot more than just flesh gashes that would heal eventually.


    ''I''ve been flung into new territory!''


    He cursed even as he waspletely immersed in darkness. The psychological toll from not being able to sense his surroundings was high. It certainly grounded down on his mental fortitude to be able to contend with such uncertainty.


    The dragon, however, was not kind enough to offer him respite.


    "ROOOAAAR!" It swiftly surged forward toward Rui, sensing blood. The crucial moment of the battle arrived as the dragon lunged forward with its jaws open as it sought to eat Rui whole one one go.


    Rui leaped backward, looking to distance himself from the dragon.


    BOOM!


    He bumped into a cliffside, breaking down the bedrock, but there was just enough resistance to prevent him from evading the attack entirely. He ducked, struggling to avoid the attack at thest moment.


    But he was unable to.


    CLASP!


    BOOM BOOM BOOM!


    The dragon soared to the skies, having caught Rui within his ws as he mmed Rui across enormous rock foundations and bedrock, hoping to knock him out so that it could eat him in peace.


    Rui gritted his teeth as he began bleeding and bruising all over his body.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1438 Intelligent

    <h4>Chapter 1438 Intelligent</h4>


    The dragon understood that this was perhaps the only way it could take Rui out firmly, thus it maintained an iron-d grip over him. Unfortunately, although he was faster than the dragon, that creature was undoubtedly stronger than him. This was the power that came with sheer size, it was not something he could easily overwhelm, especially when he was trying to conserve his physical power.


    BOOM BOOM BOOM!


    Rui gritted his teeth as he did his best to bear the weight of the many collisions that the dragon subjected him to. He crashed through cliffs, hills, boulders, and even mountain peaks.


    Even as he bore a substantial amount of damage, he wriggled within the dragon''s grip, finally managing to meet his arms together while they slid across each other.


    The tattoos on his arm shed for a moment before the Thundercoil technique activated. The dragon froze for just the briefest moments as a momentary wave of paralysis and weakness shed through his body.


    "Rgh!" Rui gritted his teeth as he did his best to exploit what was perhaps his only opportunity to break free. He momentarily activated Hypertrophic Surge as he pushed through with all his might, sting open the dragon''s powerful grip as he plummeted through the sky.


    He didn''t even bother sky-walking to break his fall, in fact, he sky-walked to plummet down faster, he needed to get out of the air where he certainly no chance of winning and have solid ground beneath his feet.


    Throughout the fight, he had been tracking all of his movements and thus tracking his position across the forest. The dragon hadn''t held him for too long, a few minutes at most. Yet it was so fast that they had moved several thousands of kilometers.


    Furthermore, it had taken him in the direction of the center of the forest for some reason. Which meant that it had managed to get him to where he originally wanted to go.


    He didn''t know how or why no cloud hos had emerged in pursuit of the dragon, but he was d. Dealing with those nightmares in his current state was as good as suicide, even for him.


    BOOM!!


    Hended heavily into the forest, uncaring to try and reduce his speed to lighten the impact. The sheer weight of his fall created an enormous crater as wide as a town, leveling the entire forest around him.


    "ROOOOAAAAR!" The dragon swiftly charged down at him, racing to catch him off-guard in an uneven and non-uniform environment. Rui''s damage from earlier, the disadvantaged environment that he would need to map all over again reassured the dragon of its victory.


    And yet...


    "You were toote," Rui murmured.


    WHOOSH!


    He swiftly avoided the charge of the dragon, somersaulting backward. He opened his eyes mid maneuver finding himself upside-down, staring into the dragon''s eyes as it charged towards him.


    SPLAT!


    "ROOOOOAAAAAAR!" The dragon bellowed in pain as Rui struck the creature''s eyes with a powerful palm jab, making it bleed.


    The dragon felt a surge of rage, unlike anything it had ever experienced before. Not only did Rui avoid its attacks the entire fight despite falling prey to its handicaps. Not only did he make a mockery of the proud creature.


    But now, he had gone as far as drawing blood from it.


    "ROOOOOOAAAAAAR!" The dragon threw an enormously powerful blow at Rui, hoping to crush him. Content provided by N?velDrama.Org.


    Yet Rui raced forward into the attack, much to the creature''s surprise.


    WHOOSH!


    The attack crashed into an empty image, dispelling it away, much to the creature''s surprise.


    It was a feint.


    Rui was able to use Phantom Step once more now that the predictive model showed him the creature''s due movements. He swiftly weaved his way through the creature''s inner guard.


    WHOOSH


    He cleanly evaded a tail attack, before leaping at the creature''s face once more. He ignored the iing attack that threatened to crash into him, firmly aiming for the creature''s eyes


    SPLAT!


    BAM!!


    The dragon''s w swipe crashed into Rui, but not before he gouged the dragon''s other eye, crippling its sense of vision before he was batted away.


    "ROOOOOAAAAAAR!" The creature writhed in pain as it lost its main sense, crippling it forever.


    "Rgh..." Rui grimaced as he got up, still shot with pain from taking that attack unguarded. Yet his eyes widened as he opened them.


    "...The sensory ckout illusion is gone!" He eximed as he nced around, able to perceive his surroundings just fine. "The phantom pain is gone too."


    He nced back at the writhing dragon, walking over to the helpless creature. "Well... the documentation did mention that you have extraordinary vision but your other senses were shit."


    The dragon paused before its body shifted in various ways, and a soft growl escaped its mouth.


    ''Humans.''


    His eyes widened as he understood what it conveyed to him.


    ''A truly insufferable species.'' It menacingly growled even as it stared at him with its blinded eyes. ''I will never forgive you.''


    ''Interesting...'' Rui''s intrigue was peaked as he applied Fauna Flow. ''They did say you were highly intelligent. But this is truly remarkable sophistication.''


    "ROOOOOOAAAAAAAR!" The dragon''s face warped with even rage and hatred. ''HOW DARE YOU LOOK DOWN ON ME!''


    Itshed out against Rui haphazardly in vain.


    BOOM!


    Rui applied Outer Convergence and Reverberating Lance as a powerful impact crashed into the creature''s jaw, causing immense blunt force trauma.


    The creature''s body ckened as it copsed to the ground, unconscious.


    "So intelligent and yet so bound by its instincts and irrationality," Rui murmured. "It would exin why it''s still a beast in its lifestyle despite its intelligence."


    Although it certainly possessed human-like intelligence, it was extraordinarily powerful and extremely instinctual. Intelligence wasn''t the only factor that determined the sophistication of lifestyle. It had no need to apply its intelligence the way humans did.


    Its own innate and intrinsic power was beyond the capabilities of anything that he had ever seen, it had no need for sophistication when it had such power.


    Rui sharpened his hand into a t palm jab, before rushing in to kill it. He needed food to restore his energy and the dragon would do just fine.


    And yet...


    WHOOSH!


    His eyes widened as his attack hit empty air.


    The dragon was gone.


    "I wouldn''t do that if I were you," An elderly voice remarked.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1439 Story

    <h4>Chapter 1439 Story</h4>


    Rui felt a surge of fear as he failed toprehend what just happened.


    Did teleportation technology actually get invented and mass-produced while he was in the forest?


    The only times he had experienced such a thing was with a Martial Master.


    His eyes narrowed. "...Do what? Kill a dragon that spent several hours doing its best torment and try to kill me?"


    "Precisely." A voice behind him replied. Property ? of N?velDrama.Org.


    Rui leaped away as he turned around, facing a man with a long flowing beard. It took him no more than microseconds to evaluate the man''s power.


    ''Martial Master... so it''s him.'' Rui stared at him with caution as well as the unconscious dragon behind him. "That creature is extraordinarily persevering and hates me with venomous intensity. It''s a threat to me if I don''t kill it."


    "Not unless I wiped out its memories of the past day while I froze time," The man remarked.


    Rui''s eyes widened with shock at the man''s words. "Wiped out memories...? Froze time...?"


    "For you, anyway," The elderly man replied as he peered at Rui. "You would be surprised how susceptible the mind''s perception of time is to external influences."


    Rui contained his surprise as he stared at the Martial Master with awe and shock. "You are..."


    "Zeamer Ger-Vil, at your service," The elderly man replied apathetically, before ncing at Rui. "Still, another male, eh? Shame."


    Rui tilted his head in confusion.


    "Well you see myst and current mentee was male, and now you are too. It''s a shame, but oh well," The man shrugged lethargically.


    Rui wasn''t sure what to say. His impression of the mighty Hypnomaster was overturned entirely.


    "Still... I suppose that''s too shallow a reason to reject you, even for me." The man nced at Rui with a vague hint of interest glinting in his eyes. "Already spent a little under three years as a Martial Senior at the of twenty six eh? And a mind the likes of which I have almost never seen before."


    Rui simply stared at him silently.


    "It''s no wonder you havee this far, and persevered this long." The man remarked, before ncing at a badge on his Martial Art attire. "Not to mention, you''re Reina''s pupil too. Tsk tsk, you went to her before you came to me? Are you saying I''m inferior to her?"


    "She was closer geographically." Rui insisted, before balling a fist and bringing it to his palm in a respectful gesture. "Please ept me as your pupil."


    "Only if you''re interesting," He shrugged. "You''re male so you already have a handicap in that regard."


    Rui narrowed his eyes as he stared at the Martial Master. "Interesting?"


    "Tell me, why do you seek my tutge?" The man asked. "What drives you? You''re obviously not an assassin, yet you sought Reina''s tutge, that means you seek to kill someone, right? Someone powerful too. Go on, spit it out to this bored old man. You can rest assured that you can''t earn my tutge if you''re a boring man."


    He sat down on top of the unconscious dragon whose eyes were magically healed somehow. It lent credence to the idea that he had frozen time for Rui. He folded his legs, resting his head on his hands as he watched Rui with an amused, bored, yet intrigued expression.


    "That''s personal," Rui narrowed his eyes.


    "So are my eptance criteria," The man shrugged. "So what''s it going to be? Privacy? Or my tutge?"


    He smirked at Rui mischievously.


    Rui was already starting to dislike him. Yet he contained his displeasure as he stared at the man. "How do I know I can trust you?"


    "You don''t," The man shrugged. "If your story is interesting, I''ll ept you as my pupil and keep your juicy secrets safe. If not, who knows...?"


    Rui clenched his fists as he tangled with the ultimatum that the Martial Master offered. "You''re an asshole."


    "Hahaha!" The man guffawed. "Well, that''s not a bad start. I like a little feistiness, but it''s not enough."


    Rui considered the cons. If Rui did not fulfill the man''s strange criteria, he might spread Rui''s secret.


    However, he did not find the probability of this to be particrly high. This was based on the personality profile that he had already begun creating for the man. The idea that he would make the effort to go as far as sabotaging Rui was quite low.


    "Don''t omit or lie," The man warned. "You cannot deceive me, I assure you."


    On the other hand, the man''s tutge was highly desirable. The fact that he had the ability to freeze people''s perception of time, and could wipe out memories was astonishing. Rui had never heard of such powerful hypnosis.


    After all the effort he had taken toe all this way, he couldn''t afford to miss this opportunity. He heaved a deep sigh, having taken the time to weigh the pros and cons, havinge to a decision.


    "Fine," Rui replied. "I ept that challenge. I''ll tell you the most interesting story you have heard."


    "Hahaha! That''s more like it!" The elderly manughed. "Now then, get going. I won''t interrupt you."


    "..." Rui stared at him for a moment. "...It all started more than six years ago. I had decided to go to participate in the Shionel Dungeon raid with my friend..."


    Rui continued on narrating his story.


    Little by little, the man''s expression changed as he grew more and more immersed in Rui''s tale.


    "...I soon came to be known as the Voider..."


    "...Guildmaster Bradt epted my scheme..."


    "...Esosale Suppliers became the most sessful..."


    "...And then I saw a massive root at the bottom of the dungeon..."


    "...One of them had survived, and tattled on me to Chairman Deacon..."


    Then, Rui paused, staring at the eager man.


    "Continue," The man urged. "What happened next? I need to know!"


    "Not so quick," Rui smirked. "Let us discuss some matters first."


    The Martial Master stiffened as he realized that this was Rui''s n. "...What do you want?"


    Rui grinned. "ept me as your pupil, then I will tell you the remaining story."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1440 Cloudia

    <h4>Chapter 1440 Cloudia</h4>


    "Grrr..." The man understood Rui''s ploy. "You paused the story at the most intense and suspenseful moment, knowing that I would have no choice but to ept this deal. Hmph!"


    Rui shrugged with a smirk.


    "Alright then, young man, I ept you as a pupil," The man snorted. "Now continue immediately."


    Rui smiled. "After that, I had a tough choice to make. Either submit to the Martial Union and essentially forsake my agency until I became a Martial Senior because of their grasp over my family, or use all my wealth to buy a decade of Senior-level protection from them. Guess which one I chose?"


    "Hm, a prudent decision," The man remarked thoughtfully. "You wouldn''t be the youngest Martial Senior if not for that. Martial Squires must fight for their own drives to reach the Martial Heart. But how did you escape Chairman Deacon?"


    "I dedicated a portion of my wealth to misdirecting him with a lot of Guildmaster Bradt''s resources to convince the man I really was in a ce that I was not," Rui replied. "He thinks I''m hiding and scurrying around in the Kandrian Empire. Thankfully, he hasn''t discovered the truth."


    "He eventually will, of course," The Master remarked. "In fact, it''s quite surprising that he hasn''t, yet. The Kandrian Martial Union must be going out of its way to do more than you have paid for, for him to have not discovered the truth. But it is a matter of time."


    Unfortunately, Rui knew that this was true. Chairman Deacon was far too sharp to be fooled for too much longer. It was actually quite fortunate that he had been fooled as long as he had been.


    "But that''s fine," Rui remarked as his eyes grew sharper. "I have grown stronger. I have mastered the art of killing. Now I hope to master the mental techniques that I possess such a strong affinity for. I have alreadymissioned the Beggar''s Sect for absolutely any and all intelligence that is even slightly relevant to killing him and have beenpletingmissions and operations for them in exchange."


    "Another prudent decision." The man nodded. "The Beggar''s Sect is the only intelligence powerhouse that sells intelligence formission. The information they give you will be absolutely urate and entirely whole. This is quite rare and something only the Beggar''s Sect can universally maintain as their standard."


    Rui nodded. "And so, here I am."


    "Hold on now," The man insisted. "You still haven''t talked about what you did in the five to six years while you were running away. You also didn''t reveal how you broke through to the Senior Realm."


    Rui stared at Master Zeamer before shaking his head. "...I don''t intend to reveal that at this point. You have already epted me as a student, I''ve told you the main reason that I have been training to grow stronger. That''s good enough for now."


    One of the reasons that he didn''t mind sharing the truth about Chairman Deacon was because he didn''t fear the man nearly as much as he did more than five years ago. In the time that had passed since he left the Shionel Confederation, he had grown truly strong and formidable.


    His general Martial Art ability. His ability to kill. He was not an enemy that any force would want to make an enemy out of. If not for his family, there really was not much that Chairman Deacon could do against him in his current state.


    Rui could always obscure himself and wait for the right moment to strike. Chairman Deacon would have to spend his days waiting for Rui to strike, unable to reach and hurt him in any way, living in fear for the moment Rui was struck.


    It was unfortunate, but his family was his weakness that allowed Chairman Deacon to be the hunter and Rui the hunted instead of the other way around all this time.


    However, the same could not be said for Master Uma and the Virodhabhasa Faith. She was still far beyond him despite all the gains that he had made. Unless Master Reina or Master Zeamer happened to be around if she attacked him, he would not make it out of that situation alive.


    He still didn''t trust Master Zeamer entirely. The man was a whimsical sexist man who sought entertainment from the misery of others. He was different from Master Uma whom Rui hade to develop some affection for and trust in.


    And he hadn''t even told her the truth.


    "Tsk tsk, not very revealing are you?" The man tutted. "Shame, well, it is true that I did ept you as my pupil. I have to grudgingly admit that you are an interestingd."


    "d to hear that. Now let''s get started immediately. I don''t have time to waste." Rui remarked.


    "Hold your horses kiddo," The man snorted. "Let''s return to my abode first. I''ll have you meet my other pupil first. The two of you have a lot inmon, you know?"


    "I did hear that you had epted a pupil eight years ago," Rui frowned.


    "Hm, it''s the same one. He returned to the Great Forest of Hypnonarak two years ago and has been with me since then," The man remarked.


    "I see..."


    The man began sky-walking straight upward to the skies, earning a frown from Rui, who followed suit.


    ''What about the cloud hos? I suppose they are insects to him, but where is he even going?''


    Rui wasn''t sure, but he followed the man nheless. He was curious about where they were going.


    As they kept rising, the cloud hos didn''t emerge for some reason, despite the fact that he was heading towards a huge dense cloud that looked like it housed an abysmal amount of cloud hos. Property ? of N?velDrama.Org.


    Rui could even sense them when they reached the cloud, but the man apparently didn''t care and simply circled around as he traveled to the top of it.


    STEP


    "Wee to my abode," The man gestured as he physicallynded on the cloud. "I call it Cloudia. Creative, aren''t I?"


    Rui''s eyes widened as he beheld an entire pce built on top of the huge cloud.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1441 Harem

    <h4>Chapter 1441 Harem</h4>


    He had known that the cloud hos altered cloudposition to make them more solid, but he didn''t know that they were solid enough to serve as the bedrock and foundation for extensive civil engineering atop them.


    "You have a vige atop a cloud?" Rui asked in disbelief.


    "Hoho... Impressive, isn''t it?" The man smirked. "The infrastructure is also constituted of cloud bricks and cloud cement. Amazing isn''t it?"


    Rui had to admit that he was impressed. It was actually quite amazing to see such a fantastical sight right before him.


    "Wait a minute," Rui frowned. "So you''re telling me that in order to find you, one would literally need to search the clouds? Searching the forest is futile?"


    "That''s right, haha," The manughed.


    "..." Rui stared at him with a dubious expression.


    "I don''t ept just about anybody who reaches the center of the forest. Only those that pique my interest, like you did. And that worked out well, didn''t it?"


    "Right..." Rui sighed before stepping on the cloud himself with an expression of curiosity.


    It had an unusual sensation to it. Firm and solid at its core, but very soft at the very exterior. Almost as if someone had covered steel with a thickyer of cotton.


    Suddenly, Rui''s attention was drawn as he felt two figures approaching them. Two women walked up to them in unison, facing Master Zeamer.


    "Wee back, master," They bowed their heads.


    "Hohoho..." The master''s attitude shifted as he grew more bashful and soft, much to Rui''s shock. "It''s good to be back, listening to your soft and sweet voices soothes this old man''s weary heart."


    "Would you like a massage?"


    "Would you like a bath?"


    "Or perhaps would like..."


    "Hohoho..." The man''s smile grew more. "How about all of the above?"


    Rui''s mouth subconsciously curled with a hint of disgust as he watched the lecherous Master''s smile grow more obscene as his demeanor grew more lustful. ''This is a Martial Master?''


    He would be lying if he said he wasn''t disappointed. One thing that he had long learned was that Martial Artists were far from principled and pure like those from fictional media back on Earth. They were crude and materialistic mercenaries rather than principled saints or ascetics.


    Still, he had hoped that the Upper Realms would be different. Master Reina had a strange and quirky personality, but she had not done anything that Rui considered depraved.


    ''Then again, she was an assassin for hire. The best.'' He sighed, shaking his head.


    "...hohoho..." The Martial Master paused, turning towards Rui with a less enthused expression. "...Also make sure to guide our new guest to his new living quarters and show him around."


    "We aren''t training?" Rui frowned.


    "I''m a little busy with, ahem, some ''important'' matters of vital importance," The Master shed a lecherous grin as he pulled the adoring women to his side, fondling their bodies as he walked away.


    "Hah, are you that desperate to get your rocks off, pervert?"


    "Shut up!" The man barked. "I''m a Martial Master you know?! Show some respect!"


    Rui simply stared at him with an expression of disdain as the man walked offughing alongside the cooing girls, and another set of girls walked over to him, bowing to him.


    "Pleasee follow us, sir. We will guide you to your personal quarters," The women informed him.


    Rui nodded. "Thanks."


    While they led him around, he had to admit, he couldn''t help but admire the architecture. He had no idea how Master Zeamer hade to build such an admittedly remarkable ce on top of a cloud and out of a cloud, but it was worthy of his admiration.


    He did see a lot of people, but they were all women and had the same attire as the two women from earlier.


    ''That horny geezer.'' Rui facepalmed. ''He created a harem!''


    It was actually astonishing how far this old man went to satisfy his lust. Rui had thought that Martial Masters transcended ordinary human psychology, but this one Martial Master had singlehandedly overturned that impression.


    "How many women work here?" Rui asked.


    "More than a thousand," One of them replied.


    "Do you get paid?"


    "Not at all. We do however get food andfortable living quarters free of cost, among other things." The other smiled at him.


    "Hmm..." Rui considered their circumstances with a hint of skepticism. ''Not the worst deal in the world, I suppose, especially in this world.''


    This world had much greater food and shelter insecurities, not to mention the many risks and dangers associated with living in a fantasy martial arts world, being protected by the Martial Art equivalent of an entire nuclear arsenal was a pretty good deal.


    "How did all of youe to work for Master Zeamer?" Rui asked, raising his eyes.


    "He made us an offer," One of them replied. "He would free us from the forces that tormented and shackled us in our lives, and bring us to a heavenly ce where we would be fed, sheltered, and protected in exchange for servicing him in any way that he desired, within our capabilities."


    "Interesting..." Rui considered the matter. ''Honestly, I thought he abducted them, but maybe I''m ndering him too much.''


    Then again, he was a master of hypnosis, so Rui wasn''t sure. Yet his eyes narrowed when he spotted underaged pre-pubescent boys and girls ying in the gardens of the pce.


    "Don''t tell me they also..." Rui gestured to them.


    "They are his daughters," One of them informed him. "They''ve spent their entire lives in Cloudia."


    "Oh," Rui nced back at the children. To the Hypnomaster''s credit, they seemed to be happy and content as they yed around with each other boisterously in the gardens. ''It''s not just a harem, it''s a n or a dynasty.'' Content provided by N?velDrama.Org.


    It was an interesting way of setting one up, probably the most unique n or dynasty that ever existed, but it worked. It was quite insr, considering that not even the Beggar''s Sect knew about this establishment.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1442 Revelation

    <h4>Chapter 1442 Revtion</h4>


    Rui couldn''t hide his curiosity as they continued walking across the cloud that spanned the area of a town. It was quite interesting to witness how a small little vige of sorts had begun forming atop the clouds.


    "Martial Artists?" Rui murmured with intrigue. "I thought he didn''t ept any pupils aside from one eight years ago."


    There were several Martial Apprentices sparring with each other on a sparring ring, overseen by a Martial Squire


    "They are also children of Master Zeamer that have a talent for Martial Art," The women informed him. "Thus Master Zeamer trained them as well as the Martial Squires that serve as their guides and mentors."


    "Impressive that he has managed to provide them with such a support system," Rui murmured.


    "He has ensured that they don''t depend on him too much, allowing them to train at all times even when he cannot train them himself," The women spoke.


    "Interesting..." Rui figured. "Seems like he has plenty to keep himself busy with."


    It was a good way to give himself purpose and responsibility on a day-to-day basis. Otherwise, he would have literally nothing to do while he waited for a rare talent to find him before finally training them.


    Even Master Reina kept herself busy with her little guise. With that consideration, Rui could sympathize with why the man has so many women migrating to his little cloud n.


    ''He''s definitely also a pervert though.'' Rui snorted inwardly, unwilling to give him too much credit.


    "We have arrived." They stopped before a small but cozy-looking little house. "We hope that it suits your needs."


    Generally, Rui was ustomed to harsher conditions when he trained.


    ''However, this is nice.'' Rui murmured.


    "These quarters are already staffed with maids that will cater to your every need," They informed him as they led him inside, giving him a simple tour before leaving.


    ''I feel like I''m in a resort rather than training grounds. It takes away the tension.'' He heaved a sigh of relief as he rxed on thefortable bed. He hadn''t slept in afortable ce in quite some time, having to dig holes into rocks and boulders to create small cavities where he was safe enough to rest.


    His body jumped at the opportunity to gain some quality rest as a wave of drowsiness washed over him. The fatigue of having fought golems and dragons while being drained of mental energy from the entire forest caught up to him as he slowly drifted to sleep.


    That night, he slept like a rock. So much so that it took him a while to even remember where he was when he got up the next day. The bags underneath his eyes had entirely disappeared as his entire body rxed.


    Yet he was extraordinarily famished. C0ntent ? 2024 (N/?)velDrama.Org.


    The Hypnomaster had denied him of his meal when he defeated the dragon, thus he had yet to replenish the energy that he had spent in that long and tiring fight against the stubborn Illusionary Dragon.


    "His Honour wishes to speak with you," One of the maids in his personal quarters informed him. "Please follow us."


    It wasn''t long before he found himself in a training facility.


    "You look better," The Hypnomaster remarked nkly. "What do you think of this ce that I built? Remarkable isn''t it?"


    "...It is quite special," Rui admitted. "So, why did you call for me? Are we going to begin training? I''m starving, so can we do that after I eat something?"


    "Hm, Martial Artists hunt their own food," The man remarked with a rare hint of seriousness. "If you don''t subject yourself to that much danger on a regr basis as a Martial Artist, your instincts will rust, especially in a ce as wonderful as Cloudia, hoho."


    Rui furrowed his eyebrows as the Master shamelessly praised his own work.


    "But that''s now why I called you here," The man remarked. "I want you to meet my other mentee."


    "Sure, but we''d meet anyway. No need to call me or personally introduce me." Rui raised an eyebrow.


    "Heh," A mischievous smirk emerged on his face.


    Rui could even sense a hint of anticipation and excitement.


    "What are you up to?" Rui knitted his eyebrows with dubiousness.


    "Hehehe," The man chuckled. "Not much. However, I think something interesting might happen, that is why I''m personally here to witness it."


    They arrived at a training chamber that the Hypnomaster promptly opened. Rui peered at the single figure that sat inside, meditating.


    "...!" Rui''s eyes widened with shock as his jaw dropped.


    "Tokugawa," The Master called out. "Meet your fellow pupil that I was telling you about."


    A sh of displeasure could be seen across his face. The man shifted his long pitch ck hair away from his eyes, before opening them, revealing ck eyes.


    Pitch-ck eyes.


    Eyes that seemed to reflect the very fabric of the world around them.


    "I believe I informed you not to disturb me with frivolous matters," Senior Ieyasu red at the Master, before turning towards Rui.


    A small jolt shed through his body as his eyes narrowed with recognition.


    His expression grew grave.


    An air of tension brewed as the atmosphere chilled.


    "...Why are you here, Rui Quarrier?"


    "Tokugawa Ieyasu..." Rui murmured still half-dazed at how such a coincidence could possiblye to unfold. "So when you said you were going to return to your Master to gain guidance for the Master Realm, you were talking about the Hypnomaster?"


    "Hahaha!" Master Zeamer guffawed boisterously, breaking the tension. "I had a feeling that this would happen. I''m so d I trusted my instinct."


    An expression amusement shed on his face as he nced between Rui and Ieyasu back and forth. "When Ipared my observations of you yesterday with what this brooding pupil of mine told me about his breakthrough two years ago when he returned as a Martial Senior, I made the connection. The fact that both of you had been a Martial Senior for the same amount of time was also a clue. Hahaha! It sure is a small world sometimes."


    He paused. "So the two of you broke through to the Senior Realm at the same time, hm? I wonder who will break through to the Master Realm first then."


    Both of them narrowed their eyes at those words. A surge ofpetitive drive boiled from deep within his body as every hint of rxation andfort he experienced prior was instantly dispelled.


    Neither of them was willing to lose to the other.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1443 Provocation

    <h4>Chapter 1443 Provocation</h4>


    The two simply stared at each other. No words were exchanged, yet the silence was louder than anything they could say.


    "Hoho..." The Martial Master grinned with amusement and excitement. "This seems like it will be quite entertaining. I shall call it the Master Races! And I, Martial Master Zeamer Ger-Vil shall serve as the referee!"


    The two of them turned their eyes, ring at him.


    "Oh my, scary~" The man exaggeratedly shook his hands as he put on a show of cowering.


    "Quit treating your students as entertainment," Rui grumbled, earning Ieyasu''s silent agreement.


    "Ahhhh, but that''s the best part about having students you see? HAHAHA!" The man guffawed. "Seeing you two adorable brats get all heated up over this cute rivalry is heartwarming this old man. Ah but please continue, by all means, you can pretend I''m not here."


    His hands stretched out as he began poking the two of them on their cheeks with an obnoxious expression, Rui directly, and Ieyasu through the air.


    "...What are you doing?" Rui frowned as he tried shifting away in vain.


    "It''s an expression of affection, you see. I use it with my little daughters."


    "I''ll break that finger off," Ieyasu threatened.


    POKE POKE POKE


    "..."


    POKE POKE POKE


    "..."


    PO-BOOM!


    "My~" The Martial Master disappeared as a powerful Senior-level attack from Ieyasu crashed into the ground where he was standing there. "Goodness gracious, I sure have some rambunctious pupils."


    Yet he didn''t cease the poking gesture as his mischievous smile grew increasingly obnoxious. "You''re going to have to do better than that."


    Rui and Ieyasu exchanged nces before turning back to him. Neither of them was stupid. It was pretty obvious what he was trying to get them to do. Ieyasu got up, facing the man.


    "Your efforts at provoking are unsophisticated," Rui informed him. "I could do better when I was a child."


    "Hah, but it worked, didn''t it?" The man shrugged.


    "If you want a group sparring session, you can just say so, you know," Rui sighed as the two of them took their stances.


    "But that would be boring wouldn''t it?" The manughed. "But I suppose you have a point. Let us set some stakes, then. Whoever loses gets to do anything to the loser."


    "That''s a scam,"


    "Of course, I won''t use my Martial Heart, so rest assured."


    Rui narrowed his eyes. Not using the Martial Heart was the same as not using the Martial Mind, for the most part. Something that was meant to be powered by the Martial Heart would surely be very deficient without it, like a phone in ultra-battery-saving mode.


    "Do you really think you can defeat us by reducing yourself to such a degree?" Rui tilted his head.


    "Hahaha, that remains to be seen," The man remarked.


    Rui got the feeling that he was more confident than he let on, but he also felt like they were being underestimated.


    "Alright then," Rui activated his Martial Heart after inhaling some physical rejuvenation potions.


    "Come," The man remarked.


    The two of them activated their Martial Heart as theyshed out at him in unison.


    It turned out that Rui was right.


    He was confident, and he had reason to be.


    WHOOSH!


    He evaded their blows with a simple step back, much to Rui''s and Ieyasu''s surprise. The speed of his maneuver was quite slow, it didn''t even breach the Senior Realm, yet they somehow were unable to get him.


    The two of themshed out against him once more, looking tond some solid offensive on the man.


    WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH


    Rui resorted to sweeping bod blows while Ieyasu used a striking Martial Art with shorter and crisp blows. The two managed to avoid getting in each other''s way, remarkably, while smoothly targeting the Hypnomaster. Content provided by N?velDrama.Org.


    And yet,


    WHOOSH!


    "Hahaha, is that the best you''ve got?" The manughed. "Show me your best, young men!"


    Rui and Ieyasu increased their intensity as the two of them threw out enormous barrages of attacks that miraculously managed to avoid shing as they sought to reach the Hypnomaster.


    And yet;


    WHOOSH!


    Not even they could reach the Hypnomaster.


    The Hypnomaster evaded their attacks with grace as he managed to ensure that not a single attack the boys threw harmed a hair on his body.


    Rui frowned. ''Something''s wrong. This isn''t just a matter of timing and it certainly isn''t speed. Every time I think I have him, I''m just inexplicably wrong.''


    He calmly analyzed as he continued to gather more data attacking the Martial Master. ''He''s not the physical brawler type in the first ce, it doesn''t make sense for this to be a physical technique. In that case...''


    It was definitely a mental technique. Rui briefly created a list of possible principles the technique was possibly relying on. There was one at the top of it that drew his attention.


    ''Is he sabotaging my sense of spatial awareness?''


    He couldn''t dismiss that possibility. If the Martial master sabotaged Rui''s sense of spatial awareness, then he could get Rui to miss by simply making them gauge his exact distance inurately. This would cause them to either time the attack too early or toote, both of which would make it trivially easy for someone as skilled as Master Zeamer to avoid them.


    ''I can''t believe he can sabotage my spatial awareness when I literally have the ability to sense space,'' Rui narrowed his eyes.


    What he particrly was quite impressed by was that this wasn''t even Master Zeamer fighting back, this was him merely evading their attacks to flex on them. And yet, it appeared that Rui had spoken too soon.


    POW POW!


    The two of them block simple jabs from him, and yet.


    "Rgh!" They grimaced as a tremendous wave of pain spread through body as if they had broken bones and torn flesh.


    ''Not this again,'' Rui groaned.


    He was messing with their sense of pain, causing them to feel lots of it when they hadn''t even taken any meaningful damage.


    "Hohoho..." The man smirked. "This might hurt more than you would have expected."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1444 Plan

    <h4>Chapter 1444 n</h4>


    The two of them ignored the pain as they recentered themselves, staring at their opponent.


    ''Ieyasu, listen to me, I have a n,'' Rui nced at him.


    The man nced back at him silently.


    ''Unless you know of a way of breaking out of the spell of that technique, we need to find a way topensate for it.'' Rui exined. ''We can do that with long-range wide-area attacks, but if we spread it too then, it loses too much potency. The good part is that he''s not sabotaging our spatial awareness by arge margin, probably because this is his limit without the Martial Heart and Mind. This means that possible actual distances between himself and us won''t have too much of a variance. If we work well together, we can cover that entire area, and it won''t matter whether he''s sabotaging our spatial awareness or not.''


    The basic idea of the n was to use teamwork to ount for sabotage to their spatial awareness and location-tracking senses. As long as they seamlessly timed and spaced their attacks together, they would be able to make sure that it didn''t matter whether he marginally sabotaged their estimation of his location.


    Regardless of whether he was slightly closer or further away than what they estimated, as long as they covered all possibilities together, it wouldn''t matter


    However, their teamwork needed to be beyond perfect to make sure that they covered all of the potential locations in their perception of where the Hypnomaster could actually be instead.


    Their movements would need to be perfect fits with each other. Like pieces of a puzzle fitting together just perfectly well without any gaps between them to form a perfect image and shape.


    Ordinarily, such teamwork only came with many years and decades of practice and experience together. It was not something that two Martial Seniors would have been able to develop on the spot.


    ''However, you can read my mind. And I can predict all of your Martial Art.'' Rui conveyed to him. ''With the insights that we have into each other, we can develop an absolutely perfect synergy between us.''


    Ieyasu simply stared at him.


    ''Er, take an offensive stance if you agree. A maneuvering stance if you''re not against trying it out once. A defensive stance if you are against it.'' Rui conveyed.


    Ieyasu shifted his stance, hopping lightly as his arms loosened, bouncing.


    ''Good to hear, but we''re going to need close to medium-range offense for this idea. We''ll also need to approach him in the opposite directions, as well.''


    "Are you done with your little strategizing session?" The man yawned.


    Rui didn''t respond as he circled around the man, activating the Greater Phantomind Void, distracting him in the direction of Ieyasu.


    "Hooo...?" The man raised an eyebrow. "That particr style of misdirection reminds me of Reina. You must have developed that technique under her guidance and training principles."


    Rui didn''t like how easily he saw through it.


    "But you have evolved it to an entirely different level of power," The man turned towards, Rui, pointedly ignoring Ieyasyu, as he grew fascinated with what he saw. "Incredible..." C0ntent ? 2024 (N/?)velDrama.Org.


    Rui felt a chill crawl up his spine as the Martial Master''s fixation on Rui grew more intense. He recognized the glint that shed in the man''s eyes. It was the same look that every Martial Master had given him thus far.


    It evoked bad memories.


    The power of the technique increased even more suddenly.


    Master Zeamer''s fascination increased even more.


    His fixation on Rui followed suit.


    "What an absurdly powerful misdirection force. I almost want to look away myself. And yet, you use it like an assassin. What a waste. Tsk, I should have never let her get her hands on you." The man grew serious as he focused more on Rui despite all of his misdirection.


    It was at that point that Rui''s self-control failed him.


    A smirk emerged on his face.


    "Heh," Rui smiled.


    The Master frowned in confusion for a moment. The next moment, his eyes widened in shock as he immediately turned around, leaping away.


    BOOM!


    CRACK


    The Martial Master widened his eyes in shock as Ieyasu''s fist crashed into the elder man''s guard. A look of pure astonishment shed across his face as he felt pain for the first time in decades.


    Ieyasu had sessfullynded a blow on the Martial Master.


    "I told you I would break that finger," Ieyasu coldly remarked.


    Master Zeamer nced at the index finger of his left hand. It was warped and crumpled, turning an ugly shade of purple. "..."


    For once he seemed entirely speechless and at a loss for words. Rui and Ieyasu exchanged a brief nce as confidence shed in their eyes.


    "...The two of you remember the bet?" The Master asked.


    His tone was solemn.


    "...Well, if I win, then both of you must promise to never reveal that just happened..." Master Zeamer''s expression crumbled into embarrassment as his old demeanor immediately seemed to return. "It''s a tough world out there. Can''t have people think I''ve gone soft...especially when the two of you proved I have."


    He nced towards Rui. "You knew you would fail in misdirecting me... and that was why you seeded."


    Rui had a good understanding of just how overpowered his Greater Phantomind Void was. He also understood that it wouldn''t work on Martial Masters. He also understood just how confident Masters were.


    "You used my confidence and fascination against me," The man concluded with a hint of true appreciation. "You understand the depths of the very concept of misdirection better than any Martial Artist in the Lower Realms. And yet, that alone was not enough..."


    He turned towards Ieyasu with a sense of wariness. "You... copied his technique, didn''t you? In just a moment, you copied a lesser version of his technique and stacked it on top of his own, making it more powerful, increasing my fascination and attention towards him."


    Ieyasu simply stared at him silently.


    Yet he could not hide his smugness.


    "Haha..." For a moment, Master Zeamer was at a loss of words.


    The very next, a profound aura of power emerged from within him, possessing a depth that escaped what Rui and Ieyasu could fathom.


    "Let us begin round two, then," The Master grinned with all his teeth. "Even this shameless old man has some pride to protect, you know?"


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1445 Switcheroo

    <h4>Chapter 1445 Switcheroo</h4>


    Rui and Ieyasu didn''t need any encouragement. The two of them had already had a n. Theyshed out at Master Zeamer with their full power, hoping to be able to pressure him so that he couldn''t avoid them nearly as easily.


    WHOOSH


    Master Zeamer cleanly shifted away from both their attacks. The first attempt failed, yet neither of them was discouraged. They immediately followed suit, refusing to give him even a moment to breathe. Their raw speed actually exceeded his, catching up in just a brief moment.


    ''Oho...'' Master Zeamer watched with interest as their steps synced, their attacks converged on with zing speed, filling in the gaps of each other''s attacks.


    WHOOSH!


    Master Zeamer avoided a diagonal kick from Ieyasu and a double strike from Rui.


    Or so he thought,


    FLICK


    Rui''s knuckle trimmed a bit of his long flowing beard with sheer friction, narrowly missing his head.?They failed in actuallynding a strike on the Martial Master, yet both of them only grew more driven as they pushed forward with greater vigor. C0ntent ? 2024 (N/?)velDrama.Org.


    They watched each other more carefully, Ieyasu kept track of Rui''s movement decisions from his mind while Rui predicted every movement that Ieyasu made. With this insight, they began adjusting better and better each time.


    With each attack, their transitions and follow-ups grew smoother. The gap between eachbo grew shorter and shorter.


    Their steps, the moments of the inception of their attacks and maneuvers all grew increasingly aligned as they grew more and more ustomed to working with each other against amon opponent.


    ''Oho...'' Master Zeamer''s eyes widened as their timing and cement grew to reach a critical threshold.


    BAM BAM!


    Master Zeamer blocked their attacks for the first time, unable to casually evade them as he did before.


    And yet, that did not mean that they were close to victory.


    POW POW POW!


    Rui grimaced in shock as extraordinarily fast blows crashed into his gut, finding him away. The pain hypnotic technique had not been dispelled, thus each technique felt excruciating.


    Yet, he knew that was an illusion. Not just the pain, but the sheer speed of the man''s attacks as well.


    ''His raw speed and power are well below both Ieyasu and myself. His Martial Body is vastly more powerful than ours, but with a Martial Heart, we significantly exceed it.'' Rui narrowed his eyes. ''So why the hell couldn''t I react to any of his blow?''


    It appeared that he was not the only one.


    BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM!


    The Hypnomasterunched five consecutive blows across Ieyasu''s body before the man could defend even a single time. Yet Rui''s eyes widened with shock.


    ''His attacks were so slow. Why didn''t Ieyasu react in time?''


    From Rui''s perspective, those blows were incredibly slow, yet Ieyasu''s reactions seemed extremely dull and dragged. Ieyasu''s expression grew grave with pain as he leaped back, grouping with Rui.


    Rui''s eyes widened as a realization struck him. ''Could it be...?''


    "He''s slowing down our perception of time," Ieyasu calmly rified. "I peeked into your mind when he struck you with those blows, your thoughts became slow and dragged out."


    ''I figured as much.'' Rui tutted.


    He recalled what the Master had told him yesterday.


    Not unless I wiped out its memories of the past day while I froze time.


    ''If he can freeze time with his Martial Heart and Mind, then it stands to reason he can speed up our perception of time, making his attacks seem much faster than they actually are.''


    ''Can you copy his techniques?'' Rui nced at Ieyasu.


    The man simply shook his head.


    "What''s the matter?" Master Zeamer suddenly elerated before them. "We''re just getting started."


    BAM BAM BAM!


    He began pummeling them with incredibly swift and excruciating blows. Each blow was almost invisibly fast while their impacts seemed to strike like meteorites. Rui felt as though his flesh was burning while his muscles tore and his bones broke.


    He almost activated Weaving Blood out of sheer instinct.


    ''Stop. This is just phantom pain. He''s getting us to subconscious recoil due to our mind''s subconscious tendency to avoid pain.''


    It was a more sophisticated application of the Illusionary Dragon''s abilities. It blindly applied pain across the entire body without associating it with a perceived cause, making it easier for Rui to ignore it.


    In this case, although the pain was lesser, it was harder to ignore, requiring a much stronger will.


    Yet they were the youngest Martial Seniors in history for a reason.


    "Hyah!" Rui surged forward with a solid blow as Ieyasuunched a maneuver that covered all the holes in his attack in the opposite direction.


    THWACK!


    Master Zeamer''s eyes widened with surprise as he blocked their heavy attacks, incurring a lot of damage to his arms. "Hoho...Admirable drive."


    He warped their perception of time, swiftly scurrying around them in a blurring sh. Rui and Ieyasu stood back-to-back, waiting for him to arrive.


    And he did.


    STEP


    The two of them immediately turned to the right, facing the Master.


    Ieyau''s eyes sharpened as heunched a flurry of blows?at the Martial Master. Much to his surprise, the Martial Master chose to block all the attacks head-on as Rui and himself pummeled him with blows.


    He didn''t try any tricks like his perception of time or space maniption, or anything else. He simply gritted his teeth as the two Martial Seniors sted the elderly Martial Master with countless blows from the opposite direction.


    Ieyasu''s shock only grew when the elder Martial Master fell to the ground on one knee, before the other knee also followed suit.


    It was almost too easy. The two Martial Seniors pummeled down the Martial Master with ease until he was t on the ground,pletely bruised and cut. He nced up towards Rui with a puzzled expression.


    And yet, he was unable to read his mind, much to his shock. Furthermore, Rui''s expression was quite strange, an obnoxiously wide crude grin very much unlike him.


    He nced back down at the Martial Master, only to be greeted with an even greater shock.


    The one on the ground was not Master Zeamer, it was actually Rui Quarrier!


    Rui groaned in pain, bruised and cut, t on the ground as he red at Ieyasu.


    Ieyasu nced back up at the person standing opposite to him in confusion, only to find Master Zeamer standing where Rui had been standing a moment ago.


    The two had magically switched ces!


    "Should we continue beating him up or should we give him a break?" Master Zeamer asked with an innocent expression.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1446 Spiral

    <h4>Chapter 1446 Spiral</h4>


    THWACK!


    A powerful swift blow crashed into Ieyasu''s jaw out of nowhere before he could even respond, making him feel dizzy.


    Rui got up in that time, leaping away, panting as he caught his breath. "You''re nasty, old man."


    "You have no idea," The man smiled before walking towards Rui. "Still, the two of you performed better than I had ever expected. I didn''t expect you would be able to hurt me to such an extent. I can say that hardly any Martial Senior today is capable of what you two aplished with your incredible teamwork."


    "Hmph, suchpliments after such an oue is hardly pleasing," Ieyasu snorted.


    "You would not be pleased even if you won, my frosty little pupil," The Martial Masterughed.


    "How are you able to keep up with us inbat at all?" Rui narrowed his eyes. "Without the Martial Heart, you can''t use the Martial Mind in its entirety. That means you only have your Martial Body to rely on. Surely you cannot fight against the Martial Heart with just your Martial Body."


    Especially not against the likes of Rui and Ieyasu who had Martial Art of extraordinary calibers. Content provided by N?velDrama.Org.


    "Hmmm..." The man stroked his white beard as he considered Rui''s question as he walked over to an adjacent wall.


    His aged hand stretched out, tapping the wall with his finger in an incredibly slow and gentle motion. A soft and tender maneuver that would hurt nary a fly. One that did not even exceed the human realm of power.


    And yet;


    CRACK!


    A gigantic crater formed in the wall.


    Rui and Ieyasu widened their eyes in surprise.


    "''Even the feeblest of elders, even the frailest of babies may split heaven and earth asunder should their bodies, minds, and souls harmonize with the flow of the universe.''" The man recited what may very well have been verses of a poem. "That was what a friend of mine told me once."


    Rui and Ieyasu exchanged a dubious nce.


    "Nonsensical," Ieyasu dered. "Iprehensible metaphorical philosophical garbage."


    That was harsh, but Rui wouldn''t have been much more generous, it was too detached from the practical realities of Martial Art.


    "Hahaha!" The manughed at Ieyasu''s evaluation. "I''m inclined to agree. Still, that friend of mine... is a Martial Transcendent. Perhaps I should call her here and have you say that to her face."


    Ieyasu looked like he was trying to swallow a frog. "...You set me up."


    Rui smirked, happy he didn''t say anything, while Master Zeamer had a goodugh at Ieyasu''s expense.


    "Alright, this has been fun. But time to put it to an end." The Master dered.


    The two of them got up, on guard against any attack. Yet suddenly, time seemed to slow down to a crawl, their eyes widened as they witnessed an incredible sight.


    Within the depths of their mind, Master Zeamer''s very existence seemed to transform from a human figure to something else, something that seemed to ascend humanity.


    He became a rotating dichromatic hypnotic spiral of ck and white. Every moment they beheld him, his existence seemed to erode the energy of their mind. Metaphorical waves of hypnotic force emerged from the hypnotic spiral, crashing into their consciousness.


    Until it eventually overcame it.


    THUD


    They copsed to the ground, unconscious. Master Zeamer heaved a sigh as he studied the two unconscious young men, before ncing at his healing broken finger, before ncing back at them.


    His demeanor grew solemn as all signs of his usual temperament and character were all but gone.


    Master Zeamer was immensely impressed by their performance, it was clear to him that they were the driving forces of the new generation. They were forces that would push the boundaries of what was possible.


    He had been quite astonished when Ieyasu had returned more than two years ago as a Martial Senior, having shattered the record by arge extent. Furthermore, he couldn''t have helped but grow even more curious when he was informed that Ieyasu''s record had already been broken by a simr margin.


    Senior Realm by twenty-four and thirty.


    ''How absurd.'' He sighed.


    It made fossils like him, who had broken through to the Senior Realm at the age of one hundred and twenty, feel antiquated. It was part of a cycle, each generation of Martial Artists was superior to the previous one.


    Each generation empowered each Realm by a higher notch. Yet such a thing did not happen naturally. Or at least, it did not happen this smoothly naturally. There was a force in the Martial World that ensured that each generation of Martial Artists was bestowed with the inheritance of all those before them.


    ''I should probably send a report to the Panamic Martial Federation about this one.'' He nced at Rui, recalling his precarious circumstances. ''On second thoughts, let''s avoid that. I should inform Reina to avoid that as well.''


    He knew that the Panamic Martial Federation already was aware of both of them. While the organization avoided meddling with mere Martial Seniors, that didn''t apply to the special ones. he had already used his influence to repel them from meddling with Ieyasu, he would have to do the same with Rui.


    In Rui''s case, there were special circumstances. Master Zeamer recalled the Greater Phantomind Void technique that Rui had used. An incredibly power misdirection technique for a young Martial Senior, one that had truly shocked him. Yet, it wasn''t the power that he was focusing on.


    It was the image, or video rather, he used to misdirect Master Zeamer. Ordinarily, the target wouldn''t actually be able to see the image so much as feel the danger that the image conveyed. But Master Zeamer was able to perceive the entirety of the high-definition three-dimensional video that Rui had created for the technique.


    ''Who was that Martial Master...?'' Master Zeamer narrowed his eyes as he recalled the female Martial Master that was attacking him in the video of the Phantomind Void technique. ''It seems far too unlikely that she''s a figment of her imagination. But I don''t think I''ve ever met her before. Hm...''


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1447 Considerations

    <h4>Chapter 1447 Considerations</h4>


    He closed his eyes as he activated his Martial Heart, empowering the majority of his dormant Martial Mind to life as he effortlessly recreated Rui''s full video from scratch based on pure memory, studying it.


    He walked over to the clip of Master Uma in his mind, taking on the form that she had taken against Master Deivon. ''Hmm, her Martial Embodiment is a de of wind, eh? It is congruent with the vibes that her Martial Art gives off. It doesn''t matter how brilliant he is. There is no way that a Martial Senior can create a such wlessly congruent image of a Martial Master.''


    Which meant that she was undoubtedly real. However, he didn''t recognize her appearance, not that that surprised him. He didn''t know all Martial Masters that existed. Although the Master Realm was quite small, there were far too many too widespread for him to know all of them.


    He doubted Rui would tell him either, considering that he had abstained from doing so before. Still, he had enough to work with. He studied her attire, pausing when he reached the crest on her chest.


    ''That symbol... Virodhabhasa Faith?'' Master Zeamer frowned. ''Looks like he got entangled with some nasty religious business. But if he really made an enemy of the entire religion, he would be dead right now. Which means...''


    It was most likely limited to this Martial Master. He narrowed his eyes, he didn''t appreciate his peers messing with his pupil. Even though it was in the past, he had felt Rui''s fear when he activated the technique, it was part of what made the technique so powerful.


    ''Of course, I could just find her and kill her.'' Finding her with the information he had was trivially easy. Each Master had a unique Martial Embodiment, meaning he could easily find her if he used his authority and influence within the Panamic Martial Federation.


    He was confident about the killing part, as well. Unless Ruipletely botched up her threat level, which seemed quite unlikely, he was far stronger than her considering he didn''t feel even the slightest hint of danger from the wind of des that Rui had conjured in the technique.


    ''Probably wouldn''t take more than a few days. Unless she''s in the Theocracy protected by Cardinal Sage Sariawar.'' Master Zeamer. ''Maybe I should get Reina to help me given that this is her specialty. She seems to have developed affection for the boy so she would definitely be willing. Besides...it will be a good opportunity.''


    A lewd smile sprung up on his face for a moment. "Hehehe... Then again, will that be the best course of action?"


    Had Rui been a lesser Martial Senior, then getting rid of her would be besr for him. The threat of a Martial Master was too much for more ordinary Martial Seniors to try and ovee.


    However, the same could not be said for Rui.


    ''She is part of his drive.'' He realized. ''However, he is not running away from her psychologically. He is fully prepared to grow stronger and then take her down when he has obtained the power he needs to aplish that. Not only that, he has the confidence that he will seed. Just like with that Deacon fellow he was telling me about.''


    It was quite impressive that Rui was able to turn hostile forces far beyond his power into sources of motivation and drive. Considering that Rui was freely traveling, it most likely meant that he was not under active pursuit from the Martial Master. In that case, she was not an acute threat.


    ''Then, it''s better to let her live. If only so that she can serve as the fuel to propel him greater heights. I shall not interefere.'' Master Zeamer made up his mind. ''I just hope my judgement is not wrong.''


    If Rui failed, or if she found him before he could seed, then he would die. Master Zeamer was taking a gamble by letting her live. A gamble with Rui''s life at stake.


    ''I definitely do need to suppress information about him within the Panamic Martial Federation.'' He thought. ''Otherwise this Martial Master will be able to learn about him through the intelligence collected by the organization with her Master-level security clearance.''


    Master Zeamer paused for a second. ''Ah there''s also the Beggar''s Sect. Those pesky roaches infesting every corner of humanity are also problematic, though Rui himself has probably handled matters rting to them.''


    He could still help out in his own ways in that regard.


    ''Goodness gracious, what a problematic pupil.'' He heaved a troubled sigh. ''On the other hand, look at me. I''m such a good Master. Truly exemry.''


    He nodded to himself, self-satisfied, before ncing at Ieyasu. ''If having a Master be your enemy is good for Rui''s growth, then the same must be true for him considering how simr they are. In that case, maybe I should pretend to be his enemy until he reaches the Master Realm. Or better yet, maybe I should find a weak Martial Master, hypnotize them to be his enemy.''


    His eyes sparkled with excitment. ''Ohhhh! I have an even better idea. I should not only hypnotize a weak Martial Master to pursue them, but I should fake my death at their hands so that he would be driven to avenge me, his kind wise good-hearted Martial Master that he is so indebted to. yes, that''s perfect!''


    "Father, you called?"


    While he was brainstorming brilliant ideas, a voice called out to him.


    "Hm?" The man turned to find four young Martial Artists. "Ah, right. I need to you to carry these two back to their personal quarters. Also send a couple of night attendants to their rooms. I want them to wake up to heaven. Hahaha!"


    The man guffawed as his children heaved a resigned sigh before carrying the two unconscious young Martial Seniors away. Naturally, neither of them were particrly pleased to find hoardes of naked women in their bed when they woke up.


    This chapter upload first at  Property ? of N?velDrama.Org.

 Chapter 1448 Drive

    <h4>Chapter 1448 Drive</h4>


    "What? You''re telling me you didn''t y around with the attendants I sent to you?" Master Zeamer asked, shell-shocked.


    "I did tell you refrain from such measures." Ieyasu coldly remarked.


    "I''m not really someone who enjoys that either. Besides, I''m somewhatmitted." Rui mentioned.


    The three of them were eating a simple meal atop a hill on one of the many cloud inds surrounding Cloudia. Rui had been quite fascinated to see that there was an entire ecosystem of life atop the cloud inds. Trees that sucked in nutrients and the abundant water from clouds and fauna that had adapted to living atop clouds.


    "Oho, you have amitted partner, hm?" Master Zeamer asked, curious.


    "I wouldn''t call her amited partner just yet, unfortunately," Rui murmured. As much as he enjoyed spending time with Xanarn, their worlds were starting diverge increasingly more. Rui required an active life with tribtions, self-inflicted or natural, to ovee as he forged on about his path fulfilling Project Water. It was almost necessary that he be exposed to the entire world if he wanted to be able to adapt to the entire world.


    On the other hand, Senior Xanarn preferred a stable and passive lifestyle where shemitted herself to one thing and ce. immersing hersef in a unfirm lifestyle protecting Ajanta Ind, or protecting the the Orphanage.


    Rui didn''t have any real romantic experience, which was he didn''t realize how big of an issue this was. The type that prevented rtionships from working. Affection, love, trust, physical and emotional intimacy alone were not enough. There was a bare minimum level of lifestylepatibility required.


    It was depressing to think about, but he knew he could notpromise his lifestyle for her, and he knew that she wouldn''t either, or at the very least she would be miserable even if she tried.


    Eventually, the conflict between him and Chairman Deacon would be resolved, either he would die or Deacon would, regardless, the threat to the orphanage would end.


    After that, assuming he would be the alive one, there was hardly a bond that would keep them together.


    "Rtionships sure are tough." Master Zeamerughed. "I too tried to have a rtionship with a woman who once tried to kill me-"


    "I don''t care," Ieyasu coldly snorted, interrupting him. "I came here to spar and get revenge for yesterday, not gossip about love."


    "Honestly, this is why you haven''t experienced love. We''re sharing a special meal between Master and students. Of course we should open up and grow more intimate with each other." Master Zeamer dered.


    "I'' only eating here because you threatened canceling sparring session otherwise," Ieyasu red at the Master with frosty eyes. "


    "If I didn''t do that you wouldn''te!" The Master protested. "Tsk, not even wanting to have food with men let alone women, this why you''re still a virgin!"


    Rui raised an eyebrow, ncing at the man.


    "I cannot be bothered to engage in frivolities," Ieyasu tone chilled.


    "Hah, frivolities, he says," Master Zeamer turned towards Rui with an incredulous look, looking for validation.


    "That reminds me," Rui smirked. "He was confessed to by the most beautiful girl I had ever seen. But not only did he reject her, but he exploited her love for him to make her ve away as a mere scout all to find a simple thing he was looking for."


    Rui took the liberty of rephrasing the story of Mira and Ieyasu


    "Hooo?" The man turned towards Ieyasu with a perilous expression.


    If looks could hurt, then Rui would have been frozen into a popsicle by Ieyasu''s cold eyes fixed on him. "That''s an incredibly misleading recounting of what happened."


    "Tsk tsk, cursed is a man who is unable to enjoy feminine charm," The man sighed, shaking his head. "It was the whole reason I became a Martial Master in the first ce."


    The two of them raised an eyebrow at that statement.


    "Oh, I didn''t tell you?" The man smirked. "The reason I became a Martial Artist was... to get as many women as possible! Hahaha! When you''re a Martial master, women flock to you like moths to light, you see? Hohoho!"


    The manughed triumphantly as Rui stared at him and his mouth began to curl with disdain before he turned towards Ieyasu slowly.


    "...Why are you giving me that look?"


    "..."


    "I didn''t choose him as my Master, he chose me," Ieyasu snorted, resigned.


    Rui turned back to the Martial Master, giving up. "You became a powerful Martial Master renowned within the Martial World... all because you wanted to be popr with women?" Content provided by N?velDrama.Org.


    "Of course," The Master nodded, proud. "And popr, I am. However, I''m sure I can get even more if I be a Martial Sage. Maybe I can even get the thirteen Celestial Beauties to be part of my harem when I be a Martial Sage."


    Rui stared at him with a lost expression. He knew that different Martial Artists had different Martial drives that could get them to grow stronger as long as the drives were bothrge in their scope and great in their intensity, but he didn''t think he would genuinely run into a Martial Master who grew stronger to get more women.


    In the first ce, one did not need to be a Martial Master if one wanted to attract women. That was overkill. Being a Martial Artist of any Realm alone was enough to satisfy this goal. This meant that his lust was so strong that not even being?Martial Senior could satisfy it.


    ''How can one man be so horny?'' Rui frowned as he gained a clinical interest in the Martial Master. ''There must be something wrong with his endocrinological system that it makes him so horny.''


    Rui understood full well what it took to activate the Martial Heart. An intense drive that fueled one''s Martial journey.


    "So you still want to grow stronger to get more women?" Rui asked.


    "Of course," The Master nodded. " Hehehe, if I''m a Martial Sage, I bet I can get Martial Masters as well. Then I can finally bag Reina and some others that I have been eying for centuries."


    "You''re incorrigible." Ieyasu snorted.


    Rui was inclined to agree.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1449 Split

    <h4>Chapter 1449 Split</h4>


    "Alright, now that we''ve eaten lightly, we can get started," The Martial Master began after a while.


    "This time, we''re definitely going much further than we didst time," Rui mused, earning Ieyasu''s silent agreement.


    "Now now, rx for a second. That''s not what''s going to be happening today," Master Zeamer informed them. "You came here to train mental techniques, not get sparring training."


    "I already have mastered the foundations in all sub-fields of mental techniques," Ieyasu remarked.


    "And yet you returned nheless," The Martial Master smirked. "You don''t need mental techniques, you need mind, don''t you?"


    Ieyasu didn''t reply, not denying the Master''s words. Rui knew he was referring to the Martial Mind. Ieyasu had told him more than two years ago that he was returning to his Master''s side to learn more about the breakthrough to the Master Realm.


    It seemed that he did not have his work cut out for him the way Rui did. Although Rui certainly did not have an easy time ahead due to the vastness of his mind that not even the VOID algorithm as it was was enough to fill, he was confident of treading the path forward.


    He knew what he had to do, and how he had to do it. He knew that he was very much capable of doing it. C0ntent ? 2024 (N/?)velDrama.Org.


    This was not the case with other Martial Seniors, they didn''t possess thefort and familiarity, not to mention the sheer capability, of creating systems of thought.


    "That is why we''re going to split up," The Master announced. "Ieyasu, go back to what you were doing. Rui, my boy, we will embark on your training."


    "Why does he get the first pick?" Ieyasu narrowed his eyes.


    "He didn''t. You''ve been here for two years. He hasn''t even been here for two days," The man snorted. "Besides, we''ve already gone over the challenges and impediments in your way, and what you can do to ovee them. You were fully invested in those until this one came along."


    Ieyasu considered those words before nodding, giving the Master a short bow, before leaving.


    "Honestly, he''s more needy than you''d ever imagine by looking at him despite all the talent and power he has at his disposal." The Master snorted. "Inparison, self-sufficient students like you are more to my speed. In fact, the rate at which you develop your Martial Art individualistically without any aid is rather unnerving. It''s not something that talent for Martial Art can yield."


    He threw Rui a curious nce. "In fact, talent usually gets in the way. The ease of mastering pre-existing techniques usually makes it more difficult to create their own techniques that actually fit their Body and Martial Art. So..."


    The light-heartedness dropped from his tone. "...why is it that you''re able to create techniques that harness reality so well, hm?"


    He stared at Rui as if trying to pry the truth with his eyes alone.


    As a Master of hypnosis, Rui had no doubt that he could forcefully do so if he really wanted. He was d that the Master did not cross any lines.


    "I have an understanding of reality that far exceeds the contemporary scientific insights of human civilization as it is. I frequently apply them to create unprecedented techniques." Rui exined. "I cannot divulge why and how I came to possess that knowledge, nor do I think I can get away with lying to you, so I''ll have to request you to be satisfied with that much."


    "Hoho...that''s quite direct," The man''s eyes glinted with amusement. "Very well then. I''ll just have to wait until you''re a Master and strong enough to protect yourself. By then you''ll gain the power and the confidence worthy of the heavy truths you hide."


    Actually, Rui wasn''t even sure if being a Martial Master was enough to divulge that he was from another world out there. The Virodhabhasa had Martial Sages, and he was certain that no matter how he started in the Master Realm thanks to his powerful mind, it would not be enough to fend off Martial Sages.


    "Regardless, let us begin, it is the whole reason you''re here, after all," The Master stated. "Now then, what is the reason you''re here again?"


    Rui stared at him, heaving a sigh of resignation. "Mental techniques."


    "Ah, yes, of course. I was already aware, I was just making sure you knew," The Master coughed. "Now then, what do you want to learn field of mental techniques? It isn''t a monolithic field, contrary to people''s expectations. It is actually just as diverse as any of the foundational fields. After all, the mind is diverse. So why wouldn''t techniques that use or affect the mind also be diverse?"


    For all of his affinity for mental techniques, he didn''t nearly as much about the field as he''d liked.


    "Hmm..." Rui considered the question. "You''re right. Could you help me by giving me an insight into the field of mental techniques? I think I could benefit from a broader overview."


    "Hmmm," The man scratched his head. "Well, there''s techniques that that affect the some parts of the mind and some techniques affect other parts of the mind, and others affect other parts of the mind, if you get what I mean."


    Rui stared at him with an expression of what was almost disgust.


    "What''s with that expression?"


    "That is the most ipetent exnation I have ever heard in my entire life," Rui spat. "Are you actually a master of hypnosis?"


    "Guh!" The Master lurched over, grasping his chest as if Rui had just struck him very hard. "T-That is a powerful offensive mental technique."


    "I did not use an offensive mental technique," Rui insisted, ring at him. "I just insulted your embarrassingly pathetic framework of mental techniques that could only have been uttered by an imbecile."


    "Argh!" The man staggered, gripping his chest. "F-Formidable."


    Rui heaved a sigh as he shook his head. "Why do you not sound like an expert?"


    "Ouch..."


    "Enough of that."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1450 Inscrutable

    <h4>Chapter 1450 Inscrutable</h4>


    "Well, I can''t help it, you know?" The man grumbled. "I''m no scientist. I just feel my way through these things."


    "Master Reina had a very broad and thorough framework for her field that distilled her understanding of assassinations," Rui insisted. "Why don''t you have one for mental techniques."


    "Hah, assassinations are super simple and easy. Don''tpare them to the mostplex and inscrutable existence in this universe." The man snorted.


    "Which is...?"


    "The mind, young man, the mind." He got up, tapping the side of his head. "We know very little to nothing about how it works. Most mental masters rely on the fact that they too have minds to get past ack of theoretical understanding and gain a more instinctual understanding or an understanding through lots of trial and error. But as for the core theory..." C0ntent ? 2024 (N/?)velDrama.Org.


    He shrugged. "Perhaps only Martial Sages and Martial Transcendents understand more about it."


    "You''re telling me you have trouble understanding the mind despite having a Martial Mind and a Martial Path centered around minds?" Rui scoffed with skepticism.


    "Hah, yes. I can tell you that there are mental techniques that affect the subconscious mind, the senses, and the conscious mind and they can be trained. But the core of it all is a mystery as far as everybody is concerned. What is the physical nature of the mind is something we have absolutely no clue about." The man remarked. "As far as we can tell, it may be some kind of fog of energy in the brain that leaks out of the head and can be detected and used to gauge more information about the mind. That is what the one and only individualistic technique that Ieyasu ever created is centered around."


    "Hmmm," Rui considered the man''s words. Science back on Earth had gone a lot farther in decrypting the mind, and while an absolute understanding was still far away, the fundamental nature of the mind was rather transparent.


    It was the summation of a massive number of electrical impulses firing between neurons in the brain. Neuron sticity ensured the development of patterns of electrical impulses across specific pathways that unfolded in response to other iing neuron impulses, allowing for information to be stored and processed.


    Understanding the structure and functionality of the brain was crucial for gaining a framework of the mind, which in turn was necessary to develop aprehensive and ground-up framework of mental techniques.


    "Still, you''re just beingzy," Rui snorted. "Put some effort, I didn''te all the way here for something that even a child coulde up with. There are things of the mind that can be learned just through introspection and observation, and I know Martial Masters are extremely good at both."


    "Harsh, I suppose the wool can''t be pulled over your eyes." The man remarked, before sighing. "Well. The mind is divided between the conscious and unconscious mind. I think we can all agree on that, right? The senses are sort of connected to the subconscious mind, which in turn processes it and sends the information to the conscious mind where it is evaluated and acted upon. Something like that. So mental techniques can be divided into techniques that affect consciousness and subconsciousness. However, you could also divide techniques by the effect they manifest, such as altering specific emotions or altering specific bodily functions, which are partially conscious and subconscious. After all, breathing is both conscious and subconscious, right? So a technique that affects the mind''s control over breathing does not fall into either category cleanly. Then there are non-offensive mental techniques that work on one''s self, like getting rid of pain or regting emotions, these too have the same issue. Also also, there are mental techniques that seem to negatively impact the target, but we have no idea what the actual mechanism is, so those are just flying around. There are also techniques that can affect memory which are also arguably falling into both categories. Also-"


    "-Enough," Rui raised his hand.


    "It''s a pain in the ass, right?" The manughed. "It''s hard to create aprehensive framework around these things, so we just muddle around with techniques we have."


    "Surely you can divide techniques into offensive, supplementary, and informative. You can at least divide the techniques that you do know into conscious, subconscious, hybrid, or unknown. Also, the effect it has on battle is also a useful way of categorizing it."


    "We know, and we do. The issue is that too many of them cross too many lines or are unknown, so their utility bes low," He shrugged, sighing. "We''re going to have to wait for someone who is both great at mental techniques and also possesses an intimate understanding of the fundamental nature of mind. Perhaps they will figure things out."


    Rui remained silent. He actually had the ability to organize and categorize mental techniques in a broader framework that was consistent, urate, and reliable. But that was for another time.


    It was not too much of an acute problem, just made his life more inconvenient.


    "The only mental techniques I have are supplementary and one misdirection technique," Rui exined. "I want to learn the most effective principles for various kinds of mental techniques spanning across offensive and supplementary fields. I have a powerful mind, thus I''m not content learning just one or two mental techniques."


    "Hm, I''m d that you feel that way," The Master grew more serious. "Because that misdirection technique of yours irritates me."


    Rui frowned. That was not what he expected to hear. "Why? I thought it was a remarkably powerful technique that would impress you."


    "It is precisely because it is such a powerful technique that it pisses me off!" The man barked. "You are capable of such powerful misdirection, and what do you use it for?"


    His expression crinkled with disdain. "To make people ignore you? That''s it? You can do so much more! I''m d you came here. That idiot assassin would have buried your talent for mental techniques!"


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1451 Demonstrations

    <h4>Chapter 1451 Demonstrations</h4>


    "You think I''m not using my mental talent properly?" Rui frowned.


    "It''s a good technique for an assassin, but assassins in the first ce do not seek to maximize the application of any given affinity to its full potential in all aspects. They only care bout killing. Thus they''d only apply things in order to aid covert killings. Mental techniques are capable of much much more than being a convenient tool for murder!"


    "Right..." Rui considered.


    "Going through all that effort to misdirect people so much only to then get them to ignore you is the most wasteful application of principles of mental techniques, but what more can you expect from assassins," He crinkled his nose. "Hypnosis, which is my chosen sub-specialty makes far greater use of the mind and misdirection."


    "Hypnosis..."


    "It is the art of manipting the subconscious mind," He remarked. "In this case, anything that you have no control over consciously, normally speaking. Generally, speaking this includes memory maniption, senses, and sabotage. Hypnosis isn''t limited to Martial Artists. Normal humans can also hypnotize people. However, they are much more limited. For one, normal humans cannot hypnotize people against their will."


    Rui nodded. Hypnosis was a proven phenomenon back on Earth, although it was not too very well understood. It was often used to aid with mental issues as a part of therapy.


    "Not much can be said about the subconscious mind, but one thing about it is certain. It can be impacted, influenced, and even rewritten by external influences." The Master informed him. "There existed an extremely powerful barrier between consciousness and subconsciousness, which prevents the former from directly manipting thetter. Furthermore, the conscious mind serves as a guard dog against external influences, preventing anything from impacting the subconscious mind. That is why normal humans cannot hypnotize their targets against their will."


    Rui nodded. He was aware that Martial Artists were not nearly as helpless.


    "Martial Artists can bypass this guard dog through multiple ways, but the mostmon way is through misdirection," The man exined. "We distract the guard dog with something. A toy or a treat. And while it is distracted we sneak past it and attack our target. Simply, isn''t it?"


    Rui had heard about this mechanism before, but he understood why the Master disliked his hypnotic technique.


    "Your technique distracts the guard dog, but instead of actually going to the treasure room, you run away from the prize to ensure that the guard dog never saw you. What a waste!" The man snorted. "Instead of running away, you should go to the control room and do some real damage!"


    Rui liked the sound of that. "That sounds very powerful. What are the mostbat-relevant applications? Manipting memories sounds fun, but it sounds like it is much lessbat-applicable than some of the other applications."


    "Hm, sensory sabotage, illusions, and involuntary sabotage might be right up your alley then," The man spected. "Those are the most easilybat applicable principles. However, rather than learning the principles and constructing basic techniques, it would be best to attune the technique to your Martial Art. Perhaps even consider making it an integral part of your Martial Mind."


    Rui had also considered that. The Martial Mind was categorically separate from mental techniques, but he could increase the scope for thought if he had more tools at his disposal.


    Of course, just learning mental techniques would be in line with his Martial Art, since there surely were Martial Artists that were particrly weak towards mental techniques, allowing him to adapt to them better.


    His Martial Art also relied on information a lot, so mental sensory techniques that supplied him with information were also something that he had his eyes on.


    However, there were a lot of possible things he could do, and he had trouble choosing. He was firmly on the side of quality rather than quantity, so he didn''t want to engage in more than three projects at once.


    Rui shook his head. "Just hearing about it in a superficial exnation isn''t enough to give me a good practical understanding of what is possible. Especially when mental techniques have such a bad framework. Can I get demonstrations of the several tentative categories of mental techniques and hypnosis to see what they look like inbat?"


    He didn''t think that he had a particr affinity for one over the other, if that were the case, then he was more inclined to see which field was more useful, and which field was more useful to his Martial Path. This content ? N?v/elDr(a)m/a.Org.


    These were the two parameters that he was focusing on when considering what kind of mental technique he ought to venture towards. Powerful but difficult to attune to adaptive evolution would be unfortunate. As would being easily attuned to adaptive evolution but not powerful in general.


    Ideally, he would find something that was both powerful, and also highly relevant to mental techniques.


    "Demonstrations hm?" The man stroked his beard. "Alright, I guess we''ll have to go disturb Ieyasu. It would be better to demonstrate it on Martial Seniors."


    Rui smirked. "Yes, I have lots of things that I would like you to demonstrate. That is why I want you to please demonstrate everything."


    "As expected of my pupil, you''re so motivated!"


    The two of them quickly made their way to a meditating Ieyasu.


    "Demonstrations on me?" The man coldly asked.


    "It will be quick, I promise."


    "I refuse."


    "That''s not fair, others have been used to demonstrate for you, you remember? All my students must be treated equally. You may leave if you disagree!"


    "...In that case, I too would like some demonstrations."


    "Hm? I thought you already knew all this stuff."


    "My memory is failing me," Ieyasu replied. "I want you to demonstrate to me everything you to demonstrate to him."


    "Hm, then so be it. Looks like you''ll also have to help him out." He turned towards Rui who was ring at Ieyasu.


    "Alright then! Let us indulge in a session of studies of mental techniques as Master and pupils!" The Master dered.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1452 Memory manipulation

    <h4>Chapter 1452 Memory maniption</h4>


    Pettiness aside, Rui truly wanted to see everything the Hypnomaster had to offer. There were nuances that could be shown and not conveyed, furthermore, with how terrible Master Zeamer''s exnations were, Rui did not trust him with urate exnations of what was really happening.


    "Alright then, let''s begin," Master Zeamer stated. "Take a good look."


    He stared at Ieyasu in the eyes while preparing a strike, much to Rui''s surprise. The two Martial Seniors stiffened as a powerful Master-level wave of pressure crashed into them.


    SNAP!


    Ieyasu''s eyes widened as a snapping sound reverberated in his ears all of a sudden overwhelming his auditory nerves painfully, drawing his attention for a moment. That was enough. Rui watched as the Hypnomaster''s body moved in a way that seemed to speak to Ieyasu.


    Listen to me, it told him.


    The man''s alertness and sharpness declined until his eyes became vacant.


    "That..." Rui recognized what had happened. "...Non-verbalmunication?"


    "Correct," The man nodded. "Quite sharp of you to notice on your first watch. In ordinary hypnosis, practitioners get the target to voluntarily lower their guard and convey information to the subconscious through speech. In Martial hypnosis, we either misdirect, disorient, or overwhelm the consciousness in order to prevent it from preventing external influences ess to the subconsciousness. Instead of verbalmunication, we rely on non-verbalmunication."


    Rui''s eyes lit up with fascination and enthusiasm. "That''s incredible. Non-verbalmunication, if done right, is much faster than verbalmunication."


    "Correct, it is more practical," The man nodded. "If I had to whisper to my opponents in the middle of a fight every time I wanted to hypnotize them, hypnosis would not be much of a viable technique. That is non-verbalmunication is so important."


    Rui nodded.


    Studies on Earth had shown that an overwhelming majority of themunication between humans was done non-verbally. Many different experiments and studies concluded that anywhere between seventy to ny-three percent of allmunication was non-verbal.


    This was not something that ordinary humans could harness in a fight, their minds were incapable of that. However, that didn''t apply to Martial Artists, Rui had already mastered Fauna Flow which allowed him to rely on his superior observation as Martial Artists to indulge in this otherwise subconsciousmunication.


    "To bypass the impeding conscious mind through misdirection, sensory overload, disorientation, pain, or poisoning, and then manipte the subconsciousness instantly through non-verbalmunication...that is the art of Martial hypnosis," The man said with pride. "What do you think? Quite impressive? Hm?"


    Rui nodded with excitement and enthusiasm. he would be lying if he wasn''t impressed with the profound power that the Hypnomaster had already demonstrated, let alone had yet to demonstrate.


    "Anyways, let''s get back to the topic," He said, turning back to Ieyasu. "This is the trance. It is a state of the victim where a channel to the subconsciousness has been created and secured. In this state, you may hypnotize the victim in any manner you want."


    "If he''s in a trance, then isn''t he vulnerable to physical attacks?" Rui asked. "Isn''t it better to just finish him off with a single lethal attack?"


    "If he were a normal person, sure, but Martial Artists don''t possess such limitations. Even if you put your target in a trance in the middle of a fight, he will still continue to fight you and try to kill you." The Hypnomaster said. "Why don''t you try? Go ahead and use your Martial Heart even."


    Rui nced at Ieyasu. "You sure he''ll be fine?" Content provided by N?velDrama.Org.


    "Just do it."


    ...BADUMP!


    Rui''s fist flew out as heunched a swift and powerful blow to the man''s head.


    BAM!


    Ieyasu''s arms flew into a guard as streaks of red glowing lines covered his entire body in just a moment as Rui''s attack crashed into them.


    "Did you really think you could get me that easily?" He narrowed his eyes.


    "Wow," Rui murmured, impressed.


    Before Ieyasu could even do anything, his body rxed as his Martial Heart deactivated, and his eyes grew more vacant and hollow once more.


    Rui furrowed his eyes as he turned back to the Hypnomaster, who had stood behind him. "Did you...?"


    "Indeed, this time, I didn''t need to misdirect as you had misdirected his attention away from me already," The man exined. "But as you can see, the trance does not make Martial Artists physically vulnerable. It is not as though their consciousness has been shut down, it is still active, the only difference is that we have managed to get it out of the way of subconsciousness. People in trances are fully capable of engaging in a variety ofplex and delicate tasks, it is merely the state where the consciousness does not protect the subconsciousness."


    Rui nodded, understanding. "So from here on out, we do the actual hypnosis."


    "Correct," The man nodded. "Let us begin with memory maniption. Now, I''ve already warned you that the core mechanics are... a little not well-understood, so bear with me. But memory essentially works by association. Memories are associated with sensory cues. Seeing the color red would induce a variety of thoughts and images in your mind that are associated with that color. Every memory is associated with sensory clues, generally rted to the sensory information stored in the memory."


    "I''m conjecturing that would need to you draw those memories around by conveying relevant sensory cues to the target. Like if you wanted to make someone forget about the sky? You would perhaps need to make them see blue?" Rui wondered.


    "Indeed, you catch on fast. We resurface memories in this manner and then rely on non-verbalmunication to convey to the subconsciousness that memories are invalid. Normal hypnotists do this by speech, but we Martial hypnotists, once again, use non-verbalmunication."


    "I see..." Rui murmured, immersed in his thoughts. "However, in order to generate relevant sensory cues, you need to be capable of manipting light and air to a certain extent"


    "Indeed," The man nodded. "That is the hard part and why memory maniption is very difficult midbat."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1453 Combat-relevant

    <h4>Chapter 1453 Combat-relevant</h4>


    Rui was fascinated by what he heard. Memory maniption seemed incredibly powerful, but also extremely difficult, based on the information that the Hypnomaster had conveyed.


    It was practically impossible to engage in sophisticated memory maniption, certainly extraordinarily difficult to do so in the middle of a fight. He could see why the Hypnomaster hadn''t included it in the middle of a fight.


    "Can you use memory maniption to make a Martial Artist forget their Martial Path?" Rui asked, curious.


    "Yes, but it is extraordinarily difficult." The man sighed. "Even for me, erasing the Martial Path of a Martial Apprentice takes an enormous amount of effort. The already herculean task grows exponentially more difficult with each Realm. I can only damage the Martial Path of Martial Squires, and can only cause temporary setbacks for Martial Seniors."


    "I see," Rui was relieved to a certain extent. He would rather die than allow his Martial Path to be erased, he was d that it was not something that could be done easily. "What about things pertaining to muscle memory?" C0ntent ? 2024 (N/?)velDrama.Org.


    "Those are just as hard." The man exined. "It would require much more effort to erase that.


    "If someone could perfectly manipte light and sound, would they be able to perfectly manipte memories?" Rui asked, curious.


    "Probably, but perfect maniption of light and sound is not something I have heard or seen," The man shook his head.


    "Interesting..." Rui murmured.


    Memory maniption had more applications and power than he had given it credit for, although it was still quite impractical forbat, perhaps Rui could work on a particrly long-term project for centered around mental techniques.


    "Let''s do one demonstration," The Master remarked. "You."


    He put Rui in front of Ieyasu before his body shifted and twitched, moving in particr ways. Rui even understood what he was saying, he was speaking to Ieyasu the same way that human hypnotists would speak to their targets, trying to get them to forget something.


    CLAP


    The Master dispelled the trance. Ieyasu became more alert and conscious, ncing around.


    "Ieyasu, do you know who this is?" Master Zeamer asked.


    "I''ve never seen him in my life," Ieyasu replied with confidence and certainty.


    "That''s what I thought."


    It wasn''t long before Ieyasu had been brought back into a trance.


    "That''s so surreal," Rui murmured.


    "Hahaha, mental techniques are among the most surreal techniques of them all," Master Zeamer snorted pridefully. "However, let us move on to a morebat-practical application. Sensory maniption."


    "Illusions?" Rui asked.


    "No, sensory maniption. Illusions are a subset of sensory maniption," Master Zeamer stated. "Sensory maniption includes illusion as well as things like sensory sabotage. This relies purely on non-verbalmunication to convey and embed the maniption and sabotage of a certain sense organ in the mind of the victim. However, how do you convey that? How do you convey the state of being having one''s own sense sabotaged?"


    Rui considered the matter deeply. Non-verbalmunication worked differently from verbalmunication. There were no rules of grammar, and no database of vocabry stored in some dictionaries when it came to non-verbalmunication.


    If Rui wanted to consciously tell a person that their vision was messed up, then he simply needed to say ''Hey, your vision is messed up.''


    But how was he supposed to non-verballymunicate such an inner experience to someone else''s subconsciousness non-verbally?


    "Since there is no defined set of rules for non-verbalmunication and it is all based onmon psychological associations, then..." Rui paused for a moment. "Then I''m guessing you have to subject yourself to the same experience through powerful imagination, tricking your own subconsciousness into believing it, causing your body to move in ways that it would if the imagination was real. this would undoubtedly cause the non-verbalmunication to convey the experience."


    It was a simr principle to the Phantomind Void technique. Except the purpose was to impact the subconsciousness, instead of misdirecting the consciousness.


    "Correct," The man grinned. "You really do catch on quickly. However, it takes a lot of time to develop an image powerful enough. This principle is known as the imagination-embodiment process"


    "Can the imagination-embodiment be used to manipte memories in ce of actually manipting light and sound? Rather than manipting light and sound to produce the sensory cues to draw out memories associated with those sensory cues, can I rely on non-verbalmunication to convey memories and then erase them?" Rui asked.


    "It''s possible," The Master confirmed. "However, it is even more impractical than manipting light and sound. Remember that imagination-embodiment requires an immense amount of training to generate a well-developed image that can allow you to embody it well enough to convey it through non-verbalmunication. Which means for every memory you want to erase, you need to spend a lot of time training for it, almost like it is its own technique."


    Rui narrowed his eyes. "What if there was someone who could rapidly generate these images without having to go through all the effort as a result of a powerful mind and imagination?"


    Master Zeamer''s eyebrows rose with interest. "I''d say such a person was blessed and ought to make use of their gifts to the fullest."


    A smile emerged on Rui''s face. "I do intend to."


    "Hoho..." The man stroked his long flowing beard. "I sure look forward to that. I''m d that what you have seen thus far has already motivated you to master the depths of the field of mind. Your Phantomind Void technique is powerful, but it hardly uses your talent for mind to its fullest."


    Rui nodded. He had previously been skeptical of the Master''s continuous insistence that the grade-ten technique he had been proud of did not harness his mind to produce the greatest results, but he could definitely understand where the man wasing from after seeing what was possible.


    The Phantomind Void was a deliberately iplete technique mostly because assassins did not manipte the mind, they killed. They had no need for such techniques. However, now that Rui hade across them, he could not ignore them.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1454 Limitations

    <h4>Chapter 1454 Limitations</h4>


    "I would demonstrate sensory sabotage, but you have already experienced it multiple times recently, haven''t you?" The Master asked.


    Rui nodded. The Illusionary Dragon sabotaged almost all his senses, while Master Zeamer also sabotaged his sense of space and time multiple times.


    "There are orders of difficulty when ites to sensory sabotage," The man exined. "The five conventional senses are the easiest to sabotage. Most people are highly conscious of this and it is much easier to convey information about it. However, things like the sense of bnce, the sense of space and time are far harder to sabotage, these senses are far more subconscious and detached from the consciousness."


    Rui nodded, digesting everything that the Master conveyed. It was a lot to consider and think about, and he had yet to immediatelye up with applications of these principles to develop a technique that truly resonated with his Martial Art and was truly attuned to adaptive evolution.


    "You can have those considerationster, let us move on to principles that I have yet to demonstrate," The Master remarked, before turning to Ieyasu. He walked over to the man, yet that was not all he was doing. Rui could feel the shifts in his powerful mind as his body''s non-verbalmunication also shifted.


    A lot of information, directives, and even instructions were beingmunicated to the subconscious centered around a single thing.


    Apple.


    SNAP


    Master Zeamer dispelled the trance as he got rid of the misdirection, as Ieyasu''s consciousness guarded his subconscious mind once he became aware of them.


    "Tokugawa, what do I have in my right hand?" The man asked.


    He held up an empty palm with nothing in it.


    "An apple," The man replied with certainty.


    "Are you sure?"


    "Positive,"


    "Good, oh what''s that?" Master Zeamer pointed to the left, drawing his attention, before using a powerful misdirection technique to keep away his consciousness away while he put him in a trance.


    "Incredible," Rui murmured. "He saw an apple where there wasn''t any."


    "That''s right," Master Zeamer replied. "I embedded the existence of an apple in my hand into his subconsciousness, causing him to see one where there wasn''t any."


    "Wow..." Rui murmured.


    Mental techniques were so radically different from anything he was ustomed to that he needed to spend some time forming a deeper understanding and familiarity with the field.


    However, regardless of whether he was able to form perfectly attuned techniques to his Martial Art or not, the worst-case scenario was still extremely good. He would still be able to create menacing techniques that would allow him to wreak havoc against his opponents.


    That was why he was quite optimistic about this phase of his training. The sheer things that were possible with illusions, sensory sabotage, and memory maniption opened a whole new avenue of possibilities.


    ns, schemes, and strategies that were previously impossible would no longer be outside of the realm of possibility. Content provided by N?velDrama.Org.


    In fact, if he truly gained great proficiency within these fields, Chairman Deacon was almost no longer something to be wary of. If not for the fact that these techniques wouldn''t extend to his family which remained a weakness, he would be able to stroll within the Shionel Confederation without any fear whatsoever.


    Especially when hebined it with the techniques that he had learned from Master Reina.


    "Now before we move on, let us look at some practical realities to temper your expectations," The Master remarked. "For one, the stronger your opponent, the harder it is to hypnotize them. The Martial Heart enhanced cognition, and that increases the difficulty. Your Martial Heart is the weakest that exists at the moment, so that will be a burden undoubtedly. Of course, your mind is disproportionately powerful, so it will not onlypensate for that gap but do far more. Most Martial Seniors have much to fear against you if you fully realize your potential, but not all of them. Do not underestimate high-grade Martial Seniors."


    Rui nodded thoughtfully. He didn''t want to get too conceited because of the sheer potential he had to explore within the field of mind.


    "There are limitations fundamental to hypnosis. For one, your mind is divided between constantly misdirecting the consciousness away from protecting the subconsciousness while you''re hypnotizing it. if you stop misdirecting the consciousness midway, then it will return and shut your channel to the subconscious mind," Master Zeamer exined.


    Rui nodded, this meant that he couldn''t use the Greater Phantomind Void technique to misdirect the consciousness. The reason for that was because the Greater Phantomind Void technique used all his mental power, leaving no mental power for the actual hypnosis.


    This was also another reason that the Hypnomaster chastised the technique.


    ''In that case, I might have to resort to a technique like the Lesser Phantomind Void.'' Rui mused. ''I know that there isn''t much that needs to be done for the misdirection part of hypnosis since I already have a technique that can be used for it. However, I will need to work hard to develop relevant imaginations for the actual maniptions of the target.''


    "Moving on to the next tentative category of hypnosis," The Master remarked, drawing Rui out of his reverie. "Body sabotage. This is a form of hypnosis that affects the mind''s control over the body. As I''m sure you''re aware, the brain is themand center of the body. It sends signals of sorts across nerves to control muscles and that sort of thing. That is what we will be using hypnosis to disrupt. The foundation of the mechanics remains the same as the other principles. Wemunicate with the subconsciousness using imagination embodiment and embed that into the subconscious. Causing the mind to lose control over the body to a certain extent. Masters like myself can even induce all-out paralysis of the technique."


    Rui''s eyes widened with surprise. "That''s extreme."


    "It is also extremely difficult," He remarked. "It is also overkill and unnecessary usually. One can win battles with much less."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1455 Projects

    <h4>Chapter 1455 Projects</h4>


    "Now then, time for a demonstration." The Master dered before executing another imagination-embodiment non-verbalmunication against Ieyasu.


    CLAP


    Ieyasu broke out of his trance startled.


    "Can you move your right arm, Tokugawa?" Master Zeamer asked.


    "Not at all," Ieyasu frowned.


    "And there you go," Master Zeamer gestured. "I''m sure I don''t need to exin to you at this point."


    Rui nodded. "I''ve understood everything that I need to."


    "Good," Master Zeamer pped, undoing the technique and allowing Ieyasu to move his arm once more. "That brings us to an end. I suppose it''s your turn now for Ieyasu''s sake."


    Ieyasu paused for a moment, before heaving a tired sigh and shaking his head. "Go away. I have more important priorities."


    Rui raised an eyebrow as an amicable smile rose on his face. "Appreciate the help, by the way. Good luck with your training."


    The two of them parted ways as Rui left to get more food for thought. He didn''t need much more of an input from the Hypnomaster after everything that he had seen. But unfortunately, he had yet to have a brilliant spark of an idea that would help him with creating a new technique.


    ''The goal is to create a technique that is powerful and attuned to my Martial Path.'' Rui heaved a sigh, reminding himself. Perhaps it was because there was so much potential, but he actually had a lot of troubleing up with a good technique. It was easier for him to identify the best choice when there was little potential to be unearthed.


    However, he did have some ideas.


    ''I can perfect the Godspeed technique.'' Rui noted. ''If I can learn to hypnotize myself and slow down my own sense of time.''


    Previously, he didn''t have any ideas of how to perfect the imperfect technique. But now, he had a way to fix it. He just needed to self-hypnotize himself to slow down his perception of time.


    ''Induced tachypsychia.'' Rui mused. ''Intriguing.''


    That was definitely worth putting on the table, as it meant that he didn''t have any weakness in that technique any more. He wouldn''t need to wait to develop a VOID algorithm until he used the technique.


    ''Speaking of which, that''s something I should focus on in general.'' Rui mused. If there was one weakness that the VOID algorithm had, it was the time that it took to create a predictive model. It was especially a heavy weakness because he used the Metabody System after the predictive model was developed.


    Which meant that he could not use a good chunk of his power until after he developed the VOID algorithm. Property ? of N?velDrama.Org.


    ''Then why don''t I focus on shoring this weakness?'' Rui wondered with a hint of interest.


    Beingpatible with adaptive evolution also includedpensating for its weaknesses. That was why creating mental techniques to shore up his power before he fully adapted to someone was not a bad idea.


    ''That''s definitely worth leaving as at least one of the ideas for a mental technique.''


    That meant upgrading the Godspeed technique and creating something to engage the opponent before hepletely adapted were two projects that he could undertake here.


    Then that left space for one, at most two, projects for techniques that aided with actual adaptive evolution.


    In such a case, at least one offensive mental technique would be fine as well. There were undoubtedly going to be opponents that he would run into that were too physically tough to hurt with physical attacks alone, in such a case, an offensive mental technique would be quite useful.


    ''Actually, different kinds of offensive mental techniques are suited to different kinds of opponents.'' Rui noted.


    An offensive Martial Artist was probably going to suffer most from sabotage of control over their power. A defensive Martial Artist would probably be best suited to have their pain significantly enhanced. A maneuvering Martial Artist would best be health with sabotage to their sense of space and time.


    Unfortunately, he wasn''t going to stay here for too long.


    ''I can set the specialized techniques as super-long-term techniques, probably best to stick with a simple offensive mental technique for now.'' Rui figured before his eyebrow rose with an idea.


    ''Actually, what if I fuse the pre-predictive model technique project with the offensive technique project?'' Rui wondered. ''I could kill two birds with one stone.''


    Perhaps he could cover for his rtively lower power level before adapting with mental techniques that were perfectly suited for his opponent.


    ''It will take time to develop that diversity...'' Rui tutted. ''Such a shame, honestly.''


    He needed toe up with a better n that ensured that they wouldn''t be getting all that trampled over.


    He heaved a sigh as he considered the pros and cons of the multiple ideas. Although he had conceived of some ns, it was still up in the air for the most part.


    It was definitely a good idea to rely on mental techniques to bolster his strength before he fully adapted, it was also a good idea to have a technique that was best suited for Martial Artists with a greater affinity towards one of the fundamental fields ofbat.


    Since almost all Martial Artists were more attuned towards one of three; offense, defense, and maneuvering, he could pick and choose which technique to employ versus whom.


    Rui actually found this idea more ptable. The reason for this was that it was applicable to both pre and post-predictive model parts of the fight equally, serving two roles at once.


    "Alright, that''s fine for now. Let''s begin with that." Rui decided. "Four projects, one for upgrading the Godspeed technique, and the other three for having mental techniques suited to adapting to my opponent. By the time I''m done, nobody will be able to escape the power of my mind."


    Phantomind Void was a good example of what could be aplished when he put his mind to good use. However, he needed a technique that was capable of harnessing his mind, ordinary techniques would not be enough.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1456 Choice

    <h4>Chapter 1456 Choice</h4>


    Offense, defense, and maneuvering-oriented Martial Artists. He was going to create a technique for each of them. However, he could not even get into the specifics of the technique, there were some basic rules that could be established about the techniques that he was creating before he could create them.


    ''The first basic necessity is that the ease ofnding them on the opponent is high. It must have a very high probability of sess in actually impacting the opponent''s subconsciousness.'' Rui established.


    The reason for this was simple. The VOID algorithm was his most powerful technique, but it had shorings such as difficulty of activation. It took a lot of time and brainpower to create a predictive model and use the most powerful system within the VOID algorithm; the pattern recognition system.


    He was trying topensate for the activation difficulty of the VOID algorithm, so what was the point of trying topensate for high activation difficulty with a technique that also had high activation difficulty?


    It made no sense. He would simply be trying to activate two techniques with high activation difficulty, and there would be nothing that was actually trying topensate for the time period while he was preparing for the VOID algorithm.


    Thus he needed a technique that could be used easily, that was guaranteed to seed in its hypnotic attempt no matter what to help with ensuring that he didn''t lose while preparing the predictive mode.


    Thus, each of the three techniques needed to be a low-difficulty technique with as powerful an oue as such a technique permitted.


    ''In that case, the Greater Phantomind Void technique is not suited.'' Rui mused. ''Or at the very least, I should create lesser and greater versions of all three techniques.''


    That way, he could use the lesser versions prior to adapting to ensure that the probability of sess was high even if came at the cost of a lower impact. Once hepleted the predictive model on his opponent, then he could go to higher difficulty techniques that also produced greater effects.


    With those conditions established in mind, it was time to get down to the specifics of each technique.


    ''First; offense,'' Rui mused. ''I need a mental technique that is particrly useful against powerful offenses.''


    Rui considered offensive Martial Artists. They usually relied on a lot of power, barring exceptions like poisons and mental techniques. Thus it would make sense to develop a technique that targeted this and sabotaged it.


    ''Body sabotage makes the most sense, as I''d concluded earlier.'' Rui nodded.


    If he could sabotage their bodies somehow, then he would be able to negate their offense significantly.


    However, the biggest issue was the fact different Martial Artists used their power differently and employed it offensively quite differently as well. What that meant was that he needed to find something all Martial Artists used in order to sabotage that above all else.


    Having too many targets would weaken the potency of the sabotage too much if also wanted to reduce the difficulty of the feat significantly.


    ''In that case, a singr target something to sabotage is...'' Rui''s eyes narrowed as his mind processed all possibilities before stumbling on to the perfect oue. ''...Breathing.''


    Breathing was something that every human did.


    Something that every human needed. Martial Artists were not exempt from this absolute rule either. In fact, an overwhelming majority of Martial Artists used breathing techniques to improve theirbat. C0ntent ? 2024 (N/?)velDrama.Org.


    Thus, if he could sabotage their breathing, he ought to be able to sabotage their generation of power. This was a safe universal organ to sabotage for guaranteed results.


    ''Furthermore...I don''t even need to train too hard to generate an image through imagination for breathing sabotage...''


    After all, in his previous life, Rui was terminally asthmatic and grappled with struggling with breathing his entire life. Although it had been over twenty-six years in this world, he could still remember the suffering he underwent like it was yesterday.


    In hindsight, it truly was horrible.


    He was partly able to power through his condition in his previous life thanks to the fact that he didn''t know just how bad he had it. But in this life, he knew what it felt to breathe fully and deeply, he could even use breathing techniques to augment himself significantly.


    ''My opponents will experience my pain.'' Rui dered. ''My suffering was not in vain. My suffering will be my strength.''


    He was sure that he would be able to create an extraordinary as long as he relied on the countless memories of suffering that he had. He would be able to generate a powerful illusion that he could embody to adjust his bodynguage such that he could convey and embed that same suffering into the subconscious mind, causing the target to be unable to breathe.


    Not only breathing techniques but breathing in general will be hampered. Rui wondered if he would be able to get a target to suffocate and choke due to ack of oxygen.


    Regardless, he would find out eventually as long as he seeded in the training project, which he intended to. he would be able to find out personally as long as he kept at it. The personal affinity for this technique would allow him to ovee the barriers to realizing this technique quite well in his opinion.


    Furthermore, that was stacked on top of his already high affinity for mental techniques. No one could say just how powerful this technique would end up being, not even Master Zeamer could possibly understand the limits of this technique that well. That was why he was actually quite looking forward to the oue of the project, maybe even a little too much.


    "Hehehe..." Rui smirked, as some ideas centered around the powerful technique. he couldn''t help but grow extremely excited about the end oue, even if the training contained hardships, he did look forward to seeing just how his own suffering could trante into development of his Martial Path.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1457 Hypnomatrix

    <h4>Chapter 1457 Hypnomatrix</h4>


    With the offensive project decided, he still had defensive and maneuvering projects left. He quickly thought about it as many ideas shed through his head, evaluating them with a lot of time on his hands.


    ''For maneuvering,'' Rui mused. ''Hm...''


    Frankly, sabotaging the breathing of maneuvering Martial Artists would certainly be an effective mp on their power. The reason for this was that they too needed breathing and breathing techniques.


    However, that didn''t mean that this was the optimal manner to deal with them.


    ''More than power, maneuvering Martial Artists needed congruence between mind and body. It''s the problem I currently face with Godspeed, being unable to keep up with the speed of my body.'' Rui mused.


    By speeding the rate of perception of time, causing time to pass faster in their perception, he could cause their own movements to be too fast to them. This way he could force them to slow down physically, negating their greatest advantage significantly.


    ''Furthermore, I actually have experience with the relevant image as well.'' Rui mused.


    He struggled with Godspeed when it came to trying to keep up with it with his reaction speed. The sensation of having one''s physical speed be far superior to one''s reaction and processing speed was something he was quite familiar with.


    This also helped with cultivating the right image. He would be able to curb their speed quite well by using sensory-sabotage hypnosis manipting their sense of time.


    ''That covers offense and maneuvering, what about defense?''


    This was a little bit more troubling to discern. He could rely on sensory sabotage to greatly augment pain, and that would certainly help, but that alone was probably not enough.


    ''Hm, pain can work, but it doesn''t actually deal damage.'' Rui tutted. ''It doesn''t bypass defense. Especially passive defenses.''


    However, it did make the target feel as though their defenses were not working. Which perhaps was good enough?


    ''Hm, I''ll have to revisit, maybe consult Master Zeamer.'' This content ? N?v/elDr(a)m/a.Org.


    However, the more important part was the remarkable adaptation to his opponent using mental techniques alone. He was already able to adapt to his opponents by predicting and countering their moves, then he obtained the ability to adapt his body to his opponents, and now he possessed the ability to sabotage them by specifically using mental techniques to sabotage their strengths.


    He was adapting mind, body, and Art to take down his opponent.


    ''It''s bringing me closer to fulfilling Project Water.'' Rui''s eyes lit up with excitement and enthusiasm.


    The degree to which he could adaptively evolve to his opponents was extreme. He had added a newyer of adaptive evolution purely based on mental techniques alone.


    ''I''m so d that I decided toe here.'' Rui sighed. Although he valued what he learned from Master Reina, they weren''t nearly aspatible, specialty-wise. However, Master Zeamer and Rui possessed immensepatibility with each other. That was why he knew that there was little to lose by learning from him, and everything to gain.


    And he was right. His affinity was so high, that it was possible to upgrade the VOID algorithm with just the sheer quality of his mental techniques.


    ''It is possible to create a hypnotic matrix, a hypnomatrix, that outputs the best hypnotic technique to be used against a given opponent based on their Martial Art.'' Rui realized.


    In a sense, he had already created a hypnomatrix that outputted the best hypnotic technique to counter a given opponent. Body-sabotage for offensive, sensory-sabotage techniques for maneuvering and defense.


    Of course, this was a highly elementary matrix at the moment. But it was possible to grow the hypnomatrix until it became aplex program that inputted several variables and outputted the most perfect hypnotic technique to counter his opponent.


    ''This will be my first step towards the Martial Mind.'' A grin sprung up on his face as he clenched his fist. ''First step since bing a Martial Senior, anyway.''


    He could hardly contain his excitement. By adding a hypnomatrix to the VOID algorithm, he would be concretely increasing the amount of thought inside it, and thus his Martial Mind.


    Given his sheer ability to master hypnotic techniques, he was sure that the hypnotic matrix would growrge due to his ability to create and master more hypnotic techniques. Thus there was no concern about it not being a significant addition to his Martial Mind.


    ''Furthermore, that doesn''t even include the maniptions of my own mind.'' Rui realized. ''Adapted attacks to my opponent''s minds are one thing, but adapting my own mind to suit my opponent is another.''


    Rui would need to inquire more from the Hypnomaster about self-hypnosis and maniption. Was it possible to alter his mind to be more suited towards maneuvering-oriented Martial Artists? or towards offensive or defensive Martial Artists?


    He didn''t know yet. He had just been introduced to mental techniques recently. On top of that, the fundamentals of the fields were not understood due to scientific limitations.


    However, that was not the case for someone like him who had a much better and deeper understanding of the brain and the mind. There was always a very real possibility that he would be able toe up with some truly powerful and extraordinary as long as he applied his brains wisely, and literally.


    If that were to happen, he was sure that he would be able to gather his Martial Mind over time. Although he didn''t know how much empty space there was left to be filled with the Martial Mind, it was things like the brand-new Hypnotrix Project that made him certain that he was probably progressing at a rate that was nigh unprecedented. How many people came up with Martial Minds so easily and began implementing them as early as Rui was doing so?


    After all, it had looked as though Ieyasu had spent the past two years working on his Martial mind, he frankly did not feel like Ieyasu had made too much progress when it came to this matter.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1458 Martial Embodiment

    <h4>Chapter 1458 Martial Embodiment</h4>


    In general, Rui was sure that he was probably one of the few Martial Artists who could make progress in the Senior Realm with much less difficulty than his peers.


    ''Or at least, progress towards the Master Realm,'' Rui mused. ''I can imagine other Martial Seniors rely on techniques bringing the best out of their Martial Body and, by extension, Heart because that is a much easier solution than developing the Martial Mind.''


    Developing a system of thought that was so sophisticated andplex, yet pertinently urate in its directives that it filled up an entire section of their brain that there was untapped potential?


    An overwhelming Martial Seniors did not know where to start. The Martial Mind was an intellectual feat that was no different from long-term research and development projects conducted by schrs and researchers. Most Martial Seniors felt intimidated by the challenges that beset them in their journey to a higher Realm.


    But not Rui. Of course, that did not mean he found it easy. He was very sober of the reality that his journey was much more difficult than the others. The only silver lining was the fact that he had made substantial progress with things like the VOID algorithm and the ODA System. Another boon was the greater ease with which he made progress.


    These two facts allowed him to be more confident in the face of the particrly overwhelming challenges that only he was subject to.


    ''Alright, back to the topic,'' Rui sighed. ''Ordinary hypnosis is more nuanced and delicate than the more monolithic misdirection that Master Reina taught me.''


    With Master Reina''s philosophy and application of mind, he simply needed to pour all his mind and effort into misdirecting attention away from him. However, Master Zeamer detested such a simplistic application of it.


    Of course, he did not think one was right or wrong. Master Reina was an assassin, and every technique she developed was designed to be most efficient for assassinations. Mental techniques were extremely diverse, but she only cared about its applications in assassination and nothing else.


    While Rui respected her capacity to kill, he was not an assassin. He preferred Master Zeamer''s diverse but more full-fledged application of the mind.


    ''However, because Master Zeamer''s hypnosis is multi-fold, I need to be careful about the structure of the technique.''


    Master Reina simply had him misdirect, but Master Zeamer''s techniques required him to misdirect and impress on the subconscious mind of the target. Both of those required mind and both of those were done simultaneously, which means that Rui needed to ration his mental power and make sure he split it in the best manner possible.


    ''In general, the more extensive my maniption of the mind is, the greater the misdirection needs to be.''


    In order to reach deeper, he needed to move the guard as far away as possible. Thus any extensive maniption required even more powerful misdirection.


    ''If I have to divide my mental power between misdirection and maniption of the mind, then my hypnotic techniques will have misdirection weaker than the Greater Phantomind Void.'' Rui realized.


    The Greater Phantomind Void dedicated all of Rui''s mental power to misdirection. Hypnotic techniques split mental power between misdirection and maniption thus his hypnotic techniques would need to have weaker misdirectionpared to the Phantomind Void.


    ''A fifty-fifty split should work fine. Now then, it''s time to get started.'' Rui found himself at the entrance of the meditation center where Ieyasu himself was training. It was a ce that ced Martial Artists in chambers that isted Martial Artists from any distractions, allowing them to fully be immersed in their own minds.


    It wasn''t long before the staff at the meditation center had arranged for a meditation chamber for Rui as well where he secluded himself in peace.


    ''Now then, each of the three hypnotic techniques requires misdirection. In this case, should I stick to Master Uma? Hmm...'' Rui wondered as an interesting thought popped into his head. ''Wait, if I am to use a Martial Master, then wouldn''t Master Zeamer be better?'' Content provided by N?velDrama.Org.


    He wasn''t certain, but both Master Reina and Master Zeamer struck him to be at a much higher level than Master Uma or Master Carian. It was quite amazing because thetter was supposed to be quite impressive and powerful in their own right, above more ordinary Martial Masters like Master Deivon.


    Furthermore, Master Zeamer was perhaps the most suited to be used as the distraction in his technique because of his special form. The form that all Martial Masters seemed to have was rted to their Martial Path or Martial Art.


    Rui recalled the profound hypnotic spiral of ck and white that Master Zeamer''s form shifted to. It was as though Rui could immerse himself in it, submerging his mind in it forever.


    ''It''s way more distracting and drawing than Master Uma''s de of winds.'' Rui realized. ''It would be much more suited as the image of my misdirection technique.''


    It was a shame to leave so quickly after he had arrived, but this was something that he needed to get done as soon as possible. He quickly, got up, scampering across Cloudia as he searched for Master Zeamer.


    "My what?" Master Zeamer sipped a cup of tea.


    "Your hypnotic spiral form," Rui repeated.


    "As, you mean my Martial Embodiment," Master Zeamer mused.


    "It has a name?" Rui''s eyes lit up with interest.


    "Well, of course, it''s a phenomenon that urs with the activation of the Martial Mind," Master Zeamer replied. "It''s one of the reasons that the Master Council of the Panamic Martial Federation discourages Martial Masters from fighting before mortals, among other reasons."


    "Wait, it does?" Rui frowned. "That seems... limiting."


    Rui wondered if that was the reason Master Uma attacked their carriage when they were in the middle of nowhere, among other reasons, so that she could deal with Master Deivon without having to hold back.


    "It''s not a prohibition," Master Zeamer exined. "More of an agreement and consensus between Martial Masters of the Master Council of the Panamic Martial Federation. The Martial Embodiment has an adverse effect on the minds of mortals. Crippling effects, PTSD,as, that sort of thing. It has even caused death. Long ago, two Martial Masters actually caused the destruction of an entire nation because of mass mental damage across the entire nation. Killing some, permanently crippling many, and causing damage to all. That is the power of the Martial Embodiment."


    "What is the Martial Embodiment?" Rui wondered with awe.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1459 Control

    <h4>Chapter 1459 Control</h4>


    "Other Martial Masters take a lot of pride in it. It''s a sign of the ascended. The hallmark of the Master Realm...But if you ask me, it ain''t that big a deal," Master Zeamer snorted. "It''s just a passive hypnotic effect on the minds of lesser beings. It works the same as an illusionary hypnotic technique that I showed you, but passively, and only on Martial Artists of the Lower Realms."


    "A passive illusion?" Rui''s eyes narrowed as his mind shed into action processing the new and old information he had. "I see. I understand the truth."


    "Sharp as always," Master Zeamer chuckled.


    "Illusionary techniques work by misdirecting the consciousness, and then using non-verbalmunication to manipte the subconscious mind which is extremely susceptible to external suggestions," Rui''s eyes swum around, immersed in thought. "If Martial Masters are able to generate illusions in the minds of the beholder, then that means that they are going through the same process. A number of inferences can be made."


    "You said it was passive and caused by the Martial Mind," Rui mused. "That means that the Martial Mind is impacting the body''s non-verbalmunication in the same way that image embodiment impacts non-verbalmunication in a hypnotic technique. The Martial Mind impacts the subconsciousness in the same image embodiment does. That''s why it generated the necessary non-verbalmunication to manipte the senses into seeing an illusion. But in order for that to happen..."


    Rui''s eyes narrowed.


    "Go on," Master Zeamer encouraged with an amused smile.


    "For that to happen, it would mean that the Martial Art of Martial Masters is so captivating and eye-drawing that it distracts the conscious mind so much that it leaves the unconscious mind open to maniption to the non-verbalmunication caused by the Martial Mind. But that''s just absurd."


    "Is it?" Master Zeamer asked. "It''s just the natural progression. The Martial Art of the Upper Realms is truly far beyond human limits, both mentally and physically. They are said to have ascended humanity. That is why such a thing is possible."


    Rui raised an eyebrow of skepticism. "I see."


    "You said you came here to use my Martial Embodiment as the image embodiment of your misdirection techniques, correct?" Master Zeamer thoughtfully considered it. "That''s actually quite the genius idea. My Martial Embodiment is suited for such a purpose."


    "Then..."


    Master Zeamer nced at Rui for a moment, sipping his tea.


    One moment, he was just an old man sipping some tea peacefully.


    The very next moment, his very existence seemed to shift.


    Rui gritted his teeth as an enormous wave of pressure crashed into his mind with an oppressive dominance. The weight of the Master Realm pushed down on him. He needed to struggle just to maintain his attention on the hypnotic spiral that had bloomed out of Master Zeamer''s figure. So much so that he even activated his Martial Heart to help.


    He could understand why Martial Masters avoided going all out against their peers in the public eye. If he was struggling so much to resist its mental effects, then the average person would definitely suffer brain damage or something.


    While the Martial Heart enhanced his brain enough to help him focus, he quickly recorded every single detail of the illusion that he was experiencing.


    The radius and diameter of the hypnotic circle, the number of spiraling lines, and even the exact colors of the illusion. He also made sure to urately record the angr velocity and the spiral so that he could replicate its motion urately.


    It wasn''t too long before he was done. This content ? N?v/elDr(a)m/a.Org.


    "Man..." Rui huffed as he sat down. "That was stressful."


    "Hahaha!" Master Zeamerughed at his expense. "You sure did well to resist my Martial Embodiment."


    "It''s no wonder you Martial Masters are not allowed to fight seriously in front of people," Rui voiced his thoughts. "In addition to having incredible destructive power."


    "Thetter is actually not a reason," Master Zeamer remarked. "Martial Master fights are actually no more destructive than the fights between normal humans. Though this isn''t universal as some Martial Art inherently have wide-scale destruction."


    Rui''s eyes widened. "What?!"


    "It''s the truth..." Master Zeamer remarked as he sipped his tea. "The control that the cognition of the Martial Mind grants us is beyond what you can experience."


    "But... I once saw a fight between Martial Masters escte torge environmental damage. And I don''t think either of them was particrly scale-oriented," Rui frowned.


    Master Zeamer narrowed his eyes, as a knowing glint shed in his eyes. "Then one of them must have been actively trying to cause environmental destruction on purpose."


    Rui frowned his eyes swum around, immersed in thought. "But which one... and why?"


    The Master shrugged. "That''s for you to figure out. Do you need anything else from me?"


    "No."


    "Then scatter, from here on out, I must seclude myself in my grand bedroom for some...domestic matters." The man couldn''t hide a lewd smile arising on his face.


    Rui heaved a sigh, facepalming. "I didn''t need to know that."


    He bade the Master goodbye as quickly as possible before returning to his meditation chamber.


    ''Alright, let''s revisit the juicy data I collected.'' Rui essed his Mind Pce excitedly as he gathered the distributed pixel data, creating a video of the Martial Embodiment of Master Zeamer.


    The sheer weight of a Martial Master as powerful as Master Zeamer allowed the image embodiment to pressure Rui''s mind a lot more than Master Uma''s de of wind ever had. It confirmed to Rui the sheer superiority of Martial Masters like Master Zeamer.


    ''It''s a shame that I never got to see Master Reina''s Martial Embodiment,'' Rui realized. ''It was just never relevant.''


    Considering that the Martial Embodiment reflected the Martial Path, her Martial embodiment would probably not be shy at all.


    ''In fact, it might draw attention further away from her, rather than to her, After all, a shy Martial Embodiment is a liability to an assassin.'' Rui mused.


    She would be an ipetent assassin if she draw massive attention each time she used her full power.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1460 Efficiency and Potential

    <h4>Chapter 1460 Efficiency and Potential</h4>


    Rui immediately got to work with the three Hypnomatrix projects. He excitedly essed all the stored data in the Mind Pce.


    This was the first Martial Embodiment that he had seen since bing a Martial Senior. And the enhanced senses of the Senior Realm allowed him to understand the illusion better, even if it was inside his mind.


    It affected all of his senses. He could see, hear, feel, smell, and even taste the Martial Embodiment. Furthermore, it extended to his sensory techniques as well.


    Seismic Mapping detected an Earthquake of Richter ten magnitude.


    Tempestuous Feel detected a hurricane that swallowed a small country.


    Primordial Instinct had rung rm bells through a megaphone in his mind, constantly screaming at him about the danger.


    Much to his surprise, not even Riemannian Echo was immune to such an effect, a passive illusion so powerful that it could affect an indirect sense of space was quite impressive. Property ? of N?velDrama.Org.


    He quickly built up the image of the Martial Embodiment as he began refining the image that he had built in his mind. He could already tell that it would do well to rece the image of Master Uma that he had developed. It was just that much more eye-drawing, and thus easier to use to misdirect.


    Just based on the weight that he had experienced from the two Martial Masters left him in awe. The output that Martial Masters was so high that they dwarfed even the sheer destructive power of Martial Seniors, who in turn had the power to alter terrain to a small extent, and even sink small isles.


    He had gained more clues into the nature of the Master Realm in his conversations with Master Reina and Master Zeamer. They did not possess an additional source of physical power like the Martial Heart, so one would not expect the output of the Master Realm to exceed the Senior Realm.


    And yet, it did. Not by a small margin either. It was something that Rui hadn''t entirely understood until his conversation with Master Zeamer.


    ''Far greater output than Martial Seniors, yet no environmental damage under normal circumstances due to sheer control over their power.'' Rui narrowed his eyes. ''Furthermore, the Master Realm is the evolved version of the Apprentice Realm in principle.''


    Everything clicked.


    ''I see, it''s control and efficiency.'' Rui realized. ''The reason that Martial Apprentices are extremely superhuman despite physiologically being human, they maximize the potential of normal physical human power.''


    The human body generated hundreds of joules of energy at its highest output. Mechanically, this was enough to shatter rocks, on paper at least. Yet due to mechanical and thermodynamic inefficiency, as well as structural deficiencies, humans were unable to shatter rocks. Only one percent of the total power generated by the human body actually made it to the target of their strikes.


    Martial Apprentices gained superhuman control over their bodies with the extra cognition from the untapped potential in the brain, allowing them to not only be more efficient with their movements but also develop much greater muscle memory than before. Furthermore, conditioning training which could only produce humble results in normal humans, produced incredible results in Martial Apprentices due to a much superior neuro-endocrinological response to conditioning from the superhuman brain.


    In short, it allowed Martial Apprentices to squeeze every ounce of potential generated by the human body on a regr basis, and use it for, and only for, power, ensuring nothing went to waste.


    ''And Martial Masters must be doing the exact same thing with the Martial Heart!'' Rui realized. ''It''s the Upper Realm version of the Apprentice Realm, thus Martial Masters do for the Martial Heart and the Martial Body what Martial Apprentices did with the human body.''


    That would exin why their output far surpassed Martial Seniors. They made astronomically better use of the same power than Martial Masters did. Rui recalled what Master Zeamer had told them.


    ''Even the feeblest of elders and the frailest of infants may split heaven and earth asunder should their bodies, minds, and souls harmonize with the flow of the universe.'' Rui mused. ''He had demonstrated just how efficient his power is by generating a huge crater with just a tap.''


    It was a Realm of technique and skill that Rui was far away from. And yet it was only the first step within the Upper Realms. Just how much further could one go? He didn''t know. He didn''t even under what there was beyond the Master Realm.


    ''One step at a time. Let''s get these projects up and running first.'' He put aside superfluous thoughts as he focused on the projects that he was working on. Master Zeamer''s Martial Embodiment would serve as the basis of his misdirection. Thus needed to make sure that it was not only powerful but also easy to use. He didn''t need mentally draining techniques like the Phantomind Void for his Hypnomatrix.


    The Hypnomatrix was something that was designed to be used while the predictive model was being created. Which meant that it was something he had to use while his mind was gathering and processing that data. Meaning that his mind would be quite consumed with the burden of creating a predictive model.


    ''I can''t add another big burden on top of that, that''s why it''s best to ensure that the Hypnomatrix is not as mentally taxing. I should avoid creating an extravagant three-dimensional video.'' Rui mused as he considered the parameters. ''A video is still prudent since Master Zeamer''s Martial Embodiment rotates. However, let it be two-dimensional rather than three-dimensional. This will be far easier to execute than the Phantomind Void.''


    In the first ce, Martial Zeamer''s Martial Embodiment was two-dimensional fundamentally. It did not extend to three dimensions the way that Master Unma''s de of winds, or Master Deivon''s fortress did.


    That made it much more convenient for Rui to use it as the basis of his misdirection.


    Time passed in Cloudia as Rui rigorously worked on creating the most refined two-dimensional GIF that he could. The more refined it was, the less energy it would take to output a better result.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1461 Suffering

    <h4>Chapter 1461 Suffering</h4>


    Rui was determined to minimize energy waste, so he went all out on refining the image. He had already seen that his rate of progress far surpassed that of what was to be expected. C0ntent ? 2024 (N/?)velDrama.Org.


    And not by a small amount either. When onebined his powerful mind with the continuously improving Mind Pce, one ended up with a rate of growth that was almost entirely unprecedented.


    The speed at which he created and refined the video of Master Zeamer''s was exponentially greater than anyone else could have. A month of progress was aplished in a matter of days.


    ''I wouldn''t have taken on four projects at once if not for the fact that I have a particrly high rate of progress with mental images,'' Rui mused as he refined the image.


    Within a week, he had already refined the image to a point where the returns on effort had diminished too much to be worth it.


    "Fuuu..." He exhaled deeply. "This should be fine."


    In his mind, an extremely sharp and refined two-dimensional GIF of a rotating hypnotic spiral drew his attention. Even he was impressed just by how attention-drawing it was. It reeled in any beholder with a nigh-irresistable force.


    Furthermore, it was far less mentally taxing than the Greater Primordial Void was. Which was one of the primary goals when approaching the three Hypnomatrix projects.


    ''Now that those are out of the way, I should do some detailed training on how I approach each of the principles needed for each of the techniques.''


    The maneuvering-sabotage hypnotic technique relied on speeding up one''s perception of time, causing them to perceive everything to happen faster, including their own body, than they were capable of processing. Rui needed to learn how to apply image embodiment to generate non-verbalmunication that would impact the subconscious to sabotage one''s perception of time.


    For offense, he needed to learn some amount of body sabotage, some amount of pain induction, and some body-sabotage for defense as well.


    Thankfully, he had already learned the principles of each of the three techniques, so he didn''t need the Hypnomaster''s aid in this regard. The Hypnomaster had also given him a breakdown on how to self-train hypnosis in the best of ways.


    Because of his sheer experience, expertise, and mastery of hypnosis, he showed Rui the best training methodologies and principles that he had. This helped Rui get off the right foot with his first dip into training hypnosis.


    Hypnosis techniques consisted of misdirecting the consciousness and then manipting the subconscious mind. He had alreadypleted the first half of that, and now needed to master the second half which was entirely new to him.


    He would be lying if he said he wasn''t excited.


    Hypnosis was almost magical in what it could do. To be able to manipte minds with Martial Art was something that he had never expected to do in his entire life. It was new territory that he was excited to explore, especially when he possessed an affinity for it.


    ''The first step towards manipting the subconsciousness after manipting the mind is developing the right image embodiment for the non-verbalmunication needed for maniption of the mind.'' Rui mused.


    Thankfully, he had already had some in mind when he first embarked on the project. For the offense-sabotage technique, he was quite content relying on breathing sabotage, and he intended to make full use of his previous life''s asthma for that.


    He closed his eyes. "Fuuu..."


    His mind delved back into his previous life. A life of hampered breathing. He had been diagnosed with a rare form of asthma that could only be treated, not cured. On top of that, he was a particrly severe case, and he would need to be permanently bedridden and attached to all kinds of contraptions if he wanted to breathe properly.


    He had decided he didn''t want to lead such a life. He would rather suffer hampered breathing if it meant actually living a life.


    And so began a life of gasping, wheezing, and strained breathing. He carried around three inhalers of different kinds at all times. There were many times, particrly during winter, when his asthma got so bad that even walking was difficult, he would often spend time in a wheelchair.


    He was often bullied because of the frailty and fragility that came with being an asthma. Those instances generated immense frustration, perhaps he would have gone down a darker path if not for his discovery of the greatest thing humanity had ever created; martial arts.


    Now that was something worth dedicating his life to.


    He persevered through school, getting perfect scores before going to college for a bachelor''s in science, a particrly tiring period of his life with his condition. His lungs burned and fought back against every breath he took, yet he managed to push through and get a perfect GPA.


    He went on to get another degree in sports science while also getting diplomas in relevant courses andter on even a master''s and a PhD inbat sports sciences.


    Every step of the way, his lungs fought back, but he persevered. As he grew older and exited his physical prime, his general health dipped even more, exacerbating his already poor health.


    It had gotten particrly bad during thest decade of his life. He visited the hospital so many times that he practically had a room for himself. It didn''t help that the healthcare system of his nation limited options. Even while he was working on Project Water, coordinating with his team from a hospital bed many times, he still struggled to breathe.


    When he arrived at death''s door,, he certainly was frustrated that he hadn''t fulfilled Project Water. However, he was also relieved from the bottom of his heart.


    Relieved that his suffering would finally end.


    Rui opened his eyes, sweating and panting. His hand flew to his chest, feeling his racing heart.


    He had gotten a little too immersed in his own memories, causing his own breathing to grow strained.


    ''Tsk, ended up partially hypnotizing myself without trying,'' Rui shook his head.


    His mood grew a little pensive as he reflected back on his previous life.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1462 Project Plans

    <h4>Chapter 1462 Project ns</h4>


    It had been a long time since Rui had looked back to the past so deeply. The reason he avoided doing so was not because he was running away from the past.


    No.


    It was not that he was avoiding the past, it was that he was too focused on the future.


    He had a Martial Path to tread. He had a Martial Art to grow. A higher Realm of power beckoned to him. That was why he didn''t have time to wallow in the past. of course, he didn''t forget it, but it had been a long time since he was immersed in it.


    That was why he felt overwhelmed when he revisited his previous life. It made him boundlessly grateful for everything he had in this life.


    A healthy body.


    An extraordinary mind.


    Priceless memories of his previous life which not only contained invaluable knowledge and experience, but also contained the magnum opus of his previous life; the VOID algorithm, and his lifelong ambition that became his Martial Path.


    He went from struggling to breathe to gaining the power to deprive an entire town of air and then destroy that town with a single breath. It was a stark contrast that surpassed anything he could have ever imagined.


    ''Alright, back to the topic.'' He heaved a sigh, getting rid of all superfluous thoughts. ''My memories are a powerful base for the maniption of my opponent''s mind.''


    He only needed to gather all his memories of suffering from asthma, which was a lot, and then refine and distill the suffering caused by strained breathing, and then embody that image. This content ? N?v/elDr(a)m/a.Org.


    Once again, he needed to make sure that he extracted purely the suffering of his asthmatic attacks from his memories and ensured nothing else came along. The more irrelevant information came along, the greater the dilution of the image, causing the technique to be less effective.


    If he wanted to cause the maximum impact, he would need to go through every single memory he had of an asthmatic experience, and then distil all of those away from the irrelevant information of his memories, and then refine and distil all of those into a single video.


    ''This time, the video can''t be visual, I suppose it will have to be another sensory track.'' Rui noted.


    After all, nobody visually saw themselves breathing, so there was no point in creating a visual image. Breathing was felt more than anything else. Thus he would need to create a sensory track rather than a video.


    That was new. He didn''t know how to go about it since on Earth, people could produce visual data through images and videos on a screen, but there was no such thing as touchmunication technology.


    Or rather, there was, but it was cutting-edge and highly niche. Certainly nothing that he had evere across before. There were no established variables like frame rate or definition that could be numerically measured, he wasn''t even sure if he could develop them.


    ''It''s not worth going down that rabbit hole, I''ll have to rely on my mind alone. As long as I create it, it will forever be stored in my Mind Pce.'' Rui mused.


    As high as his ability to create and refine images was, scouring through his entire life and distilling painful memories into a single embodiment for the hypnosis technique was not easy, even for Rui. It would take quite some time.


    Especially when he had four other projects to work on, however, he had a very solid direction to go in. Thus, he was quite satisfied with how this technique project was going to unfold.


    Another technique that he was quite satisfied with was the maneuvering-sabotage technique. For this technique, he would need to spend quite some time thinking back to his experiences of mastering the Forestep technique in the Shionel Confederation.


    These memories were not nearly as rich and wide as his memories of hampered breathing, but they worked fine otherwise. He had struggled a lot with trying to keep his mind up with the sheer speed of his body.


    Furthermore, every time he used the Void Forestep technique, his actual reactions and processing couldn''t keep up with his own movements, he relied on thoughtless reflexes and predictions to use it. Thus he had many memories of it to rely on.


    Thus the maneuvering-sabotage mental technique was quite satisfactory as well.


    ''The only one that isn''t quite satisfactory is the defense-sabotage hypnotic technique.'' Rui sighed.


    The only feasible idea he had was pain induction. But that was a little dull as far as he was concerned.


    ''If I have to use pain, then I''m going to have to go all out.'' Rui narrowed his eyes. ''The greatest pain that all Martial Artists past the Apprentice Realm have felt.''


    The Squire evolution breakthrough process. It was easily far and away the most painful experience he had ever had in either life. It was most certainly a dark memory in the minds of all those who had experienced it.


    It was the price of the power of the Squire Realm, in addition to the risk of life.


    ''That could be worth it, but the pain was so extraordinary that it''s hard to recall it precisely and urately.'' Rui mused.


    Still, if he was going to go for pain, then he would not stand to go for anything less than the highest pain imaginable.


    ''That''s set then.'' Rui mused.


    That left the self-hypnosis upgrade for the Godspeed technique so that he could get rid of the Forestep technique.


    Self-hypnosis was different from the other technique, it involved willingly removing the guard of the consciousness while impacting one''s own subconsciousness. The issue with self-hypnosis was reaching a level of proficiency such that one could execute then and there on the spot in the middle of a battle.


    Considering the nuances and challenges of all four technique projects, he knew that it was not going to take a short amount of time. Regardless, given his affinity for mental techniques, he wanted to be thorough rather than quick.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1463 Search

    <h4>Chapter 1463 Search</h4>


    In arge office filled with hurried employees and stacks of documents was arge table in the center. Arge map covered the table, a table assorted with all kinds of notes, pins, and pictures. Heaps of documents were stacked around it.


    On one end of the table was the only seated man who studied the map while those around him stood each taking their turn to make reports.


    He quietly listened as he studied the map in front of him with great care and attention, processing all the information. His eyes fixed on a picture pinned to a point on the map.


    The picture was of a young man.


    A young man with startling ck hair and ck eyes.


    Just the sight of that picture caused his lips to curl and his eyes to sharpen. His jaws gritted while his teeth clenched.


    "...ording to a report from squad CF54 of the long-range surveince division, we have yet to observe any signs of the target. Thus far we can only conclude that the target is not present in the town of Haj-" C0ntent ? 2024 (N/?)velDrama.Org.


    "Enough," Deacon dered, interrupting the report. "Enough of this nonsense."


    "But sir..."


    "I SAID ENOUGH." Deacon bellowed loudly, shaking everyone in the room. "DO YOU THINK I''M A FOOL? IT''S BEEN MORE THAN FIVE YEARS."


    He stopped, panting as he tried catching his breath and calming his racing heart down. His constitution had grown a lot worse in the past five years. His hair had begun whitening while his hairline had receded. He had lost weight, causing him to look gaunt and haggard.


    His skinplexion had deteriorated, causing it to look sickly. There were eyebags underneath his eyes, causing him to look quite exhausted.


    "Have we confirmed his actual presence even once since we began our operations in the Kandrian Empire?" He gritted his teeth.


    "...No, sir. We have only spotted figures matching the details of Rui Quarrier to a high degree of uracy. We also have many eye witness testimonies of those who know his appearance confirming that the suspect matched him."


    "Secondhand eyewitness testimonies, correct?" Deacon growled. "In the past five years, how many times have our own people actually spotted Rui Quarrier and confirmed his appearance?"


    "...Four times, but..."


    "But each of those testimonies have been recently revealed to bepromised due to the suspect being under the influence of mental techniques or mentallypromising substances, yes?"


    "Yes..."


    "So you''re telling me that despite creating an intelligence division just for him and spending years to establish a powerful intelligencework and surveince ring in the Kandrian Empire, not once has Rui Quarrier actually been spotted in the flesh by even a SINGLE one of our people, despite FREQUENTLY BEING SPOTTED BY EVERYBODY ELSE?"


    "Sir the secondhand intelligence sources are rather credi-"


    "THEY''RE COMPROMISED," Deacon bellowed. "THINK. We have an ENTIRE division of intelligence agents and analysts being outyed by a single Martial Squire. THINK. Why is that everybody EXCEPT US spots Rui Quarrier, HUH?!"


    The intelligence agents and analysts flinched, too terrified to retort.


    "We''re the only ones searching for him actively, yes?"


    "...Yes, sir."


    "We''re the only ones spending millions of Shionel gold every year looking for him yes?"


    "Yes, sir."


    "THEN WHY IS EVERYBODY AND THEIR MOTHER SPOTTING HIM AND NOT US?" he bellowed, banging the table in front of him.


    "...W-What are you suggesting, sir?" One brave analyst mustered the courage to ask.


    "It''s a scam. All of it." He growled, as his mouth curled. "And everybody is in on it. The Martial Union. The Kandrian Empire. That bastard Bradt. The goddamn Beggar''s Sect. EVERYBODY."


    None of them knew what to say to him.


    "We have made shit progress in finding him in the Shionel Confederation through firsthand intelligence operations," Deacon tapped the map looking around. "Yet the secondhand intelligence is glowing with all kinds of wonderful reports of ''credible'' people iming to have spotted Rui Quarrier. IT''S NONSENSE. It doesn''t make sense that so many people have spotted him when we can''t even confirm his presence in this country."


    He paused for a moment as his mind furiously parsed through all the intelligence that had been collected recently since the intelligencework had been gathered since his intelligencework had been fully established in the Kandrian Empire.


    "We can''t find him. Not an actual instance of credible firsthand confirmation and verification of both his identity and his presence in this nation, correct?"


    "But sir, the secondhand rep-"


    "I said FIRSTHAND," Deacon yelled. "Put aside the secondhand nonsense for now. Put aside all sources of intelligence aside from our foremost and directly credible and reliable active intelligencework. If we focused purely on intelligence gathered through our infiltration and surveince, what is the evaluation of the probability Rui Quarrier hiding in this country?"


    The intelligence analysts considered the moment before cautiously answering his question. "Very low...sir."


    "Right. And why have we determined up until now that Rui Quarrier is very likely hiding within the Kandrian Empire?"


    "Because of his escape from the Shionel Confederation five years ago, and the vast amount of credible secondhand intelligence supporting his presence in this nation."


    "Right, but why is there such an incongruence between firsthand and secondhand intelligence?" Chairman Deacon asked fiercely. "Why is the secondhand intelligence strongly insisting he''s in this country, while firsthand intelligence doesn''t suggest that?"


    He nced back down at the map. "Because they want us to believe he''s in this country when he''s not. It''s a lie. A LIE. IT''S ALL A SCAM!"


    He violently swept all the documents and the map off the table with a single sweep. "DO THEY THINK I''M A FOOL?! THAT I CAN''T SEE THROUGH THIS NONSENSE?!"


    "''They'', sir...?"


    "The Martial Union which values their golden boy so much. The Kandrian Empire. The Beggar''s Sect which insists the intelligence of Rui Quarrier is under a heavy seal. Guildmaster Bradt. Everybody! They''re all working together to FUCK WITH ME. That''s why THE WORLD INSISTS RUI QUARRIER IS IN THIS EMPIRE WHEN HE ISN''T."


    He panted heavily with an enraged expression. "Abandon the Kandrian Empire. Begin searching outside. If we search hard enough, I''m sure that we''ll find something. Anything. I''m sure of it."


    He walked away, before pausing at the door. "Ah, one more thing. Increase the funding for the operations to capture the orphanage. They''re the key."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1464 Upgrade Project

    <h4>Chapter 1464 Upgrade Project</h4>


    "Tsk tsk, you''re too stiff, you''ve got to immerse yourself into the illusion, young man," Master Zeamer tutted. "In the case of self-hypnosis, there is no external force misdirecting your attention."


    Rui exhaled, heaving a sigh as he tried to submerge himself inside the image that he had created for himself. In this case, he was trying to trick his subconsciousness into causing its perception of time to slow down.


    This was a phenomenon known as tachypsychia. Unlike the images that he generated for a lot of his other techniques, he didn''t have a lot of memories to rely on to create this image, thus he had to rely on pure imagination. That was the reason why he was in trouble with the fourth hypnosis technique project which was an upgrade to the Godspeed technique.


    This was a direction of upgrade that was entirely different from the direction that Kane had gone down, which used electrical stimtion to speed up his reflexes significantly. Their means of upgrading the Godspeed technique was different, but it reflected their strengths and affinities. Kane had stuck to amplifying his reflexes and reactions exclusively to a high enough degree while Rui had chosen to slow down his consciousness'' perception of time using hypnosis.


    "Here, let me help you out with building the image," Master Zeamer remarked as he activated a misdirection technique.


    Rui nced to his right as he felt an enormous presence that drew his attention. Of course, there was nothing there when he looked. It was a simple misdirection technique.


    Yet even though he wasn''t using his Martial Heart at all, and a very small portion of his Martial Mind, Rui was unable to resist the overwhelming technique. Instantly, Master Zeamer had already manipted his subconsciousness with swift non-verbalmunication. Rui''s perception of time had already begun to slow down to a crawl. The world around him moved in slow motion.


    Except for Master Zeamer, who had no problem keeping up with even his slowed-down perception of time. Rui heaved a heavy breath, having activated Godspeed. Instantly he felt his body lightening with a surge of power. He moved around with the technique, this time, however, he didn''t need to rely on thoughtless reflexes to control of the technique. He could still rely on his perception of time being slowed down.


    ''Incredible...'' Rui moved his fingers and arms around. ''I have no issue controlling Godspeed at all.''


    The Godspeed technique was already a remarkably powerful technique even without this upgrade, it would be even more capable now that he had added this element to the technique.


    He would be able to use the technique with a lot fewer risks if he could tap into this power onmand.


    ''I need to remember this sensation.'' Rui closed his eyes as he added did his best to record this memory as well as he could. He also made sure to record the change in his perception of time when the Master hypnotized him and manipted his perception of time.


    It wasn''t too longter until it wore off, however. "Huff..." Rui heaved a sigh as he returned to meditation, essing the memory of the experience that Master Zeamer had generated.


    Self-hypnosis worked differently from normal hypnosis due to several differences caused by the fact that the user was the target. Copyright N?v/el/Dra/ma.Org.


    Firstly, there was no non-verbalmunication. The conscious mind directlymunicates with the subconscious mind by embodying an image. Thus the quality and speed at which one could not only generate a powerful image but also embody it was what mattered when it came to self-hypnosis.


    Thankfully, Rui had extreme affinities for both, thus his aptitude for self-hypnosis was high. That was why although it was difficult, he was sure that he would be able to master the technique.


    Out of all the four projects that he was working on, he was definitely having the least amount of ease with the self-hypnosis technique and the pain hypnosis technique to sabotage defensive Martial Artists.


    With the defense-sabotage technique, he wanted to make sure that he didn''t just inflict pain, but he inflicted pain that corresponded with whatever attacks hended on his target.


    For example, if hended a blow on the target''s arm, he wanted the target to feel a sharp pain in his bones and on the flesh that was in the area of contact. That was particrly challenging and was going to take time from his side. He also specifically chose parts of the Squire evolution breakthrough process that would make sense to recreate for any given strike. He did not want there to be any incongruence between the strikes that he generated and the pain felt. The moment there was any incongruence, the illusion would be a lot less effective.


    All in all, he had his work cut out in front of him for all the technique projects that he was working on. Ordinarily, he would never dare take up so many at the same time, but s, he didn''t have too much of a choice.


    His progress with mental techniques was high. This meant that things that would take too long were a lot more manageable and quick for Rui. On top of that, he doubted that he would receive something as invaluable as the tutge of the Hypnomaster if he tried postponing these techniques to ater date.


    The Hypnomaster taught him the most efficient ways to develop images and how to embody them in the best manner to generate the necessary non-verbalmunication to manipte the opponent''s subconscious mind.


    On top of that, he significantly elerated his progress by hypnotizing Rui in the manner of his technique to allow him to get a good understanding of the imagination that he needed.


    All in all, it was worth it to spend some extra time in Cloudia if it meant getting the best quality techniques, and more importantly, a strong foundation to develop high-quality mental techniques in the future. The training principles and foundations that the Hypnomaster would pass on to him would be of great help in the future as well.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1465 Skip

    <h4>Chapter 1465 Skip</h4>


    Time passed on Cloudia as Rui immersed himself in training. He spent most of his time meditating in the meditation chambers of the cloud town, isting himself from any and all disturbances and distractions.


    The only times he wasn''t doing that were when he was sleeping or doing other daily basic necessities. Of course, every once in a while, he would spar against the Hypnomaster alongside Ieyasu. He also sparred against Ieyasu many times just to ensure his battle instinct didn''t rot.


    "This is one of the issues with training mental techniques," The Hypnomaster exined. "Spend too long immersed in training them, and you''ll go from a Martial Artist to a sage. The normal kind, too, not the Martial kind. Hahaha!"


    On top of that, Rui and Ieyasu were routinely tasked with the duty of hunting food for all of Cloudia every once in a while. This too was because of another rule from the Martial Master. They could hunt any beast or beasts as long as it wasn''t the Illusionary Dragon, the beast was apparently a rare and powerful species that the Hypnomaster was rearing. Furthermore, it filtered out thepetent Martial Artists from the ipetent.


    It only made their jobs harder when they ran into it, since they weren''t allowed to kill it. "Hah! It''s good to face challenges. Martial Artists should learn to hunt their own food. Being coddled will do you no good," He said, as he was coddled by multiple women attendants. Rui heaved a sigh, massaging his temples. The man was an entric character, even if he was a powerful Martial Master. It helped that he was earnestly helping Rui and Ieyasu out.


    Rui didn''t know what he was helping thetter out with specifically, but he knew that it had something to do with the man''s Martial Mind. He grew stronger every time they fought.


    He would be lying if he said that working to be ahead of Ieyasu wasn''t one of his goals as a Martial Artist. It couldn''t be helped, Ieyasu was one of the few guys of his own generation that he didn''t have to hold back about.


    Often, when he sparred against peers or friends, he generally needed to hold back in order to ensure that he didn''t go far and cross a line. However, he had found that Ieyasu was perhaps the first person he hade across who possessed a Martial Path that was of the same caliber as his own.


    It was not something Rui could overwhelm easily. It meant that Rui didn''t have to worry about him or coddle him, he could simply go all out and focus on winning. This was something that he hade to treasure, even if he was too proud to admit it to Ieyasu.


    It was true that both of them had grown at a much faster rate than when they were away from each other. Frequently being forced to spar with each other not only allowed them topare their rates of growth but also drove them to train and work harder.


    Rui suspected that that was the reason that the Hypnomaster made them spar with each other in the first ce. Regardless, his routine drew into a monotony of training, hunting, and sparring. Most of his time went into one of the four hypnosis projects that he had chosen to embark on.


    He mad remarkably fast progress, as expected, faster than any Martial Artist that the Hypnomaster had ever seen. Yet most Martial Artists only trained one technique at a time, while Rui was working on four.


    On top of that, he had chosen to also work on an elementary algorithm that would allow him to decide how to apply the hypnomatrix most efficiently. After all, it wasn''t the most cut-and-dry matter.


    For one, not every Martial Artist cleanly fell into offensive, defensive, and maneuvering. He, of all people, knew that very well. If he dide across Martial Artists who were clearly heavily inclined toward one of the three, then that was fine, but if he didn''t, then he needed to choose the best oue.


    With the way mental techniques worked, it was possible to use multiple at the same time at a fraction of their individual potency. It may have been the case that there was an optimal distribution of how much of each technique he ought to use against Martial Artists who didn''t cleanly fall into offense, defense, or maneuvering categories.


    In such cases, how was Rui supposed to use the three mental techniques?


    That was why he also worked on a minor system of thought that would allow him to arrive at the best way to use the three techniques. It was certainly a difficult thing to add on top of the four projects that he was already working on, reducing his time even further, but s, it could not be helped.


    He was prepared to lengthen the time he spent on Cloudia if that was what it took. This was especially important since he knew that this fifth extra project would contribute to his Martial Mind, which was definitely ranking extremely high at the top of his list of priorities.


    If he was going to create a system of thought that could fill his vast Martial Mind, he needed to make little steps of progress until they eventually umted enough to get him to fulfill the necessary threshold.


    He didn''t know how much he had left to go, all he knew was that the VOID algorithm filled up some uncertain amount of the totality of his budding Martial Mind. However, it was highly unlikely that he would fill the remaining gap left with another megaproject like the VOID algorithm.


    ''I should make progress wherever I can.'' This content ? N?v/elDr(a)m/a.Org.


    Smaller projects like the Hypnomatrix that allowed him to decide how to apply his mental techniques might be much smaller than the rest of the VOID algorithm, making a small impact, but it was progress nheless.


    By the time Ruipleted his training, more than two years had already passed.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1466 Test

    <h4>Chapter 1466 Test</h4>


    One fine day on Cloudia, Rui opened his eyes.


    "I have finally arrived."


    It had taken a long time, but he had finallypleted the four technique projects and the one thought project that he was working on. The sheer amount of time he had spent on each of the techniques of the Hypnomatrix, and the upgrade of the Godspeed technique in addition to the system of thought to objectively and logically arrive at the best distribution of technique application had finally paid off. This content ? N?v/elDr(a)m/a.Org.


    The offense-sabotage hypnotic technique had been the first to bepleted. Perhaps it was because Rui had a ton of experience with asthma and breathing problems that he was able to finish it the earliest.


    Regardless, it hadn''t been easy. Even for Rui, going through every single memory of an asthmatic attack in his previous life of fifty-nine years, of which there may as well have been countless, was quite difficult. This was especially true when he had four other things to focus on and dedicated his time.


    Regardless, a little over a year after he began, he had finally finished. The resulting technique was spectacrly functional, able to significantly hamper breathing. The Hypnomaster had no shortage of bringing Senior-level test subjects out of nowhere.


    Depending on several variables such as the size and the physical power of the target, the hypnotic technique could do anything from sealing breathing techniques to hampering breathing significantly, causing his targets to gasp for air like they were having an asthmatic attack.


    In many a case, this technique alone won him the fight!


    However, the more powerful, stronger, and experienced the Martial Artist was, the less impactful and effective the technique was. Rui had designed the technique as a low-effort and low-potency technique in exchange for a lesser mental burden and a guaranteed hit.


    This meant that he could absolutely ensure that the hypnotic technique wouldnd. It also meant that it wouldn''t burden his mind too much. Unlike the Greater Phantomind Void, Rui had absolutely no problem applying these techniques alongside the VOID algorithm.


    He could use the Hypnomatrix while simultaneously constructing predictive models on his opponent.


    Normally, the price of creating low-effort techniques was that the technique would yield fewer results. This wasmon sense, after all.


    Less effort resulted in lesser results.


    However, that didn''t apply to Rui''s hypnosis techniques. The reason for that was that his mind was so powerful that low effort from him still yielded a powerful result.


    Less than twenty percent of his full effort may very well have been more than one hundred percent of another''s. At least, this was the case as far as mental techniques went.


    It was, in many ways, cheating. Rui came to learn the joys of sheer and raw innate talent. This was quite different from anything that he had ever experienced thus far.


    After all, his Martial Path and Martial Art were certainly extraordinary, however, they weren''t talent since he had worked extremely hard to get them. He had shed blood, tears, and sweat while working on Project Water and the VOID algorithm. To call them talent was a disservice to John Falken.


    Even his earlier extreme tolerance of potions in his Academy days was ultimately useful only because he worked hard for them during the extra training hours he got from them.


    However, the quality of his mind was something he had been blessed with when he was reborn and his mind underwent a second round of immense cognitive growth in his new brain. He hadn''t worked for that, and it was something that could be considered as raw innate talent.


    The three hypnotic techniques of his Hypnomatrix were incredibly powerful, yet very easy to use. They did a good job covering the only phase of the battle where Rui could be said to have a weakness, which was the beginning.


    ''Time to find out just how good.'' Rui got up, leaving the meditation chamber as he referenced his internal clock in the Mind Pce. ''Right on time, I suppose.''


    He had anticipated that he would be ready by this day a week ago. That was why he had taken the liberty to prepare a test to see just how good his techniques were. In order to very the power of his new techniques and paradigms inbat, he needed a worthy opponent.


    There was only one.


    Rui sky-walked until he arrived at a cloud field adjacent to Cloudia.


    The Hypnomaster and Ieyasu had already arrived.


    "Hehe... He''s finally arrived," The Hypnomaster grinned with ptable excitement.


    "You''rete," Ieyasu narrowed his eyes. "Let''s get this over with quickly. I will return to my training after I defeat you."


    "Ho!" The Hypnomaster grinned even wider.


    "You''ll be too busy asking for a rematch to return to training," Rui retorted.


    "Hoho!" The Hypnomaster''s grin widened even more as he stroked his beard. "This is what I like to see! The two youngest and most talented Martial Seniors going at it. This old man is pleased to have such high-quality entertainment."


    The two of them ignored him, standing at a distance of ten meters from each other.


    "Mrrhm!" Master Zeamer cleared his throat. "Since both of you are here to test your growth, I shall set some stiptions. You may only use what you have learned since breaking through to the Senior Realm!"


    The two of them narrowed their eyes, ncing at Master Zeamer.


    "You two fought each other more than four years ago, so I''m sure you are well aware of what each other was capable of back then. Furthermore, I know what the two of you have been up to in the past two years, so I can ensure that you only use what you have been working on." The Hypnomaster smirked. "Whoever loses will be dered as the one who has made the least amount of growth in the Senior Realm. Hehe..."


    Neither Rui nor Ieyasu wanted to bear that humiliation. They were both far toopetitive with each other to ept such a failure, both of them were absolutely prepared to go all out and procure what they needed.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1467 Commence

    <h4>Chapter 1467 Commence</h4>


    Rui and Ieyasu considered the terms of the battle. Both of them hade to learn much in the past four years or so. However, that did not mean the battle was symmetric.


    For one, Rui spent a lot of time mastering assassination techniques. Those techniques were much harder to apply inbat. He didn''t know what Ieyasu had aplished in the past four years, but surely it was more directly relevant tobat than the things Rui had been focusing on.


    "Does upgrading techniques count?" Rui asked. "Hmm..." Master Zeamer considered the question. "Alright, techniques upgraded in the past four years will be allowed."


    That made it much more ptable. It meant that Rui could use his upgraded Godspeed technique in addition to the Hypnomatrix. Perhaps the most rational decision would be to inform them that he had focused on assassinations for a good chunk of the past four years, but he decided against it.


    He was truly confident in the progress that he had made with mental techniques. "Can I use techniques that I''ve copied in the past four years?" Ieyasu asked. "Of course," The Hypnomaster dered. "You copy technique principles and mechanisms before recreating your opponent''s technique by understanding the principles by reading their mind and replicating those principles by virtue of already having mastered the principles of all orthodox Martial Art fields. It would not vite the terms of this battle."


    This was quite a beneficial ruling for Ieyasu, it meant that he was quite suited for the terms of this battle.


    Neither side had any more questions.


    "Hohoho..." Master Zeamer put some distance between himself and the two with an eager and excited smile. "Take your stances."


    Both sides took neutral nonmital stances. Their eyes narrowed as their focus sharpened. The air grew taut, wrung by the force of their minds.


    A maelstrom of pressure brewed in the atmosphere.


    Doom and cmity struck the hearts of the few sentient creatures in the bizarre ecosystem of the clouds.


    The cloud hos inside the cloud grew agitated, panicking in fear of the unseen threats.


    "Begin," Master Zeamer''s voice cut through everything,mencing the battle.


    BADUMP!


    The two young men activated their Martial Hearts. An immense surge of power flowed through their bodies as they leaped at each other with a zing speed, leaving behind infernos generated by their sheer speed!


    BAM BAM BAM BAM!


    The two men exchanged a flurry of blows at blinding speeds. Not even a millisecond had passed, yet the first bout had already been concluded. Yet, the same could certainly not be said about the fight, as the two surged back in for a second round.


    BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM!


    Fists surged forward. Kicks swung forth. The two young men exchanged a flurry of blows on the surface, seemingly going all out in a brawl. Yet all of this was nothing more than just an exercise of evaluation.


    What appeared as a fierce battle to the untrained eye was merely them feeling each other out inbat.


    Not a single technique had been activated


    That soon changed.


    Ieyasu activated a breathing technique before a wave of strength washed over his entire body, increasing the speed and power of his strikes. His stance and bnce shifted while his arms and legs turned, facing Rui like apass pointing north.


    He had deigned to employ a new Martial Art.


    BOOM BOOM BOOM!


    Rui grimaced as he did his best to mitigate the powerful blows of what appeared to be a heavy and simple offense-oriented Martial Art. Given that the Hypnomaster did not object to Ieyasu''s application of this technique, it must have been something he copied after bing a Martial Senior.


    He was not content taking such damage from Ieyasu, thankfully, he didn''t need to be. C0ntent ? 2024 (N/?)velDrama.Org.


    Rui activated his Breathing Crucifix technique, the hypnotic technique that he had created to hamper offense-oriented Martial Artists. In his mind, a powerful hypnotic spiral identical to Hypnomaster''s Martial Embodiment was generated.


    It could not be ignored. Ieyasu exerted tremendous self-control to avoid turning to the right and leaping away to the left. Yet even if he could control his body, he could not control the impact and significance of the pressure, that he felt from the right side, in his mind.


    It wasn''t by too much, but his consciousness had been drawn away.


    And that was enough.


    BAM!!


    Ruinded an immensely powerful on the man''s abdomen, flinging him away. The man grimaced, choking. Not just because Ruinded a powerful clean blow, but also because his breathing technique had been disrupted.


    His eyes widened.


    His breathing technique had been disrupted?


    BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM!


    Ieyasu gritted his teeth, balling up as he resisted Rui''s onught. Rui refused to give him even a moment to psychologically limatize to the effects of Breathing Crucifix.


    Attack after attack, Rui bombarded him with a flurry of attacks. Each attack weaved through his guard, aiming to strike a vital. Each attack demanded his attention. Ieyasu could barely focus on the bizarre breathing impediment that he had been hit with.


    Yet the truth was clear.


    Rui had activated a technique that attacked his breathing. It had crippled breathing, making it moreborious, and also had effectively sealed off all breathing techniques.


    WHOOSH!


    ''Poison...?'' Ieyasu wondered, dodging a blow from Rui, before narrowing his eyes. ''No... under these circumstances, it can only be one thing.''


    A hypnotic technique. Ieyasu''s eyes narrowed. He knew that Rui''s mind was extraordinarily powerful, so much so that simply trying to read all the conscious cognition that Rui exposed inside that absurdly giant pce in his head had strained his mind. It had been like trying to read a book by skimming through its pages in a few seconds.


    What would happen if such a powerful mind mastered hypnosis?


    ''It may very well be an unstoppable force. A force of mind.'' Ieyasu gritted his teeth as he struggled with all his might to dispel the effects of Breathing Crucifix. While decisively inferior to Rui''s, his mind was not ordinary either. He employed all the anti-hypnosis training he had gone through, he was determined to break out of this spell.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1468 Pain

    <h4>Chapter 1468 Pain</h4>


    "What is the point of this training, Master Zeamer?" Ieyasu asked his Master many years ago. The two sat opposite each other, meditating. C0ntent ? 2024 (N/?)velDrama.Org.


    "To help you defend your mind from external hypnotic influences," Master Zeamer replied simply. "This training will help you break out hypnotic techniques to a certain limit.


    "Certain limit?"


    "Mmm. Some hypnotic techniques are too powerful," Master Zeamer had remarked.


    "What can I do to break out of such powerful techniques if this training fails?" Master Zeamer considered his question for a moment beforeughing heartily.


    "Nothing."


    BOOM!


    Ieyasu blocked a powerful blow from Rui with a severe expression as he recalled what Master Zeamer had told him many years ago. His breathing wasbored, preventing him from drawing out his full power. It certainly prevented him from activating even a single breathing technique.


    It made him weaker.


    Slower.


    Tired.


    His lungs felt like they were bound by powerful adhesives, restricting all movement. His body felt like a hill weighed it down. His entire body gasped for oxygen alongside his strained lungs.


    Yet had he been one to let such a hurdle impede him, he would have never made it this far.


    BOOM!


    CRACK


    Rui''s eyes widened as he felt a sharp pain on his hand as it crashed into Ieyasu''s elbow. He had thrown a powerful chop aimed at his neck, yet Ieyasu merely shifted.


    He shifted ever so slightly across his entire body, and before Rui knew it, his palm found itself crashing into the man''s elbow.


    Yet that wasn''t enough to stop Rui. BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM!!


    His eyes narrowed as he surged forward with extreme speed. A tsunami of attacks crashed into Ieyasu.


    Yet Ieyasu parried every single one of them away. Rui was unable to use Outer Convergence, Reverberating Lance, or even a breathing technique to aid his power. On the other hand, while Ieyasu couldn''t even breathe properly, let alone use breathing techniques, he still had other supplementary techniques that he could use to amplify power, ones that he had copied in the past four years.


    Rui narrowed his eyes as he pushed himself to the very limit.


    His bones creaked.


    His muscles burned.


    His flesh stung.


    His body shook with sheer effort.


    And yet...


    STEP


    His eyes widened as Ieyasu began stepping closer to him. 08:20


    Despite the barrage of attacks that Rui inflicted on him, he was unshaken. Not only was he unshaken, he even began walking towards Rui.


    STEP


    STEP


    STEP


    BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM!!


    Rui gritted his teeth as he sted Ieyasu with even more attacks, yet man''s defensive prowess could not be underestimated. His body had been forged with countless conditioning principles and training methodologies in an effort to be able to copy any and all conditioning-based techniques, far more than Rui had ever been subjected to.


    His defense was impregnable.


    At least, against Rui''s hampered physical power, it was not going to break any time soon.


    Or so he thought.


    BOOM!!!


    "Rgh!" Ieyasu grimaced in excruciating pain as what felt like a titanic blow crashed into his guard. His body reeled in shock as a tremendous impact reverberated across his entire body. BOOM BOOM BOOM!!


    He gritted his teeth as he used a copied defensive Martial Art to hold off Rui''s titanic blows. Yet despite the best defenses he could muster, each and every attack that struck him, burned him with pain. It was as though Rui suddenly became exponentially more powerful!


    BOOOM!!


    He grimaced in excruciating pain, yet his mind retained enough rity to derive insights into his current circumstances. ''This isn''t real... There is no way this is real.'' He gritted his teeth. ''This is such an absurdly powerful supplementary technique that would make even grade-ten techniques look ipetent. This must also be...''


    He had already realized the truth. However, he also realized that knowing the truth didn''t matter. The subconscious mind did not care whether the pain was real or fake, itmanded Ieyasu to avoid it, forcing him to act sub-optimally.


    Amand he was unable to refuse!


    BAM BAM BAM!


    Rui grinned like a shark at the sight as he bombarded Ieyasu with Phantom Pain, the pain-inducing hypnotic technique that would generate the illusion that Rui was striking his victim a hundred times harder than he actually was.


    The nervous system and the phenomenon known as pain were governed by rules that had been put in ce after billions of years of evolution. It was precisely because these rules had been put in ce and reinforced by eons of natural selection that they were almost impossible for the conscious mind to break.


    It did not matter if Ieyasu knew that it was an illusion, as long as his subconscious mind was convinced that it was real by the hypnosis, he would be forced to cower as though he was taking real damage.


    His subconscious mind forced his body to retreat and cower, despite his hatred of such conduct.


    BOOM!


    Rui sted him with another blow grinning even wider than before. His fist surged forward, crashing into Ieyasu''s guard.


    BOOM!!


    Rui''s leg had already spurred into action before Ieyasu could even recover from the previous blow, crashing into his knee.


    BOOM!!!


    "Rgh!" Ieyasu grimaced as he subconsciously shirked underneath the strike. He felt as though Rui had forcefully wrenched and torn his knee joint apart grinding the flesh together, causing twisted agony the likes of which he hadn''t experienced since the Squire evolution breakthrough.


    He fell down to a knee when Rui saw a chance to end the match. A powerful weighted kick surged forward,shing out to crash at his head. It was a game-ender.


    Or at least, it would have been, had itnded.


    WHOOSH!


    Rui''s eyes widened as his attack crashed into nothing.


    Ieyasu had disappeared.


    SPLAT!


    Rui turned around as he grimaced, leaping away as he felt a flesh wound emerging on his back. "If I cannot defend, then I will simply evade," Ieyasu dered as he rushed after Rui at a blinding speed!


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1469 Assimilative

    <h4>Chapter 1469 Assimtive</h4>


    The highly realistic excruciating pain had crippled Ieyasu''s defense since his subconscious mind refused to allow him to defend properly, insisting that he avoid confronting it.


    Thus, Ieyasu simply obeyed. He switched gears, using a maneuvering Martial Art that he had copied in the past year to confront Rui with evasion as a solution to his offense instead of defense.


    WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH


    Ieyasu effortlessly weaved away from Rui''s strikes with ease. Rui narrowed his eyes, pain could only be generated if his strikesnded on Ieyasu, which was a requirement for the pain to be realistic and believable.


    He had gone on to add illusionary elements that mimicked impact that made his body feel rocked by force the same way it would if it had been struck by an actually powerful force of the same caliber as the one he was pretending he couldunch.


    Yet if Ieyasu simply evaded the blows, then the technique was useless.


    WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH!!


    Ieyasu wormed his way past Rui''s offense, rushing in tond his piercing technique.


    Yet Rui had no intention of letting him.


    BAM!


    A short and swift blownded on Ieyasu as he lost control of his body, crashing a long way across the cloud arena. He quickly got up in confusion, surprised at what had just happened.


    Before he had known it, his body had gone out of control and Rui had somehow managed to cleanlynd a strike on him. Yet he got only a moment to consider it before Rui had arrived with a speeding charge.


    BAM!


    Ieyasu grimaced as Rui somehow managed tond a blindingly fast attack on him, yet when he charged forward to maneuver around andnd a blow, the most inexplicable oue happened.


    BOOM....BAM...POW!


    His bodyunched itself flying before he could even react, crashing across the cloud arena before he could even control his trajectory.


    ''I...can''t control my speed. It''s too fast.'' Ieyasu''s eyes widened as realization dawned on him, ncing at Rui. ''You bastard.''


    Rui surged forth with rapid speed with a demonic grin as he sted Ieyasu with a flurry of blows that were nothing short of blinding to Ieyasu. Thetter grimaced as he balled up, enduring Rui''s blows to the best of his ability.


    if not for the fact that Rui had not mastered any offensive Martial Art techniques in the past year, Ieyasu would have been overwhelmed by now. Yet the fact that Ieyasu could actually use physical Martial Art techniques while Rui couldn''t was a huge advantage that not even the Hypnomatrix could overwhelm quickly.


    Nheless, Rui was extremely pleased with the results that the Hypnomatrix had disyed. The third hypnotic technique that he had created, Temporal Disharmony, was a perfect counter to speed and maneuvering.


    Ieyasu had disyed some powerful speed and maneuvering techniques that he must have copied in the past four years, yet this one technique hadpletely sealed all of them, making them obsolete.


    Breathing Crucifix


    Phantom Pain


    Temporal Disharmony


    The three techniques of the initial iteration of the Hypnomatrix were a spectacr sess, Ieyasu had failed to ovee a single one of them while using the Martial Art that they were expressly used to counter.


    It meant that they had achieved their purpose.


    His victory was close to secured.


    Or so he thought.


    SPLAT!


    Rui''s eyes widened Ieyasu''s right hand which had buried itself in Rui''s abdomen. This content ? N?v/elDr(a)m/a.Org.


    "Did you think I could be defeated so easily?" Ieyasu''s eyes burned with determination.


    BOOM!!


    Rui defended himself from the powerful blow, grimacing deeply as he was flung away. He had barely managed to suppress Ieyasu''s power with Breathing Crucifix, reducing the speed and power of the blow. It was the only reason he was not knocked out.


    However, his mind lingered on something more important.


    A shocking discovery.


    Yet Ieyasu did not give him any time to ponder it. He shed forward towards Rui with the speed of the copied maneuvering Martial Art, beforending an attack from the offensive Martial Art onto Rui''s guard.


    Rui grimaced with shock as did his best to resist the power of two Martial Art. He activated Breathing Crucifix and Temporal Disharmony simultaneously at fifty-percent intensity each, before throwing a powerful blow at Ieyasu''s jaw, looking to knock him out.


    CRACK!


    Rui''s eyes widened as his fist crashed into the man''s rock-solid elbows, causing a fracture across his knuckle.


    This was the copied defensive Martial Art from before.


    That confirmed Rui''s suspicion.


    "You..." He murmured, leaping away. "You''re merging all three copied Martial Art into a single Martial Art!"


    Ieyasu smiled, much to the shock of Rui and Master Zeamer. Neither of them had seen him do that even once in the past two years. Yet it appeared that not even he could resist the ecstatic satisfaction of progress.


    "You are the first to face the first elementary prototype of my Martial Mind," Ieyasu informed him as he walked over. "My Martial Path is no longer imitative evolution... It has evolved."


    He stared into Rui''s eyes. "It has evolved to a higher state thanks to the power of Mind. My Martial Path... is assimtive evolution."


    Rui''s eyes widened with shock. "What?!"


    Yet, Ieyasu had no interest in borating. He simply rushed forward with the incredible speed of the copied maneuvering Martial Art, while preparing attacks of the offensive Martial Art, while simultaneously maintaining the active defenses of the defensive Martial Art.


    Rui''s expression grew more grave as his eyes narrowed. He had countless questions, but he put them aside for now. If he did not do something about the extreme threat that Ieyasu in his current state represented, then he was bound to lose.


    He had already used all three hypnotic techniques simultaneously to counter the offense, defense, and maneuvering Martial Art that Ieyasu was simultaneously using. Yet that meant that the potency of each technique was reduced to one-third its original potency.


    The techniques were meant to be low-effort in the first ce, being further reduced by two-thirds meant that their impact on Ieyasu was a lot more limited individually.


    His breathing was hampered.


    His cognition was hampered.


    His body burned with pain.


    Yet each of them was more manageable even if their product was the same as before. Ieyasu, on the other hand, seemed to have grown thrice as strong!


    BAM BAM BAM!


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1470 Card

    <h4>Chapter 1470 Card</h4>


    BAM BAM BAM!


    A flurry of strikes crashed into Rui''s defense of a guard and Adamant Reforging. The only reason Rui hadn''t gone down despite Ieyasu''s many physical techniques was because of the three mental techniques of the Hypnomatrix. If not for it, the gap in physical techniques would havepletely taken him down in a short amount of time.


    But Phantom Pain, Breathing Crucifix, and Temporal Disharmony were so powerful despite Rui''scking efforts that they could evenpensate for what was otherwise arge gap between them.


    BAM!


    Rui''s eyes widened with shock as Ieyasu grew even stronger, integrating yet another Martial Art into his hybrid Martial Art, gaining even more techniques to stack.


    BAM!


    An even more powerful blow from Ieyasu punted Rui away across the cloud field, leaving him reeling. Never before had he wanted to use the VOID algorithm to build a predictive model than he did now. But s, he couldn''t, he most certainly had not developed the pattern recognition model in the past four years.


    Thankfully, Ieyasu could not use his mind-reading technique either, among other things.


    However, he still had one more ace up his sleeve that he had yet to deploy. BAM! Property ? of N?velDrama.Org.


    Rui leaped back, minimizing the impact as his eyes were fixed on his opponent. He was waiting for the right moment to go all out. Timing was everything. BAM BAM BAM!


    He shielded himself from several blows, leaping away even as Ieyasu caught, keeping up with him.


    WHOOSH


    Rui rolled to the side, avoiding a hammer kick beforeunching a powerful kick to Ieyasu''s torso.


    POW!


    The man guarded his attack, grimacing in pain. Although the intensity of the pain had lowered to a third of the original intensity, it was still excruciatingly painful. Furthermore, Rui had developed the technique such that it would generate the sensation that he was being rocked by his attack.


    BAM BAM BAM!


    Ieyasu gritted his teeth, pushing through the pain as he continuously bombarded Rui with blow after blow. His attacks grew more vigorous as he grew more ustomed to the impediments that Rui had forced onto him.


    The deterioration of his offense and speed was highly unpleasant, but the fact of the matter was that Rui had managed to show him down and soften his strikes enough that he barely held a meager advantage, at most.


    BAM BAM BAM!!


    Rui grimaced under the increasing weight of his strikes. The man seemed to grow stronger as he better integrated the Martial Art that he had copied in the past four years.


    BOOM!


    A powerful kickunched Rui away as he just barely managed to defend to mitigate the damage.


    "Hoho!" The Hypnomaster eximed while sitting in the sky a considerable distance away as he observed. An expression of excitement, enthusiasm, and intrigue covered his face as he watched his two pupils go all out in an intense fight.


    Suddenly, the air changed.


    Ieyasu''s expression grew more grave. "Enough. Time to put this to an end."


    He exhaled deeply before inhaling as much as he could to the best of his ability under his restrained circumstances. A great amount of power surged across his entire body. Rui could feel the sheer amount of energy brimming underneath his flesh.


    He took a dashing stance, aiming for Rui, beforeunching himself forward.


    WHOOSH!


    He closed the distance rapidly, approaching Rui at incredible speeds.


    BAM!


    An immensely heavy blow crashed into Rui''s guard as Ieyasu passed him, leaving him reeling and unbnced. For just the briefest of moments, Rui was off-guard.


    And that was all Ieyasu, needed. BAM BAM BAM!!


    He pummeled Rui with a barrage of heavy blows, bruising and cutting him significantly as he pummeled Rui away.


    BOOM!


    A powerful kick crashed into Rui''s guard, flinging him awaypletely open. Ieyasu activated his charging technique onest time. It was a game-ending attack.


    WHOOSH!


    He shot across the cloud battlefield. The sheer speed at which heunched himself disintegrated the cloud bedrock beneath his feet. Countless sonic booms and shockwaves were left in his wake. The sheer skies incinerated as several infernos enveloped them furiously.


    BOOM!!!


    The sheer momentum of the blow meant that it could easily qualify as a finisher as long as it had been well-timed.


    And it certainly had.


    Rui stood at his spot.


    He didn''t so much as move.


    It was Ieyasu who copsed, coughing a spout of blood. A deep bruise began forming on his abdomen. His breathing was morebored than it had been in the entire fight. "Damn you..."


    Rui turned to face him. His body was significantly lighter than it had been before, a surge of energy flew through it. The upgraded Godspeed technique retained all of the speed of its original while using hypnosis-induced slowing down of his perception of time to allow him to keep up with his body.


    He had simply sidestepped out of the way, throwing the simplest of blows at the right time and ce.


    BOOM!!


    An immensely powerful kick crashed into Ieyasu''s jaw, leaving him dizzy. Yet Rui didn''t want to leave anything to chance, he continued to bombard Ieyasu with a barrage of blows to his vitals, refusing to allow him to use more techniques than he already had.


    POW!


    A simple blow to the jaw caused the blunt force trauma to exceed a certain threshold.


    THUD


    Ieyasu copsed to the ground unconscious.


    For a moment, there wasplete silence on the battlefield, before Master Zeamer broke it as he descended. "Very well done. The victory is yours. This old man is grateful for the incredibly entertaining fight. You sure did fight reserved, didn''t you?"


    "I wanted to use my Godspeed technique to produce the best oue. So I had to wait for a particrly decisive moment," Rui replied, narrowing his eyes. "Godspeed doesn''t have longevity, especially the upgraded version. Had I used it normally, there''s a chance I would have lost. Especially because he kept integrating more Martial Art and techniques to improve his style."


    Rui stared at the unconscious Ieyasu, in thought. "How can a Martial Path undergo such a drastic change? I thought it was the crystallization of one''s being. It doesn''t seem like Ieyasu has changed in any way at all, yet his Martial Path has gone from imitative evolution to assimtive evolution. This should be impossible."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1471 Factors

    <h4>Chapter 1471 Factors</h4>


    Master Zeamer''s smile curved with amusement. "Haha, you seem rather confused."


    "I am," Rui insisted. "How is such a thing possible? Martial Paths are not something that can be changed willy-nilly."


    "Your understanding of what is or isn''t possible is iplete," Master Zeamer remarked, amused. "It is not your fault, either, these are high-level concepts that onees in touch with only in the Upper Realms ordinarily. The factors and variables that are responsible for the Martial Path are moreplex than we canprehend. However, Martial Paths are usually profoundly connected to the experiences, memories, or emotions that most define a person and their life. Those same experiences, memories, and emotions that define a person are also almost always the foundation of one''s Martial drive."


    "So you''re saying that a person''s Martial drive and their Martial Path are connected because they are both impacted by the same experiences, memories, and emotions defining a person''s being?" Rui asked, raising an eyebrow. "Yes, or at least, generally yes. There are exceptions to all rules when ites to us humans." The man remarked. "However, they are not among the only variables that determine the nature of the Martial Path. A person''s affinity for the various Realms is also arge factor in impacting the Martial Path. In this case, the change in that variable is what has allowed for this rapid change in his impacting the Martial Path. In this case, the change in that variable is what has allowed for this rapid change in his Martial Path."


    Rui narrowed his eyes, turning back to Ieyasu, deep in thought. "In our fight, he said that the Martial mind, or at least initial prototype attempt at it, was what allowed his Martial Path to evolve. The Martial Mind is the Realm of thought, which means..." This content ? N?v/elDr(a)m/a.Org.


    Rui''s eyes widened.


    "It seems you''ve arrived at the answer. Sharp as always," Master Zeamer chuckled, turning back to the unconscious Ieyasu with a soft expression. "A person''s affinity for the various Realms impacts their Martial Path. Some people have weak bodies and thus may develop a Martial Path devoid of an affinity for the Squire and Senior Realms. Some people might have grown up with a rash and erratic mindset and temperament, causing them to lose an affinity for the Master realm. These things impact the Martial Path... They impact the Martial Path deeper than you can imagine."


    He turned towards Rui. "For example, theck of an affinity for the Master Realm can cause a Martial Path that should have been assimtive evolution to degrade into imitative evolution."


    Rui nodded with a knowing expression. "Figured as much. It''s unbelievable, but Ieyasu''s imitative evolution was antithetical to thought in a way. Because he embodied the cognition and the decision-making that he read in other people''s minds, he himself did not develop a habit of cultivating thought. He simply reflected other people''s minds rather than cultivating his own. I''m guessing this is the reason that Ieyasu failed to develop an affinity for the Master Realm due to this.


    "Indeed," Master Zeamer remarked. "I foresaw this day would arrive, ever since he developed his Mind Eye technique, at least. He would be forced to cultivate the power of thought when he arrived at the Senior Realm if he wanted to reach the Master Realm. What do you think Ieyasu has been doing for the past four years?"


    Master Zeamer turned towards Rui. "Thinking."


    "...Thinking?"


    "Yes, amusing, is it not?" Master Zeamer chortled. "But he has been cultivating the power of thought for the past four years. Day in and day out. He has been thinking about how he can employ the power of thought."


    "That''s a lot of thinking," Rui muttered.


    "Indeed, but it was necessary. That is how starved for it he was. About two years ago, a little before you arrived at Cloudia, he arrived at the answer," Master Zeamer informed him. "Using the power of thought, he would apply copied Martial Art more powerfully than he ever had, squeezing the absolute best of what he copied. With a new direction, he spent two years trying his damndest toe up with a framework and system of thought to process data based on a handful of variables and receive an output that would help him fight with his copied Martial Art better."


    He turned to Rui with a knowing expression. "Frankly, I was shocked that he came up with something such a sophisticated idea on his first attempt. How did someone go from no thought to suchplex thoughtbat-wise? However, after I met you, I understood where he got it from."


    Rui nced at Master Zeamer with a wary expression. "Just how much are you able to see with that mind of yours?"


    "Hahaha!" Master Zeamer guffawed heartily. "I''m just an old man with a good eye for the interesting."


    He turned back to Ieyasu with an endearing smile. "His Martial Path emerges from a desire to grow stronger, as well as some unique life circumstances. The moment he cultivated some affinity for the Master Realm by limatizing himself to thought and realizing the power of thought, it opened a new dimension for his Martial Path that he had previously rejected. Allowing his Martial Path to reach its full potential. Though that too is a bit of an oversimplification." "Seemsplicated," Rui sighed. "The Martial Path is," Master Zeamer agreed. "There are many theories and frameworks that try to build primitive models for the development of the Martial Path throughout one''s life, however, it is an esoteric field that is the hardest to make progress in."


    Rui was curious if his insights into neurology could help, but unfortunately, he was far from an expert in the field, he simply had some tangential knowledge that he had gained in his education and years of research in a distant field. Regardless, it was only a curiosity and not a main interest of his. He didn''t care to take away time from his Martial Art to dedicate to research.


    "By the way, are you going to get him treated or what?" Rui turned towards him.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1472 Return

    <h4>Chapter 1472 Return</h4>


    It wasn''t long before Ieyasu was quickly treated and healed. He took the loss with grace, much to his credit. "Know this. Next time, I''ll win," He dered to Rui with sharp eyes, before returning to his training.


    Rui made aplicated smile. It wasn''t that he wasn''t happy about getting a win on who was perhaps his only equal, but he knew more than anyone how skewed the match-up had been in his favor. ''He was that strong after integrating a handful of Martial Art into one,'' Rui realized. ''Just how astonishingly strong would he be had he done the same with the thousands of Martial Art he has mastered? The stiptions of this battle hurt him more than it did me.''


    Of course, Rui knew that Ieyasu was almost certainly unable to seamlessly assimte and integrate such a gigantic number of Martial Art into one wlessly. His current system of thought was certainly wed, limited, and iplete. He could sense that much.


    Still, he had his work cut out for him, and knowing how driven Ieyasu was, he was going to squeeze every iota of energy and drop of energy and dedicate himself to training and improving his Martial Mind prototype. No matter how much time, effort, or perseverance it took.


    ''If I ck off, he''ll break out of the deadlock and shoot way past me.'' Rui narrowed his eyes.


    That wasn''t to say Rui was dissatisfied with his own efforts or progress. The Hypnomatrix staved off Ieyasu''s powerful techniques by oppressing him mentally with all kinds of shackles and pain, literally.


    Without it, Rui would have instantly lost. The only normal techniques he had were Adamant Reforging which was always there passively and some assassination techniques that were highly preparatory. Ieyasu would have knocked him out on the spot with such an arsenal.


    Godspeed would certainly have staved that off had he used it right off the bat, but its stamina had reduced by half ever since Rui upgraded it. It would not have been able to take down someone with as powerful a constitution as Ieyasu.


    The first iteration that he had created was worthy of his Martial Path and a fine addition to his Martial Art. It also contributed to his Martial Mind by a decent amount, reducing the distance between him and the Master Realm. He had thoroughly achieved his purpose for arriving at Cloudia and gaining the teachings of the famed Hypnomaster.


    "Leaving so soon?" Master Zeamer asked him when he saw Rui with his bags packed. "Yes, Master," Rui remarked. "I have achieved all the objectives I came for, and I have other matters that need my immediate attention, even within the Great Forest of Hypnonarak. Therefore, I must take my leave."


    "Hmmm..." He turned to Rui. "Well then, It''s been interesting."


    Rui smiled. "I suppose it has. Thank you for everything."


    Rui bowed, expressing gratitude and respect for the Martial Master. Although he didn''t have the highest opinion of Master Zeamer''s tendencies, the man hade to prove his power and wisdom in the two years that they had been together.


    "Good luck with that Deacon fellow. Hit him for me as well." Master Zeamer called out as Rui departed.


    Ieyasu didn''t bother bidding Rui goodbye, then again, he hadn''t bothered the first time either. Nheless, Rui knew that they would meet again one day. If only because they had no other equal of their caliber in their generation.


    They didn''t share a chummy rtionship, so Rui didn''t mind his absence. It was moreforting this way. "Now then..." Rui''s mind returned to matters outside Martial Art for the first time in two years. "I suppose I should go visit the Beggar''s Sect. I wonder if they still remember me."


    He may as well have forgotten about them in the past two years. However, now that he had concluded his training, it was time to get down to business. Hismission payment to the Beggar''s Sect had waited long enough, it was time to finally finish the payment and acquire all the pertinent and relevant intelligence on Chairman Deacon.


    His fists clenched as his muscles trembled with force.


    His eyes narrowed.


    He had waited a long, long time. As patient as he was, even he was itching to put an end to everything. A rabid drive to kill Chairman Deacon drove him forward. Just thinking about the man made Rui restless with bloodlust.


    A deep bloodlust that had been cultivated over seven years of tribtions. Now, he finally had the power and the confidence to eliminate this cancer from his life. Of course, it wasn''t going to be easy, but he was more than qualified to take on this challenge and its difficulties with the power that he currently possessed after spending four years in the Senior Realm.


    Several dayster, he exited the Great Forest of Hypnonarak without a single scratch. The past two years of hunting in the forest had given him a greater ability to navigate forests and other natural habitats and untouched topographies. He was a much more qualified hunter than he was before, which was a good development considering his future intentions to visit the Beast Domain.


    It wasn''t long before he found himself navigating the human domain of the Gereign region. Rui actually had some trouble limatizing to the bustling unruly crowds of the Gereign region. Cloudia has been quite the serene and peaceful ce surrounded by a forest that was exotically beautiful when it wasn''t trying to kill you.


    His tolerance for humans had reduced.


    He sky-walked away, avoiding the crowds, quickly heading to the Gereign Distribution Service, the base for the foreign affairs department of the Beggar''s Sect in the Gereign in Region.


    "Wee back, Senior John. We have awaited your return," A manager soon came to greet him once he revealed his identity. "Let us speak in a more private setting. I''m sure we have a lot to speak about, after all. Come this way."


    "I''m ready toplete the remaining part of mymission payment," Rui calmly informed him.


    This chapter upload first at  This content ? N?v/elDr(a)m/a.Org.

 Chapter 1473 Deterrent

    <h4>Chapter 1473 Deterrent</h4>


    "Yes, the time hase, hasn''t it?" The manager remarked, smiling. "By the way, my name is Fern. I will be aiding you while youplete yourmission payment during your time here in the Gereign Region."


    "I look forward to that. Now, from what I recall, the operations that the Beggar''s Sect wanted me to undertake was sabotage and elimination, correct?" Rui asked. "Specifically, you wanted me to eliminate the operations that the Carnil Mafia had set up in the Gereign Region."


    "That''s right," Fern nodded. "That was, and still is, one of our main agendas. We would like for you to eliminate the drug trafficking ring set up by the Carnil Mafia in the Gereign Region."


    Rui recalled the conversation he had with the Beggar''s Sect two years ago. "It was in order to prevent them from spreading the drug in the Kandrian Empire, correct? So that they would be unable to generate a market for it?"


    "Indeed," Fern nodded. "The underworld of the Kandrian Empire seeks to change the status quo that has been around for centuries during Emperor Rael''s reign. By normalizing and generating demand for it, they hope to be able to decriminalize the ck market and its various goods and services by supporting a prince or princess to be the next ruler of the Kandrian Empire." Property ? of N?velDrama.Org.


    "Do they have a prince supporting them?" Rui asked, raising his eyes. "Would a prince or princess of the empire really have any incentive to work with the scourge of the Empire? That''s no different from throwing the privileges, authority, and power of their status."


    "You have a valid point, Senior John," Fern replied. "However, there are princes and princesses born with the emperor''s blood without much of the privileges, authority, and power thates with being a prince or princess."


    Rui raised an eyebrow. "I''m assuming this refers to princes or princesses lower down the inheritance line?"


    "As well as those whose mother is of lower birth," He remarked. "Most of the powerhouses princes and princesses who have a real chance of ascending the throne are children of the Empress or His Majesty''s royal concubines. However, there are plenty of princes or princesses who had been born tomoner women."


    "...I see," Rui murmured. "Interesting. So which prince or princess is being supported by the underworld?"


    "This isn''t publically known information, but it is young Prince Rajak El Kandria," Fern replied. "Born to amoner mother, he turned to the underworld to obtain the power he needed to eventually contend for the throne."


    It was a name that Rui hadn''t heard about before.


    "Interesting stuff," Rui murmured. "I have heard about the Kandrian Throne War, but it looks like it''s boiling up."


    "Indeed, the Kandrian Empire is a continental powerhouse with a whopping fourteen Martial Sages, over a hundred Martial Masters, and over a thousand Martial Seniors. Furthermore, it possesses arge developed military with nigh cutting-edge military technology," The man exined. "Whoever ascends the throne will possess the power to affect the dynamics of the geopolitics of the entire continent.


    "..." Rui narrowed his eyes. He would have liked to have asked the Beggar''s Sect for a deeper ount of the Kandrian Throne War, but he knew that expressing any more interest than this would significantly the probability that the Beggar''s Sect would tie him to the Kandrian Empire.


    Of course, he shared a decent working rtionship with the Beggar''s Sect so it wasn''t the worst thing in the world, but he didn''t trust them very much. He would have to learn about the Kandrian Empire''s political turmoil from another source. "Alright, let''s get back to business," Rui heaved a sigh. "Carnil Mafia. Specifically, what do you want to be done to them?"


    "Please inflict enough damage to their operations that will make them abandon them altogether," Fern firmly requested. "We would like you to make their cost-benefit plummet towards losses. We would like the detriments of operating in the Gereign Region to far exceed any profit that they could ever make."


    Rui narrowed his eyes. "That''s a hefty goal. The underworld of the Kandrian Empire is extremely powerful. What makes you think a young Martial Senior like myself can take them on?"


    "It is true that the Underworld of the Kandrian Empire is astronomically more powerful than you," Fern remarked. "However, the forces of the Carnil Mafia gathered in the Gereign Region do not exceed the Senior Realm. I''m sure you already know why."


    A smirk appeared on Rui''s face. "The Hypnomaster."


    "That''s right," Fern remarked. "The many forces operating in the Gereign Regione from parent forces that do have Martial Masters, yet none of them deploy them. That is because the Hypnomaster does not tolerate Martial Masters in the Gereign Region. There was once a time when twelve Martial Masters arrived at the Gereign Region as political tensions between several forces rose. Do you know what happened to those Martial Masters?"


    "Let me guess," Rui made an amused remark. "They all died, except maybe the females."


    "It appears that you have an intimate understanding of what the Hypnomaster is like," Fern remarked. "He dismissed the directive levied against him by the Master Council of the Panamic Martial Federation for creating such a hazardous zone in the middle of human civilization. He is an Elder in the organization, allowing him to get away with a lot. As a Martial Master who is over four centuries old, he is part of the second generation of Martial Artists ever and has rued an enormous amount of power across his long life. ording to our intelligence, he is close to the ceiling of the Master Realm, a powerhouse Martial Master who is not to be trifled with."


    "Ha..." Rui smiled, amused. Such high des and reputation were hard to reconcile with the impression that Rui had formed of the shameless lecher. However, he knew that they were true.


    "The one and only Martial Master known to make Master Zeamer retreat was the Silent Shadow, however, she is also of the same caliber as him. Conversely, he is one of the few to have ever survived an assassination from her. Furthermore, he is even stronger near the Great Forest of Hypnonarak. To put it simply..." Fern continued. "The Carnil Mafia will not deploy Martial Masters under any circumstances. So rest assured that you will not be dealing with forces far beyond you."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1474 Interests

    <h4>Chapter 1474 Interests</h4>


    "Even if they cannot deploy Martial Masters, they can deploy powerful Martial Seniors. The Kandrian Empire produces powerful Martial Artists, and it certainly has enough high-grade Martial Seniors," Rui remarked.


    "We have strong reasons to suspect that not even Martial Seniors can entirely diminish your ability to kill," Fern remarked. "Regardless, you are not our only solution. We have already deployed other Martial Seniors, unsessfully. If you are not enough, we will deploy even more assassins."


    Rui knew that the Beggar''s Sect was not short of the funds needed to erase the Carnil Mafia''s operations. However, unlike the underworld of the Kandrian Empire, the Beggar''s Sect was spread across the entire continent. Although the organization possessed immense power and influence, it was also true that it was spread very thin.


    Rui couldn''t even begin to imagine the sheer number of agendas and objectives that the Beggar''s Sect tackled daily. It had to be extremely taxing even for a powerful organization like the sect. That''s probably why it would like to rely on Rui alone.


    He knew that the intelligence that he hadmissioned from the sect had already been gathered. This meant that the Beggar''s Sect could resolve the Carnil Mafia agenda without having to spend any additional funds if Rui could get the job by himself. They would just supply him with hismission once he was done without having to spend any more wealth.


    Perhaps that was why they were willing to wait for quite some time for him to return from his training under Master Zeamer. They hoped that once Rui gained power training under the famed Hypnomaster, he would be strong enough to pose a threat to the Carnil Mafia.


    Well, he couldn''t say that their hope was misced. Unfortunately, he still didn''t have a very urate idea of where he ranked in the Senior Realm in terms of power. However, his directbat power wasn''t too relevant in this case.


    ''What matters is whether I can kill them or not.'' Rui mused, narrowing his eyes.


    He was confident in his ability to kill. His training with Master Reina had built a great foundation for assassination and Master Zeamer allowed him to truly tap into his mind''s power. Furthermore, he had always been extremely strong with preparation. Preparation usually allowed him to not only contend with forces far beyond him but also ovee them.


    "I''ll need to some intelligence and relevant information on the Carnil Mafia''s operations in the Hypnonarak Forest," Rui insisted. "I''ll make a decision after I''ve gone through it. If it''s too unreasonable, then I''ll reject it."


    "That is quite reasonable," Fern smiled, before fiddling with amunication device. "I have arranged for it, it should be here in some time. In the meantime, if there are any other questions or concerns that I can rify, please don''t hesitate."


    "I have nothing left to ask in regards to this little operation," Rui replied. "It''s straightforward and simple, rather I''m curious about the Beggar''s Sect''s tendency to spend such enormous funds and wealth on matters that don''t earn it profit. The Carnil Mafia, the assassination sector of the Shadow Isles. It is it really worth it to take them down?"


    "As an organization that derives its power from themon folk, the state of human civilization is of great importance to us," The man replied. "Ordinary men and women are not soldiers, trained agents, or Martial Artists. Their psychological capacity to tolerate extreme circumstances that threaten their lives or livelihood is not as high as that of trainedbatants who regrly experience dangerous circumstances."


    He heaved a sigh, continuing. "They panic, despair, break, and engage in all kinds of chaotic, destructive, and self-destructive behaviors if the state of civilization deteriorates. Wars, famines, disease pandemics, natural cmities, and other such catastrophes usually strain society and civilization to the point of breaking. In such circumstances, we find that our operations are severelypromised. In a world of the Age of Martial Art, it doesn''t take much to push civilization to the brink."


    "I see..." Rui mused. "I was informed that the assassination sector of the Shadow Isles didpromise your operations in the Derschek Region, however, I had assumed that was because your sleeper agents were assassinated, but I suppose it was also because the Derschek Region is an extremely chaotic region."


    "Indeed, it is thetter more than the former. The spontaneous assassinations were annoying and hard to predict, but we have far too many sleeper agents to be assassinated," Fern remarked, before stirring. "Ah, looks like the intelligence you requested has arrived. You maye in."


    An assistant brought in a box of documents and bowed before leaving.


    "These are all the files documenting the Martial Power of the base of operations that the Carnil Mafia has set up in the Gereign Region," He remarked, feel free to go through them in this study. I''ll leave an assistant here that will aid you in any way you need. You can contact me once you''re done. Then..." This content ? N?v/elDr(a)m/a.Org.


    He said, getting up.


    "Appreciate the free intelligence," Rui remarked.


    "We would be foolish to leave you uninformed when ites to operations affecting our own objectives and agendas, after all."


    Soon enough, Rui was left to his own devices. He quickly unearthed the documents from within the box, skimming through the first one.


    ''A report on the current logistical affairs and state of the Carnil Mafia...'' Rui raised an eyebrow, going through all the details.


    It didn''t take more than a moment for him to realize that the Carnil Mafia had been busy. With many bases established across the entire human domain of the Gereign Region, the Carnil mafia had invested quite a lot into the development of the necessary warehouses to store harvests of the narcotic nts, as well as the necessary infrastructure to process the nts to a certain extent, making it easier to store over longer periods of time.


    The Carnil Mafia apparently had an oligopoly on the ck market for criminalized substances, resources, and raw products due to the industry-level quality standards they maintained. Thus they had one of the most expensive operations anywhere in the Gereign Regionpared to the shabby smaller forces around them.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1475 High Grade

    <h4>Chapter 1475 High Grade</h4>


    "A few dozen warehouses for storage and processing, a facility to produce and maintain the equipment and tools needed for optimal extractions, a general management facility, a recruitment and training facility, even housing sectors to provide basic housing requirements for long-term deployments..." Rui murmured with widened eyes and a surprised tone. ''He wasn''t kidding when he said the Carnil Mafia is investing a lot in these operations.''


    Rui wasn''t an expert on narcotic drug rings, but he was rtively certain that such expenditure was not normal. This level of expenditure was approaching industry standards for legal substances that were also high in demand.


    However, the fact that the Carnil Mafia was able to sustain and had decided it was worth sustaining this meant that the sheer mark-ups at which they sold their products were extremely high, it was probably a lucrative enough business to justify such expenses.


    ''It''s not just the profits, but moreso normalizing and building demand for the product, putting pressure to decriminalize it, which would make it easier to do decriminalize if they do win the Kandrian Throne War and instate their prince.'' Rui mused, narrowing his eyes.


    He didn''t like the idea of drugs spreading in the Kandrian Empire. The impoverished were always the most vulnerable to drug epidemics, and he came from a background that was originally impoverished and was not far from that economic ss.


    That meant that they were particrly susceptible to falling victim to such substances. And once they did, it would be extremely difficult for them toe out of it.


    The one thing that truly grated on him was how vulnerable adolescents were to the substance. The Quarrier Orphanage housed many children and adolescents and Rui would be particrly enraged if they fell victim to these narcotics due to the Carnil Mafia''s shenanigans.


    As far as he was concerned, that was plenty of reason to annihte these operations. So much so thatpleting hismission payments may very well be his secondary motivation.


    Furthermore, this also awakened him to the dangers of the Kandrian Throne War. The many powerful forces that had been in y were willing to do anything to get to the throne, even if the people of the empire were harmed in the process. He recalled what he had heard about the princess that had been foiled by the Beggar''s Sect and her authoritarianmunistic political agenda.


    Rui had been born in an era when the Soviet Union was still in power back in his previous life, and he had a low opinion of them despite his apathy and abstinence from delving into politics.


    If the Beggar''s Sect felt the need to sabotage her, then she almost certainly was a threat to the stability and harmony of themon man.


    "Huff..." Rui heaved a sigh, narrowing his eyes. ''I may have underestimated how much of a problem this annoying throne war could be. The orphanage may not be as safe from it as I''d once hoped.''


    If that was the case, Rui may not be able to avoid partaking in it. Even if it was limited to supporting the most ptable prince and political faction, it was better than nothing. Martial Seniors had reached a stage where their impact on military and political capital could be felt, especially if they were strong and talented.


    However, these were matters to be considered after he returned to the Kandrian Empire as he hoped to. He had much more immediate concerns and priorities like taking out the Carnil Mafia''s operations and getting the intelligence he needed to eliminate Chairman Deacon.


    He turned his attention back to the reports that the Beggar''s Sect had provided him, skimming through them. The annual product produced by the Carnil operations was measured in sheer tons rather than kilograms, which showed the scale of the operations set up by the Carnil Mafia.


    ''Considering how much each gram sells for, they must be making billions. This is the kind of operation that would normally be protected by Martial Masters...however...''


    In this case, deploying Martial Masters was something that could not be done due to the Hypnomaster. Furthermore, deploying the notorious Sage Aggragor was also impossible due to far greater priorities. That was the only reason such an expensive and important set of operations was being guarded only by Martial Seniors.


    ''However, the Martial Seniors that have been deployed by the underworld are highlypetent,'' Rui narrowed his eyes as he arrived at the most important parts of the report; the security measures. Property ? of N?velDrama.Org.


    His eyes lit up with interest. ''As expected...high-grade Martial Seniors.''


    There were a total of ten Martial Seniors deployed by the Carnil Mafia, out of which three were grade twelve or above. Rui read through the intelligence gathered on them.


    This was the first time he had actually seen graded Martial Seniors. it felt odd to see grades higher than grade ten since grade ten had been firmly set in his mind at the peak, seeing grade twelve Martial Artists was quite strange.


    However, their power was real. Each of them was a Martial Senior whose age had already hit the triple digits. One of them was even three hundred years old, which was very old for Martial Seniors.


    The fact that he had been stuck in the Senior Realm for so long meant that he was having extreme trouble creating a system of thought that could elevate hisbat prowess greatly. It could also mean that the man had a non-existent affinity for the Master Realm and was simply too rigid to make a change.


    ''Not everyone can spend nearly every second of every day for four years simply thinking endlessly for the sake of cultivating an affinity for the Master Realm and discovering an additional dimension to their Martial Path, evolving it,'' Rui mused as he thought of Ieyasu, when he saw how slow people progressed and how weak they were, he was able to appreciate the sheer genius of someone like Ieyasu.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1476 Tiger

    <h4>Chapter 1476 Tiger</h4>


    He knew that the Martial Seniors he had fought thus far were not on par with high-grade Martial Seniors. Unless there were truly special circumstances, the average Martial Senior was vastly below a Martial Senior who had lived for centuries. The sheer amount of time and experience to train their body, and develop powerful techniques with immense individuality that possess great affinity with their Martial Body and Martial Art.


    Furthermore, Rui was sure that pretty much all Martial Seniors had made some degree of progress with their Martial Mind, even if they hadn''t reached the critical threshold.


    They were immensely superior to the Martial Seniors that Rui had fought in every single parameter, he wasn''t too confident if he would be able to ovee a huge gap in the power of their Martial Hearts, Bodies, and sheer quantity of techniques, experience with just his Martial Art.


    That would remain to be seen. The best part of this mission was that he didn''t have to duel them, he just needed to kill them. The intelligence gathered by the Beggar''s Sect was detailed and vast. Not only did it go into the identities of the various Martial Seniors who had been deployed to safeguard the precious narcotics ring that the Carnil Mafia had meticulously built from the ground up.


    Each of them had been a student of the Martial Academy at some point and had even been a legal Martial Artist for a long time. However, they''d been tempted by the great wealth one could make by catering to the ck market. Because it was illegal, the price of services offered was higher than that of the Martial Union.


    Thus, a small proportion of Martial Artists were roped into the underworld every year. The Martial Seniors that were assigned to the narcotics ring were notorious too. At the Senior Realm, Martial Seniors gained a very individualistic reputation from the publicpared to Martial Squires who were generally unknown individually.


    Martial Seniors possessed too much individual strength to be ignored. As long as one wasn''t ipetent, they woulde to cultivate their own recognition and sometimes even their own monikers. [Veritable Tiger]


    The leader of the security detail assigned to the narcotic ring. The division was considerable and consisted of far more than just the ten Martial Seniors deployed, however, the rest were irrelevant to Rui. The hundred Squires and nearly a thousand Apprentices deployed by the mafia were irrelevant to Rui, they could not impact the oue of the battle as long as Rui didn''t make an ipetent blunder.


    Senior Zenshin, also known as the Veritable Tiger, was a powerful Martial Senior who wielded some authority in the Carnil Mafia. The man had been part of the Underworld even before he became a Martial Artist and was one of the most trusted leaders amongst the Lower Realms by the upper echelons of the Underworld.


    That was one of the reasons that he was entrusted to protect the Carnil narcotics operations in the Gereign Region.


    Rui didn''t care that much about his history, however. What he did care about was the man''s Martial power. The man''s epithet had actually been straightforwardly taken from his Veritable Tiger Fist, a rather uninventive moniker.


    What Rui found interesting was that this was a Martial Art that was based on the predatory hunting of big cat beasts and monsters. It was said to mimic the powerful jaws and ws of big cats that could be used to sh and tear apart the prey. ording to the intelligence, Senior Zenshin had worked as a part of a wildlife sanctuary before he had gotten involved in the Underworld, it was said that he developed an immense fascination for the wild cats that he had been serving as an assistant in caretaking. Copyright N?v/el/Dra/ma.Org.


    Apparently, his admiration for the predators was great enough to affect his


    This wasn''t the first time Rui hade across Martial Art centered around an animal''s fighting style, but this was the first he had seen in the Senior Realm. He always found it fascinating that Martial Paths could be centered around mimicking or replicating the principles of creatures of entirely different species.


    Of course, there were plenty of such martial arts back on Earth. China had countless such martial arts, starting with the most famous Ng Ying martial arts featuring styles centered around tiger, crane, snake, leopard, and dragon.


    He had been surprised to see them be the foundation of Martial Art in this world, though. Martial Paths were the manifestation of the essence of who one was, what kind of inclination toward beasts did one have to possess for them to serve as the foundation of their Martial Path?


    However, he could also understand why they could serve as viable Martial Paths. Human physiology was not maximized for predation on an individual basis. If not for the fortunate evolution of human intelligence, humans would be much further down the food chain than they currently were.


    Humanscked ws sharp enough teeth, as well as the speed and strength to even take down other creatures of the same mass.


    The two things that humans had going for them were stamina, which was used in long-term hunts, and their intelligence which allowed them to develop powerful tools that could allow them to actually kill other prey.


    On an individual basis, however, humans were much inferior to other apex predators pound-for-pound in their ability to hunt and kill using only their physicality, thus a Martial Path that sought to mimic the manners in which they leveraged their physicality to hunt prey could do well.


    Evolution was not perfect, but it was pretty good at its job, there was no need to waste time finding the best way to leverage power to hunt when nature had already done that and proven its results.


    Martial Artists who sought to make use of the tried and proven principles of nature to enhance theirbat prowess were naturally formidable for the most part, and Rui was looking forward to see how one who had done that for centuries would fight.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1477 Sensor

    <h4>Chapter 1477 Sensor</h4>


    In addition to the Veritable Tiger, there were two other high-grade Martial Seniors that protected the Carnil drug trafficking ring. Rui quickly informed himself of their capabilities as well, before memorizing all other security details.


    It turned out that Martial Artists protected each harvesting and gathering operation. Martial Apprentices were enough for gathering operations that only ventured to a brief depth into the Great Forest of Hypnonarak.


    Martial Squires protected teams that ventured deeper to get stronger and more potent extracts, while Martial Seniors went for the deepest in order to get the most potent extracts for premium products. Rui smiled.


    This was far from sufficient protection.


    His biggest concern was Martial Seniors with powerful senses. It was harder to misdirect powerful senses and it could possibly end up screwing himter. Particrly, if any of them had grade-ten senses, then he definitely had to make sure they died early, otherwise they could be a great impediment.


    ''Thankfully, such Martial Artists are quite rare-'' Rui froze as he went through the profile of the final Martial Senior.


    [Senior Nereau] A stealth-oriented Martial Artist, ording to the intelligence, was confirmed to possess extraordinary senses with the All-Seeing Eye technique and the Miasma Sense technique.


    Both of these were grade-ten sensory techniques, ording to the intelligence provided by the Beggar''s Sect, he even knew one of those techniques.


    ''Dammit.'' Rui groaned. ''I guess I can''t expect it to be as easy as it was with the Martial Seniors of Shadow Isles.''


    With grade-ten sensory techniques as powerful as that, she would be able to detect Death''s Sympathy as it arrived and deflect it. Which meant that he couldn''t just snipe them from a distance as effortlessly as he did in the Derschek Region.


    The Kandrian Empire was of a different caliber in every regard, including Martial Seniors and the techniques they wielded. Rui noticed that the grade of techniques wielded by the Martial Seniors assigned to protect the Carnil Mafia''s drug trafficking ring was higher than what he had seen elsewhere. They were remarkable techniques developed based on powerful principles and mechanisms and refined through great training resources.


    ''It''s actually incredible that the Beggar''s Sect got a hold of such great details about the techniques and fighting styles,'' Rui was impressed with the Beggar''s Sect''s ability to gather information.


    Thankfully, he would not make the blunder of trying to use Death''s Sympathy with Senior Nereau around. Unfortunately, the Carnil mafia maderge joint ventures where they grouped together arge number of Martial Artists and deployed them as a group to protectrge numbers of extraction teams.


    That meant that Rui could not avoid her all that much to target only the Martial Seniors who weren''t apanied by her. ''It makes sense that they would send a Martial Senior with powerful senses, but it''s rare to find Martial Seniors that have mastered one grade-ten sensory technique, let alone two. Then again, this is the Kandrian Empire.'' Rui mused. The Great Forest of Hypnonarak was dangerous, for everybody, Rui could definitely understand the wisdom of wanting to have a powerful sensory Martial Artists who could warn them of any threats or dangers well ahead of time.


    ''Thankfully, I''m not a one-trick pony assassin like I was before meeting Master Reina.'' Rui mastered powerful stealth techniques, and close-range assassin techniques, not to mention, several mental techniques that would certainly help in the context of the domain of the Great Forest of Hypnonarak.


    ''I can do this. It''s just one final stage and then I''m done with mymission payment.'' Rui narrowed his eyes, before memorizing all the data that the Beggar''s Sect had gathered and processing all of it.


    The intelligence was remarkably detailed and expansive, it contained everything Rui could possibly need to know in order to take them down.


    After analyzing all the logistical, security, Martial, and strategic information avable, there were several conclusions he drew.


    ''I definitely can''t attack them outside of the Great Forest of Hypnonarak.'' Rui mused. He was not strong enough to take on that many Martial Seniors at once, especially when they consisted of three high-grade Martial Seniors. He could rely on the Greater Phantomind Void technique, but it was too risky with Senior Nereau.


    Thus, as long as she was around, he needed to attack them in the forest when their awareness was burdened by the forest. In such circumstances, the Great Phantomind Void was undoubtedly a killer.


    Ideally, he would love to kill Senior Nereau right off the bat and then get back to easily sniping them off one by one, but that wasn''t going to be easy. However, letting her live was probably going to make things even more difficult. Copyright N?v/el/Dra/ma.Org.


    "Hmmm..." Rui considered the matter closely. ''If I kill her, it''s unlikely she will be reced by an equally capable sensor. These techniques are extremely difficult to master, and of those who do master them, an extremely tiny proportion choose to work in the Underworld. All I need to do is get rid of her, and then they''re screwed.''


    He didn''t think they would be able to avoid his assassinations without an incredibly powerful sensory Martial Artist to protect them. He was just too powerful and had developed techniques that were too powerful.


    ''I''ll make one attempt at getting rid of Senior Nereau first if that doesn''t work out, then I''ll just focus on killing the rest of the Martial Seniors despite her.'' Rui concluded. ''It would be great if she dies first, but even if she doesn''t she alone cannot stop me.''


    Detecting his presence in the Great Forest of Hypnonarak while he was using his Greater Phantomind Void was a feat that not even two grade-ten sensory techniques could aplish. Thankfully, with information on their battle formations and security protocols, he was sure that he could weasel a way through their defenses and get rid of her.


    "Tell Fern I''m done and will get started soon," Rui informed the assistant assigned to help him. "It shouldn''t take too long."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1478 Zenshin

    <h4>Chapter 1478 Zenshin</h4>


    "Zenshin..." A woman remarked, approaching a burly man deep within a training facility. "What are you doing?"


    "Nereau..." The man growled. "How many times have I told you to not disturb me while I''m training?"


    "If you train twenty-four hours a day, then it is impossible to speak to you without disturbing you," She snorted. Stop doing that, or stop being a leader, if you want to be undisturbed."


    The man didn''t respond immediately. Instead, he continued sharpening his nails against a particrly strange ore, sharpening and hardening them the more he went at it.


    "What do you want?" This content ? N?v/elDr(a)m/a.Org.


    "We got an order from Master Haishi," Senior Nereau remarked. "She is ordering us to double our output over the next week."


    Senior Genshin paused his training. "...What?"


    "They''re going to be rapidly stepping up supply to spread the product more in the Mantian Region of the empire," She sighed. "She wants us to hasten our frencer hiring so that we can expand the scale of our operations rapidly instead of waiting for HQ to send us thebor we need."


    "...Hmph. Ry that to the manager. I don''t handle managerial duties. The only thing we are here is to do is to lead and ensure that the operations proceed ording to Lord Carnil''s desires, and protect them from those that seek to sabotage us." The man snorted as he went back to sharpening his nails.


    "That''s not even the main message. They want to establish a base inside the Great Forest of Hypnonarak and grow narcotic nts as crops within this shielded facility," She heaved an even deeper sigh. "Master Haishi said that Don Carnil himself has decided to invest and go all out in this venture."


    Not even Senior Zenshin could remain unmoved when greeted with such an ambitious n.


    "...Ambitious, as expected of him," Senior Zenshin muttered with a hint of admiration.


    "Hah," She snorted. "You are the one that''s going to shoulder the burden of this absurd n. Even putting aside the countless practical hurdles and impediments that will need to be ovee, the sheer amount of funds such an ambitious project will warrant, the biggest problem is the Hypnomaster."


    She clenched her fist. "We can deal with any Martial Senior, but that being... We cannot deal with him. This is his forest, one that he created. I don''t think we should provoke him."


    "If we are threatened with a Martial Master, then Lord Carnil will send Martial Masters. Simple as that," Senior Zenshin gruffly dered. "Most likely Master Haishi herself will take action since she is monitoring our progress."


    "You know it''s not that simple," Senior Nereau gritted her teeth. "I don''t question Master Haishi''s formidable prowess, however, the Hypnomaster is not someone to be trifled with."


    Senior Zenshin paused, ncing at her with a dangerous glint in his eyes. "Are you implying that she can''t win?"


    "I''m implying that she shouldn''t try to," Senior Nereau narrowed her eyes. "I don''t know who is stronger, however, even if she is stronger, this is the Hypnomaster''s domain, and the mental consumption of the forest works in his favor. We already supply dozens of tons of narcotic substances annually, isn''t that enough?"


    "It''s not enough," Senior Zenshin growled. "it''s not enough because Lord Carnil says it''s not enough. That''s all you need to know. You''re not a strategist or a leader. You''re a Martial Artist, you don''t need to think, you need to fight."


    "Are you saying Martial Seniors don''t need to think?" She raised an eyebrow. "If that is your philosophy, then it is no wonder you''ve remained a high-grade Martial Senior for centuries."


    Senior Zenshin paused his conditioning training once more.


    She had struck a nerve.


    It was not a secret that despite training non-stop for centuries, Senior Zenshin was still some ways away from the Master Realm. As a Martial Artist who had reached the upper ends of the Lower realms, he strongly and gravely desired to reach the vaunted Upper Realms.


    Every Martial Senior knew that Martial Masters were cut from a different cloth. It wasn''t just that they were stronger, it was as though they had attained a higher state of life. It was as though they had attained a touch of godhood.


    It was as though they were fundamentally different beings from Martial Seniors.


    While Martial Seniors simply wielded more raw power than Martial Squires, Martial Masters wielded the same power. They wielded the exact same physical power in seemingly mystical ways that resulted in magical oues.


    Of course, it wasn''t genuinely supernatural. He had long been informed of the truth of the Master Realm and the path forward towards it.


    However, the path forward to the Master Realm was more difficult than he had ever experienced.


    Using the power of thought to astronomically empower and elevate one''sbat? What kind of nonsense was that?


    How could thinking harder make one stronger in the middle ofbat?!


    He didn''t understand.


    He didn''t understand how thought and mind could be such a powerful force. It made no sense to him. If thought were such a powerful force, then wouldn''t all thosebat researchers also be very strong? Didn''t they spend most of their time thinking about the science ofbat?


    He didn''t understand.


    He knew that he wasn''t alone either.


    Most Martial Seniors felt this way. Most of them received basic education so that they wouldn''t make utter fools of themselves, many of them did not even receive a proper education. They trained their damndest from a young age to get into the Martial Academy and were set on the path of Martial Art.


    That was why when the few of them reached the Senior Realm and were confronted with the Martial Mind, they were dumbfounded. It had taken Senior Zenshin more than a decade before he could even begin taking a step, and then several more decades to make even the first hint of progress.


    "Don''t go there," Senior Zenshin growled as bloodlust oozed from his demeanor. "Not if you want to die."


    "Hmph, you bestial oaf," She snorted. "Last thing I came here to tell you. It''s time for the operation, let''s go."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1479 Not Easy

    <h4>Chapter 1479 Not Easy</h4>


    Rui almost wondered whether he should let the Carnil Mafia establish a base in the Great Forest of Hypnonarak. ''That will definitely piss Master Zeamer off,'' Rui mused.


    He hade to gain a good understanding of the Martial Master''s personality and temperament over the past two years. He was extremely down-to-earth, often underground even, when it came to people who had earned his affection, but he could be ruthless when it came to people he didn''t.


    He was also strangely possessive and very territorial. Although the elder man never said it out loud, Rui hade to realize that normal humans were hardly more than insects to him.


    Unless they were women.


    However, Rui discovered a disturbing apathy and detachment to people who didn''t earn his affection.


    He was the type who was more than willing to ughter the entire human race if it meant impressing a woman he was targeting.


    In his conversations with Master Zeamer, he came to discover that he viewed the narcotics industry surrounding the forest the same way that a human might consider an ant colony or bees being attracted to certain smells in their garden; something that wasn''t too worthy of note until it became annoying.


    Rui knew if they tried deforesting a region of the forest to grow and harvest narcotic nts, it would definitely annoy Master Zeamer. He would put an end to that before it even started, it would be a brutal blood bath.


    That was why he considered letting them relocate and allowing Master Zeamer to erase them. However, there was only one problem.


    ''It won''t count as my payment if I''m not the one doing it.'' Rui sighed. That was the only reason this was a bad n. Otherwise, it was perfect, he got to kick back and even watch a Martial Master flex.


    ''Then again, this n wouldn''t give me a way to test myself.'' Rui sighed. He had been curious about his power level for some time now. Fighting against Ieyasu didn''t tell him anything since he was just as much of an aberrant as Rui. On top of that, they had both been heavily restricted in their fight. Rui looked forward to shing with the various Martial Seniors of the Carnil Mafia, he would finally have a good idea of how strong he was. He was even hoping that he would get to have real fights rather than just engage with them as an assassin.


    Of course, he didn''t intend to seek that out. He needed to kill them in order to fulfill hismission payment, and that naturally meant relying on assassinations. He could only hope that the battle would unfold such that he could have a real fight.


    Thankfully, the intelligence indicated that that might very well be the case. The reason for that was that ording to the security protocols of the Carnil operations, all members were to wear protective gear and armor, including Martial Seniors, to minimize casualties and injuries while in the Great Forest of Hypnonarak.


    "Even the Martial Seniors?" Rui raised an eyebrow. "Also these armors..."


    They were not ordinary armors, they not only were made out of special Squire-grade substances, but they were equipped with energy-consumptive esoteric substances that could protect even the uncovered parts of the body to a certain extent. It was a sophisticated esoteric artifact made from powerful technology that Rui would see in very few ces aside from the Kandrian Empire. ording to the illustration provided by the Beggar''s Sect, it partially resembled a high-tech spacesuit while partially looking like medieval armor.


    ''Only in the Kandrian Empire...'' Rui shook his head with an amused smile, recalling the warning that the Silent Shadow had given him.


    His Death''s Sympathy technique required an exposed target, which was simply not going to happen with targets above a certain level of wealth and power. However, while he knew that, he didn''t think that he would run into circumstances where even Martial Seniors in the field would be equipped with such fancy protective measures.


    ''Part of it is to filter out all the narcoticpounds released into the air by the forest.'' He skimmed through the data stored in his Mind Pce.


    The forest had a strong narcotic influence on those who entered it. This was part of the risks and detriments of entering it. Only did rich and technologically endowed forces like the Carnil Mafia have the means to equip their teams with such extravagant protective measures on such a scale.


    This was another sign of the wealth of not just the Kandrian Empire, but also how lucrative the drug trafficking ring of the Carnil Mafia was.


    However, the thing that Rui was most concerned about this was the fact that it could shield against his Death''s Sympathy. In fact, by principle, anyyer between him and his target with a gap between them could shield against his Death''s Sympathy, since it would be detected the moment it crashed against theyer, alerting the Martial Seniors.


    ''Tsk, Master Reina was right. There are too many circumstances that can impede my Death''s Sympathy. It''s only a killer if my target doesn''t take too many measures to protect themselves.''


    Death''s Sympathy was actually a Squire-level attack. The reason for that was to minimize the energy density of the attack in order to prevent it from being detectable. Because it collided with things that weren''t the target, any significantyer of matter in between him and the target was able to negate the strengths of the technique.


    ''So essentially, I won''t be able to snipe them off one by one even if I get rid of the sensory Martial Senior. I guess these circumstances truly won''t be as smooth as the circumstances of the Shadow Isles.'' Rui narrowed his eyes. ''Tsk it''s a shame but...''


    A small smile emerged on his face. ''I guess we''ll have to do this the hard way.''


    There wasn''t too much time before their nextrge-scale operation, so Rui wanted to make sure he knew exactly what his gamen was before that time arrived.This content ? N?v/elDr(a)m/a.Org.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1480 Extraction

    <h4>Chapter 1480 Extraction</h4>


    In aplex of facilities and warehouses, arge group of people put on a set of armor suits one by one. Most of them were human, while the remaining proportion wasprised of Martial Artists.


    A highly organized set of protocols was meticulously followed before it was finally time to be deployed into the Great Forest of Hypnonarak. One of the lesser-known facts about Don Carnil was that he came into power at a remarkably young age thanks to his extremely highpetence in management, administration, and bureaucracy. Having graduated from the Kandrian Institute of Management as a sage schr, a feat unprecedented at his age, he applied his expertise to revolutionize the ck market and create the most powerful mafia in the substances/products market.


    It was thanks to him that the ck market for substances and material products went from being a chaotic and unscrupulous affair executed by thugs to a highly efficient and effective force that possessed a state of affairs with as much sophistication and organization as even the most well-honed multi-nationalpanies.


    It was the reason that he was epted as the Sixth Don of the Kandrian Underworld.


    His philosophy was reflected in the fact that the drug trafficking operation set up in the Gereign Region operated like a well-honed machine rather than a broken-down vehicle under the influence of his operated like a well-honed machine rather than a broken-down vehicle under the influence of his administrative measures.


    "Time of dispatch: 900," Senior Nereau announced while an assistant recorded the detail. "Let''s get going."


    Hundreds of individuals began moving as they exited the dispatch facility before heading towards the forest in the distance. The entire squad moved in rtive uniformity. Martial Apprentices were present at the outermost points, with Martial Squires in a line around the middleyer and a scant few Martial Seniors around the human extractors, who immediately began skillfully and swiftly extracting every ounce of narcotic raw extracts that they could.


    In order for such extravagant security and protocol measures to be worth it, the resulting harvest needed to be lucrative enough. The group would spend extensive amounts of time in the forest and would also go much deeper than a group this size would otherwise dare to go.


    That was how the team was going to justify such expenditure. Most forces did not go beyond a certain distance into the forest. The reason for that was that the risks exponentially increased the further they went and therger their group was. The profits were proportionally greater, however, most forces were not interested in risking their lives to that extent.


    The Carnil extraction squad was different. They went much deeper into the forest and extracted harvests that were orders of magnitude more potent and pure than the scraps that could be found on the furthest edges of the forest. This resulted in revenues that were exponentially greater than those of forces of simr sizes.


    It paid for not just all the expenses of the Carnil establishment in the Gereign Region but generated massive profits for being a highly premium product.


    The Martial Artists of the extraction squad remained on high alert as their senses monitored their surroundings. Their suits were able to ensure that they didn''t ingest any narcoticpounds that saturated the air, however, it could not stop the mental consumption-ability of the Great Forest of Hypnonarak.


    It hampered their minds and thus their senses to a certain extent, it was why someone like Senior Nereau had been sent in the first ce, only her senses were powerful enough to still be highly effective despite the suppression of the forest. Had she been a Martial Squire during the time of the Shionel Dungeon raid, she would have been a trump card in navigating the dungeon. She remained on high alert as her senses covered not only the extraction team but also the surrounding area. In order to see iing threats, going beyond just the space that the team upied was necessary. Only then could she sense and warn the security detail. This content ? N?v/elDr(a)m/a.Org.


    She was situated at the center of the extraction team, unlike the other Martial Seniors. In these circumstances, her senses were far more valuable than herbat prowess. She hadn''t objected to this role due to the safety that it brought her.


    It was also an important role that could propel her up the ranks of the Carnil Mafia as long as he did well. It was one of the reasons that she had begun working on mastering and developing even more sensory techniques in the past few years so that her sensory prowess would increase even more.


    Doing this would increase her utility and importance in these lucrative operations. As for herbat prowess, did such a thing even matter anymore? She talked down to Senior Genshin about not having a mindset fit for the Master Realm, but in reality, she herself had made no progress with the Martial Mind since learning the truth about it forty years ago. She didn''t have the drive to subject herself to the torture of endless experimentation, trial and error, improvisation, and innovation over many years needed to make progress with the Martial Mind.


    It had taken her everything just to reach the Senior Realm, she was content with leveraging that to gain wealth and status in the Kandrian Underworld.


    What was the point of being strong when she had several Martial Seniors protecting her and the extractors from any external threats? She would rather be valuable and important in such circumstances.


    ''I''ll break into the upper echelons of the Carnil Mafia with my contributions to these operations,'' She clenched her fist. Yet, she wouldn''t be able to do that.


    After all, she was about to die.


    BOOM!!


    An enormous explosion emerged from a powerful collision out of seemingly nowhere. One moment, there was peace.


    The next moment, it had been torn away.


    The Martial Artists, as disciplined as they were, took a moment to recover from the shock. An enormous cloud of dust reaching the skies had enveloped the entire ce, but that was not enough to impede their senses.


    And what they sensed shook them.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1481 High Grade

    <h4>Chapter 1481 High Grade</h4>


    What they sensed shook them.


    All of the human extractors: dead.


    All of the Martial Apprentices: dead.


    All of the Martial Squires had sustained injuries from merely the side effects of the collision.


    Just like that, a titanic crater spanning a city had been formed.


    At the epicenter stood a masked Martial Senior, kneeling on the ground with one knee. His fist was buried in the ground, right at the neck of a female corpse.


    Right where her head should have been. Copyright N?v/el/Dra/ma.Org.


    Without an active Martial Heart elerating the metabolism of the osteost cells leading to a temporary hardening of bone while the Martial Heart was active, she could never have survived a powerful charged Senior-level blow to the skull.


    That was not what shocked the Martial Artists into silence.


    It was the fact that this Martial Senior had somehow approached the entire extraction squad without anyone ever noticing!


    Not only did he approach the squad without a soul gaining so much even the tiniest hint of his existence, he somehow also got to the center. He got to the center and then wiped out the humans, the Martial Apprentices, and their chief sensor with a single attack.


    The three Martial Seniors assigned to the security detail were stunned in silence for a fraction of a millisecond.


    For just about a fraction of a millisecond, they simply stared with aghast expressions and dropped jaws.


    Senior Genshin was the first to break out of his momentary shock.


    Blood-curdling rage emerged from the depths of his heart.


    His jaws gritted, generating mes from the sheer friction between his teeth.


    His eyes reddened as his pupils sharpened in an inhuman manner.


    "You¡­" His voice quivered with boundless fury. "You¡­"


    His mouth opened, unleashing bellow that shook the very skies. "YOU DARE?!"


    His Martial Heart zed into action, and streaks of bright red shed across his entire body, emerging from his heart.


    His expression grew rabid as his feeble rationality was unable to contain his feral bloodlust.


    The masked man nced towards him. Yet he didn''t look into the Senior Genshin''s eyes.


    It was the ws that had drawn his attention.


    "Sharp," Rui murmured, ncing at the man''s ws that were closer to sickles than nails.


    The Martial Heart increased not just his sensory range, but also his uracy and precision of his senses, allowing him to sense microscopically. Objects that were previously stationary appeared to be quivering ever so slightly to his senses.


    des that were sharp appeared to be dull to his senses.


    Yet when he inspected Senior Genshin''s ws with his senses, it possessed a razor sharpness the likes of which he hadn''t seen since bing a Martial Senior. It was extraordinarily sharp, to the point of making standard-issue sharpness look like a blunt club.


    Rui knew that if he let those ws hit him, it would be game over. Not even Nemean Blossom would be able to protect him with such sharpness amplified by the gargantuan raw power that the man clearly possessed.


    The other two Martial Seniors had also activated their Martial Hearts, leaping at Rui. But s, Rui was far too pragmatic.


    WHOOSH!


    He simply disappeared into thin air.


    The three Martial Seniors widened their eyes, stunned.


    It was almost as though he faded out of existence itself. Unlike before, they were fully focusing on him, and only him this time. The sum entirety of their conscious minds and senses were fixated on him.


    Yet they were unable to so much as fathom his disappearance.


    "Where is he¡­?" Senior Genshin''s voice had been reduced to bestial snarls, quivering with rage.


    "¡­" The two Martial Seniors regarded the high-grade Martial Senior with fear.


    "WHERE IS HE?!" The man bellowed.


    RUMBLE


    The verynd beneath shook with his fury.


    "I can''t sense him, sir," One of the Martial Seniors replied, mustering up some courage.


    "USELESS!" Senior Genshin bellowed, swiping his ws in the man''s direction.


    SPLAT SPLAT SPLAT SPLAT SPLAT!


    "¡­Eh?" The Martial Senior nced down at the five deep gashes that had emerged on his chest out of nowhere.


    ws were limited to close range.


    But apparently, nobody had informed Senior Genshin about that.


    "FIND HIM!" The man bellowed.


    "Sir¡­" The remaining Martial Senior swallowed nervously as she tried her best to not follow in her bleeding peer''s steps. "It''s already¡­"


    It was already toote.


    The words choked in her throat, but it was the truth. How were they supposed to track him at range when they couldn''t detect his arrival and departure at close-range?


    The fact that Senior Nereau, who possessed two grade-ten sensory techniques, was unable to sense the attack and warn people or make any kind of reaction should have been enough to demonstrate that this was not something that was within their tracking capabilities.


    Thankfully, even the irrational human beast understood that they were helpless.


    His teeth gritted as boundless fury and rage overtook him.


    "Rgh!" He stomped his foot with frustration.


    Yet his powerful Martial Heart was still active.


    BOOOM!


    It made the simple gesture yield an impact that shook the entire forest, sending ripples across the entirend and yielding an enormous crater that rivaled the one created by Rui.


    "Yikes," Rui murmured as he gazed at the man from a distant mountain. "So this is the power of a high-grade Martial Senior."


    This was the first time he hade across a high-grade Martial Senior, and even he had to admit that they were extraordinary.


    In terms ofbat parameters, Senior Genshin eclipsed and dwarfed him in every physical parameter. The offensive lethality of his attacks made Rui feel like a normal human. Not only did he possess an extraordinary amount of raw power, but he focused it through those ridiculous ws of his, on top of that, he could project those lethal attacks at range and make them manifest on his opponent.


    His Martial Heart raged like an inferno, making Rui''s look like a homely bonfire. Any sense of superiority that Rui may have had from his vastly superior rate of growth and progress disappeared.


    The slightest mistake against that man, and he would die instantly.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1482 Report

    <h4>Chapter 1482 Report</h4>


    "...So to summarize. An attacker approached the extraction force, and killed Senior Nereau, wiping out all of the extractors and Martial Apprentices, before disappearing, and you weren''t so much as able to catch him?" Senior Zenshin''s expression darkened. "...Yes, Master Haishi."


    He was currently bowing his head, his expression crumpled with shame and frustration. Before him was a screen that transmitted a remarkably high-quality feed, featuring the person he was speaking with. It was a level ofmunication technology that was extremely rare, given the sheer distance between the Kandrian Empire and the Gereign Region.


    "I personally rmended you as a leader to Lord Carnil," Master Haishi''s delicate expressions sharpened. Senior Zenshin''s expression crumpled even further.


    "Your failure has affected me as well," She remarked. "However, there is nothing that can be done for the time being. I shall eventually arrive at the Gereign Region personally."


    These words evoked a bit of surprise.


    "Are you doubting my fitness?" Her eyes sharpened.


    "I don''t mean to question you, Master," Senior Zenshin hurriedly rified. "However, the Hypnomaster¡­"


    "He won''t ever know that a Martial Master has arrived at his domain¡­ After all, my stealth is perfect," She calmly dered. "It is said that the legendary Silent Shadow nearly seeded in assassinating him. That means such measures are not ineffective against him."


    "If you say so, then it must be true," Senior Zenshin bowed his head even further. "How long will it take to arrive?"


    "Several matters need to be resolved before I head to the Gereign Region," She informed him. "Do not tarnish my reputation any further."


    "¡­Yes Master," Senior Zenshin remarked.


    "Cancel all harvesting operations until then," She replied. "Whoever this attacker is, if he could do it once, he can do it again. If you were unable to sense or repel him when you had Nereau on surveince, then that means that he is mostly a high-grade Senior assassin, or potentially a peak-grade assassin. Though there are some issues with that conclusion as well."


    "If he were a peak-grade assassin, then he would have no problems killing you and the other two," She calmly replied. "Yet he simply escaped. Either his objective was specifically Senior Nereau, which would mean his agenda is entirely unrted to the Carnil Mafia, or he was unable to kill you. It is rather inconceivable that it could be anything else."


    This made a lot of sense to Senior Zenshin. Killing the three Martial Seniors would definitely have been high on the agenda had he been able to, as long as it was the case that he was targeting their drug operation as a whole instead of Senior Nereau specifically.


    "If that is the case¡­It would mean that this attacker is unable to fight off a high-grade Martial Senior and two mid-grade Martial Seniors," Senior Zenshin remarked. "Is it not overkill for a Martial Master like yourself to personally reside over this case?"


    "Normally, you''d be correct," She remarked. "However, this operation is too important. Lord Carnil is displeased that it has been sessfully sabotaged to such an extent. I will personally oversee it, and ensure that nothing else gets in the way."


    "I see¡­it appears that I have disappointed Lord Carnil," Senior Zenshin heaved a deep sigh. "If that is the case, wouldn''t aplete ceasing of all operations be a waste of time and resources?"


    "You have already proved yourself incapable of protecting arge operation from the assassin even when you had Senior Nereau," Master Haishi narrowed her eyes. "I was not referring torge operations featuring an extraction team apanied by a security detail," Senior Zenshin continued. "I was talking about individual operations with only us Martial Seniors. If the assassin chose to withdraw then and there, then it would mean that he is unable to handle opponents of my caliber that easily. Thus we can still gather some yield even while we are waiting for your arrival."


    "¡­I''ll allow it. However, only within a certain depth into the forest. I won''t allow for operations beyond a certain extent, it''s too dangerous. The forest is filled with many dangers that can threaten even Martial Seniors," She remarked. "Keep an out for the assassin, and maximize the gains you make. We need as much of a narcotics supply as possible."


    "Yes, Master," He bowed his head. The conversation soon came to an end. Senior Zenshin gritted his teeth and clenched his fist. "It''s all because of that bastard¡­"


    He had worked hard for the past fifty years serving the Carnil mafia as one of the highest outer executives. It wasn''t easy to get into the Inner Circle of the Carnil Mafia. It took both a lot of power and reliability as a Martial Artist to make it that far.


    The Carnil Mafia had been expanding due to the brewing cold civil war in the Kandrian Empire. That gave a lot of opportunities to move up the ranks to an Outer Executive like himself.


    However, now that was iffy, at best.


    He knew from the way Master Haishi addressed him that he had suffered a major setback. Many years and decades of work had been put into question because of gigantic failure. He had manypetitors who were just as driven and powerful aiming for the same goal who undoubtedly were looking a lot more alluring than himself.


    All because of one fiasco.


    A deep anger and hatred boiled up from deep within his heart. "I''ll kill him."


    He didn''t know who the attacker was, but he knew he had to bring his head back, otherwise he would never be able to wash away this stain on his reputation. He immediately began nning about how he was going to take out this attacker. He hoped it wasn''t due to a personal grudge against Senior Nereau. He needed the man to return. He needed the man to attack him. This content ? N?v/elDr(a)m/a.Org.


    Only then would he have a chance to kill him. He knew that he wouldn''t be able to find and kill him any other way.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1483 Strategic Considerations

    <h4>Chapter 1483 Strategic Considerations</h4>


    Rui heaved a sigh as he skimmed through a report that the Beggar''s Sect had prepared for him. The report featured the result of his sessful sabotage of the harvesting operation. This content ? N?v/elDr(a)m/a.Org.


    Apparently, he had pissed off the Carnil Mafia. That wasn''t the objective, but it was an inevitable oue. The Beggar''s Sect reported that the Gereign base of operations had ceased allrge-scale operations.


    ''Makes sense,'' Rui mused.


    There was no point in continuingrge-scale operations when there were enemies who had demonstrated the proven ability to bypass all surveince measures. It wasn''t possible to build passive defenses against a Martial Senior, either.


    Not for a moving squad in the middle of a forest. There were plenty of ways that solid stationary structures could be granted passive defenses at extremely high levels. There was a power that came with the sheer size and scale of infrastructure.


    It was one reason Rui wanted to ensure that they didn''t sessfully build a base in the Great Forest of Hypnonarak. They would be able topletely secure such a building even from Senior-level attacks.


    The reason for this was that defensive civil engineering in this world was leaps and bounds beyond that of Earth. Despite being constructed out of Squire-level substances, a building could be engineered with special esoteric substances that could allow it to survive by spreading and diluting the power of a Senior-level attack across every square inch of the structure.


    Once diluted enough, even Senior-level attacks could be reduced to the Squire Realm, which could then be withstood by the Squire-level materials. This was why it was possible to constructrgeplexes and buildings that could withstand attacks from Martial Seniors, yet it was much harder to construct weapons and armors that could do the same. The much smaller space meant that the extensive engineering that allowed for structures to withstand attacks could not easily be applied to armor and weapons.


    That was why therge scale operations had been scrapped by the Carnil Mafia. It was also why Rui couldn''t just run around annihting the infrastructure developed by the Carnil Mafia.


    ''Still, only forces from the Kandrian Empire can afford to spend so much on defensive measures for their infrastructure.'' Rui snorted. ''Most nations can''t dream about building anything that can withstand the onught of a Martial Senior.''


    Perhaps it was because he was ustomed to dealing with forces where Martial Seniors were at their peak, but he had to remind himself that this was not the case when it came to the Kandrian Empire.


    The Kandrian Empire was a continental powerhouse that had more than a thousand Martial Seniors. It only made sense that such a powerful nation possessed measures to defend against even the immense power of the Senior Realm.


    ''Forget about attacking their base.'' Rui shook his head. ''That''s suicide. I won''t make it back alive if I dare try something like that.''


    He knew his limits. There were still nine Martial Seniors left in the Gereign base of the Carnil Mafia, three of whom were high-grade. If the remaining two were as strong as Senior Zenshin, then attacking the base was something that would undoubtedly cause to his death.


    As proud as he was of the Greater Phantomind Void, he knew that it was far from a universal get-out-of-trouble card. For one, it didn''t improve his speed or his defenses, thus if a Martial Seniorunched a powerful omnidirectional attack, then it would hurt him nheless.


    In fact, it would hurt him even more since he was likely to react slower due to the Greater Phantomind Void technique, causing him to mess up Flux Earther, a technique that was highly dependent on urate timing.


    ''I''ll have to attack them while they''re engaging in these individual harvesting operations.'' Rui narrowed his eyes as he scoured the reports.


    The Carnil Mafia was apparently in the process of sending reinforcements to the Gereign base. Rui was impressed that they managed to get their hands on such intelligence so quickly, but it was a shame that they hadn''t yet been able to gather who was going to be sent to reinforce the Gereign base''s operations.


    Regardless, until then, the Martial Seniors were personally going to be heading into the forest to harvest and gather esoteric narcotic drugs. That was the perfect time for Rui to attack them.


    Rui nced at a profile page about Senior Zenshin on the table of his personal quarters. He recalled the man''s unstable rage over Rui''s attack. Rui was certain that the man was undoubtedly looking for revenge.


    ''You''ll get your turn¡­'' Rui narrowed his eyes.


    He was saying the high-grade Martial Seniors forst. It was better to pick off the weaklings one by one so and warm his way up so that he didn''t bite off more than he could chew.


    ''One issue is that I can''t formplete predictive models on them beforehand like I did in the Shadow Isles.'' Rui sighed. Usually, when he had a target to take down and he was able to prepare in advance, he would build predictive models well ahead of time. This allowed him to operate at his peak power right from the very get-go. He had done this many times during his time as a Martial Artist.


    However, the Martial Seniors of the Gereign base of the Carnil Mafia did not leave their base unless they needed to. Furthermore, the only time they used their Martial Art was when they were in the forest for an operation, which also happened to be the only window where he could attack them due to them being separated and not protected by their base.


    He couldn''t afford to waste such valuable time on building predictive models, this window was solely for assault since it was a scarce opportunity that he wouldn''t be able to get again.


    If the reinforcements arrived and they resumed theirrge-scale operations, he would not be able to pick them off one by one since they would be operating as arge group again.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1484 Path to Victory

    <h4>Chapter 1484 Path to Victory</h4>


    ''In short, I can only attack them when they''re in the middle of operations because this is the only time when attacking them isn''t suicide. I can''t formplete predictive models on them since the only time they use their Martial Art is also the only time where I can''t engage in observation since I''ll be too busy attacking one of them.'' Rui sighed.


    The circumstances were far from ideal.


    Back in the Shadow Isles, he could peacefully observe them, tail them, and even watch them use their Martial Art when assassinating so that he could form solid predictive models on them.


    This was not the case here. He would have to go in much more blind. He didn''t know what reinforcements the Carnil Mafia was sending, but it was best to assume that they were sending relevant high-grade Martial Seniors.


    Most likely, highly specialized sensory Martial Seniors equipped with powerful anti-stealth esoteric technological measures. Perhaps Senior-level organizations and forces were helpless before his Greater Phantomind Void, but the same could not be said for the Kandrian Underworld.


    Rui had no doubt that they would be going all out with sending reinforcements that were fully equipped to deal with even peak-grade Senior-level assassins.


    ''I need to get the job done before they arrive.'' Rui narrowed his eyes as his mind processed and analyzed his circumstances. ''If I can kill all the Martial Seniors before they arrive, then I can easily annihte the base with my full power without having to worry about Martial Seniors retaliating and killing.''


    The ultimate objective waspletely destroying all of the investment and establishment of the Carnil Mafia in the Gereign Region.


    Anything less and it would not be enough to stop them.


    The reason for this was that the drug supply from the Great Forest of Hypnonarak was an important part of the Kandrian Underworld''s political strategy in the Kandrian Throne War. This meant that because it was important to them, they would not easily give up on its sess.


    ''If I only kill the Martial Seniors and call it a day, the Carnil Mafia will simply deploy twice as many and resume the operations. And this time they''ll be armed to the teeth with all kinds of resources specifically meant to stop assassins like myself.''


    Rui knew from Master Reina''s teaching that misdirection was decentlymon amongst Martial Artist assassins. If it was thatmon, then obviously, anti-assassination measures would include counters to misdirection.


    ''Flora is immune to misdirection since it doesn''t have an awareness for misdirection to even work on.'' Rui knew that there were very concrete mechanisms through which misdirection could be stopped.


    The Carnil Mafia would undoubtedly arm their reinforcements with such measures, making his job much harder than it currently was.


    That was why he needed to destroy their base before the reinforcements arrived. If he could burn down the entirety of the foundation that the Carnil Mafia developed, then it was much likelier to permanently stop them.


    The amount of wealth that the Carnil mafia had invested in the Gereign base was probably in the hundreds of millions in terms of Shionel Gold. This didn''t include the intangible costs that came with the spent time, political capital, and Martial capital spent into shing with the other rival forces in the Gereign Region.


    If he destroyed all of that, then they would have to expend all that wealth and capital all over again. Most likely, rebuilding it would take several years and several times more wealth than they did the first time.


    That was a high cost, that alone might force them to pause and reconsider.


    Furthermore, even if they did decide it was worth it to rebuild everything from scratch, the fact of the matter was that it would still take years'' worth of time. That would not only halt their ns of normalizing drugs in the Kandrian Empire, it would regress it. Such things did not remain stagnant, they either went up or down, but never remained stationary.


    That meant that not only would they have to spend several years rebuilding, but they would have to spend several more yearspensating for the regressed demand for drugs due to its absence! This content ? N?v/elDr(a)m/a.Org.


    ''They can''t afford such a dy to their ns.'' Rui mused. ''It would be better to scrap a failed n than to cling onto it desperately long after it has failed to aplish its objective.''


    This was the true essence of Rui''s strategy.


    It was to annihte their foundation in the Gereign Region and make their entire drug strategy in the Kandrian Throne War too costly to be worth pursuing.


    ''This will be more than enough to fulfill the remainingmission payment to the Beggar''s Sect,'' Rui narrowed his eyes. ''In fact, they''ll owe me by the time I''m done.''


    Had it been any other Martial Senior, they would not have so much as dared to fight the Carnil Mafia. As one of the six pirs of the Kandrian Underworld, the Carnil Mafia was a titanic force that had Sage-level war potential with the services of Sage Aggragor.


    It was unthinkable for a Martial Senior to fight them. No Martial Senior could even possibly survive, let alone seed.


    Unless that Martial Senior was Rui.


    Having calmly processedrge amounts of data supplied by the Beggar''s Sect, he urately deduced the political and economic constraints of the Carnil Mafia''s operations. He further processed and analyzed the local geo-political factors, leveraging them by creating circumstances where they would work against the Carnil Mafia. He plotted out a detailed strategy and course of action where he would eliminate all the impediments to his goal of annihting the Carnil Mafia.


    Just like that, an impossible challenge that would result in the death of any other Martial Senior had already been scaled by Rui.


    He saw victory where others merely saw the darkness of absolute loss.


    Now it was time to execute his vision.


    ''They''re not going to know what hit them by the time I''m done.'' He narrowed his eyes.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1485 Ambushed

    <h4>Chapter 1485 Ambushed</h4>


    Deep within the Great Forest of Hypnonarak, a Martial Artist stood atop a mountain scouring the vast expansive forest with his senses. Her Martial attire bore the crest of the Carnil mafia, the cloth glowing with the light of her Martial Heart.


    A curved sheathed de hung at her side.


    "Hmmm¡­" She pulled out a rough map of the forest, eying several marked locations before directing her attention back to her surroundings. ''It should be somewhere here...The Ecstasy Plum Fruit.''


    The Carnil mafia had ceased allrge-scale extraction operations of narcotic drugs and instead had merely deigned to deploy Martial Seniors on individual small-scale operations. Since it was none other than Martial Seniors that were being deployed, they had been assigned with special objectives.


    The Ecstasy Plum Fruit.


    A special fruit that grew only in the Great Forest of Hypnonarak. It was known for its extraordinarily high narcotic potency. It was said that one drop from the Ecstasy Plum Fruit could put one thousand men in a dreamy trance indefinitely.


    Not even Martial Squires could resist the powerful effects of the fruit entirely. Only Martial Seniors were qualified to hunt for this fruit. Its market value was more than a million times greater than the ordinary narcotic nt extracts that were harvested from the forest.


    This was the Carnil Mafia''s way ofpensating for the temporarily haltedrge-scale operations.


    And it also happened to be Rui''s only opportunity to destroy the Carnil Mafia''s operations.


    One moment, Senior Ferna was merely keeping scouting the local area, and the very next, a sharp pain shed through her body as a titanic impact crashed into her passive defenses.


    BOOM!!!


    The sheer weight of the impact crumbled the mountain peak.


    "Urgh!" Senior Ferna grimaced with pain as she quickly got back up from the heavy impact despite the pain.


    She was alive.


    Yet she couldn''t afford to waste a single moment on celebrating.


    CLASP!


    A monstrous pressure washed across the area as she gripped the hilt her sword, unsheathing it in one fine motion.


    ''One Thousand Strokes of the Wailing de.'' Her body shed into motion, executing countless sword swings at a speed and pace that exceeded even her reactions. A thousand maneuvers, baked into her blood, had reached a level of muscle memory where it far surpassed her conscious cognition.


    ¡­CRACK!


    Instantly, her environment split into countless ribbons for several hundreds of meters.


    Trees, boulders, bedrock.


    Everything was reduced to sheets.


    Except, of course, for her assant. He was unharmed. On one hand, she was displeased that he was able to withstand her technique so well.


    On the other hand, his stealth hade undone as a result.


    Exactly as she had hoped.


    "Die!" Her handshed out once more speeding out as her de blurred into action. ''True Mourning Convergence Cleave!''


    A technique where the sword swing generated an intense two-dimensional wave of sound while using a breathing technique to generate powerful currents on either side of the sound wave tugging the target in the opposite direction of the wave.


    It was no different from a target being pulled into an iing swing de, increasing the piercing pressure of the de.


    A technique that was said to be unsurvivable if sessfully employed.


    The key word being ''sessfully''. Copyright N?v/el/Dra/ma.Org.


    "Rgh!" She froze, her eyes widening as her technique halted.


    A single thought shed through her head.


    ''Why can''t I breathe?''


    BOOM!!


    Her hampered breathing had distracted her for a moment too long.


    Her assant was not kind enough to let it pass. A powerful Flowing Canon empowered with the full might of Outer Convergence, Reverberating Lance, Gale Force Breathing, and Adamant Reforging crashed into her abdomen.


    CRACK!


    Her lower rib sumbed to the force, cracking as he flung her away with tremendous force.


    She gritted her teeth, coughing blood as she did her best to regain her respiratory capacity. Yet, she was unable to. Strangely, she didn''t feel any physical impediment. She was familiar with poisons, and had yet to feel the familiar sensations that were associated with it.


    This was different. It was as though her mind refused to allow her to breathe. Or rather, it was as though her mind believed she could not breathe. Perhaps had she more time, she would have been able to break out of it, but s, reality was not so kind, and neither was her assant.


    THWOOM THWOOM THWOOM!


    Heavy bullets of sound shed towards her at extraordinary speeds, forcing her attention away.


    Although she was hampered, she was not rendered obsolete.


    SWING SWING SWING!


    She cut down the swift and powerful bullets of sound with her de, gasping for air while she desperately protected herself from the powerful attacks. She gritted her teeth as she plotted a way to escape. Victory was definitely out of her hands, but it was possible that she could survive if she fought right.


    ''I didn''t struggle for a hundred years in the Senior Realm only to die at the hands of this bastard.'' She gritted her teeth.


    She recognized the mask and the Martial Art attire from when he assaulted Senior Nereau and the extraction team, annihting them in one blow. He had disappeared, as if fading away from existence.


    "You''re dead!" She shouted at him in a fit of rage. "You''re a dead man. The Carnil Mafia will tear you apart to shreds."


    He didn''t reply. He merely sted her with long-range attacks from afar, refusing to get close within her swinging range.


    The pressure began mounting.


    Faster attacks.


    Heavier impacts.


    Something needed to give.


    And something did.


    She gritted her teeth.


    A single whisper escaped her mouth. "Chanting Sword Style: Three Hundred and Sixty Hymns of the Dying de."


    Her assant paused, halting his offense before leaping back at top speed, racing away as fast he could.


    BOOOM!!!


    A tremendous explosion emerged from Senior Ferna, reducing everything it touched to dust. It expanded at speeds that far surpassed sound, swallowing up the upper half of the mountain.


    RUMBLE


    When the dust settled, the mountain had been reduced in half.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1486 Ambush II

    <h4>Chapter 1486 Ambush II</h4>


    Rui had to admit, he had found her Martial Art interesting when he read up on the intelligence on Senior Fern that the Beggar''s Sect had provided him.


    The Chanting Sword Style was an offensive Martial Art that relied on the de to produce a sharp piercing sound that struck the target with sharp focused pressure. By relying on a breathing technique, she altered the density of air in the trajectory of her de in such a way it generated a two-dimensional sound wave.


    It was a Martial Art that could generate long-range attacks despite requiring a sword. A fascinating concept that he had only seen once before.


    Yet also nothing he couldn''t ovee.


    He was unable to assassinate her with ease because the Carnil Mafia had gone as far as to supply all Martial Seniors with potions that could allow them to keep their Martial Heart active for extensive period of time, allowing them to maintain Senior-level defenses at all times.


    Thus he could not crush them, merely inflict damage with an initial ambush. After that, it was pure head-onbat. The battle had proceeded more or less exactly how he expected. Breathing Crucifix massively reduced her offensive lethality, neutering a grade-eleven Martial Senior, one who was only two grades away from being high-grade.


    Although it was a shame he was unable to maintain the Greater Phantomind Void while being physically suppressed with lethal attacks due to the fact that needing to heavily defend his life altered his non-verbalmunication, he had already been resigned to this fact.


    Kane''s Void Step also suffered from a simr problem, if he was hit with an attack, then the misdirection waspletely undone. They had almost gotten caught by Deacon Industries much earlier in the Shionel Dungeon due to this when Kane had gotten hit with a powerful shockwave.


    However, it didn''t matter all that much to the oue of the attack since he would need to put it aside when using the VOID algorithm in the first ce. Breathing Crucifix along with the elementary predictive model he had already created was more than enough to grant him dominance.


    There were only two things that caught him off-guard.


    The first was her technique naming sense, and more importantly, saying the name of the technique out loud while using it.


    He had rarelye across such a tendency and he was d that most Martial Artists had themon sense to not utter out the name of their technique when using it, but it still made him cringe when he heard it.


    Not to mention the metaphorical abstract extravagant names.


    In fact, he might have chosen to mock her for it had he not felt an extreme sense of danger from the technique.


    That was the second thing that caught him off-guard.


    "Chanting Sword Style," She whispered. "Three Hundred and Sixty Hymns of the Dying de."


    Chills crawled across his skin as shivers went down his spine. Primordial Instinct rang rms in his head about a perilous danger emerging from her. He swiftly ceased his attacks, leaping away at top speed. Copyright N?v/el/Dra/ma.Org.


    BOOM!!!


    An explosion that consumed half a mountain erupted from her.


    ''No¡­This is¡­'' Rui''s eyes widened as he gleaned the true nature of the attack.


    It was not an explosion, it was three hundred and sixty of her de swings, generating two-dimensional waves expanding outwards in every direction.


    It formed a sphere, for there were three hundred and sixty angles in a circle.


    "Rgh!" Rui activated Nemean Blossom as the slices overtook, cutting away into his flesh. Yet thanks to the distance, they had already been diluted significantly, leaving only flesh damage on his body.


    "Damn¡­" Rui cursed. "What the hell was that?"


    Considering the power exceeded what he had seen from high-grade Martial Seniors like Senior Ceeran and Senior Zenshin, it had to be some kind of extraordinary grade-ten technique.


    He immediately expanded his senses, searching for his target.


    Yet his eyes could only widen as he came across her bleeding corpse. Her skin and flesh were ravaged, leaving an unrecognizable corpse behind.


    "I see¡­ It was a forbidden technique," Rui heaved a sigh.


    Forbidden techniques were techniques that had been ouwed by the Martial Union due to being extremely self-destructive and dangerous to the user and causing permanent damage or death to the user. Such techniques were greatly restricted in their spread to ensure that as few Martial Artists as possible mastered them and thus as few sumbed to them as possible.


    His Metabody System could be considered a forbidden technique if he used all the metabodies at once, gaining extraordinary power in exchange for his life.


    However, if she generated power at the cost of her constitution, then it made sense that she was able to generated such a devastatingly powerful attack. Had he been caught in that at close range, he would have been in a critical condition.


    She had sensed her imminent loss and had decided to try and take him with her. But s, she had underestimated him.


    "One down, eight more to go," Rui heaved a sigh, drinking a healing and rejuvenation potion as he switched directions, rushing off in another direction in the forest to his next target.


    He didn''t have time. The Carnil Mafia was not going tog much behind when it came to the drug supply from the Hypnonarak forest. He gave himself a week at most. He needed to kill all the Martial Seniors of the Gereign base of operations and then reduce the base to ashes before reinforcements arrived.


    ''It''s a shame her clothes were destroyed in that final suicide attack,'' Rui tutted, narrowing his eyes. ''I need the Carnil Mafia''s crest if I want my n to work."


    Rui hade up with a strategy to ensure that he sessfully eradicated the Carnil mafia''s base of operations, but also ensured that the mafia would direct its attention away from him elsewhere by the time he was done.


    He swiftly headed over to his next target, another Martial Senior in the Great Forest of Hypnonarak.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1487 Ambush III

    <h4>Chapter 1487 Ambush III</h4>


    Senior Gemu did not enjoy the current mission entrusted to him by the Carnil Mafia


    He was not a hunter. He was a bodyguard, so why the hell should he waste time hunting for the Ecstasy Plum Fruit in the Great Forest of Hynonarak?


    It was a waste of his Iron Flesh Style. He had submerged himself seven days and nights at the bottom of the molten iron river as a Martial Senior, imbuing his flesh with Celestial Iron, giving him extraordinary passive defensive prowess.


    He ought to be protecting, either someone else or himself.


    That''s why he was grateful.


    Grateful to his assant for attacking him.


    The attack came out of nowhere.


    One moment he was treading across the forest, depressed.


    And the very next?


    BOOM!!


    An extraordinarily heavy attack crashed into his gut out of nowhere. It was heavy. It had been charged with momentum and hadpletely caught him off-guard. Furthermore, it hade so swiftly that he had been unable to react to it.


    In fact, he only sensed it after the impact reverberated across his body.


    Yet, he was unmoved. The attack had not shifted him even a millimeter. It hadn''t even shifted his center of gravity.


    It was no different from a child striking a statue.


    He was unmoved.


    At least, he was physically unmoved.


    Yet, the same could not be said about his emotional state.


    "Hahaha!" He guffawed. "You havee! Mysterious assant who seeks to oppose the Carnil Mafia!"


    "I had a feeling this would happen," Rui sighed as he nced at his knuckle even as Greater Phantomind Void was active.


    They were bruised. Even the grade-eight Adamant Reforging was no different from paper before the Celestial Iron conditioning that he had undergone in his body.


    "Come! Mysterious Assant who seeks to oppose the Carnil Mafia!" He spat a mouthful as he took a sumo stance. "Show me your power and dispel the curtain of invisibility that obscures your presence!"


    ¡­


    "Such measures may have worked against Nereau, but you cannot ovee me with stealth!" He proudly dered as he grinned widely.


    Rui heaved a sigh. He was right. Stealth was useful for ambushes to exploit weaknesses and vulnerabilities.


    But his opponent was a Martial Artist who didn''t have such weaknesses. Thus stealth was merely a waste of energy.


    Rui deactivated Phantomind Void, appearing before him.


    "Ooohhh!" The man smiled, delighted. "Now that you have graciously revealed yourself. I challenge you! Ovee my defenses!"


    THUD!


    His leg struck the ground as he adopted a Sumo stance. His Martial Heart had already activated, generating seismic activity.


    RUMBLE!


    "I wager that your strikes cannot make me feel even the slightest pinch of pain!"


    A sadistic smile appeared on Rui''s face beneath his mask. Copyright N?v/el/Dra/ma.Org.


    He surged forward with powerful momentum as his fist flew forward.


    The second Flowing Canon had beenunched.


    "Hahaha!" The manughed as the attack came. "Such measly power canno-AARRGRHRHRGSGHH!"


    For the first time in five decades, Senior Gemu felt excruciating pain beyond anything he had ever felt. The sheer power of the strike was so high that he felt as though it ignited his entire body on fire.


    He felt as though his flesh was being crushed.


    He felt his bones cracking under the sheer power of the strike.


    "Buueeergh." He puked from the sheer pain of the strike. "I-I see. Perhaps you''re a capable one after all."


    BOOOM!


    "AAAAAAAARGH!" The heavy man cried as a powerful blow crashed into his head, almost making him faint from pain.


    BAM BAM BAM!


    Rui began bullying the man as he sted his head with blow after blow. Although it certainly was fun to see the arrogant defensive Martial Artist suffer excruciating pain from the Phantom Pain hypnosis technique, it wasn''t doing anything.


    The Phantom Pain technique was the best sabotage to active defenses, but it was limited in its use against purely passive defenses like those of his opponent.


    He could not take him down by knocking him out in this fashion. If he tried, he would only break his fist before made any progress at all.


    His offense was helpless before someone who wasn''t even a high-grade Martial Senior.


    ''Tsk, I need to strengthen my foundations.'' Rui tutted, narrowing his eyes.


    While he certainly had the Metabody System, they existed to adapt to his opponent, not to empower his foundation. He needed to fundamentally strengthen his core, he had been to focused on expanding his versatility.


    Instead, he had a different goal entirely.


    His foundation was definitely excellent for a Martial Senior as young as him, but it was not enough if he wanted to contend with other Martial Seniors.


    The only issue was that it shed with wanting to prioritize the development of the Martial Mind.


    ''They can coexist.'' Rui sted his defensive opponent even as he thought about his shorings.


    The only reason he could afford to be so careless was because his opponent was an idiot. ording to the Beggar''s Sect, he hadn''t mastered even a single offensive technique. Meaning he could only rely on raw power if he wanted to hurt Rui.


    It was no different from the difference between a Martial Apprentice and a human. Techniques were engines that made efficient and effective use of power and potential.


    "Hahaha!" Senior Gemu guffawed even as his eyes watered with tears due to the pain. "You can hurt me, but you cannot kill me."


    TAP!


    Rui knocked on the man''s skull with his knuckle.


    It was softer than any of his previous strikes.


    Yet the man''s eyes rolled backward lifelessly as his body copsed forward.


    "Death sends its Sympathy," Rui snorted as he reached down to the corpse, stripping it of its clothes. "I''m going to take your attire aspensation for my bloodied knuckles."


    All the banging and striking at the man''s head had not been in vain. Rui had purposely been targeting his head with various different attacks on purpose.


    It was all so that he could find the right resonant frequencies through repeated trial and error.


    Once he did, it was simply a matter of crushing his brain with Sympathetic Death Lance.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1488 Chase

    <h4>Chapter 1488 Chase</h4>


    Rui made sure to strip the outer robe that contained the crest of the Carnil Mafia. That was what he needed. In order topletely curb the Carnil Mafia''s operation in the Great Forest of Hypnonarak, he needed to destroy their foundation and thus make the price of continuing their operations extremely high.


    There were multiple means by which he could go about aplishing this. One of the ways was increasing the amount of political pressure they sustained from foreign parties with a vested interest in the Great Forest of Hypnonarak. Resisting this took a lot of Martial power, resources, and wealth.


    ''Especially if it''s from a force with power that rivals the Kandrian Empire and has no reason to cower against the Carnil Mafia," Rui narrowed his eyes. Specifically, if a Martial Senior from the Carnil Mafia attacked the operations of one of the other three powerhouses from East Panama, that would be something that wouldn''t work out very well in the Carnil Mafia''s favor.


    The Republic of Gorteau, The Sekigahara Confederate, and The Britannian Empire. Rui was aware that each of those three nations also had their own ck markets within their nations centered around the supply and demand of the narcotic nts from the Great Forest of Hypnonarak.


    Normally, the four forces avoided conflicts with each other in this region, the reason for this was because the Great Forest of Hypnonarak was toorge. The avability of the narcotics supply far exceeded how much of it was being harvested. There really was no need for them, or any other forces to engage in any real conflicts over the resources because there were surplus resources.


    There was an entire nation of resources, after all.


    However, Rui knew that didn''t mean there was no friction at all. The fact of the matter was that the four powerhouses of East Panama were rivals. It didn''t take more than a single spark to light a fire.


    He simply needed to give them both an alluring opportunity and a reason to hamper the Carnil Mafia. Reasons such as getting revenge for an attack on their operation by a member of the Carnil Mafia.


    Rui donned Senior Gemu''s robe bearing the crest of the Carnil Mafia. ''This should be enough to light a fire. Now I need to get going before my window runs out.''


    He had chosen this day and time to attack the Carnil Mafia because he knew that the forces of the Republic of Gorteau were conducting operations in the Great Forest of Hypnonarak. Thus he would be able to take the clothes of a member of the Carnil Mafia and fake being a member of the mafia.


    He nced at the dead Senior Gemu. This was why he had chosen him as a target. Out of all the Martial Seniors in the Gereign base, he was the only one Rui could kill without making a mess of their attire and rendering it unusable.


    Thus far, everything had gone ording to his n. "Alright, about half an hour that way," Rui nced to his right as he immediately set off. He had carefully calcted the timeline for the things that he needed to execute, and he was definitely cutting it a little close.


    However, he would still make it in time. He quickly began traveling at a high speed through the forest navigating through the trees.


    It wasn''t too long before he happened on several groups of extraction teams harvesting narcotic nts. Unlike the Kandrian Empire, the Underworld of the Republic of Gorteau did not follow a singr group form of organizing. They deployed many smaller units within a much broader area that was surveilled much more broadly than the operations of the Carnil Mafia.


    However, it didn''t change what he needed to.


    WHOOSH!


    Heunched himself at a Martial Senior patrolling the general area, ensuring nothing threatening would reach the extraction units.


    No one so much as gazed at his rapidly approaching figure. No one could. In this one regard, Greater Phantomind Void simply could not be ovee.


    BOOM!!


    A powerful attack crashed into the skulls of an unsuspecting Martial Senior patrol. Rui had chosen a valuable Martial Senior but one that wasn''t durable enough to withstand his assault.


    CRACK!


    The oue was inevitable. The Martial Senior died before they realized what had happened, furthermore, Rui made sure that the resulting impact would be directed towards the extraction units, killing most of them.


    The Martial Seniors of the patrol guard were shocked.


    "What just happened?!"


    "Something hit us!"


    The risky part was just about to start. Rui immediately dashed away from the ce with technique active while the Martial Seniors scrambled about.


    However, once he had put a bit of distance between him and them, he immediately turned off his stealth, drawing the attention of the Martial Seniors. "Hey, I sense somebody that way!" One roared, activating her Martial Heart.


    "Chase after him! The Congressman will kill us if we let him get away!"


    Rui grinned, this was exactly what he wanted. He needed them to get the crest of the Carnil Mafia on his robes, but he couldn''t give it to them too easily. They needed to chase him for it. They needed to push themselves to the limit for it.


    Otherwise, it woulde too easily. If it came too easily, it would be suspected to be a red herring. He could have easily gotten rid of them with Greater Phantomind Void, but that would be counterproductive. Instead, he would make it seem as though his technique had a time limit so that he couldn''t use it continuously, and that it also had a cooling time period.


    People would be more inclined to believe that such a technique has such limits than that it doesn''t


    "Get him!"


    BOOM!


    An attack from a Martial Senior uprooted an entire hill. Rui carefully ensured that he didn''t put too much distance between them that they would give up chasing him, but he didn''t want to get bombarded with attacks and inadvertently get caught either.This content ? N?v/elDr(a)m/a.Org.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1489 Red Herring

    <h4>Chapter 1489 Red Herring</h4>


    "Damn it! Almost got him!" One Gorteaun Martial Senior cursed.


    "We''re gaining him, make sure we don''t lose track!"


    The chase had gone on for nearly ten minutes. Rui had made sure that there were plenty of close calls where they almost lost track of him. He could definitely feel that their desperation was real.


    ''Good, now time for the hardest part.''


    STEP!


    Rui pretended to trip over something, crashing extensively due to the high speeds they were all traveling at.


    "Get him!"


    BOOM BOOM BOOM!


    Rui activated Greater Phantomind Void and his Neo Godspeed technique, evading the powerful attacks, leaving behind a torn piece of the rob he stole from the corpse.


    A piece that featured only a portion of the Carnil crest, not even the entire cloth.


    "Where did he go?!" "He disappeared¡­" Another gritted. "Find out which group was responsible for this. They''re really underestimating us if they think they can get away with this!"


    "Search the area! We can''t give up so easily."


    They immediately scoured the area with their powerful senses.


    "That''s right, you gotta search for it, otherwise finding it isn''t going to be mean anything," Rui murmured, standing atop a tree with the Greater Phantomind Void active.


    "Hey look¡­" One of the mumured, narrowing his eyes. "I almost missed it but is that¡­?"


    "Hm?" Another came over, digging up a partially buried cloth. "That looks like a part of the robes that he was wearing. Nice catch but¡­ It''s not going to help us."


    "I think you might be wrong about that sir," The man''s eyes widened as he spotted the portion of the Carnil Crest that was on the other side of the torn of piece of Senior Gemu''s robes.


    "That emblem¡­" The man gritted. "That''s the emblem of the Carnil Mafia. It''s those Kandrian bastards!"


    Word spread like fire.


    "How dare they attack us?!"


    "Are they underestimating us?"


    "We should attack them and show them what it means to mess with us."


    ''Yes!'' Rui cheered them on. ''That''s a great idea.''


    "Wait, don''t act rashly," One elder Martial Artist cajoled them. "Firstly, good job finding this. We have failed in apprehending the assant, but we were fortunate enough to find a piece of evidence that points us in the right direction. We will present this to the boss. We will have at least something to show."


    Rui smirked. This was the failsafe that he had in mind. He had gone through a lot of preparation to ensure that they didn''t suspect it being fake, however, there was always a possibility there would be a sharp-minded one who would suspect this being an borate ploy.


    However, even if there were such a person, Rui''s n had already ounted for even such circumstances.


    ''Their failure is of a much greater concern to them than something as dubious as whether the crest is a red herring,'' Rui smiled. ''Even if they were smart enough to conceive that this evidence was a red herring, they would still present it to their superiors as proof of the origin of the assant to at least soften the blow of their failure.''


    After all, it would be the Underworld that deals with political conflicts with other groups, not them. Rui''s n was not only borate in its deception but also ounted for those who might be smart enough to see through it and manipte them using their own sense of self-preservation.


    ''My work here is done.'' Rui mused. ''I can leave the rest to the Beggar''s Sect.''


    They were smart enough to know what could be done, and would certainly act to ensure that the Carnil Mafia would be framed even if Rui''s measures weren''t enough for some reason.


    He didn''t know what measures the Underworld of the Republic of Gorteau would take. However, he suspected that this wouldn''t in and of itself result in a huge conflict. The underworlds, ck markets, mafias, and other forces in darkness were extremely powerful.


    While Martial Seniors were certainly not indispensable, they were forces of the Lower Realms. At most, this was no different from one person throwing a single jab at another.


    It might result in an all-out fight, but in most cases, it would require a lot more aggression to devolve into a brawl. Rui knew that had they been Martial Masters, it would have been an absolute deration of war.


    Had they been Martial Squires, it would have been insignificant and trivial. The death of a single Martial Squire was like a pinch or a flick to forces as powerful as these two. Property ? of N?velDrama.Org.


    Martial Seniors were somewhere in between.


    Thus Rui was unable to predict exactly what would happen, however, he knew that it would make life harder for the Carnil Mafia in the Gereign Region, which would certainly deter them from investing too much in it.


    "Time to resume my hunt," Rui heaved a sigh as the remaining five Carnil Martial Seniors at the Gereign base were still left on his list of targets. Three of whom were high grades. The remaining two were on the verge of high grade. This time, he knew that he wouldn''t be able to ambush them and kill them while they were vulnerable since they had already decided to get enough potions to keep the Martial Heart active at all times during the operations.


    He was going to have to defeat and kill all three of them. He wasn''t entirely sure how well he would fair against them, but he did possess confidence in himself, especially ever since he developed the Hypnomatrix and the three powerful hypnosis techniques that allowed him to inflict potent hypnosis with lesser effort, partially due to his powerful mind.


    That along with the rest of his Martial Art was not something that could be ovee easily, even for high-grade Martial Seniors. A small grin cracked at the edge of his face as he returned. He actually looked forward to testing his power against the upper echelons of the Senior Realm.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1490 Crossed

    <h4>Chapter 1490 Crossed</h4>


    Senior Faputa gazed over the dead body of Senior Gemu with wide eyes.


    "¡­Not a single scratch, but he''s dead."


    She could hardly believe it, however, the defensive expert seemed to have been killed very smoothly in a manner that bypassed his defenses and killed him in an instant.


    ''Poison¡­?'' She narrowed her eyes. ''No¡­''


    There were no signs of poison used on him. Every Martial Artist who delved into the Underworld became more familiar with unorthodox Martial Art, especially fields like poison that were used even outside of Martial Art.


    From what she could tell, he hadn''t been poisoned. C0ntent ? 2024 (N/?)velDrama.Org.


    He had just inexplicably¡­ died.


    That alone wasn''t the only oddity to be spotted.


    ''Where is his exterior robe?'' She frowned.


    It didn''t make sense that that alone went missing. Furthermore, she found it quite likely that it alone had been torn off while other articles had been intact.


    She had been sent by the Carnil Mafia for two missions, two find and extract a plum ecstasy fruit, and to find Senior Gemu who had been deployed in this particr direction within the forest.


    Unfortunately, this was part of the trap that Rui hadid.


    BOOM!


    "Rgh!" She grimaced as a powerful crashed into her head, almost leaving her dizzy. Yet she swiftly raced away at a blinding speed, quickly recovering the effects of the blow.


    She hadn''t sensed even the slightest threat when the mysterious force had struck her. It was clearly someone with an incredible amount of stealth.


    "Tsk," She gritted her teeth as she brought her hands together, activating a breathing technique before releasing a powerful omnidirectional shockwave to catch the invisible assant.


    POW!


    Her eyes narrowed as Rui appeared out of thin air at a distance, blocking the attack. "Now you''re dead."


    WHOOSH!


    Rui''s eyes widened as she shed towards him at a blinding speed and agility, her hands surged forward, reducing to blurs even to Rui''s senses.


    POW POW POW!


    He defended her vitals as sheunched a maelstrom of short and swift blows that were nearly impossible to evade at that range. On top of that, simply leaping away and opening the distance wouldn''t work when she was faster than him, he would never be able to outpace her.


    "I was you who killed Gemu and Fern, hm?" She asked with an icy tone as she plowed him with blows. "What about Nereau, was that you too?"


    POW POW POW!!!


    "You''re going to die a painful death." She dered.


    BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM!!


    A barrage of rapid-fire attacks washed over Rui.


    "The Carnil Mafia does not forgive."


    POW POW POW!!


    "It does not forget."


    BANG BANG BANG!!


    "Not until it has consumed those that cross it."


    Her eyes intensified as her blows surged forward with incredible speed.


    Countless sonic booms rippled across the skies.


    Her dainty palms ignited the atmosphere with the sheer friction she generated as a result of her speed.


    Her hands ceased being hands.


    The aura of mes they generated resembled those of meteorites.


    That was the origin of her Meteorite Monsoon technique. Swift short blows that exceeded the speed of even meteorites!


    POW POW POW POW POW!


    "My speed is beyond your capability," She dered. "I will wear you down, bit by bit. But I will not kill you. I''m sure Senior Zenshin would love to tear you alive."


    Suddenly, the air changed.


    She could feel it.


    Was it something in her surroundings?


    No¡­


    Her eyes widened as four words escaped Rui''s mouth.


    "You talk too much."


    Suddenly, she felt a shiver crawl down her spine.


    Chills crawled up her skin.


    He needed to die, that much she knew.


    "Hryah!" She snarled as she increased her efforts.


    WHOOSH!


    Yet she could only widen as her attack crashed into an empty image. Before she could even process what happened, a titanic impact crashed into her gut.


    BOOM!!


    An enormous shockwave emerged from the impact, ttening a town''s worth of area across the forest.


    She coughed blood as the impactunched her dozens of kilometers into the air.


    Rui smiled. "Watch out for the hos."


    ZZZZT!


    Her eyes widened as countless Senior-level cloud hos emerged from the clouds, threatening to tear her to shreds. She immediately dove, rushing to the ground in a matter of seconds, as she evaded the bees.


    Yet she knew she was far from safe.


    WHOOSH!


    She narrowly evaded a blow from Rui, with incredible speed and agility. As a speed-oriented Martial Artist, she was confident in her ability to evade.


    WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH!


    She weaved away from his strikes, growing more confident by the second. He had just managed to get a luck hit on her. There was no way that he could keep up with her speed.


    WHOOSH!


    She smoothly evaded the blow, swerving to the side.


    Only to find that Rui''s attack had arrived at that location before she did.


    BAM!


    She stepped away, gritting her teeth as Rui followed.


    WHOOSH!


    She spun away from a strike, crouching back tond a high kick.


    Yet even that had been seen through.


    BAM!


    His kick crashed into her head, smacking her away while he casually evaded the kick. He swiftly followed suit.


    She gritted her teeth as she understood the state of the battle. She couldn''t beat him, she didn''t know why. But somehow he was casually outpacing her speed despite being much slower than her.


    His attacks were much slower, yet they arrived earlier.


    His evasions were much slower, yet they began much earlier.


    It was as though he could see the future. It was as though he could move through time.


    "Running away, I don''t think so," Rui calmly informed her.


    "Stop me if you can!" She barked as she turned around racing away.


    Yet her she could only widen her eyes as she immediately crashed after taking the first step!


    "Huh¡­?" She nced at her legs with shock.


    She somehow lost control of her speed.


    Almost as if her brain couldn''t keep up with her body.


    "Such a shame¡­" Rui murmured. "I was hoping to finish this with the VOID algorithm alone. But I ended up using Temporal Disharmony."


    He nced at her. "Oh well."


    BOOM!!!


    He used Hypertrophic Surge to generate such power that the kick twisted her head three hundred and sixty degrees, rotating it a full round.


    "Four down. Four to go," Rui calmly tallied the score.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1491 Rising Friction

    <h4>Chapter 1491 Rising Friction</h4>


    "You''re telling me five Martial Seniors have died just like that?"


    "Yes...Master Haishi," Senior Zenshin bowed deeply.


    "This is despite being provided with the necessary resources to maintain the Martial Heart continuously at all times within the forest?" She asked.


    "¡­Yes," Senior Zenshin gritted his teeth.


    Her mouth curled with contempt.


    She wasn''t even in the room physically, yet her merely projected image seemed to generate an avnche of weight that wrung the very air he breathed. Property ? of N?velDrama.Org.


    "The height of ipetence," She dered. "The Carnil Mafia has no use for Martial Artists who are too weak to even survive."


    Senior Zenshin was not pleased. As someone who was entrusted with the security of the Gereign base of the Carnil Mafia, these failures fell on his shoulders.


    "Continue the operations," She ordered. "That goes for yourself. Obtain the Ecstasy Plum Fruits, or die trying. I can assure you that the importance of the narcotics supply far exceeds that of your lives."


    "Yes, Master," Senior Zenshin narrowed his eyes. "When will the reinforcements be arriving?"


    "I alone will be arriving under the guise of a Martial Senior, initially." She announced. "I will oversee the Gereign Base when I arrive. It is far too important to be left in the hands of Martial Seniors, as I had expected. Once I arrive, we will be able to expand our operations tenfold. No number of Martial Seniors can overrun us with my presence."


    "Yes, Master,"


    "How are the Ecstasy Plum Fruit yields going?" Master Haishi asked.


    "We''ve procured eight of them," Senior Zenshin replied. "However, the estimated yield was apparently one-fifth of the yield of our usualrge-scale operations that we''ve halted."


    "Eight is highly insufficient for Lord Carnil''s machinations," Master Haishi''s eyebrows curled as she red at Senior Zenshin. "Increase your yield. Work harder. The Carnil Mafia has invested much in you over the past three centuries. If there ever was a time to prove you are worth it, it is now, during the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that the Underworld has, to ascend to greater heights."


    The call was cut, leaving him to heave a deep sigh as a surge of rage welled up within him. He didn''t even know what his assant looked like, yet he pictured how wonderful it would be to watch the light of the man''s eyes when he finally got his hands on him.


    "I almost hope he reaches me," The man gritted his teeth.


    It didn''t take a genius to figure out that the assant, whoever he was, was targeting the weaker Martial Seniors first and then moving on to the stronger ones. After all, the sole three high-grade Martial Seniors of the Carnil Mafia had yet to be untouched in their exploration operations for the Ecstasy Plum Fruit.


    The fourth Martial Senior yet to be ambushed was a grade-twelve Martial Senior who was on the cusp of being a high-grade Martial Senior.


    Senior Zenshin was the strongest of them all, thus following this pattern, he would be thest to be attacked.


    Perhaps for the first time in his life, he regretted being the strongest. Had he been weaker, he would have had the opportunity to run into the hated assant before anybody else.


    There wasn''t the slightest shred of doubt in his mind that he would rip the sinner alive. While he disyed a docile demeanor before Master Haishi, that was because he had boundless gratitude for the Martial Master who had taken him under her wing and trained him.


    His true nature was the pr opposite.


    He gritted his teeth as his fists clenched, his mouth curled with hatred.


    "I''m going to find and tear you apart with my own two hands." Rage overflowed onto his face.


    BEEP


    He nced at themunication amulet at his waist, reading the message he received.


    "What?!" His eyes widened. "Senior Bee is¡­ dead?"


    He gritted his teeth.


    Only three Martial Seniors remained.


    "DAMN IT ALL!" He bellowed, shaking the ground with sheer rage.


    Martial Seniors were being picked off one by one with ease. Most organizations would be broken and in shambles with such a loss, but this was not the case for the Carnil Mafia, not only did this organization have the power to tap into the massive Martial Artist poption of the Kandrian Empire, they even had the power to attract Martial Seniors from across the continent.


    As the Underworld of a continental powerhouse, their power was proportionally high. They simply were not responding the way that Senior Zenshin had hoped. After all, once Master Haishi arrived, the operations would be able to expand massively under her protection.


    Essentially, he would be deemed unnecessary and ipetent.


    He clenched his fists. ''That cannot be allowed to happen.''


    However, now there were only three high-grade Martial Seniors left. Although the assant''s stealth was absurd, and his power was certainly great, he didn''t think that he would lose.


    For now, he needed to investigate the death of Senior Bee. It wouldn''t be long before he would have to report to Master Haishi about this incident as well.


    "What is the profile of the killing, same as the previous ones?" Senior Znehsin asked, growling at the scout when he met up with him.


    "N-No, sir," The man gulped. "The corpse was arranged in a peculiar manner. With its arms and knees folded to resemble a chicken."


    "What¡­?" Senior Zenshin''s eyes narrowed. "Chicken¡­? If I''m not wrong, that is something that the Vale Syndicate does."


    The Vale Syndicate was the leading Underworld organization of the Republic of Gorteau and was the Underworld force that harvested supplies of narcotics from the Gereign Region to sell in the Republic of Gorteau.


    His teeth gritted. "Has it been those bastards from the very get-go?"


    "We don''t know yet, sir, but we have begun investigating," The man remarked.


    "Find out everything there is to know! If the Vale Syndicate is involved then this may very well turn out to be a war," Senior Zenshin narrowed his eyes.


    Yet he couldn''t hide a savage smile. A known organization with a known presence in the Gereign Region was better than dealing with some singr elite assassin with ungodly stealth.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1492 Machinations

    <h4>Chapter 1492 Machinations</h4>


    "Hm, I''m hoping this works out," Rui murmured as he read through the reports provided by the Beggar''s Sect. "I may have overstepped a bit too much."


    He had been the one to kill Senior Bee, he had purposely arranged the body in a manner that resembled what the Vale Syndicate was known for doing to its enemies when it wanted to send out a message.


    This was to spark friction between the two groups.


    The more friction he could spark, the greater the reluctance that Carnil Mafia would have to return to the Gereign Region after Rui destroyed their base. While the Carnil Mafia was certainly weak in no way, they had more important priorities.


    The Kandrian Throne War was their absolute priority at the moment, it was far more important than exacerbating a small conflict with the Vale Syndicate.


    "However, I predict that that won''t be the case," Rui murmured.


    "Why not?" Ferm, the executive of the Beggar''s Sect assigned to Rui, asked.


    "Because of this man," Rui pointed at the profile of Senior Zenshin. "Based on the character profile that your sect has provided me, he will be driven to exacerbate the conflict."


    Rui had thought long and hard about how he could manipte the Vale Syndicate to provoke hostilities with the Carnil Mafia so that he could increase the cost of the drug operations of the Carnil Mafia by forcing them to resist the pressure of the syndicate.


    However, he soon came to realize that merely making them believe that the Carnil Mafia was responsible for sabotaging their operation was not enough. Copyright N?v/el/Dra/ma.Org.


    He needed a much stronger provocation.


    "Senior Zenshin is perfect for that role," Rui calmly analyzed. "He is hurt the most by my assassinations. He is surely looking for the culprit with everything he has. All I need to do is give him a viable culprit, and he will do the rest."


    "Perhaps you''re overestimating his proactiveness," Ferm suggested.


    "Unless your information is inurate or iplete, that is certainly not the case. His violent and aggressive temperament is perfect for this role. That is why I need to convince him that the syndicate is involved, he will divert his efforts in their direction."


    "What if he is prudent enough to realize he''s being manipted?"


    Rui smirked. "People will be more inclined to believe what they want to. Perhaps intelligent and objective leaders on either side would realize they''re being yed and avoid falling for it, but unfortunately, neither side is particrly intelligent and certainly not objective."


    Rui nced at a mapid out on a table before him. "Both sides would rather have a culprit in mind for their respective sabotages than not. Especially the Carnil Mafia side. Many of their Martial Seniors have fallen to an unknown assant with incredible stealth. They would do anything to know the identity of the culprit. Once they do, they will be able to leverage their power to find and kill him far easier than they otherwise could."


    Now, he just had to hope that this would devolve into a full-blown conflict.


    "¡­But even if it doesn''t, my ns will still be fine," Rui narrowed his eyes. "I will still kill the three remaining Martial Seniors in Gereign base of the mafia. And then I will destroy their precious base and foundation."


    The Vale Syndicate was just icing on the cake. If hostilities broke out and the two sides started fighting, that would be good for Rui to curb the Carnil Mafia''s ambitions in the Gereign Region.


    However, even if they didn''t do anything, the passive pressure that they would put on the Carnil Mafia alone was enough.


    What would one do if one had a neighbor who wanted to kill them?


    It was only reasonable to take precautions.


    A tall fence, perhaps.


    What if the neighbor was rich and powerful?


    Perhaps one might be inclined to get a guard, a gun, and reinforce doors.


    However, these measures cost money. Thus the mere presence of a hostile neighbor increased the cost of living safely. This was what Rui was banking on. He needed to not only pause their operations butpletely halt it.


    "Now for the hardest part," Rui narrowed his eyes.


    Yet he couldn''t even hide his excitement. He needed to fight and kill three high-grade Martial Seniors. He had taken low-grade Martial Seniors multiple times in his endeavors thus far, he had even killed multiple mid-grade Martial Seniors.


    But finally, it was time to fight high-grade Martial Seniors.


    This was what Rui had been waiting for. It had been exceedingly taxing his patience to hold back from fighting them.


    nning, strategizing, thinking, he certainly was far from a stranger from all of this, but he had been itching to test his newfound power and his developed Martial Art against Martial Seniors who had been around for centuries.


    Just the very concept of Martial Seniors who had trained for centuries gave him a deep impression of their power.


    For one, he knew he was leagues behind them in raw power. Ieyasu being six years older than Rui had a visibly stronger Martial Heart. How much stronger would a Martial Heart that had grown for centuries be?


    Rui actually knew how strong.


    His Martial Heart glowed, however, Senior Zenshin''s Martial Heart seemed to shine. The sheer amount of power contained within his body was astronomical.


    Furthermore, with centuries of dedication to his Martial Art, it had grown truly formidable in its ability to harness its raw power and make the most efficient and effective use of it. While Rui was leaps and bounds ahead of his peers when it came to the development of his Martial Art, Senior Zenshin had centuries on him.


    He was at a disadvantage in every single conceivable way. In every parameter except for the quality of their Martial Art.


    He had only met one person who had a Martial Art whose grade was in the same league of power, and while he was surprisingly close by, he was not a part of the Carnil Mafia.


    It was time to test his limits once more.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1493 Temper

    <h4>Chapter 1493 Temper</h4>


    Word spread through the Gereign Region.


    "The Carnil Mafia and the Vale Syndicate have entered a cold war."


    As of yet, hostilities had not been broken out. However, everyone even remotely informed could sense the friction.


    Competition over resources, trade routes, and skirmishes. These things all pointed to a broader underlying tension.


    Yet none of them knew that the origin of this tension was two red herrings created by a mastermind that had foreseen all of this.


    Rui, on the other hand, did not care.


    He had nted seeds of conflict because they had been worth the effort. If they panned out into a grand fire, that was great.


    If they merely smoldered, that too was fine.


    He was much more focused on something else.


    Thebat data of the three high-grade Martial Seniors in the Gereign base of the Carnil Mafia.


    When he revised all the information that the Beggar''s Sect had on them¡­


    "They''re goddamn monsters," Rui grinned.


    Senior Zenshin, the Veritable Tiger.


    His Martial Body had been geared towards absolute offense and power.


    His ws had been honed and sharpened for three hundred years.


    ording to the Beggar''s Sect, his ws were so sharp, that they would create sparks and crackles of lightning when he wed through the air.


    Rui''s eyes widened. ''He can create sma just by swiping his ws? Is he splitting molecules into atoms? Just how absurdly sharp are they?!''


    Rui couldn''t even imagine how sharp they were if they were progressively sharpening over the span of three hundred years. There were some things that could only be gained through dedicated perseverance for mind-bogglingly long periods.


    The more Rui read about him, the more he became wary of the sheer peril that Senior Zenshin possessed.


    His piercing attacks were decisively fatal. Rui suspected that the piercing attacks could probably hurt him even if Senior Zenshin didn''t use his Martial Heart


    With it? He could probably split Rui in half.


    ''And despite this, he is still only a grade-thirteen Martial Senior,'' Ruiughed.


    That meant that there were two grades of Martial Seniors who were above even Senior Zenshin.


    There probably were a small group of elites who could crush even Senior Zenshin.


    ''The Senior Realm is definitely wider than the Squire Realm.'' Rui clenched his fist, trying to suppress his excitement. ''I already knew this, but actually seeing the vastness of this Realm leaves one speechless.''


    He had yet to be pushed to his absolute limits in a fight. Not even the mid-grade Martial Seniors who were on the upper end of the mid-grade had been able to push Rui to go all out. Currently, his Martial Art had three oases of power within it.


    The Pattern Recognition System.


    The Metabody System.


    The Hypnomatrix.


    Usually, he needed only one, or at most, two to beat the mid-grade Martial Seniors of the Carnil Mafia.


    Never had he been forced to use all three against any Martial Senior.


    However, he knew that at the bare minimum, he would be forced to use all three against high-grade Martial Seniors.


    ''Huff¡­ In truth, this isn''t even the most optimal way to deal with them," Rui heaved a sigh. ''I could probably manipte even more forces if I wanted to mount even more political pressure. Then I could just incentivize them to take attack and take over if the vulnerability of the current Gereign Base was revealed.''


    However, he ultimately decided to not take out the high-grade Martial Seniors in this manner.


    The reason was simple.


    ''I need to fight them.'' A small grin cracked at the edge of his mouth. ''I want to fight them.''


    That was the truth. He had grown a lot since hisst fight to his limit. It had been more than four years since he fought the Martial Senior of the child trafficking ring in the Saiful Region. That was thest time a Martial Senior had pushed him to his limit when he was able to fight freely and all-out. C0ntent ? 2024 (N/?)velDrama.Org.


    He needed to know his precise limit.


    He also wanted to extensively break in his Martial Art with some experience. Experience was the foundation of growth. Anybody who didn''t temper one''s Martial Art with experience would cease to grow.


    ''It''s like building a tower. The taller the tower, the stronger the foundations of the tower need to be at each level. Each floor needs to be strong enough to bear the weight of all the floors above it, otherwise, the tower will break.''


    It was no different from how every development project, no matter if it was physical or software, needed to be tested rigorously countless times before it was deemed to be ready.


    Physical structures needed to be pressure tested thoroughly at every stage before progressing to the next stage.


    Programming projects needed to be run and debugged at every step.


    What would happen if these processes were skipped?


    The end result would be highly wed, useless, and even harmful.


    Rui had no intentions of skipping this process. He had made a lot of gains in the past years, and now it was time to temper them. Like a cksmith beating the impurities out of a metal while increasing the tensile strength of a de.


    That was why he chose to go through with this.


    Merely four hourster, Rui found himself standing before one of the three high-grade Martial Seniors of the Carnil Mafia deep in the Great Forest of Hypnonarak.


    "I expected that this day woulde," A woman remarked, staring at a masked Rui. "I am the youngest of the three elites at the Gereign Base. Still, the fact that you have evaluated me to be the weakest of my peers is displeasing."


    Her eyes sharpened.


    RUMBLE!


    The verynd shook as if responding to her rage.


    Rui simply stared at her wordlessly, taking his stance.


    "You will regret underestimating me," She dered as she pped her hands.


    ''Dominion Art; World of Chaos.''


    Rui''s eyes widened as the ground below him sank and the forest around him erupted in a tsunami, looking to swallow him.


    "Repent in hell," Her eyes shed with bloodlust.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1494 Tomb

    <h4>Chapter 1494 Tomb</h4>


    Earthquakes were seismic radiation generated through the discement ofnd. Shifts in tectonic tes rtive to each other caused a huge release of energy that spread over great distances, causing quakes to spread across a great area.


    However, there was a person who sought to harness this mechanism and use it as the source of their power. Except in reverse.


    Seismic radiation would diverge from the epicenter, which was generally located at the site of discement. However, some discovered that if the diverging seismic radiation from the epicenter were to instead converge at the same epicenter, a reverse discement would ur.


    They were reversible phenomena.


    This gave rise to the niche art of discingnd by generating converging seismic radiation with one''s body.


    Rui''s eyes widened as thend beneath his feet sunk, and the surrounding bedrock rose, threatening to swallow him whole. His Seismic Mapping could sense a tremendous amount of seismic radiation being generated by both her feet.


    ''I see¡­'' Rui realized as leaped,unching a Mighty Roar sh st technique to st himself an escape. ''She''s using vibrations to generate seismic radiation and uses the principles of constructive resonance to cause radiation to converge and surge at any given point of her choice.''


    BOOM!


    Rui''s eyes widened as several more surges ofnd struck himterally, flinging him away. For a moment, he had been too immersed in his opponent''s Martial Art.


    She refused to give him even a moment of respite.


    STEP STEP STEP! Copyright N?v/el/Dra/ma.Org.


    She maneuvered towards him as she engaged in a deliberate form of footwork. Perhaps, others would be unable to understand their significance.


    But not Rui.


    His eyes narrowed as he leaped into the air. WHOOSH!


    The slightest momentter, a surge of spikes emerged at the spot where he was standing, narrowly missing him.


    She inhaled deeply, activating a tremendously powerful breathing technique as her arms swayed in specific matter, causing alterations in the generated wind currents to manipte as she pleased.


    RUMBLE!


    The very atmosphere shook as she generated a tremendous amount of power. Rui''s eyes widened as he felt an incredible downward force that pushed him closer to the ground.


    "Rgh!" His expression grew grave as her overwhelming power pulled him down.


    She had generated a powerful downward wind current with the power of her Martial Heart. Although she wasn''t as old as Senior Zenshin, her body had much more time to mature than Rui''s. She was far above him in terms of raw power.


    Rui felt footing him below disappear as she created vacuums that prevented him from trying to resist sky-walking.


    As he plummeted, a hill emerged from the tnd, flying straight up at him tremendous velocity. His own descent inbination with the rapid rising of the topographical structure barely gave him any time to generate his own attack, he was hardly able to get out a Mighty Roar sh st before it reached him.


    BOOM!!!


    The entire forest shook as a titanic explosion ensued, the attack sessfully managed to destroy the iing hill.


    Yet she was far from done.


    Her eyes intensified as she put more energy into her breathing technique, generating an even stronger force. She seemed to almost dance as she stepped around, engaging in her strange, yet enchanting mysterious footwork.


    This time, spikes flew out from all directions. His eyes widened as an enormous number ofnd spikes converged into his position.


    BOOM!!!


    Senior Marna narrowed her eyes as several flesh wounds appeared on Rui''s body. ''He''s tougher than he looks¡­''


    She pped her hands. ''No matter, I''ll just continue bombarding him.''


    "Urgh¡­" Rui grimaced. ''I''d be dead if I didn''t have Nemean Blossom.''


    However, his problems were not gone. For one, she could still eliminate his ability to sky-walk. Even now, he was plummeting to the air as she generated yet another wave of spikes to strike at him.


    BAM BAM BAM!


    Rui gritted his teeth as the many waves of spikes bombarded him with attack after attack. He didn''t possess any maneuvering techniques that could help him midair bypensating for or undoing the fact that she sealed his sky-walking with a vacuum beneath his feet and a huge amount of pressure in above him pushing him down.


    BOOM!!!


    SPLAT!


    Rui''s eyes widened as he coughed blood. A single spike had pierced through even his Nemean Blossom, impaling him.


    Senior Carna''s eyes intensified. ''Now!''


    She crossed her arms as every step she took sent pulses of immensely powerful seismic radiation intermingling with each other. Intermingling and growing stronger.


    They converged into a single spot deep underground.


    A single point.


    For a brief moment, the titanic power of Senior Marna''s Martial Body and Heart werepressed within a single point.


    And there was only one direction it could all go.


    Up.


    BOOOM!!!


    Countless spikes erupted from the ground converging on Rui!


    He was entangled in a web of spikes even as he extricated himself from the one impaling him, furthermore, he had no leverage to maneuver due to the absence of air beneath his feet to serve as a footing.


    Perhaps Kane would have been able to avoid those attacks.


    But s, Rui was not Kane.


    SPLAT SPLAT SPLAT!


    Countless spears impaled different parts of his body, making him bleed.


    "Ack!" Rui spat blood as he grimaced.


    She stepped about, dancing in an enchanting manner. The spikes that had tangled Rui about plummeted down, dragging him along as the downward pressure ensured he didn''t escape.


    Yet it was only after he reached the ground that the true attack had begun.


    ''Dominion Art: Tectonic Convergence,''


    She pped her hands. Generating tremendous amounts of power with a powerful breathing technique and her shining Martial Heart. All of that power was instantly turned into seismic radiation with her peculiar footwork and vibration. It caused thend to shift.


    WHOOSH!


    Thend around Rui that had entangled him in impaling spikes instantly shifted, it flew down hundreds of meters in a tunnel.


    "Thisnd is a tomb." She whispered to him with seismic radiation.


    "Your tomb."


    Her hands pped once more.


    Thend converged, moving in closer. The tunnel shut down as the walls moved in closer, eventually closing in on Rui, crushing him.


    The very world weighed down on his impaled body with the weight of a mountain.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1495 Admiration

    <h4>Chapter 1495 Admiration</h4>


    Impaled by spears.


    Buried deep within thend.


    A mountain crushing down on him.


    Immersed in magma.


    And yet, in that moment, a single emotion consumed Rui Quarrier.


    Boundless admiration for his enemy.


    At that moment, he could feel nothing else.


    Nothing.


    The pain of his injuries.


    The despair and misery that came with the sanity of a normal being.


    They did not exist. Not within Rui Quarrier.


    His eyes opened.


    Endless will surged from deep within them. The fight was far from over.


    ''It''s just beginning.''


    Rui reduced Nemean Blossom to fifty percent, before activating Weaving Blood. He closed his eyes, shifting his muscles to dislodge the spears impaling his body as Weaving Blood closed his wounds at a remarkable pace.


    In just fifteen seconds, he was fully healed. He instantly deactivated Weaving Blood, activating Hypertrophic Surge in its ce.


    RUMBLE


    Senior Marna froze, widening her eyes as she turned back to the battlefield where she had buried Rui. "Impossible."


    Cracks emerged across the forest.


    RUMBLE!


    Thend shook violently. She gritted her teeth before activating her Dominion Art, trying to suppress him.


    Yet, it was toote.


    BOOM!!!


    A titanic eruption emerged, reaching the skies as Rui broke through his prison with a tier six Transverse Resonance attack. An expression of pure relief emerged on his face as he breathed in fresh air.


    "You¡­" Her eyes narrowed as she gritted her teeth. "I''ll-"


    She froze, widening her eyes. ''I can''t breathe?''


    Rui stared at her with calm eyes beforeshing out at her at top speed, deactivating Hypertrophic Surge and activating his Neo Godspeed technique. Time slowed down to a crawl as he moved through a world that moved in slow motion. However, he knew that that alone wasn''t enough to grant him the win.


    She pped her hands while leaping away from him at top speed. ''Dominion Art: Flowing Earthen Hymn Step.''


    This was a technique that elerated her maneuvering by having thend propel her away. With how superior her Martial Heart was, she was able to easily maintain the distance between them despite Rui''s Metabody technique.


    ''I''m still struggling to breathe!'' She gasped for breath. Her power was significantly hampered as a result. Not only did she rely on it to generate half the power she relied on, she wasn''t able to use the breathing techniques that she had created to suppress sky-walking.


    Yet Rui never once took one step into the air.


    No.


    He chased after her onnd.


    A calm look of confidence shed across his face.


    ''He could avoid my Martial Art by sky-walking but he doesn''t¡­'' Pure unbridled rage erupted from within her heart. ''How dare you underestimate me.''


    She pped her hands furiously. The air boiled under the weight of her pressure.


    Pure peril radiated from her.


    She took two steps in rapid session as she continued evading Rui, he narrowed his eyes as he felt the ground stirring.


    Then four.


    Then eight. Copyright N?v/el/Dra/ma.Org.


    Then sixteen.


    Then thirty-two.


    Then sixty-four.


    And then¡­


    ''Dominion Art: 108 Steps of Gaia.'' An enormous erupt of soil swallowed Rui whole, killing him on the spot.


    Or so it should have.


    And yet, nothing happened.


    Her eyes widened with surprise as the ground never surged up.


    It never swallowed him.


    And it certainly never killed him on the spot.


    A single remark escaped Rui''s mouth. "I''ve already adapted to your Martial Art."


    His tone was calm. His expression wasposed. His words evoked a single emotion from deep within her.


    Fear.


    His eyes were silver, yet an unfathomable void emerged from deep within them. They seemed to consume everything they touched. They pierced through her, making her feel transparent.


    Naked.


    Invisible.


    ''Damn it.'' She pped her hands as her Martial Heart strained, pushing itself to the limit. ''Damn it all!''


    She activated more techniques, seeking to shift the earth to fight for her. Yet it never did.


    Nothing happened.


    "BUT WHY?!" She bellowed with frustration as Rui chased after her at top speed. He didn''t make any unusual movements, so why was he able to suppress her Martial Art? The entirety of his focus was reaching her as he raced towards her, one step at a time.


    ''Wait¡­'' Realization dawned on her. ''Step?''


    Rui furiously zed across the forest chasing after her.


    Step by step.


    STEP


    VMMM!


    STEP


    VMMM!


    STEP


    VMMM!


    Her eyes widened as she extended her senses underground. With every step he took, Rui applied Reverberating Lance to direct force underground using sympathetic resonance. Reverberating Lance was a technique that used vibrations, throughout the fight, the moment Rui understood her Martial Art, he had fought passively.


    He fought passively as he made the preparations needed to suppress her Martial Art. In order to suppress her Martial Art, he merely needed to sabotage the convergence of seismic radiation. In order to do that, he needed to locate the point of convergence of seismic radiation. Unfortunately. He could not rely on Seismic Mapping. Just like with sound in the air, seismic radiation could be used to locate other things, but seismic radiation in and of itself could not be located.


    Then the question was how was he supposed to know the location of the convergence of seismic radiation that gave rise to seismic discement? He had found the arrived at the answer quickly. ''Unique convergences of seismic radiation give rise to unique seismic discement attacks. I can estimate the location of the convergence by looking at the attacks.''


    The only issue was that the attacks came after the convergence, he needed to know ahead of time.


    ''Then, I just have to predict them,'' He had realized early on in the fight. He needed to create a predictive model that predicted her attacks based on her preparatory movements, and then he could use that to find the convergence ahead of time.


    He also needed to find the average resonance frequency of thend of the forest. This also required quite some time.


    There was only question that had emerged in his mind when he began this process at the start of the fight. ''Can I make it in time?''


    He hadn''t known. The uncertainty of the oue, the thrill of the fear of death, the ecstasy of unfolding his full power. These emotions reigned through Rui even as he had been buried deep in the crust of thend.


    And even after he emerged from within.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1496 The Void

    <h4>Chapter 1496 The Void</h4>


    "I almost died but¡­ I made it in time."


    His deration rung in her ears.


    STEP


    STEP


    STEP


    With every step he took, he used Outer Convergence and Reverberating Lance to generate seismic pulses of the exact resonant frequency of the ground, permeating the seismic pulses rtively smoothly through the bedrock.


    They traveled deep underground, interfering with the convergence and constructive resonance of the seismic radiation that caused thend to be disced to attack Rui.


    As a result, thend never surged to kill Rui.


    RUMBLE


    It shook violently. Yet not even a grain of sand rose to strike Rui.


    "Dammit¡­" She gritted her teeth as her expression curled with frustration. "Huff¡­"


    It was frustrating because she knew she was far more powerful when it came to raw power. Rui was indeed a man, but she had a far greater Martial Heart.


    That was a gap that could not be bridged by the differences between the sexes, not even in the slightest.


    Yet, he was able to sabotage her seismic convergence every single time. Although he used Outer Convergence and Reverberating Lance, they were only two techniques.


    She, on the other hand, had six supplementary techniques that she had worked hard to develop over the span of a century. On top of that, unlike him, her Martial Body was designed for this.


    Her Martial Body contained a much greater amount and proportion of quick-twitch muscle fibers than the regr Martial Body. This meant that she was far superior to Rui when it came to short high-power and high-speed movements, which were highly relevant to vibrations.


    Yet despite all these advantages, Rui was able to overpower her seismic radiation convergence with his seismic pulses.


    Why?


    The answer was simple.


    ''I CAN''T BREATHE!'' She gasped for air like she was having an asthmatic attack as she desperately tried to generate her normal power levels.


    The Breathing Crucifix refused to let her generate even a fraction of her full raw power. With just a single grade-nine technique, Rui was able to close a huge raw gap between himself and her, allowing him to suppress her seismic activity.


    This was the result of two years of training. No matter who his opponent was, they would have to face heavy sabotage if they wanted to face Rui. He had harnessed the power of his mind.


    ''Dammit¡­!'' She gritted her teeth. ''Damn it all!''


    She struggled with every ounce of power. Using every trick, every technique, everything that her Body, Heart, and Art had.


    It was crushed.


    No¡­


    It was being consumed.


    His eyes fixed on her. The endless void that she had beheld within them had surged forward, enveloping her. The gap between them closed as Rui gained on her as her hampered respiration caught up with her.


    Every attack she made, he erased.


    Every step she took, he outpaced.


    Every step he took oppressed her.


    She could not avoid him.


    She could not attack him.


    She could not even breathe.


    As she gazed into her eyes, she found herself standing on a path. A path that extended beyond the eye. A path she had walked for a long time.


    Yet the VOID didn''t care.


    It enveloped her path. This is from N?velDrama.Org.


    It enveloped greedily.


    Hungrily.


    And then it consumed.


    CRACK!


    Her body shook, trembling. Her eyes quivered with despair as she watched her Martial Art unravel. All the pride she had ever felt in developing such a unique and powerful Martial Art crumbled.


    ''Unique and powerful?'' Her body went limp. ''What a joke.''


    CRACK CRACK CRACK!


    Boundless emptiness consumed her as the sounds of her Martial Path crumbling under the weight of the VOID ovepped with the physical sounds of her ribs cracking under the weight of Rui''s Flowing Convergence.


    BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM!


    Rui''s eyes narrowed as he bombarded her vitals with powerful blows. Her battered body grew worse with each blow as she began bleeding from multiple orifices. Her body grew limp as her eyes grew hollow.


    CRACK!


    A well-timed and well-ced kick to the skull did the trick. Her body fell to the ground as pool of blood began forming around her skull.


    Rui heaved a deep sigh, narrowing his eyes gravely. He knew what had happened, but he didn''t dare stop.


    She had almost killed him once, if he stopped suppressing her mentally and physically, she could potentially use that absurd technique once more.


    Besides, he intended to kill her regardless


    "Rgh!" Rui grimaced as he coughed up several bouts of blood, deactivating his Martial Heart. "Damn¡­"


    Abusing the Metabody System alongside his Martial Heart was very stressful to the body. The Martial Heart elerated his aging while Weaving Blood sacrificed his constitution for healing. He could handle either one individually with no problem, but abusing both to the limit did his body no limits.


    ''I didn''t have a choice.'' Rui panted. ''If I didn''t use Weaving Blood there I would have died on the spot.''


    He had been forced to use Nemean Blossom to withstand the sheer pressure that her technique generated to converge on his body as well, further adding to the strain on his body.


    His eyes narrowed gravely. ''If any of those spikes hit my head in the wrong way¡­''


    He had done his best to guard his vitals, but he couldn''t guard everything. And her offensive power had already been proven to handily ovee the Nemean Blossom.


    ''I could have died many times during the first half of the battle. In fact, if she hadn''t gotten arrogant and done her best to make sure I was dead, I could have died then and there. At the very least, I would be much worse than I currently am.''


    He shook his head. Reflecting was good, but he didn''t want to get lost in too many what-ifs. The fact of the matter was that he won.


    He won against a high-grade Martial Senior.


    A deep wave of satisfaction overcame him as he got up. He quickly inhaled a potion, before steadily distancing himself from the battlefield as he headed towards the human domain.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1497 Domain

    <h4>Chapter 1497 Domain</h4>


    Rui had much to think about the previous fight. It had been the first fight in quite a long time where he had been pushed to such a limit, and it helped him understand the current state of his power and progress.


    Naturally, it also helped him realize his ws and shorings.


    ''I need to be quicker with the Hypnomatrix,'' Rui tutted. He had just gotten up after a good long sleep, refreshing himself a bit back at his personal quarters. ''Had I made my choice quicker, it wouldn''t have gotten to this. This was despite having foreknowledge on her.''


    Although the Beggar''s Sect had offered him a good amount of knowledge into Senior Marna''s abilities, it didn''t offer insight into the nuances that he needed to figure out which Hypnomatrix technique to use.


    By the time he figured it out, he was too busy trying not to die, being bombarded by the verynd he stood on. Things would have been even worse had he not had any insight into her. He would have beenpletely blindsided by her niche abilities and there was a real possibility that he would have died.


    That was why despite winning, and despite the satisfaction that came with adaptively evolving to and oveing someone of her caliber, he didn''t let it get to his head. He was not so superior that he had earned the right to look down on her.


    ''Still, a domain Martial Art¡­''Rui grew curious about this field of Martial Art. "I guess even to this day, there are fields of Martial Art out there that I don''t know about."


    The world was wide and scarcely interconnected, there would always be ces, people, Martial Art, and other phenomena that he would never be able to learn about unless he came across them himself. Not even the powerful Martial Union could every single and all niche and exotic techniques across the continent.


    Only the Beggar''s Sect could do something like that, but they were not a Martial organization.


    However, despite being aware of this, he truly had been surprised when he learned about domain techniques. These techniques consisted of any and all principles that manipted the environment in battle.


    It was different from techniques that made use of air or sound since he produced the gust of wind or projectile of sound from within his body. In the case of domain techniques, the environment never directly interacted with the user. "Interesting¡­" Rui narrowed his eyes. He wondered if he had any aptitude for domain techniques. He probably did since, from what he could tell, domain techniques were hybrids of a variety of different principles that manipted the environment. There was no reason he was particrly bad at it.


    An exciting thought came to his mind as he wondered if he could potentially integrate an element of domain maniption into his Martial Art. Perhaps he could manipte his environment in a way that aided with adaptive evolution as a concept.


    Perhaps he could have his environment to adapt to be antithetical to his opponent.


    Or perhaps he could have his environment aid his physical and mental adaptive evolution.


    Perhaps he could manipte his environment to be unfavorable to everybody, but allow him to gain an advantage after adapting to it. There was much greater power to be gained if one was willing to risk one''s self.


    There were many potential ideas, however, there was no use specting any further. He knew far too little about them. He didn''t know what was possible and what wasn''t.


    "Hmmm¡­" Rui narrowed his eyes as he considered the matter. ''I''ll put it on the list.''


    He wasn''t short of ideas or avenues worth pursuing, he even had a list of things he should consider doing or pursuing. However, domain techniques were not an immediate concern for him at the moment, it was something to consider after he had fulfilled his vendetta.


    This was especially so since he was feeling the pressure on his decade-long time limit. It had been more than seven years since he left the Shionel Confederation, approaching eight years. He wanted to quickly get his hands on the information to form a foolproof way to get rid of Chairman Deacon. That was now his top priority. Everything came after that.


    ''Besides¡­ I also have other avenues of pursuit that rank higher on the list such as Primordial Seed.'' Rui sighed. Of course, integrating Primordial Seed into his Martial Art was much harder than mastering an existing field of Martial Art. BEEP


    "Hm?" Rui raised an eyebrow, reaching for hismunication device and reading the message that he had received. "Oh¡­? Interesting."


    ording to the Beggar''s Sect, of the two remaining Martial Seniors, one of them had refused to take any assignment that required him to leave the safety of the highly fortified base HQ. Apparently, the Martial Senior had no intentions of subjecting himself to any danger, such as the assant who had been scratching off the Martial Seniors of the Gereign Base. He did not want to risk his life.


    "Hah¡­" Rui scoffed. "How sensible. This one isn''t going to make it to the Master Realm and has no intentions of going there." C0ntent ? 2024 (N/?)velDrama.Org.


    He didn''t begrudge sensible caution to preserve one''s life. Not everyone could risk their life for personal ambition, and not everyone needed to. It was OK to not want to die. However, an unwillingness to bear the risk of death for Martial Artists usually signified their limits.


    He nced at the name on an open file before him.


    [Senior Francis]


    The vice-leader of the security and exploration team under Senior Zenshin. Despite his unwillingness to face Rui, he was undoubtedly strong. Having been a Martial Senior for nearly a hundred and fifty years, he had managed to survive and ovee a lot of tribtions, even going as far as to awaken his Martial Heart in a desperate attempt to survive sixty years ago.


    He was Rui''s next target, and he refused to ept Rui''s implicit challenge to face him in the forest, unlike Senior Marna. "Still, now that she''s dead, I can finally execute that n."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1498 Didn鈥檛 Survive

    <h4>Chapter 1498 Didn''t Survive</h4>


    "You''re going to hole yourself in the highest security arena of the Gereign Base?!" Senior Zenshin red at a man seated in front of him.


    A few days had passed since the death of Senior Marna, it had caused quite an uproar within the Gereign Base of the Carnil Mafia. "Of course," The man replied calmly, sipping some tea. "I do not wish to die or get hurt."


    "You sorry excuse of a Martial Senior," Senior Zenshin curled his mouth with contempt. "You really are the most pathetic Martial Artist I have ever met. A Martial Senior cowering away like a little girl is something that should not exist!"


    "The feeling is mutual," Senior Francis calmly replied. "If anything, it is the rest of you who are idiots. How many times did I tell you we should cease all activity until Master Haishi arrives? How many times did I warn the others to abstain from traveling across the Hypnonarak forest? No one listened, and all of them died. Hmph, serves them right."


    "You bastard¡­" Senior Zenshin narrowed his eyes. "You cowardly wimp. You haven''t a single bone of pride or courage in you."


    "If those bones didn''t break so easily, the others who had them would still be alive," Senior Francis snorted. "Hmph, Martial Artists of the Underworld are too reckless, irrational, and vtile. That''s why they have a higher casualty rate than those in the Royal Army."


    "You aren''t fit for the Carnil Mafia, that''s one thing we agree on," Senior Zenshin narrowed his eyes. "This ain''t the Martial Union. This ain''t the Royal Army. This is the Underworld. There is no royalty agreement. There is no hefty sry with government benefits. There is no safety nket, guarantees, rights, or privileges. Only one thing matters in the Underworld."


    "¡­Power," Senior Francis muttered. "That''s right," Senior Zenshin''s eyes narrowed. "The weak are exploited and killed, the strong exploit and kill. That is the only rule of the Underworld. You can''t show weakness. You can''t let others walk over you. You can''t be willing to back down. You can''t run away. If you do¡­"


    His expression intensified. "You''ll never stop running. You''ll never stop backing down. You''ll never not be weak. They won''t let you. That''s the reason the other Seniors of our team decided to go hunting for the Plum Ecstasy Fruits even though they knew they were going to be attacked¡­A pussy like you who is willing to let others walk over all over you by showing weakness would never understand."


    Senior Francis snorted wordlessly. However, even he had to admit that there was merit to what Senior Zenshin was telling him. Backing down from a threat or a risk, that too an implicit one, was weakness. And weakness was consumed in the Kandrian Underworld. If word got out that the Martial Seniors that the Carnil Mafia at the Gereign Base were too scared to leave their base because they were afraid of being killed, it would destroy their reputations.


    It would do more than that, it would destroy the influence that they had cultivated for decades in the Kandrian Underworld. None of them were willing to do that. That was why none of them backed away from Rui even though they knew he was going to ambush them.


    None of them except Senior Francis.


    "I intend to leave the Kandrian Underworld, no, the Kandrian Empire once I''m done with this assignment," Senior Francis remarked. "I will have paid off my debt to the Carnil Mafia with this assignment, and then I''m free to leave."


    "Hah¡­" Senior Zenshin snorted contemptuously. "You don''t actually believe that you can leave, do you?"


    "I have no intention of staying, I''ll tell you that much."


    "Just you try leaving¡­" Senior Zenshin narrowed his eyes. "Master Haishi may dispatch me to kill you, and I promise you that I will not hesitate."


    "Hah¡­" Senior Francis felt his head aching. "Speaking of, when is she scheduled to arrive?"


    "Today," Senior Zenshin grunted, his eyes narrowing.


    "That''s earlier than I expected," Senior Francis remarked with surprise. "She was furious when I informed her that Senior Marna died at the hands of the assant," Senior Zenshin grunted. "She was personally ordered by Lord Carnil to stabilize the Gereign Base and restore the narcotics supply."


    "Huff¡­" Senior Francis heaved a deep sigh. "I might just choose to run away before she arrives. I''m afraid she''ll kill me."


    "She definitely will if you try running away," Senior Zenshin snorted.


    Senior Francis got up, walking towards the door. "I''m going to hole myself in the HQmand center, the most secure ce in this facility. Mark my words, Zenshin, I''m not going to die, I''m going to survi-" This is from N?velDrama.Org.


    Suddenly, his body went limp.


    His eyes rolled to the back of his head.


    THUD


    Senior Zenshin simply watched, shocked, as his lifeless corpse fell to the ground. Senior Zenshin simply stared for the briefest moment before his instincts felt a single thing.


    Danger.


    "RARGH!" He activated his shining Martial Heart in just a microsecond, spinning as he swiped his ws omnidirectionally.


    A titanic amount of power and force was generated.


    ¡­SPLAT!


    A masked Martial Senior appeared out of thin air, leaping away from Senior Zenshin. His arms were bleeding, having blocked the prior attack. Senior Zenshin''s eyes narrowed as he recognized the mask. This was the same bastard that started all of this by killing Senior Nereau. He gritted his teeth as his eyes widened with rage. "You¡­"


    For a moment, the two Martial Seniors stared at each other. The very air seemed to quiver under the sheer force of mind that the two powerful Martial Seniors exerted. Senior Zenshin let his emotions boil. He let his rage soar through, taking over. He had pent up a lot of frustration over the past week or so, and he had no intentions of letting the chief party responsible for it go.


    His eyes grew feral as heshed out, abandoning his rationality.


    Just as Rui had nned.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1499 Power

    1499 Power


    Rui''s n came to fruition perfectly. The moment the number of Martial Seniors reduced to two, the Gereign Base became viable for targeting. Before, he had avoided assassinating any target there because the risks were too high with the number of Martial Seniors residing in it.


    He couldn''t maintain the Greater Phantomind Void, at least without any risks of seriously messing up, while also engaging in heavybat that required his full attention.


    Thus, if he got hit with a long-range wide-scale attack after assassinating one of them, he would be exposed to be attacked by multiple strong Martial Seniors.


    Even for him, that was not something he could ovee at his current level of power.


    That was why he waited for the right moment; when there were only two Martial Seniors left.


    Then, it was possible for him to do his regr assassination modus operandi by preparing and finding the right resonance frequencies to assassinate him with a single strike.


    Infiltrating had been difficult, but with the intelligence that the Beggar''s Sect supplied, he had been able to do it with rtive ease. The hard part was maintaining Greater Phantomind Void over longer periods of time. This tired him out a lot and he had needed plenty of mental rejuvenation potions topensate.


    He had also made sure to take both mental and physical rejuvenation potions before hemitted the assassination so that he would be ready to fight without reserve if he needed to.


    And as it turned out, he did indeed need to.


    SPLATbender Exclusive ? material by N?(/v)elDrama.Org.


    His eyes had widened as four gashes had appeared across his arm after he headed toward Senior Zenshin, looking to attack him as well. Yet clearly the man''s danger instincts were extraordinarily honed. Rui was impressed that he was able to sense his attack thanks to sheer instincts.


    It was the first time that someone had managed to not bepletely done in by the Greater Phantomind Void.


    ''I see, so his body isn''t the only beastlike trait he has. His instincts have reached a level that makes even Primordial Instinct look trivial! Rui mused with interest.


    "You..." Senior Zenshin muttered as his boiling emotions grew more intense by the second.


    Rui''s eyes narrowed as he felt horrifying peril from Senior Zenshin. The sheer pressure that he released far exceeded anything Rui had ever felt from any other Martial Senior.


    At that moment, Rui knew that the man was the strongest Martial Senior he had ever met. The Martial Seniors of Vilun Ind, the Floating Sect, the Derschek Region, and even the only high-grade Martial Senior he had fought.


    The beast that stood before him was stronger than all of them. Not even Senior Ceeran had generated such abysmal peril.


    The man''s expression curled with inhuman bloodlust.


    His ws grew longer.


    His teeth evolved into fangs.


    His eyes had turned red, bloodshot with mind-numbing rage.


    "HRYARGH!" He snarled, swinging his ws towards Rui with a titanic amount of force!


    BOOM!!!


    Rui dodged the four gargantuan shockwaves that emerged from the man''s ws. The shockwaves tore through the Gereign Base and beyond. Cleaving apart the bedrock and any structure that stood in its for nearly a kilometer away from its inception.


    A huge number of people had died, and vast amounts of infrastructure had been torn apart.


    RUMBLE!


    Thend beneath them quaked under the sheer raw power that spilled over. Rui''s eyes widened at the sheer raw power that the man outputted with a single attack. It didn''t take him even a moment to make a crucial choice.


    Senior Zenshin didn''t even waste a moment, quickly transitioning to the next attack.


    "RARGH!" He snarled,unching yet another st that Rui narrowly evaded.


    Yet this time, the attack did only a fraction of the damage that the previous ones did. Rui rushed forward, racing towards the man as the manunched several more powerful shockwaves. Yet each of them was weaker than the previous ones.


    BOOM!!


    A powerful Flowing Canon crashed into the man''s guard, pushing him away as he skidded back a meter.


    ''My strongest attack only did that much...? Oh boy...''


    Yet he was unable to contain the crooked grin at the edge of his mouth. The only way he could beat Senior Zenshin was if he executed his adaptive evolution to the best of his abilities.


    "You..." The man''s ferocity only grew more feral. His breathing grew more strained as he choked out his words. "...What did you do to me?"


    Rui narrowed his eyes as he leaped away, as formidable as the man''s long-range prowess was, Rui knew that he could not afford to engage in close-rangebat with those ws. He would literally be cleaved in half.


    Read the full version at our official website ¦Ç¦Ò¦Í¦Å??¦Ì?¦Ê.?¦Ò?


    "GIVE ME BACK MY POWER!" He bellowed, jumping towards Rui at incredible speeds crossing the distance in an instant.


    SPLAT!


    "Rgh!" Rui grimaced as he blocked the man''s w swipes, pushing himself away as he opened the distance. He partially activated Weaving Blood, healing the deep gashes on his arms before swiftlyunching a multitude of Mighty Roar sh sts.


    THWOOM THWOOM THWOOM THWOOM THWOOM!!


    Rui fired away at full power, unwilling to hold back. Senior Zenshin was so strong that he may very well have to go all out with the Hypnomatrix and the Metabody System even before the VOID algorithm waspleted.


    "RARGH!" The man snarled as he swung his ws against every iing attack, tearing it apart before he could even strike his body.


    Rui narrowed his eyes, gritting his teeth as he strained himself with sheer effort. It took him everything to he had just to keep Senior Zenshin at bay!


    ''And this is after I sealed away most of his raw power with Breathing Crucifix!'' Rui''s eyes widened with shock as he struggled to keep Senior Zenshin from closing the gap. ''I''d be dead if I fought him without the Hypnomatrix!''


    Rui was d that he decided to attack the Carnil Mafia after training under Master Zeamer. Had he chosen to do it before, he would undoubtedly be a dead man.


    <strong></strong>


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1500 Onslaught

    <h4>Chapter 1500 Onught</h4>


    The first phase of the battle bloomed inpletion as the twobatants exerted themselves to their absolute limit. Rui had begun the battle with Breathing Crucifix, immediately hampering Senior Zenshin''s breathing greatly. He did not allow the man to exert his true full power by hampering breathing for the man had abysmally superior raw power than Rui.


    Despite facing the impediment of Breathing Crucifix, he still possessed more raw power than Rui, something thetter found unbelievable.


    Yet it was the truth.


    "Rgh¡­!" Rui gritted his teeth as he strained himself to the absolute limit firing off many Mighty Roar sh sts in rapid session as he leaped away from Senior Zenshin trying to maintain as much distance between them. THWOOM THWOOM THWOOM THWOOM THWOOM!


    The sheer energy ravaged the Gereign Base and more.


    Senior Zenshin, on the other hand, was no slouch. Every attack that arrived was instantly decimated with a single w swipe. His sharp ws pierced through every single sonic projectile without exception, effortlessly tearing them apart.


    "RARGH!" He snarled as he began rushing forward at an even higher pace, swinging his ws with wildly as he tore down every single sonic projectile. His charge grew faster and faster as he got increasingly ustomed to sting away all of Rui''s Mighty Roar sh st.


    Not even Rui''s maximum output was able to entirely keep him at bay despite his sealed power.


    ''Long-range attacks do tend to be weaker than close-range attacks due to the greater waste of energy inunching and transit, but how is he able to keep up with me so well despite falling victim to Breathing Crucifix?'' Rui clenched his fists as he pushed himself to his physical limit.


    He knew the answer, of course. The Martial Heart is that shined across his body was that much superior to his own. "HYARH!" He tore past yet another barrage of Mighty Roar sh sts, leaping towards Rui, his ws poised, ready to tear apart Rui at the first moment possible.


    ''No choice,'' Rui exhaled deeply as he activated Hypertrophic Surge. BOOM!!!


    Senior Zenshin''s eyes widened as he was flung away by a tremendous surge in power. Rui''s seemed to suddenly spike at the final moment, oveing his own. Rui didn''t necessarily have to resort to this option, he could have explored other possibilities, but he ultimately decided not to risk it. Exclusive ? material by N?(/v)elDrama.Org.


    Senior Zenshin''s offense was far too lethal. A single mistake and Rui could easily lose an arm or be cleaved in half at close-quartersbat. It was best to maintain long-rangebat for the time being, he didn''t even want to risk it with close-rangebat.


    Although Senior Zenshin had remarkable long-range prowess, Rui knew that it was a learned skill that was not his primary and preferred range ofbat. Close-rangebatants faced certain universal problems. One of them was how they were going to close a distance against a long-rangebatant who was not going to let them close the distance.


    Some chose to maneuver.


    Others chose superior raw power to push through with raw power.


    Many chose to develop some elementary long-range prowess tobat long-range attacks. Senior Zenshin appeared to have chosen thetter two. He not only possessed long-range attacks, but he also preferred to close the gap by relying on his superior offense to tear everything his opponent threw to shreds.


    It had been going well until Rui suddenly got a huge boost in power. His body grew in size and volume as he gained a muscr physique that matched that of Senior Zenshin''s gargantuan body.


    His offense grew proportionally.


    THWOOM THWOOM THWOOM THWOOM THWOOM!!!


    A deeply powerful onught of attacks crashed into Senior Zenshin, flinging him an enormous distance away. By the time the man hitnd, he found that Rui had flung him so far that they had ended up in the forest.


    "Bastard¡­" Senior Zenshin gritted his teeth, baring his fangs fiercely. "You think you can take me down with such trivial attack power?"


    Rui didn''t deign to answer him. He was in a tight position himself. He needed to create a proper formidable predictive model on Senior Zenshin before his Metabody stamina ran out. If he ended up in a state where he couldn''t use the Metabody System or the pattern recognition system, then he was screwed.


    Senior Zenshin, on the other hand, simply stared at Rui with intense eyes fixed on the man. There was a brief stand-off as neither side moved an inch having relocated to the forest. That was fine as far as Rui was concerned. He needed a bit more time before the predictive model wasplete. He was holding himself to high standards. The predictive model needed to be immacte, otherwise the risks of dying or suffering a grave injury in close quarters were too high. However, his eyes widened when he gazed into Senior Zenshin''s inhuman eyes. The man wasn''t just staring at Rui like a predator.


    ''He''s¡­thinking.''


    Senior Zenshin had not sat still for the centuries that had passed by since he became a Martial Senior. He had diligently worked hard to create enough manners of thought to reach the standards of the Martial Mind.


    He hadn''t yet seeded, but progress had been made.


    At that very moment, he was employing it.


    ''This surge of power¡­is probably temporary,'' He realized. ''That means that bastard will return to his original weak body after some time. That means that I just need to ensure that I don''t go down in the time that he has ess to such power. I also need to burn his stamina to hasten the process. Once he''s lost that power, he won''t be able to hold me back anymore. I should dedicate half of my stance and power to defense while the rest goes to offense. Yeah, let''s go with that.''


    This was theplete extent of Senior Zenshin''s Martial Mind, and he was quite proud of it. Had Rui heard his internal monologue, he would have burst outughing, lowering his guard, and would have died as a result.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1501 Expose

    <h4>Chapter 1501 Expose</h4>


    However, while his Martial Mind prototype was more elementarypared to what Rui was ustomed to himself, it was not necessarily wrong.


    Rui did indeed have a time limit.


    He also could not neutralize Senior Zenshin''s approach. Even if he could, he would certainly waste more energy trying since it took more energy to generate an attack of a certain power levelpared to that of close-range attacks.


    However, the most impressive part of the n was not the n, but the raw physicality that supported the n.


    THWOOM THWOOM THWOOM THWOOM THWOOM!


    Senior Zenshin dedicated more energy towards neutralizing Rui''s enhanced raw power than he did towards progressing towards Rui. He prioritized his health over closing the distance. It was because he knew that he would gain his chance at closing the distance that he was willing to remain patient.


    This was not pleasant to Rui.


    ''I''m sting him with the power of Hypertrophic Surge, but the only thing I''m able to do is stop his approach. He''s defending every single attack extremely well!'' Rui gritted his teeth.


    This was the first time that he had used Hypertrophic Surge and failed to hurt his opponent despite it. It was such an absurd notion that Rui had difficulty believing it for a second. In fact, he had hurt Senior Zenshin only a single time this entire fight, when he caught him off-guard with the transformation.


    Senior Zenshin weathered every single iing attack, dispelling it with his lethal offense. Every swing of his ws, tore apart Rui''s offense like it was paper.


    Even though his raw power was not extraordinarily above Rui''s Hypertrophic Surge, his offense was disproportionately lethal. The sharpness of his ws allowing him to split any and everything within the Senior Realm.


    Perhaps the only exceptions were hyper-defense specialists like Senior Gemu who was so durable that not even Rui had managed to actually cause damage.


    Regardless, he could only work with what he had. THWOOM THWOOM THWOOM THWOOM THWOOM!


    The battle raged on. The two of them outputted tremendous amounts of power. Rui poured all of it into offense, while Senior Zenshin poured all of it into defense. The sheer amount of energy from their fight spread across the surroundingnds, inflicting much damage.


    RUMBLE!


    The verynd beneath their feet shook violently under the onught of Rui''s power. It was a terrifying and yet beautiful sight to behold. However, while the battle appeared to be even on the surface, they both knew that Rui was at a disadvantage. Such spontaneous power was rarely ever permanent. Just the fact that Rui activatedter into the battle was more than enough evidence to suggest that it had its limits.


    And Senior Zenshin was right.


    The Metabody System was meant to be used after the pattern recognition system wasplete, not before. It was the Hypnomatrix that was supposed to fulfill the role of adaptive evolution of the mind prior to thepletion of the pattern recognition. However, Rui ended up using the Metabody System before the pattern recognition system waspleted.


    The reason was that his opponent was too strong. He was quite proud of the Hypnomatrix. It was a set of three grade-nine techniques, that were amplified by his augmented mind, effectively functioning like grade-ten techniques. Senior Zenshin''s raw power was astronomically higher than that of Rui, and these powerful techniques had managed to chop it down significantly.


    However, not even that had been enough to close the gap. Rui had been forced to use Hypertrophic Surge to close the gap, but Hypertrophic Surge had a much shorter time period than Senior Zenshin''s raw power.


    When Rui looked into Senior Zenshin''s eyes, he sensed predatory patience. The man was waiting.


    He was waiting for the right moment. Although Senior Zenshin was nowhere near as intelligent as Rui was, he was vastly more experienced. More than three hundred years of aggressivebat had created an intuition and instinct the likes of which Rui simply did not possess.


    That same intuition told Zenshin that it wasn''t long. Rui didn''t have much time left. He was right. He just needed to wait.


    And wait, he did. He hadn''t moved from that one spot since Rui flung him into the forest. Rui had been unable to even budge from that one spot, at most he was rotating about to face Rui as he attacked from different angles. Attack after attack crashed into the man, only to be shredded into nothing by the man''s shocking piercing power.


    THWOOM THWOOM THWOOM THWOOM THWOOM!!! Exclusive ? material by N?(/v)elDrama.Org.


    "Ngh!" Rui gritted his teeth as he sted Senior Zenshin with a flurry of Mighty Roar sh sts. However, while it appeared that he was mindlessly sting attacks at Zenshin, he was not.


    Rui''s strategy was simple.


    Continuous offense.


    If the man had temporarily resigned to hurting Rui, then he didn''t need to worry about getting hurt for the time being. He could focus on gauging as much information on the man as possible before Hypertrophic Surge had reached its limits.


    ''I need topute all possible attacks. I''ll attack him from new angles that cannot be blocked by old parries, forcing him to demonstrate new parries,'' Rui narrowed his eyes. ''His moves are infinite, but thebinations are numerous, they may as well be infinite.''


    However, this was not a problem.


    ''It will allow me to learn more about the core patterns that are a manifestation of one''s very identity and being,'' Rui''s focus intensified. ''The more you fight, the more you show me.''


    The more he was shown, the more he learned. The more he learned, the better he could adaptively evolve.


    Rui had already given up on trying to hurt Senion Zenshin with Hypertrophic Surge. Rui underestimated the raw power of a close-quarters monster that had lived for three hundred years. He sacrificed it to gain more information, information that the VOID algorithm greedily consumed, eating it up. It wasn''t long, however, before that came to an end.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1502 What Are You

    <h4>Chapter 1502 What Are You</h4>


    THWOOM THWOOM THWOOM THWOOM THWOOM!!!


    STEP


    Rui''s eyes widened as Senior Zenshin took a step forward in Rui''s direction, overwhelming his onught. He gritted his teeth, pushing himself to output as much power from as many different angles as possible.


    And yet¡­


    STEP


    STEP


    STEP


    Senior Zenshin began closing the gap between them once more. First, he walked. A minuteter, he found himself being able to jog.


    It wasn''t long before he was able topletely overwhelm Rui''s offense, running in the process. Rui''s expression grew grave as his body returned to its original volume, Senior Zenshin grinned like a shark as his eyes glowed with bloodlust. Copyright N?v/el/Dra/ma.Org.


    Time was up.


    The very air curled with the sheer peril that the man radiated.


    "You''re dead¡­" His voice quivered with malice. "You hear me¡­?"


    RUMBLE!


    The verynd beneath them shook.


    "YOU''RE DEAD." He bellowed, leaping at Rui. Heunched himself at a tremendous speed, his ws swinging down on Rui, hoping to tear him to shreds. WHOOSH!


    Senior Zenshin''s eyes widened as his attackpletely missed Rui. Rui had simply sidestepped the attack in the brief moment before the attack had begun and after it was toote to change it.


    "HRYAH!" He snarled,unching powerful swift w swipes at Rui.


    Yet none of them managed to so much as touch Rui.


    WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH


    Rui''s movements continuously changed.


    They flowed.


    With every maneuver, his movements grew refined.


    They grew smoother.


    WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH!


    His expression was empty, yet his mind shed with countless thoughts.


    ''You prepare the direction of your offense too early.''


    ''Sessive attacks are usually at a ny-degree angle with the previous swings.''


    ''Your center of gravity always shifts to the forefront foot a moment before the attack emerges.''


    ''You always initiate attacks from the w that is furthest away from the target.''


    ''Your range is absolutely constant, requiring you to make predictable distance adjustments before every attack.''


    Rui had gleaned countless patterns within the man''s Martial Art. They flowed within the mind, and the VOID within consumed every single one of them voraciously.


    In return, it allowed to him peer into the future. The future of his opponent.


    A future he could change as he pleased.


    And change, he did.


    "HRYAH!" Senior Zenshin swung his w at Rui with titanic power as thetter approached him.


    BOOM!


    Where Zenshin had hoped to cut Rui into four ribbons, he was struck with a powerful elbow into his ribs. The impact of the powerful Flowing Canon was now powerful enough to hurt the man''s powerful flesh and muscles, but the impact permeated past the man''s flesh, going in deeper before it struck his internal vitals.


    "Ack!" Senior Zenshin grimaced with rage as he felt a deep sense of pain emerging from deep within.


    "RARGH!"


    He brought swung both ws down on Rui, they surged forward at incredible speed, threatening to split him into eight sections. WHOOSH!


    BAM!!


    Rui had crouched, passing through the man''s legs and kicking him in the back of his head, upside down.


    "Damn you!" Senior Zenshin screamed, panting, as he spun. A powerful w swipe rushed through, threatening to tear his head off. WHOOSH!


    Rui smoothly somersaulted over the man''s head.


    BAM BAM BAM!


    A swiftbo kicks crashed into the man''s guard, provoking him to surge with a flurry of w slices.


    WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH!


    Not a single one struck them. They missed Rui by an inch, yet Senior Zenshin could sense that they hadn''t evene close to touching him. He evaded Senior Zenshin with the grace of a ballerina and the effort of a sloth.


    It was unlike anything Senior Zenshin had ever seen.


    A single thought reverberated through his mind.


    ''What are you?''


    Senior Zenshin had initially thought Rui was a hyper-specialized elite high-grade Senior assassin who specialized in covert ambush assassins. These types of assassins could assassinate basically anybody below a certain level and were highly respected and feared in the Underworld.


    However, these types of Martial Artists were not too proficient in directbat, their Martial Paths were centered around covert assassinations or constituting or adjacent fields.


    Yet, Rui disyed incredible long-range offense. Although Senior Zenshin had sessfully torn apart the man''s offense, he knew that it was quite impressive. On top of that, there was also that incredibly frustrating respiratory shackle that Rui had inflicted on him. Senior Zenshin was barely able to use a quarter of his raw power, it was an extremely tiring impediment that he was unable to break.


    He disyed that strange body augmentation technique that enhanced his raw power. And now, he was disying evasive capabilities that he could only expect to see from a specialized evasive expert.


    ''Just what are you?''


    WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH


    The attacks converged on Rui, yet none of them struck him. He didn''t even step away, he merely swayed on his feet, evading every single one of them with seemingly otherworldly ease.


    By minimizing the expenditure of his energy with his evasion, he couldst longer than Senior Zenshin. As long as he moved the minimum, and used the fewest techniques, he could eventually gain the upper hand once Senior Zenshin was not only low on energy but also struggling to breathe due to the effects of Breathing Crucifix.


    Victory was guaranteed at that point. He didn''t rush his victory, he didn''t rage forward with aggressive attacks trying to get a hit on a vital.


    No.


    It was patient, meticulous, rigorous, and surgical.


    "Enough of this farce," Senior Zenshin whispered in an uncharacteristically soft voice.


    Suddenly, Rui felt a deep sense of peril emerging from within his mind. His eyes widened with shock at the future that the predictive model predicted, immediately leaping away from Senior Zenshin with Gale Force Breathing and Outer Convergence.


    ''Veritable Tiger Fist: Hurricane of One Thousand ws!'' The man''s arms spread out, one set of ws facing front while the others faced backward before he activated a breathing technique while spinning at top speed!


    CRACK CRACK CRACK CRACK CRACK!


    Countless gashes spontaneously emerged across an enormous expanse of the forest, shredding its targets to bits!


    "Damn¡­" Rui muttered with a shaky voice, several hundred meters away from him. DRIP DRIP DRIP


    Blood dripped out of the many cuts that had spontaneously emerged on his body.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1503 Face-off

    <h4>Chapter 1503 Face-off</h4>


    "Hehehe¡­" A wild grin emerged on Senior Zenshin''s face. "Not so slick after all."


    Rui had to admit that he had earned that boast. It was an incredibly powerful technique that did not send an attack traveling like how it was before. Instead, he had caused attacks to appear on their location.


    That was incredibly impressive.


    Of course, now that he had seen it, he had instantly figured out how it worked. It actually did not work by generating sharp shockwaves, instead, it worked on a principle of imbnce of pressure.


    He generated a tremendous amount of pressure on a target with his breathing technique, then used his w swipes to generate an extremely thin slit of vacuum amidst that pressure. The rest of the body of the target was experiencing immense pressure, pressure that had nowhere to go until he created a tiny slit of vacuum on his target''s flesh with his ws, giving that vacuum a ce to push through due to the zero pressure outside that area.


    High external pressure was met with high internal pressure to maintain equilibrium, then that equilibrium was disturbed by a slit of vacuum with no pressure that was unable to hold back the high internal pressure.


    Rui narrowed his eyes. ''He basically caused a huge imbnce of pressure inside and outside my flesh at one particr spot, causing the internal pressure to st a hole open in my flesh from inside my body.''


    To a certain extent, it bypassed his durability. It was quite the lethal attack and was much more of a sure hit than his normal w attacks. He had most likely developed it as a solution against maneuvering experts like Rui, as a way to ensure that he got some hits on them.


    Rui heaved a sigh as his wounds healed. No more than a few moments had passed in real-time as his wounds began healing at a decent pace. Thankfully, the very nature of the attack was such that it could not do more than inflict flesh wounds. It could not cause deep gashes that went beyond the flesh. Thus while he did experience a bit of blood loss, he was not in any grave danger.


    His eyes narrowed as Senior Zenshin stirred ever so slightly, the predictive model foresaw yet another one of this very attack iing.


    WHOOSH


    Rui surged forward, igniting the atmosphere with sheer speed. THWACK!


    Rui interrupted the technique with a powerful Flowing Canon crashing into the man''s guard. Yet Zenshin was hardly displeased by the interruption. ''You can''t interrupt my technique without approaching me, within the range of my ws,'' Senior Zenshin grinned.


    Long-range techniques had greater range than close-range techniques, but they sacrificed power in exchange. They both knew that Rui''s long range attacks did not have the power to throw Zenshin''s technique off. After all, Senior Zenshin had withstood them even when Rui used Hypertrophic Surge, let alone without.


    That meant that Rui needed to attack Senior Zenshin with Flowing Canon to stop that long-range wide-scale spinning technique. That would meaning close to Senior Zenshin where he could be struck by the man''s ws.


    WHOOSH!


    ¡­SPLAT!


    Rui barely avoided a lethal w strike from Senior Zenshin, suffering a minor cut from the attack.


    ''I didn''t even actually touch him!'' Rui''s eyes widened. ''Are his ws so sharp that they don''t even need to make contact with the target to cut them?!''


    Senior Zenshin''s smile widened with bloodlust. His desire to shred Rui into ribbons with his ws was so palpable that one could almost taste it. "Hehehe¡­"


    He took the stance for the technique once more as Rui''s expression grew more grave. "What''s the matter? I''m going to activate that technique again. Not going to stop me?"


    Rui narrowed his eyes. ''Damn him, he''s surprisingly not an idiot.''


    Rui''s wounds were still healing, his durability had weakened over the fight due to using Hypertrophic Surge, which fueled the growth of muscles by weakening all other parts of the body by the mechanics of the Reaper Dew poison.


    He was smart enough to realize that Rui could not afford to take too many flesh wounds like he did before. "Here I go," The man''s smile deepened, as he began spinning.


    "Tsk," Rui raced forward with Gale Force Breathing, Outer Convergence, and Parallel Walk. His fist surged forward.


    BAM!


    Rui''s eyes widened as his attack crashed into the man''s gut unguarded. He hadn''t even bothered with defense, opting to take the heavy attack head-on. Instead, his ws had already been surging at Rui.


    SPLAT!


    "Rgh!" Rui grimaced as deeper cuts emerged on his body. He had been a bit too slow in his evasion, leaping back. "Damn¡­!"


    There was only one saving grace. "Ngh¡­" Senior Zenshin grunted with an expression of pain. C0ntent ? 2024 (N/?)velDrama.Org.


    Taking Rui''s most powerful attack unguarded was something that not even Senior Zenshin could shrug off. In the first ce, he was not a defense-oriented Martial Artist, of course, that did not mean his defense was bad, there was a solid amount of defense that came with his garngantuan figure.


    That did not, however, allow him to take a Flowing Canon to the gut with no repercussions.


    "Hahaha¡­" Senior Zenshin''s expression grew excited with bloodlust. "Let''s see who can survive longer."


    The two of them quickly took their stances. Rui took a maneuvering stance that was inclined towards offense and linearity, resembling the starting crouch pose of a professional sprinter.


    Senior Zenshin spread his arms, his torso coiled, ready to spin at any moment. The battle had entered a new phase, having evolved into a battle of attrition and timing. No longer did they st each other with as many attacks as possible. No, instead, both sides focused on preserving energy and power while also focusing their efforts on nailing the timing of their respect maneuvers.


    Senior Zenshin needed tond his Hurricane of One Thousand ws twice in rapid session, while Rui needed to disrupt the execution of the technique at all costs. Both Martial Senior stood, poised for action.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1504 Opportunity

    <h4>Chapter 1504 Opportunity</h4>


    In a region of the Great Forest of Hypnonarak, silence reigned as two Martial Seniors stared at each other. Their eyes were fixed on their opponents, such that they could not even see anything else.


    There was silence, and then there was not.


    "HRYAH!" Senior Zenshin burst into motion as his body uncoiled, springing him into a spiral.


    Rui''s eyes narrowed as heunched off into a sprint, his fist surging forward as he prepared a Flowing Canon. Yet when it was merely a meter away, Zenshin abandoned his technique, redirecting his revolving ws towards Rui.


    Unfortunately for him, Rui''s predictive model foresaw the attempt.


    WHOOSH!


    Zenshin''s eyes widened with shock as the attack crashed into an empty image. Exclusive ? material by N?(/v)elDrama.Org.


    A feint.


    BAM!!


    A powerful hook empowered with Outer Convergence and Reverberating Lance crashed into the man''s liver, as Rui pushed himself away from Senior Zenshin with the recoil from the attack. "Tsk!" Senior Zenshin tutted, hiding his pain. He was far from ready to give up.


    "HYAH!" The manunched himself into a spin almost immediately, hoping to catch Rui off-guard. Yet Rui had foreseen that as well.


    BAM!!


    A powerful Flowing Canon crashed into Zenshin''s guard as the man did his best to w at Rui.


    WHOOSH!


    He failed yet again as Rui cleanly evaded him returning to his previous stance.


    "HYARGH!" Senior Zenshin tried once more, this time discontinuing the technique the moment Rui arrived within the range of his ws, ready to tear him apart.


    And yet¡­


    WHOOSH


    Rui stepped away even before his ws could had begun moving towards him, cleanly avoiding the attack. Senior Zenshin narrowed his eyes with rage as he refused to give up, repeating the aggressive technique over and over again.


    One of two things tended to happen. He would either continue with the execution of his technique, hoping to pull it off in time, or he would discontinue the technique, hoping to catch Rui off-guard with a surprise attack.


    In the former case, Rui simply surged forward with the Flowing Canon. In thetter, Rui simply turned away, evading the attack cleanly.


    However, Senior Zenshin grew increasingly frustrated as much time passed while the two of them yed this game.


    This was supposed to be a gamble Rui. Senior Zneshin merely needed to seed twice in session in order to damage him enough to gain an advantage. No matter how he looked at it, this should have been advantageous for him.


    Yet, for some reason, he was unable to tag Rui even a single time. Not even once had Rui made the wrong choice, or even the right choice at the wrong time. Whenever Senior Zenshin chose to genuinely try to execute the Hurricane of One Thousand ws, Rui unhesitatingly surged forward with his Flowing Canon, disrupting it in time.


    Whenever Senior Zenshin pretended to execute the attack, Rui somehow always knew and would always avoid the trap.


    Seconds, minutes, and even hours passed. Their Martial Hearts had already flickered out as they went off. These reservoirs of potent power were not endless, and their regr stamina was far greater than their normal stamina.


    Yet despite all the time that had passed, not once had he managed to touch Rui despite the advantage.


    "HRYAH!" He desperately spun once more, pretending to activate the Hurricane of One Thousand ws once more. He made sure that his farce was immacte, he genuinely executed the breathing techniques and other maneuvers as wlessly as possible right down to the minor twitch. Rui surged forward at top speed, as always. Suddenly, Senior Zenshin halted his technique, throwing a furiously swift w swipe at Rui.


    And despite that¡­


    WHOOSH!


    Rui had long stepped away, cleanly evading the attack with ease.


    ''DAMMIT,'' Senion Zenshin''s expression crumpled with rage and frustration. ''How is this even possible? He began dodging just the briefest moment before I began attacking him.''


    Every time. This had happened every time. It was as though there was nog. It was as though his reaction time was less than zero. It was as though he knew the future itself. Despite that, Zenshin did not give up. "HRYAH!" He began executing the Hurricane of One Thousand ws once more, going all out with the speed of the execution.


    And yet, Rui had already arrived.


    BOOM!!


    A powerful Flowing Canon crashed into the man''s back, leaving behind an ugly bruise as it threw him off-bnce.


    BAM BAM BAM!!


    Rui sted him with blow after blow, exploiting the opportunity to pile on immense attacks. The flow of the battle had changed now that Rui had finally managed to turn an opening into a proper opportunity.


    "HRYAH!" Senior Zenshin turned out swinging his ws at Rui. Yet this time, Rui had no intention of letting the opportunity go and returning to the existing deadlock.


    TAP TAP TAP!


    "Hng!" The man froze, choking as he felt jolts of electric current passing through his sr plexus and diaphragm. His eyes widened as he made a shocking discovery.


    He couldn''t breathe.


    At all!


    Before, his breathing was greatlybored, significantly hampering his raw power. However, this time, he was unable to breathe whatsoever. Thebination of Lightning Tap and Breathing Crucifix had a synergetic collusion. Rui had greatly hampered his breathing mentally through hypnosis, while Lightning Tap had temporarily hampered his breathing physically.


    For a few moments, Senior Zenshin suffocated, the shock and the inability to supply needed oxygen to sustain his expensive energy expenditure togetherpletely halted his movements.


    This was perhaps Rui''s one and only opportunity to end the fight with a decisive victory.


    "Rgh!" Rui strained himself to the absolute limit as he unloaded the mother of all beatdowns on the suffocated Zenshin. Eyes, throat, liver, testicles, and even his diaphragm. With Outer Convergence supplying the raw power, Adamant Reforging increasing the quality of the collision, and Reverberating Lance permeating the impact deeper into the vulnerable depths of the vital regions, he managed to inflict immense damage on Senior Zenshin over these areas.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1505 Arrival

    <h4>Chapter 1505 Arrival</h4>


    BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM!!


    "Rrrgh!" Rui gritted his teeth as his body began hurting under the sheer strain of the effort that he was exerting. Blow after blow crashed into Senior Zenshin''s body as the man''s condition rapidly declined with all the damage he incurred. The sessive blows to his diaphragm hampered his breathing even more, albeit temporarily.


    Of course, it didn''t take long for Senior Zenshin to regain his wits. He abandoned defense entirely as he swung both ws at Rui.


    But s, not even that could reach Rui.


    WHOOSH!


    Rui stepped away briefly as he evaded the attack, yet the battle had already tilted in his favor. Ugly purple and brown bruises had already formed across Senior Zenshin''s entire body. He had been bleeding profusely from multiple open wounds and orifices. His breathing had not entirely recovered to even its previous state which had still been horribly hampered due to the Breathing Crucifix technique.


    The multiple shocks that his diaphragm had sustained in addition to the continuous damage it had suffered due to the permeation of impact from Reverberating Lance made it so that he truly struggled to breathe, making every single movement extremelybored, heavy and sluggish.


    Rui had no intention of remaining passive anymore.


    ''I don''t have much time left,'' He noted as even his breathing had begun to growbored. He had been fighting for a long time, and even though he had purposely designed Breathing Crucifix as a high-stamina technique tost for a long time, it still put a strain on his mind and consumed his mental energy continuously.


    If he let things continue for too much longer, the battle would be even again.


    WHOOSH!


    Rui surged forth one more time.


    Senior Zenshin staggered unstably, haphazardly swinging his ws in Rui''s direction in a desperate attempt to ward him off.


    But even if Rui was too exhausted for continuous extravagant maneuvers, the pattern recognition system was still far too powerful to allow him to be tagged so easily. Exclusive ? material by N?(/v)elDrama.Org.


    WHOOSH!


    Rui smoothly shifted a foot, avoiding the haymaker w swipe with minimal effort while cleanly surging in with a powerful Flowing Canon.


    BOOM!


    A powerful blow to the sr plexus with the full might of Outer Convergence caused the man to vomit blood.


    BAM BAM BAM!!!


    Three blows to the man''s jaws caused a bout of dizziness, yet the stubborn warrior refused to fall unconscious. He swung his ws, wandering about, hoping desperately that they struck Rui.


    His offense was so lethal, that even in this state, he could still cause fatal damage to Rui.


    But s, such a thing never happened.


    Rui cleanly avoided each blow as he surgically bombarded Senior Zenshin with blow after blow.


    Yet the man never fell.


    He staggered, he coughed blood, he shuddered in pain, yet he stood his ground, swinging to the very end. Not once did the fire of vengeance in his eyes ever snuff.


    Rui could not help but feel an immense amount of respect for the man, even if thetter would have loved nothing more than to skin Rui alive with his ws. The sheer fortitude and perseverance that the man disyed was something that he ought to have been proud of.


    Rui had no doubt that Senior Zenshin could have easily fallen into a bout of despair and emptiness and could have broken psychologically the way Senior Marna did. Yet despite the sheer degree to which Rui adaptively evolved to ovee his Martial Art with a much weaker Body and Heart, he still did not give in.


    His spirit never broke even to the very end.


    BAM!!


    A powerful high kick crashed into the man''s jaw. His skull shook violently as his eyes rolled back. A critical threshold had been crossed as the blunt force trauma to the brain caused it to shut down.


    THUD


    The gargantuan body copsed, unconscious. Rui fell to his knees as he finally dispelled the Breathing Crucifix technique, catching his breath.


    "That was close¡­" Rui panted. "Far too close."


    He had lost count of the number of times that he had almost lost an arm or a part of his limb against Senior Zenshin.


    Even with the Hypnomatrix, Metabody System, and the pattern recognition systems of the VOID algorithm, he had still needed to squeeze everything from all his techniques to all his tactics and strategies to edge out a decisive win at the end.


    ''The VOID algorithm and the various upgrades that I have made to it are impressively powerful, however, they are usuallypensating for massive gaps in raw physical parameters between myself and my opponent,'' Rui heaved a sigh, pulling out a rejuvenation potion. Even in the Squire Realm, his Martial Body had been substantially behind those of peers of the same rank, although it was far stronger than Martial Artists his age. His Martial Body had been grade seven or eight when he was a grade-ten Martial Squire.


    That gap only widened when he broke through to the Senior Realm. Here were Martial Seniors that had been around for more than a century with Martial Bodies that had grown significantly in that time.


    Then there was the gap in Martial Hearts, which further increased the gap in raw power between himself and other Martial Seniors of his grade. These were not small gaps, and even with the VOID algorithm, it was truly difficult topensate and ovee such arge gap.


    ''I definitely need to fix this issue somehow,'' He shook his head. ''I''ll put it on the list.''


    Meanwhile, some distance away in the human domain, a single carriage had pulled up to the Gereign base of the Carnil Mafia. A single middle-aged woman stepped out of the carriage, frowning as she inspected the great damage that had erupted as a result of the battle between Senior Zenshin and Rui.


    "What happened here?" She called out, with an amplified voice.


    One of the managers in charge widened his eyes as he immediately scurried to the woman, bowing his head deeply.


    "Apologies for the dyed wee, Master Haishi."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1506 Escalate

    <h4>Chapter 1506 Escte</h4>


    Rui heaved a sigh as he stepped forward to Senior Zenshin''s body, having consumed several rejuvenation potions.


    "Rgh¡­" The man beaten-down man stirred, waking up from being knocked out. He opened his eyes, dazed, turning to Rui who stood beside his body.


    Normally, Rui killed his victims when they were unconscious, but this one had managed to wake up.


    "¡­Anyst words?" Rui asked in the Kandriannguage. The man''s eyes widened, narrowing. "You bastard¡­ You''re from the Kandrian Empire, not the Republic of Gorteau." This is from N?velDrama.Org.


    "That unsubstantiated confidence is precisely the reason you''re in this situation, among others," Rui replied.


    "Why do this? Who sent you? Was it the Aggragor Syndicate? Any of the other mafias?"


    Rui didn''t respond, having simply activated his Martial Heart, ready to kick at the man''s head and put him to rest. That was when he felt the oppressive pressure crash down on him. His eyes widened with shock as chills crawled up his spine. Shivers went down his skin. He recognized this pressure. It was the same kind of pressure he felt when Master Uma had ambushed him and Master Deivon.


    His eyes widened as realization dawned on him.


    "So, you''re the assant that has caused us immense trouble, hm?" Master Haishi asked, standing beside.


    Rui hadn''t even been able to react to her approach. ''Dammit, I didn''t expect them to not only bring a Master but also be able to hide this information from the Beggar''s Sect.''


    "I''m going to have youe with us," She remarked. "You''re going to regret having antagonized us. We''re going to squeeze every ounce of information you have on you, then we''re going to take our time killing you and everyone you love."


    "Heh¡­" Senior Zenshin grinned vindictively. "I call first dibs."


    Master Haishi narrowed her eyes at his words.


    BOOM!


    "Rgh!" The man grimaced in pain as she swiftly lifted and crashed her foot on his injured body in a powerful drop-kick.


    Yet the fear he felt overwhelmed the pain. He shivered as he felt the pure fury that Master Haishi radiated.


    "You dare make ims after the mess you''ve caused?" She gritted her teeth with rage. "You dare? Your fate isn''t going to be too much better than his."


    Senior Zenshin shook at those words, his expression growing grave. "¡­I ept responsibility."


    "Hmph, you will, whether you like it or not. Still, perhaps you have some saving grace. I''m going to train you to your bones"


    She turned towards Rui. "Now then, go to sleep. It''ll be yourst peaceful one."


    Her hand balled into a fist as it blurred, surging forward at blinding speeds, disappearing from his vision.


    Yet it nevernded on him.


    It froze just inches away from his jaw.


    Master Haishi''s expression grew rmed as she stared at her frozen hand. It refused to move. It refused to obey hermands.


    It was as though her body had been stolen from hermand.


    Rui didn''t understand what was happening.


    "Hohoo¡­?" A familiar elderly voice emerged from behind him. "A foreign Martial Master dares to enter my domain."


    Master Haishi''s eyes widened in shock, still struggling to control her body. "You¡­"


    "Your presence is well hidden," He remarked, studying her with interest. "Furthermore, I see you''re armed with esoteric substances that sabotage the subconscious mind''s senses. I see, so this is why you were so confident ining to the Gereign Region. You thought that these measures would be enough to disguise your state as a Martial Master¡­"


    "¡­Well, you were right. They were enough. I hadn''t sensed a thing! Hahaha!" Master Zeamer guffawed as the mental pressure he exerted plummeted. "Frankly, you would have been able to reside in the Gereign Region without me noticing, as long as I never directly focused on you. Yet you made one crucial blunder¡­"


    His smile grew a hint more perilous. "You attacked my pupil¡­The moment you did that, you earned my personal attention. You see, I''m quite possessive of my things, especially from my peers."


    Master Haishi gritted her teeth, struggling to move her hand. "Pupil¡­? This kid?"


    She red at Rui, who was finally spurred out of his reverie, leaping away as he joined Master Zeamer''s side. The air grew taut as the two Masters stared at each other.


    "Master¡­" Rui began, clenching his fist. He knew how bad things would have gotten without his intervention. It would have been hopeless. "¡­I''m truly gra-"


    "Don''t mentioned it," He remarked. "Stand back, things are going to get just a little rough. Just a little."


    Those words pricked at Master Haishi. She gritted her teeth, narrowing her eyes as they glowed, activating her Martial Heart, finally freeing her body. "You¡­"


    Both Zenshin and Rui flinched. The sheer amount of pressure that she was unleashing prickled at their minds. Pure fury seemed to reverberate from deep within her being, inspiring primal fear within them.


    Yet Master Zeamer simply stared at her with a mundane expression.


    Yet Rui recognized his displeasure. He hade to learn in the pas two years that it wasn''t the best idea to be the source of Master Zeamer''s displeasure.


    "First, you send your disciple to sabotage our operations. Next, you actively antagonize me, a Martial Master of the Carnil Mafia¡­" Her voice wasdened with bloodlust as her eyes shed with fury. "You dare provoke the Kandrian Underworld? You? A single Martial Master?"


    "Hah¡­" Master Zeamer snorted. "Why wouldn''t I? There''s only one person in the Kandrian Underworld who can ovee me."


    "Arrogant¡­" She murmured. "That''s the third time you''ve provoked us. Know that your death is yours to me."


    An aura of power that surged far beyond the Martial Heart seemed to radiate from her.


    "Hohoho¡­" Master Zeamer chuckled. "Scary. But I like that. I''d let you go since it would be a shame to kill such a feisty woman. But there is something that not even being female can excuse."


    His Martial Heart zed into power, shining like the sun. "Like messing with my pupil."


    "Enough talk," She snorted. "I''ll show you just how small you are."


    "Hah," Master Zeamer smirked, activating his Martial Mind. "That''s what she said."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1507 Shadow Credo

    <h4>Chapter 1507 Shadow Credo</h4>


    A maelstrom of pressure had engulfed the entire Gereign Region. Every animal, monster, human, and Martial Artist felt a mind-churning pressure crash into them. True terror sprung up within their hearts, crippling them.


    Many froze, paralyzed.


    Others shivered in horror.


    Many simply fainted then and there, despite the enormous distance between them and the source of the great pressure that they experienced.


    Rui and Zenshin gulped as they stood up behind their Masters, trying to maintain theirposure as much as they could. Senior Zenshin in particr, struggled as he did his best to resist the mental pressure crashing into him.


    Rui was a lot calmer, yet even he felt a tingling nervousness. The battle had begun sooner than he had expected. One moment, the two Martial Masters were standing right before them, and the very next moment they disappeared.


    Rui and Zenshin grew startled, ncing at each other. The very next moment, they felt blood-curdling pressure.


    Every cell in their body screamed danger.


    A peril unlike anything they were ustomed to washed over them. Every instinct in their body wanted them to run away.


    The skies seemed to shiver as the two Martial Masters bathed it in their Martial Embodiments.


    Master Zeamer''s very existence seemed to morph into an entirely different entity. He turned into the rotating dichromatic spiral that Rui hade to grow familiar with in the past two years, having fully activated his Martial Mind. This is from N?velDrama.Org.


    "What a paltry Martial Embodiment." Master Haishi''s voice echoed across the skies from all directions. "Allow me to bear mine!"


    Master Zeamer raised an eyebrow as a vast mist wrapped around the hypnotic spiral, obscuring it and everything around it.


    The Gereign Region was shook, both physically and mentally. The two Martial Embodiments captured the totality of the sentience within the entire region¡­


    ¡­before breaking it.


    "AAAAAARGH!" "HELP- HEEEEEELPP!!"


    "W-WHAT IS THAT?!"


    "HELP- HEEEEEELPP!!"


    Countless people had already copsed. Many were conscious, yet broken. Their eyes were hollow, as if the very sentience within them had been disabled. Others had died on the spot, having experienced heart attacks.


    Many simply copsed unconscious.


    Countless bodies were strewn across the Gereign Region.


    Those that were conscious did not have it better. In fact, many would argue they had it worse. The sheer horror they experienced from seeing what was the fabric of their world turning into a horror movie in addition to the mental pressure that the Martial Embodiments inflicted upon them was too much.


    "AAAAAAARGHHRR!" Many fell to their knees, holding their heads as they shivered in bone-chilling terror.


    Yet the two forces that caused such havoc and mayhem did not deem it fit to take any measures to hold back.


    Their battle had begun, and they cared only to fight each other. Master Zeamer stood in the air, expanding his senses across the skies of the Gereign Region. ''I can''t sense her. But this isn''t misdirection either, so this is physical stealth and not mental stealth.''


    He knew that she wasn''t relying on misdirection to hide her presence. There were no Martial Masters capable of misdirecting him without him noticing it, furthermore, he had instantly sensed that she was not a mental Martial Artist. "What''s the matter, having a hard time sensing me?" Her voiced echoed across the heavens. A hint of sadistic amusement colored the tone of her voice. Just hearing that voice had caused hundreds of thousands of people to experience mental breakdowns, tens of thousands to copse, and thousands to die.


    Martial Masters had ascended to a higher state of life, such that merely the weight of the Martial Mind behind their voice could copse human civilization.


    Yet, it was ineffective against a fellow Martial Master


    "¡­" Master Zeamer didn''t bother replying.


    They were just feeling each other out at the moment, despite the apocalypse that they caused within the Gereign Region.


    The true battle would soonmence.


    And it did.


    BAM BAM BAM!!!


    An onught of titanically powerful strikesnded across his entire body from all directions. The sheer power and speed of strikes were on a level of power and speed that Rui couldn''t evenprehend!


    Each blow possessed the power to reduce mountains to dust. They shed forward at speeds that far exceeded even lightning itself. Such was the power of the Master Realm.


    Yet despite the sheer titanic power that Master Haishi generated, not a single one of those blows generated environmental spige.


    The very skies seemed to prostrate in her presence as the air seemed to deliberately part away from the path of her attacks, unwilling to impede her.


    Not a single spec of heat sparked.


    Not a single vibration of sound ensued.


    Not a single gust of wind emerged.


    Nothing went to waste. Every iota of energy that her Martial Heart generated was dedicated one and only one target.


    Her opponent.


    BOOM BOOM BOOM!!!


    Master Haishi''s sadistic grin widened as she sted Master Zeamer with every ounce of her raw power. "What''s the matter? Where did all that bravado go?"


    Master Zeamer narrowed his eyes, remaining calm. Yet wounds had begun piling on to his Martial Body.


    "Your Martial Body is oriented to aid your mind, I''m sure your brain is enhanced well. You probably have a greater reservoir of mental energy than anybody else in the Master Realm, but that means that your body is much weaker!"


    BOOM BOOM BOOM!!!


    Master Haishi grew ecstatic as she continued bombarding Master Zeamer with blow after blow. "Hahahahaha! You''re so weak! Or am I just too strong? I can never tell!"


    Yet despite her apparent irrationality, her mind raced with thought.


    ''Martial Mind: Shadow Credo First Degree. Sense of mind, vision, hearing, spatial sense, sense of touch, sense of smell, sense of taste. That is the order of intensity intensity of his senses. His sense of mind is more powerful than the rest of them, so I need to allocate even more energy to eluding it. I''ll allocate decreasing amounts of energy in ascending order of their intensity,'' A remarkably sophisticated thought process sprung about in her mind.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1508 Unfolding

    <h4>Chapter 1508 Unfolding</h4>


    Master Haishi''s Martial Path was active stealth brawling. She simply eluded her opponent''s senses through various physical principles instead of misdirection, allowing her to fight head-on and directly without fearing attracting her opponent''s attention.


    Most misdirection-centric stealth users could not maintain stealth while also directly engaging their targets inbat. Engaging targets inbat attracted attention to them which worked against misdirection. It was intrinsically contradictory.


    There were very few exceptions to this rule like Kane, because he had mastered the grade-ten Void Step which relied onbat maneuvering itself to misdirect his target, and Rui, whose misdirection was so powerful that it could work even if he directly engaged his target head-on.


    Some especially powerful mind-oriented Martial Artists could also do the same, but the number was highly limited.


    Physical stealth that relied on physical principles to elude senses did not have such a shoring. Master Haishi couldpletely fight head-on and go all out without having to worry about sabotaging her own stealth.


    She further improved her elusive ability with her Martial Mind; the Shadow Credo. It was a methodology by which she applied her energy and physical resources to ensure that her stealth was optimized in its probability of fooling her opponent. She would secretly test her opponent''s senses subtly to evaluate the quality of their senses, and then alter the configuration of senses that her stealth was focused on.


    Her stealth would grow stronger against her opponent throughout the fight even while she bombarded them with her powerful attacks.


    It was precisely this framework of thought that had allowed her to break through to the Master Realm.


    Had Rui been qualified to be able to witness her Martial Mind in work he would have instantly recognized the element of adaptive evolution in her Martial Mind, but s, he was hardly able to even perceive the battle.


    He was only able to behold the mist increasingly oppressing the hypnotic spiral. His expression grew grave at the sight.


    "Hehehe¡­" Senior Zenshin. "Master Haishi is a direct executive of Lord Carnil himself. She is particrly powerful. As powerful as the Hypnomaster is, he can''tpare!"


    Rui red at the man momentarily, turning back to the raging fighting in the skies. Although killing Senior Zenshin and running away was probably the most prudent option, he decided against it. He did not want to run away.


    He did not even want to look away from the fight anymore.


    ''This sensation¡­'' Rui felt his nerves tingling. ''This is the power of the Upper Realms."


    His fists clenched. ''I want it. I want it with every ounce of my being.''


    His heart ached with desire. It had been a little under five years since he became a Martial Senior, and yet his ambition to achieve even greater power had already overtaken him. Meanwhile, the battle between those with the power he sought had already escted in intensity.


    "Rgh!" Master Zeamer coughed blood as he panted heavily. Bruises and cuts scarred his entire body as he bled profusely. His Martial Embodiment fluctuated.


    "Honestly¡­" Master Haishi heaved a sigh, putting a hand on her waist. "I''m disappointed. All that hype. All that notoriety. All those legends and tales of the great Hypnomaster."


    Her head tilted up as she looked down on him with unfiltered disdain. "You are a disappointment. You''re so weak. You must have hypnotized normal people and used them to spread false rumors about yourself, right? No wonder even the Beggar''s Sect was fooled. Truly disappointing." The very heavens curved under the weight of her bloodlust. "Just looking at you infuriates me."


    Her Martial Heart began shining even brighter as her rage skyrocketed. "I will end this farce now."


    She shed forward at a speed that beggared the mind, crossing the distance between them in a microsecond.


    BOOM!!!!!


    SPLAT!!!


    Both her palms surged forward sting two holes in his chest. Her arms buried themselves to the elbow.


    "Rgh¡­!" The man vomited blood as his eyes widened with shock.


    "Die, fraud," Shemanded.


    CLASP!


    Her eyes widened as she felt two hands on her buttocks, groping them.


    "Hoho¡­" Master Zeamer leaned forward, burying his face in her ample bosom, rubbing her breasts with his cheeks in glee and excitement. "Hohohooo¡­!"


    RUMBLE!!!


    Thend of the Gereign Region began shaking violently as a Richter-eight earthquake seemed to erupt out of nowhere!


    Pure raw disgust emerged on Master Haishi''s face. "You filthy disgusting lecherous animal."


    The skies began to shake with her fury. "DIE!"


    CRACK CRACK CRACK!


    ¡­SPLAT!!!


    Rui''s eyes widened as he barely managed to spot what was happening at the epicenter of Master Zeamer''s Embodiment.


    "She¡­split him in half?" Rui choked with shock.


    "Hahahahaha!" Senior Zenshin cackled. "My Master defeated yours! Now it''s your turn for a world of hurt.


    Up in the skies, Master Haishi''s face was still crumpled with disgusted rage. "I feel dirty. I should prepare a long nice bath. At least I disposed of that living human filth."


    Suddenly, she froze.


    ''Wait a minute¡­'' A wave of pure terror erupted from within her. ''If he''s dead, then why is Martial Embodiment still active?''


    Not only did the hypnotic spiral not disappear, it grew even stronger.


    There was only one answer.


    "Because I''m not dead," Master Zeamer''s voice emerged from behind her.


    A profound sense of peril radiated from him. A deep feeling of horror overtook her heart as she struggled to maintain herposure. "H-How¡­?"


    "You still don''t get it?" Master Zeamer chuckled. "This entire fight¡­everything that has happened up until now¡­has happened inside your head."


    She turned around, leaping away from him with a fearful expression. Her eyes widened as she beheld his Martial Body. There wasn''t a single scratch anywhere on his body. All of the bruises, cuts, broken bones, not to mention the two gaping holes that she had sted in his chest had disappeared.


    Even the clothes she had shredded in the process of beating him up were gone.


    "It was quite entertaining to watch you run around the sky punching and beating up empty air like the little fool you are." Master Zeamer chuckled. "But, I''ve gotten bored of it. So let''s put an end to this."


    He closed his eyes, before shing them wide open. They glowed with power. Exclusive ? material by N?(/v)elDrama.Org.


    ''Astral Abyss Style: Armageddon.''


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1509 Death

    <h4>Chapter 1509 Death</h4>


    One moment, Master Haishi was simply standing in the sky, staring at him warily and cautiously.


    The next moment, every cell in her body spontaneously died. Life transitioned to death in just a moment.


    The mist that covered the skies disappeared, leaving only the hypnotic spiral rotating in the sky. She plummeted from the air, free-falling until she copsed into the crowd. BOOM


    Just like that, a Martial Master perished.


    Senior Zenshin was stunned. "M-Master¡­?"


    BANG!


    ¡­CRACK


    Before he could even process his Master''s death, Rui had already activated his Martial Heart, killing the man on the spot. He had almost lost the chance earlier, and he wanted to make sure that nothing went wrong this time.


    "Huff¡­" He heaved a relieved sigh, ncing back at the figure that descended from the sky gracefully. "Master Zeamer¡­"


    The elderly mannded before Rui wordlessly staring at Rui with an expectant expression. "Thank you for saving my life," Rui bowed his head. "I would have been dead without you."


    "Hoho¡­Don''t mention it, my young disciple. T''was but a trivial matter," He said with a smug expression. Rui nced at the corpse of the Martial Master. "¡­What was that?"


    "Hm?" Master Zeamer nced at the Master Haishi''s cadaver. "Ah, that was one of my trump cards, Armageddon. It''s a grade-ten Master-level technique that I created."


    "¡­How did it instantly kill her? Is that even possible with hypnosis?" Rui asked him warily.


    "Generally, no. But it is possible for someone of my caliber," He remarked ndly, staring at the corpse with cold eyes. "The hypnotic technique works by convincing the subconscious mind that the person is dead. And the subconscious mind follows suit..."


    Rui''s eyes widened with shock.


    "It is the subconscious mind that maintains and monitors the body. Convincing it is dead is no different from killing the person on the spot. It is a hypnotic technique that harnesses death itself." Master Zeamer remarked. "It takes a very powerful and trained mind to even possibly resist the hypnosis, and clearly she didn''t have it in her."


    Rui wasn''t even sure what to say. This was such an absurdly lethal and powerful technique that killed so easily that Rui wasn''t even sure if such a thing was even allowed. A death-dealing hypnotic spell that killed in a heartbeat sounded incredibly dangerous.


    Rui made a mental note of never getting on Master Zeamer''s bad side.


    "Well then, I''ve finished what I came here for," Master Zeamer remarked, walking away. "Good fight. It was quite entertaining to watch."


    "You were watching?"


    "Of course, I always am. This is my domain. I''m d you didn''t die, though there were several close calls."


    "What would you have done if I was going to die or did die?" Rui wondered. This is from N?velDrama.Org.


    "Nothing at all," Master Zeamer replied nonchntly. "Losing a fight that you provoked against a fellow Martial Senior peer of yours ispletely on you. I don''t meddle in quarrels between children."


    Rui smiled, that was about what he hade to expect from Master Zeamer. He made onest bow. "Thanks again, Master."


    "Stay sharp, my entertaining disciple."


    When Rui nced back up, the man had already disappeared. It appeared that he wasn''t interested in bidding Rui a second farewell. Rui was sure that he just wanted to return to his harem as soon as possible.


    He heaved a sigh, putting the old Master out of his mind before returning to his situation.


    "Now then, what should I do?" Rui wondered.


    He nced at the two corpses that were strewn about. "I''ve killed all my targets, not a single Martial Artist above Squire-level exists in the devastated Gereign base. On top of that, the Martial Master is also dead."


    Rui nced back at the human domain. "Not to mention, the Martial Embodiments have killed, broken, or damaged every single normal human in the Gereign Region. So even the surviving employees, if that''s what they are, of the Carnil Mafia are severely damaged."


    Essentially, the Carnil Mafia lost everything. Rui took out all their Martial Seniors.


    Master Zeamer killed one of their precious Martial Masters.


    The two Martial Embodiments either killed or crippled all of their people.


    The infrastructure of their base had been entirely destroyed or greatly devastated by the initial sh between Zenshin and himself.


    "Yeah, that Carnil Mafia can''t afford or rather will choose not, to expend all the resources needed to rece all of that," Rui figured, running through variable possible scenarios based on the data that the Beggar''s Sect gave them. "The probability that they''ll fix this mess is just really low. SO mission aplished, I suppose. Time to go tell the Beggar''s Sect."


    Rui''s eyes widened as he realized the Beggar''s Sect undoubtedly suffered immensely from the battle. He had known them well enough by now to know that their people had most certainly deeply infiltrated pretty much any and every organization and force. The Gereign Region undoubtedly contained many of the spies of the Beggar''s Sect, and there was no doubt that they had suffered heavy losses and casualties.


    "Damn¡­" Rui scratched his head.


    There was only one thing he could do about that. "I''m going to have to me it all on you, Master Zeamer," He was sure that the Master was listening. "It is your fault, so I''m not even wrong."


    He shrugged. He wasn''t avoiding responsibility since he didn''t cause all this widespread damage. ''More importantly, I''ve finally finished mymission payment,'' Rui heaved a deep expectant sigh.


    It did not take a short amount of time. He had spent more than four years since he began hismission payment.


    ''Of course, most of that time has gone into training with Master Reina and Master Zeamer,'' He heaved a sigh. ''Still, it has been long. Time to finally get the information and intelligence that I need. After that¡­''


    His eyes narrowed. ''After that, I can finally take that asshole down.''


    As he walked across the human domain of the Gereign region, he had to admit, the damage was more extensive than he expected. Everybody was seemingly hurt, thus there were very few able-bodied people. Although the two Masters caused even less physical damage than Martial Seniors, the actual losses they caused were far more devastating.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1510 Acknowledgement

    <h4>Chapter 1510 Acknowledgement</h4>


    The Gereign Distribution Center which served as a base of the foreign affairs department of the Beggar''s Sect was not doing too well, but still far better than the rest of the Gereign Region.


    There were many able-bodied men and women who were working furiously on all kinds of duties and tasks. "Move!" One woman shouted at him as she shoved past him, carrying a stack of documents. The fact that they didn''t even bother deferring to him the way they normally did Martial Seniors showed just how dire of a situation they were in. Not that Rui minded, he didn''t care about such meaningless matters.


    ''I do hope I can meet Ferm,'' Rui sighed. That was the executive who was his point of contact within this base of the Gereign Region. "I''m here to speak with Executive Ferm," Rui approached a staff member at the reception counter. "He''s busy," She replied not even ncing at him while she furiously fiddled with her terminal.


    "I''m willing to wait."


    "You''re going to have to wait a while."


    "I don''t mind," Rui replied turning back, taking a seat on the crouch.


    It turned out that she wasn''t kidding. He did have to wait for quite a long time. He spent most of his time reflecting on his battle with Senior Zenshin.


    Out of all the Martial Seniors he had ever faced or even seen, Senior Zenshin was definitely the strongest. The second strongest was probably Senior Ceeran, while the third strongest was Senior Marna.


    He had managed to defeat the strongest Martial Senior he had ever met, though it truly took him everything he had, and he almost died. ''His raw physical parameters were leagues above mine. Especially his lethality, it''s unlike anything that I have," Rui sighed. "My ability to inflict damage is somewhat limited. I need Hypertrophic Surge, and even then he''s far stronger than I am, and more lethal in his offense."


    Rui heaved a sigh. If not for Breathing Crucifix, not even the pattern recognition system would have been in enough. It wouldn''t even have made it in time. Although he was d that the upgraded VOID algorithm with the Hypnomatrix and the Metabody System was powerful enough to bridge such arge gap, he was not pleased that suchrge gaps existed in the first ce.


    When it came to his Body, Heart, and even the techniques that harnessed the power of Body and Heart and employed it, he was behind in all aspects.


    He pondered about the details of the fight deeply, it was a good way to spend the time.


    "Sir?" An exhausted assistant approached him. "Executive Ferm is ready to meet you."


    "Finally," Rui muttered. The assistant led him to the man''s office, leaving him inside before closing the door.


    "Senior Falken," The man addressed Rui without much of a smile. "We have much to speak about. Please have a seat."


    "I havepleted the mission that the Beggar''s Sect gave me," Rui remarked. "With this, the Carnil mafia will surely not return after their operations have experienced a catastrophic failure. Even if they did, they have earned the ire of the Vale Syndicate and will face even greater pressure. The years worth of reconstruction due to the sheer distance, the general chaos of the Gereign Region, and the losses they have already incurred, the inevitable dy to their ns. It''s simply not worth it anymore."


    What especially sealed the deal in his mind was the loss of a Martial Master. That was very painful even for the Carnil Mafia.


    Executive Ferm simply stared at him with a neutral expression and perfect posture, considering his words. He hid it well, but Rui could tell that he was running on fumes. C0ntent ? 2024 (N/?)velDrama.Org.


    "It is true that you havepleted the operation we gave you. But a side consequence has been the sh of Martial Masters that caused immense damage to us," Executive Ferm replied.


    "I do not control a Martial Master''s actions," Rui shrugged. "I did not summon the Hypnomaster, and I certainly did not summon the other Master. In fact, had the Beggar''s Sect informed me of Master Haishi''s impending arrival, I would have done things in a very different way, if at all."


    Executive Ferm simply stared at Rui. Unfortunately, it was true that Rui could not be held responsible for a battle between two Martial Masters that essentially crippled the Gereign Region.


    "Your statements are urate," Executive Ferm sighed. "As per the uses of themission contract, we will fulfill our end of the deal. Unfortunately, our operations, both external and internal have ground to a halt. It will take quite some time for us to procure what we are obligated to give you."


    "You seem to be doing fine," Rui remarked. "In fact, I''ve noticed a lot of people in this building are."


    "Core internal staff have undergone rigorous mental fortitude training, as have executives like myself. We are specifically trained to resist mental pressure from Martial Artists like yourself. Thus, while we have suffered immense stress, we have avoided suffering damage or breakdowns." The man calmly replied.


    "Oh?" Rui raised an eyebrow. "I didn''t know that that was a thing."


    "It''s not a custom exclusive to the Beggar''s Sect," The man remarked. "Most people in power have undergone varying levels of mental fortitude training. People in positions of power cannot afford to be mentally intimidated by the average Martial Apprentice or Martial Squire. The more power one wields, the greater the mental fortitude training."


    Rui grew intrigued by the man''s remarks. He recalled that Guildmaster Bradt had personally signed a deal with a Martial Sage, of all people. He was willing to bet that the Guildmaster too had undergone some pretty severe mental fortitude training himself for him to carry himself in a manner befitting his power before a Martial Sage.


    "Huff¡­Well, putting that aside, let us conclude this matter quickly. This is a statement of acknowledgment of the fact that you have fulfilled your agreement," Executive Ferm sighed, sliding him a stamped and signed paper.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1511 Reality

    <h4>Chapter 1511 Reality</h4>


    "It''ll take quite some time for us to resume our operations," Executive Ferm remarked. "An enormous proportion of our staff is dead or crippled. It won''t be easy returning to our normal functioning. Therefore, you can choose to wait for a few weeks if you want, or you can go to the Shionel Confederation and procure themission that you made."


    "You want me to go to the Shionel Confederation to procure themission?"


    "It is in the Shionel Confederation. If our operations were functioning smoothly, we could have procured it via a remote transmission, but unfortunately it will take some to get back our remote transmissionmunication systems back to speed," He replied ndly. "Therefore, you can shorten that time by directly going to the Shionel Confederation to procure the information that you need. An assassin of your caliber should be able to infiltrate it with ease."


    Rui heaved a sigh, considering the proposal. He had regarded the Shionel Confederation as a lion''s den. However, he had reached a level of power capability that he no longer had any reason to look at it with such fear and regard.


    ''Besides, I''ll probably have to go there if I want to kill Chairman Deacon," Rui heaved a sigh. ''No point in dilly-dallying, I need that intelligence ASAP.''


    "Alright, I''ll do that. I believe that concludes our business here," Rui remarked, taking the paper. "I appreciate your services."


    Rui got up, heading towards the door, before pausing and heaving a sigh. "Onest thing."


    He turned towards Executive Ferm. "This isn''t going to change anything, but for what it''s worth¡­ I am sorry about the damages that the Beggar''s Sect has incurred. I know I did not directly and intentionally cause such an oue, nor did my negligence or shorings cause such an oue. But I am sorry nheless."


    Executive Ferm smiled bitterly. "It''s fine. I have long gotten used to this. In the Age of Martial Art, Martial Artists are the most dominant force among humans. We normal humans are subject to the whims and fancies of Martial Artists like yourself. The death toll of unintentional and negligent coteral damage deaths caused by Martial Artists is estimated in the hundreds of millions annually across the continent, on average. This is simply the reality that we live in."


    He hid it perfectly well, but Rui could sense deep resentment and hatred within the man''s eyes. Yet he put his duties and professionalism first, never once letting it affect his interactions with Rui.


    Rui couldn''t think of anything to say. What was their to say? He had long lost count of how many people he had killed. Even if he limited his targets to those who caused human suffering, he knew that it was practically impossible to not hurt innocent people even if he did his very best to be careful about those he hurt.


    All the people that he hurt in the Gereign base and the Derschek Region, most of them were drug traffickers that ruined people''s lives, or assassin contractors that spread death. However, was each and every single one of those humans scumbags who deserved to die?


    Realistically, no. There were probably some mostly innocent people mixed among them.


    Just as Ferm said, Rui viewed them as coteral damage. If he ever ran into an innocent man he crippled, he would apologize and perhaps even reimburse them. But he would not change. He could not afford to hamper himself by caring for every possible individual person.. This is from N?velDrama.Org.


    He didn''t feel good about it. But he certainly did not want to spout some hypocritical moral titudes to the man. "¡­Goodbye," Rui turned around, leaving the office with the statement of acknowledgment in hand. His next destination was the Shionel Confederation. It was a few weeks away at sustainable jogging speeds. Martial Senior-without-Martial-Heart jogging speeds, that was.


    Once he got there, he would finally acquire the information he had purchased, after that, it was forming an appropriate strategy and then killing Chairman Deacon. ''Wait, I recall that he was establishing a base in the Kandrian Empire, which probably means that there is a good chance that he is in the Kandrian Empire rather than the Shionel Confederation,'' Rui narrowed his eyes. In which case, the danger of being in the Shionel Confederation was even less. Rui had his disguise technique that he had learned from Master Reina, so he wasn''t particrly worried either way.


    Even if Deacon had set-up a facial recognition kind of protocol to apprehend suspects with the features that matched Rui, he could lookpletely different from his original appearance. As long as he restricted his aura with Mind Mask, he would be fine.


    ''Hell, I could just waltz past the transit port with Phantomind Void.''


    He immediately left the Gereign Region without further ado, heading in the direction of the Shionel Confederation which was towards the east of the continent. It had been a long time since he had been to the east of the continent, thus he did look forward to returning.


    "It''s been nearly eight years¡­" Rui heaved a sigh as he jogged at blindingly fast speeds. Eight years ago, he had fled the Shionel Confederation as a measly mid-to-high grade Martial Squire, and now he was returning as a high-grade Martial Senior. The Shionel Confederation didn''t have as many Martial Seniors as the Kandrian Empire, less than a tenth, in fact. That naturally meant that there were at most ten high-grade Martial Seniors, realistically less than ten.


    Of course, there were also several Martial Masters and a single Martial Sage, but he was not going to need to face them unless Chairman Deacon had taken some insane measures to protect his life.


    But that was not a viable strategy. As far Chairman Deacon knew, Rui was simply running away. A measly Martial Squire could not even dare to think about assassinating Chairman Deacon.


    There was no way Rui could be a Martial Senior from his perspective either, after all, Rui would be shattering the second-tost record for the Senior Realm by eight years even if he broke through yesterday.


    Chairman Deacon''sck of understanding of Rui''s current power was key to his downfall, as far as Rui was concerned.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1512 Procured

    <h4>Chapter 1512 Procured</h4>


    1512 Procured Copyright N?v/el/Dra/ma.Org.


    It took quite some time of travel for Rui to reach the Shionel Confederation. After a few weeks of travel through all kinds of topographies and even an ind ocean, however, he eventually arrived at his destination.


    "At longst...the Shionel Confederation," Rui heaved a deep sigh when he took a good look at the nation from a distant mountain. "Man, it''s been a while."


    Aplex set of emotions arose when he thought about his time in the Shionel Confederation. On one hand, most of the time he spent in the nation had been just fine. He dominated the dungeon raiding and even made an enormous profit of which he retained fifty percent.


    On the other hand, he had been turned into a traveling vagabond for more than seven years because of the events that happened by the end of his time in the country.


    But it had been seven years, those events already failed to make any impact on his mood. He quickly traveled, reaching the transit port. ''There isn''t as much traffic asst time,'' Rui noted.


    Thest time he hade here, the dungeon raids were still in their prime and glory. There was an enormous influx into the nation back then of people who wanted to partake in the massive gold rush of the nation at the time.????????????.??????


    Now, however, the hype around the Shionel Dungeon was a lot lower than it used to be. Of course, the real estate of the Shionel Dungeon was still a highly attractive affair, but that was old news by now.


    More than seven years had passed since the dungeon had been raided, it was obviously not going to maintain such a craze over such periods of time.


    He smoothly passed the transit port protocols without being arrested or apprehended by the agents that Deacon had certainly nted in the Shionel Transit Bureau to keep an eye out for Rui.


    There was no way they could see through his disguise technique, not to mention his Master-level detection-blocking mask.


    Traveling through the nation felt surreal, he had memorized the entire map of the nation long ago, so he hadn''t needed help navigating. It wasn''t long before he found himself at the Shionel Dungeon.


    "Man..." Rui chuckled when he stood before the dungeon. "It''s been a while... This ce has changed."


    The entire area had beenpletelymercialized. There used to be a lockdown zone between the dungeon and the rest of the nation, to prevent monsters from gaining direct exposure to the rest of the nation, but that had gone and been reced with amercial district around the dungeon selling all kinds of things.


    He was hardly surprised that the dungeon was beingmercialized in this manner. He expected nothing less from the merchants of the Shionel Dungeon.


    ''As for the dungeon itself...'' Rui turned towards the dungeon, spreading his senses through the ce.


    He could sense it had undergone some renovation. The tunnels had been widened and tarred, as well as set with tracks resembling train tracks anddened with steps.


    In addition, there were various pulley systems that transported goods through certain tunnels.


    Many of the other tunnels had been blocked with rubble to prevent people from going down the wrong path and getting lost.


    The biggest difference was the fact that he could sense through it even without Riemannian Echo. He could use his normal senses and sense the internalyout of the dungeon with just those alone.


    He was curious about what was done to the unrefined mines at the bottom of the dungeon that had given rise to the dungeon in the first ce, but it was too far to sense from where he was and he didn''t want to actually enter it.


    ''A Martial Master is probably assigned to oversee and protect this dungeon,'' Rui heaved a sigh, turning away.


    He didn''t want to do anything to capture the attention of Martial Masters. Time and time they had proven that their insights into other people were incredibly high, although he did have a mask capable of blocking their sensing, he did not want to use it, he didn''t want them to notice either.


    Anyone who went that far had a reason to go that far.


    Rui simply turned around before taking the badge that Sian had given him and putting it on.


    It wasn''t long before he was hawked at by a newspaper seller.


    "Consider purchasing from us, sir!" The man hawked at Rui. "I believe you''ll find what you need."


    The man gave Rui a knowing look. Rui followed inside his little shack, taking a set amidst piles of newspapers.


    "Now then, we have yourmission ready," The man remarked. "It is being procured as we speak."


    "You''re not going to set up anti-sensory measures?" Rui asked.


    "Those would only draw more attention to us," The man replied. "This ce is among the most bustling ces in the country. It is almost impossible to single out any one conversation from afar, even for Martial Artists, we ensure that that is always the case. Just ensure you don''t mention anything sensitive.""


    Rui raised an eyebrow. That most likely meant that they ensured that the poption density remained high enough to serve as a natural anti-sensory field.bender


    "Impressive," Rui muttered.


    "We make do with what we can," The man replied.


    It wasn''t long before a woman walked in with a thick package. The man unsealed it, pulling out the contents.


    Out came several newspapers with many pages.


    ''Disguising the informationmission as a newspaper to avoid anything that seems unnatural, they''re careful as always, Rui epted the newspapers.


    At longst, he had finally achieved his goal.


    "They''re water proof and impossible tear by human strength," The man remarked. "Make sure you destroy them when you''re done with them."


    Rui nodded, getting up as he left the little shack.


    "Thank you for you patronage!" The man returned to his customer- pleasingmercial demeanor.


    "Please visit again!"


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1513 Information

    <h4>Chapter 1513 Information</h4>


    Rui booked an inn for a day, secluding him in peace. He didn''t feel the need to take any extravagant measures to secure his privacy, most of those would only draw attention. He simply locked his room.


    "Huff¡­" Rui heaved a sigh as he stared at the three newspapers before him. "Finally¡­"


    It had not been easy, but he had finally gotten his hands on the intelligence that he needed to endeavor to kill Chairman Deacon. Four years of missions and operations, and training for those missions and operations had culminated into the bunch of newspapers before him.


    The cover and end pages contained mundane news local to the confederation. However, the moment he opened them up, gone was the coge format of a newspaper. The information on him had immediately begun.


    The first page contained a profile and some basic foundational information. It detailed his history, his field, and his financial and business state. There was a solid section dedicated to his personality and character profile. The inception of this chapter''s publication is linked to B00kW0rm.


    There was another section dedicated to his closest rtives, friends, and associates.


    However, this was not what he was interested in. ''Moving on¡­'' Rui shifted past the basic information to more pertinent matters.


    "Oh¡­?" His eyes rose up in interest. An extremely detailed set of sections dedicated to his schedule, time allocation, activity duration, and location visits.


    The Beggar''s Sect had not only collected extremely detailed and precise data on the man''s daily lives right down to the minute for the past four years. Every day in his life was observed, recorded, and documented from the day he woke up to the moment he fell asleep. Where he was, for how long he was, and as much as possible, exactly what he was doing.


    Rui grew flustered when he saw that the information detailed even the very second that activities had begun or ended.


    They had naturally supplied him with that raw information, however, they had taken the liberty to organize and process thatrge amount of data to make it easier to understand.


    There were pie charts that conveyed activity time allocation, bar graphs that represented location time duration, a general time schedule that gave a rough and general idea of what it was like, and two different daily schedule models that evaluated the probability of how Chairman Deacon was going to spend his day based on variables like location.


    There were even graphs that plotted the change over time in how and where he spent his time doing what. "Wow¡­" Rui''s eyes widened as he was momentarily taken aback by the sheer flood of data. ''Not only do they have an immense amount of precision in their raw data gathering ability, but they also have a lot of diversity. On top of that, they''ve done a good job organizing, processing, and assimting all this information to detect and convey patterns, trends, extraptions, and probabilities really well.''


    The level of statistical knowledge that he was seeing was high school or perhaps college entrance exam level, but they were extremely thorough. In this world, even that level of mathematics was probably the peak, or close to the peak.


    Naturally, they did not disy any higher-level statistical knowledge that would be considered bread and butter back on Earth for any statistician or data scientist worth their salt, that was fine, he could easily handle that part himself. Still, they did make his job easier.


    ''He''s been spending more time in the Kandrian Empire in the past seven years¡­'' Rui narrowed his eyes. It wasn''t possible for him to just drop everything in the Shionel Confederation and simply shift to the Kandrian Empire permanently then and there. He had countless partners, dependants, and benefactors that he couldn''t just cut ties with, at least, not without suffering tremendous losses and losing all the credibility he had built as a businessman.


    Major changes took time, and even after seven years, he still needed to spend a good amount of his time in the Shionel Confederation.


    The graph for the time he spent in the Kandrian Empire escted as time passed. While the graph for the time spent in the Shionel Confederation decreased as time passed.


    ''Hm, he''s nning to make the permanent switch in a few years, probably two or three,'' Rui narrowed his eyes. ''I have to kill him before he grows more entrenched in the Kandrian Empire.''


    The more he grew entrenched in the Kandrian Empire, the greater the political ramifications Rui would face for killing him. Even though Chairman Deacon had lost much seven years ago, he had actually gained much right more before that. The sheer amount of wealth he had, made even the profits that Rui got from Esosale Suppliers look humble. Copyright N?v/el/Dra/ma.Org.


    He most certainly used that wealth to form many partnerships in the Kandrian Empire. Rui would be pissing off all the friends he made in the Kandrian Empire by killing Chairman Deacon.


    ''Starting with Charles DiViliers,'' Rui narrowed his eyes. He knew that Charles DiViliers was connected to the Underworld, and he knew that Chairman Deacon was one of the first and firmest partners of Charles. Thus it stood to reason that Chairman Deacon was going to further his ties to the Underworld.


    Thus, if Rui killed him toote, he could incur the Underworld''s wrath once more. That''s why Chairman Deacon needed to die before he transitioned his base of power from the Shionel Confederation to the Kandrian Empire. Even if he was a high-grade Martial Senior, there were forces higher up that he could not afford to provoke. Rui returned his attention back to the intelligence reports and summaries. At the moment, he spent sixty-five percent of his time in the Shionel Confederation and twenty-five percent of his time in the Kandrian Empire. That reflected that Rui had made it in time. Most likely they had not deepened their business partnerships and transactions.


    ''Well, I''m sure this information package will cover that deeply in another section,'' Rui shook his head. ''I need to focus on the parts relevant to the actual assassination itself first, and the ramifications after.''


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1514 Bloodhound

    <h4>Chapter 1514 Bloodhound</h4>


    Rui deeply read through the newspaper that had dedicated itself to going into the whens, wheres, and whats of Chairman Deacon''s daily life.


    On average, forty percent of his day was spent in an office in one of his branches, usually going through some paperwork, addressing reports from his various subordinates, andmunicating with his various partners, associates, and allies over a multitude of matters.


    He spent seven percent of his day traveling, on average. He had many branches across the Shionel Confederation handling local matters in that region that he often needed to travel to for important decision-making matters.


    He also traveled internationally through high-speed motorized carriages that could travel at incredible speeds, allowing him to cover the vast expanses of the continent in rtively short amounts of time. He would often meet with international partners, governments, rulers, and even Martial Artists of the Upper Realms for a variety of important matters that required his personal intervention.


    Within the Kandrian Empire, he would spent time at his recently expanded branches in the nation. He had always conducted business in the Kandrian Empire, however, what he was doing now was much, much moremittal than what he did in other nations.


    ''In terms of when it is most optimal to attack him, that honestly depends on this particr section¡­'' Rui narrowed his eyes as he arrived at the security measures section.


    It wasrge enough that it had its own newspaper, the thickest one of the bunch with dozens ofrge pages.


    ''Just how much security does this man have?'' Rui frowned as he opened up the newspaper.


    The very first page was a section that talked about Chairman Deacon''s security expenditure and its trends.


    Rui''s eyes widened at the sheer amount this man spent in order to secure his life or make the life of his assant miserable.


    Not only did the man spend an atrocious amount of money on security, but that amount had been increasing across the past seven years despite having teaued prior to that.


    ''So as soon as he discovered my identity and realized I escaped seven years ago, he began beefing up his own personal protection¡­'' Rui realized. ''He''s been waiting for an assassination for the past seven years. But surely even he woulde to think that it''s nevering after seven years of searching.''


    Apparently not, considering that the budget he spent this year wasrger than any that he had ever spent in his entire life. Rui continued on as he arrived at the actual measures that Chairman Deacon had taken, themselves.


    It had roughly been divided into preventive and protective. The former were measures that Chairman Deacon had taken to ensure that an attack would not happen at all, for whatever reasons.


    Either due to the hundred million Shionel gold that he spent on surveince measures that were meant to root out any assassins that were nning to ambush him, or the forces that would be pissed off if Chairman Deacon was assassinated, or the measures taken to ensure that anyone who did dare to even try assassinating the man would most certainly be trapped by the measures that Chairman Deacon publicly put in ce to deter assants.


    Protective measures included a powerful armor that could protect the user from a lot of punishment.


    Martial Senior bodyguards were highly qualified and trained in guarding protocols in addition to their Martial Art.


    Powerful defensive measures whether they were fortified offices or fortified carriages. "Man¡­" Rui heaved a deep sigh. "He''s paranoid that I''m going to try and kill him."


    Then again, it wasn''t paranoia since Rui had always nned to eliminate him. Still, such extensive protection didplicate things. Rui was grateful that he had yet to procure any protection from a Martial Master, that would make the assassination impossible unless he relied on indirect assassinations like Master Reina taught him.


    Of course, Rui was sure that he thought he was on the safe side with all these preparations. He still thought that Rui was a Martial Squire and that these measures, while perhaps overkill for a Martial Squire, were worth it just to be safe. He couldn''t have possibly imagined that Rui was already a high-grade Martial Senior. And not just any high-grade Martial Senior, but a high-grade Martial Senior that had received the tutge of one of the greatest Martial Master assassins ever. With techniques like the Phantomind Void, Death''s Sympathy, and Sympathetic Deathnce, he had be a formidable force to make an enemy out of.


    ''Still¡­'' Rui scratched his head. ''I''ve never undertaken an assassination this difficult.''


    Rui hadn''t even gotten to the end of the security section and he already felt that it was quite difficult. How difficult would it be by the time he finished reading through all of the security measures?


    His expression only grew more grave before growing shocked as he read through.


    ''He had a quasi-Master-level explosive surgically inserted into his body, meant to explode the moment his heart stops beating?''


    ording to the Beggar''s Sect, the bomb was meant to be powerful enough to kill even Martial Seniors, let alone Martial Squires. Chairman Deacon was determined to take whosoever killed him down with him. Copyright N?v/el/Dra/ma.Org.


    ''He''s insane. Completely insane!'' Rui was almost impressed at how vindictive this man was against those who came to im his life. He was almost more willing to take him down with them rather than try to actually survive any attempt on his life.


    Just the idea that he was willing to go so far to try and kill Rui, even at the cost of his own life, showed just how much venomous intensity he detested and hated Rui from the bottom of his heart. Had Rui notmissioned the Beggar''s Sect for intelligence, he may very well have not found out and would have undoubtedly died at the man''s hands.


    There was a reason the man hade to be known as the Bloodhound. He would chase and chase and chase, bite, and never let go even if it meant going to hell.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1515 Secretaries

    <h4>Chapter 1515 Secretaries</h4>


    The bomb was made out of a small amount of a Master-level esoteric with a known tendency to explode if it ever experienced inertia for more than a certain amount of time. The esoteric had been attached to his heart, such that if his heart stopped beating, the esoteric mass would stop, experiencing inertia for enough time, causing it to explode. Exclusive ? material by N?(/v)elDrama.Org.


    As a result, it would yield an explosion that would vaporize everything within a radius of ten kilometers from the epicenter.


    ''That''s insane,'' Rui heaved a sigh. ''I can''t survive that kind of firepower, especially if I''m up close.''


    He knew that Masters were powerful, but the fact that such an enormously powerful explosion could be considered only quasi-Master-level was hard to parse. ''I''m d that Martial Masters have perfect control over their raw power,'' Rui heaved a sigh. ''Otherwise, I might have died in the battle between Master Haishi and Master Zeamer.''


    Regardless, this greatly restricted Rui''s options for a direct assassin. He couldn''t just walk up to Chairman Deacon and lop the man''s head off, even if the guards weren''t there. ''Hm, then maybe I will have to settle for indirect assassinations,'' Rui considered the option.


    Unfortunately, it appeared that Chairman Deacon was just as paranoid about getting poisoned as he was about getting murdered up close. The man had a dedicated anti-poisoning team that would not only test food but also taste a portion of every single thing that Chairman Deacon was to put in his mouth.


    That included all manners of food, beverages, and even water. Furthermore, Chairman Deacon would personally oversee the poison testing part himself, for he was too paranoid to let it happen outside of his personal supervision.


    The poison testing team included a poison-oriented Martial Senior with a hundred and fifty years of experience with poison.


    ''In other words, I can forget about poisoning his food,'' Rui heaved a sigh. Although he had gained a foundational understanding of indirect assassinations from Master Reina, he didn''t have any experience with them. All of his assassinations thus far had been direct assassinations that he himself hadpleted.


    Trying to sessfully pull off an indirect assassination against someone like Chairman Deacon and the highlypetent security personnel and the extravagant measures he had taken was not worth it.


    ''Unless I find some specific solution that has a particrly high probability of seeding, I should probably forget about trying to kill him indirectly,'' Rui concluded. ''As for the explosive, I need to ensure that I''m well out of range by the time he dies. That would be much easier to do in an indirect assassination, but it is possible even with a direct assassination.''


    One thing that he did note was the assassination history that Chairman Deacon had gone through.


    ''The man has been attempted an assassination on nearly fifty times in the past seven years,'' Rui noted. ''Which means that this is nothing new to him.''


    Furthermore, ording to the report, there have been instances where he came close to death. However, in none of these instances did he take suicidal measures to try and take his assassins with him by triggering the bomb.


    On top of that, the fact that the explosive had been surgically imnted into his body was a secret that was supposed to be known only to four people indicated that Chairman Deacon had worked very hard to keep it a secret.


    ''There are several things to be inferred about his intentions from this,'' Rui''s analytical mind kicked into action. ''First, the purpose of the bomb is not deterrence. A deterrence only works if people know about it. This bomb isn''t a deterrence¡­ it''s a trump card.''


    Chairman Deacon could have very easily deterred assassins from going anywhere near him had he spread the news about this particr survival measure. After all, what assassin would dare to assassinate him if it meant being vaporized by an explosion that would stretch a radius of ten kilometers?


    Yet he had taken a lot of measures to keep it a secret. In fact, the only reason Rui had learned about it was because the Beggar''s Sect was good at what it did. Once more, Rui thanked his old self for deciding to be prudent and purchasing intelligence on Chairman Deacon from them. Things could have gone very wrong if he didn''t.


    ''The reason he even got the bomb was to kill me, considering the timing¡­'' Rui ascertained. ''Does that mean he fears my ability to kill him?''


    Not necessarily, it could also have meant that he didn''t think he could kill Rui any other way.


    ''However, the fact that dozens of assassinations have been attempted on him in the past seven years and he hasn''t killed himself even when they got close, indicates that even if I attempt a direct assassination, it is highly unlikely that he''ll trigger the bomb to kill me by killing himself,'' Rui noted. ''That gives me some relief. I probably don''t have to worry about the bomb too much outside of ensuring I don''t kill him by ident or make him desperate enough to kill himself.''


    That meant that eliminating his bodyguards was something that he needed to do swiftly and decisively. He needed to reach Chairman Deacon before the man realized he was going to die. The bomb wasn''t the only trump card that the man had prepared. In addition to the four Senior-level bodyguards, the man had two excellent secretaries that had glowing resumes and had graduated from the highest institutes of management.


    In reality, however, both those secretaries were disguised Martial Seniors that had been retroactively trained within Deacon Industries to be secretaries.


    Of course, the Beggar''s Sect had discovered the truth and had highlighted in the report to Rui. Unfortunately, they were unable to acquire information regarding their true identities and more importantly, their grades or their Martial Art.


    ''That''s a shame, but just knowing that his true secretaries are Martial Seniors is a boon that would have screwed my ns had I not known¡­''


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1516 Travel

    <h4>Chapter 1516 Travel</h4>


    The two Martial Seniors in disguise serving as secretaries were probably the reason that Chairman Deacon survived past assassinations based on what Rui could see. Intelligence concealing, especially if the intelligence was important and impactful, was one of the most subtle and passive ways of sabotaging assassins.


    An assassin that had prepared to take down four Martial Seniors would most likely fail in their assassination if they ran into an additional two Martial Seniors. It was the best way to sabotage all assassinations in general.


    Now that Rui knew about this, however, he didn''t intend to let it get in the way.


    ''If the Beggar''s Sect is unable to supply me information on them, then I''ll just have to find out myself,'' Rui mused. ''Well, I''ll have to do that for all six Martial Seniors protecting him regardless.''


    He was definitely going to need to formte rigorous predictive models on all of them. There was no question about that. This was not a head-on fight where his main goal was to push himself by fighting fairly.


    His main goal was to seed, by any means necessary. He didn''t have any bottom lines, aside from making sure innocent people didn''t get hurt.


    ''I definitely can''t let Chairman Deacon die inside the Shionel Confederation,'' Rui noted.


    If he did, the death of millions of people would be on him. As much as Rui wanted to kill Chairman Deacon, he was unwilling to sacrifice millions of innocent people. ''It''s a shame that this isn''t the Gereign Region. If these were people who profited by spreading human suffering, I would have much less of a problem killing all of them,'' Rui heaved a sigh, shaking his head.


    That instantly ruled out the Shionel Confederation and most certainly the Kandrian Empire when it came to killing him. It ruled out any poption center for that matter.


    ''That leaves only one option. I need to kill him while he''s traveling.'' Rui concluded. ''It''s easier to kill him if he''s outside his highly fortified bases and branches. A carriage, as good as it is, simply cannotpensate for all that.''


    ording to the intelligence supplied by the Beggar''s Sect, Chairman Deacon is always apanied by a security detail and convoy when traveling. Consisting of eight Martial Seniors, including the secretaries, seventy-four Martial Squires, and two-hundred and fifty Martial Apprentices.


    ''What''s the point of having the Martial Squires and especially the Martial Apprentices?'' He scratched his head. ''I suppose it does avoid dragging Martial Seniors away from Chairman Deacon. It would be possible to pull them away from his side by sending some weak Martial Artists. So the Martial Squires and Apprentices exist merely to ensure that the Martial Seniors aren''t bothered.''


    ''Hmmm¡­Normally, I would just use Death''s Sympathy to snipe a target from a huge distance away, but in this case, Chairman Deacon has protected himself too well,'' Rui noted. Not only was the carriage, that he never stepped out of until the destination had been reached, highly fortified, but he donned attires that actually served as armor and even had invisible protective measures around exposed parts of his body thanks to some rare but powerful esoteric substances.


    Death''s Sympathy was extremely powerful when it came to assassinations, but it required unbarred ess to his target''s head. That was its one and only w. That wasn''t a problem most of the time, but against someone as paranoid as Chairman Deacon, it was going to prove to be not viable.


    ''That means I''ll need to kill him up close, or knock him out up close and then kill him away from a distance,'' Rui sighed. ''Direct up-close assassination while he''s away from a poption center. Loos like I''m going to have to prepare an ambush for the carriage.''


    For the most part, he had narrowed down on what manner of assassination he wanted to go through with. Had he been more adept and experienced with indirect assassinations and poison he might have been able to aplish something with that, but all of his assassination experience was in the field of direct assassinations.


    ''What are the conditions for a sessful assassination in such circumstances?'' Rui asked himself.


    First, he needed to not die, either to the Martial Senior guards or to a desperate suicide by Chairman Deacon.


    For the Martial Senior guards, there was only one solution and it was a proven tried, and tested solution. He needed to form thorough predictive models on all of them and find their resonance frequencies.


    With those two weapons, he could operate at a level ofbat that far exceeded his standard. Even six Martial Seniors, an ordinarily overwhelming barrier, could be ovee easily. His covert prowess had increased significantly since his training under Master Reina and Master Zeamer.


    However, it needed to be executed quickly and swiftly. It needed to be over before Chairman Deacon could realize that he was going to die. If Chairman Deacon realized his eminent death before Rui reached him, then he would undoubtedly kill himself and take his assassins down with him. Thus not only did Rui need to disy an overwhelming dominance when it came to taking out the man''s guards, he needed to do it with finesse that made it difficult for someone inside the carriage to realize of his impending doom.


    That was much harder than just killing them. ''The predictive models need to be immacte. In fact, just watching them walk and do ordinary tasks is not going to be enough, I need to see them fight,'' Rui tutted. Usually just observing them allowed him to make great partial progress when it came forming predictive models on his targets, but this time he needed to actively intervene in some way to witness their Martial prowess.


    The preparation phase of this assassination could possibly be harder than the actual execution phase of the assassination. Thankfully, he had the tools to be confident of his own sess when it came to ensuring he had everything he needed.


    This chapter upload first at  Copyright N?v/el/Dra/ma.Org.

 Chapter 1517 Bloodhound Hunter

    <h4>Chapter 1517 Bloodhound Hunter</h4>


    Rui began forming the skeleton of a n, though he was still far from fleshing out the details. Several facts had been established. He was going for an active and direct assassination, not an indirect one. Chairman Deacon was highly prepared for both, thus it made more sense to go for the kind of assassination he was greatlypetent at.


    He also had to admit, a small part of the reason for this decision was that he wanted to do the deed in person.


    He also decided on a close-range assassination rather than a long-range one. Chairman Deacon had taken more than the necessary protective measures to make sniping him with Death''s Sympathy unviable.


    Another decision he had made was that the assassination needed to be carried out away from a poption center. He was unwilling to kill millions of innocent people to get rid of Chairman Deacon, especially when he knew it could be done otherwise.


    The end decision was to go for a close-range direct assassination ambush while the man was traveling outside of the Shionel Confederation. This was the best way to kill him considering the circumstances and his own capabilities.


    Naturally, it was not going to be easy. Predictive model or not, killing eight Martial Seniors was going to be exceedingly difficult. Furthermore, he was unable to use the Greater Phantomind Void and the VOID algorithm simultaneously. And for this assassination, he almost certainly needed both.


    ''First, I need to look through some more information,'' Rui noted. ''The Beggar''s Sect gives me as much information as there is on the Martial Seniors, but it''s nowhere near enough for a predictive model, so I''ll need to handle that myself. In addition, I need to ascertain his travel ns well in advance in order to n this out. Thankfully, both of these are possible.''


    The Beggar''s Sect''s information package contained his general travel schedule, but it was best for Rui to verify the fact of the man''s travel ns surrounding the particr traveling journey during which Rui nned to kill him.


    Ideally, it was best for him to pick an isted spot along the journey just to minimize the variable of human interference screwing his n up.


    Once he found a good spot along amon travel route that Chairman Deacon frequented, and also finished the predictive models for each of the Senior bodyguards, then it would finally be time to execute the assassination and be done with this matter forever.


    ''Thankfully, figuring out a good travel journey is easy. The man travels to the Kandrian Empire regrly, there is a huge distance between the two nations and I''m sure I can find plenty of spots,'' Rui noted.


    He scoured through the rest of the information package, taking note of other important things that he needed to be wary of. One particrly important thing that he needed to keep in mind was the scout unit that apanied Chairman Deacon''s travel convoy each time. This was a unit of sensory Martial Artists who were dedicated to ensuring that there were no traps or ambushes waiting for Chairman Deacon.


    It was a unit that consisted of many Martial Squires with highly developed senses. Of course, Rui was not too concerned about this. Not even Senior Nereau, a Martial Senior with two grade-ten sensory techniques had been able to glean past his Greater Phantomind Void. This is from N?velDrama.Org.


    Rui''s affinity for mental techniques was of the same caliber as Kane''s affinity for maneuvering techniques. He estimated that he was likely above even highly talented mind-oriented Martial Seniors whose entire Squire breakthrough evolution process was greatly centered around the brain. This was because the natural and organic evolution of the mind from birth to adulthood was superior to even the artificial evolution process of the Squire breakthrough procedure.


    The probability of a Martial Squire detecting him was precisely zero.


    ''I have a pretty decent n, but very preparation-heavy. Chairman Deacon has a toon of bodyguards that he rotates through. About twelve of them, I need to form predictive models on all of them just to be sure, not to mention learning their resonant frequencies. This is going to take some time,'' Rui heaved a sigh.


    Of course, he could definitely minimize that getting the resonant frequencies and predictive models for only the Martial Seniors who would participate as bodyguards on the day of the assassination, but he would need to calcte that based on their shifts and the date. Furthermore, if there was a hup, then he would be screwed.


    ''I need to be meticulous and immacte. And patient more than anything,'' Rui decided. ''I''ve waited more than seven years for this. If it takes a few more weeks of preparation or more, then so be it. There''s no point in fucking up and possibly letting those seven years go to waste.''


    He took a deep breath as he resolved himself. He would probably require the Beggar''s Sect''s aid just a little more, but he didn''t have time to fulfillrge time-consuming operations for them anymore. ''Maybe a few small operations here and there, at most,'' Rui knew. After all, hiring a musician to y all kinds of notes around his targets was easy. As a Martial Senior, even a minute of his time was exponentially more valuable than an entire day''s worth of time of a musician. Such was the value that a living tactical nuclear missile represented. "Time to get started with Operation Bloodhound Hunter."


    And get started he did. Unfortunately, it had taken him longer than he had expected. From negotiating a few short bodyguard operations for the Beggar''s Sect for their cooperation regarding certain matters, to stalking the bodyguards of Chairman Deacon when they were off-duty with Phantomind Void, to scouting locations across his travel route from the Shionel Confederation to the Kandrian Empire that were fit for the assassination, to running simultations of the battle in his head andputing probability of sess.


    It took him a whopping three months before he was finally ready.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1518 Omen

    <h4>Chapter 1518 Omen</h4>


    In the past three months, Rui had done much. He spent most of his time stalking each of the bodyguards of Deacon Industries with Greater Phantomind Void. Building predictive models and finding the resonant frequencies of the various targets took a week per target, when considering how many there were, three months of preparation made sense.


    Rui didn''t shirk his duties either. The probability of him killing Chairman Deacon was reduced substantially if he didn''t create aplete predictive model and resonant frequency profile on each of the Martial Senior bodyguards.


    There was even one high-grade Martial Senior, this one was the reason that Rui needed Death''s Sympathy avable to him.


    He was confident of taking on a grade-thirteen Martial Senior. But could he do so while fighting five other Martial Seniors?


    Certainly not, he hadn''t reached that level. Copyright N?v/el/Dra/ma.Org.


    Not yet, at least.


    He intended to make Death''s Sympathy and the VOID algorithm among the advantages he had. However, he did have other advantages that he intended to leverage.


    In order to buildplete predictive models on all of them, Rui even went as far as leaving the country and hiring Martial Seniors to get into a serious fight with each of the Martial Senior bodyguards under various pretexts.


    Whether it be false pretenses or spontaneous esction, he made sure that he saw how they fought.


    Across three months, he gained a deep understanding of Chairman Deacon''s Martial Seniors. Simultaneously, he also finalized the location of the deed. This was much easier. After all, there was one mainrge path constructed between the Shionel Confederation and the Kandrian Empire by the East Panamic Transport Association. Chairman Deacon naturally made way of this infrastructure when traveling from the Shionel Confederation to the Kandrian Empire, especially when it was designed to facilitate smooth high-speed travel between the great distance between the Kandrian Empire and the Shionel Confederation.


    Rui had spent an entire ten days walking across the path looking for the perfect location.


    Until he eventually found it. "This will do," Rui mused as he stood in a barren desert. There were deserted regions between the Kandrian Empire and the Shionel Confederation.


    He needed deserted regions because he intended to kill Chairman Deacon, which meant that the bomb was undoubtedly to go off. This meant that he needed an entirely deserted region to ensure that nobody got hurt. It also meant that the probability of interference was low. Rui had gone on to do his research on the entire region just to make sure. However, the region only had a few viges and settlements a few hundred kilometers away from the travel route. Furthermore, they only had Martial Apprentices, so Rui had nothing to worry about.


    He just needed to make sure the bomb didn''t go off anywhere near them.


    He had actuallypleted major preparation two weeks before the actual assassination. He spent those days simply refining his preparations and fine-tuning to make sure that there was absolutely nothing wrong.


    He suspected that he probably only had one shot. Once Chairman Deacon realized how lethal Death''s Sympathy was, he would undoubtedly take measures to ensure that this trump card was sealed.


    Outside of special circumstances with immense preparation, Rui had no business fighting six Martial Seniors at once. It was simply impossible. It was unlikely he would make another sessful attempt within the time period of the protection his family had.


    Especially when the reports of the Beggar''s Sect went in-depth into Chairman Deacon''s search for Rui Quarrier.


    Two years ago, the man concluded that Rui wasn''t in the Kandrian Empire. At the same time, Rui learned that Kane and Senior Xanarn had arrived from the Kandrian Empire during the same time. This had sparked more investigation from the man, but thankfully, Rui''s measures and instructions had been prudent enough to prevent them from learning too much.


    Rui was actually surprised. The Beggar''s Sect had supplied an unnaturally amount of information on Chairman Deacon''s investigation into Rui Quarrier. This information wasn''t relevant to the information that Rui had requested for the assassination.


    ''Looks like they strongly suspect or know that I am Rui Quarrier,'' Rui mused. Back in the Kandrian Empire, the upper echelons had alreadye to learn the identity of the infamous Voider from seven years ago. It was inevitable, given how furiously Chairman Deacon searched for the Voider and Rui Quarrier.


    It was just that that information had lost its value the moment the Shionel Dungeon had been squeezed of all its resources. The only person who still clung to the past was Chairman Deacon. Rui could go home without worries as long as he got rid of Chairman Deacon.


    The day neared as Rui prepared the necessary utilities for various possible circumstances and scenarios. He spared no measure, going as far as he could.


    Yet he felt an ufortable tingling sensation in his heart, one he was no longer ustomed to.


    ''¡­I''m nervous,'' Rui heaved a sigh as he ced his hand on his heart. He hadn''t even been this nervous in fights where he nearly died, usually because he tended to enjoy those fights too much. But this was not a fight. There was nothing enjoyable about this fight. He was going to ambush Chairman Deacon, get rid of everything that stood in the way, and then kill him.


    in and simple.


    The day had arrived.


    In the Shionel Confederation, Chairman Deacon got into his personal carriage. A highly fortified carriage that could withstand plenty of punishment while keeping its upants safe, he didn''t feel safe unless he traveled in such a carriage of his own corporation''s creation.


    "I presume everything is in order?" Chairman Deacon asked as he inspected the security detail of his travel convoy.


    "We have ensured as much, sir," One of his secretaries replied. "The travel convoy is ready to go."


    "Rest assured we have taken all security measures and protocols," His other secretary added.


    "Hmmm¡­" The man nced out of the window to the sky.


    "Not a single cloud¡­I suppose that''s a good omen."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1519 Commence

    <h4>Chapter 1519 Commence</h4>


    Rui waited in position, standing some distance away from the path. shes of carriage traveling at truly remarkable speeds went in either direction on the road. The sun mercilessly baked anything unfortunate enough to be within its direct exposure.


    Of course, Rui was unbothered by this. Not only was he a Martial Senior, but he had also prepared himself physically and mentally for this for quite some time. Physically, he had ensured that he had gotten plenty of sleep before he undertook this mission. He didn''t want to perform sub-optimally since hisbat and assassination prowess greatly depended on his mind.


    He had been meticulous with his nutrition, making sure he was fed and just lightly full enough where he wouldn''t feel ufortable with great physical exertion. He had also mentally prepared himself for this day for quite some time, subjecting himself to a lot of meditation and mental conditioning.


    Today, he was different from other days.


    He seemed to ooze peril, much unlike his normal day-to-day impression. His eyes were sharp, devoid of the warmth that they normally possessed.


    His senses were active, directed towards the carriages that arrived from the direction of the Shionel Confederation.


    His eyes widened as they pricked, detecting the approach of the travel convoy from Deacon Industries. He quickly used Riemannian Echo to pierce through the anti-sensory measures of the central convoy.


    His expression crumpled with cold fury. ''He''s here.''


    Rui had no interest in attacking his convoy if the man himself wasn''t here. It would be a disaster if he attacked the convoy to kill Deacon only to find the man''s butler or subordinate.


    But he was here. He had aged a lot in the past seven years, but Rui couldn''t possibly fail to recognize him.


    The time hade. Although the carriage moved at extremely high speeds from the perspective of normal humans to Rui, it may as well have been nigh-stationary, especially when he activated his Martial Heart.


    ''First step; cripple the carriage,'' Rui fired off a Squire-level Mighty Roar sh st, having activated the Pathfinder technique, that was just weak enough such that it would pass below the senses of the Martial Seniors within the carriage. This ability was the reason he had been able to assassinate the Martial Seniors of the Shadow Isles. BAM!


    CRACK!


    One of the wheels of the carriage broke off after the attack hit a crucialponent of the axel. In the past three months, he had studied the model of the carriage that Chairman Deacon traveled by, thoroughly familiarizing himself with its engineering, so that he could identify the cleanest way to cripple the carriage as quick as possible.


    ''Next step; draw out the Martial Seniors,'' Rui inhaled deeply as he activated Hypertrophic Surge.


    THWOOM!!


    A powerful tier-five Transverse Resonance attack surged as five attacks merged into one, flying straight towards the carriage.


    Yet, it never reached.


    Four figures shed out as the doors burst open violently, before swiftly shutting.


    BOOM!!! Content protected by N?v/el(D)rama.Org.


    Theybined their power as they ensured that not only had the attack been defended, but its power had been dispelled. The one advantage that they had in addition to their numbers was their teamwork. Each team of bodyguards was highly trained in their coordination when it came to attacks that came out of nowhere, allowing them to smoothly dispel the threat.


    They were prepared for precisely such circumstances.


    What they weren''t prepared for, however, was one of the four of them copsing on the spot, dying then and there. It was as though someone had cut off the strings of a puppet, causing her to copse lifelessly.


    THUD


    Their eyes widened with shock.


    They couldn''t even sense the enemy, had one of their Martial Seniors spontaneously experienced a lethal heart attack?!


    They weren''t prepared for this. That was why it happened again.


    TAP!


    Rui knocked on the skull of the closest Martial Seniors, causing his eyes to roll back as he too copsed lifelessly. He surged forward at blinding speeds, hoping to get another if he could, but s¡­


    It was not to be.


    BAM!


    A wide-area shockwave flung him away, dispelling Greater Phantomind Void as two more Martial Seniors appeared from within the carriage with severe expressions. Many an assassination had been attempted, yet this was the first time that two of the Senior-level bodyguards had copsed so quickly.


    The two Martial Seniors in secretary disguise had decided that it was not prudent to allow only two Martial Senior bodyguards to fight such a fiendish assassin. They hoped that the sight of two more Martial Seniors who weren''t supposed to be there would cause the assassin to withdraw from the assassination attempt.


    Unfortunately, it was not to be.


    Not only did he not withdraw, he looked as though he had been waiting for them.


    The two long-range wide-scale defensive Martial Artists immediately prepared their wide-scale techniques with grim and severe expressions. If their opponent possessed such lethal stealth that he could kill two of theirrades right beside them without them even sensing it, then he could not be allowed to approach.


    Each of them knew with grave certainty that such an absurd level of stealth was extremely scary to deal with. They could die at any moment, and they would never know. It had already happened twice.


    Yet, the assassin never employed his stealth a second time.


    In fact, not only did he not employ his stealth, he charged straightforwardly at them!


    All four Martial Senior bodyguards widened their eyes with shock as they realized that the assassin was meant to fight them head-on. ''Four-on-one in an assassination attempt? Is he insane?''


    "Focus!!" The captain of the team bellowed. "We don''t know what he has up his sleeve!"


    Yet Rui simply surged forward at a blinding speed that surpassed even their alerted senses.


    WHOOSH!


    TAP!


    In less than the blink of an eye, he had already arrived, and in the next blink, his knuckles had already surged forward, striking the temple of one of the bodyguards.


    THUD!


    Not even a minute had passed, yet three Martial Seniors had already died.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1520 Countdown

    <h4>Chapter 1520 Countdown</h4>


    Rui''s strategy was simple. Catch them off-guard with Greater Phantomind Void and Death''s Sympathy soon after he drew them out with the tier-five Transverse Resonance, and take out as many as possible.


    He had hoped to take out three of them before he was booted out, but he knew that that was pushing it. Contrary to their expectations, he never intended to use Greater Phantomind Void throughout the entirety of his fight. For one, it consumed most of his attention, making his reactions to attacks slower.


    On top of that, they had two wide-scale Martial Seniors who could cover a lot of area with their attacks, Greater Phantomind Void was useless against such attacks, since they swept through a lot of area, hitting him regardless of whether they could sense him or not.


    In a prolonged fight, he would probably stille out on top since spamming wide-scale attacks was a good way to burn through stamina, but there was only one problem.


    This wasn''t a duel.


    This was an assassination.


    The longer this fight went on, the greater the probability of failure. He knew that reinforcements had already been dispatched from the bases of Deacon Industries based on the protocols for assassinations during transit.


    He couldn''t take his ownfortable time with wearing them out before taking his time to kill them.


    That was why he abandoned Phantomind Void after the first two kills. It had served its purpose.


    Instead, he used Neo Godspeed. Time had slowed down to a crawl in his vision as he surged forward at top speed with Gale Force Breathing and Outer Convergence.


    WHOOSH! Exclusive ? material by N?(/v)elDrama.Org.


    He had crossed the distance between them in just a split second, racing forward at incredible speeds, the sheer friction of which set aze an inferno that could burn down a town.


    TAP!


    He had caught them off-guard a third time, taking down a third target. The surprise from his stealth and the surprise from his incredible speed caught them off-guard multiple times.


    It cost them three of theirrades.


    ''Three left, three to go,'' Rui coldly tallied. ''Unfortunately, I have already finished all the low-hanging fruits.''


    From here on out, he wouldn''t be able to devastate them by exploiting just a moment of weakness.


    They had gotten used to his long-range power.


    They had gotten used to his stealth.


    And his terrifying ability to cause death with just a tap.


    As well as his speed.


    This was the hard part. The distance between the Kandrian Empire and the Shionel Confederation was more than ten thousand kilometers. One would think that such a distance meant that help was far out of reach.


    Unfortunately, this did not apply to Martial Seniors.


    Especially if those Martial Seniors were desperate enough to use their Martial Hearts to travel.


    And, unfortunately, they were. ''I have no more than fifteen minutes, tops,'' Rui gritted his teeth.


    That''s how fast Martial Seniors were when they abandoned all reserve and used their Martial Heart to travel. This was something that Senior Sarak had warned against since it left one more vulnerable due to less stamina for their Heart, but that was not enough to stop the reinforcements in a time of emergency.


    That was why the three remaining Martial Seniors retained theirposure despite losing threerades rather swiftly. The odds were stacked in their favor. Unless Rui had some massive surprises that none of them could possibly ount for, there was absolutely no way he could ovee them this quickly.


    Two of them were grade twelve, while the remaining one was grade eleven. Not even a high-grade Martial Senior would be able to kill all of them within fifteen minutes.


    Unfortunately, they had underestimated Rui yet again.


    WHOOSH!


    Rui sped forward at blinding speeds. This time, they resolutely pushed back in time, having adjusted their timing. A myriad of wind-based techniques flew forward, flying towards Rui. Although their raw power was below that of a high-grade offensive Martial Senior individually, together, their onught was formidable.


    Yet, it may as well have not existed to Rui.


    WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH!


    The three Martial Seniors watched with unadulterated shock as Rui weaved through their offensive onught in a manner that they never thought was possible. Every maneuver, every step, every shift¡­every move that he made seemed like it was choreographed ahead of time.


    Almost as if he had seen the future.


    Such was the power of the VOID algorithm and Neo Godspeed when used in conjunction. Out of all Metabody techniques, the speed metabody had always harmonized with the pattern recognition system in a way that the others didn''t.


    When the predictive wasplete, Neo Godspeed shined in a way that was hard toprehend. Not only was time slowed in his point of view thanks to the induced tachypsychia, but it also allowed his predictions to grow more precise, urate, and deeper.


    Dozens, if not hundreds of speedy attacks converged on him with the sole intention of keeping him away, more than anything.


    Yet they all failed.


    Their eyes widened as weaved past every single attack with incredible smoothness, surging toward his next target.


    BOOM!!


    An incredibly powerful wide-range shockwave emerged from one of them with remarkable power and speed, forcing Rui to defend as it flung him away. Yet the attack didn''t discriminate.


    It couldn''t. It had also struck the user''srades in addition to Rui, hurting them along with him.


    "Sorry¡­" The man gasped. "But I couldn''t allow him to-"


    "You made the right decision," Another remarked, grimacing as they swiftly got back into position. "Wounds can be healed but¡­"


    He nced at the corpses of hisrades who had all died from a single touch from Rui, quickly turning back to Rui.


    "Just twelve more minutes," He whispered. "We just need to hold out long enough for reinforcements to arrive. We don''t need to win. We don''t need to hurt him. We don''t even need to look good. We just need to ensure that we and the boss don''t die."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1521 Insufficient

    <h4>Chapter 1521 Insufficient</h4>


    The transport route between the Kandrian Empire and the Shionel Confederation was currently heavily disrupted. From the moment Rui fired off his tier-five Transverse Resonance, most people understood the dangers of the situation and immediately elerated away or turned around, warning others who were traveling in that direction.


    This was both concerning and relieving to Rui. Relieving because it meant that there were no innocent people around who would get hurt from his fight with the bodyguards of Chairman Deacon. Concerning because these people were not just running away, they were contacting the relevant authorities.


    The East Panamic Transport Organization was simply an organization created by many nations in East Panama to develop and maintain travel infrastructure to facilitate high-speed carriage travel across East Panama. ording to the intelligence from the Beggar''s Sect, this organization was also responsible for dismantling anything that disrupted travel on the roads.


    Even if they included Martial Artists.


    Rui didn''t know when they woulde, but they did linger at the back of his head. Of course, the biggest priority was the reinforcements from Deacon Industries, he needed to ensure that this was over before they got here.


    WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH!


    Rui moved at incredible speeds with rapidity that was hard to fathom. None of the three remaining Martial Seniors understood how he was dodging them so well. He evaded their attacks as if he was out of phase with time, making it seem like he was from the future.


    He weaved past a barrage of attacks from the long-range wide-scale attacks, emerging on the other side as he surged towards the three Martial Seniors. In just a moment, he had arrived before one of them.


    "Da-!" The Martial Senior covered his head, refusing to give Rui a clear shot at his head.


    BAM!!


    Rui''s fist burrowed its in his sr plexus, causing him to crumple down, yet before he could finish the blow, hisrades had already acted.


    BOOM!


    Rui was flung away by a wide-scale shockwave that, once again, was more friendly fire than it was an attack on Rui, but it got the job done. After all, the one weakness of the pattern recognition model was that predicting and seeing the future did not always mean that one could stop it.


    Rui paused for a brief moment as he studied the circumstances. ''They''re just holding on by keeping me away even at the cost of friendly fire. Tsk, in any other circumstance, this would be a retarded strategy but¡­''


    In this case, it was the best decision. Reinforcements were only ten minutes away as far as Rui could figure out. This strategy could allow them tost that long even if their strategy was self-destructive with friendly fire.


    However, Rui was far from done.


    WHOOSH!


    He shed into a blur, sprinting at blinding speeds as he approached from the side rather than head-on.


    "No you do-!" The man''s eyes widened with shock. ''Why can''t I breathe?'' The momentary shock from Breathing Crucifix threw his timing off by a just a moment. Rui raced into action, desperate to exploit that option. Yet before he could even reach his opponent¡­


    BAM!!!


    The self-harming attack had already arrived. All four Martial Seniors grimaced as Rui leaped back, gritting his teeth. Neo Godspeed sacrificed durability for speed, making him particrly hurt by such attacks.


    The three Seniors gritted their teeth already having leaped back, putting themselves between Chairman Deacon and Rui. "Attack! Don''t bother with stamina! Drain your Martial Heart!"


    Rui tutted with annoyance as an enormous tsunami of attacks had already flooded his direction, they were too dense for even him to squeeze through with Neo Godspeed. Chairman Deacon had apparently hired a good leader because this man seemed to make the right decision at crucial times.


    Rui tutted as he was forced to leap away to evade attacks, looking to find a good route in. ''This isn''t good¡­'' Rui narrowed his eyes. ''These bastards are willing to put themselves on death''s doors just to stall for ten minutes. I need to go absolutely all out on every front. I need to use everything.''


    Everything he had learned as a Martial Artist. He needed to squeeze his Martial Art for resources.


    ''I''ll stress their counteroffensive,'' Rui shifted, swerving.


    The three Martial Seniors altered their trajectory ordingly, only for them to find his image fade away.


    WHOOSH


    ''It''s a feint!'' He gritted his teeth sting away in the other direction, yet Rui had already closed a good chunk of the distance, making some progress.


    The three Martial Seniors fired away, doing their best to parry Rui away rather than hurt him. Even as they felt their breathing tighten and shackle, they did not hold back. They emptied and unloaded their Martial Heart as if there was no tomorrow. Furthermore, they purely applied all that power to ensure that Rui could not approach them.


    "Tsk!" Rui tutted with annoyance as he shed around at blinding speeds with Gale Force Breathing, Outer Convergence, and Parallel Walk, looking for the best way to approach them. He constantly threw them off with Phantom Step while using Breathing Crucifix to hamper their breathing, reducing theirbined output.


    His current approach was not working as well as he''d hoped. Yet he couldn''t ept that.


    His eyes shed with bloodlust as he eyed the carriage.


    This assassination needed to seed.


    ''No matter what!'' He gritted his teeth.


    WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH!


    He elerated even further, reaching extreme speeds that he had never reached before. And despite all his effort...


    It still fell short. Copyright N?v/el/Dra/ma.Org.


    BAM BAM BAM!


    Rui leaped away from them as they managed to parry his approach with wide attacks that covered huge areas.


    "Keep him away¡­" The leader choked out even as he gasped for air. Rui grew frustrated as he tried weaving past their offense, pushing not just his physical body to the limit but also his pattern recognition system to the limit.


    Yet, no matter how much he peered into the future, he was unable to use it to weave his way through their offense.


    BOOM BOOM BOOM!


    "Rgh!" Rui grimaced as he leaped away, being forced to return to square one. Despite pushing his techniques, body, and pattern recognition system to the limit, he was unable to break through.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1522 Unshackled

    <h4>Chapter 1522 Unshackled</h4>


    There were plenty of things Rui had learned today. He learned that when a person abandons and sacrifices the prospects of winning, the prospects of actually inflicting damage on their opponents, all for the sake of stalling for ten minutes, it was pretty difficult to stop them from seeding at that humble goal.


    In a normal fight, they would die immediately after ten minutes, but not in this fight. In this fight, they would win if they seeded.


    He had been surprised that even Neo Godspeed and the predictive model together had been unable to weave past their attacks, but he also noticed that they had diluted their power and spread them wider. Yet it had done them good.


    The reason for that was because it took less power to parry his charges away than to hurt him. Theypensated for a speed gap with arge area of effect by sacrificing potency.


    It was a good counter. They had adapted and evolved to him very well.


    Rui froze.


    Time slowed down to a crawl.


    ''They''re adapting to me¡­?'' His eyes widened as a profound realization hit him. ''Since when did my opponents adapt to me instead of the other way around?''


    How had they been able to make more progress with adaptive evolution than he did?


    He leaped away, putting enough distance between them as he studied the two gasping Martial Seniors. He was in the middle of an assassination attempt, yet he felt the need to take just a moment to understand what was happening.


    He was positively in a better condition than they were, they had burned through much of their stamina, and they were having a hard time breathing with Breathing Crucifix.


    Yet despite being in a better ce, they were able to adapt to him more effectively than he did.


    Why was that?


    ''They established their goal and cleanly sacrificed everything that wasn''t necessary for it. They''re making an efficient application of resources.'' Rui realized. ''¡­Am I not doing the same?''


    With Death''s Sympathy, he didn''t need power, he could kill them with a single tap. That was why he went for Neo Godspeed out of all the Metabody techniques, he needed speed more than power and defense.


    On top of that, he had put a lot of effort into his predictive models.


    ''But it hasn''t been that helpful,'' He clenched his fist. ''Why not¡­?''


    His eyes widened as the answer dawned upon him. ''¡­Because it isn''t the best option in this situation.''


    He had already experienced that predicting the future did not mean he could change it. The fact of the matter was, that his opponents had essentially built a huge barrier between himself and them, and they shifted it to keep up with his movements, preventing him from approaching.


    It was purely a reactive defensive game on their part, the predictive model could not fix his problems. ''¡­And that''s the difference between us. They cut away and sacrificed what couldn''t fix their problems while I clung to it even harder,'' Rui realized. ''Predictive model this, predictive model that. Predictive model every single time. I have been clinging to the pattern recognition system too hard all this time. There are many such circumstances where the pattern recognition system isn''t the best, but I mindlessly use it every single time.''


    The pattern recognition system was his original baby. One that he had created back on Earth, it held an extremely special ce in his heart. It was that that love that had blinded him. It had blinded him from the fact that it wasn''t the all-powerful wish-granting superpower that he had been using it as.


    At this very moment, Rui came arrived at a profound ultimatum.


    ''I need to abandon the pattern recognition system if I want to kill Chairman Deacon¡­'' Rui gritted his teeth as he clenched his fists. Just the thought of doing that was painful.


    Yet the moment he threw it away, he felt his shoulders lighten.


    It was as though every muscle in his body had rxed. His joints had loosened, allowing him to move freely like he never could before.


    This sensation¡­


    ''Freedom¡­'' Rui inhaled a deep breath. ''I see¡­''


    He had been shackling himself to the pattern recognition system all this time. When was thest time he made abat decision without the pattern recognition system?


    He indulged his epiphany to its full depth. Despite the fact that he was in the middle of the most important act of his life in the past seven years.


    ''No¡­'' Rui''s eyes softened with realization. ''It''s because this is a pivotal moment of my life.'' This is from N?velDrama.Org.


    It was only right that he proved it was worth it.


    He nced at the three Martial Senior bodyguards.


    A single emotion reigned in his heart.


    Gratitude. One moment, he stood there.


    The very next moment, he faded out of existence.


    Their eyes widened as they immediately leaped back,nding on Deacon''s carriage as they began firing off omnidirectional attacks that served as a force field to keep him away. This strategy proved to be useful against the assassin all this time, thus they were sure that it would work against him for the next ten minutes as well.


    Unfortunately, they were wrong. BOOM!!


    A titanic impact sted through the omnidirectional shockwave as Rui surged forth, using Hypertrophic Surge and Phantomind Void as he sted through their defense. It was precisely because they had chosen to spread themselves thin because that had been optimal against a speedster, but it was sorelycking against a powerhouse.


    The three Martial Seniors shook with shock as they immediately turned themselves in the direction of the invisible force that had sted through.


    But s, it truly was toote this time.


    BAM!


    Rui scrambled the brains of one of the Martial Seniors to mush as he sted him in the head with a punch. The other two Martial Seniors could barely widen their eyes in time before he swiftly followed suit.


    Death often came before one realized it.


    BAM BAM!


    While Hypertrophic Surge was certainly nowhere near as fast as Neo Godspeed, it was certainly not slow. The two Martial Seniors copsed lifelessly as Rui heaved a sigh, shaking his head.


    ''Just by changing my approach, I was able to quickly solve a problem that had seemed impossibly difficult. I have a long way to go before I achieve perfect adaptive evolution.''


    He had thought that he was doing well before, but now¡­he realized how wrong he was, how arrogant and ignorant he had been. The final hurdle had been cleared.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1523 Hopeful

    <h4>Chapter 1523 Hopeful</h4>


    He turned to the carriage.


    BADUMP


    BADUMP


    BADUMP


    He had already deactivated his Martial Heart, yet he could feel his heart beating harder than it ever had before.


    He was finally here.


    After nearly eight years, he had finally reached this point. He almost couldn''t believe it. He had dreams about this moment more times than he could count. Copyright N?v/el/Dra/ma.Org.


    He took off his mask, tossing it away.


    "Huff¡­" He took a deep breath, before forcing open the carriage door and surging in with his hand stretched out, his arms reaching out.


    CLASP!


    He caught a hand.


    A hand that held a detonator to a bomb.


    A bomb in a man.


    "Not so fast¡­" Rui whispered. "Deacon Vernes¡­"


    There he was.


    His expression crumpled with rage. Fury had turned his eyes bloodshot red. His nails drew blood from how hard his fists were clenched. He looked older than Rui had realized with Riemannian Echo. His skin had grown paler and aged. His hair had greyed significantly in the many years since theirst meeting, leaning more towards salt than pepper.


    "Time hasn''t been kind to you, has it?" It was spontaneous, yet he had already uttered it before he realized it. He didn''t know what to say.


    Or rather, he had too much to say; he didn''t know what not to say.


    Deacon opened his mouth.


    Yet no words escaped.


    Instead, he stuck out his tongue before biting down with every ounce of force he could muster.


    CRACK


    Rui shoved the detonator between the man''s teeth, jamming his suicide attempt.


    "Even if you cut your tongue and bled out, your heart would not stop beating immediately. A Martial Senior like myself could effortlessly clear ten kilometers before you actually die," Rui informed with a calmness that surprised even himself.


    The man''s eyes widened with infuriated shock at the fact that Rui knew about his secret measure.


    For a moment, there was silence as the two of them beheld each other.


    "Even if I gave you the opportunity to get yourst words out, you would just use it to try and kill yourself, knowing you¡­" Rui sighed. He turned back to the man. "You know, I''ve always wondered what I''d do when I got my hands on you. Would I chop you up into little bits, or would I try some of the torture methods that were practiced during the medieval age back in previous life? I was never able to decide. Yet, I was always certain I would make you suffer."


    His eyes softened. "Yet now that this moment has actually arrived, I don''t feel even the slightest shred of rage, fury, or hatred."


    Rui nced at his hand. For some reason, he was unable to muster up any desire to torment the man that he thought he hated with a venomous intensity. He delved within himself, trying to understand himself. Naturally, his senses were at peak alertness. Every twitch the man made, everything within dozens of kilometers of Rui was within his inspection. Nothing was allowed to interrupt this moment.


    "When I was too weak, I hated you more than anything. Yet, now that I am strong enough to act on my hatred, I don''t feel anything¡­" Rui murmured as he gained a deep understanding of himself. "I see¡­"


    It was his own weakness that he hated more than anything. His inability to eliminate a threat to himself and his family. That was the true source of his hatred.


    And now it was gone, to arge degree.


    Rui pulled out the detonator from the man''s mouth.


    The man gritted his teeth. "Yo-"


    THWOOM


    Rui fired off Death''s Sympathy. Yet this time, he hyper-focused the projectile like a scalpel rather than a bullet. It plunged into the man''s skull, crushing only his cerebral cortex and nothing else.


    It annihted his consciousness forever.


    His heart, however, kept beating.


    Yet Rui was not satisfied with just that.


    He stepped outside of the carriage, taking onest look at Chairman Deacon''s living corpse, before activating his Martial Heart and taking off.


    In just a second, he was more than ten kilometers away. He turned around inhaling deeply.


    THWOOM!


    He fired a single sound bullet, annihting the carriage, and preparing himself.


    For two seconds, nothing happened.


    Yet when it arrived, it arrived at a speed that beggared Rui''s mind. BOOOOOM!!!!!


    An eruption of raw power that exceeded anything else he had evere across blinded him. It was as though a fragment of the Sun had descended upon this world.


    RUMBLE!!!


    The world around him shook, unlike anything he had ever seen before.


    WHOOOOOOOOSH!!!


    A tremendous gust of wind and shockwave, the likes of which Rui could hardly believe, emerged as a result of the titanic power of the explosion. THWOOM THWOOM THWOOM THWOOM THWOOM!


    Rui defended himself with a tier-five Transverse Resonance shing with the portion of the shockwave that was going to crash into Rui.


    It took a minute to subside.


    The crater left behind was enormous,rge enough to fill a fragment of the Shionel Dungeon.


    "This is supposed to be quasi-Master level¡­" Rui muttered. "Sheesh."


    It was a shame that Rui could not afford to admire the destructive power of the bomb. Such an enormous explosion would not go unnoticed, and would certainly not be treated normally. There was a good chance that a Martial Master would be deployed within an hour at the very most.


    "Time to get the hell out of here," Rui drank some potent potions, restoring his stamina as he activated Neo Godspeed and Greater Phantomind Void, racing off with Gale Force Breathing and Outer Convergence at an extreme speed that far surpassed his conventional limits. By the time the initial deployments arrived, he would be thousands of kilometers away. The assassination had not been as clean as he hoped, considering the eye-drawing explosion, but it was the best he could do with what he had at the time.


    A long chapter of his life had finallye to an end, and a new chapter of his life was to begin.


    As Rui raced away, a small smile emerged on his face as he felt more hopeful for the future than he had in the past eight years.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1524 Investigation

    <h4>Chapter 1524 Investigation</h4>


    No less than a few hours after Chairman Deacon died, a full-fledged investigative team had been dispatched by the East Panamic Transport Organization to investigate the heavy energy anomaly along the travel route between the Kandrian Empire and the Shionel Confederation.


    "This¡­!" The head investigator of the team gasped with disbelief. "How can such a thinge to be?!" Exclusive ? material by N?(/v)elDrama.Org.


    The crater was mind-blowing, so much so that it beggared the mind. It was hard to actually fathom the sheer size and expanse of the crater that had appeared alongside the road.


    "Master Sera, what do you make of this?" The man murmured, shocked.


    A woman standing beside him narrowed her eyes as she inspected the crater. "Well¡­ One thing I can say is that this was not caused by a sh between Martial Masters."


    "How can you be so certain?"


    "Unless something goes really wrong, a sh between Martial Masters won''t spill over to the environment. We have immense control over our power and we usually only affect what we want to," Master Sera remarked. "Still¡­this feels far toorge to be done by Martial Seniors, especially since it''s clear it was done in one go."


    "So then¡­?"


    "Some kind of esoteric technology was definitely involved," She concluded. "However, reports from the civilians stated that a sh between Martial Artists had ensued, so maybe they were fighting over some powerful resource and something went awry during the fight. It''s hard to say really."


    "The explosion haspletely annihted any and all forensic evidence," The man heaved a troubled sigh. "We have basically nothing to work with."


    "Looks like whoever is responsible for this probably ounted for this to happen," Master Sera realized. "It would exin why they started such a high-profile fight in front of so many witnesses. They knew that there would be nothing left by the time they were done."


    "Well, they were right. There is nothing left. The only thing we have are shoddy witness testimony and a list of victims," The investigator sighed as he went through the initial reports that had been gathered by witnesses that had flocked to the nearest office to report their tales.


    "Who are the victims?" She asked, curious. "Members of a traveling convoy of Deacon Industries are most likely the only victim, given that one of the parties in the conflict was a traveling convoy from Deacon Industries ording to one of the witnesses." The man remarked. "Contact the Chairman and interrogate him," Master Sera simply remarked. "We are in the process of doing that right now, we''ll get an answer soon. Until then, this is all we have."


    It wasn''t muchter that the truth came to be. The butler of Deacon Industries enlightened the investigative authorities about the measures that Chairman Deacon had taken to protect himself. A quasi-Master level bomb being among them.


    "Does that mean that both parties died in the explosion?" The head investigator frowned. "We have not seen any signs of survivors, and ording to the butler, very few people knew about the bomb. So there is a high likelihood that it was an assassin who attacked the Chairman''s convoy, killed Chairman Deacon, and died on the spot themselves."


    There had been no witnesses recording any sole person traveling from the area, which supported such a theory, although it was also possible that they had excellent stealth.


    The case quickly came to a close with the limited amount of information avable at hand. The prevailing hypothesis was that both parties involved had perished in an explosion after Chairman Deacon died, triggering the explosion that caused the crater.


    "¡­Just as nned," Rui murmured when he read the brief report that the Beggar''s Sect had given him that ryed the results of the investigation.


    Rui had chosen a course of action that would ensure that this would be the most likely oue of the investigation.


    He had also known that the identity of Chairman Deacon''s assassin would never be looked into without any physical evidence. After all, without there being any forensic or physical evidence to work with, the only thing one could use to try and gauge the identity of the assassin or the person who hired the assassin would be motive.


    There were far too many people with motives to kill him. Rui knew that there was an extremely high chance that the investigative authorities would abandon this line of investigation when they went through the sheer list of the times that Chairman Deacon had had assassinations attempted on him.


    Ultimately, this was a simple investigative department of a transport organization, he didn''t expect much from it based on this fact alone. What he was more concerned about was the other entities that were much more affected by Chairman Deacon''s disappearance. Thankfully, however, they didn''t have any means of knowing the truth.


    Too many people wanted the man dead. And many of them were powerful. Rui would be a lot more concerned if he was the only person of power who had an enmity against him. But someone like Deacon had undoubtedly made enemies out of tons of powerful folks across the entire continent.


    An insignificant Martial Squire who had picked a fight with the man eight years ago was nothing, nowhere near the top of the list of likely perpetrators. People would just have to move on quite quickly.


    Still, Rui did not want to be too hasty, so he decided to spend just a little time until the initial wave of shock blew over.


    Considering his prominence in the Shionel Confederation, he knew that Guildmaster Bradt was probably one of thergest suspects within the nation since Deacon was a constant thorn in his side.


    "Hah, poor old man, taking the heat for my deed," Rui smirked mischievously.


    For the time being, he resided in a bustlingmercial town quite some distance from the crater, keeping a low profile. It wouldn''t be long before he made his way back to his home. Just the thought of returning made him so excited that he could hardly sleep.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1525 Smooth

    <h4>Chapter 1525 Smooth</h4>


    Weeks passed before people moved on from the man''s death. ording to reports, one of the man''s sons, an executive in thepany who had been groomed to seed him eventually, had inherited his stake and ownership of the country, bing the new chairman of Deacon Industries. ording to the Beggar''s Sect, the new chairman had already begun dismantling, assimting, and liquefying all the investments that Chairman Deacon had made in the Kandrian Empire over the past eight years.


    It appeared that the apple had not fallen anywhere near the tree this time. The new chairman appeared to have regarded all of his father''s efforts in the Kandrian Empire as a waste of capital for a goal that yielded no profit.


    He immediately began absorbing or selling whatever he could to at least salvage as much as possible to use those funds to strengthen the core of the business rather than to focus on fringe activities that did not bring in revenue for thepany.


    ''It doesn''t appear that the man gives a damn about Rui Quarrier,'' Rui mused. ''That''s good. It would be a pain in the ass if he had the same inclinations that his father did.''


    Apparently, he didn''t care for his brother as much as Chairman Deacon cared about his son.


    This was the green light that Rui needed to finally make a move and head back home. All the preparations had been made, he had returned his hair back to its original color. He had gotten used to the silver all this time and it actually felt quite dysphoric to have ck hair and eyes after all this time.


    He pulled out the original license that had been supplied by the Martial Union when he first became a Martial Artist, a document that he hadn''t touched in a long, long time, before setting out to the Kandrian Empire.


    The journey back home was unlike anything he had ever experienced.


    It was as though he had be a Disney princess. The world seemed brighter. He could have sworn that flowers bloomed as he passed them while all of nature seemed to rejoice in his return back home.


    He was unable to even contain his excitement. A small grin cracked at the edge of his mouth throughout his entire journey back as he sky-walked through the clouds feeling as free as a bird.


    Yet he also couldn''t contain the nervousness in his heart. An ufortable tingling sensation deep in his heart was stronger than even how nervous he felt when he undertook the assassination from Chairman Deacon.


    It couldn''t be helped.


    He had left his family for nearly eight years. He hadn''t even bid them goodbye.


    He had put his family at risk.


    He knew that Senior Xanarn would have divulged a fraction of the truth that would have allowed them to understand what happened, at least just a little bit better than before, however, he also knew that that would have caused pain to them.


    Although he was happy to return to the Kandrian Empire, he felt a deep amount of guilt for all the torment that he had put his family through. He felt especially guilty when he thought about how his adoptive mother Lashara and the kids that looked up to him must have felt. He had been missing during a crucial era of growth that the twin siblings Max and Mana would have gone through when they were kids. The only refuge he had was knowing that Headmaster Aronian, Squire Kyrie, and Squire Dylon would have undoubtedly guided them better than he could. While being separated from him would have undoubtedly caused them pain and uncertainty about their future, it would undoubtedly have done them good for their growth as Martial Artists and as individuals.


    One of the people he felt most guilty thinking about, however, was Julian. The two of them had shared a special unique bond that was different from any other they had. The two of them would often thoroughly discuss and debate about a variety of topics, having the kind of conversations they knew that they couldn''t have with anyone else.


    He had heard that Julian had taken his disappearance particrly hard, something that made his heartache with guilt.


    Another group of people he looked forward to meeting were his friends. He was certainly looking forward to meeting Kane whom he hadn''t seen in four, now nearly five, years, but he was especially keenly looking forward to meeting Fae, Nel, Hever, Dalen, and Milliana. Content protected by N?v/el(D)rama.Org.


    Aplex muck of emotions and thoughts flooded his mind as he made his way back to the Kandrian Empire.


    It was only dayster that the nostalgically familiar mighty walls bordering the Kandrian Empire came into view. Unlike most nations, the Kandrian Empire was wealthy enough to fortify its borders extremely well. With the highlypetent Kandrian Border Patrol Force that manned and patrolled the walls, most Martial Artists could not infiltrate the borders through force or stealth.


    It was a symbol of power and prestige. It stretched as far as the eye could see, disappearing deep into the mist that characterized the air during this time of the year. As Rui sky-walked towards the massive empire, he could see that the queue at the transit port to enter the nation was much longer and denser than the line of carriages departing from the nation.


    There simply was a muchrger influx of people who wanted to enter the nation than the people who wanted to exit it. And Rui was one of them.


    It wasn''t long before Rui found himself at the entry check-in for traveling individuals.


    "ID please. Name and purpose of visiting?" The officer on the other end of the table asked.


    "Rui Quarrier." He spoke the name loud and proud. "¡­Coming back home."


    He ced his Martial Union license in front of the man, pushing it forward.


    "Squire Quarrier, is it?" The man noted Rui''s details down, nodding with respect. "Wee back, sir. Hope you had a smooth journey back."


    "Smooth¡­" Rui chuckled softly. "I wish."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1526 Late

    <h4>Chapter 1526 Late</h4>


    1526 Late


    It wasn''t long before he took his first step back into the Kandrian Empire.


    The familiar cool breeze tickled his skin chilling under the influence of the light snowfall that was characteristic of the Kandrian Empire''s weather during the monsoons. A mild hint of saltiness and humidity also trickled into the air, characteristic of coastal regions.


    The Kandrian Empire was a rarebination of a country with arge amount of coastal exposure to the Nam Ocean in addition to having a freezing cold North, resulting in a unique climate and weatherbination that one would not expect.


    Yet to Rui, this was home. It wasn''t just the weather and air that triggered waves of nostalgia that clouded his heart, it was everything.


    The infrastructure, the roads, and buildings.


    The people and the ethnic attire that was native to the Kandrian Empire.


    The sense of modernized refinement to a degree that not even the Shionel Confederation had. Outside of more rural ces, the Kandrian Empire made significant utility of motorized carriages instead of horse-drawn carriages. The roads and the tons werergely dung-free something that was much lessmon in the many other nations that Rui had visited over the many years.


    "Hah...as expected of the Kandrian Empire, I suppose," Rui smirked with a hint of pride.


    He had never been an extremely nationalistic person ever, but he had developed an attachment to this nation, especially since it was the ce where his family resided and lived. Although life had never been easy for them, at the very least, the nation did not abuse and exploit them.


    Considering some of the inhumane and horrible ces he had seen during his time away from the Kandrian Empire like the nations of the Derschek Region and the Saiful Region, he was grateful that the nation allowed the kids and caretakers of the orphanage to live normal peaceful lives, even if hard.


    "Man..." He murmured with a bittersweet smile and a voice that quivered with emotion. "...I''m back... I actually finally back...!"


    His throat choked as he felt his eyes sting. Yet he quickly shook his head, pulling himself together as he quickly navigated through the streets. Much had changed in the past eight years, yet theyouts and the broader details had remain unchanged, the old map of the Kandrian Empire that he had stored in his Mind Pce was still quite urate for the most part.


    He had many things to do.


    Many people to visit.


    He was sure that the Martial Union had already be aware of his return. Yet before he dealt with them and others, there was one thing that he needed to do more than anything..


    "I have to return home," He activated his Martial Heart, uncaring for the eyes he drew, before taking off into the air.


    He needed to be careful, of course. With the power of the Martial Heart at top speed, just the shockwaves and mes he generated from his sheer speed would kill tens of thousands of people, and injure many more.


    Such was the power of the Senior Realm.


    He sted off once he reached high enough, zipping through the air at incredible speeds. It wasn''t much too long before he finally reached the town of Hajin, and more importantly, the areas surrounding the town of Hajin.


    In the distance, he could even see the orphanage with his superior vision,nding a good kilometer away from it to avoid causing a panic.


    Yet the second he stepped down on the ground, he felt the touch of the cold metal of a sword on his neck.


    As well as a Martial Heart behind him.


    Not just behind him, he felt seven Martial Hearts activate a short distance away all around him.


    He had been surrounded even before hended.


    "Impressive," Rui smirked wryly.


    "State your name and purpose for approaching the orphanage," The woman behind him coldlymanded him. "Move an inch, and I''ll sever your head."


    "...Well, I''m d to see that the Martial Union didn''t shirk on mymission," Rui couldn''t help but chuckle. "Thank you for everything that you''ve done for my family for the past eight years."


    "What...?" She narrowed her eyes. "I said sta-"


    BZZZT!


    She suddenly paused as she received a message on hermunication device, taking a moment to read it even as she kept a close eye on him.


    "...You''re authorized to pass." She slowly remarked, before she and her unit disappeared.


    This confirmed Rui''s suspicions that the Martial Union had be aware of his return. Yet he put the thought aside. He could have reached the orphanage in a single step, yet he felt the need to walk slowly. It only felt appropriate. He simply didn''t want to admit that he was too nervous.


    Yet, by the time he reached, he simply stopped, staring the house from the woods. Senior Xanarn had long noticed him. She smiled warmly, yet she didn''t say a word.


    It was lunch time, and Mayra had prepared arge meal for everyone gathered in the dining room.


    Countless memories sprang into his head as he finally found the courage to walk up to the front of the door, knocking on it.


    "Someone''s at the door," Horatio called it.


    "Tsk, who the heck ising now, of all times," Rui smiled as he heard Farion grumbling.


    "I''ll get it!" Alice dered, excited.


    "Finish your meals, I''ll get it," His eyes widened as he heard his mother''s soothing yet aged voice.


    Time slowed down to a crawl in his vision as she approached the door. ''Oh man...''


    He didn''t know if he could keep it together.


    CLICK


    The door flew wide open.


    Her skin had grown a tad wrinkled, her hair had gained a white ent to its blond. Her eyes seemed darker than he had remembered. Yet they lit up with shock when she beheld Rui. A wave of shock passed through her body as she dropped the jar of water she held.


    "Rui...?" She whispered. Content protected by N?v/el(D)rama.Org.


    He choked on his own voice, refusing to break down sobbing, yet not even he could stop the tears rolling down his cheek.bender


    "Wee back...!" She sobbed as her warm voice rippled with love."


    Before he knew it, she had already wrapped him in her arms, hugging him with every ounce of force she could muster, melting away all of the fear and guilt that wrapped his heart.


    "...I''m sorry I''mte, mother."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1527 Progressing Lives

    <h4>Chapter 1527 Progressing Lives</h4>


    1527 Progressing Lives


    What unfolded that day would go on to be one of Rui''s most cherished memories. His mother weed him back without even the slightest hint of hesitation despite all he had done. The rest of the orphanage soon became alerted to his presence, erupting with joy.


    "RUUUIII!" Alice leaped at him as she hugged him. "You''re actually back!"


    "Took you long enough," Farion grumbled.


    "He probably saw some awesome Martial Art technique and forgot toe back home," Horatioughed.


    "He has always been fascinated with Martial Art," Mika admitted. "I still recall how he made us help him train on that frozenke when he was a kid preparing to get into the academy. He didn''t let us go back home even if there was a storming!"


    The adults swarmed Rui one after the other as they lightened the air with humor, at Rui''s expense, of course. Not that Rui minded, after all that he had put them through, he would be shameless if he didn''t quietly take at least this much.


    However, it wasn''t just the adults who were cooed over him. The kids were excited to have their older brother.


    Naturally, they had be unrecognizable in the many years that he had been apart.


    "Finally back home, eh big brother?"


    "We''re going to have you train us in Martial Art once more!"


    "You''ve grown so tall!" Rui marveled at the sharp contrast between the kids he was familiar with and the adolescents and young adults that he was beholding right now.


    Yet among them, two of them in particr caught his eye.


    "Max...Mana..." He murmured. "You''ve be Martial Squires!"


    "Hah, of course, we did!"


    He quickly studied their Martial Bodies, he was rtively certain that they had made use of his Hungry Pain technique, at the moment, the threat level that he perceived from them put them about a low-grade Martial Squire, approaching mid-grade.


    Which was pretty decent progress considering how young they were. He had no intention of holding them to his own pacing which was undoubtedly the fastest ever in the history of Martial Art.


    "We''ll definitely have to sparter on, I''m curious to see how much progress you''ve made," Rui remarked.


    "Can we spar now?" Max asked, excited.


    "I wish to show you how much I''ve grown since then, big brother," Mana impatiently dered.


    "You haven''t finished your meals yet," Lashara firmly refused. "Aw man!". Copyright N?v/el/Dra/ma.Org.


    Rui nced over, scanning the crowd that had formed. "Where''s Julian?"


    "He''s in Hajin, at the institute. He''s be quite busy ever since he became the deputy director of the Martial Art department in the Ministry of Research and Development," Lashara smiled, proud. Rui''s eyebrows rose. To be the deputy director of a research department within the Ministry at his age was an incredible aplishment that was usually reserved for the eldest schrs and researchers with more than a century of experience in their field.


    Of course, he wasn''t surprised. Julian had always been extraordinarily bright even as a kid. He had begun reading at the age of two, around the same as Rui. Unlike Rui, however, he wasn''t cheating by being an adult as a baby. He was a genuine prodigy, and Rui was d that he had made the most out of his talents.


    "I''ll have to speak with him when hees back, I suppose," Rui smiled, looking forward to the meeting.


    He paused for a moment as he ran into Senior Xanarn.


    "You kept your word," Rui smiled. "I appreciate that."


    "No need to thank me, Rui. I was just fulfilling my debt," She emphasized, before smiling. "It appears that you have finally aplished what you set out to. I always knew you would."


    Her words were kind, but he sensed some distance between them.


    Then again, four years had passed just after they had affirmed their feelings for each other. Besides, he too knew that there were difficult hurdles that stood in the way of a rtionship with each other.


    "Yeah, but I would be much less at ease if not for the fact that I knew that you were protecting my family," Rui sighed. "Not to mention, telling them the truth."bender


    Eventually, people broke out of their reverie of amazement and fascination, returning to their own devices. As much as Rui was loved, the day needed to move on, and many of them had responsibilities to tend to.


    Over the many years, many of the young adults and caretakers had gotten married together and started families. Rui had noticed many small houses around in the vicinity when he arrived, putting two and two together.


    "We got married seven years ago," Alice smiled as she pulled Farion in. "Ultimately, we decided to settle down very close to the Orphanage. That way it would be as though we never left the Orphanage while still having our own home!"


    Rui smiled, hurting that he had missed that. He had known her his entire life and ultimately missed one of the most important days of her life.


    "It worked out really well when we did it, and everybody from the Orphanage who got married did the same thing, and now we formed a smallmunity," Sheughed cheerily.


    "That''s quite amazing, it''s like a big family stretched out over the entire area," Rui noted.


    The orphanage was muchrger than when he was born, thanks to the wealth that Rui and Julian had earned. However, it still had a limited capacity, so it was better for adults to move out but set up a home very nearby, especially if they had a family.


    "And this is..." Rui''s attention turned to a small girl who had arrived at Alice''s side.


    "This is our daughter, Ruina," Alice smiled. "I decided to name her after you, you see."


    "Alice..." Rui''s eyes widened as he felt himself growing emotional again. "...I don''t know what to say."


    "You know, I had been afraid for many years that you had forgotten about us and had moved on with your life after bing an important Martial Artist. I thought that I was happy for you, and hoped you were happy." Alice smiled bittersweetly. "But now that you''vee back...I''m so happy you haven''t forgotten us."


    "I''d never forget you, Alice. I''ve spent the past eight years thinking about all of you. No matter how many years, decades, or even centuries pass, I couldn''t forget," Rui dered, not just to her, but also to himself.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1528 Responsibility

    <h4>Chapter 1528 Responsibility</h4>


    An entire day had gone by as Rui slowly caught up with each of the members of the Orphanage. With so many years having gone by, each of them had many stories to share. Many of them had gotten married, and many of them had managed get enter new upations and make a better living. There were simply too many tales to tell, a single was far from enough. Themunity of the Quarrier Orphanage had spread in this little region as many of the kids from Rui''s generation had also grown up.


    "You''ve created your own orphanage, Nina?" Rui''s eyes widened with surprise.


    "Mhm, we tried expanding our home, but the construction group that Julian had approached told us that there were many issues with trying to expand the Quarrier home into a bigger home, so ultimately I decided to have another one built right beside it," Nina smirked, evidently proud of herself. "Of course, it hasn''t been easy, but all those years helping mom has given me good experience."


    "Wow¡­" Rui murmured. "At this rate, it won''t be another generation before we will be big enough to be a vige. Maybe we can call it the Quarrier Vige."


    "Hehehe¡­" Nina smirked. "You should speak to mother about that. I''m sure she''d love that."


    He didn''t doubt those words either. His mother had always been fiercely driven when it came to children. If she could get away with creating an orphanage vige that epted tons of homeless children, he knew that she would do it in a heartbeat.


    Still, it got him thinking. ''A vige is pretty doable,'' Rui pondered to himself. ''Especially with Julian and I funding it.''


    He had no doubt that Julian was earning handsomely, and as a Martial Senior, he easily earned enough to buy entire viges if he wanted.


    For now, he decided to keep the idea aside, perhaps he could approach Lashara with it at another time.


    Eventually, Julian arrived home. Rui found it admirable that after all these years, he still resided in the original orphanage building, although he had clearly expanded his own cabin to fulfill his needs and requirements. He froze when he ran into Rui, shocked and speechless.


    "Hehehe, look who came back, Julian." Alice teased him. "We kept it a secret from you so it could be a surprise."


    Rui studied Julian carefully. He could tell that the man had been under some stresstely with a gaunter face and eye bags under his eyes. Still, that didn''t halt his joy. If anything, he appeared even more joyful


    "I knew it¡­I knew that you would return. I always did," He whispered as his eyes watered. "It''s been long."


    "Far too long¡­" Rui sighed. "I''m sorry for that. I truly am."


    He nced at Rui. "Come. Walk with me outside. I want to catch up with you."


    The two of them strolled around the area as Rui took his time studying the new humble houses that had been constructed in the vicinity. He had to admit, it did add a sense ofmunity and belonging that perhaps was not there before.


    "You know, I brought you out here because the others would hit me if they heard what I have to tell you. Especially mother," Julian smiled wryly. "They love and adore you far too much. They''re also indebted to you far too much. They could never bring themselves to tell you what I am going to."


    Rui didn''t reply. He had a feeling he knew where this was going. He didn''t intend to stop it.


    "I am the only one in a position to tell you. That is why I must be the one to tell you," He stopped on the spot.


    Rui turned, staring straight at him.


    "We love you, and we always will. However¡­" His eyes sharpened by a few degrees. "Your actions put the entire orphanage in danger. I know that you are more than intelligent enough to understand the ramifications of your actions. I know that you understand the risks of picking a fight with a powerful business tycoon with a known reputation to be ruthlessly persevering in his vengeance. Yet, you nheless did it. And worse, you ended up putting the innocent children and the brothers and sisters, who grew up with you and took care of you when you were a child, at risk. You put your own mother at risk." This is from N?velDrama.Org.


    Rui''s expression fell at those words as an expression of guilt and remorse emerged on his face.


    "I am grateful that you have secured incredible protection for the Orphanage, but you should know better than anyone that it isn''t absolute. What if Chairman Deacon had seeded in killing Mother while she shopped for the monthly groceries in Hajin? What if that madman had massacred the Orphanage by deploying a Martial Master? If that had happened, your return to the Orphanage would be the worst day of your life instead of one of the best," Julian''s tone wasposed and calm, yet unwaveringly firm. He wasn''t venting the emotional turmoil that he had undoubtedly felt over the past eight years. His criticism of Rui came from a ce of thought and not emotion.


    "I''m aware that the life of a Martial Artistes with many risks. Risking death is bread and butter. I am aware. However, you need to remember you chose those risks, not your family. You have a responsibility to ensure that the risks you take only extend to you, and no further," Julian firmly asserted. "Our family¡­they deserve to not suffer the consequences of your actions."


    Rui could tell he was willing to fight with Rui over this matter if Rui pushed back refusing to ept any of his words. Rui was not that shameless, however.


    In the first ce, everything he said was absolutely correct as far as Rui was concerned. It was a fact that Rui was willing to risk his life as a Martial Artist. It was also a fact that he could not put his family at risk just because he himself was taking risks. It was a fact that he had a responsibility to ensure his actions only affected him, and not innocent loved ones who had nothing to do with his choices.


    Rui bowed his head. "You''re right. In every way. I''m not even going to pretend that it isn''t as bad as it seemed or anything like that. The fact of the matter is that I put my family in more danger than even you realize. I have already ensured taken steps and measures to ensure that such a thing will never happen again."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1529 Source of Stress

    <h4>Chapter 1529 Source of Stress</h4>


    Julian stared at Rui''s forlorn figure for a few seconds, before smiling, shaking his head. "Forget about it. It was not my intention to unfortunately sour the mood. The fact of the matter is that you did sessfully protect the orphanage with an exorbitant amount of protection. The fact of the matter is that you have undoubtedly worked extraordinarily hard for nearly eight years all for the sake of your family. To eliminate the threat to your family. Your devotion is admirable and heart-warming, that much cannot be denied."


    He walked up to Rui putting an arm around his shoulder. "Chin up. I have missed you."


    "As have I¡­Julian."


    "Tell me about your time away," Julian remarked. "You have be a Martial Senior in record time. That is an astonishing aplishment that will undoubtedly ripple across the Martial World. It is a great sign of progress in Martial Art."


    Julian seemed particrly enthused by this. As a researcher in Martial Art, this was undoubtedly a good thing for all of Martial Art.


    "I''m surprised you can tell," Rui keenly noticed. "I haven''t told any of them that I''m a Martial Senior yet. It seems you have be much more intimately familiar with Martial Artists than I''d have expected. As expected of the deputy director of the Martial Art department."


    Julian smiled with pride at Rui''s praise. "It means much to hear that from you of all people, Rui. I have grown very familiar with Martial Artists of the Lower Realms. I''ve led many teams that have made progress in improving the existing training program models meant to help novices discover their Martial Paths. I''ve also applied my background in esoteric material science to improve the configurations of the filtration evolution processes during the Squire evolution breakthrough procedure to produce more powerful Martial Bodies, and in the past four years, I have been working on developing on a research project that studies the development of the Martial Mind."


    Rui''s eyes widened with surprise at thest one. The fact that Julian, as a non-Martial Artist, had been authorized to learn about the Martial Mind showed just how much the Ministry of Research and Development had recognized his brilliance and genius as a researcher schr.


    The Martial Mind was a highly confidential subject. Rui couldn''t even begin to imagine just how much expertise a researcher needed to umte and how many contributions he needed to make in order to be enlightened about the breakthrough to the Master Realm, and also be allowed to undertake a research subject regarding it.


    "It seems you have been informed about the breakthrough to the Master Realm, as you rightfully deserve and need to," Julian smiled knowingly. "I''m sure you''ve made a lot of progress too. It is almost as if you were born for the Master Realm."


    Julian had known Rui his entire life. He knew better than anybody just what kind of a monstrous talent for the Master Realm Rui hid. He was even excited at the prospects of Rui''s ascent to the Master Realm.


    "I did learn about it from a Martial Master more than two years ago, Rui responded, before smirking. "And you''re damn right about that."


    "A Martial Master hm? Well, do go on. I can''t wait to hear the adventures you''ve been through," Julian''s curiosity got the better of him.


    "Don''t worry, I''ll tell you along with everyone else, it''s too long of a story to repeat over and over," Rui sighed. "I''m more curious about yourself. You¡­ don''t look too well."


    Julian''s expression fell as Rui pointed out his less-than-healthy appearance. "¡­I was actually doing quite well, until recently, about half a year ago."


    Rui waited silently, curious.


    "I was approached in the Ministry by a woman by the name of Marin Vilmentine" Julian stated. "She''s the chief of staff of Princess Raemina''s faction. A high-level executive in the Raemina Foundation."


    Rui''s eyes narrowed at that revtion.


    "She made arge donation," Julian sighed. "And when I sayrge, I do meanrge¡­before inviting me to a ball held by the princess."


    It didn''t take a genius to figure out the intentions behind such actions, even if it did, both of them were geniuses so they were fine regardless.


    Rui grimaced. "I see, so the conflict for the throne has begun revving up¡­" Julian nodded. "I''m surprised you are already aware of it, but yes. It had been more of a slow cold war in the past five years, but it has begun escting in both intensity, pace, and openness. More and more ordinary civilians are bing aware of the brewing tensions between the Royal Princes and Princesses. If that was just the one happening, it wouldn''t matter much. But my department had received several more donations at regr intervals since then, and I have been receiving an increasing number of visits from Miss Marin Vilmentine since then."


    Rui could tell that Julian was deeply ufortable with being entangled in this business. He was a researcher with a deep curiosity for the sciences, he was not someone who was politically adept.


    In that regard, Rui was actually far better. He had received training in diplomacy and geopolitics and was even said to exceed the threshold ofpetence that was required to serve as an ambassador for the Kandrian Empire to Senior-level forces. The experience that gave him was also more relevant in handling such dicey situations.


    His experiences with Guildmaster Bradt also allowed him to better navigate such situations and sessfully get what he needed.


    "If you want, I can¡­"


    "No," Julian shook his head. "It''s diforting, but ultimately it is something that I need to face head on. I intend to inform Marin Vilmentine straightforwardly and bluntly that I do not wish to participate in Her Highness'' political campaign."


    Rui didn''t think that was the best way of going about it. "Did you actually meet Her Highness?"


    "I did," Julian sighed. "She spoke many a kind word about the Ministry and its aplishments, but I could tell that she didn''t give the slightest bit of a damn about the actual state and progress of research and development. She just wanted to gather as many higher-level executives within the executive government as she could."Content protected by N?v/el(D)rama.Org.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1530 Plans

    <h4>Chapter 1530 ns</h4>


    "¡­Alright, if that''s how you want to go about it, then go ahead with it," Rui replied. "Let''s put aside the matter of the Kandrian Throne War for now," Julian heaved a sigh. "I did note here to talk about such heavy topics."


    He turned to Rui. "Tell me, what do you n to do now that you''re back here?"


    Rui considered the question wordlessly. "¡­In the short term, I think I just want to it a little slow for now. I have been away for nearly eight years, and I just want to experience a bit of what I''ve missed all this time."


    It was quite surreal to think that he had already returned home. He couldn''t quite get enough of it, especially considering it hadn''t even been a full day since he arrived.


    "That''s understandable, I''m d you''re not going to run off on some other long-term distantmission or something like that. It''s good to take things slow when you''ve been living fast and hard," Julian gently coaxed Rui.


    "After that¡­I''m going to work on reaching the Master Realm," Rui replied. "I also have plenty of business and matters to handle."


    He knew that the Martial Union was undoubtedly waiting for him. Though he was d that they had enough tact and respect for his personal liberty that they didn''t try and send a messenger summoning him to the head office of the Martial Union. That gave him a better impression of them.


    "Isn''t it a bit too soon for you to think about the Master Realm?" Julian asked hesitantly. "The youngest breakthrough to the Master Realm urred at the age of sixty, after all."


    "I don''t intend to take that long. I have a more immediate need for that kind of power," Rui thought about the matter of Master Uma long and hard.


    There was no way she wouldn''t find him before he turned sixty. Although the Panama Continent was enormous and the information connectivity across the continent was shit, it was still only a matter of time before she found him.


    The main reasons for this were that his facial features were rare, and he was going to be more famous than he ever had been before. It would probably take years, but eventually, Master Uma would run into a picture of Rui Quarrier and recognize him.


    That''s why Rui needed to dy that from happening. He had just gotten back to a peaceful life, and he had no intention of losing it yet again. He already had some pretty good ideas on how to prevent that from happening. This time, he had no intention of taking any half-assed measures to ensure that he wasn''t discovered.


    And once he broke through to the Master Realm, he would kill her the very day he did.


    For now, that was still a while away.


    "I also intend to familiarize myself with the Kandrian Empire more than I already have," Rui replied. "Although I wasn''t necessarily unfamiliar with this nation, I only realized how great this empire is after visiting other ces. While far from perfect, the people of the Kandrian Empire are generally not unhappy, I''ve even ventured to say that this is a happy nation, all things considered. I''d rather nothing happen to the peace and harmony within the Empire."


    Of course, he knew that was already false. With the cold throne war silently brewing at the highest echelons, it was only a matter of time before it escted even further, threatening the pace that he hade to btedly learn the value of.


    Then there were bastards like the Carnil Mafia, who also threatened the peace and harmony of the Kandrian Empire.


    Unfortunately, Ruicks the power to deal with these events. Even if he was a Martial Sage, it was unlikely that he would be able to do anything. After all, there were fourteen Martial Sages in the Kandrian Empire.


    He shook his head. ''Rather than focusing on things that I can''t affect, I should focus on things that I can.'' Content protected by N?v/el(D)rama.Org.


    Rui chatted a bit more with Julian as the two of them broached lighter topics. "Ah, I''ve meant to ask you¡­ That Martial Senior¡­is she your girlfriend?" Julian peeked at Rui curiously.


    Rui did his best to maintain aposed expression. "¡­She''s special, but we''re not in amitted rtionship. There are practical impediments. We want different things in life. I can''t stand stagnating in one ce for too long, especially after what I''ve experienced in the past eight years. I know for a fact I would be much weaker had the fiasco of the Shionel Confederation not urred, derailing my life."


    He probably wouldn''t even be a Martial Senior.


    "I see. Your lifestyle differences are too great, are they?" Rui nodded. "I enjoy herpany, she has a funny sense of humor and is fun to talk to. But she''s the type who enjoys peaceful monotony. But I have ambitions in life that require me to push myself, to subject myself to danger to stimte myself. And that usually means not being in the Kandrian Empire."


    "It is hard to imagine a Martial Senior associated with the Martial Union experiencing grave danger on a daily basis inside the Kandrian Empire," Julian admitted. "The Kandrian Empire is too stable for me to feel any sense of danger," Rui replied. "It''s why I began doing foreign missions as a Martial Apprentice in the first ce. The Martial Union may as well be nigh-omnipotent within the boundaries of the Kandrian Empire. What could possibly make me feel desperate?"


    The only thing he would find as a Martial Senior in the Kandrian Empire are bodyguard jobs for the most powerful figures in the nation. Perhaps some business magnates and tycoons like Charles DiViliers. Important bureaucratic figures within the government and Martial Union.


    The kind of people who were rarely truly in danger with the obscene amount of protection they received.


    "Sounds like you''ll eventually get bored of the Kandrian Empire," Julian smiled wryly.


    "Eventually, probably. But for now, I''m here to stay. I''ve been away for far too long."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1531 Tales

    <h4>Chapter 1531 Tales</h4>


    The two of them chatted some more about a variety of light topics. Eight years had passed, yet Rui noticed that there was no distance between them. They had gone back to chatting just like they used to nearly eight years ago.


    That was something that Rui deeply appreciated, it was exactly what he needed.


    He would feel awful if their rtionship had been destroyed because of his eight-year disappearance. Perhaps Julian was keen enough to realize that and had chosen to proactively close the gap between them.


    They returned to the old conversations that they used to have centered around nuanced topics rting to the anthropology of science, technology, and Martial Art.


    "You obtained a journeyman schr''s degree in the sciences?" Julian asked with surprise. "Interesting, although you were always abnormally familiar with field of science, you never indicated any interest in pursuing the sciences as a career. You had always had your eyes fixed on Martial Art from day one."


    "I needed both the knowledge and the authority to ess information on certain substances for a Martial Art technique of mine," Rui exined. "So I decided to study up a bit, and ended up clearing the exam as the topper."


    "As expected of my brother," A proud smile appeared on his face. "You are probably the only Martial Senior in history who is also a journeyman schr."


    Rui shrugged with a wry smile. He didn''t give the slightest bit of a damn about his degree or the title of journeyman schr, but making his brother proud and impressed was definitely worth the effort.


    It wasn''t long before the two of thempleted a long talk together before heading back to the Quarrier Orphanage. It took even less time for all the adults to gather around the living room while the kids yed outside in the evening.


    Everybody was curious to know what Rui had been through in the past eight years.


    How could they not be?


    They certainly mourned when he had disappeared. But now that he had returned, he undoubtedly had some entertaining tales to tell!


    "You don''t have to stare at me that intently," Rui heaved a wry smile. "Now then¡­where to begin?"


    He began at the beginning. He told them about Kane and he faked going to different ces before eventually heading to the Shionel Confederation. He told them about his exploits in the Shionel Confederation including the fiasco that eventually led him to leaving for eight years.


    He underyed the danger they were in, to a certain extent. There was no point in telling them that dozens of assassination and kidnapping attempts had been made in the past eight years. His mother might even have gotten a heart attack if she learned about this sordid fact.


    "Returning would have put you in danger," Rui exined. "He was hunting me, and thus staying away from you would mean taking his focus away from you. That''s why I didn''t return. I couldn''t, not unless I was strong enough to protect all of you, and eliminate anybody who would dare set their eyes on the people I care for and love."


    There was a stunned silence as they processed what Rui had just told him. They were already aware that Rui didn''t return to protect them, but they didn''t understand the details.


    "And that man¡­Deacon¡­Is he?"


    "Yes," Rui firmly affirmed. "He''s no longer a threat. That''s why I returned, having confirmed that."


    "¡­"


    None of them knew what to say to that. It was surreal to even think that such a thing had unfolded. The story that Rui narrated was straight out of a novel!


    Yet among all of them, Lashara was the first to react. Yet she didn''t try to console him or reassure him with words. She merely pulled him into a deep embrace.


    Rui smiled, epting her affection.


    The mood took a turn for the better as he went on to tell them the rest of his story. His adventures with Kane as they traveled to incredible ces like the Umiana Trench, the Thundering Valley, Crexeet Town, Ajanta Ind, and the Great Forest of Hypnonarak.


    He left out several crucial details because they were dangerous to even utter out loud, but he was earnest about his experiences.


    He didn''t admit to actually murdering Deacon either. Who knew who was listening, waiting to use his words against him.


    "¡­Once I confirmed the news that Deacon had perished. I returned home," Rui concluded his story. "That''s the end of that story."


    "My poor baby¡­" Lashara pulled him in for a hug. "You must have gone through so much." Exclusive ? material by N?(/v)elDrama.Org.


    Rui smiled wryly as he bent awkwardly while his mother peppered his head with kisses. He had a feeling that he wasforting her rather than the other way around.


    The adults of the orphanage were overwhelmed by the details of his adventurous tale. Max and Mana in particrly were fascinated by the various ces that Rui had visited to get stronger.


    "Is there really a hole in the ocean?" Max asked excitedly. "Yeah, it was shocking to witness, but it was definitely there," Rui nodded. "Martial Sages are incredible¡­" Mana murmured, deep in thought. "Tell me more about the Thundering Valley!"


    As a maneuvering-oriented Martial Artist, she was naturally more curious about the Thundering Valley than she was about the Umiana Trench. Rui took his time, quelling all of their questions before finally satisfying the curiosity of the two young Squires.


    "I know your experiences couldn''t have been anything but extraordinary, but to you had such a fantastical adventure in the past eight years¡­" Julian murmured. "Truly fascinating."


    The other adults were inclined to agree, the things that Rui described sounded almost fictional.


    "This world is wider andrger than you can imagine," Rui smiled. "There is no limit to what is possible in such a world. You can only understand its many wonders if you see them in person. I''ll take all of you to see them someday!"


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1532 Spar

    <h4>Chapter 1532 Spar</h4>


    It wasn''t going to be easy to keep that promise, but Rui vowed to seed. As a Martial Senior, his earning ability was truly high, especially considering that he was already a high-grade Martial Senior.


    Although the Kandrian Empire had Martial Artists up to two Realms above him, the actual number of people who were stronger than him was a few hundred at the very most. This meant that he was still a highly importantbat asset, which meant that money would never be an issue. Taking his family around the world for a tour was not impossible.


    "Let''s leave that forter though," Rui smiled wryly. "I have no intentions of going back to those ces."


    Eventually, his story-telling session came to an end. His audience had been enraptured in the details of his fantastical adventures across the continent, but they had been overwhelmed by it by the time it came to an end.


    What could they even say about all the things that Rui had gone through?


    Their experiences, in contrast, were extremely limited. Most of them had never ventured past the town of Hajin in their geographic vicinity. They didn''t even feel qualified toment on his experiences.


    "I always knew that there are incredible reality-defying wonders out there, but to actually hear about your experiences with them in such detail¡­" Julian murmured, deep in thought.


    "Alright, enough of stories!" Max got up.


    "I agree," Mana nodded. "We have waited long enough."


    The two of them dragged Rui deep into the forest where they had prepared a field to spar in.


    "Goodness gracious¡­" Ruiughed. "You two sure are excited, aren''t you?"


    "Hah!" Maxughed. "We''re going to kick your butt this time, big brother!"


    "We''ll show you just how much we''ve improved in the past eight years¡­"


    "Oh¡­ is that so?" Rui smiled, stroking his shaved chin. "Come then. Show me how much stronger you''ve gotten in the past eight years."


    He stood with his arms behind his back as the two of them took their usual stances. They exerted mild pressure on Rui, although he certainly was impressed by their progress in the Squire Realm, and they had yet to begin.


    Max''s stance reflected his Martial Path; momentum-charged offense. His arms were folded with his fists pointed straight in Rui''s direction. He adopted a stance that was reminiscent of the ssical boxing stance before the introduction of gloves into the sport.


    Mana, on the other hand, centered her crouched legs, keeping them as close to her center of gravity as possible. This made it easier for her to maneuver in all three dimensions, which is what she excelled at and focused on.


    "Come," Rui calmly instructed.


    The two of them shed forward at a speed that exceeded even sound. Mana in particr raced forward at blinding speed beforeunching a swiftbo blows at Rui''s torso.


    WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH


    Rui casually evaded them with minimal effort. "You''ve grown stronger."


    "Of course we have!" She leaped, somersaulting above his head, before her flew down like a meteorite as sheunched a powerful drop kick on him.


    Max, on the other hand, had also arrived, throwing a remarkably powerful blow charged with his momentum.


    Time slowed down to a crawl as Rui examined their movements. ''Their patterns have grown more efficient. Their teamwork has also improved.''


    He happily noted their improvement before casually sidestepping both their attacks.


    TAP TAP


    He gently patted their attacks, altering their flow of power ever so slightly as he evaded their attack.


    That slight alteration snowballed into a major discrepancy!


    BAM! POW!


    Their attacks wound upnding on each other, giving each other a good beating while Rui had long stepped away.


    "Ow! Watch who you''re hitting!"


    "Are you even on my team?!"


    Ruiughed heartily at the two Martial Squires bickering, with amusement. They had grown in many ways, yet he was d to see that some things never changed.


    "Come on, now," Rui teased. "All that hype and this is all you got? Tsk tsk, kids these days¡­"


    The two of them red at him. "We''re not kids!"


    They surged forward with remarkable coordination and teamwork, throwing all manners of attacks.


    Yet not a single one of them so much as touched Rui. His actual movement speed was below their swift attacks, yet for some reason, they were unable to evene close to touching.


    After a long session of what amounted to a cat-and-mouse chase, the two of them were finally drained of their stamina.


    "You didn''t even attack us," Maxined.


    "This doesn''t even feel like a fight," Mana murmured.


    "¡­Alright then, why don''t I show you a little treat?" Rui smirked.


    BADUMP!


    He activated his Martial Heart. Glowing red streaks emerged from his heart, spreading across his body. It was as though he was a mountainden with streams ofva, erupting with an ocean of power!


    Max and Mana widened their eyes with shock as they beheld the mighty power of the Senior Realm.


    Their skin crawled with the sheer energy that Rui seemed to radiate.


    "What is this¡­?" Max wondered with awe.


    "This is the power of the Senior Realm¡­" Mana realized. Copyright N?v/el/Dra/ma.Org.


    "That''s right," Rui smiled. "And it is the power that awaits you in the Senior Realm."


    He raised his hand. "Now then, go to sleep."


    He flicked his finger at them, activating a simple breathing technique.


    THWOOM!


    He masterfully controlled the power, timing, and cement. Cleanly knocking them out without leaving so much as a scratch on their body.


    "Hehehe¡­" Rui chuckled with satisfaction.


    Their admiration did feel good as an older brother who had guided them down their Martial Path.


    "You''re so extra," A voice called out to him, cajoling him gently.


    "Am I?" Rui nced in the direction of the voice.


    Senior Xanarn emerged from the woods. "Show off."


    "Hey, I think I''ve earned at least that much," Rui smiled. "Wouldn''t you agree?"


    She did, but she didn''t want to give him the satisfaction.


    Rui''s smile disappeared as his expression grew serious. "Xanarn, we need to talk."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1533 Diverging Paths

    <h4>Chapter 1533 Diverging Paths</h4>


    He had been wanting to speak to her ever since he got back, but he hadn''t been able to since he was far too busy catching up with all of them.


    "First, thank you for keeping your word," Rui began. "You protected my family and enlightened them about the truth. I appreciate that." Exclusive ? material by N?(/v)elDrama.Org.


    "Like I said, I was just fulfilling my debt to you. Besides, it''s hardly been a chore, it''s actually been quite the pleasure," She replied, continuing. "I never had a family aside from my grandmother when I was young. These past two years have been so soul-nourishing that I''ve felt like I could stay here forever. Which is why I don''t understand¡­"


    Her expression grew more serious. "How were you able to leave so easily? What you have is a dreame true for many. A ce and purpose in arge family full of love and hope. What more could you want? What more could you want in this cold cruel world?"


    Her eyebrows furrowed. "If I were you, I would have never left this ce. Not a single time. I would spend my entire life in this orphanage, and use my power to protect them from the harsh reality of this world. When you see those boisterous children running around¡­when you see your loving siblings raise those children with love and care, don''t you feel the same way?"


    Rui stared at her, listening to her heartfelt words. It wasn''t that he didn''t understand where she wasing from, he genuinely did. The issue was that she didn''t seem to understand where he wasing from.


    "I do experience the desire to protect my family," Rui replied calmly. "When I learned about the danger that I put them all in, I didn''t hesitate to sacrifice billions of gold from the fruits of more than a year''s worth ofbor. If I had to make that choice, I would make it over and over again. However¡­there are some things I''m not willing to do."


    Rui heaved a sigh. "This is something I didn''t mention in the story back home but¡­ back then the Martial Union offered me indefinite protection for my family as long as I became a member of their inner corps. Which basically means absolute loyalty and servitude. I refused because it would hamper my desire to live a free life and would hamper my ambition."


    He paused for a moment before continuing. "That debacle taught me many things about myself, including the fact that my desire to fulfill my greatest ambition is my strongest drive, stronger than all others."


    It wasn''t the nicest answer, but it was the truth.


    Senior Xanarn didn''t respond immediately. She had already realized this truth, but it was something else to hear it so clearly from Rui himself. Not only was he self-aware about it, but he had epted it and was not the slightest bit ashamed of who he was in any way.


    "If you feel this way about the brothers and sisters you grew up with, those who took care of you, your own mother¡­then you''d probably feel this way even if you started your own family with a woman someday, right?"


    There was a hint of disappointment and resignation in her voice.


    "¡­I cannot say, but I would not be surprised," Rui replied before closing his eyes. "You do not understand. You cannot understand. The weight of my ambition. I am nobody, if not a man fulfilling Project Water."


    She did not know what that was. Yet the details did not matter. What mattered was that they were at a crossroads, and it seemed that it was impossible for them to walk the same path.


    "¡­I see," She replied, walking away before pausing. "I will remain here. In the past two years, I have experienced peace and serenity the likes of which even the Floating Sect did not give me. Your mother and the other caretakers epted me wholeheartedly. They treated me like I was their own sister. The children of the orphanage adored me, looked up to me, and epted my love like I was their own sister. Perhaps it is because the very nature of an orphanage is to give love to those who need it¡­But this orphanage is already my home, and perhaps the home where I''ll raise a family."


    She turned around, facing Rui. "That is my choice¡­It can also be yours if you are willing to."


    Rui simply stared at her, heaving a sigh before shaking his head. "My choice was made before I was even born in this world."


    This wasn''t the first time Rui had made this choice either. He was not new to rtionships, even if he was rusty. But in his experience, there was always a critical threshold for a rtionship, a crucial make-or-break zenith.


    Commitment. Themitment to put aside everything else in their life and put their rtionship as the number one priority. Rui had reached this point a few times in his old life back in his younger days. And he had made the same choice every single time.


    His work.


    He had had a faint hope that perhaps he would meet someone who walked the exact same path as him, so he wouldn''t have to choose, but s, he had yet to meet somebody like that, in either life.


    "¡­I see," She turned away, heading back to the orphanage. Rui heaved a shaky sigh, shaking his head before heading towards Max and Mana, slowly waking them up.


    "Ngh¡­" Max groaned as he got up. "¡­Big brother? Wha-Oh."


    He remembered the spar between them and the power that Rui had disyed.


    "That power¡­" Mana murmured as she gained her bearings. "What do we have to do to attain that power? Tell us."


    Rui smiled as he observed their deep desire for the power of the Martial Heart. He had achieved what he wanted by disying his Martial Heart to them in such a fashion; stirring their drive.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1534 Flight

    <h4>Chapter 1534 Flight </h4>


    1534 Flight


    "Individuality, my little brother and sister," He replied. "Techniques that are both born from you and are highly attuned and synergetic with your Martial Body and Path. Techniques that make the absolute best of your body, squeezing out every ounce of power and potential within your body."


    "Techniques that make the best of your body?" Max asked.


    "That''s right," Rui nodded. "Techniques that maximize the harnessing of your body, its potential, and power. That is the path forward to the Senior Realm."


    The two of them epted his words, nodding seriously. They had already resolved themselves to do what it took to obtain that power.


    "I heard from big brother Julian that you are the youngest Martial Senior, is that true?" Max asked with stars in his eyes.


    Rui shed a smile of exaggerated pride. "It is. Your big brother is the best!"


    "As expected of you, big brother," Mana nodded with a knowing expression. "Squire Kyrie also said that you were something special. Squire Dylon begrudgingly agreed."


    Rui''s eyes lit up at the mention of the two Martial Squires. A lot of time had passed, but he still had a lot of appreciation for the two Martial Squires that had done much to guide him and help him grow whilst he was a Martial Apprentice.


    ''It''s been a while since I''ve seen them, I''ll definitely pay them a visit soon.''


    He decided to put off his long list of people to visit away for the day. It hadn''t even been a full twenty-four hours since he visited, and he didn''t want to get to handling these matters immediately after returning.


    "It''s good to take some rest," His mother agreed when he told her that. "My poor baby has been away for so long. Just rx for today."


    He found himself resting his head on herp as he patted his head gently.


    It was at times like this when his family almost overtook his ambition. There was always something about his mother that caused him to wonder. Nobody else could make him waver in his ambition even in the slightest. Not Julian, Max, nor Mana. Yet when it came to Lashara¡­


    "You look troubled," She softly spoke to him as she gently caressed him.


    "¡­" Rui simply stared at her.


    "No matter what you do from here on out, I''ll always love you," She reassured him, almost sensing his troubles. "You''re my precious baby, after all." This is from N?velDrama.Org.


    "I thought you''d want me to stay here forever," Rui softly replied.


    "I want you to do what makes you happy," She replied. "When I created this orphanage, it was never my intention to shackle any of my children here. If I can nurture them nourish them enough to have them spread their wings and find their own path, then I am happy. Seeing you aplish great things, things that you set out to aplish makes me feel purposed."


    That was not what Rui had expected. His mother had always been the worrywat in the orpahange, particrly around Rui. He was the first Martial Artist from the orphanage, and she had gone through sleepless nights worrying whether Rui would be alright.


    "Many of the children have begun wanting to be Martial Artists looking at Max, Mana, and you," She heaved a sigh of exasperation and adoration. "I worry, but¡­I shouldn''t suppress them. I just¡­worry."


    She was right to, too. Rui had lost count of the number of times that he had almost died since bing a Martial Artist. Surely the number exceeded a hundred thousand after having been a Martial Artist for nearly fifteen years.


    Just a single mistake, and ''almost died'' could easily be reduced to a single word. There was a reason that the Martial Union invested heavily in creating sixteen extravagant academies with the best of what Martial Art had to offer. It was to create sixteen Martial Artist-producing factories to rece all the Martial Artists who died every year.


    "I''ll train all of them properly now that I''m here," Rui reassured. "I will make sure they have everything they need to make it back alive, if nothing else."


    Survival was a skill-set that he had be proficient at in the past eight years.


    "That would certainly make me sleep easier at night."


    That was reason enough for Rui, in addition for caring for the kids. The orphanage had epted a lot of new orphans in the past eight years. He didn''t even know most of them, yet in his mind, they were already part of the family.


    It was his duty to think like that, after all, he himself had been blessed with that.


    Eventually, he found himself falling asleep.


    He slept better than he ever had in the past eight years. It was a deep, nourishing and satisfying sleep.


    When he woke up that day, it was as though he had woken up for the first time ever. He had rxed in a way that he hadn''t in a long time. It actually took him a while topletely regain all his vigor.


    "I''m heading out to see Kane," Rui informed them.


    He had messaged Kane the day before and the two of them had agreed to meet the next day. With his speed, it wasn''t long before he arrived at their rendezvous.


    "Long time," Rui smiled, waving at him. "You look¡­different."


    "Your hair and eyes are back to normal," Kane murmured. "Surreal."


    Unlike his reunion with his family, their reunion was not emotionally charged. For one, neither of them were inclined to act so rigidly and seriously with each other. They addressed each other like it had only been a month since they saw each, as opposed to four years.


    The first thing Rui noted was that he was still a Martial Squire, which was not good news. The whole point of returning to the Kandrian Empire was so that he could face a conflict that would threaten his Martial drive, awakening his Martial Heart in the process.


    The fact that he was still a Martial Squire proved that there was something wrong.


    "I wanted to tell you everything I''ve been through in the past four years but¡­" Rui paused, before continuing. "Your story is more important."


    Kane heaved a sigh.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1535 Return

    <h4>Chapter 1535 Return </h4>


    1535 Return


    Two years ago, two people arrived at the Kandrian Empire, passing through the transit port.


    "We''ve arrived,'' Kane told Xanarn.


    Xanarn took a few steps forward as she spread her senses across the transit port town. "So¡­this is the Kandrian Empire, this is his home nation."


    "We''ve still got some ways to go before we reach the town of Hajin," Kane remarked. "But this is where we split. You have the map that he gave you, so you should be fine by yourself right?"


    She nodded. "Well then, goodbye and good luck. You''ve worked hard in the past two years since he left. Regardless of what happens, none of that was for waste."


    The two of them split paths as Kane headed straight home while Xanarn headed towards the orphanage.


    BADUMP


    BADUMP


    BADUMP


    His heart beat faster the closer he got to the Arrancar Mansion, reaching its peak when he arrived at the main gate.


    "¡­Young Master Kane?!" One of the guards gasped.


    "Clear the way," Kane ordered with a steely voice.


    The two guards open the gates, watching him pass through as the security office adjacent to it scrambled to send a message to the security team and the staff. Who further passed on the messages to the main family.


    The news spread like wildfire.


    The prodigy of the Arrancar family had returned.


    A series of Martial Squires swiftly appeared before him, surrounding him.


    "You little shit¡­" One of them growled, stepping forward to him. "You have some ballsing back after all this time. You should have stayed away forever, if you knew what''s best for you."


    "Best for me¡­?" Kane asked, smirking. "Or best for you, big brother?"


    The man before him narrowed his eyes.


    Kane could tell he had struck a nerve.


    "Everybody knows that you could never be the heir of the Arrancar Family as long as I''m around," Kane smirked, taunting him. "My talent. My growth. My potential, they outshine yours so much that it isn''t even a question of whose more suited to seeding our father, the Devil Sage, isn''t that right, big brother Kanar?"


    Squire Kanar''s eyes narrowed with murderous intensity. "You bastard. You''re just a loser who ran away. Who ran away from the privilege of being born in the Arrancar Family. And now you''vee back to find your ce? Shameless!"


    "You''ve got the wrong idea," Kane narrowed his eyes. "I''vee to forever escape the Arrancar Family. I want father to sign this."


    He tossed Kanar a scroll, who begrudgingly opened it widening his eyes in shock after reading. "A formal statement from our father epting your disownment of the Arrancar Family and a statement for reparations for all the damages done to you?! Have you lost your mind?!"


    He tore the scroll apart. "Father will have your head for this! Get him!"


    The Martial Squiresshed out at Kane, racing to apprehend him.


    THWACK THWACK THWACK!


    Yet it was only after Kane effortlessly knocked them out did theyter realize how outssed they were. Kane was good at hiding his strength, that was they had failed to realize.


    They had failed to realize that in the two years that he had furiously trained in the Floating Sect, he had achieved a level of power that was truly only second only to Rui and Ieyasu back when they were in the Squire Realm. Although he had yet to achieve their absurd formidability there was no other Martial Squire on the continent who was his equal now that the two of them were Seniors.


    "You bastard!" Squire Kanar charged forward with a furious expression.


    WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH!


    Just the slightest centimeters.


    He shifted by just the slightest centimeters, and yet not a single attack so much as grazed him.


    "Forty years in the Squire Realm and you''re only grade-six or so?" Kane snorted with contempt. "This is what happens when you mindlessly rely on the Arrancar library to master existing techniques. You have mastered many existing techniques, yet because they are neither original nor unique from you, they are not attuned to your body. They do not have synergy with your body. You will never amount to anything more than a second-


    rate Martial Squire as long as you continue down this path. What a waste of talent."


    "SHUT UP!" Kanar gritted his teeth,unching an onught of haymakers. Copyright N?v/el/Dra/ma.Org.


    Kane sighed, evading them before swiftly knocking him out and moving on. Worthless Martial Squires without more than a sliver of individuality were not what could give him what he needed.


    He needed someone to push himself beyond his limit.


    "Young Master Kane," A voice drew his attention.


    A Senior-level presence graced the grounds. Kane braced himself, hoping that his resistance to this overwhelming power would push him to break through.


    Yet something was wrong.


    He didn''t feel a rush or a drive for more power like Rui seemed to when he was about to fight Ieyasu.


    He didn''t feel like he was close.


    "His Excellency wishes to speak with you," The Martial Senior calmly informed Kane.


    "I have nothing to say to him," Kane growled. "I came here for my stateme-"


    "His Excellency has agreed to all of your demands," The Martial Senior interrupted him. "Now then¡­Do not keep him waiting any longer."


    Kane simply stared at him stunned, speechless. "What¡­?"


    "It would be wise not to keep His Excellency waiting," The Martial Seniors narrowed his eyes, repeating himself.


    This was not how things were supposed to go. He hade here for a fight, hoping that he would be overwhelmed by the Arrancar''s Family''s superior forces, awakening his Martial Heart to obtain the power needed to maintain his desire for freedom and escape from his family.


    Yet his father had agreed to all his demands?


    "Young Master," The Martial Senior calmly addressed him. "Pleasee immediately. He wishes to speak to you."


    Kane narrowed his eyes, nodding slowly.


    It wasn''t long before he found himself in a cave deep underground. An unrefined cave with merely the bare necessities and none of the luxury or extravagance that the rest of the household had.


    Even before he entered the cave, he felt his nerves tingle.


    His soul screamed.


    He had experienced this many times, yet each time may as well have been the first time.


    The very air he breathed was different


    The verynd he stepped on had changed.


    It was as though heaven and earth warped in the man''s presence, prostrating in awe to the magnificence of his being.


    "So¡­" A deep masculine voice rippled through the air andnd.


    It reverberated through the very fabric of space itself.


    "The boy who ran away hase back home, has he?"


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1536 Inducing Drive

    <h4>Chapter 1536 Inducing Drive </h4>


    1536 Inducing Drive


    Kane narrowed his eyes at those words as beheld his father.


    As always, the man more a simple feathered garb covering the lower half of his body, fashioned from the pelt of an Elder Phoenix. Scruffy hair covered most of his upper body and an unkempt beard covered most of his face, making him seem closer to a bear than a man.


    His appearance did the cave justice, matching that of a caveman


    "I''m not here to return. And this isn''t my home anymore." Kane mustered up his courage with defiance, retorting.


    The man snorted. "So I''ve heard¡­some nonsense about disowning the family. Tell me, boy¡­"


    His eyes narrowed. "Did you really think you could trigger your Martial Heart with such a trivial attempt?"


    Kane''s eyes widened.


    "Did you really think you think that stepping into a higher Realm of power was something that could be triggered so easily?" Sage Damian stared into his son''s eyes.


    Kane felt transparent under the man''s piercing re. Invisible. The Martial Sage''s eyes revealed a raw aggression that was held and bound within him, tempered by his mind.


    "I¡­" Kane faltered, clenching his fist.


    "You do not even understand who you are anymore," The Sage snorted. "The very fact that you came here willingly, without political protection, knowing full well that the Arrancar Family''s might was more than enough to capture you shows that the desire to escape the Arrancar family is not a part of your Martial drive anymore."


    Kane''s eyes widened with shock as his father calmly unraveled his actions and decisions.


    "In fact¡­" Sage Damian''s eyes pupils pierced through Kane as he studied his son. "¡­It seems that not only is it not a part of your Martial drive anymore, but it is something you''re willing to risk if it means gaining the power of a higher Realm in return." Copyright N?v/el/Dra/ma.Org.


    Kane''s eyes shed a knowing glint.


    "Oh? Perhaps you''re not nearly as unaware of the changes your Martial drive has undergone¡­" Interest crept into Sage Damian''s voice. "So¡­ tell me, my prodigal son, what drives you? What drives you to greater heights? What drives you to pursue the power of a higher Realm even at the cost of what used to be your greatest desire?"


    "I¡­don''t want to fall behind," Kane''s eyes shed with determination. "I don''t want to fall behind him. He''s my best friend. He''s already reached the Senior Realm. But I¡­am still stuck in the Squire Realm."


    "''Him''¡­Hmmm¡­" Sage Damian realized who he was referring to. "Him, eh? So he''s already be a Martial Senior, shattering the previous record by ten years. Interesting."


    "Twelve years," Kane smirked proudly. "He became a Senior two years ago."


    Sage Damian narrowed his eyes as a sh of raw aggression from deep within emerged on the surface. "You seem proud of another''s aplishments. You should feel ashamed for falling behind with your talent and potential. It means you weren''t as driven as him."


    Kane shrugged. "I don''t care. He''s my best friend. I don''t feel ashamed of falling behind. My desire to keep up with him is not because my pride is hurt, it''s because I want to stay with him. Because he''s my best friend."


    "Hah!" Sage Damian snorted with disapproval as his eyes shed with aggression.


    Yet even that simple gesture shook the world.


    RUMBLE


    Kane stood unsteadily as the very ground beneath his feet began vibrating. The air had already begun dancing into gusts.


    "Uh¡­could you not? You''re causing a lot of trouble to a lot of people," Kane remarked.


    The Martial Sage narrowed his eyes as he tempered the predatory aggression within him. "Hmph. Know this, my son. A Martial drive that aims to merely keep up and not surpass is not a drive that will take you very far."


    "Well, what if I told you that keeping up with Rui would mean bing one of the strongest Martial Artists in the world someday?" Kane smirked. "One day, he will surpass everybody. I know it. He''ll even be stronger than you."


    "Will he now?" Sage Damian raised an eyebrow with interest.


    "Don''t go doing anything just because you''re afraid of being surpassed though," Kane narrowed his eyes.


    "Hah! Don''t dare insult me with an usation of cowardice. I am not as spineless as a boy who only knows to chase another man''s back."


    "Yap," Kane shrugged, growing morefortable in the conversation. "With that out of the way¡­I do have onest question."


    Sage Damian simply stared at him his steely eyes.


    "All those years you sent the Arrancar Family after me. All those years I managed to evade them. Yet you never came after me yourself. Or deployed a Martial Senior or Master."


    "I''m busy, boy." The man growled. "My pursuit of power. The burdens I bear are beyond anything you could possibly fathom."


    "But you could have definitely had me captured if you truly wanted," Kane insisted, narrowing his eyes. "Yet, you didn''t."


    The man simply stared at Kane with sharp eyes. "I suppose it doesn''t matter anymore since you now have a different drive¡­"


    He closed his eyes. "It''s simple. Drive is the source of growth. As a boy, you never had the drive to seed the Family, nor an inherent desire for power, glory, sess, or wealth. The only strong emotion you ever disyed as a boy was your growing hatred for the Arrancar Family. That is why I decided to make that your drive by using the Arrancar Family to threaten your freedom. Power was your only solution. Your strong desire to be free from the Arrancar Family fueled your growth tremendously, allowing you to break through to the Apprentice Realm at a prodigiously young age and make rapid growth from there on out."


    His tone became exceedinglyposed and calm. "¡­Exactly as nned."


    Kane''s eyes widened with shock. "Wait, so all this time. All that nonsense about the heir of the family was fabricated."


    "A sessor for the family is important, even if meaningless since I am not dying. Not now, not ever," The Sage remarked coldly. "The shallow desire of the other members of the family to gain more prestige by having you be the heir was a good superficial reason to justify tormenting you."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1537 The Power of Youth

    <h4>Chapter 1537 The Power of Youth </h4>


    1537 The Power of Youth


    Kane had always known that his circumstances were strange. Or rather, he known ever since he told his story to Rui, who had pointed out some inconsistencies, hinting that perhaps there was more to the story.


    A Martial Apprentice, no matter how brilliant, was not capable of resisting such a powerful force. Heter learned that even the political protection from the Lightning Sect was not enough simply because he wasn''t valuable enough to spend tons of political capital to resist.


    "So all that torment you put me through¡­ All that bullshit that I had to go through. You did it all just to give me a drive?" Kane gritted his teeth, clenching his fists.


    "That''s right," Sage Damian calmly replied. "I did you a favor. My son, power is everything in this world. The weak perish. The strong consume. Weakness would cause not just you, but also everyone you love, suffering. Weakness itself is evil. Being weak in this world is no different from killing yourself and everyone you love, that is why I drove you to covet power."


    "That is the most demented thing I''ve ever heard." Kane''s expression crumpled anger, almost quivering fury. "You could have just loved me like a normal father, instead you filled your son with hatred and fear, and you call it love. Fuck off with that bullshit!"


    "Love you like a normal father, eh?" Sage Damian''s voice had been reduced to a whisper. "And what good would that have done you? Look at that little wench friend of yours, the one who is touted as one of the three geniuses of your generation."


    "¡­Fiona?" Kane tilted his head.


    "Her foolish Sage of a father pampered her with all the love in the world, did he not?" Sage Damian remarked. "What good did that do her? She''s merely a grade-four Martial Squire after all this time. She had the astronomical potential to be the single greatest gem of her generation, yet diamonds are only born from great pressure. Her generational talent has gone to waste because her drive is as soft as her father!"


    He bellowed vindictively with a hint of smugness. "¡­You, on the other hand, have forged yourself. The tribtions that you have gone through, that you have relentlessly pushed yourself through, regardless of whether it''s because of your old drive or your new one, have allowed you to maximize your potential."


    Kane simply stared at him in disbelief. "¡­"


    "Look at you instead, you have reached the pinnacle of the Squire Realm at an extraordinary pace," Sage Arrancar remarked. "Reaching this level at at the age of twenty-six is certainly a highly optimistic sign about your future. Fact of the matter is that not even Martial Artists can ignore the detriments of aging. Humans lose potential at a rapid pace beyond a certain age. This is true even for Martial Artists."


    "I thought Martial Artists grow stronger as time passed¡­" Kane frowned.


    "They grow stronger in power, but their potential reduces. The rate of growth. The rate of learning. The rate of changing. All of these parameters reduce significantly, putting hard limits on long-term growth." Sage Damian told Kane. "I have experienced this myself. It took me fourteen years to develop myst technique. And it just gets harder and harder every single time."


    He closed his eyes, heaving a brief sigh. "This is why breaking through younger is valued more. The younger you break through, the earlier your lifespan is extended, the slower your aging, and the longer your youth is prolonged."


    "¡­So what if someone broke through to the Senior Realm at the age of twenty-four?" Kane asked.


    Sage Damian opened his eyes, throwing a knowing look at Kane. "¡­Then he would experience the boons of youth for a very long time. A human is at their prime for about ten years between the ages of twenty-five and thirty-five. Someone who reached the Senior Realm at the age of twenty-four would experience that prime age for more than perhaps fifty years instead of just ten, depending on their Martial Body. I cannot even begin to imagine the sheer amount of gains that he will make in that time."


    Kane clenched his fist in frustration. Based on what his father told him, if Kane did not break through before his prime ended, then he would always fall far behind Rui who was bound to race forward at an incredible pace due to a prolonged youth. This is from N?velDrama.Org.


    "¡­I see, I''ll be sure to keep those words in mind," Kane''s determination grew.


    "Hm¡­" He closed his eyes, returning to his meditation. "You''ll get your little statement signed, if that''s what you want. If you came here for nothing else, then get out of here."


    Kane stared at his father''s meditating form, narrowing his eyes.


    He hated and feared his father, especially back when his desire to escape the Arrancar Family was at its strongest. Yet now, his greatest desire was keeping up with Rui. So much so that he was even willing to risk bing the heir of the Arrancarn Family if that was what it took.


    The fact that he had even been able to keep up, even if barely and from a bit of a distance, with Rui for the time that they were together was proof that his father''s method had merit, even if it was sick.


    "You know¡­I hate that you my childhood miserable. I hate that I felt like a prisoner in my own home growing up. I hate that I felt the fear of being captured for all those years after I left the household." He gritted his teeth and clenched his fist. "But¡­


    thank you for caring for me, even if it was in your own fucked up way. I wouldn''t be this strong if it wasn''t for that. And I wouldn''t have ever had a chance of keeping up with my best friend. I will acknowledge that that is thanks to you."


    Kane''s eyes shed with defiance. "That is the one and only good thing you''ve ever done for me. But it''s not enough enough for me to start cozying up to you as your son. I still hate you, asshole."


    He turned around, leaving the cave without getting so much as a twitch from Sage Damian.


    Yet, even as he left, the smallest of smiles cracked at the edge of Sage Damian''s mouth.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1538 Artifical Triggers

    <h4>Chapter 1538 Artifical Triggers </h4>


    1538 Artifical Triggers


    "¡­And since then, I''ve been fighting. In missions, operations, andmissions¡­But I haven''t felt my Martial Heart awaken ever since then," Kane sighed, sitting opposite Rui as they enjoyed a cup of tea while Kane narrated his visit to the Arrancar Household to Rui, keeping a few embarrassing details from him.


    Rui found his tale to be fascinating, especially the part of how he apparently had gained a massive advantage due to his prolonged youth. It made sense in hindsight, something he should have figured out. Thankfully, he would benefit from it nheless.


    Regardless, he put that matter aside for the time being.


    His friend needed his help, after all.


    "I don''t know what to do, at this point," Kane sighed.


    Rui had thought that there wasn''t too much to be lost by breaking through a few yearster than earlier, but apparently, he was wrong. Kane was twenty-eight, just like himself. Theter he broke through, the less of his prime he would be able to maintain.


    There was almost nothing anybody else could do, this was a hurdle that ordinarily only the Martial Artist themselves had to face and ovee.


    Unless, of course, they were also friends with Rui Quarrier.


    Rui had not forgotten the fact that he triggered Senior Frinjschia''s Martial Heart by threatening to break their path, inadvertently discovering a way to trigger the Martial Heart.


    The way Rui went about it was not by challenging their Martial drive. What Rui did was threaten to destroy the means by which they would fulfill their Martial drive.


    People pursued power for a variety of reasons. Many people pursued power for the sake of power itself. Many pursued it for wealth, prestige, influence, glory, and a variety of other reasons.


    However, the power that they obtained was undoubtedly their only path to fulfilling these various Martial drives.


    So what if something threatened to cripple that very power itself?


    What if someone threatened to destroy the power that they had cultivated to fulfill their Martial Path?


    Without that power that they had cultivated, they would not be able to fulfill their Martial drive. Thus crippling their cultivated power was the same as crippling their Martial drive. To someone who pursued wealth through their Martial power, crippling their Martial power was no different from crippling their wealth. The same was true for every desire that served as a Martial drive, all of those desires were threatened by the destruction of the Martial Path.


    This was effectively identical to threatening the Martial drive, the same kind of threat that triggered the Martial Heart.


    Thus, Rui had essentially discovered a way to trigger the Martial Heart by threatening the Martial Path that served to fulfill the Martial drive.


    He had never so much as breathed a word about this to anybody else. Not even Senior Xanarn or Kane. It was just too revolutionary. The fact that four Martial Masters already knew about it was a headache, the fact that one of those four was downright hostile to him was an even bigger headache.


    He did not need more trouble.


    Yet, now that he was faced with Kane, he couldn''t help it.


    "Kane¡­" Rui drew his attention. "Let''s change ces. I have something to tell you."


    "Ok¡­" Kane frowned, wondering where this was going.


    "The Mantian Forest¡­no, that won''t work," Rui murmured. "We''ll have to leave the country. I don''t feel safe even uttering it within the Kandrian Empire. Far too many powerful Martial Artists with powerful senses."


    Kane had no idea where Rui was going with this, but he followed suit. To Martial Artists, traveling over such great distances was something that was not that big a deal, given their speed.


    They quickly traveled across the nation, exiting it after passing through the transit port. It was only after Rui took him to the very top of a tall mountain in a surrounding forest, scanning the entire ce for an hour with his senses did he feel confident enough to divulge the secret.


    "I can trigger the breakthrough to the Senior Realm," Rui whispered as low as he could.


    "What?!" Kane''s eyes widened with shock.


    "I''m serious," Rui reassured him. "I can do it."


    "¡­"


    Kane knew that his friend''s capabilities and growth were beyond exceptional, but what he was suggesting was revolutionary.


    He wasn''t even the most informed person, yet even he could predict what would happen if the world learned about this. This is from N?velDrama.Org.


    All hell would break loose.


    Pretty much every Squire-level or Senior-level force and above had some number of Martial Squires who were considered grade-ten or close. If these forces gained the ability to trigger breakthroughs, then they would gain several more Martial Seniors instantly.


    On a continental scale¡­tens of thousands of Martial Seniors would be born very rapidly!


    That was a titanic amount of power. A single Martial Senior was more valuable than a strategic inter-continental missile and a nuclear bomb rolled up into one. Ten thousand of them could trigger apocalypses.


    It was game-changing. The Martialmunity atrge would do everything in its power to gain this ability while individual organizations and nations would go to war not only to possess this ability but also to attack any entity that dide to possess this ability.


    He felt a shiver climbing up his spine as he stared at Rui in disbelief.


    "¡­But there are risks," Rui added. "If you''re not ready. If you''re Martial drive isn''t strong enough, then you''ll be unable to trigger your Martial Heart. In turn, your Martial Path will either be cripple permanently or damaged at the bare minimum depending on how early I notice the failure. It will leave a deep psychological scar on you that may very well be there forever."


    Those words broke Kane out of his reverie. Of course, it would make sense if there were some downsides. Even natural and normal breakthroughs to the Senior Realm were associated with the risk of death.


    One was pushed past their limits, if they didn''t activate their Martial Heart, then they would probably die in most cases.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1539 Friends

    <h4>Chapter 1539 Friends </h4>


    1539 Friends


    Kane felt chills when Rui described the risks. The breaking of his Martial Path? He couldn''t even begin to imagine how horrifying that would be. It sounded like a fate worse than death.


    Martial Artists were prepared for death. The risk of death was part of the job description. What they weren''t prepared for was being permanently crippled from even wielding their Martial Path.


    That, to most Martial Artists, was a fate worse than death.


    The power that they had cultivated was the most important thing to most Martial Artists. It was born out of years, decades, and even centuries of hard work. The very idea of that power being stripped away was highly disturbing to say the least.


    Kane heaved a sigh.


    "Think about it," Rui remarked. "Don''t feel pressured to ept immediately as proof of your determination or something. The fact of the matter is that risking the very root of your Martial Path is an extraordinary risk to take for anything, even if it is the power of the higher Realm. It''s not an easy thing to decide upon. Think it over and then let me know."


    Kane nodded, deep in thought. The two of them returned to the Kandrian Empire as quickly as they had left. Kane, expectedly, wasn''t in the mood to chat. His eyes swam around in thought as he considered Rui''s offer deeply.


    Rui, too, did not want to distract him from what would probably end up being the most important decision of his life. Although he would love to express the story of his time apart from Kane, it wasn''t nearly as important and could wait until Kane was no longer preupied.


    "Don''t sweat it, and remember; there is no wrong decision from where you stand at the moment," Rui advised Kane as the two of them bade each other farewell, parting ways. Rui wanted to give him enough free space to think about it without humoring him.


    That gave Rui plenty of free time. Naturally, he returned to the orphanage to spend some more time with his loved ones, while pondering about what else he ought to have scratched off his list.


    ''I ought to meet up with my other friends.'' Rui smiled as he recalled the memory of the times he spent with Fae, Nel, Hever, Dalen, and Milliana. Although he hadn''t been with them in a long time, he never once stopped considering them his friends.


    He spent the rest of the day reaching out to all of them. Thankfully, all of them happened to be within the Kandrian Empire at the time, fulfilling some domesticmissions. It took a few days, but Rui was finally able to organize a rendezvous with all of his friends.


    At a spot in the town of Hajin, six people had gathered at a spot, waiting for the seventh.


    They spotted him in the sky.


    "That''s him," Fae murmured with aposed yet delightful smile.


    In the past eight years, she had fully matured as a woman. Her beauty conveyed a sense of calm maturity in ce of the youth that used to characterize it. She had a more serious and solemn demeanorpared to when she had been in the academy.


    Unlike Kane, she loved the Duhan Family, embracing her role as the heir of the Martial Family. She had worked hard in the past eight years. While her progress wasn''t nearly as impressive as Kane''s or Rui''s, she had progressed much faster than most Martial Squires, bing a grade-six Martial Squire in less than ten years.


    "He looks¡­different. He''s taller." Fiona murmured with an expression of curiosity as she eyed Rui sky-walking down. "He has a heavier presence than before."


    Unlike Fae, Fiona''s physical stature had not changed all too much since when she was in the academy. She retained her diminutive stature, much to her dismay. Her temperament had remained unchanged in the past eight years. The glint of curiosity that shed her in eyes had remained unchanged.


    "He looks way stronger than before!" Nel''s grin spread wide and far as he felt his heart beating harder.


    He could tell.


    He could tell that Rui had grown incredibly powerful. In the past eight years, he had honed his body and instincts to an incredible degree, bing a high-grade Martial Squire. His instincts told him that Rui was not only incredibly strong but also stronger than him. Content protected by N?v/el(D)rama.Org.


    Yet that didn''t discourage him.


    No, that only made him more excited.


    "Do not even think about doing something as outrageous as attacking a friend we haven''t seen in many years," A calm andposed voice advised Nel.


    Hever''s impression had remained unchanged in the past eight years, unlike his appearance. He fashioned a thick beard that covered the lower half of his face, adding a lot of masculinity to his appearance.


    "It''s surreal seeing him after all this time," Dalen smiled, earning a silent nod from Milliana. The two of them stood side by side, holding intertwined hands. If one looked at Milliana closely, one would observe that her belly seemed inted, ever so round.


    Rui gentlynded near them after he slowly descended from the sky. Too many people meant that he couldn''t move at high speeds, the very shockwaves from his speed could kill a lot of people.


    "You guys¡­" Rui murmured as he grinned. "It''s been a long long time. How have you all been doing?"


    His words sparked a sequence of greetings as each of them reunited with him for the first time in many years.


    "You''ve grown up," Fae murmured.


    "Definitely," Fiona nodded, havingst seen him since before even before his long-term mission away to Vilun Ind.


    "LET''S FIGHT!" Nel roared, rushing in with a swift attack.


    An incredibly irresponsible thing to do in a crowd.


    And yet¡­


    CLASP


    Nel''s eyes widened as Rui effortlessly curbed his attack on the spot. His power and momentum had disappeared magically, almost as if Rui annulled it with but a touch.


    "Let''s take things slow, shall we?" Rui heaved a sigh of exasperated amusement.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1540 Revelation

    <h4>Chapter 1540 Revtion </h4>


    1540 Revtion


    "Wow¡­!" Nel murmured with amazement.


    "You can''t do that when we''re surrounded by people!" Fiona chided. "Do you want to be penalized with reckless negligence by the Martial Union?!"


    Nel was not even listening. He simply stared at Rui with sharp eyes, trying to gauge his power before a shocking realization dawned on him.


    "You¡­" His eyes widened, stunned.


    Rui smirked, aware of his thoughts, turning to Hever studying him. "Wow, you feel even more like a mountain than you did before. Looks like you''ve made solid progress in your Martial Path."


    "I can say the same to you, can I not?" Hever smiled knowingly, shaking his hand. He too had made the same realization that Nel had.


    "Maybe. Maybe not," Rui smiled, turning to Dalen and Milliana with a particrly interested look. He had already realized the truth, but he went to confirm it nheless.


    "You too¡­"


    "We got married two years ago, and now we''re expecting our first child in half a year," Dalen smiled as Milliana was content nodding.


    His demeanor was a lot looser and more rxed than Rui recalled, as if he had found a sense of inner peace. Milliana had changed even more, obviously due to the fact that she was pregnant, but her normally nk neutral temperament seemed to have gained more femininity.


    Rui could tell that Dalen was a grade-three Martial Squire, while Milliana was only a high-grade Martial Apprentice.


    The two of them were a good representation of the progress of normal Martial Artists. Kane and Fiona were generational prodigies, Nel was a generational physical freak who had a few screws loose, while Fae and Hever were highly talented and even more driven.


    Dalen, on the other hand, was much more normal, having made modest progress over greater time. The same could be said for Milliana. Rui''s progress was so different and distant from them that they may as well have been different species.


    Yet Rui didn''t feel a sense of superiority, especially when his sharp senses could pick up on their non-verbalmunication and demeanor. He could sense how content and satisfied they were with each other. They would probably go on to raise arge family of Martial Artists and live a good life with each other.


    His conversation with Xanarn had happened too recently for him to not feel envious in that regard.


    "I see¡­" Rui smiled. "I''m happy for you guys. I''m sad that I missed the marriage, but a bted congrattions nheless."


    It wasn''t long before the seven of them took a spot in a nearby cafe, ordering some beverages.


    "You¡­" Nel started off. "You''re a Martial Senior now, aren''t you?"


    "Yes." Rui didn''t deny the truth.


    He was ustomed to at least tempering his aura, making it harder to pinpoint his level of power, but Nel and Hever had managed to sense that he was in a higher Realm of power than them.


    Fae, Fiona, Dalen, and Milliana on the other hand were shaken, stunned by this revtion.


    "What?!" Fae eximed, shocked. "You''re not even thirty!"


    Fiona simply stared at him with utter bewilderment and shock. She was particrly personally impacted by this revtion, considering that the two of them used to be the peak of Martial Apprentices back in the day.


    She knew that her progress as a Martial Squire was humble. Unfortunately, drive mattered far more than talent did the higher the Realm one was in. She was unable to surf through the Squire Realm the way she had in the Apprentice Realm.


    Still, she hadn''t thought that she was too far behind, perhaps several grades at most, but still within the same Realm of power.


    Reality had hit her like a boulder. This is from N?velDrama.Org.


    What she didn''t know was that Rui had already made more progress in the Senior Realm than she had in the Squire Realm.


    "You¡­are a Martial Senior?" She stammered weakly. "Really?"


    Rui smiled wryly, before undoing the Mind Mask he had on, unveiling his power.


    A wave of pressure pushed down on each of them. The five Martial Squires felt extremely ufortable under the mountain of pressure that Rui unleashed for merely a moment before he sealed it once more.


    Milliana had physically winced under the pressure, and considering her delicate condition, he did not dare go too far.


    "Sorry about that," Hemented. "But, there you go. Get it out of your systems."


    The six of them were shocked. They had realized the sheer magnitude of this revtion. Although this knowledge was notmon, all Martial Artists knew the youngest ages of breakthroughs in each Realm. This wasmon knowledge within themunity and industry.


    Each of them hade to realize the sheer significance of Rui being a Martial Senior at the age of thirty.


    He was undoubtedly the youngest Martial Senior in existence.


    "Hehehe¡­" Nel grinned being the first one to break out of his reverie. "Now we definitely need to fight!"


    "Later," Rui waved him away.


    "My¡­this news is going to send ripples across the Kandrian Empire¡­" Fae murmured. "Congrattions on your breakthrough to the Senior Realm. I mustmend you for aplishing this incredible achievement."


    She smiled. "If one had told me that that kid I pummeled in the entrance exam would go on to be the youngest Martial Senior in history, I would not have believed them."


    "Yeah, I don''t know if I would have believed it back then either," Rui chuckled as her words dug up a distant memory.


    Fiona struggled to muster up any words even while the others congratted him heartily after shaking off their shock. "Truly unbelievable. Congrattions."


    She felt particrly inadequate after hearing this aplishment. In the time that they had been apart, Rui had gone leaps and bounds beyond her while she had taken steps, at most.


    She didn''t particrly want to be a hardcore Martial Artist, but knowing that she had the potential to aplish such feats, and hadn''t, made her feel like she was making poor use of her talent and potential.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1541 Preoccupations

    <h4>Chapter 1541 Preupations</h4>


    1541 Preupations


    "Enough about me, what have all of you been up to?" Rui asked, curious.


    "I''ve been spending most of my time training and undertaking missions," Fiona replied cheerily.


    "Martial Union?"


    "Not at all," She shook her head. "I''ve been working for my own family. Undertaking operations surrounding our family businesses and matters. I stopped fulfilling openmissions from the Martial Union after I broke through to the Squire Realm."


    "Ah, that must be in preparation for undertaking more responsibility within your family," Rui mused.


    "Indeed," She nodded. "Our family has entanglements and obligations to many other prestigious families in the Martialmunity of the Kandrian Empire and other organizations, in addition¡­"


    Her expression grewplicated. "The Duhan Family has openly sided with Prince Raijun Ver Kandria, joining the Raijun Faction and bing one of the donors and patrons of the Raijun Foundation. So I have been undertaking missionsmissioned by His Highness'' administration as well."


    Rui raised an eyebrow. "Prince Raijun¡­I believe that''s the Martial Apprentice prince, right?"


    She nodded, heaving a sigh.


    Clearly, she wasn''t the biggest fan of this development.


    Rui considered the matter thoughtfully. His knowledge was extremely shallow, but he was aware of the basics. Prince Raijun was a Martial Apprentice who had managed to be an internal member of the Martial Union, joining its corps. The same position that Rui had been offered but had ultimately rejected.


    "I see¡­" Rui''s eyes narrowed in thought.


    If he was reading it right, Prince Raijun was basically the Martial Union''s ticket to the Throne War. No matter how powerful an organization was, they were wholly unable topete for the throne unless it was through a royal descendant of royal bloodpeting for the throne as a candidate for emperor or empress.


    From what little Rui knew and deduced, Prince Raijun was most likely the front through which the Martial Union was partaking in the Kandrian Throne War. He shook his head slightly, he needed to stop getting his head tangled in matters that had nothing to do with him.


    "Sounds busy," Hemented, turning to Nel and Hever. "What about you two?"


    "Fighting!" Nel grinned.


    "Refining my Martial Art," Hemented. "I''m working on maximizing the potential for my body."


    Rui nodded, they were both on a steady path to the Senior Realm. He was quite confident in their ability to reach the Senior Realm eventually.


    "What about you, Fiona?" He turned towards her.


    "I''ve been hired as an explorer by the Ministry of Ecology and Environment," She replied, sipping her coffee.


    "Oh¡­?" Rui raised an eyebrow with interest. "Interesting. I''ve worked with the Ministry of Ecology and Environment many times, but that was through the Martial Union serving as a broker, as usual. I think I was offered a job long ago."


    Rui recalled the job offer he got after he sessfully killed the earthen basilisk in one of his hunting missions.


    "This is different from those. I was actually offered a job too and I epted in a heartbeat," She remarked. "The Ministry deploys me to various ces and locations either to explore and scale or document them, or find and investigate certain phenomena, either anomalous or dangerous, and sometimes has me deal with risks and threats."


    "That suits you," Rui smiled knowingly. "You were always a highly curious one. It makes sense that you would eventually be an explorer. Have you ever been deployed to the Beast Domain?"


    "Just once," She remarked. "It''s a highly dangerous ce so normally only experienced high-grade Martial Artists get deployed there. I''m building up my experience and Martial Art steadily so I can explore the wonders of the Beast Domain someday."


    Her eyes lit up with passion when she spoke about it.


    "I''m d you seem to enjoy it," Rui nodded. "You all seem to have been doing good all these years."


    He felt d that he was able to reconnect with old friends. This was one of the reasons he had looked forward to returning to the Kandrian Empire.


    "Now that you have taken the opportunity to familiarize yourselves with our statuses¡­" Fiona''s eyes shed with curiosity. "You must tell us what happened to you in the past eight years!"


    It wasn''t just her eyes, everybody immediately grew more interested at that. Even Milliana, who was normally detached, stared at Rui with an intensity.


    Each of them was curious about what had happened to Rui leading to him bing the youngest Martial Senior in history.


    How could they not be?


    Rui heaved an amused sigh, before he began narrating the story once more. It took him a while with an edited and redacted version of the story, but he managed to give them the short of it.


    They listened attentively from start to finish.


    "¡­Once I confirmed that the news of his death was real, I came back home," Rui remarked.


    "My¡­what an incredible story," Fae murmured. "Truly astounding. I thought you had broken through recently, but to think that you had broken through four years ago. That''s almost too absurd to believe."


    Rui didn''t even me them. "You can ask Kane, he''ll confirm."


    "Speaking of which¡­" Fiona interjected. "Why isn''t he here?"


    "He would definitely not miss Rui''s return," Dalen murmured thoughtfully.


    "He''s¡­busy," Rui shook his head. "I told him about the reunion but he said he would have to pass." This is from N?velDrama.Org.


    Rui would have done the same if he was in his position. He was about to make the biggest decision of his life, he almost certainly wasn''t in the mood for hanging out with friends. Besides, he had been meeting all of them for two years now, so this wasn''t particrly a special or novel thing like it was to Rui.


    The seven of them discussed about a variety of matters, trying to make for the many years since they hadn''t seen Rui, informing him of a variety of local and regional events within the Kandrian Empire in the past few years that Rui had missed.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1542 Academy

    <h4>Chapter 1542 Academy </h4>


    1542 Academy


    Rui enjoyed reconnecting with his old friends after a long period of separation. His friends freely shared the past eight years of their lives with while indulging in the finer details of his adventures.


    Since Rui had specifically chosen to go to centers of Martial Art that helped Martial Artists train and grow stronger, he had plenty of tales that were of interest to Martial Artists like themselves.


    "I must visit the Umiana Trench someday¡­" Fae murmured when Rui recounted the story.


    As a striking-oriented Martial Artist centered around palm strikes, she was quite interested in avenues of training centered around striking. The Umiana Trench was a good ce where Martial Artists like herself could train their fundamentals and foundations.


    "The Floating Sect sounds like it would be a ton of fun." Nel''s eyes shed with battle lust. "I must check it out myself someday."


    Rui smiled wryly. Someone like Nel would fit right in a ce like the Floating Sect.


    "What was the Great Forest of Hypnonarak like?" Fiona asked with curiosity.


    "It was definitely unlike any other forest I''ve ever been to," Rui remarked, thinking back to the various tribtions that he had gone through while exploring the forest. "I''ve heard that it was essentially an artificial pocket from the Beast Domain since the Hypnomaster created it using the species of flora from the Beast Domain."


    "Interesting," She murmured.


    A variety of topics came and went, among which were not only rted to their personal lives in the past eight years but also their Martial Art.


    Each of them was grateful for the Hungry Pain technique that Rui had given to them a long time ago. He had initially given it only to Kane and Milliana, who then gave it to everybody else in their friend group when the time was right.


    "It helped a lot with my stamina," Milliana nodded.


    "It also made our Martial Bodies a grade stronger than what was expected right off the bat," Dalen pointed out. "We have you to thank for that."


    The others nodded, adding their own experiences with the Hungry Pain technique as Martial Squires. Yet, eventually, even the numerous topics that they had to talk about came to an end. It wasn''t too long before their little rendezvous came to an end and they departed their own ways. Most of them were too busy with their own schedules to spend too much time away from them.


    Yet, instead of heading back home, he decided to take a little detour.


    A detour to a ce that had yed a huge role in his life and path as a Martial Artist, one that he hadn''t visited in a long time.


    "Is it just me¡­or has this ce grown bigger?" Rui smiled as he beheld the fortress walls of the Hajin branch of the Martial Academy.


    A wave of nostalgia overcame him as he beheld the Martial Academy. His memory of the Martial Academy was quite deep because this location in particr was actually a part of his Mind Pce. That''s why he could detect even the slightest of changes over the years.


    He could tell that they had expanded their area once more despite being in the middle of one of thergest towns. This is from N?velDrama.Org.


    As one of the sixteenrgest and most impactful sources of new Martial Artists, the importance of the town of Hajin could not be understated. If it weren''t for these invaluable institutions, Martial Art may very well regress due to a greater death toll than the Apprentice breakthrough number.


    He was just one of countless Martial Artists who were deeply indebted to the Martial Academies.


    He went straight through the reception for visitors.


    "I am Squire Quarrier," He showed his outdated license to a staff member. "An alumni of the Academy, I''d like to request permission to visit the premises."


    "¡­I''m afraid you''re going to need authorization if you haven''t booked an appointment," She replied apologetically. "I could file a request although it''s unlikely and would take some time nheless."


    "Please be sure to contact me when that pans out," Rui nodded, before turning around and walking away.


    "Excuse me!" She called out to him with a surprised tone, stopping him just as he was exiting the building. "You''ve just received authorization¡­from the headmaster himself!"


    Rui smiled wryly.


    It wasn''t too long before he was inside the premises with a visitor card tagged to his chest. Despite having been away for easily more than a decade, his familiarity with the ce exceeded those of current students.


    The campus was divided into two sections, the inner and outer ring. Thetter was for non-Martial Artist students while the former only houses Martial Artists. Students would go through the Foundation and Exploration Stages in the outer ring that were designed to allow them to explore Martial Art, until they broke through to the Apprentice Realm, heading inside to the inner section to join the other Martial Apprentices.


    Rui recognized the hopeful and determined looks that the kids in the outer ring had. The desire to be Martial Artists drove these kids to strengthen their foundations enough for them to explore everything that Martial Art had to offer.


    Yet it was the inner ring that he was interested in. The first ce he went to was thebat training section of the inner ring.


    "Ah¡­there she is," Rui''s eyes lit up as his senses picked up on the person that he had been looking for. "It''s been a long time, Squire Kyrie."


    She turned, gazing at him as her normally calm brown eyes widened with surprise. "Rui¡­"


    Her attention turned towards him as she paused her inspection and oversight on the Martial Apprentices sparring. "You''re alive¡­"


    Rui''s hands rose in resignation. "Alive and well. Did you think I was dead?"


    "I heard from Max and Mana that you died," She remarked.


    "Disappeared," Rui corrected.


    "In the world of Martial Art, those may as well be the same thing. Do you know the sheer number of Martial Artists who are ruled as dead due to the fact that they never returned?" Her calm voice was stern.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1543 Invitation

    <h4>Chapter 1543 Invitation </h4>


    1543 Invitation


    "To think that you woulde back after all these years¡­" Her detached voice contained a hint of emotion as her hand reached for his shoulder patting him. "Wee back."


    "It''s good to be back," Rui smiled. "Thank you for looking after Mana and Max¡­"


    "It was a pleasure, not to mention a duty," She replied. "They were earnest and driven. After you disappeared, their resolve had only grown stronger and sturdier, allowing them to graduate and be Martial Squires at quite a remarkable pace."


    "Yeah¡­I''ve witnessed their growth after returning home," Rui smiled. "They''re fine Martial Artists if a little green."


    Squire Kyrie studied him, narrowing her eyes as her senses tried to evaluate Rui''s current level of power. She was well out of her prime, but she was still a veteran high-grade Martial Squire with decades of experience.


    "This¡­" Her eyes widened with shock as she managed to get a read on Rui''s masked power. "This is impossible."


    Rui smiled wryly. He had gotten that reaction many times in the few days that he had returned to the Kandrian Empire.


    On one hand, he didn''t like excessive attention, which is why he didn''t re his power about, announcing to the world he was a Martial Senior. On the other hand, it felt really good when people he respected and cared for recognized and appreciated the fruits of his effort.


    "But how¡­?" She murmured. "How are you already in the Senior Realm?"


    He shook his head. "I went through some extreme experiences, allowing me to break through to the Senior Realm this early."


    "¡­" She simply stared at him speechlessly.


    Suddenly, another figure barged into thebat facility. "Oh Kyrie, let''s go get something to eat afte¡­"


    The man turned to Rui, squinting. "¡­Quarrier?"


    "Squire Dylon," Rui smiled, delighted to meet the old offensive training mentor. "It''s been a while." Exclusive ? material by N?(/v)elDrama.Org.


    It didn''t take too long for Squire Dylon toe to the same realization after they exchanged basic pleasantries and immediate topics.


    "Hold on¡­wait a minute¡­something ain''t right," He squinted his eyes.


    His hands went to Rui''s face. Pulling and tugging at it in different directions, squeezing it like it was y.


    "¡­What are you doing?"


    "I''m using my secret grade-ten sensory technique to evaluate power."


    Rui''s expression morphed into skepticism.


    "Holy shit! You''re a high-grade Martial Senior!" He gaped, standing back.


    Rui was actually more surprised that he managed to nail it. Was he really serious about the grade-ten technique part?


    "I always knew that you were truly special, unlike any other Martial Artist that I had evere across but this¡­" She murmured. "I did not ever expect this."


    "My man¡­!" Squire Dylon pped Rui on the shoulder, grinning. "You''ve been doing really well, eh? Good for you!"


    He turned to Kyrie. "What say you and I get dinner together to celebrate him bing a Martial Senior?"


    "Rejected," She calmly replied. "There''s no point in celebrating a breakthrough if the person in question isn''t there."


    "Damn,"


    "I admire your perseverance," Ruiughed. "It''s been thirteen years, and you still haven''t given up. Honestly, I''m surprised you haven''t broke through to the Senior Realm with that kind of drive."


    "Oh?" Squire Dylon''s eyes lit up with an epiphany. "I think I''ve got it. The way to win her heart!"


    Ruiughed as Squire Kyrie sighed in resignation.


    Just then, a staff member approached Rui. "Senior Quarrier, the headmaster has invited you to meet him."


    "That''s nice to hear. I have been looking forward to meeting him after all these years," Rui remarked.


    Headmaster Aronian had always shown an unusual interest in Rui. He met up with Rui more frequently than he did the others, inviting him more frequently than the others. Rui had never understood why, especially when he wasn''t even the strongest Martial Apprentice back then.


    Only now did Rui have a better understanding of why. He had already experienced the remarkable insight into other people that Martial Masters had. They could learn a remarkable amount of information just with a simple nce.


    Every Martial Master Rui had run into disyed a usual interest in Rui like they could see something in him that nobody else could. It was only rtively recently that he learned that this most likely had not only to with his remarkable mind but also his VOID algorithm that had inadvertently been his Martial Mind prototype all this time.


    "Go, you shouldn''t keep the headmaster waiting," Kyrie told him, smiling.


    "Besides, as long as you''re sticking around, you can always visit again," He waved Rui away.


    Rui bade them farewell as he headed on to the Headmaster''s office. It wasn''t too long before he found himself standing before therge set of doors leading to it. The doors opened before he could even knock on the leading to an incrediblyrge office filled with all sorts of books and documents.


    Rui''s eyes fell on the figure sitting behind therge table at the other end of the office.


    "¡­You have truly grown." His elderly voice was calm andposed, instilling peace and harmony in those it graced. "Just as I''d foreseen in the distant past."


    He looked exactly as Ruist remembered him. He had a long flowing white beard that he stroked. His eyes reflected his age, coupled with a twinkle of interest.


    "You knew that I''d grow?" Rui immediately asked, without even bothering to indulge in formalities or pleasantries. "To this degree?"


    "And more¡­What I hadn''t expected was how early it would unfold," He remarked with an aged smiled. "You are truly extraordinary, Rui Quarrier. You are a testament that stands tall to everything we do to empower the growth of the younger generations. You are a testament to the world that Martial Art has grown even stronger. Your very existence is one of hope to we of Martial Art."


    "I wouldn''t have gotten here if not for the vital aid to my growth that the Martial Academy provided, Headmaster," Rui brought his fist to his hand, bowing with respect in ordance to Martial norms. "I''m grateful for everything that you''ve done thus far."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1544 Be Warned

    <h4>Chapter 1544 Be Warned </h4>


    1544 Be Warned


    Headmaster Aronian smiled. "There''s no need to be so stiff, young Rui. This old man has known you ever since you were a child, and now you''ve grown to be a fine young man and a brilliant Martial Artist. Come, have a seat. We have much to speak about."


    "Yes sir," Rui obliged, taking a seat opposite to the elderly Martial Master.


    "As curious as I am to hear stories and tales from your eight-


    year voyage for power that you have recently returned from, I''m afraid that we will have to save that for another day," He remarked, growing more serious in his demeanor. "As I said, we have much to speak about."


    Rui raised an eyebrow. "Is something the matter, Headmaster?"


    "Well, for starters. As you might have already expected, your return to the Kandrian Empire has already spread like fire through the upper echelons of the Empire. Many well-informed circles of power, wealth, and influence have already received the news of your return, and more importantly, your return as a powerful Martial Senior," Headmaster Aronian informed him. "Naturally, such impactful events do not go unnoticed, and certainly do not go untouched." Content protected by N?v/el(D)rama.Org.


    Rui''s eyes narrowed sharply. "¡­Untouched? What are you implying, sir?"


    The elderly Martial Master stared at him deeply for a moment, before continuing. "What I''m saying is that your return as a powerful Martial Senior, you yourself are an event of great import. An event of great opportunity. A powerful Martial Senior is a powerful resource, especially during these uneasy times."


    Rui picked up on the subtext of his words. "¡­The Kandrian Throne War."


    Headmaster Aronian heaved a sigh. "It all began five years ago, when Emperor Rael Di Kandria fell into aa that spanned nearly half a year. The princes and princesses sprung into action, ready to cease the throne by force. A civil war nearly broke out. The only reason it didn''t was because the emperor woke up just in time to reconsolidate his power and authority. However, his already deteriorating condition had deteriorated even more. The incident had reduced him to be bedridden and required constant medical supervision. His condition has deteriorated even more since then, although the details are well-hidden and obscured."


    The headmaster paused, heaving a sigh. "Regardless, he had been afflicted by the Eternal Dream disease. An inexplicable condition that eventually causes a person to sleep forever. It can be slowed down and even stalled with particrly potent esoteric resources and the highest quality of medical care, but it cannot be treated or cured. It is a terminal condition. This news could not be kept secret any longer after his six montha, and it triggered the cold war that has begun between the princes and princesses."


    "I see¡­" Rui narrowed his eyes. "I hadn''t known any of this before."


    "You just returned to the empire recently, so it is understandable," Headmaster Aronian gently reassured him. "Regardless, the main point is that the princes and princesses began gathering political capital for the eventual day that the emperor would pass away. The moment he does, the cold war will transition to an active war. Whosoever has gathered the most capital and power, be it economic, political, or militaristic, will win the war, be recognized as the crown heir to the throne by the executive branch of the government and will be crowned the Third Emperor or Empress of the Kandrian Empire."


    "¡­And Martial Artists are naturally among the most highly sought capital in this war for the throne, I''d expect." Rui remarked.


    "Precisely," Headmaster Aronian remarked. "Especially powerful Martial Artists with a lot of prominence. Such as¡­"


    He gave Rui a telling look. "¡­the youngest Martial Senior in history, high-grade inbat power."


    Rui heaved a sigh. "I knew I wouldn''t be able to avoid this."


    It was too much to hope. How could he expect to be able to return to the Kandrian Empire, shattering the record for the youngest Martial Senior and then hope to be ignored by everybody and go about a peaceful normal life?


    "Frankly, I don''t care about the Kandrian Throne War in an of itself," Rui replied. "I don''t have any strong political or economic ideologies that I would like to lobby for. As long as it doesn''t negatively affect my family, and doesn''t get in the way of my personal ambition, I really don''t care."


    "Your aversion is more than understandable," Headmaster Aronian reassured. "I myself have been personally approached by each of Their Highnesses, looking to gain my allegiance and patronage. I had half a mind to reject all of them and stay neutral."


    Rui stared at him with interest. "And¡­?"


    "I do not wish to divulge which faction I have decided to support," Headmaster Aronian shook his head. "One of the reasons that I wished to speak to you was to firstly inform you that you are a highly desirable gem to the various princes and princesses. I wanted to caution you to be prepared to be approached by each of Their Highnesses, either by their most esteemed subordinates, core patrons, or perhaps them personally. It is better to be prepared for this than to be caught off-guard."


    Rui nodded. "I appreciate the tip. I''ll definitely be prepared for that. Although I said that I don''t care for the Kandrian Throne War if it didn''t affect my family, the fact of the matter is that it could affect my family."


    Rui recalled what he had heard about one of thepeting princesses; Princess Raemina and her allegedmunistic dictatorship political doctrine. As someone who was born during the Cold War back on Earth, he did not have a good impression ofmunism, or dictatorships, but especially not both those things together.


    If she was crowned Empress, it would undoubtedly affect trade andmerce across the entire nation, impacting trade hubs like the Town of Hajin where many of the men and women of the Quarrier Orphanage had part-time jobs and earned money from.


    That alone was enough to concern Rui enough that he couldn''t ignore the war.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1545 Technique Impacts

    <h4>Chapter 1545 Technique Impacts </h4>


    1545 Technique Impacts


    "As long as you''re aware and prepared," Headmaster Aronian nodded. "That is one matter I wanted I merely wished to bring up. On a broader note, be prepared to be approached by many powerful people, organizations, and forces even on matters unrted to the Kandrian Throne War. There are organizations that will seek your patronage, offer sponsorships, and other agreements and transactions with you."


    "I got a few of those when I was a Martial Apprentice too, shortly after bing the finalist of the Martial Contest," Rui remarked, recalling distant memories.


    He had also received such offers after bing the seventy-


    second Virodhabhasa Champion.


    "What you will receive from here on out will be much greater than that," Headmaster Aronian replied. "Martial Seniors have reached a level of power where the forces that can afford to regrlymission them usually seek to gain some form of direct long-term employment, bypassing the Martial Union. Carefully consider all the pros and cons of doing so when they approach you."


    Rui nodded. "I''ll keep that in mind."


    "I''m sure you''ll be prudent," Headmaster Aronian remarked. "Moving on to more important topics that are pertinent to you. There is much to discuss about the Hungry Pain technique that you offered as a contribution four, nearly five now, years ago."


    Rui raised an eyebrow with interest. He was curious to hear what the Martial Union had to say on the matter.


    "You imed that the technique aided in the creation of a Martial Body that was an entire grade stronger than the norm," He remarked. "We have since verified the effects of the technique on the Martial Squires you imed had used it, and verified that there were indeed anomalous deviations in the estimates of the physical parameters of the subjects simr to that of your own. While this alone wasn''t enough proof of the effects of the technique, it was enough tomence a set of trials to establish the effects of the technique."


    "Several experiments were conducted regarding the effects of the Hungry Pain on the Martial Body, each with hundreds of test subjects, and we eventually came to the conclusion that not only were your ims substantive, you had also slightly underestimated the impacts," Headmaster Aronian exined, smiling.


    Rui furrowed his eyebrows. "¡­Well, my affinity for Mind is much greater than it is for Body. I wouldn''t be surprised if someone like Nel benefited from the technique than I did."


    "He did," Headmaster Aronian chuckled. "His Martial Body started off at grade three when the norm, of course, is grade one. The mean improvement was a bit above fifty percent."


    Rui smiled. "I believe mine was about thirty percent."


    "Correct," Headmaster Aronian. "As you can expect, this sparked a huge uproar in the Martial Union. We have never in history made such massive improvements in our Squire evolution breakthrough procedure. And more importantly, we have certainly such improvements with a zero addition to the cost of production."


    Rui smiled, proud of what his work had done for Martial Art as a whole.


    "With the addition of the Hungry Pain technique to standard preparation for the Squire evolution breakthrough process, the youngest generation of our Martial Squires is, pound for pound, the strongest generation of Martial Artists in history," Headmaster Aronian smiled. "Thanks to you, the Kandrian Empire definitively has the most powerful Squire evolution breakthrough process anywhere in the continent, including the other thirteen powerhouse Sage-level and Transcendent-level nations and organizations across the continent. The Panamic Martial Federation had even made an official inquiry into the notable qualitative boost in the Kandrian Martial Union''s youngest Squire generation. We, of course, refused to share the method, it would be foolish to do so without securing massive concessions at bare minimum."


    "It turned into a bigger deal than I had expected," Rui murmured with interest. "Then again, I guess I shouldn''t be surprised."


    "I don''t think you''ll be able to keep it secret for too long," Rui remarked. "Martial Apprentices receive the technique before turning into Martial Squires, there is bound to be a leak soon, if it hasn''t happened already."


    "That is urate," Headmaster Aronian nodded. "That is why we have decided to withhold from actually divulging the technique to Martial Apprentices."


    Rui frowned, confused. "Then how¡­?"


    "We altered the technique, recing the self-hypnosis of the technique with active hypnosis from a mentalist Martial Artist," Headmaster Aronian. "The Martial Apprentice remains in a trance where we then hypnotize him or her to not recall the effects of the training. By the time they''re read for the breakthrough procedure, they have no recollection of the Hungry Pain technique."


    Rui''s eyes widened with surprise. "That is a rather extreme measure to take." Content protected by N?v/el(D)rama.Org.


    "It is necessary if we are to hide the technique from the spies of the various powerhouses across the continent, not to mention powerful intelligence organizations like the Beggar''s Sect and Shadow Guild across the continent," Headmaster Aronian reassured. "We have taken the highest level of information security measures to ensure that it will never be leaked."


    "¡­What about the Kandrian Empire?" Rui wondered. "Unlike all those other organizations, the Kandrian Empire houses the Martial Union."


    "We have signed a highly advantageous contract with the executive government and the Royal Army where we supply them with the service of the newly-enhanced Squire evolution breakthrough procedure in exchange for an extravagant amount of gold per Squire breakthrough we perform for them." Headmaster Aronian replied.


    Rui smiled wryly, it appeared that the Martial Union had truly been doing well with the technique that he had given them. "Well, I''m d to hear that the Martial Union appreciated the technique. It had been rather easy to develop when I decided to, so it didn''t really click that it would be something so significant, back then."


    He had created the Hungry Pain technique within a single day. Compared to the other techniques that he had created, the effort that he had put into it was rather trivial. Still, the fact that the Martial Union came to appreciate the technique to such a degree was good news, because it meant that his remuneration would be that high.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1546 Evaluation

    <h4>Chapter 1546 Evaluation </h4>


    1546 Evaluation


    "Naturally, the Martial Union is deeply delighted with the contribution that you have made," Headmaster Aronian smiled. "The Martial Union had always rewarded contributors in ordance with the value of the contributions made, and we intend to do the same in your case. Rest assured that you will be rewarded ordingly. The Martial Union is particrly anxious to not let go of a talent like you."


    The more Headmaster Aronian had spoken about the technique, the more Rui realized just how impactful his contribution had been. It wasn''t too big a deal for him, but it was a treasure for the Martial Union.


    An immediate fifty-percent boost in power for all future Martial Squires and above, free of cost, was a dreame true for Martial forces. Ordinarily, the only way to improve the effects of the Squire evolution breakthrough was to increase the expenses of the process by enormous degrees.


    Orders of magnitude, even. There were diminishing returned as the prices of more potent esoteric substances were greatly inted past their actual value due to scarcity. Rui''s solution may as well have conjured up power out of thin air since the costs were peanutspared to the actual power that it gave.


    With that in mind, he could see why the Martial Union went insane for the Hungry Pain technique.


    This made him more excited to hear the remuneration of the Martial Union. While he was doing pretty well these days, the Martial Union was a powerhouse in the Martial Art industry, with resources for growth and training that only an extremely minute proportion of Martial Art organizations could match.


    Earning their favor was highly beneficial for young Martial Artists like himself who didn''t have tons of umtion. Content protected by N?v/el(D)rama.Org.


    "Now then, young Rui, let us go into the details of what this means for you." Headmaster Aronian grew a bit more serious. "Are you familiar with how the Martial Union evaluates the value of techniques?"


    Rui nodded as he recalled what Senior Ceeran had told him long ago when he submitted the Pathfinder technique to the Martial Union. "I believe the Martial Union evaluates the value of technique by technique potency, difficulty, and dissemination viability."


    Technique potency measured how powerful a technique was, as in a technique''s impact onbat. This was in an of itself a variable with many sub-parameters such as the technique''s mechanical efficiency of raw energy supplied versus the produced oue, as well as consideration of how tactically and strategically significant the produced oue was inbat.


    "In this regard, the Hungry Pain technique is extremely impressive. Allowing a Martial Body to be fifty percent stronger than it would otherwise be is a remarkably significant improvement to the Martial Body," Headmaster Aronian remarked. "Fifty percent may not sound like for active techniques, but passive techniques are treated with different standards to active techniques, especially passive techniques rting to the Squire evolution breakthrough. No other passive Squire evolution technique we have ever seenes even close to a mean boost of fifty percent in the resultant Martial Body. Thus, the Hungry Pain technique excels in this regard."


    Rui nodded, simply listening.


    "In regards to difficulty, this too is an area where the Hungry Pain technique excels. It is a modification of a mental technique with low difficulty originally. The only real difficulty is the pain and the hunger that the Martial Apprentice must endure, but given the boost in power that it results in, it is easily worth it. Especially whenpared to the suffering of the Squire evolution breakthrough procedure," Headmaster Aronian exined.


    The lower the difficulty of the technique, the more people could master it, increasing the value of the technique.


    After all, what was the point of an extraordinary grade-ten technique that was so difficult that literally nobody could master it?


    The impact of such a technique was zero because it did not improve Martial Art or Martial Artists in any way. It did not change anything.


    This had been an issue with the Pathfinder technique that he had contributed to the Martial Union which had reduced its value. The Hungry Pain technique had no such problems, literally every single Martial Apprentice could master it without a problem.


    "Dissemination viability is also simr," Headmaster Aronian exined. "There are no barriers, or hurdles that prevent arge number of Martial Artists from mastering it. It doesn''t require niche affinities and is a very broad and general principle. Thus, the Hungry Pain techniques scores extremely well on all three parameters that you have mentioned. However, there are parameters in addition to these three that you don''t seem to be informed on," Headmaster Aronian remarked, earning a confused look from Rui.


    "I heard this nearly ten years ago," Rui remarked, recalling the distant interaction.


    "It is a more recent amendment to our evaluation protocols," Headmaster Aronian informed Rui. "We have now also evaluate techniques based on Realm viability. This variable measures how well a technique from a certain Martial Artist can be applied to Martial Artists of other Realms. A technique that is limited only to the Senior Realm such that it cannot be used by weaker Realms and is useless in greater Realms is something that limits the value of the technique than if it could be used across all Realms. This previously used to be swept under the rug of dissemination viability, but we have decided that it is important enough to gain its own category."


    Rui nodded, that made sense. Powerful techniques that could be applied to all Realms were significantly superior to powerful techniques that were limited to one Realm.


    "This area is perhaps the one ce where the Hungry Pain does not score nearly as well. It cannot be applied to existing Martial Artists above the Squire Realm, although future Martial Artists above the Squire Realm will have already mastered it," Headmaster Aronian. "This means that it is viable for all Realms, but not immediately and never for those who have broken through to the Squire Realm without it. While they can still master it, the proportional benefits are lower since there is none of the extreme synergies between the Martial Body''s energy consumption and the seemingly endless supply from the Hungry Pain technique."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1547 Presentation

    <h4>Chapter 1547 Presentation </h4>


    1547 Presentation


    "That makes sense," Rui nodded. "A technique that would instantly or rapidly improve the Martial Bodies of all Martial Sages, Masters, Seniors, and Squires is much superior to a technique that will only do so for future Squires, Seniors, Masters, and Sages."


    "Of course, that does not mean that thetter is not extremely valuable. It certainly is," Headmaster Aronian reassured. "The Martial Union is an organization with a lot of patience. Thus even the long-term benefits of the Hungry Pain technique are extraordinarily valuable to us, rest assured." N?velDrama.Org holds this content.


    Rui smiled. "You don''t need to pacify me, Headmaster. I am fully aware of the importance of pragmatism. While perhaps centuries in the future there will be a Martial Sage born who will be fifty percent stronger thanks to my technique, I am aware that the Martial Union cannot possibly reward me with remuneration that is worth half of a Martial Sage for that distant oue."


    "I am pleased that you haven''t taken offense," Headmaster Aronian replied, relieved. "Nheless, we will be remunerating and rewarding you handsomely. However, before we do, there is one thing that needs to be addressed."


    Rui raised an eyebrow, waiting.


    "The information that you provided to Commissioner Reze nearly five years ago details the training regime quite thoroughly and precisely, but you haven''t exined the theoretical and scientific mechanics and principles of the technique. That would not be a problem if not for the fact that the Hungry Pain technique has utterly confounded our department of research and development. Many thorough observational and sensory experiments have been conducted to discern the principles of the technique, but they haven''t been able to decipher the technique," Headmaster Aronian exined. "We have even had Martial Masters employ their senses into the body, but haven''t been able to detect anything that could exin what is happening."


    Rui smirked wryly at that.


    The Hungry Pain technique operated at a cellr but especially molecr level. Cells were broken down into elementary organicpounds and could serve to rejuvenate the body. The process was extraordinarily elerated and magnified such that all dying cells were efficiently converted into usable organicpounds.


    However, it was merely a magnification and eleration of an otherwise normal molecr phenomenon. Because the field of biochemistry and organic chemistry of the Panama Continent was highly undeveloped due to their extreme reliance on the magic of esoteric substances, thus they were simply unable to grasp the core mechanics of the Hungry Pain technique.


    It was an unpredicted predicament. He hadn''t included an exnation of the science beyond the non-scientific exnation of ''the body recycles power'' because he was in a hurry when he prepared the technique booklet for Commissioner Reze. The training was more important than the theory.


    "I can provide a brief but detailed write-up," Rui shrugged nonchntly. "This is a non-issue."


    Headmaster Aronian shook his head. "The Martial Union requests you to make a formal presentation in a science conference that representatives and Martial Artists of various divisions, departments, and branches that have expressed deep interest in the technique will attend."


    "¡­" Rui was a little speechless.


    It was true that the Hungry Pain was highly valued, but was there really a reason to make such a big deal about the theoretical framework? A detailed write-up worked just as well as as a scientific presentation, did it not?


    Then his inner scientist recalled the various scientific conferences that he had attended and presented research papers in.


    It appeared that the Panama Continent was simr to Earth in that regard.


    Regardless, this was a matter of concern for the Martial Union. Rui knew that he would probably gain a fraction of his rewards if the Martial Union was not satisfied with their understanding of this powerful but inscrutable technique.


    "Fine," Rui heaved a sigh. "But I don''t care to get bogged down too many matters that normally apany such scientific conferences and presentations."


    "It is curious that you are aware of such matters, considering your youth andck of a scientific background," Headmaster Aronian stroked his beard with an intrigued expression.


    Rui shrugged. "Regardless, I have to provide a scientific presentation, and that''s it right? No otherplications?"


    "Indeed," Headmaster Aronian nodded. "The Martial Union maintains high standards for transparency when ites to Martial Art. It is the safest and the best way to proceed with a secured and well-understood foundation. We will rapidly finish the final evaluations of your rewards and remuneration and give them to you."


    Rui could understand that, but it only added to his burden, having to go through a tedious presentation because of it. Nheless, he was willing, if only because it would get him his remuneration sooner.


    Still, it was interesting that he found himself doing this yet again even though he was a Martial Artist. What kind of presentation did they even expect from a Martial Senior like himself in the first ce?


    "The conference will contain important figures from not just the various formal divisions, departments, and branches, but also informal groups such as Martial Sects of the Kandrian Empire," Headmaster Aronian informed him. "The Martial Body is a matter that is deeply important to each of the Martial Sects, and anything that affects it to such a degree is of both a great interest and a great concern to them. Rest assured that you will find important higher-ups from each of the major sects. They have people across the entirety of the Martial Union, so it will be easy for them to secure a spot in your conference presentation. Be aware of that."


    "Alright¡­" Rui heaved a sigh.


    His entanglement with other forces seemed to grow moreplicated ever since he returned. Not that he expected to be ignored, that was not happening, but he had hoped it wouldn''t be too much.


    He was wrong.


    From the Kandrian Throne War to the exaggerated fallout from the Hungry Pain technique, Rui had already found himself in the midst of a lot of forces that had a deep interest in him.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1548 Information

    <h4>Chapter 1548 Information </h4>


    1548 Information


    "Our administration has yet to finalize all the nitty-gritty details. It is not easy to find a time and ce that works for all the Masters and other higher-up figures that wish to attend this conference," Master Aronian gently informed Rui. "They will inform you of the details and offer you a formal invitation when it is time."


    Rui nodded. "If I''m to give a formal presentation, then I''ll need some time to prepare."


    Master Aronian nodded. "Rest assured that your needs will be fully ounted for."


    Rui heaved a sigh. He had plenty to think about.


    First, he needed to consider the consequences of conveying the theoretical framework to such arge panel of distinguished Masters and experts. He had not forgotten that his scientific knowledge was anomalous in this world.


    It was not supposed to exist. He had brought over knowledge from a much more advanced civilization with a much deeper understanding of the mechanics of reality.


    What would happen if he were to present this knowledge to a panel of experts who ought to be aware of the limits of theoretical science?


    Additionally, because their biochemistry was essentially non-


    existent, they weren''t really even qualified to hear his exnation. On top of that, his exnations would be rooted in Earth''s terminology, this too was problematic. Content protected by N?v/el(D)rama.Org.


    He needed to find the right sweet spot for how much information he ought to divulge that will raise as few questions as possible.


    For now, he needed to go back and flesh out a n.


    "Ah, one more thing," Headmaster Aronian interjected as he pulled a drawer, pulling a card from within it. "Your old license is outdated, we have prepared your new one."


    He ced the card on the table, pushing it towards Rui.


    [Rui Quarrier


    Martial Senior]


    The card''s designs and colors were different before, emboldening and highlighting the Martial Senior part.


    "Thanks¡­" Rui smiled, epting it. "It feels ceremonious."


    "It is," The Martial Master reassured him. "That brings about an end to the topics that I wanted to discuss with you. I hope you''ll keep everything I''ve said in mind and act ordingly."


    "I don''t intend to forget. Thank you for everything, Headmaster," Rui smiled.


    "Hah, it''s nothing worth mentioning, young Rui."


    It wasn''t long before Rui found himself leaving the Academy, heading back home from the Town of Hajin, deep in thought. He had much to consider from his meeting with Headmaster Aronian.


    Not just about the part where he was requested to give a presentation regarding the Hungry Pain technique, but also the Kandrian Throne War and the upper echelons of the Kandrian Empire looking to reel him into their sphere of influence.


    "No peace even when I return home after eight years," He shook his head. It was a shame, but this was the state of matters. He was dealt his cards, now he needed to make the best of them.


    The good part was that this was not an acute crisis, more so tricky problems. At the very least, he was quite confident that nothing would happen to his family this time around.


    In the event that he chose to be neutral in regards to the Kandrian Throne War, the consequences were losing out on opportunities and the opportunity to impact the cold war.


    That was something that he might actuall want, especially if there were other princes who had some psycho political doctrines that would make life much worse than it currently was.


    Had h been a Squire, he could just forget about it. Squires were far too weak to be able to impact anything. But a high-grade Martial Senior was just entering the boundary where his presence might make a meaningful difference, especially given his identity as the youngest Martial Senior in history.


    ''First thing''s first, I need to learn more about the Kandrian Throne War," Rui heaved a sigh. It was incredibly foolish to make a decision without being fully aware about the very fact of the matter that he was going to make a decision on. He hadn''t bothered thus far, but now that it had been rified that he would be entangled, and perhaps wouldn''t want to avoid being entangled, he needed to learn more.


    ''I could purchase the information from the Martial Union or the Beggar''s Sect,'' Rui mused.


    The Martial Union had arge and powerful intelligence department andwork through which they gained immense information. It was this very department that allowed them to estimate mission difficulty and other details, it also served as a source of ie by having that information sold to the highest bidder.


    ''But¡­it would be foolish to trust either of thempletely,'' Rui''s eyes narrowed.


    Neither the Martial Union nor the Beggar''s Sect were objective about the matter, each organization had their own vested interests in this particr matter. Thus, Rui could not trust either of them of providing him truly objective information.


    The Beggar''s Sect had already sabotaged one of the princesses while the Martial union had one of its own candidates in the race. The former would certainly portray some princesses in a worser light while thetter would be more gentle regarding their own candidate.


    ''That''s why I''ll get both,'' Rui smirked.


    Getting both would allow him to see through the truth much better than if he relied on only one of them to gain an understanding of the political turmoil of the Kandrian Empire. He gently declined from the sky, reaching the ground as he took out the little badge that Sian had given him, putting it on his chest.


    He didn''t care that this was basically the same as announcing to the Beggar''s Sect that he was Rui Quarrier. He was ny-


    five percent that they had already figured it out. Though he did have some ns on how to keep it a secret nheless.


    "Ah, young man, we may have what you seek," A guard outside in arge and expansiveplex of called out to him.


    Rui wasn''t even surprised this time. He turned around, looking at the giant name stered on the gates outside the corporateplex.


    [Lambargeau Xavier Legal Services]


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1549 Purchase

    <h4>Chapter 1549 Purchase </h4>


    1549 Purchase


    ''¡­Aw firm this time,'' Rui heaved a sigh. ''I''m not even surprised.''


    The Beggar''s Sect had already infiltrated a consortium. Infiltrating a powerfulw guild in the town of Hajin wasn''t too much of a stretch either.


    Still, it was quite a marvel how an organization of ordinary folks essentially ended up taking over powerful organizations by literally infesting its employee workforce with their fellow members.


    This was a king of takeover that you simply couldn''t fight back against. Rui knew that the members of the Beggar''s Sect were extremely well infiltrated into humanity, not because they were elite spies or agents, but because they truly were normal people who truly were integrated into normal society.


    What could a corporation even do to stop them?


    There was essentially no way to detect them, and it wasn''t as though a corporation could stop employed employees and workers. Yet the moment they did, it was already over. It was only a matter of time before those employees would climb up into positions of power, and before too long, the Beggar''s Sect would have seizedplete control over the corporation.


    As a Martial Artist who had no intentions of ever creating a corporation, he didn''t really care about this.


    Rui followed the clerk in, heading through the well-endowedplex. Lavish gardens, fountains, and even statues were scattered across theplex. "This is rather extravagant."


    The clerk smiled. " The Town of Hajin is quite extravagant, Senior Quarrier, thus, so are we. Anything that isn''t extravagant draws attention due to being dissimr to its neighbors and environment."


    Rui nodded silently. He had a point.


    "Pleasee this way, sir." The man led him through a series of corridors before arriving at avish office with transparent ss doors at the end of the building.


    Rui nced at the words inscribed on the ss door.


    [Senior Partner


    Maiun Ka]


    He opened the door, gesturing to Rui to enter. Inside the office was an elderly woman formally dressed in a feminine suit that crisply fit her slender body.


    "Senior Quarrier," She smiled lightly, standing up and walking over to him as he entered. "It''s a pleasure to finally meet you. I must say, I have heard much about you from our other branches. You have gained a reputation for leaving behind storms everywhere you go."


    Rui shrugged. "I''m just doing the job, Missus Ka."


    "And I heard you do them well, have a seat." She gestured. "Would you like a drink?"


    "I''m good."


    "Well then, what can we do for you, Senior Quarrier?" She leaned back in her seat, smiling at Rui.


    "I want information on the Kandrian Throne War," Rui replied.


    Her smiled slowly disappeared as her eyes grew serious. "That''s highly sensitive and high-value intelligence. Its value far exceeds even the price of the previous information package you purchasedst time."


    Rui was not surprised. As rich as Chairman Deacon was, not even he could hold a candle to the sheer mind-boggling wealth of the Royal Treasury of the Kandrian Empire. The seals on any sensitive strategic intelligence on the royal family were probably unshakable for any Martial Senior, and probably any Martial Master as well.


    Rui shook his head. "I''m not looking for highly strategic information that can alter the course of the conflict between the royals. I''m looking for more general information on them. I actually little to nothing about them, and I have recently learned that I have reason to know more about them."


    He nced at her.


    Her expression didn''t so much as twitch.


    ''Tsk, she has too much control over her body,'' Rui was hoping to see if he could root out any information from her non-verbalmunication and micro-expressions, but it appeared that she had gone through simr training that he did during the diplomat training for Vilun Ind.


    "That''s much more essible and far lower in value," She replied. "However, you''ll need to be more specific about what information you seek to purchase."


    "Policy positions, political ideology, character, mary capital, Martial capital, credibility, and reliability," Rui fired off several factors that he cared about and needed. "That shouldn''t be too exaggerated in its price."


    "That is indeed much more affordable," She replied. "I''ll have the contract ready soon enough."


    It wasn''t long before the two of them signed two documents.


    "The document will burn if it''s not opened in a specific manner that only we know as a measure to prevent you from leaking proof of a transaction with the Beggar''s Sect," She informed him. "We will send you a bill for the informationmission that you may either through undertaking operations and missions or through gold, if you please."


    "Do you ept Martial Credits?" Rui wondered.


    "Of course we do," She replied. "The Martial Union''s internal currency is reliable and weighty."


    Rui nodded. "Alright then, pleasure doing business, as always."


    He headed to the Martial Union''s branch in the Town of Hajin.


    "ID?"


    "Rui Quarrier," Rui replied at the security check-in, showing the guard his newly minted Martial license.


    Suddenly, it was like he had dropped a bomb.


    The people around him went silent, turning towards him with scrutinizing him.


    "ck hair¡­"


    "Also, ck eyes¡­"


    "It''s him¡­!"


    "Oh¡­" Rui murmured as he realized what he had done.


    "IT''S RUI QUARRIER!" One Martial Apprentice gaped.


    "So he''s the youngest Martial Senior in history!"


    "Excuse me, can I please get an autograph?!"


    "Wai-!" Rui tried protesting, but it was toote.


    Rui was suddenly swarmed with person after person as they approached him to get a good look at the youngest national celebrity within the Martialmunity!


    "Huh?" The crowd suddenly did a collective double take as Rui simply disappeared midair.


    "Where did he go?!"


    "Find him!" This is from N?velDrama.Org.


    Rui shook his head disapprovingly as he floated midair, using Lesser Phantomind Void to misdirect their senses entirely. "Tsk, I forgot. Normal people who aren''t that deep into Martial Art don''t know but¡­"


    But he was standing in the Martial Union. Everybody in here knew who he was ever since news of the youngest Senior in history returning to the Kandrian Empire spread within the nation.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1550 Shocking Revelation

    <h4>Chapter 1550 Shocking Revtion</h4>


    1550 Shocking Revtion


    He sneaked away, heading to the section of the Intelligence Department within the branch, approaching a staff member at the counter.


    "Ah, how may I help you sir?"


    "I''d like to make a certain purchase," Rui replied, slipping a sheet of paper listing the intelligence that he had purchased.


    Her eyes widened when she read the itemized list of information. "W-We''ll process yourmission and get back to you."


    Rui simply nodded, activating Lesser Phantomind Void as he left the ce, heading back home.


    Eventually, he found himself back home at the Quarrier Orphanage, heaving a deep sigh. Content protected by N?v/el(D)rama.Org.


    Now it was simply time to wait for the two intelligence entities to gather the information packages that he hadmissioned and send him the bill.


    He wasn''t worried about being short on funds. Although he had used up all the funds that he got from Esosale Suppliers.


    He still hadn''t touched all the ie he earned by serving as a diplomat for the Martial Union for a year and a half in Vilun Ind and for sessfully resolving the diplomatic dead-end with the G''ak''arkan Tribe.


    That had actually earned him quite the handsome reward that he hadn''t really touched, in addition to the revenue from many missions from when he was a Martial Squire. Considering he wasn''t asking for sensitive strategic information, he was hoping that he could resolve this with the ie he had.


    "Rui?" Alice knocked on his door.


    "Hm?" Rui walked over, opening the door.


    "Why don''t youe to our house for tea?" She smiled. "Farion and I have wanted to talk to you about some matters, you see."


    Rui tilted his head, shrugging. "Sure. Matters? Is there anything you need help with. Because you just need to say the word and I''ll help with all I can."


    Rui was quite eager to offer his help to the Quarrier Orphanage. With his current level of power, there was nothing they could reasonably face that he couldn''t resolve by himself.


    "It''s nothing that serious. We just want to speak with you, it''s been so many years since we spoke to you ourselves to our heart''s content," She stood up on her toes, pecking him on the cheek before going away. "Don''t forget, ok? This is really important."


    "Ok¡­" Rui frowned, confused. "Sure thing."


    It wasn''t long before he found himself sitting at their little house next to the Orphanage, as Alice served all three of them a hot cup of tea. Their daughter, Ruina, yed with dolls by the firece.


    It was a warm and cozy ce, one that truly brought peace to the heart.


    "I''m happy that the two of you got together," Rui remarked. "I didn''t expect it, considering your personalities are the opposite, but I''m happy that you''re happy together, and gave me the honor of being your daughter''s godfather."


    "Hmph, now that you''re her godfather, you better not be going going away too far or too long."


    Rui smiled wryly, turning to Ruina, sitting down beside her.


    "Hehehe!" Ruina giggled as Rui yed with her.


    Alice smiled at the sight. "You were always the golden boy of the orphanage. I missed you so much when you were gone. In a way, naming her after you was to preserve your memory, the memory of adorable little brother who had done so much for us."


    Her smile grew bittersweet for a moment before returning to its cheery self. "But now that you''re back, we''re going to make the best of our time together!"


    The three of them spoke for quite some time about various personal topics until Ruina eventually groggy. Alice put her to bed, returning back to the the little living room.


    "So then¡­" Rui spoke up. "What exactly is going on with you two?"


    He nced at the two of them. He knew that something was up, they were uncharacteristic at the moment. "It''s fine, you can tell me anything."


    Alice stared at him for a moment with an unusually nk expression before procuring a sealed envelope, and handing it to Rui.


    Rui took the envelop, ncing back at the two of them with a puzzled expression, before opening it.


    What he saw inside shook him.


    It was an itemized bill for the intelligencemission that he had made to the Beggar''s Sect earlier that day!


    Along with it, was a nk form for a transaction bill statement from the Martial Union. He would be able to specify the amount of Martial Credits that the specified receiver would be able to redeem for gold.


    His eyes widened as he realized what this meant. He slowly turned back to the two of them, shocked.


    "The two of you¡­" He whispered. "You''re part of the Beggar''s Sect?"


    Neither of them said anything in response, silently meeting his gaze. A torrent of emotions washed over Rui, he didn''t even know what to feel about this revtion.


    He only uttered a single word.


    "¡­Why?"


    Farion heaved a sigh. "We did what we thought was best for us and the orphanage, Rui. We''re not like you. We''re not super strong. We don''t have the power to level a forest with a single motion of an arm. We''re just ordinary humans. We''re powerless¡­This is the only way we can fight back against the forces of the world."


    Rui closed his eyes, breathing deeply as he tried his best to maintain his calm andposure. He did not want to intimidate them with the aura of his Martial Senior. A strong Mind Mask wrapped around his mind, reducing his presence to that of an ordinary human.


    "How did this happen?" He asked a single question, looking them in the eyes without any reproach.


    When he thought about it rationally, there was no reason to lose his cool. His feeling of being betrayed was irrational. He hadn''t been around for eight years after having put them in danger. He was in no position to lose his temper or cool. All he wanted to do right now was understand.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1551 Conviction

    <h4>Chapter 1551 Conviction</h4>


    "It happened a year before we got married," Farion exined. "I¡­"


    He heaved a sigh.


    The air grew heavy as Alice walked over putting a hand on his shoulder.


    "I had gotten addicted Noremin," Farion admitted. Rui''s eyes widened, stunned. He recognized that name. That was the name of one of the three narcotic nts that the Great Forest of Hypnonarak had inrge quantities. The drug was said to put the user in a dreamlike bliss, making them lose sight of reality. This is from N?velDrama.Org.


    "The situation had gotten bad¡­" He heaved a deep sigh. "I had almost reached the point of no return. I would not have gotten back if not for Alice, that''s for sure."


    He gazed deeply at her with an expression of affection and love. "But also, it would not have gone well without the Beggar''s Sect."


    Rui skimmed through his memories as he recalled the whole reason that the Beggar''s Sect wanted him to cripple the Carnil Mafia''s drug trafficking operations. Their operations were to use the time that Rui suppressed the Carnil Mafia''s drug operations to detox and rehabilitate drug addicts. It appeared that Farion had benefited from their goals to prevent the lower-ss folks of a region from beingpletely destroyed by the drug. "They told me that they could help me and that I could join them to ensure something like this never happens again," Farion exined. "I''d need to undergo nine months of training in covert information transmission and their protocols, and I would be remunerated. I could help ensure that such a thing never happens to the people of this region or the orphanage. I¡­epted, along with Alice."


    Rui was starting to understand why the two of them joined the sect.


    "And¡­it paid off," Farion smiled at Rui uncharacteristically. "Four months ago, you destroyed their operation permanently. Since then, the drug supply has ceased entirely. I observe the state of folks of the lower ss document my observations and send them to the sect, and I have observed that things have shifted for the better thanks to you. The Beggar''s Sect kept its promise, and as far as I''m concerned, they have earned my trust. That is why both of us continue to work for them. They were even considerate enough to not require the two of us to spy on our loved ones, otherwise, we wouldn''t have joined. Our jobs are limited to the outer districts of the Town of Hajin and its outskirts."


    There was silence. Rui didn''t even know how to react to this information. However, the tale wasn''t nearly as dark as he had been expecting. It appeared that the Beggar''s Sect was not all talk. They truly were for, of, and by themon man and woman.


    "I see¡­" Rui managed to finally remark. "So that''s why¡­"


    "I hope you don''t feel¡­betrayed," Alice remarked. "We''re still your family. And we would never ever do anything that would harm or hurt you in any way. The Beggar''s Sect cuts a clear line between our duties and personal lives to ensure that we never have to choose between them."


    "How difficult is the job?" Rui asked carefully. "The training was extremely difficult. I have never been pushed to my absolute limits to that degree in my entire life. It was extremely difficult, learning how to observe, how to distill my observations to the barest essence of important and meaningful information, and how to memorize that distilled information quickly. I was also trained on how to efficiently and effectively organize information. Information this. Information that. It was truly difficult," The two of them went pale at the memory of their training. "But thanks to that, we can conduct intelligence surveys without doing anything outwardly suspicious or eye-drawing, while going about the same tasks that I did before. Their methods and training were truly effective."


    "I see¡­" Rui noted. "And how much are you paid?" "Twenty-eight coppers a week," Alice remarked. Rui narrowed his eyes. That was such a low amount that he would never ever notice it if such an amount disappeared from his ount every day. "I know what you''re thinking," Farion understood his concerns. "You think we are being underpaid. You''re wrong. Like I said. I don''t actually do any extra physical manualbor. I still drive rickshaws around the outer districts of the Town of Hajin throughout the day like I did before. I''ve just gathered a lot of information simultaneously with no extra physical effort. The report part is also easy. It''s just the training that was maniacally hard."


    "I see¡­" Rui softly replied as he considered their words.


    He was pretty sure that the Beggar''s Sect remunerated its members based on the value of the information they brought in. Someone like Maiun, the senior partner he had met earlier, was part of the upper echelons at arge and powerfulw guild and was naturally going to be remunerated more handsomely.


    Although Farion and Alice were each being paid twenty-eight coppers a week, the total expenses of the Beggar''s Sect were probably enormous considering that they probably had more than a billion members like them so much so that even the enormous funds that they received from selling information will bergely siphoned into remunerating its payrolls.


    Besides, considering the low cost of living that the two of them had, twenty-eight coppers a week was enough to make their living morefortable.


    "There are also additional benefits like forewarnings of dangers," Farion remarked. "Especially therger kinds that affect a general region or town. With that, we can live feeling a little more safe."


    Rui understood that sentiment. He knew from his interactions with the Beggar''s Sect that they definitely cared for their agents. This was extremely unusual for an organization as powerful as the Beggar''s Sect. Whoever ran this sect was not an ordinary power-hungry individual, that was for sure.


    "As long as I am there. There aren''t too things that can harm you. Rest assured that even if a tornado came our way, I will still be able to protect all of you," Rui reassured them.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1552 Succession Paradigms

    <h4>Chapter 1552 Session Paradigms</h4>


    The tensions in the room declined a little as Rui epted their decisions and convictions to stick by them. He tried to pry more information out of them regarding the Beggar''s Sect, but they firmly declined.


    "We also don''t know anything at all," Farion remarked. "No strategically valuable or important information whatsoever. Not even mundane stuff, we truly know nothing. However, even if we did, we wouldn''t tell you, Rui. We can''t betray their trust."


    Rui nodded. "I understand, I apologize for asking untoward questions."


    "No need to be so stiff," Alice smiled, hugging him. "You''re our precious little brother, after all."


    The air cleared as the mood took a turn for the better. The three of them got back to their boisterous discussions, this time with a little more earnestness.


    "I''m proud of you for having taken down the Carnil Mafia''s operations in the Gereign Region," Farion stared Rui in the eyes. "You have no idea how many people you saved. Truly."


    "I''m d to hear that," Rui smiled. "Had I known that it was affecting people in ces close to the orphanage, I would have done it much sooner."


    Of course, that would have been nearly impossible. Especially when considering how narrowly he almost failed even after tapping into the potential of mental techniques and his affinity with them.


    Regardless, it was eventually time for the actual transaction. Rui quickly handled the brief paperwork, handing in the debit statement that would allow the Beggar''s Sect to receive his payment for the information.


    In turn, Alice handed him a densely wrapped heavy package of documents. "This is the package of information you requested."


    "Hmph. Looks like you''re up to no good again," Farion grumbled.


    "Heh, you know me," Rui smirked. "Regardless, I''ll be sure to put this to good use."


    "Be sure to do that then. Get going now, it''s gettingte."


    By the time Rui returned, he found that the Martial Union had sent its own intelligence package, when he returned, having automatically deducted the Martial Credits from his ount.


    With this, he had ess to two sources of information about the same topic. He was much more able to ount for the biased reporting this way. He quickly got to work, reading through the Martial Union report first and then the Beggar''s Sect report second.


    Both reports were quite detailed, although he found the Beggar''s Sect''s information to be a lot moreprehensive. Reading through both of them and storing the information in his Mind Pce allowed him to gain a broader overview of the political state of the Kandrian Empire.


    "I see¡­" Rui murmured. "So this is how it is¡­"


    The Kandrian Emperor had many progeny since his crowning with many concubines. These concubines were usually in important positions of power or from important nations and organizations. By having them bear his child he could create a familial unit that would consolidate his power across the Kandrian Empire.


    Many of the concubines were important figures with high statuses in other nations. epting them as a concubine was simply a way to deepen his bonds with the nation. Doing this over and over again had resulted in more than a hundred offspring!


    The ruler of the Kandrian Empire had the authority to appoint and dismiss people to important positions of power within the executive government, the judiciary, and the Royal Army, which was a separate entity directly under themand of the Emperor or Empress.


    Thus any of thepeting princes and princesses that gained the most recognition from these three branches of the government would be able to ascend the throne and be crowned ruler of the Kandrian Empire.


    Appealing to as many of the branches of the government required economic, Martial, and political capital. After all, those with more power had more to offer to the broader government, earning more support in return. The candidates that were able to rue as much capital as they could would have a much better chance of gaining the most widespread recognition, allowing that person to ascend to the throne.


    That was the Kandrian Throne War in a precise nutshell. N?velDrama.Org holds this content.


    ''This is a circumstance where, for once, the government is more significant than the other power blocs of the Empire,'' Rui heaved a sigh. ''This is due to the nature of the ruler.''


    The ruler of the Kandrian Empire had two broad categories of power. The first was their nigh-absolute authority over legition and the second was their nigh-absolute authority over the government. It could be said that these two powers defined the authority of the ruler. Possessing these two powers was what made the ruler the ruler.


    Thus, whichever prince or princess could gain as much of those two powers would be the closest to the throne.


    The first power of legition over thew was solely by virtue ofw, thus the princes and princesses could not attain it. but the second power, power over the government, was something that could be obtained.


    Everybody had agendas and interests, both personal and professional in nature. This included the members of the government. A prince or princess with more economic, political, and Martial power would be able to fulfill those agendas better than those without. In doing so, they would gain more support from the government. Gaining more power over the government would bring them closer to the throne.


    That was why the government was the powerful force in this war. They were the objective. Other power blocs like the Martial Union, the various corporations across many industries and sectors, the civilian poption, and the Martialmunity were less important.


    ''Not less important per se¡­they''re just not the objective. They''re means to an end,'' Rui realized. Whichever candidate earned the full support of the entirety of the Martial Union would essentially win the war. The reason for this was that earning the full support of the entire organization meant that they would be able to earn more support from the government than anybody else. That was the sheer magnitude of the power that the Martial Union had.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1553 Known Candidates

    <h4>Chapter 1553 Known Candidates</h4>


    1553 Known Candidates


    The princes and princesses ran around the entire country, earning support and followers so that they could use that power to earn more support from the government. It was a mechanism that allowed the government the highest authority during session.


    The Bill of Royal Axioms, a document that specifiedws that not even the emperor could change, did not allow an emperor to appoint a sessor. Instead, the right to appoint an emperor had implicitly fallen into the hands of the government. The ceremony to officiate the emperor was, byw, in control of the government. Thus the government was given the implicit power to decide the emperor.


    ''That''s another reason why the princes and princesses are racing to appeal to the government,'' Rui mused. ''This was probably done on purpose by the founding emperor, he probably foresaw the rise of powerful corporations and organizations of Martial Artists that could potentially take the session into their own hands.''


    But by concretely ensuring that such a thing could never happen through the Bill of Royal Axioms, he ensured that the government''s stronghold over the nation did not ever get overthrown during chaotic times like session.


    That reflected the founding emperor''s philosophy. He was clearly a man who believed in governmental authority and heavy governmental intervention over the state.


    Rui heaved a sigh, shaking his head.


    He was disappointed.


    While the various princes and princesses fought for support and influence amongst the corporate and Martial forces of the nation to leverage that power to gain as much recognition from within the government, the people of the Kandrian Empire seemed to be forgotten in the conversation.


    Rui believed that any form of government where the people''s interests were not the absolute criteria was a fundamentally wed government. The current paradigm seemed to make the people of the Empire the least important bloc.


    That was not something Rui was fond of.


    Still, he didn''t have any power to change it.


    "I can only do what I can," He shook his head.


    He turned his attention to something he could potentially impact, even if by a little; thepeting princes or princesses.


    ording to both intelligence reports, some many princes and princesses werepeting. However, out of all of them, only seven of them had any meaningful probability of ascending the throne.


    Two of them he had already learned about. Princess Raemina and Prince Raijun. The former actually held a position within the Kandrian Empire as the current minister of finance, giving her a lot of sway within the government, which is why she had a solid chance of winning the Throne War.


    She believed that the privatization of property ought to be demolished, any and all wealth earned ought to be gathered, by force, and be redistributed by ability and need. It was textbookmunist philosophy in an attempt to create a utopia where everyone would allegedly have everything.


    Yet Rui was a firm believer that such a thing was closer to hell than a utopia and would slowly degrade the nation until it crumbled as it had done to the Soviet Union. Yet her pretty words and already high authority within the Ministry of Finance gave her a good shot.


    Rui shook his head, heaving a sigh.


    Prince Raijun was a more curious case to Rui. When Fae had told him about the prince, Rui had gotten the impression that he was being backed by it in its Martial Union in its entirety. Rui had wondered why he hadn''t essentially won the war with such astronomical support.


    The truth was more nuanced. Both the Martial Union and the Beggar''s Sect agreed on this. Prince Raijun had not earned the support of the entirety of the Martial Union. Many Martial factions and Sects had refused to support him.


    The Martial Union was far from monolithic. Martial Artists may havee together within one organization, but being Martial Artists meant being full of individuality. This meant that all Martial organizations would inherently be polylithic.


    ''The issue is that he''s a Martial Apprentice,'' Rui realized.


    Martial Apprentices had virtually no speaking power at the highest echelons of the Kandrian Empire. While Prince Raijun was a Martial Apprentice, that was not enough to win the support of the entirety of the Martial Union.


    For one, he was quite old, about forty years old. Progression to the higher Realm was much more dependent on individuality and drive than raw talent alone. Many Martial Artists concluded that he was probablycking in the former than thetter, and that drove them away from him.


    None of them wanted to put their trust in a Martial Artist without drive and individuality. They certainly did not want to put the fate of the nation on his shoulders.


    ''If he were at least a Martial Squire¡­'' Rui heaved a sigh.


    He might have been able to earn the support of the entirety of the Martial Union. However, as it stood now, he only earned anywhere between thirty to forty percent of the support from the Martial Union.


    The Beggar''s Sect that it was closer to forty, while the Martial Union said it was lesser. That was an interesting difference of opinion between the two organizations.


    However, despite only earning the support of thirty to forty percent of the Martial Union, he was still very much one of the strongest candidates. A solid chunk of the most powerful force in the nation was still a lot of power. Exclusive ? material by N?(/v)elDrama.Org.


    The remaining five princes were those that Rui had heard of in passing throughout his life but were still quite new to him.


    Princess Rajak was one he had heard of as well. He recalled Executive Ferm telling him about Prince Rajak being supported by the Carnil Mafia and the Underworld as a whole. That exined why he was one of the seven princes and princesses with a solid shot at victory.


    The Underworld was incredibly powerful with immense economic capital and Martial power with even a Martial Sage supporting and legitimizing it. With such raw support, he could easily tangle with the likes of Princess Raemina and Apprentice Prince Raijun.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1554 Seven

    <h4>Chapter 1554 Seven </h4>


    1554 Seven


    The one that came next on the list was Princess Rana.


    ording to both reports Princess Rana was supported by the coastal sector of the nation. The Kandrian Empire bordered the Great Nam Ocean for thousands of kilometers, shaped like a strip. This meant that the coastal sector of the Kandrian Empire was extremely developed andrge. It ounted for a meaningful chunk of the entirety of the national GDP.


    Princess Ranea had earned the support of the Kandrian Seafare Association, the Ministry of Maritime Affairs, and various sub-


    sectors all rting to the ocean and coast in one way or another, be it transport, manufacturing, supplies, or information.


    This gave her the capital to stand against even the Minister Princess who had the most authority among all the princes and princesses, as well against even the Martial Prince who had gained immense Martial capital from the Martial Union, and against the Underworld Prince with the support of the Underworld.


    Another one of the list was Princess Rafia. She was, to put it briefly, the Corporate Princess. She had earned the support of the Kandrian Merchant Guild and the most support out of the top one hundred corporations andpanies within the Kandrian Empire. Her greatest strength was her sheer mary capital which was arguably the highest out of all the princes and princesses.


    Prince Randal was a colonel in the military. Out of all the candidates, he earned the greatest share of support from the Royal Army. The only issue that hampered him from takingplete control of the army was that his rank was too low. The military was an institution where hierarchy was absolute, it was difficult for a lot of higher-ups to ept that they would bemanded by someone who was of a lower rank.


    This hampered him from gaining absolute control over the army.


    Of the remaining four, one that drew his attention the most was Prince Raul. Prince Raul did not have any corporate backing, nor any heavy Martial capital. He didn''t have any authority within the government. N?velDrama.Org holds this content.


    Yet; he had massive support amongst the people.


    Prince Raul was known as the People''s Emperor in many ces. He create a non-profit known as the Kandrian Ruffians. A beloved group that traveled across the Kandrian Empire engaging in all sorts of small-scale andrge-scale projects to help the citizens of the nation.


    The funding came purely from the humble and modest donations of the people. The manpower came purely from good-hearted able-bodied men and women who were inspired by his people-first ideology and worked hard to realize them, even if they weren''t always remunerated for their efforts.


    Had the Kandrian Empire been a democratic Republic, he would have been an absolute lock for the ruler if it came down to an election.


    But, s, this was not the case.


    The Martial Union''s description of Prince Raul was clinical and rational. Many considered him to be the weakest out of all the seven prime candidates because he was sorelycking economically, politically, and Martially.


    The Beggar''s Sect, on the other hand, spoke wonders of the man. If what they said was true, then Prince Raul was an angel in human form. Born with a heartrge enough to wrap around the entire world, he was a man of godly benevolence and righteousness. He glowed with a luster that only those pure of heart possessed!


    ''Come on now,'' Rui scoffed when he read the report. ''I get that you support him, but really?''


    They didn''t even need to specify that they supported him, and they didn''t do so either. But Rui knew from his time with the Beggar''s Sect that Prince Raul definitely appealed to them the most.


    Perhaps that was why he was considered to be among the top seven. It was because he had information on his side. Rui would not be surprised if the man did not even know he was being supported by the Beggar''s Sect!


    ording to both reports, he had the least political acumen out of all the princes and princesses. While he possessed a fierce drive for that persevered and inspired his followers to persevere through all challenges that beset them, he did not possess finesse, he did not possess the calcting nature to understand how to leverage what he had to win the elections.


    He was arguably the most unique and the one that Rui was already fond of. ording to both reports, he had been the one to contribute to fighting back the most against the recent Noremin, ckamol, and Dresatone narcotic drug epidemic.


    Rui''s eyes widened. These were the three narcotic nts that overwhelmingly popted the Great Forest of Hypnonarak.


    ''I see¡­so while I was fighting the Carnil Mafia in the Great Forest of Hypnonarak, he was fighting the Carnil Mafia in the Kandrian Empire,'' Rui''s opinion of the man had grown even more.


    In fact, he was almost certain that the Kandrian Ruffians run by the man were responsible for helping to rehabilitate Farion when he had be addicted to Noremin. The Beggar''s Sect had probably approached him from within the organization.


    That made Rui like him even more.


    Regardless, Rui had gained a good overview of the dynamics of the seven prime candidates for the throne.


    Prince Raul, the People''s Prince, the prince who had earned the love of the citizens of the nation.


    Prince Randal, the Colonel Prince, the man with a significant chunk of the mighty Kandrian Royal Army standing behind him.


    Princess Raemina, the Finance Princess, the Finance Minister with the highest authority within the government.


    Princess Ranea, the Coastal Princess, the prince that had won general support of Kandria''s sea industry.


    Prince Raijun, the Martial Prince, the Martial Apprentice had tapped into the desire of many people to see a Martial Artist rule the Kandrian Empire.


    Princess Rafia, the Corporate Princess, the princess that was backed by an ocean of wealth from the corporations of the Kandrian Empire''s powerful economy.


    Prince Rajak, the Underworld Prince, the prince that had earned the full support of the Kandrian Underworld.


    Seven princes and princesses stood far above their siblings. One of the seven of them would one day be crowned the next ruler of the Kandrian Empire.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1555 Agendas

    <h4>Chapter 1555 Agendas </h4>


    1555 Agendas


    Of the seven of them, only two of them appeared to have their own political ideologies that they genuinely espoused. Princess Raemina with hermunist dictatorship ambitions and Prince Raul with his people-first doctrine.


    The rest of them appeared to be shilling for the power blocs that backed them up.


    For instance, it didn''t appear to Rui that Raijun had a strong drive to pursue Martial power. He had be a Martial Apprentice at a remarkable age but then had never proceeded to reach the next Realm.


    To Rui, that suggested that whatever his Martial drive was, the power that he possessed as a Martial Apprentice was enough to fulfill it.


    Yet he also had the ambition to rule the nation. The only way he could have a strong drive to rule the nation but still be satisfied with the power of an Apprentice was if the reason he pursued his Martial Path was not the Martial power, but something else.


    "He most likely became a Martial Apprentice only to have the status of a Martial Artist," Rui realized. "Once he had the status of a Martial Artist, he would gain more trust from other Martial Artists who distrusted normal humans to represent their interests well."


    Yet he didn''t realize that just bing a Martial Apprentice was not enough. Martial Apprentices were children within the world of Martial Art, regardless of what their actual age was, they were treated as children on their Martial Path.


    Most likely, he had conceded to all their demands in exchange for their support. His biggest supporters within the Martial Union were the Martial Supremacists. Rui had run into this faction before. Commissioner Derun who hadmissioned him to serve as a diplomat to Vilun Ind was a part of this faction. She had even invited him to join this faction.


    He had ultimately refused. He did not want to live in a nation that ran on thews of the jungle where the strongest ruled and the weakest cowered and were consumed. Martial Artists running the country usually ended up as a nightmare, as far as was concerned.


    Most likely, the Martial Prince would make legitions that were highly favorable to the Martial Union and to Martial Artists in general if he ascended the throne.


    The same could be said for most of the others of the seven prime candidates.


    Rui shook his head, centering his thoughts. ''I''m approaching this non-systematically. I need to define what my agendas are. There is no point in thinking about what Prince to support until I have full rity on that. So what is it that I hope to achieve?'' Exclusive ? material by N?(/v)elDrama.Org.


    He didn''t have too much of a stock in the race. However, he strongly wished for his family''s life to not be disrupted. Some of the princes and princesses had ideologies or shilled for power blocs whose interests diverged from the interests of the lowest ss of society.


    ''That''s not all¡­'' Rui realized. ''Whoever ascends to the throne can certainly disrupt my family''s life with crazy azy legition. But it can also be disrupted if I earn the enmity of a prince or princess.''


    The seven prime candidates for ruler had already umted more power than he was capable of fighting back. He was sure that a solid proportion of Martial Seniors, Masters, and Sages had already distributed their support among the seven candidates. This meant that they had the power to make his family''s life miserable.


    That was why Rui''s number one goal was to avoid earning the enmity of any of the princes and princesses. What he was confident about was the fact that they would not overstep their bounds unless they hadpletely lost all sense.


    The Kandrian Throne War was a race to gather support. The entire nation and beyond were watching each of the seven candidates closely. Antagonizing others needlessly was a good way to lose a race of gathering support. It ruined their credibility, trustworthiness, and reliability.


    This session battle was a phase where each of the princes and princesses had no choice but to focus on pleasing others to earn their support, rather than antagonizing them.


    Thus, as long as Rui did not antagonize them first, the way he did Deacon, then there was little to no cause to worry about his family being endangered.


    ''Though I do need to speak with Julian and make sure that he doesn''t antagonize any of the princes and princesses,'' Rui made a mental note.


    With the concern of short-term acute threats out of the way, Rui began thinking about long-term priorities. In the long term, he did not want any prince or princess to pass legition that would hurt his family.


    That automatically put Princess Raemina out of any consideration. He would never allow the Quarrier Orphanage to be taken away from his family.


    It also put Princess Rafia, the Corporate Princess, out of consideration. He didn''t think a corporate shill would do anything that would benefit his family.


    He was less certain about the rest, but he didn''t think he could gain much by supporting Prince Randal either. A militaristic man was probably pro-increased defense spending, maybe even for more aggressive and domineering hawkish foreign policy.


    "Princess Ranea doesn''t seem bad¡­" Rui shrugged.


    The coastal and sea sectors of the nation were very important. On top of that, she had a good chance of winning with just how important they were. Not only were they economically vital to the nation, but they were strategically important because litoral gold, the gold that was used to create the Kandrian Gold coin currency, was found in the parts of the Nam Ocean close to the Kandrian Empire''s coast.


    Being supported by the sector that controlled the supply of this strategically important resource meant that she had a lot of power. Her stance and policies were also probably going to be nted toward this sector.


    If that was the case, then she didn''t really impact his family in any way by ascending the throne, most likely.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1556 Pacifying Role

    <h4>Chapter 1556 Pacifying Role</h4>


    1556 Pacifying Role


    While she was a possibility, one prince who wasn''t a possibility was Prince Rajak, the Underworld Prince.


    Rui had an extremely bad opinion of them, worse than even Princess Raemina. The Underworld had already hurt his family. He couldn''t imagine how bad it would be if this prince ascended the throne.


    Yet this prince was the one he was least willing to antagonize. The Underworld was not constrained by things like maintaining reputation and credibility. They were far more unscrupulous and uncaring. Antagonizing this prince could genuinely put him and his family in danger.


    Still, he didn''t think he would be approached by this prince at all.


    "Prince Raijun is also highly undesirable," Rui heaved a sigh.


    He did not want to live in a nation where Martial Artists ruled over non-Martial Artists and had no limits or ramifications to the use of their power. He did not want to live in a world where ordinary people were essentially enved to Martial Artists in fear of their power.


    However, the Martial Supremacist doctrine believed that Martial Artists should be the absolute rulers of society.


    Such a world was not good for the Quarrier Orphanage.


    The economic wealth of corporations, the authority of the government and the Royal Family kept the Martial Union in check and vice versa. However, if the Martial Artists gained absolute authority over the state, there would be nothing keeping them in check.


    Ordinary people were bound to suffer, there was no doubt about that.


    Although such a world highly benefited a Martial Senior like himself, he didn''t even consider supporting the Martial Supremacist doctrine for even a millisecond. It was patently uneptable.


    That left one candidate, the one that appealed to Rui the most.


    Prince Raul was easily far and away the mostpelling prince out of everyone in the race as far as his political ideology went. His political ideology, as he described it, was ''people first.''


    He believed that the needs and interests of the people in this nation that formed the very basis and bedrock of the nation were the most important parts of the nation. He also believed that fulfilling the needs and requirements of the people would enrich the working ss, empowering the nation as a result.


    However, there were shorings in him as well. ording to the Martial Union report, his political acumen was the least out of all the princes and princesses. He wasn''t ipetent by any means, but he had spent most of his life living as amoner after his mother fell out of favor with the emperor, leaving the Royal pce.


    It was only after he had formed the Kandrian Ruffians as an adolescent that he learned of his identity, and decided to leverage it to expand his little non-profit organization. Content protected by N?v/el(D)rama.Org.


    He also had rued the least amount of mary, political, and Martial capital. While he was not entirelycking in this area, he was certainly behind.


    However, he was extraordinarily popr amongst citizens across the entire nation. He had visited every inch and corner of the nation, using his princely identity to gather more people who were willing to join his non-profit. Everywhere he went, he earned a lot of supporters.


    In the past eight years, the man had essentially be the sweetheart of themon person. He was said to be extremely charismatic and charming, with a fierce determination will, and drive that inspired others to voluntarily leave their lives and join him in his quest to change the country.


    Just the sheer fact that citizens of the nation wholeheartedly supported him meant that he had thergest support base in the entire nation. This gave him power that was vastly different from that of the other princes or princesses. The sheer amount of support he had meant that him being crowned ruler would make the executive government''s job a hundred times easier.


    The nation would willingly support him in basically any and all endeavors smoothly, within reason of course. This allowed Prince Raul to execute things that were previously considered impossible or unfeasible.


    None of the other princes or princesses could offer this. Out of all the candidates, what he offered appealed to the authorities'' professional sense the most.


    "Huff¡­"Rui heaved a sigh. "Tough¡­"


    He was inclined to go for Prince Raul, but only if the man truly had a shot of winning the Kandrian Throne War.


    ''I''d need to meet him,'' Rui first concluded. He was not going support someone without getting a good personal impression of them first.


    It wasn''t long before Julian came back home from the Ministry of Research and Development, Rui immediately secluded himself with the man.


    "So?" Julian asked as he rxed in his chair. "What is it you wanted to speak to me about?"


    "It was regarding the Kandrian Throne War," Rui replied with a serious tone.


    Julian heaved a tired sigh. "It doesn''t appear that you brought this up for a mentally stimting conversation. I don''t have too much of an interest in this topic. Unlike you, I don''t possess the power to affect it."


    "If you didn''t, then you would not have been approached by the Raemina Administration," Rui pointed out.


    "I was approached because Her Highness is aggressively recruiting support across the government," He replied. "As the Minister of Finance, she is looking other ministries for support, and the Ministry of Research and Development just fell under that approach. It''s not me in particr that she wants. While I am a valued high-level researcher, I don''t possess any real political weight myself. It''s just a little better if she can get a whole ministry cleanly than just the ministers."


    "In that case, I want you to ept her offer," Rui replied, throwing a pointed look. "Because I don''t intend to."


    Julian raised an eyebrow, able to immediately understand what Rui conveying. "You want me to act as a protective guarantee for the orphanage from any reproach from her."


    Rui nodded. "Out of all the princes and princesses, she and Prince Rajak are the most dangerous to reject. It''s possible that just rejecting will mark us as her enemy. In her case, it would be better if you ept so that she will not do anything if I reject."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1557 Uninvited Guest

    <h4>Chapter 1557 Uninvited Guest </h4>


    1557 Uninvited Guest


    ording to the intelligence reports of the Martial Union and the Beggar''s Sect, Princess Raemina was not the most rational person. She possessed a violent temper that made those around her often quite fearful of her.


    Rui was concerned about any potential bacsh if Julian rejected her invitation after the many donations that she had made. That might have grown even worse if he rejected her as well.


    Regardless, he didn''t want to mess around with a crazy princess.


    "¡­Alright," Julian agreed. "Your reasoning is sound. If it''s for the sake of the orphanage, I don''t mind joining her faction. It also benefits me since she has promised even greater funding and sponsorships if I did join her faction."


    It was a win-win.


    "Who do you intend to join, if not Her Highness?" Julian asked with a curious expression.


    "Not too sure but¡­Prince Raul appeals to me the most," Rui replied.


    "¡­I''m not surprised," Julian remarked. "I met him once, you know?"


    "You did?" Rui asked, surprised. "Did he invite you to join his faction too?"


    "No, this was many years ago," Julian shook his head. "He hade to the outer and poorer districts of the Town of Hajin to aid with the Noremin narcotic epidemic several years ago. He had personally visited the various settlements outside the town like ours to offer aid to those who may have grown addicted to the drug. Back then, Farion''s condition was¡­quite bad, to say the least, though I should let him tell you that story himself."


    He sipped his tea, returning to the story. "I had personally thanked him. He was remarkably grounded. I didn''t sense even the slightest hint of an ego. His attire was not extravagant. He didn''tmand his people, rather it seemed that they were desperate to bemanded by him, to be of use to him. It''s rare to see a man evoke such raw loyalty from the people around him."


    "¡­I see," Rui murmured. "He does sound like a great leader, that I will say."


    Julian nodded. "I have heard some interesting rumors. They say that the treasury of the Kandrian Ruffians is filled with endless copper and silver coins, but not a single gold coin."


    "¡­Meaning he only gets donations from people who are not rich enough to have a gold coin?" Rui mused. "That''s surely an exaggeration of the truth."


    "It probably is, but it is quite remarkable nheless," Julian remarked. "He only helps those who need it. It''s like something out of a fairy tale. It would be quite fascinating to see him be emperor. I imagine life for us here in the orphanage will grow easier."


    Rui nodded. "Though the two of us will probably have it less easy."


    Neither of them were of the lowest economic ss. Julian was at least part of the upper middle ss while Rui was easily in the wealthy upper echelons.


    Neither of them minded being inconvenienced. Rui cared for wealth even less than he did in his previous life.


    A few days passed as Rui gave the matter some more thought, optimizing his game n. Naturally, given that his ability to impact the war was quite limited, he didn''t take it too seriously, but he was a high-grade Martial Senior, which meant that he mattered even in the eyes of the princes and princesses.


    He realized that this was more than he had expected when Headmaster Aronian''s warning began panning out


    Outside, a majestic carriage carrying the emblem of the royal family had arrived at the orphanage, drawing everybody''s attention.


    The doors opened as a woman stepped out, apanied by two Martial Seniors. She had dark brown hair that was neatly tied in a bun. Slender spectacles sat before brown eyes that eyed the Quarrier Orphanage.


    Her attire screamed businesswoman, she even carried a thin briefcase by her side.


    Her demeanor gave off a hint of elitist pride with a raised chin and eyes that looked down on everything around her.


    Rui recognized the crest on her outer coat, narrowing his eyes.


    The Raemina administration.


    "That''s her¡­" Julian told Rui with a stiff tone. "The one I was telling you about. A head executive of the Raemina Administration."


    Rui turned to the adults standing beside him, staring through the window. "Get the kids to the other side of the orphanage. Mayra, could you please prepare some tea for our guest?"


    They all immediately nodded vigorously, scattering off with anxious hearts. They decided to trust Rui with this matter since it was clear that it was probably rted to him. Exclusive ? material by N?(/v)elDrama.Org.


    "¡­Be careful," Xanarn told him softly as she ushered the kids to the other side of the orphanage.


    Rui smiled, turning back as he headed to the door, opening it as she arrived, disying a perfect perfunctory smile. "Miss Vilmentine, wee to the Quarrier Orphanage. I must confess, I didn''t expect to see you here today."


    Her demeanor lightened a bit as she stood before Rui while the Martial Seniors behind her grew more alert. "Senior Quarrier, it is truly a pleasure to meet you. I do apologize for not informing you of my visit in advance. Today, Ie here as a representative of Her Highness Minister Raemina, the eighth princess of the Kandrian Empire."


    "Pleasee in," Rui gestured, smiling.


    The two of them, along with Julian, sat in the living room of the orphanage, exchanging basic pleasantries.


    "Your return to the Kandrian Empire has been quite the hot topic in many circles," She smiled. "You had already gained quite a lot of fame as the man behind the Voider who dominated the spectacle of the Shionel Dungeon Raid close to a decade ago now. Her Highness was quite pleased to see the economic contributions you made through your Esosale Suppliers. Thanks to you, our GDP has increased and our economy has been enriched by many billions, increasing by a substantial fraction of a whole percent. The Minister of Finance appreciates your positive impact on our empire."


    "I am honored and ttered that Her Highness appreciates my work, I have always strived to be an impact for good on our great nation," Rui smiled.


    "That is quite pleasant to hear," Marin Vilmentine smiled back as she opened her briefcase. "I''m sure Her Highness would be happy to hear that from you at the reception she''s holding in a few days."


    She ced two envelopes on the table, pushing them to the two men.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1558 Invitation

    <h4>Chapter 1558 Invitation </h4>


    1558 Invitation


    She certainly didn''t waste too much time getting the point. That was to be expected, Rui supposed. She was a chief executive in the Raemina Administration, she probably had an endless list of agendas to be tackled for the day.


    "It is a modest event that Her Highness has decided to hold for patrons and sponsors, as well as potential allies that may be interested in Her Highness'' campaign," Miss Vilmentine exined. "We would be delighted to see the two of you there." Exclusive ? material by N?(/v)elDrama.Org.


    "¡­I appreciate the invitation," Rui smiled. "We look forward to the asion and meeting Her Highness."


    "Her Highness does look forward to meeting you," Miss Vilmentine directed a pointed look at Rui in particr. "Not only have you made great contributions to our economy, but you have made our country proud by being the youngest Martial Senior in history. Her Highness has also heard rumors about your significant contributions to Martial Art and the Martial Union, it is a shame that the Martial Union has been extremely secretive about the nature of this contribution."


    She brought up the Hungry Pain contribution to the Martial Union that Rui made, revealing her ignorance about it. She was clearly trying to probe Rui''s reactions to see if she could grasp any more information about it.


    Much to her surprise, Rui didn''t so much as twitch. His demeanor was unchanged, as though he was sitting in silence and nothing had happened. He exhibited a level of control over his nonverbalmunication that she rarely saw among Martial Artists in the Lower Realms.


    "Her Highness is well-informed," Rui smiled, limiting himself to that much.


    "¡­I see the rumors about your diplomatic performance in the Martial Union''s ventures were not unfounded," She remarked carefully as she studied him deeply. "It is not hard to see why the Martial Union is so fond of you. However, the Martial Union is ultimately an organization that puts distance between itself and those who haven''tmitted to it. There are limits to its goodwill unless one joins its inner corps and bes an inner member. That usually means a degree of subordination until one breaks through to the Upper Realms."


    Rui knew what she was trying to do. She was throwing shit at the wall, seeing what stuck. A low-effort and potentially high-


    reward effort to put enough of a wedge between him and the Martial Union.


    ''She''s worried that I''ll naturally lean towards the Martial Prince because he''s earned the highest amount of support from Martial Artists among the seven princes and princesses,'' Rui mused. ''However, she''s hoping the fact that I have abstained from joining the Martial Union all this time is a sign that I am not attracted by the Martial Union.''


    "I am aware of that," Rui replied. "I have weighed the pros and cons of joining the Martial Union and made my choice regarding the matter. I am satisfied with my current rtionship with the organization."


    This was the truth. However, he didn''t rify whether he was or wasn''t going to support the Martial Prince. He left that lingering in the air.


    He didn''t want to inform the executive that he had no intention of supporting the Martial Prince. He didn''t want to make himself a more alluring target for poaching.


    "While the Martial Union is limited in how far it is willing to go for Martial Artists who have merely signed out a royalty contract with the Martial Union, the same is not necessarily true for joining the Raemina Faction," She outright said. "We do not require absolutemitment from our patrons or supporters. We will offer benefits and remuneration that are proportional to the contributions that our patrons are willing to make. Rest assured that while Princess Raemina aims to be the dictatorship of amunist nation, we do not intend to treat Martial Artists and plebeians alike."


    Both of them sensed Julian stiffening ever so slightly at her statement. He didn''t have the perfect control over his bodynguage that the other two had. Miss Vilmentine instantly understood that she was treading into sensitive territory for her two hosts.


    "Martial Artists can secure property rights and tax cuts for not only themselves but also their family," She replied. "This is especially true for highly-valued Martial Seniors like yourself. We can even offer many more benefits for you and your kin exclusive to all of you."


    Rui sipped his tea, considering her words. "That is not unalluring, however, I am a man who prefers that my right to freedom and liberty are not dependent on my utility."


    "That is to be expected. However, Her Highness'' economic doctrine is also one that benefits the lowest ss of society the most," She pointed out. "We believe in true equality and fairness. The current paradigms favor those in power over the lowest ss of society. Limitless private ownership has allowed many powerful individuals who own an absurd amount of wealth and capital despite certainly not contributing anything worth everything they own. They mooch off hard-workingborers not unlike the caretakers of this orphanage, profiting from their hard work simply through ownership of appreciating assets and stakes in publicly tradedpanies. Her Highness aims to ensure that such a thing will never be possible under her regime. People will be given what they have genuinely earned and what they genuinely need."


    There were elements ofmunism that were alluring on paper. It was why it had support, even if not widespread. Still, Rui hated the intervention of the state in his personal life under such a system. On top of that, history on Earth had demonstrated the many deep socioeconomic shorings and evils that could be born under such a system.


    "I do not wish to engage in a debate about politics or economics. Let''s just say that I have very fundamental qualms about the nature of Her Highness'' political and economic doctrines," Rui replied. "Nheless, I do look forward to meeting her at least once and hearing what she has to say."


    Miss Vilmentine smiled perfunctorily. "That is all we ask."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1559 Plans

    <h4>Chapter 1559 ns</h4>


    1559 ns


    It wasn''t long before Miss Vilmentine took her leave from the orphanage. While she had clearly expressed and conveyed the high interest that the Raemina Faction had in winning over Rui, she didn''t go too far by dogging Rui about joining her faction.


    An overly-persistent approach was unpleasant to most people, it showed ack of respect for boundaries.


    Furthermore, today was just a basic low-effort preliminary attempt to earn his support.


    "Huff¡­" Julian heaved a tired sigh as he watched the royal carriage elerate away from the orphanage. "It seems she is quite intent on bringing you over to the Raemina Faction."


    "It would seem that way," Rui nodded, concurring with the man. "I''m not really surprised."


    Rui had an impressive history during his time in the Kandrian Empire.


    He had reached the finals of the Martial Contest held during the Martial Festival when he was an Apprentice, earning his first hint of fame through the Kandrian Empire. He had then gone on to perform several incredible feats as a Martial Apprentice.


    He had managed to kill a Martial Squire as a Martial Apprentice. While there was context and nuance that made his feat not nearly as absurd and bonkers as it seemed on the surface, the details had been lost in the wind as the rumors spread across the entire nation.


    On top of that, he had essentially won the Kandrian Empire the war of the Serevian Dungeon, singlehandedly decimating the armies of all of the three powerhouses of East Panama.


    He became a Martial Squire, quickly developing a handful of grade-ten techniques, one of which he submitted to the Martial Union to earn a lot of appreciation and praise. He then went on to serve as an ambassador of the Martial Union to Vilun Ind, sessfully forming a cooperative exchange with the G''ak''arkan Tribe.


    And it had longe to light amongst the upper echelons of society that he was the infamous Voider that singlehandedly dominated the Shionel Dungeon raids against an alliance led by a merchant tycoonprising of local and international powers.


    He also happened to return during a time that was close to the death of said merchant tycoon, which raised questions for many people.


    It was not enough to raise an investigation, especially when Martial Artists in the Kandrian Empire had impunity to thew to certain extents, thanks to a use in the Kandrian Martial Covenant signed between the founding emperor and the Martial Union.


    But more importantly, he returned as the youngest Martial Senior in history and was already a high-grade Martial Senior at a young age.


    ''I should be happy that my achievements during my eight-year hiatus are not known yet,'' Rui heaved a relieved sigh.


    The uproar would magnify if they learned of the sheer power that he had attained as a Martial Squire, having survived and shaken off an attack from a Martial Senior while he was still a Martial Squire.


    Bing the seventy-second Virodhabhasa Champion. The political capital he gained from the religion would not be enough to singlehandedly turn the favor towards a prince or princess, but it was still extremely significant.


    Rui shook his head and turned back ncing at the two envelopes on the table. He could sense the goldden cards within the envelopes; invitations that he would need to present to enter the reception hall.


    He was curious to hear what Princess Raemina had to say to him. Who knew? Perhaps she had something up her sleeve that could attract Rui''s interest.


    He was willing to give her one chance. He also wanted to get a good gauge of what kind of person she was. Intelligence reports from credible organizations like the Beggar''s Sect and the Martial Union were all fine and dandy, but he trusted his own evaluations even more.


    BZZZT!


    Rui''s attention flew to hismunication device that buzzed with a message.


    A message from the Martial Union.


    The date for his presentation on the Hungry Pain technique had been finalized. Thankfully, they gave him enough time to prepare in a week, as he had requested.


    Another headache that he needed to tend to. But he needed the massive funds that he would get once the Martial Union estimated the value of his contribution as he enlightened them on the mechanics of the technique.


    Frankly, there were no concerns about whether they would buy it. There were physiological experiments that would lend credence to his ims, the same ones that had led to the discovery of the phenomenon of autophagy back on Earth.


    The issue was how he could justify knowing it as a Martial Senior who was home-schooled by his mother and elder brother.


    Fortunately, he had alreadye up with the perfect way to ward off the problem.


    "I''m going to need your help with something, Julian," Rui smiled with a hint of mischief.


    "I already don''t like the sound of this," Julian heaved a sigh. "Let me conjecture based on history, you need help with some big mess that you''ve got yourself into, requiring my position as a researcher and deputy director within the ministry."


    "That''s actually exactly right. Quite sharp of you to catch on." Rui mused, impressed. "You are able to start research and development projects at your own discretion with your current discretion, aren''t you?"


    Julian raised an eyebrow. "¡­Yes. Why?"


    "Here''s what I need you to do," Rui scribbled down a list of topics. "Can you conduct some preliminary research experiments into these topics?"


    Julian read through the list frowning. "These are topics that don''t even pertain to Martial Art. Why do you want me to conduct open research projects into cellr biology?"


    "Hehe, just do me a favor," Rui mused.


    Julian raised an eyebrow as his sharp mind immediately began dissecting Rui''s request, analyzing to gauge Rui''s intent. This is from N?velDrama.Org.


    "You''re either interested in the oue of the experiment or¡­" Julian pondered aloud. "You gain something from me endeavoring into these topics at all, regardless of the oue of the research. It''s curious why you wanted me to conduct these experiments officially specifically, rather than off the books. The only reason you would want for there to be a record of it is for other people to find it. In which case¡­"


    Julian narrowed his eyes as he stumbled upon the answer.


    "You''re too clever for your own good, Julian," Rui heaved an exasperated sigh though there was a hint of pride in his tone. He was not ustomed to people keeping up with his thoughts, yet Julian was one of the few who could.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1560 Commence

    <h4>Chapter 1560 Commence </h4>


    1560 Commence


    With two important eventsing up, Rui quickly got to work, forming the presentation rapidly. The mode of the presentation was going to be an analog slide show where he would need to draw out each slide and it would be upscaled ontorger paper on a bigger board for the actual day of the presentation.


    It appeared that digital technology in this world had not reached a stage where he could actively work on a screen and create a digital slide show. But that was fine as far as Rui was concerned.


    A few days passed when Rui finally got a message from Kane stating that he had made his mind up, and wanted to meet.


    Rui decided to oblige him.


    "Kane," Rui addressed him as he sky-walked down.


    "Rui¡­" He murmured.


    Rui had immediately noticed a change in his temperament.


    His eyes were sharp. Sharper than he had ever seen them.


    His normally easy-going demeanor and bodynguage were gone. Yet he wasn''t stiff, there was only one thing that radiated from him at the moment.


    Conviction.


    Rui sensed the resolve in his eyes.


    "Good, I see that you''re well-prepared. I wouldn''t have allowed you to go through with this is if you had half-baked determination," Rui remarked.


    The two of them had beenmunicating remotely over the past few days as Rui informed Kane more of what was necessary.


    It appeared that Kane had truly taken Rui''s words to heart.


    "I won''t be holding back," Kane''s voice had a chilling undertone. "If we go through with this, I''m going to give it my absolute best¡­to kill you." N?velDrama.Org holds this content.


    It hurt him to even utter those words, but Rui had insisted that it was the bare minimum.


    Breaking through to the Senior Realm required being pushed past your limits, something that couldn''t happen unless one was giving it their very best to eliminate their opponent. Not even aiming to incapacitate or restrain was enough since avoiding dealing lethal blows required some amount of holding back.


    It was why Rui and Ieyasu had seriously aimed to kill each other in their fight, they wouldn''t be Martial Seniors if not for that.


    "Alright, let''s get going," Rui stated. "There''s no way we''re doing this in the Kandrian Empire. I''ve told my family that I''d be away for a few days, that''s how long this will take. I trust you''ve made all the preparations I''ve told you to make."


    Kane nodded seriously. "I''m ready, Rui. Thank y-"


    "You can thank me or curse me depending on the oue," Rui cut him off. "I''ve told you. You''re risking a fate worse than death for us Martial Artists."


    His expression grew sharper as he clenched his fist silently.


    Rui had prepared a few supplies, purchasing some potions and a food pills for their journey away. He was only going to get started after he was certain that he wouldn''t be discovered by the Kandrian Empire.


    The two of them departed the Kandrian Empire as they set out far and wide, heading west of the nation. Neither of them exchanged many words through their travels. Rui wasn''t even interested in the journey itself. He had just returned to the Kandrian Empire and his homesickness was still too fresh for him to be pleased about leaving the empire.


    Nheless, he was willing to do it for his friend.


    The two of them reached a deserted wastnd that was far west of the continent, devoid of any life.


    Rui had specifically aimed for this ce because of this feature. He couldn''t detect the presence of even the slightest hint of fauna and flora anywhere within a hundred-kilometer radius.


    "We''re here, let''s get prepped," Rui said, burying his bag away.


    It wasn''t too long before the two of them stood opposite each other.


    Kane drew his knives, taking his stance.


    Rui stretched a bit longer, loosening his body after a long journey, hopping lightly on his feet.


    "This is yourst chance to pull out, Kane," Rui told him.


    "I''m willing to see this through," Kane dered with determination.


    "Is that so¡­?" Rui murmured. "Well, I hope that''s true. As I said, that was yourst chance."


    An avnche of bloodlust erupted from Rui.


    The very air curdled under the peril that he emanated.


    The atmosphere seemed to have been wrung taut from the sheer pressure that he radiated.


    Kane''s eyes narrowed.


    "From this point on, even if you beg me to stop, I won''t," Rui calmly dered.


    This was a lie.


    But it was fine because he had managed to sell the act. What mattered the most was whether Kane believed it or not, and it was clear that the sheer intensity that he managed to put out convinced Kane that he was absolutely serious.


    The fightmenced immediately.


    A quiet bloodlust burned in the depths of Kane''s eyes as he rushed forward toward Rui at a speed that beggared the mind.


    WHOOSH!


    Rui narrowly evaded the pair of daggers swinging at him with fearsome speed, leaping away.


    THWOOM THWOOM THWOOM!


    He fired three Mighty Roar sh sts at Kane, which thetter promptly evaded, weaving through them effortlessly.


    WHOOSH!


    He moved with a speed and agility the likes of which Rui hadn''t seen within the Squire Realm.


    ''He''s truly grown stronger in the past four years,'' Rui mused inwardly, before deciding to get serious.


    Kane rushed forward at blinding speeds. His daggers became arcs of pure destruction threatening to cleave any and everything that came their way. The sheer friction from the speed at which he moved set the air aze making his visage match that of aet that weaved around the battlefield at incredibly high speeds.


    Yet Rui had already decided that he couldn''t afford to hold back against Kane''s current level of power.


    In his mind, a hypnotic spiral appeared in the distance on the battlefield. His bodynguage conveyed that to Kane, subconsciously misdirecting his attention, and leaving his subconscious mind unguarded.


    ''Temporal Disharmony," Rui activated the technique as he manipted Kane''s perception of time, speeding it up rtive to his body speed, causing the two to go out of phase.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1561 Clashes

    <h4>Chapter 1561 shes </h4>


    1561 shes


    Suddenly, Kane''s world changed. His physical body speed seemed to elerate to the point where he found it hard for his mind to keep up with his own body, forcing him to go slower.


    He nced at Rui with a shocked realization, yet Rui didn''t appear to want to cut him any ck.


    BAM!


    Rui managed tond a powerful blow on Kane''s guard flinging him away, creating an ugly bruise on the man''s guard. Yet he wasn''t finished.


    WHOOSH!


    He rushed forward at top speed, looking to get another blow on Kane.


    WHOOSH!


    CRACKLE!


    Rui''s eyes widened with shock as Kane disappeared in the face of his attack.


    WHOOSH!


    Rui leaped away from a twin dagger attack that almost cleaved him in half.


    SPLAT


    Kane had managed to leave a cut on his abdomen, getting back at Rui for his earlier attack.


    ''Fulminata Godspeed," Rui realized, smiling inwardly.


    Fulminata was a technique that amplified reflexes with lightning. Reflexes were a phenomenon that were not dependent on the mind''s perception of time, allowing Kane to resist the effects of Temporal Disharmony with the technique.


    On top of that, it allowed him to use Godspeed without restraint.


    "Fuuuu¡­!" Kane exhaled heavily as he activated Godspeed, rushing forward towards Rui with extraordinary speed.


    Yet, not even that was enough to reach Rui.


    "FUUU!" Rui exhaled forcefully, activating Neo Godspeed, evading Kane''s attack.


    The two young men blurred into streaks of green and ck as they maneuvered around the battlefield exchanging attacks after attacks.


    Rui rushed forth aggressively right into Kane''s dagger attack.


    WHOOSH!


    The de crashed into an empty image.


    A feint.


    Rui''s fist emerged from the other direction and a Flowing Canon with tremendous momentum sted into Kane.


    WHOOSH!


    ¡­Yet another feint.


    Both the young men had mastered Phantom Step, abusing it to create openings in their opponent''s style. However, Kane had an edge in that battle, for Phantom Step was a maneuvering technique, a field where he was overwhelmingly superior to Rui.


    Yet Temporal Disharmony was such a deep sabotage that it put them on even ying fields.


    WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH!


    The battlefield grew increasingly infested with afterimages and illusions that the two boys had created.


    Had any ordinary person witnessed that battle, they would have merely seen an army of Ruis and Kanes fighting against each other across the entire battlefield!


    WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH!


    For now, the two sides were even.


    Yet Kane gritted his teeth.


    He knew that Rui had yet to use his strongest trump card.


    He was rather surprised that Rui hadn''t used it already.


    He stared into Rui''s eyes.


    The darkness of an endless void.


    That was all he could see.


    That was all there was to see.


    Four words escaped Rui''s mouth.


    "Don''t worry, it''sing."


    A chill crawled up his spine at those words.


    BAM!


    A powerful kick from Rui flung him away as Rui saw through his feints,nding a clean blow on him.


    Kane was unable to evade the blow even though he was still moving substantially faster than Rui.


    There was only one thing that this meant.


    ''He''s ready,'' Kane gritted his teeth as he prepared his daggers, rushing forward.


    Both daggers had been aimed at Rui''s neck.


    WHOOSH!


    Both of them missed.


    Kane''s eyes widened as Rui casually evaded his attacks with a single gentle step.


    "Rgh!" Kane gritted his teeth as he unleashed a storm of des. It was as though a domain had formed around him. One that would shred anything that entered it.


    Not Rui, though.


    CLASP


    Rui caught both his arms as his foot surged forward at top speed into Kane''s gut.


    BOOM!


    "Rgh!" Kane grimaced.


    BAM!


    Rui flung him overhead into the ground.


    BOOM!


    A powerful kick flung him away,unching him in the distance.


    Rui''s offensive power while using Neo Godspeed was limited, but it was still enough against Kane, who had poor defense and durability.


    Kane coughed a bout of blood as he did his best to ready himself.


    Yet Rui had already arrived.


    POW POW POW!


    Kane grimaced, incurring more damage as Rui peppered him with blows. Heunched a powerful blow at Kane''s head, threatening to knock him out.


    WHOOSH!


    Kane evaded the blow.


    Yet, he didn''t.


    A kick had already arrived at his new location before he himself had.


    BAM!


    "Argh!" Kane grimaced as he put some distance between them. ''Dammit, he''s so strong!''


    He marveled at Rui''s power. The man had grown so strong that even without the Martial Heart he was a menace to face.


    At this rate, killing Rui was a joke. He would not be able to leave even a cut on his body.


    ''No choice¡­'' Kane narrowed his eyes a glint of bloodlust reflected in his pupils. ''I''ll have to use that.''


    Suddenly, his stance changed.


    Rui paused, not recognizing it, before rushing forward anyway.


    A deep intensity shed in his eyes as he used a Mind Mask to increase the pressure he mounted on Kane.


    It worked.


    Shivers went up his spine as he beheld Rui''s haunting figure. Within his pitch ck eyes was a seemingly endless void.


    A void that threatened to consume.


    Kane refused.


    He rejected the fate of being consumed by the void.


    No matter what.


    ''No matter what!'' Kane''s eyes sharpened as Rui had arrived to throw a powerful blow at him.


    WHOOSH!


    Kane evaded the attack, yet even as he sidestepped the attack, a second attack had already reached him.


    But not even that touched, not this time.


    WHOOSH! Content protected by N?v/el(D)rama.Org.


    Kane swung his daggers in a strange manner.


    He disappeared.


    Rui''s eyes widened as he failed to keep up with Kane for a moment.


    His instincts red warning as he leaped away.


    SPLAT!


    His eyes widened as a light gash appeared on his chest.


    "Tsk," Kane tutted at the shallow depth of the wound, before rushing in again.


    The pressure his mind was experiencing was immense, it was like fighting against a fully powered Senior.


    Yet he pushed forward nheless.


    Deep within his body, his heart beat strong.


    BADUMP!


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1562 Beyond

    <h4>Chapter 1562 Beyond</h4>


    1562 Beyond


    Rui found himself on the defensive.


    Kane had evaded his counter, disappearing at an astonishing speed while also simultaneously almost killing him.


    Rui knew that he had swung with the intent to kill. If Rui hadn''t leaped away, he would have died.


    The realization melted away every ounce of restraint that Rui had. Kane had reached a level of power that was second only to Rui and Ieyasu before they broke through. Since he wasn''t using his Martial Senior at the moment, he was effectively a Martial Squire at the moment barring his senses.


    He had already told Kane to attack with the intent to kill. Kane could not afford to hold back. Kane had conditioned himself mentally to be prepared just for that. He was not going to hold back at this juncture.


    Kane swung his daggers in strange manners as his speed continuously increased reaching levels that Rui didn''t think was possible within the Squire Realm.


    He grew faster and faster.


    His agility had skyrocketed.


    The speed gap between them increased continuously, so much so that Rui didn''t even feel like he was using Neo Godspeed.


    Despite suffering from Temporal Disharmony that hampered his own perception of time, he still relied on the reflexes that he gained from Fulminata to flub up his own techniques. The grade-ten technique was able to edge out the grade-nine hypnotic technique narrowly, allowing Kane to keep up with his own movements.


    WHOOSH!


    Kane''s dagger shed at Rui in a strange manner almost lopping his head off. The dagger also created a gust of vacuum on one side of Kane, while directing air currents on the other end. The massive pressure differential propelled Kane forward at the astonishing speeds that he was disying.


    Rui''s eyes widened as he understood the mechanism of the technique. Kane had developed a technique centered around his daggers, one that allowed him to generate a pressure differential from one side to the other, to thrust to him reach higher speeds than he alone would ever reach.


    The most impressive part was that he only needed to attack as he normally did while relying on the movements of the attacking daggers to generate the pressure differential allowing him to maneuver at extremely high speeds.


    It was free speed!


    It was a powerful technique that integrated the daggers deeper into his Martial Art, truly making it a part of his Dancing Shadow Style. The individuality of the technique had elevated the individuality of his Martial Path past a critical threshold.


    Kaneunched a flurry of dagger blows at Rui, who promptly evaded them, leaping away.


    WHOOSH!


    Kane was already at his side,unching an onught of de swings at him.


    WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH!


    Rui evaded each and every single one of them, yet Kane never let up a single time. His eyes were fixed on Rui as he rushed forward.


    His des turned into circles of cleaving pressure, threatening to hack away at Rui, generating pressure differentials that turned Kane into blurs even in Rui''s eyes.


    He had be a fleeting shadow of death.


    And yet, not even that reached Rui.


    POW!


    Rui''s fist crashed his jaw. Kane grimaced, leaping away as he beheld Rui with wide eyes.


    The void had arrived.


    He had temporarily managed to gain an upper hand as Rui limatized to his new technique. But it wasn''t too long before he had adapted even to this new powerful technique.


    It was novel, but decoding it had been easy once Rui realized the mechanics of the technique.


    He just needed to find the patterns in the causal rtionship between Kane''s dagger movements and the resulting pressure differentials that propelled him. Once he found the patterns between the cause and effect, he was able to predict the effect from the cause with remarkable uracy.


    Rui donned the strongest Mind Mask that he could muster without a Martial Heart. A mountain of murderous pressure pressed down on Kane''s shoulders.


    A deep sense of desperation overcame as his instincts and emotions took control. He forgot that this was a merely an exercise to trigger his Martial Heart.


    Rui didn''t allow him to remember.


    He needed to push Kane to the absolute limit.


    The threat to his life needed to be, and was, palpable.


    The critical phase had arrived.


    WHOOSH!


    Kane gritted his teeth with sharpened eyes as he rushed forward as his dagger chased after Rui''s throat.


    WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH!


    Rui evaded each and every single blow with ease.


    BAM!


    Kane blocked his heavy blow as surged forward, moving even faster. His des disappeared, shing at Rui with blinding speeds.


    WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH!


    Rui cleanly evaded them as his fist flew forward, exploiting a blindspot.


    WHOOSH!


    Kane barely managed to evade the well-timed attack, leaping to the side.


    And despite that-


    BAM!


    A swift blow had already arrived, mming into him. Kane grimaced, yet he persevered, as he pushed himself to the absolute limit.


    His skin tore.


    His muscle burned.


    His joints creaked. This is from N?velDrama.Org.


    He pushed himself to the absolute limit reaching speeds he had never reached before.


    And yet, it was for naught.


    WHOOSH!


    Rui evaded his attack as his foot found its target, a powerful kick crashing into Kane''s guard.


    Their eyes met mid-sh.


    Time seemed to slow down in his eyes despite Temporal Disharmony.


    He gazed into Rui''s eyes.


    The endless void gazed back into him


    It had arrived.


    It hungered.


    It threatened to consume the very path that Kane stood on.


    One that he had tread for most of his life.


    Despair seemed to slowly creep up from within his heart. A part of him wanted to allow it to consume him.


    A part of him wanted to cease his effort.


    Why did he fight anyway?


    ''Why do I fight¡­?'' The question echoed in his mind.


    He beheld Rui before him.


    ''Ah¡­''


    A small smile cracked at the edge of his mouth.


    His eyes surged with determination as he faced Rui head-on, pushing himself to the absolute limit¡­and beyond.


    BADUMP!


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1563 Outcome

    <h4>Chapter 1563 Oue </h4>


    Rui''s eyes lit up with delight as he felt a surge of power emerging deep within Kane. His aura spiked, ascending from the Squire Realm to the Senior Realm in a single moment. Glowing red streaks emerged from his heart spreading across his entire Martial Body, enriching it with the power of a higher Realm.


    One moment, Kane was a Martial Squire.


    The very next, he had be a Martial Senior.


    BADUMP!


    BADUMP!


    BADUMP!


    A rush of energy nourished his entire body. His muscles brimmed with energy as his flesh temporarily grew tougher as the elerated metabolism from the Martial Heart resulted in thicker and denser cell walls. His bones grew harder and denser as the osteost cells in them temporarily increased density.


    His Body soared to new heights while Kane gained a deep awareness of his surroundings, seeing things that he didn''t know even existed. Content protected by N?v/el(D)rama.Org.


    BADUMP!


    Rui activated his Martial Heart with a smile while Kane''s limatized to the ocean of power that his body had begun tapping into.


    His eyes were still focused on Rui, he almost hadn''t realized what had happened.


    "Come on," Rui smirked. "Let''s kick off your debut in the Senior Realm."


    Kane pressed into the ground with as much force he could muster, propelling himself at speeds that approached lightning itself!


    RUMBLE!!!


    The verynd beneath them shook under the sheer force that he applied to it.


    WHOOSH!


    Rui evaded his attack with ease and stepped away lightly with Temporal Disharmony, a predictive model of Kane''s bizarre dagger-maneuvering technique, and Neo Godspeed, who was too strong.


    POW POW POW!


    He pummeled Kane with blow after blow mercilessly, tracking him down while he refused to go as easy on him as he had before.


    They were in the same Realm now, after all. Kane didn''t need Rui to hold back, not much at all, anyway.


    Much to Kane''s disappointment, the battle had grown more one-sided now that Rui truly grew serious. The full power of his Martial Art was beyond Kane was handling when he was fully.


    BAM!


    A powerful kicknded on his jaw, rocking his head. The umted blunt force trauma exceeded the critical threshold causing his consciousness to shut down as he fell down, knocked out.


    Rui heaved a sigh as he sat on the ground beside Kane, consuming a potion. The exercise had gone well, considering the best possible oue had happened. Rui had been afraid for a moment that Kane would sumb to the VOID, but he held strong, managing to push past his limits by the end.


    "Alright, I need to get this done as soon as possible," Rui murmured.


    He pulled out a set of particrly potent high-grade potions that were capable of rejuvenating even Martial Seniors rapidly after the initial breakthrough after which they would normally be unconscious for days.


    These potions could cut the timeframe entirely. The Floating Sect did not have ess to resources or esoteric potion-


    crafting technology, but the Martial Union did.


    He carefully ensured that Kane inhaled the potions, before finally rxing, thinking about the fight.


    There were several things that popped into his mind.


    Rui noticed that Kane''s Martial Heart was weaker than his own. It appeared that age was not the only factor in determining the power of the Martial Heart, but sessive uses of the Martial Heart strengthened it a bit more thanst time. If that were the case, it could be treated like any other part of the body. Progressive overload and exercising it to failure would improve it over time as well.


    It would also exin why elder Seniors like Senior Zenshin was that physically superior to Rui as well. Not only was he more than ten times as old as Rui, but he had also exercised his Martial Heart across all those years.


    It wasn''t that problematic, the gap between Kane''s Martial Heart and his own wasn''t toorge.


    Yet the gap between theirbat power was definitely significant. Rui could handily defeat him with confidence. He suspected that Kane was probably a mid-grade Martial Senior, perhaps on the lower end.


    With that in mind, Rui probably started on the upper end of the middle grade, jumping to high grade in a single leap after mastering the powerful Hypnomatrix.


    It also reflected the gap between their power without the Martial Hearts. He was a notch or two above Kane with just the Hypnomatrix and Metabody System, with the VOID algorithm, his victory became decisive and even dominant.


    Still, Kane probably started off far higher than pretty much any other Martial Senior barring Ieyasu and himself. Certainly far higher than Senior Frinjschia who was at the very bottom of the barrel.


    ''Speaking of which, her Martial Heart wasn''t overwhelmingly powerful,'' Rui realized. ''Thus prior to breaking through, physicality determines the power of the Martial Heart more than anything else.''


    As Rui pondered over such matters, Kane slowly woke up.


    "Ngg¡­" He groaned as his eyes opened.


    It took him a few moments to recall where he was and what happened. But eventually, it came flooding back.


    "¡­Am I Martial Senior?" Kane murmured with disbelief.


    "Indeed, Senior Kane," Rui chuckled.


    "I can''t believe it¡­" Heughed weakly as he got up, staring at his own hands. "All that time... And you managed to solve it so easily¡­"


    His emotion was palpable, his voice was even choked with emotion, breaking through to the Senior Realm was an overwhelming experience for anybody.


    "Well, it wasn''t easy, especially for you," Rui noted. "Certainly was not entirely safe."


    "Better than any of the alternatives," He turned to Rui. "¡­Thank you, Rui. I''m forever indebted to you."


    Endless gratitude and appreciation filled his eyes.


    Rui waved him off. "Don''t worry about it, you''d do the same. It''s nothing."


    He didn''t want Kane feeling too burdened to repay Rui, he wasn''t interested in being around a friend who stuck around him to repay a debt.


    "Wait¡­" Kane''s eyes widened. "I can''t activate my Martial Heart!"


    Rui smiled wryly, recalling the first time he experienced the same shock. "Your Martial Heart empowers your Martial Art through your Body. It cannot be drawn by the Body alone. The Martial Path bridges you to it, connecting you to it, while the Martial Art is the key to unlocking it. Use a general augmentation breathing technique."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1564 Split

    <h4>Chapter 1564 Split </h4>


    Kane nodded, activating a breathing technique. His Martial Heart bloomed into full ze, empowering his entire body.


    "Woah¡­" Kane murmured as he nced at his entire body with amazement. "This is incredible!"


    Rui smiled at his excited reaction. "Ah, just some heads up, there''s some things that you should know."


    Rui proceeded to tell him everything that Senior Sarak told him when he first broke through to the Senior Realm. These were important cautions and warnings that every Martial Senior needed to know.


    "Wait, I die faster when I use the Martial Heart?" Kane gaped.


    "Yep," Rui nodded. "Theoretically if you used the Martial Heart all the time, you''d live a fraction of what you would otherwise live; which is to say a normal human lifespan. But pretty much no Martial Senior needs to."


    "No one told me this!" Kaneined.


    "If you don''t like it, don''t use it," Rui shrugged. "Martial Squires live a long time, not to mention there are longevity potions that you could get your hands on. If this were disclosed to Martial Squires, far fewer Martial Squires would break through to the Senior Realm, which is why the upper echelons of Martial Art do not disclose this information. The Panamic Martial Federation gets really pissed, apparently. Remember that."


    Kane heaved a sigh. "Fair enough. It isn''t that big a deal, even if it is a bummer. By the way, any clued about what it takes to get to the Master Realm?"


    Rui considered the question for a moment. He recalled what Master Reina had told him about the disclosure of the Master Realm, there weren''t any strict norms, and each Martial Master was to use their judgment for whether a Martial Senior was ready.


    Rui had no idea on whether Kane was ''ready'' or not. Maybe they judged it based on how close to their limits Martial Seniors were without relying on the Martial Senior.


    Perhaps telling them too early would lead them to neglect their Martial Body and Heart, resulting in weaker Martial Artists in the long run.


    He wasn''t entirely sure.


    "I can tell you, but I don''t know if it''s the right thing to do," Rui informed him. "If you still want me to, then I don''t mind telling you right here and now. I''ll leave the choice to you. But the Martial Union will undoubtedly inform you if you are ready and you do request for it."


    The Martial Union had a highly vested interest in seeing one of its native prodigies and youngest Martial Seniors reach the Upper Realms, so they would almost certainly tell him if it was optimal.


    Kane considered his words for a moment, before making a choice. "¡­If that''s the case, then it''s fine. I''ve just ascended into the Senior Realm, I know if you tell me now, I''d probably fixate on that too much. I''d rather limatize myself for some time and get used to this powerfully. It''ll probably take me weeks before I feel fullyfortable fighting with it. Care to be a sparring partner during that time?"


    "I''d love, but I''m quite busy," Rui heaved a sigh. "Several important matters havee up."


    "No worries," Kane was unperturbed. "I''ll justmission someone from the Martial Union."


    "I''m afraid not so soon," Rui shook his head. "You''re not going anywhere near the Kandrian Empire any time soon."


    "Why not¡­?" Kane frowned.


    "Because the risk factor is too high. If people tie your breakthrough to me, I''m screwed. I took a risk just telling you and helping you break through, but returning a Martial Senior while you left a Martial Squire just some time prior? With me walking by your side? Hell no."


    The Kandrian Border Patrol Force definitely had at least one Martial Master at each transit port. They would definitely pick up on Squire Kane returning as Senior Kane. Given how prolific intelligenceworks from various organizations were, that news would spread.


    Instantly, Rui would be hounded by everybody and their mother. N?velDrama.Org holds this content.


    "Right," Kane realized the gravity of the situation.


    "I foresaw this, and I have made some preparations," Rui activated his Martial Heart leaping a great distance to where they had buried their bags, Kane followed suit.


    "Here," Rui pushed a little notebook and a map to Kane. "This is where you''re going."


    "¡­The Laniakea Caves?" Kane frowned, reading the title.


    "It''s one of the most dangerous Squire-level danger zones on the outskirts of the Beast Domain. It was part of the information I got from Bradt before we left," Rui informed him. "There is a pocket town in that part of the Beast Domain, protected by a powerful Martial Senior. There are no Martial Masters, so your status as a Martial Senior won''t be found out. Go there, spend some time training, at least a month, pretend to break through to the Senior Realm, ande back after."


    Kane skimmed through the notebook nodding slowly. "¡­


    Gotcha."


    "Appreciate it," Rui smiled, relieved.


    "It''s the bare minimum," Kane shook his head. "I would be pretty pissed at myself if I ruined your life carelessly after you took such a big risk."


    Rui smiled, handing him some of the food pills, potions, and money that he had on him. "Don''t sweat it. Have fun. I hear there are some pretty exotic sights."


    Kane nodded, turning to Rui. "Thanks again. You''re truly the best thing that ever happened to me."


    Rui smiled back. "Seems like I''m doing a fine job as a best friend then."


    The two bid farewell, heading their own ways. Rui returned to the Kandrian Empire while Kane went his own way, heading towards the Beast Domain.


    Although Rui didn''t like the idea of splitting up with Kane after returning home so quickly, it was a necessary precaution, he would sleep well knowing no one trace his breakthrough back to Rui.


    After witnessing the ramifications of it in the Virodhabhasa Theocracy having severely underestimated the insight of Martial Masters, he was keen to ensure that it wouldn''t happen again.


    With this matter out of the way, his thoughts quickly returned to some of the important matters that he needed to focus on.


    The uing presentation on the Hungry Pain technique.


    The reception was held by the Raemina Foundation.


    In addition to his own ventures regarding the Kandrian Throne War and the general outreach that he would receive from those interested in him.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1565 Reunion

    <h4>Chapter 1565 Reunion</h4>


    A few days passed as Ruipleted the final preparations for his presentation. For one, he didn''t intend to give an extremely borate lecture about the Hungry Pain technique, nor did he need to.


    It was understood that Martial Artists were not the best at conveying their understanding of a technique in a way that appeased the scientific method.


    Still, the Hungry Pain technique was too significant for them to ept anything that didn''t at least give them a good understanding of the mechanics and principles of the techniques. That was the bare minimum.


    On top of that, Rui had cultivated a reputation as a highly intelligent intellectual Martial Artist with a remarkably high cognition a shocking ability to process information, and a scientific foundation that didn''t evenpute with his known history.


    They did expect more from him than what the average Martial Artist would scrap up. Rui was also extremely clear that he himself too was part of the agenda, and not just his technique, even if Headmaster Aronian did not outright say it out loud.


    Regardless, Rui only wanted to get the business over with so he could be remunerated for this technique. He had nned for this day nearly a decade ago when he gave his friends the Hungry Pain technique, they were to serve as the proof of his ims so that he could smoothly receive his dues without anyplications.


    Eventually, the day arrived.


    Rui arrived at the Hajin branch of the Martial Union, smoothly passing through the security check-in with his new license. There was even a panel of staff members awaiting him in the lobby, immediately approaching.


    "We are here to aid you in any manner necessary, sir," They bowed their heads.


    "Lead me to the presentation venue," Rui instructed them.


    It wasn''t long before he found himself in arge lecture hall that couldfortably host hundreds of people.


    There were teams of assistants and clerks led by managers whopleted their logistical duties ensuring everything was in order for the presentation.


    "You''re here rather early," A voice called out to him.


    A man apanied by two Martial Squires walked into the lecture hall.


    He wasvishly garbed with an expensive custom-tailored suit with immactely groomed hair and beard. A badge attached to the chest area of the left side of his tuxedo identified his position and name.


    [Director Saren Muliouen]


    "Considering that I''m leading the show, I''d say I''m just on time," Rui calmly replied.


    The man smiled as he briskly walked up to Rui. "Director Saren; head of the Hajin regional branch of the Martial Union. It truly is an honor to meet the prodigious Martial Senior of the Kandrian Empire."


    Considering that the man didn''t defer to Rui with an honorific showed that he was considerably highly ranked within the hierarchy of the executive department. There weren''t too many human officials within the Martial Union who could address Rui as an equal, this was part of the norms of the Martial Union. It was a way of saying that Martial power trumped non-Martial authority. Exclusive ? material by N?(/v)elDrama.Org.


    "I''m pleased that you''re here early, gives me a chance to speak to you before the event unfolds. His Mastery, the Surgeon, personally ordered me to oversee the event while the Her Mastery the Truth Seeker personally oversaw the vetting process," The man remarked. "That is a good indication of the magnitude of the seriousness with which the Chamber of Masters is taking whatever it is that you''re presenting."


    Rui grew surprised at his words.


    The Surgeon and the Truth Seeker were two renowned Martial Masters of the Martial Union. While Rui didn''t know their Martial Paths or their Martial Art, it was safe to say that the security of the event was highly secure.


    Headmaster Aronian was not lying when he said that the Martial Union was extremely serious about ensuring that not a single ounce of information about his Hungry Pain technique was leaked.


    "I''m d that I can disseminate my presentation without any worries," Rui replied, ncing over at a figure that had entered the lecture hall, instantly drawing his attention with their aura.


    Yet it was their identity that surprised him.


    It was Senior Ceeran.


    No, that wasn''t quite right.


    "Master¡­Ceeran?" Rui murmured, shocked.


    Yet there was no doubt about it when he verified it with his senses. The Martial Senior that he knew had gone and be a Martial Master in the decade that they had been apart.


    "Senior Quarrier. Rui¡­" He smiled warmly. The man''s voice had gained a calmness andposure that it didn''t have before. It had gained a knowing tone, one that every Martial Master seemed to have. "I knew from the very first moment I rested my eyes on you that you would not be shackled to the Squire Realm forever, yet not even I could have foreseen your ascension to Senior Realm would be the youngest this world has ever seen. You are truly special, a gem that this nation and our union have been blessed with."


    Rui simply stared at his, speechless, earning a chuckle from the good-natured Martial Master who turned to the man beside them with a nod. "Director."


    "Pleasure to meet you again, sir," The man bowed his head lightly.


    "I have many things to tell and even more to ask," Master Ceeran smiled at Rui. "But we will have to postpone that for now, I''m afraid. Formally, I''m here as a Martial Director from the long-range division of our research and development department. Informally, I am here as a part of the Ranging Sect. We are truly intrigued by the topic of your presentation today. We have even brought over renowned researchers and schrs from our division, ones that have been thoroughly vetted by the Truth Seeker, of course."


    He gestured to a middle-aged man and woman who bowed deeply to Rui. Yet Rui could see a hint of skepticism in their eyes, he could clearly sense that they didn''t expect much of a presentationing from a twenty-eight-year-old Martial Senior without any formal education.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1566 Acquainting Session

    <h4>Chapter 1566 Acquainting Session</h4>


    Of course, Rui didn''t mind. Frankly, he would have been skeptical in their shoes as well. It was unrealistic to expect much from a presentation from a Martial Senior.


    His attention turned back to Master Ceeran. He was still having trouble parsing the fact that Master Ceeran had broken through to the Master Realm, bing Martial Master.


    "I do look forward to speaking with youter, Master Ceeran," Rui reiterated, breaking out of his reverie.


    "Indeed, we will have the opportunity to do just thatter." Ceeran smiled warmly at Rui''s words. "But for now, it would do you good to not get distracted, Rui. We will be taking our seats for now. I''m sure there are others who would like to have a word with you."


    He was right.


    Another Martial Master had just entered the lecture hall, one that Rui didn''t recognize. She too was apanied by two schrs, walking over to Rui.


    The first thing about her that drew his attention was that she didn''t generate any sound. Neither her footsteps nor the shuffling of her clothes generated even the slightest hint of sound or seismic radiation.


    ''Stealth?'' He narrowed his eyes. ''No¡­''


    "Senior Quarrier," She called out to him with a nk tone. "I am Mn of the Tree Sect. It is a pleasure to meet the youngest Martial Senior in history. I have heard much about your exploits even from your Apprentice days. I am particrly looking forward to the topic of your presentation today. It raised a bit of an uproar in our sect when we learned about its effects."


    Rui smiled, bowing his head lightly. "Pleasure to meet you as well, Master Mn. I hope my presentation will be of satisfaction to you."


    She nodded before leaving and taking her seat.


    By then, groups had gathered. Each consisted of a Martial Master as well as two additional schrs. Thetter was there to ensure that the Martial Masters didn''t need to worry about not understanding any technical parts of the discussion.


    It was quite surreal for Rui to see so many Martial Masters in one room. It showed not only how much his technique was valued, but also the number of Martial Masters within the Kandrian Empire.


    "It''s an honor to meet you Senior Quarrier," Another man approached him with a smile, bowing his head lightly. "I am Doctor Garnen, one of the head schrs over at the evolution breakthrough division in the R&D department. I''ve heard many a tale about you, Senior. It truly is wonder that you were able to break through to the Senior at such a young age."


    Rui considered the man for a moment. The fact that he was from the evolution breakthrough division meant that Rui''s work probably affect the man''s work more than anybody else in the room. They were probably dying to know how a Martial Senior like Rui could produce such a breakthrough in the development of powerful Martial Bodies while they struggled to make steady incremental gains that were quite slow.


    "You tter me, doctor," Rui smiled perfunctorily.


    "I''m not, actually," The doctor grew more serious. "It is rather shocking, even to this day, to know that a Martial Senior greater contribution to the research agenda that I lead, but also did it in a manner that I am unable to decipher."


    Rui knew that he must have been leading the group that tried to understand the underlying biochemical mechanics of the Hungry Pain technique.


    "Well, I''m sure you''re pleased that this day has finally arrived then," Rui lightly replied. "The presentation will begin soon."


    After that, he was approached by several more groups from different sects and factions.


    "I have heard much about you boy!" One Martial Master from the Fire Sect grinned, pping his shoulder over and over. "The Fire Sect will wee a prodigious Martial Senior like you and your many boons with open arms!"


    "It is a pleasure to finally meet the Voider," One Martial Master stated. "The Poison Sect has benefited from the surplus of certain esoteric substances that we require for some poisons. We also look forward to your presentation. We hope you will assuage some of our concerns."


    "We of the Flickering Sect would love to have a man of your talents," Another Martial Master told him. "As a Martial Artist with a dynamic all-rounder Martial Art, you would be a better fit for our sect than any of the others."


    "Hah!" Another Martial Master chirped in. "That''s a load of bullshit! Have you gone blind? He is clearly best suited for our Mind Sect with that extraordinarily bright mind of his!"


    Friction between the groups that tried to approach Rui inevitably ensued as Director Saren helplessly tried intervening.


    "Your Masteries, the presentation is soon to begin, please take your seats!" He cried.


    Thankfully, the Martial Masters were not too stubborn, doing as he said as they took their seats.


    Soon enough, most of the seats were filled.


    The door opened as two more Martial Masters entered the lecture hall. The hall grew quiet as the two radiated a pressure that reminded him of Master Reina and Master Zeamer.


    The air was wrung under the silent pressure they exerted upon everybody.


    The Surgeon and the Truth Seeker.


    "Senior Quarrier," The Surgeon addressed him. "I apologize for the dyed introduction. I am Zentra. A team assigned to me and myself will be overseeing the final evaluation of the value of your contribution."


    In other words, Rui needed to hope that he didn''t say anything that displeased this man.


    "I am Carly Fiera, of the Eye Sect," The Truth Seeker informed him calmly. "I have personally overseen the vetting of every member in this hall with my mental sensory techniques. Rest assured that everybody in this room is verified to not have any duplicitous or malicious intent."


    These were the measures that the Martial Union was taking to ensure that the other four powerhouses of East Panama and other intelligence organizations would not learn about what was to unfold today.


    Rui nced around the lecture hall. Everybody was seated and ready for him to begin. This is from N?velDrama.Org.


    "Very well then," Rui nodded. "Let us begin without any further ado."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1567 Declarations

    <h4>Chapter 1567 Derations</h4>


    He gestured to the assistants that had been assigned to him to roll over the board with his little slide show prepared for him, before ncing back at the audience.


    "I must inform all of you of several things before we get started," Rui remarked. "The first is that theplete and whole exnation right down to every detail, is frankly, extremelyplicated too much for non-schrs. Thus I will divide my segment into two sections. One where I offer an elementary breakdown and the other where I go more in-depth into the nitty gritty for the various schrs in the room. I don''t know if I''ll be able to satisfy their questions and doubts, but I will do my best."


    He paused for a moment, before continuing. "If there are any questions and doubts, please save for the specific intervals for questions that I will continuously have. It is best that the lecture is over as soon as possible."


    He didn''t want to be continuously interrupted by skeptical schrs. "Another thing," Rui informed them. "I wille out and directly inform all of you that I am unable to provide you with empirical data that would serve as proof for the exnations that I am about to provide. I will take this opportunity to remind all of you that I am most definitively not a researcher. I am a Martial Artist. If your doubt orment pertains to theck of evidence or proof of any statement I make during this little lecture, then it will probably be for everyone''s best that you don''t bring it up."


    He paused for a moment, letting them mull over it. "Now then, let us begin with a simple overview. The Hungry Pain technique. It is a technique based on the modification technique of mental conditioning technique associates a physical trigger with a mental state. I modified it to make the trigger pain, and the mental state; the mental processes associated with overwhelming hunger. The resultant oue is a surplus of stamina and energy that is far beyond what is normally possible. When this isbined with the Martial Body, the evolution of stamina during the breakthrough process can be minimized, allowing for those resources to be used to evolve other parts of the body. Ultimately resulting in a significantly stronger Martial Body, by about fifty percent on average."


    This wasmon knowledge to everyone.


    "The core principle of this technique is what I like to call autophagy," Rui informed them straightforwardly.


    The word sounded foreign to everybody, alien even. It certainly did not trace its etymology to other words of the Kandrian dialect.


    His audience appeared to be intrigued at where he was going with this.


    "When the body undergoes extreme starvation, there are many measures it takes to prolong its survival," Rui informed them. "Chief among them is autophagy. What is autophagy?'' is a question I''m sure you''re all wondering. The answer is quite simple."


    He turned to the board, activating a breathing technique to flip the first slide page over, revealing different sections each featuring attice of a dozen cells.


    These were different phases of the autophagy process, showing just how cells were consumed dying or dead cells, and converted them into amino acids, among other organicpounds.


    "Autophagy, simply put, is the body''s ability to consume itself," Rui dered.


    This provoked a reaction among many of the members of the audience. "This is an oversimplification, of course," Rui continued. "But it is true. The body, when faced with starvation and deprivation of nutrition, engages in a systematic breakdown of cells and cellponents into useful sources of nutrition and energy for the body. It generally targets damaged, dying, and dead cells. It is constantly undergoing, but under normal circumstances, it is extremely minimal and slow. It elerates significantly when the body is faced with starvation."


    He paused for a moment, allowing his audience to digest his news. "The Hungry Pain technique, which triggers the mental processes associated with hunger, inadvertently triggers the extreme eleration of the body, supplying the body with a surplus of organicpounds while also decreasing the required nutritional and energy load."


    Turning back to the board before him. "It is thanks to autophagy that the human body survives incredible amounts of time without any food. If not for this process, the human body would copse after a fraction of the time it takes to finally die of starvation. It goes to show just how powerful of an emergency supplier of nutrition and energy the human body is. This is even more true for the Martial Body that is evolved to have much higher survivability than the human body."


    He turned back to his audience. "One can imagine how powerful it would be if harnessed inbat. It is the equivalent of consuming physical rejuvenation potions across the entire battle. It is almost like having a physical rejuvenation potion factory inside your own body. That is why the Hungry Pain technique is so potent. It breaks the known paradigms of stamina, energy reserves, and energy consumption that all Martial Artists have adhered to." Content protected by N?v/el(D)rama.Org.


    He eyed each member carefully. His words clearly had an impact. While none of the audience members did something as undignified as making awed sounds, there was a slight ripple of energy across the small crowd. Martial Masters grew deep in thought at the words he espoused.


    It was true, that while there were some rare and truly strange techniques that could siphon energy, there was almost no way to supply nutrition to the body in the middle ofbat. Nopetent Martial Artist would allow their opponent to get away with something as time-consuming and vulnerable as consuming a potion in the middle ofbat.


    Any fool who dared to do that would either die to a lethal attack or would be severely injured at the bare minimum.


    Yet the Hungry Pain technique was different, the Martial Union had already confirmed without any shred of a doubt that it could magically empower stamina. It was fascinating for everyone to learn about the principle of the technique.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1568 Concerns and Doubts

    <h4>Chapter 1568 Concerns and Doubts</h4>


    Once Rui exined the basic mechanism and principle of the technique, the main purpose of the lecture had already been fulfilled, as far as he was concerned. Not it was just a matter of appeasing the questions, doubts, and personal concerns of the Martial Artists of various sects.


    And also the more technical questions of the schrs that had been brought with them.


    "¡­and that is more or less about the benefits and limitations of ordinary autophagy in normal humans," Rui concluded the first phase of the lecture after going over all the general and broader information about autophagy that he had to offer, just to give everybody a good idea of how the process worked outside of the technique."


    He turned to the audience. "Now then. Let us go for a round of questions. Again, I have yet to go into the depth of the details of exactly how the process actually works on a sub-cellr level, thus I ask you to please abstain from asking questions that probe into the depths of the sub-cellr mechanics."


    A few hands went down, most of them from schrs who undoubtedly wanted to get into the nitty-gritty of what Rui was saying.


    Rui skimmed through the Martial Masters present, finding Ceeran having raised his arm too.


    "Master Ceeran, please," He nodded at the man with a smile.


    "I appreciate the opportunity, Senior Quarrier," Ceeran smiled warmly. "Now then, my question was whether there were any limitations to the distribution of the surplus stamina supplied by the autophagy process of the Hungry Pain technique. Is it easier for certain parts or muscles of the body to ess this power better than other parts of the body?"


    Rui shook his head. "Not at all, it urs across the entire body at an evenly distributed rate per cell per capita. Some of the nutrition and energy is absorbed while certain other kinds are released into the bloodstream which does not discriminate between any body part or Martial Art technique."


    He knew that this was the concern for most of the Martial Sects. They were worried that the Hungry Pain technique could rapidly shift the bnce of power between certain fields and techniques with how impactful it was.


    Rui quickly quelled those concerns to a certain degree for the time being.


    He skimmed across the crowd, spotting another Martial Master with a raised hand, reading the name tag on the table. "Master Sera."


    "As a representative of the Poison Sect, I wish to ask you about any potential shes between the poisons of our sect and this Hungry Pain technique of yours. Is it possible that the field poison itself is notpatible with this technique?" She asked, sounding as neutral as possible.


    "No, that''s not possible," Rui shook his head. "In the first ce, the field of poison techniques works by having the Martial Artist grow immune to the effects of the poison through repeated exposure and conditioning. Once the user reaches a state where their cells are not affected by the poison anymore, then it can be said with certainty that autophagy too won''t be negatively affected. But until then, yes, it will likely interfere with the process to a certain extent during training."


    "I see¡­" She replied thoughtfully. "I appreciate your valuable insights on this topic."


    What followed were sequences of questions from each Martial Sect that essentially inquired into how the Hungry Pain technique would affect their particr given field of Martial Art.


    Rui could sense that Martial Artists of the smaller and weaker Martial Sects were hoping that the Hungry Pain technique would disproportionately benefit their field of Martial Art, while the Martial Artists of therger sects were hoping that the status quo would be maintained, at the very least, if not tilted even more in their favor than it already was.


    Of course, there was one Martial Sect that benefited the most from the Hungry Pain. The Stamina Sect, also known as the Tree Sect. Why did they call themselves the Tree Sect? Rui didn''t know, or care to know.


    But it was undeniable that if the Hungry Pain technique benefited anybody, then it was the stamina-oriented Martial Artists.


    "By what factor what you say stamina is increased thanks to the Hungry Pain technique?" Master Mn of the Tree Sect asked him.


    "Hmmm¡­I''d say about a factor of two," Rui replied. "Though there is plenty of variation depending on several other variables."


    "I see," She replied. "That is quite the remarkable boost considering the ease of mastery, barring the fortitude, and universality of such a technique."


    Eventually, he managed to get around to more or less every Martial Master before it was finally time for the next part of his lecture.


    "Now that I have answered the first set of questions, I will move on to the next half of my lecture where I will break down the precise sub-cellr mechanics of the autophagy process. Those who don''t have a taste for the details may consider leaving the lecture at this point, I cannot promise that the next half won''t bore some of the¡­less academically-inclined members of the audience to death."


    None of the members left the lecture hall, awaiting the remaining part of his lecture.


    Rui heaved a small sigh. "Very well then. Let us begin with diving into the three types of autophagy; microautophagy, macroautophagy, and chaperone-mediated autophagy. As well as the four steps of autophagy; Sequastration, lysosome transportation, degradation, and consumption. Please refer to the chart for the definitions of the various terms. Now then¡­"


    It turned out that the Martial Masters had underestimated just how detailed the lecture would get. As he exined the detailed biochemistry of autophagy, he could have sworn he saw smokeing from the ears of some of the Martial Masters who were the least ''academically inclined'' out of everybody in the crowd.


    Thankfully, this was why the schrs were brought, while the Martial Masters were lost in the sea of exnations that Rui offered, the schrs grew more immersed in his lecture.


    This chapter upload first at  This is from N?velDrama.Org.

 Chapter 1569 Crucial Inquisition

    <h4>Chapter 1569 Crucial Inquisition </h4>


    The lecture regarding the technical details went on for quite some time as Rui exposed the knowledge he recalled. His enhanced mind increased his ability to recall old memories, being able to tap into the knowledge of Earth much more smoothly than he would otherwise have been able to.


    He avoided going into organic chemistry because that would open a whole can of worms that he wasn''t interested in revealing. The chemistry of carbon was the basis of life, but going there would reveal knowledge that did not exist within this world.


    The Martial Masters sat there, dumbfounded,pletely out of their depth. When Rui had said that the lecture would get technical, they had taken those words with a grain of salt. N?velDrama.Org holds this content.


    After all, he was just a Martial Senior, a young Martial Senior at that. What could he have gone through and known that wouldpletely escape their ability to fathom?


    Only the Ranging Sect had a good idea that this would happen. Master Ceeran gave Rui a knowing smile as he experienced a sense of deja vu, recalling a simr memory when Rui exined the mechanics of the ODA System of the Pathfinder technique all those years ago when they were each a Realm below their current Realm.


    Master Ceeran nced around the room with an amused smile,ughing inwardly at the various Martial Masters who arrogantly thought that they would be able to digest anything that Rui could throw their way. While each of them could see that Rui''s mind was exceptionally bright and powerful with a single nce, as those who had created and realized the Martial Mind, they didn''t think that they could be out-thought, or rather out-knowledged by a young Martial Senior.


    They were wrong.


    Even the Surgeon, who had been specially assigned by Sage Nulimain to preside over the evaluation of the technique due topatibility with his Martial Art and the technique, seemed lost, unable to keep up.


    By the time Rui had concluded the exnation and opened the floor to questions, only the schrs had anything to ask.


    "You have demonstrated a deep understanding of the human body," One of them said when given the chance to ask a question. "That certainly increases your credibility. However, the knowledge that you have presented is not founded upon any empirical research discovery from anywhere in the Kandrian or international sciencemunity that I am aware of. Unfortunately, our understanding of the human body at the cellr unit and past it is highly undeveloped, but you have presented concepts, frameworks, and theories that pertain to the body at that scale. What basis could there possibly be for any of this?"


    "I''m afraid you have forgotten one of the three statements I made when I began the lecture," Rui shook his head. "I made that statement precisely for those like you who would ask that question. I said that I don''t have any empirical data and that any question that seeks to understand the basis of my ims is not worth asking. Besides, I have made arge number of ims in this lecture. The scientific method is defined by falsifiability and predictability. If my exnations are wrong, then they should be easily falsifiable given how bold they are. If they''re wrong, then the predicted oues by the framework I have provided should not match reality. On the contrary, if it continuously predicts the right oue, then it will serve as evidence for the hypothesis, elevating it to a scientific theory."


    Rui got them back with the nature of science.


    The schrs were rather surprised by how confidently Rui dismissed the question, and how confident he was in his ims. He was certainly the most scientifically educated Martial Artist that they had ever met.


    "I''d like to ask a question." A voice from the crowd announced.


    All eyes turned to the man who asked the question.


    "Doctor Garnen¡­Please do," Rui replied.


    This man was the head researcher over at the evolution breakthrough process division. The Hungry Pain technique had made a greater contribution to creating a more powerful Martial Body than any individual in the division had made. Many wondered what he was going to ask.


    "It is true that you have already waved off questions pertaining to the basis of your exnations of the mechanics of the Hungry Pain technique. Since that is the case, I wanted to inquire where you gained this knowledge from," Doctor Garnen asked. "Let us say everything you said thus far is true, then it begs the question of where this knowledge came from. I, for one, have never seen nor heard of many of the things that you have conveyed."


    Rui stared at the man for a few moments. He knew that many people were curious about this question.


    Thankfully, he had foreseen this question and had already prepared for this exact scenario.


    "For one, I would like to inform you that I actually have a journeyman schr degree in the sciences," Rui began. "I got it almost five years ago, undertaking the exam after some preparation."


    "That is quite the achievement for a Martial Artist, no doubt," Doctor Garnen remarked, intrigued. "But every schr here also has a journeyman schr degree in the sciences and more. That degree could not have possibly given you what you needed to know."


    "The source of my knowledge is a person who is very dear to me, one who isn''t willing to go public with this research data yet," Rui shook his head. "I cannot divulge their identity, I''m afraid. As a scientist, I''m sure you understand the importance of this privacy."


    "¡­I see," Doctor Garnen remarked. "That truly is a shame, I would have loved to meet this person and have a long talk with them."


    "Perhaps someday in the future," Rui replied. "If there are any other questions, I''m willing to answer them all now, if not, this lecture session will soone to an end."


    Immediately, a dozen hands flew up.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1570 Conclusion

    <h4>Chapter 1570 Conclusion </h4>


    Rui spent a lot of time answering a lot of technical questions from the schrs. They certainly did not make it easy. While their knowledge of biochemistry wascking, Rui was not an expert either. He had learned much about it in theter years of his career as his research intobat sports grew more sophisticated and required a deeper understanding of the anatomy and physiology of the human body, but that was it.


    Still, it was enough to quell the doubts of the various schrs who had much skepticism about his questions. They didn''t directly question the basis of the knowledge that he disyed since he had already rified many times that he wouldn''t be getting into that topic at all.


    Still, they could still test the rigor of the biochemical framework of the autophagy process as he provided it to them.


    And test they did.


    "The so-called lysosome-assimtion mechanism that you espoused, would the framework not imply that the nutritional extraction limit is a function of cell volume and cell count?"


    "Based on the information you presented, it can be said that the body is essentially self-harming itself to a certain degree to produce more stamina, is that safe?"


    "Is it not usible that the Martial Squire can be put in danger if this phenomenon were ever suppressed using a poison technique?"


    While some of these were well-intended questions, the others were a little barbed.


    Nheless, Rui navigated them unerringly.


    Yet that only seemed to egg them on. As senior and even master schrs, it was rather humiliating to be rhetorically outdone by a Martial Senior in a topic within their field of expertise. Even if said Senior was an extraordinarily bright journeyman schr.


    "Enough," Rui dered after a while. "These questions have already strayed well away from the core topic of the Hungry Pain technique. I believe that is an indication that the core purpose of this presentation has been fulfilled. With that, I bring this presentation to an end. I hope you found this informative."


    Master Ceeran began pping with a smile, sparking a boisterous apuse that culminated the entire event.


    Rui heaved a sigh, drinking some water, hoping to catch a break. Yet he didn''t get the chance.


    "I didn''t think I would ever run into a nerd Martial Senior HAHAHA!" Master Iskan of the Fire Sectughed boisterously, pping Rui on the shoulder.


    The man had a gargantuan body, overflowing with muscles. He had a crude edge to his appearance, one that revealed he didn''t care for social norms.


    His pats hurt, though.


    "I''m d- that you- like it-" Rui squeezed out in between the heavy hits from the Martial Master.


    "Still, a technique where the body eats itself eh¡­?" The man scratched his scruffy beard. "Interesting, to say the least. Not my cup of tea personally. But who knows, perhaps I''ll give it a try. On another note¡­"


    He faced Rui head-on. "Join the Fire Sect, Rui Quarrier."


    "I''ll have to decline," Rui straightforwardly refused.


    "¡­Decisive. I like that!" The Master nodded approvingly. "Then, young man, ept my friendship. May we be friends from this day forth!"


    Rui stared at him, mentally noting that the diversity of character and personality amongst Martial Masters was not low. "¡­I would be honored to be your friend." Exclusive ? material by N?(/v)elDrama.Org.


    "Then so be it!" Heughed, pping Rui on the shoulder over and over again. "My friend, Senior Quarrier!"


    A wave of pressure washed over him. He sharply turned around, eying the source. "You picking a fight, Revona?"


    She didn''t back down. Despite being of a much more diminutive stature than Master Iskan, Master Revona calmly stared him down with sharp eyes. With a long singr garb covering her entire body and a pointy hat on her head, she gave him the impression of a witch rather than a Martial Artist.


    "Unhand the young man, oaf," She icily ordered him. "A mind as bright as him is most fit for the Mind Sect. A mindless caveman like yourself having him is like a street mongrel ying with a gem, unaware of its true value."


    "What use is a bright mind when even the dumbest beast can tear you apart?" Master Iskan smirked condescendingly. "Maybe I should take this opportunity to remind everybody why the Fire Sect is one of the strongest."


    Master Devona snorted. "You think you can best me?"


    "Why don''t we find out?"


    "Why don''t we?"


    The air grew taut as the two Masters faced off against each other. The other Martial Masters watched with vague intrigue and amusement while the humans in the room shivered with fear. If not for the protective influence of their own Martial Masters, they would have long copsed.


    Rui on the other hand, heaved a sigh, trying to interject.


    Yet Master Ceeran did so in his stead.


    "Tear each other apart all you like, Iskan, Devona. But I already have an engagement with Senior Quarrier there. It''s firste, first served," Master Ceeran as he smirked.


    He hade early precisely for this. He knew that a lot of Martial Masters would be interested in speaking with Rui, and he certainly needed to get there first.


    Yet things didn''t unfold the way he hoped


    "I''m afraid that I''m going to have to disappoint all of you," A strong voice resounded through the lecture hall. "Senior Rui Quarrier will need toe with me on official business with the Martial Union."


    The Surgeon cut through the tension in a manner that lived up to his name. No one retorted to him, he was easily the strongest Martial Master there.


    "Senior Quarrier," The tall man addressed Rui with aposed tone. "My team and I havepleted our evaluations. You may indulge in personal engagements at ater time, it is vital that weplete this matter."


    Rui grew serious nodding. This was the whole reason that he had gone through the trouble of this whole matter.


    "Esteemed Masters of the Martial Union," Rui bowed to all of them, taking a few steps back. "I am honored and ttered by your invitations and appreciation. I look forward to speaking with you on an individual basis at ater asion. While I''m not inclined to join any Martial Sect due to ack of fit with my Martial Art, I am willing to indulge your offer."


    "Haha! No need to be so polite to us old foggies! If no Martial Sect does you justice, then you can just create your own!" Master Iskanughed.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1571 Remuneration

    <h4>Chapter 1571 Remuneration</h4>


    Those words intrigued Rui even after he departed from the lecture hall, bidding all the Martial Masters farewell.


    He nced up at Master Zentra, the Surgeon. The tall man had an appearance that seemed extraordinarily well-groomed. Rui''s senses as a Martial Senior allowed him to deer into microscopic depths.


    At that depth, most people were shabby and ungroomed, although that was certainly an unreasonable standard to hold anybody to.


    Yet this Martial Master seemed to be extremely well-groomed even on a microscopic level.


    This was a level of care that would most OCD patients to shame.


    Rui wondered what rtion it could possibly have to his Martial Art and Martial Path since they were almost certainly connected.


    "Is it possible for me to create a Martial Sect, Master Zentra?" Rui asked the man.


    "Theoretically, anybody can create a Martial Sect," the man replied. "It''s just a semi-informal group centered around a field of Martial Art with themon interests of developing or spreading said field of Martial Art. In the context of the Kandrian Empire, Martial Sects also aim to secure as much support and capital for development from the Martial Union''s fiscal budget allocation. So in order to qualify as a Martial Sect within the Kandrian Empire, you would need to have a seat in the Martial Union''s annual budget allocation meeting."


    "I see¡­" Rui mused. "So theoretically I could lobby for the Martial Union to invest more in, say, my Martial Path?"


    The man nced at Rui with a hint of amusement. "Generally, only Martial Artists of the Upper Realms are allowed into the meeting, though there are ways in which Martial Artists of the Lower Realms can partake in it, the circumstances leading to such an event are highly extenuating. You need to get the votes of more than fifty percent of all Martial Masters to be allowed into the budget allocation meeting."


    "¡­" Rui had to admit that was indeed extraordinarily difficult.


    "Still, I am personally of the opinion that you are worthy of partaking in the meeting as a voting constituent, I would be willing to raise the motion if you wish," The Martial Master informed Rui.


    "¡­That is rather generous of you," Rui remarked.


    He stopped before a guarded door, opening it and ushering Rui in. "It isn''t. I believe that we need to invest in the future, rather than the past. You, young man, are the most promising element of the future that I see at the moment. It would be foolish for the Martial Union to hold back with you, regardless of whether you''re an internal member or external." This is property ? of N?velDrama.Org.


    Inside was a rather nd office with a set of documents on the table, one that did not befit a Martial Master of his renown.


    "You tter me," Rui remarked.


    "That is incorrect," He remarked. "Regardless, we are not here to speak about that. Come, sit."


    They took their seats. "The reason I was assigned this case was because it was relevant to my Martial Path; Maximized Physiological Control."


    That was an interesting Martial Path, one that piqued Rui''s curiosity.


    "It is quite literal. I have an enormous amount of control over my body''s metabolism, processes, and tissue, I also have informed myself on human anatomy and physiology, though nowhere near as much as yourself," He remarked with appreciative expression. "I was also tasked with deciphering your Hungry Pain technique, a task that I failed."


    Rui wasn''t sure what to say to that. Anything he could say only sounded like gloating to his ears.


    "This document contains both our evaluation and your remuneration for the contribution that you have made," He remarked. "Headmaster Aronian informed me that he already went over the evaluation of the technique''s value, thus I will limit myself merely to your remuneration. It is multi-faceted, so I will go over them one by one. Firstly and most straightforwardly, the mary reward."


    He put a sheet of paper on the table, pushing it towards Rui. It was an itemized list that added up a bunch of numbers to the total reward that Rui would get.


    His eyes widened when he read the number.


    "Six hundred and thirty million Martial Credits¡­?" He murmured. "That''s¡­"


    That was far more than he could earn through missions within a reasonable timeframe. He was earning hundreds and thousands of Martial Credits as a Martial Squire, even if he earned a hundred times more as a Martial Senior, this would still require many, many years worth ofpleting missions to ever hope of reaching.


    It was enough to buy a small country!


    "It''s the bare minimum," Master Zentra calmly informed him. "However, the value of Martial Credits decreases at the upper echelons of the organization. There are some Martial Masters who withdraw from the matters of the Martial Union and don''t care about it. Martial Sages certainly don''t care. At most, you can earn their time through the Martial Union, but they are unmoved if you try to leverage Martial Credits in any personal interaction. However, it is extremely useful everywhere else on the continent. The Kandrian Martial Union is a highly redited powerful organization."


    "¡­I see, still, this is quite substantial," Rui murmured. "I can do a lot with this, actually."


    He already had a n for what to do with the money he earned.


    "Let us move on to benefits that may appeal more to your Martial Artist identity," The man remarked. "We can offer strategically valuable resources, such as high-grade potions that will enhance your Body and Heart by a significant percent. These resources are usually reserved for Martial Masters like myself, to ensure that our Bodies do not fall behind the newer and superior Martial Bodies of the younger generations that benefit from techniques like the Hungry Pain. These are usually created from extremely rare and powerful esoteric resources and would never be avable for transaction under ordinary circumstances, but we have seen fit to give you this opportunity."


    Rui''s eyes shed with interest. A weak Body and Heart had been his biggest shoring, one that he was simply powerless to fix, but he had already run into a solution.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1572 Ambassador

    <h4>Chapter 1572 Ambassador</h4>


    He had experienced the difference in power in nearly every fight that he had in the Senior Realm and most fights he had in the Squire Realm. His raw physicality was holding him back since he hadn''t cultivated his raw power over extended periods of time.


    He was definitely open to getting some treat to amplify his raw power.


    He also learned why the difference in Martial Body didn''t seem to exist between Martial Artists of vastly differing generations.


    It was because they employed expensive solutions to close the gap, ording to the revtion of Master Zentra. It made sense that he had never heard of this before. Especially if they were highly rare and valued.


    While the Martial Body was the most ubiquitous and mass-producible means of empowerment, it was not the only one.


    However, only those who were worthy of these resources would gain ess to them. The Martial Union was interested in maintaining the strength of Martial Art, that meant wisely allocating limited and strategic resources. Ensuring that older and more aplished Martial Artists didn''t fall behind the younger generations as far as their Martial Body went.


    "I will most certainly be partaking in these resources," Rui remarked as he read through the details of what they offered. "It is much appreciated."


    "There were some who opposed giving you this reward, citing its scarcity. Despite there being only one hundred and fifty three Martial Masters in the Kandrian Empire, we do not have the resources avable to ensure that their Martial Body would not fall behind the times," Master Zentra noted. "¡­Are you saying I was chosen at a Martial Master''s expense?" Rui''s eyes widened. "To a certain extent, yes," Master Zentra confirmed. "Consider it to be a token of our appreciation if you. While your Martial power as a Senior greatly pales inparison to even the weakest Martial Master in this empire, in our experience, your endless potential is worth investing in. We would be just as aggrieved at losing you as we would one of our Martial Masters."


    "You tter me¡­" Rui shook his head before returning to the list of potions and pills with greedy eyes. "I will be sure to put these to good use.


    Master Zentra nodded. "You may take your time going through everything we have offered in your time and inform the Martial Union of your decision, it will be handled smoothly. Moving on to some of your next rewards."


    He ced a card on the table, pushing it towards Rui. [Senior Martial Ambassador]


    Rui''s eyebrows rose. "This¡­"


    "The Martial Union has a Martial heirarchy of authority and rank that is parallel to the administrative and executive heirarchy," Master Zentra informed him. "These usually entail the same authority with none of the duties and responsibilities. We usually do this to ensure that these is always some Martial Artist oversight in all departments and levels."


    Rui nodded, recalling Master Ceeran being in a simr role back when he was a Martial Senior.


    "In this case, we have decided to bestow you with position of Senior Martial Ambassador despite your status as an external member," Master Zentra informed him. "This is a great honor, and shows the trust and credibility that you have cultivated, as well as yourpetence as a diplomat." N?velDrama.Org content.


    Rui''s expression didn''t so much in shift, but inwardly he was already scorning. "¡­What are the benefits to being a Senior Martial Ambassador? So far it sounds like a lot ofplications without anything to be gained for me."


    Thus far, it only sounded like the Martial Union was using it to try and rope Rui into their circle. In fact, he was certain that that was one of the goals with trying to give hime this fancy position.


    His value was too high to be left to any other faction or bloc in the Kandrian Empire. The Martial Union had grown dissatisfied with his refusal to enter their ranks. Naturally, they couldn''t force him. A Martial Senior partner being intimidated and forced into their ranks by the Martial Union would be a scandal that would ruin their reputation and credibility.


    Especially when so many people had their eyes on Rui.


    Making him a senior ambassador was a good way to pull him into their circle without actually doing it.


    "I was getting to that. We have learned about some of your¡­exploits during your time away through our internal investigation," Master Zentra informed him. "That with the gains you made during your time as a diplomat on Vilun Ind and the G''ak''arkan Tribe have led us to believe that you are a Martial Artist who grows from environmental stimtion, is that correct?"


    Rui couldn''t deny it. He made much more progress traveling from ce to ce, being exposed to new and fresh environments than he did sitting in one ce, especially if he ran into hurdles and challenges amidst his pursuits.


    "Then I believe you will find this to be quite useful," Master Zentra pushed the card towards Rui. "This allows you to ess the confidential data of our outreach program and partnerships. You may think that the situation with the G''ak''arkan Tribe was unique. But this is a situation that the Martial Union is quite familiar with. There are many more isted groups, sects, and societies centered around Martial Art with unique philosophies and different paradigms. They have their own specialties and Martial cultures that are quite different from the continental standard. This world is far toorge for there to be widespread uniformity."


    He nced at the Senior Ambassador card. "What we are offering is a way for you to easily gain ess to them and visit them as a visiting ambassador of the Martial Union. You won''t be expected to carry out any duties, and you may rely on the name of the Martial Union to sort any issues that ur. There, you can train and learn in their ways if you so please."


    Rui''s eyes lit up with interest at this offer.


    6f6c1eb2f2293371ab64ba817087395e83ee5a55541b6dd02a4134383b91e5e4e8cdf2cbe931170a3a82a0883748e08ec7d6ff68e98f38ad953ce605142a93e5


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1573 Invitation

    <h4>Chapter 1573 Invitation</h4>


    Master Zentra wasn''t done. "We usually reach out to these groups, sects,munities, and societies to conduct Martial Art exchanges with them, simr to what you did with the G''ak''arkan Tribe. However, is very unusual that we are able to obtain all of their secrets, heritages, and ethnic Martial Art. Meaning, it is quite possible for you to gain Martial Art techniques from them that you wouldn''t find anywhere else in the world."


    This definitely caught his attention. "I see¡­That does sound interesting."


    He had learned some useful techniques from the G''ak''arkan Tribe that went on to be the basis of grade-ten techniques that he created. There was no denying the value of techniques of a field from a group who had dedicated their entirety to said field, along with their ancestors.


    "And just to be clear," Rui nced up at the Martial Master warily. "There are no duties or responsibilities thate with this, correct?"


    "Correct," The man nodded. "So you won''t take it away if I don''t do anything?"


    "We won''t," Master Zentra confirmed. "The only way we would take it back is if you be hostile to the Martial Union."


    "I see¡­" Rui considered the matter, before nodding. "Alright then. I''ll ept this."


    He didn''t think he was going to use it any time soon, of course. He had just returned to the Martial Union and had already gotten involved with the matters of the nation to a small extent. This was an important phase that he didn''t want to be away from for the time being.


    Rui nced at Master Zentra expectantly for his next reward, who simply stared at Rui.


    "¡­We have also decided to present you with this," Master Zentra said.


    He pushed forward a small device with a small screen on it that read ''100:00:00''


    "One hundred hours of the time of Martial Masters," Master Zentra exined to him. "Martial Masters in the Martial Union sometimes sell their time to the Martial Union in exchange for certain exclusive and elite high-level services and resources. You can purchase a total of hundred hours of the time of Martial Masters of the Martial Union."


    This was a rather surprising revtion. Though it shouldn''t have been, in hindsight. Still, it certainly wasn''t something that Rui had expected the Martial union would just give him as a part of the rewards for the Hungry Pain technique.


    "I see¡­" Rui murmured. "So I can purchase the one hundred hours of the time of any Martial Master?"


    "That''s not how it works," Master Zentra shook his head. "You can purchase a total of hundreds hours from the hours that Martial Masters have sold to the Martial Union. Some have sold only one, while others have sold hundreds. You can purchase only a hundred in total from a list that you can ess any time."


    "Interesting," Rui smiled, amused. "For the record, any Martial Artist can do that," Master Zentra informed him. "You already had a reputation for being a great trainer even as a Martial Squire. As the youngest Senior, there are those who would be willing to pay a lot to purchase your time." Content protected by N?v/el(D)rama.Org.


    "I''ll have to decline from going that route," Rui shook his head. "My time is far too precious for any number of Martial Credits, honestly."


    "As you wish," Master Zentra nodded. "That brings us to an end to your remuneration."


    Rui''s expression fell. "Is that it?"


    Master Zentra heaved a sigh. "Yes."


    "Shame," Rui murmured. "Well then, I appreciate the generous rewards. I am d to see that the Martial Union truly does value my contribution. Since our business has concluded, I shall be on my way."


    "Before you go. I would like to offer you an invitation." Master Zentra remarked, taking out an envelope from a locked drawer.


    "Invitation?" Rui turned around. "If it''s about whatever Martial Sect you''re a part of then I''ll have to decli-"


    Rui paused when he saw the crest of the royal family on the seal of the envelope. "You may decline it if you want, but I would not rmend that," Master Zentra informed Rui with a more serious tone. "His Highness Prince Raijun wishes to speak to you."


    Rui nced back between the letter and the Martial Master. He was taken aback, but this revtion wasn''t too surprising considering that Prince Raijun had gained a solid chunk of the support from the Martial Union.


    That meant that the probability that he run into a Martial Master who was a part of his faction was actually quite high. "I presume that means you are a Martial Supremacist?" Rui inquired.


    Master Zentra shook his head. "You don''t need to be a Martial Supremacist to support His Highness. You just need to be a Martial Artist. Out of all the seven prime candidates for ruler, only one of them is fighting for the interests of Martial Artists. It ismon sense for Martial Artists to support the Martial Prince, it is unfortunate that too many do not realize that."


    Rui did not entirely agree with that sentiment, but he was not interested in having a philosophical or political debate with the Martial Master. "His Highness is quite impressed and appreciative of you," Master Zentra revealed. "He is willing to make offers that he would not make to any other Martial Senior, I promise you. He was quite amazed by your presentation and the fact that you were able toe up with such an incredible technique that has greatly aided the Martial Union. Along with your other colorful feats and aplishments, he was willing to give you a position in the faction that is normally reserved only for Martial Masters. More than anything, he wishes to speak to you."


    "I see¡­" Rui remarked. "Well, I suppose I can at least offer to hear His Highness out. When can I meet with the prince?"


    "Today, of course," Master Zentra replied. "His Highness had prepared some time for you today looking forward to speaking to you after your presentation was done, there is a Royal carriage waiting to take you to meet His Highness. We have also prepared a grooming team to ensure that you are fit to be in the presence of a member of the Royal Family in Royal Pce of South Mantia."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1574 Arrival

    <h4>Chapter 1574 Arrival</h4>


    "I am certainly not prepared for such a meeting," Rui replied with a troubled expression.


    "His Highness does not intend to pressure you. His Highness is merely eager to meet you and make your acquaintance, rest assured that you make take your time for any decision regarding your allegiance or support," Master Zentra reassured him. "While it looks like we''re in the same camp, the Martial Union will not allow the Royal Family to unduly pressure our partners and members."


    Rui wasn''t so worried about being pressured, if the man had any sense, he would not do that and squander any chance of getting the support of the most prodigious Martial Senior in history.


    It was just a little abrupt, he hadn''t gotten a chance to prepare himself mentally for an important event like this. He was also a little tired after the presentation that he had just given.


    "We have prepared high-grade physical and mental rejuvenation potions if you require them," Master Zentra remarked. "


    "Huff¡­" Rui heaved a sigh. "I''ll take them."


    And he did. They nourished his body and mind thoroughly, making him feel like he had gotten a good night''s sleep and massage the next morning.


    He wished he could get a regr supply of them, but s.


    What ensued next was a blur. A group of men and women who were assigned to grooming stripped him down and then scrubbed and washed him in a tub of herbal and flowery water that was allegedly meant to help with washing away Martial Artist grime.


    Admittedly, by the time they were done, he felt more fresh than he had in his entire life. However, he also felt more vited than in his entire life.


    They donned him with formal Martial Art attire, the type that was impractical inbat with an absurd amount of folds and cloth that just got in the way.


    "This feels unnecessary," Ruiined.


    "It would be rather insulting to His Highness if you were to meet him in regr Martial Art attire that is sweaty after exerting yourself in that presentation," Master Zentra remarked. "Pleasee this way. The carriage awaits you."


    In the dispatch facility of the Martial Union stood a glowing carriage of gold and silver, drawing attention from everybody across the entire facility. Naturally, that attention shifted to him as Rui entered the carriage. At that moment, he looked closer to a noble than a Martial Artist, but his features were too well-known for people to mistake him for that.


    "Hey look¡­"


    "It''s Rui Quarrier!"


    "I heard he''s our age, but is already a renowned Martial Senior!"


    He pointedly ignored all thosements.


    "Senior Quarrier, I am a butler of His Highness," A dignified butler in a custom-tailored tuxedo with a bow tie, bowed to Rui. "I am here to apany you to the East Mantian Royal Manor. Please make yourselffortable inside."


    Rui heaved a sigh as he got into the exorbitantly luxurious carriage. It different from the ones that the Martial Union used, which focused more on utility than image.


    The Royal Family, however, could not afford to. Their image was the image of the nation, after all.


    The carriage immediately set off, elerating increasingly before it took off into the air. Content protected by N?v/el(D)rama.Org.


    "Woah," Rui murmured, surprised. "A flying carriage?"


    "It is a rare luxury that very few can afford, sir," The butler remarked, standing still despite the carriage escting to the skies. "His Highness reserved the best for you, to ensure that your travel time is minimized."


    It appeared that Prince Raijun did appear to think a little highly of Rui. Rui wasn''t even sure what the Martial Prince had to say to Rui. After all, there was little to no way in which he could possibly convince Rui to join his faction with pure benefits. Rui didn''t care for wealth for the most part, so dumping endless gold on to him was not going to make him budge.


    This was especially when the interests of his family were involved in this matter, making his choice much more certain.


    However, he wasn''t surprised that he was meeting the Martial Prince the first out of any other prince or princess. If there was any ovepping interest that he had with any of the princes and princesses, then it was certainly the Martial Prince.


    In that sense, it was not surprising that the Martial Prince took the initiative to be the first to speak with Rui in person. Perhaps he was confident that he could bag Rui as a supporter because Rui was a Martial Senior and a young Martial Senior at that. He was probably under the impression that Rui would be much more gung-ho about it.


    If so, he was gravely mistaken.


    Eventually, they arrived at their location sometimeter, crossing the Mantian Region at rapid speeds.


    The carriage gentlynded near an enormous sparkling pce-


    like mansion that extended over a huge estate. This was the Mantian Royal Manor, one of the properties owned by the Royal Family, allowing them to reside in a Royal Pce if any of the members happened to be in the region on some business.


    "Senior Quarrier, our journey hade to an end, allow me to guide you to His Highness'' abode.


    Rui nodded, exiting the carriage as he beheld the giant pce. It was magnificent and truly beautiful.


    It didn''t leave a good taste in his mouth, however. This pce was constructed from taxpayer gold taken from hardworking citizens of the nation. While he understood that the image of the head of state needed to be maintained in order to maintain international respect and esteem, it just didn''t sit right with him.


    Hopefully, the Martial Prince was not a pompous asshole who expected Rui to kneel to him and kiss his feet, because Rui certainly wasn''t going to be doing that.


    After a long walk through the winding corridors of the manor, they had finally arrived at the ce where he would have an audience with the Martial Prince.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1575 Piercing Question

    <h4>Chapter 1575 Piercing Question </h4>


    The doors before him wereden with gold and silver, just like most things were. They had put a lot of resources into establishing the anti-espionage security measures to secure the privacy of the Royal Family.


    The doors opened slowly, allowing Rui''s senses to rush inside.


    Two Martial Masters stood by the seated man.


    His body was well-chiseled. He possessed an imperious air about him, like everything and everyone around him was subject to hismand. His posture was erect and stiff with a raised chin that made it easier to look down on everybody.


    He had sharp red hair, the kind that drew eyes, that was groomed andbed impably. His attire was both Martial and extravagant, which ironically made it less Martial since Martial attire was intended to be practical and able to survive the rigors of high-levelbat.


    Yet much to Rui''s surprise, his demeanor softened when he beheld Rui, his eyes lit up with a hint of excitement.


    Rui entered the room walking before the seated prince, yet before he could observe the mandatory gesture of bowing before the Royal Family, the prince shot up, putting his hands on Rui''s shoulders.


    "By my word, abstain from such a humbling gesture, Senior Quarrier," The Martial Prince remarked with a surprisingly modest tone. "I did not bring you here to have you bow your head. I have great respect for the man who has brought the Kandrian Empire honor and glory many times in the past, withtest being by simply being the youngest Martial Senior in history. I have much to speak to you about,e, let us sit."


    Rui was taken aback by his grace. He did appreciate the respect that the prince was giving him. Although he did not have a particrly big ego, he did not appreciate being forced to bow his head to someone who hadn''t yet earned his respect.


    This was different from when he bowed to Martial Artists of higher Realms, they had earned his respect and admiration simply by virtue of existing.


    "Your honor me with you grace, Your Highness," Rui smiled as he sat down, following the prince. "It is a pleasure to meet the Martial Prince that has managed to capture the support of a hefty chunk of the Martial Union."


    Rui conveyed a subtle message with the word ''pleasure'' instead of ''honor'', giving the prince a brief but good idea of Rui''s perspective on him without being rude. The Martial prince caught on immediately as well, giving Rui a knowing look.


    The dynamics of the conversation were established.


    It was the Martial Prince that had invited Rui.


    It was the Martial Prince who wanted to earn Rui''s support.


    Rui did not possess any particrly high respect for the Martial Apprentice of royal blood. Although breaking through to the Apprentice Realm alone was something that could not be said to be easy, it was still the lowest on a totem pole that the people around him had already climbed many steps.


    The Martial Masters that served as his bodyguard were of the Upper Realms, having broken through four times. Rui had broke through three times and did it in record time. As far as their Martial aplishments went, the prince was sorely falling behind. He would certainly going to have to give Rui a reason to follow him.


    "You can imagine my fascination when word of your return a week ago spread through the Kandrian Empire like wildfire. It''s not everyday, or ever, that a Martial Squire disappears for several years and then returns a Martial Senior eight years younger than the prior record," He smiled, being remarkably approachable.


    Yet Rui knew that this was an active effort to make himself amenable towards Rui. He had already caught a glimpse of his true character the second the doors opened.


    Not that Rui cared, but it was a sign that the prince was remarkably aware. That was a good sign, a pompous fool who let his ego get in the way of his goals was not someone Rui cared to follow.


    "Yes, it appears that many people have heard, and many people aren''t content with just that," Rui heaved a sigh. "It''s been ttering and tiring."


    The princeughed at Rui''s words lightly as he drank some water that the servants promptly poured for him. "As someone who contributed to that, you have my apologies. It was not my intention. I wished to speak to you both as a Martial Artist and as well as a prince contending for the throne. I grew up fascinated with Martial Art, you see. Yet I wasn''t content with merely admiring. I also wanted to understand and feel that power for myself. It took some time but I managed to break through to the Apprentice Realm, and recently have been training for the Squire Realm, which has been more difficult than I expected."


    He put his ss aside, leaning forward. "Yet the more I learned about Martial Art in my own journey as a Martial Artist as well as a member of the Royal Family, the more I felt as though the state of Martial Art was¡­wrong."


    That was a bold thing to say. Yet Rui waited for him to continue


    "Not so much as the state of Martial Art itself, but its ce in this world," Prince Raijun exined. "The stronger I got, the more I came in touch with powerful Martial Artists like yourself and the two esteemed Masters here who I''ve been blessed to have protect me, the more I felt strange. The strangeness of these incredible figures with all this power but no authority. The strangeness of a mortal manmanding demigods. The strangeness of a nation where those who can cleave nations in half with their godly power bow down to man and woman who couldn''t snap a club of wood if their life depended on it."


    His eyes grew serious. "Historically, the strongest force has always wound up calling the shots. Yet in the Kandrian Empire and many ces around the world, it''s the Royal Emperor and his appointed Prime Minister who call the shots."


    His eyes bored into Rui''s as he asked him a single question. N?velDrama.Org content.


    "Tell me, how does it feel to helplessly lower your head to a family with no intrinsic power of their own, simply by virtue of their blood, status, and authority?"


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1576 Victims of War

    <h4>Chapter 1576 Victims of War </h4>


    Time slowed down to a halt in Rui''s perspective as scrutinized the frozen prince. He nced at the two Martial Masters beside the man. While they looked forward, he could feel their attention and alertness. If he made so much as the wrong move, he would die before he realized it. N?velDrama.Org content.


    He nced back at the Martial Prince, evaluating him. ''He''s rhetorically effective with his Martial supremacy, I''ll give him that.''


    The answer to his question was obviously in favor of his rhetoric, but it also tied back to their first exchange where he stopped Rui from bowing down to him.


    It was a goodpelling way to try and gain Rui''s approval.


    Yet Rui also knew that he was putting on an act, to a certain extent. He had sensed the aristocratic and Royal bearing in the man''s demeanor and bodynguage. It was an interesting nuance.


    ''Together¡­they most likely serve as the basis for why he thinks he is more fit than the other princes and princesses for the throne; the fact that he''s a Martial Artist who, by his Martial supremacist philosophy, ought to be part of the ruling ss.'' Rui realized, deep in thought. ''But I wonder if he''s willing to apply that to himself with stronger Martial Artists.''


    "¡­It is quite unpleasant as a Martial Artist," Rui replied, answering his question. "Part of the reason I seek power is to ensure that I don''t need to bow down to those who seek to control me."


    "I began feeling this way as well as a mere Martial Apprentice, I cannot imagine how you as a Martial Senior feel being forced to humble yourself," Prince Raijun smiled. "My goal is to ensure that that never happens again as emperor."


    "Then allow me to ask you this, Your Highness," Rui remarked. "You are a Martial Apprentice, would be willing to abandon your authority as Emperor and elevate Martial Artists to the head of state and government?"


    The Martial Prince faced Rui head-on. "I would."


    Rui''s eyebrow rose in surprise as his senses evaluated the Martial Prince as well as they could.


    They could see only one thing.


    Sincere honesty.


    It appeared that the Prince was dead serious about creating a nation where Martial Artists became the ruling ss, recing the Royal Family.


    ''Interesting,'' Rui mused to himself. ''I had expected that he would have refused to do that. But no Apprentice-level technique can fool me, so he''s definitely being serious.''


    "The biggest issue I face is not reconciling my Royal Family side with my Martial Art side. I have chosen thetter, although I have been raised a man who bears the name of Kandria from birth. The biggest issue is making it possible in the first ce. The Royal Emperor is not limitless in his authority and power, he cannot just do anything he pleases. The Founding Emperor Ra created the Bill of Royal Axioms, a set of rules that are absolute and binding even to the Royal Emperor that limits my power when I do ascend the throne," Prince Raijun exined. "Changing the political system of the nation from its very roots is something that is going to be extraordinarily difficult even as Emperor. However, once I ascend the throne, it''s merely a matter of time before this happens. Naturally, there will be enormous resistance, perhaps even a civil war, but it will happen with my power as the Emperor and the Martial Union."


    "And who will suffer the most under a civil war, Your Highness?" Rui''s eyes narrowed. "Is it the Martial Artists whose innate power always ensures that they''re the least affected by any disaster? Is it the upper ss of society that has so much wealth and resources that nothing short of an apocalypse can reach them? Is it the other various power blocs of the upper echelons of the socioeconomdscape of this nation each with vast wealth, resources, assets, Martial power, and authority that will suffer the most?"


    He paused for a moment, before continuing. "¡­No. While they may expend much pursuing their own agendas and goals, none of them are going to be the most affected by any war. The most vulnerable ss of society that will suffer the most are the people of Kandria."


    Prince Raijun remained silent but did not seem too surprised. His intelligencework had doubtlessly informed him of Rui''s attachment to his family. The same intelligencework had informed him that Rui had refused the deal to be a member of the Martial Union''s internal corps in exchange for protection for his family, instead choosing to expend billions of his then newly-earned wealth to do so.


    That had told the Martial Prince many things. Firstly, of the three interests; wealth, freedom, and his family, Rui Quarrier cared for money the least. He cared for his freedom and family the most.


    Prince Raijun''s strategy for winning over Rui to his philosophy had been to capitalize on the former of the two interests. By tapping into Rui''s displeasure at helplessly serving forces that were unworthy ofmanding him.


    He hadn''t ounted for thetter of the two getting in the middle of an ideal execution of his lobbying attempt. Regardless, this was far from insurmountable.


    "Philosophically, a single war is a lesser evil than a century of rule without Martial Artists as the ruling ss," Prince Raijun replied. "This is true because ruling the country is easier for Martial Artists than any other ss of society. No set of politicians, ss of intellectuals, fields of skill, orbor can rule a country as well as those in the field of Martial Art. I''m sure you know why with your proven political acumen, Senior Quarrier."


    Rui couldn''t deny it. "Martial Artists impede all ruling parties since they are walking weapons of mass destruction with their own drives, interests and agendas, desires and displeasures. Managing them is extremely difficult and impedes the ability to rule a nation sessfully. The only way to get rid of this impediment is to make Martial Artists the ruling force of the nation so that they are no longer an impediment to the rulers, but the rulers themselves."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1577 Offers and Interests

    <h4>Chapter 1577 Offers and Interests</h4>


    "I couldn''t have said it better myself," Prince Raijun smiled. "This is the core argument of the Martial Supremacist faction. A nation run by Martial Artists is superior. Hierarchies are maintained. Order is maintained. The efficiency and effectiveness of any such group are elevated. All nations where Martial Artists are not the ruling ss have much greater civil unrest and internal political tensions."


    Those words made Rui recall the G''ak''arkan Tribe. A Martial Tribe that was, naturally, led by Martial Artists. It was true that there were absolutely no leadership problems, it was also true that this had emerged very naturally. There were no forces on Vilun Ind that could oppose a Martial Senior. No potion users, no siege weapons that could erase mountains. As a result, Martial Seniors naturally took the lead of the tribe with very little effort.


    In a way, it could be said that this was the natural order of things.


    However, Rui didn''t care about that. What he did care about was his family.


    "It is true that Martial Artists ruling a nation would lead to less internal division for obvious reasons, but it is also true that such nations would be more martial and warmongering in nature," Rui replied. "Martial Artists are driven for power for various desires, objectives, and agendas. Being driven forbat is no different from being driven for conflict and war. Battle andbat supply the necessary experience to refine your individuality, which in turn is necessary for progressing as a Martial Artist. Battle, war, andbat are also directly necessary to reaching higher Realms. A world ruled by Martial Artists is a world of endless war."


    "Martial Artists will fight regardless of whether they are rulers or peasants, Senior Quarrier," Prince Raijun shook his head. "It is an inevitability. War has existed long before the Age of Martial Art."


    "It may be an inevitability, but that doesn''t mean it can''t be minimized. This is no different from saying people should stop consuming medicine, for death is inevitable," Rui replied.


    "Neither medicine nor pacifism is going to save you when these changes inevitably happen in other ces in the world and have happened in other ces in the world," Prince Ruijan informed him. "More than seventy-six percent of nations have already conceded some authority to Martial Artists, and increasingly do so every decade. Our Kandrian Empire fell under that category when the founding Emperor Ra signed the Kandrian Martial Pact and ratified the Kandrian Martial Covenant that essentially documents the concessions of the Royal Emperor. This just creates more political tensions between the two power blocs, causing more political unrest. Other nations will be stronger Martial Artists start usurping more power and will be more war-mongering as that happens. Falling behind will make us weaker and more passive if the time for a war ever urs."


    "That ''if'' will be ''when'' if Martial Artists rule the nation," Rui heaved a sigh. "You insist that it''s necessary to be a stronger nation, I may not even disagree with the core sentiment, my issue is that it harms people. Unless you can guarantee that such a conflict will be resolved peacefully and harmlessly, I''m afraid I cannot align with the philosophy of your policies and n."


    Prince Raijun stared at Rui knowingly.


    Such a thing could obviously not be guaranteed. There were many powerful forces that believed in the supremacy of the Royal Family. This was the effect of centuries of loyalty development.


    "It''s a shame that we are unable to findmon ground on ideology and philosophy," Prince Raijun remarked with a hint of disappointment and regret. "However, I don''t think that matters very much. Did you know that nearly fifty percent of my faction are not Martial Supremacists?"


    Rui was not too surprised. Even if people did not agree with the core philosophy of a ruler, there was still much that could be gained by their policies and even in exchange for their support and patronage. The Martial Prince must have worked hard to lobby over as many Martial Artists who were not receptive to an aggressive Martial supremacist philosophy. Just representing their interests and promising better policies was enough to earn the support of many of them.


    "What do you propose?" Rui asked.


    The Martial Prince shed a confident smile. "Join me, and I''ll extend the current protection you havemissioned over your family from the Martial Union indefinitely."


    Rui stirred mildly. This kind of offer had not been beyond his prediction. Still, that did not make it any less alluring. It was expensive to hire dozens of Martial Seniors for Senior-level protection for each member of the orphanage without their awareness. Billions of Kandrian gold coins had been sucked away for a decade of protection.


    "That is alluring¡­But each of the seven princes and princesses has the power to guarantee that, do they not?"


    "Yes, except for maybe that peasant Raul, but yes," Prince Raijun replied. nonchntly. "But you don''t want your family in the grip of the Underworld and my fellow Apprentice mafia brother, trust me. There''s a reason why he has been only half as sessful as me with dragging in Martial Artists to his cause. The others will also make more demands of you than I will. I am the Martial Prince, I fight for Martial Artists as a whole. They, on the other hand, won''t represent your interests." This is property ? of N?velDrama.Org.


    He paused for a moment. "My corporate sister Rafia aims for corporations to gain as much leverage over Martial Artists as they do normal people. That ocean-loving sister of mine is neutral over Martial Art, at best. My mafia brother is for total freedom for Martial Artists, but not necessarily authority. Mymunist sister wants to basically enve Martial Artists, even if she denies it. My military brother wants them to be indistinguishable soldiers of an army. My peasant-humping brother wants Martial Artists to be as ountable to the nation as plebeians are."


    Prince Raijun shrugged, staring deeply at Rui. "Almost none of them give a damn about your interests as a Martial Artist. Think about that."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1578 Tutelage

    <h4>Chapter 1578 Tutge </h4>


    It was hard to deny that the Martial Prince would certainly be the most useful to Rui''s personal interests as a Martial Artist.


    In fact, if not for his family, Rui would probably enter into a cooperative rtionship with Prince Raijun. While he still would not like the idea of a society run by Martial Artists, he would have no personal stake in being disaffected by such a thinging to light.


    But in consideration of the orphanage, he definitely did not want the Kandrian Empire to take a warmongering inclination. During his travels, he had seen what unstable nations did to their citizens, they always bore the brunt of any conflict that resulted in a lot of chaos and loss of life.


    He did not want the Quarrier Orphanage to be disaffected by the otherwise stable nation of Kandria gearing up for war.


    "Your offer is alluring, but I can''t join your faction," Rui replied, shaking his head. "I apologize for the firmness, but it is my final decision, all the protection in the world doesn''t mean much if the very fabric of the lives of the people I care about changes for the worse. There are things that not even Martial power can fix."


    Prince Raijun stared at him before closing his eyes and heaving a soft sigh. "I see. This pains me more than you''d think. I was truly excited to have the most prodigious Martial Senior to have ever existed join my faction. However, it appears that I have underestimated the depth of your love for your family."


    He couldn''t have expected that Rui would be willing to not only go as far as to secure his family''s safety at any cost but also ensure that their lives are not disrupted at any cost.


    Frankly, Rui too was a little surprised at how firmly he rejected the man''s offer. Ever since he returned, he had been much more unwilling to allow anything to disaffect his family.


    He identified the source of this determination.


    ''I suppose I am still guilty for the anguish I caused them in the past eight years ago,'' Rui heaved a sigh. ''It''s only been a little over a week since I returned.''


    Perhaps if the Kandrian War had urred yearster, he would be more receptive to Prince Raijun''s offers.


    "Shame, but it is what it is," Prince Raijun smiled courteously. "However, I can still offer your family the protection you want for them even if you don''t join my faction."


    Rui''s expression grew quizzical. "But why?"


    "I didn''t say it would be for free," Prince Raijun''s smile gained a hint of mischief. "You''re a Martial Artist, aren''t you? Then I''llmission you, your payment will be the protection of your family."


    Rui stared at him, unimpressed. "This is hardly any different from joining your faction in practice, is it not? Had I joined your faction, you would have meplete missions and operations that would help you gain more favor across the Kandrian government, in exchange for protection for my family, correct?"


    "True, but in this case it''s not going to be things that will help me gain more political capital," Prince Raijun replied. "What I want is for you to train me as a Martial Artist."


    Rui was slightly taken aback. He didn''t expect that Prince Raijun would request for something that personal as opposed to the general services that Rui could offer.


    "I''m sure you have many qualified Martial Masters allies, they would be better as trainers than I am," Rui replied, not even believing his own words.


    "I''d actually disagree," Prince Raijun smiled knowingly. "I have extensively looked into your tutoring record from your Apprentice and Squire days. You have glowing rmendations. All of the Martial Families and other wealthy families thatmissioned you have reported genuine and significant improvements after your tutge. Colonel Geringan informed me that your Martial Art is actively useful for training, which makes you a better choice than Martial Masters in my opinion. Of course, growing stronger as a Martial Apprentice does not bring you closer to the Squire Realm, so you needn''t be worried that you''re increasing the probability of my victory."


    Rui stared at him, processing his offer.


    Unfortunately, his arguments were valid. Training him was not going to aid his campaign in any way. He would need to maximize his potential through individuality in his Martial Art if he wanted to be qualified for the Squire evolution breakthrough.


    "I was not aware that you were still in pursuit of more Martial power," Rui remarked.


    "I always was but not everyone can speedrun the Lower Realms like, Senior Quarrier," The man heaved a sigh. "It hasn''t been easy developing my Martial Art amidst all this endless work, but I have resolved to not abandon it to the best of my ability. I will continue to work on it after the Kandrian Throne War ends, one way or another."


    Rui considered the matter. It was true that Rui training the Martial Prince was something that couldn''t possibly affect the Kandrian Throne War, while Rui could aid with the breakthrough to the Apprentice Realm and the Senior Realm, he could do nothing about the breakthrough to the Squire Realm.


    "You may hold a high opinion of my tutge, but it''s a bit excessive to remunerate me with maintaining the security that my family has currently," Rui remarked.


    "On the contrary, it''s just enough. After all, training and aiding the growth of a royal prince of Kandria is just that valued. Especially if you make significant progress and seed at training me," The Martial Prince replied. "It would reflect poorly on the family if such teachers and trainers were not extravagantly remunerated. Organizations like the Martial Union are given a pass from being judged in such a manner, but I personally am not."


    Rui considered the matter. He still had two years to go on his remaining protection, the Kandrian Throne War was unlikely to end within such a timeframe since Emperor Rael was still alive. N?velDrama.Org content.


    While there were no active threats to his family, he was still worried of being caught into some danger that would put his family at risk, this security would be a good measure until the war finally and truly ended.


    Rui nodded after a while. "Alright, I''ll train you."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1579 Spreading Martial Art

    <h4>Chapter 1579 Spreading Martial Art </h4>


    He hadn''t expected that the prince would consult Senior Colonel Geringar when searching for a tutor. Thetter had undoubtedly told the prince how his daughter Crea broke through shortly after his training.


    In that case, it was no wonder that the prince was interested in being trained by him. While Rui was not a Martial Master, the gap between him and the prince was sorge that it frankly did not matter.


    "I''m d to hear that!" Prince Raijun grinned. "Hehe, I may not have been able to get you into my faction, but I did manage to bag you as my trainer. That is still a win in my book."


    Rui smiled with amusement. Thus far, the prince had been remarkably down-to-earth given the fact that he was a royal prince of the Kandrian Empire. Rui appreciated the gesture, at least.


    "You truly as remarkable as they say," Prince Raijun remarked. "From the dawn of your career to now, your aplishments are almost unheard of. I, personally, have never heard or seen of any Martial Artist who has aplished so much in so little time. Many Martial Sects are determined to have you, or at least do their best to ensure nobody else gets you. They will invite you to join them, perhaps you should consider epting their offer."


    Rui shook his head lightly. "Most Martial Sects are not suited for my Martial Art. That''s why I''m not particrly thrilled at the prospect of joining them. Even if I did join them, I am not too fond of the implicit responsibilities that I would have to such a Martial Sect."


    "They aren''t too shackling, I assure you," The Martial Prince replied. "At most, you would be expected to make contributions when you develop something relevant to the Martial Sect, but that isn''t mandatory either."


    "In the first ce, I highly doubt that there is any Martial Sect that is worth joining simply due to the fact that my Martial Art is too esoteric." Rui heaved a sigh. "My Martial Art requires a bnce of various fields, so I cannot join sects that focus on one of the fundamental aspects ofbat. While there are sects that are focused on fields that are decidedly neutral, they are still diverged from my Martial Art," Rui replied.


    "Hmmm, in that case, you might want to spread elements of your Martial Art to others, and create your own Martial Sect that closely matches your own Martial Art," Prince Ruijan mentioned.


    "I have no reason to go through something that tedious, Your Highness," Rui heaved a sigh of exasperation. "I have not hit any sort of bottleneck where I''d have to resort to such measures in order to make progress anymore."


    "Not yet," Prince Raijun corrected. "Eventually, you will. It''s almost impossible to keep running withouting to a stop. Everythinges to an end, and that includes the progress that you''re able to make by yourself. Why do you think these sects came to be in the first ce? It''s because the first generation of Martial Masters was unable to grow stronger, thus they relied on creating lobby groups to rally for the Martial Union to dump more research and funding into their particr fields in hopes for that to result in something they can use to grow stronger. It also spreads their field around, creating more Martial Artists using it. Eventually, one of them might discover or create something that they can use."


    "I''ll think about it if the need ever arises," Rui replied. "For now, I am more than content with relying on myself."


    "It would also help the world of Martial Art," Prince Ruijan remarked. "Your Martial Path is as powerful as it is esoteric. It is probably the most powerful Martial Path that I have ever seen. The world of Martial Art would benefit if you spread seeds of it as far and wide, allowing as many Martial Artists to break through with something simr."


    "Spreading a Martial Path is extremely difficult since I would essentially need to condition and brainwash children from birth," Rui replied. "I don''t care to engage in something this distasteful."


    "Many of the Martial Families in the Kandrian Empire engage in some degree of child conditioning and brainwashing. While they don''t go too far, they do normally ensure that the Martial Path of their children fall within their general field. There are some exceptions, but it is quite convenient to most of them," Prince Raijun exined. This is property ? of N?velDrama.Org.


    It was interesting to Rui that Kane didn''t fall into that category, it showed just how much he disliked his family.


    "Still, it''s a very long-term investment and it''s not something I''m in a position to do. Simply put, I''m not interested in going down this route unless it''s absolutely necessary," Rui replied. "I''m only almost twenty-nine, I have far more productive things to do by putting my youth to good use and making sure that I make the best out of this period to maintain my momentum and squeeze the absolute most out of my potential. My progress will most likely inevitably slow down after I''m past youth, so I don''t want to let it go to waste."


    Rui had already experienced the transition of exiting his prime in his previous life. Only someone who experienced this understood the value of youth. It was absolutely priceless. He could not afford to waste time doing things that were better saved for when he had no choice but to do them.


    "I understand that quite well," Prince Raijun nodded. "Be that as it may, I do hope you eventually do spread the seed of your Martial Path. Many of the popr fields that are used across Martial Art were once a single Martial Artist''s Martial Path and Art. It was only because they decided to spread it that we have fields such as breathing techniques, poison techniques, and other non-elementary techniques. We have all benefited from the world of Martial Art, and it is important to repay our debt."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1580 Choices

    <h4>Chapter 1580 Choices</h4>


    Rui found that point of view to be quite interesting. It was not how he normally thought of Martial Art.


    Every Martial Artist knew that Martial Art was a solitary path. No one else could walk one''s path for another. The further Martial Artists walked down their paths, the more their paths diverged from each other. They grew increasingly different and distanced.


    Furthermore, to progress, conflict between them was necessary. Sparring was not good enough, genuine life-or-death conflict was what was necessary to yield the fruits of experience that would refine one''s Martial Art.


    Thus, not only was Martial Art a solitary path, but it was even an antagonistic path. N?velDrama.Org content.


    However, Prince Raijun brought up an interesting point in regard to it. It was true that Rui had benefited from the contribution of countless Martial Artists before him, contributing things that would go on to be highly ubiquitous and almost necessary fields of Martial Art.


    Of course, Rui knew that he had already contributed to Martial Art with the Hungry Pain technique and his other grade-ten techniques. He wasn''t exactly drowned in debt considering the sheer impact that he had already made and was bound to make in the future.


    The two of them spoke more before their conversation eventually concluded.


    "You''re an incredible, Rui Quarrier," Prince Raijun shook his hand. "I look forward to gaining your tutge and training. I''ll have the paperwork sent to you as soon as possible."


    Rui nodded, smiling. "I look forward to offering my services."


    "Well then, I have already kept you for enough time after having you dragged away, until next time. Farewell, Senior Quarrier."


    Rui heaved a sigh after he found himself back in his carriage, having departed from the Royal Manor after bidding the Martial Prince farewell.


    The discussion with the Martial Prince did not deviate too much from his expectations. Although the grace that the prince decided to shower him with along with the trainingmission was out of his expectation.


    Yet he was received and treated in a manner that was probably reserved for Martial Artists of the Upper Realms. Only they had enough personal capital to hold their head high even in the presence of the Royal Family, barring the Emperor.


    He hade away with a better impression of the prince.


    He immediately shed his royal and aristocratic bearing to better facilitate a smoother interaction.


    ''He most likely took my lower-ss background into ount and decided to adjust his attitude and expression,'' Rui mused. ''It was a good calcted decision. On top of that, he had effective rhetoric and understood what my personal interests were when he made the offer to prolong the protection that the orphanage had.''


    On top of that, he was clearly quite powerful and had rued a lot of wealth in addition to Martial capital. He readily epted prolonging protection that was going to cost hundreds of millions of gold annually, which was enough wealth to buy a low-ss nation.


    ''He''s trying to create an association between himself and me, to send out a message,'' Rui mused.


    He did not strictly mind. The protection was too powerful an incentive for him to possibly ignore for such a light reason. He had earned at least that much with his extravagant measures.


    Of course, Rui doubted that this would stop the other princes or princesses from making their own attempts to gain his support and favor.


    All in all, his final evaluation of Prince Raijun was that he was a level-headed and intelligent man who had demonstrated a good understanding of the state of Kandria and the nature of the Kandrian Thone War. Rui did not think he would be an ipetent ruler as long as he had a qualified staff and administration.


    The only misgiving was his political ideology, ced far too much power in the hands of Martial Artists as far as he was concerned. He was hoping that one of the other princes or princesses had a stance that would be in favor of themon citizen.


    But asides from that, he didn''t have anypunction with the Martial Prince.


    He was much more driven to ensure that certain princes or princesses didn''t get crowned as the ruler, than to support any one particr prince or princess was elected.


    The Communist Princess and the Corporate Princess were each highly distateful to him purely based on their stances and the power blocs supporting them.


    The Military Prince had some extreme policies regarding war, he probably the type who believed in a mandatory draft for the citizens. Just the idea of people from Quarrier Orphanage being deployed to war was a nightmare to him.


    There was no need to even talk about the Underworld Prince. Rui had already seen the depths to which the Carnil Mafia was willing to go to lobby support.


    Those four princes and princesses were highly disagreeable to him. The Martial Prince, the Seafare Princess, and the People''s Prince were the only three he didn''t strongly dislike. He had already disqualified the former due to a policy that disenfranchised and hurt the average citizen a little too much for Rui''s taste, but the Martial Prince did extremely well in appealing to Rui personally, to his Martial Artist identity.


    In fact, if not for Rui''s determination to ensure that the orphanage did not suffer even the slightest disruption to their lives, he would have gone with the Martial Prince.


    He heaved a sigh, shaking his head. He just hoped that the candidates he was most hopeful for would pan out and be just perfect for his needs.


    Though he was hopeful for that, he maintained grounded expectations.


    Politics was an icky muck, there was almost never an ideal choice and many a times people were forced to choose the lesser of two evils. Although Rui had seven candidates in front of him, most of them were so poisoned that it wasn''t even funny.


    "I''ll just have to impact this cold war in a direction favorable to me as best as I can."


    Fortunately, he had some ideas in regards to how he could go about that.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1581 Blackout

    <h4>Chapter 1581 ckout</h4>


    By the time he returned home, he felt psychologically tired, even if his body and mind were brimming with energy. The presentation hadn''t been very long, but it drained his energy a lot, simply the subconscious pressure that it put on him with its sheer importance and the importance of the people evaluating it drained him quite a bit.


    "Looks like my baby is quite tired," Lashara patted his head gently. "Get some rest. You''ve been running around doing all sorts of things even though you just came home."


    "A lot that I can''t ignore has been happening," Rui heaved a sigh. "I also need to go shopping to purchase some good formal suits."


    He hadn''t forgotten the invitation to the reception being held by the Raemina Foundation. Given that it was much more formal than the meeting that he had just concluded with the Martial Prince, he would need to be much more prepared.


    "Take Alice with you, she loves shopping and I''m sure she''ll be able to pick some wonderful suits for you," Lashara replied gently.


    "Will do, mom," Rui heaved a sigh.


    The following days were more rxed. He and Julian did indeed take Alice with them to go shopping. Rui hadn''t worn formal attire for so long that he had lost all fashion sense about what would be suitable and what wouldn''t.


    He took them all to a premium luxury fashion store in the heart of the Town of Hajin. An experience that was new to both Alice and Julian. Once they realized just who Rui was, the staff of the shop immediately tended to them, taking measurements before narrowing down on style and other minutiae.


    That day, both Rui and Julian came close to death.


    "Hmmmmm, this is not bad," Alice muttered. "But it doesn''t match your hair."


    "This is too colorful."


    "This is too nd."


    "The color scheme on this doesn''t fit."


    One by one she made them go through nearly every single one of the products that the store had, ensuring that there wasn''t any stone left unturned.


    "This!" She nodded enthusiastically. "This is it."


    She sharply scrutinized Rui who wore a formal Martial attire with a more modern style. While the clothes were well appreciated, Rui himself stood looking like his soul had been sucked out.


    That day, he swore to never bring her along ever again. They quickly finished up their business at the fashion store.


    And yet, even then, his to-do list was notplete.


    "Hm, where are you going?" Alice asked.


    "I have some business in town, I''ll be backter," Rui informed them.


    "Don''t be toote," Julian advised him.


    Rui waved them goodbye as he set out, eventually reaching arge and vast corporateplex.


    [Lambarageau Xavier Legal Services]


    This was thew guild that the Beggar''s Sect relied on to sell information through in the Kandrian Empire.


    "Purpose of visit?"


    "Same asst time."


    The guards immediately opened the gates, letting him in. It wasn''t too long before he found himself at the wide and luxurious office of Maiun Ka, a Senior Partner at thew guild.


    "Senior Quarrier," She smiled courteously, getting to shake his hand. "It''s a pleasure to meet you again so soon. To what do I owe the pleasure of this meeting?"


    "I have amission to make," Rui replied. "Of course," She smiled. "We are always willing to service an esteemed regr customer. How can we help you?" Content protected by N?v/el(D)rama.Org.


    "I''m not here to purchase information this time," Rui remarked. "I want to employ your counter-intelligence service this time."


    The Beggar''s Sect not only possessed the ability to gather information extremely well, but also sabotage its gathering. Most people were not aware of the extent of thetter, but it was just as strong as the former.


    "The details?" She asked, intrigued.


    "I want aplete information ckout around the target regarding Rui Quarrier," Rui replied calmly.


    The elderly woman stared at him for a moment. "It behooves me to inform you that that is an extravagant service, Senior Quarrier. The target?"


    "Master Uma of the Virodhabhasa Faith," Rui replied.


    She didn''t appear to be quite surprised. There was no reason to be considering that she was aware of the circumstances between him and her. The Beggar''s Sect was far too well-connected. The only issue was that she didn''t understand the nature of the reason for the conflict between them.


    Of course, that wasn''t relevant to the request.


    "More power individuals tend to be better connected, making it much harder to create an information ckout regarding a particr topic around a particr subject," She replied. "The exact price of such an extravagant measure will require some time, but I can assure you that it will take many years of missions and operations before you can sessfully repay themission payment for thismission."


    A small grin cracked at the edge of Rui''s mouth. ''Looks like the Martial Union did a good job hiding the details of the Hungry Pain technique evaluation from the Beggar''s Sect.''


    "I won''t be needing to repay it withmissions. I recently gained an enormous paycheck you see, hundreds of millions of Martial Credits. I presume that should be more than enough," Rui replied.


    Mrs Ka did not reveal anything from her reaction, but Rui could sense that she was surprised by this revtion. "That is indeed very well more than enough to cover themission price, most likely," She replied. "We will, of course, require a credit statement from the Martial Union to verify your im."


    Rui immediately pulled out a folded sheet that the Surgeon had given him, passing it over to the Senior Partner.


    She carefully studied the seal of the Martial Union in particr, nodding. "¡­Very well, we shall have the price of thismission quicklypiled as soon as possible. This is aplicated matter, so it will take a little while before we are able topute the difficulty and expenses of such amission," She replied. "We shall provide you with a bill and a nk transfer statement for you to fill in at the soonest."


    Rui smiled. "Pleasure doing business with you, as always."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1582 Arrived

    <h4>Chapter 1582 Arrived</h4>


    The Beggar''s Sect worked fast.


    Alice provided him with the summary of the bill rather rapidly, allowing him to examine the total price of themission.


    "A hundred and twelve million Martial credits are merely the initial set-up costs," Rui murmured. "She was right¡­"


    This would indeed take him years to pay with his own Martial services, through ordinary missions anyway. Thankfully, he didn''t need to go through the tedious effort ofpleting tons of missions for thismission. The costs for the entire operation were essentially centered around either converting or recing the entirety of Master Uma''s staff in the Church Town of Ghregol, an external religious city-state of the Virodhabhasa Theocracy that was on the other side of the Beast Domainpared to the Kandrian Empire.


    The distance between them was relieving, given the extremelyckingmunication technology of human civilization on the Panama Continent. It meant that she had essentially had a very small chance of running into Rui searching for Senior Falken. The only concern was if the news of the youngest Martial Senior reached her and she decided that she needed to see a picture of him for whatever reason.


    That was why he had taken this measure.


    Thankfully, because she oversaw her own little church city as Master Deivon did, it was easier to infiltrate her staff andpletely take over all the information that she received.


    Because her pursuit of Rui was not legitimate, she could not rely on state resources to find him, she had to rely on resources and manpower that were more in her direct control. That meant that the Beggar''s Sect didn''t need to do more than just infiltrate her town and its administration and departments.


    That was the initial cost of Rui''smission, merely setting everything up in ce was quite expensive, since some of these individuals were very difficult to rece or convert into their agents.


    The bill specified the mobilization of hundreds of thousands of their inner agents into all positions of her information ess and supply, allowing them to manipte the information that she would get. The set-up cost was merely the initial cost of the establishment of the intelligence sabotage team. There was a necessary monthly cost to keep the entire operation afloat so that they could continually do their job.


    Each month required a much less exorbitant amount to merely fund the existing team, thankfully Rui didn''t need to worry about it with the windfall that he had recently made. With this, he had ensured that the Master Uma threat was something he could deal with at ater date.


    "Huff¡­" Rui heaved a sigh once he finished the paperwork in regard to that. With that out of the way, he could move on to handling other matters that needed his attention.


    The custom suits and attire that Rui and Julian had ordered were soon done, right before the reception held by the Raemina Faction. A dayter, the event too had arrived. "This fits extremely well," Rui donned his formal Martial Art attire. "Quite impractical for a Martial Artist, but they did nail it with the fit, I admit."


    "This is why you should listen to your big sister," Alice smiled proudly.


    Lashara, on the other hand, beamed at her two adoptive sons. "You''re both so handsome."


    The orphanage marveled at their attire and well-groomed visage. Rui triedbing his hair the way it had been groomed for him when he had been carted off to meet the Marital Prince, ultimately failing to meet the standards of professional beauticians.


    Still, they were both more than presentable by the time the Royal Carriage of the Raemina Foundation rolled up to the Quarrier Orphanage.


    The invitation that they had received had confirmed that everything would be taken care of by the Raemina Foundation, including travel.


    A butler stepped out of the carriage, bowing down to the two of them as they walked out the door. "Many greetings, esteemed guests. Please allow us to take you to the reception hall."


    Rui and Julian quickly boarded the carriage after being seen off by those who had been present, before quickly setting out. Just like with Prince Raijun, the carriages immediately took off into the air before heading towards the Town of Vargard at the center of the Kandrian Empire.


    "Incredible technology, don''t you think?" Julian admired the sight outside of the window, steadying himself carefully.


    "Indeed," Rui on the other hand was much more nonchnt. This was hardly novel to a man who had sky-walked countless times since bing a Martial Squire.


    Rui, as always, admired the sheer capability of esoteric technology that produced miracles despite the poor state of the understanding that science had of this world. Yet the speed at which the carriage whizzed through the air did not leave too much time for either of them to admire the view as they would have liked.


    I wasn''t too long until the two of them had arrived at the Town of Vargard.


    Instantly, the air had changed. The Town of Vargard, being the capital of the nation that also housed the Royal Pce and the Royal Emperor was thergest and the wealthiest town in the entirety of the nation, spanning a whopping fifty kilometers in diameter. Content protected by N?v/el(D)rama.Org.


    Not even the Town of Hajin, which was quiterge and wealthy in its own right, couldpare. Just entering the town was such that neither Rui nor Julian looked too out of ce despite their exorbitantly priced custom-tailored attires.


    It was a town with the highest proportion of the upper middle and and upper ss of the Kandrian Empire. The structure that immediately caught their eyes was the reception hall that they would be attending, a glowing marvel of architecture and lighting that gave it an ethereal magnificence.


    "Wee to the Royal Hall," The butler gestured to the entrance. Around them, other guests had also already arrived, flowing into the Royal estate bit by bit, each more dignified than thest.


    "Here goes nothing," Rui remarked as the two of them headed in.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1583 Minister

    <h4>Chapter 1583 Minister</h4>


    They joined the flowing stream of guests that walked across the Royal Estate heading down the path to the Royal Hall. Rui''s senses washed across the people walking in. Interestingly enough, only a small minority of guests were Martial Artists, the remaining were civilians.


    Close to half of them were apanied by bodyguards from the Kandrian Security Force, ranging from normal human bodyguards all the way to Martial Senior bodyguards. This was telling as the Kandrian Security Force was tasked with the duty of protecting important governmental officials.


    Julian was not qualified to have one even as the deputy director of a division within the Ministry of Research and Development.


    Those weren''t the only security measures in ce, he saw many armed figures patrolling the borders. They possessed strange artifacts in their hands that even exuded a little bit of a threat to Rui''s instincts.


    Whatever they were, they were powerful. Princess Raemina seemed much less reliant on the power of Martial Artpared to some of the other princes and princesses.


    Still, as Rui sensed around the moving crowd, it became increasingly clear that Princess Raemina had managed to gain much interest from the executive government. He found that to be rather disappointing, but he had already prepared himself for poprity for hermunist philosophy ever since he learned about her being one of the seven prime candidates for the throne.


    "Wee to the Royal Hall," A set of maids and butlers chanted and bowed in harmony, weing them in.


    The Royal Hall was incredibly wide and spacious, amodating many people in it. Inside were a number of Martial Masters that secured the safety of the Royal Hall. This was still a rather strange sight for Rui who had gotten used to Martial Masters being infrequent and few during his time away.


    Here in the Kandrian Empire, Martial Masters were far moremon and were much less significant. For an event as important as this with as many important guests as there were here, it was fitting that Martial Masters were deployed to ensure the safety of all the guests. Trying to get past them was going to be extraordinarily difficult.


    "Ah, we''re d that you could make it, Doctor Quarrier, Senior Quarrier," A familiar measured voice called out to them.


    The two of them recognized the voice of Marin Vilmentine, an important executive in the Raemina Administration and Foundation.


    "We''re pleased to be here, Miss Vilmentine," Rui smiled courteously. "Might I add that that dress suits you quite well?"


    Rui had read a book on formal etiquette in the upper echelons of society. Apparently,plimenting the aesthetics of women in such events was customary etiquette. While etiquette was something that he didn''t care about, he was grateful this time because he had no idea how he ought to act in such an event.


    "Thank you," She smiled at his words. "Her Highness will be soon here once all the guests have arrived. Please do make yourselvesfortable until then. I''m sure there are many people who are eager to speak to you."


    She was not kidding. Rui could feel the attention of many of the guests. Perhaps it was because of his eye-drawing facial features that allowed them to recognize him quite quickly.


    "Look, is that¡­?"


    "It''s Rui Quarrier¡­"


    "So that''s the youngest¡­"


    He could hear whispers and murmurs quite clearly, but he knew he was expected to ignore them. N?velDrama.Org content.


    Despite the many people that had taken notice, very few were willing to approach him.


    "I have heard much about you, Senior Quarrier," A strong voice remarked. "You cannot imagine how much I''ve looked forward to meeting you since your return to the Kandrian Empire."


    The murmurs in the hall died down as Rui turned around facing a man with a heavy presence that demanded attention.


    Rui grew more intrigued as he experienced a bit of pressure from the otherwise normal human. It was different from the peril that Martial Masters possessed, it was a fainter pressure, yet it helped him understand that whoever this man was, he was not ordinary.


    "It''s a pleasure to meet you, Mr¡­"


    "Ah, how careless of me," His tone grew mildly regretful. "I haven''t introduced myself. I am Varay Nerman, the Minister of Martial Art."


    Rui''s eyes widened as he understood the significance of the man standing before him. This was the head of the Ministry of Martial Art of the executive government, a man chosen by the Royal Emperor himself.


    Of course, Rui should have already understood the significance of the man''s identity based on the high-grade Martial Seniors that stood behind him. The man carried an air and bearing of confidence and elitepetence.


    "It''s a pleasure to meet the Martial Minister, it is thanks to thepetence of leaders within the Martial Art sector like yourself that the Kandrian Empire remains a powerhouse across the Panama Continent," Rui shook hands with the man, smiling modestly.


    "The pleasure is all mine, I assure you," The minister graciously replied with a rich voice. "As for impact, I wager that you have contributed more to Martial Art than I have, Senior Quarrier, would you not agree?"


    The man gave Rui a knowing nce.


    Immediately, Rui knew that this man was aware of the Hungry Pain technique. He wasn''t even surprised. He did recall what Headmaster Aronian told him about the Hungry Pain technique being leased to the Executive Government and the Royal Army. The Martial Union obtained great mary remuneration and other benefits from the government and the army in return for servicing them with the Hungry Pain technique, without actually ever divulging the technique of course.


    Thus, there was no doubt that the Ministry of Martial Art was well aware that the Martial Union had made a massive breakthrough in regard to the Squire evolution breakthrough. There was also no doubt that the Ministry had done its best to crack the secrets of the breakthrough technique but ultimately had failed.


    The Martial Union had done its absolutely damndest to ensure that nobody learned anything about the Hungry Pain technique. When an organization as powerful as the union went all out in securing an objective, there were few things that stood in the way.


    In other words, the man before Rui was negatively affected by Rui''s contribution.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1584 Merger

    <h4>Chapter 1584 Merger</h4>


    The well-groomed man had purposely uttered those words to convey all of that to Rui without actually saying it.


    "Rx Senior Quarrier," He smiled. "While it is true that our paths have indirectly crossed in, perhaps, not the most ideal circumstances, it is also true that I have a great amount of respect and admiration for you. Our ministry had predicted that it would at least take another two generations for a Martial Squire to break the record for the youngest breakthrough to the Senior Realm. Your very existence defies our predictions, pleasantly of course."


    His smile deepened, gaining a hint of smugness. "You can rest assured that I most certainly will raise my head particrly high during the next convention in the Panamic Martial Federation."


    Rui was surprised, he expected a much colder approach from the man. "I am d to have been of service," Rui carefully said. He couldn''t hint at the existence of the Hungry Pain technique in such an environment. "As members of the Martial Art sector, we have an obligation to contribute to the welfare of Martial Art. I was merely doing my part."


    "You have done more than you can imagine, Senior Quarrier," The Minister''s tone was rich with graciousness. "It is truly fascinating how one Martial Senior is able to develop as many powerful and revolutionary techniques as frequently and easily as you are able to. It is no wonder that the many Martial Sects that extend to my ministry have mourned your stance regarding Martial Sects quite clear."


    Rui''s eyes lit up with surprise. "I was not aware that the Martial Sects of the empire extend to the Ministry of Martial Art."


    "Why would they not?" The Martial Minister slowly began walking towards the nearest balcony. "Martial Sects fundamentally strive for the development and growth of their respective fields through any feasible measure. The Martial Union has its own budget for growth and development, and so does the Ministry of Martial Art. In fact, the Ministry has an evenrger budget for Martial Art as far as the pure mary amount goes. Regrettably, we are still not as effective at the growth of Martial Art as the Martial Union. Nheless, the Martial Sects stillpete over the annual fiscal budget allocation as they do in the Martial Union."


    "I see," Rui murmured. "It is a shame too," The Minister heaved a sigh. "If one were tobine the mary funding from the mind-boggling astronomical wealth of the Royal Treasury with the sheer effectiveness and efficiency of the Martial Union''s application that yields much higher return-on-investments, the Kandrian Empire would truly rise among the other powerhouses Sage-level nations, barring the Britannian Empire of course."


    Rui narrowed his eyes as he caught onto the political inclination of the Minister of Martial Art. "Pardon me if this question is wrong or intrusive, Minister, but are you a proponent of the Merger Movement?"


    The Merger Faction had been introduced to Rui many years ago by Senior Colonel Geringar. It was a political faction that advocated for the merging of the tworgest power blocs in the Kandrian Empire, the government and the Martial Union. The reason was simr to the Martial Supremacist faction''s, but it did not believe in simply handing the reigns to the entire nation to the Martial Union. Rather it believed in a carefully integrated system with many checks and bnces within the new hybrid ruling entity. This is property ? of N?velDrama.Org.


    "How sharp of you, Senior Quarrier," The Minister of Martial Art smiled with a strange mystique. "You are correct, I am indeed a Merger. The Kandrian Empire has entered a historic period of time where a chance to change everything has appeared. Thus I, too, am rather eager to make full use of this opportunity."


    "By joining the Raemina Faction?" Rui raised an eyebrow with skepticism. "Of the seven princes and princesses, Her Highness is the only one whose policies are most amenable to the Merger Faction," The Minister defended himself from the implicit usation. "As the Minister of Martial Art, I am able to make a small but meaningful difference in the oue of this cold war, as are you."


    The two of them had already ended up in an isted balcony. Rui noted the anti-sensory field that prevented their conversation from being leaked to others. Considering that their conversation thus far has been quite light, Rui could infer that the minister had yet to actually get to what he approached Rui for.


    "I first took note of you long ago when you reached the finals of the Kandrian Martial Contest. I had known you were special at first nce." The Minister remarked. "Back then, a Martial Master had informed you of the inhuman vigor of your mind as well as signs of a nascent Martial Mind prototype. It is extremely rare for a Martial Artist to have developed the power of thought at such a young age and developed it to an extent that far exceeded the power of the body. Back then, I had marked you as one of the young growing talents to keep an eye out for."


    He turned to Rui with piercing eyes. "My judgment was urate, it was validated when you won us the final war of the Serevian Dungeon Wars, and then went on to kill a Martial Squire as a Martial Apprentice. We had already developed an extensive profile on the potency of your Martial Art."


    He turned back, ncing at the town of Vargard stretching out in the distance. "It was a shame that the Martial Union refused to take greater initiative to actively help you develop your Martial Art and Martial Path. It is their policy that younger ones should be allowed to forge their own path if they wish to. Had I been able to, I would have made an effort to help you grow and to spread your Martial Art. I wasn''t able to then, but since you''ve matured remarkably since then, the Martial Union will no longer interfere."


    He turned to Rui, arriving at the crux of the reason he approached. "As the Minister of Martial Art, allow me to aid you in the creation of your own Martial Sect."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1585 Creating Affinity

    <h4>Chapter 1585 Creating Affinity</h4>


    Rui stared at him, meeting his intense piercing eyes. The weight and the presence that this manmanded pushed down on the air, making it grow taut.


    "You''re the third person to have said something along those lines in the past week," Rui replied, turning forward, and gazing into the distance. "I am not unfamiliar with the reasons behind it, but I find it curious that important and powerful people have been interested in a Martial Sect centered around adaptive evolution."


    "Your Martial Art is more important than you profess," The Minister replied. "If we are able to spread even elements of it across the Kandrian Empire and Martial Art as a whole, we can empower Martial Art in ways you would not have imagined impossible."


    "Well, if I wouldn''t have imagined it possible, then I wouldn''t have reason to support it, would I?" Rui replied pedantically.


    "Hear me out, young man," The Minister grew more serious. "We have reason to believe that your Martial Art can improve the probability of the breakthrough to the Master Realm in the future."


    Rui narrowed his eyes, turning to the minister silently. He had already deduced the reason for this belief from just the man''s words alone. This is property ? of N?velDrama.Org.


    Still, he wasn''t inclined to be cooperative over a matter that he had no personal interest in.


    "This is a consensus that Chamber of Masters and I havee to agree upon," The man remarked. "The state of Martial Art is such that Martial Seniors struggle to break through to the Master Realm because the potential of thought is a power that is not only alien to most of them but even opposite to the potential of the body in many ways. The affinities of Martial Artists are more often than not nted overwhelmingly towards the body than the mind. There are very few truly defiant exceptions."


    He turned to Rui. "Exceptions like yourself. We believe that we can improve the rate of breakthroughs to the Master Realm eventually if we spread diluted elements of your Martial Art in the lower Realms with a lowered barrier of entry. Doing this will increase the familiarity and affinity of Martial Artists for the Master Realm, allowing them to break through with much less difficulty."


    "Is the breakthrough to the Master Realm that much harder than the breakthrough prior?" Rui wondered. "Most certainly," The Minister confirmed. "It is the most difficult breakthrough barring that of the Transcendent Realm."


    Rui grew interested and apprehensive by what he heard. Master Reina had already informed that his breakthrough to the Master Realm was going to be particrly difficult due to how powerful his mind and thoughts were.


    It wasn''t going to be easy, but the gains were going to be extremely worth it.


    "So if I''m to understand you correctly¡­" Rui began. "You wish to familiarize Martial Artists with the power of thought by spreading diluted and simplified elements of my Martial Art, to increase their affinity for thought and make the process of breaking through to the Master Realm easier?"


    "Precisely," The Minister remarked. "We were first alerted to the possibility of this n when Master Deriol Ceeran broke through to the Master Realmst year. He had informed us that you had imparted to the Ranger Sect a technique that harnessed the power of thought that was unlike anything he had ever seen in his entire life. He told us about how you helped him master what was otherwise impossible for him. After you left, he worked on it, adapting it to his needs, imbuing it with his individuality, and eventually forming the rest of his Martial Mind atop it and broke through to the Master Realm inbat."


    Rui''s eyes widened.


    No wonder Master Ceeran had been particrly driven to see Rui again!


    The Pathfinder technique that he had given the man had been of extraordinary help to him, allowing him to actually worm his way to the Master Realm when he had been struggling previously.


    "Naturally, we conducted our investigations on you, examining past data, and found his already credible im to be supported based on our profile on you. Since then, the idea to spread elements of your Martial Art has gained a decent amount of support."


    "No wonder¡­" Rui murmured. It had been a little over a week since he returned, yet the Martial Union had already expressed a lot of very unusual interest in his Martial Art and particrly the idea of creating his own Sect.


    He recalled when Master Iskan randomly brought up the idea of creating his own sect after his presentation ended. In hindsight, that was not spontaneous at all. That was most likely an intended suggestion from the Fire Sect that he represented. The Surgeon too had been quite supportive of him forming his own Sect despite him being merely a Martial Senior. He even went as far as to offer to raise a motion to allow Rui to be a voting constituent in the annual fiscal budget allocation meeting.


    Everything clicked into ce with the revtion that the Minister revealed to him.


    Rui breathed deeply as he nced back at the Minister of Martial Art who faced Rui head-on in his proposal. "So the idea is that you''ll aid me in the creation of my own sect to secure more resources for the spreading of my Martial Art?"


    "Precisely so."


    "And what exactly do I get for all of thisbor?" Rui raised an eyebrow. "I assure you that I alone am the only one who is capable of creating the diluted and simplified elements of my Martial Art that you intend to spread. What do I gain from all this effort? It may be for the good of Martial Art, but as you are aware, I have already done more than my fair share of doing for Martial Art."


    He implicitly reminded the Minister of the Hungry Pain technique. There was a limit to Rui''s generosity, as far as he was concerned, they should be grateful for the fact that he went out of his way to submit the Hungry Pain technique to them.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1586 Impaired Foresight

    <h4>Chapter 1586 Impaired Foresight</h4>


    "Well, for one, there are benefits to the very act of spreading your Martial Art," The Martial Minister informed Rui. "There is a reason that all these Martial Masters and Martial Sages create sects."


    "Yes, I''m aware," Rui heaved a sigh, not pleased to go through this conversation. "They are able to gain inspiration and insights from the gains made by other Martial Artists making use of their field, allowing them to break past bottlenecks. But I have broken through to the Senior Realm even before I entered my physical prime. My actual prime age is going tost for a long time, my rate of growth is not slowing down any time soon."


    The Minister of Martial Art heaved a soft sigh. "Your statements betray your outlook of the future, I''m afraid. It is true that your prime willst abnormally longpared to all Martial Artists in the past and present due to your prodigious speed at reaching the Senior Realm. However, you are still thinking with the psychology of a human."


    Rui narrowed his eyes at those words.


    "Of course, I am not admonishing you. In fact, it is expected. Most Martial Artists don''t fully grasp the consequences of breaking through to the Squire Realm. Although their lifespan increases, their psychology does not instantly change to suit that, for obvious reasons," The Minister of Martial Art exined.


    It made sense when Rui actually thought about it. It was not possible for a person''s psychology to change drastically without extraordinary experiences. And while the Squire evolution breakthrough was certainly extraordinarily painful, it did not alter their outlook of the future on a subconscious level.


    After all, they had lived with a psychology cultivated by living a certain lifespan their entire life. Changing something that had been shaped a certain way their entire life was extremely difficult.


    "In your particr case, your absurdly rapid growth has yed a part in making you short-sighted regarding the rest of your life. Tell me, how many times have you considered the next three centuries of life? And I mean truly having sat down, and pondered how you are going to spend those three lifetimes back-to-back?" The Martial Minister pushed on, sensing an opening. "I say this with the best of wishes and regards for your wonderful homely family, but you will far outlive them. There wille a day when all of them are dead and you will only look and physically feel like you''re in your early or mid-thirties. Have you wondered what you will do then, what life would be like then?"


    Unfortunately, for Rui, that question cut deep.


    He was right, almostpletely right. Rui knew it, too.


    Subconsciously, he avoided thinking about these questions even though they popped into his head every once in a while ever since he learned that Martial Artists live longer. The prospects of living for centuries were, as much as Rui would never admit it out loud, a little scary.


    It was true that his only vision of the future was limited to the next fifty years at most.


    "Yet one day, you too will exit your prime and slow down in regards to your rate of growth. This is the very nature of human growth and aging. You will also one day hit a bottleneck due to teaued growth and an ever-so-slowly declining condition. It will be toote to start that day, Senior Quarrier. This is a long-


    term investment, it will bear fruits years or even decades after you begin," The Martial Minister gently exined. "The day you do hit a bottleneck and doe to need it, you may very well curse your younger self for not having taken this measure."


    That was a bold statement to make, it could even be viewed as inappropriate, and discourteous, but the Martial Minister had correctly identified that Rui didn''t care much about courtesy. Content protected by N?v/el(D)rama.Org.


    His words held truth, and that was enough for Rui to consider them very seriously.


    "Besides, once you create a handful of foundational basic and simplified techniques from an element of your Martial Art, a good portion of your work is already done," The Minister of Martial Art told him. "Although it most certainly will not be easy, we will provide you with the necessary capital to win over constituents of the fiscal budget allocation meeting to allow you to partake in it. Once that''s done, you will simply need to partake in the meeting, lobby, and secure as much of a budget for spreading your Martial Art as you can, the Martial Union will do the rest."


    Rui turned, ncing at the man. "You said that there was support for spreading my Martial Art, correct? Why would I need to lobby for a budget if both the Martial Union and the Ministry of Martial Art believe that my Martial Art ought to be spread?"


    "The reason for that is that while the others may see merit in spreading elements of your Martial Art, they will still fight to secure as much of the annual budget for their Martial Art when the timees. Nobody will look out for you, you will have to fight for yourself."


    "So they agree that my Martial Art ought to be spread, but none of them will actually do anything about it and instead will selfishly fight for resources themselves when the timees?" Rui furrowed his eyebrows.


    "Correct," The man noted, having a sigh. "Martial Artists are only human. In fact, it can be said that they are the most human of all. Martial Artists areprised of the top one percent of most driven and desiring humans in this world. Greed for power is an absolute given and it normally overwhelms any other consideration."


    Rui turned away from him. "The most human of all eh?"


    He didn''t take offense at that. In a sense, he could even concur with it. Martial Artists were indeed more human in their worldly vices than normal humans were.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1587 Refusal

    <h4>Chapter 1587 Refusal</h4>


    "Are there any other benefits?" Rui asked.


    "The Ministry of Martial Art and the Martial Union have nearly everything that a Martial Artist could possibly need and want," The Minister replied. "You will be rewarded for your contributions, of course, and we will be flexible with you."


    "¡­" Rui stroked his smooth-shaven chin. It was true that he had something he could use. "Would it be possible to get all the research material that the Ministry of Research and Development has on Primordial Seed?" Rui asked inquisitively.


    The Minister adopted a perplexed expression. "That is rather an unexpected request. It requires a different ministry than the one that I head willplicate it a bit, but yes, we could theoretically procure the substances for you. Is that your demand?"


    "¡­We''ll see," Rui heaved a sigh.


    Although it was true that he wanted to harness the power of the Primordial Seed, unfortunately, there were much greater priorities at the moment. The path to the Master Realm was harder for him than it was for perhaps anybody else. He didn''t have the luxury to focus on anything else except that. On top of that, his foundations were alreadycking significantly, he did want topensate for them and bring them up to speed so that he wasn''t so abysmally outssed in raw physical parameters.


    "I haven''t made my decision yet," Rui heaved a sigh. "I''ll get back to you on this."


    "Of course, feel free to contact me," The man smiled, handing over a card to Rui. "Take your time thinking it over. For now, we must return to the reception, for Her Highness has arrived.


    Rui nced back as his senses picked up on the arrival of a figure that parted the entire crowd with her presence.


    With long flowing golden hair and eyes, she seemed to possess an ethereal yet inhuman beauty. She wore a single elegant white gown dress thatplimented her aesthetics. Yet looking at her only made him feel unsafe. Her eyes were widened and her smile felt fixed. It gave him the impression of an element of inhuman vtility that he didn''t want to be anywhere near. Compared to Prince Raijun, he didn''t have a good first impression of her.


    She slowly waded through the crowd, meeting and greeting her various guests as they flocked to her. They all bowed in deference to the kin of the Royal Family and the Minister of Finance before she engaged them in a short conversation with a soft voice that tickled the ears.


    It wasn''t long before she ran into Rui and Julian, who had reunited after he bade the Minister farewell.


    "My¡­if it isn''t the two prodigious geniuses from the Quarrier Orphanage," She smiled at them with a voice that had the soft tingle of a small ringing bell. "Your Highness," Both Rui and Julian bowed deeply. "It is an honor to meet you."


    "Raise your heads," She spoke with a gentle yet unmistakablymanding tone, gazing deeply into their eyes. "I am pleased by your presence."


    "We are honored by the invitation, Your Highness," Rui smiled perfunctorily.


    She turned towards him gazing deeply into his eyes with firm interest. "Senior Quarrier. I was intrigued by the word of the return of the infamous Voider as the youngest Martial Senior in history. Your contributions to the trade influx in the Kandrian Empire during the debacle of the Shionel Dungeon have risen above even many Martial Masters. I have personally witnessed the impact that you have had on the powerful economy of the Kandrian Empire as Minister of Finance. You are a model Martial Artist, one that all others should aspire to be."


    "You honor and tter me, Your Highness," Rui replied, maintaining a perfunctory smile. "I have merely done my best and aided this great Empire to the best of my abilities." N?velDrama.Org holds this content.


    "Indeed, that is so," She remarked, never once breaking eye contact or blinking. "I believe my executive has conveyed my interest in your ability andpetence, as well as your extraordinary intellect and remarkable knowledge, not to mention your highly optimistic potential. I truly do believe that earning your support is worth any price within reason. Tell me, what is it you desire? Wealth? Authority? Prestige and glory? Territory? Resources? Women? Ah¡­"


    Her smile deepened. "¡­I believe that you are devoted to your family, is that correct?"


    Rui felt chills crawling up his spine at the mere mention of his family. He wished she would never evoke them ever, it sounded like a threat through and through no matter what she said.


    "I can provide them with luxury unlike anything that they have ever known or seen in their life," She smiled. "I can open up a whole new world for them and you if you stand by my side."


    The crucial moment had arrived.


    Rui bowed again once more. "Your Highness, you deeply honor me with your offer. That is why it regrets me to refuse your offer. While I deeply appreciate the esteem that you have credited me with, I cannot join your faction."


    He remained bowing, waiting for her response.


    "I see¡­" Her voice rang softly in his ears. "So that is your response to my invitation."


    Rui felt a faint pressure mounting up on him.


    For a moment, he felt the urge to kill her right then and there. Of course, he was aware of the absurdity of that urge, the Martial Master bodyguards behind were not for show.


    "If that is the decision you''ve made¡­" She smiled. "Then I respect it. Your decisiveness is impressive. It is unfortunate that I was not able to earn the allegiance of the most prodigious Martial Senior in history, but s."


    She nced down at Rui. "You may raise your head, of course, it appears that my brother has gained a fine teacher."


    Rui rose, smiling. "I am undeserving of your graciousness, Your Highness."


    She turned to Julian. "And what about you, doctor? Have youe to a decision regarding my offer?"


    "I have decided to ept it, if you''ll have me, Your Highness," Julian smiled.


    "Ah, I am pleased to hear that indeed. Marin will induct you into my Foundation and brief you on everything else," Princess Raemina smiled.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1588 Dance

    <h4>Chapter 1588 Dance</h4>


    She quickly moved on from them to the other guests, engaging them in conversations one by one. Rui was grateful that she didn''t fixate on him too much, gracefully epting his refusal and moving on.


    She purposefully mentioned the fact that he had epted being Prince Ruijan''s tutor. It appeared that word had indeed spread, and it did impact how others looked at him. He heaved a sigh, relieved that he had gotten past this part without any issue.


    Prince Ruijan had been correct to a certain extent, the other princes and princesses who weren''t strictly associated with Martial Art in any way were not willing to go nearly as far as to change his mind and have him in their faction.


    It was true that Prince Ruijan had tried much harder when he spoke to Rui.


    "Now then¡­" He heaved a sigh. "I suppose I can just enjoy the rest of this reception without any trouble."


    Yet he was wrong.


    It wasn''t long before an orchestra began ying music. Couples began dancing together center stage while asked each other out to dance.


    Time slowed down in Rui''s vision as he sensed the gaze of manydiesing his direction. His mind shed through his Mind Pce as he recalled a rule from the etiquette book that he had read.


    It was considered highly rude for a man to refuse an offer to dance from ady. ''Damn¡­'' He cursed. ''I don''t know how to dance.''


    He quickly analyzed the movements of the couples that were dancing, memorizing them quickly.


    By the time, the firstdy walked over towards him, he had just barely managed to memorize the routine.


    "Senior Quarrier, I am the Varnika Nerman, the daughter of the Minister of Martial Art," She smiled at him, performing a brief curtsy. "Would you care to join me for a dance?"


    Her petite hand reached out to him.


    She appeared to be in her mid-twenties, a few years younger than him. Rui instantly understood that this particr offer was also a gesture of friendship from the Minister of Martial Art rather than purely personal interest from the young woman.


    "Why certainly, miss Varnika," Rui smiled, epting her hand as he ignored the amused smile from Julian.


    He managed to perfectly mimic the movements of the dance, carefully sashaying with the woman. "You dance well for your first time, Senior Quarrier," She lightlymented. "Was it that obvious?"


    "Not at all, actually. Your movements are perfect, but your unfamiliarity and difort are quite visible," Shemented as she pulled closer to him and their hips met. "It is an honor to make the acquaintance of the youngest Martial Senior in history."


    "You tter me with those undeserving words, mydy."


    Her expression grew disapproving. "You are far too humble, Senior Quarrier."


    "Not at a-"


    "Pardon me, but I was notplimenting your modesty," She cut him off, much to his surprise. "For someone of your power, talent, stature, potential, and value¡­you are far too humble. People in this world should know their ce, and it appears that you don''t know yours."


    Rui''s eyes lit up in surprise as she boldly told him to know his ce right to his face. It was actually refreshing, but it contradicted the rules of etiquette book that he memorized in an effort to not do anything that could be construed as an intentional offense.


    "You maye from a humble background, but your current status in our great empire is far greater than that. You ought to have an ego that matches your current power and status," She directly told him. "Yet you still act like you are an ordinary unremarkable Martial Artist. Your attitude reflects ack of value for your power. Your humility is an insult to your power Anybody else in your position would have an ego that befits your current power and value because they would understand just how superior they are to plebeians."


    Rui had never ever heard of such a personal philosophy in his entire life or lives. Not being egotistical about one''s power was an insult to it? It was almost iprehensible. He wasn''t even sure how to dissect that, especially when he needed to maintain a perfunctory smile while also calcting his next movements for the dance since he had no muscle memory for it.


    "Humility is an insult to power, you say?" Rui raised an eyebrow. This is property ? of N?velDrama.Org.


    "Indeed. Power affords you an ego. Not making use of power is not only an insult, it is evil. You are strong yet you live out your day like you aren''t, that is the greatest insult to power," She firmly told him. "It is also an insult to everybody who desires and needs power. It is no different from emptying water into a drain in front of a thirsty person."


    Iprehensible, but also fascinating. It was fascinating that there were people who genuinely believed such things. "So what would you have me do? How would you have me act and live?"


    "For one, you can straighten your back more. You can pump your chest more, and raise your chin. Your current physical demeanor is more fit for a Martial Squire than it is for someone of your stature," She informed him. "Socially, you need to act your power out more. You must not tolerate disrespect from other men, you must be more willing to employ your power to take women of lower status than you as you pl-"


    "Ok, that''s enough," Rui felt a headacheing on.


    Was this how people in high society thought? That power alone allowed anybody to act anyway and get away with anything?


    That was wrong. Rui did not think it was appropriate to allow such a thing to happen. He didn''t care who or why, but abuse of others simply because of the ability to was highly inappropriate. When he studied her expression, he could see that she truly believed every word she uttered.


    It only strengthened his conviction to stay away from this ss of society, he had no interest in mingling with.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1589 Invitation

    <h4>Chapter 1589 Invitation</h4>


    Much to his gratitude, the rest of the event went rather smoothly. It wasn''t too long before it ended and both Rui and Julian found themselves on a carriage back home.


    Julian heaved a tired sigh. "That was more tiring than I had expected."


    Rui nodded absentmindedly. He had much to think about.


    The first was the offer that the Minister of Martial Art had offered him. The Minister had not made thepensation that he would get from them entirely clear, but it was also clear that they were willing to go quite far for this particr request.


    In essence, it had the potential to make the same impact as the Hungry Pain technique did on Martial Art. Increasing the sess rate of the breakthrough to the Master Realm was a huge deal.


    He was in a position that very few Martial Artists in history found themselves to be in. There were not that many Martial Artists whose Martial Paths were so individualistic and powerful that they could be universalized to leave a mark across all of Martial Art.


    Their names were forever remembered in Martial Art.


    The first breathing-oriented Martial Artist changed Martial Art forever. Today, breathing techniques have be one of the most foundational techniques and aspects of techniques. Entirely new fields were born purely because breathing techniques made them possible.


    Rui''s Martial Path had the potential to make the same impact on Martial Art.


    The Minister of Martial Art had made a convincing argument for why Rui too should be concerned with spreading his Martial Art. It would be toote to begin after he ran into a bottleneck, toote for immediate results, but by making this investment today, he could ensure he had a ready supply of inspiration and insight based on the progress with adaptive evolution that other Martial Artists made over longer periods of time.


    Rui knew the despair of bottlenecks better than anybody. In his previous life, he had died being unable to break through a bottleneck in his research into increasing the viability of the VOID algorithm. He had desperately tried everything he could,promising his health in the process of trying to make progress, before ultimately failing and dying.


    He did not ever want to experience anything like that in his entire life. It was easily one of the worst experiences that he had ever had.


    If he could resolve it with some humble effort early on in his life then he could understand the merits of doing so.


    He had initially been quite against creating a sect, partly because he had grown intoxicated by the endless growth and progress that he had made since bing a Martial Artist. It had been nearly fifteen years since he had discovered his Martial Path, and since then he had been on a non-stop roll of growing stronger and growing stronger faster as time passed.


    Perhaps that was why an illusion of being unstoppable had subconsciously taken root in his mind.


    It was fine to be confident, what wasn''t nearly alright was being arrogant.


    Still, he wasn''t sure about themitment and whether he would be able to keep it up. He was unable toe to a decision then and there.


    BZZT BZZT!


    Hismunication device vibrated, drawing his attention before he opened it up.


    His eyes lit up as he found a message from Master Ceeran, sending him an invitation to a Martial training center for the next day.


    He recalled that it had been Master Ceeran who had informed the Martial Union and the Ministry of Martial Art about how well Rui''s Martial Art had harnessed the power of thought and how even a chunk of it had been enough to serve as the foundation of Master Ceeran''s Martial Mind.


    "Hm, it''s worth hearing about his experiences to the Master Realm,"


    Especially given that he was going through the same journey himself at the moment.


    And so he did.


    Julina and Rui returned home, mentally exhausted before going to sleep immediately.


    The next day, Rui immediately headed out after breakfast, setting of at top speed high up in the atmosphere towards the eastern coast of the Kandrian Empire. N?velDrama.Org content.


    Master Ceeran had resided in the town of Farund, a port town on the coast of the country through which much maritime trade and seafare urred. The maritime sector of the Kandrian Empire was quite developed and enriched with trade.


    The reason for this was that the east and west coasts of the Panama Continent were not exactly on opposite sides of the, they were closer through sea than throughnd.


    While seventy percent of the world''s surface was covered in water just like it had been on Earth, a third of all that water was in ind oceans inside the continent, while the remaining two- thirds was in the Great Nam Ocean.


    This meant that there was a tremendous amount of trade that urred through the Great Nam Ocean that connected the Kandrian Empire with the rest of the coasts of the world.


    Many sea routes and trade corridors across the Great Nam Ocean had long been established and funneled an immense amount of trade flux to and from the Kandrian Empire.


    It was precisely for this reason that Princess Ranea, who had earned the political allegiance of the Kandrian Seafare Association and the Ministry of Maritime Affairs, was able topete against the Martial Prince who had earned the support of a hefty chunk of the mighty Martial Union.


    He put such thoughts out of his head when he eventually reached the location that Master Ceeran had given him.


    Much to his surprise, it was a ten thousand-acre plot ofnd withrge expansive target ranges of all kinds. Inside, many Martial Artists from the Lower Realms made use of these various facilities, training their techniques hard.


    "Purpose of visit?" The two Martial Squire guards at the inquired.


    "Invitation," Rui showed them the message he got from Master Ceeran, immediately gaining entry into the expansive facility.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1590 Gratitude

    <h4>Chapter 1590 Gratitude</h4>


    Inside the training center were non-martial Artists who trained out in the open in the ground up-front. Rui was quite surprised to see many adolescent boys and girls and even young adults training their foundations inrge open grounds.


    Martial Apprentice instructors oversaw the training of the various Martial Artists up-front.


    He sharply pieced together clues from the scene before him with everything else in the ce as his eyes lit up with amazement.


    "Rui," A voice called out to him. Master Ceeran slowly stepped down from the air, arriving before him with a rxed smile on his face. "I''m d you came."


    All the people around them paused their work as they bowed deeply, offering the respect that a Martial Master possessed. N?velDrama.Org content.


    "Of course, I would," Rui smiled. "I had been wanting to speak to you anyway. This is ce¡­is it an estate of the Ranger Sect?"


    "Indeed," Master Ceeran confirmed. "The students that you see here are those that failed to make it into the Martial Academy."


    "I figured," Rui nced back at them. "Although they may have not been able to make it into the Martial Academy, that does not mean that they are without merit or potential, is that correct?"


    "That is precisely so," Master Ceeran noted. "We take them into the Ranger Sect and offer them another opportunity to pursue their aspirations to be Martial Artists."


    "I see¡­" Rui murmured. "It is good to know that aspirants who don''t make it into the Martial Academy still have hope. I assume that the premise is that they''ll join the Ranger Sect."


    "They already have," Master Ceeran remarked. "What do you if one of the Martial Paths of those who broke through doesn''t align with the sect?" Rui wondered.


    "We allow them to leave the sect and enter another that is more fitting to their Martial Path, though they don''t need to join another sect if they don''t wish to," Master Ceeran remarked. "They usually do, though. Because they didn''t make it in the Martial Academy, they usually are much behind those of the Academy in their foundation and training."


    "This sounds like the norm among Martial Sects. Do the other sects also let go of newly broken-through Martial Apprentices so that they can join the appropriate sect?" Rui wondered.


    "Of course," Master Ceeran nodded. "There is an unwritten mutual understanding between all sects that new Martial Apprentices must be allowed to go any sect of their choice. Not only is it our duty to guide the young, but it would also be a negative for Martial Art if we prevented them from leaving due to some dark desire to prevent the other sects from growing. We Martial Sects are quitepetitive, but there are lines we absolutely do not cross."


    "I see, it is best if Martial Artists of the nation do not fall to sabotaging each other in such an underhanded manner."


    "Just so," Master Ceeran smiled. "Come, let us head inside. I have much to speak to you with."


    The two Martial Artists disappeared in the eyes of everybody around them, leaving them stunned. They arrived at a spacious building, heading into an office-like space with a wide array of books and scrolls, taking seats opposite each other.


    "Now then," Master Ceeran heaved a sigh. "We can finally converse without distraction. You have no idea how long I''ve been looking forward to this. Let me begin by saying this: I would not be a Martial Master if not for you. The Pathfinder technique that you gave me and helped me master became the foundation for my Martial Mind, allowing me toplete my journey to the Master Realm in a little under a decade from that point on. I do not know just how many decades or even centuries it would have taken me to break through to the Master Realm."


    He smiled warmly at Rui. "So thank you for helping me."


    Rui shook his head. "I didn''t do much. I just helped you master a single technique, I can hardly take credit for your breakthrough to the Master Realm."


    "But it is true that I would not be a Martial Master if it wasn''t for you, regardless of how little you think your role was. That much is undeniable," Master Ceeran pointed out.


    Rui shrugged lightly, epting that bit of credit. "I heard that you proposed that people could benefit from my Martial Art from the Minister of Martial Art."


    "I did," Master Ceeran replied. "It is my earnest opinion that Martial Art can benefit from your Martial Path. Your path harnesses thought in a manner unlike anything I''ve ever seen. Even a fraction of it would bring about a greater bnce between the affinity for body and mind in the world of Martial Art."


    He stared at Rui with a serious expression. "Of course, you don''t have to if you don''t care to. Though there are benefits to doing so."


    "I am very well aware," Rui heaved a sigh. There was a moment of silence.


    "Well, let us put that matter aside for now," Master Ceeran smiled. "I am intrigued to know about your time away from the Kandrian Empire. It isn''t every day that a Martial Squire shatters that record for the youngest breakthrough to the Senior Realm. You must have a fascinating story to tell."


    Rui smiled. "Everybody is always so curious to know. It isn''t that big of a deal, honestly. I just got into a fight with somebody and managed to break through."


    "Hahaha, surely that isn''t all there is to it. The breakthrough to the Senior Realm can only ur when your Martial drive is challenged. And you are driven by ambition, so whoever you fought must have been truly incredible."


    Rui smirked. "That he is. I suppose I can tell you that story."


    The two of them conversed with each other, catching up after a long time. They had built a bond of friendship while they were on Vilun Ind together all those years ago, thus there wasn''t much of a gap despite all the years apart.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1591 Sect Matters

    <h4>Chapter 1591 Sect Matters</h4>


    "¡­What a fascinating story," Senior Ceeran marveled. "To have simultaneously broken through against a Martial Artist with a Martial Path as powerful as yours, that is truly incredible. Historic even."


    Rui shrugged. "Regardless, that was how I broke through to the Senior Realm. I spent several years training under some renowned Martial Masters, and now here I am, returning home after Chairman Deacon mysteriously passed away in arge explosion."


    Master Ceeran smirked at Rui with a knowing look. "Mysterious indeed. Regardless, it is good that you have managed to return home after all this time. It is just a shame that you returned home to a nation of increasing political turmoil."


    The man heaved a sigh. "It has been over a week, but you have already been approached by two of the seven prime princes and princessespeting for the throne. You can be expected to be approached by more, I can assure you that much. None of them are willing to let go of the most prodigious Martial Senior in history. Especially when you have proven your strategic value time and time again."


    Rui nodded, having already been warned of this by Headmaster Aronian. "It''s not easy for me to ignore the political turmoil because of my ability to influence it. It would have been easier to forget about it had I been weak since thinking about it wouldn''t have mattered."


    "But you aren''t weak, not by any reasonable standard," Master Ceeran smiled softly. "While you aren''t the strongest Martial Senior, you are far and away the most strategically valuable. On top of that, therees a certain amount of prestige from having the most prodigious Martial Senior join your political faction."


    Rui nodded, heaving a sigh. "It''s not easy making a choice. It is easy cutting away some options, but deciding has been a little difficult."


    He turned to Senior Ceeran. "May I inquire who it is that the Ranger Sect and you are supporting?"


    "We are throwing our support behind Princess Ranea, the Princess of the Seas," Master Ceeran readily divulged his political affiliation. "Interesting, I would have thought that you would be in favor of Prince Raijun''s hyper-pro-Martial political agendas," Rui remarked, intrigued. "Well, long-range Martial Artists, believe it or not, are most valued in seafare. The reason for this is because any conflicts on sea began an enormous distance away for there is no ce to hide, and every vessel on the seas is seen hours away due to the fundamentally open nature of the sea," Master Ceeran remarked. "I see¡­so the Kandrian Seafare Association and the Ministry of Maritime Affairs each have a personal interest vested in the Ranger Sect," Rui''s eyes lit up with interest.


    "Indeed, we have found that they, along with the Princess of Seas, are far more appreciative of our services than the Martial Prince and even the rest of the Martial Union," Master Ceeran remarked. "We are able to leverage more from them likewise. The princess of Seas is also among the most sane candidates out of all of the seven, thus we are more at ease trusting her with the Empire."


    "That makes sense," Rui noted as his eyes grew deeper in thought. "It wasn''t my intention to bring her up, of course," Master Ceeran remarked. "I don''t intend to try and rally you to the Ranea Faction. You should consider your personal interests deeply with the philosophies and policies of the various princes and princesses and support one that is best for your interests."


    "I am aware of that," Rui nodded. "I have already taken it upon myself to understand everything about them based on reliable sources of information. However, I do still wish to meet most of them personally to gain a more personal understanding of them."


    He turned to Master Ceeran. "Could I request you for an audience with Her Highness?"


    Master Ceeran''s eyes lit up. "Most certainly, I''m sure that Princess Ranea will ept that request."


    "Thanks," Rui nodded. "I would like to get a better understanding of her and what it stands for. That was one of the reasons that I wanted to speak with you. The other being¡­"


    "The matter with your Sect, is it?" Master Ceeran raised an eyebrow. Rui nodded. "Leading a Sect is amittal upation, I presume."


    "You have some misunderstandings of how this is going to work, I''m afraid," Master Ceeran shook his head. "A sect onlyes after there are enough Martial Artists of simr fields gathering around a single cause. At this moment, you are alone, therefore you don''t need to worry about leading a sect for now. That would onlye after you have spread your Martial Art far and wide enough that enough peoplee under a single semi-formal organization like a sect."


    "That makes sense," Rui nodded. "So I should worry about whether I want to in the future?" This is property ? of N?velDrama.Org.


    Master Ceeran nodded. "You are still young, for now, you only need to nt seeds of your Martial Art that will eventually bloom into Martial Artists with Martial Paths adjacent to your own."


    Rui found his words to be quite insightful. "I see, that does indeed make sense. As far as spreading my Martial Art goes¡­"


    "That is a bit moreplicated. Your Martial Art is a dynamic all-rounder Martial Art, and I presume that you do not wish to bias it anyway, correct?"


    Rui nodded. "Biasing it in any one direction necessarily means that I cannot adapt to something well, which is not an eptable sacrifice."


    "In that case, it is best that you spread elements of your Martial Art that are useful to all fields of Martial Art so that your future Martial Sect will also be equally bnced, resulting in funding and budgeting that is equally well-distributed, which in turn, will allow you maintain the bnce in your own Martial Art in the future if and when you do use your future sect as a source of inspiration and insight."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1592 Decision

    <h4>Chapter 1592 Decision</h4>


    Rui found Master Ceeran''s words to be rifying.


    He was not nearly familiar with the nuances of how Martial Sects functioned on a fundamental level.


    "So¡­if I do go ahead with this n, the conditions I will need to fulfill is to create techniques that ensure that Martial Artists of all fields can adopt elements of adaptive evolution."


    "Correct," Master Ceeran nodded. "Once you create a set of such techniques, you need only present them in the annual fiscal budget meeting that will ur in half a year. If they earn the approval of the constituent members, then you will gain some support and will secure yourself a handsome budget that will be used to promote and spread your Martial Path. However, if you don''t care for the little budget politics, then you can spend your own money."


    Rui raised an eyebrow with interest. "I can?"


    "Indeed, you can specify donations to a certain budget allocation and that money will be used for that," Master Ceeran replied, smirking. "It''s actually one of the Martial Union''s most convenient way of making money. We get grants, donations, and fundraisers for different budget allocations every year from each sect. Since the Martial Sects are wealthy, they can contribute to their own fields if they wish to. You, too, can do the same. Especially since you''ve earned arge windfall recently."


    The wealth that Rui had earned from the Martial Union was quite substantial and could be used to kick off the dissemination of his Martial Art. N?velDrama.Org holds this content.


    Still, Rui had some doubts. "Once the initial dissemination of my techniques urs. I won''t have any work to do until many yearster, correct?"


    "Indeed," Master Ceeran nodded. "After all, in order to form a Sect around your Path, you will need to wait for many years enough Martial Apprentices and Martial Squires to have mastered your techniques, and only then you may form a sect centered around them."


    "I see," Rui murmured. "In that case, I suppose it isn''t excessive work. I was really hesitant since I didn''t want to take on unnecessary duties and responsibilities that will frankly just shackle me. But if I don''t have to immediately lead a sect then that will be fine."


    "You don''t have to worry about the leadership of your potential sect in the future either," Master Ceeran remarked. "I am a leader within the Ranger Sect, but I have never spent more than an hour a day on sect-rted matter. The reason for this is because our sect hires managers and executives to handle all the troublesome and mundane paperwork and administrative work. The only things I do are train Martial Artists of the lower Realms asionally when they make contributions in exchange for tutge, and recruit promising Martial Artists."


    He shrugged with a mischievous smirk, earning a nod from Rui.


    There was no need to do everything himself. He could indeed delegate the annoying work to qualified employees. The paycheck wouldn''t even matter with how much he was capable of earning.


    "The decision is yours, but I do believe that you have the power to help a lot of people. You have the power to elevate Martial Art itself, you''ve already done it once. And I believe that you could do many times over if you truly wanted," Master Ceeran exined with a warm smile. "Of coure, if you wish not to. That''s fine as well. The Martial Union has never forced Martial Artists to divulge their techniques. We do not ever need to either, especially since we are able to incentivize them to divulge their secrets."


    Rui nodded. He believed that this was the case to a certain extent, although he would never reveal the fact that he could trigger the breakthroughs to the Senior and Apprentice Realm.


    Regardless, he increasingly made up his mind on the matter regarding his sect and spreading his Martial Art.


    While there was certainly some effort that he needed to go through; creating diluted and simplified techniques with elements of his Martial Path, and participating in a lofty annual fiscal budget allocation meeting to lobby for his Martial Path, it was not something that required sustained effort. He needed to tend to it once, and then wait for Martial Artists with elements of adaptive evolution to start popping up all over the ce.


    And then, and only then, could he reap the rewards should he ever run into a bottleneck where he needed insight and inspiration from those who adopted Martial Art with dominant adaptive evolution elements to show him something that he hadn''t seen before.


    Of course, there also was the remuneration from the Martial Union and the Ministry of Martial Art for contributing to a future with a greater number of Martial Masters.


    He could empower himself, the Kandrian Empire, the Martial Union, and the world of Martial Art with this measure. It was a win-win-win.


    As a Martial Artist, he did not want to live in a world where the age of Martial Art ended because technology outgrew it. Although Martial Art was the dominant force, esoteric technology had walked, at most, a few steps behind Martial Art, keeping up with its growth rapidly.


    Rui knew perhaps better than anyone in this wide world what science and technology were capable of even without esoteric substances, let alonebined with the sheer magic of esoteric substances. If the Panama Continent ever gained the titanic information technology of Earth, then not even Rui was confident that Martial Art could keep up.


    The Hungry Pain technique and the spreading of adaptive evolution were things that would protect and secure the future of Martial Art. Doing so would be beneficial to his development as well, since if Martial Art remained the strongest, then fulfilling his ambition as a Martial Artist would be a lot more achievable.


    "So be it, then," A hint of determination entered his voice. "I shall sow the seeds for a Martial Sect centered around adaptive evolution in the future. It shall be known as the Water Sect."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1593 Water

    <h4>Chapter 1593 Water</h4>


    "Why water?" Master Ceeran asked with a curious expression.


    Rui smiled. "There was a wise martial artist once upon a time, he once said: ''Empty your mind, be formless. Shapeless, like water. If you put water into a cup, it bes the cup. You put water into a bottle and it bes the bottle. You put it in a teapot, it bes the teapot. Now, water can flow or it can crash. Be water.''"


    Rui smiled wider as he uttered his favorite quote.


    "I see¡­He must have been quite the Martial Artist," Master Ceeran remarked.


    "He was the best martial artist of his time," Rui replied with admiration.


    "That saying has much inmon with your Martial Art," Master Ceeran gained more interest. N?velDrama.Org content.


    "¡­I probably wouldn''t even be a Martial Artist if I never heard those words," Rui replied.


    "Interesting," Master Ceeran remarked. "I would love to meet him someday, if possible."


    Rui chuckled. "I''m afraid he is not in this world."


    "Ah, that''s a shame. May he rest in peace," Master Ceeran regrettably mentioned. "Still, it is interesting that the root of your Martial Path is so¡­humble."


    "Hm?" Rui raised an eyebrow, turning to Master Ceeran. "Ah, I did not mean to offend you or the Martial Artist you were referring to. I just didn''t expect that your extraordinary and unique Martial Path would be rooted in origins that are, inparison, not nearly as extraordinary and unique."


    "Must a Martial Path be rooted in origins that are only as extraordinary and unique as the Martial Path itself?" Rui raised an eyebrow.


    "Oh, most certainly," Master Ceeran nodded. "There''s no doubt about that. Martial Paths are born from the summation of our mind, body, and self. It is the manifestation of the essence of your being. How can an ordinary person yield an extraordinary Martial Path? How can ordinary life yield an extraordinary Martial Art? They cannot."


    Rui''s eyes lit up with interest. "So the more unique and extraordinary the life experienced, the more powerful a Martial Path?"


    "I''m afraid not," Master Ceeran heaved a sigh. "While all extraordinary Martial Pathse from an extraordinary life, not all extraordinary lives yield extraordinary Martial Paths."


    "Ah, that''s indeed a shame," Rui heaves a sigh.


    "Indeed," The Master solemnly nodded. "The Martial Community of the continent learned this the hard way in the earliest centuries of the Age of Martial Art."


    Rui felt a chill crawl up his spine as he realized what that meant. "¡­What?"


    "Martial Art families whose bloodline had produced powerful Martial Artists put their progeny through all kinds of experiences across long period of time in the hopes of yielding a unique and powerful Martial Path."


    Rui''s expression grew disgusted.


    "One abandoned their child in poor conditions, hoping to collect them when they grew up so that they could have a powerful Martial Path," Master Ceeran remarked. "Others put them through some amount of pain and suffering. If it wasn''t for the rise of the Panamic Martial Federation, we may very well have ground the Age of Martial Ar to a halt then."


    "I''m d it had ended, at least," Rui snorted.


    "Coming back to the point. A Martial Path is as extraordinary and unique as yours emerging from a quote from another Martial Artist is somewhat¡­surprising," He remarked. "I would have expected it to be rooted in something much more fantastical."


    Rui smiled wordlessly. His Martial Path was what it was because he had dedicated his life to it in a previous life. Spending a long, long time on Project Water and the VOID algorithm. It was at the age of fifty-nine that he died and was reborn in a new world.


    A lifetime of research into Project Water was a good way to make Project Water his Martial Path. This was normally impossible for people since by that time they would bias their Martial Path in favor of any particr direction through a lifetime of dedication. By the time they were done, they were already quite old, and bing a Martial Artist was almost absolutely impossible at that age.


    The only way they could seed was if they got to start over in a new body by the time that they were done.


    Rui did. To this day, he didn''t know why or how, but he received a boon that allowed him to crystallize a lifetime of effort into his Martial Path.


    That was the reason his Martial Path was the way that it was. But how was he supposed to exin that the origin of his Martial Path was probably more extraordinary than any existing Martial Path in this world?


    He couldn''t.


    Instead, he shrugged, leaving it at that. Master Ceeran would conclude what he would, of course. The Martial Union had a pretty thorough background check on him, but that was it. They couldn''t possibly know about his life from another world.


    The only person who was aware of the truth was Ieyasu, but he didn''t care, and because nobody knew about his mind-reading ability, nobody would believe him either. The former was not something that he was willing to divulge since it was a strategic secret.


    They had mutual interests in keeping each other''s secret well hidden, thus Rui was hardly worried that he would reveal it. He didn''t care about the way that they would rationalize his Martial Art and try and exin why and how it came to be.


    "So tell me more about Princess Ranea," Rui remarked, at one point. "What is her vision for the Empire? What will the Empire look like when she''s Empress?"


    Master Ceeran smiled. "Well, you''ve already purchased general information on the princes and princesses, so I''m sure that you know the answer to that question."


    "I''m still interested in hearing about the perspective of someone who has undoubtedly met her and spoken to her," Rui remarked. "Tell me your personal opinion of her. You don''t have to try and be objective, and I''m just interested in hearing the truth.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1594 Visionary

    <h4>Chapter 1594 Visionary</h4>


    Master Ceeran eyes wandered about for a few moments as he thoughtfully considered his answer to Rui''s question. "Princess Ranea is a¡­visionary. Her vision for the future is one of prosperity and hope. It is one that I sincerely hope will unfold, even regardless of my vested interests in it as a long-range Martial Artist. She wishes to enrich trade by reducing tariffs and customs on maritime trade and seafare, doing so will weaken the Royal Treasury considering that the sea industry is second only to the Martial Art industry, but it will significantly enrich the economy ording to her. I am not an economist and my understanding of these matters is quite limited, but my personal secretary has informed me that the policies are indeed quite effective."


    He turned towards Rui. "She believes that the Maritime sector is much more fundamentally important to the Kandrian Empire than the Martial Art industry. Naturally, she does not intend to disenfranchise Martial Artists. She has no strong opinions and aside from increasing the Martial Union''s engagement and cooperation with the Kandrian Seafare Association, she does not have any strong views regarding Martial Art aside from the norm."


    "So¡­under her rule, the maritime sector will likely rise to prominence, more prominence than the Martial Union," Rui noted. "Interesting."


    He didn''t strictly mind that. He wasn''t egotistical about the exaggerated status he had as a Martial Artist. If another industry became more prominent than the Martial Art industry, Rui would wee that.


    He didn''t strictly mind that. He wasn''t egotistical about the exaggerated status he had as a Martial Artist. If another industry became more prominent than the Martial Art industry, Rui would wee that.


    "She ns to expand the Kandrian Empire''s shipbuilding capabilities aggressively and has already begun working on that. Building new schools and academies in port towns to educate students in the art of shipbuilding to produce more shipwrights in the long term," Master Ceeran informed Rui. "For the short term, the Ranea Foundation has funded and overseen the development of more harbors and shipyards to facilitate greater maritime activity. She has even announced Project Seate, which aims to create entirely new port towns across certain uninhabited or sparsely-habited regions across the Kandrian Empire''s coast."


    Rui nodded with interest as he recalled that a particr bit of information from the information he purchased from the Beggar''s Sect and the Martial Union. "It''s quite ambitious. But it will drastically increase the Kandrian Empire''s maritime affairs within a remarkably short amount of time after thepletion of the project."


    He didn''t think that she would be on short of funds for such an extravagant project. After all, if he was able to afford the expenses, then a Royal princess certainly ought to be able to afford it as well.


    11:04


    "It serves as a great way of increasing her political capital and ability to persuade the government to crown her Empress in the crowning ceremony," Rui muttered. "Yes, but those aren''t her only measures. She has worked side by side with her biggest patron to establish concrete sea routes and ocean current corridors between Kandrian and all other coastal nations in the world!" Master Ceeran told Rui with enthusiasm.


    Rui''s eyes lit up with surprise. "That''s extremely ambitious. Who is her biggest patron?"


    "Ah it''s someone you should be familiar with, if I''m not mistaken," Master Ceeran remarked. "It is Guildmaster Bradt Patrick of the Shionel Confederation."


    Rui''s eyes widened with surprise. The information he had purchased did not cover their various associations and individual patrons, but he was nheless taken a bit aback.


    ''Ah, but it makes sense,'' Rui realized. "Seafare is an extremely important method of transportation and shipping of goods and services. No wonder the guildmaster has decided to throw his weight behind Princess Ranea. He has probably negotiated an extremely sweet deal with her that allows him to make use of Kandria''s seafare and maritime infrastructure free of cost and free of tariffs or duties in exchange for his support. That will drastically lower Bradt Distribution Service''s cost and price of seafare shipping."


    "Er, something like that, I think," Master Ceeran remarked.


    "He has probably also contributed to their ship technology," Rui remarked. "He undoubtedly has among the best there is to offer as far asmercial and cargo vessels go. As expected of him, he''s a man who knows how to squeeze the best out of any given situation."


    Rui smirked. It was good to see that Guildmaster Bradt was still the excellent merchant that he had known him to be. They hadn''t met since the Virodhabhasa Martial Contest nearly five years ago, but it seemed as though the Guildmaster was constantly monopolizing on one opportunity upon another, using that to grow significantly.


    It was to be expected of him. Furthermore, with Chairman Deacon dead, he no longer needed to worry about the manpeting for the position of guildmaster, although the man''s son had indeed taken over thepany, just his death alone had hurt thepany, causing several partners and associations to break away.


    Guildmaster Bradt got thestugh.


    "Heh, I''m d to see he''s doing well."


    "He has been visiting the Kandrian Empire frequently if you''re wondering," Master Ceeran. "You could probably meet him if you wanted to with your status and prestige."


    Rui shook his head. "We''re not buddies. Our rtionship was strictly and purely business-rted. He did make a bit of an investment in me, but it was nothing by his standards. He''s a strictly business-oriented man, and the conversation would probablyst four minutes before he would excuse himself. If he wants to cash out his favor from me, he knows where to find me, he has undoubtedly heard the news of my return, after all."


    Rui didn''t think he was going to have Rui do anything at the moment. Although Rui was indeed a powerful Martial Senior, Guildmaster Bradt had powerful Seniors, Masters, and now even a Sage, after his contract with Sage Sariawar.


    Knowing him, he was probably waiting for Rui to grow. Best to cash out the favor from him after he became a Martial Master, especially when Rui had demonstrated prodigious growth since then.N?velDrama.Org holds this content.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1595 Submarines

    <h4>Chapter 1595 Submarines</h4>


    The two of them spoke a bit more about the Princess of the Seas. Rui was surprised to learn that not only did she intend to expand the shipbuilding industry, and the seafare through new port towns, but she also intended to build underwater ships!


    "Her Highness calls these artifacts ''submarines'', I hear," Master Ceeran remarked.


    "That''s extremely ambitious!" Rui''s eyes widened with surprise.


    "She has been cooperating with the Panamic Naval Guild to develop the world''s first ''submarine''." Master Ceeran remarked with an intrigued expression. "The details are far beyond me, but Her Highness extremely intelligent so I trust that she''s making the rich choices."


    Rui, on the other, hand was deep in thought.


    Submarines were revolutionary, he knew that this world didn''t have them, but if they did, a lot of things would change. He hadn''t realized that the Kandrian Empire might be the birthce of this new means of seafaring.


    On the other hand, it made sense that the Kandrian Empire would be the ce where it would be born. After all, it was an economic and technological powerhouse. It had the funding, the technology, and the resources to endeavor such a bold ambition and potentially seed.


    "Interesting¡­" Rui murmured. "You were right, she is a visionary."


    He had already garnered a lot of respect for the princess, which was saying something. Inparison to her, Princess Raemina was so unattractive as a prospective ruler that it wasn''t even funny.


    He could understand why the Sea Princess was able topete against her influence as a Minister and push back against the Martial Prince as well. She was looking to be quite an attractive candidate for support. It was a pity that their interests did not align. He had nothing to do with the domain of the seas and the coast, and neither did his family. Her ideals and visions of the future did not do anything for them.


    ''Though not being extreme is also a point in her favor,'' Rui noted. ''Prince Raijun and Raemina are so extreme that a civil war will probably ensue if they get their way,'' Rui noted. ''Perhaps I should consider supporting Princess Ranea. Though I do look forward to meeting her more than ever now.''


    "It''s interesting how she has managed to harness the entire seafare industry as a part of her faction," Master Ceeran remarked. "Part of it is undoubtedly the fact that she is said to have spent more of her life living in the Vargard Royal Manor in this very town, developing a deep affection for this sector of our nation."


    "I see¡­" Rui remarked. "It makes sense then."


    To think that that would have turned out to be the source of her campaign for the throne.


    "You should be prepared," Master Ceeran replied. "Because her vision for the future is not the most favorable for Martial Union, she is the least in need of Martial support. She most likely will not take as much of an effort that Prince Raijun did when he personally invited you to the Royal Manor."


    Rui shrugged. "That''s fine. Prince Raemina didn''t take the greatest amount of effort to try and garner my allegiance, she actually epted my refusal rather quickly."


    "She is arguably the most diametrically opposed to Martial Artists," Master Ceeran snorted. "Just the very notion of the state oppressing us. What a joke!"


    Rui was not inclined to disagree. There was no way she would seed, and even if she seeded, it would be after a bloody civil war that ruined the nation.


    He didn''t understand how she couldn''t see that.


    "I will say, ying this little game is tiring," Master Ceeran heaved a sigh. "It is rather unfortunate that only those of Royal blood can descend the throne. Frankly, there are most likely far more optimal people out there who can do a much better job leading this nation with all of the pros of each prince and princess and none of the cons." N?velDrama.Org content.


    He turned towards Rui. "At the end of the day, these princes and princesses have only ever known luxury their entire life, asides from the Underworld prince perhaps. That makes them fundamentally wed in ways that no amount of even the most extravagant education can possibly correct."


    "If anything, extravagant education would only exacerbate the problem," Rui remarked.


    Master Ceeran nodded. "The Republic of Gorteau is one such nation. Although it has its own weakness, I admire how the poption is able to control who bes the leader of the nation. I hope that some day the Kandrian Empire follows its steps."


    "That could be considered treasonous speech, you know," Rui smirked.


    Master Ceeran snorted. "That bullshit isn''t enough to stop someone of my stature. Or yours, even. We are far too important to this nation to be tried for such a farce. Not even the Emperor would hold me ountable. It''s not worth losing a Martial Master."


    The two of them continued to chat together for a while about a variety of topics. Rui found the man''s stories about his time in the past eight years to be quite interesting, especially the time period after Master Ceeran broke through to the Master Realm.


    "I broke through to the Master a little afterst year''s annual fiscal budget allocation meeting, thus this year''s meeting will actually be my first time as a constituent of the Assembly. I look forward to securing more resources for my sect," Master Ceeran remarked. "I shall vote in favor of instating you as a constituent so you can levy for your Martial Path, of course."


    "I appreciate that," Rui nodded. "However, I have heard that the conditions to actually entering the Assembly are quite stringent. I will have to earn the approval of many Martial Masters in the Martial Union."


    "Ah, don''t worry about that, Rui," Master Ceeran remarked. "I''m sure that you of all people are capable of earning their support to let you enter, especially since you have already earned their respect as the most prodigious Martial Senior in history."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1596 Drive

    <h4>Chapter 1596 Drive</h4>


    "That''s quite the high esteem," Rui remarked. "I''m not sure if I have the ability to earn their approval."


    "Nonsense," Master Ceeran huffed. "You have already earned their approval. The only ones who don''t approve of you are jealous!"


    Rui winced at the man''s strong statements. Rui would never dare to say such a thing, he had far too much respect for every Martial Master. "Rest assured that most Martial Masters are pleased with you just from your contribution of the Hungry Pain technique, you have enriched all future Martial Squires, something that will undoubtedly benefit all Martial Sects, and thus their leaders as well," Master Ceeran smiled. "While you have been rewarded heftily by the Martial Union, there is no doubt that have managed to gain the debt of the Martial Sects as well. When the timees, many of them will honor that debt and approve your nomination as a constituent of the fiscalmittee."


    Rui nodded. "Well, I can only hope that that will be the case."


    "You were rewarded with a hundred hours of time from Martial Masters, I believe," Master Ceeran remarked. "If that is the case, then you can use it not only to gain advice from some of the foremost experts in the field but also build a rtionship with some of them."


    That wasn''t a bad idea. The only thing that he was worried about was that they would realize that and see through him. Perhaps he ought to purely with the intention of guidance with Martial Art, and let himself grow acquainted with them naturally. "That''s good advice."


    "However, your potential has been known for a while now, so I think you won''t even have to do that much. There have been people awaiting your return long before you came back because of the potential of the impact you could make on Martial Art, when you returned as the youngest Martial Senior in history, many of us, myself included, were vindicated," Master Ceeran smirked. "On top of that, you have sent ripples across the Martialmunity of the Kandrian Empire regarding the Hungry Pain technique which has already made a substantial impact. We Martial Masters are not blind to potential, especially when it''s brimming right in front of our eyes. It would be the height of foolishness to ignore it. Thus even with pure self-interest in mind, many will support you."


    Rui nodded silently.


    The two of them conversed for some more time before their conversation finally came to an end. Neither of them had too much free time to squander in idle conversation.


    "I shall inform you of Her Highness'' response, however, I''m sure she would be quite interested in speaking to you," Master Ceeran remarked. "Fare thee well, my young friend."


    Rui had much to think about as he made his way back home after bidding Master Ceeran farewell.


    It hadn''t even been ten days since he returned, yet he already felt like it had been a while since he came home. The memories he had of the time away from home grew more distant. In the ten days that he hade home, he had already gotten dragged away into a bunch of matters and engagements.


    Headmaster Aronian had not been kidding when he said that everybody wanted a piece of the pie that Rui represented. From the Martial Union to the government, to the Martialmunity and sects, to the princes and princesses.


    It was not easy for him to get a break.


    Yet part of it was because he was not willing to take too much of a break. While he didn''t like it, fact of the matter was that he was in circumstances that affected one of his main interests; his family.


    Especially since it grew bigger since he had left it all those years ago. It concerned him because the bigger it was the more liable it was to be affected by the Kandrian Throne War. He didn''t want that to happen.


    So much so that he was willing to do whatever it took to ward off the threat.


    Before he had realized this, his desire to protect his family from the Kandrian Throne War had already reced the drive to protect them from Chairman Deacon. It drove him to pursue more strength and power atop his main drive; the fulfillment of Project Water. He had expected that once he returned to the Kandrian Empire, his drive would cool off a bit due to one of its constituting desires had been fulfilled, he had not expected it to grow stronger.


    Yet here he found himself undertaking long-term measures to prevent stagnation in the distant future. It was not something he would have done had he been more rxed.


    ''Still, long-term measures are good, but I also need to consider my short-term and mid-term growth,'' Rui mused. The Water Sect of the future would not help with the Kandrian Throne War. The war would have long been settled by the time the sect was set up.


    His short-term power and value were what would allow him to influence the Kandrian Throne War in a direction that would be most beneficial to his interests. He had already proven his value, spreading his Martial Art to improve the breakthrough rate to the Master Realm, and also the Hungry Pain technique that could cause huge boosts in power to the Martial Body.


    However, value without the power to defend it was vulnerable. If he did not want to be toyed with by various forces that sought his power, then he would have to deter them with his power.


    Rui knew that the fact that he was a high-grade Martial Senior had already deterred others from taking a more aggressive and ruthless approach. What is he had been a normal person with the secret of the Hungry Pain technique without any power to defend himself?


    Would Headmaster Aronian have requested him to hold the presentation?


    Would the Minister of Martial Art have requested him as humbly as he did?


    The answer was no. Power was the foundation of the world, it was also the path forward to fulfilling Project Water, it was time he took another step in gaining more.N?velDrama.Org content.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1597 Paths forward

    <h4>Chapter 1597 Paths forward</h4>


    With a bit of thought, he gained a lot of rity and conviction on his path forward from that point on. Prior to returning home, one of his drives was returning home. Now that that had been fulfilled, he had managed to rx for a bit.


    But s, it seemed that life was not willing to cut him some ck. Before he even realized it, he had already been dragged into several troublesome matters.


    But it also helped him get back a bit of the urge for power he had back when Chairman Deacon was still alive.


    When it came to his core long-term double-life ambition of Project Water, as well as his side and temporary drives for power for the Kandrian Throne War, he had several paths forward.


    Naturally, he could make good use of the rewards that he had gotten from the Hungry Pain contribution.


    He still had hundreds of millions of Martial Credits even after the expenses of the operation that he had undertaken to create an information ckout around Master Uma for Rui Quarrier.


    He had the potions to empower his body.


    He also had a hundred hours of dedicated tutge from Martial Masters who had sold their time to the Martial Union. He knew from being trained under Master Reina and Master Zeamer that Martial Masters were quite insightful, there were only gains to be made from their tutge.


    However, more importantly, he needed to focus on the direction that he was going to go down.


    There were multiple paths forward to expanding his ability to adaptively evolve.


    There was, of course, the primordial seed substance. He had run into this magical substance in the Virodhabhasa Theocracy. It constituted the body of the abyssfeeders and was the reason that the creature''s body could adapt and evolve to its environments and targets.


    He dreamed of harnessing that ability one day, allowing him to replicate those feats.


    The next path forward simply strengthening his foundation. In his assault against the Gereign base of the Carnil Mafia, he found that he was always far behind his opponents in terms of raw physical parameters. Of course, he had won every single one of his fights, but that was after using the various systems of his upgraded VOID algorithm like the pattern recognition system, the Metabody System, and the Hypnomatrix to close the massive gaps between him and his opponent.


    He would love it if he did not have to y the ''bridge the gap'' game that he constantly found himself ying against other high-grade Martial Seniors. Of course, it was expected that he would find himself in such a situation when considering the fact that they were usually centuries, at bare minimum decades, older than him having honed their Martial Bodies for far, far longer than Rui had.


    This gave them an enormous edge over him that was not easy to close. This is property ? of N?velDrama.Org.


    One more path of pursuit that he was most interested in considering was domain techniques.


    He had run into a fascinating new field of Martial Art. A niche field centered around broader and extensive maniption of the environment. This was a technique that manipted the environment to such a degree that it essentially created a field within which the user could conjure up a variety of strange effects through their maniption of the sky andnd.


    Now Rui was no stranger to harnessing the power of the atmosphere through wind and sound, but this was different. He didn''t gain dominion over the atmosphere or over sound and wind.


    But the Martial Senior that he fought could literallymand thend beneath their feet to attack him!


    It was a fascinating technique that resembled magic, rather than Martial Art.


    But it opened his eyes to what was possible.


    On top of that, it opened new paths for adaptive evolution.


    What if he could use a domain technique to adaptively evolve his environment to counter his opponent?


    ''It could potentially be a game-changer,'' Rui realized.


    He could think of a variety of applications that would be highly useful in adaptively evolving against his opponent. That was the reason that he was very keen on examining the potential of this new field.


    These three were his broader options forward in getting closer to aplishing Project Water while also gaining the power he needed to be more strategically impactful on the throne war for the sake of the people he cared.


    Of the three of them, the hardest was undoubtedly the primordial seed. In the first ce, it was not a field of Martial Art, it was just a substance capable of crazy things. He would need to create a new field of Martial Art that employs primordial seed and draws out its full potential.


    It was easily the most tedious and time-consuming with the highest chance of failure out of the three.


    ''In that case, it is best to pick all the low-hanging fruit rather than aim for the highest ones right off that bat,'' Rui mused. He could ask the Minister of Martial Art for research information on primordial seed among other things in exchange for fulfilling his request to Rui to spread his Martial Art.


    That left strengthening his foundation which he most certainly was willing to do, the potions of the Martial Union were a good way to start, but indulging in more foundational training to build his core.


    He was sure there were more extreme training techniques that could help him develop his body even more. He simply needed to find them and empower his body to an even higher degree than he already had, potentially closing some of the distance between himself and his high-grade peers on the physical level.


    The domain field would require a much more sophisticated approach since this was much more nuanced and required thought in order to empower adaptive evolution. He was sure that the Martial Union had much to offer, it was definitely worth it to check it out when he had the time.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1598 First Session

    <h4>Chapter 1598 First Session</h4>


    The next day, Rui got out of bed earlier than he normally did, quickly preparing himself. It wasn''t too long before he wore his Martial Art attire before quickly heading out after bidding his family members goodbye.


    Today was his first day training the Martial Prince.


    He immediately set off for the town of Vargard at high speeds, sailing through the Kandrian Empire.


    Prince Raijun''s staff had offered to take care of transport both ways, but Rui firmly denied it.


    He knew what the Martial Prince was trying to do. He was trying to increase the association between himself and Rui, to increase the difficulty of Rui joining other parties.


    That was why Rui firmly insisted that the contract between them ur through the Martial Union as a broker, making it seem much more business-oriented than a personalmitment.


    Furthermore, Rui refused to allow the Prince to take charge of the security detail for his family, insisting that he transfer the amount needed to sustain the security detail. He also refused any personnel change in the security detail.


    There were multiple reasons for this.


    The first reason was to ensure that Prince Raijun did not gain any meaningful leverage over Rui.


    Rui was far too sharp to not realize the ramifications of handing over his family''s safety to a Royal prince who wanted something out of Rui. That was why he simply had him pay the amount needed for the security to Rui, and Rui would then personally purchase an extension for themission of the security detail protecting his family.


    Hell, he could even get rid of the Martial Union as the broker between himself and the security detail protecting his home, if possible.


    But these were all measures to ward off the little trap that Prince Ruijan had set up. All of the remaining six princes and princesses would undoubtedly realize the significance of Rui''s refusals of the deal that Prince Ruijan provided and instead take the matters of the protection of his family into his own hands.


    It was a message, a message indicating that not only was he not in the same camp as the Ruijan Faction, but also that he did not trust Prince Raijun.


    In this manner, he flipped Prince Raijun''s cute attempt at implicitly roping him in to instead put greater distance between them.


    "I see that the Martial Union was not joking when they said that your political acumen was befitting that of a Senior Ambassador," Prince Raijun smirked mischievously at Rui when the two of them met for the second time after Rui arrived at his manor. "It seems you are truly unwilling to join my faction. Such a shame."


    "I did make my stance clear back then," Rui replied calmly. "Naturally, I would not allow myself to get funneled into a path that I am unwilling to go down."


    Prince Raijun shed a knowing smile at Rui. "I heard you met my sister. What do you think of her?"


    "I''m sure you already know that I rejected joining Her Highness'' Faction," Rui replied.


    "Ah you don''t have to address her with such a lofty title, Senior Quarrier," Prince Raijun chuckled. "That psycho does not deserve deference from someone like yourself. I told you did I not? I want to create a nation where Martial Artists don''t have to bow their heads to people undeserving of such a gesture. That includes mere Martial Apprentices like myself as well as controlling women like her. If not for the fact that only those of royal blood can ascend the throne, for now, I would not have allowed so many esteemed Martial Artists to follow someone like me." This is property ? of N?velDrama.Org.


    "¡­I see," Rui simply replied.


    Prince Raijun was an interesting character. Although he did hide it well, Rui could sense that he did possess the aristocratic and royal bearing that one would expect from someone of his background.


    Although his tone was remarkably line and informal, there were subtle hints in his bodynguage that betrayed it.


    His chin never dipped below a certain height. His eyes did not match the deference in his words.


    It was an interesting contradiction. Subconsciously, he retained the bearing that was undoubtedly programmed into him by his upbringing. Consciously, he was genuine about his Martial supremacist philosophy.


    After all, Rui highly doubted that he could fool all the Martial Masters who had chosen to support him.


    Martial Masters were extremely sharp and had an extremely high ability to peer into people and gauge the truth.


    The fact that they had decided to be his patrons meant that there was truth to his ims.


    Rui shook his head inwardly. He was not a psychoanalyst, he did not care about Prince Raijun beyond ensuring that the man did not be emperor.


    "Let us begin, Your Highness," Rui replied. "We do not have much time in the first ce. For the first session, I simply wish to know you better as a Martial Artist, not as a prince or a politician. This first session will be merely a learning session for myself so that I can familiarize myself with you."


    Prince Raijun smiled. "As you wish, teacher. Allow me to tell you about my Martial P-"


    You don''t need to," Rui got up, walking towards the training ground beside them. "Tell me with your Martial Art, not your words. That''s how Martial Artistsmunicate."


    Prince Raijun smiled enthusiastically. "Then so I shall."


    He got on to the training ground, standing ten away from Rui.


    The two Martial Master bodyguards stood at the edge of the training ground. They did do anything special, yet their eyes were fixed on Rui, cing immense implicit pressure on him.


    Rui could sense that both of them were of the same caliber as Master Zeamer. While such powerful Martial Masters were unicorns in most ces in the world, they were far less umon in the Kandrian Empire. He would die before he knew it if he did anything that even remotely resembled a threat to the prince''s life.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1599 Sparring Session

    <h4>Chapter 1599 Sparring Session</h4>


    One of the reasons Rui was eager to witness the man''s Martial Art was because the Martial Path was a manifestation of the essence of one''s being, a path born from the culmination of a person. It inherited their affinities, biases, inclinations, and strengths and weaknesses.


    Much about a person could be learned from their Martial Path. His words could be deceitful, but his Martial Art would not. This was especially the case ever since Rui had be a Martial Senior. His senses and instincts had elevated to a much higher level, and his insight into Martial Artists of the Lower Realms grew as a result.


    Prince Raijun took argely neutral stance that didn''t ce too much emphasis on any one particr domain or field ofbat. This suggested a well-bnced Martial Art, which in turn was usually a sign of a well-bnced temperament.


    He had long noticed the corrtion between temperament and the affinities of Martial Art. It was hard not to. Most offensive Martial Artists he had run into possessed highly active and aggressive temperaments.


    Most defensive Martial Artists possessed tempered fortitude.


    Most maneuvering-oriented Martial Artists possessed possessed dynamic personalities.


    Nothing was absolute, but it meant that the prince most likely had a bnced Martial Art.


    Rui walked over to him slowly, gauging his reaction. It wasn''t until he reached a meter away from the prince that he finally attacked.


    WHOOSH!


    Although the attack was quite swift for a Martial Apprentice, to Rui it may as well have been frozen in time.


    Rui lightly shifted, moving out of the way. Yet much to his surprise, the prince''s attack had already been corrected and redirected toward Rui without even the slightest hint ofg.


    POW!


    The attack crashed into Rui''s hand, stopping it midway.


    "Interesting," Rui murmured. That one attack alone had given him a lot of insight into the prince''s Martial Art.


    "You haven''t seen anything yet!" The prince confidently dered as a flurry of blows erupted, flying at Rui. Rui found that ordinary maneuvers were less effective in evading the prince''s attacks one after the other. Every time Rui shifted, the attack rapidly followed suit, altering its trajectory midair with remarkably agility and fluidity, forcing him to block.


    Of course, he could still effortlessly evade him with a fraction of his opponent''s speed if he truly wanted, but that wasn''t the point. He was trying to show-off, he was trying to be a good sparring trainer and gauge the prince''s capabilities.


    POW POW POW!


    Rui blocked several strikes from the prince before gently throwing an attack at the prince to test his defensive reactions.


    WHOOSH!


    The prince rapidly shot out of the way at thest moment throwing his fist at Rui Yet when he tried to evade, the attack shifted instantly, crashing into Rui''s palm once more.


    Yet his eyes widened when he found his bnce crumbling as Rui twisted his fist.


    CLASP


    "Then, let us test your grappling," Rui wrestled him to the ground in the blink of an eye. Yet he could only be impressed as the prince held his ground, fighting back against Rui''s attempt to wrangle over him and choke him out. Yet Rui could sense his difort and unfamiliarity. This man was firmly a striker, without a doubt.


    "You''re neither particrly good at grappling nor good at avoiding. Anybody morepetent than you at it will defeat you most of the time," Rui found himself behind the prince as his arm carefully wrapped around the prince''s neck.


    Rui felt particrly nervous as he felt a directed wave of pressure from the two Martial Masters who looked to be on the verge of activating their Martial Minds.


    In this position, it would be trivially easy for Rui to kill the prince, which is why they were on extremely high alert. Yet he delicately restricted his strength as much as possible while still exerting just enough to pressure the prince.


    TAP TAP


    Rui immediately let go when he felt two taps on his arm, indicating his submission.


    "Huff¡­You''re as tough as an ox!" The prince heaved a sigh. "I wasn''t even able toe close to overpowering your grip."


    "It wasn''t that I was strong," Rui replied. "The fact of the matter is that rear choke holds give the choker far too much leverage over the most vital part of the human body. It is almost impossible to break out of a rear choke hold, and the best way to fight it is to ensure that it doesn''t happen in the first ce. That is why it is important to never allow your opponent to get your back."


    While it was true that Martial Art and martial arts were different, there were some fundamentalmonalities that the two of them shared. Rear choke holds were game-enders in both the UFC and MMA, as well as Martial Artbat of Gaia. N?velDrama.Org content.


    "You''re right," The prince heaved a sigh, standing up. "It is indeed an area where I have to improve."


    "Let''s go again," Rui replied. "This time I will test yourbat against an aggressive offensive Martial Art."


    "Bring it on then," The prince smiled confidently.


    The sparring session ensued as Rui tested the prince''sbat prowess against various kinds of opponents. He did a good job replicating different styles, having fought against many Martial Artists, he recalled their patterns, replicating them on the spot.


    This made the prince feel like he was fighting a different Martial Artist each time. The Martial Masters carefully overseeing the training session grew curious at Rui''s ability to alter hisbat approach to such a degree.


    Normally, even against low-level opponents, it wasn''t easy to replicate the experience of fighting against different Martial Artists with different Martial Paths.


    It became evident to that the existing intelligence on Rui Quarrier was insufficient and iplete. They had already updated their knowledge on hispatibilities.


    Rui Quarrier was able to steal the essence of a Martial Art duringbat, perhaps that had something to do with his ability to adaptively evolve to them. Too much was unknown about the source of the prodigious Martial Artist''s strength.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1600 Unrefined

    <h4>Chapter 1600 Unrefined</h4>


    It wasn''t long before Rui hadpleted his sparring session with histest mentee. "You''re truly amazing," Prince Raijun heaved a sigh. "How are you so versatile?"


    "It''s a consequence of the nature of my Martial Art," Rui replied with aposed tone. "More importantly, I have gained some insights I wish to speak to you about."


    The prince eagerly nodded.


    "Firstly, your Martial Path is dynamic redirection, correct?"


    "Correct," The prince nodded.


    Rui had figured it out from the very first strike. The man possessed an incredibly high ability to control and manipte momentum. His own, as well as that of his opponent. This allowed him to alter the direction of his attack mid-strike nigh instantly, and redirect them towards his opponent.


    "Your fundamentals are quite solid," Rui remarked clinically. "Your control over the flow of power is quite exquisite even, you''re a fine sparrer."


    Prince Raijun frowned. That was an odd choice of words.


    "Sparrer?"


    "I mean what I said," Rui replied. "It would be difficult to call you a fine Martial Artist because you are unfortunately not a fine Martial Artist."


    The Martial Prince narrowed his eyes, yet he waspletelyposed and calm. "Please borate."


    "I think I have discovered the reason that you have stagnated," Rui replied, continued. "While your Martial Path is decently above average as far as its grade goes and your foundations, and body are all quite solid, there are issues. I can even say that you''re doing a very good job with your approach to individuality, I can sense that your Martial Art is decently attuned to you and your body."


    "Then¡­" This is property ? of N?velDrama.Org.


    "You really have just one main issue," Rui replied. "Your Martial Art is highly unrefined."


    Prince Raijun stared at Rui, listening to his words intently. "Individuality is necessary for attunement," Rui replied. "And attunement is necessary because it is only because a Martial Art and the techniques, principles, and patterns, that constitute it, are attuned to your mind and body that they are able to squeeze everyst drop of potential and power from within the body and employ most efficiently and effectively possible, producing results that are far superhuman."


    Prince Raijun nodded, curious about where Rui was going with this. "The issue is that the individuality you imbue into your Martial Art that increases its attunement is never refined," Rui calmly informed him. "Refinement, orck thereof in this case is in reference to the umpteen number of micro-ws in the techniques, principles, and patterns of your Martial Art, that reduce its attunement to your Martial Art."


    "Micro-ws¡­?" Prince Raijun murmured, absorbed into Rui''s words.


    "Indeed. Slight deviations, slightly mis-optimized shifts that are not the most suited for your body," Rui replied. "One or two don''t make a difference, but when there are many, they can greatly reduce yourbat prowess. It is also difficult to consciously and actively detect them. It is also the reason that you haven''t yet reached the Squire Realm."


    The prince widened his eyes in surprise at Rui''s words. "But¡­the Martial Masters I have consulted have told me that my individuality hasn''t reached the threshold to survive the Squite evolution breakthrough process. That''s why I have been working hard to imbue my Martial Art with as much individuality as possible, but progress seems nearly impossible. I get stronger, but I don''t feel like I''ve made too much progress down my Martial Path."


    "The Martial Masters certainly did not lie," Rui reassured. "The issue is that the core problem goes far beyond that. Their analysis was, well, shallow, for ack of a better word."


    Prince Raijun stared at Rui with surprise. "Shallow? Martial Masters?"


    Rui nodded. "Indeed."


    "I don''t understand," Prince Raijun shook his head with a little frustration. "What exactly is happening, why can''t I reach the threshold of Squire candidacy?"


    "The truth is nuanced," Rui replied. "Bare with me. I promise it will make sense. First, let us begin with the Apprentice Realm, what is the source of power of the Apprentice Realm?"


    This question alone was moreplex than anyone would suspect.


    "¡­The Apprentice Realm harnesses the untapped cognitive potential of the brain, allowing the user to use that additional kic and dynamic battle cognition to employ physical power in a manner that is exponentially more efficient and effective than normal humans," The prince carefully replied.


    "Correct, this process doesn''t stop after you break through to the Apprentice Realm," Rui replied. "The more of your individuality you imbue into your Martial Art, the more attuned it is to your mind and body. The more attuned it is to your mind, the more untapped cognitive potential it draws out from it. That is why the more individuality you add to your brain, the stronger it grows until it eventually crosses the threshold where your consciousness can survive the simultaneous destruction and regeneration of the brain that happens in the Squire evolution breakthrough process."


    The prince nodded, having been educated about this a long time ago.


    "Thus, individuality is at the root of it all," Rui concluded. "But what if the individuality is unrefined?"


    Prince Raijun''s eyes widened as he realized what Rui getting at.


    "I the individuality is unrefined, then the attunement with mind and body that the Martial Art gains from said unrefined individuality is greatly reduced," Rui replied. "You can think of it mathematically even. If X amount of refined individuality gives you X amount of attunement, then X amount of unrefined individuality will give you 0.5X. Depending on how unrefined it is, it can even yield only 0.1X, or 0.1X, or even 0.0000001X. That is why your attunement iscking even though your efforts are high."


    This revtion shook Prince Raijun.


    Over the years, many Martial Masters and even a Martial Sage had rarely gone beyond telling him hecked individuality, and when they did, their exnations grew more abstract and vague, often bing rather metaphorical puzzling.


    They often said things like ''Porous rock breaks easily while solid rock doesn''t'' or ''Weak is a sword whose metal isn''t beaten ten thousand times when forged.''


    This was the first time he had heard such a clear-cut, precise, and concise exnation of exactly what the problem was.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1601 Experience

    <h4>Chapter 1601 Experience</h4>


    "Because the yielded attunement from the added unrefined individuality is low, you make very little progress with drawing out the potential of your mind, leaving it weak. Because it is weak, it cannot survive the Squire evolution breakthrough process," Rui exined patiently. "That is why you haven''t reached Squire''s candidacy."


    Prince Raijun was shocked by the revtion.


    He had long grown frustrated with hisck of progress, especially since he had always fostered a deep sense of admiration for Martial Artists.


    How could he not? Rather, he never understood why none of his brothers and sisters felt the same way.


    Martial Artists were strong!


    Martial Masters did not lower their head or chin even in the presence of the Royal Family, barring the Royal Emperor.


    Martial Sages bowed to nobody.


    All thanks to their personal power. The power that they themselves had cultivated, belonged to them. That nobody could take from them.


    He had been overjoyed when he became a Martial Apprentice at the optimistically young age of fourteen. While that age had not crossed into genius-level territory, it was a sign of a great talent and affinity for Martial Art.


    It also happened to be the same age that Rui broke through to the Apprentice Realm. Yet despite twenty years ofmitment to his Martial Art and Path, he had never reached Squire candidacy.


    He never understood why.


    Today, he did.


    It was actually astonishing how simple the problem was.


    ''No, it''s simple because he urately understood it and then assimted and conveyed it in a brief and concise manner that made it simple to understand," He realized. ''Not even Martial Masters had such a conscious grasp of the problem on a theoretical level. He exined the problem the way a scientist would, rather than a Martial Artist.''


    He had tales of Rui''s schrly knowledge, only now did he experience it firsthand.


    However, he wasn''t interested in that at the moment.


    "What is the solution for myck of refinement? Why did it evene to be about in the first ce?" The prince asked desperately, throwing aside all of his royal bearing.


    "Those questions may as well be the same," Rui remarked. "They share the same answer after all. The cause of your problem is the same as the solution orck thereof."


    He stared straight into Prince Raijun''s eyes. "Experience."


    "Experience¡­?" Prince Raijun murmured.


    Rui nodded. "Experience is the only way to refine Martial Art. That''s how I, and every other Martial Art, have refined Martial Art. Tell me, Prince Raijun, when was thest time you fought genuine conflicts and battles where death was a realistic oue?"


    Prince Raijun''s head lowered with shame.


    "Don''t tell me¡­" Rui''s eyes widened. "You haven''t experienced any life-or-death battles at all in your entire life?"


    "¡­"


    Rui stared at the man with bewilderment. "I knew you were inexperienced from the very first punch you threw. But not a single battle with your life on the line? Seriously? Surely you jest? There''s no way there exists a Martial Artist that has never once staked their life in battle. I mean,e on now¡­"


    As Rui continued, Prince Raijun only grew more embarrassed and ashamed.


    "I can''t help it!" He protested. "I''m a prince! Do you have many enemies I have because of my status? There are countless people and nations that don''t think well of the Kandrian Empire or the Royal Family! I''ll be assassinated in a heartbeat if I try anything!"


    Rui paused for a moment. "I''m aware of that. But you need to bnce risk with reward."


    "Even if I wanted to, I cannot. We, children of the Empire, are constrained by security protocols of the state much more harshly than you can imagine. Especially since myte brother died nearly five years ago because he did precisely what you are suggesting to me."


    Rui paused once more, confused.


    The Martial Prince heaved a sigh. "Prince Raese Von Kandria died five years ago en route to the Kandrian Empire from the Virodhabhasa Theocracy after participating in the seventy-


    second Virodhabhasa Martial Contest."


    Rui''s eyes widened with shock as his mind shed back to a distant memory that he had almost forgotten. N?velDrama.Org holds this content.


    ''That''s right! There was the grade-ten Martial Squire prince from the contest,'' Rui realized. ''It''s been so long and so much has happened that Ipletely forgot he existed.''


    Rui couldn''t believe that he had died back then.


    "He used to throw himself into life-threatening battles despite knowing the risks for the rewards. He had almost died several times prior to various assassination attempts. Eventually, his luck ran out, and he was wiped out by an extremely powerful Martial Master. Had he returned to the Empire safely, he would be the Martial Prince instead of mere Apprentice like me."


    "I see¡­" Rui murmured.


    "This risk has multiplied by a factor of ten because of the Kandrian Throne War," Prince Raijun heaved a tired sigh. "My six siblings would not miss the opportunity to have me assassinated¡­well, except Raul, that insufferably principled and kind-hearted bastard. Of the remaining more than a hundred siblings that I have, half of them would love to have me assassinated. The risks are astronomical. Thus things like taking missions,missions, or operations arepletely out of the question."


    This was indeed problematic, Rui had to admit. He was not impractical, throwing one''s self into a situation where an assassination was almost absolutely guaranteed was stupid.


    "That''s a shame," Rui shrugged lightly. "Good luck oveing that."


    He had already fulfilled his duty to the absolute best he could, probably better than anyone else in the Kandrian Empire would have.


    "Please help me ovee this hurdle!" Prince Raijun bowed his head, much to the rm of the two Martial Masters behind him.


    "¡­What?"


    "Lend me your power!" Prince Raijun cried. "You were able to figure out the problem so easily, surely you must have a solution!"


    "I''m not a magician, Your Highness," Rui scoffed. "I don''t have any solut-"


    He paused mid-sentence as an idea popped into his head, drawing his interest and curiosity.


    "There!" Prince Raijun eximed. "I know you just thought of something! I''ll give you anything you want, just help me out!"


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1602 Attempted Deception

    <h4>Chapter 1602 Attempted Deception </h4>


    Time slowed down in Rui''s vision as the Martial Prince nearly froze in ce.


    He was in a bit of a dilemma.


    He just realized that he might be able to help the Martial Prince grow, substituting experience. Normally, this was something that each Martial Artist could only do for themselves, this was not supposed to be something that could be done for anybody by anybody.


    That was partly why the Martial Path was solitary.


    Nobody could walk it for anybody else.


    Yet Rui realized that he might be able to. He might have been perhaps the only Martial Artist who could walk their path for them due to the nature of his Martial Art. In particr, the pattern recognition system of the VOID algorithm was what he thought could help alleviate the prince''s problem.


    The reason for this was that Rui could easily copy this style if he wanted. In a manner simr to Ieyasu, although not nearly as well. Ieyasu could literally embody a person, and Rui could capture all the patterns and movements of Prince Raijun in the Mind Pce, create predictive models, and then replicate those.


    He could simultaneously get rid of the imperfections and micro-ws in the man''s movements. Doing so would allow the prince to literally look at a perfected version of himself.


    It would allow him to reach Squire candidacy without any experience at all.


    For some reason, Rui deeply disliked that oue.


    The Martial Path was quite sacred, and the journey to power was important and valued. It should have been impossible for anyone to be able to skip or bypass the grueling process by exploiting loopholes.


    Yet his Martial Art broke these rules that had been held strong for a long time. If people found out that Rui could allow Martial Artists to progress without nearly as much hard work and progress, it would not be good.


    The current attention that he had attracted was reaching the limit that he couldfortably handle.


    He was a high-grade Martial Senior, and that did deter people from trying to bully him. It would require Martial Masters, and that was an expenditure of power that was too much to employ.


    However, with this revtion in addition to things like the Hungry Pain technique, his value would slowly start to exceed the deterrence that he was able to put out. There could be people who were starting to have dangerous ideas about how to get their hands on the treasure trove that Rui represented.


    Of course, Rui''s sharp mind had already put together several ideas on how he could increase the deterrence to making an enemy out of him, but that was not the core issue.


    The question was whether it was worth it.


    It would help Prince Raijun grow at an extreme pace, such that he would be able to break through to the Squire Realm within a short amount of time. That would substantially increase the probability that he would be able to win the Kandrian Throne War and ascend the throne as Emperor simply due to the substantially greater support he would be getting from the Martial Union.


    This was an undesirable oue since he would most likely immediately seek to change the structure of power of the Kandrian Empire with the intention of making the Martial Union the legitive entity in effect.


    That would most certainly trigger at least a bit of a civil war as the diehard loyalists of the Royal Family would refuse to ept his first order. Most likely a lot of Martial Artists whose Martial drives were centered around loyalty to the Royal Family would riot in the centers of power, wealth, and influence in the nation. N?vel/Dr(a)ma.Org - Content owner.


    The Town of Hajin would undoubtedly be a target since it hosted one of the sixteen Martial Academies.


    Rui''s mind swiftly processed many possible scenarios in just a blink of an eye, ultimately concluding that all of this could likely unfold if Rui decided to help Prince Raijun be a Martial Squire.


    However, there was one issue.


    He nced at Prince Raijun as time sped up to normal.


    "Our agreement specified that you would make an earnest effort to aid my growth as long as it did not directly directly harm you," Prince Raijun reminded Rui.


    This was the issue.


    Rui had underestimated how abnormal his Martial Art was. It was also unfortunate that the Martial Prince had stagnated not because of ack of drive like Rui had thought, but due to a sheltered life andck of experience.


    Not even he could fix the former, which is why he had not been worried, but he did possess the ability to fix thetter. He would liked to have avoided the prince ever learning about it, but it was a true shame that Rui had just had the epiphany at that moment in front of two powerful Martial Masters. He probably would not be able to get away with it.


    He briefly considered using a Mind Mask, before immediately recalling that Master Deivon seemed to apparently be able to see the technique itself.


    He wasn''t sure if he would be able to get away with lying, it depended on how good he was.


    Still, worth a try.


    "I was considering whether exposing you to bloodlust could sufficiently replicate a genuine life-threatening Martial battle," Rui heaved a troubled sigh. "But unfortunately, that won''t work since you consciously know that your life isn''t in danger. It will not bear the fruit you would need to fix the micro-ws in your Martial Art."


    The two Martial Masters nced at him sharply with disapproving expressions. "Do not speak a mix of partial truths and falsehoods with the intention of deceiving His Highness in an attempt to vite the agreement that His Highness offered to you in good faith."


    It was an unfortunate yet predictable failure.


    Prince Raijun stared at Rui with a hint of hope, disregarding the fact that Rui was lying to him. "So you do have a solution then?"


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1603 Shocking Revelation

    <h4>Chapter 1603 Shocking Revtion </h4>


    He was unable to deceive them, much to his dismay. However, there were still ways to avoid helping the Martial Prince be a Squire. He stared straight at the Martial Prince."I am unable to provide you with proof that it will work," Rui replied. "It may even be dangerous to your psyche if your drive for the Squire Realm is weak."


    "My drive to reach the Squire Realm is strong, rest assured," The Martial Prince''s eyes shed with determination. "What is this method that you have in mind?"


    "Let us not get ahead of ourselves, Your Highness," Rui heaved a sigh. "In the first ce, I have made my stance regarding your policies as ruler, have I not?"


    "But our agreement¡­"


    "Our agreement also specifies a severance pay for any unwarned discontinuation on my part," Rui replied. "It''s expensive, but I can pay for it."


    He simply stared at the Martial Prince head-on with aposed expression, conveying a subtle message. Even if Rui could help him, that didn''t mean he wanted to, or would. N?velDrama.Org content.


    He had already made his stance about a warmongering nation under the rule of the Martial Artists clear. He did not like what would happen if Prince Raijun became Emperor. So why should he support him by helping him break through to the Squire Realm?


    "This goes against the spirit of our agreement, you know," Prince Raijun heaved a sigh.


    "I won''t insult you by denying that," Rui replied. "Still, there are things more important than principles."


    Rui did not deny that he was not acting in good faith. The fact of the matter was that he did agree to help Prince Raijun out earnestly, and now he came to regret that decision, thus he was trying to back out against the spirit of the agreement.


    Rui didn''t feel good about it, but he felt even worse helping the Martial Prince. Thus he sucked down a bit of his guilt and put up a defiant facade.


    Thankfully, the prince was far too driven to reach the Squire Realm to care.


    "First, tell me what your solution is," The Martial Prince told Rui with a stern voice. "It could be nothing, or it''s possible that your solution is wed and the two esteemed Masters by my side will inform me if it is."


    Rui scoffed inwardly, they weren''t even able to articte the problem that the prince had in a clear-cut manner. While he did not doubt their Martial prowess and wisdom through their centuries of pursuing their Martial Paths, there were things that they couldn''t do.


    "The solution is rather simple," Rui began with a calm tone. " First, I study your Martial Art and observe it extensively. Then I copy it."


    Prince Raijun''s eyes widened. "Copy¡­it?"


    "Correct," Rui nodded. "It should be quite simple all things considered. Once I copy it, I will fix all the micro-ws and then show you how your Martial Art ought to be, then I can train you to fix those ws with that copied Martial Art."


    The three of them stared at Rui with a shocked expression.


    "Copy my Martial Art¡­?" Prince Raijun murmured. "You can do that?"


    "Well, yes."


    "¡­Do you have any idea how many years I''ve worked on my Martial Art?" Prince Raijun softly murmured.


    Rui heaved a sigh. "It isn''t that big a deal, honestly."


    Rui wondered how they would react to Ieyasu''s copying if they were stunned by his much inferior ability to replicate.


    It just went to show how abnormal both their Martial Art was.


    "Such an ability would need to be proven," One of the Martial Master standing beside the prince remarked. "Your word is not credible, Senior Quarrier."


    "The prince was the one who asked me what the solution was, I just answered" Rui shrugged. "I still haven''t decided to supply the prince with my service, so if I was disbelieved, then that would be fine by me as well."


    He didn''t particrly care either way, it was just unfortunate that he had an epiphany at the wrong moment, giving it away.


    "No," The Prince''s determined voice cut through the atmosphere. "You are the most prodigious Martial Senior ever. The potency of your Martial Art is well-known. I believe that there is some credibility to your solution. I''m interested in witnessing it."


    "Like I said," Rui replied with aposed but firm tone. "The severance pay is within my wealth. It would behoove you to talk about your offer, rather than your demand. The price for helping a prince that I disagree with ideologically is rather high, Your Highness."


    The Martial Prince stared at Rui with a surprised expression. "Senior Quarrier, I don''t think any other Martial Senior would have dared to utter those words to me. I am the seventy-


    second prince of the Kandrian Empire. I am the sole prince who joined the Martial Union and harnessed its power and is the sole Martial Artist prince at the moment. I am one of the seven candidates to be Emperor."


    "And I am the only one who can elevate you to the Squire Realm," Rui replied calmly.


    The air grew taut being wrung by the tension that brewed between the two figures.


    However, the prince did not retort.


    He did not dare to.


    The sound of his silence elicited a small smile to crack at the edge of Rui''s mouth.


    ''He''s more desperate to reach the Squire Realm than he lets on.''


    Rui had increasingly begun suspecting this ever since the conversation had begun. The Martial Prince had done a good job hiding it at the start, but he had let slip when he intuitively realized Rui had a solution. Disying the direness of one''s need was never a good idea since it strengthened Rui''s position in their negotiations.


    Rui didn''t need anything from him.


    Ordinarily, Rui would be afraid of the sheer amount of power that the prince had umted. Martial Seniors, Martial Masters, and even a Martial Sage.


    Yet Rui''s calctions had ounted for those.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1604 Shocking Demands

    <h4>Chapter 1604 Shocking Demands</h4>


    While Prince Raijun had earned the political support of a solid chunk of the Martial Union, he did not own that power. That power had more of an ownership over him than he did over it.


    ''Your status as a prince does not hold nearly as much weight amongst Martial Artists of the Martial Union as it does elsewhere.'' Rui mused. ''The only reason they''re supporting you is because only those with Royal blood can ascend the throne.''


    In other words, Prince Raijun was not a leader so much as a front. While he had undoubtedly disyed political acumen qualities in lobbying for as many Martial Artists to join his faction. What he was essentially doing was selling himself as an opportunity for the Martial Union to gain the throne.


    In other words, for all matters not rting to the throne, the Martial Union did not care about Prince Raijun.


    This included his personal ambition as a Martial Apprentice to reach the Squire Realm. The Martial Supremacist faction in particr would never choose that personal ambition over Rui.


    Rui knew that.


    He knew that the Martial Supremacists were extremely favorable to him. Commissioner Derun of the faction, who sent him to Vilun Ind, was extremely pleased with his performance back then. On top of that, the Martial Supremacist Faction undoubtedly fell in love with the Hungry Pain technique that he supplied them.


    Furthermore, they were undoubtedly strong supporters of Rui spreading his Martial Art and creating his own sect. Something that the prince himself, Headmaster Aronian, the various Martial Sects, and the Minister of Martial Art had all personally requested or suggested Rui do.


    Inparison, Prince Raijun''s personal ambitions as a Martial Artist did not matter nearly as much to thempared to the most prodigious Martial Senior in history. He had already earned their support as an Apprentice, they themselves didn''t gain much by him bing a Squire. The prince himself was the one who gained the most by bing a Squire.


    The final reason Rui was confident was that Martial Artists believed in Martial power. Martial power had be an integral part of their identity, after all. It was almost impossible for Martial Artists to respect and value a Martial Apprentice more than a Martial Senior, especially one like Rui.


    Rui had keenly understood all these factors and had realized a single thing.


    The Martial Union would not help Prince Raijun bully Rui for his personal aspirations. Prince Raijun couldn''tmand them to do so either, he had not earned their loyalty, only their incentivized and calcted support.


    He may be the Martial Prince, but Rui was the Martial Golden Boy of the Kandrian Empire and the Martial Union.


    This was further supported by the fact that his personal bodyguards were those supplied by the state, and not by the Martial Union. It was subtle, but Rui''s sharp insight detected the distance between him and his faction.


    It became increasingly clear to Rui that although the Martial Prince had the highest amount of Martial capital, he had the least amount of control over his faction than any other prince or princess, most likely.


    This was a reality that even the prince was very well aware of and had been trying to hide, but s, Rui had discovered the truth nheless.


    If Prince Raijun wanted Rui''s help, he was going to have to use the carrot, since the stick would refuse to help him in this regard.


    "Like I said," The Prince''s voice had gained an edge of steel. "Name your price."


    Rui smiled.


    It had been a bit spontaneous, but everything had gone ording to his n. No other Martial Senior would have been able to get away with what Rui had just pulled off.


    "I want ten times the amount of funds I''m getting," Rui calmly replied. "In return, I''ll guarantee your breakthrough to the Squire Realm."


    The Prince''s eyes widened. "That''s an enormous sum. I''m already supplying you close to a billion per annum!"


    "I said I would guarantee you achieving Squire candidacy," Rui replied with aposed tone. "What''s more important, the sheer amount of wealth that you undoubtedly have to spare as a member of the Royal Family or your breakthrough to the Squire Realm?"


    "How can you possibly guarantee that?" The prince furrowed his eyebrows.


    "It''s because of your dedication andmitment to your Martial Art, Your Highness," Rui replied. "While unrefined due to ack of experience, your Martial Art is overflowing with individuality. It shows that you have worked tirelessly on your Martial Art, imbuing it with your individuality, even if unrefined. Had you refined your individuality with experience, then you would have be a Martial Squire a long ago. I''m just getting rid of the final obstacle holding you back. It is your effort that has gotten you this far, Your Highness."


    Rui smiled, lighting up the atmosphere a little.


    "Stand Proud. You are strong."


    The Martial Prince''s eyes widened as Rui validated the years of futile effort that he put in. Effort that he had thought was in vain.


    Rui had shown him the truth. N?velDrama.Org holds this content.


    It wasn''t in vain.


    Hisbor would yield fruit.


    Fruit that Rui Quarrier would personally deliver to him.


    He pushed down the tion that emerged from deep within. The tion that threatened to overwhelm him with emotion. Yet he was far too dignified as a prince to let it overwhelm him in the presence of other people.


    "If you can live up to your words, then I will give you what you seek," The Martial Prince promised.


    "That isn''t all that I want. That''s just the beginning," Rui replied.


    The Martial Prince frowned. Money was easy, even if this amount was particrly a lot. However, he could handle the money, he wasn''t sure what else Rui wanted from him.


    "Once you be a Martial Squire. I''m sure you''re going to work hard to lobby support and influence away from yourpetitors. I''m sure you''ll leverage the additional support you get to engage in a lot of sabotage, both active, covert, and everything in between." Rui replied. "What I want is for you to exclude the Sea Princess and the People''s Prince from your counter-campaigning and sabotage operations."


    Prince Raijun''s eyes widened. "What?!"


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1605 Alternatives

    <h4>Chapter 1605 Alternatives</h4>


    The air grew tumultuous and uncertain. The two Martial Masters narrowed their eyes at Rui.


    Yet he didn''t so much as budge or twitch.


    Of course, he felt shivers crawling up his skin.


    He felt chills going down his spine.


    But he maintained an impably calm demeanor despite the pressure that they exerted on him.


    Naturally, Prince Raijun stared at him in disbelief.


    His eyes sharpened. "Did you just misspeak? Or did I mishear you? Maybe I should get my ears checked."


    Rui simply stared at him impassively. He had conveyed his demand, and he knew how outrageous it was. It was, frankly, an absurd demand.


    How could he possibly demand Prince Raijun to stop fighting against Prince Ranea and Prince Raul for the throne?


    "Senior Quarrier," The prince''s demeanor grew intense. A single question escaped his mouth.


    "Do you understand the gravity of the demand that you have made?"


    His friendly facade disappeared. His demeanor and posture changed, revealing an aristocratic and royal bearing. One that came with being part of one of the most powerful families in East Panama. Untold wealth was at his disposal.


    Immense Martial Power thrust him forward towards the throne.


    Yet Rui didn''t back down.


    "I made my conditions clear, Your Highness," He bowed his head lightly. "You can ept them¡­or refuse them. The choice is yours."


    "You want me to cease offensive campaigning measures against Ranea and Raul?" The prince growled. "That''s patently absurd!"


    "Not nearly as absurd as the ability to refine Martial Art for another person," Rui replied calmly. "That is the service that I am offering at the moment."


    "Even still," The Martial Prince narrowed his eyes. "How can you demand me to cease offensive campaigning measures against two of my primepetitors?! We aren''t ying a card game, we''re fighting for ultimate authority over a powerhouse Sage-level nation!"


    "I didn''t demand it," Rui replied calmly. "You don''t have to take the deal. But what is non-negotiable is that this is the deal. If you don''t like it then¡­"


    Rui shrugged. "We can go our separate ways. That''s fine by me as well. But¡­you won''t ever be able to be a Martial Squire."


    "I don''t necessarily have to rely on you," Prince Raijun remarked. "Now that I have been enlightened on the problem, I can rely on other methods. Surely a powerful mind Martial Master should be able to rely on some hypnosis topensate for experience."


    "Hypnosis targets the subconscious mind, not the conscious mind," Rui replied. "It cannot replicate the state of both the conscious and the subconscious mind simultaneously in a particr circumstance. It suffers the same problem as exposing yourself to bloodlust. It cannot change your conscious mind without manipting your memories."


    "Then altering memories is a viable solution?" Prince Raijun.


    "It is," Rui confirmed. "However, the difficulty of altering your memories to believe that your life is in danger is extremely high. And the reason for that is because you have many memories to believe that you are not in danger."


    Rui raised a finger. "First, you are a Royal Prince. This memory alone severely contradicts the idea that you would be in danger because there are very few forces in the world that can threaten you since you are protected by Martial Masters. Any threat that can bypass your security should easily be strong enough to kill you too, so how would your mind address this discrepancy?"


    The Martial Prince narrowed his eyes as he considered the issues that Rui brought up. "In general, there are huge contradictions with you being able to fight off something that even managed to reach a position where it could threaten your life in a fair fight that you somehow have a chance of winning. Unless you are unintelligent, your mind will notice the discrepancies across its memories."


    "Are the discrepancies such a problem so long as I actually fight thinking my life is at threat?" Prince Raijun asked with a serious tone.


    "The mind is more delicate than you can imagine, Your Highness," Rui replied. "Conflicting core memories with experience can cause deep psychological stress and post-traumatic stress disorders," Rui replied. "Your memories are a crystallization of who you are. They are also built upon one another, the more you take away, the more you lose sight of who you are. On top of that, one''s Martial drive emerges from memories, which means that it is liable to be impacted for the duration of the memory loss."


    That stirred Prince Raijun, putting an end to his enthusiasm for mind maniption solutions. The fact that none of his Martial Masters had rebuked Rui was proof that he was not uttering unsubstantiated falsehoods.


    "What about a Martial Sage?" Prince Raijun asked with a pointed look. "The Kandrian Empire has a mind Martial Sage. What if I enlist Her Excellency Sage Farana''s services for my training? Surely she will be able to handle my memory more delicately."


    Rui shrugged. "I don''t know. But you can give it a try if you want."


    Prince Raijun''s expression flickered with a hint of surprise. "You''re not going to try and convince me otherwise?"


    Rui shrugged nonchntly. "Why would I? If everything works out, good for you. I highly doubt it will though."


    "Why is that?" N?velDrama.Org holds this content.


    "Because mind Martial Artists understand the nature of their field the least out of any and all Martial Artists, Your Highness," Rui heaved a sigh. "The human mind is far and away the single most inscrutable and esoteric phenomenon and existence in the entire universe. They don''t understand the mind as well offensive Martial Artists understand offense, or defensive Martial Artists; defense, or maneuvering Martial Artists; maneuvering. To them, the mind is a ck box, and they possess some understanding of its mechanisms through which they can tinker around with it to produce some potent effects that could be applied inbat. I would not trust anybody to mess with my mind to such an extent, even if I believed in their intentions, which¡­ can you?"


    That was a definite concern to Prince Raijun.


    b0dae278d29100e144f57194c201d9f8099a91a179a65332f784901b88941324185d714eb9435e3b955e4f11d1b6b12b19414de0e098c77aa3e031f9320f04bb


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1606 Additional Considerations

    <h4>Chapter 1606 Additional Considerations</h4>


    "From what I understand, Her Excellency is not a part of your faction," Rui replied. "Even if she was, you wouldn''t trust her with your memories if you had any sense. Martial Sages possess the sheer power to get away with anything short of high treason against the Royal Emperor himself. Even if she wipes your memories and turns you into a vegetable, she will most likely not face too much trouble. She is infinitely more valuable to the nation than you are."


    His words cut sharp, but they were true. There was absolutely nothing that Prince Raijun could do for or against a Martial Sage that didn''t align with his ideals.


    The prince heaved a sigh as he fell deep into thought.


    He did not like his current position.


    Rui had exploited the chinks in his armor, such as hisck of loyalty from his faction, to get away with making absurd demands that he could not dismiss. He had also cleverly leveraged his sheer value to the Martial Union, and how much the organization clearly adored Rui despite the fact that he did not choose to be an internal member and join their corps. N?velDrama.Org holds this content.


    He would not be able to convince the Surgeon or any other Martial Master in his political faction to try and pressure Rui into helping him refine his Martial Art. They would straight up refuse.


    They both knew that.


    If Prince Raijun tried bullying Rui with a few Martial Artists of his own then¡­


    ''You''ll lose support from the Martial Union. You managed to reel in the Martial Supremacist Faction because you espoused their ideals and agreed to elevate Martial Artists to the head of the nation,'' Rui mused inwardly. ''Once they find out that you used your authority to suppress a Martial Artist two Realms above you, then everything wille into question.''


    That was why Prince Raijun, despite being shocked by Rui''s demand, had been careful not to antagonize Rui in an attempt to try and squeeze his services out of him.


    Everything thus far has gone ording to Rui''s n.


    "I don''t see why you''re hesitating, Your Highness," Rui shrugged. "Are you perhapscking in confidence in your ability to surpass His Highness Prince Raul and Her Highness Princess Ranea without sabotage and counter-operations?"


    The Martial Prince simply stared at Rui imperiously. "They are an integral part of any campaign. Perhaps you do not realize the magnitude of what you are demanding in return. Crippling me of an essential tool in Kandrian Throne War is debilitating."


    "But is it debilitating enough to overwhelm the additional surge in support that you will gain from the Martial Union by bing a Martial Squire?" Rui smiled. "Just imagine Your Highness. You will have proved all your naysayers wrong. You will have proved that you are indeed a fine Martial Artists who still pursues his Martial Path. You will have proven that you are worthy of greater support."


    There was the hook. Try as he might, the Martial Prince was unable to deny the sheer attraction of Rui''s proposal. Everything that Rui had just outlined was like a dreame true to him. It was extremely attractive and alluring to him.


    He breathed deeply, exhaling heavily before shaking his head lightly. "Your proposal crosses many lines. It''s an outrageous demand. However¡­the reward is just that alluring, assuming you are urate about your capabilities. My Martial Masters have yet to verify that."


    Rui shrugged. "I don''t mind making some demonstrations. However, you haven''t gotten to the point yet, Your Highness. What will you do if I am indeed able to what I say?"


    The Martial Prince stared at Rui for several seconds, before shaking his head. "I cannot give you an answer here and now. You are asking for far too much for me to make a decision right away, there are far too many patrons who have a stake in my campaign for me to make such a decision lightly. I will have to take into consideration everything that you have said and consult with various experts and stakeholders before I make a decision."


    Rui smiled lightly. This was the best response that he could hope for at the moment. It was impossible for Prince Raijun to rely on his extensive faction and administration to help hime to a decision regarding this matter.


    "Do you support Ranea and Raul''s visions for the future?" Prince Raijun asked, narrowing his eyes. Rui heaved a sigh. "Not as much as you''d think. I just think their philosophy of them is by far the most ptable among all. That''s not to say that it''s perfect, but I don''t find them disagreeable. However, I have not yet met either of them, let alone thrown my support behind them."


    Then again, he would be meeting Princess Ranea soon enough.


    "You are bolder than I ever imagined, Senior Quarrier," Prince Raijun remarked with a hint of grudging admiration. "I would have never imagined that our first training session would have unfolded in this manner."


    "Neither did I, Your Highness," Rui smirked. "But we can only y the cards we have been dealt. That is all I did."


    "You could have just agreed to make me a Martial Squire in exchange for normal rewards." Prince Raijun remarked. "Wealth, resources, territory, resources, and information. You could have capitalized on this opportunity to get as much of those as you wished. Yet you wish to cripple some of my tools in the Kandrian Throne War."


    "Well, I did ask for wealth," Rui replied. "However, if you must know, it''s because the oue of the Kandrian Throne War is important to me. I took this opportunity to influence it."


    "If you find the Martial Supremacist philosophy that disagreeable, then why even offer to help me?" The Prince asked, probing Rui''s philosophy. "You would be better off simply paying the expensive severance pay and breaking away quietly."


    "To protect my long-term personal interests, Your Highness" Rui replied with a wry smile. "The best way to avoid irking the non-Martial power bloc of your faction is to engage in a transaction where they gain what they want. I''m not interested in making a powerful enemy after being exiled due to being making powerful enemies. That is why I have chosen to avoid antagonizing you by refusing you, and have decided to pursue cooperation instead. Thus I truly do hope we can engage in a transaction, Your Highness, for both our sakes."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1607 Demonstration

    <h4>Chapter 1607 Demonstration</h4>


    Rui found it truly regrettable that he was unable to hide the fact that he could fix the Martial Prince''s problems. But when the cat came out of the bag, he swiftly came to a decision to offer some means of cooperation instead of refusing to cooperate.


    This was because he truly did not want to earn the enmity of an entire faction by operating in bad faith.


    After all, he had promised that he would do his reasonable best to help the prince. The Martial Prince had acted in good faith this entire time, and it was Rui who went against the spirit of their deal.


    Breaking out of their deal with the severance pay would mean breaking ties with the Raijun Faction on bad terms. That was a level of pressure that he could not handle even as a high-grade Martial Senior. Had he been a Martial Master, he would have been able to get away with it, but s, he was not.


    That was why, in fear of pissing off many wealthy patrons, Martial Masters, and even a Sage, he ultimately decided to cooperate. The Kandrian Throne War was important, but not worth pissing off people astronomically more powerful than him.


    Of course, the Martial Union was very pleased with Rui at the moment and that included the Martial Supremacist Faction, so he didn''t think they would instantly be hostile to him., but it would undoubtedly sour his rtions with the Martial Union. He also needed a lot of support to be inducted into the Fiscal Committee as a constituent.


    Prince Raijun was the Martial Union''s ticket to the throne, or a good chunk of the Martial Union, anyway. Rui essentially sabotaging Prince Raijun would not fly over well with a lot of people.


    Such was the nature of the dynamics. On one hand, the Martial Union would never allow an outsider, who too of royal blood, to bully Rui. On the other hand, the Martial Union would not be pleased if Rui refused to give them the key to winning the Cold War.


    Both Prince Raijun and Rui were smaller than the Martial Union and the Martial Supremacist Faction in this case.


    That was why Rui wisely left open a path forward to cooperation.


    Furthermore, in this path, he still left some hope for Prince Raul and Ranea to win, since he would be taking away crucial methods for Prince Raul to push back against those twopetitors. It was still possible for them to win the Kandrian Throne War.


    Furthermore, this deal also reduced the probability that the remaining four princes and princesses; the Underworld Prince, the Corporate Princess, the Military Prince, and the Communist Princess, would seed.


    This was because Prince Raul would use the resources spared by abstaining against the People''s Prince and the Sea Princess against the remaining four.


    Thus, if Prince Raijun epted Rui''s proposal, then the princes and princesses with the highest probability of victory were Prince Raijun himself, Prince Raul, and Princess Ranea.


    Only one of those three was an undesirable candidate as far as Rui was concerned.


    He shrugged inwardly. This was the best he could do with the cards that he had been dealt at that point in time.


    The first training session between the two of them had the potential to be historic. If Prince Raijun epted Rui''s deal, then he would be a Martial Squire, which could ultimately prove to be the deciding element in the Kandrian Throne War.


    It was a heavy burden, but s, this was the consequence of having extraordinary capabilities. Rui had even fully processed the ramifications of being known to refine individuality.


    ''Oh well, they should understand that this is something that can''t be done for everybody,'' Rui heaved a sigh.


    He could do it for a Martial Apprentice, but it became increasingly difficult the more experienced a Martial Artist was and the higher their Realm was. It was basically impossible for him to do it for most Martial Seniors. N?velDrama.Org holds this content.


    Perhaps only Ieyasu would be capable of that, but he didn''t possess Rui''s keen ability to process to identify micro-ws.


    "Onest thing," Prince Raijun had told Rui before the training session ended. "I''m going to require you to prove your words. If you cannot do it here and now, then I''ll assume you have been deceiving me this entire time."


    "Rest assured I have not," Rui heaved a troubled sigh. "Come, allow me to demonstrate."


    The two of them got onto the training ground once more. Thankfully, Rui had seen more than enough to have created a predictive model.


    They took identical stances, standing opposite each other.


    What followed stunned not just the Martial Prince, but also the Martial Masters behind him.


    Rui had¡­ be the prince. Every movement, every attack, every maneuver, gesture, and even twitch of movement had be identical.


    Even his expressions matched that of the prince.


    It was like he was fighting a mirror image of himself.


    A stronger and more reined mirror image of himself.


    THUD!


    Rui flipped the Martial Prince over his shoulder, mming him onto the ground.


    WHOOSH!


    His fist stopped centimeters away from the man''s stunned face.


    "That should prove my words," Rui replied calmly. "I reduced reaction time to match yours, as well as my other physical parameters. Aside from basic modifications to your movements to ount for the different bodies, I have also corrected almost all of the micro-ws in your style, and this is the oue."


    Rui hadpletely demolished him with the same techniques and movements.


    "¡­Is this how unrefined I am?" The prince murmured with shock.


    "Indeed," Rui replied with aposed tone. "I believe there should be no problems with the credibility of my ims."


    He nced at the two Martial Masters who had been observing their spar attentively. They didn''t respond to him, but their silence was a good admission of their approval.


    "And so¡­that leaves my decision," Prince Raijun murmured as he got up, staring deep into Rui''s eyes. "And¡­this will be the means through which you refine my Martial Art for me?"


    "Yes," Rui replied calmly.


    "And¡­you''re confident it will work?"


    "Quite."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1608 Reward Reaping

    <h4>Chapter 1608 Reward Reaping</h4>


    Rui departed from the Mantian Royal Manor shortly after as Prince Raijun ended their session, promising a response at ater date. He had, once again, declined the offer to be transported home. He heaved a sigh as a rush of thoughts flew through his head. He had many considerations in mind.


    Aplex analysis of factors had gone into his decision to offer help to Prince Raijun at the cost of not countering or sabotaging Prince Ranea and Prince Raul. It wasn''t just because he did not dislike their political inclinations. He also had self-preserving reasons to do so.


    For one, he knew the Beggar''s Sect was in favor of Prince Raul. He was essentially taking some measures to appease them by making a deal that was more favorable to Prince Raul than the rest of them.


    He was keenly aware of the fact that Alice and Farion were a part of the Beggar''s Sect. He also knew what this meant. While Alice and Farion shared a heartwarming story of how the Beggar''s Sect had helped them in a time of need. They didn''t possess the political acumen to understand that they themselves were a subtle and implicit message from the Beggar''s Sect to Rui.


    They were informing Rui to not mess with them, for they had his family. There was no reason for them to reveal the fact that Alice and Farion had joined the Beggar''s Sect. The Beggar''s Sect''s greatest strength was that nobody knew who was a Beggar and who wasn''t. Yet despite their anonymity and invisibility being their strength, they had still chosen to divulge the fact that.


    It was quite unpleasant, but he didn''t have the power to fight off the Beggar''s Sect. On top of that, he didn''t have the right to tell Alice and Farion to leave the sect. And finally, he had to admit that the fact that the sect had indeed done a lot of good.


    To a certain extent, he was repaying the debt that he had to them by carving out a deal that was more favorable to Prince Raijun. "Huff¡­" Rui heaved a sigh. "Whatever, I''ve done what I can. It''s time I focus on my own matters."


    He put away the thoughts surrounding the Kandrian Throne War and thought about the path forward for him. It had been two weeks since he returned and he was ready to actively begin taking the next few steps forward. This is property ? of N?velDrama.Org.


    He had several priorities over the next few days.


    Rui curled his mouth in disgust as he read through the description. The potion was made from the extracted semen of a male adamantiger, a species of monster big cats that was known for being extremely hard to kill. It granted the subject immense physical durability, making their flesh extremely tough and impervious.


    Even if he put aside his feeling about the ingredients of the potion, he wasn''t too interested in potions that empowered a single parameter alone. While that worked for specialized Martial Artists, it did not work for him, a dynamic all-rounder. He preferred something that would rtively benefit his entire Martial Art.


    Unfortunately for Rui, that disqualified most body-augmentation options that were avable for him to him as a reward.


    [Goliathan me Pill]


    A pill that imbued the power of ''fire'' within the muscles of the subject, making them stronger. It was such an unscientific exnation that he didn''t even know what to make of it.


    [Skyfall Crystal Treatment]


    An exposure treatment to a substance found in a particrly dangerous zone in the Beast Domain known as the Raging Rain Zone, a zone that was endlessly bombarded with meteorites from outer space continuously forever for reasons that were unknown. It empowered speed and agility.


    Unfortunately, the more well-bnced ones were much rarerpared to the specialized ones, and they weren''t nearly as alluring. It made sense that a perfectly bnced treatment was much more unlikely than a treatment that had some imbnce.


    It was merely a bnce of probability, there were more possible oues that were imbnced than bnced. Rui was faced with difficult choices.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1609 Choice

    <h4>Chapter 1609 Choice</h4>


    The all-rounder body-augmentations did not sound nearly as impressive as some of the more focused ones precisely because of there was only one possibility of stable configuration of empowerment.


    [General Augmentation Pill]


    Augments all parameters of the body to a modest degree.


    [Base Empowerment Potion]


    Also augmented all parameters of the body to a modest degree.


    Of course Rui understood why. The magnitude of the empowerment could not be the same as some of the other potions because it was spread out across the entire physiology, or more so than the specialized body augmentation treatments that needed to empower a portion of the body.


    It certainly wasn''t bad and would undoubtedly culminate inbat to make a substantial difference, but at the same time, Rui was rather displeased with both thecking potency and flexibility of the general augmentation. Not all the avable augmentations werecking in potency and flexibility.


    Rui nced at the Roaring Dragon Blood Potion. This potion would empower his breathing, allowing him to exert greater force with his breathing. This was a potion that empowered the diaphragm of his body in general.


    If he took this potion, he would be able to grow significantly more power than he already was, but he would also be able to exert that power in a power that was more flexible.


    On top of that, from his understanding, domain techniques made use of breathing techniques more often that not. Rui quickly made a choice. "I''ll go for this one," Rui pointed at a Roaring Dragon Blood Potion, turning to the woman seated opposite him.


    He was seated in an office of an executive that was personally handling his needs. At the Senior Realm, each Senior was worth individualized attention, especially one such as Rui.


    "Yes, but that''s not what I wanted to speak about," Julian heaved a sigh. "You remember those topics that you asked me to open research projects on?" N?velDrama.Org content.


    "Right," Rui recalled the alibi that he had Julian prepare for so that he could shift credibility for the basis of the Hungry Pain technique.


    "Well, a certain Doctor Garnen has made several donations to the projects and I have received several grants from the Martial Union randomly out of nowhere," Julian threw pointed look at Rui. "Even the dullest of minds would be able to deduce that this because of you."


    Ruiughed. "Doctor Garnen eh? He was the most curious to meet the person that I credited the Hungry Pain technique to. He and the Martial Union must have deduced that it''s you, just as nned"


    "What?"


    "Don''t worry about it," Rui replied, smiling. "The Martial Union will probably make several offers to you to join their research and development department, feel free to look them over."


    Julian heaved a tired sigh. "I wish you wouldn''t involve me in your mischief. What are you up to this time?"


    "Don''t worry about it," Ruiughed. "Just make sure you exploit those fools. Make sure to squeeze them for everything they have."


    Julian only grew more troubled at the sight of Rui indulging his amusement. Rui on the other hand was d that everybody had fallen for his trap. He had given the impression that the theoretical foundation, from which Rui gained the understanding needed to then create the Hungry Pain technique, came from Julian.


    As he expected, they had concluded that Julian was likely this highly esteemed person that Rui had referred to in his presentation of the Hungry Pain technique. That was why they were undoubtedly eager to build a working rtionship with him to eventually bring him into the Martial Union.


    "Have fun, and keep dazzling them with your brilliance, it is crucial that they remain fallen for it," Rui patted his brother on his shoulder.


    Julian felt a headacheing up at those words.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1610 Breathing Granny

    <h4>Chapter 1610 Breathing Granny</h4>


    The executive wasn''t kidding when she said that the Martial Union would link him up with a Martial Artist user of the Hungry Pain technique.


    However, he had expected that he would be referred to a Martial Senior.


    Instead, he received an invitation from a Martial Master.


    Master Vericita Nepomniachtchi, also known as the Breathing Sovereign was a high-grade Martial Master who had lived for four centuries. She was as old as the Kandrian Empire and was born just one century into the Age of Martial Art.


    She was easily the oldest Martial Artist human being that Rui would have met by now. This Martial Master had also consumed the Roaring Dragon Blood Potion that Rui had chosen. She would be the Martial Master who would be informing Rui about the experiences of the Roaring Dragon Blood Potion.


    Rui raised an eyebrow.


    Would an esteemed and elder Martial Master serve as a consultant for something as trivial as the effects of a Roaring Dragon Blood Potion?


    Rui didn''t think so. ''Well, we''ll see. Speaking with Martial Masters is only fruitful, making I can have her spend some time helping me with breathing techniques with the hundred hours that I have purchased.''


    The meeting was scheduled for the next day without any dy. He quickly set out the next morning, heading to the town of Vrexin on the other side of the nation. The climate noticeably grew warmer towards the south. The Kandrian Empire wasrge enough that the climate could entirely change due to the starkly differing distance from the poles.


    By the time he reached the town of Vrexin, he was even lightly sweating.


    It wasn''t long before he found the establishment that he was looking for.


    [Breathing Sect]


    Arge board shily announced the name of the organization that the walled Martialplex belonged to.


    "Figured," Rui heaved a sigh, experiencing deja vu. He figured that that wouldn''t be thest time that he would be invited by a Martial Sect personally. The guards quickly let him in where two maids awaited him, bowing to him.


    "Senior Quarrier, wee to the Breathing Sect. Her Mastery awaits you eagerly. Please let us guide you to her."


    The Breathing Sect was a lot different from Ranging Sect. The Ranging Sect inherently required space and room to amodate and make enough space for the many training long-range Martial Artists of the Empire. This is property ? of N?velDrama.Org.


    The Breathing Sect, on the other hand, did not require that much room inherently. The ce was filled with meditating Martial artists and aspiring Martial Artists. Their breathing was gentle yet controlled.


    It painted a picture of serenity.


    Rui had already noticed the starkck of sound or noise in the Martial Sect. Even the sounds produced by his footsteps were quite muffled. It appeared that the entire premises were sound-dampened to create an environment that was easier to focus in.


    Eventually, he was led into arge luscious garden deep in the sect.


    A single elderly woman was seated on the grass, cross-legged with her hands collected in herp.


    Yet it was her breathing that drew his attention.


    There was something particrly eye-drawing about it.


    It took a moment to realize what it was.


    It wasn''t so much as the breathing itself so much as what it did to everything around it.


    His vision distorted every time she inhaled and exhaled.


    Light itself was being warped with every breath she took.


    His eyes widened as he felt the very skies respond to her deep breathing, tilting and gently rocking by the sheer weight of her rxed breathing.


    "You''vee¡­" Her soft elderly voice rippled through the air so smoothly that he could have sworn her voice had directly materialized inside his mind. "Child of the Void."


    A soft and serene smile slowly bloomed on her face as she slowly opened her eyes.


    "Master Vericita," Rui bowed with respect, sping his palm on his fist.


    "You may dispense with formality if you so please, young man," She informed him, smiling softly. "Come. Sit before me."


    She turned to the maids that remained bowed behind him. "Prepare some tea for our guest."


    "Yes, Your Master,"


    She turned to Rui with a soft smile, meeting his gaze. "I''ve been waiting a long time to meet you for a long time, my child. I am pleased that our paths have finally crossed. It seems that you have understood the importance of breathing well."


    "I have, Master," Rui replied politely. "Much of my Martial Art relies on breathing techniques."


    "Such is the case for nearly every other Martial Artist," She remarked. "Breathing is not just fundamental to Martial Art, it is fundamental to an exertion of self, Martial or otherwise. It is fundamental to life itself. Life breathes, one way or another, it needs to. What do you think, Rui Quarrier?"


    "I am inclined to agree, Master," Rui earnestly replied. "Breathing is extremely fundamental to Martial Art."


    "Mmmm¡­" She nodded, smiling with appreciation. "And yet despite that, not nearly as many are as understanding of this truth as you are. Despite being so fundamental to Martial Art, it is denied its true status as an official fundamental field of Martial Art. Tell me, Rui Quarrier. What do you make of that?"


    That was an abrupt segway. A more refined conversationalist or wordsmith would have found a smoother manner to channel the conversation in the direction they wanted. But such a direct approach did not leave any room to avoid the topic


    Rui considered her words with a steady expression. While her voice was soft,her words were notcking in controversy.


    There were three officially recognized fundamental domains of Martial Art andbat as recognized by the Martial Union and the Panamic Martial Federation.


    Offense, defense, and maneuvering. A battle could not be won without some form of offense. A battle couldn''t be lost without some basic form of defense. A battle could not move forward if thebatants didn''t.


    With these rationales, offense, defense, and maneuvering were crowned as the holy trinity ofbat, the three fundamental domains or fields ofbat.


    Not even two minutes had passed since they began conversing but this deceptively-soft and gentle granny had already brought up a controversial topic. Her words indicated that she firmly believed that breathing was as fundamental tobat as offense, defense, and maneuvering, and deserved to be crowned alongside them as a foundational field ofbat.


    But what did this have to do with Rui?


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1611 Counter-Proposal

    <h4>Chapter 1611 Counter-Proposal</h4>


    "I¡­think there certainly is merit in the idea that breathing is as fundamental to martial Art as offense and defense themselves are," Rui carefully chose his words. "As you said, all life breathes, it is necessary. Arge majority of Martial Artists have some breathing technique or the other in their Martial Art, that is also true. It certainly is as, or simrly, popr as offense, defense, or maneuvering. These are good arguments in favor of recognizing it as a fundamental field ofbat."


    He paused for a moment, before continuing. "However, I believe there are arguments that are against it as well that are more so philosophical in nature. Offense, defense, and maneuvering can be said to be conceptually important tobat itself. Offense is to hurt, and defense is to avoid being hurt, maneuvering is to move, an action that is fundamental to the prior two fields and the transitions between them. Inparison¡­"


    He met her gaze firmly. "¡­Breathing may be fundamental to our life as a phenomenon, but it is not fundamental to the concept ofbat in the manner that the concepts of offense, defense, and maneuvering are. Thus, I see merits on both sides over this issue."


    He concluded himself.


    She smiled. "You instantly managed to construct and dissect the nuances of the two main differing points of view on this topic that have long shed with each other, on the spot. You are as bright as they say."


    "You tter me, Master," Rui replied with a ton of modesty. "However, we of the Breathing Sect strongly disagree that both these positions are equally meritorious. Much underliesbat, and much is necessary for it. We often ignore them, taking them for granted, it isn''t granted," She continued. "For instance, life itself is even more fundamental tobat than offense, defense, and maneuvering are. After all, dead Martial Artists cannot fight. Martial Artists can fight without defense, although they will die very quickly, but they cannot fight without life in their bodies and minds. And, as we discussed, breathing is fundamental to life, most certainly human life. Thus, breathing several orders more fundamental tobat than even the trinity ofbat."


    "I see¡­" Rui remarked, notmenting. He felt that her logic was a tad bit pedantic and overly favorable to breathing.


    Yes, it was true that breathing was fundamental to the phenomenon of most life, which as a concept was quite fundamental tobat, however, that logic could be applied to many things.


    Consumption was also equally fundamental to the concept of life. Thus, using this line of logic, it could be argued that eating ought to be a fundamental field ofbat simr to breathing.


    The same could be said for several other fundamental processes to the human body, including thought. Would that make thought techniques, techniques that pretty much nobody except Martial Masters and Seniors used, a fundamental field?


    Rui wasn''t inclined to think so. Regardless, he wasn''t too interested in having a philosophical debate with the elderly Master when their disagreements were both fundamental and definitional, neither of which were likely to be solved with a discussion.


    "The Breathing Sect has been lobbying for the recognition of Breathing techniques as a fundamental field ofbat for centuries now," She exined softly. "Progress has been slow, but steady. Her Transcendence, the Breathless Beauty, introduced the field of Martial Breathing more than four centuries ago and has spread it to every corner of the world ever since. What was once a small movement has now be a powerhouse international faction led by a Martial Transcendent, nearly a dozen Martial Sages, and more than a hundred Martial Masters like myself. We operate across the entire continent, lobbying to bring justice to breathing, we havee closer to sess than ever before. After all, the sheer utility and power of breathing techniques cannot be denied."


    She turned to Rui. "You must be wondering why I abruptly began our conversation with this topic."


    "Well, yes¡­" It would be strange not to, rather.


    "I would like for you to support us, Rui Quarrier," She replied. "Your Martial Art, ording to our intelligencework, consists of many breathing techniques that are extremely vital in facilitating your powerful ''adaptive evolution''. I''m not asking you to believe what we believe philosophically, I am asking you to support our cause for your own benefits. The more breathing bes recognized, the greater the resources that will be expended into developing it, resulting in greater techniques in all regards, greater training artifacts and methodologies. This will benefit you because you will be able to update your breathing techniques with superior ones." N?vel/Dr(a)ma.Org - Content owner.


    She paused for a moment, giving him a knowing look. "You are currently the most valued Martial Senior in East Panama. Any group that gains your support and allegiance will gain a rather substantial amount of prestige to have earned a prodigious Martial Artist who will surely leave his mark on all of Martial Art. Supporting us benefits both of us. Naturally, the Breathing Sect is very much prepared to go to great lengths to make it worth your time."


    Rui had already sharply deduced her intentions when she brought up lobbying efforts earlier. "Tell me, Rui Quarrier," She calmly addressed him. "Do you ept the premise of our cooperation? If it is merely a matter of price, then rest assured that we are willing to go far."


    Rui shook his head. "I have enough and more wealth. I am open to cooperating with you. However, I have a counter-proposal."


    He grew more serious. "The next fiscalmittee meeting of the Martial Union is in several months. A motion to induct me as a constituent of themittee will be brought up by some Master, I wish for you to vote in favor of the motion. Not only that¡­"


    He had arrived at his actual objective. "In exchange for my support, I want the Breathing Sect''s wholehearted support for the budget allocated to the dissemination of my Martial Path."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1612 Backer

    <h4>Chapter 1612 Backer</h4>


    Master Vericita raised an eyebrow softly, giving Rui a knowing look. "I am not unaware of the suggestions and ideas regarding your Martial Art that were born from Master Ceeran''s revtions regarding it. I do not know how true they are. The Breathing Sect cannot simply throw its support behind something that isn''t substantiated with merit."


    "Is a Martial Master''s word not enough?" Rui raised an eyebrow. "Master Ceeran informed me that there was additional verification conducted on his ims." N?vel/Dr(a)ma.Org - Content owner.


    "It''s a matter of standards. The Martial Union can afford to invest capital and even take minor gambles fiscally. But Martial Sects are different. We have a reputation to maintain when ites to supporting a motion. We need a higher standard of certainty. We also need to be sure that it is what you say it is."


    "I intend to present it to a variety of Martial Masters before themittee meeting happens," Rui replied. "If it satisfies you, then I presume I have your support?"


    "Most certainly young man," Master Vericita smiled. "I, and my fellow Martial Masters of the Breathing Sect, will naturally be voting in favor of the motion to instate you as a member of the fiscalmittee."


    "Then I suppose we have ourselves an agreement," Rui remarked with satisfaction. "I didn''t expect to lobby support in our meeting, but I''m d that I was able to."


    "It was longing, young man," She remarked. "As I mentioned, I have known about you for a long time, ever since you defeated one of my descendants, heir to the Nepomniachtchi Family, as an Apprentice many years ago."


    Rui furrowed his eyebrow in confusion for a moment until it clicked. His eyes widened "Ian Nepomniachtchi?"


    This was the Martial Apprentice that he had faced in the semi-finals of the Kandrian Martial Contest held between the sixteen Martial Academies. He was a dynamic all-rounder with breathing techniques that were quite powerful and allowed him to manipte his physical configuration like the Metabody System.


    Rui had managed to defeat him with great effort, oveing him in their battle. Since then, he knew that the Martial Artist bore a grudge against Rui.


    Rui hadn''t thought about the man in so many years that the memory was buried deep in the dark depths. If not for Master Vericita bringing him up, Rui may have forgotten about the man altogether. He nced back at the Martial Master with a wary expression. He could only hope that this wouldn''t affect their agreement to cooperate.


    "Rest assured that such a trivial matter is far from enough to sour our rtionship," She calmly reassured him. "Martial Artists lose. This is an unchangeable fact. My descendant lost because he was weaker. You won because you''re stronger. Only a fool would me you for winning. Ian had behaved in a manner that is not befitting that of a scion of the prestigious family born from my blood, indicating that he wascking."


    Rui heaved a soft sigh. "I am relieved by your graciousness, Your Mastery."


    "I am hardly being gracious as much as fair and truthful," She heaved a soft sigh. "My descendant was born with prodigious talent, breaking through to the Apprentice Realm several years younger than even what would normally be considered gifted; at the age of twelve as a child. His progress has been remarkable, all things considered."


    She turned to Rui with appreciative eyes. "It is a shame that our family was not blessed with a Martial Artist like yourself. In fact, would you be willing to be adopted by the Nepomniachtchi Family?"


    Rui coughed ufortably. "Let us dispense with the jokes."


    She smiled with a hint of mischief. "It is a shame, but I shall do so. In addition to our prior agreement, I would like to add that I am willing to consider investing heavily in the Martial Art techniques of your Martial Art that you will be spreading. If they truly impress me, then I am willing to spend hundreds of millions of Martial Credits."


    Rui''s eyes widened at those words. "That is an excessive amount, Master."


    "I would have agreed with that statement even a few years ago," She remarked with a smug smile. "But rest assured that that is a very manageable amount these days as a supporter of the Rafia Faction."


    Rui raised an eyebrow at those words. It was an interesting remark, and certainly not one that she brought up for no reason.


    "I was not aware that the Nepomniachtchi Family was a part of the Rafia Faction," Rui replied with an intrigued tone. "Seems unusual for a Martial family."


    "What the Breathing Sect needs more than anything is the capital to fund extensive rallying and lobbying," Master Vericita remarked. "People assume that Martial Artists don''t care or need money, especially those of the higher Realms, but the world runs on money and capital. An innumerable problems simply melt before its power. Martial Art is more absolute, of course, but there''s no harm in possessing both instead of just one, especially when you are faced with the daunting ambition of wanting to alter the foundations of the Martial World, such a thing cannot be aplished by Martial power alone."


    Rui listened with intrigue. "I see, so the Breathing Sect has aligned with the Rafia Faction to boost the campaign to bring breathing techniques more recognition."


    "That correct," Master Vericita remarked, sipping her tea. "We have deemed it to be a necessary measure to achieve our ambition.


    Rui wasn''t sure about how he felt about that. "Doesn''t Her Highness wish to criminalize worker unions to make it easier for apany or organization to essbor? Technically that would include the Martial Union, right? Do you really support that oue?"


    "Not at all," She sipped some tea. "However, I believe that it is inconsequential. That is why I don''t care about her extreme ambition to create a world that favors ofmerce and trade. The Martial Union will never ept abolition and no force in this world, short of a Martial Transcendent, can abolish it against our will."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1613 Illusioned

    <h4>Chapter 1613 Illusioned</h4>


    Rui didn''t disagree with her evaluation.


    Frankly, he was surprised that some of the prime princes and princesses believed that they could be Martial Artists and suppress the Martial Union despite their extravagant education. This is property ? of N?velDrama.Org.


    It showed that education corrted more with knowledge than it did wisdom.


    The princes and princesses appeared to believe in the throne, perhaps a little too excessively. It appeared that they truly thought they could achieve their ambitions or ideals as long as they ascended the throne and gained the power of the crown, no matter what.


    As children of the Emperor, they were undoubtedly surrounded by those who were fervently loyal to the Emperor and believed in his absolution.


    Was that why Prince Raijun thought he could get away with using the power of the Emperor to alter the fundamental nature of the Kandrian Empire and elevate Martial Artists to be the ruling ss of the nation?


    It was funnily contradictory in his case, yet also deeply concerning. If that was the mindset that the princes and princesses had regarding what was possible with the power of the Crown, then it was no wonder that some of these princes and princesses had crazy ideas!


    Regardless, he could understand Master Vericita''s argument. The abolition of the Martial Union was essentially effectively impossible and any attempt to do so would lead to a war between two forces that would tear apart the very fabric of the nation, sending ripples of war and chaos across not just the nation but also the entire world.


    That was the influence that the Kandrian Empire had across East Panama. A civil war would leave the Kandrian Empire in a delicate state of weakness that would in turn invite its rival powerhouse Sage-level nations to wage war on the weakened nation.


    The Kandrian Empire was a highly desirable nation to colonize and take over, the fact that it bordered the Great Nam Ocean alone made it worth acquiring.


    "The risks of conflict are high with the Corporate Princess," Rui remarked. "Are you willing to bring war to thisnd for the sake of the Breathing Sect''s ambition?"


    "Yes."


    Her voice was soft, but her tone was firm.


    "War is inevitable, young one," She remarked with a tone of resignation. "Take it from someone who has lived more than a dozen times longer than you have. War is inevitable. Human greed. Human fear. Martial drive. As long as these exist, there will be always war. The Great East Panamic War may have ended eighty years ago, but it will reignite once more. War wille, one way or another. It is better to be prepared for it than to try and prevent it."


    "One can do both," Rui calmly replied. "I have taken great measures to protect my loved ones from it while doing my best to prevent itsing."


    "That is an admirable sentiment but I fear that you may be a bit naive, young man," She heaved a soft sigh.


    Rui simply stared at her. He was aware of the inevitability of war more than anyone could imagine. In his previous life, he was born during the Cold War and in an age when the world was cooling down from the world wars.


    He knew that war was like weeds, it would just keeping back even after it was gone. However, he didn''t care to postpone war forever. He wasn''t even strictly against war either.


    What he was against was a war that would disaffect his family, which a civil war would most certainly do due to its proximity to them. If the Kandrian Empire fought arge war a great distance away that did not affect the Quarrier Orphanage, he would not give a damn.


    Rui heaved a sigh. "Oh well, we can only do what we can."


    "You ought to consider following suit if you are truly serious about spreading your Martial Art," Master Vericita remarked, smiling invitingly. "Creating a Sect requires capital, rest assured. Maintaining it requires just as much capital. Joining the Rafia Faction will take care of those concerns and more."


    Rui scoffed inwardly.


    Of course, she was trying to rally him to the Rafia Faction.


    "I appreciate the suggestion," Rui replied in a nonmitting tone.


    "Hear me out, Senior Quarrier. Her Highness is quite eager to gain your support. She has a proposal for you," Master Vericita replied. "It is¡­controversial, but her reasoning is sound in theory. It may be in your interests to ept it."


    He wasn''t surprised that an initiative had already been taken to earn his allegiance. "What proposal?"


    "Her Highness will convey that to you herself," Master Vericita replied with a soft smile, firmly refusing to divulge it.


    She stood up, opening her palm before breathing in a particr manner


    Suddenly, a well-embellished envelope appeared in her palm.


    On it was the seal of the Royal Family.


    Rui heaved a soft sigh.


    "Her Highness invites you to a corporate convention," She informed him. "While she is not present at all times, you will be treated with the utmost hospitality for as long as you wish before and after you meet with her. She may also "


    Her hands stretched out, offering the envelope to Rui who epted it.


    "I look forward to meeting with Her Highness," Rui replied.


    Master Vericita smiled. "We have spoken on many a topic, Senior Quarrier, why don''t we get to why we are here."


    "Ah¡­" Rui smiled wryly. For a moment, he had forgotten when he hade to speak to Master Vericita. "Right. I wish to inquire about the effects of the Roaring Dragon Blood Potion. While there is documentation that talks about the effects, it is clinical and does not include the Martial perspective, thus I was advised to speak to a Martial Artist who has consumed the potion."


    Master Vericita considered his words for a moment before she began. "The roaring dragon is a species of dragon that is known for its lethal roars that produce a sound that can kill everything within a town as a result of an extraordinary breathing capacity. It is esoteric in that we do not understand the principle, yet through sheer trial and error, we have managed to glean a portion of the truth and harness its mysterious power."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1614 Good Boy

    <h4>Chapter 1614 Good Boy </h4>


    "More than ten thousand test subjects have perished after torturous oues with endless trial and error," Master Vericita smile grew mncholic. "That should inform you with how difficult it was to develop this potion. It also tells you the value of the power thatys within"


    Rui''s eyes widened. "That''s an absurdly high count!"


    Master Vericita''s eyes grew pensive. "It is indeed unpleasant, but this is the cost of harnessing powers and forces that we do not understand."


    Rui''s eyes narrowed.


    This was the w of human progress on the Panama Continent. Because they did not understand the underlying principles of the esoteric nature that they were harnessing, they had to rely on an absurd amount of trial and error.


    A more refined and deeper understanding would have allowed them to make more progress with less trial and error since their understanding would allow them to avoid errors rather than needing endless trials to spot them.


    "It is good to understand the weight behind these miracles of man," Master Vericita exined. "Upon consuming the potion, your breath will grow more powerful. It will feel as though even the slightest bit of effort will cause you to inhale so much. You will need to dedicate some amount of time to remastering your breathing and ensuring that you have regained control over it. In addition¡­"


    She proceeded to give Rui a good description of the experiences that she had undergone when she consumed the potion, giving him several pointers and notes.


    "¡­And while it wasn''t easy, the power that I gained was certainly worth it," She exined.


    Rui narrowed his eyes. "I see¡­this has been quite insightful. The Roaring Blood Potion is certainly one hell of a resource for Martial Artists to make up for dated Martial Bodies."


    "It is not enough, I''m afraid," Master Vericita sighed, throwing Rui a knowing look. "Especially since the technique that you have bestowed upon the Martial Union has greatly empowered the Squire evolution breakthrough process. While most Martial Artists are pleased by the contribution to Martial Art, their sects, and the Martial Union, there are some Seniors and Masters who are pressured by it."


    Rui raised an eyebrow. "Pressured?"


    "Yes, you have elerated the growth of the future generation of Martial Art significantly. The geniuses of the next generations in particr will be able to close the gap between themselves and their seniors much quicker. Thus there are some who are ufortable and feel threatened by the superior physical foundation of their juniors." She turned towards him. "You are at the top of their list."


    Rui narrowed his eyes.


    "Think about it, Senior Quarrier," She mentioned. "There are Martial Squires and even Seniors who are many decades and even centuries old. They have worked hard to reach the power that they have currently obtained. Countless years have gone into painstakingly drawing out their individuality. Even more have gone into refining it in battle. Every iota of power they possess is a testament to their drive, a source of their pride. How do you think these senior Martial Artists feel when they witness you zipping through your Martial Path like a jog in the park? Reaching the Senior Realm at the age of twenty-four and then reaching the higher grades four yearster is just so absurd that it''s not even funny."


    She heaved a sigh. "That''s not even taking into ount the various other feats that you have aplished. And now you have made their seniority even less of an advantage with the Hungry Pain technique. That is why already rare potions like these are not longer adequate. I foresee a rise in the demand for body-augmentation treatments amongst elder Martial Artists. Most likely, in theing fiscal budget allocation meeting that you aim to be a part of, a much greater annual budget will be allocated to body augmentation resources in order to ensure that it can sessfully close the gap between generations."


    "I see¡­" Rui murmured. "That does make sense. Considering that these potions are based on rare and esoteric resources, we will also most likely see a substantial increment in the huntermissions both externally and internally. It appears that I have caused a variety of chain reactions."


    In fact, now that Rui gave it deeper thought, his mind was able to calcte many possible chain reactions from this one technique alone.


    Master Vericita gave him a gentle smile as she reached out, cing her hand on Rui''s head.


    PAT PAT


    "My child, do not let the inevitable ripples from your deeds affect you," Her tone was gentle yet affectionate. "Great deeds always earn the ire of those who benefit from their absence. Rest assured that they will not be allowed to harm you out of perverse self-interest. I shall personally intervene should any Martial Master employ their power to pressure you. You have my word as the head of the Nepomniachtchi Family."


    Rui smiled wryly as she continued pat his head lightly, it was a strangely intimate gesture. It appeared that the elderly Martial Master was too old to care for social distance. Not that Rui minded, the maternal gesture even made him feel like was in his mother''s embrace making him feel secure and safe, embarrassingly enough.


    "Martial Art requires bright stars like you," She smiled affectionately, still patting his head. "You are of the future. Martial Artists like myself are powerful, yet we are of the past. I am of an era where Martial Art was more primitive and limited. It is only the freshness of youth that can qualitatively improve Martial Art, especially since your mind and body are going to retain their youth for a long time since your aging slowed down even further before you hit your physical prime." N?velDrama.Org content.


    "Your words are ttering, Master," Rui bowed his head even as she patted it.


    "You''re such a good boy, would you like to reconsider joining my family? You''ll get to call me ''grandma'' and have head pats like this every day, especially since Ian is too proud to allow me to pat his head."


    "I''ll have to respectfully decline, Master."


    "Then call me ''grandma'' anyway."


    "That¡­"


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1615 Domain Techniques

    <h4>Chapter 1615 Domain Techniques </h4>


    She eventually ceased patting him, returning to her tea. "It is not every day that I get to speak with a boy as incredible as yourself. I look forward to the day you break through to the Master Realm, that will be quite the spectacle as long as you achieve it."


    She gave him a knowing nce.


    "I too look forward to breaking through to the Master Realm as soon as I can," Rui heaved a sigh. "Although I have been informed that my path to the Master Real might be particrly tough."


    Master Vericita nodded knowingly. "That is the price you must pay for the extraordinary power that you will obtain from the Master Realm. I''m frankly shocked that you have already made such remarkable progress as a young man who hasn''t even lived three decades."


    There it was again, she eyed him knowingly like she was aware of his thought or could see through the depth of his mind. The insight that Martial Masters seemed to have always astonished him, was this the power of the Martial Mind? N?velDrama.Org content.


    "In addition¡­" She remarked. "I have never seen a young man like yourself harness the power of thought before he harnessed the masculine power that characterizes the male body. It''s almost unheard of. Tell me¡­"


    She reached out, petting him once more. "¡­what is it that led to a young man thinking so much? It is unnatural."


    Rui smiled wryly. "You say that like male Martial Artists don''t think."


    "Not when they''re young, they don''t."


    "That seems excessively harsh, Your Mastery."


    Master Vericita smiled softly. "Perhaps, after all, you are ustomed to harnessing the power of thought more than you are the power of body. The only cases I have ever seen such a thing happen are¡­ when one is crippled when one is unable to harness the power of the body. Were you afflicted by any disease that crippled you? But I don''t recall any such information on you."


    Rui''s eyes widened as she managed to hit the nail on the head.


    It was true that being crippled physically gave him time to think. A lot of it. That naturally caused him to be immersed in his own thoughts. Whether it was sitting by himself in school, watching the other kids y outside, or at lunch, or at any other time in his life.


    He did think a lot, inevitably, if only to not go insane with frustration at his inability to partake in simr activities.


    "Whatever it may be, you are blessed to be able to harness thought so well," Master Vericita replied. "It is no doubt your source of a strength as a power Martial Senior."


    "Perhaps," Rui smiled.


    "Mmm," Master Vericita nodded. "Then you should constantly nourish thought, develop your Martial Art and expand it with individuality and give your mind more things to think about. Once you do that you will gain more power than you can imagine."


    "Thank you for your advice, Master," Rui replied, before thinking about giving it some thought. "On the topic of the expanding Martial Art, I had some inquiries of you, Master."


    "Hm?" Master Vericita smiled warmly, eager to answer Rui''s questions. "Ask away, my child."


    "Can you tell me about the Martial Sect rting to domains?" Rui asked. "I have been quite interested in adding domains to my Martial Art."


    Master Vericita stared at him for a second, before shaking her head. "There is no Martial Sect centered around domains."


    Rui''s eyebrows furrowed in surprise. "What? Why not? Surely the Martial Union has many domain Martial Artists."


    "Many, no. Regardless the number is not the reason that there isn''t a domain Martial Sect. The reason is because the sole domain Martial Master has not bothered to gather Martial Artists together and create a Sect," Master Vericita informed him. "That is why."


    Well, there was nothing Rui could do about that.


    "¡­Does that Martial Master train prospective students?" Rui wondered.


    "He doesn''t," Master Vericita informed him. "He is quite insr does not concern himself with the matters of man. This isn''t unheard of. While many Martial Masters like myself are driven to involve ourselves in human society for various objectives and agendas, there are those whose drive drives them away from human civilization. I highly doubt that you will be able to get him to even teach you. Perhaps you could rely on the trainings or teachings of the Martial Seniors."


    Rui shook his head. "I''d rather train by myself if that was the case. Martial Masters are worth training under because of their special insight and observation, which is why I bother. But Martial Seniors are in the same boat, I have much less to learnparatively and I have always preferred relying on myself."


    "Suit yourself," She smiled. "Domain techniques are also techniques that are also partially dependent on breathing. They manipte heaven and earth with breath and body, the breath part would not be possible without breathing techniques. It goes to show just how important breathing techniques are. No other field of Martial Art has given rise to so many other fields of Martial Art that would not even be able to exist without it."


    Rui smiled wryly as she began espousing the value of breathing techniques.


    "If you seek to pursue domain techniques, then you made the right choice with choosing the roaring dragon blood potion," Master Vericita informed Rui. "Make sure that youplete the treatment before delving into the field, that will be more efficient than creating domain techniques centered around inferior breathing techniques."


    "I understand, Master," Rui replied, nodding. "I appreciate the advice and suggestions that you have given me. I will be sure to bear your words in mind."


    Master Vericita smiled warmly before her hand reached out patting him over the head. "Mmm, you''re a good boy. Harness the power of thought and work towards the Master Realm. The Martial World needs revolutionary Martial Artists like you if we are to maintain dominance as the age bearers in this era."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1616 Procedure

    <h4>Chapter 1616 Procedure</h4>


    It wasn''t long before Rui left Breathing Sect after bidding Master Vericita goodbye. She left asting impression on him, she was just like a dotting grandma, the type that could grow intimate with just about anybody, closing the distance between them very fast.


    At the very least, if any other Martial Artist called him a ''good boy'', he would have assumed that they were trying to provoke him with a condescending manner of addressing him. But when Master Vericita did it, he strangely didn''t feel any displeasure at it.


    Her age and experience dwarfed his even when he added up both lives. She had truly lived for a long time and it reflected in her insights.


    Regardless, he had gotten what he came for and more. Naturally, he had gotten many notes and pointers from her regarding the roaring blood potion.


    In addition, he won over a good ally. The Breathing Sect was undoubtedly powerful with the sheer number of Martial Artists that used breathing techniques. With their support, the Martial Union was bound to invest in Rui''s Martial Art to a much greater extent than before.


    There were conditions, naturally. The Breathing Sect''s support would be varied based on merit. If the techniques that he created and presented were not meritorious, then the support from the Breathing Sect would be minimal.


    Of course, Rui had hismitments as well. The Breathing Sect required him to openly support the Breathing Sect''s motion to instate and officially recognize breathing Martial Art as a fundamental field of Martial Art.


    While a single vote from him was disproportionately lesser than the many votes from the Breathing Sect, the prestige of gaining the support of the most dazzlingly prodigious and youngest Martial Senior in history was something that was important.


    Rui was the strongest symbol of the future. Gaining his open support added more gravitas and weight to the movement of the Breathing Sect whichpensated in the disparity in votes.


    But it was a great transaction as far as he was concerned. Both sides gained a lot and didn''t lose much with what they were giving. Every motion in the fiscalmittee meeting gave every constituent a new opportunity to vote on the matter. There weren''t a limited number of votes that Martial Masters had to use wisely. On top of that, votes for a particr motion could not be used for any other motion, thus nothing was gained by abstaining.


    Thus neither Rui nor the Breathing Sect lost even the slightest bit of political capital by voting in favor of each other.


    Perhaps that was why both sides came to an agreement rather rapidly, the risks were low enough that it wouldn''t matter. As long as Rui was notcking in a bare minimum amount of merit, he would earn their full-fledged support.


    He felt the royal envelope in his pocket weighing him down. The corporate princess had taken the opportunity to contact him through one of her supporters. He was curious about what this special proposal was. It didn''t seem like it was the regr offer like Princess Raemina gave him.


    He didn''t see it appealing to him though.


    He never had a desire for wealth,nd, authority or anything else that they normally used to rope in supporters.


    None of that worked on him.


    Regardless, he would definitely hear her out.


    "Now then," Rui heaved a sigh, shaking his head. "Let''s get back to the business at hand."


    He needed to quickly undertake the roaring dragon blood potion treatment that was reserved him the next day, thus he did not want to get bogged by any other matter. N?vel/Dr(a)ma.Org - Content owner.


    The rest of the day, he followed through the various instructions that were given to those who would be undergoing the roaring dragon blood potion treatment. He wasn''t allowed to consume alcohol within twenty-four hours of the treatment, not that he intended to.


    He also wasn''t allowed to consume any liquids on the day of the procedure, among other things. He was also advised to pass motion before the procedure.


    He carefully followed through every instruction until the day of the procedure came about and he found himself in the designated medical procedure early in the morning the next day.


    "Wee, Senior Quarrier. I am Doctor Frunhein and I will be personally overseeing your procedure." An elderly doctor with an air of seniority weed him in. Around was arge team of assistants, more than Rui had seen for any of the other times that he had relied on the Martial Union to service him with their medical services.


    "I am in your hands, doctor," Rui replied before ncing around. "It reassures me that such arge team will be overseeing my procedure."


    "I hand-picked them myself, rest assured they are the best of the best," He remarked. "I too was personally appointed by someone extremely high up in the Martial Union to oversee this procedure to make sure that there is absolutely nothing that could go wrong with it even the slightest."


    "I am grateful for the Martial Union''s prudence," Rui replied, unsurprised.


    He had already expected that the Martial Union would go above and beyond with this procedure. He was far too important for anything less.


    "Please change into this attire, we will shortly begin the procedure." The doctor remarked, handing a him a medical gown which Rui quickly stripped and changed into then and there.


    It wasn''t long before a set of doors opened automatically, leading down to a distant chamber where he would be undergoing the treatment. Behind him, the corridor squeezed shut as the ground and ceiling behind extended towards each other, squeezing the way behind him shut.


    By the time he reached inside, he waspletely locked in imprisoned by long and thick walls of pure esoteric reinforcement.


    "Now then, Senior Quarrier," the doctor''s voice was projected inside the chamber. "Be absolutely certain not to employ the power of the Senior Realm no matter what. Please harness the gas mask on the bed in the chamber and lie down."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1617 Record

    <h4>Chapter 1617 Record</h4>


    He wasn''t surprised that the potion was going to be administered in gaseous form. It was easier to get into the bloodstream and had the least chance of failing due to unforeseen factors during digestion.


    He followed the instructions of the doctor.


    "We will begin the procedure now."


    A red gas passed through the pipes of the gas mask before he inhaled them.


    His eyes widened as his pupils dted.


    He felt like he had just inhaled spikes into his lungs.


    "Rgh!" He grimaced.


    Sharp piercing pain ravaged his lungs, causing him to writhe in agony, doing his best to control his movements.


    "Restrain yourself, Senior Quarrier."


    It was easier said than done. Thankfully, he had been preparing for the torturous pain thus he was able to handle it a lot better than he could have otherwise hoped for. An unknown amount of time passed as he endured the sharp stinging pain that ravaged his lungs.


    The roaring dragon blood potion destroyed and reconstructed the lungs of a Martial Artist in a manner that was no dissimr to the Squire evolution breakthrough procedure. The only difference was that while it was supposed to reconstruct his lungs, it didn''t rely on Darwinian evolution, it relied on the blood of the roaring dragon to empower his lungs.


    It relied on principles that were decidedly esoteric in nature, Rui suspected that it relied on somepound in the roaring dragon''s blood that allowed for its lungs to be so powerful.


    "DAMN," What was supposed to be a murmur became a shout. He was aware that this would happen, of course, but the euphoria had overwhelmed any considerations.


    He reduced his effort to a whisper.


    "Finally, back to normal. I guess this will have to be the norm," Rui whispered, returning to his normal volume. He felt like he was breathing with vigor unlike he ever did before. "Take some time to adjust, Senior Quarrier," The doctor''s voice echoed in the chamber. "It will take some time to get used to. But it is best you at least recalibrate your effort to match your enhanced respiration. Thus far, we are pleased to inform you that no anomalies have been detected, your procedure was a perfect sess."


    "I''m d to hear that, doctor, I appreciate your services," Rui replied, closing his eyes as he tried different levels of effort to replicate what was normal before. "I think I''m getting the hang of this for now."


    He employed a little bit of self-hypnosis to elerate the process. The principles could be employed at any time, but given that he hadn''t refined the image over time, it couldn''t be considered at a technique level.


    But it helped with conditioning his mind to lower the effort and force he put into his breathing even subconsciously, which was the most important part.


    "Would you like to undergo a sneeze test?" The doctor asked him. "It allows you to test just how much control you gain over the force of your respiration. There are certain safety standards that you will need to adhere to, otherwise, you will be hurting and killing people left and right every time you sneeze or yawn."


    "Let''s try it then," Rui nodded. A strange gas filled the entire chamber, tickling Rui''s nose.


    "Achoo!" Rui sneezed.


    Much to the medical team''s surprise, it was a normal sneeze and not a lethal one. "Incredible!" The doctor eximed. "I have never seen anyone gain control over involuntary respiratory spasms in such a short amount of time!"


    He was defying the norm, which was the norm for him so he didn''t even bother acknowledging it. This is property ? of N?velDrama.Org.


    It appeared that his high affinity for mental techniques allowed him to be much more effective with hypnosis-based mental conditioning, allowing his subconscious mind to change much more rapidly than it normally would.


    "Achoo!" Rui sneezed once more. "I think I''ve -achoo!- passed the test doc."


    "Indeed," The doctor remarked with great interest as the sneezing gas was drained away. "You are truly as remarkable as I''ve heard, Senior Quarrier. This must be record-time for limatization to the effects of the roaring dragon blood potion. Come, we must conduct a few more simple tests before we are ready to discharge you. I must document everything about this historic case!"


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1618 Arrival

    <h4>Chapter 1618 Arrival</h4>


    The medical team was stunned by how quickly Rui managed to gain control over his new body. It would have been absolutely impossible to adjust the subconscious and involuntary muscle control of his diaphragm so quickly, but Rui managed to do it nheless.


    Because of his powerful mind, he was able to rapidly conjure up images for self-hypnosis to reduce the effort he put in, elerating the mental adjustment rather swiftly. What he essentially did was simply convince his subconscious mind through elementary self-hypnosis, while he sneezed, that air was being sucked out his lungs every time forcefully, causing his mind to want to reduce the force with which it pushed air out to preserve precious air that was already being forced out of his lungs.


    This way he drastically adjusted the force with which his subconscious mind performed respiratory function.


    Eventually, his subconscious mind would fully adjust by itself, but until then, he would need to keep conditioning it with self-hypnosis.


    "With the great bewilderment, I am pronouncing you fit for discharge," The doctor eventually said, heaving a sigh. "Congrattions on your sessful procedure. Would you like to go for a round of Martial testing? It''s part of the package to help you gain a good understanding of the increment to your power."


    Rui stared at his palm, breathing softly, before squeezing it into a fist, feeling a surge of power. "What kind of testing exactly?"


    "That''s up to you, sir. You can go for a battery of measuring tests of variousbat parameters. You can go for abat session as well," The doctor said.


    "I''ll go with abat session," Rui replied. "I wish to test my new power inbat."


    Combat was always a better way to gauge all the nuances of his newfound growth and power. Rather than putting himself the subject of many boring experiments and tests, he would rather test himself against another powerful opponent.


    "As you wish, sir," The doctor bowed lightly. "A training and sparring site has been prepared for you."


    "Already?"


    Hended hard on the ground, staring at the establishment. "Name, ID, and purpose of visit?" The Martial Senior guards asked him when he approached the gates.


    "There''s no need for that," A firm masculine voice called out to them from above. "Let him pass."


    Rui nced at the figure that slowly descended from above. He didn''t even inspect the man to understand his power. It was quite evident.


    "Yes, Master Krakule," The Martial Seniors bowed respectfully.


    The Martial Master was unsurprisingly elder. His body was honed with chiseled developed muscles while his skin was littered with scars across his entire body. A thick salt-pepper beard covered the lower half of his face while his head was cleanly bald. His attire was Martial. It was practical and didn''t impede his movements and was frugal, noticeablycking any crest of a Martial Family. This is property ? of N?velDrama.Org.


    His arms were tucked behind him, he walked towards Rui with measured and stiff steps.


    His demeanor conveyed a domineering masculinity. He reminded Rui of Senior Zenshin, except that his bodynguage revealed deep discipline, he did not possess the vtility that the former did.


    "Wee to Daracol, Senior Quarrier," He weed Rui with a sharp piercing voice. "I am Krakule Aragaria, the protector assigned to the Daracol branch by the Martial Union."


    Rui ignored the reaction from the two Martial Seniors at the revtion of hisuded identity, bowing with respect to the Martial Master. "It''s a pleasure to meet you, Master Krakule."


    "The pleasure is mine," He dered, almost like he was picking a fight with Rui instead ofplimenting him. "So you are the Martial Senior that the Empire has been abuzz of, hm?"


    He stared into Rui''s eyes with a powerful gaze, sizing Rui up. "The Martial Union is preparing a Martial Senior for yourbat testing, they will dispatch a Martial Senior from the corps or throughmission. Until then, you may ept my hospitality."


    "I would be most pleased by that," Rui remarked, sighing internally. He had already realized where this was going, and he wasn''t too pleased to go through it yet again.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1619 Deduced Intentions

    <h4>Chapter 1619 Deduced Intentions</h4>


    The elder Martial Master said hospitality, but it appeared that he had a very different idea of what it was. He simply sky-walked high-up into the icy freezing winds of North Kandria.


    Rui followed suit, elevating with the Martial Master. Please check at N/?vel(D)rama.Org.


    Both of them had Martial Bodies, of course, they were unaffected by the cold.


    He turned to Rui, opening his mouth to address him.


    Yet Rui was faster.


    "Before you begin, please allow me to inform you; that I have no interest in supporting Prince Randal''s hawkish ambitions." Rui raised a palm in a distance gesture.


    He had already seen through the truth. The truth regarding the Master''s intentions.


    Master Krakule''s eyes sharpened with a hint of surprise. "¡­How did you know?"


    "Your posture naturally gravitates to the Royal Army''s military stance at ease," Rui replied. "Your tone and pance betray a military background. The fact that you retained such heavy militaristic bodynguage even as a Martial Master allowed me to deduce that you were recently discharged. For, such bodynguage does notst the test of time as a Martial Artist that undergoes many changes as they ascend to higher Realms of power, especially the Master Realm which causes heavy shifts in demeanor."


    He thought of how Master Ceeran''s entire demeanor and vibe changed from the perilous nature he possessed to that of the softer demeanor he had as a Martial Master. It appeared that the breakthrough to the Master Realm was truly something that altered a Martial Artist.


    Rui''s sharp mind had deduced that he was undoubtedly discharged from the military well after he became a Martial Master.


    Then there was the fact that a Martial Master was assigned to a barren and deserted region with no civilization, by the Martial Union. This one was less certain, but Rui had keenly inferred a hint of distrust.


    Why would a Martial Master be discharged from the Royal Army in the first ce? They were so valuable that they could get away with anything short of treason or mass murder. Rui highly doubted that someone who practically radiated discipline and control would fall to that level.


    It meant he was honorably discharged.


    But why? And why join the Martial Union? And why would the Martial Union distrust him enough to assign him to an insignificant region where he could not employ his authority to make any impact on anything important?


    The final hint was the first hint; the fact that he arrived to greet Rui before Rui could even state his name to the security guards outside the gate.


    There were two things to be inferred.


    The first was that he was undoubtedly waiting for Rui.


    The second was that he undoubtedly really wanted to speak to Rui.


    "Even that little excuse of the Martial Senior not having been prepared yet was a falsehood, was it not?" Rui asked calmly. "You wanted to get the opportunity to speak with me privately."


    Thatbined with his military background, recent military discharge, and the distrust of the Martial Union gave Rui enough information to make an educated induction.


    That and this was the third time that he was being solicited by a Martial Master in favor of a Martial Faction. It was a tiring pattern that he was getting used to now.


    "Realizing your background, political inclinations, and intentions was but a few seconds of observation and a simple exercise of thought."


    "¡­I had heard rumors of your genius intellect, but only now do I realize that they precede you," Master Krakule remarked softly. "You will make a terrifying Martial Master one day, Senior Quarrier. Your Martial Mind will engulf the Master Realm, perhaps even beyond."


    Rui didn''t respond, simply staring at the man wordlessly.


    "Since you have sharply arrived at the truth, I will not deny it. I am indeed a member of the Randal Faction," The Martial Master stared into Rui''s eyes. "And indeed, I am here to solicit you and to win you over to the Randal Faction."


    Rui inwardly sighed. It seemed that his attempts to preemptively shut down the man''s lobbying attempt had failed. It seemed that he would have to bear through this.


    "We have but one reason to invite you to our faction, Senior Quarrier," Master Krakule remarked. "And that reason is that you have already greatly supported our faction more than any other political faction in the Kandrian Empire!"


    Rui narrowed his eyes. "What¡­?"


    "The Merger Faction, the Martial Supremacist Faction, the Capitalist Faction¡­none of them have been supported by you nearly as much as our Hawk Faction has," The Master boldly dered.


    "I have not supported any faction to this date," Rui retorted sharply.


    "Ah, young man, but you have," Master Krakule grinned ferociously. "We of the Hawk Faction believe in Kandrian Supremacy. The Kandrian Empire has both the right and the responsibility, to itself and to others, to intervene in the geopolitical sphere around the Kandrian Empire."


    Rui narrowed his eyes. This was typical of the hawk political ideology, which referred to a political stance on geopolitical that advocated for aggressive foreign intervention, including war, colonization, and even genocide, to protect national interests.


    Rui knew exactly what this looked like, having grown up in the Cold War in his previous life in a nation under the rule of Presidents that had an extremely hawkish foreign policy. By the time that he had passed away in 2022, the world was on fire geopolitically as an eventual result of it.


    "What does that have to do with me? When did I ever support such a maniacal warmongering policy?"


    "In order to secure what is best for our Kandrian Empire, we dominate to ensure that the world around us is most fit for it. In order to dominate, we must be dominant, in order to be dominant, we must be overwhelmingly stronger than our neighbors, our allies, and most importantly; our enemies." The Martial Master dered with firm ferocity.


    Rui''s eyes widened as he realized where this was going.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1620 Fear

    <h4>Chapter 1620 Fear</h4>


    "In order to be overwhelmingly stronger, we most certainly need greater armies, greater artillery, greater defense, greater military esoteric technology, but most importantly¡­" The Martial Master grinned. "We need greater Martial power. We live in the Age of Martial Art, of course. Martial Art is the most powerful force, whichever side has greater Martial power will win."


    "The Hungry Pain technique," Rui murmured.


    "Indeed. This incredible technique that you''ve given the Martial Union is the key to the dominance of the Kandrian Empire," The man informed Rui. "The biggest stumbling blocks in the Kandrian Empire''s dominance over East Panama are the three other Sage-level powerhouses in East Panama. Only they possess the power to rival us in war. However, with the power you have given us¡­"


    "The Hungry Pain technique will take forever to transform the power of the Kandrian Empire," Rui retorted. "Decades at bare minimum, a century ideally. It will not transform the Kandrian Empire''s power already."


    "The Kandrian Emperor can live on for centuries with modern esoteric artifacts and potions," The Master gruffly huffed. "Our faction''s foresight is not as short-sighted as yours, Senior Quarrier. Look to the future. One day, the overwhelming advantages of the Hungry Pain technique will rue and give us an overwhelming advantage in the Lower Realms, allowing us to preserve more Martial Artists of the Lower Realms in the long run, allowing the birth of more Martial Artists of the Upper Realms in the long run. We will win thanks to you."


    Rui narrowed his eyes. He didn''t like logic, it was demented, but it wasn''t invalid. "Join us, Rui Quarrier," The man stretched out a hand to Rui. "Join us and help us usher in an age of conquest and glory for the Kandrian Empire."


    Rui narrowed his eyes. "You''re insane. The Transcendent Emperor of the Britannian Empire could annihte our Empire as well as the Sekigahara Confederate and the Republic of Gorteau all by himself if he truly wanted. We should be grateful that he is allowing our facade of dominance." N?vel/Dr(a)ma.Org - Content owner.


    Rui had wondered more than once why the four powerhouses of East Panama were considered equal when only one of them had a Martial Transcendent.


    "I see, so you aren''t aware," Master Krakule remarked. "I suppose it makes sense, you were away for a long time and are only twenty-eight and only a Martial Senior."


    The weight of the man''s words pushed down the atmosphere, wringing it taut.


    "The Britannian Emperor, on the verge of defeat and death, broke through to the Transcendent Realm, bing a Martial Transcendent," Master Krakule narrated with an ominous tone. "What happened next, what I am about to inform you is not public knowledge, nor must it ever be public knowledge. Sage Damian himself narrated what followed Martial Artists of the Upper Realms in the Kandrian Empire."


    Rui stared at him in rapt attention, focusing on him with every iota of attention he had.


    "The Transcendent Emperor, having broken through to the Transcendent Realm, simply retreated after breaking through without concluding their battle," Master Krakule informed him.


    "What¡­?" Rui whispered, stunned.


    "Can you believe it?" Master Krakule continued with a solemn tone. "This Martial Artist, who always killed his opponent. Who believed that any battle without the death of the loser was iplete. Who lived and breathed conquest. This same Martial Artist retreated from a battle that he had all but won."


    Rui stared at the Martial Master with a shocked expression. It truly was astonishing and iprehensible, had the breakthrough to the Transcendent Realm altered who he was? Rui intuitively felt this was wrong. Power did not change a person, it simply unlocked who they were deep inside.


    "That is not even the most shocking part," Master Krakule informed him. "The most shocking part is what Sage Arrancar said after. He said that the Transcendent Emperor disappeared so fast after breaking through that he didn''t get to exchange a single word with the man. However, he did manage to get a single look at the infant Martial Transcendent''s expression. He said that it was the first time that he had seen his rival make that expression. He said that there was but a single emotion that radiated from the newborn Transcendent before he disappeared..."


    He looked deep into Rui''s eyes.


    "Fear."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1621 Challenge

    <h4>Chapter 1621 Challenge</h4>


    Rui''s eyes widened with shock. "What?!"


    He was unable toprehend the story that Sage Arrancar alleged. Fear?


    A Martial Transcendent? Beings that were an entire Realm of power above Martial Sages?


    How could such beings even experience fear? What force in this world, aside from their peers, could evoke such an emotion from them?


    He didn''t know.


    He was out of his depth to have any chance of remotely uncovering the truth.


    "I don''t understand¡­" Rui murmured. "Nobody does," Master Krakule heaved a sigh. "There are only thirteen Martial Transcendents across human civilization, and each of them possesses absolute power. The things that they have aplished the scarce instances that these godly beings exercise their power¡­it''s truly unbelievable that a single being is allowed to possess such absurd power. Their very existences are miracles."


    He turned towards Rui. "And yet, they religiously detach from human civilization. Why do you think powerhouse Sage-level nations are not ced leagues below a Transcendent-level nation?"


    His eyes narrowed. "It is precisely because they do not intervene in human affairs. Nobody knows why. Not even those most intimately familiar with Martial Transcendents know why. However, Martial Transcendents have gone far as to watch nations that they themselves built before they became Martial Transcendents crumble before their eyes, not lifting a finger to stop it. That is the stubbornness, if you can call it that, with which they abstain from intervening in human civilization."


    Rui''s eyes swum around at this revtion as he began considering this precious confidential knowledge regarding the absolute pinnacles of humanity and Martial Art alike.


    Rui narrowed his eyes as an intense ferocity entered them. A faint pressure with endless peril buried within radiated from him. Deep force of mind washed over the skies that beheld them, wringing them taut.


    "You should watch what you say." His words were chilling.


    His eyes were piercing. An endless void emerged deep within them, threatening to consume everything he beheld.


    The Martial Master''s eyebrows rose as he felt profound power emerging from deep within Rui. He moved out of his militaristic stance as he brought his hands forward, straightening them into palms.


    "You wish to challenge me, boy?" His deep voice reverberated through the skies. "You, a Martial Senior, will challenge a Martial Master?"


    Rui didn''t respond, staring the man down intensely.


    "Let us dispense with waiting for a Martial Senior to be dispatched," He pulled amunication device typing and fiddling with it. "I shall personally register myself as yourbat opponent. I solemnly swear on the great name of Kandria to not actively use my Martial Mind. I shall restrict myself to the power of the Lower Realms to make this a fair fight." Please check at N/?vel(D)rama.Org.


    He stared at the Martial Master wordlessly.


    "What''s the matter, boy? Are you afraid you will lose?" The Martial Master taunted Rui with a ferocious grin.


    Rui''s eyes narrowed. He took a neutral stance, distributing his weight evenly across centered legs as his arms came before him, his hands balling into fists.


    "Nah, I''d win."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1622 Commence

    <h4>Chapter 1622 Commence</h4>


    Rui wasn''t stupid.


    He knew there wasn''t anything he could do against a Martial Master even if that Martial Master was implicitly threatening his family just by mentioning the effect of their disappearance on Rui.


    Still, he couldn''t help it. Perhaps it was because of the impact of thete Deacon on him, he was far more sensitive to that threat than he was before.


    That''s why he knew that epting this little challenge was objectively not the best choice he could have made.


    Still, he didn''t care.


    The battle began sooner than even he expected.


    WHOOSH!


    He inhaled powerfully, activating Gale Force Breathing,unching himself forward at incredible speeds.


    POW POW POW!


    An onught of blows crashed onto Master Krakule''s guard.


    BAM!!!


    A powerful kick surged toward the Master''s head with immense force.


    WHOOSH!


    Master Krakule evaded it, straightening his palms as several palm jabs curled forward towards Rui.


    SPLAT SPLAT SPLAT!


    Rui''s eyes widened as many light gashes appeared across his entire body as Master Krakule''s palms flew back, stained with Rui''s blood at the finger tips.


    Yet the elder Master wasn''t done, his attacks curled in all kinds of trajectories at absurdly high speeds, rushing forward towards Rui.


    Yet, something had changed.


    SCRATCH


    Master Krakule''s eyes widened as Rui''s flesh thickened, bing seemingly imprable and darker, resisting his attacks. They couldn''t even draw blood anymore!


    Yet he didn''t have any time to even consider the change.


    BOOM!


    A powerful attack crashed onto his guard, flinging him backward.


    Yet the Master scoffed. "Is that all you can do, Rui Quarrier?!"


    He activated a breathing technique, manipting the air currents to drive his attacks forward at even greater speeds.


    Attacks of much greater power surged forward.


    Yet Rui didn''t move.


    He stared into Master Krakuke''s eyes.


    Yet he wasn''t idle.


    In his mind a hypnotic circle appeared some distance away, his bodynguage reflected that, acting in a manner that convinced the subconscious of this illusion, causing Master Krakule''s conscious awareness to be misdirected away from Rui, leaving his subconscious vulnerable to external influence.


    ''Temporal Disharmony. Breathing Crucifix.''


    He activated two hypnotic techniques simultaneously, each at fifty-percent. Please check at N/?vel(D)rama.Org.


    Master Krakule''s eyes widened as the time itself seemed to speed up while his breathing grew strained.


    Yet Rui didn''t give him any room to breathe, literally.


    WHOOSH!


    He avoided his attacks, surging forward towards the momentarily stunned Martial Master.


    BAM BAM BAM!!!


    The Martial Master grimaced lightly as Rui''s powerful blows crashed into his body one after the other.


    Rui breathed in powerfully, relying on Wind Breathing to increase his agility and speed massively.


    The difference was remarkable. The roaring blood dragon potion had truly enhanced Rui''s breathing significantly, making his breathing techniques much superior than they ever had been before!


    Yet the difference in their Martial Bodies was also immense, despite the Hungry Pain technique and the breathing potion, it was not enough to overwhelm a gap born from centuries'' worth of honing, conditioning, training, and growth rtive to Rui''s fifteen years.


    Master Krakule guarded against Rui''s attack.


    His defense never faltered.


    He narrowed his eyes, waiting.


    Rui pulled back his fist, winding up a powerful punch beforeunching it forward with great momentum.


    SPLAT!


    He coughed blood as his eyes widened with shock.


    "Youck experience, boy." The Master coldly dered, his fingers buried into Rui''s throat.


    BAM!


    Rui kicked at the man''s jaw, forcing him to hastily defend and withdraw his jab.


    He breathed through his lungs, closing the wound in his throat.


    The battle mulled for a second as the two of them faced off against each other.


    "You are intelligent and extremely sharp," The Master remarked. "While I am certainly nowhere near as intellectually endowed as you are, I have fought more than ten times as many battles as you have. There are things that only experience can give you, no amount of mindful thinking canpensate for the wisdom of experience. Now then, let us put an end to this spar before you bleed to dea-"


    Yet his eyes widened Rui withdrew his hand to reveal apletely healed wound.


    In fact, all of the cuts that he had inflicted on Rui prior also disappeared in moments.


    Rui deactivated Weaving Blood, yet chose not to reactivate Nemean Blossom. "You talk too much."


    Master Krakule''s expression darkened as he felt his breathing mping up once more, and his perception of time sped up, making it difficult for his consciousness to keep up.


    Rui rushed forward, his eyes shing with power. He pushed himself to the absolute limit, unloading an onught of Mighty Roar sh sts against the Martial Master from a distance.


    BOOM BOOM BOOM!!


    Each Mighty Roar sh st was much faster and stronger than they were before, the roaring dragon blood potion had greatly empowered the breathing that went into the technique.


    BOOM BOOM BOOM!!


    The Martial Master gritted his teeth as he worked furiously to slice them with his flowing palm jabs. The attacks moved far faster than they normally did because his perception of time had been sped up, making it difficult for him to react to all of them in time.


    Yet Rui was not done.


    He activated the third Metabody technique of the fight. A surge of hypertrophic muscle expansion inted his muscr system, increasing the raw output of power significantly.


    BOOM BOOM BOOM!!!


    "Urgh!" The man grimaced as Rui pummeled him with attack after attack. He was a dynamic offensive Martial Artist with a focus on speed and power, which was why Breathing Crucifix and Temporal Disharmony were extremely effective against him.


    Kane had managed torgely negate Temporal Disharmony with his Fuliminata because it relied purely on reflex and not conscious perception, allowing him tond an attack on Rui despite the technique, but Master Krakule had no such technique.


    The elder Martial Master narrowed his eyes, growing more intense. "Don''t underestimate me, boy! Eat my Reckoning of One Thousand Palms!"


    The man''s body moved with blinding speed and muscle memory as not even the tiniest shred of thought held him back, allowing an exponentially higher frequency of attack.


    BOOM!!!


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1623 Escalation

    <h4>Chapter 1623 Esction </h4>


    Rui scoffed inwardly as the man yelled the name of his attack, announcing the exact number of attacks with its name, and giving more information for Rui to work with.


    Why were there Martial Artists who yelled the names of their attacks?


    Was it cebo effects? It made them feel better and thus they performed the attack better.


    The scientist side of him would have grown curious about it and wanted to conduct a factor analysis and an experiment to verify the corrtion.


    But s, he was faced with the alleged Reckoning of One Thousand Palms, thus it would have to wait.


    BOOM!!!


    The onught of sound attacks was overwhelmed by the even greater onught of palm chops.


    An opening between himself and Rui emerged, and he didn''t hesitate to capitalize on it, closing the distance between them in an instant with a maneuvering technique that involved his palm movements.


    "Thirteen folds of Ruination!" He bellowed.


    Rui barely managed to rece Hypertrophic Surge with Nemean Blossom in time.


    BOOM!!!


    In an instant, thirteen palm chops had already crashed into Rui''s body almost simultaneously.


    Rui''s eyes widened as he barely managed to put up a guard to block them.


    Yet, the Martial Master was not done.


    "Twenty-six folds!"


    "Fifty-two!"


    "Hundred and four!"


    BOOM BOOM BOOM!!!


    Attacks that Rui could deal with before became vastly hard to deal with as they flowed faster. Rui could tell that eachbo was extremely honed and refined right down to the very limit. His body knew exactly what to do, and raced toplete it without being slowed down by his mind, achieving extraordinary fluidity.


    Many Martial Artists relied on the principle of honed muscle memory. Those were the foundations of the many shybos with extravagant names and numbers.


    However, they were effective, not even Rui could deny that,


    The performance boost was exceptionally high. It wasparable to the gap between an extremely fast typer and a slow typer. Advanced typists could type at about 80WPM while beginners were at about 20-30WPM.


    Did that mean that advanced typists had three-to-four times the finger/muscle movement speed of beginners?


    No, their fingers moved equally fast, but advanced typists could eliminate thought as a hurdle, allowing them to reach astonishing typing speeds.


    That was effectively what many Martial Artists relied upon including Master Krakule. It was usually highly effective against an opponent since no one could effectively deal with all of the overwhelmingbinations of movements.


    Except Rui.


    WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH!


    Master Krakule''s eyes widened as Rui casually evaded a point-nk attack, moving out of the way of the attacks as they approached him.


    ''No¡­he moved before they approached him!'' Master Krakule realized.


    BOOM!


    A powerful attack crashed cleanly into Master Krakule''s body faster than his hampered perception could keep up with.


    BOOM BOOM BOOM!


    Rui deactivated Nemean Blossom, activating Neo Godspeed instead. His speed heightened, reaching extraordinary territories as he surged forward.


    Yet Master Krakule maintained hisposure.


    He couldn''t perceive the world properly, everything moved forward extremely fast, making it difficult for him to keep up. He closed his eyes as his instincts welled up. Instincts forged in wars across a lifetime. Born from the ocean of experience of a man who constantly threw himself in conflict.


    His instincts came through.


    ''There!'' He opened his eyes as he shifted to the side, cleanly evading a blindingly fast attack from Rui.


    Yet his eyes widened when he realized that a kick had already arrived at his new location.


    It had arrived even before he did.


    BOOM!


    "Ngg!" The Martial Master grimaced with shock. ''He saw through me?!''


    He looked into the youngster''s eyes, stunned. Within them reflected a powerful void that greedily lingered over him and his Martial Path.


    Yet the Martial Master glowered. "You''re still a hundred years too early to challenge me!"


    BADUMP!


    His Martial Heart zed into fury as he essed the power of the Senior Realm. This is property ? of N?velDrama.Org.


    BADUMP!


    A second Martial Heart zed into power. The timely instinctive activation of the Martial Heart ensured that Rui did not get overwhelmed by the gap between the Senior and Squire Realm.


    The Martial Master''s Martial Heart was actually not as strong as Senior Zenshin''s, which Rui found quite strange.


    Yet despite that, he was far more powerful.


    SPLAT SPLAT SPLAT!


    His palms moved at extraordinary speeds, catching up to Neo Godspeed as he carved deep gashes into Rui''s body. Rui rapidly adapted to the model to the new physical parameters of Martial Master desperately, yet he couldn''t do it before the Martial Master wounded Rui with even more slicing palm attacks, doing as much damage as he could.


    WHOOSH! BANG!


    Rui evaded an attack before it even began,nding a heavy blow on the Martial Master''s gut, flinging him backward.


    But not for long.


    "Hryah!" The Martial Master brought down a hail of slicing palms with the full power of Martial Body and Heart.


    WHOOSH!


    It crashed into an empty image. Master Krakule instinctively ducked, evading a swift kick to the head from the side.


    And yet;


    BAM!


    He gravely blocked a powerful that had already arrived at the head, having predicted his dodging maneuver.


    BAM BAM BAM!


    Rui pummeled him with a swift onught of blows flinging him away. Yet Master Krakule patiently weathered them with a knowing look.


    Rui was bleeding profusely, inparison, the Master''s honed Martial Body possessed a higher constitution that was more durable as a result of its long honing.


    There was no way he could lose in a prolonged battle.


    In fact, if not for Temporal Disharmony and Breathing Crucifix''s great suppression, he would have dominated Rui heavily by now.


    Rui rushed forward at top speed racing forward for the Master''s with a powerful blow. Master Krakule hastily defended throwing down a powerful attack that would inflict severe damage if Rui went through with his attack.


    The offense was the best defense, as they said.


    Or was it?


    Master Krakule''s eyes widened as Rui went through the attack anyway without any hesitation.


    SPLAT!


    The slicing palm cleaved through Rui''s wrist, severing his hand entirely.


    Yet the wild grin that appeared on Rui''s face shocked him even more. The bloody arm hadn''t stopped its motion even for a split second at the severing. It instead had elerated to the man''s neck, wrangling around.


    CLASP!


    "Ack!" Master Krakule choked as Rui managed to sessfully rope him in a rear chokehold at the expense of a hand.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1624 Intervention

    <h4>Chapter 1624 Intervention </h4>


    Never had Master Krakule experienced such a turn of tables. Even while Rui choked him, he realized that this was part of the boy''s n.


    A hand was not all that useful in a rear choke hold that urred at the elbow.


    He had sharply predicted that Master Krakule would employ an active defensive offense to deter Rui away.


    But what if Rui was not deterred?


    What if he bore the consequences in order to win the battle?


    A losing battle could instantly be transformed into a winning one.


    Rui crushed down on his throat with the full power of everything he could muster, activating Hypertrophic Surge in ce of Weaving Blood,pletely sealing off the blood flow to his head.


    On top of that, he pushed the Breathing Crucifix technique to one hundred percent, cramping down on the man''s breathing.


    On top of that, a current of electricity passed through the man''s nerves, inducing a paralytic effect, crippling him even more.


    "Rgh!!" Master Krakule''s eyes grew bloodshot as his face turned red with pressure. He pulled at Rui''s hand, trying to free his neck from the young man''s hold.


    The strength gap was non-existent with Hypertrophic Surge, Rui had other shackles on the man''s power like hypnosis and quasi-paralysis.


    On top of that, there was a reason rear choke holds were so deadly, it was because the victim had absolutely no way to leverage strength to break out of it properly, while the one performing the hold had the absolute perfect way to leverage strength.


    That was why unless one had arge strength gap, which he most absolutely didn''t, one could not break out of such a hold.


    ''I''m going to lose at this rate!'' Master Krakule desperately did everything he could to break out of Rui''s hold.


    He struggled, hurt Rui, try flying around to throw him off. But the grip never softened.


    ''Am I going to lose?'' Master Krakule''s eyes widened. ''Me? A Martial Master, to a Senior brat like him?''


    His eyes narrowed. ''No.''


    The world froze as an avnche of pressure erupted from the Martial Master.


    Rui opened his eyes with shock.


    Chills went down his spine.


    Shivers crawled up his skin. This is property ? of N?velDrama.Org.


    One moment, the Martial Master in his grip.


    The next moment, he was standing in the skies above Rui.


    He was no longer a man.


    No.


    His very existence seemed to have transformed into an entirely different existence.


    He became a shining dagger. One that towered over in the skyrger than a mountain. The surfaces of the dagger were not smooth, the surface was the shape of a hand, from end to end.


    Rui''s eyes widened.


    The dagger wasn''t shaped like a hand.


    It was the hand that was shaped like a dagger.


    The Martial Embodiment reflected the nature of his Martial Art.


    He was a man who had forged his hands into des.


    The dagger embedded itself in the sky, drawing more attention from all life that beheld it than the sun itself. It stood tall and proud, dering its existence to the entire world.


    Rui beheld it with awe and admiration.


    This was the power of a higher Realm.


    In each of the honed palms of the Martial Master was the power to fell an entire mountain range with a single swing.


    With the power to alter maps, Rui yearned to reach that Realm of power.


    "You truly are an era-defining force, Rui Quarrier," The Martial Master''s voice reverberated through the skies. "I have vited the sanctity of my promise to not use the power of the Upper Realms. I am indebted to you. I will fulfill any one wish you ask of me within my power as penance. If it is my death you desire, then that too I shall give you."


    Rui''s eyes widened, before furrowing his eyebrows.


    There was but one wish that was appropriate.


    "Never implicitly threaten me with my family again. In fact, as penance, ensure with all your power that nothing ever happens to them," Rui replied.


    The Martial Master gazed deeply into Rui''s eyes. "...So be it."


    Rui could feel his sincerity, he heaved a sigh of relief although there was still some skepticism in his eyes. "I''m going to hold you to that, you know."


    "As you must," The Martial Master remarked. "I don''t like repeating myself. But I find it truly worth doing this time. Join us, Rui Quarrier. Join the Hawk Faction. Join us in the glorious conquest of East Panama. We will soar to heights unprecedented in history and you can be there with us, side by side."


    He raised his hand, stretching out to Rui.


    Suddenly, an avnche of pressure crashed into them.


    Rui shivered with the sheer amount of peril he felt at that moment.


    ''This¡­'' Rui recognized the nature of the pressure. ''Martial Master!''


    BOOM BOOM BOOM!!!


    Many short-range homing ballistic missiles crashed into the giant hand-dagger, causing several enormous explosions across it.


    Rui balled up as the explosion engulfed him, burning him to cinders.


    Except it didn''t.


    Rui''s body didn''t experience any damage.


    It was an illusion.


    Yet Master Krakule grimaced as his physical bodies were struck with precise attacks.


    ''No¡­this is the same as the hand-dagger,'' Rui realized. ''A Martial Embodiment!''


    He nced in the direction that they came from, only to be shell-shocked by what he saw.


    A modern Earth-like military missileuncher with Earthen technology floating in the air, firing homing missiles at the hand-dagger.


    The two powerful Martial Embodiments stood in opposition.


    Yet there were more.


    The pressure Rui experienced escted astronomically as other forces joined the fray.


    A titanic feminine mouth appeared from the East, opening and breathing out, sending a powerful windstorm tearing at the hand-dagger.


    A puppet controlled by strings appeared from the south, crashing attacks onto the hand-dagger.


    A shield with a mirror on the surface appeared, cing itself between the hand-dagger and Rui in a protective gesture.


    The five Martial Embodiments shed in the sky, four of them oppressing the hand-dagger aggressively.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1625 Discourse

    <h4>Chapter 1625 Discourse</h4>


    "My fellow Masters," Master Krakule managed to squeeze even as he was bombarded by four Martial Masters. "As warriors of Kandria, we ought not to fight amongst each other. What is the meaning of this? Cease this violence and speak with your words, not your Martial Art."


    His Martial Embodiment disappeared as the bloody visage of his body became tantly visible.


    The other four Martial Embodiments also froze, before slowly fading away.


    Yet the atmosphere grew more perilous.


    The homing missileuncher faded away, revealing the identity of the Martial Master.


    "Master Ceeran?" Rui whispered with shock, instantly recognizing him.


    Yet the man didn''t regard him.


    Pure perilous rage erupted from him.


    It washed over the entirety of the Daracol Region.


    Every critter, every beast, every man and woman alike despaired at the wrath of a being that had ascended to a higher state of life.


    A single whisper escaped his mouth.


    "How dare you¡­"


    His expression crumpled with rage.


    "HOW DARE YOU?!" Master Ceeran bellowed, ring at Master Krakule with bloodlust.


    "You will answer for your transgression," Master Vericita coldly informed Master Krakule, emerging from the wisps of her withdrawn Martial Embodiment.


    "As Martial Masters of the Martial Union, it is our duty to guide the future, not snuff it." Headmaster Aronian sternly informed the Martial Master.


    "Now now," Master Zentra calmly interjected. "Let us hear what he has to say to defend himself.


    The four Martial Masters stared at Master Krakule intently.


    "Hmph," He snorted. "Is that what this is about? Do you think I attacked the boy with my Martial Mind? And he''s still alive for some reason? Don''t insult me."


    "Your hand was pointed out at him," The Surgeon replied. "Which, knowing your Martial Art, is no different from pointing a sword at a person. On top of that, your Martial Embodiment was in full ze, and the boy was severely damaged, and missing a hand. On top of that, you arbitrarily registered yourself as hisbat partner for some reason. Tell me, what are we supposed to conclude?"


    "I did not attack him. I was sparring with him with power limited to the Lower Realms. He managed to ovee a losing battle with a brilliant tactical gambit and defeated me, for all practical purposes. Truly an incredible Martial Senior."


    "Is that true, my boy?" Headmaster Aronian nced at Rui behind who was being tended to by Master Vericita retrieved his severed arm and had reattached it with a potent high-grade healing potion."


    "Yes, headmaster," Rui heaved a sigh. "That is the truth. He never attacked me with the intent to kill, otherwise I would be dead right now." This is property ? of N?velDrama.Org.


    "Just using your true power in a battle against a Martial Senior is highly inappropriate, especially when you gave your word otherwise," Master Vericita coldly pointed out.


    "Hah," The man snorted. "You''re all softies. It pains to witness this, get out of my territory if you have nothing else."


    He turned towards Rui onest time. "Consider my words carefully, boy."


    He closed his eyes, turning to leave the skies, heading back to the Daracol base.


    Rui wasn''t sure he would call any of the Martial Masters present ''softies'', even Master Vericita who had taken to patting Rui''s head affectionately.


    "It appeared that we may have acted a bit too hastily," The Surgeon remarked.


    "I disagree," Master Ceeran snorted. "We should not let this go. As Martial Masters, we are expected to have control over our power, he definitely used his power on purpose."


    "It certainly was worth intervening regardless," Headmaster Aronian calmly remarked. "We have been blessed with a bright young star. Allowing it to be snuffed because of a prideful Martial Master is the height of imprudence and carelessness."


    "Indeed," Master Vericita smiled, patting Rui''s head gently.


    "I appreciate your aid, Your Masteries, it is reassuring to know that four Martial Masters came to my aid at the first hint of danger," Rui smiled, bowing his head to the four Martial Masters.


    He also did not miss that three of them were from three different princes and princesses. Master Ceeran was from the Ranea Faction. Master Zentra was from the Raijun Faction. Master Vericita was from the Rafia Faction. He knew that Headmaster Aronian was also part of some faction, though the elder Martial Master did not disclose which faction he was a part of.


    While Master Krakule, the offender, was part of the Randal Faction. In other words, this incident became a little battle between the various factions. A battle to win over Rui Quarrier.


    Still, he didn''t mind. There could be multiple intentions behind an action, and he knew Senior Ceeran was most certainly extremely sincere about helping him out.


    It wasn''t long before Rui found himselfpletely healed with some particrly powerful healing potions that the Martial Master supplied him.


    "Thank you, your Masteries," Rui bowed once more. "I am perfectly fine now, so there is no need to worry."


    "Indeed, take care, Rui Quarrier," The Surgeon replied. "We need you. More than you realize."


    He disappeared.


    "Hm, I''m d to hear that, my boy," Headmaster Aronian smiled. "Come visit the Academy every once in a while to keep this old man somepany."


    "I will be sure to do that, Headmaster," Rui smiled.


    The old man smiled, disappearing.


    "The Roaring Dragon Blood Potion has done you much good. Be sure to harness its power well, my child," Master Vericita smiled, petting him, before stepping away. "I look forward to the path that you will tread."


    That left Master Ceeran who stood in the air with Rui, smiling. "Come, walk with me, Rui."


    The two of them treaded the skies, unperturbed.


    "Today went very unexpected," Rui replied, turning to Master Ceeran. "Was it okay to bare your Martial Embodiments in the skies like that? Didn''t that hurt a lot of people?"


    Master Ceeran shook his head. "The Daracol base is deserted and restricted to unauthorized non-Martial Artists precisely to allow Martial Masters to go all out without worrying about our power hurting people. We cannot turn off our Martial Embodiments at all because it urs in the eye of the beholder."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1626 Embodiment

    <h4>Chapter 1626 Embodiment</h4>


    "Speaking of Martial Embodiments," Rui turned towards Master Ceeran. "Your Martial Embodiment is¡­how do I say it..?"


    It was a homing ballistic missileuncher. However, there were no equivalent words in the Kandrian dialect for half of those. "What did you see?" Master Ceeran asked, raising an eyebrow. "Most people see siege weapons."


    His words implied a crucial point. "So, you''re telling me not everyone necessarily sees the same thing."


    "Indeed," Master Ceeran nodded. "Why would everyone see the same thing? Ultimately, a Martial Embodiment is the image a mind associates and creates as a pictorial representation of the Martial Mind that is being imprinted on their subconscious mind while they''re being misdirected by our Martial Art. That means the image is what the subconscious mind imagines our Martial Mind to be if it were a material phenomenon. What that image is depends on the associations one makes, which in turn depend on the person''s experiences and memories."


    "I see¡­" Rui contemted this new information. That would exin why Rui saw a modern missileuncher from Earth. It was the closest association to Senior Ceeran''s Martial Art that he could muster, thus it made sense that that was what he saw.


    People would not see what they didn''t even know existed, which exined why only Rui would see such a thing since he was the only one in the world with it.


    Rui could not help but wonder what his Martial Embodiment would be in the minds of others. There was only one way to find out.


    For now, he could only work his way to that stage step by step.


    "Ah, one more thing," Master Ceeran reached into an inner pocket, pulling out something. "Here."


    He handed Rui an exorbitantly d card. "It''s your official invitation to the unveiling of the first functioning Kandrian submarine."


    Rui''s eyes widened. "I thought you said that the research was underway."


    "It is," Master Ceeran remarked. "But not for the creation of the vessel, for the mass production of it since at the moment it can only be constructed by relying on the fantasies of esoteric material reality that are rare and expensive."


    "I see," Rui murmured as he read through the formal invitation addressed to one Rui Quarrier. "That''s a good measure."


    She was trying to promote the technology by holding some sort of grand unveiling. It was a good way to build support for the technology and for her political campaign.


    "I am grateful for Her Highness'' invitation to this historic event," Rui replied, nodding. "I look forward to witnessing the unveiling of the first submarine vessel of the Kandrian Empire."


    "Indeed, I am quite excited myself," Master Ceeran smiled. "It is important for our nation to keep progressing in order to ensure that we don''t fall behind. Wouldn''t you agree?"


    Rui nodded. "I most certainly do. Nobody realizes how important it is."


    It was easy for technology to regress and disappear. Most people assumed that technology would naturally get better, but the state of technological progress was more fragile than people realized.


    It has happened many times in the past on Earth.


    The Egyptians forgot how to build pyramids.


    The Greeks lost their civil engineering.


    The Romans lost their aqueduct technology.


    More modern examples in his lifetime were rocket technology. The race to reach the moon was fueled bypetitive desire during the Cold War out of fear of losing out to each other, but as soon as it became clear no superpower had major spacefaring ambitions, the drive to reach the moon was snuffed out, and even shortly before John passed away, some nations actually regressed in rocket technology, and failed to replicate feats that that they had aplished half a century prior. N?velDrama.Org content.


    However, it appeared that with Princess Ranea firmly driving down to enhancing the Kandrian Empire''s alreadyrge seafare industry with better conventional esoteric technology, Kandrian seafare technology would only grow from here on out.


    ''I wonder if I should give them a hand,'' Rui wondered.


    He was no naval engineer, but even with the knowledge he knew, he could probably offer some extraordinary knowledge that could drastically change the foundation of shipbuilding technology.


    He had traveled on the Martial Union''s vessels, so he knew that their technology was not based on any sophisticated principles of physics, they were closer to how ships were built before the Greek mathematician Archimedes discovered what was on Earth known as Archimedes'' Principle.


    ''Meh, I''ve drawn too much attention for my knowledge recently,'' Rui shook his head inwardly. ''Better to not push my luck.''


    Finding the justification for the knowledge was going to be much harder this time since Julian''s specialty was not even remotely near the field. Perhaps he could send an anonymous mail to the relevant people.


    Still, it would be better if they discovered it from their own understanding of the world. Artificially handing them knowledge that they didn''t obtain would hinder progress in the long-term, since making progress was necessary for making further progress due to an exercised inquisitive tendency into the nature of the universe.


    "There will be many people who look forward to meeting you," Master Ceeran remarked. "Yeah, I''ve gotten used to that," Rui heaved a sigh. "Comes with the territory."


    "It seems that you''ve grown quite busy over time," Master Ceeran remarked. "However, do not let that get in the way of the momentum of your growth. You''ve just consumed a potent resource and grown stronger, but ensure that you never cease developing your Martial Art."


    "Don''t worry, Master, I have no intention of stopping now," Rui replied. "I have a vision for the path forward."


    His eyes narrowed. Now that he had tested out his newborn power with the Roaring Dragon Blood Potionpletely, it was time to make good use of it in a manner that did not neglect the development of the power of thought so that his progress to the Master Realm never stopped.


    ''Time to see what I can make of domain techniques.''


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1627 Master Gurren

    <h4>Chapter 1627 Master Gurren</h4>


    "Master Ceeran, can you tell me about the Kandrian Martial Master of domain techniques?" Rui asked.


    "Hm? Ah, Master Gurren," Ceeran nodded. "I don''t know too much about him, personally. I do know that he lives in South-West Kandria on a mountain in the Great Jravian mountain range, though it is said that he keeps moving around the vast mountain range to keep people from approaching him. If you''re interested in speaking to him, you will have to find him yourself."


    "Oof," Rui winced. "That''s rough."


    The Great Jravian mountain range was called ''great'' because of its enormous vast expanse extending thousands of kilometers across any direction. If Rui was going to have to find a single Martial Master across this expanse of mountains, he was going to have to scour every ounce of the entire region with his senses.


    Also, if the Martial Master did not want to meet him, then Rui highly doubted he would be able to find him.


    "I''ll have to get it a shot nheless," Rui heaved a sigh.


    "Are you interested in domain techniques?" Master Ceeran asked, curious. "That''s a little unexpected, domain techniques aren''t known to be the most flexible techniques, which I thought would not gel well with your Martial Path."


    Rui shook his head. "Domain techniques give me the opportunity to adapt another element ofbat to my opponent. The environment. The environment is just as important in a fight as the fighters themselves. If I can adapt the environment to my opponent, then I will have achieved a higher level of adaptive evolution than was previously possible."


    Master Ceeran''s eyebrows rose. "I see, that is truly ambitious. I foresee an enormous growth in your power should you seed, you may even reach the fourteenth grade as a Martial Senior!"


    "Er, I''m pretty sure I''m already in the fourteenth grade," Rui remarked with perplexity. "The Roaring Dragon Blood Potion has given me a considerable boost in power."


    Senior Ceeran smirked, amused. "I''m afraid not, young man."


    "¡­Why not?"


    Senior Ceeran turned forward, facing ahead. "Did you know that I never managed to reach the fourteenth grade as a Martial Senior?" N?vel/Dr(a)ma.Org - Content owner.


    "What?!" Rui''s eyes furrowed with surprise. "You broke through as a grade-thirteen Martial Senior?"


    "Indeed," Master Ceeran nodded. "The average grade to break through to the Master Realm is at grade thirteen."


    "That is substantially distant from the peak of the Senior Realm," Rui replied, flummoxed. "You''re telling me most Martial Masters were only as strong as I currently am while they were Martial Seniors?"


    "Correct," Senior Ceeran replied. "I don''t fully understand it myself and probably couldn''t exin it as well as a schr would. But the reason for this is that there is a greater variance of power at the highest echelons of the Senior Realm despite the lower poption. The low poption means that we do not wish to add another grade just to host a single Martial Senior in it, yet at the same time we cannot simply update the entire grade system as a whole since this isn''t a universal increase in power due to expected generational growth over time. Thus rather than having to add more grades for very few Martial Artists and deviate from fifteen grades, simply distribute all the extra variance of the upper echelons amongst thest three grades, making them wider than the other grades."


    "Damn¡­So this is ss-interval intion due to higher mean deviation of the upper-ss datasets," Rui murmured, instantly understanding the statistics of the issue.


    "Yes. That thingy. That sounds like what the schrs said when I inquired why my grade as a Martial Senior was not going up despite getting much stronger," Master Ceeran replied, heaving a sigh. "Regardless, I did get it intuitively. Did you know that there are only twelve grade-fifteen Martial Seniors in the Kandrian Empire?"


    "Wow," Rui murmured, impressed. "Only twelve out of a thousand five hundred or so? That''s crazy."


    It showed how scarce the power of the Upper Realms was.


    "That''s right," Master Ceeran sighed. "If we made the grades normal sized and added extra grades, then we would have to have six in grade fifteen, another five in grade sixteen, and one in grade seventeen. But nobody wants to create an extra grade just for one Martial Senior, or for five out of one thousand five hundred, so we stuff them all in grade fifteen and just make the higher grades wider."


    "So no wonder I would not be considered grade fourteen just for having grain a substantial boost to my breathing," Rui murmured. "Indeed," Master Ceeran replied. "It''s also a testament to the sheer size of the Senior Realm."


    Rui nodded, the Senior Realm utterly dwarfed the Squire Realm in width. The gap between the peak and bottom of the respective Realms was not even remotely equal in any way.


    "I have a long way to go before I reach the peak of the Senior Realm," Rui murmured. "The difficulty is so high that most Martial Seniors can only dream about being in the most powerful ss of Martial Seniors."


    "Just so," Master Ceeran smiled. "However, I believe that you specifically shouldn''t even bother dreaming about achieving it."


    That sounded sharply negative.


    "Why not?" Rui furrowed his eyebrows. "Because I believe with all my heart that you will not only reach it but go far beyond it," Master Ceeran smiled. "If you''re going to dream about something, it should be far beyond something that is this trivial for the likes of you."


    Rui smiled. "I''ll bear that in mind."


    "Good luck in your pursuit of Master Gurren," Master Ceeran remarked. "Frankly, I highly doubt that you will be able to gain his tutge. He is known to religiously avoid engaging even with the local Martialmunity, let alone the international Martialmunity. He hasn''t once epted a student, so I highly doubt that he will aid you in any way. Still, it''s worth a try. Just know that he isn''t the sole domain-oriented Martial Artist in this world."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1628 Search

    <h4>Chapter 1628 Search</h4>


    The next day, Rui quickly prepared himself for a long day ofborious work in finding Master Gurren in the Great Jrava Mountain Range in the southwest of the nation. This vast expanse of mountains upied a small portion of the territory of the Kandrian Empire, covering millions of square kilometers in totality.


    Rui would need to scan all that area with his senses, looking for a Martial Master who didn''t enjoy interacting with the empire.


    However, Rui still maintained some hope for connecting with this Martial Master. The reason for that was that he was a partner of the Martial Union, about the same as Rui. Which effectively meant that they had signed a partnership contract formissions and remuneration.


    The fact that he had that tie to the Martial Union gave Rui hope that he wasn''t an absolute istionist.


    He left extremely early when the rising sun had yet to light up the morning, swiftly coursing through the skies of the Kandrian Empire heading towards South-West Kandria.


    He didn''t have the most sophisticated strategy prepared at hand.


    He was just going to request for tutge from the Martial Master, and see if he had anything to offer.


    If that didn''t work, there wasn''t really anything he could do. He was dealing with a Martial Master.


    Eventually, he reached the Great Jrava Mountain Range.


    Mountain stretched out as far as the eye could see, snow-topped and floraden valleys with remarkably lush greenery with fantastical colors.


    The beautiful visage greeted him warmly, weing him with a cool gust of wind.


    "Wow," Rui whispered, taking in the sight from a great altitude.


    This wasn''t the first time he had seen the mountain range during his missions, it was too big to be missed, but it had been a long time since he had visited it.


    "Let''s get to work," He furrowed his eyebrows as he spread his senses as far and wide as he could.


    He could elerate the search for Master Gurren if used his Martial Heart, but even within the Kandrian Empire, he didn''t dare leave himself in a vulnerable position where he was limited to the power of the Squire Realm.


    Had he been a normal Martial Senior, it would have been less risky, though still far too daring. However, it was almost unthinkable to do so with his current status. There were many people who had their eyes on him, and not all of them had the best of intentions.


    The Great Jrava Mountain Range was different from the rest of the nation. Its distance from the Great Name Ocean meant that not even a whiff of the saline humidity that characterized regions close to the ocean, rtively speaking, could be detected in its air.


    The air possessed a hint of rejuvenating freshness that seemed to nourish the mind and body.


    "Not a bad spot to retire," Rui remarked out loud.


    He could see why someone would want to retire in such a ce and just cut away from the rest of human civilization. There was a peace that came with simply living in nature that could not be found in human civilization.


    To a certain extent, that vibe could be found in the Quarrier Orphanage too. Of course, that was less so now that there was a bit more of a settlement around the area with the various young and middle-aged adults forming their own little huts with their own families.


    Still, it could notpare the sense of nature, fantasy, and adventure that living in this enormously wide mountain range conveyed.


    He immediately got to work, dividing the area into grids with a width equal to that of his sensory radius.


    He began scouring the mountains remotely, employing the Lesser Phantomind Void technique so that nobody could detect him easily.


    Of course, that wouldn''t be enough to hide from a Martial Master, but it helped nheless. The Great Jrava Mountain Range was not an entirely benign region. There were monsters and beasts, although almost all of them were limited to the Apprentice and the Squire Realm.


    A great many of the Apprentice and Squire-level domestic hunting missions that the Martial Union had were actually rted to the Great Jrava Mountain Range. It served as a good ce for Apprentices and Squires to test their prowess and was not dangerous enough to warrant culling the dangerous fauna.


    Apprentice and Squire-level beasts were just harmless enough to the Empire to allow them to freely inhabit the Great Hrava Mountain Range. Things got tricky when there were Senior-


    level beasts since these creatures were a little too dangerous to be allowed to run around the Kandrian Empire, still, it could work. This is property ? of N?velDrama.Org.


    Rui kept his senses alert for he had no intention of dying to a Senior-level beast that managed to get the better of him.


    Nothing of remark happened in most of the process, naturally. Grid searching was a rather boring and tedious job with the least amount of excitement in this world. One merely searched and documented, and that was the job description.


    Rui smoothly traveled across the Great Hrava Mountain Range at a medium pace, ensuring that he wasn''t too fast. He needed to carefully scour the entire area as he passed it, there was no point being hasty and messing up the job. Slow and steady won the race.


    One of the challenges was that he often ran into small human settlements in the mountains that he needed to search in order to eliminate the possibility that Master Gurren resided among them. But given that he knew that the Martial Master was solitary, he could be pretty sure that he wouldn''t live among other humans.


    Yet after three-quarters of the day, he came across something that seemed promising. A small hurt at the top of the peak of a mountain. The hut was small and humble, built of rock and wood, with the roof built out of stackedyers ofrge dried leaves cut into strips and interwoven with each other.


    "What do you want, boy?" A voice from behind him called out to Rui.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1629 Refusal

    <h4>Chapter 1629 Refusal </h4>


    Rui almost shook with surprise, for the figure had entered his sensory ranges instantly.


    The old man resembled a caveman. His attire was fashioned from the furry pelts of several animals and beasts. On his shoulder was arge bunch of firewood that he held up with a single arm.


    His hair and beard were frizzled and matted. He resembled an ascetic who had secluded themselves in the mountains for a long time.


    Which he indeed had done.


    "Master Gurren, I-"


    "Not interested," The Martial Master walked past him into his hut.


    "You don''t even know what I''m about to say," Rui raised an eyebrow.


    "You''re here because you want to learn domain techniques," Master Gurren snorted. "You''re here despite the fact that you have undoubtedly hurt that I don''t teach. Which means you think you can convince me otherwise. I hate arrogant brats like you. Especially brats like you who broke the record for the youngest breakthrough to the Senior Realm. You must think you can do anything."


    "So you know about me."


    "No, I''m just not blind. I can see your Realm and I can see your age," He snorted, putting aside the firewood he had collected. "Arrogant brat insulting my ability."


    "It wasn''t my intention to-"


    "Don''t care," The Master snorted.


    Rui heaved a sigh as he considered the Martial Master. He wasn''t sure how he was going to make progress if the Martial Master was going to make it this difficult.


    Still, he noted that the Martial Master had yet to tell him to get out. Yet, the issue was that the Martial master had no reason to cooperate with him. Until that didn''t change, he couldn''t do anything.


    "If you have nothing to do, get out of here," The Master snorted.


    Welp, there it was.


    "As you wish, Master Gurren," Rui replied, skywalking away, but he kept observing the Martial Master with his senses.


    He couldn''t rely on the Martial Master''s goodwill as he did with Master Reina and Master Zeamer. If he wanted the Martial Master to help with domain techniques, he was going to have to give the Martial Master something that he wanted or needed.


    Rui scrutinized the hut and its surroundings. The man truly lived with very little despite being a Martial Master.


    Not only did he live alone, but he refused the use of esoteric artifacts or technology for some reason. Even though they certainly would make his quality better.


    ''Is he a Martial Supremacist?'' Rui wondered inwardly. Perhaps him being a Martial Supremacist would exin his disdain for technology.


    However, would a Martial Supremacist seclude themselves instead of making the effort to turn the Kandrian Empire into a Martial nation?


    There was a realistic chance that he could seed as long as he threw his support behind Prince Raijun, but he certainly was not doing that.


    Rui spotted the man discarding spoiled meat that was no longer fit for consumption off the mountain. His senses went inside the little hut, spotting some cut meat that was still fit to use. The old Martial Master quickly set light to a bunch of firewood, impaling the meat before lighting it over the fire.


    He was intent on finding out exactly what it was that the old Martial Master wanted and needed. So far, Rui had already thought of some things that he could offer to the elder Martial Master that he would want.


    He continued observing the Martial Master from several kilometers away. The elder Martial Master could undoubtedly sense Rui, but apparently, he didn''t care enough to chase Rui away.


    Soon enough, it was nighttime. Rui rxed on a tree, watching the Martial Master intently as dusk came and the sun settled. A little prior to midnight, Rui raised an eyebrow as he felt the Martial Master activate his Martial Heart.


    He quickly leaned forward confused. With how powerful the Martial Master was, there was no need for him to activate his Martial Heart. On top of that, he went as far as to activate his Martial Mind.


    His existence changed¡­ altering to a ''domain'' as he activated his Martia Mind, manifesting his Martial Embodiment inside Rui''s mind.


    What did it look like?


    It was hard for Rui to describe. It resembled a vast sky andnd stuffed inside a spherical pocket dimension with curled space to contain them, like a drop of water refracting light to warp the image that the light conveyed.


    Rui wondered how other people saw his domain. After all, the concept of a domain did not have a universal image that everybody shared. It was a more abstract concept, especially in a world with limited mathematics that could provide concrete mathematical definitions for the concept of domain.


    The Martial Master activated a single domain technique, much to Rui''s intrigue. Suddenly the air around him became opaque, sealing off any light. Not just light, it sealed off any other of the five senses from peering through the domain of opaque air.


    Rui understood why he had taken that measure, it was to protect the animals and the few human settlements that upied the Great Jrava Mountain Range from his power. If they couldn''t see him, then they wouldn''t be passively hypnotized by his Martial Embodiment and wouldn''t suffer mental damage as a result.


    He was a lot kinder than Rui had expected, for someone who hated interacting with other humans.


    He ascended to the skies, sky-walking straight up at incredible speeds.


    Rui was curious about what a Martial Master could be doing at such heights. He decided to lightly follow him at just the edge of his senses, trying to keep as much distance between them as possible. N?velDrama.Org content.


    Eventually, the Martial Master soared to heights that not even Rui could reach through sky-walking due to the plummeting density of the air, the Martial Master on the other hand, went far beyond his vision.


    ''Is he trying to go beyond space or something?'' Rui wondered with curiosity.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1630 Offer

    <h4>Chapter 1630 Offer </h4>


    The Martial Master stopped at an incredible altitude in the sky. He nced back, snorting at Rui who had been left behind. He himself would have loved to go further, but Martial Masters too were limited by the necessity to breathe air. He couldn''t any further.


    The night sky glowed with an endless ocean of stars twinkling in the sky.


    He fixated on them intently as his powerful vision was able to peer into them far deeper than any human possibly could.


    The cognition that his Martial Mind gave him allowed him to gain an intuitive understanding of them. While he did not possess a theoretical framework for the magnificent shining existences that were embedded deep in the sky.


    Interestingly enough, he never once paid any attention to the moon. In fact, his mouth curled in contempt every time he looked at the gibbous moon. He only was interested in the natural state of the universe.


    He was not interested in a man-made object.


    He continued spectating the night sky until dawn arrived, before finally declining from the sky, and returning to his hut.


    The arrogant brat was waiting for him there.


    "I thought I told you to get out of here," Master Gurren growled.


    "If I didn''t have anything to do," Rui replied. "But I do."


    "I told you, I don''t teach," Master Gurren snorted.


    "But you do stargaze," Rui remarked turning to the dawning sky. "Unexpected, for a Martial Master. Is that why you became a Martial Artist?"


    Rui couldn''t help but suspect that.


    "You''re awfully nosy for a brat that has no business being here," He narrowed his eyes. "Perhaps I should kill you right here and now. Nobody would ever know as long as I hide your body well."


    "You''re too kind to do that," Rui replied matter-of-factly. N?vel/Dr(a)ma.Org - Content owner.


    "Am I now?"


    "You ensured that your Martial Embodiment would not hurt any animal or human in this mountain range even when you didn''t have to," Rui replied. "That shows you care."


    "Hmph, don''t push me, brat, everybody has limits," The Martial Master snorted. "You really are arrogant. Give me one reason I shouldn''t kick you out of here."


    Rui smiled. "I can give you a Martial Art technique that will allow you to observe stars better. Far better than any existing telescope, I promise."


    The Martial Master narrowed his eyes. "There exists no such Martial Art technique."


    "Not physically, no," Rui replied. "But it exists in my mind. I created it after I realized you could use it."


    Optics was something one studied in high school and even more in-depth in college for a bachelor''s andter master''s degree in Physics. Once realized that his knowledge could work as a fine bargaining chip for the Martial Artist.


    "Inside your mind?" The Martial Master narrowed his eyes. "Do you expect me to believe that nonsense? There''s a limit to arrogance."


    Rui smiled wryly.


    The form magnification was rather simple. Rui knew that he probably could create a telescope technique that used that atmosphere as a lens.


    Any and all transparent media that allowed for light to pass through them could serve as a lens. Of course, it wasplicated, he would need to manipte the air to alter what was known as optical density, which was a measure of how much slower light was in a mediumpared to a vacuum, and then create curvilinear lenses out of the air to magnify light as much as possible.


    "If I improve your stargazing experience by ten times, are you willing to help me out?" Rui asked him.


    The Martial Master didn''t respond, simply staring at Rui intently.


    "I''ll take that as a yes," Rui smiled wryly. The Martial Master was too aloof to even verbally concede.


    Rui turned to the side, activating a crude breathing technique that he had created while the Martial Master stargazed all night.


    He brought his hands in front of him breathing in a particr way, it created a small pocket of air that was much more dense than normal.


    Master Gurren''s eyes widened as the image that the light passing through the pocket air was a zoomed-in version of a distant mountain.


    "That''s all I was able to do overnight," Rui replied, heaving a sigh. "It doesn''t rely on any energy-consuming esoteric substance that normal telescopes rely on. I presume that that is why you don''t use them. However, to create a technique fit to gaze at stars, I will need to master the foundations of domain techniques."


    Master Gurren narrowed his eyes as he understood the proposition that Rui was making. He had created a circumstance that not only was he offering something that Master Gurren wanted in return for a powerful foundation in domain techniques, but he had also made what he wanted necessary to fulfill what Master Gurren wanted from him.


    "Who are you?" Master Gurren asked Rui with grudging curiosity.


    "Just an arrogant brat, Your Mastery," Rui bowed lightly, smirking.


    "Hmph, you refuse to tell me your name? Arrogant brat."


    "So what do you say?" Rui asked. "We can help each other out."


    Master Gurren snorted. "Hmph, you truly are arrogant¡­Show me that technique again."


    Rui tilted his head with a smirk, raising an eyebrow.


    "Alright, fine. I ept your deal." The Master begrudgingly conceded. "Now show me that technique."


    "Of course," Rui replied, smiling, before demonstrating the prototypical technique.


    He wasn''t worried that he would be losing out on the deal by disying the technique. He wouldn''t be able to make anything meaningful from it, the physics and math behind wasplex. Rui just made it look easy.


    He had been doing this for a long time, after all. He had grown to be something of an expert in converting Physics to a Martial Art technique after doing it so often. Considering he had seeded with difficult techniques like the Riemannian Echo and the Pathfinder technique, he had no doubt in his mind he could seed with the magnification form for a convex lens.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1631 Domains-101

    <h4>Chapter 1631 Domains-101</h4>


    Rui had worked during the time that the Martial Master had engaged in his little star-gazing session to create a proof of concept. It didn''t need to function properly then and there, it just needed to work enough for a night''s work into it to convince the Master that it was worth getting his hands on.


    "And you''re sure that this can be turned into a domain technique with even greater telescoping power?" The Martial Master inquired, shocked.


    "Indeed," Rui nodded.


    "Then we must create this technique!" The Master eximed. "I will be able to peer into the nature and structure of the universe with this technique!"


    Rui raised his eyebrows, a little flummoxed. "I don''t mean to be too rude with my inquiry but, if you care so much about astronomy, then why didn''t you be an astronomer? They are able to learn much more about the universe than most Martial Artists."


    "Hmph, your words betray a modern outlook," He snorted. "I am three hundred and twenty years old. Back then, astronomy was hardly a thing. Back then, we did not even know that the small twinkling stars in the sky are all in fact individual suns that are unfathomably far away from us. The only people who learned the most about what were those with the best vision, in other words; Martial Artists."


    "I see," Rui replied, turning to the sky. "I respect and understand that. The universe is, in fact, wider than anybody can possibly fathom."


    Rui wondered if anybody in the world understood just how gigantic the universe was. It was a fact that he had learned in high school, and had grown numb to. But every once in a while even he could not help but gaze into the universe and wonder what was out there.


    It was the human spirit of curiosity.


    But s, he was born toote to explore the seas and born too early to explore the universe.


    "You say that as if you what''s out there," The man replied, raising an eyebrow.


    He did, but he didn''t say that. This is property ? of N?velDrama.Org.


    He shook his head instead. "Let''s get started. The sooner that you teach me the foundation of domain techniques, the sooner I can give you the ability to peer into the universe farther than anybody else."


    "Okay. Let us begin immediately then," Master Gurren got to both feet, determined.


    Rui stood up before his Martial Master.


    "What do you know about the field of domains?" Master Gurren asked Rui.


    "All I know is that it involves control and maniption of arger part of the environment," Rui replied.


    "If you know only that much, then you didn''t need toe to me," Master Gurren snorted. "The Martial Union has enough to give you the basics and some half-decent techniques."


    Rui shook his head. "I want the best of the best."


    He knew from experience that Masters could impart a foundation that was much better than if he tried learning from techniques from the Martial Union. He would not be nearly as lethal an assassin if not for the foundation that Master Reina imparted to him.


    He would not be nearly as much of a powerful hypnotist if not for the foundation that Master Zeamer imparted to him.


    He was hoping for something simr from Master Gurren. The two of them relocated to a barren mountain with no


    "A domain is simply a slice of heaven and earth that is under your control or influence," Master Gurren began. "We control heaven through our breath. We control the earth through our bodies. With breath and body together, we control heaven and earth together, creating a domain around us within which we can trigger certain effects."


    "I see," Rui murmured. "Interesting."


    "Naturally, not all techniques need to manipte both heaven and earth," The Master informed Rui. "Most techniques lean towards one, only truly powerful domain techniques manipte both at once. Those that do gainplete dominion over the world.


    He paused for a moment. "At the Upper Realms, there are even aspects and nes of our reality that can serve as the foundation of a domain technique, but as a Martial Senior, you only possess the power to manipte heaven and earth, and that is enough for any Martial Senior."


    Rui nodded, listening attentively.


    "Let us begin with why anyone even bothers with domain techniques," The Master calmly exined. "After all, there are other forms of environmental maniption even without domain techniques. Domains were developed muchter, born out of abination of environmental maniption techniques and breathing techniques. Why even bother with domains if the only difference is area of effect?"


    That was a good question. Rui personally pursued domain techniques because he felt as though they had good synergy with his Martial Art in concept.


    If he could adapt his environment against his opponent, then he would, in theory, be expanding his adaptive evolution to a dimension that he thought was not possible before.


    However, that was the extent of the reasoning behind his drive to learn domain techniques. His reasoning was not the reason why domain techniques were pursued, even if they were niche.


    "Offensive domain techniques offer the highest hit rate out of all domain techniques," Master Gurren exined. "These techniques are extremely difficult to avoid since they cover arge area. The probability ofnding an attack is thus extremely high since it unreasonable to evade them for long, if at all."


    Rui nodded. He too had ultimately failed to avoid the attacks of the domain Martial Artists that he fought despite using the Metabody System.


    "Good domain techniques do not sacrifice too much potency for the area of effect," The Master exined. "A natural disadvantage of domain techniques is that their power is distributed across arge amount of area, thus the potency is often weaker than even long-range techniques. A bad domain technique dilutes it too much, while a good domain technique either minimizes the dilution greatly or makes sure that the impacts of the technique inbat are worth it."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1632 Strengths and Weaknesses

    <h4>Chapter 1632 Strengths and Weaknesses </h4>


    Rui nodded, absorbed. He knew that domain techniques covered a lot of areas intrinsically; it was what defined it and set it apart. This naturally meant that a lot of energy was spread out, resulting in low energy density, which could easily result in a weak technique whose effects are too spread out.


    "The mostmon means by which this shoring is solved is by ensuring that, despite being spread across arge area, the entire area impacts the target of your technique in some way. If the entire area that is receiving energy from your domain technique is impacting the target directly or indirectly, then the total spread energy will end up impacting your target directly or indirectly," The Master exined. "In this case, the low energy density doesn''t matter because no amount of energy is being wasted. The entire area impacting the target means the entire energy you are outputting is hitting the target. Suppose only a portion of the environment is impacting the target. In that case, the energy in the rest of the environment will not impact your target, and thus will be underutilized and wasted."


    That made sense to Rui. This way, the domain''s shoring was mitigated while its advantage of highly sessful hit rates was retained.


    "That is the mostmon consideration regarding the field of domains," Master Gurren remarked. "However, it is not the only one. Domains may seem simple conceptually, but in my many years of exploring, I havee across immense depth in them that they are never given credit for. That is what I will convey to you, arrogant brat."


    Rui nodded, smirking. This was why he hade to Master Gurren instead of just searching for random domain techniques in the Martial Union''s library.


    Centuries of experience resulted in wisdom and understanding that no scroll or book couldpete with.


    "The field of domains can be divided and organized in many ways," The Master exined. "One important distinction within domain techniques is the nature of its energy requirements. Does a domain technique require a constant supply of energy to maintain it? Or does the technique require some amount of energy to set it up and then no longer require any energy for maintenance? Thetter usually involves shaping the environment or changing its state in some way. The former is usually a domain of a temporary effect that is generated by the user constantly exerting and manipting force onto the environment. It tends to be stronger and more energy-consuming while the former tends to be weaker and less energy-consuming."


    "In addition," The Master rapidly continued. "Domain techniques can also be divided by their target scope, which is not the same thing as the domain area itself. Some domains cover a wide area and many objects but have a limited target scope. These techniques often leverage arge amount of area to work against or for a single target, just like I discussed earlier. However, there are some domain techniques that are designed to target every single thing in their vicinity. These are meant for when faced with arge number of opponents and targets, generally."


    "I see," Rui murmured. "That is¡­interesting."


    He may choose to create a technique like that, though he wasn''t sure about how necessary that measure was. If he faced a swarm of equals, then he was probably screwed, but if he was swarmed by weaklings, then he wouldn''t need a domain in the first ce.


    "That gives you a general and broad overview of domain techniques and how they''re categorized," Master Gurren remarked. "There are very defined and inescapable shorings of domain techniques like their high energy consumption, but there also are very concrete hit rates. As long as you can create potent effects in the domain, the negatives of domain techniques arepensated for, and you''re left with the overwhelming benefits."


    "However, the one disadvantage that really holds back the field of domains from bing mainstream is the difficulty of individualizing them," Master Gurren exined. "Manipting arge portion of the environment is difficult, and it''s even more difficult to make individualistic progress in this field. Because there are a limited number of principles through which one can manipte suchrge swathes of the environment." N?velDrama.Org content.


    Rui nodded. "I''m not too worried about that."


    Rui was certain that he could bypass that limitation with new principles of Physics that he was aware of; he already had a lot of good ideas on how to go about it. He would immediately begin testing them out when he had the foundations of domain techniques down.


    "Hmph, as expected of an arrogant brat," Master Gurren huffed. "Do you think you can chart new territory in domain techniques?"


    "Absolutely, I''m going to create domain techniques that adapt the domain to counter my opponent," Rui replied. "That will most likely require some effort, but I am confident that I can achieve it."


    "Adapt the environment to your opponent, hm?" The Master raised an eyebrow. "Domain techniques are already suitable counter against maneuvering and speed-oriented Martial Art. This is because they invalidate the biggest benefit of maneuvering or speed: evasion. Evading a domain is a task that nobody should find themselves doing. If you do, you ought to question everything that leads to those sets of events."


    Rui chuckled. "I would only need to if Ie across an extremely lethal domain. Are there any domains that instantly kill their opponents without any opportunity for resistance?"


    "Indeed, arrogant brat" Master Gurren nodded. "These domains are based on powerful principles and are excessively difficult. It''s not that just about everyone can master them. The few grade-ten domain techniques are nothing short of magical."


    Rui smiled, growing excited by the prospect of creating such techniques. Just the idea of manipting the world around him in extraordinary manners to create extraordinary domains that adapt to the environment to counter his opponent was fascinating to Rui. He couldn''t wait to take this next step and expand the scope of his Martial Art.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1633 Heaven and Earth

    <h4>Chapter 1633 Heaven and Earth </h4>


    "Now then, let us get to the principles of domain techniques," Master Gurren continued. "The principles of manipting the heavens are very different from manipting earth."


    He exhaled heavily before him as his hands were poised, ready for action. They began moving in slow, delicate movements, curling, shifting, and flowing, which in turn impacted the wind currents, sound, and pressure gradients, causing their vectors to change as he pleased.


    "This is how we manipte the heavens. We bend breath. We bend its force to, in turn, bend the heavens," Master Gurren exined. "This is known as heaven bending. The quality of your heaven techniques is dependent on the proficiency of your heaven bending."


    Rui''s eyes widened. "I see, that''s incredible!"


    There were many forces in this world that determined atmospheric and air factors together. Gravity from the and the moon, the forces from the Coriolis Effect, exposure to sunlight, theposition of air, topography, and ecology all acted on the atmosphere, resulting in the oue.


    Heaven techniques, a sub-field of domain techniques centered around the heavens, relied on turning the powerful force of breath of the user into the dominant force acting on the atmosphere around the user, allowing them to impact it.


    "Of course, the quality of heaven techniques is also dependent on your understanding of the flow of heaven," Master Gurren informed him. "The flow of the heavens is not one of chaos. There are rules. Laws. Principles. Of course, theoretical schrs have yet to gain anything more than a minor understanding of the order that lies underneath the seemingly chaotic surface. While schrs attempt to codify the order of heaven on paper with strange symbols that they insist are scientific and mathematical, we Martial Artists are left with no other means but our instincts, intuition, and experience. Thetter hones the former, improving our subconscious understanding of the world."


    Master Gurren paused, raising an eyebrow. "What are you smirking about?"


    "Nothing."


    "Hmph, you are arrogant through and through, arrogant brat."


    Rui did his best to suppress the excited grin that was threatening topletely upy his expression. He couldn''t help it, of course. Master Gurren''s words inadvertently highlighted the massive advantage that he held over all his peers.


    He possessed the schrly understanding of the flow of heavens that Master Gurren insisted that Martial Artists couldn''t have. Fluid dynamics, ssic Wave Theory, Sound Dynamics, Thermodynamics, Kic theory of gases. What were these, if not the order of heaven, codified into scientific theories?


    "In all my many years of peering into the depths of heaven, I have yet to uncover more than a portion of the depths of the order of heaven," Master Gurren heaved a sigh. "Anyone who uncovers the truth of the heavens will possess truly heavenly domains. Regardless, that''s enough about the heavens. Let us talk about earth."


    STEP


    He pushed his foot down to the ground.


    RUMBLE!


    "We manipte heaven with our steps," Master Gurren remarked. "With each step, we supply the earth with power. We bend earth to our will using pressure, sound, and heat. Like so."


    STEP


    The ground around Rui moved up faster than he could react, wrapping around him before solidifying into solid rock. Instantly, he was trapped inside a mud boulder.


    "I liquified earth using vibrations and then relied on force to disce the earth around you and then ceased the vibrations," Master Gurren exined. "Earth bending tends to be more powerful for one''s body is stronger than one''s breath alone, but it is also far more limited in versatility and application and tends to be easier to evade. It is also less vital to the battle sincend can be avoided, but the heavens can''t. It, too, has an inscrutable order that we have yet to understand. Regardless, we can only do our best."


    Once again, Rui had a hard time suppressing his smile. He had yet another advantage that he couldn''t wait to exploit. Please check at N/?vel(D)rama.Org.


    "Together, we create techniques of heaven and earth," Master Gurren exined before exhaling heavily and striking thend with his food.


    RUMBLE!


    WHOOSH!


    A tremendous tornado enveloped them while thend began shaking violently.


    "Woah¡­!" Rui eximed, excited.


    "And that brings us to the introductory session," Master Gurren replied. "You can forge your own path across heaven and earth after you have mastered heaven bending and earth bending."


    "I see," Rui furrowed his eyebrow, deep in thought.


    His goal in mastering domain techniques was to develop techniques that adapted the environment to his opponents. Obviously, it was impossible to immediately find a way to adapt to the environment against all Martial Artists right off the bat. But he could start by adapting to the three primary fields ofbat.


    ''Hm, but I already am able to adapt to the primary fields ofbat extremely well¡­'' Rui realized.


    He had the pattern recognition system; of course, he also had the metabody system and the Hypnomatrix. All of these, as they currently were, were geared toward the three primary fields of offense, defense, and maneuvering.


    Perhaps he should consider creating domains that adapt secondary fields in addition to the primary fields. Or maybe he could focus more on secondary fields, too. It remained to be seen. While he would want to adapt perfectly to everybody and everything, he was still very far from reaching a stage where he could disregard everybody else as he adapted to them. The three primary fields ofbat were the mostmon fields that he was going to be facing inbat, so he couldn''t just ignore them.


    "Oi, are you listening?"


    "Hm? Oh, sorry, Your Mastery."


    "Hmph, arrogant brat."


    "You were saying?"


    "I was saying that I''m going to have you start training on heaven bending and earth bending with the best training methodologies that I know," Master Gurren remarked. "And then you simultaneously start developing the the stargazing technique that you promised me using heaven and earth bending. Only then will you have fulfilled your end of the bargain."


    Rui nodded. "Don''t worry, you''ll get what you want and more."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1634 Decker Byrnes

    <h4>Chapter 1634 Decker Byrnes</h4>


    Rui departed that day withoutmencing his training. He had already spent a lot of energy and skipped sleep in pursuit of convincing the domain Master to ept him as a pupil. They would begin their training at ater date.


    Rui also had an appointment to tend to.


    His meeting with Princess Rafia was due the next day. She had invited him to a business conference with a lot of prospective patrons whom she hoped to reel over into her faction. Rui wasn''t sure what to expect from her, although he did have a very basic understanding of what kind of person she was from the intelligence he purchased from both the Beggar''s Sect and the Martial Union.


    Soon enough, the day arrived.


    He quickly prepared himself, donning the custom-tailored formal Martial Art attire that he had worn to the reception that Prince Raemina had prepared for her patrons and prospects.


    Rui found it interesting that Princess Rafia was not nearly as inclined to go for a formal social event as opposed to a formal business event.


    The exorbitantly d invite that he had received specified that it was a business event and not simply a social meeting. Meaning she would most likely be formally making some sort of business proposition to the members of the business conference.


    Rui wasn''t sure what he was going to do there. He had no business history or involvement, barring that of Esosale Suppliers, but thatpany was dead and empty, absolutely worthless at the moment.


    Furthermore, he recalled what Master Vericita had told him.


    Something about a controversial proposition for Rui specifically: he wasn''t sure what that was about either.


    Still, he was obligated to hear the princess out. Not doing at least that much could be considered a sign of hostility, a sign that he had no intention of conveying to a Royal Princess of the nation.


    It wasn''t long before he had prepared himself, having dawned his formal attire before taking off for the skies. He avoided going too fast, using a breathing technique to prevent drag and wind from disheveling his hair.


    Thankfully, the business conference was in the Town of Hajin, which made sense given that it was amercial trade hub. Princess Rafia was very much in her element in the town, which was all the more good for her.


    Regardless, he reached the location of the business convention swiftly.


    [Rafia Consortium]


    Rui raised an eyebrow as he beheld arge corporateplex in one of the inner districts of Hajin. This was the Hajin branch of the Rafia Consortium, one of thergest consortiums in East Panama.


    Like all consortiums, this consortium was simply an association between manymercial entities with amon agenda. In this particr Consortium''s case, it was essentially a lobby group formercial and economic reform as far asws and regtions went, something that was mostly under the Emperor''s power alone.


    By pooling their economic might together, they gained purchasing power and bargaining power that was on par with nations. Many of these organizations were powerhouses inside and outside Kandria, after all. Even for the ruler of Kandria, it was neither easy nor wise to simply dismiss their growing demands for even greater liberalization of the economy than it currently was.


    It was something that didn''t affect Rui in any way, which is why he had never heard of it before he purchased information on Princess Rafia among the other six.


    In addition to lobbying for a more liberalized economy, it also was essentially the headquarters of the Rafia Faction. She purchased a twenty-percent stake in allmercial publicly traded organizations, firmly gaining a solid grasp on thepany''s decision-making. Given howrge these corporations were, Rui couldn''t even imagine how much wealth it took, but as a member of the Royal family, she was entitled to a small minute portion of Royal treasury. Combined with intelligent investing, she had managed to build immense capital, support, and control.


    It was said that she owned hundreds of billions of gold worth of stake, which she utilized to further her agenda of a libertarian economy.


    Philosophically and politically, she was aligned exactly in opposition to the Communist Princess. He had no doubt that there was a fiercepetition that went on between the two of them that he wanted no part in.


    Around the corporateplex was a line of motorized carriages pulling in. He felt strangely out of ce when he looked at all the distinguished conglomerates and business tycoons exiting their carriages one after the other. They were apanied by Martial Squire and Senior bodyguards.


    To a certain extent, the Realm of their bodyguards was a testament to their wealth and economic stature. There weren''t even two thousand Martial Seniors in the Kandrian Empire, and most of them were firmly with the Martial Union. Maintaining active partnerships came with many benefits that simply could not be found anywhere else, in addition to high revenue. Only the most loaded corporates had the ability to lure away Martial Seniors with even more lucrative deals.


    "Invitation," The security vetting entrants turned towards him.


    Rui made his way through after producing the invitation that Master Vericita had provided him, heading towards the convention hall.


    The internal architecture of the convention hall had a rather modern edge to it; it was of advanced civil engineering and esoteric technology, yet its design leaned towards practicality rather than aesthetics, in sharp contrast to the exorbitant reception hall he had been invited by Princess Raemina.


    He had already begun drawing a few nces from the various businessmen and businesswomen who had gathered at the business convention once he entered the convention hall. His features were pretty identifiable, of course. Yet he was grateful that they were too self-conscious of their image and dignity to disy any reaction at his arrival.


    Except for one fellow.


    "Senior Quarrier!" A strapping young man who was about as old as him walked up to Rui, calling out to him. Behind him were two Martial Seniors who, for some reason, red at him openly.


    The young man had facial features that seemed familiar to Rui for some reason. Rui was curious why he would openly try to reach out to Rui in such a loud fashion.


    "It''s a pleasure to finally meet you, Senior Rui Quarrier," The man smiled confidently, stretching out a hand to Rui. N?velDrama.Org content.


    For some reason, Rui could feel everybody''s eyes on the pair. This particr meeting was special for some reason.


    "And you, Mister¡­?" Rui asked, shaking his hand.


    "Ah, my name is Decker Byrnes," The young man smirked. "I am the new chairman and owner of Deacon Industries."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1635 Prickling Conversation

    <h4>Chapter 1635 Prickling Conversation</h4>


    Rui''s eyes sharpened. Now he understood why he could feel everybody''s eyes on him. It made sense; who wouldn''t want to witness such an exciting meeting?


    The young man was smirked with a hint of mischief. "What''s the matter, Senior Quarrier? Cat got your tongue?"


    "As I was saying," Rui continued. "It''s a pleasure to meet you, Chairman Decker."


    "Come now, you needn''t be so formal, Senior Quarrier," The young man chuckled. "I know you so well and have known you for so long that we''re practically already friends."


    "I, on the other hand, learned your name less than a minute ago," Rui replied calmly. "Perhaps we should address each other as what we are: strangers with no rtionship to each other."


    "Ah, but you''re the man who killed my father after he hunted you for nine years," The man smirked mischievously. "This may be the first time we''ve met, but our paths have crossed each other''s for a long time."


    The atmosphere grew colder.


    The air was wrung taut. Many watched the heat of the conversation escte as Chairman Decker boldly used Rui of murdering his father.


    "I would advise you to abstain from making false remarks," Rui narrowed his eyes. "I could sue you for defamation for those words."


    "Indeed, but I''m sure you''re intelligent enough to know that you shouldn''t," The chairman smirked. "You may win in court; hell, I would probably even plead guilty. But the court''s decision doesn''t matter; what matters is the court of public opinion, and that court will not find me guilty."


    "I don''t take patrons," Rui replied. "It brings about obligations, in the long term, that shackle me. I don''t like shackles." N?vel/Dr(a)ma.Org - Content owner.


    "I see," The young chairman remarked. "That''s a shame. Many people, even in this conference, would love to be your patron; I can assure you of that."


    Rui nced around; he could feel their attention and curiosity even if they weren''t looking at him directly.


    It couldn''t be helped. His return to the Kandrian Empire was a spectacle in and of itself. After that, there had been several more high-profile incidents featuring him. He had be hot news in the Kandrian Empire.


    "Still, it is good to meet you face to face," The young chairman smiled. "I would love to be your friend. We are in the same generation, too, after all."


    Rui raised an eyebrow. "Friendships involve trust. I''m afraid what we have doesn''te anywhere even remotely close."


    "True," The man remarked, nodding. "Still, everything starts somewhere. Regardless, I am content with just making your acquaintance today. For now, let us focus on the event that we have gathered here today."


    Rui nced around; the convention hall had grown even more densely filled as even more guests entered one after the other with their own Martial Artist bodyguards. Each of them wore tailored suits and scrupulously groomed appearances. They possessed an invisible weight to them that wasn''t nearly as pronounced as the pressure that Martial Artists exerted, yet it existed.


    It was a pressure that came with the power to impact nations with a singlemand. Its indirectness meant that it did not directly convey itself the way it did for Martial Artists, but Rui was not fooled. Each of the people here was an elite of the international economy and market and was not to be trifled with, even for him.


    Eventually, a door at the end of the conventional hall opened. A woman with golden hair and golden eyes walked through, followed by two Martial Master bodyguards. Her attire was business-oriented, yet an exorbitant Royal crest was embroidered onto the chest area of her attire.


    "Her Highness Princess Rafia Leoufil Kandria has arrived."


    Every member of the Convention Hall bowed in adherence to the code of conduct when graced by a member of the Royal Family.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1636 Controversial Proposal

    <h4>Chapter 1636 Controversial Proposal</h4>


    Prince Rafia had a very distinct demeanor. It was cold and detached. Her eyescked warmth, and her bodynguage was devoid of consideration. "Raise your heads," Shemanded.


    Even her tone was monotonic and devoid of any grace or measured cadence.


    "Distinguished guests, wee to the convention held by the Rafia Consortium," She began unceremoniously, speaking clinically. "Today''s agendas, as you all have been informed, have to do with a new scheme that the Rafia Consortium will be implementing in regard to the new system of patronage of our esteemed members to the Rafia Foundation. The presentation will begin immediately, and your seats have already been prepared."


    Immediately, an array of luxurious seating arrangements across the wide and spacious hall appeared out of nowhere, much to Rui''s surprise. Whatever esoteric technology was being employed was extraordinarily exclusive and rare.


    Arge board appeared behind her as the guests took their seats across the convention hall hosting the business convention.


    Therge title head at the top of the board immediately drew everybody''s reaction.


    [Patronage Tiering System]


    Below it was arge intricate maze ofyers and sub-headers with several points below each of them, with many arrows that stretched across the entire board.


    "Senior Rui Quarrier, pleasee with me. I wish to speak to you about an important matter privately," She remarked without a hint ofmanding assertiveness. Her words once more drew the attention of the various guests who were engaged with her staff as the convention hall grew silent.


    Rui Quarrier was the first person at the top of Princess Rafia''s list of people to privately consult out of all the distinguished individuals invited to the business convention.


    That was an unexpected development for many.


    She simply stared at him with a nk expression that may as well have been frozen in time, waiting for his response. Rui, on the other hand, groaned inwardly at being ced in the spotlight yet again.


    "I would be honored, Your Highness," Rui got up, bowing, before following her to one the door at the end of the convention hall, ignoring the many stares fixated on him.


    "It may behoove you to dispense with such gestures, Senior Quarrier," she remarked when they were out of everybody else''s earshot, referring to his bow. "This is a business convention and thus merely semi-formal at most. Such polities are not observed in business gatherings such as this one." N?vel/Dr(a)ma.Org - Content owner.


    "I wasn''t aware of that, Your Highness," Rui replied courteously. "I shall bear that in mind."


    Her assistant opened the door to the office that they found themselves in. "Please have a seat," the princess gestured before taking her own. "I am not fond of small talk; thus, I hope you do not take offense at my tendency to avoid them. I have but one proposition to make to you."


    She stared into his eyes without even the tiniest shred of emotion as she uttered the following words.


    "Please marry me, Rui Quarrier."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1637 Persuasion

    <h4>Chapter 1637 Persuasion</h4>


    Rui was quite proud of his ability to maintain a facade ofposure and hide his thoughts. Short of Martial Masters and their seemingly telepathic ability to peer into one''s mind, his control over his micro-expressions and bodynguage was quite high.


    Yet even his formidable control was shattered by the sheer absurdity that the Corporate Princess uttered to him.


    "What¡­?" Rui whispered.


    "I just offered a proposal of marriage to you, Senior Quarrier," She remarked without so much as a hint of fluctuation in her cadence.


    Rui stared at her with bewilderment. "I don''t understand. Is this your idea of humor? It is rather strange."


    "I am not jesting, Senior Quarrier," She replied with the same monotone that she had conducted her presentation with. "I am offering a proposal of marriage to you."


    "¡­But why?" He stared at her, unable to believe what was happening at the moment.


    "I suppose it would be prudent to inform you," She remarked. "It would be better if youprehend the reasons. The first reason is that marriage is a powerful tool to reel in support. It is a bond ofmitment, and thus, it is a strong symbol of partnership and alliance. There is a reason that families and even nations employ marriage to strengthen and affirm their bonds. That is what I aim to achieve by marrying you."


    Rui had already understood this. He had also already understood why she had chosen him of all people as a suitor.


    "My Martial capital is far lower than my six siblings," She continued. "The only ones among my six primepetitors with lower Martial capital would be Raemina and Raul. This is a sub-optimal state of affairs that I cannot allow to remain in ce. One of the measures I have at my disposal is marriage, as I am the youngest out of the seven prime candidates for the throne. I intend to employ it to increase the allure of my faction for Martial Artists. For that, I require a high-profile Martial Artist who happens to be of the same generation as me and whomands great respect, prestige, and soft influence in the Martial Community. Ideally, I would like to bear his child as well topletely seal the bond."


    Rui winced inwardly even though he had figured as much.


    That didn''t mean he was eager to ept her proposal. Getting engaged with a princess? That was a horrific idea as far as he was concerned. Having her bear his child was an even worse idea; it would make it impossible to break away from her. It would vastly increase the probability of him being the target of an assassination, and he didn''t have a pair of Martial Masters guarding him.


    He was not inclined to be under constant supervision even if he did.


    No amount of wealth or resources or anything was worth it.


    "I''ll have to decline, Your Highness," Rui informed her, shaking his head. "Please pick someone else."


    "There is no one else," She remarked.


    "That''s not true," Rui replied calmly. A mischievous smile threatened to crack at the edge of his mouth as a hrious idea popped into his head. "There is Kane, known to be a prodigy of his generation. I''m sure that he would love to be your fiance, surely. I can even give you his contact information if you wish to speak to him."


    His face was calm andposed, yet he was inwardly cackling at the little prank he was pulling.


    Imagining his best friend''s face when he realized what Rui got him into made him want to burst outughing, but he held himself together with superhuman will.


    "He is only a Martial Squire," She shook her head. "Even if he magically broke through to the Senior Realm today, he would still be far less attractive of a choice now that he had cut all ties with the Arrancar Family."


    Shame.


    "What about Ian Nepomniachtchi?" Rui wondered. "He too is touted as a genius of his generation."


    "He is even less attractive as a prospect," She remarked. "Furthermore, the head of the Nepomniachtchi Family is already part of my faction."


    She stared straight into Rui''s eyes. "It must be you, Rui Quarrier. Your track record as a Martial Artist is extraordinary. You singlehandedly won the Serevian War for the Kandrian Empire, and you defeated a Martial Squire as an Apprentice. You dominated the Shionel Dungeon and then broke through as the youngest Martial Senior before killing Deacon Byrnes in an assassination and returning home as a high-grade Martial Senior. You then earned the Martial Union''s immense goodwill with the secret Squire evolution breakthrough method, so much so that Martial Masters are willing to run across the country to protect your life from one of their peers."


    She didn''t even pretend like he wasn''t the assassin who killed Deacon. He didn''t even bother refuting it; it was pointless, and he just needed to never acknowledge it by word. Regardless, sheid out concrete reasons for why she needed Rui.


    "If you ept my proposal, I can give you anything in this world," She remarked. "For everything has a price, and I have the ability to pay all prices with the capital that I have amassed. In return, I will have you let mepletely harness every ounce of influence over the Martial Community you have and use it to win over skeptics who believe me to be antagonistic towards Martial Artists. While you singlehandedly cannot fix the problem, the sheer prestige both in the empire and across the entire world thates with being the youngest Martial Senior will do much to alleviate my problem."


    "I don''t care for wealth," Rui replied. This is property ? of N?velDrama.Org.


    "To not care for wealth is to not care for anything," She remarked. "What is it about this arrangement that displeases you? Is it my bodily aesthetics?"


    She nced down at her well-endowed figure. "I have been informed that my sexual appeal is prone to causing phallic tumescence in men. I believe that nothing about it should be displeasing enough to be averse to what is purely a business transaction."


    Rui coughed awkwardly. "It is not that, Your Highness. You are indeed beautiful. However, I simply am unable to tolerate the inevitable consequences of marriage with you and simply do not care enough for what you can offer me. That is all."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1638 Disagreements

    <h4>Chapter 1638 Disagreements </h4>


    "You seem rather certain," She remarked ndly. "If you marry me, our children and family will be the new Royal Family as long as I am able to ascend the throne. Is that not an alluring prospect?"


    "It sounds like a nightmare," Rui nkly retorted.


    For the first time since he had seen her, he saw a hint of emotion on her face. She was rather surprised by his words. It appeared that she was unable to parse why anyone would think negatively of fathering the next Royal family.


    Rui, on the other hand, had no intentions of starting a family. Even if he did, he had no intention of ruining any prospects of his children having a normal life. He didn''t even know the full extent of what being born with so much wealth and power did to their psychologies. He didn''t want to know. He wanted nothing to do with it. That was why he was very firm in his rejection.


    Even putting aside the rational reasons to avoid this horrific proposal, the very prospect of the woman before him bearing his children sent shivers down his spine. He could barely see anything resembling a sane human when he looked into her lifeless eyes, even if they were, admittedly, stunningly beautiful.


    This¡­creature raising his children? It sounded like a horror story.


    "I see," She simply remarked. "It is rather disappointing that you have rejected me with such firm certainty. It does not appear that there is much of a possibility for me to convince you otherwise."


    "There most certainly isn''t, Your Highness," Rui heaved an inward sigh when she appeared to be getting the hint.


    "I see," She remarked. "That is a shame. My proposal is open at any and all times. Please contact me if you ever reconsider. I am more than willing to amodate this arrangement at any time."


    She paused for a moment before seamlessly continuing. "I would invite you to be a part of the Rafia Faction nheless. You surely care about some of the things that wealth can bring, even if you do not care for wealth itself. I am willing to humor your requirements to a substantial degree."


    Rui wanted to shut down that offer immediately, yet his rational side intervened, encouraging prudence. "I will consider your offer, Your Highness. However, I maintain the stances I have already conveyed thus far."


    "I am pleased to hear that," She remarked. "That brings us to an end of the agendas that I wished to discuss with you. If you have any questions or statements to convey, please do."


    Rui stared at her for a few moments. "¡­Do you really think you can get away with trying to criminalize worker unions? You realize that the Martial Union would never allow you to get away with that, and they most certainly will not allow you to enforce it. Do you really want to trigger a civil war?"


    "If I have to," She replied straightforwardly. "The power of the throne is absolute."


    "Surely you don''t believe that," Rui scoffed openly. "The Kandrian Martial Covenant exists because the first Emperor Ra was unable to control the Martial Union. The Martial Union has only grown astronomically more powerful since then and continued growing stronger."


    Definite emotion entered her eyes for the first time since he saw her.


    "The Throne''s power is absolute," She dered. "It must be. For this nation to thrive economically, I will create a nation where the Martial Union does not have a monopoly over the Martial economy through brokering services. I will create a much more open and free economy where Martial Artists will directly interact with the consumer market at all levels."


    Rui raised an eyebrow as he stared at her with narrowed eyes. "The martial Union must go for this nation to thrive?"


    "That''s right," She remarked. "You may believe that the Martial Union is a force for Martial Artists, but in reality, it is a brokering middleman that increases the cost of services for consumers while decreasing the profits for Martial Artists without offering much in return. Getting rid of this middleman will economically benefit the suppliers, Martial Artists, and the consumer market as well."


    Rui heaved a sigh. "It does take a cut of the revenue without a doubt. However, to say that it offers little is disingenuous at best. The Martial Union vastly simplifies the process of findingmissions. If not for the Martial Union, I would have to meet with every single potential customer personally and speak to them individually, most likely in vain because theirmission would not suit me. Simply choosing amission would take days of tedious back and forth. With the Martial Union, that process bes exponentially easier where I can review dozens ofmissions in under an hour and find one that is extremely suited for me."


    "That''s not all," Rui continued. "The uracy of the information of themissions is evaluated by degrees of uracy certainty by the evaluation department and the intelligence department of the Martial Union, allowing me to weigh the risks of givenmissions in a calcted manner. These services make a huge impact on my ability to provide services as a Martial Artist. It allows me to focus on Martial Art and the mission alone while all these bothersome logistical impediments arepletely removed.


    "And, in turn, it takes a fifty-percent cut of the total revenue," She retorted. "Does that not bother you?"


    "It''s thirty-seven percent for Martial Seniors," Rui replied. "Let us say the Martial Union did not exist, and I got one hundred percent. What would the cost of the intelligence services and sophisticated and extensive management services that the Martial Union provides cost? Would I be able to purchase all those services from external service providers for thirty-eight percent of my revenue?"


    Rui narrowed his eyes. "Most likely not. Purchasing intelligence from information groups is not a cheap expense. Neither is hiring a manager, secretary, or team of assistant staff to gather, manage, and process customer data into simplified information packages. I would have to personally look for and hirepetent and qualified people to do all that work, and it would definitely be another expense¡­"


    This chapter upload first at  N?vel/Dr(a)ma.Org - Content owner.

 Chapter 1639 No Common Ground

    <h4>Chapter 1639 No Common Ground </h4>


    "There are cons, of course," Rui added. "I''m not denying that the Martial Union can be difficult to deal with sometimes. The contract can be considered exploitative for Martial Artists of the Apprentice and Squire Realm since there are uses that involve conscription.?But Martial Artists are free to dissolve the partnership at any time with a written letter."


    "The reason that the Martial Union can get away with exploitation is because it is hegemonic and oligopolistic," She replied. "If I liberalize that market and dissolve the Union, then corporations will not be able to get away with adding such tyrannical uses because another corporation will exploit that opportunity to offer a free contract, attracting all the Martial Artists instead. This is the power of a free market. Competition and a wide variety of choices force everybody to be more lenient and pleasing to Martial Artists to not lose out on attracting them. Currently, there is no realpetitor to the Martial Union that can threaten it or keep it on its toes. That is why it thinks it can get away with adding such authoritarian uses."


    Rui stared at her wordlessly.


    She did have a point. Rui recalled how he had essentially been conscripted into the Serevian Dungeon War and how he had been pressured into serving as an ambassador for Vilun Ind.


    Although those worked very well for him, it was true that he waspelled to serve in those regards. N?vel/Dr(a)ma.Org - Content owner.


    Still, the positivesrgely outweighed the negatives in this case. The reason that the Corporate Princess was unable to see this was because her understanding of the Martial Union was shallow.


    "Your analysis of the Martial Union is predicated on the assumption that it is fundamentally amercial organization," Rui heaved a sigh.


    "Is it not primarilymercial in nature?" Princess Rafia tilted her head with a hint of confusion. "Themerce of the organization funds all of its operations and is also the reason that younger Martial Artists are attracted to it in the first ce. The charter of the Martial Union describes the Martial Union as a broker tform to connect the supplier and consumer markets of the Martial sector."


    Rui shook his head. "It is not amercial organization. The Martial Union, fundamentally, is an organization to maintain and progress the independence and dominance of Martial Art. The agenda does not exist for the sake of itsmerce; itsmerce exists to support this agenda. That is what you fail to understand. It exists to maintain Martial supremacy from the state to ensure that Martial Artists do not ever be reduced to tools and weapons as they were before the dawn of the Age of Martial Art."


    "I am not unaware of the political inclinations of the Martial Union," She replied.


    "What you are unaware of is the motivations behind it," Rui replied. "Even if I were to steelman your perspective on the oligopolistic nature of the Martial Union, I would still disagree with your conclusions. A Martial oligopoly may be sub-optimal economically, but it is optimal politically. Martial Art will be easier to tame and conquer if it is divided. This was the case in history at one point in time. That is why unity is required. If we fight amongst ourselves, then we be easy pickings for ambitious rulers who wish tomercialize or enve us."


    "Even if I were to ept that at face value," She replied. "It is sub-optimal economically. A morepetitive market would yield more revenue, which would strengthen the Martial sector, which, in turn, would increase the difficulty of dominating Martial Artists."


    "That is a naive take, Your Highness," Rui shook his head, heaving a sigh. "Wealth does not help Martial Artists the same way it does other sectors. You possess a poor understanding of what it takes to cultivate a greater quality and quantity of Martial Artists. Simply pouring in one thousand times the money will not yield one thousand times the Martial Artists. I do not expect you, of all people, to understand what is needed to empower Martial Artists. There are dynamics in Martial Art that one only learns as a Martial Artist."


    The Martial Union, of course, did understand, from pouring an enormous amount of wealth into the sixteen Martial Academies to vastly reducing the difficulty of findingmissions that were perfectly attuned to the Martial Artist''s Martial Art. Rui understood the significance of these systems now that he had gained a deeper understanding of Martial Art.


    It was absolutely imperative that Martial Artistsplete missions that are attuned and synergistic to their Martial Art. This allowed them to gain a high quality of experience that was needed to refine their Martial Art. The experience that a defensive Martial Art gained from an assassination mission was worthlesspared to what they would get from a bodyguard mission. This was because thetter was far more attuned to the Martial Artist, giving them highly relevant experience needed to refine their Martial Art and their individuality.


    That was why the Martial Union maintained an extremely rigorous and sophisticatedmission system that allowed Martial Artists to choose the mission that was exactly perfect for them.


    Arge number of such nuances that Rui was unaware of before became evident to him, but it was very difficult to convey all of these to someone who was not only not a Martial Artist, but also of royal descent and an unfeeling psychopath.


    He was simply unable to be persuasive to her.


    "It is a shame that we are unable to findmon ground and gain a mutual understanding, Senior Rui Quarrier," She remarked. "Nheless, this conversation has been interesting. I hope you will take my offers into consideration. I am quite sincere in my marriage and child conception proposal with you. I hope that you wille around to epting my proposal."


    Their conversation came to an abrupt and unceremonious end as she moved on without anypunctions to her next agenda of the day.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1640 No Choice

    <h4>Chapter 1640 No Choice </h4>


    Rui heaved a tired sigh as he left and returned to the central business convention, where the distinguished guests discussed various matters with each other. Rui half-considered returning home now that he had spoken with the princess.


    "Ah, you''ve returned," Chairman Decker smirked, interrupting a conversation he was having, immediately dispensing with his formal tone.


    Rui wasn''t even interested in talking to him, yet the man refused to take a hint.


    "How did it go?" He asked informally like they were already friends. "Are you a couple now?"


    "Wait, you know?!" Rui widened his eyes.


    "Well, yes," Chairman Decker tilted his head. "I am part of the Rafia Faction and was for the motion to reel you in if you must know."


    Rui turned around with a feeling of horror. "So, how many people know that she proposed to me?"


    "Not too many, but it''s bound to be spread now that an attempt has been made," Chairman Decker replied.


    "¡­Damn," Rui cursed.


    He didn''t need more attention on him than he already had, and now he was the guy a royal princess proposed to.


    "You seem displeased by the proposal," Chairman Decker tilted his head in confusion. "Even if you did not want it, the prestige cannot be denied. A princess as powerful as Her Highness does not propose to just about anybody. Your value as a Martial Artist has undoubtedly gone up."


    ''My value did not go up because she proposed to me; she proposed to me because my value went up.''


    He didn''t bother voicing his thoughts to his newest acquaintance.


    "From the looks of it, not only did you refuse her proposal, but you also refused to join her faction, didn''t you?" Chairman Decker managed to glean. "It''s a rather shame. I would have loved to be a part of the same faction as you. We could have been faction-mates."


    "Well, if you know me as well as you im, you''d know I would never join the Rafia Faction," Rui remarked. "Should have taken that into ount when joining if you wanted to be part of the same faction as me."


    "Ah, but you see," The man heaved a sigh. "I didn''t join the Rafia Faction. My father did. Unfortunately, he had long sold a twenty-percent stake in Deacon Industries to Princess Rafia and joined the Rafia Consortium. On top of that, he invested heavily in the Kandrian Empire to get closer to you, and there isn''t much I can do about that without making severe losses, either."


    Rui nced at the young executive, heaving a soft sigh. He recalled hearing that the new chairman was attempting to liquidate the investments that Deacon had made into the Kandrian Empire, but it had proven to be too much of a loss to undo all the progress that had been made.


    Thus, he had been forced to go all out in the investment in the Kandrian Empire, even if he wasn''t the most pleased about this inevitability.


    "However, if I''m to partake in the Kandrian market and the Kandrian Throne War, then the Rafia Faction is objectively the best faction. You are aware of the goals of the Rafia Faction, yes?"


    "A libertarian economy," Rui simply stated. "Essentially, she would love to turn the Kandrian Empire''s economy into that of the Shionel Confederation, with the only difference being that she would be in power instead of a merchant guild."


    "Indeed," Chairman Decker nodded. "That is a desirable oue for me as well since I have decided I have no choice but to go through with at least arge portion of my father''s ns. In that case, it would benefit me greatly if the business ease index of the Kandrian Empire increased by about many points."


    "Is it that low at the moment?" Rui raised an eyebrow. He had no idea about the details, although he knew that the Kandrian Empire''s economy was not as liberal as it could be.


    "It''s not unbearable, but it would make my life much easier if it improved," Chairman Decker heaved a soft sigh with a troubled expression. "It''s actually one of the reasons that I wasn''t able to smoothly liquidate all the investments my father made into the Kandrian Empire. The sheer number of permits, approvals, statements, and criteria you must meet for any venture in this country is an eyesore."


    "If that''s the case, then it''s a little surprising Guildmaster Bradt didn''t see fit to join the Rafia Faction," Rui remarked nonchntly.


    Chairman Decker shook his head. "He doesn''t need to. He''s so influential and well-connected that these impediments are not even significant to him. The gap between Deacon Industries and Bradt Distribution Services has only grown. If anything, he would hate to see these impediments removed because it makes things much easier for hispetitors than it does for him."


    These were nuances that an outsider like Rui, no matter how intelligent, simply did not possess the depth of understanding that came with extensive experience to realize his own merit.


    "He has more to gain from joining the Ranea Faction than he does the Rafia Faction, I suppose," Rui realized. "If the Kandrian Empire turns into even more of a seafaring powerhouse than it already is, he can deepen his reach across all of human civilization through the Great Nam Ocean as long as the Kandrian Empire improves its seafaring capacity."


    Seafaring capacity was a measure of the maximum amount of flux of seafare to and from a given nation that said nation was able to handle at any given point in time. It was essentially a measure of the bandwidth of the seafaring flux of the nation''s seaports.


    "Indeed," Chairman Decker heaved a soft sigh. "If Princess Ranea bes Empress, he will probably be the most powerful figure in the transportation and shipping sector across the entire continent. No one, not even I, will be able to challenge his power anymore. He will effectively be the emperor of the Shionel Confederation. That is his true goal."N?vel/Dr(a)ma.Org - Content owner.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1641 Foundations

    <h4>Chapter 1641 Foundations </h4>


    It wasn''t long before Rui exited the business convention. He frankly had nothing to do, and he wasn''t interested in acting chummy with Decker. He had more important agendas to tend to.


    He needed to get started on his training of bending heaven and earth. That was far more important than hanging around some conglomerates and business tycoons. He also needed to start working on the three adaptive evolution techniques that he was preparing for the fiscal meeting that was due to appear in a little less than a year as well.


    Those were his priorities for the moment. His n to win over Master Gurren panned out very well, meaning he seeded in his attempt to go down domain techniques for his next path forward for adaptive evolution.


    Those were the two primary objectives that he was going to be spending time on.


    Outside of Martial Art priorities that ranked at the top of the list, he also awaited Prince Raijun''s response to his proposed offer. In addition, he was also to attend Princess Ranea''s unveiling of the first functioning submarine of the Kandrian Empire''s navy in an attempt to build up support for the new form of naval technology.


    Out of all the seven prime princes and princesses he knew, he was more intrigued to meet Princess Ranea. She certainly seemed to be one of the less extreme of the seven. Princess Raemina and Rafia were both batshit crazy as far as Rui was concerned. Prince Raijun was sane but was quite the extremist.


    Prince Randal, the military prince, did not sound very normal. He seemed highly militaristic and warmongering based on how Master Krakule spoke about his ambitions to lead the Kandrian Empire into war with the rest of East Panama.


    That left Prince Rajak, the Underworld Prince. Rui had already shed with the Kandrian Underworld before, and he had the worst impression of them. They were willing to destroy lives just to have a better chance at winning the Kandrian Throne War.


    He disdained them.


    He hoped that Princess Ranea would not give him a reason to regret the deal he made with Prince Raijun. But s, there was a limit to how much even he could control. If she turned out to be a psycho, he could only throw his hands up in resignation.


    Thankfully, the unveiling of the submarine wasn''t due any time soon, perhaps because it wasn''t ready yet. He was given enough time to train and focus on himself for the time being.


    He began his days training in bending heaven and earth with Master Gurren. To his discovery, Master Gurren was not a lenient teacher.


    "Your power needs toe from your core."


    "Your hands exist to bend breath, not generate it. Your movements need to be precise, urate, and firm."


    "Your bnce needs to be perfect to manipte earth."


    He trained Rui in the art of bending heaven and earth rigorously, building up his foundations.


    Much to Rui''s joy, these foundations got him further along the path of creating domains than he had expected. Unlike with most fields where the foundation was merely the first step, it was much more than that with domains, and it was the core of domain techniques.


    But because of that, it meant that even mastering that foundation took Rui much longer than he had expected.


    One good thing was that he had an affinity for both heaven-bending and earth-bending.


    His many years of expertise with using his breathing for long-


    range techniques certainly helped with heaven bending.


    Of course, heaven bending was much more mentally consuming than his long-range technique because it required an amount of active mental engagement to manipte heaven through by bending his breath.


    He didn''t have as much experience with subterranean maniption, but he did have Seismic Mapping that had increased his intuition for seismic radiation, allowing him to better understand it.


    On top of that, his prime defense, the Flux Earther technique, had also given him a good affinity for the earth bending. He was able to make remarkable progress by employing vibrations and force to manipte the earth.


    He discovered that Master Gurren had formed a remarkably urate intuition for the physics of solids and the physics of seismic radiation. This hade about from many years of manipting earth, no doubt. Of course, it was a subconscious understanding born from experience rather than a conscious understanding born of scientific inquiry. He was not able to apply it any other way, but Rui was different.


    His conscious schrly understanding of the environment was extremely high, in addition to a powerful intuition that hade from his years of developing and using sophisticated techniques centered aroundplex principles. He no longer needed to think all that much when using Transverse Resonance because his subconscious intuition had grown quite proficient at it.


    Master Gurren was shocked at the speed at which Rui absorbed the foundations of heaven and earth bending.


    "Huff¡­" Rui exhaled deeply with immense force. The Roaring Dragon Blood Potion had empowered his breathing to the point of being able to generate tremendous force.


    His hands and fingers swayed gently, curving and shaping the breath he exhaled, redirecting and distributing it across his environment.


    WHOOSH!


    Several powerful wind currents converged in a circle around Rui, ovepping each other, forming a spiral.


    A tornado was born.


    Yet he wasn''t done.


    His feet pressed into the ground, vibrating with Reverberating Lance, causing longitudinal waves of seismic radiation to constructively superimpose, causing a spike of pressure at the point of superimposition.


    RUMBLE!


    A wave of earth erupted, spiraling into the powerful tornado that had formed around Rui. A spiral of heaven and earth spun around him with immense force, enough to grind anything that dared step near it into confetti. N?vel/Dr(a)ma.Org - Content owner.


    He opened his eyes.


    WHOOSH!


    The heaven and earth bending ceased, causing the technique to fall apart.


    "In just three months, you have mastered the foundations of heaven and earth!" Master Gurren stared at him with shock. "What an absurd speed of growth. No wonder you have broken through to the Senior Realm at such a tender age."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1642 Quote Cheating

    <h4>Chapter 1642 Quote Cheating</h4>


    Rui heaved a deep breath, staring at Master Gurren.


    Frankly, three months were far longer than he had hoped, even if Master Gurren imed otherwise. But it could not be helped. Even with his growth, it was extremely difficult to master it any sooner.


    "Still, I suppose three months isn''t too bad," Rui replied.


    "Hmph, arrogant brat."


    "How long does mastering the foundations of heaven and earth to this level normally take?" Rui asked.


    "A year," Master Gurren replied.


    "¡­Ordinary Martial Artists sure have it rough."


    "You truly are arrogant through and through," Master Gurren snorted.


    "I was jesting. Partially."


    "Hmph. It is time to fulfill your end of the bargain," Master Gurren remarked with eager eyes. "Now then, create the technique that will allow me to peer into the depths of the cosmos!"


    Rui smiled, activating his Martial Heart, before turning up to the night sky and breathing out in a specific manner. His hands stretched out in front of him, forming a symmetric hand sign that altered the shape and density of the wind currents his breath generated.


    It created several hemisphericalyers of high-pressure high-density air at specific distances from Rui that he constantly maintained with the force of his breathing and his hands redirecting the vectors of his breath.


    The altered density of the air needed to be just perfect, altering the optical density of the air pockets in just the right manner so that they would refract light, in the same way, a convex lens made up of ss would.


    It was his first time trying this, so it took quite some time, but eventually he seeded.


    What followed shook Master Gurren.


    "This¡­!!" He gasped at the sky itself warped, zooming in straight up as he saw the ocean of tiny twinkling stars bing more distinct.


    It was as though Rui''s technique had bent the entire universe.


    "Incredible¡­!" He witnessed stars erging into not-so-small spots of fire. He saw strange, vast oceans of clouds that he had never seen before. He saw the vague figure of a glowing spiral in the backdrop of the erged image that Rui conjured. "What are those?!"


    "That is a gxy," Rui replied calmly. "It''s a collection of stars. That is a neb; it appears that there is one of both very nearby in our interster neighborhood; otherwise, even this powerful telescopic domain would not be enough to spot one."


    Rui used words that sounded alien and unlike anything he had ever heard.


    "''Neb''¡­?" He uttered them aloud.


    Rui nodded. "Where do you think starse from? They are born from nebe. That strange cloud is made up of a gas known as Hydrogen. Eventually, gravity will cause the hydrogen gas to coalesce into giant balls, causing an immense amount of pressure to well up at the core of the ball of gas, triggering nuclear fusion, which causes it to enormous heat and light, resulting in the birth of a new sun."


    Master Gurren stared at Rui with pure shock and amazement. He didn''t understand the words that Rui uttered, but they sounded fascinating, unlike anything that he had ever heard of.


    "The birth of a sun?" He incredulously whispered. "And¡­''gxy''¡­


    was it? What are those?"


    "They''re just rotating collections of stars and dark matter," Rui calmly replied. "Each contains hundreds of billions of stars, just like the Sun. And considering how simr this cosmology is to what I am familiar with, I would venture to say there are probably trillions of gxies out there, bare minimum."


    "WHAT?!" The Master bellowed.


    Rui smiled, amused at the Master''s exaggerated reaction.


    "How can you possibly know all of this?" The Master asked. "Is all of that true?! I must know!"


    Rui smirked. "If you want to know whether or not it''s true, then you''ll have to find out yourself. After all, I just created the tool that allows you to explore the universe with your own power. Explore the universe and find out for yourself."


    Rui''s smile deepened. "Find out if what I told you is the truth or not."


    He stared at Rui with a bewildered expression before turning back to the erged image that Rui''s domain demonstrated. "Incredible."


    "We can probably see even more if we take to the heavens," Rui informed him. "Less air scattering of light."


    The two of them shot up into the sky, eventually enhancing the image further and providing greater details. N?velDrama.Org content.


    "Incredible!!" Master Gurren remarked.


    Suddenly, Rui dispelled the domain, heaving a sigh.


    "Hey!" The Master protested.


    "I''ll teach you the technique; you can do it yourself," Rui waved him off, cating him with the excitement of mastering such a wonderful technique.


    "To think that we are so small," Master Gurren remarked, his eyes swimming around as he experienced a cosmic existential crisis at how utterly insignificant even his mighty power was before the grand magnificence of the heavens beyond earth.


    Rui smiled knowingly, turning around as he gestured to the world below them.


    His voice took on a sagely luster.


    "if you look at it, it''s no more than a dot. That''s here. That''s home. That''s us. On it, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever lived, lived out their lives. The aggregate of all our joys and sufferings, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilizations, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every hopeful child, every mother and father, every inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every superstar, every supreme leader, every saint and sinner in the history of our species there¡­"


    Rui smirked softly.


    "¡­on a mote of dust, suspended in a sunbeam."


    Master Gurren stared at him with amazement. "¡­I have never heard a more profound thing uttered by any other human being in my life."


    He gained a deep amount of respect for Rui as his demeanor shifted.


    Rui, on the other hand, wasughing inwardly. One of the benefits of reincarnating in a new world was that he got to giarize all the great quotes he had heard back on Earth!


    This particr quote was one from the great astronomer Carl Sagan when he beheld the first distant image taken by Voyager II. Rui thanked thete astronomer for his wisdom as he partook in the profoundness of his words.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1643 Crushing Weight

    <h4>Chapter 1643 Crushing Weight </h4>


    From that day, Master Gurren never called Rui an arrogant brat ever again.


    Creating the telescopic technique wasn''t hard once Rui gained a strong foundation in heaven bending. The form for magnification employed in telescopes was dreadfully simple, simple enough to be taught in high school. Yet because there was some esoteric out there that could do the job without requiring an understanding of optics; it had never been uncovered by the sciencemunity of Gaia.


    Rui shook his head, heaving a sigh as he began the hard part, teaching the technique to Master Gurren.


    Master Gurren was absolutely resolved to master the technique no matter how long it took. Rui saved himself by writing down as dumbed-down an exnation as he possibly could.


    Yet even that was too much for a fossil of a Master that had lived for centuries.


    "What is this¡­?" He stared at strange symbols that Rui had jotted down in a booklet.


    "That is Physics," Rui smiled pleasantly. "You''re going to have to learn it."


    What followed was a crash course and tutoring sses as Rui had the man build up a simple foundation of the basic mathematics that the Master simply could not do without if he wanted to learn the technique.


    Much to Rui''s surprise, however, the Master was not nearly as overwhelmed as he expected him to be.


    Perhaps it was because Martial Masters were necessarily familiar and proficient with the power of thought. However, harnessing thought inbat was different from harnessing thought for schrly pursuit.


    After several hours of tutoring on algebra and solving problems and numericals, Master Gurren heaved a tired sigh.


    Several days had gone by since Rui began teaching him the mathematical foundations. Master Gurren had no idea how and why this was necessary for the magical technique that Rui had disyed to him that day. However, his ascended senses could sense Rui''s sincerity emanating from within his mind. Therefore, he decided to simply trust that this was somehow relevant to peering into the depths of the universe.


    Rui hadn''t even gotten to the principle of optical magnification yet. He hadn''t even presented the framework for the nature of light and the phenomenon of refraction. The Master was so illiterate that he was far from reaching the stage needed to even understand the technique.


    That was Rui building up his proficiency with algebra.


    THUD


    Rui dropped a stack of books on the topic of algebra to crack the journeyman schr exam that he had purchased.


    "What is this for¡­?" The Master asked, feeling an ominous omen.


    "This, dear Master, is what is known as ''homework,''" Rui smiled pleasantly.


    Yet Master Gurren could almost feel the despair and misery of countless students on Earth that had been evoked by Rui invoking the very word.


    "I want these finished by today," Rui ordered him. "Good luck."


    While Rui left the Master to mull his own suffering and misery, he isted himself from the Martial Master atop a mountain in the Great Jrava Mountain Range as he focused on honing his mind.


    Now that he had mastered the foundations of bending heaven and earth, he could finally venture into creating his own domain techniques.


    His goal was to create domain techniques that would adapt his environment to his opponent. That had not changed.


    ''For now, let''s go with the three mostmon broader fields,'' Rui decided.


    How could he adapt his environment to antithetically counter offense, defense, and maneuvering?


    His mind sharply calcted all the potential principles in just a moment.


    ''Most offense relies on the heightened power,'' Rui remarked. ''Crippling the exertion of power will certainly be useful. However, most offenses are also centered around collision damage. Thus, an environment that is antithetical to my opponent''s collisions?''


    These were definitely the two most promising principles on which to base an anti-offense domain.


    "Ideally, I would like to do both, but¡­" He paused as his busy mind stumbled upon an interesting possibility. "What if I create a heavenly domain that ces the weight of the sky on my target?"


    He could use heaven-bending to alter the vectors of air "Kugh¡­!" N?velDrama.Org content.


    pressure and redirect them toward his target, forcing them to carry the literal weight of the sky.


    This domain would have to be enormous, but Rui thought it was possible. The targeting scope of the domain would be limited to his opponent, but the size of the domain that would be employed into the domain would extend deep into the atmosphere around the battlefield. However, he wouldn''t need to exert too much power, merely enough to alter the vectors of force by several degrees, causing them to converge into a single point.


    He could directly employ the power of his breath to create a heavenly domain to leverage the sky itself to weigh down upon his hapless target!


    A grand domain that harnessed the fury of the heavens themselves!


    It would hamper their power because they would have to employ a considerable amount of power just to stand. It was a good way of sealing their offense.


    ''I can double the potency of the technique by employing earth bending to act upwards, grinding my target against the weight of the sky, forcing them to use all their power to not be crushed!'' Rui realized. ''If they''re not strong enough, it could be an offensive attack itself!''


    Rui grew incredibly excited at the prospect of this technique as a way to hamper the offensive power of his opponent without actually having to face it inbat.


    ''However, the technical aspect of the technique will be quite mentally consuming, making me quite slow to react,'' Rui realized. ''Which means this technique is only suited towards highly offensive Martial Artists who aren''t extremely speedy. It''s also ineffective against defensive Martial Artists because they don''t require a lot of power in the first ce, so they will be less burdened to resist it."


    It was better to create domain techniques that were more specialized to handle both of those individually.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1644 Project Allocations

    <h4>Chapter 1644 Project Allocations </h4>


    However, even if it was not suited against defensive and maneuvering-oriented Martial Artists, it was suited to taking down offensive Martial Artists, which was good enough. A single solution could never be tuned to countering everything.


    "I''ll call this¡­ Project Skyfall," Rui decided.


    That upied one technique slot that he could work on.


    He still needed two more techniques for countering speed and defense.


    He also needed techniques that weren''t exclusive in nature; these techniques were meant to increase adaptive evolution, not sabotage the other elements of his adaptive evolution, which suggested that he ought to be able to fight normally even with domain techniques.


    It was meant to expand the dimensions of hisbat, not contract it. Although he wasn''t too sure how realistic this condition was, he was willing to give it a shot.


    Bearing that condition in mind, he had the perfect domain techniques in mind for defense and speed.


    ''For speed, I can create a domain that impedes all motion,'' Rui realized. ''By using heaven-bending, it should be possible to manipte the properties of drag force, specifically the drag coefficient.''


    Rui grinned as he happened upon an incredible idea. Drag force was simply the force of air resistance when moving. The drag coefficient was a constant that every object had in a given medium, and it was essentially a measure of how much the air would impede motion for a given object moving at a given speed. This is property ? of N?velDrama.Org.


    Drag force is increased by the square of the velocity of the object. Meaning if the object became twice as fast, then the drag force would be four times stronger. If the object became thrice as fast, then the drag force would be nine times stronger.


    However, Rui conjectured, based on his somewhat decent knowledge of aerodynamics, that it would be possible to use heaven bending to alter drag force and the drag coefficient for it to increase cubically or even tetragonally or by even greater degrees to velocity, not just squarically.


    Thus, if an object grew twice as fast, then this time, drag force would be sixteen, or possibly thirty-two times stronger!


    This would severely impede any and all motion. Rui knew that drag force was a menace because it was the biggest challenge back on Earth when it came to creating rockets or jets that could propel forward at extremely high speeds.


    If Rui increased the magnitude of that problem exponentially within his domain, then it was most likely enough to pose extremely harsh barriers to maneuvering and speed-oriented Martial Artists.


    The drag force equation was actually quite trivial, so Rui was able to run numerous elementary simtions in his head, calcting the various oues.


    In the most optimistic projections, maneuvering and speed-oriented Martial Artists would be able to move at only ten percent of their full speed!


    The sheer drag force would cancel away ny percent of their eleration, reducing them to extremely slow speeds, This domain was theoretically so antithetical to speed-


    oriented Martial Artists that it gave even Temporal Disharmony a run for its money!


    "It works!" He grinned excitedly as he began plotting out the mechanics of the technique. The hard part would be figuring out how to use heaven-bending to alter the nature of the drag force and the drag coefficient of the medium inside his domain. But as hard as it was, Rui was confident that he could ovee this hurdle.


    In addition, he could add an element of earth-bending where he decreased the friction of thend around his opponent, making it almost impossible to leverage their force to elerate. With this, he wouldplete and thoroughly crush almost any speed or maneuvering-oriented Martial Artist.


    "I shall call this Project Speed Prison," Rui filled up another project slot in his head. It was not going to be easy to aplish either project by itself, but since he was taking both of them on and another, he knew that he was going to be putting himself through a rough time.


    For the third project, he had an interesting idea that had struck him while he was mastering heaven bending but had postponed exploring until he finished training his foundations.


    This project was dedicated to an anti-defensive domain that targeted defensive Martial Artists.


    "Acoustic conduction."


    It was a phenomenon that most people did not anything about. It was the process of heating via sound. Sound, inpletely killing their Martial Art.


    general, always produced heat. However, it was possible to convert sound to heat.


    In general, they were very simr kinds of energies that were centered on the vibration of particles. The only difference was that sound was ordered and directional, while heat was unordered and non-directional.


    The difference between the two was much smaller than most people realized.


    Rui was already extremely proficient with sound. While his intuitive understanding was not on par with Xanarn, his scientific understanding of sound obviously far surpassed hers. With techniques like Transverse Resonance and Death''s Sympathy, he had expanded his intuitive grasp of sound wider than probably anybody else in the Senior Realm. That was why he was keen on exploring this principle to create a domain technique that employed his mastery of sound.


    Since he was creating a domain that was antithetical to defense, he wanted to create a domain that bypassed defense in some way, either directly inflicting damage or indirectly.


    With acoustic heating, he could heat up his opponent''s internal body temperature through a domain of sound. This domain, like Project Skyfall, would have a small target scope, but the domain itself would leverage the atmosphere and thend to employ sound to converge on to his opponent''s body.


    The trick was to not allow sound to propagate. By bombarding his opponent with sound from all directions, the vectors would cancel out, and the sound would no longer be directional or ordered, turning into heat.


    This was a domain that would cook his opponent inside out, literally.


    "I shall call this Project Malevolent Kitchen," Rui dered.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1645 In Pursuit of Thought

    <h4>Chapter 1645 In Pursuit of Thought</h4>


    Project Skyfall, Project Speed Prison, and Project Malevolent Kitchen. These were the three domain projects that he had decided to embark on.


    One domain hampered power by dumping the weight of the sky on them and every movement they made.


    Another domain hampered speed by having the heavens themselves oppose speed and agility by exponentially empowering drag force and the drag coefficient within the domain.


    The final domain cooked his opponent inside and out, bypassing durability and putting them on a time limit before they would eventually die from having their brains boiled, something that not even Martial Seniors could survive.


    In addition, this domain served as a decent counter to freezing Martial Art that were extraordinarily lethal, even for him. Perhaps he could create a domain for that specifically when he had the time.


    Rui got up with renewed drive and purpose as he set out to expand his Martial Art to include not just himself and his opponent, but also the environment they were in. He instinctively felt that he had taken several more steps down his Martial Path just by endeavoring to add domains to his Martial Art.


    Rather than simply adding more redundant techniques, it was better to add entirely new dimensions to his Martial Art. That was individuality. Please check at N/?vel(D)rama.Org.


    While the new dimensions that he was adding were not born of him, he had certainlye up with domains that only he could havee up with with knowledge from another world.


    That was as good as one could expect from its individuality.


    He had one more technique slot he could fit in as long as he was willing to adjust his training timeframes.


    In the past nine years, he had limited himself to three technique slots at a time for mainly one reason.


    "I was on a time limit back then," Rui heaved a sigh.


    He couldn''t afford to take many years worth of time for each training phase. The time constraint that he had to deal with Chairman Deacon meant that he had to spend four years just getting to the Senior Realm, and nearly another five just training to reach a stage where he could kill the six high-grade Senior bodyguards that he had.


    He couldn''t afford to breathe freely and take as much time as he wanted.


    Just three mental techniques had taken him two years, and the time to master them would have increased by more than just thirty-three percent had he chosen to add another technique atop them; it was too scary when his due date was rapidly approaching.


    Now, however, the perilous urgency he had felt back then was gone. There was no Chairman Deacon that was aiming to kill his life. His son Decker, instead, was actually doing his best to cozy with Rui.


    On top of that, as the youngest Martial Senior with decades of youthful vibrance ahead of him, he was not in any hurry psychologically.


    The only thing that did put pressure on him was the Kandrian Throne War, but that was not a direct threat to him. Furthermore, he had already done as much as he could at his current stage of power to alter its course. He was a practical man; he did not think about controlling things that were wholly out of his control.


    He had already emptied his pocket of tricks and solutions to impact the war. From this point on, it was time to focus on getting stronger. So strong that no one below the Master Realm was enough to hurt him.


    In addition, it was time to take another step to the Master Realm. He needed to harness the power of thought even more, for his threshold was much higher.


    ''How well do these three domain techniques harness thought?'' He asked himself.


    Project Skyfall did not require active thought all that much. Redirecting the vectors of pressure and weight were not active thought-requiring actions and would even be muscle memory as he used the technique more often; moving the target to scope to follow his target as they moved was also not thought intensive.


    Project Speed Prison, too, was not a thoughtful domain. Once he mastered andmitted the heaven bending, he needed to alter drag to muscle memory; it too would be a very thoughtless technique that did not require his conscious decision-making.


    The same could be said of Project Malevolent Kitchen.


    These three techniques would require an immense amount of thought while training and figuring them out, but once he mastered them, he would probably be able to do them subconsciously.


    They certainly improved his adaptive evolution, but how much closer would they bring him to the Master Realm?


    "Hm, for my final technique slot, I shall create a domain that harnesses the power of thought," Rui dered.


    There was one big problem though.


    ''I''m running out of information to process.'' He heaved a sigh.


    Thought was the processing of information. As far as he was aware, there were only two forms of conscious thought relevant tobat: deduction and decisioning.


    Realm. He needed to harness the power of thought even Deduction was the processing of information, from senses and memories, to output deductions through logic. This could be as simple as figuring out the weakness of your opponent or asplex as Rui''s predictive models.


    Decisioning was the processing of those deductions to result in a decision that your body would act out. This could be as simple as the decision to target his opponent''s weakness that he had earlier deduced or Rui perfectly countering a predicted move ahead of time with an urate decision.


    Rui''s problem was the former: the deduction aspect. Deduction required information to process as all thought did. However, he had already processed all the useful information he could about his opponent and environment.


    He processed each and every movement and motion they made across the entire battle from start to finish. What else was left?


    ''Maybe I can create a domain technique that gives me ess to a greater pool of information?'' Rui considered the possibility, though he wasn''t very optimistic. Gaining new information was something he would create a sensory technique for, not a domain technique.


    ''Maybe I can create a domain sensory technique to gather more information that can be used as fuel for more thought?'' Rui''s eyes lit up with interest as he happened upon a potentially interesting concept.


    A domain technique that manipted heaven and earth to serve as a sensory technique that could supply him with additional information that could fuel more deduction.


    Rui excitedly thought about this concept, seduced by the possibilities.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1646 Sensory Domain

    <h4>Chapter 1646 Sensory Domain </h4>


    The idea was fascinating, but he wasn''t sure if there was much merit there.


    Yet a domain sensory technique definitely sounded interesting. Was it possible to employ a domain to allow him to gather more information that he didn''t have before that would allow him to sense more than he previously could?


    He wasn''t sure.


    In the first ce, he would need to identify a new source of information that he did not have ess to and strive to solve the problem via domains if possible.


    However, that alone was quite challenging. For one, he couldn''t think of any such source that could viably give him important information that he could process to harness the power of thought.


    ''I already collect every ounce of relevant information across the entire fight,'' Rui heaved a sigh. ''The only times this isn''t the case are for assassinations where I collect information before the fight. But I can''t do that for every fight unless I peer into the past.''


    He paused.


    Anyone else would have scoffed off that thought as an impossibility.


    ''Peer into the past¡­to gain more information?'' Rui''s eyes lit up with interest.


    Was that even possible?


    The past had passed, and the only indications of what had happened were in the present. Please check at N/?vel(D)rama.Org.


    ''Could I then infer the past from the present and then refine predictive models from the information of the past?'' Rui widened his eyes as they swam around, immersed in thought, calcting the usibility of the idea that he hade across.


    Using the present to predict the future was something that he was ustomed to. But now, he was using the present to decrypt the past and then using the past and the present to predict the future.


    Predicting the future with the past and the present together would naturally be superior to predicting the future with just the present.


    The more data he had, the more refined his predictions were.


    ''This could serve as the basis for the first concrete upgrades to the pattern recognition system,'' Rui realized.


    The pattern recognition system had remained unchanged in the many years since he had used it. The VOID algorithm had undergone some drastic upgrades, but that had been due to the partial addition of systems that involved thought in their applications, like the Metabody System and the Hypnomatrix.


    But never before had he touched the process of creating predictive models that he had originally devised on Earth, leading his research team. The reason for it was that its only w was its difficulty of mastery, which he had ovee with the Mind Pce technique. Since then, it has been the core source of his dominance as a Martial Artist.


    However, today, he happened to have a way of upgrading the pattern recognition system by employing data from the past deduced from the future.


    ''Theoretically, it is possible,'' Rui realized. ''Thew of causality binds the past to the present. Tying effect to cause over and over again will allow me to decode the past. But¡­that''s an immense amount of information. I also don''t think I can ess the information with my current senses.''


    In order to be able to decrypt the past from the future, he would need to be able to sense and detect all the vectors and tensors in a given system and then trace them back, applying ssical mechanics to rewind time to recreate a picture of the past.


    However, he wasn''t sure how he was going to detect and sense all the phenomena happening for him to draw all that information. He needed a mechanism to gain knowledge of all those vectors.


    He definitely couldn''t sense it directing using his senses; there was too much information, and his senses were not detailed enough to directly sense those minute vectors in the environment to decrypt the past.


    However, that wasn''t strictly a problem either. He wasn''t inherently able to sense space, but he had ovee that problem as well.


    ''Though it''s not worth hunting an esoteric substance yet again. I can''t pump my body full of esoteric substances endlessly; the health risks spike exponentially. Besides, they are unnecessary in these circumstances,'' Rui happened upon an interesting solution.


    ''I could try and magnify the vectors by pumping more energy into the system,'' Rui realized. ''But there''s no way to do that without disrupting them and the information that they possessed. So that''s a no-go too¡­unless¡­''


    One way to measure a vector was to measure how much it changed when acted upon by another known vector, like force. If a rolling ball moved a certain way after Rui kicked it blindfolded with a certain amount of force, then Rui could gauge which way it was going before he kicked it.


    This was actually how quantum phenomena were measured since the fact that they were that small meant that even the act of measuring them with electromaic waves would disrupt them; scientists would measure the disruptions to understand their original state.


    If Rui could theoretically do that for all vectors in a given system, then he would be able to gain an ount for all the vectors in a system at any given point in time.


    Of course, he would still be faced with the challenge of having to process all that data urately and plot out the past, but it wasn''t theoretically impossible.


    ''If I refine the precision of my heaven and earth bending, then¡­'' Rui''s eyes lit up with interest.


    Unlike the other three projects, Rui had absolutely no confidence that this project would seed. Even if he could get past the massive technical hurdles, he would still be faced with practical obstacles.


    Only by oveing both the technical and the practical hurdles could he then sessfully employ the technique inbat.


    It was a difficult gambit, but it was at times like these that he could develop his Martial Art in such a manner. If it paid up, then it was all when and good, if not, then he would be reminded that he couldn''t win them all.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1647 Terms and Conditions

    <h4>Chapter 1647 Terms and Conditions </h4>


    The next day, Rui abstained from training, instead preparing himself for another audience with a member of the Royal Family. He had grown used to them by now, so he wasn''t perturbed to any extent.


    There wasn''t really much to think about; he simply sky-walked over to the Royal Pce of the Mantian Region.


    By the time he arrived, there were maids already ready at the front gate, bowing to him as he appeared.


    "Wee, Senior Quarrier, please allow us to guide you to His Highness."


    Funnily enough, the journey of walking through the absurdly borate pce was more tiring to Rui than traveling across the Mantian Region. Just beholding the sheer extravagance and thevishness that the Royal Family splurged on was something that he didn''t care to be bothered with.


    Eventually, they arrived at arge, exorbitant chamber in the Royal Pce; the doors opened immediately, revealing the seated visage of the Martial Prince along with three Martial Masters standing behind him and an array of maids and butlers across the entire chamber.


    "Your Highness," Rui bowed.


    "I have already informed you to abstain from observing such protocols, Senior Quarrier," The Martial Prince chided him with a gracious tone. "Have a seat. We have much to discuss."


    Rui followed suit, taking a seat opposite to the Martial Prince, who simply stared at him.


    "To what do I owe the pleasure of this meeting, Your Highness?" Rui asked.


    "Do not y dumb with me, Rui Quarrier," The Martial Prince rebuked him. "You know why you are here."


    Rui smiled. "Perhaps. Then again, it has been three months since ourst meeting. I was beginning to wonder if you had forgotten me, having ignored me for so long."


    An obvious lie that the Martial Masters did not even bother rebuking him for.


    "I did not forget you," Prince Raijun narrowed his eyes. "However, the sheer magnitude of the proposal that you made to me was such that even three months is rather swift a timeline. The decision I make on it will affect the course of history of our great empire."


    His words were heavy, yet he didn''t stop.


    "I have consulted my entire faction extensively over the past three months. There are powerful and influential people who have invested in me and have a stake in my campaign. Only then was I able to take a decision."


    Rui simply stared at him silently. He had nothing to say until he had heard what he hade to hear.


    "Senior Rui Quarrier," Prince Raijun''s tone grew officious and ceremonious. "I ept your proposal."


    A soft sigh escaped Rui''s mouth. For better or worse, this was the oue of the decision he had made back then.


    It appeared that the prospect of bing a Martial Squire was too alluring to the Martial Prince. He couldn''t possibly let go of this opportunity, especially since it had be clear to him that he had no other way of going about it. If he refused Rui, then he may never be a Martial Squire in his entire life. N?vel/Dr(a)ma.Org - Content owner.


    Ceasing all counteractive measures against Princess Ranea and Prince Raul was definitely quite difficult, but it was something that he was willing to tolerate. As long as he leveraged his new status as a Martial Squire to rope in people who were previously skeptical of drive as a Martial Artist, he was confident that he could more thanpensate for the self-


    harm that he would be bringing upon himself by leaving Prince Raul and Princess Ranea alone.


    All of the princes and princesses were constantly trying to counter each other; this was especially true among the seven prime candidates for the throne. Any candidate that gained a free pass from any of the other candidates was bound to be less hindered and thus make more growth.


    He just needed to ensure that he grew faster.


    "Now then," Prince Raijun waved his hand as a butler ced two sheets of paper featuring the terms and conditions of their agreement on the table. "Let us officiate our agreement once you have revised the terms."


    Rui skimmed through a single, albeitrge, sheet of paper that documented the terms of the proposal that Rui had made to him three months prior.


    Half of the sheet was simply an array of definitions that defined every single important term mentioned in terms of their agreement, while the remaining half of the document specified the actual terms and conditions.


    In return for immense wealth and theplete abstinence from any and all counteractive measures against Ranea Faction and the Raul Faction, Rui would train Prince Raijun to ensure that he achieves Squire candidacy.


    The section that specified his abstinence from sabotage was quiterge since every form needed to be specified.


    [Persuant to use three, notwithstanding thepletion of Part B''s tutoring services as described under use two, Party A hereby undertakes that the Raijun Faction, and all its constituents, directly or indirectly, through funds from private, external, or funds rued from any organization in partnership, patronship, association, membership or transactions with Raijun Kandria will hereby:


    5.1.2) Abstain from engaging in dissemination of harmful information through media including but not limited to publications, distributions, projections, remotemunication or any other form of organized form of informationmunication.


    5.1.3) Abstain from engaging in any form of agreement that, directly or indirectly, infringes upon supply channels and transactions of goods and services, involving any and all organizations associated with individuals Ranea Kandria and Raul Kandria.


    5.1.4) Concede a right of priority to any and all conflicts of interest between Party A and parties associated with Raul Kandria and Ranea Kandria in any business venture of any kind.


    5.1.5) Concede the right to invoke the identities of Raul Kandria and Ranea Kandria in any and all public discourse.


    5.1.6) Abstain from contact with any and all individuals in any form of registeredrtionship of any form with parties associated with Raul Kandria and Ranea Kandria.


    5.1.7) Abstain from...]


    What Rui was particrly interested however, was a use that specified that Rui had the right to cease any and all supply of his services at any time he deemed necessary and retained the right to void the contract at any time, including the non-disclosure agreement that he would be under if signed the contract.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1648 Ambition

    <h4>Chapter 1648 Ambition</h4>


    Prince Raijun had made some considerable concessions, even at his own expense, that gave Rui a lot of leverage.


    Of course, Rui was not fooled that he had suddenlye to have the prince by the balls if he signed this. The power disparity between them was toorge. But it was a token of his good faith.


    He was afraid that Rui would not give the training his very best if he felt like he was being unfairly disenfranchised in their agreement. Thus, these terms were quite beneficial to Rui.


    While other prominent and powerful Martial Artists had personal staff that took care of making sure such contracts were clean of any traps, Rui didn''t have such people.


    He didn''t need them either, having gone through and memorized Kandrian contractw thoroughly after he made the offer to Prince Raijun.


    Surprisingly, the contract did not contain any traps that he was able to see despite his very best efforts to find even the dimmest possibilities of any loopholes that could be exploited against the spirit of the agreement.


    Normally, both sides try to get away with as much as they can.


    Rui didn''t think it was because the Martial Prince was a kind-hearted soul who believed in fairness and justice.


    ''The Martial Union would never allow a member of the Royal Family to bully a the youngest Senior partner of the Martial Union through contract traps. The factions and sects of the martial Union that were backing him probably had entire divisions go through this agreement to make sure there was no way Prince Raijun could scam me,'' Rui mused inwardly.


    "These terms and conditions are just fine," Rui nodded after going through them for some time. "Let us go ahead with the officiation."


    An ink foam was produced for Rui, who promptly pressed his thumb into it before pressing an impression of his thumb at the bottom right of both sheets of paper.


    And just like that, a historic agreement was officially made.


    "Great!" Prince Raijun grinned. "Let''s get started!"


    Rui heaved a sigh.


    What followed was sparring sessions thatsted hours. Rui refined his predictive model on the prince while using it not to adapt to the prince but to predict what the prince would do when fighting against him and mimicking the movements to the T. N?vel/Dr(a)ma.Org - Content owner.


    He eliminated the inefficiencies in his tempo and pacing, bnce, maneuvering, and flow of power.


    POW POW POW


    He pummeled the Martial Prince with a barrage of Apprentice-level attacks that were swifter and stronger than his, forcing him into a defensive.


    Rui threw a kick flying straight at their ribs, causing him to reflexively block, yet the kick''s trajectory shifted, flying down to his ankle.


    THWACK


    THUD


    The kick unbnced him, pushing him down.


    "Tsk, I was defeated again," The Marital Prince heaved a sigh, getting up. "It truly is like fighting a stronger and faster version of myself."


    "Except I''m not," Rui replied calmly. "I''m employing the same amount of force and speed that you are capable of; I''m just making better use of it. I have noticed minor improvements in your form."


    Prince Raijun nodded. "I never knew that I sabotaging my power due to sub-optimal bnce during the moment of attack."


    Rui nodded. "Bnce is the foundation of power. The subconscious mind always strives to achieve bnce, thus when your are imbnced, your subconscious mind focuses on that instead of your attack, it kills your power because bnce takes priority."


    "I always felt like something was wrong, but no one has ever exined it with that much rity," Prince Raijun remarked with admiration. "You truly are one of a kind. Where did you gain such knowledge and wisdom?"


    Rui shrugged.


    He couldn''t tell him that it was partially due to the fact that he had studiedbat his entire previous life.


    "Knowledge and wisdom do not fall out of the sky, Senior Quarrier," The older Martial Artist informed Rui. "I cannot imagine what kind of experiences you have undergone to attain such a deep understanding of Martial Art. I have only met Martial Masters, and Martial Sages exhibit such profound wisdom. Tell me, Senior Quarrier, what is it that drives you forward as a Martial Artist?"


    The prince gazed at him with curiosity. Rui considered the question, wondering how much he ought to reveal. He could just dismiss the question, but that could be considered rude.


    Especially when Prince Raijun could probably find out through other ways if he really wanted.


    "¡­Personal ambition," Rui replied.


    "That''s quite vague," The prince raised an eyebrow. "Personal ambition could mean just about any self-centric pursuit. However, I have a feeling that it is linked to Martial Art, is it not?"


    "Indeed," Rui sighed. "I endeavor to elevate my Martial Art to be able to ovee any force in this world through adaptive evolution."


    "Ambitious indeed," The Martial Prince smiled. "How else can a Martial Artist of your prodigious calibere about from nowhere? I admire your ambition. It is free from worldly shackles that many other Martial Artists are subject to."


    "It''s not the only source of my drive," Rui remarked. "I do wish to keep my family safe from the turbulences of this harsh world and the current political climate of the Kandrian Empire. I require power for that."


    "I''m afraid you cannot fully do that with merely the power of the Senior Realm," Prince Raijun shook his head. "Only if you be a Martial Master will you be able to singlehandedly protect them from any and all threats."


    "I am aware," Rui replied. "That is why I do things such as demand extravagant wealth from you that can be employed to protect them. I am quite motivated to train you; I hope you grow stronger and be a Martial Squire, for both our sakes."


    "Don''t worry, Senior Quarrier," The Martial Prince shed a confident smile. "I have no intention of failing. I will be a Martial Squire and, eventually, Emperor."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1649 Someone

    <h4>Chapter 1649 Someone</h4>


    The two of them spoke for a bit longer. The allocated for training had not yet concluded, yet the remaining time was far too little to be worth spending on training. Prince Raijun spoke to Rui freely, putting aside his royal bearing as he tried to amodate Rui''sfort.


    The more he learned about this spectacr Martial Artist, the more he realized that this was not someone he wanted aligned against him.


    While it was true that a Martial Senior, no matter how prodigious, was small before the might of a political faction, Rui Quarrier possessed boundless potential by all estimates. On top of that, there was the mysterious knowledge of the mechanics of reality that he possessed.


    Prince Raijun was never privy to the details of Rui''s contributions to the Squire evolution breakthrough procedure as an outsider to the Martial Union. However, the Surgeon had informed him in confidence that it was unlike he had ever seen in his entire life. The unfathomable knowledge that Rui had bestowed upon them was otherworldly.


    This was not the first time that Rui had done such a thing, his sources told him. The Pathfinder technique was apparently a revolutionary manner of achieving uracy and would have changed thendscape of rangedbat if not for the difficulty of mastery.


    Even a blind man could see that Rui was a force that could change the world as long as he didn''t die early.


    Most of the Sects and factions within the Martial Union were highly pleased with him, including the Martial Sects that had joined the Raijun Faction. While other non-Martial patrons and power blocs within the Raijun Faction were in favor of trapping Rui with a loophole in their contract agreement, the Martial Sects and Martial factions that had joined his faction ultimately killed the proposal with great bacsh.


    "Senior Quarrier has just left the premises, Your Highness," His personal butler informed him. "He refused our offers of transport yet again."


    He was wrong.


    One of his most trusted patrons and supporters, the Minister of Domestic Affairs, hade across something quite shocking when he searched the Kandrian Intelligence Bureau for intelligence on Rui Quarrier.


    An ocean of intelligence reports on Rui Quarrier. Information that not even the Martial Union had.


    What shocked all of them was how far back some of these reports went.


    Reports on not just his Squire and Apprentice days but also on his early days in the Martial Academy before he broke through to the Apprentice Realm.


    "However, that wasn''t all¡­" One of his advisors solemnly reminded Prince Raijun.


    "¡­Minister Grances had also found extensive reports detailing his early life as a child in the Quarrier Orphanage. The chain ofmission was redacted, and the supervising agent on all these reports is currently missing," His supervisor informed him. "These files were not ssified as highly confidential. They were actually buried deep in the depths of the intelligence archives of the Kandrian Intelligence Bureau and were neither registered nor tagged with unique report IDs. The officers that the Minister had deployed barely managed to find one of them incidentally when looking through old dessified archives for a particr incident."


    That was not the extent of the anomalies. "The old reports clearly indicate input from Martial Masters, whose identities are also redacted and scrapped out of the database. Whoevermissioned these reports made use of multiple Martial Masters to collect intelligence on Rui Quarrier for many years and even decades and had enough power and authority to erase any and all records of Their Masteries'' identities." Material ? of N?velDrama.Org.


    It was shocking and bewildering, so much so that they had yet to piece together everything there was. Yet one thing had be evident to the elites of the Raijun Faction. Someone powerful had been trying to collect this information without alerting anyone of its existence. Someone who had immense influence and control in the Kandrian Bureau of Intelligence. Someone who could deploy Martial Masters without anybody in the nation ever finding out.


    Someone very high up in the Kandrian Empire had been spying on Rui Quarrier his entire life.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1650 Factional Decisions

    <h4>Chapter 1650 Factional Decisions</h4>


    The Raijun Faction hade across this shocking information in the three months since Rui had made his offer to the Martial Prince. They had, for the time being, decided to keep it under wraps.


    They certainly had no intention of divulging it. Regardless of where it came from, regardless of how fishy its source, information was information. It was power. On top of that, whoever was responsible for manipting the Kandrian Burea to collect information on Rui without anybody knowing was clearly hell-bent on it remaining that way: unknown.


    "If they have the power to manipte the bureau to such a degree without anybody knowing, while also erasing any and all incriminating information, then they possess an immense amount of power within the bureau, then this person is undoubtedly extremely powerful. Not even the director of the Kandrian Intelligence Bureau possesses the power to do what we see is being done. It would constitute treason, even," Another of his personal advisors told Prince Raijun. "Yet these documents were clearly inside the system, not outside. This leaves us with two possibilities."


    The Martial Prince narrowed his eyes.


    "The first is that this is someone who has deeply infiltrated the Kandrian Intelligence Bureau and haspromised it, allowing them to manipte it in whatever way they wish, including harnessing its intelligence capabilities to do something like this," One of his advisors told him. "Minister Grances has alreadyunched a formal investigation into the matter, and this possibility has neither been refuted nor proven. It will take some time for the results toe back. As for the second possibility¡­"


    His advisors nced in his direction. "It is possible that someone from the Royal Family orchestrated this. Intelligence and military are the two parts of the government that are directly under the control of the Royal Family while also being answerable to the executive government. The orders of the Royal Family, of course, trump that of the executive government."


    Prince Raijun nodded, heaving a sigh. It was a long road ahead of him.


    "The Kandrian Throne War is still in its nascency," Prince Raijun heaved a sigh. "Most of the government and most yers in the game have yet to be roped in by one of the seven of us. That''s a good thing for me since it means that the impact that I will make when I do be a Squire will be quite substantial."


    East Panama had essentially be a market for all princes and princesses aiming for the throne, but especially the seven prime candidates. There were many powerful forces who were interested in the power of the throne of the Kandrian Empire. The seven princes and princesses had essentially been shopping throughout the Kandrian Empire and beyond for entities with a vested interest in the throne''s power. "Princess Ranea has been the most aggressive with international funding," One of his personal advisors informed him, passing him a report. "The Ranea Foundation has received two billion gold coins in total from a number of its international patrons, including but not limited to the Bradt Distribution Services, the International Naval Association, the Panamic Cartographer''s Guild, and the Derschek Union."


    "Tsk," Prince Raijun tutted as his eyebrows furrowed with disdain. "If she loves the ocean that much, she should jump into it."


    "She has been gaining a lot of momentum into her idea of turning the Kandrian Empire into a nation that pedestalizes seafare industries and maritime sectors," His personal advisor warned him. "However, there are those who do not wish to see the government funnel hundreds of billions of gold worth of subsidies into the seafaring industry, including several sects of the Martial Union that are yet tomit to any one prince. We can use her momentum to win them over should they want to avoid seeing the Kandrian Empire be nothing more than a glorified port for the rest of the world to use. It is a shame that we can no longer act against her, though." Please check at N/?vel(D)rama.Org.


    Prince Raijun winced. It was indeed quite painful.


    "However, we can harness dissenting and grudging powers against her.


    Prince Raijun nodded. "The best part about any of mypetitors gaining momentum is that we use those who are dissented to them from joining our camp."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1651 Reunion

    <h4>Chapter 1651 Reunion</h4>


    One day, news broke out in the Kandrian Empire about the birth of yet another prodigiously young Martial Senior. Squire Kane had returned from the Beast Domain as a Martial Senior after just three months of subjecting himself to the tribtions of the Beast Domain.


    The disowned heir of the Arrancar Family had returned a Martial Senior. Many wondered what the Arrancar Family was going to do now that it had be apparent that they had the most to lose when Kane split from them.


    With the appearance of yet another prodigiously young Senior who had shattered the previous record for the youngest Senior before Rui, the Kandrian Empire seemed to rank number one when it came to harnessing talent and actualizing it.


    It was a source of prestige for the entire nation and painted a bright picture for the future.


    Kane, however, avoided everything as he went straight to Rui, looking for him.


    "Rui!" He called out when he reached the orphanage.


    Rui turned, ncing at Kane''s sky-walking and Martial Hearted figure.


    He had already prepared a Mind Mask for some mental conditioning.


    "Kane? You broke through to the Senior Realm!" He eximed with what seemed like genuine ecstasy. "Congrattions!"


    "Hehehe, I almost died, though," Kane replied, grinning.


    The two of them did their best to y the act.


    "How was the Beast Domain?" Rui asked curiously as he invited the young man into the orphanage.


    "It was something else¡­" Kane shook his head. "It makes you wonder if you''re even in the same world anymore, whether you were mysteriously transported to an alien world."


    Rui nodded; he had gotten the same feeling when he navigated through the Great Forest of Hypnonarak.


    "There were tons of dangers hidden throughout the entire zone that I was in," Kane remarked. "This one time¡­"


    He narrated the story of how he went through the Beast Domain.


    This part of the story was rather genuine. Kane had subjected himself to many hardships since he was not allowed to use his Martial Heart until his fake breakthrough to the Senior Realm.


    "I''m telling you, man," Kane shook his head, heaving a sigh. "Them Beast Domain monsters of a different breed, literally. They''re monsters through and through. They''re vicious, but many of them are intelligent as well, not just mindless like the monsters of the Shionel Dungeon."


    Rui''s curiosity peaked at Kane''s tales. He had yet to plunge into the Beast Domain due to one reason or another his entire life. However, now he had reached a stage in his life where he could do whatever he wanted for the most part; he didn''t have to worry about a psycho chairman gunning after his life. He had also sealed off the crazy religious Master in an expensive wide information ckout.


    "If you''re nning to go into the Beast Domain, you definitely need to be prepared, Rui," Kane warned him. "Don''t assume you''ll be fine just because you''re strong. Your general ability to survive in the Beast Domain needs to be high. There are weak creatures in the beast domain that survive long because they have really good survival skills or abilities. There are also powerful creatures that get hunted because they draw more attention than they can handle. It''s a whole other world there. I fully understand why human civilization doesn''t just conquer the beast domain."


    Rui nodded. Especially now that he had learned that the thirteen Martial Transcendants of human civilization did not act. Conquering the Beast Domain had be a much more challenging ambition for humanity.


    Of course, the many Martial Sages scattered across human civilization together were an awe-inspiring force, but Rui didn''t know if they were enough to definitively conquer the Beast Domain. It covered a substantial chunk of the continent at its center, meaning the sheer amount of area that it covered was extremely high.


    On top of that, the Beast Domain may be much smaller than human civilization, but it was more densely packed with powerful creatures than humanity was.


    It made Rui wonder how humanity even came to conquer as much of the continent as it already had.


    "I probably won''t head out to the Beast Domain immediately, though it is an agenda on my mind," Rui remarked, recalling primordial seed. "Still, I probably will take my time to prepare for it when I do head out. I have no intention of dying there."


    "Good," Kane nodded. "So, what have you been up to for the past three months?"


    "Oh, mostly training, but before that¡­" Rui heaved a sigh, narrating the tale of everything that happened since then.


    "Wow," Kane stared at him, stunned. "You''ve already met with and spoken to three of the so-called seven prime princes and princesses? That''s crazy!"


    "Is it?" Rui heaved a tired sigh. "It''s nothing but trouble, honestly."


    "How can you even say that?" Kane stared at him skeptically. "It shows just how valued you are."


    "Hah, you''ll find out just how troublesome it is," Rui smirked, thinking about Princess Rafia. "Though you might just enjoy it. At the cost of your rtionship with Fae."


    "What is that supposed to mean?" Kane furrowed his eyebrow.


    "Hehehe, you''ll find out."


    "Don''t mess me with man, spit it out."


    "Make me."


    "¡­"


    The two of them bantered for quite some time, catching up as Rui told him about everything he had been focusing on.


    "Domain techniques, huh?" Kane scratched his head. "Never heard of them. They sound quite niche." N?velDrama.Org copyrighted ? content.


    "They are," Rui replied. "The sole Martial Master with a domain Martial Art doesn''t care to form a sect to spread it. But I have been focusing on adding it to my Martial Art. I have a pretty solid affinity with it and have been working on several interesting projects that will elevate my Martial Art to a higher level as far as adaptive evolution goes."


    "Wow¡­" Kane stared at him with raised eyebrows. "I''m guessing I should focus on getting stronger too."


    "What you need is more experience using the Martial Heart," Rui replied. "I would suggest you spar with different kinds of Martial Artists and build a lot of experience."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1652 Status Quo

    <h4>Chapter 1652 Status Quo</h4>


    Speaking to Kane was quite good; they went on to speak for a whole day, talking about a whole slew of topics. "So your Hungry Pain contribution was a whopping sess," Kane remarked. "I can''t believe you nned for that ten years ago when you gave it to us to create samples and evidence that the Martial Union could use to verify the effects of the technique. That''s unbelievable!"


    He marveled at Rui''s foresight in and outside fights. "Yes, but it also had a lot of unintended consequences," Rui heaved a sigh. "For one, it came at a rather sensitive period, considering how groundbreaking it is. It has caused many waves and drawn a lot of attention."


    Rui recalled what Master Krakule had told him about how the Hungry Pain technique benefited Prince Randal and the Hawk Faction the most. It was certainly something that he hadn''t expected,rgely because he was not aware of the internal political situation of the Kandrian Empire when he had given the technique to Commissioner Rez.


    Though he wouldn''t have changed his decision either way, he needed the funds to ckout Master Uma, and at the time, that was the best way he had.


    "So that''s about it for me. Nothing else has happened in the past three months. It has only been three months," Rui remarked.


    "So you are nning on staying in the Kandrian Empire for now?"


    "Yes, unless something drastically changes, forcing me to leave, I will definitely be sticking around in the empire. It doesn''t feel like it, but it has only been four months since I came back home after Chairman Deacon passed away." N?velDrama.Org copyrighted ? content.


    Rui carefully avoided self-reporting for fear of it being used against him.


    "Good to hear. Then we''ll get to hang out with each other like we used to," Kane nodded, smiling. "Yes, but I imagine you''ll be a bit busy," Rui replied. "With what?"


    "With other people," Rui replied. "You''re the second youngest Martial Senior in history, Kane. You were known to be a generational prodigy even before that. A lot of people are interest in that kind of potential and talent. There''s a good chance that you will be approached by Raijun Faction."


    "I don''t know enough about this shit to make a proper decision," Kane sighed. "I can help you out," Rui offered. "Though you might want to stay out of it altogether."


    "Yeah, I''m probably going to do that," Kane replied. "I avoided this stuff back when I was a Squire. I also was never approached by anyone since I was only a Martial Squire. The only thing I was aware of was the fact that the Arrancar Family had sided with the Randal Faction."


    Rui raised an eyebrow, stroking his scruffy chin. "Interesting. I suppose that makes sense."


    The Hawk Faction was the warmongering faction among all the factions of the Kandrian Empire. It made sense that Sage Damian Arrancar was aligned with them, knowing his temperament.


    "So he''s a leader of the Fire Sect and of the Hawk Faction, that''s truly curious," Rui remarked.


    "You haven''t decided which prince or princess to support, right?" Kane asked. "¡­I am hesitating between Prince Raul, the People''s Prince, and Princess Ranea, the Princess of the Seas," Rui replied. "They sound the least disruptive, but I don''t know enough. I only purchased basic information. It''s also too important to rely solely on second-hand information when I have the option of speaking to them and verifying the truth myself."


    He could only hope that those two were not extreme enough in their ideologies, but he wasn''t sure. Generally, when people appealed to a specific power bloc, it was not unusual for their policies to be overwhelmingly in favor of that power bloc. "I am meeting Princess Ranea in a week," Rui replied. "She''s hosting a small social convention on the unveiling of the first submarine of the Kandrian Empire."


    "I see," Kane remarked. "What''s a submarine?"


    Rui exined the recent developments rting to the Princess of the Seas, exining to him everything she strived for.


    "Woah¡­" Kane murmured. "Turning the Kandrian Empire into a naval Empire? That sounds¡­ rather drastic."


    "It''s better than most of the others that will result in war," Rui heaved a sigh. "Ideally, I''d rather a status quo be maintained. All these princes and princesses are too eager to dye the Kandrian Empire in their colors. There should be a lot of people who simply want to maintain the current status quo, but because these princes and princesses are appealing to specific powers, their policies naturally are inclined to serve them."


    There were probably a lot of people who for the Kandrian Empire to maintain its stable inertia. For a nation of its size and power, the Kandrian Empire was remarkably bncedpared to other Sage-level powerhouses.


    The Shionel Confederation had gained two sages and was an absolute corporatocracy where merchants were essentially nobles. The Britannian Empire was often called an army with a nation rather than a nation with an army. The Sekigahara Confederate was barely considered a single nation as opposed to a bundled group of warring ns that constantly bickered and fought amongst each other. The Republic of Gorteau was known to be one of the most corrupt nations in East Kandria, with a democratic system that had been utterly sold to a deep state of severalpeting power blocs.


    The delicate bnce that the Kandrian Empire had was definitely precious; it was just a shame that these princes and princesses were not inclined to maintain the bnce and inertia that made the Kandrian Empire one of the most desirable nations to live in East Kandria.


    Rui heaved a sigh, shaking his head. "If I were a prince, I would form a faction that was centered around preserving and conserving the current bnce of powers that exists within the Kandrian Empire. That is probably the only way another prince couldpete with the seven prime princes and princesses of the Kandrian Empire."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1653 Arrival

    <h4>Chapter 1653 Arrival</h4>


    The two of them spoke together the entire day before eventually splitting paths. Kane was definitely going to grow quite busy with offers from various parties and entities in the Kandrian Empire. While Rui''s refusal to ept such deals, to the point of not even being willing to shackle himself to a sect, was well-known around the nation, Kane was not nearly as closed off to epting such offers from patrons.


    He would definitely grow quite busy in theing weeks. Of course, Rui didn''t intend to intervene; they were both fully grown adults who could handle their own business. Rui was d that he didn''t hear any suspicions about him being rted to Kane''s breakthrough in the news when he asionally interacted with members of the Martial Community that he was acquainted with.


    Of course, it would be rather bizarre for anybody to suspect him, considering Kane broke through in the Beast Domain while Rui was clearly here in the Kandrian Empire the entire time.


    In the meantime, he continued to work on the four domain technique projects that he hade up with since then. Each of them challenged him in unique ways as he indulged in the thrill of figuring out their challenges and hurdles.


    As he worked on the necessary mechanisms and the technique framework and blueprint, he gained a better idea of what they would look like when he was done, as well as their potential impact onbat. Please check at N/?vel(D)rama.Org.


    He was pleased to discover that investing his upgraded breathing power into domains was definitely worth the investment with the sheer ROI that he was getting.


    There was no better way to apply his breathing towards adaptive evolution, generally speaking, than to employ it to bend heaven to antithetically counter his opponent. It was the best way to go even further down his Martial Path. The second best option was employing different breathing techniques to augment different parameters of the body, as Ian Nepomniachtchi did with Fire Breathing, Lightning Breathing, and Earth Breathing.


    ''Yet even those wouldn''t allow me to adapt to my opponent as well as these domain techniques would, by the looks of it.''


    Of course, there were no absolutes. There probably were a fair share of circumstances where the breathing options were more desirable. In such circumstances, he would naturally adapt and use what was most fit. Rui wasn''t strictly in favor of always using domains or anything of that sort.


    Regardless, he was convinced in his decision to master domain techniques; he was even convinced that the three projects would definitely be as sessful as they were right now.


    The only project he wasn''t nearly as optimistic about was Project Reverse Prophet. The difficulty was even greater than he had feared.


    Detecting all vectors with a domain was extremely difficult in and of itself. But processing them and then extrapting the past based on that data through thews of reality.


    That was a feat that, for once, not even his powerful mind may be able to cope with. The sheer depth of the degree he would need to look into the past for the technique to be useful and practical was so high that he wasn''t sure if he could do it even as he constructed the technique.


    On top of that, this was a heavily thought-intensive process; he would not get smoother at it with muscle memory as he would with the other domains. He could only heave a sigh and hope that things worked out in his favor.


    As he trained in the four domain techniques, a week passed. The day of the inauguration of the first submarine of the Kandrian Empire had arrived after several months of preparation. The event was muchrger and much more formal than either of the previous gatherings that the other two princesses had invited him to.


    For one, it wasn''t simply just a faction meeting with a few potential members to join the faction; it was also an event to raise support for her new naval initiative.


    Rui looked forward to meeting with Princess Ranea. In fact, he was quite eager. He needed to confirm that he had made the right choice when he gave her an advantage in his deal with Prince Raijun.


    Come morning, he found himself engaging in yet another round of tiresome grooming with a scented bath his mother prepared for him, a clean shave, andbing his messy hair before finally donning the one and only custom-tailored formal Martial attire that he had.


    He didn''t really care to go for yet another horrific shopping spree with Alice.


    It wasn''t too long before he had sky-walked across Kandria, heading to the port town of Farund. Instantly, he could sense the difference in the energies in the air of the port town. The entire town had an electric air of excitement and enthusiasm. He could see decorations bearing Princess Ranea''s personal crest, paying homage to her. The harbors had been docked withrge ships as several waves more were iing.


    It wasn''t surprising, given that the inauguration of the first submarine was supposed to be a town-wide event.


    Master Ceeran had invited him prior to the inauguration ceremony since the two of them would be going together.


    "Ah, you look rather distinguished, Rui," Master Ceeran smiled. "As do you, Master Ceeran."


    "Are you ready?" Master Ceeran asked with a hint of eagerness. "I am looking forward to this new so-called submarine. I wonder how it works."


    "I am more interested in speaking to Her Highness about her political ambitions," Rui replied.


    Submarines in this world may have been truly novel, but it wasn''t special to him. He was much more interested in getting a better personal impression of Her Highness. Mainly, this was probably going to be the first time that he would consider joining a faction or supporting a candidate for the ruler, depending on whether she was able to appeal to him with her political ambitions or not.


    His mind was entirely focused on that, and that''s why he didn''t share Master Ceeran''s curiosity about a vessel that could travel underwater.


    "The entire town is in quite the mood, you see," Master Ceeran informed Rui with a smile. "As a port town, seeing a princess be so invested in the nation''s seafaring and maritime sectors is incredibly rare and good since it is something that rarely happens."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1654 Long Time

    <h4>Chapter 1654 Long Time</h4>


    The two of them chatted some more about misceneous matters before it was eventually time to set out for the ceremony. They sky-walked, as did many other Martial Artists, avoiding the bustling crowds below them as they headed towards therge observing gallery that had been specifically constructed for this event.


    "That''srge," Rui raised an eyebrow. "Just how many people has Her Highness invited?"


    "I believe about one thousand and forty-eight," Master Ceeran remarked.


    Rui''s eyebrow rose at that number. "I doubt I''d be able to have a proper conversation with Her Highness then."


    "Not during the inauguration ceremony, no," Master Ceeran said. "But Her Highness is keen on speaking to you. Word of some of the terms and conditions of your deal with Prince Raijun has reached Her Highness'' ears. She is quite pleased with your consideration of her campaign. She will speak with you once the ceremony ends, and she will begin speaking privately with certain guests."


    "Hm, I suppose I''ll have to wait for that."


    "Indeed," Master Ceeran remarked as they reached the viewing gallery.


    Arge number of guests had already arrived. Rui had long learned to distinguish their social status from their bearing, demeanor, and bodynguage. Each of the members here was undoubtedly important, influential, and powerful. He even recognized a few of them just based on how famous they were. N?velDrama.Org copyrighted ? content.


    "Wee to the inauguration of the Karokann, Master Ceeran, Senior Quarrier," A highly distinguished and dignified man greeted them once they entered therge and tall gallery. He possessed a weight that came with his experience; his appearance was immactely groomed, and his words measured.


    "Rui, allow me to introduce you to the Minister of Maritime Affairs, Jakan Ghata," Master Ceeran smiled at him, lightly gesturing at the man. "He is a trusted advisor and patron of Her Highness."


    "It is a pleasure to meet you, Minister," Rui smiled courteously. "You grace me with honor by personally weing us."


    "Not at all, Senior Quarrier," The minister smiled with equal grace. "This is a blessed and auspicious day for me. This asion gathers many influential figures, like yourself. It would be an insult to not personally wee them myself."


    Rui smiled courteously, yet inwardly, he snorted.


    The buttering process had already begun. By having his subordinates take care of all the logistics management, he could begin the campaigning process by personally making an effort to greet all the guests as the Minister of Maritime Affairs as a gesture of how much importance the Ranea Faction ced on their guests.


    "I have heard much about you, Senior Quarrier," The minister directed a look of pointed interest at Rui. "You bring our nation great prestige as the youngest Martial Senior. I am also grateful for the more direct contributions that you have made to the Ranea Faction. You will not find us an ungrateful host. Please enjoy this novel and auspicious event."


    "I most certainly intend to," Rui graciously replied before the two of them bade him a brief goodbye, slipping away inside.


    "Minister of Maritime Affairs, hm?" Rui nced back at the man. "He has presence and seems apetent man. It makes sense that Her Highness relies on him."


    "The Ministry of Maritime Affairs is also one of Her Highness'' staunch bases of power within the Kandrian government," Master Ceeran remarked. "Along the Kandrian Seafare Association. These are two most powerful entities in the Kandrian Empire''s massive maritime sector and industries."


    "I do recall learning about that," Rui replied.


    The basic information that he had purchased did document the bases of power that each prince and princess possessed. Princess Ranea had basically won the support of national and international entities, individuals, and organizations rting to the sea industries.


    Many corporations andpanies rted to goods and services surrounding the sea sector saw fit to throw their support behind Princess Ranea rather than Princess Rafia. Thetter favored policies that would serve corporations, and this was less alluring than what Princess Ranea offered them.


    Soon enough, they reached the actual viewing gallery. The floor and the walls facing the ocean werepletely made of ss, allowing guests who were seated at a particrly high floor to be able to witness the unveiling of the Karokann submarine without issue.


    The guests were unable to see the submarine submerged deep underwater, but Martial Seniors and Masters easily could. They would just have to pretend like they hadn''t seen it when it was unveiled officially.


    Rui studied the structure with some curiosity. It looked different from the submarines of Earth. He wasn''t sure how well it performed since he wasn''t an engineer. His somewhat shallow foundation in fluid dynamics was not enough to make an informed evaluation and judgment of the submarine''s structure.


    "Interesting," Rui nodded lightly. "Perhaps there is merit in expanding the Royal Navy to include a submarine division."


    "That is indeed what Her Highness believes," a familiar elder voice behind him replied.


    Rui didn''t even need to turn around to recognize the man.


    The atmosphere grew taut as faint pressure spread across the gallery.


    "It''s been a long time," Rui turned around, facing the elderly man. "Guildmaster Bradt."


    He looked older since Ruist saw him in the banquet at the Virodhabhasa Theocracy, yet his eyes brimmed sharply with greater intensity. This man was old only in body. His ambitions were closer to that of a young man than someone who had lived a full life.


    "Indeed it has," His voice was firm yet calm. "It appears that times have favored both of us alike. For both of us have ascended to greater heights in mutual cooperation."


    His words mulled in the air.


    "It appears that you''re not satisfied with the heights you have reached," Rui noted.


    "I could say the same about you."


    Rui smiled wryly. "I suppose you could. Still, I didn''t think we''d meet in the Kandrian Empire back when we parted ways. Always looking to make the most of any opportunity that presents itself, aren''t you?"


    A single word escaped his mouth.


    "Always."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1655 Favor

    <h4>Chapter 1655 Favor </h4>


    "The Kandrian Throne War is an opportunity of a lifetime," Guildmaster Bradt remarked with steelyposure. "It would be beyond remiss of me not to capitalize on this opportunity, for it is one that could propel me to the zenith."


    Rui recalled his conversation with Decker. "Ambitious."


    "I seem to recall that you are indebted to me," Guildmaster Bradt narrowed his eyes as he eyed Rui. "Care to repay me now that you are a Martial Senior?"


    Rui raised an eyebrow. "What would you have me to do?"


    "I would have you supply me with the contribution you made to the Martial Union," Guidlmaster Bradt replied, uncaring for Master Ceeran''s reaction.


    Rui let out a mirthlessugh. "We both know that my debt to you does not reach even a tenth of what you''re asking for, even if I take into ount interest on that debt."


    "In that case¡­" Guildmaster Bradt replied. "Perhaps it would be more prudent to let both the interest and your power rue. The youngest Martial Senior in history surely will have more to offer in the future."


    Rui''s expression becameplicated. "I''d rather you make your demands right here and now."


    "You wish," He snorted. "I will wait for you to be a Master or perhaps even a sage. Then, I will extract you a favor with the highest ROI, the likes of which this world has never seen. It would be a shame to reap an asset before it has reached its zenith."


    "Continue ascending to greater heights, Rui Quarrier," He informed Rui as he turned away. "It would be to both our benefits to see that you do."


    He unceremoniously departed, followed by two Martial Masters, leaving Rui behind.


    "Huff¡­" Rui heaved a sigh, smiling wryly at the man''s retreating figure, finally taking a seat with Ceeran. "In his eyes, I''m no different from shares of apany that he hopes will grow astronomically in the future."


    Rui had always known that his rtionship with Guildmaster Bradt was not one of friendship. He wondered if a man like Guildmaster Bradt was even capable of friendship in the first ce.


    "How dare he demand the secret to greater Martial Bodies," Master Ceeran narrowed his eyes. "Does he think that the Martial Union would let such disrespect slip?"


    "He''s in a far stronger position than before," Rui remarked calmly as he analyzed the guild master. "The Shionel Confederation has now earned the protection of two Martial Sages. It is not enough to be considered a powerhouse, but it still gives a substantial boost to its Martial power. It is now far less easy for the Martial Union to bully him. On top of that, he''s firmly in the Ranea Faction, she''s not going to allow the Martial Union to bully one of her patrons. She would lose all credibility among her supporters if she allowed that to happen. He knows what he can get away with. He''s just trying to throw mud and see what sticks. Sly as always."


    Master Ceeran''s expression morphed into one of enlightenment and realization.


    "Besides," Rui heaved a sigh. "Technique contribution agreements with the Martial Union require signing an exclusive license with a non-disclosure and non-dissemination use. He knows I cannot sell it to him even if I wanted."


    This was how the Martial Union became the most powerful Martial organization in East Panama, along with the Georteau Martial Association, the Sekigaharan Martial Alliance, and the Britannian Martial Order.


    Though thanks to Rui''s contributions, they had gained an edge over them, as Master Krakule pointed out when they spoke.


    Suddenly, a wave of energy rippled through the crowd, catching Rui''s attention.


    "Ah, it appears that Her Highness has arrived," Master Ceeran directed an enthused nce to the entrance as many people spotted the extravagant carriage pull up to the viewing gallery, with dozens of Martial Seniors patrolling the streets that had been railed to prevent anyone from stepping even a single foot on the road while the princess was en route.


    The door opened as two Martial Master bodyguards swiftly stepped out, clearing out a path for the Princess of the Seas.


    Rui got his first nce at the princess as she stepped out of the carriage elegantly.


    She had a much older and more mature appearance than Princess Rafia did, clearly more than just a generation older. The moment she stepped out, the crowds that had gathered in the footpaths around the viewing gallery all erupted in cheers.


    "All hail Princess Ranea!"


    "Long live the Princess of the Seas!"


    "Wee back to Farund, Your Highness!"


    She smiled with delight, waving at the many admirers and followers that she had clearly rued.


    It made sense that there were so many people in this town who hade to develop admiration for her. She was the only princess who had showered the sea industry of the Kandrian Empire with this much support. The locals had gotten to see firsthand how much the town had been enriched with immense seafare trade due to Princess Ranean''s support.


    Rui knew that none of them were aware of the political undercurrents in the nation that were brewing at the moment. In their eyes, the Royal Emperor was very much their ruler and would continue to do so until he abdicated his throne or passed away.


    They couldn''t even begin to imagine the magnitude of the cold war that was slowly heating up between the seven prime candidates for the ruler of the Kandrian Empire. Not that he was surprised. This was how things had always been, here and back on Earth.


    Only a small minute proportion of people had an understanding of the depth of political power ys, even if they supported politicians. N?velDrama.Org copyrighted ? content.


    Of course, even this was part of her n. She needed support from the entirety of the nautical and maritime sector of the Kandrian Empire. This included both corporations, associations, and branches of the government, but also the workers andborers of the seafare sector, only then would she fully harness all the support she could get from this political sectors.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1656 Presentation

    <h4>Chapter 1656 Presentation </h4>


    "Her Highness Princess Ranea Meln Kandria has arrived!" A royal announcer announced her entry into the viewing gallery.


    Most guests in the gallery bowed to varying degrees. The custom was such that even the degree to which they bowed was a testament to their social status. Martial Masters, guests from outside of the Kandrian Empire who were not citizens of the nation, and bodyguards in active duty were not required to bow; they had automatically moved to the back, furthest away from the princess, observing polities.


    Rui bowed by about forty-five degrees, expressing respect to a member of the Royal Family as she made her way to the other end of the gallery, turning around at the end.


    "Raise your heads," She gracefully instructed them, relieving them of their posture. "Distinguished guests from and beyond Kandria, wee to the inauguration of the first seal-ss Karokann Av412. Today the Kandrian Empire takes a historic step for all of East Panama. Today, our naval and seafaring channels will include a new dimension¡­ a new world. A world we know less than we would admit."


    More than her words, Rui was impressed by her oratory skill. She delicately controlled the pitch and tone of her voice, even quivering it to add a hint of rm to her tone.


    "The depths of the ocean are ripe with resources, just waiting to be ceased, yet our ability to reach them is crippled inparison to our ability to extract resources fromnd. Today¡­that changes forever."


    Her arms spread, and just a momentter, the visible ocean through therge ss rippled as the Karokann submarine emerged from the depth of the ocean, fully floating above the ocean water.


    "Ooohh¡­"


    "Wow¡­"


    A wave of murmurs spread through the crowd as many of the guests beheld the first submarine of the Kandrian Empire.


    "While I would love to tell you all about the marvels of this submarine, that honor belongs to the lead developer Rankan ren, who oversaw the project from scratch topletion; please wee him with a round of apuse," Princess Ranea gestured to a beaming man.


    "I thank Her Highness for this honor," He began. "The Karokann was truly a project that I poured my heart and soul into, yet I won''t bore all of you with the full depth of the technical details, for this is a celebration, not a lecture. Today, I simply wish to convey the manner in which the Karokann defies¡­well, everything."


    "As Her Highness rightly mentioned¡­the Karokann adds a new dimension to seafare. This alone will require us to break everything we thought we ever knew. Seafare will no longer be an open book but also a domain of stealth. It opens up new avenues of exploration, for the depth that the submarine can tolerate is¡­"


    Rui listened as the developer brought up several points in defense of submarines. The exploration of the depths of the ocean was indeed quite a good point, but Rui wondered if they were entering a territory that they were sorely ill-equipped to handle.


    This was especially true with the monsters of the Panama Continent. He didn''t know if it was the most prudent to be so eager to set off on an adventure for the ocean floor.


    Regardless, he wasn''t too interested in the performance parameters of the Karokann.


    While the lead developer continued on, Rui nced at Princess Ranea, getting a good look at her. While she exerted a great deal of control, Rui could sense her enthusiasm and excitement in her eyes.


    While she did not hide her royal bearing, she did seem sane, all things considered.


    That was already a better start than Princess Rafia and Princess Raemina.


    It reduced the probability that she had crazy ideas regarding the Kandrian Empire.


    "¡­Thus, in this manner, submarines can revolutionize the Royal Navy as well as the underwater mining industry," Mister Rankan smiled. "I look forward to serving the Kandrian Empire in its development in the field of submarine seafaring in the future. However, for today, please enjoy the Karokann."


    He offered a short bow, earning a round of apuse as he made his way back into the crowd. Material ? of N?velDrama.Org.


    Princess Ranea took center stage again upon the speaking podium in the viewing gallery, addressing the crowd. "Distinguisheddies and gentlemen, submarines are the future for all matters beneath the ocean surface. They will be at the forefront of all things furtive and ndestine in the ocean. They will be at the forefront of securing the Kandrian Empire''s dominance across the marine sector, after all¡­"


    Rui narrowed his eyes at those words as a confident smile appeared on her face. "As Empress, my first act shall be tomission the development of ten thousand such submarines!"


    Rui''s eyes widened as he recalled the stated cost of development of the submarine, estimating the total cost of such a venture, including estimated costs for expanding manufacturing capabilities toplete such a vast number within a reasonable timeframe.


    ''That''s huge!'' Rui stared at her with a stunned expression. ''That''s already close to one-fourth of the annual fiscal budget of the Kandrian Empire!''


    That may not sound like much, but it was absolutely bonkers. Such a huge chunk was being dedicated solely to the production of submarines!


    "With an enormous fleet of submarines, the Kandrian Empire''s seafaring power will be unrivaled across the entire continent!" She dered. "Be it trade flux, be it extract and mining, be it defense, this great Empire will be the strongest in the entire world! We shall hold no bars to developing our marine and naval sectors to the absolute limit, no matter the cost!"


    Rui stared at her as she confidently unveiled hermitment to aggressively expanding the Kandrian Empire''s navy.


    This didn''t even include the expenses of her other ambitions, like simrly expanding the shipbuilding prowess of the Kandrian Empire and the ports and harbors to increase seafare and trade flux to and from the Kandrian Empire.


    ''Just how much does she want to drain the nation to fund her ambitions?!"


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1657 Overexpenditure

    <h4>Chapter 1657 Overexpenditure</h4>


    The princess continued talking about the extent to which she intended to expand the Kandrian Empire''s maritime and trade sector with not just more submarines but everything.


    By that time, Rui was unable to even keep track of just how much she was spending, but it was already starting to reach the sum total of the total annual budget every year!


    She was going to spend the entire nation''s total resources on expanding the maritime sector of the Kandrian Empire!


    The entire nation was going to slowly crumble from malnutrition while the maritime sector would boom in turn. Admittedly, this would not strictly lead to the destruction of the Kandrian Empire, but it was going to result in a very rough, painful, and perhaps even violent transition to a maritime nation. It would slowly erode away all other sectors of the nation, amplifying the maritime sector instead. Rui didn''t even know how much damage this would cause to the nation before it finally stabilized into the image of her dreams.


    "¡­And that brings an end to my Royal ambitions, distinguished guests. Today is the first day I have openly revealed the extent of my full n for the future of the Kandrian Empire." She remarked. "The Karokann submarine is just the first of countless toe, mark my words. Please take it upon yourselves to enjoy the Karokann; tours of the Karokann have been prepared all day long once it docks at the port. Each of you can experience the incredible experience of being in a submarine. I would like to offer a special thanks to the Kandrian Seafaring Association and the Ministry of Maritime Affairs for this day, for it would not havee without their tireless support. I thank you all for partaking in this little unveiling event."


    A thundering round of apuse followed as she concluded her little speech, dispelling the formal air of the event.


    Rui simply stared at her with sharp eyes, throwing a little side-eye to Guildmaster Bradt, who simply stared at him knowingly. He turned back to the Princess of the Seas with a skeptical expression.


    She immediately noticed their gaze, smiling at him as she approached him.


    "Master Ceeran, I am pleased to see you here. Did you enjoy the unveiling of the Karokann?"


    "It was truly fascinating, Your Highness," Master Ceeran smiled.


    "I am pleased to hear that, Master Ceeran," She smiled warmly at him, turning to Rui. "It is truly a pleasure to meet you. I have been looking forward to it for quite some time."


    "It is a pleasure to meet you as well, Your Highness," Rui smiled courteously. "I truly appreciate the invitation to this event. Your speech was¡­interesting, I wished to speak to you about it and other matters as well."


    "As did I," She smiled. "Why don''t we find ourselves a more private setting to discuss sensitive matters?" N?velDrama.Org copyrighted ? content.


    "That would be just fine."


    As he interacted with her, he got the hopeful sense that she could be reasoned with. Perhaps there was something that he was missing about his estimations of the economic burden that her ns were bound to put on the Kandrian Empire.


    He would hope that that was the case.


    Eventually, they found themselves seated in a room with a ss wall featuring the Karokann that was now docked to the harbor.


    "It''s quite the vessel," Rui remarked, breaking the ice. "The fact that our Empire is among the very first to develop this technology is indeed a source of great pride and optimism."


    She beamed at his praise as she beheld the Karokann with loving eyes. "It is an endeavor that I have done my very best to pursue. While I may not have worked on the submarine myself, it brings me great joy and pride to know that my efforts contributed to this day unfolding in such a fashion.


    She openly admired the submarine even as they spoke to each other. It appeared the information he purchased from the Martial Union was factually urate. She did indeed care a lot about all things sea-rted.


    That didn''t inspire a lot of hope in him.


    "Your Highness," Rui drew her attention. "The revtions of your royal ambition earlier¡­were you perhaps exaggerating some of the numbers and figures that you presented earlier?"


    "Why, not at all," She tilted her head, looking at Rui strangely. "What makes you say that?"


    "Well¡­It''s because I was hoping they were exaggerated," Rui narrowed his eyes. "Even now."


    She made his sharp gaze head-on. "And what makes you say that?"


    "Because your ambitions are too great for the empire," Rui replied. "Simple and even conservative estimates of the total expenses of your ambitions have already soared into the trillions of gold coins. That''s already a substantial fraction of our fiscal year and our GDP. The Kandrian Empire cannot sustain such a titanic expenditure of wealth. You will cripple entire sectors of our nation."


    "I do not intend to increase the taxes on our people."


    "In that case, you will be hampering the other sectors of our nation that require funds that you will be redirecting towardsmissioning and subsidizing the seafaring and maritime sector," Rui replied, narrowing his eyes. "The Martial Art sector is the only sector powerful enough such that it will not be affected by this whatsoever, but other sectors of the nation that rely on these funds¡­They will be crippled."


    "I disagree with your evaluation," She firmly said. "Once the maritime and sea sector arises, the Kandrian Empire will depend on the sea sector more than any of the other sectors in our empire."


    "Do you know how many people will suffer before the Kandrian Empire stabilizes from your vtile and violent shift in focus?" Rui stared at her in disbelief. "You cannot just uproot the order of our empire and rece it with a new one and hope that no one gets hurt."


    "It does not please me, but it is a necessary sacrifice to elevate the empire to even greater heights," She remarked. "It is not impossible for the Kandrian Empire to be the richest empire in this world."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1658 A New Age

    <h4>Chapter 1658 A New Age </h4>


    "What¡­?" Rui stared at her. Though he had an inkling of what she was talking about.


    "Of the four powerhouses of East Panama, the Kandrian Empire is the only one that is deeply connected to the Great Nam Ocean," She replied. "The other three powerhouses arendlocked and also quite distant from the coast, making it far more difficult for them. This is an enormous advantage for the Kandrian Empire that we have been remiss in capitalizing on sufficiently enough."


    Rui stared at her, waiting for her to finish the argument inpelling him.


    "It is possible for the Kandrian Empire to shoot past the three powerhouses by maximizing the potential of the Great Nam Ocean," She insisted. "While it is by far thergest, deepest, and most dangerous ocean in the world, it is also the most bountiful ocean in the world."


    "So you''re saying¡­"


    "Yes, Rui Quarrier," She firmly affirmed. "If we can tap into the resources of the Great Nam Ocean with a developed sub-marine sector and industry that receives the funding and resources it needs to be prepared enough to maximize the potential of the Great Nam Ocean, then we can reach a much higher stage in the world than even what we have now."


    She paused for a moment, sipping some tea that her servants had poured both of them. "The simplest ROI is gold. The esoteric marina gold that forms the basis of the Kandrian currency system was all mined from the shores and shallow parts of the ocean around the Kandrian Empire. However, some of the deeper surveys that I have had the Kandrian Seafare Association and the Ministry of Maritime Affairs conduct have given us reason to believe that there are far greater reserves much deeper in the Great Nam Ocean. However¡­"


    "I assume the depth of these marina gold mines is quite challenging."


    Princess Ranea nodded. "Kilometers at a bare minimum. However, the greater the depth, the greater the bounty of resources. By our estimates, if we can sessfully harness the resources, then we can get a hundred percent ROI, perhaps even more, for even the massive expenditure that I had elucidated about earlier. It will easily justify all my decisions and enrich the Empire."


    "There is a reason that the Great Nam Ocean has not been fully scaled nor mined," Rui replied with a stern voice. "The depth is one thing, but there are also powerful aquatic monsters that undoubtedly increase the difficulty of meaningful sess and increase losses tremendously. Krakens, scys, jormunganders, leviathans, charybdises, umibozus¡­ With such known horrifying monsters increasinglymon towards the epicenter. Some even consider it the marine Beast Domain."


    Most of the shipping routes were directed along the coasts of the Panama Continent.


    There was a reason for this. The closer one got to the epicenter of the Great Nam Ocean, the more dangerous things were. It was like trying to cross through the epicenter of the Beast Domain while traveling onnd from one side of the Panama Continent to the other.


    It was madness. N?velDrama.Org copyrighted ? content.


    The depths of the center of the great ocean were distanced from human civilization by virtue of not only distance but also the limitations of their medium of life. Life that had adapted to survive the depths of the Great Nam Ocean could not survive except for those depths of the ocean.


    That was why the rtionship between humanity and the depths of the Great Nam Ocean was fundamentally different from the rtionship between humanity and the Beast Domain. The Beast Domain was a lot more easily essible, making it more dangerous to humanity and vice versa.


    This was not true for the Great Nam Ocean. There were far greater barriers that existed between humanity and the depths of the Great Nam Ocean; neither could easily intrude upon the other. This had caused humanity to take an ''out of sight, out of mind'' approach to the perils of the depths of the Great Nam Ocean.


    Princess Ranea''s ambitions, however, fundamentally embodied a different philosophy. She was willing to cross the barriers separating them and plunge to the depths of the Great Nam Ocean at her own peril to im the bounties it hid.


    "So let me get this straight, Your Highness¡­" Rui stared at her. "You wish to uproot several sectors, cutting funding to them, causing mass unemployment that could easily cause a recession, and then redirect all those resources to a maritime and seafare expansion for greater trade, as well as a sub-


    marine sector in hopes of extracting the perilous bounties that the Great Nam Ocean has to offer? Such that it can justify the sheer amount of expenditure you invested and more?"


    "Precisely," She dered.


    Her blunt honesty was refreshing. She didn''t try tomislead him.


    Rui stared at her with narrowed eyes. "Even putting aside the guaranteed suffering that your n will spread, the sheer risks you are undertaking are such that if you fail even in the slightest, you will bring about the destruction of the Kandrian Empire."


    "I have a much higher opinion of our ability to ovee the risk, but even still, risk is always inevitable. Always. Especially if you want to rise," She boldly dered. "Unlike that warmongering fool Randal, I intend to endeavor productive ventures that promise great yield instead of war that simply destroys any and everything. The rest of my siblings, barring Raul, do not have a vision for the Empire that didn''te from selling themselves to their patrons. Especially that despicable bastard Rajak."


    She snorted with disdain, turning back to Rui. "At least I have a definite vision that came from myself. I was the one who approached the Kandrian Seafare Association and the Minister of Maritime Affairs with my grand ambitions. And eventually, I willpel the entire nation with my vision of the future."


    She turned to Rui. "I will unveil a new age within the Kandrian Empire, then East Panama, and eventually, the entire world."


    Her eyes grew more defiant.


    "The Age of Sailors."


    Rui stared at her with disbelief as she uttered her ambitions to change the world.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1659 Ambition

    <h4>Chapter 1659 Ambition </h4>


    Rui stared at her dumbfounded.


    He couldn''t believe that she had such an absurdly ambitious dream.


    Set off a new age?


    An age of sailors?


    "With all due respect, Your Highness, that''s a pipe dream," Rui heaved a sigh.


    "Do you truly believe that, Senior Quarrier?" She stared at him. "An age is defined by the most characteristic trait in that age, and in this era, that is Martial Art. If ambition for the ocean one day drives Kandria, and then it will also eventually impact East Panama. That is how powerful and influential our country is."


    Rui heaved a tired sigh. "Your Highness, you are far more extreme than I had imagined or been informed."


    "Hah, I have only divulged a greater fraction of my ambition today due to the historic event. However, I do have dreams that I will fulfill as Empress."


    "Is that so?" Rui shook his head lightly. "Your ambitions will definitely cripple many and potentially bring this nation to ruin. Do you think it is appropriate for an Empress to burden her nation with her personal ambition?"


    "Ambition is thergest fuel for growth after necessity and fear," She firmly pushed back. "Would you rather we grow only when we need to or out of fear, or would you rather we grow out of ambition? Look at you. You''re a Martial Artist driven by powerful personal ambition. Look at where it got you. You''re probably the most sought Martial Senior in the Kandrian Empire."


    Rui had to admit that she was quite rhetorically effective. It was not easy for him to dismiss the argument when he most certainly was driven by ambition and owed his sess to his unrelenting drive to fulfill an ambition that had transcended worlds and lives.


    The issue was that there was a difference between being rhetorically effective and correct. As far as Rui was concerned, there was a difference between personal and political ambition. Every individual was responsible for themselves and bore the brunt of their own choices, but a nation bore the brunt of its ruler''s choices.


    However, he could see that there was too much of a fundamental disconnect between them. He could keenly tell that whatever rationalization she had cooked up was ad hoc and came after her ambition. Her ambition preceded all of it; she simply formed her political ideology around it to justify it as a ruler.


    It meant that there really was no arguing with her, which, of course, was obvious. There was nothing he could say that would shake her off her current track.


    He was disappointed, frustrated even. Who could have thought that something as uncontroversial on the surface as focusing on the seafaring and maritime industry would end up being so extreme that it was just almost as undesirable as some of the other princes and princesses that he had rejected?


    Of course, if forced between someone like Prince Randal and her, he would still reluctantly choose her. But he wanted a candidate he could wholeheartedly support.


    "It''s a shame that you don''t seem receptive to my politics," She nonchntly remarked. "After all that you did to help me in restraining Raijun''s offensive maneuvers against me."


    "You don''t seem very grateful," Rui snorted. N?velDrama.Org copyrighted ? content.


    She shrugged. "I am going to ascend the throne regardless. Though I suppose¡­I should tell you that I am grateful indeed. However, you made that agreement based on an iplete understanding of my ambitions. It''s not your fault since it hasn''t remained the same. Had the submarine project failed, I would have been forced to take a less ambitious stance on sub-marine policy."


    She was shamelessly confident in her victory, to the point that Rui could only heave a sigh. "I see."


    "You may not agree with the oue of my politics, but I would venture to suspect that you probably will end up finding my political agenda to be the least disagreeable out of all the seven prime candidates," Princess Ranea smirked. "Join me, Rui Quarrier. Your Martial Art. Your talent. Your magical knowledge. Your mind. Lend them to me. Help me be Empress, and I can promise you that I will amodate your desire to maintain order in the Kandrian Empire as much as possible while I apply my designs to the empire."


    "So I should support you because you''re the least bad for this nation?" Rui raised an eyebrow. "And if I support you, you will do your best to restrain the magnitude of how bad I think your policies are when you act them?"


    "Pretty much," She casually replied.


    Her demeanor was distinctively different from the other two princesses, who maintain suffocating formality. Yet it was also different from Prince Raijun, who always had an undertone of respect and admiration for Rui. Her attitude was more indifferent now that she was out of the public eye and didn''t need to maintain an image.


    She had expressed the least desire for Rui among her siblings, perhapsrgely because Rui''s value as a supporter intersected the least with her interests.


    He did appreciate the fact that she didn''t try to alter her words or her rhetoric to make it more ptable to him. She was willing to ept the consequence of not winning his support.


    Perhaps it was because she didn''t think he could make a substantial impact beyond what he had. It wasn''t a strange thought; Rui''s outsized value exceeded his Martial power, but could he continuously supply the value that a Master could through his odd extra-Martial means?


    It was not entirely clear. Especially to someone like Princess Ranea, who was focused on fields and domains that Rui hadn''t provenpetence in. She simply did not have any idea that he could offer much utility, Martial or otherwise, in aiding with her ambitions, and that reflected in her nonchnce.


    Though part of it was certainly her brashness that she had done well to hide earlier, he wouldn''t mind working with someone of her temperament, honestly. It was a shame that he didn''t care to.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1660 Strange Detour

    <h4>Chapter 1660 Strange Detour</h4>


    Rui exited the room, heading back to the viewing gallery before running into Master Ceeran once more.


    "Ah, how did it go, Rui?" He asked eagerly.


    "Interesting, but ultimately fruitless," Rui replied. "It probably won''t be joining Her Highness'' campaign."


    "I see¡­that''s a shame," Master Ceeran remarked. "If you''re partaking in the Kandrian Throne War, then you only have two princes left. You might want to reconsider some of your choices. After all, you only have the People''s Prince and the Underworld Prince, and both of them are bad choices."


    Rui turned to him with a curious look. "Why do you think so?"


    "It should be obvious. The Underworld Prince is a little bastard who caught up with the mafias and the ck market. Sometimes, I don''t understand why the Royal Family doesn''t just clean that entire mess up with force." Master Ceeran snorted. "The People''s Prince, on the other hand, is a peasant-loving prince who puts their interests above all. I''m surprised that any Martial Artist supports him at all."


    Rui stared at Master Ceeran with a quizzical expression. It was interesting to see how a Martial Master of the Martial Union regarded the People''s Prince. Apparently, a prince that put the people first was an eyesore. He wasn''t sure why the Master woulde to think in such a manner. Then again, he wasn''t a Martial Master of the Martial Union.


    At that point, he had diverged so much from the average human that they weren''t even of the same species anymore.


    "The Royal Family cannot wipe out the Kandrian Underworld for the same reason that no other state in the world has seeded in curbing the ck market," Rui replied calmly. "Supply always meets demand. Always. No amount of restrictions, sanctions, or proactive or reactive measures are ever enough to stop it. If it''s illegal but highly demanded, people will get their hands on it, one way or another. The only way to destroy the Underworld is to legalize the trade of the ck market. Otherwise, they will always lurk in the shadows."


    "You think the Royal Family does not have the power to find and annihte the ck market?" Master Ceeran asked, raising an eyebrow.


    "It''s moreplicated than that," Rui exined. "The ck market has decades¡­centuries of experience in evading any form ofw enforcement and oveing any hurdle. They understand the Kandrian Empire better than anybody else. They know this nation backward front and inside out. They know the chinks and holes in the system extremely well. They know it well and have capitalized on it even better. That is why finding them is difficult. However, you are correct in that the Royal Family and the Kandrian Empire could find them if they employed all their power. The issue is that that would provoke a war."


    "The Royal Family is stronger," Master Ceeran snorted.


    "It is, but a civil war between the Royal Family and the Six Dons will ruin the nation. Since Martial Sages will be involved," Rui heaved a sigh. "The losses this nation will be catastrophic, so much more that the Kandrian Royal Family purposefully does not escte it to active war. It is mostly limited to prevention and restriction in an attempt to suffocate the Underworld."


    "They are essentially holding the nation hostage," Master Ceeran remarked.


    "Indeed," Rui heaved a sigh. "It''s also why Prince Rajak can get away with having the Underworld as his patron. As long as he doesn''t mess up, he won''t suffer any negative consequences. The Underworld is powerful, although it suffers the disadvantage of the government being averse to it, which is why Prince Rajak is not able to get a lead even though he has the entirety of the third most powerful faction of Kandria behind him. The crowning ceremony officiates the ruler, and the government controls it; this is something even the Underworld can do nothing about."


    The Underworld was the third most powerful force in the Kandrian Empire holistically. While the maritime sector and the Underworld were roughly peers economically, the Underworld was much more Martially powerful. Yet their intense enmity with the government made it much more challenging to leverage it to make Prince Rajak the Emperor.


    Rui heaved a sigh of relief. If not for this crucial disadvantage, then there was a chance that the Underworld Prince would have surpassed the other six. Regardless, this wasn''t something that was all that relevant to Rui. He would never ept the invitation of the Underworld prince; there was absolutely no discussion to be had. Not after the suffering that they had caused to the orphanage.


    "I''ll be taking my leave here," Rui heaved a sigh, getting up. "I''ve viewed the Karokann and spoken to Her Highness; there''s nothing left me here."


    "I see, then, until next time," Master Ceeran smiled.


    He bade the Master goodbye, navigating past the crowd and the immense security until he finally descended the steps outside, leaving the viewing gallery. The crowd outside had diminished, but there were still plenty of people watching the Karokann from a distance. Please check at N/?vel(D)rama.Org.


    He was just about to sky-walk when a sign caught his attention.


    [Martial security protocols: No sky-walking or jumping permitted.]


    Apparently, stopping unauthorized sky-walking after the event began was part of the security protocols? He found that rather strange whenpared with other formal events hosting members of the Royal Family but abided by it nheless, heading northeast in the direction of the Mantian Region.


    Just before he reached the range from where he could sky-


    walk, suddenly;


    "Look, it''s the Karokann!"


    "I want to get a better view!"


    "Move out of the way!"


    Rui tutted in irritation as he tried squeezing past the crowd without killing anybody identally. He had gotten so used to evading crowds that this experience was almost entirely new for him.


    Yet waves of crowds washed just down the street, trying to move in the opposite direction as him. He would have loved to have just jumped above them, but the guards stationed across the street were staring at him pointedly.


    "Alleys it is," He squeezed through the buildings, heading through thework of alleys in some of the poorer parts of the town. The poption here was scarce and was of the type that was too poor to care about a submarine.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1661 Reunion

    <h4>Chapter 1661 Reunion</h4>


    He found himself at a dead end.


    "Do you have any business with me?" Rui turned around, narrowing his eyes at a hooded masked figure that blocked his path.


    The figure was a Martial Apprentice, that much he could tell. Yet the mask was powerful enough to jam even his Riemannian Echo, which meant that it was no ordinary mask, certainly nothing an ordinary Martial Apprentice could ever hope to get their hands on.


    "Do I?" The hooded masked figure asked Rui. His voice was distorted.


    Rui narrowed his eyes as he unleashed the aura that he was constantly suppressing. Heaven and earth squirmed under the sheer peril that Rui radiated as a high-grade Martial Senior. Yet he could only widen his eyes in shock as two Martial Masters appeared behind him out of nowhere.


    ''It''s not just them!'' Rui realized. ''I''ve been surrounded by Martial Seniors before I realized it!''


    Rui nced at the two Martial Masters guarding the hooded masked figure, instantly deciphering their Martial Art.


    Poison¡­and symbiote.


    One of the Martial Masters had a pair of wing-like appendages attached to his back. ''Unorthodox Martial Artists¡­'' Rui narrowed his eyes as realization dawned upon him.


    He understood who he was dealing with.


    "It''s been a long time, Rui Quarrier," The distorted voice returned to a masculine one as the hooded figure removed his mask. His tone was cold.


    "I did not think that we would meet again," The mask came off, revealing a man with beautiful aesthetics.


    Rui''s eyes widened. N?velDrama.Org copyrighted ? content.


    His voice grew ominous.


    "The Underworld is not a forgiving ce, you see. Back then, I was not the Prince of the Underworld; I was just a low-level Martial Artist with some ties to gangs," The Underworld Prince told Rui. "It is only a decadeter that I have grown to harness the Underworld in my bid for the throne."


    "So this was your n all along?" Rui stared at him. "To join the Underworld and harness its capital to fight for the throne."


    "Indeed," Prince Rajak calmly answered his question even as his stare intensified. "You taught me much about the consequences of failure in the Underworld. I-"


    "Cut the crap," Rui''s eyes sharpened. "If you''re here to kill me, then get it over with quickly. If I''m going to die either way, I''d rather not have to hear your pretentious monologue."


    He activated his Martial Heart, steeling himself. The prickling tension in the air escted. Yet, the prince did a good job keeping hisposure under the pressure of Rui''s Martial Heart. "Join me."


    His words cut through the taut atmosphere.


    Rui furrowed his eyebrows, staring at Prince Rajak. "You corned me here just to invite me?" "Were you under the impression that I would invite you for an Underworld social party or a mafia banquet?" Prince Rajak calmly asked. "That''s not how we do things. We can''t afford to."


    Rui stared at him. "So you intend topel me with fear? To join you or to die?"


    "That was my n, but¡­" He nced at the two Martial Masters behind him. "You have many fans. Rest assured that you will be walking away alive, if nothing else, much to my disapproval. It is not the Underworld''s way to forgive someone who crippled our profits during the Shionel Dungeon raid, but s."


    Rui recalled how he stopped the supply of esoteric substances to the shell fronts of the Kandrian Underworld. It appeared that the Kandrian underworld had not forgotten that offense after all this time.


    Yet he also understood that Prince Rajak couldn''t afford to kill Rui. It appeared that while he had managed to wring away support from Rui had sharply already deduced the dynamics at hand. It was no coincidence that the Martial Masters behind him were unorthodox. Most likely, these sects were the only sects that he could win over against Prince Raijun, given his association with the Underworld. However, while they had associated with Prince Raijun, they were fundamentally a part of the Martial Union.


    Rui had already contributed to all the Martial Sects with his Hungry Pain technique. He had earned a great amount of gratitude and approval from them, not to mention being valued for potentially even more such contributions.


    On top of that, the Martial Union was looking forward to initiating the spreading of his techniques so that one day, he could establish his own Martial Sect. In the face of all these gains that involved Rui Quarrier, he wasn''t surprised that Prince Rajak couldn''t kill him so long as he had even a single sect of the Martial Union in his camp.


    Aside from the Royal Emperor, nobody possessed the might to stand up to the Martial Union as an equal.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1662 Hatred

    <h4>Chapter 1662 Hatred</h4>


    "So, you can''t threaten me," Rui coldly stated. "You shouldn''t have bothered with this at all."


    "You seem rather impatient," Prince Rajak calmly remarked.


    "Tends to happen when I get trapped in an ambush," Ruis snorted. "I assume the no-sky-walking and endless hoards of people thing was all part of the n to lure me into the alleys?"


    "Perhaps," The prince replied vaguely. "It allowed us to meet without anybody the wiser."


    "Well, we''ve met," Rui remarked. "Now what?"


    "I asked you to join me," Prince Rajak reminded Rui. "You have yet to make your choice."


    "Join you¡­?" Rui narrowed his eyes. "You can''t be serious."


    The prince simply stared at Rui. "You know¡­out of all the seven candidates for the throne, we are the closest."


    Rui raised an eyebrow. "Wee from the same background," The prince revealed. Yet his eyes took on a dark luster.


    "I was born and raised in an orphanage as well," Prince Rajak calmly stated. "Do you know what happened when my siblings learned of my existence?"


    Rui stared at him silently.


    Yet the silence was deafening.


    "They¡­sought to kill me," Prince Rajak whispered. "They failed. It was a miracle, but I was not home that day in the orphanage. I had snuck out into a traveling merchant''s carriage to go into town so I could partake in the Kandrian Martial Festival."


    His eyes sharpened, and a glint of hatred shed in his eyes. "Do you know what happened while I was gone? Do you know what I saw when I came back?" Material ? of N?velDrama.Org.


    His golden eyes hummed with unadulterated fury.


    Financial services.


    Depraved Martial services.


    Smuggling.


    Depraved human goods and services.


    Harmful substances supplies.


    Information theft.


    The six dons regted these six pirs of the Underworld, ensuring they thrived, spreading more misery as a necessary and intended consequence.


    "You don''t have the right to call anyone a disgusting monster," Rui red at him. "You''re more disgusting than them all."


    "I''ll say this onest time," Prince Rajak narrowed his eyes. "Join me. I have the power to give you anythi-"


    "Anything I want?" Rui glowered at him. "You''re the sixth prince to make that offer. If that was enough, I would have joined Princess Raemina''s faction a long time ago. Fuck off."


    "Is that your final answer?"


    "It always was."


    A moment of silence rang in the air. The two men stared at each other with piercing eyes.


    He turned, never once breaking eye contact. "I hope you don''te to regret this decision."


    WHOOSH


    Just like that, they had all disappeared. Rui''s expression loured with displeasure as he considered everything the prince said to him. There was no doubt in his mind that the prince was poisoned with hatred that he couldn''t even see, or worse, didn''t even care about his own hypocrisy. He just wanted to exact revenge on those who had ughtered his orphanage. The only way he was able to was the Underworld, for it was the only remaining powerhouse bloc that could allow him topete with his most powerful siblings. The one entity that none of the other princes and princesses dared to touch.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1663 Degrees of Mastery

    <h4>Chapter 1663 Degrees of Mastery</h4>


    Yet¡­when Rui thought about what he had gone through, could he me him?


    What would he have done if he had learned that some powerful forces had ughtered his orphanage home?


    It would be over.


    He would find each and every aware and involved person in the matter and erase their existence from this world. In that regard, he was not that different from Prince Rajak. The only difference was that he would do it using his own personal power and not the dirty power of the Underworld.


    "Huff¡­" Rui heaved a sigh.


    His eyes dted, growing unfocused as he thought back to what the prince had told him about the princes and the princesses. Putting aside his hypocrisy, he was right about them. They were the kind of people who would not bat an eye if they had to ughter an orphanage of children and caretakers if that meant that they could eliminate one vulnerable rival to the throne with ease.


    ''Aside from Prince Raul, he said,'' Rui mused as his expression softened. ''Perhaps he is the only hope left.''


    He had always known that he could never support Prince Rajak. Not as long as that man epted the patronage of the Carnil Mafia that had hurt his family. There was absolutely no chance that he could support such a man.


    However, his words also made Rui more disillusioned about the Kandrian Royal Family. He was not entirely wrong in saying that they were monsters. He knew that Princess Raemina and Rafia, in particr, were inhuman, while Prince Raijun, Prince Randal, and Princess Ranea were apathetic to the suffering of people as long as they could fulfill their ideologies and ambitions.


    The world was filled with many such people. It could be argued that the Royal Family was prone to producing such people. What else would being born into filthy rich wealth, being brainwashed that their blood was superior, that it granted them authority and entitlement over the entire nation and all of its one hundred and fifty million people do to their psychology?


    In that regard, Rui was not inclined to disagree with him.


    It was no wonder that the only exception he cited was the only other prince who had grown up amoner: Prince Raul.


    ''I must meet with Prince Raul at once,'' Rui realized. ''He is the only hope left.''


    He was also the only prince that had yet to reach out to Rui. Not even the Beggar''s Sect had offered an invitation to Rui on behalf of the prince.


    Of course, Rui was not arrogant in that he expected all of the princes to try to woo him and that it would be an insult if they didn''t. Material ? of N?velDrama.Org.


    But it was curious to him nheless.


    As much as he would have loved to immediately set out for the People''s Prince, he was busy. Ultimately, the Kandrian Throne War was still not his absolute top priority, and he had given it enough of his time and energy sinceing back.


    He was tired of his strength not matching his value.


    He was frustrated at having returned to the Kandrian Empire at a time when not even Senior-level power was significant anymore.


    Of course, it was never too significant in the Kandrian Empire due to just how powerful the Kandrian Empire was.


    In ces like the Derschek Region, the Kaddar Region, and the Gereign Region, Martial Seniors were absolute peak powerhouses. But in the Kandrian Empire, they were far diminished in value and significance.


    It was a testament to just how much stronger the Kandrian Empire was. It was an absolute powerhouse for a reason.


    That was why he needed to grow stronger and eventually reach the Master Realm. As a Master, there were very few forces that would unnecessarily mess with him. While some truly powerful organizations did have multiple Martial Masters, they tended to avoid antagonizing other Martial Masters unless absolutely necessary. The sheer damage that they could inflict on any nation or entity was too high.


    He immediately returned to his training, submerging himself in it.


    The four projects he had begun working on were making slow but steady progress, asionally taking tips from Master Gurren while he trained his new techniques. Although Master Gurren was clueless about the mechanics of Rui''s technique, he could help Rui with certain specific aspects.


    He even offered advice to Rui about the practicality of the techniques.


    "There are two levels of mastery of domain techniques: active mastery and passive mastery," Master Gurren exined. "Active mastery is the basic level of mastery, enough that you can apply it viably inbat and sustain a domain battle that way while actively focusing on the technique. Passive mastery is when you are able to master domain techniques to the point of being seamlessly able to use them inbat while also engaging in hand-to-handbat."


    Rui''s eyes widened with shock. "You can do that?!"


    "I can, but it''s very difficult and takes a lot of time. You will most likely only be able to start with active mastery until you eventually be so familiar with the patterns of heaven and earth maniption that you will be able to execute them while engaging in hand-to-handbat. They just require too much mental and body engagement for you to be able to reach this stage immediately," Master Gurren told Rui. "But when you do, you will be able to harness the fullest potential of domain techniques and reach an extraordinary level of environment harnessing."


    Rui widened his eyes as he thought about how incredibly powerful he would be when he reached a stage where he could seamlessly go all out with all other forms ofbat while simultaneously bing so familiar with domains that he would also be able to use them. It would increase his overall power to tremendous degrees.


    Until then, he would need to use the right techniques for the right opponents and circumstances; such was the philosophy of Water, after all.


    He looked forward to mastering such power in theing months and years.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1664 Voidlets

    <h4>Chapter 1664 Voidlets</h4>


    The four projects that he was working on went well as he worked on them. Project Skyfall involved him refining his heaven-bending along a single dimension. It took intricate precision to reach a level where he could redirect the vectors of force along a single direction. The amount of force he needed was actually little, this was a technique that tested his precision and uracy. It was truly difficult.


    Project Speed Prison was a little easier. Manipting the drag coefficient to, be a variable that increased with speed was definitely not easy. He needed to alter the fabric of the atmosphere as a medium. This project required the most amount of constant trial and error. He constantly needed to test his prototype domains to ensure that he was in the right direction.


    Project Malevolent Kitchen was definitely the smoothest of the four. He was very familiar with generating sound; thus, he was not out of hisfort zone in this domain. He employed heaven-bending to create a heavenly domain that would bombard his target with sound in all directions. He created an earth domain that bombarded his target with seismic radiation at the point of contact. The result was that sound was increasingly concentrated within a single person. Since sound was being bombarded onto a single point from all directions, it was not difficult to cancel all the vectors, turning it into directionless vibration: heat.


    However, the most difficult of the four was most certainly Project Reverse Prophet. Rui realized that his optimism had been naive. He had been so seduced by the potential power of such a technique and how much it would improve his pattern recognition system that his greed for it was quite strong.


    But progress in this technique was so hard that even he was starting to have doubts. Peering into the past was not a feat that was easy to aplish. Time flowed in one direction. Defying that was a feat that mortals did not seem to be capable of. Regardless, he pushed on, focusing on the four technique projects.


    However, that was not the only thing that required his attention. ''I also need to create easy thought-based techniques for explorers and Martial Apprentices,'' Rui had not forgotten hismitment in regard to the future Water Sect. He had not forgotten that he needed to create highly diluted versions of adaptive evolution for the major fields so that he could spread elements of his technique that could potentially be nted into seedster on while also increasing the affinity of Martial Artists to the Master Realm. As long as he could do this, then he would be fine.


    However, it was difficult because he couldn''t expect everybody to operate at the same level of mental acuity as he did. He needed to ount for the diminished mental capacity of the average Martial Artist rtive to his own. For the explorers, those who hadn''t discovered their Martial Art and were still exploring different fields to see what they had an affinity for, he needed extremely simple techniques that were highly effective but also had low mental burden. He needed to ensure that the explorer techniques reflected his Martial Path without burdening them with extreme mental requirements of the VOID algorithm.


    "Oh boy¡­" Rui murmured as he scratched his head. ''This is back to problems I had back on Earth.''


    Ensuring that his system of thought was viable for the average UFC fighter was easily his biggest hurdle back on Earth, and now that he was here, he was going to be facing the problem once more.


    ''Though it''s not nearly as bad as it used to be.''


    For one, he didn''t need to make everybody master the VOID algorithm. He needed to create¡­voidlets, diluted elements of the VOID algorithm, and have them master it.


    This was much easier. He had used the VOID algorithm even before he became a Martial Artist, he was just limited to the low-level systems within the VOID algorithm. The pattern recognition system was something that pretty much nobody aside from himself could possibly master.


    ''Still, I can create simplified systems of thought that, when mastered, can allow them to fight more wisely and use less effort to ovee the same opponents,'' Rui realized.


    A lot of this was just taking several low-end systems of the VOID algorithm and making separate thought techniques for each of them. This was not the interesting part, as far as he was concerned.


    There were plenty of low-end systems that he could choose from, for example, he had a system of thought that was centered around learning as much information about your opponent as possible at the start of the fight, especially their stance. Material ? of N?velDrama.Org.


    Different stances catered to different styles ofbat. Centered legs were a sign of maneuvering; divided leg stances, on the other hand, were antithetical to maneuvering. Divided legs signified stability to form.


    Simrly, arm positioning also distinguished between offense and defense, as well as what form of offense. A striker would employ arms very differently from wrestlers, and those were quite evident in their stances.


    In addition, distance from the opponent was a good predictor of their moves. An attacking gesture made from beyond arm''s distance was a good sign that they were going to kick, which had a much greater range than the punches.


    Kicks, in turn, could also be further predicted by the center of gravity and leg positioning. Center of gravity in and of itself was another simple to decipher variable that could be used to predict the opponent.


    These methods allowed one to predict their opponent''s very next move. They still paled inparison to the pattern recognition system, which was far deeper and precise in its prediction, essentially allowing Rui to see the future itself, but they were certainly good enough to stand as a useful technique by themselves.


    ''That should be good enough for the explorer techniques,'' Rui mused as he heaved a sigh. ''As for the Apprentice-level techniques¡­I can make things a little more interesting.''


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1665 Mind Palace

    <h4>Chapter 1665 Mind Pce </h4>


    For the Apprentice-level technique, he could go on one step further and give out techniques that employed a basic amount of data analytics. It didn''t need to be something insane, but Martial Apprentices could certainly use a good deal of more rigorous data-driven analytics.


    In this world, he even had a trump card that he didn''t have in his previous life.


    ''The Mind Pce technique,'' Rui mused.


    If Rui were to be asked which technique he would retain and was forced to lose all other techniques his Martial Art had, he would unhesitatingly choose the Mind Pce technique.


    It wasn''t even close. Not even remotely.


    It was the final key to the power of the VOID algorithm. It was the final piece of the puzzle that made the VOID algorithm not just practical but also extremely powerful! Please check at N/?vel(D)rama.Org.


    Without it, he was far weaker.


    The Mind Pce technique and him were a match made in heaven. What was originally an extremely basic and simple one-dimensional technique whose only utility was to allow dimwitted Martial Artists to not forget mission details in the middle of a mission had turned into arguably the most powerful technique that Rui had ever created in his life.


    It had gone from a room, like in the original technique, to a gigantic city that contained ces from across his first and second life.


    His childhood home back on Earth.


    His researchb.


    His hospital room in the twilight of his life.


    The Quarrier Orphanage.


    The Martial Academy.


    The Town of Hajin.


    The Serevian Dungeon.


    Vilun Ind.


    The Shionel Dungeon.


    Ajanta Ind.


    These, and many more ces, had been embedded and fused into a Frankenstein city that became the foundation of his Mind Pce technique.


    It allowed his thought process to be like that of aputer. He had created an extremely organized system of memory and recall, allowing him to ess any and all information in the Mind Pce quickly.


    Every ounce of information that he stored in it contained tags. If he remembered a map of a ce, then he would tag it with ''map,'' the name of the ce the map was showing, the style of cartography, and any other details that he might inquire into in the future.


    Then he stored that map into categories of each of those tags, each having its own isted section of the city. One isted part of the Mind Pce contained everything that Rui had ever tagged with ''map.''


    This included the map of the Kandrian Empire, the town of Hajin, and even the map of the Shionel Dungeon that he had created for Guildmaster Bradt.


    Each tag had its own section in the Mind Pce technique. He even had a mental map of the entire Mind Pce should he ever need to find a particr tag!


    If he ever needed something regarding a particr tag, then he would just travel to his Mind Pce and the section of the particr tag and then walk around, scouring that section until he found what he wanted.


    It was not as absolutely robotic as aputer in the literal sense, but his conscious memory now had a system of protocols that allowed for smooth flow and storage of information.


    Of course, he did not expect other Martial Apprentices to be able to expand their Mind Pces so much. In the first ce, one''s affinity for conscious thought-based techniques determined what you would be able to do with the Mind Pce technique.


    The techniques that he nned for Martial Apprentices did not require them to have extremely powerful Mind Pce techniques. They just needed to be able to store tallied data into basic tables and ess it quickly.


    Compared to the sheer amount of information that Rui juggled with, this was nothing. It was less than 0.01% of what he handled on a regr basis.


    He had plenty of ideas about the techniques that he was going to be creating for Martial Apprentices.


    For one, he could have them engage in a very minor and highly diluted level of adaptive evolution as a general all-


    rounder technique. He could have them record and tally his opponent''s actions in a table across the fight to give them a good idea of the configuration of their style.


    How many actions were offensive?


    How many actions were defensive?


    How many were maneuvering-oriented?


    This information, along with an evaluation of physical parameters, should be enough information to allow them to make the most objectively superior strategic decision every single time when ites to their generalbat approach.


    It could allow them to make the most urate decision in regard to how much weight they should put on offense, defense, and maneuvering. How energy-conservative should they be and rough estimates of what the probability of victory was?


    They were low-hanging fruits that yielded results without mentally overloading them with an ocean of information.


    Thus began a long and slow process of creating two separate sses of techniques for explorers and Apprentices. Thetter with Mind Pce-centric thought and the former was simply based on normal observation.


    He needed to slow down on his domain techniques and take his time with them, but in turn, the voidlet techniques were being developed at a rapid speed.


    Because they borrowed so heavily from the VOID algorithm, he didn''t need to think too much about them. That was why the process had be excessively simple.


    Most of his time was spent meditating while he rxed in his Mind Pce, creating simplified algorithms of thought and decision-making that could allow the next generation of Martial Artists to harness thought from the get-go.


    "Damn, I hope these new Martial Artists are grateful to me," Rui grumbled. "I gave them stronger Martial Bodies, stronger affinities for the Master Realm¡­Kids these days are getting everything handed out to them on a silver tter. Justpletely and totally unfair I say."


    Regardless, he pushed through, developing these sets of voidlet techniques alongside his four domain projects.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1666 Immersed

    <h4>Chapter 1666 Immersed</h4>


    The total number of projects that he was undertaking was increasing dramatically. Not only was he taking on four domain techniques that each was difficult and borate enough, but now he was taking on two more sets of thought techniques.


    He was working on more projects simultaneously than he had ever worked on in his life. That was why his progress with each one of them was miniscule.


    Especially Project Reverse Prophet. This project became a scary titan that threatened to cause him failure.


    Regardless, he strived through. Months passed as he continued working on them, mostly meditating or working on his heaven and earth bending while he worked.


    His life became monotonous, yet never dull. His mind was fully invested in the technique projects that he was working on. It increasingly ceased focusing on other matters. The Kandrian Throne War became but a smaller and smaller voice in his head, until it got buried under the countless thoughts he had about his technique.


    He had quickly forgotten about it.


    At the very least, he barely thought about it anymore.


    Part of the reason was because he had taken the opportunity to speak to the Beggar''s Sect before his season-long immersion into his techniques.


    He wanted to request for a meeting with Prince Raul.


    "He''s not in the Kandrian Empire at the moment," Senior Partner Ka of Lambargeau Legal Services had told him many months ago. "His Highness is away on an important matter."


    Rui had stared at her at this revtion. "¡­In the middle of the cold war with the other princes?"


    "The Kandrian Empire is projected to suffer a particrly harsh winter this year," Miss Ka calmly informed him. "Our projection predict a long and heavy blizzard that will envelop the country for more many weeks. While the rich and even the upper middle ss will be just fine, the lower middle ss and impoverished ss of the Kandrian Empire will suffer immensely. High Highness has personally undertaken the decision to procure enough of an import of crucial resources tost everybody months and will distribute them to all those who need it. His goal is to ensure that not a single mouth goes unfed."


    Rui''s eyes widened with surprise. "So much so that he is willing to slow down on his lobbying efforts for the Kandrian Throne War?" N?velDrama.Org copyrighted ? content.


    "The Kandrian Throne War is not as important to Prince Raul as the people of Kandria, Senior Quarrier," Miss Ka had calmly informed him back then. "His Highness cares for every single citizen of Kandria more than he does the throne. Between abandoning the throne and abandoning even a single citizen of Kandria, he would much rather do the former than thetter."


    She had stared deep into Rui''s eyes knowingly. "Such is the endless benevolence that hids in?his heart."


    "¡­He will lose the cold war. He will be able to do less good."


    "He is not a calcting man," She had informed him. "Regardless, you''re wrong."


    Her eyes narrowed. "The People''s Prince will win this war."


    Rui raised an eyebrow. "If he''s not even in the Kandrian Empire, then¡­"


    "Prince Raul does not lobby," She had told him.


    "¡­What?" Rui stared at her dumbfounded.


    "He does not lobby," She had told him. "He simply does what he will¡­and people follow him of their own free will."


    "You''re kidding me."


    "That''s how the Kandrian Ruffians came to be. Not once did he ask someone to join him on his thankless journey of saving the world one person at a time. Yet they do."


    Rui stared at her skeptically, unsure of whether to take her seriously or dismiss her words as rubbish.


    "You should meet him, then you''ll understand," She had told him. "We will inform you when he returns."


    And thus, Rui had gone back empty-handed, before elerating his training efforts to the max, immersing himself in the development of techniques.


    The voidlet techniques developed faster than the rest since he had a timeline for them. He needed to have thempleted, finished, and fine-tuned before the annual Martial fiscal meeting. He will also need to have presented it to the major sects of the Martial Union to prove to them that his Martial Art and Martial Path were truly worth spreading.


    Months passed, and while Rui was immersed in his projects, the Kandrian Empire had moved on from the excitement of having the youngest Martial Senior. The seven princes and princesses continued their efforts to win over as much political capital as possible.


    Slowly, the cold war made progress, step by step. Prince Raijun grew stronger under Rui''s training as he slowly refined his individuality. Fixing micro-ws was something that took time and effort, he could not possibly get away with fixing all of them quickly, even with Rui''s efforts into tutoring him.


    Princess Ranea aggressively continued with her naval and nautical expansions. Several small new port towns were slowly being put together across the coast of the Kandrian Empire as new shipyards were born, increasing the production and manufacturing of ships. This, in turn, increased maritime flux by eighteen percent in a matter of several months, increasing the weight of her faction.


    Princess Rafia continued reeling in corporations and financialpanies across the entirety of East Panama in an attempt to raise money.


    The Randal Faction continued its preparations for war, improving its probability of victory topel more people to their hawkish ambitions.


    The Raemina Faction held even grander balls and banquets as the Minister Prince used her authority over budget to win over even more to her call.


    The Underworld Prince did not sit stationary either. The Six Dons mobilized the entirety of all their assets and power to draw in as much support from certain liberal parts of the government as possible, appealing to greed as opposed to ideology.


    Prince Raul, on the other hand, was missing. Nobody had seen him at all.


    Yet time waited for nobody.


    In just a blink of an eye, nine months passed.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1667 Happenings

    <h4>Chapter 1667 Happenings </h4>


    "Huff¡­" Rui heaved a sigh, exhaling mist, looking around.


    The Jrava Mountain Range had be buried with snow. The skies had been blurred with an endless dark grey and the white winds of the blizzard that had consumed it and more.


    Winter had alreadye and was well underway, and it was shaping up to be quite bad. Snow had already begun piling up across the entire nation in great amounts. Snow fell generously most of the day, most days, inconveniencing the local people.


    Some days yielded as much as several feet of snow, paralyzing a lot of sectors of the nation. Of course, the Kandrian Empire had already taken measures. Martial Apprentices across the entire nation were mobilized by the Ministry of Domestic Affairs and the Martial Union. Despite the enormous snowfall, streets were rapidly cleared, as were clogged residences and homes. The more-than-hundred thousand Martial Apprentices in the Kandrian Empire were easily up to the task of ensuring that the snow didn''t get in people''s way.


    The cold war slowed down in the face of the face of a blizzard that was shaping up to be a generational nightmare. Rui wasn''t particrly worried, of course, not for the Quarrier Orphanage nor for himself. With Max and Mana alone, the snow wasn''t a problem. With Rui, even if it snowed a hundred meters every day, they would be unharmed.


    Still, Rui found that he didn''t even need to lift a finger this time. Soon before winter began, the orphanage and various other settlements across the Kandrian Empire were approached by groups of young people offering various necessities and supplies to the impoverished. Food, cooking oil, firewood, clothing. Everything they could ever need.


    It was free of cost. When inquired, they proudly revealed that they were the Kandrian Ruffians.


    It appeared that Prince Raul had seeded in his procurement of the necessary supplies for the Kandrian people.


    Yet, Rui had gotten no word from the Beggar''s Sect about the prince''s return. Did it take nine months to simply sign some supply contracts? And if the supplies had been procured, why hadn''t he returned to the Kandrian Empire?


    Rui wasn''t sure, but he hadn''t let it stop bothering him for long. In the past nine months, he had been very busy. For one, he had been working on his four domain projects that had been proceeding smoothly.


    He had gained a greater intuitive understanding of what the fruits of his effort would be like whenpleted. He had worked on many original technique projects in his life as a Martial Artist, and most of them had been sesses. Yet those past experiences had allowed him to gain a sense of how fruitful a project was.


    For these four domain projects, he was quite hopeful and enthusiastic for most of them. He had already created proof-of-concept prototypes for three out of the four projects. This was a great sign that each of the three was quite viable.


    He was less enthusiastic about Project Reverse Prophet. He was starting to realize how immense of an undertaking it was.


    ''I may not be able toplete it along with the other projects,'' Rui realized.


    As far as he could tell, he had barely made two percent of progress. Even when he took into ount the fact that he was working on other stuff, it was still extremely slow. He couldn''t even imagine how much time it would take toplete the entire project.


    Yet out of all the three projects, the one that had the most promise to him was clearly Project Reverse Prophet.


    The project hid an immense amount of potential. More so than perhaps any other technique project he hade across in the past. The prospect of extracting the information of the past to empower his ability to extract the future was too alluring for him.


    Yet it was difficult because the difficulty was proportionally high; the sheer amount of data that he needed to process was something else entirely. He wasn''t entirely sure if this was viable.


    For now, he had decided to work on it. There was no point in wondering about the viability of the project this early on; he would just have to give it a fair shot.


    He was d that the other three domain technique projects were not nearly as hard to progress in as this one.


    As expected, the one that was ted to bepleted first was Project Malevolent Kitchen. It definitely progressed smoothlypared to the rest and did not require anything particrly revolutionarily new. The only challenge he was having was mastering canceling out the vectors of all the converging sounds. In other words, he needed to go for the opposite of what he did with Transverse Resonance. He needed to engage in destructive superposition to ensure that the waves canceled each other, bing non-directional and unordered.


    Only then would it be heat. The great part of this technique was that it bypassed conventional durability significantly. Simply having tough flesh, hard bones, and strong muscles was not enough to avoid being inflicted with damage.


    He thought back to Senior Janeau, the defensive Martial Senior that he had killed in the Great Forest of Hypnonarak. That Martial Senior had withstood all of Rui''s attacks without so much as a scratch. Rui needed to use his greatest assassination tool, Sympathetic Death Lance, to kill the man.


    Now, Rui would be able to do with the domain technique alone. He wouldn''t need to wait all that time, striking his head countless times with trial and error, hoping to reach the right resonance frequency.


    He could just use his domain technique to literally cook his opponent inside out. The longer the fight went, the more damage they would be. It would be especially damning when Rui reached passive mastery of domains, using domains while fighting normally. They would be passively incurring damage from his domains as well as his close-quartersbat.


    The other two projects, on the other hand, had some interesting progress.


    This chapter upload first at  N?velDrama.Org copyrighted ? content.

 Chapter 1668 Progress

    <h4>Chapter 1668 Progress </h4>


    In the past nine months, Project Skyfall and Speed Prison had made optimistic progress considering the fraction of time that he was limited to working on them. For Project Speed Prison, he had discovered the manner of heaven bending needed to alter the drag force and drag coefficient of the atmosphere within his domain.


    This meant that he had already found the solution to the biggest problem. Now, all he had to do was master applying it within arge area and embed the heaven bending into his muscle memory.


    This, unfortunately, was raw and hard, repetitive training that could not be skipped. He was going to have to put in effort in order to dere the projectplete and a sess. One of the things that he wasn''t the most fond of was the fact that there was little to nothing he could do to speed it up, but there always were elements that could not be elerated.


    Of the three, Project Skyfall was definitely shaping up to be a bit more of a challenge. Redirecting vectors to converge them onto a single target was definitely an ambitious challenge.


    Yet it did not deter him. In the past three months, progress with all three projects was satisfactory, considering that he could only dedicate half his time to them.


    The other half, however, went to the voidlet techniques.


    He had sessfully started andpleted each of those projects in the past nine months, much to his satisfaction.


    He had divided them into two sets: one for explorers and one for Martial Apprentices. He didn''t bother creating a set for Martial Squires and Martial Seniors. That defeated the purpose of even doing all of this.


    By giving explorers and Apprentices elements of adaptive evolution, he was essentially nting a seed. Hoping that when these explorers and Apprentices became Squires and Seniors, these seeds that he would soon be nting would have grown into mature trees. He was content nting seeds and letting them grow in their own unique ways so he could one day refer to them and gain inspiration for new directions to take adaptive evolution. Material ? of N?velDrama.Org.


    Each of the two sets had four thought techniques: one all-rounder thought technique and one technique for offense, defense, and maneuvering. Eight techniques would have honestly been far too much to undertake, but almost ny percent of the work was alreadypleted in the VOID algorithm. He just needed to trante it properly.


    The explorer techniques were simplistic, simr to what he himself was using before he became a Martial Apprentice.


    The Martial Apprentice techniques, however, involved a little data analysis. He was actually quite proud of what he had managed to cook up. Highly simplified applications of the Mind Pce to store and analyze data in efficient forms.


    The eight techniques were ready for presentation to as many of the Martial Sects of the Martial Union. All he needed to do was demonstrate the impact of his thought-based techniques. As long as the techniques were powerful enough, they would be widely supported.


    Of course, because he had only created four kinds of techniques, he wouldn''t be able to earn the support of all the sects. But he didn''t need to; he just needed to secure enough support to ensure that the Martial Union.


    He was nning to hold a presentation where he would be inviting the Fire, Lightning, and Earth Sects to attend, along with the Bnce Sect and other sects that were all-rounders and did not lean strongly in favor of one field of Martial Art or the other.


    He also needed to invite the Breathing Sect. He had cut a deal with Master Vericita in regard to mutual support over the initiatives that both sides were proposing. As long as Master Vericita found his techniques to be meritorious of their support, he would get it in the annual fiscal meeting of the Martial Union.


    All he had to do was figure out what was the best way to convince them of the value of his techniques. If he left a bad impression on them while he was presenting the techniques, they would probably not offer him as much support.


    "Hm, I should probably leave all the nitty-gritty details of the presentation to the Martial Union," Rui mused.


    There was no point in getting involved with useless things like logistics. What he needed to do wase up with apelling manner of presentation. He had managed to do thatst time, but s, there were little to no ways in which he could possibly replicate the same form.


    For one, the Hungry Pain presentation waspletely different from the ones that he was about to embark on. In the case of the Hungry Pain technique, the value of the technique had already been proven; all he did in the presentation was exin how it worked. It was inherently scientific and theoretical in its objective.


    This time, however, he had yet to prove that his voidlet techniques were worth the investment.


    Taking a theoretical approach was not optimal. Especially when his target audience was Martial Masters. In the Hungry Pain presentation, the core target audience was actually not the Martial Masters so much as the experts that they had brought along. He needed to provide apelling exnation of the utility of the technique to satisfy the anxiety of the Martial Union in using a technique that they did not understand.


    This time, the Martial Masters were truly the core targets. Since they were the voting constituents of the fiscalmittee and had the power to decide whether or not Rui would be a part of themittee from here on out, they also would decide how important his techniques were to the future of Martial Art and whether they would be able to increase the number of Martial Masters in the Kandrian Empire in the future.


    It was time to put together a n that would allow him to dazzle those elder Martial Masters.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1669 Return

    <h4>Chapter 1669 Return</h4>


    ''Given that my targets are Martial Masters, I need to curb the amount of theory in my presentation. I cannot impress them with words,'' Rui realized. ''I need to demonstrate the power of my thought techniques in real-time. I need to show them just how powerful even a fraction of my Martial Art is.''


    He could bring arge board with an array of flow charts, tables, graphs, and pie charts. But they would get bored and lose track of his exnations of the voidlet techniques.


    ''A demonstration, hm?'' Rui smirked as an interesting idea came to mind. ''A demonstration it is.''


    He finalized the idea then and there, for he couldn''t think of a single thing that would impress them. It wasn''t long before he began implementing it. He quickly contacted the Martial Union, informing them of his presentation and his basic requirements for them.


    Naturally, the Martial Union enthusiastically agreed, as it immediately began preparing for the event on the date that Rui had specified. From eagerly setting the time and the ce to any and all requirements that Rui had, they readily agreed to all of them withoutint.


    If anything, it seemed that they were even more eager than Rui was for this presentation, which was a good sign of how eagerly they had been waiting for this day. As for the invitations, he purposely undertook them himself, reaching out to contact the Fire, Lightning, and Earth Sects, among others.


    "Oh, you''re holding another presentation, eh?" Master Iskan of the Fire Sect grinned when Rui visited the immenselyrge training estate of the Fire Sect. "Then I shall partake in it this time, my young friend! Your proposal is entertaining. We shall ensure that we do as you say so that you can demonstrate the power of your techniques!"


    The friendly, overzealous Martial Master was also the one who had attended his Hungry Pain presentation as a representative of the Fire Sect. He had dered his friendship with Rui back then, so Rui had expected a positive response.


    The same came to be true for the remaining three major sects.


    The Earth and Lightning Sects were also receptive to his invitations without any surprise.


    The Ranged Sect and the Breathing Sect also were quick to eagerly ept his informal invitations to them.


    "I am looking forward to seeing what you have cooked up," Master Ceeran smirked with an intrigued expression. "We shall adhere to the arrangements that you have requested of us."


    "We are quite interested in the thought-harnessing techniques of your adaptive evolution, Martial Path," Master Vericita smiled affectionately as she petted his head when he visited her. "Do well my child, and we shall fully support you."


    With the several sects bagged, he had already rued a sizable guaranteed audience. He was sure that other intrigued Martial Sects would show up because of all the hype around him in general. That was fine, he had already gotten enough, he didn''t need to drag every single Martial Sect under the Sun to the presentation.


    A week passed as the date of the presentation arrived. Rui had been fully zoned into the matter of the presentation, and almost nothing could drag his attention away from it.


    Almost nothing.


    Prince Raul returned to the Kandrian Empire.


    News of his return had spread like a wildfire of extraordinary intensity. Not even Rui''s return to the Kandrian Empire had caused such a reaction.


    Celebrations. Parties. Local festivals. Myriad decorations featuring his face had been put up across the entirety of the Kandrian Empire. The entirety of the popce of the Kandrian Empire had erupted in a celebration that shook the nation.


    "Big brother! Did you hear the news?!"


    "Prince Raul has returned to the Kandrian Empire!"


    Max and Mana excitedly told him about the news when he returned from a long day of training from the Great Jrava Mountain Range.


    "What''s going on here?" Rui frowned as he saw many firecrackers and rockets bursting in the sky.


    "Big brother, can we go to the weing parade?"


    "I want to go to the weing parade!"


    Even the Quarrier Orphanage and the various homes that had formed around it were up in celebration at the return of the People''s Prince.


    Despite the harsh winter and blizzards in the nation, the citizens of Kandria were determined not to allow it to stop them. After all, it hadn''t stopped Prince Raul from helping them when they needed it.


    "The mayor of the town of Hajin has announced a day off in honor of the People''s Princeing back home."


    "The capital town of Vargard has announced a fair to be held in the town for the Prince''s return too. Can we visit that?"


    "There''s also one being held in the town of Fenia. We should go for that, too!"


    "Idiot, we can''t go to two fairs at the same time!"


    Rui stared in amazement at the domestic and national ruckus that the return of the People''s Prince had caused across the entire nation. Prince Raul had more of a presence in the nation than every single other prince and princessbined!


    Even the crowds that Princess Ranea had drawn did not evoke as much energy as Prince Raul did. She had organized events like the inauguration of the Karokann, but when Prince Raul came, the citizens organized events for him!


    That showed the sheer amount of devotion that he had earned from every single citizen. Rui had understood that on paper, but seeing it actually unfold before him was quite amazing. This was a result of many years of personal effort in the groundwork. He visited each town personally and engaged with the many citizens personally. It appeared that he was more fruitful than Rui had previously given it credit. Material ? of N?velDrama.Org.


    He found it to be a pity that the prince had returned at a time when he was truly preupied with important matters like the presentation of his voidlet techniques, but he definitely was eager to meet the People''s Prince as soon as possible.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1670 Commence

    <h4>Chapter 1670 Commence</h4>


    While the nation erupted into celebration for the return of the People''s Prince, Rui immersed himself in the preparations for his presentation. He needed to make sure that he had everything he needed to impress all the major and minor sects.


    While Master Ceeran had spread awareness about Rui''s Martial Art potentially increasing one''s affinity for the Master Realm, it wasn''t as though that was instantly enough to convince everybody. The other sects had plenty of Martial Masters as well; the word of one Martial Master, that too someone as young as Ceeran, was not going to instantly sway their mind. The only ones who had been swayed were those who had already had their eyes on Rui Quarrier and were optimistic of what he was capable of.


    He needed to make sure he dazzled all of them.


    Soon enough, the day of the presentation arrived.


    The Martial Union had taken over all the logistical requirements. The avenue, the things that Rui requested, and an appropriate seating arrangement for the Masters were all deftly prepared by a dedicated staff for the meeting. Please check at N/?vel(D)rama.Org.


    Rui was grateful that he didn''t once need to intervene in these tiring matters. He simply focused on everything that he himself needed to do.


    He waited in a little open-air arena prepared for him, opening his eyes when he felt a presence descend from the sky.


    "Master Ceeran, I''m d you could make it," He calmly addressed him. "I wouldn''t dare to miss it," Master Ceeran smiled. "Not to mention, my reputation is on the line as well."


    Rui smiled slightly. "Perhaps it would have been prudent not to put your reputation on me."


    "If not you, then nobody else qualifies either," He smiled, turning away. "Good luck."


    He took one of the seats prepared for him, not disturbing Rui any further. Yet the flow of iing Martial Masters did not stop. "Do well, my child," Master Vericita wished him as she petted his head. "I look forward to your performance!" Master Iskan grinned. Beside him was a Martial Senior.


    Rui narrowed his eyes.


    A powerful one.


    "I''m d that you have decided to take this step, Senior Quarrier," Master Zentra calmly told Rui when he arrived. "As I told you long ago, I believe in investing in the future. Show me the future, Rui Quarrier."


    "Thank you, Master Zentra."


    Rui''s eyes lit up with surprise as an unexpected guest made an appearance. "Headmaster Aronian."


    "Hmhmhm¡­" He chuckled mutedly as he descended from the sky before Rui. "I seem to have caught you off-guard."


    "I didn''t expect you toe here as well," Rui replied surprised. "Why wouldn''t I? Your Martial Art is being seriously evaluated as a foundational field for the explorer students and Martial Apprentices in the Martial Academy," The Headmaster exined. "It is within my purview, and as such, my perspective will carry much weight. Ensure you seed."


    Rui nodded. Soon enough, all the relevant Martial Masters had arrived. A handful of Masters from each sect had deigned to take part in spectating Rui''s presentation. It was time to begin.


    "Distinguished Masters, I am grateful that all of you have taken the time to attend my presentation," Rui began. "I promise that you will not regret your decision. I do not intend to present a boatload of theory. Nor do I intend to convince you of the value of my techniques through words. I shall prove it right here and now. I am grateful that each of you has fulfilled my request to help me prove to you that my techniques are worth your support."


    He nced at the three grade-thirteen Martial Seniors that stood behind the Martial Masters of their sect. Their presence there that day was rather important.


    They were going to prove that his techniques were important.


    "Then, let us begin without further ado," Rui announced. "Would the chosen Martial Artist of the Fire Sect make his way onto the arena?"


    The Martial Senior that hade from the Fire Sect was a woman with eyes so sharp that they could cut one where one stood. Her body was well-built and highly athletic, yet not overly muscr. Cleanly chiseled abs were exposed underneath her dark sports bra. "Have you been informed of the limitations?" Rui asked. "No Martial Heart, no breathing techniques, no supplementary techniques, no Martial Mind prototypes, no body transformational techniques, victory by knockout or submission," She growled back.


    "Correct," Rui nodded. "Let us begin."


    She took an interesting stance. Her leg stretched behind her as she crouched, akin to the manner a sprinter might. Her right hand balled into a fist, curling back as she tucked it at her twisting waist. Boundless energy coiled in her body, preparing a blow of titanic power.


    He stared at her as he began analyzing her in ordance with the voidlet techniques, not the VOID algorithm.


    This was part of the n. In order to show the three major sects the value of his techniques, he needed to demonstrate the voidlet techniques augmenting each of the three fundamental styles ofbat.


    Thus, he had asked them to bring Martial Seniors with stronger Martial Bodies from their sects. He would prove the value of his techniques by fighting against a stronger-bodied chosen warrior. Doing so would allow him to demonstrate the power of the voidlet techniques against all three major fields against Martial Artists of their choosing while also showing them how the voidlet could be used offensively, defensively, and in maneuvering.


    It was the cleanest manner of demonstration of his prowess with the highest credibility. He didn''t know anything about his opponents, while his opponents knew of him, both in preparation and because of his unparalleled fame as a Senior.


    The Martial Heart and breathing techniques had been restricted maximally so that the result would be more relevant to explorers and Apprentices. These were who the techniques were meant for.


    So what would that say about him if he used his voidlet techniques to win each fight domineeringly?


    Her eyes zed with determination and battle lust, as befitting one of the Fire Sect.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1671 Stance Evaluation

    <h4>Chapter 1671 Stance Evaluation</h4>


    Her stance was transparent. Frankly, he didn''t even need to use systemized thought to deduce her fighting style and intentions.


    ''Legs positioned to minimizeg in the transition to sprinting,'' He noted. ''It can be inferred that she''s going to be rushing at me the moment this fight begins. On top of that, a coiled upper body for maximal torque for a punch, based on the balled fist. So, a sprint and full-powered blow from the get-go, hm?''


    Those weren''t the only inferences to be made.


    ''She''s not worried about the gaps in the defenses of her stance. She doesn''t appear to have highly conditioned durability, either. Thus, it appears that she''s going all out on her offense, disregarding defense, which means¡­'' Rui made his choice in ordance with the stance evaluation system.


    His arms rose up defensively as he spread his legs, dividing his weight equally. This was a stance that favored bnce and stability without putting too much weight on maneuvering.


    "Come," Ruimenced the battle.


    She didn''t hesitate. WHOOSH!


    She propelled herself forward at tremendous speeds, leaving behind a sonic boom in her wake as she raced forward toward Rui. Material ? of N?velDrama.Org.


    BOOM!


    Her powerful blow crashed into his propped arm with overwhelming momentum. Yet her eyes widened as she felt the impact disappearing even before it could bloom. It was like water being drained away into a drain hole in a tub.


    POW POW POW!


    Rui sted her with a barrage of blows after dispelling the impact of her attack cleanly with Flux Earther. She barely managed to block the sharply-timed swift attacks with her guard.


    Yet¡­


    VMMM!


    "Urgh!" She grimaced


    Reverberating Lance permeated the impacts deep. Without the Martial Heart and without his stamina drained, the gap between their bodies was smaller. Without that gap, many Martial Seniors would never have been able to contend with Rui at all.


    His application of power was too sublime to be ovee without anything other than a significant power gap. This was even when he wasn''t using the VOID algorithm but even a greatly inferior voidlet technique.


    Yet she wasn''t done.


    "HRYAH!" A barrage of flowing attacks sted into him. BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM!


    Each of them was drained to the earth as Rui cleanly timed Flux Earth each time, draining the power of each of her blows and and transmitting them back to earth each time. He became a living conduit of flowing power.


    Her expression intensified as sheunched a fearsome kick at his head.


    WHOOSH!


    Rui cleanly crouched,unching a sweeping kick as her angle.


    BAM!


    She ignored the impact, redirecting her high kick into a powerful axe kick.


    BOOM!!


    Rui leaped away, barely evading the thundering impact.


    Yet she had no intention of letting him get away.


    "HAH!"


    BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM!!


    She wasn''t able to use breathing techniques, but those weren''t the only ways to supplement and augment striking power. Her powerful legs pushed forward, parallel with the ground, driving her fists with twice as much power as when she raced after him.


    The barrage of blows continued for quite a while.


    They only grew stronger.


    BOOM! BOOM BOOM!


    Rui''s eyes sharpened with intensity.


    Her blows shook the ground even as he dispersed them into thends beneath their feet. Not even Flux Earther could fully disperse them.


    WHOOSH!


    Her eyes widened as her blow struck an empty image.


    A feint. A chill crawled down her spine as she immediately retreated.


    Yet, it was toote.


    BAM!


    A swift, short blow cleanly crashed into her jaw, violently rocking her head and rendering her disoriented and dizzy. Rui was not generous enough to ignore such a clean opportunity.


    BAM!


    His kick struck her jaw, causing the blunt force trauma to exceed the limiting threshold.


    THUD!


    She fell to the ground, unconscious. He heaved a soft sigh, turning to the spectating Masters. "I''m sure I don''t need to exin to your insightful and sharp Masteries what happened this battle. Application of power. Timing. cement. This is what the voidlet techniques help optimize. With an urate system of thought, it increases the user''s ability to make the right decisions. Its utility against offensive Martial Artists was demonstrated well in this battle."


    He turned to the Martial Senior of the Earth Sect. "Let us begin the demonstration against defense."


    The Martial Senior of the Earth Sect walked into the sparring arena as he eyed the Fire Sect Martial Senior, who was being carried away. He turned towards Rui with a wary expression.


    The domineering demonstration of the previous round, in addition to Rui''s immense prestige in the Kandrian Empire, put a lot of pressure on his back. He also felt inferior when he considered that Rui had already reached his grade of power at the mere age of thirty. The fact that he had broken through to the Senior Realm seven years ago was truly shocking. He was facing a real prodigy who shined so bright that nearly every Martial Sect in the Kandrian Empire, including his, lusted after the young man.


    "Are you familiar with the rules?" Rui asked.


    The man nodded, reciting the limitations of the match. "Well then," Rui took a neutral stance. The defensive Martial Senior followed suit, taking a fortress of a stance. Hisrge barrel arms came to the forefront, guarding his abdomen as he centered his legs close to his body. He gave the impression of a dense, thick fort wall.


    Rui''s stance shifted as he analyzed the man''s. ''Given his stature as a defensive Martial Artist, his defense is mostly passive,'' Rui realized. ''Though centered legs is a stance that favors maneuvering rather than bnce and stability.''


    If his opponent''s defense was mostly massive, then Rui couldn''t focus too much on maneuvering, though his offense could not be forsaken either.


    This time, Rui focused on speed and power more than anything else. Yet that wasn''t all; no defense was perfect; Rui was already able to see ways in which he could break through the man''s armor.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1672 Future

    <h4>Chapter 1672 Future</h4>


    "Let''s begin," Rui narrowed his eyes as he raced in, preparing a powerful attack.


    BOOM!!


    A powerful Flowing Canon crashed into the man''s guard, rocking it where he stood.


    Yet it held firm.


    Rui raised an eyebrow as the man held on strong, impressed by his resilience.


    Yet he was far from done.


    WHOOSH


    He smoothly swirled to the side,unching a swift upper kick to the man''s head.


    BAM!


    The man barely managed to shift in time, blocking the powerful blow with a guard. Yet the impact imbnced him slightly. Reverberating Lance permeated the impact through his guard, hurting him despite it.


    BAM BAM BAM!!!


    Rui sted the man with an onught of blows and attacks. Each of them rattled his guard, but more than anything, he was constantly forced to shift his guard, for Rui never once attacked in the same ce.


    His guard was as hard as esoteric rock; the power of his Martial Body was higher than that of Rui''s, so he would never be able to break past his guard with straightforward shes.


    That was why he focused his stance just enough on maneuvering such that he could constantly shift around and target his weaknesses and vulnerabilities.


    As tough as his guard was, it was also heavy. It wasn''t easy for him to shift it around constantly.


    BAM BAM BAM!


    The man gritted his teeth as he constantly stepped around, trying to adjust to Rui''s maneuvers.


    Yet Rui had no intention of slowing down.


    He didn''t speed either, he just maintained the pacing and patterns of striking that he normally did.


    Time passed as the defensive Martial Senior grew increasinglyfortable with dealing with Rui''s offense.


    That was his biggest mistake.


    WHOOSH!


    His eyes widened as he realized he had shifted his guard preemptively in anticipation of an attack from the rear.


    His prediction was wrong.


    SPLAT!


    "Gah!" The man screamed in pain as his eyes bled.


    Rui had cleanly jabbed him in the eyes, making them bleed.


    BAM!


    The abrupt pain from the wound had caused his guard to be dismantled, giving Rui a clear path to victory.


    CLASP!


    His arms coiled around the man''s neck and head, squeezing extremely hard.


    It was over rather quickly.


    He turned to the spectating Martial Masters. "This battle highlighted the ability of the system of thought to capitalize on the shorings of the opponent, to stress and strain them to the point of causing the opponent to eventually make a blunder. This is the blunder induction system."


    It was a simple philosophy of a strategy that Rui had codified into the earliest iterations of the VOID algorithm before he had ventured to create the pattern recognition system.


    It was also the basis of the set of voidlet techniques he had created.


    "Imagine if every Martial Apprentice was able to fight so strategically. So thoughtfully," Rui remarked. "That is the value that these techniques are able to make."


    The Martial Masters listened to his exnations with intrigued expressions.


    It was true that if every Martial Apprentice fought in this manner from the very get-go, by the time they reached the Senior Realm, their affinities for the Master Realm would already be much higher.


    "Alright, let us get to the final battle," Rui calmly replied after having consumed a potion to restore his stamina.


    He turned to the Martial Senior of the Lightning Sect.


    It was not Kane, unfortunately.


    But then again, it was perhaps for the better. He knew Kane''s patterns too well; he might subconsciously use the predictive model, which would contaminate the demonstration.


    The Martial Senior of the Lightning Sect was a lean man, which was to be expected. He silently took a light-stepped loose stance that allowed for free-flowing maneuvering.


    Rui took a defensive stance, this time with a knowing expression. "Let''s begin."


    WHOOSH!


    Immediately, the maneuvering-oriented Martial Artist raced forward, yet as he approached Rui, he swiftly swirled around for his back, aiming for his vulnerability.


    It was a simr strategy to the one Rui had just employed in the previous fight. Yet Rui was not nearly as slow as his opponent.


    POW POW POW!


    He managed to block the barrage of blows cleanly. Yet his opponent was unperturbed, turning to different points of entry to inflict damage on Rui.


    POW POW POW!


    The battle took on a rather dynamic turn as Rui circled about a single spot as the maneuvering Martial Artist buzzed about him like a bee, seeking to inflict as much damage onto his vitals as possible.


    FLICK!


    The maneuvering Martial Artist smirked as he managed to inflict a cut on Rui''s body before he could guard against it.


    Yet he wasn''t done. N?velDrama.Org exclusive content.


    WHOOSH!


    He elerated into a blur, circling around Rui at immense speeds, throwing many swift and short blows as he pushed Rui to defend against as many as possible.


    His maneuvers grew aggressive as he confirmed Rui''s passivity, growing quicker and faster in hisbos.


    SPLAT!


    A triumphant grin emerged on his face as he managed tond a deep gash on Rui, swiftly leaping away.


    CLASP!


    Yet he could only widen his eyes as Rui managed to catch his hair just before it slipped away.


    His dark, swirling eyes pierced into the man''s. "Got you now."


    BAM!!!


    He pulled the man''s head down as he sted it with knees, over and over.


    THUD


    He threw the man away when he was done, lest he break his skull. His face was unrecognizable; even his nose had beenpletely shattered, mashed, bleeding profusely as he coughed and gasped.


    "Huff¡­" Rui heaved a sigh, turning to the Masters one more time. "That there was a technique that embodies the philosophy of strategic sacrifice. Calcted sacrifices to deal with opponents that are hard to engage with. While the wound he inflicted was damaging, it was nothingpared to the damage I could inflict if I could actually get my hands on him. Thus, I abandoned all preparation for defense and instead prepared to time as clinch, allowing me to win the fight."


    The Martial Masters thoughtfully considered his words.


    "A future where all Martial Apprentices fight with such thought is a future with more Martial Masters," Rui dered by the end, offering a simple bow. "Thank you for attending this simple presentation."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1673 Afterthoughts

    <h4>Chapter 1673 Afterthoughts</h4>


    His presentation didn''t contain even a hint of mboyance and extravagance. He didn''t want to go for any exorbitance or shiness. He simply wanted to cleanly prove the mettle of the thought-centric techniques that he would be providing to them. There was no need for anything more, and these Martial Masters would probably not appreciate it if he tried impressing them with anything other than Martial Art. It would be seen as a sign of weakness and a concession that his technique wasn''t all that impressive and that he couldn''t rely on a transparent presentation to impress them.


    That was why he abstained from using the Metabody System or the Hypnomatrix. Now was not the time to employ those. Those were so powerful that they wouldpletely defeat the point of the demonstrations.


    In this way, instead, he conveyed the impact of the voidlet techniques.


    He heaved a sigh once the presentation ended as the Martial Masters came over him.


    "Congrattions, that was a solid presentation that disyed the power of thought as cleanly as could be," Master Ceeran praised him with a smile, turning to his peers. "What do all of you think? Didn''t I tell you that he has a special affinity for thought?"


    "Indeed¡­"Master Vericita smiled. "That much is certain. You were gifted with the power of thought. It is rare to see anybody who is gifted with the power of thought pursue Martial Art. Usually, they all be schrs since it is perceived that the schrly pursuit of knowledge is the only manner to apply the talent of thought. You are a rare example of a genius of mind, among other things, who has blessed Martial Art by choosing to be a Martial Artist."


    It was true that the general perception of the world was that Martial Art was a brutish field of body. Only those who were blessed with bodily progress ought to consider pursuing Martial Art.


    Of course, those within Martial Art knew that this was false. And those who knew about the secret of the Master Realm knew that not only was it false, but it was also a harmful and dangerous mindset.


    However, it was not easy to convey the importance of thought without divulging the secret of the Master Realm, and that was something that was absolutely uneptable. Not only would it negatively impact them to learn of the secret of the Master Realm to learn of it before they were worthy of it, but it was also a strategic secret of vital importance to maintaining the dominance of the Kandrian Empire.


    One of the reasons that Senior-level regions and nations like the Derschek Region and Kaddar Region had Martial Seniors and not Masters was that their Martial Seniors did not even know what it took to reach the Master Realm, just as it had been for the first-generation of Masters before they became Seniors.


    Maintaining the secrecy of the Master Realm was absolutely necessary to ensure that the secret never got it.


    Outside of Martial Artists, only the most highly vetted, trusted, and qualified individuals were given the opportunity to learn. It was estimated the number of people who were bestowed with this knowledge in the entirety of the Kandrian Empire did not even approach a thousand.


    That was why the Martial Union had not yet simply bbed about the importance of thought in such a direct and straightforward manner. It was constantly being watched by many forces of the world who would infer the truth if it did something that crude and transparent.


    What was necessary was a more organic way of introducing thought to Martial Artists. Such as a thought technique that was so powerful that every Martial Apprentice would want to master it for the sheer value that it offered to them.


    In this manner, the Martial Union could increase the probability of a breakthrough to the Master Realm without necessarily divulging anything sensitive.


    "Hahaha! That was a good show!" Master Iskan pped Rui on the back. "I have never seen a Martial Artist whose greatest source of strength is the power of thought rather than body."


    "You have validated my support of you, Senior Quarrier," Master Zentra calmly informed Rui. "I shall raise the motion in theing fiscal meeting to induct you into the fiscalmittee. From there on, the matter regarding the propagation of your techniques will be added to the agenda."


    "Thank you, Master Zentra," Rui bowed his head lightly. N?velDrama.Org exclusive content.


    "The Breathing Sect will support your techniques," Master Vericita informed him with a smile. "Our agreement is in effect at the moment. We expect you to keep up your end of the agreement as well."


    "Of course, Master," Rui nodded. "I have no intention of reneging."


    "Senior Quarrier," A powerful elder Martial Artist drew his attention.


    He was of the Earth Sect.


    "It may please you to know that the Earth Sect has decided to support your initiative," The Master informed him calmly. "We are impressed by the thoughtful defense that you have demonstrated against the Fire Sect''s warrior. We believe that it would do the field of defense to introduce this element of systemized strategy that you have demonstrated."


    "Your support is gratifying, Master Frukel," Rui bowed his head lightly. "Mmmm, do well to keep progressing, young man," He remarked lightly before taking off.


    "The Lightning Sect will take the matter regarding your Martial Art into consideration," The Master of the Lightning Sect informed him with an aloof expression before taking off.


    It seemed that he wasn''t able to get a confirmation of support from the Lightning Sect.


    Ah well¡­


    It couldn''t be helped. He hadn''t done the best with portraying how the voidlet techniques would do with maneuvering.


    Martial Masters of other sects found his thought techniques to be worth the investment, however. They all came over one at a time, offering their praise and feedback, as well as the stance of their sects on the matter regarding its stance on his voidlet techniques and its propagation.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1674 The Power of People

    <h4>Chapter 1674 The Power of People</h4>


    Soon enough, the presentation ended just like that. The Martial Masters dispersed, returning to their sects, and Rui was finally left alone with a little bit of peace. He had finished the final deadline that he had left. Thus, he was no longer under any pressure of time.


    He could fully dedicate himself to the four domain techniques that he had been working on for quite some time.


    Yet by the time he returned home, he found an angry Kane waiting for him.


    "Rui!" He red at him. "I know you''re responsible for Princess Rafia wanting to marry me."


    Rui burst outughing as his machinations bore fruit sessfully. "Stopughing!" Heined as Rui wheezed, stumbling around. "I know you''re responsible for that!"


    "Man¡­" Rui finally gathered himself. "That''s fucking hrious."


    Kane massaged his temples, heaving a stressed sigh. "Fae stopped talking to me ever since that happened."


    "What?" Rui burst outughing again. "You have fun with those two. Who knows, maybe you can bag both of them and get a harem."


    "Stopughing!" Kane growled, earning moreughter from Rui. "Good luck," Rui patted his shoulder,ughing as he sky-walked away. He didn''t want anything more to do with Princess Rafia. Her presence freaked him out, and he would rather stay the hell away from anything that involved her. Even though he wanted nothing to do with any of them, he knew that, for the things that mattered to him, he needed to make an effort to meet onest prince.


    He had already met Princess Raemina, Raijun, Rafia, Ranea, and Rajak.


    The only ones he hadn''t met were Prince Raul and Prince Randal. Though Prince Randal had certainly interacted with him using a member of the Hawk Faction, the offer to join them was still open.


    He had never once interacted with Prince Raul.


    This was the final of the seven prime candidates for Emperor and the one that Rui was most hopeful of.


    Prince Raul was the most unique of the seven prime candidates, in many ways, including his personality and temperament, ording to the foundation information that the Martial Union and the Beggar''s Sect, he was truly different.


    On paper, he was the weakest candidate for Emperor. He had the least estimated wealth. He had the least number of Martial Artists. He had the least number of resources and general political capital.


    Yet, he was deemed by everybody to be an equalpetitor for the throne as the others.


    Why was that?


    The answer was simple. He had the most powerful resource of a nation in absolute control.


    Its people.


    If there truly was a power bloc that was absolutely vital to the very existence of a nation, it was the people.


    The Rafia Consortium, the Kandrian Seafare Association, the Martial Union, the Underworld, the Royal Army, and the Ministries of the government. These were the main six power blocs of the other princes and princesses. The cores of their factions.


    Yet they were not absolutely important to the fundamental existence of a nation. Nations existed that didn''t have these power blocs.


    Yet every existing nation had one thing that defined its existence: its people.


    That was what Prince Raul had firmly grasped with his hands. He had the people of Kandria in his hands. Every singlemon man and woman loved Prince Raul like a member of their family. He truly was the People''s Prince.


    Rui recalled one incident that the Beggar''s Sect and the Martial Union both mentioned in their information packages on Prince Raul.


    Eleven years ago, when the Shionel Dungeon had opened up to the rest of the world, the Kandrian Emperor had passed a Royal Bill that would have reduced the subsidies to the agricultural industry to redirect funds to the Shionel Dungeon to procure certain esoterics that were necessary in artifacts and products that weremonly used in the farming industry to allow them to naturally sustain themselves as opposed to relying on bailouts from the government.


    Yet, allegedly, Prince Raul disapproved of the legitive decision to remove support for the average farmer.


    He decided to act.


    With a singlemand, the farmers across the entire nation gathered and united in a protest and boycott of all agricultural production. The Kandrian Ruffians relied on their treasury, which, while much lower than the other six princes and princesses, was more than enough to sustain the farmers in their boycott of any and all activities.


    It was a tant act of defiance to the Royal Emperor. It could even be considered treachery.


    Yet the Royal Emperor was shackled in his ability to act. He could not do something as tyrannical as deploying the army to force the farmers to work against that will; that would be absolutely unprecedented and an even greater sin than Prince Raul''s treachery. It would forever lose him any semnce of cooperation with the farmers of the agricultural industry of Kandria.


    He could not arrest his own son, either. Prince Raul was not only beloved by everybody and their mother, literally but had also earned the absolute loyalty of many powerful Martial Artists.


    Including Sage Farana of the Kandrian Border Patrol Force. The probability that at least some of the Martial Masters and Seniors would defy any legal action against him was high. And if Sage Farana herself decided to disallow his arrest, then it would be an absolute catastrophe. The Kandrian Empire could not allow a conflict between Martial Sages to unfold in the Empire. That was absolutely not tolerable.


    He could not do anything to the farmers, he could not do anything to Raijun, he could not do anything to the Kandrian Ruffians that had embedded themselves amongst the people, indistinguishable. The Royal Emperor was forced to rescind the Royal Bill lest the Kandrian Empire be consumed by what was an increasingly intensifying civil conflict. In this manner, Prince Raul had overwhelmed the Royal Emperor himself.


    This was why, despite having the least amount of wealth, Martial power, resources,nd, and authority. He was feared by the other six candidates for the throne. N?velDrama.Org exclusive content.


    Such was the power of Raul Viva Kandria.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1675 Seeker of Shelter

    <h4>Chapter 1675 Seeker of Shelter</h4>


    If he truly wanted, he could cripple the Kandrian Seafare Association by manipting the people with their absolute adoration and loyalty to him.


    If he truly wanted, he could cripple the Underworld by cutting off demand for the illegal goods and services that they supplied.


    If he truly wanted, he could cripple Princess Raemina''s ambitions to control the citizens even after she became Empress.


    If he truly wanted, he could cripple the domestic market of the Martial Union.


    If he truly wanted, he could cripple the Royal Army''s low-level soldier count, having them boycott the army.


    If he truly wanted, he could cripple all the corporations that constituted the Rafia Consortium by simply cutting away their domestic market and employees.


    This was a power that terrified each and every single one of them. None of them could impact the others the way that Prince Raul could disembowel their entire faction.


    Yet he didn''t.


    Not once did he employ his almost hypnotic control over the masses to cripple hispetitors for the throne.


    The reason was rather simple. It was not because of strategic considerations or tactical analysis. It was not because of geopolitical and economic reasons.


    It was simple: the people who would be hurt the most if he executed these sabotages would be the people of Kandria and not the power blocs that he would be targeting.


    Crippling those power blocs would mean crippling his citizens even more.


    That was uneptable to Raul Kandria. Thus, he never once employed his power to cripple his sixpetitors and try to leap for the throne even though there was a good chance that he could seed.


    Rui had been beyond overwhelmed by everything he heard about Raul Kandria. It was almost too good to be true.


    There had to be a catch.


    Perhaps his kindness was an borate facade, and he was a corrupt bastard underneath. Perhaps he was secretly exploiting all the people who loved him. Perhaps he was a narcissist who simply lusted for validation and attention.


    Rui was almost certain that something like that is going on.


    "You wish to meet Prince Raul?" Senior partner Ka of Lambargeau Xavier Legal Services raised an eyebrow when he had gone to meet her, looking for a meeting with the prince.


    "Yes," Rui replied, nodding. "He''s finally returned from his endeavors to procure food imports for the impoverished during winter, right? I was hoping I could speak to him."


    "Of course, you can," She replied. "His Highness speaks to everybody that seeks him. Everybody has a ce in his heart."


    Rui raised an eyebrow as he looked at her with an expression of skepticism and disbelief. He knew that the Beggar''s Sect had wholeheartedly supported Prince Raul, yet he couldn''t believe she was seriously saying something that cheesy and embarrassing unironically.


    "¡­Uh huh. So where can I meet him?" Rui furrowed his eyebrow.


    "Currently, he is situated in the shelter town of Varmaria, at the center of the nation," She replied. "Go there, and you shall be able to speed with him."


    "¡­Ok."


    Thankfully, the Beggar''s Sect didn''t charge him with anything for learning that piece of information. They were undoubtedly eager to pull Rui into the Raul Faction. Since, unlike the entire Kandrian Empire, the Beggar''s Sect knew exactly what Rui was capable of.


    They had watched as he singlehandedly annihted the assassination industry of the Derschek Region.


    They had watched as he singlehandedly shut down the Carnil Mafia in the Gereign Region. They knew that he was not someone that they would like as a foe or an enemy. It was best to secure him as an ally and make use of niche and powerful skills as a Martial Senior.


    The shelter town of Varmaria was a town that had been created by the Kandrian Ruffians to house the bottom one percent of the most impoverished people. They supplied these people with not just food and housing but also employed them for basic manualbor. In this way, these impoverished people could not only be fed and housed but also earn their food and housing and be fully contributing members of society.


    Everything that Rui had heard about it was quite good, although he had never actually visited it.


    Traveling there didn''t take more than fifteen minutes for someone as fast as him. He zipped through the sky, leaving sonic booms in his wave as he approached the shelter town of Varmaria.


    "There it is," Rui spotted a collection of settlements and houses.


    Yet just as he approached the town, two Martial Seniors appeared in his path, halting him.


    "Name and purpose of visit," They sternly demanded.


    On their Martial attire was the emblem of the Kandrian Ruffians.


    "Rui Quarrier," He calmlyplied, disregarding their reactions. "I am here for an audience with His Highness."


    They nced at each other before turning back to him. "¡­You may proceed. Do not activate your Martial Heart. It will be interpreted as a sign of hostility, and you will be dispatched with prejudice then and there. The shelter town is under deep surveince and security while it homes His Highness."


    Rui nodded wordlessly as the two Martial Senior guards let him pass, allowing him to enter the town gates.


    He was quite surprised by how well the town was constructed. It was nothing extravagant, but it was clean and gave off a healthy impression.


    He spotted a middle-aged man with golden hair, blue eyes, and dark skin sitting beneath a tree. His clothes were ordinary, the kind that most Kandrians wore. Several children leaned on him, sleeping peacefully as he petted their heads with affection and warmth. N?velDrama.Org exclusive content.


    Rui almost hesitated calling out to him, not wanting to disturb the peace and harmony that he seemed to radiate.


    A serenity that one ought never to disturb.


    He turned towards Rui with a weing smile. "You must be new here."


    "Pray tell," His voice was warm and nurturing. "What is it that one with a hungering void within yourself seeks from a town of shelter?"


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1676 Hunger

    <h4>Chapter 1676 Hunger</h4>


    Rui stared at him, puzzled.


    It wasn''t every day a stranger said that to him out of the blue.


    "You know me?" Rui asked, raising an eyebrow.


    The fact that he made some strange reference to the void when he saw him suggested that he may have recognized Rui.


    "No," The man shook his head, smiling. "But I do know hunger when I see it. I have worked hard to assuage it my entire life, after all. Your hunger is deeper than that of anyone else I have ever seen."


    He eyed Rui''s muscr form. "Yet your hunger is not of food, clearly. It does not lie in your stomach. It is present deep within your eyes."


    His bright, brilliant blue eyes, devoid of darkness, reflected the seemingly endless void of darkness that hid deep within Rui''s eyes.


    "¡­Uh huh," Rui stared at him with quizzical askance. "Say, where can I find the headquarters of the Kandrian Ruffians."


    "At the center of the town," The man helpfully replied with a serene smile. "I hope you find what you''re looking for."


    "Thanks," Rui turned, heading straight into town.


    He didn''t think much of the encounter. Or the man who said strangely profound things. His eyes wandered about as he beheld the state of the people of the town. None of the citizens of the Varmaria seemed hungry or malnourished. If anything, their skin had a healthy luster. Their eyes had a glint of drive and hope. Most of the men seemed to be working manualbor for the construction and maintenance of the town, while women worked inrgemunal kitchens that prepared food for everybody in the town. He even saw agricultural plots eagerly tended to by plenty of people across the entire town. It had appeared that the town had taken on a bit of amunal approach so that everybody could help each other up from abject poverty.


    That was a good approach as far as Rui was concerned. When survival and basic necessities were a struggle,ing together and pooling their efforts allowed them to aplish things and ovee hurdles that they would never be able to do by themselves.


    Once they reached a certain quality of lifestyle and security, they could think about liberalizing the town and establishing property rights and whatnot.


    Regardless, his attention quickly turned to the center of the town. He hadn''te here to admire Varmaria.


    "This must be it," He arrived at a multi-storied building at the center of the town where multiple roads converged. Admittedly, it was the most humble abode for a member of the royal family that he had ever seen. Princess Raemina, Ranea, Rafia, and Raijun lived in absolute luxury inparison.


    It appeared that the People''s Prince did not mind a humble base.


    "Purpose of Visit?" One of the guards asked him.


    "I''m here to visit His Highness," Rui replied. "I was informed that High Highness epted to meet all those that wished to meet him."


    He didn''t think Ms Kaylin was kidding about that part. "He does but¡­he''s not in the office at the moment," The guards told him.


    "Oh? Then where might I find him?"


    "He''s ying.


    "ying?" Rui tilted his head.


    "He''s ying with the children of Varmaria," The guard exined. "Most likely towards the southern gate." Material ? of N?velDrama.Org.


    "ying with chil-" Rui paused, jerking his head with a surprised frown. Turning back to the southern gate that he had entered from. His senses could easily stretch to the end.


    "Him?" Rui furrowed his eyebrows as he beheld themoner middle-aged man patting sleeping children. "No way."


    WHOOSH!


    He swiftly disappeared, weaving through town at rapid paces, quickly reaching the southern gate.


    STEP


    He appeared before the dark-skinned blond man, killing the noise he generated with some heaven-bending.


    "Hm?" The man smiled again as he noticed Rui. "That was rather quick. Have you found what you seek?"


    "Not yet," Rui remarked, eying him more carefully. "What''s your name?"


    The man smiled wryly. "Can I offer a nickname?"


    "Full name, please."


    The man heaved an amused sigh. "My name is Raul Viva Kandria."


    "Your Highness," Rui bowed lightly with an exasperated sigh.


    "Please dispense with such meaningless gestures," Prince Raul''s voice was resigned. "I am not befitting of them. I am but a simplemoner who one day discovered that the blood of the royal family flows in my veins. It is nothing special nor of note."


    "You really should not be here without appropriate security, Your Highness," Rui heaved a troubled sigh as he massaged his temples.


    "Oh, I try, but I am never truly without appropriate security," Raul chuckled. "It''s hard to juke a Martial Master, you see. But they respect my wishes enough to protect me from afar. That is the best I can hope for."


    He heaved a troubled sigh. "They are protective to a fault."


    "It''smon sense, Your Highness," Rui shook his head with resignation. The prince chuckled. "So, what is it that you seek from me?" Rui stared at him.


    The prince simply met his gaze. His eyes were pure and sincere as he locked them against Rui''s.


    The contrast between their eyes was sharp. "What is it that you seek to achieve as prince?" Rui asked. The prince raised an eyebrow as his smile widened. "That''s rather simple. I wish to create a nation that exists for its people, than a nation where its people exist for it."


    His tone grew knowing. "I know what it is that you seek to understand, so I shall not hide it from you against the advice of my advisors. I intend to create a nation where Martial Artists are no longer elevated above the people. A nation can exist without Martial Artists, but it cannot exist without its people. Such a thing cannot and should not happen. Should I be Emperor, I would abolish the Kandrian Martial Pact, and the Kandrian Martial Covenant. That document, in my opinion, is the greatest sin of the founding emperor."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1677 Hope

    <h4>Chapter 1677 Hope</h4>


    "That will cause a civil war," Rui narrowed his eyes. "The Martial Union will not stand for being disenfranchised in such a manner."


    "I shall not allow a war to unfold," The prince shook his head as he slowly extricated himself from the various sleeping children. "A civil war would harm the people of this nation more than anybody else."


    "Then¡­"


    "The path forward in this difficult dilemma is rather simple," He smiled, walking towards Rui, putting his hand on Rui''s shoulder. "What is your name?"


    "Rui. Rui Quarrier."


    "Walk with me, Rui Quarrier," He told him.


    As they walked through town, the many residents lined up the streets, calling out to him with loving adoration. He painstakingly took the time to smile and wave at them individually.


    Rui eyed him with an intrigued expression.


    Unlike the other prince, he didn''t have a hint or shred of royal bearing. His chest wasn''t puffed, nor was his chin raised high. He didn''t have a measure of arrogance in his bodynguage or demeanor. Yet it was difficult to take one''s eyes off him. He possessed a strange luster about him that drew one''s attention. He seemed to glow with light as though his skin was bioluminescent, as though the Sun''s rays bounced off him harder and stronger than they did everything else. His mere presence wasforting and soothing.


    His epting, warm eyes conveyed weing love to everyone in the embrace of its gaze. A gaze that seemed to ept and forgive anybody and everybody it fixed on. It was as though any and everybody could find salvation in his grace.


    Rui shook his head, putting aside such silly thoughts. He was here to evaluate the Prince''s objectives as Emperor and whether they matched up with his own agendas.


    "It must be tiring," His tone grew sympathetic as he directed a pained gaze. "To be bestowed with a mind such as yours."


    "What?" Rui furrowed his eyebrows.


    "You cannot help but think," The prince remarked. "About any and everything that captures your attention. Your mind cannot help but race into an endless chain of thoughts. It cannot help but furiouslybust energy to sustain the sheer force of thought that undoubtedly drives forward your mind every second of every day of your life. You are unable to stop. You are unable to cease the torrents of thoughts that furiously ebby within the depths of your consciousness."


    He paused, turning around as he faced Rui, standing before him.


    His eyes were pained. His voice was ebbing with sorrow. "You cannot stop thinking. A storm of thoughts endlessly ravages your mind, never allowing it to settle in peace. Unable to exist in harmony. Unable to cease."


    He shook his head. "It is not a curse I would wish upon anybody."


    Rui''s eyes widened with shock, shaken by the man''s words. "¡­What?"


    "I cannot help you harness the power of thought. That is something that you''ll have to aplish by yourself," The man remarked. "Perhaps it may be enough to assuage the hunger that rings in your eyes."


    He turned back. "Come, let us head inside and speak in a more private setting."


    Rui stared at him, startled. In all his life, he had regarded the double-evolved intellect that he had gained as a result of going through a second growth of mind when he had already been extremely gifted mentally, even in his previous life, as a gift. A boon. Never once had he considered it to be a curse. The thought had never once crossed his mind. It was so foreign that he was unable to even parse it.


    He felt like somebody had just pped him across the face.


    His attention returned to the prince''s figure as he entered the Kandrian Ruffian''s main office in the town of Varmaria, where all the logistics of the town were maintained. Rui immediately followed him inside and through the various corridors until they wound up at a spacious but modest office.


    "Have a seat," The prince smiled. "So where were we?"


    "You said something about avoiding the civil war that your actions would cause," Rui remarked.


    He didn''t want to continue the conversation that had inadvertently begun after that.


    The prince smiled knowingly. "Is that so? Hm. I do mean what I said. I will strive to create a nation where Martial Artists and people are equal. I will abolish thews that unfairly favor Martial Artists at the cost of the safety and wellbeing of the people."


    "And how exactly do you n to go about that without causing a civil war with the Martial Union?" Rui raised an eyebrow. "By appealing to their better nature," The prince replied with a self-satisfied expression.


    Rui stared at him with a confused expression. "Is that your attempt at a joke? You''re bad at humor. Stick to being saintly."


    "I was not joking, Rui Quarrier," The Prince heaved an exasperated sigh. "I shall personally speak to all the Martial Sages and Masters of the Martial Union. I hope that if we bear our hearts to each other, we can find amon path to the future."


    Rui stared at him like he was a literal alien. "You have a rather borate and persistent sense of humor."


    The prince was unperturbed by Rui''s refusal to even acknowledge his words as legitimate. "I hope that my sincerity and love for them as citizens of Kandria and fellow human beings will be enough to convince them."


    Rui stared at him with unadulterated bewilderment. Out of all the things that any prince and princess had ever uttered to him, this might have been the most absurd thing that Rui had ever heard. It put even Princess Ranea''s ambition of creating a new age to shame as far as Rui was concerned. It was just so mind-bogglingly nonsensical that he was absolutely speechless. His voice failed him. He was unable to make even a single sound; he simply stared at Prince Raul like the man had just spontaneouslybusted out of nowhere.


    This chapter upload first at  Please check at N/?vel(D)rama.Org.

 Chapter 1678 Who Are You?

    <h4>Chapter 1678 Who Are You?</h4>


    Perhaps Prince Raul had been right. Perhaps Rui''s thoughtful nature was overthoughtful and could sometimes be considered a curse.


    If that was the case, then perhaps Prince Raul might have found a solution to it, making mind-numbingly stupid statements that absolutely stunned his mind into paralysis.


    It was as though the sheer stupidity of the People Prince''s game n was so high that it had temporarily short-circuited Rui''s brain.


    He was unable to even parse a thought after the Prince exined his brilliant n to prevent a civil war.


    If this was a hypnotic technique, it would be a grade-ten technique. He doubted that even Master Zeamer had such a powerful hypnosis technique.


    He simply sat in his seat, staring at the People''s Prince with a vacant expression. A small part of him hoped that this was all an borate joke that the prince was pulling to mess with him.


    Perhaps any second now he was going to get up and yell ''LMAO GOTCHA!'', but the rest of him knew that that would not happen.


    The People''s Prince simply stared at him head-on with eyes brimming with sincerity and hope.


    As well as certainty.


    This prince was the most delusional member of the Royal Family. Please check at N/?vel(D)rama.Org.


    At least they understood the gravity of their decision and that oveing the fallout was not going to be easy and would require more than just idly sitting on a throne. They were prepared for what it took to be Emperor.


    "¡­You are clinically insane," Rui managed to squeeze out.


    The prince did not take any offense at those words. His smile saddened as he got up, leaning forward, putting a hand on Rui''s shoulder.


    His pure eyes conveyed an impression of warmth andfort despite the shock his words had delivered. "Ah, my friend. For every ten people who call me a saint, there has always been one who calls me a madman. But¡­"


    He shook his head. "I am neither a saint nor a madman. I am simply connected to my citizens, my people; I am simply connected to the suffering of life. Even to yours."


    A deep sadness engulfed him as he beheld Rui. "Help me help you. The void in your soul is not something that any amount of power in this universe can satisfy. There wille a day when it will consume everything and, eventually, even you. You will never find peace."


    His words weighed down on the world around him.


    "You are able to satisfy it with the power that you supply it. Your astronomic growth as a Martial Artist is able to keep up with its demand. But that won''t continue forever. Some day, you will not be able to satisfy that hunger. When that dayes, it will feed on you, instead, until you lose everyone and everything."


    Rui was too mentally weak at that point, reeling from the shock of the Prince''s political ns, to bother pushing back against the philosophical nonsense that the prince was spouting. "And what would you have me do?"


    "Not even an endless universe will assuage the hunger of your ambition," The prince''s voice took on a sagely luster. "Look inward, not outward."


    His eyes bore into Rui''s. "Who are you?"


    Rui''s eyes widened.


    "What?"


    The prince smiled mysteriously. "You don''t seem to be too aware of why you are hungry."


    Rui raised an eyebrow. "I know where my ambitiones from."


    "And where would that be? What caused such a deep hunger?" The prince asked.


    Rui stared at him. "A famous quote. From a great martial artist."


    "A great martial artist?"


    "The greatest."


    His deration was firm.


    "I see," The prince smiled warmly. "Rather strange, don''t you think?"


    Rui raised an eyebrow. "What is?"


    "A famous quote resulting in a drive so powerful it propelled you to the youngest in the Senior Realm," Prince smiled. "Why do you think that happened?"


    Rui stared at him.


    His expression grew immersed.


    "A famous quote, you said," The prince continued. "If it''s famous. Then surely others have heard of it."


    "Most certainly."


    "Did all of them develop the endlessly hungry void that I see within you?" The prince asked.


    Rui''s eyes widened. "¡­No. Not a single one of them."


    "I wonder why," The prince remarked knowingly. "Why it is that while everybody else who heard this quote went about their day like it was any other, but in you¡­In you, it birthed a void that may very well consume this entire world."


    He gazed deep into Rui''s eyes. "I wonder why."


    "¡­Yeah," Rui''s eyes swam around.


    The man smiled as he patiently waited for Rui to finish his thoughts.


    Rui nced up at the prince with a refreshed expression.


    He recalled what Ms Ka had told him about Prince Raul.


    ''He simply does what he will¡­and people follow him of their own free will.''


    ''You should meet him, then you''ll understand.''


    Rui was able to see why the people of this nation were devoted to him. He possessed a maic aura. One that drew people in.


    He soothed their pain, their anguish. He gave them hope. He cried in their pain and rejoiced in their joy.


    "You¡­are special," Rui remarked.


    Yet his eyes narrowed. "Yet you are unfit for the throne."


    The prince smiled sadly. "You may very well be right. Yet, in this world, we can only do what we believe we ought to. I am driven down my path as you are yours. I pray it leads you where you hope it will, but my heart fears it won''t."


    He stretched a hand out to Rui.


    "If you take my hand, I can promise to be there for you," The prince offered. "I don''t know how much I can help, but I always strive to live up to those who ce their trust in me."


    Rui considered it for a moment before shaking his head. "The Martial Path is a solitary path. You cannot help me. Good luck with the Kandrian Throne War."


    Rui got up, leaving the office and, eventually, the town.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1679 Choiceless

    <h4>Chapter 1679 Choiceless</h4>


    For the first time in a long time, Rui felt depressed. He heaved a sigh, heading home. There wasn''t much that he could do, considering that he had made contact with all seven factions and directly contacted six of the seven candidates for the throne.


    He wasn''t sure what there was left to do. At this point, he could only hope to grow stronger so that by the time the Kandrian Emperor died and the cold war immediately heated into an active one, he would have the power to protect his family.


    A war was iing, and if he couldn''t stop it or find a favorable side to take, then he best ensured that he grew strong enough to protect his family.


    However, there were some things that he needed to take care of before he could do that.


    ''The annual fiscal meeting will start soon,'' Rui realized. It had been a year since it urredst time, shortly after he returned to the Kandrian Empire before he made his choice to nt seeds of his Martial Sect.


    It was time for yet another fiscal budget allocation meeting. This time, a motion to instate Rui as a member of the Fiscal Committee would be raised, and hopefully, Rui could get enough support. Once he was done with that, he could raise the motion to secure a budget for the dissemination of his Martial Art.


    Once that was done, he could pretty much kick back and rx.


    ''Though the budget regarding my future sect will probablye muchter in the meeting,'' Rui realized. The way the meeting worked was a little strange and different from what Rui had expected. It wasn''t as though different drafts of budget allocations were proposed, nominated, and then finally voted on.


    There were several rounds of voting.


    The first round was voting on the budget allocations between offense, defense, maneuvering, supplementary, and misceneous.


    These four allocations covered pretty much all Martial Art. Masters would vote for one of the four, and the share of the annual that each of the four categories would get would be that of the share of total votes they received.


    Thus, if one of them received twenty-seven percent of the vote, they would also receive twenty-seven percent of the budget.


    Essentially, this was a system that was designed to be reflective of the will of the Master Realm of the Martial Union. Please check at N/?vel(D)rama.Org.


    Once the four categories were decided, there would be votes for each individual category on how the budget ought to be allocated within each field to its various sub-categories. The one that Rui was concerned about was the misceneous category. These were for Martial Art that could not be cleanly divided between offense, defense, and maneuvering. For instance, a bnce-oriented Martial Art was equally and simultaneously in affinity with offense, defense, and maneuvering.


    Thus, the Martial Union had decided that it was less messy to give its own category than try to forcefully divide them across the other four categories.


    The three major sects were relevant only in the first round. The Fire Sect would do its best to earn as many votes for offense, the Earth Sect would do its best to earn as many votes for defense, and the Lightning Sect would do its best to earn as many votes for maneuvering.


    While sects like the Breathing Sect would vote for the supplementary choice. Rui wasn''t obligated to vote for the supplementary based on his deal with Master Vericita. He was to vote for the Breathing Sect when it came to voting within the supplementary category.


    This voting session would continue for many rounds until it covered all major allocations. After that, the various research and development departments could choose how to spend the budget allocations themselves.


    Rui found it curious that no Martial Sage took part in this little meeting. Perhaps this wasn''t worth their time. Perhaps they had enough self-awareness and cognizance to realize that their presence would skew things too much in the favor of their sects and other important fields of Martial Art would be disenfranchised.


    Frankly, he found it a pain. But he decided to bear through it.


    In the meantime, it was time to continue through with his four domain techniques. They wereing along nicely.


    He was especially looking forward to the final version of Malevolent Kitchen. He immediately headed to the Jrava Mountain Range, looking forward to training. He just wanted to immerse himself in training and forget about the gross mess of the Kandrian Throne War. He was really frustrated and resentful of the seven prime princes and princesses. Why did each of them have to be extreme in their own ways? Why couldn''t there be any reasonably powerful prince or princess?


    There were other princes and princesses. Yet they were so insignificant that neither the Martial Union nor the Beggar''s Sect felt the need to even acknowledge their existence in the information that they had prepared for Rui. It meant that there was no point in even talking to them. Rui did not live in a fantasy world; he was a pragmatic man for the most part. Perhaps he could be one of the prime princes or the other an edge over their peers, but he could not close the titanic gap between nobody-princes and princesses and the seven prime candidates.


    He shook his head, removing the matter from his head entirely. Weeks passed by as he immersed himself in training with Master Gurren, fulfilling his tutoring obligations with Prince Raijun, and training Master Gurren to master the telescope domain technique that he had prepared for him. The Master had made considerable progress and was on the cusp of mastering it, much to his delight.


    These three matters consumed his entire time for the most part, allowing him to fully hone in on what he needed to do to grow stronger as a Martial Senior and take more steps towards the next Realm and Project Water.


    Soon enough, the annual fiscal allocation meeting had finally arrived.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1680 Arrived

    <h4>Chapter 1680 Arrived</h4>


    The day had finally arrived. Rui felt particrly electric about this than he did a meeting with any of the princes and princesses. Compared to those psychopaths, the Martial Masters of the Martial Union had earned his respect to a far greater degree.


    These were beings who had ascended human limitation in both mind and body. They had mastered body, heart, and mind and reached a truly astonishing level of power. They were so powerful that lesser beings simply weren''t qualified to behold their Martial Art. Those who did would suffer damage to their mind by virtue of the force of hypnosis passively inflicted on them by the Martial Mind.


    They truly earned his admiration, and today, he would be facing almost each and every single Master of the Martial Union as they would decide whether he was worthy to take a seat among them and whether his Martial Art had potential for the future.


    "Nervous?" Master Ceeran smirked at Rui as they headed to the Vargard national headquarters of the Martial Union.


    "I would be lying if I was not nervous at all," Rui heaved a soft sigh. "The Martial Masters of the Martial Union are an enormous source of power for the Martial Union."


    It was thanks to them that the Martial Union was feared. Each and every single one of them possessed the power to bring ruin upon entire geopolitical regions that did not have Martial Masters like the Kaddar Region or the Derschek Region. The Martial Union had nearly a hundred and ten of the hundred and fifty Martial Masters that existed in the Kandrian Empire. Of the hundred and ten, only a hundred actually regrly partook in the annual fiscal budget allocation meeting.


    Masters like Master Gurren simply didn''t care about it and stayed away from it altogether.


    "Don''t be too nervous," Master Ceeran patted him on his back. "None of them are going to try and bully you. It is generally deeply frowned upon for a Martial Master to needlessly bully Martial Artists of the Lower Realms without adequate cause or in retaliation or self-defense. Within the Martial Union and internationally."


    "Well, that hasn''t stopped them before," Rui replied as he thought about Master Krakule and Master Haishi. "Rx, while there are outliers for everything, the vast majority are not willing to sabotage their reputation for light reasons. It would be no different from the condemnation an adult beating up a child would receive," Master Ceeran reassured him.


    Eventually, they reached the national headquarters of the Martial Union in the capital of the Kandrian Empire.


    Rui inhaled sharply as he caught the incredibly vast andrge branch estate. As the most important ce of the Martial Union, they had not held back with its development. It wasrger than the Martial Academies and the other Martial Union branches.


    As they descended, Rui could see streams of Martial Artists sky-walking to and from the Martial Union. There were so many that from a distance, it looked like a small river from a distance.


    Rui could sense Martial Masters among those who did descend from the sky down to the Martial Union.


    Rui didn''t recognize most of them. He had really only met a few dozen Martial Masters of the Martial Union.


    "Oh, if it isn''t the golden boy!" Master Iskan and some other Martial Masters of the Fire Sect approached Master Ceeran and Rui.


    "Distinguished Masters," Rui bowed lightly with a hand on his fist in a greeting gesture in Martial etiquette.


    "Cease that, my friend," Master Iskan waved him off. "The Fire Sect has decided to support you, boy. But that does not mean you are guaranteed to be voted in. If you have not earned the support of the Earth Sect and the Lightning Sect, then you will not be instated as a member of themittee."


    This was a measure that was taken to ensure that sects could not easily induct members who existed solely to bring them more votes. Whoever was inducted needed to earn the approval of the Masters of the Martial Union in general.


    Rui nodded. "I am aware."


    "Good, then let us be on our way." Material ? of N?velDrama.Org.


    They smoothly bypassed all the security check-ins and troublesome matters, swiftly heading in as they met up with even more Martial Masters.


    Master Vericita petted him lightly while Headmaster Aronian smiled warmly. Even Master Krakule gave him a curt nod.


    They entered arge meeting hall deep inside the Martial Union with a thick array of seats in a circle around a central speaker''s podium. Behind them were even more empty seats that Master Ceeran pointed him to.


    "You are amittee nominee, which is why you shall have to sit there until you are voted in or leave if the votes are insufficient," Master Ceeran told him.


    Rui nodded, obediently taking his seat as he tried ignoring the gazes and attention of various Martial Masters.


    It was unnerving because he knew that each and every single one of them had the power to eviscerate him despite his greatest resistance. He was not used to feeling so disarmed in a room full of people. Every day that passed, the number of martial seniors that could defeat him in a battle was reduced.


    He turned his attention back to the assembly hall. Martial Masters came in, often in groups, taking their seats.


    Rui recognized more than he had expected. There were the ones that he was already acquainted and friendly with, but he also recognized some of the bodyguards of the princes and princesses that he had spoken to.


    He even recognized the poison and symbiotic Martial Masters that were with Prince Raijun. They simply nced at him momentarily before taking their seats in the assembly. The Martial Masters definitely behaved more clique-like than he was expecting, but it allowed him to get a good view of the dynamics of the various major and minor sects that would bepeting for resources in the Martial Union.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1681 Bold

    <h4>Chapter 1681 Bold</h4>


    It wasn''t too long before the Masters were fully settled in. A non-Martial Artist entered the room, taking a stand on the podium, smiling at the various Martial Masters. "Distinguished Masters of the fiscalmittee, I herebymence the three hundred and fifty-forth fiscal assembly of the Martial Union. In the interest of saving time, we shall get right down to the agendas of the day. Without further ado."


    The speaker nced down at a list. "The first agenda of the day is proposal AM362, a priority induction motion from Master Zentra."


    Behind him, a screen came to life, disying the details of the official motion.


    "Motion to induct Senior Quarrier as a constituent of the fiscalmittee."


    Nothing had changed, but Rui felt a lot of weight on his shoulders, feeling the attention that the Masters were giving him. He wasn''t the most fond of being the center of attention at such an important meeting.


    "As per protocol, both the proposer of the motion and the constituent nominee are entitled to a speech," The speaker calmly dered. "After that, we shallmence the voting on the matter."


    The speaker turned to Master Zentra.


    "I decline."


    "Very well, then, Senior Quarrier," The speaker turned towards Rui. "Would you like to exercise your right to address thismittee?"


    "Yes," Rui replied, standing up. "I most would."


    "Very well then, I call upon Senior Quarrier to the stand," The speaker nodded. "You have precisely two minutes from the moment you start."


    Rui heaved a deep breath, heading down to the speaker''s stand as he beheld the Martial Masters of the Martial Union. It was almost surreal as they directed their undivided attention.


    Yet his voice cut through the atmosphere, cleaving it in half.


    "The power of thought is greater than you can imagine."


    His words earned a mild reaction from the Martial Masters.


    Not only did he not begin his speech with a respectful address to the gathered Martial Masters, but he had brazenly made a deration that implied he understood thought better than the Masters of the Martial Union!


    "To many of you, thought is merely a Realm of power, an element of your Martial Art," Rui calmly continued. "But to me, it is more than any of you could even begin to fathom. Thought is the source of my power. It always has been. My Martial Mind is yet to bepleted and unlocked¡­but do not presume that limits my understanding of thought."


    He eyes all the Martial Masters in the Martial Union. "You all may have adopted thought, but I was born in it. Molded by it."


    A few Martial Masters widened their eyes, stunned at the sheer audacity of the brazen derations of the impudent Martial Senior.


    "Each of you has a choice," Rui replied calmly, growing more confident. "I offer thought. Not to each of you, no. But to the future of Martial Art. Bodily power is a power that has already been explored to its depths. There isn''t much left to be found. It has reached its limit, and I say that as someone who has made the singr greatest contribution to bodily power."


    His words pricked at many of the Martial Masters who had an affinity for the Squire and Senior Realms rather than the Master Realm. Unfortunately, his statement was rooted in absolute fact. These sects with an affinity for the Squire and Senior Realm were extremely grateful to Rui for the Hungry Pain technique. A fifty-percent jump in power was almost unprecedented historically.


    "And now, I offer to enrich the Martial thought as I did Martial Body," Rui replied. "The distinguished Masters of thismittee is far fromcking in insight. I''m sure each of you understands the weight of my words simply by looking at me, at my mind."


    He had long learned that Martial Masters were able to somehow detect thought or something simr to that. He still didn''t understand how or why, but he knew that Headmaster Aronian had long detected something akin to a prototypical Martial Mind within Rui at a young age.


    "I hope that thismittee of Masters epts my humble offer to spread the seeds of thought in exchange for the resources I desire. I hope that Your Masteries deem me worthy of investment for the sake of the future. Thank you for taking the time to listen to me." Rui brought a hand to his fist, bowing to the Masters, before heading off stage.


    An apuse ensued, yet Rui was unable to figure out how much was obligatory and how much was sincere. N?velDrama.Org exclusive content.


    He had decided to avoid the kiss-ass speeches that they were undoubtedly ustomed to receiving. Instead, he decided to be bold yet truthful. Truthful to an edge.


    Soon, he would find out whether or not he had done a good job. At the very least, he didn''t seem to have angered any Martial Master. He would be sure to have noticed that. It did seem as though they were taken aback, yet it was not easy to scoff his words away because there was more than just an ounce of weight. It was substantiated and even known, especially since he returned.


    From the testimonies of many Martial masters to their own senses and the well-known rumors of the incredibly intricate and almost schrly Martial Art techniques that were rarely seen in the Martial world.


    Considering the records of him doing such things extended to his Apprentice days, it was just a testament to how aberrant Rui was as a Martial Artist.


    He had the capital to say what he did and get away with it.


    Now, it was time to see if it was a good idea to do so. Perhaps he just ruined his chances of getting into themittee with this little bold stunt of a speech.


    It remained to be seen very soon.


    "And now, we shallmence the voting session," The speaker calmly continued. "All in favor of the motion to induct nominee Rui Quarrier into themittee?"


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1682 Outcome

    <h4>Chapter 1682 Oue</h4>


    One by one, hands rose into the air.


    Master Ceeran.


    Master Zentra.


    Master Vericita.


    Headmaster Aronian.


    Master Krakule.


    Master Master Iskan.


    Master Revona.


    Many of the friendly acquaintances that Rui had made were rather quick to make their decision, firmly voting in favor of him. Yet they weren''t the only ones. The entirety of the Fire Sect had voted in favor of Rui, as did the Earth Sect.


    The Lightning Sect was more divided. It appeared that not everybody in the sect was in favor of Rui bing a member of the fiscalmittee.


    The Breathing Sect also firmly supported him, as promised.


    As did the Bnce Sect. N?velDrama.Org exclusive content.


    A few secondster, no more hands flew up.


    "Seventy-seven out of a hundred and one," The speaker quickly counted, announcing the total. "The votes in favor of the motion have crossed the threshold of approval. Therefore, as Committee Speaker, I induct Senior Rui Quarrier into themittee as a voting constituent of the fiscalmittee, effective immediately."


    Rui heaved a sigh of relief as he got past the most difficult phase.


    He was now a constituent of the fiscalmittee of the Martial Union. He was not blind to the sheer weight of this position. It was extremely heavy.


    The Martial Union invested arge majority of its profits after mandatory expenses, profits, and credit interest into research and development.


    It was easily many hundreds of trillions of Martial Credits in total that would all be invested into research and development. Considering that Rui had one vote out of a hundred and two voting constituents, he had the authority to decide where trillions of Martial Credits would be invested.


    It was truly a heavy burden. This was enough wealth to purchase medium Master-level nations. That was what a majority of Martial Masters thought that Rui was important enough to give authority to. They were willing to dilute the share of the budget that their votes represented for the sake of reducing the difficulty of breaking through to the Master Realm in the future.


    He turned to Rui. "Please take seat V5, Senior Quarrier."


    Rui nodded, quickly taking the seat as he fully became a constituent member of the fiscalmittee.


    "In ordance with protocols, you, as a new constituent of the fiscalmittee, may make a proposal that will undergo voting right here and now," The speaker calmly informed Rui. Rui stood up, facing the speaker. "I would like to propose the motion to amend the roster of research and development interests to include technique sets titled ''adaptive evolution techniques'', also known as ''voidlet techniques'' in the Martial Union database as a research and development interest in subcategory five under the misceneous category."


    "The Assembly finds your proposal to be valid," The speaker remarked as his assistants provided him with the prepared information that he required. "As per protocol, this proposal, now dubbed proposal AM363, will undergo voting. All in favor of proposal AM363?"


    Once again, a solid majority of Martial Masters raised their hands, supporting Rui''s endeavor to make his voidlet techniques an interest that could be voted on to receive budget.


    "With a majority of seventy-eight of a hundred and two in thismittee voting in favor of this proposal, thismittee favors this motion. The roster of research and development interests will be amended to include technique sets titled ''voidlet techniques'', effective immediately."


    The screen behind him featured a diagram containing every research and development interest for which themittee would be voting to allocate budgets.


    Rui wondered if it was the most optimal to allow Martial Masters to handle the allocations. It would probably be better if there was an objective statistical model that would allow them to measure the impact of budget allocations and their resulting oues, but he knew that that was never happening. After all, the Martial Union existed by, for, and of Martial Artists. There ought nevere a time when it would find itself at odds with the intentions of the Martial Masters of the union.


    "With that, we have concluded all preliminary proposals," the speaker announced. The next proposal is, of course, the Net Budget Allocation Proposal proposed by thismittee for the fiscal year 534-535."


    The speaker gestured with his arm as the screen behind him changed, featuring a pie chart. "Twenty-five percent of the Martial Union''s ie has been invested in research and development," the speaker exined. "Another nine percent of budget capital has been secured through debt in the form of martial bonds of volunteering martial artists."


    Rui raised an eyebrow. The Martial Union, like all organizations and nations in the world, undertook debt to get forward in its agendas. It issued millions of Martial bonds worth a million gold coins at an interest rate of one percent per annum.


    It appeared that many Martial Masters and perhaps even a Martial Sage had volunteered to bring in an immediate flush of funds.


    "The total budget for Martial research and development this fiscal year is 787,657,847,298,429 Martial Credits," The speaker proposed.


    Rui inhaled sharply at that figure, still reeling from the sheer amount of wealth that was. "Without any further ado, let us begin with the first round," The speaker calmly announced. "The first round of budget allocations are between offense, defense, maneuvering, supplementary, and misceneous. Let us begin with offense. All those in favor of allocation of budget to offensive Martial Art?"


    Twenty hands out of a hundred and two flew into the air.


    Rui nced at all of the Martial Masters who had voted for offense. He spotted Master Ceeran, Master Iskan, and some others that he was vaguely familiar with. It was a no-brainer that these Martial Masters would vote in favor of offense.


    "Twenty votes out of a hundred and two," The speaker noted. "Therefore, thismittee allocates 154,442,715,156,555 Martial Credits for research and development of offensive Martial Art."


    Rui watched as the rest of the first round unfolded, and five categories of research and development interests were voted upon.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1683 Allocations

    <h4>Chapter 1683 Allocations</h4>


    "Twenty-one votes out of a hundred and two in favor of defense. Thismittee allocates 162,164,850,914,382 Martial Credits to the research and development of defensive Martial Art."


    "Twenty-two votes out of a hundred and two in favor of maneuvering Martial Art. Thismittee allocates 169,886,986,672,210 Martial Credits to the research and development of maneuvering Martial Art."


    "Twenty votes out of a hundred and two in favor of supplementary Martial Art. Therefore, thismittee allocates 154,442,715,156,555 Martial Credits for research and development of supplementary Martial Art."


    "And finally, all in favor of misceneous Martial Art?" The speakermenced voting for the final option of the first round.


    Rui''s arm shot up, as did several others. He saw some Martial Artists carrying weapons raise their arms. As did a symbiotic Martial Master and several other Martial Masters he didn''t recognize.


    "¡­Neen votes out of a hundred and two in favor for misceneous Martial Art." The speaker announced. "Thus, thismittee allocates 146,720,579,398,727 Martial Credits to misceneous Martial Art."


    The screen disyed the five allocations behind them.


    Maneuvering had received the highest of them all with twenty-two votes, followed by defense, followed by offense. Yet they were all nigh equal. Supplementary Martial Art received the least, yet that was still an insane amount of money at about one hundred and forty-six Martial Credits.


    "We shall nowmence voting on the various subcategories, starting with the various five levels sub-categories within each category, starting with the maneuvering¡­"


    The members of the Lightning Sect nced at each other warily.


    The Lightning Sect was united in wringing away as many resources from the others as they could, but after that, they were now at odds with each other for the resources that they had collectively wrung away. The Lightning Sect no longer mattered. It had broken down into smaller constituent sects, like the Wind Sect, which Kane belonged to, the Speed Sect, the Step Sect, and several others.


    Rui didn''t really have a stake in the various following voting sessions within maneuvering. He did, however, vote in favor of the Wind Sect for Kane. But it didn''t really matter all that much.


    The same could be said for the voting rounds that came after. He voted for whatever Headmaster Aronian voted for within defense spending, and whatever Master Ceeran voted for within offense spending.


    When the supplementary voting stage came, he firmly voted for breathing techniques, as promised to Master Vercita. Firmly voting for whatever the Breathing Sect voted for and eventually what Master Vericita herself voted for.


    Eventually came the misceneous category. Rui sharpened up as it was finally his turn.


    "The following are the broader sub-categorical research interests of the misceneous," The speaker exined as the screen behind featured a list.


    It features weapon Martial Art, symbiotic Art, bnce-oriented fields, stamina-oriented fields, and, among many others, thought techniques.


    Rui narrowed his eyes. That was his category of choice. The voting proceeded as the speaker went about each sub-category that earned a small number of votes until he came about the sub-category that Rui cared about the most.


    "All in favor of budget allocation to thought techniques?" The speaker calmly asked. Rui''s hand shot up the quickest, followed by many others. Master Ceeran, Master Iskan, Master Zentra, Headmaster Aronian, and Master Krakule also followed suit, voting in favor of allocating budgets to thought techniques. N?velDrama.Org copyrighted ? content.


    Master Vericita and the Breathing Sect kept their word, voting in favor of thought techniques.


    "Twenty-nine votes out of a hundred and two in favor of budget allocation to thought techniques," The speaker calmly announced. "Thismittee allocates 41,714,674,534,932 Martial Credits to the research, dissemination, and development of thought techniques."


    Rui''s eyebrows rose in amazement. Forty-one trillion Martial Credits would be allocated to thought techniques!


    That was an amount that far surpassed anything that he could possibly do on his own. It meant that the Martial Union was about to go absolutely all out on thought-rted techniques. Most likely the research division responsible for it was going to get a shocking upgrade to their annual budget.


    The speaker proceeded to the next round, going one level deeper into each category; this was where things became extremely niche and specific. Specific weapons, specific forms of stamina and their various nuances, different sub-categories of symbiotes. Themittee rigorously allocated budgets to each of the sub-sub-categories.


    Until it eventually reached the sub-categories of thought techniques.


    "Behind me are the various sub-categories of thought," The speaker calmly announced.


    On the list on the screen were ''adaptive evolution techniques.'' Rui scanned hispetition, which, frankly, was not all that much.


    Strategic maneuvering patterns.


    Tactical distant management.


    Combat liability evaluation.


    He scoffed inwardly. He was definitely biased, but most of these didn''t sound like they wereparable to the potency of his thought techniques.


    The speaker went down each of them, as they received a modest number of votes from Martial Masters with some affinity to them. Soon enough, the most important moment of themittee had arrived.


    "Sub-category ''adaptive evolution techniques.''" The speaker announced calmly. "All in favor of budget allocation to the research, dissemination, and development of adaptive evolution techniques?"


    A whopping majority of Martial Masters raised their hands. Expressing full support for the budget allocation to Rui''s Martial Path.


    "¡­ Seventy-eight votes of a hundred and two," The speaker calmly announced. "Thismittee allocates 31,899,456,997,301 Martial Credits to adaptive evolution."


    Rui''s arm fell as the oue left him in a daze. He had always known he was going to be securing some budget for the dissemination of his Martial Art.


    Thirty-one trillion Martial Credits of research and development was going to be invested into his Martial Path. They would most likely not only use it to aggressively spread the techniques he developed but also invest heavily in developing training methodologies and resources that would increase the ease of mastery of the techniques that he had provided them.


    With just this single year''s budget alone, Rui couldn''t imagine just how much adaptive evolution would be spread through the Kandrian Empire, potentially even further beyond!


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1684 Fearful Excitement

    <h4>Chapter 1684 Fearful Excitement</h4>


    The R&D fiscal year was settled. All budgets had been allocated across all interests, and everything had received the share that the Martial Masters deemed worthy of it. N?velDrama.Org copyrighted ? content.


    Rui had gained an enormous amount of power, one that ordinarily only Martial Masters were entitled to.


    Considering that he did not spot any other Martial Senior in the Martial fiscalmittee, he could be sure that he was the only Martial Senior who had been sessfully inducted into the Martial fiscalmittee.


    It required overwhelming support from too many Martial Masters for any one sect to simply bring in members with their own votes; whoever was inducted was truly someone acknowledged by the entire Master ss to have something worthy to offer to Martial Arts.


    It was an honor.


    It also increased his social standing and prestige. Not only was he an approved ambassador of the Martial Union, but he was also a constituent of the Martial fiscalmittee.


    He was sure that the princes and the princesses of the Martial Union were going to put even more effort into wooing him. Gaining his support would give them control over trillions of Martial Credits and their allocation. That was something that not even the princes and princesses could ignore.


    He shook his head. He had more or less given each of them a chance, and they failed. Nothing they said or did could bring him over.


    "¡­And with that, the final allocation had been passed," The speaker announced after concluding the final voting session. "Having fully allocated the fiscal year, thismittee is hereby adjourned for the year. Thank you for your services."


    He walked off as the Martial Masters got up from their seats, immediately intermingling with one another.


    "Congrattions!" Master Ceeran wished him enthusiastically. "That was an enormous victory in your favor."


    "It''s actually surreal," Rui murmured, still half-dazed and lost in thought.


    "Your speech appears to have been just impactful enough to get you the support that you needed," Headmaster Aronian approached him, smiling. "In addition to the straightforwardly effective presentation that highlighted the merit of your contribution, it was effective enough to convince many Martial Masters."


    Rui nodded, heaving a sigh. "Still, thirty-one trillion Martial Credits."


    "It is what you deserve," Master Vericita chimed in, reaching out to pat him. "You have already proven yourself to be able to explosively empower all of Martial Art with your Hungry Pain technique. That has given many Martial Masters confidence that you may be able to produce a simr result with thought. Especially as you so correctly pointed out that your Martial Art employs thought a lot more fundamentally than any of ours do. It is the hope of many Martial Artists that thought being your specialty will mean that your techniques will make a simr impact as the Hungry Pain technique."


    Rui nodded. "That might be a bit too optimistic, but I have done the best I can."


    "And that is good enough, Senior Quarrier," Master Zentra calmly remarked. "It is clear that you were cut from a different cloth as a Martial Artist. That is what gives many of us the confidence that your Martial Art is worth investing in."


    Several more Martial Masters stopped by to congratte Rui on securing a handsome investment for his Martial Art, before eventually taking their leave.


    They didn''t linger for too long, for every second of their time was invaluable. They were the second most powerful ss of warriors of the Kandrian Empire and were an enormous part of the reason why the Kandrian Empire was dominant across East Panama.


    They swiftly departed the Vargard, returning to their abodes.


    "Huff¡­" Rui eventually found himself sky-walking back home.


    Finally, he no longer had any timelines and dues left.


    He had put in enough of an effort for the sake of the distant future of not just Martial Art but his own.


    It was time to focus on his short-term endeavors.


    First, he needed to finish his domain projects. That would elevate him to an even higher level of power within the Senior Realm.


    He had a faint suspicion that thepletion of the four domain projects would not yield an ordinary boost in power.


    It was another dimension of adaptive evolution. Simr to how strong the Metabody System and the Hypnomatrix altered hisbat fundamentally.


    Body, Mind, thought, and now, heaven and earth. These were what he would be manipting to adapt to his opponent.


    It was almost like he was adapting reality itself to his opponent. He was altering the circumstances that his opponent found himself in, making everything antithetical to their Martial Art.


    What kind of impact would that have on him as a Martial Art? How much further down his Martial Path would it propel him?


    Of the four domain projects, the one that excited and scared him the most was Project Reverse Prophet. Ifpletely and entirely sessful, it had the potential to extend his dimension of thought beyond three dimensions of space and to the fourth dimension.


    A four-dimensional awareness of reality.


    His cognition would exist on a higher dimensionpared to every other Martial Senior and Master that existed.


    Just the thought of it was truly electrifying. He resolved himself to forget about everything to immerse himself in training. He needed to get to the bottom of this no matter what.


    Over the next several months, Rui Quarrier almostpletely isted himself in the Great Jrava Mountain range, returning only for family and the asional training session with Prince Raijun.


    Yet while Rui coolly immersed himself in his training, the Kandrian Throne War only grew more heated.


    With each season that passed, the sickly Emperor came closer to death, at the mercy of a terminal disease with no known cure. The seven princes and princesses could almost hear the bells ringing.


    He had years at most, though he could copse any minute.


    The Kandrian Empire entered a truly brief yet historic period that would define its future for centuries toe.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1685 Alliance

    <h4>Chapter 1685 Alliance</h4>


    The cold war of the Kandrian Empire was just that; cold. It was also a deadlock. None of the seven princes and princesses were able to gain a decisive advantage over their siblings. Each of them made progress at a simr pace, for the most part. They all had their strengths and shorings.


    The deadlock didn''t seem like it was going anywhere or to anyone. It seemed almost impossible to grow faster than they were and go ahead of their siblings. The possibility of one of their siblings shooting forward seemed rather impossible. Material ? of N?velDrama.Org.


    Until, of course, it happened.


    Prince Raijun had gained an rming boost in his ability to pull over the members of the Martial Union. He had always been stalled and unable to pull a greater proportion of the Martial Union to his side, but things had changed.


    None of his siblings quite understood what happened, but in each meeting that Prince Raijun had with members and the portions of the Martial Union that he was previously unable to win over, he slowly started to earn their support.


    The meeting was ndestine. He took every ounce of effort to hide what it was that he was doing. But by the time a certain Master exited one with him, they were already a part of his faction.


    For some time now, Prince Raijun had also made an effort to hide himself even physically, refusing to allow anybody to get a good glimpse of him. Almost like he had something to hide.


    It was due to these measures that the other princes and princesses were unable to get a concrete grasp on what exactly happened. It appeared that the Martial Prince was extremely determined not to allow his siblings to learn what was happening or why he was able to suddenly make such progress.


    He had learned from Princess Raemina''s fiasco with the Beggar''s Sect. He had minimized his staff to those who were personally vetted by high-grade Martial Masters. He had decided to get off his high horse and personally do the tiresome work that he would normally delegate to other people to minimize the possibility of leaks.


    With extremely tightened and even somewhat impractically heavy information security measures of the highest caliber that a member of the Royal Family was able to muster, he managed to sessfully contain the information that he sought to hide from the others.


    Yet this only worried them even more.


    "Based on these projections, ounting for a diminishing returns index of about zero-point-five, it can be inferred that the Martial Prince may haveplete support and allegiance over seventy percent of the Martial Union within three years," Princess Rafia exined.


    Her face didn''t so much as twitch.


    Her voice didn''t so much as quiver. She monotonically exined her estimates of Prince Raijun''s future progress based on past data made with some simplifying assumptions to convey the gravity of the situation.


    "Seventy percent¡­eh?" A burly man narrowed his sharp eyes, stroking his beard. "That would be game over. I question the uracy of these estimates, Rafia."


    The burly man eyed his emotionless sister with eyes glinted with disgust and disdain.


    "As I informed you at the start of this little presentation, these are not predictions, these are possibilities, Randal," Princess Rafia nkly corrected him. "The purpose of this presentation is to highlight that even in the worst-case scenario, Raijun has the power to win the Kandrian Throne War once father dies."


    Prince Randal narrowed his eyes, yet he didn''t attempt to refute her words.


    It was not only futile but counter-productive. One needn''t be a data schr to realize that Prince Raijun''s pertinent eleration in political expansion was a trend of concern for those who sought to win the throne.


    "I, for one, am rather curious about the driving force behind his recent progress in the past few months," Princess Raemina remarked. She skimmed through the data with wide eyes, and a strange, soft smile rested upon her face. Randal''s eyes deepened with disgust as they beheld his other sister. "It''s obviously rted to Martial Art," Princess Ranea remarked with a bored expression. "Not that I care. It''s actually amusing to see all of you fret over it. What''s the matter, scared you''ll lose?"


    A smirk appeared on her face as she taunted her three siblings.


    "Of course, you wouldn''t care," Prince Randal snorted with contempt. "You''ve got protection from all offense from him. Your bravado is as ridiculous as your ambition."


    "I don''t want to hear that from a warmongering fool who seeks endless conquest," Princess Ranea''s eyes sharpened to slits.


    His eyes glinted with rage and bloodlust.


    "You should watch what you say."


    "Or what? You''ll wage a war against me?" She snorted with derision. "We''re literally at war, you fucking oaf. You assassinated my chief of staff!"


    "You took out my personal advisor," Prince Randal red at her.


    "I see neither of you has lost your propensity for pettiness," Princess Raemina chirped with eyes widened with inhuman interest at the joust between her siblings.


    "Enough." Princess Rafia''s emotionless tone cut through the taut atmosphere. "Abstain from engaging in meaningless discourse. I did not call for this meeting to indulge this belligerent confrontation. "


    "And just what is it that you sought to achieve by calling us here?" Prince Randal red at his emotionless sister. "My intentions should be rather transparent," she replied in a monotone. If left unchecked, Prince Raijun will win the Kandrian Throne War. That is an oue that must never ur, no matter the cost."


    Her eyes steadily met those of her siblings one by one. "¡­No matter the cost. Even if it means forming an alliance between us, it is the most rational and logical course of action."


    An air of seriousness overtook the other three.


    "Why only us four?" Prince Randal narrowed his eyes. "Rajak and Raul refused my invitation," She informed them in a monochrome fashion. "Good," Princess Raemina remarked as what appeared to be contempt shed across her face. "I refuse to ally with that piece of filth covered in the sewage of the Kandrian Empire."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1686 Dawning Realization

    <h4>Chapter 1686 Dawning Realization</h4>


    None of them were surprised at Princess Raemina''s scorn for Prince Rajak.


    As the Finance Minister and someone who sought to turn the Kandrian Empire into amunist regime where the government gained absolute control over the economy and capital, the very existence of the Underworld hurt her. Randal''s eyes glinted with disgust as he beheld inhuman hatred crumpling his sister''s face. "He is definitely a bastard. I am not surprised he refused to even speak to us, considering how much he hates the Royal Family."


    Princess Ranea snorted. "On that note, I''m not surprised Raul refused to indulge us as well. He probably hates us, too."


    Prince Randal shook his head. "He is not capable of hatred. He just does not like us and does not care to spend any time with us. He would rather spend his days humping peasants."


    "The reasons for their refusal are irrelevant to the agenda of this meeting," Princess Rafia''s featureless voice steered the conversation back on track.


    "You have yet to say anything worth addressing," Prince Randal snorted. "What alliance? What are our objectives? What is the scope? What is ourmitment? And what do you do about the fact that we are, as the little ocean girl put it, literally at war with each other?"


    Princess Ranea red at him.


    "Those are pertinent questions," Princess Rafia assured him. "The answers to your questions are rather straightforward. Our objective is to hamper Raijun''s growth. The scope of our involvement as members of the alliance will be limited to aiding with sabotage and sharing intelligence on the Martial Prince. No other measure is necessary. As long as we pool our resources and work together to restrain his growth, we will seed."


    Prince Randal heaved a sigh as he considered her words. He had to admit that, as much as he was disgusted by her inhuman rationality, her suggestions were exceedingly logical. The growth that Raijun had been showing over the past few months was too much for him to be able to confidently assert that he would be able to win with his own efforts.


    "What is the endgame?" Princess Ranea narrowed her eyes. "An alliance sounds fun and nice until you remember that we are sworn enemies who would love to kill each other at any moment to get to the throne."


    None of them even denied her words.


    In the room were sixteen Martial Masters. Each of them was highly vignt and was extremely protective of their guards. The round circr table that they were seated at was ratherrge to ensure that there was distance between the princes and princesses and that the other Martial Masters weren''t in too much proximity to the other princes and princesses.


    "We need only stay allied until we have contained Prince Raijun''s political expansion," Princess Rafia informed them. "In order to truly get rid of this issue, we need to identify the cause of Prince Raijun''s political expansion and eliminate or invalidate it. He has put in immense effort to hide what is responsible for his growth, but there are several possibilities. An ess to greater wealth, an ess to greater authority, an ess to greater personal power. He could also have made even greater concessions than he already has."


    "Such as?" Princess Raemina tilted her head, her wide eyes filled with curiosity.


    "Such as sacrificing even more individual autonomy for the sake of more support from the Martial Union," Princess Rafia remarked. "In the most extreme case, if he allowed a mind Martial Artist to hypnotize him for greater credibility and reliability, he may have been able to reel in more support from those who were skeptical of him." N?velDrama.Org exclusive content.


    "Hmm¡­" Prince Randal narrowed his eyes. "It''s not impossible, but it''s too unlikely¡­It has to be something more simple. Something that would exin why the Martial Masters of the Martial Union have approved of him now when they didn''t before."


    "A Martial Master in my faction informed me that one of the reasons they previously disapproved of him was because of his Martial Art or something like that," Princess Ranea frowned, narrowing her eyes.


    "Interesting," Princess Raemina murmured. "A Martial Artist in my faction reported to me that he had been looking hard for a great trainer for many years before he found his current one in the golden boy."


    "Those are crucial pieces of intelligence," Princess Rafia remarked monotonically. "There''s also the fact that he has been religiously avoiding any public appearance or any appearance at all. It''s as if he doesn''t want anyone to look at him," Prince Randal narrowed his eyes, growing suspicious as he began putting the new information the others supplied him together. "Wait a minute,"


    He turned to his sisters. "Are you absolutely positive about the intelligence reports the two of you just mentioned?"


    "Uh, yes?" Princess Ranea furrowed her eyebrows.


    "Indeed," Princess Raemina nodded, her wide eyes fixed on him.


    "Looking for a tutor¡­ws in his Martial Art¡­?" Prince Randal''s eyes widened as realization dawned on him. "I see¡­It makes sense."


    "What does?" Princess Ranea narrowed her eyes.


    Prince Randal''s eyes sharpened to slits.


    His expression grew grave. "He''s¡­probably very close to the Squire Realm. Any Martial Master would be able to notice that with a single nce. Which is why he doesn''t want anyone to even catch a glimpse of him."


    The other three princes considered his words as the gravity of the situation dawned on them.


    "Closer to the Squire Realm?" Princess Raemina remarked, her wide eyes boring holes into Prince Randal. "Is that enough to exin his growth?"


    "None of you understand Martial Artists like I do," Prince Randal narrowed his eyes. "Most Martial Artists of the Martial Union are judging him as a Martial Artist, not as a political candidate for the throne. The fact that he stalled in his Martial Path in the Apprentice Realm probably gave them a poor impression of his Martial drive."


    "Martial drive?" Princess Ranea.


    "I don''t care to exin the nuances of Martial Art to you," Prince Randal snorted. "You need drive to grow stronger, and the fact that he stalled so early as a mere Martial Apprentice makes them think lowly of him regardless of how much effort he put in as a prince. That is why his sess didn''t go very far beyond the Martial Supremacist Faction."


    "That sounds extremely irrational," Princess Rafia remarked.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1687 Must Die

    "That''s how Martial Artists are," Prince Randal narrowed his eyes. "I have spent enough time around them to know their thinking patterns. They think differently from human beings, and they suck atmunicating their thoughts to anybody, not a Martial Artist. But more importantly"


    "If Prince Raijun has somehow made great progress in the Apprentice Realm towards the Squire Realm then we need to curb the source of his sess," Princess Rafiapleted his statement. "However, I am unable to identify the source of his sess due to ack of data on Martial Apprentice growth data patterns at the moment. I will have to consu-"


    "No, you''re unable to identify it because as intelligent as you are, you''re an idiot withoutmon sense who is helpless without data," Prince Randal snorted. "Think!"


    He turned to Princess Raemina and Ranea. "Assume what you two said before is true, then we can assume that the reason he was looking for a great trainer is because of the issue with the Martial Artist you mentioned. And if we put that together with the fact that he''s been hiding his appearance the entire time. Thenthe timelines make sense."


    lightsnvl The three women stared at him, puzzled.


    "He hired Rui Quarrier as a trainer more than a year ago," Prince Randal narrowed his eyes. "Six months after that, Raijun''s campaigning progress within the Martial Union started growing tremendously, and he made great headway even though he was in a bottleneck prior."


    He turned to Raemina. "A bottleneck because of his Martial Art, as you informed me."


    He turned to Ranea. "A bottleneck that he was looking for a trainer probably for just that, ording to you."


    He turned to Princess Rafia with narrowed eyes. "Putting all the information that each of us supplied, what do you think can be concluded?"


    "Your logic is a tad contrived andcking in empirical evidence but" Princess Rafia met his gaze with emotionless eyes. "The possibility of Senior Rui Quarrier being responsible for his growth is indeed very real."


    Prince Randal''s mouth curled with disdain. "This is why you''re an intelligent idiot. It''s not a possibility, it''s the only exnation that fits the puzzle."


    "I don''t get it, not gonna lie," Princess Ranea stared at him, puzzled. "Raijun has the highest number of Martial Masters in his faction. Are you telling me Rui Quarrier did a better job than the esteemed Martial Masters of the Martial Union? That sounds extremely questionable and unlikely. How can a Senior surpass a Master in tutge?"


    "I am inclined to agree with her," Princess Raemina nodded.


    "He already defeated a Master inbat, pound for pound," Prince Randal growled at them. "He''s an anomaly. In every sense of the word. He revolutionized the Squire evolution breakthrough process with some mysterious technique. His so-called voidlet techniques earned thirty-one trillion Martial Credits half a year ago at the fiscal budget allocation meeting of the Martial Union. He earned the position of Senior ambassador from the Martial Union. He is the youngest Martial Senior in history, shattering the previous record by a whopping twelve years. That''s historically unprecedented. He also had an extremely high reputation for tutge even before he began training the Martial Prince and then there''s the strange deal he signed with Prince Raijun more than a year ago."


    His siblings knew what he was referring to.


    "In exchange for something, Prince Raijun was willing topletely cease all offensive campaigning and sabotage against Ocean girl here and the peasant-humper upon Rui Quarrier''s demand," Prince Randal narrowed his eyes. "I never understood it back then, butthink about it. Just what could be so massive that he willingly agreed to stop keeping two of his rivals in check, allowing their growth to be less hampered. It doesn''t make sense unless"


    "Unless he knew that he would be able to grow even faster if he agreed to the deal." Realization dawned on Princess Raemina.


    A chill went down Princess Ranea''s spine. "So that''s why he agreed to not campaign against me. He knew that his agreement with Rui Quarrier would bring him closer to the Squire Realm, making the concessions invalid."


    "This conjecture is unsubstantiated and without empiri-"


    "Oh, shut up," Princess Ranea red at Princess Rafia, cutting her off. "It''smon sense when you pool together our information."


    "Tsk, had I known that he was looking for a tutor even before and the reason behind the disapproval of him from the rest of the Martial Union, I would havee to this realization even sooner," Prince Randal cursed.


    "The question is what do we do?" Princess Raemina''s eyes widened with interest.


    "It''s simple," Prince Randal narrowed his eyes. "We cut the source of his growth at its root before he reaches the Squire Realm."


    His three sisters narrowed their eyes at those words.


    He had just made an extremely controversial proposal.


    It was beyond controversial.


    It could very well provoke a war.


    To say that Rui Quarrier was the golden boy of the Martial Union was an understatement. Not only was he the only Senior to have received the status of Senior ambassador, he was also the only Senior to be inducted into the Martial fiscalmittee.


    In addition to the many revolutionary contributions to Martial Art and the Martial Union that he had made that earned him the affection of the Martial Union and most of its Martial Masters, he had also be important to the Kandrian Empire as a whole simply by virtue of his alleged bottomless potential and status as the youngest Senior in Martial history.


    That didn''t even cover the economic contributions he had made to the Kandrian Empire.


    The proposal of killing Rui Quarrier was so far beyond just controversial that the three princesses didn''t even dare to agree to it. Just the thought of facing the wrath of the Martial Union inspired a lot of fear in them.


    "There must be other ways." Princess Ranea squeezed out.eastern fantasy


    "There is no other way," Prince Randal gritted his teeth, clenching his fists. N?velDrama.Org copyrighted ? content.


    "Rui Quarrier must die."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1688 Considerations

    <h4>Chapter 1688 Considerations</h4>


    "He is an asset to this nation," Princess Rafia replied. "Killing him would hurt the Kandrian Empire in ways that we are unable to even estimate."


    "He shouldn''t have gotten in my way," Prince Randal''s eyes narrowed. "Anybody who stands in the way of the throne and me is an enemy.


    "The Martial Union will have our heads," Princess Ranea''s expression grew grave. "The best-case scenario would be that the Martial Artists of the Martial Union that we have secured to our side would immediately leave."


    "That''s only if they knew we did it," Prince Randal calmly remarked. "As long as there is enough uncertainty, they won''t know who it is. Even if they did, we are of the Royal Family. The power of the Royal Emperor is on par with that of the Martial Union. If any of the Martial Sages were toe after me, General Aramoeous of the Hawk Faction is more than willing to deploy the hundred and eight Apocalypse-ss Armageddon siege weapons of the Kandrian Empire, each with the power to reduce an entire nation to dust in an instant."


    "Do you want to cause a civil war of unprecedented scale?!" Princess Ranea stared at him in disbelief. "You will destroy Kandria!"


    "Rx, it won''te to that," Prince Randal''s eyes sharpened to slits. "The Martial Sages of the Martial Union will not move for a single Martial Senior. Probably. However, the Martial Masters will. They''re the issue. However, there are ways around this. As long as the Martial Union doesn''t know who killed Rui Quarrier, there won''t be any issues."


    "The Martial Union has an extremely deep profile on every Martial Artist in Kandria," Princess Rafia remarked. "Especially Martial Masters. Employing our Martial Artists would give us away."


    "The problem is actually even worse than that," Prince Randal''s expression grew ugly. "As you all know, one of the Masters in my faction picked a fight with Rui Quarrier after inadvertently threatening him. Since then, the Martial Union has been spooked and extremely sensitive about a Martial Master harming their golden boy. There are a hundred and fifty Martial Masters in the Kandrian Empire, and the Martial Union knows the location of almost all of them. You can bet they will intervene if a Martial Master moves towards Rui with the intention of killing him."


    "In that case, we would not be able to use Martial Masters at all," Princess Raemina remarked with eyes widened with intrigue. "Martial Seniors, then."


    "That runs into the issue that Rafia mentioned," Princess Ranea shook her head. "Using Kandrian Martial Artists will get us identified and that''s not something we can allow."


    "That is why we should hire Martial Artists from outside Kandria," Prince Randal''s tone grew even more severe. "Perhaps the Derschek Region or the Shadow Isles. We could even try contracting the Silent Shadow, Master Reina Cara. She is a legendary assassin in the industry even among assassins of the Master Realm."


    "The Panamic Martial Federation has disimed that," Princess Rafia pointed out. "They frown upon unjustified and open bullying of Martial Artists by a Martial Artist of a higher Realm," Prince Randal corrected. "Assassinations are a gray area because every force in this world needs them, including the constituents that founded the Panamic Martial Federation. As long as it is not exposed, they will turn a blind eye."


    "Still," Princess Ranea shook her head. "Martial Master assassins from abroad are too much. There are very few who are frencers. An overwhelming majority of Martial Master assassins belong to some group or entity that we will have to reach out to and bargain and negotiate."


    "You''re right," Prince Randal remarked. "Master assassins like the Silent Shadow are said to be impossible to find. We can begin the process, but it will take months and even years. There is no point in waiting that long because, at this rate, Raijun will be a Squire. Senior assassins are much easier and quicker."


    "If we do this, and I''m not saying I''ve agreed yet¡­" Princess Ranea carefully spoke. "We''re going to need to do it extremely cautiously and carefully. Neither the Martial Union nor the Beggar''s Sect can know."


    Prince Randal nced around the room at the sixteen Martial Masters guarding their respective marks. Thankfully, these were among the most loyal Martial Artists each of them had and were not of the Martial Union. Prince Randal would not have dared to bring up the assassination of Rui Quarrier if even a single Martial Master of the Martial Union was around. That would be incredibly stupid.


    "The Beggar''s Sect will not stop the assassination even if they find out," Princess Rafia remarked. "They support Raul. Thus, stopping the assassination in some way is against their interests because they are very determined not to allow Prince Raijun to be Emperor." N?velDrama.Org copyrighted ? content.


    The Beggar''s Sect vehemently opposed Martial supremacy, as one would expect of them. Prince Raijun, who was a Martial Supremacist, ascending the throne was a highly undesirable oue for them.


    Prince Randal was inclined to agree that they would not sabotage any attempt to kill off the source of his growth. "However, they may still expose us after we seed. The Beggar''s Sect would like to see us fail as well, so after letting Rui Quarrier die, they will definitely expose us and get us into trouble. So we still cannot risk them finding out either."


    Princess Raemina''s mouth curled with disgust at the thought of the Beggar''s Sect. "Those filthy beggars¡­"


    "If we have to hide it from the Beggar''s Sect, then this is not going to be quick and easy. If we just waltz over to the Shadow Guild and make amission, the Beggar''s Sect and even the Martial Union will be alerted. We have to be extremely discreet and avoid doing anything that could give it away."


    "It''s best to deploy a Martial Master to do themissioning," Prince Randal remarked. "Not even the Beggar''s Sect can easily learn about them as they do everyone else."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1689 Completion

    <h4>Chapter 1689 Completion</h4>


    In the many months since the Martial fiscalmittee that Rui trained, he trained hard and with the intention of not being disturbed. He did not want his immersion and focus to be disrupted.


    Yet he was unable to live as isted as he could.


    "We require your input on the research and development of effective and efficient training methodologies for adaptive evolution techniques," a head researcher exined. "This is standard protocol, and we cooperate with all martial artists whose martial art has been allocated a significant budget."


    Rui heaved a sigh. "Fine. But I shall only serve as a consultant. And I''m only willing to consult once a week."


    "We can manage with that. We generally do not consume too much time so as to not impede the training of Martial Artists."


    Thus, much to his chagrin, he was to serve as a consultant for the research and development of his own training methodologies.


    Yet, he did not care to waste time while he served as a consultant. This was his domain of expertise; in his past life, he had spent much of his research into more effective and efficient training methodologies.


    He swiftly elerated the projects, offering the expertise he had and shocking the various schrs and researchers who were researching adaptive evolution. He quickly proposed concepts and projects from his various life that could be employed to aid with training adaptive evolution in this world.


    "Set the speed parameter of thebat patterns of the training dummy to increase linearly with the proficiency index, and it will allow them to limatize better."


    "Do not increase the input diversity in the initial training stage; it should arise more organically than artificially."


    "No no no. It is better to integrate the Mind Pce technique as a part of a hypnosis technique than to have the technique itself mastered. It will be more efficient and effective to have it done for them."


    His insights were undoubtedly game-changing. The Martial Union was once more astounded by just how much a genius inbat research Rui Quarrier was. Even the deputy director of the director was taken aback by the ocean of knowledge that Rui seemed to have stored in his brain.


    It only increased the value that the Martial Union had for Rui Quarrier. They even considered addingbat research dissemination among Martial Artists as an interest in the next fiscalmittee meeting.


    Regardless, Rui could not be bothered. He simply minimized the time he needed to dedicate to the consultation so that he could get back to his training.


    The four domain projects had been developing quite nicely. Malevolent Kitchen had been the first project to reachpletion out of all of them.


    It had been eighteen months since he started working on domains under Master Gurren. He had first spent three months mastering the foundations of bending heaven and earth. After that, he spent another nine months training the four domain projects that he had conceived, working on them side by side with the voidlet techniques.


    It was only after he presented his voidlet techniques to the Martial fiscalmittee and sessfully lobbied for thirty-one trillion Martial Credits that he finally had time to focus only on domain projects.


    Only half a yearter, the techniques had arrived close topletion. Of course, this was after a year of effort prior, but it was still remarkably quick. Malevolent Kitchen reachedpletion sooner than the rest because his affinity for sound had allowed him to gain much quicker mastery over it than did the other three techniques.


    The other two adaptive domains were quite close topletion as well. He hade very close to smoothly nailing the execution of Speed Prison, allowing it to bebat-viable. Creating the technique was one thing, but mastering it was another.


    The third adaptive domain, Skyfall, was in a simr state. He was almost at the point where he could guarantee a hundred percent sess rate in terms of execution. He directed the vectors of the pressure of the vast atmosphere onto his opponent''s body, forcing them to employ immense force to push back against it and neglecting their offense in turn.


    However, while he was very optimistic about Malevolent Kitchen, which had already reached sess, and about the other two that were rapidly approachingpletion, he was not so optimistic about Project Reverse Prophet. Please check at N/?vel(D)rama.Org.


    He was actually fairly sessful in creating the technique. That was what surprised him, but the principle of processing vectors and extrapting them backward to gain more information was not tooplicated in principle.


    The issue was the difficulty of execution. Firstly, he learned that to have any chance of sessfully executing this technique, his mind needed to be free of all other burdens. The VOID algorithm, Greater Phantomind Void, and the Pathfinder; all these techniques could not be simultaneously executed if he wanted to have any hope of executing Reverse Prophet at all.


    That was how mind-consuming it was.


    However, even with his mind emptied, it had be exceedingly difficult to detect the vast amount of information that he needed to extrapte the past, and it was even more difficult to process all of it and extrapte the past.


    He had tried his best to minimize the mental burden that the technique was, of course. He got rid of redundant processing. He employed many shortcuts to the output, skipping excessively heavy processing for simpler and straightforward ones. Yet even after all that refinement¡­


    "Ngh¡­" He grimaced, meditating in the Great Jrava Mountain range. His senses spread around him as he employed incredibly surgical minute heaven and earth bending to sense the direction of nearly every vector within arge radius.


    The very act strained him, even if reluctantly seeded.


    Yet the hardest part had yet toe.


    He gritted his teeth as he applied the Reverse Prophecy, a system of thought to process all the vectors and determine the past. "Rgh!" He grimaced, clenching his fist as he pushed himself to the absolute limit.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1690 Angel of Laplace

    <h4>Chapter 1690 Angel of Lace</h4>


    1690 Angel of Lace


    Deep in his Mind Pce, a replica of a portion of the Great Jrava Mountain Range was overwhelmed with information.


    Information regarding vectors. This wasprised of packets of information that contained two values each: direction and magnitude. A seemingly endless storm of such packets of information converged at the center of Great Jrava Mountain Range in the Mind Pce.


    Where Rui meditated.


    "Rgh!" Rui gritted his teeth as he struggled to process the endless ocean of information.


    It swallowed him whole.


    Washed away in currents that were too strong for him.


    Yet he weathered.


    Drop by drop.


    Pail by pail.


    He gritted his teeth, painstakingly putting a puzzle together.


    The puzzle of the past.


    He waved a tapestry of the past, little by little.


    The currents of the river were determined to impede him.


    The currents of the river of time.


    After all, this was the river he was wading against.


    Time flowed in one direction. That was a fact of reality. Anybody who dared to peer the other way would face its wrath.


    Yet he weathered.


    An unfathomable amount of time passed, yet he painstakingly processed every iota of information, every vector within the edge of his senses.


    Soon enough, he broke through.


    Through the currents.


    Through the ocean.


    Through the barriers of time.


    He had arrived.


    His eyes widened as the Great Jrava Mountain Range in his Mind Pce began rewinding in time.


    Snow began elevating from the ground, elerating upwards. Birds began flying in the reverse direction as the motion of their pping was also inversed. Leaves danced up from the ground, flying back to the trees around them before reattaching themselves to the tree.


    The sun retraced its path ever so slowly, returning from whence it came.


    He beheld the scene with amazement.


    This was the past.


    It was overwhelming.


    "Huff¡­Huff¡­" He opened his eyes in real life as he nced around him.


    Master Gurren was still working on the magnification form and optics equations. He had been working hard in the eighteen months to learn the mathematics and Physics needed for the telescopic domain.


    It wasn''t easy, even though Rui had worked hard to simplify the teachings needed. The Master was so illiterate that there was tons of ground to cover.


    He nced at the sky, noting the setting Sun.


    It had been a little after dawn when he had begun the execution of the technique, yet it was already dusk. N?velDrama.Org exclusive content.


    "What¡­?" A shocked whisper escaped his mouth. "Just how many hours did I spend executing this technique?"


    His body was drenched in sweat.


    He felt mentally exhausted like never before.


    Even though he hadn''t moved, he felt like his body was aching all over.


    His head, however, was the worst. A skull-splitting migraine had overtaken him, making it difficult for him to even think properly.


    Just a single standard execution of this technique had left him in this state after taking hours to sessfullyplete.


    It was painful, tiring, long, and tedious, but¡­


    "I¡­seeded," Heughed weakly. "I can''t believe it."


    His euphoria was quickly overwhelmed by his heavy headache, leaving him grimacing.


    The technique was technically sessfully executed, but one thing became exceedingly clear to him.


    "I''m out of my league."


    If he had to go through so much suffering over extended periods of time just to execute a single technique, then he was not that technique''s equal. At least, not yet.


    He needed to reach a stage where he could viably employ this technique forbat, which was not possible at his current stage, seeing how difficult, consuming, and long it took.


    What opponent would patiently wait for him to finish executing the technique and then continue the battle after he got what he needed?


    Yet he couldn''t call the technique a failure, either. The technique was a sess. It did what it was supposed to do.


    He just wasn''t good enough. This was a system of thought that exceeded even his ascended mental prowess.


    Yet he wasn''t entirely dismayed by this oue.


    ''I may not possess the brainpower for Project Reverse Prophet today¡­but in the future¡­'' Rui narrowed his eyes as he had quickly happened upon a way in which he could one day employ Project Reverse Prophet viably inbat.


    The Master Realm.


    An exponential boost in cognition with astronomically more new neural pathways unlocked that could be programmed with Project Reverse Prophet.


    In the first ce, one of the necessities in the journey to the Master Realm was employing thought beyond the limits of one''s cognition in the pursuit of greater power. Only then could he begin truly tapping and developing his Martial Mind. The first generation of Martial Seniors had done exactly that as they tried improving themselves strategically, inadvertently forming the Martial Mind.


    Today, havingpletely been outssed, he had made the most significant progress to the Master Realm. Project Reverse Prophet was an upgrade to the pattern recognition system of the VOID algorithm that exceeded his practical cognitive limits.


    That made him feel better, though he wished his mind had been powerful enough to handle it. Yet not even the full might of his ascended mind and his extraordinary Mind Pce had been enough to ovee Reverse Prophet.


    "Speaking of which, I should give it another name. Reverse Prophet is not worthy of such an incredible technique," Rui stroked his scruffy beard. "Hmm¡­scientific determinism into the past¡­that reminds me of Lace''s Demon."


    This was a thought experiment where a demon, who knew everything''s position and motion at any one point, could then predict the future of the universe for eternity by endlessly extrapting it from that data.


    He was doing the reverse of that, the very opposite, where he was peering into the past rather than the future. Though he also peered into the future using the predictive model, that wasn''t based on the same principles as Lace''s Demon.


    He made up his mind. "Since it is the opposite of Lace''s Demon¡­I shall call it the Angel of Lace."


    On that day, Project Reverse Prophet was no more.


    It had be the Angel of Lace.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1691 Constraints

    <h4>Chapter 1691 Constraints </h4>


    Four members of the Royal Family sat around arge round table covered with all manners of documents.


    This time, they were not as alone as they werest time.


    In the room, in addition to sixteen Martial Masters, were another sixteen people: analysts, executives, and personal advisors. Each was vetted by a high-grade Martial Master who was also vetted to have no allegiance to the Martial Union.


    This was the limited task force that the four princes and princesses decided to put into ce for the minutiae of the alliance between them.


    Due to the furtive nature of the tentative alliance that they had formed to curb Prince Raijun''s growth and, specifically, to assassinate Rui Quarrier, this was the limit of the personnel they could allocate to the alliance.


    Any more people than this, and the risks of an information leak increased exponentially. The Martial Union, the Beggar''s Sect, the Shadow Guild, and any other number of local, national, and international intelligence organizations.


    Thankfully, the task at hand was not managerially burdening.


    "In the past two weeks, we have identified one hundred and eighty-six Senior assassins whose track record indicates the qualities that we seek," One woman, appointed as head of the anti-Rui task force, remarked. "I have provided Your Highnesses with the relevant documents."


    She provided each of the four members of the Royal Family with a document reporting the findings of the task force.


    This work could not be done by their regr staff because it was simply far too sensitive. They needed to be absolutely clean when the assassination urred. Otherwise, they would lose a lot of support.


    "Hm, I recognize some of these names," Prince Randal nodded as he skimmed through the document that listed the profiles of the various prominent Senior-level assassins of the Underworld across Panama.


    "Have you made sure to avoid any Martial Artist with affiliations to the other three powerhouses of East Panama?" Princess Ranea inquired as she went through them.


    "Of course, Your Highness," The head executive of the task force bowed her head.


    "It would not do if it came out that we were coborating with our chief enemies, after all," Princess Raemina lightly remarked as she went through the listed assassins.


    "These assassins are quite impressive. Their sess rates per unit difficulty are statistically much higher than the average of their verified Realm," Princess Rafia monotonically highlighted as she didn''t so much as twitch or blink while she skimmed through the reports and profiles.


    "There are a ton of powerful Martial assassins on here," Princess Ranea remarked as she went through them. "It''s a shame we can''t just hire all of them for a guaranteed done deal."


    "That''s not how it works," Prince Randal snorted, ring at her. "If you didn''t fill your head with ocean brain rot and actually studied Martial Art as a field, then you would not know how stupid your statement is." Material ? of N?velDrama.Org.


    She snorted, glowering at him. "That''s why I brought over Martial Art schrs in my part. I trust the experts."


    "And they have given their word," He narrowed his eyes. "While the wealth needed tomission all of them is trivial to us, it is doomed for failure. For one, neither the Martial Union nor the Kandrian Border Patrol Force will fail to notice the entry of a hundred and eighty-six Martial Seniors. That''s an absolute pipedream. In the first ce, the port of transit is monitored by one Martial Master at all times, so stealth is not enough. They need to rely on disguise to sneak into the Kandrian Empire."


    While infiltrating the average and assassinating a target was bread and butter for these Senior assassins, the Kandrian Empire was a whole other ballgame. The same could be said for any of the other three powerhouses of East Panama.


    Each of these nations was powerful enough to deploy powerful Martial and technological forces to secure their borders.


    Of course, nothing was imprable, and the Kandrian Empire had an absolutely gigantic territory to protect. Thus, while infiltrating was not easy, it was possible.


    As long as the number was not a hundred and eighty-six, that was absolutely impossible, one hundred out of one hundred times.


    "It''s a shame we can''t deploy Masters either," Princess Ranea heaved a tired sigh.


    Martial Master assassins were extraordinarily rare given that the number of Martial Masters across the world was already extremely scarce; of them, those who were assassins were even fewer, and of them, those who were frencers and not associated with any nation were even fewer.


    Kandrian Martial Masters had no chance of even getting away with assassinating Rui and not being caught since the Martial Union knew every single one of them inside out and backward front. They would be exposed, as would their allegiance and affiliations, and the Martial Union would not spare the culprit unless it was the Royal Emperor himself.


    Not only were Martial Masters out, butrge numbers of high-grade Martial Seniors were also out.


    "In fact, we probably can''t do more than a few at the most, ording to my personal Martial Art advisor. Too many Martial Seniors fighting will release too much energy that the Martial Union will immediately detect." Prince Randal remarked. "Thus, whosoever we choose, we must choose wisely. But none of the four of us are experts in the nuances of Martial assassins."


    He turned to a handful of members of the staff, nodding.


    They immediately pulled over a board with some figures and other data on it.


    "There are several constraints to the assassination of Rui Quarrier," The head of the task force began. "First, if we want to ensure that the assassins are notpromised before or after the assassination attempt, then that automatically constraints the numbers even further than what His Highness pointed out."


    Prince Randal raised an eyebrow. "What do you mean, precisely?"


    "We have been studying location behavioral patterns of Rui Quarrier, and unfortunately, it does not bode well," The head of the task force remarked, pointing at a particr pie chart. "He spends arge majority of his time in Great Jrava Mountain Range with a Martial Master, thus that automatically rules it out as a potential venue to conduct the assassination."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1692 Sexist Targeting

    <h4>Chapter 1692 Sexist Targeting </h4>


    "In addition to the Great Jrava Mountain Range, he cannot be assassinated at his residence, for it is protected by a team of Martial Seniors and even Master Krakule," The executive analyst informed everybody.


    Prince Randal immediately earned a fixed stare from the three of his sisters, heaving a resigned sigh, massaging his forehead.


    "Your Martial Master impedes our operations," Princess Raemina pointed out the obvious.


    "You know just as well as I do that we do not control the actions of the Martial Masters of our faction," Prince Randal growled.


    "You need only ask him to stay away on the day of the assassination, or you can even instruct him not to intervene," Princess Rafia remarked.


    "No, that''s a bad idea," Princess Ranea narrowed her eyes. "Randal cannot make him go away from the orphanage without giving the entire gamen away."


    "She''s right," Prince Randal nodded with a grave expression. "If he finds out, then it is most likely that the entire Martial Union will find out. Although he definitely isn''t loyal to the Martial Union, for some reason, he hase to be appreciative of Rui Quarrier ever since he was bested by him in their fight."


    He wasn''t even surprised, for this was typical Martial Artist behavioral patterns.


    "Speaking of the orphanage," Princess Raemina''s wide eyes shifted to the rest of them. "Can''t we just¡­massacre them all?"


    The other three stared at her.


    "¡­That would make things worse," Prince Randal shook his head. "If Rui Quarrier was not hostile to us before, he definitely will be if we do that. In the worst-case scenario, he may dedicate himself to training Prince Raijun just to get revenge on us. That must never happen."


    "Then can''t we just take them hostage and threaten him with them?" Princess Raemina asked, tilting her head.


    "Forget about the orphanage," Princess Ranea shook her head. "Remember, one major constraint we have is to ensure that the Martial Union doesn''t intervene. If his entire family disappears, then the Martial Union will be instantly alerted and will definitelye running to his aid. With the Martial Union''s intervention, killing him will be absolutely impossible, and his family will be a time bomb for us rather than a useful hostage."


    "¡­Not just that," Prince Randal narrowed his eyes. "I do not wish to follow in the footsteps of the former chairman of Deacon Industries. For years, he hunted his family to get to him, but eventually, he and his security got absolutely disemboweled by Rui Quarrier, and there wasn''t even the tiniest shred of evidence left behind that could tie it down to Rui Quarrier. I do not want to spend the next fifteen years living in fear for when Rui Quarrier returns for my head. Forget about the orphanage; it actually makes it harder to kill him if we focus on the orphanage."


    Princess Raemina shrugged nonchntly.


    "So the orphanage and the Great Jrava Mountain Range are both out of the question," Princess Rafia remarked. "In that case, there are much smaller windows of time within which he can be assassinated."


    "Indeed," The executive analyst nodded. "Another constraint we have is, as Prince Randal pointed out, number. If the energy signatures of the encounter exceed a certain level, the Martial Union will detect it and deploy an appropriate Martial Artist to deal with the issue in order to ensure that the brawling Martial Artists don''t hurt anybody."


    "In that case, we should hope for swift, smooth, and clean assassination with minimal duration to reduce the probability of intervention from the Martial Union," Princess Rafia monochromatically analyzed.


    "Just so, Your Highness," The executive analyst nodded. "With that in mind, there are several Martial Senior assassins in the provided list that we can attempt deploying to take him down if you are so inclined."


    The four of them nodded.


    The executive analyst changed the slide on the board, turning back to the four of them. N?velDrama.Org exclusive content.


    "This is the Thunder Viper," She pointed to the profile of the assassin on the slide. "He is a notorious Senior assassin known for the shocking speed at which his assassinations ur. The timeframe from the actual start of the assassination to the end is extremely short. Hepletes assassinations in less than a blink of an eye. That shocking speed allows him to take out Martial Seniors by the time they have even be cognizant of him. I decided to choose him as a serious candidate because he cleanly adheres to the aforementioned constraint of timeframe. I believe that he will be able to adhere to this requirement better than almost anybody else on this list."


    The four Royals had already skimmed his profile among the hundred and eighty-six potential assassin candidates.


    "What a wonderful assassin," Princess Raemina remarked as her hand swept across his profile.


    "Interesting," Prince Randal nodded. "He seems like a highly aplished assassin."


    "His sess rate and assassination are highly optimal," Princess Rafia remarked. "In addition, his stealth and capacity for disguise are also several dozens of points higher than the industry median."


    "He does seem elite." Princess Ranea pointed out, bored.


    "I''m more concerned about whether he''s qualified to take a grade-thirteen Martial Senior like Rui Quarrier," Prince Randal narrowed his eyes.


    "His record indicates a high statistical probability against Martial Seniors of that grade," Princess Rafia noted. "He is qualified."


    "Good, we''ll keep him in consideration," Prince Randal nodded solemnly. "Who else?"


    The next slide contained a sight that widened Prince Randal''s eyes, earning him a dubious nce from Princess Ranea.


    To say she was underdressed was an understatement. The picture of the next assassin featured a woman who, for all practical purposes, was naked. A shockingly small and translucent garb covered her upper body, and even smaller covered her waist. Her luscious dark skin and her voluptuous body were hardly left to the imagination.


    "This is the assassin known as the Maneater," The executive analyst exined. "She has sessfully assassinated every single Martial Senior she has ever attempted to with a perfect record and not even the slightest failure."


    "Her targets are all¡­male," Princess Rafia remarked.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1693 The Best of the Best

    <h4>Chapter 1693 The Best of the Best</h4>


    "Indeed, Your Highness," The executive analyst nodded. "Her targets are all exclusively male as her Martial Art fundamentally targets males."


    "Her Martial Art...fundamentally targets men?" Princess Ranea grinned, amused. "I should hire her to take out Randal."


    Prince Randal red at her before turning back. "Exin, Sierra."


    She nodded. "Her Martial Art targets men. It is said that her Martial Body produces esoteric pheromones and other chemical signals, in addition to some targeted sexual hypnosis, that immediately and forcibly trigger extreme sexual arousal in male targets, often causing them to lose control and indulge in sexual intercourse where she delivers death to them, either by draining of their ''vigor'' or exploiting a blindspot to deal a death blow."


    "Men..." Princess Ranea snorted contemptuously. "I''m not surprised she has a perfect record."


    "How amusing," Princess Raemina giggled softly. "We shouldmission her."


    "Is this serious?" Prince Randal incredulously asked. "There is no way that this is urate."


    "The data has been verified, Your Highness," Sierra reassured the prince. "Every single male, Martial Artist or otherwise, she targeted has fallen prey to her assassinations. It is said that not a single one of her targets was able to maintain resistance. The redirection of blood caused by penile turgidity reduces the power of the Martial Heart while their senses and mind arepletely overridden by strong sexual arousal and lust for her body."


    "..." Prince Randal simply read through her profile with a hint of skepticism while Princess Ranea grinned.


    "I should hire her to take you out," She smirked as she nced at Prince Randal.


    "...My Martial Masters would kill her while I kill you." Material ? of N?velDrama.Org.


    She smiled as he fell into her trap. "Oh? You don''t think you can handle her yourself? I thought army men were all about discipline and control. I wonder how you would fair against her."


    "..."


    A difficult expression appeared on his face as he didn''t even bother trying to push back against her implicit allegations.


    "This conversation does not add anything to the agenda of finding an assassin fit to take down Rui Quarrier," Princess Rafia remarked. "Her record shows that she has taken out grade-fifteen Martial Seniors despite not being a high-grade Martial Senior as far as purebat goes. Thus, it can be inferred that her Martial Art is extremely power and bypasses significant disparities."


    Prince Randal nodded. "I don''t really care about the manner or the methodology. If she can kill him without getting us into trouble, then she''s fine. Are these two the only candidates?"


    "No, there are several more," Sierra replied calmly as she went on to disy several more candidates.


    Each of them was a veteran Martial Senior assassin with an abysmal track record. Each of them was among the cream of the crop. The four Royals went through several more interesting and varied Marital Artists, considering the merit of such Martial Artists.


    A domain assassin who has sessfully assassinated many Martial Senior by depriving them of oxygen through extremely refined heaven bending where they separated theponents of the air needed for life, suffocating them mid-


    bat.


    A poison Martial Artist with an array of lethal poisons, as well as a variety of lethal offensive Martial Artists with powerful Martial Art and great track records.


    "These are definitely highly qualified Martial Artist assassins," Prince Randal nodded. "We will have to choose among them."


    "The list isn''tplete, Your Highness," Sierra remarked. "I saved this one for thest. And I did that for a reason?"


    "Hm?"


    She changed the slide to feature a profile with a figure with a question mark on it.


    [Voidreaper]


    "Voidreaper¡­?" Prince Randal narrowed his eyes. "Ah¡­"


    "The Voidreaper is one of the most feared and notorious assassins in the Senior Realm," Sierra remarked. "He doesn''t have many years and decades of a track record like the others on the shortlist. However, despite that, we have seen fit to not only add him to the shortlist, but also as a special interest."


    She turned to the four Royals. "He singlehandedly annihted the assassination sector of the Shadow Isles all by himself. The assassination industry of the Derschek Region was capped at the Senior Realm but possessed the highest concentration of Senior Assassins across the entire world. And while none of the assassins there were of the pinnacle quality that our shortlist contains, they werepletely decimated without even the tiniest bit of resistance. It was overwhelming. shortlist contains, they werepletely decimated without even the tiniest bit of resistance. It was overwhelming. Absolute. A shocking performance that sent ripples across the continental Underworld and assassination industry."


    The four Royals looked mighty impressed.


    "Resistance is futile," She remarked. "Escape is futile. Defense is futile. Each and every single Martial Senior simply dropped dead on the spot. Many have gone through the bodies of the victims, and the cause of death is still not ascertained. It is almost as if¡­"


    Her eyes narrowed. "Almost as if he doesn''t exist. Almost as if it was the reaper himself iming the lives of the hapless victims. That is why he is called the Voidreaper. Within his Realm, it can be said that he has aplished the most shocking feat in all of assassination history."


    The four Royals looked overwhelmed as they went through all the details of the various matters she spoke of.


    "They simply¡­die?" Princess Ranea looked disturbed.


    "No injuries. No resistance. No witnesses. No footprints. No blood. No testimonies. No autopsy results. No weapons. No forewarning. No presence...There would also be no proof he even existed if not for the fact that he volarily revealed himself just one time, causing mass despair and destruction." Princess Rafia murmured, almost as if she was paralyzed by theck of empirical evidence and data to analyze.


    "It is said that, as far as Senior-level assassins go, he is among the very best of the best, said to be a fleeting pinnacle of assassins that only targets other assassins," Sierra remarked. "It is said that many Senior assassins around the world retired during that period, some of whom were even of the caliber to be on this shortlist."


    Prince Randal didn''t need to hear anymore. "Contact him. Indirectly. With absolute caution and care. Ensure that there is absolutely no way that the contact can be traced back to us. The Voidreaper will kill Rui Quarrier."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1694 Antisynergetic

    <h4>Chapter 1694 Antisynergetic </h4>


    "What if he fails?" Princess Rafia asked prudently. "We only have one opportunity to assassinate Rui Quarrier, there is a high probability that the Martial Union will take some measure to ensure that it won''t happen again if we fail."


    "Hm, in that case, it would be prudent to hire all of the Martial Seniors of the shortlist and have them gang up on him," Princess Ranea remarked.


    "That vites a constraint we are subject to, I believe," Princess Raemina remarked.


    "Indeed," Prince Randal nodded. "The intensity of the conflict cannot reach above a certain level, and if it does, the Martial Union will be alerted. Deploying all of them at once will increase the intensity of the conflict above safe limits, and the Martial Union will be on our asses immediately. It is frustrating, but we will have to limit the number of assassins acting on Rui Quarrier to only one at a time to avoid drawing attention."


    "That isn''t the only reason, Your Highnesses," Sierra remarked. "You have neglected the assassin side of that conversation. The assassins on the shortlist possess zero synergy orpatibility with each other. In fact, it can be said they possess negative synergy with each other. For example¡­"


    She gestured to the slide featuring data on the Maneater. "The Maneater is unable to control the range or scope of the target of her seductive Martial Art in any way. Thus, deploying her alongside the male assassins will mean that her Martial Art will affect them as well, seducing them in the process and causing them to lose control as well."


    She turned back towards them. "That''s not all; not only will she impede them, but they will impede her in turn. She will be unable to focus on Rui Quarrier while she is being assaulted by the seduced male assassins. It is her policy to assassinate with no other men around or after they are all dead."


    "What a mess¡­" Prince Randal grumbled. "In that case, we can avoidmissioning her. If we remove her, all the conflicting elements between them should be gone, correct?"


    "I would not rmend removing her from the assassination group, Your Highness. As a man in the prime of his life, Rui Quarrier will be extremely vulnerable to her. However, to answer your question, no. She isn''t the only conflicting element. For example."


    She shifted to the slide of yet another assassin.


    "The Suffocator drains all life-sustainingponents of air within arge radius. However, it is a passive effect of the domain. Thus, any other assassin within range will also be suffocated. Those aren''t the only conflicting elements. There are many more between each assassin and every other. For exa-"


    "Ok, Ok, stop," Princess Ranea heaved a tired sigh. "We get the point. It is simply impossible to have them gang up on Rui Quarrier together, is that correct?"


    Sierra nodded. "Assassins are usually highly solitary Martial Artists. Ironically, the probability of sess decreases the more of them you throw at Rui Quarrier simultaneously."


    "Then what do you propose, Sierra?" Princess Rafia asked. "We cannot stake this matter on one assassin, as I mentioned earlier. At the same time, we cannot throw multiple assassins at Rui Quarrier for reasons you have thoroughly exined. As the expert, you must have a solution in mind."


    "I do," Sierra calmly replied. "I propose setting up a series of failsafe backup rounds of assassins to take him on one after another rapidly. Thus, if the first assassination fails and the assassin ispromised, the second assassin will immediately leap in and take over. Should that fail, the third assassin will immediately leap in and take over. This way, they won''t get in each other''s way, and we''ll still have backup in case the first assassin fails. The probability of Rui Quarrier surviving this particr arrangement is much lower than if wemission only one assassin or if we have all of them attack all at once."


    She gestured to arge map of the Kandrian Empire, underneath which was a map of the Mantian Region.


    Across them were lines of various different colors, besides which were notes specifying duration.


    It was essentially a map of where and for how long Rui spent his daily life.


    "The best location for an assassination would be here," Sierra tapped at the edge of the Great Jrava Mountain Range. "He crosses this point when leaving the Great Jrava Mountain Range; here, he is a thousand kilometers away from Master Gurren and also a thousand kilometers away from the town of Hajin. It is a deserted region with no settlements or civilization nearby. The closest Martial Union branch office is eight hundred and ny-three kilometers away. At this distance, not even the resident Martial Masters will be able to detect them." Material ? of N?velDrama.Org.


    The four Royals couldn''t help but note the several lines emerging from that spot to various ces.


    "What are those?"


    "Those are the most likely escape routes he will take if he survives an assassination plot," Sierra calmly informed them. "We can have multiple backup Senior assassins at a short distance away, along those paths, from the initial assassination point on standby for immediate intervention if the initial assassination is a failure. Thus as soon as the first assassination fails, we can have the next assassin leap in less than a secondter in a decided order without giving him a single moment of respite."


    She turned back to the Royals. "We will have to instate some basic protocols while they''re working. For example, the male assassins should be at least kilometers away if it happens to the Maneater''s turn. And everybody in general should be a great distance away when it is the Suffocator''s turn, and so on and so forth."


    The Royals nodded unanimously in agreement.


    "This is a sensible and rational strategy and n of action when considering theplicated variables and constraints at y," Princess Rafia nodded.


    "This is so exciting," Princess Raemina giggled softly.


    "Sounds good to me. I don''t really care as long as he dies and we don''t get in trouble," Princess Ranea shrugged.


    "Indeed," Prince Randal nodded, narrowing his eyes.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1695 Resolution

    <h4>Chapter 1695 Resolution </h4>


    "There are several issues that we are facing, however," Sierra pointed out. "For one, the wealth needed tomission all these Martial Senior assassins will not go unnoticed. While we have extremely secure official channels, we cannot use official channels, considering the nature of themission we are making. The Royal Family coborating with foreign assassins to take out a domestic asset is a scandal that is bordering on treason. It will shatter your campaign."


    The four Royals considered her words.


    She had a point; while the Royals had ess to a small share of the titanic Royal treasury as well as the wealth from their patrons, allies, benefactors, and partners, all of it was legal and official revenue that was above board and transparent.


    They would face great suspicions from the Martial Union in their faction if that wealth, within their factions, was known to be going to a dubious source. They could not use their faction''s official financial staff for something this sensitive and delicate. The patrons of their faction had ess to the financial statements of the Randal, Rafia, Ranea, and Raemina Foundations so that they could have a good understanding of how their money was being used.


    If they found that shady foreign assassination guilds and frencer assassins were recipients of their money for confidential reasons, there would be more than just a few questions.


    "We will have to use other channels," Prince Randal narrowed his eyes.


    "I have a proposal," Princess Rafia remarked. "We should rely on the Underworld. Specifically, the Schambiei Mafia."


    The three Royals narrowed their eyes in response.


    "As we discussed, we cannot allow anyone to gain wind of these transactions andmissions," Princess Rafia told them. "What we need is a third-party organization with high credibility and reliability when ites to illegallyundering and transacting money illegally."


    An electric silence took over the task force meeting.


    The Schambiei Mafia was one of the six pirs of the Kandrian Underworld, just like the Carnil Mafia, which specialized in the supply of illegal substances and other resources. The Schambiei Mafia specialized in any and all illegal financial services, including unreported transactions, illegal under Kandrianw, and involving recipients or donors who supplied criminal activities.


    Kandrianw required all international transactions to be reported and recorded. The purchase of illegal services from abroad could thus never ur legally. In fact, the fact that the donor foundations of the four royals had transacted with criminal organizations like assassin guilds was enough to trigger an investigation case from the Kandrian Bureau of Investigation.


    Naturally, the Kandrian Empire had more than its fair share of anywhere between veteran and career criminals and shady businesses that weren''t entirely clean. The demand for illegal financial services like moneyundering was high.


    That was where the Schambiei Mafia came in, swooping in to save the day.


    They had a rather ingenious way of transferring funds and transactions in and out of the Kandrian Empire without it being reported and recorded under Kandrian protocol. They did not actually furtively smuggle physical gold coins through the borders of the Kandrian Empire.


    What they did was ept the amount that their clients and customers wanted to beundered and deposit it in their reserve inside the Kandrian Empire. A branch of the mafia outside of the Kandrian Empire would then take the same exact amount out of their reserve and supply it to the desired recipient.


    Thus, no actual gold traveled inside or outside the Kandrian Empire.


    No gold traveled at all. The amount of gold in the Kandrian Empire stayed the same before and after.


    Yet, effectively, the money had been transferred. All the Schambiei Mafia had to do was ept the gold and inform their foreign branch of the amount that they had to separately withdraw from their foreign reserves to deliver to the specified recipient.


    They bnced their reserved by also transferring money from abroad into the Kandrian Empire, to ensure that their two branches possessed bncing amounts of wealth.


    No clues. No footprint. No physical transfer. Nothing.


    In turn, they charged a much higher tax and fee for each transaction than the equivalent legal services would, earning enormous lump sums of wealth.


    This service that the Schambiei Mafia offered became so incredibly popr that it became the richest syndicate in the entire Underworld, earning it a ce among the six pirs of the Underworld.


    The Kandrian Bureau of Investigation had tried and failed to curb this practice over many decades and even centuries. It had be firmly entrenched in the Underworld and was unshakable.


    If the Royals wanted to transferrge sums to various assassination guilds around the continent, then there was a significant chance of it being leaked to the Beggar''s Sect or any other information broker. It was possible that the Kandrian Empire and the Martial Union woulde to discover it, in which case, they were screwed.


    They didn''t have exceedingly high skill sets or experience in such matters. Too much was at stake in order to risk messing it up by doing it themselves.


    That was why it was best to turn to veteran experts and masters of financialundering. Although it sickened the four Royals, who held great pride in their blood, authority, and nation, to work with the filthy Underworld, they had no choice.


    Rui Quarrier needed to go. They could not rely on domestic assassins or Martial Artists whatsoever; thus, foreign Martial Artists were required. Thus, the Schambiei Mafia''s services were required.


    Yet the elephant in the room had not gone unnoticed. Material ? of N?velDrama.Org.


    "If we want the help of the Schambiei Mafia, then we need the help of Rajak," Prince Randal''s mouth curled with disgust. "It is a bitter pill to swallow. But this time, he should not be prone to disagreeing. He hates Raijun and does not want to see him be Emperor either; thus, he should have no problem helping us assassinate the source of his growth."


    A resolution had been reached. To procure the services of the full cooperation of the Schambiei Mafia, they needed the full cooperation of the Carnil Mafia.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1696 Pact

    <h4>Chapter 1696 Pact</h4>


    "¡­So let me get this straight," Prince Rajak stared at Princess Ranea with eyes widened with hostility.


    His voice was reduced to a whisper.


    "The four of you manifestations of human filth have cooked together a n to hamper that bastard Raijun by killing Rui Quarrier, who you im is responsible for his elerating momentum in his campaign?"


    "Pretty much," Princess Ranea replied with sharp eyes.


    They were in a dimly lit room deep underground.


    Behind each of them were four Martial Master bodyguards on absolute alert if their peers on the other side tried pulling something off.


    "¡­And you dare toe to me for help?"


    His eyes were bloodshot with rage.


    "¡­Pretty much," Princess Ranea echoed.


    "It was clever of them to elect you as a representative of your little alliance," Prince Rajak''s mouth curled with hatred. "Since you are among the only two of us seven who had nothing to do with the death of my family."


    "¡­" She simply stared at him wordlessly.


    It was true.


    Rajak would not only never speak friendlily with the other three but would actively order his bodyguards to hamper their bodyguards while he killed them with his own two hands as a Martial Apprentice.


    "What makes you think that Rui Quarrier is responsible for Prince Raijun''s growth?"


    She tossed a document containing all the information that they pooled together that had allowed them to conclude that it was, in fact, Rui Quarrier who was responsible for his incredible progress with campaigning in the Martial Union.


    The Underworld Prince''s eyes narrowed as he read through all the information that they had while Princess Ranea patiently waited.


    They had no choice but to go through him if they wanted sincere cooperation with the Schambiei Mafia.


    "Hm," Prince Rajak closed the document, passing it to a butler. Exclusive content ? by N?(v)el/Dr/ama.Org.


    He steepled his fingers.


    His eyes bored into hers.


    "What''s in it for me?"


    "Don''t give me that bullshit," She snorted. "You gain just as much as we do. You may hate Randal, Raemina, and Rafia, but the fact of the matter is that you hate the idea of Raijun bing Emperor more than you hate the idea of cooperating with us for amon agenda."


    She narrowed her eyes. "He was there. Albeit young, the other three have confirmed that Prince Raijun aided in the massacre of your family."


    Rajak''s eyes burned with unadulterated fury. "You filthy¡­"


    "The man who murdered your family is reaching the throne," Princess Ranea told him with a cold voice. "What are you going to do about it?"


    "THEY MURDERED MY FAMILY TOO!" He bellowed at her.


    "Yes, but they''re not reaching the throne. Who do you think you should be paying attention to?" Princess Ranea''s icy voice washed over the smoldering rage within Rajak.


    "You of the Royal Family¡­" Prince Rajak''s expression curled with disgust and hatred. "Everyst one of you."


    "Not all of us are bad, you know?" Princess Ranea had the audacity to smirk. "I suppose I should thank Raul for being enough of a saint topensate for the rest of us."


    "Don''t you dare," His quivering tone warned her. "Don''t you dare invoke him."


    "Whatever," She snorted. "I don''t really care about your vendetta. You in or out?"


    She stared at him with a calm andposed expression.


    "Rui Quarrier¡­" Prince Rajak''s voice seemed to return to normalcy. "¡­is a good man. He doesn''t deserve to die."


    She didn''t utter a word in response.


    His words may have sounded troubling to her agenda.


    But her eyes told her something else entirely.


    "But I know better than anyone¡­" He continued. "How easily good men who don''t deserve to die¡­die every day."


    He stared at Rui''s profile picture in the documents before him. "If his death is the price to be paid for keeping that disgusting Martial Supremacist off the throne, then so be it."


    "Good," She waved her had as her personal assistant ced a thick document before her. "This contains all the information you''ll need, including recipients, amount, drop-off of the principal amount, and interest, as well as a secure means ofmunication for coordination."


    He simply stared at her wordlessly as his assistant epted the document.


    "Pleasure doing business with you," She got up, eying him to the very end. "Pay my regards to Don Schambiei."


    "Wait."


    Prince Rajak''s voice echoed across the underground chamber.


    Princess Ranea paused, turning back to him as she met his gaze silently.


    "I may agree to help kill him, but that''s it," His golden eyes simmered with rage.


    "What is that supposed to mean?"


    "The Orphanage," His eyes intensified.


    He radiated a deathly Apprentice-level aura. "You better not inflict so much as a scratch on anybody in that orphanage."


    "We have every intention of staying away," She calmly remarked. "The circumstances are such that it is detrimental to our agendas to do anything to them."


    His gaze intensified.


    A sharp silence echoed through the room for several seconds.


    "Hmph, get out," He growled.


    She didn''t even bother gracing him with a retort. She left the undergroundplex, protectively surrounded by her Master-level security detail.


    Prince Rajak, on the other hand, was unmoved.


    Physically, at least.


    His expression was curled with disgust, hatred, and frustration.


    He didn''t want to have to collude with those who had ughtered his family. The very thought of it brought deep disgust to him.


    Yet, seeing his hated half-brother, who ughtered his orphanage, ascend the throne was even more blood-curdling to him.


    In the past many years, he hade to gain immense power as the Prince of the Underworld. He had the singlergest and most powerful faction among the seven before Raijun''s recent bursts in campaigning sesses.


    Yet despite all that power under hismand, he still was not strong enough to kill those who had earned his eternal hatred. Not only that, he was so weak that he was forced to cooperate with them to stop another one who had killed his family.


    BANG!


    He shattered the table before him to smithereens, gritting his teeth.


    "Only when I ascend the throne will I possess the power I need," his eyes glowed with determination.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1697 Shocking Appearance

    <h4>Chapter 1697 Shocking Appearance</h4>


    More than eighteen months had passed ever since Rui embarked on the field of domains. He had finallypleted all four of the projects that he had conceived.


    When creating new techniques, it wasn''t just a matter ofpleting those techniques, it was also a matter of mastering them, and then also learning how to apply them inbat.


    Altogether, it had been closer to two years after he was finally satisfied.


    The three adaptive evolution domains and the Angel of Lace that was an upgrade to the pattern recognition system. While he could go to work harder for years more to gain passive mastery, he had decided against that.


    ''I''m already experiencing diminishing returns on my training,'' Rui heaved a sigh, shaking his head.


    The longer one trained in a field, the more effort one needed to put into making the same progress further down the path. The path grew steeper and steeper the higher one went. If Rui were a domain specialist, he would continue pushing through.


    He most certainly wasn''t a domain specialist. He was an all-rounder.


    He was satisfied with what he had gotten from domains, for now.


    He did hope to gain passive mastery over heaven and earth bending, but that was for the future.


    He also hoped to gain absolute mastery of the Angel of Lace, but that, too was a feat he was not achieving any time soon.


    Regardless, he had sessfully added a new dimension to his Martial Art. The VOID algorithm, the Metabody System, the Hypnomatrix, and now domains.


    "I shoulde up with a name for the group of domain techniques as well," Rui murmured as his eyes swam around in thought.


    "Domain System¡­? Domain Matrix?" His mouth curled with dissatisfaction. "No."


    His eyes lit up a secondter. "How about the Yggdrasil System?"


    The logic for the name was a tad contrived, but domains could be likened to mini-worlds with their special properties and purposes. A cool name for a group of them could be Yggdrasil, the tree of life in Norse mythology that epassed the nine realms.


    "Ok, done," Rui nodded, adding the Yggdrasil System to the visual representation of his Martial Art in his head.


    At the center of all the water was a void, representing the VOID algorithm, surrounded by the Metabody System and the Hypnomatrix. A Yggdrasil tree was added to the mix.


    "I DID IT!"


    A sudden yell drew his attention.


    The night sky was magnified within a domain that Rui had been sitting in, guiding the Martial Master in his mastery of the technique.


    It had taken him many months to master the mathematical foundation needed to even understand basic physics and then several more months to understand high school optics. It still took him several more months to master applying magnification through his domain.


    Right now, he was executing a perfect telescopic domain, just as Rui had promised to teach him.


    "Congrattions," Rui smiled. He was actually surprised that the Master took this long to master it. Especially given that he was an expert specialist in the mastery domain. It appeared that he still learned things slower than Rui did.


    It reminded him of what Kane had told him about his conversation with his father.


    Rui was still very much in his prime. He was thirty, yet he still retained the youth of a young man in his early twenties. He would retain this prime for decades toe because his life had been prolonged by the Senior Realm at the age of twenty-three, ensuring that each biological year aftersted many more years.


    That was why he could do things like rapidly master the foundations of heaven and earth in three months and thenplete four domain projects over the next eighteen months.


    A centuries-old Master, on the other hand, needed to spend the same time mastering a single telescopic domain technique despite his affinity for it.


    It taught Rui the value of his youth and how much he ought to treasure and grind while he still had it.


    "Hahaha!" He guffawed. "I can now peer into the depths of the heavens!"


    "Perhaps you could start an astronomy group," Rui remarked, chuckling. "Who knows, you might be the next Galileo Galilei-"


    He abruptly paused as a figure appeared out of thin air before him.


    She looked to be in her sixties, wearing baggy shadowy Martial Art attire. She had an amused smile on her face as she stared at Rui.


    "Master Reina¡­" Rui murmured, stunned.


    She had truly appeared out of nowhere.


    Even at that very moment, he was only able to see her, not sense her. Not even Riemannian Echo could detect her existence.


    As always, her prowess as an assassin came out of nowhere.


    Master Gurren''s eyes widened with shock as he broke into a cold sweat. "Get away from her, arrogant brat! She''s no ordinary assassin!" N?velDrama.Org copyrighted ? content.


    His Martial Heart and Martial Mind zed into power. The domain-like Martial Embodiment bloomed into full power as he confronted the Silent Shadow. It was an impressive sight.


    Yet his face was filled with wary apprehension.


    Fear, even.


    He hadn''t sensed her either.


    In fact, even at this very moment, he was unable to sense her.


    She was inside his domain, standing very much within its scope and range. Yet he was unable to detect even the faintest whiff of her existence.


    Master Reina, on the other hand, did not deign to acknowledge him. She didn''t feel the need to.


    He was unworthy of it.


    She had neither used her Martial Heart nor her Martial Mind, yet he felt deep peril from her. There were very few Martial Masters who made him feel this way even in the Kandrian Empire and the Martial Union.


    An electric silence upied the atmosphere. She squatted, staring at Rui with narrowed eyes. "Training under another Master, hm? Have you been cheating on me?"


    Rui palmed his face, heaving a resigned sigh. "Your sense of humor is as strange as ever, Master Reina."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1698 Deduced Suspects

    <h4>Chapter 1698 Deduced Suspects</h4>


    "My sense of humor is as sophisticated as ever," Master Reina corrected him.


    "¡­Sure thing," skepticism was palpably dripping off his voice.


    "You don''t seem very convinced."


    "Your humor has the sophistication of that of a teenager who just learned about the bees and birds," Rui scoffed.


    "Is that how you speak to a teacher you haven''t seen in five years? I haven''t forgotten that you didn''t invite me to your assassination!"


    "What assassination?" Rui innocently replied. "I haven''t assassinated anybody in my life. No ma''am. Not one soul. This pupil of yours is aw-abiding citizen." Material ? of N?velDrama.Org.


    "Huhu¡­That was the right response," She nodded approvingly.


    "This no assassination, is it?" Master Gurren asked, having returned to normal.


    "Who knows?" She stared at Rui with an interested expression. "I haven''t decided yet. Perhaps if this silly pupil of mine made up for not having visited his poor, lonely teacher for so many years and cheating on her with another teacher, I might consider letting him live."


    An amused smile shed on Rui''s face. "So you came all the way from the Sirana Gulf to the Kandrian Empire for aedy skit? And you call your humor sophisticated."


    "I came for aedy skit and¡­" Her expression grew a little serious. "¡­to inform you that someone contacted Area Crina with the intention ofmissioning the Voidreaper to assassinate one Rui Quarrier. They correctly deduced that there is some corrtion between the two. I was unable to track the origin of the message."


    Rui''s smile vanished as his eyes narrowed, growing immersed in thought. "Interesting."


    "You seem to be taking it in stride," Master Reina smirked with a hint of excitement.


    "The probability of some action being taken against me within two years of my return to the Kandrian Empire was at about sixty-eight percent," Rui remarked calmly. "Yet there is too much deterrence to attacking me. Thus, anybody who does endeavor to do so is either very stupid or very powerful. The stupid are not a threat, but the powerful know that they cannot tantly attack me with Kandrian Martial Artists, lest they face the wrath of the Kandrian Martial Union."


    He turned to meet Master Reina''s gaze. "Thus, it can be inferred that they will employ the power of international and foreign forces to take me out."


    Her eyes widened as she stared at Rui in disbelief. "Did you predict that someone wouldmission the Voidreaper to take you out?"


    "Well, not the Voidreaper specifically," Rui smirked, amused. "But yes, I did anticipate something like this eventually happening."


    "Did you make preparations to counter it?"


    "Well, I grew stronger," Rui shrugged. "Much stronger. Also¡­"


    Faint bloodlust radiated from him as a sharp smile appeared on his face. "I just learned a bunch of techniques. I was hoping that someone would fight to kill me so that I could test them out and refine them."


    "Hah¡­" She palmed her face. "That sounds like you. What happened to them hiring the Voidreaper to kill you, anyway? Why not hire a Master like me?"


    "That''s a good question," Rui remarked as his analytical mind burst into action. "There are two possibilities. They are unable tomission a Master assassin. Or it is inconvenient tomission a Master."


    Rui narrowed his eyes. "Thing is, no one who can''tmission Masters should have the balls to antagonize me. Unless they''re extremely irrational or extraordinarily stupid."


    "Why not?" Master Reina tilted her head, curious.


    "Because if theyck the capital tomission a Master, then they have no business trying to kill me," Rui replied calmly. "They''re underqualified. Both to kill me and to deal with the consequences. The Martial Union adores me for the contributions I made to Martial Art, and their Martial Art as well as the promise for more contributions and the prestige of having the most prodigious Senior in history. A Senior-level force that is too financially weak tomission Masters should be too terrified to try and kill me."


    "The only reason they would if, as I mentioned, they are too stupid to realize that they are too weak to kill me with the political protection I have or hate me with such intensity that they are willing to suffer the consequences of killing me; irrational," Rui made deduction after deduction. If Chairman Deacon was alive, then Rui might suspect him as the prime candidate. This was a man who hated Rui enough and was determined and perseverant enough to kill Rui even if it brought him ruin. But he was dead.


    Also, he was extremely wealthy and powerful, he could definitelymission many Martial Masters if he wanted to.


    All in all, the probability that theymissioned the Voidreaper because they were unable tomission a Master seemed extremely low. People with such limited resources would be exposed to the powerful investigations of the Martial Union and the Kandrian Empire, and they would immediately be exposed.


    That is why people tussled with others of the same weight ss. Earning the Martial Union''s ire was no different from a death warrant.


    "That is why I conclude that it is someone with the means and power with a somewhat usible chance of killing me and getting away with it and avoiding or bearing the consequences. There''s also the fact that you were unable to track the origin of the message. That suggests a high-level ofpetence." Rui replied. "This inference alone allows me to deduce much about it."


    His eyes swam around as he immersed himself in thought, calcting the probabilities of the various possibilities.


    "First," He began. "It''s definitely not any of the other three powerhouses of East Panama. If they wanted me dead, they would never try andmission a Senior-level assassin from South Panama. Most likely, it''s not any international force based on that and the prior deductions. In which case¡­"


    His eyes narrowed. "Someone inside the Kandrian Empire wants me dead. That significantly narrows it down. My prestige with the Martial Union is so high that there are only a handful of possibilities."


    He raised one finger. "The Kandrian government."


    He raised another finger. "The Kandrian Underworld."


    He raised another finger. "One of the princes. Definitely not Prince Raul or Raijun. Possibly all of them. I''ll just put them in one category."


    He raised a fourth finger. "A corporation entity amongst the top five in the Kandrian Empire."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1699 Response

    <h4>Chapter 1699 Response</h4>


    From just a single piece of information and nothing else, Rui had stacked deduction upon deduction, inference upon inference, and probability upon probability, narrowing his suspect list to four broad culprits.


    "I would include the Royal Emperor as well, but¡­" Rui shook his head. "He could just employ the Royal Corps. He is the only one who possesses the power to face the Martial Union head-on without any reason to fear. Also, he has no reason or motive. Not to mention, he''s in no state and has infinitely more things to worry about."


    That was why Rui deemed the probability of the Emperor being the culprit.


    "Not to mention, if he wanted me dead¡­I''d be dead," Rui chuckled.


    Not even the Martial Union could stop or deter him¡ªnot unless they assigned him a Martial Sage as a bodyguard around the clock.


    "Those are the extent of simple initial thoughts," Rui summed up his extensive and borate chain of logical deduction, inference, and induction. "I''ll form more detailed corrtive models on my death-wishers as time passes and form more rigorous evaluations of probability by corrting them with the modus operandi of the three prime suspects.


    Master Reina and Gurren stared at him, dumbfounded and amazed.


    "That''s¡­incredible," Master Gurren admitted.


    "So, what now?" Master Reina asked, curious about where this was going to go.


    "Well, I''ll have to wait and see," Rui smirked. "Inform them that the Voidreaper has epted theirmission."


    Master Reina smirked, amused. "I knew it was the right choice toe to the Kandrian Empire. I''ve been so goddamn bored in the Shadow Isles ever since you exterminated the assassination industry."


    "You didn''t consider visiting Master Zeamer?" Rui smirked.


    "Hah," She snorted contemptuously. "The only reason I would go visit him is if I decided I wanted to assassinate him. This time, I would seed."


    "I dunno about that, Master Reina," Rui chuckled. "I had the privilege of seeing him in action. He is absurdly powerful."


    "Hmph," She snorted. "Did he tell you about how he almost died at my handsst time?"


    "He did," Rui admitted, chuckling. "Still, I appreciate you taking the effort toe to Kandria and warning me about this. I''m surprised they let you in, honestly."


    "Who do you think I am? I infiltrated it covertly. However, the Kandrian Border Patrol Force is definitely better than I remembered. I almost got caught by Her Excellency Sage Farana when infiltrating the nation," She remarked.


    "I''m surprised you managed to get away with that," Rui threw a troubled look at her.


    "This is a good lesson for a youngling like you. As long as you stay far enough away from the monsters, you''ll be fine," She smirked. "Many a year has passed since this old poor teacher of yours has gotten excited with something as exciting as the Kandrian Throne War. Perhaps I shoulde out of retirement."


    "Nonono," Rui quickly gestured. "Stay retired. For the sake of the world."


    "Boo."


    Rui heaved a sigh at the strange antics of his entric assassin Master. He had gotten used to them in the more than two years that he had spent training under her. He was lying if he said he didn''t enjoy reuniting with her after all this time.


    Her lessons had aided with the assassination of Chairman Deacon.


    "Thank you for everything, Master Reina," Rui smiled warmly.


    She put aside her jestful nature for a moment, pulling him in for a wordless soft hug before turning to the awkwardly silent Master Gurren. "Whatcha lookin'' at? Do you want a hug, too? You''re not my type. Sorry."


    "Hmph, how arrogant," Master Gurren snorted. "So you are the reason my pupil is an arrogant brat."


    Rui heaved a sigh as the two of them started bickering with each other like children.


    He considered what to do. He had already inferred as much as he could from the information that Master Reina supplied him. The question was, what was the best course of action to take?


    ''I don''t want to die, that''s for sure,'' he snorted, ncing at the two Martial Masters bickering. "If I were attacked by Martial Masters, would you protect me?"


    "Of course," Master Gurren snorted. "Who do you think I am?"


    "It would be fun to kill a Martial Master after so long," Master Reina remarked.


    "Ok, if I was ambushed by a Martial Senior, then what?" Rui raised an eyebrow.


    "You''re on your own," Master Gurren said, shaking his head. "Martial Artists are not supposed to coddle those of lower Realms."


    "I will wish you the best and hope for an entertaining show," Master Reina flicked him a thumbs up.


    "Hah," Rui snorted, amused. "Appreciate the warm support."


    He shook his head with resignation. Master Zeamer had said something simr to the two of them back soon after his fight with Senior Zenshin. It appeared that this wasn''t just their personal opinions but also a norm or trend among those of the Master Realm.


    Yet he wasn''t disappointed.


    In actuality, he had hoped for this. N?velDrama.Org exclusive content.


    He had been looking for serious and lethalbat opportunities.


    What better way to be thrust into serious and lethalbat circumstances than to be targeted by powerful assassins?


    "Surely you don''t intend to ept themission?" Master Reina gazed at him with interest.


    "I''m not going to assassinate myself, no," Rui replied. "But¡­I do want to speak to the peoplemissioning me to kill me. It will be a good opportunity to gain the identity of the culprit. Still¡­"


    His eyes narrowed. "I have some interesting ideas to learn the identity of those whomissioned assassins to kill me; it all depends on how everything turns out and what their intentions are when ites to going about my assassination."


    "Prudent approach," Master Reina nodded. "I''ll convey your eptance of themission."


    "Tell them that I need to know the identity of themissioner before I ept the assassination," Rui smiled, interested. "I''m curious to see how they go about this."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1700 Duplicitous Intentions

    <h4>Chapter 1700 Duplicitous Intentions</h4>


    Themunications between the Voidreaper and the allied royals happened rather quickly as Master Reina securely ryed Rui''s messages to Area Crina, where it was then ryed to the royals through an untraceable means as a result of the sheer resources and care that the royals had put into not being traced.


    "The Voidreaper has a policy of knowing the identity of themissioner?" Prince Randal narrowed his eyes.


    "That was the response that Area Crina supplied us with, Your Highness," Sierra calmly informed him. "It''s not unheard of, even if unusual."


    "We cannot possibly divulge our identities," Princess Ranea''s tone was firm. "We should cancel our ns tomission him if he is not amenable to not knowing our identity," Princess Rafia remarked.


    "However, he is the most desirable candidate out of all the assassins," Princess Raemina remarked as she studied his profile with interest.


    "Our identities as the ones who seek to assassinate Rui Quarrier must nevere out at all costs," Prince Randal was clear. "At the same time, securing hismission is desirable."


    Princess Ranea turned to Sierra. "Are there any circumstances under which both of these can be achieved?"


    "In our talks with the Voidreaper, he had revealed that he is willing to learn of the identities of themissioners after the assassination isplete when he delivers the body," Sierra remarked. "Do we really require the body?" Princess Raemina frowned.


    "The best way to minimize the probability of Your Highness'' identities being revealed is to ensure that the body is not discovered. Once the body is discovered, the probability that of Your Highnesses being exposed increases significantly, statistically," Sierra remarked. "So ensuring that the body is never found is our best course of action?" Prince Randal narrowed his eyes.


    "Correct, Your Highness; for that reason, ensuring that we procure the body and thenpletely and systematically erase it from this world such that no esoteric technology or Martial Artist will ever be able to learn anything from it is an important agenda. About ny-eight percent of murder investigations sessfully solved are those where the scene of the crime and the body are readily avable for investigation. Inparison, in those where it isn''t, the sess rate of solving such cases is only two percent," Sierra exined calmly. "Thus, we need to procure the body after the sessful assassination."


    "However, there is no guarantee that the Voidreaper will be the one to kill Rui Quarrier," Princess Rafia remarked. "Considering the number of Martial Seniors that we are hiring, the probability that it will be the Voidreaper who will kill him is minimal. In that circumstance, why should we even bother to promise something as risky and dangerous as revealing our identity?"


    "The Voidreaper has acquiesced and proposed apromise," Sierra informed them. "He proposes that as long as he is the one to kill Rui Quarrier, he learns the identities of those whomission him."


    "He seems oddly fixated on learning our identities," Princess Ranea narrowed her eyes.


    "It doesn''t matter," Prince Randal snorted. "We can put him at thest in the line of assassins that will attack Rui. That way, there''s almost no way he''ll be the one to take on Rui Quarrier." Material ? of N?velDrama.Org.


    "¡­You cannot rule out the possibility that he will be the one to kill Rui Quarrier after thetter somehow survives every other assassin," Princess Rafia remarked. "In such a case, we will have shot ourselves in the foot with the need to show him our identity in order to retain the body of Rui Quarrier to erase it."


    The four royals were in a bit of a dilemma. Revealing their identity was an uneptable request. If the Voidreaper just so happened to reveal this information, they would suffer tremendously!


    It could get so bad that he could singlehandedly cripple their entire political campaign if he had even a shred of proof.


    None of them wanted that to happen.


    "If I may, Your Highnesses, I have a proposal," Sierra calmly offered, earning a nod of approval from the four royals. "I believe the solution is simple. Once the Voidreaper has been satisfied with learning your identities and offers up Rui Quarrier''s cadaver, then we need only kill him afterward."


    The suggestion intrigued the four royals. "¡­I suppose that''s a simple way to fix the problem," Prince Randal mused. "Actually, that is indeed a rather simple and straightforward solution. Once he has delivered the body, the agreement will bepleted, and the contract will be voided, including the nonpete use. Then we can kill the Voider then and there on the spot with our Martial Masters and dispose of the body without anybodying out the wiser."


    "As long as nobody walks away learning our identities, I''m fine," Princess Ranea shrugged. "Even if that means killing the people who do walk away."


    "That is an agreeable proposition," Princess Rafia nodded. "The probability that he can survive such a situation is precisely zero. In that case, it would be better to procure the body after fulfilling his request and then kill him then and there."


    "Sounds like it will be an exciting spectacle," Princess Raemina giggled. "I look forward to seeing the great Voidreaper struggling against our Masters."


    "There won''t be any struggle," Prince Randal snorted. "He will die instantly. Not even the might of the Voider will be enough tost a second against a powerful Martial Master. Objectively, there is zero risk."


    He turned to Sierra. "Good suggestion."


    "Thank you, Your Highness," She bowed.


    "Since our agreement is unanimous, let us go with this n," Princess Ranea nodded, narrowing her eyes. "We willmission the best of the assassins we can within short notice, all of whom will be Seniors because Masters will take years naturally and have them take Rui on in a manner that ensures that they won''t impede each other. The Voidreaper will be putst in line, and if he does somehow sessfully kill Rui, then he dies after learning our identities."


    The four royals nodded with affirmation.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1701 Point of Failure

    <h4>Chapter 1701 Point of Failure</h4>


    "¡­Interesting," Rui mused. "They actually agreed¡­? I wasn''t expecting that."


    He turned to Master Reina. "What do you think is the probability that they''re sincere in revealing their identity?"


    "¡­Fifty-fifty," Master Reina remarked with thought. "I depends. They could be either paranoid or duplicitous; it is difficult to discern which without meeting them."


    "Agreed," Rui nodded. "Regardless, assuming they do indeed intend to reveal their identities, then I just need to survive all the assassins and let the Voidreaper kill me."


    Master Gurren and Master Reina exchanged a puzzled nce.


    "So you do intend to kill yourself?" Master Reina pouted. "That sounds boring."


    "I intend to pretend to sumb to the hands of the Voidreaper," Rui chuckled. "I''m going to need someone to y the part of the Voidreaper convincingly enough."


    He nced at Master Reina with a pointed look.


    "Me?" She was flummoxed. "You''ve already got your body morphing technique, so I know you can do it," Rui smirked. "On the day of the assassination, you''re going to have to be the Voidreaper. You will pretend to kill me and take my pretend corpse to the people who want me dead, and when they reveal themselves, I will have won," Rui smirked. "It''s the perfect n; they won''t know what hit them."


    A grin arose on her face as she realized the entertainment value of the n that Rui had proposed. "Hehe¡­that does sound fun, I can''t deny."


    "Good," Rui nodded. "Then that''s the n so far. In case they try something funny, I want some insurance. We''ll have to carry a tracker in my pretend cadaver so that Master Gurren can intervene."


    "Hmph, arrogant as always, arrogant brat," he snorted. "I never agreed to partake in this machination of yours."


    "I''ll teach you a technique that allows you to estimate the distance of all celestial objects you see in the sky," Rui replied.


    "Done,"


    Rui smirked. "Good."


    Rui was no expert in astronomy, but the Parax Method was an ancient way of estimating distance. It was also extremely simple and elementary. He didn''t mind sharing it with Master Gurren for this favor.


    "Still, I don''t understand," Master Gurren narrowed his eyes. "Why not inform the Martial Union of this? Isn''t that the mostmon sense n? Once you inform the Martial Union, they''ll definitely provide you with a security detail of Seniors, maybe even Masters, to protect you from any assassination attempt until years worth of investigation leads them to the source and they eliminate it."


    "That''s precisely why I''m avoiding them," Rui replied. "They''re overbearing. They solve every problem with Martial force because that is the only way Martial Artists know how to solve problems. Either fear of their power or power itself. In order to protect me from proven unknown threats of assassination, they will pressure me into sacrificing any and all privacy and freedom for the sake of protection. I will be stalked by Martial Seniors or Masters. It''s bad enough to deal with it at the Orphanage, but I tolerate it because it''s for my family''s sake. However, I absolutely refuse to make sacrifices of freedom and privacy for the sake of protection outside of that."


    This was one thing Rui was consistently adamant about his entire life. It was the same circumstance as it had been more than a decade ago when Chairman Deacon discovered the true identity of the Voider, and the Martial Union offered protection for his family in exchange for his absolute loyalty. He had refused to sacrifice his liberty back then, and he refused to sacrifice his liberty today.


    "On top of that, if the Martial Union finds out, I will lose ckmail material," Rui replied. "The best part about having proof that a certain individual or individuals are plotting to kill me is exposing them to the Martial Union. That is the core of my threat. I can bend them to my will by threatening to expose their plot to kill me to the Martial Union or the Kandrian Bureau of Investigation. The statute of limitations for crimes against Martial Artists is much longer, so I''ll be able to squeeze them for decades."


    Rui grinned sadistically.


    He had absolutely no qualms about extorting and ckmailing people who plotted to kill him. He was not a saint. He was not Raul.


    "We''ll have to execute this cleanly," Rui remarked. "We can''t afford to make mistakes."


    He turned to Master Reina. "I will be the one to go through the briefing session that they will organize for the various assassins. I''m strongest when I collect data on my opponents. I will study all of them thoroughly during the briefing and use that to my advantage during the assassinations. However, you will be taking the ce of the Voidreaper instead of me during the assassinations. I will only do so during the briefing. This means that you will have to match my Voidreaper persona and bodynguage."


    Master Reina snorted. "That''s trivial. I have mastered persona mimicry. I shall ensure that none of theme away wiser." N?velDrama.Org copyrighted ? content.


    Rui nodded. "Also, can you guarantee that nobody will notice your Master status?"


    "Yes," Master Reina nodded. "That''s trivial enough; it takes a particrly powerful high-grade Martial Master with a nt towards sensory to sense me."


    "Hm," Rui nodded. "That means I should keep you away from the Truthseeker or Master Zentra and people like that. That''s fine."


    "Alright, then the n is set," Rui replied. "I got to the briefing to gather as much intelligence as possible. On the day of the assassination, Master Reina takes ce as the Voider, and I will allow the assassinations to happen. I ovee them all and then pretend to sumb to the Voider, and Master Reina will procure my body and head to the designated area to learn the identity of my death-wishers and extort and ckmail them with it, and then everyone lives happily ever after."


    "Yes, but the biggest point of failure in this operation is you," She remarked with concern. "The assassins they''re going to be hiring are not second-rate; they''re all at the peak of the Senior Realm. On top of that, you''re going to be fighting them back to back."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1702 Concerns

    Her concerns were very valid and sound.


    There were extremely few Martial Seniors at the very highest echelons of the Senior Realm who could ovee the things that Rui would be subjecting himself to.


    "My rationale is sound," Rui replied calmly. "I am strong. Far, far stronger than I was when I was training under you five years ago."


    "I can see that," Master Reina remarked. "Your progress is truly astounding. I''m just cautioning you not to let it impede your judgment."


    "I understand. I am doing my best to ensure that it isn''t and hasn''t while in regards to this decision," Rui replied with aposed tone. "My primary goal is to survive; my secondary goal is to eliminate the threat to me; I can do that by suppressing them with ckmail or even killing them then and there if I can get away with it. Thus, my goal is to exit this ordeal with the threat eliminated and no loss of quality of life where I have to be constantly protected by the Martial Union surrendering my agency."


    He wasn''t lying, but that wasn''t the whole truth.


    The truth was that he wanted to be attempted to be assassinated. He had rued a lot of power recently. He had even gone to rue a new dimension of his Martial Art.


    eastern fantasy N?velDrama.Org copyrighted ? content.


    Thest time this had happened was when he trained under Master Zeamer, soon after that, he got to fully test the limits of his power in all-outbat against the powerful Seniors of the Carnil Mafia.


    Prior to that, he had added another dimension of adaptive evolution to his Martial Art with the Metabody System, and he had gotten to rigorously test that out in the Virdhabhasa Contest.


    This time, he would be testing his power out against assassins who were hired to kill him. It was not fake nor false, nor did he have to go searching for conflict and pick fights forcefully. The fight wasing to him.


    He needed to find out just how powerful his Flowing Void Style had be.


    Master Reina heaved a troubled sigh, shaking her head. "You''re such a troublemaker."


    "Hey, I''m not the one who hired assassins. I''m a victim here," He grinned mischievously.


    "Hah, it''s the other way around," Master Gurren snorted. "How shameless, pretending to be prey when you''re actually an ambush predator. You''re truly an arrogant brat, after all."


    Rui shrugged, uncaring for their usations. "As long as you fulfill your parts in this n, I can ept anything you say."


    He turned to Master Reina. "Aren''t you happy to be partaking in the Kandrian Throne War?"


    "How do you know this is rted to the Kandrian Throne War?" Master Reina raised an eyebrow.


    "Everything is," Rui replied, scoffing. "Especially in the Kandrian Empire. I guarantee you, regardless of whether it''s the Kandrian government, any of the seven royalspeting for the throne, a powerful corporation, or the Underworld, the motivations behind this assassination are rted to the Kandrian Throne War."


    The probability that the motivation to take him out was unrted to the throne war was unthinkable. He had already concluded that the culprit was in the Kandrian Empire. That was what made him confident that it was rted to the Kandrian Throne War. His impact on the Kandrian Empire was beneficial to all of its residents. He was such a golden goose that nobody in the Kandrian Empire had a reason to kill him if not for the fact that there was a throne war.


    "Tsk, pesky throne war," Rui tutted. "If only Emperor Rael never fell ill. After listening to the seven royals vying for the throne, it made me realize how valuable he was for maintaining harmony without too much of a cost."


    Rui didn''t know what the endgame of the throne war was. He had done his best to steer it away from the worst of candidates, but s, even for him, making lemonade out of this lemon was proving to be almost impossible.


    He shook his head, putting away such thoughts.


    He had more important matters to focus on in the short term.


    The assassinations. He needed to survive. He needed to ovee. He needed to employ every ounce of power he had mustered in the seven years he had spent in the Senior Realm. He had grown tremendously stronger since then, and he couldn''t wait to test his new limits.


    The two Masters narrowed their eyes as they felt a wave of battle lust from Rui.


    He was itching for it.


    He grinned, turning to Master Reina. "When is the arranged briefing?"


    "It''s supposed to be in two weeks," Master Reina replied. "They seem to be proceeding with the greatest of care and caution without giving away even the slightest detail. The Voidreaper will be expected to be in the Kandrian Empire and they will disclose the location of the briefing on the same day as the briefing itself."


    "That reveals a lot of fear of being discovered," Rui narrowed his eyes. "It gives me more clues as to who it could be, but not enough to be conclusive about my suspicions. Regardless, I''ll be fine. Thankfully, I have a Master-level mask that can impede their senses."


    He still had the Master-level mask that Master Deivon had given him a long time ago, and he certainly intended to use it to ensure that any Martial Master present during the briefing would not instantly discover his identity.


    "I also need to put up a good little costume befitting that of the Voidreaper," Rui smirked, turning to Master Reina.


    lightsvel "Oh, I have a lifetime of experience with that. I''m sure we can put up something extremely convincing that will really convince people that you are the Voidreaper. After all, you truly are the Voidreaper."


    Both sides began preparations for the eventual meet-off and showdown.


    In just a matter of two weeks, the briefing meeting had arrived and it was time for Rui to take on his identity as the Voidreaper.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1703 Confrontation

    <h4>Chapter 1703 Confrontation</h4>


    Rui walked down the crowded path in a rural district of a bustling town. His attire was¡­strange, to say the least. He wore things he never had before. A dark Martial Art attire, with a cape-like dark robe over it. A hood extended over his head, covering his mask-adorned head. He looked like he was trying to cosy as darkness itself. It was very embarrassing, but Master Reina insisted that it was just right.


    Today, he was not Rui Quarrier.


    Today, he was the one who hade to kill Rui Quarrier.


    Today, he was the Voidreaper. The assassin that hunted other assassins. He set himself into that mindset as he took on more silent and darker bodynguage. Yet no power, not even the slightest ounce of threat, could be felt like him. Amongst Martial Artists, that was perhaps a sign of weakness, but amongst assassins, it was the reverse. It was a sign of power.


    Assassins were not showmen; they did not flex their power or lethality in broad daylight to inform everyone around them of their threat.


    They did not draw attention.


    Despite his get-up, not a single person in the bustling flea market so much as turned a head towards him.


    He was invisible.


    He had activated Greater Phantomind Void to throw any and everybody off his trail.


    Eventually, he stopped, having arrived at a certain inconspicuous shed.


    Most would never deign to pay it attention.


    That was precisely why his contractors had chosen this as a ce to conduct the briefing. When he extended his senses inside, he found that Riemannian Echo was still reluctantly able to sense through it. Their security measures were not the absolute best that he had ever seen, although they were still extremely good.


    That gave him even more clues as to who he was dealing with. He quickly made a few adjustments to the evaluations of the probabilities of the identities of his employer.


    CLACK


    He opened the little rattling door, crouching his way to fit in through the narrow door as he entered the little shed, taking a row of stairs down, arriving at a more pristine area.


    A door was the only way forward.


    Yet, it was guarded.


    "Name and verification," A masked Martial Master coldly demanded from him.


    A single thought shed through Rui''s mind at that moment.


    ''My deductions were urate. It is somebody native to the Kandrian Empire. There would be no need to mask a Martial Master if they were not native. The fact that this is even being conducted in such a location is also evidence.''


    Rui simply stared at the Master for a second, before reaching in to his robes, pulling out a little token, handing it to the Master. "Voidreaper."


    His voice was distorted.


    A little trick Master Reina taught him.


    The Master''s eyes drifted to meet his as he sized Rui up for several seconds.


    He didn''t seem to be taken aback that he was unable to sense the Voidreaper''s appearance.


    "You may enter," The Master nodded after verifying the token.


    This was a token that had been provided to Area Crina, which Master Reina had returned to bring back to Rui so that he could provide it as proof of identity.


    Inside was arge, well-ventted, and well-lit room filled with luxurious and ostentatious couches and furniture.


    It was not something one would expect to see in the flea market that upied the entire district.


    Yet that didn''t draw his attention nearly as much as the various figures seated across the couches.


    A lean Martial Artist with a curved de sheathed at his side.


    A man whose face was covered with an extravagant gas mask.


    A woman with a voluptuous body with scarce clothing that left little to the imagination.


    A burly gargantuan man whose hands wererger than Rui''s torso.


    A woman with green skin that did not even hide its poisonous nature.


    Several more, each with their own entric traits.


    These were the ones who were chosen to kill him.


    All of them reacted with rm when he dispelled Greater Phantomind Void, appearing out of nowhere in their senses as he entered the room, quietly taking a seat on the couch.


    Yet he wasn''t unaware of the powerful stares boring holes into his body.


    They weren''t pleased. After all, Rui had made a silent deration, conveying a message that they were all too familiar with.


    I could kill you whenever, wherever, however.


    It was a blow to their pride.


    "You must be the notorious Voidreaper, eh?" One of the more chatty assassins stared at him with a poisonous smile. His words were equally veiled, hiding the spite beneath.


    "I''ve heard things like you''re really strong. And that¡­" His eyes narrowed.


    The air grew electric.


    "¡­And that you kill assassins like us for a living."


    The others exhibited various reactions; some didn''t do so much as twitch, while some watched on with interest.


    The man with the gas mask stared holes into Rui while the scantly-clothed woman featured a seductive smile, licking her lips.


    SHIIIING


    Rui opened his eyes at the noise of a de being unsheathed, turning to the lean man who was slowly drawing his de.


    "I''m sure the others will agree," his voice was sharp.


    "Assassination is already such a dangerous and risky business," His tone grew dangerous.


    "Almost all of us are doomed to die miserable deaths long before we reach the end of our lifespans."


    The atmosphere grew taut.


    "It''s already so hard being an assassin¡­" He remarked. "We can''t have a bastard like you running around making it even harder, can we?"


    The atmosphere grew perilous. N?velDrama.Org copyrighted ? content.


    "Anyst words?" Rui''s eyes shifted to meet his.


    Four words escaped his mouth.


    "Come at your peril."


    A grin appeared on the man''s voice.


    "Heh, so he speaks, well, for hisst words, those weren''t too ba-"


    CLACK


    The door opened as a well-attired businesswoman apanied by four high-grade Martial Seniors walked in, apanied by a staff of assistants.


    All of them were masked.


    "Wee to Kandria, assassins of the Underworld," She calmly replied. "I am speaking to you on behalf of your employers; you may address me as M. I will be briefing you on the specifications of ourmission, after which you can decide whether you wish to sign the contract or not."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1704 Constraints

    <h4>Chapter 1704 Constraints</h4>


    She turned to the lean man with a drawn de. "Sir Thunder Viper, please abstain from engaging in any disruptive manner towards your colleagues while you are on our premises. You may indulge them after you have exited the premises, lest we remove you with force nonpliance."


    The Thunder Viper stared at her for a second, turning back to the Voidreaper, snorting before sheathing his de and taking his seat.


    "Without further ado, let me begin the briefing session."


    A board featuring a screen instead of a surface was brought over, featuring an image.


    It was that of Rui Quarrier. Rui narrowed his eyes as M cut to the chase, featuring the target of the operation.


    "As you have been informed, the target of the information is one Rui Quarrier, a grade-thirteen, asst verified, Martial Senior of the Kandrian Empire. The objective, of course, is to assassinate him and supply us with the body," She exined. "This much you have all been informed about. Today, I will go into the constraints and requirements we have for the assassination."


    The screen changed, demonstrating immense data on Rui''s travel and time habits, including how much time he spent in each location during the day.


    It was incredibly creepy to Rui, but he wasn''t surprised. Stalking one''s assassination targets waspletely normal in the industry. One needed to gain every ounce of information to ensure that the assassination went perfectly.


    In fact, it was what he was doing right now, at the moment. Even as she spoke, he wasn''t paying too much attention to her.


    She was not going to be the one trying to kill him. It was the assassins around him.


    He paid attention to all their movements, every twitch, and every shift. Their reactions to every word, the things that preceded each movement. He hadn''t yet begun creating predictive models; he could do thatter. He first just wanted to gather as much data as he could. "First, the assassination needs to be covert, ideally," M began. "We wish for you to kill him, having drawn as little attention as possible. This involves minimizing the energy output of the fight as little as possible. Please ensure that it does not cross a certain threshold so that it will draw the immediate attention of the Martial Union."


    ''Figured,'' Rui narrowed his eyes. ''Their game is to ensure that there is little to no way in which the Martial Union will intervene before they sessfully kill me and take my body away.''


    "This would generally mean ending the assassination quickly and swiftly, although there are exceptions¡­" M nced at the Maneater.


    She was known to spend time with her targets if she found herself enjoying her assassination, killing them slowly rather than swiftly.


    "Truly a shame¡­" A seductive feminine voice escaped her mouth as she eyed the image of Rui on the board. "I dislike rushing the cute ones to death. There''s no harm in giving them the time of their life before they die, is there?"


    Her expression grew more intense.


    The men in the room stirred as she inadvertently began employing her Martial Art.


    ''I see¡­'' Rui felt blood rushing to his groin. ''That''s a powerful Martial Art. I''ll have to be careful about this one.''


    Her Martial Art bypassed other Martial Art fundamentally. At least, it bypassed those of heterosexual men and homosexual women. She was useless against anybody else, but within those two groups, she couldpletely bypass resistance itself.


    It was lethal.


    In fact, Rui wasn''t sure that it was strictly limited to the Senior Realm.


    ''I know Master Zeamer is a Master, but¡­'' A strange expression appeared on his face beneath his mask. ''Would he really survive if she tried assassinating him?''


    He desperately wanted to believe that the Hypnomaster, by virtue of being a particrly formidable Master, would easily be able to handle her seduction-assassination, but he unfortunately couldn''t be himself to muster confidence in Master Zeamer.


    The man''s sex drive was his Martial drive. Could someone like that possibly resist her at all?


    He didn''t know.


    Yet, he did know that he didn''t intend to sumb to her. While he would be lying, as a man, if he said he wouldn''t mind a taste of what she had to offer under more amiable and consensual circumstances, he was not going to toss his life for it.


    "Madame," M addressed the seductress. "Please abstain from employing your Martial Art. You are affecting this briefing."


    No one had missed the changes in the male assistants and assassins.


    "Ah¡­my apologies," She giggled, restraining herself.


    Rui inwardly heaved a sigh as he felt relief immediately. Outwardly, he hadn''t so much as twitched, maintaining his shadowy mystique and implicit peril. Yet he was quite wary of the seductress.


    While the other assassins were all high-grade and threatening more directly, he was much more concerned about a woman who could affect his mind and remove his will to resist. That was far scarier than even the most wicked of des.


    "As I was saying," M continued. "The first constraint of the assassination is that it must be as furtive and quick as possible. The second is that you must provide us with the body and get rid of any evidence of the assassination swiftly after its sess."


    She turned to the screen as it shifted to a map of the Kandrian Empire, zooming in on the spot outside of the Great Jrava Mountain Range.


    "This is the most optimal spot for the assassination and also the third constraint," She exined. "We require you conduct the assassination here and ensure that it ends here. Under no circumstances must the operation shift locations. It will be considered a failure." N?velDrama.Org copyrighted ? content.


    "That''s simple enough," the Thundering Viper snorted. "We just need to kill him then and there, right?"


    "Indeed," M nodded. "That''s the third constraint."


    "Trivial," he nced at the picture of Rui. "Especially with all of us working to assassinate him, he won''t stand a chance."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1705 Last Turn

    <h4>Chapter 1705 Last Turn</h4>


    "In regards to that..." M began. "That brings us to the fourth constraint; the anti-synergy between all of you."


    The Thunder Viper narrowed his eyes as he understood what she meant.


    He turned to the Maneater and the Suffocator with wary eyes. "I definitely cannot operate near them, that much I can tell you."


    He nced around at each of them with sharp eyes. Each of them had elements that conflicted with his manner of going about things.


    A smile shed atop his face. "A gauntlet, if I remember correctly."


    "That''s right," M nodded. "We will have a series of assassins in ce, ready to take the ce of the one that failed. Of course, if there are those of you who think they can work with each other without getting in each other''s way, then that is eptable, too. Aside from the twins, are there any pairs who would be able to work without impeding each other significantly?"


    Nobody raised their hands. Although this was the first time that some of them had met each other face-to-face, they knew that their styles would definitelypete with and impede each other.


    "...In that case, a series it is," M announced. "We have informed you of the payment structure, but I shall take a moment to go over it again."


    The screen on the board changed, featuring a flowchart.


    "Each of you will be paid your standard premiummission for simply partaking in the assassination," She informed them. "The one tond the final blow will receive two to the power of whatever their numeric turn is. Thus, if the person going first seeds in the assassination, they will get twice as much, but if the person going second seeds, then they get four times as much. The person going thrice would get eight times as much for killing him, and so on and so forth."


    This was why so many of them had decided to ept themission. The price for actually seeding was incredibly high. Material ? of N?velDrama.Org.


    Whoever was employing these assassins to kill Rui was simply giving away gold as it grew on trees.


    It also incentivized them to participate even if they didn''t get to first due to the additional gold they would get if they seeded where the ones prior failed.


    "I''m going first," The Thunder Viper dered.


    His words earned the ire of those around him.


    "I''m afraid not," The Maneater''s seductive tone grew cold.


    "If anyone is going first," A deep voice emerged from within the Suffocator''s mask. "It''s me."


    "We will draw lots for the disputed numbers," M informed them.


    Suddenly, Rui raised his hand, drawing everybody''s attention. "I''ll be goingst."


    His words took the entire room by surprise.


    The probability that the target would be able to get to thest was minimal. It would take an extraordinary Martial Senior to aplish such a feat.


    "Hah," The Thunder Viper snorted. "Did youe here just to get a freebie and avoid working?"


    "¡­If nobody disputes his im, then it will go to him," M calmly remarked.


    A brief silence overtook the entire room.


    "Let us proceed with the drawing of lots," M remarked as a box with a hole came about. "Let us begin from the left. Pleasee in and reach for a chit. Show it to nobody else except me."


    That was less desirable for Rui, knowing the order of his assassins was definitely desirable, but s, he didn''t have any valid im to ask for them. Doing so would simply draw more attention to him. On top of that, he didn''t have any justification for it, so it would make him suspicious.


    One by one, they drew their number. Most did not exhibit any reaction; the Thunder Viper tutted, and the Maneater smiled seductively.


    "Ensure that you do not enter the fray at anything other than your turn," M stated. "If you do, then you shall be denied your pay even if you seed in killing him. That will be a term in the contract."


    None of the assassins voiced anyints against this.


    "Let us get back to the target itself," M said after they had each drawn their turn. "Rui Quarrier. I would suspect most of you know nothing about him."


    "I heard he was the new youngest Martial Senior in history," Thunder Viper snorted, raising an eyebrow. "Hehehe, he should have waited. It was stupid to break through that young. He''s drawn more attention than he can handle, and he''s going to die for it."


    The Voidreaper was silent, but inwardly, Rui snorted contemptuously at his words.


    "He is indeed the youngest Martial Senior in history," M remarked. "His age of breakthrough thoroughly confirmed by multiple parties, including the Beggar''s Sect, the Martial Union, and the Ministry of Martial Art to be twenty-three."


    "So young¡­I bet he tastes wonderful," The Maneater giggled.


    "His age of breakthrough is not relevant to the difficulty of the operation," M remarked. "An information package will be provided to each of you featuring everything there is to know about his strengths and weaknesses. You may read through them while I go over the important points."


    She turned back to the board as the screens changed to one featuring all of Rui''sbat feats and Martial Art intelligence while books filled with intelligence on him.


    "There is much to be said in regards to Rui Quarrier as a Martial Artist," M remarked. "However, ording to Martial Master sources, there are two things that truly need to be paid attention to."


    The screen changed, featuring a brain symbol beside the words ''adaptive evolution.''


    "His Martial Path and his capacity for thought are the most important things," M remarked. "In regards to thetter, there are many reasons and testaments. For one, it is confirmed that he learned how to speak fluently by the age of one and how to read by the age of three, demonstrating an astonishingly prodigious rate of growth. In the mental evaluation in the Martial Academy, he scored above two hundred on an IQ test, the highest score in the history of the Martial Union¡­"


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1706 Departure

    <h4>Chapter 1706 Departure </h4>


    Rui sat there, trying not to let his ego get stoked as she started zing him.


    "¡­It has been confirmed by Martial Masters that his capacity for thought is so high that he had developed a nascent Martial Mind prototype at the age of fourteen when he broke through to the Apprentice Realm," she remarked.


    This revtion sent a visible wave of shock across almost all the Martial Seniors.


    As fellow high-grade Martial Seniors who had been in the Senior Realm for decades and centuries, they each understood how arduous the task of making any progress with the Martial Mind was.


    "What¡­?" The Thunder Viper whispered. "That''s absurd!"


    Not even the Maneater or the Suffocator could maintain theirposure at those words as they stared at the masked woman with shock.


    "All of what I have uttered is verified and vetted information," M remarked. "He is a prodigy the likes of which this world has never seen. He may be the most thought-gifted Martial Artist in the history of Martial Art. His potential is considered to be immeasurable. His contributions to Martial Art exceed that of even aplished Martial Masters. A force that will change Martial Art forever¡­" Material ? of N?velDrama.Org.


    M paused for a moment. "¡­That is Rui Quarrier. And it is the most important thing to note about him. Do not underestimate him due to his youth and thus weaker Martial Body and Heart. What hecks in body, he makes up for, and then some with thought. You will be facing a monster of mind who will fight with a degree of strategic and tactical saturation that you likely have never faced before."


    "Is that why you have taken such extravagant measures to take him down?" Thunder Viper raised an eyebrow. "Even if he is a grade-thirteen Martial Senior this young, this is overkill."


    He gestured to all the assassins that had been gathered in the room.


    "We cannot afford any mistakes," M remarked. "To ensure that nothing can possibly go wrong, we have taken every possible precaution, no matter how excessive."


    She turned back to the screen. "Now, the other pertinent matter to address. Adaptive evolution. That is his stated Martial Path. Based on our rigorous research, it is a philosophy ofbat that, as the name suggests, involves change in hisbat that is antithetical to his opponent in any and every way."


    "Adaptive evolution¡­" The Suffocator''s voice sounded intrigued.


    "However, there are certain caveats," M remarked. It has been identified that he requires information or time to evolve adaptively. In this case, we endeavor to give him neither. That is why we encourage you to ensure that you do not prolong the assassination. The longer it goes, the lower the probability that you will seed."


    The assassins nodded. None of them wanted to face a target that grew stronger with time and allow him the time he needed to survive their assassination attempts.


    "I wonder if he can adaptively evolve to me," The Maneater remarked.


    Rui didn''t respond, of course.


    "The details of his known techniques are contained in the information packages that we have provided you," M remarked. "You may go through them in your own time."


    She touched up a bit more on the feats that he had aplished. She was singing praises of his contribution to the Serevian Dungeon War and his aplishments in the Shionel Dungeon.


    "¡­That is who you''re up against. That¡­ is Rui Quarrier," She concluded.


    "Heh," A smile saturated with bloodlust emerged on the Thunder Viper''s face.


    The air crumpled under the sheer maleficent bloodlust of the high-grade assassin. "I can''t wait to kill him."


    "As mentioned, those reports and analyses we provided you contain everything you need."


    "Hah," The Thunder Viper tossed it away. "I believe what I see. I will gather everything I need to know myself."


    M didn''t respond to that. "That brings us an end to the briefing. Now, if there are no objections, we shall sign the contract. Each of your contracts has been personalized to the personal demands that you''ve made prior toing to the Kandrian Empire."


    A stack of sheets was handed to Rui, who promptly skimmed through all the terms and conditions.


    Frankly, there was only one use he gave a damn about.


    [Persuant to use six, in the event of a sessful assassination as expounded in use one by Party B notwithstanding the condition of the cadaver, Party A hereby undertakes that it will divulge its true identity in person, with documented proof and evidence of the truth of said identity prior to the handover of the corpse as specified in use one.]


    This was what he cared about. The identity of the one behind these assassinations. Half of the reasons for all of his deductions, ns, and machination thus far were for the sake of the ones who sought to kill him.


    ''I can''t wait,'' Rui mused.


    Yet he may not have had to.


    This was not the extent of his machinations.


    "With that, this briefinges to an end," M remarked. "The assassination is precisely in two weeks. Please follow the pre-


    operation protocols that we agreed upon prior to the assassination. Any failure toply with them will result in an immediate voiding of themission as specified in the contract. We cannot afford any mistakes."


    Immediately, like clockwork, the staff team immediately began packing as the various instruments folded into portable carry-alongs. In just a minute, the entire ce was cleaned up of any evidence that they were there.


    "Farewell," M lightly remarked before the entire team disappeared.


    ''A stealth Martial Master¡­'' Rui narrowed his eyes. ''I bet nowhere near as good as Master Reina, though. Still, more than enough to evade my senses.''


    Yet a smile emerged on his face. ''¡­Enough to evade my senses in the present, at least. But the past¡­''


    "They didn''t even bother telling us to leave," Thunder Viper snorted, getting up. "I guess they just wanted to leave without leaving any trace more than anything. Paranoid bunch, aren''t they?"


    "I suppose that means we can remain here until the assassination," the Maneater smiled. "An unnecessary arrangement."


    Yet despite that, none of them remained to stay, getting up to leave.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1707 Scried Past

    <h4>Chapter 1707 Scried Past </h4>


    "You actually going remain here, Voidreaper?" The Thunder Viper asked as he noticed Rui remaining seated while the others had already taken their lead.


    "¡­"


    Rui didn''t bother responding to him as he continued reading through the information package that they had each been provided.


    "¡­You''re an annoying bastard to the very end," The Thunder Viper narrowed his eyes before leaving.


    Rui remained there.


    Ten minutes passed.


    Twenty.


    Half an hour.


    Eventually, an hour passed.


    CLACK


    Rui tossed the information package on the table, turning to the door.


    ''That should be enough.''


    He left the building and entered the flea market, activating Greater Phantomind Void as he weaved through the various crowds entirely unnoticed.


    He found a deserted set of buildings upied by some homeless people and some junkies. Ignoring them, he sat down, focusing.


    ''Let''s see what the Angel of Lace can show me,'' Rui closed his eyes as he activated the technique.


    An almost unnoticeable domain expanded from Rui, covering the entire flea market and beyond.


    It was not a powerful domain.


    No.


    Its energy output was actually not even Squire-level, let alone Senior-level.


    Its value came from how it applied energy.


    A minute amount of energy spread throughout heaven and earth as Rui measured every single vector by how it resisted the infinitesimal force he applied on each and every single one of them.


    In this manner, he was able to measure each and every single one of them.


    In his Mind Pce, the Angel of Lace stood before him.


    ''No¡­''


    He was looking at a reflection of himself in the ocean of information that began flooding his Mind Pce.


    ''I am the Angel of Lace.''


    RUMBLE!


    The weight of the technique crashed against him abruptly.


    "Rrrrrghh!" He gritted his teeth as he struggled to process every single vector that he had measured.


    It threatened to crush his mind.


    Yet he weathered it.


    He endured.


    An unfathomable amount of time passed.


    Yet, eventually, the fog that separated the past from the future began fading. N?velDrama.Org exclusive content.


    This was hardly the first time he had gone through this.


    Yet each time was a magical experience.


    It was profound.


    His eyes widened as the world around him began rewinding. The sun in the sky froze before rewinding its path.


    People stopped before walking backward.


    Gravity seemed to reverse as things fallen on the ground rose up, elerating before returning from whence they came.


    Yet he wasn''t concerned about the mundane past.


    He was looking for a very specific past.


    Some distance away from the venue where the briefing had urred. He saw several Martial Masters surrounding a small crowd of people walking backward from outside of the flea market in the center of the town they were in.


    He recognized the masked M.


    A grin appeared on his face.


    "Found you."


    Misdirection did not work through time. It was limited to the present.


    He could bypass it in the future.


    And bypass he did.


    He had scried the past.


    He knew what direction they had gone.


    He quickly shifted, leaving the flea market as he followed the path that they had taken.


    The hard part about this method was that he would need to execute the Angel of Lace until he found them.


    Yet that was a price worth paying.


    "Rrrrgh," He gritted his teeth as he executed the technique once more.


    An hour passed as he breathed heavily, pushing his mind to the absolute limit. He executed the technique a little quicker thanst time, having optimized his thought process.


    The Master-escorted group passed through the metropolitan town and richer districts in the center of the town.


    Just before his vision ended, he spotted where they had entered.


    [DiVilliers Enterprise]


    His eyes widened as he shut off the technique.


    "DiVilliers¡­?" He narrowed his eyes.


    Charles DiVilliers was a powerhouse tycoon in the Martial manufacturing and services industry. His clientele was limited to Martial Artists and aspiring Martial Artists. His products were so powerful and impactful that the Ministry of Martial Art and the Kandrian Empire both signed him as exclusive partners.


    The Royal Emperor had specifically passed a bill that made it impossible for him to sell his products and services to any market internationally, limiting his international reach.


    That was what had pushed him to the Underworld.


    Through the Atagliana Mafia, he was able to smuggle his products and services outside of the Kandrian Empire without being caught and sell them to international clients.


    Through the Schambiei Mafia, he was able to receive illegal payments without ever being caught.


    Ever since Rui learned that Rajak was the Underworld Prince, he knew that Charles DiVilier was part of the Underworld Faction.


    It made sense.


    ''Is he targeting me, or is Rajak?'' Rui narrowed his eyes. ''What is the extent of his involvement, and are there any other parties involved?''


    He didn''t know.


    Yet he didn''t dare to go anywhere near DiVilliers Enterprise.


    The man undoubtedly had Martial Masters and other powerful esoteric istion systems that would interfere with the Angel of Lace.


    Yet this information alone was enough.


    He now knew who was targeting him in part, though he didn''t know everything.


    Unfortunately, this could not be used as evidence for Rui to tie their hands by threatening to reveal it to the Martial Union.


    Even if he did convey his visions, there was no proof that they were an urate representation of the past. He did not want to reveal Angel of Lace to the world just yet, either.


    Yet he had certainly unlocked a part of the mystery of those who wanted him dead.


    It made sense that Rajak would want him dead if he hade to learn that Prince Raijun was approaching the Squire Realm at breakneck speed.


    The other six would know that once Prince Raijun became a Squire and gained much greater support from the Martial Union, it was game over. That was incentive enough to get rid of Rui.


    ''That little bastard thinks he can get rid of me that easily, eh?'' Rui smiled.


    Cold amusement shed across his face.


    ''Just you wait¡­''


    His eyes narrowed.


    "You will regret making me your enemy."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1708 Delicate Inferences

    <h4>Chapter 1708 Delicate Inferences</h4>


    "Charles DiVilliers...The Underworld Prince..." Master Reina considered his words thoughtfully.


    "I can confirm that he is one of my conspiring death-wishers," Rui replied.


    "One of?" Master Reina raised an eyebrow. "How do you know there are more?"


    "...I am eighty-nine percent certain that the little briefing was not arranged by Rajak or the Underworld," Rui replied, narrowing his eyes. "It''s not their modus operandi. No...this is the work of someone who is not nearly as ustomed to covert and furtive operations of the kind that is being attempted. The Underworld would have sacrificed the luxury in favor of practicality. They would have briefed us in the middle of a trash valley if it meant lesser probability of being tracked." Material ? of N?velDrama.Org.


    "That''s true," Master Reina nodded thoughtfully.


    Rui narrowed his eyes defiantly. There was still something that didn''t add up. The more he thought about it, the more he felt like this was not an initiative from the Underworld so much as an initiative that came from elsewhere and made use of the Underworld''s services.


    ''Yes, that better describes what''s happening,'' Rui realized. ''The Underworld wouldn''t need to use Charles DiVilliers'' ce as a getaway if it truly was intent on killing me with everything it had. Their own capacity to hide the Kandrian Empire far exceeds that of Charles DiVilliers. The resources that were employed were more reminiscent of someone powerful who is working with their hands tied.''


    That suggested a force that had a lot of power at their disposal but was not under their absolute control, such that they could use it to get rid of Rui without the Martial Union noticing.


    ''...The Royals...'' Rui''s eyes widened as he arrived at his final deduction. ''The modus operandi I have witnessed from my death-wishers ever since being informed about them perfectly fits that of a group of individuals with immense power at their disposal, which they cannot employ against me because of ack of absolute control over it and because of a conflict of interests with my death.''


    Only the royals fit that description. Aside from Raul, none of the royals had gained true loyalty from their faction. The royalscked control over their faction the most than any of the other three options.


    The Underworld, a powerful corporation, and the Kandrian government would have handled this very differently, especially in their manner of getaway. These three had much greater control over their power and resources than the royals did, and while they all feared the Martial Union too much to use their own Martial resources, which would lead to them being identified and caught, there would be more refinement in their modus operandi even in their hiring of international assassins."


    "A corporation would not have demonstrated the nuanced understanding of the operation that I witnessed in the briefing," Rui narrowed his eyes. "These are organizations who are ustomed to outsourcing services to the experts and leave the matter entirely to them with the constraints and objectives specified. They would have simply asked for my covert death and body and let the assassins figure it out. Yet they have proactively partaken in the nning of the assassination."


    That reduced the probability of the true culprit being a corporation.


    "The Kandrian government would never rely on DiVilliers Enterprises. There is too strong a conflict of interests between the two parties for them to trust each other," Rui realized that the probability of the Kandrian government being the true culprit was limited as well. "They also would not be able to transfer suchrge sums of money abroad with the Martial Union not noticing something fishy."


    He had also noted the inconsistencies with the modus operandi of the Underworld and what he witnessed, thereby reducing the probability that it was the Underworld. Byparing the known modus operandi of the four suspects and the actual culprits, he was able to revise his evaluations of the probabilities of the four suspects.


    The only option out of the four possibilities that he had shortlisted two weeks ago was the royals.


    It became increasingly likely that one or more royals had cooperated to take Rui out.


    The only royals he could trust not to take him out were Prince Raijun because Rui was his ticket to winning the Kandrian Throne War and Prince Raul. Since, as hard as it was to believe, the man was fit to be considered a saint.


    "Well, do you want me to assassinate them?" Master Reina asked curiously.


    An amused smile emerged on his face. Had anyone else offered, he would have scoffed, but when Master Reina did, he knew that she wasn''t jesting in the least. He would not bet against her being unable to assassinate somebody not protected by a Martial Sage.


    "¡­No," Rui heaved a sigh, shaking his head. "That will make things worse."


    If it came to light that he was indirectly involved with the mass assassination of the royal family, he was dead. Not even the Martial Union could protect him from the gravity of such a situation. It waspletely over.


    On top of that, even though he knew she probably wouldn''t get caught, he didn''t gain anything from their deaths. In fact, it just allowed Prince Raijun to be Emperor with zeropetition.


    Rui needed the other princes and princesses to restrict him so that a bit of a deadlock could return. He would rather dy the unofficial victory of any one prince or princess as much as he could by ensuring that they kept each in check.


    It was quite likely that multiple royals and factions would need toe together to actually sessfully keep each other in check. But s, that was the best he could do for the time being.


    Regardless, his own priorities took precedence, and he needed to suppress the threats that the royals represented without getting himself into major trouble andpletely throwing the Kandrian Throne War sideways and ruining the country.


    At that moment, Rui couldn''t help but feel like the Kandrian Empire was a little child, depending on him, the adult, to sustain it.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1709 Preparations

    Chapter 1709 Preparations


    "So now what?" Master Reina asked him. "Now we wait," Rui replied. "The assassins have probably already begun shadowing me, keeping an eye on me. I can''t do anything too suspicious."


    He turned to Master Reina. "You''re sure none of them can see you, right?"


    "Of course," She nodded. "Nobody except for you two."


    Master Reina had the ability to selectively choose who could or couldn''t see her. This allowed her to speak to them normally without worrying that anybody would see her.


    "Good," Rui nodded. "As for me, I''m going to have to spend the next two weeks just living life normally for Rui Quarrier."


    He needed to ensure he didn''t deviate from his standard daily schedule and travel pattern to ensure that he didn''t throw them off. "You, on the other hand, are going to have to spend some time pulling off a perfect Voidreaper persona," Rui noted. "As long as you can do that, that''s good. You''ll be able to fool all of the Master bodyguards of the royals."


    "How many will there be?" Master Gurren raised an eyebrow.


    "Probably no more than three to four per Royal," Rui shrugged.


    "That''s a lot¡­" Master Gurren narrowed his eyes. "The two of us cannot fight off sixteen Kandrian Martial Masters. I''m just not strong, and she''s a strong assassin, not a strong warrior."


    "She doesn''t need to be a strong warrior," Rui turned to Master Reina. "She just needs to be a strong assassin."


    Master Reina smiled as she understood what Rui was telling her. "Sounds fun. It should work."


    "Good," Rui replied. "As for me¡­"


    His eyes narrowed. "I need some time to train."


    Although the data that he got on each of the many assassins that had been called to take him down was not too much, it was enough for him to get started.


    He had avoided creating a predictive model during the briefing. That could be der. What couldn''t have been der was gathering data on them. That was why he had focused on observing them like a hawk every millisecond of the briefing.


    Now, he could get started on not just the pattern recognition system but also the other strategic and tactical systems of thought. These were arge variety of practicalbat considerations and lines of thought that included even the voidlet techniques in their own way, adjust for his circumstances.


    ''I also need to form some very specific counters to some of them,'' Rui narrowed his eyes as he thought about the Maneater.


    The epithet was befitting an apex predator that only hunted human beings. It was not something he could expect to refer to a seductress Martial Art who had sealed away being effective against most women for the sake of being extremely effective against most men.


    He had confirmed that her Martial Art was quite powerful. She had only disyed a small speck of it in the briefing by ident, and it had been overwhelming. If he didn''t do anything about her, he might end up getting ''eaten'' by her.


    ''I could go to the Beggar''s Sect to learn more about her, but¡­'' Rui heaved a sigh. ''That would be too suspicious in my currently surveilled circumstances. I''ll just have to stick with what I know.''


    It would also alert the Beggar''s Sect about what was going on. He didn''t want them to find out if they hadn''t already.


    ''Considering the royals know about how dangerous the Beggar''s Sect can be to them, they should have taken the extreme measures needed to keep the Beggar''s Sect at bay,'' Rui noted.


    Martial Masters thoroughly and individually vetting each and every person was one way, but having them involved with each and every single step with the utmost stealth precautions taken. This was the bare minimum to prevent the Beggar''s Sect from learning, and even these did not guarantee secrecy. Thus, even more measures would need to be taken to bepletely safe from the Beggar''s Sect.


    ''However, the royals should already know the necessity of these measures,'' Rui narrowed his eyes. ''Unless they have forgotten about the fiasco that Princess Raemina suffered when all the strategic and tactical ns cooked by her and her advisors were leaked,'' Rui mused.


    He, too, did not want the Beggar''s Sect to know about these assassinations.


    While his rtionship with the Beggar''s Sect had always been cooperative and cordial, that did not mean that they were his friends. They were an astronomically gigantic organization spread across all human civilization. It probably was not possible to be ''friends'' with them. To them, he was an asset worth befriending. To him, they were just a convenient source of information. N?velDrama.Org exclusive content.


    He shook his head as he began working hard to form specific counters and adaptively evolved manners ofbat. That was what consumed most of his mind in the days that followed. He meditated, simting oues and scenarios as he dedicated immense time to the Martial Artists that had earned his highest priority. Some of the assassins were obviously easier to deal with than the others. He spent less time on them.


    However, none of them were ''easy.''


    They were all high-grade assassins. Worst of all, he would be facing them in an assassination, which was their domain of expertise and specialty. Not his. All of their techniques. All of their Martial Bodies and prototypical Martial Minds would be centered around assassination and killing; precisely the circumstance that they would be taking him on in.


    On top of that, he was not going to be facing one but many, one after the other. Oveing one could leave him too drained to face the next, causing his death. He needed to defeat each and every single assassin without rest or rejuvenation.


    Even for a powerful high-grade Martial Artist like himself, these were extremely dire circumstances.


    However, he had several advantages.


    The first was, well, he was strong.


    Extremely strong.


    He didn''t know how strong. But this opportunity served as a good way to test the newfound power he had gained since consuming the Roaring Dragon Blood Potion and developing his newfound Yggdrasil System.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1710 Heavenly Convergence

    Chapter 1710 Heavenly Convergence


    Another advantage he had was that he knew what they knew, but they didn''t know what he knew. In other words, he was the one ambushing them, not the other way around.


    This is why he could set traps to catch them off-guard.


    The final advantage he had was that they were operating on what was essentially misinformation in regards to his power level. That was a huge advantage that would do him well at the beginning of the fight.


    "Huff¡­" He exhaled lightly. "I just have to hope that that does me well enough."


    Days passed as Rui trained hard, preparing for the dreaded day.


    Eventually, it came.


    Two weeks had passed since the briefing. And the day of the assassinations had finally arrived. Master Reina''s body had morphed to match his silhouette as she donned the Voidreaper attire, heading off toplete the pre-assassination protocol.


    His death-wishers were deliberately staying away from the assassination. M was nowhere near the location of the assassination, as far as he could tell. That made sense. It was best to ensure that there were no inconveniences. In the past two weeks, he had thoroughly prepared himself for the assassination. He had also gotten a good full night''s sleep the night prior, havingpletely refreshed his mind and body. He opened his eyes, leaving a deep meditative state to condition and temper his mind.


    The atmosphere was tense.


    "Are you ready, arrogant boy?" Master Gurren asked.


    "I am," his voice was calm andposed.


    Yet it was also steely and firm.


    "Good," Master Gurren nodded. "Now get going. And survive. I still need you to teach me that Parax Method."


    "Hah¡­" Rui chuckled. "Of course."


    Sometimes, the Martial Master just could not be honest.


    He got up, leaving the mountain the Master resided upon, heading out down his regr path through the Great Jrava Mountain range that he had been following for nearly two years now.


    As he got closer and closer to the point of assassination, the atmosphere became heavier.


    His demeanor remained unchanged on the surface.


    But inwardly, he grew graver and graver.


    Soon enough, he had crossed the entirety of the Great Jrava Mountain Range. There was a camping convoy of various travelers that had happened to be conveniently set-up around at various spots where he would normally stop.


    Quite conveniently, it circled him.


    It was time. STEP


    Hended on the ground.


    His demeanor was nonchnt.


    Like it was just another day doing the same old thing that he did yesterday and would be doing tomorrow.


    Yet everybody around knew that it wasn''t just another day.


    The moment had arrived.


    WHOOSH


    Rui''s eyes widened as he felt a deep sense of peril from behind him.


    BOOM!!!


    A fake expression of shock and bewilderment arose on his face as he just barely managed to evade a double-fisted hammer fist with his Martial Heart.


    RUMBLE!


    The verynds beneath them shook under the weight of his attack,


    Had it struck Rui¡­he would be dead.


    He had narrowly avoided death.


    Rui''s eyes narrowed as he beheld his first opponent.


    The man was gargantuan. A single one of his arms dwarfed Rui in size; he was inhumanly big and had an unbelievable stature. A wild grin appeared on his face as he didn''t give Rui even the slightest chance to gather his bearings.


    He opened his mouth, sucking air with a powerful inhaling force.


    Yet it wasn''t the gesture that stunned Rui; it was what followed.


    An enormous, powerful suction force between them emerged, pulling everything towards the man.


    His arms waited in anticipation, ready to crush Rui with the unfathomable weight of his powerful hammer blows. This was the Hammerer, a powerful high-grade assassin who haplessly dragged his victims away from a distance and then pounded them to death with a single blow from his astronomical striking power.


    His Martial Body was centered around power. Centered around the respiratory power and striking power of his Martial Art. Yet, Rui had no intention of dying.


    His eyes bore into the Hammerer''s.


    ''Breathing Crucifix.''


    "Hnnng!" The man choked. His eyes widened with shock as he noticed that the suction force had reduced by more than half!


    His lungs felt shackled.


    They feltbored.


    Like someone had attached weights to them.


    He didn''t understand.


    Yet he could afford to try understanding, either. He had a target to kill.


    He had already flubbed his ambush, allowing Rui to avoid instantaneous death.


    And now, the man had somehow sealed his breathing power!


    Yet, just when he thought it was over, Rui''s arms stretched out towards him.


    Two words escaped his mouth.


    "Heavenly Convergence."


    Rui hated that he needed to utter the new name of the technique born from Project Skyfall out loud. The name was surprisingly literal, for it did converge the weight of the heavens on his target. He even liked the name; he just hated actually saying it inbat.


    "It''s a matter of psychological association and trigger," Master Gurren had told him many months ago in training. "Do you want to reach passive domain mastery or not?"


    Yet, regardless of his sentiments, the domain technique unfurled. It bore its power to the world.


    RUMBLE!


    The very fabric of heaven and earth shook.


    It bent.


    Bent to the will of Rui Quarrier.


    Every vector in the air.


    Every vector in thend.


    He gently ushered them in a single direction.


    Towards a single person.


    BOOM!!!


    AARGRGRHHRHRH!!!" The Hammerer bellowed as he gritted his teeth. His joints creaked.


    His muscles shuddered.


    His flesh wrung.


    He felt like a mountain had been ced on his shoulders in all directions.


    His suction technique was overwhelmed as a tsunami of vectors crashed into him from the front.


    "ACK!" He choked even further!


    He was entirely unable to breathe.


    Yet Rui had no intention of letting him gather his bearings.


    CLASP! N?velDrama.Org exclusive content.


    His arms coiled around the man''s neck as he squeezed hard, crushing it.


    A rear chokehold was a simple maneuver, even if deadly. He was barely able to use it simultaneously with Heavenly Convergence, allowing him to hamper the man''s breathing in three different manners.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1711 Unearthly Coordination

    Chapter 1711 Unearthly Coordination


    ??Minutes passed.


    The Hammerer struggled vigorously. Yet each of his movements was hampered by Heavenly Convergence.


    The technique made him feel like he was trying to move while trapped at the center of an ocean of adhesive. By the time his attack struck Rui behind him, most of the power had gone into pushing against Heavenly Convergence.


    Every movement he made.


    Every attack he made.


    Every haymaker he threw.


    They were insufficient.


    He still would have seeded in shaking Rui off even after the shackles of Heavenly Convergence if not for the second pair of shackles on not his body but his mind.


    Breathing Crucifix prevented him from inhaling the air he needed to generate the power and energy he needed to break free of Rui''s grasp.


    On top of that, Rui''s powerful arm crushed against his windpipe like a constrictor, stopping all breathing.


    The man struggled.


    Yet, with each passing second, his movements grew more sluggish, slower, and weaker.


    His pupils dted as his vision blurred.


    The end was nigh.


    WHOOSH!


    Yet, Rui''s eyes widened as he undid the chokehold, leaping away desperately.


    SPLAT!


    The Hammerer''s head flew into the air, separated from his body by the precise sword swing.


    "Dang, I was hoping to take both of you out."


    The Thunder Viper''s grin was malevolent.


    His eyes were wide.


    They fixated on Rui.


    He sheathed his curved de as he faced Rui once more.


    One moment he was there¡­


    The next moment, he was not.


    WHOOSH!


    He sped through the air at mind-boggling speeds, incinerating the air into a white inferno with sheer friction alone.


    SPLAT!


    "Rgh!" Rui gritted his teeth as he barely managed to get decapitated.


    What shocked him was how extraordinarily sharp the de was. It possessed an edge thinner than the ws of Senior Zenshin. It cut through his flesh like a hot knife through butter.Exclusive content ? by N?(v)el/Dr/ama.Org.


    A deep sense of peril shed through him as he realized that he hade extremely close to death.


    "Hey, not bad!" The Thunder Viperughed, already ready for yet another round. His grip on his de tightened as he leaped into motion.


    "Speed Void."


    The assassin''s eyes widened with shock as Rui''s voice reverberated across his new domain.


    His face stretched, blown back with an astounding amount of drag force. The sheer amount of resistance he faced from the air was unlike anything he had experienced in his entire life!


    He felt like he was trying to run immersed deep in the ocean!


    When he tried elerating from zero to top speed, all of heaven and earth seemed to be doing everything in their effort to stop his eleration!


    Yet Rui wasn''t done.


    The assassin''s eyes widened as they met Rui''s.


    Suddenly, the fabric of time went haywire.


    Time sped up.


    Everything sped up.


    The turbulent drag force that opposed him speed to grow faster.


    His own body movements became too fast for him to keep up, forcing him to slow down.


    ''Temporal Disharmony.'' Rui narrowed his eyes as he sessfully nailed the hypnotic technique.


    It helped that Speed Void, the domain born from Project Speed Prison, hadpletely cut off the man''s speed.


    Now, he was no longer a speedster.


    He may as well have been a below-average Martial Artist with a shitty Martial Body that had no strengths, only weaknesses.


    Rui blurred in his slowed-down vision, appearing before him.


    He peered into his target''s eyes.


    They were pitch ck.


    Greedily consuming all the light that graced it.


    They bore into his.


    At that moment, he felt naked.


    Transparent.


    Helpless.


    His speed was denied.


    His very perception of speed was denied.


    What else did he have?


    His eyes became hollow as the horrifying answer dawned on him.


    ''Nothing.''


    CRACK!


    Rui''s powerful blow crashed into his jaw, breaking it.


    Yet that wasn''t the only thing inside him that broke.


    By the time he lost consciousness, he had also escaped Rui''s consciousness.


    For he had bigger things to worry about.


    BAM BAM BAM!


    "Rgh!" Rui grimaced with pain as he leaped away from the unconscious body of the Thunder Viper, facing his new opponent.


    Or opponents.


    Twin sisters stood side by side.


    Their cold eyes fixated on Rui.


    They had waited for the moment when Rui''s attention had been fully consumed by his attack on the Thunder Viper.


    WHOOSH!


    They shed forward aggressively, arriving before him just a momentter.


    Yet he could only see one.


    She stared at him.


    Where was the other one?


    BAM!!!


    He grimaced as a powerful blow crashed into his diaphragm.


    It came out of nowhere as the second twin sisterpletely bypassed his senses.


    WHOOSH!


    In just a moment, they had already arrived before him.


    BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM!!!


    Dozens, hundreds, and thousands of well-timed blows crashed one by one into Rui. An ocean of attacks sted him at a rate beyond his ability to contend.


    "Rrrrrghh!!" Rui gritted his teeth as he desperately defended against each strike.


    Each strike exceeded his own.


    They were incredibly heavy.


    He felt his arms rattling as they crashed into him.


    They were incredibly swift, as swift as one could be without being a speed-oriented Martial Artist.


    Yet those weren''t the most devastating part of their offense.


    ''It''s their absurd coordination. It''s even greater than the telepathic-predictive coordination Ieyasu and I had set up!'' His eyes widened with shock.


    To say they could read each other''s minds was an understatement.


    BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM!!!


    In just a moment, an uncountable number of blows had been unleashed upon Rui.


    Each time he took a step back, they took two steps forward.


    Each time he took a step forward, they took two steps forward.


    When he tried to so much as catch his breath and breathe, they pressured him with their most powerful, lethal attacks.


    SPLAT SPLAT SPLAT!


    Rui gasped for breath as the sharp, piercing attacks from their elbows left light gashes across his chest. The very act of breathing became painful!


    Rui''s eyes widened as he realized one of them had disappeared once more!


    BOOM!!!


    A titanic blow crashed into his head!


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1712 Powerful

    Chapter 1712 Powerful


    Rui leaped away, reeling from the tremendous blow to his head.


    If not for a timely Flux Earther, he would have been knocked out then and there. Thankfully, his proficiency with the technique had reached a much higher stage in the past decade and a half since he had created it. He no longer needed any active interception.


    He could intercept any attack passively with Flux Earther and disperse its impact into the environment.


    BAM BAM BAM!


    The twins never let up, bombarding him with blow after blow. It had be painfully clear that these two were definitely stronger together than the Hammerer or the Thunder Viper were individually. They were high-grade Martial Seniors in their own right, yet together, they were much stronger.


    POW! POW! POW!


    He gravely defended against a series of wound-up heavy blows one after the other while her twin sister rounded about,unching a series of blows against his back.


    BANG BANG BANG!


    None of them gave him so much as a second to breathe.


    On top of that, while they were twins, their movements were not entirely identical. He had been required to create two separate predictive models on each of them, stalling his progress.


    However, that wasn''t all.


    As he watched their thoughtfully synchronized timings and exploitations of the chinks in his armor, an even greater realization dawned on him.


    ''Their prototypical Martial Minds are also centered around their coordination!'' Rui''s eyes widened with surprise.


    It was no wonder how they were able to execute such a tremendously synergetic degree of coordination.


    POW POW POW POW POW POW!


    Their attacks spun one after another the way two rotating gears interwove in each other''s gaps, leaving no gaps for him to exploit.


    Their offense was domineering.


    Yet nothing in this world was without ws.


    WHOOSH


    Two extraordinary attacks converged on Rui, threatening to knock him out.


    CLASP!


    Their eyes widened as he effortlessly caught both attacks, cleanly halting them in their path.


    ''If every movement is coordinated, then I can predict each of you from the other.'' It was a pattern.


    BOOM!!


    He flung them to the ground with Hypertrophic Surge, causing enormous hills of bedrock to erupt from the ground, disced by the attack.


    RUMBLE!


    A single attack had reversed the battle.


    Yet they were far from done. The twins rushed in, looking to regain their domineering momentum against him.


    Yet their biggest w was that they were too coordinated.


    It meant that there were too many patterns between each of their movements.


    They rushed in, unleashing a flurry of blows against him.


    Yet all he could see were patterns.


    ''If your coordination leaves no holes, then I know to expect attacks where there should be holes.''


    WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH!


    He calmly evaded blow after blow. Attacks that were too numerous and frequent for him were effortless now that he could predict based on the co-dependent predictive models he had made on them.


    The most dominant pattern in all of their movements was alternating phases of preparation and action. When one prepared, the other attacked, followed by the attack of the one who was preparing while the second prepared.


    This allowed them to ensure that there were simply no windows of opportunity for Rui to exploit and take them out.


    The only time they went for simultaneous attacks was when they were attacking different parts of his body from different directions. This allowed them to ensure that they wouldn''t get in each other''s way. Yet, while these minimized inefficiency in their delivery of attacks, it also necessarily formed patterns in their coordination.


    The VOID algorithm loved patterns.


    It gobbled them up greedily.


    WHOOSH!


    Their eyes widened as Rui cleanly evaded both their attacks, ncing into the eyes of one of them intently.


    ''Temporal Disharmony.'' This was his second time using it since he began taking on the series of assassins that were put out to take him out.


    BAM!!!


    A swift kick from Rui crashed into her faster than her slowed-down reaction allowed her to contend with.


    Yet even before her twin sister could process the frozen reaction time from her sister, Rui had already arrived.


    POW POW POW!!


    He peppered her with powerful blows, one after the other. She gritted her teeth as she did her best to block and evade his attacks. Yet even without her sister, Rui had already found the patterns in her movements in the time he had observed since the briefing and the fight.


    BAM!!!


    A powerful flying knee kicknded straight into her sr plexus, making her cough blood. Just as the finishing blow flew to her, it was intercepted by a flying high kick from the second twin, desperately trying to save her sister.


    POW!


    Rui cleanly blocked as the two sisters came back together to regain their harmony and coordination. Material ? of N?velDrama.Org.


    Yet Rui wasn''t perturbed in the slightest. He had long shattered their synergy.


    WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH!


    BAM BAM!!!


    Looks of shock and bewilderment appeared on their faces as Rui evaded every single attack they threw while cleanly sting both of them with blows.


    Because he had selectively applied Temporal Disharmony only to one and not the other, he waspletely throwing off their carefully honed coordination and disharmony. One was operating at a different speed of time than the other.


    This sudden and abrupt changepletely shattered their coordination.


    The psychological blow was too great.


    BAM!!!


    A kick cleanly on the jaw of her opponent, knocking her out.


    POW POW POW!!!


    CLASP!


    He sted the final with several blows before swinging overhead in a perfect over-the-body throw.


    BOOM!!!!!


    She, too, swiftly lost consciousness.


    Yet, they had already escaped his focus and concentration.


    "You have powerful domains," A voice behind him called.


    Rui narrowed his eyes as he came across the familiar visage of the Suffocator. "Not going to ambush me like the others?"


    "There''s no need to," The Suffocator''s eloquent voice replied. "You are doomed to die. You have exhausted your stamina and your wounds, while healing at an exceptional rate, are going to hold you back."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1713 Domain Attacks

    Chapter 1713 Domain Attacks


    The Suffocator did not appear to be in a hurry. Rui found this strange.


    Instead, he simply noted Rui''s enhanced regeneration, as mentioned in the intelligence that they received, born from the Hungry Pain technique.


    "Who put you up to this?" Rui growled as he recuperated, grateful to the assassin for giving him a few seconds to catch his breath.


    He may have already triumphed over the twins, but they definitely strained and stressed him out.


    He even deactivated his Martial Heart. It was an extraordinarily precious resource at the moment.


    "I have no idea," The Suffocator replied. "Probably someone extremely powerful. You have powerful enemies, Rui Quarrier."


    His strange ent being warped through the mask left his speech to be quite different.


    "Have you bated your exhaustion?" The Suffocator asked helpfully.


    "¡­Do you mind if I drink a rejuvenation potion?"


    "Even my generosity has limits," The Suffocator scoffed. "Now then. Bare your domain."


    Rui raised an eyebrow. "Why would I do tha-"


    "If you don''t want to die, that is," The Suffocator''s voice grew cold as he began bending heaven.


    Rui''s eyes widened as he got a good look at what he was doing. He was creating a density of gradient vertically, then filtering out gases of a certain amount of rtive density by eliminating gas across between that gradient.


    Namely, oxygen.


    That left a domain without any oxygen.


    Rui held his breath as he leaped away, yet the man leaped along with him while also expanding the domain with him.


    "What''s the matter?" The Suffocator''s voice called out to him. "Cat got your domain? Not confident you''ll win?"


    He was surprisingly fast, refusing to allow Rui to exit his domain. Material ? of N?velDrama.Org.


    Naturally, Rui could expect him to have prepared counters to escape domains by simply exiting them. One of them was simply following and taking the domain with him.


    The influence of the domain followed him, spreading through the air, filtering out the oxygen.


    Rui narrowed his eyes as he considered whether he ought to use Neo Godspeed to escape the influence of the domain.


    ''¡­No,'' He shook his head even as his breathing grewbored.


    It took too much energy and strained him far too much. He still had many assassins to survive and ovee. He needed to preserve as much as stamina as possible.


    That was why he had kept his Metabody consumption to the absolute minimum.


    His physical stamina was the reason that he needed to keep it to the minimum.


    Rui was surprised as the man rushed forward towards Rui,unching a flurry of blows.


    BAM BAM BAM!!!


    His blows were surprisingly heavy.


    ''No¡­'' Rui''s eyes widened with realization. ''He''s using a domain to elerate his attacks!''


    He was using that as well as the oxygen-depriving domain simultaneously!


    Not only that, he was fighting hand-to-hand unperturbed!


    "Passive mastery¡­" Rui murmured.


    "That''s right, Rui Quarrier,"


    The Suffocator''s voice was solemn.


    "Your domains are powerful, yet you are unable to use them simultaneously. You are also unable to use them while fighting unarmed," The Suffocator''s voice was gleeful. "Well then, suffocate to death. Like all those before you have."


    Rui was forced to halt hisbat as he began heaven-bending. He wasn''t using a domain technique in particr.


    WHOOSH!


    No, he was just employing heaven-bending to disrupt his opponent''s heaven domains.


    "Good thinking," The Suffocatormented. "But unlike you, I can weave domains passively, which means¡­"


    BAM BAM BAM!!!


    Rui grimaced as he did his best to disperse the impact of the powerful blows of the man''s attacks with passive Flux Earther.


    Under any other circumstances, these attacks would have been quite easy to deal with, but they were particrly difficult to do so while he was doing heaven-bending.


    He was truly pushed to use the Metabody System this time. Yet despite that, he still held back.


    It was too early to use it, considering how much it drained his stamina.


    His Martial Heart was already passively drained from taking on the first four assassins.


    That was why he could not also afford to further drain it with the Hypertrophic Surge or Godspeed.


    Instead, he used the stamina-preserving Metabody System with final breathing and Hungry Pain technique, allowing him to prolong his energy reserves as long as possible.


    Yet that still left him with the huge problem that he was facing.


    POW POW POW POW POW!!!


    "What''s the matter?!" The Suffocator''s voice was filled with sadistic glee. "Too exhausted from previous assassins? Too concerned for assassins that are surely toe even after? Does it feel suffocating? Does it feel like you''re choking? Like the walls are closing in? Like a painful death is the only foreseeable oue?!"


    The man''s voice became drowned in ecstatic pleasure as he witnessed Rui''s pain and suffering. Yet, despair never entered his eyes. No, his eyes were fixed on his opponent''s.


    They were waiting.


    The void within his eyes unfurled.


    Hungry.


    Yet the Suffocator was far from done. Even as he entered what seemed to be an ecstatic and sadistic stupor, he unveiled a new domain.


    Rui''s eyes widened as the air around was sucked away.


    The little bastard had created a vacuum around him!


    Rui rushed into action!


    "Heavenly Convergence!" The target of the domain, of course, was himself.


    By redirecting the vectors of force towards him, he fought back against his domain, pulling back the atmosphere as he gasped for a deep breath of air.


    "Clever!" The Suffocator rushed forward to take into ount the fact that Rui''s hands were busy with heaven-bending.


    Yet that was what Rui was waiting for.


    ''Breathing Crucifix.'' Yet that wasn''t all.


    TAP TAP TAP TAP TAP!


    Rui flicked his nerves with Thunder Tap, paralyzing his diaphragm.


    "¡­!" The Suffocator suffocated.


    Rui knew he only had a few moments.


    A few moments when the man couldn''t breathe under the influence of two breath-crippling techniques. BOOOOOM!!!


    He fired the man with his most powerful tier-five Transverse Resonance, amplified with a temporary Hypertropic Surge.


    It was a single attack.


    Yet it was all that he needed.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1714 Familiar Techniques

    Chapter 1714 Familiar Techniques


    ??RUMBLE!


    A small mountain erupted from within the depths of thend, disced by the sheer power that Rui exerted.


    The Roaring Dragon Blood Potion benefitted his long-range techniques the most, increasing their upper limit significantly.


    "Aarggrhrhrgrvhghrgr!" The Suffocator''s unintelligible screams echoed through the air.


    CRACK CRACK CRACK!


    The gear that surrounded his torso, that attached to his mask broke down.


    Rui''s eyes narrowed as he recognized what the contraption was. "Just as I thought. You avoided your own domains by having breathing cylinders feed your air through your mask."


    In other words, he was using a special artifact contraption to mitigate the shorings of his own techniques.


    Rui''s mouth curled with contempt. "You''re a disgrace of a Martial Artist. You will never be a Martial Master."


    "Kugh!" The man coughed a bout of blood. "Hehehe...you maybe right. But I won''t be the one dying here today.


    Before Rui could finish him off, he felt a surge of peril behind him.


    FLICK!


    SPLAT


    It was a simple nick, yet Rui''s eyes widened with rm when he saw the color of the woman''s skin and nails that drew his blood.


    ''Poison,'' He cursed as he leaped away.


    His eyes narrowed with severity as he made a painful decision.


    SPLAT!


    A piece of the chunk that had been inflicted with the toxin was cleaved off his shoulder with some precise heaven-bending as he immediately activated Weaving Blood, regenerating the missing chunk of his shoulder.


    He nced at the severed piece of his flesh with a grave expression.


    SIZZLE


    It had already begun rotting at an rming rate.


    "Your regeneration is far better than the intelligence reports indicated," The woman''s course voice reached out to him. "Yet it will not save you next time."


    WHOOSH!


    She lunged forward towards him as her nails were poised for action, ready to inject their venom and turn him into a rotting corpse.


    Her deadliness and lethality exceeded even that of Senior Zenshin.


    His eyes narrowed as time slowed down to a crawl.


    He had several courses of action.


    Firstly, he could activate Gale Force Breathing, put distance between and bombard her with distant attacks.


    Secondly, he could employ Neo Godspeed as be ran circles around her trying to knock her out.


    ''My goal is to take her down with as little energy as I can get away with,'' His eyes narrowed. ''In which case...''


    The third option was the best.


    His flesh grew thicker and denser, growing darker in shade.


    He rushed forward, activating Nemean Blossom.


    CRACK!


    The poison assassin''s eyes widened as her nails cracked against his flesh, breaking into pieces.


    Yet, he wasn''t done.Material ? of N?velDrama.Org.


    BAM BAM BAM!!


    They were simple straightforward blows that ceashed against her guard.


    Yet...


    "AAAAAARRGHRGRH!!!!" She screetched as each blow caused excruciating, mind-meltingg pain the likes of which she had never experienced since the Squire evolution breakthrough procedure.


    Her flesh like it was melting off.


    Her muscles felt like they were being blow-torched.


    Her bones felt like they were being systematically pulverized.


    ''Phantom Pain,'' Rui fixated his eyes on hers as he cast the third technique of the Hypnomatrix.


    POW POW POW POW POW!


    He bombarded her with short and swift strikes.


    Yet each one of them was nothing short of horrific torture.


    CLASP


    She grabbed Rui''s shoulders with tears of pain in her eye, before leaning forward and exhaling in his face.


    HISSSSSS


    A green gas exited her mouth spraying all over her face.


    Yet the gesture created blindspot below her.


    One that Rui did not forgive.


    BAM!!!


    A powerful flying knee kick crashed into her jaw. The sheer pain that it caused triggered the brain''s emergency shutdown, causing her to copse then and there.


    Yet her effort had not been in vain.


    "Cough...cough...." Rui fell down to one knee as he felt a distinct bout of weakness. "A muscle rxant? Damn..."


    Yet, he didn''t have any time to rx whatsoever.


    Primordial Instinct warned him off an iing attack.


    WHOOSH!


    BOOM!


    Even though he evaded direct impact, the sheer force from the explosion caused enormous explosions that erupted across the entire battlefield.


    He didn''t know what became of the many injured assassins across the entire battlefield.


    He didn''t care.


    He immediately faced the direction that the projectiles came from with a wary expression.


    He had been fighting for a while now, and he was starting to feel the impact on his stamina.


    His breathing grewbored. His movements had be weaker and sluggish.


    On top of that, the wounds that he had sustained across the entire battle were not low. He had taken considerable damage from each of them, barring the Hammerer.


    On top of that, the damn poisondy had slipped him a poison that made him feel even weaker.


    He was far from his peak.


    On top of that, each assassin that came started off in their prime.


    It meant that he was forced to hold back and defeat them with just a portion of his full power.


    WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH!


    BOOM BOOM BOOM!


    Rui evaded wind attack after wind attack, ensuring that he never once took a direct hit.


    He directed his senses deep in the direction of the attacks, eventuallying across his target within the jungle.


    The man had nned himself many kilometers away, acting like the typical sniper as he shot attacks at Rui from a great distance away.


    WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH!


    He evaded five wind attacks, not thinking much of them as they passed him.


    That was a mistake.


    BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM!!


    They converged onto him immediately after, shing into him.


    "Rgh!" He gritted his teeth as he did his best to disperse them with heaven-bending, the remaining impact was negated with Adamant Reforging and Flux Earther.


    His eyes sharpened gravely. He recognized this field of techniques, it was the same niche specialty that Master Ceeran specialized in.


    It meant that dodging was no longer an option!


    He needed to take down the assassin before he bled to death.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1715 Price

    Chapter 1715 Price


    The memory of Master Ceeran''s trajectory maniption techniques was distinct. It had been the first time that he had seen a Martial Senior fight. Back then, he was a simple mid-grade Martial Squire. Today, he was stronger than Senior Ceeran had been as a Martial Senior.


    Yet he didn''t have time to mull over old memories.


    WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH!


    He evaded three wind sts, yet his eyes narrowed as they turned around, converging on BAM BAM BAM!!


    He gritted his teeth, yet this time, he managed to minimize the damage even further.


    Yet, his assassin was just getting started.


    WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH!


    Rui evaded five more as he watched them converge on him once more.


    BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM!


    Rui intercepted each of the wind sts with sonic bullets, canceling out their momentum. By then, however, several more were already fired.


    ''This is not a feasible path to victory,'' Rui''s eyes narrowed. ''If I go down this path, I''ll be drained by the time I''m done.''


    He still had other assassins that he needed to deal with. If he didn''t deal with this sniper soon enough, he would be far too drained to keep up with any other assassin. He couldn''t fight so symmetrically where they drained identical amounts of energy.


    ''I need topletely close the distance, but¡­''


    BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM!!


    Rui gritted his teeth, ring at the sniper from afar. Unfortunately, this assassin was a lot more refined than Rui had expected. He hadpletely gained a good grasp of Rui''s circumstances and priorities.


    His attacks were focused on keeping Rui busy and forcing him to drain his energy. Once Rui waspletely exhausted, the assassin would still have more than enough energy to begin the true assassination.


    ''My first few battles have made a strong impression on all assassins,'' Rui narrowed his eyes. His dominant performance had highlighted just how tremendously strong he really was. Having taken numerous prominent assassins down in a dominant fashion had alerted the rest of the assassins to the threat that he represented.


    Each of them was starting to understand just why their employers had gone through the trouble of hiring so many Senior assassins to take down just a single Martial Senior. It was not overkill, not at all.


    WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH!


    Rui weaved through the wind sts with remarkable quickness. Alternating between Gale Force Breathing and Wind Breathing allowed him to maintain a good bnce between speed and agility. Yet this particr assassin was no slouch.


    RUMBLE!


    The very earth shook as heunched a powerful onught. Each attack of the many that flew towards Rui possessed the power to level hills to rubble.


    They converged on him.


    WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH!


    Rui gritted his teeth as the attacks converged on him.


    BOOM!!!


    An enormous wind st explosion erupted from him at the epicenter, covering more than a dozen kilometers.


    WHOOSH!


    Yet when the dust settled.


    Rui Quarrier was nowhere to be seen.


    The assassin situated deep in the woods shook as he realized Rui hadpletely disappeared. He double took as he scanned the entire battlefield with his senses,pletely bewildered.


    Losing sight of his target was a rookie mistake that he hadn''t made in more than two centuries!


    CRACK!


    The assassins''s eyes widened as the world flipped upside down. It had bizarrely done aplete one-eighty-degree flip! He wasn''t even able to scream.


    He felt a distinctly sharp pain in his neck.


    It was only when his vision began blurring that he realized what had happened.


    The world had not flipped upside down.


    His head had been flipped upside down.


    Thest thing he saw was Rui ring at him upside down, having forcefully twisted his head a hundred and eight degrees.


    THUD


    "Huff¡­Huff¡­" Rui panted, gasping for air as he struggled to catch his breath. He nced at his body.


    It was battered, bruised, and cut all over. The sniper assassin had done a real good number on him with that final onught. Although it had served as a good cover for Rui to use Greater Phantomind Void and sneak up on the assassin without anyone noticing, it had been extremely painful to allow that final barrage to strike him.


    It was the price he paid.


    He needed the cover the explosion provided, unfortunately. He could not use Greater Phantomind Void out in the open. He was reluctant to reveal this technique since the Voidreaper had used it as well, but s, he had no choice but to use it. The probability of being suspected was extremely low since he had used it as discreetly as possible. At the very first moment of the explosion, the energy flux around him in the atmosphere was extremely high, high enough to jam any and all sensory techniques for just a single moment.


    At that moment, he had activated Greater Phantomind Void. Of course, this was merely precaution, there were other measures he had taken.


    Master Reina was an extremely good persona and body mimic; she had done such a good job mimicking Rui''s micro-expressions that he felt like he was looking at the true Voidreaper.


    As long as she was there, the very question of Rui being the Voidreaper should be absolutely absurd and asinine in the minds of all people involved.


    WHOOSH


    Rui''s eyes sharpened.


    His expression grew grave.


    Primordial Instinct redundantly warned him of yet another danger. He knew that he was far from done with the series of assassins.


    Yet he was already quite tired. Although the duration that he had spent on each assassin was only ten minutes on average, he had faced so many that hisbat power was falling by the minute.


    He had rued many wounds, his special healing factor waspromised, and his stamina was greatly drained.


    He didn''t have much left in him.


    Yet he still had to take down thest few assassins before he could call himself victorious. The battle against the assassins had entered its twilight as Rui was entering the most difficult phases of the struggle. Exclusive content ? by N?(v)el/Dr/ama.Org.


    He didn''t have much time before he waspletely drained, and his opponents had entered the battle entirely fresh.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1716 Paralysis Poking

    Chapter 1716 Paralysis Poking


    "¡­How many did you say?" A stunned voice escaped Princess Ranea''s mouth.


    "Seven, Your Highness," Sierra calmly informed him. N?velDrama.Org copyrighted ? content.


    Prince Randal''s expression grew severe. "We have underestimated him. No, everybody has. He''s far, far stronger than we had expected. I don''t think there are Senior assassins out there who actually possess the ability to kill him."


    Princess Rafia''s expression was nk, as always. "Even if that were the case, it doesn''t matter. Seven may have failed, but they have undoubtedly wounded and exhausted him, significantly reducing him below his peak. Theter assassins will have a much greater chance."


    "Still, this is surprising," Prince Raemina eyed the brief report with interest. "Do you think he''s the strongest Senior in Kandria."


    "Definitely not," Prince Randal shook his head. "He''s got endless potential and is definitely far and away with the most talented and driven. But he''s not on par with the Gatekeeper."


    That name hung in the air.


    Prince Ranea shook her head. "I''m more concerned about the operations. Since we havemitted to this, we need to see it through."


    She turned to Sierra. "How is the progress going?"


    "We do not have any real-time footage or surveince,'' Sierra replied calmly. "We barely have one distant scout using long-range surveince artifacts to ascertain the bare basics of the operation. We cannot allow anything to be traced back to us. When the anomaly is investigated, we cannot have any proof that we were involved."


    That was why the task force sacrificed information for the sake of staying hidden. The ce that the operation was taking ce in was mostly deserted and remote with almost no settlements or human presence anywhere within a hundred kilometers of the battlefield.


    This was what allowed the Martial Seniors to go all out, as long as it was one by one, without immediately alerting the Martial Union.


    On top of that, the Great Jrava Mountain Range had its own beast poption that asionally caused a ruckus that would be ignored until it started affecting people.


    "Don''t worry; the next assassin will surely get him. He''s too exhausted to get away with any shocking victories," Prince Randal asserted, almost trying to convince himself.


    He was wrong.


    BOOM!!


    "Sonic Singrity."


    Rui''s voice reverberated through his new domain as he unleashed the domain born from Project Malevolent Kitchen. The domain unleashed sound waves toward the epicenter of the domain.


    An avnche of sound.


    A tsunami of vibrations.


    Suddenly, they converged.


    They converged upon a single point.


    A single man.


    BOOOOOM!!!


    "AAAAGRGRGRGGRGEGREGGR!!!" The gargantuan man bellowed in agony as Rui unleashed the third domain technique of the Yggdrasil System.


    His skin grew red as his entire body began heating up, and his hair and clothes incinerated from the sheer heat that he was giving off.


    "RRRRGHHH!!" The man gritted his teeth.


    The Martial Body, particr when reinforced from the enhanced metabolism from the Martial Heart, was not nearly as easy to incinerate.


    STEP


    He centered himself, crouching as he took a sumo stance.


    "Bring it on!" The man roared.


    THUD!


    He struck his foot against the ground in defiance.


    "Why are you even an assassin?" Rui scoffed.


    Yet he never let up on the domain.


    The grappling Martial Artist was dangerous. If Rui got caught by him, it would have been game over. He was sorge and gargantuan that not even Hypertrophic Surge would have been enough to ovee him in grappling.


    Thankfully, Rui didn''t need to maintain the domain forever.


    HSSSSSSS!


    The man''s flesh started sizzling and smoking.


    His eyes had be a deep red.


    He staggered before losing consciousness.


    THUD


    He copsed, dead.


    "Huff¡­Huff¡­!" Rui fell down to one knee as he desperately gasped for air.


    He nced at his broken hand. It had been incredibly difficult to bend heaven with a broken hand, but s, he had no choice.


    Normally, he would have never allowed such a giant assassin to have sneaked up on him and caught him by surprise, but his exhaustion had truly been catching up to him.


    ''Only¡­a few more to go,'' Rui barely caught his breath when he suddenly detected the familiar sense of peril from Primordial Instinct. BOOOM!!!


    He barely managed to evade a tremendous impact with Gale Force Breathing as he got a good look at his next opponent.


    The man had a well-bnced body frame, not unlike Rui''s. He had especially long arms rtive to his body, giving him an enormous wingspan. Rui was unable to gauge exactly what his Martial Art was just by looking at his body.


    "Honestly, I didn''t think I''d get a turn," He smiled. "You''ve done well tost this long. But time''s up!"


    WHOOSH!


    Heshed out against Rui at tremendous speeds. His arms blurred as heunched them into action.


    POW POW POW POW POW


    Rui expected short, swift, heavy blows, yet he only received soft finger pokes. Yet, his eyes widened with surprise as his arms couldn''t move.


    ''Paralysis!'' Rui gritted his teeth.


    BAM!!!


    The manunched a heavy kick against Rui''s ribs, dealing a painful blow. "Rgh!" Rui gritted his teeth as he leaped away, struggling to regain control over his arms. The degree and duration of the paralysis far exceeded that of his own Lightning Tap, which was only partial and momentary.


    The man''s grin widened as he sted off arge variety of kicks, one after the other. WHOOSH!


    Rui ducked, evading a powerful upper kick as he finally regained control over his arms.


    WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH!


    The man leaped back, taking back a stance that emphasized his arms.


    ''I see,'' Rui narrowed his eyes as he formed a basic model of the man''sbat system. ''His Martial Body is such that his arms were evolved purely to disable while his legs are meant to batter his opponent while they''re paralyzed. In most cases, he would be able to take them down very quickly if he had the element of surprise. Fitting for an assassin.''


    The man rushed forward, ready for round two.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1717 Preparatory

    Chapter 1717 Preparatory


    ??Rui winced.


    He knew what he had to do.


    Yet, the thought of doing it in his current state was painful, to say the least.


    Yet he did it nheless.


    ''Temporal Disharmony,'' His expression grew strained as he employed the Hypnomatrix yet again. Yet that wasn''t all.


    "Speed Void."


    With both anti-speed hypnotic and domain techniques, the man''s very existence had been downgraded to a lower n of speed. He appeared to be a sloth and a tortoise rolled up in one.


    BOOOOOM!!!


    Rui sted his body with the most powerful Hypertrophic Surge-enhanced Flowing Canon he could possibly muster. Just a moment before the impact, he breathed in tremendously, dispelling the domain in the process but giving him a huge surge of power at the moment of impact.


    It was the principle of Fire Breathing.


    Rui hade to decode this powerful breathing technique naturally over the many years he had been practicing breathing techniques.


    The resulting impact was the single most powerful punch that Rui had thrown in his entire life.


    BOOM BOOM BOOM!!


    The assassin was propelled across the forest, creating enormous gaping hill-sized craters. Because his perception of time and speed were hampered, he was unable to defend in time. Rui knew that his passive defense and durability were minimal at best.


    Now, his condition was at least as bad, if not worse, than Rui''s.


    ''I''d be dead without the Hypnomatrix, Metabody, and Yggdrasil System,'' Rui mused as he prepared himself.


    The three systems intersected in the VOID algorithm while also being their own groups of techniques, and they had saved Rui many times in this battle. While the VOID algorithm was still the most flexible and powerful, it also required the most amount of time and preparation.


    These three techniques could be executed instantly and oppressed his opponents very hard, allowing him to take them down incredibly swiftly by relying on openings created by the hypnotic techniques and domains while he exploited them to the fullest with the Metabody System.


    On top of that, most Martial Artists had a healing factor that was only a fraction as good as his, they could not recover from extremely damage the way Rui could.


    ''Three more to go,'' He fell to one knee as he panted heavily trying to conserve his stamina.


    The umpteenth sense of peril arrived out of nowhere.


    Yet his exhaustion made him too sluggish.


    SPLAT SPLAT SPLAT!


    "Rgh!" Rui grimaced as painful gashes appeared across his entire body despite ast-second Nemean Blossom.


    He nced up at his new opponent.Material ? of N?velDrama.Org.


    A tall, hooded woman stood before him.


    Her arms were raised before her.


    Her hands were open, and her fingers were spread, wriggling in a specific manner.


    She resembled a sorcerer more than she did a Martial Artist. He hadn''t even understood what she had done to inflict cuts on his body. He couldn''t even see how she did it.


    But he did hear it.


    SZZZZZZZZZ


    A distinctly familiar sound rang around the forest they were in.


    His eyes widened. "Wires?"


    "You''re more resilient than any of my previous victims to have survived them."


    He immediately reduced the range of his senses, focusing on detail as he noticed thin strings all around him in the entire forest.


    Yet, not all of them were small.


    Her hands and fingers burst into action abruptly, rming him.


    SZZZZZZZZ!


    lights¦­¦Ïv¦Ål ?¦Ïm He barely managed to pick up several strings converging on him from all directions!


    THWOOM THWOOM THWOOM!!


    He fired off several attacks, trying to curb as many as he could.


    SPLAT SPLAT SPLAT!


    He gritted his teeth as his eyes bore into hers.


    ''Breathing Crucifix.''


    Since the strings could converge on him omnidirectionally, he could not avoid them. If he was going to avoid them, then he needed to ensure that the damage the attacks did were minimal.


    "It''s useless."


    Her voice rang in his ears as several moreyers of stringsshed out at him.


    SPLAT SPLAT SPLAT!


    "Rgh!" Rui grimaced with shock as he realized that the string attacks had not lost an iota of power.


    In fact, they had grown stronger!


    If not for some defensive-heaven bending, Flux Earther, and Nemean Blossom, he would have long been cleaved into thin strips!


    ''Somehow, her wire attacks are immune to any impediment to her brea-''


    His eyes widened as realization dawned upon him. "Your Martial Art¡­it''s already fought the battle."


    It sounded like an extremely bizarre thing to say. Yet his assassin''s eyes twinkled with appreciation even as her hands and fingers worked even faster than before, releasing new sets of attacks.


    "Very good. Rui Quarrier. The reputation of your intelligence precedes you. In all the decades that I have spent shaving people into ribbons, you are the only one who has seen through the truth. However¡­"


    Her tone grew cold. "Knowing will not help you. You will die, ignorant or knowing."


    Pure peril radiated from her.


    Bloodlust shed in her eyes.


    It wrung the atmosphere taut.


    Rui''s eyes narrowed gravely. He had understood why Breathing Crucifix was ineffective against her. She was not employing any power at all. The only reason she was using her Martial Heart was to keep up with him in speed.


    ''She''s not employing raw power now, but she did before the battle began,'' He gritted his teeth.


    Her Martial Art was not just about wielding strings. It was also about preparing string set-ups. The strings that converged upon him were those that had already been stretched taut and set in ce long before the battle began!


    This preparation phase was when she employed her Martial Heart. During preparation, she stored the energy of her Martial Heart in the strings. Using her Martial Heart, she stretched the strings as far as she could, converting her physical power into potential energy in the strings.


    Once the battle began, she would simply release the super-


    stretched strings, causing them to snap back with the potential energy she gave them, attacking her opponent with tremendous power!


    Her Martial Art was not active.


    It was a Martial Art centered around preparation.


    ''Her Martial Path is something like preparatory wire system maniption.'' Rui''s expression grew grave.


    The peril in the air was palpable.


    As were the wires that converged upon him once more.


    SPLAT SPLAT SPLAT!


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1718 Sympathetic Solution

    Chapter 1718 Sympathetic Solution


    "Rgh!" Rui cursed as several wires converged onto him, inflicting even more wounds on him.


    He leaped away, putting distance between them, yet she had already prepared for that evidently.


    SZZZZZZZ!


    Several more wires converged to intercept his escape.


    THWOOM THWOOM THWOOM!


    He warded them off using several Mighty Roar sh sts. N?velDrama.Org copyrighted ? content.


    Or at least, he tried.


    SPLAT SPLAT!!


    Some managed to sneak through on ount of their size, inflicting superficial wounds on Nemean Blossom.


    ''If I cannot effectively defend against them, then I need to ensure I take you down faster than you do me.'' He gritted his teeth as he stretched a hand out at her.


    "Sonic Singrity."


    Heaven and earth bent to his will, curving to form a domain. The very next moment, a tsunami of sound was unleashed from all directions.


    It converged upon a single point.


    A single person.


    Yet it never reached her.


    SZZZZZZZZZ!!!


    Rui''s widened with surprise as a wide of wires shed, instantly interweaving with each other to form ated barrier.


    VMMMMM!!!


    The sound released from his domain could only be converted into heat if it converged into the target.


    Otherwise, it was just sound. Whatever her strings were made up of, they could withstand the pressure from the sound.


    "Did you think I wouldn''t prepare defenses?" Her contemptuous voice reached him even as she furious released several more attacks.


    Rui narrowed his eyes.


    An idea had struck him.


    His hand reached out again.


    "Sonic Singrity."


    VMMM!!!


    The array of herted wires disrupted the sound.


    "Vain desperation."


    SZZZZZZZ!


    SPLAT SPLAT SPLAT!


    Rui bore the impact, grimacing as he did his best to minimize the damage.


    Yet he never once disrupted the domain.


    VMMMMMNNNNNNUUUUUUOOOOOOEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAA!!!


    The frequency of the sound kept changing, altering the pitch of the sound. It continuously changed by the second.


    "Smiling in the face of death. Perhaps I should praise you," She snorted after a wide grin appeared on Rui''s face. "I''ve had enough of this. Now die!"


    The air grew perilous.


    The atmosphere grew electric.


    Danger was afoot.


    Her expression grew murderous as her hands and fingers spread wide.


    "Stringing Executioner Style." A whisper escaped her voice as she triggered the psychological trigger for her technique. "Strings of Death!"


    SZZZZZ!!!


    Numerous strings converged onto Rui.


    Yet he didn''t so much as move.


    Two words escaped his mouth.


    "Toote."


    Shivers crawled up her skin. She felt a deep sense of danger even as she precisely guided her killing string attacks on him.


    VMMMMMMMMMMMM!!!


    The sound from the domain crashed into her wires one more time.


    This time, they bypassed the strings like they didn''t even exist!


    VMMMMMMMMM!!!


    An avnche of sound converged onto her after effortlessly bypassing her strings.


    A sonic singrity formed.


    At a single point.


    A single person.


    BOOM!!!


    "AAAAARRGRRGRGRGGRHH!!!" Her screech of agony echoed throughout the forest.


    Immense heat caused unfathomable pain. Yet it wasn''t just the heat that caused had caused the pain.


    ''Phantom Pain!'' Rui''s eyes shed.


    "AAAAARGHRGHRGRHRGR!!!!!" A deathly howl of pain reverberated through the forest as shepletely abandoned her attack.


    SZZZZZ¡­


    The release of potential energy was abruptly disrupted, halting the attack.


    HISSSSSSSS!


    Her hair began smoking and burning as her flesh and skin turned red and ck.


    Rui mercilessly ensured that the sound followed her pained, erratic movements, never once letting her off.


    She was not a defensive Martial Artist.


    Durability and endurance were not her strengths.


    Not ten secondster, her agonious screeches had subsided.


    THUD


    Her lifeless roasted cadaver fell.


    For a moment, Rui didn''t move.


    THUD


    The very next moment, he fell to his knees, panting heavily as his strained healing factor did its best to heal the many flesh wounds that she had inflicted on him.


    ''That was close...!'' He grimaced.


    His strategy to victory was on the ball, yet he had almost died!


    ''Thank god for sympathetic resonance...'' His eyes narrowed.


    As soon as he saw that she relied on strings as a barrier for defense, the possibility of bypassing them using sympathetic resonance entered his mind.


    He just needed to find the right innate resonance frequency of the substance the strings were made up of.


    It was not that difficult either, and it was far easier than doing so for a human.


    The strings were made up of a single substance, while humans were chemically diverse in their constitution. That was why it had taken him merely minutes.


    He continuously changed the frequency of the sound released by the domain to rather swiftly go through all the possibilities before he arrived at the right solution.


    He dealt the killing blow sooner than she did, narrowly evading death.


    He nced at the dead corpse.


    He would be lying if her Martial Art didn''t fascinate him. He had never seen a preparation-based Martial Art before. It was incredible how she was able to leverage preparation topletely rece active effort.


    Such a model had both advantages and disadvantages to it. The disadvantages to it were that there were no limits to the preparations that could be made, allowing her to exert far more stamina than her opponent in battle.


    It could allow her to perform at extraordinary levels far surpassing what someone of her raw power and techniques ought to be capable of.


    The disadvantages were also quite pronounced. She could never not prepare for a fight. Without preparation, she was probably the weakest Martial Senior out there. Perhaps even quasi-Senior level at worst. She undoubtedly was a rare example of a more thought-oriented Martial Senior, much like himself.


    The only difference was that Rui could not afford to have a Martial Art that was fundamentally preparatory, in order to be able to adaptively evolve to anything. He needed to make sure that he could take everything thrown at him at any time.


    Yet he could not afford to think about it now; he would have to save it after he sessfully survived this series of assassins.


    He was in a particrly dangerous spot at the moment.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1719 A Tale of Ugliness

    Chapter 1719 A Tale of Ugliness


    He was physically tired.


    He was wounded. Bruised. Cut. He was mentally exhausted.


    Yet he pulled himself together when he felt yet another surge of peril with Primordial Instinct.


    WHOOSH


    The assassin was stealthy. Material ? of N?velDrama.Org.


    Rui could feel the misdirection even as he approached. Unfortunately for the assassin, Rui''s mind was extremely difficult to misdirect. On top of that, his senses were extremely powerful. On top of that, Riemannian Echo was indirect sensing.


    He was so resistant to being misdirected that Kane had stopped bothering to use Void Step when sparring against Rui. It was simply useless. At this point, he doubted whether any misdirection in the Senior Realm could even affect him.


    Unfortunately for the assassin, the reports that the M had given them did not entirely capture how resistant to misdirection Rui was.


    That was why he was waiting.


    Waiting for one of the assassins to finally use it against him.


    All so that he could pretend to fall for it andunch a trap at the opportune moment.


    WHOOSH!


    Rui evaded an assassination technique at thest moment, meeting eyes with him.


    ''Phantom Pain!''


    BAM BAM BAM!!!


    Caught off-guard, Rui managed to pound him with several blows.


    "Rrrgrhh!!!" The man grimaced under the sheer pain from the technique.


    Ordinarily, he would have retreated and immediately opted for gueri warfare tactics. Yet the sheer pain from Rui''s blow almost caused him to vomit what he had eaten for breakfast!


    He shivered, trying to break out of a pseudo-paralysis caused by the ungodly hellish pain.


    Yet he was a beat toote.


    BAM BAM BAM!!!


    Rui pinned him to the ground with a mounted position.


    Murderous rage radiated from him, sending chills down the assassin''s spine.


    He didn''t even bother going for a chokehold to finish it off as cleanly as possible.


    BAM!!!


    His fist crashed into the assassin''s face. CRACK!


    "AAATRGRAHRGWGHHR!!!!" The assassin howled with excruciating agony as his nose was crushed under a single blow.


    He shivered and shuddered with pain. His eyes shed around, rolling backward as he tried struggling discordantly.


    "I''m not a sadist."


    The air grew perilous.


    A deep, dark wave of bloodlust erupted from within Rui.


    It was suffocating.


    "I''m not a sadist¡­" Rui''s expression was murderous. "¡­But your suffering does bring me joy."


    Rui conjoined his hands into a single hammer fist, raising it high into the air.


    "No¡­" Fear entered the assassin''s eyes.


    BAM!!! BAM!!! BAM!!!


    SPLAT! SPLAT! SPLAT!


    Fire Breathing. Hypertrophic Surge. Outer Convergence. Reverberating Lance. Adamant Reforging. The weight of these five techniques drove his fist down with titanic power.


    BOOM!!!


    BOOM!!!


    BOOM!!!


    Soon enough, the howls of pain ceased. Perhaps it was because the man''s vocal cords had snapped with all the screaming.


    Perhaps it was because the man couldn''t breathe, drowning in his own blood.


    BOOM BOOM BOOM!!!!


    Each impact caused a visible reaction in pain. Yet, with each impact, they ceased.


    BOOM!!!


    The man''s fingers twitched.


    His face¡­he no longer had a face.


    Where his face was was now a bloody, crumpledyer of flesh.


    "Huff¡­" Rui panted heavily when he was done. His expression grew ugly as he beheld his own handiwork. Yet he felt much better, having vented his frustrations at recent happenings on the hapless assassin, beating him within an inch of death. It was cathartic. It also brought him back to his senses.


    He was exhausted from the bottom of his body.


    BADUMP¡­


    His Martial Heart had dimmed tremendously since he started fighting. He had less than ten percent of his reserves left. It was to be expected. Not even he could fight off so many high-grade assassins without using everything that he had to offer.


    Suddenly, something changed.


    The air changed.


    He felt a deep sense of danger.


    Deeper than any of the others he had faced thus far.


    A whiff of a strange scent entered his nose.


    A profound odor tickled his nose.


    It was not ordinary.


    His eyes widened as his pupils dted.


    His body grew excited. A primal masculine urge flushed through his mind.


    The blood pumping from the tachycardia of the Martial Heart was redirected to his groin as it swelled up, standing stiff and taut.


    A gentle feminine whisper graced his ears.


    "You''ve fought well."


    STEP


    She arrived before him.


    There were no red lines streaked across her Martial Body, yet her Martial Heart was very much active. Her Martial Heart magnified the passive and active seduction-hypnosis techniques. It massively empowered the pheromone-production metabolism of her body, producing enough to seduce an entire town of men instantly.


    And it was effective.


    Her dark skin was luscious. Her voluptuous bosom and hips. Her well-endowed Martial Body. All of it, designed to enchant the male gaze, hypnotized men who beheld her. Literally and metaphorically.


    "You are tired."


    Her feminine angelic voice was soul-soothing.


    "You are hurt."


    It was addictivelyfortable. Men could lose themselves in it forever.


    Many men had.


    "It''s ok," A seductive smile bloomed on her face as she reassured him, putting a hand on his chest as it slowly lowered to his hips. Her touch was electric.


    It was the trigger.


    The trigger tomence her assassination.


    Rui stumbled forward with widened eyes as his hands reached forward, cupping her beautiful face and her wide hips.


    He stared into her beautiful golden eyes, leaning in.


    Yet he didn''t kiss her.


    A single remark escaped his mouth.


    "You''re ugly."


    Her body shook with shock.


    Her eyes widened, stunned.


    An expression of pure bewilderment appeared on her face.


    Not once in her life had anyone ever uttered those words to her.


    Yet she was unable to get angry.


    The reason for that was simple.


    She was too dead to be angry.


    SPLAT!


    "¡­Eh?"


    She grew confused as the world suddenly lowered before spinning.


    It was only when she saw her headless body standing before her assassination target''s arm extended to his side, covered in her blood, that she realized what happened.


    He had beheaded her with a single swing of his arm.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1720 He Died

    Chapter 1720 He Died


    ??One of the things that Rui had prepared the most was a counter to the Maneater. He knew that she was definitely the biggest individual threat to him. In fact, if they had a random encounter, Rui definitely wasn''t confident he could defeat her.


    He had spent the most amount of time developing a powerful counter to her.


    The solution was more simple than he had expected, however.


    He simply had to hypnotize his perception of her.


    Over the two weeks that he spent preparing himself to fight her, he hypnotized himself to alter his perception of her.


    It was a hypnosis technique that he designed to be passively triggered by her appearance. His mind would warp her beautiful appearance into the ugliest woman he could possibly imagine.


    This would curb her hypnosis and stop any visual psychological maniption.


    What he had underestimated, however, was how beholden the male brain was to odor and sound. The second he smelled her pheromones and her painfully sexually arousing voice, he almost lost control despite his self-hypnosis technique.


    ''That was close¡­'' A cold sweat had overtaken him.


    Yet despite her death, her odor still lingered in the air, causing all sorts of¡­ awkward, undesirable oues that thered mud on his dignity.


    Yet, he wasn''t eager toin, considering he had almost died yet again.


    Of course, he had almost died against many other assassins after he grew more tired and hurt.


    And if he had to choose, he would rather die at her hands than any of the other assassins.


    On the exterior, he appeared to grow even more alert and paranoid.


    After all, he still had one more assassin left to survive.


    ¡­!


    THUD


    Rui fell to the ground, seemingly lifeless.N?velDrama.Org copyrighted ? content.


    It was as though he had dropped dead out of nowhere.


    WHOOSH!


    STEP


    A hooded figure appeared out of nowhere.


    Had any of the other assassins been alive and conscious, they would have recognized the hooded figure.


    The Voidreaper.


    An assassin of assassins.


    The most feared figure among assassins of the Lower Realms across all of Panama.


    A distorted voice identical to the one that the Voidreaper had had during the briefing escaped from his mask.


    "Missionplete."


    The Voidreaper had struck again.


    He never failed.


    He never missed.


    Everybody he set in his sight died.


    Rui Quarrier had been set in his sights.


    And just like all those that came before, Rui Quarrier, too, died.


    "¡­Is what the scout surveilling with the long-range sensory artifact from the distant town says," Sierra calmly informed the four tense royals. "The operation has seeded. Rui Quarrier is dead."


    Yet the four royals were too stressed to celebrate immediately.


    "Unbelievable¡­" Prince Randal whispered. "He almost seeded. He almost got away. He almost survived despite running into all those assassins!"


    "This must be part of why the Martial Union valued him so much," Princess Ranea narrowed her eyes. "He was extraordinary. In every sense of the word. If he hadn''t died today¡­I can''t imagine just how far he would have gone. Just what heights he would have reached."


    A tinge of regret could be detected in her voice. "Our nation has lost a precious asset."


    Princess Rafia nodded. "It is not a cause for celebration."


    "I beg to differ," Princess Raemina narrowed her eyes.


    "As do I," Prince Randal snorted. "He should have lowered his head and stayed low."


    Princess Raemina heaved a sigh, shaking her head. "Enough about this. We need to ensure that the Martial Union never finds his body. As long as the body is not found, the Martial Union will know that he was involved in the tiny skirmish outside of the Great Jrava Mountain Range. They won''t even know he''s dead. He''ll be put on the missing Martial Artist list."


    This was what the royals were hoping for. As long as they could hide the fact that he had even died, then the probability that the Martial Union would find who killed him was extremely low.


    After all, one wouldn''t look for the murderer of a victim if one still believed that the victim was alive.


    In this manner, they could very effectively evade the Martial Union''s scrutiny.


    More Martial Artists went missing than they died.


    This was because Martial Artists possessed an extraordinary ability to travel; thus, a whimsical decision could easilynd them tens of thousands of kilometers away in a matter of a week at afortable pace.


    "On top of that, Rui Quarrier has a history of unannounced departures," Sierra calmly remarked. "Has done so multiple times in the past. Thus, the tracking department of the Martial Union will not instantly assume the very worst."


    The four royals nodded, relieving themselves.


    "What of the Voidreaper?" Prince Randal asked. "Has he retrieved the body? Is he heading to our location?"


    "Yes, sir," Sierra nodded. "On top of that, we have taken extreme precautions that nobody is tailing the Voidreaper. We have ensured that no Martial Master or Senior is tailing him. Our analysts have paid a lot of attention to ensuring that he has not betrayed us by tattling. The fact that hepleted the assassination itself is the biggest proof that he has no intention of using it against us."


    After all, the fact of the matter was that Rui Quarrier had indeed died. He had indeed been murdered by the Voidreaper.


    If he, for example, tattled to the Martial Union or the Kandrian government in some sort of malicious scheme against the royals, he would suffer just as much as they did.


    Now that he had actually physically killed Rui Quarrier, he wasplicit. Anything bad that happened to them would also be extended to him. Thus, he had no reason to harm them in any way.


    The reverse, however, was not true.


    Prince Randal nced around the room at the sixteen Martial Masters. The second the exchange of the final deal waspleted; Rui Quarrier''s body for their true identity, they would kill him on the spot.


    The Voidreaper would meet the same fate as Rui Quarrier.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1721 Adamant

    Chapter 1721 Adamant


    The four royals prepared to meet the Voidreaper.


    The n was simple and straightforward.


    There was no need toplicate it.


    Divulge their identity.


    Acquire the body.


    Kill the Voidreaper.


    There were sixteen Martial Masters. Against a single Martial Senior.


    Yes, he was an extraordinary assassin. They could all honestly admit that he was probably the best Senior-level assassin that they had evere across. In fact, they felt silly hiring anybody else except the Voidreaper.


    Had they hired the Voidreaper alone, he would probably have seeded with his extraordinary, almost God-like ability to snuff life and bestow death. Sierra had been exactly on the mark when she said he was too good to be excluded due to his condition to learn their identities. Had they not hired him, Rui Quarrier would have escaped and gone to the Martial Union.


    Yet, as amazing and extraordinary as he was, he was not defeating sixteen Martial Masters.


    Granted, each of those Martial Masters was a bodyguard, not an assassin. Their absolute priority was guaranteeing the safety of the four royals above all else, including their orders. However, such distinctions did not matter when there was a difference of a Realm of power between them and their target. The Martial Masters could easily protect their marks while effortlessly killing him on the spot simultaneously.


    Thus, they didn''t have anything to fear.


    ''Then why do I feel so ominous?'' Prince Randal narrowed his eyes.


    Currently, the four masked royals were moving to the drop-off location in a disguised carriage. The Voidreaper had not been informed about this location beforehand. This was to ensure that there was no way he could spring a trap.


    Yet Prince Randal could not help but have an instinct that something was wrong.


    Yet he didn''t know why.


    ''Stop,'' He shook his head. ''You''re good. Everything will be just fine. Rui Quarrier is dead. The Voidreaper will soon die. We will erase their bodies from existence and reality itself. There will be no proof they ever even existed. The Martial Union will not immediately assume Rui is dead and instead assume he''s abruptly and erratically traveled as he has many times in the past, and there will be no murder investigation. By the time any suspicions about his death arise many months or a yearter, it will be toote. They will never have any reason to even begin to suspect us or me.''


    The rationale was calm and collected. It was logical. Yet, he couldn''t shake off the feeling that it was dead wrong. N?velDrama.Org copyrighted ? content.


    Regardless, he forged on. It was toote to make any changes, even if he wanted to. And there was no doubt that the oue of Rui Quarrier''s death was highly desirable to him.


    Soon enough, the carriage arrived at the drop-off.


    An old warehouse in a remote, backward district had been secretly fitted with sensory disguisers, meaning they would not prevent a Martial Artist''s senses from peering into the building but would trick them into seeing something else.


    It was the best measure that they could muster to ensure there was no way of anybody getting suspicious.


    The carriage paused such that the door opened directly to a discreet passage with anti-sensory measures to ensure there wasn''t a single moment where their persons were exposed.


    The passage directly led to a shabby room with arge table and chairs on both ends.


    They took their seats with heavy hearts.


    "When is he arriving?" Princess Ranea turned to Sierra.


    "Very soon, Your Highness," Sierra casually replied. "Rest assured that we have made all necessary preparations. We will acquire the body. And the Voidreaper will not leave this ce alive. No Martial Senior can resist a Martial Master."


    They nodded, growing more relieved.


    Several tense minutes passed by.


    The silence was deafening.


    The district they were in was in a remote, boring town that didn''t have much going on. It was actually a vige a year ago that had finally just barely crossed the poption count of ten thousand to be considered a town.


    Silence was all there was. "He has entered the district," One of the Martial Masters behind the royals informed them several minutester. "He is carrying arge case with anti-sensory measures so strong that my senses are unable to peer into it."


    "His caution and care are highly professional, as expected of the Voidreaper," Prince Randal nodded.


    It would be devastating if the Voidreaper crossed paths with a Martial Artist of the Martial Union whose senses peered into the suit only to discover the dead body of Rui Quarrier.


    In that regard, they were grateful that the Voidreaper took such extreme precautions.


    "He has arrived at our location." The Master helpfully added. "He is entering the building as we speak."


    The four royals prepared themselves. STEP STEP


    STEP


    STEP


    STEP¡­


    The door squeaked open as the Voidreaper entered the room, beholding the four masked royals before him.


    A moment of silence emerged as both parties beheld each other for the first time.


    The Voidreaper''s eyes behind the mask shifted to each of the royals, one after the other, before moving to the sixteen Martial Masters behind each of them.


    The air grew electric as the silence lingered for a moment too long.


    Until it was broken.


    "Wee, Voidreaper," Prince Randal addressed the Voidreaper as the original proposer of the assassination operation of Rui Quarrier. "We are your contracters."


    The Voidreaper stared at him.


    A single remark escaped his mouth. "Your identity. Not your masked visage. Remove the masks or..."


    The Voidreaper opened the case, showing it to them.


    It was empty.


    The air grew perilous.


    Pure rage shed across Princess Ranea''s face. "What is the meaning of this?"


    "Viting our contract voids it," Princess Raemina whispered. "Do you want to die?"


    Princess Rafia stared at him with emotionless eyes. "Your actions are irrational."


    "Identity first," The Voidreaper''s distorted voice was firm and clear. "Body after. Rui Quarrier will be here. That much, I promise."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1722 A shock of a Lifetime

    Chapter 1722 A shock of a Lifetime


    "Where is the corpse?" Prince Randal growled. "It is as I said," The Voidreaper firmly pacified. "Identity first. Rui Quarrierter."


    "Why should we trust you''ll keep your word?" Princess Ranea red at him.


    "Do you trust the sixteen Martial Masters behind you?" The Voidreaper tilted his head. "That''s all you need. I cannot vite my agreement, not if I want to get out of here alive. But you can. You have all the leverage and I don''t. That is why you will fulfill your end of the agreement first, as agreed. Then, Rui Quarrier will be delivered to you."


    "We cannot let you leave without providing the body after you have seen our identity," Princess Rafia remarked. "There is no guarantee you''ll return with the body."


    The Voidreaper stared at her. "I am not leaving to fetch the body. The body ising here."


    His eyes shed across them. "If you want the body, you''ll have to divulge your identity. You''ll never get the body from me otherwise. You can even threaten or torture me all you want. But you will never get the body."


    His eyes were widened.


    A glint of insanity sparkled across them.


    "Reveal your identities. And I will give you the body. This is what we had originally agreed upon. I have no need for the body. It is useless to me. It only serves as insurance that you will follow through with your end of the agreement. After that, it is useless. I will readily fulfill my agreements. I have a reputation of credibility to maintain. Reputation is everything in the Underworld."


    His voice was clear, firm, and even earnest. None of the Martial Masters could detect even a hint of deception.


    "How long will it take toe here?"


    "Not long,"


    The four royals nced at each other. He had probably handed it over to a trusted subordinate outside of the town.


    It was possible for them to deploy a Martial Master to scan the city, but¡­


    It was better to just go through with the agreed n.


    No fuss, no hassle.


    Torture, threats, ckmail. All these were extremely time-consuming affairs of extracting information. The probability of something going wrong by the time they extracted information from a veteran assassin increased the longer they took.


    The quickest way of getting the body was agreeing to his demands.


    He was right; after all, there was no way he could escape. It would take more than sixteen Martial Masters supporting him to ensure that he ddin''t die while trying to escape.


    On top of that, his death was certain.


    Come what may, he was not leaving here alive today.


    "Alright," Prince Randal narrowed his eyes. "However, if you deceive us...your death will be painful, excruciating, and long. No, we won''t even let you die. We will stuff your body with healing and rejuvenation potions forever. You will suffer for eternity."


    The Voidreaper nodded. Prince Randal exchanged nces with each of his siblings before heaving a sigh.


    He took off his mask, revealing his identity.


    The Voidreaper simply stared for several seconds.


    "I am willing to recognize you as one of the alleged clients whomissioned me," The Voidreaper nodded. He turned to the remaining three, waiting.


    They took off their masks one by one, bearing their identities to him.


    The Voidreaper nodded. "Pleasure doing business with each of you."


    "This will be thest time I ask. If I don''t like your answer, you will not leave here alive," cold fury shed on Prince Randal''s face. "Where is Rui Quarrier?"


    "Where is Rui Quarrier?" The Voidreaper echoed his question. "Funny you should ask because¡­"


    His tone grew enormously perilous.


    "He has been standing in this room the entire time."


    Master Reina snapped her finger, releasing the many grade-ten Master-level misdirection and stealth techniques she had been simultaneously applying this entire time.


    Not to herself, of course.


    She had reached a higher stage of mastery; she could freely apply them to anybody anywhere, anyhow, within her sensory range.


    What followed next was bound to sear itself as the most horrifying moment in the entirety of Prince Randal''s life.


    Every night from that moment on, he was bound to get nightmares of the things he saw after those words were uttered.


    What followed next was something that was bound to change each of the four royals forever.


    Pure horror emerged on Prince Randal''s face, crumpling with shock.


    Princess Raemina shook in her seat, physically impacted by what followed the Voidreaper''s words.


    Princess Ranea understood the true meaning of fear that day as chilling terror gripped her heart.


    Even the notoriously rational, logical, and unemotional Princess Rafia was not unmoved. For the first time in her life, her expression morphed into one of shock.


    After all, an event that seemed to defy causality ensued.


    "Man, the Martial Union is going to love this when I show it to them," Rui Quarrier remarked with an excited smirk as he held a premium hand-held omnidirectional recording device.


    Not only was he alive.


    He had appeared out of nowhere.


    Behind the Voidreaper.


    In that instant, the four royals, the sixteen Martial Masters, and Sierra had each gotten metaphorical heart attacks.


    Sierra might have gotten a real one, though, considering she fell unconscious.


    None of them could move.


    They each stared at Rui with unadulterated, unfiltered, unhindered, unhampered, uninhibited, and unreal raw shock and horror.


    Not only had they seen a dead mane back to life.


    They had seen him appear out of thin air.


    "Hehehe, nice, nice," Rui nodded, chuckling. "I''m going to take a frame of your shocked faces and hang it on my wall before I go to sleep.


    His words broke them out of their reverie.


    "KILL HIM!!!!!!!!!" Prince Randal bellowed, standing up. "KIIIIIIIIILLL HIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIMNMNMNHNMGHHHHEEEBAHSHEUUUH!!!!1!!!!!!1!!!!!!!11!!!!1!!!"


    It was an impulsive, emotional decision. Yet the Martial Masters behind him obeyed. Time slowed down to a crawl in their vision.


    An enormous amount of bloodlust converged on Rui. They were to kill him.


    He was to die.


    Yet Master Reina was faster. She shed, blurring even to the reflexes of the Martial Masters who wereshing out at Rui, much to their greatest shock. N?velDrama.Org copyrighted ? content.


    SPLAT SPLAT SPLAT SPLAT!


    The Martial Masters froze in horror as they turned back, ncing at their marks.


    ¡­DRIP DRIP DRIP DRIP


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1723 The Rui Quarrier Gambit

    Chapter 1723 The Rui Quarrier Gambit


    ??"¡­Eh?" Prince Randal''s eyes widened as a deep gash appeared on his body, leaking blood.


    "AARRRGRHRH!" Princess Raemina screeched, undignified, in pain as she held her wound.


    "Rgh!" Princess Raemina gritted her teeth as her eyes watered, spilling out in tears.


    Princess Rafia had not moved an inch. Her expression had been frozen in shock, unchanged ever since Rui Quarrier appeared out of nowhere.


    Words could not describe what the Martial Masters felt at that scene.


    They had one job.Text ? owned by N?velDrama.Org.


    One job.


    "Your Highnesses!" The Martial Masters roared with horror as they returned to their marks, gritting their teeth as they pulled out healing potions.


    They had been caught horrifically off-guard. It could be argued that no Martial Master in the history of Martial Art was as caught off-guard as they did.


    After all, Martial Seniors did not randomly turn into Martial Masters.


    Martial Seniors did not randomly instantaneously transform into legendary assassins within the Master Realm.


    Martial Seniors did not possess the ability to move faster than they could even see!


    "I''m going to be real straight with you, fes," her voice was mischievous. "I most certainly cannot defeat sixteen Martial Masters simultaneously. Not that strong, unfortunately."


    Her horrifying bloodlust intensified.


    RUMBLE


    It shook heaven and earth.


    Even Rui felt chills crawling up his skin as he stared at her.


    She radiated bloodlust like the Sun radiated light.


    Just how much bloodlust could one person possibly emit?!


    "¡­I cannot defeat sixteen Martial Masters, but I can assassinate people who are protected by sixteen Martial Masters. It''s lower than my actual record," She continued as her smirk deepened.


    "¡­Go ahead and kill Rui Quarrier if you want," smug apathy radiated from Master Reina''s voice. "In exchange, I will kill the four royals. Tit for tat. Eye for an eye. You scratch my back; I scratch yours. Deal?"


    The Voidreaper chuckled as a deeper horrifying blood-curdling bloodlust emerged from him. Her grin widened even more as she activated the full might of her Martial Mind.


    Her Martial Embodiment bloomed in all its ndestine glory. The Martial Masters gritted their eyes as they covered the eyes of their marks with an opaque wind barrier, lest their minds be eroded by the sheer weight of her Martial Embodiment.


    Lesser beings were not qualified to witness the true splendor of a Martial Master.


    Rui''s eyes widened as the world around them disappeared.


    The room.


    The chairs.


    It was darkness.


    It was silent.


    It was¡­


    ''A shadow,'' Rui felt chills crawling up his spine. ''Her shadow!''


    He recognized the silhouette of the shadow that epassed the world around them.


    Everybody was within her shadow.


    Everybody was at her mercy.


    "Your lone might cannot ovee ours!" The Martial Masters roared.


    Sixteen Martial Embodiments bloomed across the room.


    A spiked shield, a transparent barrier, a ming torch, ated armor.


    The sixteen Martial Masters prepared themselves to take her down while simultaneously protecting the royals from any further harm.


    They physically guarded the royals.


    They also mentally protected the royals by ensuring that Master Reina''s Martial Embodiment never once reached their eyes by creating an opaque air barrier that restricted light.


    This time, they were not going to be caught off-guard.


    It was just one Martial Master.


    Except it wasn''t.


    WHOOSH!


    Master Gurren appeared out of nowhere, his Martial Mind already active.


    His domain Martial Embodiment red, shocking the sixteen Martial Masters once more.


    His eyes narrowed as his arms reached out, bending heaven.


    The air barrier protecting the royals from the Martial Embodiments was dispelled by his expert mastery.


    For just a few microseconds, the royals witnessed eighteen Martial Embodiments.


    WHOOSH!


    Sixteen Martial Masters physically barricaded the light as they gritted their teeth.


    "Hehehe¡­" Rui chuckled, even as he inwardly struggled to resist the pressure of eighteen Martial Masters. "That was close. The human brain only has a visual perception framerate of sixty FPS, so I doubt that they saw anything. Still¡­"


    Rui''s grin widened. "Imagine if they did."


    It was precisely at that moment that the sixteen Martial Masters made a profound realization.


    These circumstances are untenable.


    If the royals hadn''t been here, this would have been game over.


    One dangerous high-grade Martial Master and a mid-grade Martial Master could not defeat sixteen mid-grade Martial Masters in a fair fight.


    It was not possible.


    Patently in the domain of impossibility.


    All eighteen Martial Masters knew this.


    However, as they had just realized, this was not a fair fight.


    "It''s not a fight at all."


    Rui''s tone was calm andposed.


    His smile was confident.


    "You certainly can kill all three of us¡­" He affirmed the unspoken truth. "Only if you are willing to let the royals die, either physically or mentally."


    He didn''t rify.


    He didn''t need to.


    The equation wasid out.


    Just like how Rui could kill a target protected by sixteen Martial Seniors through Greater Phantomind Void and other powerful tools he had developed, Master Reina, too, had the potential to kill the four royals protected by sixteen Martial Masters.


    Could either of them defeat sixteen Martial Artists of their respective Realms?


    No.


    But defeating inbat and assassinating targets protected by were two entirely different things.


    The sixteen Martial Masters had truly felt this truth in their bones.


    Master Reina was the physical threat. Through her absurd stealth and misdirection, blinding speed, an extraordinary assassinating lethality, she could inflict lethal wounds on them, wiggling through the defenses of the Martial Masters.


    Master Gurren, on the other hand, threatened the royals mentally. Through his deeply mastered expert control over heaven, he could strip away any barrier that protected the royals from the Martial Embodiments. The moment the Martial Masters directed their energy to kill Reina and Rui, he would strip all barriers protecting their vision.


    It would damage them mentally.


    And the ones who would be doing the damage would be the sixteen Martial Masters themselves, through their Martial Embodiments.


    This was a soul-revolting oue for them!


    They gritted their teeth as they surrounded the royals in an air-tight circle, ring murderously at the three on the other side of the room.


    "So what''s it going to be, Your Masteries?" Rui casually asked as he took a seat at the table. "Our heads at the cost of the royals...or a sensible retreat to let them live another day?"


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1724 Perspective

    Chapter 1724 Perspective


    Life had be a blur for the four royals ever since Rui Quarrier had been unveiled. One moment, Prince Randal ordered his Martial Masters to attack, and the very next, a gash had been inflicted on him and his half-sisters.


    It couldn''t be helped. The Martial Masters and even Rui lived on an entirely different speed, at least as far asbat was concerned. That was what may have taken a lot of time for them inbat and might have been just a split second for the royals.


    He had been hurt in a split second and seemingly simultaneously been fed a healing potion, which he was duly inhaling.


    It was a lot of blurred darkness.


    It was like a bad dream.


    In fact, Prince Randal desperately hoped it was a bad dream.


    Perhaps he had nodded off the morning of the assassination, having a horrible nightmare caused by his nervousness. Perhaps everything had gone smoothly, and this was a nightmare he was havingter that day.


    Perhaps he was just dreaming stuff up; maybe Rui Quarrier didn''t exist at all.


    "So what''s it going to be, Your Masteries?" Rui Quarrier''s voice broke him out of his stupor. "Our heads the cost of the royals¡­or a sensible retreat to live another day?"


    Prince Randal''s eyes widened as he gained a better inkling of what was happening.


    He nced at the Martial Masters covering him. Their teeth were gritted, and their expressions were grave. ''¡­Are they actually unable to kill them and protect us at the same time?'' Prince Randal grew bewildered even as he healed himself.


    He didn''t understand.


    The Martial Masters looked deeply conflicted. Of course, they were entirely unwilling to let any harm befall their marks. Yet, at the same time, they did not want to let Rui Quarrier walk away alive. Especially not when he impertinently held a recording device that had been recording everything that had happened since the Voidreaper entered the meeting.


    The air was tense.


    Master Reina was excited, just itching to rush over and kill the four royals.


    Master Gurren remained impassive, maintaining his calm, ready to ensure that the four royals bore witness to the Martial Embodiments any chance he got.


    Rui, on the other hand, was rather remarkably nonchnt. He rxed on the chair, rocking lightly as he stared at the group of Martial Masters.


    Seconds, even a minute passed by.


    The Martial Masters struggled to make a decision.


    "¡­What are you doing?" Princess Ranea asked with a severe tone. "Kill them!"


    "¡­It''s not that simple, Your Highness," One of her bodyguards replied with gritted teeth. The safety of the four royals was the highest priority of the Martial Master bodyguards. They were paralyzed as long as it waspromised, paralyzed because they could do nothing but protect them.


    "¡­There are sixteen of you!" She yelled. "Just three of them! Go ahead and ki-"


    "Ranea," Prince Randal''s voice was grave and severe. "Just stop."


    Despite being able tomand their bodyguards, they were deeply unqualified to do so at that very moment. While Prince Randal possessed a much more thorough understanding of Martial Art andbat dynamics than his sisters, he knew that he didn''t couldn''t hold the dimmest candle inparison to their understanding.


    They were far and away the most qualified out of them all.


    Even at this moment, their powerful minds were furiously considering theirbat circumstances. Their eyes were fixed on the two enemy Martial Masters. Every twitch, every shift, every movement they made¡­it was anguage. A high-level form ofmunication that only Martial Artists of the Upper Realms could engage in. It allowed them to gain a measure of their opponents and the potential oues of conflict.


    Unbeknownst to Prince Randal, Rui had been participating as well.


    A small grin cracked at the edge of Rui''s mouth as his eyes shifted across the sixteen enemy Martial Masters.


    His message was clear, although he didn''t say a word.


    The second the sixteen of them were too busy protecting the royals from Reina; he would exploit the opportunity to kill them himself.


    "Your Masteries," Prince Randal''s voice regained someposure. I leave the decision to you. Whatever the oue, the four of us will take full responsibility."


    "Hah," Rui snorted.


    His eyes turned to the four royals standing behind the sixteen Martial Masters. "Responsibility will be the least of your worries when I''m done with you four."


    His voice was as cold.


    The four royals grew grave at those words.


    They didn''t need to inquire what he meant by that.


    He had absolutely irrefutable proof that they had aimed to assassinate him. He had them by the balls.


    The threat it represented to them was not something that they could withstand. If the Martial Union found out that they had tried to assassinate Rui Quarrier¡­


    They didn''t even want to think about what would happen.


    The best-case scenario was that they would lose all support from the Martial Union.


    It was not improbable that they would be tried in a judicial hearing conducted by the Martial Union since it would undoubtedly fall under their jurisdiction as mandated by the Crimes Against Martial Art Act ratified by the first Emperor of the Kandrian Empire in ordance with the Kandrian Martial Covenant.


    That meant that they would be charged with murder conspiracy, and the judge would be the Martial Union, with the recording that Rui was making as proof of the crime.


    It was game over.


    "Your Highnesses¡­" One of the Martial Masters broke the silence with a resigned tone. "¡­We should retreat. This is¡­untenable."


    Prince Randal''s expression crumpled with grave frustration and rage. N?velDrama.Org exclusive content.


    He red at Rui with ungodly murderous rage. The three princesses were speechless.


    Shocked to their very cores.


    "So be it," A whisper escaped his mouth.


    Yet a glint of suspicion shed in his eyes.


    It wasn''t directed towards Rui or the Voidreaper.


    No.


    It was directed at his own Martial Masters.


    People he thought he could trust with his life.


    "Is it Going so soon already?" Mockery rang in Rui''s voice. "Don''t worry; we''ll be meeting each other soon," a mischievous smirk shed on his face. "...Very soon."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1725 Strategy

    Chapter 1725 Strategy


    WHOOSH


    The sixteen Martial Masters disappeared along with their four marks.


    All that was left behind was silence.


    The three of them simply remained as they were for a few seconds.


    "Shame," Master Reina admitted.


    "Speak for yourself," Master Gurren snorted, heaving a sigh of relief.


    He turned to Rui. "You better give me that parax technique as promised."


    "Will do," Rui smirked. The Master nodded before sky-walking away.


    "What now?" Master Reina asked, raising an eyebrow.


    "Well, most importantly, I need to get this to a safe ce," Rui turned off the recording artifact.


    He had gone for a rare recording artifact. It was based on potent esoteric substance that was highly reactive to light and was uniquely altered by the color, intensity, and angle of all light that hit it. Each second of light permanently altered ayer of the orb. Thus, a sphere could store an entire video that couldter be reconstructed by doing detailed examinations of eachyer.


    Thus, it effectively functioned as a video camera. It was also the only real leverage he had over the royals. So, he needed to ensure that nothing happened.


    "Where are you going to keep it?" Master Reina asked, curious. "If they get to it, then all this will have been for nothing."


    "Well, first, I''ll have to make several copies," Rui replied nonchntly. "That massively reduces the probability of a fiasco. It''s never a good idea to have a single point of failure. I will entrust each of the copies to several secure and trusted individuals, with specific instructions on what to do with them under certain circumstances."


    His eyes closed. "With that, they can kiss any hopes of getting rid of the evidence goodbye. I have them by the balls."


    His voice was firm.


    Master Reina smirked, amused. "Nice. But wouldn''t it be better to get rid of them entirely by handing in the evidence to the Martial Union?"


    "It is an attractive proposal," Rui replied calmly. "But it has issues. Their trial will not entirely restrict their ability to exercise their soft power, not all of it; that is what scares me. The Martial Masters loyal to them will not cease their loyalty just because they''re being tried. After all, those same Martial Masters wereplicit. They will still obey theirmands, most likely to the very end."


    Rui narrowed his eyes. "Someone who has nothing to lose is far more dangerous than someone who has everything to lose. What if they¡­decide they want some revenge before they go down? What if they snap and decide they want to see me suffer even if it only hastens their inevitable fate?"


    In particr, he was most worried about Princess Rafia and Princess Raemina.


    Both of them were patently insane.


    It was not impossible for them to instruct their Martial Masters to kill Rui. Or, they might decide to target his family beforemanding the Martial Masters loyal to them to go annihte the orphanage.


    Raemina, in particr, was known to be a viciously vengeful woman. Rui did not want to see what she was capable of when she was no longer shackled by any constraint of any kind. There was no telling what they would do.


    "On top of that, if I do as you suggest, I will likely earn the hatred of the Kandrian Seafare Association, the Ministry of Maritime Affairs, the Royal Army, themercial sector of the Kandrian Empire, the Kandrian government, international forces and powers¡­" Rui heaved a sigh. "To them, these royals are vessels to achieving their greatest ambitions. A realistic chance to achieve some of their wildest dreams. An enormous amount of power is at stake."


    He turned towards Master Reina. "How would you feel if a young Senior brat destroyed your only hope of achieving your greatest ambitions and wildest dreams?"


    "Pretty pissed," Master Reina admitted.


    "Exactly," Rui replied calmly. "I don''t need that pressure. I don''t need that hostility. Yes, I have the Martial Union, but that gives them more leverage over me. The more I need their protection, the more they can demand of me."


    He shook his head. "As satisfying as it would be to see the royals sentenced to life imprisonment¡­the risks of them harming me or my family, the dangers of pissing off their backers. These are things I cannot contend with. There are limits even for me. That''s not all¡­"


    He got up, putting the chair back. "The oue of the Kandrian War will be negatively affected by this. The fact of the matter is, I don''t want any of them to be Emperor or Empress, including Raijun. I avoided pissing off his faction by yielding to aiding him, but I don''t want Kandria to be a Martial Supremacist nation. That is why I cannot get rid of the four royals. Because the moment they''re gone¡­"


    He closed his eyes. "Prince Raijun will have won the Kandrian Throne War. Rajak and Raul cannot stop him by themselves. Not after the power that I have bestowed upon him. The only one who can stop Raijun¡­"


    He opened his eyes. They shed with a glint of determination. "The only one who can stop him is me."


    His eyes sharpened. "I will use my leverage over the royals to turn them into my puppets. They will stop Raijun at the cost of their own dead ambitions."


    "That is why I cannot turn in the evidence," Rui replied. "In the short-term, the mid-term, and in the long-term, it is an objectively sub-optimal decision, even if very satisfying. On top of that, the probability that-"


    "Enough," Master Reina raised her hand with a tired expression, massaging her head. "My head hurts. Is this how it always is inside your mind? Your thought process is nauseatingly tiring. It must be a nightmare being you."


    Rui narrowed his eyes. That was the second time he had heard that. "Still, couldn''t you have at least revealed that you were the Voidreaper in dramatic fashion?" Master Reina smirked. "Seeing the dumbfounded expressions on their face would have been a treat."


    This chapter upload first at  Content is ? by N?velDrama.Org.

 Chapter 1726 All According To Plan

    Chapter 1726 All ording To n


    ??Rui shook his head. "It is sub-optimal to divulge the cause of their fiasco to them. Currently, they haven''t the foggiest idea what happened. Or why they failed. Put yourself in their shoes. You hired an assassin to kill Rui Quarrier, and he supposedly does, only to trap you by revealing that Rui Quarrier was actually alive and had even recorded evidence of your misdeeds. Then the assassin then protects Rui Quarrier by deterrence and ensures that he gets away scot-free with the damning evidence."


    He turned to Reina. "What questions present themselves?"


    "¡­''Why did the assassin betray me?'', ''How did Rui Quarrier find out?''" She thoughtfully replied.


    "That''s right," Rui nodded patiently. "What are the biggest reasons that assassins betray their contractors?"


    "Money, ckmail, a btedly-known high risk of death," She instantly replied with confidence. As the pinnacle of assassins in the Master Realm, she knew what made them tick.


    "Right," Rui nodded. "Loyalty. Or the fact that the assassin is actually the target you''re trying to kill. These things literally almost never happen. Thus, if one of the reasons you provided was the reason why the Voidreaper betrayed the royals, then what can be further inferred?"


    "¡­Rui Quarrier might have paid them an ungodly amount of money," She remarked, narrowing her eyes in thought. "Or, he might have ckmailed the Voidreaper."


    "¡­Which means?"Content is ? by N?velDrama.Org.


    "¡­" She stared at him nkly.


    Rui sighed. "It means that Rui Quarrier needed to know that he was being assassinated well ahead of time. This much is absolutely inescapable. Thus, based on the perspective we have just constructed, what does Rui Quarrier learning about your assassination attempt on him ahead of time tell you? Where did that informatione from? From the assassin? Or¡­?"


    Master Reina''s eyes widened as she understood what he was conveying. "¡­An information leak from my operation."


    "That''s right," Rui nodded. "Rui Quarrier learned about the assassination through an information leak in their operation. He bribed or ckmailed the Voidreaper and then used that to spring a trap to gain damning evidence to ckmail you. This is the most likely exnation of what happened. The true exnation that Rui Quarrier is the Voidreaper is something that they likely haven''t even fathomed in their wildest dreams."


    He narrowed his eyes. "That''s good. It is better for me if they think it is an information leak. It means that despite them taking great measures to avoid the Martial Union or the Beggar''s Sect from learning, Rui Quarrier was still tipped off by someone in their operation."


    "If they believe that, then they will think they have a traitor amidst their operations, someone they trusted absolutely but has now revealed to be a traitor," Master Reina continued down the chain of logic as she realized the sheer depth of Rui''s strategic considerations.


    "Your capacity for thought is still shallow," Rui smirked. "Think deeper. What is the mostmon way of vetting trustworthiness in the Age of Martial Art?"


    "Using a martial master''s ascended sense of mind," she replied. We possess the ability to sense depth of mind, emotion, and general nature of intent."


    "And yet, despite them undoubtedly using Martial Masters to vet each and every single person involved, there was an information leak," Rui grinned. "Not just any information leak. The mother of all information leaks. Rui Quarrier didn''t get a vague tip-off. He basically learned everything way ahead of time. What would you, in such a position, conclude?"


    "¡­" She stared at him nkly.


    Rui heaved another sigh. "If a tea filter allows teapower to slip through, then the tea filter is not working."


    His eyes mer her. "If a Martial Master allows a traitor to slip through, then the Martial Master is not working."


    Her eyes widened. "¡­!"


    "Seems you figured it out," Rui replied, grinning. "From their perspective, everything can be exined if there is a traitor among their Martial Masters. The information leaks, Rui Quarrier learns about everything, and the Martial Masters fail to kill Rui Quarrier. Everything can be cleanly exined if enough Martial Masters had secretly betrayed the operation."


    "''Why was Rui Quarrier so confident against sixteen Martial Masters despite being protected by only two?''" He smirked. "''Why did sixteen Martial Masters fail to kill Rui Quarrier when there were only two protecting him? Why did sixteen Martial Masters insist they ought to retreat in such advantageous circumstances despite the fact that Rui Quarrier getting away was a catastrophe?''"


    There was one answer that presented itself.


    "Rui Quarrier wasn''t facing sixteen Martial Masters from the very get-go¡­He was being secretly helped by the traitors¡­" Master Reina whispered. "¡­All this time, this was the true depth of your considerations? All of this? All of it was a part of your n?"


    "Well, there''s more, but thetter half of my n won''t be relevant for another fifty years. So meh."


    Master Reina stared at him dumbfounded.


    She felt a chill crawl down her spine.


    At that moment, she swore never to be his enemy.


    Not that she ever would.


    But the resolution to avoid ever doing that would antagonize him was deeply embedded in her mind.


    Even now, as she gazed into his eyes, lost in thought, it was almost as if she could see something.


    A void.


    "Alright, time to get going," He jerked out of his thoughts with a cheery voice. "The high-grade anti-sensory artifacts they''ve lined this ce with work both ways, so the Martial Union probably hasn''t detected the battle. Still, we ought to get going. Undetected."


    He put a hand on her shoulder with a pointed look.


    "Shame," She remarked, shrugging. "I still wish you let me assassinate them."


    "That''s sub-optimal."


    "Boo."


    WHOOSH


    They disappeared as Master Reina activated her many powerful stealth and misdirection techniques.


    The other quiet town remained as was.


    Not a single one of them had been made aware of the historical events that had urred in the little warehouse. Events that would change the fate of the Kandrian Empire and beyond.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1727 Damn It All

    <h4>Chapter 1727 Damn It All </h4>


    BANG!


    Prince Randal struck his fist against a table.


    His expression was murderous.


    His demeanor was grave.


    They had just returned to one of their secret bases, transported by their Martial Masters. He gritted his teeth as he thought back to what happened.


    Even at this very moment, it was difficult to conceive that what happened had actually genuinely happened.


    He didn''t understand.


    How could something so oundish happen?


    He was unable to conceive of a possible chain of causality that could exin how this happened.


    "What happened?" He turned to his Martial Masters sternly. "Why were we unable to kill him despite the numeric advantage?"


    The Martial Masters grew severe. "The Voidreaper¡­he was incredibly dangerous. There''s a decent chance that he would have been able to kill at least two of you before we could take him down."


    His words stirred Princess Ranea as she turned towards them.


    A glint of suspicion shed in her eyes. "I have never heard of any circumstance where one Master is able to deter sixteen using assassination. It was literally sixteen to two. Couldn''t you have split up and ganged up on them individually separately."


    The Martial Masters shook his head. "With her stealth and speed, she would effortlessly weave past us and kill all of you. Or, Rui Quarrier himself would kill you while she keeps us busy. He may not be a Master, but after the shocking performance that he disyed, it is not inconceivable that he may be able to kill you in the briefest opportunity that presents itself."


    She didn''t respond to his words.


    She was not qualified to dispute them.


    Yet she was clearly unsatisfied by such an exnation.


    Princess Raemina sat on the floor in the corner of the room, uncaring for her dignity as a royal princess.


    She was shivering with rage.


    Her eyes were bloodshot and widened.


    She looked closer to a mental hospital escapee than a royal.


    Princess Rafia had not uttered a word since the disclosure of Rui Quarrier''s life.


    It was as if her brain was short-circuiting, trying to rationalize how an event that defied causality had unfolded. She was no different from aputer trying to divide a number by zero at the moment.


    "¡­" She murmured something under her breath.


    "What was that, Your Highness?"


    "I''LL KILL HIM!" She screeched with ugly bloodlust. "I''LL TEAR HIM TO SHREDS!"


    "Please calm down, Your Highness," One of her Martial Masters tried cating her.


    It was in vain.


    "Oh, that''s right. His brother in my faction," A quivering smile spread on her face. "Hahaha! I''m going to make his life hell. No. Everyone in that filthy orpha-"


    "You''ll do no such thing," Prince Randal growled at her.


    "And who are you tomand me, you filthy army dog?" She red at him.


    His eyes sharpened fiercely.


    The air grew electric.


    Surprisingly, he managed to keep his cool, exercising great discipline over his impulses.


    "If you don''t want to live a miserable life¡­" Prince Randal coldly retorted. "Don''t think about doing anything stupid. He can effortlessly ruin your life if he wants. You will go from being a dignified royal princess with great prestige and authority in the Kandrian government to a filthy rat trapped in a Martial Union holding cell and prison for the rest of your life. Is that what you want?"


    His words poured cold water on her inferno.


    As much as she wanted to inflict the most unspeakable things on Rui Quarrier and everyone who could bring him pain, she cared about herself more. The Martial Union imprisoning her in a shabby prison with shabby cloth for clothes and livestock feed for food was an oue that she desperately wanted to avoid with every cell in her body.


    Prince Randal heaved a sigh as he thought about the circumstances that they were in.


    It was beyond dire.


    It was dooming.


    They picked a fight with Rui Quarrier, and he proceeded to demolish all of them.


    At this very moment, he could imprison them for life. Prince Randal had asked his Martial Masters if they could track him after they had left the warehouse, but the Master had informed him that he and the Voidreaper had disappeared.


    It was game over.


    There was nothing that could be done; now, they could only sit tight and hope that he wasn''t a sadist at heart.


    Because if he was, then they were in for a world of hurt.


    Prince Randal gritted his teeth, clenching his fists as a glint of suspicion and resentment shed in his eyes, flying around the room across the various Martial Masters in there.


    He had indeed said he would take full responsibility, but now that the consequences of the actions wereing, he couldn''t help but feel incredibly dubious and resentful about the choice that the Martial Masters made.


    He, like Princess Ranea, was unqualified to question the evaluation of the circumstances from the Masters, but that did not mean he was convinced.


    Yet he abstained from voicing out hispunctions. N?velDrama.Org exclusive content.


    This was no moment to iste his protectors, whether sincere or not. However, he definitely needed to reconsider how much he could trust them to act in his best interests.


    He got up, leaving the room wordlessly.


    Now that their operation had crashed in a massive fiasco, he didn''t have any more business with his three half-sisters. He didn''t particrly enjoy theirpany either, and they were all fighting for the throne; thus, they were back to being enemies.


    "Huff¡­" He heaved a grave sigh.


    He was certain that his bid for the throne was dead. One of his lifelong dreams to ascend the throne and lead Kandria to glorious conquest had now probably died forever. He wanted to Kandria to be the sole hegemon over all of East Panama. He wanted to go down in history as a conquerer among conquerors.


    Words couldn''t begin to describe the hatred he felt for the fellow Kandrians who got in his way of delivering them glory.


    He gritted his teeth. "Damn it."


    "Damn it all."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1728 Power

    <h4>Chapter 1728 Power </h4>


    Rui painstakingly made several copies of the recording that he had created. He had already prepared to do so well ahead of time,missioning a distributor ahead of time at a particr time and ce.


    He made a total of five copies, giving him six recordings by the time he was done.


    "You want me to keep a hold of this?" Master Ceeran tilted his head as he examined the box armed with Master-level anti-sensory esoteric substances.


    "Yep," Rui nodded. "It''s very important to me. Just keep it safe, and don''t let it be opened no matter what, and don''t let anybody learn of its existence. Can I entrust you with this?"


    Master Ceeran grew serious, nodding. "I will."


    "Thank you, Master," Rui smiled. Content is ? by N?velDrama.Org.


    He proceeded to give him a few more instructions on it. What to do with it if he went missing, and what to do with it if he died.


    "Why are you saying so many ominous things?" Master Ceeran''s expression grew worried.


    "It''s just in case," Rui smiled.


    Soon enough, he took his leave.


    He went on to hand a copy to Headmaster Aronian, Master Vericita, and even in a premium deposit locker in the Martial Union that he could earn by forking over a portion of the several billion Martial Credits that he had earned. Not to mention, the fees from his training with Prince Raijun.


    He was extremely rich at the moment, and he didn''t have anything to do with all this wealth.


    He even handed one copy to Master Reina.


    "What am I supposed to do with this?" She tilted her head.


    "Just keep it," Rui remarked. "You know what to do with it if the need everes."


    "Of course," She remarked with an amused smile.


    It was important for at least one of the people he was entrusting the copies to know what to do with it if an irregr situation ever appeared.


    "So now what?" Master Reina remarked.


    "¡­I have a training session with Raijun. I also need to go home and tell Julian that he can leave the Raemina Faction," Rui remarked. "Once that''s done, I''ll speak to the four royals. It is good to establish what the game is going to be early on so that they don''t get any strange ideas. The sooner they ept reality, the better it will be for them and me."


    "And what is going to be the game from here on out?"


    "Didn''t I already tell you?"


    "You did say you were going to use them to counterweight Raijun¡­but then what?" Master Reina asked, curious. "Something has to give. This can''t go on forever. The Royal Emperor will die, and someone will need to ascend the throne."


    "You''re right; although you''d be surprised how little the Emperor is needed for day-to-day maintenance of the nation, it is the long-term that is an issue," Rui heaved a sigh.


    The Royal Emperor generally did not directly intervene in executive government or the judiciary. His role was legitive, suprememander of the army and appointer of the cab of ministers and the panel of judges.


    It wasn''t a role that would bring the Empire crumbling down the moment he died.


    Rui heaved a sigh.


    "So what''s the solution you''ve prepared?" Master Reina raised an eyebrow expectantly. "Surely, you must have some n on who is going to ascend the throne."


    Rui heaved a sigh. "¡­Not really."


    Master Reina cocked her head back in surprise. "What? You don''t have a n?"


    "I have limits, too," Rui replied calmly. "Not everything can be fixed with a clever n. The fact of the matter is that only someone with royal blood can ascend the throne. And the only people worth allowing to ascend the throne are all problematic."


    "Why not consider one of the weak and non-prominent princes and princesses?" Master Reina asked. "Maybe you''ll find a worthy candidate to support?"


    "If they were worthy, they would have been among the seven prime candidates for the throne," Rui replied, shaking his head. "One of the reasons that there exists apetitive element to ascending the throne is because it is a measure ofpetence."


    He narrowed his eyes. "The challenges they face in their attempt for the throne are a diluted experience of what the Royal Emperor will face leading a Sage-level powerhouse. Anybody who is unable to even qualify as a realistic candidate is unfit to bear the greater burdens and challenges of being Emperor or Empress. It''s a brutal meritocratic process in a sense. In that regard, as much as I dislike them, the seven royals are definitely far morepetent than the others, barring Raul."


    Each of them had cleverly identified what they needed to win the war, harnessed the greatest powers of Kandria, and used them to elevate themselves far above their siblings. Rui was not interested in talking to princes and princesses who had Seniors for bodyguards because they were too ipetent to reel over a single Martial Master to their quasi-faction.


    "Huff¡­" Rui shook his head.


    He had thought about how he could guide the Kandrian Throne War in a way that did not disrupt the lives of his family and did not make the nation a ce not worth living in, but it was not easy, even for him.


    Previously, he shook these thoughts out of his head because he didn''t have the power to decide who would be Emperor or Empress.


    But now he did.


    He could very easily make any of the candidates ruler of Kandria. He knew the four royals would rather die than be disgraced, lose all their privileges and luxuries, and rot in the Martial Union imprisonment block for the rest of their lives.


    It meant that he could manipte them as much as he pleased. That gave him power of the resources that theymanded. It gave him immense power over the Royal Army, the seafare and maritime sector of Kandria, the corporate sector, and the government.


    It was not an exaggeration to say that, at this moment, he was the most powerful individual in Kandria after the Royal Emperor and the Martial Sages.


    Yet, despite all that power, he couldn''t see a path forward to manifesting an eptable oue.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1729 Resolution

    <h4>Chapter 1729 Resolution</h4>


    POW POW POW!


    Prince Raijun narrowed his eyes, throwing a flurry of blows against Rui, who promptly retaliated with a swift kick.


    WHOOSH!


    He swerved, evading it, only to find that it had arrived, nheless.


    WHOOSH!


    He evaded it for the second time, weaving through Rui''s attack stance.


    BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM!!


    His blows struck Rui''s guard, pushing him back as he rushed forward.


    WHOOSH!


    He cleanly evaded a retorting blow before sting Rui with his most powerful kick.


    BAM!!


    SKDDDD¡­


    Rui skidded back a few meters from the momentum of the kick.


    Rui nced up at the prince with an impressed expression. "Good. You''ve arrived."


    The Martial Prince looked different from how he did when he began training under Rui more than a year ago. A calm aura of dense power seemed to emanate from the Martial Apprentice. His presence had grown heavier over the months of training with Rui.


    "Congrattions, Prince Raijun," Rui calmly remarked. "You''ve now arrived at the cusp of the Squire Realm."


    "¡­I see."


    "You don''t seem as excited as I expected you to be," Rui raised an eyebrow.


    The Martial Prince stared into Rui''s eyes. "It was inevitable, yet it''s all thanks to you, Rui Quarrier. You have earned my eternal gratitude. When I be Emperor, I will fulfill any one wish you have, within reason."


    "How about not making Kandria a Martial Supremacist nation?"


    "Rejected."


    "Shame," Rui shrugged.


    He met Prince Raijun''s eyes onest time. "I''ve fulfilled my end of the agreement. This is farewell."


    Prince Raijun stared at Rui. "I''ll be holding a celebration for when I be a Martial Squire. I''d like to invite you to it as the individual who helped me unlock my potential."


    Rui shook his head. "I''m good."


    Prince Raijun heaved a sigh. "I don''t repeat myself often. And yet this is the first time I find myself repeating myself for the fourth time."


    He extended a hand to Rui. "Join me, Rui Quarrier. I will give you anything you want."


    A deafening moment of silence trickled in the air.


    "And I''m going to have to repeat myself for the fourth time as well, Prince Raijun," Rui''s eyes narrowed. "I will not join you. Not now. Not ever."


    Prince Raijun closed his eyes, heaving a resigned sigh. "So be it. Rest assured, my favor to you is not contingent on your support of me. Love me or hate me, I will not forget my debt to you¡­Farewell."


    Rui stared at him before turning around and leaving.


    He exited the Mantian Royal Pce.


    Yet this time, he was not heading back to the orphanage.


    No, he had something much more important.


    He activated Greater Phantomind Void, melting away into thin air.


    That was a signal.


    WHOOSH!


    "Ready?" Master Reina asked him, appearing out of thin air. She had allowed him alone to perceive her existence.


    "Yeah, let''s go." Rui''s eyes narrowed.


    There was a reason that he was going through all the effort of even using his and Master Reina''s stealthbined while traveling to Vargard.


    That was where he would be meeting the four royals.


    However, he could not let anyone know that he was meeting them. There would be no point in acquiescing to making Prince Raijun a Squire if he openly revealed he was plotting against him. He would be making even more enemies, defeating the point of epting to train him instead of refusing.


    ''I need to operate from the shadows," Rui narrowed his eyes. ''Simultaneously, I need to find a permanent solution. Master Reina is right; this cannot go on forever. Somebody needs to ascend the throne.''


    Not only did Kandria need an able ruler, but he himself could not do this forever. Something needed to give.


    All for the sake of maintaining the harmony and peace of Kandria.


    All for the sake of not disrupting the fragile lives of the people he loved. Content is ? by N?velDrama.Org.


    He needed to find a proper solution.


    ''I''ll do it.''


    A resolution was made.


    ''I will not allow these maniacs to ascend the throne,'' His eyes sharpened. ''I will find a solution to a harmonious future.''


    He didn''t know how, but he would do it.


    Eventually, they reached the location that he had decided upon to meet with them in Vargard.


    He wanted to avoid any potential surveilling Martial Masters to know that he was in Vargard. Thus, he was using Master Reina to transit across Kandria. He never once deactivated Greater Phantomind Void, even consuming rejuvenation potions to keep it active constantly, even as he entered the unremarkable building that he had designated as their meeting ce.


    The Beggar''s Sect definitely could not be allowed to know that he was here, and that was difficult to achieve.


    CLACK


    He opened the door to the meeting room featuring the four royals sitting around arge table.


    They didn''t look any different than they did before.


    Yet they were was a deep sense of resignation that radiated from them.


    "No Martial Masters?" Rui raised an eyebrow, noticing that they were unguarded.


    "¡­"


    "You should bring them. This is irresponsible," Rui remarked.


    "¡­"


    "Your royals of the nation, how can you appear before me without them? Go call them."


    "Why do you care so much about our bodyguards being here?" Prince Randal narrowed his eyes.


    A glint of suspicion shed across them.


    "They have secured the ce; thus, our safety is not a problem."


    "I see," Rui shrugged.


    Yet inwardly, he was grinning.


    "Now then, let''s begin," Rui remarked as he sat at the other end of the table. "I arranged this meeting for one reason."


    His eyes narrowed. "To tell you that I can ruin you at any moment I desire. If you don''t do as I say, then I have no problem ending you. In turn, if you do as I say, your life won''t be horrible. In each case, however¡­your ambition for the throne ends."


    Rui stared at them with narrowed eyes. "From this day forth, your sole purpose exists to stop Raijun from bing Emperor, got it?"


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1730 Warnings and Directive

    Chapter 1730 Warnings and Directive


    The four royals gazed at him with shock.


    "¡­What?"


    Rui sharpened his eyes. "Did I stutter?"


    Princess Ranea furrowed her eyebrows. "¡­You want us to do everything in our power to stop Raijun from bing Emperor?"


    "That''s right," Rui nodded calmly. "He has reached the Squire Realm. Thus, you will pool your resources and ensure that he does not win over enough of the government to initiate the Crowning Ceremony to crown himself Emperor. Employ every means of legal, extra-legal, covert and active, direct or indirect, or any other measure that can be employed to stop him. That is all."


    "¡­Is that all?" Prince Randal red at Rui, yet a hint of surprise was evident on his face.


    "Yes." Rui simply replied.


    "You''re not going to¡­personally oversee our operations?"


    "I don''t need to," Rui calmly replied. "You lot have spent many years, even decades, some of you, pining for the throne. I''m sure you''ve developed a good understanding of what it means to sabotage your fellow siblings. You''ve done it before, and now you will do it with everything you have. You will sabotage Raijun even at the cost of your campaign. You will sabotage Raijun even at the cost of all your faction''s detriment."


    The very thought of it was revolting. Yet they could onlyply.


    "¡­"


    He had expected much worse from Rui.


    All of them did.


    Yet, he did not torture them sadistically or vengefully.


    "That is all," Rui nodded. "Is that clear?"


    "¡­"


    "Or would you rather rot in prison?" Rui narrowed his eyes.


    "¡­I ept." Princess Ranea''s tone was resigned.


    Soon enough, the other three followed suit.


    "I ept."


    "I ept."


    "¡­I ept."


    "Onest thing," Rui coldly added. "If I die, the evidence goes public."


    "If I go missing, the evidence goes public. "If anybody in my orphanage suffers from a mysterious force, the evidence goes public."


    "If you make any action that can be even partially construed as treacherous or hostile to me, the evidence goes public."


    His words were ruthless. The air grew perilous as profound bloodlust pushed down upon them.


    "If the thought of eliminating me crosses your mind, then take a moment to remember what happened thest time you tried killing me."


    Chills crawled up their spine as his words triggered forbidden memories that had already be the seed of life-long trauma.


    Princess Raemina visibly shivered.


    Princess Ranea did her best to suppress the sheer terror that gripped her heart.


    Princess Rafia widened her eyes at his words.


    Prince Randal''s expression grew ugly.


    "All that effort. All that caution. All that capital. All of it, and for what?" Rui''s voice grew fierce. "For a magnificent failure that will choke you for the rest of your lives."


    His words had a strong impact. A deep ferocity apanied his voice. Text ? owned by N?velDrama.Org.


    "Do not think you''ll be able to slip past my notice just because I''m not going to be personally overseeing you," A sharp edge overtook his voice. "I will not only learn of the truth like I didst time, but I will make you regret it for the rest of your life."


    This time, they were quicker to acquiesce.


    "Good, do well," Rui narrowed his eyes. "If you stall, I''ll release the evidence. If you fail, I will find out. So you better get working, and fast. Make sure that you seed for your own sake. If you fuck around, you will find out."


    "That isn''t a threat." His voice grew colder. "No¡­"


    "¡­that''s a promise."


    His words firmly resounded in the minds of the four royals. He turned around and left the building, disappearing as he activated Greater Phantomind Void while Master Reina brought her into the effect of her active stealth techniques as well.


    "What do you think?" Rui asked, turning to Master Reina.


    "They were filled with hatred and fear. But I sensed no deceit or deception," Master Reina replied.


    "Good," Rui heaved a sigh.


    "That was awfully short," Master Reinamented. "I thought you would give them highly specific orders."


    "They''re more suited to micro-managing the task because of their position, familiarity, and personal experience with their own resources," Rui replied calmly. "On top of that, the more involved I get, the more I''m likely to be exposed, earning the displeasure of parties that want to see Raijun be Emperor."


    "¡­The Martial Union?" "The Martial Supremacist Faction, primarily, but yes," Rui calmly replied. "I might be demoted from tinum boy to golden boy if they learn what has happened, though it would cancel out the favor I gave Prince Raijun by empowering him. Still, an undesirable oue."


    "How will you know whether they''re doing their jobs?"


    "I won''t; they won''t mess around when ites to the threat of being imprisoned," Rui replied calmly. "But there is a reason that I embedded the idea that I will find out if they do mess around, just like I didst time. It rted to what we discussed."


    He turned to Master Reina. "What can be inferred if I am confident that I can know everything about their operations despite not actually being there?"


    Realization dawned on Master Reina. "¡­They''ll be more convinced of an information leak if they think about the reason behind your confidence of being able to keep tabs on them."


    "That''s right," Rui smiled mischievously. "Besides, I do intend to use the Beggar''s Sect to keep an eye on their activities. But there is an even bigger reason why I avoided taking the lead in the operations against Prince Raijun."


    "¡­Which is?"


    Rui shrugged. "It''s too time-consuming. I have a Martial Path to tread."


    Now that he had settled the matter regarding the royals, he had gained a bit of breathing space.


    While it was true that he still needed to find a way to end this little cold civil war cleanly, it was not an immediate concern. He had more important things to consider.


    "My fight against the assassins revealed minute ws and sub-optimalities," Rui revealed. "I need more experience with domains."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1731 Impediments

    Chapter 1731 Impediments


    Eventually, Rui found himself training in the Great Jrava Mountain Range once more.


    He recalled the fight against the Stringing Executioner; she had managed to temporarily negate the effects of his Sonic Singrity domain by not allowing the sonic singrity to actually form.


    By dispelling the technique when it had yet to take effect, she managed to deal with it much easier than if it had hit her.


    This was a bit of an unexpected weakness but one that he should have expected in hindsight. Unfortunately, it was a fundamental w of the technique; he could not get rid of it, but he could mitigate it with other factors.


    One of them was the solution that he hade up with in the fight itself, which was relying on the principles of Death''s Sympathy. He could use that to bypass any barrier that tried to obstruct the sounding from his domain.


    ''Regardless, her Martial Art was definitely potent,'' Rui gave her the credit that she was due.


    While there were many drawbacks, shorings, and constraints to her Martial Art, they all urred prior to the battle.


    In the battle itself, she could functionally operate with a stamina many times greater than what her Martial Body and Heart would have. She could also operate with potency and power many times greater than what her Martial Heart would warrant.


    Twenty strings released at once would have twenty times the power of a single string, even if her true attack power is on par with a single string''s power. Unlike the stamina of the body, the potential energy in all of the strings could be set up however she wanted. In fact, if she was willing to sacrifice all string stamina, she might even be able tounch a single quasi-Master-level attack.


    However, she would need to n ahead of time.


    He shook his head, putting the matter aside. She was dead.


    The same could be said for the other assassins that had given him some trouble. The Suffocator disyed domain mastery that exceeded even Rui''s. Passive domain mastery was truly impressive now that he had actually fought against it. The man was able to fight normally while still moving in a manner that bent his breath to, in turn, bend heaven. N?velDrama.Org exclusive content.


    One of the constant problems that he experienced throughout the battle was the fact that it was difficult to use domains while fighting in any other manner. At the very least, if he had to use a domain while fighting in hand-to-hand, his hand-to-handbat would be quite limited.


    Thus, he had to effectively choose between domains and hand-to-handbat.


    There were some circumstances where hand-to-hand was more desirable. Such circumstances were when his opponent was had a non-specialized Martial Art that had more bnce across the field.


    In such a circumstance, there would not be especially one domain that perfectly countered his opponent.


    He did not have the ability tounch two domains partially and simultaneously. The Yggdrasil System was less flexible than the Hypnomatrix.


    ''If I want to adaptively evolve smoothly in the future, then I''m going to have to gain both passive mastery and domain flexibility,'' Rui realized. Ideally, he would want to reach a stage where he could use multiple domains simultaneously and partially to correct the right configuration to counter his opponent while also being able to engage in hand-to-hand.


    This way, he would have reached a state where he could adaptively evolve his body to match his opponent, as well as hypnotic offense and his domains. And of course, hisbat style.


    The day he reached that pinnacle of mastery was the day that he would be deploying multiple dimensions ofbat to perfectly adaptively evolve to his opponent.


    His fist quivered with excitement as he thought about just how much adaptive evolution he would have cultivated.


    Body, mind, Art, and domain. These were the four dimensions of his adaptive evolution.


    When he first became an Apprentice, he only had one, Art, through the VOID algorithm. He actually had less than one since he hadn''t mastered the pattern recognition system back then.


    ''I''vee a long way,'' Rui''s determination grew. ''And I''ll go even further. No matter what hurdle I have to ovee.''


    "Speaking of things I have to ovee¡­" Rui''s mind delved into the only domain technique he hadn''t used during the assassinations.


    "The Angel of Lace."


    The technique had a lot of potential. If there was one weakness that the pattern recognition system of the VOID algorithm had, it was the fact that it needed time to be activated.


    This was not a small weakness.


    What if he faced a Martial Art with an extraordinarily lethal and quick attack from the very start of the battle? In that case, the pattern recognition system would be unable to help him. In the worst case scenario, he would die.


    He knew that the solution to this weakness could note from the pattern recognition system. In order to predict the future, the past needed to be known.


    As sharp as his mind was, Rui did not think that he would be able to break this principle. It was fundamental.


    It was a result of thew of causality.


    Back on Earth, this was not a problem. While Rui had created the VOID algorithm for allbat, it was mainly used in the context of the UFC rather than street fights.


    He didn''t need to worry about this w because the past data of all fighters were avable. All fights were recorded and broadcasted. Thus, all the past data needed was avable.


    This was not the case in Gaia. If he was ambushed by an assassin, or assaulted by a Martial Artist, he didn''t have ess UFC fight footage of these Martial Artists.


    That was why he had created the Angel of Lace.


    If the past was needed to see the future, then the past he would grasp.


    However, the Angel of Lace had proven to be¡­difficult.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1732 Path Forward

    Chapter 1732 Path Forward


    ??Rui meditated in the Great Jrava Mountain Range.


    Some distance away in a little hut was Master Gurren.


    He had yet again been thrown under a pile of homework, cursing incessantly as he persevered through the assignments on the Parax Method that Rui had supplied to him.


    Rui ignored him.


    He was focused on something more important.


    Inside his mind, an ocean of information sted through the mindscape of his Mind Pce.


    "Rgh!" Rui struggled as he processed every packet of information, each containing a vector, magnitude, and direction.


    Each packet was like a drop of water.


    Yet there were so many that nothing short of a sea of information had been drowning him in his Mind Pce!


    It was only more than an hourter when he managed to extricate himself from the sea.


    He opened his eyes as he put the final piece of the puzzle together.


    The puzzle of the past.


    Time reversed as he bore witness to the past.


    It was overwhelming.


    "Huff¡­Huff¡­" he broke out of his stupor, gasping for air like a fish, ncing at a timer.


    "Damn, eighty-nine minutes," Rui cursed.


    It was better than his first attempt, which took several hours, but it was still a long way from beingbat-viable.


    An expression of frustration shed across his face.


    "Can I not employ this technique without the power of the Master Realm?" Rui gritted his teeth.


    That was what he had initially concluded.


    Yet, now¡­


    A glint of greed shed in Rui''s eyes.


    "I want this power."


    Perhaps it had been because he had experienced how game-changing the technique was when he used it to essentially bypass Master-level stealth.


    "This technique definitely has the power to erase my weakness."


    "It has the power to elevate the quality of my thought."


    His eyes widened as a higher realization dawned on him.


    "The Master Realm cannot help me harness the Angel of Lace, no¡­it is the Angel of Lace that will help me harness the Master Realm."


    This realization was euphoric.


    He had almost chosen not to try and ovee the hurdle that was the Angel of Lace, cing his trust in a higher Realm of power that came after the hurdle.


    Yet how could a power that would only be gained after oveing the hurdle help him in oveing said hurdle?


    "Stupid." Rui shook his head.


    He had let the sheer difficulty shock him into believing that only the power of the Master Realm could help him ovee the Angel of Lace.


    It was cowardice.


    His eyes sharpened with determination.


    "I will ovee the Angel of Lace."


    Amitment had been made.


    "I will harness the past."


    "I will harness the past to harness the future."


    His powerful mind shot to work as it swiftly processed dozens, hundreds, and even thousands of broad solutions.


    He could look toward optimizing processing.


    He could potentially increase the tolerable margin of error, reducing the burden on him for uracy.Content is ? by N?velDrama.Org.


    He could reduce the scope.


    All of these solutions handled the problem of excess information, but they each were either difficult to even conceive or sacrificed too much.


    The ones that were difficult to conceive were extremely information-heavy and would likely be even more difficult than actually creating the Angel of Lace. This was the most difficult technique project he had ever worked on, second only to the original VOID algorithm that he had created in his previous life.


    "I''m not opposed to such solutions, but¡­" He shook his head. "I would rather go for something that has more certainty of sess."


    Uncertainty was a dreadful thing.


    Throughout all of Project Reverse Prophet, he had felt deep uncertainty about its sess, he did not want to subject himself to that once more if he could avoid it.


    It meant that he was favoring the options that made a bit of a sacrifice with more guaranteed returns for those sacrifices.


    "If I''m going to sacrifice something, then I would rather it be something that does not hurt me as much," Rui thoughtfully considered. "Ideally, it would be something that I don''t need in the context ofbat."


    His eyes narrowed as he caught onto a promising line of thought. "Sacrificing something I don''t need for something I don''t. Hmmm¡­"


    In order to know what he didn''t need, he needed to establish what he did need.


    "Information on my opponent, everything else other than that¡­" His eyes widened with realization. "I don''t need anything else."


    While it was nice that he could roughly rewind time of the entire world around him in his head based on the analyzed information¡­how much did he really need information of the past of the entire world inbat?


    "The input is high¡­but the output does not need to be high," Rui realized. "The only output I really need is the past of my opponent. I don''t need to see the past of the rest of my environment inbat¡­"


    What good did knowing the past of a rock, or a tree, or a bird do him?


    Especially inbat, he did not need to know the past of a squirrel on a tree near the fight.


    The system of thought for the Angel of Lce simply derived the past first and then focused on the relevant information, but what if he knew to only derive the past relevant tobat?


    "If I could get rid of having to process the past of every rock, tree, grain of sand¡­then I could massively reduce the burden of the Angel of Lace!" Rui eximed, excited.


    The only trick was knowing exactly which vectors to process and which ones to not, but even that was theoretically and logically possible. He just needed to add a scoping system that would allow him to only process the past that he needed to process.


    A path forward had been found.


    It was not going to be easy.


    "Nothing worth it ever is," Rui said, feeling a surge of motivation and energy as he immediately began working on this auxiliary technique project.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1733 Shocking Reports

    Chapter 1733 Shocking Reports


    FSHHHHHH¡­


    In a well-guarded medical room in the Martial Union, a chamber opened, releasing steam.


    Around the chamber were several Martial Masters.


    Further away was arge team of medical experts monitoring some readings on their panel.


    "Preliminary evaluation; the procedure is aplete sess," One of the more senior doctors announced with a relieved expression on her face.


    She would face a lot of heat if something was wrong.


    CLASP


    A hand emerged from the chamber, grasping at the side.


    Prince Raijun pulled himself up and gazed at his new body with shock and bewilderment.


    It was euphoric.


    At that moment, he felt like a god.


    He felt like he was an unstoppable force.


    Nothing could be a match for his newfound power!


    Of course, his rationality was more than strong enough to recognize that that was a stupid thought or belief to have.


    He was logically cognizant of the fact that he was a grade-one Martial Squire.


    Of course, grade-one Martial Squires today were now what grade-two or even grade-three Martial Squires were before the Hungry Pain technique. But even considering that, he was still extremely low on the totem pole of the second of six Realms.


    Getting arrogant would be the height of foolishness. N?velDrama.Org exclusive content.


    Still, he found it difficult to humble himself.


    "It is alright to indulge yourself for a bit, Your Highness," Master Zentra assured him. "Congrattions on bing a Martial Squire."


    "¡­Thank you," Prince Raijun murmured. "Now what¡­"


    "Normally, you would enter into isted limatization training for however long it takes to get you limatized to your Martial Body. However, in your case, that cannot be afford to be done," Master Zentra exined patiently. "You have a throne war to win. Thus, we have specially adjusted our limatization body suit to be sleeker, thinner, and less noticeable so that you can limatize to your body even whilst you go about your duties and obligations."


    "I''m grateful to the Martial Union for taking my circumstance into ount, Master Zentra," Prince Raijun smiled. He was d to know that he could immediately get back into the working. While it was true that his growth and now sessful breakthrough to the Squire Realm would yield him a great amount of political capital, he could not kick back and rx.


    He needed to capitalize on it.


    Only a few dayster, he left the Martial Union in his new bodysuit.


    It greatly restricted his raw power to that of a human for now; it would slowly be released at about one percent every day so that he wouldpletely be limatized to it over a span of a little over three months.


    "Alright, what do we have on the agenda?" Prince Raijun asked his secretary, sitting at his table for the first time in two weeks.


    "There have been some concerning developments, sir," His secretary handed him a stack of papers.


    "What am I looking at?" He asked, skimming through the pages.


    "A report regarding the six tier-five patrons that have passed notice for the termination of their contracts with the Raijun Foundation," His secretary exined.


    Her tone was calm.


    Yet her words physically rocked him in his seat.


    So much so that his secretary would have died had he not been wearing a suit that suppressed his raw power.


    "What?!" An expression of shock shed on his face. "Which ones?!"


    "Chairman Frenek, Minister Zioschek, the Kandrian Distribution Service, Nereau Defence Enterprise, and Naracka Limited."


    "Damn, why didn''t you inform me?!" He eximed, frustrated.


    "Your instructions were to not disturb you during your breakthrough unless it was urgent," She calmly replied.


    "¡­" She was right.


    "What is the change to our patronage count?"


    "We have gained six and are losing five, thus the gain is one," His secretary told him.


    "What are the reasons those five offered for the notice of termination?" He incredulously skimmed through the documents.


    "The official reasons are perfunctory, as evaluated by the analytical team," His secretary informed him. "The Martial Union''s intelligence department has found out that each of the five patrons has received¡­surprisingly generous offers from four different royals."


    She ced another document before Prince Raijun.


    "Randal, Raemina, Rafia, and Ranea?" Prince Raijun red. "Just what have they offered to steal my patrons away from me?"


    "Princess Rafia made a four billion gold donation to Chairman Frenek shortly after he filed a notice for termination. We can assume this was part of the deal."


    Yet another shock struck Prince Raijun. "What the hell?! Twelve billion gold donation?! Is she trying to go bankrupt?!"


    He was stunned into silence. Twelve billion Kandrian gold was arge amount of money, it was simr to the entirety of all of Rui''s profits from the Shionel Dungeon raid. To donate this enormous amount of money in a single donation was an absurd and absolutely shocking move.


    Donations were typically in the millions of gold, maybe even a few hundred million, to genuinely incentivize people into doing things. A twelve billion gold donation just to immediately terminate the contract that Chairman Frenek had made with Raijun and join her faction was insane. There was no way she was making any profit with that investment. Raijun was truly surprised because it did not sound like the meticulous, calcting sister he was familiar with.


    It was no wonder he had lost Chairman Frenek, there was nothing that Raijun was willing to offer that could possibly beat match twelve billion gold, it just wasn''t worth it.


    Yet the same should also be true for his sister; there was no way this was worth it for her either.


    "Randal stole my patron through an authorized defense-security contract signing away official military protection¡­?! Raemina stole my patron by issuing two billion gold worth of treasury bonds¡­?! Ranea stole a patron by selling the Karokann???" Pure and unadulterated bewilderment overtook him. "This is insane! They''re burning through their capital just to hurt me."


    He stared at the report in disbelief. "Have they given up on the throne or something?"


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1734 Opaque Intentions

    Chapter 1734 Opaque Intentions


    Prince Raijun could not feel as though something had changed. "What is happening?" Prince Raijun stared at the reports with disbelief. From the various actions of his siblings, he could feel a shift in their mindset. This was not the action of someone who had hope left. The sheer rate at which they were spending resources just to cripple him was a troubling sign.


    It seemingly signaled an apparentck of hope in the prospects of their ascendance to the throne.


    Yet, Prince Raijun couldn''t imagine this happening.


    As much as he disliked and even detested his siblings, he did respect them. They were indeed powerfulpetitors who had managed to develop a massive power bloc centered around them, enough topete with him and potentially emerge victorious.


    Yet, currently, they had begun a self-destructive bid to do everything they could to stop him.


    ''They wouldn''t do that as long as they were still aiming for the throne,'' Prince Raijun stared at the reports before him,pletely flummoxed. ''What has changed? What could have caused such a drastic change in the four of them?''


    He felt like he had missed something.


    Something really important.


    He felt like he had missed something.


    Something really important.


    "Your advisors have prepared a briefing for you," Her secretary remarked as she handed him a single sheet.


    "That is very much appreciated," Prince Raijun nodded his eyes. "I must listen to what they have to say after I''ve familiarized myself with all recent developments."


    Prince Raijun hurriedly tried reading through the documents at superspeed, only to discover that a Martial Squire''s enhanced speed did not apply evenly across the board, much to his chagrin. In general, the cognitive boosts that the Martial Path provided as a result of maximizing the potential of the brain came from areas of the brain rted tobat.


    The further away an activity was from physicalbat, the less it would be empowered above human limits.


    It wasn''t long before he had caught up to the state of affairs of his campaign. He had made the choice not to let it impede him while preparing for the Squire evolution breakthrough procedure, thus he did need to spend some time overlooking the reports and records.


    "Something has changed since I was away," His eyes narrowed as they flew around. "What happened to the four of them? Why are they acting like this? What has caused them to take such a suicidal approach to hampering me?"


    "Your advisors believe they have some exnations," His secretary exined.


    "Then I must speak with them at once." Prince Raijun narrowed his eyes as he immediately got up and walked away, apanied by his secretary.


    It wasn''t long before he found himself seated at the head of a long table with many elderly figures around.


    "Your Highness, wee back," One of his advisors smiled. "On behalf of us, I can say that we are sincerely proud of you. Congrattions on stepping into the Squire Realm."


    "Thank you, but this is not time for that; let us save the congratting and well-wishing for the celebration party," Prince Raijun remarked. "Cut to the chase, what is happening?" Content is ? by N?velDrama.Org.


    His advisors grew solemn. "We believe that¡­Princess Ranea, Rafia, and Raemina, as well as Prince Randal, have formed an alliance dedicated to stopping your ascent at any cost."


    Prince Raijun''s eyes widened with surprise. "What?"


    "It is clear that they have learned about your breakthrough, but the timing is far too suspicious," one of his advisors sighed. "There must have been an information leak somewhere."


    Prince Raijun narrowed his eyes. "Even if they learned about my breakthrough to the Squire Realm, that alone does not exin this. Twelve billion gold donations, signing away military protection, giving away the Karokann, selling massive treasury bonds¡­These are rather extreme measures. Extremely extreme. The kind that would not be taken unless they were willing to burn themselves alive to stop me, even if it meant their deaths."


    The atmosphere grew severe.


    Everyone fully understood his words. Someone who didn''t care about getting hurt could spread more damage and destruction than someone who cared about their well-being.


    The measures that they were taking were those of the former than thetter. If Princess Rafia continued making such absurd donations to tear away his most supportive patrons, she would go bankrupt. If Prince Randal handed away military capital with such ease, he would lose the resources needed to win the war and lose the support of his militaristic power bloc. If Princess Raemina kept issuing such debt, she would weaken her position as the finance minister. Ranea giving away the Karokann would shatter her rtionship with the ship-building bloc of her faction.


    Yet they had taken these measures all just to impede and hurt him.


    "We¡­have been unable to find the case for the extreme shift in their aggression toward our campaign," His advisors heaved a solemn sigh. "They have always been aggressive towards you, but this is quite different. The measures that they have been taking recently make it abundantly clear that they are willing to hurt themselves and their ambition at the cost of holding you back."


    "That is not the scariest possibility, Your Highness," One of his advisors murmured. "We believe that they have not just allied against you¡­but also have beenpromised. This is not their work nor their idea¡­this might be the work of someone else."


    Prince Raijun''s eyes widened with shock. "You mean¡­someone has gained control over them?"


    "¡­Yes, Your Highness," His advisors nodded. "They have always prioritized their ambitions over halting yours; the only way for their decisions to make sense is¡­if it''s not their decisions. Otherwise, it is inconceivable that Her Highness Princess Ranea would ever give away the Karokann."


    That was apelling point. His sister had loved that submarine-like it was her own progeny. The fact that she would give it away for something like impeding Prince Raijun was unthinkable.


    In other words, it could not possibly be her decision.


    "Someone powerful may have gained control over the four royals. Someone who doesn''t want to see you be Emperor."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1735 Emperor of Harmony

    <h4>Chapter 1735 Emperor of Harmony</h4>


    "That idea seems increasingly alluring," Prince Raijun remarked. "I, for one, find it hard to imagine that all four of them had a massive shift in priorities simultaneously. It is much more likely that there is amon causal factor between them."


    "We agree," The advisors nodded. "That is our analysis on the matter as well. We believe that there is amon cause behind their aggressive shift towards you."


    Prince Raijun nodded, narrowing his eyes. "I just am unable to imagine who or what it could be; these are truly mind-boggling events."


    "There are some possibilities, but there is one that stands at the top of the list..." One of his advisors signaled to an assistant, who promptly supplied Prince Raijun with a report document.


    "What is this...?"


    "Something you haven''t heard about yet. We saw fit to hand it to you ourselves to minimize an information leak," His advisors exined.


    Prince Raijun raised an eyebrow as he went through it.


    His eyes widened. "Father...has awoken once more?"


    "His Majesty, Second Emperor Rael Di Kandria, has awakened from his Eternal Dream sleep, perhaps for the final time," The advisors solemnly informed him.


    The atmosphere was severe.


    Second Emperor Rael Di Kandria was the man who elevated Kandria to a powerhouse Sage-level nation.


    He was known as the Emperor of Harmony in the political sphere.


    The reason for that was because, across all of Panama, he alone was the one and only ruler in the history of the Age of Martial Art to have averted a civil war. N?velDrama.Org exclusive content.


    One of the most universal political phenomena during the early half of the Age of Martial Art was civil war.


    On one side of the civil wars were the ruling political establishment that had been in power since long before the age of Martial Art. These included royalty, aristocracy, and monarchies.


    On the other side were the younger and newer Martial Artists of the new age who broke free of the control of the existing political establishment. These were younger Apprentices, Squires, and even some Seniors.


    Every nation experienced this power struggle. It was the defining hallmark of the earliest phase of the Age of Martial Art, which itself was an era marked by the beginning of the first Martial Squire leading a revolution.


    The Britannian Empire had a civil war that led to the old monarchy falling, reced by a Martialocracy. The Sekigahara Confederate was a state where Martial Artists grouped together, selectively breeding with each other to create their own bloodlines, resulting in ns that swept the militaries of the aristocratic ns that previously ruled the Sekigahara ins. The sh between the Martial faction and the dictator of Gorteau resulted in a tie and apromise, causing a democracy to emerge.


    Yet, the Kandrian Empire was the only nation in history that had never experienced a civil war.


    It hade close.


    While the first Emperor Ra had not tried oppressing Martial Art and even signed the Kandrian Martial Pact and the Covenant, he did expect loyalty from Martial Artists. He refused to give up the right to conscript them for war.


    This led to immense friction between him and the young Martial Union.


    In fact, it was bound to lead the war.


    Yet before he could pull the trigger, he was assassinated.


    First Prince Rael overcame the allied resistance of his siblings and became Emperor, bing Emperor Rael. He immediately formed agreements with the Martial Union with apromise on both sides, conceding to a highly conditional and limited defensive conscription in the event of an all-out invasion.


    His political acumen made for a brilliant lobbying effort that appeased the Martial Union despite extracting several concessions. His expertise inw and administration created a system of governance that worked around the Martial Union and slotted perfectly into the power system of Kandria, seamlessly harnessing its power. His diplomatic and militaristic acuity empowered Kandria''s influence and control over its domain of power, bing a true powerhouse on the international tform.


    He was widely regarded as the man who saved all of Kandria from destruction and elevated it to power and dominance, earning the respect and admiration of all his subjects.


    His name invoked silence.


    While the advisors were firmly a part of Prince Raijun''s faction, they would be lying if they did not have an immensely favorable opinion of the Emperor of Kandria.


    Prince Raijun''s eyes sharpened. "Tsk, he should have stayed asleep. Better yet, he should have died."


    None of his advisorsmented on that remark.


    "Still, Father has woken up, hm?" Prince Raijun read through the report. "This may indeed be thest time he wakes up."


    The Eternal Dream disease was often thought of as a curse. While there was a medicalmunity, this world was still one filled with much superstition. One would progressively fall into sleep for longer and longer periods until they eventually slept forever before dying in their eternal sleep.


    Was that not a curse?


    "Once he goes into eternal sleep, he will probably still not be pronounced dead," Prince Raijun tutted. "Courtesy of my power-hungry grandfather, Emperor Ra. What a foolish system. However, the moment he dies, I will do everything in my power tomence the Crowning Ceremony and crown myself as the third Emperor of Kandria."


    Prince Raijun furrowed his eyebrows as he considered the cards that he was dealt.


    "I hope the old man just epts his fate humbly," Prince Raijun snorted. "His time has passed. I doubt that he''s responsible for my four suicidal siblings going all out against me."


    "Don''t be too certain, Your Highness," One of his advisors cautioned him. "Even if he isn''t responsible for it, we can be sure that he will take action once more now that he has awakened. He is not a man who will sit tightly as he watches his children trigger yet another civil war that may bring about ruin to Kandria."


    "Hmph," Prince Raijun snorted, yet a hint of wariness shed in his eyes.


    "I just hope nothing happens."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1736 Revisit

    Chapter 1736 Revisit


    "I must say¡­" Prince Raul remarked. "I didn''t expect you toe back."


    "Well, I don''t have much of a choice," Rui replied. "I thought ourst conversation made it clear that we are notpatible in philosophy," Prince Raul raised an eyebrow, smiling. "Maybe," Rui shrugged. "But like I said, I don''t have much of a choice but to try."


    He couldn''t make any of the four royals on the palm of his hands into Emperor because that got rid of the weight of his evidence pretty much entirely. The power dynamics would flip, and he would forever be targeted by the new ruler.


    That was why, while he might have considered Princess Ranea if she dialed down her extremities, he simply could not do that.


    It would be the height of foolishness to put himself and his family at risk.


    After all, the whole reason he had be involved in the Kandrian Throne War was to ensure that the harmony and peace of the lives of his family were not disrupted. It was motivated by the guilt of having disrupted their lives by his sudden disappearance; he didn''t want anything like that to happen again if he had the power to avoid it.


    And now, he did.


    With the four royals who tried to assassinate him beingpletely disqualified from consideration, that left three royals; Raijun, Rajak, and Raul.


    Raijun, too, was disqualified.


    Between Rajak and Raul, Rui was inclined to go with Raul, especially since the royals had confessed that Rajak was indeed peripherally involved with his assassination. However, Raul, despite certainly knowing that Rui was responsible for Raijun''s growth through the Beggar''s Sect, did not take any measures to eliminate Rui.


    That was why Rui had turned to Prince Raul.


    Despite having every motive to assassinate Rui, he didn''t take such measures. Soon after he began fleshing out his ns for the Angel of Lace, he had taken the liberty to visit Prince Raul in the "You make it sound like someone is holding you to a de''s edge," Prince Raul raised an eyebrow, smiling amusedly.


    It was the reverse.


    But he didn''t need to know about that.


    Rui needed to carefully choose his words.


    He couldn''t make it sound like he had the power to make Raul Emperor. That would make the Beggar''s Sect suspicious.


    "In a sense, I am," Rui admitted. "The reason I am here is to make an offer to you."


    "Oh? Let''s hear it then," Prince Raul smiled, leaning forward.


    "I will give you all my power and knowledge in return for not abolishing the Kandrian Martial Covenant," Rui replied. "I refuse," Prince Raul shook his head. "That is not something I canpromise on."


    "¡­Why not?" Rui raised an eyebrow. "Youe off as anti-Martial Art if you''re so hell-bent on abolishing the Kandrian Martial Covenant. What is it about Martial Artists securing rights and privileges befitting the power they contribute to this nation that you dislike?"


    Prince Raul stared at him calmly. "I am not anti-Martial Art. I''m not fond of physical conflict, but people have a universal right to cultivate their personal power. What I am against is what that power is used for¡­"


    His demeanor grew more hurt. "Do you know how many innocent people are hurt by Martial Art in the Kandrian Empire every year?"


    "¡­A lot?"


    "About a hundred and fifty thousand every year."


    Rui''s eyes sharpened.


    That was far higher than Rui had been thinking. Almost ten times higher than he had been hoping for.


    Yet deep down, he was not truly surprised.


    "It makes up about ten percent of the total annual death toll in Kandria." Prince Raul''s eyes grew sullen as he heaved a sigh. "A hundred and fifty thousand innocent men, women, and children die at the hands of Martial Artists every year. Ten times as many people are hurt by Martial Artists in this nation. Most of them, of course, are perpetrated by Martial Apprentices and Squires."


    Prince Raul met Rui''s gaze. "I''ve been informed that Martial Apprentices cannot lose control of their power, for their natural power is on par with that of a human, yet through Martial Art, they are able to elevate it to leaps and bounds beyond the limits of human physicality through conscious refined control. If that''s the case, then it is almost impossible for Martial Apprentices to kill humans by ident."


    Rui heaved a sigh. He knew where he was going for this.


    "When I learned that Martial Artists could not kill humans identally by losing control of their natural power, it made me wonder¡­" A pained expression came upon his face. "Does that not mean these Martial Artists hurt people intentionally?"


    That was true.


    The fact of the matter was that many people strived to be Martial Artists because of a power fantasy. These were young, disenfranchised boys and girls who partook in the dangerous and risky Martial Academy entrance exam with the hopes of one day ameliorating their low socioeconomic status by bing a Martial Artist.


    An early life of no power made it precious, perhaps a bit too precious. Often these young aspirants were those who bore resentment to the world around them, having grown up with no power and a low socioeconomic ss.


    It manifested in young, arrogant Martial Apprentices who began exercising their power on others to fulfill their power fantasy or to vindicate their resentment towards those who had antagonized them when they were younger.


    "Yet it is the Kandrian Martial Covenant that allows them to get away with it with just a p on the wrist," Prince Raul exined. "The Kandrian Martial Covenant has acts such as the Martial Judiciary Delegation Act that allows the Martial Union to act as the judiciary for crimes perpetrated by Martial Artists and concession of a special Martial penal code with lighter sentences and punishments for every crime than other citizens. Essentially, there is no real consequence for the crimes of Martial Artists. In such a case, no wonder Martial Apprentices think they can get away with misdemeanors."N?velDrama.Org exclusive content.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1737 Frustrating Answers

    Chapter 1737 Frustrating Answers


    Rui had to admit that Prince Raul''s critiques were more than just valid; they were sound. As a Martial Senior, Rui couldmit murder and get away with it pretty easily. In fact, the Martial Union essentially used the crimes to justify squeezing out freebor from Martial Artists as a punishment


    Martial Artists were not straightforwardly imprisoned for many years or decades. They were sentenced to Martialbor, as dictated by the Martial Union, which would squeeze them of all the value they could during this time until they served their sentence and were free.


    On top of that, the sentences for assault and battery were crimes that were treated with a p on the wrist, with sentences ofbor thatsted months at most.


    Essentially, the Martial Union used this as a way to gain free Martialbor. The Kandrian government used this as a way to delegate what would be an expensive judiciary process for imprisoning powerful Martial Artists under the standard penal code.


    It was not pretty.


    However, Martial Artists were a precious and vital resource.


    They could not be locked up; it would weaken the Empire twice, once for losing the power that the Martial Artist had to offer and another for having to dedicate the same amount of power needed to ensure that the Martial Artist was actually locked up and didn''t escape with force.


    They could not be locked up; it would weaken the Empire twice, once for losing the power that the Martial Artist had to offer and another for having to dedicate the same amount of power needed to ensure that the Martial Artist was actually locked up and didn''t escape with force.


    Even if the Kandrian Empire could sessfully implement this, it would dramatically weaken the nation, which was highly undesirable considering how many enemies the Kandrian Empire had inadvertently made.


    This was the dilemma of the Age of Martial Art.


    It was one that Prince Raul did not like.


    "That is why I wish to abolish the Kandrian Martial Covenant; I will either abolish it or amend it so that Martial Artists will face real, genuine consequences for hurting people. Power does not make the death of a hundred and fifty thousand innocent Kandrian citizens eptable, not at all, as far as I am concerned."


    Prince Raul was clear on that.


    It was difficult for Rui to push back. He was sympathetic to the plight of the people most vulnerable to assault from Martial Artists. Yet it also wasn''t something he was cognizant about on a day-to-day basis, especially in the Kandrian Empire.


    Yet, at the same time, he didn''t think highly about Prince Raul''s goal of trying to get rid of the Covenant.


    "You''ll be provoking civil war. And even if you win that, you''ll weaken the Kandrian Empire by shackling our Martial Artists and make us more vulnerable to external pressure," Rui shook his head. "It is the height of irrationality to believe that you can fix this problem through niceness."


    "Everybody has a human heart, do they not?" Prince Raul smiled warmly. "You know, if not for the fact that you don''t have a privileged background, I would assume you have had the privilege of growing up around extremely good and kind people," Rui raised an eyebrow.


    Prince Raul chuckled, shaking his head. "People have a greater capacity for kindness than you could ever imagine, Rui Quarrier. Why do you think the Kandrian Ruffians have grown to such an extent? It is not because of my kindness but theirs. It is only because people are fundamentally kind that so many have selflessly joined me in my voyage."


    Rui raised an eyebrow as he stared at Prince Raul with a dubious expression. It was true that the scale of the Kandrian Ruffians surprised Rui. However, that did not mean everybody was fundamentally kind. "Do you truly believe that just asking kindly will result in sess?"


    "It will bear my heart," Prince Raul smiled warmly. "What if you fail?" Rui asked him.


    "¡­Then I will be forced to choose the lesser of two evils," Prince Raul replied with a sorrowful tone. "I don''t know what the lesser of two evils is, but I have very clever people who can show me what avable path brings the least suffering."


    Rui''s eyes lit up with a little bit of hope. He could at least conceive of his own failure, which means he wasn''t arrogant.


    He was just incredibly naive.


    However, that didn''t mean all the issues were resolved.


    "What if the path to least suffering is a civil war?" Rui calmly asked.


    "¡­Then I will do everything in my power to ensure not a single person suffers. We Kandrian Ruffians will protect, feed, and house every person who needs it," Prince Raul heaved a quivering sigh.


    "It is impossible to prevent the mes of war from spreading suffering," Rui snorted. "I fear from the bottom of my heart that you may be right," Prince Raul smiled sadly.


    "What if the path to least suffering is maintaining harmony?" Rui raised an eyebrow.


    "Then that is the path I will go down," Prince Raul firmly replied. "However, I do not believe that this is the path to least suffering. I do not believe that the best we can do is to let hundreds of thousands die over the years. I do not believe that is the very best we can afford to do."


    Rui shook his head. "This is the price of Martial Art. This is the price of power." Text ? owned by N?velDrama.Org.


    "Then it is not a price that I am willing to pay," Prince Raul''s voice grew stronger.


    "Would you reject Martial Art?" Rui raised an eyebrow. "No, as I said before, I am not anti-Martial Art itself. But I will not ept the price of more than a hundred thousand dying every year," Prince Raul shook his head. "If Martial Art is unable toply, then Martial Art may need to cease to exist."


    "Hah," Rui shook his head. "What an asinine thing to say. You will spread more suffering if you try to get rid of Martial Art itself."


    "People are kinder than you think, Rui Quarrier."


    "You think kindness will get rid of the deaths caused by Martial Art, or Martial Art itself. You think kindness and ''heart'' can fix all our problems?!" Rui grew frustrated.


    "I am a firm believer in the human heart." Prince Raul smiled, ignoring Rui''s outburst.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1738 The New Variable

    Chapter 1738 The New Variable


    ??Rui''s head fell back as he stared at the ceiling.


    He had gone back to Raul, looking for hope that he may have missedst time. But it was entirely pointless.


    This fool of a saint was even more irrational than Rui had realized initially.


    "You seem distressed." Prince Raul smiled. "Are you in such a dire need of a royal?"


    "¡­Yes," Rui heaved a sigh.


    "I don''t quite understand," Prince Raul replied as he gazed into Rui''s eyes with interest. "Why would a Martial Senior feel so pressured to find an emperor candidate that has earned his approval? What will happen if you don''t find someone you approve of? Will something of note happen? Do you possess the power to make them Emperor or Empress?"


    For some reason, Raul''s sincerity seemed to coax a somewhat truthful answer from Rui.


    "¡­I have much to offer," Rui replied, heaving a sigh. "It may not change the course of the Kandrian Throne War, but it can be impactful."


    "So I''ve heard," Prince Raul smiled knowingly. "What kind of ruler do you seek?"


    "¡­Someone who understands the importance of bnce," Rui replied. "That has been the greatest shoring among you seven. There is no bnce in your visions of the future. You cannot disenfranchise the greatest forces of Kandria for the power that is backing you in your faction. Kandria is built upon a delicate bnce between all its stakeholders and power blocs."


    The seven royals didn''t understand the destruction awaited Kandria should the bnce be discarded.


    Largely because a war would be waged against whichever side the bnce shifted to.


    "That sounds like my father, the Emperor of Harmony" Prince Raul smiled. "Speaking of which, did you know that he''s woken up?"


    "I was not aware," Rui raised an eyebrow. "But at this point, it doesn''t mean much, does it?"


    "¡­I don''t know," Prince Raul shook his head. "My father is more clever than any of the seven of us. It took a disastrous terminal disease that crippled him with sleep to finally shake his guiding hand off Kandria."


    "There''s nothing he can do at this point, can he?" Rui remarked calmly.


    "I would be careful to say that," Prince Raul cautiously remarked. "My father¡­is not a man of inability."


    "So I''ve heard, but since his disease is certainly bound to kill him at this point, what can he do?" Rui raised an eyebrow.


    "¡­I don''t know," Prince Raul shook his head. "As I said, my father is not a man of inability."


    Rui stared at him skeptically.


    What could an emperor who was inching closer to death by the day do?


    This was especially the case when he was sleeping an overwhelming majority of the time forrge periods of time in a single stretch. In fact, Rui was pretty certain he had been in a slumber since before he returned to Kandria two years ago.


    Even if he tried exerting his power, there were limits because he had yet to be able to stop his own death, nor could he stop his children from preparing for war. He also couldn''t change the political system of the monarchy with the power that he had left.


    Such a political move would require the unanimous alignment of all power blocs across all of Kandria.


    However, nobody would be receptive to the Emperor''s lobbying attempts.


    "¡­Because he''s dying," Rui narrowed his eyes. "He has lost tremendous amounts of power as a result."


    "He has aplished much in even more dire circumstances," said Prince Raul. "As far as rawpetence goes, he has reached what many would consider the pinnacle of statesmanship. Did you know that Kandria was actually weaker than the other three powerhouses during the Founding Emperor Ra''s rule?"


    "What?" Rui raised an eyebrow.


    "I found it hard to believe as well," Prince Raul smiled. "But back then, there were only three powerhouses in East Panama, nations that existed before the Age of Martial Art. Kandria was extremely youngpared to these millennia-old nations. As far as Martial Art and esoteric technology went, we were actually an entire Realm behind them. It seemed to be in our destiny to forever be inferior to them. That, however, changed after my father ascended the throne."


    Rui''s eyes widened with surprise.Content is ? by N?velDrama.Org.


    "I am definitely not knowledgeable about history; thus, my recounting will be limited to the broader events¡­but my father allowed Kandria to catch up to the other three powerhouses by averting a Martial civil war that ravaged the other three nations," Prince Raul exined with mixed expressions of sorrow and pride. "By the time the other three civil wars had concluded in the Sekigahara Confederate, Britannian Empire, and the Republic of Gorteau, their nations had been ravaged. Kandria, on the other hand, was swimming forward with great speed, reaching extraordinary heights as my father harnessed conflicting forces, adeptly integrated them within a single system, and brought about harmonious synergy between them, producing a nation greater than the sum of its constituents."


    Prince Raul met Rui''s gaze. "That is my father, the Emperor of Harmony. And now he has awoken. Awoken amidst civil conflict. The only question is¡­"


    "¡­whether the Emperor of Harmony can pull off onest miracle at death''s door and avert a civil war for the second time?" Rui stared at Prince Raul skeptically. "I think you''re giving His Majesty too much credit. Everybody has limits, and being crippled with sleep and permanently bedridden is enough to suppress anybody."


    "¡­Maybe," Prince Raul relented. "I would firmly agree with that sentiment had it been anybody else. But¡­"


    An expression of hesitation appeared on his face. "¡­I am unable to bring myself to believe that my father is someone who can be suppressed. I believe that now that he has awoken when the Kandrian Throne War is only bound to escte in intensity¡­


    Something will change."


    His uncertain yet admiring tone made it clear that he had deep respect and fear for his father.


    Rui, on the other hand, could not help but wonder if there was any truth to his words.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1739 The Endgame

    Chapter 1739 The Endgame


    "What do you think?" Rui asked as he sky-walked back home.


    "What did you expect?" Master Reina snorted. "He''s an empathetic fool."


    "Do you think there''s any hope in choosing him as my candidate?"


    "You will doom Kandria if that man sits on the throne," Master Reina shook her head.


    "Huff¡­" Rui listlessly sighed. It was tiring ying kingmaker. Now, he almost wished he didn''t have the power to choose the future Emperor of Kandria. It was an utterplete mess.


    "Maybe I should just forget about this nonsense and go back to refining the Angel of Lace," Rui heaved a sigh. "What do you think, Master Reina?"


    "¡­"


    "Master Reina?" He nced at her.


    Her eyes were narrowed as she nced around warily.


    "What''s the matter?" He raised an eyebrow.


    "I am unable to confirm this¡­but I can''t help but get the sneaking feeling that we''re being watched." Her words were rming.


    Rui furrowed his eyebrows with concern. "Through your stealth?"


    "Yes, through my stealth," Master Reina narrowed her eyes. "My instincts are tingling, but my senses can''t detect any surveiller."


    "I don''t even know how many people there are in Kandria who can actually sense you past your stealth, Master Reina."


    "There are about seventeen people in Kandria against whom my stealth would be ineffective," Master Reina replied.


    "That''s an oddly precise number."


    "Among them, only three are Masters. The Truthseeker, the Blind Behemoth, and the Lightweaver," Master Reina replied with a severe tone. He had heard of all three, but he had only interacted with the Truthseeker, who had been present as head of security for his Hungry Pain presentation. It appeared that she truly was as powerful as they said she was.


    "But none of the three are here, that much I am certain of," Master Reina''s tone grew more intense. Rui''s expression grew grave as he understood the implication.


    If there was indeed someone spying on them as her instincts warned her, then it had to be a Martial Sage.


    "This isn''t the first time either; ever since I''ve been with you, I get this feeling¡­"


    The air grew electric.


    "Well, it''s just an instinct. Doesn''t mean it''s true." Rui sounded like he was trying to convince himself.


    After all, if there truly was a Martial Sage watching them, then there really was nothing he could do. There was absolutely nothing that he had that could ovee the power of a Martial Sage.


    "I hope so," Master Reina narrowed her eyes, turning to Rui. "What do you n to do now?"


    "Train while researching additional possibilities in regards to the Kandrian Throne War," Rui shrugged. Ever since he had decided to reduce the scope of the Angel of Lace to just his opponent, he had been working on a system of thought that would help him only process what he needed to. However, even then, the technique was still extremely difficult.


    Right now, he needed more than an hour to process the Angel of Lace. Could he really cut down all of that to a single second? He didn''t know.


    "Research additional possibilities?" Master Reina raised an eyebrow.


    "Yep," Rui nodded. "Though, at this point, I think the Kandrian Empire is just screwed. I might have to resign to protect my family from some civil war catastrophe to the best of my power. I don''t think I have the power to protect the peace and harmony in their lives at the moment."


    For all his capacity for thought, he was unable to think his way out of this conundrum. All possible paths either led to civil war or economic ruin. While such things would not affect him personally, many of the orphanage members who had livelihoods very much tied to the condition of the Kandrian Empire would be deeply affected.


    "That''s rather defeatist of you," Master Reina raised an eyebrow. "I didn''t expect you to be a quitter."


    "That''s rather harsh."


    "I call it like I see it, boy."


    "Knowing when to quit is a good trait to have," Rui shook his head. "Though¡­I just learned something from Raul that might give me a little bit of hope."


    "¡­The Emperor of Harmony awakening from his slumber?" Content is ? by N?velDrama.Org.


    Rui nodded. "I don''t trust Raul''s evaluation of his political prowess because he himself is inept and unqualified to judge. However, I do trust his ability to inexplicably read people."


    Rui recalled the very first conversation he had with the man.


    "That''s a rather flimsy basis to be hopeful that the Emperor of Harmony may open a new path forward," Master Reina scoffed.


    "When you''re as desperate as I am, even the smallest things provide a lot of hope," Rui shook his head. Rui was desperate.


    That could not be denied.


    As it stood, either Prince Raijun, Prince Rajak, or Prince Raul was bound to be Emperor.


    All three oues led to civil war.


    "I also n to look into the so-called Emperor of Harmony and judge if he truly is as Prince Raul says he is," Rui narrowed his eyes. "As Emperor, he wields power, albeit fading as he approaches death, that is equal to that of the Martial Union. On top of that, he possesses a lot of authority over the princes as their father; there might be something that he can do. Maybe there is something he can do. Maybe there is something he will do."


    If Rui could find a new path forward, then he would greedily seize that path with everything he had. "Something has to give soon," Rui narrowed his eyes. "Although the Kandrian Throne War will not actually ensue until after his death, the fate of the Kandrian Empire will be decided very soon."


    Rui''s estimations were that within a year from then, Kandria''s fate would be decided. They were reaching the endgame, and soon enough, whoever was bound to ascend the throne eventually in the future would emerge now as the victor.


    In a race, the winner was often times very clear towards the end, even before the race ended. Soon enough, the fate of Kandria and perhaps all of East Panama would be clear.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1740 His Move

    Chapter 1740 His Move


    Not long after his final meeting with Prince Raul, the news about the awakening of the Emperor of Harmony was announced across all of Kandria, evoking immense bittersweet celebration.


    While not to the extent of Prince Raul, it was clear that Emperor Rael had earned a lot of love from the citizens of Kandria. "His Majesty has returned!"


    "All hail the Emperor of Harmony!"


    "May Emperor Rael live forever!"


    While themon folk celebrated cluelessly, the powers of Kandria grew ufortable. Many had hoped that, given that he had been sleeping for more than two years, this truly would be the eternal sleep phase of the Eternal Dream curse.


    Most people had treated it as much.


    Yet the emperor had woken up again thiste in the game.


    The Cold War had been going on for about seven years now, reaching the endgame where the victor would emerge decisive.


    Many forces were confident they had a good grasp on which prince or princess would ascend the throne and which royal''s ass they needed to kiss.


    However, a new variable had returned to y.


    The Emperor of Harmony.


    The faction that was displeased the most was the Raijun Faction.


    This was because they had the most to lose by the reintroduction of this old yet powerful variable.


    There was one thing that everyone considered.


    What if the Emperor finally decided to support one of his children?


    This was certainly not the first time that he had been awake. The Kandrian Throne War had been sparked when a year-longa had frenzied the royals into almost triggering the war for the throne until it was revealed that he was not dead yet, merely under the effects of the Eternal Dream disease.


    In the seven years since then, he had been drifting in and out of sleep as his condition worsened, slipping away from the public eye and refusing any meetings. He never named his chosen heir. Although the Kandrian government did not officially recognize an ''heir,'' it would still mean immense informal support lent to whoever earned his approval.


    Potentially, it would bring bring the many supporters the Emperor of Harmony over to the faction of the heir, massively boosting their campaign.


    Prince Raijun undoubtedly was most afraid of this happening, since the probability of him being chosen was only one in seven. If anybody else got the title or crown prince or crown princess, they would gain a surge in progress that would match the one he got from bing a Martial Squire.


    Except he was being bombarded with almost bloodthirsty sabotage attempts from four of his royal siblings.


    Prince Rajak and the Underworld were even more displeased by the revtion of his awakening.


    There was absolutely no chance that they would be chosen. Each of the seven royals had their own considerations.


    "This might be our only opportunity," Prince Randal narrowed his eyes. "That bastard Rui Quarrier is threatening us with the Martial Union. The only one with the power to protect us from that threat is Father."


    At the moment, the four puppet royals werepletely alone and isted inside a highly sensory-insted zone.


    Not even their Masters had been permitted to be privy to this conversation. The four royals did not trust them enough to discuss this sensitive matter.


    His three sisters took his words seriously. "We need to appeal to Father," Princess Ranea narrowed her eyes. "Surely he won''t forgive the Royal Family being ckmailed."


    "It would be in his interests to ensure that the candidates for the throne are free of ckmail," Prince Rafia emotionlessly stated.


    "¡­Father is not that soft towards us," Princess Raemina shook her head as her wide eyes intensified. "He may very well choose to abandon us to the fate of being controlled for the rest of our lives. This is an oue of our failure."


    Her words hung in the air.


    "We need to win him over," Prince Randal''s eyes narrowed. "Together, we represent arge portion of the stakeholders of Kandria; he cannot ignore us. We just need to adjust our policies to ensure that he isn''t dissuaded from supporting us which we can use to dismiss Rui Quarrier''s ckmail leverage with the protection of the Emperor."


    While the four of them cooked together a n in absolute secrecy, many other yers moved around, making small adjustments to their ns and strategies, factoring in the decisions of the Emperor of Harmony.


    The Kandrian Throne War almost entered a bit of a standstill as people waited to see.


    They were waiting to see if the Kandrian Emperor would do something now that the Kandrian Throne War had escted to close to critical thresholds. With the advent of Raijun''s breakthrough into the Squire Realm, the Kandrian Throne War had almost reached a point of no return.


    If the Emperor did not act now, then Raijun was destined to eventually usurp the throne after the Emperor died.


    The royals temporarily paused their campaign, and the stakeholders of Kandria temporarily paused negotiations with the royals.


    For the first time in more than seven years, silence ran through the politicalndscape of the Kandrian Empire.


    Even the Martial Union held its breath.


    Was something bound to happen?


    Days passed.


    A week passed.


    Nothing.


    The air of anticipation was fading.


    Just as all of East Panama concluded that the Emperor was not to move, a sudden shock spread through the politicalndscape of Kandria.


    An announcement.


    An invitation.


    Not just any invitation.


    And not just to anybody.


    The Emperor of Harmony had invited all the powers and stakeholders of Kandria to a gathering where to bear witness to his addressal to the royal family, to all those who bore his blood. N?velDrama.Org exclusive content.


    The Martial Union, the cab of ministers of the executive government, the generals of the Royal Army, the chairmen of the top one hundred corporations of Kandria, the Martial families of the Kandrian Martialmunity, the Kandrian Seafare Association, the leadership of the Kandrian Ruffians, national banks, nationalbor union leaders, and many other nationally relevant Kandrian powers.


    He had even invited people with open-secret ties to the Underworld, such as Chairman Charles DiVilliers!


    The Kandrian Empire shook as the Emperor of Harmony made a move!


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1741 Invitation

    <h4>Chapter 1741 Invitation</h4>


    1741 Invitation


    A public addressal of the Royal Family.


    Essentially, he would be speaking to the entirety of all his progeny in a formal ceremony.


    He had invited all Kandrian powers to bear witness to the public addressal.


    The moment the forces of Kandria learned about this, a single thought shed through their heads.


    There''s more to it than meets the eye.


    If this ceremony was simply a formal addressal of the Royal Family, there would be no need to invite so many people.


    Not just so many people, but so many powerful people.


    The Royal announcement, a public notice distributed across all of Kandria, mentioned essentially every single important person part of the ruling ss of the Empire. These were people who could impact, no matter how little, the entire nation to some bare minimum degree.


    A simple formality featuring a generic speech where a ruler would espouse the importance of responsibility as a ruler to his potential heirs was not an event that warranted inviting so many people.


    Their time was valuable, and thus, only significant events worth their time were worth inviting them to.


    Thus, the Emperor had sent a clear message to all of them through merely the act of the invitation.


    And everybody who received the invitation got the message.


    Including Rui Quarrier.


    "¡­Er, yes, I am Rui Quarrier. What is this about?" Rui asked, raising an eyebrow, staring at the man before him.


    They stood at the door of the Quarrier Orphanage.


    Some distance away before him stood a man d in a uniform woven from esoteric fabric. His bearing was regal, his chest was pumped out, and his chin was raised.


    He made no effort toport himself in a less condescending fashion.


    And with good reason.


    Behind him was the most ostentatious carriage that Rui had ever seen in his entire life, apanied by a squadron of Martial Artists.


    The man did not respond to Rui. He instead gestured to a staff of assistants who immediately procured a small chest, bringing it before the man.


    CLICK


    The chest opened as the man extracted an extravagant scroll woven from glowing gold so bright what may as well have been thread spun from the Sun itself. Yet it was not the scroll fabric that caught his eye.


    It was the seal of the Royal Emperor on the scroll that drew his attention.


    His eyes widened as he fell down to one knee, with one fist touching the floor and his head bowed. The word of the Emperor required observing protocol.


    "Bow!" Rui whispered to the few curious members of the orphanage behind him. "On both knees!"


    He wasn''t fond of it, but the protocol for ordinary citizens was different from what he had to follow.


    "Hmph," The man snorted, his mouth curling with disdain before he conveyed the message of the Royal Emperor.


    "His Majesty Second Emperor, the Emperor of Harmony, Emperor Rael Di Kandria, invites Senior Rui Quarrier to the Vargard Royal Pce for the Addressal Ceremony of the Royal Family at the dawn of the forty-second of Spring."


    Rui''s eyes widened with surprise.


    "I, Rui Quarrier, honored by the invitation from His Majesty, humbly ept His Majesty''s invitation," Rui replied.


    The man carefully offered the invitation with both hands, which was promptly epted by Rui with both hands as the ritual of conveyance of the invitation waspleted.


    "The invitation has been made," The man announced. "I shall take my leave, havingpleted my Royal duty."


    The man immediately turned around without waiting for a reply, boarding his carriage with a formal gait.


    Rui nced at the sparkling and glowing scroll with furrowed eyebrows.


    "WOOOOOOOAAAAAAAH!!!" Max and Mana squealed with excitement. "BIG BROTHER JUST GOT INVITED BY THE EMPEROR!!! THE ACTUAL EMPEROR OF KANDRIA!!!"


    It took Rui half an hour to extricate himself from the curious and excited members of the Quarrier Orphanage before he could actually go to his room and process what had just happened.


    For quite some time, he just stared at the scroll.


    It was surreal.


    It was a testament to the impact he made on the Kandrian Empire. Perhaps the Hungry Pain contribution, the spreading of the thought techniques, and the impacts that he had made throughout his career, including the trade influx and contributions to the Kandrian economy during the Shionel dungeon debacle.


    His official status as a Senior ambassador and a constituent of the Martial Fiscal Committee of the Martial Union meant that he had a great ability to impact the Martial Union.


    All these instances solidified his status as part of the ruling ss of the Kandrian Empire.


    "An invitation from the Emperor himself¡­" Rui whispered as he finally opened the scroll and read through the invitation.


    It was as the royal messenger announced, but it also contained additional details such as the exact venue and time. On top of that, it served as his entry ticket to the event. Text ? owned by N?velDrama.Org.


    Rui breathed in deeply as a myriad of thoughts flew through his head as he considered the implications for this event.


    Undoubtedly, something big was bound to happen.


    Rui instantly arrived at the conclusions that other invited parties had also concluded.


    This was no ordinary event.


    Something was bound to happen.


    ''The question is what?'' Rui narrowed his eyes. ''What exactly does the Emperor of Kandria have in mind?''


    The probability of the Emperor inviting spectators to the address ceremony of the royal family to engage with them directly or have them partake was low; it was almost certainly the case that the spectators were definitively going to merely spectate. Rui highly doubted that whatever the Emperor had nned would be a stunt directly involving the participation of the off-guard spectators.


    The most likely possibility was that the Emperor of Kandria wanted everybody invited to bear witness to something important or significant, to learn of something that he wanted to convey.


    ''Most likely, he wants the impact of the revtion to stick,'' Rui realized. ''Not only because of the weight of the event, and not only because of all the power blocs of Kandria gathered then and there that day, but also because it will be evident that he endorses whatever it is that he wants people to see."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1742 Inscrutable Information

    Chapter 1742 Inscrutable Information


    The only question was, what the hell was it that the Royal Emperor wanted to convey? What is it that he wanted everyone to see? What was it that he wanted everyone to learn of?


    Whatever it was, it was clearly something that could affect the entirety of Kandria.


    Rui furiously processed the various possibilities, trying to eliminate as many as he could.


    Unfortunately, he didn''t have enough data, so he didn''t know what was possible. It was possible that the Kandrian Emperor had actually found a way topletely cure the Eternal Dream disease and had been restored to his prime.


    In this case, the point of the ceremony was to show that the Kandrian Throne War was not to happen any time soon. It would be a deration that he was alive and well and going nowhere.


    Such a move would instantly curb the campaigning done by his children and bring it all down to copse.


    It was possible that he was actually gathering everybody so he could offer his full support to any one of the seven candidates. Thus, he could ensure that the candidate that he approved of the most benefited from his powerful endorsement. Thetter was far more usible than the former. The fact that he hadn''t found a cure for the disease in over seven years implied that this was not something that could be solved by capital. Had there been any known medical treatment, no matter how difficult to procure, the Kandrian Emperor would have been able to procure it over the span of seven years.


    Yet he hadn''t. His condition continued to grow worse progressively.


    Regardless, there were many more possibilities than just those two; he was unable to constrain the possibilities much.


    ''I guess we''ll just have to wait and see what the emperor has in mind,'' Rui narrowed his eyes.


    The event was to be held in a week, which was awfully short notice for an event of this magnitude. From this, Rui could infer a sense of urgency; the Emperor didn''t want to or couldn''t afford to spend too much time waiting.


    That further contradicted the hypothesis that he had managed to restore his health. If he truly was healed, then there would be no reason to hold the event on such short notice. The more Rui thought about it, the more curious he grew as to what it was.


    Whatever it was, it would undoubtedly affect him and his resolution to find someone suited for the throne. He could only hope that it was something that could help him find a path to the future.


    KNOCK KNOCK


    "Come in," Rui absentmindedly responded. Text ? owned by N?velDrama.Org.


    CLACK


    "Rui," Julian smiled, opening the door.


    "Julian."


    "I just heard the most unbelievable tale from everybody when I got back from work," Julian remarked. "Did you truly get invited by the Kandrian Emperor?"


    "¡­So it would seem."


    "That''s incredible," Julian eyed the scroll that Rui had received with incredulity.


    "Yeah, it is¡­"


    "To think you''ve be someone that the Kandrian Emperor personally invited," Julian smiled proudly. "As expected of my little brother."


    Rui absentmindedly nodded. Julian sighed, putting a hand on Rui''s shoulder. "You don''t have to stress yourself out. This isn''t a personal audience with the Emperor. You have been invited among many other figures across all of Kandria. Unless the Emperor has nned something cumbersome that will involve the impromptu participation of all these important figures, you won''t have to do anything other than spectate."


    As expected, Julian had swiftly arrived at the same conclusion that he had rather quickly.


    "True," Rui got up, walking towards the door.


    "Where are you going?" "I need to speak to some people," Rui replied. "No need to wait for me."


    From there on, Rui consulted many of his friends in high ces, many of whom had been invited, looking for more information.


    Yet he was unable to find any.


    "I''ve tried poking around, but I''ve been unable to find anything," Master Ceeran had shook his head. "Even Her Highness Princess Ranea knows nothing. I''m just as clueless as you."


    "The event, unfortunately, is quite opaque," Headmaster Aronian had heaved a thoughtful sigh before smiling at Rui. "It appears that we will have to simply wait and see."


    "Prince Raijun has expressed a lot of concern over this new development," Master Zentra had remarked calmly. "Our analyst department has concluded that the Emperor is going to be using this event to disclose a revtion, and the high profile of the guest spectators is merely meant to be their learn of it first-hand."


    The analyst department had not uncovered anything that Rui hadn''t easily figured out himself. "We have tried and failed to gather any concrete information," Master Vericita had remarked with an affectionate smile as she petted his head. Not even the Beggar''s Sect knew anything, which was quite surprising.


    "The information security in the Vargard Royal has been absolutely imprable even for us," Senior Partner Kaylin at Lambargeau Legal Services shook her head. "Despite the rushing flux of many people managing the enormous event on short notice, Emperor Rael has taken the absolute strictest of security measures, temporarily calling in Her Excellency Sage Farana from the Kandrian Border Patrol to head the security of the event. Thus, even we have been rendered absolutely ineffective."


    It was only when Rui heard this that he gave up. If a mind-oriented Martial Sage had been deployed to secure the event, then there was absolutely no way whatsoever to gather intelligence without equally powerful forces.


    Part of the reason for such security measures was that the Vargard Royal Pce would be the epicenter of Kandrian Power, and any attack on it during the event could lead to devastating losses for the entirety of the Kandrian Empire.


    Rui shrugged. "What will happen will happen."


    He had already resigned himself to that, and now he could only wait and watch until the Royal Addressal Ceremony, which was due to arrive in about a week''s time.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1743 Stuff

    Chapter 1743 Stuff


    "Have you all heard about the royal address?" "My, how could I have not? It appears that, on his deathbed, His Majesty the Emperor will surely be passing on his wisdom to the royals, to the emperors and empresses of the future."


    "Sounds boring."


    "Agreed. I''m d I don''t have to attend such a boring event!"


    "Do not look down on it; it''s an important event."


    "Ah, Damia! Don''t y with your food."


    Rui smiled wryly as his eyes wandered across the table.


    Fae had organized a short get-together, inviting Kane, Fiona, Nel, Hever, Milliana, and Dalen to an evening gathering at a ce in the town of Hajin.


    "It''s a shame that the Emperor of Harmony may not be the emperor for too long," Fiona heaved a sigh. "I can only imagine the chaos that will ensue after he passes away."


    "It will be a rough and uncertain time for the Kandrian Empire," Fae heaved a sigh. "We can only hold tight and hope for the best."


    "Boring!" Nel grumbled out aloud. "Kane, let''s spar again!"


    "No," Kane snorted. "Why not?!"


    "Go train if you have time to spar with me."


    "Fighting is more fun."


    "Enough, you two," Hever calmly quelled the spat.


    "Hever will you¡­?"


    "I''m too busy¡­"


    "My, is there anything that goes in your head except for fighting?" Fae shook her head with disapproval before turning around the table. "So, what has everybody been up to these days?"


    Hever replied, earning a grumble from Nel. "I have recently received amission to serve as the bodyguard of the mayor of the town of Hulfrum, due tomorrow. I cannot let slip the opportunity to add this to my track record and career."


    A wave of impressed murmurs spread through the table.


    "Wow, congrattions on the cement!" Fiona''s eyes sparkled. "As for my recent doings¡­I was recently authorized to lead an expedition in the Freiva Mountain Range. It''s a quasi-Squire-level danger zone in the east part of the Beast Domain." Content is ? by N?velDrama.Org.


    "To be authorized as an expedition leader at your age is quite remarkable," Dalen admitted.


    "Hehe¡­praise me more!"


    "I was recently appointed to head of security of the Verain Vige in the Mantian Region," Dalen smiled. "It pays decently, and it''s close to home, and I''m protecting my family simultaneously. Couldn''t ask for more."


    He smiled affectionately as he fed his infant daughter with a spoon. Milliana had been pregnant about two years ago when Rui had first returned to the Kandrian Empire; since then, she and her husband had been busy raising the infant baby.


    "The only exciting thing I went through recently was this offensive operationmissioned by a government official on a drug-bust operation; it turned out to be a crucial supply chain with a huge drug yield, and I managed to apprehend an important drug dealer in the drug-trafficking business in the town of Brillix, I was personallymended by His Highness Prince Raijun himself!" Fae said proudly.


    This earned a particrly outsized reaction among friends.


    "From the Martial Prince himself? That''s pretty impressive," Kane remarked as he took a bite from his sandwich. "I haven''t met him yet. I was considering joining his faction."


    "You can do that; after all, Her Highness Princess Rafia proposed marriage to you," Fae shed an icy smile that didn''t reach her eyes. "You should ept her as your sugar mommy."


    "I told you that I rejected her!" Kaneined. "Come on, can we forget about that already¡­"


    "Kane has been busy courting a Kandrian princess!"


    The table burst intoughter.


    "Haha, very funny," Kane grumbled. "I''m too busy grinding missions for experience with the Senior Realm and ruing enough credits to purchase a Lightning Serpent potion to make out with a princess."


    Kane, having sparred with Rui routinely, had been thoroughly amazed by how much stronger Rui had be with the Roaring Dragon Blood Potion. He had resolved himself to purchasing a potion that improve his speed and agility.


    "So what have you been up to, Rui?"


    The question was innocuous and sincere, yet it had caught him off-guard.


    Suddenly, everybody was looking at him.


    "Ah¡­" Rui smiled wryly. "You know. Stuff."


    This conversation made him feel surreal.


    It highlighted how he was worlds, even universes, apart from Martial Artists his age, let alone people his age. His friends talked boisterously about careers, upations, promotions,missions, jobs, and a variety of things that were so disconnected from what he was dealing with and used to dealing with.


    Their dreams, ambitions, and objectives were objectively not even in the same order of magnitude of impact as his.


    He envied them even as it became increasingly difficult for him to rte to them. He found it hard to engage with and reciprocate with them.


    What had he been up to?


    In the past two years, he had presented a seminar for the Hungry Pain technique that led to the Martial Union adopting the technique on a national scale, increasing the power of new Martial Squires by fifty percent on average across the entire nation, resulting in a dramatic growth in power at the lowest level that would eventually snowball into a huge amount of power, altering the power dynamics of all of East Panama.


    He had formed an agreement that produced a power imbnce in the Kandrian Throne War that could very well affect the future of all of Kandria and, consequently, all of East Panama.


    He had been inducted as a constituent of the Kandrian Fiscal Committee and then went on to nt the seeds of a new sect, earning thirty-one trillion Martial Credits for the techniques that he had created. Techniques that would increase the probability of Master breakthroughs, substantially increasing Kandria''s power.


    Having earned the ire of the royals, he then went on to scheme a clever strategy to sabotage their assassination, gain leverage, and eventuallyplete control over them, gaining the power of kingmaker in the Kandrian Empire.


    And now, the weight of Kandria''s future was on his shoulders. The decision he was to make would alter the future of not just the Kandrian Empire but, to a certain extent, all of human civilization.


    "Stuff?" Fae raised an eyebrow.


    "Yeah¡­" He smiled bitterly. "Stuff."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1744 The Pinnacle of Kandria

    Chapter 1744 The Pinnacle of Kandria


    ??The evening spent with his friends gave him perspective, reminding him of what normal looked like.


    Yet it didn''t fix the problems he was facing. Problems that were certainly not normal.


    While meeting up with his friends was soothing and rxing, when he returned home, his thoughts returned to the royal addressal ceremony.


    ''Only a few more days now,'' His eyes narrowed.


    He distracted himself with working on the Angel of Lace during the time, at least trying to make it morebat-applicable, but it wasn''t easy.


    His revtion that the key to the Master Realm was the Angel of Lace was true, but it was also true that only the Master Realm could help him use the original Angel of Lace that could allow him to see the past of the entire world.


    Essentially, he was trying to create a Senior-level version and save the original Angel of Lace for the Master Realm.


    Because really, it was a Master-level technique based on the sheer scope of the information processing.


    Once he reached the Master Realm, he suspected that he would be able to use the full technique without any problems.


    Few days passed quicker than he noticed even as he immersed himself in the Angel of Lace.


    The time had arrived.


    The event that the entirety of the Kandrian Empire had been waiting for.


    The Royal Addressal Ceremony had arrived.


    The politicalndscape of the Kandrian Empire and perhaps all of East Panama was watching this event with bated events.


    A single thought shed through everybody''s mind.


    Something is going to happen.


    FLICK


    Rui put theb aside as he finished his brief grooming session, looking over his custom-tailored Martial attire.


    "Looking crisp, Rui!" Alice flicked him a thumbs-up with a wink. "Be sure to leave a good impression of the Kandrian Emperor."


    Rui chuckled. "He has more important things to do than to pay attention to a single guest among a sea of hundreds of other important figures."


    "You never know!"


    "Yes yes," Rui shook his head with a chuckle and a resigned smile.


    His thoughts went back to the Royal Addressal Ceremony.


    "Rui baby?"


    "Yes, Mom?" Rui asked as he heard Lashara call him.


    "The carriage is here."


    "I suppose my ride is here."


    It wasn''t too long before he wound himself heading out the door.


    "I''m sure you''ll do just well, Rui," Lashara smiled affectionately.


    "I''ll be fine; see you allter!" Rui waved at everybody who hade to see him off.Content is ? by N?velDrama.Org.


    He headed to the extravagant, ostentatious carriage that was waiting outside the Quarrier Orphanage quickly taking a seat after presenting his invitation.


    WHOOM


    "As expected¡­" Rui murmured as the carriage took off into the air before zooming away through the sky. He could sense the presence of several Martial Seniors with active Martial Hearts securing his safety as they traveled south towards the center of Kandria, where its capital resided.


    He felt tingly on his ride there.


    Something prickled at his instincts.


    He wasn''t sure what it was.


    Despite the incredibly high speeds at which they zoomed through the air, it took more than an hour to cross even a portion of the vast expanse of Kandria.


    Yet once he arrived, he could sense many flying carriages converging into the center of the vastndscape of the town of Vargard.


    THUD¡­


    The carriagesnded smoothly, leading him right to the entrance of the Vargard Royal Pce.


    Each person exiting the carriages was d in truly extravagant attire. Shining fabric, embroidered with precious esoteric materials, made them look like they were each fit to be considered rulers of their own states.


    "Well well, if it isn''t Rui Quarrier," A familiar voice called out to him, earning a look in his direction.


    "Minister Varay¡­" Rui''s eyes lit up. "It''s been quite some time."


    "Indeed, much has happened since our first meeting in Princess Raemina''s gathering," The Minister smiled warmly. "I was deeply pleased to learn that you heeded my suggestion and request regarding your own sect."


    "¡­I ultimately decided hat it was in my interests," Rui confirmed, smiling wryly.


    "And in the interests of everybody around you," The minister added. "You have risen to even greater prominence since then. I look forward to seeing not only how far you go but also how far you take this great nation with you."


    The two conversed lightly as they entered the Royal Pce.


    It was his first time entering the prime pce of Vargard.


    He wasn''t a fan of extravagance, but when he beheld the throne room of the Kandria Emperor he could not help but admire the sheer brilliance of the throne room.


    The tall, ostentatious tinum-gold walls of the massive throne room converged towards the Emperor''s throne from the entrance, growing narrower and narrower as it approached the throne.


    This architecture conveyed a simple but strong message: The Throne was the center of attention.


    And center of attention it was. Its workmanship was beyond anything Rui had ever seen in his entire life. Even to his sharp senses, he was unable to spot even the tiniest w, wless on even deeply microscopic scales.


    It was made with breathtakingly beautiful esoteric substances, the likes of which Rui had never seen before.


    It was as though it was ethereal.


    Not of this world.


    Once fully entered, however, it was no longer the magnificent throne hall or the glorious throne that drew his attention.


    No.


    It was the people upying it.


    Rui''s eyes narrowed as he bore witness to the forces that drove Kandria.


    The forces that decided what Kandria was.


    Or what it would be.


    Or what it would do.


    Or what would be done to it.


    An ocean of Martial Masters, powerful merchants, chairmen, and CEOs of corporations, firms, guilds, and banks, as well as wealthy capital owners, and high-profile government officials of all branches, the most knowledgeable of schrs, the leaders of powerful organizations and institutions were spread across the Throne Hall.


    This was the very pinnacle of what the Kandrian Empire had to offer.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1745 Arrivals

    Chapter 1745 Arrivals


    For a moment, Rui could not help but short-circuit as he tried parsing the importance and weight of the sheer gathering that he was a part of.


    "Is this your first time?" The Minister of Martial Art smiled friendlily.


    "¡­Was it that obvious?"


    "Haha. Your reaction was the reaction that everybody, without fail, has in their first time. Being invited to an important event with the many powers of Kandria in the throne hall is indeed an extraordinary event."


    Rui nodded.


    No wonder the Martial Sage of the Kandrian Border Patrol Force had personally arranged for the security of this event. In hindsight, at least one of the fourteen Martial Sages of the Kandrian Empire needed to personally guard this event, anything less was a poor allocation of Martial resources.


    On top of that, there were many Martial Masters in the Martial attire of the Royal Security Force inside and outside the Royal Hall as an additional guarantee, making it such that their safety was high.


    He walked around, overly conscious of everybody around him. There was loud chatter and murmurs among them as the many guests began intermingling with each other. After all, this was a rare event where the many powers of Kandria were gathered in a single room. The ceremony would not begin until everyst guest had arrived.


    Thus, it was only natural that they would take this rare opportunity to speak with each other about various topics.


    He was unable to calm down.


    The air tingled.


    "Rui!" A relieved smile shed on Rui''s face as the familiar, friendly voice of Master Ceeran beckoned him.


    "Master Ceeran."


    "Quite the event, isn''t it?" Master Ceeran murmured as he eyed their surroundings.


    "That''s an understatement," Rui replied as he took measure of the other guests. "Have all Masters been invited individually or¡­?"


    Master Ceeran nced at Rui. "All Masters merit being invited to this event; however, the nation cannot afford all Martial Masters to abandon their training or operations to be in this room simultaneously."


    "This is the norm when ites to Martial Artists in general," The Minister nodded.


    Rui nodded. "Makes sense."


    Martial Masters were entrusted with important duties, many of national importance. They could not be drawn away from it. Certainly, it could not be the case that all of them were simultaneously taken away from their duties.


    "That is why each major and minor sect has sent an appropriate number of leaders. Today, I represent the Long-range Sect along with another of my elder colleagues," Master Ceeran exined.


    That matched Rui''s estimations, more or less, based on the distribution of the present Martial Masters.


    As the three of them spoke, it wasn''t too long before they were approached by several familiar faces.


    Headmaster Aronian. Content is ? by N?velDrama.Org.


    Master Vericita.


    Master Zentra.


    These familiar faces helped him feel morefortable.


    Yet despite that, the underlying tingle never disappeared.


    He didn''t know what it was.


    But something, something deep inside him, was¡­uneasy.


    It was not dangerous; he knew how that felt consciously and unconsciously. It was rm bells ringing as Primordial Instinct would yell at him about the iing danger.


    No, this was subtle.


    It was soft.


    Dim.


    It was a little voice.


    A little voice that whispered to him.


    ''Something is off.''


    "-i?"


    He didn''t know what it was.


    "-ui?"


    Yet it felt like his mind was on the brink of figuring it out.


    "Rui?"


    He jerked out of his reverie, turning to the concerned Master Ceeran. "I''m sorry, what?"


    "It''s time," Master Ceeran gestured to the final carriage taking away, having dropped off the final guest who came scrambling through, undoubtedly embarrassed at the outsized interest in him.


    Now, the stream of iing carriages was no more.


    That was not the only change that became evident.


    Each and every single one of them felt it.


    In the depths of their bones.


    In their souls.


    Be they human or Martial Artist.


    For the air had changed.


    Thends beneath them seemed to shift.


    Rui''s eyes widened as he recognized the familiar sensation.


    RUMBLE¡­


    The world quivered.


    It quivered, for she had arrived.


    It quivered as heaven and earth bent.


    They bent under the weight of her existence.


    STEP


    An oppressive Sage-level aura spread throughout the gathering within the throne hall, weighing down on everybody it graced.


    STEP


    Her steps were light, yet their impact on the world and the minds of those who beheld her were heavy.


    STEP¡­


    Her ostentatious appearance seemed to embed itself in their minds by force. Her militaristic uniform attire featuring the crest of the Kandrian Border Patrol Force matched the disciplined bodynguage that her demeanor echoed.


    Her visage was elderly, yet her presence could not be further away from that of a senior citizen. Shemanded the atmosphere, demanding their attention.


    "The Royal Addressal Ceremony is due tomence soon. Comport yourselves in ordance with royal protocol." Themanding tone of her elderly voice was unmistakable. And yet, not a single person dared to retort.


    Not a single person disobeyed.


    Before a Martial Sage of the Kandrian Empire, every other identity melted away.


    The crowd scrambled, splitting into two equal, neatly arranged crowds on either side of the golden red carpet flowing through the throne hall.


    STEP STEP


    STEP


    Sage Farana walked through the throne hall with a disciplined gait, standing behind the throne.


    "Please wee their Highnesses, the royal princes and princesses of Kandria!" The royal announcer dered.


    A fast-paced drum roll echoed through the throne hall as a line of royals began pouring into the gigantic throne hall.


    Rui beheld all the princes and princesses of Kandria in ascending order of seniority, walking into the throne hall in perfectly synchronized footsteps one after the other.


    The eldest of princes and princesses were quite old, looking to be in their eighties. They had lived the entirety of their lives out long before the Kandrian Throne War began and clearly had no intention ofpeting with their younger and more ambitious siblings.


    Soon enough, Rui saw Prince Randal''s domineering militaristic figure before the others followed suit.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1746 Does It Not?

    Chapter 1746 Does It Not?


    Shortly after, he spotted the eager figure of Prince Raul, who was soon followed by Princess Raemina, Prince Raijun, Princess Ranea, Prince Rajak, and Princess Rafia throughout the long line.


    They alternatingly split into two lines on either side of the ostentatious carpet leading to the throne.


    The time hade.


    "Please wee the Emperor of Harmony, the Second Emperor of the Kandrian Empire, His Majesty Rael Di Kandria!"


    A powerful drum beat reverberated through the throne hall with each step.


    STEP


    STEP


    STEP


    Rui''s eyes widened as he beheld the vaunted Emperor of Kandria. ¡­Now, a weary old man with a diseased body.


    His skin was a shade of sickly darkness, hanging off his gaunt face. His body was lean and haggard; his thin, weak limbs conveyed an impression of malnourishment. His hair, once a brilliant golden, had lost its luster. His eyes, once an ethereal blue, had lost their shine. Yet they never once lost the light of determination.


    His gait was unstable even as two of his concubines held his hands, aiding him as he exerted himself to reach the throne.


    Nearly twenty-five Martial Masters followed behind him, absolutely alert for any threat whatsoever.


    Not that there were any threats.


    Not with a Martial Sage overseeing security.


    STEP


    With each passing step, each guest bowed their head deeply as the Royal Emperor passed them, paying their respects to the Emperor of Kandria. STEP¡­


    He had arrived at his rightful throne atop the elevated toon, beholding it for what could very well be thest time it bore him.


    "Ahh¡­"


    A voice offort escaped him as he sat upon his throne. His security detail circled around the throne, forming ayer that epassed him, his concubines, and Sage Farana standing behind him.


    A singlemand escaped his voice.


    "Raise your heads."


    His deep and rich masculine voice cut through the silence as each of the guests abided, beholding the seated Emperor of Kandria.


    Despite his sickly appearance, a profoundly deep air of power and authority seemed to radiate from him. This was power, not innately of his own but that of the entirety of Kandria. When Rui saw him, he saw the hundreds of thousands of powerful siege weapon artifacts.


    When Rui beheld him, he beheld the might of a million-strong army of elite soldiers armed with the finest artifacts and potions that the Empire had to offer.


    When Rui bore witness to him, he bore witness to the power of three Martial Sages who had sworn absolute loyalty to the throne. N?velDrama.Org holds ? this.


    When Rui regarded him, he could almost feel the weight of his power, the power to erase Sage-level nations with a singlemand, to hunt Martial Sages like they were no more than prey, to leave his mark on the fabric of all of human civilization today and forever more.


    The guests did their best to hide their nervousness as the emperor''s eyes swum across each and every single one of them.


    The silence lingered.


    It was deafening.


    "It''s good to be back." A nonchnt remark. No, it may as well have beenw, considering who spoke those words.


    "My citizens¡­My children¡­" His voice reverberated through the throne hall. "It is good to be back, wouldn''t you agree?"


    The air grew electric.


    It prickled.


    His eyes nonchntly swam across the guests and his own children as a wave of apprehension washed through the crowd.


    "You seem nervous."


    They undoubtedly were.


    Be they the most powerful business and economic tycoons or the most aplished Martial Masters of the Martial Union, a heavy weight weighed down on their weary shoulders.


    "Do I inspire fear?"


    He certainly did now, with the way he was talking.


    Uncertainty began gripping the hearts of the many guests that were present in the throne hall.


    "Does my sickly visage inspire fear?"


    His voice grew stronger as it pierced through the tingling silence.


    "Does my impending death inspire fear?"


    Many of the invited guests stirred at his words.


    "It should."


    His words grew ominous.


    "It should inspire fear in you but¡­I know it doesn''t," The Emperor calmly dered. "What it inspires, if anything at all, is¡­."


    A fierce light lit up in his eyes as his nonchnce receded. "¡­is ambition and greed, does it not?"


    Silence rang through the throne hall.


    "DOES IT NOT?" His voice boomed through the throne hall.


    His words shook them.


    His wrath shook them.


    Physically, but also mentally.


    It shook them to their very core.


    "¡­So much so that a war that threatens to tear Kandria apart boils in the undercurrents of this Empire. A war of greed and ambition. A war for ultimate power," The Emperor''s voice took on a hint of ferocity. "My fragile life happens to be the only force that keeps it at bay. Should I die at this very moment, the lot of you would leap at each other within this very room, fighting each other to race to this throne over each other''s corpses."


    "Civil wars¡­a known tale," He remarked. "One that has recurred many a time in the annals of history in all manners of unfolding. Yet, do you know what each of them has inmon?"


    His eyes narrowed. "They are all marked as human catastrophes by history."


    "Tell me, my subjects¡­"


    His voice was calm.


    Yet it betrayed a deep undercurrent of cold fury.


    "Tell me, my children¡­"


    Ferocity glinted in his eyes. "Do you, too, want to be known as human catastrophes by history?"


    Uncertainty shed in the eyes of the many forces and powers that heard the Emperor''s words. It was not just the words being uttered.


    No.


    What mattered more was who uttered them.


    Anymon man or woman could lecture them on the perils of civil war. Yet it wasn''t just anybody lecturing them about civil wars.


    It was the Emperor of Harmony, the man who prevented the greatest civil war of all of East Panama from unfolding, who spoke to them. The weight of history itself apanied his words.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1747 Rhetorical Dominance

    <h4>Chapter 1747 Rhetorical Dominance</h4>


    At that moment, the entirety of all Kandrian powers and forces that heard his words faltered.


    Many of them had aligned themselves with one of the princes and princesses, excited about the possibility of a ruler that worked for their interests. Excited about a ruler that would warp Kandria to elevate them above all.


    Yet, history was a heavy weapon.


    When wielded properly, it could break apart any conviction and any emotion.


    Rui''s eyes widened as he realized the Emperor understood this truth better than anybody else.


    His powerful words were armed with the weight of human history.


    Not just human history.


    His history.


    He who quelled the most fierce civil war. He who masterfully intertwined countless opposing forces into a single nation. He who elevated Kandria to the pinnacle of human civilization with the power of harmony.


    Yet history alone was not enough.


    It needed to be channeled carefully, masterfully, and with immactemunication, both verbal and nonverbal. It needed to be channeled so that it wove past the greed and ambition of its beholders. It needed to weave past the human condition that drove man to war.


    It needed to strike the human heart. N?velDrama.Org holds ? this.


    And struck the human heart, he had.


    At that moment, uncertainty radiated from those who beheld his words.


    Rui''s eyes widened as realization dawned upon him.


    At that moment, the Emperor of Kandria sought to move Kandria with the weight of history¡­with the weight of his words alone!


    Yet it was not to be.


    "Permission to address His Majesty Second Emperor Rael Di Kandria." A powerful voice cut through the atmosphere.


    It cut through the progress that the Kandrian Emperor had made.


    It was Prince Raijun.


    The Kandrian Emperor nced at Prince Raijun with calm nonchnce. "Raijun, my son¡­"


    Prince Raijun red at him, waiting for a response.


    "You have grown much," The Emperor gazed at him with pointed interest. "Your breakthrough to the Squire Realm was one of great surprise to me. I was now aware that there was a way to ovee the fact that you''ve never fought a real battle in your entire life as a Martial Artist."


    Rui stirred at his words.


    He couldn''t help but feel that the Emperor was looking at him even though his eyes were fixed on the Martial Prince.


    "Permission." Prince Raijun gritted his teeth at being humiliated before all the powers of Kandria.


    "Granted, my child. Not just to you, but to all those who bear my blood." The Kandrian Emperor''s tone grew rxed. "Let us speak with each other as the family that we are. Let us indulge in open dialogue before the subjects of Kandria. Let us truly engage in the spirit of the Royal Addressal Ceremony beforemencing the formalities of the ceremony."


    Rui understood what he was trying to do. He had already nted the seeds of doubt with his powerful words earlier. Hammering the same point over and over redundantly would not help his case at all. If anything, it would weaken it.


    On top of that, the optics of refusing to allow anyone to speak was one that could ruin his impact. It conveyed an inability to engage, perhaps even fear of engaging, crippling his credibility.


    However, by freely allowing not just Raijun but also all other royals to speak openly, he maintained the momentum he had built, conveying unerring confidence.


    It was only then that Rui realized that the sheer mastery overmunication that the Emperor of Harmony possessed was far greater than that of anybody else he had ever seen.


    In just a short amount of time, he had demonstrated a profound ability to move people with words alone.


    He truly was what Prince Raul thought of himself.


    "Your Majesty¡­" Prince Raijun''s eyes narrowed. "Your words betray cowardice. Yes, civil war is bad. Yet, it is inevitable. Conflicts of ambition and greed are inevitable. Greed and ambition are the fuel of human civilization. Would you have us cripple human civilization in a dovish attempt to prevent its negative consequences? Your way would send us back to the Shadow Ages!"


    The Shadow Ages, an era in the five-thousand-year-long history of mankind, was an era long before the Age of Martial Art characterized by the recession of human civilization on all fronts.


    Prince Raijun had attempted to associate the negative connotations of this era with the Emperor''s words.


    Unfortunately, it was a crude attempt. He did not possess even a fraction of the sophistication and mastery of his father''s oration and speech.


    "My ways will send the Kandrian Empire back to the Shadow Ages, hm¡­?" Amusement crept into the Emperor''s tone. "My ways have ruled Kandria for three centuries."


    His powerful gaze pinned Raijun.


    "Tell me, boy, have they sent Kandria to the Shadow Ages in the past three centuries?"


    Prince Raijun''s expression crumpled, growing ugly. "That¡­"


    There was simply no argument to be made. The Emperor of Harmony had elevated the Kandrian Empire from one of the countless nations in East Panama to the very pinnacle of it, standing equal to the three legacy powerhouses that were in power from before the Age of Martial Art.


    "You said civil war was inevitable, did you?" A glint of predation shed in the Emperor''s eye. "If that''s true, then I suppose it is a shame I was unable to prevent the Civil War of Kandria at the dawn of my rule then."


    A light touch of sarcasm to cleanly convey the apparent absurdity of Prince Raijun''s statements.


    "That''s not what I meant!" Prince Raijun gritted his teeth.


    The funny thing was that Rui didn''t disagree with Raijun''s statement. Civil war was indeed inevitable when looking at the very same exact history that the Emperor''spelling rhetoric was based on.


    The guests stirred as the Emperor effortlessly dominated the rhetorical battle that underlied their exchange.


    "Your cheap word games do not impress anybody, Father." Another voice joined the conversation.


    Prince Rajak red at him. "Your eloquent sophistry cannot obscure the fact that we will fight to ascend the throne, just as you did. It is the height of hypocrisy to condemn us for partaking in a power struggle that you yourself partook in when you were in our position."


    The dynamics of the conversation shifted once more as Rajak''s words attacked the Emperor.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1748 Shocking Confession

    Chapter 1748 Shocking Confession


    The Throne Hall grew chilly as Prince Rajak tantly attacked Emperor Rael with condemnation much more directly than Prince Raijun did.


    "Condemn you for a power struggle¡­?" The Emperor''s tone hid a smile. "No. I condemned you for a civil war. Those are close but not quite the same."


    Prince Rajak''s face contorted with cold rage. "As I said, your cheap word word games do not impress anybody."


    "Those are neither mere words nor games, my hateful child of the Underworld," The Emperor smiled. "You and I, indeed, have partaken in our respective power struggles for the throne. Yet, do you know what the difference between the two of us is?"


    Prince Rajak stared at him coldly.


    He didn''t utter so much as a word.


    "The difference between us is that I won." His aura rapidly shifted from serene to overbearing dominance.


    "I won the war before it even began."


    The Emperor''s domineering words sent a wave of surprise washing through everybody in the throne room.


    "I won before anyone got hurt."


    An abundance of confidence echoed the deep masculine melody of his voice. The dominance of his words came from the fact that they were rooted in history. He ascended the throne at the young age of thirty-one after the previous Emperor passed away mysteriously, crushing the allied resistance of his brothers and sisters, initiating the crowning ceremony, and bing Emperor.


    Prince Rajak gritted his teeth as his expression grew ugly.


    "That is the difference between us. The ''struggle'' in ''power struggle'' came from those who struggled against me in vain," The Emperor''s words were unshakable. "I prepared to ascend the throne my entire life¡­"


    A grin lit up on the Emperor''s face.


    "¡­and when it was time, I killed my power-hungry fool of a father."


    "!!!"


    Every single person in the throne hall shook.


    They shook.


    Physically.


    Mentally.


    Emotionally.


    How could they not?


    The Emperor of Harmony had just confessed to assassinating the previous and Founding Emperor of Kandria!


    He had just confessed to the highest treason as recognized by Kandrianw.


    Even the most hardened poker faces had cracked.


    At that moment, regardless of their origin, affiliation, station, rank, or field, every single member of the Kandrian Throne Hall was united in their reaction.


    They were shocked.


    Shocked to their very core.


    Murder conspiracy against the Royal Emperor was the highest form of treason, and it was a crime with no statute of limitations that not even the Emperor himself was entirely immune to being prosecuted for!


    Should he abdicate the throne, he would instantly be thrown behind bars!


    Yet his expression was defiantly fierce.


    His eyes pierced holes into a frozen Rajak, stunned and speechless by the Emperor''s confession to high treason.


    "I killed Emperor Ra."


    His bold words reverberated throughout the throne hall.


    "I killed my warmongering power-hungry before he tore Kandria apart with an apocalyptic civil war."


    His deration rang in the ears and the hearts of those who beheld it.


    "I killed him and brought three centuries of peace, harmony, and glory to Kandria."


    The weight of Kandria itself bore down on Rajak with the Emperor''s powerful gaze.


    "That is the difference between you and me," Emperor Rael''s domineering voice pushed down on the various princes and princesses. "The best way to prevent a war is to win it before it even begins. You, my hateful son, are unable to win at all, let alone before it begins."


    Prince Rajak red at him, gritting his teeth.


    Rui, on the other hand, was stunned.


    He had begun with an impactful speech that showed a pacifist heart and a saint''s aversion for war, yet as smooth as the workmanship of the throne that bore him, he immediately became a domineering conqueror who brilliantly seized power over Kandria moments before the catastrophic war broke out and went on to raise the nation to high heavens for three centuries after sessfully blowing out the embers of war.


    One moment, he was even more saintly and dovish than Prince Raul.


    The very next, he disyed a domineering hawkish dominance that exceeded that of Prince Randal.


    Yet, they didn''t contradict each other.


    No.


    They coexisted within him.


    They coexisted in harmony.


    They coexisted within him for the sake of the Kandrian Empire. At that moment, Rui truly understood why he was called the Emperor of Harmony. He possessed a depth of mind and dimensions of character that exceeded that of all of his progeny. A ruler able to adopt any mindset, any inclination, any doctrine, any philosophy to ovee any hurdle, all for the sake of the Kandrian Empire. N?velDrama.Org holds ? this.


    He was like water in that regard. Formless, shapeless, able to be what was necessary for the Kandrian Empire to survive and thrive. Rui''s eyes widened at that thought.


    Never in his wildest dreams did he think that they would share this trait with the Royal Emperor.


    "It doesn''t matter!" Prince Rajak snapped. "It doesn''t matter. No matter what you say. No matter what you do. We will converge upon the throne, and I will emerge victorious. And when you breathe yourst breath, I will crown myself Emperor. If you think you can stop us with rhetoric, then you are sorely mistaken!"


    His voice was reverberated through the throne hall.


    Unfortunately for the Emperor, the Underworld Prince had a point. The bottom line was almost impossible to change. Once he passed away, people would forget about his words this day and fight for the throne.


    It was a truly remarkable attempt, of course. Some would even say he came close to putting an end to the Kandrian Throne War.


    Yet, reality was not soft.


    It was not convenient.


    His physical condition, his diseased body, his waning influence and power. On top of that, the fact that he had simply woken up toote to deliver his powerful words.


    All of these seemed to work against him.


    They seemed to work against him as the guests of the throne hall increasingly returned to their sober mindsets prior to the powerful impacts that the Emperor dealt them with his words.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1749 Race For Approval

    Chapter 1749 Race For Approval


    The incredulous atmosphere blew away as Prince Rajak drew the bottom line. The bottom line that not even the Emperor of Harmony was able to change.


    If Emperor Rael was displeased, he did not show it on his face or in his body. He remained unmoved.


    The guests regained theirposure even as he stared at Rajak impassively. Content is ? by N?velDrama.Org.


    It became clear, in hindsight, that this was the reason he had organized an event and invited all the powers and forces of Kandria to it.


    Now that the guests and the royals had sobered up rapidly from the cold dose of reality from Prince Rajak''s words, it begged the question¡­ What was he going to do?


    Did he really just summon them to try and move them with words alone?


    ''Surely not,'' Rui narrowed his eyes. ''He should have known that the odds were stacked against him when nning this out. Which probably means he most likely isn''t done yet¡­''


    The only question was what his final trump card was.


    "¡­Is that so?" Emperor Rael whispered. "You break my heart, my dear son."


    Prince Rajak''s eyes red with hatred. "Don''t you dare say that."


    "I am the Emperor of Kandria, boy," Emperor Rael''s powerful, deep voice reverberated through the throne hall. "No force in this world can abate my speech."


    "¡­Not for long."


    The Emperor heaved a sigh, shaking his head. "So be it."


    His eyes shed around the crowd.


    He seemed to eye each and every guest.


    The weight of his vision pressed down on each and every single one of them. Whatever wasing was important. That much became clear to everyone as the air seemed to be wrung by the weight of the tension.


    "As I behold all of you, it has be painfully clear that I cannot stop what is toe," Emperor Rael closed his eyes, heaving a soft sigh. "Try as I might, Kandria may be doomed for a civil war between my ambitious progeny and perhaps yet another civil war as they disrupt the delicate bnce that I have dedicated my life to crafting."


    He paused for a moment as a hint of sorrow shed in his eyes. "It pains me that even in a time where I need all the rest in the world to ameliorate my condition, my duties as Emperor beckon me. Even unto death, I may not rest."


    He nced at his children with soft eyes. "Heavy is the head that wears the crown."


    His voice reverberated through the throne hall.


    "Each ounce of power is also an ounce of responsibility." He remarked. "The lot of you who lust for power to fulfill your ambitions or the ambitions of those you have sold yourself to, cannot begin to understand the burden."


    A profound state of introspection seemed to take hold of the Emperor.


    "And if you do not understand that burden, you will never be able to carry it," The Emperor heaved a soft sigh as his eyes returned to his children. "I fear for what will happen if spoiled princes and princesses who have known power and luxury without responsibility happen to ascend the throne. Only three royals of the lot of you have grown up outside of the luxury of the Kandrian Royal Pces."


    Rui narrowed his eyes. As far as he was aware, Rajak and Raul were the only princes who had grown up outside of royalty.


    "That is why I have decided," Emperor Rael dered. "I shall bestow my support to one of my children. For the sake of ensuring a decisive victory."


    The air grew heavier as Emperor Rael dered his intentions to dere an unofficial heir.


    Many had predicted this.


    Including Rui.


    While the Emperor''s influence had waned immensely over the span of seven years ever since his terminal condition became public knowledge, he still had retained a lot of support and power over three centuries. While not all of it could be cleanly passed on to his chosen heir, thetter would certainly gain arge boost in their campaigning efforts.


    The only question was who it was going to be.


    Rui was deeply curious to know, for this decision was one that had gued him.


    "You may not believe me, but¡­" The Emperor smiled wryly. "The decision to crown an unofficial heir has been somewhat¡­whimsical. Being in a death-like sleeping state for two years leaves almost no room to n, you see. But it is indeed my final ounce of power. I hope that there will be a prince or princess who can inspire confidence from within me."


    He nced across all his children.


    "Is there anybody among you who will?"


    Thepeting princes and princesses grew determined.


    They needed to secure the Emperor''s support.


    Even the lesser princes and princesses felt hope. Even if they could notpete against the seven prime candidates by themselves, they could with the Emperor''s support.


    The air grew taut, wrung by the tension between all the princes and princesses who vied for the Emperor''s approval.


    He nced at Prince Rajak, who was still ring at him. "My boy¡­should you ascend the throne, Kandria will burn," The Emperor dered. "Do not insult my intelligence or those of the esteemed powers gathered here today by denying the hatred in your heart and the vengeance you wreak. The fact that the only force in Kandria that was willing to support you was the Underworld speaks volumes, does it not?"


    Prince Rajak red at his father.


    Yet his words could not be denied.


    For everyone knew they were true. He would begin hunting the Royal Family and all those loyal to them using the power of the Emperor. In return for the Underworld''s power, he promised to drastically amend the criminalw to allow the Underworld to be a legal andwful sector of Kandria.


    Nobody in the throne hall wanted anything to do with him.


    They were unwilling to touch him with a ten-foot pole. Having anything to do with him would cklist them nationally and internationally to many parties.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1750 Unworthy

    <h4>Chapter 1750 Unworthy</h4>


    It was a shame that even though it was an open secret that he was backed by the Underworld, the Underworld had mastered the art of evading Kandrianw enforcement, making it extremely difficult to charge him with crimes due to ack of substantial evidence.


    "You are unworthy." The Emperor dered. "Unworthy to bear either the power or the burden of the crown. You are unworthy to be my heir and inherit my power."


    Prince Rajak red at the Emperor, not saying a word.


    The Emperor''s eyes drifted through his many progeny. "Most of you do not war for the throne, and of those of you who have the ambition to be Emperor, only seven of you have disyed thepetence to forge their path to the throne needed to earn my support."


    Many of the princes and princesses winced and grimaced at the Emperor''s words.


    After all, he called all but seven of the ipetent.


    And, unfortunately, it could not be denied.


    Their campaigning efforts were, frankly, embarrassing. Most of them struggled to reel over even a single power to their so-called faction.


    "Of the remaining six of you¡­hm, let''s see," The Emperor''s eyes shifted to the closest one.


    Princess Rafia stared at him emotionally as he gazed into his daughter''s eyes.


    "Rafia¡­my poor girl," He remarked.


    "I am not poor," She retorted.


    "Certainly not in wealth, no. But you may as well be bankrupt when ites to emotional intelligence," The Emperor remarked. "So long as we live in a world where people are more irrational than rational, more emotional than intelligent¡­the capacity toprehend, harness, and manipte emotion is more important than the ability to process data."


    She didn''t reply to that.


    She didn''t know how to.


    Yet a glint of frustration shed in her eyes.


    "I had hoped that in the many years since ourst exchange¡­


    you would have grown to experience and understand emotion, yet¡­" He shook his head. "When I gaze into your eyes, it is clear to me that my hopes have not been fulfilled. Seek the human heart before you seek the throne."


    His eyes shifted away from her, moving on to Prince Randal. "Ah¡­my warmongering son."


    "¡­Father," Prince Randal regarded him with a respectful tone.


    "You see, war to the others is a negative externality that ought to be limited," The Emperor suddenly remarked as he eyed Prince Randal. "There is a shared understanding that it is destructive and ought to be avoided. But you¡­"


    The Emperor''s eyes sharpened. "You have made war your entire objective."


    "¡­"


    "You have delusions of grandeur of being a conqueror and conquering all of East Panama," The Emperor remarked. "You are unable to critically analyze the probability of sess, blinded by your desire for conquest."


    He shook his head. "If you were truly capable of conquering all of East Panama with brilliant strategic and tactical application of power, you would have won the Kandrian Throne War by now, ready to crown yourself Emperor the moment I passed away, yet even if I were to pass away today, you would certainly not be the one to ascend the throne." Text ? owned by N?velDrama.Org.


    "¡­" Prince Randal exerted great control on his desire tosh out at the Emperor''s judgment.


    He needed the Emperor''s power to break free from the clutches of Rui Quarrier.


    "Father, Your Majesty¡­you yourself demonstrated that we have the power to ovee the resistance of all of East Panama during the First East Panamic War," Prince Randal respectfully countered the Emperor''s words.


    Prince Randal appealed to history, pulling a page of the Emperor''s book.


    The First East Panamic War was triggered by Emperor Rael''s discovery of the first marine mine of esoteric gold a short distance off the coast of the Kandrian Empire in the Great Nam Ocean. It was estimated to have more than ten thousand tons of Marina Gold, a highly beautiful golden esoteric with a known non-addictive psychological soothing effect on the brain through esoteric visual stimulus.


    It was a substance that was highly in demand across the entirety of the Panamic Continent. Emperor Rael''s brilliant decision to make it the basis of the Kandrian Empire''s currency was the reason that the Kandrian Empire became an economic powerhouse surpassing even that of the then-


    young Shionel Confederation.


    The demand for Kandrian currency shot up after the currency became Kandrian Marina gold coins; it consequently skyrocketed the value of the entirety of the Kandrian economy internationally, which was measured in Kandrian Marina gold. The more valuable the currency, the more valuable everything that was measured with that currency became.


    That was the first that the Kandrian Empire truly stood equal to the other three powerhouses.


    The bnce of power shifted drastically, diminishing the significance of the other three powerhouses.


    It became the trigger for an East Panamic War as the Sekigahara Confederate, the Republic of Gorteau, and the Britannian Empire could not only not tolerate the rise of a new powerhouse but also sought to get their hands on a piece of the Marina Gold pie.


    Yet, they could not. Abination of using topographical defenses, strategic and tactical allocation of resources, and brilliant geopolitical campaigns, Emperor Rael created powerful deterrence until the three powerhouses eventually gave up five yearster, signing a peace treaty with the Kandrian Empire.


    "You proved that the Kandrian Empire is superior!" Prince Randal dered. "You showed the world that not even the three powerhouses could overwhelm Kandria!"


    "Fool."


    Emperor Rael''s words cut through his jubtion.


    "The more you speak, the more I am convinced that you possess neither the rationality to see the errors of your thronely ambition nor thepetence to execute your self-


    destructive ambition without bringing ruin to this nation."


    Prince Randal froze as the Emperor passed his judgment.


    His disapproval was palpable.


    "Father, I-


    "Silence."


    The Emperor''smand was decisive.


    His re weighed down on the Military Prince, pinning him in ce.


    "I will not entertain your nonsense any longer."


    Prince Randal''s expression grew ugly, yet he didn''t dare speak after the Emperormanded him to shut up.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1751 Come Forth

    Chapter 1751 Come Forth


    The Emperor turned to Princess Ranea. "My daughter¡­It has been five years since west spoke."


    "¡­I was pleased to receive the news of your awakening," She said with a respectful tone.


    "I recall that your ambition to cross the waters of the Great Nam Ocean had not ceased even after I told you about the dire threats that exist at the depths at the center and core of the Great Nam Ocean."


    "¡­Yes, Father."


    "And yet you wish to set foot in a domain we are powerless within to take on what is the Beast Domain of the ocean¡­"


    "¡­Yes, Father."


    "And you still wish to tear apart the delicate bnce of the Kandrian Empire in an attempt to channel all of Kandria''s power into this endeavor in pursuit of the many treasures that its treacherous depths have to offer, correct?" "¡­Yes, Father."


    "¡­"


    He stared at his daughter, apparently speechless, before heaving a soft sigh.


    "Your honesty is refreshing. Then, answer this question honestly as well. Tell me, my daughter, what is the crown to you?"


    "¡­" She didn''t reply.


    "Do you seek the depths of the Great Nam Ocean for the sake of Kandria, or do you seek Kandria for the sake of the depths of the Great Nam Ocean?"


    She shook at his question.


    It struck at the very core of her drive.


    "¡­" Her expression grew grave even as she held her tongue.


    "Your silence is deafening, dear daughter."


    "¡­"


    He shook his head before issuing his judgment.


    "Unworthy."


    He nced around at his children. "Two years have passed, yet is there nobody who can earn my approval? What have you aplished in the past two years?"


    His eyes shifted to Prince Raul, who winced at his attention.


    "Ah¡­if it isn''t my saint of a son," The Emperor snorted. "¡­Father."


    "The boy who thinks he can move the world by striking the human heart," The Emperor scowled. "Yet he doesn''t understand that it is the mind that moves the world, not the heart. That is why he fails to draw enough power from across Kandria to his noble cause."


    Disappointment shed in the Emperor''s eyes. "Raul¡­I¡­had high hopes for you. I had hoped that you would cultivate thought. Cultivate your understanding of the world. For how can you change a nation you know not anything about?"


    His eyes grew sharper. "It took me but a single nce to discern that you haven''t changed. That is why you, too, are unworthy."


    Prince Raul lowered his head wordlessly.


    He finally turned to the final of the seven princes.


    "Raijun."


    "Father." Prince Raijun narrowed his eyes.


    "You don''t need to put up a fierce facade, my son," The Emperor grinned. "I can see that you are deeply relieved and pleased that your rivals failed to gain my approval. Even if you yourself fail to do so, the final possible impediment has proven to not get in your way."


    Prince Raijun''s expression grew ugly as the Emperor effortlessly read his mind, seeing right through him.


    "You are correct," The Emperor nodded. "You do not require my support, nor will you get it. I will die before I let Kandria be a Martial supremacist nation."


    He chuckled at his own joke before shaking his head. "When I look at you. I don''t see you. I see the Martial union."


    Prince Raijun''s expression grew even more ugly. "You are a tool."


    Prince Raijun gritted his teeth.


    "A puppet," The Emperor snorted. "You are even more of a tool than Randal, Ranea, Rafia, and Raemina."


    Rui shook where he stood as he realized the Emperor had somehow found out about his maniption of the four royals. Chills went up his spine at this revtion. But how?


    He didn''t know.


    Prince Raijun red at Emperor Rael. "Father, you-"


    "Shut up." The Emperor''s heavy voice cut through his words.


    His powerful re pinned Raijun down. "Tools should remain silent and do as they''re told."


    Prince Raijun gnashed his teeth in humiliation. Content is ? by N?velDrama.Org.


    "I am disappointed."


    His words struck all of his children.


    "Disappointed that not a single one of you is able to understand the harmony needed to rule Kandria."


    His eyes narrowed. "Kandria is a nation with many pirs that support it. Anybody who does not understand the importance of bnce between these pirs that support our great nation is unworthy and unfit to rule it."


    The Emperor had issued his judgment.


    A dark atmosphere settled into the throne hall.


    It was not inspiring to know that the great Emperor of Harmony judged all of them unworthy of ascending the throne.


    Many wondered if this marked the end of the Age of Glory for the Kandrian Empire.


    Many wondered if the death of Emperor Rael truly would, as he dered, bring about a civil war that would bring ruin to Kandria, marking the dawn of decline. Perhaps Prince Raijun was right. Perhaps civil war was inevitable.


    Perhaps the Emperor of Harmony was the outlier, a rare individual blessed with the gift of harmonizing a nation.


    At that moment, they truly did feel a hint of regret at his impending death.


    "I have failed this Great Empire."


    His words stunned those who heard them.


    If there was anybody who had not failed the Kandrian Empire, it was Emperor Rael. If even he had failed the Kandrian Empire, then what about everybody else?


    "I have failed this Empire by failing to impart harmony to my descendants."


    Regret saturated his rich, deep, masculine voice.


    "If the Kandrian Throne War cannot be averted, then so be it¡­"


    His voice changed.


    A new determination filled its depths.


    "What I am to do may very well be my final act as Emperor."


    A grave severity underlied his tone.


    "It will be my final gift to Kandria."


    The air grew electric.


    It grew taut.


    A deep amount of weight weighed down on all of them.


    At that moment, a single realization dawned on all of them.


    History was in the making.


    They didn''t know how.


    Or why.


    But the depths of their instinct felt this truth.


    "I herebymence the Kandrian Blood Ritual!" The Emperor''s powerful voice boomed across the entirety of the throne hall, stunning the entire hall with his sudden deration.


    The Kandrian Blood Ritual. An age-old tradition and ritual that affirmed blood kinship between the Emperor and those who bore his blood within a hundred meters of the ritual. It was based upon an extremely rare esoteric substance that reacted to the very essence of the blood of a person.


    Everybody instinctively understood that this was the culmination of this historic event.


    Whatever was toe would change Kandria forever.


    His servants stepped forth before him, kneeling down as they presented a strange ethereal orb to him.


    "By blood, we live¡­" His voice quivered with emotion as he drew a ceremonial dagger.


    SPLAT


    The de dug into the flesh of his hand.


    "¡­By blood, we inherit." His voice grew severe.


    DRIP DRIP DRIP¡­


    It spilled upon the orb.


    For a moment, nothing happened.


    Then, the orb glowed, lighting up with a brilliant shine.


    The princes and princesses began glowing, row after row, emitting a simr light. The orb recognized the blood within to be the same as that which was spilled upon.


    Yet that wasn''t all.


    What followed shocked everybody to their very core.


    No one.


    Not a single person could have imagined what followed.


    From within the depths of the arrays of guests behind the royals, another light glowed.


    A light emanating from Rui Quarrier.


    He was frozen.


    Frozen in pure horror of what had just unfolded.


    "Come forth," A grin emerged on the Emperor''s face. "Come forth, Prince Rui Quarrier Kandria."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1752 Shocking Decision

    Chapter 1752 Shocking Decision


    Not a single person could remain unperturbed.


    Not a single person could remain calm.


    Not a single one of them could maintain theirposure at the revtion that had just unfolded.


    Yet the ritual did not lie.


    A light identical to that of the other princes and princesses had shone from Rui.


    Rui himself had been frozen in shock at the realization of what had just happened.


    "Come forth..." The Emperor beckoned him forth with a knowing smile. "Come forth, Prince Rui Quarrier Kandria."


    For a moment, nobody moved.


    Everybody was shocked.


    His acquaintances around him were stunned and speechless.


    Master Ceeran, Vericita, Aroanian, Minister Varay, and several others simply stared at him like he was from another world.


    The royals stared at him in shock.


    The entirety of the throne hall was stunned to its very core.


    Yet, none of them were more shocked than Rui himself.


    "¡­What?" He whispered with horror. "This has to be some kind of a mistake."


    Time slowed down to a crawl as his Martial fight-or-flight instincts took over. His mind, normally ordered and organized in its thought, had fallen into absolute chaos. Countless thoughts shed through it as it copsed into disarray.


    He didn''t understand.


    He didn''t understand what was happening.


    How could he possibly have royal blood in his veins?


    How could he possibly be a descendant of the Kandrian Royal Family?!


    Could it be a mistake?


    Could the orb be malfunctioning?


    No, the probability of that was far too low. This was a matter centered around the Royal Family; there was no room for error.


    ¡­Could it truly be that he was a royal?


    He didn''t know who his father was and had never given it much thought. As far as he was concerned, it didn''t matter. It was irrelevant to him.


    His mind shed back to the sole memory of his mother when he first gave birth. Despite her exhaustion and pain, her eyes lingered with deep affection for Rui even as she passed away.


    Was she a royal or¡­?


    "Do not make me repeat myself, boy."


    The Emperor''s powerful,manding tone left no room for reprieve. It shook Rui out of his frozen reverie, propelling him forward as he obeyed the Emperor''smand. STEP


    STEP STEP¡­


    With each step he took, he became increasingly aware of all the attention on him. Not a single person was anything less than shocked.


    Those who knew him the most were beyond bbergasted. The members of the Martial Union were truly taken aback as they realized their golden boy had been a member of the royal family the entire time.


    They hadn''t even reached the point of considering whether this was good or bad, they were still utterly bewildered by the revtion of the Kandrian Blood Ritual.


    Yet, the royal family was even more shocked than the Martial Union!


    The moment the realization dawned on them, the royals had lost all dignity as the deepest of horror overtook their demeanor.


    Prince Randal''s expression crumpled with horrified terror.


    He seemed to age by the second.


    Princess Ranea, Rafia, and Raemina were frozen in raw fear as they realized the nightmare that this situation was to them.


    Prince Rajak gritted his teeth apprehensively at the revtion of Rui being his half-brother.


    Prince Raul was, perhaps, the only one who didn''t appear to be inflicted with pain at the revtion. Yet, even he was deeply stunned by the revtion. It was clear that not even the Beggar''s Sect had been aware of this deep secret despite all their exposure to Rui Quarrier.


    Prince Raijun, however, was the very first to understand the implications of this revtion. He gritted his teeth with deep fear and apprehension as he did his best to maintain hisposure.


    Yet, inwardly, he experienced true terror and fear for the first time in his life.


    Rui schooled his expression and his gait with heightened self-awareness as he walked past the crowd of guests and toward the royal family that had gathered a short distance away from the elevated tform bearing the throne.


    With each step he took, the harder it grew to breathe.


    With each step he took, the burden on his shoulder deepened.


    With each step, it grew heavier.


    By the time he arrived, he felt like the weight of the entire Empire rested on his shoulders.


    It pressed down on him, squeezing his heart, crippling his breath.


    "Rui Quarrier Kandria."


    The Emperor spoke his name like an incantation. His voice was powerful, yet his tone was soft.


    Gentle.


    Rui beheld the Emperor of Kandria.


    Gone was the powerful and domineering persona of the Emperor of Harmony. All Rui saw was paternal pride.


    He didn''t understand.


    He didn''t understand what he was seeing.


    "You are a son of Kandria." The Emperor''s deration was firm.


    "You are a son of the Royal Family."


    Not even the slightest hint of hesitation rang in his voice.


    "You are¡­a son of mine." His words spread through the Kandrian Throne Hall.


    Rui stared at him.


    His eyes brimmed with intense emotion. Content is ? by N?velDrama.Org.


    Uncertainty.


    Apprehension.


    Fear.


    The Emperor met his gaze with clear eyes.


    A glint of affection lingered in them.


    "Be not afraid."


    His tone was warm.


    "Fear does not befit a son of mine."


    His words were sharp, yet his tone did not barb Rui.


    It coaxed him.


    "¡­And son of mine, you are," The Emperor reaffirmed once more.


    This time, his tone was more firmer.


    Fiercer.


    "As Emperor, I dere you, Rui Quarrier Kandria, Son of Rael Di Kandria and Miriam Nephi Ss of the Ss n¡­" The Emperor''s voice grew grave. "¡­as my chosen heir."


    Rui''s widened his eyes, stunned at the Emperor''s solemn deration.


    The entirety of the throne hall shook once more as yet another wave of shock washed over each of them. The Emperor had not only unveiled a new son who had been unknown before but had also dered him his chosen heir immediately after disclosing his identity!


    The air grew tumultuous as the weight of the Emperor''s deration struck everybody.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1753 Alone

    Chapter 1753 Alone


    ??"What?!"


    "He''s suddenly his son and his chosen heir?!"


    "Unbelievable..."


    "The Kandrian Throne War has changed forever."


    "Who could have known..."


    A wave of murmurs erupted from the crowd as the Emperor made his final deration.


    Rui himself was frozen where he stood, shell-shocked.


    "...What?" A single whisper escaped his mouth.


    The Emperor did not respond to him, instead waving his hand.


    A servant walked over to Rui with a prepared ostentatious tray with a ceremonial de and an insignia atop it. A tinum-gold adorned insignia that bore the crest of the Royal Family.


    "Commence the blood seal," The Emperormanded.


    Rui had no idea what that meant, but the circumstantial context and evidence were enough for him to rapidly infer exactly what was expected of him. He took the knife, cutting his palm, allowing the blood to fall on the insignia.


    VMMM!


    The artifact absorbed the blood, shaking and glowing, before finally subsiding.


    "The Royal Insignia is proof that you are of the Kandrian Royal Family," The Emperor dered. "And the Royal Sword of Kandria¡­"


    He extracted his sheathed ceremonial de from his robes. "¡­


    is proof that you are my heir."


    Rui stared at him with uncertainty.


    "Come forth, my son, and ept my offering of heirship." The Emperormanded him.


    Rui walked over to the throne with a measured gait, ascending the tform before arriving at the Emperor.


    Their eyes met, fixing upon each other''s. Rui''s eyes bored into his with askance, yet the Emperor''s steely eyes were firmly unmoving.


    "And with this¡­" The Emperor''s solemn voice reverberated through the throne hall as he bestowed his Royal Sword upon the kneeling Rui. "The world shall recognize you, Prince Rui Quarrier Kandria, as chosen heir unto the Second Emperor of Kandria."


    CLASP


    A chill went down Rui''s spine as he epted the ice-cold ceremonial sword. His mind jarred back to reality as he broke out of his shell of shock. The surreality of what was unfolding at the moment had suddenly struck him like a jackhammer.


    ''¡­Is this real?'' Uncertainty grasped at his heart, squeezing it in a vise.


    He hoped he was having a nightmare.


    He hoped, from the bottom of his heart, that he would wake up in the Quarrier Orphanage as just another ordinary orphan blessed to have been epted by Lashara thirty-one years ago.


    Yet reality denied his deepest desires.


    Instead, it cruelly thrust him into a world where he was somehow a Royal Prince, son of the Royal Emperor.


    Rui''s eyes wandered around with uncertainty as he returned to his spot.


    The Royal Sword weighed down on him.


    It was heavy.


    It was a burden he didn''t ask for.


    It was a burden he didn''t want.


    One that was thrust upon him against his will.


    Yet he hadn''t even reached the part where he could calmly evaluate his circumstances objectively.


    He was far too shocked about the nature of his own circumstances. He didn''t even know how to begin processing everything that had just happened. He didn''t even know how it could possibly be happening.


    "My subjects."


    The Emperor''s powerful voice cut through the tumultuous atmosphere as the Emperor took the opportunity to address the guests.


    "My children."


    He nced at the royals gathered closer to him.


    "Much has unfolded during this Royal Addressal Ceremony," The severity of his tone reflected the weight of the circumstances. "Much that no one could have predicted or known."


    No one aside from the Emperor himself, of course.


    "I, the Emperor of Kandria, am diseased," He closed his eyes. "I do not have much longer left. Know that I have fought, with all might, against this curse that addles my body for far longer than any of you could have imagined. I have fought¡­ and I have failed."


    He opened his eyes, meeting everybody with his powerful gaze. "This is my final act. This is my will. I believe that this, even as I inch closer to death, is the right choice for Kandria. For the future of Kandria."


    The weight of his words was deep.


    "I have made my choice," He told the many powers and forces of Kandria that had gathered within the hall. "I have made my choice, and it is time for each of you to make yours."


    The air grew electric.


    Each and every single person in the hall understood what the Emperor was telling them.


    A new prince had entered the war.


    A prince who bore the will of Rael Di Kandria.


    In other words, a powerfulpetitor for the throne had emerged from the woodwork. It was bound to be the birth of a new faction. A new faction that they could choose to support or not.Content is ? by N?velDrama.Org.


    It could be a great opportunity if exploited correctly.


    The guests narrowed their eyes with deep seriousness as they furiously considered the prospects of supporting and allying with the final prince of Kandria.


    "I, Emperor Rael Di Kandria, dere the Royal Addressal Ceremony to beplete," The Emperor announced. "Glory to Kandria."


    "Glory to Kandria!"


    A saying that signaled the end of royal ceremonies.


    CLACK


    The giant doors of the Kandrian Throne Hall opened.


    For a moment, nobody could move.


    Yet, move they did.


    Shock was not a justification to ignore royal protocol.


    The guests neatly exited the throne hall row after row, heading down the stairs as the Martial Masters of the royal security force secured the path down. Sage Farana had already shifted, standing in the sky, overseeing the security of all the important powers and forces of Kandria.


    Her heavy presence weighed down on the world, inspiring great confidence in their safety in the minds of the many powerful guests.


    Rui never moved.


    He didn''t move so much as an inch from where he stood.


    Even as the many princes and princesses headed to the exit in the order that they had arrived in, he never moved.


    He simply stood there, staring at the Emperor.


    The uncertainty and confusion in his eyes were reced with a steely re.


    One by one, everybody left.


    The Master-level bodyguards.


    The concubines that had stood by his side.


    The many attendants that had tended to him.


    Soon enough, they were alone.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1754 Tale

    Chapter 1754 Tale


    "You seem displeased." The Emperor''s powerful voice echoed across the vast expanse of the Kandrian Throne Hall.


    "Oh, I do, do I? You don''t say." Rui''s sarcasm was palpable.


    Yet the Emperor didn''t seem to mind the impropriety.


    "Your displeasure is very understandable." The Emperor remarked. "Yet you managed to retain your exteriorposure even when bombarded with life-altering revtions in front of all the greatest powers of Kandria."


    A hint of approval could be detected in his voice. "Had you grown unstable or had a mental breakdown, I would not have chosen you as my heir. It was¡­the final test."


    Rui narrowed his eyes, ring at the Emperor. "The final test?"


    "Final test." The Emperor reaffirmed calmly. "You have passed all others with flying colors. You are truly a prince worthy of ascending the throne. You are worthy of being Emperor of Kandria."


    "I don''t understand." Rui''s voice betrayed the frustration that had rapidly built up since the revtion of his royal bloodship. "I DON''T UNDERSTAND." He bellowed as a surge of emotion washed through him.


    A brief silence lingered in the air.


    "I don''t me you." The Emperor''s tone was gentle. "Sometimes, I''m not entirely sure I understand what happened."


    Regret and sorrow echoed within the melody of his voice.


    He heaved a sigh. "If I, as Emperor of Kandria, had the choice to choose a single supernatural power or ability, what power do you think it would be?"


    Rui furrowed his eyebrows in confusion at the random question.


    What did it have to do with their current circumstances?


    What relevance did it have to anything that was pertinent?


    If ranked on the list of topics that Rui wanted to speak to the Emperor about, it would not even make it into the top ten thousand!


    Yet, as he met the patient and calm eyes of the Emperor, waiting for an answer, he heaved a sigh.


    "¡­Telepathy? Precognition. irvoyance..." Rui nonchntly replied. "Depends on its synergy with your circumstances and needs as ruler, I suppose."


    "That is a neat analysis; those are certainly good choices," The Emperor nodded, smiling wryly. "I chose precognition."


    Rui tilted his head. "I do not follow."


    "Or rather, an opportunity to choose precognition had risen nearly forty years ago," The Emperor replied calmly. "One of my intelligenceworks had caught wind of a clue to the location of the mythical Ss n."


    Rui''s eyes narrowed sharply at that name. The Emperor had mentioned it when he dered Rui his heir.


    It was the n of his mother, allegedly.


    He had never heard of such a n before in his entire life.


    "The Ss n is a nomadic n descended from the Transcendent Prophet, the Astral Sovereign." The Emperor exined. "It is a n birthed by the son of the Transcendent Prophet, a Martial Sage who went by the name Ss."


    Rui''s eyes widened, surprised at the connection between the prophet of the Virodhabhasa Faith and the n his mother was allegedly from.


    "The historical records about the origin of the Ss n are¡­shoddy, to say the least," The Emperor admitted. "However, it is said that Ss was inspired by his father''s Transcendent Prophecy from a very young age, so much so that he grew up wanting to be a prophet like his father. It is said that it had shaped his entire identity as he grew up, the core of his drive."


    He nced at Rui. "What do you think his Martial Path was when he broke through to the Apprentice Realm?"


    Rui''s eyes narrowed. "¡­Prophecy?"


    The word lingered in the air.


    "Indeed." The Emperor nodded, closing his eyes. "Over the span of centuries in the Age of Martial Art, Ss broke through to Realm after Realm, reaching the Sage Realm. Just one Realm below Transcendence. It is said that Sage Ss had reached the cusp of the Transcendence Realm¡­before he ultimately disappeared, thought to be dead." Exclusive content ? by N?(v)el/Dr/ama.Org.


    "''Thought'' to be dead¡­?"


    The Emperor shrugged nonchntly. "Thought to be dead. Gaia is an astronomically enormous world. Orders of magnituderger than any other in our sr system. He could be dead or not. I doubt we will ever find out. However, before he died, he passed on a technique to his n of descendants¡­a forbidden technique, the Eye of Prophecy."


    Rui''s eyes narrowed. "It was a Sage-level technique that is said to allow the user to see the future." The Emperor remarked. "The Ss n inherited Sage Ss'' final heirloom and dedicated everything to it. Their entire identities warped around the technique as they religiously embodied it."


    His eyes met with Rui. "I''m sure you''re familiar with the corrtion between identity and Martial Path; what do you think happened?"


    "¡­The Martial Artists of the Ss n naturally came to possess Martial Paths centered around the Eye of Prophecy," Rui realized. "If their progeny were raised to form their identity around their inherited technique, then there''s no doubt that their Martial Art would not stray far away from the technique."


    "Indeed," The Emperor nodded. "That was not all. There is a reason the technique is considered to be a forbidden technique. The original technique was not a forbidden technique; it was a Sage-level technique. It was made functioned to make use of the Sage Realm of power. In other words, it was not a technique meant to be used by even Masters, let alone Martial Artists of the Lower Realms. Yet they were determined to harness the power of the technique, the only heirloom given to them by their beloved progenitor, Sage Ss."


    The Emperor''s eyes narrowed. "They were willing to use it no matter the price. And the price they did pay. The many Martial Masters united together to decode, decipher, and reconstruct the technique to water it down."


    "¡­I presume they seeded." A glint of curiosity shed in Rui''s eyes.


    "Partially," The Emperor replied. "They managed to water it down in order to make it easier to use as a result. However, they were never entirely able to reduce it below quasi-Sage level. The technique was fundamentally such that it required a bare minimum amount of the power of the Sage Realm."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1755 Forbidden

    Chapter 1755 Forbidden


    "And, rest assured, the quasi-Sage level version of the Eye of Prophecy was also too difficult for any of the Masters at the time, let alone any of the younger Martial Artists," Emperor Rael''s tone grew darker. "As I mentioned, it could not be used without paying the price and the price they paid."


    He stared deep into Rui''s eyes. "The price they paid to use a technique they were unworthy of using was their lifespan."


    Rui''s eyes widened with shock. "What?!"


    "They modified the technique, adding forbidden principles that could supply them with the power they needed to wield the Eye of Prophecy in exchange for their lifespan," the Emperor exined in a heavy tone. "Lifespan is precious, and when sacrificed can conjure up miracles. That''s why those principles are forbidden. That is why it is considered a forbidden technique. The Panamic Martial Federation frowns upon the creation and propagation of forbidden techniques, techniques that cause irreversible harm to their user, yet the Ss n was determined to use the Eye of Prophecy even if it came at the cost of their lifespan. They believed the power was worth it, and thus began a century-old tradition in the Ss n."


    Rui listened to the Emperor''s tale with rapt attention.


    "And they were right," The Emperor remarked. "It was worth it. When the world learned that the Ss n had harnessed the power of prophecy, naturally, they wanted it. The Ss n was targeted and hunted by the powers of the world that sought to get their hands on the power of prophecy."


    "¡­Why didn''t they seek refuge in the Transcendent Prophet if they were his descendants?" Rui raised an eyebrow.


    "They probably tried." The Emperor sighed. "But Martial Transcendents are¡­detached from human civilization. Not even I have been able to understand what it is that drives them away to distance themselves from humanity when they break through to the Transcendent Realm. Regardless, it can be readily inferred that this option was not avable. Otherwise, they would have lived happily ever after in the Virodhabhasa Theocracy."


    That was a sensible deduction.


    The Emperor heaved a sigh. "Prey to the predatory greed of human civilization, the Ss n abandoned their roots and became a permanently nomadic n that wandered through the peripheries and gaps in human civilization and the Beast Domain to this day. The world searches for the Ss n even to this day, yet none have found them yet."


    His eyes narrowed. "None except me. I searched for the Ss n for many years, studying every ounce of data and creating models of behavioral patterns until I managed to predict their future course based on a crucial piece clue that the Kandrian Intelligence Agency. I personally undertook the operation, traveling across Panama in disguise to intercept them along with a single Martial Sage, and seeded. I won the race to the Ss n."


    An affectionate smile appeared on his face. "¡­And that was how I met your mother."


    Rui''s eyes widened as the Emperor''s demeanor changed. His eyes grew loving as they zed over, recounting the memories of a woman who no longer was.


    "¡­Your mother was a being of hope." The Emperor remarked lightly, lost in his memories. "She gave me hope when I had nearly lost all of it."


    "You see," The Emperor remarked as his attention returned to Rui. "The reason I sought the Ss n wasn''t just because prophecy was an extremely useful and revolutionary power for any ruler to have, although that was also true and a good bonus. But the true reason I sought the Ss n¡­was because they had the power to help me find the key to healing my curse."


    Rui''s eyes widened with shock.


    The Emperor''s eyes darkened. "I had already been alerted to the Eternal Dream disease thaty dormant in my body a few years prior to my meeting with the Ss n. There was no known cure in the medicalmunity. No treatment could slow it down. Nothing could get rid of it. I drove myself mad, looking for a solution, almost unraveling into despair until a possibility finally appeared."


    Rui''s attention intensified.


    The air grew heavy.


    "The Divine Doctor." The Emperor remarked. "The single greatest known healer in all of human history. A genius that is said to be a gift to humanity from the God of Medicine herself. Born many centuries before even the Age of Martial Art, this doctor was said to be transcendent in his ability to heal and cure. The Divine Doctor is said to have even cured death itself, transcending morality and bing an immortal sage who wanders throughout Gaia to this day."


    Rui grew amazed, enraptured by the Emperor''s tale. "¡­He doesn''t even sound human."


    "He can hardly be considered to be a human," The Emperor replied. "He isn''t the only one. Throughout history, there have been those born with transcendent minds and godly mentalities, not unlike yourself."


    Rui narrowed his eyes.


    He eyes Rui carefully with a pointed look. "The Scrier¡­an extraordinary archaeologist who sought to uncover the mysteries of the Empty Ages before known and recorded human history. The Beggar Sage, the founder and current leader of the Beggar''s Sect, is said to possess an unfathomableprehension of information and epistemology. And, of course, the Divine Doctor, the godly healer, said to be able to cure anything."


    The Emperor narrowed his eyes. " I believed that he might have the power to heal my condition. However, finding him was even more difficult. It proved untenable with my power alone. I needed something that could help me find the Divine Doctor."


    Rui''s eyes widened as realization dawned on him. "That was why you sought the Ss n. That was why you sought the power of prophecy. You hoped that with Ss n''s Eye of Prophecy, they would be able to help you find the Divine Doctor to help cure your condition before it manifested." Text ? owned by N?velDrama.Org.


    "A keen inference," The Emperor nodded, smiling. "An urate one, too. Yet, the prospect of finding a secret nomadic n to then somehow gain their most treasured technique to, in turn, somehow help me find the Divine Doctor was¡­a dubious n, to say the least. By the time I had seeded in intercepting the Ss n myself with a Martial Sage, I had lost all hope and, as I said before, that¡­"


    He smiled once more with clear eyes full of hope. "¡­was how I met your mother. She gave me hope. The hope for life. The longer I spent with her, the more hopeful I grew. And long I spent with her, indeed. It wasn''t long before she gave me more than just hope."


    A soft smile appeared on Rui''s face.


    "As a Martial Apprentice, she had already gained the power of prophecy."


    Rui''s eyes widened, surprised. "She was a Martial Apprentice?!"


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1756 Unforgotten

    Chapter 1756 Unforgotten


    ??"Indeed," The Emperor nodded. "Although young and inexperienced, she possessed the forbidden technique of the Eye of Prophecy. In return for the technique in her Martial Art, I offered the Ss n a powerful Sage-level artifact that would aid in obscuring them even further. And thus, an exchange urred."


    He smiled. "She was pregnant with you even before we bade the Ss n farewell and returned to the Kandrian Empire¡­"


    His smile grew sorrowful. "And that was when things took a rough turn."


    "¡­What happened?"


    "She grew revolted and disgusted at the toxic, poisonous rtionships within the Royal Family," The Emperor heaved a sigh. "Princes and princesses plotting and scheming each other''s downfall and deaths. Scheming to one day ascend the throne after I died or abdicated it. Anybody who bore the blood of the royal family was in danger of being targeted to eliminatepetition."


    "¡­Like what happened to Rajak," Rui realized.


    The Emperor nodded. "Indeed. You might think that what happened to him was special, but really, it''s rather tamepared to what has happened and what does happen."


    Rui''s eyes sharpened at those words.


    The Emperor shook his head, heaving a sigh. "She sought to distance herself away from me. She refused to let her baby be embroiled in the venomous and hateful conflicts between the members of the Royal Family. I tried my best to convince her, but she demanded that I abdicate the throne and leave Kandria with her forever if she wanted us to remain together as a family. However, so long as the crown rested upon my head, she deemed that it was a threat to her growing fetus."


    "And you chose the crown." Rui narrowed his eyes.


    The Emperor heaved a sigh. "I had trulye close to abdicating. Maybe I would have, had I had just a little bit more time. Unfortunately¡­"


    His voice grew grave. "¡­Time I didn''t have, for that was when true disaster struck."


    The air grew a few shades darker.


    Rui narrowed his eyes. "What happened?"


    "¡­A few weeks before her delivery, she foresaw her own death." The Emperor heaved a shaky sigh. "She told me that it was inevitable and that no force in the world could save her life, refusing any help. I desperately begged her to ept the medical intervention of the Royal Doctors of the Royal Court, but she refused. She did not want her existence to be alerted to the princes and princesses who would undoubtedly learn of her and her baby should any Royal assete into contact with her during pregnancy or childbirth. After all, that was how Rajak was exposed."


    The Emperor paused as his expression grew darker.


    "I¡­lost my temper that day. I said things that I now can never take back."


    Deep regret and guilt churned in the depths of his voice.


    "Yet thest time I saw her, she extracted an oath from me." The Emperor breathed in shakily. "That you would grow up with the true love that every child deserves. That you would grow up with the love of a family that she and I were unable to give you. That you would never be preyed on by the darkness of the Royal Family."


    The Emperor sighed as sorrow shed in his eyes. "Back then, I was truly resentful of her for walking away from me and refusing my aid. However, I never forgot the oath I made to her."


    A sorrowful smile returned to the Emperor''s face.


    "I¡­found a ce far away from the politics of the Kandrian Empire. An orphanage about an hour away from the town of Hajin by carriage. An orphanage created and run by a woman who was once a trafficked orphan, determined to offer a loving home to orphans that she had been denied as a child. After months of rigorous vetting, I deemed her orphanage worthy of being the home that you deserved. The home that would also fulfill my oath to Miriam, your mother."


    The Emperor smiled at Rui. "That was the Quarrier Orphanage."


    Rui stared at the Emperor in amazement as the Emperor recounted the tale that had gone on to shape his life!


    "So you made it so that Mother Lashara epted me as an orphan?" Rui whispered, shocked.


    "T''is but a trivial matter for my wide set ofpetencies," The Emperor shrugged nonchntly.


    "..And then you, what, decided to forget about me until recently?" Rui narrowed his eyes. "Hide the truth from me until you needed me? And then reveal the truth to me alongside the entire world in a manner that forces my hand?"


    A hint of resentment echoed in Rui''s voice.


    He was not pleased about the emotional rollercoaster that the Royal Addressal Ceremony had been.


    The Emperor heaved a sigh. "I did not forget about you. I have never forgotten you."


    His demeanor grew solemn yet soft.


    His eyes peered into Rui''s.


    "I watched over you your entire life. I rejoiced alongside you, celebrating your aplishments. I mourned alongside you when you suffered from the tribtions life thrust upon you. Yet, I never forgot about you, watching your miraculous life with more pride than I ever thought I had. I even actively protected you before you became a Martial Artist, though I wonder if you even remember¡­it was so long ago, then again, I don''t know if I should¡­"


    The Emperor''s voice trailed off as he murmured to himself.


    "What do you mean?" Rui''s eyes furrowed with uncertainty. "I don''t follow your words."


    The Emperor''s eyes shifted to meet his. "¡­Then I suppose it would be better to show than to talk, isn''t that right? Sayfeel?"


    For a moment, nothing happened.


    "¡­Huh?" Rui frowned, wondering if the Eternal Dream disease elerated mental decline. "There''s no one else here but us."


    Oh, but there was.


    A familiar Realm of power unfolded behind Rui.


    His eyes widened as he felt a titanic surge of pressure weighing down on him.


    Not just him.


    Everything.


    The very world around him seemed to shiver.


    Heaven and Earth seemed to bend.


    They bent under the weight of his being.Text ? owned by N?velDrama.Org.


    Rui leaped away in terror as he turned around to catch a glimpse.


    Yet what he saw shook him.


    A man.


    A Martial Sage.


    Yet, it was not his Realm of power that shocked him.


    It was his appearance.


    "You¡­!" Rui gasped with recognition.


    The Martial Sage smiled.


    Rui stared at his face with bewilderment.


    This was the man who had saved him from being kidnapped by a trafficker at the age of seven, many years ago!


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1757 More Shocking Revelations

    <h4>Chapter 1757 More Shocking Revtions </h4>


    "It has been a pleasure watching you grow into a fantastic Martial Artist, Your Highness."


    A profoundly powerful voice escaped Sage Sayfeel.


    It reverberated in his heart.


    Rui stared at the Martial Sage with unadulterated shock. "So all this time¡­you were a hidden Martial Sage."


    Rui felt weak in his legs at the weight of this new revtion.


    He recalled the incident quite clearly and deeply in his mind. He had yet to be a Martial Artist; he hadn''t even had a real fight with his life on the line at that point. That had been his first conflict.


    The very memory of it embarrassed him.


    The man who had saved him was a Martial Squire or was supposed to be. He had taught Rui that neither fear nor failure disqualified him from being a warrior. It was what he did after that decided whether he was a warrior or not.


    This man had done much to set Rui down his Martial Path; if it weren''t for him, let alone a Martial Artist, Rui would have died long ago.


    "¡­Thank you," Rui whispered, bowing his head deeply. "Thank you."


    "I was simply doing my duty, Prince Rui," The man smiled before gazing at the Emperor reverently. "It was His Majesty truly saved your life."


    Rui turned back to his father with gratitude in his eyes, earning a nonchnt dismissive wave from him before turning back to Sage Sayfeel.


    The bewilderment in his eyes had yet to dim.


    It wasn''t just the fact that this man was a Martial Sage.


    Rui had not failed to notice that this wasn''t any of the known fourteen Martial Sages, the appearance of all of whom he knew.


    This was a new Martial Sage. N?velDrama.Org holds ? this.


    One he had never seen before.


    The air tingled as the frightening implications of this revtion struck Rui.


    Rui was so utterly bewildered by the string of revtions that he had been bombarded with that he no longer had the energy to get shocked.


    He was utterly drained.


    The Emperor could pull a Martial Transcendent out of his ass, and he doubted that he would be too surprised.


    "Sayfeel is one of my greatest trump cards," Emperor Rael calmly dered. "My hidden weapon. The fifteenth Martial Sage of Kandria. Everybody who knows of his existence is standing in this room."


    Rui stared at Sage Sayfeel, stunned speechless. "The fifteenth Martial Sage of Kandria¡­?"


    "From a young age, I knew that in order to seize the throne, I needed a powerful hidden trump card that could help me ovee the resistance of my allied siblings who sought to keep me from reaching the throne," Emperor Rael calmly informed Rui. "Thus, about thirty years before I assassinated your grandfather, I began cultivating a weapon, a powerful Martial Artist that answers only to me."


    Rui realized he had been wrong.


    He was indeed capable of getting shocked even now as his eyes widened with shock for the umpteenth time.


    He realized he might have had more inmon with the Emperor than he had realized. "Incredible."


    Rui realized the weight of this revtion.


    It was an unspoken gesture of trust from the Emperor.


    He had just been entrusted with a secret of national importance.


    He nced at the Emperor with askance. "You said you protected me until I became a Martial Artist."


    The Emperor nodded. "That''s right. Once you became a Martial Artist, protection would only hamper your growth. A sheltered Martial Artist is a weak Martial Artist; you saw that with Prince Raijun, didn''t you?"


    Rui nodded.


    He didn''t bear any resentment or hostility towards the Emperor for not protecting him when he became a Martial Artist. Prince Raijun was actually the perfect example of what a sheltered Martial Artist looked like.


    "I held my breath many times through your journey, of course," The Emperor remarked. "Yet you managed to ovee every tribtion that you faced thus far. I''ve even taken the personal liberty of dubbing some of your sesses with a personal touch."


    Rui furrowed his eyebrow in confusion. "What is that supposed to mean?"


    A mischievous smile shed on the Emperor''s face. "Voidbringer. Voider. Voidreaper¡­Did you think it''s a coincidence that these nicknames that belong to you all suspiciously share the theme of ''void'' even though they were supposed to have risen entirely separately and disconnected from each other?"


    Rui stared at Rael with a stunned expression. "You were responsible for those epithets!"


    Emperor Rael burst outughing, guffawing at Rui''s expense. "Indeed. I had great fun cooking up such names and spreading them hahaha!"


    Rui heaved a sigh of resignation and amusement as the Emperor indulged himself in a goodugh before finally calming down.


    "I assume you were the one who named me," Rui remarked.


    "No, actually," The Emperor shook his head. "Your name was given to you by your mother."


    "¡­I see," Rui remarked as he grew silent.


    He had never known his biological mother. However, she sounded like an incredible person the more the Emperor spoke about her. He felt a pang of sorrow that he never had the opportunity to get to know her.


    "¡­So my father is the Emperor of Kandria. The man who gave me a family and home that I have longe to love as truly my own, who protected me before I discovered my Martial Path, who watched over me my entire life¡­" Rui murmured.


    The Emperor did not respond, staring at Rui calmly.


    "¡­Who then, thirty-one yearster, exposes my identity before the entire world and then deres me his heir." Rui''s eyes sharpened slightly.


    His resentment towards the Emperor had reduced greatly after he learned that his father had not only given him the Quarrier Orphanage but also saved his life as a child. However, the fact that his father had derailed his life by exposing his identity and crowning him as his unofficial heir still remained.


    It hadn''t been that long since the revtion had been disclosed.


    Not even an hour.


    That was why it had yet to settle in and be his reality and normality, but Rui knew that his life had been forever changed in every way.


    Nothing would ever remain the same.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1758 Requirements of a Ruler

    <h4>Chapter 1758 Requirements of a Ruler </h4>


    A massive permanent change to his life had happened abruptly a short while ago.


    He hadn''t even fully processed it, certainly not emotionally.


    But on a rational level, he obviously understood that the Emperor had some high expectations of him.


    The Emperor wanted Rui to seed him and ascend the throne.


    "Why me?" Rui''s voice grew solemn.


    The Emperor stared at him calmly. Content is ? by N?velDrama.Org.


    "Because you are worthy."


    "¡­"


    A deep silence echoed through the throne hall.


    Sage Sayfeel had suppressed his aura entirely, reducing his presence to that of an ordinary human being.


    He, more than anybody else, understood the depth of importance of this moment.


    It was a moment that would alter the future of Kandria for the rest of time.


    Nothing could be allowed to disrupt it.


    "Worthy¡­?"


    "Worthy." The Emperor reaffirmed.


    "I am worthy even though I do not desire the throne?" Rui narrowed his eyes.


    A soft smile appeared on Emperor Rael''s face.


    "You are worthy because you do not desire the throne."


    Rui''s eyebrows rose at those words, stirring in response.


    "I told you," The Emperor continued. "I have watched you your entire life. In some ways, I know you better than yourself."


    The Emperor closed his eyes. "You understood the core of the Kandrian Empire. You understood our greatest strength. You understood the pir that sustains this powerhouse of a nation."


    Rui stared at him. "¡­The delicate bnce between the many forces and powers of Kandria is what allowed this nation to rise. This delicate bnce that you yourself hand-crafted three centuries ago is the reason our nation does not copse into the civil war you averted long ago. In other words, bnce is the Kandrian lifeline."


    The Emperor smiled. "Indeed. Thus, in the Kandrian context, harmony is the most important thing a ruler must have. Harmony is not just in their policy but in temperament. The corrtion between temperament and political philosophy has been empirically demonstrated and quite rigorously explored at length in the research literature of political psychology."


    His tone grew instructive.


    "For example," He continued. "You have people like Raul with high trait neuroticism and high trait agreeableness, traits that statistically corrte with dovish and pacifist political philosophies, on one end, and people like Randal, who have low trait openness, high conscientiousness, and low trait agreeableness, have a seventy-eight percent chance of having a hawkish foreign policy."


    His eyes met with Rui''s. "Thus, a bnced temperament is highly desirable in my chosen heir. None of the seven possess a bnced temperament, and their political philosophy reflects that."


    "¡­And I do?" Rui asked, curious. It became evident to him that one of the many areas of expertise that the Emperor had was in the domain of psychology. Some of the jargon that he uttered reminded Rui of that of psychology back on Earth.


    The Emperor considered the question. "Not inherently, no. In some ways, you are worse than Randal. You have extremely high trait conscientiousness, as driven martial artists often are; you are extraordinarily driven¡ªextraordinarily driven to this so-called Project Water. If not for your consideration and care for your family, you most likely would be extreme. The only difference is that your sheerpetence and extraordinary intellect mean that there is a high chance that you have a high chance of actually seeding in an extreme endeavor. Far more so than someone like Randal and Ranea, for example."


    Rui shrugged, considering the Emperor''s evaluation.


    He didn''t strictly disagree.


    If not for his family, then he would have gone for whichever route helped with Project Water. Perhaps he would have more open to prince Randal''s or Princess Ranea''s ambitions to increase his experience as a Martial Artist.


    The impact on the average Kandrian citizen would be a much smaller concern for him. Certainly nowhere near as it was now.


    "So I''m only a worthy candidate so long as nothing happened to my family?" Rui stared at the Emperor with a judging gaze.


    "Normally, that would be the case," The Emperor remarked. "In your case, however, yourpetence is so abnormally high that virtually any extreme inclination can be justified. For example, the strategic and tactical insight and capability that you demonstrated when youpletely overturned an ambush assassination into a trap to gainplete control over those who sought to eliminate you was perhaps the greatest counter-trap that I have seen in the past century."


    An appreciative, impressed expression appeared on his face. "On top of that, not a single Martial Master has contradicted the report that your capacity for thought is extraordinary. Your Martial Art possessed a degree of information processing that is hitherto undreamt of in the Martialmunity¡­"


    He paused before continuing. "That isn''t the extent of the reason for my confidence in yourpetence, and it''s an evaluation based on arge amount of data. Your remarkable diplomatic sess in Vilun Ind and your current status as Senior Ambassador of the Martial Union are the brilliant powerys underlying your sess in the Shionel confederation, and many more have led me to the conclusion that you are deeply gifted mentally and possess what is needed to ensure that the Empire doesn''t burn down."


    Rui stared at him silently as he considered the Emperor''s words.


    "So I possess the right inclination and the rightpetence to be Emperor¡­but without desire to ascend the throne¡­" He remarked. "You ruled out my many other half-brothers and half-sisters as candidates because they didn''t desire the throne, did you not? Why do you not rule me out for the same reason?"


    "The reason I ruled them out is because they know they do not possess the temperament nor thepetence to sessfully win the Kandrian Throne War even if they tried," The Emperor scoffed. "It is not because of ack of desire for the throne. Almost every prince and princess is raised with a deep desire and admiration for the throne cultivated from childhood. A brutal set of psychological programming tactics is employed to ensure that the princes and princesses inherit a drive for the throne. Those that are unable to sustain it do so because their ipetence makes their drive untenable."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1759 Not a Good Father

    <h4>Chapter 1759 Not a Good Father</h4>


    Rui sharpened his eyes at the Emperor''s ruthless eyes.


    The Emperor shared a nuance that he hadn''t considered before. In hindsight, Rui wasn''t surprised that part of the grooming, education, and raising of royals included instilling a drive to inherit the throne.


    In that case, it was true that the royals who had still failed to retain a drive for the throne simply were not temperamentally inclined towards inheriting the throne. In that case, Rui understood why the Emperor had simply dismissed them as candidates for being his heir.


    "Regardless of the reason, the fact of the matter is that I do not desire the throne in any way," Rui narrowed his eyes. "You, who ims to know me better than myself, still chose to name me as your unofficial heir. What am I to infer from that?"


    "You can infer what you want, my son," The Emperor replied.


    The air grew electric.


    "Alright then," Rui red at his father. "What I am to infer is that you stayed out of my life my entire life, and now that you need a good heir for the throne, you have decided to drag me out of my previously normal life and exposed my identity as a prince and crowned me an unofficial heir in order to make me participate in the Kandrian Throne War, win, and be the next Emperor of Harmony."


    A tumultuous tension boiled between father and son.


    The Emperor met Rui''s usatory re with clear eyes.


    A single remark escaped his mouth.


    "Everything you have uttered is urate."


    Rui stirred, surprised that the Emperor readily admitted to exploiting Rui to fulfill his own political visions for the future of Kandria.


    "You would disrupt your son''s life for the sake of the nation?" Rui stared at him, his anger overtaken with astonishment.


    The Emperor stared at Rui, heaving a deep sigh. "A good father would do the opposite. He would prioritize the well-being of his son over that of the Empire, but¡­"


    He closed his eyes. "I am not a good father."


    He inhaled deeply, meeting Rui''s eyes again. "I am a good emperor. An emperor who does what is necessary for the future of Kandria."


    Rui furrowed his eyebrows as his father readily admitted to exploiting his son for politics. "At least you admit it. You''re not nearly as bad a father as you would be had you tried denying it."


    "I don''t deny my intentions," The Emperor affirmed. "However, your well-being and the life that you led up until now do not entirely need toe at the cost of bing Emperor. I hope you realize that."


    Rui snorted. "You think I can pursue my Martial Path while simultaneously running a Sage-level powerhouse nation?"


    "It''s not necessarily impossible," The Emperor remarked. You don''t need to micromanage the Empire. Your most important role is giving direction to the Empire and ensuring that you push it in the right direction. What that means is that there is immense room for delegation. Let tasks be handled by people who have dedicated their lives to specializing in handling those tasks."


    Rui narrowed his eyes. "That will still be an enormous responsibility even if things go as smoothly as you think they will. Worst of all, I will be shackled to the throne. I will not be able to explore this world and expose myself to it on my voyage to fulfilling my ambition. I will be unable to partake in any meaningful real battle that will give me the experience I need to refine my Martial Art as I develop it."


    As Rui began fully regaining his calm andposure for the first time since the revtion, the many disadvantages of being Emperor came flooding back to him as his mind urately extensively projected and extrapted many possible models of what his life would be like.


    "Considering the division of power within the government and the delicate bnce of powers within the Kandrian Empire that require delicate tending to¡­" Rui snorted. "The theoretical absolute best-case scenario is that I have around forty percent of the day to myself."


    The Emperor smiled appreciatively. "Those were indeed around my estimations as well, perhaps even less depending on how much of howrge the error parameter centered around your inexperience with administrative and managerial responsibilities is and how well you delegate them."


    "I''m a Martial Artist," Rui growled. "Spending sixty percent of my day on the duties of the throne is not something that I am inclined to do. I gain absolutely nothing from this proposition!"


    While Rui had suffered more heart attacks than he could count on this day, he had not been shocked to forget knowing what mattered to him personally.


    "Come now, I understand your sentiment, but we both know that''s not entirely true," The Emperor smiled. "You cannot begin to fathom the kind of resources that I can get my hands on. Resources so unfathomably precious that Martial Artists would die to get their hands on them."


    Rui cursed inwardly as a hint of greed shed in his eyes. "¡­


    What kind of resources are we talking about?"


    The Emperor''s mischievous smile deepened. "Wouldn''t you like to know?"


    Rui red at his father. "You really are a horrible dad." N?velDrama.Org holds ? this.


    "Hahaha!" Emperor Rael beganughing heartily as Rui began cursing him.


    "Ohhh¡­" The Emperor heaved a pleased sigh. "I cannot recall thest time that I had such a goodugh."


    His eyes returned to a grumpy Rui. "Think about it. I won''t force you to be Emperor. I cannot, anyway. If you publicly announce your abandonment of the throne, you will not have to be Emperor, although you will not be able to get rid of the status of Prince. Ultimately, it is your choice. Making hasty, ill-thought decisions is not your modus operandi. Besides, there is one variable impacting your decision that we haven''t spoken about."


    Rui winced; they both knew what he was talking about.


    "The orphanage," The Emperor remarked. "You now have the opportunity to give them the life that you always desire they had."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1760 Hope Till The Very End

    Chapter 1760 Hope Till The Very End


    Rui narrowed his eyes.


    He didn''t like the fact that the Emperor had brought this matter up in the middle of a conversation.


    "¡­Give them a normal life?" Rui growled. "That option was gone the second you exposed my identity as a prince. You just put a target on their backs!"


    The Emperor heaved a sigh. "Yes, but it can be undone if you choose to be Emperor. You can still give them a good life with the powerful royal protection that you won''t have ess to as a prince. You can ensure that they go about their lives as normally as they did before with the power of the Kandrian Empire."


    Rui stared at him intensely as he considered the proposition.


    It was true that the power of the Emperor could grant them enormous protection without sacrificing their daily lives.


    However, that would mean needing to be Emperor to solve a problem caused by the fact that he was revealed to be a prince.


    Emperor Rael was far too intelligent andpetent not to have foreseen this when he nned to disclose Rui''s identity to the entire world.


    "You are truly shameless," Rui red at him. "It makes me want to flip a middle finger to the throne just to spite you." Exclusive content ? by N?(v)el/Dr/ama.Org.


    Emperor Rael did notugh this time. "Shame is an impediment to rulers. You will have to abandon it should you choose to ascend the throne that I will leave behind."


    The Emperor closed his eyes. "The decision to save Kandria from ruin or not is entirely yours."


    Rui tutted at the emotional ckmail even as Emperor Rael smirked.


    Unfortunately, as much as Rui disliked it, the Emperor was right.


    Rui rarely made ill-thought decisions. Most decisions he made were made after great consideration.


    And if there ever was any decision to truly sit down and think about, it would be this decision. A decision that would easily be the most important decision that he had ever made in his entire life. His eyes wandered with uncertainty as he stood, frozen in ce.


    "Take your time," The Emperor remarked. "You are not in a state of mind to make the decision even if you managed to consider all the many considerations needed to make a decision. Go home, spend some time with your loved ones."


    The Emperor closed his eyes. "We will speak another time. This discussiones to an end.


    CLACK


    The giant doors at the other end of the throne hall opened.


    Rui''s eyes shifted to meet those of his father onest time before he turned around, leaving wordlessly.


    The Emperor heaved a heavy sigh, pulling out a locket that hung at his chest. CLICK


    It opened, revealing a picture.


    A youthful, happier Rael with a beaming woman by his side.


    Memories of a long-gone time rushed through his mind.


    CLICK


    He closed it, ncing at Sage Sayfeel. "¡­How do you think I did?"


    "¡­"


    "It''s at times like these where you''re the most useless," The Emperor scoffed.


    His aged hands strained, lifting the crown from atop his head and onto hisp. "¡­I don''t think it could have gone any better or worse, honestly."


    He closed his eyes. "Any report on¡­?"


    "¡­Yes, Your Majesty," Sage Sayfeel answered. "I have observed it religiously with my senses and instincts during the two years you slumbered. Based on my experience and observation, in my estimation¡­the Beast Domain is stirring."


    Emperor Rael narrowed his eyes. "¡­The Great Purge may not be too far into the future," Sage Sayfeel''s voice grew grave. Emperor Rael''s demeanor grew deeply solemn and severe. "This does not bode well for human civilization."


    His eyes returned to Sage Sayfeel. "I suppose you failed to aplish the primary objective as well?"


    Sage Sayfeel bowed his head apologetically. "I was unable to locate the Divine Doctor. Although we know he is in the Beast Domain. It hampered my sensory prowess too much, I am afraid."


    The Emperor heaved a sigh. The loss of Miriam also meant the loss of the Eye of Prophecy. Without that, he hade back to square one when it came to finding the Divine Doctor. The Divine Doctor had turned out to be one the most inscrutable people in existence. Not even the Ss n was as absurdly difficult to track as the Divine Doctor.


    The only progress that he had made in that regard was that the Divine Doctor was somewhere in the Beast Domain. Aside from that, there was no other information. That was the only thing that Rael had been able to learn after years of investigation and information gathering.


    The fact that a normal physical human could not just survive but also thrive in the Beast Domain was something that Emperor Rael did not understand. He chalked it up, of course, to the superhuman mind that the man was born with.


    "On top of that, I do not think I will be able topel him toe to your aid," Sage Sayfeel bowed his head. "Our investigations have revealed that not even Martial Sages are able to earn the respect of the Divine Doctor. He can only bepelled by Martial Transcendents or¡­''kindred souls'' by his own words, allegedly. The probability that I will be able to find him and bring him back is¡­"


    ''Extremely low'' was what Sage Sayfeel left unspoken.


    "¡­So be it," Emperor Rael smiled with eptance. "My time hase. Thanks to Miriam, I have learned to ept what cannot be changed and never lose hope no¡­matter.¡­.wha..."


    His eyelids grew heavy.


    His vision blurred.


    His consciousness dimmed, burying deep inside his mind as he entered a deep slumber once more.


    "Your Majesty!" Say Sayfeel''s cried as he rushed forward to support the Emperor.


    The duration of consciousness was even lower than before, and it appeared that the Emperor''s condition had worsened by yet another notch as he rapidly returned to deathly slumber not long after he woke out of it.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1761 Companion

    Chapter 1761 Companion


    CLACK


    The door closed behind Rui after he exited the throne hall.


    He beheld the outside world in a daze.


    He wasn''t even sure what to do.


    "Rui." Master Ceeran''s voice broke him out of his reverie as he descended from the sky, standing before Rui at the closed entrance to the Kandrian Throne Hall.


    "¡­Master Ceeran," Rui smiled at him, tired. "¡­You didn''t need to wait for me."


    "I chose to," Master Ceeran smiled back, patting him on the shoulder. They walked down and away from the throne hall silently. Neither of them addressed the enormous elephant in the room. N?velDrama.Org holds ? this.


    Master Ceeran tactfully avoided bringing it up immediately.


    "Man¡­" Rui heaved a sigh. "Today had been a crazy day."


    "Indeed," Master Ceeran replied, nodding. "Not even in my wildest dreams could I have imagined what happened actually happening¡­"


    "¡­What is the Martial Union''s reaction?" Rui asked warily.


    Although he had yet to sort his thoughts and emotions from the information dump that he had been smacked in the face with, it was still a good job to understand the ramifications of the Emperor''s decision. He could not avoid them after all. The sooner he gained a measure for them, the sooner he would be able to make a decision.


    "¡­Do you really need to ask?" Master Ceeran''s voice betrayed a hint of excitement.


    Rui smiled wryly. "You''re right. It was a stupid question."


    There was absolutely not even the slightest shred of a doubt in his mind that the Martial Union as a whole was extraordinarily shocked and even more overjoyed at the revtion of Rui''s royal bloodship.


    While the reactions and favorability of this revtion were undoubtedly not uniform within the Martial Union, and there certainly were bound to be some elements of the powerful organization that weren''t entirely pleased by this oue, there was no doubt that an overwhelming majority of the Martial Sects and factions within the Martial Union.


    He was already their tinum boy, and now he had the power to ascend the throne and be Emperor of Kandria. He was what Prince Raijun went to sleep dreaming of.


    "The Martial Union has already taken the liberty of emergency protecting your family," Master Ceeran remarked. "Several Masters have volunteered to stand guard on a temporary basis, secretly, of course. The Martial Union acknowledges the importance you ce in not disrupting their lives."


    "¡­Who are the Masters that have volunteered?" "As of right now, it''s Master Zentra and Master Vericita," Master Ceeran said. "Along with Master Krakule, who had previously stationed himself close by quite some time ago, as you know. The three of them are extremely strong; thus, you can rest assured that harm will not befall your family."


    Rui smiled, tired. "I am grateful to all of them. I must thank them in person."


    "That''s not all," Master Ceeran remarked, growing even more excited. "The Martial Union has just summoned an emergency meeting recalling as many Martial Masters back to the Vargard headquarters. I have heard that even some Martial Sages might be partaking in the emergency briefing meeting."


    "¡­Oh boy," Rui whispered.


    "It''s not just the Martial Union that is shaken," Master Ceeran remarked. "All of the upper echelons of Kandria are shaken. Each of the power blocs of our Empire is having their own emergency meetings to discuss the shocking revtions that His Majesty the Royal Emperor has chosen to disclose."


    Rui was not surprised. The appearance of a new major bidder for the throne that had earned the Emperor''s approval and heirship was an enormous deal for the future of Kandria. Not a single stakeholder nor a single power or force within the Kandrian Empire was unaffected. He had no doubt that these rich, powerful, influential, and even authoritative figures were scrambling to get a hold of the situation and make the best of it.


    "And that''s still not all¡­" "Of course not," Rui groaned.


    "Based on what I have been informed of, the news has already spread to the international and foreign stakeholders of Kandria with vested interests in the oue of the Kandrian Throne War," Master Ceeran remarked. "A variety of spokespersons, delegates, ambassadors, constes, and rulers have issued statements to the recent revtion."


    Rui felt an enormous headacheing up.


    "A number of news distribution services have contacted the Martial Union in hopes of getting statements from you," Master Ceeran remarked. "The revtion is slowly starting to spread to themon public; after all, you have been added to the official public record of the Royal Family Tree as Prince Rui Quarrier Kandria, the Final Prince."


    At that moment, Rui just hoped the ground would open up and swallow him whole forever.


    "An unexpected announcement of celebration from a Transcendent-level powerhouse nation was also issued just a short while ago," Master Ceeran remarked. "The Virodhabhasa Theocracy pledges its support to the seventy-fourth victor of the Virodha Martial Contest, Prince Rui Quarrier Kandria."


    "Damn, they found me!" Rui cursed. "You could not have expected them not to, not by now," Master Ceeran shook his head. "They are not ipetent and have an excellent intelligencework. They have learned of your identity shortly after you returned to the Kandrian Empire and gained international fame amongst the connected internationalmunity as the youngest Martial Senior in history."


    "¡­Sigh," Rui shook his head.


    "The entirety of East Panama is watching, Your Highness," Master Ceeran patted him on the back. "Don''t call me that," Rui bitterly reprimanded him.


    Master Ceeran smiled, putting a hand on his shoulder, before gazing forward. "I cannot imagine what you are going through. It is not my ce to tell you what to do, and it is certainly not my intention. All I can do is promise to help you in any way I can. That is all."


    "¡­Thanks."


    Rui heaved a sigh as he resolved himself. This was his new reality.


    There was no point in trying to run away from it. It was better to face it head-on and forge a path forward.


    "Let''s go," Rui narrowed his eyes.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1762 In Shock

    <h4>Chapter 1762 In Shock</h4>


    That day, a ripple spread.


    It originated from the Kandrian throne hall, rapidly spreading outwards. In just fifteen minutes, it had spread across Kandria.


    Or at least, the highest echelons of Kandria.


    Soon, it spread across East Panama within a single hour.


    Althoughmunication technology was scarce, it was well-established in the top ten percent of humanity. Within the highest echelons of humanity, there were vast information andmunicationworks that were centered around mass-mined esoteric substances that weremon enough to base a technological and artifact paradigm upon.


    Thus, although themoners of human civilization had yet to hear about the news and may never hear about it, the powers that drove human civilization on the East side of the gigantic Panama Continent had already received it shortly after the titanic revtion was disclosed.


    In this case, the news moved far too quickly.


    Not just because of the weight and sheer significance of the shocking revtion, not just because the second most powerful man in East Panama disclosed it, but also because Emperor Rael had invited every single significant and important person of the many powers and forces of Kandria to the Royal Addressal Ceremony.


    Each and every single one of them left the throne hall impatient to share the gossip with everybody in their circle andwork.


    The consequence was that the information spread like wildfire through the powers of East Panama. In literally less than an hour, every rich, influential, authoritative, and powerful figure across all of East Panama has received the news.


    Yet, none were more shocked than those of Kandria, those who had personally borne witness to the revtion of Prince Rui Quarrier Kandria''s royal bloodship.


    "...ording to the initial evaluations of the meta-background check on Prince Rui conducted by the Consortium Intelligence Task Force, there was no prior indication of His Highness'' royal bloodship," A woman calmly announced to arge round table. "Our Masters have also confirmed that there is absolutely no hint or evidence of hypnosis that could have been employed to potentially deceive the guests and the royals into seeing a Blood Ritual''s light on Rui Quarrier when it didn''t exist. The absence of any lingering aftereffect has caused Mind Sect to rule out the possibility of hypnosis."


    A grave atmosphere settled down amongst the individuals around the round table. Each of them wore crisp business attire that weighed practicality and extravagance equally.


    Not a single one of them thought that the Emperor was deceiving them. It would be far too easy to disprove it. He certainly would not have invited so many powerful Martial Masters of all factions and sects if he intended to be deceptive.


    "On top of that, Sage Farana has unofficially thrown her weight behind Prince Raul. She would not ept themand to deceive all the audience, including Prince Raul, of Rui''s royal bloodship."


    The Emperor''s ability to issue Royal Commands was not absolute. As power-hungry as the first Emperor Ra was, even he recognized the need to have some limits. Commanding Sage to vite all the powerful and authoritative guests with hypnosis was uwful.


    Essentially, there was no way around it.


    "Prince Rui Quarrier Kandria is the final prince of Kandria."


    A severe air dawned on the table.


    "Where is Her Highness Princess Rafia?" One of the suited women at the table sternly demanded. "She is the Founder and President of the Rafia Consortium. She owes an exnation, a vision, and a path forward for the future to us, her primary stakeholders, in light of recent revtions. It is deeply irresponsible for the Rafia Administration to conduct this briefing without Her Highness personally overseeing it." Text ? owned by N?velDrama.Org.


    "Hear hear."


    "I concur with the CEM of Verunel Oil Enterprises," Another suited man red at the secretary conducting the preliminary analysis and reporting. "This can be interpreted as a dismissal of our vested interests in her campaign."


    "I would like to form a petition to demand personal ountability of Her Highness, President Rafia." Another tier-


    one member of the Rafia Consortium announced.


    "You have my signature, Chairwoman Kiara."


    "And mine."


    "I, too, shall partake in this petition."


    A wave of agreement washed across the table of tier-one members of the Rafia Consortium as the chief of staff desperately tried to soothe her employer''s stakeholders.


    "Dignified members of the Rafia Consortium, I request you to assuage your demands for Her Highness. She has unfortunately fallen deeply ill after the Royal Addressal Ceremony and has been moved to intensive care for the time being," The woman tried to calm down the powerful business tycoons that formed the Rafia Consortium. "She sends her deepest apologies to you, her important stakeholders."


    The businessmen and businesswomen gathered at the table frowned collectively, furrowing their eyebrows in skepticism and concern.


    "Fallen deeply ill?" Chairwoman Kiara raised an eyebrow. "Does Her Highness think of all of us as fools? Did she forget that each of us at this table was present at the Royal Addressal Ceremony as guests invited by His Majesty? I recall herplexion; she did not seem physically ill."


    She red at Princess Rafia''s chief of staff, trying to squeeze an exnation from her.


    "¡­Her Highness has fallen mentally ill," The chief staff executive relented. "ording to the Royal Doctor tending to her, she has suffered mentally during the Royal Addressal Ceremony and has fallen in a state of shock."


    A wave of shock spread across the members seated at the table. "What?!"


    "How brittle!"


    "Madam secretary, this does not bode well for us."


    "I wish Her Highness well, but it certainly does not inspire confidence in me regarding her mental fortitude."


    Murmurs spread across the entire room as each of the tier-


    one members of the Rafia Consortium took a moment to deeply reconsider the choice of supporting Princess Rafia. The fact that she had failed to earn the heirship of the Emperor of Harmony was bad enough, but then the shocking revtions of Prince Rui Quarrier Kandria''s royal bloodship and heirship had put them in a bad mood. The fact that she then fell into shock and missed the preliminary analysis did not make them optimistic about her.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1763 Prudent Choice

    Chapter 1763 Prudent Choice


    While uncertainty, concern, and loss of confidence had sparked within the halls of the Rafia Faction, it wasn''t the only ce.


    "The Kandrian Throne War haspletely changed."


    Within the halls of a militarymand center in the capital town of Vargard. Many figures, garbed in military attire, sat on either side of a bare metal table, scattered with files and documents, extending across therge sphericmand center. "A new prince has appeared."


    Prince Randal stood at the head of the table with arms locked behind his back and split feet. His posture was stiff and disciplined, unmoving.


    "The unfortunate reality is that our campaign is bound to stall. However, I can assure you that I, Randal Kandria, swear on the great name of Kandria to do everything in my power to overtake mypetitors," Prince Randal boldly dered.


    He was lying, of course.


    He had greater mental fortitude than his sister, Princess Rafia, which was why he hade to terms with the fact that he was truly andpletely defeated. The reawakening of the Emperor of Harmony, his father, had given him dim hope that he could rely on his father''s enormous power and authority to gain a Royal Pardon, which would make him immune from persecution from the Martial Union against Rui Quarrier.


    Only his father had the power to oppose the Martial Union.


    However, an oue worse than even his worst nightmares had unfolded.


    Not only had Rui Quarrier turned out to be his brother, he turned out to be the favored son of the Emperor of Harmony.


    The chosen heir.


    Randal briefly considered suicide after that revtion.


    However, he decided against it. It was too shameful an act for him.


    He had resigned himself to whatever fate had prepared for him.


    "To think that His Majesty had prepared such a trump card despite his condition¡­" A man seated closest to Randal remarked with a grave expression. "I see that His Highness has not lost his touch as Emperor." Exclusive content ? by N?(v)el/Dr/ama.Org.


    His eyes turned to Randal with a stern light in them. "What are you going to do, Prince Randal?"


    Prince Randal felt the air grow heavier as the man fixed his attention on him.


    Grand General Aramoeous Flor-Eul Geigervansen.


    This was the highest-ranking officer in the Kandrian Royal Army. The man who answered to the Royal Emperor himself. He had fullmand over the one thousand apocalypse-ss weapons of mass destruction, each with the power to erase a nation, of arge variety, including the many beam-siege weapons, ballistic-siege weapons, chemical, and bioweapons that the Kandrian Empire had cultivated over four centuries.


    As long as he gained primary authorization from the Emperor, he had full authority over their deployment of it in war, as he determined.


    In terms of power and influence, it could be said that only Martial Sages and the Emperor surpassed him within the Empire.


    "What I have always done," Prince Randal''s tone was confident. "Persevere and ovee. My advisors and analysts will soon provide me with numerous courses of action that I can potentially take to mitigate this new variable. The only issue is that weck too much data. Thus, I have decided to wait until Rui Quarrier issues a statement or makes an announcement. It doesn''t make sense to n for his actions when we do not even know what his intentions are yet."


    Grand General Aramoeous stared at Prince Randal with fixed eyes.


    The entire room waited with bated breaths as the most powerful military man in Kandria considered Prince Randal''s words.


    "¡­A prudent choice," The grand general nodded slowly. "Knowing your enemy''s objectives is an important part of war strategy."


    Prince Randal inwardly heaved a deep sigh of relief. He would be in deep trouble if the esteemed military man disapproved of the prince. "Prince Rui Quarrier Kandria, hm?" The grand general narrowed his eyes. "I do not approve of him. I am constantly hearing one thing or the other about him. Frankly, it is quite the eyesore that the Martial Union got their hands on such a rare and incredible talent."


    Prince Randal heaved a sigh. "It''s unfortunate, but the Martial Union excels at snatching up Martial talent."


    The Grand General scoffed. "This is despite the fact that our fiscal budget allocation exceeds that of the annual profit of the Martial Union."


    He turned towards the Prince with stern eyes. "As I recall, Your Highness, one of your promises to me when I acquiesced to giving you my support was taking endeavors to increase the recruitment influx and retention rate of the Kandrian Royal Army, was it not?"


    "It indeed was, Grand General Aramoeous," Prince Randal nodded. "I have not forgotten that endeavor. My administration has already begun coordinating with the Ministry of Education in setting up sixteen military schools to counterbnce the sixteen Martial Academies of the Martial Union."


    "Hm," The Grand General nodded. "Good. We must not allow the Martial Union to snatch any more talents of the Kandrian Empire from us."


    His eyes narrowed. "His Highness Prince Rui¡­what are the chances that he will make a bid for the throne?"


    "¡­I cannot say, but I do not believe that it will be low," Prince Randal replied. "He had disyed an interest in the oue of the Kandrian Throne War and even engaged in a transaction where he elevated Prince Raijun a Martial Squire."


    "¡­Is he a Martial Supremacist then?" Grand General Aramoeous'' face crumpled with disgust.


    "Certainly not," Prince Randal shook his head. "However, his poprity and approval from the Martial Union is so high that he does not need to subscribe to Martial Supremacist ideology in order to earn the support of much of the Martial Union. In fact, he probably does not need to subscribe to any ideology to earn their support."


    Prince Randal heaved a depressed sigh inwardly. Just thinking about the sheer momentum that his new half-brother would be gaining was just deeply despairing, he wished he could live in a world where Rui Quarrier didn''t exist.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1764 Her Evaluation

    Chapter 1764 Her Evaluation


    While Prince Randal and Princess Rafia felt the mounting pressure from their factions, the other seven royals didn''t do well either. Princess Ranea, too, felt the mounting heat from her most important stakeholders in a meeting in the port town of Farund.


    "Princess Ranea, what is the meaning of this?" A man d in business attire demanded.


    "The revtion of my brother''s royal bloodship was new to the entire world," Princess Ranea firmly replied. "What has happened has happened. It cannot be undone."


    The president of the Kandrian Seafare Association narrowed his eyes. "What are you going to do about this? Even putting aside the Kandrian Royal Sword that the Emperor personally bestowed upon him, his own personal merits make him an extraordinary threat to your ambitions for the throne!"


    The Minister of Maritime Affairs nodded with a grave expression. "His Highness is sure toe out of the gates storming. Has he released an announcement or issued a statement yet?"


    "No," Princess Ranea shook her head. "There exists a realistic possibility that he might not bid for the throne."


    "I find that rather difficult to imagine, Your Highness," The Chairwoman of Kandria''srgest shipbuilder corporation narrowed her eyes. "Not only does he have a powerful chance of seizing the throne, but he is also bestowed with the heirship of the Emperor of Harmony himself. Even if he does not want to, he may very well do so because of how much pressure is being ced upon him to inherit the throne."


    "We cannot control his choice," Princess Ranea remarked. "The only thing we can do is invest even more into reaching the throne."


    "You mean we, your stakeholders, must invest more in reaching the throne?" The Chairman of arge luxury cruise corporation snorted. Princess Ranea did not respond. Outside of the minute fraction of the Kandrian Royal Treasury that each royal could extract once in their lifetime, she did not have any sources of wealth of her own. All of her faction''s wealth came from across the powerful and rich seafare and maritime sectors of the Kandrian Empire. Without all of her many powerful and rich patrons supplying her faction with a steady supply of donations from their own pockets, she would eventually run out of funds.


    "I understand that this is a difficult decision to make," Princess Ranea remarked calmly. "However, this is the price of the throne. The money you stand to lose if someone like Prince Raijun or Randal bes Emperor is far greater."


    Her stakeholders eyed each other before turning back to Princess Ranea.


    "Do not fail, princess," A burly man seated at the end of the table growled.


    Princes Ranea''s winced inwardly under his stern gaze and warning. This was Grand Admiral Geron.


    The head of the Royal Navy who answered to the Royal Emperor. Bestowed with the authority tomand the twelve hundred warships of Kandria at his own liberty in times of emergency and when war was dered, this man possessed a heavy voice in the seafaring sectors of Kandria.


    While the Royal Navy was a branch of government directly under the Royal Emperor''s control and did not profit from Princess Ranea''s maritime ventures, it did indirectly benefit from the state of naval and nautical technology growing as a result which directly tranted to the Royal Navy''s power.


    "I do not intend to fail," Princess Ranea narrowed her eyes. "Rest assured, I will be crowned Empress of Kandria." Exclusive content ? by N?(v)el/Dr/ama.Org.


    That was a lie.


    She, like Randal, already knew that her dreams for the throne were dead. Inwardly, she was actually relieved that Rui Quarrier Kandria was revealed to be a prince. She hoped that he would put an end to the throne war by ascending the throne and letting her live out the rest of her days without the burden that she felt now.


    "You''ve spoken to him before; tell us, what is your evaluation of Prince Rui Quarrier Kandria?"


    The grand admiral asked Princess Ranea point nk. The entire room turned towards her with askance.


    She took a deep breath before exhaling. "In my opinion, Prince Rui is a highlypetent and intelligent man and Martial Artist. His political philosophy is unclear. However, given that he has met up with all seven major prince factions and didn''t join a single one of them, we can say that he most likely is not inclined toward the philosophies espoused by any of the seven factions."


    Her eyes shifted across the room, meeting with those of her patrons. "It could be that he doesn''t have any extreme vision for the nation, which could be why the Emperor saw fit to dere him his heir."


    This was a possibility that the others found usible.


    "In that case, why don''t we try estimating what his political appeal is going to be?" One chairman raised an eyebrow. "From that, we can establish what his primary stakeholder targets are going to be, and we can pre-emptively get the jump on him and try and sabotage his lobbying and campaigning."


    This n greatly appealed to the other stakeholders, forcing Princess Ranea to acquiesce partially.


    "¡­I shall take it upon myself to ensure that the analyst division within my faction carefully considers the proposed n," Princess Ranea replied. "I believe, however, that the biggest stakeholder that Rui will target will be the Martial Union. I highly doubt that any amount of sabotage from our end can prevent him from earning the support of the Martial Union."


    The air grew gloomy.


    The love and affection for Prince Rui Quarrier Kandria that the Martial Union had even before he was revealed to be of royal blood was deep.


    Was it even possible to make the Martial Union, especially now that he represented a powerful chance for the Martial Union to bid on the throne?


    "We cannot give up," The Grand Admiral dered. "This is an era-defining opportunity to grasp the power of Kandria itself. Nothing can deter us from doing our absolute best to stop Prince Rui from ascending the throne."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1765 Earning Confidence

    <h4>Chapter 1765 Earning Confidence</h4>


    In a dark chamber built deep underground sat seven figures around arge round table.


    A foreboding silence rang in the air.


    The air was perilous.


    Electric.


    "¡­Is this real?" One man narrowed his eyes, reading a report.


    "It is, Don Jiteliana," Prince Rajak replied.


    Don Jiteliana''s expression grew ugly. "Prince Rui Quarrier Kandria, hm?"


    A fierce, malevolent bloodlust lit up in the depths of his eyes.


    "What a profoundly displeasing turn of events."


    His dark robes fluttered as he shook with disgust at the report.


    "Rx, Jiteliana," A seductive voice chimed in.


    "Do notmand me, harlot," Don Jiteliana''s eyes lit up with rage, ring at her. "Get your legs off the table before I chop them off."


    The threat in his eyes was palpable.


    "Like what you see? If you want my body so much, just ask, though it''ll cost ya." She blew out a deep puff of smoke before inhaling another from her cigar. "¡­Still, curious plot twist, ain''t it?"


    Her eyes shed with a hint of curiosity as they fell to the picture of Prince Rui Quarrier Kandria. "...Yummy."


    A sadistic smile emerged on her face as her eyes widened with lust and greed.


    The others sharpened their eyes.


    "Don''t even think about it, Don Carura," Prince Rajak narrowed his eyes.


    "¡­Oh?" Her eyes turned to Prince Rajak with a glint of maleficence. "¡­And just what was I thinking of?"


    "Your intentions are all but transparent," Another young man''s voice calmly interjected. "You were thinking of kidnapping him and selling him after getting a taste for one night, weren''t you?"


    "My, Carnil," A coy smile emerged on her face. "Y''got me."


    Her eyes returned back to the profile of Prince Rui Quarrier Kandria. "Such deep pitch-ck hair and eyes. Just like the fabled Demon of Asmodeus. I know some senators and congressmen of the Republic of Gorteau who have exotic fetishes. They would love to have him as a pet."


    "His Sagehood informs me to tell you to forget about it," A Martial Master seated at the table remarked. "Prince Rui Quarrier Kandria is not to be touched. His Sagehood says he will abandon all of you and escape when the Martial Union''s overpowering dominance and wrath destroys the Underworld in retaliation."


    An ugly expression appeared on all their faces. "How could such a coward be a Martial Sage?"


    "What kind of Martial Sage did you think would join the Underworld instead of the Martial Union?" Don Carnil heaved a sigh.


    "My Lords," Prince Rajak''s eyes narrowed. "Can we focus on the agenda at hand?"


    "There isn''t much to focus on." An elderly man at the table calmly remarked. "I have gathered all the information there is to gather. There is about a fifty-percent chance that he will bid for the throne. And should he choose to do so¡­"


    The old man closed his eyes. "Your Highness'' probability of ascending the throne plummets by about seventeen percent."


    Prince Rajak''s expression grew ugly at his words. "¡­Are you sure about that, Lord Dagonel?"


    The old man opened his eyes, slowly turning to Prince Rajak with a glint of darkness in his eyes.


    "¡­I apologize for questioning your judgment."


    Don Dagonel was the head of the Dagonel Network, the oligopolistic mafia for illegal information services. Although its scope and scale were smaller than those of the Beggar''s Sect, the quality of its information services within the Kandrian Empire, their main market, was on par with that of the Beggar''s Sect before rapidly declining anywhere outside.


    The entirety of the Underworld relied on the Dagonel Mafia for reliable information, as Prince Rajak in his campaign for the throne.


    "It is a shame that the assassination attempt by the four royals seems to have failed." Another man''s voice echoed in the dark chamber. "I went through all the effort of supplying gold to the designated assassins."


    Don Schambiei expressed his displeasure at the failure of the assassination attempt.


    "It wasn''t easy smuggling so many prominent high-grade Senior assassins into Kandria," Another woman remarked with a calm voice.


    "Your services were certainly appreciated, Don Schambiei, Don Feimia," Prince Rajak''s expression grew ugly.


    He, too, regretted that the assassination didn''t seem to have panned out.


    "We can consider the option of killing Prince Rui. However, I still need more support," Prince Rajak remarked. "Prince Rui will be gaining immense momentum right out of the gate. You can be assured that the Martial Union will not allow any force to so much as put even the slightest scratch on him. This time, even the ten Martial Sages of the union might personally move. We need to be able to win and outbid this new opponent."


    "It''s not that easy," Don Carnil nonchntly remarked. "We have tried helping you gain more momentum with our ventures, remember? But these require capital and are prone to risk of failure, like my drug trafficking operation from the Great Forest of Hynonarak that was targeted and rapidly annihted more than two years ago by a mysterious assassin."


    "I need your help, My Lords," Prince Rajak gritted his teeth. "I cannot ascend the throne without it."


    He inwardly cursed at the casual nonchnce of the Underworld''s reaction to the recent news. He had to deal with strange and entric personalities that were the height of irrationality.


    "¡­I''ll think about it," Don Carnil calmly replied. "I''m not sure how inclined I am. The probability of your victory has reduced substantially, and the risk factor has risen above tolerable magnitude. The probability of meaningful ROI increasingly decreases."


    He turned to Prince Rajak, narrowing his eyes. "Prove yourself. You''re intelligent andpetent. Show us that you''re still worthy of our unconditional support." N?velDrama.Org holds ? this.


    This was the first thing that all six dons of the Underworld found themselves to be in agreement with. They stared at Prince Rajak with judgmental eyes with a hint of amusement and skepticism.


    Prince Rajak''s expression grew grave. "Fine. I will show you that only I am to ascend the throne."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1766 Despairing Reality

    Chapter 1766 Despairing Reality


    The most silent out of all the seven royal factions was, undoubtedly, the Raijun Faction.


    Prince Raijun sat at the head of the table, listless.


    His eyes were depressed.


    His demeanor was soulless.


    He nced around the weakly. "¡­Have they yet toe? Perhaps they''re dyed¡­"


    A weakugh escaped his mouth. Text ? owned by N?velDrama.Org.


    He had called for a meeting, but a whopping sixty percent of his most invested stakeholders and patrons had chosen to skip it.


    Not a single one of the members of the Martial Union had chosen to participate.


    When he left the Kandrian Throne Hall two hours prior, he had been extremely determined.


    He had been incredibly resolved.


    He would not allow the damage to grow too far. He immediately called for a meeting with all his patrons to reaffirm his intention to dedicate his heart and soul to bing Emperor and turning Kandria into a Martial Supremacist nation.


    A strong head-on affirmation was bound to ensure that as few stakeholders would choose to defect.


    In fact, while the revtion of Rui''s royal bloodship and heirship had shaken him to the very core of his soul, he had taken it in a very positive manner.


    A challenge.


    He would ensure that not a single one of his stakeholders would leave the meeting with any thoughts of leaving the Raijun faction.


    Yet, they never came.


    That was when he realized he was truly ovee.


    The revtions of Prince Rui''s royal bloodship had driven everybody to excitement. This was especially true for the members of the Raijun Faction.


    Prince Raijun couldn''t even begin topare to Prince Rui as a Martial Artist.


    When it came to Realm, feats and aplishments, potential and progress, as well as overall utility andpetence, Rui was overwhelmingly superior to Prince Raijun.


    Everybody knew that.


    Before, however, Prince Raijun didn''t really care about that. After all, that didn''t mean he could ascend the throne.


    Now, however, it was all but overwhelmingly relevant. Any stakeholder and or potential patron would look at both of them as Martial Artist princes and pick Rui Quarrier any time of the day.


    Prince Raijun wouldn''t even be a Martial Squire if not for Rui aiding him and holding his hand every step of the way all the way to Squire candidacy.


    His secretary heaved a sigh. "Your Highness, as informed, they have chosen to skip the meeting to attend the emergency meeting held by the Martial Union."


    "Right¡­" Prince Raijun smiled weakly. "Right. I''m sure they''ll be here at the next meeting."


    It sounded like he was trying to convince himself more than anything else.


    Prince Rui had yet to even announce his bid for the throne, yet people were ready to dive into his faction, a faction that didn''t even exist yet!


    "Huff¡­" Prince Raijun heaved a sigh as a hint of hope shed in his eyes.


    He wasn''t entirely done.


    Not yet.


    He had spent enough time with his half-brother to know that the man was certainly not a Martial Supremacist and deeply disliked the philosophy.


    ''That means that he will not be able to win over the Martial Supremacist Faction much, if at all,'' Prince Raijun realized.


    After all, why would they support them if he actively worked against their ambition for a Martial Supremacist state?


    With that consideration in mind, he didn''t think he would lose any support from the Martial Supremacist Faction.


    What he was worried about was the progress that he had made rapidly ever since he started progressing towards the Squire Realm and after bing a Squire.


    He had truly begun gaining the approval of many sectors of the Martial Union after that recently, and he could lose all of these new bonds now that Rui had been dered royal prince and heir to the Emperor of Kandria.


    In hindsight, the lifelong spying on Rui Quarrier was finally deciphered.


    How many Martial Sects would favor Prince Raijun over Prince Rui?


    It was hard to conceive that even a single one of them would.


    In general, it was hard to imagine people favoring a Martial Squire over a Martial Seniors. But it was almost impossible to fathom it when the Martial Squire was a grade-one Martial Squire like Squire Raijun,pared to the youngest Senior in history with a multitude of shocking aplishments throughout his long life as a Martial Artist.


    There was simply noparison to be made.


    Prince Raijun had learned that there were even more shocking aplishments made by the Martial Senior once the Virodhabhasa Theocracy announced their support for Rui Quarrier, revealing that he was a champion of the Virodhabhasa Martial Contest.


    Apparently, he had withstood an attack from a new Martial Senior and walked it off without a single scratch visible on his body.


    Prince Raijun had needed to physically suppress his mouth when he learned about that, lest he let out an undignified scream before others.


    It simply reaffirmed the fact that Rui Quarrier was a Martial Artist who was cut from a different clothpared to his peers. It could be said that he was truly the strongest Martial Squire of his generation before breaking through to the Senior at the tender age of twenty-three.


    And now, at the age of thirty-one, he was already a powerful high-grade Martial Senior. Prince Raijun simply didn''t understand how a single Martial Artist was able to progress at such an absurd speed.


    This was especially the case when the age he broke through to the Apprentice and Squire Realms, while impressive and optimistic, were definitely not too infrequent. It was as though he elerated the stronger he got.


    This was the opposite of what was usually the norm. Martial Artists tended to slow down rtively the stronger they got. Yet, looking at how each feat that Rui Quarrier aplished seemed to be more impressive than the rest, Prince Raijun only grew more fearful of what his half-brother would go on to aplishter on in life.


    The more remarkable he was, the more the Martial Union would be irresistibly drawn to him. Prince Raijun could only envision how much harder things were going to get.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1767 Proposal

    Chapter 1767 Proposal


    In a wide hall was arge number of individuals seated semi-circr, facing a podium at the center.


    The atmosphere prickled.


    The air was wrung taut with tension.


    The many men and women seated were garbed in ostentatious business attire, yet none as much as the man standing at the speaker''s podium.


    "¡­And on to the main agenda of the day," Guildmaster Bradt announced. "Motion for the re-consideration of the Shionel Confederation''s neutrality stance towards the candidates for ruler of the Kandrian Empire. Agenda proposed by¡­" Content is ? by N?velDrama.Org.


    Guildmaster Bradt nced up from his paperwork. "¡­Me. I herebymence an open-forum unmoderated caucus on the motion."


    The first thing that Guildmaster Bradt did when the revtion of Rui Quarrier''s princehood and heirship had reached his ears was pass notice for the termination of some of the more ambitious agreements with Princess Ranea that involved her bing Empress.


    The moment he learned that Rui was of royal blood, he knew that Princess Ranea never had a chance of ascending the throne.


    Even when he removed the fact that Rui Quarrier was a powerful Martial Senior, the gap inpetence and ability to navigate circumstances by exploiting opportunities prudently alone would have been enough to make him deeply reconsider supporting Princess of the Seas. He would most likely still defect from her to a certain extent.


    Of course, he didn''t burn the bridge. After all, he was still connected to the Kandrian Seafare Association, and that connection was quite valuable regardless of the Kandrian Throne War.


    However, hepletely removed Princess Ranea from his mind when it came to choosing somebody to support the throne.


    However, this time, he didn''t just try to approach Rui as the chairman of Bradt Distribution Services. Unfortunately for him, Rui''s status, power, influence, and authority within the Kandrian Empire had spiked to an unimaginable degree.


    He was no longer Prince Rui Quarrier Kandria''s equal by himself.


    That was why he sought to leverage the power of the Shionel Confederation as a whole. If he could approach Rui with the authorized support of the entirety of the Shionel Confederation, then he would have much stronger bargaining power.


    He needed the vote of the entirety of the Merchant''s Guild to do that. Unlike the Emperor of Kandria, the position of Guildmaster did not lend him the authority to levy war or forge alliances on behalf of the state by itself.


    The established system of checks and bnces ensured that the guildmaster could not go out of control unchecked.


    Unfortunately, he had also run out of all his veto authority and decision votes to essentially force his way through the voting session, having exhausted his limited supply for them this guildmaster term.


    That meant that he was going to have topel the cab merchants of the Guild Council join the yet-to-emerge Rui Faction.


    Unfortunately, that was not going to be easy.


    "I am against it!" One cab merchant boldly dered, drawing attention.


    She red at Guildmaster Bradt. "I know what your game is. You wish to drag the Shionel Confederation into your secret alliance with Prince Rui Quarrier Kandria! I refuse to allow it! I, along with many others, have been deeply disenfranchised at the hands of the bastard prince!"


    Chairwoman Veros had been the third-most powerful merchant in the Shionel Confederation after Guildmaster Bradt and Chairman Deacon. Ever since Deacon Industries took a massive hit after the fiasco of the massacre on the final floor of the Shionel Dungeon, causing him to lose the election against Bradt narrowly, thepany had been on a slow downward trajectory.


    Chairwoman Veros had overtaken the young Chairman Decker, who had taken over the previously sinkingpany, to be the second-most powerful merchant in the Shionel Confederation.


    While the sensible leadership under the qualified Chairman Decker had managed to stop the sinkingpany and even cause a small hint of growth for the first time in ten years, it was not enough to preserve rank number two. "It is objectively the most profitable option by any metric of evaluation," Guildmaster Bradt narrowed his eyes sternly. "Prince Rui Quarrier Kandria has the highest probability of victory."


    "A high probability of victory is not the only variable to be considered when evaluating the merits of forging alliances," Her eyes sharpened in retort. "Compatibility of interests and history of cooperation are also equally important variables."


    "Converging interests are not a requirement since what I propose is merely a mary investment, a transaction, that will us massive profits should he sessfully ascend the throne," Guildmaster Bradt calmly rebutted. "I am not proposing we hold hands with him and entrust our lives in his hand. However, the promises of far greater benefits, ones that wealth cannot buy, can be obtained upon his victory in exchange for rtively humble capital investments. On top of that, Rui Quarrier does have a history of cooperation with important stakeholders in the Shionel Confederation."


    Namely, him; the most authoritative stakeholder of the Shionel Confederation.


    "I beg to differ," Chairwoman Veros snorted. "He may have a history of cooperation with you. However, he does not have a history of cooperation with most of us. Can we have a show of hands of those who have been adversely affected by Rui Quarrier in this cab?"


    Many hands across the entire room flew up.


    These were merchants who were a part of thete Chairman Deacon''s now-dissolved anti-Voider faction formed during the raid of the Shionel Dungeon roughly a decade ago.


    They had not forgotten their grudge against the Voider, Prince Rui Quarrier Kandria.


    There were more hands up than there were hands down.


    "You''re making a foolish blunder," Guildmaster Bradt narrowed his eyes. "Do not antagonize Prince Rui Quarrier Kandria a second time."


    "He antagonized us!" Chairwoman Veros retorted fiercely.


    "By freely and fairlypeting and winning the Shionel Dungeon?" Guildmaster Bradt snorted contemptuously. "By beating you at your own game through brilliant lobbying efforts and a genius strategy for exploration and extraction? Despite possessing zero venture capital while the lot of you had billions?"


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1768 Nostalgic

    Chapter 1768 Nostalgic


    ??The air grew prickly.


    Her expression grew ugly. "I-"


    "Children."


    His deration was firm.


    He narrowed his eyes, ring at Chairwoman Veros. "Is this how a cab merchant ought to conduct themselves? Comining like spoiled children every time someone else does it better than them?"


    He closed his eyes, shaking his head. "As much as I disliked thete Chairman Deacon, I at least respected him more than I respect any of you. He most certainly would not have sat hereining. He was a man of action; he would have fiercely gone all out and persevered till he overcame his problems."


    He opened his eyes. "Imence the voting process on this agenda. All in favor of motion D48?"


    Out of the hundred cab merchants, forty of them raised their hands.


    Guildmaster Bradt''s eyes narrowed. "All against?"


    Sixty hands, including Chairwoman Veros'', went up.


    Guildmaster Bradt closed his eyes, shaking his head softly. "¡­This cab votes against Agenda D48. With no more agendas on the docket, this Cab Assemblyes to an end. Meeting dismissed."


    Guildmaster Bradt shortly left the Cab Assembly Hall, followed by two Martial Masters as he headed to his own office in the guild headquarters.


    His eyes narrowed as he found Chairman Decker and his two Martial Senior bodyguards waiting inside.


    "Tough luck on that proposal." Chairman Decker remarked as Guildmaster Bradt entered his office.


    CLACK


    He closed the door behind him. "I don''t recall an appointment with you."


    Chairman Decker smirked mischievously. "Yes, but you can either kick me out or take a moment to hear out my proposal to you regarding Prince Rui."


    Guildmaster Bradt narrowed his eyes, taking his his seat at the table, steepling his fingers as he leaned forward. "What do you want?"


    FLAP


    Chairman Decker nonchntly tossed a file on the table.


    "¡­Bradt-Decker Political Venture Capital Guild?" Guildmaster Bradt remarked, furrowing his eyebrows as he read through the document. "An organizationprised of cab merchants in favor of investing in Prince Rui Quarrier Kandria in his bid for the throne?"


    "If we can''t get more than forty hands up in favor of a motion to consider supporting candidates for the throne of Kandria, then we just need to make do with forty people," Decker shrugged. "By founding a guild that gathers us forty together, we can collectively invest in Rui Quarrier Kandria."


    "¡­Hm," Guildmaster Bradt considered the proposal deeply. "Although the bargaining power wouldn''t be on par with the Shionel Confederation had the motion passed, It is still better than if we individually negotiated with the prince ourselves."


    "Indeed," Decker nodded. "As a united political venture investment guild, we will be able to demand more concrete and greater promises that benefit the forty of us together."


    Guildmaster Bradt read through Decker''s rough draft of the administrative and managerial details. "This is rather borate for a preliminary proposal."


    He turned to Decker, narrowing his eyes. "You seem quite eager to support Prince Rui."


    Decker shrugged with a smug smile. "What can I say? We''re best friends, after all."


    Guildmaster Bradt''s expression grew skeptical. "He killed your father. You have met him only once."


    "It''s because he killed my father," Chairman Decker''s smile grew darker. "Saved me the trouble of doing so."


    "¡­Hmph," Guildmaster Bradt nced down at the proposal.


    He had to admit, the heir of his greatest rival had indeede up with a rather resourceful proposal that made the best of what they had. The cab merchants wereprised of the top hundred merchants of the Shionel Confederation for any given fiscal year.


    Forty of them represented an enormous amount of wealth.


    Together, they could muster up an enormous amount of bargaining capital.


    On top of that, as the name of the organization suggested, the ones who benefitted the most were himself and Chairman Decker. Normally, this would not be tolerated, but they could get away with it with theirbined authority and influence in the Shionel Confederation.


    On top of that, Guildmaster Bradt had not forgotten that Rui owed him a solid favor. He had made this investment a decade ago, choosing to believe in the shining potential that he saw in Rui, and it turned out to be one of the best decisions of his life.


    Prince Rui Quarrier Kandria went on to be the youngest Martial Senior in history and had reportedly already be a high-grade Martial Senior. He had made enormous contributions to the Martial Union, earning him the position of Senior Ambassador and a seat on the Martial Fiscal Committee of the Martial Union.


    While that was alluring in and of itself, he had wanted to wait until Rui at least became a Master.


    Now, however, he had changed his mind. With Rui being revealed as a royal prince and clearly the most powerful candidate for the throne, there was no doubt that this was the best moment to try and cash in that favor for some absolutely game-changing benefits for himself exclusively.


    Just the thought of it made him inordinately excited


    When was thest time he had felt this excited?


    ''Ah¡­'' An old memory resurfaced in his mind. ''It was when the Voider proposed a partnership that allowed both of us to dominate our respect battles.''


    It was rather profound that ten yearster, he would feel the same sense of excitement from the exact same person.


    "Rui Quarrier Kandria¡­" The man murmured.


    "Hm?" Decker tilted his head.Text ? owned by N?velDrama.Org.


    "Nothing," Guildmaster Bradt shook his head, his attention returning to the proposal by Decker.


    He had already made up his mind


    "I approve."


    "Nice," Decker grinned. "Let''s start setting up then."


    Guildmaster Bradt nodded. "I''ll leave the administrative and managerial establishment to you; I''ll lobby the forty cab merchants to join the proposed guild."


    "Makes sense," Decker nodded. "Let''s keep each other posted with standard progress reports. I suppose we have a deal then."


    The two men got up, shaking hands before Decker left the room eagerly, ready to immediately begin working on setting up the guild.


    Guildmaster Bradt also got to work, determined to make the most out of a lifetime opportunity.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1769 Disclosure

    Chapter 1769 Disclosure


    The journey back home felt like it took forever. Rui wasn''t even sure that he wanted to go home yet.


    What was he supposed to tell everybody when he got back home and they asked him how the Royal Addressal Ceremony went?


    His family was, of course, far from well-connected. They would have no idea what had happened at the ceremony. He had been invited to several events connected to the royals, and even if this one was clearly far more prestigious, they didn''t think much of it.


    STEP


    He arrived before the orphanage with a deeply contemtive expression. "We''ll speak again whenever you''re ready," Master Ceeran remarked. "Take your time."


    WHOOSH


    He felt Master Ceeran moving away, hiding his presence and joining the perimeter consisting of Master Vericita and Master Zentra. He could also sense Master Reina, but he knew that she was specifically allowing him alone to sense her.


    Yet, at the moment, he was only concerned about his family.


    It had grown a lot in the many years he had been a part of it.


    All the children in his generation of orphans had grown into caretakers who worked part-time or full-time in the orphanage. Not only did they work hard to support an increasinglyrger orphanage spread across multiple houses built beside the original ones, but they also chipped in some of their own scant earnings to contribute to supporting the children. It was a task that only grew harder. When he was adopted, there were only sixteen orphans, for that was the limit that the orphanage could support. However, since then, the number had risen dramatically.


    If he was being perfectly honest, he would be lying if he said he knew all of them or had formed a bond with all of them. Many children had been brought to the orphanage and had grown up there while he was away from the Kandrian Empire. He certainly was not as close to them as much as he''d like. Content is ? by N?velDrama.Org.


    But that didn''t matter.


    He was given a home when he didn''t have one without any expectations in return.


    He was going to impart the same to those who came after. He would ensure that, no matter what choice he made from here on out, the consequences of his identity and his actions would not hurt them in any way.


    He had several ways of going about it, but that was a matter for another day.


    For now, he needed to tell his family the truth. While he would rather not disrupt their lives with it, there was no point in hiding it because it had be public knowledge at that point.


    Julian would definitely find out very rapidly, even if he wasn''t told.


    He heaved a deep sigh as he prepared himself.


    CLACK


    He opened the door to the orphanage.


    "I''m back!" Rui announced to the entire house. "How did it go, dear?" Lashara asked him while tending to the orphanage.


    "¡­I have something to tell you," Rui heaved a sigh.


    "What is it?"


    Rui shook his head. "Let''s gather everybody first. This is important."


    Fifteen minutester, the confused adults of the orphanage gathered around in the room reluctantly at Rui''s insistence.


    "What''s this about?" Alice asked, curious.


    "He has another shocking tale to tell us," Farion grumbled.


    "Can this wait?" Mayra folded her arms. "I have to start prepping for dinner."


    Julian simply stared at Rui with a serious expression, noticing the severity in his bodynguage.


    "This is important; I''ll be quick, I promise," Rui assured them.


    Within twenty seconds, he briefly summed up all the relevant facts. It was better to rip the band-aid off swiftly rather than take his sweet time and test their patience. Their expression morphed by the second as he spoke, swiftly divulging everything that they needed to know.


    In twenty seconds, they had gone from reluctantly curious to shocked and utterly bbergasted.


    The air tingled as each of them struggled to process the information that Rui had conveyed to them.


    For several seconds, they simply stared at him like he hade from another world.


    "¡­You''re a royal prince?" Farion whispered.


    "That''s right," Rui confirmed.


    Lashara stared at him, speechless.


    "However, while I am a Royal Prince, I do not consider the royal pces my home," Rui remarked. "I don''t care for luxury. Never have and never will. That''s why¡­"


    He turned to his mother. "I still and will always consider this orphanage to be my family and my home."


    Lashara smiled at those words.


    "You''ll always be my precious baby," She pulled him in for a hug. "And this will always be your home."


    Rui smiled, returning her embrace. "Thanks, mom."


    She smiled warmly, kissing him on the head. Rui basked in her affection for quite some time. It soothed his nerve, casting a healing effect on him.


    The others didn''t nearly recover from the shock as quickly as Lashara did.


    "Royal prince¡­YOU''RE A ROYAL PRINCE!" Alice gasped.


    "¡­Unbelievable."


    "¡­So you can also be EMPEROR!"


    "Congrattions!"


    "Our Rui bing Emperor would be amazing!"


    They were shaken, trying to process the weight of the implications of what Rui had told them. Xanarn was speechless, utterly stunned. "¡­To think that you were a prince all this time."


    "I know it''s a lot," Rui heaved a sigh. "But it''s the truth."


    "What are you going to?!" One asked.


    "Be Emperor!"


    "He won''t be able to spend any time here then¡­"


    The ruckus began growing out of hand.


    It took half an hour before Rui was able to calm them down.


    "Alright, alright, the kids are waiting; let''s not waste too much time," Rui remarked, ushering them out of their reveries and back to reality. "I didn''t mean to disrupt your work. We can talk more extensivelyter on."


    He managed to coax the stunned and bbergasted orphanage caretakers back to their original tasks. As much as they wanted to bombard him with questions, the children who needed their attention took priority. All except one.


    Julian had taken a seat, pondering what Rui had told him.


    "You''re taking this swimmingly well," Rui smiled wryly.


    "Well, a rational mindset is especially necessary when the stakes are high," Julian calmly remarked. "Still, this is most unfortunate."


    Rui raised an eyebrow appreciatively. As expected, Julian immediately processed the information that Rui had supplied and understood the various ramifications of the events that Rui had described. "It is," Rui heaved a sigh.


    "So¡­" Julian stared at Rui. "Have you made your choice?"


    A heavy air came between them.


    Rui heaved a sigh. "No."


    "Hm, I suppose it''s far too early for that," Julian remarked. "However, you will have to make a choice sometime soon."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1770 Pros and Cons

    Chapter 1770 Pros and Cons


    "I know," Rui heaved another sigh.


    He knew that even as they spoke, the ruling ss of the human civilization of East Panama was furiously considering the new information and what they could do to spin it in their favor. The future of Kandria impacted the future of East Panama more than they wished.


    If someone like Prince Randal ascended the throne, then the nations of East Panama could only quiver.


    While the Sage-level powerhouses of East Panama were confident no matter who ascended the throne, the nations that weren''t too far from the Kandrian Empire, such as the Commonwealth Duchy of Vinfrana, the Kingdom of Grahal, and the Violis Kingdom. They would much rather have a candidate who wasn''t a psycho.


    That was why the revtion of Rui''s princehood mattered to everybody within a hundred thousand kilometers of the Kandrian Empire in East Panama.


    He needed to make his decision quickly lest he experience pressure from countless stakeholders about his intentions, regardless of what they were.


    "¡­I don''t know what to do," Rui breathed deeply. "¡­It''s almost impossible to weigh the considerations against each other."


    "Well, we can start simply by looking at the pros and cons of announcing your bid for the throne," Julian remarked. "What do you stand to gain from bing Emperor?"


    Rui stirred. "Well, a lot. For one, as a Martial Artist, it''s not unattractive in every way. Extraordinarily rare and powerful resources that not even Martial Masters can merit¡­are all within the palm of my hand."


    Julian nodded. "As Emperor, you can gain resources that would normally require reaching the Sage Realm to even consider getting."


    Rui nodded. The Roaring Dragon Blood Potion was nothingpared to what he could get if he ascended the throne.


    He would be lying if these prospects were not deeply attractive to him. They definitely were. He could perhapspletely mitigate the enormous power gap between himself and his peers.


    Every single high-grade Martial Senior possessed a Martial Body that was far stronger than his own. He made up for the gap with a Martial Art that was superior and more potent than that of his opponent.


    He could probably not only entirely close that gap but also surpass his peers with a stronger Martial Body by augmenting his body with resource after resource, potion after potion.


    He wasn''t idealistic about whether this was a good or bad thing. A powerful Martial Body was necessary for Project Water, there was absolutely no doubt about that. On top of that, his body would eventually reach that power in time, all he would be doing was hastening the process.


    All in all, a very solid benefit to ascending the throne.


    "That''s not all," Rui heaved a sigh. "Ensuring the crazy ambitions and objectives of my half-siblings nevere to fruition is also a decent advantage."


    By bing Emperor, he could crush the embers of civil war between the princes and the civil wars they would cause when they instated their crazy policies. Preventing them from going down this path was also a worthy goal and objective.


    "True," Julian nodded. "But that''s not all, is there?"


    "¡­No, there are actually some other benefits," Rui sighed. "I can also give the orphanage better protection than just as a prince."


    "True," Julian nodded. "That is certainly a personally reassuring benefit of you bing Emperor."


    Julian exhaled heavily. "Ok, now what are the cons?"


    Rui closed his eyes. "My father tried convincing me otherwise, but if I ascend the throne, I can forget about dedicating myself to my martial path and martial art."


    The air grew heavy.


    It was quite evident that this downside was deeply undesirable to Rui.


    He could forget about immersing himself in long, extensive training sessions.


    He could forget about dedicating everything to Project Water.


    He could forget fighting a real battle with his life on the line.


    He could forget about refining his Martial Art.


    In the worst-case scenario, he would start to be like Prince Raijun.


    Just the thought of it disgusted him.


    He would rather die than let himself fall to such an extent.


    He would also have to engage in a lot of boring legitive work. The Emperor was the sole legitive body in the entirety of the Kandrian government. His word was literallyw. But that also meant that he needed to manage Kandrianw.


    The other princes and princesses had received an education on Kandrianw as a mandatory part of their sybus to ensure they were qualified to ascend the throne.


    He would need to learn the entirety of the Kandrian Constitution.


    Of course, this was a trivial feat for his mind. He could do it any time he pleased, but it wasn''t the only requirement. Being Emperor was not a simple, unidimensional job. He needed to familiarize himself with the Kandrian Empire to its very core, gaining an intricate understanding of the details and nuances of its economy and history, as well as many mundane details about geography and topography.


    He would also need to be briefed on countless necessary, highly confidential ssified information and intelligence about Kandria, about foreign powers, and about human civilization in general.


    Only upon knowing this could he possibly be ready to be Emperor.


    Just the thought of going through all this made him groan.


    He was a Martial Artist. This was the one and only con to bing Emperor, yet it was enormous and ring.


    "You can''t have your cake and eat it, Rui," Julian calmly remarked. "It''s either your Martial Path or the path of Emperor unless you think can walk both paths simultaneously through some miracle."


    Rui heaved a sigh. "I don''t know, Julian. I don''t know. It hasn''t even been more than a few hours since I spoke to His Majesty."


    The air grew heavy once more. Text ? owned by N?velDrama.Org.


    "Well, the cards have beenid," Julian calmly remarked. "Now you need to look into yourself and understand what it is that you truly want out of these circumstances."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1771 Nigh Unanimous

    Chapter 1771 Nigh Unanimous


    ??Arge number of important individuals had gathered deep in the Martial Union headquarters in the capital town of Vargard.


    The seating arrangements were structured strangely.


    A hundred and eleven seats faced the speaker''s podium, each upied by a Martial Master.


    There were two more sections of seats on either side of the Martial Masters, facing each other, upied by various different non-Martial officials within the Martial Union. Commissioners, managers, directors, and so on and so forth.


    Although they didn''t have any real authority, they did have the right to spectate and voice their opinions, offering a non-Martial perspective.


    "I presume that everybody knows why this emergency meeting has been called." The speaker calmly remarked. "This assembly has been called for one and only one agenda."


    A moment of silence lingered in the air.


    "The stance of the Martial Union on the recent revtion of His Highness, Prince Rui Quarrier Kandria''s royal bloodship and heirship," The speaker remarked. "As everybody here is aware, thismittee was unable to arrive at a consensus on the decision of the Martial Union on the cold war ensuring in the Kandrian Empire at the moment. In light of the aforementioned revtions, there have been arge number of calls for reconsideration on this matter."


    Different Martial Sects and factions within the Martial Union supported different princes and princesses.


    Although Prince Raijun had received the most amount of support from the Martial Union, each of the six other princes and princesses had also received support in varying amounts, including Prince Raul and Prince Rajak, who had managed to earn the support of several unorthodox sects who wanted to decriminalize several forbidden substances and products that were relevant to their Martial Path.


    Thus, themittee never arrived upon a consensus on which candidate the Martial Union ought to choose.


    Now, however, many people felt it was possible that the Martial Union may unanimously or overwhelmingly approve of one and only one candidate.


    "Let us not beat around the bush," The speaker remarked. "What is the will of the Martial Union about Prince Rui Quarrier Kandria. I open the stage for free discourse."


    Not a moment passed, and all hell had broken loose."


    "THE FIRE SECT APPROVES!" Master Iskan bellowed with a wild grin. "His Highness, the Void Prince, has proven time and time again that he is a Martial Artist among Martial Artist. A Martial Artist cut from a different cloth! A general supermind who, for once, chose to pursue his Martial Path instead of boring shit like medicine or history!"


    "Hear hear!"


    "The Fire Sect fully supports Prince Rui Quarrier Kandria!"


    "The Void Prince shall lead the Martial Union and the Kandrian Empire to eternal Martial glory!"


    The boisterous Martial Masters Fire Sect began causing a ruckus as they vocally supported Rui.


    "Order¡­ Order¡­!" The speaker urged them to calm down. "I encourage all members to partake and allow others to partake equally."


    However, the Fire Sect wasn''t the only sect that expressed support for Rui.


    "The Lightning Sect supports the Martial Union supporting Rui Quarrier," A thin, lean female Martial Master stood up, dering. "We havee to a unanimous decision that of the potential candidates for Emperor or Empress, the Void Prince must be the Fourth Emperor of Kandria."


    "The Earth Sect is also deeply in favor of the Martial Union supporting Prince Rui Quarrier for Emperor."


    The three major sects of the Martial Union had made their decisions.


    It was clear that nearly single Martial Master among the three had an extremely favorable impression of the prospects of Prince Rui bing Emperor.


    "The Breathing Sect also unanimously approves." A Master from the Breathing Sect dered.


    "The Mind Sect also unanimously approves."


    "The Bnce Sect also¡­"


    One by one, Martial Sect after Martial Sect dered their approval for Rui Quarrier ascending the throne.


    Yet, not all Martial Sects were in favor.


    "The Poison Sect disapproves!" A Martial Master with an unnatural paper-white skin dered.


    The momentum of the pro-Rui power bloc was halted as the first sect thoroughly opposed them.


    "Ungrateful bastards!" One Martial Master cursed. "You have benefited from the Hungry Pain technique, and this is how you repay him?!"


    "We have indeed benefited from him," The leading Martial Master of the Poison Sect replied. "However, our decision is based on future considerations, not past. So long as Prince Rui does not announce his intention to decriminalize the thirty- one illegal poison substances under Kandrianw as Emperor, we will not support him!"


    The Poison Sect was firm on what they wanted from the Kandrian Emperor. While it was true that Rui had earned their admiration and respect, it was not enough to overwhelm the actual benefits that supporting Prince Rajak would bring them.


    Stronger poisons meant stronger poison-oriented Martial Artists, and that was very difficult to beat.


    "¡­The Merge Sect is firmly in favor of Prince Rui!" One man from the non-Martial section dered.


    This sent a wave across the gathered members. Yet, it was not unexpected. In their eyes, Rui Quarrier may as well have be a beacon of hope. Not only was he the tinum boy of the Martial Union, but he was also clearly the tinum boy of the Royal Family, heaving earned the heirship of the Emperor of Harmony.


    He alone could fulfill the dream of the Merge Faction. The dream of the Merger Faction to unite the Martial Union with the Kandrian government. With his strong ties to the Royal Family and the Martial Union, it was not impossible for him to rewrite Kandrianw and convince both parties to unite in some fashion.


    "We will support Prince Rui till the end of time!" The unofficial representative of the Merge Faction within the Martial Union firmly dered. "We urge the Union to fully support the Void Prince!"


    However, they weren''t the only faction with an opinion on Rui Quarrier.


    "The Martial Supremacist Faction¡­" One member began. "¡­is torn in half."


    She faced the entiremittee. "We, of the pro-Rui Martial Supremacist Faction, fully support His Highness to rule Kandria."


    This chapter upload first at  Text ? owned by N?velDrama.Org.

 Chapter 1772 Rationales

    Chapter 1772 Rationales


    A wave of surprise spread through the members of themittee.


    The Martial Supremacist was a highly cohesive faction.


    Yet apparently, the Final Prince was powerful in a topic to cleave even this cohesive faction into two.


    "We of the pro-Rui Martial Supremacist Faction are in favor of supporting the Void Prince," She said. "We believe it will do more for Martial supremacy to support him instead of Prince Raijun."


    The air tingled, prickling at their nerves.


    Many stirred at her words.


    The rationale behind it became increasingly clear.


    Prince Rui was far likelier to win the throne war than Prince Raijun. Thus, supporting him was the best way to get a through-and-through Martial Artist on the throne. However, that wasn''t the only rationale.


    He was also a Martial Senior, while Prince Raijun was a new Squire.


    He was a deeply aplished Martial Artist, while Prince Raijun had yet to have his first real fight.


    Many Martial Masters felt naturally inclined to support Rui between the two. He was overwhelmingly more attractive and superior as a candidate to support.


    However, his detractors had a point.


    "We of the pro-Raijun Martial Supremacist Faction have chosen to abstain from supporting His Highness, the Void Prince," One man remarked. "While we have deep respect for the final prince of Kandria, his marked distaste for Martial supremacy is far from a secret. We do not wish to support a prince that actively dislikes our philosophy."


    This was the reason that Rui had been unable to win over the entirety of the Martial Supremacist Faction.


    While a portion of the Martial Supremacist Faction had immediately defected and switched sides, the portion that was more concerned with making Kandria a Martial Supremacist nation had remained with Prince Raijun.


    The fact of the matter was that most of the portion that defected to Rui wasprised of Martial Masters.


    As Martial Artists, they were prone to judging Martial Artists by strength, regardless of context.


    Even if the duties of the Emperor were entirely irrelevant to one''s Martial power, they were still much more inclined to support Prince Rui because he was exponentially stronger than Prince Raijun. This was what power was to Martial Artists. It was overriding. Martial Artists naturally arranged themselves in hierarchies of power in any given organization or even random grouping.


    That was why Rui had earned arge amount of support from across the Martial Supremacist Faction.


    "The Bnce Sect supports Prince Rui for Emperor," One Martial Master dered.


    "The Aquatic Sect refuses to support Prince Rui," Another Martial Master immediately followed up.


    It was not surprising that this sect did not cease their support of Princess Ranea. After all, Princess Ranea''s vision heavily favored their sect above all else. The Aquatic Sect would be extremely prominent and powerful if she ascended the throne.


    Of course, like all members of the Martial Union, they certainly respected Rui and were grateful for all his contributions to Martial Art. However, that did not mean that they were willing to curb their interests to support him when he didn''t really favor them.


    It was also known that Prince Rui had been invited by Princess Ranea to join her faction more than a year and a half ago, and he had refused. He was known to be highly opposed to her naval ambition.


    It meant that if Rui ascended the throne, they were definitely going to be disenfranchised,pared to if Princess Ranea supported him.


    Just like the Poison Sect and the Aquatic Sect, there were sects that were ultimately opposed to the Martial Union opposing Prince Rui Quarrier.


    However, they were few and far betweenpared to those in favor of Rui. This content is ? N?velDrama.Org.


    "The Hajin Martial Academy approves," The calm and powerful voice of Headmaster Aronian reverberated through the General Assembly. "Prince Rui Quarrier has not only demonstrated an extraordinary drive for Martial Art but also a supernatural mind and a capacity for thought that rivals those of fabled human sages throughout history."


    Headmaster Aronian was the only Martial Master in the Martial Union who had known Rui from before he broke through to the Apprentice and Squire Realms. His insights regarding the prodigious genius were especially heavy in that regard.


    "The Weapon Sect refuses!" One Martial Master dered. "While we have deep respect for His Highness and his aplishments, he is unable to act in a manner that is best to our interests."


    One of the things that weapon-oriented Martial Artists were uniquely concerned about was ess to high-quality resources and smithy services. They were among the most economically aware Martial Artists and understood that their needs were greater than those of the average Martial Artist.


    That was why they had firmly chosen to support Princess Rafia in return for an astonishing amount of wealth and exclusive channels and agreements to secure the goods and services they needed for their Martial Art. The quality of their weapons would raise much more if Princess Rafia ascended upon the throne.


    Just like the Poison Sect and the Aquatic Sect, they simply did not get from Rui what they got from other princes or princesses.


    They weren''t the only ones. The pro-Rui Martial Masters cursed as more Martial Sects and Martial Masters than they expected refused to support the proposal of the Martial Union as a whole supporting Rui Quarrier.


    It wasn''t long before every Master, sect, and faction had voiced their opinion.


    "Let us nowmence the voting period," The speaker remarked. "All in favor of the proposal?"


    Arge majority of the Martial Masters threw their hands up in the air.


    "Eighty-two Martial Masters are in favor of the motion," The speaker remarked. "All against the proposal?"


    A minority of Martial Masters raised their hands. Their numbers were far fewer than those that favored the Martial Union wholeheartedly supporting Rui Quarrier Kandria as Emperor.


    "Twenty-nine Martial Masters have voted against the motion," The speaker remarked. "With merely seventy-three-point-eight percent of the votes, this motion has failed to meet the threshold of approval and has thus been rejected!"


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1773 Clash of Intentions

    Chapter 1773 sh of Intentions


    Immediately, the detractors who voted against it earned the ire of the rest of the room.


    "Tsk!"


    "Fools!"


    "You will regret this mistake."


    In order for a motion of foreign policy to be passed, it required at least seventy-five percent of the votes. This was to ensure that any decision the Martial Union made as an organization represented the will of arge majority. The motion to support Rui as an official candidate had just narrowly missed the mark!


    While the support for it was far higher than the fifteen percent that Prince Raijun had gotten when a simr proposal had been raised for him, it was still not enough.


    Of course, the various sects, factions, and individuals were free to support Rui in an individual capacity. They would not be able to employ the resources of the Martial Union, outside of their direct personal authority, to help whoever they chose to support.


    "With no more agendas on the docket, I dere this assemble to be clos-"


    Suddenly, a tremendous wave of pressure pressed down on the entire assembly.


    An enormous presence had suddenly arrived.


    A presence that weighed down not just on the mind but also on heaven and earth.


    The world seemed to almost distort to amodate this new presence.


    STEP


    He stood at the center of the assembly.


    His attire matched that of a monk, with a single robe that wrapped across his entire gargantuan body. His head was entirely bald, while his chin featured a long, white, flowing beard.


    Not a single person failed to recognize him.


    The Mountain of Fortitude, Sage Kreinwol Vintar of the Earth Sect, had appeared.


    "Your Sagehood!"


    "It is an honor to be graced by Your Sagehood!"


    The non-martial Artists exited their seats, kneeling down on both knees, pressing their heads into the ground, and prostrating themselves with abandon.


    The Martial Masters bowed their heads with respect and admiration.


    He stared at them for a moment before issuing a single remark.


    "I reject this oue."


    His words reverberated through the General Assembly of the Martial Union.


    "Your Sagehood¡­?" One Martial Master inquired.


    "The Martial Union shall support Prince Rui Quarrier," He dered.


    The General Assembly of the Martial Union shook as the veritable Martial Sage made his bold deration.


    Martial Sages normally did not partake in the nominal decision-making process of the Martial Union despite being the recognized leaders of the Martial Union.


    They couldn''t be bothered.


    However, that did not mean they couldn''t.


    Every Martial Sage reserved the right to veto any decision made by the General Assembly of the Martial Union or any othermittee. Their singr word alone was enough to outweigh the words of all Martial Masters of the Martial Union.


    It was an authority that they seldom used.


    Yet, every once in a while, a matter worthy of their time and attention appeared.


    This meeting was one of them.


    It had appeared that the Mountain Of Fortitude had chosen to intervene upon the failure of the motion to pass.


    "Your Sagehood, if you may be so gracious to give this one an opportunity to speak?" The speaker humbly requested.


    The Mountain Of Fortitude nced toward the inconspicuous human.


    "Speak." Content is ? by N?velDrama.Org.


    "Can this be interpreted as the exercising of your veto authority?"


    "Indeed," The Martial Sage calmly remarked. He nced over to the detractors of the proposal, who shirked under his vision. "I have determined that the General Assembly ispromised by interests outside of the charter of this organization. I hereby exercise my veto authority as well as my decision vote authority as a member of the Sage Council and thus¡­"


    His eyes sharpened. "¡­I hereby pass the motion."


    His powerful deration spread across the General Assembly, stunning everybody.


    Not only was he going to undo the decision that the Martial Masters hade to, but he was going to forcefully pass the motion using his authority.


    The Martial Masters who had opposed the motion gritted their teeth, yet they didn''t dare utter a word. He possessed the absolute authority to ovee theirs, and more importantly, he was a Realm of power above them.


    No Martial Master could resist a Martial Sage''s decision.


    However, a Martial Sage could resist a Martial Sage''s decision.


    And, on this historic day, it appeared that one had indeed chosen to.


    A single whisper echoed through the General Assembly.


    "Do not get ahead of yourself, Vintar."


    A second Sage-level aura spread through the General Assembly.


    The world seemed to contort and shiver under the weight of two Martial Sages.


    The Mountain of Fortitude narrowed his eyes "¡­Lemolen." A veiled shadowy figure had appeared before the monk. His face was entirely hidden, unseen to those who peered into the hood that covered his head.


    All they saw was darkness.


    "¡­Your Sagehood!"


    "It is He!"


    The sole assassin Sage of the Kandrian Empire, the Whispering Widower, had chosen to make an appearance. "¡­Do you truly intend to oppose me?" The Mountain Of Fortitude stared at the Assassin Sage with fixed eyes.


    "I reject your decision vote," The Whispering Widower''s raspy whisper was fierce.


    The air boiled in rm.


    Thends beneath their feet quivered in fear.


    Heaven and earth despaired as the two Martial Sages red at each other.


    One could only imagine its reaction when a third Martial Sage appeared.


    "I support the Mountain Of Fortitude''s decision vote." RUMBLE


    The very world itself seemed to shake under the weight of her words.


    A lean, elderly woman draped in long, overflowing robes appeared. Her silver hair overflowed far, far beyond her body.


    Yet it did not fall.


    It swayed afloat midair.


    Almost like it was underwater.


    "This union shall support Prince Rui Quarrier Kandria," Her imperious tone left no room for retort.


    The Breath of Destruction, Sage Mya Avastriya of the Breathing Sect, had dered her intentions.


    Three Martial Sages stood at the center of the assembly.


    An undercurrent of tension washed across the entirety of the General Assembly.


    The humans were reduced to prostrating voiceless spectators. Before the three Martial Sages of the Martial Union, they did not even have the right to speak.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1774 Silent Deliberations

    Chapter 1774 Silent Deliberations


    ??The Martial Masters silently witnessed the diverging wills of Martial Sages sh midair.


    lights¦­¦Ïv¦Ål ?¦Ïm Every twitch, every movement, every breath they took.


    It impacted the world.


    It churned the air.


    "Honestly, I think we should leave it to the Masters."


    A fourth Sage-level aura ovepped upon the others.


    The three of them frowned at the man who had just appeared.


    He was lying down on the ground, sleeping.


    "Why would you bother yourself with such tiresome work in the first ce?" The man yawned, remarking absentmindedly.


    Yet his eyes glinted with interest.


    "We should be the ones asking you that¡­" The Breath Of Destruction narrowed her eyes. "¡­Sevian."


    "Well, it''s been a century since I partook in one of these. So I figured why not? Also¡­" Sage Sevian smiledzily. "As much as I owe the kid one, it''s not appropriate to dismiss the Master Council decision because of your selfish intentions.


    The Sloth Sage of the Stamina Sect had made his choice.


    The votes from the Martial Sages were tied two-to-two.


    None of the Martial Sages uttered a word.


    They didn''t need to.


    Their speech was for the sake of those who beheld them.


    It was an unnecessary and primitive form ofmunication.


    They needed much less.


    Just a nce of the eye was enough.


    A deafening silence echoed through the room.


    A deep tension choked the air, wringing the atmosphere taut.


    Even breathing was a challenge for lesser beings.


    "Enough of this," The Mountain Of Fortitude narrowed his eyes. "If words cannot move you, then numbers shall!"


    The Martial Masters gasped as six more Sage-level auras spread through the air.


    RUMBLE!


    The verynd beneath them shook in agony.


    Heaven and earth wailed as the weight of ten Martial Sages weighed down on them.


    The lesser beings shivered in terror as godly power radiated from the beings at the center of the assembly hall.


    They prayed.


    At that moment, there were no atheists.


    They prayed to none other than the beings to the very beings who inspired primordial fear from the depths of their souls.


    "I''m ready to go a round or two any time if you lot are interested!"


    A horrifying malevolent cackle escaped from the Devil, Sage Damian Arrancar. A profoundly deep bloodlust emerged from the very core of his being, so much so that it was palpable, almost actual.


    "Restrain yourself, fool," The Tempestuous Fortress, Sage cken, scowled at the leader of the Fire Sect as he protected the minds of the assembly from his belligerence. "We convene. We do not war."


    He, along with the Mountain of Fortitude, led the Earth Sect.


    "War does not sound bad, though," The Hugging Hegemon defended her fellow leader of the Fire Sect with a grin that featured a mouth full of canine teeth. "I dunno if that pipsqueak of a prince is going to give it to us."


    Not even the deep, dark scars that ran across the entirety of her fair skin could draw attention away from the sheer hulking mass of muscles thaty underneath. An unfathomable amount of physical powery dormant within the depths of her body.


    Every twitch she made caused a tsunami of wind that the Martial Master struggled to contain.


    "The two of you are incorrigible," A young girl, one who looked no older than eight years old, red at the two leaders of the Fire Sect.


    The little girl seemed to live in a different flow of time.


    She tapped her fingers, yed with her hair, swayed back and forth, and tapped her feet seemingly all at once.


    She made billions of impatient movements every second.


    She couldn''t help it.N?velDrama.Org holds ? this.


    The entire world may as well have been frozen in time from her perspective. It took a deep amount of patience to issue her words in a manner that the lesser being couldprehend.


    "I support Prince Rui Quarrier Kandria."


    The leader of the Lightning Sect, the Flickering Elder, had dered her decision!


    "I second my colleague''s decision," The shing Flier calmly expressed his support for the Void Prince alongside his fellow leader of the Lightning Sect.


    expressed his support for the Void Prince alongside his fellow leader of the Lightning Sect.


    The air grew


    "Hic¡­buuurp,"


    Nine of them nced at one particr Martial Sage with disdain.


    "Sorry, sorry¡­don''t mind me, but man¡­" The drunk woman remarked as she chugged from her wine bottle. "This liquor made from the Celestial Plumberries of the Beast Domain just hits different!"


    The Celestial Plumberries were fruits known to be so extraordinarily toxic that a single drop of its extract once brought death upon the entire poption of a small country when it escaped into the air due to the mishandling of the product.


    Her hair was as disheveled as messy as her clothes were.


    Yet the perilous Sage-level aura that radiated from her was not for show.


    The Drunk Dame.


    The only Martial Sage of the Martial Union who didn''t bother creating or joining a sect.


    She, along with the Sloth Sage, were among the most entric Martial Sages of the Martial Union.


    "Why are you even here?" The Mountain of Fortitude red at her.


    She shrugged. "Why not?"


    "If you''re here, make up your mind."


    She nced at the Sloth Sage. "What choice did he make?"


    "He chose to oppose the motion."


    "Then I choose to support it," She boldly dered. "What is the motion again?"


    The nine Martial Sages stared at her, dumbfounded.


    While the mood amongst the Martial Sages was nothing they weren''t ustomed to, having known each other for centuries, the lesser beings did not perceive it as such.


    Most of them had fainted.


    The Martial Masters gritted their teeth as they beheld the ten Martial Sages of the Martial Union, silently deliberating in a ream ofmunication beyond their fathoming.


    RUMBLE


    The world quivered under the weight of the Sage Realm.


    A profound power that not even the Masters could fathom radiated from them, they, who were but a single Realm below Transcendence. A power that could only be considered that of the gods.


    They deliberated silently.


    It wasn''t long before a decision was made.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1775 An evening of Fruit Juice

    Chapter 1775 An evening of Fruit Juice


    "Mom," Rui nced at his mother.


    "Yes, baby?"


    An unusual silence had permeated through the Quarrier Orphanage. The caretakers had the opportunity to take the children for a small outing in the nearby woods for half a day of fun while the season of springsted. While the forest in the vicinity wasn''t entirely safe, Max and Mana had apanied them as bodyguards, so Rui wasn''t particrly worried.


    While managing and ying with the kids could be fun, he passed on the little trip. "¡­What are you making?" Rui asked, ncing at her work.


    "Fruit juice," Lashara smiled. "They''ll be tired when theye back. Some good fruit juice will make them feel better. Mayra has nned for some yummy meals today, so look forward to it."


    "Hm¡­" Lashara nced at him. "And what is my baby doing?"


    "¡­Just thinking," Rui replied, ncing at the wall before him before turning back to Lashara. "Say, mom¡­could I ask you about something?"


    "Of course," Lashara nodded as she squeezed the juice from an orange.


    "¡­What was your childhood like?" Rui asked.


    The silence grew more pointed.


    It prickled at the skin.


    Rui''s question wasn''t out of nowhere. He recalled what Rael had told him when describing how he found Rui a good home.


    An orphanage created and run by a woman who was once a trafficked orphan, determined to offer a loving home to orphans that she had been denied as a child.


    He didn''t really think much about it since, at the time, he had yet to process the many even more shocking revtions that his father had revealed to him. But as he sat here, he could not help but recall those words.


    Of course, he had an idea of what had happened. The Mantian Region once had a rather extensive child trafficking ring across Kandria. They would set up fake orphanages that looked like real orphanages and lure children into them with food, shelter, and apparent loving family


    It wouldn''t be a week before that child was never seen again.


    The Emperor of Harmony, along with the Martial Union, had worked together to systematically suppress this sector, although it was impossible to eliminate it entirely. It wasn''t not longer prevalent currently.


    "¡­" Lashara winced at his question.


    "¡­I''m sorry, that was an insensitive question," Rui apologetically remarked.


    Lashara shook her head. "¡­It''s not you, baby. It''s just¡­I don''t like thinking about my childhood."


    She squeezed the fruits even harder. "I haven''t had the most fortunate circumstances."


    That was putting it mildly. "But it was because of those unfortunate circumstances that I found my calling, that I grew determined to create a truly loving orphanage," She remarked. "Determined to give to others what I thought I had."


    She turned to Rui with a glint of affection in her eyes. "And it was the best decision of my life. That is why I do not resent my childhood if those experiences were necessary for me to choose this path in life."


    Rui smiled, amazed at the graciousness in her words as she returned to squeezing fruit with greater affection.


    "¡­Thank you," Rui found himself saying. "Thank you for creating this wonderful orphanage." N?velDrama.Org holds ? this.


    The air grew quiet for a moment as Lashara met his gaze with an affectionate smile. "Thank you for being born in this world."


    His face slid into aplicated smile at her words. "¡­You know, you''re the only person who didn''t ask me or talk about¡­it."


    His eyes met her motherly gaze. "Thank you. Thank you for that. Thank you for everything."


    Lashara smiled as she returned to squeezing fruits. "Everybody needs space and time. To think, to decide, to build up the courage needed to take the first step. Take all the space and time you need before you''re ready."


    "¡­Thanks," Rui smiled, resigned.


    He was once more reminded about why he loved his mother. While his life kept growing crazier, while the way people treated and talked to him changed, she would make him feel warm and fuzzy inside with just a simple conversation. No matter what he did or became, he was always her baby.


    This was something that grew increasingly precious to him as time passed.


    People who could just treat him ordinarily without letting his status get in the way. Of course, while the orphanage still loved and adored him, many of the caretakers could not hide their new awe and amazement towards him since the revtion of his princehood.


    Only Julian and Lashara had treated him entirely normally, and only Lashara had understood what he needed from her emotionally.


    He didn''t need to be bombarded with questions that he himself did not know the answer to, nor constantly reminded that he was the son of the Second Emperor of Kandria. These did not help him process things that he just wanted a moment of sce from.


    "Have a taste," She gave him a spoonful of the juice.


    "..Mmm, that''s nice," Rui clicked his tongue. "What do you think about the vor."


    "Tastes like love."


    "Oh silly," She giggled. "Tell me if it needs a little sugar; the oranges this season were a little too sour for the children."


    She worked on therge pot of juice while Rui supplied her with feedback until it was eventually done.


    "Done." Lashara turned to Rui with a smile, only to notice him in a pensive mood. "What''s the matter, baby?"


    "¡­Just thinking."


    "About what?"


    Rui''s eyes glinted with a hint of sorrow. "I probably won''t be able to do things like this ever again if I ascend the throne."


    She smiled mncholically, reaching and pulling him in an embrace. "Nothingsts forever. Treasure what you have while you have it and ept it when it goes."


    She squeezed Rui harder in her embrace, nting a few kisses atop his head. "Just like I am doing now. Grateful people are happy people. I am grateful to the universe for allowing me to adopt you as a baby. I am grateful that you have been a part of this family. And know that no matter what, you will always be my baby."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1776 The wisdom Of A Friend

    Chapter 1776 The wisdom Of A Friend


    WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH!


    Kane evaded a flurry of blows from Rui, circling around him before driving his blunt sparring daggers into Rui''s neck.


    THWACK!


    Rui sharply deflected his knife jab at the wrist, swiftly turning as he unleashed a powerful, swift blow at Kane.


    WHOOSH!


    Kane swiftly evaded the blow with ease, yet his eyes met Rui''s for a moment.


    ''Temporal Disharmony.'' Kane prepared himself for this technique, activating Fulminata Godspeed as a counter. This technique had a good synergy against Rui''s hypnosis,rgely negating its effects.


    Yet, he was not prepared for what came next.


    "Speed Void."


    Kane''s eyes widened as he felt his speed disappearing. Heaven and earth themselves opposed his motion.


    The very world rejected his Martial Art!


    BOOM!


    A powerful blow crashed into his sr plexus before he could evade it with his deeply hampered agility. The sheer power of the blow waspletely converted into damaged, soaked by his body, so much so that his body didn''t move an inch.


    07:20


    A powerful blow crashed into his sr plexus before he could evade it with his deeply hampered agility. The sheer power of the blow waspletely converted into damaged, soaked by his body, so much so that his body didn''t move an inch.


    "Ack¡­!" Kane gasped, coughing as he fell to the ground, unable to so much as breathe, his diaphragm reeling from the impact. "¡­Ok, you win. Sheesh." Rui smiled, offering a hand to him, pulling him up.


    "What was that?!" Kane eximed, shocked. "I''ve never felt anything like that."


    "It''s the domain technique I was telling you about," Rui remarked. "The Speed Void technique of my new Yggdrasil System."


    "That name makes sense, not gonna lie," Kane admitted. "I felt like my speed was disappearing. That''s insane, man."


    "Yeah, it''s quite powerful," Rui smiled with a hint of smugness. "It''s what I was working on for more than a year and a half after consuming the Roaring Dragon Blood Potion."


    "Oof, I''m going to need me one of them potions if I want to keep up, because you''re too damn strong!" Kaneined. "How''s progress been with those?"


    "Not easy," Kane heaved a sigh. "I don''t how you did it, but earning the right to consume those potions isn''t just a matter of money."


    "True," Rui nodded.


    Those were potions reserved for the Martial Masters of the Martial Union to ensure that their Martial Bodies did not fall behind the times due to inferior Squire evolution breakthrough processes. This was connected to the martial Union''s overall power thus these potions were considered strategic resources.


    The Martial Union did not hand them out to Martial Seniors, barring truly special circumstances. Rui was one of those truly special circumstances.


    "¡­Especially since the recent revtions," Kane remarked, throwing a knowing look at Rui.


    Kane was deeply shocked when he learned about Rui''s princehood. He couldn''t have imagined that Rui had a family that was even more lofty than his own! Rui heaved a heavy sigh. "Yeah. I don''t know if I''ll be going down that route."


    Though, he didn''t even strictly need to be Emperor to gain more resources, even his status as a prince afforded him greater options and opportunities to get his hands on some powerful resources.


    "As Emperor, of course, I would be able to gain far more resources than just a prince, but¡­" He left the obvious unspoken.


    "If you ask me, you should totally go for it," Kane remarked nonchntly.


    "You think?" Rui raised an eyebrow.


    "Absolutely," Kane remarked. "Not gonna lie, I''m surprised you haven''t leaped at the opportunity yet."


    "Would you?"


    "In a heartbeat, man," Kaneughed. "Think about it. You get to be the Emperor of Kandria!"


    Rui stared at him, flummoxed, before breaking into a wry smile. "Right, why didn''t I think about that? You''re such an utterly brilliant genius, Kane. Truly unparalleled."


    "What can I say? I''m just too good, you know?" Kane shrugged, ignoring Rui''s sarcasm. "If I were you, I would be Emperor, appoint a dude to do all the actual work, and just live it up, man. I''m talking luxury living, a staff of maids and butlers tending to your every need, maybe even a harem. The Emperor gets concubines, right? You should get a bunch of babes from across the world and just bang bang!"


    Rui furrowed his eyebrows as Kane crudely described the process of creating heirs for the future of the ruler of the nation.


    That was also one part he was not entirely looking forward to.


    Not the ''bang bang,'' specifically; he certainly had no problems with that specific part whatsoever, but the prospects of fathering dozens or hundreds of children and essentially leaving their education to trained staff and their mothers was something that he did not look forward to if he did choose to be Emperor.


    He also did not want to be the origin of the next generation of the Royal Family and watch them be power-hungry princes and princesses with a toxic and venomous hatred for each other who were each just waiting for him to die so that they could ascend the throne.


    "That doesn''t sound fun."


    Kane turned towards him with a flummoxed look. "You must be gay."


    Rui heaved a sigh. "I meant the fathering heirs part. I''m not ready for a single son or daughter, let alone more than a hundred."


    Kane shrugged. "Hey, you can''t have it all. I''d say it''s a fair trade for being required to have a harem. The best part is that nobody''s gonna judge you for fathering a lot of kids since you''re the Emperor. If I wouldn''t be judged by anybody I knew, I would apply for a harem today, not gonna lie."


    Rui chuckled weakly, shaking his head. "Maybe you could start with Fae and Princess Rafia."


    "She''s your sister, man." "You can kill her for all I care," Rui snorted. "I''d even help you bury the body."


    "Dayum!" Kaneughed. "That''s cold."


    Rui smiled wryly as he bantered with his friend. He appreciated what Kane was doing.


    He understood that the insights he had to offer were, well, not very insightful. He also knew Rui well enough to know that his considerations on the matter were far deeper than his own could ever evene close to being.


    What he could do, however, was lighten Rui''s consideration of the matter by blurting out his instinctual considerations about it, regardless of whether they were the most sound or not.


    This chapter upload first at  Text ? owned by N?velDrama.Org.

 Chapter 1777 Decision(?)

    <h4>Chapter 1777 Decision(?)</h4>


    Rui spent the next few days talking to several people about the recent revtions. Friends, family, acquaintances, benefactors¡­


    They had different insights to offer.


    "Drive alone is indeed enough to walk down one''s Martial Path, however¡­" Headmaster Aronian had told him with a knowing look. "Momentum can help you tread that path even faster. It is precious and does notst forever. Neither does your youth. Consider what ascending the throne will do it."


    He abstained from telling Rui what choice he ought to make. He did, however, warn Rui of how precious the momentum that he had rued in recent times.


    "Had anyone else told me that they could follow their Martial Path and rule the Emperor in a manner befitting the heir of the great Emperor of Harmony, I would haveughed in their face," Master Vericita smiled gently as she petted Rui''s head. "However, I would be unable tough if it was you, of all people, who told me this. Your mind is innately the most powerful that I have ever seen in my entire life. I believe that you, of all people, may be able to do the impossible and walk both paths."


    It appeared that Master Vericita thought highly of him.


    She wasn''t the only one.


    "I cannot begin to imagine how difficult ruling an Empire must be," Master Ceeran had remarked when Rui consulted him. "The sheer tribtions of mind that the Emperor of Harmony must have ovee to not only bring this Empire back from the brink of civil war, but also then turn a civil war into civil harmony. I do not believe that most Martial Artists are able to fathom how difficult it is. However¡­"


    He had turned towards Rui. "I believe you have the ability to seed the Emperor of Harmony. I believe that you have the power to surpass him. Thus, if you decide to be Emperor, I will support you with every ounce of power I am able to muster."


    "¡­Thanks," Rui smiled. "I will keep your words at heart."


    He wasn''t the only one who offered more clear opinions.


    "In the past decade, I have worked hard inpleting missions from clientele through the Martial Union," Master Zentra had inly informed Rui. "Do you know why?" Content is ? by N?velDrama.Org.


    "¡­No?" Rui tilted his head.


    "I''ve been seeking the Neinhart Nectar Potion," Master Zentra remarked, closing his eyes. "It''s a potion that increases the precision of motion of the consumer by an order of magnitude. I believe that it will allow me to reach a territory of control that has previously alluded to me due to ack of talent. Unfortunately, the Neinhart fruit only grows in Sage-level danger zones in the Beast Domain. In other words, it requires a Martial Sage to acquire it. That is why I''ve been working hard to earn enough credits tomission Her Sagehood, the Flickering Elder, to procure a fruit for me."


    He turned to Rui. "The Emperor would be able to get his hands on it within a month with a singlemand."


    Rui''s eyes widened as Master Zentra calmly conveyed the benefits of bing Emperor.


    "That is what you will be giving up if you choose not to ascend the throne," Master Zentra calmly exined. "Remember that whenever you feel like you do not want to talk about it."


    It was a powerful argument and rhetoricallypelling, even Rui had to admit. However, they weren''t the only Martial Masters that Rui had taken the liberty to consult.


    "Hehehe, you should be Emperor," Master Reina smirked.


    He had finally had a chance to speak to her when he returned to the Great Jrava Mountain Range.


    "Why?" Rui gazed at her skeptically.


    "Because it''s the most entertaining option for me."


    "Your selflessness is truly tear-jerking," Rui snorted.


    He turned to Master Gurren. "What do you think?"


    "I support it as long as you put more research into the astronomy department."


    Rui heaved a sigh, palming his face, earning a chuckle from Master Reina.


    "A man who walks two paths is an iplete man, my entertaining pupil," Master Reina smiled. "You would be happier if you dedicated yourself to solely one path and abandoning the other rather than having some kind of narcissistic, arrogant faith in your oh-so-brilliant supernatural intellect."


    She gave him sobering advice that made Rui consider the viability of walking two paths at once.


    Everybody he spoke to had their own opinions.


    Most people gave him sensible but ultimately useless redundant advice. It did not take a genius to realize what most of them told him.


    He actually found Kane''s thoughts to be more insightful than the generic advice. The greater the diversity of thoughts he had, the better he would be able to make a choice.


    Several dayster, he found himself sky-walking high in the sky, overlooking all of Kandria.


    The nation was so gigantic that not even at this height could he see from one end to the other.


    This was the nation that he had the opportunity to rule.


    It could be his.


    If he wanted, he could be Emperor of Kandria.


    If he wanted, he could be the second-most powerful man in all of East Panama.


    His word would bew.


    His desires would be reality.


    The very best of what this world had to offer would be offered to him with a bow.


    The power to elerate human civilization.


    The power to drown it in the mes of war.


    That was the power that he had the opportunity to take.


    A profound euphoria overtook him at that realization. It seeped through his body, heart, and mind.


    When he opened his eyes, his decision had been made.


    Later that day, an announcement was made.


    It spread through the Empire in a heartbeat before racing outside of the Empire and across all of East Panama.


    A single statement from Prince Rui Quarrier Kandria.


    "As the final prince of Kandria, I, Rui Quarrier Kandria, hereby announce my bid for the throne of the Kandrian Empire."


    Yet, while East Panama was rocked into an uproar by his deration, Rui found himself standing before Sage Sayfeel in the empty throne hall. The Martial Sage regarded Rui with silence, waiting.


    Rui stared at him deeply.


    His eyes, filled with determination, bored into the Martial Sage.


    A single demand escaped his mouth.


    "Tell me where the Divine Doctor is."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1778 Curbing Faction

    Chapter 1778 Curbing Faction


    Sage Sayfeel narrowed his eyes.


    The weight of his gaze pushed down on Rui.


    A single question escaped his mouth.


    "Why?"


    Rui stared at him silently for a moment.


    "I believe that I can find him."


    His eyes grew more intense.


    "I believe that I canpel him."


    His tone grew stronger.


    "I believe I can end this war by ending what caused it," His clear eyes met those of Sage Sayfeel. "I believe that I can get him to heal my father."


    Sage Sayfeel''s eyes sharpened into slits.


    The air seemed to shift.


    It seemed to be wrung taut by the escting tension.


    "End what caused it?" Sage Sayfeel whispered. The displeasure in his voice was clear.


    "Compel the Divine Doctor to heal the Emperor?" His eyebrows furrowed sternly.


    "That is not the destiny that your father bestowed upon you."


    His mouth curled with displeasure. "That is not the will that your father bequeathed to you."


    His tone grew more intense. "Your father entrusted the throne to you. He entrusted you to rule Kandria in a manner befitting the Emperor of Harmony."


    Rui met the Sage''s powerful gaze for a moment before closing his eyes. "I am aware."


    "I am aware, but¡­" His eyes opened.


    rity glinted in their eyes.


    "¡­but that does not mean I have to ept the destiny or the will that he bequeathed me," Rui narrowed his eyes. "He said the choice was mine. And this is my choice."


    Sage Sayfeel''s displeasure grew more pronounced. "Your father gave you power that many in this world would kill and die to have¡­"


    STEP


    He stepped towards Rui, peering into his eyes deeply.


    "¡­Yet you choose to reject that power that he graciously gave you?"


    "The only power that I am interested in is Martial," Rui calmly replied. "Political power¡­Economic power¡­Authoritative power¡­"


    He shook his head. "These are not for me."


    He turned back to the Sage, meeting his powerful gaze. "My only path is Project Water¡­"


    His tone grew more firm. "¡­In this life and in any other."


    "You would reject your father?" Sage Sayfeel narrowed his eyes. "You would reject this Empire? You would reject save it from the mes of war poised to consume it¡­?"


    His eyes peered into Rui''s. "¡­Even at the cost of your family''s peace?"


    Rui narrowed his eyes. "I won''t allow that to happen."


    "Then ascend the throne," Sage Sayfeel''s tone grew stronger. "Ascend the throne and rule over Kandria, just like His Majesty foresaw."


    "¡­It was my mother who had the power of prophecy, not my father," Rui''s tone was calm yet solid. "He didn''t foresee anything. He used the revtion of the truth and the threat against the peace and harmony of my family that I value to try and manipte me into the throne."


    Rui shook his head. "I cannot do justice to Project Water as Emperor."


    "I cannot tread my Martial Path as Emperor."


    "Every second upon the throne is a second away from my Martial Path," Rui narrowed his eyes. "No amount of thought can change that."


    His eyes grew more intense.


    "It was always an impossibility from the very get-go. I know you know that."


    Sage Sayfeel didn''t respond.


    Yet his silence was telling.


    "It was always an impossibility, and not even my father pretended otherwise," Rui closed his eyes. "The only reason I ever considered this choice, the choice to tread the path of the Emperor at the cost of my Martial Path, was for the sake of my family, but¡­"


    He opened them, meeting Sage Sayfeel''s powerful gaze. "¡­my family is not nearly as absolutely central to the very essence of my identity in the manner that my Martial Path is."


    He ced his hand on his heart. "Abandoning them¡­the very thought of it is excruciating. Just imagining it is soul-agonizing. Yet when I abandon my Martial Path¡­"


    His hand twitched with pain, wing at his chest. "¡­there''s nothing left. Just a¡­


    The darkness in his eyes rumbled.


    It seemed toe to life. This content is ? N?velDrama.Org.


    "¡­a void."


    Sage Sayfeel narrowed his eyes.


    "So you''ve abandoned them."


    His tone grew tumultuous. "You chose to abandon the family that epted you, raised you, and nurtured you with love and affection."


    Rui shook his head. "No."


    His tone grew stronger.


    "I will protect their peace without sacrificing my Martial Path," His eyes grew intense. "And I will tread my Martial Path while protecting their peace."


    He clenched his fist. "I will not ascend the throne."


    Sage Sayfeel closed his eyes with resignation. "Then why did you dere your bid for the throne?"


    "For the sake of the Empire," Rui replied.


    Sage Sayfeel stirred at those words. "I do not understand. You just said that you would not ascend the throne."


    "I announced my bid for the throne," Rui smiled. "That does not mean I have any intention to ascend the throne."


    "¡­What?"


    "If I did not announce a bid for the throne and Emperor Rael died while I was away looking for the Divine Doctor," Rui narrowed his eyes. "Then one of the princes and princesses, probably Raijun, will ascend the throne and be Emperor or Empress. If that were to happen, my efforts to find the Divine Doctor would be wasted."


    Sage Sayfeel''s eyes widened as he understood the extent of Rui''s n. "So you intend to announce your bid for the throne and create a faction that is powerful enough to curb any individual prince or princess from ascending the throne while you''re away."


    "That''s right," Rui smiled. "As long as I do that, none of them will be able to ascend the throne if my father dies before I return with the Divine Doctor."


    Sage Sayfeel narrowed his eyes as he beheld Rui. "But how are you going to maintain a faction while spending months, potentially even longer, away from the Empire? Prince Raul was able to do so because he earned fanatic loyalty from his people. While forces of the martial Union will be deeply loyal to you, they will question your absence."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1779 Void

    Chapter 1779 Void


    Rui smiled calmly. "An astute observation and one that I have a solution for. Good thing it is that already know about her."


    Sage Sayfeel narrowed his eyes. "¡­''her?''"


    "The Silent Shadow," Rui remarked. "You know, Master Reina Cara. She possesses the ability to transform her body to mimic the appearance of anybody; she also possesses the ability to mimic their bodynguage, demeanor, and microexpressions to the T. She can do it to a degree that not even non-sensory Martial Masters can discern. It''s one of the reasons she''s among the very best of the best as far as Master assassins go."


    Sage Sayfeel''s eyes widened as he understood the depth of Rui''s n. He realized it was quite impressive. "You n to create a faction, and once you''ve created the bulk of it, you then intend to have Master Reina Cara serve as a stand-in to mimic you to maintain your faction while you secretly leave the Kandrian Empire."


    "Indeed," Rui closed his eyes. "If I am unable to return to the Kandrian Empire with the Divine Doctor before Emperor Rael sumbs, then the Rui Faction, maintained by the disguised Master Reina, will stop any of my insane half-siblings from ascending the throne."


    "And then what?" Sage Sayfeel narrowed his eyes. "Someone needs to ascend the throne."


    "¡­I''ll figure something out," Rui narrowed his eyes. "Now, tell me. Where is the Divine Doctor."


    "Figure something out?" Sage Sayfeel''s displeasure grew. "Figure what out? You tried to figure something out, and that failed, didn''t it?"


    "It''s only a problem if I fail," Rui sharpened his eyes. "I don''t intend to fail. Where is the Divine Doctor?"


    "You will fail," Sage Sayfeel narrowed his eyes. "That is why I demand to know. What will you do when you fail?"


    "Why are you certain that I will fail?" Rui growled. "If you''ve watched me for much of my life, you should know what I am capable of."


    His eyes grew more intense.


    "I can see the past and the future."


    His tone escted.


    "Half of which gave my father hope that he could find the Divine Doctor."


    Sage Sayfeel was undoubtedly aware of the Angel of Lace. He also undoubtedly witnessed Rui using it in action when he used it to track stealthy Martial Masters from the future, peering into the past.


    A Senior effectively bypassing a Master''s stealth was a feat that would shock the entirety of the Martial World if they knew about it.


    Sage Sayfeel would be lying through his teeth if he said he hadn''t been shocked and silent that day.


    Rui stared at him with askance. "What do you know that ascertains you of my failure?"


    Sage Sayfeel narrowed his eyes. "¡­You are capable¡ªhighly capable¡ªmore so than any Senior that I have ever seen. However¡­"


    His tone grew grave.


    "¡­Do you think you can find the Divine Doctor within the entirety of the Beast Domain before the Emperor dies in half a year?"


    Rui''s eyes widened with shock. "...Half a year?! What is a human doing in the Beast Domain?!"


    He couldn''t believe what he was hearing.


    The Beast Domain was highly perilous and highly expansive. The idea that a human could walk into it and survive for long periods of time was absolutely absurd!


    Even Martial Artists had a shockingly high mortality rate within the Beast Domain; it was truly a hellish ce for anybody not powerful enough to survive.


    "The information is verified and vetted," Sage Sayfeel remarked with resignation. "He is somewhere in the Beast Domain."


    Sage Sayfeel narrowed his eyes, turning to Rui Quarrier. "So tell me, Your Highness, can you find and bring back the Divine Doctor from god-knows-where in the Beast Domain before His Majesty passes away half a year from now?"


    Rui''s expression grew grave. "¡­I didn''t know he has half a year left. Is that why you said he was unavable?"


    Sage Sayfeel''s expression crumpled with frustration and resignation. "He fell unconscious shortly after you departed. I was prepared to announce it shortly after you made your decision. He has¡­entered the phase of eternal sleep."


    This was the final phase, where the patient entered a deathly state where they would be indistinguishable from death, barring a scarce heartbeat and mild respiration. It would continue slowing down until the patient passed away sometime after.


    His eyes returned to Rui. "You haven''t answered my question."


    His tone was demanding. "Do you think it is possible for you to find him across the entirety of the Beast Domain in just half a year?" Sage Sayfeel''s voice grew fiercer. "Do you think you can even convince him to help the Emperor when he is known not to defer even to Martial Sages? Only Martial Transcendents and so-called ''kindred souls'' can earn his aid."


    The Sage''s gaze intensified. "Even at the threat of death, he does not budge. Martial Artists have killed him for his impudence in the past, yet eventually, he simply returns from the dead. How are you going topel such a man to help you?" N?velDrama.Org holds ? this.


    "¡­Returning from the dead," A strange expression appeared on Rui''s face. "¡­''kindred souls''?"


    A strange possibility entered his mind.


    A deep curiosity burned in his eyes.


    "Even if you could somehowpel him," Sage Sayfeel narrowed his eyes. "Half a year is too little time for you to possibly aplish this!"


    RUMBLE


    Heaven and Earth quivered under the weight of his emotion. They bent, straining to amodate his titanic presence.


    Rui grew grave. "Half a year¡­"


    He knew it was impossible.


    "There has to be something¡­" Rui''s eyes swam around as his powerful mind furiously burst into action, processing every possibility. "Something that can ameliorate that timeframe¡­"


    "¡­Why do you do this?"


    Sage Sayfeel''s voice was tired.


    Rui narrowed his eyes at that question. "Why are you so determined to stop me?"


    His tone grew more frustrated. "I am trying to save my father!"


    His eyes intensified. "I am trying to save the man you pledged undying loyalty to!"


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1780 So Be It

    Chapter 1780 So Be It


    ??A moment of silence lingered in the air.


    "¡­Your Highness," Sage Sayfeel whispered. "You think¡­I want him to die?"


    His gaze bored into Rui''s eyes.


    "¡­You think I don''t want him to live?"


    His voice quivered ever so slightly.


    "You think his ailment¡­his fate pleases me?"


    He shook his head.


    "You are wrong."


    He turned to Rui, meeting his gaze.


    "It was his will that you ascend the throne."


    Rui narrowed his eyes. "I rejected his will."


    Sage Sayfeel closed his eyes. "And what will you do when you fail?"


    Rui stared at him.Text ? owned by N?velDrama.Org.


    The man opened his eyes. His powerful gaze bored into Rui''s.


    "¡­If you fail, will you ascend the throne?"


    A moment of silence lingered.


    It was deafening.


    The two Martial Artists stared at each other.


    The air seemed to boil.


    It boiled, wrung taut with the weight of the escting tension.


    "¡­If I agree, will you help me?" Rui''s tone was as clear as fresh water. "Can you help me?"


    He stared at the Sage with hopeful eyes.


    He didn''t know what the Martial Sage was capable of.


    In truth, he didn''t know what Martial Sages, in general, were capable of. He wasn''t entirely aware of the extent of the Master Realm''s power and certainly knew no firsthand information.


    Sage Sayfeel closed his eyes. "Not even the power of the Sage Realm can aplish what you seek to aplish within the time limit you seek to."


    Resignation overtook Rui.


    Yet the Martial Sage wasn''t done.


    "¡­The power of the Sage Realm might not be enough, but¡­" Sage Sayfeel''s voice took an upturn. "Power rivaling the Transcendent Realm can dy the Emperor''s fate."


    Rui''s eyes widened with shock. "¡­What?!"


    The air tingled.


    It prickled at the skin.


    "What do you mean?" Rui whispered.


    "The Emperor had refused this option whilst he was conscious, for he deemed it unworthy to use such a powerful resource to merely dy the inevitable, not prevent it," The Sage''s voice grew severe. "The Topaz of Time is a Transcendent esoteric substance that possesses the power to manipte the flow of time."


    "What?!" Rui shook where he stood. "Such a thing exists?!"


    "It does," Sage Sayfeel affirmed. "It is one of the national treasures of the Kandrian Empire. With its power, the Emperor''s fate can be dyed from half a year to five years."


    His eyes narrowed. "However, it is not a renewable resource. Once used, it will crumble to dust. Once used, the Kandrian Empire will be deprived of this treasure."


    Rui''s expression grew grave.


    He met Sage Sayfeel''s powerful gaze. "¡­Do you possess the power to deploy this Transcendent resource?"


    "¡­Yes."


    "¡­Is the Emperor more precious to you than this resource?"


    "Infinitely."


    Not a hint of hesitation could be found in his voice.


    "Then¡­" Rui''s voice trailed off as he met the Martial Sage''s powerful gaze.


    His message was clear.


    "You haven''t answered my question yet," Sage Sayfeel narrowed his eyes. "What will you do if you fail?"


    "I said I''d figure something ou-"


    "No." Sage Sayfeel''s eyes widened with intensity.


    The very air seemed to boil.


    Rui felt chills crawl up his skin at the mere gesture.


    "Prince Rui Quarrier Kandria."


    The Sage''s tone grew more intense.


    "If you fail¡­you will do but one thing."


    His eyes narrowed.


    "You will ascend the throne."


    His words weighed down on Rui.


    "You will bear the crown."


    They weighed down on his body.


    "You will be the Emperor of Kandria."


    They weighed down on his soul.


    Rui''s expression grew grave. "¡­And if I refuse?"


    "Then I will not deploy the Topaz of Time to dy His Majesty''s fate," The Sage''s tone was unshakable. "You will have to watch Kandria burn with the mes of a war that you could have prevented!"


    A moment of silence lingered.


    The Sage had made his choice clear.


    His eyes bore holes into Rui''s. "So, Your Highness, what will it be?"


    Rui stared at him.


    What if he refused the offer?


    That would mean he was back to square one, back to where he was before he was when he was struggling to find a suitable candidate for the throne. Looking for a way to ensure that the throne war ended and that whoever sat atop the throne was not an extremist who would throw the Empire that the throne war ended and that whoever sat atop the throne was not an extremist who would throw the Empire into disarray and civil war.


    It was a dead-end.


    He had tried every option. None of the seven royals possessed the harmony needed to ascend the throne, and none of the other royals possessed thepetence to be Emperor or Empress.


    He had made his choice, and he was not to ascend the throne.


    There was no path forward.


    The Kandrian Empire would simply meet inevitable doom.


    However, if he epted the offer and seeded, then he would be able to undo this mess entirely.


    The Emperor of Harmony would be cured by the Divine Doctor.


    And everything would return to just as it was.


    However.


    "¡­If I fail¡­" he whispered.


    "If you fail, you will be Emperor," Sage Sayfeel stared at him. "That is the cost of my cooperation."


    Rui closed his eyes.


    Silence lingered in the air.


    Sage Sayfeel stared at the Final Prince intently.


    It wasn''t until Rui opened his eyes, meeting his gaze with determination, that a single word escaped his mouth.


    "Deal."


    He made his decision.


    Should he seed, he would be able to fix every single problem in his life.


    His father would return.


    War would be quelled.


    His family''s peace would not be disturbed.


    However, if he failed¡­


    "If I fail¡­" Rui''s voice intensified. "I, Rui Quarrier Kandria, solemnly swear an oath to ascend the throne as the third Emperor of Kandria if I fail to save Emperor Rael''s life despite its prolonging with the Topaz of Time."


    His voice was clear and honest.


    A deep sincerity and earnestness lingered at its core.


    Sage Sayfeel could sense that. His Sage-level senses were incredibly powerful, possessing the power to urately discern Rui''s intent.


    The truth was evident.


    He closed his eyes.


    "So be it."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1781 Soft Power

    Chapter 1781 Soft Power


    Rui had chosen to refuse the will bequeathed by the Emperor of Harmony.


    The reason was simple.


    It cost him what he cared for the most. It was a sacrifice that he was unwilling to make, for the same reason that he had refused to make a simr sacrifice for his family ten years ago when offered protection for his family.


    His decision today led to a covenant with Sage Sayfeel.


    In return for prolonging the Emperor''s life, Rui would ascend the throne should he fail to heal the Emperor. If he failed, however, he would ascend the throne.


    It was a risk.


    Yet, it was a calcted risk he was willing to take.


    Rui was keenly aware of the many things that could go wrong.


    He could potentially just never find the Divine Doctor; that was a very real possibility.


    Even if he did find him, he could potentially fail topel him.


    Even if he didpel him, it was possible that they wouldn''t make it in time.


    Hell, it was possible that Rui would just die in the Beast Domain even before he met the Divine Doctor.


    All these possibilities were very real and impossible to deny.


    "¡­Still, as long as I have you, a Martial Sage, by my side," Rui heaved a sigh.


    Sage Sayfeel''s expression darkened. "I will not be apanying you."


    "¡­Wait, what?!" "Soon, the Emperor''s impending death timeline will be dered," Sage Sayfeel remarked. "However, there will be princes and princesses who will seek to eliminate the Emperor before their one and only advantage over you slips."


    Rui immediately understood what he was trying to convey. "Time."


    If there was one advantage that the seven royals had over him, it was that they had been umting powerful patrons into their faction for at least seven years, some even longer. While Rui was easily the most powerful candidate for the throne, it was extraordinarily difficult to instantly inte his faction to its maximum potential in a single day or even a single month.


    Thus, it was possible for Prince Raijun or Rajak to ascend the throne if they killed Emperor Rael that day, giving absolutely no time for Rui to build enough power to curb them. Of course, he could still use his control over the four royals to curb them, but nobody knew about that; thus, the possibility of Emperor Rael being targeted was quite realistic.


    That was what Sage Sayfeel did not intend to allow. He would stand guard and ensure that none of the royals would be able toy so much as a finger on the Emperor of Harmony.


    "¡­Alright," Rui heaved a sigh. "Do what you must as I will."


    He bowed, sping his fist with a hand.


    Sage Sayfeel narrowed his eyes. "If you fail, then the Topaz of Time will have been wasted for an oue that could have happened if you simply epted your father''s will and ascended the throne as he arranged for."


    Rui narrowed his eyes. "My father''s will is his. This is my will."


    Rui turned around, leaving the Kandrian Throne Hall and heading down the steps.


    "How was your audience with the Emperor?" Master Ceeran asked.


    "Just fine," Rui replied.


    No one was to know about the Emperor''s condition yet, although the announcement would be made soon.


    "What do you intend to do now, Your Highness?" Master Zentra asked.


    Silence lingered in the air. Text ? owned by N?velDrama.Org.


    A single answer escaped Rui''s mouth.


    "Win."


    Their eyes lit up at that answer.


    "I will win this war before it begins," Rui closed his eyes. "Just like my father before me."


    He couldn''t leave the Empire without preparing his faction. It meant that he couldn''t leave immediately; he would need to put a lot of effort into reeling in powerful allies and patrons until he overwhelmingly dwarfed the power of his opponents.


    "I look forward to it, Your Highness," Master Zentra remarked, smiling. "Do you know what your first order of business looks like?"


    "I need a staff and administration," Rui narrowed his eyes. "I cannot build a faction without a hundred-strong team of people who will handle the minutiae of building a faction. So, the first order of business is for me to hire a team of staff and administration. After that, I need to set up a foundation that will ept donations. And only then can the development of a faction happen."


    Rui felt a headacheing up. During a time when he ought to be focusing on refining the Angel of Lace to make itbat-viable, he had to deal with this mess, all because he was revealed to be a prince and now had the power to fix the Kandrian Empire potentially.


    It was aplete pain in the ass, but the faction needed to be built not only to stop his siblings from ascending the throne if he failed but also to fulfill his oath to Sage Sayfeel if he failed in healing Emperor Rael.


    He swore an oath that he would ascend the throne.


    He intended to keep it if he failed.


    He needed a faction for that, too.


    "The Martial Union is more than willing to aid you with all these minor matters," Master Zentra graciously informed him.


    "That''s fine, but my faction cannot beprised of people who are a part of the Martial Union. I won''t tolerate any managers or bureaucrats who have had any history with the Martial Union," Rui calmly informed him. "They must be independent. Is that clear?"


    Neither Martial Master missed the subtle hint of change in his manner of address. Yet, they didn''t voice it. While Rui did not suddenly gain a royal bearing all of a certain, an implicit sense of power seemed to radiate from him.


    As a royal prince, as the beloved of the Martial Union, and as he who hadplete control over four other royal factions, Rui''s soft power and his capacity to impact the nation had risen to be on par with that of a Martial Sage.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1782 Staff Hiring

    Chapter 1782 Staff Hiring


    That day, the ruling ss of East Panama braced itself for a tumultuous period. The abrupt introduction of such a powerful force in the equation of Kandria''s future rendered all predictions about the oue of the throne war null and void.


    Many analysts and pundits rated Prince Rui Quarrier Kandria''s probability of winning at over sixty percent due to his outsized prominence and support from the Martial Union even before his identity as prince was revealed. Very rapidly, the Martial Union organized a set of recruiting events for qualified individuals with the necessary education and experience with management and bureaucracy so that they would form the basis of his faction.


    Nearly a hundred thousand people applied.


    Why would they not?


    This was the opportunity of a lifetime.


    The prince or princess that seeded the throne would usually delegate the most important bureaucratic, administrative, and managerial roles of the Kandrian government to their most trusted staff.


    Since Rui was currently evaluated to be the most likely candidate for Emperor, anyone who became his chief of staff or secretary could potentially go on to be important bigshots in the Kandrian government, such as the Executive Minister or the Royal Chancellor.


    It was an extraordinary opportunity for the most qualified people in the field of management and administration who had high career ambitions.


    Over the next week, the Martial Union worked furiously to separate the very best of the best and most qualified individuals, screening out the very best of the best. A few thousand remained at the end of this process.


    It wasn''t just qualifications that were important. It was also credibility and trustworthiness.


    As per Rui''s request, Martial Masters from different factions and sects of opposing interests personally verified the intent of the highly qualified individuals one after the other to root out those who were spies or had malicious intent.


    "Ny percent were rooted out?" Rui''s eyes widened with shock. "Yes, Your Highness," The head of the division assigned to screening candidates for Rui''s staff and administration told him. "It appears that most of the people who applied were spies sent by rivaling royals, national and international powers who wished to get reliable intelligence on your campaign and potentially sabotage it."


    "Tsk tsk," Rui narrowed his eyes. "And these remaining two hundred arepletely vetted with background checks that arepletely verified?"


    "Yes, Your Highness," The man nodded.


    He was lying.


    Rui knew he was lying.


    The Martial Union would never fail to use this opportunity to nt their own secret agents amongst the ranks of his administration and staff.


    "I''ll be verifying them myself," Rui remarked. "I appreciate the administrative support from the Martial Union in handling this tiring process, and you can deduct the amount from my ount."


    "This is a service that the Martial Union has offered free of cost as a token of friendship to reaffirm the powerful partnership between yourself and the union," The man smiled pleasantly.


    "¡­Token of friendship, hm?" Rui smiled wryly. "I appreciate that."


    Rui had already felt the change in the dynamics of his rtionship with the Martial Union. At this moment, the Martial Union was treating him like an equal and not as a son. He had gained a tremendous amount of power simply by virtue of possibly ascending the throne, even before Emperor Rael had yet to pass away.


    While the process for the creation of his administrative staff was ongoing, Rui had also taken it upon himself to set up the Rui Foundation, the avenue through which his patrons and benefactors could support him through donations. It was also open to the public, should anybody feel the need to support him.


    Eager to please Rui, the National Bank of Kandria swiftly streamlined what would be a long process, ensuring that the financials of the foundations were set up within a single week. "¡­And here it is." A well-groomed man seated before Rui smiled, opening a small chest.


    At its centery a golden-silver card.


    "This is proof of ownership; it is highly important, Your Highness."


    The CEM, chief executive merchant of the bank, had taken the opportunity to personally deliver the key card to the ount of the newly-established Rui Foundation.


    "I appreciate that Chairman Fellingel," Rui replied calmly as he inspected the card. "Thanks to your swift services, I can begin my campaign immediately."


    "We are pleased to hear that you are satisfied with our services. It was not easy prioritizing your process at the cost of others, many of whom are quite powerful. We hope that you won''t forget this."


    Rui smiled perfunctorily, yet inwardly, he was already cursing. He hadn''t even begun his campaign, but the ass-kissing and implicit bribery had already begun. He was sure that the man before him expected a ''favor'' when the time came. However, that wasn''t the only issue he had to tackle. He also needed some business real estate to establish his faction headquarters. After all, it was not like he could manage his faction from his extended room in the Quarrier Orphanage. He needed a proper ce to work and to meet prospective patrons and benefactors.


    That wasn''t the only issue. This content is ? N?velDrama.Org.


    He also needed to hire a bunch of other professionals, including legal, intelligence, data analysts, and diplomats.


    Fortunately, the staff that that the Martial Union had provided, which he had Master Reina further chop down by rooting out the nted spies of the Martial Union, could greatly aid in handling these matters.


    "There are an additional twenty-one agendas on our docket in addition to the ones that you mentioned, Your Highness." A woman by his side remarked. "Creating a faction emblem, public persona management division, establishing rigorous administrative protocols, hierarchies of power,mand, and security clearance. As well as inventory and schedule management. Not to mention, we also have to¡­"


    Rui groaned inwardly. This was what he dreaded when it came to faction-building and kingdom-building as Emperor. He could not deal with things this boring without losing his mind bit by bit.


    That was why he had hired excellent staff with extraordinary benefits and incentives.


    This was his new head of staff, Mikha Jeaun. She had passed even the harshest round ofpetence evaluation, vetting, and verification with the highest credibility and transparency. "However, you can leave it to me, Your Highness," She enthusiastically smiled at him. "I will ensure that this faction runs as smoothly as a well-oiled machine!"


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1783 Announcement

    <h4>Chapter 1783 Announcement</h4>


    The Rui Faction began setting up at a remarkable speed. Just a month after announcing his bid for the throne, the core foundations had been established.


    He employed his wealth to purchase a massive high-end businessplex at the heart of the Town of Hajin that couldfortably fit his new staffprised of hundreds of members initially, due to amodate thousands, eventually.


    With the hundreds of billions of credits from his Hungry Pain contribution and the billions of gold that he had gotten from his deal with Prince Raijun, it was no effort to purchase what he needed to get his hands on.


    Once his staff got to work, the speed of growth of the infant iplete faction was high.


    Very rapidly, a financial division was hired that was given some authority in the ounts of the Rui Foundation. This team would handle various mundane financial matters such as calcting budget, estimating expenditures, and documenting taxes, among other things. Rui did not want to so much as dip a toe in this matter because of how astonishingly boring and mind-numbing it was.


    That was why ensuring the man in charge waspetent and trustworthy was important.


    "So, Mr. Dolius Meafeau, I read that you were the chairman of the top venture capital guilds in the nation before you retired," Rui remarked casually. "Why apply to my faction for the position of director of finance?"


    The elderly man smiled. "I retired shortly after the debacle of the Shionel Dungeon. It was one of the most exciting econopolitical tussles that I have ever witnessed in my entire career. At the time, I didn''t know who the Voider was, but he had earned my deepest appreciation and admiration. And now, the Voider has bid for the throne. My instinct tells me that this is not an event that I want to watch from the sidelines."


    A small hint of mischief cracked at the end of his smile. "It also would not be bad to be appointed as the Finance Minister of the nation."


    He was incredibly qualified. No one with his education, experience, and des would apply for the lowly position of director of finance of any ordinary organization.


    But he did so for Rui''s faction.


    Rui epted him in a heartbeat after verifying his intent with various Martial Masters.


    Another important division that he needed to pay attention to was the intelligence division. Timely and reliable intelligence was vital for a faction to function.


    Now that he was creating his own faction, it was not appropriate to rely on the Martial Union or the Beggar''s Sect.


    The Beggar''s Sect had allied itself with Prince Raul, meaning that there was a conflict of interests between himself and the organization.


    It was a shame.


    They had had a good partnership and working rtionship, but unfortunately, he could no longer trust them the second he was revealed to be a prince.


    The Martial Union''s intelligence services were still more trustworthy, but not entirely. They were not morally above manipting information to make themselves look more favorable to him.


    "Mrs. me Vering," Rui remarked, seated before an older woman. "You were the former director of the Kandrian Bureau of Intelligence. You can imagine my surprise when my secretary informed me about your application for the position of Director of Intelligence in my soon-to-beplete faction."


    She simply stared at him with a nk expression without making so much as a twitch.


    "¡­" Rui waited for a moment. "I was hoping you could tell me more about your reason for application." Content is ? by N?velDrama.Org.


    She closed her eyes. "I have had my eye on you ever since I learned of the fact that you tricked my intelligence surveince when you sneaked into the Shionel Dungeon."


    "Ah¡­" Rui smiled back as he recalled how he had tricked the Martial Union into believing he was in the Kingdom of Violis while he sneaked away to the Martial Union.


    He had long forgotten about that, but apparently, some people hadn''t.


    He put her through even more verifying, requesting even the Truthseeker herself to vet and verify her intent before he appointed her to the position of director of intelligence.


    Once he appointedpetent and credible people to the directors of divisions, hepletely delegated the structuring and hiring process of the positions in their departments to them. He didn''t want to deal with more boring administrative work.


    Thankfully, the more he delegated, the less work he had.


    That wasn''t saying much, of course, considering he still had a huge amount of work after delegating, but it was still manageable.


    Funnily enough, he found the boring work of creating and leading a faction to be far more tiring than even the most difficult training processes for his technique project techniques.


    It was soul-draining.


    It made him all the more resolute to find the Divine Doctor and avoid the throne, for the task of Emperor would be a much greater burden than what he faced now.


    By the time the Rui Faction was fully established and set up at its massive headquarters in the heart of the town of Hajin, three months had fully passed.


    "¡­And with that, all systems are running smoothly and soundly, Your Highness," His secretary informed him.


    Rui sat at the table in his new extravagant and ostentatious office.


    Never had he imagined that he would be in the position that he was, doing the things that he was doing.


    It was at moments like this that the consequences of his father''s decision truly hit him.


    The air grew mncholic.


    He opened his eyes.


    A single remark escaped his mouth.


    "It''s time."


    "¡­Your Highness?" His secretary tilted her head.


    "Call for a press conference," Rui remarked. "Invite all the top national and international corporations and services in the news and information distribution sector of East Panama."


    His secretary widened her eyes at that instruction. "¡­And the purpose?"


    "Only inform them that I have an important announcement to make," Rui replied. "I intend to announce the officialmencement of my campaign and more¡­"


    His eyes narrowed. "The world will listen to what I have to say."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1784 Announcement

    Chapter 1784 Announcement


    The powers of Kandria grew excited when Prince Rui Quarrier Kandria announced a press conference, inviting more news distributionpanies than one could count. Whatever this announcement was, it was big.


    It was certain that he was going to be announcing themencement of his campaign, which was different from announcing his bid for the throne, which he had done three months prior.


    It was only once the campaign began that he could actually begin epting donors, patrons, and benefactors. Until then, there was no avenue for them to easily support him. It was also why all the national and international stakeholders of Kandrian and East Panama had yet to approach him directly.


    There was no point in trying to join a faction that didn''t exist.


    However, now that Rui had a factionprised of a thousand-strong staff and administration and many divisions and departments to handle the rigors that a faction underwent, only now did it make sense to try and join the faction.


    That was why Kandria had been waiting for the Final Prince to announce themencement of his campaign.


    Many were waiting with abated breaths as the day of the press conference finally arrived.


    An enormous crowd of reporters stood before an elevated podium. They carried recording artifacts and notepads, alert and prepared to record everything that happened. The Rui Administration had also hired a stenographer to transcript the exchanges.


    Everything had been set up.


    "Ladies and gentlemen," Rui addressed the crowd of reporters from behind his speaker''s booth. "Wee to this conference."


    The noise from the crowd lessened as Ruimenced.


    "A little over three months ago, at the Royal Addressal Ceremony, I was not only revealed to be a royal prince but also dered as heir to the Emperor," Rui began his speech without any further formalities. "A short whileter, I announced my bid for the throne."


    His eyes narrowed. "I have not forgotten my word. In the past three months since, I have worked hard to take the first steps towards achieving my goal of bing Emperor. I have formed the foundations needed for me to begin striving for the throne in earnest. I have formed the tform that will elevate me to the crown."


    His eyes grew steely. "On this day, I dere the founding of the Rui Faction!"


    FLAP!


    Behind him, arge banner unfolded, revealing a grand banner. It bore the new emblem of the Rui Faction, shining and glistening as a matter of the esoteric fabric used to construct it.


    The entire conference hall unrolled the various banners, dying the entire conference hall in the colors of the Rui Faction.


    A wave of murmurs spread through the reporters as they excitedly captured images and took notes.


    "On this day, I, Prince Rui Quarrier Kandria, dere themencement of my campaign for the throne."


    His tone was strong and intense.


    His eyes conveyed his determination to ascend the throne and be Emperor.


    "On this day, I begin my unstoppable march to the crown."


    The air tingled as his strong voice reverberated through the throne hall.


    He closed his eyes. "And when I ascend the throne, the world will look back at this day and remember my deration."


    He opened his eyes, eying each of the reporters deeply. "When I ascend the throne, I shall raise this Empire to even greater heights than my father did."


    His eyes narrowed. "When I ascend the throne, I shall restore the harmony that my brothers and sisters seek to disrupt."


    His expression darkened. "The harmony that my father dedicated his life to creating and cultivating. The harmony that lies at the core of the Kandrian Empire. The harmony that allowed the Kandrian Empire to soar to greater heights while the mes of civil war burned down all those around it."


    His tone grew stronger. Content is ? by N?velDrama.Org.


    "Harmony is my doctrine." Rui narrowed his eyes. "I intend to remind this nation what our greatest strength is."


    His tone grew more intense.


    "Our greatest strength is neither our powerful Martial Art nor the mighty Martial Union."


    The reporters stirred as Rui uttered some rather bold and controversial words. The Martial Union was his biggest supporter and fan; undoubtedly, how would they feel about that statement?


    Regardless, the reporters were happy with the juicy content.


    "Our greatest strength is not our government," Rui boldly dered. "Nor is it our valiant royal army, not our economy, nor our maritime sector, not even our people are our strongest strength despite their greatest importance."


    He had arrived. "¡­Our greatest strength is the harmony that exists, and has existed, between all of them," Rui remarked. "While the world was plunged into civil war, the Kandrian Empire took this opportunity to progress and skyrocket while other nations stalled and even regressed. That is why our Empire, young as it is, is able to stand equal to powerhouses with a history and umtion spanning millennia prior to the Age of Martial Art."


    His words could not be denied.


    "If any of the sectors of our Empire ceased to exist, we would still not lose our status as a powerhouse despite being hurt," Rui boldly dered. "However, if the harmony of our Empire disappears and we fall into a destructive civil war, we will undoubtedly fall off our pedestal, burning as we regress to a state three centuries ago."


    Rui narrowed his eyes. "That is why harmony is the doctrine of the Rui Faction. Our faction firmly believes that any force that tries to disrupt the harmony of our Empire is an enemy and a traitor."


    The reporters murmured.


    "I believe that there are many who believe in the doctrine of harmony. In the doctrine that my father imbued into the soul of the great Empire," Rui dered. "I believe, in my heart, that I am not the only one who feels the way I feel. I believe that there are many who are sick of the extreme proclivities of my siblings who seek to turn the Empire into a vessel of their own personal ambition without care for the delicate harmony that they threaten to destroy."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1785 Questions

    Chapter 1785 Questions


    "To all the stakeholders of Kandria, if the harmony of the Kandrian Empire is in your heart, then I beseech you," Rui called. "Lend me your power. Lend me your support. Allow me to maintain the peace and harmony that my father has maintained."


    Rui''s strategy was simply to appeal to the stakeholders of Kandria, which weren''t appealed to by either of the seven royals and did not possess a strong affinity for any of them.


    He knew that there were plenty of such stakeholders in Kandria. Powerful, rich, and authoritative people who weren''t strongly inclined in the direction of any of the seven royals.


    These were people who were put off by the radical extremism in the visions that each of the seven had presented. There were undoubtedly a lot of conservatives in the nation who were silent because they had no avenue to channel their power in.


    Only a royal could ascend the throne.


    No matter how rich, powerful, and authoritative, this could not be changed. Thus, the only way to impact the future was to support a royal.


    However, previously, there had been not a singlepetent royal who sought to maintain the harmony that Emperor Rael had worked hard to create and preserve over his lifetime. Thus, the people who desired the status quo to remain had no avenue to channel their power to maintain it.


    08:59


    However, previously, there had been not a singlepetent royal who sought to maintain the harmony that Emperor Rael had worked hard to create and preserve over his lifetime. Thus, the people who desired the status quo to remain had no avenue to channel their power to maintain it.


    That was why Rui had framed the rhetoric of his campaign in the manner that he had chosen to.


    He was appealing to this interest group of the Kandrian Empire. These were conservatives from an older era, having prolonged their life with potions, who had personally witnessed the astounding, unprecedented growth that Emperor Rael had brought about in three centuries.


    That was who he was talking to at the moment, even if he was looking at reporters.


    He knew he would not be able to pull away the hardcore supporters from each of the seven royals, barring Prince Raijun. There was no way the Kandrian Seafare Association and the Ministry of Maritime Affairs would defect from Princess Ranea after she had filled their heads with her nonsensical visions of the Age of Sailors.


    "I know that many of you watched in silence."


    Rui''s tone grew soft.


    "I know many of you have watched with defeat."


    It grew sympathetic. "I know many of you have watched with fear."


    His tone grew stronger.


    "Fear at what will be of the Kandrian Empire should my fools of siblings ascend the throne."


    "Well¡­" His eyes sharpened. "¡­Fear not. For I, Rui Quarrier Kandria, heir to the Emperor of Harmony, reject them."


    His tone grew stronger.


    "I reject their vision."


    It grew fierce. "I reject their ambitions.


    His tone quivered with power.


    "I REJECT THEIR DISHARMONY!" He bellowed.


    The reporters shook, stunned where they stood as a st of emotion apanied his bold deration.


    "¡­Yet, I cannot reject them with my power alone."


    His voice was reduced to a whisper.


    "I cannot protect harmony with my power alone."


    A fierce whisper. Text ? owned by N?velDrama.Org.


    "I cannot do it by myself."


    His voice escted.


    "Lend me your power," his eyes narrowed. "Lend me your power, and I will endeavor to protect and elevate harmony¡ªa harmony that permeates through each and every element of this nation, binding us together for eons toe."


    He closed his eyes. "Glory to the Kandrian Empire."


    The reporters double-took as Rui indicated the end of his speech.


    That was incredibly short for a conference asrge as this.


    Usually, speeches for conferences with so many news distributionpanies and services were much longer,sting at least ten minutes.


    "I now open this conference to questions," Rui calmly dered.


    A multitude of hands flew up.


    "Go ahead," Rui nodded at the first one to do so.


    "Thank you for the opportunity, Your Highness," The reporter began. "Your Highness'' speech was emotionally powerful but seemed to be entirely devoid of any practical and grounded exnations for the manner that you would be ruling this nation in, should you one day ascend the throne. Can you be clearer and more precise as to what, if any, specificmitments you will be making?"


    It was a pertinent question that was framed in a manner that inquired about a clear shoring in his speech without antagonizing him.


    "Of course I can," Rui replied calmly. "Let me begin by saying that the shoring is intentional. The most important part of politics, a process of taking the world from how it is to how we want it to be, is conveying the core of my vision that drives my policies and politics. Simply rambling about my economic and political doctrines without illuminating the core vision that underlies all of it is foolish."


    He paused for a moment. "To answer your question, any changes in policy I make will be reactive to economic and national stimuli; I do not have any active changes, for I do not wish to disrupt the status quo of our nation. My fiscal policy will almost entirely ovep with that of the Emperor''s, barring a few small changes in policy that I''m sure His Majesty would agree to due to changing times. But otherwise, the distribution and division of the fiscal budget will remainrgely the same. I will maintain the Emperor''s policy of relying on governmental intervention only when there are negative externalities that cannot be ounted for by the free-market economy that we have in ce. Taxes, of course, will remain unchanged, and expenditure will be maintained proportionally. I also intend to continue the Emperor''s policy of minimizing the rate of change in expenditure allocations to no more than three percent a year to avoid any drastic shocks to the harmony of the Emperor."


    When it was time, Rui immediately altered the nature of his message from oratory to technical, growing remarkably specific about exactly what the Kandrian Empire would look like under his rule.


    The shift was rather jarring, catching everybody, including the one who asked the question, off-guard.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1786 Answers

    <h4>Chapter 1786 Answers</h4>


    Once Rui made it clear that he wasn''t simply a motivational speaker trying for the Emperor, the reporters grew more serious, asking targeted and specific questions.


    "What is the Kandrian Empire''s foreign policy going to look like under your rule?"


    "What is your stance on social issues? Do you intend to focus on Martial-perpetrated crimes on non-Martial citizens? What are your thoughts the non-Martial-lives-matter movement by the Kandrian Ruffians and His Highness Prince Raul."


    "What are your solutions to fiscal deficit and the growing debt-to-GDP ratio of the Kandrian Empire in the past seven years?"


    These were incredibly difficult matters and issues to tackle for even seasoned statesmen.


    However, Rui had done his homework in the past three months at the cost of training Angel of Lace, something he mourned andmented every day of his life.


    "The Kandrian Empire''s foreign policy is going to maintain the stance that it has had for three centuries. We are not territorially aggressive and have not engaged in conquest for three hundred years, ever since the first Emperor''s passing. However, I also recognize that the world is not a friendly ce and does not possess the harmony that the Kandrian Empire does. It is a world of the survival-of-the-fittest where the weak are bullied and consumed by the strong. Rest assured, the Kandrian Empire will continue to remain among the strongest under my rule and will actively take aggressive measures against foreign hostile forces that seek to bully or consume us."


    "You have brought up a deep social problem that is extraordinarily difficult to solve. Unfortunately, activism cannot fix injustice. Only power can. The Prevention of Martial Crimes Actunched by my father nine years ago to deal with this growing problem has failed because it was unable to secure the cooperation of the Martial Union as well as his untimely health problems. I, however, am not subject to the same restrictions for obvious reasons as an influential member, to say the least, of the Martial Union. With the power of Emperor and the Martial Unionbined, I alone, out of all candidates, possess the power to resolve this horrible social issue that permeates all of human civilization."


    "Deficit is indeed a problem that the Kandrian Empire is faced with. I intend to raise the interest rates of the Reserve Bank of Kandria while also erasing the deficit and adding repayment of treasury bonds as a national interest in the roster of fiscal interests. It will be possible to repay the entirety of the national debt over the span of thirty years and drastically reduce the amount of interest we pay each year, freeing up the fiscal budget that I will redirect towards the expenditure of gross fixed capital formation."


    With each answer, the reporters were taken aback by the sheer rity and brevity of his answers to each of their probing questions, as well as the disy of the deep knowledge that he possessed, having sharpened it over the span of three months.


    Not a single reporter was able to muster up a follow-up to any of their questions due to the sheer wholeness and sense ofpletion that each of his answers possessed. While there were plenty of dishonest reporters with an agenda to make him look bad, he didn''t offer them a single avenue to make him look bad.


    And they certainly tried.


    "As a member of the Martial Union''s Martial fiscalmittee, are you notpletely biased towards the Martial Union?" One reporter challenged. "How can the citizens of this nation trust you when you may as well be a puppet of the Martial Union?"


    "Yes, because it makes sense that a puppet of the Martial Union has openly and vehemently criticized Martial supremacy, had refused to join the Martial Union as anything more than an honorary member its entire career, and even duped the Martial Union on several asions in the past, and refuses to allocate any additional resources or money or legition in favor of the Martial Union. On top of that, I have even stripped their actual puppet, who has promised all these things, of all his support," Rui sarcastically replied. "I would be one hell of a useless puppet if I were a puppet, wouldn''t I?"


    A wave of chuckles washed across the reporters as the reporter left the podium before he could face any more embarrassment.


    "Any final questions?" Rui asked.


    Most of the reporters had gotten around to asking all the pertinent and important questions.


    Just as Rui was about to end the session, a single had risen up.


    "Go ahead." This content is ? N?velDrama.Org.


    "Thank you for the opportunity, Your Highness¡­" The man remarked. "You are a Martial Artist, yes?"


    "¡­Of course," Rui remarked with a raised eyebrow. "


    "¡­And yet you seek to be Emperor."


    "¡­Is that a question?"


    "No," The man shook his head. "My question is, how do you do both at the same time?"


    It was a more innocent question.


    Yet, the reporters turned to face Rui with askance.


    "Is it even possible to do both at the same time? And if it isn''t¡­which one will you be dedicating more energy to?"


    Rui stared at the man. "¡­Should I ascend the throne, I will fulfill my duties as Emperor without anything interfering."


    "¡­I see. Thank you for your answer."


    Rui nodded.


    He didn''t lie.


    His statement conditioned it on him ascending the throne, which he didn''t intend to do. Of course, if he failed to find the Divine Doctor, he would certainly ascend the throne in ordance with the oath that he made to Sage Sayfeel.


    "If that''s all, then this conferencees to an end," Rui calmly dered. "I am grateful to all of you for your time and questions. Glory to Kandria."


    He walked off the stage, heading into the backroom.


    "Well done, sir," His secretaryplimented him. "The faction has already received many offers and inquiries through our official channels. It has appeared that your powerful speech and solid answers have appealed to many."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1787 Donation and Announcement

    Chapter 1787 Donation and Announcement


    "Good," Rui narrowed his eyes. "I need to appeal to as many people as I need to for my n."


    "Yes, sir," His secretary nodded knowingly.


    The only hiring of which Rui had personally partaken was that of his secretary; he had even chosen a candidate who, while extremely qualified, was not the very best because her background was fully transparent. In the past three months, he had fully vetted her time and time again with Martial Masters and had ced her under permanent surveince.


    This was because he needed her to be aware of his intentions. Otherwise, the probability of someone finding out would be much higher if she was not aware enough to cooperate with him.


    Regardless, she wasn''t kidding about his speech having made waves. By the time Rui even returned back to his office in the town of Hajin,rge developments had already urred.


    "The Martial Union has made a hundred billion gold donation along with the announcement of its official patronage to the Rui Faction," His secretary murmured, shocked.


    The report shook Rui.


    "What?!" Rui''s eyes widened.


    A hundred billion gold was an astronomical amount of wealth. For the Martial Union to make that donation as a whole organization and not from individual sects was an incredible start.


    "And you said the Martial Union as a whole made that donation and officially announced its support of me?" Rui''s eyes widened. "That''s...incredible!"


    While he knew that he would beat his half-brother Raijun in winning over sects and factions of the Martial Union, he didn''t know he would win over the Martial Union as a whole.


    He quickly studied the statement provided by his secretary in disbelief, along with the financial statement from the National Bank of Kandria providing a statement that confirmed the donation from the Rui Foundation.


    "Damn..." Rui murmured in disbelief. "...I guess the Rui Faction is already rich."


    While he was sure that the wealth of the other seven candidates exceeded his, he could be confident that he had already gained the capital topete with them with this enormous donation alone.


    "Has the Martial Union expressed a desire to meet me?" Rui furrowed his eyebrows.


    "No, sir, they have merely announced their support with you along with a donation and have remained entirely silent after that."


    "Huh." Rui frowned.


    That was atypical. Usually, patrons, benefactors, and stakeholders sought to meet with the candidate they were supporting in order to gain a better mutual understanding of what they wanted from each other.


    It was very rarely the case that public statements of support were made with massive donations before some prior mutual


    understanding was established between the benefactor and receiver.


    That was why Rui wasn''t sure what the Martial Union''s intentions were.


    They gave him a hundred billion gold coins and a public announcement of support the second that Rui officially dered themencement of his campaign. That sounded like they simply wanted to support him unconditionally without any expectations in return.


    "That''s absurd," Rui murmured. "Nothing is unconditional."bender


    "Perhaps you should meet with the highest leaders of the Martial Union, Your Highness," His secretary suggested. "It would behoove you to convey your gratitude for the donations and public support."


    "You''re right; tell Mikha to arrange for an invitation and appointment," Rui remarked. "I don''t know if I''ll get to speak to the very highest leaders, but I''m sure the highest Martial Masters of the Martial Union will form a collective representative."


    For the Martial Union as a whole, the sheer scope of the money involved and the stakes at hand were so great that none of his Martial Master friends within the Martial Union, like Master Ceeran or Master Vericita, could singlehandedly represent the entire Martial Union.


    Only a diverse panel of Martial Masters across different sects and factions possessed the qualifications to represent the Martial Union as a whole to one of its supported princes. Either that or a Martial Sage. A Martial Sage was qualified to represent the Martial Union even at the highest of levels and stakes.


    Rui didn''t think Martial Sages would go out of their way to meet him. While it was true that his power and capacity to impact this nation had increasingly grown on par with them, they undoubtedly primarily judged him as a Martial Artist more than anything else.


    And so long as he was a Martial Senior, even if he was the youngest and among the most aplished, he was not qualified; it was difficult for him to earn the personal time of mighty vaunted Martial Sages.


    Sage Sayfeel did so primarily because of the fact that he was chosen by the Emperor of Harmony as his heir.


    "Regardless, this is an incredible development," Rui murmured. "With the public support of the Martial Union, it''s almost entirely game over."Content is ? by N?velDrama.Org.


    Prince Raijun never managed to earn more than the informal support of a solid chunk of the Martial Union. That was why he was never able to overwhelmingly crush his rivals.


    Rui, however, had gained the full support of the Martial Union. He had gained the full support of the most powerful bloc in Kandria, entirely unrivaled by any other faction now that Emperor Rael was permanently out ofmission.


    How could any prince or princess resist him?


    "They can''t."


    It was overwhelming to the point he may as well not bother with any other patron or benefactor.


    "That''s unwise," Rui shook his head, turning to his secretary. "Tell me about the others who have expressed an interest in my campaign."


    "The first one to do so immediately after hearing your speech was the Director of the Kandrian Border Patron Force," His secretary exined. "She sent an inquiry and a request for an appointment with you soon after the conference ended."


    Rui''s eyes lit up.


    The director of the Kandrian Border Patrol Force was undoubtedly powerful and authoritative, entrusted with the important duty of ensuring the borders of the Kandrian Empire were never breached, covertly or openly.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1788 Familiary New

    Chapter 1788 Familiary New


    "The director of the Kandrian Border Patrol Force isn''t the only individual interested in meeting you," His secretary remarked. "Miss Mikha has alreadypiled a list of inquiries and appointments expressing credible interest and their prior engagements in the Kandrian Throne War as per research conducted by the intelligence division."


    She ced a document before him, which quickly revealed itself to be aption of reports on those who had reached out to the newly officially founded Rui Faction. Within it were chairmen, Martial Artists, organizations, corporations, and even some government officials.


    "¡­Woah!" Rui murmured when he came across a name that was familiar yet new. "Bradt-Decker Political Venture Capital Guild? What the heck is this?"


    He recognized the two names, but he had never heard of this guild ever before.


    "Officially, it is a guild that was founded by Guildmaster Bradt and Chairman Decker Byrnes of the Shionel Confederation as a consortium of like-minded politically interested merchants who would collectively pool their money and invest in political candidates, politicians and members of monarchies to aid them ining to power, however¡­" She remarked as she ced another file before him. "Director Vering believes that Guildmaster Bradt and Chairman Decker have created this consortium with the specific intention of supporting you."


    Rui read through the report that his new director of intelligence had quickly put together to exin her analysis of the new political venture capital guild. By relying on things such as Guildmaster Bradt''s prior failed proposal in the Shionel Merchant Guild and the subsequent forming of the political venture capital guild shortly after Rui''s identity was revealed, as well as Guildmaster Bradt''s prior engagements with Rui, there was an exceptionally high probability that this new consortium existed for the sole purpose of supporting Rui.


    "Director Vering is indeed highlypetent an analyst," Rui smiled. "Because her analysis is exactly on the money."


    He agreed with her analysis that Guildmaster Bradt had probably created this organization with the intention of approaching Rui as a whole. His identity as the Guildmaster of the Shionel Confederation and the chairman of Bradt Distribution Services was no longer enough in and of itself to draw out the best concessions in return from Rui.


    "This bastard¡­" Rui grinned, amused and resigned. "He wants to squeeze as much from me as possible."


    He expected nothing less from Guildmaster Bradt. "He filed for an appointment the very second the banners of the Rui Faction dropped," Rui chuckled. "Alright, I''m definitely interested in hearing how he intends to squeeze me this time."


    On top of that, he still hadn''t forgotten the fact that he owed the crafty guildmaster a solid favor. The man had let the favor sit, allowing Rui to grow, increasing the value of that favor so that he could one day extract a powerful gift from Rui. Text ? owned by N?velDrama.Org.


    Neither one of them had likely expected that that favor woulde into y this quickly. However, while Rui knew that the guildmaster was not going to make it easy for him, he also knew that it was worth it to have the guildmaster as an ally.


    The man was exceedingly sharp with a heightened sense of opportunity; he was known as a surgeon in the business world for a reason, and Rui had seen how well he exploited opportunities and made the absolute best out of them.


    "The political venture capital is exceedingly wealthy and will undoubtedly offer great financial support if Your Highness is able to earn their patronage, ording to Director Vering," His secretary remarked.


    "She''s right, but that''s actually not why I am interested in his support," Rui remarked with interest. "I am after the connectivity that the Bradt Distribution Service can offer. That''s extremely valuable in appealing to international stakeholders."


    With Guildmaster Bradt, he had full, smooth, and reliable ess to all of East Panama. The man could connect him to anybody and anywhere, allowing him to send and receive anything from and to them incredibly swiftly.


    "Arrange for an appointment as soon as possible," Rui nodded. "I''ll form a priority list based on these potential patrons and allies. Brad-Decker Political Venture Capital Guild is definitely very high up on that list."


    "You have also received inquiries from seventeen Martial Masters, many of whom arergely independent," His secretary remarked. "Would you be interested in meeting them as well?"


    "Of course, I need as many Martial Artists as I can get," Rui remarked. "I will personally speak to all the Martial Masters myself."


    At the moment, Master Ceeran and Master Zentra were standing guard behind him silently, alert. When they actually worked in their roles as bodyguards, they didn''t utter so much as a word, instead focusing their senses outwards, ensuring that there were no threats nearby and that if there were, they would be able to react to them very quickly.


    "This, however, has been deemed the most important prospective ally," His secretary ced a file before him.


    It was a statement of offer of alliance and patronship from a familiar person.


    Rui''s eyes lit up with tion at the identity of the person. "Minister Varay has defected from the Raemina Faction!"


    Minister Varay, the Minister of Martial Art, was of the Merger Faction that had chosen Princess Raemina for her ideals were the closest to fulfilling the dreams of the Merger Faction. The Merger Faction was unsatisfied with the harmony that Emperor Rael had created; they wanted unity. And it appeared that they saw hope in Rui Quarrier to fulfill their greatest dreams.


    It made sense, after all, Rui Quarrier had earned what was almostpletely unconditional loyalty from the Martial Union, as long as he didn''t do something absolutely maniacal like wage war against the Martial Union, they would always have his back, and as Emperor, he would also gain full power of the throne.


    With the power to harness the throne and the Martial Union, in a way, their dreams of unity would be partially fulfilled!


    "Put him at the top of the list along with the Director of the Kandrian Border Patrol Force, then the Martial Masters, and after that, the various other business tycoons in descending order of worth," Rui decided. "That is the order in which I shall speak to all of them."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1789 Criteria

    Chapter 1789 Criteria


    ??There was a reason that Rui put those two government officials who had contacted him at the top of the list. High-ranking government officials were the most important people in the Kandrian Throne War.


    Found Emperor Ra had made it so that the new Emperor could not be officially crowned without their presence and official acknowledgment of the new Emperor. ording to Kandrianw, the Coronation Ceremony required at least seventy-five percent of high-ranking government officials to officiate the ceremony for it to be considered official.


    Anything less than seventy-five percent, and the ceremony was invalid.


    This essentially meant that during times of throne wars, these government officials collectively had the power of kingmaker. Whichever prince or princess couldpel seventy-five percent of the high-ranking officials at the time could be Emperor or Empress as soon as the throne was empty.


    This was the game; this was why gaining as much Martial, economic, and political capital mattered to these princes and princesses. Those royals with the greatest Martial, economic, and political capital would be able to earn the support of as many high-ranking government officials by purchasing their officiation with said capital from their allies.


    Previously, Rui hadn''t cared about this detail since this was a headache exclusively for the princes and princesses, but now it was his headache, thus all the details suddenly began mattering.


    lights¦­¦Ïv¦Ål ?¦Ïm "As long as I can bag these two, then I will have remarkably swift progress, considering it hasn''t even been half a day since themencement of my campaign," Rui remarked. "I''ve already essentially gained the support of two high-ranking government officials of a total of hundred and four."


    There were a hundred and four high-ranking government officials, including ministers, directors, generals, and supreme judges, who each oversaw an entire executive, judiciary, or military section of the government, be they ministries, agencies, bureaus, courts, militias, etc.


    It was highly optimistic that Rui had already essentially received the support of two such officials: the Minister of Martial Art and the Director of the KBPF. How many more would he gain the support of over the span of weeks and months?


    Which government official would be able to say no with the silhouette of the Martial Union standing behind him? There was little the other seven royals would be able to individually do, considering how much power and influence Rui had even before he was revealed to be a prince.Content is ? by N?velDrama.Org.


    "The Minister of Culture has just requested for an appointment, Your Highness!"


    "The President of the East Panamic Consortium has issued a statement expressing interest in joining the newly-founded Rui Faction!"


    "The Panamic Martial Federation has issued a statement of support for Prince Rui Quarrier Kandria!"


    Rui was d that he had built a very solid faction administration and staff beforehand; otherwise, he would be drowning in all this good news!


    Yet it was impossible for everything to be good.


    "Prince Raijun and Rajak have announced an alliance, Your Highness!"


    A bomb had been dropped.


    The air grew electric as the jubtion of his faction was dampened.


    "What?!" Rui narrowed his eyes. "No way."


    He couldn''t believe that Prince Rajak would ever dream of coborating with Prince Raijun, considering what thetter had done to his family. The very thought of it should have been deeply disgusting to him.


    Yet, when he looked at the statement released by the Rajak and Raijun administrations, it became rather clear that it was very real.


    "He¡­actually decided to ally with Prince Raijun," Rui whispered with shock. "¡­All to stop me from bing Emperor."


    From the statement released, Rui could sense deep desperation from Prince Rajak. He wouldn''t have done this if he had no other choice and was unwilling topromise on the throne.


    ''Something must have happened between him and the Underworld," Rui realized. ''Is he losing their support?''


    He didn''t know.


    One thing was clear, however.


    "He''s doing this because he knows that he has no other way of stopping me," Rui''s expression grew ugly. "What is their current collective share of the high-ranking government officials?"


    "Twenty-two high-ranking government officials are supporting the two of them in total, Your Highness," His secretary immediately informed him.


    "¡­And what about Raul?"


    "Twelve government officials in total, sir," She quickly supplied.


    "So the three of them have monopolized the support of thirty-


    four government officials," Rui narrowed his eyes. "Which means I''ll have to steal eight high-ranking government official from them in order to reach seventy-five percent."


    His secretary frowned in confusion. "What about the remaining four royals, Your Highness? They also have a solid share of the hundred and four high-ranking government officials you will need for the official coronation ceremony after the Emperor of Harmony passes away in five years."


    Rui shook his head. "Those four are irrelevant; ignore them."


    He no longer cared about what Randal, Raemina, Ranea, and Rafia did. They were dead as far as he was concerned, and they probably knew it. Their final hope, the Emperor of Harmony, had be their final despair when he dered Rui his heir.


    "Master Ceeran," Rui addressed his bodyguard.


    "Yes, Your Highness?" Master Ceeran smiled from behind him.


    "Don''t call me that," Rui grumbled. "You remember that item I gave you for safekeeping?"


    "¡­Of course."


    "Please open it and give it to the Martial Union as evidence."


    "¡­Okay?" Master Ceeran frowned. "Evidence of what?"


    Rui smirked. "You should see it firsthand; it''s quite entertaining and amusing, as far as I am concerned. Please ensure that the information is as contained as possible."


    "¡­Understood."


    With that, the four royals were no longer relevant.


    The only opponents he had remaining were Prince Raul, Prince Rajak, and Prince Raijun. It was a shame that he wasn''t able to gather any irrefutable evidence on Prince Rajak''s involvement with his assassination, but s.


    "What now, Your Highness?" His secretary asked.


    "Now, we go over and win every single damn person interested in supporting the Rui Faction," Rui narrowed his eyes. "The next few months are going to be hectic as all hell."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1790 Clandestine Arrest

    Chapter 1790 ndestine Arrest


    In a garden outside the Vargard Royal Pce sat four royals.


    Prince Randal, Princess Ranea, Rafia, and Raemina sat around a table, sipping tea. There wasn''t much to do these days. Each of them had barely managed toe to terms with the fact that their campaigns for the throne were dead. They had epted that their dreams and ambitions for the throne were dead.


    It hadn''t been easy. Text ? owned by N?velDrama.Org.


    Some of these dreams and ambitions had driven them since childhood, and it was extremely painful for them to ept that they would never happen. Yet, thrust its will onto them.


    Or rather, Rui Quarrier Kandria did.


    His existence had be a source of primal terror to each of them. Prince Randal was too proud and ashamed to admit that he had recurring nightmares of Rui Quarrier Kandria every night since the royal addressal ceremony.


    The Final Prince had made a deep impact on his psyche even before he was revealed to be a prince.


    Prince Randal had previously thought that the day of his assassination attempt on the final prince was the worst day of his life.


    Nothing else hade close.


    That was until the royal addressal ceremony hade, turning his final hope into final despair.


    The two events had scarred him. He hade out of them a changed man.


    All of them had. While he, Princess Raemina, and Princess Ranea had managed to pull themselves together, the same could not be said for Princess Rafia.


    She sat at the table with a vacant, hollow expression. Her eyes were zed over, unfocused, while her mouth hung open. She had a maid who would asionally wipe the drool trickling down her mouth.


    She had been diagnosed with severe PTSD, often causing her mind to simply disassociate from reality to escape the trauma.


    Prince Randal shook his head at her sight. "¡­He recently started his campaign."


    None of the two able princesses responded.


    "I just hope that he ascends the throne and keeps up his promise of letting us live the rest of our lives out," Prince Randal heaved a shaky sigh.


    That was their only hope. They hoped that Rui Quarrier Kandria would be able to win and then decide to keep them around as pawns to use after he ascended the throne.


    s, that was not to be.


    The air tingled.


    It grew perilous.


    The four royals instinctively nced up to the sky before shuddering with shock.


    Dozens of Martial Masters descended into the garden from the heavens!


    A deep collective displeasure radiated from each of them.


    Their attires were varied and diverse, suiting their personal inclinations and Martial Art. Yet each of them bore the emblem of the Kandria Martial Union.


    The four royals watched with fear as dozens of Martial Masters descended before them. Leading them at the forefront was the famous Surgeon, Master Zentra¡ªa powerful high-grade Martial Master who had earned great recognition from the Martial Union.


    This was not a man who moved for light reasons.


    Sixteen Martial Masters appeared before the Martial Masters of the Martial Union and the four royals.


    "What is the meaning of this?!" One of them barked at the Union Masters. "Have you gone mad?! Has the Martial Union dered war against the Royal Family?!"


    "It''s the other way around." Master Ceeran''s voice was murderous. He emerged from among his peers with a profound bloodlust radiating from him. "The Royal Family has dered war against the Martial Union!"


    "No, we didn''t!" Prince Randal desperately denied the false usations.


    "YES YOU DID YOU MOTHERF-"


    "-Ceeran." Master Zentra''s calm voice cut through his titanic roar. Although his voice was soft, it contained a depth of power that Master Ceerancked. He slowly turned towards the sixteen Martial Masters, having abated his junior''s belligerence. "I am Zentra of the Martial Union. I apologize for my colleague''s outburst; you can rest assured the Martial Union has neither dered war against the Royal Family nor believes that the Royal Family has dered war against the Martial Union."


    "That when have youe?!" One Martial Master retorted with wary indignance. "Unauthorized entry of royal property is prohibited!"


    "ording to the uses of the Crimes Against Martial Art Act, the Martial Union is authorized to enter any and allnds within the Kandrian Empire in pursuit of the arrest of those it charges with murder conspiracy against not just a Martial Artist, but a constituent of the Martial Fiscal Committee," Master Zentra calmly remarked.


    Instantly, the sixteen Martial Masters and the four royals grew grave.


    They all understood exactly what had happened. Rui Quarrier Kandria had pulled the trigger.


    He had decided that he no longer needed them.


    And at the moment, he no longer needed them.


    In fact, he needed them gone. Each of them had earned the deep loyalty of a handful of high-ranking government officials who would not budge from them. If Rui wanted to earn their loyalty, he needed to cleanly remove them from the equation without any shadow of a doubt.


    "Now¡­" Master Zentra''s calm voice drew everybody''s attention.


    His eyes sharpened. "Move. Or you will be moved with force. You will join us regardless. The Martial Union has decided to avoid charging the sixteen of you with attempted murder as long as you agree to some¡­arrangements. However, if you want to join them in hell, I can have that arranged."


    The sixteen Martial Masters grew severe.


    But eventually, they relented, stepping out of the way.


    Prince Randal gritted his teeth.


    Yet it was over.


    "We have prepared a discreet transport method," Master Zentra remarked, gesturing to a stealth Martial Master.


    The royals frowned. Why bother going through these borate methods instead of just arresting them openly?


    "His Highness wishes to speak to you," Master Zentra rified calmly. "I believe that he had a proposal to make to you."


    The four royals stiffened at those words. None of them wanted to meet the Final Prince again, yet they had no choice. They could only pray that the worst would not unfold and they would at least be able to live a life.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1791 Progress

    Chapter 1791 Progress


    Rui meditated in an isted and silent training facility. Around him were a multitude of candles spread across the entirety of the


    His environment was serene.


    Yet his mind most certainly wasn''t.


    "RRRRRRGHHH!!" Rui gritted his teeth inside his mindscape inside his Mind Pce.


    A tsunami of information bombarded him, and he struggled to process each vector as well as he would have liked to. Yet the tsunami was much smaller than it had previously been.


    It was no longer an ocean that entirely overwhelmed him.


    "Rgh!" He pieced together the final piece of the puzzle.


    Suddenly, his vision of the world shifted. Time turned back, tracing its path.


    Yet, this time, it did not do so for all of the candles around him, only for the dozen or so before him.


    His eyes opened, lighting up with triumph. "It''s possible!"


    The sole Martial Art project that he had been working on at the moment was making the Angel of Lacebat viable by reducing the target scope of the technique to solely his opponent.


    Rewinding time across the entire world around him was cool, but it did not serve any purpose inbat. He needed to shave off the fluff so that he didn''t get anything he didn''t need in the middle ofbat.


    Unfortunately, this was proving to be quite challenging. The Angel of Lace domain technique worked by measuring every single vector within an enormous range of Rui.


    It was sort of like taking a molecr-high-definition three-dimensional picture of the entire world within that range. After that, he simply applied someplex mathematical functions to the system of vectors that drew them back in time, allowing him to then simte the past.


    It was an astronomicallyplicated version of predicting the past of waves atop the surface of ake.


    Even a child could nce at a wave of water and intuitively predict not just its past but also its origin. After all, the origin of a circr wave atop the surface of ake will always be the epicenter of the circle that the wave formed. One also knows that these waves of water move at a constant speed and move radially outward. Thus, one can predict the future and past of the wave of water infinitely.


    Rui was essentially doing a simr but exponentially moreplicated version to the entire world with the Angel of Lace, operating with heat, sound, discement, and even entropy to be able rewind the past.


    The only issue he was facing was that because he had taken such a mathematical approach to scrying the past, it was difficult to figure out how to selectively process the bare minimum amount of information needed to figure out the past of a single target. Text ? owned by N?velDrama.Org.


    He had no choice but to go down the trial-and-error route. By adjusting the mathematical models of the Angel of Lace and measuring their consequent impact on the output the functions spat out to the various inputs, he could slowly but steadily make progress towards eventually perfecting the Angel of Lace such that it became entirelybat viable.


    He didn''t know how long it would take.


    He didn''t even know if he could aplish it with the power of the Senior Realm solely.


    ''If I cannotplete the Angel of Lace with solely the power of the Senior Realm, then¡­'' Rui''s eyes narrowed.


    CLACK


    Rui nced at the door opening. "Your Highness," an assistant bowed deeply. "As ordered, I am here to inform you that it has been three days since the arrest waspleted. His Mastery, Master Zentra, has informed me that he had ensured that he has followed your instructions perfectly since then."


    "Good," Rui remarked. "You may go."


    "Yes, Your Highness," She left his presence.


    "Huff¡­" Rui heaved a resigned sigh, shaking his head.


    He would have loved to have continued refining the Angel of Lace technique in peace, but reality kept reminding him that he had a campaign to lead. It wasn''t long before he eventually ran into Master Zentra, who had been waiting for him.


    "Your Highness, I apologize for disturbing your training," Master Zentra greeted him.


    Rui shook his head. "You needn''t be apologetic or that humble to me. This is especially true for a Martial Master of your stature that exceeds even the status of a royal prince."


    "It would be inappropriate nheless, Your Highness," Master Zentra refused to relent.


    Rui heaved a sigh as the two of them walked through the branch of the Martial Union they were in. "When is the Martial Union going to officially dispatch a representative or panel of representatives to address the elephant in the room."


    The elephant of a hundred billion gold coins was donated t, along with a deration of support for Rui''s campaign. "I am unfortunately not privy to such a high-level matter," Master Zentra calmly replied.


    "What?!" Rui raised his eyebrows in disbelief. "Not even you?"


    "Not even me," He reaffirmed. "The Martial Union''s decisions and stance are extraordinarily impactful and will have ramifications across all of Kandria and beyond. It has the potential to impact the future of human civilization. Not even I am qualified to solely take charge of this matter. Thus, the Martial Union may dispatch a collective of Martial Masters from different sects and factions to deliberate with you toe to a mutual understanding or¡­"


    His voice trailed off.


    But his message was clear.


    Rui grew nervous and excited at the possibility, yet he schooled his demeanor. He still had business to take care of.


    "Where are those four idiots?" Rui asked. "I want to see how they''ve been doing in the past three days."


    "We''ve arrived, Your Highness," The Master remarked as they descended into a dungeon-like space underneath the Martial Union branch. A spiral of corridors led them further and further down the space. Rui could see countless prison bars down the corridors, imprisoning many people within.


    The depths of the dungeon were deep, such that the light of the torches along the corridors did not even illuminate the abyss down the center of the spiraling corridors.


    "I''ve never been to this part of the Hajin branch¡­" Rui murmured as he nced at the enormous prison space underneath. "Incredible."


    "This is where we house those sentenced to prison time by the Martial Union," Master Zentra remarked. "We''ve arrived."


    CLACK


    The guards open the doors, revealing four despairing figures.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1792 Machinations

    Chapter 1792 Machinations


    ??"Well, well, well¡­" Rui smirked. "What do we have here?"


    His very voice seemed to trigger deep trauma in each of them.


    Prince Randal''s breathing grew heavy as his expression crumpled, gritting his teeth. It was as though he needed to exert himself just to maintain hisposure before Rui. Princess Ranea stared at him with unadulterated fear while Raemina''s demeanor grew psychotically hateful.


    Princess Rafia started shivering uncontrobly.


    "Tsk tsk," Rui tutted lightly at her. "How brittle. The mere failure of the assassination attempt and the revtion of our blood rtionship were enough to break you mentally? What a joke. None of you wouldst a day as a Martial Artist."


    "I''LL KILL YOU!" Princess Raemina screeched.


    "Ah, the psycho has snapped," Rui heaved a sigh. "Behave unless you want to be stripped and thrown into a cage like an animal. I can arrange for that if you want."


    His words shut her up on the spot. She certainly despised him from the depths of her heart, but what he had described was soul-excruciating to even fathom, let alone actually experience.


    "¡­Soft," Rui huffed, shaking his head. "So addicted to your luxury that even amoner''s life must be gut-wrenching to you."


    "¡­What do you want?" Prince Randal managed to squeeze out.


    Rui turned to him. "I have an offer. If you refuse, I will ensure that you will live like animals for the rest of your life. If you ept, I can arrange for more amenable circumstances. If you do really well, I might be willing to have the Martial Union reduce your sentence to house arrest."


    Hope lit up in the eyes of the four royals.


    Rui had purposely let them spend a little time in the most extreme prison the Martial Union had to offer. He needed to bring about a deep desperation in their hearts and souls. He needed the gravity of the situation to truly set inside their bones.


    It was one thing to wave around the threat of life imprisonment, but unfortunately, they eachcked the understanding of how horrifying the threat was to them. They couldn''t fathom how much despair and misery it would bring about on an emotional level.


    After all, the standards of living the royals considered to be normal were whatmoners would consider to be paradise. What the royals considered to be bad was still quite very hospitable bymoner standards.


    They simplycked the context of how horrific things could truly be.


    That was why he had allowed them to rot in a holding cell for three days while the Martial Union prepared their trial so that they could gain the context needed.


    The moment he mentioned the possibility of house arrest. Their eyes lit up with deeply desperate hope. They leaped for the bars, abandoning all dignity, grasping at it as they stared at him with desperation. "We ept! We ept!!"


    "Are you sure¡­?"


    "Yes!!!"


    "Hehe¡­" Rui chuckled, taking a moment to enjoy the view.


    He had no sympathy for them. He didn''t care for them even before they tried killing him, but once they did, he could watch them burn without feeling damping his mood even in the slightest.


    They got what they hading.


    "As for what I need you to do¡­" Rui narrowed his eyes. "I need you to consult with each of your patrons, benefactors, and consultants and inform all of them personally that you have decided to cease your campaign and abandon all im to the throne. Tell them that you are grateful for all the money, Martial capital, and resources that they have given you, but unfortunately, you cannot return all of it. Apologize for the inconvenience courteously, and brush them off when they demand exnations."


    The four royals widened their eyes with shock. "¡­That will antagonize them and make them our enemies!"


    A sinister smile emerged on Rui''s face.


    "Exactly."


    Horror shed on their faces as they understood Rui''s true intentions!


    It would be all too easy for Rui to just have the Martial Union arrest the four royals in public with the publicly stated charge of Martial murder conspiracy against Prince Rui. However, this would be easily distorted as the Martial Union uwfully eradicatedpetition with some bullshit bogus charges, especially when the evidence could not be released ording to regtions for high-profile cases.


    Normally, only the Emperor had the authority to authorize a public review of the case, but he was not avable, which would only further inme the nation''s suspicions that the Martial Union had crossed a line with a fascistic attempt to instill their own puppets specifically during this time.


    Rui would not be immune to this. If he was known to be responsible for this suspiciously convenient arrest, he would be a target of suspicion and hatred. He would not be able to convince andpel the high-ranking government officials of the four royals to defect to him, not if he was seen as the front of the Martial Union''s potentially uwful misapplication of the Crimes Against Martial Art Act of the Kandria Martial Covenant.


    In the worst-case scenario, his campaign could be deeply stalled.


    That was why he resorted to this instead.


    "As long as you convince your stakeholders, donors, patrons, and benefactors that you are truly abandoning your campaign and running away with the money that they gave you for the sake of the campaign¡­" Rui smiled. "I will ensure that you will live a luxurious life under house arrest in the Vargard Royal Pce, protected by the Martial Union from your angry patrons."


    The moment they heard ''luxurious life,'' they did not even hesitate.


    "Deal!"


    "Good," Rui smirked.


    This was also a part of his n. If their donors, patrons, and benefactors saw the four royals suddenly abandon their campaign, brush off their demands, and then hide under the protection of the Martial Union in luxury, there was only one exnation to be deduced.


    The four royals sold themselves to the Martial Union.


    Corruption was not rare among members of the royal family. Once all the supporters of the four royals realize that they sold out to the Martial Union to stop their campaigns in exchange for luxury and absolute protection, they would undoubtedly garner deep hatred and break all ties with them.


    "¡­And then I shall swoop in and offer myself as a new candidate willing topensate them for their losses, secretly using the same money that they gave to the royals, as long as they join my faction," Rui smirked. "It''s too strong an offer for them to refuse."N?velDrama.Org holds ? this.


    This was the way that he could smoothly win over all their patrons, donors, and benefactors in one fell swoop.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1793 Uproar

    Chapter 1793 Uproar


    ??An uproar had sparked in the political sphere of the Kandrian Empire.


    One that shook the entire politicalndscape and the dynamics of the Kandrian Throne War.


    Prince Randal, Princess Ranea, Princess Rafia, and Princess Raemina had each abruptly forfeited the Kandrian Throne War!


    The announcements spread like wildfire as each of the four royals released statements to their respective factions. The entirety of the upper echelons of the Kandrian Empire was utterly bewildered by the simultaneous decisions of the four royals to forfeit their im to the throne.


    The ones who were most shocked, of course, were the closest patrons, donors, and benefactors of each of the four royals. None of them were able to understand what was happening.


    "What is the meaning of this, Randal?!" Grand General Aramoeus bellowed at the royal prince.


    "I have taken some time to introspect," Prince Randal replied calmly, closing his eyes. "I have decided that I no longer wish to ascend the throne. I appreciate all the time, effort, and capital that each of you has invested in me, but unfortunately, I am unable to return it. I hope you understand."


    "What?!"


    "Come back!"


    "How dare you?!"


    The entirety of the war room stared at the Military Prince with shock as the man quietly left the room, ignoring any demands for justification.


    Simr scenes unfolded in the other three factions as well. Each of the other three royals broke the news quickly and clinically and departed once the message had been conveyed. Not a single one of their patrons, donors, and benefactors was able to maintain theirposure.


    They were even more bewildered when they learned that simr things happened in three other factions.


    Yet, they were helpless. Once a donation had been made, they could not pry it back; they would have to live with the fact that each of the four had simply walked away with all that wealth.


    Once the shock wore off, each of them very quickly began to curse the four royals with deep frustration. The investments that these donor patrons had made to each of the royals were not small. Some of them had even bled for the royals in hopes that it would increase the chance that they would ascend the throne and fulfill their promises.


    Now, all of those hopes had gone down the drain.


    lights¦­¦Ïv¦Ål ?¦Ïm Yet, that wasn''t even the worst part.


    The worst part was that the four royals were spotted in one of the Martial Union''s most luxurious guest estates, used to entertain important and powerful international guests visiting Kandria on business with the union. Allegedly, the Martial Union had gone out of its way to put up a disy of Martial Art to entertain them.


    That was when the final pieces clicked.


    It made no sense for the four royals to randomly abandon their lifelong ambitions and then coincidentally live it up at the Martial Union''s expense when they were previously adversarial with each other.


    A spark of understanding formed in people''s minds.


    Everything could be exined if the four princes had been bought by some powerful incentive from the Martial Union. It would exin the otherwise odd sequence of events.


    It was still shocking. Just what kind of mind-numbing offer had the Martial Union made to each of them?


    The four royals already lived in royal luxury; whatever the Martial Union had offered must have far exceeded anything they could even imagine, so much so that even the four royals had willingly abandoned their ambitions.


    That was the most reasonable exnation when one applied am''s Razor.


    Regardless, the Kandrian Throne War had been shaken.


    The number of primepetitors for the throne had reduced from eight to four in a single day!


    The remainingpetitors were the allied princes; Prince Raijun and Prince Rajak, as well as Prince Raul and Prince Rui.


    Anybody looking to support candidates with political philosophies most beneficial to them was left with four choices. Many powerful people in the political sphere of the Kandrian Empire had just been deprived of their supporting prince or princess with the removal of the four royals from the race. Each of them reluctantly returned to considering which of the remaining princes they ought to support with a hint of caution.


    Although many of them had lost trust in the Royal Family, with half the prime royals dipping from the race and running away, they had no choice but to partake in the race.


    It was too important. Whoever would ascend the throne gained enormous power that made even the Martial Union wary and apprehensive. They could not allow themselves not to influence who the next ruler was, however little they could.


    They were very familiar with three of the four candidates, having considered and very quickly rejected them in the past.This content is ? N?velDrama.Org.


    The fourth candidate, however, was quite new to everyone.


    Not that there was a single person who was unaware of the youngest Senior in history. Up until the revtion of his royal bloodship, they were only aware of him in the capacity of an extraordinary Martial Artist.


    Nobody knew nearly as much about him as a potential candidate for Emperor.


    That was why arge number of them revisited recordings and transcripts of his press conference, going over every word he uttered.


    His political doctrine was that of harmony.


    He was a prince who sought to maintain the existing status quo.


    That was not ideal to them, but¡­


    It''s not bad.


    This was the thought that shed through many of their heads. The status quo that existed in the Kandrian Empire did not strictly favor any one power bloc of the Kandrian Empire over another.


    On top of that, if the Final Prince was aspetent as he seemed, then the Kandrian Empire might experience a period of growth simr to what it experienced under the rule of the Emperor of Harmony.


    That was not disagreeable. It certainly was infinitely more alluring than a vengeful psychopath, an ignorant saint, and a plummeting Martial Prince.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1794 Monastery of Mysteries

    Chapter 1794 Monastery of Mysteries


    ??"Your Highness! We have received inquiries and appointment requests from more than a hundred distinguished economic and political tycoons!" His chief of staff eximed.


    Rui smirked.


    Just as nned.


    "Ensure that each of them receives an appointment within the month," Rui replied. "In thetter half of the day, preferably. I''ll leave the scheduling management to you."


    "Understood, Your Highness."Content is ? by N?velDrama.Org.


    Rui grinned, amused, as he went through the list of those who were once of the faction of the four royals that he had eliminated from thepetition. They had considered him fairly, something that they would not have done if they had known that he was the reason that their favored candidate had dipped from the race and ran away with their money.


    He certainly didn''t intend to tell them.


    No one would believe that a prince who had recently entered the race would be able to arrange for the immediate removal of four of hispetitors. It would be an extraordinary level ofpetence to eliminate powerfulpetitors so quickly.


    While the other three princes would undoubtedly work hard to reel in as many candidates as they could, Rui wasn''t too worried that they would be able to exceed his efforts. If they failed before, there was no reason to think they would seed, especially when they were in a tougher spot.


    Rui sharpened his eyes as his mind furiously raced to make considerations of the future. He had a clear vision of what was toe and what he was to set out to achieve.


    His political goals were to quickly monopolize each of the freed-up patrons, donors, and benefactors from the four former factions. Eventually, he intended to wring away at least seventy-five percent of support from high-ranking government officials.


    This way, there was absolutely no chance for any of hispetitors to seed at bing Emperor.


    On top of that, if he failed, he would be able to keep up his oath. He was sincere when he had sworn the oath to Sage Sayfeel, and he doubted that the powerful Martial Sage would allow him to go back on his word even if he tried.


    If that was the case, it was best to prepare for failure.


    His eyes narrowed as the air grew heavier.


    If he failed, he would be Emperor.


    "Huff¡­" Rui closed his eyes, shaking his head.


    When he opened them, a deep determination lit up within their depths.


    "Your Highness," his chief of staff contacted him once more.


    "Hm?" He turned to themunication artifact projecting her voice. "What is it?"


    "The Martial Union has just invited you for an official deliberation regarding its patronage of your campaign," she told him.


    Rui''s eyes intensified as he read through the statement that the Martial Union had issued the Rui Administration. It was a rather formal invitation to discuss the arrangements between the Martial Union and Prince Rui Quarrier Kandria in his campaign for the throne.


    Rui noted that the two Martial Masters standing behind him of the Martial Union hadn''t told him anything about it. Master Zentra was one thing, but it was rather strange that Master Ceeran hadn''t informed him beforehand.


    ''He didn''t know,'' Rui realized. ''Would he really not know if it was just a bunch of Martial Masters?''


    That was impossible. The Ranging Sect was undoubtedly powerful enough to have a voice in this panel of Masters that would collectively address Rui. The fact that he didn''t know meant that it wasn''t just going to be a panel of Masters.


    Rui''s eyes narrowed as realization dawned on him. "When is it?"


    "¡­It''s now, sir," His chief of staff remarked with an indignant tone.


    Her tone made it clear she didn''t appreciate the Martial Union summoning Rui without prior notice, expecting him to drop his work and run to their summons.


    Yet Rui only grew more certain of his realization.


    "I''ll go," He remarked, getting up hastily. "Send me the location."


    Very soon, he found himself sky-walking across Kandria at top speed. The sheer speed at which he was traveling was so great that it looked like aet was flying through the sky at astronomical speeds!


    He didn''t want to leave whoever it was that he would be speaking to waiting. That was why he even activated his Martial Heart along with Gale Force Breathing and Outer Convergence, reaching speeds dozens of times greater than that of even sound.


    Master Zentra, Master Vericita, Master Ceeran, and Master Iskan effortlessly kept up with him, of course, using a fraction of their full power to ensure that they were in close proximity at all times.


    "Is that it¡­?" Rui narrowed his eyes as he spotted a structure on top of a mountain three hundred kilometers away from them.


    "Indeed, Your Highness," Master Vericita smiled. "That is the Monastery of Mysteries, a ce for meditation built by the Martial Union that is usually reserved for..."


    "¡­for Martial Sages," Ruipleted his words with a heavy tone.


    His nerves tingled.


    The air prickled.


    He could almost feel the strain of heaven and earth under the weight


    "Hehehe, you seem to have attracted the attention of bigshots, my friend!" Master Iskan grinned. "Be honored; it is not every day that those of the Sage of Realm see fit to give their time to Martial Seniors! It is a testament to how much of an impact you have made as a Martial Artist!"


    "¡­I think it''s because I''m a prince rather than a prominent Martial Senior," Rui smiled bitterly.


    "That''s where you''re wrong."


    Master Zentra''s calm voice denied his statement.


    "The only other prince who has gained the personal audience of a Martial Sage was Prince Raul," He calmly remarked. "None of the other Martial Sages have deemed the royals they supported to be worthy of a personal audience. Prince Raijun had desperately begged the Flickering Elder for an audience for many years, yet she never relented, deeming him unworthy of her personal time."


    Master Ceeran smiled at him. "Your aplishments were previously deemed impossible. You have earned the right to be proud of them."


    "¡­Thanks."


    Gratitude echoed in Rui''s voice.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1795 How Dare You

    Chapter 1795 How Dare You


    ??STEP


    Theynded atop Mt. Vanfeiger.


    It was a mountain at the center of a barren desert in South Kandria, devoid of too much activity and life. The area was as deste as it was serene.


    "Huff¡­" Rui heaved a sigh as he quickly consumed a light rejuvenation potion, restoring his expended stamina.


    He gazed at the Monastery of Mysteries.


    "We will secure the area, Your Highness," Master Zentra calmly remarked. "Not that it is required, but nothing can be allowed to disturb your audience with the personage that awaits you."


    "¡­Understood."


    "Break a leg, my friend!" Master Iskan pped him on the shoulder, leaving him a bruise as he walked away.


    PAT


    Master Vericita smiled warmly as she reassured him with a hand on his head. "Good luck, my child."


    She, too, stepped away.


    "You don''t need luck," Master Ceeran smirked. "If it''s you, you are able to make your own, am I wrong?"


    Soon enough, he was alone before the giant structure.


    His heart felt heavy.


    A profound sense of power radiated from within the monastery.


    A Realm of power that he hade to recognize.


    It was a Realm of power that seemed to bend the world itself.


    A power that bent heaven and earth itself.


    His Martial drive stirred.


    His hunger stirred.


    The void in the depths of stirred.


    "I want this power¡­" A single whisper escaped his mouth.


    Feeling such power only brought about greater rity in his heart.


    Was he going to sit on a throne and y Emperor while such godly power awaited him?


    Determination shed in his eyes.


    "No."


    He stepped forth with a determined gait.


    He didn''t have time to waste.


    CLACK


    The giant gate of the Monastery of Mysteries opened before he could reach them, closing behind him when he entered.


    The monastery was hemispherical.


    It was also almost empty.


    Devoid of all but one.


    A man.


    No.


    Rui''s eyes narrowed.


    Not a man.


    A Sage.


    Rui could feel it.


    That strange sensation that apanied all Martial Sages.


    He couldn''t quite put his finger on it, but it was¡­


    Heavy.


    Their presence weighed down on the world around them. It weighed down on space and time itself, almost generating a gravitational field by virtue of the weight of their being, so much so that Riemannian Echo had be utterly incoherent in the man''s presence.


    He didn''t understand.


    He didn''t understand this power that he deeply yearned for.


    The Martial Sage was lying down on the ground, rxed. His hands supported his head as a cushion while his legs stretched out, intertwined in a rather rxing sleeping position.


    His appearance and attire werezy, at best. He wore a simple, fluffy single-piece garb, a fusion between Martial Art attire and sleeping pajamas.


    He was toozy to switch back and forth between them.


    Rui recognized him instantly, of course.


    The Sloth Sage.


    Countless thoughts shed through Rui''s mind as he considered what to do. The meeting was too important to act without carefully considering the ramifications of every single word he uttered!


    "It ain''t that deep, kid."


    A nonchnt remark escaped from the Martial Sage.


    Yet his mouth hadn''t moved.


    "Hup¡­" He visibly looked tired as he got up. "Huff¡­at my age, even getting up can be quite exhausting."


    His mouth didn''t move.


    Yet Rui could hear him.


    ''How?'' Rui''s eyes widened.


    The Sloth Sage peered at him with azy gaze.


    "It''s because the Monastery of Mysteries manifests thought as sound and vision."


    His mouth hadn''t moved.


    "Right now, you''re hearing my thoughts," The Martial Sage smiledzily. "Convenient, isn''t it? I love this ce because I''m toozy to move my mouth and exert my vocal cords."


    "What?!" Rui''s eyes widened with shock as his thoughts manifested into sound, reaching the Martial Sage.


    "The effect gets stronger the closer you get to the center." He exined. "Come closer."


    Rui stared at him apprehensively.


    "Oh, don''t be a pussy, boy," The man snortedzily. "I won''t tell anyone about the depraved thoughts and fantasies you have about the women in your life. I''m toozy to bother."


    Rui shook his head, heaving a sigh.


    STEP


    Suddenly, the world around him changed.


    The hemispherical dome of the monastery disappeared.Text ? owned by N?velDrama.Org.


    What appeared in its ce was a sight that he had grown extremely familiar with over time.


    His Mind Pce.


    "Wha-" He literally shook on the spot, bewildered at how his Mind Pce manifested in reality around them!


    "¡­Oh?" The Martial Sage slowly shifted his head, resting in his hands, around as he gazed at the sight that emerged before him with interest. "I had read that you had mastered the Mind Pce technique to an extraordinary degree, but this¡­"


    The Martial Sage''s murmur trailed off as he squinted at a particr sight with sharpened eyes.


    It was the street that John Falken had lived on back on Earth.


    "¡­Where is that?"


    "Nothing!" Rui squelched as he quickly thought about something; the scene changed.


    The man turned to Rui with interested eyes.


    A certain realization had dawned on him.


    "¡­I see that there''s more to you than meets the eye."


    "This is unfair!¡­Your Sagehood," Ruiined, hastily adding the honorific at the end.


    The Sloth Sage smiledzily. "I suppose it is. You have my apologies. Here, I''ll let you get a glimpse of my mind."


    lights¦­¦Ïv¦Ål ?¦Ïm WHOOSH!


    Rui''s eyes widened as the world changed.


    Suddenly, he was in the sky.


    An empty blue sky.


    The only thing he could see was a light cloud. It expanded, slowly epassing him in its warm embrace.


    It was soft.


    It was serene.


    The very sight of it made him feel rxed.


    Its touch made him feel sleepy.


    It made for soul satisfaction.


    He felt like lying down and sleeping forever.


    Why bother with building a faction?


    Why bother searching for the Divine Doctor?


    Why bother with¡­Project Water?


    His soul shook at that thought.


    BADUMP!


    His heart began beating faster and faster.


    Every cell in his body shook with power.


    His eyes lit up with rage as he red at the floating cloud.


    It was the Martial Embodiment of the Sloth Sage.


    "How dare you?" Rui''s tone grew murderous. "How dare you make me question my Martial Path?!"


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1796 Unfolding

    Chapter 1796 Unfolding


    Of all the things that he could possibly have done against a Martial Sage, Rui didn''t expect that he would be directing his bloodlust towards one. It was an act that had an extremely high mortality rate.


    Yet, the deep disgust he felt at even having questioned dedicating himself to Project Water instantly turned into deep rage. Rage against the one who had caused him to question his Martial Path, even if only for a moment.


    He wanted to erase the one who caused him to question his Martial Path from existence.


    Erase him from history.


    Erase the very fact that such a thing had ever even happened.


    His bloodlust deepened. It was palpable, wringing the very air around them taut. His fury boiled.


    It boiled until it no longer could.


    In that moment, he had be beholden to it.


    At that moment, he snapped.


    BADUMP!


    His Martial Heart zed into full power, propelling him forward. It hadn''t been his intention, yet he moved without even realizing it. In less than a millisecond, he had already arrived before the Sage. His leg blurred, shing forward at blinding speeds. Content is ? by N?velDrama.Org.


    The full weight of Outer Convergence, Fire Breathing, Reverberating Lance, and Adamant Reforging flew forward in a titanic Flowing Canon kick to the head.


    WHOOSH!


    Rui''s eyes widened as he felt all the momentum of his attack disappear as his attack before it could even reach the Martial Sage.


    It wasn''t a technique.


    Rui instinctively understood that much. It was the very world itself. Almost as though heaven and earth had been bent by his presence so much that it impeded his attack.


    It was only then that Rui''s conscious awareness caught up to what he had done.


    WHOOSH...!


    He leaped away, breaking out in a cold sweat.


    "I would have let you vent your anger if it appeased you, but¡­" The Sloth Sagezily turned towards Rui. "¡­Lesser beingsck the qualification to touch a Martial Sage. I''m toozy to do the work for you. Still¡­"


    A glint of interest shed in his eyes. "¡­I was not aware that it was possible for a lesser Martial Artist to resist the effects of my Martial Embodiment."


    His interest grew deeper.


    "This is a feat that only those of the Upper Realms are able to aplish."


    His eyes fixed on Rui. "¡­You are cut from a different cloth, Rui Quarrier Kandria."


    Rui narrowed his eyes, clenching his fist. His displeasure towards the Martial Sage was palpable.


    The Martial Sage heaved a sigh. "I won''t lie to you. I intended to interrogate you while you were in a hypnotic state under my Martial Embodiment, but out of respect for your resistance, I will abstain from attempting."


    Rui''s eyes grew colder. "Interrogation? Hypnotic state?"


    The man smiled. "While being a Martial Artist is enough to withstand the Martial Embodiments of Martial Masters, once needs to be of the Upper Realms to withstand the hypnotic effect of Martial Embodiments of Sages like myself."


    He gestured to the Monastery of Mysteries. "I don''t have any hypnotic techniques and rather bring out my full power to active my Martial Embodiment, I figured it would be better to use the Monastery of Mysteries, which can convert my thoughts into light and sound, which can be used to hypnotize people."


    Rui understood why the Martial Sage had invited Rui to the Monastery of Mysteries. The monastery essentially allowed the Martial Sage to use hypnosis within the facility without actually having mastered any hypnotic techniques.


    That wasn''t what Rui was concerned with, however.


    "Why do you want to interrogate me?" Rui growled. "Is this how the Martial Union treats those it seeks to patron and support? Is this how it treats members of the Martial Fiscal Committee?"


    Aplicated expression appeared on his face. "¡­Well, I had intended to erase your memories of it. I didn''t expect your mind and drive to be collectively powerful enough to resist even the initial hypnosis."


    "Why did you want to interrogate me at all?" Rui red at him, no longer feeling safe in the presence of the Sloth Sage.


    "To figure out your true intentions, of course," the Sloth Sage calmly remarked. "I''ve gone through your whole profile in our database. Did you really think I would buy you, of all people, willingly be Emperor at the cost of your Martial Path without any schemes, ns, strategies, or something in an attempt to have your cake and eat it?"


    He tilted his head. "¡­We aren''t ipetent, you know. The Martial Union has been observing you for eighteen years. Short of your father, we know you better than anybody else does."


    Rui narrowed his eyes. "¡­Just to assuage suspicions, the Martial Union decided to hypnotize me against my will?!"


    "Nah, that was me alone. I''m toozy to find out the truth in an ethical but time-consuming manner, you see. So I decided to do it the easy way using hypnosis," the Sloth Sage smiledzily before a hint of concern shed in his eyes. "Wait. Don''t tell anyone. I''ll get my ass whooped if my peers find out. That drunk bitch is always looking for an opportunity to whale on me."


    Rui red at the Martial Sage. "And what if I do? It''s not like you can hurt me or kill me without getting into much deeper trouble with the Kandrian government and military. Everybody knows my current location, you know. There are powerful forces that will move when they learn that a Martial Sage of the Union bullied the heir of the Emperor."


    The Sloth Sage groaned. "Damned Void Prince. Bullying you would have been much easier three months ago, even if still difficult."


    He heaved a sigh. "Alright, tell you what. You tell me your intentions and keep this hypnosis matter a secret, and in return, I''ll do you one favor, deal?"


    The Sloth Sage shamelessly asked Rui to keep his transgressions a secret, trying to incentivize him with a favor.


    Unfortunately for Rui, it was hard to ignore such a deal.


    Rui''s eyes lit up with interest. "What kind of favor are we talking about?"


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1797 Final Card

    Chapter 1797 Final Card


    The Sloth Sage shrugged. "The kind of favor that only a Martial Sage couldplete. Nothing unreasonable, of course. I am not going to assassinate the other princes for you. As long as it is not detrimental to the Martial Union and the Kandrian Empire, I''ll do you a solid deal."


    Rui narrowed his eyes. "And what if I refuse?"


    "Then the Martial Union rescinds its support for you," The Martial Sage lightly remarked. "We will not support someone who refuses to be transparent with us."


    "Shouldn''t this have been done before the union announced its support for me?" Rui raised an eyebrow.


    "If I had the power to have stopped that, I would have. I was against the Union supporting you," The Sloth Sage shrugged. "But you have acquired some¡­fans. A lot of fans. However¡­"


    His eyes narrowed. "I am not necessarily one of them. At least, not a fan of the political support for you. I was chosen to represent the Union out of all my peers because I have among the leastpromised interests and am able to represent the Union rather than my personal interests, believe it or not. The major sects don''t want to allow one of their rivals to get it. I, on the other hand, am least involved with my sect, or anybody or anything else."


    He heaved a tired sigh as though the very act of monologuing was exhausting.


    "The Drunk Dame is even more detached than me, but she''s perenially too drunk to be entrusted with representing the Martial Union," The Sloth Sage remarked. His eyeszily turned to Rui. "So what''s it going to be, Void Prince? Show us you are worthy of our trust by divulging your true intentions, get a favor from me, or¡­refuse to do so and lose our support due tock of transparency, as judged by me?"


    Rui stared at him.


    It appeared that the Sloth Sage was willing to use the fact that he was entrusted with deliberating with Rui to take away the Martial Union''s support of him if he didn''te clean.


    To a certain extent, he could understand where the Sloth Sage wasing from.


    After all, if he were a donor considering heavily supporting and investing in a political candidate, knowing thetter''s true intentions and goals was a bare minimum. It was an absolute necessity.


    Still, he didn''t appreciate being attempted hypnosis against.


    However, he needed the Martial Union''s support.


    He also didn''t mind a favor from the Sloth Sage. "I''ll tell if you keep it a secret," Rui narrowed his eyes. "And just why would I do that, young prince?" Text ? owned by N?velDrama.Org.


    "You don''t seem to want me to ascend the throne, right?" "¡­It would be a waste of potential," the Sloth Sage closed his eyes. "Your Hungry Pain technique has helped my sect more than you can imagine. Your so-called voidlet techniques will lead to a surge in sessful breakthroughs in the Master Realm. And that Mind Pce I saw earlier¡­"


    His eyes opened.


    They fixed on Rui, sending chills down his spine.


    "The wonders within it that I have borne witness to¡­" The Sloth Sage continued. "They would be wasted on the throne."


    Wonder shed in hiszy eyes. "Era-defining power. Era-defining knowledge. Era-defining potential."


    He shook his head. "What I have seen today convinces me all the more that you must never ascend the throne. For the sake of the future of Martial Art. For the sake of the future of human civilization."


    "¡­If you don''t want me to ascend the throne, then¡­" Rui''s eyes lit up. "¡­It would you do well to keep my true intentions a secret. After all¡­"


    Rui stared at the man. "I do not intend to ascend the throne."


    The Sloth Sage narrowed his eyes as he peered at Rui with his sharp senses.


    He could only sense sincerity.


    "I don''t understand," The Sloth Sage tilted his head. "I intend to find the Divine Doctor and have him heal the Emperor of Kandria," Rui calmly dered. "The reason I''m growing my faction is to prevent any of my other princes and princesses from ascending the throne even if the Emperor passes away. I will monopolize seventy-five percent of the high-ranking government officials needed to be the ruler of Kandria."


    The Sloth Sage raised an eyebrow. "¡­Divine Doctor. That''s a name I haven''t heard in a long time. So that''s your y, hm?"


    He narrowed his eyes. "You''ll fail."


    "So I''ve been told," Rui calmly retorted. "It''s not going to stop me."


    "Hm¡­" The Sloth Sage considered his words. "And what if you fail?"


    "I swore an oath to ascend the throne, should that happen," Rui replied.


    "¡­Well, I suppose that''s how desperate the situation is," The Sloth Sage heaved a sigh. "Your chances of sess are very low. If I choose to oppose you, they will reduce even more."


    Rui didn''t deny his words.


    They were true.


    "Healing the Emperor of Harmony to get him back on the throne¡­" The Sloth Sage heaved a sigh. "I am not opposed to that. Unlike for most others, the history of the Emperor of Harmony is within my memory. More than three hundred years ago, the Martial Union only had twenty-five Martial Masters, and the Sage Realm hadn''t even been discovered yet. I was among the Martial Masters. I recall the young prince Rael approaching me many years before the civil war heated up, predicting everything that went on to happen, sessfully extracting the support of the various power blocs of Kandria, including us leaders of the Martial Union, to swiftly be Emperor after he assassinated his father."


    He closed his eyes. "I consider him a friend, as do most of my peers. I truly believe that no other person is worthy of ruling over this Empire that rests on a delicate bnce that he has created with his own hands."


    He heaved a sigh. "Frankly, I figured the Kandrian Empire was screwed the moment I learned about his illness. But it turned out that¡­"


    His eyes turned to Rui. "¡­that he still had one final card to y."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1798 Path Forward

    Chapter 1798 Path Forward


    ??The Sloth Sage shook his head. "Look at me, rambling about the distant past. Rather out of character, I must say."


    He nced at Rui. "If my fellow leaders find out, half of them will not be pleased. There is an implicit understanding that you would do Martial Art and the Martial Union more justice as Emperor than the Emperor of Harmony who focused on bncing interests as per their importance and power."


    Rui didn''t reply.


    He simply stared at the Sloth Sage silently.


    He was waiting for the Martial Sage''s decision.


    The man heaved a sigh.


    "Alright, I''ll keep it a secret. In turn, you keep my, ahem, transgressions a secret. I''ll dere that you were forthright and transparent with your intentions of bing Emperor, and I''ll owe you a favor, deal?" The Sloth Sage turned to Ruizily.


    "Deal," Rui smirked. "As for the favor¡­I intend to have a Martial Master who is highly adept at disguise take my ce while I travel in search of the Divine Doctor. She is able to fool almost all Martial Masters, but when ites to Martial Sages¡­"


    "I''ll handle it," The Sloth Sage waved his handzily. "It''s not particrly relevant to my field of expertise, but I can ensure that it won''t get out unless something particrly unfortunate happens."


    "Thanks!" Rui grinned.


    He had managed to secure confidence that Master Reina wouldn''t be exposed. Of course, anything was possible, but he had a reasonably high degree of confidence that the worst wouldn''t unfold.


    ''Now I can just focus on calmly building my faction, and then head out to the Beast Domain as early as I can,'' Rui narrowed his eyes.Text ? owned by N?velDrama.Org.


    "Good luck with that," The Sloth Sage remarked, reminding him that he could hear his active thoughts. "Finding the Divine Doctor is going to be a particrly difficult task. Among the hardest to track, he ranks particrly high on that list."


    Rui turned to the Sloth Sage. "¡­Any advice?"


    "Going in blind is stupid," the sage remarked. "I''d say, find someone who has a connection with him. They might be able to give you more clues. I don''t know how you found out that he''s in the Beast Domain, but it doesn''t surprise me. You still need more specific information, though. I probably don''t need to tell you that."


    Rui nodded.


    The Beast Domain was far toorge for Rui to manually search it, looking for the Divine Doctor; that was a nonsensical way to go about it.


    "Someone who has a connection with the Divine Doctor, hm?" Rui narrowed his eyes. "Like who?"


    "The Beggar Sage of the Beggar''s Sect," The Sloth Sage shrugged. "Any of the other human sages, maybe. A Martial Transcendent could potentially help you. Good luck finding one and getting them to help you."


    Rui had to admit the prospects were scarce at best.


    "I''ll have to think hard and long about it before I depart," Rui''s eyes swam around. "I want to make sure that I have a concrete n in mind before I begin my search for him."


    It wasn''t going to be easy, but he would need to discreetly search for as much information on him as he could.


    He didn''t have too much hope that this would yield fruit, however. He knew that his father had been looking for the Divine Doctor for many years and still failed to narrow down the man''s location.


    He undoubtedly employed every single manner of intelligence-gathering he had at his disposal. If Rui simply tried going down that same course of action, he would probably take even longer than his father did to find the information that he was looking for.


    This meant that Rui needed to employ a method that his father had not tried, whether it was because he was unable to or hadn''t thought to.


    He had some potentially promising ideas.


    He turned to the Sloth Sage. "Regardless, I appreciate your cooperation and advice, Your Sagehood."


    The Martial Sage shrugged. "Good luck. I''ll inform the union that our deliberation was a sess, that the Void Prince understands our basic expectations, and that his expectations of us are also within an eptable range. Thus, the Martial Union will extensively cooperate with him even more than to have to secure his im on the throne of the Kandrian Empire."


    "Thank you," Rui bowed his head lightly.


    "Alright, I''m tired. I''m taking a nap; get out of here," The man waved his hand, and suddenly, Rui found himself standing outside of the Monastery of Mysteries.


    Before he could even consider that, his four bodyguards had already arrived behind him.


    Before he could even consider that, his four bodyguards had already arrived behind him.


    "How did it go?" Master Ceeran asked him with concern.


    "It went pretty well," Rui casually remarked. "We managed toe to a solid agreement and understanding. The Martial Union will be supporting me even more."


    "That is very relieving to hear," Master Zentra remarked.


    "Good going!" Master Iskan pped him on the shoulder.


    "It is definitely relieving to know that the Union will be moving as a whole," Master Vericita smiled warmly.


    Rui nodded. "I have a lot of work to do. So let''s get back."


    He wanted to finish his faction-building goals as soon as possible. He had less than five years to find the Divine Doctor and save the Emperor. The more time he wasted, the lower the probability was that he would seed.


    He also intended tomence a search for information on the Divine Doctor employing methods that his father hadn''t. His father did not have the ability to harness the Martial Union''s power to find the Divine Doctor.


    Rui did.


    14:51


    His father did not have powerful techniques such as the Angel of Lace and the pattern recognition system of the VOID algorithm.


    Rui did.


    There were many possibilities that he could find what he was looking for, but many of them needed to wait until he departed from the Kandrian Empire. This was the only realistic way forward, and even then, Rui knew that it would not be easy.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1799 First Demand

    Chapter 1799 First Demand


    Now that he had secured the support of a Martial Sage to aid with ensuring that Master Reina didn''t get exposed to other Martial Sages or extremely powerful Martial Masters, he could be a lot more assured about the security of his n to have her take over in his stead once he essentially won the Kandrian Throne War.


    ''Now that I''ve secured the Martial Union''s full cooperation, it''s time to bulldoze through thepetition and win seventy-five percent of high-ranking government officials,'' Rui said, narrowing his eyes. With the Martial Union''s support, it was going to be smooth for the most part. No government official could resist the power that the Martial Union had. Any favor, any request, any necessity or indulgence, he could have it fulfilled. If they wanted a powerful potion brewed from rare substances, then he could simply instruct several Martial Masters of the union to head down the Beast Domain and procure the required substances in exchange for that high-ranking government official''s support.


    In the worst-case scenario, he could employ the Martial Sages to a minor extent. And the number of things that were too difficult for a Martial Sage was quite limited and usually involved other Martial Sages.


    Once Rui returned, he immediately got to work. His chief of staff had already scheduled a hundred appointments within a single month with a hundred important and distinguished individuals whom Rui personally needed to spend time with to reel over.


    His life very quickly shifted as the faction-building took off in full force. In the past three months, he had merely been setting up the foundations of his faction staff and administration.


    Now, he was starting the real deal.


    "Who''s the first appointment fixed with?" Rui asked.


    "Guildmaster Bradt and Chairman Decker of the Bradt-Decker Political Venture Capital Guild, Your Highness," she quickly replied, providing him with a scheduling docket.


    "Was that on purpose?"


    "¡­Yes, Your Highness. I suspected that it would be best to begin with prospective patrons with whom you already have a history of cooperation and partnership before moving on to those you don''t have any prior rtionship with." Content is ? by N?velDrama.Org.


    "Good thinking," Rui admitted. "It is indeed easier for me to deal with Bradt and Decker since I know them, especially the former."


    He immediately headed to his office, where the two had been waiting already.


    CLACK


    "Apologies for the slight dy," Rui remarked as he walked into his office, immediately spotting the two of them and their bodyguards. "I''ve been incredibly busy with untimely matters that I could not put aside."


    "Don''t worry about it," Chairman Decker smiled. "You do not need to apologize," Guildmaster Bradt calmly remarked. "It is a perennial part of leadership."


    Rui smiled wryly at the two of them as he took a seat. "I did expect to be approached by the two of you the moment I decided to go for the throne, but this¡­"


    He nced at the documents titled with the newfound guild that the two had founded. "This was unexpected, even if clever."


    "It was my idea, by the way," Chairman Decker remarked with a hint of smug pride. Guildmaster Bradt stared at Rui impassively. "Collectivism, no matter what form it takes, is an age-old solution to oveing hurdles that cannot be ovee alone."


    Rui smiled, amused. "And what hurdle is it that the two of you seek to ovee?"


    "The hurdle of making the best out of our patronage of you, of course," Chairman Decker remarked. "We seek to squeeze you for the best deal we can get."


    "Alright, I''ll let you begin," Rui remarked. "What are your demands, and what do you offer in return?"


    Guildmaster Bradt pushed a file forward to Rui. "We have two broad demands; the first is a lowered ease of doing business in the Kandrian Empire. While not nearly as restrictive as the Britannian Empire or the Sekigahara Confederate, it is nowhere as libertarian as our own Shionel Confederation or the Republic of Gorteau."


    Rui considered their demand while he went through the file, which expounded the precise details of their demands.


    "Lowered permit and authorization requirements¡­lowered difficulty of credit acquisition¡­lowered difficulty ofnd acquisition¡­" Rui murmured. "All standard stuff. I''ll consider it. I am more amenable to long-term adjustments to the Kandrian Empire''s economic model, but if you''re expecting anything swift and instantaneous, then I''m afraid not. The Kandrian Empire has integrated many stakeholders and power blocs into it seamlessly, thanks to my father, but the only disadvantage of that is that changees slowly because too many people have vested interests, increasing the probability that at least one of them would find change to be detrimental."


    There were some sectors that benefited from the government regtion, because it favored domestic supplier markets over foreign markets. Many international and foreign manufacturers and suppliers were reluctant to expand too heavily into the Kandrian Empire due to the ease of doing business, which, while not too bad, was not too inviting either.


    "I do not wish to suddenly thrust our domestic supplier market into a world where they have topete with seasoned veteran business tycoons like those of the Shionel Confederation," Rui replied calmly.


    "You''re giving us too much credit," Decker waved his hand dismissively. "You''re a Kandrian, and you utterly dominated all of Shionel during the dungeon arc, didn''t you?"


    Rui gave him a dubious look. He didn''t say it out loud, but everybody in the room knew that he was far too extraordinary to extrapte his sesses to anybody else. "I don''t mind liberalizing the economy further over a span of ten years to give local and domestic Kandrian supplier markets time to adapt and change," Rui remarked. "Anything lower, and they''ll be crushed by international monsters that have mastered libertarian economies."


    He nced at the two of them. "That''s my bottom line. Take it or leave it."


    The two nced at each other, turning back to Rui.


    "Deal."


    "Good. We''ll iron out all the nitty-gritty detailster," Rui steepled his fingers. What is your second demand?"


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1800 Second Demand

    Chapter 1800 Second Demand


    "Our second demand is increased fiscal expenditure into gross fixed capital formation," Guildmaster Bradt answered, pushing another file to Rui, who promptly read through it.


    "You''re demanding a thousand-five-hundred-percent increase in gross fixed capital formation in public infrastructure?" Rui narrowed his eyes, turning to Guildmaster Bradt with a dubious expression.


    "This is your demand, isn''t it?"


    Guildmaster Bradt didn''t reply.


    But his silence was deafening. This content is ? N?velDrama.Org.


    Gross fixed capital formation, or GFCF, was a macroeconomic concept that dealt with fixed capital or fixed assets. Things like state and public infrastructure, production facilities, and equipment were considered to be fixed capital. GFCF, in turn, simply measured the increase in the value of fixed capital.


    The fact that the demand specified public infrastructure, such as roads, railways, and dedicated tracks for high-speed carriages, was enough for Rui to infer that this came from Guildmaster Bradt. Hispany, Bradt Distribution Service, desperately relied on such infrastructure to distribute goods, services, capital, and information. After all, it was impossible to rely on carriages to transport capital when there weren''t road tracks specifically designed to amodate the rigors high-speed carriages. Rui wasn''t opposed to increasing fiscal expenditure on public infrastructure and gross fixed capital formation. These were important assets to the Kandrian Empire and would certainly nourish the economy.


    "Still, a thousand-five-hundred-percent increase?" Rui raised an eyebrow. "That''s a bit much for a demand, don''t you think?"


    "It''s the bare minimum," Guildmaster Bradt simply replied. "The Kandrian Empire is extremely well-connected within its massive towns such as the town of Hajin, Vargard, and the port town of Farund. But interconnectivity between these towns and across therge nation is shoddy, at best. On top of that, many of the smaller towns, viges, and settlements are entirely disconnected from travel infrastructure, increasing the cost of transport to them. If not for the Kandrian Empire''s powerful Martial economy and maritime exposure due to its exposure to the Great Name Ocean, these shorings would be critical."


    Rui knew that his reasoning was unshakable and solid.


    "Cut us some ck," he grumbled softly. "The Kandrian Empire has an enormous territory and a low poption density. Thus, the increase in GDP caused by gross fixed capital formation is minimal. The incentive to connect a nation as enormous as the Kandrian Empire is not as strong as it is in other nations due to how expensive it is. On top of that, there are many topographical impediments such as the Great Jrava Mountain Range, among other things."


    "It is true that the incentive is lesser than it would be in smaller nations with greater poption density," The guildmaster remarked. "But regardless of degree, it is always beneficial. If you intend to liberalize the economy in ten years, then expanding on public infrastructure will benefit the Kandrian Empire, besides¡­"


    His eyes narrowed. "This is not a suggestion; it is a demand in a potential agreement, which means we are willing topensate you for fulfilling this demand."


    "Hm, true; since we have gone over your two main demands, let us hear yourpensation," Rui remarked. "These are not light demands. You guys better havee prepared."


    Chairman Decker smirked as Guildmaster Bradt impassively ced a single document in front of Rui.


    It was a cheque statement.


    Rui''s eyes widened with surprise as he beheld the amount. "¡­One billion Shionel gold coins?!"


    "Hehehe¡­" Chairman Decker chuckled. "Each of the many members of our political venture capital guild chipped in a chunk. This is the amount we are willing to give you if you agree to our demands."


    Rui heaved a deep breath.


    He was feeling a little guilty at the moment. He didn''t intend to ascend the throne, and yet he was getting billions of gold coins from prospective patrons.


    How pissed off would these two be if they learned about Rui''s true intentions?


    "¡­Are you serious?"


    "Indeed," Guildmaster Bradt calmly remarked.


    "¡­I''m assuming you probably didn''t make such an offer to Ranea."


    "Not even a third of it."


    "Then why¡­?" Rui raised an eyebrow.


    "Because of our certainty in your victory," Guildmaster Bradt impassively remarked. "I''ve personally witnessed what you are capable of with your own personal power and mind. I am unable to conceive your defeat in the Kandrian Throne War now that you have earned the support of the Martial Union and have sessfully eliminated your four opponents without anybody realizing."


    Rui smiled wryly. "Sessfully eliminate? I don''t know what you''re talking about. They just suddenly announced the forfeiture of their bid for the throne."


    Guildmaster Bradt narrowed his eyes. "You may have fooled others with that, but I know what you are capable. I knew you were responsible for their exiting of the throne war. I don''t know how you managed to aplish it, but there''s no doubt in my mind that you are responsible for it."


    Rui shrugged with an amused smile. "I don''t know what you''re talking about. Anyway, I ept your offer. One billion gold coins, and I will guarantee significant liberalization of the Kandrian economy over a ten-year span and sixteen times the fiscal expenditure into GFCF. Deal?"


    The two looked quite pleased with this oue. "Deal."


    "Great, I''ll have my legal division whip up the contract as soon as possible," Rui remarked. "Stick around the Kandrian Empire until then."


    "I have some personal business to attend to," Chairman Decker remarked. "As do I," Guildmaster Bradt. "While this is our initial agreement, I hope you''ll be open to additional arrangements in the future."


    "Of course," Rui smiled. "I did have a favor to ask of you in particr, Guildmaster."


    The man stared at Rui impassively.


    "I seek any and all information on the human sages of human civilization that you have," Rui remarked. "I am aware that the Bradt Distribution Service engages in information distribution rather than information brokering, but I am sure you nheless have a very powerful intelligence-gathering capacity that is unique to you due to the nature of your business. Help me find the Scrier, the Marine, the Divine Doctor, the Beggar Sage, and the various other mythical humans who have left their mark in history."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1801 Time

    Chapter 1801 Time


    ??This demand was actually the greatest reason that Rui was eager to speak to Guildmaster Bradt. Rui knew that the man''s powerful distributionwork undoubtedly exposed him to information and intelligence that perhaps no organization other than the greatest of intelligence organizations, such as the Beggar''s Sect and the Shadow Guild, possessed.


    However, Rui also knew that he couldn''t simplye forth and ask about the Divine Doctor the moment they met.


    Guildmaster Bradt was very intelligent.


    The man would instantly realize what Rui''s intentions were and would immediately question whether Rui was even sincere about ascending the throne. That was why Rui decided to generalize his request to the human sages of humanity in general.


    This way, he would get what he wanted without giving himself away. It was very understand able that a candidate for Emperor would be interested in getting his hands on the human sages of humanity.


    Each of them had reached a supernatural mastery and expertise in their field. The Scrier was the world''s greatest archaeologist, historian, and anthropologist who dedicated herself to uncovering the truth of mysteries of ancient history and the truth of the Empty Ages. Her understanding of history and insights into the world were extremely important for the ramifications it had on the future.


    The Marine was a marine biologist and an oceanologist with an extraordinary understanding of the Great Nam Ocean, far surpassing the rest of human civilization. Just having an extremely urate, precise, and clear understanding of what lurked in the Great Nam Ocean could be revolutionary for maritime and seafaring, eliminating losses and making enormous gains.


    The Divine Doctor''s knowledge could revolutionize medicine, elevating the Kandrian Empire''s medical sector and industry to the pinnacle of human civilization, something that would not only support all of its citizens immensely but be a huge economic sector of the nation.


    The Psycher was a world-renowned psychologist who had be one of the most wanted criminals in human civilization for being responsible for the deaths of one hundred million human beings in his quest to understand the human brain and the human mind with endless experimentation.


    His macabre endeavors allowed him to gain extraordinary understanding in those fields, allowing him to gain the power to manipte the human mind and brain however he wanted, like it was a simple machine.


    Although he was a criminal, his knowledge and power were something any ruler would want.


    The Astromind was a genius who sessfully left Gaia, reaching the moon and returning back unharmed through his deep understanding of gravity. He imed that the universe had infinite resources, dwarfing anything Gaia had to offer and that space was the future.


    Each of them had extremely precious knowledge and capabilities that, should any nation harness, would be revolutionary if fully exploited.


    Thus, Rui was able to evade any suspicions in this manner, while still getting what he wanted.


    "The locations of these extraordinary individuals are either unknown or are in ces protected by powers that are greater than what you can hope to bypass," Guildmaster Bradt narrowed his eyes. "I''ll do my best to procure what you have requested, but do not expect me to give you the exact coordinates. Gaia is an extremelyrge world, and it is all too easy for these extraordinary individuals to hide in the cracks of human civilization and beyond."


    "What measure, specifically, will you be taking?"


    "I can begin by implementing a division that will sift through all influx of intelligence in my operations and g any potential reports that may have something to do with the individuals you mentioned before deploying agents to verify said reports, in the order of credibility, for starters," The man exined calmly. "I can slowly increase the rigor depending on your needs."


    Rui smiled. "I appreciate that. Looking forward to the results of your efforts."


    This was one of the measures that Rui was going to take to gather as much information on the Divine Doctor as he could before he set out.


    The three went on to discuss many more pertinent matters. Including potential partnerships between the Kandrian Empire and the Shionel Confederation in the event that Rui became Emperor.


    lights¦­¦Ïv¦Ål ?¦Ïm Guildmaster Bradt boldly performed several treaties and pacts for political and militaristic protection for annual tributes, as well as several business privileges for the Kandrian Empire, giving it an enormous advantage in the Shionel Confederation over the others.


    "Huff¡­" Rui heaved a tired sigh as he sank into his chair after the two departed. "This is more tiring than training ever was."


    "Mostly because you don''t want to do it," Master Ceeran smirked. "You love training, instead."


    "True," Rui admitted. "What''s next on my itinerary?"


    "An appointment with Chairwoman Cathy Maveil," His secretary remarked.


    "¡­Right," Rui groaned, heaving a tired sigh.This content is ? N?velDrama.Org.


    This was going to be his daily routine until he achieved a seventy-five percent support rate among high-ranking government officials.


    It was extraordinarily painful, considering that he only had two high-ranking government officials bagged at the moment. There was still another seventy-four to go. Given that he dedicated only half his day to politics, spending the first half on training the Angel of Lace, it meant that he needed to work quickly.


    Thankfully, once his new routine settled in, he began working faster, smoother, and more efficiently over theing days, weeks, and even months.


    His impatience caused him to get work done as quickly as possible so that he could go to bed and wake up the next morning refreshed for a long session of Martial Art training. And even then, he abused potions to their absolute limit to make as much time as possible.


    Despite delegating as much as he could, he still needed to spend at least half the day talking to important individuals and reeling them over to his side. He also needed to butter up high-ranking government officials and make truly extraordinary offers to get them to take him seriously under consideration.


    All of this took time, so much so that nine months passed in the blink of an eye.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1802 Imperfect

    Chapter 1802 Imperfect


    In a meditation chamber sat a man surrounded by candles.


    His eyes were closed.


    A sense of serenity and calm echoed in the air.


    Yet, the same could not be said for his mind.


    Within his mind, in the giant mind pce thaty within, Rui Quarrier struggled.


    He struggled against an ocean information, gritting his teeth as he furiously processed a tsunami of ocean. The ocean was a lot smaller than the original ocean that the Angel of Lace method produced, but an ocean was an ocean.


    "Rgh!" His eyes shed with determination.


    His vision of the real world around his body shifted.


    Time rewinded.


    Yet, not for everything.


    It reverted for a batch of candles before him, causing them to reverse their flickering while the other candles were untouched.


    It was the past.


    He heaved a deep breath as he opened his eyes, covered with sweat.


    "Tsk, not perfect yet," He narrowed his eyes.


    He had worked hard on the Angel of Lace for about half a day continuously for the past nine months. During this time, short of absolute emergencies, nobody was allowed to disturb him.


    Thankfully, the staff and administration that he had established nine months ago were extremelypetent and could handle an overwhelming majority of the things that were needed to maintain a faction.


    He was rarely disturbed.


    Half a day was short by his standards, but it was still good enough to immerse himself in a good, long training session. Thankfully, it was good enough to make decent progress, considering that he only had half a day per day.


    "Ideally, if I had the whole day, I might have seeded with the Angel of Lace by this point," Rui snorted, shaking his head. This was enough time to finish this upgrade to the Void Algorithm if he didn''t need to divert time and energy. But s, he had other obligations andmitments.


    Sometimes, he wondered why he bothered. Perhaps he should have just ignored the Kandrian Throne War and forsaken his family''s peace and harmony. Perhaps just protecting them physically and ensuring that none of them died in the civil war was enough. Why did he set such high standards to ensure that they never suffered any anguish or misery from the civil war burning around them?


    The moment that thought shed in his head, however, he felt guilty.


    "I''m an asshole," He shook his head, getting up.


    His desire to protect not just their physical lives but also the lives that they had cultivated in the Kandrian Empire stemmed from the guilt of having gravely disrupted it when he exiled himself from the Shionel Confederation.


    That was why he had resolved himself never to let it get disrupted again if he had the power.


    Unfortunately, he did.


    He heaved a sigh, quickly donning his custom-tailored Martial Art attire featuring the symbol of the Royal Family. His secretary and bodyguards were patiently waiting for him outside the meditation chamber.


    "Apologies for the wait," Rui greeted them. "What do we have first on the itinerary?"


    "A meeting with the Minister of Domestic Affairs," His secretary remarked. "Should you seed in winning him over, you will have secured the support of the seventy-eighth high-ranking government official out of a hundred and four, a perfect seventy-five percent."


    "Finally," Rui heaved a tired sigh.


    In the past nine months, his faction worked aggressively to leverage the economic, martial, and political capital that they had gained from their patrons, benefactors, and allies to win over as many high-ranking government officials as possible.


    The effort had been extremely sessful.


    He managed to secure the contracted support of seventy-seven high-ranking government officials.


    It hadn''t been easy.


    He needed to entertain the whims and fancies of intelligent officials who knew exactly how important they were and made very tall demands of him for their support.


    One wanted two life-prolonging potions to guarantee an additional two human lifetimes.


    Another wanted enormous real estate on the coast of the Kandrian Empire.


    Most of them demanded wealth, among other things.


    The more Rui worked with this system, the more he realized just how immensely corrupt it was. His father was right; his grandfather was indeed a power-hungry bastard who gave too much power to the Kandrian government during times of session when founding the Kandrian Empire.


    s, it was extremely difficult to change what had been established in stone. He was sure that his father had tried to change the foundations of the system, but the first Emperor Ra had taken away the power of the Emperor to change some things.


    Regardless, with the wealth he got from his allies and patron, the Martial power of the Martial Union, he was able to fulfill their demands and secure their cooperation in unbreakable contracts.


    The allied princes worked hard to stop him, of course, but he had too much support and power. And as everybody hade to predict he managed to overwhelm the support of the princes in his campaign for the throne.


    And now, it was finally time for the final hurdle before he could secure an absolute im to the throne.


    "Let''s end this once and for all," Rui heaved a sigh as he headed back to his campaign headquarters.


    It wasn''t long before he entered hisrge, extravagant office with a suited man sitting opposite him.


    "Minister Kramen," Rui smiled. "I apologize for the brief dy. Did you wait long?"


    "Not at all, Your Highness," The man stood up, shaking Rui''s hand. "I''m grateful you took the time to meet me."


    They took their seats as Rui leaned forward, steepling his fingers.


    "The fact that you took the time to meet me despite knowing exactly what I want from you means that you are not averse to it," Rui replied calmly, analyzing the man. "Let us cut to the chase, Minister Kramen. What is your price?" This content is ? N?velDrama.Org.


    The man stared at Rui with a bitter smile. "¡­You remind me of your father."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1803 Exclusive and Permanent

    Chapter 1803 Exclusive and Permanent


    N?velDrama.Org holds ? this.


    Rui raised an eyebrow at his words.


    "He was sharp, just like you," the man shook his head. "His ailment is Kandria''s greatest curse."


    "I understand you feel strongly about it," Rui replied. "I do, too. It is because I feel strongly about it that I require your support to ascend the throne and maintain the harmony that my father created, the harmony that elevated the Kandrian Empire to a powerhouse."


    The man heaved a sigh. "I''m afraid I cannot help you."


    Rui narrowed his eyes. "¡­And why is that?"


    "¡­Had I known that you were a son of the Emperor, I would have made different choices, but¡­" The man shook his head.


    "Get to the point, Minister," Rui stared at him intently.


    "I have signed a permanent exclusive contract with Prince Raijun where I forfeit the right to officiate the coronation ceremony of any royal other than him," The man lowered his head.


    Rui''s eyes sharpened.


    He clenched his fist.


    In other words, the minister could not attend Rui''s coronation ceremony without viting his agreement, allowing Prince Raijun to summon him to a court and negate his officiation of Rui''s coronation ceremony, voiding Rui''s im as Emperor.


    Prince Raijun hadplete control over the minister''s officiation power, in other words.


    "¡­How could you?" Rui growled. "That''s the highest agreement that a royal can secure from a high-ranking government official. Very few of the high-ranking government officials of even my faction have signed that."


    Minister Kramen sighed. "¡­I had no choice. Only the Martial Union had the power to fetch me the Heavenly Makara Flower needed for the esoteric disease that I had contracted. Prince Raijun demanded permanent exclusive support of him in writing."


    A contract specifying permanent exclusive support was extremely valuable to royals because it meant that they didn''t need to worry about those high-ranking government officials defecting. That contract would effectively prohibit them from doing so.


    "¡­I am sorry, I do wish to support you. I do believe that you are far and away the best candidate for the throne," The man heaved a regretful sigh. "But only Prince Raijun reserves the right to terminate our agreement and he would never do that."


    "Perhaps my legal team can find a loophole," Rui suggested in vain.


    The manughed mirthlessly. "Surely you are aware that there is no such loophole, Your Highness. The legal division of Prince Raijun''s administration is not that ipetent."


    Rui heaved a sigh.


    The man got up. "¡­I am truly regretful and bitter about this turn of events, but I am unable to help you. I shall not waste your precious time anymore. I hope you find someone else and ascend the throne as your father intended you to."


    Rui watched the man leave his office with a soft gait. "M."


    "Yes, Your Highness?" His staff immediately responded. "Have the intelligence division send me a report on all of the other twenty remaining high-ranking government officials," Rui narrowed his eyes.


    "¡­Yes, Your Highness."


    It wasn''t long before he got the report in his hands.


    "Nine of them are in Raul''s faction, eight in Rajak''s, and eight in Raijun''s," Rui narrowed his eyes. In the past nine months, he had slowly chipped away at each of the remaining three prince''s factions with his overwhelming factional power. There was almost nothing they wanted that he could give their high-ranking government officials, winning them over remarkably swiftly.


    The progress that they had taken many years to make was unraveled by Rui very quickly. Yet, unfortunately, not all high-ranking government officials can be bought with Martial and economic capital and powerful favors.


    "All of the remaining twenty-five support my three half-brothers for ideological reasons?" Rui tutted.


    "Yes, Your Highness," The director of his analyst division told him when he met up with her. "Over the past nine months. Those that can be moved by powerful incentives and benefits have already been wrung over to our faction; these remaining government officials are¡­ hardcores that support the ideologies and policies that the three princes espouse."


    "Tsk," Rui tutted. "So they cannot be moved by powerful favors from the Martial Union orrge sums of money."


    "Unfortunately so, Your Highness."


    Rui narrowed his eyes as he considered the dilemma. Martial Supremacy, the abolition of all restrictions and regtions, and the pedestalizing of the people''s interests were doctrines that many found attractive. Thus, Rui was not surprised that a minority of high-ranking government officials were deeply supportive of one of the three.


    Unfortunately, that also meant that he could not bring them over to his faction the easy way.


    "Have Mikha set up an appointment with one of each of the most amenable supporters of each faction," Rui replied. "I will test how ideologically fixated they are and evaluate the prospects of bringing them over to my side."


    If there was any hope in pulling them over to his faction, then it was best to work with the people who were most open-minded.


    "I will be sure to do that, Your Highness," she bowed to him.


    Rui nodded, taking his leave.


    It was annoying that he had stumbled into a roadblock at the final step of the journey to reach seventy-five percent. But s, things couldn''t go smoothly forever.


    Unfortunately, he needed seventy-five percent even if he didn''t intend to ascend the throne. In case he failed and the Emperor died, it would light aze the cold war and turn it into an active war.


    While he didn''t think Prince Raul would trigger a civil war in an attempt to use force to make high-ranking officials forcefully officiate his coronation ceremony, the same could not be said for Prince Raijun and Rajak.


    He knew that these two were capable of falling to any depths to reach the throne.


    If he failed in healing the Emperor and also didn''t have seventy-five percent of the support needed to immediately crown himself Emperor, then the longer that went on, the greater the probability that Prince Raijun and especially Prince Rajak would rely on desperate measures of force, inevitably triggering a civil war even if their chances of reaching the crown was slim.


    He also knew that Rajak would love nothing more than to kill as many members of the royal family as possible.


    ''I need to get seventy-five percent as soon as possible,'' he narrowed his eyes. ''Only then can I leave the Empire without concern.''


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1804 A Martial Gamble

    <h4>Chapter 1804 A Martial Gamble</h4>


    "It is disgraceful that a superior Martial Senior like yourself is so unwilling to take your rightful ce as leaders of human civilization."


    A man sitting opposite Rui in his office remarked with an ugly expression.


    "I am willing to ascend leader of the Kandrian Empire," Rui lied. "Why else would I bid for the throne?"


    "You''re doing it as a member of the royal family! Not as a Martial Artist!" The man barked. "In all of human history, nay, in all species in the world. The strongest rule. It is the natural order. Anything else strains human civilization as we move away from a natural power hierarchy!"


    He red at Rui, uncaring for his royal status. "You care about harmony? The best way to reach harmony is to put people where they naturally belong. The strong at the top and the weak at the bottom. Because human civilization naturally tends to a natural hierarchy of power, this is the most stable and harmonious form of civilization!"


    Rui heaved a sigh as the Martial Supremacist lectured him about his ideological doctrine. "Yes, because the civil war that would be triggered the second someone tried to make Kandria a Martial Supremacist nation sounds very harmonious indeed."


    His sarcasm was palpable.


    "Some amount of chaos and heat is inevitable as society returns from this perverted hierarchy to its natural state!" The man barked. "But once it does, it will be extremely stable and harmonious."


    "If by extremely stable, you mean reduced to ruins, then yes, I might actually agree with you," Rui narrowed his eyes. "I don''t think you understand how destructive even a single Martial Senior is. The Kandrian Empire has one thousand five hundred such Martial Seniors. A Kandrian civil war will not be a war; it will be an apocalypse."


    This was the impact that Martial Art had on human civilizations.


    Back on Earth, even in the modern era that Rui had died in, revolts, revolutions, and coup d''etat could and did ur without reducing a nation to rubble. It could and did ur without causing enormous destruction. Oftentimes, they urred without a single person dying because the overwhelming power of the insurrections quickly seized control, and nothing changed. N?velDrama.Org owns ? this.


    This was not the case in the Panama Continent.


    Any civil conflict that urred between powers within a nation almost always involved Martial Artists, who were essentially walking tanks, sentient fighter jets, and living weapons of mass destruction.


    Thus, civil conflict in the Panama Continent was exponentially more destructive than on Earth. It would be analogous to governments on Earth deploying nuclear weapons inside their own territory.


    "It cannot be allowed," Rui narrowed his eyes.


    "Hmph!" The man snorted. "Destruction precedes creation. The destruction of this wed system of power is necessary for us to return to the natural order."


    Rui grew disgusted by what he heard. "Get out."


    "You will never ascend the throne, Final Prince!" The minister dered, leaving his office. "I will do everything in my power to ensure that."


    For a moment, Rui felt the urge to kill him then and there, barely restraining his impulsive thoughts.


    Rui heaved a sigh, pressing a button on themunication artifact on his table. "You''re telling me that man was the most open-minded high-ranking government official of the Raijun Faction?!"


    "¡­Unfortunately, yes, sir," The director of his analyst division heaved a sigh. "He was at least willing to visit our headquarters and speak with you. The others would not even bother engaging in a discussion."


    "Damn!" Rui cursed.


    He had just spoken with three of those who were considered to be the most open from all three rival factions, and not a single one of them was willing to abandon their ideological doctrine or join Rui''s faction.


    He steepled his fingers as he sunk deep into thought.


    He had seventy-seven supporters.


    He needed just one more.


    Just one more out of the remaining twenty-six.


    Unfortunately, only one of them was willing to join his faction but was bound by a restrictive, permanent exclusive contract.


    The remaining twenty-five were hardcore, ideologically beholden government officials who didn''t listen to reason or incentives. If the minister he spoke to was the most open- minded Martial Supremacist of Raijun''s supporters, then there was absolutely no hope in trying to make any of the others defect to his faction.


    He closed his mind as his mind furiously raced into thought.


    A year had passed since the five-year deadline he had.


    With every day that passed, the probability of him sessfully healing his father was reduced.


    "We could expand our legal division and work hard to find a small potential loophole that they missed," His director of finance suggested in an emergency meeting that Rui had called to deal with this dilemma.


    "In the worst-case scenario. We could just wage a war against the allied princes'' factions, get our hands on Prince Raijun, and force him to void the contract," another advisor remarked.


    "How aboutpromising Prince Raijun and conceding to implement some Martial Supremacist ideals? Maybe then we''ll be able to get him to void the contract."


    Rui shook his head. "Those ideas eitherpromise too much or are too unlikely to seed and not wroth pursuing due to the time and energy it takes."


    He narrowed his eyes. "What I need¡­is a solution that does not lose me anything while delivering to me the final high-


    ranking government official I need."


    It could not require a deeppromise.


    It needed to have a high enough probability of seeding to be worth pursuing.


    It could not consume a lot of time.


    "¡­Something Raijun agrees to without demanding a definitivepromise," Rui realized. "That really is the only way to get this done quickly and have a high enough chance to seed."


    Rui''s eyes lit up, swimming around as a germ of an idea formed from the many possibilities that he furiously analyzed. "What is his greatest desire?"


    His advisors nced around at each other with confused expressions. "The throne."


    "Yes, but what is his greatest desire born from his desire for the throne?" Rui asked, his tone growing more jubnt.


    The others stared at him, confused.


    "It would be the desire that I was gone, at least, gone from the throne war," Rui continued, growing more energetic. "What if I offered that to him in return for his voiding of Minister Kramen''s contract?"


    The others stared at him like he had lost his mind. "Offer to forfeit your campaign for the throne in return for the final supporter you need for the throne¡­? That¡­"


    That made no sense.


    "Not an offer," A grin appeared on Rui''s face. "A gamble. A gamble where he stands to gain my forfeit of the bid for the throne, and I stand to gain Minister Kramen. Yes, this is the only way to gain Minister Kramen''s official support without wasting time or necessarilypromising anything."


    His words shook the entire room.


    None of them understood what he meant.


    Rui was the only one who did.


    His grin widened. "Not just any gamble. A Martial gamble."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1805 Seeking Fulfillment

    Chapter 1805 Seeking Fulfillment


    His advisors nced at each other, confused. Even the four Martial Masters behind him turned towards him, intrigued.


    "...''Martial gamble"?"


    "Yep," Rui looked pleased with his idea. "That is the only way to coax Prince Raijun into terminating Minister Kramen''s contract."


    His eyes shifted across the room, meeting with those of his confused advisors.


    "A Martial duel."


    His eyes swam around in thought. "I will challenge him to a Martial duel. If I win, Prince Raijun will terminate the contract. If I lose, I will forfeit my bid for the throne. I''ll partake myself and give Prince Raijun the right to appoint a champion to fight in his ce."


    The expressions of his advisors darkened.


    "You''re risking too much, Your Highness!"


    "How can Your Highness possibly risk the bid to the throne?!"


    "This is deeply risky and dangerous! You might truly never ascend the throne, Your Highness!"


    Of course, Rui expected his advisors to erupt into protests at the terms that Rui had proposed. He would question their reliability if they didn''t push back against such absurdly imbnced stakes against him. Unfortunately, it was not enough to deter him.


    "I don''t intend to lose," He calmly replied. "Of course, if any of you think you can ovee this hurdle in a reasonably short-term frame, feel free to share your bright ideas."


    One of his advisors frowned. "Your Highness, why are you so hell-bent on getting this done in a short amount of time? The Emperor isn''t dying tomorrow."


    That was a very pertinent question.


    Follow current nov_els on --n ovel ne xt.c 0 m--


    Unfortunately, it was not one that Rui could truthfully answer. However, he had already primed himself for this question, having prepared for it.bender


    "It isn''t just that a matter of getting it done soon," Rui replied. "There are no other feasible solutions of any kind, including long-term ones. This one can potentially be executed very quickly. Another reason is that the sooner I establish my victory, the lower the probability of a civil war ensuing once my father dies."


    These were technically true, and thus, none of his Martial Master allies, inside and outside the Martial Union, saw anything wrong with it. While Martial Masters could detect emotion, they could not detectplex nuances regarding the truth factor.


    His advisors were deeply unconvinced. "Your Highness, you have an overwhelming advantage against them; your probability of victory over the span of five years and beyond is greater than ny percent. If you challenge them with the aforementioned conditions, you''re evening the odds in their favor to fifty-fifty."


    That wasn''t the only critique they had.


    "On top of that, the stakes are also not equal. Voiding a contract is not equal to forfeiting your im to the throne! If your intentions were to have the stakes be equal, then this would still not be nearly as disagreeable."N?velDrama.Org owns ? this.


    Rui shook his head. "Prince Raijun would never agree to the deal if it was equal on paper because the value of him voiding Minister Kramen''s deal is much greater than the value of me voiding the deal with one of the high-ranking government officials that support me."


    Prince Raijun was undoubtedly aware that his permanent exclusive contract with Minister Kramen was the only final defense against Rui''s unstoppable campaign in the past nine months.


    The allied princes had realized the sheer overwhelming campaigning power that Rui had. The way in which he swept through them when it came to buying high-ranking government officials with immense Martial, economic, and political capital quickly made them realize that they didn''t have any hope when it came to beating him quickly or fairly.


    Most likely, they were simply holding on to dear life, stubbornly unwilling to give up while also knowing deep down in their hearts that they had no chance of victory.


    By some turn of luck, this one random permanent exclusive contract that Prince Raijun had extracted many years ago turned out to be the final line of defense, but it probably could not stop Rui forever, nor could it bring them any closer to the throne.


    "That is why a Martial duel will be extremely attractive to Raijun," Rui narrowed his eyes with a soft smile. "What you need to understand about his psychology is that he went from being the most powerful contender for the throne and the one with the highest probability of victory after I turned him into a Martial Squire to being an oppressed candidate who needed to rely on alliances to barely handle my campaign."


    He turned to each of his advisors. "Can you imagine how much desperation and frustration he must have felt when he went from being the shining Martial Prince who was all but destined to win the throne to being the shadows of my campaign?"


    Rui closed his eyes. "In such a state of mind, what do you think he would do if he saw a realistic chance of kicking me out of the Kandrian Throne War?"


    His eyes opened, filled with certainty. "He would take it.


    That''s why it needs to be what he perceives to be a realistic chance. Of course, rest assured that I have no intention of losing."


    "Why not have another Martial Senior take your ce?" One of his advisors asked. "There are only twelve grade- fifteen Martial Seniors in the Kandrian Empire, but I''m sure we can get one of them to support you. It''s highly unlikely, but we might even be able to get the Ga-"


    "Absolutely not," Rui gruffly interrupted him. "I will not allow any Martial Senior to represent me as my champion. I cannot tolerate that. I will fight for myself. With my own power."


    His advisors stared at him with a hint of exasperation.


    It was clear that Rui was being irrational at the moment. In the first ce, it was not rational to bet one''s bid for the throne of a Sage-level powerhouse, one that was all but settled to be his, in return for a simple termination of an agreement. On top of that, he intended to participate himself.


    These two things were definitely not a rational course of action that someone in the winner''s seat would take, but s, it appeared that Rui Quarrier Kandria was determined to follow through.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1806 Dead Serious

    Chapter 1806 Dead Serious


    "We''re not questioning your power, Your Highness," One of his advisors carefully remarked. "However, you are grade-thirteen Martial Senior, are you not? While your growth to the Senior Realm has been nothing short of the quickest and most prodigious, there are some powerful Martial Seniors who have spent centuries in the Senior Realm and are of a higher grade than you."


    Rui smirked. "Your concerns are understandable, but leave the matter of the duel to me."


    His advisors stared at him with fear and apprehension.


    "Prepare the contract, contact Prince Raijun, and arrange a meeting with him," Rui replied, getting up. "Meeting concluded."


    He left the office with his Martial Master bodyguards. "If you have something to say, say it," Rui chuckled. "Your stared are heavy."


    "Sorry," Master Ceeran remarked. "I didn''t mean to."


    "We''re just surprised that you''re acting uncharacteristically impulsively," Master Zentra calmly remarked.


    "¡­You''re not wrong," Rui heaved a sigh. "I suppose I''m just happy that I found a Martial solution to this problem."


    Rui closed his eyes. "I''m a Martial Artist, after all, not a politician. The greater the number of problems better solved with my Martial Art, the happier I am. It makes me feel more¡­fulfilled."


    One of the frustrating things about the Kandrian Throne War was that it was too high and powerful for him to influence with his own Martial Art. While techniques like the Hungry Pain technique could impact the Empire as a whole, it was not as though his personal power as a high-grade Martial Senior could impact the Kandrian Throne War.


    Thus, he was forced to resort to solving his problems through ingenious schemes and sharp politics, but he didn''t find satisfaction in this manner of aplishing things. The feeling of winning a fight to solve a problem with power obtained after years of hard work was a triumphant satisfaction that no amount of machination could fulfill. That was why he looked forward to the prospect of dueling his way to the throne.


    It sounded much more fulfilling than anything else.


    On top of that, he could take sce in the fact that there wasn''t really any other viable solution to getting what he needed withoutpromise and as quickly as a Martial duel could get him what he sought.


    "But can you win?"


    A simple question from Master Ceeran returned his attention to the consequences of his loss.


    "Don''t worry," Rui closed his eyes. "I am the strongest when I have time to prepare."


    The two Martial Masters were familiar enough with his Martial Art to understand what he meant by that.


    "Besides, this new technique that I''m working on¡­it''s not perfect, but it should still be useful in this context."


    The Angel of Lace was not yet perfected such that he could use it inbat viably. Although he had drastically reduced the operation time of the technique by reducing the target scope from everything to just his target and opponent, it was still just a bit too long to be used inbat without leaving him open with vulnerabilities.


    However, if he could use it before the fight got off¡­


    His probability of victory was significantly higher than before, and he would have eliminated his biggest weakness before the battle even began. If his target was someone that he could find easily, he could shadow them and build a predictive model if needed. At that point, Rui found it difficult to conceive his loss. He had always been able to output incredibly far beyond his conventional limits with substantial preparation.


    "Well, it remains to be seen."


    It wasn''t long before the Rui Administration had finalized the details of the little Martial duel, and had managed to arrange a meeting with the allied princes.


    "What''s the matter?" Rui nonchntly remarked as he stared at the projection.


    It was a projection of Raijun and Rajak.


    "Too scared to meet me face to face?" Rui smirked.


    Prince Raijun red at him with hostility while Rajak simply stared at him coldly.


    "You know I''m surprised you two allied," Rui remarked, turning to Rajak. "He killed your family, bro."


    Prince Rajak visibly strained to contain murderous bloodlust.


    Not at Rui, but at Raijun.


    "¡­And he helped with plotting my assassination to stop you from reaching the Squire Realm," Rui casually remarked, observing his reaction.


    Prince Raijun didn''t react to that.


    It appeared that despite their many differences, they had managed to agree that Rui could not be allowed to ascend the throne.


    "What do you want?" Prince Raijun red at him. "Why did you request for a meeting."


    Rui heaved a sigh, resigned to the fact that his low-effort attempts at causing them to break up had failed. "I need you to terminate your contract with Minister Kramen."


    "Ha!" Prince Raijun snorted with disbelief. "And why in the world would I do that?"


    "Because you might be able to get to forfeit my bid to the throne," Rui calmly replied..


    Prince Raijun narrowed his eyes. "What?!"


    "I propose a Martial duel," Rui replied. "If you win, I''ll forfeit my bid to the throne. If I win, you terminate Minister Kramen''s contract."


    Both princes widened their eyes with shock!


    "You¡­" Prince Rajak stared at him like he was mad. "Are you serious?"


    "Dead serious," Rui replied with a steely voice. Prince Raijun stared at him in shock. "¡­You have it in writing?"


    "Had my team whip up a neat little contract," Rui remarked.


    "¡­Details?" N?velDrama.Org holds ? this.


    "Senior Realm," Rui replied. "I''ll be my champion; any Martial Senior can serve as your champion. Other rules and details include no weapons aside from those rting to the Martial Path. Win by death, knockout, or submission. The battle can be any barrennd spanning thirty kilometers in diameter that our administrations can collectively find and inspect. A panel of invigtorsprised of Martial Masters from both sides to monitor for foul y. Let''s also allow for Martial Artist spectators from across Kandria to reduce the probability that anything wrong goes unnoticed, deal?"


    Prince Raijun hesitated.


    The offer was extremely attractive.


    Rui smiled when he saw the greed in the man''s eyes.


    "¡­Deal. I''ll send a man over to your headquarters for the contract. It better be exactly as you say, otherwise I will tear it to shreds. I''ll need a month to vet it with my legal team before I sign it," Prince Raijun narrowed his eyes. "You''re serious about this, right?"


    Rui smirked.


    "Like I said, dead serious."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1807 Unable to Defend

    Chapter 1807 Unable to Defend


    ??The administrations and staffs of both princes had quibbled about the details for longer than Rui had hoped.


    The Raijun Administration had been extremely paranoid that Rui was somehow trapping Raijun with this contract. An extensive amount of time across many days and multiple weeks went into solely vetting the rather straightforward and simple contract despite the fact that it was only two pages long.


    Until they had finally confirmed that there was no way that this was a trap, Prince Raijun finally signed the two copies of the contract on the projection.


    "I''ll have a man deliver one copy to you," Prince Raijun stared at Rui apprehensively.


    "Rx, my brother," Rui smirked. "It''s just a duel. You get to avoid risking your life yet again."


    Prince Raijun ignored the barb as he stared at Rui with sharp eyes. "I don''t get it."


    The two of them had had a prior cooperative rtionship, thus despite the fact that Rui had steamrolled his campaign in the past nine months, he was still able to engage with Rui in a somewhat normal fashion.


    "Why are you doing this? What are you hiding?" He stared at Rui with paranoia.


    lights¦­¦Ïv¦Ål ?¦Ïm Rui chuckled.


    It appeared that his reputation had caused Prince Raijun to assume that there was more to this agreement than met the eye. Perhaps he thought this was part of some brilliant, ingenious scheme that Rui had cooked up.


    He was wrong.


    But Rui had no intention of correcting him.


    "I''m hiding nothing at all," Rui''s eyes grew sharper as he gave Prince Raijun a mysterious smile. "This is an entirely ordinary agreement with nothing more under the surface."


    Prince Raijun''s expression grew more grave and severe.


    He didn''t believe a word Rui uttered.


    "...As long as you abide by your concessions when you lose, I don''t care what you have in mind," Prince Raijun gritted his teeth, clenching his fist.


    "I will; you can rest assured about that," Rui smirked. "Bye-bye."N?velDrama.Org holds this content.


    He cut the call, chuckling. "He''s paranoid as hell."


    "Anyone would be, Your Highness," Master Zentra heaved a soft sigh.


    Rui got up and walked away. "Tell Mikha to ensure the preparations for the match go smoothly. She''s in charge."


    "Yes, Your Highness," His secretary quickly scribbled in her pad.


    "Do not disturb me until it''s important," Rui remarked calmly. "I intend to spend the next few days conditioning myself for the battle."


    The battle was due in two weeks.


    That was the shortest that the Rui Administration had managed to negotiate for. The Raijun Administration had sought for months of time for scouting a fighter, but Rui simply refused.


    He knew he held the advantage in the deliberations.


    Prince Raijun didn''t and couldn''t know how much Rui cared to save time. As long as Rui postured that this was a trivial event and was willing to cancel at any time, he would always hold the advantage in deliberations.


    This was because Prince Raijun was unable to even hide how desperately he wanted this. There was no point in trying to pretend he didn''t want this because anyone with a brain would know that his probability of victory was much higher, even with short notice than if Rui canceled the event.


    It was probably his only realistic chance of beating Rui. There was no way he could do it in the Kandrian Throne War.


    He didn''t understand why Rui abruptly presented him with an opportunity to get rid of him so simply and straightforwardly.


    His legal team had reassured him that there was no trap in the contract, but he found that hard to believe.


    Regardless, once the contract was signed, word of it quickly spread across the highest echelons of the Kandrian Empire.


    Naturally, those who heard of it were beyond shocked.


    It made no sense for the Final Prince to want to level the ying field when he had such an overwhelming advantage. The many stakeholders of the Kandrian Throne War were aghast at the decision that Rui had made.


    Yet, the Martial Masters of the Kandrian Empire were the least surprised.


    Perhaps they understood his motivations better than normal humans did.


    Yet, it begged the question, was his decision right?


    "It depends on how strong he''s be since he fought me," Master Krakule gruffly remarked. "There are twelve grade-


    fifteen Martial Seniors in Kandria. Prince Raijun is bound to be able to get at least one of them to serve as his champion."


    A prince like him had the power to attract all of them with powerful incentives. Especially when their victory would return the Martial Prince to being the strongestpetitor for the throne and eventually Emperor.


    This meant that Prince Raijun could make promises that included benefits after he became the throne.


    "There is no doubt that Prince Raijun will be getting his hands on one of the grade-fifteen Martial Seniors of the Kandrian Empire," Headmaster Aronian heaved a deep sigh. "I don''t know if Rui is prepared tobat this level of power evenly. He is still extremely young for a Martial Senior."


    "I have faith that His Highness is able to," Master Zentra calmly replied. "He would not have taken this course of action if he did not believe that victory was attainable."


    Master Vericita looked uncertain as her eyes shed with protective concern.


    "Hah!" Master Iskan snorted with a grin. "You should have faith in the little shrimp! He''s strong!"


    "I agree," Master Ceeran''s voice was firm and steely. "If he thinks he can win, he is undoubtedly able to. Rui is the most extraordinary Martial Senior in history. He has aplished feats that would be deemed absolutely impossible if he hadn''t. His Martial Art has the highest recorded grade in Kandrian history, and his capacity for thought is supernatural. Do not underestimate him!"


    Master Vericita closed her eyes. "Rui is indeed extraordinary. But what if Prince Raijun acquires a particrly powerful champion?"


    Her eyes shed with angst.


    Her tone grew darker.


    "What if¡­what if he manages topel the Gatekeeper to serve as his champion?"


    In just a moment, the optimism in the air was crushed.


    Their expressions grew severe.


    The air tingled.


    "¡­Surely Sir Armstrong would not deign to serve as a champion for a Martial Artist he does not respect." Headmaster Aronian''s voice was grave.


    "True. But if he does¡­" Master Zentra closed his eyes, turning to Master Ceeran. "Would you still be confident in His Highness'' victory?"


    For once, Master Ceeran was unable to defend Rui.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1808 Arrived

    Chapter 1808 Arrived


    A battle between Martial Seniors.


    It was not something that human beings were qualified to bear witness to under normal circumstances. The sheer power output of Martial Seniors was so high, that death was a certainty even if the spectators were hundreds of meters away. Such was the destructive power of those who had harnessed the full potential of the Martial Body.


    Of course, the Kandrian Empire most certainly possessed the powerful infrastructure needed to allow spectators to survive and witness the riveting battle between Martial Seniors. That usually came at the cost of freedom in battle.


    In this case, the Martial Senior battle was not amercial event. N?velDrama.Org owns ? this.


    Thus, neither side saw fit to bother getting spectators.


    This was purely a duel for the throne.


    For the future of Kandria.


    Naturally, because the stakes were so high, it instantly drew massive amounts of attention not just across Kandria but from across much of East Panama as well.


    "What is he thinking?!" Chairman Decker eximed with horror. "He had a clear path to victory in the long run, which is trying to hasten the final step with such an absurd risk?!"


    Guildmaster Bradt narrowed his eyes as he studied the report, maintaining hisposure.


    He had to admit that, on the surface, it was an incredibly stupid and irrational gamble. There was no need to try to secure the final supporter in a month when it was known he had four years left. It was better to use long-term strategies to secure the final high-ranking government official that he needed.


    However, Guildmaster Bradt knew that Rui wasn''t stupid.


    Thus, it meant that Rui was aware of the risks and deemed them worth undertaking. It didn''t really make sense why he would deem it worth undertaking unless he was extremely arrogant about his own Martial prowess or¡­


    "¡­Or there''s some other important consideration that he''s hiding," Guildmaster Bradt narrowed his eyes.


    He had no idea what it could be. Regardless, it didn''t matter. He had already hedged his bet with Rui. Not even he could afford to pull out of a faction twice in rapid session. He had invested a lot in Rui.


    "Besides," He closed his eyes. "I do not believe that the prince would have taken this course of action had he not been confident. He also, in my experience, is able to urately evaluate what he is and isn''t capable of."


    He would have never won the Shionel Dungeon War, as far as Guildmaster Bradt was concerned.


    "Let us wait and watch."


    This was a sentiment that was echoed across the political sphere of the Kandrian Empire.


    That was all they could do, after all. They were unable to intervene in the agreement, and it had already been signed and thus would unfold no matter what.


    Thus, they simply waited and watched with abated breaths. While they did, Prince Raijun was trekking up a mountain in the depths of North Kandria, where the weather was so cold that it was entirely inhospitable to all human life.


    "Are we there yet?" Prince Raijun murmured. "Some more distance, Your Highness," One of his Martial Master bodyguards remarked. "The Mine of Frosty Lava is within the depths of the mountain with the sole entrance at the top of the mountain."


    "Huff¡­" Prince Raijun panted, narrowing his eyes. "It''s worth it. If I can just get him to fight for me¡­"


    He clenched his fists.


    He knew that it was an extremely long shot. So much so that most people would write it off.


    When his staff and administration provided him with a list of the best Martial Seniors to have as his champion, they had purposefully only provided eleven because gaining the twelfth''s support was almost impossible.


    Yet, he couldn''t help but at least try.


    "It would be game over if I seed." He narrowed his eyes as he strained forward.


    The storm surrounding the mountain was difficult to tread through despite his Martial Body. It was caused by the presence of an esoteric ore known as Frosty Lava. An esoteric that glowed a smoldering red identical tova but was actually extraordinarily cold, causing low-pressure regions in the atmosphere around it with its low temperatures, resulting in powerful wind currents due to the pressure gradient.


    The result was a blizzard that was extraordinarily cold and powerful, making it difficult even for Martial Squires to travel.


    "Huff¡­Huff¡­" He reached the peak of the mountain. Ahead of him was a cave that retreated deep into the depths of the mountain.


    He sky-walked down the cave, along with his bodyguards, following the winding tunnels throughout the interior of the mountain. The air grew colder and colder the closer they approached the center of the mountain.


    It wasn''t too long before they arrived at what seemed like avake, with streaks and lines ofva flowing in and out of theke down to even deeper depths.


    The air was extraordinarily cold, stinging at even the Martial Prince''s body.


    Yet, it wasn''t the cold that drew their attention.


    No.


    It was the power.


    It was the sheer power that radiated from the being submerged in the supernaturally coldke.


    Prince Raijun widened his eyes as he felt deep peril from the man.


    He felt his hands shaking.


    Not from the cold.


    But from the fear.


    He gritted his teeth, clenching his fists. "I, the Martial Prince, request an audience with Sir Armstrong, the Gatekeeper of the pinnacle of the Senior Realm!"


    RUMBLE!


    Prince Raijun widened his eyes with shock as the mountain shook.


    It tremored.


    The verynds beneath them roared.


    "¡­What is this?!" Prince Raijun yelped in fear. "Is he activating his Martial Heart?! Is heunching an attack?!"


    "¡­No, Your Highness," One Martial Master gravely replied, meeting the prince''s fearful eyes.


    "That''s just his Martial Body moving."


    THUD


    The Martial Masters grew more severe.


    THUD


    Prince Raijun knew, on a rational level, that he was safe.


    THUD


    He knew there was no reason to fear.


    THUD


    Yet when he beheld the gargantuan eight-foot behemoth that emerged from theke, he could not maintain hisposure.


    The man didn''t look human.


    His skin and flesh had been conditioned so much that they may as well have been of a different species altogether.


    His muscles had muscles.


    His bones radiated a sense of impregnable solidity.


    His body seemed to generate its own gravitational field.


    The Gatekeeper had arrived.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1809 He Is The One

    Chapter 1809 He Is The One


    The man didn''t have so much as a hint of hair on his head, yet his eyebrows, mustache, and beard were long and overflowing. His visage was aged and elderly. His eyes seemed to radiate a depth that Prince Raijun was unable to fathom.


    They regarded Prince Raijun without a hint of reverence towards the symbol of the Royal Family.


    "Sir Armstrong," Prince Raijun bowed. "It is an honor to be in the presence of the first sword of the Kandrian Empire."


    "Speak." The man''s voice rumbled, possessing an inhuman depth.


    "¡­I would like to request you to fight as my champion in a Martial duel that I have epted."


    The Gatekeeper''s eyes narrowed. "No."


    He turned back, returning to theke with heavy steps.


    "Please, Sir Armstrong!"


    THUD


    "Help me!"


    THUD


    "Help me win!"


    THUD


    "Help me win!"


    THUD


    "DEFEAT THE VOID PRINCE AND MAKE ME EMPEROR!"


    The man froze.


    He turned around slowly.


    His powerful gaze pinned the Martial Prince in ce.


    "¡­Tell me more."


    A wide smile of jubtion emerged on Prince Raijun.


    Unfortunately for him, the news of what happened that day could not be contained. He was not the only one who had eyed the Gatekeeper.


    Rui sat in a room, isted from everybody and everything. He had reserved a space of absolute silence to condition his mind forbat to ensure that he was at his absolute peak going into the battle.


    CLACK This content is ? N?velDrama.Org.


    The door opened, breaking his focus.


    "This better be important."


    His words were intense.


    The messenger of the Martial Union flinched. "Y-Your Highness, it''s Their Masteries. They have requested your presence immediately. They said it''s urgent."


    Rui frowned, immediately getting up.


    He knew that the Martial Masters in his orbit would not call him for something stupid and meaningless. Whatever it was, it was mostly likely something that he definitely would want to know.


    "Take me to them now."


    It wasn''t long before Rui found himself before Master Ceeran, Zentra, Vericita, and Aronian.


    He nced around at them, immediately noting the tension in the air.


    It prickled at the skin.


    There was a distinct gloom that lingered in the air.


    "¡­What''s going on?" "¡­Please have a seat, Your Highness."


    Rui frowned, taking a seat before them. "What''s this about?"


    "You must find a way to terminate your Martial duel with Prince Raijun, Rui," Headmaster Aronian heaved a sigh.


    "What?" Rui narrowed his eyes. "Why?!"


    "Because we just received news about who Prince Raijun has chosen as his champion." Master Zentra calmly remarked.


    "¡­And?" Rui raised an eyebrow. "What is this, a drama? Just spit it out."


    Master Ceeran grew grave. "His champion is¡­is none other than the Gatekeeper himself."


    The name lingered in the air like an incantation.


    Its very utterance weighed on them.


    "¡­Who?" Rui tilted his head.


    PAT


    Master Vericita patted him on the head with affectionate concern. "The Gatekeeper, Sir Armstrong, the first Squire and Senior of the Kandrian Empire. Centuries ago, the strongest Martial Artist in all of Kandria before the advent of the Master Realm. A legend. His name was known throughout the Kandrian Empire when I was but a young girl but has been forgotten over the centuries as Martial Art progressed far beyond the Senior Realm."


    Rui could feel the respect and admiration in her voice for who was supposed to be a Martial Senior. And not without reason, either. If even half of what she said was true, then her reaction was understandable.


    "¡­Is that why I''ve never heard of him?"


    Master Ceeran snorted, amused. "No, in your case, you''re just too self-absorbed in your Martial Path to care to find out."


    Rui regarded that with a light shrug, unable to deny it.


    "So¡­" Rui turned around to each of them. "Old Senior veteran is my opponent, got it. What''s with all the gloom?"


    "He is strong, Your Highness," Master Zentra calmly remarked. "The strongest."


    "There is no one who has cultivated the Martial Body as much as he has, Rui," Headmaster Aronian gently informed Rui.


    Rui narrowed his eyes.


    "Do you recall when I told you that the highest three grades of the Senior Realm are wider?" Master Ceeran remarked.


    "¡­Yeah," Rui recalled that distant conversation shortly after his fight with Master Krakule. "You told me that even the grade fifteen Martial Seniors could be divided into fifteen, sixteen, and seventeen."


    "Do you recall how many I told you would fall into grade seventeen?" His tone grew more severe.


    Rui''s eyes sharpened. "¡­One."


    Master Ceeran turned towards Rui, meeting his eyes.


    "He is the one."


    Rui considered his words as his eyes swam around. "¡­And Raijun managed to get him as his champion?"


    "Many people have sought to have the Gatekeeper as a champion, but he straightforwardly refuses them. He has never epted a request for championship. However, this time¡­he has changed his mind."


    Rui grew severe. "¡­I see."


    "When ites to the Senior Realm, he is undefeated," Master Vericita informed him with concern. "Many a Martial Master has challenged him to a duel without their Martial Minds, just to test their foundations, and he has defeated every single one of them in the past three centuries. He has lifetimes of experience in war andbat, having been a part of the very first generation of Martial Squires whomenced the Age of Martial Art. He is among the progenitors of the Age of Martial Art with over half a millennium of experience in Martial Art."


    "¡­And what is his Martial Art?" Rui narrowed his eyes. "What is his Martial Path?"


    "His Martial Path is Physicality Evolution," Master Zentra answered Rui''s question calmly. "His Martial Art, the Temple of God Style, is a Martial Art that isrgely a training-oriented Martial Art."


    Rui''s eyes lit up. "Interesting¡­"


    Training-oriented Martial Art were those Martial Art arger majority of the Martial Art techniques were geared towards training the body. These training techniques permanently elevated physical performance parameters to greater heights, increasing the standard output of the body to much greater heights.


    "The advantage of such a Martial Art is that there is often no strict upper limit to the growth a training technique can provide,pared to active techniques and that the gains are perennial and permanent," Headmaster Aronian remarked. "The disadvantages, of course, are that it takes arge amount of time to maximize the potential of each training technique."


    He turned to Rui with a hint of angst.


    "He has been training for more than five hundred years."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1810 Adamant

    <h4>Chapter 1810 Adamant</h4>


    Rui understood what Headmaster Aronian was trying to say.


    Most Martial Artists trained their bodies to their conventional limits, achieving the desired weight and muscle-mass-to-body-mass ratio before focusing on developing active techniques.


    Active techniques were techniques that required the mind for cognition, usually to achieve necessary activation,mencement, coordination, timing, uracy, or precision. Techniques like Outer Convergence, Flux Earther, Fire Breathing, and Reverberating Lance were such techniques.


    Passive techniques were those that did not require the mind for anything. These were techniques that would be in effect even if the user was knocked unconscious. Most passive techniques were training techniques, often conditioning techniques that would permanently alter the body.


    The greatest disadvantage of such techniques was that they required a long time to materialize the same level of power that active techniques did. Rui had mastered Outer Convergence in half a year originally. However, if he wanted to train his muscles to naturally and innately output the same attacks as they did with Outer Convergence, then he would probably need to train them in extreme training and conditioning techniques for at least a few years.


    This disadvantage made many Martial Artists unwilling to pursue them too much. It simply took too long.


    However, what if there was a Martial Artist who did pursue them?


    What if there was a Martial Artist who pursued them for a long time?


    What if there was a Martial Artist who pursued them for more than five hundred years?


    "I can''t imagine how strong he is."


    Rui''s words expressed concern.


    Yet neither his quivering voice, the smile cracking at the edge of his mouth, nor the twinkle in his eyes could hide his excitement and amazement.


    "It isn''t just that he has ovee the disadvantages, my child," Master Vericita chided him. "He has fully manifested the advantages to their absolute maximum."


    Rui narrowed.


    There were three main advantages of passive and training techniques. N?velDrama.Org holds ? this.


    The first was that they didn''t burden the mind duringbat. Because they didn''t require cognition midbat, they didn''t require any attention; thus, they didn''t slow down reaction time or reflexes.


    The second was that there wasn''t a strict limit to the number that could be in effect simultaneously. With active techniques, because each one of them required a certain amount of cognition, there was always a limit to the number of active techniques that could be used at any time because there was only so much cognition the mind had to distribute. The same was not true for training and passive techniques; one could benefit from the power given by a hundred, potentially a thousand, passive and training techniques at once.


    The third was that their power being permanent meant there were few openings to be exploited. Mistakes weren''t as costly as they were with active techniques because the power was, in a sense, permanently switched on.


    "The Gatekeeper has weathered the passage of time to achieve these advantages, having ovee the price to pay: the enormous time it takes to cultivate these techniques," Master Zentra remarked with a tone of respect. "He has dedicated himself to the elevation and mastery of his body and, in doing so, hase up with many Martial schools of thought on the evolution of the Martial Body that have gone on to be their own fields of Martial Art, including my own Martial Path, physiological control. He is the progenitor of many such fields."


    Master Zentra turned to Rui. "You are the first Martial Senior to have been inducted into the Martial fiscalmittee, but you are not the first to be invited. While no individual contribution the Gatekeeper has made is equal to your revolutionary Hungry Pain technique, the sheer sum of all the contributions he has made may exceed it."


    Master Ceeran heaved a sigh. "Many of the elder Martial Masters and regard him with deep respect. He was at the forefront of the Kandrian Empire during the Kandrian Empire''s days of conquest more than three hundred years ago. They refuse to address him by the honorific of ''Senior,'' instead using ''Sir'' to convey their respects for a man they deem as an equal despite his lower Realm."


    Rui heaved a deep breath, considering everything he had heard.


    It was a lot to process.


    He hadn''t expected that the person Raijun would manage to get his hands on would be someone this distinguished and impressive. He did look forward to fighting the strongest Martial Seniors of the nation, but this was far beyond just that.


    "I hope you understand now, Your Highness," Master Zentra calmly remarked.


    His tone contained a sense of finality.


    "I''m sure the legal team can find some loophole in the contract to terminate it."


    Master Ceeran nodded. "If I remember correctly, inadequate health should technically be a valid reason and justification."


    "I''m sure you can find another way to bring that contract from the Martial Prince''s grasp, my child," Master Vericita smiled, consoling him as she patted his head.


    Headmaster Aronian nodded sagely. "Knowing when to retreat is the marker of a great king."


    "I will not be retreating for this."


    Rui''s steely voice firmly cut through the air.


    His determined eyes met each and every single one of theirs. "I will fight."


    The air grew tumultuous.


    A smirk emerged on his face. "Physicality Evolution¡­I wonder if my Adaptive Evolution is powerful enough to ovee it. Aren''t you excited to find out?"


    Tension tingled in the air.


    "Your Highness," Master Zentra narrowed his eyes. "You will lose."


    "You''re selling me short, isn''t that right, Ceeran?" Rui turned to the Master.


    Yet the man was unable to muster up a pro-Rui statement, wincing silently.


    Rui shook his head. "¡­I don''t me any of you, but my choice won''t change."


    "¡­Rui," Headmaster Aronian hesitated.


    He got up, walking away. "Send me all the information you have gathered on the Gatekeeper."


    Even as he returned to his meditation chamber to calm down, he was unable to contain jitters of excitement. Any considerations for the contract and the final high-ranking government official he needed were already gone.


    A single desire had captured his heart.


    He just wanted to fight this man.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1811 Arrived

    Chapter 1811 Arrived


    Word of Prince Raijun''s champion spread through the upper echelons of the Kandrian Empire.


    It shook them.


    "Sir Armstrong has decided to act as Prince Raijun''s champion?!"


    "How long has it been since he''s done that?"


    "Centuries. We will gain the honor of witnessing the might of the man who led Kandria to glory in conquest in its first century before the advent of the Emperor of Harmony."


    "Who do you think will win?"


    "I have my money on the Final Prince. He''s the most prodigious Senior in history!"


    "I bid one million gold coins on the Gatekeeper. He''s older than the Kandrian Empire! You can''t beat that kind of experience with talent."


    Many of theymen were limited to surface-level analysis. They possessed neither the understanding nor expertise to make informed guesses on the oue of the battle. Yet, the rich gambling sector, both legal and illegal, revved into action, capitalizing on the opportunity. Yet, while the public could only gamble, the Martial Union possessed much greater insight into the battle.


    An emergency meeting had been called in the Martial Union, once more dragging many Martial Masters to consider thetest battle that the Void Prince had gotten himself into.


    "This is untenable!" One Martial Master roared. "Sir Armstrong is one of the very strongest of the strongest Martial Seniors in existence! The Final Prince wasst recorded to be grade-thirteen before consuming the Roaring Dragon Blood Potion around two years ago; how could he possibly think to fight the Gatekeeper and emerge victorious?!"


    "Do not hold the Void Prince to the standards of growth of other Martial Seniors," One Martial Master growled. "He reached the high grades in just seven years. Considering this growth rate, he is undoubtedly far higher than merely grade thirteen in the two years since hisst confirmed grade!"


    "On top of that, it is a well-documented fact that His Highness grows stronger the more he prepares for his opponent," Another Martial Master remarked.


    "That only applies to actually witnessing him inbat!" Another rebutted. "Simply providing him a profile does not get the job done."


    "It''s still better than nothing," he countered. "His Martial Path is Adaptive Evolution! If you think he cannot make progress with the rich information that the Martial Union has, then you''re sorely mistaken!"


    "Even if he can, this is Sir Armstrong we are speaking about!" Another Martial Master red at them. "This is a man who cannot be defeated without the power of the Upper Realms! If all of us sealed our Martial Minds and attacked him simultaneously, I am not entirely confident we would be able to down him!"


    "It is true that the Gatekeeper has amassed immense power, but it is also true that his Martial Art is not particrly potent. The reason for his strength is the continuous progress made over five hundred years of relentless training andbat. In the Void Prince''s case, it''s the opposite. His umtion is paltry, given that he is only thirty-two years old. It is his Martial Art that is extraordinarily potent, more potent than anything else I have ever seen!"


    "The only question is whether it is enough to ovee the sheer umtion that the Gatekeeper has engaged in?"


    "¡­"


    The question paused the momentum of the discussion as each Martial Master earnestly considered the question.


    "Frankly¡­none of the old data is really relevant to predicting either of these two Martial Artists," one Martial Master heaved a sigh. "It has been a long time since the Gatekeeper has gone all out against one of us,rgely because none of us are able to force his very best without our Martial Minds. And while we have rtively recent battle data of the Void Prince from two years ago, he grows so fast that it is probably already irrelevant."


    "¡­Well, the Void Prince has indicated that he will not be withdrawing in any form whatsoever," another Martial Master heaved a sigh. "Let''s just hope he can win."


    While the Martial Union deliberated on the decision that Rui had made, another group had also been shaken by his decision.


    "I demand to speak to His Highness!" One man garbed in business attire strongly insisted.


    "He is answerable to us, his stakeholders, for actions that cause damage to his campaign," Another woman remarked. "We did not invest in him for him to take such a gamble and squander all our investments."


    "What does His Highness intend to do if he loses?!"


    The patrons, benefactors, and allies of the Rui Faction were riled up by the seemingly irresponsible actions of the Void Prince.


    "Distinguished members of the Rui Faction, I have a message from the Final Prince himself," Mikha, his chief of staff, calmly addressed them. "He says that he will see to it that none of you are affected by the consequences of this battle. Yet, he also hopes that each of you has confidence in His Highness and will be ready to celebrate when he wins." N?velDrama.Org owns ? this.


    She closed her eyes. "And win he intends to. That is why he is not here. He has instructed me not to disturb him with anything while he prepares for the battle to ensure that he is at his absolute best when the battle arrives."


    This assuaged the concerns of the stakeholders to a certain extent.


    "¡­I shall hold His Highness ountable should he fail to ovee this challenge."


    "I hope that His Highness will adhere to those words in the event that he loses."


    "I look forward to His Highness'' victory."


    While many people had many different thoughts and reactions, none of it changed what was to unfold. The Martial duel would unfold, and the future of the Kandrian Empire would be decided.


    Many people with great power, authority, and influence managed to procure permission to dispatch one of their Martial Seniors, or even Masters, to bear witness to the historic battle that would unfold in the depths of North Kandria. Soon enough, the day of the battle had arrived.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1812 Necessary

    Chapter 1812 Necessary


    In the depths of a meditation chamber within the Martial Union sat a man.


    Rui Quarrier Kandria had isted himself from everybody and everyone.


    He had isted himself from the world.


    Isted, he did but one thing.


    He dedicated himself to but a single task.


    A single act.


    He honed himself.


    He honed his being.


    He honed his mind.


    He gathered his attention, sharpening it to a point. His mind converged in all but a single direction.


    He refined his thought, ridding it of impurities.


    Ridding it of all superfluous thoughts


    His faction. The challenge of finding the Divine Doctor. The timeline of his father''s prolonged lifespan.


    In time, he had filtered these away from his mind. It, usually flooded with waves of thoughts, had grown almost silent.


    Only a few things were allowed to remain.


    Battle.


    The Gatekeeper.


    And, of course, victory.


    Nothing else was allowed to remain.


    Two weeks of deep mental conditioning had changed his vibes and aura. It had grown prickly.


    Sharp.


    Rui had seen fit to enter what wasmonly referred to as ''the zone.'' A state of absolute focus, concentration, and immersion in a single act.


    A single direction.


    It was not a state that one entered spontaneously.


    No.


    It was a state that was cultivated. "It''s been a while¡­" A single whisper escaped his mouth.


    He nced at his hands softly.


    A surge of power erupted from deep within him, sping his hands shut into fists.


    BOOM


    The atmosphere rippled, quivering under the force of the gesture.


    CLACK


    The door opened to the chamber.


    "Rui."


    Master Ceeran gently addressed him.


    "¡­"


    "It''s time," Master Ceeran lightly remarked. "We have made all the preparations."


    Rui opened his eyes lightly.


    They were as sharp as the edge of a de.


    "We prepared an apt Martial attire for you, custom-tailored to your body by the micrometer, and able to seamlessly amodate your Metabody System without getting in the way," Master Ceeran waved his hand as two assistants presented the attire to him.


    Rui didn''t so much as nce at it, simply spreading his arms after getting up slowly. The assistants immediately switched his clothes, dressing him up swiftly.


    "Let us go," Ceeran remarked as he gestured outside.


    Rui simply walked ahead wordlessly, uncaring to acknowledge the world around him all that much. As he strode forward with an effortless gait, the many Martial Masters around him did not so much as utter a sound.


    Inanements of good luck and other well-wishing were not worth it. They weren''t worth disrupting the state that he was in.


    A single look in the depths of his pitch-ck eyes had made a single truth evident.


    At that moment, Rui Quarrier was the strongest he had ever been in his entire life.


    What followed may as well have been a blur to Rui. The world had not earned his attention; it had not earned the importance of beingmitted to his memory.


    "We have arrived, Your Highness."


    He briefly stirred at those words. Before he knew it, he was at the battleground. He stepped outside, spotting an enormous wall of light extending into the sky. This was caused by a special luminous esoteric substance to mark the borders of the battle arena with a radius of about thirty kilometers.


    While throwing one''s opponent out was not victory, it served as a visual indication to both warriors not to stray away any further.


    When they arrived at the wall of light, the other Masters had paused while Rui walked through it, heading to the center of the battlefield.


    They heaved a sigh as concern began wringing in their hearts. "What do you think¡­?" Master Ceeran heaved a sigh.


    "¡­Well, he''s undoubtedly at the very pinnacle of hisbat potential," Master Zentra remarked. "That certainly increases his probability of victory, however¡­"


    "¡­It remains unclear if that is enough to ovee the might of Sir Armstrong," Headmaster Aronian heaved a deep sigh.


    "¡­" Master Vericita simply stared at Rui''s figure with worry in her eyes. "¡­I just hope hees out safe."


    Unbeknownst to them, another martial master stood beside them, listening to this conversation as she beheld Rui entering thebat arena.


    The Silent Shadow grinned as she gobbled up arge tub of popcorn with palpable excitement. The only thing she needed to do was keep her distance from the Truthseeker of the Martial Union, who was unfortunately present and even serving as one of the invigtors of the battle.


    Thankfully, the great distance between them and the fact that she was focused on invigting a battle with all her attention meant that Master Reina was safe unless she tried to do something particrly risky, like entering the battlefield.


    She was grateful that there were no Martial Sages on the battlefield.


    Minutes passed as spectating Martial Artists had gathered around the battlefield upon the arrival of one of the contestants.


    Soon enough, the second contestant had arrived, earning the attention of all the spectators.


    CLACK


    The door of the especially enormous carriage opened, and out emerged an enormous behemoth that one could scarcely consider human. The Martial Artists that beheld the gargantuan man stiffened.


    Their vision¡­their senses, they could perceive one and only one thing radiating from the man.


    Power.


    RUMBLE


    The verynds around them tremored as the Gatekeeper surged forth.


    "Sir Armstrong," Master Zentra calmly addressed the gargantuan man. "It has been a while."


    The eyes of the Gatekeeper fell on the man. "Zentra."


    His voice was as deep as the ocean. "You''ve grown stronger."


    Its depths struck the heart.


    "You''ve trodden the path of control far deeper than I had imagined possible."


    Master Zentra closed his eyes, bowing his head lightly. "I would not have been able to if not for you, Sir Armstrong. You taught me your secrets, allowing me to be who I am today."


    "I merely pointed to a mountain. It is you who has climbed it. Do not prostrate yourself before a meager Martial Senior like myself, Zentra, it is unbing of you and undeserving for me," he regarded the man. "Yet you''re not the only one who has grown."


    His eyes shifted across all the Martial Artists that beheld him. "Your growth¡­" A remark escaped his mouth. "¡­All your growth pleases me."


    Approval radiated from his voice.


    "It warms the depth of my heart to know that Martial Art has not stagnated in the centuries since I ceased leading it."


    Master Zentra narrowed his eyes. "Sir Armstrong."


    The man''s eyes returned to him. "I have a request¡­" Master Zentra continued. "I would be deeply honored and indebted if you could humor i-"


    "-Your desire is transparent," The Gatekeeper''s powerful voice cut through Master Zentra''s words. "You desire my forfeit, do you not?"


    "¡­Yes, sir." N?velDrama.Org holds this content.


    "I am afraid I cannot humor that request, my former pupil," his voice radiated sincerity and regret. "For my victory is necessary."


    RUMBLE


    He surged forth, entering the battlefield. "It is necessary for the future of Martial Art."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1813 All Hell Broke Loose

    Chapter 1813 All Hell Broke Loose


    ??Rui stood at the center of the battlefield.


    His eyes were closed.


    Before him were the five Martial Masters assigned to invigte the battle.


    They awaited the Gatekeeper.


    They awaited his arrival.


    VMMMM¡­


    Thend around them quivered ever so slightly.


    Rui opened his eyes.


    His instincts tingled.


    A profound power radiated from some distance behind him.


    It was different from the power of higher Realms.


    It was less muted.


    Itcked the sophistication of a Martial Mind that obscured the depth of its power. The Martial Mind deeply empowered one''sbat prowess, yet its depth was not nearly as easy toprehend or be aware of.


    It did not inspire as much raw fear.


    After all, one could not fear what one was unaware of.


    This was different.


    Every human and every beast, every creature, every lifeform, sentient or otherwise, understood.


    They all understood the power of physicality.


    They understood the power of size.


    They understood the power of weight.


    Darwinian evolution had long baked many psychogic danger evaluation systems in the brain that were all centered around physicality.


    It begged the question.


    How much fear would a Martial Artist, who could shake heaven and earth with each step, inspire?


    RUMBLE


    Rui was about to find out.


    "I have arrived."


    The depth of the Gatekeeper''s voice stirred the hearts of those it graced.


    Rui turned, beholding the behemoth of a man standing before him.


    The very air boiled.


    It boiled under the pressure of physicality.


    It crackled under the weight of mind.


    Peril, hardly bound by the Senior Realm, radiated from the duo collectively.


    "Hooo¡­" A murmur escaped the Gatekeeper as he beheld Rui''s eyes.


    He beheld the endless void that stirred in the depth of Rui''s pitch-ck eyes.


    A single word escaped his mouth.


    "Magnificent."


    A profound intensity entered Sir Armstrong''s eyes.


    "Forsooth, you are worthy."


    RUMBLE


    The verynds shook.


    They shook under the weight of the Gatekeeper''s emotion.


    "I seek no further dy."


    THUD


    A single step from the gargantuan mountain of a man caused a seismic shockwave to radiate through thends beneath them. He tucked his right fist to his side as it coiled with power.


    RUMBLE


    An unimaginable amount of power.


    His left poised before him, serving as a guard. His legs were partially divided, with an equal amount of weight divided between them.


    A tsunami of horrifying peril radiated from him.


    It engulfed Rui, the invigtors, and the spectators.


    It engulfed the very world.


    It engulfed the very world in its unfathomable depth.


    It threatened to crush Rui. It threatened to consume him whole. It threatened to deliver him death.


    Yet, a single question escaped his mouth.


    "Why do you fight?"


    Rui gazed at the Gatekeeper with a tranquil serenity.


    The Gatekeeper narrowed his eyes.


    "You have denied serving as a champion ever since you stepped down from the forefront of Kandria," Rui continued. "Why do you fight now? What is about this duel that it managed to earn you as a champion?"


    Rui closed his eyes. "I am unable to imagine that Raijun earned your approval or your respect. I am unable to imagine that any offer or threat he could have made would have moved your heart."


    He opened his eyes.


    They bored into the Gatekeeper''s.


    The endless darkness within them stirred.


    "¡­If not Raijun, then there can be one and only one reason."


    His eyes narrowed. "Me."


    The Gatekeeper stared at him in silence.


    "Why do you fight?"


    Sir Armstrong closed his eyes, heaving a soft sigh.


    He opened them.


    "I mourned at the revtion of your princehood."


    Rui sharpened his eyes at those words.


    "I mourned that Rael had chosen to unveil your royal bloodship."


    The depth of his voice conveyed sorrow and regret.


    "I feared that you would be seduced by the power of the throne."


    His eyes bored deep into Rui''s. "I feared that you would cast aside the path that you would have trodden had it not happened. And when you dered your campaign for the throne, my fears were realized. But¡­"


    He clenched his fist harder. "¡­I have been given an opportunity to prevent catastrophe."


    The depth in Rui''s eyes intensified. "Catastrophe?"


    "Catastrophe," the Gatekeeper affirmed. "I realized how much of a miracle of a Martial Artist you are after I sessfully integrated your Hungry Pain technique into the configuration of my Martial Body."


    Rui''s eyes widened with shock. "¡­What?"


    A small smile emerged on the Gatepeer''s face. "It wasn''t easy, but I have sessfully harnessed its power in a manner akin to Martial Bodies born with its power embedded into it."


    He closed his eyes. "You have my gratitude, Rui Quarrier Kandria, for elevating my Martial Body to a higher echelon of power. I will express my gratitude to you by defeating you in this duel."


    He opened his eyes.


    They red with power.


    They bore into Rui''s eyes.


    "I cannot allow the catastrophe of your ascension to the throne to unfold."


    His voice grew stronger.


    "As I behold you, I am even more convinced of this truth."


    He narrowed his eyes.


    "The Age of Martial Art needs you, Rui Quarrier Kandria."


    RUMBLE!


    The verynds around them shook.


    "It needs you too much. Too much to allow you to squander your Martial Path atop the throne."


    His body brimmed with energy. His muscles quivered with power. His stance radiated peril.


    "Now then," He growled. "Are you done stalling?"


    A smirk emerged on Rui''s face. "Was it that obvious?"


    "Transparent," the Gatekeeper narrowed his eyes. "Allowing it is a token of my gratitude for your contribution to the power that you will personally experie-"


    He froze as a maelstrom of peril erupted from Rui.


    His eyes sharpened as he beheld Rui''s.


    He saw but one thing.


    An endless darkness.


    A void.


    One that sought to consume the entire world.


    STEP


    Rui took his stance. Two fists were poised before him while his legs were centered, lightly bobbing.


    "I''m ready."


    The Gatekeeper closed his eyes.


    "So be it."N?velDrama.Org owns ? this.


    That was the signal.


    "Begin!" The invigtorsmenced the battle.


    BOOM!!!!!


    All hell broke loose.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1814 Destruction

    Chapter 1814 Destruction


    "Begin!"


    BADUMP


    Their Martial Hearts flickered into power the moment the battlemenced. And that was when Rui saw the Sun.


    The Gatekeeper''s Martial Heart shined a brilliant, blinding white light that was more than an order of magnitude more powerful than any other Martial Heart Rui had ever seen in his entire life. Yet he was unable to admire it.


    Not even the briefest moment passed before the Gatekeeper leaped at Rui with an astronomical speed. He had already arrived in just a matter of microseconds. His fists converged on Rui, threatening to crush him with a single blow. It was within Rui''s prediction.


    WHOOSH!


    He managed to evade it.


    Yet the same could not be said for the very world around him.


    BOOM!!!!!!!


    Heaven and earth roared as a wave of destruction emerged from the attack. A devastating shockwave the likes of which Rui had never seen erupted from the collision. It spread, expanding as it engulfed everything.


    The sheer concussive force of the shockwave shattered the foundations of the bedrock it touched as it spread from the epicenter. It spread through the battlefield and the skies for several kilometers, ravaging everything it engulfed.


    STEP


    Ruinded away.


    He was frozen.


    Frozen in shock as he beheld the destruction that the Gatekeeper unleashed upon the very world itself.


    The battlefield had been ravaged. Where Rui once stood was the epicenter of a crater that spanned kilometers in radius. A profoundly deep scar had been inflicted upon the very world that bore their battle. N?velDrama.Org holds ? this.


    The attack hadn''t struck him physically, but it sure did strike him mentally.


    The destruction he beheld was in the same tier of power as the quasi-Master-level bomb that Chairman Deacon had surgically imnted into his body.


    A single whisper escaped Rui.


    "What is this¡­?" RUMBLE


    Thends quivered as the Gatekeeper emerged from the crater. "This is power that I have cultivated over five centuries," the Gatekeeper solemnly remarked. "That was the first attack¡­"


    The man narrowed his eyes. "A hundred thousand more to go."


    At that moment, Rui felt a chill crawl up his spine. He felt something he hadn''t felt in battle in a long time.


    Fear.


    "Here Ie!" The Gatekeeper roared.


    Despite the weight of his gargantuan body, his speed was extraordinary, exceeding even that of Fulminata Kane.


    A titanicteral swing was hurled at Rui''s side.


    WHOOSH!


    Only to miss as Rui crouched, cleanly avoiding the blow.


    WHOOOOOOSH!!!!


    The sheer winds the attack generated from the enormous power of the swing caused shifts in pressure in the atmosphere across the northernmost peak of Kandria, altering the entirety of the weather spanning the expansive region.


    Yet, the Gatekeeper was far from done.


    He hurled a barrage of powerful blows at Rui, each with the power to crumple his body into an indistinguishable b of meat.


    None of them connected.


    WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH!


    Rui evaded every single one of them, even if narrowly. The man surged forth,unching a devastating barrage of powerful, heavy blows.


    WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH!


    Rui''s eyes sharpened with intensity as his concentration and focus heightened even more, reaching unprecedented levels. He could not afford to make even a single mistake. There was a zero tolerable margin of error, for even a single error would undoubtedly get him killed. The Gatekeeper possessed more raw power than Rui could even begin toprehend. There was no question of trying to defend against the Gatekeeper''s attacks. The man was so titanically powerful that he would shatter any and all defenses that Rui could possibly muster.


    FLICK


    His eyes widened as a small cut emerged on his face, evading a blow. It was not the attack that cut him.


    No.


    It was the sheer air pressure around the attack generated by its power that had managed to break his skin.


    Rui gritted his teeth as the Gatekeeper appeared before Rui once more.


    BOOM!!!!!


    An enormous sphere of destruction emerged as his attack barely missed Rui once, punishing the world instead.


    Rui had barelynded on his feat when the Gatekeeper had already arrived, thrusting forth yet another devastatingly powerful blow.


    BOOOM!!!!!


    Rui narrowed his eyes with a grave expression, sessfully managing to evade the attack, yet the Gatekeeper had already arrived before him once more.


    WHOOSH


    BOOOOOM!!!!!!!


    The first, and perhaps even thest, phase of the battle had taken shape. A single truth had be evident to every single person who bore witness to the battle.


    Rui Quarrier Kandria was weaker than the Gatekeeper.


    That was not a single doubt in anybody''s mind regarding this matter. As far as any physical parameter went, the Gatekeeper was absurdly stronger. Thus far, Rui had been pushing himself to desperately avoid the destruction of the Gatekeeper''s offensive power.


    WHOOSH!


    BOOOOOM!!!!!


    Rui gritted his teeth; if not for the predictive model that he had created from the Angel of Lace moments before the battle began, the battle would have long been over. The Gatekeeper possessed speed and power that greatly exceeded that of Rui''s.


    WHOOSH


    He leaped away moments before destruction ensued.


    BOOM!!!!!!!!


    Each attack inspired a primal terror within him. The power that the man exerted was horrifying, causing Rui to overreact and over-evade. Yet¡­


    BOOOM!!!!!


    BOOOM!!!!!


    BOOOM!!!!!


    With each passing blow, Rui became increasinglyfortable and familiar with evading them. His nerves eased, attack by attack, as his movements grew more efficient. They grew more rxed.


    WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH!


    Rui shifted millimeters to avoid the ensuing blows. The Gatekeeper narrowed his eyes at the sight, exerting himself as his attacks quickened.


    WHOOSH!


    Rui spun, evading a powerful blow, surging towards the Gatekeeper.


    BAM!


    A charged Flowing Canon kick crashed into the man''s jaw.


    The Martial Artists beholding the battle stirred as a significant event had finally unfolded.


    Rui Quarrier Kandria hadnded his first attack.


    "Not bad," The Gatekeeper remarked.


    "Liar," Rui gritted his teeth.


    The Flowing Canon was Rui''s most powerful attack. Unlike his Transverse Resonance, which was only empowered by his lungs, the Flowing Canon was empowered by every single muscle group in the body, including his augmented lungs. The full might of Outer Convergence, Fire Breathing, Adamant Reforging, and Reverberating Lance had been funneled into the Flowing Canon.


    It hadn''t so much as budged the Gatekeeper''s face by a millimeter.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1815 Heated Conflict

    Chapter 1815 Heated Conflict


    WHOOSH!


    BOOOM!!!!!


    Even as Rui leaped away from the attack, the man had already surged forth at extraordinary speeds. His gargantuan body had appeared before Rui in a fraction of a millisecond, his attack already hurtling at Rui.


    Yet, it was within Rui''s prediction.


    WHOOSH!


    BOOOOOM!!!!!


    He had already dodged it before it had reached him, leaping away¡­


    WHOOSH!!


    ¡­only to find that the Gatekeeper''s speed had already closed the distance between them.


    BOOOOOOM!!!!!!


    A hint of frustration appeared on the Gatekeeper''s face as Rui had somehow evaded his attack once more.


    That wasn''t all.


    BAM!!


    He had somehownded a blow on the gargantuan''s jaw quicker than he realized.


    His hand shot forward like a bullet, reaching to grab Rui''s fist, hoping to turn it into a grappling battle where he would undoubtedly have won.


    WHOOSH!


    An empty image was all he managed to sp.


    His eyes narrowed.


    It was a feint.


    POW POW POW!


    A swift barrage of blows struck the man''s jaw in vain before he could react. His eyes intensified as his arms hurled forward at blinding speeds, hoping to crush Rui before he could retreat.


    WHOOSH!


    He was already gone, having foreseen the attacks long before they came.


    It was almost iprehensible.


    Sir Armstrong knew that he was far faster and stronger than his opponent. Yet, for some reason, he was unable to so much as even touch Rui.


    WHOOSH


    In a single sh, he had arrived before Rui at blinding speeds, hurling his powerful palms at Rui.


    WHOOSH!


    The attacks were so fast that the friction ignited the atmosphere, causing a congration that engulfed the entire battlefield.


    Yet the attack never so much as touched Rui.


    He had evaded them long before they had arrived, having timed his evasions in the short time period before the attack began and after it was toote to change them.


    WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH!


    Rui leaped away, putting some distance between them as he awaited the Gatekeeper''s usual follow-up.


    Yet, it didn''te.


    "I see," the man''s deep voice reached him. "So, this is the power of thought."


    Rui narrowed his eyes at those words.


    THUD


    THUD


    THUD


    The man slowly emerged from the dust cloud, regarding Rui with respect. "I have never beheld a Martial Senior whose mind exceeds their physicality."


    THUD


    "I have never beheld a Martial Senior to have harnessed thought to such an extent."


    THUD


    "I have never beheld anything quite like you."


    Sincere respect radiated from the depths of his voice. He closed his eyes. "¡­In return for your magnificent disy of mastery of thought, allow me to demonstrate mastery of physicality."


    His eyes opened as he took a sprinter''s stance.


    "Behold." N?velDrama.Org owns ? this.


    His voice grew grave.


    "Behold my mastery of physicality."


    The air boiled.


    It grew tumultuous.


    A profound peril erupted from the man.


    Shivers crawled down Rui''s skin at what ensued.


    The shining, blinding white lines of his Martial Heart streaking across his entire body changed. The blood vessels streaking across his torso and back dimmed, regressing to a bright red, while the lines that streaked across his legs grew even brighter and blinding than they already were.


    Raw terror gripped Rui''s heart as he understood what was happening.


    He had gained a level of mastery over the Martial Heart that Rui didn''t even know was possible!


    He could freely allocate the resources of the Martial Heart to any part of the body however he wanted.


    To him, the Martial Heart was not just a passive resource that empowered the body as a whole.


    No.


    It was a resource that he could distribute in any manner he saw fit to.


    The man''s eyes bore into Rui''s, ring with a bright red light as he increased the supply of metabolic power to them, increasing the quality of his vision to track Rui better.


    A single remark escaped his mouth.


    "Here Ie," His inhumanly deep voice grew perilous. "Do your best to survive."


    WHOOSH!


    Rui''s widened his eyes, dodging, as the man arrived before him faster than he could see.


    BOOOM!!!!!!


    CRACK CRACK CRACK¡­!


    "AAARRGHH!" Rui grimaced in pain, gritting his teeth as his eyes peered into the Gatekeeper''s.


    His arm had gotten caught in the attack even as he evaded, instantly fracturing in eighteen different ces. Just as the Gatekeeper swung another attack, reality itself warped.


    ''Temporal Disharmony.''


    The man froze in shock as the flow of time of the very universe sped up immensely! Rui gritted his teeth, healing his arm with Weaving Blood, forced to employ the Hypnomatrix against his will. The man had heightened his speed to an even greater degree by allocating even greater resources of the Martial Hearts to his legs. He had reached speeds that Kane would only be able to reach once and once with the original Godspeed technique that focused all the speed in a single bullrush.


    Unlike Kane, however, the Gatekeeper appeared to be able to spam such speeds over and over!


    "Did you think something of this caliber would be enough to stop me?" Chills crawled up Rui''s spine. His senses and instincts heightened as the manunched himself at Rui at titanic speeds once more.


    Yet this time, he was only half as fast as before.


    WHOOSH!


    BOOM!!!


    Rui evaded the attack cleanly, leaping away as eyes narrowed. He hadn''t failed to notice that the man''s destructive power had reduced significantly ever since he had redirected the power of the Martial Heart to his legs to increase the speed of his bullrushes.


    WHOOSH!


    The manunched himself at Rui once more, unrelenting in his onught. Rui had predicted the attack, perfectly timing the dodge.


    Except he didn''t.


    Rui had failed to notice that his arms were brighter than they had ever been. That meant that they came down faster and stronger than Rui had predicted.


    BOOM!!!


    CRACK CRACK CRACK!!!


    "Rgh!" Rui grimaced as the ncing blow shattered his arms effortlessly.


    Weaving Blood rushed in to fix the damage rapidly even as the Gatekeeper surged forward, preparing another attack to demolish Rui once and for all!


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1816 Holding Back

    Chapter 1816 Holding Back


    ??"Speed Void."


    WHOOSH!


    The Gatekeeper''s narrowed as Rui cleanly evaded the finishing blow, leaping away as heaven and earth itself seemed to shackle the Gatekeeper in ce.


    That wasn''t all.


    "Fuuu¡­"


    Rui activated Neo Godspeed at twenty percent while using Final Breathing at eighty percent, surging forward with much greater speed than before!


    WHOOSH!


    He evaded a powerful blow from the Gatekeeper,unching a powerful kick at the man''s jaw. He threw every single technique into the Flowing Canon.


    BAM!


    lights¦­¦Ïv¦Ål ?¦Ïm It didn''t so much as budge the man''s head.


    WHOOSH!


    He somersaulted away, evading the man''s extraordinarily swift and powerful blow. Suddenly, the Gatekeeper''s body shifted, as his upper body dimmed while his legs brightened.


    WHOOSH!


    He appeared before Rui in the tiniest fraction of a millisecond, his legs dimmed as his upper body brightened. The most powerful and fastest blow of the battle was thrown at Rui.


    WHOOSH!


    Rui barely evaded the blow itself, yet the sheer shockwaves that emerged from it struck him point nk.


    BOOOOOM!!!!!!!!!


    "Rgh!" He grimaced


    The destructive shockwave that emerged from the attack was so extreme that it battered Rui, engulfing him and everything beyond.


    RUMBLE!!!


    The verynds beneath them shook under the devastating power of the Gatekeeper!


    That day, all of North Kandria experienced a small earthquake.


    STEP


    Rui leaped away with a grave expression, panting heavily. The Gatekeeper, too, took a moment to catch his breath after exerting himself to the very limit.


    Silence spread across the battlefield.


    Both warriors considered each other for a moment.


    The Gatekeeper closed his eyes. "It has been a long time since I have been forced to think."


    Rui shrugged. "It has been a long time since I have been forced not to."


    The two of them couldn''t help but share a brief, fleeting smile.


    Yet, a silent understanding had befallen both of them.


    The first act of the battle hade to an end.


    The Gatekeeper, with deep confidence in his physicality, had chosen a rtively mindless approach to the battle.


    Chase after his opponent.


    Hit his opponent.


    This was the approach that had won him victory after victory for all of his life. Nothing short of the power of higher Realm has been enough to ward off this simple brute-force approach.


    His physicality had trumped all.


    No Martial Art, no Martial Path, no technique, no Martial Body, no Martial Heart no strategy or tactic had ever been able to withstand this mindless yet unstoppablebat approach.


    Yet, for the first time since the birth of the Kandrian Empire, he had found an opponent who possessed the power to withstand his onught.


    He still didn''t quite understand how Rui did it.


    It was as though he could see the future itself.


    Even after the Gatekeeper unveiled his most prized trump card, his absolute mastery over the Martial Heart, he had only been able to gain a brief advantage that was quickly taken away.


    Despite greatly increasing hisbat power by regting the flow of the Martial Heart and redirecting it to the most relevant muscles at any given point in time, he was unable to win.


    He only managed to force his opponent to go all out, unveiling mysterious hypnotic techniques, momentary domains, and his own crude maniptions of the body.


    Of course, the battle could not considered equal.


    Rui had yet to put so much as a single scratch on the man''s body, while the Gatekeeper was always merely inches away from crushing Rui to a pulp. He had even shattered Rui''s bones multiple times, which would have ended the fight then and there if not for Weaving Blood.


    In his situation, any normal, sane Martial Senior would now alter their strategy and tactics. There was no point in continuing with a mindless and brute-force approach that clearly wasn''t working.N?velDrama.Org holds ? this.


    They would have switched their strategic approach to a long-


    range, wide-scale attack. They would have considered disrupting his timing through sabotage. They would have considered soaking damage to get their hands on Rui and grapple him.


    Something.


    Anything.


    Not the Gatekeeper.


    There was a reason that he was still only a Martial Senior five hundred years into his Martial Path.


    This was a man who had rejected the power of thought.


    Physicality Evolution.


    He had stayed true to his Martial Path.


    Not even the seductive power of the Martial Master could shake his love and single-minded dedication to physicality, even at the cost of thought.


    Especially at the cost of thought.


    "You are the strongest Martial Senior I have ever fought," the Gatekeeper dered, cutting through the silence.


    He closed his eyes.


    "I will stop holding back now."


    Horror gripped Rui''s heart at those words.


    Chills crawled up his spine.


    Fear emerged from the depths of his very being.


    "¡­Hold back?" Rui whispered.


    BADUMP!


    His heart began glowing tremendously, shining from deep within the depths of his chest.


    BADUMP!


    Rui shook as he felt a shockwave emerge from the man''s chest from the sheer weight of his heart.


    BADUMP!!


    RUMBLE


    The weight of the man''s heartbeat shook the verynds beneath them.


    BADUMP!!!


    The world quivered under the roar of his heart.


    Rui stared at him with terror.


    He wasn''t the only one.


    Not a single person watching could maintain theirposure.


    Not a single one of them could maintain their calm.


    Every single one of them stared at the Gatekeeper with unadulterated shock.


    "What is this¡­?" Palpable fear was visible on Master Ceeran''s face.


    "¡­I don''t know," Master Zentra''s voice, usually calm, had grown saturated with angst.


    Not a single one of them knew what they were seeing.


    They could only watch with horror as the Gatekeeper''s power continued rising until every cell in his body glowed with power.


    Raw power that transcended anything that was supposed to be possible in the Senior Realm.


    "I have you to thank for this technique," the Gatekeeper''s voice had grown inhumanly deep. "Thanks to your Hungry Pain technique, my greatest masterpiece wasplete."


    His pupils shined like two miniature suns.


    He took his stance, readying for battle.


    "Forbidden technique¡­" He whispered.


    "Ragnarok."


    BOOOOOOOOOM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1817 Forty Five Seconds

    Chapter 1817 Forty Five Seconds


    RUMBLE¡­


    "Get in!"


    "Take shelter!"


    "Make sure the kids are safe!"


    The Quarrier Orphanage was in a state of panic when the earthquake ensued; the Kandrian Disaster Management Authority had issued emergency announcements to the northernmost parts of the Kandrian Empire, warning them about potential earthquakes throughout the entire day.


    RUMBLE¡­


    Lashara held on to the kitchen counter with fear in her eyes.


    For some reason, despite all the chaos, a single thought rang in her head. N?velDrama.Org holds this content.


    A single person.


    "Rui¡­" She whispered. "Be safe."


    s, it was questionable whether her wish would be granted.


    The Gatekeeper pushed his leg into the ground,unching himself forward at more than twice his previous speed.


    BOOOOOOOOOM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


    The very act caused mountains to erupt in the air behind him. The battlefield shook as the Gatekeeperunched himself at speeds that were not supposed to be possible in the Senior Realm.


    WHOOSH!!!!!


    In the briefest fraction of a millisecond, he had already arrived before Rui. Instantly, the most powerful and fastest attack of the battle converged on him. It threatened to crush him.


    Ragnarok was originally a forbidden technique that relied on the metabolic immtion of the cells of his own body to generate power that exceeded the Senior Realm. Unfortunately, while the power of the technique made him more than twice as fast and strong, it was a technique that would extract his life should he actually use it.


    With the advent of the Hungry Pain technique, Sir Armstrong discovered it was possible to significantly offset the worst consequences of the technique. It was his ultimate trump card. As far as he was concerned, there was no force in the Lower Realms that could withstand the power of the technique.


    That was why he was shocked when Rui evaded the attack cleanly once more. WHOOSH


    His fist just barely missed him as Rui evaded the blow with an enormous surge of speed.


    At that moment, their eyes met.


    A single whisper escaped Rui.


    "You''re not the only one with forbidden techniques." It was his only hope.


    BOOOOOOOOOM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


    The evaded attack shook the heavens. The enormous wind currents and pressure imbnces it released began to coalesce.


    It gave birth to something new.


    WHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOSH!!!


    An enormous hurricane was born. It engulfed the entire battle and beyond.


    Yet even as it grew at an rming rate, not a single person paid it any heed. Each and every single one of them focused on one and only one thing.


    The escting battle between the two Martial Artists.


    Even though Rui evaded the attack, he was unable to evade the destructive shockwave it produced. "Rgh!" Rui grimaced, simultaneously using a maximum Weaving Blood to heal wounds that his maximum Nemean Blossom had been unable to prevent.


    "HYARGH!" The Gatekeeper surged forth with even greater vigor and power, determined to ovee Rui with his newfound power; a powerful fist converged into Rui''s position, threatening to crush him.


    WHOOSH!!!


    Rui would have died if not for his maximum Neo Godspeed.


    BOOOOOOOOOM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


    Instantly, a crater evenrger than any Rui had ever seen was formed. Yet, his eyes were fixed on one and only one target, surging forward to exploit a rare opportunity.


    BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM!


    A flurry of blowsnded on the Gatekeeper''s jaw even as he ignored them. His body coiled as it hurtled a titanic attack at his opponent at blinding speeds.


    Yet, not even that could reach Rui.


    WHOOSH


    Yet, while the attack could not reach Rui, the destructive shockwaves certainly did.


    BOOOOOOOOOM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


    "Rgh!" Rui grimaced, gritting his teeth, surviving purely because of the grace of two Metabody techniques working hand-in-hand.


    Yet the Gatekeeper did not intend to give him reprieve. A barrage of devastating titanic blows had surged forth toward Rui in a blinding sh.


    WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH!


    Rui''s eyes sharpened as he evaded each and every single blow within an inch of death. The gatekeeper''s speed was so extraordinarily high that dodging before the attacks wereunched was almost not enough!


    In truth, Rui''s eyes were unable to perceive the man''s movements despite a maximum Neo Godspeed. There was one and only one reason that he was able to evade the Gatekeeper''s devastating attacks over and over.


    "Your patterns are more elementary than any I''ve ever seen."


    Perhaps it was the price to be paid to abandon thought forever. In the absence of sophistication, simplicity was the only thing that could fill the void.


    And fill the Void it did.


    BAM BAM BAM!


    A swift flurry of blows crashed harmlessly against the Gatekeeper''s jaw even as the Gatekeeperunched yet another titanic attack surging forth at astronomical speeds.


    BOOOOOOOOOM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


    The world roared agonously as the powerful attack inflicted a gigantic wound on its body.


    Yet, it hadn''t so much as touched Rui.


    But the destructive shockwave did.


    "Rgh!" Rui grimaced even as Weaving Blood healed the wounds that Nemean Blossom could not prevent.


    Yet, neither of them had failed to notice that his regeneration speed had grown slower.


    Rui had suffered a huge amount of damage throughout the entire battle. Not just from the two times that the Gatekeeper lightly managed to touch him but also from the omnidirectional destructive shockwave that constantly emerged from the man''s fists.


    As for the Gatekeeper, Rui failed to hurt him even a single time.


    Their eyes met for a moment, and a mutual understanding shed between them.


    Both of them had used forbidden techniques, yet only one of them had suffered immense damage. It did not require a genius to figure out who would sumb to the effects of their forbidden technique first.


    The impetus was on Rui.


    His eyes narrowed as he shed forward at blinding speeds, empowered by a maximum Neo Godspeed, Gale Force Breathing, and Outer Convergence.


    BOOOOOOOOOM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


    BOOOOOOOOOM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


    BOOOOOOOOOM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


    He weaved through the Gatekeeper''s devastating attacks,unching a flurry of powerful blows to the man''s jaw one after another.


    POW POW POW!


    Yet, not even a speck of damage was inflicted upon the man. Rui gritted his teeth as he sharply evaded more attacks from the Gatekeeper. He didn''t have much time left. He hadsted only thirty-four seconds when he had used four metabodies simultaneously. This time, given that he used only three, he estimated he only had forty-five seconds.


    Yet, their perception of time was so high that not even a second had passed in real time since the Gatekeeper had unveiled his trump card.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1818 Coping

    Chapter 1818 Coping


    The many spectators watched, shell-shocked, as Rui experienced a mysterious yet enormous surge ofbat power. His speed and power were merely a minute fraction of the Gatekeeper''s, yet he was somehow able to evade and even attack his opponent.


    Yet even as he dazzled everybody with his almost magical ability to evade, he hadn''t changed their outlook on the oue of the battle. There was one fact of the matter that killed any chance of victory for him in their eyes.


    He had yet to so much as even hurt his opponent while the Gatekeeper continued to ravage.


    Not forck of trying.


    Regardless, a single truth had be clear to each and every single one of them.


    The battle had reached its twilight.


    Nothing short of a miracle would be enough for Rui to seize victory under these circumstances.


    POW POW POW!


    Heunched a short, swift barrage of blows on the Gatekeeper''s jaw, instantly leaping away swiftly to evade the retaliation.


    BOOOOOOOOOM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


    Rui grimaced as the destructive shockwave battered him with wounds despite a maximum Nemean Blossom. He immediately leaped back towards the Gatekeeper even as a maximum Weaving Blood healed his wounds, albeit slower than before.


    WHOOSH


    He spun, evading an astronomical blow from the Gatekeeper, simultaneouslynding his own.


    BAM!


    The Gatekeeper didn''t so much as budge. He didn''t even bother defending against Rui''s pathetic attacks, for his own had already beenunched hurtling towards Rui.


    WHOOSH!


    Rui somersaulted,nding away, only to find that the Gatekeeper had already arrived with his astronomical speed, ready to pummel him with a powerful blow.


    All within Rui''s prediction.


    WHOOSH


    BOOOOOOOOOM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


    Rui grimaced as the destructive shockwave caught up with him even after he evaded the attack, battering him once more. Weaving Blood immediately kicked into action, yet the Gatekeeper did not give him even a moment of relief.


    WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH! This content is ? N?velDrama.Org.


    Rui gritted his teeth as he leaped away dodging blow after blow after blow, barely avoiding being utterly demolished by the absurd destructive power of the Gatekeeper.


    BOOOOOOOOOM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


    BOOOOOOOOOM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


    BOOOOOOOOOM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


    Heaven and earth shook under the Gatekeeper''s devastating power. Each attack instantly carved out craters spanning many kilometers in radius!


    A single one of them would utterly destroy Rui''s body, Nemean Blossom or not.


    The Gatekeeper''s eyes narrowed with frustration as he relentlessly sted attack after attack against Rui with blinding speed and astronomical power.


    Yet, not a single one of them struck him.


    Rui timed each and every movement within a microsecond of uracy; anything less than that, and he would mistime the evasion, causing the attack to strike him sessfully. The faster one''s cognition was the shorter the timeframe between the inception of the attack and the final decision of the brain.


    If Rui evaded the predicted attack a microsecond too early, then the Gatekeeper could reactively change the trajectory of the decided attack to hit him.


    Had Rui evaded the attack a microsecond toote, then he would have been unable to avoid the Gatekeeper''s astronomical blinding speed.


    He had an extremely minute window to dodge the predicted attack.


    He needed to time it urately over and over and over.


    The second he made a mistake, he would lose his life in addition to the battle!


    If not for Temporal Disharmony reducing his perception of time and increasing the size of that window, as well as Speed Void reducing the sheer speed of his movements, not even the full might of Rui''s pattern recognition model in conjugation with maximum Neo Godspeed would have been enough to avoid the astronomical speed that the Ragnarok technique gave him.


    Even if it were, without maximum Nemean Blossom and maximum Weaving Blood constantly protecting him, he would have long sumbed to the destructive shockwaves of the Gatekeeper''s attacks.


    WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH


    BOOOOOOOOOM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


    BOOOOOOOOOM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


    Rui gritted his teeth, withstanding the destructive shockwaves of the three evaded attacks as his leg surged forward toward the man''s head.


    BAM!


    It didn''t so much as disce his head by even an inch. WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH


    The Gatekeeper gritted his teeth as the three attacks crashed into an empty image.


    A feint.


    POW POW POW!


    Rui barely managed to squeeze in a swift flurry of strikes to the back of the man''s head before a titanic backkick almost killed him.


    WHOOSH!


    He evaded it within an inch of his life, yet Primordial Instinct had already warned him of ensuing follow-ups. WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH


    He barely managed to evade three more ensuing attacks, one after the other, kicking off the Gatekeeper''s head to propel himself away.


    BAM!


    "RARGH!" The Gatekeeper arrived before him, and a powerful drop-kick flew down at blinding speeds, threatening to crush him to a pulp.


    BOOOOOOOOOM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


    Rui gritted his teeth, barely having evaded it, as the destructive shockwave battered him for the umpteenth time.


    "Your body cannot hold out much longer, boy," the Gatekeeper''s deep voice reverberated in Rui''s ears. "I am unable to control the power of the Ragnarok; you will die."


    Seconds had passed since the activation of the metabody forbidden technique.


    His eyes met with Rui''s.


    "Forfeit."


    Rui narrowed his eyes. "I''m not the only one who is on a time limit."


    The Gatekeeper narrowed his eyes.


    Rui grinned even as he coughed blood. "You''re breathing is much more strained andborious than before, old man."


    His eyes narrowed. "Focus on yourself."


    Rui took his stance once more.


    "I have no intentions of losing."


    A measure of respect and admiration lit up in the Gatekeeper''s eyes.


    BOOOOOOOOOM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


    Heunched himself at Rui, ravaging the battlefield with each step. "I will defeat you before you sumb to your power."


    He appeared before Rui in a sh; his arms swung down at an astronomical speed, threatening to crush Rui.


    BOOOOOOOOOOOM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


    Rui grimaced, barely evading the titanic power of the blow, leaping away even as the destructive shockwave of the attack ravaged him.


    "Rgh!" He vomited blood. The continuous damage that the Gatekeeper had inflicted upon him had taxed his body even more than he had ounted for.


    The end of his short and brief burst of power was arriving even sooner than Rui had expected!


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1819 Remained To Be Seen

    Chapter 1819 Remained To Be Seen


    ??WHOOSH


    Rui pirouetted, evading a powerful, swift blow as a spinning kick crashed into the man''s head.


    BAM!


    Once again, not a spec of damage was inflicted on his opponent even as a power haymaker arrived hurtling at Rui.


    WHOOSH


    It crashed into an empty image of Rui.


    A feint.


    POW!


    A straight hook kick crashed into the man''s jaw, yet again failing to hurt him.


    "Why do you bother?" The Gatekeeper murmured even as heunched an enormous flurry of blows at Rui. "Your paltry power is unable to hurt me."


    He narrowed his eyes, gazing deep into Rui''s eyes.


    He saw but one thing.


    An endless darkness.


    A void.


    It threatened to consume him.


    Yet, a single remark escaped him.


    "Trivial."


    His eyes intensified as he unleashed a titanic amount of power against his opponent.


    BOOOOOOOOOM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


    BOOOOOOOOOM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


    BOOOOOOOOOM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


    "Rgh!" Rui vomited blood as the destructive shockwaves of the evaded attacks battered his strained body.


    THUD


    He fell down to one knee as his leg gave out. Weaving Blood had reduced tremendously since Rui began using it.


    WHOOSH


    He leaped away, barely evading the Gatekeeper''s attacks.


    Yet a single truth had be entirely evident to not just his opponent, but to every single spectating the battle.


    "The time is nigh."


    While the Gatekeeper had also grown slower and weaker, his condition was far more stable than Rui, who had been battered deeply throughout the entirety of the battle. The disadvantage of forbidden techniques was that any damage exacerbated their consequences.


    It was a negative feedback loop that worked against the user.


    Had Rui been able to inflict a simr amount of damage, he would have ensured that the battle remained bnced.


    Yet, since the inception of the battle, Rui Quarrier Kandria had been unable to inflict so much as a scratch upon his opponent.


    Was there ever a more clear indicator of inferiority?


    The realization had long set a deep gloom upon those who yearned for his victory.


    "¡­Rui!" Master Ceeran gritted his teeth, clenching his fist.


    Master Vericita bore witness to the battle with deep angst.N?velDrama.Org holds this content.


    She was not worried that he would lose. As far as she was concerned, that was inevitable. She was afraid that he would lose his life in addition to the duel.


    Master Zentra simply closed his eyes, shaking his head.


    Headmaster Aronian beheld the battle with a grave expression.


    Resignation shed in his eyes.


    Only Master Reina continued to spectate the battle with deep enthusiasm and excitement. A knowing look shed in her eyes as she continued to eat her popcorn, cackling out aloud.


    WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH


    Rui grew more disoriented, struggling to evade the attacks one after another.


    With each maneuver, he grew slower.


    He grew sluggish.


    Pain ravaged his body. His body felt like it was burning, burning alive.


    Blood spilled from many orifices across his entire body.


    A single truth became evident to everyone.


    He was at his limits.


    "I will say this onest time," the Gatekeeper''s voice spread through the battlefield. "Forfeit."


    "Huff¡­Huff¡­" Rui stood unsteadily, breathing heavily. His vision grew disoriented while his bnce seemed to crumble by the millisecond.


    He could barely maintain his Martial Heart.


    He had already deactivated his dying metabody techniques, using Final Breathing to prolong what little time he had.


    Yet, with herculean effort, he pulled himself together, taking a stance.


    His body coiled as he tucked his fist at his side, gathering what little power he had left.


    Instinctively, realization dawned upon all of them.


    This was his final attack.


    The Gatekeeper closed his eyes. "So be it."


    He took a powerful charging stance.


    "I will not forget you," his final remark rang in the air. "Rui Quarrier Kandria."


    RUMBLE!!!


    Heaven and earth shook as he shot himself at astronomical speeds. His body coiled as a titanic amount of power exploded from across the entirety of his gargantuan body. An astronomically devastating, powerful attack was hurled forward at extraordinary speeds.


    It converged unto Rui.


    The end seemed nigh


    BOOOOOOOOOM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


    What followed shook everyone to their very souls.


    What followed ensued seemed to defy thew of causality itself.


    What unfolded would go on to sear itself in the minds of all those who beheld it.


    One moment, Rui was to be struck by the ferocious attack that the Gatekeeper hurled at him.


    The very next?


    His fist crashed into the Gatekeeper''s head.


    Every single person widened their eyes as the Gatekeeper''s attack crashed into an empty image, only for Rui to emerge as his attack crashed into the man''s head.


    Yet that wasn''t the miracle that put the fear of God in all of them.


    A single whisper escaped Rui''s mouth.


    "Sympathetic Death Lance."


    The Gatekeeper''s Martial Heart flickered, snuffing entirely.


    His body grew limp.


    His eyes grew unfocused as he began to fall.


    Rui closed his eyes with regret.


    Yet, this time, it was his turn to be shocked.


    CLASP!


    Rui''s eyes opened, widening with shock as the Gatekeeper stared deep into Rui''s eyes, having caught both his arms.


    His eyes were bleeding profusely.


    A small smile emerged on his face.


    "I have you now."


    SPLAT!


    In a single gesture, he tore both of Rui''s arms from his body.


    DRIP DRIP DRIP DRIP!!!


    "AAAARGRAHRVAGHHHHHHH!!!!"


    A horrifying screech echoed through the battlefield.


    The Gatekeeper surged forward with jubtion and triumph as the armless Rui fell backward.


    Victory was his.


    POW


    He froze as Rui''s foot crashed into his head.


    The second Reverberating Death Lance of the battle.


    His brain shook for a second time despite the extraordinary skull that protected it.


    THUD


    He fell to the ground, copsing.


    Copsed and unmoving.


    "ARRCGH!" Rui coughed blood even as blood gushed out from the open wounds of his torn arms. Combined with the loss of two arms and the effects of the forbidden technique, the cells across his body began dying rapidly.


    He was on the brink of death.


    On the brink of death, yet conscious.


    "Winner! Rui Quarrier Kandria!"


    "RUUIIIIIIIIIIII!!!!!!" Master Ceeran bellowed as he and his fellow Martial Masters rushed forth with Hearts and Minds aze with prepared potions.


    It remained to be seen whether the battle was the only thing that woulde to an end.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1820 Outcome

    Chapter 1820 Oue


    Rui felt his consciousness dimming.


    "Winner! Rui Quarrier Kandria!"


    A sense of relief spread within him when he heard those words. He won. N?velDrama.Org owns ? this.


    But at what cost?


    His body had been throughout the entire battle. He had been forced to use a forbidden technique. He had even had his arms ripped out.


    Still, the thought of victory brought him great tion even as his consciousness faded. After all, he had defeated the great Gatekeeper. Someone who was regarded to be the strongest Martial Senior in all of Kandria. Hell, he could not imagine the Gatekeeper losing to any Martial Senior even though he had barely extracted victory from him.


    Rui had truly used everything that he had to offer against the elder Martial Senior. Even by the very end, he had used Phantomind Void synergetically with Phantom Step to bypass his guard andnd his Sympathetic Death Lance on the man.


    He had known from the very moment heid eyes on the Gatekeeper that he would be unable to harm him using conventional methods. He had resigned to having to kill him using his greatest assassination technique in order to extract victory.


    That was why he continued striking the man''s head throughout the entire battle, even if the action appeared to be in vain. It was not about damage; it was about finding the right resonant frequency.


    And despite that, the man did the impossible; he got up after being struck by the Sympathetic Death Lance, not once, but twice. It was a feat that Rui still didn''t understand.


    Rui would probably never admit this out loud, but the moment that he realized that not even the Sympathetic Death Lance could take this man down was one of the most horrifying moments that Rui had ever experienced in the entirety of both lives.


    Thankfully, the second one seemed to do the trick, but it still shook him.


    What he hadn''t expected was how absurdly strong the Gatekeeper would be. The sheer amount of physical power that this man had cultivated across his entire lifespan was unlike anything he had evere across.


    Rui had thoroughly been shown how great the power of umtion was. If he ever came across a particrly old Martial Artist, he definitely needed to steer clear, for there was no telling just how much power they had cultivated in all that time. He couldpletely understand why the Martial Masters in his immediate inner ring had told him that he would lose.


    He didn''t me them.


    Inparison, he was close to one-twentieth the Gatekeeper''s age. Thus, the fact that he managed to ovee all that umtion was a testament to the potency of his Martial Art as a force multiplier.


    He had many questions that he wanted to ask the Gatekeeper if he got the chance.


    He didn''t know if he would.


    Even if the man was still alive, Rui wasn''t sure if he would live.


    Time seemed to have slowed down in his perspective as a multitude of thoughts shed through his mind. ''Am I dying?''


    The question seemed to break the spell of time, elerating the darkness that overtook his mind.


    Soon enough, his consciousness hadpletely faded. Aforting, warm sensation hadpletely overtaken his body.


    Time passed.


    Faint memories of noises, voices, scents, and odors had cumted during this time. His body experienced many different sensations during this time. A lot of pain initially, but eventually, even that ceased.


    By the time his eyes opened, he could instinctively sense that some time had passed. He found himself in a bed. An unfamiliar ceiling greeted him when he opened his eyes. "I''m alive."


    A sigh of relief escaped him.


    His circumstances before passing out had been so genuinely dire that he could not help but worry that death was a very realistic possibility. Having his arms ripped out after using his forbidden metabody technique was a good recipe for death. It would suck to die after going as far as he had.


    He hadn''t trodden his Martial Path for almost twenty years only to die so this young.


    He had an entire life ahead of him.


    An extremely long life.


    He clenched his fists, feeling a surge of power.


    He was unable to distinguish any differences in the sensations of his arms. It was as if they had never been torn off in the first ce.


    Whatever the Martial Union did to him while he was unconscious did the trick quite well.


    "Mmm," Rui groaned as he sat up in his bed.


    His body seemed to have grown a little unfamiliar with the movement, reluctantly obeying his control.


    "Your Highness!"


    His attention was drawn by eight Martial Masters that guarded him while he recovered.


    "¡­Hm?" Rui narrowed his eyes, tilting his head. "You''ve finally woken up!"


    "I shall inform the doctor."


    "How do you feel, Your Highness?"


    tion radiated from them. "I feel fine, mostly," Rui murmured, ncing at his arms. "How long has it been since my battle with Sir Armstrong?"


    "A little over a month, Your Highness."


    "What?!" Rui''s eyes widened with shock as he jolted. "Over a month?!"


    "Yes, Your Highness," the Martial Master exined. "ording to the medical team we assigned to specifically your condition, your condition was extremely dire. ording to them, without extravagant and ostentatious resources that the Martial Union has invested into your recovery, you would undoubtedly have been dead or permanently crippled."


    "¡­Damn," Rui murmured. "I suppose that means that I am not permanently crippled?"


    The Martial Master smiled. "We have used the very best of the best to ensure that your condition waspletely restored. Congrattions on yourplete recovery, Your Highness."


    Rui heaved a shaky sigh, smiling at the man. "I am grateful to the Martial Union for ensuring that my condition waspletely head and restored."


    The direness of his circumstances was not lost on him, but it certainly became clear to him after he learned that he had been asleep for more than an entire month.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1821 Aged

    Chapter 1821 Aged


    N?velDrama.Org owns ? this.


    The revtion of his awakening immediately prompted a medical team to tend to him. They conducted a small battery of tests, testing his mental and physical parameters.


    TAP


    A hammer struck his knee, flinging his leg forward. "Are you experiencing any trouble feeling that?" The doctor asked while a tendon reflex exam was being conducted.


    "Not at all," Rui promptly replied.


    "Hm, good," the doctor nodded with an encouraging smile. "Congrattions, none of our tests have indicated anything of even the slightest concern. We can confidently say that you have made a full recovery and are fit for discharge."


    "Thank you," Rui expressed gratitude to the doctor. "I am grateful that you and your team have restored my health from the dire condition that I was in."


    It wasn''t long before Rui was flooded with visitors from his faction, expressing their relief at his recovery.


    At that time, he also got a preliminary report of everything that had unfolded since his battle with the Gatekeeper.


    Prince Raijun had obediently terminated his contract with the Minister of Domestic Affairs. Immediately, the Minister of Domestic Affairs had chosen to join the Rui Faction as he had always wanted to. "With that, we have now acquired support from seventy-five percent of all high-ranking government officials," his chief of staff exined. Congrattions, Your Highness; you have won the Kandrian Throne War."


    Her words were heavy.


    The Kandrian Throne War had boiled underneath the surface in a cold war for eight years, ever since Emperor Rael''s condition became known. It had escted greatly over the years, embroiling all of Kandria and eventually spreading far beyond the Kandrian Empire.


    And now, it had finally effectivelye to a conclusion.


    Rui smiled wryly as he went through the stack of reports. "It would seem that I have."


    Of course, Rui doubted that his half-brothers would call it quits this easily, but their battle was as good as lost.


    "In addition to the Kandrian Throne War, Your Highness," Master Zentra remarked. "We would like to congratte you on your victory against Sir Armstrong."


    He closed his eyes. "I had told you that you would lose. It turned out that it was I who was patently wrong. I apologize for doubting you."


    "No, you don''t need to apologize for that," Rui shook his head. "Frankly, once the battlemenced, I understood why everybody had been deeply skeptical about my victory. I would too, had I been in your positions."


    "Yet, you managed to wring victory from the jaws of defeat!" Master Ceeran grinned. "I knew you could do it!"


    "Uh huh," Rui stared at him with a dubious expression.


    "What matters most is that you ultimately managed toe away with your life and body intact and restored," Master Vericita heaved a sigh of relief as she patted his head affectionately.


    Headmaster Aronian smiled with a hint of pride. "Your victory has sent waves across the Martial Community of the Kandrian Empire and East Panama. While those outside the Martial World are unaware of the significance of a Martial Senior defeating the Gatekeeper, those within have been thoroughly shaken by the significance of this feat."


    It was only then that Rui realized that the way that the Martial Masters regarded him had changed. Their manner ofmunication with him had grown more¡­deferring. In hindsight, it was not surprising. Especially when one considered how much respect the eldest and most powerful Martial Artists had for the Gatekeeper. How would they feel for someone who managed to edge out a victory against this Martial Senior?


    "It signifies the emergence of the new strongest Martial Senior in Kandria and perhaps even all of East Panama," Master Zentra remarked. Rui liked the sound of that, but¡­


    "¡­I''m not worthy of that title," Rui shook his head. "As far as I am concerned, the Gatekeeper is still the strongest Martial Senior of the Kandrian Empire despite my victory against him."


    "That''s not how it works, Rui," Master Ceeran calmly disagreed with him. "The strongest do not win; those who win are the strongest."


    Rui considered the man''s words, shrugging.


    One consideration that immediately entered his mind was the fact that if they had a fight again, Rui would probably win much quicker, considering that he now knew the exact resonant frequency of the Gatekeeper. Thus, he no longer needed to go through the lengthy and tedious process of banging his head with attacks that did literally no damage to him in order to find the resonant frequency.


    It wasn''t nearly as satisfying as holistically being stronger, but it was true that his victory against the Gatekeeper was secured.


    Rui turned to all of them. "What about Sir Armstrong¡­? Is he¡­?"


    "He''s alive," Master Zentra remarked, closing his eyes. "¡­Unfortunately, he is still in aa and has yet to awaken from it."


    The air grew heavy.


    "¡­I see," Rui remarked.


    His tone was solemn. Yet, it also encapsted the respect that Rui felt for the man for surviving not one but two Reverberating Death Lance attacks. It was an unprecedented feat and showed just how absurdly difficult the Gatekeeper was to actually put down.


    "That''s a shame," Rui shook his head. "I actually wanted to speak to him."


    "We will inform you of if and when he awakens, Your Highness," Master Zentra remarked. "Unfortunately, the man''s physical condition was actually more dire than yours."


    Rui frowned, confused. "How does that even make any sense? I didn''t inflict any real damage on him. His skull was so tough that I only managed to knock him out."


    "That''s because he is five hundred years old, Your Highness," Master Zentra remarked, heaving a deep sigh. "Even by Martial Artist standards, that is extremely old. His body has long moved past its prime. He is the equivalent of an eighty-year-old man. This is after prolonging his life significantly with potent life-prolonging potions. Healing potions are significantly less effective as are all medical treatments and healings, esoteric or otherwise. On top of that¡­"


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1822 Time

    Chapter 1822 Time


    ?1822  Time


    "On top of that¡­" Master Zentra continued. "He used a powerful forbidden technique that granted him more than twice as much power as he normally wielded by burning his body in internal metabolicbustion. If not for your Hungry Pain technique, it would not be a technique that could be used without dying."


    Rui understood everything that the Master was conveying to him. "¡­The problems caused by the forbidden technique and the blunt force trauma I inflicted on his brain have been exacerbated by his extremely aged body that responds very poorly to healing potions and any and all treatments?"


    "That is a good summary of the issues," Headmaster Aronian nodded regretfully. "You suffered far, far more damage than he did, having brought to the very cusp of death. But because your body is extremely young, energetic, and brimming with youthful vitality, you have been able to recover swiftly under the very best medical care and resources the Martial Union could muster."


    Rui nodded.


    Despite being thirty-two years old, his body had remained entirely unchanged since the age of twenty-three, when he broke through to the Senior Realm. This was because the discovery of the Martial Heart strengthened the mitochondria of the cells of the body, erasing umted oxidative stress and preventing further stress from ensuing.


    After all, the mitochondria was the powerhouse of the cell. In some ways, the Martial Heart was, in a sense, contained in the mitochondria of the cells. The mitochondria was most affected by the discovery of the Martial Heart.


    In other words, his capacity to heal and recover was orders of magnitude greater than that of the Gatekeeper.


    It was no wonder that he woke up earlier despite having suffered far greater damage than his opponent.


    "¡­He shouldn''t have used a forbidden technique so easily," Rui murmured with a hint of frustration. "What kind of a Martial Artist does that rather than adjusting their tactical and strategic approach?"


    Frankly, one of the reasons that Rui didn''t feel superior to the Gatekeeper was because the man could have won the battle had he not been so inflexible and rigid in his approach. Had he adapted his strategy to Rui''s immense evasion and focused on wide-scale attacks that could not be avoided, he would have been able to inflict even greater damage on Rui, which probably would have won him the fight.


    Master Zentra shook his head. "The same kind of man that rejects the power of a higher Realm due to the sacrifice of thought at the altar of physicality. It takes a special kind of man to unerringly and unhesitatingly abandon everything to elevate the body to the highest degree. A man who would opt to alter tactics and strategy is a man that would never have singlemindedly dedicated himself to the body at the cost of the Master Realm."


    In other words, the Gatekeeper was not entirely sane.


    He turned towards Rui. "¡­And if not for the fact that he was not entirely sane, he would not have gone down his path and discovered many new fields that have gone to be the Martial Paths of many. He would not have provided us with many potent training techniques for the Martial Body that have be part of universal paradigms."


    Rui considered that.


    "In that regard, you and he are quite simr," Master Zentra remarked.


    Rui furrowed his eyebrows. "I''m entirely sane, though."


    Instantly, he drew dubious and skeptical looks from those around him.This content is ? N?velDrama.Org.


    Not a single person believed a word he was saying.


    This was nder, as far as Rui was concerned, but he couldn''t be bothered with such a trivial matter at the moment.


    "How long will it take for me to return to my peak?" Rui nced at his arms, clenching his fists.


    "I suspect that it will take you at least a few weeks of training," Master Zentra remarked. "However, there''s no need to be in a hurry since you have already aplished everything you need."


    Yet Rui gritted his teeth. "It will probably take longer."


    He had plenty of experience in the research of the return of injuredbat sports fighters post-recovery, and it was not something that was quick and convenient.


    Of course, the Martial Body was very different from the human body in some ways. But he also had a lot of experience with the Martial Body.


    While the Martial Masters and other visitors around him were quite rxed about the situation, Rui was inwardly cursing at the dys. He already had spent half a year winning the Kandrian Throne War, and now almost two more months would be gone into simply dealing with the consequences of his battle with the Gatekeeper.


    With each passing day, the probability that he would find the Divine Dictor reduced. Now he had less than four years to find the damned doctor inside the Beast Domain.


    "This is going to be rough," Rui murmured as his eyes wandered around.


    At the very least, he had some time to give more thought to exactly what he was going to do to find the Divine Doctor.


    As the Sloth Sage had reminded him, he could not just run into the Beast Domain and then begin searching blindly. He needed to take a more sensible approach to finding the Divine Doctor.


    ''The only constion is that I do need a little bit of time to solidify my ns to find him,'' Rui realized.


    While the nine months prior to the previous one had been spentrgely on building up his faction, he had nted many potential seeds that could help him find the Divine Doctor. Having Guildmaster Bradt research the human sages through his deep connectivity throughout the continent was one of them.


    Now, he needed to consolidate the fruits of these searches so that he could pick out the most optimal path to finding the Divine Doctor and immediately begin his voyage to the Beast Domain. The sooner he could find the man, the sooner things could go back to exactly how they were.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1823 First Avenue

    Chapter 1823 First Avenue


    As Rui btedly realized, the ramifications of defeating the Gatekeeper were far greater than he had imagined. A new burden fell on his shoulders.


    The title of the strongest Martial Senior in the Kandrian Empire.


    This wasn''t the first time that he had been acknowledged as the strongest of the Realm. He had experienced just this in the Apprentice and Squire Realms as well, but he didn''t expect that he would thrust into the pinnacle this early.


    He still felt a nagging sense of unworthiness.


    It stemmed from the fact that he needed to activate Angel of Lace before the battle began and stall while he furiously processed the technique.


    This was all fine and well in a duel setting, but the fact of the matter was that most of the battles that Rui fought were not duels; they were genuine life-and-death battles. He would not always get the chance to simply activate Angel of Lace before the battle began.


    He also would have undoubtedly lost if the Angel of Lace had not kickestarted the predictive model to initialpletion. The Gatekeeper was so much stronger that even Rui''s greatest trump card could only allow him to maintain a stalemate of not dying. "Tsk," Rui tutted, narrowing his eyes.


    He had undoubtedly gotten closer to his goal, but the Angel of Lace was one of the greatest beasts that he had ever had to tame. Short of the actual VOID algorithm itself, nothing gave him more trouble than the Angel of Lace did.


    The day he mastered it perfectly to be able to use it inbat seamlessly was the day that he would be entirely confident of being regarded as the strongest Martial Senior of Kandria. Until then, he could only strive to be worthy.


    It wasn''t just the respect and admiration he received from people in his orbit and beyond for defeating the Gatekeeper.


    It was also the changes in attitude that people showed him when he got all the high-ranking government officials needed tomence the Coronation Ceremony. In the eyes of others, he was the de facto third Emperor of Kandria. He was undoubtedly the one who would ascend the throne and gain power that equaled the Martial Union''s. He already was one of the most powerful people in human civilization.


    He began receiving shows of deep deference from those around him, as he had already ascended the throne. It was a taste of what the Emperor undoubtedly went through his entire life.


    People stopped seeing him for himself and were more prone to see the shadow of the throne and crown when they looked at him.


    It was an unpleasant experience.


    One that only reaffirmed his determination not to ascend the throne as Emperor.


    Once he gained a good grasp of the circumstances that had unfolded in the month that he had been recovering, he immediately secluded himself in returning to his physical peak. While his health was entirely fine, his body lost a bit its habituation to exertion, strain, and stress.


    Rather than training his techniques, he simply ustomed his body to getting pushed to the limitfortably. This process would normally take far longer for humans, but the Martial Body was intended for the purpose of exertion, strain, and stress; thus, Rui expected to reach his peak much sooner.


    He didn''t intend to depart from the Kandrian Empire before he reached his peak. The Beast Domain was not a ce he could afford to be when he was not at his very best. In addition to nurturing himself back to his physical peak, he continued aggressively researching the Divine Doctor. Naturally, he made sure to keep pretenses up and not let his true intentions be divulged, which wasn''t easy, but he had gained more information on where he could find the man.


    In the previous nine months, he had leveraged the massivework that he had gained as a result of expanding his faction to learn more about the human sages under the pretense of seeking to reel these extraordinary individuals into his faction to increase his political capital and to use their knowledge to the benefit of the empire.


    It was a highly usible excuse that did not evoke any suspicion because he was not the only one who had sought to achieve just this. Many powerful members of the ruling ss of humanity had already tried to win over these incredible human sages.


    Almost all of them failed.


    Not forck of trying.


    It made sense that Rui was confident that he could seed where others had failed due to how much power he had amassed across all of humanity.


    Regardless, he leveraged his powerful faction to gain potential avenues of pursuit in order to find each of the human sages. While he pretended to care about all of them equally, he had secretly paid attention to the only person on the list of human sages that he cared about.


    In regards to the Divine Doctor, there were a handful of potential avenues through which he could get a clearer answer for the location of this particr human sage.


    The first was the Beggar Sage, the founder and current leader of the Beggar''s Sect.


    It was said that, across all of human civilization, the Beggar Sage was the most knowledgeable human of all time. The man was said to know everything that the Beggar''s Sect knew.


    Rui found this particrly difficult to believe. Anyone who was aware of how the Beggar''s Sect worked was aware of the sheer amount of information that this secret organization possessed. It was unfathomable.


    Most estimates Rui had heard put the proportion of humanity that was secretly a part of the Beggar''s Sect to be anywhere between six and neen percent of humanity. Even the lowest estimate still meant an absurdlyrge number of spies that fed information to the Beggar''s Sect every single day.


    Rui was deeply skeptical about whether he could even memorize the entirety of the Beggar''s Sect''s information, even with his highly advanced Mind Pce technique.


    -


    This chapter upload first at  N?velDrama.Org holds this content.

 Chapter 1824 Reincarnation and Prophecy

    Chapter 1824 Reincarnation and Prophecy


    Of course, it was entirely possible that the Beggar Sage possessed a mind that exceeded even that of his own. While Rui had yet toe across anyone who was clearly superior to him in this regard, he did not think that he was the greatest that the Panama Continent had ever seen.


    Partially because it was embarrassingly arrogant to think that his mind was the greatest to grace this world. Aside from that, he especially was not too skeptical because of the revtions that human sages were effectively immortals that could seem to be able to undo death or reincarnate. He knew reincarnation was possible.


    He had gone through it himself, after all.


    Furthermore, it was the reason that his mind was as powerful as it was. While he had been exceptionally bright even in his previous life, the growth that he gained through this life was unlike anything he had ever experienced.


    If the immortal human sages experienced something simr, then he would not have any questions regarding their intellect. It would also exin why they were greatly superior to their contemporaries in their respective fields, massively outstripping anybody in their domain.


    It was another reason that Rui looked forward to meeting with the Divine Doctor.


    He had questions.


    Questions pertaining to their immortality and how they managed to return from death.


    For the first time in his entire life, he had found a clue to his magical reincarnation, the greatest miracle he had ever experienced in his life.


    He would be lying if he said he wasn''t dying of curiosity as to the truth about his reincarnation into the world of Gaia.


    Who wouldn''t be?


    He had simply resigned himself to putting away the matter on a day-to-day basis because he was helpless in finding out the answer. There was no point in thinking about it because there was nothing to be gained by doing so.


    Now, however, there was finally an avenue of inquiry.


    Of course, it was entirely possible that it was entirely disconnected from his reincarnation.


    "Only one way to find out," Rui murmured. The Beggar Sage had reserved a spot as one possible avenue of pursuit of the Divine Doctor. As the leader of one of the most powerful intelligence and information broker organizations on the entire continent, he was undoubtedly highly credible.


    Another avenue of consideration was the Transcendent Emperor of Britannia.


    Rui had mixed feelings about this particr option.


    As the future heir to the throne of the Kandrian Empire, he was diplomatically not on the best of terms with the Britannian Empire. On top of that, he was utterly helpless before a Martial Transcendent. None of the power that he amassed as a royal prince or as a Martial Artist could possibly resist the power of one of the thirteen pinnacle Martial Artists of all of human civilization. Not even the sum totality of the Martial Union could protect him from such a force.


    The only constion he had was that Martial Transcendents had a history of non-interventionism when it came to human matters. Based on that, the probability of the Martial Transcendent exercising his power to erase Rui was somewhat low, but Rui would be unable to stop him by any metric whatsoever.


    Still, he was the second avenue of inquisition that Rui had considered.


    The third option was the Panamic Adventurer''s Guild.


    This was the organization born to serve as a broker for Martial services pertaining to the Beast Domain. Essentially, it was a muchrger version of the Martial Union that specifically dealt withmissions pertaining to the Beast Domain.


    It was founded by the Venerable Venator, an extremely powerful Martial Sage, centuries ago and had grown into a behemoth of an organization over the years. The reason that it was in consideration was because it was the most knowledgeable organization when it came to the Beast Domain, and because of how extensively it dealt with that particr region of the Panama Continent.


    Martial Artists who chose to register would be designated with the status of ''adventurer,'' which was simply an upation that specifically referred to those who chose to provide Martial Art services pertaining to the Beast Domain.


    This was also an avenue that was worth exploring.


    The fourth option was going down the same route as his father did. The Ss n.


    His father had sessfully found the Ss n and even made a deal with them to get him the Eye of Prophecy technique, which could significantly increase his chances of finding the Divine Doctor.


    Unfortunately, he never got to use it. Probably because the technique would have harmed not just the woman he loved but their unborn child in her womb, Rui himself. Rui didn''t know the exact principles of the forbidden technique, but it was a logical assumption that a technique that reduced lifespan would harm a fetus if used by the pregnant mother.


    His father probably intended to wait until she gave birth and then have her consume the very best of life-prolonging potions before she executed the technique to help him find the Divine Doctor. This content is ? N?velDrama.Org.


    s, his mother died soon after giving birth to Rui, sealing that option for his father.


    The question was whether this option was avable to Rui even if his father had lost it. It was something that he needed to discuss with Sage Sayfeel. Otherwise, he highly doubted that he would be able to find the Ss n.


    On top of that, he bore their blood. He was a descendant of the Ss n himself, not an outsider like his father. His ability to harness their power was probably much greater.


    Of course, he also wanted to get his hands on the Eye of Prophecy technique. He would be lying if he wasn''t deeply curious about this technique. The ability to peer into the future itself was an ability that was deeply important to him. It was the foundation of his pattern recognition system and his very initial solution to fulfilling Project Water itself.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1825 Await

    <h4>Chapter 1825 Await</h4>


    From the looks of it, the principles of the Eye of Prophecy and his pattern recognition system were not the same. For one, he could not freely peer into the future regarding anything. He needed data.


    It didn''t sound like the Ss n had this limitation. Of course, the limitation that they did have was that they needed to sacrifice their lifespan to aplish the feat. That was an extremely heavy price, and Rui wasn''t sure that he wanted to pay that price.


    Still, when he thought about the enormous power he would gain if he added the Eye of Prophecy to his VOID algorithm¡­


    He could not help but feel deep greed for it. Undoubtedly, it was an additional incentive for him to consider this option. This was especially true when there was a chance that he could extract the principles of the technique and mimic them to a lesser extent. In the best-case scenario, he could potentiallypletely get rid of the price of the technique.


    If that did happen, life would be good.


    He didn''t count on it, though.


    Unfortunately, these were the only four credible sources and avenues of pursuit. Information on the Divine Doctor was so scarce that nothing else credible even turned up.


    With these options at hand, it all depended on how he wanted to go about it. It wasn''t even the case that he strictly needed to pick one out of the four. He could potentially pursue all four options if he felt that there was merit to doing so.


    ''It all depends,'' Rui narrowed his eyes. ''The cost of extracting information from these four sources is not going to be cheap.''


    The Beggar''s Sage would undoubtedly demand an enormous price. Any information that this was exclusive was bound to be priceless.


    The same could be said for the Adventurer''s Guild.


    However, Rui preferred this path. He had a filthy amount of wealth at his disposal at the moment from all the donors of his campaign. He didn''t really need the wealth anymore since he had brought about an end to the Kandrian Throne War. N?velDrama.Org holds this content.


    It made perfect sense to use the great wealth at his disposal to find some initial basis for his journey to find the Divine Doctor.


    What he ultimately needed was precise enough information for him to work with; after that, his personal power would be able to do the trick. He had abilities that he suspected no others did.


    Unfortunately, while wealth was effective for two of the four options at his disposal, it was not enough to move Martial Transcendents or the Ss n. The Transcendent Emperor was the absolute ruler of a powerhouse nation. Trying to buy him was like trying to sell sand in a desert.


    The Ss n was disconnected from human civilization. Wealth did not hold any meaning to them, for they avoided human civilization, bing self-sufficient and nomadic.


    On top of that, they were undoubtedly the most difficult of the four to find. Perhaps not as difficult as the Divine Doctor, but they were very difficult nheless. Rui didn''t know if the remaining time he had left was enough to find them, learn their technique, and then find the Divine Doctor. That sounded almost impossible.


    Regardless, he didn''t have all the time in the world to make a decision. With each passing day, he grew stronger and stronger, returning back to his peak. He needed to make decisions quickly.


    The best choice was to test the waters with each of the possible avenues of exploration and proceed after seeing the response to his initial attempts to pursue them.


    Depending on which option seemed to be the most receptive and promising, he could invest greater resources in finding them.


    "Send delegations to the Britannian Empire, the Beggar''s Sect, and the Adventurer''s Guild."


    His staff head tilted her head in confusion. "¡­Regarding what, Your Highness?"


    "Express the desire that I, the future ruler of Kandria, desire to speak to the Britannian Emperor, the Beggar Sage, and the guildmaster of the Adventurer''s Guild," Rui calmly informed her. "As what is effectively the confirmed ruler of a Sage-level powerhouse nation, they could not ignore me due to ack of status."


    Rui had no problem using his status and power to find a starting point to search for the Divine Doctor before he personally set out to search for him. It would be stupid to try and contact these powerful individuals as a mysterious Martial Senior.


    At these levels, the Senior Realm was entirely beneath their time and energy, unfortunately.


    "Have the Director of Diplomatic Affairs put together qualified individuals for delegations; they are to convey a handwritten letter from me to the designated recipients and convey my desire for a meeting with each of them," Rui replied.


    "Understood, Your Highness."


    As for the Ss n, he figured it was best if he sought them more personally than as a royal prince of the Kandrian Empire. It was also best not to tediously search for them when he had reliable sources of intelligence on them. He would simply contact Sage Sayfeel and then take a trip to the Ss n as his father once did when the time was right.


    The days passed as Rui grew stronger and stronger, returning to his peak step by step. Whatever the Martial Union must have been immacte, for he felt his body was identical to how it had been before.


    It wasn''t too long before his faction whipped up eptable delegations, dispatching them to their designations. Rui''s status had risen so far that it was something that could be ignored by essentially anybody in the Panamic Continent by virtue of his unshakable im for the throne.


    Within a matter of days, the delegations had reached their dispatched locations and were promptly received with great honor and hospitality. Within a week, they hadpleted their tasks and conveyed everything that Rui wanted them to.


    Now, Rui simply had to wait and hear their official response to him and evaluate them based on it.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1826 Beast Convergence

    <h4>Chapter 1826 Beast Convergence </h4>


    Alongside recovering from the ramifications of having used a forbidden technique, Rui also took the time to research the Beast Domain thoroughly. Regardless of the responses from the four avenues of inquiry, he would be entering the Beast Domain to find the Divine Doctor, but that didn''t change.


    While he wasn''t training, he took it upon himself to familiarize himself with the Beast Domain.


    It was only then that he realized that although the borders of the Beast Domain epassed much were defined on map, the exact location where the Human Domain ended and where the Beast Domain began were not entirely clear.


    It was more like a gradient.


    When one reached the core of the domain, the Human Domain became increasingly scarce, while the Beast Domain became increasingly abundant. On paper, the Beast Domain was defined as the perimeter formed by the points where human settlement ended.


    Even then, the maps continuously needed to be adjusted every year because humans kept encroaching on the territory of the Beast Domain every year, pushing the wildlife deeper and deeper every year.


    The Beast Domain, as a whole, was extremely powerful. However, it was weakest at its edges and borders while strongest at its center. It grew stronger and stronger the deeper one went.


    That was why humanity had been able to continuously conquer and colonize the territory of the Beast Domain throughout the Age of Martial Art. The edges of the Beast Domain were mostly filled Apprentice/Squire-level danger zones and regions that humanity could easily overpower with its Martial Artists.


    This caused mass discement of the fauna of the Beast Domain, causing them to migrate deeper into the Beast Domain to avoid the overpowering humans.


    Over five hundred years, this had caused the poption density of the Beast Domain to skyrocket, causing it to massively strain its ecosystems and disrupt the harmony of nature.


    Rui furrowed his eyebrows as a thought immediately shed to his mind.


    "What happens when the Beast Domain revolts?"


    In fact, Rui was surprised it hadn''t happened already.


    As prince and the de facto next emperor, Rui had ess to a lot of information that he was otherwise not privy to.


    The public was unaware of the mysteries of the Beast Domain, but that no longer applied to Rui.


    "The Beast Convergence Theory?" Rui frowned.


    "That''s right, Your Highness," A woman standing before Rui smiled.


    "Exin, Professor venel," Rui furrowed his eyebrows.


    The two of them were in an empty ssroom. Rui had taken it upon himself to request the Minister of Education and the Minister of Research and Development to gain lessons from the most learned specialist and expert in the field of the Beast Domain.


    "It is the answer to your earlier question," she replied, smiling. "The Beast Singrity Hypothesis was posited three hundred years ago by the Ecologer, a human sage who specializes in the Beast Domain, the very pinnacle of the field that I, myself, specialize in."


    Rui narrowed his eyes.


    He recognized the name, of course, having received immense information about the various human sages of humanity.


    "The Beast Convergence Theory, today, is a well-epted scientific theory in the field of ecology that states that all fauna in the Beast Domain, in general, is in a natural state of constant migration, or attempted migration, towards the center of the Beast Domain due to a non-evolutionary psychogic trait triggered by some universal environmental stimulus throughout the entirety of the Beast Domain," Professor venel exined.


    Rui''s eyes lit up with curiosity. "Interesting. If this is a scientific theory, then what empirical evidence is presented?"


    The scientific method of scientific induction wasrgely the same as it was back on Earth. Of course, it was slightly morex and less rigorous due to the mysteries of the esoteric reality of Gaia, but it undoubtedly abided by the rules.


    A scientific theory was a hypothesis that was falsifiable, made predictions about reality, and was formted through inductive reasoning applied to empirical evidence along with thew of causality, the principle of uniformity of nature, and am''s Razor.


    "Of course, there is a litany of evidence,rgely centered around measuring the discement and migration patterns of many specific regions over years and even decades, that points to a certain truth that the fauna of the Beast Domain does indeed appear to be in a constant of migration towards the center of the Beast Domain," Professor venel. "You can visit the literature on your own if you''re interested in the details." Content provided by N?velDrama.Org.


    "But can it not be attributed to the continuous encroachment and expansion into the Beast Domain that humanity is slowly but steadily doing over centuries?" Rui frowned.


    "The rate of human expansion and encroachment only ounts for about fifty percent of mass attempted immigration towards the core of the Beast Domain," the Professor exined. "The remaining fifty percent absolutely cannot be justified by human expansion and colonialism. There are entire regions that are entirely unaffected by human expansion that appear to be constantly trying to migrate toward the center of the Beast Domain by what appears to be primal instinct."


    "¡­Interesting," Rui furrowed his eyebrows, turning to the professor. "You said it was the answer to my earlier question. The question as to why the Beast Domain has not revolted yet?"


    "Indeed," The professor nodded with an erudite demeanor. "In the five hundred years since the dawn of the Age of Martial Art, humanity has very slowly but steadily expanded, encroached, and colonized a substantial part of the Beast Domain. There was a time many centuries ago when most of the continent was the Beast Domain; now, only roughly twenty percent of it is. The general consensus amongst schrs is that the Beast Convergence Theory is the reason that the Beast Domain has not revolted against humanity. Due to the fact that the fauna of the beast domain is constantly migrating towards the center naturally, the proclivity to turn around and retaliate against humanity is minimal."


    Rui narrowed his eyes. "Everything has a limit, professor. Humanity has already pushed the denizens of the Beast Domain extremely far. What happens if we cross the line? What happens if one day, the Beast Domain decides, ''Enough is enough,'' and decides to turn around and revolt against humanity?"


    The professor took a moment to consider his question, closing her eyes.


    "Then the Age of Martial Art will experience an apocalypse."


    She opened her eyes, meeting Rui''s gaze.


    "An apocalypse hitherto undreamt of."


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1827 Results

    <h4>Chapter 1827 Results </h4>


    Her words were ominous but very true.


    Nheless, the lessons continued as Rui made judicial use of the expertise of someone who had dedicated her entire life to the study of the Beast Domain.


    Even gaining a foundational understanding of the Beast Domain was eye-opening to Rui. Before, what was a mystery born from ignorance was now a mystery born from understanding. The Beast Domain was nothing short of a domain of fantasies, mysteries, and tribtions. N?velDrama.Org owns ? this.


    From Lost Cities to dungeons, to exotic topographies and regions, even worlds within worlds. All manner of nonsense consistently unfolded within the depths of the Beast Domain.


    Things that didn''t make sense.


    At another time, Rui would have loved to spend more time learning about them, but s, he didn''t have time.


    The Beggar Sage and the guildmaster of the Adventurer''s Guild had heeded his call for a meeting.


    Unfortunately, the Transcendent Emperor appeared to have not even bothered to deign to issue a response.


    Rui furrowed his eyebrows. "Not even a verbal response?"


    "No sir¡­" The lead ambassador of the delegation that Rui had sent to the Britannian Emperor. "Nothing."


    Rui heaved a sigh. "Try onest time; if nothing, then thank them for the hospitality,plete the formalities, and return to the Kandrian Empire."


    He didn''t expect a second try to be any different. It appeared that the Martial Transcendent hadn''t even deemed Rui worthy of his acknowledgment.


    Perhaps it was because Rui had attempted to use his royal status rather than purely on the merit of his Martial Art.


    The Britannian Empire was a Martialocracy. It was a system that only respected Martial power. Rui, being a Martial Senior, was so far beneath the Transcendent Emperor that it wasn''t even funny.


    ''I can cross him out as a potential means to reach the Divine Doctor,'' Rui shook his head. ''Time to focus on the two positive oues.''


    The Beggar Sage of the Beggar''s Sect seemed receptive to Rui''s attempts to reach him. It almost made Rui feel nervous to meet him. This was an extraordinarily powerful man at the center of a web of information. He possessed an enormous amount of power, enough to make even Rui pause warily.


    Even though the Beggar''s Sect could not match the Kandrian Empire''s military and Martial power, it had massively infiltrated the Kandrian Empire at countless levels. No organization was free from the Beggar''s Sect.


    If the Beggar Sage wanted, he could inflict untold damage upon the Kandrian Empire.


    Of course, if he did that, he would make himself the Kandrian Empire''s enemy. That was something that not even he could afford to get away with unless he had many Martial Sages protecting him always.


    Reaching the Beggar Sage had been easy. The Beggar''s Sect was everywhere; Rui simply dispatched a formal delegation to the Lambargeau and Xavier Legal Services in the town of Hajin.


    Very rapidly, the message shot through the web of information of the Beggar''s Sect that spread through the entire continent, reaching the ears of the man in charge.


    ording to the Lambargeau and Xavier Legal Services, the man at the top had agreed instantly.


    "However, he is only willing to speak to you remotely, Your Highness," the lead ambassador sitting before Rui exined. "He is not willing to entertain a physical meeting under any circumstances."


    Rui expected that. "That''s fine. Arrange a meeting as soon as possible."


    "The Guildmaster of the Adventurer''s Guild is enthusiastic about speaking to you and is pleased to receive your outreach," his third lead ambassador replied, handing Rui a written missive from the guild master himself.


    "Hmmm¡­" Rui narrowed his eyes as he read through it.


    The Guildmaster of the Adventurer''s Guild was known to be a highlypetent and distinguished administrator and manager appointed by the Veritable Venator himself. This man also had ess to all the information of the Adventurer''s Guild. The real-time uracy and precision of his understanding of the Beast Domain undoubtedly exceeded that of even the Beggar''s Sage.


    It made sense that the guildmaster of the Adventurer''s Guild was eager to cater to Rui. The Adventurer Guild always needed to maintain strong diplomatic ties with nations and states of human civilization.


    It would be difficult to continue its stated goal to explore and understand the Beast Domain to aid humanity with and against the Beast Domain if it made too many enemies within humanity.


    The Kandrian Empire, while furthest away from the Beast Domain, was still a powerhouse of East Panama. One in the position of the guildmaster of the Adventurer''s Guild did not ignore its de facto heir to the throne.


    "Inform the guildmaster that I would be happy to visit him," Rui replied.


    This worked perfectly in Rui''s favor.


    At some point, before departing for the Beast Domain, he would need to switch with Master Reina and sneak away unnoticed.


    It was almost impossible to do in the Kandrian Empire.


    However, the invitation by the guildmaster of the Adventurer''s Guild gave him the opportunity to leave the Kandrian Empire officially. After meeting with the guildmaster and hearing what he needed to hear, he would switch out with Master Reina and then head out for the Beast Domain.


    Then, Master Reina would return to the Kandrian Empire as Rui.


    She didn''t need to do anything significant as Rui when she returned. The campaign was done, and the Kandrian Throne War effectively came to an end. She just needed to ensure that nobody caught wind of the fact that he was gone.


    His eyes narrowed as he plotted timelines for the n he had just conceived. He needed to ensure that nothing went wrong while coordinating with Master Reina to ensure the timing was just perfect.


    "Arrange for the meeting with the Beggar Sage first," Rui replied. "I need to meet him before I meet with the guild master."


    Using the information about the Divine Doctor that the Beggar Sage might give him in conjugation with the guildmaster''s depth of real-time knowledge with the Beast Domain would be best at finding a good initial basis begin his journey to find the Divine Doctor.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1828 Seen Through

    <h4>Chapter 1828 Seen Through </h4>


    BADUMP!


    Rui''s Martial Heart red into power.


    A tsunami of power erupted from deep within his body.


    His cells shook as a maelstrom of power gushed from deep within them to far beyond, spreading across the entire body.


    His circtory system lit up a brilliant bright red from his chest across the entirety of his body, giving him an aura that the ignorant would mistake as godly.


    His body brimmed with energy.


    His quivered with power.


    His eyes red with a faint glow as he opened them, inspecting his entire body.


    "I''ve finally returned to my peak."


    After a month of gradually intensifying rehabilitative training, he gradually coaxed his body to return to its state before the battle with the Gatekeeper.


    While the sensation of returning to his peak was pleasing, he was not pleased.


    His eyes narrowed as his fists clenched. "Two months¡­"


    He snuffed his Martial Heart, tutting with displeasure.


    He didn''t like the fact that he had to waste so much time just recovering and rehabilitating from the consequences of using the forbidden metabody technique.


    It was a painful reminder of why the technique was forbidden.


    If not for the fact that the Gatekeeper had also very willingly used a forbidden technique to win the battle with brute force, he would have never dared to use the technique. Two months was too much of a cost to pay, as far as he was concerned.


    Especially when he was pressured by a deadline.


    Now, he only had roughly three years and ten months left.


    KNOCK KNOCK


    "Come in."


    "Your Highness," His secretary walked in.


    "It is time for your remote appointment with the Beggar Sage."


    "Hm," Rui donned his outer attire before departing from the training room. "Let''s get going then."


    His mind drifted about to the many thoughts he had had when thinking about the Beggar Sage when nning this meeting.


    What was the best way to extract information from this man?


    Money.


    Not every single person hadplicated or mysterious motives.


    In fact, most people had transparent motives.


    The Beggar''s Sect was an information broker. It was amercial organization that collected and gathered information to sell it at a profit.


    Of course, money was not the sole objective of the Beggar''s Sect. It had other interests. Clearly, it was an organization that worked towards its agenda of protecting the primacy of themon man in an age that glorified and pedestalized Martial Art.


    Of course, Rui did not need to be a consummate politician to be cognizant of the fact that their agenda to protect themon man was not from a ce of kindness andpassion like Prince Raul.


    It was simply power.


    Themon man was the Beggar''s Sect only source of power. Themon man was the reason that the Beggar''s Sect was a powerhouse. They were simply using Raul to protect their power.


    He was also aware of the fact that while he had a history of cooperation with the organization and had built a working rapport, there was a conflict of interests between him and the Beggar''s Sect.


    They had supported the People''s Prince, whom Rui had utterly defeated in the Kandrian Throne War.


    Thisplicated their rtionship.


    They were not enemies.


    However, they were never friends, and the rapport he had built with the organization had been damaged by the revtion of his princehood and his sessful campaign for the throne.


    Still, he was rtively certain that the Beggar''s Sect did not hate him as a candidate for the throne. During his campaign announcement, he conveyed a strong determination not to disenfranchise themon man. He had even disclosed very practical and undeniable reasons why he would be able to do even more for the citizens of Kandria than even his father did.


    In other words, he was the next best option after Raul in their eyes.


    That was why he had hoped he would be able to extract the information that he needed.


    This meeting was important.


    The closer he walked toward the meeting room, the more it weighed down on him. If the Beggar Sage did not cooperate, he was probably screwed. He highly doubted that the Ss n alone would be able to provide him with the key he needed.


    What he needed was pertinent information from a highly credible source. The Beggar Sage was just that. As a fellow sage of humanity, his words are of deep value to Rui.


    "Let me begin by saying I deeply appreciate the fact that you took the time to speak to me despite the immensely busy schedule that the leader of the Beggar''s Sect is undou-"


    "-Make it quick."


    An inhumanly raspy voice with deep impatience emerged from the orb before him in the isted room where he was to speak with the Beggar Sage.


    There wasn''t even a visual projection and the voice that the orb projected was altered beyond any hope of recognition. Content provided by N?velDrama.Org.


    Rui was taken aback by his rudeness andck of formality, but he actually preferred it to stuffy formality.


    His eyes narrowed.


    "Where is the Psycher, the Astromind, the Scrier, and the Divine Doctor?"


    He made sure to not change so much a hint of his cadence in regards to the final name.


    The air grew heavy.


    It grew tumultuous.


    "..."


    Rui furrowed his eyebrows.


    "¡­Kek."


    Rui could almost hear him grinning widely on the other side.


    "Kekeke¡­" He beganughing uncontrobly. "HEHEHAHAHEEE¡­!!"


    Rui narrowed his eyes as the man burst into guffaw,ughing uncontrobly!


    "¡­You, you little trickster," A hint of excitement entered his voice. "You almost fooled me."


    "¡­What do you mean?"


    "Hah, searching for the human sages," the man snorted.


    Rui could hear his excitement.


    "You only care for one name on that list of names, don''t you?"


    Rui narrowed his eyes. "I don''t know what you''re-"


    "-Spare me the bullshit."


    His voice was nonchnt.


    "Don''t forget who needs who here," he growled. "I don''t mind cutting this call short right here and now."


    Rui closed his eyes. "¡­Fine."


    He didn''t know how, but somehow, the Beggar Sage saw right through him just by hearing his voice.


    "Where is the Divine Doctor?"


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1829 Follow the Chaos

    <h4>Chapter 1829 Follow the Chaos </h4>


    "Kekeke¡­" The man cackled at Rui''s expense. "HEHEHEAHAHEHEWEHAHEHE!"


    His unevenugh made Rui feel nervous.


    It was already bad enough that man saw through Rui from a mile away.


    He didn''t even understand how.


    It would be one thing if a Martial Master was standing right before him, staring into his eyes with their extraordinary senses. But the man was only exposed to an imperfect recording and projection of his voice an unimaginable distance away.


    Yet, through an imperfect replication of Rui''s voice, he was able to grasp his intentions.


    That was a feat of insight that exceeded any other Rui had ever personally witnessed. Just how much about Rui would he be able to learn if he actually stood before him?


    It was a question Rui didn''t want answered.


    "I see," the man mused. "You want to heal the Emperor of Harmony, hm?"


    Rui narrowed his eyes.


    "Rx," the Beggar Sage''s voice reassured. "The agreement specified that nothing in this conversation would be divulged. The Beggar Sage keeps his word."


    Rui could almost hear the smile emerge on his face.


    "Still, you should be more careful, boy."


    "Kekeke¡­" The man cackled. "You can''t be this transparent. Still, healing the Emperor of Harmony, hm?"


    He seemed to be considering the matter. "Not a terrible oue."


    "Are you willing to help me?"


    That was the only thing that Rui cared to know.


    "¡­Alright," the Beggar Sage relented. "Why not? You and I do have a history of working together. I''ll help you out. It will cost you, of course."


    "How much?"


    "Hm, let''s say nine hundred and ny-nine million gold coins."


    Rui winced at the number.


    It was an absurdly high for a piece of information.


    "Don''t think like that; fact of the matter is that it''s more than just the value of the information you''re paying for," the man remarked. "My time is valuable. If this call never happened, then that is the equivalent of the money I could have earned if I truly wanted to. It is the bare minimum."


    Rui narrowed his eyes. "Information first. You know where to find me if I break our deal. If you cut the call right now, then I''ll never find you."


    "Kekeke¡­What good is knowing where you are when you are protected by a powerful faction?" The man chuckled. "But alright, Rui Quarrier Kandria, I''ll humor you. You have a history of credibility and reliability to us, after all."


    Rui waited impatiently as the man cleared his throat dramatically, taking his time.


    "To answer your question, the Divine Doctor is the Beast Domain," the Beggar Sage nonchntly revealed. "I don''t know exactly where, but certainly not in a danger zone of the Upper realms. That''s too much even for his skills."


    "Beast Domain¡­I see," Rui did his best to feign ignorance, modting his voice just right.


    Yet, it was in vain.


    "Kekeke¡­So you already knew that the Divine Doctor is in the Beast Domain," the man cackled with amusement. "What you seek is a more precise location, hm? Well, I cannot give you the exact coordinates if that was what you were hoping for. Still¡­"


    He grinned. "I could help you out with finding him."


    Rui heaved a sigh.


    He was indeed hoping for exact coordinates.


    "Any and all information that you have that might help with finding him will be appreciated," Rui replied. Content provided by N?velDrama.Org.


    "The Divine Doctor is a¡­disruptive man."


    Rui narrowed his eyes at that.


    "He''s a man of chaos. Everywhere he goes, he brings and leaves chaos. He disrupts the order and harmony of every ce he goes to with every waking step he takes. This one time, shortly after I founded the Beggar''s Sect many centuries ago, I let him enter our then-taskforce, and hepletely disrupted our operations with his incessant poking and interruption. By the time he left, my newfound headquarters was burned to the ground. Kekeke¡­!"


    The Beggar Sage continued talking with wistful reminiscence before finally catching himself.


    "The point being¡­" The man grinned. "¡­a man who leaves chaos in his wake is a man who can be traced."


    Rui''s eyes sharpened at those words. "¡­If that were the case, wouldn''t he have been found by everybody who sought him?"


    "Hehe, only if you have ever met the Divine Doctor in person," the Beggar Sage cackled. "If you don''t know what the Divine Doctor is like. You''re never going to catch him. He''s too good."


    Rui frowned. "If he''s a doctor, then why is he so good at being covert? Not even an assassin Martial Master would be this hard to track."


    "It is because he''s not a Martial Master that he cannot be identified easily," the Beggar Sage grinned on the other side. "If you ever ran into him in person, you would never think he is the famed Divine Doctor even in your wildest dream. Kekeke!"


    The man cackled.


    "Chaos, hm?" Rui narrowed his eyes.


    "That''s right, follow the chaos," the Divine Doctor grinned. "The question is, how do you follow the chaos in a world that is filled with chaos? That is why not even the Beggar''s Sect is able to find him."


    "If you know this much, then can''t you find him yourself?" Rui narrowed his eyes. "You are touted to be among the very most knowledgeable people in the world."


    "Kekeke, you would think so, but s, I am powerless in the Beast Domain," the man shrugged lightly. "If there is one avenue where my sect is unable to know much about, it would be the Beast Domain."


    Rui understood.


    The Beggar''s Sect relied on a supply of information from themon man, who was entirely absent from the Beast Domain, crippling their sole greatest strength. On top of that, information about the Beast Domain wasrgely collected with abination of Martial Artists and esoteric technology, an avenue where the Beggar''s Sect was deficientpared to everybody else.


    Of course, the Beggar''s Sect made do by simply stealing information that others collected through their spies in their ranks, but that was hardly optimal.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1830 Diagnosing a Patient

    <h4>Chapter 1830 Diagnosing a Patient </h4>


    It exined why the Beggar Sage was unable to know the exact location of the Divine Doctor.


    "Is that all?" Rui narrowed his eyes. "''Follow the chaos'' is not advice that is worth nearly a billion gold coins."


    The Beggar Sage cackled. "That is true. However, I can give you the Divine Doctor''s location before he entered the Beast Domain. While I do not know where he went to the Beast Domain, I can definitely tell you where he entered it."


    Rui''s eyes lit up in interest. "That would definitely be helpful. I will definitely be needing that service."


    "I''ll have it sent to you," the Beggar Sage dismissively replied.


    "What about his appearance?" Rui narrowed his eyes. "I need an identifier to know that he is the person that I am looking for."


    "Kekeke, I''m afraid not," the man cackled. "Appearances mean nothing to any human sage, but especially not to the Divine Doctor. He can change his appearance like he changes his clothes."


    Rui''s eyes widened with surprise.


    That was something that Master Reina aplished with a Master-level technique. The fact that he could aplish that with his mastery of human physiology was rather shocking.


    It also exined part of why he was almost impossible to track.


    "Anything else?" Rui narrowed his eyes.


    "One thing you need to pay attention to is the manner in which he survives the Beast Domain," the Beggar Sage advised. "If you already knew that he was in the Beast Domain, then don''t you wonder how he survives there as a human?"


    "I do," Rui thoughtfully replied. "I presume it''s due to his knowledge and expertise."


    "He is not an expert of the Beast Domain; I can assure you of that much," the Beggar reassured. "He uses expertise in medicine and biology to arm himself with solutions to things that would ordinarily kill any ordinary human instantly. When you understand the depths of anatomy and physiology that he does, you are able to use it beyond just for diagnosis and treatment."


    The Beggar Sage grinned. "However, because his solutions are so unique, they will undoubtedly leave markers and oues that are especially unique. Thus, what you need to pay attention to is not just chaos but unique chaos. That is the only way to track the Divine Doctor in the Beast Domain."


    Rui was getting a headache.


    The Divine Doctor''s covert practices were so effective that not even the Beggar Sage could advise him beyond ''look for unique chaos.''


    However, it was extremely useful to gain the entry point into the Beast Domain to Divine Doctor had taken. When within the Human Domain, the Beggar''s Sect was top dog in the intelligence industry, it appeared that even the Divine Doctor was subject to.


    The issue was the Beast Domain.


    ''If only the Divine Doctor wasn''t in the Beast Domain,'' Rui heaved a sigh.


    "You were just thinking, ''if only the Divine Doctor weren''t in the Beast Domain,'' weren''t you?" The Beggar Sage cackled. "I can understand your sentiment."


    "What is he even doing in the Beast Domain?" Rui narrowed his eyes. "He''s a doctor. He''s not supposed to be anywhere near the Beast Domain."


    "Tsk tsk," the Beggar Sage tutted disapprovingly. "So prejudiced. Are doctors not allowed to enter the Beast Domain?"


    "Don''t be sophistical," Rui narrowed. "You know what I mean. What is his purpose in being in the Beast Domain?"


    "The answer to your question is quite simple," the Beggar Sage grinned. "The Divine Doctor is always true to his profession no matter what. His purpose for any action is always true to his profession."


    "True to being a doctor? In the Beast Domain?" Rui raised an eyebrow.


    "What do doctors do?" The Beggar Sage inquired with amusement.


    "¡­diagnose, treat, and cure."


    "Exactly."


    "You''re telling me that he''s meeting a patient in the Beast Domain?" Rui frowned.


    "No, he has already met the patient," the Beggar Sage grinned. "He entered the Beast Domain to diagnose the illness."


    Rui frowned. "That makes no sense whatsoever."


    "Kekeke!" The Beggar Sage cackled. "I''m afraid I cannot divulge the truth of this particr matter, young Prince of the Void. You will have to learn the truth from him if you want to know. After all, I would not want him to b all the important secrets he knows about me."


    Rui frowned as he considered the man''s words.


    He had already met the patient.


    He entered the Beast Domain to diagnose the illness.


    The phrasing of this particr statement was pointedly strange to Rui. If the patient was in the Beast Domain, then why not just say, ''He is in the Beast Domain to treat the patient''?


    But he denied that the Divine Doctor was entering the Beast Domain to meet the patient.


    How did one diagnose an illness without meeting the patient?


    Rui narrowed his eyes as an absurd possibility popped into his mind N?velDrama.Org owns ? this.


    "Forget the purpose of his entry into the Beast Domain," the Beggar Sage advised, drawing his attention. "It isn''t going to help you find the Divine Doctor; I can assure you of that much. The best way to find him in the Beast Domain is to follow his lingering trails."


    Rui narrowed his eyes at those words.


    It certainly was true that he didn''t give a damn about the Divine Doctor''s purpose in the Beast Domain if it didn''t help him find him. It simply didn''t matter what crackpot reason the Divine Doctor had chosen to do something as insane as personally entering the Beast Domain as a human doctor.


    "¡­Fine, anything else I should know?" Rui huffed.


    "Hehehe," the Beggar Sage started cackling at Rui''s frustrated tone. "Don''t be like that, young Prince. The location of the Divine Doctor''s entry into the Beast Domain and his path around humanity is something that no other organization in the world can tell you. I can assure you that I alone am the only one who possesses this knowledge. You won''t regret purchasing it from me."


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1831 Today

    <h4>Chapter 1831 Today</h4>


    The conversation with the Beggar Sage did notst much longer. Rui managed to extract several more tidbits from the Beggar Sage, including the Divine Doctor''s modus operandi in the Human Domain.


    But s, it wasn''t as helpful as Rui had hoped. The Beggar Sage had a lot of information about how the Divine Doctor operated in the Human Domain, but not so much in the Beast Domain.


    Still, it was certainly far better than nothing.


    "Huff¡­" Rui heaved a sigh, shaking his head once the meeting with the Beggar Sage waspleted and the delegation left, returning to his office. The information had yet to reach him as the Beggar Sage would be personallypiling it as the sole man who knew half of the things that he was selling to Rui.


    He still had things to do before that arrived.


    "Have the appointment with the guildmaster of the Adventurer''s Guild been booked?" Rui asked.


    "Yes, Your Highness," his secretary replied. "Miss Mikha has just finished the arrangements. They are due exactly a week from now."


    His heart grew heavier.


    A week from now, he would be departing from the Kandrian Empire and probably wouldn''t return for months and years.


    He had many things to do before departing from the Kandrian Empire.


    "Have Mikah a carriage to the Vargard Royal Pce," Rui instructed her.


    His tone grew serious.


    "I wish to see my father."


    "Yes, sir," his secretary quicklyplied with his order.


    It wasn''t long before he rode a fast carriage to the Vargard Royal pce, along with four vetted Martial Masters who had pledged loyalty to him. Yet, he asked them to wait outside when he reached the medical ward of the royal pce where his father was being overseen.


    "Don''t let anyone enter."


    "Yes, Your Highness."


    Outside the medical ward that was solely dedicated to his father were more than a dozen royal Martial Masters who oversaw the protection of the Emperor. Manyyers of extremely powerful protection and security were instated to ensure that nothing could possibly approach the slumbering Emperor of Harmony.


    Just passing through all of them took several minutes.


    Before long, he had entered the medical room that housed his father.


    He took a good look at his slumbering father.


    A multitude of apparatuses pokedy around him, each serving some function or the other.


    His hair had whitened more than hest remembered, and his skinplexion had be an unnatural darkness. His face and body had grown more gaunt in the past year, looking even more unhealthy than he did before.


    Rui stared at him with mixed feelings.


    On one hand, he disliked his father for revealing his true identity and giving him the power to ascend the throne. On the other hand, he was deeply grateful for being given the Quarrier Orphanage as his family.


    He wasn''t quite sure on he ought to feel looking at his father lying before him, approaching death by the day.


    The medical staff had been instructed to leave at his instruction.


    Only three people were left in the room.


    His father, himself and¡­


    "Why have youe, Your Highness?" Sage Sayfeel calmly asked, standing behind the Emperor.


    He had revealed himself as soon as they were alone. Content provided by N?velDrama.Org.


    While the others thought that Rui had simplye to pay his father his regards and respects, Sage Sayfeel knew that he hade to speak to him specifically.


    "I need to know where the Ss n is," Rui replied.


    Sage Sayfeel understood his intentions. "You seek to make use of the Eye of prophecy technique to find the Divine Doctor."


    "As much as I can," Rui replied. "Considering that they left on good terms and that they would want to maintain contact with their daughter and grandchild, they undoubtedly allowed my father to be able to meet them whenever."


    "A keen deduction," Sage Sayfeel remarked. "You are correct. However, their rtionship broke down after Madam Miriam passed away. They refused to speak a word to him when he met them a second time."


    Rui narrowed his eyes. "Which means¡­"


    "I can enable a meeting if you so desire," Sage Sayfeel replied impassively.


    Rui''s eyes lit up. "Great. Let''s do just that."


    "However, they may not want to speak with you," Sage Sayfeel remarked. "Especially if they learn of your ultimate objective."


    Rui was already aware of that. "My father did not tell them that he was looking for the Divine Doctor, right?"


    "He did not," the Sage confirmed. "However, they are aware of his condition. Thus, if they learn that you are trying to heal him, they will not help you."


    It appeared that the Ss n harbored great resentment towards Emperor Rael for the death of their daughter.


    "¡­Hm," Rui narrowed his eyes as his mind shed into thought. "Tricky but surmountable. The fact that I am the son of their daughter should help, right?"


    "It certainly does," Sage Sayfeel admitted. "Especially because Miriam was the daughter of the matriarch of the Ss n."


    "¡­What?"


    The hostility that the n had for the Emperor became even more understandable. He highly doubted that his grandmother, the matriarch of the Ss n, would be greatly displeased by her daughter''s death.


    "One of the reasons that the Ss n agreed to the marriage was that a marriage between the Emperor of Kandria and the daughter of the chief was a powerful political bond with a Sage-level powerhouse," Sage Sayfeel replied. "They found it rather fortunate that the Emperor had fallen in love with your mother while the lengthy deliberations ensued. Thus, while they grew to hate the emperor, as someone with the blood of the matriarch of the Ss n, you might be able to get them to regard you as a son of your mother than a son of your father."


    Rui''s eyes swam around in thought as he considered how to go about this.


    "¡­I''ll chart out the optimal manner to approach them, but more importantly, how soon can you get me before the Ss n?"


    Sage Sayfeel shrugged.


    "Today, if you wish."


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1832 Crucial Information

    Chapter 1832 Crucial Information


    "That''s rather quick," Rui furrowed his eyebrows.


    "They gave us a map highlighting their migration route, allowing us to locate them based on the time of the year," Sage Sayfeel remarked. "Thus, I can take you to their location once I confer with it."


    "Interesting," Rui murmured. He hadn''t known that meeting up with the Ss n would be that simple and easy. But if that were the case, then it certainly was a viable path forward. He didn''t know how much the Ss n could help him find the Divine Doctor, but if his father thought that they were one of the few ways he could find him, then Rui was inclined to put some trust in this means.


    He nodded at Sage Sayfeel. "I''d like to meet with them as soon as possible, certainly before I leave the Kandrian Empire and set out for the Adventurer''s Guild."


    "As you wish, Your Highness," Sage Sayfeel remarked. "I will require some time to have another Martial Sage protect His Majesty as well as conferring upon the Ss map before I can take you there. In the meantime, I would advise you to prepare yourself."


    Rui nodded. "Will do. What are the things that I need to know before I meet them?" N?velDrama.Org holds this content.


    Sage Sayfeel considered Rui''s words for a few moments, gathering his thoughts. "From what I have gauged during my stay with the Ss n, along with His Majesty, they have inherited several characteristics from the Virodhabhasa Faith. They are firm believers in Martial supremacy and organize the n as a Martialocracy. Matriarch Nephi was the strongest Martial Master of the n at the time."


    Rui considered the Martial Sage''s words carefully. "Interesting. If they appreciate Martial power, then it is possible for me to gain their approval in this avenue as well."


    One of the things that he was also considering was the fact that he would also be going there under the protection of a Martial Sage. He wasn''t sure how much that would hurt how they considered him.


    "However, they aren''t a pure Martialocracy either," Sage Sayfeel informed Rui. "As a n that is entirely centered around the power of prophecy and the inheritance of Sage Ss, those with the most powerful Martial prophecy are given the highest regard, even if they aren''t necessarily the strongest."


    A smile emerged on Rui''s face. "So the power to predict the future is of the most importance to them?"


    "Correct, Your Highness."


    "Heh," Rui smirked. "Then I think I just might have that covered."


    Prophecy just happened to be something that he excelled at. He actually looked forward to trying to earn their approval by demonstrating the power of his pattern recognition system. He had recently gained immense confidence in his pattern recognition.


    His recent battle with the Gatekeeper had proven beyond any reasonable doubt that the pattern recognition system was still the most powerful part of his Flowing Void Style. He had previously considered the Metabody System, the Yggdrasil System, and the Hypmnomatrix to be on par with the pattern recognition system. However, the previous battle revealed that the pattern recognition system was still greater in terms of how much adaptive evolution it brought to the table. This was especially true after Rui had upgraded it with the Angel of Lace.


    It was the sole reason that the Gatekeeper hadn''t crushed him the instant the battle began. "How strong is their prophecy?" Rui asked, turning to Sage Sayfeel. "How does itpare to me?"


    Sage Sayfeel considered the question, shaking his head. "I am unable to conceive that they are greater than you after witnessing your recent performance, however, I cannot say. I never witnessed their Martial Artists inbat. I can only assume that they are highly potent based on the legends and tales about them."


    "Hm," Rui narrowed his eyes. "Then it remains to be seen, I suppose."


    There was no point in considering the matter when they were entirelycking in relevant data. Rui might personally find out when he met them.


    His eyes narrowed as another important matter entered his mind.


    "They are descendants of the Transcendent Prophet, right? Does that mean that they are adherents of the Virodhobhasa Faith?"


    He needed to know this because this deeply affected how he interacted with them or whether it was even worth visiting them.


    If they were anything like Master Uma, then he definitely didn''t want anything to do with them.


    These days, he didn''t think about the Virodhabhasa Master, especially since he sealed her in an information ckout, however, the Master was once a deep source of distress to Rui. It was his fault for underestimating how absolutely crazy the extremists could get. If he was going to experience something simr with the Ss n, then he would rather forget about them entirely.


    "They are adherents of the Virodhabhasa Faith; however, they do not believe in the Virodhabhasa, they believe in the Transcendent Prophet," Sage Sayfeel exined. "They are part of a religious faction of the Faith known as prophetants who believe that the Transcendent Prophet is the true savior for bestowing humanity with his prophecy."


    Rui furrowed his eyebrows. "I suppose that''s a relief."


    He wasn''t aware of the nuances of the religious politics of the Virodhabhasa Faith. He didn''t care to know; there were a million things that he would rathermit to memory.


    However, his meeting with the Ss n was important. It wasmon sense to know everything that he could know about people that he needed to acquire something. He needed to study the nuances of their theological beliefs.


    "I need to make a lot of preparations," Rui closed his eyes. "I will need at least twenty-four hours before we depart."


    "Understood, Your Highness, then I will pick you up in exactly twenty-four hours. Please ensure that you''re alone and are in a location with no other Martial Sage."


    Rui nodded. "I''ll lock myself up in highly isted training and instruct no one to disturb me at any cost. The Kandrian Throne War in the Kandrian Empire has concluded; I''m not required in this nation for anything."


    The two conversed for a bit longer as Rui thoroughly inquired about everything he needed to know.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1833 Philosophical Outlook

    Chapter 1833 Philosophical Outlook


    "¡­And thus, dear friends, the Rui campaign has effectivelye to an end with a whole andplete victory in our hands." Rui smiled, raising a ss of alcohol. "Cheers!"


    "CHEERS!"


    An enormous hall of distinguished guests erupted in apuse. Rui smiled and waved as he walked around, engaging with each of his donors, patrons, and benefactors who supported him.


    An enormous wave of triumph and jubtion washed across all of them as they relished in their victory.


    "Congrattions on your victory, Your Highness!"


    "All hail the future Emperor of the Kandrian Empire!"


    "Glory to the Kandrian Empire! Glory Emperor Rui Quarrier Kandria!" N?velDrama.Org owns ? this.


    Rui smiled with perfunctory pleasure as he acknowledged every single cheer from otherwise distinguished guests, taking the time to meet with each of them personally.


    "You remind me of your father, Your Higness," one elderly smiled. "He, too, secured domineering victory before the throne was vacant. And, today, you have finalized your victory for the throne in a simr manner. Indeed, only such a man is worthy of seeding the Emperor of Harmony."


    "Your words tter me, Minister Gregile," Rui smiled. "I would not have been able to secure the throne without your support."


    "Hohoho, I believe you would have seeded nheless, Your Highness," the elderly man smiled warmly at Rui. "Just as Rael had long ago."


    The minister before him was one of the oldest and longest-serving high-ranking government officials. He had originally been one of the high-ranking government officials to officiate the coronation ceremony of the high-ranking government officials as the Chief Minister of the government that oversaw the cab of ministers.


    PAT


    "Rule this Empire well, Your Highness," he gazed into Rui''s eyes with profound solemness. "It is the legacy that your father tirelessly dedicated his heart and soul to. Do not tarnish his legacy. Do not tarnish the name of Kandria."


    Rui''s grew steely. "Rest assured, I will not allow anything to disrupt the harmony of the Kandrian Empire."


    "¡­Hm," the man nodded, satisfied with what he saw. "Indeed, there was never any need to say this. I shall retire for the night, Your Highness. An old man like me needs his rest."


    "Of course, Minister Gregile, have a good night."


    Soon enough, the many guests that had joined the celebration party that the Rui Faction had thrown began to retire and depart after paying their respects and regard to Rui. Soon enough, the party came to an end.


    It had been organized for a month while Rui recovered, and it marked the final obligation that Rui had towards his faction.


    "Huff¡­" Rui heaved a sigh once the final guest had left.


    This marked the end of his responsibilities as faction leader.


    "Anything else on my itinerary?" "No, Your Highness," his secretary smiled. "All obligations, objectives, and agendas."


    "Hm," Rui nodded, turning away. "I will be secluding myself in training in the Martial Union''s absolute istion chambers for several days. Ensure that I am not disturbed under any circumstances whatsoever, got it?"


    "Understood, Your Highness, I shall ensure that nothing disturbs your training."


    It wasn''t long before Rui found himself sitting inside an isted meditative training chamber, alone to himself and his thoughts.


    He had memorized all the information on the Virodhabhasa Faith that he needed forter analysis when he was free.


    He had only a few hours before Sage Sayfeel came to pick him up. He was cutting it close, but he didn''t want to waste any more time than he already had.


    "Sayfeel was right¡­" Rui murmured as he skimmed through the data that he recorded in his Mind Pce. Prophetants believed that the Antithesis was created by the prophecy rather than the prophecy emerging as a result of witnessing a pre-determined future of the Antithesis saving the world from a great apocalypse. Prophetants differed from fundamentalists in that they believed that the prophecy took primacy rather than the prophesized Antithesis.


    In other words, while they believed that the Virodhabhasa was indeed a savior who would save the world, they believed that he could save the world because the prophecy prophesized that he would. The prophecy was the only reason they knew he would, and thus, in a sense, was the only reason that he would.


    "It''s basically a strange epistemological and ontological outlook on the nature of prophecy that believes prophecy to actually decide, rather than merely predict, the future," Rui sharply inferred, cleanly extracting the philosophy of their world-view from all the metaphorical and flowery theological literature that he memorized.


    This was an important realization because it allowed him to understand how prophetants, like the Ss n, thought of prophecy. It affected the way that he needed to approach the Ss n.


    Prophecy didn''t merely see the future; it created the future in their eyes.


    Rui frowned. "Does that mean the Ss n believes they are altering the literal future itself every time they use their prophetic Martial Art?"


    That was a deeply narcissistic view.


    Rui was proud of his pattern recognition system, but that didn''t mean he was altering the fate of the universe every time he used it. He was not a god.


    He was a Martial Artist who had tapped intoyers of potential that existed in his being.


    Regardless, it didn''t matter if he disapproved of their narcissistic self-image. The fact of the matter was that he needed their power. If he needed their power, then it was best not to offend any godplex that they might harbor.


    ''In fact,'' Rui''s eyes sharpened. ''It''s best if I use it to gain what I need.''


    Time passed as he began fleshing out his approach to the Ss n. He needed to y his cards just right when interacting with the Ss n. Countless considerations shed through his mind as he created models of several strategies and tactics based on an iplete profile.


    Of course, because his profile was limited, he couldn''t create anything with much precision. He would need to rely on his intuitive judgment. Still, there still much he needed to think about beforehand.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1834 The Power of a Martial Sage

    Chapter 1834 The Power of a Martial Sage


    ??He had several things going for him. For instance, he was their blood. Based on everything he heard, he could be certain that the Ss n had extremely strong familial bonds and ced a lot of importance on family.


    In other words, appealing to this was his greatest out to victory.


    However, he could not be obvious with it. The moment they realized he was trying to manipte them, they would most likely be extremely hostile. He simply needed to act and talk in a manner that evoked a sense of familial kinship naturally and organically within them.


    The fact that he was a descendant of Matriarch Nephi was also a great boon in that regard


    While relying on familial kinship was undoubtedly an effective strategy, it wasn''t the only approach he had at his disposal. He could incentivize them with beneficial offers of great value to them.


    His father had taken this approach. He had offered them an artifact of proprietary Kandrian technology that obscured their existence, making it harder to detect and find them. It was deeply valuable to them as they were hunted by the entire world for their prophetic power.


    "That isn''t the only thing that is valuable to them," Rui smirked.


    The Eye of Prophecy was a forbidden technique that consumed lifespan. In other words, it was lifespan that was deeply valuable to them. Far more so than it was to other Martial Artists.


    Longevity potions were already deeply valuable to any person. However, it was beyond priceless when it came to people with crippled lifespans. Even a single life-prolonging potion was an extremely powerful bargaining chip when it came to negotiating with the Ss n.N?velDrama.Org holds this content.


    This was another card that he had at his disposal. With the sheer amount of political, economic, and Martial capital that he had rued as the next Emperor of the Kandrian Empire, longevity potions were effortlessly avable to him. In fact, he was probably functionally immortal with how many could ess if he wanted.


    With these two cards to y, it was difficult to conceive that he would fail to gain their approval.


    On top of that, he also had his trump card revealing that he, too, had the power of prophecy. Given how important and central was to their identity and Martial Art, there was a good chance he would be able to earn their approval by demonstrating his ''prophetic'' power.


    Another card he considered ying was the Antithesis Card. If they were prophetants who did not worship the Antithesis, then there was a chance that they wouldn''t go crazy at the revtions that he resembles the Antithesis in some ways.


    "Nah, let''s not go down that route," Rui shook his head.


    He was unable to model theological irrationality. He didn''t know how they would react to it; it was best to stay within the territory that he was confident in.


    Time passed as he fully refined his strategy to approach the Ss n. It still wasn''t as rigorous as he would have liked to due to ack of data, but s, that was all that he was limited to doing.


    CLACK


    The door to the meditation chamber opened.


    "I have arrived, Your Highness," Sage Sayfeel informed him impassively like it was nothing special.


    "You''re exactly here exactly twenty-four hourster, down to the minute," Rui marveled.


    "Precision and uracy are extremely important if I am to serve the hidden de of the Emperor."


    "Hah, alright, let''s get going," Rui smiled with excitement as he walked out with the Sage.


    CLACK


    The Martial Sage locked the door to the meditation chamber, leaving exactly as he found it.


    "Woah¡­" Rui studied the four Martial Masters that stood outside in a trance. "That''s some powerful hypnosis."


    "I will release the technique when we depart," Sage Sayfeel remarked,pletely concealing his titanic presence within him.


    He turned to Rui. "Then, Your Highness, are you ready?"


    "I am," Rui breathed deeply, centering himself. "Let''s go."


    The Sage ced a hand on Rui''s shoulder.


    And that was when the universe itself shifted.


    What Rui saw shook him to his very core.


    Reality blurred as things shed through Rui''s field of vision at an unfathomably astronomical velocity. The very world itself was reduced to a myriad of shing streaks. A mind-boggling amount of distance passed him every second.


    It took him a moment to realize that they were the ones who were moving, not the universe.


    It exceeded his mind''s capacity to fathom.


    All during that time, Sage Sayfeel didn''t so much as budge, merely activating a breathing technique, bending heaven and earth to propel them forward.


    ''No, this¡­'' A profound realization dawned on Rui as he activated Riemannian Echo. ''He''s not just warping heaven and earth; he''s warping space itself!''


    He stared at Sage Sayfeel with a shocked expression.


    Today, he beheld power that he was not supposed to.


    Today, he beheld a minuscule fraction of the power of the Sage Realm.


    Minutes passed as they continued traveling; the Kandrian Empire had already be a distant location on the East coast of the Panamic Continent. They were already standing at unimaginably high altitude.


    So much so that Rui could see the curvature of the entirety of Gaia!


    A single whisper escaped him.


    "Incredible¡­"


    He gazed at the sight of the Panama Continent expanding throughout his vision with deep awe.


    It was a sight that burned itself into his memory forever.


    In the distance, he could even see the Beast Domain from the sheer altitude that they were at.


    A deep, dark domain that was visibly different from the Human Domain.


    It was ominously inscrutable.


    Within ity priceless treasures and equally great tribtions to those who sought to get their hands upon it.


    Within ity the objective of his voyage.


    Somewhere in the depths of the Beast Domain was the man that he was searching for.


    His eyes sharpened with steely determination as he faced the direction that they were traveling in, eager to reach their destination.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1835 Futures

    Chapter 1835 Futures


    Less than half an hourter, the Beast Domain was already behind them.


    Sage Sayfeel began slowing down as the world began blurring lesser and lesser, their elevation reducing as they headed fornd.


    STEP


    "Huff¡­" Rui heaved a sigh once they finallynded on the ground. "That might be one of the craziest things I have ever experienced in my entire life."


    He always knew that Martial Sages were incredibly powerful, of course, but witnessing their power in front of his eyes was something else entirely. Even in his meeting with the Sloth Sage, he hadn''t gotten to witness the Martial Sage''s true power.


    Rui shook his head, putting the thought aside.


    It wasn''t important at the moment.


    "So, where are we?" Rui asked, ncing around.


    His senses detected a myriad of trees and mountains in the forest around them, stretching for many kilometers. He was unable to detect so much as a hint of human presence, though.


    "We are in West Panama at the moment, Your Highness," the Martial Sage helpfully replied. "This is the Nariawar Forest. And¡­"


    The man narrowed his eyes. "It is a location where the Ss n temporarily resides during this time of the year."


    "Hm, I don''t really sense anythi-"


    Rui froze as a profound avnche of pressure washed into him.


    Both Martial Artists stiffened as a myriad of Martial Artists appeared out of nowhere, sky-walking in the sky above them. Content provided by N?velDrama.Org.


    Their eyes were fierce, pointedly ring at the two kandrians while they took battle stances. Their attire and garb were scant, fashioned from the pelts of various animals. Among the near-hundred Martial Artists that had appeared in the air above them, Rui could sense many Martial Seniors, several Martial Masters.


    Yet that wasn''t all.


    Rui''s eyes widened with shock as he beheld the Martial Artist who stood at the forefront of the group. Sage Sayfeel''s expression grew severe and grave. He had long arrived at the same conclusion as Rui.


    She led the Martial Artists, standing the vanguard. She had an extremely aged visage, looking to be ny years old in human aging. Yet, despite that, an astronomical power that Rui couldn''t even fathom radiated from the depths of her body.


    It was a power that seemed to warp the very world around them.


    Heaven and earth bent under the weight of her existence.


    RUMBLE


    It quivered, shivering under the might of her being.


    "Martial Sage¡­" Rui whispered as he beheld her.


    She disregarded him, refusing to deign to spare her attention to a mere Martial Senior.


    Her eyes were fixed on Sage Sayfeel.


    A single remark escaped her.


    "You." Her eyes narrowed. Sage Sayfeel regarded her impassively. "Matriarch Nephi, I havee here today to-"


    "-I care not why you havee today," Matriarch Nephi growled, cutting him off. "I believe I told Rael to nevere to us ever again."


    Cold fury radiated from her demeanor.


    Sage Sayfeel narrowed his eyes. "Matriarch, I understa-"


    "-You understand nothing," her eyes red with power as she red at him.


    "Begone."


    Sage Sayfeel was not pleased to be interrupted so many times. "Matria-"


    He froze as piercing peril erupted from her. Her Martial Heart zed into fury as she raised her hand at him.


    Sage Sayfeel grew grave, clenching his fists.


    "Do not do this." The next moment, her Martial Embodiment red into power, epassing the sky and the very world itself. It seemed to transcendent material form, for he saw only one thing when he saw her.


    The future.


    A myriad of Countless possible futures.


    Countless possible futures of what was to unfold.


    Future upon future, timeline upon timeline, the five-dimensional multiverse flooded his mind. The avnche of information, even greater than the Angel of Lace, crashed into him, threatening to overpower him, just as the Martial Embodiment of the Sloth Sage did.


    Yet he weathered.


    Perhaps it was because he had tempered his mind with the Angel of Lace, but as close as it came to overwhelming him, it didn''t.


    Future after future, his mind bore all of it.


    In almost all of them, a battle between Sage Sayfeel and herself unfolded. Sage Sayfeel won an overwhelming majority of their battles, proving to be substantially stronger. In each of those battles, the battle engulfed the entirety of the forest and beyond.


    Nothing within a thousand-kilometer radius would escape the destruction that would unfold from the ensuing battle.


    Yet, there was a single future where a conflict did not ensue.


    "Grandmother."


    She shook at that word as Rui''s voice cleaved through the powerful, growing tension that skyrocketed by the second. She dispelled an attack that was on the cusp of being released, turning to Rui for the first time.


    Their eyes met for the first time as she beheld her grandson. Her Martial Heart snuffed as her visage returned to that of an elderlydy, slowly approaching Rui.


    STEP


    She arrived before Rui, her hands cupping his face. "You¡­" Her eyes widened as realization dawned on her. "You are Miriam''s son."


    "¡­Yes," Rui affirmed her words. "I came to meet my family, grandmother."


    Her eyes lit up at those words as she relented. "I see¡­"


    Her tone contained a hint of sorrowful affection as her gaze met his eyes. "You have grown up."


    She heaved a deep breath. "My only regret was that I was not there to see it happen. My daughter¡­she¡­"


    A heavy sorrow overtook her demeanor. "I may not have been here my entire life," Rui replied, sincerity echoing in his voice. "But I am here now, grandmother."


    "Mmm¡­" She closed her eyes. "That is true, I suppose. The past is the past. But the future¡­"


    Her eyes opened, piercing into Rui. "The future is yet to be. It is yet to be written, and those who know how to write it can mold it to their desire. What is your name, my grandson?"


    "Rui," Rui replied.


    She furrowed her eyebrows yet epted it nheless. "Come then, young Rui. We have much to talk about."


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1836 Seeking to Gain

    Chapter 1836 Seeking to Gain


    Rui heaved a sigh of relief at her words. He hadn''t expected to be so close to witnessing a battle between Martial Sages upon his meeting with Ss n. Content provided by N?velDrama.Org.


    Partly because the Ss n was not supposed to have any Martial Sages, ording to Sage Sayfeel. Matriarch Nephi was only supposed to be a high-grade Martial Master ording to Sage Sayfeel in hisst meeting with her.


    However, more than thirty years had passed since then. It appeared that Matriarch Nephi had managed to break through to the Sage Realm in the decades since theirst meeting. It threw Rui off his game a bit.


    It meant that the consequences of failure could potentially be a lot more dire than he had partially established, forming a much more powerful constraint on his projections as to what degree he could tolerate a break inmunications.


    If their rtionship grew hostile, then he was as good as dead. He highly doubted Sage Sayfeel could fight a Martial Sage while also protecting him from hoards of Martial Artists. Matriarch Nephi was strong enough to keep him preupied even if she had little chance of victory.


    Of course, it would take incredible ipetence on Rui''s part to allow their rtionship to degenerate to that degree. He had no intention of allowing that to happen. However, the revtion of Matriarch Nephi bing a Martial Sage meant thatpelling them was not as easy as before.


    Still, their first interaction after their meeting gave him hope that he would be able to secure their help for what he sought to achieve.


    He followed them deep into the dense and enormous forest, and they arrived at a small river flowing through the forest. On the banks of the river was a humble settlement with more than a thousand people.


    They each wore garb and attire simrly fashioned out of animal pelts. The settlement was littered with small tents fashioned with branches, twigs, and leaves. Several Martial Artists stood guard at the edge of the settlements, highly alert and cognizant of their surroundings.


    The arrival of the Ss Martial Artists weed a sigh of relief from the many n members of the Ss n. Each Martial Artist was priceless to the Ss n, and the loss of even a single one of them was a terrible price to pay.


    Yet they grew wary and cautious of the two outsiders that followed suit, following their Martial Artists.


    The many children of the Ss n gathered, staring at the two outsiders brimming with curiosity.


    "Rejoice, my children," Matriarch Nephi smiled at the children, talking to them in their ethnic dialect. "There is no cause to be afraid."


    She ced a hand on Rui''s back. "My grandson, son of Miriam, has returned!"


    A wave of surprise and cheers spread through the members of the Ss n as they beheld Rui with renewed curiosity and amazement.


    "He hase to see us," she dered. "And see him we shall."


    She turned to him, meeting his eyes. "The n council shall hear what he has to say, what he has to offer, and what he seeks. The n council shall judge whether he is worthy to bear the name of Ss."


    A wave of murmurs spread through the n. "Er¡­" Rui didn''t understand a word of what was being uttered. "Grandmother¡­?"


    "We will listen to what you have to say, young Rui," her elderly voice assured him. "And the n will judge you. If we approve, you may be able to gain what you seek. What the world seeks to gain from us."


    Rui furrowed his eyebrows. "Which is¡­?"


    "The Eye of Prophecy, of course," she replied. "However, only those who bear the name of Ss maye to gain the technique of the Eye of Prophecy. You may bear our blood, but blood alone is not enough to bear our name. Should you fail to gain our approval, you will never be able to gain the Eye of Prophecy."


    Rui furrowed his eyebrows.


    Things were not proceeding faster than he had expected. He hadpletely lost control over the flow of conversation. His primary purpose here was to gain information about the Divine Doctor.


    Of course, he would be lying if he said he wasn''t interested in the Eye of Prophecy technique.


    For now, he decided not to disrupt their formalities; it was clearly important to them. It wasn''t long before something akin to a shed was constructed, featuring many rock stools that amodated many important members of the Ss n, such as their elders and their Martial Masters.


    At their forefront sat Matriarch Nephi.


    "Sit." She instructed him.


    Sage Sayfeel stood behind him impassively, never once leaving his side.


    "Now then, young Rui," she remarked. "Tell us."


    Rui tilted his head. "Tell you what¡­?"


    "Tell us why," her aged voice. "Tell us why you seek the Eye of Prophecy."


    Rui took a deep breath. "¡­I require the power of the Eye of Prophecy to find someone. And perhaps more importantly¡­"


    His voice grew firmer. "I wished to empower my innate prophetic power with the Eye of Prophecy."


    This sent a wave of shock across the members of the Ss n. Matriarch Nephi narrowed her eyes at his words. "¡­You mean to say you already possess the power of prophecy?"


    "Yes, grandmother," Rui replied firmly. "I possess the power to see the future and harness it for my Martial Path."


    "¡­Impossible!"


    "Only the Ss n possesses the power of prophecy."


    "We should punish him for lies!"


    He had ounted for the possibility of the Ss n''s displeasure at this revtion, but s, there wasn''t much he could do to prevent it. The matriarch quickly quietened the people behind her with a gesture of her hand.


    "And just what is your Martial Path?" Matriarch Nephi asked. "¡­My Martial path is Adaptive Evolution, grandmother," Rui replied truthfully.


    As he feared, none of them missed the connection.


    "Adaptive Evolution¡­" She whispered, narrowed her eyes. "Hmmm¡­interesting. And you say your Martial Art possesses prophetic power?"


    "It certainly does, grandmother," Rui replied.


    "Then we will have you prove that im before we continue this hearing," Matriarch Nephi dered. "The Martial Path is a gateway to the soul. A Martial Artist must be judged by his Martial Art."


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1837 Different Philosophy

    <h4>Chapter 1837 Different Philosophy</h4>


    Rui had predicted this oue with about an eighty-percent chance of urring. Groups that were Martialocratic and Martial Supremacist always tended to solve things with Martial Art.


    He didn''t expect the Ss n to deviate too much in that regard.


    "I ept that arrangement, grandmother."


    His voice was calm andposed, yet radiated unshakable confidence. He normally hid his aura because he disliked drawing attention. However, the Martial Artists of the Upper Realms had much greater insight into his power.


    "Hm," The matriarch''s eyes conveyed approval and interest. "Then so be it. We shall have you fight a chosen Awakened Bodyforger of our n. Do you take issue with this?"


    Rui stared at her dumbfounded. "¡­Awakened bodyforger?"


    "Yes, boy. You are unqualified to fight a Mindforger and too strong to fight an ordinary Bodyforger. Only someone of the same rank of power is a worthy test of your power and ims."


    Rui stared at her like she was speaking anothernguage.


    She wasn''t.


    "The Ss n has a different Martial philosophy from the mainstream system propagated by the Panamic Martial Federation, Your Highness," Sage Sayfeel interjected, exining. "A Pathforger is a Martial Apprentice, a Bodyforger is a Martial Squire, and an Awakened Bodyforger is a Martial Senior. They view the Squire and the Senior Realm as a single rank of bodyforging. Mindforgers, what they call Martial Masters, are rank-three Martial Artists." This content is ? N?velDrama.Org.


    "¡­Fascinating," Rui''s eyes lit up with interest.


    Rui was too ustomed to thinking of the Squire and the Senior Realm as entirely separate, but in reality, they were deeply connected. Empowering the Martial Body necessarily empowered the Martial Heart. They were both the same power; it was just that the Martial Heart was shackled out of reach by subconscious mental blocks. But ultimately, all of it was the power of the body.


    Thus, in a sense, formting them within a single rank of bodyforging, and referring to the Martial Heart as the Awakening, was perhaps more urate as far as categorizing the sources of power went.


    However, he understood why the Panamic Martial Federation propagated the Squire and Senior Realm as entirely separate. There was simply far too much of a gap in power between the two Realms to treat them as one and the same when it came tomercializing Martial Arts.


    "We don''t have all day," Matriarch Nephi growled, drawing him out of his reverie of thoughts.


    "I ept your proposal, grandmother," Rui remarked.


    "Very well then."


    The council got up, leaving the little shed, prompting Rui to follow suit.


    Matriarch Nephi beheld her n members, who quickly gathered around to hear what she had to say.


    "The council shall hereby put the son of Miriam to the test," she announced.


    Her eyes turned to a particr woman in the crowd. "Huldah."


    She straightened her back, bowing to the matriarch. "Yes, Matriarch Nephi?"


    "You shall test the Martial Art of the son of Miriam as a part of the council''s evaluation of his merit," Matriarch Nephi instructed.


    The woman raised her head.


    A fierce light lit up in her eyes. "Understood, Matriarch Nephi."


    The matriarch turned to Rui. "Do you ept?"


    "I do, grandmother," he calmly replied, having understood.


    He had already begun applying the Angel of Lace to the woman.


    She was strong. Easily strong enough to be a high-grade Martial Artist at a bare minimum.


    Her body was well-chiseled and bnced in its parametric configuration. However, it was clearly not her greatest strength, and she had not received a tremendous amount of training and conditioning.


    It was to be expected as the Martial Artists of the Ss n had Martial Art centered around prophecy, thus physicality was not her greatest strength.


    For the first time, he faced an opponent in the Senior whose body was not that much stronger than his.


    This was rare.


    Usually, the only advantage his opponents had over him was physicality. That was the only reason they could cope with the sheer potency of his extremely high-grade Martial Art.


    Rui wondered how she would fare.


    "What are the rules for the battle, grandmother?" Rui asked gently and slowly, stalling.


    He didn''t particrly need the Angel of Lace to beat her. Frankly, the Gatekeeper was probably the only Martial Senior, or one of a very handful of elite, in the entire world against whom Rui needed his predictive model ready from the get-go just to avoid losing.


    However, in this case, he needed to show off his predictive model. It was best to have it ready to show to them rather than making them wait through the entire battle.


    "Victory by knock-out or submission. No killing," she clearly drew the line. "There are no rules aside from that."


    "I understand; I find those terms to be quite eptable," Rui nodded.


    "The battle will be conducted far away from the n," she dered. "We cannot have you draw attention to the Ss n, nor can we allow any damage to befall our n members. I shall observe from here itself, and the council of Masters will oversee the battle itself. Be sure to go all out and not hold back."


    "I do not intend to disappoint, Matriarch Nephi," Rui replied. "I am prepared tomence the battle any time."


    "Then depart," she instructed.


    Instantly, a few Martial Masters and Senior Huldah skywalked away, prompting Rui to follow them.


    Sage Ss simply watched.


    As long as matriarch Nephi wasn''t closer to Rui than he was, he could always protect Rui from the Martial Masters, even at a great distance away from him.


    Soon enough, they had put enough distance between them and the n. Rui and Senior Huldah stood at some distance away from each other.


    "Take your stances." One of the council members instructed.


    The Martial Senior and the Awakened Bodyforger tookrgely neutral stances, ready to spring into battle.


    "Begin!"


    BADUMP!


    Their Martial Hearts zed into fury as they leaped at each other at blinding speeds,unching their first attacks.


    WHOOSH!


    Their fists missed each other, having predicted and evaded each other''s attacks.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1838 Growth

    Chapter 1838 Growth


    The first exchange was probably enough to confirm that he had predicted her. However, he wasn''t interested in just proving that he had the power of prophecy. He wanted to prove that he was the best at it.


    However, not to the Ss n. He wanted to prove to himself that he was the best at it.


    John had worked hard on the predictive model for much of his life. It took him two lifetimes to perfect it inbat. He was not willing to cede superiority easily. His grandmother had told him to go all out, but Rui knew that wasn''t the right choice. The best way to earn the Ss n''s respect and acknowledgment was to win the fight using the VOID algorithm, specifically the pattern recognition system.


    Senior Huldah shed forward, throwing a powerful flurry of blows at Rui.


    WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH


    Rui evaded every single one of them, throwing a powerful kick at her head.


    WHOOSH


    She had already evaded it. A swift drop-kick was already hurtled, plummeting at his head.


    WHOOSH


    Rui had long shifted out of the way, throwing a heavy blow to her head.


    WHOOSH


    Not a single one of them had been able tond a strike on their opponent. In fact, a scene unlike anything Rui had seen unfolded before Rui. Each of them was constantly foreseeing each other''s attacks and reactively evading them ahead of time.


    An illusion was born from the exchange.


    It was as if they were skipping time, phasing into the future.


    WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH


    Their attacks and movements grew increasingly smoother and more refined. They grew sharper.


    WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH


    They simultaneously threw attacks and dodged them simultaneously. They surged forward, throwing power blows at each other''s heads, hoping to take each other down swiftly.


    WHOOSH!


    Their attack crashed into empty images.


    Each of them had long evaded the attack, having foreseen its arrival. A smile emerged on Rui''s face. This was the first time he had ever had a battle like this with an opponent that could foresee his attacks just as well as he did.


    Senior Huldah, however, was not pleased. WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH!


    She gritted her teeth as Rui feinted away from each of her attacks, one after the other. What was a novel experience for Rui was most mundane to Rui. What she was displeased about was the fact that this outsider had predictive power that was on par with her own.


    ''No¡­'' She narrowed her eyes. The fact that they were equal inbat was proof that his predictive power likely exceeded her own!


    After all, she had a stronger Martial Body, being centuries old. Not by too much; the Roaring Dragon Blood Potion had closed much of what would be a great gap. However, she was undoubtedly faster than he was by a notch or two.


    Yet;


    WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH


    He cleanly evaded all her attacks whileunching a barrage of his own.


    "Tsk," she tutted, gritting her teeth.


    It was a painful indicator that his predictive power was truly impressive.


    What she didn''t realize was that she had underestimated him.


    "Your evasions are preceded by weight shifts and muscle twitches."


    BOOM!


    A powerful blow crashed into her gut mid-evasion. The full power of Fire Breathing, Outer Convergence, Reverberating Lance, and Adamant Reforging culminated in the impact.


    "Rgh!" She grimaced with shock, more than pain.


    Yet, a powerful kick had already arrived, hurtling at her head. She ducked, evading the attack, only to find that a flying knee kick had been waiting for that.


    BAM!!


    The knee kick crashed firmly in her head, breaking her nose on the spot. Yet Rui was far from done.


    POW POW POW!!!


    "Rgh!" She gritted her teeth, guarding against a multitude of blows that peppered into her, ounting for her evasive maneuvers. BOOM!!


    Rui sted her with a powerful kick, flinging her back as he rushed in, refusing to give her reprieve.


    POW POW POW!!


    Rui narrowed his eyes, focusing on her as he sted her with blow after blow.


    ''Hm, so the Eye of Prophecy is static and constant in its predictive power; it does not grow stronger,'' Rui realized. ''Well, too bad. My Martial Art has nothing to do with prophecy. It embodies adaptive evolution!" N?velDrama.Org owns ? this.


    BOOM!!!


    He sted her with a powerful Flowing Canon, crumbling her firm guard. Unlike the Eye of Prophecy, the predictive model always continued growing stronger. After all, there was no upper limit to the amount of data that it could take. The more data it had, the greater the precision of prediction, depth, and uracy of the predictions.


    The Angel of Lace simply skipped much of the initial process by supplying arge number of passive patterns that existed in a person. The actual fight would supply him with an immense amount of activebat patterns, further evolving the predictive model.


    However, his opponent had a very fundamental misunderstanding of Rui''s Martial Art.


    The predictive model was secondary. It was created to mitigate the shoring of the adaptive evolution model, which allowed him to counter foreseen moves with the statistically most optimal counter.


    That was the adaptive evolution of the pattern recognition system.


    That was his true strength.


    BOOM!!


    His attack precisely weaved through a foreseen momentary chink in her, crashing into her sr plexus.


    "¡­ack!" She choked, unable to breathe.


    Just as Rui had foreseen.


    BAM!!


    The full might of Fire Breathing, Outer Convergence, and Reverberating Lance crashed into the jaw, rocking her entire skull violently. The blunt-force trauma exceeded the critical threshold, causing her to copse on the spot.


    THUD


    He gazed at her unconscious body. The Mindforgers assigned to oversee his battle descended from the air, gazing at Senior Huldah''s body grimly. "Winner¡­Rui." They reluctantly dered.


    Yet their eyes were filled with grudging respect for Rui. He had just disemboweled their strongest Awakened Bodyforger rather decisively. Furthermore, as Mindforgers, they knew that Rui had only employed a fraction of his maximum power, which forced them to acknowledge the extraordinary Awakened Bodyforger before them.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1839 Private Conversation

    Chapter 1839 Private Conversation


    This battle was rather therapeutic after his traumatic experience against the Gatekeeper. It reminded him that the Gatekeeper was an aberrant among aberrants. It also reminded me that he was strong.


    The result was decisive. The Ss n watched the Mindforgers haul the unconscious Awakened Bodyforger chosen to test Rui''s full power, shocked at how quickly and decisively the battle had been won by him.


    "Have her mother tend to her wounds."


    "Wrap her up in Velmin Leaves; it will hasten her recovery."


    "To think she would lose so decisively¡­"


    It was difficult to ept, but a victory was a victory.


    Once Senior Huldah had been tended to, the Ss Council returned their attention to Rui. Their eyes shed with various different emotions. Admiration, respect, reluctance, and even amicability.


    Yet there was also another emotion that lurked underneath.


    Greed.


    It had not escaped them that the power of prophecy that Rui had demonstrated was fundamentally different from that of the Eye of Prophecy that they wielded. The Mindforgers and even the matriarch had gotten the sense that it did not intersect with their technique in any way.


    This meant that it could potentially be used concurrently with their technique.


    It could elevate their power of prophecy to a much greater degree!


    They would be lying if they weren''t tempted to use¡­less-than-ethical methods to forcefully extract the technique. Yet the powerful Martial Sage that stood by Rui dissuaded them from even thinking about such things.


    More importantly, he was the grandson of the matriarch.


    Her words were absolute.


    They waited for her word. "My grandson¡­" Matriarch Nephi gazed into his eyes.


    A hint of pride could be detected in her tone.


    "You are strong. I have never seen an Awakened Bodyforger as young as you. Yet I most- certainly haven''t seen one as strong as you, either."


    She closed her eyes. "I must confess, I was almost certain that you were attempting to deceive us by iming you had the power of prophecy to gain the name of Ss and our Eye of Prophecy technique."


    "Thank you, grandmother," Rui bowed his head. She opened her eyes, her powerful gaze bored deep into his eyes.


    "If you seek the name of Ss, then you shall have it.


    Rui''s eyes widened.


    "As is the right of those who bear the name of Ss, if you seek the Eye of Prophecy, then you shall have it."


    A wave of murmurs spread across the Ss n. The matriarch had always been the most ardent believer in prophecy and the refusal to allow it to leave the family. If not for her daughter''s sincere and passionate pleading, she would have never allowed the Eye of Prophecy to leave the Ss n.


    Yet, now, she had bluntly offered the name of the Ss n and the Eye of Prophecy technique to Rui!


    "However, ites at a price," she dered. "If you choose to bear the name of Ss, you must bear the responsibilities along with its privileges."


    She narrowed her eyes, arriving at the point. "You must share your power of prophecy with the Ss n; that is the responsibility of those who bear the name of Ss. We have a Martial culture where the progress in prophecy made by any member is shared with the entire n and made avable to all those who seek it. This is a way of giving back to the n for the gift of prophecy that was initially bestowed upon them when they ascended to be Pathforgers."


    Essentially, if he was willing to share his predictive model with the Ss n, they would share the Eye of Prophecy technique with him. The whole business regarding the name of Ss n was simply to ensure that, technically, the Eye of Prophecy would never leave the Ss n or Ss blood.


    This way, they could ensure that that didn''t happen, technically, while also gaining Rui''s predictive model to enrich their prophetic power.


    "¡­I''m not opposed to a mutually beneficial exchange of techniques," Rui replied. "However, as I said, the technique is also not my only need of the Ss n. I am in dire need of aid in search of someone. On top of that, I''m going to be very busy for months, if not years, with this task. I cannot afford to spend years mastering what is undoubtedly an extremely difficult technique. Nor do I have the time to teach what is the most difficult set of techniques that I have ever created. My circumstances are, unfortunately,plicated."


    Rui made it clear that he was not willing to talk about them in front of the entirety of the Ss n.


    "The council shall hear what you have to say," the Matriarch nodded.


    "I wish to speak to you alone, grandmother," Rui replied. "I am your grandson, after all. I believe I have that right."


    Her eyes softened at that request. It was true that she was not treating him like a grandmother ought to. Unfortunately, she was also the leader of the Ss n; she needed to uphold their norms more absolutely than others and treat Rui as a leader.


    "¡­As you wish," she closed her eyes. "I, too, have been meaning to speak to you about¡­many things."


    It wasn''t long before the Sage Sayfeel activated a barrier of heaven and earth around the shed that the grandson and grandmother moved into, giving the three of them absolute privacy.


    "¡­Before we get to business¡­" Rui began. "I am sorry that I did not evere to meet the Ss n ever before. I was unaware of my rtionship with the Ss n my entire life, having learned recently. I was unaware that there was such a group as the Ss n. I was unaware that I was the son of the Emperor of Harmony."


    Matriarch Nephi closed her eyes, shaking her head. "Rael, I see he chose to keep the truth from you your entire life."


    "¡­He said it was at my mother''s request," Rui heaved a sorrowful sigh.


    -


    This chapter upload first at  This content is ? N?velDrama.Org.

 Chapter 1840 Names

    <h4>Chapter 1840 Names</h4>


    "Hmph, Miriam," Matriarch Nephi snorted softly. "That sounds just like her."


    She turned to Rui with a deep gaze. "Yet, despite not having her or your father, you did well. Too well, in fact. I am unable to fathom how a thirty-two-year-old Awakened and reached the peak of the Bodyforger rank, especially when your great strength is not your body but a mind brimming with more thought than I have ever seen amongst bodyforgers."


    Rui smiled wryly. "I had a good family that took care of me in ce of my parents¡­I have also been blessed with miracles."


    That was what his reincarnation in a new world was, as far as he was concerned, a miracle.


    "Do not give all the credit to talent," Matriarch Nephi huffed. "Talent is worthless without drive. Utterly worthless. It must not have been easy to arrive at the power that you possess."


    Rui smiled, epting herpliment.


    "You must wonder why we never came for you."


    Her voice grew heavy.


    Rui''s eyes softened.


    He would be lying if he didn''t. The Ss n was undoubtedly one that cared about family deeply. It was probably the second most important thing to them, based on what he saw, after prophecy.


    He didn''t know why the Ss n had nevere to adopt Rui as a baby after Miriam died. He didn''t understand why they had never oncee to see him or speak to him. He didn''t know why he was the one who sought to find them when they had known about him for more than thirty years.


    He would be lying if he thought of them positively with this in mind.


    "I can understand if you resent me," Matriarch Nephi closed her eyes. "Every child deserves the love of arge family. And we deprived you of what we were obligated to give you. It was a painful but ultimately necessary and inevitable decision."


    Rui gazed at her deeply, waiting for her to continue.


    "I was heartbroken that Miriam chose to entrust you to your bastard of a father," Matriarch Nephi''s eyes darkened. "It was painful to ept that she found us, her own blood and kin, who had raised her with all the love in the world, to becking inparison to her husband. A man whose family was filled with hatred. It drove me away from you, a mistake I deeply regret today."


    She turned to meet Rui''s eyes with sorrow and a hint of guilt. "I should have fought to bring my grandchild back into my family, but s, I was too weak back then. Mentally and Martially. Back then, I was a high-level Mindforger, which, while powerful, is not enough to protect the Ss n from those who wish to get their hands on our prophecy at any cost. I only gained enlightenment unto my current rank a few years ago."


    Rui''s eyes sharpened as hetched onto what appeared to be a clue about the Sage Realm!


    She had blundered in her emotional state, revealing something she probably shouldn''t have.


    "Forgive me," Matriarch Nephi heaved a shaky sigh. "Forgive me for failing you as a descendant of the Ss n. It has been decades since the death of my daughter; only now do I possess the rity of mind to see the error in my choices."


    The air grew taut as the emotions of a Martial Sage wrung at it.


    Rui shook his head. "¡­I understand. I don''t bear any hostility or hatred towards the Ss n. You may think that I have been deprived of a family, but I told you, thanks to my mother and father, I gained a family that gave me all the love that I will ever need in my life."


    The elderly Sage smiled at his words. "That is good to hear. Tell me, what is your full name?"


    Rui stiffened inwardly, maintaining hisposure outwardly.


    She shook her head. "Your apprehension is understandable. However, three decades have passed. Hearing his name is not going to evoke me to break a rtionship with my grandson."


    "¡­Rui Quarrier Kandria."


    "Hmm¡­" She considered the name. "It suits you as much as I dislike thest name. As far as your middle name¡­"


    "It''s the name of the orphanage where I was raised," Rui exined.


    "A good name," she concluded.


    "Though, it''s been going to grow even longer after I gain the name of Ss," Rui smiled wryly. "I don''t know how I feel about a name that is four words long."


    "Long names are a sign of prestige in our culture," Matriarch Nephi reassured. "Rui Quarrier Ss Kandria. That is a splendid name. If only your first name was longer than two sybles. If I were Miriam, I would have chosen something like, hmmm, ''Ruina,'' for example. In fact, I would suggest you change your name to that. Your current one is odd."


    "That sounds like a girl''s name."


    "We do not distinguish names as masculine or feminine in the Ss n, young man," Matriarch Nephi snorted lightly. "If you wish to bear the name of Ss, you must familiarize yourself with our culture."


    "Right¡­" Rui smiled wryly. "I''m a bit too busy for a cultural ss at the moment. And I am fond of my name; I have lived my entire life with that name. It was also given to me by my mother."


    His grandmother frowned. "If that is the case, then it is an even more odd name. Tsk tsk, if Miriam were here, I would scold her for picking such an odd name to give to her son. I suppose it doesn''t matter outside of the Ss n, though."


    Rui furrowed his eyebrows, amused. "I don''t see how it''s an odd name."


    "It''s an odd name to those who understand the Ss Dialect," Matriarch Nephi indignantly huffed.


    Rui raised an eyebrow, curious. "Does it mean something in the Ss Dialect?"


    "Of course it does!"


    "Oh? What does it mean, then?"


    She turned to him with a deep gaze.


    "Reincarnated."


    This chapter upload first at  Content provided by N?velDrama.Org.

 Chapter 1841 Questions

    Chapter 1841 Questions


    If one were to ask Rui how many times his mind had been free from thought, he probably count the number on one hand.


    It was rare.


    It was rare, and this was one of those moments.


    "Reincarnated."


    Rui froze then and there. His body.


    Mind.


    All of it seemed to freeze in time itself.


    He was almost unable to parse what she had just uttered.


    His name was something he hadn''t given too much thought to in his life. He had initially had some trouble adjusting to it as the newbel of who he was. After all, John Falken had lived with his name for nearly sixty years. That was an attachment that was not easy to rid.


    By the time he got used to it, he didn''t hold any curiosity about its etymology.


    After all, it was three letters and two sybles. About as basic as a name could get. Today, that illusion had been shattered.


    A single whisper escaped him.


    "¡­What did you say?"


    "It means ''reincarnated'' or ''reborn,''" his grandmother helpfully reiterated. "It is a very strange name to give to a person. Imagine naming your son ''reborn!'' Very much unlike her. I wonder¡­"


    Her words erased any shred of doubt that may have lingered. Rui didn''t know how or why, but somehow, his mother knew that he was reincarnated. There was no realistic exnation for why she went out of her way to give her son a patently absurd name in the Ss Dialect if it didn''t hold significance.


    Even if she had developed entric tastes and given her son some strange names, the probability that the name she chose would be exactly what his deepest secret in this world was was extremely low.


    How did she know he was reincarnated?


    Did she have anything to do with it?


    Did she know how or why he reincarnated?


    A multitude of questions flew through his mind by the second as the reality of his name sank in.


    "You seem rmed."


    Rui froze.


    His eyes met his grandmother''s powerful gaze.


    Her eyes bored into his with askance.


    In that moment, he put aside his emotional turmoil, which she undoubtedly sensed as a Martial Sage. He knew he could not hide it from her, which is why he focused on disguising it.


    "I''m rather disturbed at this revtion," Rui narrowed his eyes as they swam around. "I wish she were here so that I could speak to her. I wish she could tell me about everything."


    This was the sincere truth. This content is ? N?velDrama.Org.


    However, it was indirectly deceptive because shecked the context to understand what he meant or what he was referring to. And while it was not the most ethical, reminding her of her dead daughter did draw her attention away.


    Her eyes softened with sorrow. "I, too, wish I could speak to her and understand her choices. Why did she choose the Kandrian Empire over us? Why did she foresee her death yet refuse to take any measures to avert it of any kind?"


    It became clear that there was more to his mother than he had ever suspected in his entire life. There were too many oddities for him to possibly shrug off, even if he ignored the elephant in the room, which indicated that his mother was very aware ahead of time that her unborn baby was a reincarnated person.


    Regardless, he knew that he wouldn''t get any answers here and now.


    His grandmother''s words indicated that she, too, didn''t really understand the mysteries that surrounded his mother shortly before her death. On the one hand, he could avoid being exposed as a being from a different world. He was d that his grandmother was not a devotee of the Virodhabhasa. She didn''t seem to think he was the Antithesis himself or didn''t care if she did know.


    This response would have been very different if Master Uma had been there. She would have undoubtedly taken that as further proof that he was the Antithesis, fueling her insane theological delusions.


    On the other hand, if she did have answers, then he could perhaps solve some of the most burning questions that he had had the entirety of his second life. "Huff¡­" He shook his head. "What has happened has happened. It can never be changed. I am more inclined to look to the future than the past."


    His grandmother agreed with that sentiment. "The future is within our grasp. Especially within the grasp of we, the Ss n, for prophecy runs in our blood."


    Rui smiled wryly. "Indeed."


    That had somehow held to be true, considering that Rui had obtained the power of prediction independently of the Ss n as their blood kin. "I am willing to bear the name of Ss and the responsibility and privilege thates with it," Rui dered, steering the conversation in more important directions. "I seek the Eye of Prophecy for my Martial Art, and I am certainly willing to share my prophetic power."


    He didn''t mind sharing the predictive model as long as he was appropriatelypensated. In this case, the exchange was truly equal and fair, so he had no issue. This was especially true when the whole purpose of Project Water was initially to universalize Adaptive Evolution. It only became a more self-centered goal after he rediscovered it as his Martial Path.


    Matriarch Nephi smiled at those words. "I am pleased at your openness to cooperate. By working together, we can ensure that all of us harness the power of prophecy to a much greater degree."


    "Yes, however, as I said, I cannot do so immediately. I am in pursuit of a man and am toomitted to finding him before I run out of time. I am unable to dedicate myself to mastering it, nor am I able to teach my technique to others during this time. I was hoping to make use of your services to find the person that I am seeking at the moment."


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1842 Impromptu Offer

    Chapter 1842 Impromptu Offer


    Matriarch Nephi peered at him curiously. "That is the second time that you have mentioned that. Just who are you searching for, and for what?"


    Rui considered her question before making a choice. "To find the Divine Doctor."


    Matriarch Nephi narrowed her eyes. "I know of him," she remarked. "He is fickle. Fleeting."


    "That is why I need your help, grandmother," Rui replied. "As a Martial Sage, your prophetic powers are undoubtedly extremely powerful. In fact, as a Martial Sage, you no longer need to use the forbidden version of the Eye of Prophecy. You can just use the original iteration of the technique handed to you by Sage Ss, right?"


    Pride emerged on her face. "It is true. I have mastered the true Eye of Prophecy, the legacy left by our ancestor."


    "I don''t know the full extent of what Martial Sages are capable of," Rui continued. "However, I know that they are extremely powerful. If anyone can offer me any insight into the location of the Divine Doctor, I believe it is you. He is in the Beast Domain; thus, I truly need something extraordinary to help me find him."


    One of the reasons his father had rather have had a member of the Ss n rather than ask them to find the Divine Doctor was probably because no Martial Artists of the Ss n at the time could help him find the Divine Doctor with their own power within a short amount of time. However, thirty yearster, that was no longer strictly true. Now that Matriarch Nephi had broken through to the Sage Realm, she possessed extraordinary power that a very small proportion of Martial Artists in the entire world possessed.


    Even if she couldn''t give him the exact coordinates of the Divine Doctor, he knew that she was at least capable of significantly increasing the probability of him finding the Divine Doctor.


    "I can help you," Matriarch Nephi simply replied. "The Eye of Prophecy technique no longer consumes my lifespan now that I have reached the Sage Realm and am able to use the true technique. I have also been able to scry more of the future than I had ever been able to in the past."


    Rui grew hopeful hearing those words.


    "But why do you seek the Divine Doctor?" Matriarch Nephi asked.


    "¡­To do what I believe would be the best for the Kandrian Empire," Rui replied. "I''m afraid I cannot divulge the exact details." N?velDrama.Org holds this content.


    This was the sincere truth. He didn''t think he could do a better job than his father, and it probably would do Kandria a lot of good to re-enter the status quo. Plus, he could help his father even if he didn''t ascend the throne, and they could probably do a lot of good for the Empire together.


    "Hm," Matriarch Nephi peered into him before eventually relenting into epting that as an answer. "Then I shall help you find the Divine Doctor if that is what you seek."


    Rui smiled. "Thank you. Unfortunately, I''m in a very tight position at the moment. I will need to return to the Kandrian Empire. I''m not even supposed to be here, officially. So I was hoping I could you could help me sooner rather thanter."


    "Before that," she remarked. "You said that you are unable to learn the Eye of Prophecy or teach your technique any time soon. That is rather concerning."


    "Unfortunately, finding the Divine Doctor is a rather pressing engagement at the moment," Rui replied apologetically. "However, I can assure you that the moment I return-"


    "-You said he was in the Beast Domain, correct?" Matriarch Nephi narrowed her eyes, cutting him off. "That will take a lot of time. On top of that, you may die."


    "Please do me a favor, grandmother," Rui heaved a sigh. "If you are unwilling. I have offers that can sweeten the deal. For instance, I can supply the Ss n with longevity potions. I''m sure you, of all people, understand the value of such a potion."


    Her eyes narrowed, even as they shed with a hint of greed. "Are you willing and able to?"


    "I am," Rui replied. "However, in order to gain a continuous supply of potions, you will need to settle in the Kandrian Empire."


    That evoked a reaction from his grandmother. "What?!"


    "These are highly precious resources that I cannot have transported across the entire continent in a ndestine manner," Rui replied. "They are in high demand in all of human civilization. There are many powers and forces on the continent that are constantly keeping track of them. They will eventually be able to track it to the Ss n and you will be exposed undoubtedly."


    "So the solution to getting exposed is exposing ourselves to the entire world by settling in the Kandrian Empire?!" Matriarch Nephi was displeased by his words.


    "You have nothing to fear anymore, grandmother," Rui replied. "I don''t know if you noticed, but you''re a Martial Sage."


    "That does not mean that I am invincible," Matriarch Nephi huffed. "There are much stronger Martial Sages than me in the continent, including the one behind you."


    "Yes, but you won''t be alone," Rui replied. "Did you think settling in the Kandrian Empire would be just for show? Once you settle in the Kandrian Empire, permanently, you will be under the protection of a nation with fifteen Martial Sages and one of the most powerful militaries and navies in all of East Panama."


    "Hmph," Matriarch Nephi snorted with a hint of grudging respect. "This was your intention the entire time, was it not?"


    Rui smirked. "Perhaps. However, even if it was, it does not change the facts. Settling in the Kandrian Empire solves the tworgest problems that the Ss n faces: Lifespan and security."


    In reality, this had not been Rui''s n all along. Arge part of his n had not been fleshed out due to ack of data, but once he gained a more intimate understanding of the Ss n, he realized that the Ss n settling in the Kandrian Empire was undoubtedly one of the most optimal oues for him and the Kandrian Empire.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1843 Powerful Reassurances

    <h4>Chapter 1843 Powerful Reassurances</h4>


    However, while he saw the n to be perfect, his grandmother was not quite convinced by his offer yet.


    "Why not secretly have him deliver the potions?" She gestured to Sage Sayfeel.


    Rui furrowed his eyebrows. "Sage Sayfeel is far too precious and valuable an asset of the Emperor to be reduced to a delivery man. If you joined the Empire, you would not need to rely on this; you could just directly procure the potions from the Kandrian government or the Martial Union."


    She steepled her fingers, peering into Rui''s eyes. "The potion matter is secondary when ites to the radical offer that you have made, my grandson. Do you think we have not considered joining powerful Sage-level powerhouses in the past? The greatest issue is that we cannot trust them to extract our technique by force. How can we trust the Kandrian Empire to exert its great power to extract our technique with force?"


    "By bing a part of it," Rui replied. "The Kandrian Empire is an empire of harmony. There are many interest and stakeholder groups with conflicting interests and stakes that exist without friction because the Kandrian Empire is designed to amodate all of them. This is the system that my father devised in order to prevent civil war in an age of civil wars. It is the reason that the Kandrian Empire is a powerhouse today."


    "There have been attempts by my foolish siblings to try and disrupt this harmony, but rest assured that I have crushed them," Rui replied. "As the next Emperor of Kandria, I guarantee you safety in the name of Kandria."


    Her eyes widened as Rui finally yed another one of the cards that he had been saving up for the right moment.


    "You are due to ascend the throne?" She stared at him incredulously. Content provided by N?velDrama.Org.


    "Indeed," Rui replied. "Unless Emperor Rael magically heals, of course."


    Her eyes narrowed as she finally gained a deep understanding of the circumstances that Rui was in and what his ultimate objective was.


    Rui admittedly took a bit of a gamble by hinting at it. However, he judged that her hatred for Rael was not as strong as the rapport he was building, as well as the powerful concrete incentives that he was offering.


    "Your concerns of a Sage-level powerhouse bullying you to reveal your technique is justified. In fact, if you were in the Britannian Empire, you would undoubtedly be forced to share it. If you were in the Sekigahara Confederate, the feudal Martial ns that rule the state would exterminate all of you in pursuit of the technique if you dared to refuse them. The Republic of Gorteau, being the most corrupt state in East Panama, would undoubtedly spur countless actors to act against you in pursuit of the power of prophecy."


    He closed his eyes. "The Kandrian Empire, however, has a history of internal cooperation and harmony. This was true under my father, and it will be true under me regardless of which one of us rules the Kandrian Empire."


    "Your father took my daughter away from me and then let her die," Matriarch Nephi narrowed her eyes.


    "I am aware you dislike my father as a son-inw. I can understand your sentiment. Perhaps I even share it to a small extent." Rui closed his eyes. "However, your greatest fear was the Kandrian Empire forcing the Eye of Prophecy out of you out of greed for the power of prophecy, correct?"


    "It is the reason we have disconnected from human civilization," she remarked.


    "Then let me ask you this." Rui stared into her eyes. "Why would the Kandrian Empire bully you this time when it did not bully youst time?"


    She narrowed her eyes at that question. "What?"


    "When the Emperor of Harmony found you, you were a Martial Master, correct?"


    "Yes."


    "When he found you, he had a Martial Sage, right?"


    "Yes."


    "Then why didn''t he use the power of a Martial Sage to force you to give him the Eye of Prophecy technique?"


    She stared at him wordlessly.


    "Not only did he not bully you when he could, he even transacted fairly and built a rtionship with you before my mother died, right?"


    "¡­"


    "Think about it," Rui replied. "There are only two forces in the Kandrian Empire that have the power to concretely overwhelm you as a Sage-level n. One is the Emperor and the government that answers to him, who has already proven that he does not operate in such a manner, or the Martial Union that has a long history of deep cooperation with all Martial Art entities that are not hostile to it. The Martial Union is filled with all kinds of sects that are centered around different kinds of techniques. These sects have many exclusive techniques that they don''t share with the Martial Union. The Martial Union has never forced anybody to share their technique. In fact¡­"


    He pulled out an amulet featuring the insignia of the Martial Union. This was proof of his authority as a senior ambassador of the Martial Union.


    "As a senior ambassador of the Martial Union, I can guarantee you the absolute right to privacy," Rui replied. "I have had my prophecy technique for eighteen years now from when I was a Martial Apprentice."


    He stared into her eyes. "Yet even as an Apprentice, Squire, and now Senior, they have never, not once, forced me to reveal or share my prophecy technique with them."


    He leaned forward. "Not once. Think about that. Even though I was a weak Apprentice who no one cared about. They never once bullied me to share my technique. They have centuries of history of maintaining this policy and they have never once vited it even against a Martial Apprentice."


    Her expression crumbled into uncertainty as her eyes swam around.


    She hated to admit it, but Rui''s arguments were both logically and emotionallypelling. Her powerful senses told her that he was telling her the absolute truth. She could even detect deep sincerity.


    "If a Martial Apprentice was not forced to reveal his prophecy technique. Then surely a Sage-level n will be just fine in the ranks of the Martial Union."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1844 Time For Consideration

    Chapter 1844 Time For Consideration


    She heaved a deep sigh after a minute of thought. "Your words are¡­hard to refute. However¡­"


    "I understand." Rui closed his eyes, leaning back. "It is extremely difficult to change your nomadic ways after centuries of living in such a manner. It will be extraordinarily difficult to adjust to such a drastic change in life and lifestyle."


    She nodded, deep in thought.


    "However, think about what you lose if you don''t choose to go this route," Rui replied, staring at the ceiling. "I just sparred with Senior Huldah. I wonder how many years of her lifespan she lost in a simple short spar?"


    Matriarch Nephi winced at his words. "That¡­"


    "Besides," Rui spoke. "I haven''t even told you all the benefits of joining the Kandrian Empire and the Martial Union. There is a realistic chance that you will find a way to mitigate or possibly even erase the price of the forbidden technique with the Martial Union''s Martial Art techniques, principles, and training resources."


    Her eyes widened with surprise. "What?!"


    "Think about it, Grandma. I don''t mean to be rude, but the Ss n only has a handful of Mindforgers," he replied. "On top of that, you don''t have any resources to train because you''re disconnected from human civilization and are constantly migrating and resettling over and over. The Martial Union receives techniques and contributions from across the Kandrian Empire and even beyond. Many Martial Artists sell their techniques and an exclusive license to the Martial Union. You cannot even begin to fathom the ocean of Martial Art techniques and principles that the Martial Union has. That''s not all¡­"


    He leaned forward. "The Martial Union dedicates an enormous amount of wealth and resources into research and development of Martial Art. It has been doing this for centuries. There is a reason that the Martial Union is one of the most powerful Martial Art organizations in the entirety of Panama."


    Every single statement he made was rooted in absolute fact. She knew that because she did have some understanding of the Kandrian Empire and the Martial Union, but also because she could inly see that he was uttering the truth and nothing but the truth.


    She would be lying if the prospects of getting rid of the greatest shoring of the Eye of Prophecy did not excite her. Unfortunately, he was right in that their circumstances made any research and development extremely difficult. "I haven''t even covered all the incentives and benefits, to be honest," Rui heaved a sigh. "There are so many in addition to the benefits that I have already told you about. Just the fact that you are reconnected to human civilization is an enormous blessing. Medical services, education, Martial resources, technology, and quality of life. There are so many benefits that I don''t think I can cover all of them even if I spend the entire day."


    Frankly, the logical side of the argument was so overwhelmingly favor in joining the Kandrian Empire in so many dimensions that she did not even bother contesting the rational soundness of the reasoning that he espoused.


    The biggest issue was how the n would handle such a drastic shift in lifestyle.


    "With sixteen Martial Sages, the Kandrian Empire will have the greatest number of Martial Sages on retainer than any organization in the entire world, I think," Rui lightly remarked. "Even the Britannian Empire has only fifteen Martial Sages. In other words, external threats will reduce drastically."


    "Enough," she raised a hand. "I have heard enough."


    Rui stared at her silently.


    "I have heard your offer," she stated officiously. "Your reasoning is deeplypelling, I admit. However, this is not a decision that can bemitted by myself at this moment."


    "I understand, grandmother," Rui nodded. "Unfortunately, I will only be around in the Kandrian Empire for about a week or so. After that, I must depart for the Divine Doctor. You have a week to make your decision unless you are willing to approach the Kandrian Empire without me guiding the deliberations. I wouldn''t rmend that, personally. But it is an option if you are confident in your diplomacy."


    She wasn''t.


    She couldn''t remember thest time that she or anybody in the Ss n had ever needed to employ diplomacy. The very concept didn''t even exist in the Ss Dialect, which was how foreign it was to the Ss n.


    "¡­If we choose to ept your offer, we will certainly need your help to navigate the diplomatic negotiations with the Kandrian Empire, my grandson."


    Rui smiled warmly. "I will do my personal best to ensure that the Ss n will not be disenfranchised in any way whatsoever in finding its ce in the Kandrian Empire. I swear an oath to that." N?velDrama.Org owns ? this.


    He was sincere about that. He sincerely believed that both the Ss n and the Kandrian Empire would benefit greatly if the Ss n was able to integrate into the Kandrian Empire. It was upto the Ss n if they were willing to break away from the inertia of their nomadic life and strive for a better life in the Kandrian Empire. "However, I do believe that it is, frankly, a separate matter from my earlier request to you, my induction into the Ss n, and the exchange of techniques. These can happen regardless of whether you join the Kandrian Empire or not," Rui replied. "So, please help me find the Divine Doctor, grandmother. It is quite important to me that I find him. It will be to your benefit as well if I find him, as long as you are able to put aside your dislike for the Emperor of Harmony."


    She finally relented, heaving a sigh. "Fine. I will find the Divine Doctor regardless of our decision. Tell me everything you know about him. The more I know, the more I will be able to scry about him and supply you with crucial prophecies."


    "That might be a bit of an issue," Rui frowned. He had yet to receive the information package from the Beggar Sage; thus, this requirement was a bit inconvenient for him.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1845 Nature of Prophecy

    Chapter 1845 Nature of Prophecy


    "The information I have on him is definitely significant, but I don''t know how much it will help you," Rui informed her. "However, I am due to get a more thorough information package on the Divine Doctor soon. I will convey it to you when I get it."


    "You do that. It will be better if Iplete the prophecies then," Matriarch Nephi nodded. "I did want to inquire¡­" Rui continued. "What kind of information can I expect from your prophecy?"


    It was crucial for Rui to understand exactly what the output of the Eye of Prophecy yielded when applied. It would help him n out how he was going to find the Divine Doctor better. He also was quite curious about the matter. "The oues of the technique aren''t¡­uniform," she admitted. "They vary quite vividly in many ways, including depth, precision, and the kind of sensory information that it gives us. Sometimes I get vague visions, sometimes it''s sounds, or even touch and smell."


    Rui frowned. "That''s¡­much less reliable than I had expected. Does that also happen inbat?"


    "It''s more uniform and reliable inbat," she reassured him with pride. "There are visions that allow you to see what your opponent is to do inbat. But it''s much harder to execute outside ofbat since it is primarily abat technique."


    Rui could definitely rte to that. After all, the same could be said for the Angel of Lace. Its nonbat version was extraordinarily more difficult to use than the scaled-down version that he created forbat.


    Her description of the output technique made him curious about the mechanics of the technique. It sounded like she didn''t really have any control over the process itself. Whatever it was, it clearly functioned differently from his predictive model or the Angel of Lace that relied on statistics and physics, respectively, to give him the information that he sought from the two techniques.


    "I am curious to learn more about the technique when I have the chance after my urgentmitments," Rui replied. "I don''t know if I will be using it unless my life is truly in danger, though."


    It was a forbidden technique. That meant that it harmed the user too much. In this case, it consumed the lifespan of the user and aged them even faster.


    The Martial Heart already made him age faster than he normally would if he never used it after breaking through initially. He would begin aging much more rapidly if he used the Eye of Prophecy regrly on top of that.


    He hadn''t forgotten that his extremely young breakthrough to the Senior Realm allowed him to prolong the time period that his prime wouldst. A phase of peak growth, vitality, and vigor that would normallyst only several more years would nowst for a few decades.


    "You do have longevity potions," his grandmother remarked. "It is best you take them as early as you can and prolong your youth for as long as you can. I can assure you that you will never get it back. With those, you can also use the Eye of Prophecy with greaterfort."


    "True," Rui nodded. "Perhaps even a little less than a year ago, getting a longevity potion would have been very difficult, but now I can definitely get one for myself."


    These were normally reserved for Martial Masters who were approaching the end of their lifespan. Its avability through the Martial Union or the government wasn''t strictly merit-based, and for good reason.


    The Kandrian Empire stood to lose more if the potion was taken from the hands of an elderly Martial Master who needed it to prolong his life than from a young Senior who still had a century or two of natural lifespan ahead of him.


    Still, he had far too much power to be denied now.


    "In fact, I''m pretty sure that we can increase the supply of longevity potions if you join the Kandrian Empire," Rui replied. "The raw natural resources needed to brew this potion are most abundant in powerful Master-level danger zones. We can gain more of them if the Ss n aids in their acquisition. In other words, you can prolong your own lifespans without relying on handouts from anybody else."


    This possibility was clearly appealing to the elderly matriarch. It made it easier to stomach the prospects of settling in the Kandrian Empire for potions if they were the ones who werergely relying on the potions themselves.


    It preserved their pride. Content provided by N?velDrama.Org.


    The grandson and grandmother conversed about a variety of topics while they could, as Rui purposely took the time to build a greater rapport with this grandmother.


    "As if we would ever settle with those ignorant antithetants!" Matriarch Nephi scorned when Rui asked her why she had never taken protection in the Virodhabhasa Theocracy. "We prophetants understand that it is the Transcendent Prophet who deserves the highest regard and worship, not the Antithesis! It is a prophecy that saved this world! It is prophecy that is supreme!"


    She grumbled, much to Rui''s delight.


    He was d that there were theological conflicts between the Ss n and the Theocracy. Frankly, if not for that, the Ss n may very well decide to settle in the Theocracy. This would be a great loss to the Kandrian Empire and himself, especially.


    They conversed more as Matriarch Nephi asked him many questions regarding their potential permanent residence in the Kandrian Empire. It was important for her to gain an understanding of the nature of what their life would be like in the Kandrian Empire before making a final decision in regard to whether they would take Rui up on his offer to permanently reside in the Kandrian Empire or not.


    "¡­It has been a long day," Matriarch Nephi heaved a sigh. "Much has happened. Why don''t you take some rest in our n before departing?"


    Rui smiled. "I''d love to, but as I said earlier, I''m not supposed to be here. I will need to return soon. Thus, I hope I can return home today with the name of the Ss n."


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1846 Preparations

    Chapter 1846 Preparations


    ??The naming ceremony was shorter than Rui had expected, much to his delight. They adorned him with gands of flowers and leaves as well as leaving markings across his body, making him swear to a number of oaths.


    "I hereby swear to act in good faith with those who bear the name of Ss..."


    "I hereby swear to always do good by my kin..."


    "I hereby swear to never betray the name of Ss..."


    "Hm..." His grandmother regarded him. "Then rise, Rui Quarrier Ss Kandria."


    Rui stood up from a kneeling position, smiling at her.


    "From this day forth, you shall bear the name of Ss," she told him in a solemn tone. "Never forget your oaths, your responsibilities, or the privileges of being part of our n."


    "I will not forget," he promised.


    lights¦­¦Ïv¦Ål ?¦Ïm She smiled affectionately at him. "And that brings us to an end to the ceremony."


    Rui nodded. "...I must return now. But before I go."


    He pulled out amunication artifact, handing it to his grandmother. "This is a reliable cross-continental means of reaching me. Please let me know what your decision is before the week ends."


    "I shall be sure to do that, my grandson."


    Rui smiled. "I look forward. Goodbye."


    The entire n came forth to bid him goodbye in unison before Sage Sayfeel activated his breathing technique, propelling them forward at extreme speeds in the sky toward the Kandrian Empire.


    This time, however, Rui was too consumed in his thoughts to pay too much attention to the view of the travel.


    "How do you think that went?"


    "..."


    Rui heaved a sigh. "I think that went as good as it could have. Though things were a little dicey there at the beginning."


    "Your timely intervention prevented the situation from deteriorating, Your Highness," Sage Sayfeel remarked.


    "True. I really hope that the Ss n makes the right choice," Rui heaved a sigh. "Every incentive and disincentive point towards settling in the Kandrian Empire. The only reason that they are not immediately jumping to the opportunity is because of the radical lifestyle shift."


    Rui knew that it was going to be particrly challenging to integrate the Ss n into the Kandrian Empire fully. In fact, it was almost impossible to do within a short amount of time.


    For the time being, he could hope that they would slowly integrate into society eventually. He would need to n their integration such that they would not grow too isted. He quickly came up with a variety of schemes that would require them interact and cooperate with the Martial Union first for things like potions and potentially fixing the Eye of Prophecy technique''s great price.


    Rui heaved a sigh. "I might have to postpone my meeting with the Adventurer''s Guild by a bit if they make their decision toote."


    He definitely needed to be there to mediate the agreement between the Ss n and the Kandrian Empire, as well as the Martial Union.


    He was effectively a representative of all three as a member of the ruling royal family, a powerful member of the Martial Union, and a member of the Ss n. If he didn''t mediate, it was possible that the pride and even narcissism regarding prophecy might hamper a seamless integration into the system of the Kandrian Empire.


    "I''m sure my father would probably do a better job," Rui heaved a sigh, shaking his head.


    "That is an extraordinary standard to hold yourself to, Your Highness," Sage Sayfeel remarked. "Your father would do a better job than anybody else."


    It wasn''t too long before they returned to the Kandrian Empire, where Sage Sayfeel quickly snuck Rui back into the isted meditation chamber before disappearing.


    CLACK


    Rui opened the door, walking out briskly.


    "Sir," his secretary got up.


    "Tell Mikha to postpone my meeting with the head of the Adventurer''s Guild by a week and a half," Rui replied. "Convey my apologies and inform him that I have unfortunately been forced to deal with some ensuring emergencies."


    "¡­Yes, sir," his secretary wisely kept her confusion concealed.


    As far as she was aware, no emergencies had happened. In fact, just half a day ago, they had discussed how all the work was finallyplete.


    "I want a civil infrastructure map of Kandria as well as a topographical and climate map of the Kandrian Empire. Also, have her book appointments with all the civil constructionpanies in our that engage in residential construction," Rui replied. "I''ll also need to speak to the Kandrian Border Patrol Force and several more governmental institutions. And the Martial Union, especially the Martial Union."


    "Understood, sir."


    "Also, get me in touch with all thepanies that engage in research, production, and manufacturing of longevity potions."


    "Yes, sir."


    "Also¡­"


    Rui''s certain renewed vigor had not gone unnoticed. He was too powerful for people to miss his sudden drive. First, his administration noticed, followed by his inner orbit, then his entire faction, and eventually the political ss of the Kandrian Empire all grew confused as Rui suddenly rushed into a flurry of preparations and arrangements with a variety of parties.


    It was rather strange.


    He had already won the Kandrian Throne War.


    There was nothing else left to win.


    Why was he getting so riled up?


    Nobody understood.This text is ? N?velDrama/.Org.


    While they watched in confusion, however, Rui had made multiple preliminary preparations for the settlement of the Ss n into the Kandrian Empire. These were the kind of preparations that didn''t cost him much, considering how much wealth he had. He made multiple arrangements for housing across the entire Empire depending on which region they liked and what kind of housing they wanted.


    There were many forests and natural habitats in the Kandrian Empire that they could reside in should they have chosen to build their own housing in the manner they pleased; Rui had already begun scouting multiple candidates for regions they might want to settle in.


    BZZZT BZZZT BZZZT


    Just a dayter, he received a call on hismunication artifact.


    It was his grandmother.


    A single remark escaped her.


    "We ept your offer."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1847 Time was Nigh

    Chapter 1847 Time was Nigh


    "What is the meaning of this, Your Highness?" A man fashioning a custom-tailored suit was seated before Rui. His grey hair and beard only entuated the elderly aura of wisdom he radiated. The man gazed at Rui with askance, having gone through the documents that Rui had produced before him.


    "It is an application for birth certificates, government-issued ID, and statements of recognition of citizenship on behalf of the Ss n, Minister Kramen."


    This was the same man whose contract Rui had fought the Gatekeeper to terminate. The Minister of Domestic Affairs was part of his faction and had the power to grant citizenship and official recognition from the state of Kandria to any given asylee seeking asylum.


    With this man in his faction, Rui had never been worried about the official process. The minister had the power to expedite the process very rapidly, allowing him to make the Ss n a part of the Kandrian Empire within a day if he really wanted.


    He also garnered deep loyalty to Rui ever since Rui fought to have him.


    Still, that did not mean he was not shaken by the weight of what Rui had done.


    "The mythical Ss n," the man incredulously went through the various profiles with pictures and names that Rui had painstakingly acquired from the Ss n. "Have you truly found the n with the power to scry the future?!"


    "You heard what my father said during the Royal Addressal Ceremony, didn''t you?"


    "I did, but¡­" The man murmured. "I could not have imagined that you would have tracked them down so quickly and even got them to agree to join the Kandrian Empire!"


    Rui smiled. "I can understand your shock. But I require you to put it aside and get this done as soon as possible."


    "Of course, Your Highness. Your wish is mymand. But¡­" He murmured. "This is not going to go unnoticed. The power of prophecy is something that would drive the world crazy. Just the fact that the Ss n has been able to avoid being found by every single force and power in this world with the power of their prophecy is proof that it is extremely powerful."


    That was true. After all, he was pretty sure that not even the Beggar''s Sect knew the location of the Ss n or any of the intelligence organizations.


    Despite only beingprised of Martial Masters for centuries, they had managed to evade every single powerhouse Master-level and Sage-level force that exerted its power to track and hunt them alive. Time after time, they evaded capture and discovery by simply foreseeing danger in the future and negating it ahead of time.


    In that regard, it spoke to his father''s sheer ingenuity andpetence in tracking down the Ss n.


    "Your Highness, the world will not ignore this," the minister murmured. Content provided by N?velDrama.Org.


    "Ignore, no. But they cannot do anything," Rui calmly replied. "The Kandrian Empire would have a whopping fifteen Martial Sages, equal to the Britannian Empire which previously held the highest number of Martial Artists in each Realm, even if by a small margin."


    He, of course, discounted the existence of Sage Sayfeel.


    He steepled his fingers. "In other words, no Sage-level force is stronger than us. On top of that, we can foresee any danger that strikes us thanks to the power of the Ss n. While an increase in the magnitude of events makes them harder to foresee, a prophetic Martial Sage will undoubtedly not fail to foresee any attack, giving us a priceless stream of information from the future itself."


    That was why the Ss n was so sought after.


    Any nation that gained the power of prophecy gained an enormous advantage in information against everybody else, allowing them to manifest events that would be considered miracles.


    The Minister of Domestic Affairs could not deny how attractive Rui''s words were. "I shall be sure to get this done as soon as possible!"


    "Good," Rui smiled. "Ensure that you yourself do all the work. Do not offload it to anybody else. There are ears and eyes everywhere."


    "Very well, Your Highness."


    Once the citizenship was granted, they were officially citizens of the Kandrian Empire.


    Of course, there was more that needed to happen. The Kandrian Border Patrol Force was undoubtedly going to raise a fuss at the prospect of an unknown Martial Sage being allowed in the nation under the Kandrian Asylum Act.


    Unfortunately, he couldn''t inform anybody of the news of the Ss n joining the Kandrian Empire.


    It would spread like wildfire, and the chances were high that the Sekigahara Confederate, the Britannian Empire, and the Republic of Gorteau would do their best to prevent the Kandrian Empire from gaining this priceless asset.


    Interceptions. Ambushes. Traps. Assault. Assassinations.


    Furthermore, these would not be skirmishes. Martial Masters and perhaps even Martial Sages would be deployed to kill the Ss n before they entered the Kandrian Empire. That would be the bare minimum necessary to overpower them.


    It could easily be a trigger for the third East Panamic War.


    Rui had no intention of sparking another continental war between the Sage-level powerhouses of East Panama.


    Absolutely not.


    That was why no one could know ahead of time.


    The only reason he told the Minister of Domestic Affairs was because it was absolutely necessary.


    Days passed as Rui grew nervous. He had been coordinating with his grandmother for exactly when the Ss n would arrive at the Kandrian Empire. He had also cautioned certain parties of a major decision that was toe soon, even if he didn''t tell them exactly what.


    Eventually, the day of arrival came.


    "Rui, who exactly are you waiting for?" Master Ceeran frowned. "You''ll see," Rui smiled, closing his eyes. He was seated in a VIP section meant for official delegations meant to greet important political delegations or parties. He was surrounded by eight Martial Masters tasked with ensuring his safety as well as an enormous staff who had been briefed and tasked with catering to the Ss n after they arrived.


    He also had another administrative staff that would provide various official documentation to appease the forces that would undoubtedly be pissed.


    Rui felt his nerves tingling as the time was nigh.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1848 Confrontation

    Chapter 1848 Confrontation


    "You''ve been acting really strange over the past few days, Rui," Master Ceeran lightly remarked.


    "That is true," Rui smiled.


    "And you''ve been keeping it a secret," Master Ceeran peered at him suspiciously. "Just what kind of mischief are you up to?"


    "Like I said, you''ll find out soon enough."


    "Perhaps we could be service if you inform us, Your Highness," Master Zentra remarked. Rui smiled wryly. "Look, I get-"


    Suddenly, they froze. Something had changed. It was the world.


    The very world seemed to change.


    It shifted.


    It shifted, warped under a powerful force.


    Heaven and earth bent under the weight.


    The Martial Masters stiffened, growing grave. Each of them recognized this sensation. They had long grown familiar with it after reaching the Master Realm.


    It was the power of a higher Realm.


    And it was getting closer and closer.


    "Looks like they''re almost here," Rui grinned, getting up as he shot through the corridors and doors of the facility heading toward the actual port of entry.


    "Your Highness, this is dangerous," Master Zentra warned him, effortlessly keeping up with him along with his peers. "You cannot meet a non-allied Martial Sage without a Martial Sage bodyguard!"


    "In the first ce, why are you meeting a Martial Sage at all?!"


    "Did you really invite one without telling anybody?!"


    "I have followed the protocol. I have received authorization from the Burea of Immigration and the KBPF, using my influence, of course," Rui smirked. "That''s not the point!"


    They finally reached the posh and extravagant facility that served as the port of entry designated for political guests of the state.


    Rui watched, grinning as more than a thousand people descended from the sky as the powerful Sage-level and Master-level auras grew stronger and stronger. His grandmother had been kind enough to hide their Martial Embodiments lest they crippled the customs and immigration officers working at the port of entry.


    THUD


    The Ss n had arrived.


    It took a moment for Rui to sense the nervous energy that radiated from the entire n. Even if they had made the decision to immigrate to the Kandrian Empire, it was still a shock to their psyche to be this exposed to human civilization,


    Standing in front of the Kandrian Empire was something that would previously be considered a nightmare!


    If not for Rui, and his grandmother most likely would have used her authority to push through with the decision, they would never have voluntarily put themselves in such a situation.


    Yet before Rui could even try to console and calm them down, an avnche of pressure erupted from behind him.


    RUMBLE


    Heaven and earth mourned as it strained even more under the weight of a second Martial Sage.


    "Your Highness."


    The powerful voice sent chills down his spine.


    It conveyed pure power.


    Pure power condensed into a being of unfathomable might.


    "Your Sagehood Sage Farana," Rui smiled wryly as he turned around slowly to find a deeply displeased Martial Sage and many Martial Masters lined across the border.


    They had taken their stances, ready to begin fighting at the drop of a hat.


    The Martial Artists of the Ss n shook at the disy, instantly taking a defensive formation and stances, their expressions growing grave.


    The air was drawn taut, churning under the avnche of pressure from both sides.


    The tension boiled, escting by the second as the two Martial Sages regarded each other with fierce res. Perhaps the only reason that they hadn''t sted into battle was because Rui Quarrier Ss Kandria stood precisely between them.


    Rui winced as Sage Farana''s fierce re turned to him, boring into his eyes.


    "What is the meaning of this, Your Highness?" Sage Farana growled. She wasn''t trying to press him with her pressure, yet it took every ounce of willpower to construct the most powerful Mind Mask that Rui had ever created in his entire life just to maintain hisposure.


    Such was the weight of a Martial Sage''s emotion.


    Their rage was the world''s rage.


    "It is as I informed the Kandrian Border Patrol Force in ordance with the protocols of the Kandrian Delegation Act," Rui replied. "These are political guests, and now citizens, of the state that I have gained authorization to wee and escort. It is entirely normal for the royal family to personally undertake this role, as per protocol. I can even provide you with all the authorization and pre-requisite documentation as is your right to inspect and demand."


    She narrowed her eyes sharply, exuding clear displeasure. "That is not what I meant, and you know it. What is the meaning of this? Documentation and authorization aside, it is deeply unprofessional and against the norm not to warn and inform the Kandrian Border Patrol Force of the threat level of any foreign delegation dispatched by a foreign entity ahead of time so that we may be prepared."


    "I am aware. The reason I didn''t was for the sake of national security," Rui calmly informed. "Unless, of course, you want to trigger a war by informing the world that the Ss n was immigrating to the Kandrian Empire as citizens of Kandria."


    Not a single person could maintain theirposure at his revtion.


    Every kandrian who heard his word shook at the revtion of his words.


    Sage Farana''s eyes widened with surprise as her gaze returned to Matriarch Nephi, who resolutely returned her gaze with powerful, firm eyes that refused to cede dominance. "Will all due respect, Your Sagehood, Sage Farana," Rui bowed his head lightly, offering deference to try and defuse the situation. "These are my blood kin, as you are undoubtedly aware. Not only have I ensured that I am entirely in line with every protocol and guideline of receiving political guests and political immigrants, but I am also a man weing his estranged family. I request you not to dy this long-awaited reunion." N?velDrama.Org holds this content.


    Sage Farana closed her eyes, heaving a sigh. "¡­Very well. Have it your way."


    "Thank you."


    She opened them as her powerful gaze bore deep into Rui''s eyes. "You shall bear responsibility for any and everything that is to ensue. Remember that, Prince Rui Quarrier Ss Kandria."


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1849 Uproar

    Chapter 1849 Uproar


    ??That day, an uproar erupted.


    It spread across the upper echelons of the Kandrian Empire like wildfire before eventually spreading across East Panama.


    "To think His Highness found the mythical Ss n¡­"


    "Not just found, he also managed to bring them to the Kandrian Empire!"


    "Once again, His Highness has rocked the Empire."


    It couldn''t be helped.N?velDrama.Org holds this content.


    Rui had been forced to disclose their identity, in part due to Sage Farana but also because they had already arrived. However, the initial number of people who heard about the Ss n wasn''trge; it was like a spark in oil.


    The information spread like a congration across the entire Kandrian Border Patrol Force from where it was leaked to all corners of the political and upper sses of Kandria.


    The legendary Ss n had joined the Kandrian Empire.


    On top of that, the matriarch of the Ss n was a Martial Sage.


    This information rocked everybody who heard of it.


    A Martial Sage was nothing short of a priceless national treasure. Every nation that had one on retainer was on a whole other level entirelypared to Master-level powerhouses. One of the reasons that the Shionel Confederation managed to just barely retain ownership of its dungeon instead of the Sage-level powerhouses bullying it was because it had a Martial Sage on retainer.


    Just the presence of one Martial Artist made a difference between night and day.


    Of course, in the case of the Kandrian Empire, the difference was not so staggering. Fifteen Martial Sages were marginally stronger than fourteen Martial Sages. However, the Martial Union had reached such a pinnacle of power that even a one-percent increase in power was extremely difficult and precious to achieve.


    The fifteenth Martial Sage of the Kandrian Empire represented a seven-percent increase in power!


    This was a staggering increase in power, rtively speaking.


    However, onlookers did not discount the other gains that the Kandrian Empire had made with the widely reported addition of the Ss n to its ranks. With the power of prophecy, the Kandrian Empire had undoubtedly be the nation with the most powerful intelligence capability.


    It could be game-changing.


    There was also the addition of Martial Masters, which, while not as exaggerated as the two main gains, was still worth mentioning.


    All in all, the impact and ramifications of this recent event were diverse and widespread.


    Naturally, an overwhelming majority of the political establishment of the Kandrian Empire had positive reactions.


    While not all of them had the best impression of Rui, it was almost impossible to pretend that this development did not deeply benefit almost all of them.


    For the business andmercial sector of the Kandrian Empire, an additional Martial Sage represented a much stronger Kandrian Empire. This, in turn, almost instantly increased the benefits to the Kandrian economy.


    After all, a Martially stronger nation was less likely to suffer negatively due to detrimental external stimuli like war and natural disasters. This meant that the nation was more reliable and stable to external shocks, which, in turn, naturally meant that the risk factor in investing capital in the nation was lower.


    This tranted to a greater capital influx, higher credit scores, a higher Kandrian currency index, and a lower trade deficit.


    Thus, the corporate, business, andmercial sections of the Kandrian Empire were quite pleased with the retainer of a new Martial Sage and the power of prophecy. Not all of them had chosen to switch to Rui after Princess Rafia dropped out of the Kandrian Throne War, but there were no doubts that they all stood to make great benefits from this recent event.


    The maritime and seafare industry of the Kandrian Empire was also pleased for this reason. In addition, the Ss n''s prophecy could be deeply useful for forecasting the ocean. This new means of information was deeply alluring to all of them; thus, they, too, had no reason to be displeased by this event.


    The Hawk Faction was also grudgingly pleased by this event as a faction centered around ambitions of conquest and dominance; greater militaristic power was always a good thing to them, no matter what. The addition of the Ss n greatly enhanced the power of the Kandrian Empire and made their pipe dream of continental dominance minutely less unrealistic.


    The Merger Faction was mostly ambivalent, tending towards positive since it reinforced Rui''s influence in the Martial Union if and when the Ss n inevitably joined it. This would allow for a smoother merging of the two greatest power blocs of the Kandrian Empire.


    The Kandrian Border Patrol Force was displeased with this little stunt; however, Rui''s paperwork was impable, so they did not have the authority to stop him in any way. The various governmental institutions reacted somewhat positively because the Ss n had proven a history of cooperation with the royal family by marrying their daughter to the Emperor.


    Thus, that most likely indicated that they were not going to be against the authority of the royal family and the government that answered it.


    If there was one power bloc of the Kandrian Empire that was displeased by the revtions of the Ss n, it was the Underworld.


    "¡­This threatens the very foundation of the Underworld," Don Dagonel growled.


    As the head of the Dagonel Network and the oligarch of the ck market for information, he had swiftly verified the veracity of the Ss n story. Much to his shock, it turned out to bepletely legitimate and real.


    The prophetic power of the Ss n had the potential topletely uproot the Underworld!


    Itpletely changed the equations of the game for them.


    Five other figures sat around at the table with equally grim expressions. The existence of the underworld was predicated on the darkness. They had attempted to change this through Prince Rajak but had all but failed.


    And now, the power of prophecy threatened to strip away the darkness that protected them. They needed to be deeply careful about the way handled this, otherwise, it could spell the end of the Underworld.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1850 Union Considerations

    Chapter 1850 Union Considerations


    The Underworld was perhaps the only power bloc that had a negative reaction in the sea of positive reactions within the Kandrian Empire.


    Yet, none were more overjoyed than the Martial Union.


    An emergency assembly meeting had been called, featuring all kinds of authoritative officials within the Martial Union and as many Martial Masters that could be called on short notice.


    "All hail the Void Prince!"


    One Martial Master dered loudly.


    "Truly, His Highness has bestowed nothing short of a miracle to the Kandrian Empire and to the Martial Union."


    "With the power of the Ss n, the Martial Union will be invincible! We will be invincible!"


    Naturally, many of them were deeply excited by the prospects of the Ss n joining the Martial Union. It made too much sense for them to do so. The Ss n was a Martial family that was centered around a technique or a field led by a Martial Sage. This kind of model already existed in the Kandrian Empire and the Martial Union. It was nothing new; thus, as far as the Martial Union was concerned, the Ss n fit right into the Union!


    "We must immediately arrange for a qualified ambassador!"


    "Indeed, the probability is low, but we must ensure that neither the Kandrian government nor the Underworld gets their hands on the Ss n!"


    "The Void Prince is our ambassador, fools. He is officially recognized as the senior ambassador of the Martial Union. He is the strongest Martial Senior of our Union and blood kin to the Ss n."


    "There is no better ambassador for the Martial Union!"


    "Truly, there is no one better than the Void Prince. All hail the Void Emperor!"


    The meeting soon devolved into a cheering party, and a praising session of Rui, for the Martial Masters, were too pleased by this particr oue.


    "Your Masteries, if I may," one non-Martial Artist in the panel adjacent to the Martial assembly chirped up.


    He managed to sessfully earn their attention on ount of being the Director of Foreign Affairs of the entire Martial Union, a particrly powerful position within the Martial Union.


    "While the Void Prince is most certainly a qualified ambassador, we ought to consider more direct diplomatic endeavors that operate under our direct authorization. Naturally, the Void Prince can also take his own measures or even cooperate with our authorized delegation, but it is best that we take a more proactive stance to reel in the Ss n regardless."


    His words were sensible.


    It made the enthusiastic Martial Masters pause and consider the merit of his words. A wave of murmurs spread across them.


    "Forget about it."


    A powerful voice cut through the atmosphere.


    A single Martial Master drew all the attention in the assembly hall to herself. Instantly, the room quietened down as the Martial Masters deferred her.


    Master Sera Graven, the Harbinger.


    The sole grade-thirty Martial Master of the Kandrian Empire.


    The strongest.


    She closed her eyes. "The Ss n is led by a martial sage. In other words, nobody on this assembly panel is qualified to negotiate with the Ss n."


    She opened her eyes.


    A wave of fear spread through the Martial Masters around her.


    "Only the Martial Sages are qualified to handle this particr case."


    Her words rang true.


    While other organizations did not hold such an attitude when it came to dealing with Martial Artists, the Martial Union was firm that delegations ought to include Martial Artists of the same rank.


    It was one of the reasons that Ceeran had been deployed with Rui to the Vilun Ind.


    "In the Void Prince''s case, he is blood kin of the Ss n, thus he is somewhat immune to this rule in this case. However, I''m sure that the Martial Sages of our Union will act nheless."


    An understanding needed to be developed between the leaders of the union and the head of the Ss n. If that did not happen, then no amount of negotiating from the Void Prince would be able to bridge the gap.


    "The Ss n is said to be extremely proud of their prophetic heritage and legacy from Sage Ss," the Harbinger quietly analyzed the situation. "That may make it difficult, although it is not insurmountable by any measure."


    A proud Martial Sage was hardly new. Several Martial Sages of the Kandrian Empire were deeply proud, arrogant, and even narcissistic. Yet, they still managed to live in the same Empire, and ten of them even formed a union together, even if they didn''t necessarily like each other all that much.


    "Rather than considering tasks beyond our reach, I suggest we focus on things that are within our reach. The Ss n propagates a forbidden technique, which might vite some of our rules and bws," she analyzed.


    "Not precisely, Your Mastery," the Director of Union Code replied. "What is forbidden is themercial transaction and sale of forbidden techniques. Simply creating one and using it for one''s self, or sharing it with family is not forbidden. On top of that, Martial Sages possess penal immunity; thus, if the Ss n frames it as the Matriarch''s endeavors and initiatives, there would be no vition in any case."


    That was a relief.


    The worst-case scenario that could unfold was that the Ss n changed their mind about joining the Martial Union because of a handful of rules.


    The assembly was willing to go as far as amending the rules just to amodate the Ss n.


    That was how valuable a Martial Sage and the power of prophecy was. There were very few lines that the Martial Union was not willing to cross to have them. The Ss n was the kind of resource that could trigger continental wars if they were independent.


    The fact that Rui had singlehandedly granted the Martial Union this boon had elevated his position in the Martial Union to even greater heights. Not even ''tinum boy'' was enough to describe how valuable and important he had be to the Martial Union.N?velDrama.Org holds this content.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1851 Summon

    Chapter 1851 Summon


    "What do you think, grandma?" Rui asked, hands on his waist, turning to his grandmother behind him.


    She smiled, nodding with approval. "You have understood our needs very well. This will do."


    She gazed around in the forest they were in encouragingly.


    The forest they were in wasprised of dense and thick trees that formed arge canopy, blocking out the Sun. There were also a multitude of smaller and thinner trees that could be chopped down for housing.


    Thend of the forest was t, with solid bedrock deep under the yish soil, making ideal for building elementary housing.


    Rui ensured that the trees'' wood had as low a water content index as possible so that it could easily be used as firewood.


    In addition, there was a freshwater river in the vicinity with bountiful fish for food.


    Furthermore, the forest was bountiful with game, critters, and birds of all kinds. It also had beasts of all kinds in its depths, including a plethora of Apprentice-level, Squire-level, and even a single Senior-level beast. In other words, food and water werepletely secured.


    "Wow¡­"


    "This will be a nice ce to stay¡­"


    "This is going to be a new home for us¡­"


    He could see the Ss n rxing a bit more after returning to an environment that was familiar to them.


    Rui had initially considered preparing luxurious housing arrangements for them but had quickly realized that the Ss n would be unable to feelfortable and rxed in such an environment.


    It was entirely alien and beyond their life experience.


    That was why he had instead cooperated with the Minister of Ecology and Environment to find a location that would be ideal for a nomadic tribe that had wandered the cracks of the Human Domain and the Beast Domain.


    Thankfully, the Kandrian Empire was filled with such locations, this was because there were many parts of the nation that were isted and deste. The Kandrian Empire had an enormous amount of territory spanning many millions of square kilometers in total for a poption of only about a hundred and fifty million.


    This was good because it made finding a remote, uninhabited natural forest known as the Ilvilia Forest to give the Ss n afortable ce. After pouring through all the data, he found a spot in West Kandria that fit the exact needs of the Ss n to the T.


    He had acquired permits on their behalf from the Ministry of Ecology and Environment as well as permission for full impunity regarding forestry rules. Overhunting was prohibited, but it was worth it if it meant keeping the Ss n happy.


    He doubted they would, though. The Ss n was minimalistic and non-disruptive of the environment, which was necessary because disrupting the environment could draw attention that they did not want.


    "I''m d you like it, grandmother," Rui smiled. "Why don''t you settle in and find yourselves at home before we proceed with other important matters? I''ll visit every day and I''ll have some personnel on-site that you can rely on for help in regards to anything you may need. For now, I would suggest that you all get some rest, you have exerted yourself in traveling a great distance in a short amount of time."


    "We will take you up on your suggestion, my grandson," Matriarch Nephi nodded. "Rest assured, we won''t need anything, we are self-dependent."


    The Ss n enthusiastically got to work, transforming the environment around them into their new home, while Rui gave them some personal space to limatize themselves to the radical shift in lifestyle.


    Although he was now a part of the n, he knew better than to think that he could seamlessly integrate himself into the dialect. It was why he had asked his grandmother for the script of thenguage when she had the time.


    It had barely been several hours since they joined the Kandrian Empire. Rui was sure that word of the Ss n''s entry into the Martial Union had spread across the highest echelons of East Panama.


    How could it not?


    This was a game-changing unfolding.


    When he nced at his silentmunication artifact after leaving the Ilvilia Forest, it was bombarded with countless messages.


    Yet, he wasn''t even able to read them as the eight Martial Masters around him bombarded him with countless questions.


    "Rui, what is all this about?!"


    "Your Highness, when did you contact the Ss n?"


    "How did you even find them in the first ce?"


    Rui smirked. "The details are irrelevant. Here are the facts that do matter. The Ss n is a part of the Kandrian Empire from this day forth. Our Empire now has fifteen Martial Sages and the power of prophecy at its disposal."


    "This¡­" It was difficult to wrap their head around this.


    It was incredibly sudden and abrupt.


    Normally, negotiations like this carried on for weeks and months!


    Yet somehow, Rui had very swiftly managed to reel them very swiftly, sealing the deal in what appeared to be a few days at most.


    There were many factors that allowed him to aplish this feat. Being rted to them by blood, possessing his own unique power of prophecy was also deeply helpful, defeating their strongest Awakened Bodyforger, and the tantalizing offers and reliable guarantees that he had made had all yed a part in sealing the deal rapidly. N?velDrama.Org owns ? this.


    Of course, they had no awareness of any of this.


    Rui smirked, ignoring their flummoxed dumbfoundedness, returning his attention to themunication artifact.


    He had more important matters to deal with.


    While he had countless messages from multiple parties spamming him to learn more about the shocking event of the Ss n''s joining of the empire, he had received only one message from the Martial Union.


    [Dear Rui Quarrier Ss Kandria,


    The Sage Council of the Kandrian Martial Union has summoned you for an audience. Kindlyply with the summon in ordance to the attached details.


    Regards, the Martial Union.]


    Rui narrowed his eyes, preparing himself.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1852 Eat Your Heart

    <h4>Chapter 1852 Eat Your Heart</h4>


    He was not surprised that the Sage Council of the Martial Union had sought to personally tackle this case by themselves instead of leaving it to the Master Council or the Union Assembly.


    They were ill-qualified to deal with a Martial Sage. Content provided by N?velDrama.Org.


    Frankly, so was he. But he had special power and influence in this case.


    There was no doubt that the Ss n and its Martial Sage matriarch joining the Martial Union was nothing short of a shock to ten Martial Sages of the Martial Union. They probably would not have personally undertaken this case if Matriarch Nephi had still been a Martial Master.


    Naturally, the power of prophecy was deeply attractive, but a Martial Sage wielding prophecy was something that definitely earned their personal intervention.


    He was grateful for the deference they had shown him by not rushing in to intervene the moment the Ss n entered the Martial Sage after the confrontation with Sage Farana. They had waited patiently for him to finish his initial guidance of the Ss n around the Kandrian Empire.


    However, they would undoubtedly seek an exnation and understanding of what had happened.


    In fact, most likely, the same could be said for the Kandrian government and the military, as well as the Kandrian Security Agency.


    The difference was that he was more powerful than most people who sought exnations from him. He didn''t need to answer them with the sheer amount of political capital he had.


    The only forces he could not brush off were his father and the Martial Union.


    STEP


    He exhaled deeply as he arrived before the Martial Union national headquarters in the Town of Vargard along with his eight bodyguards.


    It wasn''t long before he found himself standing before the gate to the Sage Council Hall of the Martial Union.


    His expression grew grave.


    It took every ounce of self-control to prevent himself from quivering under the sheer pressure that permeated from deep within the hall.


    He could almost hear heaven and earth screaming in agony under the weight of ten Martial Sages.


    It was as though the weight of their being exceeded what the world around them could bear.


    RUMBLE


    The world shivered unsteadily.


    Rui exhaled unsteadily, reaching the open gates.


    CLACK


    Ten martial Sages greeted him with powerful, deep stares the moment the gates opened. The ten of them were seated on extravagant thrones on an elevated tform, allowing them to look down on those who beheld them.


    Rui gritted his teeth, arming himself with his strongest Mind Mask to weather the passive pressure that their presence generated within his mind.


    It was effortless on their behalf.


    A part of their being.


    Yet it was almost more than what Rui was able to tolerate.


    STEP


    STEP


    STEP


    Rui walked closer towards them, reaching the center of the great hall, before bowing deeply to the ten Martial Sages with a hand sped at his fist.


    "Greetings, Your Sagehoods," Rui replied with a deferring and respectful tone. "I am deeply honored to be deigned worthy of-"


    "-Cut the crap."


    The Sloth Sage''szy voice echoed through the hall.


    He eyed Rui sleepily. "You can save that for royal stuff, and we don''t care for that in the Martial Union."


    Rui knew this, but it was worth a try.


    "I understand Your Sagehood," Rui straightened himself.


    "Senior Rui," the Mountain of Fortitude addressed Rui with his Martial honorific rather than his royal one. "You must be aware of why we have summoned you."


    His tone was formal.


    His eyes were sharp, boring into Rui''s.


    He conveyed an unfathomable weight¡ªas though a single knuckle on his fist weighted as much as a mountain.


    This was a leader of the Earth Sect.


    "Most certainly, Your Sagehood," Rui affirmed firmly.


    "Then, tell us, Void Prince," the clear voice of a little girl echoed through the hall. "What is the meaning of this?"


    He nced at the Flickering Elder.


    She looked to be no older than eight. She would fit right into the Quarrier Orphanage, in fact.


    If one could ignore the perilous Sage-level aura that radiated from her, as well as the fact that her physicality distorted in real-time.


    A multitude of micro-movements across her entire body in a matter of nanoseconds conveyed the impression that her body was in multiple ces at once. It was deeply unsettling, yet Rui firmly maintained hisposure.


    "It is exactly as it seems, Your Sagehood," Rui sincerely replied. "After my father, Emperor Rael, revealed my kinship with the Ss n, I sought them and found them, making contact with them and eventually convincing them to join the Kandrian Empire."


    RUMBLE


    The world shivered beneath his feet as the Martial Sages narrowed their eyes, peering into his eyes.


    "When, where, and how did you do all of this when you never once left the Kandrian Empire?" A raspy whisper echoed through the hall.


    The Whispering Widower seemed particrly intense among them.


    "I must deeply apologize, Your Sagehood," Rui replied calmly. "However, I''m afraid I cannot say."


    RUMBLE


    His eyes sharpened. "You would dare to deprive me of the truth?"


    Rui gritted his teeth.


    It took him every ounce of willpower to maintain hisposure, but he could not dare to divulge the existence of Sage Sayfeel. It would be the height of ipetence and betrayal to do so.


    "Lemolen."


    The air boiled as the Tempestuous Fortress red at the Whispering Widower, intervening. "Cede."


    Rui broke into a cold sweat as a tsunami of peril erupted from the two.


    "Pressuring one of our most valued partners and constituents is deeply inappropriate." The shing Flier calmly dered, pinning the Widowing Whisperer with a powerful gaze.


    Yet thetter refused to relent.


    "A Martial Senior ought to know when to defer to a Martial Sage," the Whispering Widower whispered, his eyes turning back to Rui. "His princehood has gotten to his head. Perhaps I ought to-"


    He froze as a horrifyingly malevolent bloodlust erupted from across the table.


    Its maleficence rotted the very world around them.


    Rui shivered.


    He shivered as he experienced a depth of horror that he didn''t know was possible.


    "Touch him, and I will eat your heart."


    The world shook with fear as the Devil, Sage Damian Arrancar himself, dered with a predatory grin.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1853 Mediator

    Chapter 1853 Mediator


    The air boiled.


    It boiled tumultuously as the Devil made his deration.


    Rui gritted his teeth as he struggled to maintain hisposure.


    He failed.


    Such was the horror that radiated from the Martial Sage touted as the Devil.


    The Widowing Whisperer narrowed his eyes, ring at the leader of the Fire Sect. Yet he didn''t retort back.


    Sage Damian Arrancar was the greatest maniac of the Martial Sages of the Kandrian Empire.


    He was also the strongest. That wasn''t the only reason that the Whispering Widower froze in his tracks at the threat that the Martial Sage brazenly dered.


    That threat was the reason the Second East Panamic War had been triggered. Sage Damian killed a Martial Sage of the Britannian Empire by doing exactly what he had threatened to do.


    By eating his heart.


    "Calm down," the Mountain Fortitude narrowed his eyes. "You too, Lemolen. None of us will tolerate any sort of action, no matter how little, against the Void Prince just because he refused to divulge information he had no obligation to divulge."


    The other Martial Sages turned their powerful gazes to the assassin Sage.


    It was clear that this was a sentiment that they each shared.


    "Hmph," the Whispering Widower relented, closing his eyes and folding his arms. "Acting like I was going to kill him. It was only my intention to educate him about the hierarchy of power in Martial Art."


    "I am in charge of education," Sage Dagar Roschem, the shing Flier, calmly reassured. "Leave that to me. Regardless, we have gotten off-topic."


    The leader of the Lightning Sect turned his gaze to meet Rui''s eyes. "It is indeed rather strange that you were able to find, meet,pel, and coordinate the Ss n''s arrival to the Kandrian Empire without a single person noticing. However, I suppose that is a testament to yourpetence. Like father, like son."


    "If you don''t wish to divulge the details of this particr matter, then we shall respect your wishes," the Flickering Elder graciously dered. "Frankly, these details, as confounding as they are, do not matter. They are not why we have gathered here. They are not why we have summoned you here."


    Their attention returned to him, pinning him in ce. "Where in the harmony of the Kandrian Empire does the Ss n fit?"


    Rui narrowed his eyes. In other words, they wanted to know what the Ss n was going to do now that it had be citizens of Kandria.


    Depending on which faction, power bloc, or stakeholder group the Ss n sought to join, they would undoubtedly alter the power dynamics of the Kandrian Empire.


    Of course, Rui was certain that the ten Martial Sages of the Martial Union were hoping that the Ss n would join the Martial Union as a Martial family in a manner simr to the Arrancar Family, the Roschem Family, and the Duhan Family led by the Devil, the shing Flier, and the Hugging Hegemon.


    "The Ss n hopes to join the Martial Union."


    Rui''s voice echoed across the hall.


    Clearly, the Sage Council of the Martial Union was pleased by this revtion. It increased the Martial and bargaining power of the Martial Union and gave them ess to a priceless stream of information about the future itself.


    "Of course," Rui continued. "That does not mean it will be unconditional. They are offering a powerful, unique service and will not settle for being short-changed. They have a deep narcissistic pride regarding their power of prophecy; thus, if you convey even the slightest hint of disregard for their prophecy, they will not join the Martial Union."


    The Martial Sages narrowed their eyes thoughtfully at his words.


    "They are also paranoid regarding outsiders due to centuries of persecution and possess no diplomatic sense or experience. In addition, they have powerful kinship, low societal awareness, and are religious to the Transcendent Prophet. That concludes all the important elements of their character profile, though I am able to provide you with a more detailed character profile if you desire."


    He knew exactly what they sought from him, offering it before they could even ask; intelligence.


    "As far as their interests and demands go, they require longevity potions to ameliorate the lifespan-consuming effects of the Eye of Prophecy technique. They also seek security guarantees for full aid and cooperation from the Martial Union in the event they get attacked for their technique. Tertiarily, they also seek Martial Art resources that are exclusive to the Martial Union," Rui replied. "They have other requirements, but those are not of the Martial Union and will be handled by my faction."


    He closed his eyes. "I am more than willing to serve as a mediator, should Your Sagehoods desire this of me."


    That was what they sought of him: intelligence and aid.


    The ten Martial Sages stared at him nkly for a moment.


    RUMBLE


    "Cut to the chase and right to the point," the Devil chuckled. "I like you, kid." N?velDrama.Org owns ? this.


    Rui turned towards Sage Damian Arrancar with a deep gaze. "It has been a long time, Your Sagehood."


    He had met Kane''s dad for a brief moment a long time ago, passing out in his presence the first time he entered the Arrancar Mansion.


    It could barely be considered a meeting.


    He didn''t know what to think of the Martial Sage when he thought about Kane. The man had tormented Kane for a long time but had ultimately turned out to have done it for his sake so that his drive would ensure he realized his potential, unlike Fiona, whose father also happened to be sitting in the room.


    In addition, Fae''s grandmother was here too.


    He closed his eyes, shaking his head inwardly. This was not a family-friend meeting; it was a serious council meeting that sought to maximize the gains from the opportunity of the Ss n.


    "Prince Rui Quarrier Ss Kandria," the shing Flier calmly addressed him. "We are grateful for your willingness to mediate an audience with the Ss n. It is clear that you possess a much greater understanding of them than we do. Any and all information and aid that you are able to give will be greatly appreciated. You can rest assured that our objectives are to amodate the Ss n in a position that is befitting of their power and contributions, just as we do with all Martial Artists in Kandria."


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1854 Conquered Death

    Chapter 1854 Conquered Death


    The meeting with Sage Council continued for some time as Rui went more in-depth into the nuances of the character profile that he had formed on the Ss n and their interests and objectives. This time, he spoke more about Matriarch Nephi, who had earned their interest and curiosity; she was the most important member of the Ss n by far, after all.


    Simultaneously, he gauged just how far the Sage Council was willing to amodate the Ss n.


    "We hope to forge an exclusive partnership contract between the Ss n and the Martial Union," the Flickering Sage informed Rui. "We are aware that it is somewhat unrealistic for the Ss n to acquiesce to bing a part of our internal corps."


    Rui nodded. "They strongly value their autonomy; they are deeply unwilling to move at someone else''s order. Most likely, they will not cede to any sort of conscription use. Thus, I think forging a partnership like you do with external partners like myself is ideal. A revenue split agreement, a mutual-aid use where both parties aid the other in times of unprovoked conflict by the respective parties, and amission use where you make use of their services for a certain annual fee might be the best way to go about it and free ess to the Martial Union''s technique data base."


    Such an agreement would give the Ss n the guaranteed political and militaristic protection of the Kandrian Empire, where they would be required to aid the Martial Union. It would also allow them to sell their services for wealth that they could use to procure potions and other resources.


    It was a win-win situation as far as Rui was concerned. Both parties got what they wanted. The Martial Union could boast a whopping eleven Martial Sages and the other Martial Artists of the Ss n, and it could also make use of prophecy services.


    In turn, the Ss n could rx under the guaranteed protection of ten Martial Sages, a hundred and ten Martial Masters, and more than a thousand Martial Seniors. It also had the protection of the Kandrian Border Patrol Force and the Kandrian Security Agency, each boasting a Martial Sage. They also would be able to purchase and procure potions and the endless Martial Art resources that the Martial Union had.


    "You are truly incredible."


    RUMBLE


    His statement permeated through the world itself.


    The weight of his emotion coerced him into submission. This text is ? N?velDrama/.Org.


    The Mountain of Fortitude gazed at Rui with admiration as his voice cut through all of Rui''s thoughts.


    "Your value to us is beyond what any kind of remuneration can possibly justify," The Mountain of Fortitude remarked. "We are willing to wage wars for you should the need ever arise. We look forward to seeing what you aplish on the throne. I have been one of your most ardent supporters as the next Emperor of Kandria."


    Rui had to control himself from wincing and grimacing, bowing his head in turn. "Thank you for your kind words, Your Sagehood."


    Yet he couldn''t help but feel heavy in his heart.


    "Ss n, eh?" the Sloth Sage yawnedzily, heaving a sigh. "This is going to be a drag."


    "You have given us much to think about, Prince Rui Quarrier Kandria," The Flickering Elder. "We will endeavor to approach the Ss n after we have thoroughly prepared ourselves to make the most favorable first meeting. Any intelligence reports on your behalf would be appreciated. When that happens, we will look to you to mediate the meeting as trusted members of both groups."


    "I will do my best, Your Sagehood," Rui bowed towards her.


    Soon enough, the meeting came to an end.


    Rui heaved a sigh, massaging his temples as the stressful meeting finally came to an end. Now, he just needed to convey this to Matriarch Nephi so she could be aware of it. Then, he had to wait for the Martial Union to arrange for a meeting with the Ss n and mediate it. Once the arrangement was set, then there really was no need for him to stick around as things would proceed smoothly. When he returned to his office, he found a strange package waiting on his office room table.


    He frowned. "Did you put this here?" "No, Your Highness," she furrowed her eyebrows.


    He opened the package, inspecting its contents as realization dawned on him. "It''s the Beggar''s Sect. Show off."


    He shook his head before going through the information package that the Beggar Sage had prepared for him.


    [Doctor Kar Mar-Vel]


    Rui narrowed his eyes. ''Is that his real name?''


    He had only heard the Divine Doctor addressed by the name ''Divine Doctor,'' considering that this man was allegedly older than the Age of Martial Art, it was not strange that his real name had long been buried in the sands of time.


    ording to the Beggar Sage, the Divine Doctor was a young boy who grew up in a settlement in North Panama. Born in an unstable age with little prosperity, he grew up having to satiate his endless curiosity regarding the mechanics of life with experimentation and self-experimentation.


    So much so that by the age of fifteen, he singlehandedly cured his entire vige of a gue that had spread across human civilization, if it even existed in any meaningful sense then.


    That event triggered him to pursue the path of medicine, creating and founding the modern medical school of thought. Disease after disease, condition after condition, his understanding of the human condition spiked, far outstripping the nascent medical professionals that had been born as a result of the field of medicine that he had founded.


    He traveled across the world, spreading the art and science of medicine across all of human civilization.


    His contributions to humanity were immeasurable. It was difficult to say whether humanity would have survived the harshness of this world without his medicine. Yet there had always been one condition that he had never been able to cure.


    Death.


    Try as he might, once a human died, nothing could fix them. When his life soon approached its natural end, rather than gracefully epting his death, he sought to ovee it.


    His lone efforts were not enough.


    Yet he was not alone. Two others, who were equally gifted in mind, aided him: the Psycher and the Beggar Sage.


    Together, the three of them pooled their ingenuity, and shortly before the Divine Doctor was to die, they did it. Together, they freed the soul from the shackles of a dying body and imnted it into a new, younger body.


    They conquered death.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1855 Worthy

    Chapter 1855 Worthy


    ??Rui''s eyes widened as he read through the Beggar Sage''s ount of the Divine Doctor''s life.


    This was not what he expected.


    "¡­The Divine Doctor, the Beggar Sage, and the Psycher conquered death together?" Rui whispered, stunned.


    The Beggar Sage did not specify the mechanics of the soul transferring, which Rui expected. Functional immortality was sought after even more than the power of prophecy. Any information regarding it was priceless.


    He continued reading on through the ount of the Divine Doctor.


    Once he grew immortal, the Divine Doctor spent his days looking for greater and greater hurdles to cure.


    He had already cured death.


    Now, he sought to cure diseases and conditions worse than death.


    He spent his days traveling across all of human civilization in search of medical conditions and patients that could challenge his transcendent medical prowess.


    At the moment, ording to the Beggar Sage, the Divine Doctor was undertaking the greatest challenge that ever existed. The greatest challenge that would ever exist. The greatest challenge possible. A feat worthy of the gods should he sessfully ovee.


    He was in the Beast Domain, pursuing the diagnosis for this particr patient.


    There were many more details, but they weren''t nearly as important.


    ''So basically, the Divine Doctor is to medicine what I am to my Martial Path,'' Rui mused, realizing that they might have more inmon than he had considered.


    He frowned as he read the next sentence


    [PS: This is extra information that you might find interesting, but you''ll owe me one if you want to read it, and trust me, I''ll know if you choose to. This information is tangentially rted to this topic and particrly relevant to you, so consider it. Oh, and my favor is not going to be unreasonable. It''s actually quite easy for you, but it is something only you can do.]


    Rui scowled at the message from the Beggar Sage that came after the life story of the Divine Doctor.


    Information relevant to him?


    He narrowed his eyes. The Beggar''s Sect could be sneaky, but it did not lie through its teeth when it came to the information it sold. Credibility and reputation were priceless in the intelligencemunity. If there was even a hint of deception in the information it sold, then its credibility would go down the drain, and it would lose a lot of business.


    "Fine." He muttered before continuing on.


    Their manybined efforts, led by the Divine Doctor, to gain immortality yielded fruit.


    It worked.


    They had be immortal, living on from long before the Age of Martial Art, before the longevity potions of humanity were created, until the modern day.


    The question that had begged them after they gained immortality was what they ought to do with the method of immortality.


    Keep it to themselves?


    It was tempting, but they had decided not to.


    They were not the only ones worthy of immortality. Albeit very minutely few, there were others who were like them, gifted in mind with the power to change humanity forever. They kept their eyes out for such individuals.


    Gifted geniuses with extraordinary minds.


    The Scrier.


    The Astromind.


    The Esoterist.


    They bestowed the gift of immortality upon each of them, allowing them to spread their gifts across humanity forever.


    The Beggar Sage created the Beggar Sect that would allow him to find and locate geniuses of mind around the world, marking them as potential candidates for immortality to approach when they came to the end of their lifespan.


    Unbeknownst to him, one of the chosen candidates was¡­


    special.


    The Martial.


    She was a genius ofbat, able to defeat countless hoards of men all by her lonesome. Armed or unarmed, gangs, and even small armies. She was able toe away victorious against all of them.


    She redefined what was possible to be aplished by a single person.


    The Beggar Sage, impressed by herbat prowess, decided to bestow the gift of immortality on her.


    Unbeknownst to him, this decision would change humanity forever.


    The Martial, to whom he granted immortality, was none other than the first Martial Apprentice of human civilization.


    Rui''s eyes widened with shock as he shook in his seat.


    "What?!" He stared at the words with unadulterated bewilderment.


    The first Martial Apprentice of humanity?


    As far as he was aware, the identity of such a person was entirely unknown. The identity of the first Martial Squire that triggered the dawn of the Age of Martial Art was known, but Martial Apprentices existed at least a century before the Age of Martial Art.


    Due to the poorly written records from an era six hundred years ago, it was impossible to know exactly which Martial Apprentice was the first Martial Apprentice of humanity.


    Now, however, Rui knew exactly who it was.


    Not only that.


    The revtion that the Beggar Sage was ultimately responsible for triggering the Age of Martial Art was shocking!


    Yet, what was toe shocked him even more!


    [You, Rui Quarrier Ss Kandria, may be worthy of immortality as judged by none other than me, one of the three keepers of immortality. You are undoubtedly a powerful candidate for the title of sage.]


    Rui stared at the hand-written words of the Beggar Sage as the air tingled under the weight of his mental turmoil.


    His breathing grew heavy as his mind furiously pored at the words of the Beggar Sage.


    [Of course, don''t get it twisted; I say ''immortality,'' but it does not mean you are unable to die. If you die inbat or are murdered, that''s game over. What it is is longevity. In your case, you are a Martial Artist and have ess to longevity potions, so you won''t need me any time soon. But one day, centuries from now, you will. Your lifespan will one day deplete, and when it does, you better hope that I deem you worthy of a new life]


    Rui struggled to maintain hisposure as the Beggar Sage casually revealed life-altering information to him.


    This chapter upload first at  Content provided by N?velDrama.Org.

 Chapter 1856 Prism Valley

    <h4>Chapter 1856 Prism Valley </h4>


    Rui''s mind was in a muck, trying to process all the information that the Beggar Sage had nonchntly thrown at him.


    Today, he learned that he had applied for a longevity program he didn''t even know existed.


    Hell, he was scouted for it.


    Scouted by the Beggar Sage.


    It made sense on a rational level, considering how much his talent had shined. The extraordinary capabilities of his mind were almost public knowledge at this point. Thus, if the Beggar Sage was looking for truly exceptional human beings that stood out from all of human civilization, then Rui was indeed among them in the modern era.


    However, it still hadn''t settled into his soul that he now potentially had a path after natural death.


    The ramifications of this new revtion were rocking, which is why he struggled to process them.


    It reminded him of the revtion of the meaning of his name.


    His eyes narrowed at that thought.


    Soul transferral.


    Something clicked in his mind.


    ''Could it be¡­?''


    For the first time in his life, he had found something that resembled a clue regarding the greatest mystery of his life.


    Unfortunately, any critical analysis quickly revealed that it was not a viable exnation.


    For one, he didn''t just reincarnate; he moved to another world entirely with a reality that defied the one that he had known in his previous life.


    On top of that, the Beggar Sage stated that he, the Divine Doctor, and the Psycher were the only ones who had this so-called soul-transferral technique. However, the Beggar Sage made it clear from his words that they had nothing to do with his reincarnation.


    He was being considered a candidate for immortality, as in he had never been one.


    Thus, it was questionable whether his reincarnation had anything to do with this so-called soul transferral.


    A myriad of possibilities shed through his mind as he considered the matter more deeply.


    His mother almost certainly knew that he had been reincarnated. It appeared that now he may have found something that could potentially help elucidate the truth of his reincarnation.


    These were just two pieces, potential pieces, of a muchrger puzzle that had been a mystery his entire life.


    Yet the stronger he got, the more he learned about the world, and the closer he came to an answer to what was the greatest mystery of his life.


    Or lives, rather.


    "Huff¡­" He heaved a deep sigh, shaking his head.


    It was too open-ended to spend too much of his time on. There were essentially infinite possibilities, and he had no real way of narrowing them down any more than he had already tried to do.


    As for being selected for immortality¡­


    He was a Martial Senior with ess to as many potions as he could possibly ever need. He could live on for many, many centuries. The matter of his lifespan was an extremely distant and hardly pressing matter.


    It did not move Rui This text is ? N?velDrama/.Org.


    In fact, as shocking as all of this information was, it was not the most important information that he had received. The most important and vital information that he had received was¡­


    ''Thest known location of the Divine Doctor in the Human Domain,'' Rui narrowed his eyes as he eyed the location.


    [The Prism Valley]


    It was a valley that served as a passageway into the Beast Domain from the Human Domain, located at the edge of the western side of the Beast Domain. It was thest time that the Divine Doctor had been seen in the Human Domain.


    This was what he was looking for.


    The earlier information that the Beggar Sage threw at him was sensational, novel, and shocking, but it did not help him in any way in any short-term sense.


    He put the matter aside for now; he had more pertinent matters to deal with at the moment. He needed to show the information regarding the Divine Doctor to his grandmother; he also needed to prepare for the deliberations between the Matriarch and the Sage council of the Martial Union.


    Only when those two matters were fully taken care of could he head out to the Adventurer''s Guild to speak with the guildmaster.


    When he returned to the Quarrier Orphanage, his eyes furrowed with surprise.


    "I wondered how he managed to be such a splendid young man when raised in an orphanage, but¡­" Matriarch Nephi held the hands of Lashara. "I no longer have any doubts. Thank you, dear, for giving my grandson a life of love."


    "N-Not at all, Your Sagehood!"


    "You are the adoptive mother of my grandson; cease with such stiff formality. I was never fond of that honorific. Today, I am merely an elderly woman expressing gratitude to the mother of my grandson."


    Matriarch Nephi did a splendid job of controlling her aura.


    The aura of a Martial Sage could cause mental damage to ordinary humans regardless of intent. Rui actually marveled at how firmly and properly she was able to erase any pressure that she generated in the subconscious minds of those around her.


    However, it made sense.


    The Ss n was a tight-knit n that was always together. This meant that Matriarch Nephi was always meters or feet away from her kin.


    She could not afford to not control her power. It was undoubtedly a basic skill that was an absolute necessity for all Ss Martial Artists in order to ensure that they did not hurt their own kin.


    That was why the children of the Quarrier Orphanage were able to swarm around her, receiving hugs and pets without ever once realizing that the gentle, affectionate elderly grandma who indulged them had the power to reduce nations to a hole in the ground.


    Julian and Xanarn were equally unnerved under their superficialposure, for they understood exactly how powerful this being was.


    It was a surreal scene.


    Yet the peace and serenity left him longing.


    "You''ve returned, my grandson?" Matriarch Nephi turned to him calmly.


    "Yes, grandmother."


    "Mmmm, it appears that we have much to talk about," she remarked. Her eyes softened as her gaze returned to Lashara. "Then, I shall no longer impose on you. Maintaining a family is difficult, after all. I look forward to speaking to you once more. I will have you regale me with the stories of my grandson from his entire life."


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1857 Instinct

    <h4>Chapter 1857 Instinct </h4>


    Lashara smiled at those words, turning to Rui with an affectionate gaze. "¡­It is my favorite past-time."


    Rui''s smile was mncholic, for he knew that soon he would be departing from the Kandrian Empire and would not see her for several years toe.


    "Then, you''ll have to pardon me while I borrow this young man for a brief," Matriarch Nephi got up, withdrawing her hands from Lashara. "We have some important matters to speak about."


    Rui waved the dumbfounded Quarrier Orphanage. "I''ll be back in an hour or so."


    The two of them sky-walked across Kandria toward the Ilvilia Forest, where the Ss n was settling.


    "You have been blessed," Matriarch Nephi remarked with a profound tone. "That bastard Rael did a good job finding a family for you."


    Rui smiled wryly. "Grandmother, when I''m gone¡­"


    "Don''t worry," she remarked. "I shall ensure that no harm shall befall the Quarrier Orphanage. Not now, not ever. Rest assured that my power will protect them always.


    Rui heaved a deep sigh of relief. "¡­Thank you."


    With that reassurance, Rui could probably stop worrying about the Quarrier Orphanage entirely. With the protection of a prophetic Martial Sage, the Quarrier Orphanage was essentially untouchable. This text is ? N?velDrama/.Org.


    "Now then," Matriarch Nephi narrowed her eyes. "What did the Martial Sages of the Martial Union say to you?"


    "They were naturally shocked by your citizenship in Kandria," Rui remarked. "At the same time, they were deeply interested in winning over the Ss n to the Martial Union. Now that the Ss n has settled in the Kandrian Empire, everybody wants a piece of the pie."


    "Hm, and you''re sure that the Martial Union is the ce most suited for us?"


    "Without a doubt, the other options are governmental institutions that require loyalty and some amount ofpliance with orders from superiors or the Underworld, where you will then be the enemy of the Martial Union and the Emperor," Rui informed her. "Of course, you can also go ''his'' route and swear an oath of loyalty to the Emperor."


    He didn''t dare utter Sage Sayfeel''s name aloud. He had already warned the Matriarch of the importance of the secret and had reluctantly got her to agree to allow Sage Sayfeel to wipe out his memory from their minds with some hypnosis while she herself agreed to never divulge the secret.


    "Hmph, no thank you," she snorted. "We refuse to make enemies inside the nation or swear loyalty andply. The Martial Union seems like the best ce, without a doubt."


    "It definitely is," Rui admitted. "As I was saying, they were deeply interested in obtaining the Ss n''s partnership and even giving you all a say in the Union''s Fiscal Committee, which decides the allocation of the Martial Art budget. They are also proposing a mutual aid agreement where both parties wille to aid the other in times of unprovoked conflict."


    Matriarch Nephi''s eyes nodded with enthuse at that. "We are very much willing to enter such an agreement unless the Martial Union is frequently attacked. Is it?"


    "Thest time it was attacked was more than eighty years ago during the Second Great Panamic War," Rui shrugged. "Only a minute proportion of the peak of human civilization, the Sage-level powerhouses, around the Panamic Continent that have the balls to attack us. And frankly, the incentive is not strong enough. They''ll lose far more than they could possibly ever gain."


    It was simply not worth it to lose half one''s Martial Sages and Martial Masters just to get one''s hands on the power of prophecy. Both sses of Martial Artists were too powerful to be worth sacrificing en masse for the sake of the power of prophecy.


    "Hm, that''s quite attractive, then," Matriarch Nephi remarked.


    "Do you want me to provide you with a more detailed report regarding the Martial Union and its Sages?"


    "Hmph, that won''t be necessary. It has been a long time since I''ve read in the continental dialect, and I prefer to rely on more own judgment rather than second-hand intelligence."


    "Understandable."


    It simplified his job, certainly.


    STEP


    They arrived at the Ss settlement in the Ilvilia Forest.


    Rui nced around, inspecting the progress of the n. Considering how short a while it had been, they had made significant progress in building initial settlements for everybody in a short amount of time.


    "Come," she remarked to her grandson, entering a particrlyrge hut. "Give me all the information you have about the Divine Doctor. I shall fulfill your request to me now that it is clear that you have obtained all the information that I require."


    Rui nodded before proceeding to tell her everything that the information package covered. He also showed her several pictorial representations of data, including a map featuring the Divine Doctor''s migration patterns in the Human Domain.


    He made sure to congest and present her summaries and distilled shreds of information that were particrly pertinent.


    "Hmmm¡­" Matriarch Nephi narrowed her eyes a few hourster. "How fascinating. To think that he has managed to conquer death in this fashion. I wonder if the Ss n could employ their soul transfer technique to ovee the shoring of the Eye of Prophecy technique?"


    Her eyes shed with greed at the revtion of this new information.


    "I doubt that the Beggar Sage is going to offer up the key to immortality," Rui shrugged. "But that''s about all the relevant information about the Divine Doctor. So what do you think, grandmother? Can you use your Eye of Prophecy technique to locate the Divine Doctor?"


    He gazed at her with enthusiasm and anticipation.


    "Remains to be seen," Matriarch Nephi. "I will need some time to digest and process everything that you have told me."


    Rui tilted his head. "Is that how the technique works?"


    "Of course. I suppose I can tell you now."


    Her tone grew solemn as the air almost instantly grew heavier.


    The intensity in her eyes reflected the importance of what she was about to disclose.


    "Ites from the soul."


    Rui narrowed his eyes.


    "Every living creature is able to instinctively discern the future, whether it''s something as simple as instinctively predicting the motion of moving objects or moreplex instinctive estimations of the future of matters rting to people," she continued. "The origin of these instincts regarding the future is the subconscious mind. Sage Ss developed a sophisticated set of hypnotic training techniques that trained and honed that future instinct, elevating it far beyond instinct. Elevating it to the Eye of Prophecy."


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1858 I Accept

    <h4>Chapter 1858 I ept </h4>


    At that moment, a flood of memories from back on Earth struck him.


    It was a time during which John Falken had already finished the development of the adaptive evolution model that allowed the user to thoroughly adapt to anybody with the most perfectly ced counter to any given move.


    One of the biggest problems he was running into was that the human mind was too slow to execute these moves before it was toote. Human movement speed exceeded human reaction speed.


    That was why he had turned to prediction.


    If the user could predict the movement of his opponents urately, then he could begin his counter at the right moment.


    Of course, he had eventually gone on to develop the predictive model for just that reason. However, the predictive model had not been his only option. Another serious contender for the prediction mechanism was honing and training the subconscious predictive instinct that was based on subconscious pattern recognition.


    It was a very serious contender for bing the predictive mechanism.


    There was very rigorous research that statistically demonstrated the subconscious mind''s ability to foresee the future. There was research that neurologically demonstrated that parts of the brain associated with the subconscious mind preemptively prepared to execute decisions before the conscious mind had even made an actual conscious decision. Content provided by N?velDrama.Org.


    It was an evolutionary neurological trait that greatly predicted survival, which was why evolution favored it.


    Rui often wondered what would have happened if John had instead chosen to go with the subconscious, instinctive prediction instead of the conscious statistical prediction of the predictive model.


    Well, now he found out.


    It would have worked out just fine.


    "Incredible¡­" Rui murmured. "Instinctive prediction."


    "I know that the prophecy of your technique is different. It''s not prophecy at all, is it?"


    She stared at him with a knowing look.


    A Martial Sage could not be fooled so easily.


    "It isn''t," Rui smiled wryly. "It''s calction. Really advanced calction."


    "Fascinating," she murmured. "I was not aware that the future could be calcted. Yet your worths are undoubtedly truthful. I sensed a tsunami of conscious thought erupting within the depths of your powerful mind during your fight with Huldah."


    She closed her eyes. "Imagine what would happen if we were tobine these two techniques."


    Rui''s eyes lit up with a hint of greed.


    "We would ascend from mere prophets to¡­gods," her voice grew energetic at the prospect of attaining the power that Rui had shown her.


    "¡­It will be the first thing I do after returning," Rui heaved a sigh.


    "Hmph, is the nation? Is your father that important to you, boy?" She snorted. "You''re wasting time on things not rted to the growth of your Martial Art."


    "That''s a false dichotomy, grandmother. It''s not that simple," Rui replied calmly. "I am not choosing between my Martial Art and the matter of Kandria''s next Emperor. Choosing to expose myself to the Beast Domain will probably do me more good for my Martial Art than remaining here and mastering your technique."


    There was a reason he truly believed this.


    She peered at him knowingly. "Being protected by eight mindforgers around the clock has dulled your instincts."


    Rui heaved a sigh. "Yes, unfortunately. I am no longer alert or aware because there is no point in being alert or aware. On top of that, I have only fought seriously twice in the past year and a half. That is a very graveck of realbat experience. I used to be embroiled in more conflict before I returned to Kandria. I was alert, and my instincts were sharper."


    "Hm, in that regard, perhaps it would be better for you to get away from this environment," she remarked. "When do you n to leave?"


    "In some days after all the matters regarding the Ss n are settled."


    "Then I shall be sure to prepare a prophecy for you by then."


    Rui smiled. "I appreciate that, grandmother."


    Days passed as Rui waited for the Martial Union to make its move.


    He wasn''t the only one waiting.


    The entirety of East Panama was waiting as well.


    The sudden increase in the Martial Sage count of the Kandrian Empire had already sent ripples across East Panama. The economic incline that this event would cause had already been felt in the first week since the arrival of the Ss n as the Martial Credit currency index experienced a whopping eight percent growth internationally.


    This was before the Ss n had even met the Martial Union!


    It reflected the expectations of the internationalmunity. The Ss n was an asset and a power unlike any other that existed in East Panama. That was not to say it was Martially the strongest, certainly not.


    It was strategically the most powerful for a nation.


    If not for the fact that the Kandrian Empire under the Emperor of Harmony was not hawkish or conquest-oriented, many people would be worried about what the Kandrian Empire would be capable of once the Martial Union fully harnessed the power of the Ss n.


    Some even hoped that there would be a severe breakdown in negotiations, causing the Ss n to leave the Kandrian Empire.


    Unfortunately for them, Rui did not intend to allow this oue to unfold. He had earned the trust of both parties and would be serving as the mediator for the approaching conference.


    And it arrived.


    STEP


    Master Sera Graven, the Harbinger, had arrived at the settlement of the Ss n in the Ilvilia n, wearing formal attire with the emblem of the Martial Union on the chest of her attire.


    A profoundly powerful Master-level aura radiated from her. One that was stronger than all Martial Masters of the Kandrian Empire.


    Naturally, she could not be ignored.


    STEP


    The Mindforgers of the Ss n had arrived before, regarding her with stern caution.


    "Identity yourself and your purpose for approaching the Ss n."


    "I am Sera Gervin of the Master Council of the Martial Union," she calmly replied, pulling out an extravagantly adorned envelope. "I am here to convey an invitation for a conference personally offered by the Sage Council of the Martial Union to Matriarch Nephi Ss of the Ss n. From Sage to Sage, they beseech an audience with her."


    RUMBLE


    The Harbinger stiffened as a profoundly power presence shook the very world around them, bending heaven and earth under the weight of her being.


    STEP


    Matriarch Nephi had arrived.


    A single remark escaped her mouth.


    "I ept."


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1859 First Meeting

    <h4>Chapter 1859 First Meeting </h4>


    The Sage Council of the Martial Union didn''t mess around too much. While emperors and rulers of nations would often take weeks, months, and in some extreme cases, even years to n out such an important meeting, they didn''t care for all that.


    The invitation was a handwritten letter.


    [Respected Matriarch of the Ss n, Matriarch Nephi,


    On behalf of the Sage Council, we, the Flickering Elder, the Mountain of Fortitude, and the Hugging Hegemon would like to invite you to a summit to discuss the prospects of any potential cooperation between the the Martial Union and the Ss n. We hope to formally wee you to the Kandrian Empire and explore each other''s interests and objectives to potentiallye together in a powerful, mutually beneficial agreement and understanding between us for the betterment of both parties.


    We would like to nominate Prince Rui Quarrier Ss Kandria as a neutral mediator who truly wishes the best for both parties and understands what each party needs and desires.


    We hope that you will ept our invitation, and we look forward to speaking with you.]


    Three signatures from each Martial Sage were at the bottom of the invitation card, along with other details such as the venue and the time period.


    "Hmph, I didn''t expect the Martial Union to be so suffocatingly formal," Matriarch Nephi snorted once she read through the letter.


    "That''s actually not all that formal," Rui replied. "A formal invitation would be much more tedious in its verbiage and sentence structure. That''s semi-formal at best."


    Matriarch Nephi stared at her grandson with deep skepticism.


    Rui heaved an amused sigh. "Listen, grandma, don''t be too casual with the Martial Sages of the Martial Union; this is a formal meeting, and not reciprocating the formality they show you could be interpreted as a sign of disrespect."


    "Hmph, I know."


    Of course, Rui wasn''t all that worried. He had already highlighted Matriarch Nephi''s severeck of diplomatic experience on multiple asions. Thus, he had no doubt that the Martial Sages of the Martial Union would not care.


    What was some rudeness before the prospect of gaining a new Martial Sage and the power of prophecy?


    He continued to prepare her until, eventually, the time for the meeting had arrived. She had dismissed the formal attire that Rui had offered, choosing to wear the leather fashioned from game and cloth fashioned from tree fiber.


    "This is our tradition," she insisted.


    Eventually, they set out for the Town of Vargard to the headquarters of the Martial Union. Naturally, Rui didn''t take his bodyguards this time around. He didn''t need them when he was traveling with his grandmother.


    STEP


    They descended before the Martial Union, where a delegation of Martial Masters had awaited their arrival.


    "Wee to the headquarters of the Kandrian Martial Union, Matriarch Nephi Ss," They bowed, sping their palms over their fists. "Their Sagehoods await to wee you themselves."


    "Hm," She nodded perfunctorily. "Lead the way."


    With each step they took, the world seemed to shift.


    Rui had grown ustomed to this, but it was still unnerving. The impact that Martial Sages had on the world was almost impossible to articte, yet it was one of the most real experiences a person could have.


    Matriarch Nephi, on the other hand, was unperturbed even as she contributed to it as a Martial Sage herself.


    STEP


    They arrived before arge gate.


    Ruiposed himself as the pressure upon the mind had intensified.


    There was no doubt about who awaited them on the other side.


    CLACK


    The gates opened, revealing three Martial Sages standing on the other side.


    The Hugging Hegemon, the Flickering Elder, and the Mountain Fortitude.


    "Wee to the Kandrian Empire and the Martial Union, Matriarch Nephi Ss," the Flickering Elder began with grace in her child-like voice. "We are grateful and pleased that you have epted our invitation. I am Maya Heln, a leader of the Martial Union and the Lightning Sect."


    "I am Kalyn Duhan, matriarch of the Duhan Family and leader of the Fire Sect."


    "I am Kreinwol Vintar, patriarch of the Vintar Family and leader of the Earth Sect. Together, the three of us are represent the will of the Sage Council of the Martial Union."


    "I am Nephi Deborah Ss," Rui''s grandmother spoke with a measured tone. "Matriarch of the Ss n. Thank you for inviting me."


    Not the most elegant response, but it would do.


    The Flickering Elder smiled at her good-naturedly. "We have heard much about you and kin from the many tales that have trickled across human civilization. We have also learned about you from your grandson, our ambassador andmittee member, and hope toe to an understanding and a mutually-beneficial agreement."


    "The Ss n, too, hopes to establish a rtionship with the Martial Union," Matriarch Nephi replied.


    "Then, let us begin without further ado.


    The five of them settled around arge and extravagant table and chairs with the three Union Sages on one side and Matriarch Nephi on the other side. Rui sat at the side of the table to fulfill his role as mediator.


    They nced at him with a pointed look.


    "As an individual with deep rtions with and understanding of both parties," Rui began with a calm and confident tone. "I shall endeavor to establish the interest and objectives of both parties regarding a partnership with each other."


    He gestured to his grandmother lightly. "On one side, we have the Ss n. They seek security from power-mongers who pursue the Ss n for the power of prophecy. Secondarily, they also seek a supply of longevity potions that can ameliorate the price of the forbidden prophecy technique they employ. Tertiarily, they seek Martial Art resources that can help them elevate their prophetic Martial Art, mitigate its drawbacks, and grow stronger as Martial Artists. These are the three primary desires and objectives that the Ss n seeks from a partnership with the Martial Union."


    He turned to his grandmother. "Is that an appropriate representation of your stance, grandmother?"


    "It is." Matriarch Nephi affirmed firmly.


    "Very well," Rui nodded. "On the other hand, the Martial Union seeks to be able to harness or employ the Martial power of the Ss n with appropriate remuneration as well as the prophetic power and prophetic services from the Ss n, also with appropriate remuneration, is that urate?"


    "Definitely," the Hugging Hegemon confirmed nonchntly.


    -Content provided by N?velDrama.Org.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1860 Mediation

    <h4>Chapter 1860 Mediation</h4>


    "Then, in that case, I will attempt to ensure that both parties are able to secure each of their demands in a mutually beneficial cooperative partnership," Rui replied. "I am more than equipped to begin exploring potential models for the partnership between the Ss n and the Martial Union."


    He pulled out several sheets of paper from a folder. Each of them focused on elements of a potential agreement or was a temte for the partnership between the Martial Union and the Ss n with basic terms and conditions between the Martial Union and the Ss n.


    "The first and what might be the most pertinent tenant, in my opinion, would be the use of mutual aid," Rui began. "This use specifies that both parties will be obliged to provide proportional aid to each other in the event that a party is a victim of a sustained and unprovoked assault. This use lends the power of the Martial Union to the Ss n to fulfill the aforementioned security requirement for the Ss n."


    Neither side had any issues with the spirit of the agreement, as Rui had privately conferred with both sides about it, but there were potential issues in defining the details.


    "What exactly counts as unprovoked in these circumstances?" Matriarch Nephi raised an eyebrow. "The Kandrian Empire has made enemies in its history during the Age of Martial Art. It has undoubtedly provoked at least some of them in the past; what if an attack on the Martial Union is a long-awaited retaliation for transgressions of the Martial Union in the distant past?"


    It was a valid concern.


    The Martial Union had undoubtedly picked fights in the past, and Matriarch Nephi wanted nothing to do with conflicts provoked by the Martial Union in the past.


    "It refers to conflicts provoked after the signing of the agreement," Rui replied. "The history of East Panama is such that any attack can be construed as a retaliation. It would be unreasonable to evade aiding the Martial Union by finding some niche historical justification for the attack, thus giving the Ss n justification to not fulfill its obligation. The spirit of the agreement is vited if this urs."


    Approval shed in the eyes of the Union Martial Sages as Rui firmly put his foot down to be fair to the Martial Union.


    "I''m sure your grandson has informed you of this, but nobody attacks the Martial Union," the Mountain of Fortitude remarked with a hint of arrogance. "Very few are even qualified to. On top of that, attacking us in our stronghold and domain of power is almost suicide, even if conducted by a force with the same amount of Martial power as the Martial Union. Rest assured, you will not be dragged into countless battles."


    RUMBLE N?velDrama.Org owns this text.


    It was almost as if his confidence alone radiated seismic radiation through thends beneath them.


    "Then why do you seek the use of mutual aid so much?" Matriarch Nephi raised an eyebrow with askance. "If conflict is rare, then there should be no reason to seek our reinforcements."


    "It is because we are strong that conflict is rare," the Flickering Elder replied calmly. "If we didn''t amass power, we would be targeted. This world is still a world of survival of the fittest. The Ss n should understand this truth better than anybody else, does it not?"


    Matriarch Nephi definitely had to admit that she had a point.


    "Ultimately, we''re stronger together than apart, is all," the Hugging Hegemon grinned. "We can also fight stronger opponents if and when we are attacked."


    "Typical Fire Sect," the Mountain of Fortitude snorted. "The point is to not get attacked; that''s why the Matriarch seeks us. Are you trying to sabotage us?"


    "Hey, just sayin''." She shrugged nonchntly.


    Rui wasn''t sure why the Sage Council had chosen to send her, but if one representative of the Fire Sect needed to be present, then Rui figured that it was better for her than the maniac that was Kane''s father.


    The Flickering Elder heaved a sigh, ncing at the matriarch of the Ss n with an apologetic expression. "Rest assured, the Martial Union does not pick fights just to fight stronger Martial Artists. Individuals can make individual choices that have nothing to do with the Martial Union and thus will not apply to the mutual aid use that is specified."


    That earned Matriarch Nephi''s approval. "Then, I do not care what individuals do or say. The Ss n will not fight to clean up the mess of particrly aggressive members of the Martial Union."


    "That is understandable; however, if the Martial Union is attacked unprovoked, including territory or authoritative and significant members of the Union, then we will expect you toply with the use. Can you confirm you are in agreement with this?"


    "I am," Matriarch Nephi firmly affirmed. "In turn, I expect that the Martial Union will abide by this agreement to the final letter. The Ss n has been attacked many times in the past; we expect you to supply solid reinforcements matching the threat if we are attacked unprovoked."


    "We swear to abide by this condition absolutely on behalf of the Martial Union," the Flickering Elder dered.


    Very quickly, both parties came to an agreement on one element of the partnership between the Martial Union and the Ss n. Rui had expected this, having received a positive response when he proposed the agreement to each side privately.


    "We have taken the first step to arrive at a final agreement for the partnership between the Martial Union and the Ss n," Rui remarked optimistically as he swiftly noted the use in an empty temte for the contract. "With that, one of each of the aforementioned interests and objectives of both parties has been fulfilled; let us engage in discourses and explore other potential agreements that both parties can have."


    The deliberation proceeded smoothly as Rui delicately and gently guided the discussion down productive directions relevant to both parties.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1861 Valuation

    Chapter 1861 Valuation


    While the mutual-aid agreement was rather smoothly settled, it was ultimately low-hanging fruit. It was not one of the more contentious avenues of discourse that Rui would need to delicately mediate.


    "With that, the Martial Union''s remaining important interests in the partnership with the Ss n are their prophetic services," Rui began. "The Ss n''s remaining interests are longevity potions, which are not strictly required from the Martial Union, and Martial Art resources, including but not limited to techniques, training and growth resources, Squire evolution breakthrough procedures, etc. Is this a fair assessment of the remaining primary interests of both parties?"


    The four Martial Sages nodded wordlessly.


    "I am not too keen on my n selling prophetic services," Matriarch Nephi narrowed her eyes. "The prophecy technique drains our lifespan. Frankly, no amount of currency is worth it."


    "That is understandable," The Mountain of Fortitude gently nodded. "However, our intelligence sources have indicated that you yourself are not subject to this price. Is that correct?"


    "¡­It is true that I do not suffer from it, yes."


    "In that case, we are willing to procure prophetic services from you alone," the Flickering Elder continued. "Naturally, you shall be remunerated on the basis of your status as a Martial Sage and the value of the services you are providing. We hope that you will be open to trading your services. You can rest assured that the rest of the ten of us also engage in such services."


    "¡­I am open to the prospects in return for equally valuable resources." This text is ? N?velDrama/.Org.


    "We can offer you enough wealth to buy nations."


    "I care not for wealth," Matriarch Nephi snorted. "My prophecies are strategically game-changing. In return for them, I want a simr supply of longevity potions for my n."


    "¡­That can be arranged for," the Mountain of Fortitude nodded. "It''s a reasonable exchange of goods and services. The only question is how we can determine an exchange rate. It is difficult to quantify the value of prophecy."


    Prophecy was information. It did not have a mary cost of production. Thus, its baseline value could not be estimated with a profit margin. There was no easy solution to valuing it.


    Fortunately, Rui had sharply foreseen this problem well ahead of time, having arrived at a solution.


    "It''s simple," Rui remarked calmly. "We can use a hypothetical differential system to evaluate the losses suffered by the Martial Union had Matriarch Nephi''s prophecy. For instance, if Matriarch Nephi foresees a tsunami from the Great Nam Ocean and ultimately prevents it with the Martial Masters prepared for the event, we can estimate the damage it would have done, damage that would not have been prevented by Matriarch Nephi''s prophecy and evaluate the capital loss suffered as a result. Matriarch Nephi will be entitled to half of that capital, which can be used to estimate how many longevity potions she has earned."


    It was not straightforward and would beplicated and tricky, but it got to the heart of the value of prophecy. Indeed, the value of prophecy was in its power to prevent undesirable unforeseen circumstances and manifest desirable circumstances.


    "¡­That sounds extremelyplicated, Senior Rui," the Mountain of Fortitude raised an eyebrow. "How would you go about evaluating hypothetical loss, and who would be responsible."


    "There exist modeling methodologies; in addition, the information from Matriarch Nephi''s prophecy is powerful. We can cooperate and deliberate to figure out the value. I can have my faction whip up a team dedicated just to representing Matriarch Nephi in this regard."


    Rui knew that the Ss n had no ability topetently deliberate in this regard due to theirck of conventional education and knowledge. Thus, he was more than willing to put qualified teams in charge to handle each case and ensure that his grandmother was not short-changed.


    "¡­That is an eptable arrangement," the Flickering Elder thoughtfully considered. "It won''t always be easy toe to an agreement on the value of a prophecy."


    "I''m sure we''ll manage, Your Sagehood."


    Rui didn''t think that the Martial Union would try to use this to exploit his grandmother; it was an extremely foolish move.


    His grandmother would simply stop selling her prophetic power to the Martial Union if she was being short-changed. In fact, she might choose to direct her services to other parts of the nation, such as the Kandrian Border Patrol Force or Kandrian Security Agency or the military.


    This was an extremely undesirable oue for the Martial Union. They needed to keep Matriarch Nephi happy; otherwise, she had no qualms about never selling to them again.


    "I, too, am satisfied with this particr manner of evaluation," she nodded. "I shall entrust the matter to you, my grandson."


    "Rest assured that I will handle it," Rui reassured her. "With that, we have fulfilled all of the Martial Union''s interests and objectives regarding their partnership with the Ss n. On the other hand, the Ss n has one remaining final interest which is the Martial Union''s Martial Art resources."


    He turned towards his grandmother. "The Martial Union has fulfilled its objectives; thus it will be up to you to provide an offer in return for their vast Martial Art resources."


    "How does one normally procure them?" She asked, turning to Rui.


    "By exchanging Martial Credits that can only be earned through Martial Artmissions or through special agreements," Rui replied. "As someone who has spent much of his lower Realms in the Martial Union''s system, I can assure you that the Martial Union offers plenty of opportunity for redeeming its resources. The system is designed such that as long as a Martial Apprentice, Squire, or Senior works hard, they can continue gaining a reasonable amount of resources from the Martial Union through the Martial Credits that they have earned."


    "Hm," she narrowed her eyes. "And this extends all the way to the Upper Realms?"


    "It does, matriarch," the Mountain of Fortitude calmly reassured. "There is a reason that the Martial Union has managed to retain such high partnership with all the Martial Artists associated with us."


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1862 Escalation

    Chapter 1862 Esction


    "Are you suggesting that the Ss n partake in the Martial Union''s brokering system to earn Martial Credits through missions and earn the Martial Union''s resources in that manner?" Matriarch Nephi frowned.


    "Yes. It is the norm," the Flickering Elder remarked. "There are several Martial Families with Sage-level leaders simr to the Ss n. When ites to the Martial Union''s services, the members of these families work for themselves and earn their resources. Their families do not bail them out; it is not part of the Martial culture in the Martial Union to give bailouts to our Martial Artists."


    "Hm," Matriarch Nephi considered the Martial Union''s words. "¡­In that case, I suppose I shall conform to the norm. How good is the Martial Union''s system?"


    She turned towards her grandson.


    "The best," Rui replied. "I have especially learned of how good its system is after spending time outside of Kandria. Nothing else even remotelypares to the sheer convenience that the Martial Union has to offer. It isn''t absolutely perfect; nothing is, but it is the closest to perfect that I have ever seen. You would be hard-pressed to find any other system that so seamlessly and speedily connects millions of Martial Artists to millions of clients across the world, ounting for all their needs and preferences and adhering to all constraints."


    That was high praise, but Rui meant every word he said. Even when onepared Sage-level powerhouses, the other three in East Panama possessed systems that were not as efficient and effective as the Martial Union.


    Although Rui was not an expert on each of them, he knew they had deep wspared to the Kandrian Empire.


    The Republic of Gorteau had a powerfulmercial and finance sector that somehow managed to gobble up the Martial sector. Martial Artists were hired by Martial contractors who then essentially pimped them out to clients and customers or the government, and there were also Martial Insurance Companies that not only required hefty investments but also took a cut from taxes for emergency supplies of Martial Art services and security at low prices.


    It was extremely exploitative to younger and weaker Martial Artists as well as the citizens of Gorteau.


    The Sekighara Confederate was basically a state run by Martial ns that effectively functioned as Martial mafia gangs that controlled who could learn Martial Art and who couldn''t. Only younglings who swore loyalty to a Martial n could earn the right to pursue Martial Art. Pursuing Martial Art without authorization was actually prohibited. The clients within the nation were extorted with outrageous taxes for the services of the Martial ns that ruled over them, and the status difference between non-Martial Artists and Martial Artists was the greatest.


    The Britannian Empire was a Martial nation where the army was the only organization allowed to hire Martial Artists and the only opportunity for Martial Artists was moving up the ranks in the military. Martial Artists had no freedom to choose their clients and instead would be forced to undertake designated missions or be charged with treason.


    Inparison to these horrific systems in ce, the Kandrian Martial Union was a breath of fresh air. It gave Martial Artists maximum freedom and opportunity in all dimensions of Martial services, including freedom to choose their customers, freedom to choose their missions, and freedom to choose any other parameter that they pleased.


    It had the least and minimal amount of coercion and only at the lowest level, and even then, it was not genuine coercion, as Marital Artists could swiftly terminate their contracts at any given moment as long as they were not mid-mission. They could also pursue different kinds of contracts and arrangements with the Martial Union.


    It was, as far as Rui was concerned, the best system in East Panama.


    In that regard, he was undoubtedly very blessed and privileged to be born in the Kandrian Empire, even if he was biased by that fact.


    "Hm, in that case, we shall endeavor to be a part of the system and conform to tradition," Matriarch Nephi readily agreed. "However, we are unustomed to working in such a situation."


    "Rest assured that we can very much help you with that," the Mountain of Fortitude nodded encouragingly. "Thenguage barrier may prove to be tricky but not insurmountable; we will undertake the burden of handling those."


    Matriarch Nephi nodded. "In that case, I have no issue with my n acquiring the Martial Art resources of the Martial Union."


    With that, the core interests of both parties had been fulfilled extremely quickly, just as Rui had hoped. Of course, writing out the contract would still take time and require effort, but he was grateful for the fact that the most important stuff had been dealt with.


    "Well, I''m sure our legal teams can hash out the details of the contract," Rui heaved a sigh. "And with that-"


    "-Not yet!" The Hugging Hegemon interjected firmly.


    RUMBLE Property ? of N?velDrama.Org.


    Rui shook under the wave of pressure that erupted from her.


    Rui nced at her with a dubious expression.


    "¡­Your Sagehood?" The air grew tumultuous as her grin widened.


    Rui gritted his teeth, struggling to maintain hisposure.


    She wasn''t even flexing her aura.


    This was just a consequence of the weight of her emotion!


    "We have yet to address the most important matter of all!" She dered.


    The Mountain of Fortitude and the Flickering Elder scowled at her, fully understanding her intentions.


    "Sto-"


    "-A MARTIAL CONTEST TO DETERMINE SAGE RANKING!" She bellowed with excitement. The weight of her voice contained the power to annihte a mountain range.


    It threatened to crush Rui.


    WHOOSH!


    Matriarch Nephi narrowed her eyes, waving her hand as she conjured up a barrier of heaven to protect her grandson while the Mountain of Fortitude neutralized the devastating power with ease.


    "This is why I hate the Fire Sect," the Flickering Elder red at the Hugging Hegemon. "What is the meaning of this?" Matriarch Nephi red perilously at the Hugging Hegemon.


    The air boiled as the Hugging Hegemon threw all civility out the window.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1863 Provocation

    Chapter 1863 Provocation


    ??"You need to find your ce in the hierarchy of the Martial Union," the Hugging Hegemon calmed down a bit, yet a me still flickered in her eyes. "To do that, you''ll have to fight us, starting from the weakest to the strongest, to determine exactly where you''re ranked."


    RUMBLE


    The air grew prickled.


    "And why must I do this?" Matriarch Nephi narrowed her eyes.


    A sharp smile appeared on the Hugging Hegemon''s face.


    "Because you''re a Martial Artist, of course."


    Her powerful eyes bored into the matriarch''s. "What''s the matter? Scared? Is the oh-so-mighty leader of the Ss n a little wuss who can''t fight for herself? Her pride and honor? Or is your prophecy too weak for that?"


    Matriarch Nephi''s rage red. "You dare disrespect me?! You dare insult my prophetic power?!"


    "If you want respect¡­" The Hugging Hegemon grinned. "You''re gonna have to earn it. So far all I see is a Martial Sage with a big ego who spent her life running away and hiding."


    It was tantly evident what the Hugging Hegemon was trying to do.


    She was trying to bait the Ss Matriarch into a fight, essentially.


    Unfortunately, even if Matriarch Nephi was aware of her intentions, her pride in her prophecy could not allow her to back down.


    Additionally, she was indeed a Martial Artist.


    Martial Artists respected power.


    This was a simple truth.


    And it was a truth that she could not run away from.


    If she wanted to truly earn the respect of her peers in the Kandrian Empire, she would have to demonstrate her power and earn it.


    Matriarch Nephi closed her eyes. "So be it. I shall demonstrate the superiority of prophecy inbat. You shall learn why I am called the Celestial Seer."


    Rui raised an eyebrow with a hint of curiosity.


    That was indeed an extravagant nickname that conveyed majesty.


    "Hehe, then let''s begin!"


    "No," the Mountain of Fortitude and the Flickering Elder narrowed their eyes as they red at the Hugging Hegemon.


    "Why not?!"


    "You''ll destroy half the Kandrian Empire. If you want, you can fight her yourself in some other remote part of the continent."


    "Tsk, spoilsports," the Hugging Hegemon grumbled.


    She turned to the matriarch with a mischievous grin. "I''ll see you on the battlefield."


    "Which battlefield?"


    "¡­I will find a ce and then send you the location."


    WHOOSH


    She was gone.


    Rui heaved a sigh, shaking his head lightly.


    He would be lying if he said he wasn''t curious as to how shepared to the Kandrian Empire.


    The prophecy Martial Path was undoubtedly very potent and high-grade with versatile application.


    His grandmother most likely had an edge against the Martial Sages of the Martial Union in that regard.


    However, she had broken through to the Sage Realm just a few years ago. That was definitely a disadvantagepared to her peers, who had had more time to limatize to the power of the Sage Realm and make even further progress.


    Unfortunately, it didn''t appear as though Rui would be invited to the battle between the Martial Sages.


    Hell, he doubted he was qualified to witness the battle in the first ce.


    "We apologize for her rudeness," the Mountain of Fortitude heaved a tired sigh.


    "Hmph, it''s not particrly shocking," the matriarch snorted. "Besides, her words, rude and disrespectful as they were, contained an inkling of truth that could not be ignored."


    "We hope to speak with you more once as and once we finalize the agreement between both parties and sign the contracts," the Flickering Elder smiled friendlily to the matriarch of the Ss n. "The avability of your prophetic power has opened up paths and doors to the Union, Empire, and use Martial Sages that were previously unavable. I believe that you can help us grow stronger by foreseeing the oues of certain pursuits of power."


    That was definitely a clever and resourceful use of the prophetic services to shorten the time that they needed to make gains.


    In fact, those weren''t the only ways her prophetic power could be used.


    There were so many ways that it was no wonder that the world hunted the Ss n.Content provided by N?velDrama.Org.


    It did make his job ofing up with a system to evaluate the value of prophecy by the oues they produced harder. He would definitely need to invest some serious capital to ensure that the team he put together would be able to urately evaluate her contributions with her prophecies.


    "I suppose with that, our meetinges to an end," Rui remarked. "We have managed to arrive at firm agreements on several matters, and while hashing out the details will take some time, it is all but set and established. I would say this meeting has been a sess."


    The Flickering Elder smiled at the matriarch. "While we represent the Sage Council, the other Martial Sages will want to speak to you as well, aside from two of them, perhaps. We hope that you will seriously consider meeting each of them ande to an arrangement with all of them. We often trade out services with each other informally. It is stuffy and inconvenient to go through a contract each time. We also often spar and train with each other. Experience is important and relevant at all Realms."


    Matriarch Nephi nodded, interested. "¡­I dock experience in the Sage Realm, unfortunately. I have yet to fight a Martial Sage, although I have fought Sage-level beasts in the Beast Domain. Prior to joining the Kandrian Empire, seeking out a Martial Sage would be unthinkable for me due to the security risks. But now that I am in a nation with allied Martial Sages, I do look forward to making the best out of this opportunity and training hard against different kinds of Martial Sages."


    The three Martial Sages discussed several matters after the official deliberations had concluded while Rui remained silent, taking the privilege to listen to a conversation that he normally would never have a chance to listen to.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1864 Arrangements

    Chapter 1864 Arrangements


    Soon enough, the first meeting between the Ss n and the Martial Union had concluded rather swiftly as the two entities managed toe to a conclusion of the spirit of the agreement.


    Matriarch Nephi set out to god-knew-where to pick fights with the Hugging Hegemon and whoever else; Rui had begun endeavoring to conclude some of the final-most tasks he had left in Kandria before he was to set out for the Adventurer''s Guild.


    He needed to ensure that his faction worked on establishing a team that would negotiate well for Matriarch Nephi to ensure that the value of her prophecies was not short-changed.


    He also needed to wait to hear her issue her prophecy on the Divine Doctor.


    He swiftly endeavored to ensure that the Ss n reached a stable position form within the Kandrian Empire.


    That was not particrly easy to do.


    A lot of people were interested in the Ss n.


    They were not necessarily deterred by the fact that it seemed clear that the Ss n was to join the Martial Union as a partner and honorary member by virtue of joining their fiscalmittee.


    After all, this did not mean that the Ss n could not forge a rtionship with any other entity in the Kandrian Empire.


    Many Martial Artists and nations were partnered with the Kandrian Martial Union, but this did not mean that they were unable to trade in the free market.


    Rui knew that now that it appeared that the Ss n was here to stay, the various power blocs of the Kandrian Empire were going to do their best to wring away the Ss n in their direction and try and forge trade rtions to harness their Martial and prophetic capital. Most likely, the Ss n would be bombarded with delegations and invitations of all kinds very shortly.


    Of course, Rui did not intend to allow this to happen.


    Matriarch Nephi had already made it clear that she didn''t particrly care about engaging with the rest of the Empire to any extent. The Martial Union was powerful enough and perfect for fulfilling all their needs and desires.


    Thus, in order to ensure that the Kandrian Empire would be unable to bother the Ss n, he employed his considerable political and economic capital to make several arrangements in this direction.


    First, he had the Kandrian National Bank establish an ount for the Ss n within an extremely rapid timeframe, to which he donated a substantial amount of his own Foundation''s wealth. Then, he had the Ministry of Land Resources, one of the high-ranking government officials of his faction, sell an enormous patch ofnd in the Irvilia Forest to the Ss n,rge enough to more than amodate all their living, hunting, and even Martial activities. With that, the Ss n owned the patch ofnd Rui had prepared for them.


    In other words, no party could enter thend without permission from the Ss n. And since the Ss n was highly self-sufficient and insr, this essentially cut-off any opportunity for the rest of Kandria to dog the Ss n for their prophecy or Martial services.


    He also informed the Ss n about this development, to which they promptly rejoiced and immediately set up a fence and a border, marking their enormous territory.


    Kandria was not pleased, but there was nothing they could do. Rui had too much power.


    He did not intend to allow their greed for power to cause the Ss n to develop a negative view of the Kandrian Empire, causing them to potentially question their decision to migrate to the Empire.


    It would be the height of ipetence to fumble this priceless opportunity by driving the Ss n away from the Kandrian Empire.


    He also passed detailed instructions to his staff about what to do in various possible circumstances regarding the Ss n, ensuring that even while he was gone, searching for the Divine Doctor, everything would be fine just at home.


    Simultaneously, he made arrangements for a slow, eventual integration into Kandrian society. The biggest challenge was getting rid of thenguage barrier, which would take several years most likely.


    Only once thenguage barrier was gone could he then ease them into modern society bit by bit. Content provided by N?velDrama.Org.


    The point of this was to serve as an anchor for the Ss n to ensure that the probability of them leaving the Kandrian Empire was extremely low.


    The speed and ease with which Rui was able to suppress much of the Kandrian Empire from harassing the Ss n was a testament to how powerful his faction was. It was almost like he was close to bing the de-facto Emperor of Kandria.


    The more he wielded his enormous power, the more the upper echelons of the Kandrian Empire treated him as the effective ruler of Kandria. Every word he uttered to the world would be treated as the word of Kandria. He needed to tread extremely carefully with everything he did and said.


    He deeply disliked that. It was power, but that same power shackled him. He disliked the weight, and it would only magnify if he sat on the throne and actually took the position of Emperor. It made him more resolved to find the Divine Doctor and make him heal his father by force if he needed to. His mind returned to the intelligence that the Beggar Sage supplied to him as he considered the data that the man had prepared for Rui. From things like the Divine Doctor''s general travel habits and patterns in the Human Domain to, more importantly, his starting point in the Beast Domain.


    This was extremely important since it eliminated more than half of the Beast Domain as usible areas where the Divine Doctor could be since the data indicated that the Divine Doctor had entered the Beast Domain through this section of the Beast Domain intentionally.


    The intentionality reduced the probability that he would wind up finding himself on the other side of the Beast Domain, though not impossible. With information from the Divine Doctor in corroboration with the Adventurer Guild and hopefully some vital tips from his grandmother, he would rapidly be able to trace the Divine Doctor''s tracks.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1865 Outcomes

    Chapter 1865 Oues


    A few dayster, his grandmother finally returned from wherever it was that she went. She heaved a tired sigh upon return, taking a good long rest.


    Naturally, Rui couldn''t contain his curiosity.


    "How''d it go, grandmother?" He asked once she had recuperated for some time.


    "Hmph, the Martial Sages of Kandria were stronger than I had expected. But I still managed to secure rank four."


    Rui''s eyes lit up at those words. "You mean you beat seven of them?!"


    As far as Rui was concerned, that was incredible.


    Martial Sages of the Kandrian Empire were stronger than their peers for the same reason that Kandrian Martial Artists of other Realms were also stronger than the average Martial Artist.


    The Kandrian Empire had better everything as far as Martial Art went.


    Thus, the fact that his grandmother was able to defeat seven of them and rank fourth was quite incredible. This was especially the case when she had recently broken through to the Sage Realm and did not possess as much experience with the Sage Realm as the Martial Sages of the Martial Union.


    It was all thanks to the potency of her Martial Art.


    "Most importantly, I managed to defeat that obnoxious woman and restore my pride and the pride of the Ss n," she snorted.


    "The Hugging Hegemon? You actually beat her?" Rui stared at her incredulously.


    "Indeed," Matriarch Nephi heaved a tired sigh. "She was the toughest of the seven to beat."


    "So then, who did you lose to?"


    "¡­The little one."


    "The Flickering Elder?"


    "Do not judge her by her size," Matriarch Nephi snorted. "She is far stronger than you could ever imagine."


    "Woah¡­" Rui murmured. Rui didn''t know that she was the third-strongest Martial Sage in the Kandrian Empire. Truly, looks could be deceiving.


    "Regardless, it was a good exercise," Matriarch Nephi huffed. "I have be stronger as a result of gaining some experience. Next time, I shall be able to perform even better."


    He listened with curiosity and fascination as she regaled her tales of her battles against the Martial Sages of the Martial Union. Naturally, she didn''t go into any particr depth about them, but she did speak about the Martial Sages in a general sense.


    "The Drunk Dame was the easiest for me to fight," Matriarch Nephi remarked. "Largely because she had extremely poorpatibility against me and because she wasn''t all that strong. No amount of drunkness can evade my prophecy."


    Pride saturated her voice. "The Sloth Sage was trickier, but ultimately, I was able to get him as well," she remarked. "I almost lost because of exhaustion; his stamina may as well be endless. Prolonged fights against that man are a blunder unlike any other."


    Rui nodded, prodding her along as he learned more about seven of the ten Sages.


    "The shing Flier also had poorpatibility against me," Matriarch Nephi remarked. "His speed was extraordinary, but his trajectories were much more predictable. My prophecies ate him alive."


    The shing Flier was Sage Dagar Roschem, Fiona''s father. In other words, his grandmother beat her father. It was juvenile, but Rui couldn''t help but feel smug.


    "So the Flickering Elder was the most difficult to fight?" Rui raised an eyebrow.


    "No, actually," she narrowed her eyes. "Soon after, the man they call the Devil arrived, challenging me to a duel. Hmph, as if I would ept. I have pride in my prophecy, but I am aware that I am not the strongest. I had no intention of fighting him until¡­"


    Her expression grew ugly. "¡­he said he would only use a single arm in battle and nothing else. He said if I win, he would personally secure longevity potions for all the members of the Ss n."


    "What?!" Rui''s eyes widened with shock. "And the result¡­?"


    Her expression grew uglier. "He defeated me."


    "¡­"


    "Huff¡­" Matriarch Nephi shook her head lightly. "This is what happens when a genius Martial Artist trains non-stop for more than four centuries without his drive waning even a little. You get a monster of a Martial Sage with unparalleled power."


    Rui stared at her in shock.


    He knew that Kane''s father was strong. But he didn''t know the man was this strong!


    It was difficult to imagine his grandmother with her prophecy, losing to a Martial Sage with such an impediment in his power holding him back. Yet, clearly, it was more than possible.


    "He is probably the strongest Martial Sage in the Kandrian Empire," Matriarch Nephi shook her head with a sigh. "Nevertheless, I have earned the respect that I am due by showing the world the power of the Ss n. And now that I am in the Kandrian Empire¡­"


    Determination flickered in her eyes. "¡­I shall make good of its resources to focus on training and elevating myself to a higher degree. This was something that I wasrgely unable to do when we of the Ss n were still nomadic."


    Now that she no longer had to worry about the safety of her n nearly as much, she had more time to dedicate herself to her own power.


    She turned to Rui. "Now then, I shall cater to your request. I have had time to consider the information you have provided and to let it sink in. I believe that I am now able to supply you with a prophecy that can help you find the Divine Doctor."


    Rui''s eyes lit up with enthusiasm. "Great. Let''s get right to it."


    Her eyes grew a tag more severe. "I must warn you, the Beast Domain is¡­difficult to scry. My visions of the future are not always entirely decipherable when ites to it. The information is disjointed and can be incoherent." N?velDrama.Org owns this text.


    Rui raised an eyebrow. "How bad can it get?"


    His grandmother winced. "It is better than I show you, then tell you. Prepare yourself."


    She waved her hand, conjuring a barrier of heaven to separate her little shed from the rest of the Ss n for the timebeing.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1866 Who Are You?

    <h4>Chapter 1866 Who Are You?</h4>


    RUMBLE


    Rui''s eyes widened as the world shook.


    The air grew tumultuous, boiling, as it was wrung by the power that Matriarch Nephi manifested.


    She conjured a barrier between herself and Rui to protect him and shield her visage from him, yet he could feel his grandmother''s powerful Martial Heart blooming into power, followed by her Martial Mind.


    Yet, that wasn''t all. A third Realm of power far greater than the previous bloomed alongside them, elevating herself to a much greater degree of power.


    Rui gritted his teeth as he struggled to withstand the pressure that she was emanating.


    "Behold."


    Her voice graced him.


    "The future."


    His eyes widened as she dispelled the barrier, and her Martial Embodiment bloomed in his mind at full power.


    Suddenly, the entire world around him changed.


    He found himself standing on a path.


    A path that he had trodden his entire life.


    No.


    A path he had walked even before his life.


    The world around him waspletely different. One moment, he was in the shed of his grandmother in the Ilvilia Forest; the very next moment, the world around him shifted, bing something else entirely.


    It had be a world of tribtions.


    Rui''s expression grew horrified as he bore witness to an endless sea of cmities as far as the eye could see.


    Earthquakes, volcanoes, tornados, hurricanes, blizzard storms ravaged the world around him. All manners of monsters and beasts unleashed an onught unto thends around them.


    His path wound through them.


    It was a perilous path.


    No sane man would walk down this path.


    Yet, nheless, he chose to.


    It called out to him.


    It lulled him, drawing him in.


    He would walk the path no matter what.


    "Your mind hijacked my prophecy with its own," she frowned. "I did not know it was possible for an awakened bodyforger to resist and override my Martial Embodiment to such an extent."


    Rui broke out of his reverie in a startle. "Uh, sorry."


    However, her words caught his attention.


    This was not the first time he saw this vision.


    He had seen it many times in the past.


    He didn''t know why, but it was almost like a visual representation of his Martial Path. He had seen it in visions, in dreams, and now, in a Martial Embodiment.


    Yet, she called it a prophecy.


    His eyes returned to the visions that his mind conjured up in her Martial Embodiment. "This¡­is a prophecy?"


    Her eyes bore deep into her grandson''s. "Your prophecy. The visual representation of the Martial Embodiment is a product of the Martial Artist whose embodiment it is and the mind of the beholder of the Martial Embodiment."


    Rui knew that.


    Master Ceeran had told him something simr himself. It was the reason that he saw Master Ceeran''s Martial Embodiment as a missileuncher of homing missiles from Earth while everyone else saw siege weapons of Gaia.


    It appeared that in the case of Matriarch Nephi, it allowed the beholder to create their own prophecies!


    His eyes widened in shock as the implications of this shook him!


    "Do you now understand why people seek my prophecy?" She calmly asked with pride in her voice. "I can bestow a fraction of my power to others. At least, as long as they''re not lesser beings. Non-Martial Artists cannot bear to know the future."


    "¡­Incredible," Rui whispered.


    "Regardless, that is not what I wanted to show you; I just didn''t expect your mind to be this powerful. You will redefine what is possible when you break through to the Master Realm. Regardless, for now¡­" She narrowed her eyes, exerting a fraction of her full power.


    Suddenly, Rui felt himself losing control of the visions as she directed him to see what she wanted to show him.


    RUMBLE!


    The world shook as a myriad of visions shed through Rui''s mind.


    The Beast Domain.


    The prophecy evoked the information that Rui associated with it all in a messy sh: the depiction of it on maps and the information he learned about it during his crash course on it, as well as the real visuals of it from Matriarch Nephi''s memories.


    It was a ck box.


    Not even the senses of powerful Martial Artists could peer into its depths.


    Miracles and wonders were hidden within its depths. Supernatural fantasies and reality-defying tribtions were hidden away within its depths.


    As well as a certain man.


    Rui''s eyes widened as distorted and shing visions of a man.


    The vision was blurred. He wore a worn-out medical coat with an array of medical tools adorned across multiple belts and straps across his entire body. A variety of instruments and artifacts made him look like the fusion between a doctor and an adventurer.


    He couldn''t see the man''s eyes.


    He could see his smile.


    A normal, pleasant smile.


    Yet, it couldn''t hide his inhuman glee.


    This man was a monster.


    He opened his mouth.


    A single question escaped him.


    "Who are you?"


    An ordinary question. One that one might hear without so much as batting an eye. Yet, for some reason, when Rui heard that question, he felt only one thing.


    Despair.


    "Huff¡­" He breathed heavily. "Huff¡­"


    His grin widened as he cackled with glee and amusement. A deep malevolence echoed in the depths of hisughter. Rui couldn''t see his eyes, yet he could feel his attention peering into Rui''s eyes.


    He wasughing at Rui.


    In that moment, Rui felt but one thing.


    Fear.


    Raw terror overcame Rui. This text is ? N?velDrama/.Org.


    Horror, unlike anything he had ever felt.


    He felt more fear towards the man before him than he had ever felt in his entire life. The fear he had felt from Chairman Deacon. The fear he felt from Master Uma, the fear he felt from Martial Sages, the fear of death¡­


    None of them couldpare.


    None of them couldpare to the soul-rending primordial Fear that the man evoked within the depths of his soul.


    He cackled at Rui''s fear with endless amusement.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1867 Clues

    Chapter 1867 Clues


    His breathing strained as his heart beat at a heightened pace. His Martial Heart burst into power subconsciously as glowing red streaks shed across hi body as his circtory system flowed.


    Suddenly, the vision disappeared as he returned back to reality. This text is ? N?velDrama/.Org.


    "My child," Matriarch Nephi patted him with concern. "What happened?"


    "I-I don''t know." Rui''s eyes swam around subconsciously as he struggled to regain hisposure. "I just-"


    He choked.


    Words could not describe the torment he experienced. He didn''t understand.


    He didn''t understand what had just happened.


    "Perhaps we should take a small break," Matriarch Nephi suggested with concern and worry. "Sometimes, my prophecies can be overwhelming. It is arge amount of information being flooded into the mind, after all. The subconscious mind sometimes rejects it, while the conscious mind actively seeks it. This disharmony can bring about mental stress, which is experienced as anguish."


    Rui sat down on a small wooden stump in the shed, taking deep breaths to calm himself down.


    "¡­What happened, my child?" She gazed at him with concern.


    The air grew severe.


    Rui inhaled deeply, closing his eyes.


    "I think I saw the Divine Doctor¡­" Rui murmured softly as his eyes swam around.


    "¡­Isn''t that a good thing?" Matriarch Nephi asked.


    Her tone was careful and gentle.


    "It is, but¡­" Rui''s hand covered his heart. "¡­He asked me a question."


    Just the memory of it brought about an emotional turmoil, an echo of what he felt in the prophecy.


    "¡­Question?" "Yeah¡­" Rui whispered, turning to meet his grandmother''s gaze.


    "Who am I?"


    Matriarch Nephi''s eyes sharpened. "But it wasn''t a question," Rui whispered. "It was the answer."


    "Tsk. Meddling fool," Matriarch Nephi muttered under her breath.


    Rui''s eyebrows furrowed at that strange remark. "What?"


    "Nothing." She closed her eyes. "Forget about it. It''s nothing at all."


    Rui narrowed his eyes sharply at her sudden dismissal of it.


    She knew something.


    That was odd. The knowledge bases of Matriarch Nephi and the Divine Doctor ought not to ovep. Yet it seemed as if that question held significance to both of them.


    His conscious mind immediately raced into action as it furiously processed the information, outputting hundreds of possibilities, each less likely than the one before it.


    "If you know something, I would appreciate it if you shared it," Rui remarked.


    "I cannot," his grandmother replied firmly.


    "¡­" He closed his eyes, heaving a deep sigh. "¡­Fine."


    "Did you gain anything useful?" His grandmother asked, diverting the topic. "¡­Yeah," Rui replied. "I got a decent view of what he looked like. That will definitely help."


    "That''s good," Matriarch Nephi nodded. "Anything else?"


    "He had a lot of tools and instruments," Rui murmured. "Lots of artifacts. I recognized a lot of them and I can research the remaining because I stored the whole prophecy in my Mind Pce. The traces they leave can help me potentially find more clues about him if he''s used them in the Beast Domain."


    Rui was reluctant to revisit them, however.


    He did not feel what he felt a second time.


    "Who are you?" He asked himself out aloud.


    He didn''t feel anything.


    He was Rui Quarrier Ss Kandria, as he had recently updated his official name a second time.


    It was a benign question. It made sense that the Divine Doctor would ask him that question since they were strangers who, as Rui hoped, would be meeting in the Beast Domain.


    Yet, when his memory went back to the Divine Doctor, he couldn''t help but feel like something was deeply off.


    He was deeply mistaken somewhere.


    Yet, he didn''t understand.


    It was frustrating.


    ''I guess I''ll just find out when I find the bastard,'' Rui narrowed his eyes.


    For now, he put the matter aside as he revisited the prophecy with a heavy heart, this time, he blurred out the Divine Doctor, instead focusing on the environment around them. The visions were distorted and even incoherent, yet Rui could undoubtedly detect a world around them.


    They stood on sandynd.


    Rui was able to ascertain that much.


    That in itself was a valuable clue.


    However, that wasn''t all. "¡­I smell the ocean," Rui murmured as he revisited the sensory data of the prophecy stored in his Mind Pce. "¡­I think we might be on the coast of an ind ocean."


    If that was true, it was a huge clue!


    It drastically narrowed down the possibilities from half the Beast Domain to a much more manageable set of locations!


    Of course, there were many salt-water bodies in the Beast Domain, many seas, and ind oceans in the Beast Domain, thus he still had a huge amount of possibilities as to where the Beast Domain was. However, it was no longer as absurdlyrge as it had been before.


    If hepared the intelligence that the Beggar Sage had given him with the information of the Adventurer''s Guild, then he could significantly narrow down the possibilities.


    On top of that, he had the Angel of Lace, a technique in the same tier of thought as the VOID algorithm, and his evolved Mind Pce that could allow him to scry the past. If hebined that with more information from the remaining prophecies of his grandmother, then Rui was starting to grow truly optimistic about the prospects of finding the Divine Doctor.


    Before, what had seemed like an almost impossible task was now very much within the Realm of possibilities. It appeared that pursuing paths and avenues of learning more about the Divine Doctor to hopefully give him a chance to find the Divine Doctor together was the right choice.


    Of course, it was still going to be extremely difficult. He had no doubt that he would be thoroughly pushed to his limit, but the possibility of winning would fix everything about his life that he didn''t like.


    Failure would mean ascending the throne.


    "Huff¡­" Rui heaved a sigh,posing himself as he steeled his determination.


    "Let us continue," he told his grandmother. "I still need more if I am to aplish what I seek to."


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1868 Visions of Death

    Chapter 1868 Visions of Death


    "¡­Then let us continue," his grandmother remarked. She conjured up a barrier separating them as she once more unleashed her full power, activating the Eye of Prophecy at full power.


    Rui narrowed his eyes as her Martial Embodiment washed into his mind.


    The world changed once more.


    Visions of the Beast Domain continuously sprung up in his mind, showing the many fantasies and horrors of the domain of beasts.


    He saw argendscape extending into the horizon with all manners of flora and fauna living there. The bedrock of thend glowed with a spectrum of lights, indicating the presence of rich esoteric substances.


    The very next moment, the vision shifted, showing an icynd with an extraordinary blizzard.


    The very next moment, it shifted to a region in the sky filled with floating inds simr to the Ajanta Floating Ind of the Floating Sect.


    It shifted to a ruined forest ravaged with destruction. It shifted to a a sea that stretched far beyond the eye could see.


    Countless visions shed through his mind.


    Then, his vision shifted to the Divine Doctor once more. The man stared at him with an intrigued smile, almost as if he were watching an interesting experiment unfold.


    "Wee to my prison," the man remarked. "I came here looking for clues regarding the illness of mytest patient, but s, I was only shown that this world was even more fantastical than I had ever expected."


    Rui tried responding to him, but s, this wasn''t a conversation.


    "The Beggar Sage never noticed; what a fool," the Divine Doctor grinned at Rui with glee. "He always misses the most important stuff because he operates from the shadows."


    Rui didn''t know what he meant, but he stared right into Rui''s eyes when he uttered those words.


    "Eternal Dream disease?" He murmured, bored. "Trivial. Has the medicalmunity not figured that one out yet? Tsk tsk."


    The vision distorted once more as Rui gained another vision of the man; this time, it was more broken and incoherent.


    "So what ¡ª¡ª he''s the ¡ª¡ª¡ª-r of a Sag¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ªerhouse?" The Divine Doctor yawned with azy drawl. "My current ¡ª¡ª is infinitely more imp¡ª¡ª¡ª any individual person. You could br¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ªry single emperor of humanity, and they w¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ªl be less important than my curr¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª, you know?"


    It was a prediction of the future.


    Did that mean that his grandmother predicted that he would find himself in front of the Divine Doctor?


    "That is but one possible future," she remarked. "The ideal one; let me show you more realistic ones."


    Rui''s eyes widened as his vision changed once more.


    He found himself in a rocky area.


    Around him was an endless ocean of Senior-level big cat monsters that extended as far as the as the eye could see. Content provided by N?velDrama.Org.


    They pounced on him, and Rui could feel ''himself'' activating his Martial Heart, but s, there were too many.


    SPLAT SPLAT SPLAT!


    Rui gasped for breath as the lion-like monsters began tearing at his body, ripping flesh chunk by chunk.


    Oneunched for his face just before the vision shifted once more.


    Now, he found himself standing before a volcano.


    A super volcano, based on its absurd size.


    An active volcano.


    RUMBLE


    Rui''s eyes widened as realization dawned on him.


    It was an active super-volcano that was about to erupt.


    BOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!!!!!!!!!!


    A pir of white-hotva erupted from the mountain; it shot straight up into the atmosphere like aser beam past the clouds.


    Until it cooled down into solid hard rock and came hurtling down at an extraordinary speed.


    It began raining enormous meteorites.


    BOOOOOOOOOOOM!!!!!!


    BOOOOOOOOOOOM!!!!!!


    BOOOOOOOOOOOM!!!!!!


    His vision shifted just as one was about to strike him.


    He found himself at sea, standing atop water. He nced around, only to be greeted by endless dense mist in all directions.


    One moment, the world around him was calm and serene.


    The very next?


    Rui froze as the waters around him began churning in a spiral into an enormous whirlpool that began drawing him in with an unstoppable force.


    At the center of the enormous whirlpool was a circr mouth with endless that sucked in all the water while chomping down on anything that came near the mouth, drawn in by the currents.


    It was a charybdis.


    Rui gritted his teeth as the unstoppable force drew him in. The vision changed once more before the jaws could mp on him.


    He suddenly found himself standing in the sky, surrounded by clouds. Strangely enough, the sky was purple instead of the usual blue that he was ustomed to. He sky-walked peacefully across the entire sky, alone.


    Until he no longer was.


    WHOOSH


    Clouds morphed into birdsrger than him, quickly surrounding him. Their bodies retained a smoky exterior, allowing them to camouge as clouds extremely well.


    They converged on him with lightning-fast charges. His vision shifted just as their beaks impaled him from all directions.


    This time, he found himself in a cave. Inside it was a powerful serpent that towered over him, staring into his eyes. Its eyes seemed to have a hypnotic effect, boring into his mind as it scoured around, peering at things it shouldn''t have.


    HISSSSS


    Rui understood what it was trying to convey.


    |Alien|


    WHOOSH


    It lunged forward at speeds he could not even fathom. His vision shifted just a moment before he was swallowed whole. He found himself in a desert that was empty in all directions.


    There was nothing but sand.


    Unfortunately, that was bad news.


    Rui froze as grains of sand began moving in his direction, swallowing him up and crushing him under their weight.


    Rui struggled in vain as he realized the very desert around him was alive. Not only was it alive, but it was a predator that fed on anything that entered its sands. s, he realized this toote.


    "Enough," Rui squeezed out with a strained voice. "That''s enough."


    The visions were dispelled as Matriarch Nephi stared at him with a calm expression. Rui narrowed his eyes, staring at her.


    "Why did you show me futures of me dying?"


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1869 The Perils of the Beast Domain

    <h4>Chapter 1869 The Perils of the Beast Domain</h4>


    Rui was not pleased to see himself dying in countless different scenarios. It was actually deeply disturbing and unpleasant to find himself in situations that were too much for him to survive.


    He stared at Matriarch Nephi with indignant askance.


    Yet, a single question escaped her in response.


    "You''ve never been to the Beast Domain, have you?"


    "¡­No," Rui admitted honestly.


    "That is why I needed to give you a proper preview of what was toe," She calmly remarked. "The Beast Domain is different. It''s different from most likely anything that you have ever experienced in your entire life."


    Unfortunately, Rui knew that she had a point.


    Outside of the Great Forest of Hynonarak, he had probably never experienced something even remotely simr to the Beast Domain.


    "I took the liberty to show you the powerfully-fated futures where your death was high because such is the future," She remarked. "The more you know about these fates, the likelier it is that you will be able to avert them."


    Rui considered her words, nodding slowly.


    "It is more important to me that you survive than seed," She exined gently. "As long as you survive, everything has a solution. Yet, if you die, then that is truly the end."


    She heaved a sigh. "The Beast Domain is an environment that truly embodies the survival of the fittest. This has especially been true over the past five hundred years as the Human Domain has pushed and squeezed the denizens of the Beast Domain into a smaller and smaller area."


    Rui narrowed his eyes. "Has it gotten that bad?"


    "It has, unfortunately," Matriarch Nephi affirmed gravely. "The density of life has increased while resources have depleted due to the lessernds avable to them. There is constant war and conflict within the Beast Domain between the countless species in the Beast Domain that have been pushed together. It has gotten so bad that even the saying ''survival of the fittest'' does not do it justice. Sometimes, things are so harsh that not even the fittest survive."


    Rui''s expression grew grim at her words.


    "Do you understand?" Matriarch Nephi calmly asked. "It''s not enough to just be strong. You need to be able to survive with heavily strained resources in extremely harsh ecosystems and environments for prolonged periods of time while you look for the Divine Doctor."


    The air grew heavy as she warned of the perils of the Beast Domain. This text is ? N?velDrama/.Org.


    "The voyage that you will be making is deeply dangerous," she replied. "One that will only continue to be increasingly dangerous as humanity pushes and pushes the Beast Domain, further straining the Beast Domain."


    "¡­I understand."


    "I don''t think you do," Matriarch Nephi remarked. "Picking fights in the Beast Domain is losing. Since, with every fight you pick, you will drain your power and stamina, requiring rest and food even sooner than usual. On top of that, you will be weakened after each fight, making you easier prey for other predators."


    Rui nodded, understanding her words carefully.


    "In other words, those who avoid conflict win," she remarked. "The beasts that continuously engage in territorial conflicts are the ultimate losers. It is people who are able to slip through all of that, like the Divine Doctor, who are able to survive the Beast Domain, you understand?"


    "I do, grandmother," Rui replied sincerely. "Thank you for warning me and teaching me."


    "Mmm, it''s the least I could do," she replied, softening her eyes.


    "Can you show me about fates rting to the Divine Doctor?" Rui asked.


    "I have already shown you everything that I could," she remarked, closing her eyes and heaving a sigh. "I don''t know what it is, but wherever the Divine Doctor is¡­my instincts are unable to peer much into fates rting to him. Otherwise, I would have been able to show you a definitive future that would have urred had you not seen this prophecy."


    Rui raised an eyebrow with interest. "Is that how it works?"


    "Indeed," she remarked. "There is a certain amount of information we need to be certain about the future. In regard to the Beast Domain, there''s too much information for my subconscious instinct to process. That is why I am forced to reduce my precision and show you the most fated, most likely, futures."


    "I thought that prophetants believed that prophecy determined the future rather than predicted it," Rui asked with a careful tone.


    "Of course we do!" Her eyes intensified. "Once we divine the future, the future changes from what it would have been had we not divined it. We, who know the future, can change it to our will. In other words, prophecy allows for the controlling of the future!"


    In other words, it wasn''t as though the prophecy directly altered the future, but more so indirectly altered it simply by virtue of people acting differently and more optimally. This was a more grounded exnation for the belief that Rui wasn''t unamenable to.


    "Interesting," Rui murmured. "Did you scry the future before you joined the Kandrian Empire?"


    "Of course I did," she snorted. "You alone are not enough in and of yourself for me to make such a drastic decision that quickly."


    That partly exined why she made her decision so quickly and firmly. She must have foreseen that her grandson would adhere to his tall promises and secure them a better future.


    "Wherever the Divine Doctor is¡­ is most likely a region that is deeply cut off from this world," she remarked. "That is the only way I can exin how difficult it is to divine even basic visions of the future rting to him."


    She gazed at Rui deeply. "I''m afraid that is all I am able to help you with, my grandson. You will have to find him with the information that you have, along with the other sources that you are pursuing. Good luck, and more than anything, do not perish in your pursuit of the Divine Doctor, no matter what."


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1870 Due Meeting

    Chapter 1870 Due Meeting


    He discussed the prophecies that he had seen with his grandmother some more. It was interesting that his grandmother did not see everything he had seen. Apparently, when it came to delivering prophecies to another person, she used her Martial Embodiment so that the prophecy would be built from both her and her target''s subconsciousness.


    This resulted in a mutually-fueled prophecy that would also include the information and the instinct of his target, resulting in a more urate prophecy.


    Thus, some of the visions that Rui had seen were based on his knowledge and instincts and were restricted only to his mind.


    Yet despite both their subconscious mindsbined, they were unable to scry anything concrete about the Divine Doctor.


    For a powerful Martial Sage like Matriarch Nephi to be so deeply hampered showed that the Divine Doctor was in no ordinary location. Of course, the information that his grandmother had given him was game-changing. "Somewhere deeply cut off from the world¡­" Rui narrowed his eyes.


    He also recalled what the Divine Doctor had said to him in the prophecy.


    ''Wee to my prison.''


    That was an important clue.


    The two pieces of information together pointed towards the fact that the Divine Doctor was potentially trapped or heavily hampered in a location that was deeply disconnected from the world in some manner.


    If that was the case, it could exin why the Divine Doctor had been in there the entire time.


    "Hmmm¡­" Rui narrowed his eyes. It did help narrow down the possibilities even more, if this was the case.


    In addition, when he added the information he had gleaned from his prior visions, he could further narrow down the possible locations of the Divine Doctor of the Beast Domain. Then, if hebined the information of the Beggar Sage and the Adventurer Guild, he could potentially trace the path that the Divine Doctor had walked.


    "It''s time." His deration contained a hint of finality.


    He hadpleted every single task that he had left in the Kandrian Empire. Fortunately, the matter of the Ss n and the Martial Union had beenpleted rather quickly. Both parties were able toe to a very solid middle ground where they each acquired what they desired from the party in a mutually beneficial exchange system.


    While the contract had yet to be signed, it was merely a formality. The fact that his grandmother had begun to growfortable in the Kandrian Empire was a sign that she didn''t foresee anything negative for the Ss n with her tremendous prophetic ability.


    That meant that he could leave the Kandrian Empire and head for the Adventurer''s Guild and the Beast Domain with peace of mind.


    "It''s going to be time soon, Master Reina," Rui replied to nobody in particr.


    Master Reina appeared out of thin air, standing before him. An amused smile emerged on her face. "Hmmm, I''m not sure if I am inclined to spend months, if not years, recing you. In the first ce, it won''t work because your grandmother will see right through me, as will the other Martial Sages."


    "The Sloth Sage will handle the others," Rui remarked. "My grandmother knows."


    "True, but¡­" Her smile widened. "What''s in it for me?"


    Rui turned to his assassin teacher with a dubious expression. "There''s not much in it that you care for. If you cared about wealth or capital, I could give you more than you could ever dream about."


    "Meh, boring," she waved him away dismissively. "Unfortunately, the only thing you care about is amusement and entertainment," Rui scoffed. "True."


    She didn''t even bother denying his usations.


    "That is why I have a proposal," Rui replied.


    "Oh?" Her eyes lit up with interest. "Pray tell."


    "A game," Rui replied. "I dare you to interact with every single person in the orbit of my life, except the orphanage and the Sages, and see if you could get away with it. You''ve been following me around for a year now in secret. Thus, you have borne witness to all of them."


    He turned to her with a grin. "The entire world will be watching Rui Quarrier."


    "The entire world will be watching, and you will fool every single one of them¡­or is it too much for you?"


    Her eyes lit up with excitement. "Hehehe¡­you have a way with words, Rui Quarrier Ss Kandria."


    Rui smiled wryly as he managed to bait her well. "Thanks, I suppose. So, what do you say?"


    "¡­You got me," she remarked lightly. "It should be fun ying those idiots for fools."


    Rui chuckled lightly. "You''re going to have a tough time during the fiscal budget allocation meetings, you know?" Content provided by N?velDrama.Org.


    "Heh, those will be the most fun; I''m sure I can fool every single one of them with some preparation."


    With that established, he immediately returned to his bodyguards on standby, heading back towards his office in the Town of Hajin.


    "Mikha, has the appointment with the guildmaster of the Adventurer''s Guild been finalized?"


    "Yes, Your Highness, the meeting is due soon. The guildmaster has expressed an eager desire to meet you for a variety of reasons."


    "Hmph," Rui snorted. "He wants my political support and capital. He''s hoping that I be an investor and patron of the Adventurer''s Guild."


    His father had been somewhat against the Adventurer''s Guild and had maintained the position that the Adventurer''s Guild was harming the Beast Domain by facilitating and even perpetrating the constant encroaching and colonizing of the Beast Domain and that it was dangerous for the future of humanity.


    Thus, the guildmaster must have been overjoyed when Rui, the guaranteed next Emperor, had expressed interest and sought a meeting for him. The Adventurer Guild would rather not have to sustain pressure from a powerful Sage-level powerhouse that had recently gotten yet another Martial Sage and the power of prophecy; it was too much political pressure that they were unable to bear or withstand.


    It would soon be time for Rui to depart from the Kandrian Empire.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1871 Conviction

    Chapter 1871 Conviction


    He hadpleted all his political endeavors in the Kandrian Empire.


    He crushed the Kandrian Throne War, emerging thoroughly victorious as the de facto next ruler of Kandria.


    He obtained the intelligence he was looking for from the Beggar Sage. He found and won over the Ss n, bringing them over to the Kandrian Empire and using his grandmother''s prophetic power to foresee visions of the Divine Doctor that gave him crucial information about the man''s location and circumstances.


    Now, he needed to meet with the guildmaster of the Adventurer''s Guild and get even more information. Once that was done, it would be time to switch with Master Reina and head to the Beast Domain.


    Naturally, his ns to visit the Panamic Adventurer''s Guild brought up concern in his faction.


    After all, he was an extremely high-profile target.


    There were many parties that had powerful reasons to kill him.


    Naturally, it was not feasible to kill him inside the Kandrian Empire, where he was in his domain power, but they had no qualms about killing him outside it.


    Rui was aware of this. "Rx, I willmission the Sloth Sage to join my security detail," Rui assuaged their concerns.


    No one knew why he chose the Sloth Sage instead of a defense-oriented Martial Sage, but it was fine nheless.


    A Martial Sage was a Martial Sage.


    They didn''t know that the reason Rui chose him was because he would not be able to switch with Master Reina if another Martial Sage joined him.


    He would have chosen to bring his grandmother along with him, but unfortunately, she was still busy helping her n find its ce in the Kandrian Empire and getting used to a new life; she could not leave her n during this critical stage.


    Rui informed members of his faction and orbit of the decision, stating it was a short diplomatic visit and he would be back soon.


    That was a lie, of course.


    While he didn''t feel an ounce of guilt lying to his faction, he was unable to bring himself to lie to his mother.


    And thus, he didn''t.


    "¡­Gone for a while?" Lashara''s expression fell. "¡­How long?"


    Rui winced, struggling to get to the point. "Probably more than a year, maybe a few. But no more than that."


    She leaned in, pulling him for a hug.


    "Mom¡­?" Rui returned her embrace.


    She didn''t reply, simply wordlessly hugging him, refusing to let go.


    "¡­Don''t worry, I''ll be back." Rui tried to console her.


    "¡­"


    "¡­Please? It''s important to me."


    She finally relented, letting go. She gazed into his eyes intensely. "¡­Come back safe."


    "I promise."


    She closed her eyes. "Tell everyone before you go. You will not leave them heartbroken a second time."


    "¡­I understand."


    He spent the rest of the day slowly breaking the news to the rest of the orphanage, coaxing them into reluctantly agreeing. But ultimately, they understood. "I am not surprised," Xanarn smiled. "This is your life path, after all. It is part of who you are."


    "I can tell that you are undoubtedly going to do something extremely dangerous," Julian smiled wryly. "As I once told you, your life is yours, and you must bear the consequences of your actions, your family. Please ensure that you remain mindful of this this time."


    Their words were not light, but they showed that they understood.


    He was not someone who could spend his days in the orphanage, unfortunately. He exined it away as being busy with work inside and outside the nation where he would be unable to visit them.


    This was a good cover that did not draw too much attention.


    "Huff¡­" He heaved a heavy sigh after he departed the Quarrier Orphanage for what would be the final time for quite some time. Yet those weren''t the only people he felt the need to speak to.


    POW POW POW N?velDrama.Org owns this text.


    Rui calmly blocked a flurry of attacks from Kane, returning them before Kane swiftly evaded them.


    "You''re up to something, aren''t you?" Kane narrowed his eyes as he maneuvered around Rui.


    "What makes you think that?" Rui smiled, amused. "I can tell."


    BAM!


    A blindingly swift kick crashed into Rui''s guard.


    "Well, I''m not surprised that you can," Rui remarked.


    They had been friends for a long time. Kane had a decent grasp of what Rui''s thought patterns were like.


    "Whatever it is, take me as well!" Kane pleaded, throwing a flurry of blows at Rui.


    WHOOSH!


    They crashed into a feint.


    POW


    Rui''s leg clean sweeped Kane''s leg, knocking him off bnce.


    WHOOSH!


    His fist stopped an inch away from Kane''s jaw.


    "Not this time, Kane," Rui remarked. "There''s too much at stake, and bringing additional people drastically increases the probability of something going wrong. On top of that, the risk is too high."


    Rui was firm about that. Kane wasn''t at the level where Rui could confidently bring him along. Unfortunately, although he didn''t say it, Kane was too much of a liability at his current level of power.


    "Come on!" Kane protested. "No," Rui shook his head. "You might die."


    Kane''s eyes intensified. He gritted his teeth.


    "I would rather die than be left behind."


    Rui''s eyes widened.


    The weight of his words weighed down on the atmosphere. His voice was earnestly sincere; he meant every word he uttered.


    "¡­Kane."


    "Besides, the Beast Domain isn''t about strength; it''s about survivability, isn''t it?" Kane asked. "I''m an assassin. I have skillsets that extend far beyond activebat, and I''ve grown far better at them than I ever was before. I can offer you a much higher degree of stealth, you know?"


    It wasn''t the mostpelling argument, rationally speaking.


    Rui could conjure up a number of powerful rebuttals as to why his logic wasn''t sound.


    For one, while it was true that he had much more Martial-oriented skillsets outside ofbat than Rui did, it was also true that the skillsets of an assassin did not ovep with that of a hunter or an explorer.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1872 First Meeting

    Chapter 1872 First Meeting


    ??On top of that, while Kane was an assassin, he did focus on a direct approach that wasrgely ovepping with frontalbat skills.


    These were enough rational grounds to dismiss the value proposition that he had to offer as opposed to the risk that he could bring with him.


    However, Rui was unable to bring himself to outright refuse Kane firmly.


    He knew that he was part of the reason for Kane''s Martial drive. In the past three years since Rui returned to the Kandrian Empire and broke him through to the Senior Realm, Kane had isted himself in rigorous, long-term training and missionpletion to gain more experience.


    He had undoubtedly grown much since he had broken through to the Senior Realm, but from what Rui could see, he had yet to reach the threshold of a high-grade Martial Senior.


    More importantly, Rui knew that refusing him here would not be good for his Martial drive. Even if it wasn''t strictly his fault, Rui would definitely feel very guilty and sorrowful if he was responsible for crippling Kane''s Martial drive.


    The correct answer was telling him no, but...


    "..."


    Rui was unable to bring himself to do that.


    A tense moment passed before Rui heaved a sigh.


    "Fine. You cane along."


    "YES!" Kane leaped into the air with delight, reaching hundreds of meters into the sky instantly. "Woohooo!"


    Rui felt a tinge of regret even as he watched Kane with an amused expression. It wasn''t the right thing to involve Kane in the mess. That was the situation that Rui had put himself in to fix everything wrong in his life at the moment.


    But, he appreciated Kane''spany. They were undoubtedly best friends.


    "Listen," Rui grew serious. "If we''re going to do this, we''re going to have to be even more careful than we werest time, got it?"


    "Got it, chief," Kane grinned. "This is Shionel Dungeon all over again. If it ain''t broke, don''t fix it, amirite?"


    Rui heaved an amused sigh as he felt a mild headacheing about him. It was all nice and well to want to help his friend, but it also meant that an additional burden had fallen on his shoulders.


    He needed to n things carefully. Thankfully, he had a tremendous amount of resources as well as the support of powerful people. Thus, it was possible to pull it off even if he was under far greater scrutiny than he had ever been before in his entire life. His powerful mind had already burst into action, fleshing out a sophisticated n to allow Kane to tag along with him.


    It wasn''t long before he sat Kane down, exining all the details to him and what he needed to do with a flowchart, just for good measure.


    "...and then we''re done, got it?" Rui asked him.


    "Yep yep, I got it," Kane nodded enthusiastically.


    "...Let''s go through it one more time."


    It wasn''t until half an hourter that Rui was convinced Kane fully understood the sophisticated andplicated multiyered n right down to the very letter. Kane was sharp, but Rui''s ns were like mazes.N?velDrama.Org owns this text.


    While Kane set off to begin fulfilling the n that Rui had put together that could allow him to join Rui without anybody knowing, Rui continued on with his n, taking his own measures.


    "Are the preparations ready?" Rui asked his chief of staff.


    "Perfectly, sir," she replied. "We have prepared the most luxurious andfortable carriage for your journey to the Adventurer''s Guild, as well as the finest staff to cater to your needs and all the other goods in storage as you specified. All that''s left is for..."


    RUMBLE


    The world shook.


    Rui turned, recognizing the sensation as heaven and earth bent under the weight of the new presence that had arrived at the carriage.


    STEP


    "Your Sagehood," Rui bowed lightly, greeting the Sloth Sage. "I am grateful for your services. I look forward to journeying with you."


    "Hm, let''s get this over with," he yawned sleepily. "This looks like it''s afortable carriage to get some sleep in."


    "It is," Rui smiled. "I prepared it with you in mind."


    "Well, well, then, I shall dly partake in it."


    This time around, Rui had decided to travel with the Sloth Sage as the sole member of his security detail. Naturally, it meant more work for him, but he was strangely understanding this time, much to the Martial Union''s surprise.


    It wasn''t long before the final preparations werepleted, and the enormous luxurious carriage set off into motion, ascending into the air as it bypassed any traffic on the streets of the Kandrian Empire.


    BOOM!


    It produced a sonic boom, crossing the sound barrier, and just a few hourster, it had already arrived at the western border of the Kandrian Empire, smoothly crossing it. He had already received authorization from the Kandrian Border Patrol Force, allowing for a smooth and hassle-free exit from the Kandrian Empire.


    Rui heaved a sigh once they left the Kandrian Empire. He knew he wasn''t going toe back any time soon.


    The Sloth Sage had already dozed off, rxing across one of the many wide seats in the spacious carriage.


    "Aahhh¡­" Master Reina appeared out of thin air, rxing on a seat opposite Rui. "Finally, I can release my technique."


    Yet, she wasn''t the only one that emerged.


    THUD


    Rui turned to one of the pieces of luggage in the storagepartment.


    It was a human-sized box.


    CLACK


    "Huff¡­!" Kane gasped for air. "Man! That was rough!"


    "Oh, we have an additional guest, do we?" Master Reina nced at Kane, amused.


    "Wait, who are you?" Kane tilted his head.


    "I could ask you the same question." Master Reina huffed.


    Rui had almost forgotten that these two had never met.


    "Kane, Master Reina, my assassination teacher. Master Reina, Kane, my best friend," he quickly gestured to each of them introducing them to each other.


    "Woah," Kane looked interest. "You''re a Master assassin? Can you train me?"


    "Depends," Master Reina shrugged nonchntly. "Can you entertain me?"


    "I have a good sense of humor, unlike him," Kane remarked.


    "What a coincidence, so do I."


    Rui tried to contest the assertions, but s, he stood no chance against the newfound assassin duo.


    The Sloth Sage snored the entire journey.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1873 Ominous Arrival

    Chapter 1873 Ominous Arrival


    The journey was a lot less solemn than Rui was expecting.


    He was leaving his family for the foreseeable future. Both his families.


    He was leaving his friends, his faction, his supporters, and his patrons behind.


    He was leaving his father behind.


    He was heading to the Beast Domain, an extremely dangerous ce, and would be searching for the Divine Doctor.


    Yet, the banter between Kane and Master Reina kept the atmosphere light. The Sloth Sage snoring away in anotherpartment made it difficult to feel particrly heavy.


    Yet, inwardly, he could feel his nerves tingling.


    "Wait, so you were the one who helped master Phantomind Void? That''s crazy, you gotta help me with my Void Step technique¡­"


    "You have a greater affinity for stealth than he does; you should focus on physical stealth in addition to misdirection," Master Reina gave him tips and instructions.


    "I''ll definitely have to train under you when we get back," Kane nodded. "Also¡­"


    While the two of them conversed, Rui closed his eyes, entering his Mind Pce as he revised the information that he knew about the Adventurer''s Guild. While those two could afford to rx, he had an important meeting.


    The Adventurer''s Guild was not only thergest Martial broker for services rting to the Beast Domain between the consumer market and Martial Artists, but it also had powerful cultural impacts on human civilization. The Shionel Adventurer''s Guild, for example, that set up during the Shionel Dungeon raid was a copy-paste of the Panamic Adventurer''s Guild on a smaller scale.


    One of the greatest ts of the guild was its pledge to never bear arms against humanity or in inter-human conflicts. It would exclusively make use of its services and capital in rtion to the Beast Domain.


    This was one of the reasons it had received widespread support from across human civilization.


    Naturally, it was ufortable when it was bashed for its impact on the ecology of the continent and its continuous damage to the Beast Domain.


    That was one of the incentives that Rui intended to dangle in front of the current guildmaster of the Adventurer''s Guild. This was a boon that he would not be able to ignore and would be more inclined to aid Rui.


    Naturally, it wasn''t going to be easy.


    Guildmaster Vaughn Shelbous Rauebeinon


    This was a man who was appointed as the guildmaster by one of the most powerful Martial Sages of human civilization, the Veritable Venator. He was an extremelypetent administrator and manager, as well as someone with a master''s degree in Beast Domain ecology and an expert in business affairs and had a background in diplomacy as well.


    In other words, he was an extraordinary individual.


    He was not someone to be trifled with.


    It tangentially reminded him of the Beggar Sage and his mission to grant immortality to geniuses of humanity so that they could continue their work.


    Did the Beggar Sage give Guildmaster Vaughn immortality?


    Probably not.


    The fact that Rui hadn''t gotten it proved that merely intelligence was not enough.


    Most likely, there had to be some degree of impact on human civilization that proved that they were worth immortality.


    Regardless of whether he was or wasn''t, it did not change the fact that Rui needed to carefully dangle political support in return for thorough aid in searching for exactly what he was hoping to find: a very concrete and grounded path to investigate and find the Divine Doctor.


    He couldmission the Adventurer''s Guild, but money left traces, traces that could be found and potentially used to sniff out what he was trying to do and what his true intentions were.


    Rui would rather avoid getting money involved for this reason. N?velDrama.Org owns this text.


    He hadrgely fleshed out his diplomatic approach to the Adventurer''s Guild as they traveled to the headquarters of the Adventurer''s Guild in North Panama, in the Panamic Adventurer Town. Thergest market for adventurer missions andmissions. An enormous town dedicated to facilitating an open market.


    Even at the tremendous speeds that far outstripped sound by orders of magnitude, it still took them nearly an hour to reach their destination. Soon enough, Rui could spot the enormous town in the distance outside of the window.


    "The Panamic Adventurer Town¡­" Rui whispered. "Fascinating, isn''t it?" Master Reina asked with an interested tone. "It''s been a long time since I came here."


    "You used to be an adventurer?"


    "Yes, but it was a cover," she remarked. "I would often undertake adventurer missions as a cover to conduct my assassinations."


    "You used to assassinate beasts?" Kane frowned. "That''s just normal hunting."


    "Not beasts, no, other adventurers," her smile grew sinister as her tone grew dark. "You see, the best ce to kill someone is in the Beast Domain. The death is never suspicious since the Beast Domain has much higher mortality rates than anywhere else. It will be treated as a consequence of the hostile environment and life. The best is if you can ensure that their body is never found, which is easy."


    Rui stared at her, speechless.


    nning assassinations in the Beast Domain was probably extremely difficult and extremely dangerous. Only Master Reina could treat them as an opportunity rather than a tribtion.


    He shook his head lightly as he observed the Beast Domain far away on the horizon.


    Just looking at it made one feel ominous and dark.


    It was opaque.


    Dark.


    Nothing could be gauged from it aside from a strange darkness that didn''t befit the time of day. He would be plunging into the darkness and mysteries within it and exploring its depths, searching for the man that he needed most.


    He didn''t have as much as he wished he did.


    At the moment, he had less than four years.


    Less than four years to find and convince the Divine Doctor to fix his father. The many visions of death his grandmother showed him had ground his resolve and conviction. But they were unable to break it.


    He forged forward, reaching the Panamic Adventurer Town.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1874 Inquiry

    Chapter 1874 Inquiry


    The Adventurer Town possessed an energy more vibrant than any other ce he had ever seen. Not even the town of Hajin couldpare to the sheer enthuse in this town. For one, there were almost no residents; everyone in it was temporarily visiting for some business, either as an adventurer or to hire an adventurer.


    This tranted to an enormous hub for adventurer trade with a huge amount of flux in and out of the town.


    THUD¡­


    The carriage descended from the air,nding on the ground with a bump before slowly drawing to crawl.


    The Snoring Sage got up, yawningzily before ncing at the three of them seated some distance away.


    He didn''t even bother acknowledging Kane or Master Reina.


    He was toozy to.


    "Alright, you too," Rui nced at Kane and Master Reina. "Disappear."


    They nodded, activating their stealth as a staff member opened the door to their privatepartment. "Your Highness, Your Sagehood, we have arrived."


    "So it would seem," the Sloth Sage stretched, heaving a tired sigh.


    "You just rested the entire journey; how are you this lethargic?" Rui furrowed his eyebrows at the Martial Sage. "I''m surprised you managed to be a Martial Sage in the first ce."


    "One needs to be a Martial Sage to be able to rest without worrying about anything," the man casually remarked. "Otherwise, there''s something or the other that will always interrupt your peace, no matter what. I would argue that even bing a Martial Sage is not enough in some circumstances. This is one of them."


    Rui''s eyes lit up with interest as he got some insights into the man''s Martial drive which may have led him to reach the Sage Realm. Regardless, this wasn''t the time to think about the man. "It''s time, Your Sagehood," Rui echoed the staff''s words. "Let''s go."


    The Martial Sage heaved a tired sigh, getting as he followed Rui.


    Outside was a delegation that awaited them, led by a particrly distinguished man up front.


    He had a heavy air of authority around him, instantly drawing Rui''s attention.


    His attire and appearance were immactely groomed to perfection, radiating power and authority. His cleanly maintained salt-and-pepper hair and beard conveyed his age, giving him an air of experience and wisdom.


    He smiled at Rui as he exited the carriage, apanied by the Sloth Sage.


    "Wee to the headquarters of the Adventurer''s Guild, Prince Rui Quarrier Ss Kandria," a gracious melody serenaded in his voice. "I, Guildmaster Vaughn Shelbous Raubeinon of the Panamic Adventurer''s Guild, am pleased and honored to receive the next Emperor of Kandria."


    His words conveyed much deference, while his tone and demeanor firmly maintained a proud and powerful image.


    "I am pleased and grateful to be received the vaunted guildmaster of the Adventurer''s Guild himself," Rui replied, smiling. "Thank you for taking the time out of your busy schedule to indulge me, guildmaster."


    "Not at all," he replied graciously. "I was quite pleased to learn of your interest in speaking to me. I hope I am able to aid you with whatever it is that you seek from me. The Adventurer''s Guild hopes to build a better rtionship with the Kandrian Empire."


    He didn''t bat an eye at the Sloth Sage behind Rui, remaining entirely unconcerned.


    Rui had understood why the moment he had stepped out of the carriage.


    He was apanied by a Martial Sage himself. The woman behind him did an excellent job hiding her aura and blending in with civilians but there was no doubt that she was of the Sage Realm.


    "Come, let us speak inside my office, Your Highness," Guildmaster Vaughn smiled, directing Rui inside the enormous headquarters of the Adventurer''s Guild. The entireplex seemed to cover a good solid district in the Adventurer''s Town, featuring many buildings and facilities.


    CLACK


    The door opened, and the four of them entered a spacious and extravagant office with an array of shelved books across the entire office. A huge artistic map of the Beast Domain was hung up on the wall behind him, drawing Rui''s attention. N?velDrama.Org owns this text.


    "We had thatmissioned by one of the best cartographers on the continent," he remarked, noticing Rui''s gaze. "The light fantasy themes from the Human Domain turn dark as they go towards the Beast Domain. Beautiful, isn''t it?"


    "Magnificent," Rui heaved a sigh as he admired the map. The man smiled approvingly. "Have a seat."


    The two finallymenced their first meeting.


    "I apologize for the rescheduling and postponing," Rui smiled apologetically. "I was deeply preupied with some urgent, important matters. Still, that is no excuse for causing you inconvenience."


    "Not at all, Your Highness," the man lightly shook his head. "It is rather understandable. After all, the news of the Ss n joining the Kandrian Empire has spread across all upper echelons of human civilization in Panama, I dare say."


    He threw a knowing look at Rui. Rui smiled wryly. "Indeed, it was rather unforeseen, to a certain extent, but the Kandrian Empire is proud to host the Ss n as a residential group ofnd-owning citizens."


    The guildmaster''s eyes lit up with interest. "There are many tales and legends of them that have spread through the years. I wonder how many of them are true and how many aren''t."


    "I have experienced their power firsthand, guildmaster," Rui smiled proudly. "I can assure you that their power is very real."


    His words were sincere. After all, Matriarch Nephi had provided him with more information on the Divine Doctor''s location than all of humanitybined just through the sheer power of her prophecy. The feat allowed Rui to understand just why they were hunted so much throughout history.


    "It begs the question; is the Ss n open to trading their prophetic power?" The guildmaster asked Rui with a pointed interest. He didn''t hide how much he would look forward to that.


    "The Eye of Prophecy technique is one that requires the user to pay a heavy price," Rui remarked. "It is not something that they are willing to trade lightly, but¡­"


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1875 Tentative Agreement

    <h4>Chapter 1875 Tentative Agreement</h4>


    "¡­we might be willing to do so for certain services and trade in return."


    Guildmaster Vaughn clearly hoped that this would be the case. This text is ? N?velDrama/.Org.


    "The Adventurer''s Guild is willing to bend over backward for the Ss n''s prophetic services; I can assure you of that much," he eagerly replied.


    "Raw ingredients for longevity potions," Rui replied straightforwardly. "They can only be found within the Beast Domain, for the most part, and the organization that is able to supply the most reliable, urate, and precise information regarding these natural resources is the Adventurer''s Guild."


    The Adventurer''s Guild had its own guild corps that could be deployed by the guild for various purposes. Unlike a majority of other resources, the Adventurer''s Guild did not sell intelligence for the location of the resources required for longevity potions.


    This was because longevity potions were strategically precious. There were many powerful individuals across human civilization who were willing to pay fortunes to acquire the chance to prolong their lifespan.


    The profit margins for longevity potions were one of the highest for any goods or services, almost as high as that of Martial Artists.


    It was too much of a waste for the Adventurer''s Guild to allow adventurers to get their hands on it. Thus, they deployed their guild corps to acquire the resources needed for longevity potions.


    Of course, this approach was limited only to extremely precious resources.


    What Rui was proposing, however, was to allow the Ss n to get their hands on the raw materials needed for the longevity potions in return for their prophecy services.


    "Hmmm¡­" Guildmaster Vaughn considered the proposal.


    It wasn''t a light one.


    However, it definitely had merit. For one, Rui demanded information that was strategically valuable, simr to the prophecies of the Ss n.


    "I am open to a certain amount of trade with the Ss n in this regard after some guarantees of the value of their prophecies and an established trade rate," he finally said.


    "That''s fine and all, but it is you who seeks the prophecy techniques," Rui replied. "The Ss n is open to trading the prospects of longevity potions, but an excessive number of demands is not something they will tolerate. There are many other sources of longevity potions besides the Adventurer''s Guild. However, there is only one source of prophecies in this world."


    Rui had a point.


    Although the Adventurer''s Guild was most sessful with harvesting the raw ingredients in the Beast Domain, they were far from the only ones. They didn''t have a majority of market share.


    The Beast Domain was toorge.


    It was toorge and far too many Martial Artists scoured its depths. It was impossible for the Adventurer''s Guild to monopolize the longevity potions.


    However, the Ss n had indeed monopolized prophecy, reducing supply and increasing its value.


    Guildmaster Vaughn knew that he was at a disadvantage in terms of the intrinsic value of the services that they were trading.


    "The details can be hashed out by our respective teams," Rui continued. "As long as you are open to trade, a deal that is fair to both sides can most likely be reached."


    Guildmaster Vaughn smiled. "That is true. I shall have my administration contact your factions regarding the details."


    "That''ll do," Rui replied, unconcerned.


    He had already properly grilled his faction in regard to how to handle these kinds of business even if he wasn''t there.


    Besides, he was sure that his grandmother would be interested in this venture. Longevity potions were extremely expensive and generally weren''t for sale in the open market. However, if Ss Chan could bring back their own supply of raw ingredients from the Beast Domain, the total cost would reduce significantly than if they had to redeem one from the Martial Union bypleting arge number ofmissions.


    On top of that, the lifespan lost by offering a handful of prophetic services to the guildmaster would be far less than the lifespan they gained by getting their hands on longevity potions by harvesting resources from the Beast Domain.


    "So, what brings you to the Adventurer''s Guild?" The man asked after they reached a tentative agreement. "I must confess, I was interested in hearing what it was that you sought me for. The Adventurer''s Guild has not had the¡­best rtionship with the Kandrian Empire, unfortunately."


    "I won''tment on my father''s stance towards the Adventurer''s Guild," Rui remarked. "I am not yet Emperor, after all. The Emperor''s stance is Kandria''s stance, for now."


    The guildmaster smiled at the addition at the end of the sentence. "For now, yes."


    Rui smiled back as the man happily interpreted it favorably. He had no idea that Rui had no intention of ascending the throne if he could do anything about it.


    In fact, he had absolutely no idea that the reason Rui was seeking him was precisely to ensure that he didn''t have to ascend the throne as the third Emperor of Kandria.


    "I am looking for someone," Rui rified. "Someone in the Beast Domain. I hoped that the Adventurer''s Guild would aid me in finding it."


    The guildmaster was hardly surprised. "Many people go missing in the Beast Domain. After all, it is easily the most perilous region to find yourself in, in the Panama Continent. The Adventurer''s Guild has an entire department targeted towards recording and finding missing people, though we are ustomed to extremely low sess rates. Naturally, I am willing to employ the guild''s resources to aid you. Can you provide me with the identity of this person?"


    Rui shook his head. "The identity is¡­sensitive. It is not something I am able to share."


    The guildmaster nodded understandingly. "Naturally, we understand the confidentiality of the information of our premium clientele. We have developed strict need-to-know protocols when ites to the handling of private and confidential information of our clientele. I can assure you that it will not be leaked."


    Rui highly doubted he could make that guarantee with powerful international intelligence brokers such as the Beggar''s Sect and the Shadow Guild. Even if he could, informing him that he was searching for the Divine Doctor was far too much of a risk.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1876 Seeking Data

    Chapter 1876 Seeking Data


    "I cannot share the identity of the individual, unfortunately," Rui shook his head, denying the guildmaster''s offer.


    "I certainly understand that," Guildmaster Vaughn graciously replied. "I shall respect that decision. However, it is impossible for us to find the person you seek without their identity or some identifying element."


    "That''s fine," Rui replied. "What I seek is information. Information about the Beast Domain. Information that only the Adventurer''s Guild has."


    "Ah," the guildmaster understood why Rui had sought him. "That is certainly more amenable. It is true that no organization in the world understands the Beast Domain better than the Adventurer''s Guild. I can rmend information packages that you might want to consider purchasing from us unless you have a good idea of exactly what it is you seek."


    "I am open to the former," Rui admitted. "However, I do have some ideas as to what it is I need."


    "Oh? Pray tell, then."


    "Specifically, I am looking for data on acute ecological and environmental change across danger zones up to Master-level in the Beast Domain," Rui replied. "I am aware that the Beast Domain is in a constant state of chronic ecological and environmental change due to the continuous discement migration of beasts. I, however, am not looking for that."


    Rui stared at him with a pointed look. "I want data on abrupt and acute changes that cannot be exined by the discement migration or the Beast Convergence Theory."


    The guildmaster frowned at Rui''s words. "That¡­is not what I was expecting, I must confess. I am unsure as to how this data can help you find an individual person. However, I am willing to aid you nheless."


    Rui smiled. "Thank you, it is certainly much appreciated."


    The guildmaster''s confusion was understandable. Rui would have been very confused had he been in the man''s ce himself. However, the Beggar Sage had been very clear. The Divine Doctor was a man who left chaos in his wake everywhere he went. He had essentially told Rui to follow his trail of unique chaos.


    This was extremely difficult because the Beast Domain was inherently very chaotic.


    It certainly wasn''t possible to aplish it by exploring the Beast Domain by himself. That''s why the data of the Adventurer''s Guild would certainly be very useful. The reason he asked for acute and abrupt changes was because change, to a certain extent, was constant. He needed change that was not part of the usual consequences of human encroachment or beast convergence.


    Only then could he find clues as to what the Divine Doctor had done and where he had been.


    On top of that, thanks to the Beggar Sage providing him with when and where the Divine Doctor entered the Beast Domain, Rui knew where to start looking. He could corroborate the data of the Adventurer''s Guild of the Valley of Prisms at the time that the Divine Doctor had allegedly entered it and verify to see if the Beggar Sage''s assertion that the Divine Doctor was a man who spread chaos was true or not.


    Of course, Rui doubted that he would be wrong.


    This was the immortal leader and founder of the Beggar''s Sect, after all.


    More importantly, once Rui gained a sample of what the ''chaos'' the Divine Doctor spread looked like in terms of ecological and environmental data, he will have gained what could thought of as a chaos signature in the form of patterns in statistical data measuring change in ecological and environmental parameters.


    This would allow Rui to be able to roughly develop a trail for the Divine Doctor through time and the Beast Domain. Unfortunately, the precision would drastically reduce further in the future Rui tried inferring the possible paths through pattern recognition.


    This was where his grandmother''s prophecy came in. It drastically reduced the possible locations for the Divine Doctor, which would ensure the precision of his pattern recognition would remain.


    As for finding the exact location of the Divine Doctor, Rui hoped that his own innate capabilities, like the predictive model, fauna flow, and the Angel of Lace, could cover the final hurdle to physically finding the Divine Doctor in the flesh in the Beast Domain.


    These four sources of information woulde together and allow Rui to find the man he had been looking for.


    "As I said, I am naturally willing to provide this data, but I''m afraid it is not something that can be sold for free," the guildmaster smiled wryly. "Name your price," Rui shrugged. He had so much wealth that wealth had lost all meaning to him at this point. Rui wasn''t sure if he would ever undertake purelymercialmissions ever again. If he did undertake them, it would be for experience or for purposes other than mary remuneration.


    "I''ll have the amountpiled and sent to you," Guildmaster Vaughn assured. "In the meantime, I can provide some luxurious guest suites for you and your convoy while you wait."


    "That would be appreciated," Rui replied. The two chit-chatted lightly about several topics before it finally came to an end. While guided by staff to luxury suites, Rui couldn''t help but begin nning the inevitable switch that he would need to make with Master Reina at some point. He needed to quicklye up with thorough ns to ensure that nobody noticed it or suspected Master Reina of being him.


    He began inspecting theyout of the buildings and their architecture, security measures, and other factors that would be relevant in formting a sessful switch n. Of course, Rui highly doubted that doing it within the guild headquarters was the most optimal way of doing it.


    Regardless, it was best to always consider all his options at his disposal. He would definitely need to spend some time studying the data that the guild would provide him. He could simultaneously scout his potential options to make the switch as cleanly as possible. Over the next few days, he had a lot of work to do.


    -


    Property ? of N?velDrama.Org.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1877 Statistical Anomalies

    Chapter 1877 Statistical Anomalies


    Rui''s luxury suite was, well, luxurious. It was the kind that would be used to house extremely important and special guests, after all. One of the things that Rui was pleased about was that the guildmaster did not mess around and rather quickly supplied Rui with all the data that he sought.


    He found a box on the table in his suite that contained thick and dense piles of documents and files after he returned from a rxing tub bath.


    He had no interest in beating around the bush.


    Immediately diving into the pile, fishing out what served as an index for which files contained what.


    "Valley of Prisms¡­ah, there it is," Rui spotted the document that contained what he was looking for.


    The empirical data of ecological and environmental parameters of the Valley of Prisms in the past few decades. Now, all he needed to do was observe the changes in the Valley of Prisms in that timeframe, subtract the changes that urred constantly and uniformly, and look for any potentially abrupt disruption during the time period that the Divine Doctor was supposed to have arrived at the Valley of Prisms, ording to the Beggar Sage.


    The data provided had all kinds of tabr data, graphs, and charts pertaining to things like poption count of fauna and flora, food chain demographics, changes in topography,nd, and air, as well as fluctuations in evaluated danger level.


    Simply ncing through the data confirmed to Rui that there was indeed a constant change. One that lined up with the Beast Convergence Theory presented by the Ecologer, an immortal sage who had been granted immortality by the Beggar Sage for her extraordinary progress and contributions to ecology.


    The data demonstrated a tendency for migration of fauna species towards the center of the Beast Domain. Herbivorous species slowly moved toward the center of the Beast Domain while grazing onnds.


    Carnivorous species began hunting for prey in regions closer to the center.


    That did not mean their progress was unstopped.


    The Beast Domain grew more dangerous the deeper one went in. This was because the threat level of all species rose significantly. Thus, when species of the Beast Domain tried moving deeper, they ran into stronger beasts that were often territorial, which restricted their migration.


    There were also often topographical and environmental barriers. A drastic shift in the environment would hamper migration since these species would not be able to sustainably live in such conditions.


    Thus, migration efforts were stalled and bounced back.


    In the Valley of Prisms, this was exactly why the migration efforts.


    That was until Rui reached the year that the Divine Doctor was supposed to have entered the Valley of Prisms. "Woah¡­" Rui''s eyebrows furrowed as there was a sudden spike in several parameters.


    During that year, the Valley of Prisms experienced mass migration from the various species that did live in the valley at the time. They all, rather abruptly, moved away.


    "This¡­" Rui''s eyes lit up with interest.


    Simultaneously, during that time, flora health began decreasing significantly as nts and trees, esoteric or otherwise, began dying up and even rotting while they were still alive.


    This persisted for a brief period before it stopped, and the flora slowly recovered. The fauna also eventually returned.


    It was marked as an anomaly whose cause was entirely unknown to this day. Some meta-analyses have been conducted that hypothesized that a powerful monster with potentially poisonous esoteric capabilities had traveled through the forest at the time.


    However, Rui disagreed.


    "Unique chaos," Rui remarked with delight. It lined up with the tips that the Beggar Sage had told Rui when looking for the Divine Doctor. He was already very credible due to his position and known capabilities. And the fact that his words appeared to be true lent further credit to them.


    This was the easy part since he had the data on the valley during the time period that the Divine Doctor was confirmed to be in the Valley of Prisms. N?velDrama.Org owns this text.


    ''The difficult part starts from here on out," Rui narrowed his eyes.


    He had no idea where the Divine Doctor had gone. He had no idea how fast he had moved. The only path forward was scouring through all the data and finding patterns simr to what had happened in the Valley of Prisms.


    ''Thankfully, pattern recognition is my strongest suit,'' Rui smiled as he immediately got to work.


    The most likely direction that the Divine Doctor would take was probably going to be straight ahead towards the center. The probability that he would take a steep turn to the right or left from the Valley of Prisms was extremely low. Otherwise, he would have directly gone straight to that location rather than going through the Valley of Prisms.


    Unfortunately for Rui, the Beast Domain was a more chaotic ce than he had expected. The data from the Adventurer''s Guild showed how little about the Beast Domain humanity truly understood.


    There were many abrupt and colossal data shifts.


    There were little to no exnations for most of them. It was so frequent that the datandscape resembled the seismograph readings of an earthquake. It was utterly iprehensible.


    While he could be reasonably certain, based on the ovepping timing, that the Divine Doctor had caused the mass emigration of the Valley of Prisms, he could not ascertain where the Divine Doctor had gone from there on out by looking for statistical anomalies in the ecological and environmental data because there were too many of them.


    "Damn, stopped at the second step," Rui cursed. As far as he could see, there were three possibilities as to where the Divine Doctor had gone on from there out if Rui used the ''chaos'' searching method that the Beggar Sage had told him about.


    These were three locations that were somewhat close to the Valley of Prisms but deeper into the Beast Domain. Each had its own ecological anomaly shortly after the mass emigration of the Valley of Prism, presenting Rui with three possible paths that the Divine Doctor might have taken.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1878 Three Possibilities

    Chapter 1878 Three Possibilities


    ??The first was the Forest of Fear, which was some distance further into the Beast Domain after the Valley of Prisms. This was a forest with flora and fauna that had a special effect on the mind that caused the target to be more neurotic and prone to experiencing negative emotions, particrly fear.


    The second region was the Caves of Penance, which was some distance from the side of the Forest of Fear to its right. This was a region of cave tunnels created by a species of giant ants that could dig through hard rock like it was y, forming an enormous number of winding cave tunnels that wove through the bedrock and the mountains of the region.


    The third region was some distance to the left of the Forest of Fear; the Sea of Solitude. This was a rather peculiar esoteric water body that extended far beyond the eye could see. The strange thing about the sea was that its waters wereprised of a strange esoteric that allowednd animals to breathe its water in without suffering any problems. It allowed animals to get their oxygen the same way they would in the air.


    In the first region, the recorded anomaly was that on one fine day, all the fear from the Forest of Fear disappeared. The substances that were responsible for inducing fear had all been extracted from the region, temporarily depriving it of any and all fear.


    It was no longer the Forest of Fear!


    It was a very bizarre urrence that many Beast Domain ecologists and experts were unable toprehend or exin.


    In the second region, the Cave of Penance, the anomaly was that all of the giant ants had one day died seemingly simultaneously.


    These ants were spread across a region that was asrge as a country, and yet they had all simultaneously fallen dead.N?velDrama.Org owns this text.


    It was utterly iprehensible.


    The third Region, the Sea of Solitude, experienced a sudden crisis. The esoteric substance that allowed for underwater breathing had been extracted, causing the animals that relied on it to breathe underwater to drown on the spot. This caused a mass extinction of life in the sea, with most life forms that had adapted to that environment dying on the spot.


    Magically, the substance had been restored shortly after, but it was already toote. In the many years that had passed since then, the ecosystem had slowly repopted from the small portion of surviving species. However, the cause of the anomaly has never been understood by anybody to this day.


    "Hmmmm..." Rui narrowed his eyes as his mind furiously burst into action.


    He knew the first region that the Divine Doctor had visited in the Beast Domain was the Valley of Prisms, ording to the Beggar Sage; there was no doubt about that.


    However, where he had gone after that was difficult.


    Following the Beggar Sage''s criteria of chaos, Rui could narrow the next ce that the Divine Doctor had visited, one of the three aforementioned ces that had each suffered a chaotic disruption, which made them viable candidates.


    Rui didn''t know which one had been visited by the Divine Doctor.


    That wasn''t the only issue.


    The possible regions that the Divine Doctor had visited after that rose exponentially as each of the three regions opened a path for several potential regions that experienced disruptions where the Divine Doctor might have visited.


    "Tsk," Rui tutted. "In other words, I cannot use this method to urately derive exactly where the Divine Doctor has gone."


    He could onlye up with an impractical number of possibilities that didn''t give him a good understanding of exactly where the Divine Doctor was.


    The statistical approach itself did not have as much data as he needed to narrow down the paths that the Divine Doctor had taken. In other words, he would need an on-the-ground investigative approach to figure out where the Divine Doctor had gone from there.


    "If that''s the case, then I bettermit all of this to memory before I enter the Beast Domain," Rui nced at the many stacks of documents within therge box.


    This way, he would not be lost when he entered the Beast Domain and found something significant. He would be able to rely on the data even when deep within the Beast Domain.


    For nearly anyone else, memorizing this much data within a short amount of time was impossible, but Rui effortlessly gobbled the data up,mitting it to his Mind Pce.


    He noticed that the data provided by the Adventurer''s Guild grew less precise and less extensive regarding information that was deeper in the Beast Domain.


    This made sense; it was exponentially easier to record data regarding regions at the edge of the Beast Domain that were closer to humanity due to their proximity, due to sensing being less hampered due to its distance from the center of the Beast Domain, and due to the really low danger-level of regions and zones in the extremities of the Beast Domain.


    The deeper regions and zones were much more dangerous. There was almost no information about Master-level zones or regions in the Beast Domain that tended to be deeper into the Beast Domain.


    In other words, the regions and zones that were deeper into the Beast Domain were aplete ck box even for the Adventurer''s Guild.


    Zones ranked in the Upper Realms were so dangerous that only Martial Artists of the Upper Realms were deemed qualified to survive.


    With so few people qualified to enter a region where sensory prowess was hampered due to environmental regions unique to the Beast Domain, reconnaissance was an absolute nightmare.


    Rui was d that the Beggar Sage was confident that the Divine Doctor could not survive Master-level zones and regions near the core of the Beast Domain because Rui was not qualified to survive in those zones.


    Master-level danger rating indicated that a zone was so dangerous that one needed to be a Martial Master to survive indefinitely, and anything lesser was bound to die soon.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1879 First Step

    Chapter 1879 First Step


    Since the Divine Doctor, for all his biological and medical prowess, could not survive Master-level zones, that means Rui could firmly rule out zones that were deeper into the Beast Domain.


    It made his job easier. This text is ? N?velDrama/.Org.


    It wasn''t long before he finished memorizing all the data that he needed to.


    Once that was done, he had no reason to stick around anymore.


    "Er, Your Highness, are you leaving so soon?" Guildmaster Vaughn frowned as Rui abruptly informed him of his departure on short notice. "You have just arrived, and we have yet to be able to prepare a feast for this asion."


    Rui smiled. "I''m sorry about the short notice and the abrupt departure. However, I am pressed with urgent matters that require my immediate attention. The information that I sought from you was relevant to it. Thus, I personally came to acquire it."


    "But¡­"


    "I look forward to speaking with you in a more extended meeting next time," Rui continued. "I shall invite you to the Kandrian Empire next time, and perhaps we can finalize some agreements pertaining to greater cooperation between the Kandrian Empire and the Adventurer''s Guild when I ascend the throne."


    Clearly, the guildmaster was pleased to hear that. "Why, most certainly, Your Highness," he remarked courteously. "I shall look forward to that. In addition, there is an ongoing potential agreement regarding the Ss n and the longevity potions. Our respective staff have already begun negotiations, too, after all."


    "Indeed, I believe that we can reach an agreement in this regard," Rui nodded encouragingly. "On that note, I shall take my leave; I am grateful for the hospitality during my brief stay here and look forward to our next meeting."


    "I, too, am eager to build a working rtionship with you, Your Highness," the man smiled. "It is unfortunate that you are pressed with urgency this time. Thus, we will have to leave it for next time."


    They bade each other goodbye as Rui boarded his royal carriage before it took off into the air from the guild headquarters estate into the air.


    Rui smirked mischievously once he was alone with the Sloth Sage in thepartment of the carriage. His body began to warp as his shoulders shortened, his hips widened and his chest expanded, growingrger while his face and head changed.


    "Hehehe¡­ first target fooled," Master Reina chuckled as she scribbled down on a notepad. The Sloth Sage didn''t mind her, having been on the n for quite some time and having aided with the switch.


    "He was a shrewd and sharp man, yet he wasn''t able to see through my act," She grinned smugly. "Pretty convincing, am I not?"


    "To anybody below the Sage Realm, yes," the Sloth Sagezily remarked. "But a Martial Sage will see right through you, in person at least."


    "Rui said he entrusted that part to you."


    "¡­Yes, unfortunately," the Sloth Sage heaved a tired sigh. "Just keep a low profile and don''t do anything that would warrant you meeting a Martial Sage. I''ll handle the rest."


    "Mmmm, I wonder how far those two are now," Reina voiced her thoughts.


    Many kilometers away, two hooded men watched the carriage sh away from the town at incredibly high speeds. Around them were crowds of customers and clients looking to makemissions from the Adventurer''s Guild or from the many Martial Artists around them directly.


    "Welp, no turning back now," Kane remarked. Rui stared at the distant carriage, closing his eyes. "¡­Yeah."


    He turned around, heading back to the guild headquarters.


    "No turning back now."


    His voice was determined.


    "Wait up," Kane caught up to him. "So what now?"


    His appearance was much different than normal. As was Rui''s, returning to the silver hair that he had fashioned during his eight-year exile from the Kandrian Empire, using the appearance-altering technique that Master Reina had taught him while he trained under her.


    "Now, we register as adventurers," Rui replied.


    "Well, do you intend to undertakemissions for the Beast Domain?"


    "No," Rui shook his head. "But I want to avoid relying on the resources of my faction because that will give me away with the sheer number of eyes on my faction at the moment. The Adventurer''s Guild will be useful for procuring resources relevant to the Beast Domain."


    Of course, this was merely a precautionary measure. Rui had alreadye loaded with everything he would ever need in his entire life.


    Underneath the hood wereyers of belts that were armed with all kinds of useful and necessary tools, artifacts, and instruments that woulde in handy in the Beast Domain and its extreme environment.


    "Won''t registering in the Adventurer''s Guild expose us since we need to give identities?"


    Rui shook his head. "The Adventurer''s Guild is veryx about identity requirements. This is to ensure that they are able to maximize the number of Martial Artists who will register to be Martial Artists."


    Many Martial Artists were in a position where they could not reveal their identity. Usually because they were in hostilities with a given state and did not want to be exposed. This excluded them from being eligible to register with a lot of Martial brokers or mercenary groups that sold their Martial services to the highest bidder.


    The Adventurer''s Guild did not even require any proof of identity. This was why it was extremely alluring for Martial Artists who wanted to work without having their identities exposed. It was perfect for Rui in his current circumstances.


    The two of them got to experience the adventurer town in its rawest self. They navigated dense, bustling crowds filled with Martial Artists and civilians who each sought to participate in the market as suppliers and consumers in the adventurer industry. The atmosphere was electric and infectious, riling anybody it touched.


    Kane grew more excited while Rui maintained his calm andposure. Thetter knew that he had entered a period of his life that would require a lot of patience and perseverance.


    Thus began the first step towards finding the Divine Doctor.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1880 Different

    Chapter 1880 Different


    Rui got a closer look at Adventurer Town when he physically moved around by himself. This was much different from watching it from afar in his carriage. He had to admit the spirit and energy of the town was contagious.


    Perhaps it was because everybody around him walked with a purpose, direction, and drive. This was a town where not a single normal resident remained. It existed solely for the purpose of serving as an avenue for consumers and suppliers of Beast Domain-rted Martial Art services.


    Every single person was searching for something.


    Ambition and determination flickered in the eyes of the Martial Artists round Rui, be they Apprentice, Squire, or even Senior. No matter their Realm, Martial Artists threw who themselves in the Beast Domain day in and day out were built different from those who onlypleted regr and normal civilianmissions.


    It was the difference between soldiers who were regrly deployed on the frontlines and those whose services in an army involved being extremely far from any danger. Rui could instinctively tell that these Martial Artists were different. There was an edge in their eyes that conveyed implicit peril. These were Martial Artists who were forged in adversity that was born from throwing themselves in the Beast Domain.


    Rui respected that, regardless of their Realm. He appreciated it because it was equally infectious. It subconsciously primed him for the magnitude that he was undertaking.


    He couldn''t help but notice that the number of Martial Seniors was proportionally low. And thus far, he had yet to see a single Martial Master.


    It made sense.


    While Martial Apprentices and Martial Squires needed to go out and do groundwork if they wanted to gain personal customers and clients outside of the guild or go procure missions in the mission library of the Adventurer''s Guild, Martial Seniors, and Martial Masters were much more valuable and much more scarce as service providers.


    They could get heads of governments and states to personally negotiate with them for an agreement on their services. They did not need to hanker for customers in the Adventurer Town.


    It reminded him that he had amassed a lot of power by virtue of reaching something close to the peak of the Senior Realm.


    Sometimes, Rui forgot the civilizational significance of Martial Seniors. It was easy to forget this simple fact in the Kandrian Empire, but Martial Seniors were powerful when one looked at human civilization through and through.


    There were nations like the Commonwealth Duchy of Vinfrana that did not even have Martial Squires, let along Martial Seniors. Rui may as well be an overlord to such small and weak nations.


    Even amongst Senior-level groups such as the Kaddar Region and Vilun Ind, Rui would today be considered to be unparalleled. Considering that Master Ceeran, when he was still a Martial Senior, was able to beat two Martial Seniors of the G''ak''arkan Tribe simultaneously. Rui, in his current state of power, would be able topletely mop them up.


    It was only when he entered Sage-level powerhouses like the Kandrian Empire that Martial Seniors were quite diminished in their significance. The moment Rui stepped out, he could almost instantly feel the esteem that came with being a Martial Senior just looking around.


    Of course, Rui and Kane had hidden their presence. Maintaining their furtive approach was more important than flexing auras to boost their egos. STEP


    They shuffled through the many bustling crowds, arriving before arge and towering office of the Adventurer''s Guild.


    "Let''s go," Rui remarked as the two of them weaved through the gathering of people at the entrance.


    Inside was arge space filled divided into multiple sections. What he saw was beyond his expectations.


    "Hahaha! We live to see another day!"


    "Drink up, drink up!"


    "One more mug of starshine mead!"


    On one section was what appeared to be a pub section with tables filled with drunk adventurers drinking away to glory. On the other side was an enormous board with what looked like application forms pinned to it.


    Rui raised an eyebrow, quickly identifying them asmissions. They were on public disy for everyone to see.


    He found it rather strange and interesting that the system was not as robust as that of the Martial Union. The Martial Union had a far more organized and sophisticated system of processing, evaluating, categorizing, and organizingmissions to maximizepatibility between Martial Artists and missions to ensure that the experience gained is relevant to the Martial Artists'' specialty.


    Here, from what Rui could see, there wasn''t nearly as much sophistication.


    Of course, Rui knew that he was being unfair.


    It was probably impossible to have such a system for the Adventurer''s Guild because it was too difficult to have transparency when it came to matters rting to the Beast Domain. The difficulty of gaining information regarding the difficulty of themissions itself was very high. If the Adventurer''s Guild set up an extensive information department that focused on evaluating the difficulty ofmissions, then the cost of those services would be included in the total bill from clients.


    This would cause massive intion in the prices of Beast Domain services across the continent, further inting the prices of goods and services that relied on these missions. It would severely impact the Panamic economy. That was why the Adventurer Guild forewent sophistication in favor of cheaper goods and services. In turn, adventurers suffered. Naturally, the Martial Union did not develop such a scrupulously rigorous evaluation system for fun. It was to ensure that the difficulty of missions was transparent to Martial Artists.


    Here, adventurers could not be certain that they woulde away alive. Every mission could very well be their final mission realistically. Being an adventurer meant being ready to look death in the eye. It was why they had a different feel to them than the average Martial Artist. This text is ? N?velDrama/.Org.


    Rui narrowed his eyes as he headed inside. The energetic atmosphere from those celebrating living another day by getting drunk took on a darker and more somber light. -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1881 Adenturer鈥檚 Guild

    <h4>Chapter 1881 Adenturer''s Guild</h4>


    1881 Adenturer''s Guild


    "Excuse me," Rui called out to a staff member working at the counter.


    "Ah, how may I help you?" She smiled perfunctorily.


    "We''d like to register as adventurers." Rui calmly informed her.


    "Of course," She smiled, pulling out two forms and cing them in front of him.


    They asked for basic details, and none of them demanded proof of identity, as Rui had expected.


    "You will need to answer some questions and verify some basic details. What is your experience with the Beast Domain?"


    "None at all."


    "What is your experience with sustained long-term hunter-


    ss missions?"


    "None at all."


    "What is your expected period of operation within the Beast Domain?"


    "¡­Years, I suppose."


    Suddenly, the ce grew silent as the people around turned towards Rui with incredulity on their faces.


    "¡­"


    The air grew tumultuous.


    "Kid."


    A burly man got up from his seat, putting his drink away as he walked towards Rui.


    "What the fuck did you just say?" He bent down, peering into Rui''s eyes with a condescending expression.


    "It has nothing to do with you," Rui replied nonchntly as he continued filling up the form.


    "Years?" He stared at Rui with incredulity. "The fuck do you think this is? Vacation?"


    Kane red at him. "What is your problem, man?"


    "Tsk tsk," The man tutted patronizingly. "Newbies. They think they can reach quick fame by trying to aplish impossible nonsensical goals like spending years in the Beast Domain. Making a mockery of us veterans of the Beast Domain."


    He snorted, ring at Rui. "Take this advice, don''t be arrogant. I can barely sense any aura from you, but given how young you look, your Squires at be-!"


    The man froze as Kane removed the seal in his aura, unleashing a muted Senior-level aura that seemed to choke the man alive. The entire room froze, watching as they realized the scrawny kid in his early twenties was actually a Martial Senior.


    "Done."


    Rui''s voice cut through the tension in the air as he handed his application in. "Please hasten the process as much as possible."


    "Ah! Of course! Just a minute, sir!" The staff member hurried with an anxious expression. C0ntent ? 2024 (N/?)velDrama.Org.


    CLACK


    A door to the side opened as another person stepped out. Rui and Kane instantly identified her as a Martial Senior.


    She was low-grade. Rui could dispatch her without any


    "Do we have a problem here?" She growled at Kane.


    She didn''t bother even acknowledging the Martial Squire that had provoked the fight. He was irrelevant.


    "Not at all," Rui calmly replied. "The man approached us and made a false assumption about our Realm. My friend here simply corrected his misconception about our Realms."


    "Y-Yes, that''s right!" The Martial Squire bowed down to the three Martial Seniors. "I am sorry for disturbing you, sirs, madam."


    "Hm," She snorted. "Make sure you don''t cause any problems."


    "We shall be sure to adhere to that," Rui remarked.


    She stared at the two of them for a moment before returning on standby.


    The entire guild stared at the two of them with peculiar wary gazes while Rui and Kane quickly collected registered identity cards.


    "We recognize the two of you as gold adventurers. This pamphlet contains all the information that you could possibly need to know regarding being gold adventurers."


    Rui stared at the simple card issued to the both of them.


    The adventurer system, for some reason, did not use the conventional Martial Art ranking system that was spread by the Panamic Martial Federation. It instead used metals as rankings for Martial Artists.


    What Rui found especially strange was the fact that although the rankings covered Martial Apprentices to even Martial Sages, the rankings did not match the number of Realms.


    The metal rankings of the Adventurer''s Guild were as followed; copper, iron, bronze, silver, gold, tinum, mythril, and adamantine.


    The five Realms were somehow squeezed between these eight ranks. Rui wasn''t sure why or how this ranking came to be, especially when danger zones were still marked rtive to Martial Art Realms.


    Regardless, it was very weird. Even Rui did not actually intend to make use of the ranking in any way aside from essing the Adventurer''s Guild''s resources better if there ever was a need.


    The two of them quickly left the guild office once they got what they needed.


    "¡­Probably messed up back there in hindsight," Kane remarked.


    Rui smiled wryly. "As long as you''re aware of it. That man was annoying, but keeping our identities secret is more important. I thought you were an assassin."


    "I hide, I don''t disguise, I''m not good at that, ok?" Kane huffed. "I''ve never had to y a part ever since I mastered the Void Step technique."


    Rui shook his head with amusement. But it made sense, considering how powerful his stealth was. There was no point in trying to disguise his way in which he could just walk in without anybody ever noticing.


    Master Reina would naturally disapprove, of course, if she were here to see this.


    "Alright, so we registered with the Adventurer''s Guild. So now what? We just jump right in?" Kane asked eagerly.


    "We''re on the wrong side of the Beast Domain, for one," Rui replied. "The Valley of Prisms is on the other side. So, we''ll need to circle around the Beast Domain until we reach the western side."


    Rui quickly plotted the shortest path to their destination on foot as he pulled up a detailed, high-quality map of the Kandrian Empire in his mind. "We can probably take the Pave of Graves to minimize distance."


    The Pave of Graves was a travel route that the British Empire had created that passed through the Beast Domain to connect with the Great Southern Trade Road, which connected the east and west half of the continent with each other. Essentially, it was an inward shortcut through the outskirts of the Beast Domain rather than around it, saving time, and had gained its name for passing through a former danger zone in the Beast Domain.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1882 Carrots

    Chapter 1882 Carrots


    "Traveling through the Beast Domain?" Kane raised an eyebrow. "Did the Britannian Empire really make a road through the Beast Domain? That''s crazy!"


    "Yes, but it does a good job of summing up the Britannian Empire, atst, before the Emperor broke through to the Transcendent Realm," Rui huffed. "Thankfully, the road only goes through Squire-level regions and a handful of Apprentice-level regions. Thus, it''s manageable for us."


    Most of the regions of the Beast Domain were of the Lower Realms. Thus, Kane and Rui could survive and even thrive in a good number of the weaker danger zones.


    Things began getting dicey when they entered Senior-level danger zones, where simply not dying very quickly required being part of the Senior Realm. These zones often contained master-level threats, be they fauna, flora, or the environment. "We can follow the Pave of Graves to cut short our distance to the Valley of Prisms on the other side of the Beast Domain," Rui remarked. "It will also give us a good feel of what it''s like to be in the Beast Domain."


    "How far is the Pave of Graves from here?" Kane asked. "Quite close by, some distance away from the Britannian Empire," Rui replied. The Britannian Empire was very close to the Beast Domain, which had sprung them into doing something as insane as creating a path through the Beast Domain. The sheer amount of protection that every single convoy in the Beast Domain would require was something that would inte the prices of any and all goods and services passing through the road beyond any reasonable degree.


    It was a terrible investment.


    Then again, the Britannian Empire was a Martialocratic Martial Supremacist nation. Thus, it was hardly any surprise when it did irrational things such as this.


    "Let''s get going," Rui replied. "It''s going to take us a while to reach the Valley of Prisms." C0ntent ? 2024 (N/?)velDrama.Org.


    The two of them immediately set out for the Pave of Graves quickly, traveling along the border of the Beast Domain.


    Although Rui would have loved to just shoot through the Beast Domain and take the shortest possible path, it was dangerous to do so since it would take through the inner section of the Beast Domain, which was where the information of the Adventurer''s Guild began failing.


    If they ran into a Master-level region, then they were screwed. Rui would rather minimize the risks if they were not necessary. "So, let me get this straight," Kane began. "We circle around the Beast Domain, heading into the Valley of Prisms to look for clues about where the Divine Doctor was headed after. Then we follow his trail by using the clues we find there with the information from the Beggar Sage, the Adventurer''s Guild, and your grandmother''s prophecies?"


    "Pretty much," Rui replied. "Those are four mutually exclusive sources of information, meaning there is no redundancy in the information that I will get from those sources. That''s why having all four will be extremely powerful in finding the man."


    The Beggar''s Sage gave him intelligence on the Divine Doctor himself, while the Adventurer''s Guild gave him information on the Beast Domain. His grandmother gave him information about the future while personally investigating the ces where the Divine Doctor passed through gave him information about the past.


    "And how do you intend to convince this man to heal your father?"


    Rui sharpened his eyes. "By giving him anything he wants. He has powerful connections, undoubtedly, but there are things that only a Sage-level powerhouse can possibly have and procure."


    He paused for a moment before continuing. "¡­The Beggar Sage had said that he was working on treating a patient and had entered the Beast Domain for a diagnosis."


    "¡­Huh?" Kane tilted his head, confused. "What is that even supposed to mean?"


    Rui heaved a sigh, shrugging. "However, in a prophecy that my grandmother showed me, broken as it was, he told me that his current patient was more important than all rulers of humanitybined."


    Rui had faint suspicions and ideas about this patient, but they were so far-fetched that it felt stupid to even utter them aloud. "Regardless, if the difficulty is this high, then there are undoubtedly many things that we can help him with, be it procuring things that he needs for his treatment of this person. I don''t believe that he would not benefit from our aid."


    The Kandrian Empire had an enormous ocean of resources, both literal and figurative, and was among the most powerful Martial Artists anywhere on the continent. "We also have prophecies," Rui murmured. "I know he''s a genius, but surely even he would be tempted by such power. On top of that, his words seemed to indicate that the Eternal Dream Disease that my father is suffering from was a trivial task for him. So healing my father should not be a tall demand of him."


    These were the rationales that gave Rui confidence inpelling the man over to his side. Of course, Rui''s confidence was based on the assumption that the man had some rationality. Unfortunately, Rui was not too confident in this premise. A rational man did not enter the Beast Domain alone.


    He certainly was not the type to spread chaos everywhere he went. Everything that Rui had seen suggested that this person was extremely irrational. A true genius of mind, undoubtedly. But entirely unparalleled in his mental prowess. "I''ll deal with any issues thate up on the fly," Rui remarked, heaving a sigh. He also had one more card to y: He had been deemed a candidate for immortality, to join the ranks of immortal human sages created by the Divine Doctor, the Beggar Sage, and the Psycher by extracting a being''s soul and cing it in a new vessel, allowing them to escape death indefinitely through this process.


    He might be able to earn the Divine Doctor''s regard more than if he were just another Senior or just a prince.


    In other words, the biggest issue was definitely finding him.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1883 Arrived

    Chapter 1883 Arrived


    The two traveled by foot for the most part, maintaining a medium pace over longer periods of time. While they could move far, far faster, it would notst long, and it would deplete their stamina very quickly. These speeds were limited to short bursts inbat. It was why Sage Sayfeel took nearly an hour to travel halfway across the continent with Rui, even if he could''ve moved quicker inbat by himself.


    The world around them changed the closer they got to the Beast Domain. Human civilization grew dimmer and dimmer the closer one got. Towns became viges, which became settlements. Once they arrived within a hundred kilometers of the Beast Domain, only individual buildings fashioned from wood and stones could be spotted.


    It signified the edge of human civilization. It signified that they were crossing the boundaries between man and beast.


    "It''s just devoid of¡­people," Kane muttered as they walked through barren ins.


    There were plenty of deserted regions, even in the Human Domain. The issue was that even in these deserted ins, the taint of humanity could be felt. Abandoned huts and sheds, a broken road or path. Traces and pieces of evidence indicate that, once upon a time, human beings were here. This text is ? N?velDrama/.Org.


    However, the closer they got to the Beast Domain, the more it felt like they had discovered a newnd. "So this why they are called adventurers," Kane''s eyes widened with realization. "Any and everything pertaining to the Beast Domain is an adventure."


    He grinned. "It feels pretty cool when you think about it that way, not gonna lie."


    Rui smiled. "Yes, yes, it does."


    He breathed in deeply.


    The fresh air felt good.


    He had almost forgotten what it was like to not be stalked by bodyguards. It had been more than a year since the revtion of his princehood, and since then, a slew of Martial Masters who had sworn loyalty to him or from the Marital Union apanied him pretty much everywhere.


    He hadn''t realized how sick of it he had grown until today when their simple absence had already begun having a positive effect on him.


    His nerves, senses, and instincts became more active and alert. No longer could a Martial Master bail him out if he was in trouble.


    No.


    Only he could protect himself.


    Indeed, this was what a Martial Artist ought to be like.


    The many shocks and revtions he had been battered with, as well as the objective he had set for himself, had caused him to neglect the negative impacts of being a royal prince of Kandria.


    He had already seen exactly what happened when a Martial Artist was constrained by a princely status. His half-brother Raijun would not have broken through to the Squire Realm if not for Rui''s aid.


    Theck of experience crippled a Martial Artist, and Rui would be no different if he followed the man''s path. However, it was also true that, as a prince, he was in danger. This was true regardless of whether he seeded in his current voyage.


    Even if he seeded in finding the Divine Doctor and bringing him back home to heal his father, he was still a prince.


    No matter what he did, he would always be a member of the Royal Family and of Royal descent.


    This would always bring about danger to him. The Kandrian Empire, simply by virtue of its size and power meant that he would always have enemies inside and outside the Kandrian Empire.


    There were always going to be people that wanted him dead. There were always going to be people that wanted to hurt him.


    All because of his blood.


    That was why he needed bodyguards of the Master Realm at all times. If he didn''t, he might as well offer his life up.


    To live, he needed bodyguards. To progress as a Martial Artist; bodyguards were actually harmful.


    It was an infuriating dilemma. He had found a temporary solution by juking the world. With Master Reina pretending to be him and disguising himself, he could get away with being a Martial Artist and giving himself real experience without dying.


    However, this was not a permanent solution.


    Eventually, he would return to the Kandria, and the problem would persist.


    There was only one solution, as far as Rui could tell.


    His eyes narrowed as he clenched his fists.


    "The Master Realm." Once he broke through to the Master Realm, he will have gained the power to protect himself despite his princely status. One thing that he was not particrly pleased about was the fact that he didn''t know where he stood. He had made fundamental upgrades to his system of thought by adding the Angel of Lace to fundamentally upgrade his system of thought by getting rid of the greatest weakness of his Martial Art.


    Of course, he hadn''t cleanly mastered it as well as he would have liked, but he only got better and better at it.


    Of course, the Martial Mind was supposed to beprised of a system of thought that the conscious mind was unable toplete by itself. The Angel of Lace, even thebat-refined version, was still an enormous flood of information that essentially paralyzed him because his mind was too weak to process all this information.


    That was why he needed to stall the Gatekeeper before their battle began. He would be frozen in one ce even if he wanted to move if used inbat.


    Regardless, he was on the right path, and he just didn''t know whether he had arrived at the precipice of a higher Realm.


    It was infuriating because Master Reina had informed him that his path to the Master Realm would be the hardest all because of his gifted mind. He had reached such a high level of thought inherently thanks to his mind undergoing a second round of explosive cognitive growth in a young brain.


    "Rui?" Kane''s voice broke him out of his reverie.


    "Hm?" "¡­I think we''re here."


    Rui turned forward as he beheld the Beast Domain for the first time.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1884 Incredible

    Chapter 1884 Incredible


    ??Rui had known about the Beast Domain for a long time. Since he first heard about it as a Martial Apprentice, he had gone on to learn how the central and core of the Panama Continent was one that was still upied by nature and a natural ecosystem that was almost entirely untouched by human civilization.


    He had heard stories.


    Seen a few images.


    He had even done a deep dive into the Beast Domain when preparing for it, learning even more about the fantasies and mysteries this domain, devoid of humanity, held.


    Yet, nothing could have prepared Rui for what he saw.This text is ? N?velDrama/.Org.


    Standing atop the edge of a cliff, he beheld the Beast Domain for the first time.


    An ocean of alien-like flora of myriad colors stretched as far as the eye could see. Yet, not even the enchanting symphony of colors it created could distract one from the many miracles that seemed to unfold right before his eyes.


    Inds that magically floated in the air, overshadowing the dense forests.


    Rivers that defied gravity, flowing from the earth to the heavens above beyond even his enhanced depth of vision.


    A transparent sky that did not scatter blue light. It was a sky that betrayed a universe filled with stars in broad daylight. The visage of the cosmos was a sight more profound than anything Rui had ever seen in his entire life.


    There were colorful shes of light, unlike anything one would ever see in the Human Domain. Fantastical Aurora Borealis spectacles danced across the transparent sky and the background of the very universe.


    It was a magnificent fantasy that could paralyze one in awe for a thousand lifetimes.


    RUMBLE


    Mountains shook.


    "No¡­" Rui''s eyes widened with shock as he stared into the distance. "Those aren''t mountains."


    They were so enormous and resembled rock that Rui had thoroughly taken them for mountains, but he had seen this species before.


    "Golems," Rui murmured with awe. "Golems the size of mountains."


    Yet, as shocking as they were, they weren''t the only fascinating species of flora. A myriad of creatures flickered in the air and the atmosphere in the distance. Their strange shapes resembled a fusion between birds and fish.


    Yet Rui could only grow stunned when he realized that creatures swam in the air, identical to how fish swam in the ocean.


    The very skies were their ocean.


    Mis mind struggled to parse all the fantasies of the very fabric of the Beast Domain. The human mind had not evolved to be able to adapt to such drastic and radical shifts in reality.


    "You good, bro?" Kane tilted his head towards Rui.


    Kane had spent more than a month in the Beast Domain when he went there to get an alibi for his breakthrough to the Senior Realm. He had already gone through what Rui was currently going through.


    It broke Rui out of his reverie.


    A single whisper escaped him.


    "¡­Incredible."


    His voice was sincere.


    No amount of studying could have ever prepared him for this.


    No amount of preparation and research could have ever allowed him to maintain hisposure.


    "This¡­" Rui muttered. "This is a miracle in the flesh. The Beast Domain is unlike anything I could have imagined."


    "Yeah, it''s crazy," Kane concurred, nodding as he appreciated the scenery. "It''s like I say, man, if not for the dying part, I would migrate and start a new life in the Beast Domain."


    "Well, as a Martial Senior, you''re not dying in an Apprentice-


    level Region," Rui remarked.


    "Yeah, but they''re boring. Things get even more crazy the deeper you go."


    "Crazier than this?" Rui gestured to the supernatural scenery before them.


    "You have no idea," Kane grinned. "Let''s go. The Pave of Graves is over there."


    He pointed distantly in the direction that they were walking.


    It was buried under the canopy of the dense forest, but Rui''s senses did allow him to make out a road in the Beast Domain.


    The two of them descended from the cliff, sky-walking down to the Beast Domain as they headed toward the Pave of Graves.


    STEP


    "My first step into the Beast Domain," Rui murmured aloud.


    "Quit being so melodramatic bro," Kane snorted


    "This road¡­" Rui inspected it. "It hasn''t been maintained in forever."


    The material used to construct it had been subject to immense wear and tear over the decades. It appeared that the British Empire hadpletely stopped caring about it for many years now.


    Rui narrowed his eyes. "Probably since the Second East Panamic War."


    The Britannian Empire had be a lot more passive than it ever used to be after the Emperor broke through to the Transcendent Realm.


    It clearly had some corrtion to what Master Krakule had told him. For whatever reason, Martial Transcendents abstained from interfering in the world. Being the authoritarian state that it was, the Empire followed suit as it soon abandoned much of its previous hawkish warmongering aggression to the rest of East Panama.


    "Still, it''s good enough since we''re on foot," Rui remarked. "The path was constructed to allow for carriages to pass through it without running into too much danger or losing their way through the Beast Domain, so we should be fine as well."


    Direction was extremely important in the Beast Domain.


    Rui knew it was extremely important, not just because he had thoroughly researched its importance but also because he could feel it at that very moment.


    The Beast Domain hampered the natural sense of direction inclined to the''s maic field.


    Every species in the animal kingdom had evolved an inherent ability to maintain direction that was known to be corrted with the earth''s maic field. Yet ever since Rui stepped into the Beast Domain, Rui felt as though he was lost.


    He felt directionless.


    He felt like he was drawn into an endless spiral where directions had lost meaning.


    It didn''t hamper his body or reflexes or reactions in a manner that would weaken him. But one could walk around in circles in a small region for years and never find one''s way out.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1885 Fear of Unknown

    Chapter 1885 Fear of Unknown


    Of course, Rui was different.


    He could record even directions in his Mind Pce, allowing him never to get lost no matter what.


    "Let''s get going," Rui shook his head vigorously. "We don''t have any time to waste."


    Every second wasted was one second less to find the Divine Doctor, bring him back, and heal his father.


    The two of them immediately picked up the pace as they swiftly traveled through the Pave of Graves. Given how enormous the Beast Domain was, it would take them many weeks to travel through the Beast Domain.


    The two of them traveled through the Beast Domain, experiencing its many fantasies up-front and in person.


    It turned out that Kane was right.


    Traveling through the Beast Domain showed Rui magical worlds that were even more fantastical than he had imagined possible.


    They passed through a region with extremely light gravity and its own ecosystem of species that had adapted to the bizarre conditions of that region. Lands and rocks floated midair while trees had developed active mobile roots that could actively search for and hunt for the resources the tree needed.


    Fauna, on the other hand, was muchrger and heavier. On of that, they had stranger and more bizarre shapes that could never be sustained in high-gravity environments. The food chain of this region was no more than a cross-species game of three-dimensional tag with all kinds of animals leaping around in the air.


    "Woah," Rui pirouetted in the air, drawing the attention of a local frog-like predator.


    "RIBBIT!" It leaped at him.


    Unfortunately, it was thest mistake it had ever made.


    SPLAT!


    Rui annihted it with a single attack.


    "Tsk, to think that an Apprentice-level beast thought it could eat me," Rui grumbled. "Hiding our power in the Human Domain was prudent, but it''s self-sabotaging in the Beast Domain."


    "True," Kane admitted. C0ntent ? 2024 (N/?)velDrama.Org.


    In just a moment, the two of them unleashed their auras, removing the mental shackles on them.


    A passive mid-grade Senior-level aura emerged from Kane, while one at the very peak of the Senior Realm erupted from Rui. A profoundly deep tsunami of peril emerged from Rui, sweeping across the region.


    This was the power of one of the very strongest Martial Seniors to ever grace the Senior Realm.


    The creatures in the region shivered before swiftly evacuating from the region in a hurry.


    "Why do we live in the Kandrian Empire again?" Kane asked half-sarcastically and half-seriously. "We could just rule our own kingdoms, man."


    "Meh, I''m not interested in ruling any kingdom, but especially not a pittance of a Squire-level or a Senior-level one," Rui remarked nonchntly. "Yeah, you''d rather rule a Sage-level powerhouse like the Kandrian Empire, wouldn''t you?" Kane smirked.


    "Funny."


    The two of them moved on, finally exiting the region and returning to normal gravity.


    "Man¡­" Kane murmured, turning around. "They built a road through that?! Have they lost it?"


    Kane had a prudent point. "I doubt it," Rui shook his head. "Most likely¡­this region was probably born in the past eighty years or so."


    "Really?" Kane raised an eyebrow. "This region is that young? Is it really possible for so many species to have evolved so quickly to be perfectly suited for this region in such a short timeframe."


    "The pacing is indeed unbelievable, but the Beast Domain is constantly in change," Rui replied. "Change from beast migration due to human expansion and encroachment. The Beast Convergence Theory proposed by the Ecologer. And just a high tendency to change due to vtile shes between beasts in an ever-shrinking beast domain."


    "¡­That''s crazy," Kane murmured, turning back to the region behind them. "To think that we humans have caused this indirectly."


    Rui narrowed his eyes. His nerves and senses tingled as he felt an implicit sense of peril.


    It was not acute nor physical. It was certainly not some threat immediately around him. It was more like he felt unsafe simply being in the Beast Domain.


    It was an ominous sense of fear.


    A peril that was toe.


    "New ns," Rui remarked, turning to Kane. "We''re heading directly to the Valley of Prisms. I don''t want to waste time leaving the Beast Domain and then re-entering it. Let''s get this done as quickly as possible."


    "You sure?" Kane raised an eyebrow. "We could die if we make a mistake."


    "The probability of that happening is low so long as we are in registered and documented Apprentice-level and Squire-level danger zones."


    "Aren''t only a quarter of the regions in the Beast Domain properly evaluated and graded?" Kane raised an eyebrow.


    "We travel through the ones that are known to be safe," Rui remarked. "That way, we minimize the probability of running into a Master-level monster."


    Of course, Rui could never get rid of the possibility of running into a Master-level monster that would kill them then and there. The Beast Domain defied order.


    It defied predictability. The fact that his grandmother could predict such precise visions of the future spoke to not only how immensely powerful she, as a Martial Sage, was but also how powerful the Eye of Prophecy technique was.


    "Let''s keep our auras open in regions where we know we''re the strongest," Rui suggested. "However, when we enter unknown regions of the Beast Domain, let''s not only keep it closed but use our misdirection-stealth techniques as well while ensuring that the region is safe."


    Both of them had mastered the Primordial Instinct technique and together would at least be able to detect non-hidden danger. If a Master-level beast roamed a certain region, then Rui and Kane would hardly fail to notice it.


    "Damn, we might actually die," Kane realized. Rui understood the sentiment. The feeling of actually experiencing real danger for the first time since his battle with the Gatekeeper and his battle with the gauntlet of assassins before that in the Kandrian Empire.


    However, for one of them, he had expected and prepared for while the other was a duel. Dangerous they were, but they were known.


    For the first time in a long time, Rui was reminded of the fear of the unknown.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1886 Hidden Threats

    Chapter 1886 Hidden Threats


    "By the way, I just assumed you have the navigation part under control," Kane murmured. "You do, right?"


    "Yeah, I do, I added an ultra-high-definition map of the map to my Mind Pce," Rui remarked. "Courtesy of the guildmaster of the Adventurer''s Guild."


    "Good, then give me a heads up if we head into an unknown zone."


    "Funny you should mention that," Rui remarked, turning to Kane.


    "Because we are about to."


    The two of them turned front, spreading their senses into the distance.


    "What is that?" Kane raised an eyebrow.


    Rui''s expression grew grim. "Marsh."


    "Oh, hell no!" Kane shook his head. "I am not setting foot in there. I bet there''s a gigantic-ass anaconda or python that will eat me in one go."


    "Then don''t," Rui remarked. "We can sky-walk. We don''t need to go anywhere near the marsh."


    It was a fair point.


    "¡­Only if my senses don''t warn me against it," Kane replied apprehensively.


    "Fair."


    The two of them treaded through the forest as thends beneath their feet grew increasingly less solid and increasingly marshier.


    "Eugh," Kane grimaced as the two of them slowly began escting into the air to avoid the marsh.


    The flora began changing, gradually shifting fromrge trees to shorter and detached nts that loosely floated in the marsh. The two of them cautiously entered the new marshy region that gradually expanded while the forest was left behind them, keeping their senses active.


    The moment they entered, they felt peril.


    WHOOSH


    Instantly, they surged higher into the air, putting distance between them and the marsh, quickly reaching the clouds.


    By the time they realized that the danger came from above and not below, it was toote.


    "SSSSS!!!"


    A blindingly fast viper strike emerged from the clouds,shing out at them.


    WHOOSH!


    Rui and Kane barely managed to evade death with active Martial Hearts as the viper''s fangs missed them by inches. Being inflicted with venom in the Beast Domain was game over for any adventurer. It was rmended that one conveyed their final will to any party members along with them in the Beast Domain because that was a hopeless situation. C0ntent ? 2024 (N/?)velDrama.Org.


    THWOOM THWOOM THWOOM!


    Rui fired off three Might Roar sh sts at the serpent, striking its scales hard.


    "SSSS!!" It slithered back into the clouds it came from, evidently surprised at the power that the small creature was capable of unleashing.


    Yet, just as the two of them could even think of rxing, a myriad of serpent strikes converged on them, seeking to tear them apart.


    "SSSS!!"


    There was no room for escape.


    In just the briefest fraction of milliseconds, Rui unleashed one of his most powerful techniques. One that he hadn''t used in a long time.


    ''Mind Mask.''


    Suddenly, his aura skyrocketed.


    It shot far past the Senior Realm, reaching a higher Realm of power.


    A Master-level aura spread across the entire battlefield, pressing down on the minds of those of Lower Realms.


    Thankfully, the serpents had a powerful survival instinct. They shivered, ceasing their strike midway as they immediately slithered away from the two. The two of them panted heavily, breaking into a cold sweat. "Damn¡­" Kane murmured. "Not gonna lie, that was pretty close."


    Rui nodded grimly, keeping his Master-level aura.


    Whenever he got to the peak of a Realm, he gained the ability to project the power of a Higher Realm using the Mind Mask technique.


    This was the first time he had projected the power of a Martial Master. Thankfully, it was sessful.


    "Good going," Kane heaved a sigh of relief. "Surviving that would have been¡­difficult."


    "I can keep this Mind Mask active for a short amount of time at most," Rui replied. "So let''s get past this marshy area quickly."


    Kane nodded before the two of them shot forward, sky-walking through the region at top speed.


    Rui nced at the clouds with narrowed eyes as he extended his senses to them. He knew that they housed serpents, but s, his senses could not pick out any particr serpents among them.


    Only when he used the Riemannian Echo could he sense them, even if barely. This showed how powerful their camouge was, that they could fool the senses of a powerful Martial Senior like himself.


    "You really can''t let your guard down around here," Rui grumbled as he kept his senses active.


    He could see why this region was marked as unknown. Most Martial Artists who entered it probably had the same thought that they did, staying away from the marsh when, in actuality, it was the clouds that were dangerous. In most cases, the ambush of the vipers was probably devastating and game over for the Martial Artists.


    The Adventurer''s Guild did not deploy Martial Artists to try and map the Beast Domain.


    It was futile.


    Not only were senses hampered in the Beast Domain, which exined why Rui and Kane failed to notice the vipers in the clouds, but the size of the Beast Domain was greater than the surface area of Earth from his previous life.


    Despite being a fraction of the Panamic Continent, it boasted a mind-boggling amount of area. It was impractical to try and actively map such an enormous environment. The Adventurer Guild relied on reports of adventurers to try and piece together a picture of the Beast Domain, but that was hardly enough to know every region of the Beast Domain inside out.


    It wasn''t too long before the two of them managed to exit the marsh region. The marsh slowly reverted back to mud before growing drier and coarser.


    "I''m d the marsh is behind us, but¡­" Kane murmured at the sight before them. "I''m not sure if I want to deal with this.


    WHOOOSH


    The cold winds of a blizzard blew against them. In the distance, an enormous spiral of ice, snow, and freezing cold winds churned in circles. The cold spread out as prickling winds blew over towards them.


    "Fun," Kane murmured.


    "Let''s go, we don''t have time to waste."


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1887 Shocking Revelations

    Chapter 1887 Shocking Revtions


    ??The two of them treaded past the snow, heading straight for the blizzard.


    "I can''t even see the Pave of Graves anymore," Kaneined.


    "I doubt the road survived all of this," Rui narrowed his eyes. "We''ll just have to rely on my memory."


    "¡­I know you''re memory is good and all, but you''re sure you have this, right?"


    "Don''t worry, I''m good," Rui replied.


    The map he had memorized every detail of was intentionally extremely high-definition. He could actively track their position on it in real-time by tranting the distance covered in real life to the distance covered in the map, allowing him to know exactly where they were.


    "I don''t have time to waste," Rui narrowed his eyes.


    BADUMP!


    His Martial Heart burst into life, empowering the entirety of his physicality. He inhaled deeply, filling his lungs to their maximum capacity.


    THWOOM THWOOM THWOOM THWOOM THWOOM!!!


    Heunched his most powerful long-range attack.


    BOOOM!!!


    The tier-five Transverse Resonance attack crashed into the blizzard, instantly dispelling all the winds as the intense sound dispelled the winds swiftly, clearing a way for them.


    "It''ll reform soon; let''s go," Rui remarked as the two of them shot forward and past the blizzard region swiftly. They maintained a brisk pace, crossing the snowy region within an hour and arriving on the other side quickly as they arrived at a cliff overseeing an enormous region that extended far into the distance.


    The two continued traveling for hours.


    Days even.


    They stopped only for basic necessities, often prolonged because one of them needed to be awake when the other was asleep.


    Region after region.


    Zone after zone.


    They continued traveling through the outermost regions of the Beast Domain to minimize the distance that they needed to cover.


    The things that they came across were truly stunning. Rui had to readjust his worldview on the things that were possible.


    He had always thought that the Human Domain was fantastical and magical. After all, it had ces like the Umiana Trench, the Thundering Valley, the Great Forest of Hypnonarak, and the floating ind.


    Yet, those were bread and butter for the Beast Domain.


    Theye across a pir of water that extended from the ground, reaching all the way into the depths of the heavens. It remained in ce like a solid pir spanning an enormous area that left them no choice but to try and cross it.


    "Woah," Kane murmured, trying to reach for it.


    Yet the moment he tried touching, the water retreated precisely enough to avoid his touch, leaving a cavity in the shape of his arm.


    Rui grabbed a rock, throwing it at the pir of water.


    CLACK


    The pir of water retreated to avoid the trajectory of the rock, allowing it to hit the ground normally.


    He expanded his senses into therge pir of water, detecting many fish-like lifeforms.


    Nothing unusual, if not for the fact that these were liquid lifeforms whose bodies were in a liquid state.


    Rui sshed a bit of water into the pir, which it did not reject.


    "It''s solid-phobic," Rui remarked. "It evades contact with all solid states of matter."


    "That''s crazy," Kane admitted.


    "Confident in holding your breath?" Rui raised an eyebrow, turning to Kane with a wry smile.


    Kane grinned. "You''re on."


    The two of them took a sprinter''s position.


    "Ready¡­Set¡­GO!"


    BADUMP!


    Their Martial Hearts zed into life, propelling them at extraordinary speeds as they shed through the pir of water.


    Much to Rui''s surprise, the pir managed to evade them cleanly despite their speed, never once touching them.


    That was until they reached the center of the enormous pir. The two shivered as they felt an enormous sense of peril.


    It was the water.


    The water that previously evaded them suddenly converged on them predatorily. Rui btedly realized that the pir of water was an actual living being and not just a lifeless medium like a sea!


    ''Shit.''


    BOOOOOOM!!!


    Rui and Kane rushed forward even as an enormous wave swept them, trying to consume them.


    s, Rui was not that easy to kill.


    ''Hypertrophic Surge,'' Rui narrowed his eyes as his muscles inted, growing extremely powerful as he activated the Metabody System, massively amplifying Outer Convergence and Fire Breathing.


    BOOOM!!!


    His power crashed into the crushing weight of the water as an enormous shockwave erupted from the sh, flinging them out of the water.


    The two of them gasped for air as they spun through the air, struggling to gain their bnce in midair.


    "What the fuck?!" Kane red at the pir of water that had already begun to return to its original shape. "Since when was water alive?!"


    lights¦­¦Ïv¦Ål ?¦Ïm "Thankfully, it could only rely on its weight," Rui remarked. "It underestimated the power of the Senior Realm.


    "Man, that shit is crazy¡­" Kane huffed as he turned around to get a good look at the region they had arrived at.


    What he saw stunned him stiff.


    In just a moment, his demeanor shifted, growing severe.


    The air prickled, growing more tumultuous.


    "This¡­" Kane''s eyes widened with shock. "Isn''t this¡­?"


    His voice grew incredulous.Property ? of N?velDrama.Org.


    His mouth dropped at the scene before him.


    Rui followed his gaze, immediately narrowing his eyes.


    His expression grew grave.


    "Am I dreaming?!" Kane eximed with shock.


    "No¡­" Rui shook his head.


    Before them, spanning an enormous distance, was a region filled with the ruins of civilization. They stood in the sky, overseeing a region that spread far into the distance, one covered in light forests and trees.


    What stood out of ce was the presence of remains of the foundations and bases of oncerge buildings. Arge half-


    broken tower stuck out of the forest like a sore thumb.


    The remains of what once were roads spread across the entire region, indicating the presence of a oncerge metropolis.


    Kane shook at the revtion.


    "But how?!" He stared at the region before them. "How can there be ruins of human civilization in the Beast Domain?! Didn''t we conquer the Beast Domain from the very edges of the continent moving inwards?"


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1888 Nagarojin

    <h4>Chapter 1888 Nagarojin </h4>


    The size of the region over which the ruins spanned was enormous. It exceeded the size of the Town of Hajin and the Capital Town of Vargard in the Kandrian Empire. It was clearly extremely. Buildings had been chopped right down to their very foundations, leaving only the sturdy bases that once supported them.


    Piles of rubble from bricks and bs of stone piled up across the entire region, painting the deste picture of the erosion of civilization.


    Yet, not even time could hide how glorious this city would have been in during its prime. Thework of roads indicated an incredibly brilliant vision of civil engineering for the entire metropolis. The foundations and bases of infrastructure revealed an extremely well-thought-out nning for infrastructure allocation.


    Just these clues alone allowed one to infer that this was far from a primitive civilization that merely tried to survive.


    No.


    This was a civilization that thrived.


    It was a painful reminder that nothing couldst forever.


    "How can this be¡­?" Kane gazed at the ruins with shock. "These aren''t years old. Or even decades old. These are centuries old, if not longer! But how? Weren''t we much more primitive back then or something? We barely survived outside of the Beast Domain that spanned much of the continent. How in the world did a human city flourish in the Beast Domain?!"


    He grew excited. "We need to inform the Adventurer''s Guild about this ce!"


    "They already know," Rui replied calmly. "They have taken to calling it the Lost City of Nagarojin."


    Kane''s eyes widened with surprise. "Lost City of Nagarojin?"


    "Yeah," Rui nodded. "This is the name designated to this particr lost city."


    "Wait wait wait," Kane raised his hands, gesturing Rui to stop. "Isn''t this revolutionary?! Why are you so nonchnt about it?"


    "It is revolutionary," Rui nodded. "But it is not new. It isn''t even unique. There are other such ruins in the Beast Domain, although very scarce and rare. It is not possible for ruins from well beyond the age of Martial Art to survive this long."


    "¡­What?" Kane whispered, turning back to the lost city. "I don''t get it. How can that be? What does it even mean?!"


    "The mystery of lost cities is one of the greatest mysteries we know," Rui replied. "Lots of data has been collected throughout the years on these strange ruins of civilization in the Beast Domain, and the very cream of the crop of experts and schrs of human civilization have collectively gone through it to try and piece together the very mystery that gues you right now?"


    "¡­And¡­?" Kane urged him.


    Rui shrugged. "Nobody knows. Nobody understands how human civilization existed in the Beast Domain. It has utterly baffled archaeologists, anthropologists, historians, and other experts in relevant parallel fields."


    "Oh,e on!" Kaneined. "You can''t leave hanging like that!"


    Rui smiled wryly, amused. "Well, there are hypotheses. Of course. However, none of them have managed to cross the threshold to be considered as fact beyond a reasonable doubt. It is one of the greatest points of conflict among historians specializing in early humanity."


    STEP


    The two of them reached andnded in the metropolis of ruins overrun by thick vegetation. Yet, no amount of vegetation could hide the touch of humanity in this particr region.


    Rui''s senses washed over the entire region, relieved at what he sensed.


    "Well, this seems to be most an Apprentice-level danger zone," Rui heaved a sigh of relief. "Considering that the bases of these ruins and all this light vegetation are intact, I highly doubt there are any Master-level monsters in this particr region. We can take a break here, get some rest and recuperate."


    "What hypotheses?" Kane urged, ignoring his words.


    Rui smiled wryly. "First, we find a good ce to get some rest."


    The two of them tread through the ruins of the Lost City of Nagarojin, observing the various remains of the ruins.


    Not much could be inferred due to how much had been eroded by time.


    Patched of what used to once have been a road appeared to be constructed by burying bs of stone into the mud beside each other to form a level path. Considering even a bit of it had managed to survive centuries in the Beast Domain, its endurance could be praised.


    "Woah¡­" Kane murmured as he came across an open space in the ground with straight walls. Something that, once, was clearly manmade. "You think this was like an open bath or a swimming pool of ancient times?" N?velDrama.Org owns this text.


    Rui shrugged, eying a particr spot. "I found us a good spot."


    He gestured towards a particr ruin in the distance whose walls were better preserved than any other. Creepers had formed a atop it, allowing it to serve as a natural shelter. The two young men decided to partake in its shelter for the time being, having traveled more than a day continuously.


    "Alright, spit it out," Kane red at Rui, who enjoyed his impatience.


    "I told you," Rui replied, drinking some water. "Nobody knows. There are only hypotheses. One popr hypothesis is the Beast Nativity Hypothesis, which states that human civilization long ago had been integrated into the Beast Domain along with the fantastical fauna and flora of the Beast Domain. This particr hypothesis suggests that the Beast Domain once covered every end of the Panama Continent, and humans lived within it as just one out of many species of the Beast Domain."


    "Woah," Kane murmured as his gaze returned to the lost city around him. "That would exin why there was a human city or multiple human cities in the Beast Domain. But that feels off, to be honest."


    Rui nodded. "am''s Razor certainly aids this particr hypothesis due to how simply it follows the evidence. However, there are many gaping questions that present themselves at the behest of this particr hypothesis. What happened? The earliest human records preserved in the Human Domain indicate that humanity was outside the Beast Domain on the very outskirts of the Panama Continent. So how and why did humanity go from inside all the way outside, abandoning the robust and sophisticated civilization that they built in the Beast Domain?"


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1889 Other Issues

    <h4>Chapter 1889 Other Issues </h4>


    Rui narrowed his eyes. "That''s not the only issue. Another issue that presents itself is the fact that the quality and scale of civilization that we see here vastly exceeds that of early human history on the Panama Continent. A thousand years ago or so, humans were still hunter-gatherers at best or nomadic tribes at worst. Thus, the anthropological discontinuity in the sophistication of civilization suggests that the hypothesis is deeply wed or very iplete."


    "Makes sense¡­" Kane murmured. "I felt it was off, but that does highlight why it''s off."


    Rui had to agree that intuitively, he felt like it was iplete or outright wrong as well.


    "What about other hypotheses?" Kane asked, turning to Rui.


    "Well, they''re just possibilities that try to connect this part of human civilization to known history," Rui remarked. "There are all kinds of possibilities that anyone can conjure up. A forced migration. Independent civilizations inside and outside the Beast Domain. Maybe nigh-extinction events that led to a reset etc. The possibilities are endless as long as you are creative enough. They are not what''s significant."


    "Well, then, what is significant?" Kane asked, curious.


    "The information that we have about the traces of ancient civilization in the Beast Domain that we have much greater confidence in than unsubstantiated hypotheses," Rui replied calmly. He continued, "For example, anthropologists, through data collected by Martial Artistsmissioned through the Adventurer''s Guild, have made very odd empirical observations of these so-called lost cities."


    "Like what?"


    "It''s not one definitive observation," Rui replied. "It''s actually many little observations. In some of the better-preserved lost cities, they managed to gain a better understanding of the technological paradigms of these civilizations. And while somewhat unclear due to how much has been lost, it''s almost as if¡­"


    Rui narrowed his eyes. "¡­Almost as if these civilizations did not know what esoteric substances were."


    Kane''s eyes widened with shock. "What?! What do you mean?!"


    "Let me exin," Rui answered. "For example, you know how esoteric lighting technology works in our human civilization, right?"


    "¡­Yeah, we use moonshine and glowflower nts, right?"


    One was an extremelymon esoteric substance in the crust of the Panama Continent that absorbed ambient light during the day and shined when ambient light around it reduced, serving as natural automated lighting for when the Sun started setting. It was considered esoteric because, mysteriously, the light it shined exceeded the light that it absorbed.


    The other was a nt that could shine endlessly as long as it was healthy.


    Both of these were extremely economical and cheap ways of generating light that there was practically no incentive to use anything else as a source of light, including fire which required fuel that cost money.


    "Well, this advanced civilization, advanced as it was, did not use moonshine rock that can be found literally everywhere in the Panamic Continent," Rui replied. "They used firewood across the entire metropolis despite its massive inconvenience. There is some anthropological evidence that they even had processes for drying wood during monsoons to ensure that they could light fires. Why didn''t this clearly sophisticated civilization employ moonshine instead?"


    Kane''s eyes swam around, deep in thought. "Yeah, that''s kinda crazy, not gonna lie."


    "It would be one thing if some environmental reasons, such as particr topographies like deserts, prevented them from having ess to moonshine. But, as far as anthropologists can tell, this seems to be universal across lost cities," Rui remarked. "That isn''t the only instance. Putting aside rare esoteric phenomena, lost cities did not have any records indicating that they were aware of moremon esoteric phenomena that are nigh-universal in our civilization today. It''s extremely bizarre."


    "It definitely feels really weird," Kane murmured, immersed in his thoughts.


    "It''s especially absurd when you consider that these lost cities are in the Beast Domain, which contains even more esoteric wonders than the Human Domain. So, a starkck of esotericism in their civilization haspletely flummoxed anthropologists and historians. It''s just reality-defying. This is why no one has understood lost cities. Not even the best of minds that humanity has to offer in regard to these fields, like the Scrier, the Esoterist, and the Ecologer, have been able to whip up an exnation as to what all of this means."


    None of this wasmon knowledge.


    In fact, much of what Rui had told Kane was ssified. The existence of lost cities had not been discovered until after the Age of Martial Art was founded. It had shattered the known understanding of human history and was dealt with in an extremely careful and furtive manner.


    While the existence of lost cities could not be kept secret, many of its ramifications were deemed to be worth censoring until they gained a better understanding of what had happened.


    It was a stupid decision as far as Rui was concerned. They should have never hidden the full extent of the truth and divulged everything from the very get-go in the spirit of the pursuit of truth. But s, that wasn''t nearly as much of a thing here in the Panama Continent as it was back on Earth.


    Naturally, as prince and sessor to the throne, he had learned everything there was to know, to a basic degree.


    It changed his view of human history on the Panama Continent.


    The current conventional understanding of human history was based on Panamic civilization in the human domain, which has onlyprised a thousand years of history. It was remarkably simple when looked at as a whole. It was marked by the believed and theorized transition from nomadic to settlement. From there on, civilization grew increasingly sophisticated as humans made greater use of the magical resources that the Panama Continent had to offer, expanding, developing, and engaging in war with each other until five hundred yearster, the Age of Martial Art was born.


    However, evolutionists agreed that the human species had been around for far longer than a thousand years.


    This meant that the history constructed from avable evidence only told a minute fraction of the totality of human history since the inception of the species.


    -Property ? of N?velDrama.Org.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1890 Unanswered Questions

    <h4>Chapter 1890 Unanswered Questions</h4>


    Thus, historianszily marked the history of humanity prior to the previous thousand years as the Empty Ages.


    Nobody knew what happened during the Empty Ages more than a thousand years ago because there was no evidence of any kind that they could work with. Rui recalled that his father had told him that the Scrier was a historian immortal sage who sought to uncover the truth of the Empty Ages.


    Just what had happened to humanity prior to the previous thousand years of recorded history?


    Did the lost cities have anything to do with the Empty Ages? What was their corrtion to the Empty Ages and what could be inferred about history from them? Where did the lost cities of the Beast Domain fit in the truth of the world?


    "Unfortunately, as I said, not even the brightest minds of humanity have found an answer to these profound questions. Nobody knows the tantalizing truth about this world," Rui quietly concluded his little seminar while they recuperated in a ruin in the lost city of Nagarojin.


    "¡­That''s crazy," Kane remarked, immersed in what Rui had told him.


    "Yep," Rui nodded.


    "If the lost cities are this significant, then shouldn''t the Adventurer''s Guild take to doing better job of protecting it?" Kane asked, curious.


    Rui snorted mirthlessly. "In the Beast Domain? Really? The expenditure is not worth it from the perspective of amercial organization like the Adventurer''s Guild. This is not a revenue-generating asset."


    "¡­Shame."


    "If you''re worried about precious history being lost to time, then don''t be," Rui remarked. "Lost cities are scrupulously scanned, surveyed, and recorded thoroughly, the moment they are discovered, by the Panamic History Association and the Council of Archaelogy and Anthropology," Rui reassured him. "They probably recorded every single detail about the Lost City of Nagarojin decades ago. It''s more practical to gather all the information that they would ever need than to try to fight against time vainly and the Beast Domain."


    "That feels better," Kane nodded. "Still, it''s a shame that these ruins are not being preserved. They''re priceless history!"


    Rui heaved a sigh. "It''s how the world works. If there''s no money, people don''t care."


    "So you studied about lost cities before you entered the Beast Domain?"


    "Among other things, yes," Rui nodded. "I knew that the Divine Doctor was in the Beast Domain, which would almost certainly mean that I would need to enter it to find him. Thus, it''s worth doing your homework before you enter. I am well-prepared for literally everything we might need."


    He gestured to his portable little backpack and many belts featuring instruments, artifacts, and items that one might need in the Beast Domain.


    "What even is all of that?" Kane furrowed his eyebrows.


    "Antidotes and anti-venom for the mostmon types of poisons and venoms in the Beast Domain," Rui began. "Also, extremely versatile first-aid for any and all wounds and afflictions one can have in the Beast Domain. Weeks worth of extremely dense Martial food pills. Also, a whole slew of cutting-edge navigational artifacts made from proprietary Kandrian technology. Also-"


    "Alright, I get it." Kane gestured for him to stop with an exasperated expression. "I''m d you''re well-prepared since I sure as hell am not."


    "I got you covered." This text is ? N?velDrama/.Org.


    The two of them bantered for a bit before their conversation returned to more pertinent matters.


    "How far are we from the Valley of Prisms?" Kane groaned.


    "Weeks worth of travel far. Probably well over a month, even at a brisk pace, as Martial Artists. The distance is huge even if we can travel extremely fast easily," Rui remarked. "But traveling through the outskirts of the Beast Domain means that this is still shorter than it would have taken had we gone through the Human Domain."


    After all, they would still have had to circle around, but the circle would have been much longer.


    "Sure, but aren''t we slower in the Beast Domain?" Kane raised an eyebrow.


    "Only if you try to stray too deep and start running to Senior-


    level danger zones more frequently," Rui replied. "As long as we stick to the outskirts where the danger zones are not that much of a threat to Martial Seniors like us."


    "Hmmm¡­" Kane shrugged. "Once we reach there, you''re immediately going to work on deducing where the Divine Doctor went on from there, right?"


    Rui nodded. "I''m sure that it''s one of the three: the Caves of Penance, the Sea of Solitude, and the Forest of Fear. I just need to find clues for what I seek to find."


    "Honestly, finding people in the Beast Domain sounds utterly impossible," Kane remarked. "If someone told me that they were going to find not only any random person but someone that is known to be hard to track, in the Beast Domain? I would not believe them. But¡­"


    He turned to Rui. "I know better than to bet against you."


    Rui smiled wordlessly. "Let''s catch some sleep before the next stretch. It''s better to do extended travels than to constantly and frequently take short breaks."


    "Alright," Kane yawned. "I''m really sleepy after all that exercise, so I''ll eat up a bit and head to sleep."


    The two of them quickly consumed some dense food pills that were condensed heavy pills with everything that their body needed before heading to sleep. The two of them needed to ensure that they were at their peaks when they resumed traveling through the Beast Domain.


    While traveling, they needed to be extremely alert at the first hint of danger; otherwise, they could be taken down faster than they could react to. With the Beast Domain hampering senses to a certain degree, the importance of alertness was extremely high. One could not be half-asleep when traveling through the Beast Domain. That was a recipe for disaster and asking to get killed. Thus, as unnerving sleeping in the Beast Domain could be, it was even more unnerving and dangerous to be sleepless while traveling through various danger zones.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1891 Careless Blunder

    Chapter 1891 Careless Blunder


    ??The journey from there on took even longer than Rui had spected. The two of them ran into all manner of environments, topographies, and ecosystems that defied what they thought was possible.


    While they managed to ovee them, there were more close shaves than Rui had expected.


    The Beast Domain was truly unpredictable.


    It had an absurd degree of diversity and variance, and the very concept of consistency was foreign to the entire region.


    Regions changed drastically every hundred kilometers; there was absolutely no continuity like there was in the Human Domain, where weather and climate did not change more than several percentage points across a hundred kilometers.


    Rui had a hard time understanding how a piping hot desert could co-exist with a blizzard next door. It vited thews of thermodynamics, as far as he was aware.


    He also btedly realized that such phenomena required him to make adjustments to the Angel of Lace for every given region. He needed to adjust its functions to cater to the given mechanics of a given region, or else the technique would yield errors.


    It was annoying but, thankfully, not insurmountable or too time-consuming.


    They always ensured that they slept in an Apprentice-level region. As Martial Seniors, the passive mental pressure and danger that they would radiate to Apprentice and Squire-level creatures would be enough to ensure that they would not bother or harass them in any way.


    Squire-level regions, on the other hand, were regions that they chose to pass as quickly as possible. These regions were deemed Squire-level because one needed to be Squire-level to be guaranteed not to die at the hands of another creature or the environment. This usually meant that there were a handful of Senior-level creatures which meant that it was impossible for Rui and Kane to lower their guards.


    Yet, despite all their precautions, it was impossible not to get hurt, whether it be in the times that they were unable to avoidbat or were subject to harsh environments that managed to harm them despite their power. Rui proved the degree of his preparation for the Beast Domain, whipping up solutions for just about everything including the one time Kane foolishly ate poisonous fruit.


    "Bleugh¡­" Kane vomited his guts out in the distance after Rui gave him an antidote and medicine to make him puke out the poison.


    "Damn¡­" Kane groaned after he was finally done. "That is the worst thing that I have ever experienced in my life."


    Rui palmed his face. "Why on Earth would you put anything in the Beast Domain in your mouth?"


    "That fruit looked he tasty, bro. And I saw some monkeys eat it, too, so I figured it couldn''t be that bad, right?"


    "That''s because they''ve evolved to be able to be immune to it!"


    "Damn¡­"


    lights¦­¦Ïv¦Ål ?¦Ïm Rui heaved an exasperated sigh. "Next time, run things by me. I have a toxinmeter artifact for precisely this purpose. I also have a de-esotericer artifact to make organic material with esoteric substances in it edible."


    "Aren''t our Martial Bodies able to digest and remove such substances from our body naturally?"


    "Yes, but it will leave you incapacitated with illness as long as they''re in your body. It''s better to have the food properly handled before consuming it. It''s also why I brought a huge supply of dense food pills for precisely this reason," Rui exined.


    "I''m sick and tired of eating food pills!" Kaneined. "I want to eat some good meat, man."


    "Don''t be a baby."


    "Also, we need to preserve our food pills, right? After all, if we run out of them in a region with nothing edible, then we''re screwed! It''s best we try and eat from nature, you know what I mean?"


    He stared at Rui pleadingly.


    Rui heaved a sigh before ncing around the region they were in.


    Currently, they were in a Squire-level Region. It was an enormous region that spanned hundreds of kilometers in diameter. It was a strange region where a single species reigned supreme.


    The king rabbit species. A carnivorous rabbit species that was characterized byrge numbers from constant breeding and high fertility and a powerful adherence to hierarchy ingrained in their blood. The strongest rabbit took control of the entire colony of rabbits, leading hunting sprees that allowed them to gather enough food for the entire colony.


    "If you want, we can hunt one of them," Rui gestured to a sea of ck rabbits in the distance. "They''re edible, and their meat is considered an exotic delicacy in gourmet cuisines of certain south Panamic cultures."


    "Say no more!" Kane eximed.


    "Wait," Rui stopped before he could rush to kill one of them. "The species is characterized by an extreme capacity for vengeance and a low survival instinct. Their senses of smell and ability to detect blood are also high. Pissing them off is only going to make them charge after us.


    "So what? They''re only Squire-level beasts."


    "Who are led by a Senior-level monster," Rui added. "On top of that, what is the only way to win a battle in the Beast Domain?"


    "¡­To avoid it," Kane heaved a sigh. "Alright, so what do you propose?"


    "You have the right idea," Rui replied. "Hunt one of them with your stealth techniques and bring it back. Make sure that they are isted from the colony."


    "Gotcha. Bye!"


    "Be careful," Rui warned him even as the man activated his Void Step technique and his Martial Heart, shooting away.This text is ? N?velDrama/.Org.


    Rui heaved a sigh, taking a seat as he enjoyed the beautiful scenery of the region before him. He had to admit that traveling the Beast Domain was nothing short of a life-


    changing experience. Previously, he had thought of the Human Domain as exotic by Earth''s standards, at least.


    However, it was paltrypared to the Beast Domain. Not even fiction could rival the miracles that he had beheld in the Beast Domain.


    STEP


    Kane appeared before him carrying the corpse of a ck rabbit in his hands, deactivating his Martial Heart with a grin. "I got us lunch."


    Rui''s eyes widened with horror as he spotted blood dripping from the corpse at the spot where Kane had cut at the corpse.


    "I told you that king rabbits can detect blood extremely well!"


    Kane''s expression grew grave. "Shit."


    RUMBLE


    Thends beneath them quivered as many, many thousands of rabbits moved, converging towards their position.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1892 Clash

    Chapter 1892 sh


    ??The two men immediately stood back to back, taking their stances as their senses detected an ocean of Squire-level rabbits converging towards their position.Property ? of N?velDrama.Org.


    "I swear to god, Kane," Rui grumbled. "You''re going to be the death of me."


    "Hehe," Kane smiled wryly. "Hey, at least I''d be going down with you. I''d argue that cancels out getting you killed."


    "Your math is beyond my ability toprehend."


    Their words, light as they were, could not alleviate the tension in the air.


    The Squire-level beasts were not inherently the problem. While it was true that there were more than Rui could even begin to count, it was also true that they were Squire-level. Rui could only hope that their Martial Hearts wouldst the entire battle.


    The issue was¡­


    BOOOM!!!!


    A blindingly fast projectile crashed into thend before them.


    The sheer weight of the collision shook the verynds around them. In just a moment, a crater spanning an entire vige emerged.


    A perilous Senior-level aura emerged from the neer who had emerged before them. The dust cleared, revealing a ck rabbit with blood-red eyes. Its pupils fell on the king rabbit corpse that Kane had brought back from his hunt before slowly turning to the blood on Kane''s de.


    lights¦­¦Ïv¦Ål ?¦Ïm Its inhuman pupils slowly shifted to Kane''s eyes, staring him in the eye.


    Kane maintained hisposure even before the eerie alien-like creature focused on him. It was especially unnerving, because unlike many of the species that they had run into, this particr creature was undoubtedly intelligent.


    Conscious thought flickered behind its eyes as it calmly evaluated the situation before it.


    For a moment, nothing happened.


    The world grew silent.


    Silent as it awaited the rabbit king to make its decision.


    "Chirrup."


    Rui narrowed his eyes as Fauna Flow allowed him to understand the meaning of what was conveyed.


    It had made a judgment.


    Human.


    "Chirrup." It narrowed its eyes. Rabbit Killer.


    "Damn," Rui gritted his teeth.


    An unfathomable and inhuman bloodlust erupted from it, crashing into every sentient lifeform in the vicinity.


    "Chirrup."


    Attack the rabbit killer.


    "Watch out!" Rui narrowed his eyes as his Martial Art zed into life.


    RUMBLE!


    Heaven and earth shook as countless rabbits leaped in the air, emerging from the woods and converging with them.


    Yet, Rui''s eyes were focused on the rabbit king.


    One moment, it stood where it was.


    The very next?


    WHOOSH!


    It had arrived before he could react.


    SPLAT!


    "Rgh!" Rui grimaced with pain as the rabbit''s razor-sharp teeth tore a chunk of flesh from his abdomen.


    Rui leaped away, narrowing his eyes with a severe expression as he activated Weaving Blood, quickly healing his wound on the spot. However, it undoubtedly reduced his stamina.


    The rabbit prepared for another attack as Rui activated his Master-level Mind Mask. A powerful Master-level aura flooded the region.


    It was to no avail.


    The powerful determination of the rabbit king only grew due to this.


    STEP


    The rabbit king''s body pressed into the earth with titanic force. Its body squeezed and coiled up every single muscle, smoothly exerting a tremendous amount of force into thend beneath it.


    Its physiology and anatomy had been built for a single purpose.


    It was precisely for what it was about to do.


    BOOOOOM!!!


    The rabbit king pushed down with such an enormous force that a titanic wave of seismic radiation rocked the verynds around them!


    RUMBLE!


    The rabbit king leaped forward at blindingly high speeds.


    But s, Rui was not a man who made the same mistake twice.


    BAM!!!


    A titanic shockwave erupted from the collision as he evaded razor-sharp teeth while his elbow crashed into the rabbit king''s torso.


    The sum of their momentum coalesced in that collision. The rabbit had moved so fast that Rui could hardly see anything beyond a hazy blur. This linear speed had been the rabbit king''s greatest strength. No Martial Senior it had run into before had been able to respond in time.


    Not even Rui.


    He responded ahead of time.


    He attacked the future itself.


    That was something no amount of speed could ever ovee.


    Pure fury erupted in the rabbit king''s eyes at the revtion of Rui''s ability tobat it.


    "You''ll die."


    Rui''s cold voice cut through its aggression as he conveyed his message through non-verbalmunication.


    The rabbit king''s eyes narrowed. "Chirrup."


    Humans and their arrogance.


    It no longer resorted to an ordinary bullrush, seeing how well Rui had managed to thwart it the second time. Instead, it activated an innate ability of the rabbit king species.


    VMMMM!!!


    Its powerful legs began vibrating so hard that they appeared to be in two different ces simultaneously. These vibrations sent out an enormous amount of seismic radiation, causingnd underground to be disced. Rui''s eyes widened as it began doing something simr to earth-bending.


    RUMBLE!!


    A tremendous amount ofnd erupted from deep within the earth.


    In just a moment, several hills erupted around them, barricading Rui and the rabbit king alone, separated from Kane and the rest of the rabbits. It appeared that the moment the rabbit king focused on Rui, its subordinates left Rui alone with it, focusing on Kane instead.


    It was dire, but Kane was well-suited for such a battle, and his Void Step technique was especially useful in such circumstances.


    "Chirrup." The rabbit king red at Rui.


    Die, filthy human.


    WHOOSH!


    Rui''s eyes widened as it disappeared before his eyes.


    Images of the rabbit king shed across the entire region barricaded by hills as the rabbit king effortlessly bounced around the battlefield locked by hills at tremendous speeds.


    It essentially created an environment that gave it greater maneuverability.


    Rui''s expression grew grave as he immediately leaped to leave. But s, the rabbit king had no intention of allowing him to.


    BOOM!!!


    "Rgh!" Rui partially dispelled the impact of the charge into the environment with Flux Earther. But the rabbit king sessfully stopped him before continuing its zig-zagging.


    STEP


    "Fine," Rui growled. "I''ll y your game and win."


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1893 Make Up

    Chapter 1893 Make Up


    ??The rabbit king continued to gather even more speed as it grew faster and faster. Rui would be lying if he said he wasn''t impressed by its sophisticated hunting style. In fact, if he hadn''t known better, he would have suspected that it was a Martial Art technique.


    However, he knew that it wasn''t.


    It was more so an evolutionary innate ability.


    Their entire physiology and anatomy were structured in such a way that it lent itself to allowing them to make extremely efficient and effective applications of their power. At the moment, The rabbit was disying efficiency of application of power simr to Rui''s Outer Convergence.


    The difference was that Rui''s Outer Convergence was a set of coordinated movements, that he mastered within micrometers and microseconds of absolute uracy, with timing and cement such that the sum total power generated by the body across the body could be redirected and leveraged in a single point or part.


    The rabbit king aplished something simr to that based purely on physiology and anatomy, limited only to jumping and vibrating purposes. That,bined with the fact that it had a body that was stronger than his despite being smaller due to the fact that it was a literal monster, meant that it could output devastating power and speed.


    Unfortunately, its opponent was Rui Quarrier.


    "Speed Void."


    Instantly, Rui activated the Yggdrasil System, bending heaven and earth to change. To be hostile to speed itself.


    The drag coefficient altered, bing a dynamic variable such that the drag force would rise tetragonally rtive to speed.


    WHOOSH!


    The rabbit king slowed midair as a huge burst of air exploded from it in resistance. The rabbit shook visibly, stunned by the fact that Rui somehow managed to steal its speed from it!


    Yet that wasn''t all.


    "Temporal Disharmony." Rui red into its eyes as he activated.C0ntent ? 2024 (N/?)velDrama.Org.


    WHOOSH


    Rui appeared before it in a sh.


    BAM BAM BAM!!!


    He pummeled the rabbit kind with a torrent of powerful blows. Behind each fist was the full power of Outer Convergence, Fire Breathing, and Reverberating Lance, unleashing devastating impacts upon the rabbit king.


    Stripped of its speed, the rabbit king was almost crippled.


    Rui knew that.


    However, he had no intention of taking a safe and slow approach. It might be what he would have done in the Human Domain, but in the Beast Domain, such measures were too slow and energy-consuming.


    BOOOOM!!!


    He sted the rabbit king''s head with a powerful double-fist axe blow with the full power of Hypertrophic Surge.


    CRACK!


    The rabbit kind shivered as its pupils dted and its eyes rolled upward.


    A pool of ck blood formed underneath its head as its body grew limp.


    "Huff¡­" Rui heaved a sigh, deactivating all his techniques.


    It was a powerful foe, one that had given Rui a decent challenge even if it could not bring out his full power. Of course, that did not reflect its power poorly, but it spoke more to just how strong Rui was currently.


    Unless one was an absolute monster like Gatekeeper, defeating Rui while in the Senior Realm was an extremely difficult task. And even then, Rui had managed to ovee the Gatekeeper, even if extremely narrowly.


    This battle once more reaffirmed his dominance in the Senior Realm. Yet, Rui knew that in the Beast Domain, power did not corrte with survival entirely. There were powerful,rge beasts that made themselves prey with how much attention they drew to themselves such that even the smallest opportunity was exploited by everything to collectively bring it down.


    WHOOSH


    He immediately leaped away, returning to where Kane was. Thankfully, as he had predicted, Kane could handle the army of Squire-level creatures pretty well. They could not sense him so long as he used his Void Step technique. While his power was low, his twin daggers were more than strong enough to slice and dice through the king rabbits that tried attacking him.


    "Help me out!" Heined. "These things are endless!"


    It was difficult for him to evade them since they were omnidirectionally swarming him. There was no opening through which he could squeeze through to escape. The more he killed, the more they jumped in. If not for the fact that he killed dozens every second, they would have long swarmed him.


    THWOOM!!!


    Ruiunched a powerful Might Roar sh st, sting a hole through the many that sought to overrun Kane through sheer numbers. Kane immediately exploited the opening to leap through and get away.


    With Void Step, they couldn''t even sense him.


    "Thanks, man," he heaved a tired sigh. "I did not ever think that I would face that much trouble with Squire-level beasts."


    "Quantity has a quality of its own," Rui replied. "Hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of low-grade Squire-level creatures, are not a Squire-level threat; they''re Senior-level because they can drain the Martial Heart and mog you down when you''re exhausted."


    It was the biggest shoring of the Martial Heart and the Senior Realm. The two of them activated their respective stealth techniques, immediately moving away from the region.


    "I didn''t even get to try the meat," Kane grumbled.


    Rui returned with the corpse of the rabbit king in the distance. "Well, this one had grown much stronger over time. Has higher nutritional value and was cleanly killed less than a minute ago, so¡­"


    He shrugged. "Might as well. You''ve spilled so much blood that they won''t be able to track us."


    "Nice!" Kane grinned.


    They stopped some distance away from the region before finally pausing to take a break. Rui heaved a sigh, drinking some water while Kane skinned the rabbit and drained the blood.


    "This meat better be worth it, not gonna lie," Kane remarked as he roasted it over a fire.


    "It wouldn''t have needed to if someone had been so rash and careless," Rui red at him. "This isn''t a vacation. This is the Beast Domain."


    To his credit, Kane relented. He knew he had messed up in his excitement.


    "I''ll make it up by roasting this rabbit immactely," he promised.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1894 Advantages of Humanity

    Chapter 1894 Advantages of Humanity


    He surprisingly lived up to his word. The odor of cooked meat was tantalizing, Rui had to agree.


    "Mmmmm!" Kane nodded, evidently pleased, as he took a big bite. "That''s that good stuff!"


    Rui had to admit, it was worth it.


    Food pills were not pleasant to consume. They usually had a disgusting or neutral taste at best. Having grown ustomed to that for over a month, the two of them had reset their food standards thoroughly. Even an unseasoned and bare-roasted rabbit was delicious.


    "Huff¡­" Rui heaved a satisfied sigh when he was finally done. "The food was good since all it took was a rtively straightforward fight. But that''s only because we''re in a Squire-level danger zone."


    His eyes narrowed. "But if this were a Senior-level danger zone, we''d be the ones getting fed on."


    Kane winced. "Yeah, I''ll remember that. It''s crazy that the Beast Domain is considered a force that humanity can deal with when there are way more beasts and monsters of a certain realm of power."


    Rui nodded. "It''s the good old ''quality vs quantity''. A Martial Artist of a certain Realm is far stronger than a beast of that same Realm because of several reasons: we''re more efficient and effective both mechanically and tactically or strategically."


    It was simr to how humans used to sessfully hunt mammoths back on Earth in thete Pleistocene age. They could bridge titanic gaps in power by simple, clever applications of power that made huge differences in the oue.


    "If beasts and monsters possessed the kind of strategic and tactical application of power that Martial Artists do, then humanity would be dead," Rui asserted.


    "Aren''t there beasts that are as intelligent as humans?" Kane raised an eyebrow.


    "Theyprise a minority of the beasts of the Beast Domain," Rui replied. "While they are more of a threat than the other beasts of the Beast Domain, their intelligence is limited to them. In addition, it''s not just a matter of intelligence, but also rationality."


    Kane nodded understandingly. "We''re not nearly as subject to our impulses and instincts as beasts are."


    "Exactly," Rui concurred. "It has to do with the ratio of size of the prefrontal cortex rtive to the rest of the brain."


    "¡­The what?"


    "Oh, right, I''d forgotten that that wasn''t discovered yet," Rui muttered. "Basically, the prefrontal cortex is a part of the brain that houses what we refer to as the consciousness. It is the core of the conscious mind and is the ''you'' that is consciously making decisions. This region isrgest in humans rtive to the rest of the brain, meaning that conscious thought is a much more powerful force in humans than it is in any other species."


    He turned to Kane. "For example, we humans are able to resist our impulses, resist our instincts, and resist urges. We engage in, rtively speaking, intelligent and logical thought and arrive at a decision based on that."


    Kane raised an eyebrow skeptically. "I don''t know if I would consider the vast majority of people intelligent and rational in their thoughts."


    Rui smiled wryly. "It is fun to make fun of the irrationality and stupidity of the average human. However, even the average person is able to demonstrate greater rationality than most intelligent beasts and monsters. The average human possesses the ability to suppress impulses like hunger and thirst and avoid stealing food based on moral and consequential analyses. They are able to suppress sexual urges to avoid raping and are able to suppress violent urges to avoid killing based on simr analyses. That alone may be unprecedented in the history of this world."


    Rui paused, chewing a chunk of rabbit meat. "Of course, we still have theft, murder, and rape, but even intelligent beasts and monsters are generally entirely unable to suppress those urges. When they want food, they eat. When they feel violent, they fight. When they''re in heat, they mindlessly satisfy that urge." N?velDrama.Org owns this text.


    He turned to Kane. "The reason that humanity has been able to build a sophisticated and powerful civilization that can single-handedly equal and even surpass the Beast Domain is not just because we are intelligent. Intelligence is not enough. It''s because the disproportionatelyrge prefrontal cortex allows our intelligence to override our urges, emotions, and instincts to arge degree. It allows us to be rational enough to engage in social contracts that aim to maximize well-being, the potential of resources, and the distribution of capital to supply to demand. It also allows us to create a framework that lets people pursue their paths to much greater degrees than if such a framework did not exist."


    He returned to his rabbit meat. "That''s why a weak and pitiful species like the human species came to be the most dominant species on the entire continent, able to single-handedly push back the rest of the biosphere of the Panamic Continent. It also applies to individual dynamics that despite possessing weak and lesser bodies, the Martial Path allows us to crush beasts and monsters by making the very best of the various Realms of potential in the human being on top of tactical and strategic superiority."


    "It''s crazy when you put it like that," Kane admitted.


    "Still, that doesn''t mean we can lower our guards. Tactics, strategies, and efficiency of application of resources are the only reasons that the average Martial Artist is vastly stronger than the average beast or monster," Rui replied, throwing a pointed stare at Kane. "Bing so engrossed in your desire that you forgo those advantages would mean we lose those advantages, bing no different from beasts and monsters."


    Kane sheepishly raised his hands. "Alright, alright, you got me. I don''t know if it''s because we''re in Apprentice-level or Squire-level zones, but it''s hard to feel any sense of danger. Even those rabbits were aberrant. How can such a mindlessly aggressive species exist?!"


    "I told you," Rui replied. "They''re irrational due to a diminutive prefrontal cortex. You remember what the rabbit king did when I flexed a Master-level aura?"


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1895 Soon to Arrive

    Chapter 1895 Soon to Arrive


    "It continued attacking even after you flexed a Master-level aura," Kane replied, recalling that moment. "That was such an absurd decision. It''s a Senior-level beast. Any Martial Master would eradicate it effortlessly. I''m guessing that retarded decision is rted to what you said earlier."


    "Yep, like I said," Rui tapped its head. "It was intelligent but ve to its aggression. You''re going to run into some more beasts like this that do utterly insane things. That''s what animals do. That''s why deterrence doesn''t always work. I''m sure you noticed that in the past month and a half." Belongs to (N)?vel/Drama.Org.


    Kane nodded.


    The two of them had run into all manners of beasts and animals in the past month and a half. Different species had different gic temperamental traits that often overrode any and all rationality.


    Of course, even Rui had to admit that the rabbit king was a special case. He did not expect a Senior-level beast to leap aggressively against someone it clearly perceived to be a Martial Master. It was the height of irrationality that overcame even self-preservation.


    "Another reason that humanity is able to bully the Beast Domain is because, as much as we fight amongst ourselves, it does not even remotelypare to the internal conflict between monsters of the Beast Domain. They view each other with as much hostility as they do humans," Rui replied. "If they were united then¡­"


    "Another reason that humanity is able to bully the Beast Domain is because, as much as we fight amongst ourselves, it does not even remotelypare to the internal conflict between monsters of the Beast Domain. They view each other with as much hostility as they do humans," Rui replied. "If they were united then¡­"


    He narrowed his eyes. "That would be a hellish situation for humanity."


    "Meh, that''s never going to happen as long as they continue to have territorial disputes," Kane replied. "Right?"


    "Maybe¡­" Rui considered his question. "The issue is that humans are responsible for the continuous increase in territorial disputes. Though mostck the intelligence to learn that. That''s why I''m not particrly concerned. A unity amongst the beasts of the Beast Domain is basically impossible, as far as I am concerned. I''m just hoping we don''t run into intelligent beasts and monsters in the Beast Domain while we travel to the Valley of Prisms."


    Kane nodded. "Speaking of which, how far are we from that ce?"


    Rui was the navigator between the two of them. On top of that, he was the only one with a map stored in his Mind Pce that he could ess mentally.


    "About a day or so," Rui replied. "We''ve covered most of the distance to the Valley of Prisms in the past month or so."


    Rui was d that he was finally nearing the first ce that the Divine Doctor had visited in the Beast Domain.


    "Honestly, the more time we spent in the Beast Domain, the more I''m shocked that the Divine Doctor managed to survive in the Beast Domain all by himself," Kane remarked.


    "He''s an extreme example of what I mentioned earlier, though I don''t know if he can be considered particrly rational. He is extremely intelligent and extremely knowledgeable. He uses his knowledge to survive in ces that ordinary humans have absolutely no business surviving in," Rui continued. "Frankly, I would be lying if I said I wasn''t curious about how he did it. I strongly suspect we''ll find clues about this in the Valley of Prisms."


    Rui had not forgotten that ording to the intelligence from the Beggar Sage, the ecological and environmental data from the Adventurer''s Guild indicated a rather abrupt disruption in the Valley of Prisms around the same time that the Divine Doctor had entered it.


    Somehow, the Divine Doctor had caused a mass exodus of various fauna species from the Valley of Prisms further deeper into the Beast Domain.


    If the Beggar Sage''s information was right in that the Divine Doctor had spread chaos through the Beast Domain, then Rui could be quite confident that the Divine Doctor had been responsible and had almost certainly left clues that Rui could use to understand exactly how he had managed to do it and survived in the Beast Domain.


    Once he got that, he would be able to better identify which path the Divine Doctor had gone down after.


    That was part of Rui''s n for eventually finding the Divine Doctor.


    "Come on, let''s get going," Rui informed Kane after they ate and recuperated enough. "I don''t want to waste any more time than we have."


    He had an original five years when his father fell back into aa from the Eternal Dream disease. He had spent around a year fighting the Kandrian Throne War and, after that, another two months to recover from his battle with the Gatekeeper. A total of two more months had passed since then. He only had three years and eight months left to find the man that he was looking for.


    He was not eager to waste any more time than he already had.


    The two of them immediately departed, traveling through the outskirts of the Beast Domain. The topography changed slowly and steadily as the forest they were in grew thinner and thinner on a gradient, and thends beneath their feet slowly began growing drier and coarser.


    "Any information on what we might be running into next?" Kane asked.


    "The Adventurer''s Guild''s information doesn''t have anything specific on this region," Rui replied, narrowing his eyes. "Stay alert; you never know what we might run into there. Once we cross this region, we''ll have reached the Valley of Prisms."


    The topography of theing region became increasingly apparent. A desert began emerging over the horizon as the amount of sand beneath their feet slowly began increasing.


    "Deserts are good," Kane nodded. "They are open and transparent and all. As long as you look for the sand, you''re safe. With our senses, that should be all fine, right?"


    Rationally, Rui was inclined to agree with that analysis. Yet, his instincts tingled as his eyes fell on the sands in the distance.


    They drew his attention especially strongly. For some reason, he felt uncertain as he headed towards them. He could not feel any overt danger or peril from Primordial instinct. But something nagged at his instincts.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1896 Fitting Name

    Chapter 1896 Fitting Name


    ??He grew increasingly anxious the closer they approached the desert. Kane, on the other hand, while alert, was oblivious. He continued to jog towards the desert at high speeds.


    Rui''s senses and alertness heightened as they drew closer to the desert. His senses spread across the entire area, looking for any and all monsters and beasts that might be trying to ambush them.


    Yet, strangely, he couldn''t spot a single lifeform.


    That was strange.


    The Beast Domain was filled with all kinds of lifeforms at all scales; he had seen plenty of strange insects and little critters native and unique to the Beast Domain. Yet there was not a single soul in the vicinity. He could not spot even a single insect.


    That only strengthened his gut feeling.


    Yet it was only after Kane took the first step into the desert that it finally clicked.


    The way the sand moved.


    The way each of its grains shifted.


    The strange, inorganic, and unnatural feel to it.


    Shivers crawled up his spine.


    Time slowed down as a memory shed in his mind.


    A memory from the prophetic visions his grandmother had shown him. One of the many visions of death that she had shown him was him in a desert, being swallowed up by sand that was so powerful he could not resist it.


    RUMBLE!


    "KANE!" Rui bellowed, instantly activating his Martial Heart and Neo Godspeed.


    "Hm?" Kane frowned, turning to Rui.


    Behind him, a tsunami of sand asrge as a mountain had already erupted, converging on him in a matter of no more than a dozen microseconds. Kane''s Martial Heart had already instinctively burst into power thanks to his passive Primordial Instinct, but his conscious mind had yet to catch up.


    WHOOSH!


    Rui surged forward at extraordinary speeds, reduced to no more than the haziest of blurs as Gale Force Breathing and Outer Convergence propelled him forward faster and faster.


    BOOOOOOOOOOOM!!!!!!!!


    Rui gritted his teeth as he barely managed to pull at Kane, avoiding the initial crash. Thankfully, Kane, too, activated his Fulminata Godspeed, utterly bewildered by what had just happened. In just a moment, they crossed kilometers at top speed.


    The sheer devastation of the desert''s attack shook the verynds of the region to their core as an abyssrger than a mountain emerged from the titanic weight of the crash. Rui and Kane had evaded death by just meters.


    They watched in horror as the sand slowly retreated back to the desert without causing any more of a ruckus.


    "What the fuck was that?!" Kane barked, startled.Property ? of N?velDrama.Org.


    "That desert is alive," Rui''s expression grew grave. "It consumes organic life that steps onto it like you did as sustenance. It has extremely high power and probably cannot be ovee with just the power of the Senior Realm."


    Aside from a freak like the Gatekeeper, of course.


    Kane turned to Rui, utterly astonished. "How in the world did you know that? I thought this was supposed to be an unknown region? Also, how in the world did you react faster than me?! I thought reflexes were the only advantage that I had over you."


    "You do," Rui affirmed. "I didn''t react, I preacted. I recognized the desert from my grandmother''s prophecy. In that prophecy, I actually ended up dying here because it swallowed me up whole."


    Kane froze when he heard that.


    "The Eye of Prophecy must have allowed my grandmother to foresee that I woulde here and showed me the oue of entering this dangerous region," Rui''s voice grew severe. "This entire region is a predator. That''s why I couldn''t sense a single lifeform when I came here. All of them must have either been devoured or escaped and never returned anywhere near this region."


    Rui heaved a sigh, catching his breath. "¡­If I hadn''t sought the Ss n, the two of us might have been dead right now."


    Rui thanked his stars and his grandmother. He definitely needed to do right by her when he returned from the Beast Domain one day. Also, it showed him the power of prophecy. The power of prophecy had instantly grown more alluring and attractive to him today. He regretted that he hadn''t learned about the Ss n and sought them out a lot sooner.


    Had he mastered the Eye of Prophecy technique, he would probably have been able to whiz through the Beast Domain much easier and quicker than they currently did. They also wouldn''t have had as many close calls and shaves as they had up until now.


    "¡­I can see why so many adventurers die in the Beast Domain," Kane warily regarded the enormous abyss that had been inflicted on thend before them. "This is insane. Almost no Martial Artist of the Lower Realms can survive this if they didn''t know about it. Which no one does."


    "¡­Let''s circle around this region," Rui got up, having caught his breath as he brushed off the dust from his clothes.


    "Noints there." Kane snorted.


    The incident served as a chilling reminder that the two of them could die at any moment, anywhere in the Beast Domain, with just a wrong step. This included times that they were in Apprentice-level or Squire-level zones.


    They grew even warier and more alert as they kept a ten-


    kilometer distance from the desert just to be safe as they circled across the region. Neither of them voiced a singleint about the extra time taken by the detour. Eventually, however, they finally managed to arrive at the other end, putting the desert behind them for good.


    "Finally¡­" Rui gazed down from atop a mountain.


    Before him was an enormous valley that extended well into the distance. Yet the visage of the valley was distorted and broken. Almost as if it was made up of ss and someone had shattered it, extracting a piece or two. It was as though people had mixed up the pieces of two different puzzles to create broken images formed together into one.


    "Valley of Prisms," Rui narrowed his eyes. "Fitting name."


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1897 Surveying Oddities

    Chapter 1897 Surveying Oddities


    He wasn''t kidding when he said the name was fitting. The Valley of Prisms was a region where the optical density of the air was not consistent, causing light to bend midair, turning in different directions.


    Almost as though the atmosphere was a collection of prisms.


    Hence the name of the region. Belongs to (N)?vel/Drama.Org.


    "Man¡­" Kane murmured. "Just looking at this ce is giving me a headache."


    "So this is where the Divine Doctor entered the Beast Domain," Rui remarked, turning back as he nced towards the Human Domain in the distance. He could see that as the alien-like flora began to grow scarce and peter out into barrennd, traces of the touch of humanity could be seen at the horizon.


    He turned back and faced the Valley of Prisms with a deep breath. "Let''s get going. I''m sure that we''ll find some clues."


    Rui surged forward intently. Yet it was hard to hide his nervousness. This was the first juncture in searching for clues for the Divine Doctor. The oue of this particr investigation would drastically alter Rui''s evaluation of the likelihood of sess. Thus, he was particrly anxious to find something that could point him in a definitive direction.


    The Valley of Prisms was definitely most defined by its eye-drawing characteristic and its highly uneven distribution of optical density. However, it wasn''t the only aspect of the region that mattered. The valley was quiterge, surrounded by the Hroul Mountain Range.


    It had lush greenery with a wide stretch of grass and shrubs and other flora thriving in the fertile soils of the valley, which was glowing vividly in myriad colors. Its fauna seemed surprisingly normal and sane, in a way. He saw herds of herbivorous monsters peacefully grazing on the grass.


    It was weird and out of ce for a region like the Beast Domain.


    Rui immediately jumped into surveying mode. With his many powerful sensory techniques like Seismic Mapping, Tempestuous Feel, and Riemannian Echo, he was able to sense arge amount of area and simultaneously ignore the vision distortion caused by the refraction of the atmosphere. He immediately began scanning the entire region with a zig-zag grid-mapping system, ensuring that he would have covered every inch of the entire valley in time.


    Even before his initial survey wasplete, he had already begun to note oddities in the region half a day ago. The fauna surprised Rui even more, for it struck him as imbnced, as though there were links missing in the food chains of the entire environment.


    Namely, there were no predators.


    At least none that he could detect.


    "Mmm¡­" Rui narrowed his eyes. "No wonder they''re so rxed."


    He nced at the various herds of catoblepas, a cow-like monster species, grazing on grass openly and intrepidly. It was an odd sight in a domain that was characterized by harsh conditions and elevated difficulty of survival due to human expansion and encroachment.


    They looked semi-intelligent. They clearly were cognizant of him, sizing him up and steering away from him every time he got too close in his scanning endeavors.


    There were a variety of other monsters that seemed to coexist in the region in peace.


    "Oh, never mind, not all the predators, clearly," Rui finally arrived at an enormous freshwaterke in the middle of the valley from which a variety of streams and rivers flowed into and out.


    Within its depths, Rui could clearly sense powerful predatory fish-like monsters the size of small buildings within its depths. These were definitely predators that were on a particrly high grade in the Apprentice Realm.


    "Huh," Rui frowned. "So, the only predators are in water while¡­"


    He turned out to inspect the rest of the valley. "¡­most of the region isprised ofnd andnd-dwelling animals."


    Could a water-dwelling predator unable to set foot onnd truly regte the poption of herbivorous species?


    Rui narrowed its eyes. "Unlikely."


    He ran simple projections and models with safe estimates for variables such as reproduction and hunting rates, and in most cases, unless these monsters were extremely aggressive, it was not feasible for the poptions of the herbivorous animals to be kept in check by the water predators alone.


    "On top of that, theke is brimming with other fish life," Rui noted. "It begs the question of whether these monsters even huntnd animals that assuage their thirst at theke."


    Additionally, with the many streams and rivers running around, Rui found it rather hard to believe that herbivores necessarily even relied on theke.


    All of these ecological and environmental oddities were strange and pointed to an iplete food chain and ecosystem that would eventually overload the environment.


    Unfortunately, while he made numerous observations, there were none that could directly elucidate anything about the Divine Doctor.


    Of course, this was to be expected.


    It wasn''t as though the Divine Doctor had visited this region yesterday such that his footprints might still be visibly indented in the ground. He had visited years ago ording to the data from the Beggar Sage. Any direct clues that Rui could possibly extract from the region were undoubtedly long eroded by time.


    Naturally, he was prepared for this.


    What he did hope to find was a more concrete insight into the ''disruption'' that the Divine Doctor had caused so that he would have more urate and precise data that he could systematicallypare to all known disruptions in the region over many years; data that he had acquired from the Adventurer''s Guild. Those with the highest match would have the highest probability of corrting with the Divine Doctor.


    "I dunno, man. Doesn''t seem like there''s anything worth looking at here," Kane yawned, bored. "It''s too chill."


    Rui smiled. "Exactly."


    "What?"


    "Around the same time that the Beggar Sage says the Divine Doctor entered the Valley of Prisms, the Adventurer Guild''s data records mass emigration from this region around the same time¡­" Rui reiterated as he closed his eyes as his powerful mind furiously processed all the data at hand.


    He considered a variety of factors. "Missing predators in the food chain. A return of the poption. There is no environmental evidence that points to an environmental crisis that caused mass emigration. Considering that the Valley of Prisms is brimming with a biosphere again, it can be assumed that the cause of the emigration was acute."


    He opened his eyes. "In that case, somehow, the Divine Doctor must have personally caused the mass emigration."


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1898 Deductive Inferences

    Chapter 1898 Deductive Inferences


    "Wait a second," Kane frowned. "Didn''t you already conclude that the Divine Doctor was responsible for the emigration before?"


    "Yes, but before, I did not know how," Rui replied. "Looking at the environment, the probability of him having triggered an environmental event that causedthe mass emigration is low. Even if many years have passed, something that caused such arge crisis that all fauna emigrated would not be undone so easily. Thend and soil are pristine, as are the water sources. There is no evidence of seismic wear and tear, nor any evidence of geological stress."


    He turned and closed his eyes as he recollected his survey data from within his Mind Pce. "There is no archaeological evidence of mass death during the period of the Divine Doctor''s visit."


    "What?"


    Rui turned to Kane. "It''s a piece of evidence that reduces the probability that the Divine Doctor triggered an environmental cmity. Such an event would have caused mass death, which would mean a lot of corpses that would not escape my senses. Yet I do not sense such a thing. Thus, I can conclude that it was not a life-threatening environmental crisis that caused the mass emigration."


    STEP


    Kane raised an eyebrow. "What if it wasn''t life-threatening but still an environmental crisis?"


    "Then it would not have caused mass emigration," Rui remarked. "The Adventurer''s Guild recorded aplete exodus of allnd animals with only the aquatic animals remaining behind, for obvious reasons. The fact that the Adventurer''s Guild was unable to identify the cause also reduced the statistical likelihood of it being environmental since such a thing cannot be hidden."


    Rui quickly eliminated impossibilities before evaluating the most likely possibilities. "I think the most likely case is that the Divine Doctor came to this region and did something, probably employing his extraordinary medical prowess that caused mass panic among the creatures in the region, causing them to leave."


    "Then why did theye back?" Kane asked, growing curious. "And how does that exin the predators being absent, like you mentioned?"


    "¡­The herbivores are more environmentally shackled than the carnivores are," Rui narrowed his eyes. "They usually need a specific diet of grass. The flora in the Beast Domain has an even higher variance and diversity than the fauna does. Carnivores can get sustenance by eating whatever fauna exists unless it''s extremely esoteric. The same cannot be said for herbivorous animals. Hence, they returned while the carnivores migrated somewhere else, probably deeper into the Beast Domain as beasts in the Beast Domain are known to normally do."


    "Hm, that makes sense, I guess," Kane shrugged. "But if that''s your hypothesis, then how can you use that to find where the Divine Doctor went?"


    Rui''s eyes sharpened.


    It was a pertinent question.


    The whole reason that they hade to the Valley of Prisms was to find more clues about where the Divine Doctor had gone after the Valley of Prisms, to eventually find the man and get him back home to the Kandrian Empire.


    Rui closed his eyes. "If the Divine Doctor triggered a mass emigration without leaving behind any environmental trace, then the only source of information is¡­"


    He opened his eyes, turning to the herds of grazing animals in the distance with narrowed eyes. "¡­is their memories."


    "¡­Huh?" Kane tilted his head.


    "Barring the young ones, many of these animals must have undoubtedly retained memory of the Divine Doctor," Rui remarked. "Thus, I''m sure that precious intel on the Divine Doctor lies locked up deep within their brains. There is a chance that that intelligence could help us locate where the Divine Doctor is, where he went, or maybe even his objective."


    "I mean, what if they forgot about it?" Kane asked impassively. "They are animals, after all."


    "Unlikely," Rui shook his head. "If it was just an ordinary urrence, I would be inclined to agree with you. However, this was probably, by far, the most traumatic experience of their life."


    "And how can you know that?"


    "Because every single animal ran away from the entire region," Rui replied. "It is a direct measure of psychological impact. And considering the peace that they are naturally ustomed to¡­"


    He gestured at the many grazing herds, their images shattered and distorted like misced pieces of a puzzle due to the refraction caused by the Valley of Prisms.


    "¡­it undoubtedly is seared and embedded in their memories. It probably caused trauma, among other things. There''s no doubt they experience nightmares, especially when it is evident that they are not as dimwitted as the average farm animal back on Earth."


    "¡­Alright, but how do you intend to extract that information from them?" Kane asked skeptically. "It''s not like you can just walk up to them and ask them."


    "I can, actually," Rui smirked.


    "Oh yeah¡­" Kane recalled. "Well, worth a try, I suppose."


    Rui nodded, disappearing and appearing before arge herd of catoblepas faster than they could react. He knew that they had a tendency to avoid him, so he couldn''t approach them slowly.


    "MOOOEEAAUUU!"


    Rui activated a breathing technique, bending his breath to bend heaven and earth to his will, holding them in ce, refusing to allow them to escape. Yet they struggled vigorously, much to his dismay. Even without his Martial Heart, he was a quasi-senior-level Martial Artist. Creatures that weren''t even Apprentice-level didn''t stand a chance of escaping his grip.


    He waited patiently for them to grow tired and finally cease their futile resistance.


    "Alright then," Rui pped, conveying his message through non-verbalmunication.


    This was the best part of Fauna Flow. Or rather, the best part ofmunication. Research in behavioral psychology had thoroughly demonstrated that an overwhelming majority of themunication between people, regardless ofnguage, was non-verbal. Demeanor, bodynguage, line of vision, eyelids, and many other things conveyed more information than the words themselves.


    Thus, it stood to reason that one couldmunicate with non-verbalmunication. Anguage that was universal across the biosphere. All species of the animal kingdom developed evolutionary traits to read bodynguage naturally.


    It was only the human species thatcked this inherentmunication method due to thought patterns that caused the mind to be more desensitized towards it while searching for humannguage, be it written or heard.


    Fauna Flow was a technique that unlocked the capacity to learn thenguage of non-verbalmunication.


    Rui smirked, excited, as he began speaking to the catoblepas non-verbally.


    Now that you lot have calmed down, I''ll have you answer some questions.


    -N?velDrama.Org owns this text.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1899 Trauma

    Chapter 1899 Trauma


    ??Rui grew excited about the prospect ofmunicating with the animals to gain the intelligence he sought. It was a really novel and non-standard way of learning what he wanted.


    Yet they stared at him nkly.


    lights¦­¦Ïv¦Ål ?¦Ïm Alright, have you guys seen the Divine Doctor? Rui asked.


    "MMOOOOOEAAAU?"


    "MOOEAU."


    "MOOOOOOOOOEAAAUUU."


    The catoblepas began a cacophony in response to Rui''s enunciated non-verbalmunication.


    Yet, they only conveyed a single meaning. A single inquiry.


    Food? They gazed at him eagerly. Food??


    Rui heaved a sigh as his excitement dampened. Their conception of the world was extremely limited. ''Divine'' and ''doctor'' meant absolutely nothing to them. Thus even if their minds parsed what Rui conveyed through non-verbalmunication, it did not register or trigger any associations in their mind.


    "How''s it going?" Kane asked, amused as he watched Rui interrogating monster cows.


    "¡­I''ll need to try a different approach," Rui murmured. "I need to work with concepts that they are aware of."


    He was extremely certain that they knew what human beings were. Everybody knew what human beings were.


    How could one fail to notice the strongest species on the Panama Continent that dominated most of the continent, conquering it bit by bit, pushing back all life with its own power single-handedly?


    Human. Rui conveyed. Like me. Years ago.


    Rui hoped that catoblepas had a solid conception of time and the passage of time. Otherwise, this was doomed.


    They stared at him, confused. However, it was clear that they at least understood what he was conveying. They did understand the concepts of time and humans; it just was not enough to narrow it down.


    The Valley of Prisms was too close to the human domain; multiple Martial Artists must have passed through this region when heading deeper into the Beast Domain.


    "Damn, I''ll have to be more specific¡­" Rui murmured before an idea popped into his head. "Wait a minute¡­"


    "What''s up?" Kane asked, raising an eyebrow.


    "I know what the Divine Doctor looks like thanks to my grandmother''s prophecy," Rui realized. "What if I use hypnosis to convey that?"


    He had already inherited a foundation for hypnosis from his training under the Hypnomaster for two years. It was possible for him to convey an image using non-verbalmunication by conjuring said image in his mind and fooling his own subconscious mind into believing it to be real.


    This would, in turn, alter his bodynguage and non-verbalmunication since these were driven by the subconscious mind, conveying said image to those who understood his bodynguage.


    This was the same principle that his Phantomind Void technique operated on. Normally, others needed time to construct an image out of imagination. Rui''s evolved mind and superhuman capacity for imagination quickly began reconstructing a high-definition version of the image from his memory of his grandmother''s prophecy.


    Within five minutes, he hadpleted what would take others weeks.


    "Here we go," Rui narrowed his eyes, embedding the image in his mind such that it fooled his own subconscious mind that he was now the Divine Doctor himself. Instantly, his bodynguage shifted, altering his being in the eyes of lesser beings as the image of the Divine Doctor ovepped his own.


    He had be the Divine Doctor.


    Fortunately, his non-verbalmunication evoked a reaction.


    A reaction much stronger than Rui had expected.


    Their eyes grew bloodshot as their body shivered.


    Raw terror was palpable in every inch of their bodynguage.


    "MOOOOOOOOOOOOEEEEEAAAAAUUUUUUUUUU!"


    Their voices were saturated with fear and horror as they began thrashing and struggling to escape from Rui''s domain in vain.


    They conveyed a single meaning to Rui.


    Monster.


    Rui''s eyes sharpened gravely.


    "MOOOOOOOOOOOOEEEEEAAAAAUUUUUUUUUU!!"


    MONSTER.


    Tears began flowing from their eyes.


    "MOOOOOOOOOOOOEEEEEAAAAAUUUUUUUUUU!!!"


    MONSTER!!


    Rui dispelled his domain, allowing them to escape. They were so emotionally distraught that he doubted he would be able to extract anything from them even if he tried. It was painfully clear that not only did they remember the Divine Doctor, but they had some agonizing trauma regarding the man.They want nothing to do with him.


    Just the image of the Divine Doctor was enough to trigger a hysterical anxiety attack in each and every single one of them!


    "What the hell¡­?" Rui frowned.


    This kind of reaction to a non-Martial Artist human being was rather extreme. How could a normal human being evoke such an extreme reaction from so many creatures?N?velDrama.Org owns this text.


    He recalled the meaning that they had conveyed to him through their non-verbalmunication.


    "Monster¡­" Rui narrowed his eyes.


    There was no doubt about exactly who they were referring to.


    Just what did the Divine Doctor do to these animals that made them regard him as a monster?


    ''Well, he did disce them, causing mass exodus, but would they really suffer from such intense trauma of the memory of him?'' Rui wondered.


    Rui had expected to be able to ess their recollection . He didn''t understand why there was so much emotional distress attached to their memory of the Divine Doctor. However, this, too, was evidence that Rui could use to refine his understanding of what had happened in this region when the Divine Doctor visited many years ago.


    "He undoubtedly had an extremely personal role in discing them," Rui narrowed his eyes. "He must have caused them a lot of suffering and distress when he came here. He might have personally driven them all away directly using some medical tech. But why?"


    And more importantly, how could he use it to learn more about where the Divine Doctor went?


    He turned back to the catoblepas. "We''re not done yet."


    He didn''t care about the suffering that the Divine Doctor had inflicted on them, though he was concerned about what it spoke about the Divine Doctor, a man who had no qualms about spreading such suffering without any hesitation.


    Was this a man he could reason with to heal his father from the Eternal Dream Disease?


    It remained to be seen.


    "Let''s continue," Rui dered under his breath, bending heaven and earth to summon all the catoblepas before him.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1900 Inspired Idea

    Chapter 1900 Inspired Idea


    He had found a promising avenue of pursuit.


    The predicament of the Divine Doctor, having left no physical clues, was fine. All Rui had to do was explore the minds of the denizens of the Valley of Prisms rather than the region itself.


    He had confirmed that they remembered the Divine Doctor well. The question was whether he ought to extract information from them effectively. They had terriblemunication intelligence. Thus, he could not particrly rely on them to convey urate details to him even if they recalled the Divine Doctor''s visit to the Valley of Prisms.


    Of course, he made sure to verify this nheless.


    He sharpened his eyes, conveying the image of the Divine Doctor to several herds of catoblepas.


    Their reactions did not change.


    "MOOOOOOOOOEEEEAAAAUUUU!"


    They mooed in emotional distress.


    BADUMP!


    Rui activated his Martial Heart, exerting immense mental pressure on them. He hoped that by subjecting them to deep mental pressure, he would be able to get them to focus on him while still conveying the image of the Divine Doctor.


    "MOOOOOOOOOEEEEAAAAUUUU!"


    Rui did a double take, frowning. "¡­Just what kind of trauma did that man inflict on them?"


    The fact that even his Senior-level aura was unable to break them out of their reverie of emotional distress showed that whatever the Divine Doctor did to them was extremely impactful on their psyche.


    What did he do? Rui narrowed his eyes. Tell me, what did he do?


    "MOOOOOOOOOEEEEAAAAUUUU!"


    s, it was to no avail. N?velDrama.Org owns this text.


    He let go of his grip on them, causing them to immediately run away from him.


    "No luck?" Kane asked, squatting peacefully.


    "It''s difficult to extract information from them," Rui heaved a sigh. "Themunication from my end is great; the issue is themunication from their end. It''s a shame Ieyasu isn''t here."


    The man''s ability to read minds would have allowed Rui to ovee this hurdle pretty easily.


    Kane furrowed his eyebrows. "Are you saying I''m not as helpful as him?"


    Rui stared at him nkly. "Would you say you''re as useful as him?"


    "I can fight and assassinate well."


    "He can do both better," Rui huffed. "Besides, his specialty would be perfect for this situation."


    Kane folded his arms. "The issue is that they''re unable tomunicate with you, and you''re able tomunicate with them, right?"


    "Yeah, in addition to being a bit unwilling, but yeah."


    "Then why not just solve the problem with your Martial Art?" Kane asked impassively.


    "¡­Use my Martial Art to solve amunication problem?"


    "After all, Adaptive Evolution is meant to ovee everything by evolving and adapting to things, right? So you can just ovee this problem by adaptively evolving to it," Kane shrugged. "Seems like a no-brainer to me, to be honest."


    Rui stared at him wordlessly. The logic was so profound that Rui had to take a moment to wrap his mind around what the man had just uttered.


    "How in the world am I supposed to use my Martial Path outside ofbat to oveemunication problems?"


    "Well, aren''t you already doing that?" Kane asked ndly. "You used hypnosis tomunicate. That''s Martial Art, right?"


    Rui''s gaze grew measured. Technically, Kane wasn''t wrong. Rui did indeed use Martial hypnosis for benignmunication. However, as much as he loved his Martial Path, it would be a stretch to say that he used Adaptive Evolution when solving a simple problem.


    Even more to say that he could use it to solve the hurdles ahead of them.


    "It''s not like I can use my Martial Path and Martial Art to make themmunicate better with me." Rui heaved an exasperated sigh.


    "Why not?" Kane''s tone was sincere. He stared at Rui with simple curiosity.


    "Because¡­ such a technique is¡­ impossible?" Rui frowned as a realization clicked in his head.


    It wasn''t impossible.


    "Wait a minute," Rui grew more engrossed in the matter, his eyes swimming around. "If I can put them into a trance and get them tomunicate their memories to me non-verbally, then¡­"


    Rui''s eyes lit up. "It just might work."


    Mostmunication between people urred non-verbally. However, while ordinary people were only able to convey a limited amount of information, Martial Artists like Rui could convey far more through non-verbalmunication alone.


    Their bandwidth was much greater. That was the reason Rui was able to convey three-dimensional high-definition videos through sheer non-verbalmunication.


    He turned to the catoblepas with an interested expression. "These creatures don''t have as much bandwidth as I do, but¡­" He muttered under his breath. "They are Apprentice-level creatures, even if barely."


    That meant that they undoubtedly possessed a bandwidth that exceeded that of normal humans. Given that non-verbalmunication wasrgely dictated by the subconscious mind, intelligence was not a particrly relevant variable this time around. Thus, he wasn''t concerned that the dim-wittedness of this grazing species would sabotage him.


    Of course, it wasn''t going to be easy.


    He was essentially talking about using hypnosis to read the mind of his target. The mechanics of the technique were different from anything that Rui had learned about from the Hypnomaster. As far as he was aware, he had never heard about a technique that allowed one to read another mind via hypnosis. He immediately thought of Ieyasu, narrowing his eyes. "I don''t think his technique works this way, but¡­"


    Rui wondered if he could replicate a fraction of Ieyasu''s capabilities with this alternative principle. After all, thetter himself did this all the time and got away with it. Surely, Rui could seed at copying a technique with alternative principles at least once.


    If he seeded, not only would he be able to extract precious intelligence regarding the Divine Doctor from the minds of the catoblepas, but he would have created a technique that could be useful in many other domains of his life, especially as a Martial Artist.


    Putting his opponent in a mild trance such that their subconscious mind conveyed some proportion of their conscious mind through non-verbalmunication sounded so tantalizingly attractive that he could not help but wonder if it was possible.


    "I must look into this immediately."


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1901 The Inception of Intent

    Chapter 1901 The Inception of Intent


    Over the next few days, Rui immersed himself in the newest idea for his Martial Art technique. A technique that could allow him to read his opponent''s mind to some degree by hypnotizing them such that their non-verbalmunication reflected their mind to a certain degree.


    This was possible if one was in a trance, which was a state of semi-consciousness. In this state, the subconscious mind gained greater control over the body. What Rui was particrly interested in was the fact that he could read what the subconscious mind was conveying much more easily.


    Thus, in regards to the catoblepas, Rui needed to develop a technique that put them in a trance where they would relive the memories of the Divine Doctor. He could trigger them into doing so by showing them the visual depiction of the Divine Doctor as he had before, except, this time, he would be doing it to them while they were in a trance.


    The visual depiction of the Divine Doctor would trigger associated memories, causing them to relive them, which, in turn, would be reflected in their non-verbalmunication. In this manner, he would be able to get detailed ess to their memories, hopefully.


    However, Rui was enthusiastic about the prospects of such a Martial Art technique beyond just the catoblepas.


    "If I can put my opponents in a quasi-trance mid-battle and cause their subconscious minds to gain a stronger hold over their body such that it reflects their intent well ahead of time¡­" Rui could not contain the sheer excitement that he felt at the prospects of such a technique.


    Reading the subconscious mind through non-verbalmunication could do much more than allow him to read intent in the conscious mind.


    It could allow him to read the very inception of intent that urred in the subconscious mind! Belongs to (N)?vel/Drama.Org.


    Rui recalled a paper on a rather groundbreaking experiment that he had read back on Earth during the development of the VOID algorithm.


    The physiologist Benjamin Libet once famously used an EEG to show that activity in the brain''s motor cortex could be detected three hundred milliseconds before a person felt that they had decided to move.


    Anotherb extended this work using functional maic resonance imaging (fMRI): Subjects were asked to press one of two buttons while watching a clockposed of a random sequence of letters appearing on a screen. They reported which letter was visible at the moment they decided to press one button or the other. The experimenters found two regions of the brain that contained information about which button subjects would press a full seven to ten seconds before the decision was consciously made. More recently, direct recordings from the cortex showed that the activity of merely two hundred and fifty-six neurons was sufficient to predict with eighty percent uracy a person''s decision to move seven hundred milliseconds before he became aware of it.


    In other words, if Rui could read any extent of a person''s subconscious mind by cing them in a quasi-trance such that their non-verbalmunication reflected their subconscious mind, he could read the very inception of intent!


    He fidgeted impatiently, trying to temper his enthusiasm and excitement. Naturally, he recognized that this could not possibly be as smooth as he had hoped.


    Even if the creation of the technique went smoothly, which he doubted, the technique itself would not be able to allow him to urately interpret thenguage of non-verbalmunication.


    While non-verbalmunication was universal, that did not mean it was universally identical.


    Everybody had a partially unique non-verbalmunicationnguage.


    It could be thought of as regional dialects and ents to a nationalnguage. English was a widespreadnguage on Earth, but it had its variants, different dialects, and all manners of ents impeding sophisticatedmunication even among its speakers. There was enough ovep for smooth generalmunication. But the moment Rui wanted to read something as precise as the activation of a few hundred neurons out of billions, he would need to know theirnguage.


    "Tsk," Rui tutted. He had hoped to find a low-hanging fruit that he had somehow missed before that would give massive upgrades to his Martial Art at a particrly low price, but s. It could not be helped.


    08:24


    Thankfully, the path to fulfilling his vision was not mired in mist. "If everybody has a differentnguage, then¡­" His eyes narrowed. "I''ll just have to decode theirnguage."


    Linguists did it all the time. When approaching the script of an entirely unfamiliarnguage, they would begin looking for patterns and associations that could help them learn thenguage''s meanings.


    In the context of Rui''s new idea, he could employ a pattern recognition system designed to understand the corrtion between conveyed non-verbalmunication and the intent of his opponent.


    Thus, if he observed a particr set of physiological changes and micro-movements that were immediately followed by a roundhouse kick, then the next time he saw those very same physiological changes and micro-movements, he could infer that his opponent''s intent was to throw a roundhouse kick.


    Of course, this was an oversimplification. He would need a muchrger dataset than a single data point. But Martial Artists threw thousands, tens of thousands, or even more kicks every second. In other words, he had plenty of data to work with.


    "In order to process that data and learn the uniquenguage of subconsciousness¡­" Rui uttered, immersed in thought. "I''ll need a new system of thought."


    A wide smile emerged on his face at the realization. His Martial Mind was already quiterge with the VOID algorithm and the Angel of Lace. The addition of a new system of thought to his nascent Martial Mind, especially one asrge and sophisticated as what he had conceived, would undoubtedly push him much closer to a higher Realm of power!


    "Chief," Kane broke him out of his reverie. "Before you get absorbed into whatever it is that has caught your attention this time, do something about the catoblepas."


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1902 Similiarities

    Chapter 1902 Similiarities


    ??"Don''t worry." Rui grinned. "I intend to tackle them and more."


    "Uh huh," Kane stared at him skeptically.


    Rui sat down and began fleshing out the concepts of his new idea for a technique.


    The objective of the new technique was dual. He needed it to be able to help him read the memories of the catoblepas and give him more intelligence on the Divine Doctor so he could find the madman and get him to heal his father.


    This was more immediate and urgent.


    Secondarily, he hoped the technique would allow him to read the inception of intent that urred within the subconscious mind.


    He would rather notpromise on either objective. Thus, he needed a technique that perfectly catered to both of them.


    Memory and intent were not neurologicallyparable phenomena. The former could be characterized as neuron pathways formed by neuron sticity. Thetter was the set of electrical impulses that were to be sent from the brain to the rest of the body through the central nervous system.


    This made the development of the technique to read both of them trickier than if he focused only on one. However, it was not unsurmountable.


    "The subconscious mind is the avenue of the inception of intent, and while memories do not originate in the subconscious mind exclusively, they can be read through the subconscious mind in a trance state as long as the person believes that they are actually experiencing those memories in real life."


    It was the same principle as the Phantomind Void.


    "Reading the subconscious mind is the key solution to reading both triggered memories of the Divine Doctor. As long as I can aplish that, it''s game over," he realized.


    His initial idea was to read the subconscious mind by putting the person in a trance. In this state, the subconscious would take more primacy in the body, allowing for deeper non-verbalmunication from it to anybody listening.


    "How do I put people in a trance midbat?" Rui wondered.


    He had learned the principle of trances from Master Zeamer. Trances were states of semi-consciousness that could be triggered through hypnosis, which, in turn, was simply impacting the subconscious mind by diverting the conscious mind away from it through misdirection.


    lights¦­¦Ïv¦Ål ?¦Ïm Thetter served as a guard to the former, requiring it to be misdirected momentarily to leave the subconscious mind open and vulnerable to influence.


    There was only one issue.


    "Trances are¡­ the most difficult hypnosis to trigger in the middle ofbat," Rui heaved a sigh with uncertainty.


    They required not just that the conscious mind be misdirected but also be dimmed to a semi-conscious state such that the subconscious mind took some primacy. Because of the additional requirement that trances had inparison to hypnosis, triggering them midbat was impossible through regr hypnosis.


    If Rui tried to trigger normal trances midbat, even with his evolved mind, a hundred-percent sess rate was doubtful at best.


    "I could spend many years training and heightening my mind, but¡­" Rui scratched his fuzzy chin. "I don''t have time for that."


    He needed to bypass the hurdle through a less time-


    consuming solution.


    "Trances," Rui uttered the word like it was an incantation. "Ordinary humans can cause them too."


    The difference between human hypnosis and Martial hypnosis was that Martial Artists could trigger hypnosis against the will of the target, while humans could only do so with the active cooperation of the target and in environments with minimized sensory stimuli.C0ntent ? 2024 (N/?)velDrama.Org.


    They needed an environment with dimmed sensory stimuli because the greater the sensory stimuli, the more active and awake the conscious mind was. It was also why the targets were instructed to close their eyes. It was almost impossible to put someone in a trance when their eyes were constantly bombarding their conscious mind with visual sensory data.


    This was another reason why putting someone in a trance midbat was imusible. Martial Artists could not ask their opponents to close their eyes and take them to an environment with no sensory stimuli.


    "Or can I?" Rui''s eyes widened as a thunderous realization dawned on him. "What if I use domains to dim sensory stimuli to massively ease the difficulty of putting people in a trance?"


    He froze as his eyes wandered around, deeply engrossed in thought.


    Domains were regions where users were able to manipte heaven and earth and the skies and thends by manipting their breath.


    If Rui could create a domain that was opaque, in that itpletely obstructed all light to the target''s eyes, then it was no different from the target closing their eyes, was it not? It would beplete darkness in both cases.


    He could also have the domainpletely mask all sound and scent and prevent all touch, further sealing three more senses.


    "If I employ such a domain while simultaneously hypnotizing them into a trance, then¡­" Rui''s eyes widened even more. "The sess rate will be far higher!"


    It would instantly turn the trance into a viable technique, allowing him to then start reading their non-verbalmunication and decoding theirnguage with a new system of thought, which would eventually allow him to read their intent much ahead of time.


    Once that was aplished, thebined power of the VOID algorithm and this new intent-reading model would give him such enormous predictive power that even the Ss n would drool!


    "Damn!" Rui cursed, rejoicing. "This is going to be so awesome."


    He had to physically exert control to stop himself from vibrating with excitement. Yet, no matter how much he tried, he could not prevent the tion from leaking out.


    "Why are you tweaking?" Kane tilted his head confused.


    Rui turned to him with sparkling eyes.


    CLASP


    He put his hands on Kane''s shoulders. "From this day forth, you shall be my new test subject."


    It was at that moment that Kane remembered that Rui was more simr to the Divine Doctor than he would care to admit.


    He braced himself for a rocky voyage ahead.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1903 Quality Vs Quantity

    Chapter 1903 Quality Vs Quantity


    ??While Kane broke into a cold sweat at the prospect of being a test subject in the R&D process of Rui''s technique projects, Rui continued to flesh out the technique.


    To read the subconscious mind, he would put his victim in a trance where the subconscious mind had greater primacy over the body, conveying greater amounts of information through non-verbalmunication.


    To put them in a trance, he would need to apply hypnosis, distracting his opponent''s conscious mind and awareness to leave their subconscious mind exposed. And then, he had to imnt the ssic hypnotic suggestion of sleep. Of course, this would not cause them to actually sleep, but it would put them in a minor trance where their subconscious mind''s influence and control were magnified.


    This was normally impossible due to sensory stimuli keeping the conscious mind active, which, in turn, could be mitigated by using a domain to kill sensory stimuli, making it easier for the conscious mind to be dimmed in its primacy.


    Thus, the technique would require a domain-hypnosis hybrid technique to put the mind into a trance, as well as an intent-pattern recognition system of thought to then create an intent-evaluation model allowing him to read the intent conveyed through non-verbalmunication.


    As such, the technique blueprint was divided into two parts: the trance-induction half and the intent-evaluation half.


    The former required a domain-hypnosis technique. This was an extremely novel endeavor as far as Rui was concerned.


    Domain maniption was extremely rare. Even in the Kandrian Empire, with a whopping one hundred and fifty Martial Masters, there was merely a single domain-oriented Martial Artist.


    Mind-oriented Martial Artists were not nearly as rare but were certainly far from frequent ormon.


    How many martial artists could walk down both paths?


    Not only walk down already trodden paths, but forge their own paths down the two fields and even try to merge them?


    He would be surprised if it''d been ever attempted, let alone in the Lower Realms. However, it made sense to Rui. Sensory input was the channel through which hypnosis functioned. Domains manipted heaven and earth, the very environment around them, and their target. This allowed for spectacr maniption of the mind.


    "Damn," Rui cursed. "It was stupid of me to fail to make this realization earlier."


    By his standards, at least. Most people would not have evere up with the idea to mix fields that were so different from each other in such an incredibly synergistic manner. He added one more idea to his list of ideas to explore: the synergy between domains and hypnotic techniques.


    This was a long-term agenda that was far from urgent. He would deal with it after the matter with his father came to a close, one way or another.


    "I have enough on my te at the moment," Rui heaved a sigh.


    Yet it couldn''t dampen his excitement. The prospect of enhancing his pattern recognition system with an intent evaluation system was too great.


    Even conservative evaluations of how much this would improve hisbat prowess were high. If this project panned out exactly how he hoped it would, then he would be able to im the title of the strongest Martial Senior with much greater confidence than simply by virtue of narrowly edging out a victory against the Gatekeeper.


    The totality of his system of thought with the VOID algorithm, the Angel of Lace, and now this new project would elevate his nascent system of thought to unprecedented levels within the Senior Realm.


    He was deeply skeptical of the existence of a Martial Senior who had harnessed thought better than him. The Martial Union would not have allocated thirty-one trillion Martial Credits to the dissemination of his Martial Path as a field of thought if what he had to offer was not truly worth the expenditure of the capital.


    The sheer amount of information that he would be processing and decisioning based on was probably groundbreaking within the Senior Realm.


    It was so overwhelming that, just for a brief moment, Rui wondered whether his capacity for thought was on par with a Martial Master.


    "Pssht, no shot," he grumbled.


    Martial Masters had extra parts of the brain aiding their thought. Rui was extremely smart, especially in his capacity to process information, but he could not beat such neurological capital.


    The conscious mind of Martial Masters spanned arger part of the brain than normal humans and Martial Artists of the Lower Realms. The additional volume that the consciousness spanned was significantlyrger, but the boost in processing that it made was also disproportionately greater.


    An X-percent boost in brain volume did not yield an X-percent boost in brain processing, it yielded an X^10-percent boost.


    This disproportionately high exponential boost was due to the fact that cognition was not born from the number of neurons in the brain; it was born from the number of neuron pathways. Neuron pathways were simply chains or connections of neurons, and they were the basis of memory and processing. The more neuron pathways the conscious mind had, the greater the cognition.


    The number of new possible connections gained simply by adding a single neuron to the brain was in the trillions. After all, a single neuron could form individual connections through each other neuron, resulting in countless permutations andbinations of neuron pathways.


    What would happen if an entire chunk of a brain, containing billions of neurons, was added to the conscious mind?


    The number of new permutations of possible neuron connections would reach a mind-bogglingly high number. All these countless neuron connections would boost cognition astronomically in regard tobat. That was why Martial Masters were leagues above Rui, even if he had a high-quality capacity to process information.


    His mind had evolved deep into genius-level territory, having undergone prodigious cognitive growth from experiencing childhood a second time. It was reaching extreme intelligence. However, that spoke to his quality of thought. The number of neurons in his conscious mind was not greater than the average Martial Senior.


    If his capacity for thought was ten times greater than it would be thanks to quality, Martial Masters would be more than a hundred times greater thanks to quantity.


    It begged the question, though. What would happen when Rui broke through to the Realm and harnessed both the quality and quantity?


    -Property ? of N?velDrama.Org.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1904 Project Telepath

    Chapter 1904 Project Telepath


    ??The very prospects of entering the Master Realm had grown more attractive with his earlier considerations. Rui had an inherently high quality of thought. Once his conscious mind grewrge and gained the quantity of thought of the Martial Mind, he would probably reach levels that he could not even begin to imagine.


    For that, he needed to develop his Martial Mind and system of thought beyond his limits so that when the time came, his consciousness could expand beyond its current limits, epassing arger part of his brain. It would serve as an operating system for the newly annexed parts of the brain, while the Martial Mind would serve asbat software.


    He shook his head. "I have no idea how close or far I am."


    The creation of atent Martial Mind was something that normally took decades, sometimes even centuries. Furthermore, Rui had long been informed that his path to the Master Realm was much harder than that of his peers. Thus, it was difficult to be optimistic that he was close.


    If that was it, then he could be certain that he was still far from reaching the finish line; however, the fact that he retained the VOID algorithm in his memories after reincarnating made it difficult to understand how near he was to his goal because of the immense headstart he had gotten.


    The VOID algorithm had taken him decades to create and refine in his previous life. Thus, in a sense, he had already fulfilled a solid part of the journey to the Master Realm in his previous life!


    "Whatever," he muttered. "I will break through when I break through."


    Agonizing about it was not going to help. If he had time for that, he would rather work on his Martial Mind and actually put in effort into getting closer to his goal.


    His attention immediately returned to the matter at hand.


    "I need to give this project a new name," Rui contemted. "Hmmm¡­how about Project Telepath?"


    It was good enough as far as he was concerned.


    He quickly began working on the first half of Project Telepath. The domain-hypnosis hybrid technique that would allow him to sessfully put his opponent in a mild trance midbat was the first hurdle that he needed to ovee.


    It was essentially a technique inside a technique.


    "Actually, it would be cleaner to think of it as entirely separate from the system of thought needed to read individualized non-verbalmunication," Rui realized.


    In that case, Project Telepath could be thought of as the creation of two separate techniques that were co-dependent.


    "The oue doesn''t really change, so I suppose it doesn''t matter," Rui murmured. "Ultimately, a domain-hypnosis hybrid technique needs to be formed."


    He immediately began considering the broader skeletal structure of the technique. For one, the domain and the hypnosis not only needed to ur simultaneously, it was best if hepletely integrated them together into a single technique.


    In other words, using a domain not only kills all sensory stimuli but also aids in hypnosis.


    "I don''t think I canpletely fuse them. A domain cannot misdirect because domains don''t have non-verbalmunication."


    Or maybe they could? It was another avenue of research he put down forter, but for now, he would need to take care of the misdirection aspect of hypnosis.


    There were two parts to hypnosis. To hypnotize was to a) misdirect the consciousness''s awareness away from him so that it no longer impeded him from b) impacting the subconscious mind with a hypnotic suggestion. He would take care of the first part while letting the domain partially handle the second part, as well as dimming sensory stimuli.


    Those two went hand in hand.


    Light yed an enormous role in the activity of the conscious mind.


    In fact, Rui knew that there was substantial research showing that the artificial lighting of human civilization was one of the greatest reasons for modern insomnia.


    While conducting research into the importance of sleep for UFC fighters in his previous life, Rui came across a paper on an experiment conducted where a group of city dwellers who reported extreme insomnia were taken away from any artificial lighting to a camp in nature. Each participant slept for a healthy seven to eight hours on the very first night.


    The underlying principle of sensory input influencing levels of conscious activity was also relevant to hypnosis. The moment he got the domain torgely cut off all sensory input, the propensity of a person''s conscious mind to reduce in awareness and activity to enter a trance was much higher.


    "Naturally, it''s impossible to cut off all sensory input," Rui admitted. "Otherwise, I could just ambush them in the darkness. However, I can get rid of a substantial amount."


    He immediately began dissecting the sensory input-blocking mechanisms of the domain technique. It was possible for him to manipte the air such that it became opaque. He could even significantly hamper sound and scent to a great degree. However, at the Senior Realm, that was not enough to hamper his opponents inbat at all.C0ntent ? 2024 (N/?)velDrama.Org.


    That was just enough to allow him to misdirect them using Phantomind Void and his three-dimensional image of Master Uma and then convey a simple suggestion to the subconscious mind.


    Sleep.


    Of course, he didn''t expect them to sleep. But a mild trance was definitely achievable and the desired objective.


    "Alright, now I just need to get down the heaven-bending and earth-bending to nail the domain ckout," Rui uttered, activating a breathing technique as he began manipting heaven and earth with breath-bending.


    He had some ideas of how to go about the ckout.


    The sound, odor, and touch parts were well within his ability to sabotage.


    However, cutting off light with air alone would require not just physical density but also optical density. Thetter was new. He would need to spend a lot of time developing mastery over the maniption of optical density to cut off light entirely.


    Thankfully, he had the perfect teacher for manipting optical density.


    He nced around at the Valley of Prisms with a smile.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1905 Rationalizations

    Chapter 1905 Rationalizations


    ??The Valley of Prisms got its name because the atmosphere had variable optical density such that light was bent and scattered while traveling through it.


    Anybody who relied on vision alone would be doomed; unable to navigate properly and prone to suffering psychological damage and madness over time. Meanwhile, the lifeforms of the Valley of Prisms had evolved different senses, and their vision had dimmed.


    It spoke volumes that, despite this, the Divine Doctor had somehow been the one to drive the catoblepas insane instead!


    The prism effect of the valley was known toe from its esoteric vegetation interacting with the atmosphere in such a way that the gaseous exchanges caused the optical density of the atmosphere to be entirely non-uniform.


    If Rui could study this, then he ought to be able to replicate the alteration in the optical density of the air, allowing him to bend and potentially even halt light in its path. Normally, he would need the guidance of a teacher like Master Gurren to aid him with that, but he had the very next best option at his disposal.


    The Valley of Prisms would be his teacher.


    At that moment, Rui felt an enormous amount of gratitude to the universe for guiding him to this destination with this particr purpose. For some reason, he had developed a blindspot to the possibilities that he had currently set out to explore.


    Just thinking about how long it would have taken him toe up with this idea, if at all, in the first ce, made his head spin.


    Of course, there was another person he needed to thank.


    "Thanks for the advice, Kane," Rui turned towards him. "Wouldn''t have figured it out without you."


    "Can I skip being a test subject then?"


    "Heh, you wish."


    "Damn."


    Rui smirked as he returned to the issue at hand.


    He had already plotted out a systematic study of the Valley of Prisms while he replicated its optical density shenanigans over time.


    Even before he embarked on this project, he knew it was going to take time. He was creating a highly sophisticated andplex technique that would allow him to read minds indirectly.


    On top of that, it was multi-faceted, and each facet was essentially its own technique.


    Additionally, Rui had to spend some time engaging in empirical research on his environment. After said research, he would need to spend even more time in developing and mastering the heaven-bending needed to alter optical density.


    "This is definitely gonna take a while," Rui heaved a sigh.


    He had far too much experience in undertaking major technique projects to possibly believe that this could possibly be finished within a year.


    Had he been in any other situation, he would not have batted an eye at such timeframes, but he was under a tight schedule. He only had three years and eight months left until his father sumbed to the Eternal Dream Disease.


    That was not immediate, but it was not too much time considering how difficult it would be to actually traverse the Beast Domain once they went deeper and deeper.


    Yet he had already made his decision.


    "I''ll manage." His eyes sharpened.


    This project would drastically reduce the difficulty of finding the Divine Doctor. It was clear that the Divine Doctor had a penchant for making an impression that stuck.


    Using Project Telepath, he could constantly dig up intelligence on the Divine Doctor from the animals of the regions that he visited. This would drastically cut down the investigation process than if he had to rely on hoping forenvironmental clues that would lead him to his target.


    Rui found thetter to be very dubious.


    The Valley of Prisms had already proven that the Divine Doctor could cause mass havoc and demographic-altering disruptions without leaving so much as a hint of a physical clue. The utility and necessity for Project Telepath in the pursuit of the Divine Doctor became increasingly clear the more Rui critically analyzed the prospects of finding him.


    "It''s hopeless unless I can tap into memory."


    The only issue was if the Divine Doctor had passed through areas devoid of life. In such a case, there would be no animals whose memories he could tap into to learn more about the Divine Doctor''s travels through the Beast Domain.


    This was deeply unlikely to happen, however.


    Humanity''s constant encroachment and annexation of the Beast Domain had made it so that the poption density of the Beast Domain had risen by nearly an order of magnitude since the dawn of the Age of Martial Art.


    There was not enough space for all fauna; massively empty regions were thus increasingly rarer with each passing year.


    "On top of that, memories of beasts and monsters are not subject to being eroded by changes in the Beast Domain," Rui keenly realized.


    Physical clues were subject to being eroded by the vtile environment of the Beast Domain. The same could not be said for memories that were rtively untouched by physical erosion. Thus, it could be argued that clues in memory were the first and primary avenue of investigation that Rui ought to undertake rather than focusing on the environment at all.


    However, while all of these reasons were logical and sound, Rui knew that they were rationalizations.


    The true reason he wanted to proceed with Project Telepath was rather simple.


    A wide grin emerged on his face. "It brings me one step closer to fulfilling Project Water. It brings me one step closer to reaching the Master Realm."


    Rui was d that Project Telepath could help find the Divine Doctor, but he would be lying if he said that he would drop the project if it didn''t help with that objective. The same drive motivating him to find the Divine Doctor in the first ce was also the drive that caused him to prioritize his Martial Path over finding the Divine Doctor.


    Thankfully, in this case, he didn''t need to choose between the two of them.


    -


    This chapter upload first at  C0ntent ? 2024 (N/?)velDrama.Org.

 Chapter 1906 Trial and Error

    Chapter 1906 Trial and Error


    Belongs to (N)?vel/Drama.Org.


    Months passed as Rui began working on the domain technique. He took his time studying the esoteric flora of the Valley of Prisms, breaking down the manner in which the optical density of light was altered and how the changes in optical density affected the passage of light.


    Simultaneously, he began trying to replicate those effects with heaven-bending. It wasn''t easy. However, the foundation that he had gotten from Master Gurren was quite solid. On top of that, he also had experience with manipting the optical density of the air in other ways when he created the telescopic technique for Master Gurren.


    Unfortunately, the heaven-bending needed to magnify light was extremely different from the heaven-bending needed to halt light in its path. It was challenging, but he worked hard in trying to figure out the most efficient and effective way to make light opaque.


    Even turning the air into a solid through heavypression was not enough. In many cases, this simply yielded a translucent and even transparent medium through which light had no trouble passing through.


    While he worked on the opaqueness of the domain, he also fleshed out its other aspects that were to aid hypnosis. Those, though, were much easier to handle.


    One thing that became extremely evident was that this technique did not necessitate tremendous exertion of power. Since the purpose of the technique was to block sensory information, it was not a physicalbat technique like many of the other domain techniques of the Yggdrasil System.


    That was great because it made it easier to employ while fighting. At the current moment, he had only begun to endeavor passive mastery of domains so that he would be able to seamlessly use them inbat without letting them hamper him.


    Thankfully, this technique woulde with passive mastery pre-loaded into it due to how little of a burden it would be to execute.


    Kanemented ever springing the idea in Rui''s head inadvertently as Rui made him sit in the center of the domain to report how well the it impeded sensory input and how much it had improved since the previous prototype. He essentially became a glorified senso to allow Rui to record observations.


    "Alright," Rui remarked. "Commencing trial number S38-174. The aim of this trial is to measure the impact of a one-point-eight-percent increase in the density of air through spiralpression on sensory input, as measured by our test subject, Kane."


    Kane raised his hand in response, heaving a tired sigh.


    In the past few months, Rui had been conducting relentless trials in various heaven-bending approaches in his endeavor to create a domain. He applied an approach simr to most rigorous R&D projects, taking trial after trial to systematically measure the oues of several experiments in their objectives of creating the best product as a result.


    It was at that moment that Kane felt a pang of regret in joining Rui to find the Divine Doctor in the Beast Domain.


    BADUMP!


    Rui''s Martial Heart zed into life as a surge of power emerged from deep within his body.


    "Here we go," he murmured, activating a powerful breathing technique, bending the vectors generated by his breathing to manipte the entire atmosphere, causing air to spirally converge in the region around Kane.


    Suddenly, Kane''s sense of vision dimmed significantly as he carefully paid attention to what he saw.


    "That''s definitely a little darker than before," Kane announced.


    "How much darker?"


    "I dunno, like ten percent maybe? Around that much."


    "Hmmm¡­noted," Rui added a new record in his mental journal as he began altering the domain technique to include the new improvement he had made.


    "Hey, how long is this going to take?" Kane arched an eyebrow. "Because we can''t spend forever in the Valley of Prisms, you know? It''s already been two months since we came here."


    "I don''t think this will end anytime soon," Rui replied, immersed in his own thoughts.


    "You''re not going to find the Divine Doctor at this rate, you know?" Kane yawned.


    Rui paused, turning to him. "I have no intention of giving up on that. Besides, this project will cut the rest of our journey quite short. We probably won''t have to spend tons of time per region from here on out. With this new technique, we can scan their memories the moment we get there and leave ASAP."


    Kane shrugged. "Your choice."


    He didn''t mind whatever decision Rui made; he was just there to stick with him for the journey.


    While Rui rxed from an intense R&D session to develop the domain, he began working on the other aspects of the Project Telepath.


    Namely, the most important part of the technique project was the system of thought decoding his target''snguage of non-verbalmunication. It was a shame that he wasn''t a linguist or a behavioral psychologist.


    Of course, being either wasn''t strictly necessary in the pursuit of understanding non-verbalnguages, and he had to admit that he had the knowledge needed to create a system of thought. It was just going to be rather difficult.


    In his previous life, creating the VOID algorithm had been a project spanning more than twenty years. In his current life, his mind was vastly more powerful due to having undergone a second route of astronomical growth from infancy to adulthood. He couldplete simrly enormous projects in just a fraction of the time within the confines of his massive Mind Pce.


    ''A system of thought to decode thenguage of non-verbalmunication,'' Rui mused. ''Such a system will need to satisfy several criteria. Firstly, I will need to be able to identify the various elements andyers of non-verbalmunication and categorize them appropriately when I record them.''


    Non-verbalmunication was far more multi-dimensional than verbalmunication. Thetter only conveyed information through sound. Non-verbalmunication, however, wasmunicated through various other senses, sometimes even all five and more. Those weren''t the only manners in which one could categorize them.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1907 Complexity of Data

    Chapter 1907 Complexity of Data


    In addition to different media ofmunication via various senses, they could also be categorized in terms of the biological aspects. They could be divided into implicit and explicit non-verbalmunication. The former were changes in a person that were non-muscle in nature; i.e., they were not movements in the body caused by the muscr system. To put more simply, they were, for example, not caused by moving a muscle in the arm.


    These changes includedvariations in body temperature, heart rate, perspiration, and respiration. Non-verbalmunication could also be thought of as voluntary and non-voluntary.


    With so many facets and aspects of non-verbalmunication, categorizing it in his head when he recorded it mid-fight was extremely important.


    Thus, one of the most important requirements of the system of thought for Project Telepath was categorization and organization.


    Rui had already spent some time developing a set of protocols when handling information in his Mind Pce.


    It involved dividing the non-verbalmunication that he perceived into finer data points and then tagging each data point with its respective category. Since these categories were not strictly mutually exclusive, it was possible for each data point to have multiple tags such as ''voluntary non-verbalmunication,'' ''explicit non-verbalmunication,'' and ''visual, non-verbalmunication.''


    This allowed him to perform more sophisticated statistical operations on the various datasets formed by data points of a given dataset. Only when he had a robust and sophisticated organization of data to maximize the efficiency and effectiveness of thought could he begin pattern recognition of intent.


    This was the easier part. Pattern recognition of intent was, in some ways, expanding the existing pattern recognition system of the VOID algorithm to include non-verbalmunication of the intent at its inception in the subconscious mind.


    In other words, the only reason it didn''t exist before was because the inception of intent was never conveyed before.


    That had now been solved thanks to putting his opponent in a trance.


    A new dimension of data had presented itself, and he would need to create a corresponding system of thought to process it.


    "It is best distinguished from the pattern recognition system of the VOID algorithm, however," Rui realized. "There are important distinctions between the existing pattern recognition system and the new system of thought I am creating."


    For one, the existing pattern recognition system detected patterns in actions exclusively. This new system of thought detected patterns between subconscious non-verbalmunication and intent at its inception. Naturally, intent conveyed what movements would be made, but that was derivative.


    Thus, the existing pattern recognition was of physical patterns, while the new one was of psychological patterns.


    This difference was enough for Rui to distinguish it as wholly separate.


    "I shoulde up with a proper name for it, one worthy of a system of thought so profound," Rui muttered. "Hmmm¡­"


    It needed to contain several keywords that were important to it. The non-verbalmunication and intent were both subconscious; thus, that was a good start. It was a system of thought that worked on data that was procured through observation; that, too, was a good word to add.


    What was being evaluated wasnguage. Subconscious non-verbalnguage, but anguage nheless. Thus,nguage was a good word to add as well.


    On top of that, themunication was unteral. It was unidirectional. His opponent was put in a trance, causing them tomunicate their intent subconsciously and non-verbally unterally.


    "Subconscious Observational Unteral Language System," Rui decided. "Or, the SOUL System, for short."


    The fact that the acronym turned out to be a word with some significance was, well, purely a coincidence. Property ? of N?velDrama.Org.


    Regardless, the SOUL System currently existed only in name. He hadn''t even finished working on the processing protocols for raw subconscious non-verbalmunication data. He certainly had not finished the development process of the Intent Evaluation model that would actually allow him to read subconscious intent at its inception.


    However, he hadpleted the overall structure of the SOUL System.


    The first step in the activation of the system would be processing and categorizing data into various categories, painstakingly tagging every data-point with multiple tags.


    The second step was to form an association between a particr set of subconscious non-verbalmunication data and its corresponding intent, as retroactively measured by actions taken. He would continue doing this hundreds, thousands, and millions of times.


    Then, it was a matter of counting the number of associations between a given set of subconscious non-verbalmunication taken and intent. If it turned out that there were recurring associations between particrmunication and intent, then he could be certain he had found out what saidmunication meant.


    Given how fast Martial Artists fought, they could have an astronomical amount of data very quickly, allowing them to form tons of associations and g the most recurring pairs as having cracked those parts of thenguage.


    The third step involved taking the more recurring and strongly associated pairs and integrating them into the predictive model.


    The moment his opponent''s subconscious non-verbalmunication matched that of anything in the predictive model, he could pull up the strongly associated intent and be rtively certain that it was his opponent''s intent.


    This part was very simr to the decoding of ancientnguages and their scripts. If a particr symbol, say ''$'', was associated with money over and over, then linguists would infer the presence of money if they ever saw ''$'' somewhere else.


    The SOUL System was doing a far moreplex and sophisticated version of that withmunication and intent.


    "Man, this is going to take a while," Rui murmured inwardly to himself.


    Thankfully, he could heavily borrow from the VOID algorithm, cutting down a project that would otherwise take many years. If not for that, there was no chance in hell he could ever finish such a sophisticated project before his father passed away. As long as he was efficient in his development process, he could finish it with plenty of time to spare.


    Or, at least, so he hoped.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1908 Unfathomable Power

    Chapter 1908 Unfathomable Power


    ??"Commencing trial W68-21," Rui remarked aloud. "The goal is to examine the effect of lowering temperature on the prization index of the domain medium Mark54634. Previous experiments have yielded results that plot a parabolic locus on a temperature-prization index graph. The goal of this experiment is to, hopefully, reach a state ofplete darkness."


    "Must you say that shit out loud each time?" Kane snorted.


    "It makes remembering it a little easier," Rui replied. "I have noted, through empirical experiments, that the memory associations of sound are easier to retain in my Mind Pce than pure thou¡ª"


    "I literally don''t care," Kane cut through what was undoubtedly going to be a mind-numbing monologue. "Just end this nightmare already."


    Rui smirked. "As you wish. Commencing experiment."


    He began his heaven-bending, altering temperature to manipte the prization index to try jamming light entirely.


    "Woah." Kane''s eyes widened with shock as pure darkness overtook the entire world. "I can''t see anything¡­ It worked!"


    Rui''s eyes lit up with ecstasy. "FINALLY!"


    Kane almost began sobbing with joy. "No more being subjected to the most torturous experiments anymore."


    Rui walked up to Kane, putting an arm on his shoulder.


    "What are you talking about? Now that the domain has been worked out, we are going to move on to the hypnosis phase. I will have you serve as a proper test subject for that as well."


    "No! I refuse!"


    Ruiughed at his expense, thoroughly enjoying the tantrum his best friend threw before returning to his own devices.


    Half a year had passed, and he had finally made significant progress on the first half of Project Telepath. He had also fleshed out the SOUL System in thest six months, thoroughly ironing out the protocols of thought.


    During this period, they had grown used to camping out in the Valley of Prisms. For one, as Martial Seniors, there was nothing there that could threaten them. However, they had experienced the chaos of the Beast Domain even in a region like the Valley of Prisms. Every day, there was some regional disruption of some kind.


    Sometimes, it was the invasion of another species of beasts or monsters immigrating from a different part of the Beast Domain. Other times, it was an earthquake triggered by some seismological event happening deeper in the Beast Domain. Most days had some sort of weather disruption that made no sense whatsoever. On other days, it was a Squire-level predator moving into the region to feast on the weak Apprentice-level catoblepas.


    Naturally, Rui did not allow so much as a scratch of harm to be inflicted on the catoblepas.


    How could he? They were precious carriers of intelligence about the Divine Doctor. The moment Project Telepath wasplete, he would use his newly created domain technique and the SOUL System to extract every ounce of information about the Divine Doctor that he could.


    In time, however, even the excessive chaos of the Valley of Prisms as a region of the Beast Domain eventually became something that the two of them got used to. The unpredictability became part of their daily routine.


    The two of them rapidly grew stronger as they each trained their own techniques. Kane decided that he could not afford to fall behind Rui anymore than he already had. He began working on honing his skills and developing a new technique alongside Rui.


    Naturally, he didn''t take nearly as much time.


    Project Telepath was definitely moreplicated than the Hypnomatrix or the Yggdrasil System. It even put the Greater Phantomind Void technique to shame.


    It possessed a degree of sophistication that was in the same tier as the VOID algorithm and the Angel of Lace, increasing the size of Rui''s nascent Martial Mind by a whopping fifty-percent.


    "Thankfully, the domain technique has been created; I just need to nail down the hypnosis," he remarked. "I shall add this new technique to the Yggdrasil System since it is fundamentally a domain technique. I also need toe up with a corresponding name to match the SOUL System¡­"


    He lingered on the matter before a fitting name entered his mind.


    "Soul Void."


    He didn''t really care about whether that was truly an urate description. The rule of cool trumped all other considerations.


    Regardless, with Soul Voidplete, the most difficult and challenging part of the trance-induction part of Project Telepath was done. He then spent his days refining the hypnosis that would go hand-in-hand with the Soul Void technique while also refining the SOUL System''s protocols.


    On the outside, when he wasn''t using Kane as a test subject, he appeared to simply be meditating peacefully.


    But internally, his mind was furiously processing a maelstrom of information as it worked towards reaching its desired oue. During that time, the catoblepas of the Valley of Prisms lived their lives peacefully under the protection of Rui and Kane. They didn''t know that they were no different from livestock awaiting ughter.


    Or, in this case, livestock awaiting traumatic recollection of scarring memories.


    Unfortunately for them, their mental health was not a priority Rui cared much about. He didn''t mind breaking their minds if that was what was required to extract even a single shred of useful information that pointed him in the direction of the Divine Doctor.


    In just a blink of an eye, eighteen months passed. His thirty-


    third birthday slipped by, unnoticed and uncelebrated. Neither of them, especially Rui, particrly cared for such a thing.


    Atop a mountain overseeing the Valley of Prisms sat Rui. His demeanor was one of serenity and peace.


    It conveyed profound harmony.


    Profound harmony and profound peril.


    So much so that the region around him became devoid of life. Be it flora or fauna, be it the microbes that resided in the air and thend, nothing remained in his presence.


    Yet, he didn''t care.


    His mind converged onto a single point.


    A mega-structure of data science protocols coalesced into a single mental entity.


    The SOUL System.


    It radiated unfathomable power from deep within.


    He reached forward to it, putting the final block in ce.


    The final piece of the puzzle.


    CLICKProperty ? of N?velDrama.Org.


    It wasplete.


    RUMBLE!


    The Valley of Prisms shook as the SOUL System came to life, brimming with iprehensible unfathomable power.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1909 Heartless

    Chapter 1909 Heartless


    A profound tsunami of power erupted from deep within Rui''s mind. It spread far and wide, washing over the entirety of the Valley of Prisms. In just a moment, he had grown almost unrecognizable. An iprehensible sense of peril radiated from him.


    It was different from the palpable power that the Gatekeeper exuded. While the Gatekeeper had reached unprecedented levels of power within the Senior Realm in the pursuit of physicality, Rui was different.


    He had attained unprecedented power within the Senior Realm in pursuit of the power of thought alone.


    Armed with the SOUL System at hand, Rui''s capacity to adaptively evolve to his opponents had risen tremendously, and he had constructed a nascent Martial Mind, the likes of which might never have been constructed in the Senior Realm in history.


    The VOID algorithm, the Angel of Lace, and the SOUL System were three mighty cornerstones of his nascent Martial Mind, each dwarfing the Martial Minds of his peers and contemporaries.


    Then, there were minor systems of thought that partially revolved around them, such as the ODA System of the Pathfinder technique. It made his aim extraordinarily good with pure deductive thought alone.


    In addition, there were smaller mini-systems of thought, such as the Hypnomatrix system of thought, which was essentially a simple one-step framework of evaluation on which and how much of each hypnotic technique he ought to use.


    Together, they came together to form his nascent Martial Mind. Waiting to be awakened.


    Rui opened his eyes.


    An endless darkness stirred within the depths of his pitch-ck eyes.


    An endless void.


    He nced at his hands.


    "Hmmm¡­" His eyes sharpened. He knew he had gotten stronger. There was just one issue.


    "How much stronger¡­?" He murmured.


    He didn''t know.


    He was unable to intuit his current level ofbat power. He could make very educated guesses on how powerful the SOUL System was in its output, but it became even harder to estimate how much stronger it made him and what caliber of opponents he could defeat.


    STEP


    Kanended atop the mountain from the skies, ncing at Rui with a knowing look. A wide smile emerged on his face as he recognized the sight before his very eyes.


    "You bastard," he grinned. "You did it again."


    He had experienced this sensation twice in the past.


    Once when Rui became the strongest Martial Apprentice.


    And when Rui became the strongest Martial Squire.


    Looking at Rui again made a truth quite evident to him. He had be the strongest of his Realm once more.


    "You want to test your new power against me?" Kane asked enthusiastically.


    Rui''s eyes shifted slowly, meeting Kane''s. His long hair fell over as he tilted his head, sizing Kane up.


    "You''ve grown stronger too¡­" he muttered. "But¡­"


    He shook his head. "I know you far too well. Even if I try not to, I cannot help but subconsciously use the adaptive evolution that I have gained from knowing you for all my time as a Martial Artist."


    At this point, his familiarity with Kane had reached a stage higher than that of anybody else. Even if he wanted to, he could not treat Kane like he was fighting against a stranger.


    This biased any evaluation of the SOUL System.


    "Fair enough," Kane admitted. "Then why don''t we do this? We fight, except this time, your Martial Heart is restricted."


    It was an absurd proposition.


    The Martial Heart was the gap between Realms. It was the reason that Martial Seniors could kill Martial Squires with a single attack. The idea that a Martial Senior without a Martial Heart could fight one with it was absurd.


    Yet, Rui didn''t immediately dismiss the proposition.


    "I''ll ditch the knives," Kane offered.


    "¡­Also, the Void Step technique," Rui added.


    "Fair."


    "Also the Fulminata Godspeed technique."


    "Alright."


    "Actually, you''ll have to ditch all techniques."


    "Oh,e on." Kane grinned. "What are you scared of dying?"


    "Yes, actually." Rui stared at him incredulously. "Fair enough." Kane shrugged. "Alright, no techniques and no weapons. That definitely makes me much weaker than a grade-one Martial Senior. If not for my Martial Body, I would be no better than a quasi-Senior."


    "That''s the point," Rui remarked, getting up. "The gap between Realms cannot be bridged by skill alone."


    The two of them stood opposite each other.


    "Well, let''s see you handle the raw power of the Martial Heart alone without one," Kane smirked.


    "Hmmm¡­" Rui took a neutral stance. "Alright."


    Kane took a speed-rted stance. "It''s going to be difficult to stop myself from using any techniques, but¡­"


    His eyes narrowed. A maelstrom of peril erupted from him.


    "Here we go."


    WHOOSH!


    He appeared before Rui at speeds that far exceeded that of sound, thrusting a powerful kick into Rui''s gut.


    BOOM!


    A powerful kick mmed into Rui. Ordinarily, such a weak kick would have been a trivial matter for Rui to halt. Yet, he didn''t have his Martial Heart.


    He didn''t have the power to stop the kick.


    WHOOSH! Belongs to (N)?vel/Drama.Org.


    The kickunched Rui an enormous distance away. He flew kilometers in seconds, crashing into an adjacent mountain.


    BOOM!


    STEP


    Kane arrived at a crater spanning an entire district, studying it. "Are you dead?"


    CLACK


    A boulder shifted as a hand emerged from arge pile of rubble. As did a voice.


    "I''m starting to think you want me dead."


    CLACK Boulders, rocks, and sand shifted as Rui emerged from the rubble.


    He was entirely unharmed.


    Yet Kane wasn''t fooled.


    "Nemean Blossom and Weaving Blood," Kane whistled knowingly. "That''s what you used to survive thest time you got kicked by a Martial Senior without a Martial Heart."


    He was referring to the story Rui had told him about almost dying at the hands of a newly broken-through Martial Senior back when Rui was still in the Squire Realm. Rui had avoided death by rapidly shifting between Nemean Blossom and Weaving Blood, allowing him to generate the illusion that he hade away unharmed when, in reality, the Metabody System had burned a lot of energy to allow for that.


    "As for wanting you dead¡­" Kane smirked. "I dunno about that, but I do have some payback to give you for thest year and a half."


    --


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1910 Coping

    Chapter 1910 Coping


    "Mmm¡­" Rui dusted himself off with a wry smile. "Well, you''ve earned the opportunity."


    He took a neutral stance. "But I have no intention of epting payback that easily."


    "Oh,e on, you don''t think you can actually win under these circumstances, can you?"


    "Who knows." Rui shrugged calmly. "Finding out is the reason I epted the challenge at all."


    "Well, let''s find out then!" Kane''s legs furled, garnering potential energy. In just a moment, he shot off at Rui at blindingly fast speeds.


    It was well within Rui''s prediction. ''Temporal Disharmony.'' "Tsk!" Kane tutted with annoyance as his perception of time sped up, forcing him to slow down. Thankfully, the Martial Heart increased his cognition while it was active, making it harder to hypnotize him. The fact that Rui had seeded without a Martial Heart at all was quite surprising.


    BAM BAM BAM!!!


    Kane pummeled Rui while thetter balled up, covering all his vitals. Unfortunately, Kane was too fast with his Martial Heart for Rui to match the man''s speed with a moving guard and a moving defense.


    However, it wasn''t speed alone that was overwhelming.


    CRACK CRACK CRACK! Belongs to (N)?vel/Drama.Org.


    Rui narrowed his eyes as he felt his bone crack under the weight of Kane''s heavy blows. It was remarkable how simply turning off his Martial Heart changed the way that he perceived Kane. With his Martial Heart active, Kane''s blows were so weak that they didn''t even register at times. Yet without the Martial Heart, Rui felt like he was fighting someone stronger than the Gatekeeper.


    However, attacks that each should have thoroughly killed him were being withstood.


    This was because his predictive model of Kane''s movements was extremely refined. He could see where each strike was going to be well before it arrived. With such foreknowledge, attacks that would have shattered past his ribcage and crushed his heart were resisted with minimal damage.


    The answer was simple.


    VMMM!


    Thend beneath his feet vibrated as he redirected all the damage to the earth beneath him with Flux Earther.


    The technique''s effectiveness was highest when timed correctly. With the current degree to which he was able to anticipate Kane with the predictive model alone, he could urately time the active defense technique even whenpletely balled up.


    Yet, not even that was enough to endure the sheer onught of Kane''s rtively devastating power.


    BAM BAM BAM!!!


    CRACK!


    Rui grimaced as he bore the brunt of another brutal attack, struggling to disperse the impact. Yet, by then, another attack had already arrived.


    BOOM!


    CRACK!


    Rui balled up as the attackunched him away. He actually preferred it. The greater the distance between them, the more time he had between each strike to prepare for the Soul Void technique. By the time he prepared the technique to the cusp of execution, Kane had already arrived. POW POW POW!!


    A flurry of strikes bombarded Rui from all over as he barely managed to time Flux Earther with each of Kane''s attacks.


    Yet, it still wasn''t enough.


    CRACK!


    He felt another bone cracking despite Nemean Blossom, even if it was quickly healed by Weaving Blood. He wasn''t fast enough to avoid Kane without his Martial Heart; thus, he was limited to defense and healing.


    "We both know that''s not going tost forever," Kane remarked amidst his strikes. "Your Metabody System running at full power has extremely low stamina. It cannotpare to the power of a Martial Heart."


    He rushed in for another strike.


    "You''re right, so I guess I''ll just stop wasting time." BOOM!!


    Kane''s eyes widened as Rui abandoned his guard, allowing the attack tond.


    CRACK CRACK CRACK!!


    Rui''s ribs snapped once Kane''s strikes made contact. A deep dent formed in his chest and abdomen as the strike broke past his bones with ease, crushing into his lungs. If not for Weaving Blood working overtime to heal the damage, Rui would have undoubtedly died right then and there.


    Yet that wasn''t what caught Kane''s attention. What caught Kane''s attention was the nket of nighplete darkness that had enveloped his senses. "Sleep." Rui''s voice seemed to trickle past his consciousness, hitting a deeper part of his mind. Before he could register it, the darkness had already faded. Rui hadn''t moved from his spot; his broken ribs had already healed.


    "What just happened?" Kane nced disoriented.


    "Why, nothing at all." Rui smiled. "Let''s continue."


    Rui had added a memory-wiping element to the trance-induction hypnosis, making Kane forget about the Soul Void technique altogether. This was to reduce the probability that they would take some active measures to break out of a trance.


    Yet, while Kane was not aware of it, Rui could see it as clear as day. Kane had sessfully been put in a trance. It was semi-conscious; it did not affect hisbat prowess in any way because his conscious mind still retained full functionality in regard to it.


    However, his non-verbalmunication had changed significantly.


    It was a window to his soul.


    "Alright then, brace yourself," Kane rushed forward with frightening speed, throwing a swift uppercut to Rui''s jaw.


    Yet, Rui had foreseen it.


    BOOM!


    CRACK!


    Rui felt the bone in his forearm cracking even as he did his very best to disperse the impact with Flux Earther. Flux Earther could be astronomically more effective and powerful with greater uracy in timing and cement of the technique. It was normally impossible to time something so fast that one couldn''t even see it.


    BOOM!!


    Yet, Rui calmly replicated the feat over and over again, dispersing Kane''s titanic power with perfect timing. He couldn''t see Kane''s movements.


    Yet, he could see the future.


    That was enough.


    BOOOM!


    A mighty impact crashed into Rui''s guards even as he increased the timeframe and distance of the collision, increasing its sticity. The power of the attacks seamlessly flowed through his body and to his legs before being dispersed into thends beneath his feat.


    A blow that should have been a death blow was reduced to one of manageable damage.


    --


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1911 Choice

    Chapter 1911 Choice


    ??Yet, timing Kane''s strikes was not what Rui''s mind was consumed with. Deep within his mind, the brand-new SOUL System had already begun kicking into action, with Kane in a semi-consciousness trance.


    He could not contain the excitement from springing up on his face.


    At that moment, he was no different from a child unwrapping a long-awaited Christmas present and ying with it for the first time.


    Kane''s subconscious non-verbalmunication had grown deeper and more personalized than ever before. It conveyed a story, but Rui was unable to read it, for he didn''t know thenguage.


    For now.


    The SOUL System raced into action as Rui began memorizing every detail of Kane''s non-verbalmunication, swiftly categorizing and tagging each data point.


    BOOM!


    CRACK!


    Even as Rui''s bone cracked, he never once let Kane out of his focus. Missing even a single dataset of subconscious non-verbalmunication could be a blunder. All he needed to do was weather out Kane''s onught with Flux Earther, Adamant Reforging, Inner Divergence, and Acute Edge, along with extraordinary timing thanks to the predictive model giving him a major heads-up about precisely when and where an attack was going tond.


    In addition, the Metabody System was working at full power, with Weaving Blood and Nemean Blossom at fifty percent power each.


    Meanwhile, Temporal Disharmony shackled the worst of Kane''s greatest strength.


    All these powerful systems and techniques worked hand-in-hand to help Rui against the power of the Martial Heart.


    And against all odds, they seeded.


    BOOM!!!


    A colossal blow crashed into Rui''s guard.


    CRACK!


    Only a single bone cracked this time, healing quickly while Rui dispersed the rest of the power to the worlds beneath his feet.


    "Tsk." Kane grew frustrated at how absurdly difficult it was to put Rui down!


    He had mostly suggested this battle as a joke. He hadn''t expected that Rui would take the suggestion seriously.


    Even before the battle began, he had expected that it would end with a single strike from him. He had known that Rui''s Martial Body would crumble like a sand rock if subjected to the power of the Martial Heart.


    Or so he had thought.


    POW POW POW!!


    Rui''s speed was so underwhelming inparison that he could barely shift inches in the time that Kane moved entire feet, yet his movements were extraordinarily well-timed and ced, allowing him to perform his coping defensive maneuvers splendidly.


    Yet, nothing couldst forever.


    CRACK CRACK CRACK!!


    Rui''s expression grew severe as his arm broke in several ces, growing visibly deformed. Kane rushed in, cautiously seizing the opportunity.


    BAM BAM BAM!!!


    He sted Rui with a flurry of recurring blows, battering Rui''s guard over and over beforeunching a powerful kick into him.


    BOOM!!!


    The kickunched Rui far into the distance. In just a moment, he had already reached the other end of the Hroul Mountain Range.


    Weaving Blood healed his arms as a final act before it finally died, shutting off. The Metabody System had reached its limit, having valiantly served him across the entire fight, separating him from instant defeat.


    And now, it was done.


    Yet, the same could not be said for Kane.


    "GG."


    He appeared behind Rui, a powerful blow surging forward to end the battle.


    WHOOSH


    Yet the blow crashed into an empty image.


    Kane''s eyes widened with realization.


    It was a feint.


    BOOM!C0ntent ? 2024 (N/?)velDrama.Org.


    A thundering impact permeated through his entire body from his blind spot, pushing him back.


    "You¡­" Kane stared at Rui in shock.


    A profound flush of peril radiated from deep within Rui.


    It washed over the Valley of Prisms, drawing out raw, primal fear from deep within the guts of its inhabitants.


    It made Kane''s skin crawl.


    It was difficult to parse.


    Here he was, armed with the full power of the Martial Heart. However, despite not possessing it, asuffocating aura of power radiated from Rui as if he had.


    "Hmmm¡­" Rui nced at his hand, turning back to his best friend.


    A single remark escaped him.


    "I think I can see your soul."


    A nervous grin appeared on Kane''s face. "That''s the corniest thing I''ve ever heard."


    Rui smirked. "I couldn''t resist."


    "Oh yeah? Resist this."


    Kane shed forward, appearing before him at blinding speeds as a flurry of blows surged forward towards Rui.


    Rui''s movements were slow.


    They were rxed.


    He moved like he was sauntering in a garden.


    He moved like he had no care in this world.


    Yet, not a single attack touched him.


    WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH!


    Kane gritted his teeth in frustration as each attack crashed into a whole slew of empty images. Rui executed the Phantom Step technique with uracy within a microsecond and micrometer of absolute perfection.


    He could not so much as see Kane''s blindingly fast movements, let alone react to them.


    But he didn''t need to.


    He reacted to the future.


    He reacted to the SOUL.


    WHOOSH!


    He stepped back mildly, evading a powerful blow by inches, even as Kane had alreadyunched a new onught of shing blows.


    Yet, not even they could reach Rui.


    BOOM!


    Kane gritted his teeth as a thundering impact crashed into his gut before he even realized it!


    "Hyah!" A powerful, blindingly fast kick swerved in Rui''s direction.


    Yet, Rui was already gone.


    WHOOSH


    It crashed into an empty image.


    Yet another feint.


    Kane stiffened as a variety of images of Rui spread across the battlefield.


    "Misdirection and feinting, two schools of deception," Rui''s voice echoed throughout the battlefield. "These techniques do not require speed, power, or durability. No, the most important trait for these techniques is¡­"


    The images disappeared as Rui appeared before Kane.


    "¡­timing."


    BAM!


    A thundering kick crashed into Kane''s sr plexus. The full power of Outer Convergence, Fire Breathing, and Gale Force Breathing supplied the Flowing Canon with immense power. Yet, it was the Reverberating Lance that allowed the impact to permeate past the reinforcements of the Martial Heart, inflicting damage.


    "Rgh!" Kane grimaced, leaping away with shock. "But how?!"


    Rui smiled, gazing at Kane.


    A single remark escaped his mouth.


    "I resign."


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1912 Averted Disaster

    Chapter 1912 Averted Disaster


    The VOID algorithm told him the future of his physicality.


    The SOUL System showed him the future by intentionality.


    Together, his intrinsic familiarity with Kane, his situational awareness of their environment, and, most importantly, the two systems of thought allowed him to see an unfathomable depth into the future.


    Not just one step into the future.


    Not even two steps.


    No.


    He could see the future of the entire battle unfold.


    As well as its oue.


    He made a decision on the spot.


    "I resign." Rui smiled, raising his hands.


    "Huh?" Kane tilted his head in confusion. "Are you sure?"


    "Yep, I''m certain," Rui heaved a sigh. "It''s taking a toll on my body. I need to stock up on nutrition and energy since the Metabody System drained it all. At this rate, I''ll lose because my body is simply failing. I have gained a good understanding of my new power, so there is no need to see this through."


    Kane looked dissatisfied with that. "Why not just see the battle to the end?"


    "We''re in the Beast Domain, Kane," Rui''s voice grew serious. "We need to keep our guards up and not unnecessarily waste energy. Carelessness is death in the Beast Domain."


    Kane nodded apologetically, switching his Martial Heart off. "You''re right, my bad. Good spar."


    Rui nodded, chatting with him. Inwardly, he reviewed the foreseen fight. The future that he had just averted, he increasingly dominated the fight until, eventually, catastrophe struck.


    The battle would have ended with Rui shattering Kane''s Martial Path.


    It was a horrific oue that Rui would never allow to unfold. Doing that was no different from stabbing his friend in the back to kill him. Although it was possible for Rui to maneuver the battle in a way that avoided that situation, he decided it was not worth the risk. N?velDrama.Org owns this text.


    With this, he had gauged a good intuitive understanding of how strong he had be. Of course, his predictive model with Kane was the strongest by far. This meant that he probably could not replicate such an astonishing result against any other Martial Senior. At least, not until he mastered the Angel of Lace and his new SOUL System.


    However, he had confirmed that the two systems of thought could allow him to bridge physical gaps so great that his opponent was invisibly fast to him and bone-shatteringly strong.


    It was truly incredible to see what the kind of oues that thought could yield. Simply greater uracy in timing and cement could bring about tremendous results, especially when he had techniques that worked better with timing and cement.


    Phantom Step and Flux Earther were decent before he adapted. But once he adapted, they suddenly became astronomically more powerful, reaching grade nine, sometimes even grade ten, in terms of their defensive and maneuvering yields.


    If Rui knew exactly how a person was going to move and exactly what their subconscious intentions were, it became significantly easier to execute the perfectly crafted feint at the ideal moment topletely bypass their awareness.


    It was almost magical.


    Flux Earther knowing the exact trajectory of the iing attack allowed him to align the axis of his body in precisely the right way to maximize the smoothness of energy dispersal.


    It was unfortunate that he didn''t have an equivalent timing and uracy-based technique for offense. Most of his offensive and power-based techniques, be it Reverberating Lance, Outer Convergence, Fire Breathing, and others, were static. This meant that even as his precision and uracy of timing and cement rose, thanks to his systems of thought, his offense did not change all that much.


    In fact, that was one of the reasons that Rui would have gone on to break Kane''s Martial Path in the future of the battle. Hecked the offensive to do any real, meaningful damage to Kane. Breaking Kane''s Martial Path inadvertently became a likely result. Had he had an offensive technique that grew significantly more effective with greater precision and uracy, he would have been able to end the spar with a victory before it reached such a grave end.


    But s, he didn''t have what he didn''t have.


    It was another thing that he ced on his list of ideas to be explored in the future. Having a powerful offensive technique was just as important as having a powerful maneuvering and defensive technique. Still, he would be lying if he imed he wasn''t deeply pleased with the spar against Kane. To any other Martial Senior, fighting another of their peer without their Martial Heart was absolutely suicidal. It was something that simply could not be aplished by the conventional school of thought. The Martial Heart was too powerful.


    Yet Rui had aplished it anyway. He was probably part of a very few extraordinarily elite Martial Seniors that could have feasibly done so.


    The first Martial Senior that came to mind was the Gatekeeper with his titanic physical prowess. Rui didn''t think Kane could possibly beat the Gatekeeper under the same conditions that he fought against Rui.


    ''Also, Ieyasu.'' He wondered how strong the man had gotten in the near-five years since they hadst met. There was no doubt that he had grown massively stronger since his battle with Rui. The only reason that Rui won their previous fight was because he had a higher affinity to the Master Realm than Ieyasu. The man needed more time to make any progress with the Martial Mind, which caused their fight to fall mildly in Rui''s favor, allowing him to edge out a victory against his sole equal rival.


    However, Rui knew better than to read too deeply into his victory. Ieyasu''s Martial Path had elevated to a higher level after he integrated thought into it.


    He shook his head, returning to the present. There was no time to spend daydreaming about what-ifs. He had spent a year and a half in pursuit of Project Telepath. Now, it was time to get back to work and find the Divine Doctor.


    --


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1913 Spontaneous Refinement

    Chapter 1913 Spontaneous Refinement


    Rui took several minutes to consume a rejuvenation potion and a healing potion, returning him back to his peak shortly.


    "Is it time?" Kane nced at the herds of catoblepas in the distance, stretching beyond the eye could see in the Valley of Prisms.


    "It''s time." Rui narrowed his eyes. Without further ado, he activated a breathing technique, bending heaven and earth to his will as he levitated a herd of catoblepas to him.


    "MOOOOOEEEAAAAUUUU!"


    The catoblepasined as they struggled to resist Rui''s power. Yet, their paltry resistance was in vain, not even denting Rui''s irond hold over them. They had grown less wary of Rui and Kane in the past year and a half, causing this to take them by surprise.


    Yet, before they could even register Rui, a world of darkness had already epassed all their senses.


    Sleep. Rui conveyed to them after momentarily distracting them.


    They entered a deep trance-like state, much deeper than the one Kane had been put in. Because the cognition gap between Rui and the catoblepas was so high, he could nt stronger suggestions in their subconscious mind.


    Rui grew more intense.


    This was it.


    If this didn''t work, he would have drastically cut down his chances for sess.


    He quickly conjured up a three-dimensional image of the Divine Doctor in his mind as detailed as he was able to, with the highest possible resolution, before embodying that image in his mind.


    So much so that his subconscious mind, not knowing better, believed that he was the Divine Doctor or, at least, looked identical to him. Naturally, the subconscious non-verbalmunication his body radiated also changed tomunicate that image. Now, his entire body became a transmitter, almost as if each cell in him was its own pixel, conveying the information about the Divine Doctor''s appearance in totality.


    He took his time with the hypnosis, letting the image of the slowly yet firmly sink into the catoblepas. Finally, memories associated with the image that he conveyed erupted in their minds, causing them to relive the memories in very visceral daydreams.


    The catoblepas immediately began thrashing as Rui put them on the ground, only ensuring they didn''t move away. He didn''t want his incapacitation over their bodies to potentially interfere with the recollection and conveyance of their memories.


    Sure enough, their subconscious non-verbalmunication began reflecting every detail of their memories, right down to every sound and color they had experienced.


    BADUMP!


    A rush of power flooded Rui''s body as his perception of time slowed down immensely, allowing him to perceive and process information an order of magnitude greater than before


    Now began the annoying part, but Rui''s powerful mind kept track of hundreds of catoblepas simultaneously as he registered their subconscious non-verbalmunication all at once. A massive flood of information rushed through his mind and Mind Pce, yet he firmly processed all of it through the data science protocols of the SOUL System.


    Only after he formed SOUL models, as he had taken to calling them, on all of them could he then go on to actually read the memories of the catoblepas.


    "Wait," Rui paused his non-verbalmunication of the Divine Doctor''s image. "This is inefficient."


    The SOUL System was still an infant system of thought born half an hour ago. He had yet to figure out the best manner of applying it. The SOUL models created by the SOUL System were trantion models that allowed Rui to read the individualized subconsciousmunication system.


    Rui had executed the trance hypnosis such that it would cause them to convey memories and also intent. However, memories were associated with sensory data¡ªthings like colors, odors, sounds, textures, and tastes. "In order to form SOUL models to understand memories, I need to subject them to all these sensory stimuli to see the corresponding subconscious non-verbalmunication," Rui realized.


    Thus, if the catoblepas recalled memories of a blue sky, then Rui would not know unless he knew whatmunication was associated with the color blue.


    "¡­Unless I show them the color blue and pay attention to the correspondingmunication thates in turn."


    He had grown a bit too focused on thebat applications of the SOUL System during training. Which was understandable, given that he was a Martial Artist. But he needed to extract memories this time, not intent.


    "The need for a clearer separation between the two has presented itself."


    SOUL models inbat allowed Rui to interpret subconscious non-verbalnguage to understand intent.


    SOUL models in this interrogation were meant to allow him to interpret the subconscious non-verbalnguage to understand the sensory data of the memories.


    Thankfully, this realization led to a quick solution.


    Rui spontaneously created a brand-new domain technique.


    "Plurichroma."


    He employed the extensive knowledge of impacting light through the atmosphere that he had gained in the past eighteen months. He wasn''t really developing anything new.


    A domain formed epassing the entire herd. "What are you up to?" Kane frowned, confused. N?velDrama.Org owns this text.


    "Just watch," Rui grinned, excited.


    He altered the prity and wavelength of light, causing the world around them to change into different shades of various colors.


    Shades of red. It lingered, allowing Rui to observe and record exactly whatmunication was associated with the color red. He would recognize it the next time he saw it, allowing him to reconstruct it based on theirmunication.


    Simultaneously, he partially activated Sonic Singrity, projecting the sound of a particr frequency. Just as with light, he intended to project all frequencies of sound to record the uniquemunication associated with each frequency. Thus, if he ever spotted any previously recordedmunication, he would be able to look at the associated frequency and know what sound the catoblepas were hearing in their memories.


    This was what SOUL models of memories ought to be: long registries of every wavelength of light and sound and their corresponding uniquemunication signatures. All so that if he ever saw one of those uniquemunication signatures, he could look at the corresponding.


    It was a genius way of mapping the light and soundndscape of the subconscious mind!


    --


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1914 Fear

    Chapter 1914 Fear


    ??Rui thoroughly used Plurichroma to understand how the catoblepasmunicated different colors and sounds. He thoroughly covered all bases, taking his time with the various shades of each color.


    He went even beyond the normal human range of visible light and audible sound, getting even more data and only stopping when the catoblepas could no longer sense the light and sound.


    He was finally done.C0ntent ? 2024 (N/?)velDrama.Org.


    He immediately returned tomunicating the image of the Divine Doctor in his mind, embodying it once more as he deployed it through subconscious non-verbalmunication.


    Instantly, the non-verbalmunication of the catoblepas shifted.


    "MOOOEEEAAAUUU!"


    They began thrashing and struggling in a futile attempt to run away, growing increasingly emotionally distressed.


    Rui sharpened his eyes as he began processing the flood of information pouring from their subconscious non-verbalmunication. The monster-cow cattle radiated a myriad of subconscious non-verbal data points corresponding to different sounds and colors each moment.


    Each moment, he weaved together tapestries of sounds and colors corresponding to a single image of color and sound.


    A single frame.


    Image after image, frame after frame, he began constructing a temporally continuous series of images and sounds.


    A video.


    A video of none other than the man he had been searching for the entire time.


    The catoblepas peacefully grazed on the nigh endless ins of grass that stretched as far as the eye could see in the Valley of Prisms. A cool breeze brushed past the entire valley as ayer of clouds shielded it from the harsh sun.


    A serenity, unlike what one would expect from the Beast Domain, permeated the entire region.


    It was a peaceful day.


    That was until he appeared.


    A strange attire, armed with belts featuring countless small instruments, tools, and artifacts, immediately drew the attention of those around him. It seemed to cover every inch of his bronze skin, leaving only his face exposed.


    He was impossible to ignore.


    Yet as eye-drawing as his attire was, it was his eyes that truly shackled one in their unfathomable depth.


    A deep curiosity twinkled from deep within them.


    It was an intensely inhuman curiosity. The same kind that a viper would show. Not even the slightest shred ofpassion or empathy twinkled in his eyes. Yet, much to Rui''s surprise, he could not detect any malice, either.


    A small smile cracked at the edge of the Divine Doctor''s mouth as he beheld the Valley of Prisms, slowly turning to the grazing herd of cows nearby. They didn''t bother with him, having sensedthat his physical threat-level was insignificant to them.


    His smile deepened.


    CLACK


    He unfurled a pair of goggles with strange lenses, harnessing it to his eyes before correcting for the impaired vision of the Valley of Prisms and its distorting of light. He pulled out a second artifact, a gas mask, that he also put on.


    "Commencing trial 1..." Gleeful interest shed in his eyes as the gas mask distorted his voice. "Experiment to confirm the intensity of omni-derivative fear-hallucinogen deterrent."


    Suddenly, Rui experienced a deep sense of fear gripping his heart. Yet, unlikest time, the fear wasn''t his own.


    It was the catoblepas'' fear that they had experienced at the moment in the distant past.


    "MOOOOOEEEAAAUUU!"


    They began moving away from him.


    But s, it was toote.


    FSSSSSSS!


    Green gas expelled from the gas cylinders tucked at his side, spreading across the air at incredibly rapid paces.


    Rui shook as his vision of the world shifted.


    Or rather, the vision of the world in the memories of the catoblepas.


    The bright blue sky turned a malevolent red in an instant. Clouds became smoke. The Sun shifted from a purveyor of life to one of death as its harsh fires spread across the sky and to the world around them.


    It was a horrifying scene.


    Especially if one believed it was real.


    It had been so overwhelming that the catoblepas literally froze in horror, toppling over as their muscles spasmed.


    The Divine Doctor walked over with his hands behind his back, observing the oue with interest. In the visions of the catoblepas, however, his very being had shifted from a human to a literal physical monster, causing even more fear to grip at their hearts.


    "Median timeframe for trauma-induced muscle-spasm: one- point-two seconds," the Divine Doctor remarked clinically. "Estimated intensity index as weighted for diffusion rate and mr density is four-point-three."


    His expression fell ever so slightly.


    A single remark escaped him.


    "Suboptimal."


    This was the sole shared memory that they had of the Divine Doctor as their individual memories of the man began diverging from this point forth.


    The trauma had clearly stressed their brain as the memories beyond that point began to grow more distorted and broken. Clearly, despite their strong recollection of the Divine Doctor, the catoblepas had already begun subconsciously suppressing and forgetting the memories rting to him.


    Visions of what may as well have been Armageddon tormented the catoblepas as the Divine Doctor continued testing his fear-hallucinogen on them for quite some time. He spoke to himself things Rui was unable to make out due to the distorted and broken memories regarding the man. For some reason, only the original memory of the Divine Doctor waspletely intact.


    Yet, what happened became evidently clear to Rui even from the broken memories of the herd of catoblepas.


    The man was a maniac.


    He went about his days spreading potent hallucinogens across the entirety of the Valley of Prisms. From species to species, in to in, and creature to creature, everything and everyone was reduced to a test subject to what appeared to be experiments to optimize his fear-hallucinogen.


    So much so that Rui was undoubtedly certain that this was the cause of the mass discement of thend-dwelling fauna of the Valley of Prisms, no creature was going to remain in a ce where that made them experience heart-wrenching terror every second of every day.


    Furthermore, it would exin why there was a mass emigration of fauna without any hint of environmental factors or oues as a result. The literal fear that the Divine Doctor had single-handedly spread was the sole reason that the demographics of an entire region had radically shifted!


    --


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1915 Attempted Bio-engineering

    Chapter 1915 Attempted Bio-engineering


    A flood of information flushed through Rui''s mind. Unfortunately, it became evidently clear that the catoblepas had already begun subconsciously erasing their memories entirely. Maybe they still remained untouched in a deeper part of the consciousness, but Rui had no idea how to ess them.


    After all, he was not a dedicated neurologist. His partial expertise in this field was limited to the foundation, whichhe needed to conduct more sophisticated research before he could apply


    it tobat science.


    A litany of broken memories in the form of shattered visions shed through his mind as he collectively read through the minds of the catoblepas.


    He came across even more interesting memories.


    The Divine Doctor stood before a lush tree, studying it with an intrigued gaze. His eyes were fixed on the light distortion caused by the vegetation, leading to broken and mixed fragmented visions of the physical world around them.


    A whisper escaped him as his eyes lit up with curiosity


    "Interesting."


    The memory cracked as Rui immediately jumped to another memory Property ? of N?velDrama.Org.


    FSSSSS!


    The Divine Doctor flushed the catoblepas with another gas from one of his canisters, one that was different from the fear-hallucinogen that he had previously used. The catoblepas didn''t physically move or react to it, yet they undoubtedly went through profound mental changes.


    Changes that Rui recognized.


    ''That''s a trance!'' Rui eximed inwardly. ''It''s a chemical-induced trance.''


    It was definitely different from Martial hypnosis or even ordinary hypnosis. The Divine Doctor had no qualms with drugging the brain with some substance that could diminish the conscious mind or increase the prominence of the subconscious mind to put the animals in a trance-like state.


    Rui watched, from the perspective of one particr catoblepa, how the Divine Doctor used trance-like states and Pavlovian reinforcement to train them to do his bidding. He watched with fascination as the Divine Doctor not only used them as test subjects for his fear-hallucinogen but also made good use of their manualbor,manding them to fetch him vegetation.


    This was where things got confusing. Rui frowned as he watched the man gather tons and tons of small nts, alive, extracted from the ground, experimenting around with them with his countless tools.


    Of which Rui had to admit he was impressed by.


    The man was even more prepared than Rui was!


    Of course, as Martial Artists, Rui and Kane were much less needy. The Divine Doctor, however, appeared to be physiologically human. Rui knew that this wasn''t his original body since the form of immortality that three keepers of immortality used was a soul-transferral from one body to another.


    Maybe his body was enhanced in some ways?


    "Maybe his body is that of a Martial Artist?" Rui narrowed his eyes. He didn''t think so.


    From the perspective of the catoblepas, the Divine Doctor didn''t trigger any peril when not using his gas weapons. Of course, Rui was very well aware that a significant proportion of Martial Artists could hide their aura, but he didn''t see any logical reason for the Divine Doctor to do so in this particr case because he clearly was not hiding or even attempting to hide.


    It also begged the question as to whether it was possible to transfer the so-called ''soul'' of a normal person into a Martial Artist.


    Frankly, the very concept of soul transference did not please Rui. Back on Earth, the concept of the soul was regarded as highly unscientific, as not a single shred of evidence pointed to the existence of such a dimension of life. John was one of many people in the domain of science who disregarded any talks of it as religious mysticism.


    He would have regarded the Beggar Sage with much harsher skepticism if not for the fact that he had an extraordinary piece of evidence: his reincarnation from one world to another.


    He had to admit that it was enough to rock his worldview into taking ims about ''souls'' seriously as he would any other scientific phenomenon.


    "Huff¡­ focus," he murmured to himself, shaking his head as he returned to scouring memories of the catoblepas.


    In the broken memories, visions, and sounds that soon followed, the Divine Doctor began ying around with the vegetation of the Valley of Prisms. The images were so broken that it was not easy to make sense of them.


    On top of that, it was difficult to catch what he spoke to himself. Rui was actually surprised that the original memory of his arrival was so well-preserved. It truly must have left a soul-wrenching brand on the catoblepas'' minds for them to retain such a high quality of the memory while theirter memories were being slowly suppressed and erased subconsciously.


    He caught snippets of the man''s words throughout the many memories that he scoured.


    "This worl-"


    "-issing stars-"


    "-ble to locate the see-"


    Unfortunately, he wasn''t able to extract anything meaningful from those snippets of words. They were cut off or distorted beyondprehension, reducing them to pure noise. The more time passed in their memories of the presence of the Divine Doctor in the region, the more it all began to be increasingly indistinguishable.


    This was especially the case considering that their minds had been deeply afflicted with the psychological effects of being subjected to the many mind-impacting drugs that the Divine Doctor had been feeding them.


    If not for the fact that their bodies and physiologies were innately within the Apprentice Realm, making them quite tough and able to withstand things that would kill the average man, physically or mentally, there would be no catoblepas for Rui to experiment on


    "Woah¡­" Rui''s eyes widened as the details of the memories began shifting to reveal a new garb underneath the Divine Doctor''s coat.


    The garb was made out of the leaves of the vegetation native to the Valley of Prisms.


    What surprised him was that the nts were not stripped and dried to be used as fiber for the cloth.


    No.


    They were still alive!


    Somehow, the Divine Doctor kept them alive despite having plucked them from their trees and stems.


    Yet that wasn''t the most surprising thing of all.


    He sprayed a strange gas on the cloth made of living vegetation, causing him to bepletely invisible!


    --


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1916 Harnessing Invisibility

    Chapter 1916 Harnessing Invisibility


    The most surprising thing was that, upon donning the cloth made of living vegetation, he became partially invisible!


    "What?!" Rui eximed as he went through the memories of the catoblepas.


    It turned out that the Divine Doctor had been working on employing the optical density maniption of the living vegetation and integrating it into his cloth. He then used it to manipte light to warp around him. Rui didn''t even know that that was possible at all.


    In fact, he was rtively confident that that was certainly impossible for any ordinary botanist on Gaia. It was especially impossible given that the Divine Doctor did this inside the Beast Domain!


    Not just anywhere in the Beast Domain, but in the Valley of Prisms, an area where normal human beings would be absolutely unable to navigate and would lose their minds due to the broken vision of the region.


    Yet not only did the Divine Doctor not let it stop him, but he also integrated the vegetation into his attire while keeping it alive such that it would continue its function and make him invisible.


    It was a ridiculous feat of bio-engineering.


    It was clear that he was dissatisfied with the result of the living cloth¡ªsince it did not fully turn him invisible¡ªfor he immediately began working on another one.


    Rui was beginning to understand what his overall purpose for visiting the Valley of Prisms was.


    His goal was to create or refine solutions that would help him deeper into the Beast Domain.


    That was why he rigorously tested his fear-hallucinogen and his trance-inducing drugs and was trying to create an invisibility suit from materials that could warp light.


    It was understandable why he did these things.


    How else was an ordinary human supposed to survive in the Beast Domain?


    Rui wondered why he didn''t hire a powerful Martial Artist, but, s, for whatever reason, it was clear that the man was journeying alone.


    "Maybe he came to the Valley of Prisms specifically for the strange light-warping effect of the flora of this region," Rui realized. "It would make sense if he believed that he could harness it."


    Rui returned to scouring through memories.


    As time passed, Rui could see, despite the broken memories, that the man was constantly improving and refining his makeshift bio-engineering project as he grew increasingly invisible and harder to perceive.


    It was rather surprising that a doctor who was supposed to specialize in medicine could be so incredibly resourceful in bio-engineering as to harness the biological capabilities of nts in such an extraordinary manner. His background was not supposed to facilitate such a feat.


    "Remarkable," Rui could not help but admit.


    It spoke to the sheer knowledge and expertise that the Divine Doctor had. Just from this alone¡ªeven without knowing his identity¡ªRui could naturally conclude that he was probably leagues ahead of any medical practitioner on the Panama Continent.


    Amidst the many noises that came from broken speech in broken memories, he managed to catch several coherent remarks.


    "¡­Manageable sustenance requirements¡­"


    "¡­Satisfactory optical oue¡­"


    "Need more fear," he murmured to himself.


    Soon enough, the memories of the Divine Doctor simultaneously stopped. He was no longer seen in any of their memories. As a result of no longer being subjected to a fear-hallucinogen and trance-induction drugs, the animals of the Valley of Prisms finally regained autonomy.


    The first thing every single creature did when they regained their autonomy was to run away. Almost immediately, an enormous mass exodus from the Valley of Prisms began. Predators ran alongside prey as each creature had but one single desire: get the hell away from the Valley of Prisms!


    Months of being subjected to hellish terror and horror born from the fear-hallucinogen and being turned into ves of the Divine Doctor had been a gut-wrenchingly horrifying experience that would remain with them forever, but what they feared more was that it would return once more, prompting them to leave.


    On top of that, the air of the Valley of Prisms was tainted with the enormous amounts of drug gases that the Divine Doctor had released.


    Rui found it almost absurd. How much gas in stock did this man have? How could reserves of hallucinogenic gasesst for months on end? How could he alter the air of an entire region with just two canisters worth of gas?


    None of it made sense. It appeared that the Divine Doctor defied logic in every sense of the word.


    "Huff¡­" Rui heaved a sigh, dropping the herd of catoblepas on the ground, breaking their trance, and then letting them go. "Well?" Kane yawned, asking with mild interest.


    "The Divine Doctor is definitely a madman," Rui muttered as his eyes swam around in thought. "Who would use others as test subjects for their own crazy experiments?!"


    Kane stared at him wordlessly.


    "However, I think I might have gotten a clue to his next location," Rui told Kane, turning to him. "Oh? What is it?" Belongs to (N)?vel/Drama.Org.


    "¡­He came here to refine his Beast Domain solutions," Rui continued. "Among the things I heard him say was ''not enough fear.''"


    Kane frowned. "Not enough fear?"


    "It''s in reference to the fear-hallucinogen that he was testing out on all the creatures of the Beast Domain," Rui informed him. "I''m guessing that he was not satisfied with his ''omni-derivative'' fear-hallucinogen''s impact."


    From what Rui could tell, it had been extremely effective, yet it was clear the Divine Doctor had higher standards. Perhaps it was because he felt less secure since he could much more easily die than Rui ever would.


    Especially after his most recent boost in power.


    "Omni-derivative¡­?" Kane tilted his head with confusion, staring at Rui.


    "It means deriving everything or derived from everything depending on the context," Rui rified. "Though, in this case, thetter might make more sense."


    It would exin how the Divine Doctor seemed to have an endless supply of such gases and how he could pollute an enormous region like the Valley of Prisms with it.


    ¡ª


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1917 Need More Fear

    Chapter 1917 Need More Fear


    ??After all, it would mean that the Divine Doctor could cook up a fear-hallucinogen from just about any organic matter.


    "That''s a bit of a stretch, but¡­ not impossible." Rui tutted uncertainly. "But regardless, he said it was not enough."


    Rui narrowed his eyes. "It stands to reason that if it''s not enough, he''d want to get more."


    "¡­Yeah, I guess that makes sense."


    "In which case, I think I know where he went next."


    "And where would that be?" Kane raised an eyebrow.


    "The Forest of Fear," Rui replied with a hint of confidence.


    There were three avenues that the Divine Doctor might have pursued. The Caves of Penance, the Forest of Fear, and the Sea of Solitude.


    Rui previously had absolutely no inkling where the Divine Doctor might have gone based on the data of the Adventurer''s Guild, but now he had a good idea.


    "I think there''s a very solid chance that he went to the Forest of Fear in order to make stronger fear-hallucinogens," Rui remarked. "After all, I already know that he is able to harness vegetation in pretty incredible feats of bio-engineering."


    The Forest of Fear was a region with natural fear-hallucinogens. Its vegetation released substances that, when inhaled, triggered deep fear in a person. This was an evolutionary ability that highly predicted survival and reproduction, causing the species to thrive wildly.


    The fauna of the region, in turn, had evolved such that they had almost no sense of natural fear. Their fear had returned to a normal level after being elevated by the flora of the region.


    Thus, an extremely unique ecosystem was born in the Beast Domain that the Adventurer''s Guild had taken to calling the Forest of Fear.Property ? of N?velDrama.Org.


    "If you''re right," Kane said, turning to Rui. "Do you think he seeded?"


    "Yes, he definitely did." Rui nodded. "There''s no doubt about that."


    The three regions that were possible candidates for where the Divine Doctor had gone after the Valley of Prisms were considered candidates because each of them had had a major disruption in their ecological parameters not too long after the mass exodus of the Valley of Prisms.


    Rui used to consider the Beggar Sage''s advice of ''following the unique chaos'' to find theDivine Doctor extremely dubious.


    However, after going through the memories of the catoblepas, Rui had to agree that the Beggar Sage was truly urate in the advice he gave on how Rui ought to track the Divine Doctor.


    The man had single-handedly caused millions of animals to run away from the Valley of Prisms for a time period by mentally torturing them with horrifically induced fear and enving them.


    It was chaotic and certainly unique.


    However, what Rui was focused on was the disruption that had urred in the Forest of Fear.


    "The Adventurers'' Guild records that for a certain time period, the vegetation of the Forest of Fear stopped releasing its fear-inducing gases into the air," Rui continued. "This got rid of any and all fear in the fauna of the region, causing them to go berserk and do things that no other creature with any sense of self-preservation would do."


    "What does that have to do with the Divine Doctor?"


    "I think he might have caused that ecological disruption," Rui remarked. "It makes sense. He probably went super overboard."


    "And did what?" Kane furrowed his eyebrows. "Drain the entire forest of its fear juice to upgrade his fear-


    hallucinogens?"


    "I think so," Rui replied. "With such a powerful base, it probably allowed him to create extremely powerful fear-


    hallucinogens that would probably satisfy even him. With that, he would be armed with the necessary tools to go even further into the Beast Domain without dying to powerful Squire-level and Senior-level creatures that would otherwise kill him with a blink of their eyes."


    Rui was starting to understand why the man hade to the Valley of Prisms and gone through this specific route. He probably intended to extract resources along the way that would help him in the deeper and more dangerous parts of the Beast Domain.


    "Well, I hope you''re right."


    Rui did too.


    Whether he was right or wrong would decide whether it was worth spending eighteen months on Project Telepath instead of searching for more clues in other avenues. However, Rui did think that searching in any other direction would not have yielded anything even remotely close to the litany of information that he had from the memories of the catoblepas.


    There was only one issue with this when it came to the Forest of Fear.


    The fauna of the Forest of Fear hadrgely died off due to theck of fear causing them to not fear death, which naturally led to their deaths.


    The Beast Domain was too dangerous for any creature without a sense of self-preservation to survive.


    "Unless they''re the Divine Doctor, I suppose," Rui muttered.


    As someone who was functionally immortal, the Divine Doctor probably had very little sense of self-preservation after all these years.


    Which didn''t make too much sense to Rui, considering that the Beggar Sage had told Rui that he was not going to be functionally immortal and that he could still die. Yet his father and Sage Sayfeel had told him that the Divine Doctor had died many times and had been spotted alive sometimeter in a different ce as though he respawned to life at a pre-


    designated save point like a video game character.


    That suggested that the Divine Doctor''s immortality was different from what the Beggar Sage was offering Rui.


    This was even more weird because the Beggar Sage''s words made it clear that they were the same.


    Rui was unable to understand the contradiction. But, s, he didn''t have the answer. Clearly, the immortality that the Divine Doctor had was one of the reasons he was confident of walking into the most perilous part of the Panama Continent all by himself.


    Rui shook his head. "Let''s go, we''re done with this ce.


    --


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1918 Anything is Possible

    Chapter 1918 Anything is Possible


    The moment Rui found a solid clue as to where the Divine Doctor had gone after the Valley of Prisms, he no longer had any need to remain in the region.


    "Goodbye, Valley of Prisms," Rui muttered. Goodbye catoblepas.


    Thetter didn''t seem to quite understand what Rui conveyed; they simply scurried away from him in fear.


    "Are you seriously bidding goodbye to a valley and a monster species?" Kane raised an eyebrow with an amused grin.


    "Of course." Rui nodded seriously. "Had it not been for them, I would not only have not created the SOUL System, but I also would not have found clues to the Divine Doctor. So I am quite grateful to them."


    "Uh huh, can we leave now?"


    "Sure." Rui turned without a second nce. "Let''s get going."


    Rui took the lead as he plotted the way to the Forest of Fear based on the map of the Beast Domain he had memorized.


    "The Forest of Fear is a Squire-level danger zone, right?"


    "Yep." Rui nodded. "It''s deeper in the Beast Domain, so it is much harder to survive in."


    The Forest of Fear, unlike the Valley of Prisms, was not going to be a smooth sailing region for them.


    "Ourbat prowess is in the Senior Realm. However, that does not mean that we can afford to rx in the Valley of Prisms. The fact of the matter is that Martial Artists, more than anything else, rely on efficient and effective use of physicality to fight much stronger opponents than their physicality would normally allow," Rui exined.


    It was the reason that Martial Apprentices were able to shatter boulders even though their bodies were that of normal human beings.


    "That said, that cannot help us withstand the neurological fear-induction of the flora of the region," Rui replied. "After all, efficient and effective application of physical power is not going to increase your neurological fortitude."


    "We have our Martial Hearts," Kane reminded him.


    "That''s true, but the Martial Hearts cannot be active round the clock." Rui shook his head. "In fact, even if it could, it''s not worth it to waste such an energy-consumptive state on simply increasing neurological fortitude."


    "So what are you suggesting?" Kane raised an eyebrow.


    "I''m saying we need to withstand the fear-induction effect of the Forest of Fear without letting it affect our actions too much," Rui replied calmly.


    "That sounds incredibly stressful, dude," Kane tiredly retorted.


    "Did you expect the Beast Domain to be a stressless cakewalk?" Rui snorted.


    The two of them shut up as they grew increasingly alert and aware of their surroundings and environment. The Valley of Prisms was a rtively harmless ce. In some ways, it was a test. If Rui couldn''t find information about the Divine Doctor in a harmless ce, then he certainly wouldn''t be able to do so in a more dangerous region.


    The Forest of Fear was filled with Squire-level creatures and a few Senior-level creatures here and there.


    That was enough to put the two of them on high alert. The Senior-level creatures were definitely capable of taking their lives.


    Rui constantly needed to remind himself that the Beast Domain was not a tournament where the strongest individual would win. The Beast Domain was a marathon. One needed tost for extraordinarily long periods in a region that had grown extremely hostile to all life.


    "The only way to win a fight is to avoid it."


    In that regard, he and Kane had not been particrly good at winning. On top of that, the SOUL System made him far stronger than he had ever been, but it also came with the weakness that the VOID algorithm used to have before the Angel of Lace.


    It required time and information.


    Unfortunately, the Angel of Lace could not mitigate that shoring for the SOUL System the way it had for the pattern recognition system of the VOID algorithm. That was because the information that the SOUL System worked with could onlye after the trance hypnosis that Rui put his opponent under. Thus, looking into the past, even if he could read non-verbalmunication through the Angel of Lace, was not going to help.


    Fortunately, he had long grown used to the shoring of needing time for a system of thought to manifest fully. It was nothing new, and he was able to adjust to the shorings of the SOUL System pretty thoroughly.


    Days passed as the two of them traveled at a remarkably high pace from the Valley of Prisms to the Forest of Fear. They cautiously passed through a variety of regions, each more bizarre and fantastical than the one before it.


    They ran into regions where all matter had an extremely low Young''s Modulus, a constant that decided how stic a substance was. This made thend, every solid object, and every solid lifeform extremely stic and bouncy.


    Rui and Kane would be lying if they said they didn''t have fun in this region, even if they were on the edge due to being in a Squire-level zone.


    BOOM!


    "Woah!" The two of themunched themselves nearly a hundred kilometers into the sky with a single jump as the entire region acted as a trampoline.


    "I could do this all day!" Kaneughed.


    Rui, on the other hand, kept a sharp eye out on their surroundings. There were plenty of bouncing living organisms that had evolved to live in this bouncy environment and were better at fighting than they were. Belongs to (N)?vel/Drama.Org.


    "Let''s activate our stealth," Rui told Kane once he spotted a bunch of living balls that had mean looks in their eyes. "This isn''t going to be easy."


    WHOOSH


    They disappeared into thin air as Rui activated the Greater Phantomind Void while Kane activated Void Step. The two misdirection-based stealth techniques fooled the creatures quite well as they quickly sky-walked away, eventually leaving the region.


    "Crazy that such a ce exists," Kane turned around once they returned to hard, solid ground.


    "Anything is possible in the Beast Domain."


    --


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1919 Fearful Resistance

    Chapter 1919 Fearful Resistance


    Days passed as the two of them traveled through the region, heading towards the Forest of Fear.


    The deeper they got into the Beast Domain, the harder it became to travel through.


    The air grew denser.


    The gravity grew higher.


    Their speed reduced as each step grew just a little more difficult than before.


    Rui hadn''t noticed this before because they circled around the edges of the Beast Domain when traveling to the Valley of Prisms. In other words, he never traveled deeper into the Beast Domain during that time.


    However, now that they were actively heading into the Beast Domain, both Rui and Kane could feel that the average harshness of the environment was rising, slowing them down.


    Rui couldn''t imagine how difficult it must be to travel in the inner half of the Beast Domain if they were already experiencing such a significant difference shortly after traveling deeper into the region.


    He knew that, at some point, only Martial Seniors would be qualified to travel further, while Martial Squires would be unable to or have to persevere beyond a manageable degree.


    Naturally, there probably was a point where not even the power of the Martial Heart would be able to protect them, leaving it such that only the Martial Masters would be able to traverse through the Beast Domain.


    There probably was a boundary beyond which only Martial Sages would be able to travel.


    He wondered if there was a region that only Martial Transcendents could enter.


    If there was, it was probably such an unfathomably destructive region that being anywhere near it would erase Rui in the briefest of moments.


    "Whatever, we don''t have to deal with it, even if it exists."


    Another thing he noticed was not just theBeast Domain''s resistance to being traveled through, but also its resistance to the senses.


    The deeper they traveled, the more their senses were hampered. The range of their sensory techniques was reduced bit by bit. The precision and detail of their sensory input were also reduced gradually as they went deeper into the Beast Domain.


    Just a day of travel had reduced them by thirty percent.


    It was no wonder that despite spending a thousand years in known human history, the depths of the Beast Domain werergely unknown. Considering the startling rate at which Rui and Kane found it harder to move and sense, how could one possibly map the entire area of the Beast Domain?


    The total area of the Beast Domain greatly exceeded that of the total surface area of Earth.


    Just how many Martial Masters and Martial Sages would be needed to map such an enormous area with such significant sensory resistance? How many of them would perish in the most dangerous parts of the Beast Domain?


    Even if they could eventually map it by going at it continuously and relentlessly, was such a thing even practically feasible?


    It wasn''t.


    That was why the Beast Domain remainedrgely a ck box. If the price to map it was bleeding one''s self, then it was a price that humanity was extremely unwilling to pay.


    While Rui understood this, he was deeply displeased that it led to adventurers suffering greater danger and harm during their ventures in the Beast Domain. It wasn''t fun when he was the one that needed to experience greater risk.


    It also made the Divine Doctor''s escapades into the Beast Domain that much more iprehensible. Even if the man was confident in his resourcefulness, intelligence, and preparations, and even if he was unconcerned about death, this was truly an irrational decision.


    Unfortunately, Rui needed to follow suit.


    The closer they got to the Forest of Fear, the more their nerves tingled. Rui felt a strange sense of anxiety building up, drop by drop. Even though his sense of danger hadn''t changed all too much, the fear he experienced grew disproportionately higher.


    Ordinarily, that would be a cause for concern, but Rui had understood that it was a sign that they were reaching the Forest of Fear.


    He also noticed that life began dimming the closer they got to the Forest of Fear. While the creatures that were native to the Forest of Fear had evolved with almost no sense of fear to live normally in the Forest of Fear, the same could not be said for creatures outside of the Beast Domain.


    Thus, the presence of fauna plummeted in the vicinity of the Forest of Fear.


    And Rui had experienced first-hand just why.


    "Damn," Kane murmured nervously. "This is really freaky."


    "Yeah¡­" Rui sharpened his gaze.


    STEP


    They arrived at a cliff that oversaw an enormous forest extending beyond the what the eye could see.


    It was pitch ck.


    The vegetation, the soil, the bedrock.


    All of it was pitch ck.


    It was as though they were beholding a deep abyss that swallowed all light.


    "What the hell?" Kane frowned anxiously. C0ntent ? 2024 (N/?)velDrama.Org.


    Rui heaved a sigh. "In we go."


    "Seriously?"


    Rui turned to him with a raised eyebrow. "Did you think we came here for sightseeing?"


    "I mean, no, but look at that," Kane gestured to the forest. "That''s a nightmare. If we go in, we''re straight-up going to die."


    "It''s a Squire-level danger zone," Rui stared at him.


    "It doesn''t feel that way," Kane shrugged.


    "That''s because we are already under the influence of the fear-inducing vegetation," Rui replied. "It''s not dangerous as long as we don''t do something stupid. Let''s go."


    The two of them slowly declined from the cliff down to the forest. Yet the closer they got, the more their senses of fear were pricked at.


    Rui had to admit that maybe Kane did have a point regarding this ce.


    "Alright, there are Senior-level creatures in this ce," Rui told Kane in a soft whisper. "We can''t be as rxed as we were in the Valley of Prisms."


    Not like they could rx even if they wanted to. The fear-inducing airborne substances in the air refused to let them!


    --


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1920 Targeting The Strongest

    Chapter 1920 Targeting The Strongest


    ??"What''s the game n?" Kane asked him, ncing around nervously.


    "We target groups of monsters or beasts one by one. Then, I scan their memories for the Divine Doctor," Rui replied. "We keep it low-profile, and we should be fine."


    Because the region had beasts and animals that could threaten their lives, Rui wanted to be more clinical with how he approached the matter.


    He would rather not be crude and haphazard like he was in the Valley of Prisms. This time, he intended to conduct surgical operations of memory scanning while drawing the least amount of attention to himself.


    The two of them carefully navigated the Forest of Death. The absence of almost any other color, barring ck, was unnerving. They drew so much attention by virtue of being extremely bright-colored inparison that they activated their misdirection stealth techniques almost subconsciously.


    It wasn''t long before they arrived at several deer-like creatures grazing on ck grass.


    "ckhinds," Rui whispered. "Good. They are docile and herbivorous beasts. On top of that, these are Squire-level. Let''s go for them first."


    He turned to Kane. "I need you to watch my back and keep an eye on our surroundings while I scan their memories."


    Kane nodded as the two of them activated their Martial Hearts. Kane expanded his senses to the surroundings while Rui appeared before the ckhinds in the blink of an eye. Before they could even react¡ª


    Sleep.


    The world went dark as Soul Void overtook their senses, leaving only Rui¡ªwho promptly misdirected them while nting suggestions in their subconscious mind¡ªvisible. Instantly, the conscious mind grew dimmer while the subconscious mind grew more active. Before they knew it, the ckhinds were in a semi-conscious state. Of course, Rui still needed to bind them with heaven-bending, for their cognitive capabilities had remained untouched, not reducing in the slightest. They still did everything they would have done otherwise: thrashing and resisting while bleating, except they did so semi-consciously rather than consciously.


    While Kane kept a sharp eye on their surroundings for any threats, Rui got to work.


    He conjured up the image of the Divine Doctor, now refined from the memories of the catoblepas, before conveying that image to the ckhinds.


    Much to his surprise, they didn''t react at all.


    He showed it to them over and over again, yet they didn''t so much as twitch in response.


    The appearance of the Divine Doctor held no significance to them.


    "Wait a minute," Rui''s eyes widened with realization. "If almost all the creatures of the Forest of Fear died due to the fear of the forest being absent for some time, causing their fear to reduce to nothing, leading to their death, then¡­"


    His expression grew grave. "All the animals who bore witness to the Divine Doctor are probably¡­"


    They were probably dead.


    While the Valley of Prisms had a myriad of animals that had very vivid memories of the Divine Doctor, the same could not be said for the Forest of Fear.


    While the results of the Divine Doctor''s disruption in the Valley of Prisms was solely a temporary exodus, the result of his interference in the Forest of Fear, however, was mass extinction.


    In other words, an overwhelming majority of the sources of information that would tell Rui about the Divine Doctor were gone.


    "¡­Does that mean we''re screwed?" Kane asked with a severe tone.


    "¡­Not necessarily, but our job has definitely be a lot harder than it was in the Valley of Prisms." Rui heaved a sigh. "We need to find creatures in this forest that survived the disappearance of the fear of the forest."


    "How can we possibly do that?" Kane scratched his head. "There are millions of animals and beasts in this forest. "How can we possibly find the ones who survived the mass extinction caused by the Divine Doctor?"


    Rui closed his eyes as his mind furiously processed all the information at hand. "We identify the traits that would predict survival in such a circumstance and then search for beasts with such traits. They are the ones that are the likeliest to have been able to survive the mass extinction."


    Kane frowned. "And what traits are those?"


    "¡­Fear is one," Rui remarked thoughtfully. "Any creature with a higher innate sense of fear would not have gone absolutely batshit insane leading to their deaths. So creatures that are more fearful than others would be far less likely to do the kind of things that got all the other creatures of the Beast Domain killed."


    "Didn''t you say that all the creatures of the Forest of Fear had evolved to have very little innate fear so that when it got amplified by the fear-inducing substances in the air, they would reach normal levels of fear?" Kane asked, even as he nced around in fear.


    "Yeah, so I think that we probably are not going to find any creature with an especially high sense of innate fear," Rui breathed deeply. "There is one other trait that could help us find who we are looking for."


    "¡­Which is?"


    "Power." Rui sharpened his eyes. "Even if they went crazy, stronger creatures are less likely to die as a result of their insanity."


    After all, there were fewer things that could get a stronger creature killed. That meant that, even if it went crazy, the statistical probability that it would get itself killed was lower.


    "That means your best bet for finding a survivor of the Divine Doctor''s mass extinction event will be the strongest creatures of the Forest of Fear?" Kane asked as he gulped nervously.


    "Correct."Property ? of N?velDrama.Org.


    "¡­But the strongest creatures in this forest are Senior-level, right?" His voice grew even more fearful.


    "Correct." Rui''s tone grew graver.


    "Which means we''ll have to pick a fight with Senior-level creatures?" Kane''s breathing grew more unsteady as he began sweating more. "That''s crazy!"


    "Hey, calm down," Rui turned to him, shaking him. "That''s just the forest messing with your mind with fear."


    Rui found himself withstanding the effects extremely well inparison. This was, no doubt, thanks to his evolved mind and evolved resistance to mental impact.


    "We''re going to have to hunt the Senior-level beasts of this forest and scan their memories after we suppress them."


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1921 Ambush

    Chapter 1921 Ambush


    ??Rui''s decision was not impulsive but actually quite well-thought-out, as always. If the fauna of the Forest of Fear had evolved such that they had no sense of fear innate to them and would go extinct in self-destructive acts without fear induced in them by the Forest of Fear, then it made sense that only the strongest creatures of the region would be able to survive the period when it lost its fear-inducing substances.


    In a Squire-level region, those strongest creatures were Senior-level creatures. It meant that Rui would need to apply his trance hypnosis to these creatures and then subject them to his Plurichroma domain to create SOUL models for their memories.


    The issue was that being Senior-level creatures, bullying them was not nearly as straightforward as it had been for the catoblepas or the ckhinds. Senior-level creatures were fully capable of resisting Martial Seniors, even if thetter was much stronger than the former on an individual basis.


    "We''re going to have to be very careful," Rui replied. "However, as long as we keep track of them, it should be all good. I''ll create predictive and SOUL models for them, and, with that, any chance of defeat on our end should be gone."


    Perhaps Rui was excessively confident. However, he did think that his reasoning had a strong basis. With the power of predictive models and SOUL models, he was undoubtedly an absolutely unstoppable force to be reckoned with within the Senior Realm.


    "Are you sure?" Kane stared at him with anxious concern.


    "Yes, I told you, you''re being afflicted with fear."


    "Well, I can''t help it. Are you absolutely sure that your n is safe? Because it doesn''t sound safe to me."


    Rui heaved a sigh. "Well, one risk is that the beasts are harder to quantify. Beasts'' power levels do not adhere to human paradigms of the Realms of Martial Art. There are plenty of beasts whose power levels fall in between Realms. It''s possible that some creatures of the Forest of Fear have crossed the limits of the Senior Realm and be quasi-Master-level."


    "Wait, really?" Kane grew more fearful.


    "Yes."


    "Aren''t we screwed if that''s the case?"


    "...Not necessarily," Rui replied, ncing at his hands.


    He clenched his fist, feeling an enormous surge of powering from deep within. It came from within his mind, not just his body. It gave him a massive amount of confidence in his ability.


    Perhaps he was being overconfident, but he felt invincible. He felt as though he simply could not lose.


    Of course, this was dangerous. Even as he was now, Martial Masters would overwhelm him with little effort.


    "Alright, for now, let u-" Rui froze as an intense wave of peril washed over the two of them.


    One moment, the air had been normal.


    The very next, their Primordial Instincts warned them of an iing attack as their Martial Hearts burst into action, beating furiously as all metabolic processes were elerated and strengthened.


    BOOM!!!


    The two of them leaped away moments before an intense impact shook the verynds around them. An attack that would have leveled cities struck the very spot they were at microseconds prior.


    Rui and Kane took their stances as they beheld their ambusher face-to-face.


    It had magnificent glossy ck scales that stretched across its entire body. Its ws were razor sharp; its very edge was beyond their vision. Equally sharp sets of teeth lined at the edge of its jaws


    Its sharp ck pupils focused on its targets with a glint of predation.


    "An obsidian wyvern." Rui grew grave.


    "Is that bad?" Kane had be much less fearful as the activation of his Martial Heart had significantly, albeit not entirely, eliminated the fear-inducing substance''s impact on his mind.


    Suddenly, a sharp sense of peril approached behind them.


    WHOOOOOOOOSH!!!


    An enormous inferno almost swallowed them whole. Rui grimaced as he dispelled the heat away from them with heaven-bending, catching a glimpse of the culprit.


    "A second wyvern?!" Kane panicked.


    "They hunt in groups," Rui''s expression grew severe as he recollected all the data on them from his Mind Pce. He expanded his senses farther and wider while also using the vector detection of the Angel of Lace across the entire detection.


    What he feared turned out toe true.


    "We''re surrounded by a pack of wyverns."


    Rui''s tone was grim.


    WHOOSH!


    A heavy fireball flew at them like a zing cannonball, only to be intercepted by Rui''s Transverse Resonance, revealing a third wyvern.


    Soon enough, several more appeared in the sky as they began circling Rui and Kane at a low altitude.


    "How did they find us?!" Kane gritted his teeth.


    Rui eyed the approaching wyverns. "They use fear to detect prey that is non-native to the Forest of Fear."


    Only one of them had experienced fear.


    "¡­Damn!"


    "ROOOOAAAAAAR!"


    The exchange of words was cut short as the wyverns shot towards the two Martial Seniors,unching fireballs and infernos at them.


    FWOOOSH!


    "Rgh!" The two grimaced, leaping away, as just being in the vicinity of the heat singed their attires and skin.


    Rui red at the wyverns. Having already activated Angel of Lace and the SOUL System, he never once let them out of his field of vision.


    Unfortunately, the wyverns didn''t make it easy. Their inhuman eyes appeared to be devoid of any sense of self-preservation or fear of death.


    That was why they were akin to fish in water in the Forest of Fear.


    Their prey, however, were usually creatures that exhibited heightened fear, which was a dead giveaway that they were non-native. This usually was very attractive prey to the obsidian wyverns because it meant that they were hampered by excessive fear that would reduce their performance.


    Kane was a perfect example.


    "AAAAAARGH!" He ran away at top speed from the congrations that the obsidian wyverns spread in an rmed panic.N?velDrama.Org owns this text.


    THUD!


    He tripped, fell over, and turned in horror to face the iing infernos.


    THWOOM THWOOM THWOOM THWOOM THWOOM!!!


    Ruiunched five Mighty Roar sh st attacks, dispelling the fires. Yet, what followed next was his true trump card.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1922 Converging Attacks

    Chapter 1922 Converging Attacks


    ??He closed his eyes, donning his most intense and powerful Mind Mask. Instantly, a Master-level aura spread across the Forest of Fear, sending shivers across the entire region.


    Yet the wyverns just grinned at him gleefully, snorting and huffing.


    Their non-verbalmunication conveyed a single message.


    Deception.


    "Tsk," Rui tutted, displeased, dispelling the Mind Mask.


    Instantly, they spiraled around him, hoping to gang up on the stronger one of the two. They converged on him in one fell swoop, preparing powerful infernos to cook him alive. The prey would have no direction to escape while being subjected to thebined heat of all the wyverns of the Forest of Fear. This tactic ensured that no prey within the Senior Realm could possibly survive their prison of hellish fire.


    The end was nigh, as far as they were concerned.


    Yet, in facing the approaching wyverns, Rui didn''t so much as twitch. He stood midair with closed eyes.


    A single remark escaped him.


    "Your neck muscles stiffen two milliseconds prior to me attacks."


    His eyes shed open as he spun,unching a flurry of Mighty Roar sh sts at each of their me-spewing mouths a millisecond before they opened.


    THWOOM TWHOOM THWOOM THWOOM THWOOM!


    FWOOOOOOOOOSH!


    "ROOOOOOAAAAAARRRRR!!!" The wyverns roared in pain as the perfectly timed sonic bullets entered their mouths the very moment they opened it, pushing the fire inside their bodies rather than outside. The fireballs erupted inside their esophagi, causing them major internal burns.


    Yet Rui was hardly done. He was grateful that the Angel of Lace had beenpleted before he was burned to a crisp by nearly two dozen obsidian wyverns. This allowed him to build predictive models on each of them at thest second.


    Fortunately, the obsidian wyverns were extremely simr to each other. Their patterns ovepped significantly, allowing him to reuse data of each wyvern on the others.Property ? of N?velDrama.Org.


    "ROOOOOOOOAAAAAAARR!" Immense rage echoed every note of their bellow as they prepared even more fireballs.


    But s, their patterns were as transparent as day to Rui.


    THWOOM THWOOM THWOOM THWOOM THWOOM!


    He fired off many Mighty Roar sh sts as soon as he saw their neck muscles stiffen, instantly extrapting the exact moment of the exact actions they would take tounch the fireballs.


    FWOOOOOOOOOSH!


    "ROOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAARR!" The wyverns roared once more in pain as they red at Rui with unbridled hatred.


    Is that the best you could do? Rui taunted them.


    While they had no fear, it was clear that they were prone to falling to other emotions. It would do well for him if he could destabilize their feelings.


    They shivered with rage, spiraling around him with tremendous velocity.


    Yet, with initial predictive models formed, Rui''s confidence had risen tremendously.


    "Bring it," he growled fiercely.


    And bring it, they did.


    WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH!


    The many wyverns converged on him. An overwhelming majority of the flock focused on him while the remaining few attacked Kane.


    Rui would be lying if he imed he wasn''t worried about Kane. He was only a mid-grade Martial Senior, and he was afflicted with the fear of the Forest of Fear. Rui was the only one who was entirely immune to it.


    Regardless, he wasn''t particrly in a position to worry about him. The obsidian wyverns were clearly intelligent enough to recognize the futility of attacking Rui with fireballs.


    They changed tactics, circling around in the sky, eying him with an aggressive light in their eyes.


    A flood of peril erupted from each of them, washing over the entire region around them.


    The air boiled under the sheer force of the bloodlust they radiated. Peril sparked in the air, igniting congrations of panic across the fauna of the Forest of Fear. These creatures who knew no fear did finally experience fear from the bottom of their hearts.


    Yet Rui did not so much as budge.


    He stood, rooted in his spot in the air with an aura of impregnable solidity, never so much as twitching an inch.


    He was waiting.


    Waiting for the moment.


    "ROOOOOOOAAAAAAAAAAAR!" A single wyvern began the charge on him, swerving in at extraordinarily high speeds.


    What was once a lesser dragon became a jet-ck blur, arriving at his location in moments, ready to rip a hole in him with razor-sharp fangs and ws.


    Yet, it couldn''t so much as touch Rui.


    WHOOSH


    He cleanly evaded the bull rush.


    "Aeronautic adjustments precede rapid eleration by a hundred microseconds." He coldly dissected patterns of the wyverns, using them to his advantage to foresee their attacks well ahead of time.


    One wyvern could never touch him.


    Yet, what about twenty-two?


    WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH


    A flurry of powerful and swift Senior-level creatures converged on Rui''s position, each ready to take him down. Rui''s expression grew grave as he activated Neo Godspeed.


    WHOOOSH!


    The many wyverns shook as Rui turned into a blur, weaving through their many blurringly fast bull rushes. None of them understood how his speed grew so significantly!


    Yet, that wasn''t all.


    "Speed Void."


    He made generous use of the Yggdrasil System, creating a domain where every moving entity or object aside from him suffered significant detriment to their speed.


    WHOOSH!


    The wyverns struggled as the drag force they experienced increased exponentially.


    "ROOOOOOAAAAAARRRR!" theyined, conveying their furious frustration with ample rity.


    Wind-shackler! They red at him with inhuman bloodlust. Eat the wind-shackler!


    All twenty-two obsidian wyverns surged forth to his location, determined to kill him at once!


    It was an intelligent decision. They were so big that together, they could cut off all directions of escape collectively as they surged toward him. If there was no room for escape, then their hampered speed was inconsequential!


    They converged on his location simultaneously. The sheer totality of their power exceeded anything Rui had ever been struck with. On top of that, all directions of escape were covered thus Neo Godspeed was rendered useless.


    A maelstrom of razor-sharp fangs and ws seemed fated to tear at him with immense speed and power.


    It meant certain death.


    Yet, he grinned.


    Sleep.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1923 Ensuing Combat

    Chapter 1923 Ensuing Combat


    ??A hypnotic wave struck their exposed subconscious as their minds were misdirected with the image of Master Uma. Simultaneously, the world went almost entirely dark, allowing their conscious mind to dim more easily as their subconscious minds rose to prominence.


    "SOUL System activated."


    lights¦­¦Ïv¦Ål ?¦Ïm SPLAT SPLAT SPLAT SPLAT SPLAT!


    In just a moment, the converging ws tore at his flesh moments before he shifted to Nemean Blossom. It could not singlehandedly stop them, but it certainly could help Rui survive.


    "Huff?" The wyverns nced at each other, confused as they wondered what had just happened.


    Rui, on the other hand, swiftly deactivated Nemean Blossom before shifting to Weaving Blood to heal his wounds.


    Yet, his focus was fixed on the obsidian wyverns.


    With each passing moment, he gathered an immense amount of data on their SOULs, forming SOUL models on each and every single one of them. Once more, he noticed there was an immense amount of ovep in their individual SOULs. While there was less than a twenty-five percent ovep in the SOULs of humans, there was more than a fifty percent ovep in the SOULs of the obsidian wyverns.


    These creatures were far more the same than they were different.


    WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH!


    THWOOM THWOOM THWOOM!


    He evaded three obsidian wyverns, somersaulting away whileunching a flurry of Mighty Roar sh sts, each pumped with the power to reducerge hills to rubble.


    The wyverns zig-zagged across the sky in evasion.


    But, s.


    The Pathfinder always found its path.


    BAM BAM BAM!!!


    "ROOOAAAAR!" The wyverns plummeted from the sky, roaring in pain as they were thrown off trajectory.


    Rui grinned as the VOID algorithm and the ODA System worked hand in hand, allowing him to fire multitudes of Mighty Roar sh sts.


    And they struck their victim true.


    Every single time.Belongs to (N)?vel/Drama.Org.


    BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM!!!


    Nearly half a dozen wyverns were struck nigh simultaneously, being thrown off course. Yet before Rui could even acknowledge it, a dozen wyverns converged on him at the same time, threatening to crush him.


    WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH!


    Rui leaped away, narrowly dodging each of them while activating Speed Void at the right moment.


    He felt a deep sense of peril as a powerful obsidian wyvern appeared behind from his blind spot.


    Temporal Disharmony!


    WHOOOSH!


    The wyvern''s razor-sharp fangs missed Rui by an inch as it grew disoriented by the hypnotic technique of the Hypnomatrix.


    Yet, even before he could celebrate, twelve more had appeared around him.


    WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH!


    Rui barely managed to avoid death as he evaded each of them one after another.


    Almost.


    SPLAT!


    His face grew grim as one of the ws of the wyverns caught him in the chest, releasing three deep gashes across his torso. The pain made his mind rush into action, pushing it to the very limit as it furiously burst into activity, elerating the process of forming associations between data points of recorded subconscious non-verbalmunication and intent, as measured retroactively by actions.


    Unfortunately, collecting data on twenty-two high-grade Senior-level creatures was quite taxing, even for him. On top of that, he continuously needed to operate the predictive model to ensure that he didn''t die in the meantime.


    THUD


    He returned to the ground, racing through the forest at blinding speeds dozens of times above that of sound. Whilend had lower degrees of freedom than the sky, it certainly allowed him to handle their speed much morefortably since he was faster.


    Martial Artists could never beat avian creatures in the sky if all else was equal unless they specialized for the sky. Especially not twenty-two of them coordinating with each other. If not for Rui''s predictive model and the Pathfinder''s ODA System, he would have never even tried.


    WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH!


    Rui sprinted away at top speeds, asionally firing Mighty Roar sh sts back at them, taking them down, all while evading their swoops and swings one after the other.


    "ROOOOOAAAAAR!" They made their frustrations known as they shed through the air, trying to kill Rui once and for all, earning a good grin from Rui.


    Unfortunately, good things came to an end.


    SPLAT!


    "Rgh!" Rui grimaced as one wyvern surprisingly managed to tag him without any problem.


    The Metabody System had been running at top gear. He had used nearly all of them extensively throughout the battle, especially the Neo Godspeed Metabody technique at full power.


    His reactions grew slower as his movements grew sluggish.


    The obsidian wyverns were far too keen to fail to notice this, they immediately rallied together, converging on Rui.


    "ROOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAAR!!!" A triumphant bellow escaped one as it reached Rui much faster than before. It jaws opened as it shed forward, ready to eat him whole.


    s, it was toote.


    "I can see your SOUL."


    CLASP


    Rui''s words cut through its jubtion as a single hand stopped the dragon in its tracks. Its eyes widened as it felt its momentum disappearing. What should have been a devastating impact where it would have torn him to shreds was reduced to a gentle grasp.


    All that energy and speed that it had rued was sunk down the drain with a single gesture.


    RUMBLE


    The very world shook as Rui dispersed that energy to the depths of the bedrock of the Beast Domain using Flux Earther.


    The technique had no hard upper limit, yet it also had no lower limit either. Poor timing would make the technique more garbage than a human technique, but with godly timing, it could be elevated to something truly special.


    "ROOOOOOAAAAAAAAR!" Another wyvern rushed in from the side, looking to finish what the earlier wyvern couldn''t, yet it met the same fate.


    RUMBLE!


    Rui effortlessly held off two wyverns with one arm each as he continuously dispersed their energy to the world around them.


    "ROOOOAAAAAR!"


    The two lesser dragonsined. It felt like walking on a treadmill. They were unable to make any progress whatsoever.


    WHOOSH!


    Rui casually somersaulted, evading a third wyvern who zoomed in while firing a single Mighty Roar sh st.


    THWOOM!


    SPLAT!


    "ROOOOAAAAAAR!" The creature roared in pain as the attack precisely crashed into its eye, blinding it on the spot.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1924 I Will Eat You

    Chapter 1924 I Will Eat You


    The moment the SOUL Systempleted the SOUL models on the obsidian wyverns, Rui gained an inordinate depth of insight.


    With it rose precision and uracy. Because the future was transparent, he could prepare for it.


    The more time he had to prepare, the more he could refine the precision and uracy of his timing and cement right down to the micrometer.


    His attacks soared past the present.


    They struck the future.


    THWOOM THWOOM THWOOM THWOOM THWOOM!


    He fired off five Mighty Roar sh sts almost simultaneously. He didn''t even bother looking at his opponent, and yet¡ª


    BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM!!


    Each and every single one of them struck true in a wyvern''s eyes.


    "ROOOOOAAAAAAR!" They roared in pain.


    Yet, they never relented even as all twenty-two of them converged on him with extreme velocities.


    None of them could so much as touch him.


    Rui''s movements had undergone a profound change. Before, they were furious as he struggled to match up against twenty-two powerful creatures all by himself. Now, however, he sashayed with the grace of a ballerina.


    Each maneuver overflowed with an elegance that didn''t belong in a battle. It didn''t belong in the Beast Domain.


    Yet with each passing movement, his movements grew dimmer. WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH!


    Rui shifted inches as their ws came within millimeters away from cleaving his head in half.


    He began moving less and less.


    And less.


    His movements continued reducing until¡­


    Until he stopped moving entirely.


    Ordinarily, such a decision was one that courted death.


    Yet, it never happened.


    None of the wyverns understood.


    Perhaps, it was because their intelligence wascking. Perhaps it was because the state of mind at the root of such grace was beyond anything a beast would ever be capable of. Regardless, none of them understood.


    None of them understood why they were unable to so much as touch even though he was stationary.


    He didn''t move.


    He didn''t so much as twitch.


    It was a tantalizing sight to the predators, yet, every time they attacked him.


    They could not touch him.


    "ROOOOOOOAAAAAAAAAR!!!" A wyvern charged at with overwhelming frustration and fury.


    Yet, it passed right through his body.


    WHOOSH


    It passed through his body like it was a hologram.


    It passed through him like his very being was ethereal. WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH!


    Each time they charged into him, they passed through him like he wasn''t even there.


    His eyes were closed, and his body was rxed. No force in the world could torment him.


    Or, so it seemed.


    In reality, his powerful mind churned non-stop as he constantly bore witness to the future itself. Well before an attack arrived, he would step away. However, he stepped away while feinting to his original standing position, making it seem that he was still standing there. In addition, he also misdirected attention away from him to the feinted image, reinforcing the feinted image. In the mind of the wyvern, he never stepped away.


    To them, he had been standing there the entire time, crashing into an empty location while Rui promptly returned back to the position after the attack passed, making it seem like he had never stepped away and that the attack had passed through him.


    It was an extravagant flex that served no practical utility.


    Yet, Rui couldn''t resist. C0ntent ? 2024 (N/?)velDrama.Org.


    It was an extraordinary feat of precision and uracy of timing and cement. It was an extraordinary feat of maneuvering that should have been impossible to replicate against those whose physicality significantly exceeded his.


    Unfortunately, the Martial Heart did not have endless stamina.


    Without it, no amount of thought would be able to save him from being torn to shreds.


    "If fear cannot move you¡­" His voice grew cold and perilous. "Then pain will have to do."


    Ironically, it was at that moment that the wyverns experienced paralyzing fear gripping their hearts.


    But s, pain was already on its way.


    He activated a breathing technique, creating powerful wind currents and pressure gradients with the force of his breath before bending it to tame the very heavens that enveloped them.


    It became his weapon.


    Simultaneously, his powerful mind stirred, activating the Hypnomatrix.


    Pain had arrived.


    "Phantom Pain. Sonic Singrity," Rui whispered.


    The world screamed.


    VMMMMMMM!!!!!


    As did the unfortunate wyvern who Rui targeted.


    "ROOOOOOOAAAAAAAAAARRRR!!!!!" It bellowed in pain as a tsunami of sound converged on it.


    It became a singrity.


    Not just of sound.


    But of pain.


    VMMMMMMM!!!!


    "ROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRR!!!!!" A guttural screech of excruciating agony echoed throughout the Forest of Fear.


    As a hypnotic technique that magnified pain exponentially, Phantom Pain worked extremely well with Sonic Singrity. Thetter caused immense naturally that was magnified beyond what the mind could fathom.


    "Your scales are tough, but your insides are not nearly so," Rui smirked. "I can only imagine how much pain you must be going through."


    The other wyverns watched with palpable terror and horror as the one that Rui singled out began bleeding from its eyes and from all orifices.


    Rui dispelled the technique, leaving the creature half-dead.


    Scram. Rui red at them. Or you''ll be next.


    Predators, while hardly rational, were capable of making risk-reward analyses. Especially ones that involved a lot of suffering and death.


    The twenty-one wyverns immediately took off with great vigor, never once turning back.


    "Huff¡­" Rui heaved a sigh before his eyes widened with rm. "Kane!"


    The average power level of the wyvern group was high-grade Martial Senior. Kane did not possess the power to take on such opponents at his current stage.


    BOOM!!!


    Rui immediately shot off at extraordinary speeds, igniting the air in a massive inferno from the sheer friction with the air.


    In just moments, he arrived.


    What he saw shook him.


    He had an eye missing with countless gashes across his entire body. On the other hand, the wyvern hunting him had lost both eyes.


    RUMBLE


    An unfathomable amount of bloodlust erupted from deep within Rui, suffocating the wyvern stiff.


    "I will eat you." His voice dripped with malice as a powerful re bored holes into the wyvern. His words contained the weight of the future.


    The future that he could see.


    The future he could create.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1925 Trade

    Chapter 1925 Trade


    The wyvern scampered off in fear. Armed with predictive and SOUL models, Rui bore an air of aura that did not quite fit within the Senior Realm. Twenty-two wyverns might have the confidence to fight him, but alone, they certainly didn''t.


    Kane fell to the ground, coughing blood.


    "Kane!" Rui urgently pulled out healing potions, feeding them to him. "Heh¡­" Kane grinned weakly as he slowly healed. "I managed to stall one."


    Rui heaved a troubled sigh. "I warned you. I warned you this could happen."


    "And I chose toe anyway." He shrugged, experiencing the relief of a healing potion. "Besides, I was fine, ok?"


    Rui stared at him skeptically. "¡­Uh huh."


    "We injured each other. That''s a tie, as far as I am concerned."


    While Rui had to admit that he did a good job holding out against a creature that was much stronger, to call it a tie was questionable at best, especially when Kane didn''t have a good way of taking down such creatures.


    Daggers were great against human-sized targets, but wyverns were muchrger and had a tough armor of scales that could deflect orrgely negate his daggers as an offense.


    "What the fuck is wrong with this region anyway?" Heined. "I thought you told me this was supposed to be a Squire-level region. It sure as hell doesn''t feel that way!"


    Rui''s expression grew grim. "It''s mostly grown more dangerous rapidly before the Adventurer''s Guild could keep up."


    This was the consequence of forgoing dedicated veracity in order to reduce the cost of Beast Domain services. They could make their services cheaper and economically viable, but in turn, countless adventurers died due to ack of information on the dangers and risks, or worse, due to misinformation about the dangers and risks. Content is ? by N?velDrama.Org.


    Rui was especially angered by this, now that his friend had almost died as a result of this.


    "Based on the level of the strongest creatures in the region, as well as the fact that the region causes one to experience fear, making them a target for powerful fear-sensitive creatures¡­" Rui narrowed his eyes. "I''d say this region is on the higher-end of Senior-level danger zone."


    Senior-level danger zones tended to have a few Master-level beasts. However, while this regioncked those, its environment hampered outsiders and made them targeted by predators, making it far worse.


    In fact, how many Martial Seniors would survive in this region?


    He could think of only two that he knew of.


    The Gatekeeper would deal with the wyverns as easily as Rui did. Rui had no doubt that the man would have to go all-out with his martial heart and martial heart maniption in order to ovee so many powerful high-grade wyverns with great coordination and using brute force alone.


    But he had an extremely difficult time picturing them taking him down, even though they would hurt him to some extent.


    While Rui was unable to hurt him with his attacks, thebined power of the wyverns far exceeded that of his own. "Huff¡­" he shook his head, putting the matter aside.


    Kane heaved a sigh of relief, fully restored. "So, what now?"


    "I have caught one wyvern," Rui replied, keeping an eye on the creature. "I chose the oldest one of the group. This one is the most likely to know something about the Divine Doctor."


    Rui paid attention to all the wyverns throughout the battle. He quickly noticed that most of them were on the younger side. He knew that wyverns tended to reach maturation extremely early despite having long lives. He inferred that most of them probably knew nothing about the Divine Doctor.


    There were a few elder wyverns that, rather than taking an active role in hunting, took more effort to protect their progeny from his attacks. He deduced that they were the most likely to have been around when the Divine Doctor disrupted.


    Thus, there was no reason to interrogate each and every single one of them as long as he had one firm and proper source of information.


    "Let''s go; he might die if I don''t heal him," Rui muttered as the two of them immediately headed to the half-dead wyvern.


    The dying lesser dragon made pitiful squeaking and whimpering noises as it tried to move. Yet each attempt caused it even more pain than before.


    STEP


    Rui arrived before it, squatting to meet its gaze at eye-level. My offer is simple. Rui hoped that it was intelligent enough to parse the concept of trade. Give me information, and I will let you live. I will even heal you.


    Rui made a quick demonstration, consuming a healing potion and showing the wyvern how the few gashes on his body quickly returned to how they used to be, leaving nothing more than mild scars of what could have been an old wound.


    "Rrrrk?" Its eyes lit up at the sight as it finally understood what Rui was conveying.


    Agreed. Heal. Help. It gazed at Rui with its inhuman eyes.


    "First, I get what I want," he replied. "This will work smoother if you cooperate. Just try your best to actively remember everything you can. That''s good enough."


    He didn''t waste any more words.


    Sleep.


    A world of darkness overcame it as its consciousness dimmed in activity while its subconscious mind grew more vigorous. It had already entered a trance much deeper than the one that Rui had put it in during the battle.


    "Plurichroma."


    The world around them shifted as he took his time going through every single wavelength and frequency of light and sound, mapping the corresponding subconscious non-verbalmunication associated with each of them.


    That, along with the intent-evaluation SOUL model that he had created during the battle, and he quickly created the memory-evaluation SOUL model.


    Immediately, he conjured up the image of the Divine Doctor, embodying it in his mind, such that his subconscious mind caused him to subconsciously act like the Divine Doctor was actually there.


    The subconscious non-verbalmunication adhered to that, fullymunicating the image to the wyvern.


    Much to his delight, a blossom of memories were triggered, resurfacing them as the wyvern relived them in real-time. -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1926 Memories

    Chapter 1926 Memories


    ??Obsidian wyverns.


    The apex predators of the Forest of Fear.


    They possessed minds that were nigh devoid of fear. So much so that despite the fear of the Forest of Fear afflicting them every moment of their lives, they were still fearless. They were the most fearless in the entirety of the forest that they stood at the pinnacle of.


    They had nothing to fear.


    There was nothing that could invoke fear.


    Or so they thought.


    Everything changed when he arrived.


    He reeked of fear.


    He might as well as have been drenched in it.


    As fear-sensitive creatures, they could smell him from a country away.


    It was almost offensive.


    How dare such a fearful creature enter the Forest of Fear?


    Instantly, the entirety of the nest of the Forest of Fear erupted into flight, soaring in the direction of the neer oozing more fear than they had ever smelled.


    He was human at first nce.


    Physically, at least.


    Yet, when they gazed into his eyes, a single realization dawned on them.


    This one was less human than even they were. The fear that they smelled was not his.


    No.


    It was theirs.


    FSSSSSSSSS!


    Countless canisters of gas exploded from underground, spreading across the entire region. In just a moment, the obsidian wyverns were intoxicated, entering a trance-like state. The Divine Doctor''s smile never once wavered.


    It was one of clinical curiosity.


    Once they entered a trance-like state, he never let them exit it. First, he trained them in a Pavlovian manner simr to how he trained the catoblepas. Their trance state made them more receptive to epting the new influence, allowing the Divine Doctor to, very quickly, turn them into his loyalp dogs.


    ''Wait, is that why he worked on refining his trance drug, in addition to his fear-hallucinogen, in the Valley of Prisms?'' Rui realized. ''He knew he would need it against the obsidian lesser dragons. That was why he was so dissatisfied with it, even though it worked perfectly against the catoblepas. He knew that that alone was not enough.''


    In order to survive deeper in the Beast Domain, he would need a strong deterrence. In order to get one that was effective enough to deter the powerful biosphere of the Beast Domain from eating him alive, he would need something particrly potent.


    Perhaps the esoteric fear-induction phenomena of the Forest of Fear had been his goal from the very start. Perhaps he only ever stopped at the Valley of Prisms as a checkpoint to prepare for taking over the fear of the Forest of Fear.


    If that was the case, then all his actions up until now would make sense.


    "So all of this, everything up until now, was just a preparation to go deeper into the Beast Domain?" Rui whispered, shocked.


    Theprehensiveness of the Divine Doctor''s ns to survive the depths of the Beast Domain stunned Rui. He had thought of himself as prepared with all the things that he had brought along for basically any and all usibilities. Yet, inparison to the Divine Doctor, who had caused mass disruptions in the Valley of Prisms in preparation for his search of the fear of the Forest of Fear, which in turn helped in his pursuit of finally actually going deeper into the Beast Domain, Rui was evidently underprepared.


    It was at that moment that Rui realized he had underestimated the man. He had aplished more in the Beast Domain than Rui would have had Rui not been a Martial Artist.


    His attention returned to the memories that he was scanning, reading everything that the obsidian wyvern conveyed to him semi-consciously.


    The obsidian wyvern, unlike the catoblepas, was able to retain a much stronger awareness of everything that had happened while it had been under the influence of the trance drug, much to Rui''s delight.


    For once, he had gotten ess to memories that weren''t broken. The biggest frustration when dealing with the catoblepas was the fact that an overwhelming majority of their memories were fragmented.Belongs to (N)?vel/Drama.Org.


    This made finding coherent information about the Divine Doctor extremely difficult. If the catoblepas had forgotten the memory of the time that he hadmented about how his fear-hallucinogen was inadequate, Rui would have never inferred that his destination was the Forest of Fear.


    He had been this close to never finding the Divine Doctor.


    Now, however, there was no such concern with the obsidian wyvern whose memories he was scanning. Memories that, while traumatic, never escaped its mind.


    "Go forth." The Divine Doctor''s smile remained unchanged. "Bring me all the fear in this forest. "


    The lesser dragons gently took off so as not to hurt their new master, setting out to uproot the entire forest.


    And they did.


    They painstakingly brought every ounce of fear there was to be found within the Forest of Fear.


    Tree after tree.


    nt after nt.


    They brought him every ounce of flora.


    What Rui wondered, however, was how the hell the man nned to process all these raw ingredients into a powerful fear-hallucinogen. This sort of endeavor required massive infrastructure, usually a factory. What he was trying to do wasn''t a small-scale experiment that he himself could manage; it was industrial-grade mass production.


    However, the Divine Doctor proved to be extremely resourceful.


    The man had the dragons dig up an entire hole to toss all the uprooted vegetation in before having the dragons set aze to the entire pit. An enormous inferno zed for days as the dragons continued stoking the fire, ensuring it never went out.


    After the process ended, the Divine Doctor had them collect all the ash before subjecting it to several chemical treatments. An enormous tower of ash was quickly reduced to a pile of strange yellow liquid, and the Divine Doctor carefully collected all of it before whipping out several more instruments to y around with the collected substance.


    Until he got what he came for.


    FSSSSSS!


    lights¦­¦Ïv¦Ål ?¦Ïm "ROOOOOOAAAAAAAAAR!" The obsidian wyverns moved away from him as they experienced heart-wrenching fear upon inhaling the gas that he had just diffused into the air.


    The Divine Doctor''s smile never once budged, yet the glee in his eyes deepened.


    "Yielded potency is satisfactory," he remarked. "With the power of fear, the Garden of Salvation is within my reach."


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1927 Garden of Salvation

    Chapter 1927 Garden of Salvation


    Rui''s eyes widened when he heard that name.


    Yet, the Divine Doctor wasn''t done.


    He removed his mask, inhaling the fear in the air. That wasn''t all.


    Rui watched, stunned, as the man subjected himself to his own fear hallucinogen! Content is ? by N?velDrama.Org.


    "This should do." He remarked.


    His non-verbalmunication and bodynguage shifted drastically, conveying endless fear from within him. It conveyed that he was utterly horrified within the depths of his heart.


    Yet his eyes and expression never changed a shade.


    It was as though he had somehow managed to barricade his conscious mind from the biochemistry of his body. If that was the case, then Rui had to admit that he was impressed. Given his specialty, it was undoubtedly a feat aplished through his mastery of medicine and the human body. This was the power of a man who cured death.


    The memories of the obsidian wyvern of the Divine Doctor ended there as the man set off from the Forest of Fear, heading deeper into the Beast Domain, never to be seen in the Forest of Fear.


    What followed after what was madness as the devastated Forest of Fear soon was unable to sustain the fear-inducing drug in the air. Once the fear-inducing effect eventually dissipated, every creature native to the Forest of Fear lost their sanity.


    They had evolved specifically to the environment of the Forest of Fear. They had evolved to have almost no innate fear of anything all so that the Forest of Fear would induce only a healthy amount of fear.


    Without it, they were absolutely insane.


    No fear of pain.


    No fear of death.


    No fear of anything led to mass death as creatures jumped off cliffs and courted their predators only to be eaten alive. The Divine Doctor stole their fear and, in turn, deprived them of life.


    Rui had been correct in identifying that this particr obsidian wyvern was one of the few survivors, while the rest of his kind had met all kinds of nasty deaths. This wyvern alone survived long enough until the Forest of Fear eventually regrew after years, returning it back to a state of healthy amounts of fear.


    Rui dispelled the hypnosis before following through on his word and giving it just enough of a general healing potion to help it recover from its internal wounds.


    "What did you learn?"


    "¡­He''s off to the Garden of Salvation," Rui replied, narrowing his eyes.


    It was a name that Rui was familiar with. He had done a pretty thorough broader research into the Beast Domain, and it naturally came up.


    "The what?"


    "¡­The Garden of Salvation," Rui replied, sharpening his gaze. "And of legend. Said to be a world of wonder and a ce of paradise. It is said to be a haven of safety for those who need it. Those that it epts."


    "That sounds like a myth," Kane furrowed his eyebrows skeptically. "Where is it?"


    "Its purported location is said to be deep in the Northern part of the Beast Domain at the precipice of the Master-level region of the Beast Domain," Rui replied. "However, no one has ever been able to find it. Many have searched, yet none have seeded. It''s one of the reasons that some experts on the Beast Domain believe that it is a myth, while others think it is real."


    "Has anyone actually seen it?" Kane raised an eyebrow. "What is the origin of this story?"


    "¡­Martial Artists," Rui murmured thoughtfully. "Many Martial Artists, from Apprentice to Master, have independently spoken about about the Garden of Salvation. They have shared their stories passionately, insisting on their truth."


    "Well?" Kane urged him. "What do they say?"


    "¡­They talked about how, on the brink of death in the Beast Domain, the world around them shifted in the blink of an eye, and they found themselves in a region that could only be described as paradise," Rui continued. "They described how the very air they breathed healed their wounds. They talked about how the light that fell on their body soothed their exhaustion. They recounted how even the very soil beneath their feet gently supported them. They went on and on about how the very world around them nourished their very being."


    "Sounds like a beautiful ce," Kane muttered. "But how did the world around them shift to the Garden of Salvation? That sounds impossible."


    "No one knows. They described it as an instantaneous shift. As if they had gone off to another world in the blink of an eye. Many of the Martial Artists who imed to have been healed and nourished by it spent their entire lives desperately looking for it," Rui closed his eyes. "Yet none of them¡­ Not a single one of them ever set foot in the Garden of Salvation a second time."


    "I''m d you know about it because I have never heard of it in my entire life," Kane remarked carefreely. "I wouldn''t expect you to," Rui huffed. "It''s a more niche case study rting to the countless mysteries of the Beast Domain that humanity has yet to figure out, just like lost cities and many other more prominent unknowns. I didn''t expect that the Divine Doctor would be looking for the Garden of Salvation."


    "Do you think it''s real?" Kane asked, raising an eyebrow.


    "¡­I believe that the Martial Artists who have shared their experiences with the Garden of Salvation are sincere and earnest in their ounts," Rui replied, considering the question. "However, that does not necessarily mean everything they say is objectively urate. It is possible their experiences are hallucinations in their mind and not real. Of course, considering that there are some Martial Artists who make such ims, that''s less likely but far from impossible."


    "Hm¡­" Kane absorbed Rui''s words with a hint of curiosity. "That''s interesting. But regardless of whether it is actually real or not, feels like the Divine Doctor thinks it''s real."


    "It does appear to be the case, yes," Rui remarked.


    "In that case, tell me more about the Garden of Salvation."


    "Sure¡­" Rui replied. "I only skimmed through the ounts of the summaries of the extensive ounts of the survivors, but I did make sure to keep them in my Mind Pce, thankfully."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1928 Elder Tree

    Chapter 1928 Elder Tree


    Rui had memorized tons of general information regarding the Beast Domain, and he had run into countless recorded phenomena that humanity had failed toprehend. Despite upying a minority of the Panama Continent, it was far and away the most mysterious chunk filled with all kinds of supernatural phenomena.


    The Beast Convergence Hypothesis, lost cities, primordial seed, the Warp, and many other phenomena took more central notice because they were observable mysteries, while the Garden of Salvation was entirely centered around second-hand information.


    That was why Rui had simply logged the information into the enormous metropolis that was his Mind Pce and forgot about it. He actually didn''t even organically recall the name through natural memory, he had to search for the information in his Mind Pce in the part that stored information about locations, searching for anything that contained the word ''garden,'' only retrospectively remembering it.


    Thankfully, as painstaking as it was, he was truly grateful that he had spent months researching the Beast Domain before his departure for it, or else he would not be able to give Kane a thorough breakdown of the Garden of Salvation. Content protected by N?v/el(D)rama.Org.


    "Not only did they say it was a paradisical environment that seemed to nurture them to the very root of their existence, but they also said that it was a haven for many creatures and organisms beside them," Rui informed Kane. "What''s most interesting is the ounts of Martial Masters with their powerful senses."


    "What did they say?" Kane grew even more curious.


    "They described how the Garden of Salvation was a seemingly endless haven for countless living beings of countless species. However, it went far beyond that," Rui replied, growing more engrossed himself. "The Garden of Salvation didn''t just host countless living beings; it also seemed to bend heaven and earth to create specialized environments that were customized for each individual living organism and species. Fish would find thend turn intokes no matter what direction they went. Species that had evolved for cold regions found the very world around them warping to suit their needs by freezing over and spontaneously developingyers of ice and snow while the air chilled. For humans, they found themselves inside their homes where they were mostfortable."


    "What?!" Kane did a double-take. "That''s absurd!"


    "That was my reaction, too," Rui remarked, continuing. "That wasn''t all. The Martial Artists describedva sharks as being only found in some super-active volcanoes right beside an icy environment with species evolved for it. So, apparently, not only did the Garden of Salvation create an environment perfect for them, but it could also do so with absolutely no limitations."


    "That does not sound real." Kane grew more skeptical.


    "That''s not all?!"


    "They described a mighty titanic tree at the center of the Garden of Salvation," Rui continued. "The tree was so enormous, ording to all ounts, that each of its roots was asrge as a mountain while its trunk dwarfed mountain ranges, extending to altitudes that went beyond even the enormous sensory ranges of Martial Masters."


    "What?!" Kane eximed once more. "Has there ever been a tree thatrge?!"


    "Yes, actually, albeit extremely few," Rui replied. " But those are known trees. And they''re very easily findable due to how enormous they are. What''s absurd about the ounts of the Garden of Salvation is that, despite every single person who described the tree universally agreeing that it was unfathomably enormous, it cannot be found. You would think that the Garden of Salvation would have been found centuries ago, but not even so much as a hint of its existence has been found."


    "There''s no way it''s real, man," Kane insisted. "Think about it: how does a tree thatrge hide?"


    Rui nodded, understanding the skepticism that Kane put forth. "In addition, its size is not the only thing that stood out. They reported that the tree¡­spoke to them."


    Kane''s eyes widened with surprise. "The tree¡­talked?"


    Rui shrugged. "Allegedly, it somehow spoke directly inside their minds."


    Kane stared at him with palpable disbelief.


    "Not my words," Rui smiled wryly. "They called it the Elder Tree. Some say that it is just one of many residents of the Garden of Salvation. However, the mostmon belief is that it oversaw the Garden of Salvation."


    "Uh huh," Kane heaved a sigh. "I can''t believe the Divine Doctor fell for such an obvious scam. Is he really as brilliant as people say he is?"


    "Yes, but regardless of if it is true, it''s definitely true that he believes it," Rui shrugged nonchntly. "Thus, we ought to think like someone who believes it''s true and is looking to find it. Additionally, there''s the fact that he subjected himself to the intense fear hallucinogen that he had crafted after robbing the Forest of Fear of all the fear it had."


    "Wait, he did?"


    "Yeah," Rui nodded. "It was extremely bizarre, but if it''s true that only living beings who need the Garden of Salvation can find it, then¡­"


    Rui''s eyes widened, realization dawning on him as a multitude of thoughts shed through his mind. "Then perhaps he was trying to fake the conditions for entering the Garden of Salvation?"


    "What?"


    "However, inducing fear to fake needing a safe haven only works if the criteria for eptance are neuro-centric," Rui muttered himself. "On top of that, different species have different neurological and endocrinological fear evolutionary mechanisms at y, but maybe¡­"


    "Hey!" Kaneined. "I don''t get it."


    Rui turned to Kane. "My bad. Let''s start at the beginning. What did I tell you the Garden of Salvation was purported for?"


    "A safe haven for those who need it?"


    "Correct." Rui nodded. "And what deductions can be inferred from that?"


    "I dunno, man."


    "What do those who would need a safe haven have inmon?"


    Kane furrowed his eyebrows. "¡­Lacking in safety?"


    "Specifically, an acuteck of safety," Rui specified. "But yes,cking in safety. How would the Garden of Salvation be able to identify those who arecking in safety?"


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1929 Deduced Plan

    Chapter 1929 Deduced n


    ??Kane scratched his fuzzy chin as he considered the question. "I dunno, couldn''t it just observe the circumstances of whichever living being it was evaluating? If it even did that in the first ce."


    "I''m only presuming intelligent intervention because it has the least amount of assumptions out of all possibilities and follows the evidence," Rui calmly replied. "In reality, we don''t know anything about the Garden of Salvation. Including if it exists or not."


    Neither of them had any idea how the Garden of Salvation ''epted'' living beings in need of a safe haven. Or if there was even an intelligent mind that epted and rejected candidates by going through them.


    However, if it existed, considering that those who entered it imed to have entered it when they were in need of a safe haven the most, then, assuming it wasn''t a coincidence, one could infer there was some intelligence that identified living beings who were in need of refuge.


    "So how would this intelligence recognize which beings required a safe haven and which didn''t?" Rui reiterated his question.


    "You don''t think what I said earlier, simply analyzing their circumstances, is a good exnation?" Kane raised an eyebrow.


    "Anything is possible," Rui answered. "However, not all circumstances are easy to parse. Considering the number of living beings alleged to have been in there, the sheer amount of information that said intelligence would need to process is beyond fathoming. Thus, considering the difficulty, I believe it is unlikely that the intelligence, if it even exists, was manually analyzing each potential candidate for entry into the Garden of Salvation."


    "It does sound extraordinarily difficult," Kane admitted. "But what else could it be if not that?"


    "It could be something that all living beings in dire circumstances and in need of a safe haven have inmon," Rui remarked, narrowing his eyes. "Like fear, for example. If the intelligence measured fear, then it could decide very quickly."


    lights¦­¦Ïv¦Ål ?¦Ïm "I suppose that''s possible."


    "After having established that, let us go back to the Divine Doctor," Rui remarked. "He wanted to enter the Garden of Salvation. If he arrived at the same conclusion that I did, that it was much easier for the Garden of Salvation to judge a candidate''s need for a safe haven by emotional parameters such as fear than circumstantial information, then what would someone who wanted to be chosen by the Garden of Salvation need to do?"


    "Be fearful? Wait¡­" Kane''s expression grew stunned as he finally caught on to the train of logic. "You think that the Divine Doctor was hoping to find the Garden of Salvation by making it seem like he was in dire need of a safe haven by consuming the fear-hallucinogen and making it seem like he was in extreme fear. That''s genius!"


    He turned to Rui, marveling at his deductive capabilities. "You figured all of that in a moment?"


    "As the Divine Doctor, I suspect¡­" Rui sharpened his gaze. "If this hypothesis is true, then I suspect that this was his whole n from the very beginning. He arrived at the Valley of Prisms to gain ess to invisibility by bio-engineering the flora of the region and to refine his other chemical weapons. All so that he could enve the obsidian wyverns for the sake of using them to reduce the flora of the Forest of Fear down to the core esoteric substances responsible for the fear of the forest. And that in turn was to create extraordinarily potent fear-hallucinogens. However¡­"


    Rui closed his eyes. "And even all of that was just a part of his full n. Even the fear-hallucinogens of the Forest of Fear were ultimately just a tool to get into the Garden of Salvation. That must have been his true goal."


    "That''s crazy¡­" Kane murmured, staggered by the depth of the Divine Doctor''s n that Rui had deduced and pieced together.Content protected by N?v/el(D)rama.Org.


    Yet, it was a sense of deja vu.


    He nced at his best friend with a wry smile.


    "The question is whether he seeded with his n," Rui remarked, too immersed in his thoughts to notice Kane''s pointed stare. "If he failed, then, frankly, we have nothing to go off of. However, if he seeded, we still have nothing to go off of."


    "¡­Then what now?" Kane stared at Rui.


    Rui considered the matter for several moments.


    They had finally hit a true snag. Rui had hoped that they could keep following the Divine Doctor by learning of his next location through the memories of the animals of the region he had disrupted, but, s, that strategy didn''t work because finding the Garden of Salvation was basically impossible.


    "The location of the Garden of Salvation¡­" Rui narrowed his eyes.


    He knew that it was supposed to be in the northern part of the Beast Domain, on the brink of the Master-level region of the Beast Domain. The reason this was known was that Martial Artists who had left the Garden of Salvation had described environmental parameters that matched up with that particr depth in the Beast Domain.


    As one went deeper into the Beast Domain, the very world around them gradually shifted and grew increasingly hostile to all life. The air grew denser and more opaque and resistant to movement while thend beneath them impeded anything that stood atop it with earthquakes,va, cracks, and ridges.


    Martial Masters who had been epted by the Garden of Salvation insisted that the sky was identical to the region that was considered to be on the brink of the Master-level region. Thus, those who searched for it did so at this particr ring around the northern part of the Beast Domain.


    "We''ll have to go there ourselves." Rui closed his eyes, heaving a sigh.


    "Didn''t you say that many people have searched for the Garden of Salvation?" Kane asked.


    "Yes." Rui nodded. "And now, we''ll be among them."


    He got up, patting the dust off himself. "Let''s go. We don''t have time to waste."


    "Huff¡­" Kane heaved a sigh. "Fun."


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1930 Purpose

    Chapter 1930 Purpose


    The two of them immediately departed from the Forest of Fear, havingpleted all their business.


    Rui had expected to spend days, if not weeks, hunting for Senior-level creatures and scanning them for memories, but surprisingly enough, they hadpleted their business in the Forest of Fear in a matter of hours.


    Of course, Rui would neverin about getting the job done sooner thanter. "What does the Divine Doctor even want from the Garden of Salvation?" Kane asked while they moved through the Beast Domain. "Honestly, what the hell is he even going through all of this for, anyway?"


    It was a good question.


    Unfortunately, Rui didn''t have a good answer.


    "He''s here to diagnose his patient," Rui replied, shrugging. "That''s all I was told by the Beggar Sage."


    "That doesn''t even make any sense."


    "I don''t really care about why he''s here," Rui replied calmly. "As long as he heals my father, he can do whatever the hell he wants. However, knowing why he''s here exactly might help us find him. So that is the only reason why I might care about his reason for venturing into the Beast Domain on his lonesome."


    Rui had many thoughts about the Divine Doctor''s escapades. However, he would be lying if he wasn''t curious about what he wanted with the Garden of Salvation.


    It sounded far-fetched to assume that he had information outside of the information that Rui had not obtained with all his political resources. If that was the case, based on everything that they both knew, Rui was unable to understand exactly what he sought from the Garden of Salvation.


    Perhaps, as a doctor, he was curious about the mechanics at y that allowed for the environment to alter fundamentally to perfectly cater to each and every single individual species. It was usible, but it was slightly disconnected from what the Beggar Sage had told him about the man. It was even possible that the Divine Doctor was looking for his patient in the Garden of Salvation. A patient with a condition so dire that it interested a man who had cured death would certainly be in need of a haven of safety.


    However, the Beggar Sage had told him that the man was in the Beast Domain to diagnose an illness. He had allegedly not gone there to meet a patient. Thus, a hypothesis that seemed quite likely was not true.


    "Huff¡­" Rui shook his head, putting the matter aside. He didn''t know what mischief these madmen were up to, and it wasn''t important.


    The only question was whether the Divine Doctor had actually seeded in his n and how Rui and Kane would sessfully find and enter the Garden of Salvation.


    Unfortunately, Rui had no definitive n this time. He kept revisiting every detail of the Garden of Salvation that he had stored in his Mind Pce ever since then. The ims that it was in the northern part of the Beast Domain came from Martial Masters, who did not require manual transportation to safety, allegedly. Yet once they were let just outside of the Garden of Salvation, they never saw it again.


    Rui found this extremely puzzling because it vited¡­well, everything knew about distance and space. It was almost as if the Garden of Salvation was its own world.


    Or, not real. Belongs to (N)?vel/Drama.Org.


    That was the worst-case scenario.


    If it wasn''t real, then Rui had absolutely nothing to go off of anymore. They would bepletely in the dark.


    The only intelligence that Rui had was that he would have met the Divine Doctor on a beach. But that simply was nowhere near enough information for a blind search. Rui began growing increasingly anxious and fearful of the prospects of finding the Divine Doctor. Everything had been going just fine when Rui had been narrowing down the possibilities of paths forward to regions that had disruptions and then relying on memories to figure out which path the Divine Doctor had taken.


    Now, however, Rui had absolutely no idea which path the Divine Doctor had gone down. While he could try to track down different disruptions and try to stick to the advice of ''follow the unique chaos'' that he had gotten from the Beggar Sage, the issue was that there was too much ground to cover. There were many chaotic disruptions in the Beast Domain, and Rui couldn''t explore all of them without something limiting all the various possibilities.


    "So how are we going to find the Garden Salvation?" Kane asked as they headed towards the northern part of the Beast Domain.


    "Our goal is not to find it," Rui replied. "It''s to enter it."


    Kane understood the subtext of what he conveyed. "So we''re going to try to get in without actually finding it?"


    "Exactly," Rui replied calmly. "I don''t think we can find the Garden of Salvation, certainly not just by searching for it physically. If Martial Artists of higher Realms have tried and failed, then I don''t think I can seed."


    "Well, then what''s the point of going to the northern part of the Beast Domain to where the Garden of Salvation is supposed to be if we''re not going to search for it?"


    "Statistics," Rui answered. "An overwhelming proportion of people who entered the Garden of Salvation did so from the northern hemisphere of the Beast Domain, which lends some credence to the im that it is in the north. It also increases the probability that we''ll get into the Garden of Salvation."


    "Makes sense," Kane admitted. "But surely there''s more, right? Just going to the north of the Beast Domain is not going to do much."


    "Correct," Rui replied with an uncertain tone. "I have some ns. Some of them are a bit, well, questionable."


    Kane threw a dubious nce at Rui. "Just how questionable are we talking about?"


    "So questionable that we will cede the right to talk smack about the Divine Doctor''s questionable ns," Rui smiled wryly. "See, you two are birds of a feather."


    "Is that apliment or an insult?"


    Kane remained silent, refusing to answer.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1931 Difficulty

    Chapter 1931 Difficulty


    Not only did they journey to the northern side of the Beast Domain, but they were also moving radially closer to the center of the Beast Domain. They could clearly notice the growing difficulty of traveling through the Beast Domain.


    The environment grew increasingly hostile to life. Their travel speed slowed down while they also began taking an increasinglyrger number of breaks. Furthermore, the very act of taking a break became challenging because of the number of regions and ces within a region where the two of them could take a break reduced substantially. Belongs to (N)?vel/Drama.Org.


    Everything became harder and harder.


    Even food became significantly more difficult as even the crazy amount of food pills that Rui had prepared were being depleted.


    They began hunting more as a result, relying on their environment for food while going back to the food pills only when the environment had nothing edible to offer. They increasingly began facing adversities that Martial Artists were generally not ustomed to facing.


    The art of surviving became more important than the art of martial affairs: Martial Art. Their inexperience became increasingly painful as the two of them traveled slower and slower than they had hoped, often time regressing back because of poor navigational choices.


    It wasn''t just enough to have a mental map of the Beast Domain, although that certainly did help. The two never got lost in the Beast Domain and were never stranded without having any idea where they were.


    This was estimated to be the fundamental cause of fifty percent of missing adventurers in the Beast Domain. The Beast Domain robbed one of a sense of direction. The extended remain without prepared resources caused being lost or stranded and eventually led to death due to other causes, such as environmental or ecological factors.


    Rui managed to avoid this entirely due to a form of directional-vector tracking on the map of the Beast Domain that he stored mentally. Thanks to this, they always remainedrgely on track, even if Rui''sck of experience with the Beast Domain led him to make the wrong choices every once in a while.


    Yet, that wasn''t the only reason that the two young men managed to avoid death.


    "Stop!" Rui pulled at Kane''s shoulder, preventing him from taking another step.


    Ahead of them was an open ocean filled with mist. Its waters were pitch ck, entirely opaque to anything that wanted to sense it. It was eerie. Yet that alone was hardly anything special.


    Rui and Kane had passed through regions of fiery fires so hellish that one would think it was straight out of Dante''s Inferno. Yet, this one was special.


    Rui knew they ought not to set foot in the water.


    "What''s the matter?" Kane frowned. "I thought you said the Adventurer''s Guild''s data said this region wasrgely barren?"


    Rui didn''t respond with words. Instead, he activated his Martial Heart,unching three Mighty Roar sh sts one after another.


    BOOM BOOM BOOM!


    Three hills of water momentarily erupted into the air under the immense destructive power of a Martial Senior.


    Nothing out of the ordinary to Kane.


    Yet, it was what followed that shook him.


    RUMBLE!


    The entire region began shaking violently. The sea quivered before it began violently spiraling and converging at a distant point.


    Kane''s eyes widened as an enormous whirlpoolrge enough to swallow a mountain appeared on the horizon. At the bottom, a hole as wide as a town appeared.


    At its edges and inside it were countless razor-sharp teeth of all sizes.


    Any and every sea creature that entered the hole ran into them, being shredded on the way in.


    "What the hell is that?!" Kane shrieked with horror.


    "That''s a charybdis," Rui spoke gravely. "The Sea of darkness is filled with them."


    "Oh, hell no!" Kane eximed, backing away from the sea. "How the hell could the Adventurer''s Guild say that it was a safe zone?"


    "Because charybdises are almost impossible to detect. They are extremely good at hiding. They only begin feeding when they sense a magnitude of disturbance within their weight ss," Rui said, heaving a deep sigh. "The adventurer''s Guild relied on adventurer reports for its intel, and any adventurer that ever learned of the charybdis is probably dead. Hence, it was never reported, and the Adventurer''s Guild basically marked it off as a safe zone based on those that never saw it when passing through the region."


    "That''s crazy¡­" Kane perked. "Wait a minute, how did you know it was there?"


    He nced at Rui inquisitively.


    "Prophecy."


    Rui didn''t need to borate.


    This wasn''t the first time that it had happened, either.


    "Man¡­" Kane turned back to the enormous charybdis in the distance swallowing up an entire section of the sea. "What would we do without your grandmother? We''d be dead without her. Turned into food for a sea monster."


    Rui couldn''t deny those words. Charybdises manipted water to increase its friction with other substances, making it almost impossible to escape when one was submerged within it, being dragged and absorbed toward the creature''s mouth.


    While Rui was an extremely powerful Martial Artist, most of his power was born from the timing and cement of movements that perfectly adaptively evolved to counter his opponent. However, timing and cement weren''t really relevant. Sometimes, in such extreme situations, physical power was the only path forward.


    In such a circumstance, the Gatekeeper was probably the only one who could be unafraid.


    "No wonder adventurers die left and right," Kane snorted. "It''s actually crazy that they go in despite such unreliable intel. When I went to the Beast Domain, I only went to the fringes of the Beast Domain. Going any deeper is insane."


    "¡­I had initially been a little irked that my grandmother showed me futures where I die instead of stuff about the Divine Doctor, but¡­" Rui''s tone was relieved. "Now, I''m grateful that she did."


    He would have died before he even reached the Valley of Prisms if not for his grandmother knowing what was best for him.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1932 Higher Aspirations

    Chapter 1932 Higher Aspirations


    ??Because the difficulty of surviving, sustaining, and progressing in the Beast Domain only grew higher the deeper they went, their journey stalled significantly. Of course, while it got harder, it naturally made them stronger.


    Rui forgot what protection felt like during this time.


    He forgot what safety felt like during this perilous voyage through the Beast Domain.


    The fourteen months he had spent under constant protection from Martial Masters might as well as have happened ages ago. While he previously felt like he was stalling and growing rusty due to theck of danger that served as a crucible to forge Martial Artists, now, he felt like he was perhaps in too much danger.


    It shook any rust he thought he had umted off him.


    Now, he had very naturally learned to grow an eye at the back of his head. A state of subconscious alertness in every inch of his environment was absolutely necessary and naturally came.


    That was how omnipresent the perils of the Beast Domain were.


    In the Human Domain, Rui had a lot of confidence in his sensory prowess. If his senses didn''t detect any threats, then he could have a high certainty that there weren''t any threats. While Martial Artists of higher Realms with decent stealth could still hide from him, such a circumstance was extremely unlikely.


    The Beast Domain was different.


    Camouge, stealth, deception... these had all been dialed to eleven in the Beast Domain. Rui had lost count of the number of times that his senses failed to detect threats until the veryst moment, almost getting him and Kane killed.


    It forged him to be a stronger Martial Artist in more than one way.


    THWOOM THWOOM THWOOM THWOOM THWOOM!


    Rui fired off a powerful tier-five Transverse Resonance attack, sting five griffons in the face.


    "RAAAWWWWWWWRRR!" The powerful beasts roared in pain, failing to avoid them as the Pathfinder technique refused to let them escape.


    They swiftly surged, encircling Rui, converging on him.


    Yet, he didn''t so much as budge. Instead, his muscles erged, and his body swelled with enormous power.


    BOOOM BOOOM BOOOM BOOOM BOOOM!


    He felled them each with a single strike, killing them on the spot with enormous raw power. He didn''t often get to test his peak power with Hypertrophic Surge, the boost from the Roaring Dragon Blood potion, along with his offense.


    He hade to the realization that he didn''t have powerful offensive techniques that resonated well with the VOID algorithm and the SOUL System. Thus, it made sense to use Hypertrophic Surge if he was fighting a bnced battle.


    Once hepleted the predictive and SOUL models, his defense and evasion were extremely amped up. The same could not be said for offense. Thus, he strove to use Hypertrophic Surge topensate for this shoring.


    He had noticed this before, even with the predictive model, but it had be extremely exacerbated with the introduction of the SOUL System.


    "RAAAWWWWWWWRRR!" A griffon surged towards Rui, trying to catch him off-guard, yet he didn''t need to intervene.


    SPLAT SPLAT!


    "RAAAWWWWWWWRRR!" The creature screamed in pain as Kane''s dagger dug deeper and deeper into its eyes, going even further.


    The brain.


    The creature fell from the sky lifelessly as Kane smirked. "Thanks. I wouldn''t have been able to kill a high-grade creature all by myself."


    "Good job, let''s get back into hiding."


    Rui was not pleased with his victory.


    He would rather have avoided the fight altogether, but the griffons managed to sniff them out despite Void Step and Phantomind Void. Thus, Rui had shifted his misdirection stealth to Kane, misdirecting attention away from him rather than himself.


    This essentially made Kane extraordinarily undetectable, allowing him to partake in battles that he ordinarily wouldn''t be able to. Regardless, the moment they finished the unavoidable battle, they immediately went into hiding, nervously ncing at the center of the region they were in.


    An enormous mountain that extended many kilometers into the sky stood towered over the entire region.Content is ? by N?velDrama.Org.


    It was not, in fact, a mountain.


    It was an elder golem.


    A Master-level creature.


    Just looking at it sent shivers down their spine.


    It slumbered, unperturbed by its surroundings.


    A single attack from the creature couldy waste to a region spanning more than a hundred kilometers in diameter.


    Rui had been quite nervous about awakening it by their battle, but thankfully, Martial Seniors were too weak to bother it, it appeared.


    "That''s a Master-level creature?" Kane asked for the umpteenth time. "You''re telling me the Kandrian Empire has a hundred fifty of those?!"


    "We are considered a powerhouse for a reason." Rui grew grave. "If it wakes up, just the act of waking up may wipe out all life in the vicinity."


    He felt powerless in the face of such a being. Despite the fact that they were many kilometers away from it, it radiated passive amounts of pressure that rattled him to his very bones.


    He realized how much control and discipline Martial Masters had over their aura. They didn''t let it flood an entire nation and traumatize all the citizens unless they did it on purpose. They didn''t let their power leak unless on purpose. On top of that, they didn''t possess much more raw power than Rui did, generally. However, their minds and cognition had risen to such a level that they could do with the Martial Heart as Martial Apprentices did with normal human power.


    Compared to them, Martial Seniors like Rui were cavemen using rifles as a club.


    The very thought evoked deep dissatisfaction within the depths of Rui''s heart. A deep yearning for that power boiled within the depths of his heart.


    "Hey." Kane''s voice snapped him back to reality.


    "Hm?"


    "We just crossed the final region of the North-West region of the Beast Domain," Kane remarked. "We''re here."


    Rui turned to overlook the view that spread far past the eye could see.


    "The northern region of the Beast Domain," Rui remarked, narrowing his eyes.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1933 Fog of Fear

    Chapter 1933 Fog of Fear


    They had finally reached the northern region of the Beast Domain after months of travel through the Beast Domain. Marked by an enormous mountain range that extended in the northwest direction, Ghar Mountain Range offered them an enormous view of the north of the Beast Domain.


    A vast and diverse world stretched beyond them, filled with all kinds of wonders and miracles that beggared the imagination.


    "Crazy world," Kane remarked, turning towards Rui. "Where to, now?"


    Rui nced to his right. "¡­Deeper into the Beast Domain, of course."


    He gazed in the direction of the center of the Beast Domain, towards which the entirety of the Beast Domain animal kingdom migrated.


    "We are still some distance away from the brink of the Master-level regions of the Beast Domain," Rui continued. "You said we aren''t searching for the Garden of Salvation," Kane raised an eyebrow. "I thought that meant you had some other n of sorts."


    "I do," Rui replied calmly. "I''ll execute it soon. We''ll have to get as close as possible to maximize our chances of getting into the Garden of Salvation."


    "If it exists," Kane heaved a sigh.


    Rui smiled wryly. "Yes, if it exists."


    Rui would have loved to believe that the Divine Doctor was a sane man who would never pursue something that had no physical evidence pointing to its existence. However, he could not say for sure. Everything he learned about the Divine Doctor from the Beggar Sage and the memories of the animals that he scanned suggested he was a maniac.


    A madman.


    Rui, in and of himself, would never try searching for the Garden of Salvation. But now, he had been forced to make ns that assumed its existence and tried to fulfill the conditions needed to get in.


    "Huff¡­" He shook his head. "Let''s go."


    The two of them dove deeper into the Beast Domain, keeping an extremely alert and vignt eye on their surroundings. Both of them had suppressed their auras to the very limit, refusing to draw any attention.


    In the outskirts of the Beast Domain, they let their auras shine loud and bright to scare off the weaker Apprentice and Squire-level creatures of weaker regions.


    But doing that here would get them killed. C0ntent ? 2024 (N/?)velDrama.Org.


    "What an absurdlyrge forest," Kane muttered as he studied the environment around them.


    It was a jungle with lush greenery. From a distance, it was an entirely ordinary sight. Up close, however, one would realize that each of the countless des of grass in the forest was taller than a human being.


    Each tree was an enormous sky-scraper, while every single animal was gargantuan.


    Rui and Kane had been reduced to insects in this region. While Kane marveled at the possibilities of the Beast Domain, Rui experienced a wave of deja vu, recalling that the Great Forest of Hypnonarak had a simr region to it.


    "Master Zeamer must have gotten that part of his forest from this region," Rui smiled wryly. "He''s certainly powerful enough to survive even in this region without any problems."


    Yet, this forest was evenrger than the Great Forest of Hypnonarak. The two Martial Seniors truly felt insignificant in such an enormous region. On top of that, there were especiallyrge creatures even within this already enormous region. RUMBLE!


    The verynds beneath their feet shuddered under the seismic radiation that came from every single step these titanic creatures took.


    Many of them were considered Master-level in that only a Martial Master possessed the power to take them down. Rui and Kane were definitely eager to avoid such massive creatures, but thankfully, it was extremely unlikely that they would be able to catch the attention of such powerful creatures.


    After all, how often does a fly manage to draw the attention of a tiger?


    The biggest issue was that even if they didn''t draw the attention of powerful Master-level creatures, they could still die as a result of their actions. If Rui and Kane were unlucky enough to run into the rampage of the devastatingly powerful creatures, then they would die. At the very least, Kane had absolutely no chance of survival.


    Rui''s senses spiked to peak alertness as he immediately applied the Angel of Lace to the most dangerous threats in the region.


    An elephant. Ordinarily, a creature considered to be on the lower end of the Apprentice Realm was now a bone-chillingly terrifying Master-level creature now that Rui had been reduced to an insect before it.


    Rui''s eyes widened as his predictive model shot him a warning of what was toe.


    "MOVE!" He bellowed in warning as his Martial Heart shed into existence.


    BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!!!!!


    The very world shook as a rampage of enormous buffaloes shook the world around them violently. Radiating cmitic seismic radiation with each gallop.


    "Let''s go!" The two of them activated their Martial Hearts, shooting away from the region at top speeds.


    From the perspective of the animals in the region, the region was actually quite small. But from the perspective of the two Martial Artists, it was far toorge!


    "This ce is crazy!" Kane eximed. "We could die at any minute!"


    "That''s good." Rui''s gaze sharpened.


    "What?!"


    "If you feel that way, that means we''re increasingly closer to the brink of Master-level regions that only Martial Master can survive in," Rui remarked. "Which means we''re closer to the boundary along which the Garden of Salvation exists."


    "Yes, but how the hell are we going to actually enter?!" Kane yelled in frustration.


    "Like this," Rui turned to him, staring him in the eye as he activated a new hypnotic technique.


    "Fog of Fear."


    Suddenly, Kane felt boundless primal fear erupt from within the depth of his heart. It was the most primordial fear that any living creature could experience.


    The fear of death.


    His body stiffened while his muscles clenched and his pupils dted as endless amounts of adrenaline and endorphins were poured into his bloodstream.


    "AAAAAAAAAARGHHH!" Kane broke out into an all-out panic as he shot off. He mindlessly activated Fulminata Godspeed, running away at top speed.


    Rui, on the other hand, maintained his calm andposure, activating Neo Godspeed, his predictive and SOUL models on Kane, trying his best to keep up with the speedster.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1934 Copycat

    Chapter 1934 Copycat


    This was the n that Rui had devised when he realized that the Divine Doctor had gone to the Garden of Salvation. The moment he realized that they needed to enter the Garden of Salvation, he knew that they could not find it through physical search.


    After all, that was why the Divine Doctor chose such an intricate and borate n to extract all the fear from the Forest of Fear.


    It was all for the sake of entering the Garden of Salvation.


    Rui didn''t feel the need to reinvent the wheel.


    The Divine Doctor''s solution was ingenious, and Rui would most likely have arrived at the same solution himself. The difference, of course, was the execution. While the Divine Doctor used his medical and pharmaceutical ingenuity to create extremely potent fear hallucinogens containing the full power of the Forest of Fear, Rui decided to employ one of his own personal strengths and talent: hypnosis.


    Creating a technique that induced fear was not easy; however, it was within his capabilities. If he wanted to generate a fear of death, he needed to hypnotize them to believe that they truly were dying. He needed to nt the very sensations of death in the subconscious mind of the target.


    Thankfully, he knew what death felt like, thus, that was no issue.


    He recalled the smell of death while he was stuck in an ICU room back on Earth at the age of fifty-nine.


    That was what the suggestion he nted in Kane''s mind. Belongs to (N)?vel/Drama.Org.


    He didn''t reveal this n to Kane because awareness reduced the effectiveness of hypnosis. He didn''t want to stack the odds against himself any more than they already were.


    By his estimations, the eptance rate of Martial Artists was barely one percent, even when closest to the region alleged to have the Garden of Salvation. Rui had run the number of Martial Artists in the regions closest to the alleged location of the Garden of Salvation, and when closest, it was still extremely unlikely.


    Thus, to keep Kane in the dark, he developed the technique secretly without ever letting him know the n to ensure its maximum effectiveness. Because it was a hypnotic technique, Rui could develop it within his mind. Of course, he was unable to test it rigorously, which was an important part of the technique development process. On top of that, because he didn''t have much time to develop it, it was not as refined as he would have liked. In addition, it was not abat-oriented technique, unfortunately. At the very least, he would need to know his opponent as well as he knew Kane in order to inspire such enormous amounts of fear.


    Thankfully, the technique appeared to be working exactly as he intended as Kane mindlessly sprinted through the region at top speed. Rui kept up despite being slower, if only because he could predict Kane thoroughly, choosing to take shortcuts to destinations that he foresaw Kane would reach. With such a deep amount of insight into Kane, Rui could also protect him extremely well, making sure to heavily attack anything that dared try approaching him. He did this all while waiting. The region they were was so dangerous that Rui was certain that they were very much within the domain of influence of the Garden of Salvation.


    Regardless of what mechanic the Garden of Salvation used to evaluate whether a living being needed a safe haven, Rui was sure that the two of them satisfied those conditions. He made sure to stick as closely to Kane as possible to ensure that he was associated with him while also naturally having relieved his own death in order to convey it to Kane through subconscious non-verbalmunication. Yet, while his own technique inspired immense fear within his subconscious mind, his conscious mind was able to detach from it, focusing only on his rationality and external awareness. He was only able to do this because his conscious mind knew it was fake. On top of that, there were very real dangers and sources of fear that he truly could not ignore. The region they were in had a much higher density of Master-level creatures than any they had been in before. The fact that the Divine Doctor had attempted something simr despite only being a human being physically was something that shocked Rui now that he was actually going through it.


    This was an environment that would kill normal humans just based on how naturally harsh it was, let alone its powerful ecosystem. However, that worked in his favor for getting into the Garden of Salvation. After all, it meant that his need for a safe haven was much stronger than that of Martial Seniors like Rui and Kane.


    If that was the case, it certainly increased his probability of getting in since he certainly wasn''t faking his need for a safe haven; the madman was genuinely in grave danger.


    Of course, he was immortal, so his soul wasn''t in danger, only his brain and body. The Divine Doctor had been killed many times, yet he just appeared over and over as if his soul could actively transfer from vessel to vessel.


    Unfortunately, Rui and Kane could not astrally detach from their body andtch on to another one; thus, they faced actual death.


    Thus, in hindsight, it could be said that they were even crazier than the Divine Doctor because they could actually die while the bottom line for him was soul-transferring to a new body and being forced to start over again.


    Even as they sprinted through the enormous forest, Rui could not help but feel jealous that they had to actually face the risk of death while the Divine Doctor basically had a save point and could go all over again if he were to meet death.


    Unfortunately, Rui was desperate. Finding the Divine Doctor had easily be one of the most challenging non-martial undertakings of his life. Even Chairman Deacon had not been such an annoying thorn in his side.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1935 Mistaken Challenge

    Chapter 1935 Mistaken Challenge


    ??"AAAAAAAARGH!" Kane continued speeding through the forest without even a hint of slowing down.


    Unfortunately, the region was too dangerous for them to run through it at such high speeds without running into threats.


    THUDContent is ? by N?velDrama.Org.


    "OUCH!" Kane cradled his head as he ran into a gigantic boulder, sting into it powerfully.


    Except the collision made the boulder bleed red blood.


    Which made him realize it wasn''t a boulder at all.


    It was the toe of a giant primate.


    Its toe was sorge that it was easy to mistake it for a giant boulder. Yet when one beheld its entire body, the true size of the creature became clear to all of them. Each strand of fur was like arge pir to Rui and Kane. Its entire body was absolutely enormous as a whole.


    "Hrrfff¡­" it huffed lightly as it noticed incredibly minute but strangely powerful creatures that pricked at its toe.


    It was somewhat unusual as size usually had a strong corrtion with power in the Beast Domain. While there were plenty of notable exceptions, arge majority of powerful creatures that could only be dealt with by Martial Artists of higher Realms were powerful because of their size.


    Its eyes widened with hunger as it felt the remarkable potent power of the Martial Heart.


    Powerful predators required powerful prey. After all, they needed a source of energy to sustain their incredible power.


    Rui''s expression grew grave as its hand reached out to the two of them, eager to pick them up and gobble its small but powerful prey in a single go.


    Yet, what was a simple, rxed gesture to the primate was nothing short of a life-threatening attack of devastating power to Rui and Kane!


    "AAAAAARGHH!!!" Kane tried running away from the creature in raw terror and in vain.


    "Hrrf¡­" it huffed as its hand surged forward, reaching for him.


    BOOOM!!!


    Rui''s expression grew fierce as he sted the enormous hand away with a powerful tier-five Transverse Resonance.


    It took him his most powerful attack just to deflect a rxed and casual gesture.


    The eyes of the primate turned aggressive. It inhaled deeply, causing an enormous suction force that pulled Kane back even as he tried running away at top speed in a panic.


    WHOOOOOOSH!


    "Rgh!" Rui gritted his teeth, doing his best to resist the suction force as his expression grew grave.


    He knew what was toe.


    And it came swiftly.


    ''Breathing Crucifix!''


    "RRRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRGRHHRGHR!" The creature let out a bellow that was more powerful than anything he had ever heard in his entire life.


    BOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!!!!!


    The sheer power of the scream had it not been dispersed, would have killed Rui and Kane then and there. Rui had pulled Kane to him while barely firing off a tier-five Transverse Resonance to neutralize as much of the power as he could.


    Yet, not even that was enough.


    "Rgh!" The two of them grimaced as a devastatingly powerful impact crashed into them. Even though it was just a tiny speck of the total power of the bellow, it still overwhelmed Rui''s counter.


    BOOOOOM!!!


    Vegetation was erased.


    Land was uprooted.


    RUMBLE!


    Heaven and earth screamed as the wave of pure destruction went on to annihte all thend around them, yielding a crater farrger than anything Rui had ever seen. It was as though an enormous meteorite had struck the region, wiping out all life within a dozen kilometers of the impact, leaving only a deep abyss formed by its sheer power.


    Not even Chairman Deacon''s suicide bomb had unleashed such world-shattering devastation.


    Not even the Gatekeeper at the very pinnacle of his output had matched the sheer destruction that had graced the world.


    The attack had knocked Kane out, breaking most of the bones in his body even after Rui shielded him with Nemean Blossom while he himself had been left bleeding across his body.


    Rui''s expression grew grave as the powerful creature approached them with greater eagerness and hunger. What was an extraordinarily powerful


    Rui grew grave as he activated a powerful Mind Mask, ring as much bloodlust as he could.


    It was a Master-level Mind Mask.


    The obsidian wyverns, being extremely sensitive to fear, had been able to see through it, but he highly doubted that a dim-


    witted primate would be able to.


    He was right.


    Unfortunately, what he was wrong about was believing that being stronger would deter the creature away from him.


    He was dead wrong.


    A fake Master-level aura erupted from deep within Rui''s mind.


    The many Senior-level creatures in the region ran away in fear.


    However, while it drove away weaker creatures, it only drew stronger creatures!


    It only drew other Master-level beasts from across the entire region who sensed the projected bloodlust.


    It was a challenge.


    It was a mistake.


    RUMBLE!!!


    Rui shuddered with horror as he understood the blunder of his choice.


    The first to arrive was a crow so enormous that its wings were asrge as the town of Hajin. They snuffed out the sunlight, returning the entire region to darkness. Its pitch-


    ck eyes bore into Rui''s, evaluating him.


    SSSSSS!


    Chills crawled across his skin as a giant cobra slithered to the area from the forest of the region, crushing mountain ranges as it made its way to Rui, its tongue flicking up and down.


    CLICK CLICK CLICK


    His horror only grew when he saw a massive spider emerge from the region. Despite its enormous size, it didn''t so much as send even a slight tremor or release the slightest vibration.


    Yet the feat only shook him more.


    BOOOOOOOOM!!!


    Rui''s eyes widened with shock as a tsunami erupted from the sea in the region, rushing over to where he Rui was.


    Yet the water never dispersed.


    It stayed together, slowing down. Within it, an enormous sharkfortably swam, manipting the water to remain around it.


    RUMBLE!!!


    An unfathomable amount of seismic radiation erupted from deep within thend. An enormouslyrge and powerful creature hurtled towards Rui from underground.


    BOOOOOM!!!!


    Rui froze in terror as he recognized the enormous mountain of a creature rising from within the ground.


    An earthen basilisk.


    One that had managed to survive and consume long enough to be a Master-level creature.


    The six Master-level creatures of the region had arrived at the challenge that Rui had issued to all of them, beholding him Rui with bloodlust.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1936 Combined Confrontation

    Chapter 1936 Combined Confrontation


    The six Master-level creatures were not only the apex predators of the region but also its rulers in many ways. These aggressive territorial creatures had risen victorious in hunts and territory disputes over many centuries, growing stronger and stronger with each victory until they reached their current size and degree of power.


    It was a feat that could not be understated.


    Competition in the Beast Domain was extraordinarily brutal, not just because it was inherently highlypetitive but also because of continuous human encroachment and annexation of Beast Domain territory. This continuously forced even greater inward migration, increasing density and, thus,petition.


    What could be said of the creatures that rose victorious over centuries in such apetitive environment?


    What could be said of monsters that had been forged in the crucibles of the Beast Domain to be the undisputed rulers of their region?


    At the very least, Rui had no words to describe them.


    The monkey, the crow, the snake, the spider, the earthen basilisk, and the shark each radiated bloodlust as they beheld the creature that had challenged them.


    As highly territorial creatures, it was not a challenge that they could ignore. It was not a challenge that they were willing to dy, either.


    A single meaning radiated from their non-verbalmunication.


    Impudent human.


    Raw horror erupted from within Rui as the creatures leaped into action, converging on him. RUMBLE!!!!!


    Heaven and earth shook violently, rocked to their very core as the six Master-level creaturesunched six extraordinary attacks at him.


    Thebined might of six Master-level attacks converged onto where he stood.


    Rui never stood a chance from the very beginning.


    BOOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMMMMMMMMM!!!!!!!!


    The resulting explosion from the sheer weight of their attacks far exceeded anything that the Martial Senior had been hit with. The devastating power that ensued tore the world asunder.


    Nature itself mourned as the power that the six Master-level creatures spread.


    They spread far beyond the region.


    The ripples from their powers caused earthquakes to ravage regions beyond theirs. They caused many hurricanes and tornadoes to erupt in the surrounding regions.


    The topography of the native region of the six Master-level creatures had been altered beyond recognition. The catastrophic power of the six Master-level creatures exceeded that of natural cmities. When exerted, the very world around them bent to their power. It was power far beyond that of the Senior Realm.


    It took a long time for the world to settle from the destruction that the six Master-level creatures had unleashed. When the dust settled, the impudent Martial Senior was gone.


    Not even ashes remained.


    It was as though thebined devastation that the six apex rulers of the region had erased him from the very world around them. The impudent human was doomed from the very beginning


    In fact, the oue was so incredibly one-sided that the six Master-level creatures could not help but wonder why the impudent human had been confident enough to challenge them.


    Usually, whether due to intelligence or a sense of self-preservation, the creatures that challenged them were not too below them. Even if they were weaker, they usually weren''t so to a degree where the six of them could effortlessly dominate them; otherwise, they would have never issued a challenge in the first ce. Content protected by N?v/el(D)rama.Org.


    In this case, however, for the first time in their life, they had been issued a challenge by someone powerful enough to warrant being taken seriously but ended up being weaker than any of their previous challengers.


    They were not particrly surprised by the creature''s size. They had faced enough Martial Masters in the past to know that these creatures, despite their diminutive size, were able to exert unfathomable power. In the past, there had been many such Martial Masters who were strong enough to fight all six of them together.


    With unfathomable speed, power, and defense and a ming-bogglinglyplex and sophisticated fighting style, each of the six Master-level creatures had quickly learned that they could not fight against Martial Masters by themselves.


    They were often toocking by themselves.


    Oftentimes, they were far too slow to even touch Martial Masters; sometimes, they were too vulnerable. Other times, they simply had no solution to the absurd techniques that these annoying creatures used.


    Whether it was things like misdirection or hypnosis, poison or weapons, as well as powerful forces that they didn''t even understand. Just the fact that these monsters had absolute control and mastery over their power allowed them to wield it like surgeons, leaving the beasts and monsters of the Beast Domain feeling primitive and paltry inparison.


    Then there was the fact that these creatures could transform into an entirely different existence, bing inscrutable to fight!


    It was unfathomable.


    They were gods of war. Monsters of conflict. Beings born for the sole sake ofbat in the eyes of powerful beasts and monsters of the Beast Domain. That was why all six of them hade to fight Rui together when they sensed the familiar aura of a Martial Master. Only the six of them together possessed the power to defend their territory from the overwhelming might of Martial Masters. These experiences made them wary of the human domain from which these beings came. Who knew just what kind of horrors it held?


    That was also why they were barely able to coexist. If not for the pressure from the Human Domain and the Martial Artists that scoured it, these creatures would have long begun challenging each other for absolute dominance.


    Each of the six creatures nced at each other, flummoxed, before going back to their sections of the forest. They each had imed about a sixth of the region that suited them, uncaring for the other parts.


    They each returned, grateful that what was shaping up to be a destructive fight with a powerful foe turned out to be a false rm with a weakling whom they annihted with ease.


    s, they didn''t understand just how wrong they were in that regard.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1937 Sought Explanation

    Chapter 1937 Sought Exnation


    Rui opened his eyes.


    A deep sense offort saturated every cell of his body. So much so that he felt reluctant to even move.


    To even think.


    "What¡­?" He frowned hazily.


    His confusion was palpable.


    He didn''t know where he was.


    He didn''t know what was happening.


    He was unable to connect his current circumstances to his memories.


    He didn''t even understand what he didn''t understand.


    On the ceiling above was a picture of Bruce Lee. John had stered it on his ceiling when he moved in, all so that thest thing he would see before the world went dark was Bruce Lee taking his iconic and ssic stance.


    A surge of nostalgia erupted within Rui.


    Yet, it also felt wrong.


    He turned to the side groggily inspecting.


    [8:59 AM] His eyes widened with shock.


    A digital clock listed the time in Arabic numerals and English letters stared him in the eye. It had been thirty-three years, yet he could never forget the numbers andnguage from his previous life. After all, John used to work with them all the time.


    Rui''s eyes turned to the rest of the room, utterly shaken by what they saw.


    There were posters of Bruce Lee across the entire room, featuring different iconic moments as well as his most famous and profound quotes. Including the one that would go on to be his life''s greatest ambition and his Martial Path.


    [Be water, my friend.]


    A thundering realization finally struck him as his groggy mind finally woke up fully. "This¡­" He whispered, thoroughly bewildered to the depths of his heart. "This was my apartment back in my previous life."


    Having purchased it in Manhattan, New York, long before real estate prices rose, he had lived even longer in this ce than he did in the Quarrier Orphanage. It was identical to how he remembered it, identical to how it was in his Mind Pce.


    However, he was certain that he was not in his Mind Pce.


    No.


    There was no doubt that this was the real physical world.


    And yet, he was standing in a ce that was supposed to be in an entirely different world from the one Rui had been reborn in.


    He walked over to the window, mind-boggled, as he peered through it.


    He was not ready for what he saw.


    His eyes widened with unadulterated raw shock as a world, unlike anything he had ever seen, stretched far beyond what the eye could see. A world with countless living beings of countless species.


    From deadly apex predatory species like dragons, phoenixes, liches, basilisks, kirins, krakens, and hydras to docile herbivorous species like catoblepas, ckhinds, unicorns, pegasi, kitsunes, and jackalopes. From ordinary garden-variety vegetation to the most esoteric and powerful flora.


    This world had all of them.


    They lived in harmony, side by side, in a vast bountiful world that altered itself to cater to its residents.


    It was inconceivable. So much so that one would have dismissed it as fiction.


    Yet, a thundering realization dawned on him as his sharp vision discerned the obscured enormous structure in the deep distance.


    A tree.


    It was so unfathomably gigantic that one would mistake it for topography if one didn''t pay attention. It radiated a profoundly tranquil sense of power unlike anything Rui had ever felt in his entire life.


    It was at that moment that everything clicked.


    A flood of memories rushed back to Rui.


    While following Kane in his artificially induced state of panic, they stumbled into a Master-level creature by ident. Rui tried deterring the creature with the Master-level Mind Mask, but it had backfired horrifically as several more Master-level creatures appeared.


    Rui recalled the horror he felt during the final moments of that encounter as each creature pounced on them with an unfathomable amount of devastating power. And that was when the very world around him had shifted. "It worked¡­" Rui whispered, stunned.


    They had seeded in getting into the Garden of Salvation.


    The weight of this realization was heavy. It was difficult to fullyprehend even as Rui wrapped his mind around it. Before, he didn''t even know if the Garden of Salvation was real.


    Now, however, he had entered it.


    A magical world said to be of paradise. An amazed smile emerged on his face as he realized that the Garden of Salvation had protected them at the very final moment. Thebined effects of Kane''s artificially induced horror and his own very real horror from having faced Master-level beasts in he flesh seemed to have been enough to trigger their eptance into the Garden of Salvation.


    He nced at the various creatures in their various habitats with awe.


    The rumors didn''t lie.


    The world did adapt to their needs.


    He nced around his environment as realization dawned on him. "Memories¡­" He whispered. "That must be it. It taps into the memories of the creature to recreate the perfect environment for the creature."


    That would exin why he found himself in a room that didn''t belong in this world. It would exin why the room was identical to the one that he had baked in his Mind Pce. The world must have tapped into his memories to recreate the environment that the creature had spent the most time. In his case; his apartment in New York.


    He nced back at the window, staring out into the massive expansive scenery out in the distance as his bewilderment only grew. What truly was the Garden of Salvation?


    How could such a cee to exist?


    Why did such a cee to exist?


    How did it bring him here from the cusp of certain death?


    Questions that were previously asked in skepticism and intrigue were now reiterated with unadulterated astonishment and raw bewilderment.


    "Awake, huh?" Rui jolted as Kane''s voice broke out of his reverie, turning to see his best friend.


    "Kane¡­" Rui murmured.


    The man walked over to Rui, staring at him for a moment. Content is ? by N?velDrama.Org.


    BAM!


    "Ouch!" Rui grimaced. "What was that for?!"


    Kane stared at him wordlessly.


    "Oh¡­right, my bad," Rui apologized, a smile twitching at the edge of mouth.


    BAM!


    "You already hit me once."


    "You''re not sorry."


    BAM BAM BAM!


    "Ok ok!" Rui suppressed his smile. "I''m sorry, see?"


    Kane sharpened his eyes, peering at him suspiciously, only for the smile to return.


    BAM BAM BAM!


    Ruiughed even as Kane threw a flurry of jabs at him, beating him up until he was satisfied.


    "With that out of the way¡­" Kane huffed cathartically.


    His expression grew serious as his eyes sharpened.


    His tone darkened.


    "You wanna exin what this room around me is?"


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1938 A Simple Question

    Chapter 1938 A Simple Question


    ??Rui''sughter froze.


    His stomach dropped as he recalled where they were standing.


    In a room full of alien symbols, alien technology, and alien culture.


    No sane person could possibly ignore that.


    Kane certainly didn''t.


    The air grew heavy as his eyes bore into Rui''s.


    He could not hide his uncertainty.


    "I have no idea how, but when I woke up, I found myself in the quarters I''d spent all my life living in after leaving my family." Kane''s voice was mirthless. "I kinda figured your quarters to be the Quarrier Orphanage, since you''ve lived your entire life there, but this¡­"


    He nced around. "I''m not the most knowledgeable person, but I don''t think there is any ce on the Panama Continent that looks like this."


    He turned to Rui. "Either this ce made a mistake or¡­"


    Rui closed his eyes. "It isn''t."


    At that moment, all the fascination and awe that he had been feeling for having beheld the Garden of Salvation dropped. All the relief for having survived what would have been absolute death disappeared. The curiosity that had been brimming in his mind was snuffed out in just a moment.


    Kane stared at Rui with confusion and uncertainty.


    It was understandable.


    He had just learned that the home where Rui had spent the most time was not the Quarrier Orphanage.


    To say that he was utterly shell-shocked to the very core of his being would be an understatement.


    Kane had woken up earlier than Rui, mesmerized by the environment, yet when he found Rui''s quarters beside his own, he was utterly paralyzed by what he saw inside. The idea that Rui had lived somewhere else even longer than then he had the Quarrier Orphanage.


    It didn''t even parse.


    His heart palpitated when Rui denied it being a mistake.


    In truth, he had already known that it probably wasn''t. However, if Rui had just told him that it was all a mistake and he had no clue why his ce looked so alien, then Kane would have taken him at his word, regardless of whether he was lying or not.


    Yet, Rui affirmed that this was the truth.


    Kane stared at him like he was a different person.


    How could he not?


    How could it not utterly alter the very foundations of who he had thought Rui was in the depths of his mind?


    "I¡­consider it my deepest secret."


    Rui''s tone was severe.


    The atmosphere grew taut, boiling with tension.


    "I am a person from another world."Content is ? by N?velDrama.Org.


    Kane''s eyes widened.


    "I was born, raised, and lived out a whole life in another world. I died in another world. And then¡­"


    He opened his eyes, meeting Kane''s shocked gaze. "¡­then I was reborn in this world."


    Kane froze at that exnation.


    "¡­What?"


    Rui heaved a deep sigh. "I know it can be hard to e-"


    "Wait." Kane did a double take. "You''re from another world? Doesn''t that mean you''re legitimately the Antithesis?"


    Rui''s expression darkened. "Don''t bring that up."


    "Damn¡­" Kane startedughing. "So that religious Master was right the whole time? You did her dirty."


    Rui red at him while Kane indulged himself,ughing at his friend''s expense. "I can''t believe you''re so rxed about this."


    Kane stared at him silently.


    Fear gripped Rui''s heart.


    Fear of rejection.


    There weren''t too many people who had such a sway over him.


    Kane was one of them.


    What if he shunned him for being an alien?


    What if he shunned him for deceiving him their entire friendship?


    What if¨C


    "Why are you looking at me like that?"


    Kane''s voice broke him out of his daze.


    He stared at Rui with clear eyes.


    "We''re friends, aren''t we?"


    A simple question.


    Yet, it pped him in the face.


    Rui stared at him for a moment before breaking into a smile.


    "...Yeah, we''re friends."


    "I swear sometimes you forget the most basic shit." Kane snorted. "Besides, it all makes so much sense in hindsight."


    Kane''s eyes wandered around as he revisited old memories.


    "Yourposure and maturity, even when we were thirteen, were exactly what they are today. Almost as if you were an adult the entire time. Then there''s the fact that you were extraordinarily knowledgeable. Your extreme affinity for thought even when we were kids. It''s crazy, but it all makes sense."


    He turned to Rui. "¡­What was your previous life like?"


    Rui smiled wryly. "I''m sure you can figure that out."


    "You''re right. Let me guess, you were a famous Martial Artist obsessed with Martial Art and adaptive evolution or something. What Realm did you reach? Wait, did you just do a convincing job of fooling me that you were new to each Realm in this life?"


    It appeared that the moment the initial shock subsided, Kane''s curiosity had gotten the better of him.


    Yet Rui shook his head. "There was neither Martial Art nor Martial Artists in my previous life. There were martial artists."


    Rui uttered in English.


    "Uh¡­what?"


    "Basically, the concept of cultivating human potential Realm by Realm did not exist," Rui remarked. "You recall the foundationalbat styles that the Academy taught to freshmen? That''s the only thing we had."


    Kane shook where he stood as he stared at Rui in disbelief. "What?! That''s crazy! You lived in a world without Martial Art?!"


    Rui heaved a sigh, nodding his head. "Though obsessed withbat sports, I was. I was a sports schr and a specialist in mixed martial arts. A niche field within sports science of which I was the leading authority."


    "I''m not even surprised. I literally can see it; it''s so easy to believe."


    "Also, you were correct about one thing."


    "Oh?"


    Rui smiled. "I was obsessed with adaptive evolution from the very start."


    He gestured to a Bruce Lee poster on the wall. "That man there uttered a quote that would go on to be my life''s greatest ambition and my Martial Path."


    Kane''s curiosity only grew. "You can''t say all that and not tell me what he said."


    Rui''s smile widened. "He said, ''Be Water, my friend.''"


    "Oh, he was your friend?"


    "¡­No."


    "Then¡ª"


    "That''s not the part I was hoping you would focus on." Rui furrowed his eyebrows at him, earning a smirk.


    The atmosphere lightened as the two of them bantered back and forth. The initial shock of the revtion had worn off even though Kane was far from processing everything he had heard.


    Perhaps he was able to shake it off because it didn''t change the bottom line.


    Regardless of where Rui came from, he would pursue his Martial Path. And Kane would do his best not to be left behind by his friend.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1939 Otherworldly Knowledge

    Chapter 1939 Otherworldly Knowledge


    Very few things would have been able to draw their attention away from the fantastical Gard of Salvation. The revtion that Rui was a being from another world who had been reborn in this world was, in fact, one of them.


    Once Kane calmed down, his curiosity revved into top gear. "Does dying hurt?"


    "What did you guys have if not Martial Art?"


    "How old were you when you died?"


    "Did you guys look like how we do?"


    "Was the esoteric stuff of your world different from ours?"


    Rui patiently answered each and every single one of them, hoping he would run out of questions as soon as possible. But s, he didn''t. He patiently absorbed all of Rui''s answers, deeply pondering them.


    "What do you mean you didn''t have esoterics?" Kane tilted his head in confusion.


    "My old world didn''t have magical substances capable of magical feats," Rui replied. "We have to do make to do with regr old materials and substances."


    Kane''s eyes widened with shock. "What?! Man, you guys had it rough, huh? I can''t imagine how much life sucked."


    Rui winced at his reaction. "Well, while there are many, many things that can be aplished via esoterics. You would be shocked by how much can be aplished with normal stuff just by gaining a deeper understanding of their properties and thews that govern them." C0ntent ? 2024 (N/?)velDrama.Org.


    Kane raised an eyebrow. "Oh yeah? Like what?"


    Rui smirked. "Like sending people to the moon without esoterics or Martial Art."


    Kane scoffed in skepticism.


    "I''m not kidding." Kane, too, realized that. "¡­Seriously?"


    Rui nodded. "It''s why I am not as optimistic as other Martial Artists that Martial Art will forever remain the dominant force in this world. The power of science and technologybined with the magic of esoteric phenomena will yield abination that is probably more powerful than anything we can ever imagine."


    Sometimes, Rui contemted that possibility deeply. What if someone in this world eventually came up with Newton''s Theory of Gravity, Maxwell''s Theory of Electromaism, and, more importantly, Einstein''s Theory of Rtivity that led to the discovery of the equivalence between matter and energy?


    The world will have gained ess to enormous destructive power on top of what they already had. Yet, as bad as that was, what made Rui nervous as a Martial Artist was IT; information technology. It was one of the few avenues where modern Earth was vastly superior to human civilization on the Panama Continent.


    The cost of production of IT in this world was high due to relying on expensive magical, esoteric substances that were not avable widely. That same limitation made it such that only the top one percent could have ess to reliable information ormunication technology.


    If they reached even a fraction of what Earth had been capable of in the twenty-first century, then he had strong reason to believe that the dominance of Martial Artists could be under grave threat.


    Powerfulputer systems could be used to engage in the processing of information needed for weapons to keep up with Martial Artists to even a minor degree. The inability of the esoteric weaponry and artillery, wielded by humans, to keep up with Martial Artists was the primary reason that Martial Artists were the most powerful weapon in the Age of Martial Art.


    Even if the former possessed far more raw destructive power, being able to effectively target and take down Martial Artists before they moved at extraordinary speeds and dismantled any artillery or siege establishment was impossible.


    "Wait, doesn''t that mean you could damage Martial Art a lot if you spread that knowledge?" Kane asked nonchntly.


    Yet he had touched on a sensitive topic.


    Rui was not a physicist or an engineer, but he did have a degree in physics and had developed a foundation in a lot of fields that were relevant tobat sports research in some way or the other.


    He had a lot of knowledge that could change the world. He had been¡­limited in his spreading of the knowledge because he feared the changes it could bring about to the broader society around them. Especially the negative changes that harmed Martial Art.


    That was the reason that his divulging of knowledge from Earth was done only for the sake of Martial Art and never without it. He didn''t mind releasing such knowledge as long as it benefitted Martial Art.


    However, he believed that eventually, the human domain of the Panama continent would progress and reach Earth''s understanding of non-esoteric reality. The human civilization in this world was identically intelligent to that of his previous life. Thus, there was no cognitive barrier to making the progress he had known in his previous life.


    The only reason that they had yet to do so was because most research was directed towards esoteric sciences that studied more fascinating and fantastical manifestations of reality. Thus, if Rui truly wanted to adaptively evolve to any and everything, then it was something that could not be avoided.


    "I could damage Martial Art if I spread it hazardously," Rui answered his question promptly. "But I believe that Martial Artists can benefit from it just as much as they could be hurt by it. Ultimately, I will strive to do what is best for Martial Art. Not just for the sake of Martial Art, but also for my own personal ambitions. It will be much better for me if Martial Arts as a whole can deal with what is toe because I intend to be the strongest of them all."


    "Hmmm¡­" Kane grew absorbed in thought. "Do you have a n for how you''re going to do that?"


    "¡­No," Rui admitted. "It''s not something that I n out. I do not care to take the effort of nning out something as extravagant as the integration of knowledge from my previous world into the human civilization of Gaia. What little I have already done came about naturally from sharing my techniques with the Martial Union."


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1940 Everything I Need

    Chapter 1940 Everything I Need


    He had shared several techniques in the past that contained bits and pieces of knowledge from his previous life. He believed that that was good enough, for the most part. There was no need to elerate to try and integrate greater amounts of science into Martial Art organically.


    Additionally, he knew very little about how Martial Artists of the Upper Realms fought; it was entirely possible that they had already integrated some concepts of science into their Martial Art. After all, he had already seen Sage Sayfeel warp space itself to propel them forward.


    "Interesting¡­" Kane murmured after the initial wave of questions subsided. "Crazy stuff, man. Also, I might be thirty-three yearste but wee to this world. Hope you enjoy your stay."


    Rui chuckled in response. "It''s been a good life thus far."


    Just not being shackled by crippling asthma was more than he could have imagined and asked for in his previous life. However, then being able to literally live his dream was something that John could have never imagined.


    While his current life had its ups and downs, it was ultimately a more splendid life than he had ever hoped. "If I can just find this Divine Doctor¡­" Rui murmured, ncing out the window.


    He didn''t know if the Divine Doctor had even sessfully made it to the Garden of Salvation. In some moments, he did a double-take at the notion that he himself entered the Garden of Salvation.


    "Come on¡­" He got up as his eyes sparkled with curiosity. "I can no longer dy exploring this crazy world."


    He exited the room, taking to the skies. The higher he reached, the further he could see.


    Yet, he could never see its end.


    He never saw a boundary or anything resembling one.


    He continued elevating to greater heights, yet the Garden of Salvation never once revealed a limit.


    It was a world that stretched far beyond even the most distant horizon.


    "Just what¡­?" He murmured softly.


    Just what was this world?


    The magnificent paradise stretched out far beyond anything he had ever seen. He could never have imagined that such a ce truly existed in the Beast Domain. In fact, even at this very moment, he had a hard time believing that it was true.


    "So¡­" Kane caught up with him. "What''s the n? Surely you don''t intend to manually look for the dude here, right?"


    "Well, that was never the n anyway; scanning memories is better than scanning the environment," Rui replied calmly. "But¡­"


    "Yeah," Kane nced at the vastnd spread across an enormous expanse of a biosphere. "No way you can possibly scan all their memories. Especially the one that can kill you in a heartbeat."


    Neither of them had missed the presence of several Master-level creatures in the distance. An enormous orange dragon sat solitarily atop a volcanic mountain, monopolizing the entire ce for itself. It was smaller than the Master-level creatures Rui had faced before getting transported here, yet it felt far more perilous.


    On the other hand, a bird of mes nested itselffortably in an active volcano.


    It, too, was a creature that sent chills down his spine. These were prideful solitary creatures that had very little qualms of reducing any and everything around them to ashes. Rui would rather avoid them as much as possible.


    However, while the fauna and flora were truly a spectacr sight to behold, it wasn''t what truly drew his attention.


    No.


    It was the world that cradled them that drew his attention. He watched as it altered the very fabric of its existence to perfectly suit the needs of the creatures it hosted. It was one thing to hear questionable secondhand ounts of it and another to actually witness and experience it himself.


    He bore witness to the Garden of Salvation in the flesh.


    He watched, with all his senses, as the Garden of Salvation warped heaven and earth to their very root.


    Chemicalposition. Density. Geometry. Mass distribution. Pressure. Heat. sticity. Friction. Conductivity. Optical density.


    All of it.


    All of it constantly changed and altered to perfectly cater to each creature, like a custom-tailored suit. It was a level of heaven-bending and earth-bending beyond anything he could fathom, the likes of which he didn''t know was even possible. Yet, as mind-boggling as the domain-bending was, it still wasn''t what truly shook Rui to his core.


    No.


    It was the purpose and the direction of the domain bending that truly shook him to his core.


    A single whisper escaped him.


    "Adaptive evolution."


    Bending heaven and earth to adaptively evolve to a specific target. It was precisely this core principle that Rui had centered the Yggdrasil System around. Yet, today, he hade across a world that embodied that principle more than he had ever fathomed possible.


    While the Yggdrasil System adaptively evolved the world to harm its target, the Garden of Salvation adaptively evolved the world to protect its target. It used the power of adaptive evolution to create a paradise that served as a safe haven for countless lives.


    It was a world that embodied adaptive evolution far more than Rui did.


    Yet, this revtion didn''t dishearten him.


    No.


    "This world is everything I need." A glint of greed shed in his eyes as he broke intoughter. "With the help of this world, I can elevate the Yggdrasil System to even greater heights."


    A gleeful cackle reverberated through the depths of the Garden of Salvation as a maelstrom of greed, desire, and ambition surged from deep within the depths of his heart.


    "Oh boy¡­" Kane murmured as he watched Rui descend into unhingedughter, heaving a sigh. "We''re going to be here a while, aren''t we?" Belongs to (N)?vel/Drama.Org.


    Rui didn''t even hear him over the sound of a storm of thoughts and emotions raging within the depths of his mind. It raced into action as he processed every single iota of data he had on the Garden of Salvation.


    He felt like he was on the cusp of learning an important truth.


    "Come on, we''re going to explore this ce."


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1941 Deductions

    Chapter 1941 Deductions


    ??"Listen, I''m not trying to dampen your excitement, but you didn''t forget why we came to the Garden of Salvation in the first ce, right?"


    Rui paused. "Right..."


    In truth, he had almost gotten carried away in his excitement.


    However, the reason that they had entered the Garden of Salvation was to find the Divine Doctor, who had embarked on a voyage to find it. Rui heaved a sigh, ncing at all the animals that peacefully lived in the Garden of Salvation. "Alright, let''s get started. I can do what I need to while observing the Garden of Salvation."


    His goal was to study how the Garden of Salvation manipted its environments to suit the many living beings that resided in this world. In addition, he also wanted to understand what environments suited what animals.


    The reason he cared for thetter was because understanding what was perfectly suited for a species was the same as understanding what was perfectly suited against a species as well.


    After all, if Rui learned that a given species required, and had evolved specifically for, an environment with great pressure and heat to remain healthy, then he could logically infer that the best environment to counter said species would be one with low pressure and low heat.


    Thus, by doing that for all species in the Garden of Salvation, he could learn everything that he needed to know how to counter them based on the information that he learned from the Garden of Salvation on each of them.


    The best part was that he could do all of this by simply observing each creature and its corresponding environment while he scanned their memories for the Divine Doctor.


    "Come on, let''s get started," Rui remarked, flying down to the many living beings hosted in the Garden of Salvation. "We''ll start scanning them one by one, and when we''ve found intelligence on the Divine Doctor, we''ll try to get out of here."


    Kane peered at him suspiciously. "Really?"


    "...Well, we''ll see."


    "I knew it." Kane snorted.


    "Give me a break." Rui grinned as the two of them arrived at their first candidates.


    A group of germanian boars nced up at Rui, who arrived before them.


    BADUMP!


    Rui didn''t even bother waiting, activating both Soul Void to put them into a trance.


    POP


    "Huh?" His eyebrows furrowed. "Did my domain just...?"


    "What happened?" Kane raised an eyebrow. "Get on with it; we don''t have all day."


    Rui frowned, activating Soul Void again.


    POP


    His eyes widened with shock as his domain broke once more. "Something is interfering with my domain!"


    "What?" Kane stared at Rui, confused. "Who?"


    Rui tried it onest time, just for good measure. Using all his power to preserve its integrity.


    POP


    It was to no avail.


    "It must be the Garden of Salvation..." Rui muttered. "But why won''t it allow me to use my domain?"


    RUMBLE...


    The two froze as they felt a hint of peril.


    An aura of unfathomable power washed over them. One that exceeded anything that Rui had ever felt before.


    A single whisper echoed within the depths of their minds.


    Your attempt at infringing on the refugees of the Garden of Salvation shall not be permitted.


    Rui and Kane both leaped away.


    "Who''s there?!" Kane drew his daggers, ncing around them.


    Several moments passed as nothing happened.


    "¡­Was that the Garden of Salvation itself? It is literally alive?" Kane asked, incredulously.


    It made perfect sense. The Garden of Salvation certainly seemed alive with how it constantly adaptively evolved to its guests.


    Yet, Rui knew that it was not responsible for what just happened.


    "No." His tone was grave.


    "No?"


    "That wasn''t the Garden of Salvation¡­" Rui grew grim as he turned backward, ncing at the Elder Tree in the distance.


    "It was you, wasn''t it?"


    Kane followed his gaze, frowning. "Huh? No way."


    Your sessful detection of the origin of my hypnoticmunication is impressive for a mere Martial Senior.


    The two of them grew stunned as a second whisper echoed in their minds. Rui stared at the Elder Tree, speechless. His eyes remained fixed on it, as he pushed his senses and mind to detect itsmunication.


    He was unable to.


    It was as though the Elder Tree was magically nting its messages into his mind directly.


    Then again, I suppose it is to be expected from an alien from Earth with a supernatural mind.


    His eyes widened with shock as his body shook physically. He stared at the Elder Tree in utter horror as a multitude of revtions clicked in his mind.


    "You¡­" Rui whispered. "You are the Garden of Salvation, aren''t you?"


    Correct.


    He stared at the enormous Elder Tree in the distance in astonishment.


    I am the creator and administrator of the Garden of Salvation.


    "Woah¡­" Kane stared at it in awe.


    Rui gazed at it knowingly.


    "It knew where I was from." Rui''s tone was severe. "That''s not something that it would know unless¡­"


    Unless it peered into his mind.


    He hadn''t mentioned the name of his old world to Kane yet, so it couldn''t have relied on his conversation with Kane to learn that detail. The possibilities of the origin of its information were numerous, yet the only usible exnation out of all of them was relying on the information stored in his mind.


    That further begged the question of whether it was a coincidence that his memories had been scanned previously to construct an environment that matched his ''home.''


    Rui''s eyes sharpened.


    The probability that it was a coincidence was quite low.


    The probability that the Elder Tree had some special rtionship with the Garden of Salvation was thus higher.Content is ? by N?velDrama.Org.


    That, along with the fact that every single ount of Garden of Salvation across centuries mentioned the Elder Tree at the center as well as the fact that he had strong evidence of an intelligence overseeing the entire area, and he had enough evidence to postte that the Elder Tree was somehow causally connected to the existence of the Garden of Salvation.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1942 Cyclical Dependence

    Chapter 1942 Cyclical Dependence


    A deductively sound and logical line of thought. The Elder Treemented, listening to his internal monologue.


    "Wait, I can''t hide my thoughts from you?"


    Correct. Your mind is certainly more powerful than that of almost any other person, barring Martial Artists of the Upper Realms, I have ever seen, but youck the power to hide it from me. It reported.


    That was inconvenient.


    Indeed.


    However, that didn''t mean that he couldn''t use this to his advantage.


    And just how would you?


    Rui stared at the Elder Tree as a smirk emerged on his face. "Because now you have no justification to not trust the sincerity of the trade offers that I make to you."


    ¡­


    "Hahaha!" Kane cackled. "That''s genius. But what trade offers did you have in mind?"


    None.


    "It''s right," Rui remarked calmly. "None. At least, nothing specific yet. However¡­"


    He narrowed his eyes. "¡­I have power. I possess unrivaled political power over a Sage-level powerhouse. I have something to offer to everybody. And everybody has something that they could get from me. Something they need. Something they want."


    ¡­


    The Elder Tree knew that he was telling the truth, having scoured through Rui''s memories to learn more about him while recreating his home in the Garden of Salvation. It had grown startled at the fact that such an important individual of the Human Domain had thrown himself into the Beast Domain.


    "And I am rtively certain that you are a living being that is as needy as it is powerful. Am I wrong?"


    ¡­


    Rui smirked, continuing. "This ce¡­"


    He gestured to the vast and expansive Garden of Salvation.


    "¡­This is not something that one would do out of the kindness of one''s heart."


    Rui hade to the conclusion quite confidently.


    No creature with any sense of self-preservation would go out of their way to create such an extraordinarily difficult set of operations that he had borne witness to in the Garden of Salvation.


    "First, this world is isted from the rest of the Beast Domain," Rui remarked. "I''d previously assumed that this was a natural esoteric phenomenon. However, since you have divulged that you created the Garden of Salvation, I can assume that you are responsible for its istion."


    He nced around at the vast safe haven. "It is difficult to fathom. However, this ce is either dimensionally or spatially isted from the rest of the Beast Domain. That is the only exnation that I can conceive. Both options undoubtedly take an extraordinary amount of energy and power. This is not something one does unless there is a genuine necessity for it."


    ¡­


    "That''s not all," Rui continued. "Adaptively evolving the world, at its very root, around each creature to suit their physiology and anatomy is also undoubtedly extraordinarily energy-consuming. The same can be said regarding sifting through the memories of each and every single creature in this ce."


    Rui knew both of those as a matter of experience. While the Elder Tree was clearly superior to Rui at both hypnosis and world bending, it undoubtedly took an ocean''s worth of energy continuously scan memories and bend the world using domains.


    It was not something that one would subject oneself to for centuries unless it was extremely necessary or desirable.


    "Additionally, there''s the safe-haven function of the Garden of Salvation," Rui remarked. "Why ept and transport creatures in need of a safe haven to the Garden of Salvation before sending them away after they have recuperated or healed? Why would someone do that?"


    I am a tree. I possess no predatory instinct by virtue of not requiring the consumption of other life. I am part of a kingdom of life that sustains all other life.


    It was a good attempt, but Rui was not so easily dismissed.


    "Lack of a predatory instinct does not beget endless phnthropy." Rui retorted. "No. You''re doing this out of necessity. Considering your stationary nature, it''s hard to imagine that you''re doing this for anything other than survival."


    The air prickled.


    He knew he had arrived at the cusp of an important deduction.


    He smirked. "You need these creatures to survive, don''t you?" C0ntent ? 2024 (N/?)velDrama.Org.


    ¡­


    "However, not in a predatory manner, for reasons you specified," he murmured. "No. You need them to survive for other reasons."


    Rui closed his eyes.


    What did a tree need to survive?


    Well, an esoteric tree was not exactly a regr tree, but even esoteric trees required the Sun and arge variety of elements andpounds, most importantly water, from thend beneath them. They required carbon dioxide.


    "Would a powerful esoteric tree require more or less than an ordinary tree?" Rui nced at the titanic body of the Elder Tree that utterly dwarfed over mountain ranges.


    How could such an enormous tree require less?


    How could a tree that was not just utterly gigantic but also able to dimensionally or spatially iste a country''s worth ofnd, adaptively evolve the world of saidnd to adapt to countless creatures, and tap into their memories, possibly have few conditions for its sustenance?


    "The sheer quantity, number, andplexity of your sustenance requirements are probably beyond anything that I can possibly fathom." Rui realized.


    The next question presented itself to Rui.


    ''How would saving all these creatures aid in its sustenance requirements?''


    It was actually the easiest question to answer thus far.


    "Chemical cycles," Rui deduced. "Nature has countless chemical cycles that rely on arge number of living creatures."


    As the name suggested, chemical cycles were endless cycles of chemicals in different states andpounds looping back to each other over and over again.


    One such cycle was the nitrogen cycle.


    Nitrogen required herbivorous animals to consume vegetation and excrete it into the ground, thereby supplying ammonia to nitrifying bacteria, which nitrified thepound into relevant chemicalpounds that vegetation would then absorb for its survival. And it would start the cycle all over again.


    In other words, without this nitrogen cycle, vegetation would not survive. This included trees. It probably also included esoteric trees.


    The nitrogen cycle alone required many species to be sustained. This indirectly meant that all vegetation needed these species of herbivores and bacteria to survive, else, they too would die.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1943 Second

    Chapter 1943 Second


    Each species of flora continuously required many chemicalpounds.


    Each chemicalpound had a cycle to sustain its avability.


    Each cycle required many other species.


    Thus, each species of flora was indirectly dependent on many other species to keep the chemical cycles going, to keep it alive.


    "The same must be true for you," Rui sharply deduced. "In fact, I cannot imagine how many chemical cycles you depend on. Millions? Probably billions with just how enormous and magical your existence is."


    That next deduction followed smoothly.


    "If you require billions of chemical cycles to sustain your existence, and assuming that each chemical cycle requires several species to sustain it, then essentially you require many billions of species to survive in order to sustain your life."


    If even a single one of those species were disrupted, then it would mean that a chemical cycle was disrupted, which would mean that the Elder Tree would lose ess to an important substance that sustained its existence.


    Of course, it would not die immediately.


    However, its health would deteriorate slowly and surely. It would be no different from ack of any given vitamin or mineral important for the functioning of the human body. In the short term, the differences would be not too noticeable. However, in the long term, it would be quite damning.


    Too many such chemicalpounds werecking, and death was a real possibility.


    This was probably especially true for such an enormous yet deeply sophisticated living being as the Elder Tree. Rui could not even imagine all the ways things could go wrong for the tree if it didn''t get some highly vital substance needed for its sustenance.


    In fact, it was possible that it had already entered a stage where it found it difficult to get a supply of the chemicalpounds that it found necessary.


    "Normally, however, the Beast Domain would have been able to naturally ensure a stable supply of these substances." Rui furrowed his eyebrows in thought.


    After all, even back on Earth, long before science became aware of these intricate chemical cycles that intertwined the fate of many species with each other, nature had thrived for a long time.


    On Earth, flora had survived five hundred million years.


    In other words, nature was prone to creating stable ecosystems that were just bnced such that they could ensure that a species neither overpopted nor went extinct. While the ecosystems of the Beast Domain were undoubtedly astronomically moreplicated than those of Earth, the same principle applied. Belongs to (N)?vel/Drama.Org.


    The fact that life had survived for hundreds of millions or billions of years meant that the biosphere was stable.


    At least until humanity arrived in both worlds.


    "Humanity has¡­disrupted the chemical cycles that you require to survive, right?" Rui asked.


    ¡­


    The Beast Domain that once used to cover an overwhelming majority of the Panama Continent had now been slowly pushed into its very core, increasing poption density by order of magnitude while countless species had either perished during the continuous expansion and encroachment into the Beast Domain, bit by bit.


    Or, they migrated deeper into the Beast Domain and died due to environmental ipatibilities or overwhelmingpetition for resources.


    The delicate chemical cycles needed to sustain an enormous,plex, and sophisticated tree lifeform like the Elder tree were undoubtedly disrupted by such enormous and radical shifts in the environment and ecosystem.


    "If I''m not wrong, countless species that were needed to maintain the chemical cycles that you required to sustain your life were probably brought to the very brink of extinction due to humanity''s continuous encroachment into Beast Domain."


    This, in turn, severelypromised the chemical cycles that the Elder Tree relied on.


    In other words, even before humanity had reached the Elder Tree, it was already an existential threat to the enormous tree.


    "You must have sought a solution. A solution to save all these species that were needed to sustain the chemical cycles that, in turn, sustained your life." Rui keenly inferred. He gestured around them. "The Garden of Salvation. A safe haven for those who need it. You save species that you need to survive, allow them to recuperate, heal, and reproduce, and then send and return them to an environment that befits them."


    Doing so would ensure that the chemical cycles wouldrgely remain in ce.


    "It makes sense that you targeted creatures only in the north side of the Beast Domain," Rui deduced another fact. "Even considering the sheer size of your full body, I doubt your roots extend much past the northern part of the Beast Domain. This means that you cannot absorb nutrients from other parts of the Beast Domain because your roots do not extend the entire way. Thus, only species in the northern parts matter. Hence, no living being is rescued much beyond that."


    Rui returned his focus to the Elder Tree again. "The fact that you rescued two Martial Seniors and have rescued plenty of Martial Artists over the years is enough for me to logically infer that Martial Artists, somehow, are also important to maintaining one or more chemical cycles that are important for your survival."


    A smirk appeared on his face. "That gives us leverage, does it not?"


    You¡­ The Elder Tree finally spoke in their minds. Of the countless sentient and intelligent beings to have entered the Garden of Salvation. You are the second person to have ever deduced the truth through sheer thought alone.


    Rui sharpened his eyes at those words. He had no proof, but he already knew who the first person was based on pure instinct alone. There was only one person that it could be. There was only one person that Rui had hoped it would be. He had truly journeyed a long, long way to find the man. He hoped that he did not run into a dead end devoid of any more clues as to where the man was.


    "¡­Second? So there was someone before me?"


    Indeed. You remind me of him. You remind me of the Divine Doctor himself.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1944 Give It To Me

    1944 Give It To Me


    A deep flush of relief erupted from within Rui.


    The Divine Doctor had indeed seeded in entering the Garden of Salvation.


    "I am looking for him," Rui blurted out. "I am looking for the Divine Doctor."


    I am aware. "As I told you," Rui narrowed his eyes. "I can help you. If you are willing to help me find the Divine Doctor. I am willing to exercise my power to make life easier for you."


    ¡­What do you propose?


    A number of thoughts shed through Rui''s mind.


    Hmmm. I can''t trust you.


    "Oh, but you have no choice but to." Rui smirked. "I am sincere, and you can sense it as long as you are willing to help me find the Divine Doctor. I will exercise my political power to aid your survival."


    ¡­


    "Think about it." Rui spread his arms. "Imagine a Sage-level powerhouse working to ensure that the chemical cycles you need are maintained. We have the power. I don''t know how strong you are, but I severely doubt that you can match the power of the Kandrian Empire. I don''t see any Sage-level beasts in here, which informs me about your power."


    ¡­


    "With the political power I have, I can easily set up a division of analysts with powerful Martial Artists dedicated to aiding you in what you are doing. As long as you give me a list of species needed, I''ll ensure that they don''t die."


    ¡­


    "You will no longer be alone," Rui promised the Elder Tree. "You will gain the support and cooperation of one of the most powerful empires in all of human civilization. In return, I first seek any and all intelligence about the Divine Doctor. This is a trivial demand and will not hurt you in any way. If you have any sense in you, you will ept this offer."


    Unfortunately, Rui''s logic was too strong. In normal circumstances, the only hurdle in this offer was the fact that there was no proof that Rui was sincere about his offer to the Elder Tree. After all, there was no incentive for it. The moment Rui got the information he needed, there was nothing stopping him from reneging from his side of the deal.


    In this particr circumstance, however, the Elder Tree could quite inly and straightforwardly see that Rui was genuine and sincere about his offer.


    Normally, having one''s mind exposed to another was an enormous disadvantage when it came to negotiations.


    Rui, however, had turned it into an enormous advantage by employing a brilliant strategy that used it to produce oues that would have been impossible otherwise.


    You really do remind me of the Divine Doctor.


    Rui narrowed his eyes. Considering everything that he had seen the Divine Doctor do, he wasn''t sure if that was apliment or an insult, but he remained silent. He was far more concerned about the Elder Tree''s decision than its musings.


    I ept your offer.


    Rui''s smile widened. "Great!"


    But I have a condition. You must swear to me in no unclear terms that you will not bring harm to the Divine Doctor.


    "I swear," Rui affirmed. "I require his aid to heal my father from the Eternal Dream disease. I have absolutely no intention whatsoever to harm him in any way unless in self-defense."


    The Elder Tree grew satisfied with that. Good. Then we have an agreement. Let me tell you all about the Divine Docto¡ª


    "Wait." Rui raised a hand. "Before we get there. I have another offer that I want to propose."


    The Elder Tree quickly read his mind. You wish for¡­ the knowledge and skill underlying the adaptive evolution of the Garden of Salvation? Content protected by N?v/el(D)rama.Org.


    Rui grinned, nodding as he grew more excited. "In return for otherworldly knowledge about the fundamental nature of non-esoteric reality."


    I can just read your mind to get ess to that.


    "Yes, but you cannot understand it unless you have gained a fundamental mastery over a vast amount of information that is ingrained in me subconsciously. You also simply may not understand the underlying concepts because of theirplexity. Furthermore, much of it is stored in aliennguage and alien numbers. You may be able to read my mind, but you will still have to dedicate an immense amount of time and mental effort if you want to try and decode an aliennguage."


    Unfortunately for it, Rui was correct about that as well. The Elder Tree, while sentient and intelligent, knew that it was not extraordinarily brilliant. It would not be able to gain anything meaningful.


    "Furthermore, if you refuse, then I''m not going to stick around for much longer." Rui shrugged. "Only up until you tell us all the information about the Divine Doctor. Can you gain every single iota of information in that timeframe?"


    ¡­Fine. However, I must inform you that I cannot teach you how to bend heaven and earth like I do.


    Rui frowned. "Why not?"


    Because this is not a Martial Art skill or technique. It is not mastery. It is an innate gic ability that my body has. Martial Artists are able to exert power that is many orders of magnitude above their raw power. However, in my case, this is my raw innate ability. It is not something I am able to pass on to you.


    "Damn!" Rui cursed, growing dismayed. "Wait, what about the knowledge? What about the knowledge of exactly what world is most fit for each species?"


    I am indeed able to pass that on to you. In the many centuries since the Age of Martial Art, when I created the Garden of Salvation, I have grown intimately familiar with most of the fauna and flora species of the Beast Domain, including the so-called ''adaptive evolution'' information on exactly how to adaptively evolve the world to each and every single species.


    Rui''s eyes lit up with ecstasy. "Yes! YES! Give it to me! GIVE IT TO ME!"


    He was unable to hide the sheer enthusiasm he had for inheriting the knowledge that came from adaptively evolving the world for countless species for centuries. It was utterly game-changing for how he approached the Beast Domain!


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1945 Limits

    Chapter 1945 Limits


    ??1945  Limits


    One of the VOID algorithm''s biggest shorings was its ipatibility with Gaia''s supernatural and esoteric reality. Of course, Rui had made a lot of progress with it over the years, but he had never found a solution for adapting to beasts.


    The pattern recognition system worked by choosing the most optimal and perfect counter to an opponent''s predicted movement ording to the predictive model. It was the adaptive evolution model that told Rui what the most optimal counter was.


    Although it sounded fancy, the adaptive evolution model was just an enormous table with two rows. It contained the solution to all predicted movements.


    If Rui predicted that his opponent was going to throw a hook punch, then he would look at the table and find the corresponding most optimal counter.


    Hook punch -> Forward-stepping straight punch.


    These were created in his previous life after countless experiments to determine the best counter to each attack, maneuver, and defense.


    Keywords being ''in his previous life.''


    It was optimized for regr humans.


    As Rui became a Martial Artist and kept growing stronger, he gradually stopped relying on it because it became increasingly irrelevant and invalid against the supernatural Martial Art of this world.


    He was forced to rely on instinct and experience, which he continuously gained more of over the years. Yet, he managed as his intuition was forged in the crucible ofbat, allowing him to replicate, through experience, what was previously done by the adaptive evolution model.


    It was a good recement for the adaptive evolution model against other Martial Artists.


    Unfortunately, this didn''t solve the problem when it came to beasts and monsters.


    There were countless different species in the world. He did not have any experience with an overwhelming majority of them. The worst part was that even being a general expert was not enough. He would need to be a specialist on each and every single monster and beast in order to adaptively evolve to each of them with absolute perfection.


    And nothing less than absolute perfection was tolerable to him.


    This shoring had be especially noticeable after he had entered the Beast Domain. He had managed to make do bypensating for it with the sheer power of the SOUL System, of course.


    However, that shoring was the reason that he and Kane had almost died against the six Master-level beasts of the mega-forest region. If Rui had been a super-expert on fauna, he would not have made that horrific blunder that almost got them killed.


    "If not for you saving us¡­" Rui narrowed his eyes as he stared at the Elder Tree. "That blunder, this shoring, would have gotten us killed. Thank you for saving our lives¡­"


    Rui bowed his head lightly in gratitude as Kane followed suit before returning his gaze to the massive tree. "¡­And please give me the knowledge that I need to ensure that this blunder never happens ever again."


    The Elder Tree listened to Rui''s earnest plea. I am able and willing. I will pass on the sum totality of my knowledge of the biosphere of the Beast Domain to you in return for otherworldly knowledge and understanding of the intricacies of non-esoteric reality.


    An ecstatic smile deepened on his face. "Alright then, done deal."


    There is only one issue.


    Rui frowned. "What is it?"


    The knowledge that you are seeking is extremely enormous, the Elder Tree informed him. Even considering your supernatural mind, it is not something that can be conveyed in a short time span, even if I directly pour the information into your mind through hypnoticmunication.


    Rui''s expression darkened. "How long are we talking?"


    Five years.


    Rui''s eyes widened with shock. "What?! Just how much information do you have that it takes a whopping five years of hypnotic transmission to give me everything you have?!"


    A lot. I am unable to quantify it, but I can convey immense sensory data every second that you are awake and free, and it will still take five years of continuous hypnotic transmission to give you everything you seek withoutpromising my mental health.


    Kane turned to Rui with a raised eyebrow. "We don''t have time for this, man."


    Rui gritted his teeth.


    Kane was right.


    They only had twenty-one months left to find the Divine Doctor and bring him back to the Kandrian Empire to heal his father before he died. Choosing to remain here for the knowledge was no different from getting him killed.


    Yet¡­ the very thought of letting this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity go tore Rui''s heart apart, causing him to wince from phantom pain.


    "You are not actually considering this, are you?" Kane stared at him. "Your dad''s gonna die. Do you not care? Is this more important than your father?"


    Kane regretted asking the question the moment it escaped his mouth. He realized a moment toote that the answer was actually yes.


    lights¦­¦Ïv¦Ål ?¦Ïm Rui knew that, too.


    However, he didn''t want to have to choose. The whole reason that he had embarked on the journey to the Divine Doctor was because he didn''t want to be forced to choose.


    "If I leave, will I be able to enter without risking my life again?"


    No. My awareness of outside phenomenaes indirectly through a florawork containing other living beings of the nt kingdom. I cannot identify you specifically, I''m afraid.


    In other words, if Rui left, he would have to subject himself to a one-percent survival chance in order to get into a ce that had a one-percent eptance rate.


    The odds were overwhelmingly horrible. It was far too much for Rui to go through it again, especially when he went through it by mistake the first time.


    "Wait." Rui''s eyes lit up. "You said, withoutpromising my mental health?"


    Correct. I am able to transmit information at far greater speeds, but it will cause extreme mental pain and suffering.


    "How soon can you get it done if we go through with that?" Rui narrowed his eyes.


    "Dude." Kane stared at him in disbelief. "Are you serious?"


    -


    This chapter upload first at  Belongs to (N)?vel/Drama.Org.

 Chapter 1946 Primitive

    Chapter 1946 Primitive


    ??1946  Primitive


    Six months.


    Rui''s eyes lit up. "Let''s do it then!"


    I strongly rmend against it. You will suffer tremendous psychological anguish and pain over extended periods of time. Even if you manage toe away with your mind and sanity intact, it will have an irreversible impact on you.


    Rui closed his eyes.


    He would be lying if he said that those words didn''t horrify him.


    He didn''t enjoy pain.


    He certainly did not enjoy extensive periods of intense mental suffering.


    He most definitely did not enjoy the prospects of losing his mind or sanity.


    However, the bottom line was clear to Rui.


    It had never changed.


    "If that is the price to gain ess to this power¡­" Rui''s expression grew grave. "Then so be it."


    Kane stared at him, utterly astounded.


    Unfortunately, this was the most Rui thing that Rui could do. Kane especially thought so after he learned the truth about his friend.


    A being from another world.


    This was a man who had followed his Martial Path to and past death.


    With that in consideration, Kane was hardly surprised that Rui was willing to do something this insane.


    "Are you absolutely certain?"


    "¡­Yes."


    "¡­Fine."


    Rui turned to the Elder Tree. "Let''s begin."


    ¡­No.


    Rui''s gaze intensified as he red at the Elder Tree.


    I do not have any reason to be as confident that you wille away with your mind intact. I shall have you fulfill your end of the deal before I do mine in case you do lose your mind in the process.


    "Fine¡­" Rui narrowed his eyes. "Do not think about reneging on your end of the deal. You will lose the power of the Kandrian Empire as an ally and a supporter if you do."


    Trees are not in the habit of making enemies. Especially powerful enemies.


    Rui knew those words were true. Besides, he didn''t have much of a choice in these circumstances. He had already turned the massive disadvantage of having exposed thoughts into an advantage resulting in what was, as far as he was concerned, a highly lucrative deal. This was the very best that he could make of his circumstances at the moment.


    "I shall prepare an information package for you in my mind. It will contain every ounce of information that you will need to inherit my understanding of non-esoteric reality," Rui replied. "I shall help you through it where you need it while I prepare for inheriting all your knowledge on the biosphere of the Beast Domain."


    That is an eptable arrangement.


    Rui nodded, quickly running some calctions. "It shouldn''t take more than a month to put together all the knowledge that I have to offer. I don''t think it will take too much longer to get a hold of it all unless you are particrly stupid."


    ¡­


    "In general, as long as you get the foundations right, you should be able to handle the rest on your own without me."


    Understood. The Elder Tree sensed that each of his words was the truth. That is identical to the arrangement that I had with the Divine Doctor.


    Rui narrowed his eyes at those words. "Enough beating around the bush. Tell me everything you know about the Divine Doctor. You will need to do this because I don''t have any actual proof at this point in time that you actually met the Divine Doctor. For all I know, you might have just chosen to say his name because you looked through my memories and knew that I was searching for him."


    It was a valid concern.


    Rui did not think that this Elder Tree was necessarily a good being. The Garden of Salvation was purely an endeavor of self-


    interest and self-preservation. Even the fact that it saved Rui and Kane from Master-level creatures was purely for its own self-interest.


    Of course, that did not make it evil, not at all. No creature wanted to die, and Rui could evenmend the Elder Tree for surviving in a manner that allowed others to do so as well.


    However, that did not mean the creature was one of integrity.


    Your concerns are valid and sound, the Elder Tree admitted. Very well, I shall disclose everything I know about the Divine Doctor.


    Rui and Kane froze where they stood as the very world around them changed, warping to something else entirely.


    Now, they stood in an empty in in the Garden of Salvation.


    For a moment, nothing happened.


    WHOOSH


    STEP


    A man appeared out of nowhere,nding on the ground. His entire body was covered in an attire that resembled a fusion between a doctor and an adventurer. His head waspletely covered in a gas mask.


    A gas mask Rui recognized.


    "It''s him¡­" Rui whispered. "¡­These are the Elder Tree''s memories!"


    Correct.


    CLICK


    The man removed the mask, revealing a tanned face.


    His eyes brimmed with endless curiosity.


    Yet they were also dead.


    Devoid ofpassion.


    The magical biosphere of the Garden of Salvation was no more thanplex chemistry to him.


    They held no value beyond his curiosity and intellectual pursuit.C0ntent ? 2024 (N/?)velDrama.Org.


    "Fascinating."


    A single remark escaped him.


    His eyes slowly turned to the Elder Tree as he beheld the enormous lifeform in the distance at the center of the Garden of Salvation.


    "Elder Tree¡­"


    His tone was clinical in its curiosity.


    "As postted, a new species of the intelligent flora phylum." His eyes lit up with interest. "Preparing new species addition, dubbed: elder tree species."


    You¡­ The Elder Tree broke its silence. I am unable to read your mind.


    "The skull of this particr vessel isced with ayer of Aurora ss, a Sage-level substance that absolutely istes the brain from any causal interaction with the outside world, rendering you unable to read it. I prepared this solution in case the hypothesis that your adaptive evolution world-


    bending relied on mind reading to gain ess to the necessary intelligence was true."


    ¡­Your fear was a falsehood, the Elder Tree realized. You were not truly fearful. You induced fear for the sake of entering the Garden of Salvation.


    The Divine Doctor simply smiled.


    "Fear." Derision flickered in his detached eyes. "An archaic evolutionary neurological in-built deterrent to danger. One that increases the probability of survival and reproduction."


    A sneer emerged on his face.


    "Primitive."


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1947 Offer and Demand

    Chapter 1947 Offer and Demand


    lights¦­¦Ïv¦Ål ?¦Ïm ??1947  Offer and Demand


    The Elder Tree was stunned into silence at the bold deration of the Divine Doctor.Content protected by N?v/el(D)rama.Org.


    Everybody felt fear.


    Even the Elder Tree itself felt fear.


    Nearly all sentient life experienced fear.


    Was the madman not calling all of it primitive with his deration?


    "It wasn''t always primitive¡­" the Divine Doctor continued as he removed several more contraptions wrapped over his body. "It served its purpose as a danger deterrent better than any other known mechanism in purpose until¡­"


    He nced at the Elder Tree, his frozen smile never once changing. "¡­Until the advent of intelligence."


    The Elder Tree stared at the Divine Doctor in silence.


    "Why be fearful when you can be intelligent?" The Divine Doctor''s question was posed to all sentient lifeforms on the Panama Continent. "Why let fear impede rationality and intelligence? Why not rid oneself of fear and embrace the power of thought? It is the most optimal choice. It was the choice that I took."


    Rui sharpened his eyes.


    That exnation exined a lot.


    It exined how the Divine Doctor''s mind seemed unaffected when he subjected himself to extremely potent fear-


    hallucinogens even though his body was clearly affected.


    "I am beyond fear." The Divine Doctor closed his eyes. "I was deeply disappointed when I logically deduced that the conditions to be chosen for entry into the Garden of Salvation was fear. Disappointed and also troubled, for it was not easy to subject myself to fear. I had to go through a lot of preparations to get my hands on the fear needed to enter this ce."


    He opened his eyes, turning to the Elder Tree. "I will have youpensate me for my troubles."


    I saved your life.


    The Divine Doctor''s smile deepened.


    "No, I''m afraid you did no such thing."


    ¡­Why did youe here? The Elder Tree grew confused. Just what do you seek?


    "I require your aid, unfortunately," the Divine Doctor remarked with a frozen smile. "I am faced with a patient with an ailment that exceeds even my ability to diagnose."


    Why should I help you at all?


    "Because I have something to offer," the Divine Doctor replied clinically. "I offer healing, treatment, and a cure."


    I do not require such things. Certainly not from a human.


    A mirthless chuckle escaped the Divine Doctor. "It will behoove you not to test me. I have identified one hundred and eighty-one esoteric deficiencies, disorders, and illnesses in your vast and expansive system, including but not limited to severe felnoven deficiency, which interferes with your space maniption, as well as severe sundew, blood iron, darkress, and heineoun cobalt deficiencies that each interfere with the more important functions that I am witnessing here."


    The Elder Tree was stunned into silence as the Divine Doctor made extremely urate evaluations of its medical condition within minutes of meeting it!


    ¡­Who are you?


    The Divine Doctor''s frozen smile never changed a shade.


    "It matters not who I am as much as what I can do for you and what you can do for me. I can not only ameliorate your ailments and illnesses, but I can also teach you how to heal and treat these creatures better."


    He nced at the vast and expansive biosphere within the Garden of Salvation. "Considering that they''re here, I can infer they''re important to your survival, most likely because of the role they y in the ecosystem that is vital for ensuring your survival through not just the chemical cycles but also the conditioning of heaven and earth to meet your environmental needs."


    Rui raised an eyebrow.


    He hadn''t figured out the second part.


    Are you truly able to do that? the Elder Tree asked eagerly.


    The Divine Doctor had just made an extremely attractive offer. The survival of the species that were important to his own survival was something that the Elder Tree had to constantly juggle with.


    For all its magical power, it was not a doctor. It did not possess medical knowledge and expertise. The best it could do was provide a ce that was perfectly suited for each creature and allowed them to heal naturally and reproduce naturally. Oftentimes, this failed, and the creatures died nheless.


    However, if the Elder Tree gained the medical expertise of the Divine Doctor, it would be able to diagnose, treat, and cure. It would vastly increase the sess of its rescue and rehabilitation operations.


    "Proving it is effortless," the Divine Doctor huffed. "I''m more concerned about whether you are able to fulfill my demands in return."


    As long as it is within my ability andmensurate to what you are offering, I am.


    The Divine Doctor''s smile widened. "What I require of you is not strenuous or demanding."


    ¡­Just what do you require?


    "You see¡­" The Divine Doctor began pacing back and forth as his eyes wandered around, immersed in thought. "My current patient has an ailment and an illness that I am unable to identify. You can be assured I have looked for it in many, many ces and consulted many people, but I am simply unable to. Truly frustrating, I say. Which is why I require your help."


    The Elder Tree grew confused. ¡­I do not follow. What can I possibly offer? I am not familiar with medicine.


    "Oh, but you can, dear Elder Tree." The Divine Doctor''s frozen smile widened, exhibiting excitement for the first time. "All you need to do is tell me what you see, or rather don''t see."


    ¡­What?


    "Your means of observing the Beast Domain even though you have spatially isted most of your main body." The Divine Doctor smiled clinically. "You rely on a florawork. You gain information far beyond your ordinary sensory limit by receiving information from flora across the Beast Domain, more specifically bymunication of sensory information through root connections, don''t you?"


    ¡­I suppose I should not be surprised that you know that.


    "Correct. Regardless, this long-distance sensorywork allows you to bypass the sensory resistance of the Beast Domain," the Divine Doctor replied. "While other Sage-level creatures are limited in their zones because of how exponentially more intense sensory resistance gets the closer you get to the Beast Domain, you are able to bypass this by leveraging a significant portion of the entire nt kingdom to serve as your eyes and ears across the Beast Domain and beyond."


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1948 Normality

    Chapter 1948 Normality


    How did the Elder Tree detect various creatures and lifeforms that were not just important to its survival in some way or another but also experiencing deep fear when it was almostpletely spatially isted from the rest of the world?


    The answer was that its roots were connected to the roots of other surrounding flora, which in turn were inworks of flora spreading across enormous portions of the Beast Domain. It received a massive flood of sensory data pertaining to light, sound, odor, the chemicalposition of the air, and several other parameters.


    Of course, nts were far from the best sensors. They weren''t able to convey detailed information about the outside world such that the Elder Tree could be able to urately get a view of the Beast Domain like it was there itself. It was why it needed to rely on lopsided ways, such as fear, of evaluating the necessity of saving a creature or not. Fear that nts could detect based on the changes in odor and other chemical substances that left a distinct signature.


    "It''s far from perfect," the Divine Doctor clinically remarked. "But it''s still vastly better than any other known source of intelligence within the Beast Domain. Inparison to you, the Adventurer''s Guild is ipetent. You''re almost like a Beast Domain version of the Beggar''s Sect!"


    The what?


    "That is the aid I require from you." The Divine Doctor''s smile remained frozen and dispassionate as he ignored the Elder Tree''s question. "Information. I need ess to the vast intelligence that you have by virtue of being connected to thergest intelligencework of the Beast Domain. Perhaps then I can learn more about the illness that ails mytest patient."


    Your rationales are incoherent to me, but if you are able to prove the skill and knowledge that you im to have in medicine, then I am open to sharing my information with you.


    Of course, the Divine Doctor, to a certain extent, had already proven that he was far from normal. However, the Elder Tree was far from a fool; it would not budge on a deal until it had seen proof.


    This was the difference between its then agreement with the Divine Doctor and its current agreement with Rui.


    Rui was unable to hide his mind from the Elder Tree. Thus, the tree knew that Rui was extremely sincere about his offer and intentions. As such, it was willing to be more liberal with its conditions.


    The Divine Doctor, on the other hand, was able to protect his mind and consequently was unable to earn the trust of the Elder Tree as easily.


    First, you will have to prove your skill and knowledge. Second, you will have to prove that I am able to learn and master the skills that will help me treat wounds and other surrounding conditions as optimally as possible. Third, you will have to ensure that I actually do learn all of it, and only then will I be able to give you what you need.


    "Your ipetence is not my problem." The Divine Doctor''s frozen smile never once flickered. "I''ll do my best. If you are still unable to, then that is on you. However, I will get the information I seek, regardless."


    ¡­Those are eptable arrangements.


    "Good." The Divine Doctor stared at the Elder Tree with detached eyes. "Let us, for both our sakes, hope you are not retarded."


    ¡­


    WHOOSH


    The scene melted away as the world around them returned back to normal.


    That was my first meeting with the Divine Doctor.


    Rui''s eyes swam around, deep in thought. "¡­He wanted an intelligencework that spread across the entire Beast Domain to diagnose his current patient?"


    A deep frown emerged on his face. "¡­What?"


    He had tried his best to avoid thinking about the reason that the Divine Doctor had even gone to the Beast Domain. Most of the time, he was able to ignore itpletely and not care about it.


    It wasn''t relevant to him.


    He just wanted the man to heal his father.


    But now that he had understood what the Divine Doctor wanted from the Garden of Salvation, it just blew his mind.


    How in the world could ess to information across much of the Beast Domain from a flora intelligencework possibly help him diagnose one specific patient''s ailments?


    It didn''t make sense.


    "Not unless¡­" Rui narrowed his eyes as an extremely strange and bizarre possibility entered his mind.


    Yet, it was far too absurd for Rui to even utter it out loud. Just doing so would make him feel incredibly stupid.


    "Huff¡­" He shook his head, turning back to the Elder Tree. "What else? That was just the first meeting, correct? That is ¡­ insightful, but it is not what I am looking for."


    ¡­From then on, the doctor spent many years teaching me and training me in medicine. He taught me the foundation of biology at the cellr level and gave me many broad, holistic understandings of different kingdoms and sses of species.


    That was to be expected. One did not just be a doctor without going through med school.


    Then, he taught me, species by species, how to treat many different wounds and rted conditions and how I ought to diagnose and approach the art of healing. He also taught me the principles of healing and rejuvenation potions and how I could create my own. It was thanks to that that I was able to heal both of you and save your lives.


    Rui''s gaze softened as he recalled the critical condition that the two of them had been in after the roar of a powerful Master-level creature, even though they had faced a fraction of the dispersed power.


    After hepleted the end of the deal, I naturally kept my word and gave him what he wanted. I obliged all his demands for data. Belongs to (N)?vel/Drama.Org.


    Finally.


    "And just what did he want?" Rui eagerly asked.


    Normality.


    "¡­What?"


    He asked me to help him find normality in a world of anomalies.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1949 The Mellow

    Chapter 1949 The Mellow


    Rui''s eyes widened with shock. "¡­Normality?"


    Indeed. That was what he sought from me.


    "He what¡­?" Kane stared at the Elder Tree, astounded. Rui, on the other hand, felt increasingly certain about the absurd idea that had popped into his head regarding who the Divine Doctor''s patient was. Yet simultaneously, he couldn''t help but wonder if he was sane for even considering the idea.


    But it made sense, unfortunately.


    "He''s looking for an anomalous anomaly among anomalies because non-anomalous anomalies are not anomalous among anomalies."


    Kane and the Elder Tree stared at him, speechless. "If a patient contracts an illness, then they will manifest symptoms atypical of their body," Rui''s tone was patient. "In other words, anomalies. However, what can possibly be considered anomalous in the Beast Domain, where every region experiences some abrupt change in environment or ecosystem or the other? Be it demographic or poption changes, topographical or geological changes, changes of different scales and permeation, and of endless causes. Something or the other is constantly changing."


    Rui recalled their time in the Valley of Prisms. They had takenplete control over the region, not allowing anything to go wrong, but every week, sometimes every day, some abrupt disruption of some kind or the other continuously happened.


    It was actually a wonder that the catoblepassted as long as they did. Pure sheer luck, actually. Just one stroke of bad luck, and Rui and Kane would have never been able to find the Beast Domain without referring to their memories.


    "The answer is a normal, banal, and mundane region that has never experienced anomalies," Rui informed them of the answer. "After all, if anomalies are the state of normality and the way things are supposed to be, then something that isn''t anomalous is atypical. It is wrong and not the way that it is supposed to be. It is¡­unhealthy."


    "Huh, that makes sense," Kane admitted. "If he''s looking for an anomaly in the Beast Domain to identify his patient."


    "He must havee to the conclusion that was the only way he could find any clues on the illness ailing his patient. To look for the true anomaly in a world of anomalies that could potentially be a symptom from his point of view," Rui calmly borated. This belongs ? N?velDra/ma.Org.


    "Wait¡­" Realization finally dawned on Kane. "Doesn''t that mean that his patient is¡­"


    Kane, too, was unable to utter the idea aloud with how absurd it was.


    Rui''s expression grew severe. "I don''t know. All I know is that I need to find him. Thus, I need to find the anomalous normality that he sought."


    Rui turned to the Elder Tree with sharp eyes. "Where is it?"


    ¡­The Mellow. Rui raised an eyebrow. "The Mellow? The Adventurer''s Guild''s data does not contain any regions or ces whose names match that."


    It is no wonder that the Divine Doctor said that the Adventurer''s Guild was ipetent if so.


    "Well?" Rui raised an eyebrow. "Go on, what and where is the Mellow?


    It is a sub-Apprentice-level danger zone within the Master-level belt of the Beast Domain. In the millennium-long life that I have lived, it is the one region that has never once changed. Its flora and fauna demographics and dynamics have never once undergone even a one-percent change of any kind. Its environmental parameters have never been disturbed. Its ecological variables have remained steadfast without any measurable shift of any kind. Its weather is also identical over time, day in and day out. While the Master-level regions around it are perenially fluctuating in chaos, the Mellow is a beacon of order and constancy across the entire Beast Domain.


    "What¡­?" Rui stared at the Elder Tree, flummoxed. "There''s no way. There''s no way that a sub-Apprentice-level zone survived in the Master-level belt."


    It is considered the Master-level belt because the average danger zone is Master-level. Though your surprise is still very much understandable, I, too, have been unable to understand how the Mellow has been able to survive and not change for as long as it has.


    "And you''re sure that''s where he went?"


    I''m certain that''s where he said he would be going.


    Rui heaved a sigh as he grew immersed in deep consideration.


    "We''re definitely going to the Mellow, but¡­"


    He turned to the Garden of Salvation. "¡­not before weplete our agreement."


    I am pleased to hear that. Let us immediately begin.


    "Yeah."


    Rui immediately began preparing the information package that contained all his scientific knowledge without any further ado.


    He was not doing the venture to find the Divine Doctor any favors by taking yet another training break.


    Yet, the very thought of finally being able to adaptively evolve to all fauna in the Beast Domain made his excitement rev to an entirely higher dimension. It was a massive boost to his adaptive evolution power.


    ''Even if the Elder tree cannot help me with upgrading the Yggdrasil System, I can still rely on Master Gurren to help me elevate the Yggdrasil System to a much higher level and a very lesser version of the Garden of Salvation.'' Rui realized.


    Of course, he knew that the Garden of Salvation was undoubtedly an entire Realm above Master Gurren at the bare minimum. He didn''t mind that. He always knew that hoping for the Yggdrasil System to be on par with the Garden of Salvation was a fool''s errand. Rui knew that he probably could not even dream of reaching such astounding levels of adaptive evolution domain bending until he was, at the very least, a Martial Sage. Until then, he could only keep striving to reach what he bore witness to within the Garden of Salvation.


    He carefully began gathering every ounce of science and math he had ever learned his entire life and beganprehensively organizing it in arge information package within his Mind Pce. He hurried quickly, for he didn''t have too much time. He only had twenty-one months left before his father sumbed to the Eternal Dream Disease.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1950 Better Suited

    Chapter 1950 Better Suited


    ??Time passed as Ruipiled the information package. It was a project he spent most of his waking days on, not paying any attention to anything else.


    One of the things that he had to wrestle with was whether he wanted to update the Yggdrasil System in the Garden of Salvation or not.


    On one hand, the whole reason he wanted to learn everything that the Elder Tree knew about the biosphere of the Beast Domain was because he wanted to upgrade his Yggdrasil System to create adaptively evolved environments that were optimally antithetical to any beast or monster from the Beast Domain.


    This was his solution to not being able to adapt to beasts and monsters as well as he could adapt to other Martial Artists.


    "The Yggdrasil System is inherently better suited to counter monsters and beasts than the pattern recognition system is." Rui cursed himself for not making this deduction earlier. "While thetter can still do a great job, the former is able to be fundamentally antithetical to beasts and monsters in a way that thetter cannot."


    Human beings did not have environmental specialization. What that meant was that human beings were not optimized for any specific environment, topography, or geology. This was a species that was able to adaptively evolve to its environment by virtue of its heightened intelligence and, rtively, heightened rationality.


    The human species had adapted to burning hot and freezing cold and everything in between, morphing culture and tradition in response to environmental conditions.


    Animals could not do that.


    If one tossed a pr bear into the desert, its only fate was death.


    Likewise, if one tossed a camel into the Antarctic, its fate, too, was death.


    This was, to a certain degree, even more true for the monsters of the Beast Domain. They had often evolved to be hyper-optimal in certain environments and were absolutely doomed if the environment was inversed to be optimally antithetical to them.


    That was why the Yggdrasil System, which altered the environment to be optimally antithetical to its target, was most suited, out of the entirety of the Flowing Void Style, to handle the Beast Domain.


    "Tsk, I should have entered the Beast Domain sooner; I would have made this realization far earlier."


    s, the past was the past. It was best to make the best use of what he had so that he would have no more regrets for the future.


    On the other hand, he was in a time crunch.


    "Still... I should save the updates for the Yggdrasil System till my current voyage to find the Divine Doctor ispleted."


    One of the biggest reasons he insisted on inheriting the knowledge of the Elder Tree now was because he most likely would not get another chance to do so in the future. The spatial warp was one that the Elder Tree conjured around the Garden of Salvation, leaving only its furtive rootlets deep within the earth that connected to countless flora intelligenceworks that, in totality, spread across much of the Beast Domain.


    In other words, the Elder Tree would not be able to recognize Rui outside of the Garden of Salvation. Rui would need to subject himself to life-threatening danger for an extremely low probability of re-entering the Garden of Salvation.


    It was not something he was willing to do.


    Updating the Yggdrasil System, however, was something that did not require the Elder Tree. Thus, he could do that in peace after returning to the Kandrian Empire.


    That was why he decided to prioritize the Divine Doctor mission, which had a time limit.


    An entire month passed as Rui sucked up every ounce of scientific information from within the depths of his memory, even obscure things that he thought he had forgotten, rigorously categorizing them as he formed a progressive information package that would allow anyone to, eventually, learn what he knew as long as they properly solved all the assignments that he prepared alongside each unit.


    The best part was that as he processed and organizedrge amounts of information, the Elder Tree watched his mind and thoughts, gaining a thorough understanding of everything that it would have to do to learn all of his knowledge.


    It could not help but marvel at Rui''s powerful Mind Pce.


    What an incredible technique¡­ I do not think that I can build such an enormous mentalndscape to store and process vast amounts of data in such a systematic way. Is this the reason behind the confidence in your ability to withstand a high level of data influx?


    "Partially," Rui remarked. "However, I would not be nearly as confident if you didn''t have the ability to read my mind and coordinate your info dump into my head with my Mind Pce."


    ¡­I see. However, even that can only partially mitigate the suffering and the pain that wille with an overflood of information. You will suffer. Perhaps enough to lose your sanity.


    "Thanks for the pep talk," Rui sarcastically replied. "I''ll be fine."Content protected by N?v/el(D)rama.Org.


    You don''t know that.


    "At the very least, I shall do my best not to lose my mind and be an invalid."


    Even if you seed with that, you can still suffer psychological damage.


    "It''s as I said." Rui narrowed his eyes. "If that is the price of adaptive evolution, then so be it."


    You are insane. Do you not care about who you are?


    "I am a man who pursued his dream to death and beyond," Rui replied calmly. "That is the only part of me that I care about. Everything else is secondary."


    ¡­Perhaps you won''t lose your sanity after all. It doesn''t seem to be like you ever had it in the first ce.


    Rui huffed lightly. "Sanity is overrated. More importantly, I have finallypleted the information packet for you. I''m d you can read my mind, so I don''t have to rely on hypnosis or non-verbalmunication to pass it on to you."


    I shall dly indulge in priceless knowledge from another world. I will have you guide me through this course.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1951 Education

    Chapter 1951 Education


    Months passed as Rui patiently adhered to his word. He didn''t want to waste any more time in the Garden of Salvation than absolutely necessary. The Elder Tree was thankfully intelligent, learning math and science at a remarkable speed.


    I don''t understand this problem.


    The Elder Tree projected the numerical into Rui''s head. It was an elementary trigonometric equation that required simplification.


    "It''s simple," Rui patiently informed it. "Apply the expressions sine-two-theta equals two sine-theta-cos-theta, and cos-two-theta equals cos-squared-theta minus sin-squared-theta. Once the angles of the trigonometric terms are equal, you can cancel them out, and you''ll be left with a simplified expression."


    I see. That does indeed solve the problem.


    Rui ensured that the quality of the education that he imparted to the Elder Tree was high so that the rate of learning and time period required to learn everything he needed to know was high.


    Why have you been circling around the Garden of Salvation over and over for the past few months everyday? The Elder Tree asked, curious.


    "Don''t mind him," Kane yawned, bored. "He does weird shit like that all the time."


    "It''s because I am nning to add the Garden of Salvation to my Mind Pce to amodate the flood of information that you will be supplying me," Rui replied. "My current Mind Pce is notrge enough to store the flood of information that you will be supplying me."


    I see; that is prudent. It will certainly increase the probability that your mind wille away with its sanity intact.


    "In addition, I am studying your domain bending," Rui added clinically. "You may not be able to teach me, but I still certainly have much to learn just by watching you so close. I doubt I will see anything remotely spectacr as far as domain bending for a long time."


    Though, admittedly, Rui felt equally awed and grim when he witnessed the magnificence of the world-bending of the Elder Tree.


    I would suggest notparing your Flowing Void Style with my Garden of Salvation. It advised him friendlily. Remember, I am a tree. My entire existence is stationary and integrated into the world. My roots are deeply integrated into the earth, while my enormous branches and leaves are deeply integrated into the heavens. I have a very specific and extraordinary affinity with heaven and earth, unlike any other species in existence.


    Rui understood what the Elder Tree was trying to convey to him.


    The Elder Tree was to domain techniques that fish were to water. Its very existence at its root, literally and metaphorically, was inclined towards domain bending. Inparison, humans did not have any particrly strong affinity as a species. That was why the Martial Paths of humanity were so diverse and varied.


    "You also have powerful hypnosis," Rui noted.


    That is by virtue of the primacy of my intelligence and the sheer size of my body and everything in it. Pound-for-pound, your affinity for hypnosis is far greater than my innate affinity for it.


    That made sense. Furthermore, if you break through the Master Realm, you will exceed my paltry prowess in this regard, I suspect.


    "Mmmm," Rui nodded before raising his eyebrow. "Say, how do you know what the Master Realm is all about? That''s not something that ismon knowledge."


    Over the centuries, I could not help but that Martial Artists of the ''Master Realm'' had expanded consciousnesses and extraordinarily sophisticatedbat styles. I managed to put two and two together. In addition, my florawork extends into the human domain, and thus, I am able to spy on humanity.


    Rui narrowed eyebrows. "That''s quite the thing to reveal to a human."


    It is a gesture of goodwill in regard to our agreement. In addition,municating will be easier if you are aware of this channel ofmunication. There are some species of flora for which I have a high affinity due to simr gic makeup. If you nt these in the human domain, we will be able tomunicate back and forth directly.


    The Elder Tree had an interest in revealing thismunicationwork because if it was to make the best use of the Martial capital that Rui pledged to dedicate to aiding its survival, then it needed tomunicate with Rui effectively.


    After all, its requirements were extremelyplicated andprehensive. Without extensivemunication between both sides, there was no way that it could possibly coordinate its requirements with Rui and the Kandrian Empire. "Oh?" Rui raised an eyebrow. "In that case, are you willing to enter into a mutual intelligence-exchange agreement?"


    Certainly. Intelligence exchanges are harmless and mutually beneficial.


    Rui grinned. "Nice."


    This was an extremely lucrative agreement for the Kandrian Empire. Gaining ess to reliable intelligence across the entire Beast Domain was an extremely priceless asset. One of the reasons that the powers that drove humanity didn''t just conduct a full-scale invasion into the Beast Domain or more extensive operations into the Beast Domain was because theck of intelligence drastically increased the losses and casualties suffered. The consensus among experts was the human domain, in its totality, was more powerful but not enough to get away with anything more than a bloody pyrrhic victory. Yet, one of the reasons for that evaluation was because of a startlingck ofprehensive intelligence into everything that could factor in, including and especially environment.


    In other words,ck of intelligence was whyrge-scale operations into the Beast Domain were rare. There were too many points of failure in such operations to have any chance of nothing going wrong. This belongs ? N?velDra/ma.Org.


    But with the intelligence from a being that was the equivalent of the Beggar''s Sect of the Beast Domain, the Kandrian Empire had an enormous edge over all other fourteen Sage-level powerhouses across humanity. It was as big a strategic advantage when it came to the Beast Domain as the Ss n. In other words, Rui had brought the Kandrian Empire a second trump card that could potentially elevate the Kandrian Empire above all other nations!


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1952 The Natural Order

    Chapter 1952 The Natural Order


    However, I won''t supply intelligence if I have reason to believe that the way you humans act upon it will be to my detriment.


    "That''s how intelligence exchange agreements usually go," Rui replied calmly. Good.


    Rui turned to the Elder Tree with quizzical eyes. "Do you dislike humans?"


    He wouldn''t be surprised if it did. Humanity''s constant encroachment and colonization into the Beast Domain was one of thergest causes for the many disruptions that the Beast Domain dealt with on a daily basis.


    This, in turn, was the whole reason that the Elder Tree had created a Garden of Salvation. In order to preserve the species in their environments and ensure they didn''t fall prey directly to humanity or to the spikedpetition within the Beast Domain. Thus, Rui would hardly be surprised if the Elder Tree harbored hatred for humanity. If it did, it was rational enough to recognize that cooperation was still the best way to go.


    The Elder was clearly aware of his thoughts.


    I am incapable of hatred as an emotion. I am incapable of a lot of emotions that you of the animal kingdom are able to harbor. I am aware that you humans do not share this perspective, but I see humanity as a part of nature rather than something outside of it.


    Rui''s eyes lit up with intrigue. "¡­You''re right; I''ve never thought of humanity as a part of nature."


    Why wouldn''t you be? Your species is of this world and of this continent, just like all other species. As a species, humanity is a descendant of thest unifyingmon ancestor that we all share from billions of years ago. The human species is undoubtedly a part of the natural order, as far as I am concerned. If anything¡­


    Rui felt a pointed gaze from the Elder Tree.


    ¡­If anything, it is you who is not a part of the natural order. You of another world.


    "¡­Thanks." Rui huffed wryly.


    You do not need to thank me. Ultimately, while I am not fond of the impact that humanity has had on the Beast Domain, I am cognizant of the fact that an overwhelming majority of species in this world would overrun every other species if they possessed the power to do so. Humanity is the only species strong enough to possibly do so.


    "That is true," Rui nodded. If any predator species gained the power to prey on the entirety of the biosphere, then they would eradicate all life into extinction. The only reason this didn''t happen was because they were far too weak to actually aplish this goal.


    "Say¡­" Rui turned to the Elder Tree. "You said you''d been alive for a millennium, correct?"


    It is indeed urate that I have lived approximately one thousand human years.


    "Then do you know what happened prior to your life? And can you tell me what the world was like one thousand years ago?" Rui asked, curious.


    He was not a historian. However, he would be lying if he wasn''t curious about what happened during the Empty Ages. It was far too much of a mystery. It was especially difficult to halt his curiosity when a potentially reliable source on the matter could potentially clear up the mystery.


    The Elder Tree was aware of what Rui wanted to know.


    Unfortunately, I do not know the truth about the Empty Ages. I also was not sentient when I was a mere sapling. Sentience and intelligence grow differently in the nt kingdom than it does in the animal kingdom.


    "Well, damn," Rui cursed. "I was hoping that would have solved the mystery."


    Although I was not sentient, however, I can tell you that I was the first of my species. I do not know how I came to be. And while I was not sentient of my sapling days. My body did contain¡­impressions of what the world was like back then.


    Rui''s eyes lit up with interest again.


    ¡­A broken world.


    Rui raised an eyebrow.


    One that was healing.


    Rui furrowed his eyebrows. "What?"


    I don''t know. But that is the only impression I can recall. "Hmmm¡­" Rui narrowed his eyes. "Do you mean broken as in civilizationally, environmentally, ecologically, or literally, or in any other possible context?"


    I''m afraid I am unable to rify. "Damn," Rui muttered. "Well, whatever."


    That was the extent of his curiosity.


    "How''s the learning going?" He turned to the Elder Tree, narrowing his eyes. "I don''t want any unnecessary dys. I am on a tight schedule."


    I will soon reach a stage where I am confident that I will no longer need your aid. I would rmend you begin preparing yourself for the inheritance of my vast knowledge. If you have any chance ofing away with your mind and sanity intact, it will only be if you have honed your mind to an absolutely optimal state and have made all the preparations you need.


    "What do you think I''m doing?" Rui gestured down to the Garden of Salvation.


    "Taking a walk in the garden?" Kane huffed beside him, breaking his silence.


    "I am expanding my Mind Pce with the Garden of Salvation. That takes time and continuous exposure to this ce," Rui retorted. "It is good that this ce is asrge as a country. Once I''m done with that¡­"


    He narrowed his eyes. "I will engage in a lot of mental conditioning and exercise."


    "Exercise?" Kane raised an eyebrow. Content is ? by N?velDrama.Org.


    "This is hardly the first time I have been flooded with information," Rui replied calmly. "I have ways to simte and replicate that as well. I will use that to temper my mind againstrge floods of information so that it doesn''t snap."


    "Are you sure that''s going to be enough?" Kane raised an eyebrow.


    "Well, I cannot be certain, but it is the very best I can do," Rui remarked calmly. "Ultimately, only time will tell whether it will be enough. Only time will tell whether it will have been worth it.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1953 Commencing Agony

    <h4>Chapter 1953 Commencing Agony</h4>


    Half a year passed before the Elder Tree was finally done.


    It is truly a shame that the non-esoteric sciences of this world are not on par with those of Earth. Content protected by N?v/el(D)rama.Org.


    Rui didn''t respond.


    I havepleted learning everything from your end of the deal. Now, I am willing to fulfill my end of the deal.


    His eyes opened.


    He sat cross-legged in his quarters, having been immersed in his thoughts. He nced around at the room he was in.


    He was in his room in the Quarrier Orphanage.


    This was at his request, courtesy of the Elder Tree.


    It wasforting, but it also made him feel homesick. The Beast Domain was not a pleasant ce. He truly looked forward to the day that he could return to the Kandrian Empire.


    Unfortunately, he had many tribtions and hurdles to ovee before that was the case.


    One of them was already ready, waiting for him.


    "Fuuuuu¡­" He exhaled deeply.


    In the past half year, he had thoroughly integrated the Garden of Salvation into his Mind Pce, massively increasing the area of the entire mental location and creating countless brand-new storage locations.


    Additionally, he had also subjected himself to extremely strenuous mental training.


    The Angel of Lace.


    It was the most mentally strenuous technique that he had ever created in his entire life. Trying to keep up with it was like trying to stop a tsunami with one''s own body. It was extremely difficult. He had subjected himself to it day in and day out for the past six months, bombarding his mind with a flood of data.


    It paid off.


    His tolerance had increased significantly. Things that would havepletely overwhelmed him before were now not just barely manageable. The mind was a muscle. While it did not undergo hypertrophy as other muscles did, it did be stronger the more one trained and exercised it.


    The third measure he took was conditioning himself in a state of absolute focus.


    He only did this in times when he was faced with a great hurdle or obstacle before him.


    It was only fit for circumstances where he needed to focus on a matter of utmost importance, trumping all else. It was actually not optimal for the Beast Domain; traversing the Beast Domain required immense alertness and situational awareness regarding everything that could possibly be a threat.


    But it was perfect for maximizing the probability of sessfully absorbing the inheritance of the Elder Tree.


    Yet, it also impacted his aura.


    It had be sharper.


    It left one feeling at the edge of a de.


    A quiet peril radiated from deep within him, inspiring primal fear from those it touched.


    "I am ready."


    His voice was calm and soft.


    ¡­Are you sure?


    "Certain."


    The tone of his voice agreed, conveying unyielding confidence.


    So be it. The knowledge and skill that the Divine Doctor imparted to me allow me to take care of all biological functions that would otherwise require you to pause and stop. I can ensure that your body remains stable and catered during the entire time.


    "¡­Good," Rui heaved a sigh.


    CLACK


    The door opened as Kane appeared, heaving a deep sigh. "The tree told me. It''s time?"


    "Indeed." Rui nodded slowly. "Once we begin, do not disturb me with anything no matter what. Got it?"


    "Gotcha. I''d change your mind if I could, but¡­" Kane smiled wryly. "I know that isn''t happening. So¡­ break a leg?"


    Rui huffed, smiling. "Thanks."


    Kane left them alone, closing the door behind him.


    ¡­Are you ready?


    Rui inhaled deeply, exhaling in a huff. "Yes."


    Hey on his bed as roots emerged from within the ground, piercing different spots in his arms and legs and into his blood vessels to regte his circtory system and blood flow. A root formed something resembling a gas mask, nting itself onto his face.


    Several thicker roots wrapped across each limb powerfully, holding him in ce. It would not do if Rui thrashed around during the inheritance.


    BADUMP


    Rui lightly activated the Martial Heart, increasing the metabolism of his brain. Yet he reduced the output to ten percent so that it wouldst an entire session.


    It was soon toe.


    The air grew taut with tension.


    It boiled tumultuously.


    Say the word.


    Rui closed his eyes.


    "Begin."


    So be it.


    At that moment, a titanic tsunami of information crashed into his mind.


    A collision greater than anything he had ever experienced in his entire life ensued.


    "AAARRGHJHJHHHHHHHHHH!" A guttural bellow of excruciating pain escaped him as more information than he had ever beheld bombarded him at once, threatening to crush him.


    BOOOM!!!


    His Mind Pce shivered under the sheer force of the oceans of data that the Elder Tree poured into his mind.


    "Rggghhhhhh!" Rui gritted his teeth as he struggled to process all of it.


    It was agonizing.


    So much so that the very notion of suffering this for half a year brought him to the brink of despair.


    Yes, his eyes red with fiery determination as he bore the full brunt of the devastating information impacts within the depths of his mind. His determination soared as he processed every iota of data that the Elder Tree passed on to him, nting them in locations across the entirety of his newly expanded Mind Pce.


    The me Baboon species.


    The Tempestuous Turtle species.


    The Light Dragon species.


    Species after species, Rui learned about the most optimal environmental data needed to adapt to them. Yet, that wasn''t all; the Elder Tree also shared profoundly exclusive insights and other strategically important information that it had to offer regarding all of them.


    Yet, that only made it harder.


    "ARRGHHHHHHHHH!!!" Rui struggled as a torrent of information weathered away his ability to process. The powerful force of information threatened topletely consume his mind the moment he let up on his effort.


    Just the slightest bit of carelessness, and he could easily be thrown into aa.


    A single mistake could end it all.


    And even if he seeded in avoiding a single mistake¡­


    "AAAARRRRRGGHHHHHHHHHHAAAHAGAHH!!!" Screams of agony spread across the entire Garden of Salvation.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1954 Patterns

    Chapter 1954 Patterns


    "ARGRHRGRHRHHHHRAGHARHHH!!!" Rui''s screams melted into incoherent wails of agony.


    Blood began trickling from his eyes, ears, mouth, and nose from the sheer stress that it caused within his body. If not for the Elder Tree, which promptly used the remarkable medical prowess it came to develop from the knowledge and skill it inherited from the Divine Doctor and its own powerful capabilities, Rui would have died very soon.


    Yet, nobody who saw his current state could, in good faith, insist that the Elder Tree was doing him any favors.


    Death was mercy inparison to what Rui was being subjected to.


    "AAAARGRHRGHRRGWHAGRGAHHHHHRHRHRHGHGGHRRR!!!!!" A soul-wrenching guttural screech of pure agony erupted from within him even as he processed the information that was thrust into him. The Elder Tree almost stopped prematurely at several points when it felt like Rui was on the verge of snapping from the sheer information overload. It was extremely cautious and attentive to his mental state, harboring a dim hope that it would be able to stop at the right moment if Rui ever snapped. Yet, much to its surprise, scream and struggle as he did; his mind never shattered. Even at certain points when any other Senior in his position would have long been turned into a vegetable, Rui gritted his teeth and forged on.


    "Rrrrggghhghegrhrhr!!!" His eyes were fierce with pain and determination. Despair stared him in the eye.


    It waited for him to fall to it.


    There were very few times that he hade this close to breaking down in despair and misery.


    Not even the Squire evolution process was so soul-wrenching.


    It was one of pure physical pain.


    It certainly tested mental fortitude. Martial Artists who had managed to retain their senses and sanity from it were undoubtedly cut from those who had suffered permanent mental anguish or the Martial Apprentices who chickened out.


    Yet, it didn''t even hold a candle to what Rui had subjected himself.


    Mental pain was different.


    It was not an experiential sensation.


    It was suffering.


    It was pure, unadulterated, condensed suffering. The kind that would eventually weather even the hardest of warriors.


    Because the experience was mental, the flow of time was different.


    It served to prolong the sheer agony that he felt from the experience. Each moment was its own eternity.


    It would stretch out forever. "AAAAAAAAARGRHRGRHRGARGAHRGRGHRG!!!"


    Rui had lost track of time.


    His mental fortitude had shocked the Elder Tree, who was surprised he had managed tost as long as he did. Species after species crashed into his mind.


    The Boiling Boar species.


    The Roaring Dragon species.


    The Killing Kirin species.


    One by one, amidst the horrors of the mental agony he experienced, he also stored them within the expanded Mind Pce. Species by species, and more importantly, world upon world.


    He received immense environmental data on how the optimal for each species ought to be, and he instantly stored it in the Mind Pce even as his mind suffered the shock of immense information being poured into it.


    Ordinarily, he should have been in joy.


    After all, this priceless intelligence was exactly what he had sought from the very beginning.


    But s, the path that he had chosen to go down was anything but joyful.


    "AAAAAARGRHRGRHAGRAHRGRHHHHH!!!" An incoherent guttural bellow of suffering escaped him as fires within his eyes began dimming.


    The darkness of fear began oveing them.


    His heart rate spiked, palpitating uncertainly.


    His body struggled more ferociously.


    Pure agony overran every ounce of his mind.


    He felt his consciousness dimming, dimming as if it was eroded by the many waves of information that churned away at it. It was so easy to let go.


    It was almost tempting.


    Why prolong his suffering when he could let himself go to thefort of the void?


    The pain only grew.


    The suffering only grew.


    Species upon species.


    World after world.


    Thousands of them, one after the other.


    It was torture.


    So easy to let go.


    At that moment, he came closer to letting go than he ever had.


    FLASH


    His eyes widened as his awareness caught sight of an anomaly within the oceans of information his mind furiously processed.


    Something that called out to him.


    FLASH


    "This¡­" A quivering whisper escaped him as recognition dawned on him.


    It was a pattern.


    Not just one pattern.


    FLASH FLASH FLASH


    Many patterns.


    As the Elder Tree kept pouring enormous tsunamis of information into the depths of his mind, even as it overwhelmed him, he began spotting pattern after pattern. The environments that were most optimal for scaled creatures universally had extreme temperatures.


    The environments that were most optimal for particrlyrger creatures tended to have a lower temperature.


    Creatures with exoskeletons tended to be best suited to environments with particrly high external pressure. Creatures with internal skeletons tended to be able to have environments with greater gravitational fields.


    Size, anatomy, density and mass distribution, diet, physiology, nature of each organ system, biochemistry. Species with simr values in some of these variables each had optimal environments that shared an element ofmonality. There were definitive corrtions that could be drawn between these variables and their corresponding environment.


    He hadn''t noticed it initially, processing them one by one, but when he organized andid them within his Mind Pce, the patterns became increasingly clear!


    For just a moment, the pain disappeared.


    The agony abated.


    The suffering halted.


    They were drowned out.


    Drowned out by the sheer magnitude of the epiphany that struck Rui. A revtion that thundered within his mind, drowning out even the enormous ocean of information that converged on him.


    A single whisper escaped him.


    "These are the patterns of life itself."


    Because all life in the world fundamentally emerged from a singlemon ancestor, patterns spread across it. Thest unifyingmon ancestor, a mere single-celled lifeform, gave birth to several descendants, which in turn reproduced into several more descendants that eventually diverged off into all known life in the entire world, forming branches after branches of new life that all stemmed from amon root. This belongs ? N?velDra/ma.Org.


    It was like a tree.


    A Tree of Life that epassed all life in Gaia.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1955 Pain and Pleasure

    Chapter 1955 Pain and Pleasure


    It was never his intention.


    When he took to calling his domain system the Yggdrasil System, this had never been his intention.


    Yet, it magically clicked.


    The more data he received from the Elder Tree, the more he could see patterns that stretched throughout the tree of life itself. These patterns bound the Tree of Life together within a single tree. They were the tree. Without these patterns, the Tree of Life would crumble.


    The depths of his eyes stirred.


    The endless void that resided within them stirred, surging forth.


    Where there were patterns, there could be pattern recognition. Content protected by N?v/el(D)rama.Org.


    A predictive model across all life in the world.


    Yet, this predictive model would not predict their movements like his other predictive models.


    No, this predictive model would predict which environment was the most optimal for a given beast or monster. And from the most optimal environment, the most antithetical environment could also be derived.


    On top of that, this predictive model could be applied to all life, even beyond the Elder Tree''s knowledge. "This is it¡­" A whisper escaped him as his pupils dted. "This is the power I sought. The power to adaptively evolve to all life anywhere in the world."


    The ecstasy of his epiphany and the agony of this knowledge converged in his mind, bing one.


    "AAAAARGRHHHHAHAHAAGARAHAHAHAGAGHRAGAHRARAHA!!!" A guttural scream of agony merged with ecstaticughter, forming an unholy union.


    "MORE!" He bellowed at the Elder Tree. "GIVE ME MORE!!!"


    A maniacally wide grin appeared on his face as the Elder Tree obliged with his request, giving him even more information.


    "AAAAARFGRHRGHRGRHRHRGHRBRGRHR!!!" At that moment, nobody could be certain of Rui''s sanity. Of course, he had never been the most¡­normal. However, even Kane had to admit that he was reaching new levels of madness. Pain became pleasure.


    The more pain he experienced, the deeper his epiphany rang.


    He didn''t have the mental capacity to simultaneously create a predictive model while processing the enormous flood of information. Yet, a newfound drive rose within him that allowed him to weather the painful influx of information.


    A predictive model across all life. The Tree of Life.


    How could he die before hepleted it?


    How could he be a vegetable before hepleted it?


    How could he lose his mind before hepleted it?


    He couldn''t.


    The desire to construct the Tree of Life predictive model for the Yggdrasil System burned in the depths of his heart, reaching unprecedented levels of drive.


    Even at that moment, an unfathomable agony burned deep within the depths of his mind.


    Yet, he smiled.


    A powerful torrent of information deeper than anything he had experienced before eroded away at who he was.


    Yet, he smiled. Even in the face of fates far worse than death, he smiled.


    The more pain he felt, the closer he got to elevating the Yggdrasil System to a ce worth its name, worthy of the Tree of Life.


    He had yet to endeavor down this venture, for he was too busy actually processing the excruciatingly painful torrent of information that flooded his mind. However, a vision of the future thundered his head.


    The future of the Yggdrasil System.


    A future that he was driven to reach from the depths of his soul.


    An endless ocean of beasts and monsters stretched out as far as the eye could see.


    They faced him, surging forth.


    Yet the Tree of Life bloomed, supplying Rui with the answer. It showed him the truth.


    The truth about how to adaptively evolve the world antithetically to each and every single one of the beasts and monsters that sought to defeat him.


    In just a moment, he felled all the beasts and monsters with powerful domains that epassed each and every single one of them, killing them on the spot.


    This was the future that he was working towards.


    It was superior to what he had previously nned.


    Simply relying on the Elder Tree''s knowledge as a database was not optimal.


    The Elder Tree was indeed familiar with most species in the Beast Domain. However, that did not mean he was familiar with all of them. It was impossible to be familiar with all life.


    That was why Rui sought to create a predictive model out of the database that the Elder Tree had bequeathed to him. By extracting the patterns of life, he could construct a predictive model for all life, the Tree of Life, which bound all life with patterns.


    Just the very thought of it excited him. All he needed to do was let the VOID algorithm swallow up all the information that the Elder Tree gave him, process it, and it would output the Tree of Life predictive model from the pattern recognition system.


    From the depths of the void would bloom the Tree of Life.


    It was poetic.


    And it was precisely this poetry that he was chasing.


    His desire to manifest that poetry inmed his Martial Drive to unprecedented levels.


    At that moment, he was more driven than he had ever been in his entire life.


    "AAAARGHHRGRJAHAHAHAGAAHARAHAGRHAHAGRRGAGRG!!!" A horrifying fusion of ecstasy and agony echoed through the Garden of Salvation.


    The first sessionsted six hours, although it felt like an eternity to Rui. The Elder Tree, thanks to the medical knowledge he inherited from the Divine Doctor, was able to detect the signs of physiological stress and strain reaching dangerous levels and promptly put an end to the first session.


    "Zzzz¡­." Never before had a man fallen asleep as quickly as Rui did the moment the Elder Tree put an end to the first session of knowledge inheritance, instantly falling into a deep sleep as his brain indulged in some desperately needed rest. The Elder Tree simply stared at Rui in wonder. Not even in its wildest dreams had it expected that a mere Martial Senior would have been able to survive an information influx so powerful that any other Martial Senior would have long been turned into a vegetable!


    What an unfathomable affinity for thought. The Elder Tree realized. Should he ever break through to the Master Realm¡­


    For all its centuries of experience with life, it was unable to fathom the endless potential within Rui.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1956 New Normality

    <h4>Chapter 1956 New Normality</h4>


    Kane heaved a sigh, trying to rx.


    Unfortunately, he was hoping for too much.


    "AAAARGHHRGRJAHAHAHAGAAHARAHAGRHAHAGRRGAGRG!!!"


    His eyebrows furrowed with irritation as Rui''s screamugh fusions disturbed the serenity and harmony of the Garden of Salvation.


    It had been a few months since the Elder Tree had transmitted all his knowledge on life in Gaia to Rui. In totality, the two of them had been in the Garden of Salvation for nine months now.


    Only a year remained till the Emperor of Harmony died.


    "ARRRGHAGAGHHRGRJAHAHAHAGAAHARAHAGRRGHAGGRRGAGRG!!!"


    Kane could not help but wonder if they were doomed from the very start.


    They might have had a chance if Rui didn''t have a fatal w with being extraordinarily driven towards adaptive evolution, even if it came at the cost of healing his father. Yet, because Rui had gotten seduced by the Elder Tree, Kane had to wait until the two of them were done with their little mind orgy.


    "Tough life¡­" Kane remarked as he rxed in an identical replica of his living quarters in the Kandrian Empire.


    "AAAARGHHRGRJAHAHAHAGAAHARAHAGRHAHAGRRGAGRG!!!"


    Of course, Kane didn''t strictly mind it if Rui''s dad died.


    After all, it wasn''t like it was his dad, though he wouldn''t mind his own asshole of a father dying either. He also knew that Rui didn''t have much, if any at all, of an emotional attachment to his father. The biggest reason he was searching for the Divine Doctor was that he didn''t want to ascend to the throne as the Third Emperor of the Kandrian Empire.


    "AAAARGHHRAAAAHGRJAHAHAHAGAAHARAHAGRHAHAGRRGAGRG!!!"


    Even though Kane didn''t mind Rui''s dad dying, he didn''t want to see Rui be Emperor because it would be impossible to hang out with his best friend and the source of his Martial Drive.


    He also knew that it wasn''t what Rui wanted.


    "Ah, well." He shrugged. "It is what it is."


    "AAAARGHHRGRJAHAHAHAGAAHARAHAGRHAHAGRRGAGRG!!!"


    While Rui spent thest three months discovering that he was a masochist, Kane had taken some time to work on his Martial Art. He strengthened his fundamentals and foundations more than anything since these were much more important than techniques in the Beast Domain.


    He had been working on improving his passive reaction time and awareness, trying to use his affinity for lightning to see if he could upgrade the Primordial Instinct. His goal was to try and use the lightning that he upgraded Godspeed with to form Fulminata, to heighten his awareness and instincts by constantly stimting them to the very maximum.


    "AAAARGHHRGRJAHAHAHAGAAHARAHAGRHAHAGRRGAGRG!!!" Content protected by N?v/el(D)rama.Org.


    Thankfully, his efforts had yielded sess. He had reached an extraordinary level of alertness and awareness through this method, and it worked extremely well. He had managed to extensively test his new technique with the help of the Elder Tree, which had created domains that severely hampered his senses.


    What he was especially proud of was the fact that he had taken his first step in forming a nascent system of thought.


    Currently, he possessed two ''modes'' of fighting, if one could call it that. One where he relied more on stealth and deception and another where he relied more on speed, agility, and, more importantly, evasive maneuvering.


    These were, to some extent, mutually exclusive. At the very least, he could not use Void Step and Fulminata Godspeed simultaneously, and each of those techniques was the strongest of the two modes ofbat he engaged in.


    One of the issues that he had was that he often had a hard time of choosing which mode to begin with against which opponent. Normally, he just went with his gut, but there were plenty of times where he made the wrong choice.


    This was not an eptable arrangement.


    Especially in the Beast Domain, where the wrong choice meant death.


    In fact, they would have died several times by now if not for his grandmother''s prophecies.


    The need to choose correctly became stronger.


    His choices could no longer be driven by guesswork; they needed to be thoughtful. He came to the realization that in order to be thoughtful, he needed to have a system of thought that allowed him to evaluate his circumstances and make thoughtful choices.


    Thus, nearly a year ago, in the Garden of Salvation, he had begun endeavoring to create his very first system of thought. He spent many hours thinking about how he would employ thought to make the right choice each time.


    Unfortunately, he hadn''t evene close to sess even after a whole year of dedicated thought.


    "Rui makes it look so easy." He cursed.


    The way Rui created powerful and potent systems of thought had created a false illusion within Kane''s mind that he could do it pretty well if he wanted to, but the sheer astronomical difficulty of creating an effective and viable system of thought was far, far more difficult than creating Martial Art techniques.


    It was such unfamiliar territory for Kane that he had absolutely no idea how to even get started.


    How did one begin?


    How did one progress?


    How in the world did one test and improve systems of thought?


    His respect and admiration for Rui for creating the VOID algorithm, the Angel of Lace, the ODA System, and the SOUL System only heightened. Only after trying to create his own system of thought did he realize how absurdly impressive the ones Rui created were.


    His thoughts were interrupted when a stark silence suddenly reced the screams.


    "Done?" Kane asked out loud.


    Yes. The session for today is over.


    "Is he¡­?"


    Thus far, arguably, he has probably retained his mind and sanity.


    "Arguably?" Kane narrowed his eyes. "Probably?"


    I am not a mental health expert. Certainly not for Martial Artists. I am unable toment on his mental health at the moment. What I can say is that he is responsive and conscious and has sessfully processed and stored all the information I have supplied him.


    Kane heaved a sigh. "Is he awake?"


    He has already fallen asleep.


    "Well, alright, I suppose I''ll just have to catch him when he wakes up."


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1957 Void

    Chapter 1957 Void


    Ever since he began inheriting the Elder Tree''s understanding and knowledge of the biosphere of the Panama Continent, Rui''s daily life had be brutally simple.


    He woke up and immediately began subjecting himself to torture.


    This period of his daily life was characterized by screams and maniacalughs that merged together in the greatest audition for a horror film that Gaia had ever seen.


    Once that was done, he fell asleep instantly.


    It was a beautifully simple life.


    It was also a brutally simple life.


    Ecstasy and pain became his reality during the influx of sessions. Pain from the inheritance of knowledge and ecstasy from finding the patterns of life that would go on to be the fabric of his Tree of Life predictive model.


    Yet, the moment the sessions ended, he felt empty.


    He felt like there was a hole in his heart.


    A void.


    He felt incapable of ecstasy or pain outside of the times when he was pursuing his Martial Path by epting the Elder Tree''s database on the biosphere of Gaia. It was as though the extremely heightened pain and ecstasy he felt during the inheritance sessions came at the cost of feeling pain or ecstasy at any other moment.


    In a way, the mind sort of adhered to aw of conservation of emotion.


    One could only feel so much of a certain emotion or feeling.


    That included pain and ecstasy.


    The more one experienced it, the more the mind would adjust its sense of normality to make it the new normal.


    It appeared that his mind had worked overtime in that regard.


    It made the inheritance sessions more ptable, yet any time he was conscious outside of that¡­it was dark.


    Each morning Rui woke up, he felt dead.


    Detached.


    Cold.


    If was thought the inheritance sessions squeezed out everything he could experience, and what was left was an empty husk of a human.


    His Martial drive still drove him forward.


    It actually only grew stronger, yet it no longer evoked emotion from him outside of the inheritance sessions of agony and ecstasy.


    It was difficult to exin.


    He didn''t understand.


    Some mornings, Rui would stare at his own hands listlessly.


    A single recurring thought would often sh through his mind.


    ''It would be so easy to kill myself with a Sympathetic Death Lance.''


    Surely, death would not feel more empty than he currently did.


    He closed his eyes. "Begin."


    Kane wished to speak to you.


    Rui''s eyes were vacant.


    Hollow.


    "Begin."


    ¡­Understood.


    Soon enough, the screams of agony andughter of ecstasy began. His vacant eyes, devoid of life, finally lit up.


    The Tree of Life awaited him.


    At this rate, he could reach it.


    Yet, at what cost?


    He didn''t know.


    He didn''t want to know.


    Days, weeks, and even months passed.


    An enormous amount of information had filled up his Mind Pce. Species by species and world by world, he filled up with depths of his Martial Mind.


    His understanding of the biosphere of the Beast Domain rose astronomically.


    So much so that it would not be an exaggeration to say that he was one of the greatest authorities on beasts and monsters of this domain, perhaps only the very greatest of schrs or someone like the Ecologer was above him, but there was no doubt that he had ess to truly groundbreaking intelligence that could greatly advance humanity''s interests in the Beast Domain.


    He could write papers on various hypotheses and scientific theories that could go on to revolutionize ecology.


    He could probably propose a holistic taxonomical framework that integrated every single species, esoteric or non-esoteric, in a single track. In fact, he could probably create an evolutionary chain of species and make educated guesses about thest unifyingmon ancestor of all life.


    Yet, he didn''t care for all of these pursuits.


    No.


    He only cared about what all this information could do or his Martial Art.


    That was the sole reason he weathered on without losing his mind.


    He suffered and suffered, persisting only for the promise of the ability to adaptively evolve to all life in the world.


    The end came abruptly. This belongs ? N?velDra/ma.Org.


    WHOOSH


    His awareness returned to the world around him. He was drenched in sweat and grime. His body was restrained by the powerful roots of the Elder tree.


    "Huff¡­Huff¡­" He felt life draining out of him, growing listless and detached.


    His eyes grew cold.


    "Why did you stop?"


    The Elder Tree stopped only when his brain needed rest. Usually, that meant he fell asleep very quickly. But he felt wide awake, even if tired. It had only been a few hours since they began.


    I have nothing left to transmit to you.


    "¡­What?"


    Congrattions, you have sessfully inherited the entirety of my knowledge of the biosphere of the Beast Domain. I can safely say that you have not suffered any neurological damage. However¡­


    Rui remained detached, unmoving.


    ¡­the same cannot be said for your psychological and mental health.


    Rui didn''t move.


    A single remark escaped him.


    "Oh."


    The Elder Tree stared at him warily.


    It was truly astonishing that Rui managed to process such an enormous database of data within just six months. The Elder Tree had not been kidding when he said that he was not confident that Rui would manage toe away with his mind intact. So much so that he had Rui pass on his priceless knowledge from another world before it was lost forever.


    Yet, even the Elder Tree had to admit that it had to eat its words.


    Rui processed every single iota of data it threw at him for six months straight.


    "Good."


    Rui''s voice was detached. Before he could even think¨C


    STEP


    Kane appeared before him, finally getting a good look at him awake for the first time in months. Rui had avoided speaking to him when he woke up for months on end, choosing to jump into the inheritance session immediately.


    He had raced when the Elder Tree informed him of the conclusion of the inheritance, looking forward to finally speaking to his friend after a long time.


    Yet, what he saw only drew horror from deep within his heart.


    There he sat.


    Without a shred of emotion in his eyes. An endless void stirred deep within their depths.


    "¡­Rui?"


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1958 Contrast

    Chapter 1958 Contrast


    "¡­Kane." Rui''s voice was detached.


    Devoid of any emotion.


    It was as though he simply uttered the word instead of greeting a friend.


    Raw terror erupted from within his soul.


    Kane''s face grew horrified at what he saw. Gone were the eyes lit with enthusiasm, excitement, and ecstasy. Where once would have been unyielding joy at having finally inherited priceless knowledge that would have revolutionized his Flowing Void Style against the Beast Domain, was¡­emptiness. It was like he was looking at a corpse.


    The Rui that Kane knew would have been beaming with energy, eager to test out his new power against various beasts and monsters.


    Yet the man sitting before him was different.


    He was detached.


    His eyes were cold, devoid of the warmth that once was there.


    "Why do you look at me like that?"


    His tone was chilling.


    It startled Kane.


    Yet there was an ounce of sincerity, cold as it was.


    It was as though he couldn''t see why Kane would react the way he would.


    Kane stared at him, his expression growing grave.


    "¡­How do you feel?"


    His eyes sharpened to slits as a smile appeared on his face.


    A cold smile.


    "I feel incredible."


    In any other circumstance, Kane would have heaved a sigh of relief, cracked a few jokes, and moved on.


    Yet he couldn''t move.


    He was frozen. Content protected by N?v/el(D)rama.Org.


    Frozen in horror.


    "You seem unwell." The edge in Rui''s voice cut at Kane, making him wince.


    Yet Rui didn''t seem to notice, staring at Kane.


    His eyes were reduced to sharpened slits.


    They were dark.


    "Perhaps you should get yourself checked out by the Elder Tree."


    Kane stared at him with uncertainty and apprehension.


    "I''m sure it''d be willing to conduct full medical examinations for free."


    A hint of fear flickered in Kane''s eyes.


    "I don''t mind trading a few extra favors if it wasn''t willing to."


    Kane felt his nerves tingle.


    "Anything for a friend, right?" His words were nice.


    Yet, his voice and tone were chilling.


    It was almost as if he was threatening Kane. Being friends with Rui had always been a crazy experience, yet Rui had never made Kane feel unsafe before.


    STEP


    Kane winced as Rui stood up, walking over to him slowly.


    CLASP


    Rui stared into his eyes, grasping his shoulder.


    "Kane." His eyes were reduced to sharp slits.


    "Are you ok?"


    The contrast between his words on paper and his demeanor and bodynguage was almost dizzying.


    Kane didn''t know what to pay attention to.


    He didn''t know what was happening.


    "Are you ok?" Kane furrowed his eyebrows with uncertainty. Rui stared at him. "I told you, I feel great. I just finished inheriting the Elder Tree''s knowledge of the biosphere of the Beast Domain. And now¡­"


    The smile that crept up on his face was soft.


    Yet, it sent chills across Kane''s skin.


    STEP


    He walked past Kane.


    "¡­now I shall manifest the Tree of Life within the depths of my mind."


    Kane turned, watching the retreating figure of his friend with horror. ''What happened to him?!'' Kane barked at the Elder Tree mentally.


    I am not an expert on psychology. However, if I had to make an educated guess, I think his subconscious mind, in response to extreme emotion triggered by extreme stimuli, has astronomically elevated the threshold for triggering both negative and positive neurotransmitters.


    ''I legitimately have no idea what that means.''


    ¡­It takes far more for him to experience agony, ecstasy, and other emotions closely rted to both of them.


    ''¡­He''s basically a different person!''


    I warned him. I warned him that he could suffer tremendous mental damage. But unfortunately, he was adamant about pursuing this course of action, as you know.


    "Damn." Kane cursed out loud. "That''s crazy!"


    Kane had also heard the Elder Tree''s warnings and Rui''s stubbornness, so he knew that the Elder Tree was not lying whatsoever. Both of them had tried to convince him not to do it, but Rui''s determination had never once wavered.


    Now, Kane wondered if respecting his wishes had been the best course of action.


    To say that Rui had undergone a shocking change was an understatement.


    His demeanor had altered at its very root, bing dispassionate and detached.


    Cold. The only time he smiled was¡­


    Kane narrowed his eyes. "What was the Tree of Life thing he mentioned?"


    He nned to condense all the information that he had inherited from me into a predictive model that could predict, based on their given traits, what environment was optimally antithetical to any monster or beast. He called it the Tree of Life.


    Kane''s eyebrows rose. "He must have nned to upgrade the Yggdrasil System with a new system of thought. No wonder. He must have been excited for that. But¡­"


    Ordinarily, Rui would have been extremely boisterous and energetic in his enthusiasm for upgrading his Martial Art.


    Yet, this time, he barely smiled.


    It might be a temporary shock. He was enthusiastic about seeing his project to the very end.


    "No¡­" Kane grew grave. "You don''t get it. His Martial Art and Path are what brings him the most joy, fulfillment, and purpose in this world. More than anything else. The fact that even they could barely make him crack a smile¡­"


    That was what terrified Kane.


    How horrific was the suffering of the elerated inheritance such that it desensitized him to the point where even the drive that persisted past death and across worlds struggled to move him?


    Yet, he didn''t strike Kane as though his drive was weaker.


    If anything, being desensitized to the point where nothing else could possibly move him simply meant that his Martial Drive and Martial Path would take an even greater primacy over his life.


    Kane shivered at the consequences of such a thinging to pass, immersing himself in thought for quite a long time.


    Rui was crazy enough in his decision-making even when he was sensitive to the consequences before.


    What would happen if he became entirely desensitized to the consequences?


    RUMBLE!


    The Garden of Salvation shook, startling Kane out of his reverie.


    "What the hell¡­?"


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1959 She Was Wrong

    <h4>Chapter 1959 She Was Wrong</h4>


    "¡­now I shall manifest the Tree of Life within the depths of my mind."


    Rui walked past Kane with a chilling smile on his face. The promised time had finally arrived. The prospect of finally fulfilling the desire that kept him going was one of the few things that brought life back to his eyes.


    He left his quarters, taking high up to the skies as he indulged in the fresh air of the Garden of Salvation.


    For a moment, he beheld the biosphere within the Garden of Salvation.


    A seemingly endless ocean of life that spread a great stretch beyond what the eye could see.


    Within the depths of his mind, he essed the Garden of Salvation that had firmly be a part of his Mind Pce, wringing out all the relevant patterns from the vast ocean of data thaty deep within his mind.


    Attribute by attribute.


    Trait by trait.


    Species by species.


    And the environments that corrted with them.


    What followed truly brought thrill to an otherwise dead man.


    His eyes lit up with wonder as he began constructing the Tree of Life predictive model¡ªa tapestry to be woven from the countless patterns. He had already begun weaving what was bound to be thergest predictive model he had ever created in his entire life.


    No Martial Artist that he had ever seen couldpare to the sheer depth of patterns of all life. Content is ? by N?velDrama.Org.


    He closed his eyes as he wove them.


    Thread by thread.


    Pattern by pattern.


    Ordinarily, forming a predictive model from pre-existing data was an easy and brief process. It used to take some time when he was in a fight because he created predictive models because he needed to gather all the data to draw patterns. When the Angel of Lace came into the picture, that time was cut extremely short because it would supply him with all the data he needed.


    Yet, despite having all the data he needed, it still took time.


    Yet, even as it did, the Tree of Life slowly came to be.


    With each passing moment, the Tree of Life grew.


    With each passing moment, it grew more real.


    The essence of the data of billions of species that Rui had inherited from Elder Tree went into its creation. Worthy of a predictive model named after the mythical Yggdrasil, said to epass all life.


    Rui narrowed his eyes as he revved up his effort, exerting the entirety of his mind, reaching a dimension of cognition that no Martial Senior could even begin to dream of. In the past year, his mind had grown more powerful under tremendous stress and strain. The sheer power of thought he had aplished had spiked so far above his peers that it was difficult to consider him to be in the same Realm.


    His mind had risen to be an aberrant among aberrants.


    Now, he exerted the sum totality of his effort, reaching a state of absolute focus and concentration as he wove together a titanic Tree of Life in his Mind Pce.


    It helped that in the past year, he had increasingly spent more time in a hyper-focused state. Entering a state of absolute focus became easier and easier; it became second nature.


    It needed to.


    He spent the entirety of his waking day inheriting the database of the Elder Tree. This was a task that, if he gave anything less than his absolute best, he would fail and suffer tremendous consequences.


    And that allowed him to construct the Tree of Life at an astonishing pace.


    And soon enough, the decisive moment came.


    RUMBLE


    The final thread locked into ce as the tapestry of the Tree of Life came to life.


    It changed everything.


    In his mind, an unfathomable depth of understanding of the very fabric of life consumed him. A deepprehension of the profound rtionship between life and heaven and earth sunk into his mind. An otherworldly awareness permeated the sum totality of his existence.


    Enlightenment.


    Yet, it didn''t change him.


    No.


    It changed the world.


    He opened his eyes, beholding the Garden of Salvation.


    It was a sight that had be banal and mundane after a year of exposure.


    Yet, it wasn''t.


    It was as though he was now able to see a dimension of the universe that had remained hidden from him his entire life.


    "Ah¡­" A serene whisper escaped Rui. "This¡­"


    This was the Tree of Life.


    With every living being he beheld, he was able to see something that wasn''t there.


    A parallel world around each of them.


    Worlds that were most antithetical to each of them.


    One that most adaptively evolved against their existence.


    He could see exactly what kind of domain would be most antithetical to them, what domain he ought to conjure to adaptively evolve the very root of the world against them. It was as though the very fabric of fundamental reality, the very ontology of the world, had changed such that each being was apanied by an invisible antithetical parallel world that followed them everywhere they went.


    Worlds that he alone was able to see.


    Worlds he didn''t make an effort to see.


    He wasn''t exerting himself in the slightest.


    Yet, he was able to see nheless. Histest and most powerful predictive model hadfortably nted itself in the depths of his mind, spreading its branches and roots across the entirety of his conscious mind and beyond.


    Perhaps that was why he was able to see a world antithetical to each and every single living being in his field of sensing.


    It was passive.


    Certainly not conscious.


    It had integrated into his awareness.


    Could it even be considered a system of thought?


    He didn''t know.


    A distant memory resurfaced from many years ago.


    "You can never know," Master Reina had told him a long time ago. "You can never know when your Martial Mind isplete. No one can."


    Yet when he closed his eyes, a single instinct erupted from deep within the depths of his soul.


    A single whisper escaped him.


    "She was wrong."


    At that moment, his mind, heart, soul, and every cell in his body¡­the sum totality of his being became certain of a single truth.


    He had arrived at the cusp of the Master Realm.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1960 Inadvertent Exertion

    1960 Inadvertent Exertion


    He basked in the otherworldly glory as he beheld innumerable worlds centered around each lifeform. BADUMP!


    His Martial Heart zed into glory as it enhanced his brain and senses, allowing him to see further.


    To see more.


    It helped.


    The invisible antithetical worlds that ovepped the real world, revolving around their targets, grew more real.


    They grew more fleshed out. Content is ? by N?velDrama.Org.


    Although he knew they were mere figments within the depths of his mind, it was difficult to truly believe that.


    They were so real.


    So real that he could almost believe it.


    And he did.


    It became so indistinguishable from actual reality that his subconscious mind was unable to distinguish it.


    That triggered a sequence of events that Rui would have foreseen if not for being consumed by the Tree of Life.


    Suddenly, his bodynguage and demeanor changed.


    His aura and vibe changed.


    His non-verbalmunication was fundamentally altered.


    The light of his Heart had spread far and wide, drawing the attention of every single lifeform.


    For a moment, every single creature in the Garden of Salvation nced in his direction.


    They fell prey to his non-verbalmunication, distracted by the light of his Heart. Unbeknownst to him, he had cast a hypnosis.


    A hypnosis that showed them what he saw.


    A hypnosis that convinced them of what he saw.


    A hypnosis of Hell itself.


    Aquatic creatures suddenly experienced all the water around them drying up. In their minds, all water ceased to exist as the Sun grew brighter and hotter, creating an inferno that consumed them alive. The air pressure decreased, causing the internal pressure they had evolved to have for the deep pressures deep underwater to work against them, causing their own blood and flesh to be their worst enemy, sting out of their flesh violently.


    Various animals experienced Hell, which was most antithetical to them. Phoenixes experienced a frosty, cold world with an atmosphere that was chemically antithetical tobustion itself. It was a world that was designed to snuff their very existence as birds of mes.


    Dragons roared in despair and misery as they experienced a world that rendered their mighty scales useless. The very air they breathed corroded them from the inside out, perfectly bypassing their external durability. Additionally, the drag coefficient of this world was extraordinarily low, rendering them unable to fly. In addition, the humidity of the air had reached an extraordinarily high level, leaving them unable to use their me breath.


    It was as though the very world around them came to hate their very existence.


    Each creature was hypnotized to experience a world antithetical to each of them. Each world was as unique as each creature was. It left them drowning in pain, suffering, and agony.


    No matter their power. No matter their size. No matter what species they were.


    Every Apprentice-level, Squire-level, Senior-level, and Master-level Master-level creature and every creature in between experienced the hell that Rui delivered unto them.


    RUMBLE!


    The world shook with countless roars, wails, and screeches of agony.


    It was a horrifying sight.


    No sane man would derive pleasure from it.


    "Adaptive Evolution¡­" A soft smile emerged on Rui''s face. "So much Adaptive Evolution."


    In the face of all the horror that he had unleashed, Rui found himself experiencing but a single emotion.


    Ecstasy.


    A pure, innocent joy. The joy of someone who truly loved his Martial Art with all his heart.


    Yet, itsted only the briefest of moments.


    An unfathomable power washed over the entirety of the Garden of Salvation. The Elder Tree mobilized its titanic power in time, effortlessly dispelling the hypnosis that Rui inadvertently had inflicted on the entirety of the Garden of Salvation.


    It was not pleased.


    I believe I told you not to infringe on the senses of the creatures of the Garden of Salvation. Why did you spread so much despair and misery?


    "¡­Ah," Rui murmured softly. He turned to the Elder Tree in the distance with detached eyes.


    Eyes devoid of life.


    "You have my apologies."


    His tone was stoic.


    Detached, even if it contained a spark of sincerity.


    "It was not my intention." A whisper escaped him. It was the truth.


    That was what terrified the Elder Tree so much. It was the reason that it had reacted sote. It normally paid attention to the conscious intention of Martial Artists to stop them from hurting creatures of the Garden of Salvation.


    Yet, this time, it had reactedte because Rui truly didn''t intend to hurt them. He had inadvertently cast an unintentional hypnosis that tormented all life in the Garden of Salvation.


    What had shaken the tree was supposed to be reserved exclusively for Martial Masters. The Elder Tree did not understand how a mere Martial Senior had managed to reach a high level of thought without the Martial Mind.


    Rui stared at his hands. "Reality is¡­hazy."


    He turned back to the world around him.


    There was the real material world.


    Yet ovepped over it were countless antithetical parallel worlds, each maximally adaptively evolved against one particr living being.


    "Reality is¡­" A murmur escaped him. "¡­Adaptive Evolution?"


    It was an absurd statement.


    Yet, he felt like he had stumbled into a truly profound insight. "Rui!" Kane finally reached him. "What were you doing?"


    Rui''s eyes slowly turned towards him.


    When he looked at Kane, he saw the Speed Void domain. As expected, it was most optimally antithetical to Kane, one that he would find almost impossible to ovee. He nced back at the Elder Tree, looking for what world was most antithetical to it ording to the Tree of Life.


    His eyes lit up with interest at the answer.


    Outer space.


    A ce where there was neither heaven nor earth would be unable to create domains and would be deeply deprived of all the substances that it needed to sustain its massive existence.


    "Interesting." His tone was empty.


    "¡­Rui?" Kane tilted his head. His dark eyes turned towards Kane slowly. "¡­It''s nothing," he remarked, closing his eyes. "I just made a mistake when I sessfullypleted the Tree of Life. Our business in the Garden of Salvation has concluded."


    -


    Comment


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1961 Departure

    1961 Departure


    The two quickly packed up all their essential needs, restocking their supply of high-quality food pills from the Elder Tree, taking everything they needed for a long journey to the Mellow.


    His stoic eyes slowly returned to the Elder Tree. "Once again, thank you for saving our lives."


    What should have been a pleasant, warm expression of gratitude turned into what was almost an intense face-off.


    "Thank you for telling us where the Divine Doctor went," Rui continued, devoid of warmth. "Thank you for bequeathing a millennium''s worth of knowledge and experience with the biosphere of the Beast Domain."


    ¡­Thank you for knowledge from another world. The Elder Tree returned his gratitude. I look forward to you keeping your word in regard to aid from the Kandrian Empire.


    "I will." Rui nodded slowly. "You know that."


    I do. Be sure to nt a grove of connector tree species in the Kandrian Empire.


    Rui nodded. "Well then. It''s been¡­enlightening."


    "Bye-bye!" Kane waved at the enormous tree. Good luck finding the Divine Doctor, and goodbye.


    Kane''s eyes widened as the Elder Tree transmitted a private message to him just before they were teleported out of the Garden of Salvation.


    Look after him, Kane. He needs you. He needs you more than you realize.


    WHOOSH!


    The world around them magically shifted in a single instant.


    They found themselves in the Beast Domain outside of the Garden of Salvation. Rui narrowed his eyes sharply as his expression grew cold. "No more safety from this point on. Let''s go."


    Kane nodded, staring at him uncertainly, keeping the Elder Tree''s message close to heart. He didn''t fully understand what had happened to Rui.


    He certainly didn''t understand what he could do to fix his friend. Or whether something could even be done.


    However, he knew that he could be there for his friend.


    "We have nine months left," Rui remarked with a t tone. "We need to get from the North of the Beast Domain to the South."


    Kane''s eyes narrowed. "I mean, just getting from the West to the North took three months. Wouldn''t that mean this journey would take twice as long?"


    Rui softly shook his head, sharpening his eyes dark eyes. "We took three months because I sucked as a navigator. With our tremendous speed, we could have made it in two months."


    "Did your navigation skills improve recently?"


    "Yes."


    He didn''t bother borating. However, it was self-exnatory.


    The inheritance from the Elder Tree had given him a fundamentally deep understanding of how to navigate the Beast Domain. The Elder Tree had given him a map of the Beast Domain that was exponentially more precise and urate than the one that he got from the Adventurer''s Guild. Content protected by N?v/el(D)rama.Org.


    In fact, inparison, the Adventurer Guild''s map was not only useless, it was downright dangerous. Rui was hardly surprised that adventurers had the highest mortality rates among all Martial Art professions in existence.


    It took Rui abination of the Elder Tree''s knowledge and his grandmother''s prophecies, two extraordinary trump cards to not feel like he would die in the Beast Domain at any given moment, and even then, they would have, if not for the Elder Tree saving them.


    This time, however, the journey was a lot safer than Kane had expected. They didn''t run into countless ambushes or attacks and were rarely caught off-guard. For the first time since entering the Beast Domain, the two of them truly lived the philosophy ''the only way to win a fight is to avoid it.''


    Kane had to admit that Rui had been precisely on point when he said he could get them there much sooner. They zipped through the Beast Domain, navigating through niche routes and paths that efficiently avoided danger in the Beast Domain. They traveled at a far greater pace than Kane had ever imagined possible. Rui didn''t talk much during the journey. He had grown more silent and aloof, limiting his words to the bare minimum whenever he did talk. It was as though the experience of inheritance broke his ability to be moved.


    Thus far, he had yet to crack even a smile at anything not rted to his Martial Art or his Martial Path. Not forck of trying, Kane had tried his damndest to make himugh with all kinds of jokes, yet none of them could so much as even stir him.


    Yet, that wasn''t the only change that he had undergone. Unsurprisingly, Rui became significantly more effective against beasts and monsters.


    BAM BAM BAM!


    SPLAT!


    Three hippogriffs exploded upon contact with Rui''s attacks, entirely annihted.


    "How''d you do that?!" Kane marveled at him.


    Rui''s eyes turned towards Kane slowly.


    "¡­They have extreme tension piled up in a blood sack within their navels. Striking it causes the pressure to imbnce, leading to an explosion."


    His voice was detached.


    "I see¡­" Kane smiled wryly. "Useful to know, I guess."


    Rui wordlessly strove forward, continuing their journey south. With his newfound expertise, a journey that would have taken six months only took three months, allowing them to reach the Mellow in the southern part of the Beast Domain.


    In addition, despite being tucked in the Master-level belt of the Beast Domain, they managed to traverse through the Master-level belt without too much difficulty. While ny percent of the master-level belt was in Master-level zones, Rui managed to employ the knowledge inherited from the Elder Tree to plot out exactly the right path so that they could avoid being killed.


    Danger zone after danger zone, region after region, monster after monster. STEP


    The two arrived over a cliff that overlooked a normal, peaceful region that stretched out as far as the eye could see under a normal blue sky. The vegetation and flora were entirely normal, which was strange for the Beast Domain.


    Rui spotted herds of deer and other herbivorous creatures, yet he was also able to see normal tigers, leopards, and other entirely mundane predators.


    "Is this the ce?" Kane huffed, tired.


    Rui simply stared at it wordlessly.


    "If it is¡­" Kane remarked. "The Elder Tree was right. This ce doesn''t belong in the Beast Domain."


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1962 Disappeared

    <h4>Chapter 1962 Disappeared</h4>


    "Mmmm¡­" Rui''s dark eyes sharpened.


    Kane was on point with his judgment.


    "This ce belongs in the Human Domain."


    His voice was as soft as it was detached.


    BADUMP


    He activated his Martial Heart, spreading his senses across the Mellow, searching for the Divine Doctor.


    Much to his disappointment, he couldn''t find him.


    His displeasure darkened the atmosphere as his expression grew more severe.


    "Rx, man," Kane put a hand on Rui''s shoulder. "I''m sure we''ll soon find him."


    He didn''t respond.


    STEP


    He leaped off the cliff, free-falling off the cliff, plummeting straight down to the Mellow.


    Kane heaved a deep sigh, following suit.


    THUD


    "Now what?" Kane asked,nding behind him. "I suppo-"


    RUMBLE


    He paused as Rui activated a breathing technique, bending heaven and earth with breath bending as he extracted every single fauna lifeform across the entirety of the region that stretched as far and wide as a town did.


    One by one, every animal of every species had a capacity for intelligence was extracted from the forest, drawn towards Rui by powerful wind currents and pressure gradients.


    Rui stared at them with chilling eyes.


    "Soul Void."


    Suddenly, the world went dark as a flicker of light drew the attention of their consciousness to the side.


    Sleep. Rui whispered to their subconscious mind.


    Ironically, they did fall asleep on the spot instantly.


    "Hahaha!" Kane burst outughing. "These creatures aren''t even Apprentice-level, dude. You gotta tone it down."


    SNAP!


    He flicked his fingers hard, causing a powerful shockwave to wake all of them up, deactivating his Martial Heart. Without it, he managed to get them all in a deep trance before quickly activating Plurichroma.


    Immediately, the world around them changed radically, going through every single frequency of light and sound as he swiftly created SOUL models on every single creature.


    He couldn''t help but marvel at how it was a breeze.


    The mental stress he experienced during this process was trivial inparison to the inheritance from the Elder Tree. Thetter had drastically improved his information influx stress tolerance, allowing him to engage in greater processing power in the heat of the moment.


    So much so that things that he used to find somewhat stressful had be a lot more manageable. While his mastery of the Angel of Lace had yet to reach a stage where he could use it without being frozen in ce, he had made a significant process.


    Who knew that the solution to making progress on that front was mental torture?


    Soon enough, the SOUL models on each of the creatures wereplete.


    Now came the moment of truth.


    He conveyed an image of the Divine Doctor through non-verbalmunication, convincing his subconscious mind that he really was there, and sure enough, they recalled the Divine Doctor really well as they immediately began reliving their memories of him.


    That was not the surprising part.


    What stunned Rui was how long ago these memories were created based on their freshness.


    "He was here¡­a day ago?" Rui''s dark eyes lit up with surprise.


    "What?!" Kane stared at Rui in shock. Content is ? by N?velDrama.Org.


    A flicker of realization dawned within Rui''s empty eyes. "He took much longer to reach the Mellow than we did. He''s a human, so, of course. What was a three-month journey for us might have been a decade-long voyage for the Divine Doctor. But still¡­"


    It was an astronomical coincidence.


    Yet Kane didn''t care, turning around as he spread his senses far and wide across the Mellow. "Where is he?! We must find the bastard!"


    On that point, Rui was inplete agreement.


    "Search for him in the forest while I search through their memories," Rui told Kane as a hint of vigor momentarily returned to his voice.


    It was surreal that they had gotten this close to him.


    They had already set out looking for him roughly three years ago.


    ''Where did all that time go?''


    The darkness within Rui''s eyes stirred as he peered into the minds of his hapless targets.


    He spotted their memories of the Divine Doctor, walking across the Mellow earlier that day.


    They stayed away from him.


    Almost as if they instinctively sensed the menace that he was.


    The Divine Doctor walked across the Mellow, experiencing the region with detached clinical curiosity.


    And then he disappeared.


    "¡­What?" A chilling whisper escaped him as his eyes sharpened to slits.


    He didn''t understand.


    He had already evaluated that it could not possibly be due to a broken memory. Broken memories did not result in a single person disappearing from the memory while everything remained pristine, as opposed to the entire memory degenerating as a whole.


    On top of that, this was hours ago.


    As primitive as these creatures were, surely their memory was not that pitiful.


    THUD


    He dropped the creatures immersed, deep in thought, as he waited for Kane to return.


    Yet, he never did.


    His deste eyes lit up with concern. "¡­Kane?"


    His senses spread across the entirety of the forest as his Martial Heart zed into fury.


    Yet, his friend had all but disappeared.


    RUMBLE¡­


    Raw peril flushed out from his body, causing heart attacks from the surrounding creatures frozen in a trance.


    Yet, he didn''t care.


    His dark eyes, devoid of life, flickered with a single emotion.


    Fear.


    "He''s not dead." Rui dered. "They''re not dead."


    Yet the uncertainty in his voice could not hide itself. Those words were to convince himself more than anybody else.


    His eyes shed with unfathomable power as he activated the true Angel of Lace. An ocean of data of vectors converged onto him within the depths of his mind.


    Yet, it could not so much as make him flinch.


    The darkness within his eyes stirred as he processed every ounce of data at breakneck speeds. His horrific tribtions with the inheritance elevated the speed at the sheer speed at which he processed everything that the Angel of Lace threw at him.


    Within an hour, he was done.


    And that was when the very flow of time reversed.


    It was as though the fabric of reality had been rewound.


    He turned back time further and further back.


    Second by second.


    Minute by minute.


    "¡­There," he whispered as his dark eyes widened with a flicker of hope.


    Kane suddenly reappeared in his visions of the past as he spotted the exact moment and ce where Kane had disappeared.


    It was on the banks of ake.


    RUMBLE!


    In one fell swoop, Rui made an enormous leap as his Martial Heart red with power, propelling himself close to the ce where Kane had disappeared.


    Yet, when he arrived, he hesitated.


    He didn''t know what this esoteric phenomenon was.


    For all he knew, it could be something that erased targets out of reality.


    ¡­It could even be that Kane and the Divine Doctor were dead.


    There was only one reason he didn''t think so.


    "¡­The prophecy."


    A deste whisper escaped him.


    The prophecy showed him meeting the Divine Doctor on a beach. If the Mellow was always his end goal, then the probability he would die when disappearing due to the bizarre esoteric phenomenon was low.


    Thus, he could inductively conclude that both Kane and the Divine Doctor were alive, in which case¡­


    He heaved a soft sigh before stepping forward on the banks of theke as well.


    WHOOSH!


    He, too, disappeared.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1963 At Long Last

    Chapter 1963 At Long Last


    WHOOSH!


    The world around Rui shifted in the blink of an eye.


    One moment, he was in the Mellow.


    The very next?


    He found himself standing before the shores of a beach.


    The softest of smiles cracked at the edge of his mouth as he spotted Kane standing at some distance before him.


    Yet, Kane faced someone else.


    He had bronze skin, donning an attire that resembled that of a fusion of between that of an adventurer and medical attire. An umpteen number of instruments, artifacts, and tools adorned it from top to bottom, no doubt able to be of aid in nearly every circumstance conceivable.


    The Divine Doctor himself.


    Not in a memory, not in a prophecy, but in the flesh.


    His eyes devoid of anypassion, shifted away from Kane, turning to Rui slowly. Curiosity flickered within their hollow depths as he beheld Rui.


    "Interesting."


    Kane frowned, turning to follow his gaze.


    "Rui!" His eyes lit up with joy. "You''re finally here!"


    An invisible smile cracked at the edge of Rui''s mouth. "You''re alive."


    "Bring it in, man." He lunged at Rui, pulling him in a bear hug. "After the first few days, I thought we''d never meet."


    Chills crawled across Rui''s skin at those words. "¡­Days?"


    "Yeah, it''s been like three days. Actually, what took you so long?"


    The atmosphere grew taut.


    The void within Rui''s stirred as he stared at Kane gravely. "Kane¡­"


    His dark eyes sharpened to slits. "I entered less than an hour after you did."


    Kane did a double-take, cocking his head back. "What?! There''s no way!"


    Realization had already dawned on him.


    "Doctor Kar," Rui addressed the Divine Doctor, his dark, sharp eyes slowly turning to him, meeting the man''s clinical gaze. "Could you tell me how long you''ve been here? I wish to confirm or deny a hypothesis."


    The Divine Doctor''s smile remained frozen.


    Yet a glint of interest flickered in his eyes.


    "About two hundred and sixteen days."


    "Figured¡­" Rui muttered severely.


    "Figured what?" Kane asked, narrowing his eyes. "Spit it out!"


    "This ce¡­" Rui nced at the world around them. "¡­Time moves one hundred and forty-four times faster here than it does in the real world."


    Kane''s eyes widened with shock. "What?! Are you sure?!"


    "Certain. The ratio matches both your stated timespans in this worldpared to how long you''ve been absent in the outside world."


    "And just how would you know how long I''ve been absent in the outside world?" The Divine Doctor''s tone cut through, seeking to know.


    The darkness within Rui''s eyes stirred.


    They stirred, meeting the clinical curiosity thaty within the Divine Doctor''s.


    "I verified it in the memory of a deer that spotted your abrupt disappearance when I searched for you in them," Rui truthfully remarked.


    Yet, the Divine Doctor''s detached intrigue only rose. "And just why would you be searching for me in the memories in the fauna of the Mellow?" This belongs ? N?velDra/ma.Org.


    "Because we came to the Mellow to find you, of course," Rui replied. "And just why did youe to the Mellow to find me?" Rui''s chilling gaze bore into the man.


    "¡­Topel you to heal my father of the Eternal Dream disease."


    In just a moment, all the interest disappeared from the Divine Doctor''s eyes.


    "Eternal Dream disease?" He murmured, bored. "Trivial. Has the medicalmunity not figured that one out yet? Tsk Tsk."


    Rui shuddered as a wave of deja vu washed over him.


    Those words.


    Those very words had been uttered by the Divine Doctor in the prophecy that his grandmother had shown him. It appeared that now that Rui had reached the Divine Doctor, the prophecies that his grandmother had shown him might start unfolding one by one.


    "Will you help me?" Rui stared at the man.


    The man gazed at Rui with a hint of derision.


    "My father is the Emperor of Kandria." His tone was sharp. "Aid him, and he will reward you handsomely."


    A mirthlessugh escaped the Divine Doctor. "What I need, he cannot give. No one can. No one aside from the Martial Transcendents who refuse to move despite reaching the pinnacle of Martial Art."


    The weight of Rui''s gaze pressed down on the Divine Doctor. The darkness within his eyes stirred.


    The endless void within them rumbled. "You¡­" "Besides¡­" The Divine Doctor''s eyes closed. "Even if I were to agree, and I certainly haven''t, it would be meaningless. After all, we cannot leave."


    He spread his arms, gazing at Rui with a frozen smile.


    "Wee to my prison." He spread his arms. "I came here looking for clues regarding the illness of mytest patient, but s, I only discovered that this world is even more fantastical than I had ever expected."


    Rui narrowed his eyes. "Prison?"


    "We can''t leave this ce man," Kane grew grave. "I checked this ce; it''s even more bizarre than the Garden of Salvation. The Garden of Salvation had barriers. An end. But this ce¡­it''s continuous. Endless. It loops back over and over, no matter how far you go. It''s like it''s its own! Truly its own world!"


    The sheer shock of this revtion stunned even Rui through his cold darkness.


    "What¡­?" He whispered, staring at Kane, turning to the Divine Doctor. "Is this true¡­?"


    "It''s a self-warping region of heavily curved space-time," the Divine Doctor replied, intrigued. "It''s a shame that the Astromind and Ecologer weren''t here; they would have seen through every secret that exists in this ce. Certainly, I would have inferred far more than I am able to about the geometry of space-time. It''s far too far from my field of expertise."


    Rui closed his eyes as a flood of thoughts churned within the depths of his mind.


    "If what you told me is true, then it can be inferred that the time eleration gamma factor of one hundred and forty-four is a result of the self-looping extrinsic four-dimensional manifold." He sharpened his eyes in thought. "In order to maintain the constancy of the speed of light, time warps to cancel out the effects of the space-warping."


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1964 Open

    Chapter 1964 Open


    Rui''s words were profoundly intriguing to the Divine Doctor.


    His eyes remained fixed on Rui.


    Yet, the clinical curiosity that lit up within them only grew stronger.


    "You." Rui''s dark, cold eyes turned towards the Divine Doctor, meeting his gaze.


    The Divine Doctor studied the darkness that stirred deep within the depths of Rui''s eyes. Yet, not even the mildest ounce of warmth could be detected amidst the deep curiosity that characterized his gaze.


    He would dissect Rui apart in a heartbeat if he was strong enough to do so.


    "Fascinating." He stared at Rui, evaluating him. "A Martial Master who decided to pursue the sciences. Truly fascinating."


    Rui tilted his head slightly. "¡­I am not a Martial Master."


    The Divine Doctor''s frozen smile faltered, crumbling ever so slightly.


    His mirthless, detached eyes intensified. "¡­What?" Rui furrowed his eyebrows. "It is exactly as I said. I am not a Martial Master. I am a Martial Senior."


    The Divine Doctor''s gaze grew chillingly intense, slowly turning to Kane. Kane, too, stared at him quizzically. The Divine Doctor''s inhumanly detached eyes returned to Rui. His gaze remained fixed on Rui. "You mean to say¡­" His voice flickered. "¡­this is your innate capacity for thought?"


    "¡­I suppose you could say that." Rui''s tone was frosty. The Divine Doctor smiled.


    It was a chilling smile.


    Inhuman.


    The smile of a creature that didn''t understand such an expression of joy.


    That of someone who smiled to deceive.


    He walked towards Rui, never once taking his eyes off the man. Kane''s expression sharpened nervously as his body stiffened.


    STEP


    He arrived before Rui.


    Rui''s dark, cold eyes met the inhuman curiosity that lingered deep within the depths of the Divine Doctor''s eyes. CLASP


    He put a hand on Rui''s shoulder. "I have reconsidered my decision regarding your request. I shall heal your father after you allow me to conduct an invasive neurocranial examination inside your head."


    The darkness within Rui''s eyes stirred.


    A chilling gaze peered into the Divine Doctor''s eyes.


    Yet, the doctor remained unperturbed, his frozen smile never once changing a shade.


    The atmosphere froze, growing chill as Rui''s gaze intensified.


    The tension boiled as the air prickled.


    "Reach for my head, and I''ll kill you on the spot." Rui''s menacing voice oozed with peril as his dark eyes red at the Divine Doctor. Yet, the doctor didn''t so much as flicker in the face of the chilling warning.


    He closed his eyes. "Shame."


    He turned around, losing interest as he walked away from the duo.


    "Wait." Rui''s perilous gaze softened. "And why would I?" The Divine Doctor merrily made his way away from the two of them. "It appears we are unable to give each other what we seek."


    "I won''t allow a madman like you anywhere near my brain," Rui growled.


    "But you''ll allow me near your father, eh?" A hint of derisive amusement shed in the depths of the inhuman eyes of the Divine Doctor. "Yes, actually," Rui''s words were sharp. "I cannot trust you, but that doesn''t mean I have nothing else to offer."


    "I care not for mere rewards." The Divine Doctor huffed. "Besides, any agreement is ultimately meaningless since we cannot leave this ce."


    Those words finally got Rui turned to pay attention to the world around him. What would have been the very first thing he''d have done when he entered this ce had been dyed by finding Kane and the Divine Doctor, who had consumed his attention immediately on arrival.


    It couldn''t be helped.


    He had searched for this man for three years in the Beast Domain and more than a year prior to that after he''d learned about him from his father. This was the ultimate objective of the voyage that he had taken.


    The key to solving all his problems since his return to Kandria.


    His senses expanded far and wide, stretching deeper ind as he tried to get a stock of what this isted world was like. He rose to the air, elevating to get a good look at the world they were in.


    "This¡­" His eyes, normally devoid, widened with shock.


    The first thing he noted was the absurdly high degree of curvature of the horizon.


    Just a hundred meters of the ground had been enough for him to spot the curvature of the horizon!


    Even back on Earth, one needed to reach more than ten kilometers to catch even the slightest glimpse of curvature with the human eye.


    On Gaia, that height was orders of magnitude higher!


    If he hadn''t known better, he would have thought he was on a smalloid in a different world.


    Yet, that wasn''t the most stunning revtion that bore itself to him.


    The ind of what appeared to be an ind was upied by nature. Yet, it was abnormal.


    His senses experienced tremendous sensory resistance the deeper they went, but he could sense extremely abrupt and radical shifts in the fauna and flora at certain boundaries.


    A gradient of flora and fauna grew thicker andrger as thend grew elevated higher and higher as if disced.


    Unfortunately, he knew exactly what they meant.


    "Open dungeon¡­"


    "That''s what the Divine Doctor had told me too," Kane murmured, having caught up to him. "What exactly are they?"


    "¡­They''re dungeons that are simr to the Serevian Dungeon that the two of us of cleared a long time ago. Except that this is definitely of a far higher caliber than the Serevian Dungeon.


    His senses were significantly hampered the closer they tried to get to the center of the open dungeon that he saw before him.


    "I have never heard of a dungeon so powerful that it warped space to such an extent, creating an extrinsic four-dimensional manifold. A literal pocket dimension," Rui grew grim. "This is definitely one of the most esoteric dungeons that we have evere across. Not even the Elder Tree knew about its existence, clearly. Otherwise, it would have informed us and warned us about it."


    This, along with prior information that Rui had on the Mellow, allowed him to develop some hypotheses.


    -


    This chapter upload first at  This belongs ? N?velDra/ma.Org.

 Chapter 1965 The Main Problem

    <h4>Chapter 1965 The Main Problem</h4>


    Dungeons.


    These were esoteric flora phenomena where flora species, havinge into contact with some truly special esoteric substances and absorbing them, mutated in a way that altered the entirendscape, leading to an extremely perilous region.


    The mutated flora was extremely sensitive to threat levels, attacking anything sufficiently threatening enough before it could even get close enough. Thus, only Martial Artists below a specific degree of power could enter and clear the dungeon.


    These esoteric flora phenomena were extremely attractive to humankind, for they were ripe with valuable and rare bounties.


    Each dungeon was unique.


    They usually had characteristics and traits that matched with that of the esoteric substances that they had absorbed from deep underground mines.


    The Shionel Dungeon was extraordinarily sensory resistant, far more so than the Beast Domain or most other dungeons, due to the fact that it wasprised of special potent esoteric substances that halted the flow of energy of any kind.


    "This dungeon must have risen from extraordinarily potent space-time esoterics." Rui''s cold voice softened.


    Considering that the Topaz of Time was considered a Transcendent esoteric, Rui had no doubt that this dungeon was probably also based on simrly powerful esoteric substances. This meant that it was an extraordinary dungeon, the likes of which probably did not exist anywhere else in the entire world!


    "Truly extraordinary¡­" Rui whispered.


    His eyes fixed on the extreme curvature at the horizon of the dungeon region. It truly resembled its own minuteoid. Any creature that had been born within the Mellow Dungeon would definitely believe that this tiny littleoid-like dungeon was the entirety of the whole world.


    His eyes turned to the beach of the dungeon ind as he spotted the Divine Doctor nonchntly sauntering away from them in the distance.


    "Kane."


    Kane flinched at his sharp voice. "¡­Yeah?"


    "You''ve been here a few days, right?"


    "¡­Yeah."


    Rui slowly turned towards him, his dark eyes peering into his.


    "Tell me everything. Everything from the moment you entered to the moment I entered. Don''t leave out a single detail."


    Kane nodded. "Sure. So, after I entered the Mellow Dungeon¡­"


    Kane began to narrate how he had begun panicking for a few hours after he inadvertently entered the dungeon. His first instinct had been to get back to the Mellow and Rui but he had been unable to find the exit.


    He circled across the beach and across the sea, yet he only ran in circles, often returning to his original starting point.


    "Did you try going up?" Rui turned to the sky. "That must have been the very next thing you tried, correct? It is the most logical next option."


    Kane stared at him. "Oh¡­"


    Rui heaved a resigned sigh as he shot up at full speed, reaching for the depths of the sky.


    WHOOSH


    His eyes narrowed as he began slowing down the further up he got. Even though he sky-walked harder and harder, he only got slower and slower.


    As though an increasingly stronger resistance force refused to pass smoothly.


    "I see¡­" Rui''s tone was detached. "So simply reaching for the skies does not permit escaping the Mellow Dungeon. Interesting. It makes sense, considering that the Divine Doctor would have effortlessly ovee such an obstacle. Yet, the fact that he''s still trapped here means I can safely rule out all low-hanging fruit."


    Rui didn''t have a high opinion of his sanity, but the same could not be said about the man''s intelligence. The fact that he managed to cook up an borate and sophisticated n to get his hands on fear to get into the Garden of Salvation to meet with the Elder Tree and conduct a trade where he received clues to diagnose his patient showed that the man was extremely strategically intelligent.


    The fact that he had been unable to leave showed that the no-


    brainer solutions were unlikely to work.


    The darkness within Rui''s eyes stirred as they slowly turned towards Kane.


    "Go on."


    "Ah, right," Kane remarked. "So after I tried everything possible, or at least everything I thought of, I ran into the man himself, the Divine Doctor. Thankfully, I recognized him from the memories of the Elder Tree. I''ve been trying to get him to cooperate with me for quite some time, but I don''t think he thinks much of me."


    "How much did you tell him about me and our objective?"


    "Nothing," Kane replied. "I knew it wasn''t my ce since this is your imperative, and I didn''t think I''d be able to handle it properly."


    "Good¡­" Rui softened up as his eyes remained fixed on the Divine Doctor. "What exactly did you converse with him about then in regards to the attempt at cooperation?"


    "I was tryna get him to tell me more about this ce since he had clearly been here a while, but squeezing information out of him is like trying to squeeze water out of rocks. It''s almost impossible!"


    "Mmm¡­" Rui''s devoid eyes fixed on the Divine Doctor in the distance.


    "And then, you finally entered the Mellow Dungeon. I didn''t know about the eleration of time in this dungeon. That''s why¡­"


    Kane''s expression fell. "¡­I kinda thought you abandoned me."


    A maelstrom of thoughts had been raging within the depths of his powerful mind. Yet Kane''s words cleaved through it with incredible force as his attention immediately turned to his friend.


    "Kane." His hardened voice grew soft as his clear eyes firmly met Kane''s gaze. "I''d never abandon you, got it?" Content is ? by N?velDrama.Org.


    Kane grinned. "Yeah. I''d never abandon you, either."


    A fleeting smile cracked at the very edge of Rui''s mouth, going away as quickly as it came as his attention returned to the open dungeon in the distance.


    "So what now?" Kane asked. "How are we going to convince the Divine Doctor to help us?"


    "He''s not the main issue right now." Rui narrowed his eyes. "This ce is. We''re trapped here and until we can leave, the Divine Doctor is not our main problem.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1966 Core Objective

    Chapter 1966 Core Objective


    "Wait, so you''re not going to focus on bringing him over to our side?" Kane raised an eyebrow.


    "Finding a way out of this ce is more important," Rui replied frostily. "Time moves one hundred and forty-four times faster than it does in the real world. In other words, in this world, we have seventy-two years before my father sumbs to his death. Due to this immense time, its urgency has reduced substantially. It is only the second or third-most important agenda at the moment. Getting out of this ce has be the number one priority."


    "¡­Makes sense."


    Rui''s attention returned to the dungeon in the distance. "Let''s revise the facts. This dungeon sucked us in from the Mellow and trapped us in a spatially isted world with a four-dimensional manifold such that exiting the boundary of the world simply warps up back into the world such that we loop back. As a result of this imprisoning mechanism, time is elerated and this otherwise t dungeon is extrinsically warped to resemble aoid."


    "Wait wait wait." Kane raised his hands. "What do you mean ''t'' dungeon? It''s clearly a round sphere!"


    "I''m saying that this dungeon is a normal part and extension of the Mellow. It''s a part of the Beast Domain just like any other region is."


    "Huh??" Kane frowned, turning back. "But why does it look like a ball? It loops back in on itself. Isn''t this a separate world from Gaia entirely? Like a different oroid? Maybe somewhere else in outer space far away from Gaia?"


    "No. That is absolutely not the case," Rui firmly denied Kane''s words.


    "How can you be so sure?" Kane raised an eyebrow. "What if it transported us to a different world entirely?"


    "Environmental and ecological continuity," Rui quietly replied. "The soil, the bedrock, the minerals and sediments of this ce are identical to that of the Mellow. Additionally, the Tree of Life allows me to see, as in as day, that these creatures are part of the Tree of Life of Panama. There is no way that this is a different ce entirely. This is just an extraordinary amount of space warping to create a pocket dimension such that escaping a region from one side causes you to loop back on the other side."


    Rui had already deduced that this ce was undoubtedly a part of the Mellow. Most likely an ind at the center of theke on the banks of which they had disappeared to be absorbed into the dungeon.


    "This dungeon is also almost certainly the reason that there are no anomalies in the Mellow." Rui keenly deduced. "It absorbed the Divine Doctor, you, and then me. But considering that it didn''t absorb in any of the sub-Apprentice-level creatures, it can be inferred that the conditions for absorption are specific."


    Rui closed his cold eyes as his powerful mind processed all the information, analyzing countless possibilities. "¡­It cannot be power alone. The Divine Doctor does not possess any superhuman physicality. It cannot be esotericism alone since the Martial Body possesses almost no esoteric substances inherently, and the ones that we embedded in our bodies are minimal, notparable to some of the Apprentice-level monsters here in the Mellow that have far more than we do, but don''t get absorbed. In that case¡­"


    Rui''s eyes opened, devoid of warmth. "¡­Most likely abination of power and esotericism. I would venture to say that it absorbs anything with the capacity of disrupting the Mellow."


    Kane''s eyes widened. "If that''s the case, that exins why the Elder Tree said that the Mellow has never ever experienced any disruptions or anomalies ever!"


    Rui nodded coldly. "Everything would be exined if this dungeon absorbed all the anomalies into it, leaving no anomalies outside for the Elder Tree to detect. But in that case¡­"


    He nced at the minute silhouette of the Divine Doctor in the distance. "¡­His journey here was in vain. He came here looking for normality and ended up finding the biggest anomaly that the Beast Domain may have ever seen."


    "Yeah, sucks to be him," Kane snorted.


    "Kane."


    Kane flinched as Rui''s sharp voice addressed him. "Yeah?"


    "In the time that you''ve been in this ce, did you see human skeletons or corpses?" Rui''s devoid eyes turned towards him.


    "Now that you mentioned it, yeah, I spotted lots of human skeletons."


    "Human or Martial?"


    "¡­I can''t really tell the difference." This belongs ? N?velDra/ma.Org.


    "Hm, I''ll have to put that on the list. It will give us insights into the threshold of the conditions needed to enter this ce," Rui remarked stoically. "However, it won''t be necessary to exit this ce."


    Kane''s eyebrows furrowed. "You say that like you know what it takes to exit this ce."


    "It''s a simple deduction." His voice was detached. "If we assume that this isted pocket manifold is caused by the dungeon, then we simply need to destroy the source of it that is creating this manifold."


    "¡­Which is?"


    "Most likely a mutated flora lifeform at the center of the dungeon," Rui replied aloofly.


    "And how do you figure that?"


    Rui''s dark eyes turned, eying the entirety of the dungeon. "By gauging the center of this pocket manifold. Do you recall theke at the center of the Mellow, close to which we got absorbed?"


    "¡­Yeah?"


    "This enormous ind was most likely at its center, based on the aquatic continuity of the water surrounding the ind in this pocket manifold," Rui sharpened his eyes. "It is highly likely that the esoteric phenomenon maintaining this manifold is at the center of it based on the principle that it is warping space equally in all directions. Putting these two together, you arrive at the inference that the source of this pocket manifold is at the center of the dungeon, which, in turn, is at the center of the pocket manifold."


    "¡­I see, it makes sense when you go down that line of thought. That''s genius," Kane murmured. "So we just need to clear the dungeon to leave this ce? Let''s go tell the Divine Doctor!"


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1967 Mindful Advantage

    Chapter 1967 Mindful Advantage


    Rui snorted at Kane''s words. "That man figured this out a long time ago."


    "What?" Kane stared at him. "Why didn''t he say anything?"


    "He would have if I was a Martial Master," Rui quietly replied, detached. "His interest in me drastically reduced after I informed him that I was neither a Martial Master nor willing to let him poke around my brain. He did well to hide it and mask it with real fascination about my mind, but he was definitely a little disappointed that I wasn''t a Martial Master."


    "That''s why he didn''t tell us what you just figured out?"


    "Yes," Rui replied. "Because it is highly likely that to clear this dungeon¡­"


    Rui''s dark eyes sharpened chillingly. "¡­one needs to be a Martial Master to have a real chance of sess."


    "How can you possibly know that when you''ve been here for like fifteen minutes?" Kane stared at him.


    "It''s based on the fact that the sensory resistance that I am experiencing when I try detecting what is at the center of the dungeon is extremely high. On par with what we experienced in the Master-level belt of the Beast Domain," Rui replied. "Thus, considering that this dungeon is apletely normal part of the Beast Domain warped inside a four-dimensional manifold, I can strongly infer that the rtionship between the sensory resistance and level of danger of this dungeon is identical or very simr to that of the rest of the Beast Domain."


    "¡­Makes sense, but doesn''t that mean we''re screwed?" Kane asked, growing anxious. "Neither of us is a Martial Master!"


    "¡­" Rui remained silent.


    "Rui?"


    He closed his eyes, heaving a sigh. "Just because we aren''t on par with the creatures of the Master-level portion of the dungeonbatively doesn''t mean we don''t have a chance. This isn''t a duel, and we don''t have to face them head-on. This is an asymmetric battle, and our goal is not to win. Our goal is to escape this ce. Thus, even if we fail to kill them, we will have won if we escape this ce, and that''s good enough. Remember, what is the fundamental key advantage that has allowed our species to rise astronomically above all others?"


    "¡­Our minds." Kane nodded, growing more optimistic.


    "Correct," Rui replied calmly. "As long as we apply our minds, it is possible for us to escape this ce with all three of our lives intact."


    "Especially when we have two of the brightest minds on our side!" Kane grinned.


    A soft smile cracked at the edge of Rui''s mouth fleetingly. "Yes, I suppose that is also a plus in our favor."


    His gaze returned to the Divine Doctor, who had returned to a small makeshift hut. "So what now?" Kane grew more enthusiastic. "How do wee up with a n that would allow us to clear that dungeon and get out of here safely?"


    "In order to create a strategy that has a realistic chance of sessfully breaking this manifold, we''ll need a lot of intelligence in the obstacles that we face," Rui remarked. "The more precise and urate our information is, the greater the likelihood that we will be able toe up with the most perfect n possible. After that, we can only hope for good luck and hope that it will be enough."


    "Makes sense; as for gathering intelligence, I''m assuming that¡­" Kane nced at the dungeon in the distance. "¡­that the only way to do so is to get in and start clearing it?"


    A hint of a smile flicked at the edge of Rui''s mouth. "You caught on quickly."


    "Hah! I''ve already been through this, remember? The Shionel Dungeon?" "Indeed, but this dungeon is far more powerful than the Shionel Dungeon was¡­" Rui quietly remarked. "The good news is that so are we." Content protected by N?v/el(D)rama.Org.


    "Ok, so let''s say that we clear the dungeon and break out," Kane began. "We would also be freeing everything in this ce from the clutches of the Mellow Dungeon, right?"


    "Correct."


    "Then, how are you nning to convince the Divine Doctor? He already showed that he doesn''t care for your princely status or even what your father can offer him. I don''t know what else you could offer him, maybe knowledge from your previous life?"


    "¡­Unfortunately, I don''t think that will be enough," Rui heaved a sigh. "This man''s medical prowess exceeds anything back on Earth. And I''m not even anywhere remotely close to the pinnacle of medicine or biology in my previous life, so it''s aughable endeavor. If I try schooling him on biology, he''ll probably just humiliate me with his greater understanding of material life."


    Despite having gained immense enlightenment on the Tree of Life, Rui didn''t think he had anything to teach the Divine Doctor based on the medical prowess that the man demonstrated in the memories of the animals and the memories of the Elder Tree. In fact, he knew for a fact that arge proportion of the inheritance that he got from the Elder Tree had directly or indirectly emerged as a result of the Divine Doctor''s teachings.


    It was a shame, but he was hardly surprised. This was a prodigious genius that had cured death and had roamed all of Gaia for centuries. It would be the height of arrogance for Rui to believe he couldpete with such a person in their field of specialty.


    "I probably know more about Physics than he does, but¡­" Rui shook his head. "He probably realized that in our earlier conversation. Clearly, he doesn''t care that much. If he truly did, he could talk to some other immortal sage with a specialty in that regard, like the Astromind, for example. So, unfortunately, it''s a dead-end."


    Rui was not ustomed to being so utterly outssed in knowledge, but he had to admit that he had been humbled to a certain extent by incredibly knowledgeable monsters like the Elder Tree and the Divine Doctor.


    "However, there are still ways I can persuade the stubborn madman." He narrowed his eyes.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1968 Potential Bargain

    Chapter 1968 Potential Bargain


    ??"And how would you do that?" Kane raised an eyebrow.


    "...We offer him freedom," Rui replied coldly. "...I have a feeling that the Divine Doctor would rather not die in this ce."


    Rui didn''t know if his soul could really transfer to another body if it was trapped in a four-dimensional space-time.


    He didn''t really know the mechanics of souls at all in the first ce. Were they bound by space and time like other material phenomena were?


    Considering that his soul had gone to an entirely different world, he could not help but wonder if they truly were. For one, he didn''t even know if he was in the same universe as Earth. Even if he was, they clearly weren''t anywhere near Earth considering how absurdly enormous Gaia was. The Hubble Telescope and the James Webb Space Telescope would have long spotted Gaia if Gaia was in the intergctic neighborhood of Earth.


    Based on the evidence that he had at hand from his own reincarnation in a different world and the Beggar Sage''s words regarding soul transference, souls were clearly some form of astral phenomena that he had yet toe into touch with. Perhaps they were an extra dimension of astral reality that only the highest of Realms, such as the Sage Realm and Transcendent Realm, could ess.


    It may have even been the source of power for one of the two Realms.


    It would make sense why he hadn''t learned anything about astral phenomena if it was truly the focus of higher Realms.


    "...Even if he canmence the soul transference ritual despite being trapped in a four-dimensional manifold, it''s clear he would rather escape physically," Rui quietly remarked. "...Otherwise, he would not have spent so many months here. That gives us leverage. I can offer to free him in return for healing my father."


    "That''s a good deal," Kane admitted. "Let''s go talk to him quickly."


    "No," Rui''s voice grew frosty.


    "Why not?" Kane winced.


    "¡­If he believed we had the ability to free him, then he would have proposed that deal himself," Rui''s tone was sharp. "....Yet, he didn''t. He just walked away from us when I refused his insane offer to poke around my head. In other words, he doesn''t believe that we can help him get out of here by virtue of us being mere Martial Seniors. So what do you think would happen if¡­"


    His dark eyes turned towards Kane. "¡­if we walked up to him and offered him something he doesn''t believe we can give him?"


    "¡­He''d think we''re trying to scam him or are just delusional, I guess," Kane admitted.


    "Correct." Rui nodded stoically. "...This means that when we approach him, we need toe up with an extremely solid, viable, and effective n that has a high enough probability of sess such that even the Divine Doctor cannot help but admit that it is worth investing in. Only then will I have the capital needed to demand what I seek from him. He may not be sane, but considering that he said the Eternal Dream disease was trivial, it should be a no-brainer to ept my offer then."


    Rui''s stoic gaze returned to the Mellow Dungeon. "...Until we reach that point, there''s no real point in talking to him."


    Of course, Rui would be lying if there weren''t things that he wanted to ask the man. Things that he wanted to learn and understand. s, he didn''t think the Divine Doctor would be willing to indulge him all that much, considering he had rudely refused him. He would wait until they had figured out a viable n.


    "So¡­" Kane turned to Rui. "You think we should jump right into the Mellow Dungeon or¡­?"


    "I''d like to, but¡­" Rui''s dark eyes swept across regions of the ind outside of the Mellow Dungeon. "¡­it''s better to get a full and total grasp of all there is to know in the pocket manifold before we investigate the dungeon."


    There were plenty of peculiarities within the entire ce that Rui wanted to investigate thoroughly. The first one was one that had struck him the very moment he realized that this was a pocket manifold.


    His eyes turned to the sky, eying the powerful Sun. Despite the pocket manifold, he could see it. Either it was fake, which he found extremely hard to believe unless a sentient creature created it to rece the Sun or the pocket manifold allowed light to enter.


    ''Does that mean that someone couldmunicate to us from the outside?'' His eyes narrowed.


    "Kane."


    "...Yeah?"Content protected by N?v/el(D)rama.Org.


    "Does this ce have day-night cycles that you would normally expect?"


    Kane''s eyes lit up. "No, actually. Half the ce is day, and the other half is night! Isn''t that crazy?! It''s why I thought this ce was a separateoid!"


    Rui frowned. "¡­Half the ce is day, and the other half is night?"


    "Yeah, and it continues in a twenty-four-hour cycle just like we normally experience on Gaia."


    "Interesting," Rui muttered quietly. "Does the dungeon also warp space in such a way that its exposure to sunlight is identical to that of a rotating like Gaia? It would make sense if it evolved to day-night cycles such that it needs precisely those kinds of cycles to survive."


    Flora had an extremely special rtionship with the Sun. It could even be said that their lives revolved around the Sun. Just like how drastic changes in diet in humans could cause drastic changes, flora often needed exactly the right amounts of exposure to the Sun.


    It was a very strong possible candidate for an exnation as to why the manifold created by the dungeon warped light to ensure that their exposure to sunlight remained unchanged in the long run.


    "I probably can''t exploit it by depriving it of sunlight as a viable strategy," Rui remarked.


    Even ordinary vegetation couldst quite some time without sunlight; he couldn''t imagine the sheer amount of time it would take to kill something that had absorbed the power of an extraordinary esoteric substance.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1969 Greedy Considerations

    Chapter 1969 Greedy Considerations


    Over the next few days, Rui explored the manifold pocket space that they were in, getting a good understanding of the ce that they were in. The pocket manifold was truly very bizarre.


    Half of the area wasnd, while the other half was water that was probably originally part of theke in the Mellow, the banks on which Rui and Kane had been absorbed into the Mellow Dungeon. From a distance, it resembled aoid of equal halves ofnd and water. The water, originally surrounding the ind, had not been merged into a single water body due to the manifold causing the ends to converge spatially.


    One of the first things he did was conduct an ecological, topographical, and geographical survey. He also went as far as to convey gravitational surveys with the Riemannian Echo technique.


    Naturally, he focused on the parts of the manifold that were outside of the Mellow Dungeon. That required a more dedicated and more focused investigation into thend. Currently, he was just making sure that he didn''t miss any of the low-hanging fruits before reaching for the higher ones.


    His geographic survey of the entire region indicated that it was only a hundred kilometers in diameter, or circumference, depending on how one looked at it. This yielded aoid that was only thirty kilometers or so wide when one looked at it from a distance. It was an extremely small world for a Martial Senior who could cross that distance in extremely short timeframes.


    The most interesting results were those yielded by the Riemannian Echo.


    Despite the region being born from a four-dimensional manifold, a phenomenon of extreme space-warping, he was unable to detect anything off about gravity, as detected by Riemannian Echo. He had expected this, even in the Garden of Salvation, and outside of it, he was simply unable to detect the warping of space by the Elder Tree. He expected a simr thing with the Mellow Manifold, and he got exactly what he expected.


    It was unpleasant. He had hoped that he would have been able to gain some precious insights into the nature of the manifold that trapped them inside. One of the reasons that he hoped for this was the fact that he could get his hands on the esoteric substance that allowed for such a magical phenomenon to ur.


    It was undoubtedly extraordinarily precious.


    He knew this because his background in the Beast Domain allowed him to figure out exactly just how rare such a phenomenon was.


    The number of space-time phenomena that had been discovered was scantpared to just how enormous the Beast Domain was. Furthermore, the number of phenomena that were even remotelyparable to what he had seen was limited. Content is ? by N?velDrama.Org.


    The Elder Tree''s spatial istion was among them, yet not even the Elder Tree had warped reality to such an incredible degree.


    "If I can get my hands on it¡­" His eyes lit up with a hint of greed.


    He didn''t know exactly how it could help him in his Martial Art endeavors, but he couldn''t help but wonder nheless. Regardless, it seemed far too precious to let go.


    While the gravitational phenomenon of the manifold was unclear, the gravity of the actual Mellow within the manifold was the same as that of Gaia, which Rui had expected. After all, this entire ce was a normal part of Gaia, just like other regions. It appeared that the manifold did not interfere with the gravitational eleration of the entire ce. Apart from that, he was truly unable to detect gravitational anomalies that could potentially harm or hamper them.


    That was good overall.


    Because, at the current stage of power, he didn''t possess the capabilities to deal with gravitational or spatial phenomena. He knew Sage-level beings could, based on Sage Sayfeel and the Elder Tree warping space immensely. If it were a feat limited to the Sage Realm as he had hypothesized, then it would indeed be a long time before he reached that degree of capability.


    Regardless, that wasn''t necessary here. As long as he disrupted or killed the flora lifeform that was causing the manifold, it would die, and the Mellow would be exposed.


    His surveys also supplied more evidence for the existence of a manifold that made ends meet when he conducted his geographic survey. He found strong evidence of sedimentary and geological discontinuity. These were sharp breaks across a point that suggested the two ends on either side of the point were not originally together. It would only happen if a four-dimensional spatial manifold caused two opposite ends of a region to be spatially connected, causing them to loop over.


    Coincidentally, this point was deep underwater in the waters surrounding thend half of the Mellow Manifold.


    A point that waspletely opposite to where the center of the Mellow Dungeon would have been. This was strong evidence of Rui''s hypothesis that the entity causing the Mellow Manifold was at the center of the dungeon. That was good because it meant that he was on the right track to diagnosing the problem and their circumstances. The worst part would be finding conflicting evidence that would leave him in a bid, unable to create a n as well as he would have.


    The ecological surveys were interesting. The dungeon itself wasprised ofyers, each corresponding to a different danger level. The outermostyer was the weakest one, where even ordinary humans could reside at the furthest extremities.


    In other words, the entire region ofnd was part of the Mellow Dungeon, causing it to be much wider spread than even the Shionel Dungeon and the Serevian Dungeonbined. A deeper survey also allowed him to confirm the ecological continuity between the fauna and flora with the Tree of Life, confirming that it was indeed very much within the biosphere of Gaia and not a separate world by any means whatsoever. Soon enough, he hadpleted all of his preliminary and initial surveys.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1970 Trance

    Chapter 1970 Trance


    "Huff¡­" Rui''s cold eyes narrowed, staring at the Mellow Dungeon in the distance. "It''s a shame I wasn''t able toe here before I inherited the Elder Tree''s knowledge."


    Rui wasn''tcking self-awareness. He knew that he was different from before. He felt as though someone had dialed down his emotions. He recalled the fascination, awe, and wonder he had experienced when he beheld the magic of the Garden of Salvation.


    He was unable to experience a fraction of that emotion when looking at an equally exotic phenomenon. The revtion that very few things could trigger the same kind of experience was not pleasant. While, before, a series of things could have triggered positive emotions, it was as though someone had drastically increased the threshold for those same experiences to bring him the same amount of happiness. Only the ecstasy born from his Flowing Void Style and Adaptive Evolution had been able to cross that threshold consistently. "I mean, we could have." Content protected by N?v/el(D)rama.Org.


    Kane''s voice interjected, cutting through his own thoughts.


    "No," Rui replied stoically. "We couldn''t have."


    "Was it worth it?" Kane''s voice was sharp. "Was breaking your own mind worth it?"


    Rui turned to Kane with a detached gaze. A single remark escaped him.


    "Yes."


    Kane shook his head, heaving a sigh. "I figured. It''s your best and worst trait, man. It might get you killed. Thankfully, you have me. Now, are we ready?"


    "Soon."


    Once Rui had gotten a good understanding of the Mellow Manifold, all the low-hanging fruit were gone. Now, it was time to subject himself to danger if he wished to learn more about the Mellow Dungeon.


    The objectives of the operation into the Mellow Dungeon were simple. To learn more about the challenges that barricaded the way to the center of the dungeon and get rid of as many as possible. Ideally, Rui hoped to learn the identity of the creatures at the Master-level zone of the Mellow Dungeon.


    If he could catch a glimpse of them all, then he could instantly gain a deep understanding of exactly what kind of environment was most antithetical to them through the enlightenment of the Tree of Life. He had yet to flesh out a specific n, but he was absolutely certain that knowing the environments that were most antithetical to each of them would help him clear the dungeon and undo the manifold, freeing them.


    "We don''t need to hurry," Rui sharply remarked, turning to Kane. "We have thirty-six years."


    "It thought it was seventy-two?"


    "That is until my father sumbs," Rui darkly replied. "We need to get there before he does, and the travel time alone will be a lot. It''s an irrelevant distinction, ultimately."


    Rui did not intend to spend thirty-six years in this dungeon.


    It was a consequence of his goal to be able to adaptively evolve to ovee any force that sought to defeat him. In order to grow, he needed to be exposed to different kinds of forces that sought to crush him. More importantly, it required him to train and grow stronger by adaptively evolving to them as a result.


    This had been the case for a lot of the progress that he had made over the years.


    A lot of the techniques that he had created after bing a Martial Squire had been a result of trying to ovee certain challenges with his Martial Art. This had been the case when he adaptively evolved to the challenges of the Shionel Dungeon by creating techniques specifically designed to offset it.


    The same could be said for all the techniques that he had created during his exodus away from Kandria, hiding from Chairman Deacon. He created Greater Phantomind Void, Death''s Sympathy, and simrly powerful techniques for the sake of killing Chairman Deacon.


    Many of his greatest creations were a result of adaptively evolving to the challenges and forces aligned against him. He would not be able to find much of that in a prison as small as the Mellow Manifold. Another part of him, however, felt that it was a worthy ce to train his foundations. It was a shame that he valued the diversity of adaptive evolution more.


    "Done." His voice was stoic as he buried their little backpacks in the sand. He didn''t intend to carry all the instruments, artifacts, and tools that he had brought along with him to the Beast Domain. They would just get in the way.


    The two men got up, facing the dungeon.


    "Any time," Kane remarked.


    "Let''s go."


    WHOOSH


    The two shot off into the Mellow Dungeon at an incredible speed, heading deep into the dungeon.


    Immediately they came across several Apprentice-level monsters as soon as they entered. Several harpies with faces that were more humanoid and feminine than any other monster Rui had ever seen stood in their path.


    Much to Rui''s surprise, simply flexing a powerful aura didn''t instantly cause them to run away from fear. Not only did they face the sum totality of Rui''s aura, but they didn''t so much as flinch.


    Yet, that wasn''t all.


    "They''re in a trance¡­" Realization dawned on Rui as the harpies pounced on him. He would be able to recognize the hazy, unfocused, and vacant eyes that the harpies anywhere he went.


    POW POW!


    Rui exploded their heads into mist with light jabs, a hint of intrigue entering his empty eyes. "¡­Was it the Divine Doctor?"


    He had seen the Divine Doctor put Apprentice-level and Senior-level creatures into trances before training them to be his ves in a Pavlovian fashion.


    "¡­If this method was effective, he would have long escaped," Rui stoically remarked, shaking his head. "No, this¡­this is the work of someone else."


    His eyes scoured the dungeon around him. "¡­I see."


    "What do you see?"


    "The dungeon controls them," Rui sternly concluded. "It''s definitely not the Divine Doctor because he requires a continuous supply to maintain the trance. This must be the dungeon''s doing. I see, if it controls the beasts and monsters in its depths then¡­"


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1971 Surveying

    <h4>Chapter 1971 Surveying</h4>


    Then they had it rough.


    "These monsters are not as prey to their own instincts as other monsters," Rui''s dark eyes sharpened. "In other words, tricks, and schemes that would work with other dim-witted animals are most likely going to be super ineffective against these creatures."


    POW POW POW!


    He erased the heads of several more harpies.


    "Damn man!" Kane cursed at his words. "We can''t just have it easy, huh? Why does this gotta be this hard."


    "Rx." Rui''s frosty voice possessed a spark of confidence. "This can work in our favor as well. I''ll need to gather more data for that, though."


    POW POW POW!


    The two of them could have just breezed past these incredibly weak creatures, but Rui insisted on taking it slow.


    "Given the environmental constraints, the fauna of this ce is most likely not too diverse," Rui remarked. "In other words, the species at the outermost and weakest part of the dungeon are probably the same species that are in the core of the dungeon, protecting the source of the manifold. I can infer immense amount of data about the stronger creatures from these weakest members of the same species." This belongs ? N?velDra/ma.Org.


    "Makes sense," Kane admitted, effortlessly slicing and dicing them into fine specks of flesh and blood.


    SPLAT SPLAT SPLAT!


    "That''s not even the best part."


    "Hm?" Kane turned towards Rui, before widening his eyes with surprise.


    A fleeting smile emerged on Rui''s face as a hint of excitement shed in the depths of his dark eyes. "The best part is that collecting SOUL data on these species is a lot easier. Because these creatures are already in a trance, I don''t need to run around using Soul Void over and over again for different sets of creatures."


    Kae''s eyes lit up as he understood how well this worked in their favor. "That means you can?harness your true strength much better!"


    "¡­Correct." Rui nodded stoically. "That''s not all."


    Rui recalled how the obsidian wyverns had SOUL models that were more the same than different. The same was true for most creatures of the same species that he had created SOUL models on.


    Rui had inferred that the lowered intelligence and primacy of intelligence resulted in low variance in SOUL models across the entirety of the species. In other words, humans had a far, far higher capacity for individuality than any other species that he had evere across.


    The insights that he gained from the enlightenment of the Tree of Life also concurred with this.


    The environments most antithetical to the human species had vastly greater variance than those for any other species in existence. No single environmental configuration could possibly be antithetical to all Martial Artists. In contrast, no species required more than one environmental configuration to be antithetical to each and every single member of the species.


    This was greatly beneficial to Rui.


    "¡­I might be able to form SOUL models on the stronger creatures by looking at the lower and weaker creatures." Rui realized as his enthusiasm grew.


    One of his frustrations was that he hadn''t been able to use his SOUL System against the Master-level creatures that assaulted them shortly before they had been saved by the Elder Tree.


    He was far stronger with the SOUL System than without, after all.


    He suspected that, while he still had a low chance of actually defeating them, he might have been able to survive far longer than he would have. The issue was that the SOUL System had the same shorings that the pattern recognition system of the VOID algorithm did.


    It needed time.


    Unfortunately, the Angel of Lace was unable to ovee this shoring because it only supplied physical data. It did not supply SOUL data from the past. Someday, he might have to create another solution to get rid of this shoring as well, but in his current circumstances, he could rest pleased knowing that he could gather SOUL data without needing to put his targets in a trance.


    In addition to gathering SOUL data on the species, he was able to get a good understanding of the environments most antithetical to them. The enlightenment of the Tree of Life showed him that the harpies hadparatively weak joints and wide wings that were meant for low-pressure regions.


    The most optimal domain to be antithetical to them was a technique he already had, the Heavenly Convergence technique. This technique converged the vectors of the weight of the heaven and earth onto the target.


    It was most optimal for killing it on the spot.


    POW POW POW!


    He annihted more harpies before turning to Kane with stoic eyes. "¡­I''m done with the harpies. Let''s circle around thisyer of the dungeon and find other species."


    "Nice."


    The two of them immediately moved away from the region as they began their journey to gather the intelligence needed to formte the perfect n to escape the Mellow Manifold. Rui intended to employ this strategy to the best of his ability as far as they could easily go to gather data.


    The more valuable data would be deeper into the open dungeon. The more data that Rui could gather on stronger creatures, the more he would be able to get a better understanding of the most powerful creatures that guarded the center of the open dungeon. The Senior-level and quasi-


    Senior-level creatures would most likely tell Rui the most about the Master-level creatures.


    However, the risk and danger would only grow higher and higher the more urate and relevant data that he sought.


    "We''ll proceed slower and slower the deeper we get into the Mellow Dungeon," Rui remarked with a stoic voice devoid of emotion. "With time on our side, it is best we use it to offset the power imbnce, which is certainly not on our side."


    "Yeah, makes sense, I''ll leave all the nning to you as always."


    Rui''s stern eyes slowly turned towards Kane. "¡­You should try and participate. Thought is the key to the Master Realm, and unless you develop a habit and an affinity for it, you won''t be able to discover your Martial Mind."


    "Alright alright, cut me some ck."


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1972 Further Deductions

    Chapter 1972 Further Deductions


    In the following days, the two of them followed through with their investigation.


    Or rather, Kane merrily joined along for the ride while Rui did most of the data-gathering. He was quite content hanging out with his best friend in a cool new world. He experienced deep anxiety and stress when he got absorbed into the new world and spent three days by himself and the Divine Doctor.


    However, the moment Rui entered, he felt quite secure and confident. Over the many years that he had known him, he learned a simple truth. Rui Quarrier Ss Kandria could ovee anything. With the power of adaptive evolution, man could handle anything that the world threw at him and eventually ovee it.


    Admittedly, Kane had grown overreliant on him to a certain degree, but it was difficult not to. How could one avoid doing so when the person in question was extremely reliable such that he could fix every problem?


    Still, he did his best to contribute with everything he had.


    POW POW POW!


    He devastated three quasi-Squire-level crocottas with a blow each, crushing their skulls effortlessly. The dog-wolf monsters died on the spot.


    "Ok, done with this species," Rui remarked stoically. "Let''s go."


    In the past week, they had run into many species since they began investigating the dungeon, and it hadn''t taken Rui too long to make a bted realization.


    "These species¡­" Rui narrowed his eyes. "These aren''t in the inheritance I got from the Elder Tree. Yet, they are still a part of the Tree of Life of Gaia."


    In other words, they stemmed from the samest unifyingmon ancestor that gave birth to all life in the world. The enlightenment he gained from the Tree of Life allowed him to instantly deduce the most antithetical world to the species, even if he didn''t recognize the species itself.


    He didn''t recognize a single one of them.


    ''Despite belonging to the Gaian Tree of Life, these species have undergone eons of isted evolution,'' Rui realized. ''After all, assuming that this ce has been around for as long as the Elder Tree has, then that''s an enormous amount of time.''


    Time flowed one hundred and forty-four times faster in the Mellow Manifold. Thus, the biosphere of the Mellow Manifold had undergone an additional hundred and forty-four millennia of evolution over the rest of the biosphere of the Beast Domain.


    Of course, life had been around for billions of years, which was why Rui was still effortlessly able to understand each of these species and what it took to evolve them. The entirety of the Mellow Manifold and Mellow Dungeon was only a minute twig in an absolutely gigantic tree.


    "Fascinating," he muttered with a hint of intrigue in his eyes. "To think that such a thing can happen."


    He greedily added all the data that he needed from them and the environments most suited to them to the Tree of Life, increasing its acuity bit by bit. The more data he fed it, the greater the predictive model would function, like all predictive models. He began gaining deeper insights into the species of the dungeon as he mapped theyers of the dungeon. The danger level of the dungeon grew drastically as one went deeper into the dungeon, yet it was a gradient. It started from zero from the very outskirts such that even the Divine Doctor could remain there without any problems whatsoever, eventually growing stronger and stronger the deeper one went.


    This gradient allowed Rui to make extremely educated guesses about the danger level of the core of the Mellow Dungeon.


    "¡­As previously estimated, definitely Master-level," Rui remarked stoically. "¡­Both mathematical extraption and statistical sensory resistance corrtion yield a result of the core being Master-level. Thus, the certainty of this result is quite high."


    "Damn!" Kane cursed. "So, a region filled with multiple Master-level creatures after all? I was kinda hoping that we would discover that you''re wrong."


    "¡­Well, I was partially wrong," Rui replied quietly. "¡­It''s definitely a Master-level region, but there''s probably only a single Master-level creature."


    "How do you figure?"


    "¡­Area." Rui''s tone was confident. "There''s too little area for more than a single Master-level creature. If you recall the Master-level creatures that we faced in that Master-level region in the North of the Beast Domain, they upied an enormous amount of territory divided between the six of them."


    Rui knew that these creatures were extremely territorial. Each of them possessed the power to dominate an enormous amount of territory. Thus, he highly doubted that so many could live together, trance or otherwise. Their instincts would fundamentally cause them to fight against each other.


    "A single Master-level beast¡­" Kane''s voice trailed off. Content from N?velDr(a)ma.Org.


    He was certainly more hopeful, yet it was still unfathomably difficult to believe. Master-level beasts were Master-level because they absolutely could not be beaten by Martial Seniors, ording to the Panamic Martial Federation. And as Martial Seniors, they had absolutely no chance of beating a creature that required Martial Masters to fell them. Yet, when Kane thinks of Rui, he feels as though he cannot put Rui in the same category as himself. Regardless, even if he could not handle the beast likest time, Kane was confident that Rui would find some way to deal with the creature, or at the very least, that he would be able to get them out of there alive.


    "¡­It''s certainly more manageable than the six Master-level beasts that we faced that one time. However, it won''t be easy," Rui''s expression grew severe. "However, a Master-level beast in a trance¡­"


    He had many thoughts about that, yet he had no idea what kind of strategy would work under a creature that was put under a trance.


    It also mattered who or what exactly was putting the creature under a trance. Of course, it was the dungeon or the source of the manifold, but depending on what kind of living being it was, he might have had to change his approach quite differently.


    "RRROOOOOAAAAAARRRR!"


    A powerful roar drew his attention as he felt a higher level of pressure from the dungeon than before.


    They had run into their first Senior-level creature.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1973 Revelations

    Chapter 1973 Revtions


    "Interesting," Rui remarked as he beheld a simple three-tusked white boar before him. Its danger level was on par with grade-one Martial Seniors.


    At this point, Rui was so much stronger than it that he may as well have been an entire Realm above it. It rushed towards him, leaping at him in a single go.


    Yet, it never stood a chance.


    BOOM!


    A devastating blow to the head killed it in an instant. "From this point on, we need to be more alert," Kane murmured.


    Senior-level beasts, even if low-grade, had the potential to harm them. It was deeply unlikely, but even a moment ofcency couldpletely turn the tables over. The two took their stances as a herd of three-tusked white boars rushed at them, seeking to kill them.


    SPLAT SPLAT SPLAT!


    Kane alone was enough to deal with them, yet he held back, leaving only flesh wounds. The goal of their ventures into the dungeon was not to eradicate all the creatures of the dungeon. That was a foolhardy and brute-force manner of doing things that wasted a lot of time and energy and didn''t bring them closer to their goal of reaching the core of the dungeon.


    It was because Rui knew that it was highly likely that the Master-level creature upying the core of the dungeon probably came from one of the species that upied the lower parts of the domain.


    Thus, killing each and every single one of them without gaining enough data that could be useful for the Master-level guardian was foolish. BAM BAM BAM!!!


    He ended each of them mercilessly once he got what he needed.


    "Are you sure we need to do this for each species in the manifold?" Kane asked, raising an eyebrow.


    "¡­To maximize our probability of escaping this ce, yes." Rui''s voice was stoic. "Why are you so confident that this will help you with the Master-level guardian of the Mellow Manifold?" "¡­It''s a nested inference based on the state of these creatures," Rui nced at the corpses at his feat. "What question presents itself when we think of the fact that these creatures are made to be put in a trance state?"


    "¡­''How?'' and ''Why?'' I guess," Kane remarked.


    "Correct." Rui''s detached gaze remained fixed on the corpse. "Fundamentally, it boils down to the fact that these creatures are being used for protection of the dungeon. It''s a defensive measure. One that none of the dungeons we visited before had."


    "Sure, but what does that have to do with the Master-level guardian?"


    "¡­Like all dungeons, this ce was created when the flora absorbed powerful esoteric resources, surviving and mutating, evolving to be something else entirely," Rui replied. "If we assume that this ce was like the Mellow outside it, which is quite reasonable considering it was once one ce, then the species it started off with were as weak as the sub-Apprentice-level creatures outside it. Yet¡­"


    He gestured to the corpses around them. "¡­It now has Senior-level creatures and Master-level creatures."


    Rui turned to Kane with a stoic gaze. "How do you think that came to be?"


    "Well, it is a drastic jump," Kane admitted. "To go from sub-Apprentice-level to Master-level at its strongest. But you pointed out that this ce has been evolving for hundreds and forty thousand years, right? That''s a long time, so it''s not crazy."


    Rui shook his head. "¡­If it was a million years, I would have been less surprised. But a hundred and forty thousand is nothing. You would not seen an astronomical evolution of life so quickly, historically speaking. Species do not grow ten thousand times stronger on average in such a timespan under ordinary circumstances. The statistical likelihood of such a thing happening is extraordinarily low."


    "Ok, but then what''s the gig here?"


    "This dungeon¡­" Rui narrowed his eyes. "¡­is selectively breeding them. Additionally, it''s elerating evolution by engaging in brutal survival of the fittest. Having these animals breed at an extremely high rate by cing them in a trance it is able to tolerate high death rates, which allows them to engage inrge-scale Darwinian evolution measures. The Darwinian evolution filters ensure that each generation of species is decently stronger than the previous generation, albeit not too much. Doing that will yield some tremendous results over one hundred and forty-four millennia. Only that can exin this drastic disparity from species that evolved from the ordinary creatures we saw in the Mellow outside."


    Rui knelt down to the three-tusked boars before him. "This species of boar is an evolved version of the ordinary ground boar that we saw outside in the Mellow. Yet, in this Mellow Dungeon, it has evolved to orders of magnitude stronger."


    "How can you tell these boars have anything to do with boars outside? They look different and are wayrger and stronger." Kane curiously asked. "¡­The enlightenment of the Tree of Life not only allows me to predict the most optimal antithetical environments against a given lifeform, but it also allows me to understand the evolutionary distance and evolutionary position on the Tree of Life," Rui calmly remarked. "These creatures undoubtedly branched off from the species of boar we saw outside. Based on the titanic differences, I can assume some intense selective breeding and forced Darwinian filtering have been happening for a long time. It wasn''t difficult to piece together the truth once I figured this much out."


    His detached eyes slowly turned to Kane. "Thus, the strongest creature will be the strongest individual of the strongest generation of the strongest species. Most likely, some freak mutation, if I had to wager. You''re bound to run into those over a hundred and forty millennia. Still. That is the long answer to your question. One of these species possessed the key to understanding the Master-level creature that guards the core of the dungeon¡­"


    ".When you put it like that, that definitely makes much more sense, to be honest." Kane heaved a sigh. "Just how many such species are there in this dungeon?"


    "¡­Lots."


    "Damn."This belongs ? N?velDra/ma.Org.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1974 Roaring Contest

    Chapter 1974 Roaring Contest


    ??"That being said," Rui remarked stoically. "We can discard the species that failed to reach the Senior Realm."


    "Why''s that?" Kane furrowed his eyebrows.


    Rui coldly nced at the corpses before him. "Because if any species were not able to evolve into Senior-level producing species, then there''s no chance that they produced the Master-level being guarding the dungeon core."


    "I don''t get it," Kane remarked. "If all the creatures underwent one-forty thousand years of evolution, then shouldn''t they all have received the same evolutionary boost?"


    "Time is hardly the only factor that would affect the end power granted by extensive evolution," Rui replied quietly with a detached tone. "Some species, for better or for worse, are simply superior. They possess greater evolutionary potential than other species. It is most likely that the Master-level creature guarding the dungeon core is that of an apex predator species."This belongs ? N?velDra/ma.Org.


    Based on the species outside of the Mellow, Rui could make a pretty remarkable estimate of the kind of creature that guarded the dungeon core.


    Unfortunately, none of them were optimistic about their probability of escape or survival.


    He did not want to face a Master-level version of tigers or leopards. He could only hope that it was a herbivorous species but did not possess the propensity to hunt for them.


    In such a small, limited environment, there was simply nowhere to run. Perhaps that was the reason that the Divine Doctor didn''t get to immediately exploring this ce.


    While he could try his gold tried and tested tactics of using fear and trance-induction substances, just like the dungeon did, he would be doomed if he ran into anything stronger than Senior-level beasts or monsters.


    If he was as smart as Rui knew he was, then he would have undoubtedly deduced the same things that Rui had. That, in turn, would exin why he stayed away from the center of the dungeon as much as possible.


    Suddenly, a wave of peril washed over them.


    RUMBLE!


    The two of them leaped away, turning in the direction of the source with a grave expression.


    Yet, they were hit with a wave of sound louder than almost any other.


    "RAAAAAAAAAAAWWRRRGHRGRHW!!!!"


    BOOOM!!!


    Kane simply evaded it by putting as much distance between himself and the source as possible while Rui calmly withstood it.


    A cold smile appeared on his face.


    Recognition shed in his eyes.


    "To think I would see you here of all ces, roaring dragon."


    It had sharp green scales across the entirety of its long body that stretched out like a serpent. It was closer to what would be considered an eastern dragon back on Earth. Rui recognized it instantly because he had studied it when looking for which potion he ought to consume.


    He had chosen the Roaring Dragon Blood Potion. A potion that was created from the blood of the dragon that he was looking at at the very moment. One that had significantly improved his breathing capacity and had elevated his power greatly.


    Yet, it was different from the one he studied, having grown longer, stronger, and more ferocious.


    Yet, the Tree of Life allowed Rui to recognize the species that he was looking at was an evolutionary derivative of the same species that had led to the creation of the potion he consumed.


    Unfortunately, the creature didn''t seem to care to reminisce.


    Rui hadn''t failed to note the trance that it was in, just like every other creature that they had run into in the Mellow Dungeon.


    It inhaled deeply, causing an enormous vacuum that shook the very world around them, before exhal¡ª


    ''Breathing Crucifix.'' Rui coldly cast a powerful hypnotic shackle on its breathing.


    BOOM!!


    The resulting attack was so weak that it was hard to believe that it was from the same creature!


    "Rrrfff?" It huffed nervously as fear entered its eyes.


    Yet, Rui was far from done.


    His eyes grew malevolent as he inhaled deeply, expanding his lungs more than he ever had before. He activated the Metabody System, using the Hypertrophic Surge to gain an enormous surge of raw power.


    Then, he roared.


    Six Mighty Roar sh sts of unprecedented power shot one after another rapidly as he used Transverse Resonance tier six. The six sonic projectiles swiftly merged into a single projectile as they underwent simultaneous constructive superposition, bing a singr attack.


    It was the most powerful attack that Rui had ever unleashed in his entire life.


    BOOOOOM!!!


    The resulting impact was sorge that a craterrge enough to swallow mountains erupted on the spot.


    RUMBLE!


    The verynds shook beneath their feet as immense tsunamis of seismic radiation circled in and around the Mellow Manifold.


    The evolved roaring dragon was nowhere to be seen.


    "That was ruthless," Kane remarked, half wary and half amazed. "Your raw power has grown since thest time you did that."


    "Natural growth," Rui replied. "I have yet to reach my physical prime, so I will grow stronger unless I let myself go."


    Although it was not too substantial, he had indeed grown stronger physically. The time that they had spent in the Beast Domain had subjected their body to greater stress on average.


    Their bodies had slowly adapted to the pressures, growing stronger than they would have had they lived in theforts of the Kandrian Empire in the past three years.


    "Let''s head back," Rui remarked.


    "¡­Uh, why?"


    "We have exhausted some of our Martial Heart," he stoically replied, turning as he headed back to the coasts of the Mellow inds. "Remember. Time is on our side. I don''t want to risk anything, so we will always stay away from the dangerous margins that we were forced to suffer in the Beast Domain. Here, we can afford to do things extremely carefully."


    His dark eyes swam around as he began processing all the information that he had gathered in the meantime.


    It wouldn''t be too long before he had a concrete direction for his n to get out of this prison.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1975 Potential Plan

    Chapter 1975 Potential n


    A week passed since Rui entered the Mellow Dungeon. The two men had developed a bit of a routine where they spent most of the day investigating the dungeon. The biggest time-consuming factor was the fact that Rui insisted on collecting all the data on a species before they were ready to move on to another species. The only times he didn''t was when he confirmed that the species had yet to even crack the Senior Realm.


    This meant that even if they faced Apprentice-level species, Rui would painstakingly develop predictive and SOUL models on all of them. What would have otherwise been a millisecond''s work to wipe out a weaker species had been stretched to about an hour''s work.


    That was one of the reasons that their job took longer than Kane would have liked.


    However, Rui had been crystal clear.


    Safety was paramount this time.


    He didn''t mind spending an entire year on reconnaissance if that was what it took. Content protected by N?v/el(D)rama.Org.


    "¡­I have several temtes of a strategy in mind," Rui stoically told Kane one time after they returned from their reconnaissance of the Mellow Dungeon. "I don''t know which one will end up being the chosen strategy, but even based on the data that I have collected thus far, there are several possibilities. The first thates to mind is the trance-release n."


    "Trance-release?"


    "¡­Yeah," Rui quietly replied as his dark eyes sharpened. "Trance-release n. It''s a model of a n that involves gaining ess to the core entity maintaining the Mellow Manifold. As the name suggests, we break the trance on all the creatures, including the Master-level creature at the core of the Mellow Dungeon. Once they break out of their trance, there''s a good chance that they will stray from their previous roles and habitats."


    "Oh, your n is to use that to get the Master-level creature away from the core of the dungeon by breaking it out of the trance that it was in?"


    Rui nodded impassively. "There''s a good chance that the creature will cease protecting the core if we break it out of its trance."


    "How would we do that?"


    "¡­That is the tricky part," Rui''s stoic voice grew more severe. "However, I know that my hypnosis is partially effective on Master-level creatures."


    When he identally cast the Tree of Life hypnosis on the popce of the Garden of Salvation, it had been effective even on Master-level creatures. Naturally, they were the least affected by it, certainly not nearly as impacted as the Senior-level creatures were, for instance.


    "¡­However, it wasn''t ineffective, either," Rui frostily remarked. "That means there exists a certain non-zero probability that I can break the Master-level creatures out of their trance."


    The fact that Rui was able to, to any extent, impact a Master-level creature was rather surprising to him in hindsight. After all, his hypnosis would bounce off of a Martial Master, unable to budge them. It made one thing crystal clear.


    Martial Masters were of a far higher caliber fundamentally. It was no wonder that despite being far fewer in number, they were able to rival the entirety of Master-level fauna and flora.


    They were built different.


    "But if it''s only partially effective, that means you cannot go all the way by yourself in most cases, right?"


    "¡­Correct, that is why I would approach the Divine Doctor for his cooperation in the event I choose to go for this n," Rui impassively replied. "He clearly has the ability to concoct some powerful drugs and steroids. I''m sure he can whip up something that can potentially aid in breaking the trance."


    Kane nodded as he came to appreciate Rui''s n. He had initially been dumbfounded at trying to ovee a Master-level threat with sheer brains alone, but Rui had shown him how it was done. He provided a viable n that wasn''t patently absurd and was not unrealistic in its expectation that they could break out of the dungeon through it.


    "I have many other ideas, but they will need fleshing out before I present them to anybody," Rui impassively stated. "Additionally, our data is still iplete, so I will continue adapting our ns to suit our circumstances."


    His eyes sharpened. "While all this tangential information collecting will be quite significant, the most significant source of intelligence will be our given target itself. I don''t think we need a n for any of the other creatures, and we can just eliminate them one by one."


    Rui had reached such an astonishing degree of power that nothing short of a Master-level beast was beyond his ability. It was almost an insult to even call him a Martial Senior at this stage. If he ran into quasi-Master-level beasts, he would leap into battle without any fear for his life.


    That was especially true in a dungeon that was filled with tranced monsters and beasts. The ease of employing the SOUL System had risen tremendously. Before, he was often dyed because ofplications arising from timing the domain application correctly. Now, he could start collecting SOUL data far prior to what he normally would be able to do.


    "In this dungeon, I am far stronger than I would be outside."


    "Yeah, it''s sort of like what the Thundering Valley was to me," Kane turned towards him with a curious look in his eyes. "But you don''t seem to like it."


    "I am pleased that it increases the probability of our escape, however¡­" Rui closed his eyes. "I don''t like it for my long-term progress."


    "Why not?"


    "Because, unfortunately, I don''t live in a world where all my opponents are in a trance before the fight begins," Rui impassively replied with a displeased tone. "Spending more time in this ce will make me weaker, not stronger."


    Of course, it felt good. Rui couldn''t deny that with a straight face. Yet, it was that that worried him. If he spent too much time here, he would grow ustomed to not having to use Soul Void and bepletely blindsided when he returned back to reality.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1976 Nascent System of Thought

    Chapter 1976 Nascent System of Thought


    WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH!


    Rui evaded three dozen dark ravens in the sky.


    "CAWK CAWK CAWK!" The angry birds hawked at him as they surged forward with their talons poised to tear him to shreds.


    Yet, much to their surprise, the talons never reached him.


    WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH!


    They passed right through him.


    They passed through him as though he was an empty image.


    Rui stood in ce with closed eyes as he rxed his body. Each time a raven approached him, he would evade their strike at the final moment but would feint toward his original position, making it seem like he was there the entire time. Simultaneously, he would misdirect them to said feint, causing them topletely ignore his dodge and believe that he had been standing there the entire time.


    The creatures never stood a chance at seeing through his illusion. Yet, he wasn''t doing this just to flex.


    It was a good exercise because it required an extremely high level of precision and uracy when it came to his timing and cement.


    His SOUL and predictive models needed to be immacte. His feinting and misdirection needed to coincide within microseconds of each other.


    It was a great workout to train his finesse.


    WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH!


    Once he got the hang of it, though, he was on a roll; nothing could stop him.


    "Show-off," Kane muttered as he faced two dark ravens by himself. "Ok now, think¡­should I enter stealth mode or agility mode?"


    He tried out a sequence of thoughts, which was his first prototypical system of thought. ''These guys are kinda fast.'' He squinted, trying to think. ''They certainly don''t look heavy or anything like that. Also, their wings are freaking huge and they can do some incredible maneuvering with them.''


    WHOOSH WHOOSH!


    He evaded them. ''That means they can faster and quicker opponents, but can they handle stealthy opponents that well?''


    That was the extent of his system of thought thus far. This belongs ? N?velDra/ma.Org.


    ''Hmmm¡­'' He stared at their eyes. ''They have eyes.''


    A keen observation.


    ''If they have eyes, they probably rely on it. Which means misdirection should be pretty decently effective against them.'' Kane realized. ''Inparison, their fast maneuvering should be less dominated by Fulminata Godspeed. Alright, Void Step it is.''


    And there, his line of thought waspleted.


    Unbeknownst to him, Rui paid more attention to his battle than his own. A fleeting smile cracked at the edge of his mouth. "Good."


    He knew that Kane was taking his very first baby steps when it came to creating a Martial Mind. Although it was an extremely elementary and minimally effective singleyer decision process, it was still a first step in the right direction. Rui had faith that someday he would eventually develop a mature system of thought.


    "Not anytime soon, unfortunately," he huffed impassively. Kane still had an extremely long way to go before he fleshed out his system of thought to berger and more powerful in its impact inbat. The good news was that the road to the Master Realm was shorter for him than it was for Rui.


    Martial Minds were proportional to minds. That meant that Martial Seniors with more powerful minds had to create muchrger systems of thought. Their path to the Master Realm was more difficult than those of the rest.


    That was why Rui, despite creating tremendously powerful systems of thought such as the VOID algorithm, Angel of Lace, SOUL System, and the Tree of Life, had only just recently reached a stage where he could be certain of the saturation of his nascent Martial Mind. That was how staggeringly powerful his mind was.


    Kane, on the other hand, could make do with regr systems of thought, unlike Rui. However, in order to ensure that his individuality manifested, Rui never once tried nudging him or offering rmendations.


    Unlike techniques, thought affinities were less clear. Rui could very easily contaminate his Martial Mind with thought that was not suited for Kane''s Martial Art and Body. It was different for the distilled voidlet techniques that the Martial Union had already begun to aggressively propagate. Those had been stripped of Rui''s thought patterns and were truly able to be adapted by others to suit their own needs.


    Ultimately, he decided to let Kane do his own thing. If he gained inspiration from Rui and followed suit, that would be one thing since that came from within, but Rui himself would not interject from the outside.


    WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH!


    Rui''s stoic gaze returned to the ravens that converged on him from all directions. It appeared that they weren''t as stupid as they looked. They sought to deprive him of any escape, threatening to shred him from all directions.


    s, it was for naught.


    RUMBLE


    They froze as a horrifying tsunami of peril erupted from deep within Rui.


    Within his eyes stirred an endless void.


    A single remark escaped him.


    "My data collection on your species isplete, so¡­" His eyes darkened.


    "Heavenly Convergence."


    At that moment, heaven and earth converged on the hapless ravens.


    BOOM!!!


    They never stood a chance, dying on the spot.


    Not because Rui''s raw power was extraordinarily great, no.


    It was because he applied it in the most antithetical manner possible to produce the most devastating effect.


    The Tree of Life had long shown him that his Heavenly Convergence was actually the most suited domain out of all environments possible to taking the ravens down.


    They never stood a chance at taking him down in the first ce.


    He nced at Kane, who had promptly used Void Step to quickly cut down on the two ravens, bringing them death by a thousand cuts.


    SPLAT SPLAT SPLAT!


    "Huff¡­Huff¡­" He panted heavily, sheathing his des.


    STEP


    "Well done, your nascent system of thought was not ineffective." His tone lightened up as a soft smile cracked at the very edge of his mouth.


    "Hah," Kane snorted. "Not ineffective, that''s rich."


    "It''s where everybody starts," Rui replied. "Including me."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1977 Outside vs Inside

    Chapter 1977 Outside vs Inside


    ??"That''s hard to believe," Kane frowned. "You cook up magical systems of thought in years where it would take others decades."


    "That''s because I dedicated my life to them," Rui replied impassively. "I''m probably better at creating them than anybody in this world, I would suspect."


    "How do I get as good as you? Or at least, really good?" Kane asked.


    "¡­"


    Rui considered the question for a moment. "¡­You could try what Ieyasu tried. He spent two years just thinking, trying to increase his affinity for thought."


    "Does that actually work?"


    "It did for him." Rui shrugged impassively. "His capacity for thought rose enormously in the time that he spent thinking to increase his affinity for thought. This ce is a good ce for that, actually."


    "You mean the time eleration?"


    "Yes," Rui nodded. "It will allow you to make far more progress rtive to others at your stage outside."


    Kane shrugged. "I don''t care about others. But I don''t want to fall too behind you, though. Since you''re here as well, the time eleration doesn''t really help with that."


    "That''s true," Rui calmly replied. "But you''ll still most likely make more progress than me in this environment if we remain here for too long. That''s why I would rather leave this ce as soon as possible."


    Kane frowned at that. "You''re not going to remain here to grind one hundred and forty-four times faster?"


    "If it were one hundred and forty-four times faster, then that would be ideal, yes, but unfortunately, I won''t progress one hundred and forty-four times faster. In fact, I will probably progress more slowly here than on the outside."


    "Huh??" Kane stared at him with deep skepticism. "What do you mean? You would have one month on the outside and a hundred and forty-four months in here. There''s no way you can be more productive in the former than thetter."


    "That is true for the average Martial Artist, undoubtedly, however¡­" Rui closed his eyes. "That is not true for me. If I stay here, I will stagnate."


    Kane stared at him, speechless.


    "My growth and progress is tied to the gains made from trying to adaptively evolve to new challenges," Rui opened his eyes, meeting Kane''s stare. "Without a continuous fresh supply of new challenges to adaptively evolve to, I probably will not be able to progress down my Martial Path quicker in the long run. This ce¡­"This belongs ? N?velDra/ma.Org.


    He gestured to the Mellow Dungeon. "¡­can only offer so much. Already, what it can offer is paltry. If not for the Master-level beast, which is certainly a formidable challenge, I would say this ce is worthless to me. I will have nothing left to adaptively evolve to, almost halting the progress I would make down my Martial Path. With nothing left to challenge my Adaptive Evolution, I would probably never break into the Master Realm."


    He turned back to Kane. "On the outside, however, there are endless forces that I have yet to adaptively evolve to. My rate of progress will spike inparison and the challenges would allow me to temper and refine my Martial Art and eventually lead the way to higher Realms."


    "¡­So that''s why you would rather leave this ce even though it offers massive benefits to elerating your benefits rtive to others."


    "The drive to adaptively evolve is more important and significant to my progress than time. Thetter is not worth the cost of the former. So yes, I would progress more in two years on the outside than two hundred and eighty-eight years here."


    "¡­That sounds like a you-problem," Kane cautiously remarked.


    A fleeting smile cracked at the edge of his mouth. "I suppose it is. But I don''t know if it is a w that I would want to correct even if I was able to, which I am unable. But ultimately¡­"


    His eyes sharpened. "I refuse to spend more than two years in this ce. I am already feeling suffocated, I don''t know if I''ll even be able tost two years."


    "¡­That''s wild," Kane furrowed his eyebrows. "Someone like the Gatekeeper would happily train in this ce without any issue."


    Rui''s impassive eyes turned to the sky. "¡­True, he would. But he is a fundamentally different person than I am. Of course, while I would personally never subject myself to long-term training in this ce, I think it could be priceless for most Martial Artists. It could be priceless for Kandria¡­"


    Kane''s eyes widened with shock as he understood Rui''s intentions. "You. You''re thinking of harnessing this power of this dungeon for the Kandrian Empire."


    Rui shrugged. "If possible, yes. A stronger Kandria means more security for my family. Not to mention, I am indebted to."


    Rui had not forgotten that he had made use of a priceless resource to manipte time to save his father and avoid the throne while also protecting his family. The Topaz of Time was now forever gone because Rui made use of it. Thus, it was only right that hepensated the Kandrian Empire for indulging in his selfishness.


    What better way to do so than to provide the Kandrian Empire with a resource that was even more precious?


    His recent spikes in the understanding of the Beast Domain informed him of just how exotic and unprecedented the Mellow Manifold was. It was more than what he took, which he could wave off as interest.


    "¡­But only if we survive."


    That caveat, unfortunately, dampened their excitement. If, at this very moment, the Master-level beast leaped out and attacked them, then the two of them were dead on the spot with absolutely no chance of survival.


    A simple roar from a Master-level beast had left Rui half-dead previously.


    The severity of the hurdles that they had to ovee one by one was far too great, even for the potential rewards. For anybody else, not even potentially gaining a Transcendent resource was enough to ward off the threat of the Master-


    level beast.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1978 Angelic Encounter

    Chapter 1978 Angelic Encounter


    "If you can get your hands on the source of the Mellow Manifold, then¡­" Kane''s eyes lit up with greed and wonder. "That would be insa-"


    RUMBLE


    A wave of peril washed over them.


    The two of them leaped away, catching a hazy glimpse of the threat that surged towards them.


    What they saw shook them.


    It had six enormous brilliant shining wings that emerged from a humanoid torso. The creature didn''t have a head; instead, bearing enormous eyes across the entirety of its body. Eyes that were each in a trance.


    "Angel¡­" Rui whispered, stunned.


    The angel species was one of the most bizarre and exotic species of the Beast Domain. It was the least understood species among all apex monster species that resided deep within the Beast Domain, leading extremely solitary lives.


    The enlightenment of the Tree of Life


    Rui''s expression grew grave when he noticed a fourth pair of small baby wings below the three enormous pairs that drew all the attention.


    The eyes across its body slowly turned towards Rui, fixing on him.


    Within them, an inhuman, malevolent bloodlust palpably shook the air. "Get out of here." A chilling instruction escaped Rui as his dark eyes sharpened.


    Kane gulped, immediately adhering, before taking off.


    Unfortunately, the angel had no intention of allowing that. Its wings pped a single time, generating an enormous wind current that it then manipted seamlessly to attack Kane.


    It was within Rui''s prediction.


    "Breathing Crucifix." His cold voice cut through the bloodlust of the angel. The angel froze as the wings that also served as its breathing organs experienced a sudden reduction in its breathing capabilities, halting its offense.


    Yet, Rui was far from done.


    "Sonic Singrity." The world screamed.


    Heaven and Earth shook as a tsunami of sound converged onto the angel.


    BOOOM!


    Yet, Rui could only widen his eyes when the creature effortlessly resisted his sound domain. WHOOOSH!!


    With a light p of its wings, it effortlessly dispelled the sound despite being restricted by Breathing Crucifix. His expression grew grave at the sheer nonchnce the being disyed in the face of his domain.


    Yet, he wasn''t surprised.


    Angels were born as weak as humans. Their wings were the source of their power, and each sessive pair of wings was multiplicative in the total power that it supplied to the angel.


    The power that they offered was considered to be simr to Martial Realms. This particr angel had three massive pairs and one small pair. That most likely meant that its power exceeded that of the Senior Realm considerably.


    And it proved him correct.


    WHOOOSH!!!


    It pped its wings, generating a million powerful, sharp wind currents that converged onto Rui, ready to turn him into flesh confetti.


    Unfortunately, its attempt was too paltry.


    THWOOM THWOOM THWOOM THWOOM THWOOM!


    Rui fired off five Mighty Roar sh sts in rapid session, blunting the iing wind currents.


    BOOOOOM!!!


    He emerged from the ensuing explosion with light bruises and wounds, yet his innate healing kicked into action, quickly fixing them.


    He never once let Breathing Crucifix off during the entire time.


    A fact that clearly irked the angel as it pped its wings once more,unching it forward at astonishing speeds. The sheer eleration that its powerful wings were able to generate was well beyond Rui''s ability to even perceive.


    Such was the power of an angel.


    However, there were two angels in this battle.


    One that faced Rui.


    And one that helped him. Content protected by N?v/el(D)rama.Org.


    The Angel of Lace had made it just in time.


    His mind expanded into the fourth dimension, reaching the future and past.


    WHOOSH!


    The tranced eyes of the body of the angel widened with surprise as Rui cleanly evaded its bullrush, sidestepping it. "Your wings show me the future." A soft whisper escaped him as he focused on the micro and macro patterns of each of the eight wings that emerged from the creature''s back.


    Because they were so central to the threat that the angel posed to him, he needed only to pay attention to the preparatory movements to know exactly what was toe. After that, it was just a matter of timing his movements after the point of no return before the movements began.


    WHOOOSH!


    The angel pped its wings once more, shooting forward at absurdly blinding speeds in the briefest of moments.


    Yet, by the time it reached Rui, he was already gone.


    No, he was never there to begin with.


    THWOOM!


    Instead, it was greeted by a cheerful Mighty Roar sh st.


    BOOM!


    The impact staggered it as the tranced angel grew stunned. The many eyes across its entire body sharpened as rage flickered in their depths. Unfortunately for Rui, it was not mindless enough to continue with an approach that had failed twice. It stared at Rui.


    Itsrge and powerful eyes were unnerving. In their depths, Rui could sense a sophisticated evaluation of him and the best way to approach this battle.


    The angel species was one of the most intelligent species in the Beast Domain and certainly the most intelligent species he had encountered now.


    That was why he could understand what it conveyed to him.


    Outsider. It remarked non-verbally. Submit.


    He didn''t mind the asional non-verbal trash talk. However, its words made him pause.


    ¡­Submit? He stared at it impassively, quizzical.


    Submit. It reaffirmed. Submit to the hive.


    Rui''s widened with shock. "¡­What?"


    Its stare intensified. Submit.


    His eyes narrowed. Fuck off.


    A deep-seated rage erupted from the depths of its eyes. Its wings expanded to their full glory, massively dwarfing its torso as it covered an enormous amount of area. They stretched back to the maximum degree possible.


    Then die. Bloodlust flickered in the depths of its eyes. WHOOOOSH!


    Its wings pped, and in just a moment, an enormous, dense tornado was born. The tornado surged forward, rushing towards it with astounding levels of power and speed. It didn''t matter if Rui saw iting from a mile away.


    How did one dodge something that was almost everywhere?


    BOOOM!!!


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1979 Vulnerabilities

    Chapter 1979 Vulnerabilities


    What followed was a scarring battle that ravaged the section of the Beast Domain that he was in. BOOM BOOM BOOM!


    Rui spiraled around in the air as his mind furiously processed tons of information. His eyes never once left the creature''s wings.


    Every shift, twitch, contraction, and expansion.


    All of it.


    He watched all of it, extrapting the future from the predictive model that only grew more refined with each passing second. Yet, that wasn''t the only thing that kept his mind busy.


    He rapidly gathered SOUL data on the angel, which, like all creatures in the Mellow Dungeon, was in a trace. He was grateful for theck of necessity for the Soul Void technique in this particr circumstance. It would have been far more of a pain if he needed to get close to put such a powerful creature in a trance.


    RUMBLE!


    WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH!


    Rui pirouetted across the Mellow Dungeon as he struggled to evade the generated tornados one after another. They were slower than the angel''s individual bullrushes, yet they were enormous and covered a huge amount of area, making them much more difficult to evade.


    That was why he kept Nemean Blossom active.


    The powerful Metabody technique helped him weather the tremendous tornados generated by the angel. Each of them possessed the power to reduce a mountain to rubble. Thankfully, with thebined power of Nemean Blossom, Adamant Reforging, and Flux Earther, he couldrgely dispel the impacts of the powerful tornados with little effort.


    On top of that, the greatest issue with widescale attacks was that they drastically reduced potency. This meant that while attacks struck Rui with greater frequency due to his inability to evade all of them, the amount of power actually attacking him was only a fraction of the total power.


    Thus, while he was displeased with the sheer scale of the attacks, he was perfectly fine with the force they inflicted on him. Content from N?velDr(a)ma.Org.


    Unfortunately, this was not a sustainable venture.


    This level of output was standard business for the angel. Rui could tell because there were absolutely no hints of strain or exertion across the entirety of its body. It could maintain this over longer periods of time.


    Unfortunately, the same could not be said for the Metabody System.


    BOOM BOOM BOOM!!!


    Three enormous, powerful tornados shed with Rui even as he tried to escape them, leaving a series of light cuts across the entirety of his body. His expression grew grave.


    The fact that it was able to hurt him through the Nemean Blossom was troubling. His eyes grew grim as he elerated the SOUL System processing as much as he could. A flood of data coursed through the depths of his Mind Pce, quicklyyering on to the nascent SOUL model that he was forming on the angel.


    WHOOSH!


    His eyes widened as he plummeted midair; the air from beneath his feet had been abruptly yanked by a powerful suction, causing him to have no footing for evasion. Five tornados converged on him.


    BOOOOOM!!!


    "Rgh!" He grimaced as wounds emerged across the entire body at a dangerous rate. The sheer damage that he had incurred had been so high that the Nemean Blossom technique had been emptied in an instant, deprived of all durability that it could offer him.


    The angel rushed to exploit the opportunity, exerting its maximum power to crush him on the spot.


    BOOOOOM!!!


    A thundering explosion rang across the Mellow Manifold.


    The eyes across the body of the angel closed as it deemed the jobplete.


    Unfortunately, it was wrong.


    SPLAT!


    Its body shook as it felt a sharp, excruciating pain emerging from its back.


    "Having so many eyes must suck," Rui''s chilling murmur emerged from him as his arm dug deeper into the angel''s body. "So many targets. So many vulnerabilities."


    Its wings expanded as they unleashed an omnidirectional st wa¡ª "Phantom Pain."


    VMMMMMMM!!!


    The power in the creature''s muscles died as an ocean of pain flooded its nervous system and its brain, incapacitating as it quivered, convulsing with unfathomable agony. SPLAT!


    Rui disemboweled arge eyeball from its back, tossing it away.


    Rage and pain shed in its remaining eyes as it unleashed a multitude of tornados at Rui, seeking to crush him once and for all.


    WHOOSH!


    Its eyes widened as the tornados crashed into an empty image,pletely having missed it from the very get-go.


    Rui appeared before it, deactivating Greater Phantomind Void.


    "I can see your soul."


    It was thest thing that it heard before the world went dark.


    SPLAT!


    Rui''s hammered right through the eyeball on its abdomen, reaching for the brain at the center of its body. The body of the angel went limp as it died on the spot.


    He scoffed coldly. "With such ring weaknesses, it would be an insult to consider you a true quasi-Master-level threat."


    Still, he didn''t like how close the battle had been. If the SOUL System had not kicked in at thest moment, allowing him to precisely evade the iing attacks at the right moment and ce.


    "Huff¡­" He heaved a soft sigh of relief as he dropped the body, letting it plummet. "At least I collected all the data on it. This way, if the Master-level creature is an angel, I''ll be able to better ount for it in our strategy to get out of here."


    His eyes returned to the fallen angel''s corpse.


    While it was far inferior to Master Gurren and certainly astronomically inferior to the Elder Tree, he could understand why angels were considered to be masters of the heavens. They had an extraordinary affinity for heaven, allowing them to be masterfully adept at heaven-bending.


    "If that fourth pair of wings was fully mature¡­" Rui narrowed his eyes gravely. "I''d probably be dead right now."


    It would have most likely be a Master-level beast, capable of exerting a truly tremendous amount of power when all four wings worked together. He definitely would have died within ten seconds of the battle.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1980 Insightful Inferences

    <h4>Chapter 1980 Insightful Inferences</h4>


    He carefully reviewed and stored the data that he had collected. If the obscure and rare angel species were present in the dungeon, then there was a very realistic chance that the Master-level beast was at the core of the dungeon guarding the source of the Mellow Manifold.


    He recalled its message to him.


    Submit to the hive.


    "Hive¡­" His eyes narrowed. "I see."


    It appeared that he had underestimated the degree to which the dungeon had integrated the beasts and creatures into its system.


    His eyes turned to the corpse as something caught his eye.


    Several subterranean rodents emerged from the ground around the angel, digging the ground underneath it as they quickly pushed the creature further and further into the soil.


    His eyes lit up with interest as glowing roots became exposed meters underneath thend. The little rodents wrapped up the corpse in the long glowing roots before covering all of it up in soil and returning.


    He hadn''t missed the fact that each of the rodents was in a deep trance.


    This wasn''t the first time he had seen it, having butchered plenty of monsters. However, in light of what the angel had told him, he saw it in a new light.


    "Normally, the roots of the dungeon do this," Rui narrowed his eyes.


    In both the Shionel and Serevian Dungeon, the roots of the dungeon were mobile, able to sense and absorb the corpses for nutrients.


    In fact, the inheritance of the Elder Tree tantly told him that this was the norm for most dungeons.


    His eyes lit up as an insightful realization. "Could it be that the reason that this dungeon evolved the ability to put creatures in a trance and enve them rose as a result of its immobile roots?" Content protected by N?v/el(D)rama.Org.


    If that was the case, it would exin why the dungeon needed to enve all creatures in the dungeon. If it was an immobile entity, it needed something else to control that would serve as its arms and legs.


    Naturally, it would also exin why it desperately needed these creatures for protection.


    The Shionel and the Serevian dungeons did not necessarily require monsters and beasts to defend themselves or to mine esoteric substances. Both dungeons possessed substantial physical power of their own, rtively speaking.


    Perhaps that was why they hadn''t evolved such a trance-like mechanism.


    Perhaps that was why the Mellow Dungeon did, to the point that an intelligent being like an angel called it a hive.


    That was rather telling.


    If that was the case, then all the pieces fit in. The oddities that he had observed in the Mellow Dungeon set it apart from all other dungeons. All became exinable if the Mellow Dungeon was impotent in one of its own capabilities, requiring other species to do what other dungeons would be able to do by themselves.


    "No wonder it pursued the aggressive strategy of selective breeding and Darwinian evolution." Rui realized.


    The creatures of the Mellow, barring some here and there like the angel species, were most likely far too weak to guard what was probably a Transcendent treasure. If the dungeon felt that it was too vulnerable, then Rui could fully understand its decision to leverage the esoteric substance''s space-time power to create a domain isted from the rest of the Beast Domain to elerate the evolution process of the weak creatures by a factor of one hundred and forty-four.


    "It would also exin why it keeps absorbing phenomena above a certain level of esotericity and power," Rui murmured impassively. "It can gain more security for itself if it is able to absorb powerful beasts and monsters."


    That would exin why creatures non-native to the Mellow were present in the Mellow Dungeon. Perhaps there were some monsters from the surrounding Master-level danger zones that wandered into the Mellow looking for easy prey but were, in turn, absorbed by the Mellow Dungeon and became a part of the hive, forced to breed, evolve, and do the bidding of the Mellow Dungeon.


    The angel had demanded that Rui submit to the hive.


    "¡­That means the Mellow Dungeon wants to enve and make me a part of its hive?" Rui narrowed his eyes coldly. "But why not just send the Master-level beast instead of a creature weaker than me?"


    Rui knew that a Master-level creature would have been able to apprehend him effortlessly and drag him away to the core where the trance enving most likely happened.


    There was no logical reason that it would not make this choice. Either he had deeply overestimated the intelligence of the Mellow Dungeon''s consciousness, or the reason that it didn''t deploy the Master-level asset of the Mellow Dungeon was that¡­


    "¡­it can''t?"


    If so, he had stumbled into some truly astounding insights. He could infer that there was a significant possibility that the Master-level asset of the dungeon was limited in its ability to be deployed. Rui didn''t know how or why this would be the case if it truly was. But he was unable to figure out any realistic reason for the dungeon not to deploy the master-


    level asset if it was able to.


    "If so, this could be the key." Rui realized. "If it has limitations or conditions, then they can be exploited to reach the source of the Mellow Dungeon safely and break out of this ce without a fight potentially."


    Of course, this was the most optimistic possibility. Rui was not naive enough to believe that reality would be in his favor. However, the best part was that he was learning more and more about the dungeon and the threats he was to face so that he could better n their escape from the Mellow Manifold. It also increased the probability that they would be able to convince the Divine Doctor to ept their offer and concede to helping Rui''s father from his condition.


    RUMBLE


    A wave of seismic radiation from within the depths of the dungeon broke him out of his reverie, drawing his attention.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1981 Plan

    Chapter 1981 n


    It was probably unwise for Rui to stray too much further into the dungeon as the danger levels constantly rose. Even in the Beast Domain, the two of them never went so far as topletely drain their Martial Hearts. Who knew what could attack them in their incapacitated states?


    Luckily, Rui still had a decent amount of stamina left. Thus, he could afford to stray a bit deeper to take a good look at what was going on. Thankfully, given how small the manifold was, it wasn''t too far in.


    "ROOOOOAAAARRRRR!" Rui''s eyes widened as he saw a slew of emerald dragonsunching an assault on a region, lighting it up with their fire breaths. Yet, it was the residents of the region that surprised him.


    Angels.


    An overwhelming majority of them were weaker than the one he faced, with only three pairs of wings or less. They struggled under the wrath of powerful apex monsters led by a tyrannicallyrge dragon the size of a hill.


    "ROOOOOAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!"


    The mighty dragon scorched the angels alive, setting them on fire. Not even their powerful heaven-bending could entirely abate the infernos and congrations that it released into the world.


    While the angels were able to match the weaker dragons under it, it was the sole dragon that allowed what would have been a stalemate to fall in their favor. The angels did not have a leader with the power to match a creature, exceeding the Senior Realm.


    "No¡­" Rui''s impassive eyes widened as realization dawned on him. "They had a leader capable of that, but now it''s dead."


    It had challenged Rui and had not lived to tell the tale. However, the timing of the attack was too suspicious. The moment Rui killed the angel, the dragons coincidentallyunched an attack on the angel colony?


    "¡­It was because I killed the angel leader." His tone was sharp. "But why are they fighting?"


    As far as he could tell, there was nothing in the region that was of particrly high value. There was no real reason that the Mellow Dungeon ought to allow the species to fight unless there was something to be gained.


    Soon enough, the answer became clear. Content from N?velDr(a)ma.Org.


    CHOMP CHOMP CHOMP CHOMP


    The mighty dragon feasted upon the angels as pleasure shed through its eyes. Meanwhile, the same creature ignored the countlessrger creatures in the dungeon that were not onlyrger but weaker.


    It flew away, satisfied with feasting on a few dozen angels.


    "¡­I see." Rui closed his eyes as he headed back to the coast of the Mellow dungeon.


    He had understood everything that he needed. This was part of the Darwinian filtering process. Powerful beasts required powerful prey to sustain their power. Normally, apex predators did not find themselves at odds with each other. After all, there was an extremely extensive ecosystem and food chain below them at their disposal that could supply them with the nutrients they needed without requiring them to fight other apex species.


    "But the Mellow Dungeon is a ce where they are deprived of satisfactory prey," Rui noted calmly, adding to his understanding of the dungeon. After all, the ce was only a hundred kilometers in diameter. On top of that, the power gradient was quite steep, such that most of the creatures of the Mellow Dungeon were too weak for the apex predators to even bother preying on. In other words, the most nutritious sources of food were their own peers.


    This caused predators to prey on each other, leaving only the strongest of the strongest alive. Then, the Mellow Dungeon would probably swoop in and cause a mass mating season, leading to a lot of offspring, which, when mature, would go through the same process, leaving only the strongest alive.


    Over a span of one hundred and forty-four millennia, Rui could understand how the creatures of the Mellow had gotten so powerful.


    "Rui!" Kane waved at him in the distance on the shore. STEP


    "Kane." Rui impassively acknowledged him.


    "Man am I d you beat that angel." He grinned. "I''ve never seen one before."


    "There''s not a single known nest of angels in the Human Domain, at least," Rui informed him. "I didn''t think we would run into one here. More importantly, I''ve learned more about how the dungeon functions. Its shorings and limitations. I think I have an idea of how we''re going to break out of this ce."


    Kane''s eyes lit up with optimism. "Really?!"


    Rui nodded. "It''s rather simple; we draw the Master-level creature away from the core of the dungeon using a distraction or a red herring and then uproot the core source of the Mellow Manifold while it is away."


    Kane frowned. "I was expecting an extraordinarilyplex n with a hundred different stages and your n is the most basic strategy ever?"


    "Complexity is neither a virtue nor an objective," Rui replied impassively. "Only a fool who thinks he is a genius would chooseplexity over simplicity if all else were equal."


    "¡­OK, but why exactly did youe up with this n specifically?"


    "The dungeon¡­cannot move," Rui replied. "Be it roots or branches. It painstakingly hypnotizes creatures to get them to do its bidding. It''s an incredibly cumbersome means of going about it that really cannot be justified by anything other than an inability to move."


    "¡­Ok? That doesn''t answer my question."


    Rui closed his eyes. "You remember what dungeons when they sense a threat they deem dangerous?"


    "They attack it with their branches and roots, right?"


    "And how would the Mellow Dungeon do that if it cannot move?"


    "¡­Oh," Kane''s lit up with understanding. "The Master-level beast¡­"


    "Correct." Rui nodded. "This dungeon is immobile. Thus, it is highly likely it would deploy the Master-level beast in its stead. Especially if it senses a particrly powerful threat. Just like it uses its ve creatures to do everything else that mobile roots or branches would do."


    "Wait a minute¡­"Kane froze as his mind caught onto something. "¡­How do you n to trick the Mellow Dungeon into thinking that there is a Master-level threat on the other side of the manifold?"


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1982 Bait

    Chapter 1982 Bait


    A fleeting smile cracked at the edge of Rui''s mouth as expression softened. "You know me well, Kane."


    "Answer the question," Kane sternly demanded, narrowing his eyes.


    "¡­How do I n to trick a dungeon that there is a threat?" Rui''s voice grew macabre. "How I''ve always done."


    He calmly met Kane''s powerful gaze. "¡­By making myself bait with a Master-level Mind Mask."


    "I knew it." Kane huffed bitterly. "There are easier ways tomit suicide if that''s your intention."


    "It isn''t."


    "Yeah, well, that''s even worse because then you''ll die without wanting to," Kane scoffed. "A Martial Senior cannot defeat a Master-level beast."


    "I don''t need to defeat it," Rui replied softly. "I just need to survive long enough."


    "Long enough for what?"


    "For you and the Divine Doctor to break us out of the dungeon while the core is unguarded, of course."


    "There''s no way you''resting that long." Kane stared at him in disbelief.


    "Not in a random encounter, no, but¡­" Rui''s eyes grew more steely. "¡­when I''m prepared for my opponent, you know how strong I can be."


    Kane''s expression grewplicated.


    He had to admit that the things that Rui had pulled off over the years were truly incredible. He recalled how Rui fought the Root, a quasi-Senior-level opponent, as a high-mid grade Senior with just preparation alone. When Rui had the opportunity to study his opponent and adaptively evolve ahead of time, he could aplish things thought to be impossible.


    "¡­What if you''re wrong?"


    Rui shrugged nonchntly. "Then I die." Content protected by N?v/el(D)rama.Org.


    Kane stared at him, speechless. "The risk is hardly anything new," Rui impassively stated. "We''ve been in the Beast Domain for more than three years now."


    "¡­I mean, I guess." Kane heaved a severe sigh as he thought about the n. "You''re putting a lot of faith in the two of us."


    "Faith?" Rui stared at Kane in a detached manner. "I don''t do faith. I have strong reason to believe that the two of you are collectively capable of this feat. The Divine Doctor may be a madman, but he is a brilliant genius who cured death by freeing the soul from the body that has been around for the better half of a century. I have no doubt that he will know exactly how to incapacitate the source of the dungeon. The reason he hasn''t done it thus far is because he iscking in power. That''s where youe in."


    Kane grew serious. "What is my role?" "Your role is to escort the Divine Doctor to the core of the Mellow Dungeon while I distract and ensure the Master-level beast remains as far as away from the center as possible," Rui replied. "And aid him with the operation of incapacitating the source of the Mellow Manifold. It is quite likely that while he will know how to incapacitate it, he won''t have the physical power needed to do so. In that case, make sure to follow his instructions carefully."


    "Gotcha." Kane nodded solemnly.


    "Your current level of power won''t be enough," Rui informed him. "Over two years, you will have to be stronger. Much stronger than you are now. You will need to be a high-grade Martial Senior."


    At the current stage, Rui estimated that Kane was a high-mid-grade Martial Senior, probably not too far from bing a high-grade Martial Senior. Rui had reached the threshold seven years ago, but Kane''s progress was astonishingpared to anybody other than Rui and Ieyasu.


    Not only was he a genius, but he also possessed a powerful drive and an extremely good influence on him in the form of Rui. Rui was confident that with a few more years, he would cross the threshold to enter the high grades.


    "I''ll do my best," Kane nodded. "What about you? What preparations are you going to make over the span of two years?"


    "¡­I will probably elevate the Yggdrasil System and reduce the gap between it and the Tree of Life," Rui softly replied.


    Kane frowned. "Aren''t you going to focus on creating more systems of thought? That is the path to the Master Realm."


    Rui shook his head. "I havepleted all my efforts in that regard. The greatest thing I can do in the direction of adaptive evolution at the moment is to increase the versatility of my domains to suit well against the beasts and monsters. Obviously, I won''t be able to create a technique for all possible antithetical environments that the Tree of Life shows me."


    What he intended to do was create domains to construct the most frequent andmon kinds of antithetical environments that the Tree of Life enlightenment yielded. "I''ll especially do that for the most powerful species of this dungeon," Rui remarked as eagerness lit up in his eyes. "I''ll have finally taken the final steps needed to eradicate my weakness to the beasts of the Beast Domain."


    He had initially thought he could improve his domains in peace in the Kandrian Empire after returning home with the Divine Doctor and finally putting the mess of the session behind him. However, it was clear to him now that it was something that he would need additional to stall the Master-level beast long enough for Kane and the Divine Doctor to incapacitate the source of the Mellow Manifold.


    Rather than pursuing more distant possibilities, he decided to go for the lowest-hanging fruit that had very recently ripened. In hindsight, it was actually the most ideal timing. He didn''t think that there was a better moment to embark on domains than in circumstances that actually required them.


    "Necessity is the strongest driving force of adaptive evolution." Rui''s tone grew more energetic. "Any result born purely out of idle endeavor within the safety of a nation like the Kandrian Empire will be subparpared to what I can achieve in these perilous circumstances."


    His eyes sparked with life and energy at the thought of finally fulfilling the ambition of making the Yggdrasil System a force against all life. -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1983 Incomprehensible

    <h4>Chapter 1983 Iprehensible</h4>


    Kane smiled at the sight of Rui''s eyes energetically swimming around immersed in deep thought. The spark of excitement twinkled within them. His feet began tapping, and his hands began fidgeting impatiently.


    The moment Martial Art became the topic, he was reduced to an enthusiastic child who couldn''t wait to y in the park. The moment Martial Art arrived, his heart and temperament would thaw, and for a moment, the Rui of old woulde out.


    The same Rui that he had known his entire life.


    "As always, Martial Art always brings you endless happiness, huh?" Kane chuckled mirthfully.


    "It''s the best," Rui replied, growing more vigorous. "Sometimes, I''m truly astonished that not everybody falls in love with Martial Art. How is that possible? How can you look at Martial Art and note to love it with all your heart? Strange world, truly."


    Kane stared at him, speechless.


    It was an absurd statement.


    Martial Art was the cause of immense suffering in the world regardless of what one personally felt about it. It had caused a lot of fear, anguish, pain, and death, much of it unjust. This was so much so that an international movement dubbed ''Non-Martial Lives Matter'' was born after a Martial Sage genocided one billion human beings in the blink of an eye.


    Of course, Rui was very well aware of this himself. Yet, it never emotionally registered within him. His love for Martial Art was so deep that it refused to allow him to truly understand, on an emotional level, how people could wind up hating it.


    Kane shook his head. "Whatever. Let''s go tell the Divine Doctor now that we have figured out a n."


    "No, not yet," Rui refused impassively. "That man will be a difficult nut to crack even with a seemingly reasonable n. I know his type. He will not be satisfied with a n as loose as I have proposed. I will have to flesh out all the details and have powerful reasons to convince him to invest in it."


    Kane heaved a sigh. "So I was right ultimately. It will be aplex n."


    "Maybe." Rui shrugged nonchntly. "It will be detailed but ultimately simple in concept. The most important part is having rock-solid foundations to convince him of the probability of sess. I don''t think there''s any point in approaching him before I''ve mastered my understanding of this dungeon and all its creatures."


    "¡­Is it going to be that hard?"


    Rui narrowed his eyes. "This is a man who has little fear of death. The only question is why he hasn''t killed himself and unshackled his soul so that his soul can travel to a prepared body of his or whatever the specific mechanism of the soul transference is. But despite not having done so, I didn''t sense any fear. He''s going to have a high bar for cooperation. I certainly would if I were in his circumstances."


    Kane smiled wryly. "Right."


    "On top of that, this n is based on the assumption that this man wants to leave. If he doesn''t, then I''ll have to make other concessions."


    "Like letting him poke around your brain?"


    Rui''s expression darkened. "Absolutely not. But I''ll have to figure it out when ites to it."


    Rui had some ideas as to what he could offer if the man did not care about gaining his freedom. Unfortunately, due to hisck of understanding of how the soul was transferred from one body to another, he was at an information disadvantage in this regard.


    It could be that he needed to suffer a natural death in order to unshackle the soul from his body and let it transfer from the dead vessel to a prepared living vessel. Rui recalled his father''s description of how the man had been killed before, only to spawn in a new body that would go about elsewhere.


    Not even Martial Sages could keep this man dead. It was a feat that Rui found mind-boggling.


    Yet, for some reason, in the Mellow Manifold, the man was unwilling to slit his throat or throw himself into the dungeon to let himself die.


    What changed?


    All indications pointed to the fact that the self-looping four- dimensional space-time manifold was the reason. There was nothing else meaningful that could distinguish why the Divine Doctor''s current circumstances were different, such that he had yet to kill himself. He had spent two hundred and sixteen days in this ce without making any progress yet refused to die.


    Rui shook his head. "¡­Ah well, we''ll find out eventually; rather than focusing on things that are outside of our control, it is best we deal with things within our control. The value proposition of our n needs to be rock solid; otherwise, he''llugh at us."


    Kane nodded. "Gotcha."


    "I''d suggest you focus on training from here on out," Rui told him. "You don''t need any more experience than you have. A dedicated two years of training to expand your skillset and strengthen your foundation will do you much better than more experience."


    "What about you?"


    "Well, I''ll finish what I started," Rui remarked impassively. "Gather all the intelligence on all these creatures until I know this ce inside out and backward front. I need to be so good that the Divine Doctor better request me to teach him. Once that''s done, I''ll begin my domain training ande up with new domains to create environments that are antithetical to the biggest threats in this dungeon. After that¡­"


    Rui turned to Kane. "It''ll be showtime."


    "And you''re going to wait until all our preparations are done before you actually even tell the Divine Doctor what our n is?"


    "Yes," Rui replied. "We will have gained a lot of rity that he simply will be unable to refuse if he has any desire to not rot in this dungeon for the rest of the life of this particr vessel." Content is ? by N?velDrama.Org.


    "¡­Alright, I suppose it''s the only way," Kane remarked, heaving a sigh. "Life is going to get rough."


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1984 Completed

    Chapter 1984 Completed


    BOOOOOM BOOOOOM BOOOOOM!!!


    Rui evaded a series of infernos one after another as he zipped through a region in the Mellow Manifold.


    "ROOOOOOAAAAAARRRRRRRR!!!" The enormous emerald dragon let out a guttural bellow as its eyes remained fixed on Rui.


    It hadn''t even been that long since the battle had begun, yet the dragon panted lightly as Rui ran circles around it with a pointed gaze in the direction of the creature. Beasts and monsters did not require the same sophistication to adaptively evolve against as Martial Artists did.


    This was a good example.


    BOOOOOM BOOOOOM BOOOOOM!!!


    While the emerald dragonunched st after st, exerting an enormous amount of energy. Rui speedily stayed away from its output, ensuring that it never so much as touched him.


    It was a very simple strategy that capitalized on stamina by tiring out the dragon. It was hardly even new or creative. Rui actually borrowed it from ancient human hunters back when the human species relied on foraging.


    The biggest advantage that humans had over more powerful species was long-term stamina. Tiring mighty beasts was the only way they could fell them.


    Rui was more than happy to take a page out of their book and apply the Martial version of the same strategy.


    Additionally, it made gathering patterns and SOUL data that much easier.


    While the beast foolishly wasted enormous energy in vain, Rui simply waited, collecting data as he avoided it before he proceeded to kill it.


    And soon enough, the moment arrived.


    "Rrrff¡­" its eyes grew hazy as it panted heavily. "Rrfff¡­" Content is ? by N?velDrama.Org.


    Rui activated Greater Phantomind Void and Hypertrophic Surge, rushing in with maximal momentum.


    SPLAT!


    "ROOOOAAAAAARRRRRR!!!" A guttural roar of pain emerged from the creature as Rui dung its eye socket with a Metabody-amped Flowing Canon, entering its skull.


    After that, it was just a matter of time before he reached the brain.


    SPLAT!


    The creature''s eyes grew vacant as its body grew limp, tilting over.


    RUMBLE


    The entire dungeon shook as the hill-sized corpse fell backward.


    "Gross¡­" Rui murmured impassively as he emerged from the corpse''s eye socket. "Well, dragons: check."


    He mentally ticked off the dragon species in his head. He had fully collected all the data that he wanted on this species and didn''t need to bother anymore.


    He nced at the corpse with cold eyes. At that moment, he couldn''t help but feel superior.


    "All that raw power, yet you were defeated by a creature one-millionth your size. This is why Martial Artists are the strongest."


    An extraordinary degree of efficiency and effectiveness in the application of power mechanically and strategically led to vastly superior oues than a horrendously wasteful application of it.


    "ROOOOAAAARRRR!"


    Rui nced at the many smaller dragons that broke into panicked roars over the death of the leader, shaking his head and leaving.


    He didn''t care about the riff-raff.


    He had reached such a high stage of power in the past three years in the Beast Domain that even Martial Seniors felt like they were a Realm below him. With the exception of the Gatekeeper, none of them could make him feel any sense of danger.


    STEP


    "Good job." Kane flicked him a thumbs-up. "That was the final one, right?"


    Rui nodded. "I''m done with all possible species candidates for the Master-level creature of the Mellow Dungeon."


    "Nice!" Kane grinned.


    In the past month, Rui had run around Mellow Dungeon, fighting all the most powerful creatures and species in the Beast Domain, from dragons, angels, basilisks, kirins, and many others.


    With each fight, he learned everything he possibly could.


    He also killed each and every single one of the creatures that exceeded the Senior Realm. The reason was simple. In order to reduce the probability that Kane would be unable to guide the Divine Doctor safely to the core of the dungeon while Rui kept the Master-level beast busy. While quasi-Senior-level creatures were not a problem for Rui, the same could not be said for Kane.


    Even if he did sessfully be a high-grade Martial Senior after two years of rigorous training, he would still be easy prey for creatures of that caliber.


    Thus, Rui made sure to sweep them all up. Additionally, he needed to keep that up over the next two years that he and Kane trained for the escape of the Mellow Manifold.


    "How''s training going?" Rui casually asked while washing his dirty clothes in the waters of the Mellow Lake.


    "Not bad," Kane remarked. "I''ve been focusing on three different areas: my physical foundations, Martial Art techniques, and my system of thought. It''s thetter that''s been giving me a lot of difficulty."


    "Mmmm¡­" Rui nodded. "Those are good goals, but focusing on three different avenues of yourbat power will mean spreading yourself thin. Over two years, that''s only eight months for each of them."


    Kane understood what Rui was saying but was firm in his decision. "I''m continuing progress from the Garden of Salvation. So technically, it''s three years. I wasn''t able to make much progress on my system of thought, so I''m hoping I''ll be semi-done when Iplete this first one. What I''m not sure about is the division of time between the three. I dunno if I should focus more on my system of thought or my Martial Body and techniques or my system of thought."


    "That''s entirely up to you. Only you can know whether it''s the right choice or not," Rui informed him. "In the long run, a system of thought will bring you closer to the Master Realm, but it''s high-hanging fruit for most Martial Artists. But Martial Body and techniques will probably be more useful for getting out of here and low-hanging fruit, but it will not bring you any closer to the Master Realm."


    Kane''s eyes grew hazy as he grew immersed in thought.


    "Take your time," Rui replied impassively. "I did say two years, but that isn''t an extremely strict deadline. I would rather dy our escape n if any of us require more time to be prepared."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1985 Quality over Quantity

    Chapter 1985 Quality over Quantity


    While Kane fell into deep consideration about how he ought to allocate his time, Rui had far more rity on what he wanted to spend his time training. There was only one answer under his current circumstances after having spent three years in the Beast Domain.


    "Time to expand the Yggdrasil System." Rui found himself perched atop a mountain on the Mellow Manifold with closed eyes and crossed legs. The calm serenity that overtook him on the outside was in sharp contrast to the maelstrom of thoughts that shed through his mind.


    Domains and monsters.


    A match made in heaven.


    He had already discovered that one of the weaknesses that monsters had was heavy environmental requirements and, consequently, environmental weaknesses. Unless humans had no specific or particr environmental requirement or weakness of any kind, these beasts were strong specifically because they evolved for given environments. This belongs ? N?velDra/ma.Org.


    That didn''t mean they couldn''t survive outside these environments, but it certainly meant that the opposite configuration of that environment was their version of hell. Now, this was not particrly a new revtion. Rui knew this before, yet never paid it mind because it never mattered. Not until he met the Elder Tree and inherited its vast knowledge of much of the biosphere. Not until he constructed the Tree of Life that extended to all life in the world beyond just the Elder Tree''s knowledge base.


    The Tree of Life showed him the path, and the Yggdrasil System could allow him to walk it. He just needed to expand his domains to allow him to create environments closest to what the Tree of Life showed him.


    "¡­But there are limitations to how much I can expand the Yggdrasil System."


    He heaved a sigh.


    The Tree of Life showed him a unique environment for each creature and species. And considering the number of thetter was in the trillions, he could not possibly create the most antithetical environment for each species. Thankfully, he had alreadye up with a stopgap solution for this dilemma. All he needed to do, for now, was create a domain technique that created the mostmon type of antithetical environment in the Tree of Life. He could create domains that contained themon type of feature that he saw in antithetical environments.


    "I can start with temperature-based domains."


    An overwhelming majority of antithetical had an element of extreme temperatures.


    This was not a random observation.


    Temperature was extremely important and decisive in its impact on life. Rui knew that countless species had gone extinct back on Earth throughout its long history due to changes in temperature. There were evenws of biology centered around the rtionship between life and temperature. One suchw was Bergmann''s Rule.


    Bergmann''s rule stated that the size of a given organism or species of a given region was inversely proportional to it temperature. Colder ces tended to haverger organisms and species, while warmer ces tended to have smaller organisms and species.


    Rui knew this in two different ways, one through his knowledge and research in his previous life. John Falken published some pretty radical research that suggested that taking into ount environmental temperature was the best way forbat sports athletes to adjust their body weight to fight in different weight sses.


    Additionally, the enlightenment from the Tree of Life also confirmed Bergmann''s Rule as one of the countless patterns that he had extracted from the inheritance of the Elder Tree. That was why Rui was so certain that focusing on temperature-based domains was the best idea.


    "If I''m to focus on extreme temperature-based domains then that leaves only two options."


    Hot and cold.


    Temperature was uni-dimensional, after all. Because it was a uni-variable parameter, Rui needed only to create two domains that focused on the extremities of temperature; hot and cold. "Ideally, they ought to be a little flexible so I can decide the temperature of the environment."


    Yet, when he thought of heat, his mind inadvertently drifted to Sonic Singrity. This domain created an avnche of sound that converged onto a single point from all directions with equal magnitude such that the vectors canceled each other out, and order melted into chaos, leading to in old scr disordered heat. It was acoustic heating.


    "That''s different." Rui shook his head. "That''s more of an attack than an environment. I need an actual environment. Attacks can be avoided."


    He recalled how the angel he fought effortlessly dispelled Sonic Singrity before it even reached it.


    "Attacks can be avoided or dispelled, but an omnipresent environment? Not so much."


    As long as he continued supplying the force needed to ensure it remained that way, it would alwayse back. Furthermore, if it was truly antithetical, even the effort to fight back would be drastically diminished.


    He happily dedicated two technique slots to a domain centered around heat and cold.


    He briefly considered adding more domains, but¡­


    "¡­It''s best I focus on quality instead of quantity. These are not actively offensive; thus, I will need passive mastery over them for them for them to truly shine."


    He had yet to achieve passive mastery of any of his domain techniques. These were fine so long as they could carry the battle by themselves, but passive environmental domains did not inflict direct damage on their opponents. Thus, he could not tolerate being swamped by them when fighting.


    Because of that, he decided to limit himself to only two domains in this training session. The lower the quantity, the higher the degree of mastery, the greater the chance that he could achieve passive mastery over it.


    His mastery over domain bending, in general, had reached an extremely high stage. Thus, the possibility of achieving passive mastery was much higher as long as he trained it right from the get-go. Once he achieved that, he would be able to wave his domain while fighting normally without any issue in that regard. The only problem was the fact that he, too, would be subject to them.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1986 Combined Training

    <h4>Chapter 1986 Combined Training</h4>


    After all, it would take an extra amount of effort to shield himself from his own environment, which would only make the difficulty of passively constructing these domains that much more difficult. It would have been ideal if his body was highly resistant to these conditions naturally.


    Unfortunately, he hadn''t engaged in too much body conditioning. After bing a Squire, the only time he had was when he mastered Adamant Reforging, which was strong but a general boost to his durability and could not handle too much of a particr given environment.


    "Do I really have to spend an additional year or two conditioning myself to handle the heat and cold without letting it affect mybat ability?"


    Rui found the idea unpleasant.


    He did not want to extend his time in this ce beyond the stipted two years, if possible. He also didn''t like the idea of conditioning himself. The reason for that was that conditioning was inherently inflexible, which was ipatible with the concept of adaptively evolving. It also didn''t work spectacrly with his systems of thought.


    Unlike Flux Earther, which grew vastly stronger after he formed his predictive and SOUL models, conditioning was static.


    Unfortunately, he also recognized that he needed it. Active defenses like Flux Earther and Inner Divergence had multiple points of failure and an extremely high threshold of mental engagement to be effective. In other words, making the wrong decision could reduce active defenses to zero, leading to death.


    Static and passive defenses were much more reliable. No matter what decision the user made, they would always be reliable and did not require a high amount of mental engagement to function as always.


    Rui''s rationality refused to allow him to ignore the massive benefits of static and passive defenses.


    "Damn," he cursed under his breath. "Do I really have to subject myself to conditioning? I don''t even have the specialized training environments of the Martial Union--!"


    Rui froze as an epiphany thundered in his mind. "Training environments...What if I use the domains that I am training as training environments to condition my body?!"


    The more he thought about it, the more it made sense. What better way to condition his body to withstand his domains effortlessly than to use those very domains to condition his body?


    "On top of that, conditioning training applies the principle of progressive overload, in that the load needs to be progressively stronger," he muttered himself. "My domains will start off weak in training and progressively get stronger as I master them. They are absolutely ideal for progressive overload body conditioning!"


    Rui''s expression morphed into one of awe as he realized how extremely efficient and resourceful these training measures were.


    "In fact, I can use other domain techniques for the same purpose as well." He realized, growing excited. "I can use Heavenly Convergence to train my raw physical strength. I can use Sonic Singrity to train my internal durability. I can use Speed Void to train my maneuvering. I can even use Soul Void to train sensory techniques!"


    He no longer needed to run to the Martial Union with their specialized anti-sensory training environments. In fact, he could drastically elevate the quality of body training that he was able to engage in without needing external resources!


    "I could even create a domain to train my domains!"


    ...


    Now, that was a little far-fetched.


    Even Rui had to admit that that would be extremely difficult, even in theory, let alone practice. Content is ? by N?velDrama.Org.


    For now, he was satisfied with two years of simultaneous domain training and body conditioning.


    "It will probably take a little longer to get both done even if they''re simultaneous," Rui admitted since he would need to take more care to ensure both happened properly without any sub-optimal divergences.


    But it was fine.


    He was still training extremely efficiently andpleting two training sessions in close to the timeframe it took for one. Toin even after that would be too greedy, even for Rui.


    With that, he hadid the specific objectives for histest training phase. To create domains while using them to condition his body to be immune to them. A domain of heat and a domain of cold.


    "Project Muspelheim and Project Niflheim."


    The names came to him almost immediately.


    He couldn''t resist.


    After all, he named the Yggdrasil system after its namesake the Tree of Life in Norse mythology. Muspelheim and Niflheim were, respectively, realms of fire and frost and were of the nine realms of Yggdrasil.


    It would be criminal not to name the two domains and forgo the chance to make for an awesome yet unintended theme.


    "Now, I just need to work on the theoretical frameworks and then flesh out the blueprints."


    Thankfully, he wasn''t uninspired.


    "Time to revisit thermodynamics."


    It was a vast field that explored the dynamics of heat and thews that governed them. If he could find the rightw or principle, he could create powerful techniques that harnessed thesews better than anything in this world.


    He had already had arge flood of ideas on how to go about creating a domain of heat and cold.


    Especially for heat. There were so many possibilities that he would actually have to go through a phase of scientific empiricism with trial and error to gauge which of the many ways. He could rely on friction, acoustic conduction, gaseous convection, and a variety of other principles. He could also choose what sources of energy to convert to heat, be it his own physical power, environmental energy, or even his opponent''s power in the most novel cases.


    In the case of the cold domain, the options were more limited. It was much easier to generate heat than cold, and the former happened naturally every second. However, perhaps it was for the better. It would not do for him to be overwhelmed by too many choices across the entire board such that just making a choice would take a long time.


    And thus began a new training arc that Rui set himself into, excited by the countless possibilities that existed.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1987 Heating Elements

    Chapter 1987 Heating Elements


    ??Rui lost track of time as he grew immersed in fleshing out the theoretical frameworks of the two projects. The many possibilities that existed with Project Muspelheim were, in particr, difficult to parse through.


    "Friction is not a bad idea for a heating technique."


    In fact, friction was the reason that all mechanical processes yielded heat. It was an extremely natural source of heat and, in some mechanical processes, produced so much heat that extra cooling units needed to be put in ce just to ensure that friction did not cause them all to melt.


    Back on Earth, in recognition of how great a source of heat it was, there even existed welding methods known as friction welding that used the tremendous heat that friction could generate to heat up two objects and weld them together. It was especially used for metals that had high melting points and was an efficient way of getting them to weld.


    It was an extremely powerful candidate for the Muspelheim technique that Rui was seriously considering.


    "The issue is that it requires at least one solid object."


    Friction existed the most between solid-state objects with bound molecules and atoms. If they were not bound, then these particles would only collide with each other and move away.


    "It might not be fit for heaven-bending generation, but it works well with earth-bending heat generation." Rui realized.


    Earth bending involved manipting the soil and bedrock beneath one''s feet to use it inbat. It was most fit for friction-heating to create the high-temperate environment of Project Muspelheim.


    "Alright, friction-heating for earth-bending it is¡­"


    That was a rather simple choice.


    While his other domain techniques paid more weight to heaven-bending, he couldn''t do the same for Muspelheim.


    The was an enormous heat sink. He needed to ensure that thends beneath his feet were equally hot; otherwise, the heat he generated in the atmosphere would only transfer to the ground, which was at a lower temperature. He would lose almost all the effort that he put into heating it up.


    "I''ll need to start mastering friction-heating through earth-bending as soon as possible," Rui made a mental note to the training phase of Project Muspelheim.


    For each technique he created, he also needed to create an efficient and optimal training regime. In some ways, it was even more important than the theoretical framework of the technique. A poor quality training regime could not only fail to get the user to a satisfactory degree of mastery, but waste a lot of time in the process.


    "Ok, friction-heating for the earth-bending aspect of Project Muspelheim, but for heaven-bending, I need something that works well with gases."


    ''Heaven,'' in the context of domain Martial Art, was merely the atmosphere and the air around the user. It was ideal to go for heating methods that were primarily centered around gaseous heating.


    "Convection is powerful, but it''s not easy to control, and in gases, it also moves against gravity."


    Convection was a form of heat transfer that transferred heat through the movement of heated liquids or gases. In the context of Project Muspelheim, it would mean heating his breath to an extremely high degree before exhaling and bending it to spread across the entire atmosphere.


    "It will definitely yield the highest temperature, but¡­" Rui''s expression grewplicated. "It takes more time because the quantity of breath in my lungs is limited."


    No matter how powerful his lungs were, his lung capacity had firm limits. His body had a fixed size, which always meant that the amount of breath stored in it had fixed limits that no amount of training would ever improve.This belongs ? N?velDra/ma.Org.


    The limited amount of breath per inhtion meant that it would take a lot of time to heat a lot of area.


    Rui''s eyes lit up as an idea popped up in them. "I¡­can increase the density of the air stored in my lungs."


    This was ordinarily an impossible feat as the lungs of the Martial Body sorelycked the power to convert a gas into a solid through sheer force, but the power of the Martial Heart was great enough to do that. That could partially mitigate the limited volume to a certain extent.


    "I''ll need to conduct several tests and trials."


    While he could mathematically model the oues and simte them inside his Mind Pce, it did not beat actual empiricism. However, even putting aside the oue, heating the breath inside his lungs was not a part of heaven- bending. Heaven-bending happened after exhtion. Heating his breath inside his lungs was something that happened before exhtion.


    "Even if I heat air in my lungs and exhale to heat the heavens using convection, I still need to figure out the exact manner in which I am going to bend the heavens."


    Convection was something that didn''t require heaven-


    bending. Just exhaling heated breath would be enough for convection, but it was not heaven-bending.


    Fortunately, Rui had several ideas.


    "Gay-Lussac''s Law." His eyes lit up with excitement. "It''s perfect for this domain."


    Gay-Lussac''s Law was aw of Thermodynamics that governed gases. It that stated that the pressure exerted on an ideal gas, with a constant mass and constant volume, was directly proportional to the temperature of the gas.


    In other words, as long as the size of a gas was unchanged, more pressure was equal to more temperature.


    "If I use heaven-bending to create a domain with unchanging volume while also using heaven-bending to apply pressure to it, I can heat up the entire domain tremendously." Rui grew engrossed in the technique. "In fact, I can modify Heavenly Convergence to apply pressure to an entire domain. That way, I can skip progress by using stuff I''ve already mastered."


    Thus, not only would he heat solidified air in his lung with pressure such that it would heat his domain with convection, but he could also then bend the heated breath to bend heaven to apply the Heavenly Convergence technique on an entire domain rather than a single person.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1988 Energy Absorption

    Chapter 1988 Energy Absorption


    ??The Heavenly Convergence technique applied tremendous pressure on the target. Gay-Lussac''s Law required immense pressure for immense heat; thus, it was the perfect technique to use.


    Rui was immensely satisfied with the theoretical framework that he had created for the Muspelheim domain. The domain involved three forms of heating at the moment: 1) passive convection, which would happen naturally after exhaling super-heated breath; 2) active pressure-heating that required active effort and conscious control; and 3) friction-heating through earth-bending if he was in contact with the ground.


    With these two elements, Rui was quite confident that the theoretical framework of the Muspelheim domain technique wasplete. While he would have loved to add a fourth element to the technique, it was beyond his capacity to handle at the moment.This belongs ? N?velDra/ma.Org.


    Three solid methods of heating was more than enough, especially when he needed to exert force to iste his domain from the outside world to ensure that heat didn''t leak. On top of that, adding a fourth element would make the technique extra-difficult for passive mastery which was also main objective of the Muspelheim technique.


    "And with that, I havepleted the theoretical framework and blueprint of the Muspelheim technique."


    Now, he just needed to flesh out the training regime of the technique, keeping in mind that he sought to reach passive mastery.


    "Thankfully, friction-heating is a lot easier to reach passive mastery for than normal domains."


    Every time someone walked, they generated heat using the same friction that they propelled themselves forward. Every ounce of force that they applied on the ground would end up being used for friction. Every time he maneuvered, he could simultaneously use that to create heat in the bedrock of thend beneath his feet.


    "Wait, friction isn''t the only way I can heat the ground beneath my feet." Rui realized as an epiphany shed in his mind. "I can also use Flux Earther!"


    Flux Earther absorbed the opponent''s energy and harmlessly redirected it to thends beneath his feat. That was the purpose of this original technique that Rui had created. However, as he btedly realized, this wasn''t its only application.


    "I can use my opponent''s power to heat my domain."


    He could use his opponent''s power to fuel his domain and maintain it throughout the entire fight. Instead of harmlessly projecting all that power down the drain, he could use it to heat thend beneath his feet using acoustic conduction.


    Acoustic conduction was the same principle that was used for the Sonic Singrity technique. Sound converged into a single target through the air, causing the vectors to cancel out and the order to crumble, bing scr chaotic heat within the target.


    If he applied acoustic conduction through the Flux Earther to thend beneath his feet, he could heat it up extremely quickly, free of cost.


    He could use his opponent''s energy to cook them!


    "It''s genius!" He grinned, quickly revising the theoretical framework of Project Muspelheim, adding a fourth element of heating to the project.


    On top of that, it would mean that Muspelheim would grow stronger and stronger the more Rui adapted to his opponents with his systems of thought. Once he reached a stage where the predictive and SOUL models were established, Flux Earther would grow vastly more powerful, which would mean that the Muspelheim domain would grow vastly more powerful.


    Already, Rui could not imagine how powerful this domain would grow to be when hepleted it.


    It had the potential to be the most powerful domain he had ever created. If he ever ran into a creature whose antithetical environment, ording to the enlightenment of the Tree of Life, was a heat domain, then they were so dead that it made Ruiugh giddily.


    "Damn, I shouldn''t have killed that dragon!" He cursed himself. "I missed the opportunity of watching it suffer in a domain antithetical to it when Iplete Project Muspelheim."


    Project Muspelheim truly excited Rui. He immediately rushed to flesh out its training regime now that he had updated it.


    "I need to master generating heat through friction with regr maneuvering." Rui thoughtfully considered. "Thankfully, I know all mybat patterns. Thus, I can tailor a training regime specifically to my patterns."


    This was where Rui''s Martial Art gave him an edge over all other Martial Art. His own systems of thought allowed him to create absolutely perfect training regimes for himself while others followed more generalized methods that were not optimized for him.


    Furthermore, with the recent revtion that domains could help him condition his own body, he had freed himself from needing to rely on anybody but himself, which allowed him to customize his training even more.


    It was possible that he might finish his current training arc in merely two years. Thankfully, the burden of time had been removed from him the moment he stepped into the Mellow Manifold.


    "Master generating friction with my maneuvering patterns, Practice internal breathing pressure-heating, Master applying Heavenly Convergence to an entire domain rather than a target. Master applying local Sonic Singrities with Flux Earther."


    Thetter was definitely the hardest but also the most powerful since it didn''t require using his own power but instead absorbed his opponent''s power and used it against them. However, he had already begun fleshing out the specifics of how he was going to go about mastering these four elements of heating.


    "Alright, now for Project Niflheim."


    One would think that being so engrossed in heat generation would mean that he was less excited about a cooling domain, but s, that was not true.


    "A lot of the insights I gained from working on Project Muspelheim can be used to improve Project Niflheim."


    Hot and cold were two sides of the same coin. The inverse of heating was cooling. Many of the principles that Rui had used for heating, when inversed, could be used to get rid of heat. In fact, just thinking about how he could further reduce his time by making efficient use of concepts from Muspelheim made him even more excited.


    "This might be one of the most productive training arcs of my entire life."


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1989 Cooling Elements

    Chapter 1989 Cooling Elements


    ??Project Niflheim was a domain meant to create a cold environment antithetical to beasts who couldn''t handle the cold whatsoever. Fortunately, even before he got to the project, Project Muspelheim had given him several ideas.


    "Convection," Rui remarked. "It''s more useful for getting rid of heat than heating."


    While Rui was confident that he could use it to heat the Muspelhein domain, it was even more naturally useful in the Niflheim domain. He could use convection to filter out heated air allowing only cool air to remain within his domain, significantly reducing the temperature.


    In fact, it was precisely this principle that was used in modern cooling units to prevent equipment, electronics, and machinery from burning or melting. Thus, its cooling power could not be understated.


    Yet, that was just one of many cooling elements that Rui had in mind.


    "If high pressure yields high temperatures, then low pressures will yield low temperatures."


    Gay-Lussac''s Law worked both ways. Rui could drastically cool the environment by applying the inverse of Heavenly Convergence to direct pressure away from the domain, allowing it to cool significantly.


    It was definitely functional as the second element of the Niflheim domain.


    "Additionally, I get rid of heat by using the enthalpy of vaporization as a heat sink."


    This was the same way an AC functioned. Air conditioners functioned by having liquids absorb heat from the environment to convert the liquid into gas, lowering the temperature of the environment.


    What would happen if said AC was a billion times more powerful? What would happen if an AC became as powerful as a Martial Senior who could level a mountain at his or her peak?


    That was what Rui aimed to be.


    "I can temporarily convert gas into liquid within my lungs using pressure and then have the gas rapidly absorb heat as it turns into a gas


    "Convection, pressure-cooling, and vaporization cooling."


    These were the three elements of the Niflheim Domain that he hade up with.


    They were powerful enough on their own, but Rui was not satisfied.


    The Muspelheim domain had a fourth element that absorbed the enemy''s energy and used it to heat the Muspelheim domain.


    Unless Rui found a way to add the same energy-absorption element to the Niflheim domain, it would never be as strong as the Muspelheim domain. That was deeply dissatisfying to Rui.


    He wanted the Niflheim domain to be as glorious and powerful as the Muspelhein domain was. He wanted both domains to be equally powerful such that if they were used simultaneously by two Rui''s, the environmental temperature would remain unchanged because both domains would perfectly cancel out each other.


    He refused to make any progress until he added a simrly powerful fourth element to the Niflheim domain.


    Thankfully, his powerful mind delivered after it processed all the options at hand.


    "Thermoacoustic cooling." Rui grinned as he found the answer.


    This was a novel and cutting-edge form of cooling back on Earth in the twenty-first century that applied sound to absorb heat.


    Sound waves wereprised of low-pressure and high- pressure zones. Thermoacoustic conditioning functioned by timing and spacing sound such that, in the low-pressure zones of a sound wave, the gas expanded and absorbed heat, and in the high-pressure zone, the gas contracted and expelled heat.


    Thus, sound could transfer heat in a particr direction away from an area as long as the right frequencies were perfectly applied.


    "I can absorb my opponent''s energy using Flux Earther and use the sound it creates in thend to cool the Niflheim domain via thermoacoustic cooling."


    This way, he could absorb his opponent''s power to cool the environment down even further than the three elements of cooling that he had already created.


    This way, the Niflheim technique could create an environment that was absurdly cold.


    With this, it would be able to match its counterpart in the Muspelheim domain.


    "Brilliant, with this, the theoretical framework of the Niflheim domain isplete. On top of that, I can significantly borrow from the training of the Muspelheim domain as well, further reducing the training time of the entire project.


    "Thermoacoustic cooling is definitely going to be the hardest to train out of all four cooling elements of the Niflheim domain," Rui realized.


    It was drastically different from anything he had done before; thus, it would definitely require the most focus out of all the training elements of Project Niflheim.


    "Additionally, I can''t forget that the body conditioning training needs to be applied side by side with these two domains in such a manner that progressive overload is never once broken. Otherwise, it could kill my gains."


    The epithelial system, the entirety of the body''s outer flesh, was reced every twenty-seven days. He needed to ensure that the conditioning training adhered to that cycle to maximize the effects of the training, such that each cycle of skin was more resistant to cold and heat than the previous one.


    Over two years, that was more than enough time to gain an immense amount of resistance to heat and cold. It was the same reason that workers who worked in furnaces had essentially be immune to the heat. Their epithelial tissue had been conditioned and had adaptively evolved to handle the heat over long timespan.


    The Martial Body was even more extreme, with an even higher ability to condition and adaptively evolve to environments and forces. Thus, no matter how powerful these domains became, Rui was certain that he would be able to handle them without any issues, no matter what, as long as his training went right.


    "Alright, time to begin."


    He immediatelymenced his training after fleshing out the training regimes and all the details in his head, dedicating exactly equal amounts of time to each domain. In hindsight, he was d that he focused on only two domains rather than three.


    "I should focus more on quality than quantity the stronger I get," he murmured.


    The more techniques he had, the less quantity mattered. It was better to have a single grade-ten technique than three grade-eight techniques.This belongs ? N?velDra/ma.Org.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1990 Progress

    Chapter 1990 Progress


    WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH!


    Kane''s dagger shed through the air in blinding arcs, cleaving through the very molecules that stood in his way. CRACKLE


    It left only sparks of sma in its path. WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOOOSH!


    He pirouetted in the air,unching countless spinning dagger swipes.


    STEP


    "Huff¡­Huff¡­" He nced at his daggers. "Not bad. Though I might need to upgrade these after I get back to the Kandrian Empire."


    His daggers were made of Master-level behemoth fang. Only Master-level substances could possibly serve as the materials for the weapons of a Martial Senior. This was because his daggers were razor-sharp. The dagger''s edge had to withstand the full power of a Martial Senior being focused through a single point. Senior-level substances, which were defined as substances that would withstand Senior-level attacks with only mild deformation, could not withstand such kinds of pressures.


    Kane had to work hard to be bestowed these weapons by the Martial Union and then even harder to forge them into the daggers that he used presently. Yet, the moment he did, he gained a tremendous amount of lethality. Not even Rui could afford to be hit with his attacks, though Rui had reached a stage where Kane could never even touch him with his dagger, even if he wanted to.


    Yet, he knew that Rui was the one that was abnormal. Kane had fought many Martial Seniors after Rui broke him through to the Senior Realm which allowed him to gauge just how deviant he was as a Martial Senior.


    He knew that he was definitely extremely abnormal, thanks to that. Most of the Martial Seniors he fought were old enough to be his grandparents or great-grandparents. On top of that, Kane''s progress in the Senior Realm was truly incredible, which was what allowed him to earn enough appreciation from the Martial Union to bestow him with a loan to buy exceptionally high-quality daggers shortly after he broke through.


    The Martial Union had a credit system that essentially allowed Martial Artists with resource-intensive Martial Art, like weapon-oriented Martial Artists, to get all the resources they needed on the promise of making use of the growth they got from it to repay the Martial Union.


    Furthermore, it was interest-free. The Martial Union was much more interested in investing in Martial Art than trying to squeeze it for money.


    Much to their appreciation, Kane proved his worth right away, reaching extraordinary growth rates within the Senior Realm. He was substantially superior to all other Martial Seniors of his grade in his potential and rate of manifesting that potential. Content is ? by N?velDrama.Org.


    Of the three generational prodigies of his generation, he was the only one who had manifested that talent into actual power and sustained astronomical growth, being one to shatter the previous two records for the youngest Martial Senior.


    He was exceptional. Yet, despite being exceptional, he found it difficult to take pride in it. At the very least, it was impossible for him to grow smug and self-satisfied.


    That was because of the cosmic anomaly known as Rui Quarrier Ss Kandria. Rui made him feel like how normal Martial Artists felt looking at Kane. Everything about him was absurdly unprecedented. While geniuses like Kane were not umon in the five centuries of the Age of Martial Art, the world had never seen a reality-defying Martial Artist like Rui.


    Up until a year ago, Kane had never understood how Rui''s growth rate was so ridiculously high. His innate talent for Martial Art had never been as high as Kane''s when they were young. Rui took far longer than Kane did to master existing Martial Art techniques like the Apprentice-level Parallel Walk.


    Yet, he somehow managed to rise astronomically and develop absurd systems of thought even as an Apprentice. Later on, he maintained that growth rate by developing techniques with extraordinary individuality and consequently, power.


    Only after Kane learned his secret did everything finally make sense.


    In the past year, he had been slowly processing this staggering revtion. He had epted it as the truth, but it was difficult to understand what it meant. A part of him felt like Rui should have told him a long time ago. One of his greatest sources of insecurity and sense of inadequacy was being so slow despite having a prodigious innate talent for absorbing Martial Art.


    It had tormented him for long. Had he known that Rui was blessed with otherworldly priceless knowledge of Martial Art and understanding of reality, he would never have felt so inadequate. He could have avoided years of self-torment if Rui had simply told him the truth.


    However, he understood why Rui had never told him. It was impossible to tell. It was impossible to believe. Kane would probably scoff it off because of how oundish it was.


    Dying and being reincarnated in another world?


    If not for the Elder Tree providing such irrefutable proof, he would never have believed such a tale so easily.


    It was also impossible to trust.


    Especially when Kane, admittedly, grew more immature after entering the academy and Lightning Sect once the pressure of his family went away. The more distance he put between his family and himself, the more he could be the child that he was not allowed to be. He was far too juvenile back then and perhaps even now to be trusted with such a heavy secret. No one in their right mind would bear the deepest secrets of their soul to such a person.


    He could only me himself. Had he been more mature and trustworthy, then perhaps Rui would have voluntarily divulged this secret of his own volition.


    Regardless, the past was the past. He had resolved himself to be more reliable from there on out so that Rui would never feel like he couldn''t trust Kane. This was especially the case since Kane had been entrusted with an important role in the n to break out of the Mellow Manifold.


    "Huff¡­" Kane caught his breath, sheathing his de before ncing in the direction Rui was training in.


    "Let''s see how much progress he''s made in a year."


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1991 Just Need To Suvive

    Chapter 1991 Just Need To Suvive


    He ventured to the mountain Rui trained atop, stopping a good distance away to not disturb him.


    He couldn''t hide his curiosity.


    Just what kind of crazy technique was he going to create this time?


    He was curious to know since Rui had specifically said he would no longer be working on a system of thought. That had excited Kane.


    The only reason Rui would not work on a system of thought when it was the path to the Master Realm was if he no longer needed to. The implications of that decision were so great that Kane did not dare put it in words for fear of jinxing it.


    Furthermore, Rui''s training sessions grew more interesting when he wasn''t working on a system of thought. Thought training was simply meditating in an isted location, there was nothing to see since Kane could not read thought.


    That was why he was amazed by what he saw.


    He saw a realm of fire.


    Within its depths, Rui meditated. Yet, he wasn''t focusing on a system of thought, no. The entirety of his mind was focused on the maintenance of the Muspelheim prototype. "Woah¡­" Kane murmured. "That''s crazy. Did he create the domain for the conditioning, or is he conditioning for the domain?"


    If he had to guess, it was thetter.


    He knew Rui was never a fan of conditioning. So much so that he had only ever gone through one training session of conditioning in his entire life. On the other hand, Kane knew, from the Elder Tree, that this Tree of Life thing that Rui had got was connected to domains. The inheritance was primarily centered around domains as well.


    "A heat domain, huh?" Kane was not an expert on domains, yet he knew that what he was seeing was hardly standard. Most domains were limited to wind andnd discement as those were the low-hanging fruits. The reason he knew anything about domains was because maneuvering and speed-based Martial Art were weak against it because it could not be avoided since they it was omnipresent on a battlefield.


    Yet, a domain that super-heated a massive amount of area?


    He had never seen anything like it.


    He watched as the air boiled, crackling with sparks and minor congrations. He watched as the soil and bedrock grew red-hot.


    Anything that could burn had long burned away to a crisp. This belongs ? N?velDra/ma.Org.


    WHOOSH


    The domain abruptly faded away as Rui broke into a gasp for air ncing at his body with a dissatisfied expression. It appeared that he could only maintain it for a short time.


    "Inefficient," he muttered to himself,pletely immersed in thought.


    Once he caught his breath, he immediately jumped back into training.


    WHOOSH


    Kane''s eyes widened as the world around Rui shifted. It was hardly quick, but within minutes, he understood what was happening.


    "It''s getting colder¡­" He remarked, curious. "Way colder."


    The previous molten hot rocks cooled down at a truly remarkable rate as Rui breathed out what seemed to be liquid air that rapidly expanded. At the same time, he could sense the seismic radiation that Rui was releasing in thend beneath him. He could sense Rui manipting the heavens as heat drifted away from the region as it slowly cooled down the fiery location to normal temperature and then colder and colder.


    Within a few minutes, drops of water formed on the ground and even on Rui''s body as humidity rates dropped, being unsustainable as the temperature fell. Yet, it only grew colder.


    "Wha-" Kae stared at the domain, astonished as he spotted a snowke forming and falling.


    Yet, it only got colder.


    Water rapidly became frost, growing colder and colder. Rui''s expression grew increasingly stressed as he pushed himself to the very limit managing the domain, trying to reduce its temperature while also conditioning his outer skin.


    He relied on the Martial Heart to ensure that his blood and the water within his body never froze. Especially the water in his brain, he would rather avoid dying.


    Kane watched with awe as an isted sphere of absolute cold formed around Rui. Looking at it from afar, it looked as though someone had choppily photoshopped a region of absolute cold onto an otherwise ordinary environment. WHOOSH!


    The domain was dispelled as external heat rapidly gushed in.


    Rui panted heavily, dissatisfaction clearly evident on his face, before getting up and drinking arge bottle of water.


    "That was so cool!" Kane eximed once he reached Rui.


    Rui raised an eyebrow impassively. "You saw that, did you?"


    "Well, yeah," Kae sheepishly admitted. "I didn''t know you were working on such novel projects."


    Rui shrugged nonchntly. "I just hope they''re enough."


    "Enough for what?"


    Rui''s gaze sharpened as he gazed towards the core of the dungeon, wrapped in mist and darkness.


    "Enough to let me survive my role as bait for the Master-level beast at the core of the Mellow Dungeon."


    Kane immediately grew glum. "Right."


    The fascination of the domains he saw momentarily made him forget what those domains were for.


    Of the n that the two of them were going forward with, Rui''s role in it was by far the most dangerous.


    No, dangerous was an understatement.


    To face a Master-level beast as a Martial Senior was downright suicidal. Neither of them had forgotten how they had been left half-dead by the mere roar of a Master-level beast. Now, Rui would be throwing himself to the fate of one all by his lonesome to buy the Divine Doctor enough time to incapacitate the source of the Mellow Manifold and hopefully dispel the trance that it maintained on the creature.


    It was an absolute death sentence to any nearly other Martial Senior alive. Yet, the darkness within Rui''s eyes stirred as he gazed at the core of the dungeon impassively.


    The light of challenge flickered in their depths.


    "I just need to survive."


    It was almost as if he was convincing himself. "Yeah." Kane nodded severely.


    "You just need to survive."


    A macabre silence brooded.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1992 Arrived

    <h4>Chapter 1992 Arrived</h4>


    Time passed as Rui devoted himself exclusively to the development of Muspelheim and Niflheim.


    Their importance could not be understated.


    These domains were one of the few things that stood between him and death. Of course, he had many things going for him, but most were not truly effective against creatures of the magnitude of power that he was facing.


    The predictive models he had developed on all species, the SOUL models he had developed on all species, and temperature domains to go for the most antithetical temperature he was able to. These were the cornerstones of any hopes for survival he had against the Master-level guardian of the Mellow Dungeon.


    That was why he poured his heart and soul into the two new domains. Over the next year, as he proceeded topletion, Ruipletely cut himself off from anything else. The only thing his mind thought about every waking moment was the two new domains that he was working on.


    Simultaneously, his flesh grew tougher and more resistant to heat and cold. With each passing day, it stung and burned less.


    Yet, no matter how much it did, he never so much as twitched or flinched.


    This was perhaps the sole good impact that hade from the mental damage that the inheritance had had on his mind.


    Ecstasy and surrounding emotions certainly hade to require a far higher threshold to be activated, yet the same was true for agony.


    His skin blistered. It singed and burned.


    Yet, he was unfazed.


    It could not bring him suffering. The fortitude he inadvertently forged from the inheritance was something that greatly aided him in the conditioning training that happened simultaneously with his domain training. He could overload far more than most Martial Seniors could ever tolerate.


    It allowed him to condition far better than they ever could.


    Unbeknownst to him, he had gained a much higher affinity for conditioning after he underwent the torture of the inheritance for half a year.


    What would have otherwise taken three years soon was shortened to two. Just two years after he embarked on Project Muspelheim and Project Niflheim, Rui reached a stage of passive mastery.


    He stood atop a tnd, atop a ce that once used to be a mountain. Two years of constant wear and tear from Rui''s domain training had reduced therge mountain to a t, barrennd at sea level.


    An unfathomable aura radiated from the depths of Rui''s body.


    His eyes sharpened as a single whisper escaped them.


    "Muspelheim."


    One moment, the environment around him was calm and peaceful.


    The very next?


    RUMBLE


    Heaven and Earth burned.


    The air crackled as shes of sma sparked across the entire domain as a hemisphere of pure fire enveloped him and his environment, the pressure from Heavenly Convergence acting on the entire domain only drove the temperature higher and higher by the second. Thend beneath his feet rapidly surged in temperature as the rocks and gravel grew red-hot in a matter of seconds!


    Rui''s body vibrated at a tremendous yet imperceptible frequency, heating the bedrock up through acoustic conditioning and friction while his breath-bending turned the heavens into a sharp furnace.


    The air ionized rapidly as bolts of sma shed across the entire domain with even greater violence while the moltennd beneath his feat melted, bing a bright ocean ofva.


    What was once a normal patch ofnd had now been turned into a hellish fieryndscape that looked like it hade right out of Dante''s Inferno.


    Yet, faster than anybody could have ever imagined, it began to shift.


    "Niflheim."


    His tone was as cold as the cold, frosty blizzard that soon ensued.


    Lava sizzled as it solidified to molten rock before slowly returning to its original temperature in less than a minute.


    Yet, it only surged and spiked further colder.


    WHOOOSH!


    Water condensed at an extraordinary rate before freezing over as temperatures surged far below the freezing point of water, surging towards absolute zero at a terrifying rate. Within a minute, the gases in the air struggled to maintain their gaseous forms as droplets of the mostmon constituents in the air began forming across the entire battlefield, further cooling.


    Matter grew extraordinarily brittle as the extraordinarily low temperatures reduced its sticity, causing it to crumble with a fraction of the force needed at room temperatures.


    The drastic temperature and pressure differentials inside and outside the domain caused tremendous wind currents and torrents, and a mini blizzard formed within the domain under the sheer coldness of Niflheim.


    "I have arrived."


    WHOOSH! This belongs ? N?velDra/ma.Org.


    The domain was dispelled as a tsunami of external heat rushed into the domain, rapidly increasing its temperature.


    A profound surge of peril oozed from his very being. He had reached a threat level so high that merely calling him a Martial Senior may as well have been an act of deceit. The power that the two domains bestowed unto him was power that no Martial Senior ought to possess.


    This was the power to adaptively evolve to all life, for all life possessed a temperature that was antithetical to their very survival.


    It struck at the heart of all who beheld him.


    The biosphere of the Mellow Manifold shifted. Aquatic life moved away from the region of the coast where Rui trained. The demographics of the Mellow Dungeon had shifted drastically.


    All life diverged from the being known as Rui Quarrier Ss Kandria.


    The sense of self-preservation, the fear of death, the instinct of danger. These forces drove all life, from the tiniest of microbes to the mightiest of angels and dragons, away from him.


    He had be the antithesis to all of them. Neither the SOUL System nor the VOID algorithm could have ever allowed him to reach such a stage of adaptive evolution against the very Tree of Life that he was an alien to.


    His eyes opened.


    Endless rity and certainty surged from within their depths.


    "It''s time. It''s time to get out of this ce."


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1993 Approach

    Chapter 1993 Approach


    "Oh, is it time?"


    Kane watched Rui sky-walk towards him.


    He had been done a little sooner than Rui, left bored as he waited for Rui to finish his two domain projects. "Yes."


    Kane''s grin lit up at not just the affirmation but the aura of power that enveloped Rui. The darkness within Rui''s eyes stirred as a steely determination flickered within their depths, the depths of the void. "So¡­" Kane began. "I''m guessing we finally approach him?"


    Rui nodded wordlessly.


    "Gotcha." Kane leaped to his feet. "I''ll leave all the talking to you. Thank you for the effort."


    Kane was more than happy to toss this responsibility on Rui. Rui simply turned around and began jogging at superspeed towards the Divine Doctor''s humble abode.


    In the past two years, Rui and Kane avoided him. With their senses, it was easy to make sure that they basically never ran into him. Only now, when an entire n had all but been ready except for the Divine Doctor, did they finally endeavor to speak to the Divine Doctor a second time.


    Rui had prepared long and hard for this conversation and had modeled different possible scenarios for their second interaction. Unfortunately, he didn''t know how the Divine Doctor would react. The man was as opaque as a b of concrete. He was utterly inscrutable and had the emotional expression of an RPG character.


    Unfortunately, he had to make do with what he had.


    STEP


    They arrived at a small hut.


    Within it stood the Divine Doctor.


    Before him was an unfolded portable table upon which a series of sks, canisters, test tubes filled with various substances, and a variety of other tools that one might find in a chemistryb. It appeared that the array of instruments, artifacts, and tools that hung across his entire body were not for show; he had trulye prepared with anything he could ever need.


    Not that Rui was surprised, of course. He would have never been able to process all the fear from the Forest of Fear had he not had some amount of portable chemical processing and production folded down into one of the many items that hung from his attire.


    "I was beginning to think you would nevere." His mirthless tone was devoid of wee, beating Rui to the first word.


    "¡­I suppose that I shouldn''t be surprised you expected us." Rui heaved a soft sigh. He had anticipated the possibility that the man might have predicted a second plea for help.


    "You, ck hair, have a seat there," the Divine Doctor murmured impassively. "I''ve painstakingly prepared potent anesthesia, so we should be able tomence the invasive neurocranial examina-"


    "-I haven''t epted your offer, Doctor Kar," Rui interjected coldly. "I have not changed my mind in that regard."


    The Divine Doctor stared at him with a frozen smile. Disappointment shed in his inhuman eyes. "...Shame. Yet, surely you''re not dull enough to believe that vainly pleading for my help is going to be of any use. I can only infer that you have a different proposition in mind, then."


    "I do." Rui met the Divine Doctor''s inhuman gaze with impassive eyes. "It''s rather simple. We help you get out of the manifold, and, in return, you heal my father."


    "A rather curious proposition." The Divine Doctor''s interest lingered. "How do you posit to be able to help me get out?"


    "It''s simple," Rui replied calmly. "We destroy the source of the manifold at the center of the dungeon."


    Unfortunately, the Divine Doctor didn''t appear impressed. "Tell me, why do you think that, in all the time that I spent here, I never ventured into the dungeon to do exactly that?"


    "Because of the hive of tranced beasts thaty within its depths, protecting the source of the dungeon at the behest of the dungeon." Rui''s steely voice rang with certainty. "The strategy that you used to tame the obsidian wyverns is entirely ineffective in this dungeon, rendering you unable to use the tools that you prepared for the Beast Domain. This belongs ? N?velDra/ma.Org.


    The Divine Doctor''s frozen smile thawed, growing wider. "¡­Correct. The dungeon has arranged itself such that the deeper one goes, the more precious and nourishing resources there are. Thus, all creatures experience a powerful desire to go deeper into the dungeon. A drive to migrate to the core of the dungeon. This allows for a very natural hierarchical security system that grows stronger the deeper one goes. And consequently, at its core¡ª


    "¡ªlies a Master-level beast, yes, I know. I figured that out two years ago," Rui cut in again. The Divine Doctor''s eyes shed with clinical interest.


    "¡­Then it all but begs the question of why you believe that you can reach the core of the dungeon," the man curiously remarked. "Unless, of course, you are arrogant enough to think you can defeat a Master-level beast as a Martial Senior."


    "I don''t believe that I can fell a Master-level beast, no," Rui replied. "However, there is a high probability that I can survive, and that will be enough."


    The Divine Doctor mirthlesslyughed. "Even if I were to believe that exceptionally highly unlikely im, that yet would not open a path for us to the source. The Master-level beast protects it from all danger."


    "Rest assured, it won''t be at the core," Rui informed him with certainty. "My proposition is a bait strategy. I will draw the Master-level beast out of the core of the dungeon to the other side of the manifold by posing an existential threat to the dungeon, or, at least, fooling the dungeon into thinking I pose an existential threat to it."


    The Divine Doctor stared at Rui with a frozen expression and smile, considering Rui''s words. "¡­And just how would you go about doing that?"


    "A technique that allows me to fake an illusion of Master-level power by subconsciously embodying it and non-verbally conveying it to onlookers," Rui replied. "I have confirmed, on two asions, that dungeons evaluate threat in a manner that will be fooled by it. The Serevian Dungeon and the Shionel Dungeon."


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1994 Revelations

    Chapter 1994 Revtions


    Rui had let the Divine Doctor control the flow of the conversation. It was a simple diplomatic tactic that was often employed when trying to de-escte the hostility or heat in a conversation. It was a way of implicitly conveying a good faith willingness to cooperate rather than trying domineer in the conversation to potentially earn the distaste of those he was trying to get to cooperate with him.


    Of course, he didn''t know if it was the optimal approach. Perhaps the Divine Doctor would perceive it as cowardice orck of confidence, but Rui didn''t want to risk it by choosing for an aggressive approach.


    "¡­So, to summarize, you intend to draw the Master-level beast to the other side of the dungeon where you ''survive,'' as you put it, to hopefully open up a path for me while the beast is away?"


    The Divine Doctor gazed at Rui with fascination.


    "That is correct." Rui calmly reaffirmed the man''s words.


    The man closed his eyes.


    "¡­A rather simple strategy," he lightly remarked. "Yet, the simpler they are, the more difficult they tend to be. In this case, you im to be able to survive a Master-level beast that is remarkably difficult to ept at face value."


    "I''ve made preparations." "Is that so?" The Divine Doctor grew amused. "And just what preparations did you undertake to face a Master-level beast?"


    A soft smile fleetingly cracked at the edge of Rui''s mouth. "I memorized the patterns ofbat data of each creature and species, as well as the non-verbalmunicationnguage of each species in this dungeon. These parts of my system of thought allow me to gain an enormous advantage against any creature that is a part of this dungeon, including the Master-level beast. Additionally¡­"


    His gaze grew more intense. "I''ve inherited the sum of all knowledge that the Elder Tree possessed on the biosphere of the Beast Domain, especially environments most conducive to each species and environments most antithetical to them conversely, which is useful because¡­"


    WHOOSH


    Rui bent heaven and earth ever so slightly to heat the temperature up and cool it down. Content is ? by N?velDrama.Org.


    "¡­I can control the temperature of the environment."


    He knew that the Divine Doctor didn''t need any additional boration on exactly why this was remarkably impressive.


    "Tell me, what kind of environment is most conducive to the shadow cerberus species?"


    "They prefer cold environments with minimal exposure to sunlight," Rui replied, continuing. "They require high humidity and high pressure as well in addition to low drag."


    "What about the blood kirin species?" "They require high heat and high pressure with ample exposure to sunlight and high humidity as well as an environment with high electrical conductance."


    If the Divine Doctor was surprised, he did well to hide it. "Remarkable."


    Rui simply stared at him silently, waiting.


    "¡­It is a shame I am unable to evaluate the probability of you surviving against the Master-level beast," the Divine Doctor remarked with a tinge of regret. "Do you have a choice?" Rui asked. "I know your soul can''t leave this ce. You''ve whiled away time aplishing nothing, yet you refuse to kill yourself even though death, in the past, has seemed to always be a trigger for the soul transference ritual, allowing your soul to transfer to another prepared body after death. Yet the fact that you''ve not done that despite having no physical way out allows me to infer that even your soul is trapped in this manifold."


    Realization shed in the Divine Doctor''s eyes as his mind swiftly deciphered the truth. "¡­I see; no wonder you knew to look for me in the Beast Domain. You must have procured that information from the Beggar Sage when he informed you of being chosen as a candidate for immortality."


    Kane frowned with confusion. "¡­candidate for immortality?"


    "I see you haven''t told him," the Divine Doctor''s smile grew wider. "As for your hypothesis regarding my predicament¡­"


    He closed his eyes. "It''s moreplicated than you think it is. Your hypothesis is, well, not entirely inurate, but I do have reasons not to let this particr vessel die, yes."


    Rui frowned. That was a particrly vague response that rified very little about the soul-manifold situation, but regardless, it wasn''t the point.


    "If you don''t want this particr vessel to die, then doing nothing isn''t going to help you," Rui replied. "You will simply rot in this ce, otherwise. That probability of that happening is a hundred percent. Regardless of what you think of mybat ability, my n has more of a chance of getting you out of here than doing nothing."


    His words rang of truth.


    Even the Divine Doctor recognized that. Yet, it wasn''t easy to put his faith in a young Martial Senior who dered he could survive a Master-level beast. It was such a stupid decision at face value that it probably hurt him to even be the one to make it.


    "Don''t you want to save your patient?" It was fleeting, but Rui could sense that that question pricked at him. Good, it was valuable capital for emotional maniption.


    "I see that the Beggar Sage told you my purpose in the Beast Domain."


    A hint of bitterness flickered in his tone.


    "Not entirely," Rui offered. "He told me you had a patient with a condition, the diagnosis of which required you to enter the Beast Domain. However, based on existing evidence and the fact that you essentially conducted a symptomatic examination of the Beast Domain to identify the Mellow as a true anomaly, it leads me to believe that your patient¡­"


    His eyes narrowed. "¡­is the Beast Domain itself, as absurd as that sounds."


    The Divine Doctor smiled mirthlessly, closing his eyes. "An intelligent deduction, but I''m afraid it''s not the correct one."


    Rui furrowed his eyebrows, staring at the man. "You see, my patient is beyond just the Beast Domain," he remarked, opening his eyes. "My patient is¡­Gaia herself. It is this very world that cradles that requires healing."


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1995 Epiphanies

    <h4>Chapter 1995 Epiphanies</h4>


    Rui''s dark eyes lit up with a sh of interest. "¡­Gaia?"


    The Divine Doctor heaved a soft sigh, ncing at the sky of the manifold.


    He grew quiet as his smile faded and his eyes softened.


    A profound silence seemed to overtake the atmosphere.


    For a moment, he became human.


    "You see¡­" He began, his voice growing soft. "One fine day at dusk, when gazing at the setting Sun, I had an epiphany."


    He continued, immersed in a reverie. "I consider it to be the most glorious moment of my long life. Not even oveing death inspired the depth of emotion that I experienced from this magnificent revtion."


    He closed his eyes. "In that moment, I came to realize that this world was not merely a lifeless stage for all life to upy. It was not merely a dead speck of rock floating about in an infinite void we call the universe. It was not merely sustenance for the Tree of Life."


    His eyes opened.


    Within then shed boundless intensity.


    "No." His voice grew more intense. "This world is alive. Gaia is alive."


    Rui and Kane widened their eyes in shock. "Gaia is¡­alive?"


    Had anyone else uttered it in front of him, Rui would have scoffed and moved on.


    Yet, before him was the Divine Doctor.


    The prodigy who cured death and lived for more than six centuries, traveling the world and gaining priceless knowledge and experience in the domain of medicine and biology. His sole knowledge and mind exceeded thebined capability of the rest of the international medicalmunity.


    Rui stared at him, frozen in shock.


    Yet, he was far from done.


    "She''s not just alive," he insisted, growing more intense. "She is more alive than any of us. She is more alive than all of us! She is the life that nurtures the very Tree of Life of which we are merely an indistinct part!"


    Rui simply gazed at him, speechless.


    The Divine Doctor''s expression fell immediately after, growing regretful. "¡­Yet, along with the magnificent revtion of her life came a second epiphany."


    His intense eyes returned to Rui. "You see, Gaia¡­she''s ill. She''s¡­dying."


    "¡­What?" A stunned whisper escaped Rui. "But how?"


    "¡­I don''t know." The Divine Doctor admitted. "I don''t know, but I made it my life''s mission as the greatest doctor to have ever walked Gaia to heal her. To steer her away from death."


    He closed his eyes. "I haven''t evene close to diagnosing her condition and her ailments, let alone treating and curing her, unfortunately. Even for someone of my ability, it has proven to be the most difficult endeavor I have ever undertaken in my entire life, far greater than anything I have ever aplished in my entire life."


    The magnitude of the revtions that the Divine Doctor made struck Rui and Kane like a truck, shaking them.


    "But how¡­?" Kane murmured, shocked. "How can a be alive?"


    "¡­It is a profound question," the Divine Doctor replied softly. "Yet, it is one that is beyond me. However, I do not find it impossible considering the most extreme forms of life that exist in this world that make it usible for an enormous to be alive."


    While his revtions were extremely difficult to digest, Rui agreed with that particr statement. "If deserts and golems can be alive, then it isn''t impossible for a to be alive."


    "Just so." The Divine Doctor nodded. "When considering the exotic and esoteric life that exists in this world, it is only the scale and magnitude of Gaia''s life that is truly mind-boggling rather than nature."


    A moment of silence overtook the conversation.


    "¡­So that''s why you entered the Beast Domain, to look for clues in different parts of Gaia''s ''body'' for symptoms for a diagnosis." Rui realized. "The Human Domain is transparent, the Beast Domain is a region filled with countless mysteries and was most likely to hold the key."


    "Correct." The Divine Doctor nodded, growing more open. "However, the Adventurer''s Guild is ipetent, and my friend''s sect cannot help me with the Beast Domain, so I consulted the Ecologer, an unparalleled genius and the leading authority on the Beast Domain. Yet, diagnosing Gaia was beyond even her. I was almost out of options until she told me about the existence of the Garden of Salvation and the all- knowing Elder Tree and how I might find the information I sought there, and then¡­"


    He heaved a sigh. "¡­well, I''m sure you know the rest."


    His eyes swam around the entirety of the Mellow Manifold. "Fascinating, but ultimately not what I seek."


    Rui exhaled heavily, remembering to breathe.


    It was such a fantastical tale that it was almost impossible to believe. Yet, Rui knew that he was almost certainly telling the truth, considering how consistent it was with everything he heard and said in the memories of the countless animals that Rui had scanned and in the memories of the Elder Tree.


    Ultimately, however, Rui had not forgotten the objective of bringing up his patient in this conversation. As fascinating as the Divine Doctor''s tale was, Rui ultimately didn''t give a damn about his mission.


    He only cared about securing the cooperation of the Divine Doctor as long as he was able to leverage this to seed in his negotiations; he was content to consider his words at ater date with more leisure.


    "I don''t know what ails Gaia," Rui began. "I certainly have no idea whether you will be able to heal her. However¡­" Content from N?velDr(a)ma.Org.


    His eyes narrowed. "¡­I know for a fact that you will fail if you don''t get out of this ce. That is what I am offering. A chance to leave. And in return, I demand you to heal my fa-"


    "Fool."


    "¡­" Rui''s expression darkened. "Excuse me?"


    The Divine Doctor''s expression froze as an icy smile appeared on his face. "Do you take me for a fool?"


    Rui met his cold gaze with dark eyes.


    The air grew tumultuous.


    It boiled.


    "Your n needs me just as much as it needs you," his smile deepened. "Do not pretend escape is something you are offering to me rather than a joint aplishment we seek to achieve together. Did you think I wouldn''t see through this trivial, thinly veiled attempt to sneak a demand I owe you not?"


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1996 Offers

    Chapter 1996 Offers


    ??Rui simply stared at him impassively.


    Unfortunately, the Divine Doctor was too sharp to be fooled by ambiguity, covering up the fact that the Divine Doctor didn''t owe anything to him. It was also unfortunate that he was quite correct. Rui''s n did need him; he had no confidence that Kane alone would be able to incapacitate the source of the manifold by himself.


    "You''re not entirely correct," Rui chillingly replied. "My n doesn''t need you as much as it needs me. Without me, there is no n. Without you, however, the n can not only function but also have the possibility of escape."


    This was also undeniable.


    The most difficult part of breaking out of the manifold was dealing with the Master-level beast guarding the dungeon.


    And Rui was the only possibility of doing that.


    This was something that not even the Divine Doctor could deny.


    "Be that as it may," the man remarked with a hint of smugness. "The fact that I am required is enough for me to deny any demand in return for breaking out of the manifold. What I offer is more than sufficient service in return for breaking it, for it is something you would rather do with me than without."


    This, in turn, was something that Rui had to admit as well. The man was contributing too much for Rui to demand anything in return; he just didn''t have the leverage.


    "Can''t we just threaten him with death?" Kane scratched his head. "Not that I''m suggesting we do that, of course. But fear of death lights a fire under the ass, you know?"


    "..." The Divine Doctor stared at Kane with an unimpressed expression.


    "That was a joke. He has an edgy sense of humor," Rui lied to the Divine Doctor, earning a scowl from Kane.


    It was such a retarded suggestion that Rui didn''t even bother addressing it. For one, the Divine Doctor was immortal; thus, death was merely an inconvenience in this particr situation for reasons unclear.


    On top of that, they needed him to have a realistic chance of getting out of the manifold. Thus, the threat of killing the Divine Doctor was empty because the Divine Doctor knew that Rui would never do something that stupid and wasteful. Killing him would only lead to extremely negative oues for Rui, and letting him out was the only way for positive oues to unfold.


    Thus, the very suggestion of threatening him with death was invalid because his death was the death of Rui''s future. If Rui actually did make that threat, the Divine Doctor would probablyugh in his face and invite Rui to kill him.


    "If you want help with finding out what ails Gaia, then I can help with that," Rui remarked. "My grandmother is Sage Nephi Deborah Ss, the matriarch of the Ss n. She possesses a truly godly power of prophecy and is one of the reasons that I was able to track you within three years."


    Rui pulled out one of his trump cards.


    Although he hadn''t consulted his grandmother on this particr course of action, desperate times called for desperate measures. He was sure his grandmother would begrudgingly let it slide this one time.


    Regardless, the Divine Doctor was unable to hide his reaction.


    "¡­Fascinating." His eyes lit up with interest. "You are truly fascinating."


    "Please," Rui impassively replied. "You tter me."Content protected by N?v/el(D)rama.Org.


    Rui had not opted for this course of action prior to knowing exactly why the Divine Doctor entered the Beast Domain. His grandmother required more precise and actual information than just some mysterious patient for whom the Divine Doctor had entered the Beast Domain to diagnose.


    However, now that he knew exactly who or what the Divine Doctor''s patient was, he could get his grandmother to apply her astronomical prophetic power to Gaia or the Beast Domain and potentially aid him with finding the alleged illness that Gaia was dying from.


    "That''s not all," Rui replied calmly. "I possess the means to contact the Elder Tree remotely. Thus, if you ever do decide to search for the ailment that gues Gaia in the Beast Domain, then you won''t need to go through the risky fake fear induction process again to enter the Garden of Salvation and will be able tomunicate with it regrly in the long run. If you agree to heal my father, this could potentially radically change your approach to the Beast Domain."


    Rui had collected two super assets for the Kandrian Empire in the form of the Ss n and the Elder Tree. Both of them were assets that astronomically increased the intelligence-


    gathering ability of the Kandrian Empire and could be of extraordinary utility to the Divine Doctor, who sought to make a diagnosis of the entire.


    While the material resources of the Kandrian Empire might not have been able to help much with the immense ambition of the Divine Doctor, these supernatural and extraordinary information resources could potentially be the key to obtaining a diagnosis.


    Both of them recognized that simultaneously.


    The Divine Doctor closed his eyes.


    A single remark escaped him.


    "Deal."


    The agreement almost caught Rui off-guard.


    It came quickly.


    For a moment, he was actually speechless.


    "¡­Deal," Rui remarked. "For the record, it was either-or; I didn''t simultaneously offer both those information resources. Heal my father, and you get one use of Sage-level prophecy. Or regr ess to the Elder Tree. If you want both, you''ll have to offer something additional that is equally valuable."


    The Divine Doctor''s frozen smile widened. "And just what would you be willing to ept for both?"


    "Oh, I don''t know." Rui shrugged exaggeratedly. "How about practicing medicine in the Kandrian Empire?"


    Amusement emerged on the Divine Doctor''s face as he burst outughing. "Do you have any idea how many powerful nations and organizations desperately seek my services?"


    "Do you have any idea how many powerful nations and organizations seek the Ss n?" Rui snorted. "Or how many would seek the Elder Tree''s intelligence and power if they knew it was even more fantastical than the legends?"


    This was something that the Divine Doctor could not disagree with in good faith.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1997 Stethoscopic Offer

    Chapter 1997 Stethoscopic Offer


    ??The dynamics of the conversation shifted the moment Rui revealed the Ss n and the Elder Tree as bargaining chips. Now, it was almost as if the Divine Doctor was more eager to negotiate with Rui than the other way around.


    Both of them knew the Divine Doctor would be lying if he said he was an asset that was equal in value to the Ss n and the Elder Tree. In fact, Rui knew that he would probably struggle topete in value against even one of them, but he didn''t mention that at the moment.


    "ess to prophecy and the Elder Tree is a continuous service," Rui informed him. "If you want continuous ess to prophecy, you need to provide continuous services to the Kandrian Empire."


    A continuous service was generally more valuable than a one-time service, assuming all other variables were equal.


    "¡­Be that as it may, I cannot search for Gaia''s illness if I practice medicine in Kandria," he retorted clinically. "I cannot forsake my mission."


    "I''m not asking you to," Rui calmly replied. "You yourself do not need to personally endeavor the world to find the illness. In fact, I cannot understand why you thought it was a good idea to personally travel across the Beast Domain by yourself instead of relying on Martial Masters. Are you simply trying to prove that you are the only human who can do so by relying exclusively on your own skills? It took you more than a decade to travel to the Mellow, while it took Kane and me three months."


    "I cannot rely on Martial Artists because no Martial Artists understand the Tree of Life." He shook his head. "It is not enough to travel; one needs to have a deep understanding of the biosphere to be qualifi-"


    The man froze mid-sentence as a realization clicked.This belongs ? N?velDra/ma.Org.


    He nced at Rui.


    The expression on Rui''s face revealed that he, too, had had the exact same thought. Their minds had simultaneously arrived at a sole possibility that neither of them had considered prior.


    "I''m too busy," Rui replied, raising his hands. "My Martial Path is Adaptive Evolution. Adaptive Evolution is a reactive phenomenon and cannot ur actively; it can only ur in response to what I expose it to. To be able to fulfill my life''s ambition to adaptively evolve to all forces in existence, I need to devote myself to exposing myself to them, one by one. I don''t have time to-"


    "-that''s perfect!" The Divine Doctor eximed, growing excited. "Searching for Gaia''s illness will require you to be exposed to everything Gaia has. You are the only Martial Artist, aside from the unmoving Transcendents, who has the ability to serve as my stethoscope for this entire!"


    Yet his smile froze as Rui''s demeanor grew icy.


    "I am not your tool."


    Rui''s voice was chilling.


    The Divine Doctor''s eyes widened as he gazed into Rui''s eyes.


    They were pitch ck.


    Within their depths stirred an endless darkness.


    A void.


    It instantly cooled down the Divine Doctor''s excitement. Yet, the idea was too thrilling for him to let it go. The Divine Doctor instinctively knew that Rui was qualified to effectively serve as a conduit to search for the illness that ailed Gaia.


    Perhaps it was because he could sense the enlightenment of the Tree of Life that had perched itself in his Mind Pce. Perhaps it was because he had verified Rui''s knowledge with a handful of exceptionally difficult questions.


    Yet, he had found a solution that could elerate his diagnosing process by orders of magnitude. A Martial Senior''s sensory range and travel speed were so much higher than his own that it wasn''t even funny.


    "¡­That wasn''t my intention," the Divine Doctor''s frozen smileposed itself. "I was merely suggesting that practicing medicine in the Kandrian Empire was a perfectly amenable condition if you were willing to undertake a Martialmission from me in return."


    The Divine Doctor wisely adjusted his words, framing his previous remark in the context of amission. Martial Artists were ustomed to taking Martialmissions in one form or the other. Thus, it was hardly an offensive suggestion.


    "¡­Amission?" Faint interest lit up in Rui''s eyes as he regained hisposure.


    "Amission." The Divine Doctor confirmed. "Amission to help me diagnose Gaia. No time limits. No limiting conditions. No minimum hours of work. I merely seek an oue. You mayplete it passively while going about exposing yourself to all the forces in this world to fulfill your aforementioned ambition."


    Rui understood what he was offering.


    Rui suggested that if he wanted both prophecy and continuous contact with the Elder Tree, he would need to offer much more than just healing the Emperor of Harmony. He would need to offer his medicine services continuously in Kandria to make use of such super assets.


    However, doing so would mean he could not proceed with his life''s mission, for he would remain stuck in Kandria. Thus, the only way he could ess both super assets and proceed with his mission was if a qualified Martial Artist with deep enlightenment about the Tree of Life proceeded with the diagnosis process in his stead.


    If he could get Rui to do that, the probability that he would seed in diagnosing Gaia rose tremendously. Not only would a superior searcher do the searching in the Divine Doctor''s stead, but he would also gain ess to both super assets instead of just one.


    Sessfully diagnosing Gaia would be a realistic oue!


    Yet, the condition was that Rui agreed to themission. If he didn''t, then the Divine Doctor would be forced to do the physical searching himself, which meant he couldn''t practice medicine in Kandria, leaving him with only prophecy and not the Elder Tree''s intelligence.


    Rui closed his eyes. "¡­It is not something I care to decide upon now. I will decide on whether or not I ept yourmission after we get out of this ce and after you heal my father."


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1998 Fleshed Strategy

    Chapter 1998 Fleshed Strategy


    ??The Divine Doctor was not pleased by Rui''s abstention, but Rui didn''t care.


    He had gotten the Divine Doctor to agree to participate in his n. He had also gotten the Divine Doctor to agree to heal his father in return for his grandmother''s prophecy.


    He had managed to secure an agreement for both things that he cared for at the moment: Breaking out of the dungeon and getting his father healed.


    Very rapidly, the tables turned as Rui held all the cards.


    He was mixed about the Divine Doctor''smission. He was initially displeased at being referred to as a stethoscope, a tool. But when he rationally considered the Divine Doctor''s offer, it wasn''t particrly disagreeable.


    He just didn''t care to think about it at the moment.


    He had far more important things to care about.


    "Since everybody is on board with the n, allow me to concretely go over the n," Rui remarked. "The preparations prior to themencement of the n involve me standing at the exact opposite side of the center of the Mellow Dungeon at the center of the Mellowke."


    Because the Mellow Manifold essentially functioned as a smalloid, getting the Master-level beast as far as possible from the core of the dungeon meant getting it to the very opposite side of theoid.


    "Kane and Doc will be positioned here at the edge of the ind," Rui remarked, drawing a rough drawing of the Mellow Dungeon and Manifold. "The operation willmence when you detect a fake Master-level aura from me, a sign that I have already begun using the Mind Mask technique to fake a Master-level threat to draw the beast out. The moment you detect that, Kane, you will escort the Divine Doctor to the core at high speed, got it?"


    "Got it." Kane nodded seriously.


    Fortunately, this was well within this skillset and experience. A high-speed evacuation was one of the things that was often expected of speed-oriented Martial Artists in the Martial industry. Thus, he was very much able to shift the Divine Doctor at high speeds and surge towards the core of the Mellow Dungeon.


    "¡­The moment you detect the fake Master-level aura, the race will have begun," Rui remarked. "From that point on, everybody is on a clock, any dys of any kind can mean the difference between breaking out of the dungeon alive and dying in this prison."


    The importance of Kane and the Divine Doctor working with speed could not be understated. Assuming Rui was able to survive like he insisted he was able to, it still meant that they needed to get things done without any inefficiency. Rui could not buy them endless time.


    "The key is to use Void Step," Rui insisted to Kane. "I''ve already gotten rid of any creatures powerful enough to sense you despite it. Thus, as long as you avoid literally running into them, you should be able to get into the undefended core of the Mellow Dungeon after I draw out the Master-level beast."


    "Gotcha; I''ll have it activated even before you begin so that there is no dy," Kane reassured him. "Also, I''ll need to keep it active on myself and the doc when we reach the source of the manifold, right?"


    Rui nodded. "The dungeon has ensured that all enved creatures are constantly moving toward the core of the dungeon by creating a gradient of quality of resources such that it increases the closer you get to the core. The moment the Master-level beast leaves the core of the dungeon, the remaining creatures will immediately start migrating toward the center of the open dungeon due to the vacancy. You will need to maintain Void Step to avoid being targeted by the migrating beasts."


    "Additionally, the resulting chaos that will ensue over the limited high-quality resources at the core might result in inadvertent hindering," the Divine Doctor prudently pointed out.


    Rui nodded appreciatively. "You''ll not only need to help him with incapacitating the source of the manifold but also ensure that both of you evade any strays."


    Kane would need to multi-task and keep his awareness active at all times.


    "You, on the other hand, need to focus only on the source and nothing else," Rui pointedly informed the Divine Doctor. "Leave your security to Kane and focus on disabling the manifold in the shortest time possible."Content is ? by N?velDrama.Org.


    "I am Ny-nine-point-eight percent confident that I am able to aplish this feat," the Divine Doctor clinically informed Rui. "The only thing that could stop me is if you are unable to fulfill your end of the n."


    "Leave that to me," Rui''s eyes shed with steely determination. "I will stall the Master-level beast by any and all means necessary."


    Rui had no intention of failing. He would keep the Master-level beast to himself, and he would withstand the ensuing battle with the preparations that he had made in little over two years.


    If disabling the manifold required merely a minute of work, then he would stall for a minute.


    If disabling the manifold required an hour of work, then he would stall for an hour.


    And if it required stalling the Master-level beast for an entire day, then he would grit his teeth and weather the battle for a full whole day.


    Had any other Martial Senior dared to try, they would have been diagnosed with suicidality or insanity. Yet, when Rui promised them he would buy them as much time as needed, it was difficult to deny.


    Rui and the Divine Doctor fleshed out some of the niche details and possible scenarios and how they ought to react, firmly fleshing out the n at rapid speeds as the two exchanged ideas and information swiftly at a pace beyond Kane''sprehension.


    Soon after, a week passed as Rui and Kane elevated themselves to their absolute mental and physical peaks while the Divine Doctor engaged in his own preparations for Operation Prisonbreak.


    Yet, soon enough, the critical moment had finally arrived.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 1999 Commencement

    Chapter 1999 Commencement


    ??In the past week, the world may as well have ceased to exist.


    For Rui, at least.


    He immersed himself in a deep meditation.


    He refined his concentration, honing his focus.


    The world around him slowly ceased to exist as his mind entered a state of mental singrity, filtering out all information outside of the state of concentration. A state of consciousness is often referred to as the zone or flow state.


    It was delicate and fragile.


    Fickle in its ability to be achieved.


    Rui would often immerse himself in psychological conditioning to allow him to enter such a state.


    Yet, he had never entered it in less than a week outside of spontaneous luck.


    This time, however, it was as though the sum totality of his being understood the gravity of the situation that he was in.


    It understood the consequences of failure.


    Thus, it readilyplied, allowing Rui to enter a state of mind where he could exert more than a hundred-percent of his regr power.


    That, along with all the gains that he had made in the past five years away from Kandria, meant that he was the strongest that he had ever been in his entire life. Fitting, considering he was going to face what was undoubtedly the strongest opponent he had ever faced in his entire life.


    A Master-level beast.


    It was almost surreal.


    What had he been thinking, he often wondered.


    It was almost as though he had been in a trance when he chose to be the bait.


    His eyes opened facing the distant, dark core of the dungeon.


    Within ity what could be the most glorious aplishment or the most inglorious blunder.


    He had considered sneaking a peak into the Master-level core of the Mellow Dugeon many times in the past two years.


    How could he not even consider it?


    If he could gain data directly on the Master-level beast, it would increase the probability that he would survive.


    Yet, he knew that the moment he entered the Master-level core, the creature would detect him. It was undoubtedly tranced as well, considering that it never once left the core. That meant that it would undoubtedly pounce on him as well since he was entering an area that the dungeon considered ''restricted.''


    It was due to this that Rui ultimately avoided the master-level core. Triggering the battle against the Master-level core prematurely and that too in the core itself, would have been utterly disastrous.


    The time he spent meditating was merely a week, yet it may as well have been an eternity within the depths of his mind.


    Within the depths of his mind, he painstakingly erased every single superfluous and irrelevant thought as he focused the sum entirety of his concentration and focus on his breathing and heartbeat.


    His focus increasingly sharpened, honing itself.


    His concentration gathered, bing a force unto itself.


    He had reached such a deep state of immersion that Kane winced when he arrived at him, almost as if the sharpness of Rui''s mental pressure had physically cut him.


    "Hey¡­" He gently called to Rui. "¡­It''s time."


    Rui''s eyes opened, turning to Kane.


    Yet, he wasn''t looking at Kane. His eyes were fixed on the objective of Operation Prisonbreak.


    At that moment, nothing else mattered.


    Nothing else ought to matter.


    Had anything else mattered, he would be weaker.


    Therefore, he painstakingly entered a temporary state where nothing else could matter.


    STEP


    He got up, gazing at his own hands.


    His body was at its absolute peak. In the past week, he abstained from consuming any rejuvenation potions, letting his body get a full, natural night of sleep. He adjusted his diet perfectly, to ensure that he wasn''t even the slightest bit hampered in the ensuing fight.


    "Let''s go." His voice was steely.


    It wasn''t long before they arrived at the Divine Doctor''s makeshift abode. The man was clearly prepared, armed with a variety of tools and test tubes filled with various substances.


    "I''m all ready." His voice contained a hint of cheeriness. "What a lovely day it is today."


    Almost as if he was embarking on a pic than an operation, the failure of which would lead to his death.


    "Tsk," Kane grumbled. "Read the atmosphere."


    "I care not for brooding anxiety of death," the man lightly replied. "I''m immortal, remember?"Content protected by N?v/el(D)rama.Org.


    Kane scowled at him.


    "Is everybody ready?" Rui asked calmly.


    "I have everything I require for my role in the n," the Divine Doctor lightlymented.


    "Same." Kane patted his trusty twin daggers.


    "¡­Good," Rui closed his, turning around. "Then, I''ll get into position."


    WHOOSH


    He sky-walked away from the Mellow ind, heading to the very other side of the Mellowoid. He arrived at the point most opposite to the very center of the dungeon, standing well above the Mellow Lake.


    "Ready?" Rui called out, manipting heaven to permeate it far further than it would have ever been able to otherwise.


    "READY!" He heard Kane''s voice emerging from the other side of theoid.


    "Huff¡­" Rui heaved a soft sigh as he ced a hand on his heart.


    At that moment, it was as though the weight of the very world pressed down on him.


    Yet, it was a weight he felt strong enough to carry.


    BADUMP


    His Martial Heart zed into existence as a surge of power emerged from within the depths of his body. Bright red streaks emerged from his heart, spreading across his entire body.


    Time slowed down in his eyes as his senses deepened and spread across the entire manifold. An extraordinary rush of energy emerged from within each cell as the Martial Heart shined in all its glory.


    He constructed a powerful Mind Mask rapidly, one that was more powerful than any other Mind Mask he had ever donned in his entire life.


    A fake Master-level aura spread across the entire manifold, reaching every nook and cranny of the Mellow Dungeon.


    Including, of course, its very core.


    RUMBLE!!!


    The world shook as all hell broke loose!


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2000 He Stood

    Chapter 2000 He Stood


    ??RUMBLE!!!


    The world shook.


    At that moment, every lifeform native to the dungeon felt a single emotion in its highest, unadulterated form.


    Primordial fear.


    Tranced or otherwise, they could feel it in their bones.


    They could feel the eminent sh between two unstoppable forces. Forces that may as well have been cmities of nature.


    Unfortunately, they were not wrong.


    The moment came sooner than Rui could have ever expected.


    From within the depths of the core of the dungeon, he saw it.


    He saw the objective of his operation.


    He saw what he had dedicated the past two years to ovee.


    He saw the Master-level beast that guarded the core of the Mellow Dungeon.


    And it evoked a single emotion from within the depths of his heart.


    Horror.


    Pure, unadulterated horror.


    It was a monster.


    A true monster.Content is ? by N?velDrama.Org.


    It was an amalgamation of every monster nightmare, every monster drawing a child had ever drawn, every visual manifestation of the concept of a monster.


    It was worse than them all.


    It had multiple heads.


    A dragon, an angel, and a phoenix.


    Its body appeared to be a hybrid fusion of countless creatures. It contained both the scales and the feathers of a phoenix and a total of six pairs of wings: four angel wings, a pair of dragon and phoenix wings each.


    It was as though someone had butchered various lifeforms and then tried to mash them into a single creature.


    Its very appearance evoked horror in the hearts of all living beings that beheld its grotesque, monstrous form.


    It was a monster.


    The monster.


    The enlightenment of the Tree of Life helped him understand exactly what he was looking at.


    "A chimera...!" A horrified whisper escaped Rui.


    Chimeras.


    These were a particrly abominable species within the Tree of Life of Gaia. It was a species characterized by its most prominent gic ability to absorb its prey alive and integrate it into its body. It was considered to be an apex predator species that, like all apex species, was able to undergo self-evolution as a lifeform.


    In the case of this particr species, it simply did so by integrating desirable parts and portions of any creature that it consumed while carefully ensuring that its prey never actually medically died. Furthermore, it didn''t directly take control of the assimted and integrated parts of its prey into its own nervous system.


    No.


    The truth was a lot more horrifying.


    It consumed its prey alive, never letting it die while preserving its brain and nervous system to use as an interface to control the body parts it integrated into its body. The brain of the chimera species contained a neuroparasytical lobe that extended into the prefrontal cortex of its prey''s brain to gain manual control over the consumed prey.


    In other words, it controlled the brains of its prey to control their bodies inside its own body. A disgusting, grotesque brain controlwork that made use of its prey''s mind, experience, and muscle memory.


    Yet, despite its horrifying ability to usurp the minds of the disjointed prey alive inside its body, a single truth had be clear to Rui the moment he bore witness to the creature that emerged from the core of the dungeon on the other side of theoid.


    "...It''s in a trance." A horrified voice escaped him. "The chimera and all the life forms integrated into its body are all under a trance of the dungeon!"


    The puppeteer had been reduced to a puppet.


    Horrifyingly poetic, it didn''t bode well for Rui.


    The various eyes of the heads of the chimera turned toward the source of danger. Their pupils dted as the creature identified the threat to the dungeon that it was dispatched to eliminate.


    RUMBLE!!!


    The world shuddered as heaven and earth screamed in pain. With a single leap, the monstrous horror reached the other side of the dungeon as its powerful wings propelled it at an unfathomable speed, crossing a hundred kilometers in the blink of an eye.


    In just a moment, it had arrived at Rui''s location.


    A horrifying cacophonic roar sent shudders down every life form in the entirety of the dungeon, evoking despair in the hearts of all those who heard its cry of bloodlust.


    A blood-curdling tsunami of horrifying peril erupted from the chimera, washing over all living beings in the dungeon, paralyzing them with horror and fear.


    Not Rui.


    While the biosphere of the Mellow Dungeon crumpled with fear and despair, his heart surged with will and drive as boundless determination radiated from within him.


    Within the depths of his pitch-ck eyes stirred an endless darkness.


    A void.


    One that consumed everything that it beheld.


    "Come." His tone was chilling.


    It obliged.


    WHOOOOOOOOOOOOSSSHHHH!!!!!


    With a single p of its angel wings, a mighty tornado was conjured¡ªone with the power to level a mountain range. A cmity with the catastrophic power was spawned with minimal effort.


    WHOOOOOOOOOOOOSSSHHHH!!!!!


    With a second p of its angel wings, the titanic attack surged towards Rui at the speed of lightning. An attack more powerful than anything Rui had ever experienced shed towards him.


    It threatened to erase him.


    BOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMM!!!!!


    In that moment, the world may as well have died.


    At that moment, heaven and earth screamed in pain as the chimera effortlessly inflicted a horrifying wound on it.


    The tornado, which gouged a crater thirty kilometers deep and wide, triggered an unprecedented tsunami that crashed into the Mellow Dungeon, threatening to wipe out all life in the blink of an eye.


    Countless creatures died instantly.


    The sum totality of the aquatic ecosystem of the Mellow Lake inside the Mellow Manifold died.


    It died on the spot.


    No living being in the dungeon could survive its horrifying might.


    No life form in the dungeon could resist its horrifying might.


    Or, so it thought.


    Yet, there he stood.


    There he stood, within the depths of the abyss. Within the depths of the abyss birthed by the creature''s horrifying power, he stood.


    Countless wounds littered his body.


    Yet, he smiled.


    He stared a horror among horrors in the eye.


    Yet, a wild grin emerged on his face, brimming with endless excitement.


    At the bottom of the abyss, he stood grinning as he took his signature stance.


    "What''s the matter? Is that the best you can do?"


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2001 Charging Attack

    Chapter 2001 Charging Attack


    ??Rui had never felt more alive.


    He had never felt more alive than he did at the very moment the chimera''s attack struck him.


    WHOOOOOOOOOOOOSSSHHHH!!!!!


    It was the first attack of the battle.


    An attack he foresaw.


    A future he foresaw.


    He had never applied the SOUL System to the chimera.


    Yet, he didn''t need to.


    At that moment, he was not fighting the chimera.


    No.


    He was fighting an angel. He was fighting a species for which he had already created a SOUL model and predictive model.


    He foresaw the attack a whole second before it arrived.


    Not a lot of time for a human, no, but it may as well have been an eternity for a Martial Senior.


    An eternity of preparation.


    Preparation to survive the most horrifying attack he had ever been struck with.


    Before the attack emerged, he had adjusted his entire position, carefully sculpting it to within a micrometer of uracy to the most optimal position. Nemean Blossom bloomed in all its glory and might, dding him in powerful armor.


    When the attack arrived, his timing was nearly wless. He gracefully intercepted the sum totality of wind attack allowing the astronomical power to flow through his body, before dispersing into thends beneath his feet.


    BOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMM!!!!!


    The sheer devastation that the horrifying power of the chimera gouged an abyss dozens of kilometers deep and wide as an unfathomable amount of water andnd were disced in a heartbeat.


    RUMBLE!!!


    An astronomical amount of seismic radiation spread from across the point of contact ravaging the entire manifold. An entire chunk of the biosphere of the Mellow Manifold perished under the devastation from a single attack.


    Rui''s Flux Earther dispersion had been almost wless. He had almost perfectly dispersed every ounce of the horrifying power of the chimera, achieving a whopping ny-nine percent efficiency and sess rate.


    Yet, the chimera was so devastatingly powerful that even a single percentage of its astronomical power exceeded Nemean Blossom.


    SPLAT SPLAT SPLAT


    Countless small wounds opened up across the entirety of his body as a cost.


    This was the cost of even a minute amount of failure.


    Yet, he was alive.


    He was more than alive.


    He felt more alive than he had ever felt in the entirety of his life.


    At the bottom of the abyss, he stood grinning as he took his signature stance.


    "What''s the matter? Is that the best you can do?"


    For a moment, the chimera simply beheld him.


    In its countless years in the dungeon, it had never oncee across an organism that could even survive its power.


    Yet, Rui did more than survive.


    He resisted.


    And he came back for more.


    The Chimera answered his question with a simple p of all of its wings.


    WHOOOOOOOOOOOOSSSHHHH!!!!!


    WHOOOOOOOOOOOOSSSHHHH!!!!!


    WHOOOOOOOOOOOOSSSHHHH!!!!!


    Rui''s expression grew grave as three tornados formed at once, surging toward him even faster than the previous one did!


    BOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMM!!!!!


    BOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMM!!!!!


    BOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMM!!!!!


    Three gigantic collisions ensued, shattering the world with even greater devastation than it had before. Pure destruction emerged from them, spreading across the entirety of the dungeon.


    Yet, amidst all the chaos and destruction that ensued, a chilling whisper emerged from Rui.


    "Muspelheim."


    RUMBLE!!!


    Armed with the power that he absorbed from the creature, Rui executed the most powerful technique he had ever created in his entire life. The convection from his hyper-


    heated breath, Heavenly Convergence heated the domain through pressure-heating.


    Most importantly, the power of the tornados that he absorbed was used for acoustic conduction, heating up the entire domain to an unimaginable degree.


    The air crackled with sma as the high temperatures ionized the gases in the atmosphere. Thend grew molten before turning into an ocean of white-hotva. In an instant, the world had truly be Muspelheim itself.


    The chimera shuddered ufortably as an intense sphere of heat around Rui enveloped it. It pped its wings with tremendous power, seeking to bury Rui in countless tornados.


    WHOOOOOOOOOOOOSSSHHHH!!!!!


    A tornadorger than anything Rui had ever seen before was spawned. Its sheer size was so great, that it stretched across the entire manifoldoid. A second p of the wings caused it to surge towards Rui at astronomical speeds.


    A tornado so powerful that it undoubtedly would have erased Rui had it touched him.


    Yet¡ª


    WHOOSH


    The tornado dispelled before it could reach Rui, never so much as touching him.


    Confusion overcame the chimera.


    It didn''t understand.


    It didn''t that tornados, which wereprised of wind currents born from pressure and temperature gradients, could not exist in Muspelheim. The sheer temperature of Muspelheim erased the atmospheric conditions needed to give birth to these wind currents.


    Rui had chosen Muspelheim for this very reason, to negate the angel''s heaven-bending. High temperatures resulted in extremely excited gas molecules in the atmosphere. These were extremely difficult to control. The increased difficulty resulted in increased difficulty for heaven-bending.


    Muspelheim was a domain that was antithetical to angels.


    Yet, before Rui could even brag, the chimera epted his challenge. The dragon and phoenix heads stirred before opening their mouths.


    Rui froze in horror as an enormous inferno greater than anything erupted from within the two mouths.


    WHOOOOOOOOOOOOSSSHHHH!!!!!


    The inferno spread far and wide in an instant. In just a moment, it produced heat that dwarfed the Muspelheim domain, bathing half the manifold in a fire wave, unlike anything the dungeon had ever suffered.


    Yet¡ª


    "Niflheim!"


    A freezing-cold domain of ice and frost emerged from Rui, desperately trying to protect its user from the heat of the chimera. But s, this time, Rui paid the price in full.Content from N?velDr(a)ma.Org.


    "Rrrrrghjhhh!!!" He gritted his teeth as his entire body burned. He quickly shifted from Nemean Blossom to Weaving Blood. If not for the fact that the power of the inferno was spread across an entire area, Rui would have undoubtedly died then and there.


    Yet, the chimera was not done.


    It surged forward towards Rui at blinding speeds, threatening to end him once and for all!


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2002 A Single Minute

    Chapter 2002 A Single Minute


    ??The charge of the Master-level beast into close-rangebat marked a shift in the battle. The first phase of the battle had ended within thirty seconds ofmencement. It ended the moment a significant realization dawned on it.


    The realization that it could not kill its target with low effort.


    That its opponent was not weak.


    That he wouldn''t simply perish with little exertion.


    That was all that this had been.


    Little exertion.


    The creature rushed against Rui with blinding speed and astronomical momentum, charging at him with full power as the jaws of the dragon and phoenix rushed to gobble him up in a single rush.


    In just the briefest of moments, it had arrived before Rui could even react.


    WHOOSH


    Rui barely avoided the attack within an inch of his life as the creature crashed into an empty feint.


    BOOOOOOOOOMMM!!!!


    A collisionrger than anything he had ever beheld in his entire life erupted as the devastating momentum of the creature ravaged the Mellow Manifold even further. Even the mere aftereffects of the horrifying power of the Master-level Beast possessed the ability to wipe out all life in the Mellow Dungeon.


    Yet, the eyes of the chimera never shifted away from Rui.


    Not once.


    Its bloodlusted, tranced gaze bore into Rui even as its mighty tail flung itself at him with an astronomical velocity, threatening to erase him with a single blow.


    WHOOSH


    Shivers crawled across his skin as he barely managed to get out of the way a mere microsecond before it struck him, surviving by the skin of his teeth.


    Yet, the chimera was just getting started.


    The dragon and phoenix heads unleashed a tsunami of an inferno as white-hot mes expanded at speeds that beggared the mind.


    "Niflheim." Rui bore the pain of being burned without so much twitching.


    Not only did Niflheim dull the worst of the fire attack, but the heat conditioning that he sustained during the training made him even more resistant to it. He was grateful he made sure to gain passive mastery of the two domains.


    He''d have died very quickly had he not.


    Weaving Blood surged to rapidly heal his burned flesh as he leaped away from the inferno, rushing away at top speed.


    Yet, the chimera was vastly faster.


    Rui''s eyes widened as a blindingly fast tail whip surged toward him at extraordinary speeds, its size leaving him with no room for escape.


    BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMMM!!!!!


    Rui gritted his teeth, barely having pre-emptively prepared a Flux Earther to disperse the blow.


    It was insufficient.


    CRACK!


    He felt a sharp pain in his broken forearm as he failed to disperse the power properly. The mistake cost him a cleanly broken arm.


    Yet, it was not in vain.


    WHOOOSH!


    Suddenly, the environment cooled as the thermoacoustic cooling, powered by the chimera itself, began taking effect. The enormous amount of power that the chimera essentially poured into Rui''s Niflheim caused the temperature to plummet far faster than Rui could ever do so with his own power.


    The chimera shuddered as the mes of its phoenix feather dimmed. Hot environments were the most optimal environment for phoenixes and most dragons. These creatures had evolved to have extremely high internal temperatures for healthy survival. Hot environments allowed them to maintain their high internal heat easily.


    And that was precisely why Rui had opted to go for Niflheim. It had turned out to be the most antithetical environment against this particr chimera. It was the most confounding creature he hadid his eyes on.


    The enlightenment of the Tree of Life was unable to easily discern what environment was most antithetical to the chimera because it was a hybrid fusion of multiple entirely different species.


    However, it showed him the most antithetical domains for each of the three individual species integrated into the chimera. Two of them had evolved for hot environments, and only one of them had evolved for cold environments. It was a shame that there was no one temperature antithetical to all of its being, but s, he could only choose the lesser of two evils.


    That lesser evil was Niflheim, greatly antithetical to the dragon and phoenix sections of the chimera''s body.


    The effects were almost instantly visible due to just how antithetical they were. The dragon''s scales, meant for heat resistance rather than cold resistance, grew more brittle as they lowered in temperature while the phoenix''s mes grew even dimmer.


    The monster was clearly displeased.


    Yet, its displeasure didn''t bode well for Rui.


    It was a MasterContentt bel0ngs to N0ve/lDra/ma.O(r)g!


    It possessed the power to rewrite heaven and earth as a Master-level creature.


    And that was exactly what it sought to do as its body shook with power, preparing the most powerful fireball that it could muster up.


    RUMBLE


    The dragon and phoenix opened their mouths to unleash the most powerful inferno of the batt¡ª


    "Breathing Crucifix."


    What was shaping up to be a horrifying roar of a fire attack partially morphed into a cough as Rui timed the psychological shackle on breathing at precisely the right moment.


    Unfortunately, he was dealing with a Master-level beast.


    BOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMMMMMM!!!!!!


    He gritted his teeth gravely as a horrifying wave of heating destruction erupted from the creature. The fire expanded, spreading across the entire manifold at a speed that beggared the mind. In an instant, all the water had evaporated. A vast amount of fauna and flora had been vaporized. In an instant, it birthed an enormous craterrger than any other Rui had ever seen.


    Such was the horrifying power of a Master-level beast.


    Yet, despite the titanic show of power, its eyes red with rage and fury.


    He was still standing.


    Thebination of his Muspelheim conditioning, Niflheim, Adamant Reforging, and Nemean Blossom were the sole reasons he hadn''t been vaporized. Yet, he would have been reduced to ash, nheless, had he faced the full power of the heat focused on him rather than diluted over an enormous area.


    Yet, even a fraction of a Master-level beast''s power left him ravaged


    SSSSSS¡­


    His flesh was burned, bruised, and wounded while his bones were broken.


    Yet, he was still standing.


    A single minute had passed since the inception of the battle.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2003 Declining Condition

    Chapter 2003 Declining Condition


    ??SSSSSS¡­


    The Metabody System grew disabled after Weaving Blood healed Rui one final time with thest ounce of power it had.


    It had served him well.


    Without Nemean Blossom and Weaving Blood, he would have died in the very first attack that the chimera had unleashed on him. These techniques were attack-limited rather than time-limited. The more attacks one endured, the quicker Weaving Blood and Nemean Blossom depleted.


    Yet, in the thirteen years since he developed the Metabody System, not once had the Metabody System been depleted within a single minute.


    Not even the Gatekeeper hade anywhere close to depleting it within such an absurdly short timeframe.


    Yet, against the chimera, it depleted at an extraordinarily astonishing rate.


    Such was the horrifying power of a Master-level beast.


    Despite the massive preparations and growth he had made to fight the monster, he was still forced to be overreliant on the Metabody System to survive.


    And now, it was gone.


    The physical Adaptive Evolution that served as a crutch was now gone.


    Yet, the chimera''s displeasure only mounted.


    What was supposed to be an effortless operation to crush a threat perceived by the dungeon was shaping up to be an annoying battle against a creature with a tenacity that made cockroaches blush.


    It sought to end this quickly.


    And that was exactly what it moved to do.


    RUMBLE!!!


    The world shook violently as the Master-level beast threw a titanic blow at Rui. The sheer momentum of the blow rose to even greater heights as the creature''s wings propelled its ws forward. Its gigantic hybrid arm flew at Rui at astronomical speeds, tearing through heaven with horrifying power.


    Rui could have chosen to avoid it.


    It was an extremely attractive option. Without Nemean Blossom and Weaving Blood, taking the attack head-on was almost suicidal.


    Yet, Rui chose to take it head-on.


    His eyes shed with determination as an attack with terrifying power crashed into him.


    BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMMMMM!!!!!


    The resulting collision shattered the very fabric of heaven and earth.


    A devastating collision gouged an enormous crater that consumed half the Mellowoid. The resulting seismic radiation reverberated through the very fabric of the microcosm that contained them.


    Yet, the rage and fury of the chimera only rose when it beheld Rui standing.


    He stood.


    His body ravaged with broken bones and wounded flesh.


    Yet¡ª


    "Niflheim." His whisper was chilling.


    WHOOOOOSH!!!


    The realm of frost and ice returned with a horrifying cold that exceeded any Niflheim that Rui had ever produced before. A domain powered by the full power of a Master-level beast. It was a feat that he paid the price with a ravaged body.


    Yet, it was worth it.


    The Chimera''s eyes red with monstrous bloodlust as vengeful rage and fury overtook it.


    RUMBLE!!!


    The very world quivered, shuddering with fear as the Master-level unshackled every ounce of restraint, unleashing every iota of power it was able to muster against Rui. At that moment, countless attacks converged on Rui.


    Blow after blow.


    Whip after whip.


    Tornado after tornado.


    BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMMMMM!!!!!


    BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMMMMM!!!!!


    BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMMMMM!!!!!


    The very root of the Mellow Manifold shook as the chimera unleashed an onught unlike anything the Mellow Manifold had beheld. The true, unshackled might of the chimera ravaged the entirety of the Mellow Manifold, not even the core of the dungeon was safe from the horrifying power that the creature unloaded.


    Yet, not a single attack struck Rui.


    Tornadoes, bull rushes, blows, tail attacks.


    Nothing.


    Fury and frustration erupted from deep within the creature as it strained its body under the antithetical conditions of Niflheim. It was unable to make much use of its dragon and phoenix sides, and it was forced to use its angel side the most.


    BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMMMMM!!!!!


    It was exactly as nned.


    Not only was Niflheim objectively the most antithetical to the chimera, but it also sealed away the fire breaths of the chimera.


    This was an extremely important tactic.


    Rui could not absorb the fire of the chimera through Flux Earther, which meant that if hit with a focused fire breath, he would die on the spot. As long as Niflheim was active, the fire-


    breathing of the dragon and phoenix side were less optimal.


    It was also why he had strategically chosen Breathing Crucifix.


    Everything thus far had been for the sake of sealing the fire of the chimera. Thus, even if it killed, he would¡ª


    BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMMMMM!!!!!


    "Niflheim."


    The world grew colder even as his body broke further.


    Without the protection of the Nemean Blossom and Weaving Blood, it was impossible for him to withstand the power of the chimera.


    BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMMMMM!!!!!


    BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMMMMM!!!!!


    BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMMMMM!!!!!


    Rui evaded a flurry of devastating tornadoes that ravaged nearly the entirety of the Mellow Manifold.


    Yet, the passive area of effects of the tornados was omnipresent throughout the entire battlefield.


    And they could not be avoided.


    SPLAT SPLAT SPLAT!


    Countless wounds emerged across Rui''s body from countless sharp wind currents. Without the Metabody System to defend or heal him, it became increasingly difficult to sustain the battle.


    His time was ticking.


    Yet, the manifold had note undone.


    ''Then I just need to buy more time.''


    Boundless determination surged from within his heart as he pushed himself to remain in the battle despite everything.


    He didn''t need to hurt the chimera.


    He didn''t need to win.


    He just needed to survive and stand on his feet.


    It was far easier than winning, one would think, but only now was he realizing how absurdly difficult it was to merely survive.


    "Huff¡­" He staggered as he narrowly managed to avoid dying from an astronomically powerful tornado st.


    BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMMMMM!!!!!


    BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMMMMM!!!!!


    With each passing attack, his wounds grew.


    With each passing moment, his stamina depleted.


    With each passing moment, he suffered more.


    His body burned with pain as the countless wounds he suffered ached him continuously, struggling to be healed.


    THUD


    For the first time in the battle, his knee hit the ground.


    The chimera smelled blood.


    It rushed forth at speeds that beggared the mind, arriving at Rui with horrifying power. The most powerful attack of the battle was unleashed.


    Yet, despite the raging tornadoes, the tsunamis of seismic radiation, and the horrifying destruction afoot, a single whisper reached the chimera.


    "I can see your SOUL."


    WHOOSH!


    -


    This chapter upload first at  This content is ? N?velDrama.Org.

 Chapter 2004 An Infinite Void

    <h4>Chapter 2004 An Infinite Void</h4>


    The moment Rui bore witness to the chimera at the start of the battle, countless tactics and strategies emerged within the depths of his tremendous mind.


    Yet, the most important among them was centered around chimera''s mind.


    More importantly, its SOUL.


    It was the creature''s greatest weakness. The greatest weakness of the entire species. Theg between decision and action in the chimera was twice asrge as it normally was.


    This was because, unlike normal creatures, action did not immediately follow the decision to act. The brain of the chimera was not directly connected to most of its body. Once it made a decision, it then indirectly manipted the minds of the angel, phoenix, and dragon to make the decision that it wanted, and only then could it move its body.


    That was why the decisioning process of the chimera was twice as long: it involved two brains going through the same process one after another. It resulted in a clunky and unwieldy reaction and decisioning time.


    Yet, what was a curse for the chimera was a blessing for Rui.


    After all, it meant that theg between SOUL and action was muchrger, giving him twice as much time to prepare for the imminent attack than any creature of its caliber.


    He recognized this the moment he beheld the monster.


    A single objective formed in his mind: toplete the SOUL model on the chimera''s main mind before he died. Never before had he rushed to create a SOUL model with such desperate determination.


    It took him everything.


    It took him everything to buy enough time.


    And on the cusp of defeat, the very brink of death, he suceeded.


    "I can see your SOUL."


    WHOOSH


    Rui narrowly evaded a thunderous charge of horrifying power.


    Hisbat level had decreased significantly since the inception of the battle, especially with the copse of the Metabody System. Yet the void was filled up by an even stronger force.


    A quadruple SOUL model on the dragon, angel, and phoenix as well as the main SOUL of the chimera.


    RUMBLE!!!


    A might roar shook the devastated world that cradled them as the chimera unleashed a horrifying onught devastation. Countless tornados and blows converged onto Rui.


    Yet, Rui foresaw each attack almost an eternity before they arrived.


    WHOOSH


    Each time, the chimera unleashed devastating power at Rui, and each time, Rui avoided it.


    BOOOOOOOOOOMMMMM!!!


    BOOOOOOOOOOMMMMM!!!


    BOOOOOOOOOOMMMMM!!!


    Tornado after tornado.


    Blow after blow.


    Charge after charge.


    Yet¡ª


    WHOOSH


    The empty image of Rui Quarrier Ss Kandria merely faded into thin air. It was as though he had transcended the material realm. It was as though he had ascended to an ephemeral stated of existence.


    Or so he wished.


    In reality¡ª


    ¡ªSPLAT SPLAT SPLAT


    Countless wounds emerged across his entire body. While he was able to avoid each individual attack, massive as it was, he could not avoid the devastating shockwaves of the tremendous power that the chimera outputted each moment.


    It took a toll on him.


    ¡­DRIP DRIP DRIP


    Blood spilled out of several orifices in his body as his passive healing factor worked over time to clot the wounds and heal them. If not for the super-charged Niflheim reducing the chimera''s power by thirty percent, it would have long annihted him in his condition.


    His eyes narrowed as he noticed an array of minute twitches, shifts in breathing, heartbeat, and perspiration.


    In an instant the SOUL model supplied him with the trantion.


    A powerful tornado in precisely seventy-eight milliseconds. He swiftly made preparations for precisely timing a Phantom Step feint at exactly the right moment.


    WHOOOOOOOOOOOSH!!!


    By the time the tornado arrived at speeds exceeding lightning, he was already gone.


    BOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMM!!!


    He grimaced as the devastating shockwaves emerged from the missed collision, washing over everything.


    CRACK CRACK CRACK!


    His expression grew grave as multiple bones across his entire body broke. Instantly, hisbat prowess was cut substantially.


    The chimera sensed this as well as it unleashed the most powerful onught it was able to muster up under the incapacitating conditions of Breathing Crucifix.


    BOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMM!!!


    BOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMM!!!


    BOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMM!!!


    His expression grew severe as his wounds instantly worsened.


    Despite what felt like an eternity of preparation, Rui was not able to distance himself from each attack as well as he wished he could. Phantom Step, when used in conjugation with the VOID algorithm and the SOUL System, was an extremely demanding maneuver as far uracy of timing and cement.


    Under his broken condition, it was almost impossible for him to meet the standard regrly.


    And he paid the price.


    He paid the price dearly.


    BOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMM!!!


    BOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMM!!!


    BOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMM!!!


    His determination surged even as his body plummeted towards death. In that moment, the sum totality of the Flowing Void Style surged to Rui''s aid.


    The powerful predictive adaptation of the VOID algorithm showed him how to avoid the inevitable.


    The potent SOUL System showed him the very origin of intent within the depths of the soul.


    The mighty Hypnomatrix wrestled with the monstrous chimera, suffocating it with Breathing Crucifix.


    The titanic Yggdrasil System, the Tree of Life, rendered all of heaven and earth antithetical to its being with the chilling power of Niflheim.


    Yet, not even that was enough to withstand the horrifying onught of a Master-level beast for too long.


    BOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMM!!!


    BOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMM!!!


    BOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMM!!!


    His bones broke one after another. His flesh tore, wound after wound. His body shed copious amounts of blood by the second as hisbat power plummeted by the second.


    His vision dimmed, growing blurry as his breathing grew heavy and strained. An unimaginable amount of pain flooded his mind, threatening to paralyze him in agony.


    Yet, it could not dampen his will to fight.


    A soft smile appeared on his bloody face as he felt more alive than he ever had in his entire life.


    Even as his body died, his mind surged with life.


    It surged with power.


    It surged with force.


    It surged to unprecedented realms of power.


    RUMBLE!!! This belongs ? N?velDra/ma.Org.


    The very world shook as the chimera unleashed an attack of horrifying magnitude. An attack that epassed the sum totality of the microcosm that enveloped everything.


    An attack of certain death.


    It was the end.


    "No." His eyes red with endless defiance and determination as he surged forward.


    And in that moment, an infinite void expanded from within the depths of his mind.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2005 Core

    Chapter 2005 Core


    Kane exhaled deeply as he soothed his nerves.


    Operation Prisonbreak was on the cusp ofmencement, and while his role was not as absurdly difficult as Rui''s, it was equally necessary. The Divine Doctor was unable to exercise his mind maniption on the beasts due to the dungeon already doing so. Thus, he was stripped of the many offensive options that he hade prepared with.


    Without Kane, he would never be able to reach the core of the dungeon alive. Kane would not only have to protect him to the core, but he would also have to aid the man in incapacitating whatever monstrosity was the source of the manifold.


    Kane would be lying if he felt super confident in doing thetter. The manifold was a godlike feat far beyond anything he could ever imagine. Any lifeform that was capable of conjuring and maintaining it was probably an extraordinarily powerful creature.


    Yet, considering that both Rui and the Divine Doctor had independently arrived at the conclusion that the dungeon itself was benign and harmless and thus needed to manipte creatures as its tools, it was apparently something that any high-grade Senior ought to be able to aplish.


    Thankfully, that was exactly what he was.


    In the past two years, Kane had honed himself extremely well. While this ce was something that Rui abhorred training in, it was actually something Kane found quite amenable. His raw, prodigious talent in Martial Art meant that arge amount of time worked extremely well for him. It allowed him to strengthen his foundation and develop more powerful maneuvering Martial Art that would be particrly useful for Operation Prisonbreak. "Ready?"


    He heard Rui''s voice ringing in his ears from across theoid.


    Kane nced at the cheery Divine Doctor beside him. The man''s nonchnce was in sharp contrast to Kane''s severity.


    He was certainly ready any time.


    "READY!" Kane yelled back before putting one hand on the shoulder of the Divine Doctor.


    BADUMP!


    His Martial Heart immediately burst into power, empowering raw physical prowess tremendously. It was better to get it done before Rui began than after, for he did not want to waste even a millisecond of precious time once Rui drew out the Master-level beast from the core of the open dungeon.


    And then, itmenced.


    Kane shuddered as he felt Rui''s fake yet powerful Master-level aura spread across the entire dungeon.


    RUMBLE!!!


    The world shook as the depths of the core of the dungeon stirred.


    And out came the most disgusting monster Kane had ever beheld in his entire life. Just the mere sight of it sent chills crawling up his spine, and an expression of horror appeared on his face.


    The horrifying three-headed creature radiated a malevolent peril that paralyzed every single living being in fear. Every single living being was reduced to a statue frozen in horror.


    Well, not every living being.


    "¡­A tier-three chimera that has consumed an earthen dragon, a tekhan phoenix, and an angel." the Divine Doctor''s tone was that of clinical interest. "A rather fascinating creature. I wonder how he''ll fare. Rather poorly, if I had to predict, it would be far beyond merely statistically anomalous if he could buy us even two minutes. Operation Prisonbreak''s probability of sess is 0.075%."


    Kane stared at him.


    Not even the slightest iota of fear could be detected on the man''s face. Not even the horrifying visage of the chimera could stir his emotions. It appeared that his little speech about fear to the Elder Tree was more than just bravado. Fear was alien to the man.


    Kane couldn''t help but feel that that was more terrifying than even the chimera itself.


    RUMBLE!!!


    The world shuddered as heaven and earth screamed in pain. With a single leap, the monstrous horror reached the other side of the dungeon as its powerful wings propelled it at an unfathomable speed, crossing a hundred kilometers in the blink of an eye.


    In just a moment, it had departed from the dungeon and had arrived at Rui.


    ""???????R?????????O???????????????O?????????????O??????????????O???????????O?????O??????????E??????????????E?????????E?????????????E????????????E??????A?????????????A??????????A?????????A??????????????A????????????A??????????U????????U???????????????U?????????U?????U??????????????R?????????R????????????R????????????????R??????R???????????R???????????????!??????????!??????????!????????!???????????!???????????????!!"???????? ??????????????"


    A horrifying cacophonic symphony of roars inspired most disgust and terror than Kane had ever experienced in his life yet¡ª


    "It''s time!" Kane activated a breathing technique before rushing forward with the Divine Doctor at high speeds!


    WHOOSH!


    Normally, running at top speed through dangerous areas was extremely risky and not rmended. However, in the past two years, Kane had sessfully developed Fulminata Instinct, a technique that he had been working on since the Garden of Salvation. He had sessfully managed to employ the electrical stimtion of Fulminata to greatly enhance and heighten Primordial Instinct.


    This gave him an extraordinary sense of danger and instinct, which allowed him to travel at full speed across dangerous areas while avoiding extremely dangerous creatures. This was one of the measures that he had taken for Operation Prisonbreak.


    Considering how much chaos and devastation the horrifying power of the Master-level beast caused spread, it was the right option. Kane and the Divine Doctor would have died had he not mastered this technique. This content is ? N?velDrama.Org.


    BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMMM!!!


    The battle hadmenced. Considering the sheer depths of the horrifying power of the chimera, Kane could only pray that Rui could stall it for as long as possible. He weaved through the chaotic fauna and flora that had been thrown in disarray from the after-effects of the chimera''s devastating power.


    Not once did he falter, crash, or slow down, rapidly surging inwards. Thanks to Rui having confirmed that not a single creature in the dungeon could detect him through Void Step, he didn''t need to worry about being sensed through it either. While he considered using Godspeed instead of Void Step, his nascent system of thought, which he had slowly worked on for three years, suggested that thetter was better.


    And it was right, considering how wlessly he fulfilled his end of the bargain of Soon enough, the two of them had arrived at the core of the dungeon, a deep, dark region that suffocated the senses.


    Yet, amidst the darkness, a bright light shined at the center of the region.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2006 Otherworldly

    Chapter 2006 Otherworldly


    CLICK


    The two of them instantly put on a gas mask the moment they entered the core of the dungeon. Both Rui and the Divine Doctor had independently arrived at the conclusion that gaseous mental drugs were probably one of the ways that the dungeon maintained the trance of its creatures.


    They had also deduced that it most likely was a biological apparatus at the core of the dungeons since none of the three of them had ever experienced any forceful trancing attempts. This was enough evidence that core was most likely connected to how the dungeon maintained the trance of its people.


    Amidst the dark region, at the core of the dungeon, was a light at its very center that drew their attention. "That must be it!" Kane eximed as he cautiously grabbed the Divine Doctor and ran towards it.


    He ran.


    And ran.


    And ran.


    He even got closer.


    Yet, he never reached.


    The closer he got, the slower he moved.


    It was almost paradoxical, yet it was real.


    For some inexplicable reason, he made less and less progress the closer he got to the dungeon. "What is this?!" He groaned with effort as he tried making more progress to the very epicenter of the dungeon core. "Why can''t I reach?!"


    "Length contraction." The Divine Doctor''s eyes lit up with interest. Length contraction, also known as Lorentz'' Contraction, was a phenomenon in Einstein''s Special Theory of Rtivity that was visibly measurable when one moved at speeds close to the speed of light. The object moving at such speeds experienced a visible shortening in length across its entire body in the direction that it was moving.


    Yet it appeared that, whatever the source of the manifold was, it was able to actively cause length contraction.


    RUMBLE!!!


    The battle between Rui and the chimera raged on.


    "What does that mean?!" Kane grew desperate with each passing moment. Each second was priceless in this circumstance.


    "A truly fascinating phenomenon, even if entirely out of my specialty and interest. It means that the closer you get, the shorter your steps be. The shorter your steps be, the slower your speed. The slower your speed, the more time it takes. Thus, vastly increasing the effective distance between us and¡­"


    The Divine Doctor froze as heid his eyes on the source of the manifold.


    While they were unable to reach the light at the center of the manifold, they grew close enough to see what it was.


    It was a nt.


    A sapling.


    It was pure white, shining brightly amidst a region of darkness.


    It was certainly visually unusual, yet, considering the exotic lifeforms that Kane had seen in the Beast Domain, it didn''t shock him.


    It did shock the Divine Doctor.


    His frozen smile crumbled, disappearing. The clinical interest in his eyes turned to pure, unadulterated shock.


    Kane had never seen him this animated ever before in his entire life.


    "What?" His stare at the Divine Doctor beside him intensified. "What is it?!"


    The Divine Doctor stared at the bright white sapling with eyes of endless intensity.


    A single whisper escaped him.


    "That lifeform¡­is not a part of Gaia''s Tree of Life."


    The Divine Doctor was intimately familiar with Gaia''s Tree of Life. Short of truly obscure and deeply hidden species like the Elder Tree, he had seen it all. That was why he knew.


    That was why he knew with but a single nce.


    "That lifeform¡­is not of this world."


    The sheer magnitude of this revtion was beyond almost anything he had ever experienced in his life. Short of the grandest epiphany of his life regarding the life of Gaia, nothing had shaken him as much as beholding a lifeform from another world!


    Yet, Kane didn''t share his fascination on this matter.


    "I DON''T CARE WHETHER IT IS OR ISN''T A PART OF THE TREE OF LIFE!" Kane bellowed with frustration. "WE DON''T HAVE MUCH TI¡ª"


    ¡ªRUMBLE!!!


    The battle between Rui and the chimera escted in intensity as the first phase of the battle ended.


    A single minute had passed, yet all hell and beyond had broken loose. The destructive devastation of the battle escted as the chimera employed the full expanse of its horrifying power against Rui. "Hahaha¡­" A shakyugh escaped the Divine Doctor even as Kane surged forward with more desperation than he had ever experienced in his entire life, deactivating Void Step and activating Godspeed.


    He knew he didn''t have time!


    He needed to go faster!


    Faster than he had ever moved in his entire life!


    WHOOOSH!


    He surged at extraordinary speeds as he pushed his body to its very limit. The very air ignited under the sheer friction that Kane generated at top speed, burning the Divine Doctor''s flesh in advertently.


    Yet, the man didn''t seem to care.


    "HAHAHAHAHAAA!!!" An inhuman cackle escaped the Divine Doctor as a manically wide grin emerged on his face.


    A glint of madness flickered within the depths of his eyes. "THIS COULD BE THE KEY!" He screamed. "THE KEY TO MY LIFE''S GREATEST MISSION! SURGE FORTH! I CANNOT DIE HERE! NOT AFTER SEEING THIS!"


    Kane didn''t need him to tell him that.


    His mind felt dizzy as he reached unprecedented speeds ever before; despite each step growing short under the Lorentz Contraction of the source of the manifold, his speed rose faster, allowing him to make quicker and quicker progress. His muscles burned.


    His flesh tore.


    His joints creaked.


    Yet, despite the agony of pushing himself at the cost of himself, he gritted his teeth and pushed harder.


    And it paid off.


    STEP


    The two of them arrived before the very epicenter of the manifold.


    Yet, he paid the price for pushing beyond his limits.


    A single whisper escaped him before he lost consciousness.


    "¡­Your turn."


    THUD


    Kane fell.


    A maelstrom of emotions lit up in Doctor''s eyes as he immediately began. "Your efforts will not be in vai¡ª"


    RUMBLE!!!


    And in that moment, the world disappeared.


    It disappeared, consumed by an endless void.Content from N?velDr(a)ma.Org.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2007 Ascension

    Chapter 2007 Ascension


    ??RUMBLE!!!


    The very world shook as the chimera unleashed an attack of horrifying magnitude. An attack that epassed the sum totality of the microcosm that enveloped everything.


    An attack of certain death.


    It was the end.


    "No." His eyes red with endless defiance and determination as he surged forward.


    And in that moment, an infinite void expanded from within the depths of his mind.


    Time slowed down.


    It slowed down to a crawl.


    It froze.


    It was as though the very fabric of reality halted to bear witness to his apotheosis.


    It was as though heaven and earth held their breath as they beheld the miracle that unfolded before them.


    As though Gaia herself had been waiting for what was to be.


    Rui closed his eyes as his mind expanded.


    It expanded.


    It expanded far beyond its limits.


    His consciousness elevated to a higher state of being as his awareness ascended to otherworldly suchness.This content is ? N?velDrama.Org.


    His thought exploded as his cognition surged, enveloping everything.


    Everyone.


    The sum totality of his logos rose.


    It soared.


    It soared to unprecedented heights as his nascent Martial Mind expanded in all of its ineffable glory. The microcosm of his conscious mind expanded into a world unto itself as the very culmination of his being ascended.


    It ascended to a higher Realm of power.


    "Ah¡­" A whisper escaped him as he opened his eyes, beholding the very world before him.


    It was unrecognizable.


    It was as though he had beheld it for the very first time in his entire life.


    He saw more than just materia.


    He saw the ebbies of energy and power.


    He saw the flow of entropy.


    He saw the symphony of the four fundamental forces of the universe.


    He barely caught a glimpse of the very flow of the universe that trickled through all of reality.


    Before him, the horrifying visage of the chimera remained nigh-frozen in time, shackled in its ce by Rui''s ascended perception of time.


    A titanic attack surged towards Rui.


    Towards everything.


    An attack that threatened to wipe out all life within the Mellow Manifold.


    His bones were broken.


    His flesh was torn.


    His muscles were ravaged.


    His body was dying.


    Yet, a single remark escaped him.


    "Your paltry power¡­" He whispered as his eyes red with power. "¡­is of no consequence."


    WHOOSH


    With a single wave of his hand, he erased the chimera''s attack.


    With a single wave of his hand, an ocean of power that his Heart generated erased the power of the chimera.


    With a single wave of his hand, every ounce of energy and every iota of power that each cell in his body could generate seamlessly converged onto the chimera''s devastating power.


    With a single wave of his hand, an ocean of power, once wasted, smoothly surged to snuff out the devastating attack of the chimera.


    Such was the power of a Martial Master.


    WHOOSH


    For the very first time in its life, the chimera experienced fear.


    All four minds of the creature experienced terror in the depths of their bones.


    "¡ªBreathing Crucifix." Rui whispered as he wholly imprisoned its breathing entirely. With the power of the Martial Mind, the technique had reached astronomically unfathomable levels of power.


    Try as it might, the chimera couldn''t breathe.


    It was not permitted to.


    Yet, he wasn''t done.


    "Niflheim."


    WHOOOOOOOOOOOSSSSHHHH!!!!!


    It was no longer a domain.


    It was a realm unto itself.


    In just a moment, all water in the domain froze. A catastrophic blizzard with the power to wipe out all life erupted across the entire manifold. Heaven itself began condensing as the entire domain began raining liquid nitrogen.


    The water within the chimera''s body and brains had long frozen.


    It had already died.


    Thest thing the creature had seen was an endless void.


    An endless darkness emerged from the depths of Rui''s very being, consuming it and everything beyond it.


    Nothing was spared.


    His Martial Embodiment, a flowing void, gushed from within the root of his mind and rushed far beyond it.


    It consumed the entire manifold in the eyes of the few surviving creatures that beheld it.


    It consumed their mind.


    It consumed their mind with sheer information.


    Too much information.


    "RRRAAAAARWWWRGRHRH!!!"


    "RRRRGGHRGRHRGRHR!!!"


    "SCREEEEEECH!!!"


    Countless creatures screamed in agony as their minds were overwhelmed with an endless surge of information. A Martial Embodiment was the visual manifestation created by the subconscious mind upon processing the non-verbal information conveyed to it by the Martial Mind.


    The more information a Martial Mind had, the more information it conveyed.


    Within the Martial World, it had been theorized that it was possible for a Martial Mind to be so overwhelminglyrge and powerful that the sheer amount of information that it conveyed could overwhelm the brain, causing brain death due to an overwhelming information overload. A hypothesis that had never been confirmed, for no Martial Artist in history had developed a Martial Mind powerful enough to cross the threshold of information tolerance.


    Until now.


    "RRRRAAAAAAWWWRRRRR!!!"


    Countless lifeforms screamed in agony as an information overload on par with the inheritance of the Elder Tree. Their minds could not withstand the tsunami of information that flooded them from within the depths of his extraordinary Martial Mind.


    Yet, that wasn''t all.


    Rui''s Martial Embodiment was so powerful that it epassed more than just himself.


    It epassed all of reality.


    At that moment, the very fabric of reality altered within the depths of their mind. A world absolutely antithetical to each of them formed within the depths of their mind. Their bodies burned, froze, exploded, and imploded while his Martial Embodiment simultaneously eroded their consciousness bit by bit with an avnche of information crashed into their little minds.


    And then, they almost died spontaneously.


    Unbeknownst to him, in the process of killing the chimera, he killed almost all life along with it with the sheer weight of his Martial Mind.


    Only two beings survived.


    Kane, who was unconscious, and the Divine Doctor, the only living being in the entire Mellow Manifold who possessed a mind powerful to effortlessly withstand Rui''s Martial Embodiment.


    He gazed at Rui with boundless fascination as a revtion dawned on him.


    "You¡­" He whispered. "You have undergone the soul transference ritual."


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2008 Observations

    Chapter 2008 Observations


    One moment, Rui''s Martial Embodiment ravaged the minds of all those it beheld witnessed, erasing their consciousness.


    The very next, however, it disappeared once Rui dispelled Niflheim, finally putting his Martial Art to rest. Although it had felt like an eternity since the inception of the battle, no more than three minutes had passed since.


    Yet, the disappearance of his Martial Embodiment certainly didn''t undo the damage it had already inflicted. It had been minutes since his battle with the chimera had begun, yet almost all life in the manifold had perished as a result.


    Despite millions and even billions of lifeforms of all sizes across the entirety of the hundred-kilometer-wide manifold, not a single one of them could survive the battle between Rui and the chimera.


    Such was the horrifying power of beings at their level.


    "Huff¡­" For the first time in what felt like ages, Rui remembered to breathe. "¡­Huff."


    The battle between him and the chimera had been so intense that even breathing was difficult, especially when the two of them ravaged the very atmosphere that nourished them with tornados, infernos, Muspelheims, and Niflheims.


    STEP


    He descended before the frozen corpse statue of the chimera, gazing at the horrifying monster with soft eyes. "You were exactly what I needed."


    He was grateful.


    He was grateful that the Master-level beast of the dungeon core was a creature that was almost impossible to adaptively evolve against with the power of the Senior Realm alone. Its strengths and weaknesses were deeply mismatched. A singr solution could not epass all of it, for it was three beings integrated into one. Rui had not been able to adaptively evolve to it pound for pound despite all the preparations that he had made for the battle.


    It was a direct challenge to his Martial Drive with extraordinarily high stakes. Had it not been for that, it most likely would not have triggered his breakthrough. His desire for power was not as strong as his desire toplete Project Water and was, in turn, in service of Project Water. After all, one could not adaptively evolve to ovee powerful cmitous monsters such as the chimera if one did not have power.


    Everything boiled down to the ambition that carried on from his previous life, and it was precisely what the chimera posed a powerful challenge to.


    A wave of surreality swept over him as he gazed at the corpse of the chimera.


    He had won.


    Not only had he emerged victorious, he had also ascended to a higher Realm of power.


    He had ascended to the Master Realm.


    He had reached the Upper Realms.


    He was no longer of the Senior Realm.


    No.


    He was, truly, a Martial Master.


    Profound satisfaction spread through his mind. It gushed from within his mind, overflowing into the body, as his demeanor, vibe, and aura reflected the satisfaction he felt. He nced at the chimera deeply onest time before walking past it, never once looking back.


    His extraordinary senses spread across the depths of the Mellow Manifold as he beheld the sum totality of the microcosm that had imprisoned him for two long years. It was dead.


    The dense and rich biosphere that existed prior to the inception of the final battle across the manifold had all but perished. All life had died.


    "¡­Almost all," Rui''s eyes lit up as he sensed three living beings. WHOOSH


    With a single leap, he crossed the vast expanse of the manifold, arriving at the core of the dungeon. Instantly, he found himself in a dark, deste region that consumed light itself. Yet, while living beings of the dungeon found it difficult to descry the world, the breakthrough to the Master Realm enabled Rui to perceive every micrometer of the dungeon in great detail.


    Now that he had ascended to the Master Realm, his senses were far too powerful to be constrained by lesser means. Countless observations flooded into his powerful mind as he beheld the epicenter of the core of the dungeon.


    Firstly, Kane was unconscious but alive. Rui was unable to detect any internal bleeding or brain damage with his powerful senses, much to his relief. Even if he were gravely wounded, with the Divine Doctor present, he certainly wouldn''t die. He appeared to have either been knocked out by force or had passed out due to pushing himself too hard. This was hardly a problem and didn''t even require a healing potion to solve. Rui would rather let him get the rest that he had earned, considering that the Divine Doctor was alive and mostly well, barring some burns to the flesh.


    Secondly, thebination of his heightened awareness and senses, along with the Riemannian Echo, allowed him to instantly notice and recognize the spatial anomaly at the very epicenter of the dungeon core.


    "Lorentz Contraction." His eyes lit up with faint interest. "Just so," the Divine Doctor''s frozen smile sparkled with fascination as he stared at Rui with deep interest.


    Rui narrowed his eyes.


    This was the third observation that made no sense.


    "Why are you so focused on me when an alien flora lifeform exists right behind your back?" Rui''s dark eyes sharpened.


    Rui, like the Divine Doctor, had instantly noticed that the white sapling was clearly not a part of the Tree of Life of Gaia. That was simply another way of saying it was from another world.


    It was a staggering and shocking discovery that could alter the very foundations of the human worldview.


    Perhaps the shock was less stunning because Rui knew for a fact that there were other worlds out there.


    After all, he, too, was a denizen of another world before his soul somehow traveled from it to Gaia.


    Yet, even then, he was still truly surprised to see a lifeform alien to Gaia right before his eyes. Even if he wasn''t a biologist, he could still genuinely appreciate the shocking wonder that a truly alien lifeform was.


    It was truly groundbreaking and world-shattering.


    That was why he didn''t understand.


    "Why do you turn your back to it¡­" Rui''s tone was soft. "¡­and gaze at me instead?"


    The air grew tense as the two men stared at each other.


    -


    This chapter upload first at  This content is ? N?velDrama.Org.

 Chapter 2009 Confrontation and Offer

    Chapter 2009 Confrontation and Offer


    A Martial Master was hardly novel in the grand scheme of human civilization. While Rui was truly unprecedented as a Martial Master, did the Divine Doctor truly care that much about Martial Art?


    Rui would have expected him to be too immersed in studying the alien flora lifeform to even notice his existence.


    He would have expected that the Divine Doctor would have ignored every call he made to the man in favor of studying the lifeform.


    But no.


    The Divine Doctor was quite firm in his fascination and interest in Rui.


    The inhuman curiosity within the depths of his eyes bore deeply into the endless void within Rui''s.


    A single remark escaped him.


    "You."


    "¡­" Rui tilted his head, perplexed.


    "You lied to me." The man''s eyes widened with intensity.


    Rui frowned. "¡­No, I didn''t."


    "You did," he insisted as his voice grew more intense. "You said you were merely a candidate for the soul transference. But the truth became as clear as day when I beheld your Martial Embodiment."


    The maniacal intensity of his eyes only rose.


    "You have undergone the soul transference ritual." The man grinned wildly. "You already are an immortal."


    Rui scoffed. "I told you, the Beggar Sage made me a candida¡ª"


    "¡ªDON''T LIE TO ME," he bellowed, stunning Rui into silence.


    He had never once heard the man raise his voice.


    "Your Martial Mind is too powerful for you to have not undergone the soul transference ritual," the man insisted. "From it, I have detected the mildest signs of remnant muscle from your old vessel. Roughly thirty-seven years ago, if I had to judge."


    Rui''s eyes widened with shock.


    He was thirty-seven years old.


    Thirty-seven years ago, he had been reborn.


    In addition, the power of his Martial Mind was indeed something that had been born as a result of a second round of extraordinary cognitive growth spike over the span of thirty years.


    The fact that the Divine Doctor recognized his reincarnation as the very soul transference ritual that he had developed along with the Beggar Sage and the Psycher was telling. If they were different, he would not have found the tell-tale clues that pointed him to the conclusion that Rui had undergone the same There was only one conclusion to be inferred from this.


    Rui''s eyes sharpened his expression grew severe. "¡­So my reincarnation was indeed done through the soul transference ritual?"


    The Divine Doctor furrowed his eyebrows as his curiosity only grew. At that moment, he was able to judge that Rui''s expression and words were sincere by analyzing his physiological and anatomical microexpressions.


    "¡­You," his eyes widened with a hint of surprise. "You didn''t know? You didn''t n this?"


    Rui shook his head slowly as his eyes wandered around, deep in thought, growing more severe. "¡­After I died, I found myself reborn in a newborn baby that was being delivered."


    Rui had spent his entire life wondering how his reincarnation was possible. How did his soul travel from one world to another?


    In fact, if Gaia was truly in a different universe with slightly differentws of reality, then how in the world did his soul travel from the universe that it was into an entirely different universe?


    What were the mechanics of such a magical phenomenon?


    He would be lying if he said he hadn''t asked this question himself a million times before.


    When the Beggar Sage had divulged the truth of the soul transference ritual, he had instantly considered the possibility of the soul transference ritual being connected to his reincarnation.


    After all, the way that the Divine Doctor''s soul seemed to be able to transfer from vessel to vessel seemed to be reminiscent of his own reincarnation from what little information he had. Thus, it truly was usible that he had been reincarnated into this world by having his soul transferred from vessel to vessel.


    However, he also knew that the Divine Doctor''s soul transfers were of his design. He had chosen it to be this way of his own ord by actively participating in the soul transference ritual.


    That was not the case for Rui.


    He had never nned for this and certainly had never made any preparations for any kind of transference from the body of John Falken to the body of Rui Quarrier. And since the soul transference was a ritual, someone must have done this to him.


    Someone must have conducted the soul ritual for Rui without his knowledge or consent back when he was in his old body.


    Of course, he wasn''t going toin about getting a second chance at life.


    Although this life had had its downs, for the most part, it had been a beautiful dream where he could be a Martial Artist, something he was cruelly denied in his previous life. He could live Project Water while he was limited to giving Project Water to everybody else except himself in his previous life.


    He had enough gratitude to whatever extraordinary force had given him a second life. Yet, he would be lying if he didn''t seek answers.


    And today, he had gotten a fraction of the answers he sought.


    The ''how'' of his reincarnation was close to being answered. All he needed to know was how the soul transference functioned mechanically in terms of how it transferred something as astral and metaphysical as the ''soul.''


    His eyes met up with the Divine Doctor.


    In an instant, both of them had already deduced each other''s intentions and thoughts.


    "What do you want in return for the secret of the soul transference?"


    Yet, his eyes widened with surprise as a disturbingly maniacal smile appeared on the Divine Doctor''s face. It spread across the man''s face, warping it as inhuman amusement lit up within the depths of the man''s eyes.


    "Themission," he whispered, quivering. "ept mymission, and I will give you what you seek. I will give you what I seek."


    His voice shook unstably as Rui grew more ufortable. The man had always been insane and mad, Rui knew, but it was at moments like these that Rui questioned the wisdom of cooperating with someone so psychotic. Contentt bel0ngs to N0ve/lDra/ma.O(r)g!


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2010 The Truth

    <h4>Chapter 2010 The Truth</h4>


    Yet, his proposition was sound despite his insane antics.


    Rui closed his eyes as he considered themission that the Divine Doctor had made of him.


    Amission to help the Divine Doctor with the diagnosis of Gaia''s alleged illness. As the sole Martial Master in the entire world who had gained the enlightenment of the Tree of Life, Rui was the only Martial Master who could help the


    It was an appealingmission.


    It was true that Rui needed to expose himself to the world to truly fulfill Project Water in an absolute sense. Thus, he did not need to derail his life in order to fulfill the Divine Doctor''smission.


    Furthermore, the Divine Doctor had specified that there were absolutely no limiting conditions on themission as long as Rui helped him find the diagnosis. Content from N?velDr(a)ma.Org.


    Not even time was a limiting factor since the Divine Doctor had an eternity ahead of him. He had extreme patience, psychologically speaking. This was a man who saw no problem with spending more than a decade traveling through the Beast Domain by foot to reach the Mellow in the south, a journey that had taken Rui and Kane three months.


    He wouldn''t mind if Rui took more than a century to fulfill thismission.


    In other words, it was so loose and rxed that it could hardly be called amission.


    Additionally, Rui knew that epting thismission was necessary to get the Divine Doctor to remain in Kandria as a citizen and a practicing doctor in return for both the Ss n''s services and the Elder Treemunicationwork.


    If the doctor remained, it would benefit all of Kandria. All of the people in his life that he cared about could indirectly benefit significantly. He could make sure the children and people of the orphanage were in optimal health. He could potentially get Julian an apprenticeship with the greatest doctor in all of Panama.


    Who knew? The Divine Doctor could potentially help him with integrating Primordial Seed into his body with his extraordinary medical knowledge and capabilities.


    "¡­If you''re willing to ept a small favor every now and then, sure," Rui casually replied. "I''ll ept yourmission."


    Kandria was far too much of a safe space.


    It was also an extremely small fraction of all of Panama and Gaia. While he had explored a decent amount of the world during his self-imposed exile from the Kandrian Empire for about eight years after leaving the Shionel Confederation, it was still just a fraction of everything Gaia had to offer.


    Thus, he ultimately decided that themission didn''t take away anything from him and gave him far too much to reject it.


    "Now then." Rui narrowed his eyes. "Tell me, how does the soul transference ritual work? How does it transfer the soul from one body to another body? What are its requirements and principles? Most importantly, what can it tell me about the person or people who performed the soul transference ritual on me?"


    The maniacal grin on the Divine Doctor''s face.


    It widened, warping his entire face in madness.


    The glint of insanity within the depths of the Divine Doctor''s eyes only grew more intense.


    "¡­Haha¡­" A shakyugh escaped him. "Hahaha¡­"


    Rui frowned.


    "HAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAARRGRHHHHH!!!" The man broke out into a maniacalughter as his hands pressed against his head. "HAHAHAHAAAAA!!!"


    The air boiled with tension as the Divine Doctor grew more unhinged.


    His mannerisms degenerated to the verge of insanity.


    His eyes twitched as his hands shook.


    Hisughter only grew more maddening and maniacal.


    For the first time in his life, Rui felt truly fearful of a mere human.


    "Tell me¡­" The Divine Doctor''s voice quivered. "What do you think a soul is?"


    Rui shrugged lightly. "Like a wispy transparent blob with the appearance of the physical body."


    It was the ssic portrayal of a soul in fiction; it was almost impossible to think of souls with that image in mind, considering how universal it was.


    "Fool." The Divine Doctor sneered with derision.


    Rui''s eyes sharpened with severity. "Excuse me?"


    "There is no such thing as a soul," the Divine Doctor grew more excited. "It doesn''t exist. There is no blob of energy that contains the sum totality of the information characterizing a person. It does not exist. It cannot exist! The mind cannot exist outside of the body for it is deeply interwoven with the body. The endocrine system controls emotions, the nervous system lies at the root of all experience and agency of the mind, and each of the various systems of the physical body is responsible for shaping and controlling the mind. For controlling the very essence of who you are as a being. When a body dies, that person truly dies then and there."


    "Wait¡­" Rui''s eyes widened with fear. "What are you saying? Doesn''t that mean¡­?"


    "Correct," the Divine Doctor''s sneer of amusement grew wider as a glint of madness shed in the depths of the man''s eyes. "The soul transference ritual does not transfer souls."


    His maniacal grin of insanity only grew wider. "I never cured death. Or, should I say, the Divine Doctor never cured death. He had tried, but he failed. What he created was not reincarnation or immortality, but merely a means of passing on his will and memories."


    Horror emerged within the depths of Rui''s eyes as realization dawned on him.


    "Calling it the ''soul transference'' ritual was the Beggar Sage''s idea," the Divine Doctor grew more excited as he revealed the truth to Rui. "To convince others of it; after all, nobody would ever choose to go through the soul transference ritual if they understood what it actually was. What it truly was."


    "What¡­?" A single whisper escaped Rui as he stared at the Divine Doctor with unadulterated horror. "What are you saying¡­?"


    "Tell me," the Divine Doctor''s smile widened even deeper as anticipation lit up in his eyes. "What was your previous name?"


    "¡­John. John Falken." A whisper barely escaped Rui as he stared at the Divine Doctor, frozen in horror.


    The man walked up to him, putting a hand on his shoulder with a pleasant smile as he stared deep into Rui''s eyes.


    "You are not John Falken."


    His smile grew cruel.


    "You were never John Falken."


    His smile grew sadistic.


    "You are simply a victim."


    His voice was filled with derision.


    "A victim of brainwashing."


    Ecstasy lit up in the Divine Doctor''s eyes as he arrived at the whole truth.


    "A brainwashed victim who was deluded to believe that he is John Falken. Brainwashed to believe that he was ever John Falken. Brainwashed with the memories of John Falken imnted into your mind through advanced hypnosis developed by the Psycher. You are not John Falken. You were never John Falken. And you will never be John Falken."


    His eyes bore deeply into Rui''s eyes as a single question escaped him.


    "Who are you?"


    RUMBLE!!!


    The world roared as heaven and earth shuddered.


    For the first time in his life, Rui''s Martial Drive shook, threatening to copse.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2011 Deluded Inheritor

    Chapter 2011 Deluded Inheritor


    The very foundation of who Rui was had been shaken to its very roots.


    The words of the Divine Doctor were more painful than anything he had ever experienced in his entire life.


    Pure horror erupted from within the depths of Rui''s heart at the revtion.


    RUMBLE!!!


    Heaven and earth shook as the world mourned alongside him.


    A single quivering whisper escaped him.


    "I''m not John Falken¡­?" The light of terror lit up in his eyes as his body shivered, entering a state of shock.


    The very root of his identity had been ripped out.


    Ripped out with apathetic cruelty.


    "Correct," the Divine Doctor grinned with amusement. "The soul transference ritual is a method created by the Beggar Sage, the Psycher, and, of course, the Divine Doctor. We each y an equally important role in the ritual. I handle all of the creation and production of the vessel with the goal of reducing the probability of ipatibility between psychology and physiology. I adjust all anatomical, physiological, and biochemical parameters to be close to that of the original''s body. My skills are so supreme that the impossible bes not only possible but usible."


    Rui stared at him with raw horror, frozen in shock.


    "The Psycher handles the optimizing mental states for the vessels. Using his extraordinary understanding of mind, he puts both the donor and inheritor vessels into truly extraordinarily deep trances, certainly vastly deeper than this dungeon or Martial Artists do, without which extracting every memory is absolutely impossible." The Divine Doctor''s tone was clinical. "The Beggar Sage is the greatest genius of information, knowledge, and epistemology. He handles the transference of information. You cannot even begin to fathom how extraordinarily difficult it is to transfer the actual information of memories. The soul transference ritual is an impossible miracle that can only ur when the three of us pool in our extraordinary prowess together. And yet¡­"


    He stared at Rui with fascination. "¡­here lies an inheritor we never created."


    He turned away from Rui as his eyes wandered about with curiosity. "It certainly isn''t possible for this to have naturally urred. If it was done by a conscious agent, then they either independently arrived at the soul transference ritual or¡­" Contentt bel0ngs to N0ve/lDra/ma.O(r)g!


    His eyes grew more intense. "¡­or stole it from us. Yet, just knowing the means and mechanics isn''t enough; without our skills, the ritual would be impossible. Or so I thought¡­"


    He turned back to Rui with curious eyes.


    "This is impossible¡­" Rui whispered. "This cannot be. I am John Falken! There is absolutely no way that I''m not!"


    The Divine Doctorughed.


    Heughed heartily.


    Heughed heartily at the symphony of Rui''s despair and denial.


    Heughed heartily even as Rui red at him with murderous rage.


    RUMBLE


    "You." A horrifying amount of rage and bloodlust emerged from within the depths of Rui''s eyes. "I will kill you."


    His voice distorted with hellish fury.


    The very world is distorted under the maelstrom of Rui''s emotional distress.


    "I will kill you."


    Yet, the Divine Doctor onlyughed harder. "Fool. Do you really think death means anything to me? Think about what I have just informed you. I am not the Divine Doctor. I am simply a quasi-clone who is subconsciously convinced he is the Divine Doctor to prevent the inevitable subconscious psychological distress that emerges with identity discrepancy. Even if you kill me, my death will only activate the many other quasi-clones kept in stasis throughout Panama."


    At that moment, the avnche of rage and bloodlust disappeared as horror lit up within the depths of Rui''s eyes. "Other quasi-clones¡­?"


    "Correct." The Divine Doctor sneered. "As of this moment, two-hundred and fifty-six inheritors of the Divine Doctor exist. Spread across Panama and beyond in the Great Ind Belt. How do you think I survived death from Martial Sages? They can use their nation-wiping power all they want, but they can never kill the Divine Doctor''s legacy. Even if they kill any particr inheritor vessel, another shall take its ce. Do you see, little deluded inheritor?"


    The Divine Doctor smiled cruelly. "This is even more powerful than immortality. This is eternity. The Divine Doctor''s legacy is infinitely more meaningful than his life. Death is as meaningless as it is inevitable. All materia muste to an end, but information¡­"


    He tapped his head. "Information is not shackled by causality. That is why you may kill me if you wish; it does not take away anything from me. But, if you kill me¡­"


    He sneered. "Who''s going heal your father?"


    Rui red at him with hatred.


    His eyes flickered with horror, rage, and a maelstrom of other emotions.


    Yet, in spite of the emotional distress that stirred within the depths of his heart, a spark of rationality remained.


    He could not kill the Divine Doctor.


    He could not do that.


    He simply could not.


    It would undermine everything he had worked hard for.


    It would undermine everything in the past five years. Three years of a voyage through the Beast Domain and two years of preparation in the Mellow Manifold would be rendered utterly meaningless.


    He simply could not do that.


    At the very least, he needed to heal his father. Perhaps after that, he could kill him?


    Yet, the thought of that simply brought him more misery.


    It was a tantrum.


    The man had simply told him the truth. The very truth that Rui had asked him for and negotiated for.


    What was the point of getting angry at him?


    Who was he to get angry with him?


    Who was he?


    RUMBLE


    The world shook.


    Horror, terror, rage, despair, and misery converged within the depths of his mind.


    They converged into a singrity of extraordinary emotional intensity.


    And then, they exploded.


    "AAAARGRGRGRHAGRHAHRGRHRHRGARGRH!!!" A horrifying eruption of emotion washed over the entirety of the Mellow Manifold as the weight of the revtions of the Divine Doctor truly settled inside his mind.


    And they were too much.


    His condition had originally been very poor because of the battle with the chimera; he simply could not handle the emotional distress that had been brought about by the Divine Doctor''s revtions.


    His eyes rolled upwards as his body loosened.


    THUD


    He copsed unconscious.


    The Divine Doctor studied him for a moment before making the prudent decision to heal him to absolute perfection.


    "This inheritor is of extremely high value to the Divine Doctor even if he definitely will never break through to the Sage Realm..."


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2012 Motherly Involvement

    Chapter 2012 Motherly Involvement


    An eternity passed.


    Or at least, that was how Rui felt when he opened his eyes. An eternity may as well have passed.


    For a moment, he couldn''t remember.


    He couldn''t remember where he was.


    He couldn''t remember thest thing he remembered.


    His blurred version grew clearer as he saw the sky.


    The sky of the manifold.


    His eyes widened as his recollection came through, triggered by the visual stimulus.


    Two years worth of memories flooded through his mind as he recollected his entering the dungeon, his meeting with the Divine Doctor, the two years of preparation for Operation Prisonbreak, his battle and breakthrough against the Chimera, and, of course¡­


    "¡­Who am I?"


    His Martial Drive shuddered at the question. His eyes were vacant.


    Hollow.


    His body loosened as he felt like a walking corpse.


    Not even the inheritance of the Elder Tree made him feel that way. His Martial Drive had protected him from the worst of the inheritance, merely causing him to suffer a drastic shift in emotional quotient.


    Yet, the Divine Doctor''s words had struck him harder than anything the Elder Tree could have ever mustered up.


    It attacked the very root of his drive.


    The very root of who he was.


    All this time, he thought he was the actual entity of John Falken himself, continuing his life past death after being reborn in a new body. Yet, the information provided by the Divine Doctor, or the inheritor of the Divine Doctor, had shattered this very foundation at the center of his identity.


    He was not John Falken.


    He was a man of Gaia who, as a newborn baby, had been brainwashed with the memories of John Falken from another world.


    "¡­Is John Falken even real? Was Earth ever real?"


    His hazy eyes grew steely as a faint hint of certainty lit up within the depths of his uncertain eyes. "No." His voice grew a little more confident. "John Falken was real. Earth is real. The probability that they didn''t exist is astronomically low."


    There was far too much internal and external coherence in his memories for them to be conceivably fabricated. Additionally, the knowledge that he had learned and researched throughout his entire life was extremely consistent with reality. The probability that they were fiction was so unfathomably low that it could be dismissed out of hand.


    Thus, unless he was truly confronted with supernatural and extraordinary evidence, he was inclined to believe that Earth was real.


    If that was the case, then someone had taken John Falken''s memories after he died and then brainwashed fetus Rui with all his memories to believe that he was John Falken.


    If someone hadn''t done that, Rui Quarrier would have gone on to be someone else. Rui would have grown to be an entirely different person with a different life, different emotions, temperament, and personality, and different goals, ambitions, and aspirations.


    All of that had been snuffed out the moment the fetus Rui had been brainwashed and hypnotized.


    "But how¡­?" He couldn''t fathom how.


    It was truly iprehensible to its very root.


    ording to the descriptions of the Divine Doctor, the soul transference ritual required an extraordinary amount of preparation, resources, and active involvement from three supergeniuses.


    How on Gaia did such a thing happen without anybody noticing?


    It made no sense!


    "Wait¡­" Pure horror erupted within the depths of Rui''s metaphorical soul. "¡­My mother."


    ording to his grandmother, his name, bestowed by his mother, meant ''reincarnated'' in the Ss Dialect.


    He had already concluded that this was strong evidence that she knew that he was a reincarnated being, yet, now he realized that there was another possibility in light of the new information that he had been confronted with.


    "Was my mother involved with my soul transference ritual?" Pure terror lit up in Rui''s eyes at the thought of this bone-chilling possibility. Did his mother truly consent to having her unborn child be brainwashed and hypnotized in her womb with the memories of another man?


    "Huff¡­huff¡­huff¡­"


    His heart rate elerated as his breathing grew heavier.


    He felt as though someone was choking him.


    As though someone was suffocating him, snuffing his heart.


    As though his own mother was squeezing the life out of him.


    He didn''t know.


    He couldn''t know.


    How could he possibly know?


    Yet, it was this uncertainty that was the most horrifying part. Who was his mother?


    Was she a monster who erased the potential identity of her child with a prepared identity from another world and another man? Was she uninvolved? She certainly knew; what did she do with that knowledge? Where did that knowledge evene from if she herself was not involved?


    He didn''t know.


    He didn''t know who she was.


    He didn''t know who he was.


    He didn''t know anything.


    "Rui?" Content from N?velDr(a)ma.Org.


    Kane''s voice shook him, breaking him out of his stupor.


    Rui became suddenly became aware of material reality.


    "Kane¡­" He whispered, heaving a sigh. "You''re awake."


    Kane snorted. "Those should be my words. You slept for three days!"


    Rui''s eyes widened. "¡­What?"


    "Yeah, doc said your injuries were grave, and for maximally optimal recovery, it was best that you remained unconscious, allowing your body to dedicate all its resources to objectively optimal health or something like that, so he fed you some gross concoction to keep you asleep."


    Rui sat up slowly, ncing at his hands and body for the first time since he regained consciousness. He had been so emotionally immersed in his thoughts that he deigned to ignore his material conditions.


    Although his mind was a mess, his body was the very opposite.


    It was pristine and brand-new.


    It felt extraordinarily rejuvenated, energetic, and powerful from within his depths all the way to the outside. Every cell across his body roared with life and vigor, working hard to fulfill their minute but important role in the microcosm that was his body.


    He had never ever felt this good physically in his entire life.


    "In fact¡­" He murmured, stunned. "¡­My body feels more powerful than it ever has."


    "Yeah." Kane grinned. "He said he took the liberty to make some optimizations to our Martial Bodies."


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2013 Psychology and Philosophy of Identity

    Chapter 2013 Psychology and Philosophy of Identity


    ??Not even the very finest state-of-the-art and cutting-edge recovery and medical treatments of the Martial Union had ever made his body feel this good in its entire life!


    The fact that the Divine Doctor could produce an oue


    Unfortunately, not even the immense physical pleasure and bodily satisfaction could possibly fill a gaping void in the depths of his eyes.


    His mouth curled as a sharp question escaped him.


    "What else did he tell you?"


    Kane''s expression darkened. "¡­He told me everything. Congrattions on your breakthrough to the Master Realm, but¡­"Content from N?velDr(a)ma.Org.


    His expression grew more grave. "¡­I can understand if you''re not in the mood to celebrate that."


    Kane''s voice faltered.


    He truly didn''t know what to say.


    He didn''t even know what to think.


    He had learned about Rui''s past life in another world two years ago.


    Over the past two years, he had fully epted that his best friend was a man from another world with another life.


    Now, however, that had been undone after the Divine Doctor informed him of the truth.


    While the impact the truth had on him was nowhere near as devastating as the one it had on Rui, he, too, was truly shell-shocked into silence. He was d Rui had been unconscious for three days because it gave him some time to think and prepare to help his friend when he did wake up.


    "¡­I can''t imagine how you must be feeling. I can''t imagine how you must have felt, but if there''s anythi¡ª"


    "¡ªKane." Rui cut him off, slowly turning towards him.


    The air grew tense.


    It grew tense as endless darkness swirled within the depths of Rui''s eyes.


    A void.


    "¡­Yeah?" Kane gulped.


    "Who am I?"


    Rui''s voice was chilling.


    It was a simple question.


    Yet, the answer was perhaps the mostplicated a question could ever have.


    "You have all the memories of John Falken," Kane insisted. "How is that any different from a soul being reincarnated? They''re literally the same thing!"


    Rui stared at Kane impassively, lightly scoffing at his attempt at philosophy and psychology.


    However, the intent and the effort counted.


    He appreciated Kane''s efforts at giving him what he had lost.


    s, if the solution had been that simple, he would have never lost it in the first ce.


    "Mind is farprised of far more information than memories alone, Kane."


    His voice was hollow.


    Empty.


    "¡­What do you mean?" Kane furrowed his eyebrows. "A person is their memories, right? We''re all born with nk tes. And then our memories and experiences define and shape us. Thus, imnting John Falken''s memories and experiences into someone''s mind is no different from imnting John Falken''s mind or soul or identity or whatever into that person. That is identical to reincarnation."


    Rui closed his eyes.


    "We''re all born with nk tes, you say?"


    "¡­Aren''t we?" Kane frowned.


    Rui''s eyes as he met Kane''s gaze.


    A single remark escaped him.


    "No." His voice grew cold. "No, we are not."


    Kane tilted his head in confusion.


    "If you think newborn infants are nk tes, I''m afraid you''re sorely mistaken. There are countless pre-


    determined neurological and psychological parameters, including but not limited to psychogic temperamental and personality inclinations, whether you are inclined towards being open, agreeable, neurotic, conscientious, or extraverted. Additionally, there are pre-determined gic factors in neurology and endocrinology as well, such as pre-


    determined thresholds for the release of neurotransmitters such as dopamine, serotonin, and oxytocin. All of these countless parameters and variables are different for each newborn baby. So no, newborn babies are not nk tes such that only memories and experiences shape identity. These neurogic, psychogic, and other gic traits also shape identity just as much as memories and experiences do."


    Kane stared at him, speechless, utterly confounded by everything Rui had just said.


    "If you were to imnt John Falken''s memories in one million babies, each and every single one of those million babies would be entirely different people altogether with entirely different minds," Rui''s voice was as clinical as the Divine Doctor''s. "Some John Falken babies would be psychopaths or school shooters due to the bullying that John Falken suffered as a kid due to gically being high on the anti-social personality disorder spectrum. Some of those babies would be horrible people due to gically high trait disagreeableness. Some babies would be saints. Most babies would turn out normal-ish, but all of them would be very different from each other as people and would have very different minds and different behaviors despite being imnted with the same memories. They would all be very different from the original John Falken, with different emotions, desires, goals, and ambitions. Essentially, different people from the original John Falken."


    Rui stared at Kane impassively. "Can you say all those babies imnted with John Falken''s memories are John Falken? Or even the same people in identity?"


    Kane was stunned silent.


    "¡­Not to mention," Rui huffed. "That was just gic differences alone. I haven''t even talked about environmental differences and how those differences lead to different identities. Environments y an enormous role in shaping who you are."


    There was a vast field of psychological research that demonstrated that gics and physicality, environment, and exposure all yed an enormous role in shaping identity and mind.


    As much as Rui would love to believe that identity was solely and exclusively memories alone, he knew that that was simply not true. It was one of three major factors that affected identity.


    "That''s just scientific issues with your argument," Rui remarked. "I haven''t even talked about the philosophical problems with the proposition of identity-


    equals-memory. There''s a reason that the philosophy of identity within ontology and metaphysics has existed for thousands of years, with thousands of philosophers debating what identity is and developing many schools of thought about exactly what identity is. If the answer to the question of what identity is, if such an answer even exists, was simply equating it to memory, then a vast field of philosophy would uld have never existed in the first ce."


    Rui gazed at his hands, clenching them into fists. "¡­I don''t know who I am, but I do know one thing."


    His eyes sharpened with steely determination. "If knowing who I am is needed for fulfilling Project Water, then I will discover who I am, no matter what."


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2014 A Significant Question

    Chapter 2014 A Significant Question


    Kane frowned at Rui''s words. "What does your identity issue have to do with impeding Project Water?"


    "¡­I don''t know," Rui admitted.


    Kane stared at him, confused.


    "I don''t know what it has to do with Project Water," Rui borated. "But I do have strong reasons to think that it has something to do with it."


    "¡­Like what?"


    Rui''s eyes turned back to Kane. "¡­One of the things that my grandmother''s prophecy before we left Kandria foresaw was the Divine Doctor asking me, ''Who are you?''"


    Kane''s eyes widened with surprise. "You mean that you knew that all of this was going to happen?"


    Rui shook his head impassively. "¡­I didn''t know that this specifically would happen. All I saw and heard in the prophecy was the Divine Doctor asking me that question. I didn''t have any other context. More importantly, my grandmother''s reaction to it was¡­ strange."


    Kane tilted his head. "How so?"


    "¡­She acted as though that question meant something to her." Rui narrowed his eyes. "She muttered something like ''meddling unnecessarily.''"


    Kane''s eyebrows furrowed with surprise. "You mean to say your grandmother may have known your true identity all this time? No, not just your true identity, but the truth about how ''you'' came to this world?


    It was a possibility that Rui didn''t have evidence to deny, but¡­


    "¡­I would be surprised if she did know, it wouldn''t make sense," Rui remarked, sharpening his gaze as his mind coursed through various memories of conversations with his grandmother. "Firstly, she''s straightforward and blunt; she''s my grandmother, too. Had she known, she would have just told me. She wouldn''t have kept it a secret. Secondly, she found my name to be quite strange. She said it meant ''reincarnated.'' If she truly knew the truth, she would not have reacted the way that she did."


    "Is that what your name means in the Ss Dialect?" Kane''s eyes widened with shock. "Doesn''t that mean your mom¡­?"


    "Yeah¡­" Rui''s eyes darkened. "But my grandmother most likely doesn''t know. This means that the question ''Who are you?'' had some other meaning or relevance to her that was different from what the Divine Doctor actually meant when he did ask me that a few days ago."


    Rui felt remarkably confident about this particr inference. He felt like he had stumbled onto something important. Contentt bel0ngs to N0ve/lDra/ma.O(r)g!


    "I suspect that¡­" His eyes narrowed. "¡­it has something to do with making progress in the Upper Realms."


    "¡­Who are you¡­" Kane murmured to himself. "How can such a question possibly be relevant to Martial Art? If it is relevant, then man, I am not going to make it far."


    A fleeting smile cracked at the edge of Rui''s mouth.


    He had to admit that that sentiment was something he felt too.


    Regardless of whether he was Rui, John, some bizarrebination, or someone else entirely, the Divine Doctor''s revtionsplicated his situation undoubtedly. Before, he felt like he was John continuing his path in a new life. Now, he had lost that simplicity andfort.


    "Maybe the Divine Doctor was lying?" Kane asked with a hopeful expression. "Wouldn''t it be prudent to not put so much weight in his words?"


    His words made sense. Unfortunately, he was unconscious when all of it happened, and he didn''t know all of the details.


    "It''s not that I have extraordinary faith and trust in him, no." Rui shook his head. "I have reason and evidence to believe that his exnation is highly credible. For one, he made an urate inference based on the exnation. If a theory leads to verifiably urate predictions, then one can have high confidence that it is more truthful than other theories that don''t. It exins much and is backed by evidence more than anything else. It''s also a better exnation than ''souls,'' the existence of which has never been proven or demonstrated scientifically. Information, brainwashing, and hypnosis, however, are all extremely real."


    Rui approached the matter through scientific inquiry. He had tentatively epted the theory of souls as a ceholder for an exnation, but now that he had arrived at an actual mechanism that made urate predictions for why he was the way he was, the scientist in him was willing to ept it as an extremely well-founded exnation.


    He would need even more powerful evidence to disce it as the epted theory for his ''reincarnation.''


    "Does it really matter who you ''technically'' are?" Kane pondered. "You have a past, present, and future, you know? You have people you care about, who care about you, things you want to do. Things you have to do. How much does it matter what the correct bel'' on you is?"


    Rui stirred at that question.


    It was pertinent and got to the heart of the issue.


    Yet, it wasn''t that simple.


    The atmosphere tingled as Rui closed his eyes.


    "¡­All my life, I thought Project Water was born of me and came along with me from one life to another," he whispered. "Now, I am confronted with powerful evidence that it was passed on to me from a being who died before Rui Quarrier was born. Nothing causally traveled from John to Rui like a soul. There was no ball of energy and information containing my whole mind and my whole identity. We are causally disconnected. That¡­"


    Rui had no words to describe it.


    The belief that Project Water was his creation. His child. His efforts. It was truly his. These beliefs were at the foundation of a lot of things.


    Now, he felt as though it was yanked out from underneath all of that.


    To him, it had been no different from telling a mother that the child that she had given birth to and had raised all her life had never existed, and all her memories of it were brainwashed and hypnotized into her.


    How was one supposed to maintain theirposure?


    The sheer shock had overwhelmed him in the heat of the moment.


    His Martial Path and the drive to fulfill it had been of ineffable importance to him. After all, he once attacked a Martial Sage with bloodlust when the Sage negated his Martial Drive for just a moment.


    The Divine Doctor''s revtions were one thousand times worse, causing him to be overwhelmed momentarily.


    "¡­You''re not going to stop pursuing your Martial Path, Project Water, right?" Kane''s eyes lit up with rm.


    Then, and only then, did certainty return to Rui''s eyes.


    A single answer escaped him.


    "No."


    -


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    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2015 Unable

    Chapter 2015 Unable


    "¡­That was more confident than I had expected."


    "The question is a bit invalid," Rui replied calmly.


    His tone was solid.


    Unyielding.


    "I feel as though... I cannot stop pursuing my Martial Path. I physically cannot stop pursuing Project Water," he murmured lightly. "It is an inability."


    Kane frowned. "What do you mean? Isn''t pursuing Project Water a choice?"


    "I used to think so¡­" He closed his eyes. "¡­until three days ago."


    Kane furrowed his eyebrows in confusion. "I don''t follow."


    "My drive to pursue my Martial Path shook at the revtion but¡­" His eyes opened slowly. "¡­it didn''t break."


    Kane stared at him uncertainly.


    Rui''s eyes turned to him, meeting his gaze.


    Within their depths stirred an endless darkness.


    A void.


    A single question escaped him.


    "Do you know what I think that means?"


    The air tingled.


    It grew more tense.


    It grew taut.


    A soft smile emerged on Rui''s face.


    "It means that¡­" He closed his eyes. "¡­not even the revtion that my Martial Drive was not my own choice was able to make me choose otherwise."


    Kane''s eyes widened with shock as he finally understood what Rui was saying. "You¡­"


    "That''s right."


    Rui''s eyes grew more intense.


    "I don''t think it''s a choice, at least not anymore." He gazed at his own hands.


    He balled them into powerful fists. "It feels like it is beyond choice. Beyond my choice. I cannot stop. I am unable to stop. When I try imagining a life without my Martial Drive, my mind yields nothingness. Do you understand?"


    A profound intensity apanied his voice as he turned to Kane.


    "I am not able to stop pursuing my Martial Path anymore than you are able to stop breathing."


    "¡­Breathing?"


    Rui nodded.


    "Can you permanently stop breathing by choice?"


    Kane''s eyes widened with shock.


    The answer was obviously not.


    Breathing, while within conscious control, was not something that could permanently be stopped by choice.


    No matter how hard one tried, the subconscious mind wrested away control from the conscious mind above a certain threshold and reflexivelymenced breathing. It was impossible to stop breathing by choice.


    "...That''s absurd." Kane stared at him with shock.


    "Project Water¡­" A bittersweet smile appeared on Rui''s face. "¡­is something I cannot stop striving for. Every time I try, it''s no different from trying to stop breathing. It is no different from trying to stop my heart from beating by choice."


    His words sent shivers down Kane''s spine.


    "You¡­" Kane gazed at him, stunned into sheer silence.


    A Martial Drive that was so incredibly powerful that it transcended conscious choice and was even more unshakable than breathing?


    He had never heard of something like that in his entire life. This belongs ? N?velDra/ma.Org.


    He had never heard of such an absurdly powerful choice.


    He knew that Martial Drives were the fundamental driving force for progress down one''s Martial Path. The stronger it was and the greater its scope, the further down one was likely to go.


    How far would a man whose Martial Drive was stronger than the drive to breathe go?


    Just what kinds of feats would such a person achieve?


    Kane thought he had reached the end of the rope of how surprised he could get when it came to Martial Art and Rui once Rui shattered the record for the youngest Martial Master at the age of thirty-seven.


    Yet, he was wrong.


    In that moment, a single truth became clear to him.


    "I don''t think you''d stop pursuing your Martial Path even if you stopped breathing."


    A soft smirk cracked at the edge of Rui''s mouth. "Still¡­ I don''t know how far I''ll go. Or whether I''ll be able to master Project Water."


    If ''who are you?'' had some relevance to it in the higher Realms, then he suspected that he was truly in for a rough time crossing this hurdle.


    Regardless, it was no longer relevant at the moment.


    "Huff¡­" He heaved a sigh before finally turning around and actually beholding his environment fully since waking up.


    "This¡­" Rui muttered as he eyed the shoddy sticks and leaves formed around him. "This is the Divine Doctor''s makeshift hut¡­"


    "Yeah." Kane nodded. "You needed a ce to rest, after all¡­"


    Rui nced in the direction of the core of the Mellow Dungeon.


    What was shrouded in darkness to the senses of a Martial Senior before was all but transparent to his gaze now.


    From dozens of kilometers away, he beheld the Divine Doctor studying the alien flora lifeform. He had all but forgotten about Rui once the fascination for the revtions surrounding him wore off.


    "Has he dyed dispelling the manifold because I was unconscious or because he wanted to study the alien lifeform?" Rui frowned.


    "Both, I think." Kane shrugged. "¡­By the way, I forgot to ask since there were important matters, but why are you shouting? Are you doing that on purpose?"


    "¡­Ah." Rui grew self-conscious. "No. It''s just something from the breakthrough to the master Realm that increased the volume of my voice."


    "That''s really weird," Kane frowned.


    "¡­Its efficiency of sound generation by myrynx," Rui calmly informed him.


    Ever since he broke through to the Master Realm, it was as though the sheer cognition of his Martial Mind allowed him to preserve an enormous amount of energy that would otherwise be wasted.


    Mechanical systems grew less wasteful with moreputing power due to consequently more efficient choices. Even with his Martial Mind mostly passive at the moment, his efficiency in the systems of his body had grown tremendously. Even when he was speaking normally, his sound generation had risen to a level where he was basically shouting.


    "I''m guessing every Martial Master must go through a phase of readjustment to reduce their effort because their efficiency has risen," Rui muttered impassively. "¡­Is this better?"


    Rui started whispering.


    "Yeah, that''s perfect." Kane threw him a thumbs-up. "¡­Alright, so now what?


    Rui considered the question before turning back in the direction of the core.


    "I''ve had enough of this ce. It''s time to get out of here."


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2016 An Opportunity

    Chapter 2016 An Opportunity


    ??The chat with Kane had helped Rui gather his thoughts and regain hisposure. The shock of the revtion had initially been truly overwhelming.


    Not even the emotional desensitization of the inheritance of the Elder Tree had helped. He had been emotionally desensitized to external stimuli of pain and pleasure and surrounding emotions.


    It didn''t protect him against internal stimuli such as the realization that his drive had not been his own, that his memories were that of a dead man of another world.


    Yet, in hindsight, he was grateful to have learned the truth.


    It taught him an important lesson.


    His drive would not yield even if its very foundations were ripped apart from under it. It was so powerful that it had embedded itself deep into Rui''s conscious and subconscious mind.


    It didn''t matter if it came from another person.


    It didn''t matter even if it were somehow pure fiction.


    Rui would make it reality.


    And frankly, that was all that mattered, for now.


    Who was he?


    He still didn''t know how to answer that anymore.


    Of course, if knowing it wasn''t necessary for fulfilling Project Water, then he wouldn''t bother.


    But, and he suspected that this was the case, if it was required to reach higher Realms, then he would fulfill this condition no matter what.


    For now, however, it was time to get out of this ce.


    "Let''s go." Rui narrowed his eyes as he snapped his fingers.Contentt bel0ngs to N0ve/lDra/ma.O(r)g!


    WHOOSH


    The world around them shed away as Rui effortlessly bent heaven and earth to propel them forward at tremendous speeds. With a simple gesture, he could not just unleash immense power, but employ it with nigh-absolute efficiency.


    STEP


    In seconds, they had already arrived at the core of the dungeon.


    "You..." Kane''s eyes widened with shock at Rui''s newfound power.


    Yet, Rui''s attention had fully turned to the Divine Doctor.


    The man hadn''t even noticed their arrival.


    He sat before the alien flora lifeform, studying it with a wide variety of artifacts and tools.


    "Incredible..." he constantly muttered to himself. "...Truly."


    WHOOSH


    Rui effortlessly bent heaven and earth to hide the alien flora lifeform in an opaque shell of air and soil.


    The Divine Doctor''s eyes slowly shifted towards Rui with clinical regard. "Quite the way to express your gratitude to me for saving your life and enhancing your Martial Body."


    Rui''s eyes sharpened.


    His perspective on the Divine Doctor had changed.


    This man was just a vessel of information from the original Divine Doctor''s mind and the minds of the Divine Doctor inheritors before him.


    On top of that, while Rui could sense Kane''s emotions very clearly thanks to the newfound quasi-mental sense of the Martial Mind, he couldn''t sense anything from the Divine Doctor.


    It was to be expected considering that not even the Elder Tree could sense it.


    "Thank you." Rui''s tone was impassive, albeit sincere. "However, the point of Operation Prisonbreak was to escape, not to spend the rest of our lives studying this admittedly fascinating alien specimen."


    "I had no intention of doing thetter," the Divine Doctor smiled. "I am anxious to return to the Human Domain and conduct a soul transference data save. The memories of this particr vessel are priceless and must be preserved immediately."


    His words were unnerving. He seemed to treat himself like a disposable pawn, which Rui found unsettling.


    "However," he added, "there are some issues."


    Rui''s expression grew graver. "Don''t tell me we cannot leave."


    "We can, but the second I uproot the source of the manifold, all thend and water within this manifold will be exposed to the outside world. And that will attract the attention and interest of all the Master-level beasts in the surrounding Master-level regions."


    Rui instantly understood everything the Divine Doctor was getting at. "The Mellow Dungeon grows more bountiful and resourceful the closer one gets to its core, where it is rich enough to attract even Master-level beasts."


    The second they opened the Mellow Manifold, it would attract the attention of all surrounding Master-level beasts, who would be drawn towards the center of the open dungeon as all beasts in it were.


    The three of them were at the core of the dungeon.


    In other words, the moment the dungeon opened, they would be attacked by all Master-level beasts from all directions.


    "That''s why you waited for me to wake up."


    "Correct."


    Without Rui awake, the Divine Doctor and Kane would never be able to escape alive with all those Master-level beasts converging onto them at extraordinarily rapid speeds.


    Previously, the prospect of facing several Master-level beasts would have chilled his bones, yet now¡ª


    The Divine Doctor and Kane froze as unfathomable power erupted from deep within Rui.


    "Let theme."


    His tone was steely.


    Confidence and certainty radiated from every spec of his being.


    "The chimera was too weak to allow me to test the limits of my newfound power."


    With a single gesture of exertion, he had negated its greatest attack.


    With a second exertion, it had died on the spot.


    It had been unsatisfying.


    Unenlightening.


    It hadn''t shown him his limits.


    That was why he had absolutely no idea what he was capable of and wasn''t.


    "But you aren''t ustomed to the power of the Master Realm, are you?" Kane asked with concern.


    "That''s not how it works with the Master Realm," Rui calmly remarked. "I have not gained any additional power. My raw power is the same, I''m just orders of magnitude more efficient. With my Martial Mind, however, I can use all my systems of thought simultaneously with absolutely no restraint or limitations whatsoever."


    Not even the original Angell of Lace was stressful anymore.


    Rui''s mind was aputer. Together with his Martial Mind, it was a supeputer. A supeputer with his mind as the operating system and his systems of thought as thebat software.


    "I''m at my peak," Rui calmly informed them. "There is no longer any need for dy. Kane, the moment the manifold is open and undone, take the doctor and run. I shall draw them away and hold them off single-handedly. If I stay with you, they will box us in and I will need to spend all my power protecting the two of you and the alien specimen, unable to break out."


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2017 Ownership Dispute

    Chapter 2017 Ownership Dispute


    ??"I approve of that n," the Divine Doctor remarked with a frozen smile. "The alien specimen cannot be allowed to be anywhere near the heat of battle. I''ll have to transfer it to my most securebs to study its alien nature and space-time maniption abilities."


    Rui''s eyes sharpened. "I''m afraid you''ll be doing no such thing."


    The air tingled.


    It grew more tense.


    The Divine Doctor''s eyes slowly turned towards Rui as the man stared at Rui.This content is ? N?velDrama.Org.


    "What made you think I''d just let you walk out of here with ownership over a priceless asset with a Transcendent resource?" Rui coldly inquired with a calm voice. "That alien specimen is mine. It belongs to Kandria."


    He had not forgotten that the only reason that this little escapade to the Beast Domain had been possible was that Sage Sayfeel made use of the Topaz of Time to slow down his father''s dying condition.


    All because Rui refused to ascend the throne.


    He nned to make up for that by offering what should have been an even more priceless asset. This asset could radically alter the growth rate of Martial Artists in the Kandrian Empire, even if it wasn''t of too much use to Rui himself.


    "Rule of the strong, is it?" the Divine Doctor remarked with a hint of dissatisfaction.


    "Not quite," Rui replied impassively. "You have no contributed to Operation Prisonbreak in any meaningful way. I had previously assumed you would, but things have unfolded such that your expertise was not required. In other words¡­"


    Rui''s dark eyes sharpened. "¡­You have no im over that alien flora lifeform. The only people who have im over it are myself, who drew away and yed the chimera for it to be possible to study it, and, to a lesser extent, Kane, who performed his role with perfection."


    The Divine Doctor was not willing to back down so easily. "I saved your life in return and upgraded your Martial Body."


    Rui scoffed. "And I saved your life with Operation Prisonbreak, and now again when we undo the manifold. It is an equal trade. If you want ess to the alien lifeform, you''ll have to contribute something of equal value to ess to it during your time in Kandria."


    The Divine Doctor instantly understood what Rui was trying to do.


    He was adding another tie between the Divine Doctor and Kandria.


    Currently, they had a few agreements in ce.


    The Divine Doctor would heal his father in return for a defined amount of ess to his grandmother''s prophecy or live, sustained Elder Treemunication. If he wanted both, he would need to offer his extraordinary medical prowess to Kandria.


    That meant that he would need to remain in Kandria indefinitely in order to get ess to both these super-assets.


    That was even more true if he wanted regr ess to the alien lifeform that Rui hadid im to.


    It meant that Kandria would be his new home for a long time.


    "Well yed," the Divine Doctor admitted. "You are the first man in seven hundred and twelve years who had seeded in gaining the loyalty of the Divine Doctor. In the time that I have observed you, I can estimate that you are truly are worthy of being an immortal sage. Unfortunately, it is toote for that."


    Rui narrowed his eyes. "What do you mean?"


    "We are unable to perform the soul transference rituals on Martial Masters," he lightlymented. "Specifically, we cannot transfer Martial Minds. The soul transference process functions by transferring memories of experiences and thoughts. The inheritor vessel is unable to sustain it because itcks the evolved neurological potential of the Martial Body."


    Rui frowned. "That makes sense. Why not use Martial Bodies, then?"


    The Divine Doctor shook his head. "For many reasons, but thergest is that the Martial Path prevents the destruction of the pre-existing mind and memories that are needed to turn it into an empty vessel."


    Rui''s impassive gaze lit up with interest and curiosity.


    "It''s the same reason Martial Apprentices can survive the Squire evolution breakthrough process with their mind intact," hemented lightly as he meticulously put all his tools back in ce across the ps in his robes. "The Martial Path is able to protect the mind and memories in a seemingly acausal and immaterial manner that we don''t quite understand yet. That is why we are unable to erase the entirety of the mind of Martial Artists from their brains; the pesky Martial Path makes it impossible."


    "Intriguing¡­" Rui''s eyes sharpened.


    He did recall his own Squire evolution breakthrough. His Martial Path had indeed protected his mind and memories from destruction even as his brain was rapidly being destroyed and recreated.


    It was something that he hadn''t understood to this day.


    "If only we had a way to break Martial Paths," the Divine Doctor heaved a sigh. "My life would be so much easier."


    If not for Rui''s extensive foundation of nonverbalmunication, he would not have been able to hide his reaction to the Divine Doctor.


    He had no intention of revealing his capabilities to the Divine Doctor, although he might find out in other ways, such as the Beggar''s Sect.


    In fact, Rui recalled how the Beggar Sage had mentioned he had a very special request of Rui in return for divulging the fact that he was eligible for the soul transference ritual.


    Rui put two and two together as he realized what that request probably was.


    He shook his head, ridding his mind of all such matters. He could ponder them at ater date. Right now, he had more important, not to mention far more exciting, matters to pay attention to.


    "Alright, I havepleted my preparations," the Divine Doctor lightly remarked as he returned all his tools and artifacts back in ce. "I am ready."


    Rui nodded. "Kane, when the manifold is undone, be sure to shield your senses from me, got it? While the Divine Doctor''s mind is powerful enough to withstand my Martial Embodiment, I''m afraid yours isn''t."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2018 A Dozen鈥檚 Convergence

    <h4>Chapter 2018 A Dozen''s Convergence</h4>


    "Oh,e on!" Kaneined. "Doesn''t that mean I cannot ever see you fight?"


    A small smile cracked at the edge of Rui''s mouth. "I''m afraid that''s true. If you want to see me fight in all my power¡­"


    His eyes sharpened as his tone grew stronger. "¡­you will need to be a Martial Master."


    Kane''s eyes grew more intense.


    Not wanting to fall behind Rui was one of his greatest motivations.


    "Will do. Just you wait, man."


    Rui''s smile softened. "I will. But for now, do as I say. Make sure you don''t perceive my Martial Embodiment. I''ll ensure you don''t, too, but I will be busy fighting Master-level beasts. Thus, I need you to make sure you do the same as well, got it?"


    "Gotcha."


    Rui''s passive Martial Mind allowed him to sense the minds of others, as he had long known Martial Masters were able to.


    Rui could sense the burning drive of Kane rising even higher than it had ever been. He could sense a variety of emotions across the entirety of his mind, spurring him down his Martial Path and towards the Master Realm.


    It was strange to perceive all these emotions themselves. It was very different from reading nonverbalmunication.


    No, it was as though he was perceiving emotions themselves in their own actual existences of matter, energy, and information. He could read the emotional makeup of his friend at each moment, watching the dynamics of his mind in real-time.


    It was ufortable.


    He felt like he was viting the privacy of his friend. Privacy of mind was, in many ways, a God-given right that each human being was entitled to.


    Except Martial Masters couldpletely disregard it. This content is ? N?velDrama.Org.


    He heaved a sigh inwardly before ridding his mind of those thoughts as well.


    "Alright, with that warning, it''s time," Rui''s eyes narrowed.


    A glint of excitement flickered in the depths of eyes.


    Soon, he would have the opportunity to fight to his heart''s content.


    Soon, he would have the opportunity to exercise the full depth of his newfound power.


    Soon, he would be able to test the limits of his current state of power.


    "Soon." He turned to the Divine Doctor with a pointed gaze. "Do not make our lives more difficult."


    The man stared at Rui with a frozen smile before closing his eyes and plucking a particr artifact from his utility belt.


    It expanded into a sphere, which opened in half.


    WHOOSH


    Rui carefully manipted heaven and earth to extract alien flora lifeform, severing its root connections with the flora root hive beneath thend, along with enough soil, perfectly fitting it within the sphere.


    CLASP


    The sphere was sealed shut before reducing itself and everything within it to the size of a marble,pletely isting itself from the outside.


    For a moment, nothing happened.


    "Now what?" Kane murmured. "Mayb¡ª"


    RUMBLE!!!


    The three of them froze as the very world shook to its roots.


    Rui felt a tremendous amount of ripples through space-time with Riemannian Echo as Heaven and Earth shuddered alike.


    And then, it happened.


    It happened abruptly.


    Faster than even Rui could react.


    POP


    The manifold disappeared as space-time uncurled instantly.


    Suddenly, the smalloid was no more.


    The world became t in Rui''s senses, extending far, far beyond his senses.


    They had returned.


    They had returned to the wide, vast world of Gaia.


    They had returned to the Beast Domain.


    They had returned to the Mellow within the Master-level belt of the Beast Domain.


    The dungeon was exposed to the rest of the world.


    And it was hardly gone unnoticed.


    Who could possibly ignore a hundred-kilometer-wide patch ofnd appearing out of nowhere?


    Who could ignore the ripples across space-time that spread from it?


    Most importantly, who could ignore the mouth-watering bounties thaty at the center of the dungeon?


    Certainly, not the twelve Master-level beasts in the surrounding Master-level regions around the Mellow that had sensed it almost immediately.


    In an instant, they made a decision.


    "Go." Rui''s voice betrayed a hint of excitement and enthusiasm.


    Kane didn''t need any more advice, grabbing the containment unit and the Divine Doctor before bolting with the man at top speed; as Rui instructed, he shielded his senses as much as he could with a breathing technique conjuring up thick air behind him.


    Rui was not worried about them losing their way. The Divine Doctor knew his way through the Beast Domain, or else he would have died a long, long time ago.


    There were more important things he needed to pay attention to.


    RUMBLE!!!!!


    The world shook violently as twelve Master-level beasts arrived at extraordinary speeds and horrifying momentum.


    Each step they took ravaged mountain ranges.


    Shattered regions.


    Wiped out local life.


    Life was at the mercy of these regional hegemons.


    Life was at the mercy of these living cmities.


    At the mercy of these breathing catastrophes.


    A small smile cracked at the edge of Rui''s mouth as he beheld his opponents.


    A crystal-furred ape, the size of a hill, rushed in from the south with greed in its eyes, uncaring for the sheer devastation that it left in its wake.


    A Sun Eagle with wings the size of a city flew in at enormous speeds from the north, rushing it at speeds that dwarfed lightning.


    A pair of twin dragons surged from the east, spiraling about each other as they lit aze the very atmosphere in the wake of their travel.


    BOOOOOM!!! BOOOOOM!!! BOOOOOM!!!


    A golem the size of a mountain slowly walked towards the Mellow from the West, step by step,


    Yet, each step it took was no different from an apocalypse in the local region.


    Yet, those weren''t all the creatures Rui perceived converging onto the Mellow.


    No.


    He saw more.


    A mirror cobra whose scales reflected all light.


    A phoenix.


    A basilisk.


    A kirin.


    A colossal centipede.


    A heavenly whale.


    Swiftly, these twelve beings of immense power converged onto the core of the newly exposed Mellow Dungeon.


    And all hell broke loose.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2019 The Power of the Martial Mind

    <h4>Chapter 2019 The Power of the Martial Mind</h4>


    The twelve beings were pleasantly surprised at the sudden appearance of rich bounties attractive to their senses.


    Yet their expressions darkened as they felt a familiar aura.


    An aura they instantly recognized.


    It was an aura of power.


    Ordered, directed, controlled, and driven power.


    The most potent powers they had ever faced.


    A Martial Master.


    An iprehensible existence.


    Despite the diminutive bodies that ought to have beencking in power, they radiated unfathomable peril.


    With tiny physicalities devoid of any extraordinary substance or extraordinary power, these unfathomable beings were still somehow so powerful that Master-level beasts could not even withstand a battle against them without tag-teaming with other Master-level beasts.


    Within a moment of beholding the Martial Master at the center of the newly exposed dungeon, the twelve Master-level beasts instantly made a decision.


    Kill the Martial Master together, then dispute territory.


    Initially, they were intent onpeting amongst themselves.


    That all changed the moment they sensed a Master-level beast, arriving at a temporary alliance with each other.


    This was nothing new.


    The less unintelligent Master-level beasts had all long learned that Martial Masters could not be bested in a fair fight. A culture of teaming up when one showed up to their region was very much the norm.


    With the twelve of them, they would surely not lose.


    Or so they thought.


    "Come."


    Shivers crawled down their spine as the very foundation of Rui''s existence altered, radiating horrifying peril.


    His very being changed at its very root.


    One moment, he was merely human in his appearance.


    The very next?


    He became a void.


    A flowing void.


    Endless dark nothingness itself.


    It was nothing, yet everything all at once.


    The twelve Master-level beasts stiffened, frozen, as a horrifying flood of information flooded their entire minds.


    It was painful.


    Agonous.


    Excruciating.


    Yet, it wasn''t overwhelming.


    These were creatures who had lived for many centuries, emerging victorious within the depths of a hellish Beast Domain.


    They weren''t done in so easily.


    All twelve converged onto the Martial Master at once.


    Yet, his eyes were fixed on a single one of them.


    The one closest to Kane and the Divine Doctor.


    "Breathing Crucifix." His eyes red into the crystal-furred apeing from the south, paralyzing it on the spot as the creature copsed.


    It couldn''t breathe.


    Not even an ounce of air.


    Try as it might, it struggled, suffocating on the ground as its movements dullened.


    Simultaneously, his Martial Embodiment changed.


    The void flowed from one state to another, changing from an endless dark nothingness into a crucifix with chains that swept around the crystal-furred ape, shackling it.


    The other eleven grew graver as they witnessed the Martial Master effortlessly dispatch one of the twelve in a single go with hypnosis.


    They needed to erase him as soon as possible.


    "That''s not happening," the ck-haired Martial Master grinned as he read their minds with abination of his Master-level mind sense and the SOUL System, even as the twelve Master-


    level beasts converged on with horrifying power and momentum.


    BOOOOOOOOOOMMMMMM!!!!!


    A terrifying amount of power converged onto Rui.


    Yet, it couldn''t so much as touch him.


    WHOOSH


    Rui smiled as he effortlessly evaded the attacks of Master-level beasts one after another, weaving past all of them with the grace of a dancer.


    Why spend all the effort to block their attacks when he could simply step out of the way?


    It was the most objectively superior option.


    His grin widened as his Martial Mind zed into full power, activating the Angel of Lace, the Tree of Life, the VOID algorithm, the SOUL System, and the ODA System all at once.


    It was effortless as the astronomical processing power of the Martial Mind could effortlessly amodate all these systems of thought simultaneously.


    A supernova of information erupted from deep within the depths of the mind.


    A maelstrom of knowledge.


    Of thought.


    The Angel of Lace showed him the past.


    The whole past.


    The entire world reversed as he beheld the very world lines of each entity throughout the grand calculus of the universe.


    The VOID algorithm simultaneously showed him the future.


    He beheld the journey of the twelve entities through the space-time continuum into time yet toe.


    He beheld the very future he sought to bend.


    Together, the VOID algorithm and the Angel of Lace elevated his awareness to a higher dimension of reality.


    His consciousness had expanded into the fourth dimension.


    Yet, that wasn''t all.


    The Tree of Life showed him the most optimal reality out of the entirety of the Yggdrasil System, while the SOUL System unearthed their deepest thoughts and feelings.


    It unearthed their ''souls.''


    The past and future.


    Soul and life.


    His Martial Mind epassed all of them, giving him absolute awareness of all of them. This belongs ? N?velDra/ma.Org.


    "Muspelheim."


    BOOOOOOOOMMMMMMM!!!!!


    At that moment, an otherworldly realm of vengeful fire had descended across the entire Mellow.


    In an instant, the earth, which supported the life above and beyond it, melted into bubbling white-hotva.


    The air, which nourished the biosphere, erupted in crackling sma, ravaging all life it touched.


    The devastating power of the Muspelheim domain had reached such an enormous level that in merely an instant, entire mountain ranges disappeared, leveling the entire region into a dystopia that fit right into Dante''s Inferno.


    "ROOOOOOOOAAAAARRRR!!!!!"


    "SCREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!"


    "ARGHRGRHRGHRHRHHH!!!!!"


    Of the twelve, only four could withstand Muspelheim to continue the battle.


    The basilisk, the phoenix, and the twin dragons roared in defiance as they converged on him. Rui grinned, revving up the domain as he confirmed that Kane and the Divine Doctor were far enough to not be caught in it.


    The two twin dragons shot at him at extraordinary speeds, reaching him in an instant with tremendous velocity.


    BOOOM BOOOM!!!


    Rui withstood the powerful impacts, with a solid guard as he absorbed their attacks with Flux Earther, using it to fuel Muspelheim even more as the heat elevated even higher, roasting the other eight alive.


    WHOOOOOOSH!!!


    Rui''s eyes narrowed as an inferno from the phoenix, even hotter than Muspelheim, arrived from one side as a wave of lethal venom erupted from his other side from the basilisk.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2020 Consequences

    Chapter 2020 Consequences


    The fire and poison attacks were not only attacks that bypassed Flux Earther but were also wide in their area of effect, making it impossible to evade.


    Yet, their wide area of effect was also their greatest weakness.


    THWOOM THWOOM!


    Potent Mighty Roar sh sts sted two holes in the parts of the fire and poison waves that were going to hit Rui, allowing him to evade the attack entirely.


    So what if theirbined power exceeded his? All that power meant nothing if they could not control, focus, and direct it with precision and uracy. Rui was basically a tiny dotpared to them, but that actually worked in his favor because these creatures could not focus all their power against a tiny dot.


    However, the reverse was not true.


    They could not make their power hit him, but he certainly could hit them with his power.


    THWOOM THWOOM THWOOM THWOOOM THWOOM!!!!!


    Rui fired his first tier-five Transverse Resonance as a Martial Master.


    Its power was even greater than he had imagined.


    Just as even the softest of whispers had be prominent speech, the power of his sound attacks had increased titanically, growing devastatingly more powerful.


    BOOOOOOOOMMMMM!!!!!


    The devastating attack crashed into the basilisk, ravaging it.


    While these creatures were more durable than him, that came from their size, not from the toughness of their hide. Against a honed, focused attack of Rui''s caliber, it could not offer too much protection.


    "ROOOOOOAAAAAARRRR!!!"


    The creature screamed in pain as the powerful impact bored into its flesh. Yet, before he could deal it even more damage¡ª


    BOOM BOOM!!!


    The twin dragons crashed into him with remarkable speed, knocking him away. The two creatures were far quicker than he was, able to rapidly catch up to him and¡ª


    "I can see your souls."


    WHOOSH!


    The two Master-level dragons widened their eyes with surprise as they crashed into an empty image, momentarily caught off-guard.


    Rui exploited the moment of respite to target the basilisk rather than the two twin dragons, but s, the phoenix refused to let off so easily.


    "SCREEEEEEE!!!"


    It spat an inferno of extraordinary magnitude at Rui, forcing him tounch attacks to dispel the attack. By then, however, the basilisk and the twin dragons were already prepared to continue the assault.


    WHOOOSH!


    Rui shed away as he narrowly avoided a charge from the two twin dragons, yet the very next moment, an enormous wave of poison threatened to drown him. This content is ? N?velDrama.Org.


    THWOOM THWOOM THWOOM!!!


    By the time the Transverse Resonance attacks dispelled the poison, the two twin dragons had already arrived once more.


    Unfortunately for them, Rui had been waiting precisely just for that.


    "Hypertrophic Surge." A cold smile emerged on his face.


    The two dragons shuddered moments before the collision, but it was toote.


    BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMM!!!


    A devastating Flowing Canon ravaged the two dragons, knocking them from the sky.


    Yet, the phoenix was already ready.


    "Breathing Crucifix." He shifted the hypnosis from the crystal-furred ape to the phoenix, stopping its inferno attack before he could even begin.


    THWOOM THWOOM THWOOM THWOOM THWOOM!!!


    BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMMMMM!!!!!


    A devastating collision ravaged the basilisk, leaving it unmoving as blood spurted out from its skull.


    There was a strategic reason that Rui was most focused on the basilisk.


    Of all the offensive options stacked against him, poison was the only one he didn''t have any innate defenses and resistance against. Thus, the most strategic target to take out was the basilisk, the death of which drastically reduced his chances of defeat.


    He nced around at his handiwork.


    A choking phoenix.


    Knocked out twin dragons.


    And eight beasts incapacitated with extreme heat.


    It wasn''t that Muspelheim was more powerful than all eight of thembined.


    It was merely antithetical.


    Rui''s powerful mind sense could detect the very manifestations of pain and agony from those creatures. His powerful material senses allowed him to detect the profuse internal hemorrhaging that had alreadymenced due to the extreme heat.


    Perhaps that made him more amenable to mercy.


    WHOOSH!


    With a single wave of his hand, he gathered the incapacitated beasts before rising up into the air and preparing himself.


    His Martial Embodiment spread far and wide, killing increasingly ever more creatures as he rose up into the air and harming countless outside of the death range.


    To him, it was nothing. He was not doing anything.


    But to the various creatures that beheld him without dying, it was horrifying.


    A single instinct welled up within them.


    To get away as far as possible from the Mellow.


    Thousands, millions, nearly a billion creatures began migrating as the endless void eroded countless minds.


    Countless Apprentice, Squire, Senior, and even Master-level beasts ran away with extreme terror, heading deeper into the Beast Domain, as was their instinct, determined to never return.


    The scale of the exodus increased with each passing second as the mass exodus triggered more and more beasts and monsters deeper within the Beast Domain into a panic.


    Had Rui stopped then and there, the damage to the ecosystems of the Mellow and surrounding regions would have been reversible.


    But what he did only sealed it forever.


    WHOOOOOOOSHHH!!!!!


    He inhaled deeply, causing a horrific flood of air to enter his lungs, momentarily causing a vacuum within the Mellow. At that moment, his Martial Embodiment changed from a flowing void to an enormous siege weapon of mass destruction.


    THWOOM THWOOM THWOOM THWOOM THWOOM THWOOM THWOOM THWOOM THWOOM THWOOM!!!!!


    Ten Mighty Roar sh sts surged in rapid session of each other, merging into a single attack, surging towards the twelve Master-level beasts.


    The world beheld the very first tier ten Transverse Resonance attack.


    BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM!!!!!!!


    The most horrific collision, the likes of which even Rui had never seen, erupted from the center of the Mellow.


    A devastating st wave swallowed up everything.


    Everyone.


    A mass exodus that previously might have eventually reversed had all but be absolutely permanent and unstoppable. The horrifying energy that Rui had released, along with his horrifying Martial Embodiment, had forever marked the Mellow and the surrounding regions as taboo within the instincts of the creatures that migrated away from it, never to return.


    Countless creatures surged deeper into the Beast Domain, forever changing its dynamics, increasing poption density, and crossing critical thresholds ofpetition to unprecedented levels.


    Every action had consequences.


    Unbeknownst to Rui, this event would eventually change the future of the Panama Continent forever.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2021 The Price of the Martial Mind

    Chapter 2021 The Price of the Martial Mind


    "Woah," Rui murmured, pleasantly surprised. He was pleased with his newfound destructive power.


    It was overkill, but there was a concrete reason that he had gone this far.


    Not even twelve beasts had been able to push him to his limits. They had indeed forced him to use all aspects of his Martial Art, but the moment he used the Metabody System, it was game over.


    He wanted to know how powerful he was.


    He needed to know.


    And now, he had a better idea.


    RUMBLE!!!!!


    Earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, floods,ndslides, and countless other natural disasters radiated from the epicenter of the horrific destruction that Rui was able to unleash.


    Once, where the Mellow used to be, was a hemispherical crater that was many dozens of kilometers in diameter. It was almost surreal, but such was the power of the efficiency brought about by the Martial Mind''s cognition.


    "Hmmm¡­all that power, and I wasn''t even able to kill my targets," Rui impassively murmured as he nced at the spot they had been right before the attack struck them.


    The spot that they had been before they disappeared.


    It happened within a microsecond, yet Rui''s enhanced cognition was able to perceive it in slow motion.


    Right before the attack struck them, the twelve creatures had disappeared.


    They were teleported away.


    "Elder Tree¡­" Rui stoically nced in the direction of the north of the Beast Domain.


    Of course, the Beast Domain beingrger than manys meant that he most certainly couldn''t see the north, but he knew that the Elder Tree was responsible for teleporting all those creatures from death, just as it had done for him and Kane five years three years ago.


    He heaved a soft sigh before turning in the direction that Kane and the Divine Doctor had escaped in, leaping towards them


    WHOOSH


    ¡­STEP


    Within seconds, he had already caught up to them, deactivating his Martial Mind and Martial Heart.


    "Rui¡­!" Kane gazed at him with shock. "That was rather quick," the Divine Doctormented with faint interest. "I believe achieving this level of power immediately upon discovery of the Martial Mind is statistically unprecedented in the Martial World. You might have been upset, but you should be grateful to whoever imnted the memories of another person into you for achieving such power this quickly would be otherwise impossible."


    Rui could not deny that.


    "Let''s go," Rui replied. "We''ll exit the Beast Domain in the south as soon as possible. I''ll carry the two of you at top speed so we won''t experience dys."


    Rui had no intention of traveling for weeks and months on end as they did when he was still a Senior. This belongs ? N?velDra/ma.Org.


    He yearned to return to the Kandrian Empire after having spent five years away from it.


    "We should take some rest once we exit the Master-level belt." the Divine Doctor rmended.


    Rui frowned. "And why is that?"


    "The drawbacks of the Martial Mind, of course," The Divine Doctor lightly remarked. "Rest immediately after application of the Martial Mind will minimize the amount of rest your brain will need to recover from the usage of the Martial Mind, but dying it can increase the amount of required rest exponentia¡ª"


    "¡ªWait." Rui''s eyes widened with surprise. "Rest? Are you telling me I need to sleep specifically for the Martial Mind?"


    "Of course," the doctor smiled. "Did you think the power of the Martial Mindes for free? Without a cost? Such a thing does not exist. The Martial Mind is extremely taxing on your brain. I would rmend you sleep for a short amount of time as soon as we leave the Master-level belt rather than spend hours sleeping in addition to normal sleep. The more you dy it, the more sleep you require. Dy it for too long, and you may very well incur seizures and other neurological disorders."


    "What?!" Rui stared at him, shocked.


    "So it''s kinda like a loan?" Kane remarked with furrowed eyebrows. "The more you dy, the more you end up repaying in return? But if you repay it immediately, then you only need to repay what you took."


    "That is an apt analogy," the Divine Doctor impassively replied. "Oh well, I''ll leave the decision to you. It''s your choice. But this is something that every Martial Master needs to be careful about. A mind requires sleep; two minds require more sleep. In many ways, Martial Artists operate in Realms of power far beyond their normal power, which is that of the Squire Realm. The Martial Heart and Minde with their own prices."


    Rui heaved a sigh. "Fine. Once we leave the Master-level belt of the Beast Domain, I''ll get some rest. Hopefully, it won''t be for too long, considering that I didn''t use my Martial Mind for too long. Now that I know about the price of the Master Realm, I can''t afford to waste time; let''s go."


    BADUMP!


    His Martial Heart and Mind zed into action as Rui swept up the two of them with heave-bending before rapidly shooting through the Master-level belt of the Beast Domain at extraordinary speeds.


    The revtion of the price of the Martial Mind was new to him.


    Then again, so had the price of the Martial Heart been when he broke through to the Senior Realm. It would probably have been told to him had he been in the Kandrian Empire at the moment, but thankfully, he had the Divine Doctor.


    He didn''t even want to think about what would have happened without the man informing him about the truth.


    At the sheer speeds that he traveled, it wasn''t too long before they arrived at a safe Apprentice-level zone well outside of the Master-level belt.


    Rui sat against a wall, letting his head rest back.


    Never before had he fallen asleep that quickly. "¡­Doesn''t this mean Martial Masters can be quite vulnerable?" Kane frowned as he gazed at the dozing Rui.


    The doctor huffed. "That has always been the case. Nobody is invulnerable."


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2022 Close

    Chapter 2022 Close


    ??Rui didn''t have any dreams.


    It appeared that the state of sleep that let his brain rest after the Martial Mind was perhaps even deeper than normal sleep.


    Regardless, it passed by in an instant.


    Almost as if he had just blinked.


    By the time he woke up, he felt quite refreshed, ncing at the Divine Doctor and Kane sitting around a fire.


    "¡­How long was I out?"


    "About an hour," the Divine Doctor replied impassively. "More or less the expected amount."


    "Huff¡­" Rui shook his head, heaving a sigh. "¡­Annoying drawback."


    "You can just stop using the Martial Mind if you don''t like it." The Divine Doctor lightly remarked with a frozen smile. "The same goes for the Martial Heart. Martial Seniors who don''t actively use their Martial Heart will live twice as long as those who regrly use it."


    "¡­Meh, it''s worth it," Rui muttered impassively. "Besides, it can ovep with regr sleep, too, I notice. However, it does disrupt your circadian cycle."


    "Most Martial Masters rest as soon as possible after the application of the Martial Mind." The Divine Doctor informed Rui. "So long as they get it over with immediately, they can minimize the amount of time gone into resting."


    "Hmmm¡­" Rui grew immersed in thought. "It puts the Martial Mind in a different light than before."


    The Divine Doctor''s smile widened. "Living beings are not able to maximize every ounce of potential without some price to pay. The Martial Heart and Martial Mind, at their full power, at least, are transient and are elevated states of life. They are not normal, and they demand a price to raise one''s self to such a level. These prices take a toll on the body. It''s partly why the Panamic Martial Federation prohibits the sale or mass propagation of forbidden techniques."


    Rui''s dark eyes lit up with faint interest. "That makes sense, I suppose. The Martial Heart is sort of like a forbidden technique. It''s allowed because it''s absolutely necessary to reach higher Realms and progress down one''s Martial Path."


    The mention of the Panamic Martial Federation reminded Rui of the fact that he was due for some meetings with them as a Martial Master. Martial Masters were qualified to be members of the Panamic Martial Federation, an organization collectively founded to introduce some bare minimum regtions deemed necessary in the Martial World and industry.


    As a Martial Master, he had gained the qualifications to impact the norms, guidelines, andws of the Martial World. Although he wasn''t quite familiar with its bureaucratic structure, he knew that he most likely would be invited to its headquarters as soon as his breakthrough to the Master Realm became well-known.


    It reminded him of the many other engagements andmitments he had in the Kandrian Empire. The past five years in the Beast Domain had made him almost forget the fact that he had a faction and administration of his own.


    He had the support of many powerful national and even international patrons, donors, and benefactors who had be stakeholders in his campaign for the throne.


    His eyes sharpened at the thought of his intentions bing known to all of them.


    It was a scary possibility.


    Yes, he was a royal prince and a high member of the Martial Union.


    Yes, he was now a Martial Master.


    But earning the ire of so many powerful entities was not a light consequence. Even for a Martial Master, this was a tremendous amount of pressure as many of his stakeholders had the caliber tomission and deploy Martial Masters.


    Some of them were so powerful that they could even have them on retainer as bodyguards, like Guildmaster Bradt.


    Earning all of their ire for essentially having deceived them the entire time while taking their money and making false promises was something that Rui would rather avoid happening.


    He could only hope that Master Reina and the Sloth Sage had kept their word and ensured that it was a secret.


    "Let''s go." Rui got up, feeling an urge to return to the Kandrian Empire as soon as possible. "I want to get out of the Beast Domain and return to the Human Domain as soon as possible."


    He had had enough of the savagery of the Beast Domain.


    He yearned for civilization.


    They soon departed as Rui sped through the Beast Domain at extraordinary speeds.


    If usage of the Martial Mind required corresponding rest, then it was best to make sure that he put this time to maximal good use, employing his Metabody System to elerate.


    Soon, they exited the Beast Domain.


    After nearly five years in the Beast Domain, Rui and Kane had finally left.


    As for the Divine Doctor, he had spent decades in the Beast Domain. This vessel of his had grown much older, which exined his desire to conduct a soul transference data save to ensure that the information of the memories of this particr vessel would not die along with it.


    The journey through the Human Domain was much longer, naturally.


    However, the dangers of the Human Domain were also far lower. While Rui and Kane had naturally grown eyes on the back of their heads, such levels of alertness weren''t necessary within the Human Domain.


    They passed through huts, settlements, viges, towns, and eventually nations as they went deeper and deeper into the Human Domain at extremely speeds.


    "Ah," the Divine Doctor interjected. "Drop me here¡ª"


    "No."


    Rui''s voice was chilling.


    "The very first thing you will do is heal my father. After that, you may conduct your soul transference ritual and do whatever you want. But you and your precious memories are going absolutely nowhere until my father is perfectly restored, glowing with health."


    "¡­huff," the Divine Doctor heaved a tired sigh.


    This was the original reason Rui had left for the Beast Domain in the first ce.


    After five years, he had gotten so close.


    Nothing was allowed to stand in his way.This belongs ? N?velDra/ma.Org.


    He was not willing to dy the healing of his father by even a second.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2023 Recognized Change

    Chapter 2023 Recognized Change


    As Rui surged towards the Kandrian Empire at top speed, his homesickness and nostalgia bubbled over.


    He hadn''t realized how much he longed to return to the Kandrian Empire. This content is ? N?velDrama.Org.


    He longed to put an end to all of this.


    He was sick and tired of living on a timeline.


    Pressure did indeed push him forward, but it took its toll and could be counter-productive when he didn''t need it. Now that he had broken through to the Master Realm, he needed time to consolidate the many massive gains he had made in the past five years.


    Additionally, as a person, he needed time to breathe.


    Time to think.


    He never got a chance to process many of the things that had happened. With less than four years to find the Divine Doctor, he postponed everything that didn''t directly contribute to his Martial Art or the goal of finding the Divine Doctor for after thetter waspleted.


    Now that he was almost there, it was almost surreal, and his paranoia surged.


    What if he hadn''t managed to make it in time?


    What if they were attacked by a random Martial Sage?


    What if the Divine Doctor died for some reason or the other before he could heal his father?


    They weren''t exactly the most rational concerns, but now that Rui had gotten this close to their goal, he couldn''t help but feel immense fear of everything that could go wrong at thest minute.


    He surged through the Panama Continent at extraordinary speeds, ignoring the conventional wisdom not to waste power during travel. Hecked the patience to spend weeks traveling at a low speed painstakingly.


    Much to his relief, they reached the Far eastern side of the Panama Continent without running into a hostile Martial Sage and without the Divine Doctor dying for inexplicable reasons.


    STEP


    Hended on a mountain peak.


    "The Kandrian Empire¡­" A whisper escaped Rui as he gazed at the distant fort walls that ran along the border of the nation.


    "Man, it''s been a while¡­" Kane murmured, turning to Rui. "How are we getting in?"


    Rui wordlessly pulled an amulet with the crest of the Kandrian Empire, pressing a button at the center.


    Kane frowned. "What''s that¡ª"


    Suddenly, his eyes closed as his body went limp.


    Simultaneously, even the Divine Doctor lost consciousness, threatening copse.


    RUMBLE


    Chills crawled up Rui''s spine as he experienced the extraordinary existence of a Martial Sage. It was all too familiar.


    All too familiar, yet just as ineffable as ever.


    It was as though the entire world prostrated before the might of the Sage Realm.


    It was as though all of heaven and earth bent under the sheer weight of such a colossal being.


    Everywhere they went, they became the center of the world.


    Nothing could ignore the magnitude of their suchness.


    Nothing was allowed to.


    Rui was no different.


    His gaze was fixed on the Martial Sage that had arrived before him.


    Yet, it was Sage Sayfeel who was unable to take his eyes off Rui.


    "Your Highness¡­" Pure bewilderment could be heard in his voice as his eyes widened with astonishment.


    Try as he might, he was unable to contain the shock that he experienced when he beheld Rui for the first time in three years.


    It was iprehensible.


    He didn''t understand.


    He didn''t understand how a thirty-two-year-old Martial Senior returned to the Kandrian Empire as a Martial Master three yearster. He was stunned, frozen, as his powerful gaze pinned Rui where he stood, trying toprehend how such a thing was possible.


    Yet, the truth eluded him.


    Breaking through to the Master Realm at such a young age was an unfathomable world-shattering aplishment that would undoubtedly rock the entire Martial World, yet he couldn''t even imagine how Rui broke through to such a high level of power from the very get-go.


    "It''s been a while, Your Sagehood," Rui bowed his head lightly, expressing the respect that a Martial Sage was worthy of.


    Yet the Martial Sage had not failed to miss the frost in Rui''s voice.


    Where there was warmth was a cold apathy.


    Where there was light was an empty void.


    "I''ve aplished what I set out for." Rui''s tone was stoic.


    Impassive.


    His eyes were dark.


    The Final Prince''s return triumphant from a voyage to heal the emperor and restore the Empire''s harmony was something that should have brought a smile to his face.


    Yet, when he beheld Rui, his eyes sharpened as his expression grew grave.


    "¡­You''ve changed," his tone was severe. "Your Highness."


    "¡­Be that as it may," Rui''s tone was calm. "I have seeded in what I set out to aplish."


    The air pricked.


    It tingled, growing more tense as the intensity of their gazes rose.


    "¡­I cannot help but wonder at what cost has your sesse." The Martial Sage closed his eyes. "Nheless, I must acknowledge your triumph. I was convinced you would fail. Yet, you have seeded against all odds, proving me wrong. I would like to offer congrattions and¡­"


    His tone grew more solemn. "¡­my condolences."


    Rui stared at the man wordlessly.


    His eyes were dark, his expression chilling. The high from his breakthrough and the ecstasy of testing his newfound power against the twelve Master-level beasts had worn off over the long journey back, returning him to his impassive self.


    Sage Sayfeel heaved a soft sigh, turning to the unconscious Divine Doctor as his eyes lit up with intrigue.


    "Is this¡­?"


    "The Divine Doctor." Rui''s tone was stoic. "Please be careful with your hypnosis; his mind and memories are priceless; it would not do for any damage toe to them."


    "Rest assured, I have been exceedingly cautious and limited, merely putting the doctor and the young master to sleep," Sage Sayfeel replied. "The secrecy of my identity is paramount. It cannot be divulged at any cost."


    His gaze returned to Rui. "Much has happened during your time away from the Kandrian Empire. However, for now, let us return to the Empire and finish what you set out for. Additionally, you have been using your Martial Mind for quite some time, and you will need some rest before you are ready to face the consequences of deceiving those who stood by you."


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2024 Rushed

    Chapter 2024 Rushed


    Rui''s expression grew grave at his words.


    They were ominous. Yet, he was also right. There were more important things at hand.


    "Let us return."


    WHOOSH


    The world shed away in a flurry of streaks as Sage Sayfeel warped them away at incredible speeds.


    Rui studied his technique with faint interest.


    As a Martial Master, he was able to glean far more than he ever had. He was altering the very fabric of space-time to propel them forward, but now Rui could see the exact principle of the technique.


    Much to his surprise, it was no different from a proposed form of space-time propulsion back on Earth. Rui wasn''t entirely sure how, but he warped space to push from behind and pull from the front by expanding andpressing space.


    It was the same principle as an Alcubierre warp drive.


    "Fascinating¡­" Rui''s voice grew more invigorated. STEP


    Their journey halted as Rui found himself in a familiar ce. It was the same royal medical wing of the royal pce where his father was being hospitalized. The room wasrge and extravagant with all kinds of medical artifacts and instruments all in ce for the sake of one patient.


    Rui beheld his father for the first time in five years.


    His worsened significantly.


    His hair had grown whiter.


    His body and face had grown skinnier and gaunter.


    His skin had taken a dark sickly tone.


    He was unrecognizable.


    The sight of him made Rui wince.


    Rui nced at the Divine Doctor, only to notice that Kane was missing.


    "I have transported the young master to a different room where he is resting," he remarked, donning a dark hood and a mask. "He is far from authorized to stand in the Emperor''s presence. As for the Divine Doctor¡­"


    Sage Sayfeel snapped his finger, releasing the man from his hypnosis while also suppressing his aura in its entirety. "I do not wish to dy the treatment and cure by even a single moment."


    He also did not care to inquire about the arrangements that Rui had undoubtedly made with the doctor at that moment.


    He didn''t care to inquire about how Rui had managed to earn his services at this point in time.


    Or how he even managed to find him.


    He rushed past all the talks and conversations with Rui that were undoubtedly due.


    He skipped formalities, officialities, protocols, and guidelines that were normally appropriate for an event of such importance and significance.All of them were secondary.


    They were secondary to the healing of the Emperor of Harmony.


    Once this was done, there was plenty of time to tackle the many issues that needed to be tackled.


    Until then, however, Sage Sayfeel had rushed them along to the medical room of the emperor unceremoniously, unwilling to dy the treatment and cure by even a microsecond.


    "You know¡­" the Divine Doctor remarked, waking up. "I wish you would warn me before hypnotizing me to sleep."


    He heaved a soft sigh as his eyes wandered about the medical room they were in. The many medical instruments and artifacts in ce were cutting-edge Kandrian esoteric technology. Many of them were connected to the Emperor of Harmony in one way or another, rying information about his health.


    Many were life-support systems in ce, designed to keep him alive for as long as possible.


    It was truly state-of-the-art technology.


    Yet, not even that was enough to impress the Divine Doctor.


    "Not bad, I suppose." the Divine Doctor''s tone was bored. "Still, elementary."


    His eyes shifted to Emperor Rael Di Kandria. "Hmmm¡­"


    "Can you heal him?" Sage Sayfeel''s voice was distorted by the mask that he had donned to hide his identity.


    Yet, he could not hide the concern that lurked in the depths of his voice.


    "Oh please, I could heal him even if he was on the brink of death," the Divine Doctor huffed indignantly. "In fact, perhaps we ought to let him rot for a few more months so that it actually bes just a little bit of a challenge for m¡ª"


    A horrifying amount of bloodlust converged on him from Sage Sayfeel and Rui.


    "¡ªOr I suppose I could just save myself the trouble and heal him here." He smoothly changed his words without so much as a twitch, his smile as frozen as ever. "Besides, I look forward to my remuneration."


    His eyes turned to Rui. A glint of insanity flickered in the depths of his eyes.


    The air tingled, growing taut with tension.


    It boiled under the peril that the man exuded.


    "I hope you have not forgotten our agreement. You are intelligent enough to understand exactly what I am capable of." Faint peril lingered in his tone. "Do not make an enemy of the Divine Doctor, little inheritor."


    Rui''s eyes sharpened. He had no intention of testing the man''s words. He would rather not discover what the man was capable of when he wanted to do harm.


    "¡­I do not intend to vite my end of the agreement, rest assured. Return my father to peak health, and I shall give you exactly what I promised."


    "Mmm¡­" The Divine Doctor''s gaze returned to the Emperor of Harmony. "¡­Then that is exactly what I shall do, I suppose," he remarked, walking over to the head of the bed that cradled the emperor. "You there, Martial Sage, you shall be my assistant, got it?" Content from N?velDr(a)ma.Org.


    Sage Sayfeel stiffened as the Divine Doctor instantly identified him as a Martial Sage despite the former concealing his aura as best as possible. "¡­Understood."


    As bad as the leak in highly ssified intelligence was, Sage Sayfeel was too desperate for the Emperor to be healed to bother making a fuss about it at this point in time.


    "Your Highness," Sage Sayfeel remarked, never once taking his eyes off the Divine Doctor. "You should get some rest; your Martial Mind has been active for quite some time. Additionally, you have journeyed a long time and havepleted the mission you have set out for. You have earned a long, deep rest. Leave the rest to me."


    Rui''s eyebrows furrowed. "I''m fine, I want to watch¡ª"


    "¡ªI''m afraid I must insist, Your Highness, for your own good," the Sage snapped his fingers. The world went dark, and Rui''s consciousness shut down as he fell asleep.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2025 Surreality

    Chapter 2025 Surreality


    ??When Rui woke up, he was unable to recall.


    He was unable to recall where he was.


    What he was doing.


    How he had arrived.


    For a moment, he simply nked out, staring at the white ceiling that greeted him the moment he woke up.


    And then it all came back in a flood.


    He had returned to the Kandrian Empire.


    He had sessfully returned home with the Divine Doctor and had delivered him before the slumbering Emperor of Harmony.


    He hadpleted his long-awaited goal.


    For a moment, he felt like he was still sleeping.


    Dreaming.


    It was surreal.


    Far too surreal.


    Yet, it soon settled once he became more aware.


    His attention turned to the ce he was in.


    An extravagant and ostentatious bedroom d with precious metals and stones that could be nowhere else except in the Royal Pce.


    Several maids and butlers bowed to him the moment he sat in his bed.


    "Greetings, Your Highness." The head maid greeted him with a deeply revering tone.


    He frowned. "How long has it been since I was asleep?"


    "It''s been about eight hours, Your Highness."


    He narrowed his eyes.


    Even though he had gone to sleep very shortly after he stopped the utility of his Martial Mind, he still essentially slept a good night''s worth of sleep.


    Of course, he had also umted a lot of normal mental and physical fatigue and exhaustion from traveling to the Kandrian Empire as fast as possible during the final stretch, which probably significantly inted the amount of rest that he needed to recuperate.


    Thankfully, it had been enough.


    "Your Highness, you have received a Royal missive addressed to you."


    The maid and butlers knelt on one knee as a scroll bearing the royal seal was presented to Rui by the head maid.


    It was indeed addressed to Rui.


    The sender was not mentioned, which most likely meant it was from Sage Sayfeel. His father had probably set up a system through which Sage Sayfeel could exercise authority without ever being exposed.


    It would exin how he was able to exercise authority over a national treasure such as the Topaz of Time to be used to find the Divine Doctor.


    He unfurled the scroll, reading the message.


    [With the royal authority bestowed unto the missive by the royal seal, Prince Rui Quarrier Ss Kandria has been summoned to the royal room of the royal medical wing of the Vargard Royal Pce.]


    He immediately got up, heading to the designated location in a hurry.


    After all, it was the ce where his father was being treated.


    As he strode through the Royal Pce, he couldn''t help but worry.


    His paranoia surged against his will.


    What if the Divine Doctor had failed?


    What if he had been lying about his ability to heal the Eternal Dream Disease?


    What if he hadn''t been lying but made a mistake and screwed up the process?


    His heart pounded against his ribcage, threatening to break out until he arrived at several Martial Master royal guards guarding the royal medical wing.


    They shook.


    They shook as their eyes widened.


    For a moment, they had be paralyzed.


    "¡­Your Highness¡­?" Pure and unadulterated shock emerged from them as they witnessed a Martial Master where there was supposed to be a Martial Senior.


    They didn''t understand.


    They didn''t understand how such a thing could happen.


    Yet, Rui had no intention of exining himself.


    It wasn''t important at the moment.


    "Authorization." He showed them the scroll, walking past them without so much as missing a beat.


    Layer afteryer of intense security in ce specifically to protect the Emperor erupted with shock and bewilderment when they detected a Master-level aura from the Final Prince.Exclusive ? content by N(?)ve/l/Drama.Org.


    Yet, Rui paid them no mind.


    His attention was fixed on one and only one thing.


    STEP


    He arrived at the massive gates that opened to the royal ICU at the core of the medical wing specifically designed for his father.


    CLACK


    The door opened, and Rui''s senses surged, eager and anxious to see what had be of his father.


    The difference was almost dizzying.


    Where there was once a decrepit old man who awaited death was a vibrant and vigorous man with glowing skin and golden hair.


    His flesh had rejuvenated tremendously, returning to what it looked like in his prime. His hair resembled strands of the sunlight, almost luminous in how golden they were. His expression was peaceful and serene.


    Harmonious as befitting him.


    For the first time in a long time, the Emperor of Harmony truly rested.


    "Haha¡­Hahaha¡­" A weakugh escaped Rui as he beheld the miracle that he had persevered through countless tribtions to achieve.


    He almost couldn''t believe what he was seeing.


    It was difficult to parse.


    Difficult to truly fathom the state of reality as it was.


    Yet, as of this moment, he lived in a world where the Emperor of Harmony lived.


    A world where the Emperor of Harmony had finally been healed of an illness that once meant certain death.


    A world where Rui would not need to ascend the throne.


    "Thank you, Your Highness."


    Sage Sayfeel''s voice broke him out of his reverie.


    His voice was saturated with gratitude and joy.


    He bowed deeply. "Thank you. I, Sage Sayfeel, will never forget this for as long as I live. Never before have I been this grateful to have been proven wrong. I thank the universe for being aligned in a way that caused me to ept the hope that you had delivered to me."


    Rui closed his eyes, shaking his head. "Raise your head, Your Sagehood; it is unbing of someone of your stature and being to bow before a Martial Master."


    "I beg to differ, Your Highness," Sage Sayfeel denied Rui''s words with a smile on his face. "I''m sure the emperor will agree with me when he wakes up in a few days, ording to the Divine Doctor. While getting rid of the physical symptoms after the surgery was a trivial aplishment, the mental symptoms could not be hastened. This is good, after all¡­"


    His tone grew more serious.


    The air grew tense.


    It tingled under the severity of the Martial Sage.


    "¡­We have many, many things to talk about."


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2026 Muck

    Chapter 2026 Muck


    The sense of urgency had diminished once the Divine Doctor had healed the Emperor of Harmony. No longer was there an extraordinarily pressing event that took precedence over all others.


    Of course, just because the Divine Doctor made it look easy didn''t mean that it wasn''t an extraordinarily significant event.


    It undoubtedly was.


    After all, healing the Eternal Dream Disease was why his father sought out the Divine Doctor in the first ce. Finding the Divine Doctor was why his father had ever, in turn, sought the Ss n, which in turn had led to Rui''s birth.


    Then Rui had gone full circle by seeding where his father had failed by not only finding the Divine Doctor to heal him but also tying him to the Kandrian Empire. A feat that no nation-state of any caliber had ever seeded inpleting.


    The problem of the Eternal Dream Disease was one that had stretched for decades, and Rui himself had dealt with its consequences pretty much ever since he returned to Kandrian after killing Chairman Deacon.


    A whopping eight yearster, the problem had finally been solved.


    Yet, before Rui could even rx¡ª


    "¡­We have many, many things to talk about."


    Rui narrowed his eyes. "¡­Earlier, you said that I would have to face the consequences of my deception. I didn''t inquire into it at the time since healing my father took precedence, but the only reason I would have to face the consequences of it is if¡­"


    The Martial Sage nodded with severity. "I won''t beat around the bush. Your deception hase to light."


    His words were heavy.


    Rui''s expression crumpled with graveness as he felt chills crawling across his skin.


    This was one of the worst-case scenarios.


    Had he still been a Martial Senior, he would have been terrified for his life.


    One did not make an enemy of countless powerful national and international entities and make it away unscathed.


    The only reason he wasn''t horrified by the possibility of the Quarrier Orphanage being harmed was because his grandmother had sworn no harm would befall them. She was more than powerful enough to protect his family from across the nation, especially with her mighty prophetic prowess.


    He couldn''t imagine someone dispatching a Martial Sage to harm his family in vengeance, so not even his paranoia was extended to his family.


    Nheless, this was far from ideal.


    "¡­How bad?"


    Rui''s voice was reduced to a whisper.


    "The Martial Union," Sage Sayfeel calmly informed him. "The Martial Masters and Sages. When confronted with the decision to reveal your deceit to the world in what would be one of thergest political scandals in all of East Panama, they decided to keep it a secret."


    Rui''s dark eyes widened with faint surprise. "¡­Just the Martial Union? Nobody else?"


    "That is correct, as far as I am aware," Sage Sayfeel remarked. "Surprisingly, the information hasn''t leaked further. I suspect the Martial Sages of the union have exerted the sum totality of their collective power, authority, and influence in keeping the scandal under wraps. Surprisingly, they have done a good job of keeping it hidden. As far as I can tell, not even the Beggar''s Sect or the Shadow Guild has learned of it." Content from N?velDr(a)ma.Org.


    Rui sharpened his eyes. "The Beggar''s Sect knows. Or rather, the Beggar Sage knows, but we agreed that all information exchanged in that meeting was strictly confidential. The man may be an utter madman like the Divine Doctor, but the Beggar''s Sect has cultivated absolute credibility and trustworthiness over many centuries; he will not destroy all of that just to sell the information regarding this scandal."


    It was one of the reasons that Rui didn''t panic, even though the man instantly saw through him during their brief conversation. "How did it happen?" Rui asked, narrowing his eyes. "Did Reina make a mistake? That''s hard to imagine. She''s a world-ss assassin. Even amongst high-grade Martial Masters, there probably is almost no one who is as good at covert operations as she is."


    Sage Sayfeel shook his head. "As far as I can tell, she yed her role perfectly. Frankly, if not for the fact that I knew beforehand, I do not think I would have noticed. Your agreements with the Sloth Sage were perfect, and she continued engaging with the Sloth Sage and your grandmother as liaisons for the Sage Council so that she never had toe face-to-face with any of them who weren''t in on it. Unfortunately¡­"


    He closed his eyes. "¡­It''s often the most unexpected things that can throw even the most meticulous ns off the tracks. She yed her role perfectly, but not even she could have expected to be ambushed out of the blue one day by Sage Arrancar demanding to know where his son was."


    Rui stared at the Martial Sage, thoroughly speechless.


    "Sage Arrancar may be the most powerful Martial Artist of the Kandrian Empire, but he isn''t the most refined man. He almost killed her when he discovered an imposter Martial Master in the ce of his son''s best friend. If it wasn''t for the Sloth Sage and Matriarch Nephi intervening at the right moment, she almost certainly would have died."


    "¡­Seriously?" Rui felt an enormous migraineing up as he put his head in his hands. "¡­You''re telling me the Sage Arrancar, a father who never gave Kane the attention, love, and familial bond for thirty-three years. You''re telling me that man manually searched for Kane himself?"


    "I''m afraid so," Sage Sayfeel calmly informed him. "It is indeed remarkably atypical of the Martial Sage to pay much attention to his blood, but the Martial Sage has always been vtile and quite whimsical, making him difficult to predict."


    "¡­Damn." Rui cursed lightly despite his impassive temperament.


    It was frustrating that a nutjob like the Devil could throw all his meticulous ns for a toss. "¡­More importantly, the Martial Union knows." His dark eyes narrowed as he furiously considered his current circumstances. He needed to figure out the best way to handle the political muck he had been thrown in.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2027 Union Considerations

    Chapter 2027 Union Considerations


    "¡­What are their internal considerations like?" Rui''s tone, albeit impassive, grew more intense. The Martial Sage shook his head. "I''m afraid that I''m not privy to such knowledge. The Martial Union''s information security is extremely high. This is especially true for matters that only the Master and Sage councils are privy to. Their security is no less than that of the Royal Pce in that regard."


    Rui had expected about as much. Cracking these extremely high authorities within the Martial Union was patently impossible.


    His dark eyes narrowed as he considered the ramifications of the Martial Union, having learned of his deceit.


    "Considering they have not ousted you, Your Highness, perhaps you have nothing to worry about," Sage Sayfeel remarked.


    Rui shook his head. "They have powerful incentives to not oust me. The association between myself and the Martial Union is extremely high. If the world learns of my deceit, then they will catch heat even if they were truly uplicit. There are many other reasons as to why they would rather not divulge my deceit. They gain nothing from it from divulging it."


    Rui swiftly refuted the Martial Sage''s refutation, leaving him silent. It had been a gesture more than an actual possibility, but Rui''s political acumen and his personal, intimate understanding of the Martial Union allowed him to calmly judge the merit of Martial Sage''s words.


    It was not enough to make him feel particrly optimistic.


    No one liked to be deceived.


    The Martial Union had just realized that Rui had deceived them for five years since the revtions of his princehood. They would not look too kindly on Rui for doing that. Especially when the deception was not light, and they had invested a lot into him into the belief that he was genuinely striving for the throne.


    To find that it had all been for naught was not a pleasant realization. Anybody would be quite angry if they realized they had been the victim of deceit that negated the fruits of theirbor.


    In this case, the Martial Union would not obtain a Martial Artist Emperor.


    While Rui had made clear that he would not unfairly favor the Martial Union as Emperor, there were implicit expectations. This content is ? N?velDrama.Org.


    They would definitely be deeply displeased to know that Rui never acted in good faith.


    However, Rui did not forget that he had built a lot of goodwill with the Martial Union over the years. So much so that he could be considered the tinum boy of the Martial Union in many ways. Although he decided not to be an internal member of the Martial Union, they truly did consider him to be among their highly important members. He had made vital contributions to the betterment of the Martial Artists of the Kandrian Empire, such as the Hungry Pain contribution and the voidlet techniques that would eventually increase the breakthrough rate of the Master Realm.


    That gave him leeway.


    At the very least, he could be certain that they weren''t hostile to him. As in, they wouldn''t act to harm his interests.


    That didn''t mean he was in the clear.


    "Hmmm¡­" Rui narrowed his eyes. "I''ll need to handle this delicately."


    "¡­What do you intend to do, Your Highness?"


    "That''s quite simple, really." Rui closed his eyes. "Apologize and give them a make-up present."


    Sage Sayfeel stared at him. "¡­Well, I suppose there''s more to that than meets the eye."


    "Besides¡­" Rui remarked stoically. "¡­I''m the youngest Martial Master in history. That alone is partially making for my deceit in a sense. Ultimately, the Martial Union is an organization of, by, and for Martial Artists. I cannot imagine how their valuation of me will skyrocket when they realize that I have broken through to the Master Realm before exiting my physical prime."


    He nced at his arms, feeling the youthful vigor within his body.


    Because he broke through to the Senior Realm at the age of twenty-three, he managed to slow down his aging greatly, even well before entering his prime. He may have been thirty-seven in the present moment, but his body biologically was barely twenty-six years old. The fact that he was already a Martial Master this young meant that he wouldn''t stagnate due to a lowered growth rate andck of vitality.


    It meant that his potential had only risen rather than declined.


    It was extremely counter-intuitive, but his value to the Martial Union had risen exponentially above what it had ever been in the past.


    That alone was a sort of reparation for his deceit, in a way.


    It was no different from telling them, ''I was right in my decision, for it has increased my value to you.''


    However, that wasn''t the only n that Rui''s powerful mind had conjured up in the span of a few seconds. He had other trump cards that he had never divulged to the Martial Union or to anybody because of the sheer severity of their implications. Still, now he had finally obtained the power needed to protect himself from the consequences of revealing them.


    "¡­Alright, I think I have it under control." Rui nodded impassively as he gathered his thoughts. "¡­What else? What else have I missed?"


    "The number of Martial Artists adopting your voidlet techniques has risen exponentially over the span of five years since you created them," Sage Sayfeel calmly informed him. "In the sessive years since your departure, the Master-level council has voted to give your voidlet techniques more funding."


    Rui''s dark eyes lit up with faint surprise. "¡­That''s a lot sooner than I had ever expected to happen. How did it happen that quickly?"


    "It is because thought techniques in the lower Realms are extremely scarce," Sage Sayfeel stated. "Systems of thought are only developed by mature Martial Seniors who are ready to begin seriously working towards the Master Realm. Thus, they are usually hyper-individualized to suit their Martial Art. You are perhaps the first Martial Artist in history who has gained such extraordinary power and mastery of thought so as to specifically hyper-generalize small systems of thoughts for the three primary fields ofbat."


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2028 Adaptive Evolution

    <h4>Chapter 2028 Adaptive Evolution</h4>


    This had been one of the reasons that Headmaster Aronian had paid a lot of attention to Rui at a young age. While the Squire teachers were unaware of Rui''s capacity and application of thought or its significance in the grand scheme of Martial Art, Headmaster Aronian had understood how incredible it was.


    "With a thought technique that is of affordable difficulty with enough of a value proposition to be worth it, avable for all Realms, your voidlet techniques have be the sole gateway to gaining some proficiency with thoughtful decision-making," Sage Sayfeel informed Rui appreciatively. "Martial Artists across the Lower Realms have begun mastering it. Ironically enough, the ones to master it the most are Apprentices and Seniors, with Squires being the least to master it."


    "Seniors, too¡­?" Rui grew immersed in thought. "And the rate of progress to the Master Realm?"


    "It is difficult to gauge general broad progress," Sage Sayfeel noted. "However, the Martial Union has gained an additional Martial Master after a grade-fourteen Martial Senior broke through a few years after mastering your offensive voidlet technique and then customizing it and individualizing it to her needs with the progress that she had already made prior. She, too, credits you as a reason for her breakthrough to the Master Realm."


    Sage Sayfeel didn''t miss Rui''s demeanor thawing and lighting up whenever the topics came to Martial Art and his Martial Art. While his nominal demeanor had grown impassive and frosty, it appeared that Martial Art returned him to who he once was.


    He had no idea what had happened to the Void Prince for such a drastic change in his temperament and demeanor to ur, but nheless, there was hope that things would return to normal.


    "So it does indeed appear to increase the probability of breakthrough to the Master Realm, then," Rui remarked, engrossed in the matter. "That''s good to know; perhaps I ought to expand the number for voidlet techniques wider. My only issue is that a lot of my systems of thoughte to the service of Adaptive Evolution. That could potentially disrupt the Martial Paths of other Martial Artists."


    Sage Sayfeel stirred at Rui''s words. "Your Highness, you mean to say that they haven''t told you?"


    Rui frowned. "Told me what¡­?"


    "¡­I suppose it makes sense," Sage Sayfeel remarked out loud. "You were only a Martial Senior back then. But now that you have broken through to the Master Realm at an absurdly young age, I suppose I can take the liberty to inform you."


    "Inform me about¡­?" Rui furrowed his eyebrows.


    "About the fact that Martial Minds embody the principle Adaptive Evolution." Sage Sayfeel''s tone was certain. "Including my own."


    Rui''s widened with surprise. "What?!"


    "I can understand why ites as a shock, but think about it, Your Highness," Sage Sayfeel calmly stated. "The Martial Mind is about optimizing decisioning. However, is it possible to optimize decisioning without taking into ount one''s opponent and circumstances?"


    Rui had never given deep consideration as to what other Martial Masters'' Martial Minds looked like. He had assumed that they hade up with their own ways to empower thought without considering opponents or circumstances as relevant parameters.


    "The only way for conscious, systematic thought to empower a strike via decision is to ensure that the decision for the timing and cement of the strike yields optimal energy. This simply cannot be done without adapting your decisioning from opponent to opponent to yield the maximal output for each opponent. In other words, adaptive evolution is the normative progression for Martial Minds," Sage Sayfeel said knowingly. "While you might have thought that your mysterious Squire evolution breakthrough method was more valuable than the voidlet techniques, that is because you were unaware of the contextual importance of adaptive evolution for the Master Realm. In other words, you are more valuable than you think you are."


    At that moment, Rui couldn''t help but recall Master Zentra''s words to him a long time ago.


    We need you. More than you realize.


    At the time, Rui had waved it off as simply an expression of their regard for him. But now he wondered if this was what Master Zentra was referring to.


    A Martial Artist whose Martial Path was the very essence of what Martial Minds were. That same Martial Artist also happened to possess an unfathomable affinity. Assuming Rui lived up to his potential, the Martial union must have assumed that Rui''s Martial Mind and progress in the domain of thought could potentially revolutionize systems of thought. This content is ? N?velDrama.Org.


    "And as I stand before you, I can see that we were right to believe that." Sage Sayfeel''s voice grew more intense. "In all my time, I have never ever seen a Martial Mind as absurdly powerful as yours. If other Martial Minds were dim stars in the night sky, then yours may as well be the very Sun itself. As far as thought goes, I can say with extraordinary confidence that you are the very pinnacle of what Martial Art has to offer. No Master and no Sage canpare to the sheer depth and power of thought that you possess. If you are able to impart even a minute fraction of your thought to others, you will change the Martialndscape forever."


    The weight of his words hung in the air.


    It pressed down on the atmosphere, making it heavy.


    Rui stared at the Martial Sage, stunned, speechless. "¡­I didn''t know that my Martial Path had such significance in the Master Realm. I feel rather silly noting to this conclusion prior."


    "Don''t be, Your Highness." Sage Sayfeel shook his head lightly. "This is a conclusion that the Martial Union and other organizations in the world havee to after studying and researching Martial Minds for centuries now. It is not something that can be derived in the mind a priori, even for you."


    Still, Rui was stunned to know that his Martial Path had secretly been of such interest to the Martial Union this entire time.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2029 Bigger Than Him

    Chapter 2029 Bigger Than Him


    Although it was true that he had absolutely no exposure to other Martial Minds to possibly arrive at the conclusion himself, it made sense when he thought about it. Still, he had qualms about the grandeur that Sage Sayfeel subscribed to him.


    Although it was ttering, it also vaguely felt like Sage Sayfeel was giving him a bit too much credit.


    "¡­Your statement regarding Martial Minds embodying Adaptive Evolution is only true if we define Adaptive Evolution extremely broadly." Rui realized. "It works only if you broadly define Adaptive Evolution, in the context of Martial Minds, as any thought processes that change one''s decision-making based on information about one''s opponent to maximize the probability of victory against said opponent."


    "That is indeed true." Sage Sayfeel confirmed.


    "¡­If that''s the case, then such a broad conceptualization of ''Adaptive Evolution'' applies to many, many things far beyond me," Rui insisted. "It epasses all Martial Minds and perhaps even all Martial Art to a minor degree by such a broad definition. My Martial Mind and Martial Art are just a minute iota of everything that would fall under such a broad definition."


    "That is also true." Sage Sayfeel calmly concurred.


    "¡­Then it means that Martial Minds do not embody my Martial Path, specifically. My Martial Mind is merely one of many that also embody Adaptive Evolution."


    It was a bit of a humbling realization.


    Approval shed in Sage Sayfeel''s eyes. "You possess wisdom beyond your years. I had expected my revtion to inte your ego and sense of self-importance, but you correctly understood that your Martial Art does not epass Adaptive Evolution, but Adaptive Evolution epasses your Martial Art. It epasses your Martial Mind among all others. It is bigger than you."


    Rui nodded. "¡­I don''te across Adaptive Evolution all that much on a day-to-day basis. Though there have been instances where I have been truly blown out of the water by entities that embodied elements of it far better than I could ever hope to."


    Rui recalled the incredible abyssfeeder that had once nearly broken him through to the Senior Realm. As far as physical adaptive evolution went, there was most likely nothing that could ever even hold a candle to it.


    Another reason he didn''t let it get to his head was learning the truth about his ''past life.'' The fact that he had inherited rather than been made him feel more grateful for what he had.


    Sage Sayfeel gazed at him knowingly. "However, do not sell yourself short. While it is true that Adaptive Evolution is farrger than you, that can be said for all Martial Paths. Physicality Evolution as a concept is also simrly farrger than the Gatekeeper, but that doesn''t change the fact that he is far and away the single greatest embodiment of that concept in his Martial Path."


    Rui could not deny that. Countless Martial Artists elevated their physicality, but that didn''t take away the fact that nobody could hold even a candle to the shocking physical prowess of the Gatekeeper.


    "Sir Armstrong has, over his long life, made countless contributions to the evolution of the Martial Body," Sage Sayfeel informed Rui with aposed tone. "Without him, Martial Bodies would be noticeably weaker. There is great reason to believe that you can be an even greater force for the evolution of the Martial Mind. That is the reason that your affinity for thought and your Martial Path being Adaptive Evolution has made the Martial Union and, frankly, all Martial Artists of the Upper Realms of the Empire enthusiastic for your breakthrough to the Master Realm even more."


    Rui huffed indignantly. "That''s ttering but also pressuring. High expectations are annoying to deal with, so I pursue my Martial path for myself."


    "I, too, was concerned about the excessive expectations of the Martial Union for your breakthrough to the Master Realm, however¡­" Sage Sayfeel''s eyes twinkled. "¡­After witnessing the sheer weight of your Martial Mind, I suspect that their expectations weren''t high enough."


    Rui shrugged. "That works in my favor for the appeasement, I suppose."


    He didn''t mind using their expectations against them to cancel out any disapproval or resentment they had.


    "¡­Anyways, I have gotten a grasp of the intel leak crisis. It won''t be easy, but I can handle it," Rui remarked. "Once my father wakes up, there won''t be any conversation to be had about me ascending the throne. Speaking of that, where is the man responsible for this?"


    Rui had certainly not failed to notice that the Divine Doctor was not in the room.


    "He said he had fulfilled his part of the agreement in healing His Majesty and would return after dealing with matters of vital importance to fulfill the agreements that the two of you had forged," Sage Sayfeel calmly remarked, not betraying any curiosity in his voice. "He also said, ''Don''t open it till I return.''"


    Thetter meant nothing to Sage Sayfeel, but Rui was hardly surprised.


    "¡­About as much as I''d expect." Rui''s eyes turned to the small little containment that contained the alien lifeform specimen.


    Over their travels, the Divine Doctor had very meticulously periodically kept the thing alive in the contracted space. Because it was outside of the Gaian Tree of Life, Rui was unable to treat it ordingly.


    The Divine Doctor most certainly knew this.


    The fact that he had left meant that it was in no danger of dying, for whatever reasons, so long as Rui did not do something stupid with it.


    CLICK


    Rui handed over the marble-sized container to Sage Sayfeel.


    "¡­Your Highness?"


    "It''spensation for consuming the Topaz of Time," Rui calmly informed him. "It''s an even more valuable treasure if I had to hazard a guess."


    Sage Sayfeel''s eyebrow rose. "That is¡­hard to conceive." Content from N?velDr(a)ma.Org.


    "As the doctor said," Rui turned, walking away from the medical room. "Don''t open it till he returns. Kandria has gained a new super treasure that may very well change its fate."


    Sage Sayfeel found it difficult to believe that Rui had somehow stumbled upon a Transcendent treasure in the Beast Domain, yet, as a Martial Master and an extraordinarily intelligent person, his word held deep credibility.


    The Martial Sage''s gaze returned to Rui''s retreating figure.


    He made a decision.


    "Your Highness."


    STEP


    Rui paused at the door, turning around to face the Martial Sage impassively. -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2030 Untethered

    Chapter 2030 Untethered


    The Martial Sage simply stared at Rui silently, earning a frown from him.


    "With all due respect, Your Sagehood, I am extremely busy."


    Sage Sayfeel closed his eyes. "¡­I have onest thing to inform you."


    His tone grew graver.


    "I didn''t think it was appropriate for me to be the one to inform you, but¡­"


    A severity apanied his gaze.


    "¡­it''s more important than all the aforementioned matters."


    Rui raised an eyebrow, puzzled. "¡­and just what might it be¡ª"


    "¡ªYour mother."


    Sage Sayfeel cut into his question.


    Rui''s eyes sharpened. "Which one?"


    "¡­Your adoptive mother, Lashara."


    "¡­I find it concerning that you felt the need to bring her up at all." The endless darkness within Rui''s eyes stirred. "What about my mother?"


    Sage Sayfeel''s eyes closed. "She passed awa¡ª"


    ¡ªA horrifying tsunami of bloodlust and peril flooded the Martial Sage, stunning him silent.


    It was pure, unadulterated darkness.


    "I''ll kill you." Rui''s voice resonated with the emotional maelstrom within.


    Yet, Sage Sayfeel''s eyes only grew mncholic.


    For all he could see was pain.


    "¡­My condolences, Your Highness."


    "No¡­" His voice shook. "¡­I don''t believe it." This content is ? N?velDrama.Org.


    His eyes burned with defiance.


    "I don''t believe it."


    BADUMP!


    Rui''s Martial Heart and Martial Mind zed into full power even as his eyes red with defiance.


    WHOOSH!!!


    In an instant, he shed away from the medical ICU room that held the Emperor of Harmony. He shot away from the Royal Pce, surging through Kandria as he moved at extraordinary speeds, the likes of which he had never reached before, pushing his body to the very limit.


    His flesh churned under the sheer stress he subjected it to, while muscles burned as his joints creaked under the sheer speed at which Rui moved at.


    Yet, the pain in his body could not even begin topare to the pain that he felt in his heart.


    His expression crumpled with grief and defiance.


    His heart refused to ept it.


    Yet, his mind knew that Sage Sayfeel would never utter a falsehood about such a thing.


    A single remark escaped him.


    "No."


    It was as though he was trying to will reality to hismand.


    WHOOSH!!!


    With each step, he surged faster and faster.


    With each step, he brought about greater pain.


    For the first time since bing a Martial Artist, he cursed the heightened perception of time that came with it.


    Each passing second was an eternity.


    An eternity of hell.


    Yet, merely a minuteter, he had arrived at the Quarrier Orphanage.


    Unfortunately, the two Martial Masters in ce for protection did not take kindly to the rapid arrival of what could only be interpreted as a hostile Martial Master.


    Yet, the two of them were frozen stiff with shock when they saw the identity of said hostile Martial Master.


    "¡­Your Highness¡­" They stared at him with unadulterated shock, emerging from their spots as they surged into the air to confirm what they were seeing. "You are a¡­"


    "Move." Rui''s voice was cold.


    STEP


    He arrived at the orphanage.


    In an instant, his powerful senses scoured the entire ce.


    It had grownrger in the past three years, almost bing its own little vige as a new generation of young adults had also moved out of the orphanage. While many of them had moved to the town of Hajin, many had also chosen to take the steps of those before him, setting up small huts and little homes in and around the orphanage along the road that led to it.


    His mother had never had children of her own yet had given birth to a small vige.


    Yet, he didn''t care for that at the moment.


    His eyes were only fixed on the original Quarrier orphanage house.


    They scoured its depths.


    He spotted many familiar faces, young and old.


    Yet, he couldn''t find his mother.


    Try as he might, his powerful senses couldn''t find her.


    That didn''t mean others didn''t find him standing outside the orphanage.


    "Look, it''s Uncle Rui!"


    "Woah, he''s finally back!"


    The adolescents noticed him first, growing more excited. CLACK


    "Rui¡­?" Alice opened the front door with an amazed smile. "You''ve truly returned¡­!"


    She was visibly older.


    Her energy had declined.


    Previously, she would dive at him and hug him while yelling out his name with excitement. Yet her youth had long gone over the years. Before him was an older woman who was in her forties.


    A single whisper escaped Rui.


    "Alice¡­" "Wee bac¡ª"


    "Where''s mom?"


    Her expression copsed with mncholy. "Oh Rui¡­"


    She pulled him in for a hug.


    He stood there, frozen. Alice wordlessly embraced him not letting go.


    "Alice."


    Rui''s tone was soft.


    "¡­She passed awayst year."


    The air boiled tumultuously as the truth gripped his heart in a vice. No amount of denial could ever undo it. A single whisper escaped Rui.


    "I should have never left."


    Had he not left, he would have been by her side the entire time.


    Had he not left, he would have been able to speak with her, with the woman who had raised him her as his mother.


    "No."


    Alice''s voice was uncharacteristically firm.


    "She was most proud of you. Proud of you for forging your own path. She would have never wanted you to throw away your life just to bring herfort."


    A soft, bittersweet smile cracked at the edge of Rui''s frozen demeanor. "¡­That''s true."


    Perhaps Martial Art wasn''t the only thing that could evoke emotions of old from him.


    Yet, even then, his frosty demeanor had not gone unnoticed. "Rui¡­?" Alice released as she peered into his eyes, getting a proper close look at him for the first time in a long time. She frowned wordlessly.


    She was unable to articte herself well, yet, the more she studied him the more rmed she grew.


    "What happened¡­?" She asked as she gazed into his dark, frosty eyes.


    Rui simply stared at her impassively.


    Within his eyes stirred an endless darkness.


    A void.


    A new reality had set in.


    One where he was no longer tethered by a mother''s love.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2031 Home

    <h4>Chapter 2031 Home</h4>


    In many ways, Lashara had been a rock in his life. No matter how crazy his life as a Martial Artist had gotten, he could always return home to the unconditional love of his mother.


    It was a tether to his emotions.


    He had yearned to fall back into the loving embrace of his mother after the mental turmoil he had experienced inwardly recently.


    The loss of emotional feedback.


    The loss of his identity.


    Who could help him if not for his mother?


    Who could ease his mind if not for his mother?


    Yet, fate cruelly denied him this simplefort.


    No longer could he find any emotional respite in his mother''s embrace.


    No longer could he soothe himself in her unconditional love.


    Inwardly, he felt as though he had lost more than just a person he had loved his entife life.


    He had lost a haven in the Quarrier Orphanage.


    While he had deep love for many of the caretakers that had raised him and had been raised alongside him, he saw them as responsibilities he ought to protect.


    And while he certainly felt most protective of Lashara, a part of him felt protected by her in ineffable ways.


    Now, she was no more.


    Suddenly, all the power he had gathered felt useless.


    He felt helpless.


    What was the point of being a mighty Martial Master if he couldn''t even be there for his mother? What was the point of voyaging for an absent father when it deprived him to be there for his mother?


    Chills crawled across his skin as the truth began settling into his bones.


    The world grew a few degrees colder.


    It grew darker.


    "Rui...?"


    Alice gazed at him with rm.


    Each moment she gazed at him, she grew increasingly more anxious and scared as she bega?noticing the countless discrepancies in the man she had known her entire life.


    Gone was the light in his eyes.


    She could only see an endless darkness in its ce.


    Gone was the warmth in his demeanor.


    A frosty chill had overtaken him.


    A single question escaped him.


    "How...?"


    It was a whisper.


    "How did she go?"


    "..." A bittersweet smile emerged on her face. "With a smile on her face surrounded by whose who loved her. The family that she had created."


    Tears welled up in Rui''s eyes even as a fleeting mncholic smile cracked at the edge of his mouth before disappearing.


    "Why...?" His tone grew dark. "...Why did she go."


    His words were a question, yet his tone was an expression.


    An expression of grief.


    Alice''s smile grew bitter.


    "People pass away, Rui. She passed on without any regrets. She lived life to the fullest for those she loved and was blessed with a life full of love. Rather than remembering her death, I remember her life. All those times she would read us bedtime stories when we were children, all the meals she cooked for us, all the times we fell asleep in her arms..."


    Her smile grew warm as a symphony positive memories flooded both of them. They lightened the vice that gripped Rui''s heart even as his eyes softened.


    "...We may not have her anymore, but we have the family that she created." Alice tugged at his arm.


    Rui''s gaze turned to the many members of the Quarrier Family that hade out of their homes, eager to speak to him.


    Many of them were new young children who had been epted into the orphanage rtively recently. These children gazed at Rui reverent excitement, having heard of many tales of the orphan-turned-prince extraordinary Martial Artist.


    Many of them were older adolescents whom Rui had spent some time training and ying with before he departed for the Beast Domain.


    Many of them were fully mature adults like Max and Mana who had progressed well in the Squire Realm.


    Many of them were far older, in their forties and fifties. Julian, Farion, Nina, and Myra. These were among the first generation of the Quarrier Orphanage who had helped run the orphanage when he was still a child.


    It was heartwarming. This content is ? N?velDrama.Org.


    Yet, deep within him, it was heartbreaking.


    He was cursed to watching all of them grow old and dying.


    Having broken through to the Senior Realm a while back with plenty of life-prolonging potions at his disposal, he was doomed to watchingg all his loved ones die one after another.


    The extraordinary senses born from his Martial Mind allowed him to almost see their remaining lifespan.


    It made his love painful.


    It made his love a ticking timebomb.


    Would he go through this very pain when all the people he hade to love in this life died before him one by one?


    Would he have to go through this very heartbreak time after time after time?


    He knew the truth.


    He had always known the truth from the very moment he learned that Martial Artists lived longer.


    He knew that he would outlive them.


    But to simply be cognizant of a fact was entirely different from experiencing a truth.


    He had always been cognizant of the fact that he would outlive his loved ones.


    Yet, today, he truly experienced that truth to the depths of his heart.


    A part of him wanted to run away from the orphanage and never return. Perhaps he could run away from reality. Yet, the very thought made him hate himself for it.


    It was a cowardly desire, one he would never yield to.


    If he had limited time with them, then, that was all the more reason to treasure it as much as he could.


    It was precious.


    And one day, when it was gone, he would curse himself for not treasuring it while he could.


    "Come in," Alice smiled warmly. "It''s been a while since you''vee home."


    A soft fleeting smile cracked at the edge of his mouth.


    Almost invisible.


    Yet, there, nheless.


    "...It''s been a while but..." His eyes softened. "...I''vee back home."


    He walked in to the crowd of family waiting for him, determined not to regret.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2032 Tales Over Dinner

    2032 Tales Over Dinner


    "Can you think of a better ce?" Julian closed his eyes. "She created our home. She deserves to rest here."


    No amount of warmth and empathy that the orphanage showered him with could wash away the awkwardness and guilt that he felt at that moment.


    Rui couldn''t agree more.


    The Quarrier Orphanage had already mourned for a year. They had, for better or worse, begun entering the phase where they moved on from this tragedy.


    He simply stared at the statue of his mother with a mncholic expression, grieving silently and inwardly.


    Rui did not want to selfishly undo all of their progress and pull all of them back into mourning.


    "You have changed, but you are still kind."


    Rui snorted impassively. "Kind, I am not."


    People had a right to heal from the loss of loved ones.


    Julian smiled. "Maybe, maybe not. I''m just sharing with you what I see."


    That was why he smiled.


    Rui continued staring at his mother''s statue. "She would have liked to see me onest time. Kindness would be not denying her that."


    He smiled like he meant it.


    Like he wasn''t hurting from the loss of his mother.


    "¡­Not at the cost of pulling you away from your path," Julian lightly remarked. "¡­She was always sensitive about that, refusing to be a hurdle to her children''s path to sess. She would have felt horrible if you could not set out to do what you wanted with your life."


    Like it didn''t burn him from the inside out.


    "You''ve grown taller, Kellen."


    "Ah, congrattions on your third baby!"


    Rui could not deny that. "Good job with your breakthrough to the Apprentice Realm, Lea."


    Still, it didn''t alleviate his guilt.


    While he wanted nothing more than to mourn for the loss of his mother, she would not have approved if he paid more attention to the dead than to the living who sought him.


    "¡­What happened?" Rui asked, directing a pointed gaze at Julian.


    "¡­She experienced a heart attack," Julian replied. "Sometimes, I cannot help but wonder if she knew. She¡­made sure she could give everyone her love onest time before passing away¡­"


    "Rui."


    Julian''s voice tugged at his attention.


    "If she did know, she probably would do just that." A fleeting, bittersweet smile cracked at the edge of his mouth. "Julian, it''s been three years." Rui wore a smile. "How have you been?"


    "I concur," Julian closed his eyes. "Outliving her purpose and her loved ones was her greatest fear."


    He didn''t respond, simply staring at Rui knowingly.


    PAT


    Rui simply stared at her statue in silence.


    He put a hand on Rui''s shoulder, dragging him across the orphanage to the center of the garden in the backyard.


    "¡­Let''s go inside; it''s time for dinner," Julian remarked.


    "¡­I''d rather stay here for some time."


    Rui''s eyes lit up as he came across a beautiful memorial at the center of a circle of flowers featuring a marble statue of Lashara with a gravestone by her feet.


    Julian stared at him knowingly.


    [Beloved mother to many]


    "When was thest time you ate food?"


    Rui''s eyes softened as he gazed at a statue in her likeness. "¡­It''s almost like she''s still here." Contentt bel0ngs to N0ve/lDra/ma.O(r)g!


    Rui''s eyes grew hazy as he considered the question.


    It had been a while.


    "A Martial Artist has extremely high nutrition requirements," Julian told him. "Mother wouldn''t approve if you didn''t ensure you got all the food you needed. Mayra has prepared high-density food for Mana and Max; why don''t you join us?"


    The mention of Lashara''s disapproval stirred him.


    "¡­You''re right," he relented. Besides, he had resolved to make as much of his living family as possible while they were there. He didn''t want to feel the regret that he felt today.


    He joined the family at the giant table,rge enough to amodate them all.


    "Big brother Rui!" Max chimed up, unable to control himself. "Is it just me, or have you broken into the Master Realm?!"


    A soft smile cracked at the edge of Rui''s mouth. "I have."


    "Hahahaha! I knew it! You''re the best, big brother!"


    "¡­I can''t believe you broke through to the Master Realm at such a young age, elder brother," Mana murmured, stunned. "Congrattions on your breakthrough!"


    Theymen followed suit, congratting Rui happily one after another, yet they didn''t quite understand the sheer significance of what breaking through to the Master realm at his age meant. They were simply happy that he seemed to be doing well on his chosen path.


    Julian stared at Rui with shock. "¡­You broke through to the Master Realm?"


    Julian was unable to urately intuit Rui''s Martial Artist Realm based on his aura, unlike Max and Mana, whose senses were far greater.


    The revtion that Rui was a Martial Master hit him like a train.


    He couldn''t believe that his younger brother had shattered the record for the youngest breakthrough to the master Realm by half!


    "You¡­" Julian stared at him dumbfounded. "Just what have you been up to?"


    Suddenly, many gazes and pointed looks pinned themselves on Rui. Rui was known to have the most fascinating and fantastical stories that sounded like they came straight out of a fairy tale. The adolescents were especially eager to learn the things that Rui had gone through.


    "Well¡­" He put his food down. "If you must know, I was in the Beast Domain."


    Their eyes lit up with intrigue. The Beast Domain.


    Arge region at the center of the Human Domain uninhabited by human civilization. To the average person, it was a mysterious realm filled with all kinds of fantasies and miracles. "And in reality, it is exactly that."


    Rui firmly confirmed their image of the Beast Domain.


    "What kind of things did you see?!"


    "Dragons! Did you run into any dragons?!"


    "Did you bring back any souvenirs?"


    Rui patiently answered all their questions as he took the liberty to narrate a highly doctored version of his story of his time in the Beast Domain, devoid of any strategic intelligence, of course.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2033 A Candid Conversation

    2033 A Candid Conversation


    Watching the orphanage gobble up his tales of the Beast Domain with ecstatic excitement was cathartic to Rui. It was because he could directly feel their joy.


    A part of his Martial Mind was always active.


    His Martial Mind was particrly extraordinarily powerful, allowing him to perceive the depth of happiness that his words brought about.


    It was a warm feeling.


    It wasn''t just the children, he could sense that his presence brought immense happiness to the many members of the Quarrier Orphanage. These were people who had grown up under Lashara alongside him.


    While he wasn''t entirelyfortable with the ability to peer into people''s minds passively outside of a conscious decision to do so inbat, at least he had the security that his presence in the Quarrier Orphanage was a positive one.


    He patiently entertained everybody, making an effort to engage with everybody one after another throughout dinner and past.


    "Where''s Xanarn?" Rui realized she was missing. "Ah¡­" Alice smiled awkwardly. "She said that she would be returning to Ajanta Ind to meet her friends from long ago. She told me to wish you the best of luck and said she would visit from time to time."


    "¡­I see."


    The reason she hade here was to protect the Quarrier Orphanage in addition to the protection that hemissioned for them. Then, the threat was eliminated, and Rui gained immense political power, able tomission Martial Masters to protect the orphanage and a Martial Sage eventually.


    He understood why she left.


    Her Martial Drive had always been centered around using her power to protect something.


    She was purposeless and unable to do that here.


    On top of that, Rui had rejected her and her offer to pursue a family with her. While she had built bonds with the Quarrier Orphanage, she too needed something to strive for.


    "¡­Shame," Rui murmured. "Tsk tsk, you let a good fish slip, big brother."


    POW!


    A wry smile cracked at the edge of Rui''s mouth, disappearing as fast as it came.


    It wasn''t long before dinner finished, and the adults and children dispersed. They each had their own lives and workload and couldn''t spend their time entertaining Rui.


    Instead, he found himself sitting opposite to Julian.


    "You have gotten yourself into quite the mess this time." Julian stared at him intently.


    His words were heavy.


    Rui''s eyebrow rose. "You know¡­?"


    "I know the ''you'' that has been in the Kandrian Empire this entire time, unbeknownst to the rest of the orphanage, was not really you," Julian remarked. "Confirmed by your stories in the Beast Domain. It is good you never allowed that fake doppelganger toe to the orphanage. I would never forgive you if you sent him in your ce to mother''s funeral."


    Julian''s words were firm.


    "I would never stoop that low." Rui shook his head. "The doppelganger was never meant to deceive the orphanage; it was meant to deceive everybody else."


    Julian nodded knowingly, having already deduced that Rui had never intended to deceive the orphanage. After all, if he had intended to deceive the orphanage, he would have never told them that he was leaving and tried to have the doppelganger take his ce.


    Yet, he told them the truth and ensured that Master Reina never met the orphanage.


    "In fact, you were never supposed to know that the fake me was in the Kandrian Empire since I had intended her to remain away from the public eye."


    "I have my sources," Julian remarked. "I am the head of a research division, so I was able to find out that you were in the Kandrian Empire and attending an address from Prince Rui Quarrier Ss Kandria to the Ministry of Research and Development." Content from N?velDr(a)ma.Org.


    "Wait, what?" Rui''s eyes widened. "She did what?"


    "The fake Rui gave a speech about how he was going to increase the budget of the ministry by sixteen percent."


    Rui stared at Julian, stunned, speechless, as chills crawled up his spine. Now, he was worried about exactly what Master Reina had been up to this entire time.


    "Just listening to him talk, I could deduce that he wasn''t you." Julian smiled wryly. "His mannerisms were indistinguishable from yours, but the content of his speech was not of the caliber I would have expected from you. From that, I could deduce that, for some reason, your goal was to fool everyone into believing that you had never left the Kandrian Empire. However, the fact that you came here abruptly and are freely talking about your escapades in the Beast Domain allows me to infer that your deception has already failed."


    14:04


    Rui gazed at Julian appreciatively.


    "Just listening to him talk, I could deduce that he wasn''t you." Julian smiled wryly. "His mannerisms were indistinguishable from yours, but the content of his speech was not of the caliber I would have expected from you. From that, I could deduce that, for some reason, your goal was to fool everyone into believing that you had never left the Kandrian Empire. However, the fact that you came here abruptly and are freely talking about your escapades in the Beast Domain allows me to infer that your deception has already failed."


    Rui gazed at Julian appreciatively.


    This was why he enjoyed talking to his adoptive older brother.


    It was a treat to talk to someone who was highly intelligent and also not utterly insane like the Divine Doctor was.


    "You''ve hit the mark." Rui shook his head. "I am in some trouble, unfortunately. The only reason that the Martial Union hasn''t stormed to me yet is most likely as a bare minimum courtesy to not invade my home, especially during a time of mourning for me. They have that much respect for me regardless of what misgivings they have of me."


    "If your problems are solely limited to the Martial Union, then¡­" Julian''s eyes narrowed in thought. "¡­it''s still salvageable."


    Yet, the severity of his tone could not be missed.


    "You have angered an organization that is effectively a Sage-level quasi-powerhouse in and of itself."


    The seriousness of the situation could not be understated.


    Rui''s expression darkened. "It won''t be easy but¡­I think I have the capital needed to quell them. I would be quaking in my boots if not for the extremely good rtionship that I have built with the union."


    Julian stared at Rui with intense scrutiny. "If you believe so¡­then I have faith in your judgment, but do not think the union will simply forget your deceit and wee you with open arms."


    The air grew heavier.


    "You will have to answer to the Martial Union, Rui."


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2034 Split In Two

    <h4>Chapter 2034 Split In Two</h4>


    The Master Council did not convene lightly.


    After all, the hundred-and-eleven Martial Masters of the Martial Union represented a titanic amount of Martial power. This was enough Martial capital to wipe out countless nation-states from existence and wreak havoc across human civilization. Contentt bel0ngs to N0ve/lDra/ma.O(r)g!


    Even when they weren''tpleting operations or missions at the behest of the Martial Union, their very presence was an asset.


    A deterrence.


    They were needed to deter the many potential enemies and hostile predators that Kandria had made simply by virtue of being one of the powerhouses of East Panama.


    If not for them, Kandria would experience war and invasions.


    Without them, the other three Sage-level powerhouses of East Panama would smell blood in the water and tear down the upstart powerhouse.


    That was why the hundred-and-eleven Martial Masters of the Martial Union rarely concentrated in a single ce.


    To gather was no different from leaving entire regions of the vast territory of the Kandrian Empire vacant and undefended. It left such a void in the distribution of power that the Martial Union, ording to protocol, informed the Kandrian Border Patrol Force and the Kandrian Security Agency well ahead of time of such gatherings so the two forces could be prepared for the voids in security that the Martial Masters would be leaving behind.


    That was why the Master Council did not convene lightly, and whenever they did, they did so partially and often through projections.


    Only the most important and significant matters could make each and every single one of the hundred and eleven Martial Masters converge to the Martial Union headquarters in the Town of Vargard.


    The return of Prince Rui Quarrier Ss Kandria was one such matter.


    Within the depths of the Vargard headquarters of the Martial Union gathered each and every single Martial Master.


    Not a single one of them dared to miss this historic gathering.


    Not even the fiscal meetings of the Martial Union had a hundred-percent participation rate.


    Yet, this particr meeting did.


    Among the many distinguished Martial Masters that were seated across the extravagantmittee hall were Master Ceeran, Headmaster Aronian, Master Zentra, Master Vericita, and many others.


    Even the inscrutable Master Gurren had deigned to partake in his very first Master Council meeting.


    It only added even more weight to the solemn asion.


    "Masters of the Martial Union."


    A powerful feminine voice drew their attention.


    Each of them directed their gaze towards the voice that beckoned their attention.


    They found themselves gazing at Master Sera Graven.


    The Harbinger.


    The very most powerful Martial Master in the Kandrian Empire.


    The sole grade-thirty Martial Master in the entire nation and one of three in all of East Panama.


    Her very existence was one that brought about fear at all those who gazed at her.


    "Today, we gather for a long-anticipated event of extreme importance and significance." Her eyes sharpened. "You will have to pardon me in my dismissal of formalities. We are faced with decisions that cannot be dyed."


    Her tone was unyielding.


    "The Void Prince has returned."


    The air grew heavy.


    "...Not only has he returned from his escapades into the Beast Domain, he has returned a true Martial Master."


    Her words shook them.


    It shook them physically.


    Mentally.


    Emotionally.


    The sheer magnitude of what she had just informed them could not be overstated.


    At that moment, the air boiled tumultuously, churning under the weight of the emotional turmoil of more than a hundred Martial Masters.


    "IMPOSSIBLE!" One Martial Master bellowed with an aghast expression. "How can he have broken through to the Master Realm at the age of thirty-five?! It''s impossible!"


    "On what basis do you assert your words?!" Another eximed with disbelief. "How can you expect us to believe such nonsense?!"


    "Do not insult us, Master Sera. Breaking through to the Master Realm before his first century? Come now."


    "It is especially absurd considering the Martial Union has already firmly established that the Void Prince''s journey to the Master Realm will be more difficult than any other Martial Senior to have ever existed."


    A myriad of voices began erupting from the Master Council, expressing disbelief and incredulity at the Harbinger''s words.


    Yet, a single voice cleaved through all of them.


    "Hah, what a bunch of losers you lot are."


    Master Ceeran grinned vindictively as he raised his voice loud enough to ensure everybody heard him.


    In just a moment, he drew not only their attention but also their ire.


    "How dare a junior Martial Master insult this cou¡ª"


    "¡ªShut up!" Master Ceeran red at them. "You have no idea who you''re talking about. If it was anybody else, I, too, would be unable to believe it. But if it''s His Highness¡­If it''s Rui¡­"


    A grin lit up on his face.


    "If it''s him, it''s possible. Anything is possible."


    For a moment, there was a stunned silence at the gall of the young Martial Master.


    Yet, his words were not unsupported.


    "While I condemn Master Ceeran for his uncouth conduct, I am inclined to agree with his words."


    The calm words from the elder Headmaster Aronian gave pause to the many Martial Masters who had reflexively denied the notion of the Void Prince having broken through to the Master Realm.


    "Might I add¡­" He continued with an erudite tone. "¡­that while it is true that His Highness will have faced a much more difficult path to the Master Realm, I would like to remind this council that His Highness began cultivating thought in his Martial Art at a much younger age. In fact, in hindsight, I suspect he had a nascent system of thought from before he joined my Martial Academy."


    His words, intended to calm them down, merely added more fuel to the fire.


    "How can that be possible?!"


    Yet, there were more.


    "I do not doubt the unprecedented and supernatural affinity for thought that the Void Prince has," Master Vericita sternly dered.


    "The arrogant boy has the capital to reach the Master Realm faster than anybody, arrogant as he is," Master Gurren begrudgingly chimed in.


    "I am inclined to agree that things that are ordinarily impossible are well within the realm of possibility when ites to His Highness." Theposed voice of Master Zentra echoed through the hall.


    The Master Council had been split in two.


    Those that believed it was possible and those that didn''t.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2035 Revisions

    Chapter 2035 Revisions


    The number of Martial Masters who simply could not ept the truth that the Void Prince had broken through to the Master Realm at the age of thirty-five was higher than I would expect. Their disbelief halted the progress of the meeting from the very moment itmenced.


    Forget reconsidering their approach to the revtion of his breakthrough to the Master Realm, they were unable to ept the fact that he was indeed a Martial Master.


    It was irrational.


    Any amount of critical thinking would have illuminated the fact that the Martial Union would not call for the Master Council if it weren''t certain about the reason for doing so.


    Yet, despite that, many were irrationally vehement in their denial of the truth.


    There was a simple reason for their incredulity.


    What did it say about them if a young thirty-five-year-old Martial Artist reached the Master Realm in a tiny fraction of the time they did?


    What did it say about them if he reached the Master Realm faster than they could have ever dreamed of doing so?


    What did it say about them if he did this despite facing far greater difficulties?


    Just what had they done with their life if all their multi-century aplishments had been replicated within multiple decades by this unfathomable prodigy?


    They would rather it wasn''t true.


    Unfortunately, they didn''t get to decide.


    "The im that Prince Rui Quarrier Ss Kandria is a Martial Master is not fiction."


    Master Sera''s voice cut through all the chatter from the Master Council.


    Her dark eyes narrowed, turning to one particr Martial Master in the crowd.


    "Master Gilbert Ferik, can you please share your recent experiences running into His Highness at the Quarrier Orphanage."


    The Master Council turned their attention to the mentioned Martial Master with intent eyes. This was the same Martial Master who had been instated for the protection of the Quarrier Orphanage by the Martial Union.


    "I¡­was performing my duty today as I normally did," he began. "When, all of a sudden, I sensed a truly potent Master-level aura surging towards the Quarrier Orphanage at extremely high speeds. Yet, when I went to confront the unauthorized neer ording to protocol, I found myself staring at nobody else but the Void Prince himself."


    His expression grew severe as he clenched his fists.


    "That''s not all¡­" he continued. "He wasn''t just a Martial Master. His Martial Mind¡­it was unlike anything I have ever felt in this entire world. I did not know that a mind could possibly be that powerful¡­!"


    The man found himself choked, speechless, as he struggled to find the words to describe the weight of Rui''s Martial Mind.


    He was unable to.


    Yet his anecdote had been enough to convince most Martial Masters of the veracity of the ims regarding the Void Prince''s breakthrough to the Master Realm.


    Most of them grew engrossed in thought at the man''s words, pondering about the shocking implications that they led to.


    Yet, not everybody was entirely on board.


    "¡­His testimony means nothing!" One elderly Martial Master gritted his teeth. "The Void Prince is known to be able to fake auras an entire Realm above him through his extraordinary mastery of the Mind Mask technique!" Exclusive ? content by N(?)ve/l/Drama.Org.


    Master Gilbert Ferik''s eyes red with anger, turning to the protesting Martial Master. "Do not insult me! No Martial Senior could possibly fool my senses, the senses of a Martial Master, with that technique!"


    Unfortunately for the recalcitrant elderly Master, this was undeniable. Martial Masters had senses that gave them deep insights into the minds of other beings. While the Mind Mask was enough to fool Martial Artists of the Lower Realm, the same most certainly could not be said about Martial Masters.


    "Master Belmanel."


    The Harbinger''s perilous words addressed the elderly Martial Master with a chilling tone.


    He shuddered momentarily as he felt an inkling of the wrath of the Harbinger building up within her.


    "We have verified this im through other means as well, including but not limited to confirmation from the second Martial Master of the Royal Family posted at the Quarrier Orphanage, long-range sensory Martial Artists detecting His Highness'' aura and independently arriving at the conclusion of his breakthrough to the Master Realm." Her voice was cold. "It is not disputable. The Martial Union is not ipetent."


    The elderly Martial Master shut up, frozen stiff, where he sat.


    He didn''t want to give the Harbinger a reason to be pissed off at him.


    "¡­I understand; it appears that I have been severely mistaken."


    A bitter expression appeared on his face.


    "Then, without further ado, let us consider the revisions to our original approach to handling the Martial Union''s response to the Void Prince''s deceit of the Martial Union," she calmly dered. "Might I remind you all that our previous resolution into this matter was to ensure that our rtionship with the Void Prince would not deteriorate while also ensuring that he fully repaid the Martial Union for three counts of major fraud against the Martial Union. We had previously decided to offer him a settlement that would involve him conceding each and every single technique, principle, system of thought, and any other Martial development of any kind that he had ever engaged in, to the Martial Union while also demanding that he be a member of the internal corps and fall under our chain ofmand."


    The Martial Union had previously not wanted to turn Rui into a hostile entity against them, yet, at the same time, they couldn''t have overlooked such major fraud against them. Gaining billions of gold worth of investment and donations under intentional and knowingly false premises and ims was textbook fraud. The Martial Union was well within their right to persecute him by themselves under the provisions of the Martial Judiciary Delegation Act of the Martial Covenant ratified by Emperor Rael Di Kandria in the year one hundred and four.


    However, going for this aggressive and hard-headed route was something that the Martial Union was extremely reluctant to do.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2036 Proposals

    Chapter 2036 Proposals


    They did not want to destroy their rtionship with a golden goose like Rui and had far too much goodwill for him from a brilliant rtionship prior. And while they were certainly pissed about his deceit, he had never acted maliciously against them and had merely sought to do what was necessary to fix everything and pursue his Martial Path as a Martial Artist.


    That was something that, as Martial Artists, they could respect and even begrudgingly admire.


    Additionally, there were extreme consequences to destroying their rtionship with him. He was no longer the lone Martial Artist without backing. He was a prince of the Royal Family and had developed his own faction that was extremely powerful.


    Pushing him away was pushing him to their enemies.


    It also meant pushing away the many contributions that Rui would have otherwise made to the Martial Union in the future.


    There were countless pros to not destroying their rtionship with him and countless cons to doing so.


    That was why the Martial Union had previously unanimously decided to go for the peacemaking-salvaging route. They would ensure that hemitted to reparations for the losses that he had caused to the Martial Union while also ensuring their rtionship with the Void Prince did not deteriorate.


    That was why the Martial Union had previously unanimously decided to go for the peacemaking-salvaging route. They would ensure that hemitted to reparations for the losses that he had caused to the Martial Union while also ensuring their rtionship with the Void Prince did not deteriorate.


    It was the objectively best option.


    They had previously arrived at the decision that they would have him reveal all his juicy Martial secrets while also having him instated into their internal corps as they had long dreamed of doing.


    "Unfortunately, the previous resolutions we had arrived at on the matter have all been voided."


    The Harbinger''s chilling voice dered.


    "The breakthrough of the Void Prince to the Master Realm is¡­unexpected, to say the least," Master Sera continued with aposed tone. "It throws all our ns out the window, I''m afraid. Our previous ns were based on the power differential between the Martial Union and the Void Prince, but now that he has be a Martial Master, we will be unable to demand nearly as much."


    In addition to being a prince and the sessor of the throne, he was now a Martial Master. He had essentiallye very close to the peak of powers in both the Martial and political worlds within Kandria. The amount of power and influence he would have rued was so high that it beggared the imagination.


    The Martial Union was set up for, by, and of Martial Artists. That meant that the stronger one was, the more immune they were to action within the framework of rules of the Martial Union.


    A Martial Master simply couldn''t be persecuted very easily. Content from N?velDr(a)ma.Org.


    It meant that they had lost their fundamental leverage, which served as thepelling force to make Ruipensate for his deceit and the losses he caused the Martial Union.


    That wasn''t the only matter to be considered.


    "Now that he has reached the Master Realm." The Harbinger closed her eyes. "¡­His ability to contribute to the Martial Union had undoubtedly skyrocketed. As a Martial Master who has mastered Adaptive Evolution, one of the fundamental principles that Martial Minds embody, the value that he is able to offer to us is extremely high. Thus, a simple question presents itself to us¡­"


    Her eyes opened. "Do we want to pursue reparations?"


    It was a serious question, even if it sounded like the answer was obvious.


    In some ways, the skyrocketing value of the Void Prince after he broke through to the Master Realm was enoughpensation for the losses he had caused them. After all, he would undoubtedly empower Martial Art in his domain of specialty just as the Gatekeeper had done over the years.


    "I believe that we should strongly chastise him but not take action against him." Master Ceeran firmly voiced his opinion. "While it is true that he has lied to all of us, deceived all of us, and caused the union many losses for a false investment, he has the power to make up for all of it and more. Ultimately, gold is merely gold. The Martial Union is not an investment firm or a finance guild. We are an organization of Martial Art. Contributions to Martial Art should outweigh the losses in gold. And nobody can contribute to Martial Art like Rui can."


    Many Martial Masters frowned at this suggestion. Not taking action after the Void Prince lied through his teeth and deceived them all while they invested in the false dream of a Martial Artist Emperor seemed far too easygoing. The many pro-Rui Martial Masters of the Martial Union were a bit more in line with Master Ceeran''s considerations, it seemed. "While I think Master Ceeran is a bit too light on His Highness, I am more or less in agreement with the sentiment of his words," Master Zentra calmly voiced his opinion. "I would propose a penalty system where we have his highness remunerate all our losses in the form of contributions. Having him make powerful contributions for free until all our losses are covered."


    Many Martial Masters stirred at this suggestion, considering the Surgeon''s suggestions. It seemed quite sensible and was a good bnce between not deteriorating their rtionship with the prince while also not letting him off the hook easily.


    "That''s too little!" One elderly Martial Master strongly insisted. "We cannot allow for there to be such a light punishment for deceiving us! This will send a message to all Martial Masters. If we do not punish him for his deceit, then we will essentially be announcing to all Martial Masters that betraying the Martial Union and causing us many losses is perfectly tolerable as long as one is of value. You will start a rat race of Martial Masters pushing the line and testing the limits of how far they can go with deceiving the union!"


    Many of the firmly pro-Rui members of the council frowned at his words. Unfortunately, it was not easy for them to deny them. It was true that the way the Master Council handled this major event would set precedence for the future. That was why they needed to handle it with the utmost care.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2037 So Be It

    Chapter 2037 So Be It


    ??Many were in favor of a stricter penalty, much to the dismay of the pro-Rui faction.


    "I am firmly in agreement with Master Herel." Another elderly Martial Master remarked. "I think that, in addition to Master Ceeran''s suggestion, we should firmly secure joining the internal corpse of the Martial Union under our chain ofmand."


    While some of the disgruntled Martial Masters of the Martial Union were more in favor of that, the pro-Rui faction vehemently opposed it.


    "That''s not different from demanding his servitude." Master Vericita''s elderly voice stormed with power. "Forcing a Martial Master to join the internal corpse that wemand is deeply humiliating."


    "Has he not humiliated us when he lied through his teeth and yed us like clowns?!" Master Herel''s eyes zed with rage. "Never before have I felt as humiliated as when I realized the prince I had spoken to for three years was the notorious and infamous Silent Shadow, who yed me for a fool for four years straight!"


    Unfortunately, this was not a singr or even fringe opinion. Many Martial Masters who were not personally friends with Rui but had still had a good opinion and high hopes for him to ascend the throne were deeply angered when they realized all their efforts never meant anything.


    It wasn''t easy to forgive such deep exploitative deceit.


    Only those martial artists who had a personal rtionship and rapport with him and had been endeared to him over the years were able to understand why he did what he did and forgive him.


    Yet, some of the rest, in addition to their resentment of him, were also driven by a bit of jealousy. Not only did the Void Prince y them for fools, but then he magically breaks through to the Master Realm and returns an extraordinary Martial Artist who shattered the record for the youngest Martial Master?


    It was too much.


    It was far too much for them to tolerate.


    While most of the Master Council was mixed and on the fence on the matter, the pro-Rui and the anti-Rui sections continued to fight against each other throughout the meeting, reaching a deadlock that did not yield in either direction.


    "Enough."


    The Harbinger''s voice cut through the bickering in one fell swoop.


    The weight of dozens of Martial Masters'' voices simply did notpare to the gravitas of the sole grade-thirty Martial Master.


    "It has be entirely clear to me that this Master Council is unable toe to a consensus."


    The Master Council quieted down after a lengthy session of bickering finally came to an end.


    "On one hand, we have a section that advocates for no more than a scolding, while on the other hand, we have a section that advocates for coerced servitude. These are rather far extremes that will never be able to see eye to eye on this matter. Discourse has proven useless in this regard."This content is ? N?velDrama.Org.


    Nobody disagreed with this statement, it was an empirical fact that they were getting nowhere through talk.


    "In the first ce, this discourse is something that would not normally happen," Master Sera continued. "Under normal circumstances, we would be able to rely on our powerful analytics department to provide us with robust probabilistic projections and extraptions of the consequences of the various ns that we have discussed. They would have given us an objective and scientific understanding of what n would lead to what oue. But unfortunately, we are unable to rely on anybody outside of this council at the moment."


    Rui deceiving the entire national and international politicalndscape for four years straight would go down as thergest political scandal ever in all of East Panama. It would harm Kandria, the Martial Union, and everybody involved in ineffable ways with dire consequences.


    The Master Council was too paranoid about the Beggar''s Sect or the Shadow Guild finding out, thus they could not trust even their own analytics department due to the magnitude of the importance of such a secret.


    That was why they could only decide and act amongst themselves.


    "And we are unable to decide and act amongst ourselves, as all of you have proven," the Harbinger coldly remarked. "But rest assured, I have a proposition. One that could solve all our problems."


    A cold smile emerged on her face, giving chills to all the Martial Masters present.


    The gesture chilled the air.


    It grew icy.


    "We are not diplomats, nor statesmen, norwyers."


    Her voice grew even colder.


    "We are Martial Artists."


    Her smile grew more ferocious.


    "We ought to dispute our disputes with Martial Art, not words."


    The eyes of the many Martial Masters lit up with interest.


    They understood what she was getting at.


    And where she was going with this.


    "I propose a duel and a wager." Her dark eyes twinkled with peril. "Should he win, he will have earned the gentle n that Master Ceeran proposed."


    Master Ceeran gulped. "¡­And should he lose?"


    Master Sera''s eerie smile grew wider. "Should he lose, he will have no choice but to adhere to Master Herel''s harsh penalties."


    A deep silence upied the Master Council of the Martial Union.


    Regardless of how one felt about Rui, each and every single one of them was attracted to this idea.


    They were Martial Artists.


    One didn''t need to be a Martial Supremacist to be attracted to the idea of Martial merit deciding one''s fate.


    If he had cultivated enough Martial power to pry victory, he would be able to secure the best fate for himself.


    If he had been remiss in pursuing his Martial Path, then he would be unable to prevent the worst fate.


    It was brutally Martialocratic.


    Seconds passed as neither the pro-Rui faction nor the anti-Rui faction raised any objections to the powerful suggestion of the Harbinger. Raising an objection to this was no different from admitting defeat as Martial Artists, in a sense.


    "All in favor?" Master Seramenced an informal vote on the spot.


    Each and every single hand rose in the air.


    An icy smile emerged on her face.


    "So be it."


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2038 Sought Clarity

    Chapter 2038 Sought rity


    Rui and Julian had a frank conversation for the first time in three years. While he gave a doctored version of his story to the others, he was able to be more frank with his elder brother.


    "The Divine Doctor¡­?" His eyes widened with shock. "The mythical prodigious genius who is said to have cured death?"


    Rui nodded, not correcting his mistake.


    The truth about the soul transference ritual was something he could not divulge if he wanted to maintain a good rtionship with the three immortal sages who created it.


    "Incredible¡­" he whispered with awe. "To think that not only was he real, but you somehow managed to find him in the Beast Domain. What was he even doing there?"


    Rui shook his head, heaving a sigh. "Long story, it''s not for me to divulge, either. However, you''re a researcher who dabbles across multiple fields, including but not limited Martial Art and esoteric science. I''m sure the Divine Doctor can be of great interest and use to you should you be able to work alongside him."


    Julian''s eyes lit with interest. "That would be the kind of opportunity that arises once in a lifetime."


    A fleeting smile cracked at the edge of Rui''s mouth. "I can probably give you a chance to have that opportunity. Here, in Kandria."


    Julian stared at Rui in amazement. "You managed to get him to agree to settling in the Kandrian Empire?"


    "That''s right." Rui nodded. "Although, I cannot force him to work with you specifically, as long as you are the best, you will be able to get a chance to work with him."


    Julian nodded absentmindedly, engrossed in thought. "Still¡­to think that you managed to bring the Divine Doctor back to Kandria to heal His Majesty. Maybe you can get him to heal your mind if psychology is within his specialty."


    Julian had been shocked when he learned of what Rui had subjected himself to in the Garden of Salvation. "To think that you experienced such a fantastical adventure in the Beast Domain¡­" He shook his head. "You''re one of a kind, Rui."


    A wry smile momentarily cracked at the edge of Rui''s mouth. "You haven''t even heard the best and worst of it."


    He abstained from telling him about the dungeon or alien flora lifeform.


    Those were far too important to be divulged to a civilian without any security clearance for them.


    "Anyways¡­" Rui got up from his seat.


    "Leaving so soon?" "¡­I have many important and pressing matters to attend to, I''m afraid." "I suppose that''s true." Julian closed his eyes. "The others have already gone to sleep, so go on and take care of everything you need to. Good luck¡­"


    Rui nodded.


    WHOOSH


    In an instant, he already found himself surging away from the Quarrier Orphanage at an incredibly high speed.


    His eyes narrowed.


    It was indeed true that he had many orders of business to attend to, but they were not equally important.


    The Martial Union.


    The alien flora lifeform.


    The Elder Tree Pact.


    The Divine Doctor agreements.


    The Rui Faction and administration.


    His various stakeholders, benefactors, and patrons.


    Master Reina''s mischief.


    The return of the Emperor of Harmony.


    These were undoubtedly important.


    "But my Martial Art¡­My Martial Path is more important." Contentt bel0ngs to N0ve/lDra/ma.O(r)g!


    He was a Martial Master.


    His breakthrough into the Master Realm was one of the greatest moments of his life and one that had permanently seared itself into his memories.


    "But it''s in the past." His eyes narrowed. "I need to know what is needed to pursue my Martial Path in the future."


    Project Water was more important to him than all of the aforementioned matters.


    He needed rity regarding what the path forward as a Martial Master was.


    Only after he gained this rity and understanding could he be bothered with handling the rest of the important matters that awaited his attention.


    "If I go to the Martial Union now¡­" His expression soured momentarily. "I''ll have to spend a lot of time dealing with the consequences of my actions¡­"


    The Martial Union was certainly not going to be gracious enough to address all his questions and doubts regarding the path forward to higher Realms before the matter of his deceit.


    He didn''t want to get bogged down by lesser matters prior to gaining a satisfactory amount of understanding and rity regarding the most important thing in his life.


    That was why he didn''t move towards the Martial Union headquarters in the town of Vargard.


    No.


    He was traveling towards the Ivilia Forest in the South-West region of the Kandrian Empire. With the power of the Martial Heart and Martial Mind, he surged to his destination at astonishing speeds, reaching it in a matter of moments.


    He had already spotted his target.


    And they had spotted him.


    "Rui¡­?" The Martial Masters of the Ss n widened their eyes with shock as they slowly emerged from the forest with caution. The approach of a powerful Master-level aura had certainly not gone unnoticed. The Martial Masters of the Ss had moved to intercept the rapidly iing Martial Master before they got anywhere near the civilians of the Ss n, but they most certainly had not expected to run into the grandson of their matriarch!


    For a moment, they were stunned, frozen.


    They had always known that Rui was the youngest and most prodigious Martial Senior in existence.


    Yet, for all their prophetic power, they could never have foreseen that he would shatter the record for the youngest Martial Master by half!


    They each stared at him with bewilderment.


    "Y-You¡­" they choked, stammering. "How coul¡ª"


    "¡ªWhere is my grandmother?" Rui''s impassive voice cut through their astonishment apathetically.


    The frost in his voice jolted them out of their stupor.


    "¡­She is in her quarters at the center of the settlement." They carefully enunciated the Kandrian dialect, which they had only recently be fluent in.


    "Thank you." WHOOSH


    Rui breezed past them quicker than they realized, surging towards the Ss n in the distance to where his grandmother awaited him.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2039 Tilt to Psychopathy

    Chapter 2039 Tilt to Psychopathy


    His breakthrough was such an absurd anomaly that the Ss n stared at him with shock even before hended.


    Three years ago, he was an Awakened Bodyforger at the age of thirty-two.


    Today, he was a Mindforger.


    Such a thing was so beyond the realm of what was supposed to be possible that the various Martial Artists of the n could not even muster any words at him.


    They just stared at him like the cosmic anomaly that he was. Content from N?velDr(a)ma.Org.


    Rui''s gaze swept across the n with vague interest.


    In the past three years, the Ss n did well to settle in the Ilvilia Forest.


    Rui had been worried of some degree of ipatibility with an agrarian transition, but it appeared that the Ss n wasfortable with their current style.


    It turned out that life could be extremelyfortable when one didn''t need to constantly move to not be hunted by the world. Rui was d as it diminished any possibility of the n leaving the empire and returning to their nomadic lifestyle. Their members had grown too used to the benefits of civilization. While it was definitely a pleasant development, it was not why he hade here.


    His eyes were fixed on the giant hut at the center of Ss Vige.


    It could not hide the extraordinary power thaty within it.


    Despite her greatest efforts to hide her power, it pricked at her skin.


    It tingled at her nerves.


    It was as though heaven and earth bent under the sheer weight of her being.


    "You''ve changed more than I foresaw."


    A voice halted him the moment he arrived at the entrance, covered with strips fashioned from leaves.


    WHOOSH


    They swept aside as he found himself standing right before the matriarch of the Ss n.


    "Grandmother." he regarded her with respect. "Mmm¡­" She studied him with her powerful gaze. "¡­Indeed, more than I foresaw."


    Rui''s eyes sharpened. "¡­And just how much did you foresee?"


    She regarded him silently for a moment before closing her eyes. "¡­Come in, we have much to speak about."


    She ushered him in as she silently gathered a bunch leaves in a mortar, mashing them up patiently. "You''re a Martial Sage," Rui lightlymented as he observed her, flummoxed.


    She snorted. "I do not wish to wield the power to level nations for every small task. Appreciating the innate capabilities of human beings keeps me in touch with my humanity. No matter how far I have risen above the average human, I am, at my core, a human being."


    "¡­I would have thought that our Martial Bodies resembling humans indistinguishably was enough for that."


    She snorted. "In the Lower Realms, perhaps. But that is no longer enough in the Upper Realms. Martial Artists in the Upper Realms have risen so far beyond the human being in every dimension of evaluation that we may as well be gods."


    Rui''s gaze grew a bit sharper. "¡­That is rather arroga¡ª"


    "¡ªIs it?" Rui''s eyes widened as her voice grew more intense.


    "¡­It hasn''t been long since your breakthrough to the Master Realm," she remarked critically as she poured the mixture of churned leaves into a y mug of boiling water. "That is why the reality of its impacts on your rtionship with humanity has yet to hit you."


    Her eyes slowly turned to him. "The Martial Heart did not affect one''s rtionship with humanity, but the same cannot for the Martial Mind. You shall learn that it takes effort to¡­maintain your connection with the human being."


    Rui''s impassivity morphed into a frown. "What are you saying?"


    "They cannot hide their minds from you. Their emotions and mentalities are all but transparent to Martial Artists of the Upper Realms. Did you really think that this wouldn''t alter your rtionship with humanity?"


    Her words gave him chills.


    "Awareness of mind and the very natural ability to manipte it as a result¡­" She continued. "They are to us what infants are to their parents. No, they are even less. They may as well be livestock to us. That is why it takes effort such as this to hone one''s mind, otherwise¡­"


    She turned to him. "¡­It is very easy for a Martial Master to develop a godplex."


    Rui narrowed his eyes. "¡­Is that actuallymon?"


    "Quite."


    Her answer stunned him. "But most of the Martial Masters that I have spoken to have been remarkably humble and down-to-earth¡­"


    "That is because most of them have undergone some amount of psychological training, conditioning, and in some extreme cases, hypnosis and brainwashing after they broke through," She calmly informed. "Those that don''t go through this often end up bing the kind of Martial Masters that end up being hunted by the Panamic Martial Federation for crimes against humanity."


    Shock flickered in the depths of his impassive eyes. "¡­What?"


    "It is one of the many reasons that the Martial powerhouses of humanity came together to found the Panama Martial Federation," she continued, ignoring his incredulity. "You''re telling me it''s so bad that most of the friendly Martial Masters I know needed psychological treatment to not develop a mindset psychopathic to humanity?" Rui gazed at her with a stunned expression.


    The idea that Headmaster Aronian, Master Ceeran, Master Vericita, Master Zentra, Master Deivon, and many others had undergone some amount of psychological conditioning and treatment to adjust their mentalities to ensure that they didn''t develop some degree of psychopathy was deeply disturbing.


    "¡­It is a consequence of the human condition." Her tone was mncholic. "Social sorting is a sociological and psychological phenomenon deeply ingrained in the mind as a consequence of evolution. Thebination of social sorting with the ascended state of life in the Master Realm can lead to some truly horrible oues."


    "¡­But how?"


    She snorted as she nced at him with askance. "Look at the history of humanity, my grandchild. That should be an answer in and of itself. The list of things that groups of humans have done to other groups of humans that they perceived as ''other'' and ''lesser'' is long. Unfortunately, a simr thing generally tends to happen when Martial Masters break through to the Master Realm."


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2040 Reign of the Master Realm

    Chapter 2040 Reign of the Master Realm


    ??Rui stared at her with unadulterated surprise at the stunning revtions that his grandmother had shared with him.


    He had never considered the consequences of the Martial Mind on psychology.


    He had implicitly assumed that it didn''t have any major effects on the mind based on the empirical observations that Martial Masters weren''t particrly crazy or psychologically deviant.


    They had an erudite air about them, but that was all he had ever observed of them.


    Yet, now his grandmother shared with him the truth.


    "The Age of Martial Art has had many ups and downs," she calmly informed him. "Among the lows were things such as the Martial Revolution which consisted of civil wars across all of humanity. Another low was a brief period of barbarism when infants were subjected to horrors of all kinds in the hopes of producing powerful Martial Paths. And another lesser-known and downyed low was the Reign of the Master Realm."


    She turned to him. "When Martial Seniors broke through to the Master Realm, many of them experienced the very shift in psychology that I just borated on. At the time, the Master Realm was the peak of Martial Art; you can imagine just what happened."


    He felt chills as he thought about the kinds of horrors that unfolded.


    "Narcissists. Sociopaths and psychopaths. Egomaniacs." She snorted contemptuously. "While they pursued their Martial Paths and were still driven by their Martial Drives, the courses of actions that they might have previously considered to be immoral were less and less so. Humans became lesser beings both in body and mind. No different from how humans view livestock as lesser, inferior, and property with which they could as they pleased. The most unfortunate reality is that they were not technically wrong. It is because theparison cannot be refuted that it caused such a massive shift in psychology over time. The Reign of the Master Realm was one of the worst periods to ever be a human."


    "¡­I have not read about this in my study of history in the Age of Martial Art."


    "The Panamic Martial Federation and all its constituents have exerted a tremendous amount of political power over centuries to censor and even retcon history. But no matter what the doctored and falsified historical literature being pedaled around today says, we Martial Artists of that brief era remember it as clearly as yesterday."


    Her tone grew grave. "We keep it deep within ourselves as a reminder to never let that history recur."


    She turned to him with a powerful gaze. "Now that you have be a Martial Master, you are entitled to know this truth. Hone your mind and mentality, or pay the price. There are resources and manners in which you can condition your mind and will be avable to you for free in the Martial Union or the Panamic Martial Federation."


    Rui gazed at her impassively.


    "Do you think I''d go down that path?"


    She considered the question for a moment. "¡­It might shock you to believe, but no. Despite all the changes you have undergone, I do not believe you will ever go down that path. Not as long as the Quarrier Orphanage exists."


    A soft smile cracked at the edge of his mouth. "I see."


    "¡­After all, that is how the Reign of the Master Realm came to an end," she replied. "While there were plenty of madmen Martial Masters, there were even more Martial Masters who happened to retain a strong bond to humanity. Parents. A loved one. Children. A family. Amunity. These things anchored the Martial Masters despite the tug of the Martial Mind to view humans as inferior. It is why I never strayed into a dark path myself. My responsibilities and my Martial Drive to protect my n keep rock solid. These days there are even more systems in ce to keep Masters from developing psychopathy."


    Rui started to gain a better understanding of the mentalities of more entric Martial Masters such as Master Reina and especially Master Zeamer.


    "The breakthrough of the first Martial Sage, a man of powerful integrity and honor, led to the end of the Reign of the Master Realm," she lightly continued. "If not for him, the destruction of human civilization as we know it may as well havee to be the case. Yet, the tug of darkness always remains. Martial Masters must learn to exercise emotional control and discipline when they break through to the Master Realm. It is also encouraged that they breed and start their own families to tether them to humanity strongly. That is one of the reasons that the Martial Community nationally and internationally are thriving."This content is ? N?velDrama.Org.


    Rui immediately thought of the Arrancar Family and Sage Damian Arrancar.


    It had always struck him strange that a Martial Sage of his temperament and personality would ever bother creating a family asrge as the Arrancar Family, especially when he clearly wasn''t a family-oriented man if Kane''s childhood was indicative of anything.


    Perhaps he had done so with the intention of ensuring he didn''t be a true devil, as his epithet suggested, that would lead to his own destruction.


    "It''s a shame that she left the orphanage," his grandmothermented lightly with a small smirk. "A wasted opportunity."


    Rui coughed awkwardly. "Please don''t joke about that. I didn''te here to talk about starting a family or the Reign of the Master Realm, really."


    His voice grew more serious.


    "I came here to gain rity."


    "Hah." She snorted mirthlessly. "If only it were that simple. The rity you seek can onlye from within, not without. Nobody can give you the rity you seek except yourself."


    Rui was hardly satisfied with such a vague answer. "What is the path to the Sage Realm and, more importantly¡­"


    His eyes narrowed. "¡­what does it have to do with who I am?"


    She gazed at him, snorting.


    "You are unworthy of the answers to those questions if they existed in the first ce," her eyes narrowed. "Look at the mess that your mind and emotions are in. Even your mother was closer to the Sage Realm than you are."


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2041 Love, Not Regret

    Chapter 2041 Love, Not Regret


    His eyes narrowed at her words. "Which one?"


    "Your adoptive mother, of course," his grandmother calmly replied, facing him head-on. "She didn''t so much as flinch when I warned her of her impending death."


    Rui''s eyes widened with shock. "¡­What?"


    "Now there was a woman who understood who she was." Matriarch Nephi ignored his incredulity. "When she learned of her impending death, she made sure that when the time came, she could rest without any regrets."


    Rui stared at his grandmother in shock. "¡­You foresaw my mother''s death?"


    "Of course, I periodically employ prophecy on the orphanage, just in case," she replied. "When I foresaw her natural death and informed her, she worked hard in the next two years to ensure that neither she nor the ones she loved would suffer from regret when it came to pass."


    Rui stared at her, speechless.


    "She spent more time with each and every single one of her loved ones, imparting enough love tost a lifetime," she closed her eyes. "I suspect that that is why the Quarrier Family was able to move forward with their heads held high and eyes pinned on the future."


    Rui''s eyes darkened as his fists clenched.


    "I should have never left."


    "Then you wouldn''t have broken through," his grandmother calmly replied. "¡­I wonder what she would have imparted to me had I been able to speak with her onest time."


    "Hm," Matriarch Nephi''s regarded his words. A single question escaped her.


    "Would you like to find out?"


    Rui raised an eyebrow as he watched her reach into a counter.


    She pulled out an envelope.


    Rui''s eyes lit up. "Is that¡­?"


    "She entrusted me to convey this message to you when you returned," his grandmother calmly remarked, handing it to him.


    Rui epted the envelope, holding it like it was a priceless artifact, carefully and quickly opening it.


    [To my precious baby, Rui.


    I write this letter with all the love that my heart is able to squeeze for you.


    I write this letter with all the pride that I have for you.


    I write this letter with the hope that you will feel my love long after I am gone.


    I write this letter with the hope that you won''t be burdened by a void in your heart after I am gone.


    It isn''t easy to walk the path that you have chosen walk. It isn''t easy to walk the thin line between two worlds.


    I know that you have always felt burdened by the distance that your path puts between you and the people you love.


    I know that you have always felt as though you left your family behind in pursuit of your dreams.


    I know that you fear a day when you live past us.


    I know the pain in your heart when you learn of my passing.


    I know you will gue yourself with guilt. Content from N?velDr(a)ma.Org.


    I know that words alone cannot alleviate the burdens that weigh down on your heart.


    However, know that I lived my life to the fullest.


    Know that when you read this, I will have passed on with no regret in my heart.


    Know that you have brought me more happiness than you could ever imagine.


    Know that I am grateful to the universe for delivering you to me.


    Know that I am grateful that you were a part of my life.


    Know that you have brought more meaning and purpose to my life than you can ever imagine.


    Know that I celebrated all your aplishments, your feats, your sesses.


    Know that they validated my life.


    Know that they are part of why I feel the soulful satisfaction I feel as I write this letter.


    The satisfaction I will surely feel as I pass away.


    Know that the orphanage, our home, is your haven, not your shackle.


    Know that you must live your life the way you must.


    Know that I am grateful that you have lived your life the way you have.


    And know that I will always love you no matter what.


    I hope that this letter will always remind you of the love that you will always have.


    I hope that this letter brings you warmth on the coldest days.


    I hope that this message brings you light when your world grows dark.


    I hope you one day experience the peace that I do as I write this.


    I hope my hope reaches you long after I pass.


    I hope my love reaches you long after.


    I hope it reaches you forever.


    With sincere love and adoration, your mother.]


    His heart rumbled even as he felt her love gushing into it. It rumbled even as he felt it filling the void filling it.


    Little by little, a part of the lost warmth his eyes once had returned.


    Little by little, a part of the lost light they once had returned.


    He closed his eyes even as tears escaped them.


    He opened his mouth, yet nothing escaped, choked with emotion.


    Yet, the symphony of his beating heart was loud enough. At that moment, he couldn''t help but feel blessed.


    Blessed that he was raised by such a miraculously wonderful mother. Blessed that he was born in the Quarrier Family.


    Blessed that he was given more love than he could ever be worthy of.


    His grandmother waited patiently as he absorbed the message his mother had given him. Rui went on to meticulously memorize every word she had imparted to him in her final message.


    He memorized every ounce of the letter with his enhanced senses, making sure he missed nothing.


    Within the depths of his Mind Pce, he stored an identical copy of the letter that he could ess any time he wanted.


    "¡­Thank you for showing this to me, grandmother," he finally managed to squeeze out. "¡­Thank your mother, not me," she replied gently. "It is she who sought to ensure that her passing would not burden you. It is she who was determined to ensure that you would remember her with love and not regret."


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2042 The Martial Primordial

    Chapter 2042 The Martial Primordial


    It was almost magical how the flood of guilt that had gued his heart was reced with even more potent love from his mother in her final message.


    It gave him closure.


    He didn''t know it was possible to love his mother even more than he already did.


    He didn''t know it was possible to feel more loved by her than he already did.


    His mother was determined to ensure that Rui wouldn''t spend the rest of his life hating himself for not being there.


    And she had seeded.


    And he would always love her for that.


    He exhaled heavily as he felt his stiff body loosen up and lighten up more than it ever had in the past five years.


    He felt as though his heart had grown stronger.


    It had grown stronger from the ever-present and eternal love that his mother always had for him.


    "Grandmother¡­" Rui wiped away his tears. "Can you keep this letter for me?"


    "Of course, my child," she replied with a smile. "I shall protect it with my life."


    Her words made a soft, grateful smile appear on his face.


    "That''s better," she remarked approvingly as she studied him. "Perhaps now you are worthy to know."


    His eyes lit up with interest at her words. "You mean¡­?"


    "Yes."


    Her answer was clear.


    "But¡­" His eyebrows furrowed. "I just recently broke through to the Master Realm."


    "¡­That is indeed true," Sage Nephi calmly replied. "However, I am not going to tell you the secret to the Sage Realm. Or rather, I cannot tell you. I am unable to."


    Rui''s powerful mind processed her words furiously as he recalled her earlier words.


    "¡­You implied that the power of the Sage Realm is something that is beyond our understanding of it." He frowned.


    "Mmm¡­" She stirred. "¡­Well?" Rui asked impatiently. "How does one reach the Sage Realm and not know what it is?"


    She shook her head. "I cannot say. But I can tell you a story."


    He tilted his head in confusion. "Story?"


    "¡­The story of the first Martial Sage."


    "The Martial Primordial?" Rui grew eager.


    The Martial Primordial.


    The Martial Artist who discovered the Master, Sage, and Transcendent Realms. He was the first Martial Master, the first Martial Sage, and the first Martial Transcendent.


    A man at the very pinnacle of all Martial Art.


    Many Martial Artists across the vast Martial World regarded the Martial Primordial as the spiritual leader of Martial Art.


    This was despite the fact that, as with all Transcendents, his involvement with the world mysteriouslypletely and entirely ceased. Yet, every Martial Artist knew his name.


    Rui was no different.


    "Indeed." His grandmother quietly nodded. "After having scoured the length and breadth of the vast Master Realm, he came to a single conclusion¡­"


    Her eyes sharpened. "¡­that he had reached the pinnacle of Martial Art."


    Rui gazed at her silently. "Had anyone else made that deration, they would undoubtedly have beenbeled as a narcissist, not umon amongst Martial Masters back then," Matriarch Nephi continued. "But when he, of all people, made that deration, nobody could object."


    Her tone grew severe.


    "He was the strongest," she stated with certainty. "He came to the conclusion that he had reached the pinnacle of Martial Art and that Martial Art had nothing left to offer. Having mastered the depths of mind and body, he didn''t see any path forward. He, who was driven to reach the pinnacle of Martial Art, was now devoid of drive. Dismayed by the Reign of the Master Realm yet powerless to stop it, he departed the Human Domain and left for the Beast Domain..."


    Her eyes slowly turned to Rui. "¡­where he secluded himself atop the highest mountain he could find and isted himself from the rest of the world."


    Rui frowned, yet he didn''t interrupt her.


    "Devoid of drive, he found himself devoid of purpose and meaning," she remarked. "He began to wonder why he had chased the pinnacle of Martial Art his entire life. He began to wonder what it was about him that had caused him to be one who chased after the pinnacle of Martial Art. He found himself asking a single question, over and over."


    Her powerful gaze bore itself into him.


    "Do you know what that question is?"


    Realization dawned on him. "''Who am I?''"


    She nodded. "Precisely. He asked himself that very question fervently. He immersed himself in the endless depth of the question for every second of every day, of every year for an entire century¡­"


    Her tone culminated with finality.


    "¡­and only then did he gain enlightenment. He became an ascetic, an honored being, a sage. A Martial Sage," she remarked lightly. "That is the most discrete line I am able to draw to iste what the Sage Realm is. It is the answer to the question that each Martial Master must ask themselves after reaching the end of their path."


    "''¡­After reaching the end of their path?''" Rui''s eyes widened, stunned.


    The implications of her words were frightening.


    "Correct."


    Her voice was firm. "After all¡­" She closed her eyes. "How can you know who you are when you do not know what you can do?"


    A profound light lit up in her eyes as she opened them. "¡­And how can you know what you can do when you do not know what you cannot?"


    Her tone grew profoundly deep. "Potential and actuality. Possibility and impossibility. The lines that separate these antithetical dualities also separate who you are from who you aren''t."


    "¡­I don''t understand."


    His voice was honest.


    Frankly, if not for the fact that his own grandmother, a powerful Martial Sage, was the one informing him of this, he would have scoffed it off as philosophical and metaphorical nonsense.


    He was unable to parse how ''who you are'' had any relevance to Martial power.


    It made no sense whatsoever.


    Even if he somehow discovered evidence that he truly was John Falken or or even more evidence that he wasn''t, how could that possibly elevate his Martial power? Contentt bel0ngs to N0ve/lDra/ma.O(r)g!


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2043 Martial Qualia

    <h4>Chapter 2043 Martial Qualia</h4>


    His grandmother smiled gently at the confusion that had clearly manifested itself on his face. Contentt bel0ngs to N0ve/lDra/ma.O(r)g!


    "There is a saying¡­" Her voice grew soft. "¡­Power does not change a person, it only reveals who they are. People are capable of stooping to hell if they have the power to get away with it. Inability to act is mistaken for the choice not to. People mistake themselves as good-hearted and kind when, in reality, they simply are unable to do the things that they think they are choosing not to."


    "Power does not change, but merely reveal who one truly is¡­?" A hint of understanding finally dawned on Rui. "So the more powerful one is, the more one can understand who they truly are because their power revealed who they truly are."


    "Precisely, my grandchild," she nodded with approval.


    The mechanics of how self-understanding somehow resulted in a massive power boost for Martial Sages was still beyond him.


    He still couldn''t fathom how simply knowing ''who you are'' could result in such a massive boost in power.


    However, he gained a slightly better understanding of what it took to reach the former.


    "In all previous Realm, power had very little corrtion, if at all, with progress to the next Realm," she continued. "However, that pattern breaks in the Master Realm. The strongest Martial Masters are those who are the closest to answering the question ''Who am I?''"


    "That''s¡­" Rui grew engrossed in her words. "That''s very different from the Lower Realms."


    His grandmother nodded approvingly. "Indeed. That is why there is division in most Martial philosophies between the Lower Realms and the Upper Realms. There are too many differences in many aspects in addition to the ones that I have mentioned. Even in the Ss Martial taxonomy that the Ss n subscribes to, Pathforthers and Bodyforgers are also categorized separately from Mindforger and Soulforgers."


    Rui''s eyes widened as he heard her name the Sage Realm in the Ss Martial philosophy. "Soulforger¡­?"


    "Indeed, I am a soulforger."


    "¡­Is that what the answer to the question ''who am I?'' is considered to be?" Rui''s eyes sharpened. "The ''soul?''"


    Matriarch Nephi did not miss the tightening of his muscles, the gritting of his teeth, and the other physiological shifts that indicated that she had touched a nerve.


    She had absolutely no idea why he reacted this way to the mention of ''soul,'' but she didn''t wish to pry.


    He was not a child of any age or in Realm.


    He would have to ovee his own challenges with his own personal strength; otherwise, he would not be qualified to enter the Sage Realm.


    "Do not fixate on the nomenture. It is not a ''soul'' as conceptualized in theology. Different philosophies call it different things." She remarked. "Moksha. Nirvana. Bodhi. Satori. Prejna. Kensho. Shaman. Vimukti. The Third Eye. The Union. The Essence of Tao. The Harmony of Self etc. You may pick among the various philosophies that exist around the world. For the sake of simplicity and uniformity, the various constituents Panamic Martial Federation has collectively designated it as the ''Martial Soul,'' as a flexible ceholder that can be substituted with any of the aforementioned philosophies."


    Rui stared at her, stunned. "The Martial Soul? A ceholder?"


    "Correct," his grandmother patiently nodded. "That is what is tentatively used to refer to the power of the Sage Realm and the answer to the question that all Martial Masters must strive to answer."


    Rui grew engrossed in everything that she had divulged to him.


    It was a lot to take in.


    "¡­I am not ustomed to facing such uncertainty in the established path forward," Rui admitted. "There was universal agreement on the Martial Body, the Martial Heart, and the Martial Mind. But here, no one seems to understand what the so-called ''Martial Soul'' is."


    "It is not that nobody understands it," she exined. "It is that it cannot be conveyed. Those who understand it also understand that it cannot be described in words. It is information that cannot be conveyed through words,nguage, or even hypnosis and non-verbalmunication. It is an ineffable qualia that only I and my fellow soulforgers are able to understand and experience."


    A qualia was an experience within consciousness that could not be conveyed. Experiences of colors, sounds, odors, inside the mind could not be directly conveyed in its essence. No one could ever describe what the experience of red at its very essence was beyond merely pointing at the color red and uttering ''red.''


    "That is even more true for the soul," she remarked with elderly wisdom. "It''s not just that it cannot be conveyed. Even among those of us soulforgers who do understand it, we do not necessarily agree with each other what it is. Soulforgers like myself call it the soul and conceptualize it as our inner self. Other Martial Sages believe that it is a form of internal harmony. Some believe that it is an existential potential that stretches from the mind across the very fundamental material of the being. And so on and so forth. The experience can not only not be conveyed in a scientific manner, but it also cannot be agreed upon as to what it is even among the vague metaphoricalnguage that is often used to describe it."


    "¡­" Rui stared at her with amazement and awe. "That feels like the Sage Realm is still being explored. As if it''s still a mystery waiting to be solved."


    "¡­That''s not too far from the truth," she resonated with his words. "The Upper Realms are where the theoretical considerations and scientific exploration of Martial Art by research schrs are highly limited. In the first ce, the qualia of mind is a domain where science may categorically be obsolete. Where science stops, the philosophy begins, and only we soulforgers can explore its depths."


    Rui had so many questions that he wanted to ask that he was simply unable to decide, he had just begun to touch at the very highest echelons of Martial Art and it was already more vast than he had ever imagined.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2044 Power Reveals

    Chapter 2044 Power Reveals


    He was not ustomed to facing such ack of certainty and rity in what the breakthrough to the next Realm was.


    Previously, when the conditions of the next Realm were exined, there was never even the slightest shred of ambiguity. Yet, this time, a Martial Sage was saying that she couldn''t even actually exin in words what the conditions to the next Realm were.


    "Why is the Sage Realm such a mystery when Martial Transcendents exist?" Rui raised an eyebrow. "I would have thought that the Transcendent Realm is the mystery Realm, whatever it even is."


    "If the Martial Transcendents are able to shed more light on the Sage Realm to dispel theck of rity, then they certainly aren''t interested in doing so, considering that not a single one of them has bothered to," she grumbled begrudgingly. "Aside from the great Transcendent Prophet, the lot of them mostly do nothing." Exclusive ? content by N(?)ve/l/Drama.Org.


    Rui wasn''t surprised she mentioned that exception, considering that the Ss n basically worshipped the Transcendent Prophet.


    Yet, he wasn''t interested in pursuing the topic.


    "About the so-called ''enlightenment''¡­" His eyebrows furrowed. "Is the breakthrough to the Sage Realm a gradual process or an instantaneous transition?"


    "Most certainly thetter," she calmly informed him. "You either know who you are, or you don''t. The moment you do, you will have discovered your Martial Soul and have gained the power of the Sage Realm."


    "¡­Earlier, you said that, unlike on lower Realms, there is a strong corrtion between the power level of Martial Masters and progress to the Sage Realm," Rui continued. "Does that mean all strong Martial Masters have a deeper understanding of who they are, or that those who do not are necessarily weaker?"


    "The corrtion is not absolute," she lightly answered. "As mentioned, power does not change; it merely reveals who you truly are. It helps one understand who they truly are, but there are other variables that sometimes cause a Martial Master to diverge from this trend, causing strong Martial Masters to have lower self-awareness or weaker Martial Artists to be closer to discovering their inner soul. An example of that would be¡­"


    Her eyes peered deeper into his. "¡­Yourself. You are strong, yet you are deeply confused about who you are. Not only are you deeply confused, you are deeply distressed. Despite your power serving as a good reflection of who you are, something much deeper has muddied the water, making it difficult to see your reflection."


    She closed her eyes. "I cannot imagine what could have happened in the Beast Domain of all ces, but whatever you have experienced has clearly shaken you and left you confused. The less you understand who you are, the more power you will need to gain the self-understanding needed to break through to a higher Realm of power¡­"


    "The less I understand who I am, the more power I''ll need¡­?"


    "Correct, though in your case¡­" She gazed at him with a hint of sympathy. "¡­I cannot imagine how much power you will need to finally gain the self-understanding you seek. You will need extraordinary power. You will need more power than any Martial Master in the history of Martial Art has ever needed to understand themselves. You will need to be the strongest Martial Master to have ever existed, and only then, perhaps, can you ovee the gaping abyss of self-confusion in your heart."


    "¡­"


    Rui simply stared at her for a moment before closing them. "In other words, I have an extremely poor affinity for the Sage Realm."


    "¡­I suppose you can say that," Matriarch Nephi stirred at his words. "Though, you have the added benefit of youth and potential. Despite reaching the Master Realm, I am unable to detect the limit of your potential. That being said, your you also means less experience, so its advantages may cancel out its disadvantages in the long run. Still, your youth will mean that growing in the Master Realm will be easier for you than it is for other Martial Masters."


    "¡­Does gaining more self-understanding make you stronger?"


    "It''s entirely useless until you break through," she remarked. "Martially, at least. Self-understanding will allow you to lead a more meaningful life outside of Martial Art. People who have a greater understanding of who they are tend to live life ordingly."


    "¡­Power does not change, it merely reveals who you are, does it?" Rui murmured to himself as he considered it.


    She regarded him momentarily.


    "In some ways, a person is the sum totality of their choices." Her tone grew sagely. "Thus, to know every choice you would make is to know yourself. Yet, how can you know every choice you would make if you are unable to choose? Power is the ability to choose, it forces people to make choices. And those choices show them who they truly are. Those without power insist they will never abuse it, yet the moment they gain it, what happens? How many truly remain as they were before they gained power?"


    Rui considered her words. "¡­Almost absolutely none."


    "That is correct," she nodded approvingly. "Power merely unlocks the true person hidden deep inside. Those who believed they would never abuse powere to realize that they mistook weakness and inability for moral integrity. A weak man who does no harm is not a good man; he justcks the power to be bad."


    Rui stared at her, furrowing his eyebrows. "¡­I think I know what choices I would make."


    "Oh, do you, now?" She raised an eyebrow. "Did you know you would choose your freedom as a Martial Artist over your family before a life-threatening situation forced you to choose seventeen years ago?"


    Rui winced as she brought up the crucial decision he made when Chairman Deacon discovered the identity of the Voider. "¡­I had an inkling, but I was more agnostic about it. I only gained certainty of what choice I would make when I was forced to choose."


    That choice shaped him. Or rather, it showed him what shape he was. He had learned more about what kind of person he was when he made that choice.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2045 Clarity

    Chapter 2045 rity


    "That is how it is with all choices. You never know what choice you will make until you are confronted with the choice. The stronger you be, the more you are able to choose that you were unable to before, and the more you learn about yourself with the choices you do end up making," his grandmother continued in a sagely tone. "Choices are an expression of one''s self in that regard. Theye from heart, mind, and soul. Words, on the other hand, are shallow and fickle. They mean nothing. They do not reflect who you truly. Actions speak louder than words. Power gives you the ability to act and thus, to know."


    It is true that Rui understood himself less until he was forced to make hard choices such as his choice between his family and freedom when Chairman Deacon discovered his identity. Or, more recently, when he was confronted with difficult choices after his princehood came to light. His choice to instead pursue the Divine Doctor gave him deeper insights into what kind of person he was that he would have otherwise not known.


    "However, I have power."


    Matriarch Nephi raised an eyebrow. "Martial power, but also, political power," Rui replied calmly. "I can exert influence on all of East Panama with the political power that I have at the moment, does that not allow me to understand myself better due to a wider array of choices I can make?"


    "All Martial Artists have some political power," she remarked. "In your case, however, your political power exceeds your Martial power. Unfortunately, it does not help nearly as much as Martial power does. You''re far better off cultivating Martial power than political. There are reasons that political power does not turn politicians into enlightened sages."


    Rui narrowed his eyes. "¡­Is it because political power is not their own?"


    "Correct." She nodded approvingly. "It can be taken away. It exists outside of you. Its exertion is constrained and influenced by many factors in addition to your own. Leaders often do not truly make their choices, but the choices that their many stakeholders and citizens may want. Their choices are constrained by the desire to not lose their ability to choose. They are constrained by checks and bnces that impact their choices. They learn less than if the sole driving factor behind their own political actions was their own soul rather than countless external factors that directly muddy the water."


    Rui understood what she was saying. "¡­Martial power, on the other hand, is pure. It does not require the approval of a system of checks and bnces to exert itself. Our ability to exercise power is absolutely unconstrained, and our choices to exert it are a direct reflection of who we truly are. Not even the most absolute of emperors have such unconstrained and absolute power that can never be stolen from them."


    "If you have understood that, then you should understand that you are better off cultivating your own power. Our Martial Art and Path are reflections of ourselves that aid in giving us a deeper understanding of ourselves," she regarded him appreciatively. "The stronger you grow, the more choices you will need to make, the more you understand yourself. The pursuit of the Soulforger rank boils down to a pure pursuit of power."


    "¡­Normally, each Realm pursues power a little differently than the previous Realm," Rui muttered. "Apprentices pursue general individuality. Squires pursue individuality to draw out physical power. Seniors pursue individuality to draw out mental power. What do Masters work to draw out?"


    She shrugged. "Whatever they want to. There is always some untapped potential, however little it may be. However difficult it may be to manifest. By the Master Realm, a Martial Artist has alreadye into touch with their affinities, be it body, mind, or anything in between. They need only to cultivate it further." This content is ? N?velDrama.Org.


    "¡­In my case, that would be my Martial Mind," Rui remarked. "I guess I will have to improve it.


    "I wouldn''t rmend it," she remarked. "Your Martial Mind is extremely powerful, but I sense you have already created an extremely sophisticated andplex Martial Mind from the very beginning. Improving it after it is going to be highly difficult because it is already extraordinarily powerful. Creating an even more powerful system of thought than your existing ones will be even more difficult."


    "True," Rui admitted.


    The VOID algorithm, the Angel of Lace, the SOUL System, and the Tree of Life were all extraordinary systems of thought. Improving them at this point would take an extraordinary amount of effort. As for recing them with an even more powerful system of thought?


    "Hah," Rui scoffed at the very thought of it. "I suppose your point is that I ought to focus on my Martial Art and Body?"


    She nodded. "Your Martial Body is underutilizedpared to your Martial Mind. Additionally, now that you have gained the Martial Mind, it would be better for you to limatize your Martial Art techniques to your Martial Mind. That is the mostmon path that Martial Masters take when they break through to the Master Realm. To make their techniques more thoughtful to be highly synergetic with their systems of thought."


    "I''ve already done that with some techniques," Rui replied. "I suppose I''ll have to dedicate myself to it more now that my Martial Mind has awakened."


    While some techniques like Flux Earther and Phantom Step were more synergetic with his systems of thought, the same could not necessarily be said for the rest of his Martial Art.


    In addition, he was very keen to solve the fact that none of his offensive techniques were synergetic with his Martial Mind. It reduced his finishing power even after he adaptively evolved to his opponents.


    He would need to figure out some way to directly empower his offense with thought.


    "I have many things to consider, but¡­" Rui smiled at his grandmother with gratitude. "Thank you for giving me rity on my path in the Master Realm."


    "Hmph," she snorted. "This much is basic. However, I wasn''t done. Thought-synergetic techniques and Body may be the best way to develop your Martial Art, but they are not the best way for you to grow stronger."


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2046 Pay a Visit

    Chapter 2046 Pay a Visit


    ??Rui immediately understood what she was getting at.


    "Experience."


    "Correct," she nodded. "Prior to breaking through, you had more than enough experience from years in the Beast Domain. However, that was before you broke through."


    Rui had to admit that she was right.


    As far as being a Martial Master went, he was newborn infant.


    "You need to gain experience with using your Martial Mind inbat. You need to gain experience with using your Martial Art, Body, and Heart alongside it," she continued. "In addition, you need experience against Martial Masters. Experience with beasts and monsters in the Beast Domain is all well and good, but the biggest threat to a Martial Master is another Martial Master. While Master-level beasts and monsters need an overwhelming numbers advantage against Martial Master, your peers are strong enough to fight and defeat you by themselves."


    Rui''s expression grew more serious as he absorbed her words.


    "Combat in the Master Realm is more dynamic and less certain than that of the Lower Realms. There are far more variables and parameters that matter," she remarked. "You have a powerful Martial Mind, but you have not fought other Martial Minds. Your Martial Art does not utilize your Martial Mind as well as other Martial Masters do. I would rmend you hone yourbat with experience and refine your Martial Art experience before you return to training."


    "¡­I presume you mean more than just sparring," Rui replied. "Sparring is great, but it does notpare to genuinebat. It certainly doesn''tpare to life-and-deathbat."


    "Just so," she nodded. "Thankfully, you have returned to a nation with nearly a hundred and sixty Martial Masters, so you don''t need to search very far."


    "¡­Yeah, but most of them are in the Martial Union," Rui heaved a sigh as he felt a headacheing back to him.


    He had not forgotten that mess that he had to deal with.


    "You will have to deal with it on your own," she closed her eyes. "While it is true that I have gained a lot of power and influence within the Martial Union, I will not be able to protect you. In fact, any attempt on my part will make it worse, it will provoke the rest of the Sage Council who are also displeased with your deceit."


    "¡­I suppose that means I''m going to be dealing with the Master Council," Rui replied with a severe expression. "That is the norm for offenses perpetrated by Martial Masters. Based on my estimations, there is a high probability that the Martial Union will attempt a form of peacemaking. There is a low probability that they will break rtions with me or persecute me for fraud."


    Rui had gathered enough data on the Martial Union to model their behavior and decision-making. Thus, he had enough reason to believe that things had not turned for the worse.


    "You have made too many contributions." His grandmother gazed at him knowingly. "They will let you out with a p on the wrist."


    "I''m afraid you''re wrong."


    Rui''s tone was certain. "Outside of the faction that is through- and-through pro-me, there will be a lot of disgruntled Martial Masters who will be pissed that I cheated them of their efforts. I wouldn''t be pleased if I were in their position, either. I wasn''t able to build form personal rapports with each of them as I did with the ones that I am closest with."


    "Are you certain about that?"


    "About eighty-six percent certain, yes," Rui''s eyes narrowed. "I highly doubt I can get away without paying for my deceit. And frankly, I do not believe that I should get away scott-free."


    His grandmother frowned at his words. "You want to be punished? Is this an attempt at trying to learn more about who you are, my grandson?"


    "Hah," A mirthlessugh escaped Rui. "No. It''s a consideration for long-term well-being."


    "I do not follow."


    "A portion of the Martial Union will never forgive me if I do not pay reparations, at the very least," Rui replied. "These are some of the hardliner Martial Masters and Martial Sages that will harbor resentment towards me for taking from them without giving back. I do not wish to have any more enemies within the Kandrian Empire. Especially powerful enemies. Thus, it is within my interests to make reparations for cheating them. Especially when they are well within their right to demand it."


    "¡­That is rather honorable of you. But that''s not going to be easy, my grandson," his grandmother calmly advised him. "The Martial Union has invested immense Martial and wealth into your deceitful campaign. Eve for a Martial Master of your caliber that cannot be repaid easily."


    Yet, her words brought a smirk to his face. "Don''t worry. I know how they think. I have some juicy trump cards that will dazzle them so much that they will forget that I ever defrauded them."


    His grandmother gazed at him quizzically as Rui''s smirk widened at the thought of their reaction to his sessful capture of the Divine Doctor, the Elder Tree intelligencework, and some secrets of his Martial Art that he had kept hidden for a long, long time.


    "The Master Council is holding a meeting as we speak," his grandmother informed him. "They were alerted of your return the moment you went back to the orphanage and have scrambled to put together a meeting to deal with your return and the revtion of your breakthrough." His grandmother calmly remarked.


    "That is to be expected, considering that one of the guards around the orphanage was of the Martial Union," Rui muttered with intrigue as a glint of amusement flickered in his eyes. "It would be rather interesting if I crashed that meeting, wouldn''t it?"


    His grandmother peered at him disapprovingly, like he was a mischievous boy. "That is rather juvenile."Contentt bel0ngs to N0ve/lDra/ma.O(r)g!


    "I am a Martial Master," Rui reminded her. "So I am well within my right to enter that meeting. Besides, I do not have the patience to gather all of them another time."


    He turned in the direction of Vargard with enthusiasm even as his grandmother heaved a sigh.


    "Let''s go pay them a visit, shall we?"


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2047 Wagering Gauntlet

    Chapter 2047 Wagering Gauntlet


    "So be it," the Harbinger remarked with an eerie voice.


    Many of the Martial Masters in the hall could not help but wonder if this had been her n from the very beginning. Perhaps she wanted to measure the Void Prince''s capabilities in the Master Realm from the very get-go and didn''t want to wait for the opportunity to see him fight.


    Nobody objected, even if that was the case.


    In truth, they would be lying if they said they weren''t curious about what Prince Rui was like after breaking through to the Master realm.


    "We still haven''t ironed out the details, of course." Master Sera smiled. "We need to choose an appropriatebatant. Someone who isn''t too difficult nor too easy, someone who will truly push the Void Prince to his limits before he could even possibly achieve victory¡­"


    Unfortunately, to arrange for such an opponent, one would need to have a precise understanding of how strong the Void Prince really was. This content is ? N?velDrama.Org.


    "I volunteer!" Master Herel''s voice boomed. A wave of murmurs spread across the council.


    It appeared that Master Herel particrly had a bone to pick with Rui, for some reason.


    "That''s hardly fair," Master Vericita coldly shot back. "You are a high-grade Martial Master, even if barely. There is absolutely no justification to pit a high-grade Martial Master against a new Martial Master who is merely thirty-five years old."


    "Hah!" Master Herel snorted at her words, ring at her. "Good. He deserves a little beating. I will not be satisfied until I see him pay for his deceit!"


    The murmurs from the Master Council rose in volume as the various Martial Masters chimed into the controversy.


    "I won''t allow such an unfair match-up!" Master Ceeran roared. "It is indeed a deeply questionable proposition," Master Zentra calmly remarked. "It makes me wonder if you care about justice or simply want to hurt him."


    "I propose we estimate the general territory of the Void Prince''s power level in the Martial Master and choose one in the same region," Headmaster Aronian''s elderly voice stated. "In this manner, there is truly a fair chance for His Highness to be able to grab the fate he desires."


    "That does not ount forpatibility discrepancies," The Truthseeker objected with aposed tone. "Should he face a battle with poorpatibility, then he will most certainly be unfairly disadvantaged. The same can be said if he faces a battle with unfairpatibility in his favor. He will not have earned his p on the wrist."


    That was a sensible point to bring up.


    "Hah!" Master Herel snorted. "So not only do we need to find him an opponent that is of his grade, roughly speaking, but is also of neutralpatibility with him to make the perfect opponent? What do you think this is? The Senior Realm? We don''t have so many choices!"


    There were only a hundred and fifteen Martial Masters of the Marital Union in total, including that of the Ss n. The selection pool was much smaller.


    Despite the Master Realm being much wider, the number of Martial Masters was barely a tenthpared to the number of Martial Seniors. Martial Masters were truly among the fleeting elite, looming over an overwhelming majority of Martial Artists.


    Many wondered if it was even possible to find a perfect match for the Void Prince. That wasn''t the only concern.


    "I won''t ept the result of the battle if it is with a Martial Master sympathetic to the Void Prince!" Master Herel snarled. "A Martial Master on his side can throw the battle intentionally to ensure that the Void Prince gets off easy!"


    A number of Martial Masters voiced their support for the elderly Martial Master''s words.


    Unfortunately, it onlyplicated the matter by reducing the pool of avable Martial Masters even further.


    Their opinions couldn''t be dismissed as they wererge enough to prevent any motion from being passed by collectively voting.


    "It appears that finding a singr opponent willplicate matters to an extreme degree," the Harbinger observed. "In that case, I propose a gauntlet of three different Martial Masters of different grades. Should he win less than he loses, we will go with Master Herel''s harsh proposal of the strictest action. Should he win more than he loses, we will go with Master Zentra''s bnced proposal, and should he win all battles, we will go with Master Ceeran''s gentle proposal. Does that sound fair?"


    Many of the Martial Masters gazed at her with skepticism.


    She said finding him a singr suitable opponent was tooplicated before proposing an even moreplicated n.


    Yet, at least as far asprehensively pushing and letting his Martial power grasp his own fate, there was probably no fairer setup than the one she had proposed. It gave him more than one chance while not dismissing any failure.


    "As for ensuring that the chosenbatants for the gauntlet will not hold back or allow the prince to win," she continued. "Let us ensure that all of them are selected from the very group that has objected for this reason and has vocally been against the Void Prince."


    She smiled icily at the group of anti-Rui Martial Masters who, in turn, gulped inwardly. By tossing the matter on them, they no longer had any avenue ofint. If theyined even after gaining the opportunity to fight and defeat Rui, then that was no different from conceding that they did not believe they could handle the Void Prince.


    "Hmph, we are by no means a singr group," Master Herel snorted. "But I ept this proposal. As long as the Martial Masters fighting him are doing their best to defeat him, I do not have any objection. I actually enjoy this proposal because it increases the chances of me getting the battle I seek against the Void Prince."


    Several other Martial Masters were also in agreement with this proposal for the same reason. The pro-Rui faction could not object since they could not, in good faith, deny that they were notpromised. No one would believe them even if they tried.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2048 Impenetrable

    Chapter 2048 Imprable


    "All in favor?" The Harbinger smiled frostily. All hands rose up in the air. Even if they had minor misgivings, there were few better alternative options in their perspective, if at all. "Good." Her calm voice spread. "Then this council unanimously passes the drafted motion. It is decided that Master Rui Quarrier Ss Kandria shall be subject to a gauntlet of battles against three Masters from the three sections of the thirty grades of the Master Realm, such that more losses than victories will result in the Martial Union pursuing Master Herel''s proposal, more wins than losses; Master Zentra''s proposal, and aplete victory; Master Ceeran''s proposal."


    Her tone was finality.


    The Martial Masters of the council fell into thought. "Now then," Master Sera continued. "We will reconvene after issuing a summon to Master Rui and informing him of the Master Council''s decision, should he refu¡ª" Contentt bel0ngs to N0ve/lDra/ma.O(r)g!


    She froze.


    She was the first to notice.


    Something had changed.


    It was abrupt.


    The others sensed the change as well, stiffening.


    The air stirred.


    It boiled.


    It boiled tumultuously as a tremendous aura of power crept across the entire council hall.


    It pricked at their senses. It tingled at their instincts.


    It drew closer and closer.


    And closer.


    Until it had finally arrived.


    CLACK


    The massive gates behind the Harbinger opened.


    He had arrived.


    "Ah¡­" A single murmur escaped him. "¡­It''s been long."


    Their eyes widened as they beheld him standing at the entrance of the council hall.


    In an instant, recognition, realization, and disbelief surged through the minds of the various Martial Masters in the council hall.


    For a moment, none of them could move, frozen in shock.


    It wasn''t the fact that he was a Martial Master that shackled them in their own incredulity.


    No.


    It was his Martial Mind.


    They had always wondered what it would be like.


    How could they not?


    They always knew that he was the equivalent of the Gatekeeper of the Mind.


    They always knew that his Martial Path embodied one of the core universal principles at the heart of Martial Minds.


    They always knew that it would be unlike anything they had ever seen.


    They always knew it would redefine what was possible.


    Yet, what they beheld before exceeded even their wildest imagination.


    It was unfathomable.


    Imprable.


    An endless vortex of information.


    A void


    It flowed from one state to another.


    It flowed from one person to another.


    Like Water.


    It subsumed reality.


    When they bore witness to him.


    It was as though heaven and earth warped under the weight of the mind, adaptively evolving the world to be antithetical to everyone and everything.


    An apocalypse of unfathomable proportion.


    It was the most powerful Martial Mind they had ever beheld in their lives.


    The room darkened as a single realization dawned on them.


    They could not sense the depths of his mind.


    Not even in the slightest.


    It was a humiliating revtion.


    It meant only one thing.


    His Martial Mind was astronomically superior to each and every single one of theirs.


    Within the Master Realm, barring stealth and sensory techniques, the capacity to sense each other''s emotions was an urate representation of the power of their Martial Minds rtive to each other.


    Masters with lesser Martial Minds could sense less of the emotions of a Master with a greater Martial Mind.


    Thus, Masters with weaker Martial Minds often had to bear the humiliation of having their emotions and mental dynamics be transparent to Martial Masters with stronger Martial Minds while being able to sense very little of the emotions and mental dynamics of their stronger peers.


    Today, however, was the first time that any Martial Master was entirely unable to sense the emotions and mental dynamics of a fellow Master.


    He was inscrutable


    When they tried, they could see nothing.


    An empty abyss.


    A void.


    It was humiliating, for all of them alike.


    It meant that the Martial Mind of Master Rui Quarrier Ss Kandria exceeded theirs by an astronomical margin.


    A Martial Artist at the age of thirty-five, a boy by their standards, vastly exceeded the crystallization of centuries'' worth of effort that these vaunted Martial Masters had painstakingly exerted.


    It was deeply unpleasant, yet undeniably real.


    The revtion stunned them silently.


    "Masters of the Martial Union."


    His voice radiated power.


    Pure, unadulterated power.


    It demanded their attention.


    His dark eyes swept through the many constituents of the Master Council. "I have returned."


    He regarded the silent council with regretful eyes. "I am aware of the agenda behind this particr council meeting," he calmly informed them. "I am aware that I cannot escape the consequences of my decei¡ª"


    "¡ªYour Highness."


    The Harbinger''s chilling voice cut through his words with even greater force.


    "¡­Master Sera." His eyes narrowed as he directed his gaze at her. "Your words are, frankly, meaningless," her tone was perilous. "Had you arrived a little sooner, they might not have been. But as things stand at this very moment, nothing you say will change what you must do."


    Rui frowned at her. "¡­What have you done?"


    An eerie smile emerged on her face.


    Chilling darkness lingered in the depths of her eyes.


    He could sense a single emotion within the depths of her mind.


    An endless desire for carnage.


    Chills crawled across his skin as a single realization dawned on him.


    ''She can easily kill me any time she wants.''


    His expression grew guarded and wary as his nerves tingled under the weight of her attention.


    "Master Rui Quarrier Ss Kandria." Her tone was officious.


    She addressed him as the speaker of the Master Council.


    "You have defrauded the Martial Union of immense Martial and financial capital."


    Her words reminded everybody of the agenda, breaking them out of their stupor and pulling them back to reality.


    "You have caused our union to incur immense losses. Losses that far exceed the sum totality of your contributions for which you had been remunerated prior."


    Her gaze sharpened.


    "This council has unanimously passed a motion on what our settlement offer to you will be. Listen carefully, for it is your only chance to restore what has been broken."


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2049 Reaffirmed Bonds

    <h4>Chapter 2049 Reaffirmed Bonds</h4>


    Rui listened patiently as the speaker of the Master Council quickly exined the conditions of the Master Council''s proposal.


    A gauntlet of three Martial Masters in rapid session.


    Three possible oues based on his victories and losses.


    A p on the wrist and a mild scolding if he achieved the best possible oue.


    A debt to repay all the losses he made the Martial Union incur through contributions for free if he won more than he lost.


    And a harsh demand to concede any and everything of value he had in regard to Martial Art and to be a member of the internal corps in the chain ofmand, answerable to the very council he faced.


    "Of course," Master Sera patiently continued. "Should you choose to refuse to ept this settlement offer and refuse to engage with it, then we shall simply assume that you are a hostile entity and press charges and prosecute you under the provisions and protocols of the Martial Judiciary Delegation Act on ount of high fraud."


    Rui simply stared at her.


    Based on her tone, she didn''t appear to know that his father had already been healed of the Eternal Dream Disease and would wake up in a few days.


    The Emperor of Harmony possessed the power and authority to challenge charges under the provisions of the very same act she cited. It was why Prince Randal, Raemina, Ranea, and Rafia had turned to their father as the only person who could protect them from the wrath of the Martial Union after Rui secured proof of their crimes of murder consOriginal.


    Still, he had no intention of going down that route.


    "I ept the offer of the Martial Union."


    His voice was firm and confident.


    "I shall fight to earn my acquittal."


    "¡­So be it," An eerie smile of excitement appeared on the Harbinger''s face.


    A wave of finality and conclusion washed across the entire Master Council.


    It no longer mattered what one thought about the gauntlet duel and wager proposal of the Harbinger.


    The Void Prince had epted.


    Unbeknownst to them, however, Rui had no intention of contesting their demands.


    He had previously intended to give them ess to some of his revolutionary trump cards for free or at a low price as reparations for his deceit and crimes of fraud against them.


    However¡­


    A smile crept up on his face.


    How could he possibly let go of the opportunity to fight for real?


    He had just arrived at the Master Council meeting after a discussion with his grandmother, where they agreed that he needed realbat experience against Martial Masters.


    Ideally, genuine conflict rather than light sparring.


    There was no greater opportunity than to pick three fights against Martial Masters who were genuinely pissed off against him.


    At the moment, there was no quicker way to gain ess to realbat experience within the Master Realm.


    "What about the details?" Rui questioned. "Conditions for victory, manner of choosing opponents, time and location."


    "They will be fleshed out in the contract that the Martial Union will offer to you," Master Sera calmly answered him. "This sort of duel and wager is hardly new, and the Martial Union will use standards temtes. Rest assured, you won''t be disenfranchised."


    He shrugged lightly, epting her words.


    "This council has fulfilled the agenda of the meeting¡­" she remarked, ncing at Rui deeply onest time. "Council dismissed."


    And with that, the meeting officially concluded.


    The first to rise were the anti-Rui Martial Masters, who red at him with resentment before departing from the council hall in a hurry.


    Almost as if they couldn''t afford to remain in his presence for too long.


    Yet, the sight of it merely brought a wry smile to his face.


    "Clever."


    Rui''s ability to gather data on his opponents was extraordinarily high and extraordinarily well-recorded by the Martial Union. With each passing second that they remained in his presence, they increased the probability that he would somehow snatch victory against them.


    "Rui¡­"


    His gaze turned to those who had arrived before him.


    Master Ceeran, Master Zentra, Headmaster Aronian, Master Vericita, and many others had supported him enthusiastically and faithfully with the genuine hope that he would ascend the throne.


    He deceived them all.


    He betrayed them each time he made promises he knew were false.


    He could see in their eyes and in their minds that while they still retained affection for him, they were also dismayed by his deception and deceit.


    "My friends¡­" Rui addressed them as his expression grew apologetic and regretful. "I have wronged you. I don''t deny that. I won''t pretend that I didn''t knowingly do what I did with full awareness of exactly what it was that I was doing."


    He bowed his head lightly. "I am sorry for deceiving you. I am sorry for hurting you. I did what I deemed was best for me, and that has undoubtedly led to all of you being wronged. While I cannot undo the past, I certainly can do my best to make it up to all of you andpensate you for the losses you have suffered."


    Their gazes softened.


    "You already have." Master Ceeran shook his head. "I wouldn''t have been a Martial Master without you. Honestly, I wish you had trusted me enough to share all your ns, but I also understand the more people you tell, the likelier an information leak will ur. I am not trained in intelligence security, so I can''t really act in a manner that would not reveal the truth to the many prying eyes."


    Rui gazed at Master Ceeran appreciatingly.


    That was precisely the reason that he didn''t tell Master Ceeran.


    All of East Panama was watching him and his faction like hawks during the Kandrian Throne War.


    Even the slightest whiff of suspicious words or actions and entire intelligence agencies would be on the trail.


    He couldn''t have that.


    "While I was quite displeased by your deceit, I have ultimately decided to forgive you." Master Zentral remarked calmly.


    "It takes a big man to admit his wrongdoings," Headmaster Aronian''s gaze softened. "However, you do not need to apologize. There are some things that simply need to be done as a matter of inevitability." This belongs to N?velDrama.Org - ?.


    Master Vericita simply approached him, patting him. "You''ve been a good son to your father. Family matters."


    "Also." Master Ceeran grinned. "Congrattions on your extraordinary breakthrough to the Master Realm!"


    Rui smiled warmly as he reaffirmed bonds with friends that he made in the Martial Union.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2050 Tales of Mischief

    Chapter 2050 Tales of Mischief


    Rui was d to reconnect with old friends of the Master Realm.


    Especially now that he could speak to them as equals standing on the same stage.


    In the past, the difference in their Realms made it so that their rtionship was lopsided.


    But now, however, he was finally their equal.


    "I''m sure you have one hell of a story to tell," Master Ceeran eyed him curiously.


    Rui smiled wryly. "I do. Unfortunately, it''s not something I can spend time narrating at the moment. I am preupied with many extremely important matters that require my urgent attention."


    There were so many things that he needed to deal with that it wasn''t even funny.


    By now, word of his breakthrough to the Master Realm would undoubtedly be passing around the highest echelons of the Kandrian Empire. However, his return was still a secret to the rest of the world since only the Master and Sage Council were aware of his deception.


    Thus, he would need to ount to his many stakeholders how he managed to break through to the Master Realm while remaining in the Kandrian Empire, heavily guarded by virtue of his status as a prince.


    "More importantly, I need to get up to speed in regards to what she has been up to," Rui heaved a weary sigh.


    It appeared that Master Reina had not been able to restrain her entric sense of humor when acting as him. He had feared this possibility, but he didn''t have any choice, he didn''t know of another Martial Artist that could transform their appearance to such an extraordinary degree.


    He had baited her with entertainment and amusement, and now he would have to deal with the consequences.


    "The Silent Shadow is¡­" Master Zentra''s expression darkened. "¡­different."


    Rui scoffed aloud. "I suppose that''s one way of putting it."


    "It is disturbing that it took a Martial Sage to see through her disguise. She had an overwhelming majority of Martial Masters fooled over the course of three years. I believe there are only five Martial Masters she didn''t meet," Master Vericita''s elderly expression grewplicated. "She lives up to her reputation."


    A smirk cracked at the edge of his mouth. "¡­That she does. Once I''m done with handling the most immediate matters, I will be sure to tell my story to all of you as one of the many ways I intend to make up for my deceit. But until then, I''ll be busy trying to make sure my life doesn''t explode."


    "We''ll be waiting." Master Ceeran smiled. "Go, do what you must."


    Rui left after bidding them a temporary goodbye, activating Greater Phantomind Void along with his Martial Heart and Mind.


    Until he switched with Master Reina, he needed to minimize his public appearances to the bare minimum.


    He surged back to the Town of Hajin in the north from the town of Vargard at tremendous speeds, crossing the vast expanse of Kandria within a minute.


    Very rapidly, he had arrived at his personal office in the Rui Faction.


    An exact copy of Rui Quarrier Ss Kandria sat at his table.


    Rui took a moment to appreciate the fact that Master Reina was able to age him urately in the span of three years on a micro-level.


    "To say I am shocked that you have broken through to the Master Realm is stating the obvious, so perhaps I should say the opposite, hm?" She gazed at right through his Greater Phantomind Void with an expression of amusement.


    Yet, Rui could sense the deep shock and rm within her mind due to a greatly superior Martial Mind.


    "You''re able to sense me despite my misdirection?" Rui raised an eyebrow. "I helped you create the technique, after all," she remarked. "Not to mention, I suspected something like this would happen, so my Martial Mind and Heart are secretly active. A niftly little technique I developed in my time. And even then, I can only sense your presence and location, nothing else. To think that you''re able to hide so well from my senses. Tsk, truly heartbreaking."


    "Uh huh¡­" Rui stared at her with a dubious expression. "We have a lot to talk about, don''t we?"


    "Do we?" She shrugged, amused. "I think I''m going to remain mum."


    "I''m afraid not, Master," Rui scoffed. "What have you been up totely?"


    "Are you sure you want to know?" Master Reina smirked mischievously. "It might be better for your poor little heart to never find out."


    Her words only made him more weary.


    "¡­Just spit it out."


    "Hehehe¡­very well," she grinned. "Today, Prince Rui has a harem to tend to in about two hours. Over the past few years, the Void Prince has adopted the strategy of befriending powerful forces across East Panama by engaging in romantic and sexual rtions with their daughters in a long-term polygamous rtionship. It has been quite fruitful and has yielded many benefits, both in and out of the bed."


    Rui stared at her, frozen.


    "¡­The youngdies never saw through me; I used hypnosis to make them see things that weren''t there," she winked at Rui. "Rest assured, I didn''t do your¡­''stature'' injustice. Seeing as how you have an inactive sex life, I figured this generous Master of yours would do you a favor and have a harem prepared for you when you came back home. Aren''t I wonderful? Tsk tsk, you don''t deserve such a wonderful mentor like me."


    "¡­" This content is ? N?velDrama.Org.


    "Oh, and that wasn''t all¡­!" Master Reina continued, excited as she began narrating her story of the past three years. Despite his fortitude against external information he had gained from the Elder Tree, her words still struck him like a lightning bolt, one after another, as she divulged her escapades and games in the past three years. Much of it was her indulging in her entric sense of humor, which did not sound as bad but was quite disastrous. She also entertained herself in a variety of ways across three years, yet now that Rui had returned, he would need to deal with all of this himself.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2051 Evaluation of Power

    This content is ? N?velDrama.Org.  Chapter 2051 Evaluation of Power


    "¡­And that about sums up my many adventures in the shoes of Master Rui Quarrier Ss Kandria."


    By the time she was done, Rui was in a daze. Dazed at just how much of a maniac a person could be.


    "Now then, tell me about your adventures," Master Reina inquired with curious excitement. "As fun as mine were, any adventure that led to the birth of the youngest Martial Master in history and the most powerful Martial Mind in history cannot be anything less than extraordinary."


    Rui gazed at her wearily, breaking out of his frozen shock. "...I''m not sure I want to indulge you after the mess that you have left behind for me."


    "Oh, don''t be a baby! I spent three years covering for you, I deserve to know!" She insisted.


    Rui heaved a tired sigh as he began narrating his tale since theirst meeting. The Beast Domain, the Valley of Prisms, the Forest of Fear, the Garden of Salvation, and finally, the Mellow and his breakthrough within the dungeon.


    As much as her story impacted his, it could not even begin topare to the bewilderment she exhibited from his.


    "The Garden of Salvation¡­?" She stared at him. "You mean that myth?"


    "It''s not a myth," Rui shook his head. "It''s real."


    "¡­I''ve never heard of the Mellow," she murmured, trying to recollect.


    "It is, or at least was, an insignificant ce on the outside. The dungeon is gone, though after we disrupted it."


    He abstained from telling her about the alien flora lifeform. That was far too important to reveal to anybody, including Master Reina; it was ssified as extraordinarily strategic intelligence of the highest order.


    "Still¡­" She turned to him. "To think you truly seeded in finding the so-called Divine Doctor. Not to mention, to think you change so much in the span of three years."


    Master Reina hadn''t, for a moment, missed how much he had changed.


    Although the closure with his mother was healing, the Elder Tree''s inheritance undoubtedly changed his temperament, turning him more stoic and impassive than he used to be. In addition, the revtions of the Divine Doctor were so staggering that echoes of the emotional turmoil it left him in were reflected in his eyes.


    No one would miss the changes that he had been through.


    "Still, congrattions on your breakthrough," she wished him earnestly. "When you first came to me, I didn''t think you would be a Martial Master eleven yearster. Truly shocking. I hope you''re prepared for the consequences of breaking the world record by half. If you think your breakthrough to the Senior Realm sent waves, then this time, it will be floods and tsunamis. Such an event will not be ignored by any of the fourteen Sage-level powerhouses of the Panama Continent."


    Rui''s expression grew serious. "I know. It hasn''t been long since I returned, but I''m already on a countdown."


    The guards and staff of the Royal Pce. His time in the Quarrier Orphanage. The information about his breakthrough to the Master Realm would slowly spread across Kandria and eventually across the entirety of the Panama Continent.


    He was on a countdown the moment he returned.


    "I intend to announce it after my father awakens."


    She raised an eyebrow. "Why after?"


    "Because the return of the Emperor of Harmony is more consequential and significant to the world than my breakthrough to the Master Realm at my age," Rui calmly exined his reasoning. "The former materially affects the future of human civilization and certainly the future of East Panama. While my record-breaking breakthrough would indeed shock the world, its impacts on the future are not as heavy. Ultimately, I am one Martial Master and far from the strongest."


    He hadn''t forgotten the eerie peril that lingered within the eyes of the Harbinger. The fact that his Martial Mind allowed him to detect her desire for carnage was almost a curse.


    "Far from the strongest, yes," Master Reina calmly remarked. "But strong, nheless. Your first priority should be understanding how strong you''ve be."


    "¡­Don''t worry," a smile cracked at the edge of his mouth. "I have already made ns to rigorously test my strength. It was quite unfortunate that my senses alone were unable to determine the overallbat level of Martial Masters very clearly."


    "That''s to be expected," Master Reina reassured him. "Thebat power of a Martial Master is dependent on many factors, more factors than it is in the Senior Realm, which is why it is possible to gauge rtive power byparison in the Senior Realm through senses alone. However, you cannot trust the observational evaluation of power in the Master Realm. ''Power level'' as an emergent property is far moreplicated in the Master Realm. The Martial Mindplicates matters, and thepatibility of Martial Minds is something that cannot be measured."


    Rui grew immersed in her words. "Compatibility of Martial Minds?"


    "Correct," she nodded. "Some Martial Minds are antithetical to others. Some perform extremely poorly against each other, while some perform extremely well against others. This does not seem to be able to be predicted or known before the battle actually urs. Thus, you must always be extremely careful judging a Martial Master until you have fought them. You cannot simply evaluate the strength of their Martial Body and Mind or purely rely on sensing their aura. All Martial Masters are extremelyplicated beings."


    "Hmmm¡­" Rui absorbed her words. "Ifpatibility of Martial Minds is an important parameter, then it makes sense that I had a hard time evaluating rtive power levels in the Master Realm. But if that''s the case, how does the Martial Union and other organizations grade Martial Masters?"


    In the lower Realms, the power level was observationally evaluated in addition to being tested. However, as he had just learned, the power level of a Martial Master could not be observationally evaluated.


    "Most organizations and nations bypass this by having all Martial Masters fight against as many other Martial Masters as possible, as painstaking and tedious as it is," Master Reina informed him as she exined to him the many dynamics of the Master Realm.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2052 Tomorrow

    <h4>Chapter 2052 Tomorrow</h4>


    It hadn''t been too long since his breakthrough to the Master Realm. He had many, many holes in his knowledge regarding it. From the price of the Martial Mind that he learned from the Divine Doctor to learning about the core principle of Martial Minds from Sage Sayfeel to learning about progress in the Master Realm from his grandmother to learning about how power was evaluated in the Master Realm from Master Reina.


    Each pitstop he made seemed to enrich his understanding of the Realm that he had just entered.


    "Facing off against as many Martial Masters, was it?" Rui raised an eyebrow. "That is a cumbersome way of evaluating what grade a Martial Master is."


    "It can''t be helped." She shrugged. "Martial Masters had an additional dimension of power with many parameters within them that cannot be directly measured. Thus, one can only brute-force the measuring system. When the Reign of the Master Realm began, there weren''t too many Martial Masters back then. Thus, this was much easier back then. But today, you will need to fight dozens of pre-graded Martial Masters to learn where you stand on average. The grade where your win rate and loss rate are exactly fifty percent on average across said grade is estimated to be your grade of power."


    Under the given circumstances, this was the best Martial Art organizations were able to do. The advantage of such a system was that it naturally ounted for growth without needing to shift grades every generation to adjust for growth.


    "Now that you have entered the Master Realm, you must adjust your mindset to be able to ept more uncertainty. Uncertainty of the path ahead, the uncertainty of power, the uncertainty of victory, and so on and so forth," she informed him. "The Upper Realm is a solitary Realm, in many ways."


    CLACK


    The door opened as his chief of staff walked in, yet by the time she walked in, she merely saw Rui sitting on a chair.


    Master Reina was nowhere to be seen.


    "Mikha," Rui addressed her as he pretended to be immersed in whatever Master Reina had been studying.


    "Sir, the Martial Union has just delivered a document containing what appears to be a contract for a duel," she frowned. "It is marked as highly ssified. Thus, I saw it to bring it to you without dy."


    She didn''t possess the awareness needed to distinguish passive auras between Realms, and neither did she know him well enough to notice any differences in his mannerisms.


    "It is indeed highly ssified." He epted the document with interested eyes. "I''ll look over it myself.


    "Understood, Your Highness."


    Master Reina appeared out of thin air after the woman left, turning to Rui with a curious expression.


    "Duel?" Her eyes lit up with interest.


    "Yeah, thanks to your fuck-up, I need to fight to earn reduced penalties," Rui calmly informed.


    "Not fair," she folded her arms. "What am I supposed to do when a Martial Sage ambushes me? In fact, I should have youpensate me for bringing me to the brink of death!"


    "Hah," Rui snorted. "After the mess you have made in the past three years, I should have youpensate me for emotional damage. Now, let me read this contract in peace."


    He ignored herints as he read through the agreement fleshed out in the document.


    The duels were scheduled in North Kandria, Daracol.


    Rui recalled this ce, and it was the same ce where he had fought Master Krakule, a region devoid of human settlement built specifically for Martial Masters to fight without worrying about causing psychological damage to human onlookers.


    "Good." He nodded appreciatively.


    His Martial Embodiment was too destructive; it was mental torture of such magnitude that it eroded consciousness, turning people into brain-dead vegetables unless their minds were powerful enough to handle it.


    The criteria for victory were knock-out, submission, or incapacitation.


    Killing one''s opponent was strongly prohibited.


    That made sense, too. Martial Masters were national treasures. Neither the Martial Union nor the Kandrian government could possibly afford to have them dying in duels and spars.


    The contract also specified the many exact crimes Rui hadmitted, describing multiple charges of fraud within his borate deceit, and also put a number on the total losses suffered by the Martial Union due to fraud.


    "¡­Twenty-one billion Kandrian gold coins." He winced at that number. "Yikes."


    He understood the anti-Rui faction''s sentiment against him a little better. He had always been willing topensate them with priceless assets like the Elder Tree intelligencework and the Divine Doctor''s services.


    "But if they want a fight, then a fight they will get."


    The contract also specified the three exact oues as well as the manner in which the three Martial Artists would be chosen. Contentt bel0ngs to N0ve/lDra/ma.O(r)g!


    "One from the lower third, one from the middle third, and one from the upper third of the thirty grades of the Master Realm chosen at random, barring those who have a conflict of interests," Rui furrowed his eyebrows in thought.


    "Interesting," Master Reina remarked as she read alongside him. "So you''ll have to fight a Martial Master from within the first ten grades, another from the middle ten grades, and a particrly powerful Martial Master in the higher echelons of the Master Realm. Hehehe, that sounds exciting."


    A smile cracked at the edge of Rui''s mouth as his eyes lit up with enthusiasm. "Three opponents won''t be enough to help me understand precisely how strong I am, but it should give me a rough estimate of my own power."


    The weight of the agreement pressed down on his shoulder.


    The oue would forever impact his rtionship with the Martial Union. He needed to ensure that he secured the best possible result to prevent an inadvertent end to a great partnership.


    "Seems they''re particrly quite eager to arrive at a conclusion without any further dy."


    "Why do you say that?"


    His eyes narrowed.


    "The duel is tomorrow at the break of dawn."


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2053 Commencement

    Chapter 2053 Commencement


    When Rui arrived, the Masters of the Martial Union would not have thought he was about to fight life-changing duels if they didn''t know better. While most other Martial Artists in his position would be deeply stressed about winning the duel for not wanting to suffer a horrible fate, he arrived at Daracol with an enthusiastic smile on his face.


    The number of Martial Masters that had chosen to bear witness to his duels was not low.


    While not every Martial Master could make it, he had undoubtedly broken a sort of record for the sheer number of Martial Masters that had made the time to be able to witness the power of the most extraordinary Martial Artist that they had ever seen. STEP


    When he arrived at the designated battlefield in Daracol, the many gathered Martial Masters were already waiting outside the enormous battlefield that stretched hundreds of kilometers in diameter.


    Such a distance was nothing for their powerful senses.


    Yet, Rui did not direct his attention to the many friends he had among them.


    No.


    Within the battlefield, he found himself staring at a single person.


    A single being.


    "Sage Lemolen," Rui bowed his head in respect to the powerful Martial Sage that stood before him. d in dark, ck attire and a hood over his head, the man stuck out like a sore thumb. Rui had never seen a Martial Sage control their aura as well as Sage Lemolen did. It was as though the man was not even a Martial Artist at all.


    He couldn''t detect the heavy aura that was characteristic of Martial Sages. He couldn''t detect their usual influence on the environment.


    "Master Rui¡­" A raspy whisper escaped him as his eyes narrowed. "Are you prepared?"


    The Martial Sage pinned Rui with a powerful gaze and visible displeasure in his eyes.


    "Of course, Your Sagehood."


    "I will be the arbiter of your duel. I shall ensure the battle is carried out in ordance with the rules of the battle while also ensuring that it is shielded from unauthorized surveince. We cannot have the strategic intelligence of our Martial Masters leaked to the outside world."


    His deration was not light.


    "I''m honored, Your Sagehood."


    "Are you?" He red at Rui. "If you truly were honored, you would not have deceived us, all of us, the way you did. The first thing I wanted to do after learning of your deceit was kill the Silent Shadow and hunt you down in the Beast Domain."


    "¡­" Rui simply stared at the man with aposed demeanor.


    "Yet, I''m afraid this farce of a penalty will have to suffice." He snorted. "I hope justice prevails. Now that you are here, I see no reason to dy themencement of the first battle."


    He waved his hand and a Martial Master immediately emerged from the base, entering the battlefield.


    His upper body was bear while his lower body was garbed in Martial attire. He featured a well-honed Martial Body with highly developed muscles and immense power.


    "Master Gerlin Hanti of the Earth Sect, grade nine, will be your first opponent." Sage Lemolen solemnly dered


    The man regarded Rui with a glowering expression. "Master Rui." This belongs to N?velDrama.Org - ?.


    "¡­It''s been a while, Master Gerlin," Rui calmly addressed him.


    This was a man who had joined Rui''s faction four years ago with tentative enthusiasm and hadpletely turned against him after learning about his deception.


    Rui could directly sense the anger festering within his mind,


    "You have taken the many things you''ve been blessed with for granted," he used. "I''m here to teach you that deceites at a cost. Your Martial Mind may be more powerful than mine, but my Body and Heart are far more powerful than yours!"


    He took a stance, tucking his fist at his side while his arm was brought before him, spreading his legs and distributing his weight.


    "¡­" Rui simply stared at him for a moment before taking his ssic neutral stance.


    The two Martial Masters faced each other, prepared forbat.


    Rui remained unmoved while Master Gerlin grew increasingly furious at Rui''s nonchnce.


    "Begin."


    Sage Lemolen''s raspymenced the duel.


    BADUMP!


    Their Martial Hearts and Martial Minds zed into power.


    Instantly, his opponent''s Martial Embodiment bloomed.


    A spiked armor. One that could not be attacked without hurting one''s self.


    One moment, it stood tall and proud.


    The very next¡­


    "¡­!" Master Gerlin froze as Rui''s Martial Embodiment erupted in all its ephemeral glory.


    It erupted in a horrifying tsunami, washing over his opponent.


    It spread far beyond, epassing the entire battlefield.


    The many Martial Masters spectating shuddered as an avnche of endless darkness subsumed them.


    An endless void.


    It was nothing, yet everything.


    "What is this¡­?" Master Vericita whispered with fear in her eyes as she beheld a Martial Embodiment more powerful than anything she had ever felt in her entire life. The sheer flood of information was so high that each Martial Master needed to activate their own Martial Minds just to withstand all of it!


    "Rgh¡­" Master Ceeran gritted his teeth. "So powerful!"


    "Truly¡­" Master Zentra remarked. "¡­Truly unfathomable."


    "Kekeke¡­!" Master Reina cackled. "As expected of my pupil!"


    Most of them were shocked speechless even as their Martial Minds fought back against the titanic flood of information that coursed from his Martial Embodiment.


    Sage Lemolen narrowed his eyes gravely as he bore witness to the unimaginable power of Rui''s Martial Embodiment.


    It had exceeded even his expectations by arge margin.


    Master Gerlin was frozen, unmoving.


    No.


    He was unable to move.


    His affinity as a Martial Artist had always been that of Body. He had barely managed to break through to the Master Realm with a pitifully weak Martial Mind.


    Enough to fight Martial Masters but¡­


    "Ngggrh!" He gritted his teeth as his eyes grew bloodshot. He struggled.


    To think.


    To decide.


    To move.


    Martial Embodiments forcefully injected information into the subconscious mind through their interpretation of nonverbalmunication after misdirecting, which could not be regted by the misdirected conscious mind.


    Normally, the information it conveyed was far too weak to impede any Martial Mind.


    Yet, what if the disparity between two Martial Minds was so great that the information conveyed by the Martial Embodiment of one was greater than what the other could process?


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2054 Cracking Attacks

    Chapter 2054 Cracking Attacks


    Try as he might, Master Gerlin could not move.


    His Body was fine.


    Yet his mind¡­


    "Rgh¡­!" He gritted his teeth as his expression crumpled with strain.


    The sheer amount of information that Rui projected was so great that the Martial Artist couldn''t process all of it!


    Because his mind could never process all of it before more entered, it couldn''t so much as make a coherent decision or even focus on Rui.


    This was what was known as incapacitation.


    Sage Lemolen heaved a sigh. "Winner by incapacitation, Master Rui Quarrier Ss Kandria."


    Rui immediately turned his Heart and Mind off, allowing the man to breathe.


    THUD


    He fell to his knees, panting for air.


    "For what it''s worth," Rui calmly addressed him. "I am sorry."


    Unfortunately for Rui, he wasn''t even listening to him.


    He was still processing the fact that he lost to Rui''s Martial Embodiment before Rui even used his Martial Art.


    He gritted his teeth, choking under the anger and frustration.


    He felt as though his pride as a Martial Master has been trampled on.


    He gazed at Rui with a mixture of defeat and despair. "You¡­"


    He halted, at a loss for words, as his eyes widened with shock.


    Rui was more displeased than he was.


    He was hoping to genuinely fight a Martial Master for the first time in his life. It was frustrating to be denied that opportunity when it was this close to him.


    "Master Gerlin," Sage Lemolen sternly addressed him. "The battle is over. Please vacate the battlefield."


    "¡­I understand, Your Sagehood."


    The man left the battlefield with vacant eyes. Sage Lemolen''s eyes returned to Rui, gazing at him deeply before announcing the nextbatant.


    "Master Zere Mhel, grade neen, of the Fire Sect."


    Rui''s eyes lit up with interest as a second Martial Master arrived at the battlefield with a fiery expression.


    The air boiled under the sheer heat of her re. "You shall learn that all actions have consequences, Your Highness," She snarled. "Take your stance!"


    "I look forward to a good duel."


    "Hah!" She snorted. "I''m just going to beat you up, boy!"


    Sage Lemolen''s eyes shifted towards Rui.


    "¡­Do you wish to exercise your right to consume potions before the fightmences?"


    He was allowed to make use of the highest rejuvenation and healing resources, as availed by the Martial Union itself between each round. "¡­It''s unnecessary," Rui calmly remarked, taking his stance. He hadn''t expended any meaningful amounts of energy against Master Gerlin. Instead, his attention had shifted to Master Zere. A single fact had be evident to him.


    She was strong.


    Unfortunately, as he discussed with Master Reina, that didn''t mean much. He had already begun studying her the moment she had arrived.


    Her body was well-chiselled, yet did not possess the overwhelming physical power that he hade to expect from Martial Masters of the Fire Sect.


    Instead, the physical configuration of her Martial Body maintained a good bnce between power and mobility.


    The VOID algorithm processed her stance in the briefest of moments, revealing much about her fighting style from it alone. Her centered legs facilitated ease of maneuvering at the cost of positional stability, which indicated she was most certainly a moving Martial Master.


    Her upper body twisted, coiling with power.


    He had no doubt that she would leap at him, ready to st him the moment the battle began.


    "Begin." Sage Lemolenmenced the battle.


    BADUMP!


    She did as he predicted.


    Unfortunately for him, she was much faster than he had ever imagined.


    BOOM!!


    Rui''s eyes widened as he barely managed to react in time to the iing blow that crashed into his guard.


    The sheer weight of the attackunched him away.


    That wasn''t all.


    SPLAT!


    He grew stunned as blood began spilling out of a puncture wound in his arm, leaping away, rmed.


    Unfortunately, this was a tactic that her Martial Mind forbade.


    WHOOSH


    Rui''s eyes widened as thend where he sought to step caved into the earth while it rose at her feet, propelling her forward with powerful earth-bending while he had no leverage to move.


    BOOM!!


    Rui blocked a powerful blow from her blinding attack with a grave expression.


    SPLAT


    A second puncture appeared on his arms.


    His eyes barely caught a glimpse of her bloodied fingers before she blurred a third time, determined to puncture him a third time.


    WHOOSH


    Her attack crashed into an empty image of Rui.


    A feint.


    BOOM!


    A powerful Flowing Canon armed with the full power of Flowing Canon, Outer Convergence, and Reverberating Lance crashed into her chin.


    A finisher.


    Or so he thought.


    CRACK!


    "¡­Eh?" Rui''s eyes widened as he felt his knuckle fracturing on the spot.


    A vengeful grin appeared on her face as a powerful spear hand jab surged at Rui, threatening to puncture him yet again.


    WHOOSH


    Rui evaded the iing attack,unching a powerful spiraling kick to her gut.


    CRACK!


    His eyes widened as he felt a bone in his foot cracking upon impact. Master Zere surged at him once with a flurry of spear jabs.


    "Breathing Crucifix."


    BOOM


    Heunched a third blow, sting her away with a heavy impact.


    This time, he didn''t feel any bone cracks.


    "I see¡­" His eyes narrowed. "That''s a nifty Martial Mind you have there." Exclusive ? content by N(?)ve/l/Drama.Org.


    "Hehehe¡­" A bloodlusted smile appeared on her face as she adjusted to the powerful hypnosis shackling her breathing. "You haven''t seen anything yet!"


    Even as she surged towards him yet again with her spear hands at the ready, Rui leaped away as he understood what was happening.


    ''Her Martial Mind contains a system of thought that allows her to shift the area of impact of the collision such that all the damage is incurred by the attacker rather than herself,'' he realized. ''I cannot hurt her in closebat, no matter how powerful my attacks are.''


    Even in battles between humans, often times, the one throwing their fists would be the one to have them broken.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2055 Perfect Solution

    Chapter 2055 Perfect Solution


    This urred because the bones of the fist were weaker than the bones of the region being struck. Thus, the attacker suffered all the damage of their own attack.


    It was no different from trying to damage a steel wall with ss. It didn''t matter if the ss attacked the wall, it would always be the one to suffer.


    Normally, this happened at random and was unpredictable.


    However, what if someone devised a system of thought that calcted how to make this happen every time?


    What if someone created a system of thought that evaluated the structural integrity of their opponent and adaptively evolved their movements to ensure each collision damaged their opponent more?


    ''In that case, it doesn''t matter how powerful my blows are," he narrowed his eyes. ''She will always be immune to them.''


    By hyper-conditioning her joints and other special regions, she had created zones across her entire body that served as collision pads to shift all collisions. In addition, because she merely needed to shift her body by a little, the effort and time needed were minimal, allowing her to always ensure that her opponents suffered more than her.


    Then, by creating a system of thought that allowed her to calcte the exact location of impact and the structural durability of her opponent''s fist or leg, she would know exactly how to move to ensure they suffered from their own power.


    "A splendid system of thought." Rui''s admiration was earnest.


    Her eyes red with rage. "Don''t patronize me!"


    WHOOSH


    WHOOSH


    She surged forward at him at extremely high speeds, throwing flurries of blow after blow.


    Yet, they nevernded.


    WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH!


    Rui calmly evaded each of them with the most optimally efficient evasion maneuver, foreseeing all her attacks with the predictive model of the VOID algorithm as he decided his course of action, courtesy of the Angel of Lace.


    He couldn''t strike her.


    It was possible that he could negate her system of thought through some tactic or strategy, but it was not an avenue worth pursuing.


    He had a much better solution.


    ''Mighty Roar sh st.'' His eyes intensified as the Void Pathfinder technique activated in his mind. THWOOM THWOOM THWOOM THWOOM THWOOM!


    A barrage of sonic projectiles surged toward her with remarkable velocity.


    BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM!


    Her expression crumpled with severity as she tore through each projectile one after another.


    Yet, he could directly sense the pain and strain inside her mind.


    "Sound cannot get hurt."


    THWOOM THWOOM THWOOM THWOOM THWOOM!


    He continued sting her with projectile bullets of sound one after another.


    Not a single one missed her, much to her dismay.


    Like magic, each and every single sound projectile surged exactly where she stepped, almost as if they came from the future, forcing her to endure and tear apart at each and every single pulse of sound that moved towards her.


    Yet, she was not done.


    ''Mind of Spear: Dividing Spear Mode.'' Her mind surged into thought as she shifted her body in calcted manners.


    THWHOOSH THWHOOSH THWHOOSH THWOOSH!


    Rui''s eyes lit up with interest as his sound attack dissipated when they struck her body. Her movements lessened as she lessened her surface area, closing her body and stiffening her muscles.


    "I see¡­"


    It was simr to her earlier system of thought but a slightly different application. Rather than focusing on specific areas of her body where her body was tougher, she focused on withstanding attacks through an axis where she was most durable.


    Every object had an axis along which the maximum amount of force was needed to break it. Even an egg could be extremely difficult to break if one tried breaking bypressing it from top to bottom rather than side to side.


    She estimated the vector of force of her opponent''s long-range attack and ensured that the axis of maximum difficulty was aligned exactly with each attack.


    THWHOOSH THWHOOSH THWHOOSH THWHOOSH THWHOOSH!


    She was able to minimize damage by cleaving through each attack with less resistance.


    Her grin widened as she surged forward at him at high speed. She thoroughly overwhelmed each iing sound projectile with maximal effectiveness, growing better and better at it with each step that she took.


    Until Rui used Hypertrophic Surge.


    BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM!!


    "Argh!" She grimaced as countless bruises, wounds, and cuts erupted across her body.


    Yet, her steps never ceded as her eyes remained fixed on him.


    Rui was deeply impressed by just how powerful her defense was. Her Martial Mind was weaker than his, but her defensive techniques and conditioning were even more synergetic with it than his were.


    Unfortunately for her, he had already identified the most adaptively evolved solution to hertest offensive defense.


    "Sonic Singrity."


    The world screamed.


    It screamed as a tsunami of sound converged onto her from all directions.


    No greater solution against her directional defenses existed than an attack that attacked her from all directions. She couldn''t shift to adjust the point of impact because the point of impact was every inch of her body.


    BOOOM!!!


    "AAAARRGHHJHHH!!!" She screamed in pain as she tried to cleave through all the iing sound that began heating her body up from the inside out, ring at him through the pain.


    His Martial Embodiment had shifted entirely.


    Gone was the endless void that consumed everything.


    In its ce, a singrity of heat and sound had emerged.


    Yet, she stood nheless, moving towards him even as her insides began heating up at rming rates.


    "Phantom Pain."


    All thought in her mind ceased to exist as unfathomable pain erupted from deep within her.


    "AAARGRHAGRHARGH!!!!!" Her bellows echoed throughout all of North Kandria.


    "Enough." Sage Lemolen''s raspy voice cut through the battle.


    In an instant, Rui''s domain and hypnosis disappeared.


    THUD


    The Martial Master copsed to the ground, unconscious.


    "Winner by incapacitation," Sage Lemolen calmly announced. "Master Rui Quarrier Ss Kandria."


    Rui heaved a sigh as he deactivated the Metabody System, his Martial Heart, and Mind, and a hint of satisfaction glinted in his eyes.


    He had achieved his first proper victory in battle against a Martial Master.


    -


    This chapter upload first at  This belongs to N?velDrama.Org - ?.

 Chapter 2056 Bypassed Prediction

    Chapter 2056 Bypassed Prediction


    While his first victory was technically his first battle against a Martial Master, Rui was not interested in counting that. It gave him absolutely no meaningful experience against other Martial Masters.


    If anything, he almost wished he could request a rematch for the lower third against someone he could test himself against.


    s, the contract specified that the results of these matches could not be undone.


    With two victories in the bag, he had secured the second-best oue for himself. Even if he lost the third match, he would only be subjected to a punishment where he would have topensate for their losses with Martial contributions.


    Frankly, this was not a bad oue as far as he was concerned. Making contributions to the Martial Union did not consume extra time or energy since he would just be sharing things that he had already worked on in the past.


    He closed his eyes as he absorbed the experience of his first Master-level battle. His opponent was undoubtedly strong. It didn''t seem as though she had a particrly lowpatibility against him. She had managed to push back even after he developed a predictive model on her with the VOID algorithm and the Angel of Lace. Additionally, she managed to neutralize the battle even after he shifted the battle to a long-range one against her using the Void Pathfinder technique, despite being shackled with Breathing Crucifix.


    It took abination of Hypertrophic Surge and Yggdrasil System to put her down for good. It was a good battle where he was forced to fight seriously, which was enough to win the battle. Contentt bel0ngs to N0ve/lDra/ma.O(r)g!


    ''¡­I can''t say for sure because she might be lesspatible with me than others in her grade, but I suspect that I am at least grade neen,'' Rui mused to himself.


    "We have reached the third duel."


    Sage Sayfeel''s raspy voice drew his attention.


    "Your final opponent will be¡­" Sage Sayfeel narrowed his eyes. "¡­Master Grais of the Lightning Sect."


    An elderly Martial Master arrived at the battlefield, garbed in the Martial attire featuring the Lightning Sect''s crest.


    Just his sect and Body told Rui everything he needed to know about the man.


    "Master Rui¡­" The elderly Martial Master gazed at him with a disapproving expression. "I will not hold back against you."


    Rui shook his head. "I wouldn''t want it any other way."


    Unlike the previous two opponents, Master Grais did not seem to bear too much of a grudge against him, even if he wasn''t particrly fond of Rui either.


    "Master Rui, would you like to exercise your right to consume healing and rejuvenation potions before the fight begins?" Sage Sayfeel asked.


    "Yes." He nodded. He had taken some damage in his fight against Master Zere. Her Martial Mind had allowed her to crack his bones upon contact, which had healed but drained him of vital stamina, as did the entire battle and the Metabody System.


    "As you wish."


    Immediately, Rui was supplied with the finest rejuvenation potions, which brought him to his very peak.


    "Now then," Master Grais narrowed his eyes. "If you are settled, then let usmence immediately. I am eager to experience your touted power for myself."


    He took a highly aggressive maneuvering stance that resembled that of a sprinter. Rui didn''t need the VOID algorithm to tell him that the man was undoubtedly going to dart for him the moment the battle began.


    He took a neutral stance.


    "Begin." Sage Sayfeelmenced the battle.


    WHOOSH


    As predicted, Master Graise surged towards Rui with extraordinary speed, arriving before Rui in the briefest of moments. A targeted knuckle punch surged towards Rui''s throat, threatening to strike his neck.


    As predicted by his predictive model.


    WHOOSH


    Rui had already dodged it before it had arrived.


    Or so he thought.


    POW!


    Rui''s eyes widened as he barely managed to throw up a guard against his opponent''s attack trajectory, which shifted abruptly, crashing into his guard without so much as missing a beat.


    Yet, before he could even breathe, his opponent''s other hand already surged for his eyes, threatening to take them out.


    "Speed Void."


    WHOOSH


    Master Grais'' eyes widened as Rui just barely managed to move out of the way, managing to avoid losing his eyes.


    Yet, Rui was hardly done. ''Temporal Disharmony.''


    Rui immediately brought out the two most powerful anti-speed techniques that would undoubtedly hurt the Martial Master significantly.


    "Do not underestimate me." BOOM!


    Rui''s eyes widened as he felt a surge of pain emerging from his abdomen.


    "¡­what?" A whisper escaped him as he nced down.


    The man''s fist had instantly buried itself deeply in his sr plexus.


    It had happened so quickly, that even Rui''s sense of pain waste to react.


    He didn''t understand.


    He didn''t have time to.


    BOOM!


    The world rotated as a second blow crashed into his skull out of nowhere. For a moment, Rui was frozen midair, upside-down.


    Yet, the man was just beginning.


    ''Steps of Lightning.'' The man narrowed his eyes, activating his Martial Mind once more. ''Shadow Transmission.''


    BAM BAM BAM!!


    Powerful blows crashed into Rui before he evenprehended what was happening. He guarded his vitals, trying to withstand an onught from his opponent as his mind surged into thought.


    ''¡­The predictive model isn''t predicting each of these attacks.'' He gritted his teeth. ''In that case¡­''


    POW


    Master Grais'' eyes narrowed as his attack bounced off of Rui uselessly. His outer skin and flesh had grown thicker and darker as Nemean Blossom was activated to the fullest.


    "Tough." Master Grais narrowed his eyes. "Then I shall just have to whittle you down bit by bit!"


    The man disappeared as he surged towards Rui with remarkable agility, arriving before he could even begin toprehend.


    It was as though Speed Void and Temporal Disharmony were entirely ineffective against him!


    POW POW POW!!


    The Martial Master weaved in and around Rui beyond his awareness, peppering him with countless strikes, one after another.


    Yet, Rui never yielded his guard, waiting for the right moment.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2057 I Can See Your SOUL

    Chapter 2057 I Can See Your SOUL


    "¡­Who do you think will win?" Master Vericita asked with concern. "Rui is strong, but Master Grais is certainly no slouch, he''s just one grade away from bing a high-grade Martial Master."


    "¡­It''s difficult to say." Master Zentra narrowed his eyes, observing the battle. "His Martial Mind is quite powerful and refined. His Highness has probably never faced an opponent with a system of thought as powerful as this."


    "His Shadow Transmission system of thought is as fearsome as ever." Headmaster Aronian heaved a sigh. "In addition, his ability to convert speed into offensive power is even better than I recalled."


    Master Reina''s eyes lit up with vague interest as an insight dawned on her. "¡­Stealth."


    The other Martial Masters of the pro-Rui faction gazed at her warily. "He''s using stealth," Master Reina remarked with curiosity. "He''s hiding the telltale signs of his future movements with a momentary, abrupt, and transient burst of stealth. He adaptively evolves the timing and sensory-orientation of the stealth to match his opponent''s senses and awareness for the greatest effect. Tsk, why didn''t I think of that?"


    Master Zentra nodded tentatively. "¡­I am not surprised that you have managed to see through it as an exceptional master assassin. That is the secret behind the Shadow Transmission system of thought." Exclusive ? content by N(?)ve/l/Drama.Org.


    All sentient beings engaged in extraptive analysis subconsciously and consciously. Science had shown that interpreting the telltale signs that preceded movements to gauge timing was something that was ingrained in the very neurology of sentient creatures.


    This was exactly what Master Grais had sought to undermine when he created the Shadow Transmission system of thought. He employed a very brief and limited momentary burst of stealth to hide all the telltale signs of his movements which disrupted all extraptive cognition of those that observed him.


    This had an extraordinarily high synergetic effect whenbined with his blinding speed.


    Those who observed him would see a single thing.


    A Martial Master disappearing through space and time.


    He was beyondprehension.


    BAM BAM BAM!!!


    Three charged blows crashed into Rui''s vitals through his guard at extreme speeds.


    He never saw theming.


    Master Grais surged forward throwing a swift blow at Rui''s abdomen, promptly provoking a guard from Rui.


    WHOOSH


    Rui''s eyes widened as the image disappeared.


    It was a feint.


    By the time he noticed the two fingers surging towards his eyeballs, it was toote.


    SPLAT SPLAT!


    "Argh!" Rui grimaced in pain as the Martial Master''s powerful finger jabs ravaged Rui''s eyeballs, leaving him blinded.


    Master Grais'' eyes narrowed as a golden opportunity of an opening presented itself to him.


    Neen Martial Art techniques were activated, improving his agility, speed, maneuvering, fluidity, and efficiency.


    WHOOSH!


    He crossed the distance between him and Rui in less than a microsecond.


    Yet, his eyes widened when Rui''s bloody eye sockets opened, meeting his gaze.


    "I can see your SOUL."


    Those words sent chills up his spine.


    BOOOM!


    "Arck¡­!" The man grimaced as a powerful blow crashed into his body, armed with the power of Outer Convergence, Fire Breathing, and Reverberating Lance.


    CRACK


    His expression grew grave as he felt one of his ribs fracture under the sheer weight of Rui''s strike. Although his Martial Body was more powerful than Rui''s, its physical configuration was oriented towards speed, agility, and mobility. He could not tank strikes like a defensive Martial Artist.


    "I see¡­" A whisper escaped Rui.


    The battle paused momentarily as the two Martial Artists took a brief reprieve to catch their breath and recuperate.


    "No wonder the pattern recognition system of my Martial Mind failed," Rui murmured, displeased. "It is partially ipatible with your system of thought."


    The predictive model of the VOID algorithm relied on analyzing the telltale signs and extrapting them to evaluate timing. While all living beings did this to a small degree inherently, pattern recognition did it to an astronomical degree to produce incredible results as far as predictive power went.


    The Angel of Lace primarily supplied him with passive patterns centered around these telltale signs and the timing and action they corresponded with rather than activebat patterns.


    Rui now understood what Master Reina meant when she said rtive power levels could not be evaluated before a battle due to thepatibility of Martial Minds.


    "You are still young."


    Master Grais'' voice drew his attention.


    "Far too young," he narrowed his eyes. "Your inexperience with the Master Realm shows. The most important factor in a battle between Martial Masters are their systems of thought and the decisions we make based on them. Take the defeat that I will be handing you with grace and learn from it."


    WHOOSH!


    He surged towards Rui the moment his ribs had healed. His opponent''s vision had yet to return, thus, waiting any longer would begin to be detrimental to his own interests.


    Unfortunately for him, the battle didn''t go as it did before.


    WHOOSH!


    His eyes widened as his blownded on an empty image of Rui.


    A feint.


    WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH


    The elder Martial Master barely managed to evade the iing blows of the youngest Martial Master, circling around him tond powerful blows in his blindspot.


    BAM BAM BAM!


    Rui shifted to block the attacks calmly, one after another.


    Against speed-oriented Martial Artists, dodging was too much of a hassle because of their speed. Given that he had opted to use Nemean Blossom, he would rather make the best use of it.


    POW POW POW!


    He blocked a flurry of blows from the Martial Master, carefully using the SOUL System to read his intention. Even if he could hide external telltale signs from Rui''s sense with momentary but powerful bursts of stealth, he could not hide his SOUL from Rui''s mind sense.


    When Rui broke through to the Master Realm, he realized that he no longer needed Soul Void to read the SOULs of people within his sensory range. His Martial Mind, when fully active, was so powerful that it could glean the data that he needed without needing to put his opponent in a trance.


    He had been studying the Master''s SOUL from the moment the battle began.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2058 Maximized Reaction

    Chapter 2058 Maximized Reaction


    The battle shifted into the second phase as the cards had beenid out for both Martial Masters.


    Even with the SOUL System at y, Rui found it difficult to actuallynd a blow on the Martial Master. He had seeded in doing so the very first first time because he managed to cleanly catch Master Grais off guard due to overmitting.


    However, the Martial Master was shockingly faster than he was.


    WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH!


    He effortlessly avoided Rui''s attack, moving so fast that he was reduced to indistinguishable blurs in Rui''s eyes. His Martial Body was far faster inherently, but even more shocking was the number of techniques this man used simultaneously!


    ''He''s using almost two dozen techniques simultaneously.'' Rui narrowed his eyes. ''It makes sense because the Martial Mind has expanded the cognitive limits to active techniques.''


    In the Lower Realms, one generally could not use more than several active techniques simultaneously withoutpromising reaction time and awareness because too much of the mind''s attention went into maintaining the techniques.


    Yet, things changed in the Master Realm.


    There was additional cognitive capital that allowed for even more active techniques simultaneously so long as they didn''t directly conflict with each other.


    Unfortunately, Rui didn''t have such arge number of non-conflicting techniques that could make use of his additional mental capital.


    He had very recently broken through to the Master Realm.


    Yet, the sheer disparity between their raw speeds and the techniques allowed him to move so incredibly fast that even the SOUL System could only mitigate the enormous speed gap. In addition, his technique and Martial Mind had been molded around each other, while Rui''s simply worked side by side.


    The difference was enormous.


    WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH


    The Martial Master almost ignored Rui''s attempts at reaching him as he surged forward with aggressive velocities, ruing great momentum.


    BAM BAM BAM!!


    The blows peppered across his entire body were designed to strike the most vulnerable parts of his body and cause maximum damage. The fact that he had partially negated the predictive model prevented Rui from getting away with much preparation; he couldn''t use Flux Earther instead of Nemean Blossom due to the limited timespan.


    Against the chimera, he had both, in addition to dyed cognition from the chimera due to its tedious decisioning system.


    Master Grais had no such w.


    POW POW POW!


    He sted Rui''s body with swift blows before leaping away at thest moment, avoiding a powerful strike from Rui.


    WHOOSH


    The two surged forward at each other.


    BOOM! WHOOSH!


    The battle churned as the two sides tried to gain an advantage over the other.


    The endgames in their mind were entirely different.


    Rui''s win conditions were clear: He either needed tond a single attack with enough damage to cripple the fragile Martial Master or trap him in grappling where his speed was useless.


    Master Grais, on the other hand, was keen to avoid this oue. He needed to y the long game correctly and ensure that he never got hit or fell into a trap. As long as he could slowly umte damage over Rui, the battle would eventually turn in his favor. Unfortunately, he had underestimated Rui''s Martial Mind.


    "Your direction of dodging is always in alignment with torque."


    SPLAT!


    Master Grais''s eyes widened as a cut appeared on his face from the edge of Rui''s knuckle.


    "Fuuu¡­!" Rui rushed in with a charge, shifting from the Nemean Blossom to Neo Godspeed.


    Time slowed down in his senses as his body grew lighter and faster.


    A battle of attrition was sub-optimal when using the Metabody System. In the long run, allowing the Martial Master to umte damage in the long-run was not something that he would rather take his chances with.


    If he wanted tond a finishing blow on Master Grais, he would have to seize that opportunity himself within five minutes!


    "Come then." Master Grais invited him fiercely.


    WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH!


    The two of them danced around the battlefield as Rui significantly closed the speed gap between them.


    Yet, everything came with a price.


    BAM BAM BAM!


    The blindingly fast blows of the Martial Master hurt even if Rui mitigated them with partial evasions.


    "You may be faster than before." His elderly eyes intensified. "But now you''re in my territory."


    WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH!


    A flurry of blows flew at each other as the two Martial Masters sped around the battlefield at incredible speeds.


    Rui threw an incredibly fast kick at the Martial Master''s head, trying to knock him out with a single blow.


    WHOOSH


    Master Grais narrowly evaded it, circling around Rui as a flurry of jabs flew at him at extraordinary speeds.


    WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH!


    Rui gritted his teeth with frustration.


    Despite Speed Void, temporal Disharmony, and Neo Godspeed, they still weren''t equal in speed!


    ''He''s maximizing my reaction time by attacking from directions with the least amount of my concentration and awareness.'' Rui''s expression grew grim.


    Reaction time was not a static or uniform parameter. It was dependent on how much attention and awareness the mind reserved for whatever it was reacting to. Master Grais'' system of thought was a psychological evaluation system allowed him to understand how his opponent distributed their attention and focus throughout the battle, allowing him to dy their reactions by attacking in those directions.


    Thus, despite reading the inception of his intent, his mind sluggishly reacted to attacks on certain vectors and directions.


    "You should pay more attention." A chilling whisper escaped the elder Martial Master.


    SPLAT


    Rui barely managed to avoid a pronged finger poke to the eyes, millimeters away from losing his vision a second time, leaping away. He had attacked Rui in the blind spot of his vision, the spot where the eye could not see due to theck of photoreceptor cells at the spot where the nerves connected the eyeball to the brain.


    A lethal move that had an extraordinarily high sess rate of blinding his victims. Contentt bel0ngs to N0ve/lDra/ma.O(r)g!


    "Come, Void Prince," the Master addressed Rui. "The battle is just beginning."


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2059 Time limits

    Chapter 2059 Time limits


    The moment the battle shifted to that of one between speeders, rui was on a timer. He needed to get the battle done as quickly as possible because it was not something that he could afford to prolong too much.


    Unlike Master Grais, this was not something that could be prolonged too much. He immediately rushed in to st his opponent and end the battle as soon as possible. WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH


    Master Grais evaded a flurry of blinding blows, one after the other.


    s, it was not as easy as he had hoped.


    POW


    One of Rui''s strikes crashed into his face.


    His eyes widened, stunned. In the depths of Rui''s eyes stirred an endless darkness.


    A void.


    BAM


    His expression darkened as he barely managed to block the swift blow that sted into his face.


    It wasn''t that Rui had gotten stronger.


    No.


    He was reading Master Grais better. This belongs to N?velDrama.Org - ?.


    "You may be able to hide your telltale signs, but you cannot hide your active patterns."


    POW POW POW


    The master gritted his teeth as he bore Rui''s onught.


    The only reason that he did not break bones then and there was because rui had lost power to achieve greater speed.


    BAM BAM BAM


    "Rgh." Master Grais leaped away from Rui to put some distance between them.


    The two of them locked eyes as a mutual understanding shed between them.


    Based on simple deduction, Master Grais understood that there was undoubtedly a time limit to his power.


    "I need onlyst till your power wears out." The man''s eyes zed with determination. "Then victory is mine."


    Rui knew that he was right as far as that went.


    If he was gaining the upper hand with Neo Godspeed, then he would undoubtedly be losing it to his opponent after it wore off.


    He was on a sharp timer.


    Master Grais watched him like a hawk.


    He was waiting for the critical moment.


    Yet all he saw was a smile emerge on Rui''s face. A smile of pure excitement.


    Rui never felt more alive than when he was pushed to the very limit of his ability to adaptively evolve. His eyes widened at that thought.


    ''Maybe the moments I feel most alive can teach me something about who I am¡­''


    He felt most alive when his adaptive evolution was pushed to his limits. His eyes lit up as he felt profoundly euphoric. He had taken the first of a million steps to an unimaginably distant Realm.


    Yet, it was a step in the right direction.


    BAM BAM BAM


    Master Grais grew grimmer as Rui pummeled him hard on and across his guard.


    His perseverance to withstand Rui''s attacks only grew stronger, but unfortunately, he continued to suffer damage from his opponent as time passed.


    Thebined power of Speed Void, Temporal Disharmony, and Rui''s own Neo Godspeed was so great that his Martial Mind was able to make for the gap between them, never allowing the Martial Master out of the grips of his onughts.


    BAM BAM BAM


    Master Grais put as much distance between himself; s, Rui wasn''t willing to allow that to happen.


    THWOOM THWOOM THWOOM!


    Rui fired three Mighty Roar sh sts at the Master, guided by the Void Pathfinder. They couldn''t miss.


    BAM BAM BAM!


    Master Grais grimaced, yet his eyes never left Rui.


    They were waiting.


    ''Only a few minutes left.''


    He was not wrong in his estimates, able to urately gauge the time that Rui had left in his state based on the physiological strain that was clearly evident to the power senses of the Martial Master.


    Rui''s red with intensity as he pushed himself to the very limit to inflict as much damage as possible and get as close as possible. He was determined to inflict as much damage on Master Grais as possible if he could not end the battle then and there.


    The moment his Metabody System ended and the battle hadn''t, Master Grais would return with a vengeance.


    THWOOM THWOOM THWOOM!


    Rui continued firing Mighty Roar sh sts one after another as his opponent did his best to ensure that they didn''t meet. Long-range power was usually weaker, which was to his benefit; in addition, he didn''t want to get anywhere near the possibility of a grappling match. He didn''t think he could possibly win that.


    THWOOM THWOOM THWOOM THWOOM THWOOM!!!


    Master Grais gritted his teeth as Rui managed to nail him with a tier-five Transverse Resonance.


    CRACK CRACK CRACK


    The powerful attack fractured bones in his body, reducing hisbat effectiveness.


    Had Rui been fast enough, he would have been able to win the battle then and there.


    Unfortunately¡­


    "Huff¡­huff¡­" He panted heavily.


    Neo Godspeed had run out.


    Of the four Metabody Systems, Neo Godspeed was the most taxing because it taxed not just the body but also the brain with the self-hypnosis adjusting perception of time. While Hypertrophic Surge would havested a much longer time, this didn''t.


    On top of that, he was continuously maintaining a power domain like Speed Void and power hypnosis like Temporal Disharmony.


    Without those two, Master Grais would blitz and knock him out before he could even begin to process it.


    The speed disparity between them was absurd.


    Not only was his Martial Body several times faster than that of Rui, but his techniques increased that gap massively, making the total speed gap great.


    Furthermore, Rui didn''t have Nemean Blossom or Neo Godspeed.


    Master Grais''s eyes lit up with fire as he rushed towards Rui at top speed, eager to end the battle as soon as possible.


    WHOOSH


    Two fingers surged towards Rui''s eyes at high speeds.


    Yet, they never reached.


    CRACK!


    His eyes widened with shock as his fingers broke, deforming as they crumpled against Rui''s forehead.


    He had crouched a little at thest moment, causing the man''s fingers to m into hard bone.


    A single remark escaped Rui. "Predictable."


    WHOOSH


    Master Grais leaped away, dodging a slow attack from Rui as he healed his fingers.


    This time, however, Rui didn''t chase him.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2060 Gambit

    Chapter 2060 Gambit


    Instead, he remained where he stood, crouching as he brought his hands and legs closer to him, making him smaller.


    He reduced the feasible avenue attacks.


    As a speedster, Master Grais primarily targeted the more vulnerable parts of the body since hecked the power to do damage to particrly tough and well-shielded parts of the body.


    His expression grew more severe as he understood what Rui was trying to do.


    ''It''s an invitation¡­'' His eyes narrowed as he stared at the prodigiously young Master. ''¡­and a trap.''


    For a moment, the two of them simply stared at each other.


    As it was right now, Rui had exhausted more energy, but Master Grais had taken more energy.


    However, as they exchanged gazes, a mutual understanding came between them.


    A battle of attrition favored Rui.


    The longer the battle continued, the more Rui grew familiar with his opponent and the more he adaptively evolved. His SOUL and predictive models only grew stronger and stronger, while Master Grais'' speed only went downhill.


    At some point, Rui woulde to outmaneuver him if the battle continued for long. The fact that Rui was able to keep up without the Metabody System when he needed it before was proof of that.


    If he wanted to win, he would have to do so very soon.


    Rui had already foreseen this even before he used Neo Godspeed. He made sure to hurt Master Grais enough such that the decline of his speed was all but guaranteed before adopting a strategy that forced Master Grais toe to him rather than Rui adopting the role of the chaser.


    "Well yed, Void Prince," Master Grais snorted. "I ept your invitation."


    His hand sharpened, straight as an arrow, as he finally activated his third system of thought. ''Lightning Spear Jab.'' His eyes red with power as he surged with power.


    It was an offensive system of thought that relied on scanning the opponent''s body for microstructure weaknesses across the entire body before eventually adaptively altering the form of the attack to inflict as much damage as possible.


    Angle, area of contact, and direction of attack all needed to be within micrometers of precision.


    It was simr to how chopping karate wooden blocks was easier when done along the grain than against.


    All cellr structures had imperfections that could be exploited if one was precise and urate enough.


    It was his most powerful attack.


    The final exchange came sooner than anyone had expected.


    WHOOSH


    In an instant, Master Grais arrived before Rui.


    SPLAT!


    His eyes widened as his attack pierced through Rui''s torso in between his abs without resistance or defense, emerging on the other side.


    He gazed into Rui''s eyes with shock. "You¡­!"


    A wide grin appeared on Rui''s face.


    He had allowed the attack to impale him thoroughly without resistance. Rui tightened his back and abdomen muscles, locking the man''s arms within his body, refusing to let go.


    This had been his tactic all along.


    "I have you now."


    The words sent chills down the Martial Master''s spine as he struggled to escape. Yet his speed-oriented body did not allow him to overpower Rui''s back and abdomen muscles. Additionally¡ª


    ¡ªBZZT!


    A light paralytic effect weakened the elder Martial Master''s effort.


    His eyes took on a grave light as he realized that there was no escape.


    He would face what was toe.


    What followed was beat down, unlike anything the Martial Master had ever experienced. BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM!


    Rui pummeled him with blows one after another, bludgeoning him ck and blue. Each blow was empowered with the full power of Outer Convergence, Reverberating Lance, and Fire Breathing.


    Master Grais desperately guarded with one arm, trying to inflict as much damage to Rui''s vitals with his trapped right arm.


    Yet, Rui was hardly done.


    "Heavenly Convergence." Rui''s voice strained with pain even as his vision blurred from the critical internal bleeding. "Phantom Pain."


    Now that the man was locked in ce, there was no need to continue employing anti-speed measures.


    "AAAARRGGRHRGHHHH!!!" Master Grais shuddered with excruciating agony as each of Rui''s blows set his nervous system on fire, causing him to convulse uncontrobly.


    "Rgh!" Rui''s eyes red with determination and pain as he continued sting the Martial Master with as much power he could possibly muster, growing weaker by the second.


    Yet, the end came abruptly.


    BAM!


    A thundering haymaker crashed into the man''s skull with the power of Outer Convergence and Fire Breathing permeated by Reverberating Lance.


    The blunt force trauma crossed a critical threshold.


    The elder Master''s eyeball rolled upward as his body went limp.


    Thest thing Rui remembered before losing consciousness was Sage Lemolen''s deration.


    "Winner by knock-out, Master Rui Quarrier Ss Kandria."


    The world went dark as Rui finally let go, falling back.


    Even as he fell unconscious, Sage Lemolen waved his hand, diffusing a rejuvenation and healing potion into the lungs of both Martial Masters in a split second.


    The spectating Martial Masters converged at the scene in seconds, gazing at the two unconscious Martial Masters.


    STEP This belongs to N?velDrama.Org - ?.


    "Hah!" Master Ceeran gleefully grinned. "This means that he will be let off with a scolding, right?!"


    "Indeed¡­" Master Zentra remarked. "A bit too light, in my opinion, but I cannot deny that he had earned it with his astonishing disy ofbat."


    While there was a wide variety of reactions of the many Martial Masters, none of them could deny the sentiment of Master Zentra''s words.


    The Martial Union''s hierarchy was that of power. The stronger one was, the more one could get away with things that would not be tolerated by the weaker.


    While Rui''s crimes against the Martial Union were still heavy, a contract was a contract. Not a single one of them had objected to the arrangements of the duel and wager thus they had no one else but themselves to me now that the oue was not as they desired.


    "Hmph," Sage Lemolen snorted. "You lot are far too lenient with the brat."


    He disappeared immediately after, leaving the Martial Masters to deeply ponder the oue of the battle.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2061 Reflections

    Chapter 2061 Reflections


    While the two Martial Masters were rushed for medical care, the remaining Martial Masters of the Martial Union could not help but look back on the battle between Rui and Master Grais.


    "¡­How?" One Martial Master gritted his teeth. "How can one be that powerful at the age of thirty-five?! It doesn''t make sense!"


    They fell into thought at his words.


    They would all be lying if they said they didn''t share at least a bit of his frustration.


    The average Martial Master broke through to the Martial Master at roughly the age of one hundred and fifty. The average Martial Master also broke through to grade seven in the Master Realm, which was the very beginning of the low-mid grade.


    Some particrly talented, powerful, and experienced Martial Masters started off at much higher grades, like grade thirteen. These were geniuses who were not only talented in mind, body, Path, and Art but had cultivated their Martial Art for centuries before breaking through to the Master Realm.


    Yet, none of them could even begin to fathom how Rui had actually broken through to the Master Realm at such a high level of power that he could defeat grade-neen Martial Masters without too much strain and even take down grade-twenty-three Martial Masters.


    It made them feel like their entire lives had been a waste of time. "I had always known he had immense potential deep within him even when he was but a human." Headmaster Aronian smiled, closing his eyes as he recalled memories of old. "However, not even I could have imagined something like this was possible."


    Not everyone took it as well as he did.


    "¡­I was still a Martial Apprentice when I was thirty-five," Master Herel whispered.


    He had been convinced that Rui would lose two matches out of three. Possibly all three.


    He was a brand-new Martial Master, after all, and had only been a Martial Artist for twenty-one years.


    That was nothing in his eyes.


    Far too little time to amount to much.


    When Rui defeated Master Zereena while still holding back, he was extraordinarily furious.


    Yet, when Rui went toe-to-toe with Master Grais and even obtained a pyrrhic victory, he was simply at a loss for words. It was as though Rui''s shocking victory and the shocking reality that Rui had presented to all of them had washed away all the fiery hatred.


    He was left feeling depressed.


    He had much pride in being a grade-twenty-four Martial Master.


    Now that Rui hade terrifyingly close to that from the looks of it, all that pride melted away.


    Compared to a man less than one-tenth his age who may very well have been a high-grade Martial Master, he was nothing impressive.


    "This is what you get for being a jerk to my student," Master Reina grinned pridefully. He red at her. "Who let her in? She''s not even a part of the Martial Union!"


    "Hey, don''t take it out on me." She shrugged. "Take out on him when he wakes up. Unless you''re afraid you''ll lose."


    Her words pricked at him.


    At the very least, unless he had some massive advantage as far aspatibility went, he did not think he would be able to win easily.


    "Nonsense!" He growled. "Besides, don''t think he''s cleared so soon. If the Sage Council is dissatisfied with this oue, they can undo it with their collective power."


    His words were sharp.


    "They cannot." Master Zentra narrowed his eyes. "As far as the provisions of the Martial Judiciary Delegation Act go, he has been acquitted of fraud and can no longer be charged with frau¡ª"


    "Don''te at me with legal bullshit." He waved Master Zentra off. "They are the Sage Council. Should they will that he suffer consequences, then nobody can stop it from happening."


    "¡­Nobody except the Emperor of Harmony," Master Zentra quietly retorted.


    The air grew heavy.


    They were talking about forces that not even they were qualified to judge upon.


    "Zentra is right."


    A heavier voice cut through the air, drawing all attention.


    "¡­The Martial Sages will not undo what has happened." Master Sera smiled. "And even if they did, with the Emperor of Harmony returning, they will not be able to do anything without threatening to provoke a civil war."


    The expressions of the various Martial Masters darkened.


    "I''m sure you''re aware of the consequences of a civil war at this moment," Master Sera''s tone was light.


    Yet her message was perilous.


    "It could very easily trigger the advent of the third East Panamic War," She remarked with delight. Exclusive ? content by N(?)ve/l/Drama.Org.


    While Rui had been adventuring in the Beast Domain for three years, the dynamics of East Panama had shifted.


    The long-term absence of a powerful leader central leader with the illness of the Emperor of Harmony.


    The juicy rewards of the Eye of Prophecy technique.


    The threat factor of an additional Sage.


    The cold war that had been ensuing within the nation during the Kandrian Throne War.


    These events were not missed by the other three Sage-level powerhouses.


    Kandria had grown more attractive as a target, more politically vulnerable, and more militarily threatening than they werefortable with. While Rui indulged in his escapades in the Beast Domain, the political tensions between Kandria and its peers had risen significantly over the span of three years.


    The number of scuffles and shes had increased over the past three years while trade andmerce between the three nations and Kandria reduced each quarter.


    Simultaneously, it had increased between the other three powerhouses of Kandria.


    These were not proof of anything, yet only a blind man would fail to read the atmosphere of East Panama.


    "The revtion of the youngest and most prodigious Martial Master in upper echelons of the Master Realm will not be taken well either," Master Vericita calmly remarked. "He will be treated as a potential Martial Sage by other nations."


    It added more fuel to the fire.


    Unfortunately, little they did know that Rui''s return as a Martial Master meant more than just that.


    It would change the nation forever in ways that they had yet to fathom.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2062 Hyper Integration

    Chapter 2062 Hyper Integration


    When Rui woke up, he found himself staring at an unfamiliar ceiling.


    For a moment, he didn''t know what he was doing here.


    Then he remembered.


    "Ah¡­" he murmured. "¡­I won."


    A sigh of relief escaped him.


    The door to his room opened as two Martial Masters emerged.


    "Rui¡­" Master Ceeran smiled. "How do you feel?"


    Rui nced at his hands, closing his eyes.


    "¡­Quite good."


    The wound he suffered hadn''t been too bad by Martial Artist standards.


    "Then, congrattions on your victory." He smiled. "You have earned your acquittal."


    "¡­I suppose," He remarked. "I got off easy."


    Rui would be lying if he didn''t feel that way. Aside from the third match, victory was never out of his hands. "Perhaps you did," Master Ceeran admitted. "But I believe that it''s justified, especially after you have proven yourself and ovee the trials and tribtions of the Master Council."


    Rui shrugged wordlessly. "I''m just d it''s over."


    He looked back at the battle with Master Grais with satisfaction. It was truly a grueling battle. There had been very few times that his pattern recognition system had failed during his time as Martial Artist. Of the few times that it did, it had been against truly deviant opponents such as Meera and Ieyasu.


    This time, however, it didn''t happen against a truly exceptional Martial Artist. No, it happened against a powerful but hardly abnormal Martial Master.


    It showed that the Master Realm could not be underestimated. If a Martial Master who wasn''t even high grade could partially negate the pattern recognition system, then he shouldn''t assume that stronger Martial Artists.


    "¡­This was my first time seeing other Martial Minds," Rui remarked aloud absentmindedly. "Truly fascinating how other Martial Artists came up with Martial Minds of their own."


    Master Ceeran nodded understandingly. "I recall feeling the same way. They were very different from my own, and learning to fight against them was something that required practice. While Martial Seniors did use their developing systems of thought, it was never the center of their battle. Only someone with as much affinity for the mind could make the system of thought highly central to your Martial Art."


    "Hmmm¡­" Rui stirred at his words. "He had three systems of thought. They weren''t particrlyplex, but they were decently effective."


    He spoke rtively, of course. In terms of bothplexity and power, Master Grais'' Martial Mind was perhaps a tenth of that of Rui, but it was still impressive when considering that he could only make do with what he had.


    "I had the edge when it came to the utility and impact of our Martial Minds," Rui mused to himself. "Greater average efficiency and far greater decision-making. But the issue is that his Martial Body, Art, and thetter''s synergy with his Mind was truly far superior to that of mind."


    He was perhaps an entire order of magnitude faster than Rui at all times, barring the five minutes when Rui used Neo Godspeed. "He was right¡­" Rui murmured. "¡­I am inexperienced. I didn''t even consider the fact that my saturation limit is far higher than it was when I was a Martial Senior. I can use many, many more Martial Art techniques simultaneously than ever before."


    Certainly far more so than Master Grais, who used a whopping two dozen Martial Art techniques at one point.


    "It''s not low-hanging fruit, however," Master Ceeran pointed out insightfully. "Creating all those techniques takes time. Lots of time. Master Grais created those techniques and then refined them with experience in realbat over centuries. Of course, you will take less time because you are younger and thus can grow much faster, but still."


    Rui nodded appreciatively. "That''s true. I can mark it as a long-term growth strategy." Exclusive ? content by N(?)ve/l/Drama.Org.


    Developing even more powerful active techniques that synergized well with his Martial Mind like Flux Earther and Phantom Step was a great way to make progress while umting even greater strength.


    He could maximize the potential of his Martial Mind and Martial Art to greatly increase his strength in the long run. "I especially need to bolster my offense as soon as possible," Rui narrowed his eyes with dissatisfaction. "I would have won my final fight without needing to take such a big risk if I had greater finishing power."


    When he decided to take Master Grais'' lethal attack head-on, he didn''t know for a fact that he would emerge victorious.


    It was a gambit.


    If he had been able to severely damage Master Grais before that point when he was bludgeoning him before that point as a Martial Artist, he would have won.


    "Even a speed-oriented and maneuvering-oriented Martial Master has greater lethality!" Rui chastised himself. It was a little embarrassing that Master Grais had more lethality than he did.


    "It will need to actually be even more synergetic with my Martial Mind than Flux Earther and Phantom Step, those techniques aren''t nearly as synergetic as I had previously thought."


    He used to think they synergized well with his Martial Mind, but after looking at the synergy between Master Grais''s Art and Mind, he didn''t think so.


    "Master Grais'' techniques are so integrated with his Martial Mind that many of them cannot even be used without the Martial Mind," Rui recalled the Lightning Spear Jab technique that the Martial Master had struck him with.


    That certainly was not something that could be used without a system of thought telling him exactly where to strike and how to cause damage to his opponent.


    Inparison, the same could not be said about Flux Earther and Phantom Step.


    "Don''t be too swept up by hyper-integrated Art-Mind techniques," Master Ceeran cautioned him. "The Martial Mind is a limited resource and can and often does run out in the middle of battles. The moment it runs out, all techniques that depend on it to function cannot function anymore. Thus, getting too absorbed into making everything depend on it is a bad idea."


    Rui nodded. "That''s a really good point."


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2063 Hanging Fruits

    Chapter 2063 Hanging Fruits


    "Still, that alone isn''t enough to dismiss their value," Rui replied thoughtfully. "Thus, I would suppose that most Martial Masters find a bnce between the two. Or better yet, it''s quite likely that most Martial Masters create two versions for important techniques, one that is extremely integrated with the Martial Mind and one that can function without it."


    Master Ceeran nodded, impressed. "That is exactly what the current paradigms for Martial Masters are. It''s remarkable that you managed to arrive at a solution that was created over centuries, instantly."


    "Hmmm¡­" Rui grew engrossed in the matter. "Creating two versions is a highly intensive training process and is really only worth it for the most core and central techniques of one''s Martial Art. Still, I suppose I can put it on my list."


    He began fleshing out his journey in the Master Realm.


    From his conversations with his grandmother he knew that the condition to breaking through to the Sage Realm was knowing the true answer to the question that all Martial Masters needed to ask themselves.


    The best way for Martial Artists to arrive at the answer to that question was to simply unlock their true selves by gaining immense power. The power they gained would give them the power to choose things they were too weak to be able to do before. The choices they then made would illuminate who they truly deep in the depths of their mind.


    His grandmother had advised him that his Body was one of the lowest-ganging fruits as far as gaining more power.


    "Time to drink up another enhancement potion." Master Ceeran smiled wryly. "You know, even for Martial Masters, getting ess to them is not easy. One needs to breach grade fifteen to even have any chance at all at getting them within a reasonable span of time."


    "I shot past such a level of power," Rui calmly remarked. "Besides¡­"


    He nced at his friend with a smirk. "I am the Void Prince. I can drink ten potions right now if I want."


    "That''s true, but¡­" Master Ceeran shook his head. "That would be a blunder, I''m sure you know that."


    "I''m aware. I was jesting."


    The more potions one drank, the stronger one became, however, the delicate physical configuration would be warped beyond salvaging after a certain point of enhancement, leaving one''s Body out of sync with one''s Art and Mind.


    At the Master Realm, individuality had reached such an extraordinary degree, that Martial Masters truly diverged from each other as entirely different beings from one another. The sheer amount of variation was extremely high.


    It also meant that each technique that a Martial Artist created was carefully calibrated for their highly unique beings in both their theoretical foundation and the muscle memory that had been built for them.


    "Making too many changes to the foundations of the Body will make my own Art, Mind, experience, and muscle memory entirely ipatible with it."


    "Just so." Master Ceeran nodded approvingly. "It''s good that you haven''t let your political power get to your head and do things that willpletely sabotage yourself. It''s best to consume them over a muchrger span of time to avoid self-sabotage."


    Rui nodded. "Consuming a physical potion is definitely the easiest boost in power that I can take. I even know what kind of potion I wish to consume."


    The clear choice was a stamina potion.


    Stamina was at the foundation of one of his most important but under-appreciated technique systems; the Metabody System. Contentt bel0ngs to N0ve/lDra/ma.O(r)g!


    The system had saved his life more times than he could count. While the VOID algorithm used to require time, as did the SOUL System now, it would often be the very thing that bought him the time he needed.


    Consuming a stamina potion would give the Metabody System a much-needed boost.


    He would likely be able to use each of his techniques for much longer than he could before.


    Furthermore, the boost woulde immediately and the limatization would be minimal too, since it merely increase his energy reserves, not his power.


    "Of course, that still will not close the gap in umtion of power over time, but it will aid significantly," Rui noted. "The objectively best way to improve my Body."


    "Improving your Body and increasing the integration between techniques and mind is all well and good, but it''s not enough," Master Ceeran remarked.


    Rui raised an eyebrow.


    "You need more individuality. A potion alone will not give you that." Master Ceeran remarked. "The Martial Union has collected immense data on the things that separated Martial Sages before they broke through to the Sage Realm with Martial Masters that haven''t, and one of the differences that separate those that break along is how much individuality they imbue in their Martial Art."


    Rui''s eyes lit up with realization. "Individuality¡­that bears a lot of resemnce to the answer to ''Who am I?''"


    Master Ceeran nodded enthusiastically. "That is why developing your power is the best way to reach the Sage Realm. Not only does power unlock who you are, but the individuality you imbue in your Martial Art serves as a reflection of your true self."


    "¡­That makes sense," Rui murmured. "Tsk, should have thought of that before."


    "Hah," Master Ceeran scoffed. "It''s no wonder that you haven''t considered it, considering how busy you''ve been since returning home. At least now, all of your problems are finally done."


    Rui''s expression grewplicated at those words. It was not true.


    He still had several things to address. The official ownership of the alien flora lifeform.


    The matter regarding his agreement with the Elder Tree and implementing it.


    His multiple agreements with the Divine Doctor and implementing it.


    "God, I can''t wait for my father to wake up," Rui muttered.


    He was vastly more qualified at implementing and managing the minutiae of such matters than Rui was.


    "Soon¡­" Rui murmured to himself. He couldn''t wait to finally be free.


    To be emancipated from his many problems.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2064 Possible Applications

    Chapter 2064 Possible Applications


    For a long time now, he had been swarmed with non-Martial Art-rted problems. Probably ever since he got involved with the Kandrian Throne War. An entire mountain had been put on his shoulders, weighing him down.


    Now, he was so close.


    So close to getting rid of all of it.


    The Kandrian Throne War would be truly put to an absolute end.


    He could finally live without the shackles of things like his royal bloodship and princehood weighing him down.


    Truth be told, he desperately needed to cut himself off from the because he had more important matters to deal with, such as his identity crisis and his path forward to fulfilling Project Water, the most important force in his life.


    He didn''t have time to dedicate to managing the matters of the super-assets. The moment his father woke up, he would toss all these burdens on his shoulder and walk away without any regret.


    That was the best way to go about it, indeed.


    "Hehe, this is my revenge," Rui smirked mischievously.


    His father had changed his life by tossing the burden of his princehood on him, not to mention the entire empire. He even admitted that he was doing it for Kandria rather than for Rui.


    Now, Rui would bring him back to health and toss all of those burdens back at him, and some extra burdens as a form of interest.


    He couldn''t wait to see the expression on his father''s face, in fact.


    Thetter would be torn between gratitude and exasperation.


    "Sons don''t normally talk about their fathers this way." Master Ceeran pointed out, amused.


    "Hah." Rui snorted. "He deserves it after putting me through so much trouble. You cannot even begin to imagine the things I''ve had to go through to bring back the damned doctor."


    "A story that you promised to tell me," Master Ceeran reminded him. "True¡­" Rui nced at him. "¡­I have some ns regarding that. It will be better to share it with everyone rather than person by person. I will need to call for a meeting with the Master Council."


    Rui had many things that he needed to tell them.


    The first was the matter of ownership over the alien flora lifeform. He nned to share its ownership with the Martial Union and his father. Topensate the former for his fraud and to win back their approval and goodwill and thetter topensate him for the loss of the topaz of Time.


    The only reason he even sought to maintain partial ownership was because he would be able to use it without any problem should he ever needed.


    He had some rather powerful visions of what to do with the alien flora lifeform if they could sessfully harness it.


    It was possible that they could potentially build an entire Martial Academy inside the dungeon that allowed them to mass produce Martial Apprentices like a factory. They could potentially create many Squire-level and Senior-level training facilities that allowed MartialArtists to train and aplish in a tiny fraction of the time in real-time than it would normally take, massively elerating their progress.


    It would drastically empower the Martial Art foundation of the Kandrian Empire.


    Of course, there were many considerations regarding the risks and dangers of such an approach.


    The more they used it, the higher the probability that its existence would be known to the rest of Kandria.


    That was the reason that he was quite cautious of going all out with it.


    The other three powerhouses and frankly the rest of Panama would not allow Kandria to use such a priceless treasure to massively elerate their development.


    Of course, this wasn''t absolutely insurmountable, but still, extremely dangerous and perilous. The might of dozens of Martial Sages and many hundreds of Martial Masters was not something that the Kandrian Empire wanted or needed to face.


    However, if they chose a more lowkey approach then they would be forgoing many benefits of the alien flora lifeform.


    It could create a hundred-kilometer-wide area with elerated time. What was the point of using such an enormous area for only a limited number of individuals?


    Rui had to admit, he wasn''t entirely sure what was the most optimal application of this asset.


    It was why he was more willing to let his father take care of this matter. The Emperor of Harmony understood geopolitics far, far better than Rui ever would, being extremely talented and gifted even when he was being groomed for the throne and having three centuries of experience with geopolitics.


    Though, another important variable to consider was whether or not the nt could even be harnessed effectively.


    Rui didn''t understand anything about the alien flora lifeform. Being outside of the Tree of Life of Gaia, there were absolutely no insights that he was able to offer.


    The Divine Doctor was different, however.


    He had managed to keep the alien lifeform alive alive and well even in a spatiallypressed orb. In the short time that Rui had been unconscious after his battle with the chimera, the man had managed to gain many insights, enough to treat the creature and ensure it was healthy and alive.


    It was an extremely impressive feat that Rui hadn''t missed. Not at all.


    If anybody knew how to use the alien lifeform in some sort of dungeon bio-machine, it was him. Thankfully, Rui had already forged an agreement with the man where he would have ess to the alien lifeform.


    He could have the Divine Doctor also simultaneously lead a development project to create a powerful dungeon out of the creature that could be used. Then, and only then, was it possible to n around it.


    It was possible that it wouldn''t be possible to control the creature from acting in a hostile manner against all its inhabitants. Or perhaps it was possible but would require weakening the creature in a manner that would also weaken the manifold created by the creature.


    "Tsk, I need more information¡­when is that doctor returning?"


    -


    This chapter upload first at  This content is ? N?velDrama.Org.

 Chapter 2065 Return

    Chapter 2065 Return


    It wasn''t long before Rui was discharged from the clinic after a final check-up. "What do you intend to do now?" Master Ceeran inquired. "If you''re free, then you might as well get your grade tested. I''m sure that there are many Martial Artists who would be willing to help you understand where you stand."


    Rui shook his head. "Grade evaluation is not at the top of my priority list at the moment. I have some important things to tend to."


    After bidding his friend goodbye, he surged back to the Royal Pce at top speed.


    It had been more than twenty-four hours since the Divine Doctor had left.


    "If I''m not wrong¡­"


    Then, he had most likely returned. He surged to the medical wing of the Royal Pce, showing his Kandrian amulet to all the security in ce as he headed to his father''s vast medical room.


    CLACK He walked in, finding a familiar man arguing with Sage Sayfeel.


    "¡­I must strongly insist that you hand over the specimen for treatment¡ª" He paused, turning to face Rui. "Aha, well well, if it isn''t the deluded inheritor."


    He was far younger than Ruist saw him.


    He was also a different person.


    He was a little taller, with facial features that weren''t entirely identical to the man that Rui had known.


    Yet Rui would recognize the inhuman clinical curiosity in his and the frozen smile on his face anywhere.


    "Doctor Kar¡­?" He murmured cautiously.


    "This is mytest vessel, you see." His tone inflections were identical to those of the man with whom Rui had been familiar. "My previous one was getting old and inefficient, so I decided it was best to switch to a fresher vessel."


    He looked even younger than Rui.


    "¡­I see." Rui''s tone was grave.


    He didn''t like what he was seeing. It only made his uncertainty about himself even greater.


    "Now then," the man urged. "Tell this oaf of a Martial Sage to hand over the specimen to me right now!" This belongs to N?velDrama.Org - ?.


    Rui furrowed his eyebrows. "You do recall that I own it, right?"


    "Yes, yes, but we agreed that I would get ess to it in exchange for even more contributions."


    Rui shrugged. "I''ve already procured your services in exchange for prophecy and the Elder Treework. What else do you have to contribute to me or the empire?"


    His gaze grew pointed as a single remark escaped him.


    "I am the Divine Doctor, little inheritor," he remarked. "I have the power to change human civilization if I put my mind to it. In regards to the alien specimen, I know what your intentions with it are, and only I can make them possible; that is contribution enough, and you know it."


    Rui had to admit, he had a powerful point there. Without the Divine Doctor aiding them, Rui didn''t think it was possible for the Kandrian Empire to tame the alien lifeform without harming it in the process.


    Only the Divine Doctor possessed the ability to do so.


    Rui heaved a sigh, turning to Sage Sayfeel, nodding.


    The man nonchntly handed over the little orb to the doctor, who held it like it was sacred.


    "I need aboratory immediately," the man remarked. "Quick, we don''t have time to waste."


    "Come with me." Rui turned around after taking onest look at his father before leaving with the Divine Doctor. "I need the best of what you have to offer," the Divine Doctor insisted, holding the orb reverently. "As much space, state of the art technology, and absolute secrecy and privacy."


    "Rx, I know just the ce." Rui calmly assured him.


    BADUMP!


    He activated his Heart and Mind, activating Greater Phantomind Void as he dragged the Divine Doctor by manipting heaven.


    It wasn''t too long before he arrived at an enormous researchplex in Vargard stretching over many acres ofnd, with extremely high security.


    There was an enormous board featuring the location.


    [Kandrian Institute of Biotechnology]


    It was a facility that fell under the control and management of the Ministry of Research and Development.


    A ministry that was very much a part of his faction.


    Essentially, he might as well have owned the entire ce and could do whatever with it if he truly wanted.


    A single sh of his royal amulet and confirmation of his identity was enough to breeze through all the security protocols.


    "Your Highness." The director of the institute kneeled before the Void Prince of the Kandrian Empire. "It is truly an honor to meet the vaunted Final Prince¡ª"


    "¡ªYour loyalty is deeply appreciated," Rui impatiently interjected. "I need a state-of-the-art researchboratory with an isted environment chamber system and all cutting-edge esoteric technological instruments and artifacts right now."


    It wasn''t long before Rui and the Divine Doctor found themselves exactly where they wanted to be.


    "Finally!" The Divine Doctor ecstatically eximed. "You cannot imagine how long I have waited for this!"


    The two men stared at the glowing white flora lifeform contained within an isted environment that the doctor carefully manipted.


    Taking a close look at it for the second time gave Rui an appreciation of the sheer significance of what he was looking at.


    An alien lifeform revolutionized their perspective of the universe.


    It was the answer to ''Are we alone in the universe?''


    Not even Rui could be certain despiteing from another world.


    Last time, he didn''t get to appreciate the sheer significance of what the alien lifeform represented because he had been blindsided by the revtion of his ''reincarnation.''


    But now that he finally got to focus on what he saw, he couldn''t help but lose himself observing it.


    It shined white light despite being transparent. It was an ephemeral existence.


    A creature unlike anything else he had ever seen in his life.


    Its beauty was ineffable.


    It was captivating.


    Hypnotizing.


    "It uses visual signals to hypnotize," the Divine Doctor broke him out of his reverie. "That''s part of how it hypnotized all the creatures in the Mellow Dungeon."


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2066 Possibilities

    Chapter 2066 Possibilities


    "¡­That''s interesting," Rui remarked. "I''m a Martial Master, but will you be fine?"


    "I armed this particr vessel with anti-hypnosis measures," he lightly replied as his eyes never once left the specimen. "However, ordinary human staff cannot be allowed to directlyy eyes on it without beingpromised and untrustworthy."


    Rui''s eyes narrowed. "Creating a training dungeon out of this will be annoyingly difficult if it''s this hostile to anything that even looks at it."


    "It can be ovee," the Divine Doctor replied. "However, I will need time. Lots of time to research it."


    Rui turned to him with a pointed look. "How do you intend to approach researching this specimen? I will not perform experiments or endeavors thatpromise the health of the specimen by anything more than an insignificant amount."


    "I have no intention ofpromising the alien specimen, I am certainly not foolish enough to get rid of one of the most promising keys to my greatest ambition," the Divine Doctor clinically reassured Rui. "However, this constraint will slow down. I would be able to elerate my research if I had countless specimens of this species, but s, we can only y with the cards we have dealt. Thus I shall have to limit my experimental research to micro samples."


    "Experimenting on micro-samples is permissible, but how much will that dy your progress?"


    "Hard to say, however, I would surprise myself if I''m able to make much progress within a year," he calmly answered Rui. "Conducting experiments of samples of different tissue to put the pieces of the puzzle together to understand the creature is a truly difficult task, but it is a matter of time. The creature is alien, not its matter." Exclusive ? content by N(?)ve/l/Drama.Org.


    Rui nodded. "That makes sense. Get me up to speed on the insights you have collected so far."


    The Divine Doctor stirred at his words. "Well, I only had the creature for a few days before you woke up, thus do not expect highly rigorous insights, but the first conclusion that I came to the moment I learned of its alien origin was that the creature must be extraordinarily adaptable and survivable for how physically fragile it is."


    It didn''t take long for Rui''s powerful mind to understand the line of logic that the Divine Doctor was implicitly using.


    "The fact that the alien is not only able to survive but also thrive in a world that isn''t its native home is truly remarkable," Rui realized. "If you disce any creature from Gaia and throw it into a random in this vast universe, the probability that it will be able to survive is extremely low but this creature¡­"


    His eyes narrowed at the alien lifeform. "¡­It had absolutely no problem doing just that."


    "Just so, young inheritor." The Divine Doctor nodded with a hint of appreciation. "Thus, it is highly likely that this specimen has an innate adaptability and survivability that is nigh unprecedented within our world. Perhaps the only creature that can match it as far as adaptive evolution goes is the Abyssfeeder. The only other possibility is that its native alien world is extremely simr to ours, within ten percent of a perfect match. But such a scenario is astronomically unlikely. Thus, it was unlikely."


    Even Rui had to admit, it was too absurd to be usible. The probability that there existed a world extremely simr to Gaia such that an alien from that world could survive on Gaia without any problem was probably more unlikely than anything else Rui could parse.


    "However, your binary perspective seems oversimplistic," Rui countered. "It is possible that the true reason it is able to survive and thrive in our world is because of abination of the two possibilities you have spected. One can plot out a distribution of the configuration of thebinations of the two reasons. Perhaps the alien world is only a fifty-percent match with ours, but the alien flora lifeform possesses just enough adaptability to our world."


    The Divine Doctor stirred at Rui''s words. "That is indeed a possibility. However, given that it has been able to survive in the chaotic and erratic Beast Domain for a millennium, the inference still stands. There is no doubt that this creature possesses an incredible ability to adapt and integrate into alien ecosystems to a degree that I have never ever seen in my entire life. The fact that it''s able to dungeonify after absorbing a powerful esoteric substance is proof of that."


    Rui had to admit that his analysis was sound.


    "Regardless, I intend to measure its adaptability and survivability by conducting experiments and tests on various samples," the Divine Doctor remarked. "I will begin with a top-down analysis and study its structure, the various types and distribution of tissue, and their apparent functions. Only after I have gained a thorough understanding of the aforementioned matters will I increase the resolution of my scientific inquiry."


    "¡­I suppose you are inplete control," Rui remarked, closing his eyes. "What else do you need?"


    The Divine Doctor considered his question. "¡­I will need a team. This is not something that I am able to embark on myself as quickly as I''d like to. Experienced, brilliant researchers. Ideally, I''d like you to be a part of my team, but I already know that you would refuse."


    Rui snorted lightly. "I''m a Martial Artist."


    "It is both fortunate and unfortunate that you are." The Divine Doctor heaved a sigh. "I need people of your caliber for them to be able to help me beyond grunt work."


    An idea popped into his head as a smile emerged on his face. "¡­I think I know just the man for the job."


    The two of them conversed for a while about the specifics of the alien lifeform.


    Rui was d that he was able to get the Divine Doctor on the job. A process that would probably take a decade had been cut down to a year. If anybody was qualified to learn the secrets of the alien lifeform, it was the Divine Doctor.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2067 Considerations

    Chapter 2067 Considerations


    While the Divine Doctor and Rui studied the alien lifeform, other developments began to unfold across Kandria over the next few days.


    A single rumor had begun zing through the upper echelons of the Kandrian Empire.


    A rumor that staggered anybody who heard it.


    "Final Prince Rui Quarrier Ss Kandria has broken through to the Master Realm."


    The elite, rich, and powerful in well-connected circles increasingly began hearing this piece of information passed around more and more.


    Normally, they would dismiss it as nonsense.


    A thirty-five-year-old Martial Senior, which was deeply anomalous in and of itself, breaking through to the Master Realm?


    Who would believe such a thing?


    Why would anyone believe such a rumor, especially when it was about the Final Prince of all people?


    In the past six years since Rui had been revealed as the Final Prince of Kandria, countless rumors has flooded the Kandrian Empire about him.


    Some whispered that he wasn''t really the emperor''s son. That the Emperor had faked their blood rtionship because he found Rui to be fitting for the throne. Some whispered that he was actually responsible for the copse of Prince Randal, Princesses Raemina, Ranea, and Rafia.


    Some whispered that the current prince was a fake.


    All of these rumors, however, had been dismissed as nonsense.


    This was just thetest rumor to join therge pile of nonsensical rumors regarding the Final Prince.


    But it persisted.


    This was because it came from multiple sources that independently reported it.


    A leak from the staff at the Royal Pce.


    A leak from the Kandrian Institute of Biotechnology.


    A leak from the Martial Union.


    A leak from an independent investigative guild.


    They kept leaking faster than people could dismiss them.


    It gave the naysayers pause even if they were deeply skeptical.


    The Final Prince was thirty-five years old if he truly had broken through to the Master Realm at his current age, then he will have shattered the previous record by half.


    In fact, he would have matched the previous record for the breakthrough the Senior Realm with his breakthrough to the Master Realm.


    "That''s impossible!" It was an exmation that was not umon among those that could not bring themselves to believe such an outrageous rumor.


    Over the next few days, the rumors continued to grow louder and stronger, spreading far beyond the confines of Kandria.


    "Verify these immediately," a powerful masculine voicemanded, emerging from an even more masculine man.


    He sat on an extravagant chair at a wide table at the center of arge extravagant office. An extravagant crest shined on the chest of his attire.


    A coat of arms featuring a golden lion at its center.


    The Britannian Empire.


    He was none other than Prime Minister Edward Gel Dermont III of the Britannian Empire.


    He read through the reports supplied by Britannian spies rooted in the Kandrian Empire as his eyes narrowed. Exclusive ? content by N(?)ve/l/Drama.Org.


    "It is deeply unlike that these are true but¡­" His deep voice rumbled. "¡­verify the veracity of these ims."


    "Yes, sir."


    His assistant swiftly left the prime minister''s chambers to convey hismand to the Britannian Intelligence Force.


    His gaze shifted to the profile documents of the Final Prince featuring a picture of him.


    "Prince Rui Quarrier Ss Kandria¡­" He growled. Britannia was hardly the only powerhouse that had a pronounced interest in thetest rumor surrounding the most famous prince of the Kandrian Empire.


    In the depths of the most heavily guardedplex in all of the Republic of Gorteau sat a suited man at the desk.


    The President of Gorteau.


    He frowned, reading through the reports that the director of the Federal Intelligence Bureau had supplied. "¡­Is this real?"


    A heavily suited man standing before him. "We have strong reason to believe that this isn''t merely empty gossip, Mr President."


    "So you mean to say¡­" He tossed the documents on the table. "¡­that this kid, who also turned out to be the crown prince of the Kandrian Empire, is also now a Martial Master? Are you kidding me?"


    His eyes darkened as he met the gaze of the director of intelligence. "Tell me, if he truly is a Martial Master, what is the probability that he will be a Martial Sage?"


    The air pricked all those who stood in his vicinity.


    "¡­Dangerously high, Mr President. He has retained his youth and will almost certainly retain it even more when he consumes a potion sooner orter. His rate of growth will be extremely highpared to Martial Masters. The conditions to reach the Sage Realm are corrted with rtive power. Thus, it will be highly beneficial to his growth in the Sage Realm."


    President Raymond narrowed his eyes. "¡­What is the rmended response by the Federal Security Agency?"


    "Elimination, Mr President." The Director of Intelligence firmly asserted. "The Final Prince of Kandria has caused us to suffer losses multiple times in the past. If he truly is a Martial Master, the threat that he represents is quite high. The potential threat he represents as a potential Martial Sage is even higher. Furthermore, killing him will weaken Kandria even more, triggering a second Throne War by depriving them of their next Emperor."


    The president narrowed his eyes coldly as he fell into thought.


    "¡­Purely hypothetically, but what are our options in eliminating him?"


    On the very opposite side of East Panama, the Sekigahara Confederate, too, had taken notice of the rumors of Rui''s breakthrough to the Master Realm.


    "¡­This will be fun." A woman d in the ethnic attire of the Tanaka n remarked. She smiled coldly. "Kandria''s future is bright with that young man at its center."


    Her eyes grew frostier. "Perhaps a bit too bright."


    Her gaze swept across the round table of the thirteen other individuals who shared her smile.


    They were the leaders of the fourteen ns of the Sekigahara Confederate.


    "Kandria¡­" One of them remarked. "¡­is changing."


    His eyes sharpened. "Times of change are no different from times of weakness. I wonder if there ever will be an opportunity like this ever again."


    The others understood what he meant as they fell into thought.


    The three powerhouses came to have their own considerations regarding the recent developments.


    Regardless, the future of the East Panama would change more than anything of them could ever imagine.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2068 Mess After Mess

    Chapter 2068 Mess After Mess


    Over the next few days, Rui tried his best to deal with the many things that were on his te.


    Among the more pressing matters was dealing with the mess that Master Reina had left behind for him.


    "Why did you go even more crazy after the Martial Union discovered your deception?" Ruiined to her. "Well, if you must know," she sighed dramatically. "¡­It was because I got bored."


    Rui mmed his face. "¡­Now, I have to deal with the fact this mess, bit by bit."


    There had been more than one heartbroken youngdy who shed many a tear when Rui began dismantling his harems one by one.


    Not that there was anything wrong with them, of course. He even inwardly admitted that Master Reina had good taste in women. But it was something that he could not continue in her stead.


    Many a father grabbed his cor.


    Many a mother cursed him for taking their daughter''s virginity while not also taking her hand.


    But he gritted his teeth and bled through it.


    Thankfully, he was rich.


    Filthy rich even.


    Almost all sobbing daughters froze as their eyes lit up with greed when they saw the number of digits he wrote on his cheques.


    Ten minutester, he had already departed from the ce.


    "Tsk, Master Reina found me a bunch of gold diggers," he grumbled.


    Some cases, however, were not so easy to deal with.


    This was especially the case for all of those that had plenty of wealth. For these people, merely wealth alone was not enough.


    In such cases, he had no choice but to eptmissions.


    Those who realized that he had broken through to the Master Realm were especially eager to obtain a promise of his services.


    As for his faction, thankfully, he didn''t feel the need to do much in that regard. As soon as his father woke, he would be fully within his right to disband his faction.


    Maintaining it would only impede his father''s return to power.


    In addition to dealing with the mess that Master Reina had left him, he also began considering how to fulfill his promise to the Elder Tree.


    He hadn''t forgotten that he had promised the Elder Tree that he would enlist the power of the Kandrian Empire to aid the creature in its many operations to survive. He intended to fulfill that promise thoroughly. Not just because the Elder Tree was a highly important asset.


    But also because he truly valued the creature as an ally.


    Even when it was in a position of power, it had never done Rui any wrong and had always operated in good faith. This content is ? N?velDrama.Org.


    Allies that were both powerful and sincere were extremely rare and valuable.


    "The beacon blood tree species?" A man sitting opposite Rui frowned. "Of course I know of it. What of it, Your Highness?"


    "What can you tell me about it in so far as procurability and maintenance?" Rui asked nonchntly. "Hmm¡­I can say that it is quite rare and challenging to find and procure," he pondered aloud. "And maintaining it is rather difficult as it has some truly extreme environmental requirements." "Oh?" Rui raised an eyebrow. "Like what?"


    "Unlike nearly every other species in the nt kingdom," he continued. "It is highly hydrophobic. Water is highly toxic to it. Thus, it needs to be in an environment that is entirely devoid of water. Additionally, it is highly nutrient-demanding. That is why maintaining it is not easy. It is also why it is quite rare to find the first ce."


    Rui didn''t care about the costs. The priceless value of the strategic intelligence of the Elder Tree on the Beast Domain far dwarfed anything that could possibly be lost in sustaining the species.


    "Procure them at all costs," Rui instructed the Director of the Kandrian Institute of Biotechnology. "Budget is no matter. You will be given as many funds as you need."


    The Director''s eyes widened at those words. "¡­Your Highness?"


    Rui got up. "Procure as many as fast as possible. I shall instruct my faction to aid you in any way possible. If you need me to personally intervene, then I shall do that too."


    The man stared at Rui, flummoxed. "¡­Is it really worth it to go through all the effort to procure them, Your Highness? My institute does not evaluate them to have such high research value."


    "That is no matter. Do as I say," Rui calmly instructed him. "I shall inform the Minister of Research and Development to also pursue this matter."


    Rui had no intention of revealing the reason that he sought these trees, of course. The value of the Elder Treework would have been maximized if nobody had known about it.


    He needed to pursue it aggressively to ensure he actually got it, but not too aggressively such that those who saw him got suspicious and began digging deeper.


    The easiest way avenue of procurement was the market. Although they were rare, the Ministry of Research and Development could very easily purchase them for whatever price was needed.


    The Elder Tree had mentioned that the more they had, the better. It represented a greater bandwidth.


    Rui wanted to maximize the bandwidth as much as possible to maximize the strategic intelligence that could be conveyed by the Elder Tree to them. The more intelligence he had, the more he could do with it.


    Thus, ideally, he would love to have an entire forest''s worth of beacon blood trees so that he could gain a massive connection to the Elder Tree. But he didn''t know how viable that was.


    Regardless, he would be grateful to have any.


    ''Once Father wakes up, I''ll need to have a long and deep talk with him regarding this. We''ll need toe up with some sort of task force that is dedicated to aiding the Elder Tree with its nutrition requirements and sustaining its needed chemical cycles,'' Rui narrowed his eyes as he left the institute, returning home.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2069 Seeking Freedom

    Chapter 2069 Seeking Freedom


    It had been five days since Rui''s return to the Kandrian Empire.


    He had hoped for some peace upon his return back home, butrgely thanks to Reina, he had been greeted with a mess that gave the Beast Domain a run for its money.


    Instead of dealing with important things, he was left busy putting out the many things that she had set on fire to satisfy her boredom. Of course, while he resented her for making his life hard, he was grateful to her for covering for him for three years upon his request. She had stillrgely been of great help despite her many little pranks on him.


    The Martial Union settled down after his return and victory in the duel and wager. While many Martial Masters were not entirely satisfied with the oue, none of them voiced anyints and piped down when it came to the matter regarding Rui''s punishments.


    Things would have been very dicey had he been a Martial Senior, but as a Martial Master who was extremely powerful from the very get-go, most of them did not have the right to evenin.


    Unbeknownst to them, Rui had been cooking a pleasant surprise.


    Rui had also been made aware of the many rumors of him that had been spreading about his breakthrough to the Master Realm in the Kandrian Empire and even outside. Given that he had educated himself on the deteriorating international rtions in the past three years, he knew that this development was most likely not going to be pleasant.


    Unlike the youngest Martial Senior, the youngest Martial Master meant something. Martial Masters had the power to affect the bnce of power even between Sage-level powerhouses.


    Rui predicted, much to his own chagrin, that the probability of the three other powerhouses of East Panama taking action to nip a future threat was, unfortunately, not zero.


    This was part of standard operations.


    Extraordinary Seniors were usually potential Masters.


    And extraordinary Masters were certainly potential Sages.


    Whether he like it or not, he would undoubtedly be viewed that way.


    "I don''t think I can afford to show off too much." He realized. "That will just increase the probability that I will be assassinated."


    Rui would rather not return to needing bodyguards.


    He was a Martial Master.


    He decided to cancel making an official announcement for now.


    "Maybe I''ll consider doing it after I consume a stamina potion."


    He had already looked through the Martial Union''s catalog of avable potions and chosen a potion of his choice.


    [Sandflower Nectar Potion] This content is ? N?velDrama.Org.


    It was a potion that was created out of the nectar of a flora species that had the power to survive for decades through an extraordinarily dense andpact manner of storing energy and nutrients. It would significantly increase Rui''s stamina, allowing him to sustain intense battle for lengthened periods of time.


    In turn, it would allow the Metabody System to catch up with the other systems that were more modern and refined, for it was the sole system that had been created when he was merely a Martial Squire.


    It had not been created with the Martial Heart in mind which was also quite stamina draining as well. Together, the two often forced Rui to be on the back-end as far as attrition battles went.


    Rui suspected that he would grow immensely stronger as his initial power increased tremendously, allowing him to withstand many tribtions throughout the battle due to a much more powerful failsafe.


    "As soon as I''ve fixed the mess Reina left behind," Rui grumbled. "I''m going to consume that potion."


    Thankfully, all though she had been busy, he was able to deal with each obstacle at a remarkably high pace. He partially dealt with it as quickly as he did by sending out his agents one after another, canceling all the silly harem contracts that she had signed and paying the severance pay even if it made him bleed.


    Having put the Ministry of Research and Development and his administration immediately on search for beacon blood tree specimens and having put the Divine Doctor on researching the alien, he had dealt with the three super assets simultaneously.


    The Divine Doctor had yet to inquire to request Rui for his payment for healing his father.


    They both knew why.


    Until the Emperor of Harmony woke up, the deal was not yet in ce. Both of them were waiting for Emperor Rael Di Kandria to wake up for their deal to unfold. The Divine Doctor at least had principles as a medical practitioner.


    Rui had aplished a lot in the past five days, so much so that it felt like an entire month. Yet, he gritted his teeth and cleaved through all the nonsense that shackled him, breaking them apart. While others saw him working as a responsible leader, he saw himself as a man fighting for freedom. His goal, at the end of all this effort, was toe out on the other side of the tunnel a free man.


    As Rui, the Martial Artist.


    Not Rui the prince.


    Nor Rui, the future Emperor.


    Nor Rui, the leader of a faction.


    Nor anything else.


    It was an exorcism.


    He sought to return to his roots.


    Yet, the most important piece in freeing himself of all these unwanted burdens was to ensure that the thing that had caused them to weigh him down was undone.


    He needed to get at the root cause of why he was weighed down by much in the past eight years.


    The man he had longe toe to ept as his father begrudgingly.


    Everything was in ce.


    And that was when the long-awaited event finally happened.


    Deep within the medical wing of the Vargard Royal Pce, in a special medical room,y a man.


    An emperor.


    One that had slumbered for a long time.


    And now, his long slumber had finallye to an end.


    He opened his eyes.


    The Emperor of Harmony had awakened.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2070 My Son

    Chapter 2070 My Son


    If the rumors of Rui''s record-shattering breakthrough to the Master Realm had sent waves across East Panama, then the news of the awakening of the Emperor of Harmony sent tsunamis, avnches, and floods across East Panama.


    An announcement from the Royal Pce shook the world asunder.


    [With the power vested in me by the Royal Seal, I hereby verily dere and announce to the Kandrian Empire theplete recovery of the Third Emperor of Kandria, Emperor Rael Di Kandria.


    -Royal Chancellor Mandaine Vermont.] This content is ? N?velDrama.Org.


    "What?!" "The Emperor of Harmony has healed?!"


    "Long live the Emperor!"


    "Glory to Emperor Rael!"


    Not a single one, aside from those in the know, could possibly contain their shock. Nations, corporations, organizations, and institutions, even powerhouse martial artists from around the continent, shook at the announcement that had been widely spread and broadcast by the Royal Pce.


    Despite the fact that news media were not as popr in Gaia as they were on Earth, countless journalists and reporters had hoarded the Royal Pce, causing the Royal Security Force to have to instate barriers, restrictions, and manned security lines to prevent the news-hungry men and women from flooding into the Kandrian Empire.


    The many power blocs and factions within the Kandrian Empire were stunned beyond what words could parse. Each and every single one of them had written of the Emperor of Harmony as dead.


    Having been embroiled in a throne war that epassed all of Kandria''s highest echelons, they had been thoroughly shaken by the consequences of Emperor Rael''s illness.


    They had shed blood in their cold war for the throne.


    An unfathomable amount of wealth, resources, capital, and time had been invested in the Kandrian Throne War.


    And all for what?


    With the return of the Emperor of Harmony, the result of the throne war never mattered.


    Even if the Final Prince wasn''t the one to win, even if the prince or princess they supported won the war, it never mattered.


    The Return of the Emperor of Harmony brought about deep frustration among those who had suffered due to the Kandrian Throne War.


    The losers of the throne war were depressed.


    Yet the winners of the throne war were even more frustrated.


    The Rui Faction gritted their teeth with clenched fists as their eyes grew bloodshot.


    They had rested easy all this time, knowing that any time soon, Rui would ascend the throne after the Emperor croaked. Some of them had invested billions of gold coins and had essentially made a failing investment. Each of Rui''s many stakeholders had supported him in many ways in exchange for securing promises written in contracts that Rui was to fulfill when he ascended the throne.


    Now, those investments were sunk.


    The contracts were automatically voided.


    They couldn''t even me Rui. After all, it wasn''t like he had any control or influence over the medical condition of the Emperor of Harmony.


    Of course not.


    That would be absurd.


    "Damn¡­!" Guildmaster Bradt''s expression morphed into grave displeasure in a rare moment of a loss ofposure. He had been one of Rui''s most ardent supporters and greatest benefactors. Among all, he had undoubtedly suffered the most.


    Many of his ns had beenpletely destroyed with the return of the Emperor of Harmony. Many long-term strategies had been thoroughly invalidated now that Rui could no longer ascend the throne.


    "Huff¡­" Chairman Decker heaved a tired sigh. "¡­This is why you can''t bet on politics."


    The two of them would simply have to take their losses and move on. Yet, despite wallowing in their own self-pity, most of Rui''s stakeholders had the greatest pity for Rui. Despite the fact that he had worked so hard for six years, all his efforts had gone down the drain. Despite breaking through to the Master Realm, if the rumors were to be believed, he would be deprived of the throne.


    None of them could even imagine what he was going through.


    He had worked extremely hard and diligently ever since he had been unveiled as the Final Prince of Kandria.


    He had personally lobbied all of them, one by one, battling the Kandrian Throne War and eventually dominating and securing victory when he got the final vote by defeating the Gatekeeper in their duel.


    Even after he won, he didn''t rest, lobbying even more power by forming harems. Though none of them quite understood why he was recently on a spree to get rid of all the harems that he had painstakingly created over the span of three years. Yet, nheless, he had also cultivated his Martial power to the point of reaching the Master Realm. All of it had undoubtedly been to seize as much power as the Emperor of Kandria and lead the nation to even greater heights than his father had.


    Yet, all of it was now for naught.


    They could not even imagine the pain and frustration he must have felt when he learned that he would be unable to ascend the throne. They could only hope that in his grief, he wouldn''t do something drastic, overwhelmed with emotion.


    The announcement of the Return of the Emperor of Harmony shook everybody who heard it, even as the world began to ponder the implications of such an extraordinary event on the future of the Kandrian Empire and the future of the geopolitical dynamics of all of East Panama.


    Yet, while the world was reeling from the impacts of the Return of Emperor Rael, Rui found himself staring the man in the eyes in his medical room.


    His skin glowed with a healthy luster.


    His eyes and hair sparkled with golden light.


    His body surged with vitality and energy.


    He had not only been healed but had returned to his very prime by the magic of the Divine Doctor. An aura of majestic power radiated from deep within him.


    It inspired awe.


    It inspired deference.


    It inspired reverence.


    A gentle smile emerged on his soft expression as he gazed at Rui standing before him.


    "My son."


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2071 Tell Me Everything

    Chapter 2071 Tell Me Everything


    For a moment, Rui was frozen.


    He had rushed to the Royal Pce when he heard of his father''s awakening, yet the moment he saw his father, he had been rendered frozen.


    What unfolded before him was surreal.


    His father, awake, gazed at him with a gentle smile.


    "My son."


    "¡­Father."


    The Emperor''s powerful gaze peered into his son''s eyes as he studied him, noting the many differences and changes he had undergone since theirst conversation. It didn''t take him more than a moment to understand the significance of how much his son had changed.


    He had many things he wanted to say.


    Yet, he held his tongue.


    He dared not say them out loud in the presence of the medical staff that swarmed him for check-ups.


    "You''ve¡­grown, my son," Emperor Rael''s rich and melodic voice contained a hint of pride and sympathy. "¡­To think you would grow to reach the Master Realm at your age. Truly, you are an exceptional Martial Artist."


    "Thank you, father," Rui replied calmly. "And congrattions on your recovery."


    "Mmm¡­" He gazed at his hands with profound eyes. "It is difficult to believe even at this very moment. I cannot help but wonder if this is reality or a dream. I don''t think I would be able to distinguish them."


    "¡­It is real, rest assured." Rui''s tone was confident. Exclusive ? content by N(?)ve/l/Drama.Org.


    "Real¡­" Emperor Rael whispered. "¡­If so, it is as beautiful as it is overwhelming."


    Rui didn''t know what to make of those words.


    However, he could understand his father''s sentiment.


    He had probably dreamed of this for a long time, yet having attained it after he had written it off as impossible, words probably could not even begin to describe how he had felt.


    "Your Majesty," the Royal Doctor addressed with deep reverence and incredulity. "I am deeply pleased and thoroughly shocked to inform you that you have made aplete recovery. Not a single side-effect neurological side-effect or symptom from prolonged unconsciousness has been detected. We have thoroughly scanned Your Majesty for anomalies, yet your condition is as perfect as the human condition can possibly be! It''s a miracle!"


    The royal doctor could hardly contain himself, overflowing with ecstasy and excitement.


    "¡­I certainly feel better than I have in my life," Emperor Rael calmly dered as he gazed at his hands. "Have I truly made a full recovery?"


    "Absolutely, Your Majesty. I am extremely confident in our evaluation of your current condition," the royal doctor assured the Emperor of Harmony with high confidence.


    "¡­Then how did this happen?"


    Emperor Rael''s voice was reduced to a whisper.


    "Er¡­" The royal doctor scratched his head. "¡­I''m sorry to inform you, Your Majesty, but we have no idea how you have recovered to such an extent. The Eternal Dream Disease is said to be impossible to cure. Your case ofplete recovery at the cusp of passing away will shock the entire medicalmunity, I''m afraid."


    "Mmmm¡­" Emperor Rael hummed as he closed his eyes. "Leave us."


    "¡­Your Majesty?"


    "I wish to speak with my son alone." His tone was gentle yet unyielding.


    It demanded deference.


    "O-Of course, Your Majesty. We shall vacate immediately!"


    In a moment, the medical staff scurried out of therge, extravagant medical dedicated solely to the Emperor of Harmony.


    Emperor Rael opened his eyes, turning his powerful gaze towards Rui.


    "How much¡­?" Emperor Rael''s eyes bore into Rui''s. "¡­How much did it cost to find and procure the Divine Doctor''s services?"


    The Emperor of Harmony was no fool.


    He knew, more than anybody, that miracles did not ur.


    They were created.


    "There was always only one possible source of the healing of my condition." Emperor Rael''s was as rich as it was deep. "The fact that I am here, alive, awake, and better than I have ever been means that someone seeded where I failed and procured the services that I sought for decades."


    His hands balled into fists. "¡­It is difficult to fathom that, in the six months I had left, someone managed to track andpel the Divine Doctor to heal me."


    He gazed at Rui with powerful eyes.


    Yet, he could not hide the light of confusion within them.


    "I do not understand." Yet, despite his confusion, he never once lost hisposure, gazing at Rui with strong yet gentle eyes. "Rui." He gazed at his son with deep eyes. "Sayfeel."


    "Just what have the two of you been up to?"


    Sage Sayfeel disclosed himself in front of his charge with eyes sparkling with renewed drive. "Forgive me for not informing you of the truth earlier when you woke up, Your Highness," Sage Sayfeel knelt, unable to hide the emotion in his voice. "Confirming your health and recovery was my absolute highest priority."


    "Sayfeel." Emperor Rael smiled gently at his kneeling follower. "Your humility is only surpassed by your loyalty. Rise, my friend. It is unbing of a Martial Sage to prostrate one''s self to such an extent. Unworthy of your loyalty I am should I scorn the boon of life you have given me."


    His powerful voice was rich with sincerity.


    "¡­I am unworthy of you, Your Majesty." Sage Sayfeel''s closed his eyes. "Please live. Live so that I can be worthy of the grace that I have received from you."


    Rui gazed at the prostrating Martial Sage, stirring.


    He had always known that Sage Sayfeel was fiercely loyal to his father, yet he had absolutely no idea how the two of them had met or how and why Sage Sayfeel hade to pledge his eternal loyalty to his father, yet the fact that his father had managed to cultivate a Martial Sage in secret was already a mind-boggling aplishment that Rui was unable to fathom.


    "Rui."


    His powerful voice drew his attention.


    A deep gaze bore itself into Rui''s eyes.


    "Father." Rui calmly returned.


    A soft smile emerged on his father''s face. "Come now, my son. Do not deprive your father of the truth."


    His rich, melodic voice beckoned Rui.


    "Tell me. Tell me everything."


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2072 Where Is My Crown?

    Chapter 2072 Where Is My Crown?


    Exclusive ? content by N(?)ve/l/Drama.Org.


    Rui gazed at his father deeply for a moment.


    And then he began.


    He began narrating a tale that began seven years ago on the fateful day his father unveiled his true identity to the entire world.


    He disclosed everything.


    From the very start.


    What happened. How he felt. What he thought. And ultimately, what he decided to do.


    "¡­And so I decided that I would not forsake my Martial Path for the throne." His tone grew fierce. "Not now. Not ever. Yet, at the same time, I did not wish to allow the empire to be ravaged by war. A war that would undoubtedly subsume the long lives that my family had cultivated in Kandria. After all the pain that I had put them through from my seven-year exile, I could not bring myself to do that to them."


    His father gazed at him silently with mncholic eyes.


    "¡­And so I decided that I would undo the very thing that had caused this mess in the first ce," Rui continued as his tone grew heavier. "I would undo the very source of all of this mess. If I could just get your illness healed¡­"


    His father silently listened as Rui bore his heart out for the first time without leaving out even the slightest detail.


    He listened as Rui talked about how he built his own faction from nothing, elevating it to the most powerful political faction in the Kandrian Empire.


    He listened as his son described his battle with the Gatekeeper, and his victory against the elder Senior and against his brothers, truly attaining everything he needed to im the throne and all of Kandria for himself.


    Yet, it couldn''t move Rui.


    His father listened as he began his search for the Divine Doctor, approaching the Beggar Sage, the Ss n, and the Adventurer''s Guild.


    His eyes widened as his son described how he managed to reel in the Ss n into the Kandrian Empire.


    His gaze softened as Rui described his voyage in the Beast Domain.


    The Valley of Prisms.


    The Forest of Fear.


    The Garden of Salvation and the Elder Tree and the suffering he endured to obtain the power of the Tree of Life.


    The Mellow and the Mellow Dungeon.


    The Divine Doctor.


    His breakthrough to the Master Realm.


    Yet, as much as Rui tried, he was unable to bring himself to divulge the matter of his soul. He was unable to bring himself to disclose the identity crisis he had suffered in the Mellow at the revtions.


    It was too personal.


    Too close to the heart.


    Too close to the soul.


    "And after collecting the alien flora lifeform, we left the dungeon, the Beast Domain, and returned home," Rui exined. "Sage Sayfeel collected us the moment we returned and had the Divine Doctor heal you immediately after. It''s been five days since then. And here you are¡­"


    A deep silence settled in the room once Rui finished his long tale.


    STEP¡­


    The Emperor of Harmony stood.


    He stood for the first time in a long time.


    Yet, his gaze was fixed on his son.


    His golden eyes were mncholic.


    He had needed to exert herculean self-control to suppress his outburst when Rui talked about the Elder Tree intelligencework, the Divine Doctor agreements, the Mellow Dungeon, and the alien flora lifeform.


    Each of these was of enormous significance.


    They were priceless assets.


    Yet, his keen and sharp observation told him that there was more.


    His son was hiding something.


    Whatever it was, it was deeply personal and had impacted him more than everything had.


    It had brought suffering.


    Suffering that he had endured as a price for healing his father.


    PAT


    Rui''s eyes widened as his father pulled him into a tender embrace.


    "It''s over, Rui." His voice was warm and powerful. "I am here."


    He let Rui go, directing a deep gaze into his eyes. "Thank you."


    His rich, deep voice was as grateful as it was sincere.


    "I had thought my fate was sealed."


    His tone grew heavier.


    "I had thought my life was over."


    He closed his eyes. "I had thought dying with regrets was the only possibility, but you¡­"


    A warm smile appeared on the face of the Emperor of Harmony.


    "You have shown me that your mother was right. One must never abandon hope, no matter what. I had thought I knew what that meant, but now I understand what she was trying to tell me."


    Rui stirred at his words.


    "Only now do I understand what she was telling me." Emperor Rael closed his eyes. "Hope must never be abandoned. No matter what."


    He opened his eyes, gazing at his son with profound eyes. "I hope you never forget."


    Rui met his gaze silently.


    "I don''t know what gues your heart," Emperor Rael continued. "But I hope that you ovee it. I hope I can help you, just as you have realized my hope."


    Rui nodded silently.


    "We have much to speak about." Emperor Rael calmly informed him. "But this is neither the time nor the ce. Now that I have returned, I bear the responsibility of the Kandrian Empire. It is one that I cannot let be any longer. The Empire has suffered from a power vacuum and leadership for a long, long time. Its foundation has cracked, and the harmony that I have cultivated over centuries is surely eroding. Do you understand, my son?"


    Rui nodded slowly. "¡­You are the Emperor of Kandria. The Empire needs you. It needs you more than ever. You don''t need to worry about me, Father. I''m not a child that requires pampering. I have issues, but¡­"


    He gazed at his hands, clenching them into fists.


    "¡­I can handle them."


    He needed it to handle it by himself.


    His gaze returned to his father, his eyes filled with confidence.


    "Do what you must."


    A gentle smile emerged on the Emperor''s face. "Then, I shall do exactly that. Now then¡­"


    He nced at Sage Sayfeel.


    "Where is my crown?"


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2073 Lets Get Started

    ?Chapter 2073 Let''s Get Started


    One would think that the excitement from the return of the Emperor of Harmony


    would subside in time.


    One was wrong.


    Shortly after the announcement of the Return of the Emperor of Harmony, the Emperor himself issued an announcement.


    An announcement of three addresses.


    A public address, private, and a governmental address.


    The former was issued to the citizens of Kandria and the entire state.


    The Emperor of Harmony would address each and every single citizen and convey his message to them.


    The second was an exclusive meeting with the stakeholders of Kandria.


    He had invited each and every single one of them, just as he had many years ago.


    The Martial Union, powerful corporations, banks, conglomerates, and consortiums across many industries that held great sway on the Kandrian economy, the powerful maritime and seafaring sector of the Empire, the many smaller unions, associations, and guilds that existed with some significance in the Empire.


    The third was to all governmental branches of the Kandrian Empire. He needed to reaffirm and restrengthen his grip over the government as the legitor and suprememander of the Royal Army and the Royal Navy.


    He also announced the calling of a C16 Summit.


    This sent ripples across East Panama.


    The C16, shorthand for Circle of Sixteen, was an intergovernmental political and economic forum consisting of the sixteen Sage-level nations of East Panama, including the four Sage-level powerhouses and another twelve Sage-level nations with one or two Martial Sages such as the Shionel Confederation.


    As the returning leader of the Kandrian Empire and the head of state, one of his most important responsibilities was maintaining internal rtions, diplomatic, and foreign affairs.This content is ? N?velDrama.Org.


    It was especially important in East Panama.


    These four events immediately after his recovery sent a message to the rest of the world.


    The Emperor of Harmony had returned.


    One of the most formidable and powerful yers of all of human civilization had returned to the world stage.


    And he demanded acknowledgment.


    And he got it.


    Within hours of the two back-to-back announcements, each and every single nation save for the other three powerhouses had already issued statements and sent


    delegations to the Kandrian Empire to personally kiss Emperor Rael''s ass.


    "Popr," Rui muttered as he carefully read through the flood of intelligence reports that the intelligence department of his faction had been feeding him.


    It was no wonder that his return had been greeted with so much positivity, even putting aside that it would be stupid to piss off someone as powerful as his father.


    For one, an overwhelming majority of nations in East Panama were genuinely grateful that the Emperor of Harmony had returned.


    Of the three Sage-level powerhouses, the Kandrian Empire was the least tyrannical and the best to all of them.


    Within the Age of Martial Art, the Britannian Empire and the Sekigahara Confederate had a long history of exerting tyrannical Martial power within their domain of influence. The Britannian Empire, prior to Emperor Arthur breaking through to the Transcendent Realm, engaged in colonialism while the Sekigahara Confederate ravaged their domain of influence with war.


    The Republic of Gorteau, on the other hand, engaged in economic and financial dominance, using debt to trap nations into economic subservience while draining them of capital and resources. It artificially inted the value of its paper currency by leveraging its debt traps and Martial dominance to force all nations to trade essential resources and goods in the Gorteau Dor,


    The Kandrian Empire, thanks to the Emperor of Harmony, was the least horrible nation, although not entirely clean itself. At the very least, Emperor Rael was a man who made them actually want to engage in a rtionship with the Kandrian Empire.


    Three centuries of a diplomatic approach centered around harmonious globalization, the Kandrian Empire gained thergest number of powerful allies and synergetic growth that, at the very least, did not leave any parties disenfranchised.


    "Now then..." Rui nced at the time. "He should be seeking my presence any time soon."


    Rui knew that he would be an important part of the Emperor of Harmony''s return to power. After his father fell into aa, the faction and power blocs that he had monopolized fell away from his grip and were soon lobbied by the likes of Princess Rafia, Ranca, Prince Randal, and Raijun.


    And thenter, by Rui.


    Currently, Rui monopolized a great deal of the influence and power that once used to belong to his father. The two of them would need to coordinate carefully to ensure all that power returned to his father.


    His father would need to time his re-monopolization of that power simultaneously as Rui dissolved his faction, bit by bit.


    This was not a simple process, unfortunately.


    Rui would need to void many of the exclusive contracts that he had signed with the stakeholders of his faction while also slowly freeing up all the resources that belonged to the Rui Foundation and returning them to his father.


    Only after that wasplete, could his father truly return to the pinnacle of power he once held long before his decline.


    He had absolutely no problem giving it all away; he looked at it as an exorcism, a process of emancipation.


    He would finally be savoring the fruits of five years of painstaking efforts in the Beast Domain. Considering everything he had suffered through, he was determined not to let anything take away from him.


    "It''s not going to be easy."


    The deep voice of the Emperor of Harmony echoed through the empty throne hall, rich with power. His aura of ephemeral authority and power returned with the Royal Crown of Kandria adorning his head and the Royal Throne supporting him.


    "I know, Father," Rui replied. "But, I intend to cut myself away from all these shackles and burdens. If I''m to understand who I am, I cannot be hampered by all this nonsense."


    The Emperor of Harmony smiled wryly. "You cannot be hampered by all this nonsense,


    hm?"


    He closed his eyes.


    "Then let''s get started, shall we?"


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2074 The Transfer of Power

    Chapter 2074 The Transfer of Power


    The two of them immediately began working together to ensure that the transfer of power would go smoothly. "It won''t take me too long to void all the agreements and contracts now that news of your return has spread through the world," Rui calmly remarked. "However, I doubt that you want me to get rid of all of them at once."


    The Emperor of Harmony nodded appreciatively. "Should you let go of all your power faster than I can make it mine, then the probability that I may fail to monopolize it is now low enough."


    Rui shrugged. "I think you''re underestimating how popr you are, Father. Too many people hold you in far too high regard for anybody to possibly win that power from you."


    "Be that as it may," his father continued. "It is not worth taking a risk for. I want to minimize the probability of anything going wrong."


    "¡­Fair enough," Rui nonchntly remarked. "What ns for the transfer of power do you have? I was thinking of holding a mass conference with my stakeholders to tell them that I would eventually be nning to support you and prime them to join you. However, that is a crude way of going about it."


    Rui was just extremely impatient to get it over with.


    "¡­It is a bit too straightforward and may very well do more harm than good." The Emperor of Harmony shook his head. "You need to remember that the stakeholders of your faction are deeply displeased by my return. In their minds, they have been denied their rightful influence on the next emperor due to my return and have suffered immense losses."


    Rui was aware of this, of course.


    "There are ways to get around this," he pointed out. "For one, I can financiallypensate them significantly with all the wealth I got from the donations to my campaign."


    Emperor Rael frowned at his son''s suggestion. "That is surely impossible. Campaign donations are spent on campaigning. There is no way you can repay all of them since you have spent the majority of it on bribing high-ranking government officials."


    "That''s true, but the good part is that I received capital from all over East Panama," Rui smirked, "while the only people that we need topensate are stakeholders within Kandria."


    Emperor Rael understood where Rui was going with his n. "However,pensating only domestic stakeholders will earn you the ire of foreign stakeholders."


    Rui shrugged. "If I were a Martial Senior, I would be worried. But I am a Martial Master." "¡­Still, even if you did receive donations from foreign stakeholders, surely most of the wealth you received came from within Kandria."


    "That''s true."


    "In that case, you shouldn''t be able topensate your domestic stakeholders since the total capital you received is not that much greater than the capital you received from within Kandria, which is what you''re seeking to repay."


    "That''s also true," Rui admitted. "However, out of all stakeholders, I do not need to financially repay the Martial Union. They learned about my deception, as you know, and I already settled my debt to them for free after I won a Martial duel and wager to them."


    "...That sounds exactly like something they would do." Emperor Rael heaved a soft sigh. "And considering that arge portion of my donations came from them, I can actually manage to repay the others from the wealth that I got from them. It''s close, but I should be able to fully repay all of them in this manner," Rui exined. "Hmmm¡­ in that case, your n does have merit." Emperor Rael nodded appreciatively. "Less than one percent of campaign runners return donations in the event of their losses; thus, you shall earn deep appreciation from each of them, which, in turn, shall make them more sympathetic and willing to support me instead."


    Rui nodded. "Those were my thoughts as well. Probably the best way to turn them sympathetic."


    "That''s not all," the Emperor realized. "It can allow you to abolish your faction a lot sooner since you can justify that by theck of funds. I see; that was your main goal, wasn''t it?"


    Rui shrugged. "Win-win if you ask me."


    "Hah," Emperor Rael mirthlesslyughed. "I suppose that is true. Your n has merit. The only issue is¡­" Contentt bel0ngs to N0ve/lDra/ma.O(r)g!


    An amused smile appeared on his face. "Can you actually sell that you are truly devastated by my return?"


    That was a question that Rui hadn''t considered.


    It might prove to be a little difficult.


    "I''ve fooled lots of people about lots of things," Rui impassively remarked. "I don''t foresee any issues in that regard."


    "It''s going to be a little different this time," his father warned him. Rui''s expression darkened. "Because of how close the timing is to my breakthrough?"


    Emperor Rael nodded seriously. "A son randomly breaks through to the Master Realm at the age of thirty-five while the father simultaneously breaks out of the curse of the Eternal Dream Disease. Two events that should be impossible somehow happened nigh simultaneously."


    It wouldn''t take a genius to suspect that something fishy had taken ce.


    "Of course, they won''t arrive at the truth when considering the various possibilities," the Emperor calmly stated. "The truth, your story, is actually quite absurd and fantastical. However, many mighte to think that it was a fraud from the very start. After all, deception is far more likely than the notion that I was able to recover from the Eternal Dream Disease."


    "We have the Divine Doctor as proof, but¡­" Rui''s expression grewplicated.


    "¡­Revealing that we have the Divine Doctor at our service will put an even bigger mess on our hands," Emperor Raelpleted his thoughts. "Put aside any thoughts of revealing any of the super assets that you have bestowed upon Kandria. The Ss n''s joining of the Kandrian Empire significantly increased the tensions between Kandria and the other three powerhouses. Elder Tree, time-elerated dungeon, and the Divine Doctor are things that must remain secret. At the very least, not before I have fully regained all my power."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2075 Offer and Request

    Chapter 2075 Offer and Request


    The possibility of the Britannian Empire, the Sekigahara Confederate, and the Republic of Gorteau waging war against the Kandrian Empire was terrifying.


    "Yet it is not unrealistic."


    The Emperor''s voice was calm.


    "I know how my peers and counterparts think," the Emperor continued. "They will not tolerate Kandria retaining so many powerful revolutionary assets together. The power that you have brought home for all of us is extremely great. Far too great. The world will not leave us alone if they were to find out."


    Rui nodded along, yet he kept the fact that a war wasn''t the worst thing to him personally due to the fact that he needed more real experience in battle as a new Martial Master.


    Of course, he would never try to trigger a war purposefully.


    "I will need to chalk up an exceedingly secure n for the utility of these assets without it being leaked to the rest of the world, but¡­" The Emperor shook his head. "It is impossible to keep it a secret forever while also making meaningful use of them. The more we benefit from each of these treasures, the less we''ll be able to hide them."


    Rui had had exactly the same thought process.


    The world wouldn''t just ignore the Kandrian Empire growing ten times stronger. It would have long taken any and all measures to halt the Kandrian Empire''s growth once it crossed a certain threshold.


    If they did use the Divine Doctor to massively empower all Kandrian Martial Bodies, the world would notice instantly by straightforward observation.


    If they did use the time-elerating dungeon to elerate the growth of all Kandrian Martial Artists, then the world would notice.


    If they did use the Elder Tree to dominate the Beast Domain market, the world would notice.


    If they did all three, then the world would refuse to stand by and watch the Kandrian Empire rise far above everybody else.


    "In fact, even at this point, we are teetering dangerously close to that very threshold," the Emperor of Harmony warned his son. "And you are at the center of it all."


    Rui frowned. "Me?"


    His father nodded. "You are responsible for the two things that have pushed Kandria into the red zone. Namely, the Hungry Pain technique and the Ss n."


    Rui''s eyes widened. "¡­You mean that I have been pushing the line long before I even realized it?"


    "That is precisely correct," his father replied calmly. "The Ss n was certainly a big push. One of the reasons that it did not escte too much was because, as juicy as the Ss n was, it was also feared. Your grandmother was feared. The power of prophecy was highly feared. That is why tensions have escted but have not erupted into full-scale war."


    Rui narrowed his eyes. "However, if there is another push¡­"


    "Especially if that push is of an element that is not directly additive to our military power." The Emperor''s tone grew solemn. "Like the Divine Doctor. He can change the nation immensely in the future. However, if he is discovered today, there is nothing he can do that will off-set the dangers that he will attract."


    Rui heaved a tired sigh. "So¡­ what are your ns to deal with these dilemmas?"


    The Emperor carefully considered the matter.


    It was an extremely difficult matter to consider.


    Yet, in the few days since his return, it was the matter that he had thought the most about.


    "The best-case scenario is one where we''ll be able to both use these boons to the fullest and withstand the consequences of their disclosure."


    Rui''s eyebrows furrowed. "¡­That is highly unrealistic."


    Earning the bloodlust of three Sage-level powerhouses was no different from a death warrant.


    It was an unfathomable amount of military power.


    Withstanding such hostility should have been impossible.


    Yet, just as he sought to voice his opinion, he froze, remembering who he was talking to.


    "I have withstood the pressure of the other three Sage-level powerhouses before."


    The Emperor''s tone was one of calm confidence.


    His statement was one of cold historical fact.


    During the first and second East Panamic Wars, it was he who had led Kandria to hang on under thebined pressure of the three other powerhouses of Panama, even if by the skin of his teeth through ingenious military and geopolitical strategy. It was he who had forced the other three powerhouses to finally concede and acknowledge Kandria as a true equal, cementing his glory as the Emperor of Harmony.


    "I have reason to believe that it is possible this time as well, but¡­" his gaze softened as he smiled at his son. "¡­This time, I may not be able to do it without you." Exclusive ? content by N(?)ve/l/Drama.Org.


    Rui stared at his father with an incredulous expression. "You¡­"


    "Perhaps it is because I feel incredible at this very moment." He gazed at his hand, clenching his fist. "¡­but I do not think I will fail. At least, not with your help. Without you, I might have no choice but to settle for inferior options. I might be forced to minimize the use and consumption of the priceless assets that you have bestowed upon this empire so that the world does not discover these treasures..."


    "But with me, that somehow changes?" Rui narrowed his eyes.


    A hint of pride lit up in his father''s eyes. "It changes everything."


    He closed his eyes. "Your mind is not ordinary. In the span of a few years, you aplished what I failed to aplish in thirty years: finding the Divine Doctor. You won the Kandrian Throne War dominantly. You lobbied the Ss n to join us, earned the friendship and cooperation of the mythical Elder Tree, and broke through to the Master Realm at the age of thirty-seven before procuring a few more priceless assets."


    His eyes opened as they met Rui''s gaze with endless certainty and confidence.


    "Together, we can elevate Kandria to even greater heights," he continued. "Together, we can manifest Kandria''s true potential rather than burying it forever. Together, we can aplish the impossible."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2076 Ambitious Undertaking

    Chapter 2076 Ambitious Undertaking


    It didn''t take Rui long toe up with an answer.


    "No."


    His tone was clear and certain.


    Not a hint of hesitation could be heard in it.


    "I''m going to transfer all my political power and influence back to you as soon as possible," Rui calmly stated. "After that, I''m done with politics. I am not a politician. I am a Martial Artist."


    His father was stumped, speechless.


    "The whole reason I sought to find the Divine Doctor was so that you could do all this stuff, not me," Rui firmly asserted. "I refused to be dragged back into something I have worked so hard to leave.


    For a moment, Emperor Rael simply stared at his son before closing his eyes with a wry smile. "I see¡­" Rui simply awaited his response warily.


    "Forgive me; I should have never asked," his father shook his head. "It was a foolish question. You have put much effort into avoiding taking the throne, and I should have foreseen that getting even more involved would be against your wishes."


    Rui nodded with relief. "¡­I don''t have time for this stuff. I need to focus on Project Water and getting stronger quicker."


    His father smiled at those words. "Your single-minded determination to fulfill your ambition is inspiring. I see now that relying on a son who has already done so much for me and the empire is a weakness on my part."


    His tone grew heavier.


    Rui peered at his father upon those words. He wasn''t able to sense his emotions, but that was probably on ount of the invisible Sage Sayfeel, who was always in the Emperor''s vicinity.


    "You mean to say¡­" Rui narrowed his eyes. "You''re going to go through with it? Do you really think you can elevate Kandria far above everybody else with the power of priceless treasures and endure the consequences thate from it?"


    Even if Rui did ept his father''s offer and request, he wasn''t sure if they could seed together. The moment Kandria crossed the eptable threshold of power, the other powerhouses would immediately swoop in like sharks to drag it down before it forever escaped their reach.


    Yet, when he beheld the Emperor of Harmony, he couldn''t help but pause. Ironically, the man radiated an even greater aura of confidence and a sense of certainty after Rui rejected him. This was the man who had raised Kandria from just another nation to a continental powerhouse.


    He seemed to growrger than life by the moment his powerful gaze met Rui''s eyes.


    A single word escaped him. This content is ? N?velDrama.Org.


    "Yes."


    Rui''s eyes widened.


    "In my stead, any other ruler and leader would fearfully keep the Divine Doctor, the time-elerated dungeon, and the Elder Treework hidden, never to be exposed, but I¡­" Growing more certain by the second, the Emperor continued, "¡­I do not intend to settle for a sub-optimal option. I believe that it is possible to maximize the benefits of the Divine Doctor, time eleration dungeon, the Ss n, and the Elder Treework without suffering dire consequences."


    Rui stared at him, stunned. "¡­This is going to be far more difficult than the two East Panamic Wars, Father. Back then, you fought for the acknowledgment and eptance of being equal. But this time¡­"


    His eyes narrowed. "This time, you''re fighting for the acknowledgment and eptance of Kandrian supremacy. None of the other three Sage powerhouses will ept Kandria as far superior to them. They will never tolerate and never allow it. Even if you do not somehow sumb to the sheer amount of hostile pressure you will be inviting, war will never end unless Kandria does somehow be powerful enough to ovee all three of our peers¡ª"


    He froze as it suddenly clicked.


    His father''s true intentions.


    "You¡­" Rui''s eyes widened. Emperor Rael smiled. "It is merely a matter of time for any nation possessing the treasures that you have brought us to elevate itself above others should it employ these treasures to their absolute fullest."


    "¡­As long as it can withstand the hostile pressure from elevating itself above others for long enough." Rui''s tone grew more severe.


    "That is correct," Emperor Rael calmly affirmed Rui''s words. "Should I employ these resources for the maximum benefit and utility, their effects will soon be widely known, triggering wars from those that will not allow us to elevate ourselves far beyond them. However, if we can weather these wars long enough for the resources to take full effect, then we will have gained the power needed to stalemate them and, eventually, end them."


    His father intended to start a race.


    A race that he intended to win.


    "¡­Are you really nning to do this?" Rui gazed at him, stunned.


    His father gazed at him with a confident smile. "Not right now, no. My greatest priority at the moment is regaining all my lost political power. Only after that will I begin nning and preparing to fulfill the ambition that I have just informed you of. It is very easy to talk about dreams in a conversation, but manifesting them takes immense time and effort."


    "¡­I see," Rui murmured. "In the meantime, my return will most likely rm my counterparts," the Emperor remarked with a knowing tone. "In my projection, tensions will continue rising. I will need to n a scrupulously wless long-term strategy for maximizing the benefits of the treasures you have given Kandria while also nning our resistance against the hostile pressure that will undoubtedly converge upon us from the rest of the world. However, the probability of a great war is¡­"


    He grew more severe. "¡­extremely high."


    Rui stared at his father wordlessly.


    "Well, all the more reason to get stronger."


    His father''s powerful gaze softened as a smile cracked at the edge of his mouth. "I suppose that''s true. Prepare yourself, my son. If you wish to pursue the Martial Path at the cost of all other paths, then so be it. You will learn what it means to partake in a war as a Martial Master."


    On the one hand, Rui was concerned at the prospect of his father leading Kandria to war because of his desire to maximize its potential for greatness.


    On the other hand, the prospect of war excited him as a Martial Artist and a newly ascended Martial Master.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2077 As a Martial Artist

    Chapter 2077 As a Martial Artist


    His father''s new ambition was extraordinary.


    It was the kind of ambition that would affect not only him but everybody else in the entire world.


    It was surreal.


    Perhaps it was because he had just regained life and was looking forward to making the most of it.


    Perhaps it was because he truly believed in the revolutionary power of the priceless treasures that Rui had brought home with him. The Ss n and its Eye of Prophecy, the Divine Doctor, the Elder Treework, and the time-elerated dungeon¡ªeach of these had the potential to revolutionize nations and skyrocket them beyond their limits.


    Kandria had gained all five.


    Any ordinary leader in his stead would have quaked in fear even if their eyes were lit with greed.


    After all, no nation would tolerate its peer growing astronomically stronger than it. Especially if it could foresee said astronomical growth ahead of time.


    That was exactly what revealing the possession of these treasures would do; it did not take a genius to see that allowing Kandria to monopolize them freely was the same as agreeing to be forever inferior to Kandria.


    That was never going to happen.


    They would either plot to rob Kandria of said resources or destroy those treasures. At the very least, get ess to a solid piece of the pie in exchange for not waging war.


    His father was disinclined to go down these routes.


    Rui was able to parse scenarios where Kandria didn''t get wiped off the map by the sum total military power of three Sage-level powerhouses and many Sage-level and Master-level nations. However, achieving those scant few positive scenarios would require extraordinarily effective geopolitical, diplomatic, and even domestic strategies and tactics. His father would not only need to carve out a n that was highly effective but also execute it with a certain degree of uracy. Even a single mistake could spell disaster for Kandria.


    "¡­And even if you doe up with the most effective strategy and execute it with extreme perfection, war will be inevitable," Rui murmured out loud. "In this particr case, not being defeated alone can be considered a great victory. We will still need to fight tooth and nail to secure such an oue."


    "That is correct." Emperor Rael smiled. "Train hard, my son. I suspect that when the time doese, even your current level of power will be rendered insignificant in the face of the sheer amount of pressure that we will experience. If you want to make an impact, if you want to make the most of it, you will need to be strong enough to participate in it as a Martial Artist."


    His tone was light, but his words were heavy. This content is ? N?velDrama.Org.


    If Rui, as a Martial Master in the upper echelons of the Master Realm, could be rendered meaningless, then that spoke to the sheer volume of pressure they would be experiencing from the rest of the continent when the time for his father''s ambitions came.


    Yet, this realization did not bring him despair.


    No.


    His eyes lit up with fire as his drive grew stronger than it had ever been in his life.


    "Do what you must, Father." His voice grew steely. "I will be ready when the timees."


    A proud smile cracked at the edge of his father''s mouth. "That''s my boy. Prepare yourself. Fortunately, you have time. I have only just woken up. In addition to regaining my lost political power, I will also need to stabilize the domestic power dynamics and the bnce between various power blocs of the Kandrian Empire to minimize civil conflict and friction. The foundation of the Kandrian Empire''s supremacy is harmony. Should it ever cease to exist, this nation will be torn apart by civil war and will be weakened enough to be suppressed by our enemies."


    He exhaled deeply. "¡­Once these most immediate concerns are settled, I can begin creating my master n andmence preparations to execute it."


    Rui sharpened his gaze. "What will you do with the Divine Doctor, the Elder Tree, and the time-elerated dungeon in the meantime?"


    Emperor Rael shook his head. "Until I am certain that we have obtained the means to endure their consequences, we must restrict their utility and impact on Kandria. We absolutely cannot allow the other nations to learn about them prematurely. Thus, one of my highest priorities at the moment is to secure them with absolute secrecy."


    "That is prudent." Rui nodded, relieved that his father was approaching the treasures with extreme caution and sense despite the insane ambitions he held. "It will be impossible for me to n and aplish this all by myself, thus I intend to involve the most important military and Martial stakeholders in the nation with this n. Grand General Aramoeus and the Grand Admiral Geron, the Sage Council, and the strongest of Martial Masters. And perhaps, you too."


    Rui furrowed his eyebrows at those words. "I told you, I''m not going to engage in politics anymore."


    "I'' wouldn''t be inviting you in the capacity of a politician this time," Emperor Rael calmly replied. "I would be inviting you in the capacity of a Martial Artist. Martial Artists are also involved when ites to military and Martial strategy. As thergest stakeholders of the power of a nation, Martial Artists possess a voice that cannot be ignored and must be given its due."


    Rui stirred at those words, acquiescing lightly.


    He did not want to engage in the roles of a politician that involved lobbying and leveraging, negotiations and diplomacy, legition and executive, bureaucracy and management, but he didn''t mind offering his two cents on Martial Art-centric matters when it came to the strategizing and nning.


    "Fine." Rui heaved a sigh. "I''ll help you out with chalking up a strategy. But that''s it. Nothing else. I will not be involved with the execution, management, oversight, or any other responsibility of any other kind."


    His father chuckled. "It seems like your experience as a politician has left you wanting to stay away from that world."


    Rui snorted. "That, it has."


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2078 Treasure Profiles

    Chapter 2078 Treasure Profiles


    His chat with his father gave him some rity on what the future held. Before, Rui did not have a clear idea of what was toe of the many changes that he had introduced to the Kandrian Empire.


    Now, however, he had listened to his father''s intentions for the future and had gotten a good idea of what was toe for Kandria.


    Most people in his position would have despaired at what was toe.


    Yet, when he thought about the prospects of fighting true battles against many different Martial Masters from different nations around East Panama, he could not help but grow extremely excited.


    There were many things to look forward to.


    "For now, however, my new ambition to elevate Kandria to even greater heights will need to wait for quite some time until I have reached my previous levels of power." Emperor Rael directed a pointed look at Rui. "Let us begin the transfer soon. We can begin with your n ofpensating your domestic stakeholders and priming them to support my faction. After that, I will speak to as many as I deem fit and lobby them to my side. Only after I am certain that I have earned the support of as many of your stakeholders as possible can you void all the contracts that bind them to you and abolish your faction."


    Rui nodded in agreement, satisfied with this arrangement.


    It minimized his work.


    Emperor Rael had firmly gotten the message that Rui was not interested in being his political second-inmand or political lieutenant.


    Thus, he proposed a n that required Rui to take merely one final action as a political leader before finally tossing the role away by releasing his political power and letting his father inherit it.


    In this context, the ''political power'' that Rui had essentially boiled down to two types: explicit and implicit. The former was the hundreds of contracts that Rui had signed that contained nonpete and exclusive uses that restricted his stakeholders from extending certain capital, goods, and services. Thetter simply boiled down to a willingness to support.


    His father could handle thetter quite well. He was charismatic andpelling, and more importantly, he was extremely credible with a long proven history of extremepetence and brilliance. Rui priming his stakeholders to consider him as a person to invest in was merely the cherry on top.


    Yet, that was not the only thing that Rael wanted to consult Rui on.


    "At this point, you possess the highest amount of experience with the Divine Doctor, the Elder Tree, and the time-elerating dungeon," his father pointed out. "Your insights into managing them and keeping them secret will be highly valuable."


    "I don''t think you need my help in that regard." Rui shook his head. "You kept Sage Sayfeel hidden all this time, after all."


    "Because I knew what I was dealing with," his father pointed out. "That is simply not true here."


    That was a fair point.


    "The Divine Doctor is the easiest to handle," Rui remarked, shrugging. "He is the hyper-obsessive type. Just let him y with the alien flora lifeform, and he will be satisfied. He doesn''t need anything beyond that and basic necessities."


    "And how much can he be trusted?" The Emperor''s eyes narrowed. "What is the probability that he will betray us?"


    "¡­He is a psychopath," Rui slowly began. "Looking into his eyes is unnerving because it is like looking into the eyes of an inhuman thing posing as a human. He is also a bit of a narcissist when ites to his medical capabilities."


    "¡­That does not inspire much faith in me." the Emperor frowned. "However, he has no incentive to betray me and every incentive not to."


    "¡­Incentives can be created, my son," he calmly continued. "It is called bribing."


    Rui shook his head. "You don''t have to worry about that. He cannot be bribed with wealth, resources, or power. Trust me, I have tried. The arrangements that I have made with him are a powerful shackle on him."


    "¡­I am unable to verify that im, but I have trust in your evaluation." His father''s tone was sincere. "In that case, dealing with the Divine Doctor will be a lot simpler. I shall have an alias and a fake identity prepared for him and have him work in the Kandrian Institute of Technology."


    Rui raised an eyebrow with confusion. "Aren''t you going to build a super-secretboratory in the middle of nowhere to hide him there?" This content is ? N?velDrama.Org.


    "That is a sub-optimal solution," his father calmly replied. "Under the current circumstances, the risk of such extravagant moves being discovered is too high. The rumors of your breakthrough inbination with my recovery from the Eternal Dream Disease have put all eyes on us. For now, at least, leave the Divine Doctor alone."


    Rui stirred, finding himself in agreement with his father.


    "What about this Elder Tree of Legend?" His father inquired. "It isn''t even human. I am much more troubled with the notion of trusting in the intel of an intelligent non-human species."


    Rui smiled nostalgically as his memories of the Garden of Salvation returned. "If that tree cannot be trusted, then no one can. It is, in my evaluation, a Sage-level creature; it could have easily taken me captive and forcefully extracted all the value that I could possibly provide before killing me, yet¡­"


    His gaze turned to his father. "It never once exploited me despite how easy it would have been."


    That was indeed a deeplypelling argument, even his father had to admit. "¡­I need to speak with it."


    Rui nodded. "I have already begun working on it."


    "¡­Good," his father nodded. "The dungeon is a nonsentient asset; thus, the only question regarding its performance is whether the Divine Doctor can unlock it."


    Rui''s eyes grew more certain. "He''ll figure it out. That man is undoubtedly a genius. He will need time, but he will seed."


    "Time he has," the Emperor reassured him. "There is much that needs to happen before I can even begin to n its usage."


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2079 Much Work

    Chapter 2079 Much Work


    Father and son talked more about what was toe as theyid out their ns for the future and came to an agreement on arge number of things.


    "I''m d that I have plenty of forewarning this time for an impending war," Rui remarked with appreciation. "That is a luxury that is afforded to very few people."


    Rui had already begun to plot out his path forward for when his father would inevitably trigger a war with his peers.


    He didn''t have a precise estimate for when the timeline for war would begin, of course.


    But that was fine, as long as he knew it wasing, he could grow stronger.


    He would equip himself with the power to deal with the war.


    With the power to adaptively evolve to war.


    He didn''t even know what that looked like.


    In the past five years, much of his growth had been maximized to adaptively evolve to the Beast Domain. The Tree of Life, Muspelheim, and Niflheim were most optimal against inhuman species. The Tree of Life did indeed treat each Martial Body as its own species and thus was effective. After all, although every Martial Body was unique, they were merely hyper-evolved human beings. Each Martial Body, although its own species in a sense, was still a part of the Tree of Life.


    Thus, Rui was able to see exactly what kind of environment was most suited to taking them down. However, the difference was that Martial Artists tended not to have the extreme weaknesses against temperatures that beasts did.


    Thus, Muspelheim and Niflheim, while quite damning against the denizens of the Beast Domain, were not nearly as powerful against Martial Artists.


    Of course, not all the progress that he had made in the Beast Domain was most effective against the beasts of the Beast Domain. The SOUL System that he had developed in the region was also effective against Martial Artists. Unfortunately, he didn''t have much experience using it against Martial Artists, unlike against beasts.


    The same could be said about the past five years worth of experience. "I''m actually d that your war will be taking its time toe," Rui told his father. "I have so many things to do as a new Martial Master that it isn''t even funny."


    Gaining experience against Martial Masters was something that he had already discussed with his grandmother. He also needed to work on increasing the synergy between his Martial Art and Mind and to work on bolstering his offense and improving his physicals. "If a war were to ensue at the moment, I would be sorely underprepared," Rui remarked. "Not to mention, I look forward to honing myself in the furnace of war, but peace¡­ isn''t bad."


    After five years in the Beast Domain where he was prone to losing his life any moment in the maelstrom of chaos that characterized the region, some peace and security in the Human Domain were quite soothing.


    Especially after everything that he had gone through emotionally.


    "Enjoy this peace while itsts, my son," his father told him. "For when I begin to fulfill my ambition, it will surely cease to exist."


    Rui narrowed his eyes. His words were ominous.


    War.


    It felt surreal.


    Like the reality of war in the not-too-distant future was something that hadn''t settled in.


    Perhaps it was because their conversation was normal, but the gravity of the Emperor of Harmony''s words had yet to really hit Rui on an emotional level.


    On a rational level, however, he had already begun to adjust his mindset for the future.


    War did not tolerate softness.


    Nor weakness.


    "I will keep that in mind."


    It wasn''t long before their second meeting came to an end.


    Of course, it most certainly would not be theirst. Considering that Rui was the strongest tie between some of the super treasures that he had brought back home and Kandria, his aid and input in regting them would be needed.


    However, for now, he could put the matter aside.


    For now, his father was focused on returning to his old state of hard and soft power and influence.


    Until then, any question of triggering a war was entirely off the books. This content is ? N?velDrama.Org.


    While his father focused on regaining what he had lost in the many years since his prior decline, Rui would be focusing on gaining more power.


    [Your Highness, the Sandflower Nectar Potion procedure and the life-prolonging procedure are prepared; I am informed that you may choose to undergo them any time you please.]


    Perhaps the only part of having a faction that Rui didn''t dislike was the fact that he could pawn off a lot of boring work to people he employed. "I need to get myself a managerial team after I dissolve my faction."


    Even powerful and prominent Martial Seniors tended to have managers who dealt with paperwork, contracts, and negotiations. Martial Masters were wholly too prominent to participate in the world without one.


    Now that he had decided to cut away as much non-Martial bullshit from his life to focus solely on training, he could never go back to personally dealing with things that he hade to delegate. His time was too precious, especially since the future was not one that would tolerate weakness.


    "Stamina potion, offense training,bat experience, synergy training, war preparations¡­" he murmured. His to-do list had ballooned all of a sudden upon return from the Beast Domain. He had expected some amount of reprieve, and perhaps he would still get it, but it appeared that life was not willing to let him rest on hisurels nearly as easily.


    "Such is life."


    He never intended to rest on hisurels, at least not until he obtained Project Water. An ambition of a lifetime.


    Two lifetimes, even.


    An ambition from two different people across two different worlds. He immediately put aside such thoughts as he began nning his path to greater power. He had much work to do in theing years.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2080 Path of His Own Making

    Chapter 2080 Path of His Own Making


    "Nothing?! You''re telling me the Intelligence Bureau, which receives hundreds of billions of dors of funding each year, has absolutely no intelligence on how in the world that bastard Rael woke up from an incurable disease?!"


    The atmosphere in the federal headquarters of the Republic of Gorteau curdled upon the rage of the President of Gorteau.


    "¡­Mr. President, I can assure you that the entire bureau is working overtime to gain insights into the sudden inexplicable recovery of the Emperor of Harmony," the director of the Federal Bureau of Intelligence managed to squeeze out. "We are coordinating our infiltration and surveince divisions to gather as many insights into this event as possible. We''ve even deployed the Martial division and have already entered into negotiations with the Beggar''s Sect and the Shadow Guild. You will be the first to know the moment we gain any breakthroughs in intelligence."


    "Goddammit!" President Raymond cursed with frustration. "Why did this have to happen now of all times?!"


    His fingers steepled as his eyes swam around in uncertainty. "¡­Summon my chief of staff and director of campaigning affairs. Inform them that I want a thorough and scrupulous report on the impact of this on the uing presidential elections."


    "¡­Yes, sir."


    "Arrange for a meeting with my donors and the stakeholders of the National Libertarian Party immediately."


    "Yes, Mr. President."


    "Arrange a separate meeting with Whiterock, Streetstate, and Rearguard immediately."


    "Yes, Mr. President."


    "Have the analyst division of the Intelligence Bureau redo the threat profile analysis of the Kandrian Empire with itstest developments."


    "Yes, Mr. President."


    A heavy sigh escaped the President as he massaged his forehead. The return of the Emperor of Harmony hade at a terrible time. In fact, President Raymond could not think of a worse moment for it to arrive. The presidential elections of the Republic of Gorteau were barely a year away.


    His administration and party had already chalked out their campaign strategy and had already begun executing it, but the return of Emperor Rael threw out all his ns. It was such a major event that the political parties in Gorteau had halted to a stop as each of the presidential candidates began re-examining their campaign strategy.


    Not all parties of the Republic of Gorteau were equally affected, of course.


    The one most negatively impacted by this news was the National Libertarian Party due to the fact that it had a hawkish foreign policy.


    The power vacuum that Emperor Rael had left, followed by the Kandrian Throne War, had severely eroded the political cohesion, making Kandria less prepared to deal with foreign threats.


    It was one of the reasons for the rising tensions between Kandria and its three peers.


    Within the Republic of Gorteau, those rising tensions werergely fueled by the hawkish National Libertarian Party. A party that historically utilized any and all incentives to push for war. It was a party whose benefactors and stakeholders were the thriving arms industry,prising of weapons developers and manufacturers and also much of the Martial industries, including independent Martial Artists, Martial mercenary groups, and Martial Contractors.


    Thus, in addition to ideologically supporting war, they also needed to wage war to satisfy and please their donors so that the funding and donations never stopped.


    This time, the National Libertarian Party had chosen the Kandrian Empire.


    Its state of political weakness and dissent had riled up much of the party in warring fervor. They had smelled blood in the water.


    After all, one of the greatest reasons behind the Kandrian Empire''s power was the fact that Emperor Rael maximized its potential by having many opposing forces synergize harmoniously to yield a sum that was greater than its parts.


    Without him, that advantage was gone, reducing the nation''s effective war potential.


    Thus, the Kandrian Empire became the target to fulfill the party''s bloodlusted political ideology and also to satisfy their stakeholders, who deeply profited from war.


    Over the past three years of his term as president, the National Libertarian Party had merrily fed its voter base much propaganda about the Kandrian Empire. They droned on and on for years about how the Kandrian Empire was a nation gued by an authoritarian monarchy system that oppressed its citizens with leaders that they did not choose.


    They described vividly how a single family, the Kandrian Royal Family, tyrannically ruled over its citizens and oppressed them for four long centuries.


    They presented themselves as noble purveyors of democracy.


    Naturally, the Libertarian voter base ate up the propaganda heartily over the years, firmly bing anti-Kandria as President Raymond made it his primary policy to garner votes.


    Everything was going well until Emperor of Harmony returned from the brink of inevitable death.


    Suddenly, the reason that Kandria was ever chosen as a target, its political weakness, was gone.


    Suddenly, the very foundations of the National Libertarian Party''s call for war against Kandria had vanished.


    They were no longer dealing with a leaderless, divided nation.


    They were dealing with a man who was widely recognized to be one of the greatest leaders of all of human civilization.


    It wasmon wisdom in the political sphere that it was extremely unwise to pick a fight with Emperor Rael Di Kandria.


    Unfortunately, much to their own chagrin, they had unwittingly found themselves doing just that all of a sudden.


    Even worse still was the fact that they couldn''t really change gears at this point in time for many reasons.


    For one, their voter base no longer expected it but hade to demand it.


    Not to mention, any attempt to halt now would be widely perceived as cowardly.


    They would lose the elections. This content is ? N?velDrama.Org.


    They would also lose a good chunk of their donors who thrived in war and would not be pleased to be denied a war.


    "¡­Damn!" President Raymond grimaced at the terrible predicament that he had found himself in.


    "¡­Mr. President, it''s time for your statement and press conference soon."


    The man stirred as he returned back to reality, steeling his face as he prepared himself to walk down a path of his own making.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2081 Redirected Investigation

    Chapter 2081 Redirected Investigation


    Prime Minister Edward Gel Dermont was not in a good mood these days.


    Not only did the shocking rumors of the Void Prince''s breakthrough turn out to bepletely true, but immediately after they were confirmed to be true, the announcement of the recovery of the Emperor of Harmony spread around the world.


    Just the thought of it evoked deep rage within him.


    If there was a man he hated from the bottom of his heart, it was undoubtedly Rael Di Kandria.


    If there was a man he respected from the bottom of his heart, it was also Rael Di Kandria.


    They had a long history with each other.


    They were the heads of governments in their respective states for a long time.


    They were also the prime strategists of their respective Sage-level powerhouses.


    Of course, prime ministers did not normally serve as military strategists in most governments. A prime minister was the head executive of the government. Their primary role was to manage the nation''s executive branch. Their required skill set was bureaucratic management.


    Yet, in the Britannian Empire, the prime minister, appointed by the Britannian Martial Assembly, possessed oversight over much of the government.


    The reason for that was that he, the first and current prime minister since the Second Martial Revolution three hundred years ago, was so extraordinarilypetent in all aspects of political engagement that Emperor Arthur had seen fit to give him the keys to the entire government.


    He came to power around the same time as Emperor Rael. Of course, the difference between the two was that Emperor Rael was the true ruler of the Kandrian Empire, while the Prime Minister was little more than a glorified servant of the Martial Artists of the Britannian Empire whose power and life could be taken away at any time the Martial Assembly pleased.


    The Britannian Empire was ultimately a Martialocracy.


    Thus, no matter how brilliant he was, he could never gain true power.


    Yet, nheless, they were, in some sense, rivals.


    This was definitely the case when they firstpeted with each other in the First East Panamic War.


    That was the first time he had been ovee as a strategist and a leader.


    Of course, the oue of a war was dependent on a myriad of variables in addition to the strategy.


    However, the ideal strategist could maximize the probability of victory after taking into ount all the many relevant variables.


    The Emperor of Harmony had ovee him in that regard.


    Without any dispute.


    That was when Rael had earned his respect and his hatred.


    Since then, the two of them had butted heads many times, with the Emperor of Harmony emerging victorious by thin margins.


    When Emperor Rael''s condition came to light, he was delighted, although a part regretted not being able to ovee his rival and reim his honor.


    However, now that Emperor Rael had returned, a small part of him felt delighted in the opportunity to finally defeat his ursed enemy.


    And Emperor Rael''s very return had shown him a possibility of doing just that.


    "Cease all investigative effort into the Emperor of Harmony."


    Hismand stunned the Britannian Intelligence Service.


    "¡­Sir?" The deputy director stared at him, flummoxed.


    "¡­You won''t learn anything meaningful if you do pursue investigation into the Emperor of Harmony," the Prime Minister calmly remarked. "¡­There is no doubt that his predicament was the Eternal Dream Disease. It would be deeply foolish for him to have done something that stripped him of his power, undid a decade''s worth of effort of progress, and brought him absolutely no additional benefit, putting him back at square one or even further behind. Not each and everything is a conspiracy."


    His words were sharp and cleanly cut away fiction from fact. "¡­Of course," his eyes narrowed, "that doesn''t mean nothing at all is a conspiracy."


    A predatory light flickered in his eyes as his gaze fell on a particr document. A profile analysis of one Rui Quarrier Ss Kandria.


    "Let us revisit the facts once more." His tone was imperious. "All the evidence at hand proves that he truly was afflicted with the Eternal Dream Disease. And now, he has fully recovered from it. An extraordinary oue."


    His eyes narrowed. "¡­Yet, the thing about extraordinary oues is that they tend to have extraordinary causes."


    His gaze intensified.


    "¡­Extraordinary causes such as breaking through to the Master Realm at the age of thirty-five despite being surrounded by four Martial Masters at all times."


    His expression grew certain. "¡­Divert all your investigative efforts into Rui Quarrier."


    "Over what timeframe, sir?"


    "¡­Ever since Emperor Rael revealed him to be a royal prince."


    Centuries of experience as a statesman allowed him to catch the barest whiff of a deep conspiracy.


    His instincts told him that there was something deeply significant that had transpired that resulted in these two extraordinary events happening nigh simultaneously.


    "Pursue your investigations into the Void Prince. I have an inkling that you might find some truly interesting stuff on him."


    Previously, the man wasn''t too moved by Prince Rui Quarrier as a martial artist or as a politician. The former was because he was a martial senior, and they were simply too insignificant to earn his power. N?velDrama.Org holds text ? rights.


    He was clearly impressive as a politician. He possessed a sharp mind and had a good grasp of the ways of the world. However, he had a marked inexperience andck of refinement.


    Now, however, the Prime Minister couldn''t help but wonder whether his understanding of what the young prince was capable of was highly limited and deeply iplete.


    "Something is happening in Kandria." His tone grew more confident.


    It wasn''t just his intuition that told him this; it was also straightforwardly true. If they had no inkling of how such miracles came to be, then it tautologically followed that they did not know what was happening.


    Regardless of how much merit the Prime Minister''s words had, the Intelligence Service followed his orders nheless, diverting all their investigative efforts to Rui Quarrier Ss Kandria. -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2082 A Nation of Disharmony

    Chapter 2082 A Nation of Disharmony


    Just like the Republic of Gorteau and the Britannian Empire, the Sekigahara Confederate was also displeased by the return of the Emperor of Harmony for their own reasons. They were the most ideologically opposed and antithetical to the Emperor of Harmony.


    While they respected his capacity in war as the suprememander of the Kandrian Military, they deeply abhorred the philosophy that hade to embody his politics.


    "The Emperor of Harmony," the matriarch of the Tsukishi n grumbled. "Coming back and calling for a C16 meeting from the start. Who does he think he is?"


    "¡­It''s just like him," the patriarch of the Kenjin n narrowed his eyes. "Of the four powerhouses, he was the one who initiated cooperation the most."


    The Republic of Gorteau sought war for profit, while the Britannian Empire simply sought war because it was a state that was led by Martial Artists who needed physical conflict to grow.


    The Sekigahara Confederate was in a simr position.


    In addition to Martial Artists needing war for growth, war was also baked into the blood of its culture.


    Not just its culture, war was baked into the business model of the state. The state was reborn during the Martial Revolution three hundred years ago after the fourteen ns took over from the Sekigahara Empire and rebranded to a confederate of fourteen powerful ns.


    Since then, the powerhouse had been sustaining itself through war. This content belongs to N?/velDra/ma.Org .


    There was a reason that North-East Panama was the most war-stricken area in all of East Panama.


    The Sekigaharan modus operandi was rather simple and was a time-and-tested strategy.


    It used covert infiltration, coercion, propaganda, and other poption maniption tactics to create civil hotspots across all of North-East Panama. These were small regions, often smaller and weaker states, and entirely vulnerable. The Sekigahara Confederate would covertly create civil unrest, escte it to civil dissent, and then trigger a full-blown civil war.


    By ensuring that the civil war was between two or more groups centered around immutable differences characterized by race, ethnicity, culture, religion, and sex, they tapped into the worst of humanity and magnified it into a war.


    Once a war was created, naturally, the demand for Martial Artists would increase.


    That was when the Sekigaharan ns would swoop in and supply the Martial Artists in demand in exchange forrge sums of money, of course.


    Thus, they created their own market by creating war.


    The fourteen routinely warred against each other in these civil hotspots on opposing sides. Yet, that was entirely normal and even considered healthy by the n heads, although the Martial Artists of the Lower Realms developed deep hostility against each other.


    It was even considered a form ofpetition and sport, with pride, glory, and bragging rights as the reward.


    Their civil culture and foreign affairs were both thoroughly characterized by deep disharmony. It sustained their Martial, economic, and cultural power.


    That was why they hated everything that the Emperor of Harmony represented.


    His political philosophy was entirely antithetical to everything about their state.


    In their eyes, he represented an existential threat to them.


    If harmony was allowed to spread across Panama, then their way of life was doomed to cease.


    Among all three powerhouses, they were the most firmly opposed to him.


    "¡­That being said," the patriarch of the Kaze n narrowed his eyes. "The C16 meeting isn''t something we can ignore very easily."


    As much as they would have loved to flip the middle finger to the Emperor of Harmony, they would only be hurting themselves by not partaking in the meeting. The C16 was the tform upon which intergovernmental policies that would impact the future of the nation were agreed upon. Should the Sekigahara Confederate abstain from partaking in the C16 meeting, they would be unable to influence these changes in a manner that was most suited to them.


    That was far too much to their detriment, unfortunately. The business model of the Sekigaharan Confederate was unstable because it depended on how much war they could fabricate and maintain in North-East Panama.


    "Now that Emperor Rael has returned, we cannot expand our domain of war into the far East," the patriarch of Enken n snorted. "All that funding we poured into Prince Randal''s campaign during the Kandrian Throne War was useless from the very beginning if the Emperor of Harmony was bound to always return."


    It would have benefitted the Sekigahara Confederate had Prince Randal taken the throne. A Martial emperor with all the desire for war without any of the brilliant genius of his father. It was ideal for the Sekigahara Confederate to prosper.


    That was why, despite the enormously vast distance between the Sekigahara Confederate and the Kandrian Empire, they painstakingly tried to support the candidate that was most conducive to their interests.


    They failed when Prince Rui Quarrier Ss Kandria thoroughly dominated the war for the throne and unfortunately touted his father''s abhorrent philosophy of harmony.


    The return of the Emperor of Harmony was even worse, but s, they could only y the cards that they were dealt.


    "...And then there''s the fact that the Void Prince somehow broke through to the Master Realm at half the youngest age."


    As a nation with a deeply Martial culture, the Void Prince''s rate of growth was even more shocking than the return of the Emperor of Harmony.


    Ever since the Britannian Empire mellowed out ny years ago with the breakthrough of the Transcendent Emperor, the Sekigahara Confederate had considered itself to undisputedly have the highest quality of Martial Artists. The miraculous growth trajectory of the Void Prince stung at their pride.


    He made their most vaunted prodigies and geniuses look rather ordinary inparison. His growth put into question whether the Sekigahara Confederate had the greatest Martial generation and development system in East Panama.


    Regardless, their hostility towards Kandria only continued rising. They would be lying if they said they weren''t itching for war, looking for a sound reason or trigger to put Kandria in its ce and suppress its disgusting philosophy from regaining prominence.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2083 Time to Test

    Chapter 2083 Time to Test


    This content belongs to N?/velDra/ma.Org .


    The news of Emperor Rael''s return shook the ruling ss of human civilization. The entire world reacted as innumerable statements from all ruling polities converged from around the continent.


    [The Republic of Gorteau condemns Emperor Rael for his fascist regime. In the past three centuries, the Kandrian Empire has suffered at the hands of a power-hungry madman. His unfortunate recovery is a threat to democracy¡­]


    [The Commonwealth Duchy of Vinfrana offers its sincere congrattions to the Emperor of Harmony for his recovery¡­]


    [The Kingdom of Violis celebrates the return of the Emperor of Harmony¡­]


    It only intensified as it captured the interest of everybody.


    Well, almost everybody.


    FSSS¡­


    A pair of enormous, heavily-bolstered doors opened, letting out a cloud of smoke.


    A medical team waited on standby as a masculine silhouette emerged from it.


    "¡­How do you feel, Your Highness?" a doctor asked.


    Rui gazed at his hands, clenching his fists. "¡­Like I can fight forever." The doctor smiled at those words. "It''s not unusual to feel that way, but please keep in mind that it is merely euphoria. Due to the stamina boost varying from person to person, we strongly rmend that you test it out in training rigorously before entering the field."


    Rui nodded. "Will keep that in mind."


    He had undergone two procedures in rapid session. The first procedure was the life-prolonging procedure, where he consumed a longevity potion. The second was the Sandflower Nectar Potion, enhancing his stamina significantly.


    The former was to prolong his prime as much as possible. He didn''t do it before because he hadn''t entered his absolute prime. But now, however, he had entered his prime phase. Thus, he immediately arranged for and consumed an extremely potent longevity potion.


    This way, he could prolong his phase of rapid growth even more than the prodigiously early breakthrough to the Senior Realm did.


    Thus, for him, consuming a longevity potion was more for his growth as a Martial Artist than it was in desire for more life.


    In addition, it would ensure that his Martial Body would grow much quicker than his peers due to the fact that he had severely slowed down his aging.


    Martial Bodies possessed an evolved capacity to grow stronger in response to stress, far greater than that of the human body. So much so that the growth due to the naturally responsive evolution of the body outpaced the decline due to age, which was why elder Martial Artists only grew stronger even if they no longer retained their youthful energy.


    Yet, their growth was despite their old age. Rui''s Martial Body would reach much greater heights than others quicker, even after years and even decades.


    That was what truly excited him.


    All his life, hisck of umtion had been the reason that he fell behind older Martial Artists, and now, he had solved that problem in the long run.


    However, in the short term, the stamina potion mitigated the gap between him and centuries-old Martial Artists.


    In addition, the boost from the Divine Doctor had also made noticeable improvements to his Martial Body. Step by step, he was making significant progress in mitigating the weakness of his Body.


    ''However, it''s not important enough to just consume potions. I need to ensure that I make the most of it.'' Rui grew engrossed in thought. For now, however, he looked forward to measuring his newfound power after the stamina boost.


    And, naturally, if he was going to measure his newbat level, he might as well get it measured objectively and officiously.


    That was why he had already arranged for an evaluation exam ahead of time, scheduling it right after he finished his procedures.


    He immediately headed to the Daracol base up north for Martial Artists.


    He could sense numerous Martial Masters waiting in the base, yet his evaluation of them was limited and hazy. Not that that even mattered anymore.


    He had already experienced that Masters were inscrutable andplex beings that could not be evaluated by one''s gaze alone.


    This time, he could not sense as many Martial Masters asst time.


    He had fought two battles, which gave them enough to satisfy their curiosity.


    In addition, this time, he missed the presence of his Martial Master friends. None of them were around this time, which was hardly strange.


    They were Martial Masters.


    Their time was valuable.


    Half of them were probably outside the nation,pleting important operations for the Martial Union.


    Martial Masters like Master Aronian were busy guiding the Martial Artists of tomorrow.


    Martial Masters like Master Vericita led an entire Martial n.


    They cared about him, but they did not live for him.


    That was all fine by him, of course. He hade for one purpose: to gain an urate understanding of exactly how strong he was. STEP


    They were already there.


    "Master Rui."


    Six Martial Masters stood before him.


    Each had a radically different Martial Body, indicating a drastically different Martial Path.


    The Tree of Life provided further insights into their Martial Bodies by allowing him to see exactly what kind of environment would be perfectly antithetical to their Martial Bodies. It gave him a better understanding of who he was dealing with.


    "Masters," Rui greeted them with respect. "We are the Martial Masters who will be testing your caliber as a Martial Master," the one in the center remarked. "You will face all of us inbat, and the track record will be used in gauging whether you are of the same grade as us."


    "¡­I thought that grades were supposed to beputed after arge number?" Rui inquired, raising an eyebrow. Though, he had already surmised the reason.


    "In theory, you are entirely correct. In practice,. hHowever, it is utterly impractical to round up all Martial Masters for a lengthy set of battles. While this was easy enough to do back in the day when there were only a handful of Martial Masters, it is no longer practical. Thus, we make do with what we have at any given moment¡­"


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2084 The Yin-Yang Shield

    Chapter 2084 The Yin-Yang Shield


    "¡­Additionally," he continued, "the Martial Union has also taken the liberty to analyze the data from your duel to further reduce the tediousness of this process. Based on it and the fact that you have grown stronger, the Union has decided to deploy six grade-twenty-five Martial Artists to test your power."


    Rui''s eyebrows lit up at the mention of their grade.


    "¡­High grade," he murmured.


    "Indeed, Your Highness," the Martial Master confirmed. "The Martial Union believes, in consideration of your prior matches, that testing you with grade-twenty-five Martial Artists, the first of the high grades, will lead to the most urate evaluation."


    "¡­Sounds like grades are much more rough in the Master Realm," Rui remarked. The Martial Master nodded. "In the Master Realm, grades are far less urate and precise when ites to measuringbat level. They are merely used as a reference and nothing more. Unfortunately, the Martial Union has yet toe up with a better way to quantify Masters."


    Rui nodded, pondering the man''s words. As abat scientist or, at least, someone with the memories of abat scientist, he knew just how difficult it was to quantify beings asplex and powerful as Martial Masters. "Your services are much appreciated, Masters," Rui expressed gratitude.


    "It is an obligation, Your Highness," he replied. "By partaking in this test, you agree to partake in the evaluation of as many Martial Masters aiding in your evaluation. Each Master must agree to this."


    Rui immediately understood the point of this.


    It was to ensure that there always were Martial Artists avable when others required themselves to be evaluated.


    Thus, Martial Masters had essentially created a self-serving system where they took care of each other''s needs rather than needing tomission a bunch of them each time.


    "I don''t mind," Rui calmly replied.


    "Then, let us begin without any further ado. I am Vertol of the Earth Sect, and I shall be your first opponent."


    Rui''s eyes fixed on the man.


    He had a sturdy, heavy body; in addition, he had arge paunch that undoubtedly made it harder to inflict any damage on him. Nothing above par for a defense-oriented Martial Master.


    Rui could already imagine the trouble that he might have with this particr Master due to hisck of offense. It almost made him want to drop out ande back after spending a few years honing his offense.


    However, it was imperative that he knew how strong he was at this very moment before he entered training. This belongs to N?velDrama.Org - ?.


    This was so that he would know exactly how much stronger he had gotten after training. Without measuring his currentbat level, he would be unable to gauge the gains that he would make from entering his training phases.


    Not to mention, he just wanted to fight more Martial Masters.


    He could use the experience.


    "Any time, Master Vertol." Rui smiled.


    The two of them immediately shifted to arge battlefield in the isted Daracol Region, taking their stances.


    Master Vertol took a strange stance.


    He brought his feet together, "I have been looking forward to this, Your Highness," Master Vertol admitted. "Show me the power that you have umted. Rest assured, I won''t go down nearly as easily as Master Grais did."


    "Is that so?" Rui smiled wryly.


    Master Grais had not gone down easily at all.


    In fact, he had almost won.


    "Come."


    Master Vertol''s challenge was firm.


    Rui didn''t need any more warning.


    BADUMP!


    Their Martial Hearts and Minds zed into action as Rui surged forward. A tremendously powerful Flowing Canon flew towards the man''s sr plexus with immense momentum.


    Yet, he didn''t so much as twitch, allowing the blow tond. The full power of Outer Convergence, Reverberating Lance, and Fire Breathing struck him unguarded.


    Yet, what unfolded was beyond Rui''s expectations.


    BOOM!!!


    His eyes widened as a tremendous resistive force from within the man''s body emerged out of seemingly nowhere, pushing back at Rui''s powerful blow, knocking him away.


    The man hadn''t so much as moved.


    Rui narrowed his eyes, refusing to give up. Since the Master was a defensive Martial Artist, he didn''t feel the need to be careful about a counter at range. He leaped away, gaining some distance, before sprinting towards the man at top speed.


    He activated Gale Force Breathing, Outer Convergence, and Parallel Walk, surging towards the man at extremely heightened speeds, umting even more momentum thanst time.


    A second Flowing Canon surged forward.


    This time, it was far stronger due to the greater momentum rued this time.


    Yet, it was to no avail.


    BOOOM!!!


    Rui gritted his teeth as an enormous repulsive force sted his attack away, bruising his fist. The man hadn''t so much as shifted.


    Yet, the sheer power that his body was able to exert thoroughly broke Rui''s attack, flinging him away.


    STEP


    Ruinded at a distance, furrowing his eyebrows as his powerful mind surged into thought as to exactly what he was dealing with.


    "What''s the matter, Your Highness?" Master Vertol smiled. "I didn''t even feel anything. You''re going to have to do better than that if you want to ovee the Yin-Yang Shield."


    Rui''s eyes lit up at that name.


    It was a name that many Martial Artists would recognize.


    "You mean¡­?" Rui stared at him, stunned.


    "Indeed." He nodded. "This is the one and only Yin-Yang Shield of the Gen Temple."


    The Yin-Yang Shield technique was said to be one of the most powerful defensive techniques in existence, said to be impervious to any and all forms of attack. It was developed by the Gen Temple, one of the three Sage-level powerhouses of South Panama and was their primary defense technique.


    The reason that the technique was valued so much and was held in such high regard was because it was a grade-ten technique as far as its potency went, yet only grade-five as far as difficulty went.


    Normally, extreme power came with extreme difficulty.


    The Yin-Yang technique was one of the rare techniques that did not adhere to this principle so much so that Martial historians redited the Yin-Yang shield to be one of the reasons that the Gen Temple managed to rise above others over the span of five centuries, bing a Sage-level powerhouse in the process.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2085 Two Sources

    Chapter 2085 Two Sources


    Yet, despite its ease of mastery, the Gen Temple had managed to monopolize the technique for centuries. This was because they went to obsessive degrees to hide the novel training method for the technique. All memories of the training method were wiped from the minds of all those who went through it, ensuring that it could never be spread without the authorization of the Gen Temple.


    Apparently, the training method for the technique was extremely novel because not a single force had managed to crack the key to mastering the Yin-Yang Shield. To the present day, it remained a secret that only the highest authorities of the Gen Temple were entrusted with.


    This was despite the fact that many samples of the technique, such as Master Vertol, had spread throughout human civilization.


    "You were¡­ a part of the Gen Temple?" Rui cautiously asked. The man nodded candidly. "Around two hundred and fifty years ago when I was still a Martial Apprentice. I had mastered the Yin-Yang Shield technique, but, unfortunately, due to lifestyle and ideology differences, was unable to remain in the Gen Temple. Thus, I was honorably discharged from the temple before I ended up in the Martial Union."


    Rui stared at him with interest. "To think that the Martial Union has yet to crack the technique¡­"


    The man burst out intoughter. "Not forck of trying their damnedest, Your Highness. That being said¡­"


    He lifted one leg up before bringing it down in a thundering stomp.


    BOOOOM!!!!


    In an instant, a craterrge enough to swallow a small sea erupted across the entire region from the epicenter.


    "¡­We''re still in the middle of a fight, Your Highness." He smiled. "Come, show me what the most prodigious Master in existence is capable of."


    A grin cracked at the edge of Rui''s mouth.


    "As you wish."


    His Martial Mind surged into thought as he revisited his two interactions with the technique. Two of his most powerful strikes, eachpletely negated by a force emerging from within Master Vertol''s body at the point of impact. The force also bruised his fist, serving as a counter-offensive technique.


    It was deeply unlikely that simply bludgeoning him with attacks was going to be any different, thus Rui immediately ignored the natural instinct to continue attacking.


    Given that he did not even bother guarding, Rui could deduce that point of impact was irrelevant to the technique. Otherwise, there would have been special spots that he would not be able to guard, outside of obvious vulnerabilities such as the eyes.


    Yet, if he was going to adaptively evolve to it, then he needed to know more about the technique.


    The best way to learn more about an unknown phenomenon was, of course, scientific inquiry.


    At that moment, Rui temporarily let his inner scientist take over.


    For the sake of victory.


    He surged forward at extreme speeds, running straight at Master Vertol as the third Flowing Canon surged at him.


    Except it didn''t.


    WHOOSH


    Master Vertol''s eyes lit up with surprise as the image of Rui''s attack disappeared.


    It was a feint


    BOOOM!!! This content belongs to N?/velDra/ma.Org .


    Rui gritted his teeth as heunched a strike from his side, only to be battered by the repulsive force emerging as soon as his strike connected, flinging him away yet again.


    His eyes narrowed as hended away.


    He didn''t inflict any damage and had even taken some himself, but he had managed to gain some important insights.


    ''¡­He was caught off-guard by the technique, yet the repulsive force appeared out of nowhere and sted me away nheless.'' Rui narrowed his eyes. ''That means the technique is passive, but how¡­? Since when can force be passively generated without active and conscious intention?''


    The more he learned about the technique, the more it seemed magical to him.


    He was not consciously activating the technique, yet reading his SOUL told Rui that he was exerting energy, just not consciously and not through external movements.


    And somehow, this resulted in a magical force emerging in response every time an attack struck him.


    It was inexplicable.


    ''¡­If catching him off-guard doesn''t work, then speed and maneuvering are not useful against him.'' Rui tutted, displeased.


    He had already formed predictive models on himself and was also forming a SOUL model for himself, but they helped only with maneuvering and defense, both of which were minimally useful against his opponent.


    He really needed to get himself a powerful offensive technique.


    "For now, an enhanced Hypertrophic Surge will have to suffice."


    Master Vertol''s eyes widened as Rui''s body transformed, growing farrger as his muscles expanded. In just a moment, the physical configuration of his Martial Body had gone from bnced to extremely power-oriented.


    Not only was the sheer power that he was able to generate much greater than it had ever been in his entire life, but he was also able to maintain it for much longer thanks to the Sandflower Nectar Potion.


    "Eat this."


    A singrity of astronomic power expanded as Rui threw the single most powerful Flowing Canon of his entire life.


    BOOOOOM!!!


    "AAARRGHRHH!!!" Master Vertol bellowed in pain as Rui simultaneously activated Phantom Pain at the moment of impact.


    Yet despite his agonized state, the Yin-Yang Shield did not disappoint. The technique let out an extraordinary amount of force, shing with the ovepping power of Hypertrophic Surge, Outer Convergence, Reverberating Lance, and Fire Breathing.


    Yet not even that could overwhelm the famed Yin-Yang Shield.


    The two powerful forces remained in ce furiously churning against each other.


    VMMMmmmMMMmmmMMM!!!


    Rui''s eyes widened as the sh of the empowered Reverberating Lance with the Yin-Yang Shield produced recurring patterns of constructive and destructive interference.


    ''But how¡­?'' His gaze intensified. ''That only happens when¡­''


    His eyes lit up as a thundering realization dawned on him. ''¡­when there are two sources of vibrations.''


    STEP


    He leaped away, putting some distance between him and his opponent as the two of them took a moment of reprieve.


    Yet, a wide smile appeared on Rui''s face.


    He had figured out the secret of the Yin-Yang Shield.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2086 Sitting Down

    Chapter 2086 Sitting Down


    "What a powerful attack¡­!" Master Vertol eximed. "I have never experienced such pain in my entire life!"


    Yet a grin emerged on his face. "Not enough to ovee the Yin-Yang Shield, I''m afraid."


    Rui smiled. "Say, do you know how the technique works?"


    "Of course," he snorted. "The shield is born from the harmony of my inner yin and the outer yang. The harmony of yin and yang gives rise to all things in the universe."


    Rui stared at him knowingly. The fact that an empowered Reverberating Lance and the Yin-Yang Shield produced interference patterns that were normally only produced by the superposition of two sound waves necessarily meant that there were two sources of vibrations.


    One was, of course, Reverberating Lance.


    The other could only be the Yin-Yang Shield.


    The source of its defensive power was sound vibrations.


    Yet, that wasn''t the whole exnation.


    It didn''t exin many things.


    For instance, through the mind sense and the SOUL System, Rui knew that the man was currently exerting himself on the Yin-Yang Shield technique. Yet, despite that, he was unable to detect any sound.


    The only time the force of the sound showed up was when his attack made contact with the Yin-Yang Shield.


    And he had already verified that it wasn''t Master Vertol who was actively maintaining the technique.


    So why exactly was the sound detectable at the moment and position of impact?


    ''I need more data.'' Rui grew a little excited at the prospect of cracking the mysteries of the Yin-Yang Shield. He couldn''t believe that he had somehow happened upon the secrets of the Yin-Yang Shield.


    It made sense that he was the one able to gain insights into the technique.


    His insights from the nuances of his understanding regarding waves and how they interacted gave him an advantage.


    Given that the understanding of the non-esoteric reality of the scientificmunity of Gaia was highly underdeveloped, it made sense that others had yet to gain insights into the Yin-Yang technique.


    However, he wasn''t satisfied with merely uncovering the source of the force.


    He wanted to understand the intricacies of this mysterious technique.


    Not just because it had his fascination but also because the knowledge would help him adaptively evolve to his opponent.


    "Sonic Singrity." Rui immediately activated the Yggdrasil System, employing the anti-defense domain technique.


    At that moment, the world screamed as an ocean of sound converged on Master Vertol, threatening to cook him inside out.


    Yet, it couldn''t


    VMMM!!!


    Rui watched as the two waves of sound interfered in destructive interference.


    "Rrrgh¡­" Master Vertol grimaced as his body was subject to deep stress.


    Yet, he endured and withstood it.


    His tolerance for stress was far higher than the average Master or even other Masters of the same grade who weren''t defense-oriented.


    The Yin-Yang Shield held strong, withstanding everything that Rui threw at it. Be it Flowing Canons or Sonic Singrities, Master Vertol was able to withstand everything that was thrown athe threw at him.


    Even the best of offense was well within his capacity to defend against.


    Rui knew of his type.


    This was the type of Martial Artist that dedicated themselves to one or two sub-fields within a single field and ensured that they were the very best in their chosen specialityfield.


    Inparison, offense was most certainly not Rui''s strong suit at the moment. Yet, the goal of the Sonic Singrity domain was not to defeat Master Vertolhim. The goal was to illuminate how the mechanics of the technique functioned.


    Yet, it was only when Rui he saw ssic patterns of constructive interference in the man''s body that he finally understood what was going on.


    "¡­There isn''t just one source of sound," he realized. "There are actually two waves constructively interfering as one."


    The superposition was so smooth that without his deep understanding of how waves ovepped, he would have never understood what he was looking at. Without his extensive experience with the Transverse Resonance technique, he, too, would not have noticed the simrities and would have been thoroughly flummoxed by the technique.


    Based on his current insights, the technique wasprised of twoponents.


    Internal vibrations and external vibrations.


    The former were vibrations that were created inside the body, primarily through the movements of the diaphragm.


    Thetter were vibrations caused by the muscles. It was very simr to Reverberating Lance. The normal state of the technique when it was active and in effect was that of a state of destructive interference where the two vibrations canceled each other out to such a degree that one would never detect the presence of either. This belongs to N?velDrama.Org - ?.


    Yet, the moment the user was disturbed by an external force, the delicate bnce that led to an absolute destructive interference was disrupted, causing the two vibrations to interfere constructively. The constructive interference led to the sudden creation of a powerful sound wave at the point of contact with the opponent.


    The sudden shift from destructive interference to constructive interference created an extremely convincing illusion. The illusion that the force came into existence out of literally nowhere, one that fooled even the powerful senses of Martial Artists.


    That was the secret of the Yin-Yang Shield technique.


    The reason this technique was this powerful was that it drew power from more techniques than just the muscr system. It drew power from the diaphragm and across all cells of the Body to contribute to the vibrations.


    Master Vertol had most likely been trained to be able to create constant destructive interference without conscious effort such that he could maintain the technique as a matter of muscle memory alone.


    WHOOSH


    Rui abruptly dispelled both the domain and the Hypertrophic Surge, ceasing his attack altogether.


    "What''s the matter, young man?" The Master raised an eyebrow. "I''m far from done; your power isn''t enough to do me in anytime soon."


    Rui didn''t respond.


    Yet what he did shocked everybody to their very core.


    He sat down.


    Every single person spectating the battle froze.


    They stared at the Void Prince, aghast.


    "What¡­ What is the meaning of this?!" Master Vertol barely managed to squeeze words out through his shock.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2087 Stamina Constraints

    Chapter 2087 Stamina Constraints


    Rui smiled inwardly at Master Vertol''s reaction. He sat down cross-legged, rxing while simultaneously activating his stamina metabody, drastically lowering his energy consumption.


    "You¡­" Master Vertol stared at him with pure bewilderment.


    "That Yin-Yang technique of yours¡­" Rui smirked. "¡­Is it tiring to constantly maintain?"


    The Martial Master froze as his eyes widened.


    "I asked myself, ''Why does he constantly keep maintaining the Yin-Yang technique instead of only activating when an attack is iing?''" Rui spoke out nonchntly. "There are several possibilities, but¡­"


    His gaze met Master Vertol''s eyes.


    "¡­the most likely one is that the technique cannot be activated rapidly."


    Master Vertol did his best to suppress any reaction that he had, but unfortunately for him, Rui had already created a SOUL model on him.


    A smile cracked at the edge of Rui''s mouth as he confirmed the truth. "Since it cannot be attacked too quickly, it is far too risky to try and activate it reactively. Thus, it is left permanently active. But that consumes too much energy, so¡­"


    He shrugged. "¡­I wonder which one of us will run out of energy first."


    Master''s Vertol''s expression grew grave.


    As absurd as Rui''s strategy seemed, it actually was the worst thing that Master Vertol could deal with.


    It was undoubtedly true that Rui''s Martial Heart wouldst longer if the two of them just entered into a pure stamina contest at the moment. Master Vertol was especially certain he would lose this contest because he knew that Rui had consumed a stamina potion.


    The only way that defeat wasn''t inevitable was if he deactivated the Yin-Yang Shield technique.


    Yet, he could not help but hesitate when he gazed into Rui''s eyes.


    They were the eyes of a predator.


    A predator eyeing its prey.


    The moment he turned the technique off, Rui would lunge at him like a viper.


    The only option left was¡­


    "Hah," he snorted with grudging respect. "Well yed, Master Rui. They did not lie when they said that your capacity for Adaptive Evolution exceeds all of ours greatly."


    Rui got up silently as he grew more guarded.


    "But if you think sitting like a duck is all I can do, then I''m afraid you are sorely mistaken," he growled. Rui didn''t bother responding.


    That was because he could sense it.


    The man''s Martial Mind revving into action.


    That was when Rui came to make a chilling realization.


    ''His Martial Mind doesn''t empower his defense.'' He narrowed his eyes. ''It empowers his offense¡­!''


    There was no strict rule that required one''s Martial Mind to be centered around one''s field of specialty.


    As much as hyperspecialists disdained working outside of their field, it was necessary if they didnot want to be rendered obsolete.


    Every defense specialist needed to develop a bit of offense or maneuvering, or else they could not win. The same could be said for specialists in other fields. Master Vertol clearly respected that.


    Yet, he chose to keep his Body and Art hyper-specialized for defense while using his Martial Mind for the purpose of offense and maneuvering.


    ''Steps of Yin-Yang Disharmony.'' Master activated his Martial Mind as he studied his opponent. ''Disharmonious pursuit.''


    He took a step forward as he triggered the constructive interference of his own ord, using the force to propel him forward.


    WHOOSH


    Rui''s eyes widened as he appeared before Rui in the briefest of moments, ready to charge into him.


    WHOOSH


    He crashed into an empty image of Rui as thetter applied Phantom Step to leap away, leaving a feinted image behind. Unfortunately, with the predictive and SOUL model active, Rui was almost impossible to catch. He was highly confident in his ability to maneuver evasively.


    Yet, Master Vertol was hardly discouraged.


    His eyes red with determination and certainty, fixating on Rui.


    They were waiting.


    Waiting for the perfect moment.


    Unfortunately for him, Rui didn''t n on making it easy for him.


    "Breathing Crucifix." Rui applied a powerful hypnosis on him, shackling his breathing.


    Master Vertol stiffened as he felt his breathing straining.


    This, in turn, required more effort and energy to achieve the same output as before.


    While Rui considered using the other techniques of the Metabody System and the Yggdrasil System, he ultimately decided that they were not optimal for adaptively evolving against his opponent.


    The moment he used them, he would cede any stamina advantage he had over his opponent. At the moment, the stamina advantage was more precious than either system.


    The battle continued as Master Vertol resolutely chased Rui down while Rui enjoyed the strategic benefits of being able to oust his opponent.


    With thebination of Hungry Pain, Final Breathing, and his innate boosted stamina, he strongly threatened to oust Master Vertol and effortlessly ovee him when his Martial Heart was exhausted.


    That was what spurred Master Vertol to pursue an aggressive approach when he was normally a defensive Martial Master.


    Unfortunately for Rui, the elder Martial Master was not shaken by this dynamic.


    This suggested that he was not entirely unustomed to dealing with lower stamina than his opponent.


    STEP


    Heunched himself at remarkable speeds, considering his size, arriving before Rui in the blink of an eye. WHOOSH Rui evaded his charge, stepping away.


    Unfortunately, Master Vertol foresaw that. In a swift maneuver, he drastically made a sharp cut, turning towards Rui while preserving as much momentum as possible. His eyes fixated on Rui as he surged forward, waiting for the perfect moment.


    And then, it arrived.


    STEP


    Rui leaped away, facing Master Vertol.


    For a moment, his feet didn''t touch the ground.


    That was the moment that Master Vertol had been waiting for.


    CLAP


    He swiftly brought his palms and arms together before rapidly opening them, activating a particr breathing technique. This belongs to N?velDrama.Org - ?.


    WHOOSH!!!


    Rui''s eyes widened as an immensely powerful suction force instantly dragged him down the moment his feet left the ground. In an instant, he was dragged into the deadly charge of his opponent.


    Yet, instead of a blow, he found himself a bear hug.


    CLASP


    "Rgh¡­!" Rui struggled as the powerful, beefy arms of his opponent refused to let him go as the two of them grappled.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2088 Deceptive Trap

    Chapter 2088 Deceptive Trap


    Master Vertol''s true offense was not bullrushes or charges.


    No.


    Those were red herrings.


    By constantly charging in over and over, he tricked his opponents into believing that he was a Martial Artist who relied on linear momentum to inflict damage with heavy collisions. His systems of thought relied on constantly conditioning his opponents to be wary of his bullrushes while writing them off as his sole offense.


    It was a lie.


    He grinned as the two Martial Masters sted around on the battlefield, grappling with each other.


    CLASP!


    He pulled Rui into a deeper, deadlier embrace, using all the power he was able to muster in his arms and legs. By further pulling him in, he also subjected Rui to the Yin-Yang Shield, which had now be a full-contact battering ram.


    BOOOM!!!


    "Rgh!" Rui grimaced as he experienced the full power of Yin-Yang Shield over longer periods of time.


    A tremendous amount of pressure converged on him; he would have long broken his bones if not for Nemean Blossom, which was at half power, and Flux Earther dispersing the impact. A half-powered Hypertrophic Surge helped him fight back against his opponent''s immense resistance, yet this was where Master Vertol showcased his power.


    This was the power of a man who had honed his body for centuries. While enhancing its defense was something that he had focused on the most, his power output was extremely high, far higher than Rui as he had a massive weight advantage in addition to being stronger pound-for-pound. Exclusive ? content by N(?)ve/l/Drama.Org.


    The two Martial Masters struggled, yet Master Vertol was definitely morefortable. The Yin-Yang Shield became surprisingly lethal when used in grappling; that was why Master Vertol had spent more than a century refining his grappling trap. Once he snared his opponents in a trap, he could use his greatest shield as his greatest club.


    His Martial Mind allowed him to maximize the probability of sessfully grappling with his opponents by scrupulously evaluating their reactions, their attention, and their focus. It also allowed him to find the most optimal timing for springing his grappling trap so that he could ensure that the probability of failing to trap them in it was minimal.


    Furthermore, the trap itself was something he had painstakingly and tediously burned into muscle memory and pure reflex to minimize the probability that it would be foreseen before it was toote. Theck of conscious intentionality behind the motions was the reason that the SOUL model''s reading of intent was dyed, causing Rui to react toote.


    The SOUL System was centered around reading the physical intent at its inception, yet he was unable to read their minds to learn of strategies or their systems of thoughts.


    That wasn''t all.


    CLASP


    The two of them wrestled in a deadlock as Rui exerted himself to the maximum. Yet, Master Vertol even had a system of thought for grappling.


    While Rui''s predictive and SOUL models allowed him to foresee his grappling maneuvers, his opponent''s system of thought allowed him to grapple in a manner that was most adaptively evolved against his opponent''s Body and techniques.


    The innate physical superiority, the centuries of deep experience in grappling, the systems of thought specialized for grappling, and actual grappling techniques were strong advantages that gave Master Vertol an extremely high probability of victory.


    On the other hand, Rui could predict his moves well ahead of time. He also dispersed much of the man''s output over time with his defense. In addition, he continued Breathing Crucifix, stifling the man''s full power and draining his stamina even further.


    If not for them, Rui probably would have broken some bones under the sheer pressure of the Yin-Yang Shield technique.


    However, those weren''t the only cards he had to y.


    BZZZT


    An electric current passed through his opponent''s body, interfering with the yin and yang vibrations of the technique, reducing their power. Master Vertol gritted his teeth as the two of them rolled around heaven and earth, furiously struggling with each other.


    Master Vertol couldn''t help but be amazed at how powerful Rui was even when he had fallen into his opponent''s home court.


    Even though his systems of thought were not specialized for full-contact grappling, Rui demonstrated that they were so powerful that they didn''t require any special affinity to rival and even ovee other systems of thought.


    Every time Master Vertol maneuvered, Rui had already long predicted it, ensuring that he had a timely counter prepared at the right moment to prevent his situation from deteriorating any further.


    Both of their energy reserves continued plummeting as they exerted immense power each second. Grappling was a field ofbat that required continuous exertion of not just a part of their Body but the entirety of it.


    It was a field ofbat that genuinely tested power and stamina.


    Rui would have long lost had he not consumed the Sandflower Nectar Potion.


    Thanks to it, he was able to sustain the Metabody System for much longer than he otherwise possibly could. He wasn''t worried about it running out of juice at any moment, even if it did consume more energy than his opponent.


    While Master Vertol had exerted himself more since the start of the battle, the Yin-Yang Shield technique was a technique that was much less taxing than the Metabody System. This was where the sheer magic of the technique shined the brightest. Despite its extremely high output, it was remarkably low in its difficulty of mastering and execution, making Rui deeply envious.


    Neither side was certain of their victory or loss, yet they struggled nheless.


    Of the two of them, only one side was sustaining damage.


    "Rgh¡­!" Rui grimaced as he tried his best to disperse the heavy impacts of the powerful grade-ten technique.


    Unfortunately, the synergy between Flux Earther and his systems of thought was negated greatly in this circumstance. The synergy normally existed because the greater the preparation for the technique, the greater the effectiveness.


    Yet, in grappling, he was constantly bombarded with the Yin-Yang Shield technique, making any notion of preparation irrelevant. The odds were not in his favor.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2089 Track record

    Chapter 2089 Track record


    Rui struggled with all his might as he leveraged Hypertrophic Surge, Fire Breathing, and Outer Convergence to make the best of what he had. He fought, using Thunder Coil to cause a light paralysis effect on his opponent while using Breathing Crucifix to shackle his breathing.


    Yet, with each passing moment, it was he who suffered damage as the extraordinary technique subjected him to tremendous amounts of pressure from the constructively interfering sound vibrations that sted at him.


    The only thing that stood between him and a shattered skeleton was Nemean Blossom and Flux Earther.


    Yet, not even they could hold out forever.


    CRACK!


    He gritted his teeth as he felt a pair of ribs breaking, only growing more desperate as time passed. Yet, Master Vertol recognized the faint scent of victory as his eyes grew steely with determination.


    If Rui managed to break out of the grappling battle, then his victory was secured.


    The grappling trap that Master Vertol had perfected and refined for more than a century was one of the reasons that he had managed to earn a high-grade evaluation. Yet, in exchange for a highly effective grappling trap, the greatest w of the technique was that once his opponent knew about it, the probability of it seeding was extremely low.


    Against Rui, Master Vertol knew that he would never seed with the trap ever again. Rui had already demonstrated that his strategic and tactical Adaptive Evolution was extremely high, enabling him to pick the most objectively superior strategy at hand.


    That was why Master Vertol couldn''t let go.


    No matter what.


    His expression crumpled with steely determination as he pushed himself to the absolute limit. He would die before he let Rui go.


    Yet, he didn''t need to.


    Rui had yet to inflict a spec of damage on him.


    "Arckgh¡­!" Rui coughed a spout of blood as he began hemorrhaging internally.


    Once the wounds he suffered crossed a certain threshold, they only elerated his copse. His resistance grew weaker, while Master Vertol only heightened his efforts.


    The end came sooner than one would expect.


    STEP


    The other five Masters arrived at their spot.


    "Release him, Master Vertol, lest you kill him after you''ve won."


    Master Vertol widened his eyes in rm as he realized that Rui had already fallen unconscious, releasing him from his lock.


    Rui had lost the first of six battles.


    A few minutester, he woke up, and a heavy sigh escaped him.


    "I lost."


    His eyes closed as he recalled the ending of the battle; he had felt dizzy as his vision had blurred.


    "¡­Damn," Rui murmured. "It''s been so long that I almost forgot what it feels like."


    Defeat.


    He couldn''t even remember thest time that he had been defeated. This content belongs to N?/velDra/ma.Org .


    "Everyone experiences defeat, Your Highness," Master Vertol coaxed him with gentle respect. "It is truly astounding that you are able to ovee me at your age. I truly look forward to what you will aplish in the future. Furthermore, this is merely your first battle out of six. You have plenty more to go."


    Rui smiled wryly at the elderly Martial Artist''s attempt to encourage him, as if he was afraid that Rui would be deeply discouraged.


    Of course, Rui most certainly wasn''t.


    In fact, he would even go as far as to say that he was grateful for the loss.


    It shed clear light on his now-ring shorings.


    His offense was even morecking than he had realized.


    The fact that he wasn''t able to inflict any damage on his opponent was proof of just how much he wascking. He needed a powerful offensive technique that was highly synergetic with his systems of thought.


    This time, he wanted something that was even more synergetic with them than even the Phantom Step and Flux Earther.


    He wanted to create an offense that was even more potent.


    Thankfully, this battle had given him an exciting option.


    However, this was not something to be explored at the moment. First, he needed to ovee his other opponents so that he could earn additional battle experience and gain a better understanding of where he stood.


    PAT PAT Rui dusted out his Martial attire before consuming some potent healing potion to return him to his peak state. Ever since he had enhanced his Body and prolonged his life, he needed even greater potions to recuperate.


    "I''m ready," Rui''s tone was certain.


    "¡­Then let us immediately proceed to the next battle."


    The following battles ensued, one after another, as Rui was pushed far with each of them.


    None of the Masters that he fought with were anything less than very strong.


    Rui ended up undergoing a bit of a perspective shift, even.


    His prized trump cards that, in the Senior Realm, used to be game-enders, did not allow him to dominate his battles against these opponents.


    For one, their Martial Minds were truly remarkable.


    Although his was definitely an order of magnitude stronger, they more thanpensated with way more physical evolution, far greater Martial Art techniques, and additional synergy between said techniques and Martial Mind.


    They were very well capable of handling everything that he threw at them.


    They were high-grade Martial Masters for a reason. Each one of them was deeply unique in many ways. Their Martial Minds had so much individuality that it was difficult to even put them in the same category. It was like trying to put sumo wrestlers in the same category as boxers.


    By the time the six battles were over, an entire day had passed.


    Thanks to the boost to stamina, Rui''s ability to rely on stamina as a winning strategy increased while he was forced to be impatient. These six battles allowed him to understand exactly how much stronger he had gotten as a result of the stamina potion while also giving him some experience with that strength.


    He gained an intuitive understanding of how to best apply his increased stamina inbat.


    By the time the rest of the battles ended, he had won three, lost two, and drew one.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2090 Experience

    Chapter 2090 Experience


    "Huff¡­" Rui sat on the ground after the final battle against Master Moirin of the Poison Sect. The other five Martial Masters arrived at the two of them.


    "Congrattions on your spectacr performance, Your Highness," Master Vertol wished him. "With this track record, there is no doubt that you are a high-grade Martial Master. It is truly unprecedented for a Martial Master to reach this level of power so quickly after reaching the Master Realm."


    "Thank you, Master Vertol." Rui smiled. "Still¡­"


    He gazed at his hands, "¡­I''m not satisfied with my current level of power. I look forward to training and growing stronger."


    One of the Masters shook her head in mild disapproval. "You need more experience, Your Highness. You have less than twenty-five years of experience as a Martial Artist. That is extremely low for a Martial Artist. It isn''t as obvious how much you''recking it, but you would not have lost your battle against me or Master Vertol if you had had, say, twice the amount of experience than you do now."


    Rui gazed at her deeply. She was Master Dorin of the Sword Sect. She had managed to emerge victorious against him in a pyrrhic battle.


    Her victory against him gave her words more weight.


    "Had you had more experience, you would not have fallen for Master Vertol''s trap," another Martial Master exined. "Youck the intuition thates with fighting as many battles as we have."


    Rui knew the importance of experience better than anyone else. Ever since he had begun walking the path of a Martial Artist, the Adaptive Evolution model of Earth had grown entirely ipatible with this new world. This model allowed him to know what counter-move was the most optimal response to his opponent''s predicted move.


    Yet, in this world that allowed for supernatural Martial Art by Earth''s standards, the inherited Adaptive Evolution Model had grown more obsolete.


    Rui had instead beenpensating with intuition and instinct, which were ultimately bolstered by experience, to know what the most optimal counter-moves were.


    That was why experience was so important in general, but also to him specifically.


    The mind as a whole had immense pattern recognition capabilities that allowed it to soak experience over time and turn it into intuition and instinct that often moved much faster than thought.


    Rui had felt just as they did when he had sparred with Mana and Max.


    They had been simply transparent to him without even the slightest hesitation. This content belongs to N?/velDra/ma.Org .


    He imagined it was a much lesser version of what happened between him and the Martial Masters due to the fact that he was very deviant in many ways.


    ''That was the reason that the two of them could not allow one more of me.''


    Rui had simply fallen behind in that regard. Even then, the difference wasn''t the most evident due to the fact that he had powerful thoughts, and the experience gap was never thatrge in the Squire Realm and, to a greater extent, the Senior Realm.


    But, the difference was jarringlyrger in the Master Realm.


    He was dealing with veterans who had centuries of experience as Martial Artists through some of the most violent phases in the Age of Martial Art.


    On top of that, they had gained significant proficiency with thought as well. Thus, the thought advantage that Rui had was no longer as unchallenged as it was in the lower Realms while the experience gap only grew wider.


    Thus, immediately in his first few battles, his peers were able to point out his shorings.


    Not all of them were of the opinion that he ought to prioritize it above training.


    "It is true that your experience iscking," another Martial Master added. "However, that is not something that can be strengthened artificially. It is not as though you can fight a hundred battles in a single day. In that case, it would be better to direct your efforts where they make the most impact."


    Rui nodded in agreement.


    Those were his thoughts as well.


    He couldn''t elerate his experience too much under normal circumstances at the present. Thus, he was more inclined to continue on the path that he had set for himself.


    He thanked the Martial Masters for their time, services, and advice before taking his leave.


    He already knew what he had to do.


    "Tsk, still some stuff to do before I can jump into training," he tutted with irritation.


    Unfortunately, he had promised his father he would cooperate with the transfer of power. As much as he wanted to just dive into training, he still had some final obligations to engage in. It was the final step, and he was done with ever taking center stage in politics again.


    Once this was done, he could leave everything to his father, as it should have been in the first ce. He had already begun nning his next training.


    In his prior conversations with Masters and Sages, he knew that there were a few primary avenues that he could consider.


    The first was hisck of offense, of course, but he also intended to kill two birds with one stone by making it hyper-synergetic with his system of thought. These were the two primary steps that he intended to take as a Martial Master. It might very well be one of the most powerful techniques that he would ever create if he could satisfy thetter condition. His Martial Mind being as powerful as it was meant that anything that synergized with it extremely well would be a formidable force unto itself. Flux Earther and the Phantom Step had not been created by Rui to synergize with his systems of thought, yet preparation and foreknowledge allowed for a far superior execution of both techniques.


    He couldn''t even imagine how powerful a technique that was designed to synergize with his Martial Mind would be. The synergy would most likely reach a level of power that far exceeded anything he had ever created in his life.


    Just the very thought of it excited him deeply.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2091 Address and Compensation

    Chapter 2091 Address and Compensation


    Arge number of people had gathered in a conference hall, garbed in business attire.


    None of them wore a pleasant expression on their face.


    The various Kandrian stakeholders, patrons, and benefactors of the Rui Faction had indeed promptly epted the invitation to a conference address from Rui himself, but his words no longer mattered all that much.


    With the return of the Emperor of Harmony, Rui would most certainly no longer be the Emperor.


    Even if he did, it would be in a distant future after the Emperor of Harmony finally croaked. This was no longer happening soon since he had ess to all the longevity potions in the world. At the very least, he was going to live for a few more centuries.


    It didn''t matter what words of encouragement or constion Rui was undoubtedly going to give them. The fact of the matter was that they had made major investments in his campaign and had now lost all their bets big time.


    Their attention shifted as Rui walked on stage to the podium. Much to his disdain, he needed to go through one final time of intensive grooming, wearing stuffy formal Martial attire.


    Onest time.


    "Ladies and gentlemen."


    His powerful voice spread across the entire conference hall.


    "Patrons and benefactors of the Rui Faction."


    He addressed all of them. N?velDrama.Org holds text ? rights.


    "¡­Much has happened since ourst meeting."


    That was an understatement.


    "Much that needs to be addressed." Rui closed his eyes. "Many of you have undoubtedly heard the rumor that I have broken through to the Master Realm."


    Not a single one of them had missed the rumor.


    Many of them had already confirmed the rumor through their contacts in the Martial Union and other intelligence sources.


    "It is the truth," Rui dered. "I truly am now a Martial Master."


    A wave of murmurs spread through his faction as they finally received official confirmation of this truth as Rui announced his Masterhood to the world for the first time. Now that he had officially made the announcement, he had put himself on a clock.


    He would need to visit the Panamic Martial Federation and partake in it as a member. He had already been informed of the initiation where he would be enlightened about some of the high-minded secrets of Martial Art and of humanity the moment he officially announced his Masterhood.


    Yet, that wasn''t his focus at the moment.


    "I''m sure this came as pleasant news to those of you who came to learn of it beforehand," Rui stated knowingly. "I''m sure many of you were excited at the prospect of me gaining even more undivided support and allegiance as a Martial Master."


    That was true.


    Had Rui ascended the throne as a powerful Martial Master, he would have had extraordinary political influence. Even the Martial Union would have entirely fallen in line due to that.


    He would have had absolute, unshakable support from every facet of Kandria. He would most likely have had an even firmer grip over the nation than even his father ever had.


    This was why his faction had been excited. It meant that Rui would be able to aplish more and then pay them back better for their support.


    That was why what had followed had shaken them so much.


    "¡­Unfortunately, I cannot ascend the throne."


    A dark silence lingered in the air as he iterated the obvious.


    "My father lives." Rui''s eyes swept across the crowd. "While I certainly never wished him ill and mourned for the condition that he was in, it truly pains me that I was deprived of my greatest ambition¡­!"


    His tone reflected his bitterness.


    Fake bitterness, of course.


    "All those months and years of hard work¡­" Rui shook his head. "All gone to waste."


    His gaze returned to his faction.


    "All of your investment and support have been in vain, and for that, I am deeply sorry."


    His faction thought he was apologizing merely to express his regrets.


    They didn''t realize that Rui was genuinely apologizing for causing his father to be healed.


    And they never would.


    "I intend topensate each and every single one of you for everything that you have done for me."


    Their eyes widened with surprise as Rui''s words reached them.


    They did not expect anypensation.


    They made donations and investments voluntarily, with some promised returns upon Rui''s reign, but if his reaching the throne was impossible, then they werepletely dead in water with absolutely no avenue to seek rpense.


    "I intend to repay each and every single member of this conference hall for all their contributions to my faction."


    They stared at him bewildered.


    "Every coin of gold, every resource and service, every ounce of capital will be refunded to each and every single one of you."


    None of them could bring themselves to believe such an absurd im.


    It would be unprecedented as far as campaigns went.


    Each and every single one of them had invested with the very clear understanding that they would not be receiving a single iota of what they had invested.


    Yet, they had done so anyway due to the high prospects of Rui winning the Kandrian Throne War, which he did. But even after it had turned out to be in vain, Ruipletely upended their expectations with a promise to repay them.


    "In return," Rui continued, "I have only one request. Once more, please support my father as the Emperor of Kandria. If there is anyone who deserves it, it is him rather than me. It is he who single-handedly elevated Kandria to the pinnacle of human civilization through his genius as a politician. Each and every single one of you is undoubtedly aware of everything he has done for this nation. I have no doubt that each and every single one of you has benefited from his work more than words can describe."


    His supporters stirred at his words.


    They rang true.


    "From a business perspective, you know better than me that a leader with brilliance proven beyond all doubt is far better than someone with no prior experience in politics."


    Rui''s gaze swept across them.


    "I hope that all of you will make the right choice."


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2092 Purposeful Visit

    Chapter 2092 Purposeful Visit


    "Huff¡­" Rui heaved a tired sigh. He had finallypleted his final obligation as the leader of his faction. His stakeholders had been stunned by the fact that he was nning to go through with something that extravagant aspensating all of them.


    In fact, many of them secretly had their own doubts in regards to whether Rui would actually go through with his promise.


    After all, politicians were nothing if not remiss in their promises.


    Rui didn''t care what they thought.


    They would know that he was telling the truth when they saw the money enter their ounts.


    "It''s all up to you now," he muttered, thinking about his father.


    He had done his part. He had already instructed his administration to coordinate with the Emperor so that he didn''t have to look into the matter whatsoever. Rui had also passed to his father information packages that conveyed everything he understood about the treasures that he had brought back home.


    This way, his father could seamlessly take over their management, including things like the Elder Tree connections and the alien lifeform.


    Now, Rui didn''t need to think about any of it.


    "Except for the Divine Doctor, I suppose," Rui muttered.


    That was something that was stuck to him.


    On top of that, now that his father''s recovery wasplete, the doctor was entitled to collect his payment¡ªlimited ess to the Elder Tree connection, which could not be applied at the moment, or his grandmother''s prophecy.


    Rui also had some other requests for the Divine Doctor to fulfill sooner rather thanter.


    "Best to get it done before I jump into my next training phase."


    Rui knew himself all too well.


    The moment he entered training, everything else would cease to matter. He would single-mindedly focus on getting stronger.


    He had already handled the biggest matter at hand regarding his faction.


    "Mikha," he addressed his chief of staff, "I have some business to attend to. I''ll leave the rest to your discretion."


    "Understood, sir."


    He immediately left for the Kandrian Institute of Biotechnology.


    "Understood, sir."


    He immediately left for the Kandrian Institute of Biotechnology.


    It wasn''t long before he found himself in the top-secretb, facing the Divine Doctor.


    The man was buried in the study of a sample underneath an esoteric microscope of sorts.


    "Fascinating¡­" the man murmured to himself as he made mental notes in his mind pce. "Doctor Kar."


    Rui gently tried to extricate the man from his research.


    If he did hear Rui, then he certainly didn''t seem to care, for he didn''t so much as acknowledge Rui''s presence.


    Rui could rte to but not amodate his antics. This belongs to N?velDrama.Org - ?.


    He gently bent heaven and earth, turning the man in his direction.


    The Divine Doctor certainly did not like that.


    "Unless you are nning on fulfilling your end of the agreement, I can assure you that my work is more important than whatever reason that you have forcefully gathered my attention for."


    Rui stared at him for a moment.


    He had not forgotten the fact that he had promised the Divine Doctor that he would help the man with his diagnosis of Gaia.


    "I won''t bemencing that any time soon," Rui calmly replied. "As agreed, I have no constraints or conditions to fulfill yourmission."


    "Then why are you here?"


    "Several things," Rui began. "Now that my father has reawakened, he will take over the management of our deal and will readily fulfill my end of the bargain on my behalf. You can apply for the prophecy of the Ss n anytime. The Elder Tree connection will take time."


    The Divine Doctor shrugged nonchntly. "I do not require them at the moment. Rather than using them when I do not really require them, I shall save them for a moment when I truly need one of them."


    Rui stirred, epting his decision.


    Although he would rather that the Divine Doctor use them sooner thanter, he didn''t mind it.


    "Alright." Rui shrugged, ncing at the sample the Divine Doctor was studying.


    "¡­How is progress going?"


    The Divine Doctor''s empty eyes lit up with interest. "It truly is entirely unlike anything that I have ever seen. This creature possesses a micro-biology that is unlike anything that I have evere across in my entire life. Unlike virtually all life in the world, this creature is notposed of multiple cells." Rui''s eyes widened with shock. "¡­What?"


    "It is effectively a single-celled organism!" the Divine Doctor eximed. "Thus far, I have determined that the creature isposed of countlessyers that are chemically homogenous across each of themselves."


    Rui turned to face the alien flora lifeform. "It''s made up ofyers rather than individual cells¡­?"


    "Incredible, isn''t it?" The Divine Doctor turned to face the creature. "It is possible that the native world of this creature supports an entire Tree of Life that is exclusivelyposed ofyer-based life rather than cell-based life. An entirely different model ofplex life!"


    Rui grew stunned at the Divine Doctor''s exnation.


    It was truly astounding to know that such a radically different form of lifeform could possibly exist. Rui would be lying if he said that the scientist in him was not deeply curious about this alien life.


    It was also no wonder that the Tree of Life model in his Martial Mind instantly deemed the alien flora lifeform creature foreign to the Gaian Tree of Life. It was so radically different on a fundamental basis from pretty much all lifeforms in the Gaian Tree of Life.


    Yet, while the scientist in him was curious to know more, the Martial Artist urged that he finish with business.


    "That''s nice and all, but I need you toe with me. There is a person who requires your services direly."


    The Divine Doctor snorted. "That is an entirely meaningless statement. Everyone is in dire need of my services. Gaia is just the most important patient of them all. I''d rather you not impede my time in diagnosing her at all."


    "That''s not part of our agreement," Rui reminded him.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2093 Return

    Chapter 2093 Return


    The Gatekeeper opened his eyes slowly.


    He saw an indistinct ceiling and heard indistinct murmuring.


    His attention was hazy, yet he could instinctively tell that a long time had passed since he hadst been awake.


    His eyes turned to his side, only to find himself gazing at the man he had seen before copsing.


    His consciousness was jolted as he felt the young man''s aura.


    It was that of a Martial Master.


    "I see¡­" he whispered. "¡­I have slumbered for long."


    What hest recalled was a young man who was surely a Martial Senior. The fact that Rui stood before him as a Martial Master undoubtedly meant that decades had passed since he hadst fallen asleep.


    "It''s been three years since west met, Sir Armstrong."


    The old man''s eyes widened with shock.


    "Calm down." Rui could directly feel the immense emotion that this revtion had inspired within him. "You''ve just recovered; it would be wise not to stress yourself."


    "That is correct."


    Another voice drew his attention.


    "I would be deeply displeased if the patient that the little inheritor had me step away from my research for my patient to die anyway," the Divine Doctorined.


    The Gatekeeper did not know who the man was despite recognizing him as his savior.


    "¡­Thank you." He tried getting up slowly. "Thank you for sa¡ª"


    "An ordinary medical team should be able to handle the rest." The Divine Doctor huffed at Rui, leaving the room.


    Rui smiled wryly at the Divine Doctor as his gaze returned to Sir Armstrong. "Don''t mind him; he doesn''t do bedside manners all that well. I have already arranged for another medical team to take over your recovery."


    "¡­Impropriety is hardly a price for the gift of life." He gazed at his hands. "I feel remarkably good."


    Rui smiled. "I hired the best of the best."


    "¡­You have my gratitude, Void Prince," the Gatekeeper remarked. "I verily offer my congrattions on your breakthrough to the Master Realm despite ascending the throne. It seems that you have not let thetter impede your progress as a Martial Artist. That is quite remarkable."


    Rui''s smile grew wryer. "I didn''t ascend the throne."


    The Gatekeeper furrowed his eyebrows in confusion. This belongs to N?velDrama.Org - ?.


    "Emperor Rael Di Kandria has recovered from the Eternal Dream Disease and has now returned to the throne."


    Realization dawned on the Gatekeeper at those words. "You have been busy the past three years."


    Rui shrugged nonchntly. "I suppose that is true."


    The Gatekeeper''s attention returned to his hands. "I do not consider myself worthy of such a service."


    Rui shook his head at those words.


    "You have made many contributions to the Kandrian Empire."


    That was undeniably a fact. Aside from Rui himself, there probably had not been any Martial Senior that had made as much of an impact on the Kandrian Empire as the Gatekeeper.


    "And there are still contributions that you can make even now."


    The Gatekeeper raised an eyebrow.


    "The training technique that you used to integrate the Hungry Pain technique into your body," Rui reminded him. "That is a technique that the Kandrian Empire could really use."


    He recalled how the Gatekeeper had told him about how he had managed to integrate Rui''s Hungry Pain into his body despite the fact that it had been created long after his Martial Body.


    "I have always shared all my techniques with the Kandrian Empire, but¡­" The Gatekeeper shook his head. "That technique is something that will take a lot of time. Most will not be willing to waste all that time to fall behind their peers. I did it because I had already explored all other paths to their conventional limits. But in this case, it was entirely uncharted territory, allowing me to make a lot of gains."


    Rui smirked. "You don''t have to worry about time. We will get lots of it soon."


    The Gatekeeper frowned at his words, unsure of what they meant.


    "That''s forter, of course," Rui exined. "You''ve been healed from the damage you took from your forbidden technique, but you will still need time to recover to your peak from years of being in aa. Also, ideally, never use that technique again."


    Rui still wasn''t sure why the Gatekeeper felt the need to deploy such an absurdly dangerous technique in a duel, but he understood that this was a hardcore man whose decisions were not necessarily guided by the cost-benefit analysis.


    However, he did look forward to getting the training technique that the man used to retroactively integrate the Hungry Pain into his Martial Body.


    Whenbined with the time-elerated dungeon, that technique could be used to upgrade all techniques in Kandria.


    In addition, it was possible that they could deploy the Divine Doctor to reduce the time needed to integrate the Hungry Pain into the Martial Bodies of the Kandrian Empire. This would ultimately benefit Kandria greatly in the war, and his father''s ambitions would inevitably trigger this.


    Rui also considered informing the Martial Union that he had cracked the secrets of the Yin-Yang Shield.


    For now, however, he was inclined to keep it to himself until he was able to provide concrete results. Just as with the Hungry Pain technique, he didn''t just hand it in immediately and only did so after he got everything that he needed.


    He also had some ideas in regard to how he could utilize some of its principles to solve some of his problems; thus, he intended to spend a lot of time experimenting with the principles of the technique so that he could make it his own.


    He had previously been uninspired for exactly what projects to embark on to solve some of his greatest problems. However, ever since his battle with Master Vertol where he faced the Yin-Yang Shield technique, he had some exciting ideas.


    "I look forward to pursuing physical evolution once I have recovered."


    The Gatekeeper''s voice broke Rui out of his reverie.


    "You''ll have the chance to do just that," Rui assured him.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2094 Heavy Hitter

    Chapter 2094 Heavy Hitter


    Once a dedicated medical team began helping the Gatekeeper return to his peak, Rui bade the man farewell.


    "I shan''t forget my debt to you, Void Prince. Rest assured, I shall repay you for this boon one day," he solemnly swore to Rui before thetter departed. Rui left him to his own devices.


    His road to rehabilitation wouldn''t be easy, considering his age and just how absurd his recovery process would be.


    There was a price to pay for healing from the Divine Doctor, of course.


    First, the Emperor was healed from an incurable disease.


    And now, the Gatekeeper was suddenly healed from a grave condition.


    This alone was far from enough to conclude anything, but it was the start of a pattern.


    Rui knew that any further application of the Divine Doctor''s services needed to be limited until after his father regained all his political power. He would be entering risky territory otherwise. He knew that he had already attracted the attention of the three Sage-level powerhouses that rivaled Kandria.


    He would need to wait until his father chalked up an borate long-term grand n for the elevation of Kandria above all others.


    Until then, everything needed to stay below the radar.


    He heaved a sigh, shaking his head lightly as he went through his to-do list to make sure he hadn''t missed anything.


    "Divine Doctor stuff; check. Elder Tree stuff; check. Alien lifeform stuff; check. Faction stuff; check. Martial Union stuff; check¡­" He pondered about what he had yet to do. "Panamic Martial Federation stuff is still in the air, but¡­"


    This was not something that required his immediate attention.


    The Panamic Martial Federation obligation was not a formal obligation but a semi-formal one. In addition, the time constraints were ratherx.


    Martial Masters were busy, after all, especially soon after they broke through. N?velDrama.Org holds text ? rights.


    "I''ll leave it forter."


    He would be lying if he said he wasn''t interested and curious about what the Panamic Martial Federation had to say.


    This was an organization founded by and constituted of Martial Artists and Martial Artist-led organizations for the sake of furthering the collective interest of Martial Artists and Martial Art. This meant that the Britannian Empire, which was an unshakable Martialocracy, was officially recognized as a part of the Panamic Martial Federation, but the Kandrian Empire, Republic of Gorteau, and the Sekigahara Confederate weren''t.


    This was an organization founded by and constituted of Martial Artists and Martial Artist-led organizations for the sake of furthering the collective interest of Martial Artists and Martial Art. This meant that the Britannian Empire, which was an unshakable Martialocracy, was officially recognized as a part of the Panamic Martial Federation, but the Kandrian Empire, Republic of Gorteau, and the Sekigahara Confederate weren''t.


    Rui could choose to partake in it as an independent Martial Artist or as a member of the Martial Union, which represented its own power bloc within the power dynamics of the association.


    While he did not intend to ignore it, it was simply not a high priority at the moment. In fact, there was almost nothing that was as high of a priority as taking his first step as a Martial Master.


    It was finally time tomence his first training phase as a Martial Master.


    He had already booked a ratherrge training Master-level chamber in Daracol.


    Daracol was reserved for all things rted to Martial Masters.


    While many nations simply couldn''t afford to have Martial Artists of the Upper Realms train within their borders, the Kandrian Empire and the Martial Union had reservedrge swathes of thend solely for the training of Martial Masters and even Martial Sages to a limited degree.


    As a Martial Master, Rui simply couldn''t train in poption centers. The risks were too high.


    All it took was one mistake for millions of people to be exposed to a Martial Embodiment, causing mass mental damage. That was even more true for Rui; a single nce at his Martial Embodiment would spell brain death for everybody who beheld him. "Please let me know if you need anything, Your Mastery."


    Rui nodded at the assistant outside of hisrge training chamber.


    CLACK.


    The gates were shut, leaving him all to himself.


    The moment he was alone, he dove into his mind in regard to how he wanted to spend the next few years training.


    "¡­I''ll undertake one project this time."


    He wanted to produce an oue that was extremely refined and of the supremely highest quality that he was able to muster. He had much cognitive room for more active techniques ever since he broke through to the Master Realm, but he didn''t want to saturate it with sub-optimal techniques.


    Because he was young, he knew he could develop powerful techniques in a fraction of the time that it took others. Thus, he was far more concerned about making sure that the quality of his martial art remained extremely high, especially since there were no areas in which hecked a foundation.


    "Offense is important enough to have my full undivided attention and effort."


    With that decision in ce, he was ready to get started on his next training phase, one that was dedicated solely to bolstering hisck of conventional offense.


    "Project Heavy Hitter." The name of the project signified its objective. He needed something that bolstered his offense heavily and synergized extremely well with his Martial Mind and systems of thought. It would most likely mean that he would not be able to use the technique too well without his Martial Mind, but with it, he would gain the tremendous finishing power that he had alwayscked for some time now.


    Prior to his battle with Master Vertol, he had had some tentative avenues that he could pursue, but after he had been exposed to the astronomical power of the Yin-Yang Shield that made it a grade-ten technique in the first ce, he knew that he wanted to explore its principles and see if they could be adapted to offense.


    The reason he saw much potential in this avenue of pursuit was because the Yin-Yang Shield was able to exert a terrifying amount of damage despite being defensive in nature. Thus, how much damage would it be able to exert if its principles were leveraged specifically for the sake of offense?


    It was something that he could not even begin to imagine.


    It was a thought that excited him.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2095 Vibrations

    Chapter 2095 Vibrations


    Rui had very specific ideas regarding what directions he wanted to explore.


    The Yin-Yang Shield had earned his fascination and his awe.


    Perhaps it was not the objectively best option that was at his disposal.


    But it didn''t matter. Even if there was an option out there that would have yielded a better return on investment, he had already decided that he was going to pursue this particr avenue.


    "Vibrations¡­" he pondered out loud.


    It was a phenomenon that he had long grown familiar with.


    Many of his techniques were based on it in some way or another on vibrations.


    His Mighty Roar sh st technique was inherited from the G''ar''arkan Tribe to the Reverberating Lance that he had mastered from the database. He had also developed arge number of his own vibration techniques from scratch.


    Techniques like Sympathetic Death Lance and its cousin Death''s Sympathy, Transverse Resonance, and domain techniques like Sonic Singrity, and even his most recent developments like Muspelheim and Niflheim made sophisticated implementations of vibrations.


    In other words, he was deeply familiar with applying it as a principle in his techniques and Martial Art.


    That was why he was also confident of being able to crack how the technique worked and apply it in a manner that would not only supply him with an offense that was not only powerful but synergized extremely well with his Martial Mind.


    Of course, the Yin-Yang Shield was a technique that utilized vibrations to an extremely high degree. So much so that Rui could confidently say that none of his prior techniques in that regard could match it.


    It was a technique that utilized constructive and destructive resonance to achieve results that would be otherwise impossible. It was unfortunate that he did not have ess to the super secret training technique of the Gen Temple. He was truly curious what exactly the Sage-level powerhouse had actually done to make the otherwise difficult technique easy to master.


    Regardless, he was certain that he would have to toil to ensure that he was able to realize the technique.


    It was nothing out of the norm for him.


    "I have already nailed a part of the technique down¡­" he realized. His mastery of Reverberating Lance meant that he could probably skip one step of the training process.


    "But Reverberating Lance isn''t enough," he mused. "I need to master the internal vibrations that Master Vertol used."


    The issue was that he didn''t have a fully clear picture of precisely what Master Vertol did to produce the internal vibrations while using the technique. This part alone was difficult enough to be its own technique worth of training.


    And that would just be the preliminary. He would then need to apply his mastery of internal and external vibrations to master constructive and destructive resonance.


    "Leave it to a grade-ten technique to be difficult."


    Regardless, he was confident that he would be able to reach that part as long he mastered internal vibrations.


    "I''m not entirely sure of whatprises of the sources of the internal vibrations."


    He was fairly certain that the diaphragm was a part of it due to observing the patterns in Master Vertol''s technique. Yet, there were additional sources of vibrations within the body that could serve as potential power sources of the technique.


    "Cells," he murmured, growing more engrossed in his line of thought.


    All cells vibrated and oscited with an inherent metabolical frequency about them. These vibrations were produced as a result of the metabolism of the cell; they were the product of the exothermic reaction of each cell producing energy that it needed.


    In other words, it was leftover energy that was naturally wasted due to inefficiency on a biochemical level.


    "What if I could tap into the power of each and every cell?"


    It was a novel idea.


    Of course, in a sense, it was already true.


    The human body made use of each and every cell for an umpteen number of reasons. However, what if the Yin-Yang Shield made use of the metabolic frequency of each and every cell?


    Rui was unable to conceive of any other source of energy that would exin why the Yin-Yang Shield technique was as powerful as it was. N?velDrama.Org holds text ? rights.


    After all, the power of the diaphragm and that of the muscr system was routinely utilized in techniques. If it had just been those two, then the Yin-Yang Shield technique would not be as powerful as it was.


    Thus, Rui was able to infer additional sources of energy that empowered the technique.


    He postted that it had something to do with the metabolic vibrations of each cell for several reasons.


    "It''s a source of the same kind of energy that the technique uses."


    That was the reason he strongly suspected that the Yin-Yang Shield techniques were derived from this untapped source of power. It would also be the third source of power in his vision of Project Heavy Hitter.


    Or, at least, he would do his best to ensure that it worked out that way.


    "I''ll need to dedicate an entire phase of the training session to this part." He frowned. "I have absolutely no idea what the model of the technique will look like."


    This was unusual because, normally, the principles and mechanics of the technique served the broader technique temte. This time, however, Rui had already decided on the underlying principles of the technique without actually formting the broader framework.


    It was a bottom-up approach that ran contrary to his normal top-down approach.


    Yet, he was still firmly certain of his choices.


    "Now the question is how I am going to use the ''Yin'' and ''Yang'' vibrations to form an offensive technique."


    He wanted his technique to have a lot of innate offensive power, which was taken care of by the fact that the technique''s source of power was what made the Yin-Yang Shield technique so powerful.


    Secondly, he wanted the technique to have a powerful synergy with his systems of thought to elevate its effective output to a higher dimension of power.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2096 Fleshed Framework

    Chapter 2096 Fleshed Framework


    Synergy with Martial Mind meant something very specific in the context of Rui''s Martial Mind.


    It meant a technique that grew more powerful the more foreknowledge of its execution that the user had. It could also mean a technique that was extremely powerful innately but required some amount of foreknowledge of execution.


    Phantom Step was nothing too special by itself, but it had an extremely high affinity with the VOID algorithm and the SOUL System, allowing it to function as a powerful grade-ten technique when he used it with his Martial Mind..


    Flux Earther fell into a simr category, although it was an inherently stronger technique.


    For Project Heavy Hitter, Rui knew that it would most certainly be far more synergetic simply based on how the Yin-Yang Shield technique worked. Master Vertol needed to keep the technique active because otherwise, he would not be able to use it to defend in time against attacks.


    This was because the technique had a timeframe of activation that was not quick enough for rapid activation on and off.


    Rui knew that his technique would most likely inherit the same shoring.


    This was where his Martial Mind came in. Because of the deep insight into the future that his Martial Mind gave him, he could adaptively evolve his timing to ensure the technique activated on time.


    "Thus, Project Heavy Hitter fulfills both conditions that I have set for it."


    It was not only very powerful innately but worked far better with his Martial Mind than his defense or maneuvering did.


    Having confirmed that the project met the standards that he had set for it, he could now begin fleshing out the theoretical framework of the functioning of the technique. While he had decided to rely on the underlying principles of the Yin-Yang Shield technique, those were merely underlying. They did not create a technique by themselves and he still needed to flesh out exactly how the technique would function.


    "In some sense, this project will bear some resemnce to Reverberating Lance."


    After all, both techniques would inflict damage via vibrations, it was just that this technique would be exponentially more powerful and would also rely on his Martial Mind.


    "It also is a far superior version of Outer Convergence."


    While thetter gathered power across all muscle groups in the Body, the former would be doing that but with each cell.


    "The technique wouldmence when I begin the internal yin vibrations and external yang vibrations," Rui closed his eyes as he began visualizing the technique. "I''ll need to bnce the frequency and phase of the two sources of vibrations to ensure that they''re in destructive resonance until the moment of impact."


    If they didn''t negate each other in destructive interference until thest moment, then his body would be vibrating with far too much energy, making motion much too impeded. He assumed this was part of the reason that the Gen Temple had introduced the concept of destructive interference in the first ce.


    Perfect destructive superposition would silence all the vibrations until the very moment they were needed by having two sets of vibrations cancel each other out.


    This exact same principle was used in some aircrafts in cutting-edge vibration systems. By relying on acoustic and maics, the immense turbulence that these vehicles experience was negated entirely.


    The vibrations weren''t needed until the attack actuallynded on his opponent. Thus, he needed to keep them in a state of destructive resonance before shifting to constructive resonance at the moment of attack so that both vibrations werebined into a single super vibration that would inflict a tremendous impact on his opponent.


    This was the broad function of the technique that he had in mind. It bore a lot of resemnce to the Yin-Yang Shield, but there were many major differences.


    "This technique will need to involve directing vibrations in a particr direction, namely; that target of my attack."


    Unlike the Yin-Yang Shield technique, this technique inherently required direction. He wanted the sum weight of both the Yin-Yang vibrations to flow into the body of his opponent in one go.


    Thus, he would also need to master not only the generation of Yin vibrations but also their direction.


    He was not making it easy on himself.


    Mastering the underlying principles of the technique was hard enough, butplicating them with an additional variable was something that only increased the probability of his failure.


    Yet, if he seeded¡­


    "The results will be on another level." This belongs to N?velDrama.Org - ?.


    The power of the technique would most likely outstrip even the Muspelheim and Niflheim domains or at least match them. The difference was that all that power was dispersed over arge amount of area, while the technique of his current project could be focusing it into a single attack at a single point.


    It was more than capable of fixing any offensive shorings.


    That was the reason that he was intent on going all out with the project.


    If sessful, it could make his offense the strongest field in one go.


    "Now, time to flesh out the training regime for this project."


    This was the hardest part of this project.


    It wasing with some form of training that could allow him to master the technique.


    Thankfully, he had some ideas.


    "I can use domains to train my yin vibrations."


    He had already discovered that domains were highly effective training tools that could be used to train things that would otherwise require some highly advanced training resources from the Martial Union.


    "Sonic Singrity and Death''s Sympathy are good ways of training my offense."


    These two techniques were powerful sound-based techniques that could help him master his generation and maniption of yin vibrations.


    They would serve as good resistance training.


    He could begin slowly by using Sonic Singrity at one-percent power and subjecting himself to it. Then he could work on negating the vibrations of the domain with that of his yin vibrations.


    This way he would be able to refine it step by step.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2097 Training Difficulties

    Chapter 2097 Training Difficulties


    Each time he grewfortable with negating a level of power of Sonic Singrity, he would increase the power of the domain by one percent, thereby increasing the difficulty of negating the vibrations of the technique through his yin vibrations.


    Over time, hopefully, he would be able to negate the domain at full power, and that was when the yin mastery phase of the training would bepleted.


    The Death''s Sympathy technique could allow him to project power into his body. This was perfect for training his yin vibrations because they, too, were present in the body. Thus, he could surgically exercise them with this technique.


    The yin mastery in and of itself was worthy of beingbeled grade-ten.


    Yet it was merely the first phase.


    He had yet to create a training technique for thebination of yin and yang. After all, the technique was entirely centered around their constructive and destructive fusion. That was a training phase that was also extremely difficult in and of itself.


    Based on his experiences with constructive resonance during the creation of Transverse Resonance, he knew that dealing with resonance and superposition was extremely difficult. It had taken him a long time to develop the muscle memory for the constructive superposition of sound bullets.


    This time, he was attempting to master constructive resonance and superposition inside his body from two different sources.


    That was far more difficult than anything he had ever done in regard to sound.


    He would need to spend a lot of time developing muscle memory for both forms of resonance inside his body, and, more importantly, he would need to develop muscle memory for switching rapidly between them. This belongs to N?velDrama.Org - ?.


    If he was a moment toote with the shift from destructive resonance to constructive resonance at the moment of impact, then the technique would be ineffective since the vibrations would have canceled each other out.


    If he was too early, then the vibrations would merge into a super vibration before the moment of impact, impeding his motion with severe vibrational turbulence.


    Thus, this technique inherently had an extremely high floor for precision and uracy of timing.


    Precisely the kind of technique that synergized extraordinarily well with his systems of thought. However, he would need to train to ensure that his timing of the technique activation was impable.


    As long as he managed toplete all these difficult and tedious training phases, he would sessfullyplete Project Heavy Hitter.


    Perhaps other Martial Artists would despair under the sheer difficulty of mastering a technique like this, but Rui grew only excited.


    After all, generally, the more difficult a technique, the greater its gains. With the sheer amount of difficulty that this technique posed, he knew that he would be receiving some extraordinary fruits upon its attainment.


    The immense power that this technique would give him was game-changing. As long as he was able to do that, his offense would never ever suffer a shoring ever again.


    If anything, he would need to start worrying about his maneuvering and defense once his offense skyrocketed. He would no longer need to rely on convoluted and sub-optimal strategies just because hecked the finishing power to put his opponents down for good.


    In fact, conventional wisdom for certain battle paradigms could even be flipped on its head due to the technique being powerful enough to single-handedly ovee others.


    Furthermore, he would also be taking a small but necessary step towards his pursuit of a higher Realm. The project fulfilled increasing the synergy between Art and Mind, which was a path that all Masters inevitably needed to go down once their Martial Mind was developed.


    "I probably will need experience with this technique specifically." He frowned.


    The technique was highly demanding in its uracy of timing, thus it was best to be intricately familiar with the technique through sparring experience. This was not normally a part of his training due to the fact that most of the techniques that he had developed were not that harsh in their demands for timing. Not even the Muspelheim and Niflheim domains required him to be extremely careful with timing.


    All in all, he would be shocked if he managed toplete this technique within two years.


    In fact, even three years did not seem like an excessive amount of time to master the technique, all things considered. Rarely, if ever, had hee up with a technique derived from an uncracked grade-ten technique and then attempted to furtherplicate the matter with additional burdens and requirements all to elevate the power of the technique.


    If not for the fact that he was in his prime, he probably would have taken far longer than just two or three years.


    He just hoped his father wouldn''t trigger the third East Panamic War within that timeframe.


    He would hate if he missed out on all the action due to being cooped up in training. He doubted it, though; a few years seemed like far too little time for even his father to make all the ns and preparations needed to do something as outrageous as pushing for Kandrian supremacy across East Panama.


    Ideally, his father would trigger it the moment Rui finished his training, but he doubted that Emperor Rael would have the leeway to be kind and considerate about his son''s need for real battle experience as a new Martial Master.


    "Whatever, it will happen when it will happen. Nothing I can do about it."


    Or, at least, he forfeited the right to do anything about it when he made his decision to stay away from the politics of it.


    "For now, I can just begin training and forget about it all."


    He immediately sat down as he began meditating, directing his senses inward as he gazed at the countless cells thatprised of his body. Clearing his mind of all thoughts, he solely focused on them as he breathed deeply, understanding the power of yin thaty deep within each quivering cell.


    His training hadmenced.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2098 Meeting

    Chapter 2098 Meeting


    Emperor Rael narrowed his eyes as he gazed at the spread of documents on his table. In the past week, he had entirely refamiliarized himself with all of the happenings in Kandria and in all of East Panama.


    He had gotten a thorough understanding of all the domestic and international shifts in the bnce of power and capital.


    The Kandrian Empire had note out of the Kandrian Throne War doing too well.


    ording to the statistics of the Ministry of Economic Affairs, the Kandrian Empire had been doing just fine on paper. A substantial influx of capital bolstered exports to a rate of growth that actually touched double-digit percentage points.


    However, the Emperor of Harmony had eruditely arrived at the truth after conducting a meta-analysis on the topic. His investigations revealed that while the Kandrian Empire had indeed gotten richer, that wasrgely due to an influx of capital from foreign powers who had invested in one of the eight prime royalspeting for the throne, including Rui.


    These included nations,mercial organizations of all kinds, factions, sects, and other power blocs that had each wished to influence not only who his sessor was to be but also what kind of acts they ought to take as the next ruler.


    The Kandrian Empire was truly powerful in every facet of evaluation and measure, and many powers had deemed it worthy to try and invest a lot in manipting its next ruler.


    That was why the numbers were misleading.


    While a lot of money entered Kandria from foreign power blocs, a lot of capital had also left the empire. Many medium and even decentlyrge businesses had left the nation in fear of the next ruler. After all, whoever the next ruler was, they had the power to set the nation aze, literally and figuratively. And considering that most of the prime candidates had been utterly insane, many had written Kandria off and left.


    And now that the Throne War had long ended and the money stopped flowing in, this weakness had settled in.


    The Kandrian economy was weaker than he had left it in.


    It was an unfortunate turn of events.


    Until he regained his old power and influence, restored Kandria''s economy to its former peak, and restored the bnce of power within the nation, there was absolutely no way in hell that he could even consider starting the war.


    However, he could start long-term nning.


    There were countless conditions that needed to be fulfilled before it was time to begin executing his war n.


    The biggest one was dealing with the overwhelming military imbnce between the Kandrian Empire and, well, all of East Panama. Obviously, in a symmetric all-out war, Kandria stood no chance in a war against a significant chunk of all human civilization. The other three powerful Sage-level powerhouses.


    However, Emperor Rael knew better than anybody else that war was not symmetric.


    It was won and lost outside of the battles.


    There were a myriad of ways to lock an enemy''s military and Martial power through means that many would not be able to even fathom, let alone manifest.


    Rael could, however.


    A germ of a strategy had already formed in his mind, one that painted a picture where Kandria rose above all others unstopped.


    It was possible.


    A future that Emperor Rael intended to manifest.


    CLACK


    Emperor Rael''s attention shifted as a woman garbed in formal attire stepped in.


    She bowed deeply. "Your Majesty, they''re here."


    "Mmm¡­" Emperor Rael put aside a file he was looking at. "¡­Rather unceremonious of them."


    "¡­You know how they are, Your Majesty."


    "And what about my son?"


    "He has just entered into deep training at the Daracol Base. ording to the Intelligence Bureau, he will most likely spend a few years in deep training."


    "¡­I see." A smile cracked at the edge of his mouth. "Now, lead the way."


    He exited his Royal Office as his assistant guided him down to the Royal Conference Hall.


    The closer he approached, the more he could feel the world bending to the weight of the beings of his guests. It was a sensation he never got used to, no matter how many times he felt it. It was always surreal to experience such enormous power concentrated within individual beings.


    CLACK


    The gates before him opened as Emperor Rael found himself gazing at the Sage Council of the Martial Union. They sat across arge table with eleven extravagant thrones that they rested upon before a giant ostentatious table.


    They gazed at him with deep eyes. "Rael."


    Had anyone outside of the Royal Family dared to address the Emperor of Kandria in such an irreverent manner, they would have been imprisoned for viting thew. Yet, they were the Martial Sages of the Martial Union.


    A civil war would break out in any attempt to do so.


    "My friends." Rael smiled. "It has been a long time. I see that not only have each of you been doing well but that your numbers have increased since ourst meeting."


    His gaze met Matriarch Nephi''s eyes as he sat down on his giant Royal Throne.


    "You have my gratitude, mother."


    Matriarch Nephi''s eyes red with rage. "Don''t you dare call me that."


    The anger of a Martial Sage was not something that any human could withstand. This content belongs to N?/velDra/ma.Org .


    Unfortunately for her, the Emperor of Harmony was anything but that.


    "Such hostility." He closed his eyes. "Yet, despite all of that¡­"


    His eyes opened as a powerful gaze pinned her.


    "¡­you still helped heal me."


    His son had not been remiss in informing him about the power and importance of his mother-inw''s prophecy and how it had saved them from inevitable death many times during their perilous voyage through the Beast Domain.


    Her gaze faltered as aplicated expression appeared on her face.


    "Hmph." She snorted lightly. "I didn''t do it for you. I did it for my grandson."


    A soft smile cracked at the edge of his mouth. "Is that so? Regardless, thank you for helping to heal me, mother."


    "I said don''t call me that!"


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2099 Prospects of War

    Chapter 2099 Prospects of War


    The rest of the Martial Sages were not keen on watching in silence as the mother-inw and son-inw bickered.


    "Enough." Sage Lemolen snorted. "What is this, aedy routine? Do you know who we are?"


    His eyes narrowed. "We are the Sage Council."


    Emperor Rael directed his gaze to the displeased assassin.


    "We are the Martial Union," Sage Lemolen asserted.


    "¡­As wound up as always, Lemolen." Emperor Rael smiled. "It would behoove you to remember that we are on the same side. This was true more than three hundred years ago when I convinced all of you to create a union for Martial Artists. It was true when the powers of East Panama sought to crush us, and¡­"


    His gaze grew sharper. "¡­it will be true when they inevitably do it again."


    The eleven Martial Sages stirred as they sensed the weight of his words. Grumble as they might about being dragged to the Royal Pce, they did it nheless for they knew that Emperor Rael was not a man who spoke or acted without due cause.


    "''Inevitably?''" The Flickering Elder narrowed her eyes. "What do you mean by that? Tensions between the Kandrian Empire and the other Sage-level powerhouses have risen, but not to the level of war."


    "Not yet, no," Emperor Rael''s heavy gaze bore on them. "However, I have strong reason to believe that it will happen in the future."


    A deep silence brooded in the air as the eleven Martial Sages of the Martial Union gazed at the Emperor of Harmony, considering his dark deration.


    Yet only one of them caught on to what his words meant.


    "Rael." Sage Arrancar grinned. "You n to trigger a third war, don''t you?"


    The Emperor of Harmony smiled. "War is not my intention, but rather an inevitable consequence of my intentions."


    "Hah!" Sage Arrancar grunted with grudging respect and excitement. "Same thing. About damn time, too. Thest ny years have been boring peace and shitty harmony."


    "Your words prick, Damian." Emperor Rael smiled wryly. "Harmony is my philosophy, after all."


    "It''s a shitty philosophy."


    "Agreed." Sage Kalyn, the Hugging Hegemon, nodded.


    "Enough, you two," Sage Vintar, the Mountain of Fortitude, interjected, earning a scowl from the Devil and the Hugging Hegemon.


    Yet, his attention was fixed on Emperor Rael. "Exin. What do you mean? What is this all about?"


    Emperor Rael gazed at him for a moment.


    "Mira."


    "Yes, sir." One of his assistants distributed eleven copies of a document to each of the Martial Sages of the Sage Council, who immediately began reading them with a hint of curiosity and intrigue.


    What they read, however, shook them.


    One of his assistants distributed eleven copies of a document to each of the Martial Sages of the Sage Council, who immediately began reading them with a hint of curiosity and intrigue.


    What they read, however, shook them.


    The air palpably boiled as the Sage Council grew stunned at what they had read.


    It changed everything.


    "This¡­" The shing Flier, Sage Dagar Roschem murmured faintly.


    "¡­Is this real?" Sage Lemolen''s voice was stunned.


    "Yes," Emperor Rael nodded with severity. "My son would never lie about it to me, and we have verified the veracity of his ims in the flesh, directly and indirectly. My recovery is proof of this. These are real, and Kandria is in possession of all of them."


    His words weighed on them like mountains as they came to understand the gravity of the situation.


    They also understood the depth of the meaning of his words.


    "If the rest of the world finds out¡­" Even the Sloth Sage grew stiff. "¡­We''re dead." N?velDrama.Org holds text ? rights.


    His gaze turned to Emperor Rael. "You¡­ You intend to show these off to the world?"


    "That would be foolish, Sevian," Emperor Rael calmly replied. "I n to extract the maximum benefit out of these resources and produce the best long-term oue for Kandria."


    His tone grew more confident. "I believe that, with these, it is possible to elevate Kandria to unprecedented and unparalleled power and, thus, unparalleled prosperity."


    Had anyone else dared suggesting anything as absurdly risky and fraught with danger, they would have scoffed and even attempted to suppress the fool to stop him from getting them all killed.


    Yet, any retort died in their throat when the powerful gaze of the Emperor of Harmony fell on them.


    They were unqualified to tell him, of all people, that it was impossible.


    Because thest time they did, he proved them wrong.


    "This takes me back." The Mountain of Fortitude closed his eyes. "We had gathered just like this before the First East Panamic War. Back then, you were the newly ascended Emperor, and we were peak Martial Masters. You won that war."


    "We won that war." Emperor Rael''s deep, rich voice grew gentle. "It wouldn''t have been possible without all of you. Without all of us working together in harmony. I asked you to trust me back then, and I ask you to trust me once more. Together, we can raise Kandria to transcendent heights."


    The Martial Sages of the Sage Council stirred at his words.


    Not all of them had trouble making a choice, of course.


    "Count me in!" Sage Damian grinned. "I gotta thank that brat of yours for bringing in such juicy bait for war."


    A hint of amusement and exasperation lit up in Emperor Rael''s eyes. "I think you are the only one who is more interested in the war for these priceless resources than the priceless resources themselves."


    "He isn''t." Sage Kalyn began drooling at the thought of another major war. "I can''t wait. How soon do we start."


    The two of them earned res from the rest of the Martial Sages.


    "This is why I hate the Fire Sect," the Flickering Elder grumbled. "Bunch of warmongering fools," the Whispering Widower concurred.


    Unbeknownst to them, this was why Emperor Rael appreciated the Fire Sect. Sometimes, war was inevitable when soaring to greater heights. In these times, the Fire Sect merrily supported Emperor Rael,pletely ignorant of the fact that Emperor Rael manipted them to do so by carefully and surgically framing his rhetoric to trigger them into supporting him.


    They served as useful political capital for pushing for his causes.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2100 Support

    Chapter 2100 Support


    One of the reasons that all eleven members of the Sage Council had chosen to heed Emperor Rael''s call was because they knew that he was not a man who would waste their time.


    And they were right.


    Considering everything that he had shared with them, nothing they would be doing otherwise couldpare to the importance of this meeting.


    "Why are you showing this to us?"


    Emperor Rael directed his gaze toward the shing Flier.


    "While we have arge stake in the nation, you are the Emperor," Sage Dagar Roschem continued. "In addition, you own these treasures. Why go out of your way to reveal your cards? We may be friends as people, but our positions of power put us on opposite sides of the leading powers of Kandria."


    Emperor Rael smiled inwardly.


    He had been waiting for this question, having guided them to it.


    "¡­I own these treasures, you say?" Emperor Rael shook his head. "That is not true. My son has given me only a third of the ownership over the dungeon. He decided that he would give a third of the ownership over the dungeon to the Martial Union while retaining a third of it for himself."


    Their eyes lit up at those words.


    "¡­You see, while he has earned acquittal from the little duel and wager that the Master Council came to agree upon, he ultimately decided to make up for his deceit to all of you. This is his repayment. Partial ownership over a priceless training tool of unprecedented value."


    The Sage Council grew stunned at Emperor Rael''s words. Even Sage Lemolen''s sharp gaze softened a bit. "¡­Hmph, he''s still an impertinent brat."


    "Speak for yourself," Sage Vintar threw a disapproving nce at Sage Lemolen. "I, for one, will gratefully ept a stake in this treasure and forgive the young man for his discretions against the Martial Union. I will admit that I was deeply displeased when I came to learn of it, even if I decided to leave it be and let the Master Council deliberate over it."


    Many of the others had felt simrly.


    They certainly had the power to punish the Void Prince and make him pay if they truly wanted. However, in consideration of their extremely good impression of him and his existing and future value to the Martial Union, they ultimately decided to stifle their resentment.


    Now, however, they had an even better impression of him.


    Not only did he not use his position as a member of the Royal Family to shield him from them, but he actually went above and beyond to repay everything they had done for him during the Kandrian Throne War and more.


    In fact, partial authority over the dungeon was an asset that far exceeded everything they had ever done for him. So in reality, they were actually indebted to him.


    "Hah." the Sloth Sage heaved a sigh of relief. "This is a good development."


    He hade under the most pressure from his peers due to covering up Rui''s deceit. The same was true for Matriarch Nephi. This had not been good for her because, unlike Sage Sevian, she hadn''t built a deep rapport or friendship with her peers due to the limited amount of time that she had spent in Kandria.


    "As expected of my grandson." She beamed with pride.


    "When can we begin using these?" Sage cken''s eyes twinkled with greed. "I am eager to use the dungeon. However, I am especially eager to make use of the Elder Treework to find particr precious resources in the Beast Domain that cannot be found otherwise. Naturally, I will impart a fair portion of gains to the Empire."


    "I wish to procure the Divine Doctor''s services," the shing Flier remarked. "No price is objectionable."


    "The dungeon sounds like a dream to me," Sage Sevian remarkedzily. "I take forever to finish training."


    "We can iron out the details. However, rest assured that I do not intend to extract a great price," Emperor Rael reassured them. "As I mentioned, I intend to use these resources to elevate Kandria far above all others. That necessarily means using them to empower our greatestbat assets: Martial Sages. Unfortunately, barring the Divine Doctor, none of the other assets are ready at the moment, although they will be within a year. I intend to chalk out a long-term strategy for their application, one that I hope you will aid me with."


    The Flickering Elder nodded solemnly. "We will leave the strategizing and decision-making process to you, Rael. In fact, it would be disastrous to trust a matter of such unparalleled importance to anybody but you or your son, I suppose."


    "¡­My son has decided to stay away from the politics of this matter." Emperor Rael shook his head. "He is rather adamant about only partaking in it in so far as Martial Artists normally do."


    "A pity and a relief," the Mountain of Fortitude shook his head. "He has inherited your genius for politics but has been blessed with an even greater capacity to pursue his Martial Path. I previously was pleased about a Martial Artist ascending the throne, but after seeing him break through to the Master Realm at the meager age of thirty-five, I realized that it would have been a blunder to waste his unfathomable potential by shackling it to the throne."


    Emperor Rael smiled, d to see the Sage council hold a positive outlook towards Rui. Exclusive ? content by N(?)ve/l/Drama.Org.


    "Then, to affirm, I have your absolute support in the ambition that I espoused, correct?" Emperor Rael''s tone grew more heavy.


    The Sage Council gazed at him deeply for a moment.


    Their decision was unanimous.


    "Give me a war, and I''ll give you all the support you need." Sage Damian grinned with bloodlust.


    Emperor Rael heaved a sigh of exasperation and amusement. "Alright then. Prepare yourselves. All of you are deeply important to the oue of this reach for the skies. Kandria will experience much turbulence in the future, but together, we can ovee it."


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2101 Chinks In The Armor

    Chapter 2101 Chinks In The Armor


    Now that he had secured the cooperation of the Martial Union, Emperor Rael was a lot more confident about his n. It would have been extremely difficult to go through with it if the Martial Union did not support him. Thankfully, he had managed to reel them over to his side.


    The treasures that his son had brought home were so precious that even Martial Sages were willing to wage war to defend them.


    However, they alone were far from enough. It would be up to him to protect the Kandrian Empire with an extraordinarily effective political and military strategy.


    FLAP


    He read through intelligence reports on the military and Martial developments of the other three powerhouses of East Panama. There was much to be covered.


    Understanding the changes in the military profile of the three powerhouses was extremely important and was going to be central to his n. He had had his Bureau of Intelligence produce a meta-analysis of their recent developments and their current military power, as well as model the most probabilistic future militaristic and Martial developments.


    Then, he would create many of long-term strategies designed for each usible scenario as far as usible oues went.


    He was a man who nned for everything.


    Such was the Emperor of Harmony.


    "¡­The Republic of Gorteau has invested more in its long-range siege weapons," he narrowed his eyes.


    Of the four powerhouses of East Panama, the Republic of Gorteau had the highest amount of weapons of mass destruction and the least number of Martial Artists of the Upper Realms. Technologically, they were a cut above the rest of their peers, while theygged behind Martially.


    Emperor Rael found this to be the most troubling.


    Weapons of mass destruction against Martial Sages was something that had never been tested all too often in the field.


    After all, Sage-level powerhouses did not wage war with each other lightly or frequently, therge variance in the number of times it had happened also made theparison tricky and difficult.


    In other words, Emperor Raelcked the empirical data to statistically evaluate the oues of this particr paradigm too well.


    This was troubling.


    His considerations needed to be precise.


    The lower the resolution of his strategy, the greater the probability that something would go wrong.


    Of course, conventional wisdom in military and Martial circles had longe to the consensus that while each a singr siege weapon of mass destruction possessed energy output simr to that of a Martial Sage, thetter was vast astronomically and exponentially superior in every regard.


    Thus, only arge number of destructive siege weapons could push back a Martial Sage.


    Yet, in all of recorded history, not once had they taken down a Martial Sage, while Martial Sages had most certainly eradicated entire arrays of siege weapons. That was perhaps the greatest relief of Emperor Rael.


    In the past four years, President Raymond of the National Libertarian Party, in conjugation with Congress, had increased the amount of defense spendings on destructive siege weapons while the former riled up the Gorteau voter base about the so-called oppressive tyrant that Emperor Rael was.


    His eyes shifted, returning to the statement that President Raymond had released shortly after Emperor Rael recovered.


    [The Republic of Gorteau condemns Emperor Rael for his fascist regime. In the past three centuries, the Kandrian Empire has suffered at the hands of a power-hungry madman. His unfortunate recovery is a threat to democracy¡­] It had taken Emperor Rael one look to see through the man.


    He had fancied Kandria as the weakest of the four after Emperor Rael''s decline, causing him to rile a massive war to please the military and Martial industrialplex in Gorteau. And now that Emperor Rael had returned, he had no choice but to go through with his n even if he was inwardly dreading it.


    "A greedy, glory-hungering, power-mongering fool who thought he was dealing with an easy target."


    Emperor Rael''s evaluation was remarkably urate.


    The system of the Republic of Gorteau was such that any elected leader was necessarily inexperienced. Of the four states, they had the weakest leadership. Each president could only serve three terms, after all. By the time they gathered enough experience to remedy their shorings, it was already time for them to leave. It was why the Republic of Gorteau was the slowest and clumsiest of the four powerhouses. Another weakness of the state was its deep internal divisions and borate systems of checks and bnces.


    There was no unteral decision-making without constraints, consequences, and oversight, including that of the president himself, who could be impeached or even criminally prosecuted.


    Emperor Rael recognized the many merits of such a system for its citizens; after all, it meant that leaders were at least a little ountable and not authoritarian. However, it also meant that during times of war, the nation was sluggishpared to the Kandrian Empire, the Britannian Empire and, to a lesser extent, the Sekigahara Confederate.


    Of course, Rael intended to use that against them.


    Checks and bnces were a weakness in war.


    They could be turned into shackles and stakes if they werepromised, corrupted, extorted, or ckmailed. In addition, no set ofws were ever absolutely invulnerable and had their own legal chinks. Those chinks didn''t mean much in the other three powerhouses, but in the Republic of Gorteau, they couldpletely paralyze the government.


    His eyes fell on another profile in the analytical report he had received. This belongs to N?velDrama.Org - ?.


    [Democratic Socialist Party]


    It was the second part of the bi-party system of the Republic of Gorteau, the opposition to the current government and administration in power, and would bepeting against the National Libertarian Party in a year''s time in the general and presidential elections of the Republic of Gorteau.


    A smile cracked at the edge of his mouth. "Contact my chief of staff."


    He had found a good opening through which he could incapacitate the power of the Republic of Gorteau, among others. KNOCK KNOCK


    Emperor Rael''s eyes shifted to the person who had entered his office.


    His eyes widened as he saw his son, of all people, standing in his office.


    "Hey, Dad," Rui smiled eerily, waving at him as he closed the door behind him.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2102 Offer

    Chapter 2102 Offer


    Emperor Rael''s eyes narrowed, growing cold and icy.


    He stared at Rui with a sharp gaze.


    "You may have been able to fool everyone else," Emperor Rael''s tone grew heavy.


    The air boiled with peril as his powerful gaze pinned Rui in his ce.


    "But you cannot fool me."


    "Hehe¡­" Rui chuckled. "Just as I figured, you''re even more entertaining than I had expected." This content belongs to N?/velDra/ma.Org .


    Rui''s form shifted, revealing his true identity.


    "You might just be more fun than Rui himself, at the moment," Master Reina smirked mischievously.


    Emperor Rael gazed at her with a steely expression. "I could have you executed for trespassing on Royal grounds, at this very moment."


    "I could kill you before you do it," Master Reina shrugged nonchntly. "Aren''t you afraid of being in my presence without many Martial Masters or Martial Sage? You''re not in a position to be threatening me, you know~"


    Had most Martial Masters threatened one of the most powerful men in all of human civilization, they would be quaking in their boots. Yet, she looked amused and even excited at the consequences of her insane words.


    Yet, they did not so much as stir the Emperor of Harmony.


    He gazed at her impassively, unimpressed.


    The moment she even mentally decided to try and kill him, the invisible Sage Sayfeel behind him would snuff her life with the slightest exertion.


    Naturally, she was not aware of his presence or even existence, nor did Rael intend to expose him to elucidate how delusional her threat was.


    For a moment, he was at an impasse in regards to what to do about the odd woman before him.


    "Silent Shadow." His rich voice beckoned her. "Tell me¡­"


    His deep voice grew stronger.


    "Why are you here?"


    She stared at him, heaving a sigh. "I am bored."


    Emperor Rael directed a deep gaze at her.


    "Rui has just entered another one of his long training sessions in isted training," she remarked lethargically. "Knowing him, he''s going to be in there for the next few years. He abandoned his poor Master without any source of entertainment after using her for three years. Oh, the woe."


    She expressed exaggerated grief.


    Emperor Rael simply stared at her silently.


    "Since he left me all alone and lonely." Mischief lit up in her eyes. "He shouldn''t me me if I do everything I can to find new entertainment. In a world of nd, empty, and meaningless masses of humans, finding entertaining and amusing sources of fun is a tough thing, y''know?"


    It didn''t take more than a minute for Emperor Rael to precisely and urately gain a good understanding of her personality and temperament.


    He didn''t like what he saw.


    He detected traces of psychopathy deep within her, beneath her exterior colorful emotional expression.


    This woman was dangerous.


    He could already tell that his son was not as cautious and wary towards her as he ought to be. Perhaps it was because he had developed an emotional attachment to her due to being trained and guided by her in the field of assassinations, which had helped him to take down Chairman Deacon.


    He needed to handle this delicately.


    "You seek entertainment, do you?"


    Emperor Rael closed his eyes. "I just returned from aa recently; what makes you think I could be a source of entertainment for you?"


    "Hah," Master Reina scoffed. "Please. Only a blind man would fail to see what broiling in East Panama. I have no doubt that if I remain by your side, I will find the entertainment I seek."


    "¡­And what makes you think I would ever want you by my side?" "Well," Master Reina''s eyes twinkled with excitement. "The fact that you haven''t already had me locked up and executed. I have pride in my prowess, but I do not think I can escape the grasp of the Emperor of Harmony."


    Her smirk grew wider. "So I can only assume that you have decided that it is sub-optimal."


    A small smile fleetingly cracked at the edge of Emperor Rael''s mouth. She had hit it the bullseye.


    One of the things that had impressed him about Rui''s tale of the past four years was how Master Reina had managed to fool all Martial Masters, intelligence organizations, and the variety of investigative efforts that had been directed towards her while she pretended to be Rui. She had fooled the entire world.


    It took a Martial Sage, in the flesh, to expose her.


    That was extremely impressive and even more rare and unprecedented.


    The notorious Silent Shadow lived up to her vaunted reputation.


    It would be a waste to not make use of her impressive capabilities.


    "Aid me, and I will give you the entertainment of a lifetime."


    His rich voice was powerful and certain.


    It left no room for doubt.


    Her eyes lit up with delight. "Hehehe¡­that sounds fun. I ept your offer. So, what are we going to do?"


    Emperor Rael shook his head. "Not so quick. You cannot be trusted as far as I am concerned. I will have you go through some of the highest calibers of examinations that the empire is able to muster before I can trust you with any duty or information of any kind."


    Instantly, she grew sullen, pouting. "Boo."


    "If you are unwilling to adhere to these conditions, then I''m afraid there can be no cooperation."


    The Emperor of Harmony was unyielding on that. "Does that mean you''ll have me executed for trespassing if I don''t agree to that condition?"


    "No," the Emperor remarked. "Even if your intentions were entertainment and amusement, you have materially contributed to the recovery of the Emperor of Kandria, and I shall give you a royal pardon for all your crimes thus far. Though, if you trespass another time after, then I shall have you executed without hesitation."


    Another ruler in his ce would have merrily used the threat of execution to force her to serve him, but Rael was able to urately and precisely weight the long-term costs versus benefits and hade to the conclusion that it wasn''t in his interests to entrust important duties to someone who was resentful of him.


    Master Reina smiled, growing more enthusiastic. "I ept your offer."


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2103 Revelations

    Chapter 2103 Revtions


    This content belongs to N?/velDra/ma.Org .


    Emperor Rael immediatelymenced the vetting process for Master Reina; not only did he instruct the deputy director of the Kandrian Bureau of Intelligence to vet her, but he directed the Kandrian Security Agency to conduct an analysis on her in addition to the one that he had tentatively conducted. He also arranged for Sage Farana and Matriarch Nephi to verify the sincerity and trustfulness of her intention to aid him.


    She might have been an extremely impressive Martial Master, but she was unable to fool two Martial Sages.


    Only then would he be truly able to trust her.


    One of the reasons that he was able to execute his ns with extreme sess was precisely due to his high levels of caution and veracity.


    Regardless, he had reason to believe that he would be able to rely on her. While she had certainly yed many pranks on Rui, she had never acted against his interests even when he entrusted her with extremely important duties.


    Nheless, he would wait to see the results of the vetting process.


    Meanwhile, he had taken the time in his busy schedule to visit two of the more important and core interests that would y an enormous role in his grand n to elevate Kandria to transcendent levels of power and prosperity.


    "Divine Doctor." Emperor Rael addressed the man before him calmly. "I am the Emperor of Kandria, father of Prince Rui Quarrier Ss Kandria, with whom you have many ongoing agreements. I am deeply grateful to you for healing me and, as I''m sure he has informed you, I will be taking charge and management of your promised services, including but not limited to medical services and the research and development process of the dungeon."


    The Divine Doctor peered at the Emperor of Harmony with curious eyes devoid of warmth.


    His gaze was filled with clinical interest. "You know," his tone was intrigued. "I thought it was a curious coincidence, when I learned the truth about your son."


    Emperor Rael narrowed his eyes. "What?"


    The smile of the Divine Doctor widened. "It was a rather curious coincidence that both father and son somehow happened to be candidates."


    His words were heavy and deep with meaning.


    Inscrutable meaning.


    Emperor Rael frowned. "I do not follow, doctor."


    Amusement lit up in the Divine Doctor''s eyes. "He didn''t tell you the truth about himself, did he?"


    "Tell me the truth about what?" Emperor Rael''s tone grew stronger.


    "You were nominated by the Beggar Sage, but¡­" The Divine Doctor murmured faintly. "¡­you were rejected because, despite your brilliance and impact sessfully meeting the strict conditions we had set, you were far too tied to a single nation, especially one whose interests weren''t in line with what we sought. I found it rather curious when I learned that your son, too, was a candidate, at least before he broke through. Of course, I didn''t tell him about you either."


    His eyes lit up with interest. "What are the odds that both son and father would independently manage to gain our attention?"


    Emperor Rael stared at him silently.


    He had no idea what the man had been talking about whatsoever.


    However, his sharp mind surged into action as he pieced the many pieces of information together, inductively piecing the truth together.


    "You¡­" Emperor Rael narrowed his eyes. "¡­were going to give my son immortality?"


    The Divine Doctor''s smile grew deeper. "You truly would have made a good immortal sage."


    The Emperor of Harmony stared at the unnerving inhuman light in the Divine Doctor''s eyes.


    Something was deeply off.


    This man was supposed to be many centuries old.


    Yet, when he gazed at him, his intuition told him that that wasn''t true.


    He wasn''t looking at a seven-hundred-year-old man.


    It was almost as if¡­


    He was unable to articte the discrepancies his observations and analysis of the man yielded, but he found it deeply disturbing and unsettling nheless.


    "Oh well, I suppose it doesn''t matter anymore," the Divine Doctor nonchntly moved on.


    As if it was nothing at all.


    "Wait." Emperor Rael narrowed his eyes. "I am not done with you yet. Your medical services are required. I need you to enhance and improve the Martial Body of a Martial Sage. I also require a progress report on the research project you have undertaken. Do not forget that the alien specimen does not belong to you."


    "The details of my agreement limit my medical services to half of my time and energy." The Divine Doctor lightlymented, losing interest. "The other half goes where I please to research the alien lifeform. As long as you ensure that your littlemissions fit within the stipted time proportions, then I will ept them."


    Emperor Rael had no problem with that. It effectively meant that the Divine Doctor was spending the whole day working for the Kandrian Empire. He had to admit that his son had done a good job of harnessing and shackling the Divine Doctor to the Kandrian Empire through their agreements, both known and unknown.


    "I shall send you the data on the Martial Body of the Martial Sage in question, we cane to an agreement on the time after you have gone through it."


    Emperor Rael was eager to fulfill the requests of the Martial Sages who sought an upgrade to their Martial Bodies. While it was all well and good to read about the treasures in an intelligence report, it was something else entirely to actually experience those treasures in the flesh.


    It would fully bring them over to his side and make them more willing to defer to him when it was time to unveil his grand n for the war. It would also get them to adjust their mindsets quicker, getting them to be more prepared.


    And, of course, it increased the Martial power of the Kandrian Empire significantly. He also needed to verify the exact degree of enhancement, as this variable was extremely important for his grand n.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2104 Hurdles and Solutions

    Chapter 2104 Hurdles and Solutions


    Rui had to admit that despite his harshest estimates of the difficulty of his training, he had nheless underestimated the difficulty of the project that he had undertaken. Generating vibrations from all sources of vibrations within the inner section of his body was extremely difficult.


    For one, his mind didn''t even have direct control over all the cells in his body.


    Thus, he couldn''t just ''will'' them to vibrate in ordance with his needs because most cells were not in direct connection with the nervous system. The vast majority of cells in his body were outside of his direct control, which is why he couldn''t rely on direct control to trigger them into generating more vibrations.


    "How the hell did the Gen Temple make this training easy?" He gritted his teeth.


    The Gen Temple had somehow mastered a special training technique. This training technique was so powerful that it somehow allowed them to increase the training sess rate of all Martial Artists who engaged in it.


    Rui would be lying if he imed that the thought of running to the Gen Temple to request them for their technique had not shed through his head.


    Of course, he knew this was stupid. The Gen Temple would probably kill him on the spot if they found out that he had managed to crack the principle of the Yin-Yang Shield technique.


    Of course, he hade to realize that theplex and inscrutable principles of the technique were just one of the security measures of the temple.


    Even if someone had found a way to figure out the principles of the powerful technique, they would not be able to master or propagate it without first having mastered it, which was extremely difficult without their training method.


    "No wonder literally nobody has managed to sessfully master this technique!"


    With so many measures of security in ce, the Gen Temple had the right to be confident in the security of their technique.


    Their only mistake was existing in the same world as Rui.


    "Powerful self-hypnosis will be the only way forward."


    With the knowledge of another world, Rui was already aware of the parts of the brain that regted involuntary cell activity. As long as he could manipte them, he would be able to manipte his cells indirectly.


    However, that onlyplicated his path forward and increased the difficulty of the training beyond even his highest estimates.


    "But¡­ as long as I can manipte my cerebellum and my endocrinology system, it should be possible to improve the amount of vibrational energy that my cells release."


    This was bound to be a long and tedious process that would undoubtedly be extremely tiring in and of itself, but he was confident that he was able to get his cells to generate as much vibrational energy as he needed them to.


    However, even such borate and extravagant training methods were not enough.


    "I can''tmence such a convoluted self-hypnosis training method each and every time in battle."


    Under ordinary circumstances, he could do it.


    The cognitive power of his Martial Mind was so great that it allowed him to pull offplex hypnotic processes within impossibly short amounts of time. However, the issue was that this technique was already time-consuming and would require his Martial Mind to ensure he could even viably use it each and every time. This content belongs to N?/velDra/ma.Org .


    Did he want to increase that timeframe even more by adding a manual self-hypnosis each time he used the technique?


    He would be lying if he said that prospect appealed to him.


    However, he had solutions to that as well.


    "Hypnotic association therapy," Rui muttered.


    This was the same principle of the Hungry Pain technique. It allowed him to associate physiological and psychological phenomena with a behavioral or sensory trigger, allowing him to activate the technique with greater ease than if he had to manuallyplete the entire process of causing the oues that he desired each time. In this particr case, he would ideally like to have a trigger that was indistinguishable inbat, allowing him to be able to seamlessly trigger the activation of the yin vibrations.


    This way, it wouldn''t serve as a tell that could allow his opponent to predict his attack. At the same time, it wouldn''t consume time any more than the technique already did, thereby not increasing the difficulty of the technique.


    "Huff¡­" He closed his eyes as he began formting a separate training regime for the generation of the yin vibrations.


    This was undoubtedly the mostplicated technique he had ever worked on, on par with the difficulty of the Angel of Lace.


    That was the reason that he was excited to see the technique to the end. Whatever awaited him at the end of his training was bound to be something truly special.


    He suspected that the creation of his offensive technique would qualitatively elevate his Martial Art to an entirely different level than ever before.


    After all, his systems of thought were limited by his Martial Art.


    It wasn''t just that his Martial Mind empowered his techniques, no, the techniques gave his Martial Mind more power.


    With a powerful offense, countless tactics and strategies that had been closed off before were now open to him. It would qualitatively increase his power far beyond anything he had ever had before. His mind would be unshackled by the limits of his Body and Art.


    His concentration and immersion only rose as he grew even more absorbed in the creation of histest technique. He had long forgotten about the outside world. He had forgotten about his father''s ambition.


    He had forgotten about the looming war that awaited Kandria. He had long forgotten about the consequences of the waves that he had created, the ripples of which had spread far beyond him.


    s, while he forgot about the world, the world had not forgotten about him. It changed and shifted as the oues of decisions that he had long made became far beyond anything he could have ever imagined at the time of making those decisions.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2105 Shocks

    Chapter 2105 Shocks


    In arge royal hall, a huge number of people had gathered.


    Had Rui been there, he would have recognized them.


    They were members of his faction.


    Or rather, former members.


    In the past six months, Emperor Rael had won each and every single one of them over to his faction.


    It had been effortless.


    While Rui had needed to toil and struggle to earn the approval and loyalty of those who had eventually be a part of his faction, his father made it look easy.


    With blessed innate attractiveness and aesthetics, perfected mastery over verbal and non-verbalmunication, immacte control over his body, and even a background in diplomacy and behavioral psychology, his charisma far exceeded anything that Rui could muster.


    This, in conjunction with his already high esteem and status within Kandria, had allowed him to win back all of Rui''s political influence andpletely make it his own.


    "¡­And, thus, I raise a toast." He smiled. "To Kandria."


    "To Kandria!"


    The formalities broke as the gathered esteemed guests began talking to each other about a variety of matters rting to things that had happened recently. Just half a year ago, these same people had cursed and mourned the return of the Emperor of Harmony, deeply displeased at Rui losing all opportunity to ascend the throne.


    Yet, now, however, they spoke with delight and vigor, with an optimism that had not existed before.


    ''Good.'' Rael''s analytical gaze washed over each and every single one of the newly returned members of his own faction. ''The response is within predicted ranges. I can proceed with the next phase of my n.''


    While hecked the sheer cognition his son had been blessed with, the illuminating SOUL System, and the mind sense of a Martial Master, he still had something that even his extraordinary soncked.


    Experience.


    Three centuries of reading and manipting people had given him an unmatched intuition about them. He knew how they felt, how they thought, and what triggers and fault lines they had that could be used to cause them to act a certain way.


    It was one of the many reasons that he had seeded in averting civil war and creating a nation where opposing forces coulde together in harmony and produce a force that was greater than the parts.


    He walked around the hall, exchanging pleasantries with each and every person and seamlessly integrating himself in and out of conversations before anybody even realized.


    "Emperor Rael." A powerful, firm voice drew his attention.


    Rael''s eyes lit up as his attention shifted to the man who had beseeched him.


    "Well, if it isn''t Guildmaster Bradt." Emperor Rael smiled pleasantly. "¡­Thest decade has been something of a rollercoaster for the Kandrian Empire, hasn''t it?" Guildmaster Bradt remarked calmly. "To think your illness came to light, triggering the Kandrian Throne War as the seven royals battled for the throne. Only for you to rock the boat with the revtion of Prince Rui, turning him into a contender for the throne."


    Emperor Rael smiled calmly while the Guildmaster narrowed his eyes.


    "¡­And just when everybody thought things had finally ended with Prince Rui''s victory, you shocked the world once more with your return," Guildmaster Bradt continued. "I, for one, am wary of any more shocks."


    His gaze sharpened. "Tell me, Emperor Rael. Do I have reason to fear any more shocks?"


    Emperor Rael''s powerful eyes met the inquisitive peer of the guildmaster of the Shionel Confederation.


    Ironically, it was the more direct line of questioning that was trickier to evade than more sophisticated lines of inquiry and investigation. Guildmaster Bradt knew that. Normally, it was not something that people without the appropriate amount of power could do, but as the leader of a Sage-level nation and an oligarch of an entire industry, Guildmaster Bradt knew that he was just powerful enough to address the Emperor of Harmony.


    He put Emperor Rael in a tough spot.


    If thetter tantly denied any more shocks, it woulde to bite him back when his actions inevitably triggered the next Great East Panamic War. It would undermine the credibility and trustworthiness of his words.


    This was a highly undesirable oue. This belongs to N?velDrama.Org - ?.


    However, he could not simplye out clean and tell the foxy guildmaster about his ns to elevate Kandria to the supreme pinnacle of humanity.


    At the same time, if he overtly refused to answer the question, then he would reveal the fact that he was hiding something. His answer needed to be surgically vague enough where he wouldn''t reveal his ns but also would not be perceived as evasive.


    "The only constant is change, guildmaster. You, of all people, should know that better than anyone else, considering that it was because you were open to a radical change of strategy that you could win the Shionel Dungeon War, was it not?" Emperor Rael''s rich voice confidently asked. "I do not intend to be an instrument of inertia. Kandria must change. Kandria will change. Just as it changed when I became Emperor, it will change now that I have returned as Emperor."


    "¡­" Guildmaster Bradt simply stared at the Emperor of Harmony.


    By making it seem like a political slogan of sorts, Rael had sessfully obscured the truth. It was difficult for Guildmaster Bradt to evaluate whether it was just an empty line thrown out without too much seriousness or whether it was something that he needed to take seriously.


    Emperor Rael gazed at him knowingly.


    Guildmaster Bradt yed an important role in his ns with the sheer amount of power this man couldmand. It meant that he would eventually need to lobby this man to his side.


    However, today was not that day. The only people who knew of his n were the Martial Sages of the nation, barring the underworld Sage, and a few people he trusted wholeheartedly.


    Any premature revtions of his intentions and ability to elevate Kandria would lead to absolute catastrophe that would end in Kandria''s downfall.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2106 Harnessing People

    Chapter 2106 Harnessing People


    A year had passed since Emperor Rael''s return.


    East Panama finally got over the event despite its magnitude.


    Or, at least, the people did.


    The ruling ss of East Panama watched with bated breaths and wary eyes as Emperor Rael''s activity did not appear to cease or reduce whatsoever. A conference here, a meeting there, immense activity in the foreign affairs department. Nation after nation, he held long private talks with not only nations and states in the immediate domain of influence of the Kandrian Empire, but also with all sixteen Sage-level nations.


    It was a scary amount of activity.


    At the same time, they could not help but grudgingly marvel at how immensely effective he was as a statesman.


    Within six months, the Kandrian Empire was firmly within his grip once more. He applied skilled use of the carrot and the stick, creating the most optimal incentive structures and penalty systems to firmly regain absolute control over the entire nation.


    The maritime and seafare industry of the Kandrian Empire¡ªwhich had suffered many losses and shocks when Rui eliminated the seafaring princess Ranea during the Kandrian Throne War¡ª was now slowly returning to its prime within half a year as Emperor Rael graciously recuperated the sector with tax cuts and interest rate cuts.


    It became beholden to him in return as he appointed his own men to the board of directors of every maritime enterprise in the entire nation.


    He employed a simr tactic in every sector of the nation, capitalizing on the failure of the seven prime candidates to regain his lost control in exchange for returning them to a state of normalcy.


    Of course, money did note out of thin air. He needed a non-capital-intensive power.


    "Do you understand, my son?"


    Emperor Rael gazed down from atop his throne at his son.


    Prince Raul met his gaze with a wry smile. "You are good at making people feel good when you need them, father."


    He had grown visibly older in the past four years. He had gracefully epted his defeat at Rui''s hands in the Throne War and had instead shifted his efforts to aiding Kandria during trying times.


    With the voluntary service of the Kandrian Ruffians, he was able to help many people get through the worst of the Kandrian Throne War.


    "Your heart is as noble and pure as it has always been," Emperor Rael gently remarked. "Even as l gaze into your eyes, I am unable to detect even a hint of darkness. To think that you would be able to resist being corrupted by the entire world for this long. It has allowed you to inspire many who follow you in your path."


    "¡­but?" Prince Raul smiled at his father knowingly.


    "But you do not apply your power optimally." Emperor Rael''s voice grew firmer. "That is why you could not defeat Rui during the Kandrian Throne War."


    Prince Raul shook his head.


    "People are not power, father. At the very least, I don''t think of them that way."


    Emperor Rael heaved a sigh, shaking his head.


    Everything was power.


    There was a reason that the Emperor of Harmony had been one of the most effective leaders in all of human civilization.


    It was because he saw power everywhere and in everyone.


    He saw power in ces that others couldn''t have dreamt of.


    He saw the greatest amount of power in harmony, which is why he hade to adopt it as his working doctrine. It resulted in one of the greatest sess stories of any human nation.


    While his son was certainly a far better human being than Rael had ever been, he was deeply unfit to be a leader, which was why Emperor Rael found it to be a shame that he had suchmand over so much soft power over people.


    He decided to change gears.


    "A war awaits Kandria on the horizon, my son."


    Prince Raul''s expression grew serious at those words.


    "I tell you this because you are the only one in the Royal Family that I can trust, aside from Rui," Emperor Rael continued. "I need you to use the Kandrian Ruffians to aid my economic stimulus and national security agendas." This is property ? of N?velDrama.Org.


    Prince Raul gazed at his father with careful eyes. His father did not utter such things lightly.


    "What kind of war?" He frowned. "With who? And why?"


    Emperor Rael simply shook his head, leaving the People''s Prince sighing.


    "If a war ising, then I''ll need to make preparations for supporting our people during wartime," Prince Raul muttered. "I hope you can tell me when."


    "You''ll know when the timees," Emperor Rael reassured him. "I need to make use of all the freebor youmand for the time being to ensure that I''m able to secure the best oue."


    Prince Raul''s expression grew a bit guarded. "¡­If I do not approve of your directives, then I will simply ignore them at any point. I refuse to make my people suffer if I think that your objectives are not for their benefit."


    Emperor Rael knew that his son would notpromise on this condition no matter what. "I ept that condition, my son." He smiled. "Rest assured that you will only be working for the betterment of the Kandrian people. With the power that youmand, I am certain that the Kandrian Empire will ovee all the tribtions that seek to crush it."


    Having secured the cooperation of the People''s Prince, he had taken one more step toward his ultimate ambition and objective of elevating Kandria above all others. He had fleshed out much of his grand n and had made concrete preparations to execute it. However, he couldn''t execute the n until Rui was done with his training.


    Unbeknownst to Rui, Rael had made him one of the central elements of his grand n to elevate Kandria to the heavens.


    Just thinking about it put a smile on his face, the world had no idea what it was in for.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2107 Searching For Reasons

    Chapter 2107 Searching For Reasons


    The mere return of the Emperor of Harmony had sent waves across East Panama.


    His actions, however, did more than just that.


    In an office in the presidential headquarters of the Republic of Gorteau, President Raymond sat in his office, frozen with shock.


    "What¡­?" A whisper escaped him. "What did you say?"


    His administrative head stood before him with a grave expression.


    "The Democratic Socialist Party has won over two hundred and eighty-three seats, sir."


    He shuddered at her words.


    The general elections of the Republic of Gorteau had just ended. These were elections conducted for the state government, the legitors of which would go on to form the Congress, the legitive body for the entire nation.


    President Raymond''s ambitious campaign promises required him to not only be re-elected in the presidential elections of the Republic of Gorteau but also needed his party, the National Libertarian Party, to gain an overwhelming majority in Congress.


    This was because the governmental system of the Republic of Gorteau was such that the authority to levy war was divided equally between the Congress and the President. While the President was the sole overseer of war, the authority to formally approve his deration of war rested solely in the hands of Congress, barring times of emergency or breach of national security, as specified by the Constitution.


    This measure was to ensure that war could not unterally be dered by any one candidate.


    Thus, in order to go ahead with his ns to wage war on Kandria eventually, he needed Congress to approve his deration of war. He needed Congress to be firmly dominated by his party, or else he could lose his existing ns.


    That was why the news of his opposition party gaining an enormous number of seats in Congress was so horrific.


    "What the hell happened?!" He gritted his teeth. "I thought the polls indicated that we would get at least seventy percent!"


    "Sir, the director of campaigning affairs has already begun preparing a psephological report that is exploring the reasons for the unexpected upset."


    President Raymond gritted his teeth. "What is his initial diagnosis?"


    "Sir, ording to him, it appears that the Socialist Democratic Party gained arge surplus of campaign donations to fund a lot of their campaigning," she calmly exined. "The states that they won correspond with theirrgest campaigning ventures. The estimated cost of their campaigning far exceeds their funding."


    President Raymond narrowed his eyes. "In other words, they got arge windfall at the final moment, breathing life in their campaign in swing states?"


    "That appears to be the case ording to the director of campaigning affairs, sir."


    He gritted his teeth.


    "If I may, sir, isn''t this a good thing because we have a good justification? We can avoid war with the Emperor of Harmony."


    He shook his head. "Our donors don''t care about the reason. And the voter base doesn''t even understand the justification. The only thing they''ll remember is that I failed to keep my promises."


    He understood how both his donors and voters thought. The former understood the reason that they didn''t care about. Thetter didn''t understand the reasons and still didn''t care. Regardless, this was a major upset that threw all his ns out the window entirely. If he couldn''t get Congress to approve his deration of war, then everything he had worked towards in the past five years would be in vain.


    And he knew that his opposition would impede all his initiatives as much as possible. The less he aplished, the more it would be used against him in the next round of elections. All in all, it was aplete nightmare for his future prospects, even though he had just been elected as president.


    However, there was one good oue out of all this.


    He could indeed avoid war with the Emperor of Harmony. This belongs to N?velDrama.Org - ?.


    He had put on a facade of confidence when questioned on how he would fare in the war against the famed Emperor of Harmony. However, he would be lying if he said he was confident or had reason to be confident.


    This was a man who had brought Kandria victorious oues, if not outright victory, in every major war that the Kandrian Empire had ever partaken in. It wasn''t even a question of whether he was qualified, considering he had a team of military and Martial experts that he needed to defer to.


    He had not looked forward to waging the war against Kandria now that the Emperor of Harmony had returned to power.


    "Find out where the socialists got that windfall from." He narrowed his eyes. "They had always fallen behind us in funding due to being pacifists. How could they have possibly gained enough at thest minute?"


    He had his suspicions.


    Whoever it was that had supplied them with therge donation was clearly someone who wanted to stop the war against the Kandrian Empire from happening. There was clearly no other reason to support the socialist party.


    Especially because their ideology was antithetical to most of the wealthy ss. Regardless, it was a horrible oue. If he didn''t get the war against Kandria that he had promised his voters, then the probability of him being re-elected was extremely low.


    "Damn it all!" He gritted his teeth. "Now the only way I can dere war against Kandria is if the Emperor of Harmony provokes a war somehow such that I can dere an emergency or even those thick-headed socialists will decide to support it."


    He didn''t hold out much hope for that.


    The Emperor of Harmony was not an imperialist leader, and, thus, the probability that he would go out of his way to trigger war was low.


    Unfortunately, it was his only option from there on out.


    Thankfully, his new presidential term wouldst another five years, which gave him hope that he would be able to find justification to dere war on the basis of national security.


    "Contact the director of the intelligence service. I want him to direct targeted investigations against the Kandrian Empire. Tell him to find me a reason to dere a national emergency to unterally dere war. Any valid reason." He narrowed his eyes gravely. "For the sake of my presidency."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2108 Shift in Priorities

    Chapter 2108 Shift in Priorities


    "Your Majesty, are you sure that donating ten billion gold coins to the Democratic Socialist Party of the Republic of Gorteau anonymously was a worthwhile expenditure?" the Royal Chancellor asked with a skeptical tone.


    A group of officials gazed at the Emperor of Harmony across an extravagantly adorned table.


    Emperor Rael''s powerful gaze shifted to the Royal Chancellor. "It worked just as intended, did it not?" he calmly asked. "If ten billion gold coins is all it takes, then it is worth it to stop a fool who cannot stop what he knows is a foolish endeavor."


    Emperor Rael huffed. "More importantly, Kandria is in a precarious position internationally. The Republic of Gorteau is not the only one that is openly hostile to our empire. I do not need to remind all of you that the Sekigahara Confederate would love nothing more than to wipe us off the map. And while the Britannian Empire calmed down after Emperor Arthur broke through into the Transcendent Realm, it is still an imperialistic nation that preys on the weak, colonizing any and all nations that it is able to."


    He narrowed his eyes. "We are in a world that will devour us in a heartbeat if we show enough weakness."


    His words set the tone of the meeting.


    "I have managed to slow down and even undo the damage of our waning influence in the internationalmunity," Rael calmly informed them. "However, even for me, it is impossible to undo the damage in our international standing that a decade of political weakness has done to us."


    This was a lie.


    Emperor Rael possessed the ability to undo all of it.


    He even genuinely nned to undo all of it when hemenced his grand n.


    However, for now, he abstained; he had found a better way to make lemonade out of lemons.


    "As discussed, there are verifiably grave threats that are hostile to Kandria by all objective measures, the details of which have been provided to you in the information package that each of you has been supplied with. That is why I have formted several domestic agendas that will take priority from this day forth," he continued. "They are, in no particr order¡ª"


    He raised a finger. "Border security."


    A second finger rose. "Foreign Intelligence."


    A third finger rose. "Economic independence." This content belongs to N?/velDra/ma.Org .


    A fourth finger rose. "Military and Martial investment."


    A fifth finger rose. "Strengthened authority andw enforcement."


    The leaders of the executive government grew surprised at the list of priorities that the Emperor of Harmony espoused.


    "Your Majesty¡­?" The Minister of Foreign Affairs stared at him, confused. "Do you intend on waging war? These do not sound like the list of priorities of a leader with peaceful intentions."


    "I won''t ever dere war," Emperor Rael asserted evenly. "However, that doesn''t mean I can live like war doesn''t exist. I have already provided ample substantiation for my shift in policy. We have a powerful Sage-level powerhouse that is openly lobbying to wage war against Kandria. The other two are not actively pushing for war yet, but have grown more hostile against us in the past decade due to our political weakness. Wake up; one can hope for the best but must always prepare for the worst."


    His rhetoric was quite effective, painting a narrative with a carefully selected set of facts to convince others of his decisions.


    In reality, the reason he wanted to make such aggressive wartime preparations was because of his grand n.


    He knew war was inevitable if he went through with his ambition to use the super treasures that Rui had brought back home to elevate the Kandrian Empire above all others.


    "Allow me to go through all of them one by one," Emperor Rael offered. "For border security, l n to triple the fixed capital funding to the Kandrian Border Patrol Force to strengthen our border fortified wall. No cost is objectionable when ites to strengthening border security. Minister Milian, I entrust the execution of this to you as it falls within the purview of the Ministry of National Security."


    She nodded solemnly.


    "I do not need to even borate on the importance of foreign intelligence," Emperor Rael mused. "I want eyes and ears everywhere. If President Raymond even whispers about waging war on us, I want to know. If Prime Minister Edward decides tomence military action, I want to know. If the Sekigahara Confederate so much as nces in our direction, I want to know. As for military and Martial investment¡­"


    He nced at the Grand General and the Grand Admiral of the Royal Military. "I''m sure you two know exactly how to improve the army and the navy, correct?"


    The two men grinned. "You know us well, Your Majesty."


    "Hm." Emperor Rael nodded. "As for Martial investment, Minister Varay, I can entrust you to handle a coboration with the Martial Union to increase the quality of Martial Artists of both parties."


    The man beamed at the Emperor''s words. "I will ensure that it is done, Your Majesty."


    "Good." Emperor Rael nodded. "All of this expenditure will undoubtedly tax the Royal treasury, but I have secured the cooperation of Prince Raul and the Kandrian Ruffians to offset thebor costs. Thus, it shouldn''t exceed our budgets."


    His gaze returned to the rest of them. "As far as economic independence, the rationale is simple. During times of war, economic dependence bes a liability. If we import energy from a foreign nation to fulfill our needs, then that nation has leverage over us, which can be very dangerous for war. I seek to cut off this dependence. From this day forth, all of our important needs and interests must increasingly be fulfilled domestically."


    The cab of ministers stirred at his words.


    This was not a light shift in policy and divulged that the Emperor of Harmony was extremely wary of war.


    Almost as if he was certain that war was inevitable instead of merely a possibility.


    "¡­Your Majesty," the Royal Chancellor addressed him. "What about the final priority you mentioned? ''Strengthened authority andw enforcement'' is frankly a vague priority. Could you be more specific?"


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2109 Shocking Objective

    Chapter 2109 Shocking Objective


    Emperor Rael smiled. "It''s simple. It means one thing, really."


    He narrowed his eyes. "The destruction of the Kandrian Underworld."


    Not a single person could maintain theirposure at those words.


    "What?!"


    "Your Majesty, are you truly serious?"


    "That is absurd!


    Their reactions were justified.


    The Kandrian Underworld had long entrenched itself in the Kandrian Empire. It had infiltrated itself so deep that exorcizing it was almost impossible. Even if they tried, the consequences would be devastating, triggering a mini civil war that would harm the nation.


    The fact that the Underworld had a Martial Sage, Sage Aggragor, meant that a war against the Underworld would mean a battle between Martial Sages.


    That was a disaster that would destroy all life in Kandria.


    Thus, the Underworld was left alone and allowed to fester in darkness.


    It held the entire nation hostage in order to ensure that it was left alone.


    Not a single member of the meeting was anything short of disgusted by the Underworld. Disgusted by their helplessness against the despicable but effective strategy of the Underworld.


    Yet, what could they even do?


    It was impossible.


    "Is it?" Emperor Rael''s tone grew frosty. "Is it truly impossible?"


    They all gazed at him, speechless.


    "Your Majesty¡­" the Royal Chancellor murmured. "You have always maintained that harmony with the underworld was the best long-term oue¡­ Why have you changed your stance?" N?velDrama.Org holds text ? rights.


    Emperor Rael shook his head. "You don''t understand. I have no principled attachment to Harmony. I chose to make it my doctrine because, all this time, it was the best domestic and international policy for Kandria''s circumstances."


    "¡­And has that somehow changed since your return, Your Majesty?"


    Emperor Rael smiled.


    "Everything has changed."


    They frowned incredulously.


    They had no idea what he was talking about.


    And, clearly, he had no intention of revealing his thought process.


    However, he was more open about his espoused goal of the eradication of the Underworld.


    "Before, I would have agreed with you that the destruction of the Underworld was almost impossible," Emperor Rael remarked calmly. "However, today, at this moment, it is entirely possible due to a new variable."


    He smiled with confidence. "The Ss n. More specifically, Matriarch Nephi Deborah Ss."


    They grew stunned as they stared at him with widened eyes.


    "I''m sure the thought has crossed each of your minds." The Emperor''s rich voice grew enticing. "''What if we use the Ss n against the Underworld?''"


    Their expressions betrayed the truth of his ims.


    "I will excuse the fact that nobody executed this n in the past four years since their arrival because there were more pertinent matters," Emperor Rael calmly remarked. "However, now that I am here, there is no excuse. The Ss Matriarch is a super treasure whose value is priceless precisely because of the sheer strategic advantages that her Martial Art offers. This can be used against the Underworld to produce oues that would be absolutely impossible otherwise."


    Matriarch Nephi could show them the exact oue of a military assault on the Underworld, thereby allowing them to adaptively evolve their strategies to be perfectly antithetical against their foes.


    They couldunch damning ambushes that would cripple the Underworld before it could even understand what had happened.


    "More importantly, the biggest priority is neutralizing Sage Aggragor without harming Kandria in the fallout. A targeted strike involving three Martial Sages should be more than enough to capture and neutralize the end oue. And once he is taken care of, the Underworld is doomed."


    It was not an exaggeration to suggest that ny-percent of the reason that the Underworld was left alone was entirely due to the Martial Sage.


    Without him, they most certainly didn''t have enough deterrence to push back the Kandrian Empire from swallowing them up.


    "I will personally enlist the Martial Sages of the Martial Union to make this a joint operation," Emperor Rael dered. "Two Martial Sages should be enough to ensure he is captured. Three should be enough to ensure absolutely no harmes to Kandria. I''ll deploy four for absolute certainty. There is too much at stake to bex about this."


    He considered deploying Sage Sayfeel, but ultimately decided not to. There was no need to deploy him andrisk his existence getting leaked.


    At least, not yet.


    "Your Majesty, is there a reason that you are so insistent on destroying the Underworld?" The Royal Chancellor inquired, frowning. "It appears to me that you have an especially strong reason to do so."


    Emperor Rael''s gaze shifted to the man. He certainly was perceptive.


    Rael did have an especially strong reason to do so.


    The probability of his grand n seeding rose by at least six percent if he could eliminate the Underworld as a variable and assimte its economic and Martial capital. As long as he could do that, Kandria as a force would be much more formidable in the war against those that sought to curb its rise to absolute supremacy.


    This was because it was standard tactics for the Underworld to use wars like this to weaken the government''s control over the nation to give themselves more leeway. After all, a more chaotic nation was one where they could thrive.


    Rael simply could not tolerate such liability impeding the execution of his grand n. That was the reason that he wanted to uproot this evil before hemenced his grand n. On top of that, he wanted them gone before they could ever learn of the super treasures that his son had brought back home. There was no telling what those greedy mafias would do when they learned that there were such treasures that were out of their control.


    "With the Whispering Widower, Tempestuous Fortress, the shing Flier, and the Mindbender, there should be no chance for failure." Emperor Rael''s voice was firm. The most important part of the n was the Mindbender¡ªSage Farana¡ªand her mental Martial Art. Using hypnosis, she could incapacitate Sage Aggragor and render him weak and incapable so that Emperor Rael could use him as a pawn in his grand n.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2110 Drive of Paranoia

    Chapter 2110 Drive of Paranoia


    The Emperor of Harmonymenced the nning for the operation to neutralize Sage Aggragor. It wasn''t easy formting a n that would use the Matriarch Nephi''s power to find the Underworld Sage.


    This was because of the way that prophecy worked. N?velDrama.Org holds text ? rights.


    It wasn''t a know-it-all source of answers to any question.


    It was a technique that allowed one to foresee the future.


    However, if the Underworld wasn''t there in the future, then not even prophecy would be enough.


    "What do you think, mother?" Emperor Rael gazed at Matriarch Nephi from his throne. "Do you think you can help us precisely locate the Underworld Sage with your prophecy?"


    She red at him. "I think you should stop calling me mother, for one."


    Emperor Rael smiled at her, amused, earning an exasperated huff from her.


    "As long as you can direct my prophecy in the right direction, then it is possible to learn of his exact location and time."


    Emperor Rael''s eyes lit up with interest. "Right direction, you say? Interesting. Considering that this prophecy allowed you to find the Divine Doctor in the Beast Domain, I thought that finding the Underworld Sage would be rather easy for you."


    "It''s not that simple." She shook her head. "The further into the future I peer, the more the scope of possibility increases. Finding the Divine Doctor was just one possible future that allowed me to find him in my visions of the future. In other words, Rui''s future was in the right direction. You need to find me the right direction to peer into the future that will allow me to foresee when and where the Underworld Sage will be."


    "Hm, that''s an interesting mechanism for how the technique works," Emperor Rael pondered about the words of his mother-inw. "I just need to find the right direction, don''t I?"


    There were plenty of directions in which he could point his mother-inw''s prophetic power towards. Unfortunately, there were drawbacks to this approach.


    "You foresaw the Divine Doctor years into the future, did you not?" Emperor Rael inquired. "Does that mean that the same might happen with the Underworld Sage?"


    She shrugged lightly. "Most likely, unless you can point me in the direction that will allow me to learn of his location in the next twenty-four hours."


    "Tsk." Emperor Rael was displeased by this revtion. "I do not wish to find out where the Underworld Sage will be years in the future; I need to find out where he will be tomorrow."


    "That is possible, too, but as I said, it is entirely dependent on where I point my prophetic powers," she calmly replied. "I can find out where he is right now if you point me in the direction of scrying the future of someone who is currently with him right now.


    "What about looking into the future of the Underworld Sage himself?"


    She stirred. "If you have enough data, then that works too. Mind you, it must be nothing less than a full profile. Without that, I cannot give you precise details. I generally rmend handing me physical subjects because these contain a lot of information that my senses can deliver to me. But, if you have rigorous documentation, then that is good enough as well."


    A smile emerged on Emperor Rael''s face. "That''s good to hear; rest assured, we can supply you with all the information that you need."


    Emperor Rael was familiar with the Underworld Sage on a personal basis. He had known the man from when he was a Martial Master. The Underworld was much younger than the Kandrian Empire, and there were days when the Martial Master, who went on to be the Underworld Sage, stood among his peers before the Martial Union even existed.


    And now, it was finally time to drag the Underworld Sage from the darkness.


    "I will alsomission the Martial Masters of the Ss n to aid in tracking the Martial Masters of the Underworld," Emperor Rael informed her. "The Underworld must be disarmed of all Martial Artists of the Upper Realms. Only then will I be able to assimte its power into the Kandrian Empire and strengthen it to elevate us to a higher Realm of power."


    He was also wary of any desperate attempts from the Martial Masters to hold Kandrian poption centers hostage by baring their Martial Embodiments far and wide, thereby causing immense damage to people of Kandria.


    Emperor Rael could not allow that to happen.


    While Rael possessed a lot of certainty in his n, Matriarch Nephi had herpunctions about it.


    "Even if you do capture him without any harm to Kandria, how can you possibly force him to ve for you?" She raised an eyebrow. "Martial Sages like myself cannot be restrained and forced."


    Emperor Rael smiled wryly. "You give him too much credit. That man¡­"


    He shook his head. "He''s a coward unlike anyone else I''ve ever seen."


    Matriarch Nephi raised an eyebrow with surprise.


    "He fears everyone and everything," Emperor Rael exined. "He has what I would diagnose as Paranoid Personality Disorder. However, while this mental disorder shackles others, it became the source of an endless Martial Drive, allowing him to pursue his Martial Path in fear and eventually reach the Sage Realm. Frankly, I would have thought it would be impossible to attain the so-called ''Martial Soul'' with a mental disorder, but he proved me wrong."


    Matriarch Nephi expressed a vague interest in the matter. "It is not impossible for one to attain moksha even if one has a mental disorder. Although, I cannot imagine that it doesn''t make it harder. He must have had a powerful drive if he discovered his inner self despite his mental disorder. It isn''t the most extreme condition that a Martial Sage has ever had in his entire life."


    "Hm," Emperor Rael considered the matter. "Well, if someone with a mental disorder can reach that Sage Realm, then surely my son will as well."


    She shook her head. "He was more lost in regards to who he was than anybody I have ever seen. I do not know what the Divine Doctor told him, but it broke him spiritually. His path will be longer and more arduous than any before him."


    The two of them remained in silence.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2111 Control Mastery

    Chapter 2111 Control Mastery


    VMMM¡­!


    In an extravagantlyrge isted training chamber in Daracol, Rui meditated in absolute solitude, radiating intense Yin vibrations.


    It had taken him more than a year just to reach a stage where he could generate a meaningful amount of Yin vibrations. It was a slow and tedious process. He had to gradually condition his mind to enter a state such that it would cause metabolic vibrations in cells indirectly through the endocrinological system. This is property ? of N?velDrama.Org.


    Adrenaline and endorphins surged through his tissue, exciting his cells and causing them to elerate metabolically, producing more vibrations.


    He trained this very phenomenon with his domains and Sympathetic Death Lance, teaching his cells to vibrate hard enough to negate the iing vibration with destructive resonance.


    Most of them couldn''t do that.


    Thus, most of them died.


    Over the span of a year, Rui engaged in a form of targeted physical evolution that involved improving his body by training with domains and Sympathetic Death Lance. Most cells simply did not possess the ability to generate such high metabolic vibrations; it wasn''t their purpose.


    The ones that could survived, and divided the most.


    Those that couldn''t, did not.


    Over the span of more than a year, his body became increasingly able to generate vibrations of higher magnitude as it underwent multiple cell division and recement cycles. Yet it was a maddeningly slow process that required immense attention to detail when operating his domains.


    That was the reason that it had been exceedingly difficult, not to mention dangerous.


    After more than a year of intense and uninterrupted effort, he finally crossed the first stage of the training n he had created for Project Heavy Hitter.


    Now, it was time to enter the second stage.


    "Control."


    This was what made Project Heavy Hitter particrly difficult. He had decided to shoot for the stars when he put it upon himself to master directing the Yin vibrations of the technique towards the point of contact, exerting the sum totality of the Yin power that he had generated in his attack with the intent of inflicting as much power as he possibly could.


    While the Yin-Yang Shield focused on directing its power across the entire body without any particr direction, the technique he sought to create was offensive and thus needed to inflict as much damage as possible.


    "Rgh." He gritted his teeth, straining with effort as he focused on directing the Yin vibrational energy in the direction of his desire.


    It was much more challenging than he was hoping for it to be. One of the things he had begun doing was targeting different parts of his body with directed resonance from his domain, such that he could train his body to direct its Yin energy in any direction.


    This was even more difficult than simply generating Yin energy.


    If he didn''t do it properly, he could end up injuring himself quite gravely. After all, the Yin energy that he generated was not necessarily friendly to him. It was a lot of power that could cause immense damage to his own body if mishandled.


    "Fortunately, I have Flux Earther."


    That technique was the reason that he felt confident enough to endeavor on this risky road. The technique allowed him to mitigate the damage by grounding the vibrations to the environment around him.


    The technique''s original purpose was to absorb impacts and then disperse them through vibration into the environment. Only when this happened could the impact be considered nullified.


    It was even easier to apply the same principle to Yin vibrations. They were already of vibrational energy, making it easier to disperse the energy he generated from his cells through metabolic vibrations.


    He closed his mind, feeling the Yin energy develop across the entire body. Each cell oscited vigorously, contributing to the ocean of energy that spread across his entire Body. He needed to bring every cell in harmony.


    Rather than a cacophony of noise, he needed them to y a symphony.


    Only then could he gain control over such immense power. Until then, he would never be able to control the immense power that he managed to produce.


    The most exasperating part of this particr part was that even this was merely the second step of several more toe.


    Even if he mastered the direction of the Yin energy, he would still need to master destructively and constructively resonating with the Yang vibration of his external body.


    After that, he would need to spend even more time mastering the application of destructive and constructive resonance inbat. "This¡­ will take more time than I expected."


    Developing techniques in the Master Realm was twice as hard as developing techniques in the Senior Realm. The reason was that there were more constraining factors that increased the difficulty of mastering the technique.


    The technique needed not only to be synergetic with the Martial Art but also with the Body and Heart as well as the Martial Mind. Thus, techniques of the same caliber as those of the lower realm are simply developed with much greater difficulty.


    It was no wonder that growth often stalled in Martial Masters. If developing powerful techniques required oveing such arduous challenges each time, then Rui couldpletely understand why so many took so long to develop a single new technique.


    Of course, Rui had no intention of stalling. Unlike many of his peers, he had the power of youth on his side, allowing him to ovee hurdles much better. This way, he didn''t experience the spike in difficulty nearly as hard as others whose learning speed and capacity for growth were limited.


    Still, despite that, he didn''t think that his training time for this particr training could be shortened to how long his old training periods extended.


    It all depended on how quickly he mastered the direction of Yin energy. Yet, with each hurdle he faced, he only grew more excited for the end product. The greater the difficulty of the path to attaining power, the greater the power to be gained. The anticipation and excitement spurred him on even harder.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2112 The Devil Draws Out The Underworld

    Chapter 2112 The Devil Draws Out The Underworld


    In a dark secluded underground chamber sat a man. He was d in a baggy clothes that covered every inch of his skin. He wore a Sage-level mask that covered his face.


    A Sage.


    Yet, one would never guess looking it looking at him.


    The reason for it was quite simple.


    He concealed his power.


    He concealed his aura.


    He concealed the sheer magnitude of his existence.


    He concealed all of it.


    For he was afraid. He feared his peers and, well, everybody.


    He feared Martial Sages because they possessed the power to kill him. He even feared Martial Masters in fear of them breaking through to the Sage Realm and then gaining the power to kill him.


    That was why he ran away from the world and concealed himself in the darkness. He feared them all. It was also why the Underworld managed to gain so much power and entrench itself well into the Kandrian Empire.


    Today, too, he concealed himself in fear in his personal base.


    It brought himfort.


    Normally, that was.


    Today, he was unable to calm down.


    He wasn''t sure what it was.


    But his nerves tingled, leaving him on edge.


    Perhaps the only way that he hadn''t taken action yet was because he had experienced this many times. His paranoia was strong, after all. He had learned that the best way was to simply sit tight and wait it out until he calmed down.


    Unfortunately, the peril he felt this time was entirely real.


    RUMBLE


    The world bent under the sheer weight of four Sage-level auras. Heaven and Earth screamed as the magnitude of their beings tore them apart.


    He shivered as his eyes widened with horror as he recognized one of them.


    The man he feared the most in this whole wide world.


    "Damian¡­!"


    BOOM¡­!


    The underground chamber erupted to the surface, sting through kilometers of bedrock.


    WHOOSH¡­ For a moment, the massive chamber simply stood midair as the two Martial Sages beheld for the first time in centuries.


    "Long time no see, Aggragor." Pure terror curdled in the Underworld Sage as he felt the horrifying bloodlust of the man who had earned the moniker of the Devil.


    It warped the world.


    A force unto itself.


    A wide smile crumpled his face ear to ear, radiating pure malice.


    He was here to kill him.


    There was no doubt about that.


    In an instant, their Martial Hearts, Minds, and Souls surged into power.


    "Get away from me!" He squelched, leaping away from Sage Damian as fast as he could possibly move.


    WHOOOOOSH!!!


    It was a single step, yet, he crossed thousands of kilometers as his Martial Heart, Mind, and Soul worked in unison to get away from the Devil himself.


    RUMBLE


    The sheer speed at which he moved shook all of Kandria and beyond at once, warping the very fabric of space and time.


    Yet, it was not enough. WHOOSH


    In just a moment, he found himself staring the Devil before him in the eyes.


    "What''s the matter?" The Devil''s malevolence sent chills down his spine. "Going somewhere?"


    "Get away from me!" Sage Aggragor threw a powerful blow in all his desperation, one that drew power beyond just the Body and Mind.


    It drew power from the root of existence itself, transcending far beyond anything any Martial Master could even begin to fathom.


    A blow that contained the power of more than one billion nuclear bombs.


    A blow that contained the power to eradicate all life in the Kandrian Empire. This is property ? of N?velDrama.Org.


    Yet¡ª


    ¡ªCLASP


    Sage Aggragor widened his eyes as the Devil effortlessly caught it, halting it in its tracks.


    That wasn''t all.


    "Let go of me!!" Sage Aggragor squealed desperately as he struggled to break free from Sage Damian''s grip.


    Yet, he couldn''t as so much budge his fist from the Devil''s grip.


    "Your Materia Prima is shitty." Sage Damian grinned maniacally. "I''m going to eat you alive, maggot."


    Pure horror erupted from the depths of Sage Aggragor''s eyes.


    Sage Damian was a man who did not threaten for the sake of threatening.


    When he made threats, he made promises.


    He was going to literally eat him alive.


    "No! Stop!" The man cried. "I''ll give you anything!"


    "Just what can a sniveling worm like you give me?" Sage Damian''s malevolent grin grew wider. "You''re too weak to give me the one thing I came here for, a good fight. A pathetic Martial Artist like you would be better off bing nourishment. I have always wanted to eat a Martial Sage from head to toe."


    Sage Aggragor grew dizzy with horror. "I-I''ll destroy the Kandrian Empire if you don''t let me go!"


    Yet, the terror he experienced only grew as Damian smile intensified in its malice.


    "Be my guest."


    Sage Aggragor''s eyes widened with horror. "Monster¡­!"


    Suddenly, four more Sage-level auras appeared.


    "DAMIAN!" Sage cken roared. "WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!"


    "You should have invited me if you''re going to steal him." The Hugging Hegemon red at him.


    "This is why I hate the Fire Sect." The Flickering Elder grumbled.


    "You animal." The Whispering Widower hissed at him.


    "Tsk." Sage Damian tuttedzily. "A bunch of tardy party poopers."


    "We are not tardy!" Sage cken red at him. "In fact, you''re not even supposed to be on this operation! Raelmissioned the four of us!"


    Sage Damian grinned at him. "Fuck him and fuck you too."


    "Haven''t you toyed with him enough already?" the Flickering Elder narrowed her eyes. "Release him to our custody. The Emperor of Harmony will decide what to do with him."


    "I was going to eat him alive, but¡­" Sage Damian heaved a sigh. "I''ve lost my appetite. You lot can have this disgraceful loser."


    Sage Damian tossed the Underworld Sage like a rag doll to the four of them, who promptly hid behind them in fear.


    "Tsk, my mood is spoiled." Sage Damian tutted with displeasure. "Tell Rael to hurry up with war. My patience is running thin."


    With that, he took his leave, heading away.


    "He''s as much of a monster as ever¡­!" Sage Aggragor whimpered. "And you lot wonder why I ran away to Underworld. It''s because of that monster¡­!"


    The four of them shifted their gaze to their old colleague with a judgmental gaze. "Whatever you guys do, just make sure I don''t end up in his hands!"


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2113 Conceded Obedience

    Chapter 2113 Conceded Obedience


    THUD


    Deep within the Royal Hall, a fearful Martial Sage was tossed in front of the Emperor of Harmony by four Martial Sages of the Martial Union.


    "Aggragor." Emperor Rael''s rich and deep voice addressed the Underworld Sage.


    The Underworld Sage gazed at Emperor Rael with apprehension and fear.


    "Rael¡­" he murmured with fright. "To think that you would hunt me like this."


    "Did you mistake my tolerance for approval?" Emperor Rael''s tone grew more powerful.


    The Underworld Sage flinched at his words.


    "Even for a Martial Sage, your crimes are overwhelming." Emperor Rael narrowed his eyes. "Not even the Martial Union will overlook centuries of antagonistic behavior in light of your status. Frankly, I have half a mind to execute you here and now."


    That was a lie.


    But the Underworld Sage didn''t know that.


    His paranoia was so deep that he didn''t even consider that it might not be true.


    "No!" Sage Aggragor cried. "Anything but that¡­!"


    "Perhaps I should let Damian deal with you then."


    "EXECUTE ME!" the Martial Sage bellowed in terror.


    Rael smiled inwardly.


    It appeared that he wouldn''t even need hypnosis to manipte him.


    "There is a way that you can avoid execution and Damian," Emperor Rael continued. "If you follow all my orders, I will ensure that you don''t get executed or fall prey to Damian."


    A smile appeared on his face. "Quite the good bargain, don''t you think?"


    "Deal!" Sage Aggragor vigorously nodded. "Keep that maniac away from me!"


    "Alright, then, we have an agreement," Emperor Rael remarked. "Let''s begin the process then."


    Those words sent chills down the Underworld Sage''s spine. "Wait, what process?"


    "We''re going to put you to good use, Aggragor," Emperor Rael told him with a serious tone. "You will serve Kandria to the best of your ability. But we will need reassurances and guarantees."


    He smiled again. "And we will have it, whether you like it or not. I do not trust you even in the slightest. Thus, I have arranged for certain alterations to your Martial Body that will require you to receive medical treatment from our Divine Doctor to survive over extended periods of time. Treatments, but not cures, mind you."


    He smiled again. "And we will have it, whether you like it or not. I do not trust you even in the slightest. Thus, I have arranged for certain alterations to your Martial Body that will require you to receive medical treatment from our Divine Doctor to survive over extended periods of time. Treatments, but not cures, mind you."


    Sage Aggragor stared at him in horror. "That means that I will basically be your ve forever!"


    Emperor Rael shrugged lightly. "Would you rather I hand you over to Damian?"


    "NO!" Sage Aggragor eximed with a terrified expression. "Anything but that!"


    "Well, there you go." Rael smiled pleasantly at him. "Remain obedient, and your life won''t be terrible. It''s more than you deserve, considering the misery and despair that you''ve spread to innocent people."


    The Underworld Sage lowered his head, closing his eyes. "¡­Very well. I suppose being under you is better than anybody else."


    "Then, as for my first order to you," Emperor Rael dered, "aid us in the purge of the Underworld. You know everything. You will tell us everything. Their secret hideouts, their secret bases, their modus operandi, their covers and fronts, their leaders and their locations, their chain ofmand, and their organizational structure. Everything."


    "¡­Very well."


    Emperor Rael smiled. He was looking forward to this.


    The Kandrian Underworld had been an eyesore to him for a long while. After all this time, he was finally going to purge them from Kandria. He would be lying if he said he wasn''t extremely vindicated and eager about his ability to finally do so.


    "Do you require the Martial Union''s aid, Rael?" the Flickering Elder inquired.


    "No." He shook his head. "While the Martial Union has certainly never been on good terms with the Underworld¡­"


    He narrowed his eyes. "This battle, this purge, is mine and mine alone as the ruler of Kandria."


    "¡­As you wish. Then we have fulfilled yourmission to us," Sage cken concluded. Emperor Rael smiled. "I shall pay the remaining half of the payment promptly. Pleasure doing business with you. Sage Farana has already arrived to take over the handling of this one. Thus, your services areplete."


    STEP


    A fourth Martial Sage entered the Kandrian Throne Hall, donned in the militaristic uniform of the Kandrian Border Patrol Force. "Your Majesty," Sage Farana addressed the Emperor of Harmony with deference before acknowledging her peers in the Martial Union with a light nod.


    "Sage Farana, incapacitate him and take him to a medical ward in the Royal Ward, I have already arranged for the Divine Doctor to work on him. After that¡­" A smile appeared on Emperor Rael''s face. "¡­It will be a bloodbath."


    "Your wish is mymand, Your Majesty."


    Soon enough, Sage Farana incapacitated the Underworld Sage with her hypnosis, taking him away to do exactly as ordered while the Martial Sages of the Martial Union bid the Emperor of Harmony their farewell and took their leave.


    WHOOSH A sixth Martial Sage returned where he belonged.


    Sage Sayfeel was quite confident in his stealth, but Emperor Rael had long deemed it prudent to never have him in the presence of other Martial Sages.


    "What do you think, Sayfeel?" "It is no wonder that they seeded in capturing Sage Aggragor, Your Majesty," he calmly remarked. "Finding him was always the greatest hurdle. However, the Ss n proved their worth."


    Emperor Rael smiled. "That is true."


    Part of the reason that he chose to enlist Matriarch Nephi''s service was to test her strategic value in war. Of course, the main goal was to take down the Underworld, but he also wanted some data on how useful her prophecy was as a Martial Sage.


    This would help him make more precise and urate ns and models for her impact on his grand n, increasing the probability that they would seed. This particr experiment, along with Rui''s, ounted for the usefulness of her prophetic power. And they made him more confident that the Ss n would allow him to aplish the impossible, in addition to the other treasures that Rui had procured.


    His grand n in the making grew more refined by the day as he continued fleshing it out. This belongs to N?velDrama.Org - ?.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2114 Sealed Fates

    Chapter 2114 Sealed Fates


    "Where is Aggragor?"


    In a dark chamber deep within aplex of buildings, six figures sat around a round table.


    Tension sparked and lingered in the air.


    "It''s unusual for him to not send a proxy, at least," Don Carnil casually remarked. "I cannot help but wonder what the coward is up to. He is too afraid of the bacsh to not at least send one of his Martial Master underlings."


    "Hmph, you lot give him too much credit." Don Carura snorted, displeased. "He is the type who will ignore all hismitments if he feels afraid of his current circumstances."


    "Perhaps you are too harsh on him," Don Schambieimented. "That being said, I do wish he would at least have the courage to show up in person. There is a reason we go through the effort to painstakingly gather in person. We need to coordinate our operations to make sure that we cover each other''s backs and distribute our resources optimally. A divided Underworld is a far easier target to take down."


    "Carura is right," Don Dagonel grumbled. "The fool puts all of us at risk by not adhering to established protocol."


    Don Feimia snorted. "If only we had another Martial Sage. Then we wouldn''t need to rely on him."


    The five dons gathered at the table could not help but disdain their peer. If not for the fact that he was a Martial Sage, they would never have recognized him as a leader of the Underworld.


    "However, it is highly unusual for him not to have sent one of his underlings as a delegate." Prince Rajak narrowed his eyes. "I cannot imagine what kind of circumstances would cause him to be so remiss in this matter when he normally makes sure to do at least that much."


    Prince Rajak could not help but feel something was deeply off.


    It was highly atypical of the Underworld Sage to be so dismissive of his duties. Prince Rajak had to admit that as cowardly as he was, he was also exceedingly alert and aware. He would never miss a meeting as important as this one by ident or by mistake.


    "¡­Which means something must have happened," Prince Rajak realized. "He must have gotten caught up in something that makes him unable to partake in this meeting."


    "You give him too much credit, Prince Rajak," Carura sneered with derision. "He''s probably huddled up in his hideout afraid of his own shadow or something."


    She stood up, heaving a sigh. "If he''s not here, then this meeting is meaningless, considering we were discussing the agenda of Martial security."


    She got up, leaving the Underground chamber unceremoniously.


    "If that''s the case," Don Carnil sighed. "Then I suppose I ought to leave as well. Now that the Emperor of Harmony has returned, I cannot say that I can operate as freely as before. That bastard is far too sharp for me¡ª"


    RUMBLE¡­


    The five of them frowned as they felt tremors reverberating through thend.


    "Earthquake?" Don Carnil frowned. "In Kandria?"


    s, by the time he realized he was wrong, it was toote


    BOOM!


    The door to the chamber sted open, stunning everybody as hundreds of armed and suited operatives poured into the room, rushing towards the dons of the Underworlds.


    "No¡­" Prince Rajak''s eyes widened with horror.


    The Martial Master bodyguards of the five dons and the prince surged into action, instantaneously activating their Martial Hearts and Martial Minds.


    Yet their expressions grew grave as they recognized the crests of their enemies'' militaristic attire.


    The special ops division of the Royal Army.


    This was a division that was trained with the sole intention of bing a force that could contend with Martial Artists.


    The manner in which they overcame the massive gap between humans and Martial Artists involved extraordinary potions that granted them special physical capabilities and an arsenal of cutting-edge esoteric weapons.


    "You are no match for us Martial Artists!" one of the Martial Masters roared, surging forward at lightning-fast speeds as theynded a powerful blow on one of the soldiers. A blow that would have otherwise eradicated entire poptions of humans merelyunched him a distance away, only for him to get right back up.


    They had been armed with the ability to tank blows from Martial Artists and engage with them even if they didn''t have the power to ovee them alone. Fortunately, they were not alone.


    The Martial Masters of the Underworld grew graver as they felt many Master-level auras arriving at the location. A second set of Martial Masters donned in ostentatious golden military attire shining with the crest of the Royal Army had also arrived, contrasting with the Martial Masters of the Underworld d in darkness.


    "Underworld scum," they spat. "Today is the day you will feel the wrath of Kandria!"


    The Underworld Martial Masters gritted their teeth as the special ops and Martial division coordinated their positioning, boxing them in, refusing to let them get out.


    They could have escaped by themselves if they were extremely lucky, but there was no way they could possibly escape while also simultaneously carrying their charges.


    The Royal Army wasted no time pouncing on the Underworld Martial Masters.


    It wasn''t even close as far as the parity of power was concerned.


    The formidable Royal army hade prepared. The entire ce was surrounded by even more troops from the special ops division, while the long-range artillery division had been posted throughout the entire town, armed with hundreds of powerful, long-range, wide-scale Master-level weapons that were designed to stall and impede Martial Masters.


    It was a devastating power of overwhelming quantity that neither the Martial Union nor the Underworld could ever muster.


    The operation waspleted within ten minutes ofmencement. The special ops division stalled them, while the artillery division was armed with the power to strike down and impede the escape of those who somehow managed to slip from the after abandoning the dons inside.


    Soon enough, Prince Rajak and the dons were captured by the Royal Army. This belongs to N?velDrama.Org - ?.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2115 Uniting Drive

    Chapter 2115 Uniting Drive


    Violence sparked throughout the Kandrian Empire as the Royal Army conducted countless raids, strikes, and assaults.


    It systematically attacked the entirety of the Underworld throughout the whole nation at all levels, based on the intelligence that Sage Aggragor had happily supplied to the Kandrian Intelligence Bureau.


    All of his intelligence reports had been spot on.


    They were able to urately target everything of even remote importance and significance.


    And they seeded each and every time.


    The Kandrian Royal Army was an extraordinarily well-oiled machine led by Grand General Aramoeous and Emperor Rael themselves. With urate intelligence on their targets and enemies, there was absolutely no chance for failure.


    One of the reasons that the Underworld stuck to the darkness as fervently as it did was because it did not stand a chance against the Martial Union or the Royal Army in direct conflict. It was far too weak and small in that regard.


    Those in the know watched with glee as the Royal Army effortlessly overran the Underworld with exponentially greater numbers.


    Within seventy-two hours, it was over.


    THUD


    Six people were thrown before Emperor Rael, shackled in chains and stripped of all clothes.


    Before them had gathered the entire leadership of the Kandrian government, spectating a historic moment. The six of them struggled, enraged, yet they only invited more sneers.


    Not a single one of them was willing to miss one of the most glorious moments as members of the Kandrian Government.


    The Kandrianw enforcement had battled with the Underworld for centuries now. It was a long, arduous cold war filled with many losses and partial victories.


    They harbored a deep hatred for the Underworld but were quite powerless in their desire to eradicate them. Not a single person had thought it was even remotely possible. Even as they gazed at five dons of the Underworld shackled and humiliated before all of them, they had a hard time believing it was real. N?velDrama.Org holds text ? rights.


    In their eyes, this was only possible because of one man. They turned to reverently gaze at the Emperor of Harmony on his throne.


    He was extra shiny today.


    Normally, he disdained overly extravagant clothes, especially when he was working on the more mundane parts of being an Emperor. But today was a day worthy of donning the most brilliantly ostentatious Royal Attire that he had.


    "Today is a day that will be remembered forever."


    His rich, powerful voice reverberated across the entire throne hall.


    "A day that will be looked back on with pride."


    He opened his eyes, letting his gaze fall on each and every single one of the members that remained captured.


    "Former dons of a now eradicated Underworld, I judge you as guilty of three thousand charges for arge number of crimes, including but not limited to treason, murder, drug trafficking, human trafficking, rape, moneyundering¡­" Rael continued. The list of crimes that the five hadmitted was so long that he needed to essentially cite an entire section of the Kandrian Constitution.


    Yet, painstaking as it was, he did it nheless.


    He could feel the vengeance in the room from the various high-ranking members of the Kandrian government. Each of them had been negatively affected by the Underworld in many ways. Each of them grew increasingly angered and vindicated as Emperor Rael reminded everybody of the many crimes that the men and women before him hadmitted.


    Just as Rael had nned.


    The best way to unite people was to point them in the direction of amon enemy, amon source of hatred. This was an extremely important step for Kandria and for his grand n.


    While he had already begun fixing the negative economic consequences of the Kandrian Throne War, fixing perception and morale was not as straightforward.


    The tensions that existed between the power blocs of the Kandrian Empire were not something that could be solved so easily. After all, even if the throne war had long ended, the memory of the cold war waged between each other still lingered, reducing the cohesion that existed between all parts of Kandria.


    That was why Emperor Rael used this incident to bring different power blocs together.


    "¡­And thus, with the power vested in me as Emperor, I sentence you to public execution." His voice glinted with finality. "Glory to Kandria."


    "GLORY TO KANDRIA!" the entire throne hall roared as one. "LONG LIVE THE EMPEROR OF HARMONY!"


    The entire throne hall erupted in jubtion, triumph, and vindication. Rael smiled inwardly as he killed two birds with one stone.


    The probability of his grand n seeding had increased by eight percent. Now, he needed to make sure that he absorbed the Martial and economic capital of the Underworld properly. While he resolutely sentenced the leaders of the Underworld to death, he had no intention of doing the same with the Martial Artists of the Underworld.


    That was far too wasteful.


    He intended to assimte them into the power of the Royal Army eventually. With this gained power that would otherwise be used to damage them,the benefits were actually twice of what they were on paper.


    Amidst all the loud celebrations, he found his eyes meeting the gaze of his son, Rajak. The man red at Emperor Rael with unadulterated hatred. Hatred that Emperor Rael had earned.


    He had been unable to protect this son the way that he had Rui. The loss of this young man''s family had caused him to join the Underworld for revenge against his half-siblings and his father. Emperor Rael gazed at him deeply onest time before heaving a soft sigh and closing his eyes.


    "Take them away."


    He put the matter aside as he began nning how he was going to present this to the public. He needed to ensure that he earned their approval for causing the many shes that had spread across the entire nation.


    A myriad of thoughts shed through his head as he nned everything out right down to minute details.


    Kandria was soon to enter a new era as the Emperor of Harmony approached the day he would execute his grand n.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2116 Announcement

    Chapter 2116 Announcement


    N?velDrama.Org holds text ? rights.


    The sparks of violence throughout Kandria had not gone unnoticed inside or outside the empire. The Underworld was ustomed to hiding in disguised fronts, allowing them to hide in in sight. Thus, conflicts often broke out in the poption centers, shocking the citizens of Kandria.


    Yet, the Kandrian Royal Army was absurdly prepared. They came with the surgical amount of reinforcements that allowed them topletely suppress all resistance with such dominance that not a single civilian got hurt.


    Normally, this was absolutely impossible.


    It didn''t matter how much intelligence the Underworld Sage had divulged. Conducting extremely perfect operations without a single civilian casualty was impossible.


    The reason that Rael was able to seed was because he had the Ss n on his side. It was impossible to overstate how powerful prophecy was as an asset.


    There was a reason that the entire world had hunted the Ss n as hard as it did. Prophecy was a game-changer that allowed for the impossible to be possible. It was why Emperor Rael viewed the Ss n as a super asset and treasure that could allow the Kandrian Empire to rise above its peers.


    First, he enlisted Matriarch Nephi and the Martial Masters of her n to know exactly what level of information dissemination would be leaked to the Underworld and thus tip them off of the attack before it came.


    He found exactly who he could tell and who he couldn''t, thanks to knowing the oue through prophecy.


    This way, he was able to ensure that the Underworld never heard so much as a whisper of the n ahead of time. They had been caughtpletely off-guard to a level that wouldn''t have been possible without prophecy. The element of surprise yed an enormous role due to how significant it was. It thoroughly ensured that the response of the Underworld was always sub-optimal and wed, which killed any chance of an effectiveeback.


    That was the reason that things went more smoothly than ever thought possible.


    Emperor Rael manifested a one-in-a-million oue thanks to it.


    So much so that when Emperor Rael announced the oue of the targeted strike to the entire nation, the whole poption base of the Kandrian Empire was utterly shocked.


    [Citizens of the Kandrian Empire,


    It is my greatest pleasure to inform you that across a span of seventy-two hours, from the twelfth to the fourteenth of Spring, the Royal Army of Kandria, upon my mandate, in a series of operations led by Grand General Aramoeous, has eliminated or captured any and all individuals part of or in association with the Carnil Mafia, the Dagonel Syndicate, the Feimia Mafia, the Schambiei Gang, the Jiteliana Family, and the Aggragor Syndicate.


    These six criminal groups, colloquially referred to as the pirs of the Underworld, have a long and documented history of perpetrating drug trafficking, human trafficking, moneyundering, information theft, smuggling, and Martial violence, the details of which have already just been released to the public.


    Today, they are no more.


    We have eradicated the pirs of the Kandrian Underworld within a rapid series of targeted assaults, rooting out a cancer in this nation that has spread more misery than words could ever express. We have freed Kandria from the shackles of evil and vow to ensure that it never returns to the Kandrian Empire ever again.


    I am pleased to announce to you that the ringleaders, the dons, will be executed publicly by beheading before all of you at the dawn of the twenty-first of Spring. Simultaneously, I express both my regrets and an oath ofpensation to those who have suffered injuries or damage to property.


    This marks the dawn of a new era for the Kandrian Empire.


    A new era of unparalleled prosperity and power. An era I swear to usher in.


    This is my oath to you.


    This is my oath to Kandria.


    It is an oath I intend to fulfill.


    Glory to Kandria.]


    The announcement struck every single person who read it like a hammer.


    "Wait, is that what the Royal Army was doing the other day?!"


    "No wonder they were so aggressive to that onepany¡­"


    "You''re telling me they uprooted the mafias entrenched around the Kandrian Empire?! In three days?!"


    The number of people who were initially skeptical was not few. However, even for them, reality would settle in soon. Unlike the average citizen, however, the elite, wealthy, and ruling ss of the Kandrian Empire had much greater insights in regard to the sheer significance of what had just happened.


    Their ess to intelligence about the happenings within the Kandrian Empire allowed them to learn about the truth even before it had been publicly announced. That was the reason that they knew that each and every word of the announcement was absolutely true.


    That truth was scary.


    The fact that the Emperor of Harmony managed to erase the Underworld inspired nothing short of fear in the power blocs of the Kandrian Empire.


    The Emperor of Harmony had always been scary, but his philosophy of harmony had always made it such that he was always ptable in his engagement with others that he sought to integrate. In the past, this included even the despicable Underworld, much to the chagrin of many. Yet, there was no other option.


    Until, of course, the Emperor saw one and decided to go all out in an attempt to destroy them. And seeded.


    Not only was the feat of perfect sess utterly shocking but to them it also represented a shift in the mindset of Emperor Rael. Gone was the man who was satisfied with maintaining a harmonious status quo to prevent civil war. The man who had woken up from hisa was a man who wasn''t satisfied with the status quo.


    It was reflected even in his announcement to the rest of the nation.


    An oath to usher in an era of unparalleled prosperity and power.


    This was not a light oath.


    Especiallying from a man who did not speak flippantly.


    Unbeknownst to them, it wasn''t the Emperor who had changed as much as the opportunities before him.


    Opportunities that most couldn''t even begin to dream of.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2117 Unspoken Warning

    Chapter 2117 Unspoken Warning


    The impact of the destruction of the Kandrian Underworld sent ripples across not just the Kandrian Empire but also all of East Panama.


    The ruling ss of foreign powers was shaken when they heard the news of the Emperor of Harmony. For once, they were more shocked than the average citizen.


    That was because they knew just how hard it was to get rid of the ck market for the trade of illegal goods and services.


    No matter how hard one tried, it was impossible to get rid of.


    This was a section that represented the darkness of humanity.


    So long as humanity''s capacity for darkness existed, the underworld would always exist. Thus, it would always exist, making it impossible to erase.


    It was a futile effort, one that wasn''t worth even endeavoring upon.


    This wasmon wisdom within the political sphere.


    Anybody who even bothered was instantly regarded as a fool who wasn''t fit to rule their jurisdiction.


    Yet, the Emperor of Harmony proved them all wrong.


    He showed them that it was indeed possible.


    Of course, most of them were cognizant of the fact that something extraordinary had transpired in his highly sessful attempt. Many were able to urately surmise what was the core cause for his sess.


    They were the ones who also realized that it was a message.


    A silent one.


    One that was addressed only to those insightful enough to understand what the Emperor of Harmony was conveying.


    Don''t.


    It was a chilling warning.


    Don''t mess with Kandria.


    His return wasn''t merely one of optics.


    He had returned in every sense of the word.


    A variety of statements from the ruling ss were released as the internationalmunity erupted into an uproar over the shocking event. Many used the event to condemn the Empire of Harmony for its extra-judicial handling of the captured criminals. Many used it to try and spin a conspiracy theory that all of it was a hoax nned by Emperor Rael to fool his citizens and gain brownie points for an aplishment that he didn''t actually aplish.


    Many cited human rights vitions as a reason to condemn him.


    Yet, an overwhelming majority of people, especially in the Kandrian Empire, slowly began to feel the positive effects of this major upheaval.


    Gang-rted crime plummeted by ny-five percent in the first month alone.


    This was because most criminalshad been locked up or killed, but also because the remaining ones had scattered after the Purge of the Underworld.


    Previously dangerous areas across the wide nation had suddenly loosened up.


    The supply of many illegal services and goods had ceased all of a sudden, further affirming to all the citizens that, as unbelievable as it was, it was indeed the truth.


    Morale in the nation was at an all-time high as the faint cloud of darkness that had been lingering in the air in the aftermath of the Kandrian Throne War was finally fully erased.


    It appeared to everybody that Emperor Rael had not lied when he said that he was going to usher in a new era of prosperity and power.


    It was evident that he was fully serious.


    And it slowly began reflecting in the numbers.


    The economy began trending upward due to a variety of factors that all boiled down to the Purge of the Underworld.


    With the absence of organized crime in the nation, business,merce, and trade resurged through the roof in half a year. Much of themerce that had left Kandria during the throne war promptly returned and resumed.


    Immense amounts of investment flew into the empire with the promising return and ambition of the Emperor of Harmony as well as the plummet in organized crime. Thetter was an important variable that affected the ease of doing business. Nations with higher crime rates were nations where business was far riskier and required far higher security costs.


    It rejuvenated the economy, revitalizing the lives of the people across all strata throughout the entire empire.


    The Kandrian Empire had finally surpassed its previous peak prior to the throne war, reaching uncharted territories of prosperity.


    Yet, the man responsible for it all was hardly done.


    Deep within his office in the Royal Pce, Rael sat alone at arge, extensive table with many documents spread across it.


    His eyes narrowed as he gazed at an enormous chart before him containing a highlyplex array of arrows in a giant maze of a flowchart. "Finally done with the entire skeleton of the n¡­" he murmured to himself.


    It hadn''t been easy, and he hadn''t even filled in all the details. Yet, he had arrived at a broad strategy that he was confident in. A strategy that survived even his scrupulous scrutiny, proving to be highly effective in achieving his ambition in elevating Kandria far above the rest of human civilization.


    He still had time to flesh it out. He couldn''tmence the n until his son left training, for he yed an important role in the n.


    BZZZT


    He nced at the message on hisms device.


    [Your Majesty, the Elder Tree Connection has been established.]


    His eyes lit up as he immediately got up.


    "Prepare a carriage for me."


    "Yes, Your Majesty."


    He grew engrossed in thought while he waited.


    The Elder Tree yed an extremely important role in his n to elevate the Kandrian Empire to greater heights.


    It was also the most uncertain variable.


    While he undoubtedly knew that Rui had been entirely sincere and honest in his recounting of his time in the Garden of Salvation, he needed more confirmation of the strategic value of this particr asset.


    Based on his son''s ounts, the Elder Tree had made several agreements with Rui that were to their mutual benefit, but particrly to its own survival.


    This was good news, as it meant that Rael could trust the Elder Tree more, for self-preservation was the most universal drive throughout all life.


    Yet, on the other hand, his experience in and mastery ofmunication with humans was not going to help him here.


    This chapter upload first at  N?velDrama.Org holds text ? rights.

 Chapter 2118 Purveyor of Harmony

    Chapter 2118 Purveyor of Harmony


    The Elder Tree was inhuman in its mind.


    That was, to a certain degree, self-evident. But Rui had specified that it was more different than one might expect. For one, it was not capable of anger and hatred. This was good on the surface, but Rael had absolutely no idea how that would impact their rtionship. This uncertainty was something that was intolerable for someone who operated with certainty of sess.


    Furthermore, none of the literature on the biosphere of the Beast Domain gave him what he needed to know, for it did not record anything about an intelligent tree so massive that it dwarfed mountain ranges.


    That was why he had consulted the only other person who knew more about the Elder Tree than Rui.


    "Ah, the Elder Tree species," the Divine Doctor mused. "Fascinating species of flora, really. The most interesting flora lifeform after this one." He gazed at the alien lifeform with deep curiosity.


    "Be that as it may¡­" Emperor Rael''s eyes shifted back. "¡­I am here to ask you about the Elder Tree, not the alien specimen."


    "Hm, temperamentally, it''s a creature that can be characterized by high-trait agreeableness and openness. It would score zero as far as trait neuroticism goes," the Divine Doctor absentmindedly remarked. "I know plenty more, but nothing pertaining to what you surely care about."


    No amount of prodding could draw much more information.


    "It is highly willing and able to conduct agreements," he told Rael. "It doesn''t engage in charity beyond the Garden of Salvation, but it also does not disenfranchise. I would suspect that as a species that is part of the nt kingdom that nourishes all other life, it is fundamentally devoid of predatory instincts. Yet, simultaneously, it does not trust without reason too."


    That was reassuring, considering that it was echoed by his son, who was also an insightful man. Together with that, Emperor Rael formted an approach to building a rapport with the Elder Tree.


    Straightforward sincerity.


    From what he could tell, this was the best option when dealing with the Elder Tree. This was especially the case when Rui had already established an agreement with it. All Rael needed to do was reaffirm it, and build on top of it.


    STEP


    He stepped outside of the vehicle, followed by a squadron of Martial Masters and, of course, a Martial Sage in the form of the hidden Sage Sayfeel.


    "And you''re sure that it''s entirely established as per the specifications I gave you?" Emperor Rael asked, narrowing his eyes.


    "Of course, Your Majesty. We have made sure to follow your instructions right down to thest detail."


    In order to avoid drawing suspicion or attention, Emperor Rael had disguised the forest trees of the blood connector trees as a simple ecological and agricultural project.


    And, for the most part, it seeded. Not a single person who worked at the facility managing the Elder Tree Connection, barring the head whom Rael had personally appointed, knew the truth. It minimized the probability of a leak happening. That would inadvertently trigger the third East Panamic War.


    He had his official bodyguards wait outside, secretly entering the forest that had specifically been nted tomunicate with the Elder Tree. This content belongs to N?/velDra/ma.Org .


    "Sayfeel."


    "Always here, Your Majesty. Rest assured, nothing can harm you."


    "Good to know. I am counting on you if something goes wrong."


    STEP


    He entered into the forest, observing the trees that constituted the forest. He had ensured that everything adhered to the specifications that Rui had shared with him in the information report and summary. so that he would be able to handle all the super treasures brought back home.


    The trees had veins and arteries of red blood just like a mammal did. A deeply unsettling sight that would give anybody pause. It was only a wonder why the Elder Tree needed this particr species tomunicate over long distances.


    RUMBLE¡­


    Emperor Rael narrowed his eyes as tremors radiated from within the forest. He felt a faint sense of pressure on his mind, one born of an astronomical power differential.


    STEP


    He found himself having arrived at the center of the forest. "Your Majesty¡­" "I am aware." Emperor Rael''s gaze swept across the entire forest. He could sense it.


    He could sense the gaze of a tremendously powerful being so far above himself in its state of life.


    Yet, his powerful gaze did not buckle.


    His head was held high while his back remained straight as an arrow.


    He was the Emperor of Kandria.


    No matter what, he would always carry himself in a manner that was befitting the Emperor of the Kandrian Empire.


    You truly are as you were in your offspring''s memories.


    Emperor Rael narrowed his eyes.


    Non-verbalmunication. That too of a caliber he had never seen before.


    The ''voice'' spoke in his head before he could fathom its precise origin.


    Despite having spoken no more than a single time, the Elder Tree continued, you left a deep impact on your son. I have looked forward to this meeting for a long time, Emperor of Harmony. "You know me, do you?" Emperor Rael chose to match the informality that the Elder Tree had set. "I thought I would need to introduce myself."


    I most certainly know of the sole human that embodies harmony as much as I do, the Elder Tree replied with hopeful eagerness. While your progeny touted harmony deceitfully, you are different. You are a man who truly embodies harmony to its very core. He could sense an almost innocent sincerity from the voice that spoke in his head.


    "Tell me." Emperor Rael narrowed his eyes. "Is your pact with my son contingent on me?"


    No. I made the decision to form a pact with him regardless of you. In fact, I did not expect to meet you here. I did not think that your seed would seed in healing you. But the fact that you stand before me instead of him is proof that he did.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2119 Lagging Military

    Chapter 2119 Lagging Military


    Emperor Rael mulled over the Elder Tree''s words carefully.


    He hadn''t considered that the Elder Tree would not only be aware of who he was beyond his rtionship with his son but also appreciate him for his philosophy. He could see the parallels between them based on the understanding that he had gotten from Rui and the Divine Doctor. This was a creature whose survival was contingent on the stability of the ecosystems of the Beast Domain. It had sought to maintain them by protecting the bnce of life as much as possible.


    There were parallels between the two of them in so far as how they exercised their power in rtion with others that they could influence.


    It was a rather strange feeling to be told that he bore a resemnce to a giant intelligent tree. Still, regardless of the nuance, this was a good thing.


    It meant that they had a good starting point for their correspondence.That was a good opportunity for building a good rapport. He instantly gained a higher certainty that he would seed in extracting value from the Elder Tree as a super asset. "Tell me, you negotiated aid from my son for your ecosystem management in exchange for the inheritance of your knowledge, information on the Divine Doctor, and general intelligence aid to us," Emperor Rael continued. "How much do you need precisely? And how much do you offer in return?"


    It was important to specify the details when it came down to it. Rael''s nning needed to be extremely precise and urate if he had any chance of seeding with his immense ambition.


    I do not require much, the Elder Tree replied. What I only require is aid with South Panama. I am situated in the North of the Beast Domain, as you are undoubtedly aware. Because of that, my domain of influence is strongest in the North before lessening in western and eastern parts of the Beast Domain. It is minimal in the Southern parts, where I truly have to strain myself to extend my influence.


    Rael sighed with relief as he shook his head.


    He was worried that he would have to expend immense Martial capital across the entire Beast Domain. However, the Elder Tree being limited to the South of the Beast Domain was a good thing; it limited how much help the being needed from them.


    "And how much are you able to offer in return?" Rael asked with a hint of eagerness.


    Everything. His eyebrow rose. This is property ? of N?velDrama.Org.


    I possess immense awareness across the entire Beast Domain, although it lessens in precision the deeper one goes due to the anti-sensory suppression of the region, the Elder Tree borated. Thus, I can tell you about the location of precious resources that you humans love so much. I can tell you the whereabouts of certain species of flora and fauna. As well as the location of all undiscovered mines of precious esoterics. I can direct you to other esoteric phenomena that you humans regard as priceless.


    A smile emerged on Rael''s face.


    This was exactly what he was hoping for. This resource was something that would make traveling the Beast Domain far easier. Normally, the difficulty of the Beast Domain matched its rewards; however, with the intelligence of the Elder Tree, it was far easier.


    However, there are limitations, the Elder Tree cautioned the Emperor. The resolution of my senses is not the highest. After all, these are indirect senses through flora and fauna. Thus, I can get you to within a radius of a human vige of the desired target, but you will have to search for the target within said area.


    Emperor Rael shook his head lightly. "That is not a problem. The fact that you can narrow it down to such a degree is quite amazing in and of itself."


    Rael was already thinking of the many ways that he could employ thiswork to maximize its impact yield. In fact, he didn''t need to dy the utility of the Elder Treework for too long either. As long as he could keep its gains subtle, he could avoid too much scrutiny over time. This was unlike some of the other treasures, whose benefits were much more direct and could not be hidden too much if used to the maximum.


    He was certain that he could use it to benefit the nation and stock up on war capital before the actual war.


    In particr, what he was interested in was the fact that while the other two resources aided Martial Artists, they did not aid non-Martial military power. This meant that the Martial Union soaked most of the benefits while the Royal Army and Navygged behind.


    That was the reason that he put such an emphasis on the Elder Tree. It was the only resource that benefited esoteric weapons technology more than it did Martial Art. That was why he needed to ensure that he used it to elerate the development of weapons technology to keep up the growth in Martial Art.


    Without this, his power as Emperor would be undermined, increasing the tensions between himself and the Martial Union. In order to maintain the bnce of power, he would have to go all out on the Elder Tree''s intelligence. Martial Art had been making an astonishing amount of progress, really showing off why the entire era was named after it.


    It was also in part due to his son empowering Martial Arts with his thought techniques while also making contributions like the Hungry Pain technique.


    While he was inordinately proud of his son for such aplishments, it put him in a tough spot. He continued negotiating with Elder Tree about the details of their agreement before finalizing it. While he was wary of the fact that there was no enforcement mechanism disincentivizing viting, it was ultimately not a deal breaker. Based on the two sources that he had consulted on the matter, there was no need for such a thing, after all.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2120 Final Phase

    Chapter 2120 Final Phase


    Rui sat cross-legged deep within his training chamber.


    The past two years had gone purely into training. He had spent the past year masteringbining his Yin and Yang vibrations in constructive and destructive resonance. It had taken him far longer than he had hoped. That was the reason that he had to readjust his expectations for how long this particr training phase would take. Perhaps this would be the case for all serious training phases involving the development of new techniques.


    After all, one of the reasons that this training phase took as long as it did was that he needed to ensure that the technique was hyper-synergetic with his Martial Mind, in addition to being innately powerful.


    This was probably going to be true for most techniques from that point on in his journey in the Master Realm. Thus, it was probably for the best that he got used to greater periods of time going into training.


    Things had changed quite a bit since his Apprentice days.


    There had been a time when he could master a technique in just three or four months. Or, at most, half a year. In the Squire and Senior Realm, each technique had required a year of time on average.


    Things were only bound to get harder from here on out.


    Fortunately, he was in his prime. He was not going to stall like other Martial Masters.


    VMMMmmmMMMmmmMMM


    He began rapidly alternating between constructive and destructive resonance, building the transitions into his muscle memory. He needed to be able to execute them as smoothly as possible in battle with as littleg as possible. The greater theg, the likelier his opponents would be able to read his intent based on its timing. The goal of Project Heavy Hitter was to develop a reliable offensive technique that could be of use without being a liability that was difficult to actuallynd on his opponents. It didn''t matter how long it took, but he would not stop training until he gained maximal mastery of the transition.


    Unfortunately, that wasn''t even thest step. He also needed to master applying it to his offensive maneuvers. All this time he was merely dealing with the principles of his technique, rather than the application of his technique tobat.


    He closed his eyes, his eyebrows furrowing with strain as he began speeding up the frequency of the transitions, trying to aplish them quicker.


    VMmMmMmM¡­.


    With each moment, it got faster and faster, turning into a monotonic hum. Unfortunately, it was much easier to maintain such swift transitions in training, not so much in practicalbat.


    STEP


    He got up, preparing an ordinary punch to be used with Yin-Yang constructive resonance. Hemenced the Yin and Yang vibrations, focusing their direction toward the end of his fist, yet he kept it in a state of destructive resonance.


    His eyes sharpened as he surged forward with great power.


    BOOOM!!!


    A thundering shockwave emerged as the Yin and Yang vibrations converged at the end of his fist in immense constructive resonance, yielding an impact of unparalleled power. RUMBLE¡­ This belongs to N?velDrama.Org - ?.


    The chamber strained, tremoring as the sheer amount of power that Rui outputted was able to overwhelm even the istion measures of the Master level chamber that he was training in.


    "This¡­" Rui''s eyes widened with shock. This was beyond his expectations.


    He didn''t expect that he would be able to produce such power on his first try!


    "If I can just master the timing and refine my transitions¡­" he murmured. "Then this could be apletely different gamechanger!"


    He couldn''t even imagine how strong he would be with such immense destructive power at his disposal. Furthermore, he hadn''t even triedbining it with any of his other techniques, thus this was far from his limit. With this, his offense would almost certainly jump from being considered the worst part of his Martial Art to being the most powerful part of his Art while simultaneously ensuring that he now had ways to take his opponent down without having to bank on stamina or any other option. His entire approach tobat could improve.


    He had sensed the possibility of this such that he would never find himself fighting peers that he would be unable to take down.


    He grew excited at the thought of the upgrade to his grade. He was rtively certain he would no longer be grade twenty-five if he sessfullypleted this technique. Perhaps he would be more than just a grade in the most optimistic circumstances.


    He immediately jumped back into training, growing more determined to see the technique to the end. While he certainly missed the ease of training multiple lower grade techniques at once, training one extremely difficult technique to produce an incredible attack was proving to be a lot more satisfying than he had expected.


    In the past, the reason that he often undertook the training of multiple techniques at once was because he oftencked a foundation in them. This had been the case when he first created the Hypnomatrix as well as when he created the Yggdrasil System. Now, however, he was refining something that he already had a great foundation in.


    That was why it was worth it to focus on quality instead of quantity. At the same time, he knew that the cognitive limit for techniques was now a lot higher than when he was a Martial Senior, allowing him to use many techniques simultaneously in the past. However, as far as offense went, the Yin-Yang Resonance was something that took a lot of cognitive load to function. Of course, this technique also produced more offensive power than a lot of powerful offensive techniques put together.


    "Quality is what I need at this point in time."


    He resolved to focus on one technique at a time from that point on, having been pleased with the results of dedicating all his efforts in a single direction; a technique of unprecedented offensive power and lethality.


    Rui grew more absorbed into his training as he entered the final stage of his technique.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2121 Risk vs Reward

    Chapter 2121 Risk vs Reward


    The Divine Doctor gazed at the alien lifeform with excitement.


    It had been two years since he started ying with it, and it had been fun the entire time. The alien lifeform was one of the most incredible living beings he had evere across. The more he learned about it, the more amazed he grew.


    A plunge into the unknown.


    An avenue of life where he was entirely clueless.


    When was thest time he hade across something else?


    He couldn''t even remember thest time he had gotten this excited about exploring something new that he was entirely ignorant about.


    Over the better part of a millennium, he had be an expert in pretty much all life, gaining the enlightenment of the Tree of Life through sheer intellect and experience. The most novel experience was discovering the Elder Tree species; however, even he had deciphered the ce on the Tree of Life.


    Perhaps only his ambition to heal Gaia was closest, but he was too small to study Gaia as a whole, thus he had not experienced the joy of scientific inquiry into the unknown with it.


    The alien creature was different.


    Not only was it truly alien to the world of Gaia, but it was also immediately avable to his study, allowing him to make immensely satisfying progress with his understanding of it. Not only was it a single-celled organism, but it was alsoprised of countlessyers of chemicals isted by a minutely porous substance that allowed for osmosis between eachyer.


    He had long concluded that the chemical dynamics across theyers were the metabolic processes that kept the creature alive. He suspected that the creature caused the metabolic processes in its body to elerate or decelerate by causing pressure imbnces betweenyers, which resulted in osmosis, causing chemicals to be exchanged betweenyers. Furthermore he didn''t find any equivalent of genes. He wasn''t able to find evidence of any chemicalpounds that essentially contained all gic information of lifeform.


    He suspected that the creature was a form of non-gene-centric life. A form of life that did not rely on genes entirely but merely used them as a production center for certain kinds ofpounds.


    "It''s an entirely different model of life!" He eximed.


    "I don''t care." Emperor Rael''s powerful voice grew cold. "I asked you whether you have truly unlocked the dungeon ability." This is property ? of N?velDrama.Org.


    The Divine Doctor heaved a sigh. "I have. I have identified the source of the dungeon within its body."


    He pulled out a picture from one of the documents lying on the table, handing it to the Emperor.


    It was a blurry image of a shard of a crystal deep within a haze of shadows.


    "Is this¡­?"


    "It is the esoteric substance that caused it to dungeonify." The Divine Doctor absentmindedly remarked. "It is responsible for the warping of space and time that you so desperately want to harness. From what I can tell, it seems to be a piece of an astronomicallyrger crystal. I suspect that if you were to dig deep in the Mellow, you would find it."


    Emperor Rael''s eyes lit up at those words. If they were true, then he could potentially strike gold when the time came.


    He had to admit that it was a deeply attractive prospect that he couldn''t possibly ignore. He immediately put it on his list of agendas to explore.


    For now, however, he had more immediate concerns.


    "And you''re confident you can generate the dungeon once more?" Emperor Rael asked sharply. "That is all I care about at the moment."


    The Divine Doctor heaved another sigh. "Yes, I am able to generate the dungeon at will with my current understanding of the creature. All I needed to do was iste the elements of the Mellow that was responsible for triggering the dungeon creation, through trial and error on micro samples as permitted by your son. Thus, I am able to cause the creature to produce the dungeon at any given moment."


    Emperor Rael smiled. "Good. I shall prepare the time and ce. You shall trigger the creation of the dungeon when and where I order you to, as stipted by your agreements with my son."


    The Divine Doctor sighed once more.


    In the past, many a nation had tried to hold his interests and retain him. Yet, not a single one had ever seeded in getting it done. No amount of gold,nd, resources or power could ever move him.


    Yet, the Kandrian Empire had effortlessly seeded in ensnaring him in their shackles.


    Not literally, of course.


    He could leave any time he wanted. But he stayed of his own volition. He even decided to take orders from an emperor he didn''t answer to. The reason was rather simple: his appreciation for what he received far exceeded what he had to tolerate.


    Not only did he get permanent ess to the alien flora lifeform, but he also gained greater hope of diagnosing Gaia with the help of Rui serving as a Martial stethoscope. As the sole Martial Master who also had a deep understanding of the Tree of Life, he was a priceless asset to the Divine Doctor in his greatest ambition to heal Gaia from what ailed her.


    "There will beplications." The Divine Doctor told the Emperor of Harmony. "So long as you create the dungeon, the creature will undoubtedly be hostile to any and everything that enters it, including but not limited to hypnotizing it or outright killing it by ordering other hypnotized creatures."


    Emperor Rael frowned. "What do you rmend then?"


    "You can either employ a lot of security across the entire dungeon at all times. Or, you can allow me to disable the creature''s control over the resulting dungeon, thus disabling all dangers. The price of this oue is that the degree of the time eleration is greatly reduced."


    Emperor Rael''s eyes narrowed. "How much?"


    "By an order of magnitude or so, I would suspect." The Divine Doctor replied nonchntly. "So what is it going to be? Great risk for greater reward? Or lesser rewards for greater safety?"


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2122 Prudent choice

    Chapter 2122 Prudent choice


    Rael grew thoughtful.


    He had not expected to be confronted by this problem when it came to setting up the dungeon.


    "¡­How hostile is the alien creature to life within the dungeon?"


    "Quite," the Divine Doctor calmly remarked. "It actively enves most creatures within it and forces them to breed while creating a gradient of resources that increases the closer you get to the center of the dungeon. This increasespetition for resources as the area decreases the closer one gets to the center of the dungeon, allowing only the fittest survive. In other words,st time, it created a self-improving ve army. I cannot help but wonder what it would create this time."


    Emperor Rael narrowed his eyes. "You say that like it cannot be inferred from thest time."


    "Correct," the Divine Doctor replied. "It is not something that can be inferred from thest time. The reason is quite simple yet infinitely fascinating. You see¡­"


    A glint of inhuman excitement and curiosity shed in his eyes.


    "The creature is sentient."


    Emperor Rael''s expression grew a shade more severe.


    "Not just sentient¡­" His gaze returned to it. "It is intelligent."


    Emperor Rael''s gaze grew sharper. "None of your reports mentioned anything about this."


    "That''s because you wanted scientific certainty." The Divine Doctor''s tone was clinical. "I have yet to discover the exact biochemical mechanisms for the apparatus that serves as its intelligence, but there is no doubt that the creature is intelligent based on its responses to stimuli. They demonstrate a capacity for pattern recognition, temporal and spatial awareness, problem-solving, among other things."


    "In other words, you personally believe that it is intelligent but have yet to secure enough evidence to constitute incontrovertible proof," Emperor Rael surmised. "Be that as it may, I''m inclined to trust your expertise in this particr matter. What are the risk factors involved with an ill-understood intelligent hostile force in control of such a powerful dungeon?"


    "¡­Anything is possible," the Divine Doctor calmly remarked. "It could resort to something other than hypnosis and enving. After all, its circumstances are entirely different than before. It could create an environment that is hostile to all life. It could potentially use a more subtle and tricky means of sabotage that could eventually end up harming all its captors. In the worst case scenario, it could potentially end up undertaking risks of its own to try and master its control over the esoteric crystal fragment it has embedded in its body to eventually be a Sage-level creature with potent space-time power."


    "¡­Anything is possible," the Divine Doctor calmly remarked. "It could resort to something other than hypnosis and enving. After all, its circumstances are entirely different than before. It could create an environment that is hostile to all life. It could potentially use a more subtle and tricky means of sabotage that could eventually end up harming all its captors. In the worst case scenario, it could potentially end up undertaking risks of its own to try and master its control over the esoteric crystal fragment it has embedded in its body to eventually be a Sage-level creature with potent space-time power."


    His tone was light, but his words were heavy. Emperor Rael would be lying if he said that undertaking risks in order to maximize the benefits was something that wasn''t deeply attractive. However, hearing about the possibilities brought him back to reality.


    "The risks that you have elucidated upon are far beyond tolerable thresholds."


    His tone was one of certainty.


    At this point, what he needed was more certainty and confidence in his ns, not more time eleration for the dungeon. If he decided to undertake the risks of the dungeon, he could potentially destroy all his ns and bring about ruin.


    He was already dealing with countless different variables for when he eventually would begin using all three super treasures to their absolute limit.


    He had painstakingly ounted for countless different scenarios, building many different failsafes and contingencies.


    He could not afford to take such immense risks atop all of this.


    "Are you certain that you can get rid of all these risks with the price being that the time eleration factor is reduced to one-tenth of the original?" Emperor Rael asked, staring at the doctor with wary eyes. This is property ? of N?velDrama.Org.


    "Yes," the Divine Doctor calmly replied. "I have identified the metabolic processes responsible for secondary function in rtion to the crystal fragments that the body has absorbed. I can cripple them withoutpromising the primary health and metabolic function of the alien lifeform."


    "That is a satisfactory result," Emperor Rael remarked, nodding. "Then, proceed with this n immediately. Give me timelines, requirements, conditions, and constraints for the creation of the dungeon. I shallmence the creation and appoint you as the head of the operation, along with a team of invigtors overseeing it. I will also rely on Martial Sages to verify the truthfulness and sincerity of your words."


    The Divine Doctor didn''t deign to respond, yet he didn''t object either. His circumstances were such that he had no choice toply if he didn''t want to lose a once in a lifetime opportunity.


    Some days, he considered relying on force to take the alien lifeform for himself. However, he knew that he simply did not have the power to do so. Else, he would have never allowed Rui to take it in the first ce.


    Then there was Rui himself, who he also needed and could not afford to lose as an ally.


    Emperor Rael had already verified exactly how much power over the Divine Doctor these agreements had, thus he had already mapped out precisely what he could get away with.


    Thus continued an unusual cooperation between the Divine Doctor and the Kandrian Empire, where both sides got what they wanted from the other.


    The preparations for the dungeon went smoothly as Emperor Rael found the perfect spot in the Kandrian Empire to nt the domain. The Kandrian Empire was utterly enormous that even if a piece ofnd a hundred kilometers in diameter disappeared, not a single person would notice. However, he still needed to set up an entire system of administration that managed the dungeon. After all, the only way that people could enter or exit the manifold was if the manifold was dispelled. Thus, he needed to set up the system such that there were slots for a year of training so that the manifold would only be opened every time a year passed in it.


    This way, there wouldn''t be an unnecessary amount of exposure due to frequent opening and closing of the manifold. He wanted to ensure that the manifold remained as much of a secret from the rest of the world for as long as possible.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2123 Solution

    Chapter 2123 Solution


    Deep in a training chamber in Darcol, Rui found himself standing before a fortified barrier.


    One that was meant to aid Martial Masters in their training. He narrowed his eyes as his fist drew back while his torso coiled.


    VMMM¡­!


    The world tremored as an enormous power began surging from the depths of his body. Yin and Yang began converging unto each other in perfect disharmony, canceling each other in perfect destructive resonance.


    His eyes sharpened as he surged forward, his fist sting forth. Yin and Yang came together in perfect harmony, forming a singrity of constructive resonance at the point of contact. This belongs to N?velDrama.Org - ?.


    It gave birth to a tremendous impact.


    BOOOM!!!


    CRACK!


    The barrier, armed with powerful esoteric substances, failed to bear the power of the blow, cracking apart. Yet, Rui was hardly done.


    BOOOM!! BOOOM!! BOOOM!!


    Rui threw a flurry of blows, one after another, as he shadow-boxed, exerting himself to apply Yin-Yang resonance behind each blow. Consequently, the power of each blow rose far greater than his previous most powerful blows.


    BOOOOM!!!


    A powerful Yin-Yang empowered Flowing Canon allowed him to release so much power that he would have thought he was using Hypertrophic Surge at full power.


    "Huff¡­" He heaved a sigh as he caught his breath, clenching his fist. "This¡­"


    A faint smile appeared on his face.


    He had arrived.


    "Only took three years¡­" A murmur escaped him. "Or has it been more¡­?"


    He had lost track of all time ever since hemenced his training phase. A century could have passed for all he knew. He hadpletely isted himself from the outside world in an effort to master the technique that he had set out toplete.


    And, now, he had seeded. Project Heavy Hitter wasplete.


    It was a sess.


    Not only had he mastered Yin vibrations as far as magnitude and direction went, but he had also mastered constructive and destructive resonance as well as their rapid shifting between each other.


    Then, in the past year, he had finally gone on to master them inbat. He had ingrained the sensations of applying them to all kinds of strikes that the Martial Body could possiblyunch.


    It wasbat-ready.


    And despite all that, the technique was inherently impractical. It took too long to generate the immense power that the technique was capable of. The reason for this was that while other techniques typically drew power from muscles or breathing, this technique drew power from three sources, and needed to bring them into perfect harmony in order for power to be supplied to the attack.


    That took more time than ordinary attacks that merely required muscles to be flexed or breathing to ur in a certain way. It was a whole microsecond.


    To a human, this was an unfathomably brief timeframe.


    To a Martial Master, however, it was too long.


    The only way to apply it inbat was to keep it switched on permanently or rely on his systems of thought to allow him to use it seamlessly inbat due to foresight on what his opponent''s future actions and intentions were.


    The former was the solution that the Gen Temple applied. By having the technique constantly switched on, the timeframe was cut short. However, the price for this was that the technique would consume an immense amount of energy, lowering stamina to untenable degrees.


    It was the weakness that Rui had exploited in the past.


    He did not intend to go for this solution in general. With his Martial Mind, he was rtively certain that he could use his predictive and SOUL models to prepare attacks more than a microsecond ahead of time so that blows couldnd precisely and urately.


    He would have to be ustomed to striking the future rather than the present. Furthermore, relying on this option meant that he couldn''t make a mistake. His precision and uracy needed to be impable; otherwise, he would not hit his target properly, or the timing for constructive resonance shift would be thrown off, resulting in the blow failing to deal a powerful impact.


    Sure, his systems of thought were powerful, but they were no longer absolutely invincible when he entered the Master Realm. Not only did other Martial Masters have decent systems of thought, but they also had something that he sorelycked as a Martial Master.


    "I need experience," Rui realized. "The more experience I have, the better I will be able to time this new technique due to being able to rely on not just my systems of thought, but also my intuition born from experience."


    That was the reason that he needed to shore up this shoring. It wasn''t that big a deal in the Senior Realm since, on average, Martial Seniors were much younger than Master Masters.


    However, the very moment he entered the Master Realm, this shoring was magnified by an order of magnitude.


    He had received contradicting advice from his fellow Martial Masters on the matter, too. One had said that he ought to remedy it as soon as possible, while another had said that it was best to let it rue naturally. Ultimately, they had leaned towards not needing to focus on it in the short-term simply because experience was not something that could be hastened.


    It was not possible to gain ten years'' worth of experience in one year. Thus, they were of the opinion that it wasn''t worth pursuing it as an active interest.


    However, they didn''t know what Rui knew. He was aware of a way of gathering an immense amount of experience in a short amount of time. However, it wasn''t just a matter of taking less time rtive to others; it was also making sure that it was the best use of his time.


    After all, the dungeon did not conjure more time. No.


    It just allowed him to consume time faster than others, but he still had a limited amount of time. He aged faster in the dungeon, which was a heavy price to pay. It meant that whatever he chose to do in the domain would be the best set of decisions that could be made.


    He turned, facing the exit.


    "I need to speak with my father."


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2124 The Final Treasure

    Chapter 2124 The Final Treasure


    All three treasures were in ce.


    The Divine Doctor had been ready to discharge all his duties from the very start, obligated to spend half his time on providing medical and biotechnological services. He had already upgraded the Martial Bodies of all the Martial Sages, making them substantially stronger.


    In just a year, the Kandrian Empire''s raw Martial power had increased by fifteen percent.


    He had also further upgraded the Squire Evolution process of the Martial Union by a whopping one hundred percent, allowing new Martial Squires to emerge far stronger than their predecessors, although Rael had limited its use for the time being. Upgrading the Squire Evolution procedure would provide massive gains in the long run; however, it would put them under tremendous stress in the short run.


    The Elder Tree Connection was put in ce and in the span of a year, Emperor Rael had made sure to develop a robust and sophisticated mapping system that would allow the Elder Tree tomunicate its intelligence in an objective and documentable format that could be shared with others in the form of intelligence reports.


    This was important because even if the Elder Tree could directly imnt the intelligence of the Beast Domain into the minds of the task force officers dedicated to it, it was impossible to seamlessly convert thought into data.


    Thus, a special coordinate system for the Beast Domain was developed specifically for this purpose, allowing the Elder Tree to seamlessly convey the exact location that it sought tomunicate.


    Furthermore, the veracity of its intelligence had been verified, and the results of Rael''s investigation had already proven that the Elder Tree was the real deal. From the moment they began relying on it, it had increased their Beast Domain yields by more than an order of magnitude. It was utterly astounding how the Elder Tree nonchntly informed them of the locations of countless Master-level and even Sage-level resources.


    It made the process of finding and procuring them a lot easier, quicker, and less dangerous. The Beast Domain was a difficult ce to survive in, and extended periods of time in the region exponentially increased the probability of death.


    It allowed Rael to quickly and secretly bolster the weapons arsenal of the Kandrian Royal Army. He made sure that there were no overt applications or utility of these extra resources. It was not time tomence the meat of his grand n, not until his son returned.


    The Manifold was undoubtedly the hardest to n for.


    It was extremely difficult to keep hidden. While Emperor Rael had done his best to keep it hidden, nothing could possibly conceal such an enormous training area appearing and disappearing from time to time. That was why it would undoubtedly be the trigger for war.


    It was the most prominent and rming of the three super treasures.


    In addition to preparing the treasures themselves, Rael had made many preparations in ordance with his grand n to elevate Kandria above the rest. Not only had he been able to flesh out all the details after gaining more certainty about what kind of variables the three treasures were, but he had also gained greater certainty and foresight into how they would act out.


    He knew exactly what was necessary, and it had yed an enormous role in shaping his foreign policy in the past three years.


    He had deepened his bonds with all twelve Sage-level nations in East Panama, nations with only one or sometimes two Martial Sages, such as the Shionel Confederation. He had also deepened his bond with the sole technocratic Sage-level powerhouse in North Panama, the Esocline Confederation.


    He had strengthened his connections with the Gen Temple in South Panama.


    No one knew why he had gone through the effort of establishing such powerful bonds and alliances with nations when there was no strategic merit to doing so in the first ce. No one had expected him to be so aggressive in his bridge-building.


    Thankfully, he had been able to get away with it under the guise of harmony, which was an excuse that worked well when one considered his past.


    Unbeknownst to everybody, it was all part of his grand n.


    In the past three years, all chess pieces had been put in ce.


    Everything was ready.


    Everything except¡­


    "Your Majesty, your son has just exited training," his Royal Secretary told him. "He seeks an audience with you."


    A smile cracked at the edge of his mouth. "Send him in."


    He had been waiting for this day for a long time.


    STEP


    Eventually, Rui found himself standing before his father in a throne room that was empty save for them and Sage Sayfeel, who stood behind the Emperor, faithfully protecting him at all moments.


    "My son." Emperor Rael''s rich voice softened as he smiled at the Void Prince. "You seem to have grown stronger." This is property ? of N?velDrama.Org.


    "¡­I have," Rui replied, furrowing his eyebrows. "I didn''t think you would meet me the very moment I left training."


    "Why would I not want to meet my own son after three long years?"


    Rui stirred at those words, frowning. "Aren''t you super busy? You have an impending war to inevitably trigger in an attempt to realize your grand ambition. Unless you''ve decided to abandon that ambition or something."


    Emperor Rael grew amused at his son''s words.


    "Much has happened in the time that you have spent training in solitude," he continued. "However, now that you have returned, the time tomence my grand n has arrived."


    Rui''s eyes widened with surprise. "Wait, you dyed your n just for me? You didn''t have to, you know."


    "I didn''t dy it for you." Emperor Rael''s tone was calm. "I dyed it because my n needs you. I told you thest time we spoke, did I not? You are the fifth treasure of Kandria. You are necessary for Kandria''s ascent to greatness."


    Rui frowned, tilting his head in confusion. "I''m pretty sure that I have given everything I have to offe¡ª!"


    His eyes widened as he understood what his father was referring to.


    "That''s right." Emperor Rael smiled knowingly. "I will have you trigger every breakthrough you are able to, across all Realms, inside the Manifold."


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2125 Weighing Considerations

    Chapter 2125 Weighing Considerations


    For a moment, Rui was shocked.


    Then, his mind remembered all the ways that his father could have found out about his secret. Maybe he had ordered one of his Martial Masters to watch Rui''s battle against Senior Frinjschia, or maybe Sage Sayfeel had spied on them the time he broke Kane through to the Senior Realm.


    The details didn''t matter.


    What mattered was that his father now knew.


    "Well, I suppose I ought to be grateful that you didn''t bring it up until now," Rui grumbled lightly. "Still, you just couldn''t help but include it in your n, could you?"


    Emperor Rael lightly shrugged with a hint of wry amusement. "I suppose I couldn''t."


    The two of them remained silent for a moment.


    "If I were to refuse, I suppose you would attempt to persuade me."


    "I would certainly try, but I''m afraid that it would be a failing initiative." Emperor Rael''s powerful voice was calm. "You have grown too powerful. You still don''t understand what it means to be a Martial Master in human civilization; perhaps you will learn more when you visit the Panamic Martial Federation. On top of that, you are especially unique and powerful in more ways than words can describe. I am unable to influence your decision as Emperor any more than what I am willing to do. I suppose the same is also true for the Martial Union."


    Rui stirred lightly at his words.


    They were true.


    Nothing Rael had to offer him couldpel him. His father was far too intelligent to even consider standard mundane bargaining chips such as wealth, resources, ornd.


    Rui would outright scorn him if he dared to offer him political power. In other words, there was no way, even with his authority as Emperor, that he couldpel Rui.


    After all, the Kandrian Empire was not an absolute monarchy. It was a constitutional monarchy where even the emperor had limits to the extent of his ability tomand. He couldn''t, with the authority vested in him as Emperor, order Rui to obey all hismands.


    Of course, he could deploy the Royal Army to threaten and forcefully extract any service from anybody. But that would never happen for many reasons, of course.


    "So what do you say?" Emperor Rael asked with a rxed tone. "Care to aid me with your services?"


    Rui stared at him silently for a moment, heaving a sigh. "Within reason, and as long as it doesn''t meaningfully impede my main priority, and as long as I can avoid the dangers thate with that, sure."


    Rui stared at him silently for a moment, heaving a sigh. "Within reason, and as long as it doesn''t meaningfully impede my main priority, and as long as I can avoid the dangers thate with that, sure."


    Rui refused to sacrifice his interests for the sake of Kandria. N?velDrama.Org holds text ? rights.


    As far as he was concerned, he had done enough and more for the nation. He had bestowed upon it multiple treasures essentially free of cost. Even his father had to concede that he didn''t owe this nation anything. Of course, that didn''t mean he didn''t care at all. It just meant that he had firm priorities and boundaries established.


    Emperor Rael smiled back. "Your willingness is deeply appreciated, of course. Naturally, this isn''t something I intend to pressure you to do at the cost of your personal ambition. With the training manifold, any amount of time you graciously extend to the cause will naturally trante to extremely high results."


    That was true.


    Even if Rui spent less than an hour a day on this matter in the manifold, that would trante to many hours of effort per day. This was especially unproblematic to Rui because he intended to employ the manifold to speed through at least some amount of time¡ªgaining experience as a Martial Master and experience with the new technique was his intention all along.


    During that time, he could easily break a bunch of Seniors and Masters through in the manifold.


    It was no wonder that the Emperor was unperturbed by his firm intentions.


    "However, there are some things that you should know," Rui told him solemnly. "My power to break Squires and Seniors through is not unconditional. There are risks. If the drive isn''t strong enough, it could shatter their Martial Path."


    Emperor Rael''s expression grew more severe. "That is a drawback I did not expect. It does alter my considerations a bit, but not too much. After all, that risk can be minimized, can it not?"


    Rui nodded. "With my mind sense and SOUL System, I can gauge the intensity of their drive quite well. Thus, I should be able to evaluate whether or not one has the drive to be able to handle my breakthrough trigger."


    Emperor Rael listened with deep interest. "And, as long as your intuitions are reliable, the risks ought to be minimal then."


    "Perhaps," Rui remarked. "Also, it seems that you are only aware of half the truth when ites to my ability to trigger breakthroughs."


    Emperor Rael raised an eyebrow. "Oh? And what is this other half?"


    "My ability to trigger breakthroughs to the Apprentice Realm."


    Emperor Rael grew surprised. "¡­I have never heard of such a thing."


    "I only ever used it once." Rui''s tone was calm. "I kept it a secret because I wasn''t strong enough to bear the consequences back then, but I am now. Of course, within reason. If the whole world came to know, I''d be screwed."


    Emperor Rael grew silent as he fell into deep consideration. A new and powerful variable had appeared. He needed to ount for all of its consequences on the war between Kandria and the three Sage-level powerhouses of East Panama.


    "¡­If what you''re saying is true, then it means we''ve gained yet another treasure that will greatly benefit us in the long term while simultaneously bringing us more pressure in the short term," Emperor Rael keenly analyzed the matter. "This particr treasure will merely confirm to the other three Sage-level powerhouses that this war is do or die. With this, there will be no doubt in their minds that if they do not manage to ovee Kandria in this war, they will never be able to do it again."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2126 Strategic Outlook

    Chapter 2126 Strategic Outlook


    If Rael decided to use Rui''s breakthrough to the Apprentice Realm to its absolute fullest, then the stakes for both sides in the war skyrocketed. A greatly erged supply of Martial Apprentices meant that in the future, Kandria would greatly surpass all the other Sage-level powerhouses in the quantity of Martial Artists.


    In other words, it truly was do or die at that point in time before the additional supply of Martial Artists made a genuine difference.


    "Martial Apprentices cannot affect the strategic outlook of an all-out war."


    Neither of them had any delusions in that regard.


    "When the war will have escted to its prime height, the only sses of Martial Artists that will be able to affect the strategic outlook of the war are Martial Sages and Martial Masters," Emperor Rael remarked, engrossed in thought. "More Apprentices will bring us no real benefits in the war but will rm our enemies and make them even more desperate to attack and destroy us."


    "¡­Are you saying that it isn''t worth it?" Rui raised an eyebrow.


    "I''m saying that in order for it to be worth it, I need to be damn certain that it doesn''t get us destroyed."


    "¡­I was under the impression that they would be trying to do that anyway." Rui frowned. "Might as well go all out. After all, if they are always going to use their military to take us down, then it literally cannot get worse."


    "There is merit in that." Rael stirred. "However, you''re wrong. It can get worse. I hope I don''t need to remind you that there is more to the continent than just East Panama. There are Sage-level powerhouses in all four corners of the continent. They might decide that the threat of being able to trigger Apprentice breakthroughs on top of all the other treasures is too much to ignore and decide to participate."


    Rui grew grave at the mention of the possibility of additional Sage-level powerhouses getting involved.


    It was bad enough that they were facing the Britannian Empire, the Sekigahara Confederate, and the Republic of Gorteau. That alone was a nightmare, with almost no hope in an overwhelming majority of situations.


    If any more Sage-level powerhouses joined the fray, then Rui was deeply skeptical of their ability to not lose, even if they had his father on their side.


    "¡­It''s tolerable."


    Rui''s eyes widened at his father''s words. "The distance between the four Sage-level powerhouses is absolutely enormous," Emperor Rael remarked. "The distance between us and the other Sage-level powerhouse across the continent is evenrger. In other words, it is deeply impractical for them to wage war against us over such vast expanses. That is why the Kandrian Empire has never been involved in conflicts with the Virodhabhasa Theocracy or the Sris Kingdom in West Panama."


    Rui stirred in consideration of his father''s words. "That makes sense. It''s difficult to project power so far away from their territory. Only Martial Sages can cross such massive expanses in a reasonable amount of time without wasting too much of their stamina." This content belongs to N?/velDra/ma.Org .


    Even for Martial Masters, crossing this great distance with the Martial Mind active would take days of actual travel time, while the drawbacks of the Martial Mind would force them to sleep, leaving themselves vulnerable in the middle of war far away from home. It was anything but ideal.


    "Not only that, but it isn''t as though these nations are simply sitting around with all the free time in the world to be bothering about things happening on the other side of the world," Emperor Rael remarked knowingly. "No, they''re embroiled in their own conflicts and local matters, which affect them far more materially and directly than anything happening in East Panama. Thus, I deem the probability low enough to be manageable as long as I keep an eye on the geopolitical dynamics in the other parts of the continent."


    Rui shrugged. "Well, it''s all your headache to handle."


    "Well, more importantly, I need you to send me a report on the limits and constraints of this ability of yours." Emperor Rael''s gaze shifted to his son. "I will carefully integrate it into my grand n ordingly."


    "Sure, as long as you don''t forget what I said before. I tend to spend an overwhelming majority of the day on training. I don''t mind offering help on these kinds of matters as long as it doesn''t infringe on my training."


    "I hear you, my son." Emperor Rael''s rich voice was reassuring. "Now then, why did youe to seek me?"


    It was Rui who sought an audience immediately after he was done with training. "Ah, I wanted to borrow the manifold for gathering experience," Rui informed him. "You see, I just mastered a technique that requires extremely high foresight, which I could get with my systems of thought, but¡­"


    He shook his head lightly, "¡­there are things gained from experience that no amount of thought could ever hope topensate for."


    "Hm, well, that is no problem at all, but¡­" Emperor Rael raised an eyebrow, "¡­I have a faint suspicion that it won''t be nearly as convenient as you seem to think it will."


    Rui frowned. "What is that supposed to mean?"


    "Experience, true experience, is not so easy to procure," his father eruditely remarked. "Then again, I suppose I have no standing to offer advice on Martial matters. However, remember that quality of experience matters just as much as quantity."


    Rui stared at him with uncertainty. The Kandrian Empire had some of the finest Martial Masters across all of human civilization. This was proven by the fact that it was able to cultivate a grade-thirty Martial Master, of which there were only three in all of East Panama.


    Unless he meant¡­


    "Like I said, I shall abstain frommenting on matters that are beyond my personal fields of expertise," he remarked. "The manifold is ready. Now that you havee out of training, I shallmence its operation and elerate the use of the other treasures."


    His eyes narrowed as his tone grew heavier.


    "I have prepared for three years for this day. Kandria''s ascent to greatness shan''t be dyed any longer."


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2127 Operation Transcension

    Chapter 2127 Operation Transcension


    The re-emergence of the Void Prince sent a message to the highly select few who knew what was in store for Kandria''s future. N?velDrama.Org holds text ? rights.


    All sixteen Martial Sages. The Grand General of the Kandrian Royal Army. The Grand Admiral of the Kandrian Royal Navy. The Minister of Defense. The Minister of National Security.


    These were the key individuals in the nation who had been informed by the Emperor of his grand n. They were too significant in their roles to y in what was toe to be left in the dark. None of them knew why the Emperor chose to wait for his son to re-emerge from his training tomence his grand n.


    None of them had been made privy to the entirety of his grand n, either. The Emperor of Harmony had stuck to a need-to-know basis for his grand n, refusing to reveal even a hint more than was necessary.


    Yet, despite this, not a single person objected to this.


    Had it been anyone else, they would not have allowed one person to take full control of the nning. As participants of the war, they each had a stake, and thus an interest and valid justification in demanding a seat at the table.


    However, their trust in the Emperor of Harmony was high enough that in the past three years, not once had they demanded a seat at the table.


    And now the time hade.


    Briefly, after Rui Quarrier Ss Kandria emerged from his three-year training session, a single secret royalmand left the Kandrian Throne Hall.


    "Commence Operation Transcension."


    Operation Transcension, Emperor Rael''s grand n, had begun.


    Immediately, the furtive Elder Tree task force began aggressively gathering intelligence from the Elder Tree,municating it to the Royal Army and the Martial Union, who began preparing widespread covert operations to raid the Beast Domain for precious resources of various kinds and sorts to bring back home.


    This would cause a massive surge in the supply of precious resources, an oue that Emperor Rael had foreseen and long prepared for. In the past three years, the ndestinely disguised and hidden inventory warehouses that used to be employed by the now-deceased ck market had been converted into storage and processing warehouses for the impending surge of precious resources.


    Rather than expend massive capital expenditure into creating brand-new hidden storage and smuggling infrastructure and resources, he simply repurposed the Underworld''s resources and hard work to his own needs.


    So long as he could do that, he could drastically cut down on expenses and also the probability of his activities being noticed by the other three Sage-level powerhouses. It had been Emperor Rael''s intention from the very start when Rui had told him that he had managed to rope the Ss n into the Kandrian Empire.


    Simultaneously, the manifold too was rapidlymenced and put into operation in the depths of one of the uninhabited forests in Kandria. The Kandrian Empire possessed many uninhabited regions due to just how vast its territory was for a poption of nearly two hundred million citizens.


    No one was going to notice and, a hundred kilometers wide, disappearing out of nowhere.


    And no one did, especially with two Martial Sages employing their full power to hide it from the sensory perception of the outside world.


    The Divine Doctor, much to his displeasure, was put to much more work than ever before.


    From upgrading the Martial Bodies of Martial Sages toMartial Masters to the strongest of Seniors such as the Gatekeeper, he had alreadyprehensively improved the power of the upper echelons of Kandria significantly.


    Furthermore, he had also improved the biotechnology of Kandria significantly as well, greatly empowering the Kandrian Royal Armyl. The mass secret manufacturing and implementation of his new forms were alsomenced.


    The Ss n began its future surveince for dangers and threats immediately upon receiving themand from the Emperor of Harmony. Naturally, Emperor Rael promised heavypensation and remuneration, such as longevity potions galore and other Martial resources.


    He was able to promise such extravagant payments because the surplus influx that would flood the Kandrian Empire was going to be so great that none of them would ever fall short in any regard.


    The trickiest to operate was the training manifold, for it was jointly owned by the Martial Union, the Kandrian Empire government, and the Void Prince. Thus, Emperor Rael had set up a robust system that allowed all three parties to smoothly control the dungeon without getting in each other''s way.


    Ten thousand square kilometers was a lot of area in general, but it was surprisingly little considering how extremely precious it was.


    The entire area was divided equally between all five Realms of the Kandrian Empire, which meant Martial Artists of any given Realm had ten times as much training area as those of lower Realms. A massive training facility spanning a hundred kilometers, dubbed the Kandrian Martial Chambers, had been created inside the manifold, costing both the government and Martial Union an astronomical amount of wealth and resources.


    Ordinarily, this would have been untenable economically, but Emperor Rael went all out nheless because the Elder Tree would replenish all invested resources and far more with an enormous surplus of precious resources.


    And he was right.


    It was only after the fifth treasure began working his magic that the leaders of the Martial Union and the Royal Army understood why Emperor Rael had been adamant in refusing to start Operation Transcension until the Void Prince stepped out of his training.


    Normally, no single Martial Master was ever so strategically important to be worth dying such massive and important designs for the future.


    But as they all came to realize, the Void Prince was absolutely worth it.


    Not a single one of the leaders of Kandria could even begin to fathom what they saw when humans began turning into Apprentices, Squires into Seniors, and Seniors into Martial Masters.


    Emperor Rael sat upon his throne.


    A smile of confidence emerged on his face.


    "Now we wait."


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2128 Clash of Harmonies

    Chapter 2128 sh of Harmonies


    His talk with his father had given Rui some insight into just how serious Emperor Rael was about seeing it to the end. Not that he expected his father not to, but his ambition had slipped to the back of Rui''s mind.


    The only thing that consumed his mind for the past three years was his own ambition.


    Project Water.


    Specifically, Project Heavy Hitter.


    He still had yet toe up with a name for the technique even though it was very muchplete.


    "I''ll figure it out when I gain inspiration." He shook his head. "For now¡­"


    For now, he was much too eager to test his new strength and understand how much it had grown thanks to the technique.


    Normally, one technique alone would never make that much of a difference, but Rui had a feeling that it would be a game-changer.


    That was why heter found himself standing before Master Vertol at Darcol that day. "Thank you foring on such short notice, Master Vertol." Rui smiled at the elder Master who had just arrived before him. "I hope I haven''t troubled you all too much."


    "Not at all, Your Highness." The older man nodded at Rui with acknowledgement. "You caught me at a good time. On top of that, I have been in your debt the past three years, you see."


    Rui raised an eyebrow. "Oh?"


    "It is thanks to you that my Martial Body has grown stronger," Master Vertol continued. "I''ll leave it at that."


    Rui''s eyes lit up as he instantly understood what the man was referring to.


    "I see¡­" he faintly murmured. "It seems much has happened in the past three years."


    Master Vertolughed boisterously. "I suppose that is true. Much has happened, and much will continue to happen. Am I right, Void Prince?"


    He gazed at Rui knowingly. It became clear that he possessed some understanding of what the future had in store for the Kandrian Empire. Whether he inferred it from his own observations and experiences or whether he was told in confidence by the Martial Sages of the Earth Sect, Rui didn''t know. He supposed it didn''t matter, considering that Master Vertol was a high-tier Martial Master who had a level of power to merit some forewarning of what was toe. The same was true for many other Martial Masters.


    While Martial Sages would be the most important ss, Martial Masters'' ability to inflict harm on civilizations and cripple their growth was too high for them not to be relevant to the strategic outlook.


    He supposed it didn''t matter, considering that Master Vertol was a high-tier Martial Master who had a level of power to merit some forewarning of what was toe. The same was true for many other Martial Masters.


    While Martial Sages would be the most important ss, Martial Masters'' ability to inflict harm on civilizations and cripple their growth was too high for them not to be relevant to the strategic outlook.


    It was interesting to ponder, but it was not important to Rui at the moment.


    "I hope you will aid me in testing my newfound offensive power, Master Vertol," Rui requested him. "While I have other ways of testing it, I have exerted my offensive power against you the most previously. Thus, unless you have grown massively stronger since ourst battle, you can help me understand just how strong my offensive power has grown."


    "Hahaha. Ah, Master Rui, I have not changed one bit in the past three years." The elder Master smiled wryly. "Not everyone can grow as fast as you after breaking through the Master Realm. It''s not forck of trying, I can assure you."


    Rui stared at him for a moment. "Nheless, I appreciate you taking the time toe see me out here and aid me with self-evaluation. Then¡­" N?velDrama.Org holds text ? rights.


    Rui drew his fist back while his torso coiled, gathering power. His legs spread, giving him stability and solidity.


    "Hah,e, Void Prince." The elder Master grinned, taking a Sumo-like stance. "Show me just how much you have grown in the past three years!"


    VMMMmmm¡­!


    The Yin-Yang Shield zed into life, radiating pure power as its harmonic vibrations hummed through heaven and earth upon the dawn of the technique. Yet, no amount of forewarning could have protected hisposure when he detected another source of harmonic vibrations.


    VMMMmmm¡­!


    His eyes widened as he detected the harmony of Yin and Yang within Rui. Although the principles were extremely inscrutable and almost impossible to decipher, he could instinctively tell that whatever technique Rui was using was based on the same principles as the Yin-Yang Shield technique.


    "You¡­!" The man stared at Rui, aghast, as a soft grin cracked at the edge of Rui''s mouth. "Here Ie."


    Rui surged forth while Master Vertol gritted his teeth, hedging himself in ce. The powerful attack surged forth with tremendous power contained within the depths of Rui''s body. What followed exceeded either of their imaginations.


    At the moment of contact, disharmony turned into harmony as constructive resonance between the two sets of Yin and Yang vibrations formed a tremendous convergence of power upon a single point, resulting in a massive collision of equal and opposite power.


    BOOOOOM!!!


    A devastatingly enormous crater emerged around them across Daracol as the sheer amount of power they outputted had nowhere else to go, manifesting the devastating destruction that Martial Masters were capable of.


    "Rgh!" The two Martial Masters grimaced as the immense power at the point of collision pushed them back.


    "¡­Damn." Rui nced at his bruised fist.


    The collision had been so powerful that it didn''t matter who the attacker and the defender were.


    However, that also meant¡­


    "Rngh¡­" The elder stood back up, revealing an enormous bruise on his paunch. "Unbelievable¡­"


    He gazed at Rui with a stunned expression. "To think you managed to crack the principles of the Gen Temple and applied them to an offensive technique. Not only that but its power rivals that of the Yin-Yang Shield. Truly, it is a feat that I thought wasimpossible."


    Rui smiled, ncing at his hands. "I had been looking for ideas to create an offensive technique, and the Yin-Yang Shield technique looked to be quite powerful and potent. Thus, it perfectly fit my needs."


    "¡­So you decided to endeavor to crack a technique that has sessfully evaded disclosing its truth to all scrutiny? Hah¡­" The older man shook his head. "You are something else."


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2129 Perseverant

    Chapter 2129 Perseverant


    "I''m not done yet." Rui smiled. "I will test my new offensive technique to my heart''s content."


    "Hah, bring it on then." Master Vertol grinned. "My defense isn''t just for show."


    Although he said that, he was still deeply stunned at the revtion that Rui had cracked the principles of the technique upon his first observation of them three years ago.


    Rui had also managed to sessfully inflict damage on him, unlikest time. This showed that this technique alone surpassed his previous offensive technique. It was a tremendous boost that the Void Prince treated as entirely normal and mundane.


    In other words, he was ustomed to such tremendous growth that even this was hardly worth remarking to him. To Master Vertol, this was hard to wrap his head around. The only time in his entire life that he had made such growth was when he mastered the Yin-Yang Shield technique through the secret methodology of the Gen Temple centuries ago.


    Yet, despite that, he refused to cede ground to Rui''s newfound growth. If the Void Prince was destined to surpass him anyway, then he ought to make sure that he maintained parity for as long as possible. s, Rui definitely didn''t make that easy for him.


    BOOM BOOM BOOOOOM!!!


    The two Masters got into a furious brawl at close quarters as Rui, running in circles, peppered him with blows, one after another. All the maneuvering and foresight weapons he had at his disposal came to use now that he finally inflicted damage on his opponent.


    Last time, none of it mattered since not even Hypertrophic Surge had been able to prate the man''s Yin-Yang Shield.


    Now, however¡ª


    BOOOM!!


    A powerful blow crashed into the elder Martial Master''s throat, choking him on the spot.


    "Breathing Crucifix," Rui whispered, adding fuel to the fire. He deliberately abstained from using Hypertrophic Surge or the Metabody in general.


    He didn''t want the battle to end too quickly.


    BOOM BOOM BOOM!!


    Rui relied on the predictive and SOUL models that he had created in theirst battle.They were entirely relevant as thebatants had not changed much since neither Rui''s Martial Art nor Master Vertol himself had fundamentally changed as a person at his depths.


    BOOOM!!!


    "Rgh!" Master Vertol grimaced as Rui used Outer Convergence with the Yin-Yang Shield technique. A deep shade of red and purple formed on his abdomen as Rui continued reaching greater heights of power than he ever had before. He had practiced using Outer Convergence with his new technique during training, but he had never been certain whether the muscle memory he had developed was good enough for it to be viable inbat.


    That was why Rui had chosen Master Vertol to test his newfound power against. He was a passive-defensive type who was perfectly content standing in one ce, never once moving from his spot. The only times he deviated from this strategy were in circumstances like his first fight against Rui, where he had no choice aside from pursuing victory aggressively as a chaser would.


    BOOOM!!!


    "Rgh!" Master Vertol leaped backward with a grim expression.


    Rui, however, only grew more delighted as the first Flowing Canon, empowered by his new technique and Outer Convergence, turned out to be even more powerful than he had ever imagined.


    However, much to his dismay, he could not use Fire Breathing with this particr technique. His new technique required the diaphragm much more to generate vibrations than Fire Breathing technique needed it for, well, breathing. The two techniques were physically contradictory and thus, they couldn''t be used simultaneously. He had to choose between them.


    Except that it wasn''t even remotely close.


    Of course, his new technique was exclusively reserved for when his predictive and SOUL models were limited. Thus, in most cases, he would be using Fire Breathing in the initial stages of a fight.


    BOOM BOOM BOOOOOM!!


    Rui continued peppering Master Vertol with blow after blow, testing how the technique felt in realbat to gain an understanding of how to use it best. It was very different from using it in training.


    Thus, he mostly treated this sparring battle as a means of building the ''sense'' of using the technique. His opponent, however, was not content with simply heading towards loss without putting up a single fight.


    However, it was impossible to even touch Rui with any of his attacks. This content ? N?v/elDr(a)m/a.Org.


    WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH


    Each time heunched a blow at Rui, thetter evaded it effortlessly. Rui saw his attacksing when the patterns pointed to them.The SOUL model also tranted the inception of intent, showing Rui what Master Vertol''s intended attack was going to be.


    However, Rui refused to make the same mistake asst time. As he peered into the elder Martial Artist''s eyes, he didn''t see someone who was simply fighting in vain.


    No.


    He knew he was looking at a man who had not only not given up, but could see the possibility of victory.


    Master Vertol had undoubtedly experienced many battles where his opponent could not only damage him but also avoid all attacks that he threw. Was Rui truly inclined to believe that the man had not developed a strategy in his Martial Mind to ovee precisely this kind of battle dynamic?


    ''No.'' Rui narrowed his eyes. ''This man has something up his sleeve. I shouldn''t underestimate his craftiness like I didst time.''


    He made a choice. A choice to end the battle as quickly as possible. The longer Rui prolonged it, the greater the probability that Master Vertol would be able to sessfully pull his strategy off.


    His eyes narrowed as his muscles grewrger, brimming with immense energy. The Sandflower Nectar potion that he had consumed three years ago gave him an immense upgrade in his energy reserves.


    Master Vertol grew more grave as the sheer amount of power that Rui unleashed far exceeded his wildest expectations.


    BOOOOOM BOOOOOM BOOOOOM!!


    The end of the battle rapidly arrived as Master Vertol pushed himself to the very limit.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2130 Named Technique

    Chapter 2130 Named Technique


    Rui had urately surmised that Master Vertol had developed a strategy and system of thought against precisely the battle dynamic that their battle had taken.


    Master Vertol had long asked himself how he was to ovee a foe that could not only ovee his Yin-Yang Shield but was fast enough to evade all his attempts to return the favor.


    After all, he was, well, fat as a matter of design. His bulky body allowed him to absorb damage extremely well. However, it restricted his speed and mobility. He had thought long and hard about the solution to this dilemma. And he had found it.


    BOOOOOM!!!


    A powerful blow crashed into his bare belly, digging deep. Yet before the core of the damage could be inflicted, Rui''s eye widened as he suddenly canceled his attack and leaped back.


    No one who witnessed that would understand why he did something so illogical.


    Yet, Rui knew.


    "You¡­" He narrowed his eyes. A grin appeared on Master Vertol''s bloodied face as he protruded and sucked in his gut, demonstrating extreme abdominal control. "To think that you saw through that. Your Martial Mind is truly insightful."


    Rui stared at him cautiously.


    Had he not pulled his attack back at thest moment, he would have lost the fight then and there.


    It was subtle.


    His strategy was simple.


    Most people would have missed it. Not Rui.


    "You''re prolonging the impact," he used.


    "Right on target, Void Prince." Master Vertol took his stance once more. "Come. It won''t go as smoothly as before."


    Rui stared at him knowingly. He manipted his muscles and gut to expand to meet iing attacks before contracting them to increase the distance over which an impact had to stretch over to actually inflict damage.


    The greater the distance of an impact, the more time it took to inflict damage.


    And the more time it took to inflict damage¡­


    ''¡­the more time he has to get a hold of me.'' Rui narrowed his eyes.


    That was his true aim. Had Rui gone through with his attack, Master Vertol would have prolonged the impact by sucking his gut deeply along with the attack and used the opportunity to ensnare Rui into a grappling match.


    He would have undoubtedly won the fight had Rui allowed him to get away with that. Although Rui had indeed grown much stronger in the past three years, he had not gained any additional proficiency in grappling.


    Thus, it was highly likely that any grappling match would have ended up in Rui''s loss for a second time.


    He immediately put grappling on his long to-do list. He had undoubtedly neglected it without even realizing so for quite some time now. s, there was no point in mourning his regrets in the battle. There was only victory or defeat.


    "I should apologize, I treated this more as a spar rather than a proper battle."


    Master Vertol frowned. "Hm?"


    WHOOSH


    His eyes widened as Rui appeared before him in an instant, his fist surging at his gut.


    Master Vertol''s eyes sharpened as he sucked his gut in. His arms flew forward, determined to get a hold of Rui.


    WHOOSH


    His hands sped an empty image.


    A feint.


    It was well within Rui''s prediction.


    BOOOM!! This is property ? of N?velDrama.Org.


    A powerful kick empowered with his new technique and Outer Convergence sted the back of Master Vertol''s head, delivering a tremendous impact to his skull.


    The sheer amount of power imparted in the impact instantly inflicted immense blunt force trauma, exceeding a critical threshold.


    THUD Master Vertol copsed, unconscious.


    Rui gazed at him silently as he deactivated his techniques and his Realms of power, heaving a sigh.


    The only reason that their previous fight had gone the way it had gone was that Rui had no way to inflict any meaningful damage on the man.


    That was no longer true the moment he mastered his new technique.


    Of course, Master Vertol had proven to be not just extremely resilient, but capable of solidly withstanding the onught that Rui had unleashed with Hypertrophic Surge, Outer Convergence, and his new technique. On top of that, he hade close to reaching victory for a moment there.


    It was a simple yet effective strategy that would have allowed him to turn the tables aroundpletely.


    Unfortunately for him, his opponent was Rui.


    He had not only managed to avoid the trap but bypass it to finish the fight on the spot with his new technique.


    "Also, it''s about damn time that I name it," Rui muttered, ncing at his hands.


    For a moment, he was silent, undecided.


    Eventually, he decided on a simple name.


    "Yin-Yang Spear."


    After the technique very much functioned like a spear version of the Yin-Yang Shield, both in principle and function. Rui couldn''t be bothered to muster up the creativity toe up with a more mboyant or ostentatious name.


    With that, the technique project finally felt like it had trulye to an end. It had taken him more time than any other technique, yet, its results followed suit, leaving him satisfied with the end oue that he had received upon investment of all that time and effort.


    Because each year that passed was that of his youth, where he retained an extreme capacity for growth and learning, he was extremely sensitive about how he spent his time. "Now then¡­" He heaved a sigh. "What to do?"


    He did indeed n to use the manifold to its fullest. However, he also had other things that he needed to do.


    "I ought to spend some time in the orphanage before I set out on my next endeavor."


    He had not forgotten the regret he had felt for not having spent more time in the orphanage when his mother had died. He did not wish to experience that ever again.


    "Ah, I ought to check up with Kane, too; he''s probably been training this entire time."


    And while he was at it, it might be worth it to take some time to meet his other friends and acquaintances.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2131 Passage of Time

    Chapter 2131 Passage of Time


    It had been a while since Rui had visited home. Thest time he had done so was before he dove into his training three years ago. Of course, his family had long grown used to the fact that his path as a Martial Artist required him to be away from the orphanage for extended periods of time.


    Rui was d that they had shown remarkable understanding, although he still felt guilty in that regard. However, the good news was that he probably wasn''t going to need to spend too much time away from the orphanage.


    Although perpetual use of the dungeon was something that he had already written off due to a need for exposure to a variety of forces to grow stronger, he didn''t mind using it to elerate his training phases when all he needed was istion. Thus, unless he spontaneously decided to leave Kandria for extended periods of time, he could be sure that he would be able to spend plenty of time with his family.


    STEP


    He found himself before the Quarrier Orphanage, taken aback by how much it had changed in just the span of three years. What had once been an extended neighborhood of homes had now grown into something muchrger.


    [Quarrier Vige]


    He stared at a board nailed to the top of a tree. N?velDrama.Org holds text ? rights.


    It was startling.


    When he had been a kid, there had been a single home, the original Quarrier orphanage. Since then, more than three decades had passed.


    The entirendscape had changed, having grown onlyrger andrger over time. It almost gave him whish, leaving him stunned for a moment.


    Each generation of the Quarrier Orphanage had been inspired by Lashara, a mother and grandmother to all of them. Many simr orphanages had sprouted across the entire ce, forming amunity of caretakers who took care of as many kids as they could.


    His mind sense allowed him to directly sense the emotive energy of the atmosphere.


    It was pure positivity.


    An atmosphere of hope, love, and joy.


    Naturally, beingprised of many orphanages, the number of children far outnumbered the adults. They yed with each other in the woods around the orphanages. He couldn''t help but think about his adoptive mother.


    She would have loved what he was looking at.


    "Big brother!" Two Martial Squires descended from the sky before him.


    Max and Mana approached him with beaming smiles. "You finally returned from your training."


    Rui smiled. "¡­Yeah, I''m back."


    He observed the two Martial Squires carefully.


    Thankfully, they hadn''t been remiss in their training.


    They had grown stronger in the past years, having approached the peak of the Squire Realm.


    It showed that they had made steady growth in the Squire Realm since having entered it nearly a decade ago.


    He was certain that they would reach the threshold of Senior candidacy soon enough. It made him wonder if he ought to break them through.


    After all, their Martial Drive was centered around the orphanage. That meant for their Martial Drive to be challenged, the orphanage itself would need to be under grave threat, pushing them to require more power and triggering the activation of the Martial Heart.


    That was a circumstance that was never going to happen.


    If only because Rui would never let it happen. Although he would love to see the two of them break through to the Senior Realm, he was not willing to allow the orphanage to suffer in service of that desire.


    That was why he seriously considered breaking them through the Senior Realm with his own Martial Art. There were risks, of course, but he was confident of being able to mitigate them.


    "Big brother?"The two of them broke him out of his reverie, drawing his attention.


    Rui smiled. "The two of you have grown, just like this orphanage. Come, I''m eager to meet everyone else."


    Funnily enough, the orphanage had grown to a size where the number of people he knew had shrunk to a minority. Yet, trudging through the orphanage vige didn''t make him feel out of ce.


    He drew a lot of attention from everybody even as he concealed his aura.


    He was too recognizable, after all.


    Not only was he a prince of the Royal Family, but he was also a highly renowned Master for having broken through to the Master Realm at the youngest age anyone ever had. While the gazes of the young children were characterized by innocent curiosity, the gazes of knowing adults were reverent and awed.


    At least those of the adults who didn''t personally know him.


    "Rui." Alice''s aged voice drew his attention.


    She smiled at him warmly. "You haven''t aged a day."


    The same could not be said for her.


    He had known her his entire life. It was almost impossible to reconcile her current visage with his memories of her when he was a child and she was still a boisterous adolescent in herte teens.


    "You know," Rui began with a wry smile, "you used to jump at me and hug me so hard that I thought my Martial Body would break whenever I returned after a while."


    "Hoho, if I do that at my age, I will pull my back." She chuckled. "I shall entrust that duty to young Apprentices that have been popping up all over this orphanage these days."


    Rui raised an eyebrow. "Really now?"


    "Ever since you, many more have followed in your footsteps," she told him with a sigh that was equally amused and exasperated. "You started a trend in this orphanage by being the first Martial Artist among us, followed by Max and Mana here. Now, we have more than a dozen Martial Apprentices who are currently in the academy."


    Rui stirred at her words.


    Considering the total poption of the vige, that was a high proportion of Martial Apprentices. Normally, such a thing was possible only when one employed means now banned by the Panamic Martial Federation or had some trump card like the Ss n''s prophecy, which could increase the number of Martial Artists in the long run.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2132 Seeking Life

    Chapter 2132 Seeking Life


    However, he knew that that number would soon grow even higher in the long run once he started triggering breakthroughs in the training manifold. After his meeting with Alice, he ran into all of the first and second-generation members of the original Quarrier Orphanage. It was pleasant, yet bittersweet to Rui in the back of his head.


    It reminded him of human mortality. Each of them had gray or white hair and a face full of wrinkles. N?velDrama.Org holds text ? rights.


    Yet they each possessed eyes of peace and serenity.


    It wasn''t easy living in an orphanage, but things had gotten easier, especially after Rui had be a Martial Artist, and Julian had be a research schr at the Kandrian Institute of Sciences. The two supplied the orphanage with as much money as they needed and more. They had managed to live a meaningful life, dedicating themselves to giving a home and family to children who had neither.


    It was difficult to not grow satisfied when seeing the crystallization of their efforts flourish so well.


    "You seem to be doing a little better since thest time I saw you." Julian smiled at him knowingly. "Although, it doesn''t appear as though you''ve fully ovee your dilemma, from what I can tell."


    Rui''s expression fell a little. "It hasn''t been easy. But, I''m on a path to oveing it."


    "Good." Julian sipped a bit of tea. "Direction is all one needs. I''m d you seem to have found yours."


    Rui gazed at him silently, noting how much he had changed now that he was in histe forties.


    "You should stop doing that."


    Rui raised an eyebrow. "Doing what?"


    Julian directed a knowing gaze at him. "Silently dreading our impending demise."


    Rui winced at his words, smiling bitterly. "I''m the Martial Master between us, you know?"


    Julian chuckled at him. "And I''ve watched you your entire life. If anything, rather than dreading our mortality, you should be d that everyone has lived their life out to the fullest, that they will be able to pass without any regrets."


    Rui stirred at his words.


    That was true.


    Although he still missed his mother, he was d that she had lived a life that allowed her to pass away without any regrets.


    "I, for one, am thoroughly enjoying working under the Divine Doctor," Julian remarked. "He is just as impressive as the legends say. The sheer depth of knowledge he has is truly amazing. He far surpasses modern medicine. It is a shame he isn''t very interested in spending time on passing his knowledge to the world."


    Julian had expressed interest in working under the Divine Doctor when Rui had informed him of the opportunity with the greatest doctor humanity had ever produced.


    It was not just a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.


    No.


    One could live many lifetimes and nevere even close to gaining such an opportunity.


    Thus, for the past three years, he had been aiding the Divine Doctor in researching the alien lifeform.


    "The past three years have elevated my understanding of what is possible," Julian remarked absentmindedly. "They have altered my worldview of the entire universe."


    He narrowed his eyes. "We are not alone."


    Rui gazed at him knowingly.


    Perhaps the revtion did not hit him as hard due to the fact that he had grown up believinghe had been from another world. Thus, the revtion of more worlds was less impactful on him.


    However, he could understand why Julian had been truly shaken by the revtion.


    "If there are twos withplex, intelligent life, then there is an overwhelmingly high probability that there exist mores with simpler forms of life. I have spent many sleepless nights pondering the possibilities." Julian heaved a regretful sigh. "s, there is too much to explore, not enough time in all the world to explore it."


    Rui sensed regret and resignation in the depths of Julian''s mind with his mind sense. He came to the realization that for all Julian told him about how the people of the orphanage lived long and satisfactory lives, he wasn''t including himself in that group. His curiosity about the world had led him to be a scientist, researching the mysteries of Gaia.


    "It isn''t impossible for you to be able to live longer, you know?" Rui informed him. "I could fetch you a life-prolonging potion at this very moment."


    Julian''s expression grew serious. "Tempting, but no. I do not want to live on time that I haven''t earned. I am striving to redeem a potion with my own merits. I do not want to feel like a useless man who would not be here without the grace of his little brother."


    "Well, suit yourself." Rui shrugged.


    "That''s remarkably understanding of you. I thought you would put a much stronger resistance to my choice, insisting that I take one regardless."


    That was what had been Rui''s first instinct indeed.


    However, he had realized that there was no need. He knew that once his father began using the Elder Tree Connection to the absolute maximum, the supply of life-prolonging potions would increase by at least an order of magnitude, if not much more. This meant that there was ten times the chance that his brother would be able to get his hands on one.


    Given how brilliant he was, there was no doubt that the Empire would invest in him so that his genius could benefit the entire empire for another century.


    "I''m certain that you will be able to redeem one with your own merits, that''s why." Rui smiled mysteriously. "Especially if you keep up the great work with the alien research that you''re partaking in at the moment."


    Julian raised an eyebrow. "Well, I appreciate your confidence. However, it won''t be easy. Much of the existing supply is limited to the Emperor and the Martial Sages, followed by Martial Masters like yourself. Us non-Martial Artists have topete for a much more diminished supply of potions. I will have to work extremely hard to have any chance at getting one."


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2133 Seeking Experience

    Chapter 2133 Seeking Experience


    His time with Julian and the rest of the orphanage had jolted him back to reality.


    It had altered his perspective of time.


    He was forty years old, although only thirty-eight years had passed since his birth in the real world.


    However, he felt and looked twenty-six years old physically.


    Thebination of having broken through to the Senior Realm and having consumed a particrly potent life-prolonging potion at the biological age of twenty-six meant that his aging had slowed down significantly. For every year that passed, his body aged a few months at the very most. It had warped his perception of time significantly. So much so that three years was nothing to him. It was what a season might be to a normal human. He felt as though someone had put the Quarrier Orphanage in the Mellow Manifold in the time that he had been away. However, he knew that he had to simply ept reality and be d that the people he had grown up with were living rich and satisfactory lives. This is property ? of N?velDrama.Org.


    His sole constion was that Julian, someone he was particrly close to, also sought a life-prolonging potion because he wasn''t satisfied with what he could aplish with the time he had remaining.


    Rui found himself spending a few days at the orphanage, taking in life as it was. He trained several Martial Apprentices, as well as Max and Mana, helping them refine their Martial Art.


    It was a peaceful life.


    Perhaps he would have even sought it had he not been consumed by Project Water. But s, he was. He would not rest until he had fulfilled his greatest ambition. He knew that he wasn''t even remotely close to doing so, even if he made remarkable progress. Being able to adaptively evolve to any and everything required him to be exposed to any and everything.


    It meant that he could never remain at one ce for too long.


    Either he went to the world, or the world needed toe at him.


    "I suppose thetter might not be too unrealistic in the near-ish future," he remarked to himself, sitting on a tree overlooking the Quarrier Vige.


    With his father''s ambition to elevate Kandria above all others, he would undoubtedly get a good taste of what the world had to offer as far as Martial Masters went. He would be facing the high-grade Martial Masters of all three Sage-level powerhouses, perhaps even more, depending on how much the war got to escte.


    There was no better avenue than gaining all the vital experience and exposure that he needed to adaptively evolve to everything. It would also be optimal for making him stronger, bringing him closer to answering the ultimate question that all Martial Masters needed to answer to reach a higher Realm of power.


    "That''s about it for what I''ve been working on these days," Rui remarked nonchntly, shifting his gaze. "What about you, Kane?"


    The two of them were meeting for the first time in three years, although it didn''t feel like any time at all as Martial Artists.


    "Building up my systems of thought," Kane muttered, dissatisfied. "It''s so hard to think up sophisticated systems of thought. I can''t believe you''ve been doing this since you were an Apprentice. That''s just insane."


    Rui smiled. "You should master the Mind Pce technique if you''re having difficulty juggling lots of information. It is one of the reasons that I was able to use the more information-intensive systems of thought at all. It might help you through it."


    "I already have, but even that technique is so difficult to use for anything other than basic facts. In the first ce, it''s crazy that you were able to use it to memorize the entire Shionel Dungeon. Or the entire Garden of Salvation."


    Kane assumed that he would be able to rapidly memorize information and organize it efficiently in ways that allowed for swift retrieval and processing.


    However, after purchasing the technique, he realized that not only was it not supposed to allow for such things, it was insanely difficult.


    It stressed imagination to the very limit just to conjure up a detailed room in his mind to actually store information.


    Rui made it look easy.


    "Sigh, I don''t know if I can create a Martial Mind. It seems way too hard," Kane grumbled.


    "Hm, if you''re having difficulty, then maybe you should try the speed-oriented voidlet techniques that I created precisely to increase the rate of breakthroughs to the Master Realm," Rui calmly informed him.


    Kane frowned. "I thought those were for aspirants and Apprentices."


    "They are¡­" Rui admitted. "However, I''ve been informed that the Martial Artists across the entirety of the lower Realms have purchased and learned them. Apparently, a new Martial Master credits her breakthrough to them. They are a collection of rtively simple rules of thumb and heuristics organized into a single system of thought. It is meant to be extremely broad, flexible, and open to lots of customization and expansion. You might find what you''re looking for there."


    Kane''s eyes lit up with interest. "That sounds like a pretty good option, to be honest. Maybe I''ll give it a shot. Better than banging my head against a wall."


    "In general, building a Martial Mind takes a long, long time," Rui remarked. "My circumstances are not normal. In fact, they are more extraordinary than most people can even begin to dream of."


    Kane nodded knowingly.


    Knowing the truth had made him feel much less pressed about the gap between them. He knew that Rui had been blessed with some incredible circumstances that had aided him to his heights.


    "Although those same circumstances areing to bite me in the ass when ites to breaking through to Sage Realm," Rui murmured with dissatisfaction. "¡­What do you n on doing now?" Kane wondered. "Another training phase?"


    "Definitely not." Rui shook his head. "What I need is¡­"


    His eyes narrowed. "¡­experience. For the foreseeable future. I''m going to rue as much experience as possible."


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2134 Kandrian Martial Chambers

    Chapter 2134 Kandrian Martial Chambers


    Not even a week had passed before Rui grew bored and restless.


    A peaceful life was fun before one realized that it also meant that there was nothing for a Martial Master to do.


    He visited some of his old friends, talking to them about how things had changed while reminiscing about their days in the academy. So many of them were so different from how they were more than ten years ago that it was rather jarring at several points.


    Inparison, he might as well be frozen in time. His breakthrough to the Master Realm naturally put some distance between himself and Martial Artists of the Lower Realms. However, he had already epted that this was the price of breaking through to the Master Realm. He wasn''t sure that he could have normal rtionships with people outside of the orphanage.


    Yet, once it was all over, he yearned to go back to training.


    And he did.


    His father had alreadymenced Operation Transcension a week ago.


    This meant that at this point in time, the manifold was almost certainly up and running.


    He knew that his father nned to break the news to the Martial Community, slowly and in a limited fashion. He could not juste out and tell everyone that they had developed a four-dimensional Manifold for training that altered the flow of time such that fourteen seconds passed in it every time one second passed in the real world.


    That was a foolish way of going about it.


    While Martial Masters and Martial Sages were qualified to know the whole truth, Martial Artists of the Lower Realms were simply unqualified and untrusted to know the entire truth. Rui suspected that his father would be deceptive when exining the effects of the dungeon and, sure enough, he was right.


    "Hey, big brother, do you know about that training drug that the Martial Union apparently developed that messes with your sense of the flow of time?" Mana frowned. "Apparently, if you consume it, it messes with how your mind and body perceive how time flows. So you can get a lot of work done in a short amount of time. We''ve saved up a lot of Martial Credits. Do you think we should purchase a dose of the drug?"


    Rui smiled knowingly. "It''s probably the best decision you can make."


    "Really? Hmmm¡­ then we''ll definitely purchase it."


    His father and the Martial Union had gone about it in an interesting but prudent manner. This way, the investigative efforts of any foreign power were doomed to be stalled due to focusing on the wrong direction.


    The amount of time it would take them to see through this deception would most certainly increase.


    Soon enough, this ''drug'' would spike in demand for its training benefits while other nations would conduct their own research and intelligence gathering to crack the form. On top of that, they could fake everyone out by expressing a high demand for materials and ingredients that had some corrtion to the alleged effect of the drug.


    Rui couldn''t help but grin at the thought.


    They also would probably increase the prices of the dungeon once its effects became well-known. So much so that even Martial Masters would need topete in order to gain ess to it.


    Not Rui, of course. As the part-owner of the dungeon, he hadplete ess to the dungeon at all times.


    He had no intention of being remiss in its utility. However, staying there for too long without stimtion for his Adaptive Evolution would impede his Martial Path. While he couldn''t afford to abuse the dungeon due to that, he most certainly could afford to use it for training new techniques or grinding for some experience.


    It was what he intended to do.


    STEP


    Rui had arrived in the depths of a forest, gazing at nothing in particr. "Here?" he asked, shifting his gaze to the suited man who stood beside him.


    "Yes, Your Highness."


    Rui''s gaze returned to nothing in particr. "Well, I assume you have some way ofmunicating with the team managing the manifold inside."


    "Indeed, Your Highness." The man pulled out a strange device with a special esoteric substance stuck inside it. "His Majesty has established a system of protocols of how, why, and when the manifold can be opened. We are to open and close it as and when you desire."


    "Good to know." Rui smirked. "Now, open it up; I can''t wait to see what my father and the Martial Union have done with it."


    "Yes, Your Highness." The man pressed a button, and soon enough, Rui felt a ripple through space and time itself.


    The manifold had opened.


    Yet¡­


    "I don''t see anything." Rui frowned at the unchanged scenery before him before realization dawned on him. "Ah, I see¡­"


    "The entire manifold boundary is armed with state-of-the-art Sage-level sensory disguising technology, Your Highness," the man informed Rui. "Let us step inside."


    And he did.


    Just one step forward and¡ª


    WHOOSH


    Rui''s eyes widened when his entire view changed.


    One moment, he was in a forest. N?velDrama.Org holds text ? rights.


    The next moment, he found himself staring at an enormous expanse of training infrastructure and facilities that stretched as far as the eye could see. An ocean of cutting-edge Martial training resources. The dream of any Martial Artist.


    "¡­Woah," he whispered.


    He couldn''t help but get lost in the sheer scale of the investment that both the Kandrian Government and the Martial Union had put into the project. It was an enormous project that had taken an unfathomable amount of resources and capital to build.


    "This is a game changer," he murmured, rising to the sky to get a better look at everything.


    His father had gone all out.


    He had undoubtedly drained the Royal Inventory of esoteric resources to help see the project right through to the very end. However, Rui also knew that they would be able to recoup all of it soon enough thanks to the Elder Tree Connection; thus, it could be seen as an investment for the future.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2135 Resource Allocation

    Chapter 2135 Resource Allocation


    Rui had to admit that his father and the Martial Union had made the manifold far more useful than it had been on its own. Although he had found a way to make do without resources when developing his Muspelheim and Niflheim techniques, he had to admit that things would have gone a lot smoother if he had the Martial Union''s resources when developing those two techniques.


    Now, with the manifold armed with the best of what the Kandrian Empire as a whole had to offer, it truly was as though the Martial Union was buying time, rtive to the rest of the world.


    He spread his senses across the entire manifold, taking a good look at all the progress that had been made by the two most powerful forces of Kandria.


    At first nce, one might find it surprising that not all of the space had been dedicated to Martial Art.


    Only eighty-five percent of the space had been dedicated to Martial Art.


    The remaining space had been dedicated to non-Martial-Art-rted activities. He spotted some ratherrge researchplexes as well as entire buildingplexes dedicated to the management of the rest of the manifold.


    After all, all the infrastructure and training resources weren''t going to manage and maintain themselves. An entire department of divisions and teams was required to manage the whole thing from end to end.


    "The question is how you''re going to manage having so many civilians working on a national treasure without causing any leaks¡­" Rui narrowed his eyes.


    It didn''t matter how much the Kandrian Government and Martial Union worked on vetting their staff. Putting so many people in direct exposure to such an important secret would undoubtedly cause at least one of them to leak precious intelligence in one way or another. He had his doubts until he found another massive section dedicated to vast expansive residential blocs.


    "Ah¡­ I suppose they cannot leak information if they never leave the manifold ever again."


    It was a brutal strategy to seal any and all intelligence risks, yet highly effective nheless.


    Emperor Rael most likely decided to make the secret hiring program specify ''for life'' and ''can never leave'' conditions.


    He didn''t need to resort to dark means, either. N?velDrama.Org holds text ? rights.


    The world was filled with all kinds of desperate people who were willing to do anything to escape their hellish circumstances. It would be quite easy to use those circumstances to get them to agree to extreme conditions, even if Kandrian wages and remuneration would undoubtedly be like heaven to them.


    Many would call that exploitation, but Rui knew that neither his father nor the Martial Union cared about such principles. By the standards of this brutal Age of Martial Art, just not forcefully enving them and making them work against their will could be considered quite virtuous.


    Rui could technically push back this hical arrangement if he wanted, with his authority over it, but the truth was that he didn''t care about it either.


    He was more interested in evaluating how well his father and the Martial Union had made use of the space of the manifold, and whether it was the most optimal division of resources or not. In that regard, it madeplete sense to dedicate an overwhelming majority of the space to Martial Art and only a minority to R&D.


    After all, the greatest constraint to Martial Art was time.


    Cultivating Martial Artists took a lot of time.


    Cultivating Apprentices took years.


    Cultivating Squires took more than a decade.


    Cultivating Seniors took multiple decades, often more than a century.


    By the time one reached the upper Realms, multiple centuries were required.


    Inparison, building a single Sage-level siege weapon of mass destruction took eighteen months on average.


    It was precisely this massive disparity in the time needed that Martial Artists had not managed to render siege weapons obsolete even if they were vastly superior inbat in many ways.


    Thus, had anything less than eighty percent of the space been dedicated purely to Martial Art, it would have been called a travesty.


    "Alright, time to check out thebat arenas."


    Rui dove as he surged to the Master-level section,ing across a vast field surrounded by a solid dome that restricted all outside vision into the dome. A prudent measure, considering how harmful Martial Embodiments were to the human mind. Eventually, he found himself touring the entirebat arena for Martial Masters.


    STEP


    "Nice¡­" Rui murmured, sweeping his gaze across the entire area. "I assume this is armed with the power to ensure that the power of Martial Masters is contained within, right?"


    "Yes, Your Highness," the manager of the arena remarked eagerly. "We cannot afford to have the rest of the Kandrian Martial Chambers experience adverse effects from thebat sparring between two Martial Masters."


    Rui nodded.


    The ce was a little cramped for Martial Masters, of course, however, he had to admit that the benefits astronomically outweighed this particr shoring.


    "Alright, I''m booking this ce for myself," Rui announced.


    "Of course, Your Highness," the manager nodded enthusiastically. "How long do you wish to book it to your name?"


    Rui smiled. "Indefinitely long. I''m not leaving until I havepletely satisfied my requirements for this ce."


    "Er, I''m afraid monopolizing of any given resource is not allowe¡ª"


    "I own the resource," Rui retorted calmly. "Partially, anyway. I can make use of any resource unless both the Martial Union and my father personally interject. Until then, it is mine for however I want to use it."


    As far as Rui was concerned, he was entitled to at least this much, considering how much he had gone through to find and escape from the dungeon, before bringing it back home and sharing its ownership with his father and the Martial Union topensate for his discretions.


    He had earned the right to override the interests of others for the safety of his own, to a reasonable extent.


    "Alright." A small grin cracked at the edge of his mouth. "Time to sendmissions to all Martial Masters in the Kandrian Empire."


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2136 Gaining Experience

    Chapter 2136 Gaining Experience


    All hundred and seventy Martial Masters of the Kandrian Empire had received Rui''smissions for experience training. Not all of them were inclined to ept, of course.


    Some were far weaker than he was, unable to provide any meaningful experience to him. Many didn''t want to cross fists with the prodigious Void Prince, due to his immense political status.


    Yet, there were plenty who did ept hismissions, choosing to humor him in a fight. A lot of them were Martial Masters who were deeply motivated. in trying out the manifold anyway.


    After all, the manifold was such a precious resource that each Martial Master pounced at the opportunity to secure one slot or another. Each and every one of them had been stunned when the Sage Council briefed them on the miracle of the manifold. A ce where they made fourteen times as much progress rtive to their progress outside?


    It was such an absurd proposition that hardly any of them could bring themselves to believe it at first. However, when they realized that the Sage Council was not in the habit of pulling impractical jokes and that the Void Prince had indeed brought back home such a magical treasure, most of them leaped at the opportunity.


    If they could have it their way, most Martial Masters would have migrated into the manifold just to ensure that they didn''t fall behind their peers. After all, for every day that they trained outside, their peers inside the manifold would have trained for fourteen days.


    However, Emperor Rael and the Sage Council ensured that the distribution of resources that only half of all Masters of the Empire could train in the manifold at any time. This was to ensure that the Kandrian Empire did not lose all of its Martial Masters in one fell swoop.


    The Empire could not afford to have all of its Masters merrily training away inside the manifold.


    Martial Masters were important to not just the functioning and security of the Martial Union, but also the economy and national security of the entire state.


    Having all of them disappear into a four-dimensional manifold for a few months at a time was disastrous for the nation.


    Thus, only half of all Masters, the most meritorious ones, were able to gain ess to the dungeon at first.


    Thus, many of the Masters who jumped at Rui''smission forbat were actually those who weren''t able to secure their own slots on the first try. Thus, they resorted to entering the manifold by epting Rui''smissions.


    His Martial Master friends were the first to jump at the opportunity.


    WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH


    Rui whizzed through the Master-level arena, avoiding the long-range attacks that Master Ceeran pelted in his direction.


    Yet, that was not enough.


    WHOOSH!


    The attacks abruptly turned their direction of attack, elerating towards Rui.


    Master Ceeran''s Martial Path was post-trajectory maniption, allowing him to manipte long-range attacks even after they had been fired at his opponents. Thus, there was no such thing as avoiding his attacks.


    His eyes narrowed, focusing on Rui as he activated his systems of thought. ''Weaving Pathfinder: Phase One.'' One of the strategies he had developed that helped him create his Martial Mind was created specifically to deal with opponents faster than his wind and sound projectiles. Speed and maneuvering Martial Artists with immense agility often frustrated him when he was a Senior.


    Until Rui had taught him the Pathfinder technique more than fifteen years ago. He modified the ODA System to create a system of thought that allowed him to geometrically corner his opponent in a tapestry woven from sound and wind.


    One that would envelop them and leave them with no room to escape.


    This was the strategy he had developed to deal with people he couldn''t tag due to speed.


    ''Now!'' His eyes shed as he curled his fingers and shifted his breathing, causing all the attacks around the maneuvering to curl onto him, leaving him no room to escape.


    BOOOM!!


    "Yes!" Master Ceeran grinned, celebrating.


    BOOOM!!!


    An even more powerful Yin-Yang Spear crashed into his arm, dealing him an immensely heavy impact.


    It was over.


    By the time, he even gathered his bearings, he found himself staring at Rui''s fist, poised to strike him.


    He heaved a sigh, raising his hands in resignation. "Alright, your win."


    Rui smiled. "Good fight, you''re even stronger than I expected."


    "Hah," Master Ceeran grumbled. "That''s hard to believe, considering that you didn''t even use your hypnosis, domains, or that body maniption technique of yours."


    Rui smiled. "True. But the point of this exercise is to gain more experience, not stack more victories."


    "How did you even escape unharmed?" Master Ceeranined. "I thought I saw you nailed."


    "No," Rui shook his head. "That is just what you wanted to see. And, I just showed it to you. All I had to was read your heaven-bending and your intentions to know when the right moment to trick you was. Your heaven bending grows more strained the closer you get."


    Rui had managed to discern the timing that his friend was going for by relying on such tells and other patterns that allowed him to time the simplest of misdirection to use the man''s expectations against him.


    "Such finesse," Master Ceeran murmured. "Honestly, it would have hurt my pride if you just beat me up straightforwardly." N?velDrama.Org holds text ? rights.


    "Now, where''s the fun in that?" A smirk cracked at the edge of the edge of his mouth. "It was a good fight. It would probably do you good to improve the lethality of your long-range offensive¡­"


    As Rui spoke, Master Ceeran couldn''t help but look back at the good old days when he was a whole Realm above Rui. He had always had an inkling that Rui would one day surpass him. However, he hadn''t expected Rui to shoot past him to such an overwhelming degree. It hurt his pride, yet it also made him more excited to witness the heights that Rui would undoubtedly ascend to.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2137 Repurposed Domain

    Chapter 2137 Repurposed Domain


    Rui began sparring with as many Martial Masters as he could. He overcame the power gaps and most Martial Masters by sealing entire parts of his Martial Art, restricting his power to whatever was necessary and forcing himself to ovee them with sheer Adaptive Evolution.


    This way the difficulty allowed him to extract some meaningful experience from the battle. As long as he could restrict enough techniques from the battle, he could essentially recreate a power dynamic simr to that of fighting an equal.


    If he didn''t do this, the number of Martial Masters that he would be able to fight would be extremely scarce as he was a particrly powerful high-grade Martial Master with the Yin-Yang Spear at his disposal.


    Of course, this came with its downsides as well.


    The more he held back, the less relevant the experience of that particr battle became. After all, he wouldn''t hold back so much in a real fight.


    That was why he valued fights where he didn''t need to hold back.


    WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH


    Master Zentra cleanly evaded a series of Mighty Roar sh sts from Rui as he swerved in and about the battle arena. His sharp eyes focused on Rui as he dodged his attacks one after another.


    Yet, it didn''tst long.


    BAM BAM BAM!!


    Several attacks from Rui struck him true and hard.


    However, he didn''t so much as flinch, blocking them with his hand, which had spontaneously grown thicker, developing what was almost a secondyer of flesh that was like armor.


    Rui narrowed his eyes at the technique.


    It resembled Nemean Blossom in some ways, in both appearance and functionality.


    He was not surprised.


    The Surgeon was famed for his body control and mastery, a field that was created by his former master, Sir Armstrong.


    Yet even Rui couldn''t help but realize that he had underestimated the man''s mastery over his body when he saw him alter his skeleton structure to increase his proficiency in maneuvering and mobility.


    That wasn''t all. The tissue in his body radically altered, growing translucent and, eventually, fully transparent.


    WHOOSH!


    He disappeared, turning into a hazy blur in Rui''s senses.


    "Clever," Rui muttered under his breath as he stressed his senses to the maximum.


    Master Zentra knew that Rui''s Martial Mind became extraordinarily powerful, in so far as its impacts on battle, the more information about his opponent he fed to it. Once the SOUL model wasplete and the existing predictive model created from the Angel of Lace was further elevated, he was extremely difficult to defeat.


    That was why he had settled for a furtive and ndestine approach to this battle. This strategic approach denied Rui the ability to collect the vital information that he needed to feed his systems of thought to grow more powerful and fleshed out. After all, he wouldn''t be able to collect much data on an opponent who could defy even his powerful senses.


    BAM BAM BAM!!


    Rui gritted his teeth as he barely managed to disperse an iing barrage of blows. Yet before he could even muster up a counter, Master Zentra had already moved away, reduced to a hazy blur.


    Despite not being a stealth-oriented martial artist, he proved remarkably difficult to pin down even by Rui''s powerful senses.


    BAM BAM BAM!!


    Rui narrowly blocked another flurry of attacks before his opponent disappeared once more.


    ''This isn''t just misdirection,'' he realized. ''He''s also using physical stealth techniques. Misdirection alone cannot exin this level of stealth due to how inherently resistant I am to it. However¡­''


    It was more than just physical stealth techniques, too. Master Zentra was also using his control and mastery over his Martial Body to alter it to aid his stealth, making it so that it didn''t reflect light and didn''t produce or interfere with sound.


    He focused all his misdirection capital on disrupting Rui''s Riemannian Echo and the mind sense of his Martial Mind, for these were two senses that he couldn''t hide from physically. It was an extremely effective approach for dealing with someone like Rui.


    ''This must be his Martial Mind,'' Rui mused inwardly. ''Finding the most optimal way to apply his body control and mastery to any given opponent in order to maximize their weakness.''


    Rui did not miss that this contained elements of Adaptive Evolution, as did most of the Martial Minds. Martial Masters naturally altered their approach and strategy to their opponents, which meant that they were necessarily utilizing the concept of Adaptive Evolution.


    Regardless, Master Zentra''s strategy was highly effective. Rui''s data collection was greatly hampered by his inability to sense Master Zentra very well.


    BAM BAM BAM!!


    Rui blocked yet another barrage of blows from Master Zentra, who was content ying the long game and slowly chipping away at him.


    Slowly, methodically, and systematically. That was how Master Zentra fought. It was one of the reasons that he had earned the moniker of the Surgeon.


    But s, Rui had no intention of allowing him to win so easily.


    "Niflheim." A smile cracked at the edge of Rui''s mouth.


    WHOOOOOSH!


    An enormous blizzard descended upon the world as heaven and earth froze over. Temperatures plummeted as Rui began using one of his most powerful domain techniques to freeze over the entire environment.


    It was a technique that was designed to make the most of the Tree of Life. Normally, its purpose was to create an environment that was antithetical to flora and fauna species that were unable to tolerate the cold. This content belongs to N?/velDra/ma.Org .


    It was not a technique that was meant to be used against Martial Artists. However, he knew better than anyone that a technique was only as useful as it was applied.


    WHOOSH


    A smirk cracked at the edge of his mouth as he spotted Master Zentra in the field of his senses. He had been forced to repurpose a portion of his body control and mastery to generate enough heat to counter Niflheim. Which reduced the amount dedicated towards stealth, thereby allowing Rui to sense him once more.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2138 Bodily Mastery and Control

    Chapter 2138 Bodily Mastery and Control


    "Impressive," Master Zentra admitted.


    Rui surged at him at top speed, unwilling to let him go this time.


    WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH!


    Master Zentra avoided his blows one after another, refusing to get hit by the immensely powerful technique that Rui had been showing offtely. He immediately judged that of the three primary fields ofbat, Rui''s offense was the most powerful, followed by his mobility.


    ''His defense is the least powerful.'' Master Zentra narrowed his eyes. ''Then, it shall be the focus of mybat approach.''


    His Martial Body shifted as his muscle mass to body mass ratio changed and he realigned tissue across his entire body, undergoing a mini metamorphosis. By the time he was done, his Martial Body looked like it belonged to an entirely different Martial Artist!


    He had grown leaner and thinner, while his muscle mass had, in turn, increased. On top of that, his Martial Body had grown more vulnerable and weaker; his fists had gained more mass, growing denser and harder; his knuckles had grown sharper, able to inflict more damage; and the skin on his fists had roughened, designed to tear away at anything it struck.


    It was a mystifying transformation to any onlooker, but Rui''s powerful mindputed all the information instantly.


    ''He sacrificed durability for speed and offensive power!''


    Master Zentra lunged forward at blinding speeds as a tremendously lethal attack surged at Rui faster than he could evade it.


    BOOOOOM!!!


    SPLAT!


    It was a wonder to witness the sheer amount of lethality that Master Zentra was able to conjure up as he repurposed his entire body for it. His attack pierced Rui''s flesh, leaving a deep gash in his gut.


    Yet, it didn''t yield the oue that Master Zentra was hoping for. This content ? N?v/elDr(a)m/a.Org.


    FSSS¡­


    Steam erupted from Rui''s wound as Weaving Blood swiftly healed it in an instant. It had been especially blessed by the Sandflower Nectar potion, allowing it to not onlyst far longer than it ever would have in the past but to also heal far more quickly than it ever used to.


    "Nifty," Master Zentra observed. "But let''s see just how much punishment it can take."


    WHOOSH!


    In an instant, he had arrived before Rui, a powerful blow already surging at him at blurring speeds.


    "Temporal Disharmony." BOOOOOM!!!


    The one tond a blow was Rui.


    VMMM!!!


    Master Zentra grimaced in shock and pain, having been struck by the blow before he could even fathom what had happened.


    Yet, his flustered shock created an opening.


    An opening that Rui had been waiting for from the very start. It was why Rui had waited that long to use Temporal Disharmony¡ªhe did not want to waste the potential for seizing the initiative and maximizing the impact of the technique on the battle by using it at any moment but the one with the greatest element of surprise.


    And his patience had paid off.


    The Hypnomatrix had been the part of his Martial Art that was most empowered by his breakthrough to the Master Realm, reaching extremely potent levels of mental incapacitation.


    BOOOM BOOOM BOOOM!!!


    CRACK CRACK CRACK!


    Blow after blow, Rui battered Master Zentra''s vulnerable Martial Body with Yin-Yang Spears, one after another. He had no intention of sparing him the wrath of his newborn offensive technique.


    Each blow not only left an enormous and ugly purple bruise on Master Zentra''s body, but it also caused massive internal hemorrhaging as the devastating impact permeated deep into his body in a manner simr to but far greater than Reverberating Lance.


    It was a devastatingly lethal offensive technique that very few Martial Artists could afford to be on the receiving end of.


    Unfortunately for Rui, Master Zentra was one of them.


    FWOOSH!


    ''He''s reducing the coefficient of friction between my fist and his skin by making his skin extraordinarily smooth!'' Rui''s eyes widened with surprise.


    He had no idea that Master Zentra could utilize his mastery and control of his Martial Body this way. Whether it was by manipting tissue alignment or having his skin turn into a particrly slippery substance, he was able to make proper collisions extremely difficult to achieve!


    ''Damn!'' Rui''s expression grew severe as he continued sting the Master blow after blow. ''This technique is especially ill-suited to handle with Yin-Yang Spear.''


    Zero friction didn''t make it impossible tond proper impacts¡ªcertainly not. However, it did make it extremely difficult, as each blow would now have to strike Master Zentra exactly perpendicrly, straight, and directly down at the point of impact.


    Even the slightest angle would cause Rui''s attacks to slip off rtively harmlessly.


    BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!


    Yet, just as Rui began getting the hang of it, his advantage was already gone.


    WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH!!


    Master Zentra evaded his blows with remarkable speed, having already healed all of the immense damage that he had taken at a rate that put even Weaving Blood to shame. Unlike Weaving Blood, he didn''t just heal or regenerate, he also returned blood lost in internal bleeding back into the bloodstream.


    This allowed him to surpass the healing speed of Weaving Blood while conserving more energy and preserving more blood, all while maintaining his speed and offensive power advantages. His Martial Mind contained systems of thoughts that minimized the blood loss and energy loss without taking anything away from hisbat power.


    It was the same as if Rui could use three Metabody techniques without dying very shortly after. Master Zentra''s immense mastery and control over his body allowed him to wield the power of Rui''s forbidden technique without side effects.


    It was one of the many reasons that he was particrly strong even among high-grade Martial Masters.


    WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH!


    He evaded Rui''s swift attacks while his own attacks struck Rui true and hard.


    BOOM BOOM BOOM!


    SPLAT SPLAT SPLAT!


    His razor-sharp knuckles and jagged skin tore apart Rui''s flesh as fast as Rui could mend them with Weaving Blood. Each blow left a wound that took a bit out of his stamina. BOOOM!


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2139 On the Brink

    Chapter 2139 On the Brink


    "Who do you think will win?" Master Ceeran watched with palpable tension, drawn in by the heat of the battle.


    "It is difficult to predict, I''m afraid." Headmaster Aronian heaved a sigh of admiration. "Master Zentra is as formidable as ever, but the young Master has grown tremendously stronger upon his entry to the Master Realm."


    "I am leaning slightly to Master Zentra," Master Vericita calmly stated. "Rui has grown a lot, indeed, but he has yet to consolidate and refine his gains with experience. He has grown too fast for his own good. Master Zentra, on the other hand, has not only grown since Ist saw him, but has refined every inch of his Martial Art over decades and centuries."


    It was a powerful argument that even the most ardent Rui fan couldn''t help but deeply consider her words.


    "You underestimate the arrogant brat."


    Their attention was drawn by Master Gurren who stood stoically, watching the battle. "He has grown far stronger than I could ever imagine."


    Master Gurren, in particr, had been deeply impressed by Rui''s Niflheim domain, and by the fact that he had also developed passive mastery. Rui had never had a particrly strong affinity for domain bending, but he had a deep understanding of what made heaven and earth bend.


    It was why he had been able to develop a telescopic technique that Master Gurren had needed to be educated on how to use, despite not being able to use it as well as Master Gurren himself could.


    The same was true for the Niflheim technique that he was witnessing. Its functionality was beyond his understanding. "Yet, its purpose in this battle is simply to root out his opponent." Master Gurren narrowed his eyes. "It''s an extremely energy-consuming technique that''s being used for a very minute but necessary reason."


    That, in addition to the fact that Rui was using other energy-consuming and stamina-draining techniques, the Yin-Yang Spear and Weaving Blood, meant that his energy reserve was plummeting by the second. If not for the Sandflower Nectar Potion, he would not have been able to sustain such massive energy expenditure. This is property ? of N?velDrama.Org.


    Yet, it didn''t mean he could keep up such massive energy expenditure for too long.


    Something would eventually have to give.


    Master Zentra knew that and had already begun adjusting his energy to ensure that he wouldst much longer than Rui while still pressuring with his Martial Art to keep up his high expenditure of energy.


    BOOM BOOM BOOM!


    Master Zentra bombarded him with even more attacks, waiting for the moment when Rui eitherpromised or ran out of energy.


    Unfortunately, it never came.


    Precisely three minutes had passed since Rui could sense him once more after the Niflheim domain rooted him out.


    It was more than enough for Rui''s second system of thought to have finally beenpleted.


    Master Zentra''s fist surged towards Rui, threatening to tear another wound in his body.


    WHOOSH


    His eyes widened as the attack crashed into an empty image.


    A feint. BOOOOOM!!!


    CRACK!


    "Rgh!" He grimaced as a powerful attack crashed into his back before he could even react, cracking several bones in his opponent''s back.


    Yet, he didn''t let up, throwing blow after blow at Master Zentra, each empowered by the lethal Yin-Yang Spear, ravaging his external and internal body.


    BOOOM BOOOM BOOOM!!!


    CRACK CRACK CRACK!


    Master Zentra grimaced, evading them to the best of his ability.


    Yet, he couldn''t.


    Wherever he stepped, he found a powerful attack waiting for him before he could even react.


    As though Rui knew exactly what he would do even before he himself did.


    And that was exactly what was happening.


    With the predictive model of the VOID algorithm and the SOUL model of the SOUL System, the amount of insight Rui had on his opponent far exceeded anything any other Martial Master could even begin to imagine.


    That, inbination with the powerful Temporal Disharmony that shackled his perception of time and negated his speed advantage, and Master Zentra knew that evading Rui was a lost cause.


    The change was swift.


    In seconds, his body had already shifted from speed and offense to pure defense. His flesh grew thicker and insnt to vibrations, trying to minimize the damage that Rui''s attacks inflicted on his body.


    BOOOM BOOOM BOOOM!!!


    Master Zentra balled up as he dedicated all his resources to guarding against his opponent''s attacks.


    Rui, on the other hand, continued sting his opponent with attack after attack, trying to get through the shockingly thick defenses that Master Zentra was able to conjure.


    He made progress.


    Each blow left massive bruises, cuts, broken bones, and internal bleeding despite the heavy focus on defense. The sheer concussive power of the Yin-Yang Spear was so great that Master Zentra knew that if he let the technique get a clean hit on his head, the fight was over.


    Yet, even then, the fight drew close to an end as Rui battered Master''s Zentra''s body beyond repair without potions. As powerful as his inherent healing was, it could not cope with the sheer amount of damage that Rui''s technique inflicted on him.


    BOOM BOOM BOOM!!!


    "Heh, it''s over." Master Ceeran grinned. "Rui has managed to ovee everything that Zentra threw at him."


    Master Vericita smiled knowingly.


    "Not yet."


    Inches away from victory, Rui froze.


    Not of his own will.


    "Finally, it appears that the poison has kicked in after all those wounds I injected it through." Master Zentra''s calm voice rang in his ears as he met Rui''s shocked gaze with a knowing look. "Spontaneous Poison Synthesis. My final technique and system of thought that I have to offer."


    "Argh!" Rui coughed blood.


    ck blood.


    He felt his muscles leaving his control, growing more paralyzed by the moment.


    It was the prime opportunity for Master Zentra to seize victory, yet he had been so badly wounded that he couldn''t even move.


    Rui, on the other hand, strained to break from the powerful paralytic effect of the poison.


    The two Martial Masters struggled on the precipice of victory and defeat.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2140 Lacking Intuition

    Chapter 2140 Lacking Intuition


    Rui had to admit that he hadn''t so much as detected a whiff of the poison, both literally and metaphorically.


    Yet, by the time he knew of it, it had already been coursing through his veins. His body felt like it was on fire, yet, simultaneously, he felt himself losing control. It appeared that the poison''s primary purpose was paralysis. It made sense, considering how hard he had damaged Master Zentra with his Yin-Yang Spear technique after the SOUL System had kicked in. Had Rui been able to move at all, he would have won regardless of what the poison did to him since he was already so close to victory.


    "Damn it¡­" Rui cursed as he focused on trying to regain control of his body.


    Master Zentra, on the other hand, was seeing far beyond him.


    "Your Highness¡­" He coughed. "Why don''t we call this a draw?"


    His condition was poor, so much so that even getting up and finishing Rui would require a tremendous amount of exertion, more than he was able to muster. It was highly unlikely that Rui would be able to ovee the poison if he hadn''t already.


    An opponent either could deal with poison or they couldn''t. There was seldom any in between.


    "Rgh¡­!" Rui gritted his teeth. "Damn¡­!"


    "The poison was constituted in my body after subjecting samples of your blood to various tests to see what poison would be quickest-acting and most effective." Master Zentra coughed. "My system of thought allowed me to synthesize the best poison for the circumstances. You won''t be able to ovee it. I would suggest that we call it a draw and seek medical treatment."


    Rui stopped struggling for a moment as he considered the esteemed Master''s words.


    Frankly, the only reason he was reluctant was because he wanted to defeat his opponent. However, as far as the purpose of the battle went¡ªgaining experience¡ªhe had already achieved it.


    "¡­Fine." Rui heaved a tired sigh. "A draw it is."


    Master Zentra smiled softly. "It was a good fight."


    Soon after, the two Martial Masters received the medical attention that they needed, rapidly returning to their peak conditions. Rui needed to undergo more borate medical procedures due to the fact that the poison had to be extracted from his bloodstream. Thankfully, Master Zentra cooperated with the medical team to help them diagnose it sooner.


    Seeing that the medical team couldn''t do it on their own, Rui couldn''t help but grow more curious about the technique and system of thought that helped Master Zentra equalize the game and extract a draw from him.


    "You need to have real knowledge of chemistry and esoteric chemistry to be able to synthesize poisons inside your body in the middle of a battle," Rui remarked with interest, approaching the man after his medical treatments wereplete. "Other poison Martial Artists don''t synthesize poisons inside their body; they just condition their body to grow immune to them."


    Master Zentra shifted his gaze to Rui. "It wasn''t just a matter of learning about poisons. I also needed to have an intimate understanding of how the human body worked. I needed to develop an understanding of how both poisons functioned and how the human body worked in order to develop the relevant poison-creation technique and the system of thought to be able to diagnose my opponent''s various poison resistances. This knowledge was the reason that I was assigned as the evaluator of the value of your Hungry Pain technique."


    Rui recalled his presentation of the Hungry Pain technique soon upon his return to the Kandrian Empire nearly a decade or so ago. It had been his first time meeting Master Zentra.


    "It''s an incredibly unique technique and system of thought," Rui offered. "I don''t think I''ve evere across a system of thought this divergent and different."


    "It is an honor to hear that from the master of systems of thought, but you wille to learn that it isn''t revolutionary among poison-oriented Martial Masters," Master Zentra calmly stated. "It is unique in that only someone with my Martial Body could execute it to such a degree. One of the reasons that you didn''t see iting is precisely due to your inexperience. A more experienced Martial Artist who had been exposed to arge variety of Martial Masters inbat would have intuitively recognized the dangers."


    Rui heaved a sigh. "Ever since I reached the Master Realm, I have been confronted by myck of experience time and time again."


    Master Zentra regarded him with a knowing look. "Frankly, it would not have mattered nearly as much had you not broken through to the Master Realm. While your inexperience wouldn''t have suddenly disappeared due to your lower Realm, it wouldn''t have mattered nearly as much because Martial Artists of the Senior Realm are far younger on average. Thus, the gap would be smaller and less relevant." This is property ? of N?velDrama.Org.


    Rui nodded, heaving a sigh. "As of right now, I have the experience of a young Senior."


    "Well, I do not mean to put you down. But as of right now, you have the experience of the average Martial Squire."


    Rui winced at the man''s words. "I suppose that is much harder to refute than to digest."


    Master Zentra grew sympathetic to his predicament. "The worst part would undoubtedly be the fact that, even with this training manifold, you cannot fully ovee it. At most, you can mitigate it by gaining some basic experience. Any more is a waste of time and a waste of youth."


    Rui nodded knowingly, heaving a sigh. "At some point, the returns from spending time on gathering experience will diminish to the point that it''s no longer worth spending that time on gathering experience as opposed to spending it on training a new technique."


    Until that point came, however, he would spend some time grinding to expose himself to what was possible in the Master Realm. It was objectively the best for both short-term and long-term benefits at this moment.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2141 Hypnotic Solution

    Chapter 2141 Hypnotic Solution


    Rui continued to spend time gathering experience within the manifold. As hoards of Martial Masters continued to rush into the dungeon, he knew that he wouldn''t be running out of opponents anytime soon.


    However, one of the problems he faced was that once he created a predictive and SOUL model on his opponent, he could never gain any meaningful experience from them ever again. This was due to the fact that his systems of thought were too overwhelmingly powerful. They literally showed him highly urate predictions and the physical intentions, at their inception, of his opponents. Thus, he came to a firm decision to maximize the experience he gained from this particr exercise.


    "I won''t use the pattern recognition system or the SOUL System against Martial Masters that can''t win against me when I do use them."


    It was a remarkably decisive, albeit extreme, decision.


    Yet, he was quite certain of his choice.


    He had decades of experience with the pattern recognition system of the VOID algorithm. He had years of experience with the SOUL System. Now, in order to cultivate his intuition and experience, he wished to be divorced from the systems of thought for some time so that he could develop the former.


    His decision was well met with approval from his friends in the Master Realm. "It makes sense. They help you inbat but can be a liability in training other things due to how strong they are," Master Ceeran offered.


    "Systems of thought and intuition often ovep in the same purposes," Headmaster Aronian remarked eruditely. "In your case, you have been utilizing a system of thought that was very powerful from a very young stage, mildly crippling the growth of your intuition. It would do you good to put your systems of thought aside for a bit to ensure that your intuition doesn''t fall back too behind."


    "It would behoove you to consider fighting Martial Artists of the Senior Realm without your Martial Mind or systems of thought if you''re willing to put them aside."


    Their insights helped refine how he intended to spend his training time inside the manifold, fleshing out how the next few years were going to look.


    However, he had plenty of things to do even outside of his training schedule. This is property ? of N?velDrama.Org.


    "So these are the first batch, hm?" Rui raised an eyebrow as he inspected arge crowd of students from across all sixteen Martial academies of the Kandrian Empire.


    Seeing their uniforms made him slightly nostalgic about his time as a nobody in the Martial Academy of Hajin.


    "Yes, Your Highness." A man bowed deeply before Rui. "His Majesty hopes that you will be able to break them through to the Apprentice Realm."


    Rui heaved a sigh. "It''s not that easy, you know."


    He had confirmed his ability to break students of the exploration stage in the Martial Academy with a student that he had personally tutored. However, it had required one-on-one attention from him.


    "His Majesty is aware of that, most certainly." The man remained bowed before Rui. "However, those limitations existed when you were a Martial Squire, two realms below your current level of power."


    Rui stirred at those words.


    He would be lying if he said that he hadn''t considered that exact rationale.


    He was a Martial Master.


    He was capable of a lot more thingspared to when he was a mere Squire. The sheer amount of raw power, control and mastery, and cognition that he had at this point in time was so high that nothing that used to be impossible when he was a Squire was even relevant anymore.


    "I have some ideas," Rui admitted. "I''ll need to think about it."


    "Of course, Your Highness."


    Rui fell into consideration as to how he could turn all these students into Martial Artists. The breakthrough into the Apprentice Realm was about discovering one''s Martial Path, an emergent field of Martial Art within each person that they had an absolute prime affinity for. The breakthrough was born out of self-awareness. Rui had long discovered that he could significantly hasten the breakthrough process and increase the odds of it happening by arge extent. He did this by creating predictive models of them and then embodying those predictive models in his movements, allowing him to mimic his targets''bat identically.


    It was a lesser version of the copying that Ieyasu could do, which led him to believe that his rival could trigger breakthroughs in the Apprentice Realm to a much greater degree than even he could.


    They had a silent shared agreement not to cause problems forever.


    Rui shook his head, returning to the present as his attention fell back on the students gathered in the pavilion.


    "I definitely can''t trigger all their breakthroughs manually one by one in person," Rui muttered. "That would take far too long and would lead to a worthless increase in the number of Apprentice breakthroughs."


    He needed a practical solution that allowed him to ovee the logistics constraint of triggering all their breakthroughs to a remarkably low degree.


    "Ah¡­" Rui''s eyes lit up as he stumbled upon the perfect solution, and his mind furiously processed all possibilities. "Mass hypnosis is the way to go."


    Via mass hypnosis, he could have each of them face clones of themselves that fought identically to them via the predictive and SOUL models that he created on each of them. This was essentially an even better version of copying their Martial Art and fighting them himself with it. Furthermore, by substituting himself with hypnosis, he could reach a muchrger number of people simultaneously.It was the perfect way to ovee the physical limits of how many people he could train at once personally by himself.


    "I would need to create predictive and SOUL models on all of them."


    However, that was an extremely trivial task for him with his Martial Mind. Even without it, it wouldn''t have been a problem, considering that they weren''t even Martial Artists.


    -


    30999b81aa2ed2d22fc02de149b32c8c05d14e7b97f87c65692cd1ed614c94d2c2354fa892ac732a9df5294dac577a8f2ac30a0ace241b0d3ef3f6f18b96160e


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2142 Rapid Results

    Chapter 2142 Rapid Results


    The students of the academy had been puzzled when the headmistress of their Martial Academy had suddenly halted all their activities and summoned them to inform them that they would be carted off for some special training.


    Much to their surprise, the Martial Academy didn''t even tell them where they were going. After they stepped out of their carriages, they were assembled in a training field and told to await further instruction.


    It was truly puzzling.


    Normally, the Martial Academy was a lot more transparent with any and everything that they wanted the students to do. Thus, it was highly unusual for them to act in such a manner.


    Many of them wanted to leave, yet they didn''t even know where they were.


    "Tsk, did they just bring us here to while away time?!"


    "I''m sure they have something in mind."


    "I wish they would tell us," anotherined. "It''s super boring doing nothing here!"


    Eventually, however, something changed.


    WHOOSH¡­!


    They grew stunned as an army of clones appeared before them out of nowhere.


    Clones of themselves.


    They were identical in every conceivable fashion in not just physicality, but in terms of mannerisms too.


    "What the-?!"


    "What is happening?"


    "This must be part of a test."


    They took their stance with uncertainty as the army charged toward them aggressively. Each clone sought its original, picking a fight with them immediately.


    The students soon got embroiled in a rather brutal battle with themselves.


    Much to their shock, their clones not only looked and acted like them, but they fought identically to themselves as well!


    On top of that, theirbat power was identical as well.


    This meant that each battle was entirely symmetric and brutally even. Not a single person was able to emerge dominant in their battles, while it took them every ounce of their power to not be ovee by their own clone.


    Struggle as they did, the fights continued without pause.


    "I see." An elderly feminine voice remarked at a distance, watching what unfolded amongst the students. "I understand how this can increase the probability of breakthroughs substantially, Your Highness."


    Her eyes shifted to Rui, who stood in the sky beside her, operating his hypnosis on the unsuspecting students that tussled with his hyper-realistic illusions.


    "This exercise will instill deep amounts of self-awareness in them," she continued with a knowing tone. "After all, seeing one''s self from the outside is a perspective that has the most to offer yet is the hardest to attain. You are able to give it to them in abundance. No wonder His Sagehood, the shing Flier, informed me that you would be able to significantly hasten their discoveries to the Master Realm."


    Her attire bore the crest of the Martial Academies, signifying her position as headmistress of one of the sixteen Martial Academies of the Kandrian Empire. Rui nodded silently, focusing on his hypnosis.


    "Your gifts are priceless," she murmured faintly as she fullyprehended the ramifications of Rui''s ability. "This can elevate the Kandrian Empire to unprecedented heights along with the manifold and the Divine Doctor."


    Rui smiled wryly, instantly understanding exactly how much she knew and what stage his father was when it came to disseminating all the information about his n.


    "You know," she continued. "Had anyone told me that the runner-up from the Apprentice-level Martial Contest nearly twenty-five years ago would go on to change the country as much as you have, I would haveughed in their face. Yet, here we are."


    Rui recalled that she had been the headmistress of her Martial Academy even back then, just like Headmaster Aronian. That was undoubtedly the first time she had ever heard of him.


    From her point of view, it was jarring to see an ultimately insignificant Apprentice rise through the years to the heights that he had.


    It made her feel old and outdated, reminding her of her own stagnated power.


    She had long given up on reaching the Sage Realm. Any Martial Drive that she once had had long fizzled away, leaving behind a person without any more ambition or desire for any more power. It was why she had stepped away from the battlefield, and instead taken on the important mantle of headmistress, assuming the duty of ensuring that Martial Art constantly received a fresh supply of new Martial Artists each year. Yet, now that she had seen one of the students far surpass her in every dimension conceivable, she had to admit that she hadn''t taken it as well as she would have liked.


    It couldn''t be helped, after all. This was the first Martial Master to emerge from the Martial Academies since she had taken office seventy years ago. Reaching the Master Realm took an enormous amount of time; thus, she had always thought that this significant event would require decades more.


    "Headmistress."


    Rui drew her attention, gesturing at the crowd of students down below with a smile.


    "We have our first breakthrough."


    Her eyes widened with shock as she sensed the faint yet unmistakable aura of a Martial Apprentice down among her students. "¡­That is far earlier than I anticipated!"


    Her stunned gaze shifted back to Rui.


    "If you can trigger breakthroughs with this little time working on the subjects, then¡­"


    The ramifications were scary to even consider.


    "We''re not done yet, headmistress," Rui smirked. "I hope you''re able to secure a greater budget of expenditure from the Martial Union because you''re going to need it to expand the Martial Academies when they''re overflowing with Martial Apprentices, I''m afraid."


    A momentter, several more students discovered their Martial Paths in the heat of battle, breaking through to the Apprentice Realm.


    They added weight to the veracity of his words. This is property ? of N?velDrama.Org.


    Rui grinned as he pushed each student to their very limits as they learned more about themselves in the past five minutes than they had during their entire time at the Martial Academy. As long as Kandria could persist, it would reach unprecedented heights of power.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2143 Quelled Reaction

    Chapter 2143 Quelled Reaction


    By the time thest student of the Exploration Stage broke through, not a single one of them could believe what had just happened to all of them.


    Suddenly, they had all broken through to the Apprentice Realm.


    To say they were shocked was an understatement.


    What had happened defied the natural order.


    Yet, before they could even process their experience, they felt dizzy, falling unconscious.


    "What did you do?" the headmistress asked, growing concerned. "I wiped out their memories of the experience," Rui calmly replied. "I cannot have them remember what it was that led to their breakthroughs to the Apprentice Realm."


    Of course, he was quite positive that there were very few, if any at all, people capable of replicating the process. Part of the reason that these breakthroughs unfolded much quicker than they ever had in the past was because he applied not just the VOID algorithm to the process but also the SOUL System, allowing him to show them, through their clones, the very inception of their intent.


    In other words, he was the only one capable of triggering this particr kind of breakthrough. Still, he found it worthwhile to ramp up the security measures and ensure that he wiped out their memories on the matter.


    This was despite the fact that he had no experience doing so. All he had was the distant lesson that he had gotten from Master Zeamer back when he had still been a new Martial Senior for the most part.


    He had to admit that he was only able to get it because his targets were new Martial Apprentices while he was a Master with a high affinity forbat.


    "Alright." He heaved a sigh. "We''re done here. Thankfully, it only took half an hour. I don''t think I could bear to waste any more time on a somewhat frequent basis."


    However, while he walked away nonchntly, the headmistress braced herself for the ramifications of his actions with grave severity.


    This was not something that could be blown under the rug to avoid the public shock that it would cause. How could one exin hundreds of students breaking through to the Apprentice Realm in a single day?


    It was a miracle, the likes of which were so unlikely that she had a higher chance of breaking through to the Sage Realm. She knew that she would have to deal with the consequences herself, of course, while the true perpetrator simply washed his hands of the event and moved on.


    Once the parents and guardians of the students were informed of the breakthroughs of the students, a collective shock struck the Martial Community.


    It was a miracle, the likes of which were so unlikely that she had a higher chance of breaking through to the Sage Realm. She knew that she would have to deal with the consequences herself, of course, while the true perpetrator simply washed his hands of the event and moved on.


    Once the parents and guardians of the students were informed of the breakthroughs of the students, a collective shock struck the Martial Community.


    Not a single one of them could believe the news. As more and more people confirmed the simultaneous breakthroughs of arge number of exploration-stage students, they became increasingly confronted with reality.


    Somehow, all the exploration-stage students of the Veine branch of the Martial Academies had broken through to the Apprentice Realm.


    An uproar erupted not just within the Martial Communities but also in other circles across the political ss of the Kandrian Empire.


    How could it not? They were faced with something that was almost certainly a product of the creation of the Martial Academy. "What is going on, Headmistress ya?" In an office in the Veine branch of the Martial Academies, the headmistress found herself sitting opposite arge number of demanding parents who had chosen to collectively confront her on what had happened.


    She met their strong gazes with a calm expression. "Whatever could you be referring to?"


    "Don''t y dumb with me, Headmistress." The man sitting opposite her narrowed his eyes. "Something deeply unnatural has happened to our students. Not only is it almost certainly not an organic development, but we know that the Martial Academy is somehow responsible for it. Our children don''t even remember what has happened."


    She stared at him for a moment before sweeping her gaze across the rest of the parents who had also appeared at the Martial Academy, demanding exnations.


    Most of them were prominent members of the Martial Community.


    They were high-ranking members of powerful Martial Families that had rooted themselves in the Kandrian Empire.


    Yet, she wasn''t worried. This is property ? of N?velDrama.Org.


    "This is the will of the Sage Council and the Emperor of Harmony."


    The demanding parents stiffened as their eyes widened with shock.


    The fact that the two most powerful forces in the Kandrian Empire had joined hands on this initiative shook them.


    Yet, it made sense.


    Only they would have the authority to dictate an event of such revolutionary magnitude. Instantly, their defiance melted away like ice in the summer sun. None of them wanted to find themselves impeding the will of the two greatest power blocs of the nation.


    "If you have any issues with what has happened," she continued, "you may consult them and demand an exnation."


    "¡­Upon self-reflection, we have unanimouslye to the realization that we have been rude and ill-spoken. We would like to take this opportunity to apologize for our conduct and assure the Martial Academy that we are pleased by their dedication and the results that they have produced."


    "Indeed. In hindsight, this is something to be quietly celebrated, not loudlyined about."


    "Forgive our imprudence, Headmistress ya. It appears that we may have overstepped."


    Headmistress ya smiled at the sight of all the hot-blooded parents swallowing their earlier words and retracting everything they had said before.


    "Not at all," she replied with aposed tone. "I would like to apologize to all of you for being unable to provide you with more information. I hope you understand that this is cause for rejoicing, not recalcitrance."


    Very soon, they peacefully departed her office without anything further to say.


    Headmistress ya heaved a sigh.


    The Emperor of Harmony and the Sage Council had considered informing the parents ahead of time to mute their reaction but ultimately decided against it. It would cause arger leak in information. In the first ce, there was absolutely zero hope of ever hiding this. It was definitely impossible, and any effort to do so would be wasted. Short of locking all the Apprentices up from the rest of the world, there was simply no way to hide their breakthroughs.


    The Emperor of Harmony and the Sage Council knew this.


    They knew it but did it anyway.


    The trigger had been lit, and the race had begun.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2144 Local Impacts

    Chapter 2144 Local Impacts


    Martial Art had a deep impact on human civilization, havinge to affect all domains of society. There wasn''t a single field or section of the species that Martial Art hadn''te to be an important variable in defining or altering.


    Be it business andmerce and the various industries and markets that they enveloped, the sciences and adjacent fields in pursuit of the truth, or other fields of intellectual pursuit of any kind.


    Developments in Martial Art affected everything and everyone.


    Everyone knew this, whether they liked it or not.


    Keeping an eye out on Martial Art to keep up with its dynamics and developments was something that everybody with any amount of power of any kind knew to do. After all, it would definitely affect everything.


    That was why the revtion about the hundreds of simultaneous Martial Apprentice breakthroughs at one of the sixteen branches of the Martial Academies rocked everyone out of their seats.


    Their first instinct was to deny it, but they couldn''t.


    It came from too many directions to possibly ignore.


    And it impacted too many directions of human civilization for anybody to ignore.


    It didn''t take everybody much time to put two and two together.


    This was certainly not an organic development and the Martial Union was certainly responsible for it.


    Did this mean that they had made a massive breakthrough in their training technology that resulted in such an absurdly high rate of breakthroughs?


    It appeared so. Then, was it sustainable?


    They quickly found the answers to that in the following days as exploration stage students from across all branches also began experiencing mass breakthroughs!


    This only poured more fuel to the fire.


    No amount of prudence could keep the intelligence hidden. It spread across all echelons of the Kandrian Empire, across the entirety of the political ss of the nation-state.


    The moment the truth became absolutely irrefutable, many broke out into a cold sweat thinking about how this crazy development would affect them. A massive increase in the supply of Martial Apprentices wouldpletely disrupt local business at all levels. Weak and inconsequential as they were on the international stage of East Panama, they were the bedrock of the local Martial industry. They were the sole constituent of the security industry of the Kandrian Empire. They also yed an important role inbor and hunting, which constituted a part of the production of countless goods and services. They were useful for intelligence gathering and surveince as well.


    Their services were the bedrock of a massive amount of trade andmerce within the Kandrian Empire and even outside.


    If the avability of Martial Apprentices spiked, it would massively impact all that trade andmerce in many ways. N?velDrama.Org holds text ? rights.


    For one, the economic value of Martial Apprentices would decrease. After all, supply would increase exponentially while demand would either not change or increase upon the increased supply and the lowered prices needed tomission Martial Apprentices.


    Regardless, it would mean that any goods and services that involved Martialbor at the Apprentice level would experience a substantial decrease in the cost of production due to the lowered price of Apprentices caused by this increased supply.


    It was a good thing for businesses andmercial endeavors of any kind, stimting the supplier market greatly. It was also great news for the consumer market, as the lowered cost of production represented lower prices for the same goods and services.


    It stimted the economy greatly.


    It was great for everybody in the nation.


    Everybody except for Martial Apprentices themselves.


    For Martial Apprentices, this was horrible news.


    It meant morepetition for the same limited amount of resources and market opportunities. It also meant a systematic devaluation of everything that they had to offer.


    It was a deeply unpleasant and hostile development.


    One that could cause the eventual mass discement and emigration of Martial Apprentices to other nations in search of lesspetitive regions that still had a greater appreciation of their services.


    If it wasn''t handled extremely carefully and effectively, the benefits of the mass Apprentice breakthroughs could spill over to other nations. Maximizing both the economic and military benefits of the Apprentice breakthroughs was actually extremely difficult.


    Perhaps a lesser leader would have fumbled, causing the worst to unfold.


    Not Emperor Rael, however.


    "Charles," he gazed down at the prostrating man from atop his ostentatious throne. "I trust the preparations over the past three years areplete, yes?"


    "Yes, Your Majesty." His deep voice was filled with admiration. "It is as you foretold. The DiViliers Division has stockpiled enough cutting-edge training and growth resources to amodate nearly a hundred times as many Martial Apprentices."


    "Good. Ensure that the timelines for the distribution of these resources match those of Operation Transcension." Emperor Rael''s powerful tone grew imperious. "Ensure that every new apprentice that breaks through does not experience any heightened difficulty in attaining all the resources that they could ever need. Ensure that they never ever have any reason to leave the Kandrian Empire in search of resources."


    "Your wish is mymand, Your Majesty." Three years ago, when Rael had uprooted the entirety of the Underworld with the power of prophecy, he had finally found enough evidence that tied Charles DiViliers to the Underworld and all the crimes that came with it.


    However, rather than executing the man, he had decided to dissolve hispany and turn him into the mafia equivalent of a prisoner of war. The man was a highly effective developer of strategically valuable Martial resources; it would have been a waste to kill him. This was especially true considering the fact that these resources would matter a lot once the war began ramping up.


    Thus, he essentially absorbed the man and all his work into the government under his absolutemand and control and squeezed him for all the value he could. As far as Rael was concerned, this itself was more than the man deserved, considering all the misery and despair that he had beenplicit in spreading.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2145 The Great Limit

    Chapter 2145 The Great Limit


    He had put the man to good use in manufacturing and developingrge amounts of Martial resources with proprietary technology three years ago. Emperor Rael possessed the deep political foresight to know that without ensuring a great surplus of Martial resources and market opportunities, he would not be able to retain all these extra Martial Apprentices.


    It was one of the reasons that he had decided to root out the Underworld at all. He needed to get his hands on this man who would be able to increase the quantity of avable Martial resources withoutpromising on quality.


    However, resource avability was just half of the matter, he also needed to ensure that the surplus Martial Apprentices had ample market opportunities.


    He had long thought of a solution for this.


    "Inform the Martial Union tomence the eleration of Apprenticemissions for the Elder Tree operations." He nced at his secretary.


    "Yes, Your Majesty." Making use of the Elder Tree''s intelligence and fulfilling his end of the bargain with the Elder Tree required Martialbor. Thus, he could provide job opportunities to the surplus of Martial Apprentices by having them fulfill the Elder Tree missions.


    Deploying them to the Beast Domain would not only give them a good experience and a handsome ie, but it would also prime their development to be hunter-ss Martial Artists. A ss that was about to be sorely needed if the Kandrian Empire wanted to maximize the benefits of the Beast Domain.


    It was killing multiple birds with a single stone.


    This would satisfy the Apprentices of the Kandrian Empire in the long run, erasing any reason for them to leave. It left them and the rest of the economy and markets happy.


    "Dealing with the local economic and political ramifications was easy enough, but¡­" Emperor Rael''s eyes narrowed. "The international and geopolitical ramifications will not be easy."


    The news would not remain restricted within the Kandrian Empire, after all.


    It never did.


    From local and international investigative and news organizations to spying and intelligence agencies, there were many paths for these juicy revtions to spread to the rest of the world. And spread, they did.


    It spread like wildfire far beyond the Kandrian Empire.


    It spread to all of East Panama.


    "Mass breakthroughs of Kandrian Apprentices?!"


    "How can that possibly be true?!"


    "Dammit! Just what is happening in the Kandrian Empire?!"


    It shook the entirety of the political ss of East Panama, leaving them frozen in horror as they slowly processed the horrifying implications of what they were witnessing.


    Guildmaster Bradt sat in his office with a grave and severe expression.


    He fully understood what they were looking at.


    "The Kandrian Empire¡­ the Emperor of Harmony is attempting to ovee the Great Limit."


    The Great Limit.


    It was an obscure concept of Martial anthropology that was mostly known within the political ss of human civilization. It referred to the barrier that restricted how Martially and militaristically strong any human organization could possibly get. It included all groups of all kinds. Whether they were Martial organizations like the Panamic Martial Federation, the Kandrian Martial Union, or the Martial Consortium of Gorteau, whether they were religious organizations like the Gen Temple and the Virodhabhasa Theocracy, whether they were intelligence organizations like the Beggar''s Sect and the Shadow Guild, whether they were underground organizations like the Underworld, or whether they were nations like the Kandrian Empire, they all were limited qualitatively by what was known as the Great Limit.


    It was not an absolute cosmic limit, per se, more so one of logistical, pragmatic, and Martial reality. The power trajectory of human civilization was not a straight line trending upwards. It was not even a curve.


    No.


    The trajectory of human civilization resembled steps. Every time a new Realm was discovered, there would be a period of astronomical and exponential growth in human civilization as nations and organizations rapidly upgraded to a new Realm of power.


    As long as it continued, there would be no true cap for human civilization.


    This was the prevailing school of thought for much of the Age of Martial Art.


    However, that ceased being true with the advent of the Transcendent Realm. Upon the birth of the first Martial Transcendent, the Martial Primordial, humanity did not grow stronger.


    For Martial Transcendents did not move.


    To this day, nobody knew why.


    But, these unfathomable gods refused to exercise their power.


    Even the most warmongering of Sages like Emperor Arthur of Britannia became an aloof, unmoving ruler who distanced him from all lesser affairs.


    It meant that organizations that obtained a Transcendent essentially lost a Martial Sage without anypensation.


    In other words, bing stronger made them weaker.


    It was a paradoxical yet brutal reality, one that limited how much stronger Sage-level powerhouses could be. More precisely, it limited how fast they could be stronger, making any gains in power extremely grueling and marginal over great periods of time with none of the many spikes that weremon throughout the Age of Martial Arts.


    This was the Great Limit.


    Even if Martial Sages continued to be born en masse without dying inbat with their peers in the depths of the Beast Domain, they would essentially continue to ''die'' as assets when they broke through to the Transcendent Realm. This content belongs to N?/velDra/ma.Org .


    It put an extremely hard limit on how much stronger Sage-level powerhouses could get, one that none of them could find a solution to. Yet, as East Panama realized, the Kandrian Empire might have found a true long-term solution to oveing the Great Limit.


    An exponential increase in Martial Apprentices eventually yielded an exponential increase in Squires, Seniors, Masters, and Sages.


    Thus, the birth of young Sages who were far from the Transcendent Realm meant that the influx of Sages would far outweigh the outflux of Sages into the Transcendent Realm, allowing for a spike far past Sage-level powerhouse territory into a proper Transcendent-level nation.


    And that was precisely what the Kandrian Empire was attempting to do.


    Yet, while most of East Panama was merely aghast and shocked, the reaction of the other three Sage-level powerhouses was a lot more vtile.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2146 Pressured Circumstances

    Chapter 2146 Pressured Circumstances


    Arge number of people were gathered within the presidential headquarters of the Republic of Gorteau.


    The air was heavy.


    President Raymond''s expression crumpled with rage as his teeth gnashed against each other.


    "This¡­" His voice quivered. "This can''t be real."


    The several officers around him nced at each other warily.


    "Mr. President¡­" One of them hesitated. "We have plenty of evidence that this is real. From intelligence reports from our spies in the Kandrian Empire to long-range surveince, as well as intelligence sources from various intelligence brokers."


    There was no doubt that the news regarding the Kandrian Empire was entirely real. The only question was whether the President was ready to face reality.


    President Raymond''s expression grew grave and rageful. "You''re telling me that the Kandrian Empire has found a way to massively increase the rate of breakthroughs to the Apprentice Realm and is now pumping out Martial Apprentices a hundred times faster than the norm? Is that what you''re telling me?"


    "Yes, Mr. President."


    "THEN WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU STILL STANDING HERE FOR?!" he roared. "I WANT ANY AND ALL INTELLIGENCE ON THIS PHENOMENON YESTERDAY!"


    The intelligence and analyst officers stiffened. "Yes, Mr. President."


    "DON''T COME BACK UNTIL YOU HAVE ANSWERS!" he bellowed at them.


    They immediately scampered out of the room, leaving the President alone with his war council.


    "Damn that man!" President Raymond cursed as he felt his stress magnify. "Damn that nation!"


    He tried closing his eyes as he calmed down, trying to regain hisposure.


    "We can''t let this happen." His tone was severe.


    It didn''t take a genius to understand what was at stake.


    The bnce of power and their supremacy was at stake. The Republic of Gorteau was among the four powerhouses that stood at the peak along with its three peers. It was an equal.


    It always had been.


    However, now, the bnce threatened to shift.


    Now, the Kandrian Empire threatened to rise far beyond them.


    "The only silver lining is that it will take centuries for this to affect the bnce of power," his vice-president calmly remarked as she shifted her gaze to him. "In other words, it is not an acute threat, but a chronic, long-term threat."


    President Raymond grew slightly calmer at her words.


    In a few centuries, he would certainly be dead, let alone anywhere near the presidential office.


    Of course, he still cared, but it wasn''t something that would fall on his head immediately.


    "That''s true," he remarked with a grudging expression as he fell into thought. "A bunch of Apprentices will not change anything in the short term. However, it will be damning as long as we don''t do anything about it in the long-term. War will be necessary, after all. I can use this to reel over even those corrupt congressmen."


    His eyes lit up with the possibility of finally being able to wage war. He had been stalled due to his inability to win over Congress to his side; he knew in his gut that the Emperor of Harmony had something to do with why Congress shot down his derations of war time and time again.


    Now, however, he found such a powerful justification for war that it would be politically untenable to keep halting his warring efforts. After all, he now had a truly justifiable cause, did he not?


    "Mr. President." A burly voice drew his attention. "I understand that there is great cause for concern. However, if you do use this as a reason to dere war on the Kandrian Empire, what is going to be the objective of the operation? After all, you cannot just dere war in a vacuum. Each military operation must have an objective. Is your goal to destroy the Kandrian Empire?"


    President Raymond nced at his appointed general thoughtfully. "¡­Previously, it was to overthrow the tyranny of the Kandrian Royal Family and bring justice to the poor people of Kandria. But now¡­"


    His eyes lit up with greed. "¡­Now I must have the method by which the Kandrian Empire is able to massively skyrocket the number of Martial Apprentices that they are able to produce."


    He would be lying if he said that wasn''t his greatest priority.


    "Even if the Kandrian Empire falls, that method will still remain, and it must fall into our hands." His tone grew more intense. "If it''s the method that is the highest priority, then war is hardly the most effective solution here," his vice-president pointed out. "For now, we can rely on intelligence gathering to piece together exactly how this method functions. If that doesn''t work¡­"


    Her eyes sharpened. "¡­Then war it is. We cannot allow the Kandrian Empire to monopolize such a powerful trump card. If they sessfully ovee the Great Limit, then they will be unstoppable amidst human civilization."


    President Raymond nodded. "Intelligence first. But our bottom line is clear. The worst cannot be allowed to happen. No matter what, the oue of the Kandrian Empire rising above all others is something that cannot happen."


    He grew a little less miserable as he gained more confidence in their current direction. He was sure that they would get their hands on the method by which the Kandrian Empire broke through so many Apprentices.


    After all, this is how things had always gone in the past¡ªany trump card that any state tried to abuse would eventually get leaked to everybody else due to the relentless espionage efforts of everybody else around them.


    Of course, there were exceptions to everything. The Gen Temple had miraculously managed to keep its Yin-Yang Shield technique a secret for a long time. This is property ? of N?velDrama.Org.


    "So did the Kandrian Empire with its Squire evolution upgrade¡­" President Raymond''s eyes widened.


    He gritted his teeth. "elerate the intelligence operations. I want confirmation that we''ll be able to steal their new method. The cost is of no matter. I don''t care how much fiscal deficit and debt we have to undertake. Make sure that, this time, we definitely crack their secrets!"


    The Republic of Gorteau mobilized its intelligence arms into action while preparing for a serious possibility of war.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2147 When War?

    Chapter 2147 When War?


    While the Republic of Gorteau could be characterized as the greediest of its peers, its reaction and approach were hardly unique.


    While all three powerhouses were extremely rmed at the revtion of the mass Apprentice breakthroughs, none of them leaped into an all-out war.


    The Sekigahara Confederate certainly came the closest, though.


    "Now then¡­" a woman calmly remarked as her gaze swept across the table. The thirteen other leaders of the Sekigahara Confederate met her gaze.


    A pleasant smile appeared on her face.


    "Shall we dere war today or tomorrow?"


    She heaved a melodramatic sigh as she gazed out a window. "I''d love to do it today, but¡­"


    Her expression became one of displeasure.


    "War should be dered at dawn. It is a bad omen to do so at dusk."


    The matriarch of the Tsukishi n snorted. "You superstitious lot of the Tanaka n. War is war. We should dere war right now as far as I''m concerned."


    The air grew cold as the two women exchanged chilling gazes.


    "Hah, you lot and your derations of war." A gargantuan man grinned wildly. "I say we just invade the Kandrian Empire without any formal deration of war. This isn''t a formal duel. This is war!"


    Many of the others stirred at his words.


    They made sense.


    Leveling the Kandrian Empire was a lot more important than adhering to any silly norms of formality or honor. It was best to gather as many Martial Sages as possible,unch an ambush on the Kandrian Empire, and wipe everyone out. Yet, not everyone was on board with triggering a war against the Kandrian Empire.


    "I disagree," the Patriarch of the Nindo n dered. "This is not a circumstance that warrants waging war. What we should be focusing on is gaining the ability to cause so many breakthroughs to the Apprentice Realm. That is what the other two Sage-level powerhouses will be focusing on, after all. Even if we wage war and win, it won''t matter if we don''t get our hands on the method to cause breakthroughs at will."


    "Hah," the patriarch of the Kaze n snorted. "Of course the n that focuses on intelligence and covert operations would be inclined to go for that route. Try to hide your tant biases better next time."


    The patriarch of the Nindo n red at him. "Fool. Even if we end up winning the war, do you really want to end up heavily weakened with a pyrrhic victory in a destroyed Kandria while the other two Sage-level powerhouses happily get stronger after stealing the Kandrian Empire''s secrets through espionage?"


    This gave pause to the other n leaders.


    His words painted an oue that was deeply unpleasant to all of them.


    It was on purpose.


    As the leader of the n that served as the intelligence and covert operations of the Sekigahara Confederate, the Nindo patriarch knew exactly how his peers thought. He knew the moment they learned of the Kandrian Empire''s ability to trigger mass breakthroughs, they would immediately itch for war even if it didn''t even make sense to jump to war as a first resort.


    That was why he painted what was a realistic oue.


    He knew that the Republic of Gorteau and the Britannian Empire had probably already begun aggressive intelligence to gather the method by which the Kandrian Martial Union broke Apprentices through. The longer they took to participate in this race, the further behind they would be.


    "Tell me." His sharp eyes swept across all of them. "Are you willing to obtain victory against the Kandrian Empire at the cost of losing to the Britannian Empire and the Republic of Gorteau forever?"


    The leaders of the Sekigahara Confederate curled their mouths with disgust at the very thought of it.


    They hated losing more than they loved winning.


    "¡­and ask yourselves, is it possible to defeat the Kandrian Empire all by ourselves without suffering massive losses?"


    "¡­"


    None of them uttered a word.


    Yet, their silence was deafening.


    To even assert that it was possible wasughable.


    All wars had prices and losses.


    The Sekigahara Confederate, which waged more war than all three other Sage-level powerhouses of East Panamabined, knew that better than anyone else.


    This was especially the case for an opponent as formidable as the Kandrian Empire. With the recent addition of the Ss n, they almost had as many Martial Sages and Masters as the Sekigahara Confederate. This content ? N?v/elDr(a)m/a.Org.


    "I''m aware of how much we hate the Emperor of Harmony and his disgusting philosophy. However, I''m sure we hate falling behind the Republic of Gorteau and the Britannian Empire even more."


    The patriarch of the Oni n narrowed his eyes. "So, let me get this straight. You want us to leave the Kandrian Empire alone after they have obtained the miraculous power to create as many Apprentices as they want? If we do that, then they will surpass us Martially and will forever be out of our reach!"


    This was what the patriarch of the Nindo n had been waiting for.


    "I''m not saying we leave them alone." His voice grew stronger. "I''m saying we steal their power and use it for ourselves. Out of all the four powerhouses of East Panama, we are the most Martially developed and the most Martially powerful. Imagine how much this new power they have obtained will benefit the Sekigahara Confederate if it falls into our hands. Imagine how strong each of our ns will eventually be with a surplus of Martial Apprentices at our disposal!"


    Greed and lust filled the eyes of the leaders of the Martial ns.


    "Fine," the matriarch of the Tanaka n finally relented. "We will destroy them after we have stolen their method. But what if you are unable to steal their method?"


    A smile appeared on the face of the Nindo patriarch. "In that case, wage war by all means. If it truly cannot be pried from the hands of the Kandrian Empire, then the Britannian Empire and the Republic of Gorteau will alsoe to the conclusion that war is the only solution. Thus, regardless of what happens, the Kandrian Empire''s only fate is destruction."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2148 Insightful Analysis

    Chapter 2148 Insightful Analysis


    "¡­Is probably what the Sekigahara Confederate is thinking at the moment."


    In the depths of the Imperial Pce, sat a man sipping tea in his office while he read through the reports of the Britannian Intelligence Service.


    Prime Minister Edward Gel Dermont had been perhaps the sole head of government of the Britannian Empire to not have been rmed by the shocking reports of the mass breakthroughs of Martial Apprentices at an absurdly high rate.


    He was also the sole head of government who didn''t bother employing standard intelligence protocols to try and steal the method of breakthroughs to the Apprentice Realm.


    His rationale was simple.


    "The Emperor of Harmony is too careful."


    He knew Emperor Rael as a ruler and leader better than anybody. The man was deeply insightful and had undoubtedly predicted the responses from the Republic of Gorteau and the Sekigahara Confederate. The former was transparent and while thetter was undoubtedly a lot more vtile, it was still predictable for the most part. The warmongering ns would push for war, while the more sensible leader would eventually make them see at least a little bit of reason and postpone war conditionally.


    However, he knew that Emperor Rael had undoubtedly prepared for the massive investigative efforts that had already been thrown his way.


    "If the method of breakthrough truly was something that could be stolen just by knowledge alone, then¡­" Prime Minister Edward narrowed his eyes. "He would have been less liberal and used it as a political tool and bargaining chip. However, the way that he and the Martial Union are spamming breakthroughs implies that there are no material or resource constraints."


    Had this new revolutionary method required some precious resources that weren''t easy toe by, Emperor Rael and the Sage Council would not have used it so freely and extensively.


    Thus, just based on how it was being employed, Prime Minister Edward was able to make numerous inferences.


    "Could it be an esoteric scientific method¡­?" he wondered before shaking his head. "No, all esoteric materials have limited supply. I suppose it could be a non-esoteric scientific development, but¡­"


    He highly doubted that, considering that even esoteric science hadn''te close to achieving such a result, and it was generally more powerful and capable, which was why it was favored as a field of research.


    "So, that leaves a Martial Artist." He narrowed his eyes. "It fits the profile of a powerful but low-cost solution."


    It was one of the reasons that Martial Art came to be the most dominant force in the world.


    Martial Art took an extremely long time to deliver powerful assets, but, once it did, it did not require much resources to sustain its output.


    "If this new solution that Emperor Rael is abusing is dependent on a Martial Art, a technique, or a Martial Mind¡­" Prime Minister Edward Gel Dermont narrowed his eyes. "It would exin why he''s being so carefree about how much it''s being abused. Interesting. Regardless, it doesn''t change what we must do."


    As he sipped his tea, his gaze turned to the Britannian analyst officers seated at the table before him.


    "War."


    They widened their eyes. "¡­Sir? Doesn''t it make more sense to invest massively in our investigative and espionage efforts to get our hands on his miraculous method so that we can ensure that we don''t fall behind?"


    Prime Minister Edward shook his head.


    "It won''t work. Emperor Rael has almost certainly prepared all kinds of traps, red herrings, and misdirections that will lead all investigative efforts down many highly convincing wild goose chases."


    They frowned at his words but remained silent.


    "His goal is to drain as much of the capital of other Sage-level powerhouses as possible and stall the inevitable war. He is buying as much time as he can to increase the probability of winning due to having elevated the Kandrian Empire," he exined. "Unfortunately, I won''t be falling for his trap."


    The analyst officers stared at him, flummoxed. "Sir, are you implying that this is all part of some n?"


    Prime Minister Edward snorted, unimpressed. "Everything is part of a n with that man. However, think carefully, think of all the developments that have happened in the Kandrian Empire." He sipped some more tea, growing immersed in thought. "First, he, on the brink of death, is magically healed from an incurable disease while his son simultaneously shatters the record for youngest Martial Master."


    He raised a second finger. "Then, Prince Rui willingly and merrily hands over all the power he has rued over the span of five years without any resistance. Almost as if he has never cared about it to begin with."


    He raised a third finger. "Then, the Emperor consolidates his power and uses the Ss n to gain massive intelligence advantages to root out and assimte the Underworld, further solidifying and centralizing his power."


    He raised a fourth finger. "Then, his Beast Domain yields spike up with countless reports talking about how the Kandrian Empire''s Beast Domain operations, be it the government or the Martial Union, have gained a rather curious boost in effectiveness and sess rate."


    He raised a fifth finger. "And now, he deploys a massive trump card that will allow the Kandrian Empire to ovee the Great Limit in the long run. When youbine that with the fact that tensions between the Kandrian Empire and the rest of us have already been rising due to the Ss n and the upgrade to their Squire evolution process, then there''s only one conclusion to draw."


    His eyes narrowed. "He knows that these developments will provoke war, yet he does them without any hesitation. This is a man who has grand ambition, and knows that it will make war inevitable, and is fully prepared for it nheless."


    He returned his gaze to the intelligence officers. "Divert all our resources to war-building and none towards intelligence-gathering. If, by some miracle, the Republic of Gorteau and Sekigahara Confederate are able to get their hands on the method, then it will be easier to steal it from them. If not¡­"


    A dark smile appeared on his face. "¡­then they will have no choice but to wage war. With the wrath of the three Sage-level powerhouses, we will emerge victorious."


    This chapter upload first at  This is property ? of N?velDrama.Org.

 Chapter 2149 Flawed Intelligence

    Chapter 2149 wed Intelligence


    The revtions and the mass Apprentice breakthroughs of the Kandrian Empire sent shudders across the politicalndscape of East Panama. The geopolitical dynamics between Kandria and its peers had already been strained even prior to this provocative revtion, but now? Many nations in the geopolitical vicinity were terrified of the prospect of war between the powerhouses.


    After all, this would be a war so massive that none of them would be able to evade it. It would swallow every nation in East Panama into it regardless of whether they were willing or not.


    Thankfully, however, war did not erupt immediately.


    Although the news had undoubtedly reached the Sage-level powerhouses, it appeared that war would not break out immediately. That didn''t necessarily mean that it wouldn''t eventually, of course. It could even be that the Sage-level powerhouses were simply preparing for war.


    This was not far from the truth.


    At least half of the powerhouses were preparing for war as an inevitability, while the other two had decided to exhaust lesser options first.


    "Things have gonergely as nned."


    Emperor Rael sat in his office, reading through some reports that his intelligence bureau had been supplying him on the aftermath of the mass Apprentice breakthrough.


    "Hm, both the Sekigahara Confederate and the Republic of Gorteau have fallen for it," he remarked as he urately assessed the situation. "Good."


    Any attempt to discern the truth about the Apprentice mass breakthroughs was doomed to either fail or be stalled for arge amount of time. Emperor Rael had spent the past three years setting up many false avenues of investigation that were meant to deceive all those who attempted to learn about the truth.


    Part of the reason he was able to do this was because he knew the modus operandi and the profiles of the intelligence-gathering facilities of his enemies. The Sekigahara Confederate would be effectively blind without the Nindo n that served as its intelligence wing.


    In other words, the intelligence wing of the Sekigahara Confederate was its own political power thatpeted with the other ns for authority. The other ns thus could not trust the Nindo n with certainty despite relying on it for intelligence.


    In turn, the Nindo n had its own interests and agendas and could not be expected to act to benefit the Sekigahara Confederate at its own expense.


    This was a crucial w in the political structure of the Sekigahara Confederate that Emperor Rael could use to his benefit.


    By supplying them with the right ''ammunition,'' he could manipte the Nindo n to act for their mutual benefit, even if it came at the cost of the Sekigahara Confederate as a whole. He knew that the Nindo n would rather avoid war due to being the weakest n as far asbat power went. In a war, it would lose most of its nominal authority sincebat power was the only thing that the Sekigahara Confederate valued.


    "Foolish." Emperor Rael couldn''t help but shake his head lightly as his eyes shifted to the reportsing from his spywork in the Republic of Gorteau. The Republic of Gorteau had its own ws that were quite different. The intelligence agencies and bureaus were not independent of the power blocs of the nations, for the heads of these organizations were appointed by the president, while their budget allocation came from Congress.


    In other words, if he could manipte enough Congressmen of this legitive body, he could manipte them to cripple the intelligence wing with lowered funding, thereby stalling the intelligence gathering operations trying to discover the secret to mass Apprentice breakthroughs. This would give him more time to prepare for the war.


    "Ensure that we have enough life-prolonging potions in stock."


    "Yes, Your Majesty."


    His attention momentarily returned to the reports from the Sekigahara Confederate and the Republic of Gorteau.


    "These two are manageable, but¡­" His eyes narrowed as he shifted his gaze to reportsing from his spies in the Britannian Empire. He always found this to be the most troublesome of the three Sage-level powerhouses.


    "Looks like he''s not falling for it, instead¡­" He tutted. "He''s wholeheartedly preparing for war. A wise decision."


    He had always known that the prime minister of the Britannian Empire was not someone to be trifled with. He was a deeply insightful and perceptive strategist and statesman who could not be tricked so easily, especially when they had known each other for a long time.


    Prime Minister Edward had already shifted his attention to preparations for war. One would think that war was just on the corner with the way the man began redirecting arge portion of the Britannian Imperial Treasury to war.


    However, Emperor Rael knew better.


    "He won''t dere war until the other two powerhouses also dere war."


    There was no point in dering war against the Kandrian Empire alone. Both Emperor Rael and Prime Minister knew that if they waged war against each other, the only winners would be the Sekigahara Confederate and the Republic of Gorteau.


    In order to ensure that the Britannian Empire wasn''t the sole bearer of the burden of war and to ensure that the probability of victory was maximal, the prime minister would undoubtedly wait until the other two powerhouses were done ying cat and mouse with the mass breakthroughs.


    Only when they were frustrated by their constant failures would they be ready to just wipe the Kandrian Empire off the map.


    "Until then, he will have to settle for a cold war." N?velDrama.Org holds text ? rights.


    Tensions between the Kandrian Empire and the other Sage-level powerhouse would undoubtedly continue to rise as the Republic of Gorteau and the Sekigahara Confederate continued using any and all means to uncover the truth of the Apprentice breakthroughs.


    However, Emperor Rael knew that they wouldn''t be able to uncover the truth. Rui had taken all the right precautions to keep both his identity and the process aplete secret. The only ones who knew outside of Emperor Rael himself and the Sage Council were the Martial Masters of the Academy, each of whom he had secretly vetted with Sage Sayfeel.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2150 Consulting an Expert

    Chapter 2150 Consulting an Expert


    The only way he could see this being leaked was if someone with an extremely intimate understanding of breakthroughs got a good look at Rui''s Martial Art.


    "The only circumstance that that could possibly happen would be the Panamic Martial Federation or¡­" Emperor Rael narrowed his eyes. "The Virodhabhasa Theocracy."


    This was one of the biggest concerns of his n.


    He had always known that his son had managed to attract the religiosity of certain fanatics of the religion and the nation-state, thanks to some of his ''gifts'' that made him resemble the deity of the religion superficially.


    However, while his son hade to view it as a nuisance, Rael came to see it as a potential blessing. When it was on one''s side, there was no better ally than a religious fanatic, for these fellows were the type to fight for their religious causes without demanding anypensation in return.


    The biggest issue was that these fanatics were unpredictable.


    It was possible that they would ally with the Kandrian Empire against evil ''heretics'' trying to harness the power of their deity for their own greedy purposes, and it was possible that they might join the other three powerhouses in attacking the Kandrian Empire to procure their precious deity from the clutches of the unbelievers of Kandria.


    Rael did not deem it worth his time to gain a good contextual understanding of the precise mindset of the believers to model their fanaticism.


    Especially when he had a reliable expert on the matter.


    "So, what do you think, mother?" He found himself gazing at his mother-inw from atop his throne, having called her to consult her opinion on the matter.


    "First of all, don''t call me that." She scowled at him. "Secondly, I''m different from the antithetants of the main faith. I''m a prophetant; I don''t believe in the divinity of Lord Virodhabhasa. I believe in the divinity of the Transcendent Prophet."


    Emperor Rael heaved a tired sigh. "Ah, yes. You conveniently think that prophecies and prophets are the true divinity. I also happen to notice that the Ss n is a n of prophets and prophecies. In other words, you lot think that you are divine."


    "We follow the path of divinity, but yes." This content ? N?v/elDr(a)m/a.Org.


    "That''s not narcissistic at all," Emperor Rael remarked sarcastically. "You still haven''t answered my question. Is it possible to gain the Virodhabhasa Theocracy''s support in this war by presenting Rui as their precious Lord Virodhabhasa?"


    Unfortunately, her answer was not what he wanted to hear.


    "It won''t work as you want," she warned him. "If the Cardinal Council truly doese to believe that Rui is the Antithesis, then they certainly will help with this war, but they will have to wage a second war after to pry him from the grips of the Kandrian Empire."


    Emperor Rael''s eyes grew severe. "Are you sure that they cannot beter convinced that he isn''t truly the Antithesis that they worship?"


    "You cannotter convince them that he isn''t the Antithesis because¡­" She narrowed her eyes. "¡­There is a high chance that he is."


    The air in the throne room grew heavier.


    Silence lingered in the atmosphere as Matriarch Nephi met his powerful peering gaze with firm eyes.


    Emperor Rael narrowed his eyes.


    "What did you say?"


    "You heard me." She snorted. "This is not something that is particrly hard to believe either. Just look at the things he has aplished. The Antithesis is described as a being from another world, possessing supreme Martial power that dwarfs all other forces in the world. A being with power antithetical to all other powers in the world. A being with the power to raise and raze Martial Paths."


    Her tone was profoundly sincere.


    She believed every word she said.


    "Are you seriously trying to convince me that my son is the deity of a religion, a being from another world with supreme power?" Emperor Rael stared at her with incredulity. "Do you actually believe that?"


    "I grow increasingly convinced it is the truth with each passing day," she calmly voiced her convictions. "Yet, as a prophetant, I understand the importance of not worshiping Lord Virodhabhasa precisely because it will harm his path to bing the Antithesis that many worship. He must find his own path to fulfill the Divine prophecy."


    "¡­Forget it," he heaved a sigh. "I shall limit myself to leveraging Rui''s political favor with them as the Virodhabhasa Champion. Based on your words, the risks and ramifications of them finding out cross the threshold of tolerable risk."


    Emperor Rael took calcted risks when he had a deep grasp and high certainty on the probabilities of the possible oues.


    Currently, the Virodhabhasa Theocracy was far too great a risk factor for someone as prudent as him to rashly y around with. He didn''t have as extensive a foundation in dealing with them as he did the three Sage-level powerhouses of East Panama.


    "¡­Not everyone in the Theocracy is a genuine believer," she informed him. "Many do believe in the Antithesis; however, many are agnostic and even atheistic. Thus, convincing them of your son''s divinity is going to be extremely difficult, for they inherently treat any such im with great skepticism due to how many fakers there are. However, the consequences of convincing the Cardinal Council will be grave. Those foolish antithetants will try to mold the Antithesis in their designs when the only design that fits him should be that of the Divine Prophecy. Tsk, this is why I hate antithetants¡­"


    As she continued babbling on why antithetants were foolish and bad, Emperor Rael had already zoned out.


    If the Theocracy could not be harnessed, then he had no qualms of throwing away the n.


    As much as he loved to manipte theocratic religion, he didn''t understand the nuances of the deep andplex theology to predict its adherents, and the person who did had made it clear that it was not a direction worth pursuing.


    The good news was that it was one less risk of an information leak.


    "That leaves the Panamic Martial Federation and Rui''s mandatory visit¡­"


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2151 A Visit and Briefing

    Chapter 2151 A Visit and Briefing


    Emperor Rael knew that there was a good chance that the Republic of Gorteau and the Sekigahara Confederate would consider Rui as a strong point of investigation to obtain the means of mass breakthrough.


    Not because they had some reason to suspect that he himself was responsible for them


    No.


    But because of how powerful his position within the Kandrian Empire was.


    Not only was he a prince of the Royal Family, but he was also a member of the Master Council. In addition, prior to Emperor Rael''s return, he was undoubtedly the most powerful man in the Kandrian Empire.


    If there was anybody who would know, it was surely the Void Prince.


    "So you''re saying I need to be careful when I visit the Panamic Martial Federation?" Rui asked, raising an eyebrow.


    "Very." Emperor Rael nodded. "As much as I would rather you didn''t, all constituents of the Federation must agree to a universal briefing on the state of affairs and certain truths that they believe that each Martial Master is entitled and obliged to know. Thus, the Martial Union will be answerable if you don''t visit the Federation. In addition, it will make you look more suspicious if you don''t "


    Rui gazed at his father quizzically. "It begs the question that, if you and the Martial Union know what the Panamic Federation will brief me on, why do I have to even go all the way to the Panamic Martial Federation to partake in this little briefing instead of getting it done through you guys?"


    "It was an arrangement that the various forces of the Martial World came to agree upon, including the Martial Union," Emperor Rael exined. "They believed that it would be good for Martial Art in the long run."


    "¡­Is it to ensure that each Martial Master is operating with a simr understanding of the world?" Rui raised an eyebrow. "If Martial Masters were briefed on the state of affairs and the truth of the Martial World by their own organizations, then it reduced themon understanding of the world that each Martial Master operated upon. This, in turn, would reduce the prospects of cooperation for mutual interests as Martial Artists, which would be to the detriment of Martial Art."


    Rui quickly deduced the truth based on the hints in Rael''s words.


    His father smiled. "Correct. Martial Artists are no less vulnerable to propaganda than normal humans are. In fact, they may be even more vulnerable to some forms of propaganda. Regardless, the martial forces of this continent came together and created a shared, mutually agreed-upon briefing of this world to impart amon worldview of the state of the power struggles that unfold at the highest echelons of human civilization."


    "I suppose that is nice and all, but I''m not really seeing the viability of such an arrangement," Rui replied. "After all, propaganda is useful for instilling loyalty. Why would organizations let go of such a useful tool and allow their Martial Artists to gain a realer outlook for the greater good?"


    "There are incentive structures in ce thatpel them to do so," Emperor Rael replied. "The Panamic Martial Federation functions as a Martial broker on an international scale, able to do for Martial Masters and Sages what the Martial Union does for Martial Artists of the Lower Realms."


    Rui''s eyes lit up with interest. "Tell me more."


    "The Martial Union is indeed powerful, but it is not equipped to serve Martial Artists of the Upper Realms as well as it does those of Lower Realms," Emperor Rael exined. "I''m sure you''ve experienced that shift as you grow stronger. You are able to do more for the Union than it is able to do for you. You have a position of great power and responsibility within the Union, and it relies on you more while you rely on it less."


    Rui nodded as he pondered about how his rtionship with the Martial Union had shifted over his career as a Martial Artist.


    There certainly was arge difference, even though the changes had been subtle and over arge span of time.


    He had gone from being an Apprentice with a lot of potential to a Squire and Senior of strategic interest, to the golden and, eventually, tinum boy of the Martial Union. Both his regard and need for the Union had reduced.


    "The Panamic Martial Federation taps intoworks of all Martial organizations to ess every inch of the continent and all markets of Martial Art," Emperor Rael continued. "As a Master, the market that is able to afford your services is much smaller than the market for the Lower Realms. That is why an organization that can stretch across the entire continent is useful, able to squeeze out all market opportunities from everywhere instead of just East Panama. Although, I suppose it isn''t relevant to you since you haven''t epted amission in a long time. Very unusual for a Martial Artist your age."


    His words put Rui into deep thought. "It has been a long time since I thought about it. I have gained so many more lucrative streams of ie that they''re frankly meaningless to me. Still¡­"


    He stirred at the memories of the many missions he hadpleted back when he had been an Apprentice and Squire.


    "Maybe I should consider undertaking one from the Panamic Martial Federation when I visit it."


    "I would rather you get the initiation and membership done before the war begins." Emperor Rael''s tone grew more serious. "There isn''t much time left. War is soon toe. After it begins, you won''t have the opportunity to get these things done."


    Rui grew more solemn at his words. "I bet the three Sage-level powerhouses are pissed off by the revtions of the mass breakthroughs."


    "Not nearly as much as they''ll be when they realize that they can''t have it." Emperor Rael calmly added. "Now go. Make sure you prepare to ensure that your departure does not cause any suspicion to fall upon you." This is property ? of N?velDrama.Org.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2152 Compelling Sages

    Chapter 2152 Compelling Sages


    Rui wasn''t sure what to expect from his visit to the Panamic Martial Federation. However, he did look forward to it nheless. Whatever it was, it was undoubtedly important if it demanded the visit of all martial masters. N?velDrama.Org holds text ? rights.


    However, he couldn''t just up and leave immediately.


    He knew that if he left and the mass breakthroughs stopped happening for a while, then it would be no different from announcing to the world that he had some connection to the mass breakthroughs.


    Therefore, he made sure to break enough Apprentices through to keep up appearances even when he was gone.


    He didn''t need to worry about breaking enough Squires and Seniors through, though. After all, that was still a secret. Thus, no one would notice that halting even if he stopped.


    He took his father''s advice to get it done before the war began quite seriously. He knew that it wouldn''t break out until the three other Sage-level powerhouses gave up on learning the mass breakthrough method and decided to focus on destroying the Kandrian Empire before it grew too strong to be stopped.


    "No more than a year," Rui estimated. "The first year is usually one where the most amount of progress is made. If they fail to make any meaningful progress in the first year, then they will most likely conclude that it isn''t worth spending what is shaping up to be decades and centuries of effort to crack the truth."


    After all, allrge and long-term intelligence objectives had diminishing returns as time went on.


    Furthermore, this was just the consequence of one revolutionary power. The three powerhouses didn''t even know about the other treasures of the Kandrian Empire, such as the Elder Tree Connection, the training manifold, and the Divine Doctor, yet.


    Once they did, they would realize how imperative destroying the Kandrian Empire before it forever escaped their clutches was. Rui was sure that that would be the day when they not just waged war but did so with the full determination to not let the Kandrian Empire escape whatsoever.


    Frankly, Rui still wasn''t entirely sure as to how his father intended to deal with thebined might of three powerhouses. Regardless, he left it to his father. If there was anyone who could do it, it was his father, and Rael didn''t need his son''s help in this matter.


    "I need your help in this matter." Emperor Rael gazed at Rui from atop his throne. Rui simply stared at him with a nd expression. "I thought I told you I''m not going to be partaking in this war in the role of a politician. I''m a Martial Artist. I won''t forsake time meant for Martial Art for the sake of helping the Kandrian Empire. Not anymore."


    "You won''t need to." Emperor Rael shook his head. "I have a mission for you during your time in the headquarters of the Panamic Martial Federation. It is a rather simple one that is not particrly challenging either."


    Rui peered at him suspiciously but did not object.


    Emperor Rael smiled. "In the advisory council of the Panamic Martial Federation is a Martial Sage named Kole Kellin. She was once a proud and highly active Martial Sage warrior but she was forced to retire after she was diagnosed with the Shivering Disease that, I was told, caused her hands and body to constantly move and shiver due to some neurological issue. I want you to approach her and¡­"


    Emperor Rael''s smile grew wider. "pel her to join the Kandrian Empire and fight to protect it in the uing war in exchange for healing her of her condition and returning her to her prime."


    Rui''s eyes widened with shock as he understood how his father intended to bolster Kandria to withstand enough pressure in the short term. While breaking Martial Apprentices through could not affect the short-term strategic outlook, healing a Martial Sage and returning them to their prime in exchange for their loyalty was something that immediately increased the Kandrian Empire''s ability to cope.


    "Is this your strategy?" Rui asked faintly, still immersed in thought. "To bolster the Kandrian Empire by gathering as many Martial Artists of the Upper Realms with the services of the Divine Doctor?"


    If so, it was a highly effective political strategy that Rui couldn''t deny the effectiveness of. If the price of obtaining an additional Martial Sage was merely dedicating some of the Divine Doctor''s time to them, then it was a price that yielded an oue that was far greater.


    "But¡­" Rui furrowed his eyebrows. "¡­This strategy alone cannot deal with the massive gap in power between one powerhouse and three."


    Emperor Rael shook his head. "This is just one small part of my grand n. I have chalked up many potent strategies and tactics into a single design of victory and sess in the long run. Rest assured, the Kandrian Empire will emerge victorious."


    Rui grew more confident in whatever this grand n was. It became extremely clear that Rael knew what he was doing when he threatened to provoke a war of unprecedented intensity in the history of East Panama.


    "Alright," Rui replied. "I ept that mission. I will need an intelligence briefing on the target and more details regarding the exact specifications and the objectives."


    "Of course, I do not intend to send you in blind," Emperor Rael informed Rui calmly. "Furthermore, to be specific, I desire her to join the Royal Army of the Kandrian Empire under my directmand. She was from a military background before she was crippled; she is highly ustomed to serving as an officer who executesmands. It gives me confidence that she will be able to fit more quickly into the Kandrian Royal Army than into the Sage Council of the Kandrian Empire."


    Rui gazed at him carefully as he understood what his father was trying to do.


    He was trying to bnce out the addition of his grandmother to the Sage Council, causing the Martial Union to gain a slight edge over the Royal Army.


    "Correct." Emperor Rael gazed at his son knowingly, reading his mind. "That coward Aggragor cannot even begin topare to your grandmother as an asset."


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2153 Experience Through War

    Chapter 2153 Experience Through War


    "You know that the Sage Council is not going to be pleased." Rui raised an eyebrow. "After all, the sole power of the Uniones from Martial Artists and nothing else."


    "Don''t worry; I have given each of them simr missions that will end up benefiting the Council if they seed," Emperor Rael calmly remarked. "There is more than one Martial Sage who could use the Divine Doctor''s medical prowess, though not all of them need it as desperately as Sage Kole does. Regardless, I have chosen my targets and their corresponding probability of sess such that the Martial Union will benefit simrly to the Royal Army. I still am a firm believer that the Martial Union and the Royal Army should always be in harmony with each other, for the sake of the Kandrian Empire."


    "Hmm¡­" Rui narrowed his eyes. "Can you really trust that all of them will do as told after they have made use of the Divine Doctor''s services? Many of them might have only agreed for the sake of being healed or enhanced, before ditching the Kandrian Empire after getting what they came for."


    "Ordinarily, you would be right," his father replied. "The risk factor, in my estimation, crosses the eptable threshold. Thus, your assessment ispletely urate."


    "¡­But?" Rui raised an eyebrow. "But we have your grandmother." Emperor Rael smirked. "She, in addition to Sage Farana, is able to allow me to be certain in my choices. Thus, I have decided to go more aggressively on this n, and many other ns, due to the sheer strategic advantages of the power of the Eye of Prophecy. It is thanks to her that I was able to eradicate the festering Underworld as well as I did. She is indeed worth being considered a treasure of the Kandrian Empire."


    Rui had to agree with the statement.


    The eradication of the Underworld had happened when he was deep in the middle of his training for the Yin-Yang Spear. He had been deeply shocked when informed that the Underworld had been uprooted and eliminated, all with the help of his grandmother''s prophecy. This is property ? of N?velDrama.Org.


    Since it had already proven itself, he could see why his father would rely on it to ovee high risks with the certainty that his grandmother''s technique used.


    Yet, more than the political considerations, Rui was much more intrigued by it as a Martial Artist.


    He felt a deep attraction to the power of the technique. How could he not?


    He couldn''t even imagine how strong he would be if he did master it. Thebination of the VOID algorithm, the SOUL System and the Eye of Prophecy together would raise his insight into a battle into absolutely uncharted territories. He might very well be nigh omniscient within the confines of a battle.


    Furthermore, he technically had ess to it due to being a member of the Ss n. As long as he contributed his systems of thought to them¡­


    "I wouldn''t rmend it." His father stared at him knowingly. "The Eye of Prophecy will drain your greatest gift¡ªyour youth. It will elerate your aging and consequently cripple and destroy your bottomless potential."


    Rui stirred at those words.


    He valued his prime deeply; it certainly wasn''t going tost forever.


    "If you weren''t strong and if your capacity to develop your Martial Art powerfully wasn''t high, then it might be worth considering. However," his father continued, "you have proven that you are capable of creating techniques that are no less powerful than it. You have reached the Master Realm at a shocking young age. That youth at this altar increases the probability that you will eventually rise to the Sage Realm."


    Rui stared at his father mncholically.


    "¡­I am aware that your path to the Sage Realm is uniquely difficult." His father closed his eyes. "However, I am of the firm belief that you will reach the Sage Realm."


    Rael''s voice contained no ounce of uncertainty.


    "You will be able to maximize your gains across your entire lifetime if you master the technique after discovering your Martial Soul."


    Rui had to admit that, on a logical level, his father''s words were entirely urate. However, it took a herculean amount of self-control to not just jump at the prospect of new power.


    Rui heaved a sigh. "I''ll think about it. I won''t master it this close to the war, since I won''t be able to make it a source of genuine experience in time."


    His father smiled. "Have you not been satisfied by the experience you gained from all your battles inside the dungeon in the past eighteen months?"


    "¡­It''s not unsatisfying per se, but it feels like the returns diminished after I fought all willing Masters at least once," Rui muttered with dissatisfaction. "My Martial Path is Adaptive Evolution. Once I adaptively evolve to an opponent, the difficulty of fighting reduces significantly. It also reduces the value of any experience I gain as a result."


    It was why Rui had exited the dungeon in the first ce. There were only so many gains that he could make with fewer than two hundred martial masters. He left the dungeon a little over a month after entering it to grind for experience for a year and a half straight.


    "I came to the conclusion that I need more opponents, ideally as many powerful high-grade ones as possible," Rui remarked. "Ideally, they should be fighting with the objective of killing me. Something like a war."


    A fleeting grin cracked at the edge of his mouth.


    "You''ve started resembling the Fire Sect." His father smiled wryly, shaking his head with resignation. "Oh well, if it''s a war you want, then rejoice. Soon, your desires will be fulfilled."


    Rui smiled as his fists clenched with anticipation.


    He wouldn''t miss the war for the world. Where else would he ever get such an opportunity?


    He was grateful that his father was both highly ambitious and highly able to give him exactly what he needed.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2154 Planning Visit

    Chapter 2154 nning Visit


    His conversation with his father ended after the two covered arge array of topics. Rui mulled over the conversation and the various things in it that pertained to him.


    His father had warned him to be careful at the Panamic Martial Federation headquarters.


    The Panamic Martial Federation did not exist independently of the forces of the Martial World. It was constituted of and founded by the forces of the Martial World for the sake of Martial Art as a whole.


    In other words, it could never be neutral.


    His father had already warned him that he would be suspected of knowing something about the mass Apprentice breakthroughs just because of his power, authority, and influence within the Kandrian Empire.


    There was no way that the Panamic Martial Federation would not be used as a vehicle by the other three Sage-level powerhouses of East Panama to pressure Rui into divulging any secrets that he might be aware of. They would most likely at least try to trick him into revealing some details.


    Interestingly enough, his father denied the possibility of force being employed to extract any secrets that Rui had on the matter.


    "While the Panamic Martial Federation is constituted of forces and powers that serve as its legitive body, itsws are enforced by a force led by ten Martial Sages who fulfill the role that the Primordial Martial yed when he was still a Sage¡ªenforcing the rules," his father had exined. "In other words, one does not mess around in or near the Panamic Martial Federation headquarters."


    If that was the case, then Rui supposed that there were no risks of force being used while he was at the Panamic Martial Federation headquarters. In other words, he needed to not only get briefed but also avoid giving away any details regarding the mass Apprentice breakthroughs. In addition, he also had the mission topel Sage Kole Kellin to join the Kandrian Empire and the Royal Army in exchange for healing her disease and restoring her body to its previous peak and even beyond.


    This was undoubtedly the most challenging part.


    Because he would essentially need to divulge the fact that they had the support of the Divine Doctor and was able to make use of his services, all without knowing whether she would agree or not.


    He highly doubted that she would simply join him in the Kandrian Empire without some guarantees and certainties. Furthermore, he would need to n his approach based on her personality and temperament.


    It was going to be challenging to juggle all these matters at once.


    However, he was confident.


    Considering that his father hadn''t specifically told him he could divulge this to the Martial Union, he could assume that his father would rather they didn''t know yet.


    The most challenging part of this would be convincing her to serve his father, a human emperor, when she had served as a councilor of the Panamic Martial Federation. This content belongs to N?/velDra/ma.Org .


    In other words, he highly doubted that she would be deeply pleased about needing to serve a non-Martial leader.


    On the other hand, she was allegedly someone with a military background, as his father pointed out, so he wasn''t sure how things would work out.


    "¡­Her condition prevents her from being able to control her power and to prevent it from going berserk, she has sealed her Heart, Mind, and the Third Eye forever," Rui read through the intelligence report that his father had prepared for him. "Interesting."


    Considering that she referred to the source of power of the Sage Realm as the Third Eye, Rui could already identify her ethnicity based on that alone. "She was of the now deceased Quetzel Kingdom in West Panama¡­" Rui''s eyes widened as he understood why she joined the Panamic Martial Federation. "As the sole Martial Sage of her Kingdom, her condition deprived the kingdom of its sole protection from enemy Martial Sages. Eventually, the kingdom was ravaged before eventually ceasing to exist. All because she was afflicted with a medical condition that denied her any control and stability over her own power."


    Rui couldn''t help but feel deep sympathy for her. If she was the loyal type, then she probably med herself for the demise of her kingdom, harboring an immense amount of guilt, yet powerless to do anything about it.


    He also couldn''t imagine how frustrating it was to have fully functioning and intact Realms of power, but forced to seal them forever nheless due to losingplete control over her immense power.


    After all, a Martial Artist who couldn''t control her own movements was definitely not going to be able to prevent her power from going berserk.


    He felt for her as a Martial Artist, but he was quite grateful for it as someone who was trying to win her over to the Kandrian Empire.


    After all, if it truly brought her as much pain as he suspected it did, then she would be deeply foolish to refuse a miracle of an opportunity that could undo all her pain.


    As for whether she could be restored, he had no doubt that the Divine Doctor was able to fix whatever was afflicting her.


    He had proven time and time again that his reputation preceded him with the feats he had aplished with just a little bit of exertion.


    Rui continued to flesh out his diplomatic approach as he gained a better understanding of his target. Normally, his father would have personally guided him on how he ought to approach this diplomatic operation.


    However, they both knew that he didn''t need it. He had proficiency and even some good experience with diplomacy during his time as a Martial Artist. He understood what were the constraints and conditions to sess and what he would need to do to adhere to and fulfill them.


    In addition to preparing for his visit to the Federation, he also made sure to prepare for his departure from the Kandrian Empire, breaking additional batches of kids to the Apprentice Realm so that they could be showcased to the world as per schedule to make sure no one tied his departure to the absence of Apprentices breakthroughs.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2155 Choices of History

    Chapter 2155 Choices of History


    The Panamic Martial Federation was an enormous organization whose mandate gave it authority over the entirety of the Panama Continent. Due to the sheer scale of its jurisdiction, it had not one but four different headquarters for thefour quadrants of the continent.


    In other words, Rui didn''t need to travel outside of East Panama to get his little briefing done.


    "Of course," Master Zentra continued, "each branch has a Martial Master from each powerhouse around the entire continent. Thus, you will be judged and evaluated by each of the powerhouses across the entire Panama Continent."


    Rui narrowed his eyes. "Judged and evaluated? You make it sound like I''m being prosecuted."


    "Nothing of the sort," Master Zentra reassured. "However, you will be evaluated based on your threat level. This includes not justbat ability but also things like how dangerous your Martial Embodiment is to normal humans. I suspect that you will hit the highest score in that regard."


    Rui raised an eyebrow. "It is rather curious that an organization that purports to exist by, for, and of Martial Art cares about themon folk."


    Master Zentra gazed at Rui knowingly. "It is because Martial Art is inherently tied to the interests of themon folk. After all, we Martial Artists are not truly our own self-replenishing species. Martial Artists cannot reproduce to give birth to new Martial Artists. No. All Martial Artists were entirely normal people at some point in time. The Panamic Martial Federation has collectively decided that it is unwise to antagonize humanity, for the emergence of new Martial Artists can be severely hampered if human beingse to hate and fear Martial Art too much." This is property ? of N?velDrama.Org.


    "¡­There is merit in that rationale," Rui cautiously remarked. "But human beings do not have the power to resist us. Furthermore, the greed for power is something that no amount of hatred and fear for Martial Art can ovee."


    Master Zentra directed a wary gaze at Rui. "That is a rather disturbing thought. I most certainly do not want to enve humanity to have them breed merely to ensure that the Martial Artist poption remainsrge."


    "I agree, but I am very certain that there are Martial Artists who feel this way." Rui''s tone was confident. "The tilt to psychopathy means that there are definitely Martial Artists who havee to regard ordinary humans as mere reproducers of future Martial Artists."


    Master Zentra narrowed his eyes. "You''re not supposed to know about that until your briefing with the Panamic Martial Federation."


    Rus smiled wryly. "Oops."


    The Ss n didn''t participate in the Panamic Martial Federation until recently, thus his grandmother probably mentioned it to him the way she would any other new Martial Master in the n.


    Master Zentra heaved a sigh. "No matter. The briefing will cover many such secrets exclusive to Masters. Regardless, you''re correct. There are Martial Artists who believe in the total envement of humanity, even in the Kandrian Empire. They were among the most extreme Martial Supremacists who firmly supported Prince Raijun to the very end. Thankfully, they were in the minority. Most Martial Artists are quite ufortable with such an idea, but there are also reasons that the Panamic Martial Federation ruled out such an approach with remarkable unanimity."


    "It is too impractical and would send humanity into a dystopian civil war, the likes of which this world has never seen," Rui mused knowingly. "Even the two Martial Revolutions of the Age of Martial Art would pale inparison to the destruction that a war to enve humanity would pan out. While Martial Art is the most powerful force in humanity, esoteric technology is fearsome enough to partially keep humanity in check."


    After all, there was at least one Sage-level powerhouse that relied on esoteric military technology. The fact that all other Sage-level powerhouses relied on Martial Art primarily was proof that Martial Art was the strongest by a significant margin.


    "On top of that, siege weapons are too destructive. In a war between Martial Art and esoteric technology, the former would win, but thetter would spread too much destruction, leaving behind a burning continent that might as well be uninhabitable," Rui further analyzed the reasons that such a war had been deemed an undesirable end. "Indeed." Master Zentra nodded. "That was why the Federation ultimately pursued harmony with humanity as a whole. Thates with certain constraints on Martial Artists of the Upper Realms. We cannot run around incapacitating entire nations with our Martial Embodiments without having humans hating Martial Artists. If we did this, this would reduce the number of Martial Artists that would be born from humans. The few who did be Martial Artists would also hate other Martial Artists for the suffering that they endured as humans. It would increase discord among Martial Artists and would be bad for Martial Art in the long run."


    Rui understood the rationale for why the Panamic Martial Federation would focus on regting the rtionship between Martial Art and humanity. If they have decided to pursue a cooperative rtionship, then it made sense to ensure that humanity would always have a positive rtionship with Martial Artists.


    "The reign of the Master Realm was perhaps the period where humanity hated Martial Art more than any other time in history due to the tilt towards psychopathy that Martial Masters underwent during that era," Master Zentra exined. "Martial Art was scorned as evil in many parts of the continent, which led to the birth rates of Martial Artists hitting record lows. The Panamic Martial Federation was created precisely to avoid this oue. And it hasrgely seeded in regting humanity''s rtionship with Martial Artists for the sake of Martial Art."


    He turned his gaze to Rui. "Today, Martial Arts has argely positive image in culture due to Masters and Sages staying their hands againstrge poption centers due to the consequences that the Panamic Martial Federation will inflict upon them if they be a liability to human civilization. Yet, that is just one of many things that the Panamic Martial Federation does to protect humanity."


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2156 Shocking Revelation

    Chapter 2156 Shocking Revtion


    Days passed as the departure day approached, and Ruipleted most of his preparations for his journey to the Panamic Martial Federation. He had consulted many people about what to expect from his visit to the Federation. While they had given him plenty of general advice, they had refused to get into specifics.


    This only made him more curious.


    However, the biggest constraint on his journey was returning in time to break enough explorer stage students to the Apprentice Realm.


    Aside from ensuring that there would be enough Martial Apprentices to be paraded around when he was gone, he also spent time thoroughly familiarizing himself with the target of the secret mission that his father had given him. He could see why he had chosen her.


    For the first decade after she had been afflicted with the shivering disease, she was hell-bent on finding a solution. Unfortunately for her, the condition could only be treated and managed, not cured. She was never able to wield the Realms of power that she had painstakingly unlocked.


    Rui grew more confident that she would be interested in his offer. He could only hope that, as bad as it sounded, she hadn''t moved on from her suffering. That increased the probability that she would be receptive to taking up his offer. However, even if she had moved on, there was no way that it wouldn''t still appeal to her. She was once a full-fledged Martial Sage and how could anyone forget that? Even if she had managed toe to peace with her current circumstances, the possibility of oveing it ought to set aze her Martial Drive once more. The drive that had driven her all the way to the Sage Realm was surely not something that would be extinguished so easily.


    Regardless, he would find out in person when he reached the Panamic Martial Federation.


    "I''ve prepared a highly secret carriage that will covertly leave the Kandrian Empire disguised as a simple transport carriage," Emperor Rael reassured his son. "With your departure obscured, there should be no risk. Though, with your current level of power, that isn''t too much of a concern in the first ce."


    Rui nodded. "Wish me luck."


    "You don''t need it." His father smiled. "Thanks, Father. I appreciate that."


    "I meant that I already consulted your grandmother. What did you think I meant?"


    "Jerk."


    Soon enough, Rui departed the Kandrian Empire and headed for the Panamic Martial Federation. The headquarters of the organization in East Panama was in the very center of the eastern quadrant of the Panama Continent, quelling any concerns that Rui might have previously had with traveling very far.


    One thing that he grew quite curious about was the details of the briefing that he would go through once he joined the Panamic Martial Federation. Neither his father nor the Martial Union seemed to want to give him much of a heads-up in regards to what the Federation would be talking about.


    He suspected that he already knew some of the topics that would be touched upon by virtue of his identity and his sources of intelligence.


    His grandmother had already touched upon things like the tilt to psychopathy caused by the mind sense of the Martial Mind, but perhaps the Panamic Martial Federation would equip him with better tools to deal with it. His grandmother did say that he wouldn''t stoop too low as long as he had the Quarrier Orphanage to go back home to. However, as painful as it was, he wasn''t sure how much the Quarrier Orphanage would mean to him in a century or even a few decades when all the people who had raised him would undoubtedly be dead.


    His connection with the orphanage had reduced. He didn''t know most of the kids and even most of the adults. He did care about the orphanage by itself, of course, as the home that his mother had given him.


    Still, it would be good for everybody if there were other means by which he could maintain his sanity as a Martial Master.


    The journey was uneventful.


    The carriage whizzed through East Panama at remarkably high speeds, crossing vast expanses ofnd in brief timeframes.


    A dayter, he arrived.


    While the journey had been mundane, the same could not be said for the destination.


    His eyes widened with shock as he stepped out of the carriage to get a good look at his destination. It exceeded even his wildest imagination.


    "Hahaha¡­" Heughed weakly as he gazed at what was supposed to be the headquarters of the Panamic Martial Federation. "They could''ve at least warned me¡­"


    His gaze was not fixed on thend before him.


    No. It was fixed on the sky.


    The sky was pitch-ck despite the Sun that was supposed to be shining in the middle.


    Yet it was nowhere to be seen.


    How could it be when it was entirely covered and blocked out by a floating tectonic te?


    Rui stared in amazement at the floating country that covered the entire sky. He had always known that it wasrge, but it appeared that his peers been remiss in informing that it floated deep in the sky.


    He almost wanted to scold the driver for not telling him ahead of time, yet he recalled that not even the man was in on the secret that he was actually transporting the Void Prince of the Kandrian Empire. Hell, he doubted the man knew what he was looking at.


    His gaze returned to the titanic floating ind overhead that blotted out the entire sky. "¡­I''m guessing the point of this is to ensure that only Martial Artists who can sky-walk that far above are worthy of setting foot on the ind?"


    It conveyed a deeply elitist mindset.


    Then again, he supposed that it was to be expected.


    After all, this was an organization that considered itself to be so superior to Martial Artists of the Lower Realms that it did not even deem them worthy of knowing about its existence. This is property ? of N?velDrama.Org.


    "So much for existing for, by, and of Martial Artists," Rui muttered, turning to the carriage rider. "Go ahead and park in ordance with the protocols¡­"


    His gaze returned to the floating rock blotting out the sky. "¡­I will probably take my time."


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2157 Martial Paradise

    Chapter 2157 Martial Paradise


    When he returned home, he would definitely smack everyone for not telling him that the headquarters of the Panamic Martial Federation was a floating tectonic te sorge and so far above sea level that it was outside the range of even his immensely powerful senses.


    Martial Squires and even Seniors would not be able to reach it by skywalking due to how low the air density would be unless they used a powerful sky-maneuvering technique.


    He didn''t understand how such a phenomenon could even exist naturally.


    This floating tectonic te was so absurdly massive that it made the Ajanta Floating Ind look like a pebble inparison. Yet, not only did it exist, it was somehow also the headquarters for the most powerful Martial force in the world.


    It was such an extravagant and ostentatious choice that it put to shame all other abodes and centers of power in the world.


    The Presidential Headquarters of the Republic of Gorteau, the Royal Pce of the Kandrian Empire, the Table of Fourteen of the Sekigahara Confederate, and even the Imperial Castle of the Britannian Empire.


    None of them could even begin topare to the sheer glory, might, and dominance that the tectonic te floating in the mesosphere of the''s atmosphere conveyed.


    It was overwhelming.


    As Rui soared up in the sky, he eventually activated his Martial Heart, gaining a surge in the speed at which he ascended to the surface. Yet, as the air grew so thin that his steps could hardly elevate him at all, he activated his Martial Mind, surging at even higher speeds.


    That journey alone took far longer than he had expected, giving him even more time to process everything he saw.


    While he scaled the heights that separated him from the surface of the headquarters, he got a better idea of what he was looking at now that his senses could reach his destination.


    The vast expanse ofnd that spread across the sky was remarkablypact despite its size. It was rather surprising that something thatrge could possibly hold itself together in a single piece. Yet, from what he could see, there were no signs of instability.


    The closer he got, the more he sensed an immense power emanating from atop the location.


    He instinctively knew that an immense number Martial Artists had gathered atop the floating tectonic te.


    It simply added more gravitas to it.


    Rui felt a growing weight on his shoulder as the mental pressure he experienced increased.


    Yet, it disappeared once he arrived at the surface of the headquarters of the Panamic Martial Federation.


    "¡­Ah." A sigh of awe and amazement escaped him. "Magnificent."


    If there ever was a ce that could be dered as the paradise of Martial Art, it was this ce. The surface of the tectonic te domed in, allowing him to see everything across it. An unfathomable amount of Martial infrastructure stretched out across the entire surface of the country-wide headquarters, arranged in an intricateyout of concentric rings.


    The overwhelming majority of it was dedicated to Martial Artists of the Upper Realms,prising of many megastructures that amodated Martial Masters and even Martial Sages without any limitation.


    Rui couldn''t even begin to fathom the amount of capital that had been invested into the headquarters of the Panamic Martial Federation over the centuries. It undoubtedly exceeded the Kandrian Martial Chambers¡ªthat had been created as a joint venture between his father and the Martial Union¡ªdraining the nation''s resources and esoteric inventory.


    Yet, the headquarters of the Federation allowed Martial Masters and Martial Sages to exert their power to the absolute limit without being restricted by concerns of space or of spreading too much damage.


    "I can see why Martial Masters and Martial Sages would never want to leave this ce."


    Considering the sheer number of Masters that had gathered here from across East Panama, he was deeply allured by the prospect of gaining more experience by sparring with all of them.


    If not for the fact that he could gain even better experiences from the war, he would definitely be inclined to remain here for a while.


    He understood what his father meant when he said that the Panamic Martial Federation did for Martial Artists of the Upper Realms what the Martial Union did for Martial Artists of the Lower Realms.


    "Wee to the eastern headquarters of the Panamic Martial Federation, Prince Rui Quarrier Ss Kandria."


    Two Martial Masters broke him out of his reverie. This is property ? of N?velDrama.Org.


    He nced at the two Martial Masters that arrived before him. The elderly man and woman donned extravagant Martial attires that bore the crest of the Panamic Martial Federation. They regarded Rui with a pleasant expression.


    "We have awaited your arrival for three years now," the woman told him. "We of the Panamic Martial Federation have looked forward to meeting the youngest Martial Master in history," the man continued. "There are many a thing that we must speak to you about."


    Rui regarded the two Martial Masters with a wary look.


    He hadn''t forgotten his father''s warning about the fact that he would be targeted for the information regarding the mass Apprentice breakthroughs. As an organization that existed by, for, and of Martial Artists, it could never overlook such a miraculous means to mass produce Martial Apprentices.


    "I thank you for your kind wee." Rui cupped his fist with his palm in a greeting gesture between Martial Artists. "I, too, have looked forward to my visit to the cradle of Martial Art in the Age of Martial Art."


    Rui''s gaze returned to the amazing view of the headquarters of the Panamic Martial Federation.


    "Remarkable, isn''t it?" They followed his gaze. "No matter how many years I patrol these exaltednds, I am never able to ovee my awe for this bastion of Martial Art."


    Rui couldn''t help but agree with their sentiment.


    "Come, Master Rui." They beckoned him. "Let us go deeper. There is much to do now that you''re here."


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2158 Innately Cultivated Martial Capital

    Chapter 2158 Innately Cultivated Martial Capital


    Just the journey deeper toward the core of the floating headquarters of the Panamic Martial Federation alone was one that Rui could immerse himself forever into. After all, there was so much to see that he could spend years, if not a decade, exploring this entire ce.


    The deeper he went, the more he could distinguish the vors of Martial power that he sensed from across the vast expanse of thend of the entire tectonic te. Rui''s Martial Mind, being as particrly powerful as it was, allowed him to make certain surprising discoveries about the Martial poption atop the headquarters of the Panamic Martial Federation.


    "This ce¡­" Rui murmured faintly. "¡­It contains lots of Martial Artists of the Lower Realms!"


    The two Martial Masters guiding him regarded him with an impressed expression. "It appears that the immense power that we sense from your Martial Mind is not for show. You are correct; there are indeed many Martial Artists of the Lower Realms in the headquarters of the Federation. While the majority of the Martial power of the Federation is actually supplied to us from constituents of the Federation, a decent proportion of the power that you feel belongs to the Panamic Martial Federation."


    Rui understood how that worked immediately. "This poweres from the innate power that the Federation cultivates to ensure that it doesn''t be a burden upon its constituents. It also incentivizes the participation of Martial powers around the world in the institutions of the Federation since there is more power at stake."


    By being able to cultivate its own Martial Artists, it was not only able to be less of a burden to its constituents but also enforce its own international Martialws better.


    "Fascinating," Rui murmured as he examined the vast Martial infrastructure that they passed. "I find it surprising that the Martial Powers of the world are willing to surrender the direct control of so much power in the hands of an organization that they don''t have full control over."


    The two Martial Masters shook their heads. "The Panamic Martial Federation possesses no individual autonomy as far legition, executive, and judiciary power of the Federation go. Everything falls to the Master and Sage councils, who decide the Martialws of the Martial World. That includes the two of us as well as yourself."


    Rui nced at them knowingly.


    The Panamic Martial Federation necessarily needed to give a voice to all Martial Artists of the Upper Realms. Otherwise, its mandate would not be acknowledged and respected by all Martial powers across the world.


    After all, why would a group of Martial Artists adhere to a set of rules that they had absolutely no say in?


    At the same time, it meant that any Martial legition that the Federation passed needed to earn the approval and consensus of Martial Artists across the board, increasing the number of hurdles that any legition experienced in order to be passed.


    Perhaps this was why Rui never felt the presence of the Panamic Martial Federation for pretty much his entire life.


    Eachw passed by the Panamic Martial Federation represented a restriction on all Martial Artists that the bill targeted. No Martial Artist wanted to limit their own freedom. Thus, the onlyws that could earn the support of the majority were extreme matters like the criminalization of Martially perpetrated genocide.


    In other words, in order to truly remain ''by, for, and of Martial Artists,'' everyone needed to have a voice. This is property ? of N?velDrama.Org.


    "Of course, that doesn''t mean everyone has an equal voice," the two elderly Martial Masters patiently exined to him. "Some Martial Artists and Martial organizations have a greater stake in the Panamic Martial Federation than others."


    "I''m aware," Rui nodded knowingly. "Those Martial Artists who contribute more to the Federation have more of a voice in the organization than others."


    It was a simple yet brutal incentive structure that encouraged Martial Artists to contribute to the Panamic Martial Federation, usually by offering Martial services just as his nameless guides were doing.


    "¡­I suppose that means that the two of you have a greater say in any Master Council Assembly than I do?" Rui raised an eyebrow. The two Martial Masters threw an amused nce at him.


    "I highly doubt that we will be able to match your voice should you decide to contribute your remarkable Martial contributions to the Panamic Martial Federation," they remarked with wry smiles. Rui raised an eyebrow as a suspicious gaze shifted between the two Martial Masters.


    "Ohe now, Void Prince," the elderly man chuckled. "You have been in the spotlight for a long time. The Martial World at its highest echelons is a small world. Whispers spread. Whispers of the magical contributions that your Martial has made to the Kandrian Martial Union. The Martial Union had decided not to contribute the secret, potent Squire evolution upgrade that you contributed to it, at the cost of a muchrger voice in the Panamic Martial Federation."


    Rui wasn''t surprised by the fact that they knew that he was responsible for the Hungry Pain contribution. He recalled that even Guildmaster Bradt had asked him about it in person when they had met in Princess Ranea''s submarine unveiling ceremony.


    He also wasn''t surprised that the Martial Union did not contribute such a valuable solution to the Panamic Martial Federation. After all, additional legitive power was not worth surrendering such a powerful solution to the rest of the world.


    In fact, he would have returned home and smacked everybody for selling his Hungry Pain technique at such a cheap price.


    Regardless, he might have had something to worry about had he still been a Martial Senior without any meaningful voice as a Martial Artist in the Martial World. But, as a Martial Master, he had nothing to worry about. No Martial Master wanted to be pressured out of their secrets. Thus, they created a system that didn''t pressure Martial Masters of their secrets.


    Still, he wasn''t sure how strong the guard rails would hold if they knew what he was truly capable of.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2159 Potential Political Power

    Chapter 2159 Potential Political Power


    Things like mass Apprentice breakthroughs, Martial Heart, and Martial Mind breakthroughs were downright priceless as an asset. He didn''t trust the integrity of the Panamic Martial Federation to withstand the force of the greed of the constituents to suspend the rules with some bullshit excuse to break open the secrets thaty within his mind.


    However, it did make him wonder.


    ''Just how much legitive power would I get if I did contribute these services to Panamic Martial Federation?'' He couldn''t help but wonder as he admired the extensive Martial infrastructure that spread out across the entire tectonic te.


    He suspected that he would be able to drown out legitive authority dozens if not hundreds of Martial Masters.


    This was not him being arrogant, but more so an objective evaluation of the value of the kinds of services that he was able to offer to the world. He could forever elerate the growth trajectory of any nation far beyond their wildest dreams. He could give them power that they could dream of by drastically increasing the rate of breakthroughs to several Realms.


    If he wanted, he could leave his mark in the Martial World by increasing the Martial power of the Panamic Martial Federation to such a degree that the political power he would gain within the halls of the organization would far dwarf that of other Martial Masters allowing him to veto the voices of his peers and singlehandedly decide allws that the Master Council was authorized to.


    Of course, he highly doubted that such a thing would be practically possible in reality. Surely, the Sage Council would step in and prevent Rui from autocratically dominating the Master Council deliberations with his personal political power.


    After all, the power of the Master Council was authorized by the Sage Council. While thetter only decided the broad direction that the Martial World ought to look like, it authorized the Master Council to handle the rest.


    Thus, his authority could essentially be revoked by the Sage Council if it deemed to do so.


    Interestingly enough, there was no Transcendent Council.


    Despite possessing more than enough Martial power to seizeplete control over the Panamic Martial Federation, they abstained from any political intervention of any kind. This was hardly inconsistent behavior; thus, nobody batted an eye.


    He shook his head lightly, ridding his mind of such superfluous thoughts. There was no point in pondering such thoughts, as he had no intention of contributing anything to the Panamic Martial Federation.


    He wasn''t even sure he cared to participate in its regr bureaucratic proceedings. There was a reason he denounced any involvement in politics, even if he was better at it than he had expected.


    He was here primarily as a Martial Artist and a man who was doing his father yet another favor.


    Eventually, the three Martial Masters reached the core establishment at the center of the tectonic te. While most of the vast headquarters of the Panamic Martial Federation served Martial Artists in some way or another, primarily through training and growth resources, the same could not be said for the core of the tectonic te.


    Rui''s senses swept across the entire ce as he got a good grasp of the entire ce.


    "Fancy."


    The two Martial Masters smiled at that remark. "Of course. Wee to the Martial Citadel of East Panama. This city can considered to be one of the greatest centers of Martial power in the entire world."


    He had to admit that when it came down to impressing its visitors, it was unparalleled. Never had he been so stunned by the sheer projection of grandeur than he did on his first visit to the Panamic Martial Federation.


    It did Martial Art justice.


    The Martial Citadel had the highest Martial poption density he had ever seen anywhere in the world. Never before had he seen so many Martial Artists gather in one ce. Furthermore, any humans that were there were merely there in a position service for Martial Artists.


    Rui had no doubt that each and every one of them had been thoroughly scanned by Martial Masters and Sages for ill intent against the Federation or Martial Artists atrge. He was certain that they put in extra effort into making it almost impossible for the Beggar''s Sect to stretch its tentacles into the Panamic Martial Federation. Material ? of N?velDrama.Org.


    After all, there was a clear ss conflict between the Beggar''s Sage and the Panamic Martial Federation. While the Federation did instate policies that sought to minimize the friction between human civilization and Martial Art, that was purely for the sake of Martial Art and not people.


    Ultimately, it was still a Martialocratic organization that existed solely for the sake of Martial Art. Considering that the Beggar''s Sage was essentially omnipresent within human civilization, it was questionable to what degree they had seeded in isting the Federation from the eyes and ears of the Beggar''s Sect.


    The way that his father and the Sage Council of the Martial Union had ovee this particr problem was to iste the workers from the rest of human civilization forever. Furthermore, the manifold prevented anymunication between the workers within the manifold and the Beggar''s Sect.


    However, given that they did not istemunication, he wondered just how secure the Martial Citadel was from the Beggar Sage.


    He knew that man was not to be underestimated just by virtue of having spent time with the Divine Doctor. If the man was as adept in his field of information and intelligence as the Divine Doctor was in medicine, then he was not to be trifled with.


    He heaved a sigh, shrugging lightly.


    It was none of his concern. He was sure that the Panamic Martial Federation had deeply considered this problem and probably instated many security policies to reinforce its intelligence security. He was more interested in indulging in everything that the Martial Citadel at the center of the headquarters of the Panamic Martial Federation.


    "I can''t wait to check this ce out."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2160 Training Value

    Chapter 2160 Training Value


    "Before that, you must register with the administration," they told him. "After that, you will be assigned a briefing and an evaluation shortly after."


    They gestured him to a counter with an array of human employees across them, processing Martial Artists that came with various needs and requirements.


    "Once that''s done, you can do whatever you want in your free time," they exined to him. "You can avail the training resources in the Panamic Martial Federation with either mary or Martialpensation."


    "Understood." Rui nodded. "I appreciate the guidance. By the way, I never caught your names, unfortunately."


    "Ah¡­" They exchanged nces. "I am Dellir Merenmel." The man smiled.


    "I am his wife," she added. "Maywel Merenmel."


    "Merenmel¡­" Rui narrowed his eyes as the name struck as oddly familiar. "Wait a minute, you guys¡­Are you not the Cardinal Couple?"


    He recognized theirst name as belonging to a pair Martial Masters that had earned a name for them as Martial Masters due to how much power the two Martial Master had collectively due their synergy and teamwork. "Ahaha, it is an honor that the Void Prince of the Kandrian Empire knows of us, I must say." Master Dellir smiled at Rui.


    "Ugh, please do not remind me of that nickname," Master Maywell grumbled. "One of the reasons that I was quite adamant of retiring to the headquarters of the Panamic Martial Federation was due to the fact that that nickname followed me everywhere."


    Rui smiled wryly while the two of them bade him farewell to return to their patrol duties.


    "May we meet again, Master Rui."


    "See youter."


    It wasn''t long before Ruimenced and evenpleted the registration process. That Panamic Martial Federation seemed to understand Martial Artists very well, considering that they merely requested for his name and proof of identity while promising to handle the rest.


    Martial Artists were not good with paperwork. With low education, they usually possessed neither the understanding of bureaucratic protocols nor the patience to deal with them. Thus, the Panamic Martial Federation wisely ensured its staff and management handled everything.


    It was one of the strongest arguments used against Martial Supremacy and quite a convincing one.


    If Martial Artists wanted to be in charge of everything, then they needed to deal with things that they despised dealing with. They also needed to deal with the fact that they needed to bepetent enough to manage a state.


    Regardless, while Rui had no problem dealing with paperwork, he was more than grateful to set out exploring the Panamic Martial Federation before he was assigned a slot for his briefing.


    He soared to the skies above the tectonic te that cradled the Federation, breathing in a gush of cold air. The atmosphere above the Panamic Martial Federation seemed to be purposefully designed to retain an unnatural amount of air, considering the elevation of the tectonic te.


    Yet, unlike the Ajanta Floating Ind, it did not do so by relying on gravity.


    It was a fascinating phenomenon yet very bizarre to the senses. It was almost as though the tectonic te was truly something that had been pasted into the sky from Gaia in a strange reality glitch, where it retained an air density that made no sense at the elevations that it was at.


    Regardless, he was more interested in things built on top of it than the floating tectonic te itself.


    "Honestly, I am shocked that the tectonic te doesn''tpletely disintegrate under the weight of Martial Sages and Masters," he murmured to himself. "I suppose that''s why the infrastructure is so massive and extensive." Belongs to N?velDrama.Org - All rights reserved.


    The amount of power that Martial Artists of the Upper Realms were capable of outputting was so far beyond what ordinary bedrock out to be capable of withstanding that it would take particrly powerful resources to ensure that these Martial Artists did not destroy everything.


    However, as far as training resources go, not even the headquarters of the Panamic Martial Federation could trump the sheer utility of the Kandrian Martial Chambers in the training manifold in the Kandrian Empire.


    No amount of ordinary training resources couldpare to the growth rate of fourteen times.


    Of course, the only drawback that the manifold made was that it only made one grow faster rtive to others while also making them age that much faster. In other words, the manifold could not make people stronger in their lifetime than they would have been without it.


    It did not increase the maximum peak that one could achieve; it just allowed that peak toe sooner rather thanter. Of course, just growing faster rtive to others was a blessing that would make people hyperpetitive against their peers.


    Still, to someone like Rui, who wanted to make the best of his youth and prime, the Panamic Martial Federation might be better for him as an individual Martial Artist, while the manifold was more precious to nations that simply wanted to cultivate Martial Artists sooner rather thanter.


    "I don''t n to return to training any time soon, so I suppose that it doesn''t matter."


    He had spent plenty of time in training, after all. However, the next time he wanted to train a specific technique, he might just decide to use the Panamic Martial Federation than his other techniques.


    He zoomed about as he indulged himself in exploring the various megastructures that catered to individual Masters and Sages with deep interest and fascination. Normally, for most training infrastructure for Martial Artists of the Upper Realms, they needed to constrain their power and the area over which they could train due to the costs of infrastructure.


    Perhaps only Sage-level powerhouses could deal with the expenses and the demanding requirements of resources for such training resources. He felt his nerves tingle when he arrived at the section reserved for Martial Sages. A training establishment that covered the equivalent of entire nations in area.


    Immense swathes ofnd and infrastructure reserved solely for Sages. It was an enviable treatment that Rui yearned to earn for himself one day.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2161 Unavailable

    Chapter 2161 Unavable


    Rui thoroughly enjoyed his tour of the headquarters of the Panamic Martial Federation. It was the first time that he hade across such an ungodly amount of resources dedicated solely to the progression of Martial Art.


    It gave him the impression that even if Martial Art were to lose an immense amount of power and capital one day, the Panamic Martial Federation possessed the ability to sustain the growth of Martial Art on its own.


    In that regard, he had to admit that it truly was by, for, and of Martial Artists.


    One of the reasons that he didn''t aggressively spread his knowledge of science was because he was concerned that it could undermine the dominance of Martial Art. He didn''t know whether Martial Sages would be able to deal with siege weapons armed with powerful processing power and urate data.


    He would have been less concerned if Martial Transcendents were actually assets that exercised their power. But given that Martial Sages were effectively the peak of Martial Art, he had been wary of the impacts he could have.


    However, after seeing how much the Panamic Martial Federation put into Martial Art, he could not help but believe that Martial Art would prevail no matter what.


    Of course, he was aware that this was far from an objective analysis and, rationally, it didn''t change much.


    Regardless, the countless training facilities that could train just about all primary fields ofbat and their various sub-fields were a truly amazing sight.


    Massive chunks of the surface of the tectonic te were dedicated offense, defense, and maneuvering. Within them, countless sub-sections dedicated many resources to all conceivable sub-fields within them.


    In the offensive section, he could see several avenues dedicated solely to impact-offenses, the mostmon type of offense in Martial Art. Things like punching and kicking fell into this category. One would think that this was a rtively simple category, yet one could not be further away from the truth in that regard. Every type of blunt force and impact-offense was explored. From vibration-based impact-offense techniques to friction-based, and even temperature and piercing-based offensive techniques. Each had dedicated training facilities to ensure that there was nock of training resources for even the most niche kinds of techniques.


    Of course, more popr andmon kinds of techniques and principles got more funding. Rui imagined that a process quite simr to the annual Martial Fiscal Budget Allocation Meeting that happened in the Martial Union also happened in the Panamic Martial Federation.


    Within the defense sector, entire portions of the infrastructure were dedicated to a variety of conditioning-based techniques that operated with many different principles. Conditioning was bread and butter as far as defense went. Yet, it was an extremely broad field that operated on many different principles.


    After all, the human body was extremelyplex. The same was even more true for the Martial Body. There were manyyers and systems of the human body that could be conditioned in different ways to improve its ability to withstand force inflicted on it. There were many advantages that came with conditioning one''s body. Passive durability that didn''t consume any energy or any mental attention was an asset for obvious reasons. Such high benefits for merely suffering through the conditioning process were the reasons that these techniques were popr. With such arge number of Martial Artists mastering and developing various kinds of conditioning techniques, it was natural that a lot of techniques with different philosophies and principles had emerged.


    However, it appeared that the Panamic Martial Federation was able to keep up with all the techniques that had sprung up across the Martial World, for there existed training resources for every kind of technique that Rui could even conceive of.


    This included techniques that only he had mastered due to having developed them for himself¡ªsuch was the versatility of the training resources avable at his disposal.


    He spent quite some time admiring the vast training infrastructure that he could ess at any point he wanted.


    "I might have been able toplete training the Yin-Yang Spear sooner if I had trained here instead of in the Kandrian Empire," he realized. However, he would have had to contribute wealth or Martial contributions to make use of it while he could make use of the Martial Union''s facilities for free when in the Kandrian Empire.


    At the moment, he wasn''t feeling generous enough to contribute to anybody after all he had done for the Kandrian Empire.


    Eventually, his little tour of the Panamic Martial Federation''s training section came to an end. It was time to get to business.


    He didn''t want to stall the mission that his father had given him.


    "Ah, I''m afraid to inform you that your slot has not yet been assigned, Master Rui," the employee at the counter began when he approached. "That is not what I''m here to inquire about," Rui stated with a calm voice. "I believe that I''m allowed to book appointments with members of the Panamic Martial Federation''s advisory council, right?" This content ? N?v/elDr(a)m/a.Org.


    "Of course, Your Mastery. Are you perhaps interested in booking a meeting with anybody in particr?" Rui nodded. "Sage Kole Kellin."


    He didn''t miss the micro-reactions from her bodynguage and the mental ripples inside her mind when she heard his answer.


    "¡­Of course, Your Mastery," she replied with a perfunctory response.


    "Is anything wrong?" Rui raised an eyebrow. "Ah¡­" Her expression grew troubled. "You can speak freely, you know." "I''m sorry, Your Mastery." She bowed her head. "However, Her Honored Sagehood very rarely epts meeting requests from anybody, I''m afraid."


    Rui narrowed his eyes. "Is that so¡­?"


    It matched the intelligence reports that his father had supplied him with, which reported that she was pretty insr and rarelymunicated with anybody. Thus, it begged the question of how one could possibly get in touch with her.


    "How much would it cost to get her to see me?"


    The employee grew more ufortable at the implications of his words. "I''m afraid we do not have such provisions at the Panamic Martial Federation."


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2162 Crazy plan

    Chapter 2162 Crazy n


    "Is it a matter of Martial Contributions, then?"


    "I''m afraid that we cannot force an honored Martial Sage to answer Your Mastery''s calls. I hope you understand."


    "Is there no way that I can contact her?" Rui furrowed his eyebrows. "I''m afraid not, Your Mastery. Not through any official channels in the Panamic Martial Federation, at least," she answered. "I cannot speak for any unofficial channels that may or may not exist."


    Stepping away from the counter, Rui fell into deep thought as she made it abundantly clear that she was unable to help him in any way after several more exchanges.


    It was annoying that he had already hit a speed bump, unable to even meet Sage Kole, let alone convince her. Normally, had it been an ordinary reason, he would have given up and gone home, however, his mission was not something that he could just give up on.


    "I need to get in touch with her through some other means," he thought to himself. "Something that will get me in touch with her face-to-face."


    It was silly that there were no official means by which he could guarantee a meeting. After all, surely the Panamic Martial Federation would ensure that even its high-ranking members did not reflect poorly on its attitude towards highly important figures.


    Which he was, by all reasonable means of evaluations.


    He was a particrly powerful Martial Master and a pretty influential member of the Martial Union. Furthermore, he was part of the Kandrian Royal Family and had even been the bonafide emperor before he had headed for the Beast Domain to find the Divine Doctor.


    Surely this extravagant status should give him enough political clout to speak to any Martial Sage on demand, or so he thought.


    There were some people who simply didn''t care, it appeared.


    "She should have some personal contact with the others," Rui thought carefully. "Is there any merit in trying to get to her through her personal contacts?"


    The idea died as fast as it had been born.


    "That''s not going to work." He shook his head, heaving a sigh. "It''s too aggressive. Not to mention, kind of creepy."


    If he couldn''t get in contact with her informally or through the official contacts in the Panamic Martial Federation, then the only choice with which he could get into contact with her was through her duties as a member of the Panamic Martial Federation.


    She was a member of the advisory council and the sole High Martial Judge of the East Panamic branch of the Panamic Martial Federation, possessing the authority to judge and sentence Martial Masters. Material ? of N?velDrama.Org.


    As an organization by, of, and for Martial Artists, humans had been deemed unworthy to judge Martial Artists. Especially Martial Artists of the Upper Realms.


    All the Martial Artists of the Panamic Martial Federation had unanimously agreed that only those with greater power possessed the right to judge those with lesser power. In other words, the only ones who possessed the right to judge Martial Masters were stronger Martial Masters.


    And perhaps the only one that could judge a Martial Master as strong as Rui was¡­


    "¡­A Martial Sage."


    The reason that she was a High Martial Judge at all, ording to the intelligence that his father had provided him, was due to the fact that one needed to be to Martial Sage to judge high-grade Martial Masters whom no retired Martial Masters serving as judges could be qualified to judge.


    "In other words, I can guarantee myself a meeting with the Sage as long as I vite thew of the Panamic Martial Federation." He calmly analyzed his circumstances to decipher the best option to get this mission done as soon as possible.


    It didn''t take him long to arrive at the quickest method to get a meeting with her.


    However, viting aw of the Panamic Martial Federation was not a sane method to get a meeting with someone who served as a judge.


    At the same time, all other methods were too slow or too infeasible. He found himself between a rock and a hard ce.


    "Unfortunately, I''m not sure there are any ways to meet her any time soon," he remarked. "And based on my estimations, this cannot be dyed all too much either. I need to ensure that I have her bagged as an asset for the Kandrian Empire by the time I head back home."


    Even though his father had not divulged the timelines of when the war was projected to start, Rui was sharp enough to deduce the due dates that his father had to adhere to based on the fact that he had shamelessly asked Rui for yet another favor after having already benefited from him greatly in the first ce. The fact that his father had requested him nheless at this particr point in time was evidence enough for Rui to figure out that they were on a schedule and couldn''t afford to fall behind.


    "Hmph, what a needy father," Rui grumbled.


    Thus, Rui''s options were reduced significantly. His powerful mind had conjured up many ns to get in touch with Sage Kole, including breaking into her personal quarters if things got truly desperate. Yet each of these ns was only viable if he had time. The only way he could get in touch with her within the duration of his visit, ording to his estimations, was if he obligated her toe before him as a matter of duty. ording to the intelligence that his father had given him, she was deeply duty-bound as a matter of her personality.


    This was a product of her time as a member of the military of her now-deceased nation. It was one of the reasons that his father wanted her services. He wanted the power of another Martial Sage who was deeply loyal to him.


    Rui had no doubt that his father would seed in earning her loyalty if given an opportunity to seed. However, he was not wee aboard the Panamic Martial Federation by virtue of being a human. It did not matter if he was the Emperor of Harmony or the ruler of a Sage-level nation. If anything, that simply made it even more difficult than if he were a normal human.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2163 A Single Name

    Chapter 2163 A Single Name


    The only outsiders that could set foot within the Panamic Martial Federation were Martial Artists, and the only Martial Artists that Emperor Rael could trust to undertake such an immensely important mission aside from the Martial Sages of the Martial Union were Sage Sayfeel and Rui.


    The former''s existence was an absolute secret that could not be divulged. Thus, Rui was the only one he could turn to.


    In fact, although Emperor Rael hadn''t said it, Rui knew that he had given him the easiest Sage recruitment mission out of all. An able Martial Sage was far more difficult to impress and was far too dangerous for Ruipared to a fully crippled Martial Sage.


    "Oh well¡­" He shrugged. "Time to break aw or two."


    It was rather silly when he thought of the underlying reason why he hade to the conclusion that he needed to go through such an extreme solution. Normally, not being able to meet a recruitment target was not cause to be a criminal.


    The sane response in this circumstance was to simply give up and go back home and tell his father it couldn''t happen.


    Yet, Rui simply couldn''t afford to do this, easy as it was.


    Sess was imperative to ensuring that the Kandrian Empire was able to gain the power it needed to withstand pressure from the rest of the world. Furthermore, it needed to happen quickly.


    On top of that, the means by which he got the opportunity to convince her to join the Kandrian Empire and serve his father, the Emperor of Harmony, could not reduce the probability of her epting his offer.


    In other words, he couldn''t go too far. Pissing her off was not going to help him seed. He just needed to ensure that he got in the same room as her. He also wanted to avoid incurring a sentence that was particrly hard or rough as he wasn''t interested in bing a fugitive.


    In other words, he just needed to get in front of her.


    The reason that he was so confident was that he didn''t think she would be able to resist the allure of regaining her power. Once she was in front of him and faced with the opportunity to regain her power, she most likely would not do anything to dy the process.


    Sentencing him to some form of imprisonment was something that would most certainly dy the regaining of her power. Thus, he could be certain that she was heavily disincentivized to go through such an option.


    Based on the intelligence that his father had provided him, while Sage Kole was a person who had been deeply loyal to her former home, she merely joined the Panamic Martial Federation because she had nowhere else to go. His father noted in the intelligence package that there was an extremely low probability of Sage Kole having gained a deep loyalty to the organization, considering that she had historically stayed away from it, refusing to partake in its legiture.


    In addition, it hadn''t been too long since the loss of control over her power. It had been merely twelve years, which was nothing by the standards of a Martial Sage. In other words, the probability that she had managed to get over her predicament was low.


    All these pieces of information culminated together to give Rui greater certainty that Sage Kole would almost surely prioritize the recovery of her power over her sedentary duty as a High Martial Judge.


    As long as he managed to convey his message to her before shepleted her trial, he couldpel her to dere him innocent so that they could head back to the Kandrian Empire to treat her.


    In other words, his n entailed breaking just significant enough of aw that would just be enough to get him in front of the sole judge whose Martial Realm was high enough to judge him so that he could essentially bribe her with what was probably the single greatest dream she harbored so that she could acquit him with the goal of hastening her recovery in the Kandrian Empire.


    "It''s a crazy n when I actually put it like that."


    However, he was confident in his evaluation and reasoning for each of the individual premises of such a crazy n. "Now, to find the most appropriate way to get myself in front of her."


    Ideally, it should be the most inoffensive thing that he could possibly do to ensure that the well wasn''t poisoned when he did eventually stand in front of her.


    "However, I should save executing this n until after my briefing and Martial evaluation," he mused knowingly. "It would not do for this n to interfere with my briefing."


    He highly doubted that they would extend this courtesy to him if he broke thew and was put on trial first. However, while he did care aboutpelling Sage Kole to join the Kandrian Empire and swear loyalty to his father, he was also interested in learning everything that the Panamic Martial Federation had to convey to him.


    Hopefully, the information that they were going to convey would aid him with his journey to the Sage Realm. However, he doubted it. Such a thing was too good to be true.


    Thankfully, it wasn''t too long before he got a notification informing him of his slot for the Master-level briefing and evaluation. He quickly skimmed through it, mindlessly reading through the details.


    [Esteemed Master Rui Quarrier Ss Kandria, your briefing and evaluation have been scheduled for tomorrow, the Sixteenth of Summer. The following internal Martial Masters shall conduct the briefing and evaluation.


    Briefing: Master Gern.


    Martial Embodiment evaluator: Master Felix.


    Martial Profile evaluator: Master Jenile.


    ¡­]


    It was an entirely ordinary message.


    One that would not have stirred anyone who read it.


    After all, it was a bunch of boring details for a bunch of boring matters.


    Yet, Rui froze.


    His eyes sharpened gravely as his expression grew severe.


    The air grew frosty as his chilling gaze intensified, fixating on the message.


    A single name.


    [Combat threat evaluator: Master Uma.]


    -This content ? N?v/elDr(a)m/a.Org.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2164 Resurfacing Memories

    Chapter 2164 Resurfacing Memories


    Rui''s presence grew chilling as a dark re fixated on her name.


    Of all the names that he possibly had run into, he did not expect to see Master Uma on the list.


    A painful sensation emerged within his body. Within his heart.


    Suppressed memories of one of the worst periods of his life flooded back.


    He hadn''t forgotten her, but he had certainly subconsciously tried to.


    Until rtively recently in his life, he was too weak to personally do anything about her. After all, she was a Martial Master.


    However, seeing her name on the list of Martial Artists unearthed a forgotten oath.


    The darkness in his eyes swirled as he recalled what he swore to himself.


    "One day, I will kill her with my own two hands."


    Nearly fifteen years had passed.


    And today, he had finally amassed enough power to do justice to his own oath. He clenched his fist as his eyes narrowed.


    Bloodlust flickered in their depths.


    He didn''t know what she was doing serving as an evaluator in the Panamic Martial Federation. However, themission for the information ckout that he had gotten from the Beggar''s Sect regarding his identity to her had long expired, and he was too busy with far too many things to pay any mind to seek information about her.


    However, the very thought of that crazy religious fanatic serving as hisbat threat evaluator was a sick joke that wasn''t funny. There weren''t many things that could inspire true rage from him.


    This was one of them.


    A single whisper escaped him.


    "I should kill her." He hadn''t forgotten the frustration that he felt at his own weakness when he escaped from her in fear while Master Deivon fought with all his might to protect Rui from her. If not for the fact that he had confirmed that Master Deivon was still alive in the Virodhabhasa Theocracy in isted training under Sage Sariawar''s oversight, he would be a lot more furious.


    However, he knew that he needed to put an end to his grudge against her and the threat that she represented to him. She couldn''t reveal her crazy delusions regarding his capabilities and shallow resemnce to the Antithesis due to Master Deivon threatening to reveal her own mutinymitted when Rui left the Virodhabhasa Theocracy after winning the Martial Contest. However, she still represented a threat to his freedom.


    However, he knew that he needed to put an end to his grudge against her and the threat that she represented to him. She couldn''t reveal her crazy delusions regarding his capabilities and shallow resemnce to the Antithesis due to Master Deivon threatening to reveal her own mutinymitted when Rui left the Virodhabhasa Theocracy after winning the Martial Contest. However, she still represented a threat to his freedom.


    She needed to die.


    There was no question of that.


    However, what was a question that he needed to answer was whether he could do so at this point in time, or not.


    After all, unauthorized killing in the Panamic Martial Federation was a serious matter.


    The worst punishment was envement.


    Despite being for, of, and by Martial Artists, he knew that the Panamic Martial Federation permitted the envement of Martial Artists that had proven to be a liability to the Panamic Martial Federation or had egregiously vited the rules. The best punishment was permanent exile.


    In other words, he could not kill her inside the Panamic Martial Federation without consequences.


    Yet, when would he ever get the chance to kill her if not now?


    Would he need to wait years and decades more to kill her? This is property ? of N?velDrama.Org.


    However, was his vendetta against her truly worth incurring a harsh sentence from the Panamic Martial Federation?


    Killing one of their officers, especially a Martial Master, was not something that could be forgiven lightly. Perhaps he wouldn''t suffer lifelong envement since the Panamic Martial Federation was extremely reluctant to spoil its rtionship with the Martial Union and the Emperor of Harmony due to its greed for mass Apprentice breakthroughs. However, it certainly wouldn''t go unpunished.


    Furthermore, it could screw with the mission that his father had entrusted him with.


    It was one thing if he vited a more technical, albeit important,w, but it was an entirely separate matter altogether to murder an ''innocent'' Master who had graciously made use of her time to evaluate him.


    While he was still confident that what he was offering was too juicy to Sage Kole for it to not be in her serious consideration, he would not be able to be certain that she would ept his offer if the context of their meeting was something as severe as this.


    "Damn!"


    He closed his eyes as his expression crumpled with a hint of frustration.


    The most rational thing to do was to kill her another day. The most logical option, when his powerful intellect processed all possible scenarios, was one where he simply pretended that he hadn''t the faintest clue who she was.


    Otherwise, he would end up incurring the consequences of acting on his bloodlust.


    He considered killing her in secret with Greater Phantomind Void, a technique that used his memories of her. However, there was no way that he would be able to do that without adequate intelligence on her and all the security measures of the Panamic Martial Federation.


    Even though he was a powerful Martial Artists with powerful, especially potent mental techniques that could allow him to achieve extraordinary misdirection-driven stealth, he had no idea whether he could prate all the security measures of the Panamic Martial Federation.


    This was especially the case when he didn''t have the time for extensive intelligence-gathering and nning for her assassination.


    No matter how much he deployed his powerful thought, he was unable toe to apromise that could allow him have his cake and eat it.


    "¡­Damn!" He cursed. "I should have killed her as soon as I''d taken care of all of the important matters after returning home from the Beast Domain."


    He deeply regretted not having killed her soon after he broke through to Master Realm, even if he wasn''t sure about whether he could beat her at the time due to the fact that he was merely at the cusp of high-grade power while she was a full-fledged high-grade Master.


    Master Deivon had needed to risk his life to stall her long enough for Rui to escape.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2165 Mysterious Circumstances

    2165 Mysterious Circumstances This content ? N?v/elDr(a)m/a.Org.


    However, now, he was confident he could deal with her in a one-on-one fight. He had achieved a truly remarkable degree of power within the Master Realm despite the fact that he had only spent four years or so in the Master Realm.


    There weren''t many Martial Artists in the Master Realm who were his equals. The only other strategic concerns he had were those of demonstrating all his trump cards before the war started.


    After all, he hadn''t forgotten that there were other concerns in the Panamic Martial Federation that he also had to deal with.


    His father had warned him that the Panamic Martial Federation and the three Sage-level powerhouses in its midsts would use this opportunity to try and poke the secrets of the mass Apprentice breakthroughs out of him.


    However, he had no intention of yielding any information. It also meant that he couldn''t afford to focus on other things, such as Master Uma. His primary objective was returning from the Panamic Martial Federation with Sage Kole with him.


    Secondarily, his mission was to withstand the pressure he would experience from the Panamic Martial Federation without divulging any confidential intelligence. These two were far too important for him to focus on anything else at the moment. It was rather unfortunate that she reappeared before him at this particr point in time, throwing him off his game.


    For now, however, it was best that he ignored her and moved on with his mission if he could. However, one thing that he didn''t appreciate was that not only did she reappear before him, but she also was hisbat threat evaluator. In other words, he couldn''t ignore her; he would need to face her inbat and watch her pass judgment on him.


    Rui returned to his housing quarters, displeased. He didn''t care to explore the rest of the headquarters upon realizing who it housed. The context of this visit had entirely changed in his eyes. He wasn''t even sure what she was doing here as abat threat evaluator in the Panamic Martial Federation. After all, this was reserved for those who were employed by the Panamic Martial Federation for that role, and they wouldn''t employ someone who was a part of the Virodhabhasa Theocracy.


    In other words, she was most likely no longer a bishop in the religious organization at this point in time.


    He found that rather strange.


    She had always been a devout follower of the religion, burying herself in theology and remaining disconnected from the rest of the world.


    Why had she decided to leave the theocracy and join the Panamic Martial Federation? As a secr organization, there was no doubt that it would not appeal to her as an organization very much.


    Yet, not only had she joined the Federation, she had also gone as far as to leave West Panama and join the eastern headquarters of the Federation. That was even more suspicious. All these facts triggered Rui''s rm bells as he began pondering the possibilities as to why she was here.


    He didn''t like the inferences and conclusions that could be usibly drawn from this. It almost made him want to leave the Federation and contact the Beggar''s Sect to gather more intelligence. He was certain that there was something or the other that she was up to that he probably wouldn''t like.


    It would be prudent to get on top of that situation and get a good understanding of the circumstances that he was in. It would have been what he would normally do, retreat to get more information so that he could analyze his situation and make more informed decisions.


    Yet, irrational as it was, the thought of ''running away'' from her made him abandon such a course of action immediately, regardless of the merit in its logic.


    "Tsk, this is messing with my head too much. I need to calm down and focus on the objectives and the missions," he reminded himself.


    For now, everything was still on track.


    He wouldplete the briefing and evaluation and then break thew, which would help him get in front of Sage Kole andpel her to join the Kandrian Empire. He had already modeled different directions the conversation could go and had prepared himself for all the broad scenarios that could unfold.


    Everything was in ce, and he just needed to not screw things up.


    The day passed uneventfully as Rui immersed himself in thought. He grew wistful as he recollected how his desire for more power to protect himself from the likes of Chairman Deacon and Master Uma was responsible for helping him get to where he was. He used to be a lot more power-hungry than he was these days. Back then, he used to seek power itself, while these days, he essentially sought power to aid him in understanding who he was.


    Thetter was more pure, but the former was more visceral. The desperation for power that he had felt prior to his breakthrough into the Senior Realm against Ieyasu was a brief period of time where he had been most driven for power.


    The more they thought about it, the more bloodlust of old emerged from deep within him. The fact that he had essentially cked out a lot of old memories rting to her was an insult to his younger self.


    He should have killed her the moment he broke through to the Master Realm. Yet, because the impact she had on him had waned in time and he was consumed by more important things like his identity crisis and the healing of his father, she essentially slipped into a pocket of unforgotten things.


    No more.


    "She should have nevere before me ever again," Rui growled. Now, he wouldn''t forget.


    Now, he would one day find her and kill her, no matter what. He would make her pay for what she did to him, what she had forced him to go through.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2166 The threat of Waning Dominance

    2166 The threat of Waning Dominance


    The Panamic Martial Federation had a powerful bureaucracy with many employees and staff members who were able to process the requirements, demands, needs, and desires of all Martial Artists within a short amount of time.


    His briefing had already been rapidly processed after he arrived at the Panamic Martial Federation with all arrangements prepared at a rapid pace. Within a day, it was already time for his briefing as a Martial Master.


    Previously, he had been deeply interested in what revtions the Panamic Martial Federation would show him. Now, however, only half of his attention was focused on it by the time he reached the venue designated for his briefing.


    Master Gern, his assigned briefer, clearly noticed.


    "Something ailing your mind, young Master?"


    Rui stirred as his attention snapped back to reality, bing conscious of his surroundings.


    He was in an empty lecture hall, sitting in the first row. Before him was an elderly Martial Master with a deeply aged visage and a diminutive aura. He was clearly retired, no longer an active Martial Artist.


    That didn''t mean he couldn''t fight, of course.


    Age affected martial artists differently than normal humans.


    The Martial Body was designed to minimize any loss of physicality to age, allowing Martial Artists to remainbat-worthy even if they were the effective equivalent of a ny-year-old.


    "Ah¡­" Rui shook his head apologetically with a mncholic smile. "I''ve been a little¡­consumed. However, I apologize, please begin."


    "Mmm," the elderly man regarded Rui with a warm smile. "You are the equivalent of a young man, it would not do for you to be so worn down with mental burdens. Leave that for old men like myself. Hoho."


    "Thank you, elder."


    "Young Martial Artists should pour their all into pursuing their Martial Paths while they can," he advised with a knowing tone while he fiddled with the projector stand, preparing for the briefing. "Your youth won''tst forever, so you better hope you can fulfill the desire or objective that server as your Martial Drive. Though, in your case¡­"


    His eyes shifted towards Rui with a knowing gaze. "¡­I suppose your youth willst for far longer than it will for your peers."


    "¡­Perhaps, but my Martial Drive isn''t easy to fulfill. Even with such an advantage, I cannot be certain whether I will achieve my goal."


    "Ambitious, indeed," the elder Master mused. "We are ready. Now, I shallmence the briefing, if you are willing to go through with it. We can reschedule it forter if you so wish."


    "No, let us go through it now," Rui shook his head. "I do not wish to dy it any further. However, this does seem more informal and less serious than I expected it to be."


    The elder Martial Masterughed aloud at his words. "Ah, informal perhaps; after all, I have given this briefing many a time to many a Master. But less serious¡­?"


    His eyes narrowed as his demeanor grew more severe. "¡­I''m afraid not."


    Rui regarded him with intrigue as the man began.


    "The Age of Martial Art gives many a Martial Artist the illusion that Martial Art is invincible, that it will always be invincible. That it cannot be challenged and suppressed by those that seem to infringe on it." He began. "After all, even the most potent of esoteric technology seems to be unable to ovee its equivalents as much as merely deter them. Furthermore, beasts and monsters seem clearly to be far weaker than Martial Artists as individualbat assets. After all, it takes many a Master-level beast to stalemate a single Martial Master due to how effective atbat our entire existence it geared to be."


    "¡­" Rui waited for the inevitable ''but'' that wasing. And it certainly came. Belongs to N?velDrama.Org - All rights reserved.


    "But what if I told you that much of this is merely an illusion?" His tone grew a tad more macabre as he inly denied the truth of his prior statements. "What if I told you that Martial Art''s position in this world is¡­fragile?"


    Rui listened to him patiently, waiting for him to continue.


    These concepts weren''t exactly new to Rui, although for particrly unique reasons. His concerns stemmed from the sheer amount of power that esoteric and non-esoteric science could yield ifbined. He truly didn''t know whether Martial Artists would be able to cope with such a rapid spike in power.


    "The fragility of Martial Art was not something that did not exist for most of the Age of Martial Art," the man remarked. "It was only realized after the Transcendent Realm was discovered and reached. The fact that Martial Transcendents are simply not assets of the Martial World means that Martial Art cannot achieve the rapid growth that it once did with spikes in power upon the discovery of a new Realm, which is one of the reasons that Martial Art has outpaced the development esoteric military technology. However¡­"


    His expression grew more serious. "¡­the Transcendent Realm has eliminated that cause for growth. Every time a Martial Transcendent is born, a Martial Sage is merely lost. This is a limit that affects not just Martial Art, but also all of human civilization. In the political sphere, this phenomenon is referred to as the Great Limit."


    Rui narrowed his eyes. "The Great Limit?"


    The elder man nodded. "However, the Great Limit is only a limit for growth driven by Martial Art. It doesn''t apply to the rise in power due to esoteric technology. In other words, if esoteric technology continues the trends of history and continues growing stronger and stronger while Martial Art stagnates, it may¡­surpass thetter."


    Rui fell into thought at the man''s words. "I suppose it''s not absolutely impossible, but¡­"


    His gaze returned to his briefer. "¡­Esoteric technology has massive resource limits that Martial Art doesn''t. One of the reasons that it was able to grow as fast as it could was because Martial Artists were able to drive up the supply of precious resources. In other words, a constraint that impacts the growth of esoteric technology is Martial Art."


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2167 Demanding Request

    2167 Demanding Request


    While the well-meaning elderly Master intended to merely break any arrogance that Rui might have had in Martial Arts and make him cautious about the adversities that Martial Art faced, he was taken aback by how well Rui was well-versed in the power dynamics of human civilization.


    However, Rui knew had a point.


    While the growth of Martial Art had elerated in the Age of Martial Art, the growth esoteric technology had also sped up due to the fact that Martial Artists were able to ovee many dangers to extract and retrieve powerful esoteric resources that served as one of the reasons that esoteric military technology grew.


    In other words, if Martial Art stalled, then that was reason to believe that esoteric technology would stall too.


    "Your profile did not lie when it said that you possess insight far surpassing your years and experience," the elderly Master admitted. "However, you still underestimate esoteric technology. While it is true that Martial Art has driven its growth, it is also true that it drives growth in Martial Art. After all, I''m sure I don''t need to remind you that the Squire Realm is an artificial Realm. A human construct. A product of technology."


    Rui stirred at the elder Master''s words.


    It was certainly true that while all realms that seeded it were natural, the Squire Realm was definitely an artificial Realm that heavily depended on esoteric technology. The quality of the Squire evolution breakthrough process was responsible for the innate power of not just the Squire Realm, but also that of the Senior Realm. After all, the Martial Heart was directly proportional to the Martial Body.


    In addition, one thing that he didn''t mention was growth and training resources that also improved the rate of growth of Martial Art.


    "However, while Martial Art has hit a potential cap, esoteric technology does not have such a limit on its potential," Master Gern warned. "This matters because many nations and rulers around the world have realized that Martial Art has teaued and will not experience the massive spikes in growth that it used to, and this has already begun reflecting."


    Rui raised an eyebrow. "¡­What do you mean?"


    Master Gern''s expression grew even more severe. "Human civilization has ceased investing in Martial Art as it did before the advent of Transcendence. Humanity is slowly realizing that the future of power will not lie in the limits of Martial Art, but in the untapped potential of esoteric technology."


    Rui''s eyes sharpened at those words. "I don''t think I''ve ever heard of such a thing."


    The elder Master shook his head. "It happens beyond our sphere. It happens when nations invest capital that used to go to Martial Art has now been diverted to esoteric military technology. It happens when the first Sage-level powerhouse that does not rely on Martial Artes into existence after the Transcendent Realm was discovered."


    Rui''s eyes widened as he understood what the Master was referring to. "¡­Esocline Federation."


    Master Gern nodded gravely. "The youngest and arguably weakest Sage-level powerhouse. However, the fact that exists, at all, a Sage-level powerhouse that primarily depends on state-of-the-art esoteric military technology, led by the Esoterist, is an absolutely unprecedented phenomenon. In the past, there were no powerhouse nations that didn''t depend on Martial Art. When the Squire, Senior, Master, and Sage Realms were once the highest Realms, it was impossible for a powerhouse not to rely on Martial Arts."


    Rui understood what the elder Master was conveying.


    The fact that a powerhouse independent of Martial power had emerged after the discovery of Transcendent Realm showed that the Transcendent Realm had not stalled but also weakened Martial Art to the point that a powerhouse depending purely or mostly on technology had emerged for the very first time!


    "What if more powerhouses relying on technology emerge?" It was a simple question, yet one that Rui had never considered.


    He had always known of the existence of Esocline Federation. They had been the power that had supplied the Kaddar Treaty Association with the weapon that stabilized the floating Ajanta Ind, allowing them to wage war with the Floating Sect.


    In addition, Master Deivon had also talked to Rui about them and their partnership with the Virodhabhasa Theocracy.


    However, he didn''t understand the contextual significance of what a technological Sage-level powerhouse represented. It represented a shift in power dynamics. Before, the gap between Martial Art and esoteric technology wasrge enough that thetter was not the former''s equal. Now, however, esoteric technology had caught up to allow for the birth of the first Sage-level powerhouse.


    "It''s all because Transcendents are non-assets." Master Gern''s voice grew bolder. "Had they exercised their unfathomable power, the gap between Martial Art and esoteric technology would have only grown, yet, because they do not move, they have instead weakened the state of Martial Art."


    It was an extremely controversial statement to make in the halls of a Martialocratic organization like the Panamic Martial Federation. Martial Transcendents were gods in human form that were to be revered, not chastised. Material ? of N?velDrama.Org.


    Yet, it appeared that Master Gern harbored no such feeling towards them.


    "What Martial Art needs is a new path to power as a whole," he continued. "The Transcendent Realm is not worth pursuing, we need something that will empower Martial Art as powerfully as a new Realm of power would. If the Realm of Martial Artists cannot improve, then the quantity of Martial Artists must increase."


    Rui narrowed his eyes as he felt a piercing gaze from Master Gern. He stared at Rui with a knowing glint in his eyes.


    "For the sake of Martial Art, you must surrender everything you know about the mass Apprentice breakthroughs, young Master," Master Gern insisted. "I have been authorized by the Panamic Martial Federation to offer you anything you desire in return. As the greatest organization of Martial Art in the entire world, there is no greater boon a Martial Artist can possibly seek. Now then, bestow upon us the key to the future of unparalleled glory for all of Martial Art!"


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2168 A Shocking Revelation

    2168 A Shocking Revtion


    Rui knew that it woulde down to this.


    He had a sneaking suspicion that the old man was going down this line of reasoning when he began talking about a numeric advantage.


    "I do not possess any knowledge of what you seek, elder Master," Rui narrowed his eyes. "Please continue with the briefing."


    The old man didn''t believe Rui for a bit.


    Rui possessed immense power in the Kandrian Empire until rtively recently. It was extremely difficult for anybody to believe that he had absolutely no idea as to what the manner through which mass Martial Artists were created, was.


    And his suspicions were correct.


    However, not for reasons that he thought they were.


    After all, he didn''t just know what was responsible for the breakthroughs to the Apprentice Realm; he was the cause of all these breakthroughs.


    If he wasn''t, then there was a good chance that he would genuinely be ignorant of what the cause of the mass breakthroughs were. After all,he had genuinely distanced himself from the affairs of the Kandrian Empire after handing his father the power that he once had.


    There would be absolutely no avenue for him to know what his father was nning. A good example of this was when the entire Underworld in the Kandrian Empire was uprooted and he had absolutely no idea ahead of time, in time and even well after time.


    In the case of treasures of the Kandrian Empire that would be used to elevate them, he knew all about them only because he was the one who brought them to the nation in the first ce.


    " Are you more loyal to your father than Martial Art, Master Rui?" the elder man raised an eyebrow. "Why do you hide such a precious miracle from us; the greatest purveyors of Martial Art in the Age of Martial Art?"


    Rui narrowed his eyes but did not answer.


    If he engaged with the question, he would implicitly be conveying that he did indeed know the secret behind the breakthroughs. He did not want to cede that ground as that would make refusal much more difficult and consequential.


    "Perhaps you didn''t hear the first time," Rui coldly remarked. "I do not have what you seek."


    "¡­" The man simply stared at Rui silently for a moment. "I told you that I have been authorized to give you anything you desire. Training resources, resources that may be able to aid your journey to the Sage Realm, more life-prolonging potions. Anything you desire. Anything at all."


    The fact that the man did not mention things likend, wealth, and political power was proof that the Panamic Martial Federation had a good understanding of what were effective bargaining chips when negotiating with Rui and what weren''t.


    Rui had never cared for these things. As a Martial Master, he could easily raise his own nation if he truly wanted. Hell, if any of those things truly mattered, he would have just ascended the throne of one of the most powerful empires in the entirety of the Panama Continent.


    The Panamic Martial Federation possessed enough intelligence of him to know that these were non-starters.


    In other words, they needed toy down the precise kind of carrot that Rui cared about.


    Rui had to admit that the mention of resources that could help him to Sage Realm was something that was deeply attractive to him.


    The Kandrian Empire did not possess such resources in stock at the moment.


    However, he could infer that such resources did exist.


    After all, he recalled how Master Deivon had been aiming for a resource that he called the ''Soul Mirror Pill.''


    It didn''t take a genius figure what the resource was meant for. It clearly aided with the discovery of the Martial Soul and was something that even Masters seemingly needed topete for to get their hands on.


    In other words, it was a resource that was highly in demand even among Masters and had a very low supply.


    It was deeply tempting. However, he was not about to yield so easily. The reason that he couldn''t was because the only way he could redeem such a resource from the Panamic Martial Federation with what they wanted was spending most of his days breaking through many Martial Apprentices.


    Breaking through thousands of Apprentices every day was more valuable than any service he could provide as a Martial Master. While he could resist political pressure within the Kandrian Empire, he could not resist pressure from the Panamic Martial Federation and the entire Martial World.


    If he did ept such an offer, he would be doomed to spend his days triggering breakthroughs for the Panamic Martial Federation.


    No resource was worth losing his freedom in such a manner.


    "For thest time, I do not have what you''re looking for," Rui''s voice was ice cold. "Do not pressure me any more, I do not mind ending this right here and now should you make that request one more time." This content ? N?v/elDr(a)m/a.Org.


    The man heaved a tired sigh. "Why do you protect the secret from other Martial Artists even when we offer topensate you extraordinarily well? Is it your father? Are you loyal to the Emperor of Harmony?"


    He was actually being incredibly loyal to himself, but he naturally didn''t inform the man about that.


    However, what he heard next shocked him.


    "Why be loyal to a human emperor that once sought the means to genocide our kind?"


    His tone was grave while his gaze grew more severe.


    The air grew frosty as he allowed his words to sink in.


    Unfortunately, he didn''t get the reaction he sought.


    Rui''sposure held strong as he didn''t so much as twitch. Yet, inwardly, he was stunned by the man''s words that struck him like a sledgehammer.


    However, his eyes couldn''t help but widen as a quick inspection of the man''s mind revealed a genuine sincerity in his words.


    "¡­what did you say?" Rui''s eyes narrowed. The elderly Master smelled an opportunity to crack through Rui''s reluctance.


    "Your father, the Emperor of Harmony, once harbored the desire to wipe out all Martial Artists," Master Gern capitalized on the opening. "Come, allow me to tell you the tale of the Emperor of Harmony before he ascended the throne."


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2169 High Principles

    Chapter 2169 High Principles


    For a moment, Rui couldn''t believe it.


    His father had been the Emperor of Harmony for as long as he could remember. A man who unified opposing forces together in a powerful harmony that elevated the nation to greater heights. The Kandrian Empire had been on the brink of civil war when the kingdom had been in the hands of his father, the first emperor.


    Yet, in order to stop the worst from unfolding, he assassinated Emperor Ra and ascended the throne, bringing three centuries of prosperity and glory to the Kandrian Empire.


    Rui was supposed to believe this man had sought the means to genocide countless Martial Artists?


    Then again¡­ Rui knew very little about his father from before he ascended the throne. And that was precisely what Master Gern insisted hid some dark truths.


    "It was a long time ago, however, the Emperor of Harmony once sought the means to genocide Martial Artists, or at least all Martial Artists above the Apprentice Realm," the elder Master remarked with a macabre tone. "However, while he didn''t seed, he got scarily close."


    "Before you continue with vague nonsense¡­" Rui narrowed his eyes. "¡­I want to know why, and I want to know how."


    Rui didn''t believe that his father would ever have such a desire without reason. Hell, he wasn''t even sure how true this actually was. After all, his mind sense merely told him about how the man felt and whether he was being deceptive or not. It did not tell him whether a given statement was true or not, only whether the man genuinely believed it was true or not.


    However, he was nheless willing to hear the man out, even if he knew that he was just trying to manipte him.


    "Why, you ask?" The man raised an eyebrow. "Well, that''s obvious. Why did any aspiring emperor of that era seek to genocide Martial Artists?"


    The man''s eyes narrowed as his expression grew more grave. "Because they feared us. They feared us and feared the fact that they could not control us. As power-hungry as Martial Artists can be, at the very least, our power does note at the cost of the freedom of others. Humans, on the other hand¡­ The only way these lesser beings can have more power than us is in a system that gives them control over Martial Artists."


    Rui simply stared at him with a nk expression, not betraying his inner thoughts.


    However, inwardly he had fallen into thought.


    Was his father no different from other rulers of human civilization in that he, too, wanted to control other Martial Artists?


    Rui found it difficult to believe because it was precisely this desire that caused the civil war between Martial Artists and the pre-established powers of humanity. His father hadpletely avoided it altogether and used the fact that the Kandrian Empire was not burdened by civil war to rise far above its contemporaries that were devastated by the Martial Revolution.


    Even if his father had once been no different from the others, he certainly had changed by the time he ascended the throne.


    In other words, whatever this elderly Master was trying to indoctrinate him into was from so long ago that it had absolutely no relevance in the modern era. It certainly had no relevance in trying to convince Rui to divulge the truth about the mass Apprentice breakthroughs.


    In other words, it was just a desperate attempt to shock Rui with some unexpected information.


    Unfortunately for him, Rui had no intention of falling for it. He made that clear with his aloof attitude.


    Seeing that, even the elderly Master had no choice but to give up.


    "It is rather unfortunate that I have been unable to convince you to side with the Panamic Martial Federation," he muttered with a regretful tone. "I hope that you will eventually reconsider. For now, let''s proceed with the briefing."


    He continued as he touched on various sets of topics. The peril of overusing the Martial Mind.


    How to manage one''s sleep schedule to minimize the disruptions caused by the sleep needed to recuperate from the use of the Martial Mind.


    The tilt to psychopathy was something that the elderly Master touched upon as well. Belongs to N?velDrama.Org - All rights reserved.


    Much of what he told him, Rui already knew due to figuring the details out himself or thanks to his powerful and well-informed contacts.


    However, even he learned new things.


    "High principles¡­?" Rui raised an eyebrow.


    "That''s right." The elderly Master nodded. "Martial Masters are qualified to work with high principles of reality; although it''s very difficult, it can yield great results if mastered."


    "What do you mean precisely?" Rui raised an eyebrow.


    "Oh,e now, Master Rui." Master Gern chuckled. "I have heard that you approached tapping into high principles even before reaching the Master Realm. These are principles that tap into the fundamental mechanics of reality. I''m sure that you''ve run into them in your pursuits of greater experience."


    Rui understood what he was referring to.


    "The power of high principles is something that you''re already familiar with," the man continued. "¡­However, what I''m sure you aren''t familiar with is the fact that they can be harnessed to a remarkably high degree within the Master Realm. For example¡­"


    He put his hands up as he activated his Martial Heart and Mind, receiving a surge of power that flushed through him.


    Yet, it was what followed that stunned Rui.


    THMOOOM¡­


    Rui''s eyes widened as a glowing ball of light appeared in his hands, crackling with energy and sparks.


    Instantly, he recognized what he was looking at.


    "sma¡­!" There was no doubt in Rui''s mind that he was looking at the fourth state of matter.


    "Materia has deep energy hidden within it, as do the heaven and earth," Master Gern remarked with a knowing tone. "This is a seldom seen form of materia that cannot be produced by Martial Artists of the Lower Realm. It is quite difficult to create and manipte, but is extremely lethal inbat."


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2170 Potential Exchange

    Chapter 2170 Potential Exchange


    Rui grew engrossed as he watched the man conjure and control a ball of sma extremely well. He grew far more excited with the topic of discussion.


    "Because we Martial Masters possess the ability to sense more than just materia, we possess the ability to harness more than just materia," Master Gern remarked with an erudite tone. "It is one of the things that separates us from Martial Artists of the Lower Realms."


    WHOOSH


    He dispelled the ball of sma, much to Rui''s dismay.


    "Of course," Master Gern continued, "most Martial Masters do not delve into high principles. The reason is that high principles are tricky and extremely difficult to understand. They are often extremely counter-intuitive and highly abstruse. Furthermore, most of them have yet to explore the limits of low principles which are simply far simpler to manipte. There is nothing wrong with a simple punch or kick; not everything needs to have extravagant principles underlying it."


    Rui nodded, understanding the man''s words.


    All of these things were true.


    What the man called high principles were simply advanced Physics to Rui. He had been making use of some remarkably advanced principles for quite some time. And whenever he did, the result was usually outstanding and revolutionary. Belongs to N?velDrama.Org - All rights reserved.


    In terms of which technique employed the highest principle, it would undoubtedly be Riemannian Echo.


    This technique was based on his understanding of gravity and Einstein''s General Theory of Rtivity. It was extremely advanced on a theoretical basis, employing high principles to achieve results that low principles could not deliver.


    The oue?


    He ended up dominating the Shionel Dungeon due to the sheer intelligence advantage that the technique bestowed upon him. The rest of the worldbined could not have produced an oue close to his sess.


    All because he applied a technique that employed high principles.


    In other words, techniques with high principles could produce impossible oues that could never happen with low principles. "Of course, that is not an absolutew, just the general trend among Master-level techniques," Master Gern added. "It has its challenges and difficulties too, of course. The development and training time for high-principled techniques is much higher than that of low-principled techniques. A lot of time needs to go into researching the high principle that a Martial Artist seeks to harness. This often takes more than a decade. This was the norm all the way until¡­"


    His eyes were fixed on Rui with an intense gaze.


    "¡­you came along."


    Rui stiffened a little at those words.


    "Here was a Squire and Senior that could harness higher techniques like they were low-hanging fruits," he remarked knowingly. "While most of the Martial World knows you for your immense power of thought, many do not know the equally frightening affinity for high principles that you have cultivated your entire life."


    Rui remained silent.


    It was true that his affinity for high principles was something that most people simply weren''t able to pick up.


    However, the reason that this was the case wasn''t because he had an ''affinity'' for high principles, per se. It''s just that he had a lifetime spent in science.


    Or, more technically, he had the memories of a man who had spent his entire life in science.


    This meant that he could harness the principles of advanced Physics in his Martial Art with far greater ease and to a far greater degree than other Martial Artists could even dream of.


    This was not as immediately noticeable as his affinity for thought and the strength of his mind.


    However, there was no doubt that the Panamic Martial Federation had had its eye on Rui for a long time. Hell, he was sure that even the Martial Union knew about his abnormal affinity for high principles.


    "The Panamic Martial Federation is indeed deeply curious as to how such a young Martial Artist has such a deep affinity for high principles," Master Gern remarked with an intrigued tone. "Frankly, we have absolutely no idea. None of our Masters and even Sages have an idea as to how such a thing happened. How can a person be born with an affinity for the force of gravity? Such a thing simply does not make sense, wouldn''t you agree?"


    Rui knew better than to offer any decisivement on that.


    He had an interest in keeping the truth hidden, he had absolutely no idea how any of them would react if they knew that he was some kind of product created from the hypnotic brainwashing with the imntation of another man''s memories.


    Who knew what they would do if they learned of such a truth?


    He had no reason to risk it for nothing.


    "I do not know why I have such an affinity for high principles, elder Master," Rui quickly replied. "However, what I can say is that I have indeed benefited from this gift."


    "Hm, so it is true that you do have a gift for high principles," the man remarked. "What I can say is that even if you do not particrly need help in that regard, the Panamic Martial Federation haspiled several high principles and how one might go about employing them in Martial Art. As long as you are willing to share some of the mechanics of your high principles and their training methodology, we are willing to reciprocate and do the same."


    Rui stirred as he considered the offer of the elder Martial Master. This was perhaps the first offer that Rui didn''t find highly disagreeable. Perhaps it was worth sharing some of his techniques with high principles in order to gain equally valuable techniques.


    The keywords being ''equally valuable techniques.''


    He was absolutely unwilling to share his valuable techniques without equivalentpensation. He was quite attached to his techniques, after all.


    "I''m not principally opposed to such a trade, but only if I genuinely believe that the offered techniques are truly worth the ones that you seek," Rui calmly replied. "It all depends on the specifics of the agreement."


    Master Gern smiled good-naturedly. "That''s good to know."


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2171 Corrected Approach

    Chapter 2171 Corrected Approach


    His briefing continued for a while longer as the elderly Martial Master reached to what was the most important part of the Master briefing.


    "The path to the Sage Realm is long and difficult," the elder Master continued with a mncholic tone. "It is one that I have given up on myself, resigned to guiding others to a treasure I cannot possess."


    He shook his head. "It is not easy to know who one is."


    "I am aware of the difficulties," Rui replied with certainty. "However, I intend to ovee them. I do not intend to let myself be halted by this challenge, as long as I gain enough power, I''m sure that I will be able to ovee the barrier to the Sage Realm."


    Rui had already put the matter aside and focused on gaining more power to understand himself. If power was the answer, then he could just put aside thinking about the traumatizing revtions that the Divine Doctor had divulged to him.


    "It is true that power is the best path to Master Realm. However, it is not an excuse to simply pursue it mindlessly without deeply dedicating yourself to understanding yourself. At the end of the day, it is you who must understand yourself. Power can simply help you along the way. However if you do not dedicate thought to it, then it will be meaningless. It seems you have been informed about the path that Martial Masters must follow to reach the Sage Realm already, so tell me, how much time have you genuinely given to answering the simple question ''Who am I?''"


    Rui closed his eyes as he thought about his time past four years since he broke through to the Master Realm.


    Most of that time had gone into training the Yin-Yang Spear technique.


    After that, he had spent most of his time sparring for experience in the manifold for a year, which tranted to less than a month in real-time.


    In all that time, how much time had he truly spent thinking about who he was?


    "¡­None at all."Rui''s voice was faint.


    "Mmm," Master Gern gazed at him knowingly. "I did the same thing. For a century, I mindlessly pursued power without thinking about who I was. Yet, at the end, I realized I hade no closer to understanding who I am. My power showed me, yes, but I did not pay it any heed and simply pursued more power mindlessly as I had. By the time I realized my folly, I had already burned out and lost my Martial Drive. To this day, it is my single greatest regret. Do not follow in my path, young Master."


    His tone was severe and intense, rich with regret.


    To others, it was a deeply introspective and immersing question.


    To Rui, however, it was deeply traumatic at worst and highly disturbing at best.


    Rui grew serious as he contemted his words. It was true that he too seldom paid any thought to who he actually was in the past four years.


    It couldn''t be helped.


    To others, it was a deeply introspective and immersing question.


    To Rui, however, it was deeply traumatic at worst and highly disturbing at best.


    Perhaps it wouldn''t have been had the Divine Doctor not shared with Rui the revtions that he did. However, he couldn''t go back in time and undo the past. He had asked for the truth and he had gotten his answer.


    "I will¡­be sure to pay more mind to this from here on out," Rui promised.


    "Good. I am not ming you, of course,"he reassured. "The truth is that knowing one''s self is not the natural state of order. Normally, people are never meant to know who they are. This is because it helps us cope with the truth that we are not who we wish we were. People are walking bags of irrationality, self-contradiction, and hypocrisy. Yet, these are inevitable oues of a mind that evolved to survive. Many believe that the separation between mind and soul exists to protect the mind from the horrors of the soul."


    Normally, Rui could not care less about such philosophical and psychological considerations. However, given that this was relevant to his path to the Sage Realm, he couldn''t help but indulge in it, falling into an introspective mood.


    "Thus, if given an excuse, one will dly avoid confronting who they are," Master Gern remarked with an erudite tone. "Pursuing power to reach the Sage Realm, is one such excuse that ruined my path to a higher Realm of power and may ruin yours, should you not change your ways. You cannot run away from who you are. Warning new Martial Masters of this very folly is one of the reasons that I joined the Panamic Martial Federation as a briefer after I retired from activebat."


    "I appreciate your warning." Rui''s tone grew grateful. "I shall bear them in mind from here on out."


    "Mmm, good." He nodded. "If you find it difficult to confront yourself continuously, then I would rmend a simple technique that the Panamic Martial Federation has recently developed: the Dream Technique."


    Rui raised an eyebrow. "There''s a Martial Art technique to help with reaching the Sage Realm?"


    "Not a Martial Art technique, no." He shook his head. "An ordinary technique, one that just about anybody can use. Always fall asleep to the question of ''who am I?'' Doing this will increase the probability that you will experience a dream triggered by associations to that question."


    Rui considered the advice, stirring. "Dreams¡­"


    "Dreams are believed to be created by the soul," he nodded. "There has been more than one Martial Master who has broken to the Sage Ream in their dreams and many who have made immense progress to knowing who they are through insights obtained in dreams." This is property ? of N?velDrama.Org.


    Rui''s eyes lit up with interest at this revtion.


    It was fascinating to know that the dreams could increase the probability of reaching the Sage Realm.


    However, considering how difficult his path was and how disturbing the memories associated with the question ''Who am I?'' were, there was a good chance that he would experience nightmares instead of dreams.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2172 Pragmatic Incentives

    Chapter 2172 Pragmatic Incentives


    Soon after the elderly Martial Master was satisfied with Rui''s heeding of his warning, he moved on to other topics that were less important. He espoused the duty that Martial Masters had as Martial Artists in the Martial World, how they were leaders of Martial Art in their own right and had a moral obligation to guide Martial Artists of the younger generations just like they had been guided by the generations before them.


    Of course, this wasn''t just an argument of ethics.


    There were real pragmatic reasons why Martial Masters were inclined to look after the younger generations.


    "The stronger and better guided the future generations of Martial Art are, the more dominant Martial Art will be in human civilization," Master Gern calmly informed Rui. "The more dominant Martial Art is, the more dominant Martial Masters will be. In addition, should there evere a day when you have run out of avenues for the pursuit of power, this simple aid to the younger generations cane back to help you by giving inspiration to you in return when you need it, perhaps even when you don''t."


    Rui nodded. He did see the merit in this kind of investment form of reasoning to guide the younger generations purely for self-interest.


    "This rationale also applies to Martial Sects," Rui noted.


    Master Gern nodded appreciatively. "That''s true. On that note, the Panamic Martial Federation is aware that you have ns to formallymence your own Martial Sect. We are interested in investing in the sect to further elerate its growth when the timees in exchange for a share of all techniques the sect eventually obtains."


    Rui considered the offer, shrugging nonchntly. "I mean, I''m not principally opposed to it. It will depend on the details."


    He did not particrly mind such trade deals as long as his techniques and sect were given their due recognition.


    Master Gern continued to speak to Rui about what it meant to be Martial Master, reminding him of what was and wasn''t permitted by the Panamic Martial Federation. A solid proportion of the most importantws of the Panamic Martial Federation targeted Martial Artists of the Higher Realms simply due to how much destruction they could unleash if they wanted to, and the number of forces that could stop them was far fewer than when they had been in the Lower Realms.


    An out-of-control Apprentice was hardly significant or dangerous by any measure.


    After all, virtually all nation-states and other human groups and organizations were capable of stopping them due to possessing Martial Apprentices of their own.


    While this was less true for Squires and Seniors, there were enough of both for nation-states to handle them in the case of an emergency.


    For Martial Masters, however, this was simply not true. An overwhelming proportion of human civilization was entirely defenseless against Martial Masters, and the number of Masters avable to deal with them should they go out of control was also far less.


    That was precisely one of the reasons that the Panamic Martial Federation stepped in and filled the void.


    It was not perfect, of course, but it did the trick. Even Martial Masters of the Underworld needed to be careful. Unlike their nation-states that had no choice but to overlook their crimes against humanity, the Panamic Martial Federation was more than powerful enough to wipe them off the face of the world.


    "I have no intention ofmitting Martial genocide, rest assured." Rui calmly remarked.


    "Mmm, the Panamic Martial Federation is pleased by your rtionship with human civilization." Master Gern nodded approvingly. "However, it''s more than just your conduct, you must also be careful to not release your Martial Embodiment bare before humans. At least,w-abiding citizens. The Panamic Martial Federation does not care if you exterminate the pests of human civilization."


    ''That must be why Master Zeamer managed to get off despite baring his Martial Embodiment to arge region,'' Rui realized.


    The man had spread an immense amount of suffering to many people of various drug trafficking mafias in the Gereign Region. But because they weren''t people protected by the human rights charter of the Panamic Martial Federation, Master Zeamer got away with it.


    Once the elderly Martial Master went over all the topics that they were due to cover, the briefing came to an end. "I''m aware that we may not have gotten off on the right foot, Master Rui," Master Gern began. "However, it has been a good time speaking to you and informing you on the must-knows of Martial Masters. I truly hope you will give everything that we have discussed a serious thought. Should Martial Art''s dominance be threatened, all Martial Artists will suffer a serious decline in our power. That is a scenario that will deeply harm both of us. We must put aside nationalism and share power for the sake of the ss of Martial Artists." Belongs to N?velDrama.Org - All rights reserved.


    Rui scoffed inwardly at his words.


    Of course, when they wanted power, they would appeal to the noble sentiment of ss struggles as they demanded the method of mass Apprentice breakthroughs from the Kandrian Empire.


    However, there was never any possibility that Rui would ever surrender to the Panamic Martial Federation. No amount of resources could ever justify anything like that ever happening to him.


    "I will give everything we have talked about its due consideration," Rui made a vague promise. "Mmm, good. With that, our talk hase to an end. I look forward to our next encounter."


    Rui quickly reciprocated his words before swifty leaving the venue as he headed away, deep in thought.


    Yet, his thoughts had already moved on from the conversation he had with Master Gern. He did experience pressure to reveal the mass Apprentice breakthroughs, just like he and his father had predicted, but it was ultimately no big deal. What came next, however, was the biggest issue.


    His Martial evaluation.


    It would be the first time he would be facing Master Uma in eighteen years.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2173 Do You Hate Me?

    Chapter 2173 Do You Hate Me?


    If he said that he wasn''t unnerved by the prospect of meeting her, he would be lying because his heart was pounding with energy. He knew he needed to exercise self-control to ensure that he didn''t justsh out at her and kill her where she stood.


    The rational part of his mind urged him not to react and simply to pretend that he had no idea who the hell she was.


    His mind considered the prospect that there was a different Martial Master who went by the name of Uma.


    Of course, this was highly imusible.


    There were only so many Martial Masters; there was an extremely low probability that there were two Martial Masters out there with an unusual name like Uma.


    No, there was no doubt that this was her.


    The evaluation was prepared shortly after the briefing without too much of a waste of time, no more than an hour. However, it felt like forever to Rui.


    Each minute, each second stretched out to what felt like an eternity.


    It was an agonizing wait.


    Yet, eventually, it came.


    STEP


    He arrived before the door.


    His designated venue for the evaluation to ur.


    He heaved a deep breath, pushing the door open.


    CLACK


    The doors swung open, revealing a seated panel of Martial Masters that awaited.


    And her.


    She sat at the edge of the table, simply gazing at him with a powerful gaze. Garbed in the ethnic Martial attire of the Virodhabhasa Theocracy, she gave off a deep sense of piety unlike anybody else that Rui had evere across.


    A soft smile emerged on her face upon his arrival.


    Yet, Rui didn''t acknowledge her existence directly.


    "Greeting Masters." Rui brought his fist and palm together in a Martial greeting. "I am Rui Quarrier Ss Kandria of the Kandrian Empire. I look forward to the evaluation of the Panamic Martial Federation."


    "Wee, Master Rui." The Master at the center nodded as he stood up, exchanging Rui''s gesture. "I am Master Jenile of the Panamic Martial Federation, tasked with the duty of evaluating your Martial profile. Let me begin by saying that you do not have to disclose the entirety of your Martial Arts; nowhere will we pressure you to do so. In fact, ording to the Panamic Martial Federation, most Martial Artists do not disclose their full power to us¡­" As he continued droning on about the evaluation, Rui couldn''t help but direct his senses to Master Uma, who sat a short distance from him.


    Her gaze bore into his body.


    It was a gaze of evaluation.


    In theirst encounter, he had been merely a Martial Squire. He had grown astronomically stronger since then, having eventually reached the Master Realm.


    She couldn''t help but furiously pore over every detail about him that she could, scouring every inch of his body, trying to understand his current state of being. Material ? of N?velDrama.Org.


    She wasn''t the only one.


    ''She''s grown stronger since then.'' He needed to exert herculean self-control on his bodynguage.


    However, he was certain of his evaluation.


    She had indeed grown stronger.


    It wasn''t as though he had gotten a great understanding of how strong she had been from the previous encounter. However, he knew that she was much stronger, instinctively.


    Displeasure shed in his eyes.


    "¡­Master Rui?" Master Jenile asked, tilting his head in confusion. "Is anything the issue?"


    Rui broke out of his internal maelstrom of issues. "Ah, I''m sorry. It''s nothing at all."


    He was extremely relieved that none of them could sense his internal turmoil with their mind sense.


    They would be able to sense his bloodlust, after all.


    However, in turn, he could sense their minds due to his vastly superior mind sense.


    This worked to his advantage as he could sense her emotions if he wanted.


    However, in the depths of her mind, he could sense a single thing.


    Reverence.


    Devoted, pious reverence.


    Reverence directed towards him.


    She knew that he could sense the depths of her mind, but that only intensified the emotion that she experienced in the depths of her heart.


    Yet, it only evoked disgust within him.


    He wanted to tear her apart then and there.


    Yet, he reined in the deep bloodlust he felt towards her.


    He couldn''t afford to kill her here.


    His rational mind knew that.


    Yet, it was hard to ignore the urge and the itch.


    His hatred towards her was deeply entrenched due to what she had done to him and how she had made him feel. "¡­With all that said, shall we begin?" Master Jenile''s voice broke him out of his mental turmoil, drawing his attention to the present. The location they were in wasrge enough to amodate a battle between Martial Masters fully.


    Rui nodded his head slowly. "I''m ready."


    He actually hadpletely zoned out of everything the man had said, but oh well, surely the rules couldn''t beplicated.


    All he needed to do was spar with the religious fanatic, and then he would be evaluated.


    "Then, without any further ado, let us begin." Master Jenile turned toward Master Uma. "Master Uma, if you will." "¡­" Master Uma got up slowly, gazing at Rui like with eyes of devotion. A single remark escaped her.


    "It would be my sacred duty."


    Rui''s disgust only grew while the other Masters of the evaluation panel frowned in confusion at her strange word choice.


    The air grew heavy.


    It grew frosty as the two Masters traveled to the center of the Master-level battlefield.


    STEP


    A perilous edge overtook the atmosphere as the Martial Masters faced each other.


    Time slowed down as Rui''s eyes met her pious gaze upon him.


    A flood of memories and emotions of old overcame him as he gazed at her.


    Hatred. Fear. Frustration.


    She had been responsible for all of it.


    His expression steeled with bloodlust as he gritted his teeth, clenching his fist.


    In the depths of his pitch-ck eyes stirred a deep darkness.


    A void.


    Yet, a single question lingered in the depths of the eyes of the older woman.


    ''Do you hate me, O Lord Virodhabhasa?'' It was a question that only evoked greater hatred from within him.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2174 Rage

    Chapter 2174 Rage


    Rui red at her with the darkness of a thousand nights.


    ''Do you loathe me?'' Her eyes gazed into his with pious devotion. ''Do you wish to kill me?''


    It took a herculean effort not to show her the answers to her questions with his actions.


    It took more self-control than he had ever mustered to stay his rage until the battle formallymenced.


    Yet, even then, he felt a deep frustration at his inability to kill her on this asion.


    Disapproval flickered in her eyes.


    ''The Antithesis shan''t be bound by the force of man.''


    Her expression grew more forceful. This is property ? of N?velDrama.Org.


    ''Lord Virodhabhasa mustn''t cede to worldly shackles.''


    Her eyes bore into his with a powerful gaze.


    It was as though she was trying to overwrite who he was with her vision of the Antithesis.


    ''You are not ready¡­'' She gazed at him with clear eyes. ''For you do not even know who you are.''


    Rui''s eyes grew darker as the air between them boiled tumultuously.


    ''Lord Virodhabhasa knows no uncertainty of self.'' She spoke to him from the depths of her eyes. ''Come, let me show you who you are. Let me show you¡ª''


    "Shut up."


    Rui''s voice wasced with hatred and disgust.


    Everything she said simply fueled his rage. He hated the vision that she had for who he was.


    He hated the pious devotion that he saw in her eyes.


    He hated the reverence that he could feel in the depths of her soul.


    It was love.


    A deep, twisted, sickening love.


    Yet, it was directed not at him as he was.


    No.


    That love was for the person that she wanted to turn him into in her delusions of his godhood.


    It was his Martial Path and Martial Art that she truly cared about.


    To her, Rui the person, his personality and temperament, all of it was simply the mortal impurity that needed to be cleansed away from the Antithesis.


    It evoked deep fury unlike anything he had ever experienced.


    "Take your stances," Master Jenile instructed, entirely and blissfully unaware of what unfolded between them, for merely half a second had passed.


    Non-verbalmunication was exponentially faster than verbalmunication.


    Master Uma simply spread her arms while her legs firmly supported her weight.


    Rui closed his eyes as he took his ssic stance.


    One that was cleanly bnced between offense, defense, and maneuvering.


    Of course, he had some idea of what her Martial Art was like, having seen it twice. Once during Virodhabhasa''s first round, and once during the time she had attacked Rui, and Master Deivon had fought to hold her back.


    ''You reminisce of a man in the past.''


    Rui''s eyes grew severe as she seemed to be able to read his mind despite the fact that her mind sense should have been entirely ineffective against him.


    He had schooled his bodynguage and non-verbalmunication as much as possible, yet she still somehow intuited his thoughts. It only added to the disgust he felt at being so transparent to someone that had such a twisted view of him.


    Yet he knew that she lied.


    The Beggar''s Sect had informed him of reports that Master Deivon had entered deep, isted training under Sage Sariawar in the Virodhabhasa Theocracy.


    Yet, when he peered into her mind, he could sense pure, unadulterated sincerity.


    There wasn''t a hint of deceit or deception.


    Chills went down his spine as that only deepened his fears. ''Do you really think that non-believer was a match for me?'' A sneering look emerged on her face. ''He deserves what has happened to him. He deserves it for impeding my divine duty to mold the Antithesis.''


    "You¡­" Rui''s expression crumbled. "What have you done¡­?"


    A profound smile appeared on her face. "Who knows?"


    It was at that moment that Rui came to learn what true rage felt like.


    "Begin!" Master Jenile frowned at the strange words that the two exchanged butmenced the battle nheless.


    Unbeknownst to him, the battle had already begun in spirit.


    BADUMP!!


    Two Martial Hearts and Minds burst into action as the two Martial Masters drew out their true power from within them.


    An ephemeral storm emerged from the depths of Master Uma''s eyes as her Martial Embodiment bloomed in all its tempestuous glory, sweeping across the vast expanse of the Master-level battlefield.


    Yet, it wasn''t merely an illusion.


    No.


    "Tempestuous Whirlwind Sword." A whisper escaped Master Uma as she activated a technique that birthed a storm that ovepped over her Martial Embodiment.


    It was a manifestation of absolute harmony and a perfect synergy between the Martial Mind and Martial Art. An extremely rare feat.


    The winds of her technique only multiplied as its scope continuously rose.


    It had grown far stronger than it had been eighteen years ago.


    Yet, what was toe had already arrived.


    The world held its breath as Rui''s Martial Embodiment erupted from deep within the depths of the microcosm of his mind.


    It subsumed heaven and earth in its vengeful fury.


    An infinite void.


    The panel of Martial Masters witnessing the battle widened their eyes in sheer horror at the power of Rui''s Martial Mind.


    Never before had they beheld such an otherworldly Martial Embodiment.


    Never before had they beheld such an astronomical capacity of thought.


    While the Martial Masters hade to ept the anomaly that was Rui and had grown used to his truly unprecedented power of mind, the same could not be said for Martial Masters who were witnessing it for the very first time.


    The Martial Master who was tasked with evaluating Ruis Martial Mind was simply frozen with an aghast expression on her face as she witnessed systems of thought far greater than anything she had ever thought possible.


    However, this was just the beginning.


    A single whisper escaped Rui.


    "Muspelheim." WHOOOOOSH!!!


    An inferno the likes of which none of them had seen before emerged from within Rui as the realm of fire descended upon heaven and earth.


    It reflected the fury that Rui felt emerging from the depths of his heart.


    WHOOOOOSH!!!


    The first sh of the battle was the storm colliding with the inferno.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2175 Clash of Principles

    Chapter 2175 sh of Principles


    Master Uma''s eyes lit up with delight at the extraordinary domain that Rui outputted. She had not expected him to have such a powerful domain that was clearly based on high principles.


    "Indeed, for even heaven and earth bow down to the Antithesis."


    Yet, she was not resigned to ceding ground to her Godling, even if he was her God in the making.


    Precisely because she was not ready yet.


    She pushed her breathing to the very limit as she strengthened her winds with even greater power, generating powerful currents that surged straight toward Rui, threatening to tear him where he stood.


    Yet, they never reached him.


    WHOOSH¡­


    Master Uma''s eyes widened with surprise as Rui surged on unperturbed, and the winds faded by the time they reached him. This was the same tactic that Rui had used against the chimera''s angel side in his battle against it.


    The extremely high temperatures of the Muspelheim were able to batter the wind currents that Master Uma was generating with her techniques. Every attack she threw at him was deeply weakened by the time it reached him.


    However, Muspelheim was highly expensive as a defense.


    It was not something that could be maintained for very long, even if he could handle it much better than when he had been a Senior due to the Sandflower Nectar Potion. If not for its perfect defense to the wide-scale and long-range offensive of his opponent, there wouldn''t be much of a value proposition due to how much energy it consumed.


    He needed to end the battle before he lost his stamina.


    And his self-control.


    STEP


    With outer convergence and Gale Force Breathing, he surged towards unperturbed at remarkable speeds. Ordinarily, anybody who stepped within the range of Master Uma''s storm would get shredded to the finest confetti. The storm served as both her bodyguard and her offense.


    Yet, the heat of the Muspelheim domain protected Rui from the omnidirectional storm that enveloped the entire domain, ensuring he didn''t suffer any harm.


    In just a moment, he had arrived before her.


    "Consider this mercy," he growled as a powerful blow surged towards her, threatening to knock her out.


    Yet, it never reached.


    WHOOOOOSH!!!


    Moments before the attack could make contact with its target, the surrounding storm rapidlypressed, coiling to form a hyper-dense tornado around its user.


    It didn''t block his attack.


    No.


    But its powerful currents redirected it, causing it to veer off target.


    WHOOSH!


    By the time his attack ended, his fist was far away from its target, causing him to veer off-bnce before he could realize it.


    Master Uma was not kind enough to ignore the opening he presented her.


    WHOOOSH!


    Arge amount of sharp winds surged towards him in the blink of an eye.


    BOOOM!!


    The impact flung him a good distance away. If not for the fact that the predictive model foresaw the attack, he wouldn''t have been able to defend himself in time.


    Master Uma frowned as she realized that the impact of her attacks had been diminished. It wasn''t until the mes grew hotter that she realized what had happened.


    "You converted the force of my winds into the heat of your domain¡­" Her eyes widened with surprise. "This must be the power of high principles."


    The Muspelheim technique, by design, was meant to sustain itself by feeding off his opponent''s power. Rui absorbed impacts through Flux Earther and, instead of harmlessly spilling the energy back into heaven and earth, he used it to fuel the heat of the domain through thermoacoustic conduction.


    While Master Uma admired the remarkably powerful heat domain that Rui had created, he had begrudginglye to respect her power.


    ''She haspletely erased her close-quarters weakness.'' He narrowed his eyes as he analyzed her technique. ''Without any ring weaknesses, I probably cannot end this battle as quickly as I hoped to. Oh well, for now, I can stick to gaining more data.''


    Yet, she acted against his intentions as though she possessed the means to intuit them. She conjured a power barrier of wind to cocoon around her, preventing him from being able to perceive her.


    She knew that he possessed the remarkable ability to, via his systems of thought, gain deep insight into his opponent through a thorough analysis of what he saw. In the past eighteen years, she had developed a solution to just that, sessfully creating a wind barrier that isted her from any transfer of information or energy.


    Rui''s expression grew uglieras she managed to impede even his mind sense.


    By doing so, the development of his SOUL model was hampered.


    Yet, that wasn''t all.


    WHOOOSH!


    Rui stirred as the storm grewrger andrger, intensifying by the second.


    Not for no reason.


    CRACK CRACK CRACK!


    Rui''s eyebrow rose as the storm began churning up the ground, which was made up of esoteric substances that were meant to ensure that the battlefield did not leak the energy output of the two Masters.


    The storm ground at the bedrock of the battlefield as arger amount of gravel and sand got caught in the winds of her technique.


    Her intentions were clear.


    While Muspelheim could impede her wind attacks by battering the wind currents, it could not impede tiny projectiles because the domain did not exert unidirectional force.


    WHOOOSH!


    A storm of gravel and sand was flung at Rui at remarkably high speeds, threatening to burrow into his flesh with their momentum. "Tsk." Rui''s expression grew dissatisfied as he activated Nemean Blossom, withstanding the iing influx of sand and gravel that threatened to tear him apart. In this particr battle, durability was a more optimal choice to pursue than speed or strength. The sand was dangerous but it merely threatened to do surface-level damage at best. There was no better option than Nemean Blossom.


    THWOOM THWOOM THWOOM THWOOM THWOOM!!


    Rui fired a barrage of sonic bullets, testing her defense as he maneuvered around, ensuring that she wasn''t able to easily attack him.


    Much to his surprise, however, the attacks were simply absorbed. Belongs to N?velDrama.Org - All rights reserved.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2176 Gravelous Storm

    Chapter 2176 Gravelous Storm


    Each sonic attack was instantly absorbed into the cocoon that surrounded her, protecting her from being exposed to him. In turn, the tornado that surrounded her only grew stronger, clearly fueled by his attacks.


    She could absorb sound to empower her winds.


    Rui narrowed his eyes as he realized that the only way to crack her shield was through close-quartersbat. On the other hand, she possessed a defense that powerfully redirected all iing impacts. WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH!


    Rui maneuvered around, withstanding and avoiding the attacks of sand and gravel that she continuously threw at him while he thought of the most optimal strategy to ovee her defenses.


    The first thing that came to mind was, of course, his Yin-Yang Spear technique. Normally, he reserved its use inbat till after hepleted a SOUL model on his opponents. However, in this case, she hade prepared for his analytical systems of thought, somehow impeding his mind sense.


    Still, he used it after he had both the predictive model and the SOUL model because the technique required too much prep time¡ªhitting a moving opponent required knowing how his opponent would move.


    However, in this particr case, his opponent couldn''t move.


    She had cocooned herself in a powerful tornado that was undoubtedly an extremely powerful defensive technique.


    However, despite the fact that she couldn''t move, the Yin-Yang Spear technique was still ill-suited in its synergy against this particr technique. The Yin-Yang Spear technique required actual contact with the target to deploy its devastating power against it. In other words, a defensive technique that functioned by ensuring that the attack did not connect with the user was the perfect counter to such a technique.


    ''So, in other words, she absorbs long-range heaven-based techniques and redirects close-quarter offensive techniques with her powerful blows.'' Rui tutted as he continued to avoid her attacks one after another. ''That defensive technique is a problem, I need to get rid of it.''


    However, getting rid of it was just as problematic for the same reason. His long-range techniques would get absorbed while his close-quarters blows would get redirected.


    The only technique that had proven to be effective so far was his Muspelheim domain.


    However, his Muspelheim domain only worked on her regr winds. Her defensive technique wasprised of her super-dense winds that were not dispelled by the powerful fiery domain. He would need much greater temperatures to tear her defense apart.


    Instantly, a germ of an idea formed in his mind.


    Yet, Master Uma was not content with giving him much leeway to strategize.


    BOOM BOOM BOOM!!! Powerful spikes of winds and molten esoteric gravel were flung at him as Rui''s expression grew grave.


    WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH!!!


    He evaded them, pirouetting through the air. The lethality of her attacks rose with each passing second, forcing him to rely more on maneuvering in that regard. Yet, he couldn''t reduce his Nemean Blossom in favor of relying more on Neo Godspeed.


    She was hoping he would. After all, she could deal with speed much easier than she could deal with a tough opponent. Speed could easily be dealt with by spreading her winds everywhere, getting rid of any space to dodge and avoid. Against a tough opponent, she needed to focus her power instead, which ironically made it easier to defend against.


    BOOM BOOM BOOM!!!


    Rui blocked a barrage of attacks from theva storm, leaping away with a displeased expression as his eyes shed with anger.


    She was using his domain as a heating unit to make her attacks more lethal. By heating up her projectiles with it, she made them more dangerous when she flung them at him. On top of that, he couldn''t absorb heat with Flux Earther, only the kic energy, forcing Nemean Blossom to pick up the ck.


    A strange cyclical flow of energy hade to take ce in the battle, flowing back and forth between the twobatants.


    Master Uma used his domain to heat up the gravel that she had churned up from the ground to make her gravel attacks more lethal due to the higher temperatures, while he used Flux Earther to absorb the kic energy that she imparted to the projectiles, using it to fuel the Muspelheim domain.


    In other words, they each used each other''s energies against each other. That was why Rui allowed the attacks to hit him, even though he could easily dodge them with his predictive model. He needed to absorb her energy over time through the Muspelheim domain in order to increase the temperature so that he could crack the extraordinary defense that protected her. Yet, of the two of them, only one had to use their systems of thought. Deep within her cocoon, Master Uma opened her eyes.


    "Preparationsplete," she remarked. "STORM System activated."


    The STORM System, or the Strategic Topological Operational Resource Management System, was a system of thought that she had created after being inspired by Rui himself. She hade came to admire how his systematic and analytical manner of collecting and processing data to make inferences, predictions, and even decisions could create such a massive difference inbat.


    It had taken took her nearly two decades to create and upgrade her Martial Mind with a system of thought that was as data-intensive as his. Belongs to N?velDrama.Org - All rights reserved.


    Today, she would find out whether she had seeded or not.


    WHOOSH!


    Rui''s eyes widened as the winds deviated off of his prediction, behaving contrary to the predictive model.


    BOOOM!!!


    "Rgh¡­!" He grimaced as it sessfully cornered him, swallowing him up as it buried him in moltenva, causing him to suffocate deep within it. For a moment, all one could see was a fiery storm circting molten esoteric g toward its epicenter, where its target sat, threatening to bury him with a cast that rapidly hardened under the cooling effect of her winds.


    Several moments passed as the storm grew more silent, and the Muspelheim domain began crumbling due to ack of sustenance.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2177 The Sun

    Chapter 2177 The Sun


    Silence.


    Yet, not the silence of defeat.


    No.


    It was the calm before the storm.


    BOOOOOM!!!


    Master Uma''s eyes widened with shock as an immensely powerful explosion sted open the tomb of esoteric gravel and storms that sought to bury Rui in their depths.


    VMMM¡­!


    The Yin-Yang Spear tore through all her efforts to bury him in the depths of her molten gravel storm. The powerful grade-ten technique might have required contact to actually function, but once it did make contact, there were very few techniques that could equal it.


    Master Uma''s storms were not among them.


    BOOOOOM!!! This content ? N?v/elDr(a)m/a.Org.


    Rui sted away shells of molten esoteric gravel with a singr attack, oveing her resistance.


    None of the Masters witnessing the technique with their powerful senses were able to understand how the technique functioned. Even when he didn''t generate much torque due to being buried in molten g, he didn''t seem to have any particr trouble generating massive amounts of power.


    Furthermore, Master Uma could tell that he wasn''t using the powerful muscle form of his Metabody System to generate all that power. Yet, somehow, his powerful offense was able to generate extremely intense collisions that sted away everything it came into contact with.


    That only brought her more delight.


    She marveled at the sheer amount of power that he cultivated while she applied her STORM System to the current information she had gathered. WHOOOSH!!!


    Instantly, the dynamics of the battle changed as she repurposed her winds to disperse their molten impacts across the entire surface of his body to gradually weather him down rather than give him the opportunity to use that mysteriously powerful technique of his.


    It was the best way to allocate her wind capital to win the battle.


    This was how the STORM System worked.


    It treated her storm techniques as capital. This was how the STORM System worked.


    It treated her storm techniques as capital. A limited resource.


    Then, she applied a systematic approach to figuring out the most effective allocation of these resources in any given circumstance against any given approach. The powerful offensive technique that the object of her reverence demonstrated forced her to redo her strategy on how to take him down.


    She began to try and churn from all sides.


    WHOOOSH!!!


    The Muspelheim domain red back to life as her opponent reused the technique. This time, however, things were a little different.


    "You have my gratitude." Rui''s voice emerged from within the fiery domain.


    It crackled with anger and displeasure.


    "You have shown me the way."


    Her eyes lit up as she basked in the expression of hateful gratitude from her God. Yet, what followed shocked even her.


    VMMM!!!


    Rui''s eyes sharpened as he activated the Yin-Yang Spear technique in conjugation with the Muspelheim technique.


    He sought tobine them.


    The Muspelheim technique employed vibrations to heat up the ground using thermoacoustic conduction and friction. In other words, it was possible to use the vibrations of the Yin-Yang Spear to super-charge the Muspelheim domain and heat up the ground to extraordinary degrees.


    Yet, there were drawbacks to doing this. The more he heated the domain, the harder it would be to protect himself from the effects of the domain. Normally, he partially isted himself from the worst of the domain. After all, although his Martial Body had been conditioned to it, that was solely when he had been a Senior.


    It could not handle the full might of the technique with only its own innate constitution.


    Heat did not discriminate between the user and the target. If he supercharged the Muspelheim domain with the Yin-Yang Spear, he would undoubtedly be affected.


    Yet, as he stared at the powerful storm that surrounded and protected the cocoon within which Master Uma hid from him, he wasn''t sure what choice he had. His strategy of using her kic energy to superheat his domain just enough to dispel the dense tornado technique that enveloped her had failed.


    In other words, he didn''t really have much of a choice.


    He felt an irrational amount of anger well up inside him at being pushed as far as he was. In any other fight, he would simply ept this without any problems. Yet, when it came to her, he wasn''t willing to take it.


    Perhaps it was because of how much he hated her.


    Regardless, his eyes flickered with rage as he surged forward and rushed into her storm head front with the Yin-Yang Spear prepared. He needed to get as close to her as possible in order to make use of this strategy.


    Master Uma, on the other hand, intuitively felt the danger and peril lurking in the depths of his eyes. Centuries of experience had strengthened her instinct, telling her that she couldn''t allow him to approach her.


    WHOOOOOSH!!!


    She mobilized all of her wind capital as she flung at Rui with the effort of pushing him away as far as possible. She instinctively knew that she needed to keep him as far as she could.


    The powerful storms picked up gravel, flinging them at him in one direction with the sole purpose of keeping him at a distance.


    Yet, it was not enough.


    STEP


    Rui went as far as to voluntarily take damage by reducing Nemean Blossom bit by bit as he activated Hypertrophic Surge in its ce to ensure that she didn''t have the power to push him back very easily.


    The darkness in the depths of his eyes stirred as he grew closer and closer, oveing the powerful molten sandstorm that sought to halt his approach.


    FSSS¡­!


    His skin began burning and peeling off as the absence of aplete Nemean Blossom allowed the gravel to ovee his raw durability. His nervous system ignited as a tsunami of pain shed through it.


    Yet, as though fueled by pure hatred and anger, he pushed through, not so much as twitching or wincing at the immense pain that flushed through his nervous system.


    STEP


    Soon enough, he had arrived.


    His eyes red with determined rage, he raised his fist high into the air, before swinging down a Yin-Yang Spear down with all his might.


    VMMM¡­!!!


    And in that moment, the Sun descended upon heaven and earth.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2178 Baptism

    Chapter 2178 Baptism


    As his fist surged down, the destructive resonance of the Yin and Yang vibrations shifted to constructive resonance. The immense power of the dual vibrations of the Yin-Yang Spear technique was poured into the Muspelheim domain as his fist struck the earth. In an instant, the power of one grade-ten technique supercharged another grade-ten technique. Yet, the effect of this far surpassed his estimations; the two techniques possessed an even greater synergy than he had ever expected from them.


    Theirbination led to a monstrous oue that surpassed the sum of the parts.


    BOOOOOM!!!


    A tremendous explosion roared across the battlefield as what might as well have been a supernova erupted from the domain''s epicenter.


    A white-hot fireball of pure destruction spread.


    It swallowed Rui in an instant.


    Yet, it didn''t stop there.


    No.


    It erupted, consuming Master Uma in a split second before consuming her storm effortlessly. Before an inferno of such immense magnitude, before the ungodly fusion of two extraordinary grade-ten techniques, even her storms were no more than a paltry breeze.


    Yet, even as the heat consumed her, she only felt a single emotion.


    Love.


    She gazed at Rui with loving eyes filled with devotion and reverence.


    He gazed back at her with hatred, rage, and pain. Material ? of N?velDrama.Org.


    His entire body was set aze, turning his visage into that of a fiery force of nature in her eyes.


    "Truly, you are the Antithesis." Her voice grew euphoric as the mes eroded her away. "It''s been an honor serving you."


    She worshiped him as her God as well as her own child whom she had helped raise into the man he was today.


    Sheid bare her emotions to him.


    Her love. Her devotion. Her reverence. Yet they only evoked disgust from him.


    As he gazed at her, his urge grew stronger.


    He knew that he ought not to do it.


    As he gazed at her, his urge grew stronger.


    He knew that he ought not to do it.


    Every rational part of his mind pleaded with him not to do it.


    Yet, as he beheld her eyes through the storm of fire that consumed them, his body moved on its own, driven by his desire to kill her for all the torment she had inflicted on him. It did not seem to care that it had been set on fire.


    It did not seem to care about the ocean of pain coursing through his nervous system at the moment.


    No.


    At that moment, his body moved on its own, surging forward.


    It was only when his dying body triggered a second Yin-Yang Spear, supercharging his Muspelheim to astronomical levels of power a second time, that he finally gained a fragment of enlightenment.


    ''Ah¡­'' Time slowed down to a crawl in his eyes as they lit up with understanding. ''¡­I see.''


    A single truth had be clear to him.


    ''I''m not as rational as I thought I was.''


    He had taken one more step in the journey to understanding who he was.


    Yet, at what cost?


    BOOOOOM!!!


    His fist struck Master Uma as a second singrity of heat emerged, consuming her alive.


    Yet, her love, devotion, and reverence only grew even as she approached death.


    She had been waiting for this day for eighteen years.


    Since that fateful day eighteen years ago, when she had failed to capture her deity, impeded by that stubborn fool, Deivon.


    The two of them had fought for quite some time that day. Master Deivon had managed to stall for her a long time despite being much weaker than her, eventually wearing her down until their Realms of power ran out.


    "Hahaha¡­" Master Deivon hadughed weakly, lying t on the ground.


    His body had been a mess, battered and gouged bloody by Master Uma''s potent attacks.


    "HOW DARE YOU?!" Master Uma had bellowed with rage. Master Deivonughed even more. "You¡­ will never reach him. He is beyond your reach, and when you do find him, it will be because he will have the power to kill you."


    His voice grew ominous even as it grew weaker.


    Yet, before Master Uma could retort, she froze.


    They both did.


    A deeply powerful aura swept over both of them, sending chills down their spines.


    A being of a higher Realm.


    "I see that the two of you¡­" Sage Sariawar smiled. "¡­have been up to no good."


    Master Deivon''s eyes lit up with hope. "Your Excellency! I wish to report treason!"


    Master Uma closed her eyes in resignation.


    It was over.


    SPLAT!


    Her eyes opened with shock as she beheld Master Deivon''s severed head hitting the ground. Her eyes turned to Sage Sariawar, stunned. "Your Excellency."


    "Uma¡­" The Cardinal Sage shifted her gaze to the Martial Master, her expression not changing so much as a shade. "Do you wish to put that seed into the Antithesis?"


    Master Uma narrowed her eyes. "He is not a seed, and he is the Antithesis. And I will mold him in the shape of Lord Virodhabhasa."


    "You are not strong enough," Sage Sariawar mercilessly told her. "If you were a Sage, perhaps. But as a Master, your life is insignificant before his. He will surpass you before you can ever hope to find him."


    Her tone, ruthless as her words were, was kind.


    Master Uma''s expression grew more severe. "Then¡­"


    "Fear not, for there is still a way that you can mold him in the image of the Antithesis." Sage Sariawar smiled. Master Uma''s eyes lit up with hope as Sage Sariawar''s smile grew wider.


    "If you are unable to impact him in life, then you can do so in death."


    Master Uma grew stunned at her words.


    "If you have conviction, I can help you serve as a step in his Martial Path," Sage Sariawar remarked. "I can help you baptize him with your death."


    "I am willing." Master Uma grew determined. "Show me how, O Cardinal Sage."


    An eerie smile emerged on Sage Sariawar''s face. "With the power vested in me as a Cardinal Sage, I hereby banish you from the Virodhabhasa Theocracy." Sage Sariawar''s deration shook Master Uma. "Go. Leave the Theocracy. Join the eastern branch of the Panamic Martial Federation. One day, he will arrive atop its abode, and you will have one final opportunity before even your death will lose meaning."


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2179 Rising Sun

    Chapter 2179 Rising Sun


    Eighteen yearster, Master Uma finally found herself at the altar of death, consumed by the wrath of Lord Virodhabhasa himself. Her final vision was that of the Antithesis ring at her with boundless hatred, rage, and pain, d in a divine armor of fire.


    A God in human form.


    "The universe bows to Lord Virodhabhasa," she whispered even as the mes ate her alive. "I bow to Lord Virodhabhasa."


    BOOOOOM!!!!!


    The hungry sun consumed her whole, leaving nothing behind.


    Yet, it was not satisfied.


    It expanded in an instant, consuming the entire battlefield.


    Yet, it never stopped. It didn''t slow down.


    It only continued to elerate.


    It only continued to expand even further.


    So much so that not even the evaluating Martial Masters were safe from its clutches. Their expressions grew grave as their Martial Hearts and Martial Minds zed into power, protecting not just themselves but also seeking to contain the power that emerged from Rui.


    Ordinarily, this was not something that they would be worried about.


    Each Master-level chamber was designed to contain power greater than the limits of the Master Realm.


    However¡­


    RUMBLE!!!


    For the first time in their careers as evaluators of the Panamic Martial Federation, they came to fear that a Master-level chamber might just not hold.


    Their fears were not unjustified. They grew rmed as they felt the powerful and vast infrastructure shaking under the weight of what felt like a cmity, sending shudders across the entire battlefield facility.


    RUMBLE!!!!!


    Much to their horror, the attack seemed to grow much stronger and stronger, as if fueled a second time. The more it expanded, the more the explosion wavefront seemed to grow greater and greater. It was terrifyingly counter-intuitive in ways that seemed to defymon sense.


    None of them understood if this was part of the technique. It was difficult to imagine that this was part of it.


    After all, why would Master Rui dare to use something this intense if he knew it was going to be this dangerous?


    This was merely an evaluation. Most Martial Masters did not go all out in order to ensure that they didn''t reveal their trump cards.


    It wasmon sense.


    After all, the Panamic Martial Federation existed for all Martial Artists, not any individual one. There was no point in trying to show all their secrets when this information could be used against any of them.


    Yet, Master Rui seemed to be baring every ounce of power he had to the world.


    And that power proved to be too much for them to handle.


    RUMBLE!!!


    Yet, as they struggled to hold back the ensuing explosion, they could not help but wonder whether such a result was possible even if a Martial Master went all out. Regardless, now wasn''t the time to focus on that.


    All five Martial Masters on the evaluation team went all out as they deployed their very best to contain the explosion as much as possible.


    Fortunately, many of them were equipped to prevent a battle from going out of control so that there was very little chance of anything bad happening during these battles.


    Now, however, they woulde to learn that they were wrong.


    RUMBLE!!!


    Regardless, they applied their breathing techniques and other defensive techniques over as much of an area as possible, pushing themselves as far as they could. Martial Art over Martial Art. Technique over technique. The power of many Martial Masters supported the defensive line.


    Yet, they weren''t able to push it back. This is property ? of N?velDrama.Org.


    RUMBLE!!!


    Their fears grew more pronounced when the structures supporting the dome over the evaluation battlefield began creaking and rumbling, struggling to contain the devastating power that Rui had unleashed inadvertently.


    Until it simply no longer could.


    BOOOOOM!!!


    "No!" Master Jenile''s eyes widened as he saw the dome break, ultimately failing to contain the attack.


    It broke free.


    All hope was lost.


    Or at least, it should have been.


    "Enough."


    Her voice was soft, yet it overpowered the roar of the infant Sun. Heaven and earth bent under the weight of her being as though the very force of her existence pushed down the fabric of the world. Yet, even this gentle gesture weighed down on the ball of pure destruction, halting its indomitable expansion.


    The baby Sun fought with all its might against the grip of her breathing technique, yet it was to no avail.


    Before the might of a Martial Sage, its power was but naught.


    "Sage Larra." Master Jenile heaved a deep sigh of relief.


    She was one of the few Martial Sages stationed at the headquarters of the Panamic Martial Federation who were tasked with security and stability. Her arrival brought a lot of reassurance to the Martial Masters who had exerted themselves to protect Rui''s power from spilling over.


    She exhaled softly.


    WHOOSH


    With a wave of her hand, the fiery ball of destruction was no longer.


    With the slightest exertion of her true power, she erased it.


    The turbulence immediately began to settle upon its disappearance. A significant amount of seismic radiation had spread across the entire tectonic te, causing serious concerns that none of them could ignore. The authorities of the Panamic Martial Federation had already entered a state of emergency as word of the energy leak spread.


    The most important issue was ensuring that the floating tectonic te was stable. As long as it was, everything else could be handled after. The Martial Sages and Martial Masters across the entire tectonic te began straining themselves to stabilize thend, gently absorbing the energy from thend as well as they could with earth-bending and channeling the seismic radiation into the atmosphere as sound. Only when the headquarters had been deemed to be entirely safe was the damage fully evaluated. Only when everything had finally settled down did they have the leeway to begin exploring the cause. Immediately, the authorities began poring over every detail rting to the inception of the attack.


    "Now then¡­" Sage Larra''s attention returned to the sparring battlefield facility. "Tell me¡­"


    Her eyes narrowed as she studied the entire location.


    "Where did that spark of materia prima emerge from?"


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2180 Aftermath

    Chapter 2180 Aftermath


    Soon, a single body at the center of thebat battlefield was discovered.


    The body of Rui.


    Alive, even if barely.


    One of his arms was missing, presumably vaporized by the heat.


    His outer flesh waspletely burned.


    Yet, he was somehow still alive.


    The Martial Master was rushed to medical aid as he was flushed with the highest medical treatments that the Panamic Martial Federation could muster. Many powerful treatments employing extremely rare and potent resources meant for life sustenance were immediately dumped into his body.


    Many of these were reserved exclusively for Martial Sages. However, the Panamic Martial Federation decided to use them nheless. The youngest and most prodigious Martial Master in all of history could not be allowed to die or be crippled.


    The Panamic Martial Federation deployed every single resource at its disposal to stabilize his condition as an entire department was put together simply to ensure he lived. Material ? of N?velDrama.Org.


    Meanwhile, word of what happened spread across the highest echelons of the Martial World and human civilization.


    Master Rui Quarrier Ss Kandria was in a critical medical condition after using a forbidden technique that killed the assignedbat threat evaluator and put the entire headquarters at risk.


    An extremely provocative framing of what happened, but, in reality, this was what the investigation department''s investigations into the incident had revealed.


    There was plenty of evidence supporting this conclusion. All the Martial Masters who were assigned to Master Rui''s evaluation unanimously corroborated the story. Their testimonies confirmed that Master Rui had deployed some kind of heat domain that wasprised of some kind of fire from the very inception of the battle. Initially, the domain had been hardly problematic. It was onlyter that Rui had taken some inscrutable measures to strengthen his domain to a much greater degree, causing it to go out of control with an enormous spike in energy.


    The result of this action was the death of his innocent sparring partner, Master Uma, a Master formerly from the Virodhabhasa Theocracy, as well as his own critical medical condition and the jeopardy of the entire headquarters of the Panamic Martial Federation.


    The spectating Masters made many statements of the strange hostility that Rui had towards her from the very start of the battle that seemed to intensify across the entire battle until it culminated in him taking extreme measures to not just win the inconsequential sparring battle but also to kill his opponent.


    Considering that there were no known ties between Master Rui and Master Uma, investigators could only conclude that Master Rui had lost his temper against the innocent Master Uma when he had found himself unable to ovee her great defenses.


    From all avable evidence, it appeared that the proud and arrogant young Master had arge ego that couldn''t tolerate his inability to ovee the defenses of the guiltless Master Uma, causing him to go too far and employ what was clearly a forbidden technique.


    The Panamic Martial Federation reassured everyone that while it would most certainly restore the young Master''s condition to his peak, this did not mean it would let him go scott-free for his crimes.


    The most shocking news was that the foreign affairs department of the Panamic Martial Federation confirmed that it would be pressing charges against Master Rui once he recovered from his critical condition.


    Given how high-profile the incident had be, how politically important the suspect in question was, and how sensitive and delicate the geopolitical dynamics of East Panama were, the Panamic Martial Federation decided to go with full transparency, going so far as to release the statements collected in addition to other pieces of evidence gathered, including footage of the magnificent infant Sun that had emerged from the sparring facility before being snuffed out by a Martial Sage.


    All of this sparked an uproar amongst the highest echelons of human civilization, especially since Rui was already super famous in the Martial World for his many aplishments, his prodigious rate of growth, and his status as the Void Prince of the Kandrian Empire and the once de facto emperor of Kandria before the mysterious recovery of Emperor of Harmony.


    For a week, this incident became the center of attention in the political sphere of the Panama Continent, even while themon folk continued life unperturbed. The forces of East Panama were most invested in the matter as a variety of Martial Artists, rulers, politicians, and organizations released many statements. [The Commonwealth Duchy of Vinfrana wishes Final Prince Rui aplete recovery and¡­]


    [The Kingdom of Violis condemns Master Rui for his reckless actions that could have resulted in the harm of countless people¡­]


    Nations within the domain of influence of the Kandrian Empire released positive statements, while those outside of it condemned Master Rui for his actions.


    In particr, the other powerhouses of East Panama leaped at the opportunity to mount even more pressure, releasing long statements and making sure that everyone heard them. President Raymond himself spent an entire week in press conferences, using it as an opportunity to rile his voter base up.


    The Britannian Empire cleverly used it as an opportunity to privately hasten the other two powerhouses into war rather than falling for the intelligence of the Emperor of Harmony. Meanwhile, the Sekigahara Confederate used it as a chance to nder the Kandrian Empire to prevent their detestable philosophy of harmony from spreading any further.


    Yet, while many condemned Master Rui across the entire Martial Community and the political sphere, there were just as many Martial Artists who came to admire the extraordinary power that the young Master had demonstrated.


    The technique, forbidden or not, was truly magnificent.


    It was a young, ferocious rising star with immense power, much like its user.


    It sparked a wave of admiration as it functioned as Master Rui''s debut as a Martial Master in the public eye, giving rise to a slew of monikers and titles as his Master title had yet to be decided. There was much contention on the matter as many of his old and new fans debated the matter furiously.


    Ultimately, the world settled upon a single name.


    Dawnbringer.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2181 Have Faith

    Chapter 2181 Have Faith


    Tensions in East Panama kept escting as the controversy over Rui''s actions in the eastern headquarters of the Panamic Martial Federation continued to be a boiling-hot topic.


    The three Sage-level powerhouses did not cease applying pressure on the Kandrian Empire by repeatedly criticizing Rui for his crimes during a mere evaluation. Of course, none of them really gave a damn about the crimes¡ªthey couldn''t care less about a random Master outcast from the Virodhabhasa Theocracy.


    However, it was a good way of applying pressure on the Kandrian Empire. It was a good way to stoke war, which looked increasingly likely as the Republic of Gorteau and the Sekigahara Confederates failed to make much meaningful progress in finding out the method through which Martial Apprentices were mass-produced.


    However, while the entirety of East Panama made a big ruckus, a few parties remained suspiciously silent.


    The Kandrian Empire and the Virodhabhasa Theocracy.


    Thetter was not as strange. After all, Master Uma, the victim, was no longer a part of the religious nation-state.


    However, the silence of the Kandrian Empire was truly shocking.


    After all, Rui was not just any Master from the Empire.


    He was effectively the crown prince of the Kandrian Empire.


    The fact that the Emperor of Harmony didn''t release a statement addressing this was truly shocking to the political sphere.


    Yet, no matter how many thinly veiled abuses the three Sage-level powerhouses threw at Rui, the Emperor of Harmony didn''t intervene whatsoever. Even the Martial Union released a statement dering unconditional support for the Void Prince, which only fueled more controversy as it seemed like a refusal to condemn what was clearly a moral wrongdoing.


    Yet, Rael remained silent.


    However, that didn''t mean he didn''t act.


    "Do you understand, Sage Laughner?" Emperor Rael''s eyes narrowed as he gazed down at the prostrating Martial Sage from atop the Royal Throne. "I am elerating certain timelines within Project Transcension in light of this event."


    "I understand, Your Majesty," the kneeling Martial Sage replied with a powerful tone. "I shall assassinate the queen of the Jahobar Kingdom and serve her head to you." Belongs to N?velDrama.Org - All rights reserved.


    This was one of the Martial Sages of the Martial division of the Royal Army. Known as the Sovereign of Silence, he was a covert-oriented Martial Artist who was deeply loyal to the Emperor of Harmony. He served as the Royal Army''s counterweight to the Whispering Widower and was a powerful resource when it came to anything that required a furtive approach.


    WHOOSH


    He disappeared in a moment, as though he had never been there.


    Emperor Rael fell into deep thought as his mind furiously coursed through all the information avable, evaluating the nuances of the subtle shifts in various local and geopolitical dynamics.


    He didn''t miss a single detail.


    His decision to avoid making a statement was the wise one, even if it frustrated him as a father.


    However, he would be giving the enemies of Kandria exactly what they wanted.


    They wanted to ensure that if and when they did dere war, it would be more well-epted than not.


    No matter what, public opinion mattered.


    As long as they could prime East Panama against the Kandrian Empire, a war on the Kandrian Empire would go a lot smoother than if they were clearly the ones in the wrong. Being perceived as aggressive without provocation, unstable, and dangerous would make many political andmercial powers less willing to trade with them.


    But, if they could frame the Kandrian Empire as a negative entity by inming controversy about the nation, then the problem was partially alleviated and the war would be viewed less negatively.


    This had already happened, after all, with the Martial Union''s response.


    Emperor Rael was not in the habit of giving his enemies what they wanted.


    That was why he elerated the assassination of the queen of the Jahobar Kingdom.


    The best way to cease attention to an incident was to misdirect attention to an even more significant event.


    Such as the assassination of the leader of a Sage-level nation.


    He had nned to get rid of her anyway so that her son, who was more pro-Kandria, would ascend the throne. The nation was divided in half between two power blocs that constantly engaged in assassination attempts against each other. Thus, it would not be traced back to him anytime soon.


    This was the best option to drown out the controversy regarding Rui.


    CLACK


    The gates to the enormous throne room opened as an elderly woman walked in, garbed in the ethnic attire of the Ss n, warping heaven and earth under the weight of her being, as those of her ilk did.


    She peered at him with clear displeasure. "Make it quick."


    Unfortunately, Emperor Rael was in no mood to indulge her today.


    His harmonious bodynguage crumpled with cold fury as his powerful re pinned her in ce.


    She narrowed her eyes as the air grew more tumultuous.


    It boiled.


    It boiled under the rage of the Emperor of Harmony.


    "You lied." His rich, deep voice heightened with anger. Matriarch Nephi met his piercing eyes with a firm gaze. "I did not lie, technically."


    Yet, her words only evoked more anger from the Emperor of Harmony.


    "Do not y word games with me, Matriarch of the Ss n." His voice was steely. "I would rather not show you that your power as a Martial Sage will not protect you from my wrath."


    She heaved a sigh, closing her eyes. "I did deceive you. However, not in regards to the oue of the operation that you deployed my grandson on. I simply hid the details of the trouble I foresaw him getting into."


    "That is a vition of our agreement." He narrowed his eyes. "We agreed that you wouldn''t hide any details from me when it came to matters rting to Project Transcension."


    "This isn''t rted to your ambition." Matriarch Nephi snorted. "It is rted to a personal matter involving your son. It is rted to his path to the Sage Realm. Had I told you the truth, had I told you that this would have happened, would you have let your son go to the Panamic Martial Federation on that mission of yours?"


    Emperor Rael narrowed his eyes.


    Yet, he remained silent.


    "Hah, that is why I didn''t tell you." She snorted again. "You would have canceled the operation and sent someone else, depriving your son of the opportunity to learn more about himself and make progress to the Sage Realm."


    "¡­"


    "Have faith in him," she calmly told him. "He is your son, after all."


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2182 Who

    Chapter 2182 Who


    Had Rui known how to leave the fieryndscape he found himself in, he would have.


    Yet, he didn''t.


    It was a rather odd phenomenon that he didn''t quite understand.


    Yet, from before he could remember, he found himself surrounded by mes in a world of infernos.


    "Weird¡­" Rui muttered as he gazed at his own incinerating body.


    He looked like a force of nature in human form, d in white-hot mes.


    Yet, it didn''t hurt.


    He burned, yet he couldn''t feel even a bit of pain.


    It was as though the mes embraced him.


    "It suits you."


    A familiar voice called out to him.


    Rui''s attention shifted to a figure a short distance away.


    A woman set aze.


    She gazed at him with reverence and devotion.


    Yet, he didn''t recognize her for some reason.


    "Who are you?" He raised an eyebrow.


    "¡­" She simply gazed at him silently for several beats. "I am hurt that you don''t remember me. However¡­"


    A smile lit up on her burning face.


    "¡­The fact that I am even here means that I have seeded in my objective."


    Rui frowned at her strange words. "Objective?"


    She shook her head, refusing to borate. "Where the hell are we anyway?" Rui grumbled. "I''ve been in this world for as long as I can recall."


    The burning woman smiled. "Do you not recognize this ce? This ce is Muspelheim. A realm of fire."


    "Muspelheim¡­" Rui whispered. "Hm, that feels familiar, strangely enough."


    "It should." The woman nodded. "After all, you were the one who created this realm."


    Rui''s head jerked back in confusion. "What?!"


    She smiled with an expression of amusement. "Do you not recall? This is Muspelheim of the Yggdrasil System. Although¡­"


    She smiled with an expression of amusement. "Do you not recall? This is Muspelheim of the Yggdrasil System. Although¡­"


    Her gaze swept across the entire firescape. "¡­Perhaps you will reach this level of power when you ascend to bing the Antithesis."


    Rui frowned with confusion. "The what?"


    "Mmm¡­" She regarded him with intrigue. "Perhaps you do not remember because this isn''t real. Perhaps you do not remember because your mind is immersed in the dream that your soul created. But¡­"


    Her expression grew more reverent. "But this is a world that you created with your magnificent power, O Lord Virodhabhasa."


    Rui frowned with skepticism. "I think you have me confused with someone else."


    "No."


    Her voice was steely and unyielding as her burning eyes sharpened.


    "You are the Antithesis, no matter what anyone says."


    Rui frowned with uncertainty.


    He felt like he knew who she was and what she was talking about.


    It was at the tip of his tongue.


    Yet, he didn''t know.


    "Who are you?" he asked as his gaze fixated on her.


    "¡­it is not I who needs to answer that question. After all, I''m dead," she replied with a hint of mncholy. "If anyone needs to answer that question, Your Divinity, it would be you."


    Rui tilted his head. "¡­Who am I?"


    Suddenly, chills ran across his skin as he realized he didn''t even know who he was.


    He couldn''t even recall his name.


    "Wait, who am I?" He frowned.


    "Well, that''s the question, isn''t it?" She smiled at him with reverence. " That''s the question you need to answer in order to reach a higher Realm of power.


    "¡­That sounds like a difficult path," Rui murmured. "I will help you traverse it," she promised with eyes filled with devotion. "Now go."


    Rui tilted his head. "Go where?"


    She closed her eyes. "It''s time to wake up."


    Suddenly, the fires began dousing as the fabric of reality cracked, consumed by an infinite void.


    Rui''s eyes flew open as he woke up with a jolt.


    His breathing calmed down as his vision adjusted, growing less blurry.


    He found himself staring at a white ceiling.


    "Tsk¡­" He tutted with displeasure. "¡­What a shitty dream."


    For some reason, he wasn''t able to remember anything when inside his dream.


    However, now that he was awake, he instantly remembered who the woman was. Her voice and appearance, he wouldn''t fail to recognize her in any other circumstances. Belonging ? N?velDram/a.Org.


    He was deeply displeased that he dreamt of her, of all people.


    He wished he had recognized her in the dream; he would have dly taken up the duty of beating her up once more in the depths of his mind.


    "Still¡­ who am I, eh?" His eyes narrowed. "To think that old man was right."


    He hadn''t forgotten his conversation with the old Master, Master Gern.


    He had advised Rui to fall asleep and think about the question, ''Who am I?'' It allegedly helped one gain insights into oneself by priming the soul to form dreams surrounding the question, which could contain important clues on the topic.


    In Rui''s case, he had not fallen asleep to the question, no, but he did fall unconscious to it. Right before his second execution of Yin-Yang-Muspelheim knocked him out, he had gained insight into who he was and taken one more step in what was shaping up to be a long journey. Thus, it seemed to have fulfilled the conditions of the dream technique that Master Gern had told him about, allowing him to have a dream once more.


    "Still, to think I dreamed about her¡­" he grumbled.


    Unfortunately, he couldn''t be surprised, even if he was displeased.


    After all, she had be a source of trauma to him when he had been a Squire, so much so that his subconscious mind had suppressed his memories of her such that he hadn''t thought about her for a very long time, forgetting to even resume the Beggar''s Sect information ckout he hadmissioned on her.


    Yet, simultaneously, her influence had embedded itself in him very firmly.


    He couldn''t pretend that he didn''t remember every detail of his encounters with her, especially when he even derived an entire technique from her: the Phantomind Void technique. One of the reasons that the technique was so powerful was because it was based on his traumatic memories of her, making the misdirection power of the technique that much more potent.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2183: Unfolding Consequences

    Chapter 2183: Unfolding Consequences


    ?


    Even though she was dead, she had left a mark on him. One that would probably remain with him forever.


    He got the feeling that that was her goal from the very start.


    He couldn''t know for sure, after all...


    "...She''s dead."


    A maelstrom of emotion surged within him.


    "Hahaha..." A weakugh escaped him as he came to terms with this surreal turn of events.


    He finally did it.


    After eighteen long years, she was finally dead.


    By his own hands, nheless.


    It felt deeply rewarding to finally cut out that cancer of a threat from his life.


    Yet, it also brought him more fear.


    His eyes grew more grave while his body stiffened.


    The severity of his current circumstances hit him like a train.


    It didn''t matter what their history was.


    It didn''t matter whether she deserved what she had gotten.


    He killed an innocent evaluator in cold blood.


    On top of that, he caused a lot of damage to the infrastructure of the Panamic Martial Federation. Normally, he would not have any civil liability for such an oue, however...


    "...I used a forbidden technique." Rui grimaced.


    Forbidden techniques were prohibited in most training or sparring infrastructure in most Martial jurisprudence. The reason for this was precisely because of what had happened when Rui had used his forbidden technique.Belongs to N?velDrama.Org - All rights reserved.


    Rui didn''t really think of it as a forbidden technique. However, what he thought didn''t matter. It was a technique that yielded an immense power at the cost of causing grave harm or even death to the user. That was the definition of a forbidden technique, and what he had done definitely fell into the category considering he had burned himself alive and lost an arm.


    Instantly, his attention returned back to reality as he finally took stock of his own body and pored over it with great scrutiny.


    He was garbed in a medical gown that covered his entire form. Several artifacts were attached to his body, measuring his vitals.


    Thankfully, his body was back to normal.


    His arms were just fine, having been restored to their original condition. His skin was fine too, although of a much darker tone. Perhaps it was due to the mes causing a change in the mnin content in his skin tissue upon recovery. Regardless, skin color was irrelevant. The only thing that Rui cared about was the impact on his physical performance.


    He would be deeply displeased if his Martial Body grew weaker in any way due to an imperfect recovery.


    His powerful senses swept across his entire body as he actively began examining it on a microscopic level, assessing the quality of the tissue of his skin and flesh.


    Hepared his right and left arms to see if there were any noticeable differences between both sides. That was a good way to ensure that he wouldn''t miss any differences in the arm regeneration procedures that they had treated him with.


    Thankfully, even the most thorough scans on his part revealed no significant differences in either side, suggesting that the medical team assigned to him had been more thanpetent.


    "Thank god the Panamic Martial Federation has one of the best medical facilities in the world." Rui heaved a sigh of relief.


    Of course, he would definitely go to the Divine Doctor for a consultation. That man was easily the best person to get medical treatment from.


    "If I manage to get out of here, that is." Rui smiled bitterly.


    He understood his circumstances well.


    CLACK


    The door opened as a doctor walked in, shing him a friendly smile. "Master Rui, I rushed to see you the moment I was alerted of your awakening. I am Doctor Sheel, the head of Martial Recovery. I have personally been assigned to your case. Rest assured, you''re in good hands." Rui managed to squeeze out a friendly smile for her. "Thank you, doctor."


    "Not at all, Your Mastery." She smiled. "So how do yo-"


    CLACK


    She paused as the door opened violently.


    Several Martial Masters d in Martial attire walked in, led by a particrly powerful Martial Master at the front.


    He was armed with an ostentatious sword by his side, giving off a sharp aura that threatened to cut anything it graced.


    "Good day, Your Mastery," he curtly wished Rui as he approached him, much to the


    displeasure of Doctor Sheel.


    "Your Mastery," she bowed deeply, "verification of the recovery of patients takes priority ording to the rules and reg-"


    "I''m afraid the Martial court disagrees." He pulled out a paper stamped with the seal of the Panamic Martial Federation.


    She heaved a sigh, clearly upset yet powerless to stop him.


    Rui, on the other hand, turned grave, having read the entire paper from top to bottom.


    It was the equivalent of an arrest warrant.


    "Master Rui Quarrier Ss Kandria," the Master began with a forceful tone, "with the vested authority of the Martial Court of the Panamic Martial Federation, you are hereby under arrest for the crimes of first-degree murder, second-degree mass murder, destruction of property, the unauthorized use of a forbidden technique atop property of the Panamic Martial Federation..."


    As he read out the list of the crimes that Rui had inadvertentlymitted, Rui couldn''t feel some amount of guilt for the destruction that he had caused.


    His thoughts shed back to the absurd inferno that the fusion of the Yin-Yang Spear and the Muspelheim domain had created.


    Never in his wildest dreams did he think that the idea would yield such a result in such a horrendous oue with an explosion that only grew stronger and more powerful even after


    Rui stopped supplying it energy.


    However, he could make some educated guesses with his understanding of science in


    hindsight.


    Yet, even those educated guesses were truly extraordinary in their implications.


    As much as he would have loved to fall into deep consideration about them, he didn''t have


    that leeway at the moment.


    "...and thus, you shall be given a fair trial where you will be judged innocent or guilty by none other than High Judge Sage Kole Kellin."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2184 Preparations

    Chapter 2184 Preparations


    Rui needed to exert an immense amount of self-control to ensure that he didn''t give away his intentions through his reactions. Thankfully, his Martial Mind was stronger than theirs; thus, they couldn''t sense his intentions directly the way that he could theirs. In other words, he wasn''t a liability to his own mission given to him by his father.


    However, it didn''t change the fact that he needed toply.


    "I''m willing to peacefully adhere to the legal protocol of the Panamic Martial Federation," Rui reassured. "I hope the Panamic Martial Federation will, however, grant me the grace of retrieving my clothes and belongings."


    "Of course." The lead Martial Master nodded. "You shall be treated in a manner befitting an exalted Martial Master."


    Rui fell into thought as he quickly prepared himself for what was toe.


    In ordinary circumstances, he had plenty of reason to be extremely wary of his current predicament.


    After all, the Panamic Martial Federation was quite certain that he was aware of the methodology behind the mass Apprentice breakthroughs. On top of that, as an organization that reflected the will and was not independent of the Martial World, he knew that the organization was experiencing a tremendous amount of pressure from its constituents to extract the secrets of the mass Apprentice breakthroughs from him. In other words, he needed to ensure that the pressure did not overwhelm his capacity to navigate the trial carefully.


    Thankfully, Martial jurisprudence typically did not take as much time and was not as borate as normal human jurisprudence.


    The reason for this was simple.


    Martial Artists simplycked the patience to deal with extensive legal protocols that weremon in the non-Martial World.


    This worked in his favor.


    After all, a prolonged legal procedure would cause the Kandrian Empire to lose stock of the extra Martial Apprentices that he had left behind to ensure that it could pretend new Martial Apprentices were being mass-produced even when he was not around.


    "I''m ready," Rui remarked, having procured the things and having made the preparations that he needed to. "Good. We will escort you to the quarters that will serve as your house arrest premises," the lead Martial Masters strictly informed him. "Until your trial isplete and a verdict is delivered, you are prohibited from activating your Martial Heart and your Martial Mind. Any attempt to do so will be deemed as hostility and we will execute you on the spot, as we are authorized to do so." This content ? N?v/elDr(a)m/a.Org.


    Rui hated what he heard. However, he had no choice but to adhere to these regtions for now.


    There was no chance of escaping the stronghold of the Panamic Martial Federation. He would get hunted so fast, it wouldn''t even be funny.


    However, in turn, he couldn''t leave his mission either.


    It would be one thing if he had simply rejected his father''s request in the first ce. However, now that he had epted and given his father his word that he wouldplete it, he couldn''t back out.


    On top of that, the only way to get out of this problem was to ensure that the mission actually seeded.


    If the High Martial Judge decided to sentence him to imprisonment or a criminal Martialbor program, he was screwed.


    He needed her to acquit him, or else he was screwed.


    For that, he could only hope that she was as desperate to get her power back as he strongly suspected that she was.


    The Martial Master guards escorted him through the Panamic Martial Federation to a highly secured housing unit that was heavily guarded by Martial Masters. One look at it and it didn''t feel very weing, given how strict the security was.


    "This will be your housing quarters, Master Rui," the head Martial Master informed him. "We will return when your trial is due. You may ess all the resources you need for your hearing inside where a dedicated staff of assistants will aid with everything you need."


    Rui nodded as they headed inside.


    It wasn''t long before he found himself inside thepound, perched inside his own designated house arrest room.


    Much to his surprise, even the house arrest quarters were quite luxurious, with plenty of space and extravagant amenities. He felt like he was in a hotel on a vacation rather than house arrest.


    "Perks of being a Martial Master, I suppose," he remarked. "However, I don''t have time to indulge in all of this."


    He needed to prepare for his trial that was tomorrow.


    There wasn''t much time for preparation. However, there wasn''t too much to prepare for either. He just needed to make sure that he had identified the most optimal strategy that would maximize the probability of him getting out of there alive and, well, with Sage Kole Kellin journeying back home to the Kandrian Empire with him.


    Upon arrival, he began nning.


    From the very start, he knew that theck of sophistication in Martial litigation would work against him because that meant there was less room for loopholes. The process was incredibly simple. He would be presented before the judge, who would have gone over the case files prior to the hearing and would proceed to ask him a bunch of questions. By the end of the session, she woulde to a judgment and would sentence him to whatever she deemed fit.


    In other words, it all came down to how well he could manipte her.


    Ordinarily, he would be quite pessimistic about his chances of sess.


    After all, Martial Sages were deeply insightful. He doubted she was any different; her senses did not need to be suppressed even if she had sealed off her Reams of power. In other words, it was highly unlikely that he would be able to deceive her as a Martial Master.


    If not for his trump card, he was sure that he was doomed.


    "But even with my trump card¡­" He narrowed his eyes. "I need to make sure that I execute my offer to her."


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2185 Commenced Trial

    Chapter 2185 Commenced Trial


    Rui spent all the time at his disposal chalking up a strategy to deal with Sage Kole. Thankfully, he knew everything he needed to know. He had memorized the details of her profile while still in the Kandrian Empire. Thus, he had pretty solid intelligence on what kind of person she was, or at least had been.


    On top of that, he had been presented with the evidence that was part of his case.


    The damage he had done was even greater than he expected.


    He had inadvertently hurt a lot of people and killed several as a result of his attack going out of control.


    He heaved a sigh, shaking his head with depressed eyes.


    Had he had any inkling that his attack would go that much out of control, he wouldn''t have gone for it. He truly had absolutely no prior idea that such a thing could even be possible.


    However, it didn''t matter if his intentions weren''t malicious. At least, not against anybody other than Master Uma, who was the only person who got what they deserved. What mattered was whether he could convince Sage Kole of it. It didn''t matter if it was the truth or if it was pretty hard to believe.


    "I¡­ should plead guilty."


    Martial Judiciary processes retained the pleading of the defendant before the judge. If he admitted he was guilty, he would get off with a lighter sentence than if he pleaded innocent but was found guilty.


    In addition, he needed to make sure that Sage Kole had reason to trust him when he pulled out his trump card. If he acted like a despicable ingrate who was clearly willing to say whatever to get out of jail, then she would immediately dismiss his bribe as a lie fabricated on the spot to get her to acquit him.


    As long as he could get her to believe that he was telling the truth, he could get her to acquit him with her desire to regain her Martial power.


    He spent the rest of the day nning and modeling different likely scenarios that the trial hearing could go before nning the best response for all of them.


    Eventually, the next day arrived, and with it the scheduled hearing.


    Like clockwork, the Martial Master guards arrived at his housing quarters to pick him up an hour prior to the trial.


    Rui was garbed in his usual Martial attire, presenting himself as a Martial Artist more than anything else.


    He presentedpleteposure.


    Yet, inside, he would be lying if he said he wasn''t at least a little nervous.


    It didn''t matter how much he calcted the most likely questions and the most optimal strategy¡ªnothing was perfect. Even if he waspletely right, it was possible that even this highly optimized approach was nothing more than an inevitable failure.


    He felt his nerves tingle as he arrived at the Martial Court.


    He would much rather face a hurdle that involved Martial Art.


    After all, he spent most of his time honing it. Rather than dealing with something that his Martial power couldn''t affect, he would rather fight a hoard of Martial Masters with low odds of victory.


    At least, he would be in his home court.


    STEP


    Soon enough, he arrived before the doors of the high Martial Court reserved for the sole use of High Judge Sage Kole.


    His eyes grew more grave while his expression grew more severe.


    He could feel it.


    Even from the outside, he could feel it.


    He could feel the nigh-boundless power hidden deep within the depths of her being. Sealed it might be, but the pressure that she exerted on him inadvertently showed that her power was still very much alive and well.


    CLACK


    The doors opened, giving Rui his first glimpse of what was inside.


    Yet, despite the magnificence of the trial hall inside, it couldn''t hold his attention for so much as a second.


    No.


    Instead, his attention remained fixed on a single person.


    A single being.


    There she sat upon her elevated seat, peering down at Rui with her unfathomable eyes. Her body quivered uncontrobly while her hands quaked, rendering them uncontroble. Her legs could no longer function properly due to the excessive tremoring.


    It was a miserable condition.


    She looked a lot worse than he had expected.


    And, as sorry as he felt for her, he couldn''t help but be relieved by the state of her condition. It only increased the probability that she would be inclined to ept her offer.


    "Master Rui Quarrier Ss Kandria."


    Her voice drew his attention forcefully.


    "Do not waste my time."Her powerful eyes pierced down at him. "Take your seat."


    "Yes, Your Sagehood," he addressed her politely as he adhered to her words.


    He felt a tremendous amount of pressure mounting on him. This was not something he could afford to mess up.


    Her bodynguage and demeanor indicated that this hearing was just another day at work. However, to Rui, it was everything. He knew it.


    The realization put an immense amount of pressure on him. "Without further ado, let us begin." Her tone was firm and unyielding. "Tell me. Case AD51 is underway. Defendant Master Rui is charged with many crimes by the Panamic Martial Federation, including murder, mass murder, damage to property of the Federation, and unauthorized use of a forbidden technique. I shall begin by inquiring into each charge before formting my judgment. By the end, I shall pass my judgment after confirming whether the defendant pleads guilty."


    Rui narrowed his eyes as the session officiously began.


    He was itching tomunicate his offer to her non-verbally. However, timing mattered. In addition, he couldn''t be too tant with it. He needed to make sure that he had everything in ce in order to make sure the impact of the offer would hit her as hard as possible. The worst possible oue would be theplete dismissal of his offer as nonsense that wasn''t even worth considering.


    -Belonging ? N?velDram/a.Org.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2186 First Charge

    Chapter 2186 First Charge


    "I shall begin with the most minor of vitions before proceeding on to the most severe," she remarked, turning her gaze. "The investigative department asserts that you, Master Rui, employed a forbidden technique. The evidence submitted includes testimonies from all five of the randomly assigned Masters who conducted your evaluation. Each of them has confirmed the allegation that you employed a heat-oriented domain technique that grew extraordinarily more powerfulter in your sparring battle with thete Master Uma."


    She paused for a moment, going through another document. "I have a statement from your assigned doctor that also confirms that your lethal injuries were caused by heat as well, which merely confirms that the technique would have caused your death if not for the timely and highly effective medical treatment the Federation has graciously subjected you to, free of cost."


    Rui wanted to scoff at thest part.


    The only reason it was free of cost was that he would be of no use to them, dead or crippled.


    However, he quickly suppressed that thought.


    He didn''t want to convey any contempt.


    "In other words, you did use the technique ording to all avable witnesses, and it was enough to constitute a forbidden technique based on highly reliable medical and witness testimonies," she continued. "In addition, the Masters also confirmed that your activation of this technique was intentional and deliberate, including measured preparations to do so. Tell me, Master Quarrier¡­"


    She steepled her quaking hands. "¡­Do you object to my evaluation of the provided evidence or the pieces of evidence?"


    Her deep eyesid immense pressure upon him, pinning him in ce.


    Rui''s eyes grew more grave.


    The words that he chose to say would make an irrevocable impact on her evaluation and impression of him.


    "I object to the usation of intentional activation of a forbidden technique, Your Sagehood." Rui''s tone was solemn. "The truth is what I did employ was not a single technique but a fusion of two grade techniques that I developed myself. I got the idea to employ them together synergistically against my opponent in an attempt to adaptively evolve to her powerful and tricky defense. That is why the heat domain was initially well within the eptable degrees but surged beyond even my control when the fusion of the two techniques proved to be far beyond even my greatest expectations and my ability to manage."


    Her piercing gaze was deeply unnerving as it continued to bore into him without her so much as blinking.


    "¡­You mean to say that it truly was all just an ident?" Her eyes remained fixed on him. "That you only meant to activate a powerful fusion of techniques?"


    "Yes, Your Sagehood."


    "Hm." She stirred. "That is consistent with the testimony that Sage Larra gave. One that I cannot reveal because it contains knowledge pertaining to the Sage Realm that Masters are not authorized to know. Although¡­"


    She shed him a nce of curiosity and intrigue. "Considering some of her testimony, I cannot help but conclude that you are qualified to know. Unfortunately, I am not able to share it at my own discretion."


    Rui wasn''t sure what to make of it.


    "I shall formte my judgment after I hear about this alleged fusion of techniques," Sage Kole dered. "Do not lie to me. You may have a niche and potent Art and Path riddled with high principles, but I''m a Martial Sage. Remember that I have reached the second-highest echelon of Martial Arts."


    Rui knew that he most likely couldn''t get away with fooling her. Considering that he couldn''t detect her mind like with other Martial Sages, it probably meant that she could detect his with her Sage-level senses.


    "One technique is known as the Muspelheim domain, a domain that generates heat bypression of air within my body and within the domain as well as through friction and vibrations, while the other¡­" Rui continued, bracing himself. "The other is the Yin-Yang Spear technique¡­"


    He continued exining the technique even as the name alone sent visible shocks amongst the Martial Master guardians, although they couldn''t show it on their faces. He could detect the shock in their minds through his mind sense.


    Yet, Sage Kole maintained herposure the entire time, not so much as changing a shade.


    "¡­And so thebination of the two techniques would result in an extraordinarily powerful oue," Rui concluded. It was painful to reveal that he had managed to crack the Yin-Yang Shield technique. However, preventing her from catching him lying made his openness worth it. In addition, he could establish that he was operating in good faith, which would set the stage for his offer to her.


    It was painful to reveal that he had managed to crack the Yin-Yang Shield technique. However, preventing her from catching him lying made his openness worth it. In addition, he could establish that he was operating in good faith, which would set the stage for his offer to her.


    "Your exnations make sense," she remarked after giving it some thought. "Furthermore, my senses tell me that you aren''t lying. Rest assured that the sensitive information that you have revealed here will remain hidden. This is part of the Martial Information Protection Act that the Panamic Martial Federation ratified in order to ensure that defendants and witnesses can offer testimonies without needing to fear the widespread leaks of sensitive information about their Martial Art."


    Rui was aware of that. However, he had no faith that it wouldn''t eventually get leaked. In fact, he was certain that it would eventually get leaked. Material ? of N?velDrama.Org.


    This was another reason to grow stronger by the time it happened so that he could handle the consequences of pissing off the Gen Temple in the future.


    "Based on all avable evidence, including your own testimony, on the charge of unauthorized use of a forbidden technique, I hereby judge you guilty of reckless endangerment," she concluded with a tone of finality. "Even if you were truly unaware of the oues of fusing two techniques, you still ultimately did it without any certainty of the oue. Furthermore, considering that you were engaging in an evaluation sparring battle, there was simply no justifiable cause for your reckless endangerment in these benign circumstances."


    Her gaze didn''t sway away from Rui for a second.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2187 True Purpose

    Chapter 2187 True Purpose


    This content ? N?v/elDr(a)m/a.Org.


    Rui had already expected this. After all, there was no way he was going to get away with the unauthorized use of a forbidden technique. However, he was d that she believed his testimony. That established the premise of trust that Rui could exploit at the right time.


    That time was yet toe, however.


    Sage Kole moved on to the other charges immediately after.


    "Now that I have established that you are criminally liable for the unauthorized use of a forbidden technique, judging you on the basis of other crimes bes a lot simpler," she continued. "The second charge is that of destruction of property."


    She paused for a moment, ncing back at Rui. "I don''t think a deliberation is even required. The fact of the matter is that your dangerous fusion of two techniques was the cause of the destruction of the sparring battlefield that you were assigned to. The evidence is, of course, overwhelming. Do you deny this?"


    "No, Your Sagehood," Rui promptly replied.


    There was no point in offering even the slightest bit of resistance on this particr matter.


    "Then, I judge you guilty of the crime of destruction of property," she remarked with a mild hint of appreciation. "Onto the next charge¡ªthe deaths of several human employees of the Panamic Martial Federation. Do you deny that you are responsible for that?"


    "No, Your Sagehood." Rui shook his head. "However, it certainly was not my intention as I have already established. Had I known that such an unfathomable oue would unfold from my fusion of techniques, I would not have done it."


    "Indeed, in that case, you are devoid of malice for these particr charges," she stated with aposed tone. "However, can the same be said for yourst charge?"


    Rui narrowed his eyes. "ording to the testimony of the five Martial Masters overseeing the evaluation, there is no doubt that you exhibited hostility, bloodlust, and aggression in your battle against Master Uma." Sage Kole Kellin peered right into Rui''s eyes. "In other words, you are being charged with the murder of Master Uma. Your most serious charge of the five. So tell me, Master Rui, did you intentionally kill Master Uma?"


    Rui closed his eyes.


    "Yes."


    Sage Kole stared at him for a moment. "That is rather honest of you. But why? Why did you seek to kill a randombat evaluator assigned to you in a sparring match? Do you have contempt for the Panamic Martial Federation? Was this an act of defiance?"


    "No, Your Sagehood." Rui heaved a sigh, shaking his head. "It was not an act of defiance or contempt towards the Panamic Martial Federation."


    "Then, did you truly grow furious at your inability to ovee her due to your ego, as is spected by our investigation department?" Sage Kole continued probing him for the truth. "You don''t strike me as a man with arge ego, Master Rui. So tell me, what is the truth? Why did you intentionally kill Master Uma?"


    Rui winced, eventually relenting before narrating the truth.


    "I knew her¡­"


    Sage Kole simply stared at him.


    "¡­from eighteen years ago," Rui continued. "I killed her out of a grudge and for revenge."


    He narrated the story from beginning to end as Sage Kole patiently listened to his testimony.


    It was a deeply unpleasant memory.


    Not because the actual damage she had inflicted on him was high.


    No.


    But because she had been the straw on the camel''s back.


    The period of his life where he had escaped from her while returning to the Floating Ajanta Ind was perhaps the worst period of his life. She had made him feel weak. Living in fear of the possibility of her finding him.


    Things had taken a turn for the better only after he had broken through to the Senior Realm shortly after his battle with Ieyasu.


    "¡­And then I made the decision to kill her on the spot then and there," Rui concluded.


    Sage Kole stared at him for several moments, trying to evaluate how sincere he was about the story that he had just narrated.


    It was not easy to believe.


    However, considering that she did not dismiss him as a liar meant that she detected that he was telling the truth.


    "So you insist that you killed her because of a grudge, revenge, and because she was a threat to you due to alleged religious fanaticism?" Sage Kole considered his words. "Unfortunately, even if all of this was granted to be true, it still does not change the gravity of your crime in the eyes of thew of the Panamic Martial Federation."


    "I am aware, Your Sagehood."


    Her gaze returned to Rui."¡­and yet you still killed her despite knowing of the consequences of doing so?"


    "Yes, Your Sagehood." Rui smiled bitterly. "I learned more about myself in that endeavor."


    Sage Kole understood what he meant.


    Yet, she shook her head. "I''m afraid that is not an excuse. Tell me, was the whole purpose of your visit to the Panamic Martial Federation because of your alleged grudge against Master Uma?"


    "No, Your Sagehood," Rui replied with greater certainty. That was not the true purpose of my visit to the Panamic Martial Federation. Neither were the Panamic Martial Federation''s resources nor its connections across the entirety of the Panama Continent. None of them were the true reason for my visit that led to all of this happening."


    "¡­And what was the true purpose of your visit, then?" she asked, gazing at him with eyes of intrigue. "Surely it has something to do with the case. Otherwise, you wouldn''t have brought it up."


    He had been waiting for this moment, carefully manipting her and the conversation until this point so that she would find herself asking him exactly what he wanted her to.


    It needed toe from her.


    If he had told her the reason for the visit without her prompt, she would have been less inclined to ept it.


    Rui smiled. "The true purpose of my visit is you, Sage Kole."


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2188 Planned Offer

    Chapter 2188 nned Offer


    It was quite a romantic statement without context.


    Of course, he didn''t say it aloud.


    That would be foolish.


    Why would he announce his intentions to bribe the judge and poach her from the Panamic Martial Federation?


    Instead, he used non-verbalmunication. Normally, this was also susceptible to beingintercepted by the various Martial Masters in the room positioned around himself and Sage Kole for her own safety since she was unable to use her power.


    It didn''t matter even if these Masters hadn''t mastered the Fauna Flow technique. The Master Realm granted all of them deep enough insight to be able to recognize and understand subconscious non-verbalnguage when they saw it.


    In other words, not even non-verbalmunication could allow him tomunicate with her without anybody noticing. Thus, he had known he would need another solution to speak with her privately. He probably could not ask to speak with her privately, and she didn''t appear to be the type to grant him a private audience. After all, if she did that with all the Martial Masters she judged, they would undoubtedly try every measure in the book to get her to abstain from inflicting a harsh sentence on them.


    Just the fact that someone would want to speak with her privately instead of openly was evidence that they were probably up to no good.


    Thus, he had always known that he couldn''t rely on the faint hope that she would give him a private meeting.


    Which meant he needed to find a way tomunicate with her without anybody else noticing. That was why he had spontaneously created a technique before the meeting could begin. One designed to solve just the very problem he knew he would encounter when trying tomunicate with the Sage non-verbally in the presence of Martial Masters.


    Silent Speech was what he named it.


    The way that it functioned was rather simple, and it made use of the existing skills that he had mastered. He would create predictive and SOUL models on all of the Martial Master guards from the moment he met them and then use that to help with misdirecting their attention away from him.


    This way, he couldmunicate non-verbally with Sage Kole without them noticing. It also meant that he was on the clock.


    The guards surrounding him were not a problem. He had met them yesterday and had been escorted by them to and from his housing quarters. Belonging ? N?velDram/a.Org.


    However, the Master guards standing behind her were different; he began creating predictive and SOUL models on them the moment heid eyes on them. He needed to bnce the time he needed to create SOUL models on them while also ensuring that he didn''t manipte her into asking the question he required too early. This was the extent of Rui''s nning and scheming.


    All for the sake of this moment.


    "The true purpose of my visit is you, Your Sagehood," he told her nonverbally. Her eyes widened, demonstrating emotion for the first time since he was with her, as she became cognizant of not just his self-professed purpose of speaking to her but also the misdirection that affected all of the Martial Masters in the room.


    It was an extraordinary feat to be able to misdirect so many Martial Masters all at once without so much as an ounce of strain. She very quickly realized that the brimming mind her senses were able to detect within him preceded its reputation.


    Rui grinned at the sess of his n ofmunicating with privacy. It was a good thing that he could finally speak to her one on one, without any problems.


    Or so he thought.


    RUMBLE¡­


    Rui froze as a horrifying wave of power washed over him.


    She red at him as her eyes narrowed into slits.


    "Did you think that you could get away with this little stunt, young man?" Her voice was reduced to a whisper.


    He yearned to speak, yet the sheer amount of pressure she exerted on him pinned him where he stood, choking him. Rui had forgotten the simple fact that a crippled Martial Sage was still a Martial Sage.


    As a lifeform, she existed in a Realm of power that existed far beyond him.


    If not for the fact that she could not use her power with control, she would have long shattered the little misdirection that he struggled to maintain due to the sheer amount of pressure she aggressively exerted on his mind.


    BADUMP!


    He activated his Martial Heart and Mind, gaining just a moment of reprieve.


    A single opportunity.


    "I can heal you¡­!" He gasped.


    Suddenly, the flood of pressure choking him disappeared.


    His words shook her to her core.


    She stared at him with a shaken expression.


    A single whisper escaped her.


    "What¡­ what did you say¡­?"


    Rui caught his breath as he heaved a sigh of relief.


    Any longer, and he would not have been able to maintain his misdirection for any longer.


    "I came here to tell you that I can heal you," Rui exined patiently through non-verbalmunication as he strengthened his misdirection with his Martial Mind. "Or, to be more precise, the Divine Doctor in my position can."


    Her eyes widened with shock.


    She knew that name, of course.


    She had tried searching for him herself when she had been afflicted with her illness many years ago.


    And had failed, of course. The Divine Doctor was notoriously hard to find. It had taken even Rui, of all people, several years to find him in the Beast Domain.


    "¡­Are you truly in possession of the Divine Doctor?" She schooled her expression with skepticism.


    Yet, she couldn''t hide the faint glimmer of hope that began flickering deep within the depths of her otherwise unfathomable eyes.


    She might as well have been transparent to Rui.


    "How do you think the Emperor of Harmony recovered from the Eternal Dream Disease?" Rui nonchntly asked, revealing a crucial state secret of the Kandrian Empire. "Inparison to that abominable curse of a disease, your condition is nothing to the Divine Doctor. He healed my father in literally half a day. I wonder how quickly he could heal you."


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2189 Unyielding Caveat\

    Chapter 2189 Unyielding Caveat


    His words were painful to her.


    Painfully tempting.


    She almost wanted to abandon her dignity as a Martial Sage and beg him to heal her. Yet, her discipline as a military woman held strong as she closed her eyes, regaining herposure.


    "What do you want?" she asked.


    She was not naive.


    She understood how the world worked.


    There was no such thing as a free lunch.


    Rui smiled.


    She had already taken his words to be the truth.


    It was within his predictions.


    Ordinarily, a more prudent person would have demanded proof for his ims. He had even secured some proof on his person if it came to that.


    However, he had known that he probably didn''t need it because of a simple fact.


    She was desperate.


    Desperate people could convince themselves of just about anything if their desperation was strong enough. It was fortunate for her that he was indeed being sincere, which she could sense.


    "I want your loyalty," Rui remarked with an unyielding tone. "Or rather, the Emperor of Harmony wants your loyalty. Leave the Panamic Martial Federation, join the Kandrian Empire and the Kandrian Royal Army, and swear loyalty to the Kandrian throne. Do that, and you shall regain control over the massive power that lies sealed within the depths of your being."


    She didn''t look too surprised.


    Considering the sheer magnitude of the boon that Rui came all the way here to offer her, there was nothing else that he would possibly demand of her.


    Yet, strangely enough, she did not find the proposition unappealing.


    As a Martial Sage, she was ustomed to serving those whom she swore loyalty to. She had done so for her native home her entire life until she was afflicted with a horrific disease that effectively rendered her a civilian.


    Inparison to the miserable state she was in, serving the Kandrian Empire and the Emperor of Harmony was hardly a bad proposition. Ideally, she would have gotten to choose whom she swore her loyalty to. Someone that she deemed to be truly worthy of her undying loyalty.


    Inparison to the miserable state she was in, serving the Kandrian Empire and the Emperor of Harmony was hardly a bad proposition. Ideally, she would have gotten to choose whom she swore her loyalty to. Someone that she deemed to be truly worthy of her undying loyalty.


    But s, beggars couldn''t be choosers.


    However, even considering that, she probably couldn''t have been confronted with a better option.


    If there was any ruler that was worthy of anybody''s loyalty, it would be the Emperor of Harmony. He was widely regarded as the greatest ruler in modern history in the Age of Martial Art, raising a Sage-level powerhouse with the sheer caliber of his rule.


    Even if he wasn''t, the fact that she was able to regain her power was in and of itself far too juicy an offering to refuse.


    "I ept your offer, Master Rui," she replied with a tone of finality.


    Rui heaved a sigh of relief. "Good to hea¡ª"


    "But," she cut him off, "I cannot break my oath as the High Judge of the eastern headquarters of the Panamic Martial Federation."


    Rui''s eyes widened as he understood what she meant.


    "You will face the full weight of the consequences of your actions," she told him with hard conviction. "If that is something that you are unable to ept, then I''m afraid we do not have an agreement. However, you will face the penalty that you deserve for your egregious vitions of thew of the Panamic Martial Federation."


    His eyes narrowed with severity.


    He did not expect her to be so staunchly principled, to the point of potentially throwing away a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. However, he could see from the pain in her voice that she truly would be hurt if she was unable to gain her heart''s desire.


    He didn''t even bother trying to convince her. He could see that she was unwilling to budge.


    Perhaps this was why his father sought her loyalty. Once he obtained it, he was extremely certain that he would never lose it.


    "Your staunch principles have exceeded my expectations, Your Sagehood." Rui heaved a sigh. "Oh well, I ept that caveat. I will take what is toe."


    He didn''t want to bother fretting about something that he couldn''t control. However, he was deeply displeased by this turn of events.


    He was sure that whatever sentence he would be given would be brutal and would be used as ckmail to extract the solution for mass Martial Apprentice breakthroughs from him as a result. Of course, he had no intention of giving in. Which meant that there was no way that he could do anything about the sentence.


    Regardless, he saved these matters for after he got the sentence. He just hoped he got sentenced to something like Martialbor rather than just imprisonment.


    He would definitely break out of prison and be a rogue if he got imprisoned instead of letting his potential rot.


    "¡­You have my gratitude." She smiled for the first time since he met her. "Do we have an agreement?"


    "Yes, we do," Rui replied with a glum expression.


    "Very well then." She tried to hide the flood of joy that filled her numb and cold heart. "Undo the misdirection and cease this non-verbalmunication." This content ? N?v/elDr(a)m/a.Org.


    Rui deactivated his Realms of power before undoing the misdirection he had put on the other Martial Masters.


    Soon enough of everything returned to normal.


    "Master Rui Quarrier Ss Kandria," she began, "I have gone through all the indictments filed by thew enforcement department, as well as the evidence submitted by the investigative department, and, of course, your testimony. You have pleaded guilty to all four indictments, and, thus, I judge you guilty of first-degree murder, mass manughter, destruction of property, and unauthorized use of a forbidden technique. I havee to a decision in regard to your sentence."


    She paused for a moment, inhaling deeply.


    The air boiled tumultuously.


    Rui held his breath as he waited for her decision.


    "Master Rui Quarrier Ss Kandria, I hereby sentence you to exile from the Panamic Martial Federation," she dered. "From this day forth, you are banished from the Panamic Martial Federation. You may never set foot on territory owned by the Federation or make use of its resources. You may not engage in Martial trade with our constituents of which you aren''t already a part of. You will be liable for vition ofws but will not be protected from them and will no longer be able to impact them while required to adhere to them." -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2190 Leaving Considerations

    Chapter 2190 Leaving Considerations


    Rui''s eyes widened as she pronounced her judgment and sentence on him.


    He did not expect her to sentence him to exile and banishment. From this day forth, he would not be able to return to the Panamic Martial Federation ever again. In addition, he would never be able to ess any of their resources or capital, not to mention join any of their constituents.


    If not for the fact that he was already a part of the Martial Union, he would not have been able to remain in it either. In other words, he was cut off from many of the most powerful Martial organizations, resources, andworks. Not to mention that he had no ability to influencews that he would be subject to without any protection from its provisions.


    He heaved a soft sigh, shaking his head. It was hardly pleasant; however, there was nothing that he could do about it.


    In his case, he thankfully was someone who trained and grew stronger in a way that wasn''t too affected by this oue. However, being denied ess to the incredible training resources was something that definitely hurt.


    Under normal circumstances, he would be much more troubled by the loss of ess to all these resources. But strangely enough, he wasn''t too moved by it. After all¡­


    ''I have the Kandrian Empire.''


    It was as simple as that.


    With its current trajectory, it was possible that the Kandrian Empire would one day be able to give him everything that the Panamic Martial Federation could. As long as they won the war and were able to consolidate their gains, the things he lost by indulging his grudge in the Federation would be reattained within the Kandrian Empire.


    However, not everybody took his sentencing as well as he did, ironically enough.


    "Your Sagehood¡­!" The Master tasked with watching over him grew stunned at her choice.


    However, Sage Kole looked unapologetic. "And with that, this case is concluded. Escort Master Rui out of here and out of the Panamic Martial Federation."


    "Your Sagehood!" The Master refused to relent. "This sentence is¡ª!"


    He froze as a tsunami of perilous power crashed on him, leaving him entirely paralyzed.


    "You are merely a guard in this hall." Her soft yet sharp voice grew. "Know your ce."


    The man gritted his teeth as he bowed his head softly before turning to re at Rui as he escorted him away as he was told.


    Sage Kole rolled away in her wheelchair nonchntly.


    "Er, Your Sagehood, there are more cases awaiting your judgment." One Master frowned. "¡­They are no longer of my concern," she remarked as she slowly left the judging hall.


    She had several urgent matters to get to as soon as possible.


    Rui, on the other hand, immediately began descending after collecting his belongings. His exile was immediately in effect; thus, he was to leave at once. Yet, it wasn''t even so bad when he knew that the Panamic Martial Federation would be more pissed off than he was.


    He couldn''t even imagine how many people would be deeply displeased by Sage Kole''s decision. Many of them were hoping to use this as an opportunity to squeeze all the juicy secrets of the Kandrian Empire out of him.


    "What a wonderful day it is¡­" hemented with a smile as he descended from atop the massive tectonic te that cradled the eastern headquarters of the Panamic Martial Federation, admiring the vast expanses ofnd and water that stretched out far in the distance.


    He had overstayed his visit to the Panamic Martial Federation more than expected. Thus, he knew that his transport was already gone.


    "Oh well, time to go by foot."


    He surged off into the distance as he thought of Sage Kole.


    "I wonder how long it will take for her toe," he remarked to himself.


    He knew that resigning from being a judge and leaving the Panamic Martial Federation was something that could not be done within a day. However, as a Martial Sage, there was probably little that stood in her way of quitting. Belonging ? N?velDram/a.Org.


    Even if she was crippled, the Panamic Martial Federation was fundamentally structured with Martial Artists in mind. Thus, there was no one that had authority over her as a Martial Sage. As such, she would undoubtedly make her way to the Kandrian Empire very shortly. In that case, he ought to go on ahead without needing to wait for too long.


    He immediately set off back home towards the Kandrian Empire without much concern. All in all, things didn''t get as bad as they could have, and that alone was worth celebrating. On top of that, he finally managed to get revenge and kill Uma and took a step toward the Sage Realm.


    Furthermore, he had seeded in the mission that his father had given him.


    With this, the Kandrian Empire would have procured a part of the power that it needed. Assuming that the other Martial Sages had also seeded, this ensured that the Sage-level power of the Empire would rise to much greater levels.


    Considering that Martial Sages were the most important part of any war between Sage-level nations, it was no wonder that his father was so determined to get as many Martial Sages to join Kandria and swear loyalty to the throne or the Martial Union.


    All in all, things were most likely on track.


    Which meant that war was most likely not too far from breaking out.


    After all, it had been a month since he had started breaking Apprentices through. Since then, he had no doubt that the other three Sage-level powerhouses had been breaking their backs trying to learn of the secret. Eventually, they would decide that enough was enough and simply attack the Kandrian Empire.


    Furthermore, they hadn''t even run into the other treasures of the Kandrian Empire yet. The moment they did, they would very soon realize that they should have waged war from the very start. When considering all these variables, there were hard limits on how much more time war could be dyed.


    "A few months, no more." Rui''s eyes narrowed.


    He couldn''t wait.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2191 No Choice

    Chapter 2191 No Choice


    The Martial World and the political sphere had been looking forward to Rui''s trial. After all, it would undoubtedly serve as an opportunity to legally obtain the method of the Kandrian Empire''s mass Apprentice breakthroughs.


    It didn''t matter if the Panamic Martial Federation was staunchly against forcing Martial Artists to divulge their secrets. The same powers that had yed a role in instating these principles looked forward to them being broken.


    That was how precious being able to manufacture Martial Artists was.


    Principles would not be able to protect them from the Kandrian Empire if it fully exploited the potential of this miraculous power.


    There was no such thing as unconditional principles in the world of Martial Art. Everything had a limit.


    That was why not a single one of them was able to maintain theirposure when they heard of the oue of what was supposed to be a m dunk case.


    "Exile¡­?"


    In the presidential headquarters of the Republic of Gorteau, President Raymond gritted his teeth as he read through a copy of the case files of Rui''s criminalwsuit.


    "EXILE?!" he bellowed with rage. "ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?!"


    BANG


    He mmed his fist down on the wooden table before him as his eyes swept across his presidential administration.


    "How did this happen?" He snarled. "I thought I told you to tip the attending Sage Kole generously. I don''t care if we spend a hundred billion. I need that mass breakthrough method!"


    His chief of staff grew more grave at his rage. "We did, Mr. President. We transferred the amount to Sage Kole''s ount the day we learned that she had been chosen to judge the Dawnbringer. However, it appears that she does not care."


    "Did you make sure you used the institutions of the Panamic Martial Federation to pressure her?" President Raymond narrowed his eyes.


    "The judiciary is not beholden to the legitive and the executive branches of the Panamic Martial Federation, Mr. President." She shook her head. "These were the arrangements that were put in ce to ensure that the judiciary would be able to perform its role without political impediment. On top of that, Sage Kole is notorious for being highly reclusive. When not performing her duties as a judge, she leads an isted lifestyle. There is simply nothing that we could do to influence her."


    "That traitorous cripple of a Sage!" He snarled. "How dare she betray the Panamic Martial Federation? File a im of treachery against her!"


    "I''m afraid that''ll aplish nothing, Mr. President." His advisor shook his head. "High Judges are not obligated to act in the interests of the Panamic Martial Federation. They only have one duty and one oath: to pass judgment and sentences in adherence to the Federation bws. Even if ites at the cost of the interests of the Panamic Martial Federation." Belonging ? N?velDram/a.Org.


    The Panamic Martial Federation was a deeply decentralized organization for the sake of ensuring that its institutions were never captured in the power ys of human civilization. Even if every Martial power desired for Rui to be subjected to the harshest of penalties, such as lifelong Martial bondage, it was a judge''s duty to pass a sentence that was proportional to the crimes of the defendant and nothing else.


    "Even still, exile?!" President Raymond gritted his teeth in frustration. "Couldn''t she have given him anything that could be used as leverage to extract his secrets?"


    "Unfortunately, she has adhered to the protocols of the penal code to the T. We do not have anything against her."


    Martialw worked differently from that of humanw.


    Martial Artists were too precious to be locked up and have their potential sabotaged. It was harmful to Martial Art as a whole, as the very nature of Martial Art was the art of violence, which was inherently illegal in most jurisdictions. Therefore, variables such as the probability of re-offending, awareness, and intent yed a greater role in reducing criminal liability.


    In that regard, her judgment and sentencing were spotless and could not be used as grounds to challenge herpetence as a judge and have the ruling thrown out. "Damn it all¡­!" President Raymond grew more frustrated at his inability to get his hands on the secret of the mass Apprentice breakthroughs. "Forget it. How are the investigations into the breakthroughs going?"


    "¡­Not well, Mr. President." The director of the Federal Bureau of Intelligence grew grim. "I have deployed our greatest resources. We have yet to find what we are seeking. However, our verytest reports show that we have thirteen promising leads."


    President Raymond grew surprised at that revtion. "Thirteen? Isn''t that too much?"


    "It is unusual," the director admitted. "However, we have no choice but to pursue all of them to the very end."


    "How long will that take?" President Raymond narrowed his eyes.


    "No more than three months, at the very maximum," the director reassured him. "Three months it is then." President Raymond''s gaze shifted to a missive beside him. "Any longer and I will have no choice but to wage war."


    The missive bore the crest of the Britannian Empire.


    Within it was a letter stamped with the imperial seal of the Prime Minister.


    In the past month or so, Prime Minister Edward Gel Dermont had written to him many times, pointing out that war was the only oue¡ªthe secret of the mass Apprentice breakthroughs would not be discoverable without invading Kandria, and that all their efforts were useless.


    President Raymond had scoffed at him in the beginning, but he could not help but slowlye to the realization that the man''s words were increasingly proven to be true.


    He came to the realization that perhaps war truly was inevitable.


    If that was the case, they would only be harming themselves with each day they dyed it, giving the Emperor of Harmony more time to prepare.


    President Raymond had half a mind to do away with this investigative effort. However, he needed to see it to the end, considering how much had been invested in it.


    "You better bring me results soon."


    "Yes, Mr. President."


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2192 Life-Changing Decisions

    Chapter 2192 Life-Changing Decisions


    While the world abused Sage Kole for wasting a golden opportunity, she found herself being entirely unperturbed.


    One of the reasons that she isted herself in reclusive solitude bar her servants was precisely because she detested the tendency of the world to pressure her away from discharging her duties.


    As a high Martial Judge, she was ustomed to dealing with particrly powerful Master criminals. Such powerful Martial Artists always had powerful parties invested in the oues of the trials.


    She would always find her bnce stuffed with credited transfers from multiple parties before each trial.


    They were nothing more than tant bribes.


    However in the case of Rui, even she had been surprised when she had received hundreds of billions of gold coins in total from countless parties across the entirety of the Panama Continent.


    Even if he was the youngest and most prodigious Master in history, she did not understand the fuss behind such powerful bribes to get him sentenced to the harshest sentences there were.


    Unfortunately for them, she did not intend to operate any differently than she normally did. Ack of any history of criminality and a clean history of cooperationbined with the context of his actions led her to believe that he was not a threat to Martial Art. Thus, exile was hardly unfit, especially when the philosophy behind the protocols of the penal code of the Panamic Martial Federation was to preserve potential unless doing so came at the cost of Martial Art.


    In truth, she had been blessed.


    If Rui had had a history of criminality, then she would have no choice but to subject him to lifelong bondage or imprisonment. This would have made it much more difficult for her to head to the Kandrian Empire and swear loyalty. She could only hope that his offer still remained despite the exile judgment.


    She should have been praised for her ability to withstand such external pressure. Yet, she was only chastised for her choices. Material ? of N?velDrama.Org.


    "What were you thinking?" Sage Larra confronted her friend with sharp eyes.


    Sage Kole simply paused her automated wheelchair as she met eyes with the woman standing before her with a stern expression.


    "About whether I should hand in my resignation now orter," she replied with a stoic tone.


    "What?!" Sage Larra widened her eyes with shock. "Why?!"


    Sage Kole nced at her shivering hands. No matter how much she tried, she was unable to control them. It brought her more despair and frustration than words could begin to describe.


    "¡­To pursue a new future," she answered as she spurred forward past her friend. "One that I have only experienced in dreams."


    Sage Larra frowned as she turned around to the leaving figure of her friend. "Where are you going?"


    Sage Kole narrowed her eyes. "The Kandrian Empire."


    Sage Larra''s eyes remained wide with shock as she witnessed her friend leave silently.


    It wasn''t long before news of the resignation of the High Judge Sage Kole spread throughout the Panamic Martial Federation.


    However, she had already descended from the lofty headquarters of the Panamic Martial Federation in a special carriage. One that headed straight to a single destination.


    The Kandrian Empire.


    Mixed emotions appeared on her face.


    Hope and fear.


    The most logical course of action in her position, with benefits in mind, was to acquit Rui. This way, when she went to the Emperor of Harmony, she would be certain that she would be healed.


    Yet, she chose not to go that route.


    "It is not who I am." Her eyes shed with rity and certainty.


    She could only hope that the Emperor of Harmony was still willing to continue with the agreement that she had made with his son. Even though Rui had signed off on it, it was clear that it was his father who had initiated this offer.


    By the time she reached the Kandrian Empire, she felt nervous for the first time in centuries. It couldn''t be helped.


    There was too much at stake.


    Yet, before her carriage coulde anywhere near the Kandrian Empire fortress wall, she was stopped.


    RUMBLE


    Sage Kole narrowed her eyes as an immense aura of power washed over the carriage, paralyzing the driver. A Martial Sage.


    "Exit the vehicle," Sage Farana ordered with an unyielding tone.


    In her current state, Sage Kole was in no position to defy one of her peers. On top of that, she did not want to increase the likelihood of being remembered as a pain in the past to deal with.


    CLACK


    She adhered calmly, showing herself before the Martial Sage of the Kandrian Border Patrol Force. The woman who stood before was garbed in ostentatious Martial attire adorned with a beautiful crest that was the coat of arms of the Kandrian Empire. She approached Sage Kole with a rigid and disciplined gait, sizing her up with a stern expression.


    "Sage Kole," she remarked with aposed tone, "His Majesty has informed us about your arrival and is likewise aware of your arrival."


    "Then¡­"


    "His Majesty has summoned you," Sage Farana calmly informed her. "He wishes to speak to you right away."


    Sage Kole understood that the domineering edge in her words did not belong to her.


    No.


    It belonged to the Emperor of Harmony.


    Yet, that only made her hopeful.


    The fact that he was summoning her despite knowing what she had done to his son was a good sign.


    "Coincidentally, I''m informed that the Void Prince is there too and has also sought your presence," Sage Farana continued. "I am ready," Sage Kole dered without hesitation. "Take me to His Majesty."


    SNAP


    Sage Farana bent heaven and earth as she shifted Sage Kole at incredible speeds, sending her coursing through the air like a sh of light.


    One second, she was outside the Kandrian Empire.


    The very next, however, she found herself in the Kandrian Throne Hall as she beheld the Emperor of Harmony gazing at her from atop the Royal Throne.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2193 Did You Know?

    Chapter 2193 Did You Know?


    Rui''s journey took longer than he had expected, but he didn''t mind it. He realized that it was the first time he had traveled outside the Kandrian Empire on foot in a while. Thest time he had done that was when he returned from the Beast Domain.


    It was a good change of pace. It also gave him time to think about his visit to the Panamic Martial Federation and the fact that he was exiled from it. The most regrettable part of that was undoubtedly the fact that he would never be able to make use of the Federation''s powerful training resources.


    That was not something that he could pretend wasn''t a big deal.


    He suspected that there mighte a day when he woulde to regret the loss of his ess to these resources.


    "I better ensure that Father and the Martial Union develop all the training and growth resources that I''m missing out on with the flush of resources we will get when we win the war," Rui grumbled. Asking them to recreate all the Martial resources that he saw atop the headquarters of the Panamic Martial Federation was a pretty self-centered request, considering how incredibly taxing such an endeavor would be.


    However, given everything he had already done for the Kandrian Empire, it was hardly unfair. It was only right that he bepensated for all the treasures he had brought back home.


    Not to mention, this venture would benefit all Martial Artists in the Kandrian Empire.


    Of course, there were redundancies. The value proposition of such a venture was questionable at best, considering that other Martial Artists could ess the Panamic Martial Federation.


    Furthermore, although his father did not say it aloud, he knew that his father intended to redirect most material resources into esoteric weapons technology. It was an elementary inference considering that half of the strength of the Royal Army was in its esoteric weapons technology.


    Diverting all those funds to the development of Martial resources woulde at the cost of the development of military esoteric technology and to the benefit of Martial Art.


    In other words, Emperor Rael would be disrupting the bnce of power within the Kandrian Empire if he actually agreed to such an arrangement.


    "Tsk, affected by politics even when I leave it." Material ? of N?velDrama.Org.


    In addition, he couldn''t help but think back to the insights that he had gotten from his conversation with Master Gern.


    The existence of a powerhouse nationprised entirely of esoteric military power was a very troubling omen for Martial Artists. The fact that esoteric military technology received a greater influx of capital and resources was also worrying. Rui had no doubt that his father had had a simr mindset until he learned of Rui''s ability to mass-produce Martial Apprentices.


    "Speaking of my conversation with Master Gern¡­" Rui''s eyes narrowed. He hadn''t forgotten one of the revtions that he had received from the man. Although its significance and shock factor were hardly important before, even more shocking things had urred since then. He had not forgotten what Master Gern had told him about his father.


    He intended to ask his father about this matter when he got home.


    STEP


    "Ahhh¡­" Rui smiled as he arrived at the fort walls that ran along the border of the Kandrian Empire. A Martial Master donning the uniform of the Kandrian Border Patrol Force appeared before him, bowing lightly.


    "Wee back to the Kandrian Empire, Your Highness."


    "It''s good to be home, considering everything that has happened." Rui nodded. "Has Sage Kole Kellin arrived at the Kandrian Empire yet?"


    "No, Your Highness, but we''ve gotten word that she will be arriving soon enough."


    "Hmm¡­" Rui considered that, turning back to the Kandrian Empire. "In that case, perhaps I ought to speak to my father before she arrives."


    He immediately surged through the air, heading straight into the sky as he soared through the Empire and towards the Royal Throne Hall.


    CLACK


    The doors to the throne hall opened, giving Rui a full view of everything within its depths. Including his father perched atop the Royal Throne, wearing his Royal Crown with his Royal Sword by his side.


    It painted a powerful visage.


    "Must you posture so much when nobody else aside from Sage Sayfeel is in the throne hall, father?" Rui raised an eyebrow.


    "You''re here, are you not?" Emperor Rael replied as a wry smile cracked at the edge of his mouth. "Besides, considering that mytest recruit is going to being to the Kandrian Empire very soon, it is worth going all out. First impressions matter. Managing perception is an extremely important duty of any ruler. Particrly the ruler of the Kandrian Empire."


    "¡­" Rui stared at him with dubious eyes.


    "Wee back home, my son." Emperor Rael smiled. "You havepleted the mission I entrusted to you and, for that, I am grateful. Kandria will not forget your contributions to its future."


    Rui shrugged. "It actually wasn''t that hard. The hard part was¡­ other stuff."


    Emperor Rael stared at his son with eyes of scrutiny. He could detect subtle changes in his demeanor and bodynguage, ones that indicated a slight shift in mentality. There was no doubt in Emperor Rael''s mind that they were a result of the fiasco of an evaluation that cost Rui his connection to the Panamic Martial Federation. He was right in that the mission was not hard in and of itself.


    Emperor Rael had quickly figured out his clever n of breaking thew to get Sage Kole Kellin. It was a good n that guaranteed a hearing with her.


    However, there was no need to go as far as using a forbidden technique to kill the evaluator. At the time, he had been at aplete loss as to what his son was doing.


    It was deeply irrational.


    Clearly, Rui was aware of that.


    Or perhaps he had just been made aware of that.


    He appeared shaken by the revtion, growing more self-conscious as a result of the self-awareness.


    "How do you feel?" Emperor Rael asked quietly.


    Rui''s gaze shifted. "¡­Did you know? That this would happen?"


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2194 Confirming Truth

    Chapter 2194 Confirming Truth


    The question was abrupt. Material ? of N?velDrama.Org.


    "No." Emperor Rael sighed. "Your grandmother insisted it was for the better. Perhaps she was right. Perhaps not. Only time will tell."


    Rui stirred at those words.


    "So grandmother Nephi knew¡­" Rui muttered. "She knew that I would go berserk and get myself into a lot of trouble."


    He would need to speak to herter.


    "Yet, not even she knew why what happened, happened." Emperor Rael gazed at Rui with an intrigued look. "She just inferred that it was necessary to allow you to make your choices rather than get rid of the freedom to choose in fear of its consequences. Not even she knows what drove you to do what you did."


    "¡­I didn''t do much," Rui quietly replied. "Just put to bed some demons of the past, that''s all. In the process, I learned that I wasn''t as grounded in my rationality as I liked to believe."


    He nced at his hands. "It objectively was a blunder of a decision by all metrics of cost-benefit analyses. However, I did it nheless. I didn''t even hesitate."


    Rui heaved a sigh with a displeased expression.


    "People are irrational," Emperor Rael remarked. "You are no different. Neither am I or anybody else. Even your sister Rafia is no different, as much as she seems that way on the surface."


    Rui snorted at the recollection of the Corporate Princess that he had eliminated frompetition during the Kandrian Throne War. He had no idea what she or any of them had been up to since then, and he couldn''t be bothered.


    "It is good to know that you have been made aware of your capacity for irrationality," Emperor Rael cajoled him. "Only a fooles to believe in the strength of their rationality. Such people often suffer the most for underestimating their ability to defy rationality. The more you are aware of it, the more you can avoid falling prey to it. The more you can make use of it."


    Rui stirred. "Make use of it¡­? I don''t know about that. Rationality is pretty important to me."


    Rationality was simply a measure of how logical one''s thoughts and actions were. In other words, some measure of rationality was needed to be able to use systems of thought effectively. The more irrational one was, the lower one''s affinity for the Master Realm was.


    That was why this recent revtion had shaken Rui a bit.


    He hadn''t known that he was this capable of knowing an action was entirely illogical and doing it without any hesitation nheless. Although he had known that he was irrational in his pursuit of Project Water, he hadn''t been aware thatit extended to matters beyond that.


    He hadn''t known that he was this capable of knowing an action was entirely illogical and doing it without any hesitation nheless. Although he had known that he was irrational in his pursuit of Project Water, he hadn''t been aware thatit extended to matters beyond that.


    That was scary. He couldn''t trust himself as much as he used to.


    It also applied to his Martial Mind and systems of thought. If such a degree of irrationality appeared in battle when he was using his systems of thought, then it could impede their execution, making him weaker.


    Of course, he wasn''t unstable. He wouldn''t randomly grow irrational out of nowhere without any particr reason.


    "Irrationality is not a liability," the Emperor of Harmony exined calmly. "If anything, you''re already aware of yourck of prowess in that regard. After all, your instinct and awareness are atrophied inparison to your experience."


    Rui stirred at his father''s words. "I didn''t make that connection. Hmm¡­"


    "Most people depend on''vibes.'' They rely on their intuition and instinct," Emperor Rael continued. "They do not engage in chains of deductive and inductive logic to infer truth. For most people, the former is easier and something they grow increasingly well-ustomed to over time. But you¡­"


    Emperor Rael smiled. "Things are the exact opposite."


    "In other words, I have yet to make use of my irrationality." Rui raised an eyebrow with a dubious expression. "Outside of intuition and instinct, I find it hard to believe."


    "Now that''s irrational." Emperor Rael chuckled. "Tell me, why do you think we, as a species, are irrational? Why did wee to evolve to be this way? Why does any creaturee to be this particr way instead of another way?"


    "¡­Because it helps us survive and reproduce," Rui answered knowingly.


    "Does it not follow that irrationality helps us survive?" Emperor Rael smiled. "Survival is important to Martial Artists, if I''m not wrong. Thus, irrationality is an asset to Martial Artists, as long as you are able to harness it."


    Rui considered his logic as he fell into thought.


    It was sound.


    Different systemsprised what broadly was recognized as human irrationality. Emotions, in that regard, were incentive and disincentive systems that existed to discourage one from some actions while encouraging other actions. Pain and fear served as the stick while joy and pleasure served as the carrot.


    "I don''t see how most of this is going to help me in a battle, though. Or help me adaptively evolve," Rui muttered. "But I suppose the point of instinct and intuition stand. Although I literally have a technique called Primordial Instinct, it has failed more recently. Due to ack of experience, I''m told. But I have already taken steps to rectify that. I have fought most of the Martial Masters in the Kandrian Empire. What I need is a war so that I can fight other powerful Martial Masters."


    He directed a pointed look at his father.


    "I''ll see what I can do." Emperor Rael chuckled. "Now then¡ª"


    "Wait," Rui stopped him. "I have something important to talk about."


    His father simply waited for him to continue.


    "Tell me." Rui stared at him. "Did you once seek to genocide Martial Artists?"


    His father seemed remarkably unperturbed by that question.


    "Yes."


    Rui narrowed his eyes, staring at his father with a piercing gaze.


    He figured that the Panamic Martial Federation probably hadn''t been lying when they chose to reveal that to him. It would be so easy to verify such a shallow falsity that it wasn''t even worth engaging in such a crude measure of propaganda.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2195: Contextualized Past

    Chapter 2195: Contextualized Past


    ?


    The air grew frosty as Rui''s piercing gaze met Emperor Rael''s calm eyes.


    "Does the Martial Union know?"


    The question evokedughter from him. "Of course they do."


    Rui frowned. "So this isn''t really a big deal, huh?"


    "The context matters," Emperor Rael exined with aposed tone. "It would be a very big deal if I harbored such an ambition today. But not so much three centuries ago when I was merely a prince preparing for the Kandrian Throne War. It was simply a different era back then. My goals were hardly rare or umon. That was how much Martial Artists were hated at one point in time."


    Rui sharpened his gaze.


    "Did you hate Martial Artists?"


    "My desire to wipe out Martial Artists was a calcted decision rather than an emotional one," he calmly replied. "In hindsight, of course, it turned out to be the wrong decision. But that was due to luck, more than anything else. My rationale was firm."


    Rui frowned. "Exin. Why did you feel the need to genocide Martial Artists?"


    "...It''s a bit of a long story, but really, it boils down to the nightmare that was the Reign of the Master Realm," Emperor Rael exined. "You should be aware of it since the Panamic Martial Federation has undoubtedly informed you about it. But, I can assure you that it was much worse than their sanitized version of it. A vast proportion of Martial Masters were downright evil. Another proportion were degenerates at best. There was plenty of evidence that Martial Art was a liability to human civilization."


    "Martial Art as a whole?" Rui raised an eyebrow. "Not just Martial Masters?"


    "At the time, Martial Masters were the peak of Martial Art. The Sage Realm hadn''t been discovered yet. So yes, Martial Art as a whole was proving to be a liability and even an evil if Martial Masters became psychopaths due to the mental shift caused by being able to sense other people''s minds. They necessarily experienced a desensitization to human emotion and came to view human beings the way that humans viewed livestock."


    His gaze grew stronger. "In other words, Martial Art necessarily was evil due to the fact that most of its power, Martial Masters, was inevitably corrupted with evil. And so..."


    Rui stared at him with a disturbed expression.


    Emperor Rael shrugged. "...I saw fit to get rid of it. I began researching ways to kill Martial Artists outside ofbat, to protect humanity from their impending or existing evil."


    "...What changed?"


    "Nothing changed for a long time," Emperor Rael continued. "It was just impossible to genocide Martial Artists. Thus, out of pragmatism, I abandoned the project and focused on harmony instead. I approached the few dozen Martial Masters who were on the brink of waging a civil war against my power-hungry fool of a father and informed them of my intentions to assassinate him, massacre all my siblings to win the throne war, and create an empire where forces that once stood in opposition could exist in harmony."


    He paused for a moment, nostalgically recollecting the past. "And, well, the rest is history." His attention shifted back to his son. "We went on to be a powerhouse by avoiding the horrific ruination that struck the other powerhouses, allowing us to catch up with them. I helped the then Martial Masters to create the Martial Union, and everything worked out well for the next three centuries. They knew that I had once intended to massacre all of them all along."


    "...I''m surprised that you managed to befriend them." Rui shook his head.


    "Like I said, the context of the era matters. Back then, it was hardly unusual, so I was able to win over their cooperation with results and goodwill. Since then, three centuries have passed. It''s ancient history that doesn''t even matter anymore," Emperor Rael exined with a rxed tone. "Of course, that doesn''t stop the Panamic Martial Federation from using it as propaganda. Haha."


    "Do you regret wanting to genocide Martial Artists, then?" Rui raised an eyebrow.


    "Of course not." His father snorted. "Had I been able to do it, I would have done it without hesitation. We were extremely lucky that the first Martial Sage was a good-hearted and kind man. If not for that, the Reign of the Master Realm would have never ended and would have evolved into an even more horrible version in the Sage Realm. It would have been a living hell. He cleaned up the madmen Masters with his overwhelming power and, with the help of all those who aided him, created the Panamic Martial Federation that would regte Martial Artists to ensure that Martial Art never stooped to such lows ever again."


    Rui grew interested as he recalled this part from his conversations with Master Gern and his grandmother. "The family andmunity policy."


    "That''s correct." His father nodded. "Those are not absolutely perfect, but they stave off the worst. How can a Martial Artiste to regard humans as livestock when his or her family and, particrly, when his or her progeny are human? The bond between parent and child offsets the psychopathy wrought by the Martial Mind. It is why the Martial Community is so vibrant and extensive. I would urge you to start your own family if you didn''t have the Quarrier Orphanage."


    Rui stirred at those words as he fell into thought in regard to the tale behind his father''s far past. The truthpared to how Master Gern had framed him as a bad man hostile to Martial Art in an attempt to coax Rui to disclose the truth of the mass Apprentice breakthrough was so different that Rui wanted to go back to the Panamic Martial Federation and beat up the crafty old Master.


    But s, he was exiled.


    "I''ve just received word that Sage Kole Kellin has finally arrived at the border," his father interjected. "We will have to continue this conversation another time."


    "Oh, I wanted to speak to her too." Rui''s eyes lit up. "I didn''t get a chance to talk to her after the hearing ended."


    This chapter upload first at  Belongs to N?velDrama.Org - All rights reserved.

 Chapter 2196 Oath

    Chapter 2196 Oath


    Sage Kole Kellin found herself before the Emperor of Harmony. He gazed down at her from atop his throne with powerful eyes that judged her.


    His bodynguage had already changed.


    Gone was the friendly father humoring his son.


    In his ce was the domineering and heavy presence of the Emperor of Harmony.


    He didn''t address her upon her arrival.


    No.


    He simply waited.


    Sage Kole bowed her head lightly.


    "Sage Kole Kellin, once the Master of the Inferno Fist, offers her respect to the Emperor of Harmony."


    Emperor Rael regarded her with steely acknowledgment. "Wee to the Kandrian Empire, Sage Kole. My son tells me that you have epted my offer. Is that true?"


    She nodded. "I have epted your offer, Your Majesty. If you are able to heal my condition, then I will forever swear absolute loyalty to the Kandrian Throne. I swear to fight when and where you order me to. I swear to adhere to your will as Emperor of the Kandrian Empire. I swear to fight to protect my new home from all external threats. I swear to destroy all those who seek to destroy the empire. I swear on my Martial Art."


    Her voice rang with earnest sincerity as she met his gaze with clear eyes devoid of any deceit.


    Emperor Rael gazed at her for a moment beforeing to a decision.


    "I ept your oath, Sage Kole," he continued. "I promise to heal you as my son offered on my behalf. Rest assured, what the rest of the world couldn''t do, the Kandrian Empire can and will."


    "¡­I look forward to that, Your Majesty." Sage Kole heaved a sigh of relief. "I am grateful to you for overlooking my judgment upon your son."


    Rui smiled wryly as Emperor Rael shook his head.


    "You''re mistaken." Emperor Rael''s tone was firm. "It is because of your judgment that I am convinced that you are worthy of the boon I offered to bestow upon you. You are exactly what the Kandrian Empire needs, Sage Kole. When the timees, you will do everything that you swore to do and more. The Kandrian Empire will require your power very soon."


    Her eyes glinted knowingly. "¡­You must mean war, Your Majesty. I was only alerted about the war brewing after the flood of bribes I received when I was assigned as the judge for your son''s case."


    "A war that far exceeds any that you have ever fought in, Master of the Inferno Fist," Emperor Rael informed her. "We will be facing the other Sage-level powerhouses of East Panama together. Only by oveing their power will the Kandrian Empire be able to emerge victorious."


    Sage Kole grew surprised. "¡­We will have to fight and emerge victorious against three other Sage-level powerhouses? Is that even possible?"


    "It is." Emperor Rael''s rich voice conveyed certainty. "I expect you to perform. Failure will not be tolerated. You must return to your peak within a matter of months."


    Her eyes widened. "Your Majesty, three months is far from enough for a Martial Sage like myself to return to my former peak, especially in my current state. Even putting aside the matter of curing my condition, the recovery process will take years at least. I haven''t activated my Martial Heart so much in twelve years. I haven''t even walked in more than a decade. I swear to execute your will to the best of my ability. However, I fear that recovering to my peak in a mere three months is beyond the realm of possibility."


    Even if she had been a normal human, making a full recovery from her condition wouldn''t have been possible. Given that she was a Martial Sage, returning to her former peak was even more impossible in the timeframe that Emperor Rael demanded.


    "Don''t worry about that, Your Sagehood," Rui reassured her with an expression of smug amusement. "We have you covered. Everything you said is entirely urate. However, my father isn''t asking you for the impossible. You see, in Kandria, doing years'' worth ofbor in months is very much possible."


    She stared at him like he was asserting that the moon was made out of cheese.


    "I''m afraid I don''t understand."


    "You will," Emperor Rael threw a disapproving nce at Rui, "when the time is right." She stared at the father and son with a hint of skepticism.


    "More importantly, we need tomence your recovery immediately," Emperor Rael dered. "We don''t have time to waste."


    Her eyes lit up with hope. "You mean the Divine Doctor, Your Majesty? Is it true that you have procured the services of the greatest healer in all of human history? The man who cured death?"


    Rui needed to exert active effort to avoid snorting with contempt.


    Yet, he didn''t want to dispel the misinformation if it meant giving her doubt that the Divine Doctor could actually heal her condition.


    "Yes." Emperor Rael''s powerful voice was rich with confidence, cleaving through the fears that gued her heart now that she was so close to her greatest dream. "I was afflicted with an even deeper condition than yours, as you undoubtedly are aware. It was thanks to that man''s extraordinary prowess that I was able to return to my former prime. He can cure your condition, rest assured. I have already arranged a medical session with him. You may head there right away."


    Emperor Rael waved his hand.


    STEP STEP


    Two Martial Masters bearing the insignia of the Royal Insignia on their garbs appeared.


    "Escort our important guest to the Divine Doctor," hemanded.


    "Understood, Your Majesty."


    "I will not forget this, Your Majesty," Sage Kole promised with a tone of deep gratitude. "I will remember this boon for the rest of my life."


    She was promptly escorted out of the Kandrian Throne Hall soon after.


    "¡­what do you think, Sayfeel?" Emperor Rael asked lightly.


    "She was entirely sincere, Your Majesty," Sage Sayfeel confirmed. "She will be fiercely loyal to the throne, but especially you when she is healed."


    -Belongs to N?velDrama.Org - All rights reserved.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2197 Other Cases

    Chapter 2197 Other Cases


    "Mmm, good." Emperor Rael heaved a sigh of relief. "One more Sage-level asset to protect the Kandrian Empire. We can never have too many. Especially considering the magnitude of the tribtions that await Kandria."


    Rui turned to his father with an intrigued expression. "How has the Sage recruitment program been going, Father?"


    "It''s been going remarkably well thus far." Emperor Rael smiled. "We have gotten five ill, crippled, or damaged Martial Sages on board. We still have three more cases in progress. If we can get all three of them, then we''ll be set."


    An excited smile cracked at the edge of Rui''s mouth. "Five Martial Sages? That''s crazy. That''s a historic growth in the number of Martial Sages for any nation within such a short number of years."


    The sheer significance of gaining five more Martial Sages did not go unnoticed by Rui. He understood more than anybody else just how incredible a feat it was. There probably was no better way to use the Divine Doctor, now that Rui thought about it. Not even researching the alien species would yield as much as simply using him to heal crippled or ill Martial Sages to win them over. It was the lowest-hanging fruit that yielded the most benefits.


    "That''s true, but¡­" Emperor Rael''s eyes narrowed. "It''s not going to be enough, I''m afraid."


    Rui nodded. "You did say it was one of the many ns you had nned for."


    "That''s true. However, I did hope that we could find more Martial Sages who were afflicted with more medical conditions that impeded their Martial Art." Emperor Rael heaved a sigh. "Unfortunately, these were the only ones that still retained a desperation to regain the power of their prime."


    "Honestly, I''m surprised that you''ve found eight such Sages considering how few Martial Sages there even are." Rui raised an eyebrow. "Is it because health declines with age and Martial Sages are particrly old on average?"


    His father nodded at his words. "Agees for everybody. There aren''t enough longevity potions in the world to ensure the continuous vitality of Martial Sages. They are already old enough, which means they are more prone to failures in health. That''s why this tactic has so much scope."


    Rui nodded knowingly. Being strong did not mean one was immune topses in health.


    "On top of that, taxing their bodies in intensebat at extremely high Realms eventually takes its toll on them," Emperor Rael exined. "Healing potions also have limits, beyond a certain amount of stress and age."


    Rui nodded. "Maybe I should take another high-grade longevity potion."


    Emperor Rael smiled wryly. "I''m sure those crippled or ill Martial Sages wish they had the opportunity to do so at your age."


    "Speaking of which, can you tell me who they are? I''m curious what the new Martial Sages who have joined the Kandrian Empire are like."


    "Hm, thus far, we have secured the cooperation of Sage Laozhu, the East Wind; Sage Meilia, the Dancing Darling; Sage Lamperel, Mernolin the Meteor; Sage Devin, the Molten Mammoth; and, of course, Sage Kole Kellin, the Master of the Inferno Fist."


    Rui recognized those names.


    Many of them were elder Martial Sages from the dawn of the Sage Realm and had left their mark on history a long time ago. Many of them had disappeared many years ago, yet it appeared that that hadn''t deterred his father from tracking each of them down meticulously and sending his envoys or the Martial Union.


    "Finding them wasn''t too challenging," Emperor Rael told Rui. "With thebination of the Beggar''s Sect, the Elder Tree, and your grandmother in the worst-case scenarios. There is nobody that can evade my pursuit. Almost half of them were cooped up somewhere in Beast Domain, strangely enough."


    "Hah, treasures in the Beast Domain indeed." Rui smirked. "If we can get the remaining three, then the Kandrian Empire will have twenty-four Martial Sages."


    They would be the first organization in the world to have so many Martial Sages on retainer.


    Of course, it still wouldn''t be enough against the nearly fifty Martial Sages that the Britannian Empire, Sekigahara Confederate, and the Republic of Gorteau hadbetween them. However, it wasn''t necessary to be equal to their enemies.


    "We just need to be powerful enough to deter them," Emperor Rael mused knowingly. "We are close to reaching that stage. However, it won''t happen before the warmences. We will need to slug it out until it bes absolutely clear that there is no victory to be won against the Kandrian Empire. Only then will we be able to live in peace without needing to make sacrifices that we would need to make otherwise."


    He turned his gaze to Rui. "There are only a few months left until war begins. Nearly all the conditions I set for a high probability of victory have been fulfilled. Prepare yourself for war. When it begins, you will have no chance to catch your breath. One way or another, the three Sage-level powerhouses will soon learn of the existence of the Divine Doctor, the manifold, and the Elder Tree connection."


    His eyes narrowed. "When they do, their fury will wash over East Panama, embroiling the entirety of it into war. What we are experiencing is merely the calm before the storm."


    Rui grew serious at his father''s warnings, nodding solemnly.


    "I''ll be ready when ites."


    He soon took his leave. This content ? N?v/elDr(a)m/a.Org.


    His father heaved a sigh as he rxed, taking a moment of reprieve as he thought about everything that had happened in the past three-and-a-half years. Much had happened, yet it felt as though all that time had gone by in the blink of an eye.


    Yet, slowly but surely, his grand n was unfolding. So far, he hadn''t experienced any major failings.


    Yet, that only made him a little nervous.


    No n could ever be perfectly executed¡ªone would need to be omniscient for such a thing to happen in practice. It was always the most unexpected thing that went wrong in truly unforeseen manners.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2198: Reawakened Power

    Chapter 2198: Reawakened Power


    ?


    Sage Kole Kellin knew on a logical level that it was highly unlikely that the Emperor of Harmony and the Dawnbringer were lying. However, it hadn''t registered on an emotional level that she was going to be healed.


    It was just hard to believe.


    After more than a decade in her condition, she could scarcely believe that she was going to be unshackled from it and regain her power of the past. She just wasn''t able to envision a future where such a thing would genuinely happen.


    "Ah, the Shivering Disease." The Divine Doctor tutted with a bored tone.


    His clinical eyes were devoid of any intrigue. "Such a trivial case. Is this truly insurmountable to the medicalmunity?"


    Sage Kole Kellin frowned. "No, but it requires resources that are astronomically rare. The Panamic Martial Federation did not have them."


    The Divine Doctor lightly snorted with disdain as he began issuing several instructions to the medical team assigned to aid him in the procedure.


    "So... you can heal me, doctor?"


    "Too easily, in fact." His clinical tone was devoid of warmth. "If those two are going to have me practice medicine, I wish they would send me more challenging cases. Instead, they sent me this."


    He peered at her with derision.


    It took her a moment to realize that he wasn''t even looking at her but at her condition.


    She furrowed her eyebrows as she studied the doctor.


    She expected the Divine Doctor to be a kind man as the greatest doctor to have ever lived, yet his eyes were cold and regarded her as no more than a defective lump of meat.


    STEP


    Her attention shifted as she felt the arrival of the familiar and powerful aura of a Martial Sage.


    The bald man regarded her with respect as he stroked his salt-pepper beard. "It''s been a while, Sage Kole."


    "Sage cken." She nodded at him. "It has indeed been a long time. Are you perhaps here to ensure that my power doesn''t go out of control?"


    The leader of the Earth Sect simply nodded curtly. "No harm can be allowed toe to the Divine Doctor, even if he is immortal. Not to mention the untold devastation you might be spreading. I will suppress and harmlessly disperse your energy into the depths of Mother Gaia should the need ever arise. I hope you understand."


    "I take no issue with the arrangement," she lightly replied. "I would be deeply upset if my inability to control my power impeded my recovery."


    "Alright," the Divine Doctor interjected. "Let''s begin."


    CLASP


    She was quickly strapped to a medical bed while a gas mask was put on her face. The Divine Doctor garbed himself in surgical attire in the meantime.


    "Good night," he wished her as her consciousness drifted away upon the entry of a potent anesthetic.


    What followed took hours, yet for her it was merely a second.


    One moment, she closed her eyes.


    The very next, she opened them.


    Yet, she could sense the changes in her body the moment she opened them.


    Tears welled up in her eyes as her body was stationary for the first time in a long time.


    Words couldn''t begin to describe how she felt.Belonging ? N?velDram/a.Org.


    The sheer amount of tion that she experienced was more than she had experienced in the past decadebined.


    She gazed at her perfectly still hands that didn''t twitch involuntarily.


    She closed her eyes as she balled them into fists, activating a breathing technique.


    WHOOSH!


    Her fists ignited with fire as she activated her in¨¡?ferno technique.


    A fiery red me enveloped her fists, quickly stabilizing under her control.


    It was the most basic technique of her Martial Art.


    Yet, she stared at it like it was the first time she had seen it in her entire life.


    STEP


    She stood steadily upright for the first time in a decade.


    Her leg muscles had been atrophied after a long time of disuse. However, given that she had a Martial Body, she still had far more power than any normal human despite her condition.


    She took a deep breath, steeling her gaze.


    BADUMP!


    Her Martial Heart was reawakened from its long slumber,ing back to life as it spread its power across all cells, invigorating and empowering them. She indulged herself in the feeling of the ocean of power that was hidden within her. She couldn''t help but feel immensely euphoric over the return of her power.


    Soon enough, she dug up the remaining parts of her power as her Martial Mind and Soul were unsealed after more than a decade.


    The aura of a full-fledged Martial Sage spread across the facility she was in as her mes evolved from red to purple to white. Ungodly power surged from within her, spreading across


    her depths.


    "It''s been so long..." she whispered.


    Her gaze shifted as she felt the presence of Sage cken entering the facility that held her. "Congrattions on your recovery, Sage Kole," he wished her. "The Divine Doctor has informed me that the procedure has been aplete sess and you have regained your power without any drawbacks."


    "I am grateful to the Divine Doctor and will forever be indebted to him." Her voice radiated power. "Now, however, what I need is time. Time to return my body, my rusty instinct, and mybat sense back to their former peaks. However, I don''t know how I am to do this within the span of three months. The Void Prince mentioned something strange in that regard but..."


    Sage cken smiled. "Come, let me guide you to your training ce. One where you can train to your heart''s content without worrying about making it in time. There is a reason that the Kandrian Empire is confident of facing the three Sage-level powerhouses in war. We have treasures, you see. Treasures that make the impossible possible. Treasures that will elevate this nation to a level of power untouched before."


    She cautiously followed him with uncertainty, entirely unprepared for the revtions that awaited her.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2199: Tough Rehabilitation

    Chapter 2199: Tough Rehabilitation


    ?


    Once the Divine Doctor healed and restored the Martial Sages of the Kandrian Empire, they immediately began rehabilitation training. It was only after the truth of the training manifold was exined to them that they understood how they could return to their prime within the timeframe that the Emperor of Harmony required them to.


    They immediately began using the power of the manifold greedily, not wasting so much as a second. They would need to spend the next few years in the manifold so that they could make it in time for the impending war that was to hit the Kandrian Empire within months in the real world.


    "So this is the power of Sage-level powerhouse..." Sage Laozhu, the East Wind, remarked, huffing lightly as his handbed through his long hair. "It far surpasses my native nation." "No," Sage Kole shook her head lightly. "This isn''t the power of just about any Sage-level powerhouse. I''m certain that this power is unique to the Kandrian Empire. We have been blessed with the opportunity to serve a powerful nation and a powerful emperor."


    Not all of her new and fellow healed colleagues shared her sentiment.


    Sage Lameperel Mernolen, the Meteor, sneered at her with derision. "Serve? You think I joined the Kandrian Empire aftering out of retirement just to serve once more?" His eyes narrowed. "Hell no. I''m with the Martial Union. I''m not serving nobody." Sage Devin, the Molten Mammoth, nodded silently, never once uttering a word. "Ah..." Sage Meilia, the Dancing Darling, heaved a melodramatic sigh. "I would normally agree, but serving the Emperor of Harmony..."


    She dreamily giggled to herself while the other four simply stared at her with a dubious expression. One could almost see the flowers blooming around her as she blushed at the thought of serving her chosen liege.


    "You''re pathetic," Sage Ourlen, the Sword Demon, spat with contempt. "You''re Martial Sage. It''s pathetic of you to lust after a mere human."


    Sage Meilia red at him. "You wouldn''t even be here if not for that ''mere human,'' you ugly hideous beast."


    "Stop messing around," Sage La, the Adamant, firmly interjected. "Emperor Rael didn''t heal us so that we can gossip around. We have work to do. We need to return to our prime as soon as possible. I don''t know about all of you, but I, for one, cannot stand my current state of weakness any longer."


    That was one thing that all seven of them could agree upon. Now that all hurdles on the path to their former power had been removed, there was nothing stopping them back from returning to their former power.


    Thus, they were unable to tolerate their current state of power for too much longer, especially when they were still inferior to their seniors in the government and the Martial Union. So much so that the Martial Sages native to the Kandrian Empire regarded them as juniors who needed their training.


    It was frustrating, but they had no choice.


    They needed to reach their peak as soon as possible, and that was best done with a powerful Martial Sage who could push them to their limit.


    However, they weren''t prepared for what wasing their way.


    STEP


    The arrival of the eighth Sage-level aura sent shivers down their spine.


    It sent chills crawling across their skin, evoking fear that predators evoked in their prey.


    "So these are the maggots that Rael was telling me about," Sage Damian''s voice crackled with giddy excitement. "All I see is a bunch of weak shits."


    He sneered as a contemptuous gaze swept across all of them.


    None of them were pleased by how much he looked down at them.


    "That''s Emperor Rael to you," Sage Meilia red at him. "Supreme Emperor of Harmony is an eptable title as well."


    "You bastard..." Sage Lamperel bristled as his expression crumpled with rage. "You think you can just walk in here and talk shit without any consequences? Who the fuck do you think you are?"


    "It seems that the Martial Sages of the Kandrian Empire are just a little too arrogant," Sage Laozhu calmly remarked. "We shall have to see whether it holds up when I return to my peak."


    "Hah, talking all that shit," Sage Ourlen red at him as his hand went to his sword. "You think you''re so tough? I''ll have you know that I earned the title of Sword Demon through my sheer skill with the de. I was once regarded as the most skilled swordsman. I once earned the praise of Her Transcendence Transcendent Daena. I once bested-"


    "You yap too much." Sage Damian''s malicious grin grew wider.


    What happened next exceeded his ability to fathom.


    BOOM


    A powerful blow crashed into the sr plexus before he could even parse what happened. "Argh...!" He copsed like a cut puppet, choking as he cradled his gut.


    The others leaped away from the Devil with shocked expressions as their expressions grew more grave.


    None of them had realized what had happened until after Sage Ourlen copsed.Belonging ? N?velDram/a.Org.


    "Hah," he scoffed with contempt. "You sorry, excuses from Martial Sages. Are they going to help us win the war? My son could do a better job with that!"


    They stiffened at the tant disrespect that he showed them.


    Yet, none of them pushed back.


    The sheer amount of peril that radiated made them sick.


    It prickled at their skin.


    "You fucking bastard..." Sage Ourlen tried getting up as he red with rage.


    CLASP


    Sage Damian grinned as he grabbed him by the neck, choking him as he held him high up.


    "Listen up, you rotten, rusty relics of the past," Sage Damian grinned. "Rael sent me here to ensure you worthless shits are actually worth shit by the time war arrives."


    His grin grew wider.


    "For the next three years..." His voice grew more malevolent. "...I will show you that Hell is real."


    His eyes flickered with thinly veiled bloodlust.


    "When I''m done with you maggots, you will regret ever epting Rael''s offer."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2200: Biggest Thorn

    Chapter 2200: Biggest Thorn


    ?


    "I told him to go easy on them..." Emperor Rael murmured. "I hope he doesn''t give them PTSD like he did Aggragor."


    That being said, he didn''t mind the PTSD.


    It served as an excellent to control and manipte Sage Aggragor by using his horrific fear of the man as a leash to turn him into an obedient ve who would follow his everymand.


    It all stemmed from the fact that Aggragor brutally trained him up when he broke through to the Master Realm during the second Martial Revolution. He figured that there was no better way to break through rust than these old retired warriors had umted by subjecting them to the Devil himself.


    It was ruthless, but he needed to be reliable when the time came. Failure because of their rusty state was not eptable. In that case, developing PTSD of Damian was an eptable price to pay as far as he was concerned. There was no one else who could singlehandedly get a firm grip on them the way Damian could, and he would rather not have multiple Martial Sages overlook their training. He needed as many Sages avable at all times.


    "I was hoping that at least one Martial Master would break through to the Sage Realm before the war began, but oh well."


    Even with the treasures of the Kandrian Empire, there was no way that breaking through to the Sage Realm would suddenly be easier. It was still an extraordinarily difficult hurdle to ovee.


    More difficult for some than others.


    It reminded him of Rui.


    His son had refused to re-enter the manifold for more experience.


    "Diminishing returns," he had told Rael. "I have already ground through most of the Martial Masters in the manifold for more than a year to get some experience. I have already embarked on powerful projects to fix my deficiency in offense. What I need is genuine, truebat experience as a Master. I have only fought against one Martial Master in a life-or-death battle. That is far too little."


    It was a subtle way of telling his father to hurry up with the war.


    It brought Rael''s attention back to the documents on his table in his Royal Office.


    Everything was going ording to n within eptable margins of deviations. Rui''s fiasco at the Panamic Martial Federation had caused more pressure to mount on the Kandrian Empire a lot sooner than he had calcted, causing him to elerate certain ns ahead of time.


    However, for the most part, everything had been on par with his grand n.


    "Soon." His eyes narrowed.


    And he wasn''t wrong.


    The documents before him documented the investigative progress of the three Sage-level powerhouses into the Kandrian Empire. They came looking for mass Apprentice breakthroughs and had begun to gain awareness of some of the other treasures that the Kandrian Empire had begun employing on arge scale.


    One by one, they woulde to learn of all treasures.


    And now, they hade to learn about the Kandrian Empire''s second most noticeable treasure after the mass breakthroughs.


    The Elder Tree Connection.


    This was inescapable.


    How in the world would they fail to notice that the productivity index of all ventures into the Beast Domain had increased by nearly two orders of magnitude?


    The Kandrian Empire had begun reeling in massive hoards of supplies extracted within the Beast Domain. The yields per operation at all levels had begun to rise up to an entirely different level.


    Arge stroke of luck for a highly fortunate find happened once in a blue moon.


    It didn''t happen all the time.


    Yet, the Kandrian Empire hit the lottery every single time.


    The response of the Republic of Gorteau and the Sekigahara Confederate was as he expected.


    Both President Raymond and the Nindo n called for an increase in all investigative efforts towards the Kandrian Empire, so much so that they redirected all the investigative efforts into each other and all to the Kandrian Empire.


    "Fools." Emperor Rael shook his head with a smile.


    However, the Britannian Empire continued aggressively preparing for war.


    So much so that Emperor Rael could detect signs of an impending transition to a wartime society.


    "Edward..." Rael narrowed his eyes. "As always, you are the biggest thorn in my side."This content ? N?v/elDr(a)m/a.Org.


    It was clear that Prime Minister Edward had seen through Rael''s broader intentions.


    The man did not order a single investigation into the Kandrian Empire.


    Instead, he quietly convinced the War Council to prepare for the inevitable war with the Kandrian Empire to ensure that it wouldn''t be able to ovee the Great Limit and go far beyond the reach of the Britannian Empire.


    On top of that, he continued to pressure both the Republic of Gorteau and the Sekigahara Confederate to pull the trigger on the war.


    If not for this man, Emperor Rael would have been much more confident in his ability to go ahead with his grand ns without any hitch.


    But s.


    The presence of the Britannian Prime Minister singlehandedly reduced the probability of victory by twenty percent.


    In times of war, a good strategist could make a greater impact upon war than any individual Martial Artist.


    In his current projection of the future, it would probably only take the exposure of just one more treasure for war to be dered.


    This meant that the moment the Divine Doctor or the manifold is revealed, war will be waged.


    They could tolerate the mass Apprentice breakthroughs without wanting to wage war, with the hopes of getting their hands on the technique.


    They could barely tolerate the clearly absurd sess rates with the Beast Domain.


    However, did they find out about the Divine Doctor or the manifold?


    That was too much.


    No amount of bribing of the Gorteau Congress and no amount of incentivizing the Nindo n


    to continue the intelligence war would be enough. When it came to the bottom line of these powers, they would never allow the Kandrian Empire to rise above them.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2201: Final Straw

    Chapter 2201: Final Straw


    ?


    Months passed.


    The tensions between the three powerhouses continued to rise as the intelligence war was seeded by a trade war. The three Sage-level powerhouses sought cripple Kandria''s economic reach within East Panama with sanctions, tariffs, and tax hikes. Together, they had the power to box the Kandrian Empire.


    This was why one of the main three agendas that Emperor Rael had espoused when he addressed the Kandrian government three years ago was economic independence. Thus, the sanctions by his enemies didn''t hurt the most vital parts of the nation. However, the Kandrian Empire''s ability to trade with other nations outside of its own domain of influence was heavily hampered.


    Unfortunately for the three Sage-level powerhouses, he had foreseen this three years ago. Every military war was preceded by economic, information, intelligence, and public rtions


    wars.


    He knew that there woulde a day when his enemies would try and suffocate him as a method of pressuring him into surrendering the mass Apprentice breakthroughs.


    That was why he had set into motion a solution three years ago.


    "Are all the preparationsplete, my daughter?" Emperor Rael gazed at Princess Ranea from atop his throne.


    "Yes, father," she smiled. "In the past three years, the maritime and seafaring capacity of the Kandrian Empire has been increased fourfold. We have built many shipyards, vessels, and ports across our eastern coast that can support an enormous number of ships at once. I have overseen the development and securing of highly safe and reliable trading routes with countless coastal hubs across East, North, and South Panama. Our maritime trading rtions with Esocline Federation and the Gen Temple have greatly increased, firmly solidifying our political rtions with the two Sage-level powerhouses."


    "You have seeded with the task I have entrusted to you quite well," Emperor Rael nodded as he read through thetest reports that she had provided him with. "This will allow us to dodge the sanctions, tariffs, and taxes that our enemies seek to suffocate us economically with. The Kandrian economy will only continue rising as it has thus far."Belonging ? N?velDram/a.Org.


    He had entrusted the development of the maritime and seafaring sector of the Kandrian Empire because she had greater expertise on it than even he did.


    He wasn''t arrogant in that regard; while it was true that no one understood the Kandrian Empire as a whole better than he did, he did not dispute that there were people who understood certain sectors better than he did. When it came to the maritime sector of the Kandrian Empire, she possessed a more intimate understanding of the matter than he did.


    A good emperor could do everything.


    A great emperor chose not to.


    By allocating the management of sub-sectors to vetted, trusted, and known individuals with greaterpetence in those narrow fields than he did, he made the most of all the resources avable by allocating them in the most efficient and effective manner.


    Princess Ranea gratefully epted the opportunity to lead the maritime and seafare sector of the Kandrian Empire as she once had after she was ruthlessly defeated by Rui in the Kandrian Throne War. She had faithfully performed her duties well in the past three years, allowing the Kandrian economy to ovee its economic restraints.


    Yet, as he predicted, that only added more heat fuel to the fire, which was the tension between the three Sage-level powerhouses.


    A PR war, an intelligence war, and now an economic war.


    All three preludes to an actual military and Martial war were underway.


    The political sphere of East Panama gritted its teeth as it buckled its seatbelts.


    When the powerhouses warred, the smaller nations could only hold on tight and hope they didn''t get wiped out in dialectic. Oftentimes, they would suffer heavy losses simply due to the side effects of the immense war. They would catch strays in the form of a vengeful Martial Master and Martial Sage destroying integral parts of the nation.


    Of course, there was rarely genocide or something on heinous that scale, for no one wanted to rile up the Panamic Martial Federation, but centers of power, assets, and infrastructure were all fair game.


    Only Sage-level nations could retain some agency when the powerhouses fought. Yet, even they had no choice but to bend to the closest Sage-level powerhouse.


    Everyone suffered when wars on this scale unfolded.


    Hell, everyone suffered even before wars on this scale unfolded.


    The impending war loomed heavily on investors and banks, who withheld lending and investing, and it loomed on businessmen and consumers, quietening down economic activity. Consumers withheld spending, anticipating tough times, and businessmen slowed down expansion and began preparing for downsizing, anticipating the downturn.


    A deathly silence spread through East Panama.


    Even themon folk, who were the slowest andtest on the uptake, began to smell the impending war that loomed over an entire section of the continent.


    The Republic of Gorteau and the Sekigahara Confederate began slowing down and reducing investigative and intelligence operations into the mass Apprentice breakthroughs and the inexplicable streak of lottery hits in the Beast Domain ventures of the Kandrian Empire.


    It was a sign.


    A sign that they were done.


    They were done with snooping around Kandria in hopes of finding the secrets to attaining the miracles of the Kandrian Empire. They were tired of the countless wild goose chases that the Emperor of Harmony had kindly prepared for them.


    Enough was enough.


    The tensions that had begun rising long ago, the vaunted Ss n joined the Kandrian Empire many years ago during the throne war had reached their zenith.


    Something had to give.


    And something did.


    The Gorteau Bureau of Intelligence came across a truly shocking discovery by chance.


    Sage Kole Kellin, who had mysteriously resigned as Prime Minister after she exiled the Dawnbringer from the Panamic Martial Federation, had been healed from her Shivering


    Disease.


    Simultaneously, the Nindo n learned that many of the newest Apprentices of the Kandrian Empire had already broken through to the Squire Realm just months after bing


    Apprentices!


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2202 No Choice

    Chapter 2202 No Choice


    President Raymond stared at the intelligence report before him with unadulterated horror. The sheer significance of the information it ryed shook him to his very core. "Is¡­" He hesitated. "Is this real?"


    "¡­I''m afraid so, Mr. President." The Director of the Gorteau Bureau of Intelligence directed a grave gaze at him. "We barely managed to catch wind of this. We only got this information thanks to ourwork of spies that had managed to enter the highly ssified division in the Kandrian Institute of Biotechnology."


    The President of the Republic of Gorteau gritted his teeth as he suppressed the urge to throw up. Just the notion that former High Judge Sage Kole had been healed after joining the Kandrian Empire sent chills down his spine. "What is happening¡­?" Anger and frustration shed in his eyes. "Just what is happening in that damned country?!"


    President Raymond had been unable to fathom what was going on ever since the Emperor of Harmony had woken up from his long slumber. Ever since the damned Emperor of Harmony had regained control of the Kandrian Empire, he had been entirely elusive and beyond President Raymond''s ability to read.


    The Kandrian Empire itself had seemingly be a haven for miracles and extraordinarily rare events.


    He didn''t understand. First, the mass Apprentice breakthroughs, then the miraculous sess rate in the Beast Domain, and then the mysterious healing of Sage Kole Kellin after she joined the Kandrian Empire. "At this rate¡­" His eyes widened as realization dawned on him. "The Kandrian Empire''s power as a nation will continue rising until itpletely surpasses the Great Limit. Each of these phenomena is pushing the limit by themselves, but together¡­"


    Together, it was clear as day that unless they did something about it soon, it would soon be toote.


    President Raymond gritted his teeth as he clenched his fist.


    He nced at a letter on his table.


    It bore the crest of the Britannian Empire. Material ? of N?velDrama.Org.


    ''His predictions¡­'' President Raymond''s eyes widened. ''They all came true. He had known from the very start¡­!''


    Over the past few months, the prime minister of the Britannian Empire had been slowly warming him up to the idea of war against the Kandrian Empire. He had been chipping at President Raymond''s reluctance to pick a fight with the Emperor of Harmony, of all people, bit by bit.


    "We need to act immediately, Mr. President." His vice president grew stern. "We cannot allow for such a clear threat to the Republic of Gorteau to affect our dominance as a Sage-level powerhouse. Should we leave the Kandrian Empire to its devices, it will be powerful enough to swallow East Panama. Now is the time to act, or else you will go down in history as the worst president in the history of Gorteau and the man who led it to its downfall."


    Those words had the intended impact on her superior. She knew that he was a weak man who needed to be manipted by his insecurities as a leader in order to get him to make the right choice.


    "¡­General Havier," President Raymond directed a nce at a man garbed in military attire with a number of medals pinned to his uniform, "do you think the Republic of Gorteau can defeat the Kandrian Empire in an all-out war?"


    The general''s expression steeled with determination. "My soldiers and warriors will fight to thest brea¡ª"


    "You didn''t answer my question." President Raymond narrowed his eyes.


    "¡­Before the Kandrian Empire gained the Ss n and Sage Kole Kellin, I would have been more confident in saying yes, but," he shook his head, "with the Emperor of Harmony and the Martial Union firmly in control of the military and Martial power of the Kandrian Empire, they have far greater control over their power that we do ours."


    President Raymond grimaced at the brutally honest evaluation of his general, but he appreciated the honesty. It was true. The Republic of Gorteau had tremendous potential for war, but it was highly scattered and decentralized. It meant that President Raymond didn''t have as much control over it. Certainly not nearly as much control as the Emperor of Harmony had over his nation. While President Raymond was themander-in-chief of the army, the Gorteau Army did not contain most of the nation''s military and Martial power.


    Arge part of the total power of the Republic of Gorteau was in its private sector. A majority of Martial Artists were a part of the private sector, employed by lucrative Martial contractors and Martial Insurancepanies, as well as Martial development corporations.


    In order to wage war, he would need to sign contracts with each and every single one of them and pay them a boatload to lend their Martial power to the war effort.


    They were waiting for it. So much so that they had heavily donated to President Raymond''s political campaign just so that he could dere war.


    "¡­Everything had been going just fine until the Emperor of Harmony woke up." He gritted his teeth as his eyes grew bloodshot. "It''s all because of him and his damn empire that threw a perfect presidency for a toss."


    He closed his eyes, trying to gather his nerves and calm himself down.


    When he opened them.


    "With the power vested in me as the President of the Republic of Gorteau, I hereby dere war on the Kandrian Empire." President Raymond''s expression grew more severe. "Have my chief of staff prepare the deration immediately; I''ll sign it and have my Vice President present it to Congress; we''ll see how long those damn socialists have the balls to vote against it in these dire circumstances."


    He knew that the Emperor of Harmony had managed to bribe the Democratic Socialist Party to impede the hawkish ambitions of his party; those pacifist bastards had been more than happy to ept his bribe due to the fact that they were inherently against war. However, if they dared to vote against his deration of war, then they would suffer deeply due to how necessary it was.


    "They have no choice but to vote for it," he growled. "Begin mobilizing our war potential immediately."


    He paused for a moment.


    "Also, arrange for a meeting with Prime Minister Edward."


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2203 Preemptive Commencement

    Chapter 2203 Preemptive Commencement


    The President of Gorteau passed a deration of war against the Kandrian Empire to Congress.


    This event alone sent ripples across East Panama.


    It was the beginning of a new era of war.


    Unless, of course, Congress voted against his deration, but that was deeply unlikely.


    Those in the know knew that the Kandrian Empire could not be allowed to get away with monopolizing such kinds of treasures with no consequences from its peers.


    Yet, while the Republic of Gorteau underwent procedures to formally dere war, the Sekigahara Confederate was different.


    They didn''t care for international courtesy.


    "Why dere war when we can just wage war, am I right?" The Patriarch of the Oni n grinned wildly. "We don''t warn someone ahead of time when we jump them. Why do we dere war ahead of time?"


    Around a round table in a highly secure fortress, the fourteen leaders of the Sekigahara Confederate had gathered. They had called for an emergency meeting shortly after the Nindo n had informed them of the shocking discoveries about the Kandrian Empire. An Apprentice who had broken through to the Apprentice Realm merely three months ago had already broken through to the Squire Realm.


    This was a level of genius that put to shame every other genius in history. It was on par with the genius of the Dawnbringer in theter stages of his career.


    However, the most shocking part was the fact that she wasn''t the only one. A number of Martial Apprentices broke through to the Squire Realm months after they discovered their Martial Path.


    "This is not natural."


    One time was a lucky genius, every nation had one of those.


    Two times? Perhaps they were especially blessed.


    Three times, five times, ten times?


    That was not possible. This is the property of N?-velDrama.Org.


    "Furthermore, ording to our reports," the Nindo Patriarch continued, "none of these Squires exhibited any special traits when they were students. Yet suddenly, these entirely ordinary children start to have elerated growth rates, unlike anything the world has ever seen before."


    They understood what he was saying.


    It wasn''t that the Kandrian Empire found a way to manufacture talent, just a way to elerate progress in some inscrutable manner.


    "I strongly rmend we continue to work on intelligence gathering to¡ª"


    He stiffened as the air at the table grew heavier.


    The remaining leaders red at him with piercing eyes.


    "Patriarch Kokure."


    The Patriarch of the Nindo n nced at the woman who addressed him.


    Her hair was balled up in a bun. She donned a simple kimono devoid of any ostentatious embroidery.


    Barring the crest of the Shinken n.


    One of the three ns of the Sekigahara Confederate that had more than one Martial Sage.


    "We''ve given you months to do your little intelligence gathering," she began with a soft voice. "Yet, you have failed to deliver, have you not?"


    "I do not deny that, but¡ª!"


    He froze as a wave of bloodlust washed over him.


    "Enough."


    Her voice grew sharp.


    "We''ve had enough."


    "The Matriarch of the Shinken has a point," another man chimed in, taking a deep puff from a smoking pipe before exhaling with a rxed expression. "If you had seeded in gaining any information from the Kandrian Empire, we would have been more inclined to rely on you. However¡­"


    He shifted hiszy yet sharp gaze to the Patriarch of the Nindo n. "From what I can tell, you were outyed by the Emperor of Harmony in the intelligence war, were you not?"


    The expression of the Nindo Patriarch grew grim.


    Yet, he suppressed the urge to p back, ncing at the man who admonished him.


    The patriarch of the Kaze n, another of the three strongest ns of the Sekigahara Confederate.


    "I find myself to be in firm agreement with my peers, Nindo Patriarch," another man began with a formal tone. "Time is up. Furthermore, I need to remind you that even if I think war is not optimal, the ultimate decision of war lies in the hands of Their Sagehoods. We only possess the highest authority when ites to non-Martial affairs. We do not decide the ce of the Sekigahara Confederate in the course of the history of war. They do. And¡­"


    A smile appeared on his face. "¡­They already have."


    The Nindo Patriarch''s eyes widened. "Wait, you mean¡­"


    The remaining leaders of the leader council of the Sekigahara Confederate smiled at him knowingly.


    The Matriarch of the Shinken n smiled.


    "The Martial Sages have already rallied a forceprising of themselves, Masters, and Seniors and have already begun moving towards the Kandrian Empire even as we speak." The sheer weight of her words struck him like a rock.


    His eyes widened with shock. "War¡­"


    "War has already begun." She softly giggled. "Have you grown so desperately preupied with directing all your intelligence and investigative power towards the Kandrian Empire that you have fallen behind when ites to your own nation?"


    He gritted his teeth before slumping with resignation.


    "Fine¡­" He closed his eyes. "War it is."


    The Martial ns of the Sekigahara Confederate were rather bizarrely organized in the division of power between the Martial and non-Martial sectors. While the matriarchs and patriarchs reserved full power over the legitive, executive, and judicial power of the nation, it was the Martial Artists who reserved the sole right to wage war as and when they pleased with absolutely no oversight or checks from the non-Martial powers of the nation.


    In other words, the Sekigahara Confederate was a nation where the military/Martial powers were entirely autonomous.


    An arrangement that would normally be impossible was possible due to the warped martial culture of the Sekigahara Confederate. Martial Artists of the Sekigahara Confederate only cared about war.


    Nothing else.


    They didn''t care about wealth, power, glory, or anything else that often served as Martial Drives for many. They only cared about fighting in war. Thus, this led to an arrangement where they happily gave up power and responsibility over other pesky political matters to educated humans in their n while refusing to budge an inch on war.


    The gravity of the current situation could not be understated.


    "They were particrly excited this time, you see¡­" The Shinken Matriarch smiled. "I don''t think the Kandrian Empire will appreciate the surprise they''ve prepared. Thus, I believe we should not formally dere war as a state."


    She giggled softly.


    "I wonder how the Kandrian Empire will react when they get ambushed by a significant portion of the Sekigahara Confederate."


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2204 Strategic Revelation

    2204 Strategic Revtion


    "¡­Is probably what the Sekigahara Confederate is thinking at the moment."


    A wide smile appeared on the face of the Prime Minister of the Britannian Empire.


    He was pleased.


    Things had been going ording to n.


    As he had anticipated, the Republic of Gorteau and the Sekigahara Confederate eventually reached their limits and headed down the path of war. What he didn''t expect was for it to happen so soon.


    He had thought it would take a year.


    "Rael¡­" His gaze sharpened ever so slightly. "To think you had umted so many treasures. No wonder you are so confident walking into war."


    He didn''t expect there to be more to his rival''s arsenal of treasures than just the mass breakthroughs and the massive sesses with the Beast Domain.


    He certainly didn''t expect the Kandrian Empire to demonstrate hyper-elerated growth for its Martial Artists, or for them to be able to heal formerly crippled Martial Sages.


    He closed his eyes as his mind processed all the information he had at his disposal. The recovery of Sage Kole was what drew his attention the most.


    There were two possibilities that he was able to think of.


    "The legendary Elixir of Heaven and Earth, or¡­" His eyes narrowed. "The fabled Divine Doctor."


    "The former would make more sense if they got their hands on the Transcendent-grade esoteric substances needed to make it," he reasoned. "It would make sense that they managed to get their hands on thetter due to all their sesses in the Beast Domain. But¡­"


    The air grew heavier as he came to a deep realization.


    "How did Emperor Rael recover from the Eternal Dream Disease more than three years ago?" he wondered to himself. "If the cause of his recovery is connected to the recovery of Sage Kole, then¡­"


    His eyes wandered around as he fell into deep thought.


    "Did their exploits in the Beast Domain allow them to stumble on the ingredients needed to concoct the Elixir of Heaven and Earth three years ago?" His eyes sharpened.


    "No. Considering that extensive operations into the Beast Domain from the Kandrian Empire have only been going on for a few months, it can''t serve as a sound exnation. Which means¡­ He must have somehow gotten his hands on the Divine Doctor?"


    He found it difficult to believe even if he was confident that these were the only two possible exnations to how both Emperor Rael and Sage Kole could have been cured from terminal conditions.


    Of course, it was possible that the cause behind both their recoveries was entirely different.


    However, he didn''t think so.


    It was just far too much of a coincidence for him to bring himself to believe it. "But how could Rael have found the Divine Doctor when he was ill, unless¡­" His eyes widened as he made another realization. "It was the Void Prince."


    He had previously chosen to research the Final Prince of the Kandrian Empire rather than his father as he had substantial reason to suspect that the odd timing of the breakthrough to the Master Realm was connected to the recovery of the Emperor of Harmony.


    "The Void Prince had once conducted research on the Immortal Sages to try and find and recruit them," he continued as the pieces of the puzzle began slowly fitting together. "What if he was looking for only one Immortal Sage out of them? What if the rest were merely red herrings to obscure his true intentions?"


    If that were the case, that would imply that the Void Prince had never truly intended to be Emperor. Perhaps his father had given him the mission to find the Divine Doctor from the very beginning. If that were the case¡­


    "It would be the biggest political scandal in the history of the Age of Martial Art."


    A smile cracked at the edge of Prime Minister Edward''s mouth as an immense amount of glee shed in his eyes. Just the mere thought of exposing both the Emperor of Harmony and his son brought him deep satisfaction.


    After all, if he could convince the world of this truth, then it would deeply harm the Kandrian Empire. Countless foreign powers in East Panama who were allied with the Kandrian Empire would instantly be hostile against Prince Rui and the Kandrian Empire due to the fraud and deceit that he had beenplicit with.


    It could potentially deprive them of support when they needed it the most.


    It could potentially be the decisive factor in the war. Belongs to N?velDrama.Org - All rights reserved.


    "But," his smile deepened, "not yet."


    Perhaps a lesser ruler would have immediately rushed to inform the entire world of the revtions he had learned to hurt the Kandrian Empire as much and as early as possible since war had already begun.


    But not Prime Minister Edward.


    He knew that there woulde a day in the war when this extraordinarily shocking revtion would hurt the Kandrian Empire deeply. After all, countless people had suffered due to the recovery of the Emperor of Harmony. The man would suddenly gain so many more enemies.


    "I''ll need to tread carefully." Prime Minister Edward narrowed his eyes. "Perhaps I should write it down and then have a mind-oriented Martial Artist wipe my memories of this revtion entirely. Hmm, but I would deduce the exact same thing all over again, knowing my propensity to decipher the truth. Thus, I should wipe my memories of the results of the investigation of the Dawnbringer. That way, even I won''t be able toe to this conclusion once again after my memories of this revtion are wiped."


    The reason he wanted to go to such degrees was because he feared the power of the Matriarch of the Ss n.


    "Would she not have a much harder time detecting this future if I don''t remember this information myself?"


    Based on what he understood about prophecy, she most likely would have a harder time if he enacted this measure.


    "All I need to do is present all the evidence in a highly convincing manner, then set up a system to ensure that it gets published when the time is right without any intervention on my part, and then wipe out my memories to ensure that the Ss Matriarch doesn''t see iting." The certainty in his voice grew. "It will take an extreme amount of insight with a high amount of uracy and precision to pull off, but¡­"


    He could do it.


    If anybody could secretly n ahead of time to have a trump card activated at exactly the right moment by urately predicting precisely how the war would unfold ahead of time, it was him.


    Prime Minister Edward Del Germont.


    The sole man who could rival the Emperor of Harmony.


    "I won''t lose this time, Rael." His smile widened as excitement shed in his eyes.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2205 Finally

    2205 Finally


    In the past few months, Rui had been spending time alone, meditating as he thought about a variety of topics and matters.


    Among them included things like who he was.


    Just as Master Gern had rmended, he began thinking about who he was more than he had in the past three years prior.


    It helped. He mulled over the insights that he had gained during his visit to the Panamic Martial Federation.


    He had always known that he could be quite irrational; however, he learned what levels of irrationality he could reach. He hade to gain deeper insights into himself over time.


    Of course, even with his current level of power, he wasn''t anywhere remotely close to reaching the Sage Realm.


    Still, he did feel like he was making progress.


    One issue was that reaching the Martial Soul was a path filled with far more uncertainty than even the path to the Martial Mind. At least with thetter, he could measure progress in an objective manner. With the former, he was left with vague intuitions in regard to whether he had made any actual progress at all.


    It could be deeply frustrating, yet he knew that that was par for the course.


    In addition to introspection, he also dedicated himself to heavy training and sparring at all levels. By sealing his Martial Mind and Martial Heart, he could spar against a muchrger variety of opponents and train his intuition and instinct.


    He had firmly chosen not to return to the manifold, for he didn''t really have any projects to work on that were worth embarking on at this juncture in time. The reason he had been anxious to finishthe Yin-Yang Spear was because his offense had been too deficient to leave alone.


    However, the merits of cooping himself up in the manifold to force a project out of him were little if he did it for the sake of doing it, as opposed to doing it in Adaptive Evolution to something else that he was unable to adaptively evolve to at all.


    After all, Adaptive Evolution was a reactive phenomenon.


    One thing he had cautiously tried exploring was what happened when he merged Yin-Yang Spear with Muspelheim.


    Of course, he didn''t do something as dangerous as actually activating thebination.


    That would be deeply foolish.


    He had almost died thest time he had done so, inadvertently.


    However, he couldn''t help but grow deeply fascinated by how thebination of two grade-ten techniques resulted in a potent inferno that appeared to be temporarily self-sustaining. So much so that it had be the basis of histest moniker, the Dawnbringer.


    It appeared that his father wasn''t able to give him a title that had the word ''void'' in it in time.


    Regardless, because of how absurdly lethal and dangerous thebination clearly was, he was limited to specting as to why it was the way it was. He had several hypotheses based on his understanding of Physics.


    Unfortunately, he couldn''t really test any of them due to being unable to activate the fusion of techniques that he had taken to calling Sun. Material ? of N?velDrama.Org.


    He was left to specte about how powerful he would be if he could harness this power safely. That, too, wasn''t something he could work on.


    "Tsk, will the ware already?" he grumbled to himself. "These past few months have been too little time for me to get anything done outside the manifold and yet I have nothing worth getting done inside the manifold."


    The diminishing returns from pursuing more sparringbat were not worth wasting his lifespan in the manifold for. He only had limited youth. Even if it was extended due to his early breakthrough and his longevity potion, he did not want to waste years on fruitless pursuits. If he was going to burn through his youth fourteen times faster, then it needed to be for an extremely good reason with great yields.


    That was why he limited himself to spending the past few months outside the manifold as he didn''t have any meaningful avenues to explore within it.


    While introspection and sparring took most of his time, he also spent a bit of his time helping out the Kandrian Empire by breaking Martial Artists through not just to the Apprentice Realm, of course, but also to the Senior and Master Realms.


    In the past few months, Rui had broken through hundreds of high-grade Martial Squires to the Senior Realm and nearly a dozen Seniors to the Master Realm.


    Both of these were incredible boons to the Kandrian Empire that had not gone unnoticed by external powers, Rui was certain. He could only hope that it would elerate the advent of the third Great East Panamic War.


    And perhaps his wishes came true, for¡ª


    BZZT!


    He nced at hisms artifact with a bored expression before his eyes lit up with joy.


    [President Raymond of the Republic of Gorteau deres war on the Kandrian Empire.]


    "Finally!" Rui eximed with a moment of happiness. "About damn time."


    In ce of the usual forlorn severity that one would expect to find, Rui only experienced ecstasy and excitement.


    The message he had gotten was from the war council formed by his father, the leaders of the Royal Army, the Royal Navy, and the Martial Union. After all, these were the most important leaders that would represent the military power of the Kandrian Empire. He had been invited to a meeting with all these big shots.


    He wasn''t surprised, of course. His father had already informed him that he nned to involve him in the strategic and tactical decision-making of the war in his capacity as a Martial Artist.


    On top of that, there was no way that he could possibly not be there. Just the fact that he had power over the Divine Doctor and the Manifold and was the reason behind the mass breakthroughs meant that he had a voice in this affair.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2206 Kandrian War Council

    2206 Kandrian War Council


    Within a giant war council constructed by the Emperor of Harmony and the Martial Union specifically for the impending war, a number of people sat around arge table equipped with the finest three-dimensional projection esoteric technology, allowing ease of ess and disy of information without any dy or inefficiency.


    Around the table, arge number of people were sitting, divided into different sections and rows.


    Grand General Aramoeous and his right-hand subordinates sat in their own section beside that of Grand Admiral Geron and his subordinates. Together, they represented the military of the Kandrian Empire, wielding an immense amount of power between them.


    Yet, despite that, the power they projected paled inparison to the five Martial Sages that sat in a section reserved for the Martial Union. Each of the major Martial Sects had one of their Sages at the table, while prominent Martial Masters and other officers in the Martial Union sat behind them in the second row.


    Meanwhile, other relevant officers of the government such as the Director of the Kandrian Intelligence Bureau and the Director of the Kandrian Border Patrol Force also were designated their own seats at the table.


    At one end of the table sat the Emperor of Harmony on his throne by his lonesome, overseeing the entire impending meeting by himself. Behind him was Sage Farana, serving merely as a bodyguard and not as a constituent of this war council meeting.


    All but one person had arrived.


    "Ah, sorry I''mte." Rui popped into the war council hall after undergoing the strict security protocols. "It is an emergency meeting, after all," Emperor Rael lightly replied. "Come, take your seat, let us not dy this important meeting."


    Rui was granted a special position by himself separate from both the Martial Union and his father, signifying his independence as an entity in the Kandrian Empire.


    "Without further ado," Emperor Rael began with a solemn tone, "Imence the war council meeting of the Kandrian Empire."


    His eyes sharpened.


    "I do not wish to waste time. Each of you is aware of the reason that we have gathered here. Let''s begin by reviewing all the intelligence we have on the matter of the deration of war made by the president of the Republic of Gorteau. A preliminary intelligence report has already been put together in haste." He turned to the Director of Intelligence. "Director Shelmin, give us a brief overview of the report and your findings."


    "Of course, Your Majesty." The man nodded at Emperor Rael before sweeping his gaze across the entire table. "Our spywork in the Republic of Gorteau and within its bureau of intelligence in conjugation with the intelligence department of the Martial Union¡­"


    He regarded the officers of the Martial Union with a nod, "¡­indicate that they have managed to be aware of the recovery of Sage Kole Kellin by tapping the Kandrian Institute of Medicine as well as the Kandrian Institute of Biotechnology. ording to our intelligence, the discovery was immediately reported to the presidential office, followed shortly by the deration of war by President Raymond."


    He paused for a moment as he let the information sit. "In other words, the discovery of the recovery of Sage Kole Kellin can be said to be the trigger for the deration of war. It appears to be clear that the revtion of the Kandrian Empire healing crippled Martial Sages after inviting them to join us has proven to be too much for the presidential office of the Republic of Gorteau to tolerate."


    His gaze returned to the preliminary report that he had overlooked the creation of. "As we speak, the Congress of Gorteau has already begun deliberating the deration of the president in confidential congressional caucuses and will soon put to vote to pass or reject his deration of war. And ording to our intelligence and analysis, there is an eighty-seven percent chance that they will pass the bill."


    His gaze returned to the rest of the war council. "Thus, there is a high possibility that the nation-state will officially dere war against the Kandrian Empire."


    The air grew heavy under the weight of his deration. There was never much of a doubt in the first ce. However, it felt far more real now that someone had finally put in no uncertain words.


    "Operation House Divide, which was an operation brainstormed by His Majesty to bribe half the congressmen and congresswomen to vote against any initiative of the National Libertarian Party of which President Raymond is a part, will most likely not be able to seed in preventing the Republic of Gorteau from dering war," Director Shelmin borated. "Our intelligence shows that most of the constituents of their Congress are firmly in support of dering war against the Kandrian Empire, despite our bribes offered to them."


    Emperor Rael nodded lightly. "It is within my expectations, after all. A few million gold coins or even longevity potions cannotpensate them for what they will lose if they allow the Kandrian Empire to go unchallenged. They will notpromise the dominance of the Republic of Gorteau, even if for purely self-centered reasons. However¡­"


    A smile emerged on his face. "¡­Will they be able to resist when ites to deciding the budget for the war?"


    The others stirred as they caught on to what Emperor Rael was saying. Belonging ? N?velDram/a.Org.


    "Your Majesty, you mean¡­" Director Shelmin''s eyes lit up with realization.


    "That''s right." Emperor Rael smiled with certainty. "I don''t intend to waste longevity potions trying to convince them not to go to war with the Kandrian Empire; I''d be asking for too much, even from those corrupt politicians. The Democratic Socialist Party would incur too much bacsh from within and beyond the nation if they dared to reject the motion for war. They have no choice but to pass the motion for war for the sake of their political future. Thus, rather than vainly bribing them with longevity potions to reject the motion, I intend to bribe them to lower the budget for war. That way, we can reduce the strength of the Republic of Gorteau in the war."


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 Chapter 2207 Shocking Escalation

    Chapter 2207 Shocking Esction


    Rui smiled wryly as he heard his father''s n to hamper the Republic of Gorteau in war. It was extremely resourceful.


    Rui''s powerful mind swiftly evaluated the n and its projected oue.


    "Because of the scarcity of resources, I assume that most human members of the Gorteau Congress do not have ess to longevity potions," Rui keenly analyzed. "They have immense power but not enough time to enjoy it considering the gerontocracy that the institution essentially is, based on the intelligence of this report. In other words¡­"


    He nced up at his father. "They have good lives and all the more reason to fear death and an even stronger desire to prolong their lives, isn''t that right, Your Majesty?"


    While he addressed his father more informally in private, he was restricted to formal honorifics in meetings such as this.


    Emperor Rael smiled with a hint of pride at his son. "That''s correct. That''s why longevity potions are priceless to these individuals. If not for the fact that there would be an immense and immediate bacsh to rejecting the motion for war under these dire circumstances, I would be able to avert war entirely by manipting those geezers."


    He, of course, conveniently forgot that he too was a geezer.


    "In other words," Emperor Rael continued, "I can reduce the budget for war significantly. This means that they will be able to sign fewer contracts with their Martial Contractors and Martial Corporations, thereby limiting their ability to harness their private sector."


    Many at the table nodded as they saw the full merit of the n. "This n is only viable due to the sess of our recent Beast Domain operations, thanks to the Elder Tree," the director of the Department of Martial Strategy in the Martial Union remarked knowingly. "Prior to this treasure, longevity potions were so rare that they were mostly limited to Martial Sages and Masters, and some important humans such as the Emperor."


    Emperor Rael nodded. "That is why Operation House Divide is effective. Longevity potions are extremely precious in the Republic of Gorteau, even at its highest echelons. While we will be deprived of many longevity potions, that is a long-term liability that eliminates much of our short-term pressure. Let me remind you that our greatest priority in this war is not to win in an overwhelming victory but to sessfully withstand the forces that seek to destroy us. As long as we do that¡­"


    His eyes narrowed. "We will surpass all forces in the world."


    Everyone nodded with steely determination.


    With the treasures that the Kandrian Empire possessed in its current state, it would undoubtedly ovee the Great Limit as long as it made use of them. In other words, it only needed to survive and endure to eventually be the strongest.


    All of Rael''s grand n was centered around this objective. "With the Republic of Gorteau operating on a crippled war budget it might only be able to output half of its full power over the course of the war, perhaps even lesser," Emperor Rael continued. "That''s much more manageable than dealing with the full power of the nation."


    He drew much appreciation from his subjects as he calmly exined the details of Operation House Divide.


    Many had wondered how in the world one powerhouse could fight three powerhouses at once ande out victorious.


    Many had thought even attempting such a suicidal war was a deeply unwise decision.


    However, Emperor Rael showed them the answer.


    From brilliant strategies such as the harnessing of crippled Martial Sages through a cleverbination of the Divine Doctor and the manifold to the objectively most optimal applications of longevity potions to increase the probability of surviving by using them to cripple the war potential of the Republic of Gorteau, the Emperor of Harmony proved that it was possible.


    "Not only is it possible¡­" His powerful gaze swept across the entire war council. "It will be the only reality to unfold."


    His words inspired a lot of confidence in the officers listening to them.


    BZZT BZZT!


    Am artifact in the pocket of Director Shelmin buzzed.


    "Ah, pardon," he murmured, reading the message. "I left this artifact active for emergencies onl¡ª!"


    He stiffened as his eyes widened with shock. "¡­Your Majesty, I have just received an emergency report that the Sekigahara Confederate has deployed a Martial forceprising of a substantial number of Martial Sages, Masters, and Seniors. They are moving towards the Kandrian Empire as we speak!"


    Many people in the war council grew stunned at the revtion that Director Shelmin presented. It came out of nowhere.


    The Sekigahara Confederate had simply decided enough was enough and was literally running to the Kandrian Empire to pick a fight.


    The air grew heavy with peril as a grave severity overcame the atmosphere. "¡­What?!" Grand General Aramoeous bellowed, standing up with a furious expression. "How dare those savages mount an attack on the Kandrian Empire?!"


    "Hehehe!"the Hugging Hegemon grinned with excitement. "I volunteer to wee them since they''reing so far just to meet us." Belongs to N?velDrama.Org - All rights reserved.


    "They have chosen wrong," Sage cken snorted coldly.


    "Looks like it is already time to intervene," Martriach Nephi grumbled.


    "Our intelligence suggests that there are a total of ten Martial Sages and nearly a hundred and ten Martial Masters!" The director''s expression grew aghast as he read through the emergency report that his spies in the Sekigahara Confederate had desperately put together in time. "They sent a majority of their forces to the Kandrian Empire?! Have those maniacs lost it?!"


    Wars usually escted from the lowest units of conflict and skirmishes before eventually reaching full-blown war.


    This was the well-known pattern of war that most wars followed.


    Yet the martial fools over at the Sekigahara Confederate had decided to merrily escte the war to the highest unit of force from the very get-go!


    "Your Majesty, requesting reinforcements for border security!" The Director of the Kandrian Border Patrol Force stood up with a severe expression.


    "Hmmm¡­" Emperor Rael calmly evaluated the circumstances from the reports that Director Shelmin had passed to him. "¡­They chose this day because the Nindo n must havee to learn that six of the Martial Sages of the Sage Council would be preupied or not in the nation. Very bold."


    A smile appeared on his face. "It is within my predictions."


    He turned to Hugging Hegemon, who sat amidst her peers, bored of the meeting.


    "I trust Damian has done a good job whipping his new colleagues back into shape. I''m going to need them to prove themselves very soon."


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2208 Emergency Preparations

    Chapter 2208 Emergency Preparations


    "Hehehe." The Hugging Hegemon grinned at his question. "He has ground the rust off of them extremely well. They almost died many times along the way, of course. However, thanks to the Divine Doctor, none of them remained that way."


    "Good." Rael calmly nodded. "I look forward to their performance against the iing strike force. I will deploy the seven of them in addition to three more Martial Sages."


    The Hugging Hegemon''s eyes lit up as she raised her arms. "Me. ME. Send me. I will teach those Sekigaharan bastards not to mess with the Kandrian Empire."


    "Very well." Emperor Rael nodded. "I hereby call for emergency protocol A65-KND. We willmence the signing of the war contract as soon as this council meeting is concluded. In addition to you, I shall naturally deploy Sage Farana and Sage Dashian of the Martial Artillery division of the Royal Army to serve as a stabilizer to ensure that none of the battles go south."


    Sage Farana did not acknowledge the words of the emperor during her role as his bodyguard in this meeting, while the Grand General nodded with a fiery expression.


    Emperor Rael''s gaze returned to the intelligence report before him. "Considering they sent only nine Martial Sages, it can be inferred that they are not aware of the spike in Martial Sages we have recently gained."


    His eyes sharpened. "This can be used against them. I will deploy some more of the Martial Sages of the Martial Union to circle around and box them in, leading to a numeric and position advantage against the enemy. With a total of fourteen Martial Sages surrounding them, they will be at a heavy disadvantage, and we will be able to wipe out as many Martial Sages as possible. In addition¡­"


    His gaze returned to Grand General Aramoeous.


    "I grant you the full authority to deploy, at your discretion, the heavy artillery esoteric siege technology at the disposal of the Royal Army at the border in conjugation with the Kandrian Border Patrol Force to resist the iing enemies with Apocalypse-ss siege weapons." Emperor Rael''s expression grew more serious. "The more hurt and damaged the iing force is, the greater the probability of a clean sweep of a victory."


    His proposals earned a lot of approval from the members of the Kandrian War Council.


    Grand General Aramoeous saluted Emperor Rael stiffly as his eyes zed with determination. "I shall see to it that it is executed to perfection."


    BZZZT!


    Director Shelmin narrowed his eyes gravely. "Less than twenty-four hours, Your Majesty. Those savages have deployed massive deep-strike, multi-terrain armored war carriages to carry their potent Martial forces to the Kandrian Empire. They will arrive at Kandria within a day!"


    Many members of the war council stiffened as their expressions grew grave.


    The air grew heavier.


    It tingled.


    It tingled with peril.


    It couldn''t be helped. The Kandrian Empire had been at a state of peace for a long time.


    Most of the people in the room had been born during this age of peace. The concept of being the target of a potent military assault strike was alien to most of them intuitively.


    Even during the height of the Kandrian Throne War many years ago, civil war had never actually broken out, even if it hade close many times.


    Of course, none of them were afraid as much as they were unustomed to the very notion of the Kandrian Empire being attacked. One did not simply pick a fight with Kandria; this was a truth that many of them had long grown used to.


    Yet, it appeared that the Sekigahara Confederate had no respect for this truth whatsoever.


    However, deep down, that wasn''t very surprising to anybody present, for the Sekigahara Confederate had always been the most martial and maniacal out of all the four powerhouses of East Panama.


    "Even then¡­" Grand General Aramoeous gritted his teeth. "¡­How dare they so brazenly attack the Kandrian Empire? Do they have no respect for the powerhouse that Kandria is?!"


    "It''s because they respect Kandria''s martial prowess that they have gone as far as to deploy a strike force of nine Martial Sage and more than a hundred Martial Masters." Rui narrowed his eyes as he calmly analyzed the circumstances. "It''s rather interesting that the number of Masters they sent is more than a hundred times the Martial Sages they sent."


    Director Shelmin''s eyes widened, catching on to the subtext of Rui''s observations. "You mean¡­?"


    Emperor Rael smiled. "Very astute of you, my son."


    "It''s obvious when you look at the demographics thatpose the strike force of the Sekigahara Confederate," Rui calmly continued as he extrapted the goals of their enemy based on what the most likely oue of this assault was from the perspective of his enemy with the information that they had at the time. "Assuming that there was some degree of thought put into this attack and the fact that they don''t know about our extra seven Martial Sages, then they have deployed just enough Martial Sages to stall out our known Martial Sages. Nine is not enough to ovee ten Martial Sages, but it is enough to keep them in ce."


    "¡­That means that the true strike force are the Martial Masters?!" Realization dawned on Grand General Aramoeous. "This¡­"


    "It is much harder for the Martial Masters of the Kandrian Empire to keep a hundred and ten Martial Masters in check," Rui''s eyes grew more severe, "than it is for the Martial Sages of the Kandrian Empire to keep the enemy Martial Sages in check. If a portion of the enemy Martial Force manages to get into the nation¡­"


    His voice trailed off.


    He didn''t need to even finish that statement.


    Even if the Masters of the Sekigahara Confederate respected the norms of the Panamic Martial Federation when it came to genocide, there were no rules against crippling a nation''s systems.


    Things like energy andmunication, food, manufacturing, and Martial infrastructure could be annihted with no legal liability from the Panamic Martial Federation by design.


    The stakes were higher than they had ever been.


    -


    This chapter upload first at  This is the property of N?-velDrama.Org.

 Chapter 2209 Deciding Factor

    Chapter 2209 Deciding Factor


    "You''re correct." Emperor Rael nodded. "In this battle, no, in this war, the Martial Masters of the Kandrian Empire will be the most taxed and will have the most important role."


    The others in the war council stirred at his words.


    "Finding and convincing seven crippled Martial Sages is far easier than finding and rallying hundreds of crippled Martial Masters," Emperor Rael continued calmly. "Our ventures in finding and convincing international Martial Masters has not experienced the same kind of sess that our ventures with Sages has. In other words¡­"


    Rui''s eyes narrowed. "Martial Masters will experience the greatest hardships and will be the most decisive part of this war. If we are able to withstand the greater pressure that we will experience, we will win. If not, we may very well lose this war."


    "I''ll have to apologize for being unable to avoid mounting this pressure on you, my son." The Emperor heaved a resigned sigh. "But yes, for better or for worse, war at the Master-level battles will be the most deciding factor for the future of the Kandrian Empire."


    Many of the members of the Kandrian War Council frowned as they digested the insights that the Emperor of Harmony and the Void Prince gave them.


    It was highly counter-intuitive.


    In any war between Sage-level powerhouses, the most important and deciding element was usually the Sage-level battles.


    After all, Martial Sages were the strongest by far for all practical purposes.


    Yet, in a strange turn of events, due to the strategic impacts of imbnced demographics, Masters ended up bearing a much greater responsibility in this war than any other war in history.


    "I am inclined to agree with your analyses, Your Majesty, Your Highness." Director Shelmin nodded. "I will endeavor to have the analytical department produce a more precise, urate, and data-driven analysis on the burden that Martial Masters will be facing in this war and provi¡ª"


    "It''s two-point-eight to one against us," Rui instantly crunched the numbers. "When weighted for the impact of Operation House Divide on the effective war potential of the Republic of Gorteau, then you have a less extreme number. However, it still means that each Kandrian Martial Master will have to have to fight more than one Martial Master. Estimated probability of victory when taking into ount weighted maximum deployment rate is still only eighteen percent."


    Everybody stared at him, dumbstruck.


    "Your calctions are based on iplete data." Rael shook his head. "You are still not aware of the full extent of my grand n and the many more measures that I have instated to increase our probability of victory. That is not your fault, of course. I have maintained a strict need-to-know basis for information dissemination. However, even considering that, the Martial Masters of the Kandrian Empire will have the most important and difficult role in this battle."


    The other Martial Masters sitting behind the Martial Sages of the Martial Union stiffened as their expressions grew grave.


    It was to be expected.


    They had just been informed that they would be experiencing the greatest difficulty and that their performance would end up deciding whether or not the Kandrian Empire suffered victory in not just this battle but also this war.


    All because the Martial Sages had disproportionately greater numbers, making both the consequences of individual defeats and the probability of defeat much lower.


    All because of that, Martial Masters suddenly experienced the burden of being the most deciding factor in the war.


    It was deeply unpleasant.


    Yet, Rui couldn''t contain his jubtion.


    "This is everything that I desired and more." The darkness in his eyes rumbled with vigor while an excited grin widened on his face.


    He was tired of light sparring.


    He was tired of duels that couldn''t stir his heart. Material ? of N?velDrama.Org.


    Stale battles devoid of even the slightest whiff of true peril.


    The experience it gave him was meager inparison to the experience he gained from a battle where his life was on the line. Inparison, his years in the Beast Domain made him feel more alive than being cooped up in the manifold despite its miraculous benefits. It made his Martial Art feel more real and validated his Martial Path. It elevated him closer to his greatest ambition than all the peace and harmony in the world did.


    He only grew more excited at the additional war burdens and the additional pressure that he sought to adaptively evolve to in order to teach him more about himself than meditating in peace ever could.


    "Ah¡­" A hint of realization dawned on him. "I see¡­"


    He fell into a reverie as he gained deeper insights into who he was.


    Grand General Aramoeous stood up with force. "Your Majesty! We can discuss the broader dynamics of the war at ater time. For now, we must immediately prepare for the iing assault, lest our inadequate preparations fail us."


    Emperor Rael nodded. "You''re right. I hereby dere a national emergency. Ensure that the protocols are immediately executed. I have already authorized you and the Kandrian Border Patrol Force to have full discretion over the allocation of military resources in adherence to prior established goals. I appoint Sage Farana as the leader of the Sage interception squad consisting of the Sages of not just the Army but also the Sages of the Sage Council, who are obligated to partake in the operation under the provisions of the Martial Covenant. Be sure to coordinate the timings of your operations in ordance with protocol."


    "Understood, Your Majesty." Grand General Aramoeous''s eyes red with determination.


    "Protect this nation." Emperor Rael''s rich voice grew more severe. "Protect the Harmony we have cultivated together."


    His powerful gaze swept across the table.


    "Protect not just the present but also the future our enemies fight to deny us. Do this, and I swear to all of you, in the name of Rael Di Kandria, that the Kandrian Empire will reach unprecedented realms of glory, harmony, and power."


    "I hereby dere this council meeting to be concluded." His tone grew profound as his eyes closed. "Glory to Kandria."


    "GLORY TO KANDRIA!" -


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 Chapter 2210 Broad Unfolding

    Chapter 2210 Broad Unfolding


    Once the council disbanded, everyone hurried to work with grave expressions, determined not to fail in their duties. If there was ever a moment when their nation could not afford anything less than a ster discharge of the duties of her leaders, it was now.


    Each of them immediately got to work, swiftly and carefully discharging their responsibilities in ordance with protocol.


    Soon enough, a national emergency was dered.


    Esotericmunication and broadcast, fliers, posters, and announcements spread across the entire nation as Emperor Rael formally dered a national emergency.


    Soon enough, the protocols were immediately put into ce. The Ministry of Domestic Affairs immediately began a nationwide evacuation away from the borders in consultation with the Kandrian Intelligence Bureau.


    It was best to ensure that the people were as far away from the borders as possible so that none of them could possibly be hurt by the devastating battle that was surely about to ensue nearby.


    The Kandrial Border Patrol Force prepared pre-installed energy instors on stand-by that would ensure that the seismic and atmospheric radiation from the battles would not enter the Kandrian Empire and would not wreak havoc. This allowed Kandrian Martial Sages and Masters to go all out without having to worry about inadvertently harming the nation amidst their battles.


    The Royal Army and the Kandrian Border Patrol Force coordinated the reinforcements of additional Apocalypse-ss long-range heavy artillery siege weapons to begin bombarding the iing deep-strike force the moment they entered the strike range of the weapons.


    Naturally, the sudden deration of a national emergency shook the poption of the Kandrian Empire, leaving them deeply terrified and in panic.


    "It''s doomsday!" one man shrieked with a terrified voice as he tried wading through the heavily congested streets of the town of Hajin. "We''re all going to die!"


    Unfortunately, his sentiment wasn''t umon.


    "This nation is as good as dead!"


    "Dammit! I need to leave!"


    "Move! Get out of the way!"


    The authorities delicately regted and directed the panicking crowds in the cities of the Kandrian Empire.


    "Calm down, citizens of Hajin." The panicking townsmen froze as a powerful, elderly voice spread across the entirety of the town. It was powerful yet gentle.


    "Panicking is neither needed nor helpful," Headmaster Aronian announced with a calm voice. "Please move towards the underground bunkers in and around the Town of Hajin in a calm and orderly manner. Your safety is guaranteed. I can assure you that much."


    Emperor Rael had ordered the construction of powerful and highly secure bunkers capable offortably holding the entire poption of the nation precisely for a day like this.


    It was finally paying off now that war had been dered and even waged.


    While the citizens were shepherded to safe bunkers, the upper echelons of the Kandrian Empire were even more shocked than the citizens.


    It was rare that those in the know were caught so off-guard by such a massive development. Belongs to N?velDrama.Org - All rights reserved.


    The least affected were the maritime and seafaring industries of the Kandrian Empire, yet they were forced to temporarily shut down all of their operations, much to their dismay. The various powerhouses in the finance,mercial, and industrial sectors experienced a sudden freeze in all their operations while the empire fully entered an official state of national emergency.


    Even the Martial Union, the most powerful entity in the Kandrian Empire alongside the Emperor of Harmony, had no choice but to shut down all operations, missions, andmissions, domestic or international.


    The human employees and members of the organization were forced to move to shelters and bunkers.


    However, the Martial Artists were put to work.


    They weren''t civilians, after all.


    Martial Apprentices and Squires were harnessed to aid the Ministry of Domestic Affairs to some degree, while all Martial Artists of higher Realms focused on approaching external threats.


    Protocol A65-KND was a protocol that arranged Martial and military resources in the most optimal manner for arge Sage-level deep-strike force approaching the Kandrian Empire.


    Yet, while the Kandrian Empire hastily prepared for the iing strike force, the world had already learned of everything happening in the Kandrian Empire.


    How could it not?


    Anything that happened in a Sage-level powerhouse sent ripples across a section of the continent. The abrupt deration of national emergency of the nation put all of East Panama into a state of shock.


    "What the hell happened in that sted nation that it had to dere an emergency?!"


    "Tsk, it''s the Kandrian Empire; something or the other is constantly happening."


    "It must be due to President Raymond''s deration of war."


    The world had yet to learn of the existence of the deep-strike force that was moving to the Kandrian Empire, even as they spected on the reason for the national emergency. Thus, on the outside, many people could only assume it was in reaction to the deration of war from the Republic of Gorteau that hade just a bit prior.


    In this case, many could not help but think that the Emperor of Harmony was overreacting.


    Yet, the upper echelons of the political sphere knew that this was not the case.


    Emperor Rael did not do anything that could be framed as an overreaction.


    His reaction meant that something big was underway.


    The nations in the vicinity of the Kandrian Empire were particrly nervous and terrified, dering their own emergencies even if they had no idea why the Emperor of Harmony had chosen to do so in the first ce. Regardless, the fact that the Kandrian Empire did it was a good enough reason for them to do so as well. After all, whatever could threaten the mighty Kandrian Empire was enough to also threaten the puny nations in its domain of power.


    Regardless, the entirety of the Panama Continent turned its gaze to the historic event that had unfolded in the Kandrian Empire with bated breaths.


    Soon, the inception of the third Great East Panamic War would ensue, sparking a conflict that would define the future of human civilization.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2211 Clarified Objective

    Chapter 2211 rified Objective


    While the whole of East Panama was rocked by the national emergency dered by the Kandrian Empire, Rui had his own thoughts and considerations regarding the matter.


    He was pleased by the oue.


    He would get to experience gruelingbat against the Martial Masters of the Sekigahara Confederate. He knew that the Sekigahara Confederate was generally considered to be the most Martially powerful state in recent years due to the slowdown of the Britannian Empire since the breakthrough of the Transcendent Emperor.


    Of course, he knew that that no longer was true with the treasures that the Kandrian Empire possessed.


    With things like the upgraded Squire evolution process from the Divine Doctor and the Hungry Pain, as well as his blessings for each individual Martial Body of the Upper Realms, there was a good chance that the Kandrian Empire had surpassed the Sekigahara Confederate with that alone.


    However, the addition of the seven new Martial Sages alone was damning. With this, the Kandrian Empire would be officially recognized as the strongest Sage-level powerhouse in existence, with a whopping twenty-three Martial Sages on retainer.


    That was more than any other powerhouse in existence.


    He knew that they were quite secure on the Sage-level front in this new war.


    The most difficult burden would fall on the shoulders of the Martial Masters of the Kandrian Empire. While Kandria had enough power to potentially equal the Sage-levelbat potential of the three Sage-level powerhouses of East Panama, it most certainly wascking, to a certain extent, in the Master Realm.


    Of course, they were alsockingin the Squire and Senior realms, but that didn''t matter because Squires and Seniors were too weak to affect the strategic outlook.


    From the demographics of the deep strike force, Rui had already figured out that the goal of this operation was to tie up the Martial Sages and ensure that they couldn''t intervene in the Master-level battles while using the Martial Masters to break into the Kandrian Empire and inflict damage to its key systems and sectors.


    While most other Martial Masters cursed the Sekigahara Confederate, Rui was perhaps the only one who was grateful for this strategy. Immense pressure was exactly what he needed.


    And he looked forward to it.


    However, before he joined the Master-level interception force, he had some things to do.


    STEP


    He arrived at the Quarrier Orphanage, gentlynding from the sky.


    Even before his arrival, he could sense the negativity emanating from the minds of all of his friends and family with the mind sense of the Martial Mind. Anxiety, anguish, fear. It would be stranger if they didn''t experience any of these.


    "Big brother!" Max and Mana were the first to sense him.


    "Big brother, we just heard the national emergency dered!" Mana eximed to him with a worried expression. "Are we under attack or something?" Max frowned.


    "Yes," Rui confirmed with a calm expression. "We are under attack from the Sekigahara Confederate. I need the two of you to gather everybody and head to the outer districts in the town of Hajin."


    The Martial Squires widened their eyes in surprise. "We''re under attack¡­?!" Belongs to N?velDrama.Org - All rights reserved.


    "There''s no time to waste at all," Rui urged them. "I need the two of you to ensure that everybody gets to the bunkers in the town of Hajin."


    He nced at the other members of the orphanage who had caught up with him.


    "Rui¡­" Julian gazed at him with a grave expression. "¡­Are we in danger?"


    "No." Rui shook his head. "You''re almost certainly not going to get hurt, I can assure you. The evacuation is just a precaution because we don''t want to take chances, so make sure you head to the underground shelters, got it?"


    Julian nodded with a solemn expression. "We''ll get there."


    "Good." Rui nodded. "I''d love to stay with you, but I need to head out to join the interception force, so I''ll be seeing you after this is over."


    A lot ofthe members of the orphanage stiffened as they realized he would undoubtedly be partaking in the war to protect the Kandrian Empire.


    "Thank you and¡­ be safe."


    Rui smiled. "I will. You guys need to head to Hajin immediately, got it?"


    They all nodded before bidding Rui goodbye.


    Rui immediately headed toward the interception force that was preparing to head out and intercept the force that was rapidly heading their way even as they prepared.


    The battle would not happen at the border of the Kandrian Empire.


    It wouldn''t happen anywhere near the Kandrian Empire at all.


    If the enemy Martial Sages were allowed to reach the fort wall, then the risk of damage to the Kandrian Empire was too high. Thus, the Martial Sages needed to be intercepted far away from the Kandrian Empire to ensure that the nation''s security was notpromised in an attempt to protect it.


    The same was true for Master-level battles, albeit to a lesser degree. Martial Masters could not afford to fight at the border as that would undoubtedly spread harm in the Kandrian Empire due to the sheer amount of power that Masters were still capable of outputting.


    Thus, both Realms ofbat would ur in separate regions far away from the Kandrian Empire.


    That was why they could not afford to wait for the deep strike force to actually reach the Kandrian border.


    STEP


    Rui arrived at the military dispatch facility at the border, immediately heading to meet his fellow Masters.


    He didn''t fail to miss the nigh endless Apocalypse-ss and Cmity-ss siege weapons and heavy artillery that were being mounted on the walls of the fort.


    As soon as the deep strike force entered the firing range of the border, they would immediately be bombarded with devastatingly catastrophic attacks that would alter the topography of the entire region.


    "We of the Master Realm will be intercepting them about a thousand kilometers from the Kandrian Empire," Master Sera began as she addressed the many Masters gathered in the base. "Let me remind all of you that our goal is not to win battles, no. Our goal is to ensure that none of them get past us and reach the Kandrian Empire."


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2212 Tempered Psychology

    Chapter 2212 Tempered Psychology


    Rui regarded her words with approval.


    She was right. Victory in war was very different from victory in a duel between Martial Artists.


    They weren''t even remotelyparable. Not only were the conditions for what counted as a victory in the war different from the conditions for victory in a duel but the way one would go about the former was very different from the way one would in a duel.


    That was the purpose of the little briefing that was being held for the Martial Masters of the Kandrian Empire.


    "Killing one opponent and wounding another is considered a failure if you allow thetter to reach the Kandrian Empire while you''re busy killing the former," Master Sera calmly informed the gathering of Masters here. "Injuring both opponents and ensuring that they remain with you and don''t go anywhere, on the other hand, is considered a victory. I only hold these briefings because none of us have gotten any pressing border defense experience in recent times. Thus, it would behoove all of you to shake off all individualistic notions of victory in this operation."


    It was a prudent choice. This is the property of N?-velDrama.Org.


    There were probably several Martial Masters who would have fought with the intention of obtaining individual victories as much as possible.


    She had keenly realized that and sought to break them out of this mindset rather than have such fools ruin the operation she was assigned to be the head of.


    The reason that she was assigned to be the head of the Master-level interception force was rather simple.


    She was the strongest.


    Out of all one hundred and eighty-five Martial Masters in the Kandrian Empire, she was the absolute strongest without any dispute. She was one of the three grade-thirty Martial Masters that existed in all of East Panama and was considered to be a Sage seed, someone with a particrly high probability of breaking through.


    "We''re outnumbered," she continued. "The Sekigahara Confederate has essentially depleted all avable Master-level resources in their nation at the time and thrown them at us. If not for the fact that we have a mysterious surge in the number of Martial Masters recently, we would be outnumbered even more significantly."


    No one here knew that Rui was responsible for the elerated breakthroughs except for theHarbinger herself and the headmasters and headmistresses of the academies who had cooperated with him on the breakthroughs.


    It was true that without Rui, there would be much fewer Martial Masters at their disposal. Not only had he introduced the voidlet techniques all those years ago that were finally spreading to allyers of the Senior Realm, but he also broke them through in his spare time.


    If not for that, they would be screwed in many ways, but Rael had taken all of this into consideration when he sent so many Martial Masters and Sages to the Beast Domain to get their hands on precious treasures that could be further used to elevate the Kandrian Empire.


    "However, while we have a numeric disadvantage, we do have the element of surprise." Master Sera smiled. "All of our Martial Bodies are substantially stronger than ever before, unbeknownst to them and thanks to the Divine Doctor. Furthermore, we have trained for six years in the manifold, having made noticeable progress. On top of that, the information about our elerated Master-level breakthroughs has not been disclosed yet. Thus, their numerical advantage will be much less than they were informed of."


    A smile cracked at the edge of her mouth. "These miscalctions will catch them off-guard and will allow us to kill more than we can after they adapt. Faulty intelligence can be devastating if exploited correctly. And the way to do that is¡­"


    Her smile grew sinister. "¡­to push yourself to the limit to kill as many of them at the very inception of the battle when they will be caught most off-guard."


    The Masters listening to her stirred. "The shock from the faulty intelligence and the sudden deaths of several of their allies will most likely inflict a psychological blow," Master Sera continued with a knowing tone. "However, this will only amount to an advantage; it cannot singlehandedly turn the tides of the battle in our favor. After all, we''re fighting the damn Sekigahara Confederate. Those bastards participate in wars multiple times every day. They''re in their home element while we''re outside ourfort zone due to theck of serious war since thest Great East Panamic War."


    Rui nodded appreciatively.


    Her analysis of the psychological aspects of war was spot-on.


    Then again, perhaps it ought not to be much of a surprise, considering her specialty and her Martial Path.


    She was the only Martial Master he knew who possessed an academic degree aside from himself. She was a licensed therapist and psychiatrist in the Kandrian Empire, graduating from the Kandrian Institute of Humanities with honors when she had been a Senior. Of course, she didn''t just do it for fun. No.


    It had to do with her Martial Path.


    Trauma Induction.


    She diagnosed the mental health of her opponent''s mid-battle using a system of thought created by her background in psychiatry and identified mental, emotional, temperamental, and personality weaknesses and damage in their mind.


    And then, she broke them.


    To be more precise, she used a second system of thought to identify exactly what needed to bemunicated to them in order to trigger PTSD, panic and anxiety attacks, and mental and emotional breakdowns.


    And in their mentally weakened state, she killed them.


    She was also the only known Martial Artist in history to win battles by making her opponentmit suicide.


    Not a single Martial Master dared to challenge her tobat. Not even a spar.


    Nor did she ept the challenge that Rui had issued to her during his time in the manifold grinding for experience.


    "Ah, young man." She hadughed at him. "I can''t control my power. I would hate to make your path to the Sage Realm harder than it already is."


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2213: Greetings

    Chapter 2213: Greetings


    ?


    Her presence as the leader of the operation brought great confidence to the group of masters she would be leading in the war against the Sekigahara Confederate. It was difficult to


    imagine her losing to anybody in the Master Realm.


    Yet, even she could only do so much.


    For many Martial Masters, this was their first time in a Master-level battle of such scale.


    The air tingled.


    It pricked at the skin even after the briefing and the final preparations for the dispatch wereplete.


    "Rui."


    His attention was drawn by his friends who approached him.


    "How are you doing?" Master Ceeran asked with a stiff smile. "I had to psychologically condition myself to bring myself to peak form for this battle."


    Rui understood his sentiment, of course.


    But he didn''t share it.


    It took everything he had to stop a silly excited grin from appearing on his face.


    "I''m doing just great," he replied with a restrained tone. "The past few months have been mind-numbingly boring. I look forward to not just this battle but to the entirety of the third Great East Panamic War."


    Headmaster Aronian smiled warmly with a knowing tone. "I expected you to say that. You will finally gain the experience you sought. Although this battle will not give you the same amount of experience as the sparring battles you have had in the manifold, it will give you a far higher quality of experience. I suspect this war will be extremely fruitful in that regard and will most likely build your intuition and instinct far more than any amount of mundane sparring ever could."


    Rui nodded. This was what he was hoping for as well. He hoped that this war wouldpletely bridge the gap with higher quality experience that only something as significant as a Great East Panamic War could give him.


    In addition, being faced with so many opportunities for Adaptive Evolution would give him the direction to create new techniques. After all, this was just as important as experience and was one avenue where he wasckingpared to other Martial Masters. He had not


    saturated his Martial Art with as many techniques as possible.


    Not even close.


    This war would serve to show him what he needed and what the optimal path forward for his growth trajectory was.


    "Be careful, however," Master Zentra cautioned. "It''s all well and good to seek out more experience, but it won''t do if you push too hard and end up dying due to going too far and biting more than you can chew. Understand your limits and push yourself to and not beyond them."


    Rui nodded. "I am aware; I don''t intend to do anything that will obviously get me killed."


    "In addition, remember what the purpose of the operation is," Master Vericita reminded him. "While you may gain more experience from trying to fight this as if it were a duel, our objective is to block and, eventually, drive back our enemies."


    Rui nodded again. "I do not intend to act against Kandria''s interests."


    The handful of Martial Masters conversed with each other as they prepared for dispatch, collecting everything from emergency potions to general poison antidotes to a transmitter and a receiver for coordination.


    However, there wasn''t much else.


    Soon enough, all final preparations wereplete.


    Yet, the air only grew more tense as the moment of dispatch approached.


    Each and every Martial Master knew that this battle would be far bigger than anything that they had experienced in the past ny years.Belongs to N?velDrama.Org - All rights reserved.


    Not even the previous Great East Panamic War had such enormous Master level battles


    because there had been far fewer Martial Masters and Sages back then.


    How often did a battle featuring hundreds of Martial Masters ur?


    It was a very limited number, even if one expanded the scope to the entirety of the Panama Continent. Such things simply did not happen except rarely.


    Yet, without warning, they had already been thrust into such an extreme situation. It would be strange if the pressure didn''t mount on them tremendously.


    It wasn''t that they didn''t have confidence. They most certainly did. However, war was an extremely chaotic event. They could end up sumbing to the sheer chaos that ensued rather than due to their own shorings.


    RUMBLE...!


    Suddenly, each Master felt chills crawling down their skin.


    The Apocalypse and Cmity-ss siege weapons mounted on the mighty fort walls bordering the Kandrian Empire began revving into power.


    The sheer amount of power that these weapons were generating was horrifying.


    It dwarfed even Martial Sages in raw power.


    The seismic radiation that they generated only grew as even more power was slowly


    umted.


    Until they were fired off all at once.


    BOOOOOOOOOMMMMMM!!!!!


    That was the day that Rui learned why they were called Cmity-ss and Apocalypse-ss


    weapons.


    They lived up to their name.


    B000000000MMMMMM!!!!!


    BOO0000000MMMMMM!!!!!


    B000000000MMMMMM!!!!!


    The weapons of mass destruction unloaded horrifying amounts of power one after another as massive and dense beams of pure annihtion emerged from the weapons, surging toward an incredibly distant, approaching target. Each of the beams expanded in diameter as they traveled across their trajectory to their targets more than ten thousand kilometers away. By the time they reached their targets, they were vast enough to epass entire nations.


    Their collisions razed the very foundation of thend, leaving nothing behind.


    Nothing except for those who were powerful enough to dismiss the attacks, of course.


    WHOOOSH!


    With a single breath, the Martial Sages of the Sekigahara Confederate manipted heaven


    and earth to ward off the iing devastating destruction.


    Not even a single scratch could be seen upon their visages.


    "Kandria greets us, brothers and sisters." An elegant masculine voice emerged from the man


    at the lead of the deep strike force.


    He lightly dusted off the simple kimono that loosely adorned his Martial Body, sweeping his


    long flowing hair back.


    "Since they''ve chosen to greet us so kindly..." his perilously soft voice continued as a bloodlustden smile appeared on his face, "We should return the favor, shouldn''t we?"


    Predatory grins lit up the faces of Martial Artists of Sekigahara Confederate as they continued


    down their paths, undeterred.


    The battle had begun.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2214 Commencing Battles

    Chapter 2214 Commencing Battles


    "Target distance is approximately fifteen thousand kilometers."


    "Increasing precision factor by about forty percent."


    As the Martial forces of the Sekigahara Confederate continued toward the Kandrian Empire, the teams and divisions assigned to the operation of each Apocalypse-ss and Cmity-ss siege weapon continued to adjust the parameters of the powerful weapons to suit the distance of their targets.


    The closer they got to the Kandrian Empire, the more precisely and urately they were targeted. They would face more power and experience greater resistance as a result. They would have to rely more on evading rather than defending, for the power and destruction would be in excess of even Martial Sages.


    Eventually, they would reach a point where they had to be actually stopped, for any closer and their attacks would be able to reach the Kandrian Empire.


    "That is when Their Sagehoods will engage with the enemies," Master Sera calmly remarked aloud. "We will engage with the enemy Martial Master when they''re poised to reach a distance of a thousand kilometers from the border of the Kandrian Empire. We head out the moment the long-range surveince division of the Kandrian Border Patrol Force tells us to. So remain on stand-by."


    The Master-level interception force grew ever more tense as they waited for the signal toe. War was soon to grace them.


    However they weren''t going to be the first to have a chance.


    VMMMmmm¡­


    They stiffened when the siege weapons stopped their onughts, powering down.


    It was a sign. A sign that none of them failed to understand.


    Neither the Kandrians nor the Sekigaharans.


    Far away from the battlefield, the Martial Sages of the Sekigahara Confederate grinned with excitement and battlelust.


    Silence overtook the battlefield in the absence of the onughts from the siege weapons.


    Yet, it was merely the calm before the storm.


    "Here theye¡­" The leader of the Sekigaharan Martial force smiled softly as his powerful senses detected the iing forces. "Masters of the Sekigahara Confederate, it is time to circle around and continue your journey to the Kandrian Empire. We will hold them back and ensure they don''t turn their power against you." Material ? of N?velDrama.Org.


    He turned, eying all of them. "We Martial Sages will join you after we have defeated our counterparts, once and for all."


    A hundred and ten Martial Masters nodded as bloodlust shed in their eyes. They took off to the sides, trying to get as far away from the region that was soon to be the battleground for Martial Sages of two Sage-level powerhouses.


    Nine Martial Sages stood.


    They waited.


    Until they no longer had to.


    BOOOOOOM!!!


    A devastating attack of heaven and earth crashed into them, threatening to destroy them where they stood.


    s, the Martial Sages of the Sekigahara Confederate were not done in so easily.


    WHOOSH!


    The leader at the forefront of his peers exerted himself as he activated a breathing technique, suppressing the flush of power that surged toward them with ease.


    "Impatient as ever¡­" He smiled. "Damian."


    In the blink of an eye, a fist surged towards him, barely giving him time to block it.


    BOOOOOM!!!


    The sheer power of the attack released a tide of seismic energy that uprooted allnd within thousands of kilometers. Yet, it didn''t so much as perturb either of them.


    "Shinken." Sage Damian grinned with a wild smile. "Today, we will settle once and for all¡­"


    His eyes red with bloodlust. "Which one of us is the strongest!"


    Sage Shinken smiled with an amused expression. "Do you intend to fight all nine of us all by yourself? Where are your friends? I''ve missed them, you see."


    "Heh!" Sage Damian''s grin only widened with anticipation. "Let me introduce you to my friends. Say hello."


    WHOOSH!


    Sage Shinken''s eyes widened as eight more Martial Sages emerged from behind him.


    It wasn''t their numbers that shocked him.


    No.


    What shocked him was their identities.


    "You¡­" His eyes swept across the Martial Sages that reinforced Sage Damian.


    A single question escaped him.


    "Who the fuck are you guys???"


    He stared at all the newly arrived Martial Sages with an aghast expression. He didn''t recognize most of them.


    After all, most of the seven Martial Sages of the Kandrian Empire had been out ofmission for many years and even decades. It was no wonder that the Martial Sage of the Shinken n hadn''t the faintest clue who most of them were. The only one he did recognize was the Underworld Sage, Sage Aggragor, who stood poised with a deeply unwilling expression as he faced off against the Martial Sages of the Sekigahara Confederate.


    The others, however, he didn''t Sage Damian only grew more gleeful as he beheld Sage Shinken''s confusion.


    Yet, he didn''t permit it to linger.


    BOOOOOM!!!


    A second blow surged forward at extraordinary velocities, sending ripples through space and time. Sage Shinken gritted his teeth as he barely managed to block it in time, caught off-guard by the revtion of the Martial Sages of the Kandrian Empire.


    "You don''t have time to focus on them, Shinken." Sage Damian''s expression steeled with malevolent bloodlust. "Your opponent is me and only me."


    Sage Shinken''s eyes red with chilling peril.


    "So be it." A whisper escaped him. "I will show you that you are not my equal. His Realms of power revved to top gear.


    "You never were."


    BOOOOOOOOOOMMM!!!!


    A horrifying wave of power erupted from their battle, threatening to deteriorate the local tectonic te they upied.


    Heaven and earth screamed under the astronomical weight of the onught that the two peak Martial Sages unleashed upon the world.


    They were forces of nature unto themselves.


    The battle between the two strongest Martial Sages of their respective nations created a maelstrom of power so enormous that even the other Martial Sages flinched, stepping away to a different region in the blink of an eye.


    They merely exchanged a single nce before all hell broke loose.


    BOOOOOOM!!! BOOOOOOM!!! BOOOOOOM!!!


    The newest Martial Sages of the Kandrian Empire leaped into action, racing after targeted opponents. Each of them had been briefed on the Martial Sages of all three powerhouses. They knew which Martial Sages they had the best synergy andbination against, and they deliberately avoided Martial Sages they knew that they were not suited to perform against.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2215 Strategic Choices

    Chapter 2215 Strategic Choices


    Sage Kole Kellin would be lying if she said her nerves didn''t tingle.


    This was her first true battle in more than a decade.


    It was also her first time executing an order by the Emperor to whom she had pledged her undying loyalty.


    In other words, it was the first time she had the opportunity to pay back some of the astronomical debt she owed her new home and her new liege.


    She needed to perform.


    If she didn''t, then she would be conceding that she was unworthy of the miracle that Emperor Rael had bestowed upon her.


    ''Anything but that¡­'' Her expression grew steely as she balled her fists before activating her most powerful technique.


    The Divine Inferno Fist technique.


    FWHOOOSH!


    White hot fires emerged, epassing the entirety of her fists, crackling as she exerted herself to maintain control over them.


    To call them an inferno was a misnomer.


    After all, they weren''t mes.


    No.


    They were sma.


    Not just any kind of sma but a particrly hyper-heated sma known as quark-gluon sma that was matter broken down to its most fundamental constituents and forces. At the Sage Realm, fire was a primitive source of energy and a paltry means of attack. Thus, upon entry to the Sage Realm, she had tapped into the greater forces that governed the very universe itself.


    Discovering and mastering this exotic form of matter and energy had been the most difficult task in her entire life, but once she had seeded, her lethality had risen so much that it had been enough to propel her to be a high-grade Martial Sage.


    With the power of high principles, her technique and Martial Art had been reborn.


    She was the Master of the Inferno Fist.


    "HA!" She surged forward to her opponent with a fiery expression as her fists¡ªshining with white-hot sma¡ªflew towards him.


    BOOOM!! BOOOM!! BOOOM!!


    "Urgh¡­!" Her opponent grimaced with a furious expression. "Damn you!"


    Sage Senpu leaped back as his hands burned under the temperature of Sage Kole''s inferno fist, gritting his teeth. She set him up.


    He knew it for a fact.


    "What''s the matter?" Sage Kole growled, narrowing her eyes. "You wanted a war, didn''t you? Well¡­"


    Her bloodlust surged as she shot toward him at a high pace. "You got one."


    A smile appeared on his crumpled expression as he ignored her iing attack, activating a wind attack and pointing it to his side, away from her.


    In the direction of the Kandrian Empire. Belongs to N?velDrama.Org - All rights reserved.


    Sage Kole''s expression grew grave as she shifted directions with haste.


    WHOOOOOSH!!!


    A powerful wind st surged toward the Kandrian Empire.


    One that possessed the power to level the entire nation t.


    Only to be chopped down by the might of her Divine Inferno Fist just in time.


    BOOOM!!!


    She used the heat of her technique to dispel the wind currents, protecting Kandria from destruction.


    For a moment, the two Martial Sages faced each other in silence as their Martial Minds and systems of thought revved into full power.


    The bald Martial Sage tucked the sleeves of his Martial attire as he fell into thought, gazing at the white sma crackling around the fists of Sage Kole.


    She was the worst type of opponent for him.


    His Martial Path was Kic Redirection.


    He manipted the flow of power and momentum of his opponent''s attacks aftering into contact with them and used it against them. At the Sage Realm, he had even gone as far as to incorporate space maniption, one of the highest principles of high principles known in all of Martial Art.


    However, it was ineffective against her type.


    Specifically, the type of offensive Martial Artist that didn''t rely on momentum to inflict damage but through a principle that allowed them to inflict damage just by contact alone. This was the type he was most ill-suited to handle. Redirection required contact, after all.


    However, against her, he couldn''t afford to make contact with much of her arm.


    Thus, many of his techniques were rendered obsolete.


    "You¡­" His eyes narrowed. "You nned for this, didn''t you, Sage Kole?"


    She wasn''t surprised that he recognized her after she activated her technique. Even though he probably had no idea who she was prior due to how infrequently she had made public appearances during her time in the Panamic Martial Federation, only an idiot would not put the pieces together after seeing her unique, shy technique.


    "Perhaps I did," she calmly replied even as her systems of thought furiously processed her circumstances.


    As a full-contact, close-range fighter, her greatest strategic challenge in battles tended to be actually getting a hit on her opponents. After all, after seeing the lethality of her technique, her opponents did everything in their power to ensure they didn''t get touched by her.


    It was because of this that her Martial Mind was filled with strategic and tactical systems of thought that allowed her to get into contact with her opponent. Under normal circumstances, she would have already been aggressively pursuing them already. However, there were variables that changed these circumstances.


    Her goal was not victory.


    At least, not yet.


    She needed to stall and tire her opponent out.


    After all, the Kandrian Empire possessed more Martial Sages that had yet to be deployed.


    They were waiting for the right moment.


    Too soon, the enemy Martial Sages would simply adopt a highly defensive and retreating strategy, and this would allow the Kandrian forces to wipe out the Martial Masters of the Sekigahara Confederate.


    However, killing Martial Sages was far more desirable for their strategic long-term victory in this war than just killing Martial Masters. That was why the other Martial Sages of the Martial Union were hidden, waiting for the right moment.


    The perfect ambush.


    All Sage Kole really needed to do was ensure that the Kandrian Empire did note to harm in the time being. Killing her opponent was not a priority right now; tiring him out so that his reaction time and reflexes were slower than their peak was the most optimal oue.


    Once his stamina plummeted to such a level, he would be more vulnerable to ambushes than ever before.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2216 Wont Fail A Second Time

    Chapter 2216 Won''t Fail A Second Time


    BOOOM BOOOM BOOOM!!!


    Many strategic considerations shed in the minds of the Martial Sages of both sides as they fought against each other. Belonging ? N?velDram/a.Org.


    The appearance of seven brand-new Martial Sages on whom they didn''t have any strategic intelligence on was unnerving to the Sekigaharan Martial Sages.


    This was an extreme failure of intelligence on the part of the Nindo n. The fact that their intelligence wing had been unable to learn of the existence of seven new Martial Sages in the Kandrian Empire in and of itself was grounds to abort the operation and return back to the Sekigahara Confederate.


    However, they could not do that, for they could notmunicate with their Martial Masters.


    In other words, they had no choice but to ensure that they fulfilled their part of the strategy no matter what.


    Yet, it was deeply sub-optimal.


    They could not help but feel like they hadpletely lost the initiative even though they had been the ones boldly marching towards the Kandrian Empire with the intention of destroying it.


    What especially made them grave was the fact that they knew that this was not everything that the Kandrian Empire had as far as Martial Sages went. They had received credible intelligence that many of the Martial Sages of the Kandrian Empire were in the Beast Domain, fetching highly precious resources with a miraculous sess rate.


    They had expected to fight the remaining Martial Sages of the Kandrian Empire in a roughly even battle, yet they now faced seven brand-new Martial Sages who had appeared out of nowhere. Didn''t that mean that there definitely were more Martial Sages that had yet to show themselves?


    Sage Senpu grew solemn as he realized he couldn''t afford to give them any ck if the Sekigaharan strike force wanted to salvage this catastrophe of an operation.


    Seven additional Martial Sages was such an enormous oversight that Sage Senpu was resolved to wipe out the Nindo n once he got back home.


    Yet, he knew that their failure in detecting these Martial Sages was not due to their own ipetence as much as it was due to the extraordinarypetence of the Emperor of Harmony.


    WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH!


    Sage Senpu evaded scorching blows from Sage Kole as his expression grew ugly thinking about the Emperor of Harmony. "That bastard¡­" he growled with frustration. If he was right, then the other Martial Sages were just like Sage Kole in that they were once long-retired crippled Martial Sages who had been healed. Even putting aside the fact that such a thing should have been patently impossible, the fact that the Emperor of Harmony had chosen to showcase them instead of hiding them as trump cards pissed him off.


    They were a deterrence.


    It was a message.


    "Do not mess with Kandria, is it?" Sage Senpu''s eyes red with rage. "Fuck you."


    His arm stretched out in the direction of the Kandrian Empire as he activated many more attacks, one after another, threatening to destroy the nation.


    THWHOOSH THWHOOSH THWHOOSH!!!


    Instantly, Sage Kole swerved as she sped to intercept the attacks one after another, dispelling them.


    He soared to the sky, tossing attacks in the direction of the Kandrian Empire in rapid session from many different angles, forcing her to push herself to the limit of her speed to keep up with the attacks.


    BOOOM!!! BOOOM!!! BOOOM!!!


    Sage Kole swiftly chopped down each and every attack he threw in the direction of the Kandrian Empire. Had it not been for the fact that speed was a parameter she had strived to heighten after her lethality, she would have never been able to keep up with each and every single attack thrown in the direction of the Kandrian Empire.


    "Rgh¡­!" She gritted her teeth as she pushed herself to the very limit to deal with the onught of attacks that flew toward the Kandrian Empire. Because the nation was so goddamned enormous, Sage Senpu had a huge amount of leeway when it came to targeting it. Even if his aim was off by a significant angle, the attack would still hit some part of the Kandrian Empire.


    After all, not only was the Kandrian Empire absolutely enormous in its area, but it also was in the shape of a strip, making it a very wide target for any attacker that chose to attack it from the western side.


    Thus, even if Sage Kole was more than powerful enough to go toe to toe against Sage Senpu and even defeat him due to his poorpatibility, he could still put her on the back foot when it came to a battle to protect or destroy the Kandrian Empire.


    "HAHAHA¡­!" A maniacalugh escaped him as he fired attacks one after another. "Yes, that''s it! Dance! Dance for me!"


    THWHOOOSH! THWHOOOSH! THWHOOOSH!


    He unleashed a barrage of attacks in different angles and directions toward various parts of the Kandrian Empire, threatening to wreak havoc across the entire nation.


    "Tsk." Sage Kole gritted her teeth with frustration as she leaped with all the speed and agility she was able to muster, shooting at each wind st and dispelling them upon simple contact with her potent Divine Inferno Fists.


    Thankfully, dispelling each attack took no more than an instant with a simple graze. Her striking technique was one of extraordinary lethality, powered by particrly high principles.


    However, the wind attacks that Sage Senpu threw in the direction of the Kandrian Empire weren''t even his specialty. They were just unsophisticated wind attacks that just about any Martial Sage could conjure up at their Realm of power.


    She was grateful that he was a counteroffensive specialist¡ªit meant he did not possess any inherently high degree of offensive power. Yet, despite that, she was put on the back foot.


    With each attack he shot toward the Kandrian Empire, she inevitably took a step back while he took a step front.


    They both got closer and closer to the Kandrian Empire.


    That was bad, for the closer they got, the greater the probability of harm to the Kandrian Empire!


    "Not on my watch," Sage Kole growled as her eyes zed with determination. "I won''t fail to protect my home a second time."


    The battle between the Martial Sages continued to rise in intensity.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2217 War

    Chapter 2217 War


    The battles between the Martial Sages raged hard as the two sides fought to aplish the goals that they had set out to achieve.


    The Sages of Kandria fought to ensure no harm came to their empire from their enemies, while those of the Sekigahara Confederate fought to pressure their opponents and ensure that they would not be able to redirect their attention elsewhere.


    After all, they needed their Martial Masters to be unperturbed by the Sages of Kandria. This meant that they needed to exert enough pressure to ensure that when the additional Sages made their appearance in battle, it would be solely to reinforce the Sage-level war front.


    Of course, the Sages of the Sekigahara Confederate did not put their faith in Masters alone.


    Their true n had yet to begin.


    For now, even with the massive oversight in the number and identities of Martial Sages present in the Kandrian Empire, they had a path forward to victory.


    While the Martial Sages fought, the Sekigaharan Masters advanced to the thousand-kilometer distance from the Kandrian Empire. The closer they got, the more of a threat they were.


    "This is it," Master Sera lightly dered, turning around to meet the gaze of her fellow Martial Masters. "Do not use your Hearts and Minds until we enter battle, got it? Conserve as much power for the actual war itself. You won''t have time to use stamina potions once the battlemences."


    The Martial Masters behind nodded affirmatively.


    Each one of them knew that once the battle began, they would need every ounce of stamina they could muster to engage the Masters of the Sekigahara Confederate and ensure that none of them reached the Kandrian Empire.


    It would be all-out warfare across an enormous battlefield.


    Anything could happen to anybody, especially when they are surrounded by hundreds of battles.


    They did not follow an orthodox and organized military style of division of specialty into different sections.


    Martial Artists were individualists.


    Unless they''d received dedicated training in coordination andbination, it was almost impossible for them to be able to engage in teamwork with other Martial Artists. And the Master-level interception force was a shabby mix of Martial Masters from different organizations. Most were from the Martial Union, while the rest were from different departments and divisions of the government and the Royal Army and Navy.


    They had no choice but to dig up every single Martial Master they could from everywhere to put up a force that could match the might of the enormous Master-level strike force that was deployed by the Sekigahara Confederate.


    There was no hope for coordination.


    Their only hope was that the same thing was true for their enemies.


    It would end up being every man for himself.


    That was how the war in the upper Realms worked.


    Each and every one of them knew that.


    They knew that this was the unspoken truth that was best left unsaid.


    Yet, it bore down on them, putting immense pressure on each of them.


    The air grew heavy as the moment of deployment drew closer, soon to arrive.


    And it did.


    "It''s time." Master Sera''s demeanor shifted.


    It grew distorted with malevolent bloodlust as a sinister smile cracked at the edge of her mouth.


    "Master-level interception force, dispatching," she spoke into a transmitter before tossing the artifact away as she surged forward.


    "Let''s go show those savages that we''re not to be messed with." Belonging ? N?velDram/a.Org.


    The atmosphere tingled with tension as the Master-level interception force shot out of the dispatch center from the forts that protected the Kandrian Empire, leaving the nation behind them as they moved to meet the enemy at dusk.


    The macabre twilight melted as dusk made way for darkness.


    A meaningless daily event. One that would have been entirely insignificant on any other day.


    Yet, it tightened their hearts, mounting even greater pressure on their hearts.


    Amidst the grave atmosphere around Ruithere were those who only grew brighter.


    He needed to exert physical effort to keep a wide grin from forming on his face. It would be his first experience of genuine life-or-deathbat in the Master Realm. Even his fight with Master Uma had never been that, considering that even she had not fought with the end goal of killing him.


    He needed to be truly pushed beyond his limits for the precious experience and fuel for the growth of his Martial Art.


    Yet, more than just calcted gains, he wanted to fight.


    He wanted a battle.


    Or, to be more precise, he wanted the opportunity to deploy the vast power of his Martial Art in abandon. Unlike Nel, it was not violence that excited him. It was the love he had for Martial Art, specifically his Flowing Void Style, that made him excited forbat.


    "There they are."


    The air boiled with anticipation.


    It prickled at the skin.


    Rui''s eyes lit up as he sensed the bloodlust long before he could actually see his enemies.


    Just how much did those Sekigaharans want to kill them?


    He looked forward to finding out.


    He couldn''t wait.


    And he didn''t need to.


    There they were.


    "AAATTTTAAAACKKKK!!!" A thunderingmand was bellowed by the man at the head of the Sekigaharan strike force. Hismand went both ways.


    BADUMP!!!


    At that moment, two hundred and four Martial Hearts and Minds zed into power, empowering each Martial Master to their peaks.


    Less than a microsecondter, the battle broke out.


    BOOM BOOM BOOM!!!


    The long-range Martial Masters began firing at each other from a distance while the defensive Martial Masters shielded themselves and those around them from the iing attacks.


    RUMBLE!


    Heaven and earth shook under thebined might of such an enormous amount of power concentrated within such a limited vicinity. The sheer power that the Martial Masters outputted was enough to reshape the entire region, causing them to grow stronger.


    The two forces drew closer, firing at each other in abandon until they shed.


    Countless fists, charges, and bullrushes were exchanged as the two forces shed with one another.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2218 Kill Him!

    Chapter 2218 Kill Him!


    BOOOOOOM!!!


    The sheer amount of power that the Martial Masters collectively outputted was so great that one would have thought that two Martial Sages were going all out if one didn''t know better.


    The battle had begun.


    Countless Martial Embodiments bloomed across the entire battle. Each of them was unique in their own way.


    Each of them reflected the Martial Mind of their respective Master.


    Together, their collective might overwrote the entire world. It formed a beautiful cascade of Embodiments that painted heaven and earth with their ephemeral beauty in a tapestry that stretched as far as the eye could see.


    It was horrifying, yet even more beautiful.


    Yet, one Martial Embodiment stood out among them.


    One Embodiment was not like others. Belonging ? N?velDram/a.Org.


    One Embodiment was stronger than all of them.


    From within the depths of his mind, an infinite void expanded, consuming everything and everybody as a euphoric smile spread on his face.


    For a moment, every single Martial Master froze as the void of information spread across the entire battle.


    For a moment, they were all solely aware of a single Martial Artist.


    "KILL THE DAWNBRINGER!" The leader of the Masters of the Sekigahara Confederate bellowed at the Masters of the Sekigahara Confederate. "KILL HIM BEFORE HE GAINS THE POWER TO KILL US ALL!"


    "Eh¡­?" Rui froze. "Wait. Let''s talk abou¡ª"


    "KILL HIM!" A wave of Martial Masters leaped towards it, oozing a wave of bloodlust.


    They had but one target.


    The most prodigious genius the Age of Martial Art had ever beheld.


    "Oh,e on!" Rui gritted his teeth as he leaped away, activating Nemean Blossom as an unavoidable tsunami of attacks flooded his direction. He swiftly activated the Angel of Lace, seeing their past and the path they took to get here. He used the data topute a preliminary predictive model with the pattern recognition system of the VOID algorithm.


    Ever since he broke through to the Master Realm, this process had begun happening almost instantaneously, so much so that it might as well have never happened. Yet, in just the blink of an eye, he could see their future.


    WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH!


    He bobbed and weaved around the iing flow of attacks with astonishing precision and uracy, deactivating Nemean Blossom.


    Ever since he consumed the Sandflower Nectar Potion, he could use the Metabody for more than half an hour continuously at full power.


    However, wars and battles continued for far longer than just a fraction of an hour.


    They could go on for many hours, perhaps even a day.


    He could not afford to burn through all that stamina so quickly.


    With the preliminary predictive models in ce, he gained a modicum of respite as he was able to avoid the flood of attacks that converged on him.


    BOOM BOOM BOOM!!!


    Rui gritted his teeth as he narrowly avoided a barrage of sharp wind currents and sonic projectiles.


    "I''m not even the strongest here!" Heined, grimacing as he activated Phantom Step, confounding them with a series of well-timed feints.


    Yes, he wanted experience.


    No, he did not want to die.


    Unbeknownst to him, however, the power of the Sun technique that Rui had used in the Panamic Martial Federation had left a deep impression on the enemies of the Kandrian Empire.


    Even if it was a forbidden technique, to think that a mere Master could touch upon a Realm of power belonging to those who achieved enlightenment of self was beyond their fathoming.


    He was a threat in every Master-level battle.


    What if he used that technique in this battle?


    What if he gets pushed far enough to decide that he will take them all with him?


    If they won the battle like they intended to, it would undoubtedly mean that the Dawnbringer was bound to die.


    If he could sense he was going to die anyway, then there was no demerit in using the suicidal forbidden technique.


    That is why the Masters of the Sekigahara Confederate hade to a single conclusion.


    The Dawnbringer needed to die early in the battle, preferably at the very beginning of the battle.


    BOOM BOOM BOOM!!!


    Rui gritted his teeth as he evaded another flood of attacks, barely keeping track of where all his aspiring killers were. He failed.


    WHOOSH


    His eyes widened as a sword swung at his neck faster than he could react.


    "Die."


    It surged to his throat in the briefest of moments.


    It certainly would have killed him if not for the timely intervention.


    THWOOSH!!


    A powerful st of wind crashed into the sword arm of the Sekigaharan swordsmen, dying the swing enough.


    WHOOSH!


    Rui leaped away as the de cleaved through the heavens with its ferocious power. He nced in the direction that the st of wind emerged.


    Master Ceeran threw him a quick nod as he resumed his battle with his adversary. There was no time to exchange pleasantries in battle.


    "Damn¡­" Rui caught his breath as his hand instinctively went to his neck, almost as if to verify that it was still there. "Tsk, I wouldn''t have missed that in any ordinary circumstances, but¡­"


    This was war.


    There were Masters fighting all around the entire battlefield,pressed within a small battleground as the Sekigaharan Masters didn''t move too far away from each other to ensure that their numerical advantage would shine the most.


    It also meant that it was impossible to keep track of everything happening in the war.


    He could be taken out with even a bit of carelessness.


    WHOOSH!


    A Martial Master appeared before him, swinging down hard, threatening to knock Rui out then and there.


    Unfortunately, Rui had no intention of being caught off-guard a second time.


    WHOOSH


    He swerved, avoiding the blow as he thrust his most powerful attack.


    BOOOM!!


    The Yin-Yang Spear struck true, permeating its immense power deep into the vitals of its target.


    "Rgh¡­!" The Sekigaharan Martial Master grimaced. "Damn yo¡ª!"


    "Phantom Pain." "AAAARRRRGHHH!!!" He bellowed as the pain magnified tenfold..


    BAM!


    A swift blow to the chin knocked him out then and there.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2219 Challenge

    Chapter 2219 Challenge


    Yet, that wasn''t all.


    CRACK!!!


    Rui ttened his skull without even the slightest hesitation.


    The unconscious Martial Master died then and there.


    The first casualty of the Master-level battle had urred.


    It was not missed.


    Rui turned as his eyes swept the battlefield, meeting the bloodlusting gaze of the Sekigaharan Masters. The tion he had felt from gaining more experience was gone. It was in the first ce. It was an emotion that had no ce in a battlefield, breeding immensecency that almost got him killed.


    "You want to kill me?" His furious voice echoed across the battlefield. "Well¡­"


    His eyes narrowed.


    In their depths stirred an endless darkness.


    A void.


    "¡­Here I am."


    For a moment, the battle seemed to pause the Rui''s overwhelming Martial Embodiment swept across the entire battlefield, snuffing all other Martial Embodiments as though they were merely mes before his inferno.


    Unbeknownst to him, in the Sekigahara Confederate, this was considered an insult and a provocation.


    A deration of superiority.


    Countless Sekigaharan Martial Masters red at him with bloodlust.


    In just a moment, several Martial Masters flooded him from all directions.


    "Die, little bastard!" they roared with furious bloodlust.


    Unfortunately for them, they didn''t have as much luck asst time.


    "Speed Void." Rui bent heaven and earth as his domain expanded, enveloping all his iing opponents. This is the property of N?-velDrama.Org.


    WHOOSH!


    "Eh¡­?" Their eyes widened as Rui casually evaded their full, slowed-down attacks with little effort.


    WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH!


    They gritted their teeth as they fought against a speed-draining high drag coefficient that refused to allow them to reach their full speed.


    That, inbination with the predictive models that he had already built on them, avoiding their attacks was quite easy for Rui, especially with a technique like Phantom Step that confounded when he used it to disappear in their faces.


    Rui''s fighting style shifted radically as he adapted to both his opponents and his circumstances.


    He used a partial Neo-Godspeed while his stance changed as he shifted around bobbing about the entire ce, centering his legs together to reduce the timeframe for shifting directions or speeding up and slowing down.


    He became exceptionally difficult to so much ass touch.


    WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH!


    The Sekigaharan Martial Masters around him gritted their teeth as they went all out, using the full power of their Hearts, Art, and Minds as they did their best to harm him.


    WHOOSH


    He avoided a powerful thrust, side-stepping as he backflipped after evading the wrestling charge.


    WHOOSH WHOOSH!!


    He evaded a spinning kick to the head, sky-walking to the air as he simultaneously evaded charges.


    "GET HIM!" they charged into the air, refusing to let him escape.


    However, much to their chagrin, the domain followed him into the air, slowing down their attacks even more since they were slower skywalking than on the ground.


    WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH!


    Rui immediately went all-out with defense as he bounced about his domain, evading the attacks they threw at him.


    The Speed Void domain was the most optimal choice to adaptively evolve to his circumstances and opponents. Just the fact that he had multiple opponents was a good reason to focus on domains.


    After all, domains typically had an effect on the entirety of the field they covered. Thus, it was useful for getting all of his opponents.


    Furthermore, dodging took little effortpared to the powerful and lethal attacks that they hurtled at him. Thus, he could drain their energy reserves long before he tired out. Then, he could effortlessly kill them after tha¡ª "You think it will be that easy?"


    Rui felt chills crawling down his spine as Primordial Instinct rang rms in his head.


    WHOOSH!!!


    Rui barely evaded an immensely powerful attack.


    BOOOM!!!


    The sheer power of the blow tore apart his domain with its devastating impact on the heavens.


    Rui''s expression grew severe as he swiftly turned around, leaping away as he beheld the new threat that had intervened in his battle.


    "Master Kaijin!" The Masters of the Sekigahara Confederate bowed to him despite the war that surrounded them. "We are gratefu¡ª"


    "Shut up."


    His voice was deep and raspy. His muscr body was littered with scars underneath his Martial dougi.


    His fierce eyes red at the Sekigaharan Master around him with contempt.


    "You weaklings couldn''t defeat a snot-nosed brat who entered the Master Realm three years ago?" They flinched at his words. "Master Kaijin¡ª"


    "Enough." He growled. "Go join the others and weather down the Kandrian Masters, you useless louts¡­"


    His gaze shifted to Rui, shing with bloodlust.


    "Yes, Master Kaijin!


    They scurried off, leaving the two remaining Martial Masters to their devices.


    "You know," Rui began, heaving a sigh. "Next time you try to provoke me with petty insults, don''t be so extra."


    He directed a steely gaze at the powerful Martial Master.


    "You''re transparent."


    A smile appeared on Master Kaijin''s face. "Hoho, it appears that rumors of the wisdom beyond your age were not wrong. I had hoped that, given your youth and the overwhelming sess that has been your Martial Art career, you would have an ego proportional to your unfathomable talent, but it appears not. In that case¡­"


    He adopted a wide-legged stance as his powerful arms stretched out before him with the fingers of his t palm facing him.


    A ssic Karate stance.


    "¡­I challenge you to a battle, Master Rui," his tone grew more intense yet respectful. "I have looked forward to fighting the Void Prince of the Kandrian Empire for a long time."


    It was deeply odd to be challenged formally in the middle of a war.


    Yet, it was nothing out of par for the martial culture of the Sekigahara Confederate. "Should you ept," Master Kaijin continued. "You will not be ambushed for the duration of our fight as they have undoubtedly witnessed my challenge to you."


    His eyes shed with battle lust.


    Yet, they lit up with tion when he saw Rui take a stance before him.


    "I ept your challenge," Rui''s tone was intense. "You see¡­"


    His eyes narrowed.


    "I love fighting people stronger than me."


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2220 Overcome Prediction

    Chapter 2220 Ovee Prediction


    It wasn''t that Rui knew for a fact that Master Kaijin was stronger than him. It was just a gut instinct that he had already been warned to not trust in the Master Realm. After all, Martial Masters were unfathomable beings in theplexity of their power.


    Yet, despite that, it was hard for Rui to ignore his instincts in this matter.


    The man had an overwhelming, thick, and suffocating aura.


    Almost as if he was a fortress looming over his hapless opponents.


    He was undoubtedly a striking-oriented Martial Artist. However, Rui was unsure whether he leaned more defensive or offensive. He would have to find out in battle.


    "Noting?" Master Kaijin raised an eyebrow. "In that case¡­"


    His eyes sharpened.


    The air grew more perilous.


    It happened far quicker than Rui could have ever imagined.


    WHOOSH!


    In the blink of an eye, he had already arrived before Rui. A palm jab flew towards Rui at a blurringly high speed, threatening to take his head off.


    It was within Rui''s prediction.


    WHOOSH!


    "Oh?" Master Kaijin raised an eyebrow as Rui evaded the jab with the slightest sidestep. Yet, he was undeterred.


    WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH!


    A flurry of powerful palm jabs surged forward, threatening to impale Rui. Yet, they couldn''t evene close to touching him as he swayed just the right amount to evade each blow.


    He had already formed a predictive model of his opponent, allowing him to foresee his iing attacks based on prior passive pattern data collected by the Angel of Lace. All he needed to do was step out of each iing attack moments before it arrived at him.


    Unfortunately, a trump card that had won him all battles in the Lower Realms was no longer the game-ender it once was.


    BOOOM!


    Rui gritted his teeth as he barely managed to throw together a guard. An attack defied his prediction, finding its mark on him despite his preemptive evasion. If not for Flux Earther, he would not have walked away with his bones intact.


    Yet, that wasn''t all.


    DRIP DRIP¡­


    Rui nced at the blood on the fingertips of the Master''s jabbing palm.


    Flux Earther was harder to use against piercing attacks¡ªit was exclusively designed to work on blunt force attacks, ideally punches.


    "¡­Insufficient." A murmur escaped Rui as he came to realize that his defense was too narrow. The technique had served him extremely well in the Lower Realms, however, it was clearlycking in the upper Realms. For Martial Artists at this juncture, progression was capable of harnessing more forms of offense than just blunt force.


    He would need to amend this shoring.


    "Focus, boy."


    WHOOSH!


    Rui''s eyes widened as he barely managed to evade yet another jab.


    Or he thought.


    BAM!! He shielded himself as the trajectory of the attack defied his predictive model, sting him with a powerful jab-turned-whip.


    This was the second time.


    The second time in a row that the man defied his predictive model.


    Yet, Master Kaijin was only getting started.


    WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH!


    Rui bobbed and weaved about each attack carefully, equally wary and curious about the man''s ability to defy his predictive model.


    Each attack the man delivered was heavy.


    Even when he didn''t charge them, even though they were merely low-effort jabs, they were far stronger than Rui''s average blows. This is the property of N?-velDrama.Org.


    He couldn''t afford to tank them in the long run.


    "Is dodging all you can do?"


    BOOOM!! A powerful blownded on Rui with devastating momentum.


    CRACK!


    Rui leaped away as he momentarily activated Weaving Blood, healing the cracked bone in the blink of an eye. He was now certain that this man possessed a system of thought that allowed him to defy his own patterns. It was a concerning revtion to Rui.


    Yet, it was his opponent that was displeased. Master Kaijin''s eyes red with rage.


    "You dare?"


    Rui raised an eyebrow.


    "You dare disrespect me, your elder, by holding back?" he growled with fury. "In the Sekigahara Confederate, you would be beaten to death for such a travesty!"


    Rui furrowed his eyebrows.


    It appeared that Sekigaharan culture was even more martial than he thought.


    "Idiot." Rui gestured around them. "We''re in a war, moron. If I waste all my stamina on you, then I''ll be dead the second this battle is over."


    Rui hadn''t forgotten the point of the battle either. He was fighting to protect the Kandrian Empire, and stalling out the battle for long was a good thing.


    Master Kaijin stared at him ndly for a moment.


    Almost as if he wasn''t sure of what to say to such level-headed reasoning.


    "I see, you''re right. I should have considered your circumstances."


    Rui was surprised at how reasonable the man was. "I appreciate tha¡ª!"


    He froze as a horrifying wave of peril washed over him.


    "I''m going to get serious now." Master Kaijin''s voice was low. "Let''s see if you can worry about what''s going to happen after this battle when you have to deal with my full power."


    He activated his first breathing technique of the battle.


    And it was only then that Rui realized he had been fighting without one the entire time.


    He leaped back in rm, yet he was a beat toote.


    WHOOSH!


    Master Kaijin appeared before Rui in the briefest of moments,unching an even faster attack that threatened to decapitate him then and there.


    SPLAT


    Rui barely managed to evade death, suffering a wound on his cheek as he leaped away, maintaining his distance.


    He couldn''t trust his predictive model with this man.


    That, on top of his superior speed, meant that he needed to maintain his distance; moreover, he also couldn''t use the Yin-Yang Spear without his predictive model.


    "Does my Insightbreaker throw you that much off-guard?"


    BOOOM!!


    Rui grimaced as he barely managed to disperse the man''s damage on his body, leaping away as he opened the distance between them. He swiftlyunched a barrage of Transverse Resonances against his opponent from a distance.


    Yet, Master Kaijin was hardly perturbed.


    BOOM BOOM BOOM!!


    He cleaved through the bullets of sound that Rui fired at him effortlessly.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2221 Converging Domain

    Chapter 2221 Converging Domain


    He was unperturbed by Rui''s meager attempts.


    "Is that the best that you can do?" Master Kaijin narrowed his eyes. "You think you have the leeway to hold back?"


    His expression red with rage.


    "Let''s see how long you can continue with that."


    WHOOSH!


    With a single step, he arrived before Rui with devastating power and speed.


    "Breathing Crucifix."


    The man froze as he choked, struggling to breathe.


    BOOOM!!!


    "Rgh¡­!" He grimaced as a thundering Yin-Yang Spear crashed into his abdomen, unguarded. Master Kaijin was shocked at the sheer amount of destructive power that Rui was able to impart in a single blow. He didn''t even understand where the power of the technique came from, considering how greatly it exceeded the visible momentum of his opponent''s body.


    It was as though the technique was able to conjure up power out of nowhere.


    "You''re right." Rui''s calm andposed voice reached him. "I can''t afford to hold back much against you."


    A sh of determination flickered in his eyes.


    "Hah!" Master Kaijin grinned. "Alright then, I''ll show you my full power!!"


    His expression grewbored as he fought against Breathing Crucifix with all his might, barely able to activate a single breathing technique at all.


    Ever since Rui broke through to the Master Realm, the hypnomatrix had be especially powerful due to the immense power of his mind. It could seal the breathing techniques of his opponents almost entirely, requiring them to struggle to use techniques that they would ordinarily be able to use effortlessly.


    Yet, Master Kaijin''s eyes grew bloodshot as they began bleeding with effort. He pushed himself to the very limit, forcing his diaphragm to move with sheer will and determination.


    The breathing technique he activated was special.


    One that stirred the heavens.


    "Heavenly Spear Style." A whisper escaped him. "Convergence."


    Chills crawled across Rui''s skin as he leaped away at full speed, yet it was toote.


    He had already been caught in his opponent''s domain.


    BOOOM!!


    A flood of air pushed him towards Master Kaijin. The sheer amount of force that pushed at him was so high that it beggared the imagination.


    It was irresistible.


    Master Kaijin grinned with anticipation as his domain refused to allow his opponents to escape him, pulling them to him against their will.


    His domain was something he had constructed as a solution to ranged fighters and quick opponents who dodged his powerful palm jabs.


    It created a steep pressure gradient from the exterior of the domain to the center, causing powerful wind currents to pull anybody within the field of his domain to him.


    Once they were firmly within striking range, there was no escape from his grip.


    "You''re dead!" he bellowed once Rui reached his striking range once more.


    Master Kaijin''s body coiled as he drew even greater power than ever before as he stopped holding back. His palm jab brimmed with power as he prepared himself to kill his opponent with a single blow while his convergence domain refused to allow Rui to escape him.


    "Die!" The powerful blow surged toward Rui at blinding speeds, threatening to st a hole in him.


    WHOOSH


    Master Kaijin''s eyes widened as Rui evaded the attack despite being forced to remain within close quarters.


    He gritted his teeth as he prepared another blow of devastating power and speed, re-activating Insightbreaker, a system of thought in his Martial Mind. The system of thought focused on defying his opponent''s expectations at the highest level, allowing him to ovee his opponent''sbat prowess with as little effort as possible.


    It was what he had used to ovee Rui''s pattern recognition system.


    Unfortunately for him, Rui''s Martial Mind had diversified a lot since then.


    WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH! Belongs to N?velDrama.Org - All rights reserved.


    His eyes widened as Rui evaded his blows despite the Insightbreaker working at full power. Not even the Convergence domain that forced Rui to stay within his striking range at all distances was enough for him tond a single blow on Rui.


    WHOOSH


    Rui calmly sidestepped a devastatingly powerful jab that threatened to take off his head.


    Yet, as long as Master Kaijin couldn''t touch him, it didn''t matter.


    WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH


    Despite the pressure from the convergence domain refusing to let him step back, Rui still evaded each blow by a thin margin.


    "Rgh¡­!" Master Kaijin struggled to maintain his domain under the shackles of Rui''s immensely powerful hypnosis. Yet it was as though maintaining this level of hypnosis was effortless.


    "Why can''t I reach you?!" He gritted his teeth. WHOOSH!


    Master Kaijin''s eyes widened as his attack crashed into an empty image.


    A feint.


    "I can see your SOUL."


    It was thest thing he heard before he died.


    BOOOM!!!


    An attack of extraordinary power struck his jaw, instantly knocking him out.


    THUD


    The domain ceased to exist as the man''s unconscious body fell.


    CRACK!


    Rui crushed his skull with little effort.


    It was the second Martial Master he had killed in the battle.


    "Hmph, I guess they weren''t wrong when they said you couldn''t evaluate a Master''s true power with instincts alone," Rui muttered. "I didn''t think it was possible to overestimate them so much, though. What an idiot."


    Had Rui not been trying to preserve his stamina, he could have just used his own domain against him and peppered him with sound attacks. The domain, pulling everything in with fierce pressure, would elerate the attacks, causing them to grow stronger and inflicting serious damage on him.


    In other words, he would be able to use the man''s own power against him.


    The only reason he went for a more time-consuming means of victory was because the Hypnomatrix and the SOUL System did not demand a lot of energy.


    BOOOM!!!


    Rui leaped away as several Sekigaharan Masters pounced on him the moment his battle ended.


    "Tsk." He tutted as he swiftly formed predictive models on them with the Angel of Lace. "Goddamned numeric disadvantage."


    The Sekigaharans had more Martial Masters, which meant that they could choose to gang on any one or more Martial Masters.


    And naturally, they chose Rui.


    "Bring it on." A fierce smile cracked at the edge of his mouth. "It''s time to grind for more experience."


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2222: Trimmed Numbers

    Chapter 2222: Trimmed Numbers


    ?


    What ensued next shocked all those who hade to witness it.


    A Martial Master who had only been in the Master Realm for less than four years was ordinarily supposed to still be in their newbie phase, where they would be rehashing their Martial Art.


    After all, it wasn''t easy to remake one''s Martial Art to be synergetic with the newly discovered Martial Mind.


    Yet, when they witnessed the Dawnbringer keep up with many Martial Masters, it became evidently clear that he had already moved past this newbie phase. Not only had he moved past it, but it was as though he had been operating with a Martial Art that was synergized with thought for a long time.


    He didn''t have as many active techniques as the average Martial Master, but the power of his Martial Mind and the synergy between it and his techniques were overwhelming.


    Furthermore, each of his few techniques was incredibly potent. The worst technique in his arsenal was still grade-nine.


    While some of his most powerful techniques...


    BOOOM!!!


    A devastating Yin-Yang Spear struck his opponent with a horrifying, destructive impact. The sheer power of the technique was so overwhelming that it cracked the man''s ribs, breaking through them. The impact warped his Martial Body, crumpling it and forming an indentation on the other side.


    THUD


    The Masters surrounding Rui froze as they watched their colleague''s corpse fall to the ground.


    A single blow.


    That was all it took.


    Rui''s powerful gaze swept across the battlefield as he eyed the dozen Martial Masters who stared at him with a single emotion.


    Fear.


    "What''s the matter?" Rui raised an eyebrow. "After all..."


    His eyes sharpened.


    "You came to kill me, did you not?"


    They gulped as they broke into a cold sweat.


    They were starting to realize that he wasn''t such an easy opponent.


    The reason that they had targeted Rui was because of the horrifyingly powerful forbidden technique that he had demonstrated in the Panamic Martial Federation.


    Yet, not a single person had told them that he was this strong even without it!


    "Damn Nindo n..." one of them muttered, gritting their teeth. "They should have told us he was such a monster."


    Rui''s power level had been rtively unknown for many years.


    Thest time he had demonstrated his nominal power publicly was in his duel against the Gatekeeper seven years ago when he was still only a Martial Senior. Furthermore, he had still used a forbidden technique even in that battle. Thus, he wasmonly thought to be even weaker.


    After that, he spent the next three years in the Kandrian Empire surrounded by bodyguards who wouldn''t let him suffer any real damage. Furthermore, even after he mysteriously broke through in the Kandrian Empire around the time his father recovered, he had only spent more time in training.


    So, how strong could he really be as a Martial Master?


    Well, today, they learned the answer to that question.


    They learned the answer firsthand.


    He was stronger than they could ever even begin to have imagined.


    "If you''re noting to kill me, then..." His voice grew perilous. "I''ll be the oneing to kill you."


    His words sent shivers down their spines.


    At that moment, they had a premonition.


    If they didn''t kill him that day, then and there, he would go on to be their worst nightmare someday.Material ? of N?velDrama.Org.


    "A-ATTTAAACKK!" the strongest of the lot of them bellowed. "He''s just one Martial Artist! Charge at him together! He cannot possibly fight on all fronts!"


    The Sekigaharan Martial Masters steeled their determination with grave expressions as they surged toward the man with the goal of killing him all at once.


    "KILL HIM!!!"


    Yet, the gesture only brought a smile to his face as he deactivated the Yin-Yang Spear, instead preparing a defensive position with hands ready for interception.


    BOOM BOOM BOOM!!!


    Many fists, wind sts, sound attacks, and body charges collided with him all at once.


    BOOOOOM!!!


    Their eyes widened as he abstained from dodging like he normally did, instead appearing to choose to withstand all their attacks. The sheer power they were able to output collectively


    gave them hope.


    Hope that he would sumb.


    After all, theirbined impacts against him were surely too much for any Martial Master to handle, particrly one who wasn''t even a defensive-oriented Martial Master.


    "Niflheim."


    They felt chills crawling across their skin.


    Not just figurative chills.


    Literal chills.


    For the realm of frost and cold had descended upon heaven and earth.


    "Thanks for all the extra juice." Rui grinned as he channeled all the power he absorbed from their attacks into a super-charged Niflheim domain.


    WHOOOSH!!!


    In an instant, the world was frozen asunder.


    Heaven and earth chilled over as the sheer might of the domain that Rui created froze


    everything within its depths.


    The atmosphere began condensing as dew drops of liquid nitrogen and liquid oxygen began


    forming on all surfaces.


    Including his hapless victims.


    "AARARGHHH!!!"


    "COLD! TOO COLD!!!"


    "MY SKIN!"


    In the first second, the domain inflicted frostbite upon them.


    In the ensuing moments, ice developed on their skin as the water content in their epithelial


    system began freezing.


    "We need to get out of here before it''s toote."


    "Ah..." Rui murmured as they shot towards the boundary of the domain. "...I''m afraid that it


    was toote the moment you chose to wage the war."


    His eyes red with power as he momentarily activated Hypertrophic Surge at full power, supercharging the domain even more.


    Just in time to freeze the water in their blood.


    THUD


    They spontaneously died.


    Rui dispelled the domain as he examined the frozen corpses.


    "I guess nothing beats the Yggdrasil System when ites to dealing with multiple


    opponents."


    His words spread chills across the entire battlefield.


    Literally, as the Niflheim domain began to dispel.


    Both the Sekigaharan and the Kandrian Masters found themselves gazing at the monster that


    Rui Quarrier Ss Kandria was.


    "I trimmed the enemy''s numbers," Rui smirked. "Now we can have an even war."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2223 Looming Planet

    Chapter 2223 Looming


    Fighting many Martial Artists simultaneously was difficult, but as Rui was more exposed to them, he was able to adaptively evolve to them just fine.He grew increasingly proficient at dealing with all of them at once.


    The Sekigahara Confederate had deployed a high-grade Martial Master as well as many mid-grade and low-grade Martial Masters to kill him, yet they could have never expected that they would have all failed to take him down.


    The power he demonstrated far exceeded even their most generous evaluation of hisbat level. After all, how could anybody have imagined that just a few years would have been enough to approach the peak of the Master Realm?


    "He''s strong, by Gaia." A man heaved a sigh, shaking his head. "To think that we will fail to kill despite all that we have reserved him. To think he can have such power in the Master Realm. It looks like I might have to¡­"


    His eyes narrowed. "Kill him myself in the name of Gaia."


    "Do you really think I would allow you to?" Master Sera asked with a cold smile. "You''re going nowhere, Master Satva."


    The man shifted his gaze to Master Sera as he sized her up with a single nce. His arms were tucked behind his back while his braided hair sashayed in the air.


    "Hm, while it is true that he will undoubtedly be a grave threat in the future, I suppose that for this battle, the gravest threat we face is still you, Harbinger." His eyes sharpened as he stroked his long, flowing white beard.


    Neither of them hadmenced their battle.


    The oue of their battle would affect the oue of the entire battle.


    That was what it meant for two grade-thirty Masters to fight.


    They were the only Masters who had known exactly who they would be fighting long before the war began.


    As much as Master Satva would love to shoot toward Rui to quickly kill him and eliminate the future threat, he could not do so as long as Master Sera impeded his path. She protected the Kandrian Masters from the wrath of the monster known as the Apostle of Gaia.


    "I suppose there''s no point in dying the inevitable." He heaved a sigh. "I will kill you as quickly as possible, and then I will kill the Dawnbringer when I''m done with you. Now then¡­"


    One moment, he was just an old man floating midair.


    The very next, an extraordinary tsunami of unfathomable power emerged from within his body as his Martial Heart and Martial Mind revved into power. His Martial Heart illuminated his entire body, as every cell began shining brightly with a flood of extraordinary power coursing through each and every one of them.


    It was as though a star had descended from the heavens, gracing the mortals below with their ephemeral power.


    Chills crawled across the skin as every Martial Master froze and broke into a cold sweat.


    Rui''s eyes widened with shock as he witnessed the sheer might of the man known as the Apostle of Gaia.


    "This Martial Heart¡­" A whisper escaped him. "It''s second only to the Gatekeeper."


    He was probably one of the few Martial Masters alive who could defeat the Gatekeeper without his Martial Mind.


    How strong would he be with his Martial Mind?


    RUMBLE¡­


    The old man opened his eyes as his Martial Embodiment consumed reality.


    Every Master grew aghast as their gaze elevated to the sky.


    It was gone.


    Yet, it took them several moments to identify what had taken its ce.


    The truth was unfathomable.


    "Is that..." Rui whispered. "A?"


    Where the sky once was was the surface of a.


    One that threatened to converge into Gaia, destroying everything.


    If not for the fact that they knew that it was merely an Embodiment, none of them would have been able to maintain even the slightest modicum ofposure that they possessed at the moment.


    It was an overwhelming sight.


    This was the power of the man touted as the Apostle of Gaia.


    At that moment, Rui knew that if he fought the man that he was, he was as good as dead. The best he could do was stall and try to survive desperately.


    He nced at the Harbinger, who simply gazed at her opponent with a calm expression.


    "Now then." Master Satva met her gaze with eyes that shed with bloodlust. "Please die in the name of Gaia."


    BOOOM!!!


    A pir of earth wider than a mountain erupted from the ground, spiking toward the Harbinger with extraordinary velocity.


    WHOOSH!


    "Oof, close," Master Sera muttered with a displeased expression as she evaded the attack, her Heart and Mind zing into power.


    The Martial Masters of the Kandrian Empire stirred with uncertainty.


    It wasn''t that she was weak, not at all. Her Martial Heart and Mind were extremely powerful, yet they didn''tpare to the sheer majesty that her opponent was projecting with his overwhelming Realms of power.


    Barring the very pinnacles like Rui and the Gatekeeper, he was almost entirely unmatched in both Body and Mind.


    A doubt began to form in their minds.


    Could Master Sera actually defeat him¡­?


    No matter who they were, they couldn''t help but have their doubts.


    After all, they couldn''t even take sce in their being of the same grade. After all, grade thirty was the limit regardless of a Martial Master''s strength. This meant it was possible for the Apostle of Gaia to be much stronger than the Harbinger despite the fact that they were of the same grade.


    That was what made the Martial Masters of the Kandrian Empire extremely nervous. If she did end up sumbing to the Apostle of Gaia, then they did not have confidence that they could win this battle.


    Just the presence of a single peak Martial Master could change the tide of battle.


    Yet, there wasn''t much they could do; each of them was tied with their own opponents, especially the few who were actually qualified to fight Master Satva head-on.


    BOOOM!!! BOOOM!!! BOOOM!!!


    The ensuing battle between the two powerhouses only escted. Material ? of N?velDrama.Org.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2224 Cute

    Chapter 2224 Cute


    Master Sera took a passive role in the battle as she seemed content focusing on evading the attacks of her opponent. "Buzzing around like a little insect," Master Satva''s aged voice remarked with a hint of derision. "No matter, you''ll get caught sooner orter."


    He stepped hard on thend, causing an enormous amount ofnd to disce as it flew up at incredible speeds, threatening to crash into her.


    Master Sera didn''t even bother trying to waste her energy with destroying thend that was flung her way. After all, there was too much. There was no way that she could deal with everything with brute force.


    She would run out of energy far sooner than he did if she chose to go that route.


    Instead, she maneuvered through the air, employing the entirety of her speed and agility to evade the attacks that flew in her direction.


    The battle quickly settled into a bit of a monotony as Master Satva calmly focused his vast energy reserves to take her down as soon as possible. He manipted earth with a degree of proficiency that beggared the imagination.


    Yet, his output was so great that it affected the rest of the battleground harboring the other Martial Masters.


    RUMBLE!! Material ? of N?velDrama.Org.


    The very battlefield became unstable and dangerous as mountains erupted from the ground, shooting into the sky like the projectiles of a weapon, threatening to strike the nimble and swift Harbinger.


    Yet, what happened when they missed and returned back to the battleground?


    The answer was obvious.


    BOOOM!!! BOOOM!!! BOOOM!!!


    "Rgh¡­!"


    "Master Satva''s power is too destructive!"


    "We need to get out of here as soon as possible!"


    The sheer amount of power that he outputted altered the terrain of the vast region over which the Masters fought. It was so great that the warring Masters were focused on migrating away before they could resume their battles.


    RUMBLE!!


    They witnessed with awe as the strongest Martial Masters fought with each other.


    Or, to be more urate, one of them aggressively chased the other around while thetter did everything in her power to avoid getting hit by his immense power.


    "Is that all you can do?" Master Satva huffed with a hint of disappointment. "To think the Kandrian Empire would dare call someone as weak as yourself a grade-thirty. The nerve of you lot. Though¡­"


    His eyes narrowed as he eyed the other Kandrian Martial Masters. ''They''re stronger than I imagined.''


    It was not easy to notice in the chaos of battle, but Master Satva had managed to spot a truth that had eluded many of his colleagues.


    ''Their Martial Bodies are stronger than ours.''


    He didn''t understand how. How did all of them gain stronger Martial Bodies than the Martial Bodies of the Sekigaharan Martial Masters?


    "No matter¡­" he murmured as his attention was on the Harbinger. "When I''m done with you, this battle is as good as won by the grace of Mother Gaia."


    His eyes narrowed as he intensified his efforts.


    RUMBLE!!!


    Master Sera''s eyes grew steely as the entirety of the region shifted, elevating to the sky.


    "If you seek to run away from Gaia, then she will follow you," he remarked. "You have nowhere to escape."


    The elevation of the entire region continued to rise as a whole, taking all Martial Masters with it, forcing Master Sera to skywalk even higher to stay away. However, they both knew that this could not go on forever.


    "You still seek to run away?" Master Satva narrowed his eyes. "The heavens will only grow thinner, slowing you down by Gaia. Eventually, you will be caught, and you will die."


    This was one of the strategies of his systems of thought. The standard response to evading his attacks was taking to the air to avoid the hostile ground. He had developed a rigorous and systematic set of counters to adaptively evolve to these tactics.


    She didn''t respond to his words, evading the increasing barrage ofnd and rock attacks as she flew around the skies, evading everything that Master Satva threw at her. WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH!!


    She weaved through the air as she evaded not only the enormous mountains but also the individual barrage of boulders and rocks that were flung at her at extremely high speeds. She correctly estimated how much distance she needed to move to evade barrages of rocks and earth based on their speed, size, and distance.


    As long as she could handle his offense long enough, she knew that she had a good chance of winning the battle. She seldom met someone who could pressure her as much as the Apostle of Gaia did.


    He was forcing her to dy the activation of her greatest trump card.


    "Enough." Master Satva grew irritated by her extremely refined evasive ability. "Dodge this."


    His expression steeled with effort as his eyes red with power.


    BOOOM!!!


    Land parted as it made way for enormous amounts of molten rock andva drawn from deep under the crust of Gaia. In an instant, an enormous tsunami, potent and wide, surged upward as it blocked off all exits and threatened to envelop her in its powerful grip. Master Satva''s bloodlust surged as he heightened his power, hoping to get rid of her already. Once he caught her in the grip of Gaia, he could bury her so far down that she would never have any hope of surviving and returning.


    Everything was going perfectly.


    Then, it all disappeared.


    All of it.


    One moment, he was on the verge of catching her in the grip of his earth.


    The very next, the world disappeared into darkness.


    The only thing he could see was himself in the reflection of a cracked mirror.


    Fear shed in his eyes as he gazed at his broken and shattered image in the mirror before him.


    His heart was shattered in the reflection as the cracks of the mirror ovepped it. His eyes widened as he saw a woman.


    "Mother¡­?" His eyes widened as a whisper escaped him.


    She looked exactly like how he remembered her, right down to her mannerisms and bodynguage. She smiled at him warmly.


    His hand reached out to the image of her. Yet, just as he reached for it¡ª


    CRACK!


    The mirror broke, and he returned to reality.


    "I see¡­" The sinister voice of the Harbinger rang in his ears. "So you''re a mommy''s boy."


    She sneered at him.


    "How cute."


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2225 Triggering Words

    Chapter 2225 Triggering Words


    Master Satva froze in horror as he struggled to parse what had just unfolded before him. Everything had been going ording to n just seconds ago.


    He was on the verge of getting her inside his tomb of earth.


    Yet, suddenly, he found himself looking at his mother in the reflection of the broken mirror before it cracked when he reached for it.


    Only to find to return himself back in reality.


    A reality where the Harbinger''s hand impaled his body.


    DRIP DRIP¡­


    "GET AWAY FROM ME!" He roared as earth andva surged to swallow her up.


    WHOOSH!


    "Ahahaha~" Master Sera soared through the air as sheughed with derision, evading his attacks. "To think the mighty Apostle of Gaia was just a little mommy''s boy hiding in the closet who wants his dear mama boohoo. Ahahaha!"


    Unadulterated fury erupted in the eyes of Master Satva. Material ? of N?velDrama.Org.


    His hands quaked with rage as he even forgot to focus on healing his wound. "You dare¡­"


    "Oh, wait," Master Sera tapped her chin, squinting her eyes as she fell into deep thought. "Don''t tell me that the reason that you constantly yap about ''Gaia this'' and ''Gaia that'' is because¡­you''re secretly projecting your mommy insecurities on Gaia, the, through your Martial Art?"


    He froze as grave horror emerged on his expression.


    "¡­Pfft!" She burst outughing. "HAHAHA! HAHAHAHAHA!!"


    Master Satva shivered as his bloodlusted fury boiled with a vengeance.


    Yet, the Harbinger was enjoying herself too much. "Hey, everybody, listen up, the Apostle of Gaia wants Gaia to be his mommy!"


    Her words reached the Masters in the surrounding region, many of whom gazed at Master Satva with a strange expression.


    That was enough.


    At that moment, Master Satva snapped.


    "I''LL KILL YOU!!!" He bellowed as his eyes grew red with rage. "I WILL KILL YOU!!!"


    RUMBLE!!!


    All of heaven and earth shivered under the rage of the Apostle of Gaia as he unleashed the total might that his body harbored.


    "Huhuhu~" Master Sera weaved around the countless iing attacks. "Still can''t catch me~!"


    She grinned vindictively as she dodged and evaded every single attack that the Apostle of Gaia threw in her direction.


    Yet, this only enraged the man even more.


    Under any other circumstances, he would have been able to calm down and retain his rationality.


    Yet, this time, he wasn''t able to.


    He could hear the Kandrian and even the Sekigaharan Martial Mastersughing at him with cruelty,ughing at his deepest emotional vulnerabilities that had existed in the core of who he was and the core of his Martial Drive and Art.


    In reality, they weren''tughing at all.


    Why would they?


    They were in the middle of a war.


    They were too busy fighting to beughing at him.


    Yet, he could hear themughing at him nheless, heightening his already high emotional distress.


    A glint of malice and cruelty shed in her eyes.


    Her Martial Embodiment was different from that of any other Martial Embodiment in that she actively used it as a weapon in battle. It was not usually shy outside of its initial form of a broken mirror, in that it shifted to create circumstances that were designed to destabilize her victim''s emotions as much as possible


    All it did was add a littleughter from the Martial Masters in his ears and senses. It didn''t alter reality in any other way.


    That made it so hard to catch.


    The more a hypnotic illusion matched with and ovepped with reality, the harder it was to notice. On top of that, how much of his anger had destabilized him emotionally made it even harder to notice that she was ying into him.


    That wasn''t all; unbeknownst to most people, most of her Martial Art was notprised ofbat techniques.


    She only had a handful of potent techniques for offense, defense, and speed. The rest of her Martial Art was dedicated to Body techniques that carefully brewed and released potent pheromones that increased a variety of psychological and sociological behavioral parameters that broadly corrted with increased emotional instability.


    In battle, emotional instability was a liability, especially in the Upper Realms, where it could be an absolute blunder.


    Just as it was panning out to be in this battle, dodging his attacks had been far easier than it had ever been despite the fact that he was exerting far more than ever before. She even activated systems of thought that functioned asrgenguage models that allowed her to figure out exactly what to say to deepen his emotional instability.


    "Imagine still being in the Master Realm after five hundred years."


    Her voice oozed derision.


    Master Satva gritted his teeth as he clenched his fists. "I WILL KILL YOU, LITTLE WENCH!


    Her grin widened. "If I was still in the Master Realm after five hundred years, I''d fucking kill myself."


    "AARGGHRAGHGHR!!!"


    RUMBLE!!!


    The earth erupted in cataclysmic power.


    Yet¡ª


    WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH!


    She cleanly evaded every single one he dished out.


    Because he had stopped using his systems in the irrational state of mind, he couldn''t take the right approach to corner her like he almost had before.


    "Your mom would probably cringe if she saw you now," Master Sera grinned. "Imagine being such a fucking loser that you still cling to her in your mind after half a fucking millennium. She''s probably turning her grave."


    She paused. "But her grave is in Gaia, so I guess your mother is turning inside your mother? Hahaha!"


    RUMBLE!!!


    Master Satva was too angry to even speak. Instead, he simply emptied his energy reserves, ravaging the world with his immense raw power, threatening the other Martial Masters even after they had moved a good distance away.


    Meanwhile, Master Sera continued triggering with just the right type of rhetoric, allowing her to continuously emotionally abuse him to the point that he couldn''t even think anymore. Yet, even as she enjoyed tearing apart her opponents, she didn''t forget the objective of this battle.


    Victory.


    None of all of this mattered if she didn''t win in the end.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2226 Shifting Strategy

    Chapter 2226 Shifting Strategy


    Rui couldn''t help but grow wary of the Harbinger. He had never ever run into such a vicious Martial Art in his entire life before. He almost felt sorry for the Apostle of Gaia. It was one thing to fight in battle with honor; it was another to be relentlessly bullied in the most horrific manner that Rui had ever seen.


    Yet, at the same time, he couldn''t help but grow deeply intrigued.


    How would he fare against her?


    Would he be able to adaptively evolve to her?


    He wasn''t sure about that with his current juncture of power.


    From what he could see, there were two possible means to go about it. One of them was to defeat her before she couldmence her bullying. Belonging ? N?velDram/a.Org.


    The other would be to adaptively evolve to the bullying itself.


    He wasn''t sure how to go about thetter at all, while the former sounded extremely difficult, considering that even the Apostle of Gaia had failed.


    Yet, he knew that he probably had very poorpatibility with Harbinger. It couldn''t be helped; he had emotional vulnerabilities that would be brutally exploited by her if they ever fought.


    Unfortunately, as much as he would have loved to watch them fight and specte about how he would fare against either of them, he was still in the middle of an operation.


    "Your Highness, intercept the Martial Masters who are making a run for the Kandrian Empire!"


    Rui''s attention was jolted to some stray Sekigaharan Masters who had managed to extricate themselves from their battles, one way or another, and were trying torun towards the Kandrian Empire in a rush to get within its territory and target vital infrastructure.


    "Not on my watch."


    He momentarily activated Neo Godspeed, shooting towards them at extremely high speeds.


    BOOM BOOM BOOM!


    He overtook all of them before turning to them and sting them with Transverse Resonance attacks.


    The three Masters fell back as he pushed them back with everything that he had. "Trying to get into the Kandrian Empire sneakily, eh?" Rui smirked. "I guess you''ve given up on killing us all."


    They gritted their teeth as they stared at him with hatred.


    Initially, the n was to head to the Kandrian Empire after obtaining a thorough victory against the Kandrian Masters.


    However, their ns were thrown out of the window when Rui turned out to be monstrously strong, single-handedly taking down the surplus Masters of the Sekigahara Confederate¡ªtheir sole task had been to kill him off with a massive numbers advantage.


    Yet, Rui somehow survived the ambush and a massive gang-up and emerged thoroughly victorious. He had single-handedly killed off their extra Martial Masters in a shocking turn of events.


    The original n was scrapped, and now they had to get to the Kandrian Empire regardless of the oue of the battle.


    ''It''s not just these three¡­'' Rui''s eyes widened as he took scope of the entire battle, measuring the changes in the way the Sekigaharan Masters fought. ''Aside from the two grade-thirty Masters, nobody is fighting to kill their opponents. Instead, they''re¡­'' The shift came soon after Rui foresaw it.


    "WARRIOR OF SEKIGAHARA!" The vice-leader''s voice spread throughout the battle. "REACH THE KANDRIAN EMPIRE AT ALL COSTS!"


    Rui''s expression grew more grave as the battle changed.


    One moment, all Masters of the Sekigahara Confederate fought to kill their opponents.


    The very next moment, they shot away from their opponents, shooting in the direction of the Kandrian Empire in hopes that they would catch the Kandrians off-guard.


    And they did.


    WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH!


    Almost like clockwork, all of them slipped away from the Masters of the Kandrian Empire in the briefest openings that they could find.


    "No!"


    "Stop them!"


    "We must catch up!"


    The Sekigaharans grinned maniacally as they shot towards the Kandrian Empire. Because they had fought so aggressively to kill the Masters of the Kandrian Empire, thetter had been fighting with full power to survive rather than to protect Kandria.


    This allowed them to find chinks in the armor of the interception force, whose whole goal was to keep them away from the surpass.


    Unfortunately for them, Rui had no intention of letting them go so easily.


    "Muspelheim!" He gritted his teeth as he activated Hypertrophic Surge.


    He didn''t dare activate the Yin-Yang Spear; the addition of that would trigger the Sun. However, he didn''t mind them thinking that he was triggering the forbidden technique.


    RUMBLE!!


    The world shook as the realm of fire descended upon heaven and earth.


    BOOM!!


    In just a moment, the horrifying mes of Muspelheim eroded everything from thends beneath their feet to skies above their heads.


    Just as Rui predicted, the Sekigaharans fell for the trick.


    "IT''S THAT FORBIDDEN TECHNIQUE!"


    "RUN!


    "THE DAWNBRINGER HAS DECIDED TO UNLEASH HIS GREATEST POWER!"


    The Sekigaharan gritted their teeth as they leaped back, putting as much distance between them and him so as to not die under the horrifying power of the Sun.


    "No."


    A single voice among them cut through the noise.


    Her hand drifted to her katana as her eyes sharpened. "This is not that technique. After all¡­"


    SWING!


    In a single, rapid, and extraordinarily smooth motion, she drew her de,pleting a sword swing within a tiny fraction of a microsecond.


    "¡­it''s too weak."


    For a moment, nothing happened.


    The mighty Muspelheim domain, powered by Rui''s Hypertrophic Surge, burned in its glory, growing stronger and stronger.


    The very next?


    WHOOSH!


    The Muspelheim domain was cleaved in half.


    Rui''s eyes widened with shock as the sheer pressure from her sword drawpletely cleaved through the powerful heat of his domain. Her cold, stoic eyes fixed on him in the distance as Rui sized her up.


    ''I can''t feel any pressure or power from her.'' His expression grew more severe.


    Yet, that only made her more dangerous in his eyes.


    With the Muspelheim domain dispelled with a single attack, the Sekigaharans should have been free to head to the Kandrian Empire, but in the brief few moments that Rui had managed to stall them, the Kandrian Masters had regrouped, forming a barrier that stood between the Sekigaharan Masters and the Kandrian Empire once more.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2227 Second Phase

    Chapter 2227 Second Phase


    The first phase of the battle was over.


    The Sekigaharans no longer grinned maniacally, reveling in their numeric advantage as they did at the start of the battle.


    They no longer focused on having the ideal victory of heading to the Kandrian Empire after killing the Masters of the Kandrian Empire. It had been a foolhardy objective to attempt in the first ce, but at least there was some rationale with it when it came to numerical superiority.


    Now, however, due to some of their incorrect predictions of Rui''sbat level, they had underestimated his current power level and had gravely suffered deep losses.


    Their original n was duly updated.


    "We head straight towards the Kandrian Empire, no matter what." The swordswoman sheathed her katana as her gaze remained fixed on Rui. "The Kandrian Empire will fall today."


    "Not gonna happen." Rui''s eyes narrowed as his steely gaze met her cold eyes.


    "You are not strong enough to stop us." Her stoic voice reached him. "He''s not alone." Master Zentra''s calm voice reached her. "Your operation is already a failure. Pursuing it any further will only lead to more bloodshed on both sides. If you leave now, we won''t pursue you."


    She closed her eyes. "You seem to be under the misunderstanding that we Sekigaharans think like you spineless harmony-lovers."


    The Masters of the Kandrian Empire red at her upon those words.


    A pure and unadulterated bloodlust boiled in her eyes as her gaze fixed on Rui.


    "Today, you and your Empire will die."


    Rui simply stared at her wordlessly.


    It was clear that they had not yet been deterred from continuing the operation that they had set out toplete.


    "There''s nothing more to be said." He took his ssic stance facing her.


    "I agree," she concurred with aposed tone. "Kill them if they get in our way to the Kandrian Empire."


    The Martial Masters of the Sekigahara Confederate surged forward as the second round of the Master-level battlemenced.


    BOOOM BOOOM BOOOM!!


    The Masters of the Kandrian Empire gritted their teeth as they re-engaged with their rivals. This time, they not only needed to fight to protect themselves, but they also couldn''t let their guards down to ensure that they didn''t fall for the juke-and-run tactic that the Sekigaharan Martial Masters were looking to pull while fighting.


    While the Masters spread across the entire battlefield, Rui found himself staring at the swordswoman in a silent face-off.


    She was strong.


    Not only was she strong, but she also possessed perfect control over it, able to ensure that none of her power slipped out.


    That put him on guard instantly.


    On top of that, he could sense that her mind was impressively calm. As though she had rid herself of all superfluous thoughts and emotions, focusing solely on her opponent.


    His nerves tingled as her grip on her katana tightened.


    Thankfully, he had built a predictive model on her and was rapidly building a SOUL model on her as well.


    Suddenly, his eyes widened as he abruptly leaped into the air.


    BOOOM!!


    The verynd beneath his feet erupted as an entire region''s worth ofnd was uprooted by her sword swing.


    STEP


    Ruinded as he witnessed the sheer amount of destruction that she had unleashed with an unfathomable, invisible sword swing.


    "You managed to dodge that." She stirred at the fact that he was still alive. "I''m impressed. An overwhelming majority of Masters can''t even perceive my sword draws."


    Rui''s eyes grew grave.


    In truth, he hadn''t been able to perceive her sword draw either.


    He wasn''t able to see it.


    But, thanks to his predictive model, he had been able to see iting.


    Barely.


    She didn''t have many passive patterns, just a handful.


    A very minute shift in center gravity preceding the attack.


    Slight increase in the tension of her muscles just a beat before the attack.


    A mild amount of pupil dtion gave her impending attack away.


    His expression grew severe. ''If not for those very minute passive patterns and tells, I would be dead right now.''


    The sheer amount of power contained in the pressure wave that it unleashed upon the world was so great that Rui knew that she would cleanly slice him in half.


    "I suppose I can''t afford to hold back." He exhaled heavily as he activated Neo Godspeed.Time slowed down in his eyes.


    "That would be prudent." Her grip over her sword tightened.


    Rui adopted a light, bouncing stance with a loose body and centered legs. A stance that favored mobility.


    He knew that he couldn''t afford to tank her ridiculous lethality.


    Thus, his only other option was to rely on speed. WHOOSH!


    In the blink of an eye, he arrived before her as a Yin-Yang Spear shot toward her.


    He knew that she wasn''t a defense-oriented Martial Artist and couldn''t afford to tank even a single one of the devastating grade-ten attacks.


    Yet, she didn''t need to.


    "Silent Sword Style: Twelve-Sword Hurricane."


    BOOOM!!!


    Rui leaped back as an enormous tornado of sound and wind erupted outwards from her, threatening to shred him to pieces.


    "Tsk," Rui tutted. "Heavenly Convergence."


    In an instant, the domain designed to curb power emerged as he redirected the vectors of force across the atmosphere to converge upon her. This is the property of N?-velDrama.Org.


    BOOM!!


    The domain snuffed her tornado, threatening to crush her. As a swordsman who defended using her de, he wanted to see how she would defend against an omnidirectional attack.


    Yet, the sight of all of heaven converging upon her body didn''t so much as perturb her.


    "Silent Sword Style: de of the Abyss."


    WHOOSH!!


    A single swing across three hundred and sixty degrees created a counter-pressure wave that shed with his Heavenly Convergence Domain.


    BOOOM!!


    The two pressure waves canceled each other out, only for Rui to arrive before her at an incredibly high speed, using the sts of air and dust as a momentary distraction to try and squeeze in a Yin-Yang Spear attack.


    Yet, she had anticipated that.


    WHOOSH!


    Her sword swung right at his neck, cleaving it apart.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2228 Perilous Battle

    Chapter 2228 Perilous Battle


    Material ? of N?velDrama.Org.


    Or so she thought.


    Her eyes narrowed as the de crashed into an empty image.


    A feint.


    The real Rui surged towards her back with a Yin-Yang Spear, threatening to cripple her with a single blow.


    "You have underestimated me."


    Rui''s eyes widened as his predictive model foresaw a de cutting his face in half.


    WHOOSH!


    Rui dodged the iing de at thest moment, narrowly avoiding instant death. He bounced back, leaping at her once more.


    "Fool." She huffed. "You''ll onl¡ª"


    "Temporal Disharmony."


    Her eyes widened with shock as time sped up massively in her eyes. Rui moved so fast in her sense that his Yin-Yang Spear arrived at her head in the blink of an eye.


    ''Got her!'' He grinned as his attack was moments away from killing her.


    Yet, it was his turn to be denied victory.


    WHOOSH!


    His expression grew aghast as she literally disappeared in the face of his attack.


    "Wha¡ª!" His senses expanded, and he spotted her a kilometer away, panting lightly with widened eyes.


    For the first time in the fight, herposure had been broken as she narrowly evaded death. His deadly technique would''ve crushed her head in.


    "If not for my Sword Step Kata¡­" she managed to squeeze out.


    Out of sheer and pure reflex and instinct, she employed a maneuvering technique that utilized her de to move even faster than was physically possible with just her ordinary sword techniques alone.


    If not for that, she wouldn''t have been able to dodge from such a short distance away.


    Her gaze fixed on him with deep hatred as she red at him.


    She had no idea what he had done to her, but her perception of the world had been sped up. Everyone moved much faster than they had before, including her own body.


    It meant that her own mind could not keep up with her own body.


    To any ordinary Martial Master, this would have been damning, especially since Rui''s Hypnomatrix had grown extremely potent since he had broken through to the Master Realm. It disrupted her perception of time very deeply.


    WHOOSH!


    Rui appeared before her at top speed, surging towards her with yet another Yin-Yang Spear aimed at her temple, threatening to kill her.


    Her sword surged toward him with even greater speed than before.


    WHOOSH


    He side-stepped the attack unperturbed as he continued his offense. Dodging her became increasingly easy as his predictive model grew refined, allowing him to be unbothered by her sword swings, especially when she was afflicted with Temporal Disharmony.


    Or so he thought.


    SPLAT!


    "Rgh¡­!" Rui grimaced with shock as a deep gash appeared on his body. He leaped back with a grave expression as he momentarily switched to Weaving Blood. Yet, she was unwilling to let go of the chance to seize the initiative.


    STEP.


    "She who cannot cut what she cannot see is a second-rate swordswoman." She gripped her de. "Silent Sword Style¡­"


    Rui felt deep peril emerging from her as chills crawled down his spine.


    "¡­Twenty-Four Sword Vortex."


    What ensued was twenty-four de swings executed in a fraction of a microsecond.


    She couldn''t even see her own body due to Temporal Disharmony.


    Yet, it didn''t matter.


    Her body remembered every movement of thebo right down to microscopic precision and uracy. She shut off her conscious reaction, relying on pure instinct and reflex bolstered by centuries of experience.


    The Twenty-Four Sword Vortex was a technique that converged the power of twenty-four swings in a single swing of unprecedented speed and power.


    An attack that could not be dodged.


    BOOOM!!!


    The attack cleaved through the world itself, causing a catastrophic devastation of heaven and earth. RUMBLE!!


    Land uprooted where the skies above them ceased to exist, giving way to the bright cosmos that shined down upon them unimpeded by the atmosphere.


    It was an attack that struck almost everything.


    Everything except her target.


    "I can see you SOUL."


    Her expression hardened as Rui emerged from the enormous cloud of dust surging towards her at top speed.


    Rui activated Outer Convergence, Gale Force Breathing, and Parallel Walk as he shot toward her with the maximum amount of momentum he was able to gather, preparing a Flowing Canon empowered with the Yin-Yang Spear.


    It was the fastest and most powerful attack he was able to muster at the moment.


    Her demeanor grew more intense as she realized that if she allowed herself to get so much as touched by that, she would lose the battle.


    The moment he arrived within her field of attack, a mighty sword swing surged toward him, threatening to cleave him in half.


    WHOOSH!


    He casually evaded her attack. With the Temporal Disharmony shackling her active coordination and the predictive and SOUL Models active, dodging her sword swing had never been easier.


    BOOOM!! His fist struck her ribs, breaking through them with ease as the blow devastated her torso.


    That was game.


    Or at least, it should have been.


    SPLAT!!


    His attack froze as a deep gash emerged on his body out of nowhere.


    "Rgh!" He grimaced as he began bleeding profusely. He gazed at her katana with shock.


    The de''s trajectory had rebounded and returned after the initial miss, surging towards her opponent as itnded its strike against him after he had dodged her initial blow. He was shocked that she was able to cut him down so swiftly after he had dodged the first sword swing. "Silent Sword Style¡­" She smiled even as she coughed up blood. "Boomerang de."


    This was her sole system of thought. She would observe the dodging patterns of her opponent only to predict the direction and manner in which they would dodge her attack before using the Boomerang de to curve the trajectory towards them after the initial dodge.


    The only drawback was that the power would be diluted due to loss of momentum during the trajectory rebound.


    It was for that sole reason that Rui had not been cut in half.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2229 True Plan

    Chapter 2229 True n


    The battle between Masters raged on at full power.


    With each passing minute, both sides only grew more desperate. The Sekigaharan Masters only grew more maniacal in their drive to win the war, as they were notorious for, as time passed. For each passing second of war drained their stamina and Martial Mind.


    The closer their Martial Mind came to being depleted, the more dangerous and perilous their circumstances were.


    After all, once their Martial Minds were depleted, even Martial Seniors were a threat to them.


    What they were especially afraid of was someone like the Gatekeeper arriving on the battlefield once Martial Minds werepletely emptied. That would be a nightmare as he would undoubtedly be the strongest on the battlefield if that were to happen.


    In their minds, they were the deciding factor of whether their operation was a sess or not.


    However, they were wrong.


    Deep in the Great Nam Ocean, three figures moved towards Kandria at an incredible speed.


    Three Sages.


    Each from the Sekigahara Confederate.


    "Preparationsplete," the Sage at the head of the attack whispered to hisrades. "Operation True Spear is underway."


    This was the true n of the Sekigahara Confederate.


    The loud and eye-drawing military operation directed towards the Kandrian Emperor was merely a red herring.


    The true operation to deceive the Kandrian Empire was a small and covert Sage-level strike group that would furtively attack the Kandrian Empire from the East, through the Great Nam Ocean, while the ''official'' military force marched towards Kandria from the West.


    It was an extraordinarily dangerous risk to deploy a whopping twelve Martial Sages away from the nation simultaneously in addition to regr Sage-level deployments. It left the nation extremely vulnerable.


    And that was precisely why it was thought to be effective.


    Because it was an absurdly risky and dangerous proposition, it was unlikely that they would be suspected of deploying more than the nine known Martial Sages in the Martial strike force.


    In fact, nine itself was pushing it.


    If not for the fact that the Sekigahara Confederate was known for being aggressive psychos, that number in and of itself would have been highly doubted.


    The three Martial Sages surged toward the Kandrian Empire at high speeds, all but ready to wreak as much destruction as they could without viting thews of the Panamic Martial Federation. Unfortunately for them, life was hardly ever that convenient.


    BOOOOOM BOOOOOM BOOOOOM!!!


    Their eyes widened as they leaped back several kilometers, avoiding an extraordinarily powerful attack that threatened to end them then and there.


    Their demeanors grew grave as they sensed the immense weight of being of five Martial Sages.


    "Hahaha¡­" The giggle of a child echoed throughout the battlefield. "¡­To think that Matriarch Nephi''s prophecy was right. The open invasion from the East was just a diversion. These bastards meant to take us out from the West while misdirecting us from the East."


    The three Martial Sages of the Sekigahara Confederate stiffened at the words of the Flickering Elder as three Martial Sages appeared before their Sekigaharan counterparts, while the other two stepped back with a wary, guarded expression.


    "¡­Three to fight us off, and the two to protect the Kandrian Empire." The leader of the Sekigaharan group grew severe. "You knew our exact numbers ahead of time."


    The Flickering Elder smiled innocently while the Hugging Hegemon shed a shit-eating grin, while the Tempestouos Fortress maintained a stern expression. In the distance, two Martial Sages stood guarding the Kandrian Empire: the Mount of Fortitude and the EasternShield, the sole Martial Sage of the Royal Navy.


    Fighting on the sea was much more dangerous to the Kandrian Empire due to the fact that the sea could carry a much greater portion of the energy of their battle towards the Kandrian Empire.


    If a meteoritended onnd, most of the energy would be contained within its immediate surroundings in the form of the mechanical work done in creating a massive crater. While some seismic energy would be released, it was only a small portion of the total kic energy of the meteorite.


    However, the story would be different if the meteoritended in the ocean.


    When a meteoritended in the ocean, the energy discharge from the collision would not be limited to the immediate surroundings.


    It would create a massive ocean wave that was capable of traveling a greater distance while carrying a substantial portion of the total energy of the meteorite. That wave would usually go on to form a tsunami that would wipe out the closest coast it reached.


    In that case, the closest coast was the Kandrian Empire, even if it was more than ten thousand kilometers away.


    However, in this case, it wasn''t just a meteorite causing the ocean wave; it was multiple Martial Sages.


    Ever since Sage Sia created the Umiana Trench while training in the depths of the Zeltic Ocean, humanity has well-recorded the dangers of Sage-levelbat over an ocean. It was far more dangerous thanbat overnd.


    Such a disaster could not be allowed to befall the Kandrian Empire.


    That was why two Martial Sages existed to ensure that no harm woulde to the Kandrian Empire by actively containing the ocean waves that would be generated by the battle between Martial Sages.


    "To think the Sekigahara Confederate would send in some of its finest offensive and covert Martial Sages to finish us off¡­" Sage cken narrowed his eyes in the distance. "It seems that Sekigahara Confederate is quite determined to end us. Just which one of our secrets did youe across, Sage Saraka, Sage Yuu, Sage Saren?"


    The three Sekigaharan didn''t so much as flinch at being recognized. Belonging ? N?velDram/a.Org.


    They had all known each other for a long time.


    "Are you sure you want to be here with the five of you, cken?" Sage Saraka smiled as he took off his hood. "With nine of myrades storming the Kandrian Empire on the Eastern front, you can''t afford to dedicate five Martial Sages to us."


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2230 The Greatest Secret

    Chapter 2230 The Greatest Secret


    Sage cken, the Mountain of Fortitude, couldn''t help but smile at the Sage Sarak''s words, turning to a man with long flowing hair, donning the military attire of the Royal Navy.


    Sage Siliken, the Eastern Shield of the Royal Navy.


    "They don''t know yet, do they?" Sage cken chuckled to his peer.


    Sage Siliken smiled. "It appears not."


    Sage Sarak narrowed his eyes as he gazed at the five Kandrian Martial Sages with a peculiar gaze.


    He didn''t understand why they were so nonchnt deploying the five of them here.


    He knew a good chunk of the sixteen Martial Sages of the Kandrian Empire were in the Beast Domain, leaving only eleven behind.


    If nine of them went to confront the nine Sekigaharan Sages from the east, then it meant that they would only have two more left.


    That was why the Sekigahara Confederate deployed just to be safe.


    Yet, he was confronted with five.


    That meant that they had only deployed six against the nine iing Martial Sages?


    That was hard to believe.


    They had not engaged in anymunication since theymenced their operation since Martial Sage could detect the invisible means ofmunication quite clearly, something that would sabotage their covert approach.


    That was why they could not be sure what was happening on the eastern war front. However, it wasn''t hard for them toe up with an educated guess as to what had happened.


    "I see," Sage Yuu began with an erudite tone. "That report about the lot of you being in the Beast Domain was faulty intel. Damn Nindo n."


    "Heh, give your little spooks some credit," the Hugging Hegemon grinned like a demon. "The intelligence waspletely urate, you see. It is indeed true that many of our colleagues are in the Beast Domain."


    Sage Saren gritted her teeth. "That''s impossible. Even if you deployed the Devil, there''s no way six Martial Sages could possibly fight off those nine, not with Shinken amongst their ranks."


    "Who said there were six of them, you stupid bastard?" the Hugging Hegemon''s smile grew wider as she enjoyed toying with her opponents before killing them.


    The confusion on their faces only grew as they struggled to understand what was happening.


    "Wait¡­" Sage Sarak''s eyes widened. "I figured it out!"


    Sage cken''s eyes narrowed. "You did, did you? Then we''ll have to kill you to protect our secret."


    The air grew heavier as tension between the eight Martial Sages grew.


    Heaven and earth strained as the weight that they exerted on them only rose, straining the very foundations of the world.


    The other two Martial Sages gazed at Sage Sarak with solemn expressions. "Quick, tell us, what insights have you gleaned?"


    "Kill him before he can speak!" Sage cken roared.


    s, it was toote.


    "These bastards," Sage Sarak gritted his teeth. "They didn''t just figure out how to trigger the Apprentice breakthrough. They also figured out how to break Masters through to the Sage Realm! That''s why they can afford to send five Sages here while nine Sages attack them from the East." Suddenly, the five Martial Sages of the Kandrian Empire paused, stopping in their tracks.


    "¡­"


    "Look at their reactions!" Sage Yuu gasped. "You must bepletely correct!"


    "Good going, Sarak," Sage Saren smiled at him. "You are truly a genius!"


    "Hehehe, what can I say? Sometimes, my deductive ability scares even me. Only I am a match for the Emperor of Harmony and Prime Minister of Britannia."


    The five Martial Sages silently watched three idiots from the Sekigahara Confederate pat each other on the back as Sage Sarak rubbed his nose bashfully.


    In reality, despite waging war the most, the Sekigahara Confederate was the worst at military strategy and tactics. The reason was simple.


    It was because Martial Artists were in charge of military and Martial operations.


    Thus, while on an individual level, their Martial Artists were known to be the strongest and best at war, as a nation, they were ipetent, for their generals were the likes of Sage Sarak and the other Martial Sages of the nation.


    So much so that Sekigahara Confederate was the strongest argument used against Martial Supremacy. Martial Artists could not be allowed to be in solely charge of military operations and war. "Hm?" He raised an eyebrow at the sight of the Kandrian Martial Sages simply staring at him. "What''s with that reaction? Could it be that my genius deduction was actually wrong?"


    They simply stared at him. "¡­"


    "K-Kill him!" Sage cken roared. "We cannot afford to let these three get away alive now that they have learned of our greatest secret!"


    Thankfully, the other four caught on to his n quickly.


    In war, faulty intelligence was a blunder.


    If they were led to believe some seriously wed beliefs about the Kandrian Empire, then there was a good chance it woulde to bite them in the ass in the future.


    "Kill them!"


    "We cannot let them get away alive!"


    "The secret must be kept safe." Belongs to N?velDrama.Org - All rights reserved.


    The three Martial Sages of the Sekigahara Confederate grew deeply grave at the weight of the burden that they were carrying.


    They were the only ones outside of the Kandrian Empire who knew of the extraordinary secret of their enemies.


    If they were to die here, then they would be unable to convey this deeply important to their peers.


    At that moment, they felt a deep responsibility to get away and return to the Kandrian Empire alive.


    "We need to live." Sage Sarak''s tone grew dramatic and profound. "We need to live for the sake of the war. We cannot afford to be done in here."


    The other two nodded with severity. "We must tell the Sekigahara Confederate about this extraordinary secret."


    "Life isn''t easy," Sage Sarak smiled. "However, that is precisely why it is worth living. Come, my brother and sister. We shall ovee this hurdle and return home."


    The two of them nodded. "Together."


    The three darted off from the bloodlusted Martial Sages of the Kandrian Empire, who sought to silence them.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2231: Revelations and Unfoldings

    Chapter 2231: Revtions and Unfoldings


    ?


    Rui and his opponent fell to one knee as they recuperated from the devastating attacks that theynded on each other.


    Rui ravaged her abdomen with a single Yin-Yang Spear. The potent grade-ten technique had shattered her ribs like twigs, leaving her unable to move her upper body very well while her broken ribcage pierced her lunges and other tissue, causing internal hemorrhaging.


    On the other hand, Rui bled profusely on the outside through a gash that dug inches deep into his abdomen.


    The wound had extended to multiple vitals, truly incapacitating him from moving. Furthermore, he had lost arge amount of blood, bringing him to the brink of losing consciousness.


    A critical wound, one that would kill most Martial Artists.


    Not Rui, however.


    He deactivated Neo Godspeed, activating Weaving Blood.


    The wound began healing at remarkable speeds, yet not even.


    Yet, Rui''s expression grew severe.


    Unlike Neo Godspeed, Weaving Blood was a technique whose consumption of power did not increase with time but with damage.


    Healing critical wounds was no different from abusing Neo Godspeed for extended periods of time.


    Furthermore, he had been fighting quite heavily in the war, having consumed an immense amount of stamina. He abused his domains and the Yin-Yang Spear many times, both of which were quite energy-draining.


    ''... Once this wound is healed, I probably can''t use the Metabody System anymore.'' His eyes sharpened. "Guess I''ll have to defeat you regardless."


    His opponent smiled when she heard those words as she slowly recovered from her wounds. "I must admit, you have surpassed my highest expectations of you. I truly did not expect you to be able to fight me off to this extent at the meager age of forty-one. Your talent is... envious. It makes me wonder what was even the point of all those decades I dedicated my everything to reaching the pinnacle of swordsmanship."


    Her eyes darkened as they both slowly recovered from their grave wounds.


    She closed her eyes. "I, too, was once called a genius. However, inparison to you, I may as well be ordinary."


    He simply met her gaze silently.


    "This feeling..." she whispered. "You''re the second person to make me feel this way."


    Rui''s eyes narrowed his words.


    "You''re the second person with gifts so absurd that the very concept of talent bes meaningless." Her tone grew resentful. "Your unfathomable potential. Your rate of growth. Even the color of your hair and eyes. It reminds me of him."


    Her grip over her sword tightened as she gritted her teeth.


    Her tone grew ominous. "He mastered my own sword style to a realm of perfection higher than I could ever even dream of reaching, and then..."


    Rui''s eyes widened with shock. "Wait..."


    "...And then, he tossed it away like a piece of garbage." Her eyes red with rage, and her gaze shifted to Rui. "He said he didn''t need it. That it was too weak to be of any of use to him."


    Her eyes deepened with hatred as she stood up. "Tsk, you made me remember some deeply unpleasant memories."


    Rui stood up once his wound and blood werepletely regenerated as he gazed at her with a severe expression. "That man you were talking about, is he¡ª"


    "Enough." She interrupted him with cold fury. "I do not wish to recollect any more. Prepare yourself; you will pay for the emotional damage that you have inflicted on me with your life!"


    "Oh,e on!" Ruiined with indignation. "I just want to know if his name is-!"


    RUMBLE!!


    The two of them froze as immense seismic radiation roared in thend beneath them.


    They could not help but direct their attention in the direction of its inception.


    Their gaze shifted towards a tower.


    A tower as wide as a mountain range.


    It extended to the depths of the heavens.


    Atop its surface, the most powerful Martial Masters fought a furious battle that would undoubtedly impact the end oue of the Master-level battle. Master Satva had continued elevating their battle arena with his astronomical power, thinning the air even further, making it extremely difficult for Master Sera to maneuver in the air.Material ? of N?velDrama.Org.


    Yet, it didn''t stop her from abusing her trash-talking system of thought.


    "What''s the matter?" Master Sera sneered. "All that shit-talk, and you still haven''t killed me, old fart."


    The Apostle of Gaia glowered with fury. "I''LL KILL YOU! I''LL KILL YOU IF IT''S THE LAST THING I DO!"


    "Are you sure you don''t want to kill yourself?" she asked with a warm smile and gentle tone. "If you kill yourself, you''ll be one with your mother when I bury you. Doesn''t that sound


    wonderful?"


    "ARRRGGHR!" He roared with frustration.


    BOOOM BOOOM BOOOM!!


    Devastatingly powerful attacks flew around in the air as Master Satva deployed the full extent of his immense power in abandon.


    WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH!


    "Ahaha~" she danced around the heavens with a cheerful expression.


    It was a facade.


    Inwardly, she was quite tense.


    Her movements grew slower and slower with each passing moment as he continued elevating the local region ofnd over which they fought. Due to the thinning air, each step she took


    only offered so much speed, forcing to narrowly dodge each of his attacks.


    In fact, if not for the highly irrational state of mind, she would have been caught by his of attacks long ago, resulting in her defeat.


    That was just how strong he was.


    This was a man who had reached the peak of the Master Realm with his sheer power and


    energy reserves.


    He was not to be trifled with.


    More so than she realized.


    RUMBLE!!!


    Chills crawled up her spine as the entire tower and all thend below it shook. Her expression grew grave as she felt an unfathomable amount of power building up in the tower, and it


    began glowing across its entire body.


    Glowing from the sheer amount of white-hotva contained in the entire structure.


    "Hehehe," A gruesome grin appeared on Master Satva''s face. "I have to admit you got me. I


    have never lost this much control over myself in my entire life. But, did you really think it would be that easy to defeat me?"


    His eyes red with even greater fury. "I''M THE APOSTLE OF GAIA, WENCH! NOW, FACE MY


    GREATEST ATTACK!"


    His rage grew with his power.


    "GRAND TERRANOVA FLARE!"


    BOOOOOOOOOM!!


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2232 The Tree of Healing

    Chapter 2232 The Tree of Healing


    Sage Kole gritted her teeth as she protected the Kandrian Empire from countless attacks across the span of her battle. BOOOM BOOOM BOOOM!


    One after another, she chopped down the iing attacks with her technique, ensuring not a single one of them reached her new home. Yet, her Divine Inferno Fist was taxing as it was powerful.


    It was not something that could be maintained forever.


    On top of that¡ª


    STEP


    With each attack, she found herself moving closer towards the Kandrian Empire, unable to keep her opponent at the same distance.


    BOOOOOM!!!


    "Rgh¡­!" She grimaced as she suffered a wound from a sneaky attack while she was chopping down her opponent''s attacks. Belonging ? N?velDram/a.Org.


    "Hahaha!" Sage Senpuughed at her plight. "What''s the matter? Can''t even protect yourself from a single attack?"


    She red at him with cold fury.


    "Hehehe¡­" Sage Senpu grinned. Yet, inwardly, he was rather tense about the situation that he was in.


    For one, the appearance of seven new Sages was still an enormouslyplicated variable thatpletely threw their operations for a loop. Ideally, he would just retreat in the face of such an enormous deviation from the expectations that the entire operation was founded on.


    However, if he retreated before the Masters did, then they were as good as dead. Thus, he needed to wait until the Masters were done with their battle. The most frustrating part was that he had no way of contacting any of the Masters via remotemunication so long as he was facing Martial Sages. The sheer amount of energy that they outputted jammed all remotemunication, offering far too much interference for him to inform the Masters of the dire need to retreat as soon as possible.


    Thus, he needed to wait for the Masters of the Sekigahara Confederate to hopefully retreat of their volition.


    Until then, he and his peers had no choice but to keep the Martial Sages of the Kandrian Empire preupied. They continuously fought to threaten the Kandrian Empire with attacks after attacks, forcing their opponents to push themselves to ensure not a single attack reached their home.


    It was highly risky, of course.


    If an attack did get through, the Sekigaharan Sages were screwed.


    After all, there would be good chance that they would vite the genocidew of the Panamic Martial Federation. Although, that wasn''t a guarantee due to how absolutely gigantic the Kandrian Empire was with its vast amounts of empty space. Not to mention, the citizens in the Kandrian Empire had been evacuated, which would also reduce civilian casualties.


    However, he knew that there was no way in hell that any of the Martial Sages of the Kandrian Empire would ever let an attack go through with intentions of using it to hurt the Sekigahara Confederate.


    Looking into Sage Kole''s eyes, he was rtively certain that she would rather die than let any harm befall the Kandrian Empire. Most of the Martial Sages of the Kandrian Empire were also of a simr mindset.


    BOOOM BOOOM BOOOM!!!


    "Rgh¡­!" Sage Kole strained herself as she sted away three more attacks in rapid session. "Damn you¡­!"


    "Hahaha! Oops, there goes another one!" Sage Senpuughed cruelly. "You''re doing a great job protecting the Empire thus far, I must say. However, I can''t help but wonder how long you canst protecting the Kandrian Empire from my wrath all alone, hm?"


    "She''s not alone." A raspy whisper rang in his ears as chills went up his spine. Sage Senpu immediately surged to leap away, yet it was toote.


    SPLAT!!


    "Rgh¡­!" Sage Senpu gritted his teeth with a pained expression as he lost a whole arm. "Damned assassin."


    He gazed at the Whispering Widower with a hateful expression, panting heavily.


    Yet, the threat was behind him.


    "You¡­" Sage Kole''s voice quaked with fury. "You dare harm the home that I swore to protect."


    "Hah!" Sage Senpu scoffed with derision. "Don''t be such a drama queen. You''ve only been here for like, what, three months?"


    Unfortunately, words weren''t able to stall her rage at everything he had put her through.


    BOOOM!!!


    "ARRRRGHH!!!" Sage Senpu shrieked with pain as Sage Kole sted him with her Divine Inferno Fist.


    This time, it wasn''t going to be over with a simple graze. The quark-gluon sma didn''t just ignite his body, it wounded his body on a sub-atomic level. Sage Senpu gritted his teeth as he warped the fabric of space in a vain attempt to redirect the immense materia prima that her me were generating away from him.


    "Don''t kill him." Sage Lemolen''s raspy voice was stern. "If that had been the objective, I would have taken his heart instead of his arm. Rael wants him and the four other captured Sages alive as bargaining chips. We will have Farana incapacitate them for safety."


    Sage Kole paused when Sage Lemolen mentioned her liege''s will. She had no intention of defying the will of the Emperor of Harmony, even if she was itching to kill the obnoxious Sekigaharan Sage.


    "Ah, you should have killed me when you had the chance."


    BOOOOOM BOOOOOM!!!


    The Kandrian Martial Sages shielded themselves with shock as they were batted away by a powerful attack. Yet, their eyes widened when they saw that both his critical wounds had beenpletely healed.


    "What¡­?"Sage Lemolen whispered with incredulity. "Impossible!"


    He had known Sage Senpu for a long time and never had the man ever demonstrated such extraordinary healing powers!


    In the first ce, only healing specialists could aplish such a feat, and it was usually because they had sacrificed all other parameters of their Martial Body for maximumhealing power.


    In other words, it was not something someone like Sage Senpu should have been capable of.


    "How¡­?" Sage Kole stared at him, stunned.


    "Hehehe,e now." Sage Senpu chuckled. "Just about every Sage-level powerhouse has one, you know?"


    His grin widened. "A national treasure resource, that is."


    Sage Lemolen grew grim. "The Tree of Healings?"


    The Tree of Healing was an esoteric fauna lifeform that asionally bore fruits that gave those who consumed them extreme healing and regeneration powers for a temporary period


    Including Martial Sages.


    It was a legacy treasure of the Sekigahara Confederate, just as the Topaz of Time was for the Kandrian Empire.


    "We all consumed one beforeing here, just in case." Sage Senpu grinned. "Too bad,so sad. You''re not going to be doing any capturing today, I''m afraid."


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2233 Operation Clean-Up

    Chapter 2233 Operation Clean-Up


    BOOOOOOOOOM!!


    All Martial Masters took cover on their own sides, breaking up their battles as the Apostle of Gaia unleashed his greatest attack.


    What ensued was as horrifying as it was beautiful.


    An enormousva st of unprecedented magnitude emerged from atop the giant tower formed by the Apostle of Gaia, continuously elevating the height of the battlefield with the Harbinger.


    The sheer scale of the attack seemed to blot out the sky.


    A fountain of white-hotva sted straight up with an incredible amount of power in ways that none of them could have thought possible in the Master Realm. Rui leaped away towardsthe Kandrian Empire while his opponent leaped away in the opposite direction.


    They exchanged nces as they realized they most likely would not be able to end their battle decisively as their Martial Minds were close to depleted. The battle had been going on for quite some time now, and had increased in intensity and effort.


    "Next time, I will win," she dered with a fearsome re. "I am Inyen Iaiashin of the Iaiashin n. Remember that name."


    WHOOSH She leaped away, taking cover as the enormous tsunami ofva finally descended upon the world.


    "Tsk." Rui fired several Mighty Roar sh sts, one after another, towards the section of theva wave that was primed to hit him.


    BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM!!


    By the time the attack rained down, enormous holes were sted in the wave front, harmlessly avoiding the Martial Masters of the Kandrian Empire.


    Rui''s gaze shifted back to the top of the tower with wariness and caution.


    He didn''t know what the state of the battle between the two powerhouse Masters was like, but there was no doubt that the final attack had pushed the battle one way or another.


    The Masters of both nations stood poised as they waited for signs of the oue of the state of the battle.


    If Master Satva emerged victorious, it was possible for the Sekigaharan Masters to kill all the Kandrian Martial Masters with his support and then head to the Kandrian Empire without any hurdles. They needed to only consume some high-grade rejuvenation and healing potions. If the battle was still ongoing or, worst of all, if the Harbinger emerged victorious, then they would have no choice but to retreat and mark the operation a failure.


    WHOOSH¡­


    Their attention was drawn by a single ming figure descending from atop the sky.


    With one hand, she flipped the bird to the Sekigaharan Masters while her other hand held a severed head.


    "No¡­!" "How can this be¡­!"


    "He was invincible within the Master Realm¡­!"


    Master Sera raised the severed head of the Apostle of Gaia by his hair, jiggling it slightly as she grinned with cruel vindiction. "What''s the matter? Not going to avenge thisnd-humper and his mommy fetish?"


    Rage and fury shed in the eyes of the Sekigaharan while the Masters of the Kandrian Empire grew relieved.


    The Harbinger had emerged victorious.


    Even if barely.


    Her condition was critical. The mes on her body finally died down, revealing her burned flesh.


    Although she had managed to kill her opponent, she had also undoubtedly been caught in his attack, barelying out alive.


    Even then, she continued provoking the Sekigaharan Masters.


    "I''m going to kill that bitch!"


    "Attack!" Belonging ? N?velDram/a.Org.


    "Get her while she''s injured!"


    The Kandrian Masters, however, were closer.


    WHOOSH!


    They arrived to guard her.


    "ENOUGH!" Master Inyen screamed at her fellow Sekigaharan Masters. "Enough. This operation has failed due to inurate and insufficient intelligence from the Nindo n. We must retreat. I refuse tomit suicide by continuing this battle any longer."


    Her words managed to get through to the thick skulls of the Sekigaharan Confederate, as they halted their approach.


    She didn''t relent. "Our Martial Minds are almost entirely depleted. We need to get out of here before¡ª!"


    BOOOM!!!


    They froze as a surge of powerful Senior-level auras emerged on the battlefield.


    At its forefront was a quasi-Master-level aura with a source of physical power far exceeding anything any of them had ever felt.


    A Martial Heart that shined like a supernova, blotting out all other Martial Hearts on the battlefield.


    Rui grinned with recognition.


    "Now then," the overpowering depths of the Gatekeeper''s elderly voice echoed throughout the battlefield. "Operation Clean-up is tomence."


    His eyes sparkled with power as the seemingly endless physical power within his body riled up.


    Behind him, a gathering of the most powerful Martial Seniors of the Kandrian Empire activated their Martial Hearts as they prepared for pursuit and elimination. Kane drew his daggers with sharp eyes. Nel grinned maniacally as he fashioned his hands into makeshift ws, ready to tear apart at his prey like a wild animal.


    Rui stared at them with shock as the peril they exuded pricked at his skin. He wasn''t sure if he could handle them in his depleted and exhausted state.


    And the same was true for their enemies.


    The Masters of the Sekigahara Confederate grew grave as they immediately began retreating from the battlefield as fast as they could.


    s, it wasn''t fast enough.


    BOOOM!!!


    "AARARGH!!!" In the blink of an eye, the Gatekeeper''s fist crushed an exhausted Martial Master under his fist.


    "One down." The peril in his voice sent chills in his enemies as his gaze shifted to them. "Ny-two more to go."


    "RETREAT!" Master Inyen gritted her teeth as she drew her sword, defending herself from Kane''s relentless swift attacks. "We''ll be safe when we regroup with the Sages!"


    This was why the Senior-level clean-up crew needed to hurry. They couldn''t endlessly pursue the retreating Master-level force.


    There weren''t many of them either.


    After all, even if the Sekigaharan Masters were extremely depleted, they would still instantly crush anyone lower than grade-fifteen of the Senior Realm. Thus, Kandria only afford to deploy its very finest to pursue and eliminate the Masters of the Sekigaharan Confederate.


    And even then only the Gatekeeper was powerful enough to overpower them decisively.


    "Hahaha¡­" Rui grinned as he watched his friends fight Martial Masters evenly and even dominantly, trimming down their stamina and numbers even more. They had grown absurdly stronger in the past half year, having spent all their time training in the manifold.


    They had trained for seven years.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2234 Progressed Friends

    Chapter 2234 Progressed Friends


    CLANG CLANG CLANG!!


    Master Inyen gritted her teeth as she barely managed to fend off Kane''s aggressive maneuvering and astronomical speed agility. She had trouble breathing at all, let alone activating any breathing techniques due to the broken ribs that she had gotten from her battle against Rui.


    WHOOSH!


    Her eyes widened as her de sank into an empty image.


    A feint.


    Chills crawled up her spine as she recollected Rui using the exact same technique.


    SPLAT!


    "Rgh¡­!" She grimaced as an invisible de carved up her flesh.


    Kane rapidly shifted back and forth between speed and stealth mode, using his refined system of thought to estimate the most optimal timing to bring out the best of both. The rapid shift between speed and stealth made it difficult to get a feel for rhythm because Kane had developed alternate sets of attack patterns that were optimal for their respective modes.


    He had developed it as a counter against Rui''s VOID algorithm, seeking to curb the predictive model on him that Rui had refined over many years and even decades at this point. "But now he''s seen it," Kane muttered with a tone of displeasure. "Ah, well."


    Surviving came first.


    He could not afford to hold back against a Martial Master no matter how exhausted she was.


    And exhausted, she was. Her breathing was desperate, gasping for air like someone who had almost drowned. Her vision was starting to blur as her Martial Body was close to depleting both her conventional energy and the energy reserve of her Heart. If not for her dimming her Martial Mind so that she could operate with extraordinary efficiency with even that limited power, she would not have been able to keep up with Kane. Not just to keep up, but even to overwhelm.


    SPLAT!


    Kane''s eyes widened as her Boomerang de inflicted a light gash on his abdomen.


    "You¡­" Her eyes widened with rage. "...are not my equal."


    SPLAT SPLAT!!


    Faster than even he could fully react, another set of wounds appeared on his abdomen.


    Her aura sharpened as she gathered her remaining energy, employing it to stabilize her condition.


    "Know your ce, little Senior."


    Her words weren''t merely an empty boast.


    He could feel the difference in the weight of their existences.


    The only reason that she hadn''t erased his existence was because of her wounds and her deep exhaustion.


    However, even under these circumstances, a Martial Senior fighting with an exceptionally high-grade Martial Master was no different from courting death.


    "Heh." Kane smirked as entered speed mode, pushing Fulminata Godspeed to the very limit as he surged forward with the Martial Mind. Fulminata Godspeed had grown tremendously as Kane had integrated his first high principle to generate a stronger current without needing to rely on esoteric imnts. This is the property of N?-velDrama.Org.


    "You haven''t seen anything yet." Kane surged with determination. "I''m going to beat you, and then I''m going to catch up with him."


    In a different part of the battle, Nel grinned as he fought multiple Masters at once with a maniacal expression.


    SPLAT SPLAT SPLAT!


    His fingers dug into their flesh, piercing into them as though they were meat.


    "Rgh¡­!" His opponent, a low-grade Master, grimaced. "You animal!"


    BOOOM!!


    Nel grinned as he blocked a heavy blow from his opponent, flying backwards.


    "Is that¡­" His bloodlust red. "¡­the best you can do?"


    "Insolent!" one Master shrieked. "Just you wait. When I recover, I will hunt you! I will kill you for not knowing your ce."


    "Is that so?" Nel grinned. "Too bad you''re going to die here today."


    His Martial Heart shined with blinding brightness, crackling with immense power while the Martial Hearts of his opponents were so dim that one could miss them if one wasn''t paying attention.


    It was solely because of this massive difference that he could fight them head-on even as they retreated.


    On top of that, Nel was as gifted in Body as Rui was gifted in mind. His Martial Heart had reached a level of power that wasparable to that of the Gatekeeper despite the fact that thetter had cultivated his body for five hundred years.


    He had spent the past thirteen years, seven of which were in the manifold, training under the guidance of Sir Armstrong. He had wanted to do that ever since he had learned of the Gatekeeper''s existence after Rui''s duel with him many years ago.


    "You have been blessed with a Body and physicality that greatly exceeds even mine, the Gatekeeper had told him. "However, while I can help you with the Body, I cannot help you reach the Master Realm. That is something that only you can do."


    Funnily enough, Nel had indeed been working on a system of thought. Unlike his mentor, he wasn''t content simply pursuing physical supremacy.


    He was pursuing Martial supremacy.


    He had gritted his teeth and began mastering Rui''s voidlet techniques ever since they were created.


    Even the highly basic and distilled thought techniques that were highly customizable to the point of being iplete had been extremely difficult for him to master. Yet, it shortened a journey that would have taken decades otherwise.


    But it helped him create his one and only system of thought.


    "Should I fight¡­" His grin widened. "¡­or not?"


    Answering that question was the sole purpose of his system of thought. It inputted data of some parameters and evaluated whether it was optimal to start or continue to fight or not fight.


    Strangely enough, the system of thought seemed to give the same answer almost every single time.


    "FIGHT IT IS!" Heughed with a maniacal innocence as he leaped at arge group of Masters retreating in the direction of the Sekigahara Confederate.


    Even if they were deeply exhausted, attacking so many retreating Martial Masters was always a horrible choice. There was no way that a Martial Senior could fight so many Martial Masters at once!


    Yet, he leaped into the fray nheless.


    The desperate battle for survival cursed the Sekigaharan Masters as they retreated as fast as they could despite the fully rejuvenated Martial Seniors who sought to kill as many as they could.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2235 Constrained Spectation

    Chapter 2235 Constrained Spectation


    "They''ve grown a lot stronger," Rui murmured to himself as he watched from afar. "I guess they''re really suitedto spending extended periods of time in the manifold."


    Rui was envious of them.


    He couldn''t spend that much time isted from the outer world.


    He needed exposure as Adaptive Evolution was a reactive phenomena. He couldn''t spend an eternity in there and emerge stronger than if he dedicated that time to exposing himself to things to adapt to.


    Someone like Nel was particrly suited to grinding in the manifold.


    However, the one whose growth impressed Rui the most was neither Kane nor Nel.


    It was actually the one he expected the least amount of growth from.


    "What has he been doing¡­?" Rui frowned as he studied the monster that was theGatekeeper. This is the property of N?-velDrama.Org.


    BOOOM BOOOM BOOOM!!


    "Argh¡­!"


    "Run! He''s too strong to face in our conditions!"


    "He''s stopping us from consuming our potions!"


    He was a menace on the battlefield, wreaking havoc everywhere he went.


    "He hasn''t experienced the most drastic growth, but how the hell is he still growing so much stronger at his age?!" Rui stared at him in shock.


    Rate of growth declined when one was old and approaching the end of their lifespan. This should have been true for the Gatekeeper as well.


    Yet it was as though the man had found a way to defy this trend.


    "He''s much stronger than when I fought him," Rui realized with a hint of wariness in his eyes. "Specifically, his Martial Body has."


    Rui didn''t understand.


    "He''d been in aa for about three years until the Divine Doctor healed him." Rui watched him mopped up Martial Masters one after another. "So, he should be weaker if anything."


    Yet, he was undoubtedly much stronger, faster, and more durable than during his duel with Rui. Even if Rui considered the standard Martial Body boost that all Upper Realm Martial Masters had gotten from the Divine Doctor, the Gatekeeper''s growth was too drastic. He had reached a stage of power that wasparable to his forbidden technique Ragnarok in his regr state.


    Naturally, it begged the ensuing question.


    "Could I have beaten him as he is now when I was Senior?" Rui clenched his fists.


    In truth, he wasn''t sure.


    Even if he took him at his strongest, which was shortly before he battled the chimera in the Mellow Dungeon, it was not something that he was confident in saying he would win.


    Suddenly, operation clean-up left his field of senses as they followed the retreating Sekigaharan Masters far away from the battlefield.


    "Your Highness, where are you going?" Master Zentra noticed him leaping and heading in the direction of the Operation Clean-up. "You''re exhausted."


    "I''ll consume a potion," Rui promised as he smiled with excitement at seeing his old friends fight. "Hell, maybe I can join them."


    "You can''t use your Martial Mind a second time." Master Zentra narrowed his eyes. "You''ll die from a brain aneurysm or a seizure. Don''t."


    "I won''t need to, I can just use my Heart and still dominate them after I consume a potion."


    "You need sleep." Master Zentra refused topromise. "You cannot stress your mind with morebat. Have you forgotten the drawbacks of the Martial Mind? Why do you think we are not also leaping into battle after consuming some potions? It''s because we cannot afford to stress our minds and brains more than we already have. You cannot use your system of thought or hypnosis, Martial Mind or not, until you''ve fully rested."


    Rui paused, turning back.


    Behind him, the Masters of Kandria took several minutes of reprieve, consuming potions as they slowly recovered from the drawbacks of the battle.


    The dead were covered withrge cloths, due to be moved back to the Kandrian Empire where they would be given a glorious memorial dedicated for their sacrifices.


    He heaved a sigh.


    "Fine. I won''t fight."


    Master Zentra heaved a sigh. "Good, then let''s¡ª"


    "But I will watch."


    Rui took off, consuming a potion as he ran in pursuit of the squad.A smile appeared on his face.


    He couldn''t wait to see what they would show him in this battle. He wanted to see the fruit of seven years ofbor.


    Meanwhile, Kane foughtboriously as he struggled to overwhelm the defenses of Master Inyen. He had to admit that her offensive lethality was so high that it served as a potent defense that deterred him from trying to attack her carelessly.


    WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH!


    Kane evaded a series of her incredibly fast sword draws, avoiding her lethal piercing power.


    Unlike Rui, Kane didn''t need to predict her attacks to avoid them.


    His reactions, reflexes, speed, and agility were far superior to that of Rui. He could evade her attacks with his innate abilities.


    But with Fulminata Godspeed, it was almost easy, especially in her condition.


    WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH!


    He weaved around her swordbinations as he surged to her back, trying to take her out where she was unarmed with some of his fastest attacks.


    CLANG CLANG!


    His eyes widened as her sword found itself blocking his blindingly fast dagger attacks faster than he even realized. SPLAT!


    His expression grew rmed as a superficial wound appeared on his neck.


    She had swung her sword so fast that even he barely had time to react to her.


    ''¡­Is she growing stronger faster?'' Kane narrowed his eyes as he took stock of the situation. Her eyes were fixed on him.


    Yet, it was strange.


    It was almost as though she was unconscious.


    Her breathing grew calmer as her body grew more rxed.


    The sense of peril she gave off only grew more intense.


    "Ah¡­" Kane''s eyes lit up with realization. "She''s¡­ entered the flow state."


    It was an elusive state of mind where the mind was free of all distractions and superfluous thought, focused on one and only one task or objective.


    Kane narrowed his eyes as he grew wary.


    Anybody in this state of mind was far stronger than they would otherwise be.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2236 Poor Compatibility

    Chapter 2236 Poor Compatibility


    He gazed at her warily as the pressure she exerted on him only grew by the second.


    She was immersed in him.


    In the person she had to kill.


    He recognized her state of mind.


    He had entered such a state himself several times in his life, fleeting and obscure as it was.


    But it was especially familiar because Rui often voluntarily entered this state, usually before battles of great importance. He had done so before the most important battle that he had faced in the Senior Realm¡ªhis battle against the chimera.


    That was why Kane knew that fighting carelessly was a blunder against this woman.


    "Still¡­"


    WHOOSH! In the blink of an eye, he had crossed the distance between them, reaching astronomical speeds. "¡­I''ll win." His eyes red with determination.


    The very next moment, he came face to face with her de, inches away from his eyes.


    WHOOSH!


    He ducked half a foot, surging forward as the de passed above him.


    Yet, just before he could dig his daggers into her gut¡ª


    WHOOSH!


    He somersaulted away, evading an incredibly swift Boomerang de.


    "Tsk." He sharpened his gaze. ''I would have lost my head if I continued with the attack. It''s not just that she has a good system of thought. No, this woman¡­''


    She had extraordinary instincts and intuition.


    He could tell that she wasn''t being extremely thoughtful in her actions. He hade to recognize how to spot an extremely thoughtful Martial Artist after all the decades he had known Rui.


    ''It''s not going to be easy to crack her defenses, but maybe I don''t need to.''


    After all, she was itching to kill him first.


    WHOOSH!


    She surged forward, taking the offensive, ready to take him down as soon as possible.


    "Silent Sword Style¡­" A faint whisper escaped her. "¡­Twelve-Strike Vortex."


    WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH!


    Kane weaved and bounced about the storm of winds and sound that emerged from an extraordinarily swift set of sword swings.


    "You¡­" Her eyes red with bloodlust, "are transparent."


    SPLAT SPLAT SPLAT!


    His eyes widened as cuts appeared on his entire body.


    "You cannot evade my de."


    WHOOSH!


    He leaped out of the way, only to find that a rebounded swing had arrived at his location even before he had.


    SPLAT!!


    "Rgh¡­!" Kane grimaced as he leaped away with shock. He recognized the sensation he had just experienced.


    It was simr to what he felt when trying to avoid Rui''s strikes. Belonging ? N?velDram/a.Org.


    "Your system of thought¡­ is predicting me?" He narrowed his eyes.


    "I told you¡­" she murmured, almost in a trance. "You''re transparent."


    WHOOSH!


    She appeared before him in the blink of an eye, having used her Sword Step technique to cross the distance between them at extraordinary speeds.


    WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH!


    Kane narrowed his eyes as he sharpened his reflexes, pushing himself to the very limit.


    Each time he evaded her attacks and surged for her throat, he would find himself inches away from her Boomerang de, forcing him to leap away with a dodge and to enter into a stronger state of Fulminata Godspeed.


    His system of thought had led him to the conclusion that Void Step was highly sub-optimal against her.


    She had a Martial Mind, dim and highly depleted as it was.


    But it meant that he couldn''t misdirect her beyond a one-time surprise move. It meant that, for this battle, he would have no choice but to stick only to Fulminata Godspeed.


    Ordinarily, that meant that he was never getting touched by any Martial Senior ever.


    But, unfortunately for him, his opponent was a Martial Master.


    CLANG!


    He narrowed his eyes as his daggers barely protected his neck from decapitation, leaping away to safety.


    Yet, Master Inyen refused to let him go.


    A foolish decision in the big picture. In her immersed state of bloodlust against Kane, she had forgotten the very thing that she had warned her fellow Sekigaharans off¡ªthey needed to retreat.


    Yet within the battle, it was the best possible decision.


    WHOOSH!


    She arrived before him at extremely high speeds with her Sword Step techniques, refusing to give him any reprieve.


    WHOOSH!


    Kane evaded her smoothly, yet this time, he didn''t even have the time to mount an attack!


    CLANG!


    He gritted his teeth, stunned as she managed to predict the direction of evasion even earlier this time.


    She had one system of thought.


    Just this one, yet she had dedicated centuries to refining it and nothing else.


    "It wasn''t able to shine against me because my prediction is much superior and universal but¡­" Rui watched them battle from atop a distant mountain. "¡­When it specificallyes to predicting evasion, her system of thought is not much below the VOID algorithm in that particr field."


    Of course, the VOID algorithm was still far superior even though John Falken had not refined it for centuries. This was because the VOID algorithm had been created using cutting-edge statistics,probability theory, and state-of-the-art data science.


    It was fundamentally of a different caliber than all other systems of thought in this world.


    "However, that''s not relevant here because," Rui narrowed his eyes, "you have poorpatibility against her, Kane."


    CLANG CLANG CLANG!


    Kane gritted his teeth as he was forced to parry every sword attack that found itself in his face each time he evaded her initial attack.


    His evasion sess rate only plummeted as she began predicting him better.


    Kane soon came to realize what Rui already had.


    "Shit," he cursed. "Of all the goddamn opponents I could have picked! I just had to pick one with a Martial Mind that specialized in dealing with evasion!"


    Initially, he thought that she was just good at predicting in general. But he noticed that avoiding her was far, far harder than actuallynding attacks on her.


    In other words, her system of thought was focused only on prediction of evasion.


    It was no wonder he was having such a hard time. ''Wait, but it''s worse than that¡­'' Kane''s eyes grew grave. ''If her system of thought is anything like Rui''s then¡­''


    Then it would only grow stronger and stronger with more time.


    Making it harder and harder for him to survive.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2237 He Who Bears Lightning

    Chapter 2237 He Who Bears Lightning


    Chills crawled down his spine as he realized the gravity of the situation.


    CLANG CLANG CLANG!


    His demeanor grew grim as evasion grew harder and harder.


    Each time he tried, she managed to foresee exactly how he was going to try and evade herattack.


    The worst part was that the speed of her sword style was greatly heightened by muscle memory.


    He could tell.


    She didn''t need to think when executing even the mostplicatedbination of attacks. Normally, the mind guided and coordinated such attacks to ensure uracy and precision were adequate.


    However, this slowed down the frequency and speed of coordinated sessive movements.


    The body was faster than the mind.


    Kane knew how much of a difference this could make. He had fought Hever many times, and despite being much slower than Kane in raw speed, he could keep just due to the fact that he had eliminated the drag of the mind on his body, allowing him to reach a level of rapidity that couldpete with overwhelming speed.


    He sensed that Master Inyen had done something simr.


    "It actually made my job easier, since the absence of conscious intervention means lower pattern diversity, making it easier to form and refine predictive models on her," Rui analyzed the circumstances,paring it to his own. "I''mpatible against her, but Kane is very much the opposite."


    It was a good example highlighting howrge a rolepatibility could y.


    Things that apatible person could handle with ease could be absolute nightmares against those who weren''tpatible.


    "At this rate, you''ll die, Kane." A faint mutter escaped Rui.


    Even if he wanted to help, he couldn''t. He was too far away in an attempt to ensure Kane didn''t get distracted after he was there.


    SPLAT SPLAT SPLAT!


    "Rgh¡­!"


    Kane grimaced as several more cuts appeared on his body. "Dammit."


    Many of the systems of thought that he had developed were ineffective in this battle due to the fact that they were centered around thebination and timing of switching between Neo Godspeed and Void Step. However, due to thetter being too ineffective against her because of her Martial Mind, he could not use them.


    CLANG CLANG CLANG!


    Their des began shing with even greater furiosity as she began nailing her timing on him even more frequently, forcing him to block instead of evade due to her inability to predict blocking maneuvers.


    Once outside of his element of evasive maneuvering, she held the advantage when it came to their sh of des. He had only adopted the twin daggers muchter in life. It meant that he had far less experience with them than she did with her sword.


    SPLAT SPLAT SPLAT!


    Rui watched with a calm expression as Kane began suffering even greater wounds from her extraordinary swordbinations. They were almost impossible to keep up with.


    DRIP DRIP DRIP¡­


    As more wounds continued piling on, he slowed down ever more. The blood loss made itharder and harder to maintain a high level of speed.


    Rui didn''t even need to strain his mind by running simtions of their battle based on the predictive models he had on both of them to know that Kane''s victory against her was extremely unlikely if that was all there was to show.


    His fists clenched as his gaze hardened.


    Suffering a brain aneurysm was worth it if it meant saving his best friend''s life.


    THUD


    Kane fell down to one knee.


    The air crackled.


    It boiled with peril.


    "Now then," her voice was filled with murderous bloodlust. "Die."


    Her de surged down towards Kane at extraordinary speeds even as Rui''s Martial Heart zed into power.


    WHOOSH!


    Master Inyen''s eyes widened as her de crashed into an empty image.


    A feint.


    Both Rui and Master Inyen froze with shock as Kane disappeared from their senses.


    STEP


    He arrived behind her with closed eyes and a serene expression.


    The air had changed.


    "I didn''t want to have to use this¡­" A faint voice escaped him. "Since I hadn''t used it outside of a controlled environment, but¡­"


    His head tilted as his calm eyes met her shocked eyes.


    "¡­But desperate times call for desperate measures, amirite?"


    CRACK CRACK¡­!


    Sparks began crackling in the air.


    "Oh well, here goes." Kane''s voice grew more severe, activating a special breathing technique. "Let''s hope this doesn''t kill me, because man I would die of embarrassment."


    His words were mirthful, yet the tone of his voice sent chills down her spine.


    In that moment, she knew that he was dangerous. Every bone in her body felt the faint peril that he was radiating.


    CRACK CRACK CRACK¡­! Belonging ? N?velDram/a.Org.


    She took a defensive sword stance as her fear lingered in her eyes.


    CRACK CRACK CRACK CRACK¡­!!


    The air began growing more charged, sparking with shes of electricity as Kane bent heaven and earth with the force of his breath.


    She didn''t understand what was happening.


    But Rui did.


    "Kane¡­" Realization dawned on him. "You¡­!"


    CRACK CRACK CRACK CRACK CRACK¡­!


    The sparks evolved.


    They became bolts.


    Bolts of none other than lightning.


    Not just around him.


    Across the entirety of his new domain.


    BOOM BOOM BOOM!!!


    He had created an ocean of lightning within the depths of his domain, as a tsunami of lightning bolts spiked across the entire domain.


    Yet, they eventually found themselves converging onto a single point.


    A single man.


    CRACK CRACK CRACK!!!


    Kane activated a second breathing technique in harmony with the first. One that allowed him to guide the lightning that soared towards him with murderous bloodlust.


    Yet, he gently embraced it.


    He bent heaven and earth, manipting the path of each lightning to curl around him.


    It obeyed him, dding him in an armor of lightning.


    "Fulminata¡­" Rui whispered with awe. He who bears lightning.


    He had lived up to the name.


    Kane''s eyes shifted as his gaze returned to Master Inyen.


    WHOOSH!


    In the blink of an eye, he arrived before Master Inyen as a single whisper escaped him.


    "Heavenly Punishment."


    BOOOM!!!


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2238 Realm of Lightning

    Chapter 2238 Realm of Lightning


    Ever since Kane had seen Rui''s elemental domains in the Mellow Manifold, he couldn''t help but wonder whether or not it was possible for him to create such a domain himself.


    Specifically, an elemental domain of lightning.


    After all, he had always wished he could retain the power he had in the Thundering Valley. That ce¡­ that environment, he was the strongest he could ever be when he was there.


    Of course, much to his dismay he had needed to leave the valley, for he couldn''t possibly live there forever even if he wanted to.


    Yet, he had never forgotten how overwhelmingly powerful he had felt within the Thundering Valley.


    That was the closest he had evere to defeating Rui in a battle.


    He yearned to be able to achieve such immense power at will.


    And when he saw Rui developing the Muspelheim and Niflheim domains sessfully, he realized that it was indeed possible.


    Upon return from the Beast Domain, he began working on two things.


    The first were his systems of thought.


    And the second, of course, was working his way towards developing a domain that functioned like the Thundering Valley.


    It was the most difficult thing he had ever worked on.


    Unbeknownst to him, in pursuit of creating such a domain, he hade into touch with high principles a lot sooner than he otherwise would have.


    It had taken him more than seven years to achieve a result that he was satisfied with. Nearly half of the time he spent grinding in the manifold was dedicated to his desired domain.


    A domain of lightning.


    One that would do for him what the Thundering Valley had done for him. It would hyper augment his reflexes and would do so for a much greater period of time than just Fulminata Godspeed could by itself.


    He didn''t think he would be putting it to use in an actual battle of course.


    But since the opportunity and necessity had presented itself, he obliged.


    WHOOSH!


    In the blink of an eye, he crossed the distance between himself and his opponent.


    "Heavenly Punishment," he whispered as his knife surged forward before it ran into Master Inyen''s katana.


    s, that was hardly enough to defend against the kind of attack that Kane sought to inflict on her.


    BOOOM!!!


    An instant, an immense amount of electric current surged from his body through his daggers, through the esoteric alloy her sword and de wereprised of, and through her body.


    "ARRRMHHH!!!" she screamed in pain as her body heated up internally and her flesh burned.


    Her Martial Body could not conduct electricity.


    No, it resisted.


    It resisted even as her blood boiled.


    It resisted even as her heart shook.


    It resisted even as her nervous system was fried.


    And it resisted even as she died.


    It was over.


    It was over in an instant.


    THUD


    Her corpse fell.


    For a moment, there was silence.


    "Tsk, that''s it? I was kinda hoping for more," Kane muttered with displeasure.


    Rui gazed at his thunder-d form with an expression of delight and excitement. It was because he understood how the principles of the domain functioned that he was extremely impressed with how powerful and difficult it was.


    Kane had created a potential difference across the domain by relying on friction and induction, charging up heated and dehydrated air to then charge both the atmosphere by relying on friction to cause a differential of charge.


    He would serve as the negative charge while the entire domain was positively charged.


    "Not just that," Rui realized. "He must have found a way to inste thend from conducting current or serving as sink for current using earth bending."


    This way all current would flow to or from his body in the forming of converging or diverging lightning bolts.


    Regardless, his body would experience current, which greatly improved his reflexes to an otherworldly degree of speed and quickness. Rui still recalled how Kane was able to match his hyper-refined predictive model with just his sheer reflexes in the Thundering Valley.


    Kane had a high affinity for lightning and electricity for reasons unknown to Rui. Kane thought that it was because of the Lightning Sect, but Rui knew that it most certainly wasn''t for any silly reason like that.


    "That''s not all. He''s conditioned himself to be able to tolerate greater strain on his heart," Rui observed as a smile appeared on his face. "He saw me train with Muspelheim and Niflheim the same way and realized he could employ the same strategy toplete two different tactics at once."


    To say Rui was impressed was an understatement.


    "The domain in istion is easily on par with my Muspelheim and Niflheim. However, it''s exponentially morepatible with him than either of thetter two are with me," Rui realized.


    It was to Kane what hypnosis might be to Rui.


    The reason that Rui was certain in his judgment was because of his enlightenment in the Tree of Life. The system of thought that had burrowed itself in his Martial Mind showed him the most optimal and, by extension, the most antithetical domains to his opponents on the basis of biology.


    And he could clearly,pared to before, see that the most optimal domain for Kane was one of lightning.


    It was one he would flourish most.


    In other words, the impact that his new domain would have on hisbat power far exceeded that of any domain that Rui had ever developed.


    In addition, Kane had also developed a system of thought that focused on optimizing how much current he ought to charge himself up with to attain victory with the least amount of energy.


    After all, domains were highly intensive, and Rui could sense with his mind sense that Kane was deeply in intense thought when generating and maintaining the domain. N?velDrama.Org (C) content.


    "He''s arrived."


    Rui didn''t understand why, but he could sense it.


    Kane had arrived at the cusp of the Master Realm.


    This was not the first time this had happened either.


    After all, he had sensed that his own nascent Martial Mind was alsopleted after he attained the Tree of Life in the Garden of Salvation.


    And now, once more, he could clearly sense apleted Martial Mind etched into his neurons, waiting to be discovered.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2239 Turning Tables

    Chapter 2239 Turning Tables


    "Tsk," Kane tutted, consuming a physical rejuvenation potion as he disappeared from the spot after having defeated Master Inyen.


    Rui got up, ncing at her corpse momentarily. "Ah, well, I guess we''ll never be able to put an end to our match."


    He didn''t really care.


    He immediately surged to follow Kane and rejoin the main retreating group at the center as he watched Kane relentlessly bully the retreating Masters of the Sekigahara Confederate.


    Their numbers had been trimmed from all the relentless harassment that they faced from the powerful Martial Seniors


    "They''re strong." Rui nodded, impressed. "Even the Sekigaharans are shocked by how strong the Seniors of the Kandrian Empire are."


    The tworgest reasons for this were the manifold and Rui''s voidlet techniques. They had allowed the Kandrain Masters to be able to generate a system of thought a lot easier and sooner than they would have otherwise.


    It had been eight years since he introduced his techniques, and since then they had been disseminated extremely far. Enough time had also passed for them to make a visible impact on Martial Seniors of the higher echelons.


    And it waspletely on disy on the battlefield. Nearly all of the Kandrian Martial Seniors were thinking deeply with their systems of thought, using them to make the right decisions inbat to increase the probability of victory.


    Even Nel had developed a system of thought, much to Rui''s shock. Despite how low his capacity for systematic thought was, he was also already ready to be a Martial Master.


    The only one who wasn''t thinking was the Gatekeeper.


    Yet, he was still the strongest of them all.


    More importantly¡­


    "At this rate¡­" Rui narrowed his eyes, "his Martial Body is going to reach the Senior Realm with its innate normal power, without the need of Martial Heart."


    It was absurd, but that was how strong the Gatekeeper''s body was bing.


    Currently, there was a decent chance he could fight the weakest Martial Senior without his Martial Heart and survive. Rui didn''t understand. Granted, the Gatekeeper had spent seven years in the manifold, but even then, Rui didn''t understand how his Martial Body was starting to grow at such an extraordinary rate after the age of five hundred when he was truly old biologically.


    Yet, Rui''s evaluation was urate.


    The Gatekeeper had grown nearly twice as strong as he had been when he fought Rui purely through bodily growth.


    "His training must have improved astronomically. I don''t know what he did, but I don''t think even Nel''s physicality has grown this fast, ever."


    Currently, the Gatekeeper was the biggest menace on the battlefield.


    The exhausted Martial Masters needed to gang up on him to keep him at bay from massacring all of them.


    They were on the verge of absolute failure at all times.


    Most of their attacks bounced off of him, inflicting little to no damage.


    Kane and Nel were menaces in their own right, of course. Having greatly benefited from the Gatekeeper''s magical training, Nel''s physicality had reached an extremely high level as well. While he didn''t have the ocean of umtion that the Gatekeeper had amassed over his lifetime, he was born with a superhuman body that made up for much of the gap. His body was also less bulky, allowing him to be faster than the Gatekeeper but far less durable and strong.


    Kane, having gained confidence in his new domain after his battle with Master Inyen, employed it everywhere he went. Nothing could so much as touch him.


    His reflexes had reached a degree that Rui couldn''t even fathom possible in the Senior Realm. His reflexes reacted not only to things that were to ur but even to things that had yet to, allowing him to invalidate everything that his opponents threw at him.


    He even circled around the retreating Sekigaharan groups, with his back facing the direction of the Sekigahara Confederate, impeding their desperate retreat home.


    It forced them to fight him head-on.


    Out of all the Martial Seniors that had taken part in the operation, the three Martial Seniors drew the highest amount of opposition. There weren''t too many grade-fifteen Martial Seniors, so most of them fought multiple exhausted Masters at once.


    Yet, this was most true for the trio.


    Each of them fought many Martial Masters that struggled to suppress their devastating power on the battlefield.


    Unfortunately, everybody had limits. Belonging ? N?velDram/a.Org.


    In this case, it was the trio that hit their limits first.


    SPLAT!


    Nel''s grin grew gruesome as a de impaled him, poking out from the front.


    "Die, monster!" one Martial Master bellowed with desperation.


    All it took was a single mistake for the battles to turn over.


    BOOM BOOM BOOM!!!


    The Gatekeeper turtled into a defensive guard as more than twenty Martial Masters ganged up on him, sting him with powerful attacks with deep desperation in hopes of downing the monster.


    He was undoubtedly strong, but not even he could ignore such an immense influx of powerful attacks from those with active Martial Minds.


    "That''s not all¡­" Rui nced at a group of exhausted Martial Masters that desperately consumed potions while their peers held off the small group of powerful Martial Seniors. "Things are about to get much harder."


    BADUMP!!


    "THAT''S IT!" Several Martial Masters with rejuvenated Martial Bodies and Hearts surged into battle. "I''LL KILL ALL OF YOU!"


    BOOOM BOOOM BOOOM!!!


    Of course, that did not mean their Minds were rejuvenated as only deep sleep could do that. But even the tiny spark of Mind capacity they had left was enough to turn the tides.


    Hell, even if their Martial Minds werepletely exhausted, they could still turn the tides with the sheer amount of power they could channel.


    In turn, they could take over the duties of suppressing the three monstrous Martial Seniors while their peers earned their reprieve that they were looking for to consume their own potions.


    The turning of one table led to a cascade of turning tables as an increasing number of rejuvenated Martial Masters ganged up on the three strongest Martial Seniors of the Kandrian Empire with fury, ready to repay them for their humiliation.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2240 Suicide Mission

    Chapter 2240 Suicide Mission


    In just a moment, the three strongest Martial Seniors of Kandria leading Operation Clean-Up were suppressed by many powerful Martial Masters that systematically opposed them as more and more of their peers grew rejuvenated.


    BOOOOOM BOOOOOM BOOOOOM!!!


    Sir Armstrong''s eyes sharpened as he put his all into defending himself from the astronomical onught that threatened to overwhelm even his immense and vaste natural durability.


    "Rgh¡­!"


    Kane''s new domain was slowly torn apart as many Martial Masters wrung heaven and earth out of his control collectively, shredding off his armor of lightning.


    BOOOM BOOOM BOOOM!!


    "HAHAHA! IS THAT THE BEST YOU CAN DO, YOU LITTLE SHITS?" Nel bellowed even as he weathered the onughts from his enemies who were determined to put him down like a wild animal.


    Unfortunately, bravado was not enough to win a battle.


    Far from it.


    The Sekigaharan Masters who should have been focusing on retreating had lost themselves in the pent up anger and frustration of losing the war to Kandrian Masters and now stooping to losing to even their Seniors.


    That was too much for their psyche.


    "DIE, KANDRIAN SCUM!"


    "KNOW YOUR PLACE, LITTLE SENIORS!"


    "HOW DARE YOU ATTACK A MARTIAL MASTER!"


    Rui clenched fists as his eyes narrowed.


    A single realization had dawned on him.


    The truth became clear as he beheld the battle dynamics atrge.


    "Father¡­" He gritted his teeth. "This was a suicide mission."


    A mutual suicide mission by design.


    There''s no way his father didn''t predict that they would undoubtedly lose their lives en masse even if their opponents were exhausted.


    However, his father probably didn''t care.


    After all, the life of a Martial Senior was insignificantpared to that of a Martial Master.


    If his father could kill as many Martial Masters as the number of Martial Seniors who were sacrificed, then his father and the Martial Union would dly make that sacrifice.


    It just made too much strategic sense.


    So much so that even Rui had no choice but to admit that the decision to deploy them into a deep strike operation from which their probability of survival was low made the most sense.


    It was objectively the best option.


    And Kandria would not be where it was today if not for his father making the objectively most superior strategic and tactical decisions each time.


    Yet, as he watched Kane, Nel, and Sir Armstrong get piled on by even more rejuvenated Martial Masters who unloaded all the power in their Martial Hearts in abandon to kill the Martial Seniors that had given them so much humiliation, he couldn''t help but grow more indignant.


    He didn''t care about the other Martial Seniors. This is the property of N?-velDrama.Org.


    However, he didn''t want to see Kane, Nel, and Sir Armstrong die.


    Was he going to just sit there and watch all of them get brutally decimated as the onughts on them only grew stronger and stronger?


    His fists clenched as he gritted his teeth.


    The answer was clear.


    "No."


    He got up with a determined expression.


    But what could he even do?


    His mind was truly exhausted from the sheer number of times he had abused the VOID algorithm, the Angel of Lace, the SOUL System, and the Hypnotrix in the previous battle. There''s no way that he could use his Martial Mind.


    He hadn''t forgotten Master Zentra''s warning in that regard.


    "¡­There''s no point in jumping into battle if I can''t use my systems of thought and or Martial Mind." He massaged his aching head.


    His greatest strength was thought.


    It always had been.


    Without it, he was only a fraction as strong as he was with it.


    "I don''t have the power to turn the tides with my personal power as I am right now." He grew more urgent as he saw even the Gatekeeper bleeding profusely from the sheer amount of devastation he weathered from many powerful Martial Masters. "If I jump in and join the fight, I''ll only prolong the inevitable and get myself killed."


    He wanted to seed.


    "Think." He closed his eyes.


    Despite how much it hurt his brain, he simted the most promising strategies in his mind to see the oue.


    Unfortunately, they all ended in failure.


    Using Greater Phantomind Void to extract them from the battlefield and get them to safety: failure. He would be deeply damaged and they would most likely notice with how many Martial Masters were focused on their targets.


    Trying to misdirect their attention away from their opponents, giving thetter enough time to escape was also a failure. There were some who still had their Martial Minds, even if barely a spark, active. That was enough to render all hypnosis and misdirection invalid.


    Using his Mind Mask to feign being a Martial Sage was also something that he considered. Unfortunately, that tactic had be extremely well-known. The Sage-level powerhouses certainly knew about it because he had used the exact same strategy in the Serevian Dungeon War.


    "Dammit¡­!" Rui cursed. A stream of ideas entered his mind, yet all of them were worthless.


    Nothing worked.


    He turned in Kane''s direction with a grim expression.


    The man''s domain had been thoroughly eroded with thebined efforts of many Martial Masters who ensured that he wouldn''t be able to activate it.


    After that, it was just a matter of picking him apart slowly but surely.


    Kane was bleeding profusely, panting heavily as he desperately evaded the attacks to the best of his ability.


    Yet, his expression was severe.


    Rui gritted his teeth as his eyes grew grave. "¡­To think that you would be thrust into this situation right after you reached the cusp of the Master Realm¡ª!"


    He froze as a final idea popped into his head.


    "At the cusp of the Master Realm?" Rui''s eyes widened. "Then¡­"


    His eyes swam around as he simted his idea.


    "¡­Then what if I break him through, them through, to the Master Realm before he dies?"


    He turned towards Kane, sweeping his gaze across the dying Martial Seniors.


    "Right here, right now¡­" Rui murmured. "If he breaks through, then¡­"


    Then they would be able to turn the tables around onest time.


    There was only one catch.


    "If I do this, then¡­" His expression grew severe, "they''ll know that I am responsible for the breakthroughs."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2241: Cost and Benefits

    Chapter 2241: Cost and Benefits


    ?


    There was no way around the fact that if he chose to go with this strategy, he would be divulging the truth about his ability to trigger breakthroughs enmasse. Of course, he could try and pin his hopes on the possibility that the Sekigaharans would think it was just a coincidence, but it was way too reckless to put his trust in such a remote possibility.


    He needed to ept that if he truly chose to save his friends, he would undoubtedly be sacrificing the secrecy of his abilities.


    The consequences were not slight.


    Once the world found out what he could do, he would be at a much higher level of danger than ever before.


    If not for the fact that he was a Master, and a particrly powerful high-grade Martial Master at that, this sort of thing would have ruined his life. His power was just barely enough to ensure that this sort of secret didn''tpletely ruin his life.


    After all, one did not mess with a Martial Master who was close to the peak of the Master Realm.


    However, while he was rtively secure against Master-level forces, the same couldn''t be said for Sage-level forces. He was screwed if he ever found himself before an enemy Martial Sage without any allied Sages around him.


    "On top of that, I''m not protected by thews of the Panamic Martial Federation anymore." Rui felt a headacheing up. "This means that I''m not protected by norms designed to protect Masters from Sages."


    Sages were expected not to run around bullying Masters without due cause. A single Sage could wipe out many Masters if they really wanted to. However, this would cause immeasurable harm to Martial Art as a whole. Thus, it was frowned upon and restricted directly or indirectly.


    Of course, war between nations was considered a valid cause, so the three Sage-level powerhouses were not limited by the Panamic Martial Federation even if Rui were a part of it. But it would have protected him from the rest of the Martial World, at least. Now he didn''t have even that.


    His expression grew grim as he thoroughly considered the consequences of this course of action.


    They were not the worst thing in the world, but they were definitely unpleasant. If he had been a Martial Sage, he would have had the power needed to unt his abilities and get away with it, but as he was now, it was unwise to reveal what he could do to the rest of the world.


    "But... am I really going to let Kane die?"


    Was he really going to let Kane die because he didn''t want to invite danger upon himself?


    A resigned smile cracked at the edge of his mouth.Content is ? by N?velDrama.Org.


    It wasn''t even a question.


    Yet, the answer taught him more about himself.


    Previously, he would not have been sure what he would have chosen in this particr circumstance, but now he knew.


    "I''m going to save Kane, no matter what."


    Of course, just because he found a viable strategy didn''t mean it was easy.


    If anything, before worrying about the consequences of seeding, he needed to worry about actually seeding.


    He needed to conduct a mass breakthrough in the middle of an intense battle, and he needed to ensure that he had gathered their focus at least once.


    He also needed to make sure he didn''t incur any attacks when breaking them through, otherwise he wouldn''t be able to focus enough.


    "Damn, this is not going to be easy, but if I can break even one of them through sessfully, then I''m probably set."


    As long as there was one Master on their side who could use their Martial Mind unhindered, it was possible for them to massacre the Sekigaharan Masters who, by now, were either entirely or almost entirely unable to use their Martial Minds.


    It was possible for him to have his cake and eat it.


    This way, everything would be just fine.


    "Alright, I don''t have much time, or rather, they don''t, I need to get this done as soon as possible."


    BADUMP!


    His Martial Heart zed into power as raw energy coursed through every cell in his body. As much as he would love to sit down ande up with ns, back-up ns, and back-up ns to back-up ns, he simply didn''t have the chance to do this.


    They could die at any moment.


    WHOOSH!


    Rui surged straight up, heading as far and as high as he could into the sky and beyond.


    He pushed himself to the limit as he headed to the point that was directly above the three of his friends.


    WHOOSH


    He let himself fall, heading down as fast as possible.


    If he straightforwardly approached this from his hiding spot, he would only invite enormous enemy attacks.


    As he plummeted, he prepared his brain for one final usage of his system of thoughts. Of course he didn''t dare to actually activate his Martial Mind; he needed to use just two or three systems of thought for just a short period of time.


    He closed his eyes, meditating even as he free-fell from the sky.


    ''Empty your mind.''


    He gathered his concentration.


    He immersed himself in what was toe.


    Bit by bit, all superfluous thoughts were rid.


    Until it was time.


    WHOOSH!


    "Hey, we have an iing attacker from the sky!"


    "Damn, did those Kandrian bastards send in another team to harass us?!"


    "Take him out before he reaches us."


    The Sekigaharans noticed his descent, turning some of their fire power away from the


    wounded Seniors.


    Kane, panting gravely, turned his gaze up to catch a glimpse of what they were looking at.


    His eyes widened with shock.


    He could recognize him anywhere.


    He could recognize the concern and determination in his eyes.


    He could recognize the reason he hade here.


    "Hahaha..." Heughed weakly. "Rui? Man, get out of here-!"


    He froze as a single whisper escaped Rui.


    "Tree..." His eyes red with determination. "... of Life."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2242: Eternal Gratitude

    Chapter 2242: Eternal Gratitude


    ?


    Suddenly the world changed.


    The Tree of Life, in its nigh infinite glory, altered the very fabric of heaven and earth within the depths of the minds of all those who beheld it.


    In that moment, the world that cradled all life ceased to exist.


    In its ce, came Hell.


    A true Hell, one that was different for each and every one of them.


    Some were submerged in a world of fire.


    Some were submerged in a world of ice.Belonging ? N?velDram/a.Org.


    Some were submerged in a world of extreme gravity.


    It brought them suffering.


    "ARGGHH!!"


    "...Ack! Can''t... breathe!"


    "Rgh!!"


    A world that was antithetical to their Martial Body.


    Martial Artists had a strange ce within the Tree of Life.


    The system of thought that codified the evolutionary gic chains that bound all life and the environments that were most optimal and, by extension, most antithetical to them


    recognize each Martial Body as its own unique individual species.


    In other words, every time a new Martial Apprentice ascended to the Squire Realm, a new species had been created.


    After all, Martial Bodies were just super evolved human bodies.


    Thus, within the Tree of Life, each Martial Artist was his or her own leaf stemming from the same branch that was the human species.


    They each had their own antithetical environments that Rui could see as clear as day at all times due to the passively active system of thought.


    The reason he didn''t use the Tree of Life against Martial Masters as ubiquitously as he did against beasts and monsters was because the former did not just use their Bodies to fight. Martial Masters had Martial Art and Minds that were best countered by his other systems of thought.


    The Tree of Life and the Yggdrasil System had been created to be most effective against those that relied on their raw and innate capabilities of their body and species. He had designated them to be used most when against beasts and monsters, because that was what they were meant for and best at.


    However, when it came to breaking through Seniors, it still contributed by making the world antithetical to them in their minds, in addition to the other measures that were to be enacted.


    Most particrly, he used the Tree of Life specifically because among the Seniors, there was one who primarily fought with his body rather than Art, had also developed a system of thought, and was eligible to break through.


    Nel.


    Nel froze in shock as the world around shifted from ordinarynd and sky to a world of emptiness.


    Everything was gone.


    "Wha¨D!" Nel grew shocked as he tried to catch on to something, anything, to gain leverage so that he could deploy his physical abilities.


    Yet, there was nothing.


    He simply floated in infinite darkness.


    A void.


    He could see nothing, feel nothing, sense nothing.


    It didn''t matter how strong his body was.


    It didn''t matter that he was born with superhuman prowess.


    It didn''t matter that he had spent decades refining his physicality.


    This was the world that was antithetical to his physicality.


    It drove him to the verge of sanity.


    Yet, that wasn''t the worst of it.


    Rui narrowed his eyes, ignoring the sharp pain in his head as he activated three predictive models that he had on the three of them, adding them to the Tree of Life hypnosis.


    Suddenly, Nel froze as the darkness he was submerged in gathered into a single figure.


    It condensed to form a head, a torso, and limbs.


    The figure of darkness took a stance as its eyes red with bloodlust.


    Nel grinned. "Oh yeah? Bring it on, you little shit!"


    The shadow figure surged forward as the two threw their most powerful blows.


    WHOOSH!


    Nel''s eyes widened as the shadow figure easily evaded his attacks using Rui''s predictive model beforeunching a blow at him.


    BOOOM!


    "Rgh! Dammit!" Nel flew spiraling as he struggled to regain any semnce of bodily bnce


    and stability.


    The world continued to reject the meaning of his greatest gifts.


    A world truly antithetical to him.


    Meanwhile, Kane faced a different world.


    A world very simr to the Speed Void domain in Rui''s Yggdrasil System. One that refused to allow him to move, let alone move fast.


    A world of light that rejected his Void Step, illuminating him as he tried to hide in the


    shadows.


    A world grounded to a current sink that drained every ounce of lightning he generated using a domain in an atmosphere that was chemically insnt and resistant to the flow of electricity.


    A world that was antithetical to everything he had to offer.


    He faced an even stronger opponent.


    He faced the desire that drove him forward.


    Rui himself.


    "What... what''re you doing here?" Kane narrowed his eyes as his gaze pinned Rui where he stood. "You just fought a long battle. I know you can''t use your Martial Mind."


    A smile emerged on Rui''s face. "You''re correct, I can''t use my Martial Mind, but the question


    is whether you will."


    Kane''s eyes widened.


    BAM!!


    "Rgh...!" Kane grimaced as Rui sted him with an attack.


    "Get up." Rui''s gaze grew severe. "You want to catch up to me, right? You want to reach me,


    right? Well..."


    Rui surged forward with powerful eyes. "You''re going to do it right here and right now or die


    trying."


    In the real world, things were not going so great for Rui.


    "GET HIM!"


    "KILL HIM!"


    "We need to break this illusion!"


    BOOM BOOOM BOOM!!


    Rui grimaced as he held on for dear life while working his breakthrough magic on all the


    Martial Seniors.


    "Did you forget why I''m called the Dawnbringer?" Rui''s re grew murderous. "Don''t push me, unless you want to fight the Sun."


    They froze as they remembered why they had ever sought to kill him early on in the battle in


    the first ce.


    This was Rui''s n to buy himself as much time as he could before his friends could break


    through. He needed to wait just long enough to ensure that their Martial Paths were on the verge of breaking, serving as a trigger for their breakthrough to the Master Realm.


    He didn''t need to wait long.


    His eyes lit up with delight as he felt a Martial Mind blooming!


    He could feel it clearly.


    It was decent.


    Yet, he could feel an unfathomable amount of refinement within it, much to his surprise.


    "Nice, is it Nel or Kane-!"


    His body froze with shock as he realized it was neither.


    The truth dawned on him.


    Yet, it was beyond even his ability to parse.


    "No..." His voice grew shaky as he gazed at the Gatekeeper with aghast bewilderment.


    "Impossible!"


    For reasons beyond Rui''s fathoming, he could sense an active Martial Mind deep within the


    Gatekeeper''s mind.


    The strongest Senior was no more.


    In his ce, a Martial Master was born.


    Sir Armstrong opened his eyes after what felt like an eternity, shifting his gaze to Rui.


    A soft smile cracked at the edge of his mouth.


    "You have my eternal gratitude, young man."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2243 A Thoughtful Man

    Chapter 2243 A Thoughtful Man


    The Gatekeeper was thought to be a simple man.


    A man who simply cultivated his Body without a care for the world.


    A man who had once been the hero of Kandria but had faded into irrelevance upon the advent of the Reign of the Master Realm.


    A man who sacrificed thought at the altar of physicality.


    A man who forsook mind at the altar of Body.


    A man who could never break through to the Master Realm.


    They were wrong.


    They were all wrong.


    While it was true that the Gatekeeper did not think in battle, relying on his muscle memory and instinct instead, it was not true that he did not engage in the pursuit of thought.


    The reason he had gained the reputation of being thoughtless even amongst those who knew him the best was because when he did think deeply, it was when he was inplete solitude.


    The truth was that when it came to cultivating his Body and pursuing Physical Evolution, he thought more than almost any other Martial Artist.


    He would often spend hours, days, and sometimes even weeks and months immersed in thought in istion.


    What was the most efficient training path for him?


    What was the most effective training methodology for him?


    What was the most effective avenue of training for him?


    What was the best way to pursue his Martial Path of Physicality Evolution?


    These were questions that he dedicated his everything to answer.


    He was not unwilling to harness the power of thought as everybody thought he was.


    He was unwilling only to pursue thought for the sake of thought or for the sake ofbat, or power.


    However, what if he pursued thought for the sake of physicality?


    What if he pursued mind for the sake of Body?


    He was not unwilling to do that.


    His ultimate goal, ambition, and purpose in life was Physical Evolution.


    In order to fulfill it, he was willing to do whatever he needed to do.


    Including harness thought.


    Including creating a system of thought.


    However, it wasn''t so easy.


    In order to create a system of thought to further Physicality Evolution, it would undoubtedly be a training system of thought. It would require him to master his understanding of the Martial Body, his Martial Body, in order to create a system of thought that would allow him to elerate Physical Evolution.


    It meant that he needed to gain an understanding of the human body on an extremely deep level.


    He needed to understand the Martial Body at the smallest unit that constituted it.


    And that was where he was stuck.


    The understanding of the human body had not reached a level for him to create a powerful system of thought that could elevate his pursuit of Physical Evolution. Understanding of the human body below the tissue level was highly limited and nobody understood how cells functioned beyond iplete hypotheses


    After all, even the Martial Union was shocked by Rui''s autophagy presentation.


    Until the Martial Union gained a thorough understanding of the Martial Body at a subcellr level, Sir Armstrong would be resigned to relying on his instincts and experience, which were far more reliable that half-baked understanding of the human body.


    That was until he met a man who possessed what he needed.


    "Oh? You wish to learn about the human body from me to create a system of thought to help your Body evolve faster and stronger?" Clinical curiosity lit up in the cold eyes of the Divine Doctor. "I must say, this is a first for me. I have never had a Martial Artist seek knowledge from me. But¡­"


    He gazed at Sir Armstrong with a frozen smile. "Why should I help you? Just because you asked me? Do you have any idea how many people have begged me to impart even a sliver of my knowledge? I refused all of them, so tell me¡­"


    His cold smile widened. "Why shouldn''t I reject you where you stand? Don''t even think of trying to threaten me. Only a Martial Transcendent possesses the power to ovee my immortality."


    Sir Armstrong narrowed his eyes.


    He understood that he was being given a chance.


    A first andst chance to make a case for gaining his aid.


    "¡­I am not making a request," he began with a solemn voice. "I am offering you a trade. I heard you like experimenting on specimens that pique your curiosity."


    BADUMP!!


    The Divine Doctor''s eyes lit up with even greater interest as the supernova that was the Gatekeeper''s Martial Heart erupted in all its physical glory, demonstrating the astronomical power that he had cultivated over the span of half a millennium.


    "My Martial Body is the greatest that humanity has ever produced, that I''m certain of. While there are others who also have dedicated themselves to their Bodies, most of them havepromised for technique, Mind, and other things. And even those who haven''t have not cultivated their physicality for as long as I have." Sir Armstrong''s voice left no room for doubt. "If you heed my request, I do not mind serving as your test subject."


    "¡­Fascinating." The Divine Doctor''s clinical curiosity grew even deeper.


    That had happened ten years ago.


    Seven of which happened in the manifold.


    The Gatekeeper learned everything that the Divine Doctor deemed necessary or relevant for him to know in order for him to aplish the goal he espoused to thetter.


    He employed the principles of data science that were present in the voidlet techniques that Rui had developed in the creation of a training system of thought dedicated to Physical Evolution.


    Even he was shocked at how absurdly powerful and effective his new system of thought was in its earliest iterations.


    The quality of his training skyrocketed.


    Within a year of his training of thepleted system of thought in the seventh year in the manifold, his Body became twice as strong as before.


    The Bodily Objective Development Yield System, or BODY System was highly effective.


    The fact that the acronym was significant and relevant was, of course, just a coincidence.


    Regardless, it was his nascent and now active Martial Mind. This is the property of N?-velDrama.Org.


    There was just one issue.


    "My Martial Mind is exclusively dedicated to training," the Gatekeeper told Rui with a calm voice. "It cannot aid me inbat. I do not possess the power of a Martial Master despite having broken through to the Master Realm for now. However, I can help you buy time."


    The Gatekeeper returned to the offensive upon those words.


    BOOOM!!!


    The tables had yet to turn.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2244 Barricading Power

    Chapter 2244 Barricading Power


    The Gatekeeper''s words jolted Rui out of a shocked stupor.


    "A system of thought dedicated to training outsidebat?" Rui''s eyes widened. "That''s incredible!"


    He had never known that such a thing was even possible. However, it appeared that the Martial Mind did not discriminate between different purposes of thought as long as it was directly in the service of the Martial Path.


    It was remarkably impressive to Rui that the Gatekeeper had managed toe up with a system of thought that empowered his Physical Evolution itself.


    "But¡­it makes sense," he realized. "I didn''t sense him using any system of thought thus far in the battle. Furthermore, even his sudden spike in the growth of his Martial Body makes sense. It all adds up¡ª"


    "Focus," the Gatekeeper''s deep voice was calm. "Do not get distracted by your endless fascination of Martial Art. The slightest bit of carelessness will get you killed."


    Rui nodded with a severe expression as he turned his full concentration towards trying to break the Martial Seniors through. He needed just one other Martial Master to break through; if what the Gatekeeper had told him was true, then he was, for the time being, the weakest Martial Master in existence, one who wasn''t even in the Realm as far asbat power went.


    Rui was sure that given time and the manifold, the Gatekeeper would be a force to reckon with very soon. However, for the time being, he was resigned to taking over Rui''s role inbat.


    "Fuuu¡­" The Gatekeeper exhaled heavily as he narrowed his eyes, activating his Martial Mind.


    He knew that it wouldn''t do for him what it did for other Martial Minds by its very nature. The efficiency boost that Martial Masters made wasbat-oriented because their systems of thought themselves werebat-oriented. His wasn''t. Thus, the only utility that the Martial Mind offered to him was his senses.


    "Kill them!"


    "Kill the Dawnbringer!"


    "Stop this nasty hypnosis!"


    A barrage of attacks had already converged upon Rui in an attempt to get him to stop his Tree of Life illusion.


    "I''m afraid not." The Gatekeeper''s tone was unyielding.


    BOOOM BOOOM BOOOM!!


    He pushed himself to the limit as he pushed himself to the limit, intercepting their Martial Art with his full power.


    BOOOOOOM!!!


    An enormous shockwave spread throughout the battlefield as he pushed himself to the very limit.


    "Tsk, kill that stubborn oaf!"


    Meanwhile, the efforts of the Sekigaharans heightened, as did their confusion.


    They truly were confused.


    They were in the middle of the process of killing the Kandrian Martial Seniors when the Dawnbringer fell from the sky out of nowhere and cast a powerful hypnosis on all of them.


    And then, the Gatekeeper, notorious for having stubbornly clung to physical pursuit, suddenly broke through to the Master Realm.


    And then, the Gatekeeper, notorious for having stubbornly clung to physical pursuit, suddenly broke through to the Master Realm.


    It was an inconceivable sequence of events.


    Yet, it had happened nheless.


    "Wait¡­" One of them realized. "This is too much of a coincidence. This illusion¡­"


    His eyes widened. "Could it be that the reason that the Gatekeeper broke through, the reason that the Dawnbringer even came to the battlefield, was to trigger the breakthroughs?"


    They froze when that thought was voiced.


    Didn''t that mean that the Void Prince was responsible for breakthroughs all along?


    The interim leader of the Sekigaharan Master let out a gruesome, malevolent grin.


    "KILL THE DAWNBRINGER AT ALL COSTS!" This is the property of N?-velDrama.Org.


    They had already noticed that despite breaking through to the Master Realm, the Gatekeeper hadn''t grown too much stronger; he was still very much within their capabilities to handle despite the fact that all their Martial Minds had run out of stamina.


    BOOOM BOOOM BOOOM!!!


    Yet, despite the onught, the Gatekeeper did yield to his enemies. His Martial Mind massively empowered his perception and senses, yet unlike how it was for most Martial Masters, the Gatekeeper did not experience a massive boost in his perception of the outer world.


    No.


    Instead, his perception of self was massively empowered. His ability to sense his own body had skyrocketed immensely. He could see each and every individual that constituted his microcosm of Martial Body. He could peer into the depths of each of every single one of them and observe the molecr processes that sustained life itself.


    He could see the flow of blood and the flow of energy in his nervous system.


    He could see everything there was to see about his Martial Body.


    In an instant, he could see everything he needed to do when he got back home to elevate his Martial Body to a higher dimension of power.


    BOOOM!!!


    The Sekigaharan Masters grimaced as a powerful shockwave swept them away.


    "Nothing will impede us today." The Gatekeeper''s powerful voice was fierce. "Not even your lives."


    Unfortunately for the Sekigaharan, although it wasn''t overwhelmingly significant, the Gatekeeper had undoubtedly grown stronger. He had be even more of a quasi-Master level monster who could not be touched by anything short of a full-fledged Martial Master.


    There was no such thing amongst the Sekigaharans at that point.


    "If you retreat now, there''s a good chance we will not pursue." Sir Armstrong dered. "However, should you choose to continue and fight, you may very well ovee me, but only at the cost of many of your Martial Masters."


    RUMBLE¡­!


    The Sekigaharans stiffened as the Gatekeeper red his immense power.


    Unfortunately, the deterrence was not strong enough; it certainly would have been if he had been as strong as a Martial Master. But, his current power level was not devastating in the face of many dozens of rejuvenated Martial Masters.


    Especially when he was already very injured before breaking through.


    Furthermore, the prize was too great. The moment they became convinced that Rui was responsible for the mass breakthroughs, they just had to kill him.


    After all, one of the main reasons that the Sekigahara Confederate waged a war against the Kandrian Empire was the breakthroughs that massively increased the poptions of Martial Artists at each Realm, a power that threatened to elevate Kandria far above them.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2245: All-Out

    Chapter 2245: All-Out


    ?


    With the source of the breakthrough right there, how could they ignore him and retreat, especially when he was only protected by one Martial Senior while the rest were in his hypnosis?


    They couldn''t.


    They would probably never get a chance like this ever again.


    The battle between the Gatekeeper and the Martial Masters raged on as Rui focused exclusively on breaking at least one more Martial Senior through.


    Unfortunately, he wasn''t doing too well.


    "Huff...huff..." He panted heavily as he closed his eyes, struggling to keep the hypnosis going. "Dammit."


    It was overwhelming.


    It felt like his brain was stinging unbearably.


    If this was how much it hurt to just use hypnosis and his systems of thought without actually using his Martial Mind, then he couldn''t help but wonder how bad it would be if he activated his Martial Mind.


    He was not interested in finding out.


    "Come on." He at the hypnotized Martial Seniors with grave hope. "You''re at the cusp. You can do it."


    They were all peak-grade Martial Seniors; Rui was certain that they had the chance to break through.


    He and the Gatekeeper needed to hold out until then.


    Meanwhile, Kane fought Rui with everything he had.


    CRACK CRACK CRACK!!


    The air sparked as it tingled with faint peril.


    "Finally going all out are you?" Rui smiled.


    Within the illusion, Rui projected an image of power.


    "I need to, if I have any hopes of beating you," Kane''s eyes narrowed, "of catching up to you."


    His demeanor grew solemn and severe.


    Yet, it only brought about mncholy within Rui.


    Kane had grown more serious after Rui broke through to the Master Realm and once more put a Realm of difference between them. The gap between them had forced him to take his path to a higher Realm much more seriously and dedicate all his time and energy to it.


    He tended to be more light-hearted and rxed after he caught up to Rui.


    Rui knew because it had happened three times in the past when he broke through to the Squire Realm, Senior Realm, and Master Realm.


    He tended not to care about reaching a higher Realm all that much until Rui broke through to


    it.


    CRACK CRACK CRACK!!


    His lightning domain roared in its full might as bolts of lightning converged upon him with full power. Rui observed with a hint of admiration as Kane gently harnessed them, roping them upon his body as he d himself with lightning itself.


    In Kane''s case, he had decided that it was sub-optimal to use the Tree of Life to produce an environment that hard-countered him physically.


    Unlike Nel and the Gatekeeper, he didn''t heavily rely on his constitution.


    If Rui wanted to break him through to the Master Realm, it would only be through actualbat.


    "Here Ie!" Kane narrowed his eyes as he surged forward with incredible speed. WHOOSH!


    In the blink of an eye, he arrived before Rui at immense speed.


    "Speed Void."


    WHOOSH!


    Rui managed to evade his attack, hampering with drag of his domain. Ordinarily, he would have also hindered him with Temporal Disharmony to lower his speed further. However, that technique wasrgely ineffective against Kane.


    The old Fulminata Godspeed alone made it quite ineffective by amplifying his reflexes and instincts to a great degree. However, the domain took it much further, meaning that using the Hypnomatrix in this circumstance was simply a waste of energy.


    However, Speed Void, in and of itself, was not enough to kill his speed advantage with his own domain, which sped him much faster than Speed Void slowed him down.


    WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH!


    Rui relied on his predictive and SOUL models to evade all his extraordinarily fast attacks one after another. If not for the fact that these were both pre-made, he wouldn''t have been able to handle Kane''s speed without at least Neo-Godspeed.


    On top of that, he couldn''t afford to get hit by Kane''s attacks.


    SPLAT SPLAT!


    Rui narrowed his eyes as two cuts appeared on his arms.


    Kane had reached a level of speed and agility that was so high that his daggers had be arcs of pure destruction, tearing apart at anything that was unfortunate to emerge in the way of his attacks.


    Unfortunately, Rui knew Kane too well. Despite the astronomical speed gap between them, Kane could not even force Rui to use his Metabody System due to how refined his models on


    were.


    "Hah, cheater!" Kaneined.


    "Life isn''t fair." Rui snorted, evading a lethal attack as he surged in, throwing a powerful Flowing Canon at Kane.


    WHOOSH!


    Kane effortlessly evaded with his astronomically heightened reflexes; it didn''t evene close to hurting him.


    It was within Rui''s prediction as a second blow had already arrived at Kane''s dodging maneuver even before he did.


    WHOOSH!


    Kane evaded that as well.


    "Tsk," Rui grew more serious as he found himself struggling to touch Kane so much in his current state.


    His reflexes were so great that while he found it exceedingly difficult tond a single hit on Rui, the reverse was even more true. Despite the extraordinary might of both the VOID and SOUL models working against him, in addition to the Speed Void holding him back, Kane wasN?velDrama.Org (C) content.


    impossible to touch where he stood.


    "Well, I''ll be damned." Rui grinned.


    The whole mechanism of the breakthrough was to use his Martial Art to bring his targets on the verge of having their paths cracked, by overwhelming adaptively evolving to them. However, if his opponent was strong enough, then it was possible that Kane wouldn''t suffer


    any threat to his Martial Path.


    And Kane was strong.


    Far stronger than he could have ever imagined.


    Not only was his new domain extraordinary, but its synergy with Kane was even greater, leading to an oue that far exceeded what Rui would have expected from him. At his


    current level of power, Rui wasn''t sure he could beat Kane without going absolutely all out.


    RUMBLE...!


    Kane''s eyes widened as Rui activated the Metabody System.


    "Alright them, all out it is."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2246 Too Weak And Too Strong

    Chapter 2246 Too Weak And Too Strong


    "Fuuu¡­" Rui exhaled heavily as he activated Neo Godspeed.


    "You know that your variant of Godspeed doesn''tpare to my True Fulminata Godspeed," Kane took his stance. "Is that what you''re calling it?" Rui smiled. "That''s an apt name, even if simple. After all, this technique was based on your natural state in the Thundering Valley. Regardless, you''re right. My Neo Godspeed is pitiful inparison to your current state, but have you forgotten, Kane?"


    Rui grinned as the air grew more perilous.


    "I don''t need to be as fast as my opponents to handle them."


    Kane sharpened his eyes as Rui surged him with much greater speed than before.


    WHOOSH!


    Kane lightly side-stepped the blow, shooting forward as his daggers converged upon Rui without so much as a hint of hesitation.


    WHOOSH!


    Kane''s eyes widened as Rui disappeared.


    A feint.


    They crashed into an empty image as the real Rui threw a powerful Yin-Yang Spear from behind him.


    "It''s over."


    Except, it wasn''t.


    WHOOSH!


    Rui grew stunned as it was his attack that crashed into an empty image this time, a feint from the Phantom Step technique. Both of them had mastered the technique many years ago, and both of them hade to develop a deep proficiency with the technique over a long period of time.


    However, as Rui came to realize, Kane was a lot morepatible with Rui. Kane appeared before him in a blinding blur as his daggers surged toward Rui with immense speed. WHOOSH!


    It crashed into an empty image as Rui appeared from his side, throwing an extraordinarily powerful blow, only to run into another feint.


    WHOOSH!


    Kane surged with a swift de swing.


    WHOOSH!


    WHOOSH!


    WHOOSH!


    A strange dynamic emerged in the battle as the two men began throwing attacks, only for them to crash into feints one after another. Kane leveraged the technique to try and mitigate Rui''s boost in speed from the Neo Godspeed technique quite well.


    Thus, even though the speed from the Metabody Systembined with his systems of thought and the nerf to Kane''s speed with Speed Void, Kane was able to keep extremely well. Yet, Rui knew that it was not that they were truly equal inbat, for only one of them could maintain this level ofbat power for long.


    And it was not Kane.


    "Huff¡­Huff¡­" Kane panted heavily, momentarily pausing the battle.


    "This level of output is quite sustainable for me, Kane," Rui remarked. "After consuming the Sandflower Nectar Potion, I can maintain this level ofbat quitefortably. But that domain of yours¡­"


    CRACK CRACK CRACK!


    Rui nced around at the lightning bolts that converged upon Kane, sustaining his True Fulminata Godspeed. "Even if you consume a stamina-augmenting potion, you won''t be able to sustain this kind of output for too long; your Martial Body is most certainly not geared towards stamina orrge amounts of energy reserves. In other words¡­"


    His gaze returned to Kane. "¡­You cannot win this battle."


    Of course, Rui had to admit, he was deeply impressed. The True Fulminata Godspeed elevated Kane''sbat power to a level that was very close to what Rui had achieved as a Martial Senior before breaking through to the Master Realm. In fact, in his current state, Kane was qualified to take on the chimera that Rui had fought in the Mellow Manifold.


    Rui couldn''t believe that despite the massive advantages he had over Kane, such as the knowledge from another world and an extraordinary mind that went through a second stage of massive growth, thetter was still able to somehow follow in the lofty footsteps that Rui had left behind.


    He was a true genius, one who had driven himself to agonous lengths to catch up to the monster that was Rui.


    The fact that he had managed to keep victory from Rui despite thetter using most of his Martial Art was a testament to the power he had rued, matching Rui, trump card for trump card.


    The astronomical reflexes of the True Fulminata Godspeed allowed him to neutralize not only Temporal Disharmony but also allowed Kane to avoid getting dominated by the powerful predictive and SOUL models that Rui had on him.


    So what if Rui could see the future?


    So what if Rui could sense his intent?


    Rui''s motion was so slow in the face of Kane''s highly augmented reflexes that he could probably evade the former''s full speed an inch away from his face. They were so great that they were not too far below the reaction speed of a Martial Master.


    In the face of such fast reflexes, Rui''s movements without his Martial Mind may as well have been frozen. The only shoring was that it, too, couldn''t allow Kane to touch Rui either, for his insight into his opponents was too great.


    On top of that, Rui couldn''t afford to get hit by his lethal dagger attacks, forcing him to y a game of evasion against Kane, something Kane was far better at than Rui, as it was his forte.


    "Truly impressive," he heaved a sigh of admiration. "But this is where it ends, Kane."


    Rui had finished updating his out-of-date predictive model with the most recent changes Kane''s fighting style had undergone, doubling the confidence intervals of the statistical model and the depths to which he could foresee the future.


    VMMM!!! Content is ? by N?velDrama.Org.


    His power roiled violently as he activated the Yin-Yang Spear. "Breathing Crucifix."


    Rui cruelly choked his gasping friend with a powerful hypnosis, refusing to let him recuperate.


    CRACK CRACK!!


    The domain shuddered, growing weaker as his heaven-bending was greatly hampered.


    "Haha¡­" A weakugh escaped Kane as he fell to one knee.


    To think he still felt short of reaching Rui after the maddening training that he had been through in the past seven years.


    STEP


    Rui walked towards him slowly, heaving a sigh. "How unfortunate. You''re too weak to defeat me but too strong to have your path broken by me, depriving yourself of the opportunity to break through. Ah, well, I guess I''ll just have to pin my hopes on Nel. For now¡­"


    His expression hardened, "go to sleep."


    He arrived before Kane with a heavy gaze, lifting his fist up, ready to knock Kane out.


    However, by the time he sensed the danger, it was toote.


    CRACK CRACK CRACK!!


    A surge of lightning converged upon Kane as his daggers shot forward toward Rui in the sh of an eye.


    "Fulminata Voidspeed."


    BOOOOM!!!


    The battle was not over yet.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2247 Broken

    Chapter 2247 Broken


    Kane knew that he couldn''t beat Rui.


    Even with the Realm of Thunder domain massively amplifying his reflexes, he knew that he would most likely fall short of actually defeating for the first time in decades.


    And he was proven to be right.


    He was able to match Rui in the hypnoticbat zone that Rui projected in his mind. However, it required a level of exertion that was fundamentally unsustainable to someone who didn''t have high energy reserves and whose energy consumption was supposed to be low as an evasive, maneuvering-oriented Martial Artist.


    However, he knew that there were some minor circumstances in which he could pull a victory. One of them was when Rui was off-guard.


    He saved his greatest trump card for the very end.


    The simultaneous activation of Void Step and Fulminata integrated together by a system of thought that allowed him to fuse the speed and reflexes of the former to amplify thetter.


    The Void Step technique was a grade ten stealth technique, one that relied on a maneuvering-derived misdirection. It functioned by misdirecting one''s attention in the opposite direction that one maneuvered; the faster one was, the greater the stealth effect.


    So what if he could use the speed of his True Fulminata Godspeed to further amplify the stealth effect of the Void Step technique seamlessly and smoothly?


    That was one of the projects he set out to aplish after Rui broke through to the Master Realm.


    It took seven years to master the fusion and a system of thought thatpensated for hisgging conscious reactions with a system of thought specifically designed to allow him to fluidly wield the two greatest halves of his Shadow Wind Style Martial Art.


    The result?


    An extraordinary technique that allowed him to cross the vast expanses between Realms for just a moment, depleting almost all his remaining stamina in the blink of an eye. One that he had yet to entirely seed in pulling off.


    One that demanded more power than he possessed in the Senior Realm.


    He had waited the entire battle.


    He had waited the entire battle for the moment when Rui made the blunder of lowering his guard down. And then the moment came. Kane summoned every ounce of his remaining power as his eyes grew bloodshot from the sheer amount of strain his mind experienced.


    "True Fulminata Godspeed."


    Rui instinctively leaped with shock as he felt unfathomable peril emerging from his best friend.


    But it was toote.


    In that moment, Kane didn''t just harness lightning.


    No.


    He became lightning.


    WHOOSH!!!!!


    He disappeared.


    For a moment, he disappeared from all of heaven and earth, surging forward at astronomical speeds forbidden within the Senior Realm. His dagger shed forward, fiercely driven by Kane''s intense will not to be left behind by his friend. A will that pushed him past him beyond his limits.


    STEP


    He arrived behind Rui with a silent grace in the blink of an eye.


    For a moment, nothing happened.


    "Hahaha¡­" A weakugh escaped Rui as a smile emerged on his face. "Congrattions, you did it."


    SPLAT!!!!!


    Rui''s illusionary severed head fell off as a fountain of blood erupted from his neck. Kane''s daggers had cleanly decapitated him in a timeframe so short that even Rui''s illusionary body had beente in realizing it. The illusion quickly disappeared as the battle came to an end. Belonging ? N?velDram/a.Org.


    An overwhelming victory.


    Yet, it wasn''t his victory that Rui had congratted him on.


    No.


    He congratted him on something much more significant.


    Kane opened his eyes as he beheld the world for what felt like the first time.


    He saw reality itself, stripped from all its veils of mystery.


    He bore witness to heaven and earth itself to the depths of their being,prehending forces beyondprehension.


    A world beyond a world.


    His gaze swept beyond the material world as he witnessed the fabric of space and time contort and stretch under the weight of materia.


    His senses stretched in all dimensions of the world, allowing him to peer at its roots and its vast expanses.


    Time slowed down to a crawl in his eyes as his thoughts surged, reaching realms of power he didn''t know was possible. This was the power of the Martial Mind.


    "So this¡­" A faint murmur escaped him, ''is the Master Realm."


    It was surreal.


    Afortable sensation of power that Kane felt like he could lose himself in forever.


    Yet, the world demanded his attention.


    Suddenly, he became aware of his immediate surroundings.


    He became aware of his immediate circumstances.


    In the distance ahead of him, the Gatekeeper singlehandedly held off a hoard of Martial Masters by his lonesome as he unleashed an onught of power that kept them where they were while he weathered his attacks where he stood.


    Yet, they gazed at Kane with fear, having sensed his Martial Mind awakening and were on the verge of retreat. He fully intended to repay them for what they had done to him in the prior battle, yet there were more important things to Kane.


    THUD


    Rui fell t to the ground, heaving a deep sigh, immediately drawing Kane''s attention and rm.


    "Hey." Kane''s powerful voice was calm andposed. "Are you okay?"


    "Yeah¡­" Rui''s winced as he closed his bloodshot eyes. "I''m just tired as hell."


    Kane gazed at him in a calm silence.


    "Thank you."


    His voice was deep with sincere gratitude.


    Frankly, if Rui wasn''t there, he didn''t know if he would have been able to break through to the Master Realm. Words could not begin to describe how indebted he was to Rui.


    Rui shook his head. "I didn''t break you through. You broke yourself through; I just gave you the opportunity. I guess¡­"


    He turned to Kane with knowing eyes, "¡­you really want to catch up to me, huh?"


    Kane smiled wryly. "Well¡­" Rui heaved a tired sigh as his eyelids grew heavy. "You''re here now, so go kick some ass. I think I''ll get some long-awaited sleep."


    Kane''s gaze shifted towards the enemy Martial Masters that had already begun retreating.


    "You bet."


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2248 Manhunt

    Chapter 2248 Manhunt


    The moment the Masters sensed a second breakthrough in the Master Realm, they knew that there was no hope that they would be able to kill the Void Prince. The mission was a failure in every sense of the word.


    They had failed to attack Kandria.


    They had failed to defend their honor, suffering losses and casualties to a bunch of Martial Seniors.


    They had failed to kill the Dawnbringer.


    Now, they could only grit their teeth and run away a second time.


    "Retreat!" The interim leader bellowed to his fellow Masters as he nced at the kneeling Kane with fear. "Get out of here while his attention is still away from us!"


    The Sekigaharan Masters grew grim as they clenched with rage and frustration.


    Yet, what choice did they have?


    They could not fight a proper Master in their current state.


    They swiftly abandoned the onught on the Gatekeeper before turning around and running away, hoping to get home as soon as possible. In just the blink of an eye, they were many kilometers away.


    s, Kane wasn''t merciful enough to let them get away scot-free.


    "You''re going nowhere."


    Chills began crawling down their spines as Kane''s powerful voice reached all of them.


    WHOOSH!


    In the blink of an eye, he arrived before them, impeding their path as he drew, activating his Martial Mind at full power as he surged forward with unimaginable speed.


    At that moment, Kane ceased to be as his very existence seemed to change as his Martial Embodiment.


    The shadow of lightning.


    That was what his victims saw before he butchered them.


    SPLAT SPLAT SPLAT!!!


    His daggers became arcs of death as he hunted them down with overwhelming speed and lethality. Nothing could impede the destruction they unleashed upon their target. Nothing could impede the Shadow of Lightning that shed from one victim after another.


    "AAAARRRGH!!!"


    SPLAT SPLAT SPLAT!


    Kane shredded a Martial Master before him while his cold gaze turned to the ones that desperately escaped from him.


    Their fates were sealed.


    "ARGHR!!!"


    "RGGGHHH!!!"


    "NO, STO¡ªAARGHAR!!!"


    That day, the screams of agony and the silence of death echoed throughout the entire region.


    One after another.


    It didn''t matter where they hid.


    It didn''t matter where they ran.


    It didn''t matter what they did.


    Kane found them and bestowed death upon them.


    A feat so significant that it would go on to be Kane''s new epithet. Kane the Reaper.


    His sparkled with bloodlust as he resolved not to let a single one of them live.


    Not just because he wanted to get revenge for putting him through what they did but also because he knew that he couldn''t allow them to get away alive after seeing Rui break not just one but two Martial Seniors to the Master Realm within a rtively short amount of time.


    He knew that Rui would be in a lot of danger if he let them get away. Content is ? by N?velDrama.Org.


    His eyes steeled with bloodlust as he fought with every ounce of power he could wield. He had already been quite tired and hurt prior, but he wasn''t tired to the point where his Martial Heart and Mind were waning.


    He could easily consume a potion and continue fighting with his Martial Mind if he truly wanted.


    Pursuing the escaping Martial Masters was not nearly as easy as he expected it to be.


    They split up, dispersing across the entire region as they pursued different routes.


    The sheer amount of distance that each individual Martial Master could travel, even without their Mind, in a single second was unimaginable. With each Master headed off in their own direction, Kane needed to pursue them, kill them, identify the closest other Martial Master, and then hunt them down as well.


    It was tough work, but Kane fulfilled it quite well.


    "Huff¡­Huff¡­" Many Sekigaharan Masters eventually found themselves atop a certain mountain as they gazed around themselves with shock.


    "Is...Is this how few of us there are left?"


    A meager twenty-seven had managed to escape the Shadow of Lightning that pursued them as they arrived at the rendezvous point with the Martial Sages.


    "Damn¡­!" The interim leader cursed as his eyes grew bloodshot with rage. "Damn it all¡­!"


    The operation was a horrific nightmare of a fiasco. Never had he imagined that they would suffer such a horrific failure in this operation. Such a thing had never happened in the history of the Sekigahara Confederate.


    "Where¡­" A choked voice emerged from one of the Masters around them. "Where did it all go wrong?"


    A chilling silence overtook them all as they found themselves revisiting the entire battle.


    "From the start¡­" one of them gritted their teeth as they clenched their fists, "¡­everything went wrong."


    For one, the Kandrian Empire had far more Martial Masters on standby than they had expected.


    Somehow, they managed to get another twenty or thirty extra Martial Masters to break through in time for the Sekigaharan assault, massively reducing the numeric advantage that the Sekigaharans had over them.


    "It''s the damned brat¡­" The interim leader''s voice grew murderous. "He must have broken them through."


    Yet, that wasn''t all.


    "They were strong."


    It was painful to admit, but it was true. In hindsight, the Masters of the Kandrian Empire proved to be impressively powerful, able to fight with not just numeric disadvantages but also the disadvantage of needing to protect the Kandrian Empire.


    It didn''t make sense how a smaller force was able to neutralize arger force despite facing such disadvantages.


    "Are we¡­weaker?" The question was shocking even to them.


    The Sekigahara Confederate considered itself to have the strongest Martial Artists due to how much war they refined themselves through.


    Yet, today, they were confronted with unshakable proof that the Martial Masters of the Kandrian Empire were just superior.


    "We need to make it home alive no matter what¡­!" He gritted his teeth. "We need to tell everyone about the crucial secret that the Dawnbringer is responsible for the breakthroughs¡­!"


    "I''m afraid that''s not happening."


    SPLAT SPLAT!


    The Sekigaharan Master slowly gazed down, finding two daggers sticking out of his chest.


    He died before he could feel the fear that the others felt.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2249 Going Nowhere

    Chapter 2249 Going Nowhere


    "I told you, didn''t I?" Kane''s cold, murderous voice sent chills up their spine. "You''re going nowhere."


    WHOOSH!


    In the blink of an eye, he had already reached his next victim.


    SPLAT!


    In a swift maneuver, he decapitated them, moving on to his other victims one after another.


    SPLAT SPLAT SPLAT!!!


    In less than a second, twenty-six Martial Masters died.


    "Monster¡­!" the Sekigaharan Master''s eyes grew grave.


    Kane surged to him as his daggers shot forward to kill him.


    And then, he froze.


    He froze.


    He froze as a horrifying bloodlust swept over him.


    RUMBLE!


    He froze as the heaven and earth themselves contorted under the weight of nine Martial Sages.


    Nine enemy Martial Sages.


    Raw terror filled his eyes as the wrath of the Martial Sages of the Sekigahara Confederate converged upon him while the lone surviving Master of the Master-level force leaped away to his superiors with desperate relief.


    "How dare you?"


    Gone was theposed nonchnce of the Sage Shinken.


    At that moment, an unfathomable fury beyond anything Kane could even begin toprehend appeared on the face of the enemy Martial Sage.


    A singlemand escaped him.


    "Die."


    RUMBLE!!!


    Heaven and earth roared in agony as the horrifying power of a Martial Sage converged upon Kane.


    Yet, fate had reserved his departure from life for another day.


    "Only a maggot targets the son of the man he couldn''t defeat."


    Kane''s eyes widened as a familiar figure appeared before him, shielding him from the unfathomable power of a Martial Sage.


    BOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMM!!!!!


    Sage Shinken''s eyes widened as the Devil himself intercepted the devastating attack he had unleashed upon Kane. "¡­Father?" A single whisper escaped his son as he beheld the man he feared most protecting.


    Sage Damian met the shocked gaze of his son from the corner of his eyes.


    "You did well."


    Kane''s eyes widened with shock as he detected unabashed pride in his father''s voice. There was no chastising, or grumbling, or berating.


    Just pride.


    It brought warmth to the depths of his heart.


    "Damian¡­" Sage Shinken shivered with rage. "You dare¡­"


    A wide grin oozing with contempt and malice appeared on the Devil''s face. "What''s the matter? Did I irk you?"


    "YOU DARE!?"


    RUMBLE!!!


    The world shook under the wrath of a peak-grade Sage.


    The Devil bore the bloodlust of nine Sages, yet he didn''t so much as flinch. If anything, he only grew more excited.


    "You were foolish toe here," Sage Senpu gritted his teeth as he tried suppressing his fear. "You cannot fight the nine of us by yourself. Especially when your condition is much worse than ou¡ª"


    "Shut up, you little shit." Sage Damian grinned wider. "I may die, but¡­"


    A horrifying, blood-curdling bloodlust emerged from him, giving chills to eight of the nine Martial Sages.


    "¡­but I''m confident I can kill at least five of you weaker maggots before I die."


    Their expressions grew grave as they saw the maniacal malice that consumed his eyes.


    "So what''s it going to be?" His bloodlusted smile widened as far as it could, crumpling his face. Sage Shinken gritted his teeth as his rage only grew.


    He could fight Damian head-on with no issue, yet he wasn''t sure that he could protect his peers before Damian got to them. He was a static defensive Martial Artist who fought only for himself with a selfish Martial Art that didn''t care for others around him.


    The others were even more hesitant.


    Their fear of the Devil of the Kandrian Empire was very real. They wanted nothing to do with him, ever.


    Furthermore, by their standards, they weren''t very far from the Kandrian Empire. There was an extremely high chance that the other Martial Sages of the Kandrian Empire would detect the battle ande running to aid their friend.


    In other words, it would easily be the trigger for the second Sage-level battle.


    However, they were too exhausted to go through another battle.


    If they exhausted the power that their Martial Heart provided, they would be rendered extremely weak and vulnerable, potentially being weakened enough to be assassinated by Martial Masters as they retreated to the Sekigahara Confederate.


    That could not be allowed to happen.


    Perhaps in other circumstances, they would have been in the mind to risk it, but not this time.


    After all, this risk had actually happened against their Martial Masters.


    They pushed it for too long, weakening themselves too much until they were hunted by the Martial Seniors of the Kandrian Empire.


    Could they be allowed to take the same risk?


    Sage Shinken clenched his fists as he struggled to suppress the sheer amount of frustration he felt boiling up.


    "¡­Retreat." A single whisper escaped him as he turned around. Content is ? by N?velDrama.Org.


    The Sekigaharan Sages gritted their teeth with helpless resignation and shame as they turned their backs on a lone, wounded, and exhausted Martial Sage heading back home, taking home the lone surviving Master of the war with them.


    "Fucking maggots." Sage Damian snorted, ensuring they heard his words. "Bunch of spineless wimps. My son has more balls than all of youbined, you hear?!"


    They were all but gone.


    "¡­I dunno if that''s true, father." Kane heaved a sigh of relief as he finally stopped feeling like he was at death''s door, gazing at his father with a dubious expression. "Like my Martial Art is literally about running away."


    "Which is why they should be ashamed for being even more spineless than you are," Damian grumbled with derision. "Still¡­"


    His attention returned to his son.


    He grinned, nodding as he sized up his son as a Martial Master. "Not bad. Not bad, indeed. You''ve broken through to a far higher grade in the Master Realm than any other Master I know of, except for him, of course."


    He snorted at the thought of the man who his son chased after. "Still, you''ve got some ways to go before you can match him. That one is a monster."


    Kane lit up at those words.


    His father rarelyplimented anyone, and even when he did, he usually offered the bare minimum.


    "Heh, Rui is the best."


    "Hmph, don''t be proud of another man''s achievements."


    "I''m a man. Aren''t you proud of my achievements?"


    "That doesn''t count! Also, who said I''m proud?!"


    Father and son bantered as they headed back home.


    And thus, the battle between the Sekigahara Confederate and the Kandrian Empire finally came to an end.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2250 Stunning Discovery

    Chapter 2250 Stunning Discovery


    The demeanor of the retreating Martial Sages of the Sekigahara Confederate was grave and severe.


    And for good reason.


    Not even the Martial Sages could maintain theirposure when they learned about the Dawnbringer''s ability to trigger breakthroughs of his own ord and everything that had unfolded from the sole Master survivor.


    "You mean to say that all this time, it was the Void Prince who was responsible for the Kandrian Empire''s mass breakthroughs?" Sage Shinken gritted his teeth. "Dammit."


    If this was something that was exclusive to the Dawnbringer, then it meant that it was most likely some highly exclusive technique or system of thought or abination of the two. This meant that it most certainly wasn''t something that could be executed by others.


    "However, if the Dawnbringer is the sole one capable of triggering breakthroughs en masse, then he most certainly wouldn''t have been deployed into a war where he could potentially die and deprive the Kandrian Empire of a powerful tool." Sage Shinken fell into thought. "Emperor Rael is too prudent a man to do something that risky and foolhardy. This can only mean that there are others who can also execute the breakthroughs."


    He was wrong.


    Of course,that didn''t mean that his line of reasoning was foolish.


    It was indeed true that Emperor Rael would rather Rui sit the war out, but he didn''t voice this desire to his son because he knew that he would refuse.


    He didn''t request him to consider otherwise.


    His son needed the war to gain some genuine experience in the Master Realm and would never want to exclude himself from it.


    On top of that, Emperor Rael abstained from requesting Rui to remain within the boundaries of Kandrian territory.


    Rui had done more than enough for the Kandrian Empire.


    Demanding any more from him for the sake of the Empire was something that Emperor Rael was not shameless enough to do.


    However, this was something that the Sekigaharan Sages were unaware of, leading them to have false assumptions about how widespread the Kandrian Empire''s ability to break through to the Master Realm was.


    "Regardless, we need to report this to the others." Sage Shinken gritted his teeth. "This and the fact that the Kandrian Empire has gotten its hands on seven additional Martial Sages, potentially more."


    To say that the Sekigaharan Sages were thoroughly shocked by the appearance of seven new Sages on retainer within the Kandrian Empire was an understatement. If not for the fact that the Kandrian Sages were disadvantaged by the burden of protecting the Kandrian Empire and being caught off-guard by the healing they had from the Tree of Healings, there was a good chance that they would have been captured alive or killed.


    "Those damn Kandrians¡­" Sage Shinken''s voice was filled with rage. "I should have known that there was a reason that they were so willing to provoke the three Sage-level powerhouses."


    "For now, let''s make sure that we reach home safe and sound," another Martial This is the property of N?-velDrama.Org.


    Sage among them lightlymented. "We can think about it all we want after we get home. If something were to happen to us as well on the way back home, that would be the worst possible oue."


    They would have scoffed at such a notion in the past, but after what had just happened that day itself, they simply kept their mouths shut and headed back home. None of them had recovered from the shock of having a hundred and nine Martial Masters ughtered by a Martial Master who had broken through to the Master Realm in the middle of battle through the strange illusion that Dawnbringer had cast on the battlefield.


    To say that it was a devastating blow to the Sekigahara Confederate was an understatement. It was nothing short of a catastrophe that would scar it for many centuries toe.


    "The only way to heal the Sekigahara Confederate from this devastating wound is to acquire the Kandrian Empire''s method of breaking Martial Artists through" Sage Shinken''s eyes shed with determination. "We will stop at nothing to get our hands on the Master Realm breakthrough that the Dawnbringer foolishly exposed to us."


    "I don''t think it''s going to be easy." Sage Senpu heaved a sigh. "I hate to admit it, but the brat is absurdly strong for his age and youth in the Master Realm. Really, only one of us has a guaranteed chance of seeding at capturing him alive with that forbidden technique at his disposal."


    A smile appeared on Sage Shinken''s face. "Ah, Senpu. You have overlooked one crucial possibility. Even if we fail to get our hands on him, we can still acquire his Martial Art. A superior copy of his Martial Art."


    Sage Senpu''s eyes widened as realization dawned on him. "You mean¡­?"


    "Yes." Sage Shinken''s voice was steely. "We fight fire with fire. One monstrous genius for another. The Kandrian Empire will learn that it isn''t the only one with a prodigy of godly talent, the likes of which the world has never seen before."


    All things considered, Sage Shinken''s solution was actually quite clever. The Sekigahara Confederate didn''t strictly need Rui himself if the secret to breakthroughs was hidden in his Martial Art.


    Thus, if they could get someone who had the ability to copy Martial Art and improve it, then they could get their hands on what they wanted with no fuss.


    "But¡­ he left the Sekigahara Confederate many years ago, did he not?" one of the Sekigaharan Sages asked with uncertainty. "True, if I recall, he left because there was no more Martial Art in the nation worth taking for himself. Tsk, this is why I hate geniuses. God blessed them with extraordinary talent, yet they still are not satisfied."


    "We must find him." Sage Shinken was determined. "We''ll have to entrust those Nindo fools with the task after we scold them and make them pay for theirpses in intelligence. We''re almost near the Sekigahara Confederate, so it shouldn''t be too long until we reach home¡ª!"


    RUMBLE¡­!


    The nine Martial Sages shook as they felt extraordinary energy output emerging from the direction of their homes.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2251 Halting Siege

    Chapter 2251 Halting Siege


    RUMBLE!


    "What''s going on¡­?" Sage Senpu''s expression grew rmed as their senses picked up the high energy levels. "Why is there such heavy energy radiating from the direction of our home? Not just any ordinary levels of energy output. This¡­!"


    It was an energy level that only Martial Sages could output.


    The nine Sekigaharan Sages grew deeply concerned about the fact that they were detecting such energy from the direction of their home.


    RUMBLE!!


    "Dammit!" Sage Shinken cursed. "Did a bunch of Martial Sages attack the Sekigahara Confederate while we were away?!"


    "Who dares to make an enemy of the Sekigahara Confederate?"


    "We will tear those bastards apart!"


    RUMBLE!!!


    The nine of them hurried as they sprinted toward the Sekigahara Confederate at top speed with grave expressions.


    What they found when they arrived shook them to their very core.


    For a moment, they could scarcely believe what they were seeing.


    BOOOOOOOOM BOOOOOOOM BOOOOOOOOM!!!


    Massive beams of pure energy soared from afar at extraordinary speeds, threatening to raze the entirety of the territory of the Sekigahara Confederate. Each beam possessed destructive power that was easily Sage-level.


    BOOOOOOOOM BOOOOOOOOM BOOOOOOOOOM!!!!!


    If not for the other Martial Sages and the Apocalyptic siege weapons of the Sekigahara Confederate intercepting almost all of them, the Sekigahara Confederate would have existed in all but memory.


    However, the destructive power of these beams, even after being intercepted, still caused immense damage to the Sekigahara Confederate just from the dispersion of the energy beams into the environment.


    If not for the four Martial Sages who had remained behind during the assault on the Kandrian Empire, the nation would have been reduced to dust. These Martial Sages not only contributed to redirecting the astronomically destructive beams of energy that soared toward the Sekigahara Confederate but also bent heaven, earth, and space to ensure that as little harm as possible came to the nation and its people.


    BOOOOOOOOM BOOOOOOOOM BOOOOOOOOOM!!!!!


    The nine Sekigaharan Sages immediately broke out of their frozen stupor, rushing instantly towards the Sekigahara Confederate in the distance to aid theirrades and protect their nation and, more importantly, their ns.


    The nine of them immediately rushed in to help the Sekigahara Confederate defend itself from those who sought to destroy it.


    Yet, the moment they jumped in alongside their otherrades, ready to contribute their power, the beams of destruction stoppeding. For a moment, all of them just stood, frozen in shock.


    They were too stunned to even speak.


    RUMBLE¡­


    As the dust settled down and the energy dissipated, the Sekigahara Confederate had finally exited a state of emergency. Yet, even before the authorities could begin conducting a survey on the material oue and the damage inflicted on the nation and its people, there was no optimism in the air.


    Even with the best effort of the nation''s valiant Sages and their powerful siege weapons, the damage inflicted on the nation was not little.


    It was as grave as it was inexplicable.


    "What¡­" Sage Shinken felt like he was on the verge of losing his sanity. "What just happened?"


    The four Sekigaharan Sages that had remained home copsed from the sheer amount of exhaustion that they experienced. They appeared to be in an even worse condition than the nine of theirrades who had taken part in the assault on Kandria.


    "¡­Shortly after your battle with the Kandrian Empiremenced, the Sekigahara Confederate came under siege. Those massive energy beams started firing at us from the west. Only we had the means to contact you, but the siege was so sudden that if not for all of us jumping in exactly the moment we did, the Sekigahara Confederate would not exist at this moment," the eldest Martial Sages slowly exined between pants. "It was extremely sudden, with absolutely no warning of any kind. Entire inexplicable."


    The nine Martial Sages of the strike team stared at the four Martial Sages with horror.


    It was just one nightmare after another.


    It didn''t seem to end.


    Most of them weren''t theistic, but all of them couldn''t help but wonder if they were being punished by a deity in the heavens.


    First, the Sage-level battle had amounted to a failure as the Kandrian Empire had suddenly revealed the addition of seven new Martial Sages to its roster. Then, all but one Master of the Master-level strike force had been massacred and butchered at the hands of the son of the Devil. And now, the Sekigahara Confederate had suddenly and randomlye under attack from the west with long-range apocalypse-ss heavy artillery siege weapons.


    It was one of the worst days of their lives, without any shadow of a doubt.


    "But who¡­?" Sage Shinken was half praying that this was all a bad nightmare and that he would wake up from it to an entirely ordinary day.


    Of course, he knew that was not possible. Martial Sages did not experience dreams.


    "¡­Who is responsible for this attack?" Sage Shinken gritted his teeth. "Who dared to attack the Sekigahara Confederate at this moment, of all times?" N?velDrama.Org (C) content.


    "¡­Given the direction that these attacks came from, and the unprecedented range of those apocalypse ss weapons," one of the four Sages who remained in the Sekigahara Confederate began, "we think it''s the Esocline Federation."


    Sage Shinken''s eyes widened with shock. "¡­What?"


    He gritted his teeth. "You''re telling me that the weakest Sage-level nation and a nation with almost no Martial Artists dared to attack the Sekigahara Confederate from afar like cowards while it was in a moment of vulnerability?"


    "There''s no other possibility I''m afraid." The Sage nodded with cold fury. "That nation is the only one with such powerful siege weapons. Today, they have waged war against us. However, what really makes me wonder is the timing of all of this."


    The thirteen Martial Sages fell into deep thought as they considered her words. Was the fact that this attack happened in the middle of an operation that deployed most of the Martial Sages and Martial Masters outside of the nation just a coincidence?


    "No¡­" Sage Shinken had never experienced such rage in his entire life. "This was nned."


    His eyes sharpened with murderous anger. "That bastard Emperor Rael. He roped in the Esocline Federation in this war. From this day forth, Esocline Federation is our enemy forever."


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2252 Unprecedented

    Chapter 2252 Unprecedented


    Arge number of significant events had happened in a short period of time.


    So much so that the rest of East Panama almost couldn''t even keep up.


    First, the President of the Republic of Gorteau dered war on the Kandrian Empire. Not long after, the Kandrian Empire entered a state of national emergency. Soon after, whispers of an elite Martial Sekigaharan strike force made up of Martial Artists ofthe Upper Realms was supposedly deployed towards the Kandrian Empire.


    This report had made the upper echelons of East Panama nervous.


    "What are those bastards up to this time¡­?"


    "Tsk, all of East Panama is going to be swept up in their chaos."


    "If this intel is true, then war has already begun. It is not surprising that the Sekigahara Confederate will be the first tounch an attack."


    The Sekigahara Confederate was notorious for being a lunatic nation.


    They waged war all-out with little prudence and, surprisingly, yielded very good results.


    It was because it was extremely difficult to predict exactly what a lunatic would do that they were sessful in war.


    Nobody could predict to what extent these madmen would go just to wage war.


    Throwing the entirety or an overwhelming majority of their Martial capital to attack an enemy nation was something that no sane man would do as it would leave their home nation entirely defenseless.


    Military strategy involved predicting enemy decision-making by estimating their objectives and constraints, plotting the most optimal course of action for their enemies, and then nning for such an eventuality.


    Whoever was able to read their opponents the furthest possessed an advantage in military strategy. This school of thought had been refined over centuries and had be the established paradigm for military strategists.


    The Sekigahara Confederate, however, defied all of them. They had no constraints, and their objectives were harder to predict than the economy. When enemy nations tried predicting the Sekigahara Confederate, they made grave miscalctions by assuming that those savages had any hint of sanity, leading to blunders in war that led to their defeat.


    This was one of the reasons that Sekigahara Confederate had managed to be a powerhouse historically.


    And they had lived up to their reputation as they deployed an overwhelming majority of the Martial Artists of the Upper Realms in a single attack in a very showy and ostentatious manner, which was something that no sane militarymander would ever dream of doing.


    Much to the shock of the world, however, the Kandrian Empire responded perfectly as the Emperor of Harmony demonstrated why he had gained the reputation for being the greatest emperor in the Age of Martial Art.


    The entire world had paid its undivided attention to the battle between the Sekigahara Confederate and the Kandrian Empire. It drew eyes from all over the continent.


    It was impossible to hide a battle of such extraordinary magnitude. Belonging ? N?velDram/a.Org.


    It was impossible to hide the battle between the Masters, let alone the Sages. Thus, although the rest of the continent was unable to get their hands on actual footage of the battle or anything like that, they were able to gain a broad understanding of the battle by either deploying Martial Artists of the Upper Realms to observe the battle from a great distance, too far to be noticed by the Sages of either side but just close enough to get a better idea of the dynamics.


    Much to the shock of all those who were powerful enough to peer at the Kandrian Empire without getting noticed, the Kandrian Empire had deployed seven new Martial Sages out of nowhere!


    "Wait, where the hell did these new bastardse from?"


    "I want all intel efforts focused on finding everything there is to know about these seven new Martial Sages!"


    "Issue a demand for Emperor Rael to make a statement on this matter!"


    This development had rattled the highest echelons of human civilization.


    A nation did not merely get seven brand-new Sages out of nowhere.


    As the Martial Masters deployed for distant surveince weren''t able to get close enough to confirm their identities, it was unclear whether these Martial Artists were native or foreign Sages brought into the nation.


    Either was a real possibility.


    Regardless, the battle between the Kandrian Empire and the Sekigahara Confederate received ashen sentiments from the rest of East Panama. Even themoners knew that this battle most likely marked the beginning of the third Great East Panamic War.


    After all, the Republic of Gorteau was on the verge of officially dering war, the Sekigahara Confederate had already mounted an extraordinary attack, and the Britannian Empire was also poised to join the war as well.


    The Kandrian Empire should have been destined for destruction in the face of such pressure. It should have suffered grave losses against the assault of the Sekigahara Confederate.


    Yet, much to the surprise of everyone spectating with bated breaths, not only did the Kandrian Empire push the Sekigahara Confederate back, but they managed to do so without suffering a single loss and much fewer losses on the Master front. Furthermore, ording to intel reports flowing in from long-range surveince and spies in the Kandrian Empire, not even the tiniest ounce of damage had been inflicted upon the nation or its people.


    A perfect victory in the eyes of the world, the dream of everymander-in-chief.


    The revtions of seven new Sages truly shocked the world, yet it wasn''t as shocking as thetest report that had made its way to the political sphere of human civilization.


    A single report.


    The Esocline Federation had mounted a long-range siege upon the Sekigahara Confederate amidst its assault on the Kandrian Empire.


    All hell broke loose across East Panama as all people of all sses and all nations of all Realms gritted their teeth and braced themselves for the impact amidst the havoc and chaos thistest report sparked amidst human civilization.


    Never before in the history of the Age of Martial Art had there ever been a war involving five Sage-level powerhouses.


    The world watched with bated breath as a conflict of unprecedented scope boiled before their very eyes.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2253: External Strategic Deterrent

    Chapter 2253: External Strategic Deterrent


    ?


    Emperor Rael had a hard time maintaining hisposure when the Gatekeeper reported the fact that Rui stepped in the middle of Operation Clean-Up and disyed his ability to break through the open, causing the birth of two new Masters, one of which went on to massacre all but one Sekigaharan Master.


    He didn''t know whether tough or cry.


    On one hand, the secret of the breakthroughs had been revealed.


    On the other, Kane had gotten rid of a huge number of Martial Masters, greatly relieving the pressure that the Kandrian Empire would face in Master-levelbat.


    However, with the intelligence leaked, it was quite questionable whether it was a good idea to let Rui continue battling. He knew that Rui would continue fighting even if he was in grave danger.


    Precisely because he was in grave danger.


    Emperor Rael didn''t even need to ask why Rui had done what he had done. Just the presence of Kane in the operation was enough for him to understand what Rui''s motivations were.


    "Huff..." He massaged his head. "Oh well, I suppose that this isn''t the absolute worst thing that can happen."


    It was still extremely bad, of course.


    However, what would have been worse was if they had lost the battle with the Sekigahara Confederate, and the Kandrian Empire suffered immense damage as a result.


    Inparison, although he would have preferred that Rui''s secrets remain a secret, he couldn''t help but be relieved that the war had begun with an overwhelming victory.


    "Still, It is rather surprising to see that the Master-level front showed greater results than the Sage-level front," Emperor Rael frowned. "Although Matriach Nephi did predict it."


    He had hoped that additional preparations for the ambush would have allowed them to capture or at least kill four Sages.


    Yet, as each of the Martial Sages on the Western Front reported, the ambushes themselves seeded. What caused the capture of the Sages to fail was their ability to heal from the wounds in an instant, causing their n of gaining an advantage by dealing them critical wounds through an ambush with the element of surprise.


    Regardless, they had ensured that not a single scratch had befallen the Kandrian Empire. That was more than enough, as far as Emperor Rael was concerned.


    "Your Majesty..." One of the officials sitting around the round table in the War Council meeting reviewing the battle with the Sekigahara Confederate asked. "The many reports from our spies of a massive super long-range siege upon the Sekigahara Confederate from the West, where the Esocline Federations is, and our spies within thetter confirming cutting- edge esoteric siege technology being deployed against the Sekigahara Confederate..."


    He hesitated. "Was that a part of your grand n, Your Majesty?"


    The entire war council meeting looked at him with curious eyes.


    The news of the Esocline Federationunching massive sieges upon the Kandrian Empire after the battlemenced was something that had shocked the Kandrians just as much as it had the Sekigaharans.


    This hadn''t been part of the n that they had discussed ahead of time.


    "I hope all of you understand why I couldn''t afford to share it," Emperor Rael''s voice was calm and calcted. "The more this intelligence is disseminated, the greater the probability that it would find its way into the hands of our enemies."Content is ? by N?velDrama.Org.


    "Hmph," Matriarch Nephi snorted with disapproval. "Keeping secrets from us."


    "Well, since it hase out, I suppose I can inform all of you of the truth." Emperor Rael closed his eyes. "I have formed a secret alliance with Esocline Federation in North Panama in preparation for the war with the three Sage-level powerhouses."


    A wave of murmurs washed over the councilors as they stared at the Emperor of Harmony with an expression of pleased surprise.


    "As you all know, on paper, the Kandrian Empire has been deepening ties with the Sage-level powerhouse through sea trade," Emperor Rael calmly informed them. "However, in truth, our rtionship is much deeper. I informed them of what was toe and formed military and Martial alliances with the Sage-level powerhouse."


    "...Your Majesty," Grand General Aramoeous interjected. "If I may, may I inquire what form these secret alliances take? For one, the Sage-level powerhouse is extremely far away from the Kandrian Empire. Even if they form an alliance with us, it is effectively impossible for them toe to our aid in the event of an attack upon the Kandrian Empire."


    Emperor Rael smiled at his words. "Your concerns are entirely valid and sound. I will let Foreign Affairs Minister Lara take the liberty of briefing you on the details of our agreements. However, it essentially boils down to what they did this time when the Sekigahara Confederate mounted its assault upon the Kandrian Empire."


    Grand General Aramoeous was the first to understand among all of them. "I see. So they will serve the purpose of an external strategic deterrent."


    An external strategic deterrent in military strategy referred to any entity that was able to reduce the probability or the degree ofmitment of any particr military group taking a particr military action against a third party. They served to discourage action by disincentivizing, discouraging, or pressuring said military group from acting the way they might otherwise have.


    "In this case," Grand General Aramoeous. "The Esocline Federation established itself as a strategic deterrent for us and against the Sekigahara Confederate, deterring them from deploying arge number of forces outside the nation."


    Emperor Rael smiled. "That''s correct. The Esocline Federation has essentially confirmed that it is willing to mount devastating super long-range sieges upon the Sekigahara Confederate if it attacks the Kandrian Empire. This means that, in the future, the Sekigahara Confederate cannot afford to deploy too many Sages against us because they know that they will not be able to defend against the super-long-range sieges of Esocline Federation."


    This strategy meant that even if the Sekigahara Confederate pursued war against the Kandrian Empire, their avable military capital was halved. It made them much less of a threat.


    "How did you convince the Esocline Federation to make an enemy of one of a Sage-level powerhouse in their geopolitical vicinity, Your Majesty?" the Minister of Domestic Affairs frowned. "The Sekigaharans are known for being absolute lunatics. No one wants to antagonize them."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2254: Logistical Constraints

    Chapter 2254: Logistical Constraints


    ?


    Many found it strange that the Esocline Federation would be willing to go so far as to serve as an external strategic deterrent for the sake of protecting the Kandrian Empire. Perhaps if the Kandrian Empire and Esocline Federation had been age-old allies with a long history of cooperating with each other, it would make more sense.


    However, that most certainly wasn''t the case.


    If anything, the Esocline Federation was closer to being an ally with the Sekigahara Confederate due to the fact that it had been the supplier of esoteric military technology to the Sekigaharans.


    The Sekigahara Confederate did not conduct any R&D when it came to technology. They had no background in it and were strictly Martial. If not for the fact that being deprived of such military technological assets would have made them the weakest of the four Sage-level powerhouses of East Panama, they would have never bothered getting their hands on such technological capital in the first ce.


    This meant that the Esocline Federation had forsaken a long-term client for the sake of the Kandrian Empire, with which it had no prior rtionship.


    Not a single person in the war council could contain their curiosity as to how the Emperor of Harmony managed to flip the Esocline Federation to his side despite the odds stacked against him.


    "Oh, it''s simple, really," Emperor Rael calmly replied. "Interest, agendas, and objectives supersede rtionships in the world of geopolitics. As long as one is able to grasp thetter, one can break up even the most solid of alliances and rtionships. In this case, all I needed to do was understand what the leader and founder of Esocline Federation seeks to achieve. And it''s rather simple to deduce what his intentions are."


    His gaze swept across the entire table.


    "ording to my personal assessment of the Esoterist, this is a man who most likely despises Martial Art," Emperor Rael began. "This is a man who most likely despises the Age of Martial Art and this world of Martial Art. He believes in the power of technology, and he believes that technology not only has greater potential than Martial Art but also benefits humanity more than Martial Art..."


    The air of the War Council tingled as the atmosphere grew ufortable; many of the members stole a nce at the members of the Martial Union, who were clearly displeased that the Kandrian Empire had allied with the Esocline Federation.


    "When I analyze all the decisions that this man has made, such as banning all research and development into the Squire evolution process or banning all research into Martial Art growth and training resources while very willingly selling powerful military technology to nations around the world, even to Martial nations like the Sekigahara Confederate..." Emperor Rael''s eyes narrowed. "I am able to deduce his long-term objectives and intentions. He wishes to erode Martial Art from human civilization with the power of technology. That is his true long-term objective."


    "... And you chose to ally with such a man willingly?" Sage cken narrowed his eyes, unable to control himself from asking.


    "Rx," Emperor Rael reassured. "The probability of him seeding in fulfilling such an objective is less than one percent. What matters most at this juncture is what he can do for us and what we can do for him. You see..."


    Emperor Rael smiled. "I made him an offer he cannot refuse. I offered to give him the locations of esoteric resources in the Beast Domain that are conducive to his goal, resources that, as our investigation, he has been scouring the market for."


    The others in the war council frowned. "Your Majesty...doesn''t that mean that you''re sacrificing our gains in the Beast Domain for the sake of the alliance of the Esocline Federation?"


    After all, everybody was under the impression that Emperor Rael wanted to monopolize the Elder Tree connection for himself. After all, a treasure that benefitted everybody equally was not something that could elevate Kandria above others. The more of the Elder Tree''s intel they sold, the less they would benefit from it themselves.


    "I can understand why you''d think that way, but..." Emperor Rael shook his head. "You''re all wrong. We''re not sacrificing anything."This is the property of N?-velDrama.Org.


    Everybody frowned at his words, gazing at him quizically and skeptically.


    "Think about it," Emperor Rael continued unperturbed. "Is it possible to extract all resources out of the Beast Domain even if we deployed each and every Martial Artist to the Beast Domain to focus exclusively on the intel given by the Elder Tree?"


    The council members fell into thought at his question.


    The Beast Domain was absolutely enormous, densely packed, and was extremely dangerous. Even with the exact location of each resource, it didn''t change the fact that they needed to travel an enormous amount of distance, undertake great personal risk, and ovee massive amounts of adversity to finally reach the target location, extract the resource, and then lug it back home.


    This took time, risk, and losses, all of which reduced both the frequency at which these missions could be conducted as well as the total number of such operations that could be conducted each month.


    "On top of that, it is impossible to dedicate all Martial Artists to the Beast Domains for obvious reasons," Emperor Rael continued. "Domestic and international martial business, military operations, governmental contracts, training, and the bare minimum of Martial Artists that need to be within the Kandrian Empire for national security. The point is that it is absolutely impossible to make use of all the intel we get from the Elder Tree; at most, we can make use of ten percent. This ten percent consists of the most precious and important Sage- level and Transcendent-level resources. Information about the remaining ny percent of resources that the Elder Tree has detected is functionally useless to us due to practical logistical constraints."


    Realization dawned upon the members of the council as they understood the Emperor''s reasoning.


    "And since all that information is functionally useless to us, why not trade it for something that is useful?" Emperor Rael smiled. "The Esocline Federation is the perfect target for this. Esoteric technology is highly demanding of resources, far more so than Martial Art is. In other words, I am offering something that is precious enough to the Esoterist for him to discard his rtionship with the Sekigahara Confederate without a second thought and readily serve as an external strategic deterrence for us."


    "Your Majesty..." Grand General Aramoeous''s eyes widened. "Is that why you spent the past three years building a rtionship with the Esocline Federation long before tensions escted?"


    "Of course," Emperor Rael smiled. "This is all a part of my grand n to ensure that the Kandrian Empire ovees all adversities and reaches uncharted realms of power, glory, and prospers. Mark my words, brothers and sisters, this victory that our valiant Martial Artists have brought us is just the first of many."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2255 Finally Ready

    Chapter 2255 Finally Ready


    As the world reeled from themencement of the third Great East Panamic War, the polities of East Panama grew grave as they were faced with choices that they would undoubtedly have to choose from.


    Wars of such scale were rarely waged among just the core participants. More often than not, smaller nations were dragged into the war between the primary powerhouses that sought to destroy each other.


    After all, Sage-level powerhouse nations possessed immense power, especially within their primary domain of influence. It was quite easy for powerhouses to use their influence to either implicitly ckmail, threaten, or bribe nations in their vicinity to pressure them into lending them their power and credit.


    While nations with military power limited to the Lower Realms were too weak to even bother with, the same could not be said about the Master-level and Sage-level nations. It was entirely worth it to gain the power of these nations and deploy it in war.


    Every Master mattered.


    Every Sage most certainly mattered.


    War was already underway.


    Everybody knew that. The Gorteau Congress was most likely going to pass President Raymond''s deration of war, and the Britannian Empire was second only to the Sekigahara Confederate when it came to propensity to wage war.


    In other words, the four powerhouses had already begun fighting for influence and support from the other Sage-level and Master-level nations.


    "But¡­" Prime Minister Edward narrowed his eyes. "Rael is definitely prepared for that as well. In the first ce, he has an advantage in that regard. After all, the Kandrian Empire has a much greater rtionship with nations in East Panama than any other powerhouse."


    The Republic of Gorteau ensnared nations with debt traps.


    The Sekigahara Confederate triggered local and civil wars across the entirety of North-East Panama to increase the demand for Martial Artists.


    The Britannian Empire colonized nations with its imperialist ambition, turning them into colonies that were forced to work for the greater good of the Britannian Empire.


    Inparison to these monsters and tyrants, the Kandrian Empire was beloved for its mutually beneficial bteral trade agreements and the philosophy of harmony that underlied its approach to foreign nations.


    While the former three evoked fear and hatred from the nations of East Panama, thetter of the four was the only powerhouse that was pleasing and desirable to engage with.


    Thus, when it came to war for allies, Kandria had a dominant advantage.


    "Hmph, he nned for this to happen from the very start," Prime Minister Edward mused knowingly. "If it was just the Kandrian Empire alone, then there would have been no need to bother with allies; after all, the three of us could just gang up on the Kandrian Empire. But with Sekigahara Confederate put in check by the Esocline Federation and the National Democratic Party of Gorteau in Rael''s pocket, he has found a way to just reduce the disparity between himself and his enemies just barely enough so that we have no choice but to seek allies, because he certainly will."


    When the Prime Minister weighed in reports of the additional seven Martial Sages that shockingly appeared out of nowhere and the fact that the Sekigahara Confederate would no longer be able to contribute to Master-level battles due to few Masters left, he realized what Rael''s ns were and what long-term strategy he was nning from the very get-go.


    The worst part was that it was very difficult for him to disrupt these ns.


    The core reason is that he had too little intel until very recently, which was toote to disrupt these ns.


    If he had been aware of the treasures of the Kandrian Empire prior, he would have been able to do much more, but s, even he had limits upon learning of such crucial knowledge toote.


    "Still¡­" His gaze sharpened as he read through the intelligence reports. "This is not enough, Rael. Bribing half the Gorteau Congress with your recent surplus of longevity potions and leveraging the Esocline Federation to cripple the Sekigahara''s freedom are certainly genius military strategies, but even if you cripple them by a whopping fifty percent, that''s still two Sage-level powerhouses against one."


    However, Prime Minister Edward knew better than to kick back and rx. The fact that Emperor Rael had gone through with his n was proof that he had almost certainly figured out some strategy to ovee.


    Prime Minister Edward has alreadyputed the most promising strategies by putting himself in his rival''s shoes. The two of them had reached a level of intellect and mastery over military strategy where they could not only predict each other''s strategies but even predict their counters to the counters of their strategies.


    "We cannot deploy all our Martial Artists to destroy the Kandrian Empire. However, the Kandrian Empire can deploy all its Martial Artists to protect itself."


    Even if not all, it could certainly deploy far more to protect itself.


    After all, even the Britannian Empire needed to ensure that a few Martial Sages remained in the homnd to ensure that none of the vassals that it had colonized decided to rebel in the absence of any Martial Sages on standby. Content is ? by N?velDrama.Org.


    "Even ounting for that, it''s still one-point-seven-five Sage-level powerhouses against one," Prime Minister Edward closed his eyes as he ran the numbers. "Hm, surely this and an advantage in ally-seeking isn''t all Rael has nned. Because if it is¡­"


    His eyes opened as they red with perilous will. "¡­Kandria will meet its destruction without any shadow of a doubt."


    He needed to not only find out what else Rael had nned for the war but also to ensure that his side had its strategy rigorously nned.


    BEEP BEEP


    His attention was drawn as a call on hisms artifact drew his attention.


    "Finally," Prime Minister Edward smirked when he saw who sought to speak to him. "It appears that the recent battle has shaken all those fools out ofcency."


    He epted the call as it projected three-dimensional images of nearly thirty people around the prepared table in his office.


    On one side of the table was the grave and severe projection of President Raymond, apanied by leaders of his administrative staff. On the other side were murderous and enraged projections of the leaders of the ruling ns of the Sekigahara Confederate.


    "Well well well¡­" Prime Minister Edward grinned, savoring the moment. "Look at what we have here."


    Both sides glowered at him even as he took pleasure in their displeasure.


    "Are you idiots finally ready to get serious and burn Kandria to the ground?"


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2256 Shattered Facade

    Chapter 2256 Shattered Facade


    A historic event had urred within the Sekigahara Confederate.


    For the first time in history, it had learned what it felt like to be a victim.


    The Sekigahara Confederate possessed arrogance that matched that of the Britannian Empire, yet it possessed even more unbridled pride in its martial culture.


    The fact that its lunacy was feared and was the reason that nobody messed with the Sekigahara Confederate was something that brought great pride and satisfaction to them. They were to be feared. Even by their alleged equals. Content is ? by N?velDrama.Org.


    Nobody messed with the Sekigahara Confederate.


    Until, of course, they picked a fight with an opponent beyond their league and got crushed. The loss of a hundred and nine Martial Masters in one go was perhaps thergest number of Martial Masters that had ever perished in a single battle in the entirety of the Age of Martial Art.


    On top of that, they got beaten back on not just the Master-level front but also on both Sage-level fronts.


    The Kandrian Empire demonstrated to the world the addition of seven new Martial Sages to its roster, proving to have a total of twenty-three Martial Sages on retainer, surpassing both the Sekigahara Confederate and the Britannian Empire.


    Not only did they suffer defeat against Kandria, but they also paid the price for their unscrupulous aggression for the first time in their life when the absence of adequate Sages caused some harm to befall the Sekigahara Confederate due to the attack of Esocline Federation.


    For the first time, the Sekigahara Confederate had experienced suffered a clear-cut crippling defeat that would scar the nation for centuries toe. In the Confederate Martial Council, sixteen Sages and merely forty remaining Masters were gathered around an enormous round table.


    The atmosphere was dark.


    A deathly silence had overtaken the air.


    It was as though a thick, ck miasma of shame, rage, and grief had infected the mood, refusing to allow even the slightest bit of positivity to seep through.


    Their heads were lowered; not a single one of them could bring themselves to hold it high after what happened.


    "Should we¡­" Sage Kai of the Oni n broke the silence as a sh of rage flooded his eyes. "¡­storm the Esocline Federation and raze it to the ground?"


    No one was surprised at the fact that the Sage of the Oni n could note up with any other idea. The Oni n was known to be among the most aggressive ns, even among the Sekigaharans.


    "¡­Don''t." Sage Shinken''s voice was reduced to a whisper. "We''ve already transferred military authority to the n leaders. This¡­isn''t something that can be ovee with brute force."


    His eyes were hollow.


    The Shinken n had suffered unfathomable losses in the battle against the Kandrian Empire, having lost all their Masters in one fell swoop.


    Now, they had only had Seniors and two Martial Sages. There was no in-between.


    The shock was something that none of the fourteen ns of the Sekigahara Confederate had ovee.


    Funnily enough, the Masters who didn''t participate in the battle actually took a step closer to the Sage Realm.


    After all, they learned something about themselves.


    They weren''t nearly as mad, maniacal, and lunatic as they perhaps fancied themselves. What was probably more true was that they weaponized their mania to inspire fear in their enemies. In other words, their insane warmongering culture was, at least in part, a facade of sorts.


    It was more important that their enemies perceived them as lunatics. And they indeed acted like lunatics to reinforce their facade so that nobody dared to mess with them.


    Normally, this was good enough.


    Yet, they had recentlye across a true madman in every sense of the word.


    One who picked a fight with the three Sage-level powerhouses and sought toe away victorious. A truly brazen man with no limits who didn''t need to project madness to get people to fear him.


    Instead, he projected harmony.


    Except when he no longer needed to.


    Kandria was filled with madmen who put the Sekigahara Confederate to shame.


    "Damian¡­" Sage Shinken''s body quivered with rage as he remembered another such madman.


    Just the thought of what the man''s son had done to their Masters drove him almost insane. "I will kill him and his son, no matter what." He gritted his teeth.


    Both father and son must die at his hand. He wouldn''t rest until he killed both of them, which he was certain about. He was not one to forgive the death of so many Masters of his n, having dedicated much to the glory and prestige of the Shinken n.


    "¡­The son of the Devil may have been the one to kill our Masters, but it was the Void Prince who broke him through, allowing him to do that." Sage Senpu grew furious. "After we gain a copy of that technique that he used to break through, we kill him. There''s no two ways about that."


    Another Sage shook his head. "After the death of so many of our Masters, only one of us possesses the power to get him killed. He was much stronger than we could have ever anticipated. The Nindo n failed us in giving us a good estimate of his strength."


    The Martial Artists in the Martial Council shifted their res in the direction of the Martial Sage of the Nindo n, who sank under the weight of their recriminating res.


    The Nindo n had be the most hated n of the Sekigahara Confederate within a single day. They had one job, which they had failed magnificently by every metric. From failing to evaluate Rui''sbat power urately to failing to detect so much as a whiff of the seven new Martial Sages of the Kandrian Empire. They also failed to grasp Rui''s identity as someone involved with the breakthroughs of the Kandrian Empire.


    On top of that, they had failed to detect the alliance of the Kandrian Empire with the Esocline Federation and the siege upon their home.


    Perhaps the only reason that they hadn''t been punished extensively for their failures was because the cause of their failures wasn''t their ipetence nearly as much as it was the superpetence of their enemy.


    Regardless, the Sekigahara Confederate had experienced its first devastating defeat perhaps ever and was slow to recover from it.


    -


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 Chapter 2257: Final Duel

    Chapter 2257: Final Duel


    ?


    While the Martial Artists of the Sekigahara Confederate were uncharacteristically in a state of depression, the civil leaders of the state were in a confidential dialogue with their


    counterparts in the other powerhouses of East Panama.


    They hade to a conclusion rather quickly after having taken full stock of the variety of disasters that had befallen the Sekigahara Confederate.


    They needed to ally with the Republic of Gorteau and the Britannian Empire.


    Painful as it was to admit, the human leaders of the Sekigahara Confederate had already epted that they were no match for the Kandrian Empire. With twenty-three known Martial Sages and an estimated hundred-seventy Martial Masters, the Kandrian Empire had be the most powerful nation in the history of the Age of Martial Art.


    An all-out war between it and the Sekigahara Confederate meant certain defeat and destruction for thetter.


    They could not afford to fight the Kandrian Empire by themselves. Thus, the most obvious course of action, albeit unpleasant, was to ally with the Republic of Gorteau and, most importantly, the Britannian Empire.


    Thetter, functionally led by Prime Minister Edward, a man who had gained recognition and had been personally appointed by Transcendent Emperor Arthur, was someone they hade to acknowledge as necessary to ovee the Kandrian Empire and the Emperor of Harmony. "I must admit, this happened sooner than I foresaw." Prime Minister allowed himself a smug grin. "I had initially predicted that this would happen after a few months. However, it appears that Rael has prepared well this time, having driven you to desperation upon the first battle itself. How pitiful."


    The n leaders of the Sekigahara Confederate bristled at his words. "Do not insult us, Prime Minister."


    Prime Minister Edward chuckled to himself, shaking his head lightly. "Well, let us establish a few rules for this alliance."


    His eyes sharpened as his demeanor grew perilous. "The weight of our voices corrtes with our military capital. This has always been true in any form of coborative endeavor but has never mattered in the past, for the military capital of the four Sage-level powerhouses has always been equal for all practical purposes. Now, however..."


    His tone grew heavy as his powerful gaze swept around the table, "that is no longer true, is it?"


    The leaders and representatives of the two polities couldn''t help but grow more grave as the meaning of his words most certainly didn''t escape them. It wasn''t even a secret at this point. "Now, however, you lot are weakened in your ability to contribute to the Martial and military capital of the proposedbined warfront of our would-be alliance." Prime Minister ruthlessly exposed their weakness without mincing any words about the matter. "The Sekigahara Confederate cannot even sleep well at night in fear of the Esocline Federation that gues your fears in its ability to demonstrate. I doubt you''d be willing to deploy more than fifty percent of your Martial Sages outside your territory."


    The n leaders of the Sekigahara Confederate gritted their teeth but did not refute the Prime Minister''s words. Even the Martial Sages of Sekigahara agreed to this arrangement, and they transferred militarymand authority to n leaders in an unprecedented move.


    "And you..." Prime Minister''s expression crumpled with bare contempt as he faced President Raymond, who flinched at the piercing gaze of the Prime Minister. "You are so ipetent that Rael probably goes to sleep thanking his stars for having the President of Gorteau be you. You cannot leverage more than half of the Republic of Gorteau''s military power dispersed across your outsized private sector. In other words, neither party has anywhere near as much of a voice in this would-be alliance as I do. Is that understood?"


    The hardened expressions of the leaders and representatives of the two polities reluctantly acquiesced to the Prime Minister''s clear-cut highlighting of the differences between them.


    "I will lead this alliance to victory as the interim head." Prime Minister asserted with an unyielding tone. "If you seek to attain victory against the Kandrian Empire in this war. Then, it can only be me."


    They disliked his attitude, but their silence indicated that they did not disagree with his statements.


    "...I don''t see the point of even having the role of an interim leader of our proposed allied warfront," President Raymond remarked with a light huff. "Yes, the Kandrian Empire has an additional seven Martial Sages, but even considering that, we should be at a numerical advantage even considering that and our...predicament. I cannot imagine that we cannot muster more than twenty-three Sages."


    Prime Minister Edward scoffed with disdain. Militarily illiterate leaders like President Raymond were the reason he hated democracies.


    "Battles are not symmetric counting games where the one with the most numbers is automatically the winner. Yes, we can muster up more Sages than they have. However, unless we fight with a two-to-one numeric advantage, we will suffer heavy losses. Do you think it is possible to kill all the Martial Sages of the Kandrian Empire without suffering devastating, even greater losses that will take another five hundred years to heal? The death of each Martial Sage represents the loss of centuries of cultivation of power. I do not know about the two of you, but I do not wish to go with a pyrrhic victory that will leave the Britannian Empire so weakened that it falls from being a Sage-level powerhouse to being just an ordinary Sage- level nation."


    His words were true.


    The reason that they were waging war against the Kandrian Empire was to protect their dominance and influence from the future of the Kandrian Empire, which would undoubtedly dominate them all after it overcame the Great Limit.


    "There''s no point in waging a war to protect our dominance if that same war destroys our dominance by heavily weakening us." Prime Minister Edward snorted. "That is what Emperor Rael is counting on. He does not need to engage in active deterrence; he has cleverly ensured that Kandria has rued just enough power to make fighting it more detrimental than not fighting it."


    Prime Minister Edward cracked a smile at the edge of his mouth with grudging respect.


    He was d that his rival had clearly brought out his top game.


    He looked forward to what would be shaping up to be their final and greatest duel.


    This chapter upload first at  This is the property of N?-velDrama.Org.

 Chapter 2258 War For Allies

    Chapter 2258 War For Allies


    "Then¡­what do you propose we do¡­?" the Patriarch of the Shinken n asked with sharp eyes and a stern expression. "We have suffered heavy losses on the Master-level front; we cannot afford a pyrrhic victory; we must minimize losses."


    "It''s simple, really. There''s only one thing to do," Prime Minister Edward replied with a firm tone. "We gather enough Martial capital from other nations in East Panama to ensure that we face an overwhelming advantage against the Kandrian Empire when ites to numbers, and then we overwhelm in war. We may not have a two-to-one advantage as we are now, but we have many subservient nations within our domains of influence. There''s also the Sage-level nations of East Panama from whom we can borrow Martial power¡­"


    Prime Minister Edward narrowed his eyes. "As soon as we have rued enough borrowed Martial Power from across East Panama, we can focus on destroying them rapidly. Thus, our primary goal is to ensure that we have rued enough Martial power from other nations in East Panama to wipe out the Kandrian Empire with minimal losses. Squeeze out Martial Artists and siege weapons from as many nations of the Upper Realms as possible through any method you can. The Britannian Empire has plenty of colonies from which we can extract Martial capital, for example."


    He turned to President Raymond. "The Republic of Gorteau has plenty of nations trapped with debt. Leverage that credit and use it to borrow as many Masters and Sages as possible. While it is painful to lose the leverage you have had over the nations you trapped, it will be much more painful if we don''t stop the Kandrian Empire."


    President Raymond closed his eyes, issuing a curt nod as he sighed. It was indeed painful to lose all the debt traps that they had ensnared many nations in, but it was worth it to acquire the Martial Artists needed to destroy the Kandrian Empire. After all, it was just money that could be rebuilt again.


    However, if they failed to stop the Kandrian Empire at this juncture, then they were screwed.


    Prime Minister Edward turned toward the n leaders of the Sekigahara Confederate. "The Sekigahara Confederate has triggered countless local and civil wars in its domain of influence for centuries. Just the price to have you halt it will be something that many nations will be very willing to pay rather than have theirnds ravaged by wars that they cannot stop. I''m sure that you will be able to borrow many Masters or perhaps even Sages with theplete halting of all covert interference that you use for triggering conflicts. They will dly fight to destroy the Kandrian Empire if it means keeping their home nations free from civil conflicts. It is the ideal incentive program that will save you money and bring you Martial Artists."


    The n leaders fell into thought as they realized the genius of such a n. It was indeed true that expenses took care of themselves. Of course, not triggering wars was a tough condition, as they triggered wars to increase the demand for Martial Artists, who were needed to win wars.


    However, it was still far preferable to losing the war against the Kandrian Empire due to insufficient firepower to win with minimal losses.


    In the past, the Sekigahara Confederate would have never taken such a stance. However, the fiasco of the previous battle was something that had shaken them to their core. Losing so many Martial Masters at once had shattered all shackles on the course of action that they would take.


    Anything to ensure that the Kandrian Empire experienced the despair it felt and was ruined forever.


    "With these three methods, the three of our nations can squeeze as much Martial capital from nations in our sphere of influence," the prime minister continued. "While the Kandrian Empire does have a much more favorable rtionship with nations in its sphere of influence, it also does not use forceful methods to get what it wants, limiting it in that regard. If all goes well, we will be able to build an enormous army with enough power to wipe out Kandria with minimal losses."


    This was the n.


    The measure that Emperor Rael had taken as a part of his grand n was enough to close the gap between Kandria and its enemies so that they would not be able to achieve anything less than an excruciating pyrrhic victory.


    In order to achieve a ptable victory, the three powerhouses needed to gather as many Masters and Sages as they could from across East Panama to ensure that they gained enough power to wipe the Kandrian Empire out with overwhelming force without having to suffer horrific losses.


    "But¡­" President Raymond sharpened his gaze as he eyed Prime Minister Edward. "Will that be enough to take down Kandria?"


    "Absolutely not," Prime Minister Edward nonchntly replied. "In fact, I am certain that he has predicted my response.''


    The two sides grew rmed at his words. "What''s the point of pursuing this n then? Are you trying to lead into a loss?"


    Prime Minister Edward heaved a sigh. "The reason that he has foreseen our response is because it is undoubtedly the best choice at our disposal. It would be foolish to let go of this opportunity to greatly bolster our war potential with the aforementioned n. In other words¡­"


    He narrowed his eyes, "¡­he needs to demonstrate that he is able to ovee this. Of course, knowing him, this isn''t something he cannot ovee, especially when he has been nning this long before the war came."


    "What could he possibly do to ovee such an overwhelminglyrge gap in war potential, however?" President Raymond.


    Prime Minister scorned him with contempt. "He already did it once with you lot. He crippled both and sealed or destroyed more than half your war potential. It is possible to do it again, especially if he foresaw this three years ago, as I suspect he did. The difference is¡­"


    Prime Minister Edward smiled coldly, "I''ll be his opponent this time." N?velDrama.Org owns all ? content.


    He closed his eyes as his mind parsed through all possible decisions and choices that his rival and enemy could take and were likely to take based on the most promising oues. It was a game that two could take.


    "It all depends on how powerful his treasures are¡­" he tutted, "he has an advantage on us. However, I cannot conceive a future where he wins without also pursuing the same strategy. The best way to counter us gathering Martial capital from East Panama is to do the same thing."


    The n leaders of the Sekigahara Confederate grew more enthusiastic at his words. "Doesn''t that mean we have an advantage? After all, three Sage-level powerhouses can gather more Martial capital than one, right?"


    "You''d be right in ordinary circumstances," Prime Minister Edward answered them earnestly. "However, these are not ordinary circumstances. Kandria has a lot of attractive things to offer. Breakthroughs, elerated growth, healed and improved Martial Bodies, longevity potions, abundance of rare precious resources, prophecy. It all depends on what limits his treasures have. However, there''s no doubt that he will pursue some strategy that will allow him to leverage these treasures in a rtionship to ensure that he doesn''t fall behind in borrowing Martial power from East Panama."


    The two parties stiffened at the Prime Minister''s words as they realized his words made sense.


    "Then¡­" President Raymond gritted his teeth. "How can we ever borrow Martial power faster than Kandria? At this rate, we will never reach a position where we can overwhelm the Kandrian Empire in war with minimal losses!"


    The air grew heavy under the shared frustration that the others felt. It was almost as if the Kandrian Empire would win no matter what they did.


    "The solution is elementary."


    Prime Minister Edward''s tone was steely. "We announce to East Panama that our alliance will wage war against any nation in East Panama that dares to ally with the Kandrian Empire."


    Prime Minister Edward knew that Emperor Rael would definitely also have to borrow Masters and Sages from East Panama to ensure that the Kandrian Empire did not fall behind the alliance, which would also be doing the same thing.


    In that case, Edward had no qualms about leveraging the might of three powerhouses to inspire terror in all nations in East Panama.


    President Raymond and the n leaders quickly acquiesced as they rapidly proceeded with the n they had agreed upon. Ordinarily, they would have stalled,resisted, and dyed, lest they dance to the tune of a rival powerhouse. However, this time they did none of that.


    There was too much at stake.


    Everything was at stake.


    Within a month, the three Sage-level powerhouses issued a public announcement.


    First, it announced the founding of the East Panamic Treaty Alliance led by the Britannian Empire, the Republic of Gorteau, and the Sekigahara Confederate.


    Secondly, it dered war on all nations allied with the Kandrian Empire.


    East Panama shook with horror as the war escted even further, swallowing up much of human civilization.


    A war that would define the future of the Panama Continent. -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2259 A Month

    Chapter 2259 A Month


    Rui woke up groggy and disoriented after what felt like an eternity.


    His vision was blurry while his mind was a mess.


    For more than just a few moments, he was lost.


    Who was he?


    Where was he?


    Why was he here?


    What happened?


    It wasn''t until he got up, easing himself onto the bed in his medical ward, that it finally came back.


    "Kane¡­" he murmured lightly as his eyes lit up with delight. "Heh, he broke through."


    Rui was deeply delighted at his friend''s breakthrough, not to mention the Gatekeeper''s breakthrough as well.


    Kane had demonstrated an extraordinary level of power when he broke through, reaching a higher starting point within the Master Realm than most Masters. He also defeated Rui in a duel by using his greatest trump card when Rui had made the mistake of lowering his guard down. He had made an enormous amount of progress in the manifold after spending seven years in it.


    Unlike Rui, his Martial Path was not reactive, and neither was his growth. It meant that he could spend massive amounts of time in istion training without needing to experience external forces to grow.


    It was something Rui envied but did not like.


    The Gatekeeper was also simr to Kane in that he benefited greatly from it, more than most people would. Content is ? by N?velDrama.Org.


    He also had one of the most unique Martial Minds Rui had ever seen. Rui hadn''t been able to spend much time pondering it back then, for they were in the middle of a dire battle, but he intended to learn as much about it as possible.


    "A system of thought for training¡­" He grew engrossed in the matter, "is within my capabilities."


    He didn''t need to add it to his Martial Mind, of course.


    He didn''t want to weaken his Martial Mind inbat by adding a training Martial Mind to it.


    However, it was worth pursuing it because he had inherited the memories of a man who had conducted plenty of research intobat training. Of course, much of it was invalid when it came to Martial Bodies, but there was plenty that could still be applied.


    "I''ll put it on the list."


    He was d that Sir Armstrong managed to break through to the Master Realm; if anybody deserved to be rewarded for their perseverance and dedication, it was the man who''d spent about five hundred years in grueling training without ever faltering.


    He had always been respected by the Masters of Kandria, but soon, he would have the power to boot. Rui had no doubt that with his explosive training progress, his Martial Mind, and the manifold''s eleration, his Martial Body would reach extraordinary levels of power previously thought impossible.


    Kane, on the other hand, had started enormously high from the very get-go.


    Rui had learned more about Kane in that battle.


    The truth was that Kane did not want to be broken through artificially the way he had beenst time. Because being broken through artificially meant that he would be much weaker than Rui was.


    After all, Rui needed to threaten the destruction of one''s path in order to trigger their breakthrough.


    However, he could not do that against an equal, only against people significantly weaker.


    Thus, if Kane was artificially broken through, it would mean he had made no actual progress with his goal of reaching Rui.


    That was something that Kane was very unwilling to let be the case.


    Thus, he had worked extremely hard in the Manifold to reach a level of power so great that not even Rui would be able to dominate him or threaten to break him through with his own power.


    On the surface, that might seem entirely irrational, and perhaps it was to a certain extent.However, Rui understood why Kane had chosen to go that route. His goal to be Rui''s equal or as close to it as possible was not just something he pretended to harbor without taking seriously but was something he intended to achieve.


    Thus, Rui actually respected his friend''s determination to refuse to be weak enough just to break through to another Realm. There was no point in pursuing power. It required him to forsake the reason that he pursued it in the first ce.


    And it paid off; Kane''s breakthrough was something that he could truly take pride in because he broke through to the Master Realm of his own merit. His breakthrough was entirely natural, and the trigger had been to defeat Rui in a battle rather than Rui breaking him through artificially.


    As long as Kane continued to work hard and grind in the manifold, it wasn''t entirely impossible that he would eventually catch up to Rui. It was actually something that Rui looked forward to, as Kane was the only Master of the same generation as Rui.


    CLACK The door opened, breaking Rui out of his thoughts and bringing him back to the real world. He found himself looking at four Martial Masters who had been standing guard outside his medical ward.


    "Your Highness, you have finally woken up."


    Rui raised an eyebrow."¡­Finally?"


    They nced at each other before heaving a sigh. "It has been a month since the battle passed, Your Highness."


    Rui''s eyes widened. "¡­I didn''t even use my Martial Mind."


    "ording to the Divine Doctor, that is the only reason that you haven''t suffered permanent brain damage," they informed him with a soft sigh. "What you did was reckless, Your Highness. There was no need to push yourself after the battle. Especially when you informed us you were going to merely watch."


    Rui''s expression grew sheepish as he recalled exactly what he had said to Master Zentra. "Ah, well, my bad. I had not gone there with the intention of acting. I just found myself in circumstances where I had no choice but to act. I think the oue speaks for itself, though."


    "We are not chastising you, Your Highness. What''s done is done. Now, however, you must deal with the consequences of your actions."


    -


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 Chapter 2260 Impacts and Value

    Chapter 2260 Impacts and Value


    Their words were ominous.


    They weighed down on the atmosphere.


    Just from them alone, Rui was sharply able to deduce much. "The Sekigahara Confederate has learned about the truth about our breakthroughs, have they?" Rui''s voice grew forlorn.


    "¡­I''m afraid they have, ording to Master Kane''s testimony. He regretfully reported that he wiped all but one Master of the Sekigahara Confederate until their Sages protected the final one."


    Rui''s eyes widened with rm. "Is he okay?!"


    Running into hostile Sages was something that no Master possessed the power to survive.


    "He is alive and well, Your Highness," the four Master reassured him. "Sage Arrancar himself intervened, protecting his son from what would have otherwise meant certain death."


    "¡­Thank god," Rui heaved a sigh of deep relief. "What is the Martial Union''s evaluation of him as a Master?"


    "Grade eighteen, your Highness," they informed with a hint of amazement. "Short of yourself, that is the highest grade anyone has ever achieved right into the Master Realm. However, that is not important at the moment. His failure to kill the final Master of the Sekigahara Confederate means that you are in grave danger, for the Sekigahara Confederate has learned about your secret."


    Rui''s eyes narrowed. "That is not his fault. The fact that he managed to kill all but one of them is, in and of itself, extraordinary. The fact that he failed to kill one is not enough to discount his immense contributions to the Kandrian Empire. Especially when he was confronted with Martial Sages."


    They quickly backed away, detecting the anger in Rui''s voice. "We are not condemning him, of course. But, it is also true that your actions and his failure in that regard have led to a lot of consequences to Your Highness and, by extension, the Kandrian Empire."


    Rui stared at them silently as he found it difficult to retort.


    After all, their words were dead correct.


    It did not take a genius to figure out the fact that he was in deep shit, and he was one, so he was able to gain a much deeper assessment of how much danger he was in.


    Yet, strangely enough, he did not feel fear.


    He could almost feel the bloodlust of the three Sage-level powerhouses piercing into him, threatening to kill him through the sheer pressure it put on him, but it was almost as though it had passed right through him.


    He felt a deep amount ofposure and calm despite his perilous and grave circumstances.


    Yet, at its roots, there was not a deep confidence or certainty in his survival.


    No.


    It was just that the prospects of death did not seem to inspire the kind of fear that it once used to.


    "Interesting¡­" He whispered to himself as he learned a new tidbit about himself, a small, tiny step towards the Sage Realm.


    "Your Highness, the Emperor, and the Sage Council have summoned you upon your discharge." The Masters interrupted his little session of introspection. "Both of them have much to speak to you about."


    Rui''s gaze shifted in their direction as he lightly nodded. "I feel fine now, so I can just go visit them as I¡ª"


    "I''m afraid that I''ll be the one to decide that." A familiar voice dered from behind the Masters, who parted to reveal the Divine Doctor.


    "¡­It''s a bit extravagant to put you in charge for such a trivial matter, don''t you think?" Rui raised an eyebrow. "You have much more important matters to tend to." N?velDrama.Org (C) content.


    "I beg to differ." His tone was as clinical in itsck of warmth as ever. "Did you forget? You are my stethoscope. A tool to diagnose Gaia herself."


    Rui did not like the way he framed it, but it was true that Rui was to aid the Divine Doctor in his grand and crazy ambition. As for his question, Rui had indeed forgotten about it until he was reminded of it.


    He didn''t have time for such missions these days. Not as long as the Kandrian Empire was in the middle of a crazy existential war that would allow it to ovee the Great Limit and be the greatest nation to have ever existed.


    How could he afford to frolic around the world in abandon, looking for the supposed disease guing a that was allegedly alive?


    While the Divine Doctor''s sheerpetence and ability lent credence to his words, it was still a highly oundish im that Rui didn''t know what to make of. "I cannot have you die or be crippled as a result of your own recklessness," he brieflymented as he began a medical check-up on Rui.


    Rui shrugged lightly,plying. "I suppose it isn''t the worst thing to have you as my doctor." If being of value to the Divine Doctor meant that he would get his personal attention for all medical matters, then it was worth it.


    "More importantly¡­" Rui began. "Was it you? Were you the one who helped Sir Armstrong develop a Martial Mind?"


    The guarding Master''s listened with rapt attention to that question.


    "It was nothing, really," his tone was one of mild interest. "He had an interesting Martial Body that allowed me to collect rare data that I would otherwise not be able to, honing and sharpening my understanding of the Martial Body. But that''s about it. I taught him everything he wanted to know, which wasn''t much by my standards of knowledge, but still more than one would ever find out otherwise."


    Rui shrugged lightly. "You have done Kandria a great service by helping him to the Master Realm. His Martial Mind is extremely useful, you know?"


    Rui had a feeling that the Martial Union would value his training system of thought almost as much as they valued his system of thought. If he could pass on his knowledge of training and growth to the Martial Union, then all of Kandria could experience a qualitative evolution. It was a level of contribution that was on par with Rui''s voidlet contributions.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2261 Changes

    Chapter 2261 Changes


    After all, while Rui''s contributions increased the affinity of Martial Artists with the Master Realm, the Gatekeeper''s contributions would be a much more fundamental increment across all Realms. After all, all Realms required training, but not all Realms required thought.


    Rui himself was quite intrigued by the man''s Martial Mind and was curious whether he could benefit from it himself. When it came to training methodologies and things outside of his Martial Art, Rui had no qualms about mooching off of the Gatekeeper''s great progress in that regard.


    "¡­And all clear," the Divine Doctor''s voice broke him out of his thought. "You''re good to go. Try not to die before you help me with my patient." Content is ? by N?velDrama.Org.


    He headed to leave unceremoniously.


    "Wait," Rui stopped him. "How¡­ how is Julian?"


    Julian had been working under him for many years now, studying the alien specimen and regting the manifold through it.


    "Intelligent andpetent," the Divine Doctor remarked lightly. "Anything else? My time is priceless."


    It was quite a praiseing from the Divine Doctor himself, even if that wasn''t what Rui was referring to.


    "¡­No." He heaved a sigh, shaking his head as he watched the man nonchntly leave the medical ward and head back to his work. He would need to check up on the orphanage vige when he was done with more pressing matters. After all, he hadn''t seen his family since the Kandrian Empire was dered to be in a state of national emergency, and they were evacuating to the Town of Hajin.


    Of course, he had no real reason to be concerned, but that did not mean that he didn''t worry about their well-being.


    A national emergency and evacuation could be extremely scary for civilians.


    "Lead the way," he addressed the four Masters who stood guard for him. "I would rather finish this right away than let it persist."


    Unsurprisingly, it turned out he was in the medical wing of the Vargard Royal Pce. His father''s office was merely a two-minute walk to his father''s office.


    CLACK


    The enormous gates to the ostentatious office thaty within opened, revealing his father sitting at his table, studying arge number of documents scattered about his table.


    "How do you feel?" he smiled, getting up and walking over. "My son."


    "Just fine, Father," Rui calmly answered while his gaze shifted to many documents scattered over his table. "You look¡­busy."


    A wry smile appeared on his father''s face as the two took their seats opposite each other. "I am the Emperor. I am never not busy."


    "You should take a break," Rui offered lightly. "I wouldn''t want you sumbing to a heart attack of stress or something."


    "That is a rather ominous thing to say," Emperor Rael''s smile was one of amusement. "If I didn''t know better, I would have assumed that you were threatening me in an attempt to ascend the throne and be the true ruler of the Kandrian Empire."


    Rui glowered at his words. "Don''t even joke about that. After everything that I''ve been through as a result of the Kandrian throne, just the very thought of a second throne war makes me feel nauseous and ill. In fact, I need you to ensure that I never have to get involved again. Get to having more heirs who aren''t insane. I do not want to be the Final Prince anymore."


    His father chuckled at his son''s words, shaking his head lightly. "Well, you might get your wish soon. I have recently forged an alliance with the Kingdom of Grahal. Soon, the first princess will be arriving in the Kandrian Empire to serve her duty as a concubine of the Emperor."


    His tone was matter-of-factly.


    In his eyes, he was fulfilling his duty as the Emperor of Kandria to leave behind enough progeny to ensure that there was at least one worthy heir to the throne. It wasn''t something that Rui was either familiar with orfortable with. While he didn''t have any parental aspirations, he didn''t want to bring children into this world without being there in their lives like they deserved.


    "I have learned from my mistakes in the past," his father''s tone grew soft as his eyes grew introspective. "My approach to my children was¡­wrong. I do not intend to make the same mistakes once more. This time, I will seek to raise my children, not potential heirs to the throne."


    A sorrowful smile appeared on his face. "It took me long enough to realize this, yet it was only thanks to you and the life you lived that showed me the error in my ways. You have my gratitude for that."


    Rui shook his head lightly. "¡­I didn''t do anything. I just lived my life the way I wanted to."


    "And that was enough." His father spoke thoughtfully. "Enough, yet necessary."


    He shook his head lightly as he put the thought away. "Regardless, that isn''t the reason that I called you here. I wanted to see how you were doing and speak with my son, of course, but also to talk about more pressing and important matters. For example¡­"


    The air grew heavier as his father''s tone grew more serious.


    "The fact that our enemies now know about your ability to break Martial Artists through and the fact that they''ve decided to go all-out in eliminating you," Emperor Rael pulled a sheet out among the rubble of documents atop his table, putting the sheet of paper before Rui.


    It was a picture of Rui with his name atop, as well as other basic details.


    At the bottom, it read in arge font:


    [Dead or alive: 10,000,000,000 gold coins.]


    Rui''s eyes widened with shock. "This¡­"


    "A bounty." Emperor Rael calmly informed him. "The East Panamic Treaty Alliance did not even bother hiding that they were the ones to ce the bounty; if anything, they have almost publicly announced it."


    Rui stared at his father as if he had just spoken a foreignnguage. "The what alliance?"


    His father heaved a soft sigh. "Sit, I''ll briefly go over everything that has happened since the battle with the Sekigahara Confederate."


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2262 Rallying Tactics

    Chapter 2262 Rallying Tactics


    This is the property of N?-velDrama.Org.


    The things that his father informed him about were stunning.


    The war for allies and the founding of the East Panamic Treaty Alliance led by the Britannian Empire, the Republic of Gorteau, and the Sekigahara Confederate with the sole objective of halting the Kandrian Empire''s rise.


    On top of that, they had gone as far as to dere war against the Kandrian Empire''s allies in East Panama.


    There was no way that was more effective when it came to deterring anybody from allying with the Kandrian Empire.


    "This is historic¡­" Rui realized. "Never before have three powerhouses formed a military alliance with the intention of harming another powerhouse."


    Emperor Rael nodded with a serious expression. Yet, his eyes were calm.


    "You predicted this?" Rui raised an eyebrow.


    "I didn''t expect the deration of a formal alliance, but yes, this was a foreseeable oue," Emperor Rael remarked with a knowing expression. "It was the most optimal way of ensuring that they will win the war for allies against the Kandrian Empire. While they have more Martial Sages than us, they do not have enough to have anything other than a devastating pyrrhic victory that will weaken them to the point of losing their dominant status."


    Rui understood the rationale quite well. "There is no point in fighting a war against Kandria if it means that the war will destroy everything that allows these nations to stand at the top."


    "Just so, in that regard, the next logical step for our enemies is to ensure that they are able to gather as much additional power as possible by borrowing it from the nations in their spheres of influence," Emperor Rael calmly added. "We will have no choice but to act."


    "¡­You mean by garnering allies with an even greater carrot than their stick?" Rui keenly recognized his father''s intentions. "Kandria is extremely attractive as an ally because of the uniquely potent gifts that we can bestow upon our rivals."


    His father nodded approvingly. "That is true. We do indeed have a lot to offer. However, one thing that we need to be careful about is that we do not bleed ourselves dry just to ensure that we are able to borrow enough Martial power tobat our enemies. There is no point in giving all our gifts to win this war because we are fighting this war to protect our gifts."


    Rui nodded. "At the very least, we cannot give away our bounties from the Beast Domain freely. Those are things that were painstakingly procured by our Martial Artists."


    "Rest assured, I have no intention of bleeding ourselves dry for that. However, other resources can be given away without any losses on our side. For example¡­" He turned towards Rui with a pointed look. "Breaking some of their Martial Artists through to the Master Realm in exchange for their support in the war."


    Rui heaved a sigh. "I suppose that makes sense. It''s an unlimited resource, in a sense."


    He did not look forward to breaking Martial Artists through, but thankfully, it was not a time-consuming process and did not interfere with his training.


    "It doesn''t matter what threats our enemies use," Emperor Rael remarked. "Gaining additional Masters is something that is too juicy for many nations to ignore. After all, even Sage-level powerhouses have fewer than two hundred Masters."


    Rui nodded. "For Master-level nations, this reward is too good to ignore. However, Sage-level nations like the Shionel Confederation will be less attracted."


    "¡­That is also true." Emperor Rael heaved a sigh. "We will need to make much more serious efforts to reel in Sage-level nations. However, it isn''t beyond our ability."


    Both of them knew that the twelve Sage-level nations of East Panama would be the most important yers in the war for allies.


    They would decide who would win the war.


    After all, while Masters were too powerful to be ignored, the ultimate winner would be decided by the oue of Sage-levelbat. In other words, if all twelve Sage-level nations sided with the East Panamic Treaty Alliance, the Kandrian Empire was doomed for destruction. If all twelve Sage-level nations sided with the Kandrian Empire, then it was guaranteed to break past the Great Limit eventually.


    Realistically, neither of these was likely to ur.


    The two sides would furiouslypete for the support of these twelve Sage-level nations who had suddenly gained the privilege of deciding the victor of the third East Panamic War.


    Suddenly, the eyes of the world were on these nations.


    Their decisions would impact the future of East Panama and the future of all of human civilization.


    "Our conditions for victory are rather straightforward, at least on paper," Emperor Rael stated . "We need to offer something that outweighs the threat of war put forth by the East Panamic Alliance, and we need to ensure that we inspire confidence in them regarding our ability to win the war. In that regard, we are at an innate disadvantage since most people would normally be more inclined to believe that three powerhouses would certainly defeat one powerhouse. Or at least, that used to be the case until about a month ago."


    Rui quickly followed the implications of his father''s words. "Our overwhelming victory against the Sekigahara Confederate has shattered the illusion that Kandria is only equal to our enemy powerhouses."


    Emperor Rael smiled with confidence. "Indeed. Never before has the Sekigahara Confederate been so overwhelmed in a war that they waged, losing more than a hundred Masters in a single battle."


    "You''re wee, by the way." "I see you''re not shy in taking the credit you''re owed." His father grew amused. "Regardless, I am indeed grateful to you for your actions, reckless as they were. They have made a significant impact on all those who expected a more even battle between two powerhouses."


    His tone grew more serious. "Thanks to you, the image of the Kandrian Empire''s formidability is rock-solid. The revtion of seven additional Sages was made in the most impactful manner possible. The world now seriously believes that the Kandrian Empire may very well win the war, just as I had hoped."


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2263 Avoiding Sages

    Chapter 2263 Avoiding Sages


    One of the reasons that Emperor Rael had chosen to freely divulge the existence of the seven new Sages of the Kandrian Empire was because he needed to project power in the battle against the Sekigahara Confederate.


    In this case, an open disy of power was much more desirable than hidden trump cards due to the fact that he would lose the war for allies if he did not convince the Sage-level nations that the Kandrian Empire had the power to win.


    After all, the choice of allying with either side was inherently risky for the Sage-level nations.


    After all, what if the side they chose to ally with lost the war?


    Then, they would have made an enemy of the victor and the most dominant power in East Panama.


    That was a nightmare of a situation.


    In other words, it didn''t matter what treasures the Kandrian Empire offered them if nobody believed that it could win. Nobody wanted to make an enemy of the Britannian Empire, the Sekigahara Confederate, and the Republic of Gorteau if they were going to win the war anyway.


    However, the oue of the battle against the Sekigahara Confederate, one of the most intimidating powerhouses, was overwhelming. The Sekigahara Confederate was bullied and pushed back and deeply wounded and scarred.


    Although nobody said it aloud, just the fact that the three Sage-level powerhouses felt the need to go as far as creating an alliance and making threats against all those who allied with the Kandrian Empire was proof that the Kandrian Empire was a serious threat to them even if they allied.


    Then, the addition of the fact that the Esocline Federation had also allied with the Kandrian Empire to keep the Sekigahara Confederate in check and cripple their war potential gave them more confidence that the Kandrian Empire truly had what it took.


    On top of that, there was the heavy reputation of the Emperor of Harmony, who had led the Kandrian Empire to victory and greatness in spite of such hurdles. He was a man who was widely regarded as one of the greatest rulers of the Age of Martial Art. If anyone could lead Kandria to victory in these circumstances, it was him. People would have been much less inclined to trust the Kandrian Empire''s odds of victory if it had been one of his heirs sitting on the throne.


    "Now, we just need to win over their support with sweet offers of breakthroughs now that the second phase of the third Great East Panamic War has begun," Emperor Rael lightly remarked. "If we can do that, we can achieve the conditions for victory."


    "Second phase, huh?" Rui raised an eyebrow. "That must be a record for how quickly a phase of war has ever beenpleted."


    "Certainly, although my ns had fully taken into ount a quick transition to the second phase of the war, I had expected that it would take much longer. I had predicted that it would most likely take half a year to transition to the next phase of the war, after a gradual esction in conflict until it reached Sage-level conflict, which would then mark the beginning of the war with allies once it became clear that they could not destroy the Kandrian Empire by themselves."


    "However, I''m guessing the lunatic aggression of the Sekigahara Confederate caused the esction to elerate, prompting an early transition to the second phase," Rui hazarded an educated guess. "Yes, it has its pros and cons. On the one hand, an early transition meant that we could avoid the grueling losses that would have wounded both sides. On the other hand, we also missed the years of training time inside the manifold during this period." His father sighed. "Ultimately, it is what it is. It is time for me to focus on winning over the Sage-level nations. I intend to begin negotiations with them with an important figure from the Kandrian Empire to convey how serious we are about this alliance. An important figure like¡­"


    He turned to Rui. N?velDrama.Org (C) content.


    Rui immediately frowned. "I thought I told you I want no part in politics. I only wish to participate in this war as a Martial Artist, not a politician."


    "I have not forgotten. But this is a role that Martial Artists sometimes undertake for the same reason that you were chosen as a representative for the G''ak''arkan Tribe endeavor by the Martial Union, and given that your services will also be what we''re offering, it may be worth considering. On top of that, you will also be burdened with the duty to protect them from attacks from the East Panamic Treaty Alliance."


    Rui raised an eyebrow. "You''re willing to deploy me outside of the nation for missions in spite of the danger that it will pose to me?"


    Emperor Rael smiled. "Well, if things went my way, I would rather you never left Kandria and spent your time around a Martial Sage the entire time. But I know that you will not ept such arrangements and will insist on fighting despite the dangers that you face."


    Rui shrugged at his father''s words.


    He was entirely right, of course. Nothing could stop Rui from fighting on the front lines.


    Emperor Rael heaved a soft sigh. "I won''t ask you to stop. You are intelligent enough toprehend the full consequences of your actions. Thus, if you are determined to fight, you may do so."


    Rui was d that his father knew better than to try to stop him from partaking in the war. He had mixed feelings about serving as an ambassador for the Kandrian Empire, but he liked the idea of fighting other Martial Masters to protect the allies of the Kandrian Empire.


    "I''ll think about it." Rui shrugged. "I have many considerations to make."


    He would rather go for the choice that would expose him to as much life-threatening Master-levelbat as possible but not to Sages who had been dispatched to kill him.


    The issue was that the East Panamic Treaty Alliance would very much like to kill him, no matter the expenses of such an operation. He found himself in a tough spot.


    "How do I avoid enemy Sages but not enemy Masters¡­?"


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2264 Possible Deployments

    2264 Possible Deployments


    "There are many ways to aplish that," Emperor Rael answered his question lightly. "For one, you can serve as an ambassador for Master-level nations. The East Panamic Treaty Alliance will not waste most of its time sending any Martial Sages to Master-level nations as opposed to Sage-level nations that choose to ally with us, for example. On the flip side, the quality of enemy Masters deployed to these nations will be lower, for example."


    Rui fell into thought.


    In other words, as long as he went to Master-level allied nations, he would be facing off weaker Masters.


    Masters who he would most likely be able to handle and dominate inbat.


    "I mean, if they want to kill me so badly, they can just send a Martial Sage to target me instead of the ally that I''m protecting. Ironically, because of how many people want to kill me, I''m more of a liability than an asset when ites to protecting nations." This is the property of N?-velDrama.Org.


    Rui found it amusing rather than disturbing.


    Though, he would be displeased if he couldn''t get into good battles that could serve as experience.


    "There are ways to handle those issues as well," Emperor Rael calmly remarked as he read through a bunch of reports. "For example, we can arm you with a rare artifact that can instantaneously transport you back to the Kandrian Empire when activated and publicly announce the news."


    Rui''s eyes lit up with interest. "Such a thing exists?"


    "The esoteric substance used to create the artifact is extremely rare, non-renewable, and can only be found in the Beast Domain, but¡­" A hint of smugness could be detected in his father''s voice. "That is no longer an impediment to the Kandrian Empire, thanks to the Elder Tree''s intel."


    "Ah, I suppose your n is to hand me such an artifact and publicize the news." Rui realized his intentions. "Doing so will make it unattractive to deploy a Martial Sage to assassinate me, because we also have my grandmother, who needs only to warn me ahead of time if they do decide to deploy any Martial Sage. The Martial Sage will have been deployed in futility because they won''t ever be able to kill me."


    "Correct, you have quickly understood the n I had in mind." His father nodded. "Prime Minister Edward is not a fool. He won''t deploy Martial Sages if there''s a high chance the operation will be futile. At this crucial stage of the war, Martial Sages will be deployed only where their impact on the war can be guaranteed."


    His father''s n was practical and a good way to keep their enemies from deploying Sages to hunt Rui.


    "However, they have enough of an understanding of your profile to know that you won''t back away from a war against Martial Masters. So there''s a good chance that they''ll be able to have you remain as long as they don''t push their attempts to kill you," his father quickly offered his judgment.


    "If that''s the case, then it also does not matter which allied nation or potential ally I go to. The level of conflict that I will invite upon myself will be the same due to how much the East Panamic Treaty Alliance wants to kill me," Rui realized. "In other words, I''m bound to face an immense amount of pressure no matter where I go the moment I step outside of the Kandrian Empire."


    "I suppose that is also true," Emperor Rael mused. "If that''s the case, you might want to be deployed to allies or potential allies where you would face a high level of pressure anyway due to their strategic importance."


    Rui stirred at his father''s words.


    Now that the war for allies had begun, Rui had several options on how he wanted to participate in it, and he wanted to make use of the opportunity to face off against as many Masters as possible.


    It wasn''t going to be easy to make a choice under these conditions.


    "I''ll need to give it a lot of thought."


    His father nodded. "Be sure to make sure you''ve considered all the choices at your disposal. And remember the consequences of any choice you make."


    Rui nodded. "I won''t forget."


    It wasn''t long before he left his father''s office, leaving him to work on his own devices. He still had a meeting with the Sage Council of the Martial Union. He was sure that the Martial Sages had plenty to speak to him about after the recent battle with the Sekigahara Confederate.


    Now that his secret of breakthroughs hade out, it was best if they collectively dealt with the local consequences of the breakthrough requests andmissions for Rui that had flooded the Martial Union.


    After all, one of the primary functions of the Martial Union was to serve as a broker between Martial Artists and the consumer market in a highly efficient and effective manner to ensure that the supply was optimally matched to demand.


    The Martial Union needed a clear stance from Rui on how to deal with the skyrocketing demand that they had undoubtedly been bombarded with since the Sekigahara Confederate learned and disseminated the intel about his breakthrough abilities.


    There were countless powers inside and outside the Kandrian Empire that wanted him to break their Squires or Seniors through to a higher Realm, or break their children through to the Apprentice Realm.


    Until Rui made his stance clear and ensured that there was a system to enforce his stance, there would only be chaos.


    "What a pain in the ass¡­" He heaved a sigh as he headed to the Martial Union headquarters in Vargard. "Why can''t people just leave me alone? Or just fight me."


    Either option worked for him.


    Thetter certainly wasn''t going to be an issue even if he didn''t leave the Kandrian Empire. Ten billion gold coins were almost an order of magnitude higher than the highest bid for assassinationmissions.


    He weed their attempts.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2265: Much To Discuss

    Chapter 2265: Much To Discuss


    ?


    "Of course, having said that," the shing Flier continued, turning to him, "the Martial Union will go naturally with whatever decision you make. What we require is rity."


    Rui understood what he sought from him.


    He was essentially hoping that Rui would get rid of all the pressure that the Martial Union was experiencing due to him. Many people sought to try to procure Rui''s services from them via amission, even though it wasn''t clear that Rui was willing to entertain most of them.


    "This is a simple matter." Rui heaved a sigh. "I simply do not care to undertake all thesemissions for my breakthrough ability. I think that is a straightforward manner of addressing this issue if you ask me, and it will instantly get rid of all the pressure that we are experiencing."


    The others around the table simply stared at him.


    Technically, he was right.


    Simply refusing thesemissions was the best way to get rid of the pressure the Martial Union was facing. All the Martial Union needed to do was publish an announcement that stated it would not be eptingmissions directed towards Rui for breakthroughs, and that would cause the flood of demand for his ability to subside.


    However, they did not need to state the obvious. It was also the most unpleasant oue for all the people of the Martial Union. It would be the Martial Union that suffered the loss in reputation for his decisions.


    "It''s inevitable, but as long as you nip it in the bud, it will be as painless as possible," Rui calmly stated. "Regardless, this isn''t something that will be too damaging."


    "I don''t think you understand how much pressure the Martial Union is under." Sage Roschem heaved a soft sigh. "The news that you can trigger the breakthrough to three Realms has already spread through much of humanity. There are many extremely powerful people who seek a breakthrough from you from within and outside East Panama. Many of these powerful people are among ourrgest benefactors and patrons who have supported the Martial Union with the expectation and promise that they will receive leeway whenever such developments in Martial Art ur."


    Rui''s eyes narrowed as he understood why the Martial Union was trying to pressure him into reconsidering his stance of absolutely nopromise. It was extremely unwilling to piss off some of its biggest clients internationally. These were individuals who possessed an unfathomable amount of capital and power and who had supported the Martial Union for decades, if not centuries, as a form of investment.


    The Martial Union was very reluctant to provoke these patrons with a tant rejection. "We have had not only individuals who are extremely powerful and have been extremely supportive of the Martial Union in the past but also members of other Sage-level powerhouses who also seek to obtain a breakthrough from you," one Master told him. "For example, the crown princess of the Sris Empire has approached us with amission for your services. The Namgun Dynasty has sought your services for one of their heirs, and even the Blood Cult has also approached us from the other side of the continent."


    Rui heaved a tired sigh as he fell into thought.


    As much as he would love to say no, he needed to deeply consider whether it was worth the consequences.N?velDrama.Org owns all ? content.


    Unlike the others, he was able to extrapte the oues much deeper into the future and evaluate exactly whether it woulde to bite him in the ass a year, ten years, or even a century down the line.


    Unfortunately, his modeling and calctions told him that it did not bode well for the Kandrian Empire and, by extension, himself if he refused all of them without any consideration.


    For one, if the war escted even further beyond merely the second phase and began dragging in other Sage-level powerhouses into the battle, there would be many forces that would remember his rude refusal of their requests and would be more inclined to side with the East Panamic Treaty Alliance.


    On top of that, his refusal was also a message to the rest of the world that he was unwilling to trade it even to the foremost of patrons and beneficiaries. Given that he was the most prominent prince of the Kandrian Empire, it would be interpreted as the stance of his father and the Empire atrge.


    With such a stubborn and insr attitude, there was a much higher chance that hostilities between the Kandrian Empire and powers beyond East Panama would erupt. Even if it did not erupt into a full-scale war, the sheer unwillingness to even trade would make these nations more inclined to contribute to the downfall of the Empire, lest it monopolize such a treasure to itself.


    This, of course, negatively affected him as he was deeply connected with the state.


    Finally, Rui was also keenly aware of the fact that he had caused this by choosing to bare his ability in front of the Sekigahara Confederate. If this had been leaked due to the Martial Union''s ipetence or any other party''s shorings, he would not have been as considerate of their circumstances.


    "I''m not absolutely opposed to eptingmissions, but..." he began. "I cannot ept more than a very small number. Any more, and it will exceed the limit I set for myself. I cannot let these impede my life or my training and growth. On top of that, may I remind you that we are in the middle of a war. Our Martial Artists take precedence over foreign Martial Artists. Thus, I will only eptmercialmissions as long as there aren''t any Seniors ready to break through to the Master Realm. It isn''t like all the people makingmissions will deploy their newly broken-through Martial Artists into our war to defend Kandria. This is my first and finalpromise. I will not go one inch further than this. Need I remind you that I also have to deal with the breakthroughs that my father will be leveraging to win allies to win the war?"


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2266 Reluctant Acquiscal

    Chapter 2266 Reluctant Acquiscal


    "Of course, having said that," the shing Flier continued, turning to him, "the Martial Union will go naturally with whatever decision you make. What we require is rity."


    Rui understood what he sought from him.


    He was essentially hoping that Rui would get rid of all the pressure that the Martial Union was experiencing due to him. Many people sought to try to procure Rui''s services from them via amission, even though it wasn''t clear that Rui was willing to entertain most of them.


    "This is a simple matter." Rui heaved a sigh. "I simply do not care to undertake all thesemissions for my breakthrough ability. I think that is a straightforward manner of addressing this issue if you ask me, and it will instantly get rid of all the pressure that we are experiencing."


    The others around the table simply stared at him.


    Technically, he was right.


    Simply refusing thesemissions was the best way to get rid of the pressure the Martial Union was facing. All the Martial Union needed to do was publish an announcement that stated it would not be eptingmissions directed towards Rui for breakthroughs, and that would cause the flood of demand for his ability to subside.


    However, they did not need to state the obvious. It was also the most unpleasant oue for all the people of the Martial Union. It would be the Martial Union that suffered the loss in reputation for his decisions.


    "It''s inevitable, but as long as you nip it in the bud, it will be as painless as possible," Rui calmly stated. "Regardless, this isn''t something that will be too damaging."


    "I don''t think you understand how much pressure the Martial Union is under." Sage Roschem heaved a soft sigh. "The news that you can trigger the breakthrough to three Realms has already spread through much of humanity. There are many extremely powerful people who seek a breakthrough from you from within and outside East Panama. Many of these powerful people are among ourrgest benefactors and patrons who have supported the Martial Union with the expectation and promise that they will receive leeway whenever such developments in Martial Art ur."


    Rui''s eyes narrowed as he understood why the Martial Union was trying to pressure him into reconsidering his stance of absolutely nopromise. It was extremely unwilling to piss off some of its biggest clients internationally. These were individuals who possessed an unfathomable amount of capital and power and who had supported the Martial Union for decades, if not centuries, as a form of investment.


    The Martial Union was very reluctant to provoke these patrons with a tant rejection.


    "We have had not only individuals who are extremely powerful and have been extremely supportive of the Martial Union in the past but also members of other Sage-level powerhouses who also seek to obtain a breakthrough from you," one Master told him. "For example, the crown princess of the Sris Empire has approached us with amission for your services. The Namgun Dynasty has sought your services for one of their heirs, and even the Blood Cult has also approached us from the other side of the continent."


    Rui heaved a tired sigh as he fell into thought. This is the property of N?-velDrama.Org.


    As much as he would love to say no, he needed to deeply consider whether it was worth the consequences.


    Unlike the others, he was able to extrapte the oues much deeper into the future and evaluate exactly whether it woulde to bite him in the ass a year, ten years, or even a century down the line.


    Unfortunately, his modeling and calctions told him that it did not bode well for the Kandrian Empire and, by extension, himself if he refused all of them without any consideration.


    For one, if the war escted even further beyond merely the second phase and began dragging in other Sage-level powerhouses into the battle, there would be many forces that would remember his rude refusal of their requests and would be more inclined to side with the East Panamic Treaty Alliance.


    On top of that, his refusal was also a message to the rest of the world that he was unwilling to trade it even to the foremost of patrons and beneficiaries. Given that he was the most prominent prince of the Kandrian Empire, it would be interpreted as the stance of his father and the Empire atrge.


    With such a stubborn and insr attitude, there was a much higher chance that hostilities between the Kandrian Empire and powers beyond East Panama would erupt. Even if it did not erupt into a full-scale war, the sheer unwillingness to even trade would make these nations more inclined to contribute to the downfall of the Empire, lest it monopolize such a treasure to itself.


    This, of course, negatively affected him as he was deeply connected with the state.


    Finally, Rui was also keenly aware of the fact that he had caused this by choosing to bare his ability in front of the Sekigahara Confederate. If this had been leaked due to the Martial Union''s ipetence or any other party''s shorings, he would not have been as considerate of their circumstances. "I''m not absolutely opposed to eptingmissions, but¡­" he began. "I cannot ept more than a very small number. Any more, and it will exceed the limit I set for myself. I cannot let these impede my life or my training and growth. On top of that, may I remind you that we are in the middle of a war. Our Martial Artists take precedence over foreign Martial Artists. Thus, I will only eptmercialmissions as long as there aren''t any Seniors ready to break through to the Master Realm. It isn''t like all the people makingmissions will deploy their newly broken-through Martial Artists into our war to defend Kandria. This is my first and finalpromise. I will not go one inch further than this. Need I remind you that I also have to deal with the breakthroughs that my father will be leveraging to win allies to win the war?"


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2267 Limited Clientele

    Chapter 2267 Limited Clientele


    His father''s attempt to leverage his breakthrough ability to rally allies and the Martial Union''s desire not to anger the many powers and forces across humanity pressuringthem revealed just how valuable the ability to trigger breakthroughs artificially was.


    Of course, he had always known that it was revolutionary.


    However, now that he was tangibly able to get a taste of just how valuable it was, it reaffirmed how difficult it was to execute. He bet that the Panamic Martial Federation deeply regretted ever trying to charge him with anything for the damages he had done. Compared to the value of the ability to trigger breakthroughs at will, the losses his Sun technique had caused them were microscopic.


    In his Flowing Void Style, he had the ability to revolutionize Martial Art forever. He could ensure that human civilization eventually grew to be qualitatively superior by orders of magnitude than it would be otherwise without his intervention.


    It was hardly any wonder that even the highest echelons of humanity sought his ability.


    Hispromise gave some relief to the Martial Sages and Masters who led the Union. Although it wasn''t the best oue, it was still far better than an absolute refusal.


    "I didn''t think that the Sage and Master Council cared so much about its perceptions internationally." Rui raised an eyebrow. "I''m the only one with real political experience here, and I don''t care about it. We''re Martial Artists, are we not? The Martial Union exists to serve Martial Artists, not the other way around."


    "¡­That does sound like someone who hasn''t witnessed the creation of the Martial Union or the earlier centuries of the Age of Martial Art." Sage Roschem shook his head lightly. "The organization is important for concretely unifying Martial Artists in our nation and ensuring that the dominance of Martial Art remains while ensuring that the power of Martial Artists grows. If the organization is weak, it weakens the influence and power of Martial Artists. Without it, we are much more vulnerable as a disorganized and disunited ss. Each and every one of us has benefited from it in many ways. Thus, we ought to ensure that we contribute to the organization with the ability to pay our debts away. Though, in your case¡­"


    He huffed with a hint of incredulity. "¡­it is the other way around." This is the property of N?-velDrama.Org.


    "I''m d the Martial Union recognizes that." Rui snorted but limited himself to that.


    He didn''t mind bolstering the Martial Union as long as it wasn''t inconvenient. After all, it was true that the Martial Union was vital to the growth and dominance of Martial Art. It was responsible for everything from massive budgets and resources allocated to Martial R&D to immense investment into nurturing new Martial Artists in the form of sixteen elite Martial Academies. On top of that, it had a highly robust and efficient bureaucracy that ensured eachmission was extensively vetted and thoroughly tagged and ssified to ensure that each Martial Artist could find exactly the kind of openmission that was perfect for their abilities and gave them the most meaningful experience and growth.


    It was indeed important.


    "I don''t like being shackled by it, though," Rui made his stance clear. "And, as pointed out, the Martial Union is indebted to me. In consideration of the sensitive situation we are in, the most crucial parts of the war, I will not refuse, but otherwise, I do not wish to be bothered by anything else in the future."


    There was nothing that any of them could say to that. Rui had already contributed too much and had too much power and influence within the Kandrian Empire. He essentially had the voice of a Martial Sage as a Master.


    "That is something that we are amenable to." Sage Roschem nodded. "What is the number ofmissions you are willing to undertake, precisely? And what, if any, preferences do you have for the clients who seek your services?"


    Those were a little harder to answer, leaving Rui deep in thought.


    "¡­I have made up my mind on exactly what role I''ll be undertaking in this second phase of the war, having just spoken to my father about it," Rui began. "I cannot say how manymissions I''ll ept immediately, but as for my preferences, I suppose that would most certainly be clients who are able and willing to help us with the war. I don''t care for anything else because Kandria is already powerful and bountiful enough to get me anything I please. But oveing this war is difficult and our single greatest priority. I don''t care what form it takes, but anybody who can help us win the war without uneptable caveats is the criteria I''ll set."


    It was precisely because the Kandrian Empire of the future would be able to give him pretty much anything he needed or desired that he was especially determined to do everything in his power to ensure that that future could be attained.


    "One more thing." A Master drew his attention. "We have identified Master assassins who have tried entering the Kandrian Empire for obvious reasons. I would strongly rmend that you travel with a protective detail of Masters to ensure that no har¡ª"


    "No need." A smile cracked at the edge of Rui''s mouth. "I look forward to their attempts."


    His words evoked a frown from those at the table. "That is dangerous and risky."


    "I can handle it," Rui reassured them. "I look forward to it. I would love to gain some experience with Masters by fighting assassins."


    "You are undoubtedly a powerful Master, but assassins are able to ovee differences in grade by virtue of their preparations and the element of surprise. All it takes is a single moment of being caught off-guard, and you could lose your life."


    Rui knew that their arguments were valid and sound, but he did not heed them nheless. He possessed a measure of confidence in his survival and looked forward to testing himself against those who sought to kill him.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2268 Propensity For Risk

    Chapter 2268 Propensity For Risk


    The Masters and Sages who gazed at him heaved a sigh and left him be. As a Martial Artist of the Upper Realms, he wasn''t to be coddled anymore. Thus, while they were concerned for him, they knew that he knew the consequences of all his choices, and that was enough.


    He was hardly the first Martial Artist to take risks of this kind, and he had a penchant for making extreme decisions like this every once in a while.


    What they had to admit was the fact that it seemed to pay off, considering his rate of growth and progress. If this was what it took, then perhaps he was an argument for the Martial Union to propagate a more risk-oriented Martial philosophy.


    Of course, it was hardly the main cause for his rate of growth. "At the very least, I would advise you to be open to gathering intel on your assassins," one Master suggested. "Of course, we will dly deploy our intelligence department to gather all relevant details about the assassins that have moved, ording to our intelligence, to kill you and im the bounty on your head."


    Rui stirred at his rmendation.


    It wasn''t a bad idea to be informed about the kind of assassins and bounty hunters that would be trying to kill him, especially when they would undoubtedly gather as much intel on him if they werepetent.


    While it would have been more challenging if he had faced them without any knowledge, it was only fair that he knew who they were. Furthermore, at the Master Realm, Martial Artists had already cultivated some kind of name for themselves. Thus, it was actually quite often that random battles urred between those who had some measure of knowledge of them.


    "That''s fine." Rui nodded. "I''m curious to know what kind of people have looked at my profile and mustered up the courage to kill me despite knowing who I am."


    He was a Royal Prince and the tinum boy of the Martial Union, after all. The consequences of killing him or even trying to were dire for any individual.


    Death would be a mercypared to the fate that awaited those who dared to try assassinating him.


    Not only were the consequences high, but the probability of them being incurred was high, as the Kandrian Empire''s and the Martial Union''s investigative ability as it stood now was immense.


    To get away with his assassination was extremely difficult as there were many resources that would be dedicated to finding the culprit and bringing them back alive.


    Perhaps, in the Master Realm, the only one he wouldn''t put it past was Master Reina, but even for her, sessfully killing him and getting away with it was probably harder than any other assassination she had undertaken.


    In other words, he didn''t think that it was possible for his assassination to be a perfect sess, especially if he had intel ahead of time and was prepared for it, which he certainly was.


    They couldn''t afford any long-term fight with him because it would be detected, and they would get caught.


    This was the same reason that Prince Ranea, Randal, Rafia, and Raemina had decided against contracting a Master-level assassin, among other reasons. The assassin would be caught, and they would be interrogated, which would undoubtedly reveal that the four royals hired them.


    In other words, if someone tried to kill him, it needed to end almost instantaneously and without any fuss. Else, they were screwed and doomed. Because he had received a theoretical foundation in assassination theory from Master Reina, he could even predict their thought process, and that was something that worked in his favor.


    In this particr circumstance, he could be certain that they would attempt an indirect assassination. If they could poison him, they could get away with killing him without any of the energy signatures of Masters getting broadcasted and drawing too much attention as a result.


    They didn''t even need to be there when he died.


    That would be the most risk-free and ideal way of killing him. Unfortunately, now that Rui knew that, he was not going to fall for it so easily.


    For one, this was one of the easier ways to kill Martial Masters in general, for their Martial Minds did not give them poison resistance. Thus, it made no difference in this Realm.


    In that case, perhaps he would face a poison-oriented Master.


    The possibilities were quite interesting.


    "Please avoid such stunts when we have an ongoing war, young man." Sage Roschem heaved a tired sigh. "Much is riding on you. You y an important role in many ways and it isn''t something that can be reced easily. In fact, even after the war, if you die, the entire nation will be disrupted because you''re the only one who can employ your breakthrough triggering ability."


    Rui stirred at the earnest request from the Martial Sage.


    It was true that the Kandrian Empire had be overdependent on him in several regards. It was annoying when he was guilt-tripped like this with that fact because he did care for the nation itself and wasn''t pleased when it suffered harm. But to what extent?


    Was he supposed to forsake his way of life and give up on his personal ambition? Content is ? by N?velDrama.Org.


    It was an unreasonable demand that would never be made of any other Martial Artist. However, because his well-being and status had deep impacts on the Kandrian Empire¡­


    "¡­In that case, perhaps I should strive to ensure that my state does not affect the Kandrian Empire negatively," he voiced his thoughts aloud.


    The others in the room frowned at his words. It was hard to imagine how such a thing was possible.


    If for no other reason than the fact that he was the only one who could artificially trigger breakthroughs.


    "There are things that only you can do." One of the Masters heaved a sigh. "Until then, naturally, the Kandrian Empire will have a much greater stake in your condition and location."


    "¡­In that case, perhaps I should consider passing on my ability to breakthrough after this war is done," Rui nonchntly remarked.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2269: Disrupted Supply Chains

    Chapter 2269: Disrupted Supply Chains


    ?


    Both the Martial Union and his father would be more than pleased at that oue, he was sure. On top of that, he would be unshackled and would be allowed to live life as he pleased without a nation constantly hankering over his condition.


    Unfortunately, Rui''s Martial Mind was extremely difficult to pass on to others. After all, his systems of thought were the most mind intensive systems of thought that anyone had ever seen. It was effectively impossible for him to pass on his breakthrough ability to other Martial Artists.


    "... Perhaps I should try creating a training methodology that utilizes the VOID algorithm and turns it into something that doesn''t need the active control of a Martial Artist." He fell into thought before the others.


    The issue was that something like this took too much time.


    He didn''t have the time or the patience to spend on realizing this project.


    "Oh well, Kandria will have to suck it up." He just shrugged. "I have already done enough and more for the nation. It will be fine with one less treasure. I''m sure that once the war is over, it will still be the strongest and continue growing much faster than all other powerhouses even without me."


    The Masters and Sages couldn''t deny that, nor could they pressure him into reconsidering.


    It was best to put the matter away for now.


    "...With that out of the way, there are still other matters that need to be discussed," Sage Roschem remarked with a calm expression. "The Martial Union has gained a surge of Martial Artists in recent times. Many Squires and Seniors in particr have immigrated to the Kandrian Empire in particr. The reason, of course, is the various treasures that are highly conducive to the growth of Martial Artists."


    Rui wasn''t surprised at this.


    There were plenty of Martial Artists from underdeveloped regions and nations in the world who left their homes to head out to Master-level or potentially even Sage-level nations due to better resources and an opportunity to grow far stronger than they would otherwise be able to.


    One of the reasons that Sage-level powerhouse nations were so superior to other nations was because this phenomenon effectively functioned like the Martial equivalent of brain drain. The Sage-level powerhouses had been receiving a steady influx of the best talent and the most number of Martial Artists, allowing this advantage to snowball into a huge gap between the powerhouses and other nations.


    And now, Kandria was en route to reaching an even higher tier of military and Martial power.


    Thus, naturally, one would expect many hopeful younger Martial Artists to head towards Kandria with the intention of riding this potential opportunity for glory when it was in the early days.


    "The issue, however, is that it''s starting to exceed our capacity to amodate," one Master remarked. "As the Martial Union of Kandria, we have a reputation of being amongst the best ces for a Martial Artist to grow and develop. It is why we attract and retain so many Martial Artists in our organization. However, ording to our analysts, very soon, the influx will overwhelm our infrastructural constraints."


    An assistant distributed a set of reports that showed a spike in the number of Martial Artists applying for immigration and looking to apply for partnership and membership in the Martial Union, versus the avability of resources.


    "In other words, the current Martial Union establishment is unequipped to take in all these Martial Artists..." Rui raised an eyebrow. "Then, why not just build more infrastructure to support all these iing Martial Artists?"


    "...It takes a lot of resources to expand the Martial Union''s infrastructure, not to mention time. The current capacity of the Martial Union was built over centuries, you know?" one Master huffed. "ording to our analysts, we do not have the resources to expand so aggressively."


    "What about the influx of material resources from the Beast Domain?" Another Martial Master raised an eyebrow.


    "...I''m guessing that while it''s useful, it doesn''t solve the problem," Rui remarked. "The resources extracted from the Martial Union are high-grade, they tend to be Master-level, Sage-level, and Transcendent resources. In other words, they''re extremely high in quality, but not so much in sheer quantity. What we need is arge amount of lower-grade substances. It isn''t as though those Martial Artists can lug home an entire mine on their shoulders." "That is what our analysts have realized as well." A Martial Sage nodded. "In other words, we may be overburdened with Martial Artists in theing months and years."Content is ? by N?velDrama.Org.


    Rui fell into thought. "...Then why not just trade with nations and corporations that do have the resources that you''re looking for?"


    "Our logistics department has indeed tried, but to little avail. Under ordinary circumstances, it would have been no problem but..."


    "...The war," Rui realized. "It''s made many mining and supply chains terrified of supporting us in fear of being decimated by the East Panamic Treaty Alliance."


    While the Kandrian Empire had certainly proven to be quite powerful and formidable with its thorough beat-back and partial decimation of the Sekigahara Confederate''s attack, many suppliers simply did not want to risk it. Unlike nations, they could not afford to even take a risk because three powerhouses represent more business than the Kandrian Empire did by itself.


    Yes, perhaps the Kandrian Empire could win, but until they actually won, many corporations simply avoided the risks and dangers associated with the Kandrian Empire at this point in time.


    No one could necessarily fault them either. Being sensitive to risk and danger was something that was required for a business to thrive. Such a thing was more the norm than umon, so the business sector was confident that it wouldn''t suffer bacsh for this decision.


    "...Which means that we''re stuck for a shortage until we can find a willing supplier?" Rui narrowed his eyes. "Or win the war. I suppose we can try to offer highly lucrative deals to them, but..."


    The broader issue was that it signified that the risk factor and the consequences of siding against the Kandrian Empire was greater than siding with the Kandrian Empire.


    "...I suppose I''ll need to change that."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2270 Troubleshooting Problems

    Chapter 2270 Troubleshooting Problems


    "¡­And just how do you intend to do that?" Sage Roschem raised an eyebrow.


    "By winning the war for allies, and the entire war, of course," Rui replied. "As long as the Kandrian Empire gains a lot of allies, it will be increasingly impossible to not cater to us. Once the Kandrian Alliance growsrge enough, we will give them no choice but to cater to us. However, that is a long-term solution. There is a more short-term solution."


    "Oh¡­?" The Masters at the table were curious about what he had to say. "It''s simple, we make the cause of the problem serve as the solution," Rui calmly remarked. "We are receiving a huge influx of Squires and Seniors, yes? On top of that, we have a ton of more Apprentices, though I''m sure my father has taken measures himself. What we can do is offer suppliers either a highly discounted or free service of protection, security and other Martialbor in exchange for epting our supplymissions. Like I said, have the problem work to serve as the solution."


    They stirred at his words, startled. "Free is a bit¡­"


    "Money is the least important asset in war." Rui snorted. "Resources matter far more. Just take debt, sell bonds, or use a share of our earnings. Whatever. What matters more is that we broker a deal with suppliers by making them an offer that they cannot refuse. Martialbor for free is something that they will be forced to ept, for if they refuse, theirpetitors will ept the deal, reducing the cost of production and oupeting them in the market with lower prices. We won''t have to worry about the increase in the number of operations that Martial Artists will have to do because that number is equalized by the increasing number of Martial Artists. This is a much more immediate albeit imperfect solution."


    A silence upied the table as they realized the merits of Rui''s genius, yet simple and brutally pragmatic solution to the supply problem that gued the Martial Union. While Rui refused to undertake the role of a politician, it didn''t mean that he had lost his ability to be extremely good at it.


    "¡­That idea does make sense. No, there isn''t any other solution that allows us to deal with the problem this elegantly," they murmured.


    "Your idea sounds quitepelling, but we will have to run it by our analytics department. After all, this is well outside of our field of expertise. We only make the final decision based on the findings and reports of people who are experts," Sage Roschem rified. "I, for one, am in favor of this solution. It seems like it ensures that we will be able to handle the influx of Martial Artists and obtain the resources we require for them in a practical manner."


    His voice was filled with concern and relief.


    Rui wasn''t surprised that he cared so much given that he was voluntarily in charge of educating and guiding the young generations of Martial Artists within the Martial Union.


    Looking at him reminded Rui of Fiona. They certainly bore a resemnce to each other. It had been a while since he had seen his friend, or any of his friends aside from Kane and Nel.


    He had been swamped with matters that were far beyond anything they could ever imagine. Unless they grew strong enough, he would only ever see them at infrequent get-togethers.


    "Master Rui?"


    His attention was abruptly drawn by another Master at the table. "Sorry?"


    "We were wondering if you had anything to offer regarding the issue of the Panamic Martial Federation being weaponized by the other Sage-level powerhouses to pass legition that specifically targets the Martial Union and the Kandrian Empire?"


    Rui heaved a sigh as he fell into thought. "This is a problem. However, I do not think that it can be too weaponized. The Panamic Martial Federation functions as a constitutional democracy. In other words, there are inalienable rights that are reserved for its constituents, though, I suppose that I am exempt from them. What works in our favor is the fact that the East Panamic Treaty Alliance cannot do this alone¡ªthey need support from the rest of the Martial World to weaponize the Panamic Martial Federation against the Martial Union and the Kandrian Empire."


    It would take too much time and effort to go across the entire Panama Continent and hold long-term negotiations to get everybody to agree to passing legition that was specifically designed to cripple and whittle down the Kandrian Empire.


    "Furthermore, it isn''t as though we will sit still. As I mentioned earlier, I am willing to conduct a small amount of breakthroughs for the most powerful of forces. This will better our rtionship significantly and make it extremely difficult to get everybody to pile on us through the Panamic Martial Federation," Rui continued. "On top of that, even if they do somehow seed by pursuing it at all costs, it will easily take more than a decade, maybe even two. By the time they actually get around to passing somew that harms Kandria specifically, we will have already grown astronomically more powerful. So much so that even the Panamic Martial Federation will find it impossible to actually enforce itsws against the Martial Union and the Kandrian Empire."


    The others stirred at his words, once again growingpelled by his reasoning. Indeed, what he said made a lot of sense.


    "Hm, we shall certainly note that down. Now, I was hoping to get your thoughts and solution on this next issue¡­"


    Rui heaved a sigh of resignation.


    The reason that they called him here was not just about the breakthrough leak, but also to get him to use his mind to solve all the problems guing them upon the dawn of the war. They essentially treated him as a problem troubleshooting software.


    Still, he remained. It was indeed true that there were a lot of problems born from the war and it was also true that it was in his interests to solve them.


    -This is the property of N?-velDrama.Org.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2271 Pending Engagements

    Chapter 2271 Pending Engagements


    The meeting with the Martial Unionsted long as Rui addressed the many problems that had emerged as a result of the war. The sheer amount of economic, political, and logistical problems that had emerged as a result of the third Great East Panamic War was a lot. After all, as amercial Martial broker, the Martial Union was sensitive to market shocks that had happened as a result of supply and demand disruptions in the economy.


    Nheless, Rui provided them with the best solutions then and there with his sheer political acumen. He was not nearly as much of a whizz as his father was, of course. But, given that his father was extremely busy as the Emperor of the Kandrian Empire, he didn''t have time to look after the Martial Union at this time.


    On top of that, the Martial Union was too proud to ask him for help.


    Thus, Rui had no qualms about offering fixes to the various problems brought up.


    After a certain point, the others simply stoppedmenting and simply waited for him to give them the answer.


    After all, they were Martial Artists.


    The only reason they had any understanding of the problem was because they had been thoroughly briefed on the problems and potential solutions at hand by the analytics department of the Martial Union.


    "¡­And with that, we''ve arrived at the end of all agendas on the docket of this meeting. We shall reconvene for another unmoderated caucus at another time." The shing Flier nodded at everyone.


    "Alright. See you guys next time." Rui was the first to get up and leave.


    He had too many things he had to do.


    The only reason he had gone first to his father and the Martial Union was that these meetings took precedence in significance to the war, which was the most important matter to all Kandrian Martial Artists of the Upper Realms.


    The most immediate thing he did next was shoot towards the direction of the Quarrier Orphanage as fast as he could.


    Of course, tempted as he was to travel at top speed, he didn''t want to use his Martial Heart or his Martial Mind in case he was ambushed when his stamina was depleted. Although he didn''t really think that any assassin would attempt such a crude attempt, it was still better to same than to be sorry.


    As he sky-walked through the vast expanses of the Kandrian Empire, he felt a strange sense of nostalgia. It was as though he hadn''t traveled through the Kandrian Empire in recent times or something like that.


    Which was strange because he hadn''t really gone anywhere after returning to the empire from the Beast Domain.


    "Maybe I should spend truly spend time in the nation itself." He pondered aloud.


    Usually, when he wasn''t in the Quarrier Orphanage, he would be training at Daracol in North Kandria or, more recently, in the manifold. It had been a while since he traveled to his home nation itself.


    "Maybe I should take the opportunity to do just that when I visit my friends."


    It had been a long time since he met with his friends, barring Kane and Nel. He definitely wished to check up on them. Although their vastly differing positions in life had pulled them apart, he still thought fondly of them.


    "I also need to check up on my friends among the Martial Masters."


    He hadn''t gotten too much of a chance to get a stock of which Masters died because he had eagerly chased after Kane to see how he held up.


    After he woke up, he had had two back-to-back meetings at once.


    "But first, I need to check up on how my family is doing."


    WHOOSH!


    He shot through the air at a remarkable speed until he eventually reached the Quarrier Vige.


    Thankfully, upon arrival, the mind sense of his Martial Mind told him that emotional energy was overall positive.


    In other words, the war and the evacuation had not caused them too much anguish.


    His arrival, however, had not gone unnoticed.


    "¡­Look, it''s big brother Rui!"


    "He''se back!"


    "Teach me how to walk in the sky too!"


    The children of the little vige grew excited at his return, swarming him. He had be a bit of a legend at the Quarrier Orphanage, inspiring many to follow in his steps to aspire to be a Martial Artist.


    Most did not seed, of course.


    The Martial Union filtered out an overwhelming majority of aspirants simply with their rather difficult entrance exam. In hindsight, it was merely a filter to ensure that those without the mental, physical, and Martial aptitude. Too many peoplecked one more of the three, which made investing in their potential to be a Martial Artist not worth it. The Martial Academies were too resource-intensive to justify giving ess to them to anything other than the top one percent who were most likely to actually break through.


    Of course, there were those among the Quarrier Orphanage who had indeed managed to break through and be Martial Artists. They were among the most eager to see Rui.


    "Big brother Rui, teach me a technique!"


    "If we all gang up on you, can we beat you?"


    "What''s the secret of the breakthrough to the Squire Realm?!"


    "Alright, alright," he smiled wryly as he tried extricating himself from the crowd of children who''d surrounded him. "All in good time."


    Perhaps it didn''t hurt to indulge the kids in a sparring match every now and then.


    "Big brother Rui, you''re returned."


    Max and Mana drew his attention. N?velDrama.Org (C) content.


    The two of them had grown quite considerably as Martial Squires, having be high-grade Squires and reached a grade that was quite close to the peak of the Squire Realm. Perhaps anytime these days, he would be tasked with breaking them through to the Senior Realm.


    Doing so would keep the Quarrier Orphanage a lot safer with the protection that they would be undoubtedly offering.


    Regardless, he put the matter away as he returned home after what felt like a long time.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2272: Perspective

    Chapter 2272: Perspective


    ?


    Content is ? by N?velDrama.Org.


    "Did you experience any difficulty or troubles during the evacuation?" Rui found himself sitting before Alice, Julian and others of his generation in the Quarrier Orphanage.


    Although he sought to treat everybody the same, he naturally was more attached to those members of the orphanage he had grown up with. The Quarrier Orphanage had grown so much in the past decade that he didn''t know most of the new kids and the young adolescents personally.


    Regardless, he treated them with love and affection.


    It was his way of respecting his mother, who had done the same for him.


    She was no longer here. Thus, he felt a sense of duty in ensuring that he did for others what she had done for him.


    "No, we did not experience too many difficulties," Alice exined, drawing his attention. "The evacuation into the bunkers was executed quite smoothly, and we were safe and without any worries."


    Rui heaved a soft sigh of relief. "Sounds like it was nned well enough."


    He wasn''t surprised, considering that it was his father who headed the project as a failsafe in case the war was lost and the enemies went too crazy in Kandrian territory.


    "I heard we achieved an overwhelming victory." Julian smiled knowingly. "And that you yed an outsized role in achieving this result."


    The others looked at Rui in surprise, not having had ess to the same intelligence sources that Julian did.


    "Hahaha, as expected of our Rui, they never stood a chance."


    "To think that you bring the Kandrian Empire war against another powerful nation..."


    "...Have you recovered from your wounds, Rui?" Alice asked with concern. "Julian told us that you were under excellent care, but it must have been something serious for you to be in medical care for nearly a month."


    Rui smiled. "Just time-consuming, not serious. I''m doing just fine, I promise."


    He was probably underselling his condition had been, but it was more or less urate.


    "...Hm, if we won, does that mean the war is over then?" Farion wondered with a strange expression.


    Rui shook his head with a soft sigh. "We won a battle. We didn''t win the war. The war is still ongoing. But rest assured, we are in capable hands."


    The more Rui learned of Emperor Rael''s grand n, the more he realized that he had underestimated his father''s genius.


    In the first ce, the hurdles that they had to ovee were so great that if Rui had been emperor, he wouldn''t have had the confidence that he would have been able to ovee them. It was difficult to parse a scenario where three nations were defeated by a single nation when all three were of roughly equal power.


    Yet, as more of the grand n of the Emperor of Harmony unfurled, n after n and strategy after strategy collectively painted the vision of the future where the Kandrian Empire could not only emerge victorious but also do so without being reduced to the brink of death in a horrific pyrrhic victory.


    By exploiting the deep sense of self-preservation of the gerontocracy that upied the Republic of Gorteau, he could manipte them with longevity potions and cripple the nation with its own separation of powers and decentralization. By correctly deducing the Esoterist''s hidden ambitions and agendas, he harnessed the Esocline Federation as a powerful ally to keep the Sekigahara Confederate in check.


    At the very least, Rui didn''t think he was capable of conceiving such an extraordinary tapestry of victory woven together by a myriad of threads of political, economic, and military strategy. It wasn''t just a matter of raw cognition; Rael was gifted in many other areas that were important for leadership. In addition, three centuries of experience allowed him to reach a realm of political acumen that Rui could only wonder if anybody could actually rival.


    It gave him a much greater sense of confidence that they could win this war without grave sacrifices.


    "Why are we even in a war in the first ce?" Farion grumbled. "Those Sekigaharans bastards just attacked us out of nowhere. We didn''t even do anything to them!"


    The others snorted in agreement, remarking about the bastards that the Sekigahara Confederate was.


    "Those assholes don''t even need any reason; they just attack without just cause!"


    "Still, we beat them ck and blue. The Royal announcements said that we killed almost all the Masters. That must mean that our Martial Artists are ten times stronger than theirs." "Tsk tsk, imagine being so weak and still attacking us. Little assholes need to know their ce."


    Rui listened on with amusement as the armchair politicians that the men began offering their expert insights into the war. It also gave him perspective on how little awareness the average person had of politics.


    The attack did not juste out of nowhere as it seemed to them; it was a result of them learning of the extent of the Kandrian Empire''s treasures that served as the trigger into sparking a conflict that had been brewing in the Kandrian Empire for seven years ever since the Ss n, the first treasure, joined the Kandrian Empire.


    The Ss n''s prophecy was so precious that the entire world had hunted them for their power. So much so that even after gaining a Sage in the form of Matriarch Nephi, they still weren''t strong enough to protect themselves.


    Them joining Kandria and settling there had sent a shock across East Panama, marking the beginning of the beginning.


    In other words, this had beening for a long time.


    However, unless one had this geopolitical context, one would only conclude that the attack came out of nowhere.


    "Not only did ite from nowhere, it isn''t just those savages from the Sekigahara Confederate. Didn''t Gorteau dere war on us as well? Why us? What did we do?"


    Rui suddenly found his tea to be quite interesting as he averted any eye contact.


    Of course, Julian saw right through him, giving him a knowing smile.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2273 Unshackled Doctor

    Chapter 2273 Unshackled Doctor


    Content is ? by N?velDrama.Org.


    Not only had he been working under the Divine Doctor, who was a national treasure by himself, but he also had worked on the alien lifeform, which was responsible for the manifold, another treasure of immeasurable value.


    "Why didn''t you tell them the truth?" Julian asked him after all the others returned to their busy day working at the orphanages.


    "¡­What''s the point?" Rui heaved a sigh. "It''s not like they can do anything about the fact that three Sage-level powerhouses have joined hands to destroy the Kandrian Empire with extreme determination. It will just cause them stress."


    "I suppose that''s true."


    He didn''t want them to suffer anxiety over something entirely outside of their control. It was within his control; thus, all they needed to do was trust him to ensure that no harm would befall them.


    "The Minister of Research and Development has recently implemented a directive from the Emperor of Harmony to focus on higher-end esoteric research and development for a variety of rare and scarce esoteric resources," Julian informed him. "Normally, we would never focus on the application of resources that we have little of and can obtain even less of, but recently, that has changed."


    Rui knew what he was referring to.


    "The Beast Domain harvesting."


    With an abrupt spike in these high-end resources, there was a sudden need to get better at harnessing these powerful esoteric resources. In other words, the Kandrian Empire needed to shift the gears when it came to its research and development philosophy.


    "The Kandrian Empire has signed several joint R&D endeavors with Esocline Federation," Julian further informed him. "There is no other organization in human civilization that is more qualified with esoteric technology than the Esocline Federation. Thus, I look forward to coborating with them once I''m done with the project with the alien lifeform."


    Rui raised an eyebrow at the news.


    There were plenty of minutiae of his father''s political strategies that Rui was unaware of as a result of having voluntarily divested himself from the politics of the Kandrian Empire.


    However, it made sense for him to coborate more extensively with the Esocline Federation when he thought about it. If they already were military allies, then coborating on R&D was hardly unwarranted.


    "That''s good," Rui nodded. "If we can improve our long-range siege weapons, then they can serve as a much stronger protector of the Kandrian Empire when the second assault unto Kandriaes."


    Apocalypse-ss siege weapons were too inflexible to be taken away from their home nations and deployed elsewhere with ease.


    These were highly delicate and demanding weapons that required immense care and attention almost around the clock due to the dangerous Sage-level esoteric substances they contained.


    Deploying for international operations was possible, of course, but highly difficult and tedious.


    For one, they required a lot of infrastructural support for their operation. One of the reasons that the Kandrian Empire border fort wall was asrge as it was was to allow these powerful Sage-level weapons to be mounted upon the Kandrian border while having the infrastructural support to maintain their operation, such as its cooling systems and the manual oversight interface.


    Thus, when the East Panamic Treaty Alliance finally decided to wage a second assault on the Kandrian Empire, they probably could not leverage their siege weapons in the attack. Thus, if the Kandrian Empire''s esoteric siege technology grew enough before that time came, it could give them a crucial advantage.


    "Also¡­" Rui perked up at some of his brother''s words. "Did you say when you''re done with the alien lifeform research project?"


    "Well, yes. We have long achieved control over the manifold, so any research going into it at the moment is purely academic and scientific in nature," Julian threw a curious nce at him. "Really, I suspect that even the Divine Doctor will eventually get bored with it.Yes, it is alien, but ultimately, it''s one of the little lifeforms that we have limited ability to research upon in fear of damaging the specimen."


    Rui''s eyes narrowed at his brother''s words.


    The Divine Doctor getting bored of the specimen was not a good sign for them. One of the things that anchored him to the Kandrian Empire was his deep curiosity about the specimen. Ordinarily, research into an alien lifeform could keep any normal team of scientists invested for decades. There was so much unknown and so much more to learn about that one could spend their entire lives just barely making a dent into tapping into everything there was to be learned about.


    Not the Divine Doctor.


    He was toopetent for his own good.


    His genius intellect, vast insights, and experience with life itself allowed him to make far quicker progress in uncovering the secrets of the alien specimen.


    Rui recalled that very early in his research into alien life, he had already modeled the anatomical structure of the creature and the microstructures underpinning its body. Not even Rui had realized that the alien lifeform was notprised of countless cells, but rather, it wasprised of countlessyers with a metabolic system that relied on osmosis of substances through pressure differentials that served as its circtory system.


    An enormous breakthrough that Divine Doctor had made very shortly after he began his research voyage.


    Not even the alien lifeform could keep his interest forever.


    Perhaps that was why he was so obsessed with healing the allegedly alive and ill Gaia. If thetter was true, then this case was one of the few cases that even someone of his caliber could not possibly be certain of solving.


    "More importantly, if the Divine Doctor grows bored of it. Then, the only anchors keeping him where he was were the prophecy he was owed for healing the Emperor of Harmony. Or¡­ me."


    It did not bode well that they did not have a firm grip over him, considering how important he was to the Kandrian Empire.


    "I''ll need to speak to my father about this."


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2274 Sustained Lifespan

    Chapter 2274 Sustained Lifespan


    The two discussed many topics across several different domains. Rui would be lying if he said that one of the reasons that he enjoyed spending time in the Quarrier Orphanage was thanks to Julian. N?velDrama.Org owns all ? content.


    While there were others that he cherished as his family, he didn''t have too many things that he could talk to them about because theycked the context to partake in the conversations that Rui would find interesting.


    The same could not be said for Julian.


    Not only did he possess a great knowledge of arge variety of topics, but he was exceptionally sharp and had always been a very bright child. Rui found that their conversations ousted his ability to spend time with them.


    "Ah, so His Majesty managed to cripple the Republic of Gorteau by bribing their congressmen and congresswomen with longevity potions. I suppose that makes sense. Why else would an entire half of a party be so averse to a clearly dire situation?" Julian mused, curious about the various things Rui had told about the war. "Speaking of longevity potions, I believe that I will be able to get my hands on one soon enough."


    Rui''s eyes lit up with ecstasy. "Nice! I knew you could do it."


    Rui knew that he would be outliving his family by no small margin.


    He had always known that, but he had especiallye to experience it when his mother died a natural death during his escapades into the Beast Domain. Since then, the sordid thought lurked in the back of his mind.


    He became extra-sensitive when he sensed the passage of time on the visages of his family members.


    It was only a matter of time.


    He was d that at least one of his family would be remaining for much longer, especially one of his favorite family members.


    "I have received recognition for my contributions to the research and development of the alien lifeform and the development of a stable control over the manifold through the alien lifeform." He smiled with a hint of pride. "It is only thanks that the Kandrian Empire managed to get its hands on one of the treasures that has caused the war that we have been hit with after all."


    Rui nodded. "Your contributions are certainly immense just on the basis of that alone. On top of that, you''ve headed multiple teams and projects as well, haven''t you? It would be foolish for them not to reward you for those services and contributions."


    While Rui certainly brought home the alien lifeform, mastering its manifold ability was certainly necessary for it to be of practical value. In that regard, the Divine Doctor and his own brother working under him were undoubtedly responsible for giving the Kandrian Empire that ability.


    Rui was d that his father clearly seemed to be pursuing a meritocratic approach to the allocation of longevity potions. He seemed to be intent on handing potions to those who had contributed to the Kandrian Empire the most and were able to contribute the most.


    In that regard, he was sure that the Gatekeeper had also received a new influx of longevity potions for his prior contributions in the form of physical evolution techniques and training methodologies.


    "That''s good. Not only does it reward those who have earned them, but it also ensures that they''ll be able to aid the Kandrian Empire rise beyond its limits in these trying times," Rui noted. "I do look forward to chatting with you for another century."


    Julian nodded with a smile silently.


    In truth, he wouldn''t have been so eager to prolong his life if he didn''t have Rui to spend it with. It was only because he was assured that he would have at least one of his old family members in the long run that he didn''t think too badly of the option. Especially when it was Rui, of all people, someone he enjoyed spending time with.


    Unlike Rui, who had spent many years away from the orphanage in his pursuit of his Martial Path, Julian had spent his entire life at the Quarrier Orphanage. He was much more viscerally aware of the fact that prolonging his life meant outliving all the people he loved and cared about.


    It was much harder for him to ept and represented a much greater shock in his day-to-day life. Although he would loved to pursue the sciences, he did not want to do so in a world where he didn''t have anybody to share his aplishments and advancements with.


    That was where Rui came in.


    Julian was d that Rui was most certainly going to be around for a very long time, having not only been a Master but also having consumed longevity potions quite early on in his life.


    "I''m rather surprised you are able to consume longevity potions or be a Martial Artist, knowing that you''ll outlive everyone you love," Julian confessed. "I don''t know if I could handle that alone."


    Rui stirred at his words, heaving a sigh. "¡­There are things that I must aplish, and it''s extremely difficult to do so in a single lifespan."


    Julian directed a knowing look at Rui.


    He had long known about Rui''s ambition when it came to his Martial Path.


    Project Water, he called it.


    For as long as Julian could even remember, Rui had harbored this ambition. He had harbored the ambition even in the earliest stages of his Martial Artist career.


    Julian could not help but wonder what that was all about. It was just as strange as how Rui had disyed a kind of desperation to be a Martial Artist from the very second he had seen one at an extremely young age.


    These oddities, by themselves, did not necessarily mean anything. But when one zoomed out and looked at it collectively, it made him wonder how someone with Rui even came to be the way he was.


    Regardless, Julian looked forward to another century of stimting conversation with his brother.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2275: Visit to the Past

    Chapter 2275: Visit to the Past


    ?


    It wasn''t long before Rui took off from the Quarrier Orphanage, heading away. As much time as he would like to spend with his family, he had other people he needed to speak with.


    WHOOSH


    He shot through the sky, running at incredible speeds through the skies of Kandria. One thing that he needed to do immediately was check up on his Master friends and make sure that they were okay.


    He felt guilty that it had been a month since the battle with the Sekigahara Confederate, and he still didn''t know if all of them had made it through. Of course, he was implicitly certain since he would have received some message on the matter.


    He didn''t me them for not showing up for him when he woke up in the medical ward of Kandrian medical ward out of some expectation that they should have shown up. He was not a prince who needed to be coddled.


    He was a prince, of course.


    Just one that needed to be coddled when Masters had many important matters to tend to.


    Ever since the war officially broke out. Masters had ceased international activity and spent more time in the Kandrian Empire.


    Outside of the highly lucrative Beast Domain missions, it was not worth it to leave the Kandrian Empire behind in the middle of a war in what was shaping up to be the greatest war in the history of the Age of Martial Art. Manning the borders, reinforcing strong alliances, intelligence operations, and strategic deterrence. There was no end to the kinds of operations that the Masters could undertake to aid the Kandrian Empire''s strategic outlook.


    Rui had no doubt that all of them were busy undertaking such duties and roles in the war against the East Panamic Treaty Alliance.


    One thing that did reduce the burden that Masters would experience in the war was the death of a hundred and nine Sekigaharan Masters. Their deaths reduced the enemy-to-friendly Master ratio significantly.


    Although they still had more Masters in total, even after all of Rael''s strategies to cripple their power, it was nowhere enough to decisively overwhelm them with a horrifically pyrrhic victory where there were no winners and only losers.


    "It makes the war for allies that much more important, too." Rui realized. "Looks like I cannot dy my decision for too long."


    STEP


    He eventually arrived at the Town of Hrava, where the Longranger Sect was based. An enormous Martial Pavilion stretched out, amodating many target ranges and a variety of other training resources for long-range offensive techniques. Within its walls, Rui could sense arge number of Martial Artists and aspiring Martial Artists training vigorously, no doubt in higher intensity due to the jolting inception of the war.


    "Your Highness."


    The Senior-level guards outside of the pavilion bowed to the Master and prince.


    "I''m here to see Ceeran, may I?"


    "Of course, Your Highness, we have received special instructions from his Mastery to allow you in as though you were our own."


    Rui smiled as they opened the massive gates to let him in; it wasn''t long before Master Ceeran arrived, having learned of Rui''s visit.


    "Rui! You''re back!" His ecstatic grin was infectious. "We were really afraid after the first ten days, but I''m d you woke up. I heard that there were noplications regarding your recovery."


    "Yeah, thankfully, it wasn''t anything severe or critical; my brain just needed some extra rest to recover from the extra strain," Rui reassured him.


    Those words understated the issue by a bit, earning a frown. "I won''t me you since I understand why you did it, and the end oue was better than anything we could have ever hoped for. Still, be careful. Don''t ever do it again."


    Rui nodded. "I don''t intend to put myself in that position ever again. If not for Kane, I would have never done that."


    Master Ceeran nodded. "Good. I''m d you took the time toe here and visit me. I would havee to you myself, but..."N?velDrama.Org owns all ? content.


    He heaved a sigh.


    "Are you in the middle of training?" Rui raised an eyebrow.


    Master Ceeran nodded. "My power is far too insufficient. For the past year inside the manifold, I''ve been developing a new technique that will allow me to hold off against other Masters and even win. I cannot let myself be so vulnerable ever again."


    The battle with the Sekigaharan Confederate had been a bit of a wake-up call for the Masters of Kandria.


    For the first time in what was probably decades, they felt what it was like to be vulnerable in a perilous situation where they could be felled at any moment and be entirely powerless to stop


    it.


    If there was one thing that the Sekigaharan Masters were far superior to the Kandrian Masters at, it would be war preparedness. They were fully ustomed to the perils of war that could reduce even mighty Masters to background victims.


    While the fact that they won ensured that the Kandrian Masters didn''t let it dampen morale, many of them realized that they had been far too overconfident in their status as Masters.


    In that battle, they felt exactly what amon foot soldier felt in war.


    Perhaps they felt it even more strongly.


    After all, Masters were essentially invincible in day-to-day human civilization. They were at the top of the food chain in an overwhelming majority of the Human Domain, after all. They were deeply unustomed to feeling vulnerable when Sages weren''t around. Thus, a lot of Kandrian Masters had found themselves morecking than they''d like to admit. Thankfully, they took the hint with grace and immediately worked on shoring up their shorings. Ordinarily, it was toote to make up for one''s weaknesses after the war began, but thanks to the manifold, each month that passed on the outside world gave them a little over a year to make up for their weaknesses inbat.


    "I''ve even been contemting going back to Vilun Ind to visit the G''ak''arkan Tribe to gain some inspiration from their unique techniques," Master Ceeran remarked. "The Martial Union is considering garnering their Martial capital to aid us in the war; perhaps I shall pay them a visit then."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2276 Quickie

    Chapter 2276 Quickie


    Rui''s eyebrows furrowed as his eyes lit up at the mention of the G''ak''arkan Tribe. It had been a while since the topic had earned his attention. However, the fact that Master Ceeran had mentioned that the Martial Union was considering enlisting their Martial power in a war of this scale could only mean¡­


    "They¡­ got a Master?" Rui''s eyes widened.


    Master Ceeran nced at Rui with a quizzical look. "I suppose you haven''t really been following up on their development after we left the ind."


    "¡­Not at all, actually, I didn''t really have the opportunity to. After we returned, I trained for the Shionel Dungeon and only returned to the Kandrian Empire after, I believe, eight years after having been chased out of the Shionel Confederation by Chairman Deacon."


    He didn''t have the time to care about the tribe when he spent most of his time getting stronger so that he could kill Chairman Deacon.


    "Ah yes, you did go through all that immediately after your return home from Vilun Ind." Master Ceeran recollected memories of old. "They happened so long ago that it feels it was part of a different era. Regardless, let me fill you up. About a decade after we left, Senior K''M broke through to the Master Realm."


    Rui''s eyes lit up with surprise. "But I believe that Vilun Ind had never even gotten close to having any of their Martial Seniors to Masters."


    "That''s true," Master Ceeran nodded. "The concept of systems of thought and Martial Minds did not even exist on Vilun Ind. They had no idea that the Upper Realms even existed. ording to our analysts, it was extremely unlikely that they would ever break through to the Master Realm."


    "Then¡­"


    "We also believe that you were the one who changed their fates and set them on the path to the Higher Realms that previously eluded them." Master Ceeran smiled. "I can attest to that since the same thing had happened to me as well."


    Rui had a feeling it was that.


    He remembered his time in Vilun Ind quite well, even if it had been a long time since he thought about it.He recalled how he traded his Pathfinder technique for some of their most powerful techniques that had gone on to be a mainstay in his Martial Art, increasing hisbat power considerably. Things like Might Roar sh st and the sessive Transverse Resonance had saved his life many times.


    The Pathfinder was a thought technique, however.


    At the time, he had no idea what that meant, but now that he was a Master and understood the criteria to breakthrough into the Master Realm better than anybody else, he understood in hindsight that he hade to set a chain reaction of events that had caused the Vilun Ind to eventually reach the Master Realm organically.


    "Interesting¡­" He murmured. "So she reached the Master Realm. I suppose that means¡­" N?velDrama.Org (C) content.


    A smile appeared on his face. "¡­A student of mine reached the Master Ream."


    "Aha, yes, I suppose that is true, in an unexpected way."


    Rui had taught her mathematics and some physics necessary for the Pathfinder technique. She was technically his student in that regard.


    "So, now that the Martial Union has decided to enlist Masters and Sages into their war effort, it has decided to do so with the G''ak''arkan Tribe with K''M, is it?" Rui pondered with interest. "That''s quite fascinating. I suppose it is a good thing that our diplomatic mission back then was a sess. It hase to be of much use in these trying times."


    Master Ceeran nodded. "We need every Master we can get our hands on. Otherwise, this war is going to be so bloody that not a single person will be left standing by the time the war is over. I need more power, and the inventive techniques of the G''ak''arkan Tribe that have improved in conjugation with ours might serve as useful inspiration for improving my power. I realized just how weak I was in the heat of that battle and that I could not afford to step into another battle without being stronger than I am right now."


    "¡­Hm, are you also nning to go as a part of the Martial Union''s war enlisting mission?"


    "Yes," Master Ceeran nodded. "If I''m going there, I might as well go andplete some important work for the war. After all, the reason that we haven''t already recruited her is because we need to send a Master to gain her respect."


    "I see¡­" Rui fell into thought. "I have a proposal."


    Master Ceeran turned towards him with an intrigued look. "Are you interested ining?"


    Rui nodded. "I have a rapport with her. We had a really good rtionship all those years ago, and she most likely feels a lot of gratitude towards me for helping her break through to the Master Realm. With those two, I am pretty sure I can convince her to aid our war efforts within a single day of negotiations."


    "A single day is remarkably quick. I suppose you n on treating this as a quick errand to do before you move on to more serious diplomatic efforts?" Master Ceeran raised an eyebrow. "The Kandrian Empire cannot afford to waste your diplomatic efforts for a single Master."


    Rui was the ideal diplomat, considering his Martial power and political power, as well as his proficiency and experience with diplomacy.


    "It won''t take too long," Rui reassured him. "I just want to see how the seed of thought I nted in her many years has evolved. I wonder what she has done with the Pathfinder technique after all this time and how strong she is. If she''s too weak, then it might not be worth bringing her in."


    Rui looked forward to going to one of the more interesting endeavors in his life and seeing how things had changed since hest knew them. Hopefully, he could also return to the Kandrian Empire with another Master in addition to satisfying his Martial curiosity.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2277 Dying to the Sage Realm

    Chapter 2277 Dying to the Sage Realm


    "Well, when do you want to leave?" Master Ceeran raised an eyebrow. "In three days," Rui calmly replied. "You haven''t prepared¡­" Master Ceeran stared at him with a strange expression. "Don''t you, you know, need to prepare and gain authorizatio¡ª"


    He paused as he remembered who he was talking to.


    Perhaps an ordinary Master couldn''t arbitrarily take over a diplomatic mission and do as they pleased, but Rui was different. He had enough clout within the Martial Union to get away with that.


    "Alright." Master Ceeran heaved a sigh. "I didn''t expect you to be so decisive in your decision toe."


    Rui shrugged. "It''s a whim."


    "You''ve never struck me as the whimsical type."


    Rui couldn''t deny that. "I''ve been trying to pay attention to my¡­ emotions. I normally would have charted what I would consider the most optimal time spent for the Kandrian Empire''s probability of victory. However¡­"


    Master Ceeran understood his motivations. "You''re trying to speed up the discovery of your Martial Soul, aren''t you?"


    Rui nodded, heaving a sigh.


    He would be lying if he said that he wasn''t desperate. This is the property of N?-velDrama.Org.


    "I don''t think such methods will be of help," Master Ceeran remarked with a wistful tone. "Your rationality is a part of you. Trying to put it away is not getting closer to your inner self."


    Rui stirred at his words, falling into thought. "Maybe not. I don''t know; I feel like going the regr route is going to take too long. My journey to the Sage Realm is arduous and long as it is. I''m not content spending decades or centuries in the Master Realm until I finally break through to the Sage Realm."


    As a Martial Artist who had progressed through his Martial Path at an absurdly high rate, he was far too impatient to wait out the long periods of time that were merely average for breaking through to the Sage Realm.


    He refused to spend more time in the Master Realm than his entire career as a Martial Artist put together. His refusal was to the extent that he was willing to try all kinds of solutions that could potentially elerate his progress.


    He especially did not want to burn away his entire youthful vitality in his climb to the Sage Realm. "You''re impatient," Master Ceeran noted. "Patience is a fundamental necessity for all those who yearn to travel their Martial Paths. It takes a long time to make progress. Do you see other Masters fretting in a hurried manner about their progress to a Higher Realm? No, because we have lived a long time, and we know that progress will take even longer. In your case¡­"


    His eyes fixed themselves on Rui. "You haven''t lived very long and certainly haven''t been a Martial Artist for very long. This may very well be the first true wall you''ve ever hit in your entire life. And to think it would be the Sage Realm. If I didn''tknow otherwise, I would scoff and say that it''s impossible."


    Rui knew that he was impatient because his progress to a Higher Realm had been unimpeded until the Divine Doctor identified the nature of his ''reincarnation'' and left him in an identity crisis that constantly loomed deep beneath the surface.


    That was precisely why he was being impatient.


    He did not want to live that anymore.


    He had tried the dream technique that he had gotten in the Panamic Martial Federation. But aside from that, he didn''t have any other way to make progress to a Higher Realm, barring the standard of cultivating more power and individuality.


    Master Ceeran sighed, sensing his unwillingness. "Well, there is one way you could try. Though it is a way that most Martial Masters do not dare try."


    Rui raised an eyebrow. "Which is¡­?"


    "Death."


    Rui''s eyes widened with surprise.


    "Or dying, I suppose," Master Ceeran mused. "Dying teaches you more about yourself than almost any other experience."


    Rui frowned. "I haven''t heard of that, not from others nor from the Panamic Martial Federation."


    "That''s because they do not encourage it. Or rather, they outright discourage it," Master Ceeran informed Rui. "And for good reasons, too. Masters die too frequently and in vain when trying out this method. After all, the process of dying naturally leads to death. What does the progress to the Sage Realm matter if you''re too dead for it to matter?"


    Rui understood why it was discouraged. He also understood why those Martial Masters who sought to eventually reach the Sage Realm did not go for this method.


    There was too much stake.


    These distinguished Masters had spent centuries of time and effort reaching the Master Realm and their current station in life. They were not inclined to risk it all for a highly dangerous and unlikely means of learning more about one''s self.


    "Dying¡­" he whispered.


    He knew what that felt like.


    Or, at the very least, he had inherited the memories of a man who had died.


    "Death is peace."


    At the very least, that was how he thought about it. It was the only state of existence where one did not need to suffer the pain of life outside of sleep.


    "Are you sure that dying can help me reach the Sage Realm?" Rui asked with a strange light in his eyes.


    "It can, but you need to undertake great personal risk and suffer harm that you might not fully recover from. It is said that this was how the Martial Primordial first broke through to the Sage Realm a long time ago. He was ambushed by a powerful beast while immersed in himself, meditating. Caught off-guard, he was wounded critically, and it was said that at the very cusp of death, he attained the enlightenment of self and managed to ward away death," Master Ceeran told Rui. "The Panamic Martial Federation and other organizations decided not to promote dying as a method because that would weaken Martial Art too much. I, too, heard of this from my sect leader. A first-generation Master."


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2278: Considerations

    Chapter 2278: Considerations


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    A new milestone had been reached when it came to the long list of crazy things that Rui was willing to do for the sake of Project Water.


    Dying for the sake of reaching a new Realm of power.


    Even by Rui''s standards, this was up there.


    He had to admit, however, that he was attracted by the possibilities.


    Just by the principle of the power of sacrifice, he knew that if it seeded, it would potentially cut down what was bound to be a multi-century time frame to a more ptable


    one.


    In other words, it was perhaps the only thing capable of giving him exactly what he wanted, exactly when he wanted.


    Rather convenient.


    Rui nced at Master Ceeran suspiciously.


    There was no way he didn''t know what he was doing by telling Rui about this crucial information.


    "Don''t look at me like that. I''m not telling you to die. You don''t see me doing it, do you?" He scoffed. "I have worked too damn hard to reach the position and status that I currently have. On top of that, I look forward to the future and the rest of my life. Especially if the Kandrian Empire wins the war, the future is extremely bright and prosperous. Under these conditions, I''m not desperate enough to reach the Sage Realm that I will severely risk this life to reach it." This was the line of thought of most Masters.


    "But, I had a feeling that you might show interest in it." Master Ceeran turned to him with a knowing expression. "Your desire to reach the Sage Realm feels very different from your desire to reach the Master Realm before you broke through. I don''t know what happened to you in the Beast Domain, but it has made you deeply desperate to reach the Sage Realm."


    He was right.


    Having known Rui for a long time, he had learned to read him well. He could tell what made him tick. Ever since Rui had broken through to the Master Realm, Master Ceeran sensed a lost emptiness that sometimes showed itself.


    It was often buried under the endless drive that Rui seemed to have for his so-called Project Water, yet there were times it came out.


    It exceeded Master Ceeran''s ability to understand, yet he understood that Rui needed to get to the Sage Realm no matter what.


    "I still wouldn''t do it. Dying, that is. I wouldn''t even rmend it, if I''m being particrly honest. There''s nothing wrong with spending more time in the Master Realm if you ask me. But, it ultimately boils down to you. It is your choice," he calmly told Rui.


    Rui fell into deep thought at his words.


    He was right.


    It was his choice what he wanted to do with that information.


    "And before you try to get any smart ideas, don''t even think of trying to game the system." He chuckled knowingly. "Having the Divine Doctor on standbypletely defeats the purpose of dying. You know you''re not going to die with such arrangements; thus, there is no effect since your brain is aware that it isn''t truly going to die. It doesn''t enter the heightened and unique state of activity that dying causes. Hypnosis has also yet to yield any promising results since it doesn''t target the sum totality of the mind, just the subconscious mind. The Martial Union and the Panamic Martial Federation have already tried exploiting such loopholes."


    "Tsk," Rui tutted with visible displeasure. "So I have to genuinely approach death itself." "Yes. That is the only way to elerate your progress beyond the norm."


    "Hm..." Hearing Master Ceeran tell him that hypnosis couldn''t serve as a shortcut reminded Rui of Master Zeamer.


    He recalled how the powerful Martial Master had employed an extraordinary grade-ten hypnotic attack that convinced the subconscious that the person was dead, leading to the halting of several life-sustaining processes such as breathing and heartbeat and even neural activity itself.


    The issue was that if he tried subjecting himself to that in an effort to reach the Sage Realm, he would die far too quickly to make anything of it. When he came extremely close to death in his battle against Master Uma, he had gained some deep insights into himself, but the plummet to death had been far too quick to squeeze more insight from it.


    He needed to be sensible with how he would go about it if he did decide to go through with this admittedly insane strategy.


    "I''ll need to think about it," Rui admitted. "I''d rather not lose this life."


    It had been a dream for the most part.


    He had finally achieved a once-dead dream of being a Martial Artist and had made much progress in that regard and was on track to achieving Project Water as long as he just stayed alive for long enough.


    He mulled over the things he had just learned.


    Master Ceeran''s revtions were not light.


    They weighed upon Rui as he considered what he was to do with that information and how it was going to change his path to the Sage Realm. Whatever he chose to do with that information would define the rest of his life. If he chose to utilize it to elerate to the Sage Realm, then he would die, and that would be the end of his story. Or, he would be able to achieve the Sage Realm in a much shorter time frame.


    If he chose not to act on the information he received, then he would be a Master for a long time.


    Regardless of what path he chose to go down, it would leave a mark on the rest of his life. "I... need time to think."


    "Of course, it is best you don''t rely merely on your whims and fancies for this particr decision. It is a little more important than the matter regarding the enlistment of MasterN?velDrama.Org (C) content.


    K''M."


    Rui was aware of that. It was far too important, not to mention difficult andplicated, to not dedicate an immense amount of thought to it.


    "Maybe I should consult other people on the matter as well. It can''t hurt to get more opinions and viewpoints on the matter."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2279: Interrupted Travel

    Chapter 2279: Interrupted Travel


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    Eventually, he departed from the Long-ranging Sect after con also confirmed that none of his friends had perished in the Mas


    Apparently, Master Guren and Master Vericita had been critical critical aid and treatment just in time to ensure that they had c of them had suffered the average injuries that one would expec However, there had been casualties.


    Master Krakule, who had challenged Rui to a spar when he was join the Randal Faction, had regrettably died.


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    While Rui did not like him very much, he had stood guard to protect the orphanage for a period after he promised Rui anything in return for breaking his word to not use his Martial Mind in the battle. Additionally, he was cognizant of the loss it represented to the Kandrian Empire.


    Several others that Rui had a passing acquaintanceship with had also passed away.This is the property of N?-velDrama.Org.


    It made Rui nervous for the people he cared about in future battles, but there was nothing that could be done about it. All Martial Artists pursued their Martial Path with full awareness that it was a treacherous path, and they had epted the possibility that they would die in battle.


    Perhaps that was why Masters did not seek dying as a means to reach the Sage Realm.


    Even without such absurd risks, being an active Master was already risky and dangerous enough. It would be astronomically more dangerous and risky if they pursued dying as a means to gain the enlightenment of self.


    Regardless, Rui was d that nobody he cared about had died.


    "Alright, next stop... Kane."


    He headed to the manifold where Kane was training.


    Ever since the battle had concluded, Kane had been familiarizing himself with the Master Realm, working on increasing the synergy between his Martial Art and his newly discovered Martial Mind.


    It was usually the first step that Martial Masters took when they reached the Master Realm.


    Given that he was in the manifold, it was understandable that he hadn''t heard about Rui''s recovery.


    However, it appeared that his meeting with Kane was going to be postponed due to some partially foreseen interruptions.


    WHOOSH!!!


    Rui''s head shifted out of the way as his Heart and Mind activated in an emergency, allowing him to evade a Master level sound bullet that threatened to blow his head to smithereens.


    He had just avoided death.


    His head turned slowly as he pinned his gaze on the direction that sound bullet came from. "Nice try, but you failed." Rui''s body surged with power as a sh of bloodlust erupted in the depths of his dark eyes. "And now..."


    Chilling peril emerged from him, boiling the air tumultuously.


    "...time for you to face the consequences."


    WHOOOSH!


    Rui shot in the direction of the assant.


    He could sense the distant man''s fear even as he frantically escaped, trying to get as far away from Rui as fast as he could.


    "I''m afraid not," Rui growled as he shot forward with Gale Force Breathing and Outer Convergence.


    Unfortunately for him, the assassin was faster.


    The hooded assant activated numerous speed, agility, and maneuvering-oriented techniques, pushing his expanded mental capacity to the absolute limit, shooting off even further away and increasing the great distance between them even more.


    "Tsk," Rui tutted as his assant slowly began escaping the edge of his senses. "Another area where I''m equally deficient inpared to the average Master."


    Experience and active technique umtion were two areas in which Masters held arge advantage. The Martial Mind increased the limit of the number of techniques that could be actively used at any point in time, and Masters made full use of this by creating many techniques over a long period of time to saturate their mental capacity and make the most of


    it.


    Rui focused more on quality than quantity these days with long-term considerations, but it was moments like this that made him reconsider that decision.


    Regardless, it was exceedingly clear that the assassin hade fully prepared to outrun Rui upon failing the assassination.


    Rui considered activating Neo Godspeed but...


    "This could be a trap." He narrowed his eyes.


    It was possible that he was luring Rui to an ambush with the intention of bleeding both their stamina under the pretense of desperately trying to escape him.


    If he was going to be jumped by a solid group of Master-level assassins, then he knew that he would need his stamina to ovee all of them.


    They were screwed anyway once the Martial Union began investigating them and finding them. But Rui had no intention of letting the Martial Union deal with his would-be killers.


    "They''re mine." He surged forward, shooting off at incredible speeds.


    Eventually, he found himself running into the Town of Narfinius, a bustlingmercial town with arge and dense poption that was constantly in flux across the nation. A trade hub not unlike the Town of Hajin.


    "Little rat." Rui snorted as his senses washed over the entire town.


    He couldn''t find him.


    He knew that his target was hiding somewhere in this town, hiding his aura and mind to blend with the immense poption.


    It was a good strategy.


    Martial Artists, in general, were limited in what they could do in such a dense poption.


    It was why military strategy in war was focused on not letting enemy Masters enter one''s territory. The capacity for harm was too great.


    Had it been any other Master chasing him, this would have been game over. The assassin hadn''t won, but he hadn''t lost either. Anybody else in Rui''s ce would have had no choice


    but to give up on finding the assassin.


    However, not Rui.


    A single whisper escaped him.


    "Angel of Lace."


    He bent heaven and earth to protect the lesser beings below from the weight of his Martial Embodiment as an ocean of information flooded his mind.


    The world came undone as the past prostrated itself before him.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2280: Lacking Challenge

    Chapter 2280: Lacking Challenge


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    The vestiges of what once was unfolded in the depths of Rui''s! As a Senior, using theplete and original Angel Of Lace and strenuous to his mind. As a Master, however, the techniqu the brainpower to use all his systems of thought simultaneous


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    Had the assassin known about the Angel of Lace, he most li Also, you can always turn it considered attempting an assassination. off/on in Settings.


    But, s, he didn''t.


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    "Ah..." He found the path of retreat that the man had taken in his mind, opening his eyes.


    "There you are."


    WHOOSH!


    He surged down at lightning-fast speeds, arriving at just another inconspicuous storage warehouse as he sted through the infrastructure.


    BOOM!


    Several hooded figures leaped away in shock as a smile appeared on Rui''s face.


    "Heh, found you..." Rui''s eyes fixed on the man who''d sought to assassinate him before sweeping his gaze to the others. "I see you have friends. That''s good. Everybody should have friends. Martial Artists have inherited the social nature of humans, after all. It''s good for your mental health and..."


    A hint of peril flickered in the depths of his dark eyes. "...it''s good experience for me too."


    The assassin gritted his teeth with a grim expression. "Kill him!"


    Yet, they froze as an endless avnche of darkness swept over them.


    An infinite void.


    Along with it came a flood of information that paralyzed their minds. A Martial Embodiment forced the processing of information against one''s will because it targeted one''s subconscious mind, which was not under the conscious control of the conscious mind. They were not able to do anything to avoid being flooded with the information of Rui''s Martial Mind, nothing that he couldn''t resist.


    And many of them weren''t able to handle it either.


    Rui frowned. "Really? You guys are this weak, and you''ve dared to try and kill me? Is it just courage? No, assassins are often cowardly by nature and doctrine. Then, is it arrogance? Did you really think you could kill me just because you caught me off-guard?"


    Those who were able to move were almost frozen from the shock they experienced from the sheer weight of his Martial Mind.


    This was not an umon reaction.


    Most Masters were thoroughly bewildered when they felt Rui''s Martial Mind in all its glory. It was absurdly powerful, far beyond anything that they had ever experienced.


    "K-Kill him!" Those who were able to move quickly converged on Rui together, going all-out from the very start.Content is ? by N?velDrama.Org.


    While they were not fast enough to ovee the predictive model created by the Angel of Lace, and touching them was not advisable, Rui could not afford to dodge their attacks.


    While it was true that Martial Masters didn''t produce coteral damage with the activation of their techniques unless intended to, it was also true that if the environment ended up bing the target inadvertently due to Rui''s evasion, it could destroy the entirety of the massive town of Narfinius.


    POW POW POW!!


    He weathered their attacks with Flux Earther, harmlessly funneling the power of their attacks deep into Gaia. Had he been facing an equal, this would have served as a damning impediment that would have gotten him killed.


    But, s, assassins were not optimized for frontalbat.


    "Temporal Disharmony. Neo Godspeed."


    Time sped up in their eyes.


    What followed exceeded their cognition.


    POW! BAM!


    An extraordinarily swift kick to the jaw cleanly knocked one of them out while the other received a blinding fast chop on the neck.


    THUD THUD


    They fell unconscious.


    "Tsk," Rui tutted with visible displeasure. "That wasn''t even a warm-up."


    He was deeply annoyed that he didn''t get a good battle out of this.


    He nced at the other two Masters, frozen stiff against their will. After seeing how much of a monster he was, they realized that they never stood a chance. He could kill them as they pleased at his leisure, and there was nothing they could do about it. Their minds strained under the sheer amount of information that Rui Martial Embodiment flood them with.


    Yet, Rui''s attention didn''t even remain fixed on them.


    "Stalkers..." he snorted, ncing behind him.


    STEP


    Several Martial Masters descended from the sky, among whom was Master Ceeran. Rui recognized all of them and was surprised by the diversity of the organizations to which the Masters belonged.


    One was from the Kandrian Investigation Service, while another was a Martial official for the Town of Narfinius, and the rest of them were from the Martial Union.


    "You know better than to me us." Master Ceeran''s expression was troubled. "You''re a prince and our most important Master. Did you really think His Majesty and the Sage Council would just let you frolic around in your own devices, knowing that there are plenty of


    assassins intending to make an attempt on your life?"


    Of course not, but Rui still reserved the right toin.


    "Are you trying to employ the dying solution this quickly?" Master Ceeran asked with an


    exasperated expression.


    Rui smirked mysteriously.


    "Well, I assume that I can leave these weaklings in your gentle care?"


    "Of course, Your Highness." Another Master replied with an intense tone. "Attempting an assassination on a royal prince is an extremely grave crime. They will be dealt with in ordance with the weight of their crime."


    Rui shrugged. "Alright. Then, I''ll be on my way then."


    Rui left the warehouse as the Kandrian Masters swarmed the debilitated Masters, quickly apprehending them. He was sure that they would be used as an example for other Master-


    level assassins.


    "Hopefully, this incident filters out all the weak ones," Rui huffed. "I would much rather a challenge next time."


    Assuming that these assassins had a name in the underworld in East Panama, there was a good chance that assassins of the same level would abstain from undertaking the mission or


    be more of a threat if they did.


    Rui was hoping that he would face a stronger assassin next time; the truly good assassins were capable of frontalbat in addition to the covert assassins.


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 Chapter 2281: Reunited Friends

    Chapter 2281: Reunited Friends


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    "Wait, you''re telling me it hasn''t even been a day since you go targeted by assassins?" Kaneughed. "That''s hrious, man.


    Rui had made his way to the manifold without any further imp Kane, informing him of his most recent incident with assassin: him.


    "Well, ten billion gold coins is a lot," Rui replied. "There aren ck marketparable to that. I''m guessing that they were they should have known that it wouldn''t be as easy as popping


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    Rui came to learn that not all Masters were masters of the art of assassination like Master Reina. He had always thought that at the Master Realm, any assassin would surely be more than just stealth and assassination techniques, but apparently not.


    "It makes sense, I suppose. Masters are so strong that just their strength alone lends them to being excellent killers. Only the cream of the crop master everything there is to the art of assassination outside of Martial Art as well."


    "You might have to deal with them soon," Kane mused. "Hell, for ten billion gold coins, I''m tempted to undertake the assassination myself."


    He grinned as Rui turned to him with a deadpan stare.


    "So, are you nning to undergo any training at the moment?" Kane asked, curious. "Maybe an anti-assassination that allows you to antithetically dismantle all the assassination attempts?"


    "...That actually sounds interesting, but no." Rui shook his head. "I haven''t reached the point where I feel the need to train another technique. I''ll do so when I happen upon an avenue of adaptive evolution that is worth pursuing or upgrading."


    Kane shrugged. "Suit yourself. I suppose it is true that you''re way too strong to be easily pushed to the point of feeling the need to train your adaptive evolution."


    Rui nodded. "I''m looking for a challenge that I am unable to ovee with my existing Martial Art techniques. I have considered creating something to aid me with war, like withrge-scale conflicts, but I figure that I might as well wait until I experience more conflicts of that nature before I try to create a technique for it."


    The battle against the Sekigahara Confederate was hardly the norm. It was actually extremely abnormal given the sheer size and scale of the conflict; such types of conflicts were highly atypical for a war.


    Once he got a good grasp, he intended to ensure that he created a technique, training system, or system of thought that would allow him to deal withrge-scale conflicts with much greater proficiency.


    "For now, however, I simply look forward to dealing with the war in earnest."


    "Well, I intend to spend more time training and getting my Martial Art in synergy with my Martial Mind," Kane exined. "I don''t really have any other goals at the moment. Of course, I intend to participate in the war; I could use some experience as well."


    Rui nodded. "Also, have you been told about the breakthrough to the Sage Realm?"


    Kane winced. "Yeah, I don''t like it, but it is what it is. I''m not really good at philosophy and whatnot."


    "It sounds philosophical, but it''s more than just philosophy," Rui remarked. "But, yes, I don''t like it either."


    Kane directed a knowing look at Rui.


    He had been there when Rui learned the truth about his reincarnation. He recalled that Rui had spected that it had something to do with the Sage Realm. And he was right; it was the key to the sage Realm.


    "So, what do you n to do?" Kane asked with a concerned expression. "Feels like in your position, just the ordinary method isn''t going to cut it."


    "You''re probably right..." Rui heaved a sigh. "There is a more effective path than the ordinary method of simply growing stronger and individuality. Dying."


    Kane looked at him with an incredulous expression; you''re telling me your n to get to the Sage Realm is dying?"


    "Yes," Rui remarked. "Allegedly, the more one approaches death, the more one learns about the depths of one''s self. The idea is that by dying, one can elerate one''s path to the Sage Realm."


    "That... sounds super risky. But knowing you, you''re probably going to take it."


    "Well, it appears you just might know me better than myself."


    "Hah! It''s a shame the rules don''t allow Masters to delegate the task."


    Rui chuckled. "Well, these are super long-term considerations. For now, I am nowhere near the Sage Realm. I don''t intend to train a new technique in the hopes of trying to close the distance either; I just need to fight some more."


    "Well, I don''t think that the Sekigahara Confederate is going to mount another attack like that after I decimated almost all of their Masters. So, how is the war going to evolve from now?"


    "...Allies," Rui informed him. "Both sides are scrambling for allies. Our enemies know that, while they have more Martial power than we do, they do not have enough power to overwhelm us without suffering horrific losses in a pyrrhic victory. The Kandrian Empire is trying to stop them from gaining the allies they seek by reeling them to our side. Thus, I expect we will see many medium skirmishes across all of East Panama."


    "I see...So, you n to fight battles by heading over to the battlefield and fighting for our allies; that sounds fun. I''ll join in."


    Rui smiled. "The more the merrier. My first stop, though, is Vilun Ind. I''m heading there to enlist the support of Master K''M of the G''ak''arkan Tribe."


    Kane''s eyebrows rose as he recalled those names. "Vilun Ind, huh? How long has it been? Twenty years?"


    "Around that much."


    "And she managed to break through to the Master Realm, huh? Good for her. Still, I think I''ll sit this one out. I never liked that ce. And if it''s just a diplomatic venture, I don''t really have anything else to do. But make sure to let me in on the next one."


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 Chapter 2282 One More Solution

    Chapter 2282 One More Solution


    Once Rui finished up his meeting with Kane, he quickly traveled around to meet up with his other friends and acquaintances. From Master Zentra to Headmaster Aronian in the Martial Academy.


    Each of them was deeply busy. N?velDrama.Org owns all ? content.


    In fact, it would be harder to find someone who wasn''t busy in the Master Realm.


    The Sages and Masters were the core fighting forces of the Kandrian Empire and bore the entirety of the fate of the Kandrian Empire on their shoulders.


    "I would love to train more, but unfortunately, I am burdened with dealing with the recent influx of Apprentices at our Academy," Headmaster Aronian informed Rui with a troubled expression. "It is not a light issue, and the Kandrian Empire could potentially lose these new and young Martial Apprentices that you''ve broken through."


    Rui shrugged. "I understand you feel responsibility over them as the Headmaster, but the fact of the matter is that in war, your identity as Master is more important than your duty as headmaster. I would rmend delegating all your duties to another person for the duration of the war. We cannot afford to be rusty at this juncture in the Kandrian Empire''s future."


    "¡­I suppose that that is also true." He grimaced lightly. "I have found myself to be morecking than I had expected. All these years of a sedentary life have buried my instincts and intuition. I did not anticipate a war of this magnitude to ur,but I suppose life has always been unpredictable."


    Rui nodded. "Thankfully, you have the manifold. I would rmend you spend a few years in there just to get yourself to a point where you ensure that you won''t die and can keep your opponent engaged."


    Headmaster Aronian heaved a deep sigh. "Your words are that of the truth. I, too, recognize that. But, Iam quite attached to my job as headmaster, you see. I had looked forward to guiding the booming youngest generation of new Apprentices, but I suppose I will have to concede that privilege to another."


    He looked genuinely aggrieved at that decision.


    "You must really enjoy your position as headmaster." A light remark escaped Rui.


    "¡­Of course I do," Headmaster Aronian replied with a profound tone. "It is a joy to oversee and guide the path of younglings brimming with potential. You were among them once. I had high expectations of you, and you have yet managed to far surpass them and everythingI thought was impossible. One of my eventual hopes was to live long enough to see one of my students surpass me as a Martial Artist, and you have helped me realize that dream."


    His tone was one of affection, gratitude, and admiration.


    "When you put it that way¡­" Rui stirred at his words. "I suppose that it is a fulfilling pursuit."


    It wasn''t as though Rui couldn''t rte.


    He had inherited the memories of a man who was a teaching assistant early in his career. A good student was extremely satisfying to teach.


    "Are you interested?" Headmaster Aronian asked with an intrigued expression. "You might have to inevitably undertake it when you set up your sect."


    "Ah¡­" Rui had almost forgotten about his sect. "¡­You''re right. Not to mention, enough time has passed since I passed on the voidlet techniques to the Martial Union. I have heard of many stories of how it has disseminated throughout the Kandrian Empire."


    Headmaster Aronian nodded. "You have the capital to create a sect. Adaptive evolution, once an unheard-of field of Martial Art in the Lower Realm, is indeed something that has spread."


    Rui nodded. He recalled how the Apprentices and Seniors had been the most to utilize his voidlet techniques. He also recalled how Sage Sayfeel told him that one of the new Masters credited him for her breakthrough.


    Perhaps it was time to set up the Water Sect.


    In the past, he only set it up in case he ever ran into a major bottleneck in the future and needed a source of inspiration or something fresh that expanded his understanding. Now, however, he saw it as another force that could help him reach the Sage Realm by helping him ovee the same bottlenecks that might keep him from reaching the necessary levels of power.


    "¡­I''ll look into it as soon as I''m back from Vilun Ind."


    He did like the idea of creating his own sect for many reasons. In addition to more selfish reasons, such as his progression to the Sage Realm, he also wouldn''t mind focusing on making the original Project Watere true.


    Project Water, back on Earth, was a selfless project.


    John Falken''s goal was to give everybody partaking inbat sports the power of adaptive evolution. It was a project that benefitted everybody but himself; it benefitted everybody who could fight and did fight, something he couldn''t do due to his poor health.


    Rui was more selfish than John was.


    His Project Water was for himself.


    "Perhaps I can pay him homage by making his dreame true through the Water Sect."


    He would spread adaptive evolution far and wide once he created a formal organization that was dedicated just for the sake of disseminating adaptive evolution. It would only benefit as the speed of growth of fields was directly proportional to the number of people participating in the field. This was true for Martial and non-Martial fields.


    Thus, if he wanted to ensure that he was able to gain the maximum amount of benefits from the sect when he truly needed it, he ought to ensure that adaptive evolution was spread far and wide across the entire Panama Continent.


    He had added another solution to his problem to the Sage Realm.


    Naturally, he still would progress by growing stronger and through individuality, but now he had one solution in the form of dying and another in the form of the Water Sect. Together, they were Rui''s charge into Sage Realm in the heights far above.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2283 Departure

    Chapter 2283 Departure


    Eventually, hepleted all his social calls soon enough, having spoken to everyone he needed and was obligated to. He was d to see that they were doing well and alive, more importantly.


    Once that was done, his attention immediately shifted to the matter regarding Master K''M. It wasn''t long before he procured an intelligence packet from the Martial Union regarding all the developments that had urred in the G''ak''arkan Tribe and Vilun Ind since his departure from the ce many years ago.


    The developments had been interesting, to say the least.


    "So she either wiped out or assimted all the tribes on the ind after breaking through?" Rui raised an eyebrow. "That''s disturbing."


    It was nothing short of genocide and ethnic cleansing.


    Then again, that was par for the course, he supposed. The tribes on that ind had a gruesome warring culture with each other. The concept of human rights and other things was something that they fundamentally did not possess, harboring significantly different views on life and death.


    The reports and records of the Martial Union talked about how, soon after breaking through, she ughtered all enemy Martial Seniors effortlessly. Wiping out all those who could possibly threaten her newfound dominance.


    The reports detailed how, even after the enemy tribes of the ind surrendered to her,she killed all the men, sparing only the women and the children, who were then assimted into the G''ak''arkan Tribe. Essentially, she had eliminated war in the Vilun Ind by eliminating anybody to war with. "Well, looks like I changed the future of the ind forever." Rui heaved a sigh as he read through the reports, struggling to reconcile what he was reading with the woman he had known twenty years ago.


    Of course, twenty years was a long time. Who knew what had happened on the ind over the course of that period?


    Still, the K''M that he knew was the least aggressive Martial Artist in the G''ak''arkan, she was also the most thoughtful out of all of them. Yet, her actions after she broke through to the Master Realm were a departure from what he remembered of her. "Wait, after she broke through to the Master Realm¡­?" His eyebrow rose. "Could it be¡­?"


    He had some suspicions as to what had happened.


    "¡­I''ll need to speak with her to confirm my suspicions, but there''s nothing I can do about it," he mused. "Oh well."


    His goal was to enlist her aid in the war against the East Panamic Treaty Alliance. In other words, he didn''t need to fix any problems; he could just use them to further his objective. He had already plotted out several pathways through which he could enlist her aid. Considering the good rtionship that the Martial Union had with the G''ak''arkan Tribe, it was best to go with a friendly carrot approach where he incentivized them to partake in the war. This was particrly easy as the G''ak''arkan was quite the primitive civilizationpared to modern humanity, given that, outside of their Squire evolution breakthrough process, they didn''t harness the power of esoteric substances all that much, if at all.


    It meant that the Martial Union always had a lot to offer.


    This was especially true now that they had the Elder Tree''s intel on the Beast Domain. Thus, Rui wasn''t really worried about how he was to convince her to partake in the war. Text content ? N?velDrama.Org.


    "Besides, she''s probably even less experienced with the Master Realm than I am."


    After all, she didn''t even have anybody to spar with. "Considering the Martial culture of the G''ak''arkan Tribe, she must be yearning for a partner to train with; that alone is probably enough to get her to join the war.


    There probably wasn''t a single war in the world that served as a better testing avenue than the war between the East Panamic Alliance and the Kandrian Empire. There were several other possible avenues of diplomacy he could undertake, but he didn''t need to sweat it.


    As far as diplomacy went, this was light work.


    Over the next few days, he simply prepared for the short trip to the G''ak''arkan Tribe. Considering that he didn''t intend to spend too much time there, his packing was light and to the bare minimum. He simply donned his Martial attire, taking the senior ambassador insignia given to him long ago.


    Just as he predicted, he was able to take over the mission entirely without any resistance. Only Martial Sage could impede his path, but it was clear that none of them saw fit to.


    He declined all traveling and logistical arrangements; he didn''t need a team to help him with this mission.


    "Just the two of us?" Master Ceeran raised an eyebrow. He was packed more heavily, anticipating to spend some time there than Rui did in pursuit of good inspiration and source of his new technique.


    "Don''t see why not," Rui replied nonchntly. "We can travel much faster if it is just the two of us. Let''s go."


    "¡­Alright."


    BADUMP!


    Their Martial Hearts zed into power.


    WHOOSH!


    The two of them shot to the sky as Rui activated Greater Phantomind to cover them with misdirection-derived stealth. He didn''t want to let people track him easily, after all. Although he was willing to face assassinations head-on, he was not willing to make it easy for them. Regardless, the two of them shot through the sky unimpeded as they headed East. Rui had long memorized the path to Vilun Ind in his Mind Pce. Thus, navigation was no issue at all.


    They soared past the port town of Farund, heading into the Great Nam Ocean at top speed. The salty humidity of the ocean and the cool wind blowing from afar prickled their skin while the odor of the ocean wafted in the air.


    "Let''s pick up the pace," Rui remarked. "I don''t want to remain at sea for too long. Let''s get tond before our Martial Hearts run out."


    The two of them activated their Martial Minds, zing through the sky as they headed towards Vilun Ind.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2284: Father and Son

    Chapter 2284: Father and Son


    ?


    As they shot through the sky at extraordinary speeds, Rui couldn''t help but be flooded by memories of old when he came here as a mere Squire. Back then, the only reason that he was selected as an ambassador was because he was most fit to open diplomatic talks.


    Master Ceeran, no more than a high-grade Senior back then, had already tried and failed at leading talks with the G''ak''arkan Tribe.


    That was why Commissioner Derun had deployed Rui for the mission, leading him to sessfully set up diplomatic rtions with the G''ak''arkan Tribe.


    It had been a long and tiring mission that had required ns spanning over months, but ultimately, he had managed to reel over the stubborn G''ak''arkan Tribe to their side.


    It had earned him a good number of credits from the Martial Union.


    He looked at the time he had spent on Vilun Ind quite positively; it had served as an experience that broadened his worldview and was the first time he had meandered so far away from human civilization.


    And now, after roughly twenty years, he was finally returning to the ind.


    The speeds at which they traveled allowed them to cover vast swathes of the ocean in short timeframes, allowing them to reach the ind a lot sooner than they otherwise would have. "It''s changed..." A murmur escaped Rui as he beheld the ind for the first time in two decades.


    Topography did not normally change as quickly unless there was a natural cmity or there were Martial Artists.


    In the case of Vilun Ind, it certainly was thetter.N?velDrama.Org (C) content.


    They had no natural disasters other than Seniors wreaking havoc across the ind the few times that they fought.


    BADUMP BADUMP!


    Before they could ever arrive at the ind, however, they were intercepted by two Martial Seniors who emerged from the ind, impeding them in their path.


    They wore pelts fashioned from the beasts native to the ind, while their bronze skin was covered with streaks made from charcoal. Yet, their faces were gaunt while heavy eyebags sat under their eyes. Their demeanor couldn''t hide their mise.


    Rui recognized not just the ethnic attire of the G''ak''arkan Tribe but also the two men who stood in his path.


    And they did, too.


    "You guys..." he spoke in the G''ak''arkan dialect for the first time in a long time. "K''ahru and N''Kulu...!"


    They were brother and father to K''M. Thetter had been the chief of the tribe as once the strongest Senior of the G''ak''arkan Tribe, but once his daughter broke into the Master Realm, he had no choice but to cede the seat of tribe chieftain to her.


    The two men shook with shock as they recognized Rui as well, if only by his rare ck hair and ck eyes.


    They also recognized that Rui stood in a Realm of power that far exceeded anything that they had ever fathomed.


    "You..." the elderly man began as his expression darkened. "You were of the second rank just twenty years ago. By what miracle did you reach the cursed fourth rank in such a short timeframe?"


    Rui narrowed his eyes as he sensed the grave weight in his voice.


    The air darkened as their eyes grew severe, judging Rui with piercing stares.


    Yet, their demeanor only confirmed his suspicions regarding K''M.


    "...Cursed fourth rank?" Rui raised an eyebrow.


    "Do not y coy with me, young man." The elderly Senior scoffed. "Did you really think that


    we would fail to notice the poison that this power is? It is cursed, cursed, I say!"


    "Slow down." Rui sharpened his gaze. "What''s going on? Why are you guys here?"


    The men exchanged a nce, heaving a sigh.


    "We sensed powerful auras iing to the ind." Senior K''ahru stated. "We didn''t expect


    it to be you two. What brings you to this ind after two decades?"


    "...We came to enlist Master K''M''s aid for a war that we are part of," Rui calmly exined the truth.


    "Just her?" Senior K''ahru frowned. "Not us or the rest of our tribe?"


    Rui shook his head. "I''m afraid you''re all far too weak to matter."


    He didn''t mince his words as he told them the truth.


    They grimaced but didn''t try to refute him.


    They already knew that maind civilization was far stronger than they were. Perhaps, twenty years ago, they would have been arrogant enough to believe in their supremacy, but the past twenty years had shattered that delusion.


    "Take me to her," Rui told them. "I wish to speak to her."


    Their gazes were fixed on Rui. "We can do that, but we have a request."


    Rui simply stared at them.


    Their expressions grew grave as they gritted their teeth.


    "We hope that you will kill K''M."


    Rui''s eyes widened with shock. "Did you just... ask me to kill your own daughter and sister?"


    Senior K''ahru''s eyes sharpened. "Our sister died ten years ago when she broke through to the cursed rank. The person she is now, I refuse to ept that wraith as my sister!"


    Rui stared at them, heaving a sigh.


    "No."


    They winced at his refusal.


    "Did you really think that I would agree to that? After I just told you I''m here to enlist her in a war?" Rui raised an eyebrow. "No wonder you idiots have yet to break into the Master Realm."


    They red at him, yet they were powerless to change his mind. He was Master, after all. He could erase their existence from the world if he wanted to. There was a time when they used to intimidate him when they were a whole Realm above him, yet that time had long passed as Rui shot past them with a meteoric speed.


    "Then..." He continued. "If you cannot kill her yourself, can you ensure that she dies in war?"


    Rui shook his head. "Absolutely not."


    They grimaced at his words.


    Rui could understand their plight, but he could not bring dishonor to the Kandrian Empire''s reputation if it came out.


    Reputation was extremely important in the war for allies. His father had entered this war knowing that the good international reputation that he had as a business partner and an alliance mate gave him an advantage.


    Rui had no intention of ruining his father''s ns by doing something that could besmirch the Kandrian Empire''s reputation.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2285 Final Request

    Chapter 2285 Final Request


    They gave up on that, sensing his unyielding attitude. "Then¡­ we have one final request of you."


    "I will not entertain any requests to harm her. If you want to kill her, then train hard and break through to the Master Realm." This was the way of Martial Artists, after all.


    "Our final request does not require you to hurt her," N''Kulu stared at him. "If anything, we hope you will do the opposite."


    Rui frowned. "Opposite?"


    The air grew heavy as N''Kulu gritted his teeth. "We request you to¡­ mate with her."


    "¡­"


    "¡­"


    "¡­"


    "¡­"


    Seconds passed as Rui stared at them, using the SOUL System to see if this was their native sense of humor.


    "¡­Excuse me?" Rui narrowed his eyes. This time, his son, K''Ahru, made the same request.


    "Please, if you have any desire to help us, then mate with my sister and let her bear your child!"


    Rui grew disgusted as father and son pleaded for him to impregnate Master K''M. "You¡­ do you intend to kill her when she''s pregnant?"


    Female Martial Artists couldn''t use their Martial Hearts when they were pregnant, which also meant that they couldn''t use their Martial Minds when they were pregnant. In other words, during this phase, theirbat power was limited to that of the Squire Realm unless they were willing to sacrifice the fetus, of course.


    His eyes zed with power as he peered into their minds, sensing their emotions with his Martial Mind and sensing their intentions with the SOUL System.


    Surprisingly, it wasn''t entirely guilty.


    "Attacking a woman warrior when she carries a child is one of the worst sins that a member of our tribe canmit. This was a line that none of the other now-deceased tribes ever dared to cross, for it is a sin against life itself," he gritted his teeth. "We hope that motherhood will rekindle the warmth in her eyes, yet if it doesn''t¡­"


    He opened his eyes. "Then I will sin my soul to damnation if that is what it takes to free my tribe from her oppression."


    Rui stared at him.


    Their rationale wasn''t as abominable as he thought it was. The G''ak''arkan Tribe was big on family, so the fact that they harbored such hostility for her as she was now probably speaking more about her than it did them.


    "What''s going on?" Rui narrowed his eyes. "Just what has happened in your tribe? Tell me everything."


    Of course, Rui had reports from the long-range surveince division of the intelligence department of the Martial Union. However, that didn''tpare to the reports of someone who lived on a day-to-day basis.


    The two men gritted their teeth, recalling the past ten years in the G''ak''arkan Tribe. N?velDrama.Org (C) content.


    Everything had changed.


    "It all started ten years ago." Former chieftain N''Kulu began with a morose tone. "My daughter broke through to the mythical fourth rank that we only had heard about but never seen. That was the day everything changed."


    His brother nodded gravely. "She had been cultivating for the ten years prior to that, ever since you traded that technique with her."


    The two red at Rui briefly as though he had been the one responsible for their current predicament.


    "She became obsessed with the power of thought," his father continued with a dark tone. "So much so that she began isting herself from the rest of the tribe for days, weeks, months on end."


    "¡­She was trying to develop more systems of thought," Rui realized. "That was what she called it," her brother nodded with a depressed expression. "She tried her very best to teach it to all of us enthusiastically, but¡­"


    "You ridiculed her, probably scoffed at her thought techniques and systems of thought as a bunch of nonsense," Rui snorted, seeing right through them. "She must''ve given up on trying to teach all of you about systems of thought."


    To their credit, none of them tried denying it. They lowered their heads with shame at Rui''s words as he hit the nail on the head.


    "Had I known that it was the key to breaking through to the next rank, I would have celebrated her achievement¡ª"


    "I don''t care for that," Rui snorted. "It doesn''t matter what you would have done. What matters is what you did. Now, continue."


    His brother heaved a regretting sigh. "The incident caused a bit of a rift between her and the rest of her tribe. Even before, she had never been extremely intimate with the tribe''s culture. Yet, once she started cultivating thought, and after she was ridiculed for doing so, she grew even more distant to the n."


    Rui could easily see where this was going. "Then, she broke through to the Master Realm."


    The former chieftain nodded with a dark expression. "And once she did, thest embers of warmth in her eyes faded away. It was as though she no longer saw us as humans anymore. She looked at us, her own blood, as livestock."


    "¡­I knew it," he muttered. "Tilt to psychopathy caused by the Master Realm."


    He suspected it the moment he saw the reports from the Martial Union, yet hearing their testimony on the matter sealed the matter.


    "So, this is what the Reign of the Master Realm must have been like." Master Ceeran remarked. "I suppose it truly isn''t an exaggeration."


    Just like Rui, Master Ceeran had never been around to see the Reign of the Master Realm; they were too young to have been alive during that era.


    It was why there was a pronounced difference in the way that older Martial Artists talked about it. A majority of Martial Artists who were alive during the Reign of the Master Realm were not Masters back then. In other words, they had all experienced the oppression of the Reign of the Master Realm.


    While younger Masters like Rui and Ceeran didn''t treat it as a joke by any stretch, they certainly took it nearly as seriously as the older ones did.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2286 Contrast

    Chapter 2286 Contrast


    Rui turned back to the two men with a dubious expression. "So, why on earth did you want me to¡­?"


    They grimaced, clearly not pleased they made of him. "We need to find a way to incapacitate her if nothing else, including motherhood, changes her?" Rui snorted with disbelief as his mouth curled with disgust. "¡­Why me? I am literally an outsider to the tribe, an ambassador from the Kandrian Empire to the tribe." Text content ? N?velDrama.Org.


    They gritted their teeth as they found what was toe hard to even say. "In our tribe, women warriors do not ept mates weaker than them. And currently, she is by far the strongest warrior on the entire ind."


    Rui found his eyebrows twitching as he massaged his forehead, closing his eyes. "So that''s the reason that you chose me because you think I''m stronger than her? Are you serious?"


    "¡­The weight of your mind far exceeds that of hers." N''Kulu countered. "We have reason to believe that you are stronger than her."


    Rui stared at them in disbelief. "You do realize what you''re asking of me, right? You''re literally asking me, a foreign official, to procreate with the leader of a warrior tribe who we intend to enlist in our effort because you don''t have anybody else. It''s absurd!"


    He couldn''t believe that they even dared to make such a nonsensical request for him. If not for their dire circumstances, he would have been much more stern and visceral in his bacsh.


    Yet, he didn''t have the heart to do so when he sensed the desperation in their minds and their SOULs. They recognized how absurd of a request to make of Rui, yet their circumstances were so bad that they didn''t have any choice but to make this request of Rui.


    "Please, Master Rui, we must plead with you to heed our request¡ª"


    "Enough." Rui firmly rejected their absurd request. "Do away with this notion. It''s not happening."


    Even putting aside his deep personal qualms with such a course of action, he didn''t think that he could do such a thing.


    After all, he bore royal blood.


    His descendants earned the right topete for the royal throne; giving that power to a foreign force was a threat to national security. Thus, he would never do that even if he somehow didn''t have any personal qualms about disturbing requests that N''Kulu made of him.


    "Please, reconsider¡ª"


    "Absolutely not," Rui''s gaze shifted away from them as it returned to Vilun Ind. "But you have made me curious as to the plight of the G''ak''arkan Tribe. The Martial Union does have a Martial humanitarian intervention program that, under certain conditions, allows it to intervene in such circumstances if it can be determined to be in favor of the development of Martial Artists."


    However, even if he found that it did match the conditions for the Martial Union humanitarian conditions, he probably wouldn''t call for it.


    The war was more important to him.


    The Kandrian Empire was faced with existential destruction, being targeted by three Sage-level powerhouses that sought to annihte the nation to ensure that it never elevated itself far beyond them. "Let''s go," Rui remarked with a serious expression. "We need to get a good understanding on the circumstances of the G''ak''arkan Tribe when we make our offer in the first ce."


    Some of the negotiation tactics that Rui hade up with involved benefits to the entire tribe. However, depending on her rtionship with the tribe she came to develop a seemingly more oppressive rtionship with; he might need to scrap all those ns and go for alternatives.


    WHOOSH


    The two Masters left the Seniors in the dust as they arrived at the ind in the blink of an eye. Rui''s extraordinary Martial Mind allowed him to sense the general mental and emotional energy of the entire ind even before he actually met any of them. RUMBLE¡­


    The Kandrian Masters stiffened as they felt a deep wave of seismic energy sweep through the entire ind and beyond.


    "Here shees." Rui''s eyes narrowed as he felt a surprisingly powerful auraing right towards them. WHOOSH


    They found themselves gazing at a dot in the far distance, growingrger by the millisecond as it came straight towards them. It was her. Rui found that, physically, she hadn''t changed all that much; her muscr and toned body brimmed with power supplied by her deeply powerful Martial Heart. Her conditioned brown skin was littered with even more scars than before, serving as a testament to the sheer amount of battles that she''d fought in her life as a Martial Artist. After all, the G''ak''arkan Tribe didn''t have any way of creating healing potions with their primitive technology.


    WHOOSH¡­


    Her long hair swayed in the powerful drag generated by her speed while her eyes sparkled with the power of the Master Realm. Within the depths of her mind, he detected the presence of a surprisingly powerful Martial Mind, more powerful than most.


    It was rather unexpected that a warrior from a less sophisticated civilization could end up creating such remarkably powerful systems of thought with just the Pathfinder technique that Rui had given her.


    She was undoubtedly deeply talented and gifted when it came to thought and mind. He hadn''t noticed it before, for the G''ak''arkan Tribe shunned thought with its more mindlessMartial culture. Her talent had been stifled by her tribe, it meant.


    She must''ve learned that after Rui gave her the Pathfinder technique, having discovered a new field inbat that she didn''t even know existed. She must''ve been quite furious living in a culture that suppressed her great gifts.


    Perhaps it was no wonder that she grew distanced from the rest of her tribe.


    Rui expected a cold and apathetic person from the tales of her brother and father, yet what he found appeared to be far away from being the case.


    Her eyes lit up with delight and ecstasy as she recognized him in an instant, leaping at him with joy.


    "Rui! You''re back!"


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2287: Transitioned Society

    Chapter 2287: Transitioned Society


    ?


    BAM!


    Rui activated Flux Earther, harmlessly dispersing the energy of her charge, as he nced down at her with a puzzled expression.


    This was not what he expected.


    In the ce of a cold and apathetic was a delighted and ecstatic person.N?velDrama.Org (C) content.


    "You returned!" She eximed. "And as a Master! How did you do that so quickly?!"


    Her voice was one of joy, one that did not hide how pleased she was to see him. She did not hide how shocked she was at the fact that he had reached the Master Realm when he was just a Squire just two decades ago.


    "K''M..." Rui murmured as he studied her with a quizzical expression. "You seem to do well these days. Congrattions on having be the tribe chief, howeverte I am."


    She got up from him, smiling. "That happened ten years ago. It''s not even special, just an annoying position with lots of responsibility and work."


    "...Uh huh." He frowned; he wasn''t sensing the tilt to psychopathy that he had been primed to expect.


    "You''ve changed so much." She muttered. "You used to be so weak, but now you seem to much stronger than me."


    Rui''s smile strained at her words. "It''s not like I was particrly weak, given my age at the time."


    "Hah! You used to pretend to be strong back then just so you could have our attention!" Sheughed at him.


    Rui did recall that, in fact. He used to use the Mind Mask to pretend to be grade ten back then because the G''ak''arkan Tribe only respected strength. There was no other way to fulfill the mission that he was entrusted to fulfill.


    Looking back, however, it was indeed a tad bit embarrassing.


    "That was purely due to my mission, I assure you."


    "Hah, sure, you can tell yourself if you want to."


    Rui red at her lightly as she indulged herself byughing at his expense.


    "Well, what brings you back to our ind?" she asked, after finally calming down.


    "It''s a simple matter, really," Rui replied. "We, the Kandrian Empire, are currently in a war. We need all the help we can get. We hope to enlist you in our war effort in exchange for anything we are able to provide that ismensurate with the value of your services."


    Her expression grew intrigued. "An invitation to war, is it? That is unexpected; I didn''t think that you would being for me myself as opposed to my tribe''s techniques. I thought you came for our techniques."


    "Well, that was why my friend came along as well. I, however, came for you."


    She giggled at his words. "Well, I''m honored."


    "Came for you for war, that is." Rui felt the need to add that rifier for some reason.


    Her expression suddenly darkened as K''Ahru and N''Kulu cautiouslynded behind them, finally having caught up to her.


    "What are you two doing here?"


    The two men gulped as the chilling peril of a Martial Master sent chills down their spine.


    "I thought I made it clear, did I not?" She red at them coldly. "Absolutely no leaving the tribe until youplete your homework."


    Rui did a double-take when he heard that word. "Homework...?"


    "Help us, Rui of the Kandrian Empire!" K''Ahru tried to force Rui''s hand by making his request in front of K''M. "Save us from this tyrant!"


    "Oh, I see..." Her voice grew cold. "You tried to appeal to him to save you from me, didn''t you?"


    The two men winced at her words.


    "Looks like I''ll have to take the time to train you once more;e personally, you will never dare to do such a thing once more."


    "No!"


    "Sorry for the trouble!"


    They scurried away as they returned to the tribe in fear.


    "Hmph, if you weren''t here, they would experience pain unlike anything they have ever felt before." She turned towards Rui with a smile.


    Rui, on the other hand, stared at her with a serious expression. "K''M, just what have you done to them? I can''t imagine what must''ve happened for them to feel this way about you."


    When her attention had turned to them, Rui was able to sense apathy and ack of warmth in her eyes that only seemed to return when she gazed at him.


    She gazed at him for a moment, shaking her head lightly. "It''s not what you think."


    Rui raised an eyebrow. "I think I know what I saw. I saw people scared of their leader."


    She heaved a sigh as she grabbed his hand, tugging at him.


    "Come, I''ll show you."


    Rui let her pull him as they sky-walked across the ind. It wasn''t long before they happened upon arge vige that had almost sextupled in size since Ruist remembered it.


    "This..." Rui''s eyes lit up with interest.


    The sophistication of their civilization had risen since Ruist recalled. Their huts used to be made of mud; now, however, they were made of neatly carved wood that made forrger homes that could amodate more people and a greater quality of life.


    On top of that, the clothing that the people of the tribe donned had evolved beyond just animal pelts wrapped around their bodies to a form of flora-derived fabric that could be woven into clothing articles.


    That wasn''t all.


    "Agriculture." Rui''s eyes lit up with intrigue as he spotted tilled swathes ofnd outside the vige.


    It appeared that the G''ak''arkan Tribe had transitioned from a hunter-gatherer society to an agrarian society over the span of twenty years.


    He continued studying the vige and its people as they descended from the sky. He didn''t fail to notice the people scurrying in fear when the two of them arrived. He also noticed them gazing at Rui, holding hands with her in intrigue.


    "Ahem." He tried gently to extricate his hands from her unwilling grip.


    "Come." She pulled him in the direction of a particrlyrge building made from mortar, wood, and stone. "This is what I wanted to show you."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2288 Rejected

    Chapter 2288 Rejected


    Inside the building were children and Martial Artists sitting on the ground, carving into sheets made from fabric woven together.


    They were doing basic arithmetics, using the same numerals that were used in the international numeral system on the Panama Continent.


    It was the same thing that he had taught K''M twenty years ago when he educated on math and physics for eighteen months on all the knowledge needed to use the Pathfinder technique.


    It was actually a remarkably short amount of time to learn a huge amount of mathematics and science.


    It was a pity that she hadn''t received all this knowledge in a proper education at a young age; she would have been touted as a genius herself. But s, the Martial culture ruined most of her potential in this dimension. She was far past the age for rapid growth and absorption. N?velDrama.Org owns all ? content.


    However, that wasn''t true for the children of the G''ak''arkan Tribe. Their life trajectory had yet to be set. They didn''t need to live a meaningless and destructive life of daily strife and war where they fought for their lives for no real purpose or gain.


    Perhaps that was why K''M assimted the other tribes on the ind under a single banner. Without different entities, there would be no more war on the ind. Without war, the opportunity to change their life was feasible.


    However, there was no doubt to be a deep amount of resistance to her actions and her desire to change the destiny of war for the people of Vilun Ind.


    If that was the case, he could understand why she felt the need to use her unparalleled might as a Master to force them to change.


    "I see." Rui closed his eyes. "I''m starting to understand why you did what you did."


    "Right?" Her eyes lit up with delight. "I knew you would!"


    "However, I disapprove of your methodology even if the oue is desirable," Rui calmly remarked as he gazed at the children immersed in their education. "You have be an object of fear and hatred by the people of the vige. You are correct that they would benefit more from not living a life of daily violence, but from their perspective, you are eroding everything they ever knew and reced with something alien that they are unable to understand. Do you understand how horrifying that is from their perspective?"


    The warmth in her eyes disappeared once more as a hint of cruelty reced them. "No, and I don''t care to. They deserve it."


    There it was.


    A deep apathy that was highly uncharacteristic of the woman he once knew.


    For a second, he had wondered if he was mistaken.


    That perhaps she hadn''t suffered a tilt to psychopathy.


    Yet, as he gazed into her eyes, he could see that he wasn''t mistaken.


    She did indeed suffer from anti-social personality disorder caused by the Martial Mind.


    One might think that it was contradictory to want to help the tribe while suffering from psychopathy, but that was an oversimplistic view of the matter.


    The human mind,passion, and psychopathy were extremelyplex.


    It was possible for psychopathy to manifest in a myriad of different ways.


    "Oh well," Rui shrugged. "You''re the leader of the tribe; it''s not in my ce to tell you what to do."


    Her eyes grew crestfallen. "Don''t say that. None of this would have been possible without you. I wouldn''t have reached the fourth rank without you. If it wasn''t for you, I would never have discovered my affinity for thought."


    Rui stared at her.


    "I want to repay you."


    Her voice grew soft as she drew closer.


    "I want to show my gratitude to you."


    Her hands ran down his torso.


    "I want to¡ª"


    "If you want to repay me, then you partake in the war." Rui interrupted her with a deadpan tone.


    "¡­"


    "Well, I''m d that we were able to handle the issue this quickly."


    "¡­I suppose." She smiled bitterly. Rui simply stared at her knowingly. He wasn''t stupid. He could sense her emotions, so he knew what she was about to say.


    He had no intentions of entertaining it. For him to even consider a romantic rtionship, it would have to be someone with the ambition to pursue power and the aptitude to keep up with him. Anything else, and the romance would just crumble under the weight.


    Unfortunately, the only two people he personally knew that were capable of that were male.


    In the case of K''M, she was too tied to her tribe to be a prospective partner for Rui.


    Of course, Rui knew that there was no such thing as the perfect partner, but he had no intention of starting a rtionship without the confidence that it had any chance ofsting.


    Regardless, on a more fundamental level, he knew that he was not in the frame of mind to pursue a romantic rtionship when he still struggled to understand who he was. And while romantic fiction had worked hard to sell the power of love, he didn''t think it could help him in his current predicament.


    He felt bad for cutting her off and trying to leverage her gratitude to gain her support in the war, but he didn''t have the luxury to be considerate of her feelings. Winning the war was more important.


    "If I leave the vige, though, then all this progress wille undone." She frowned.


    "Don''t worry about that, and the Kandrian Empire will ensure it gets handled," Rui reassured her. "We''ll send some powerful Seniors to ensure that nothing goes awry once you leave the vige. I''ll even have teachers and trainers to help elerate your work even while you''re gone."


    Her eyes lit up. "In that case, I''ll go!"


    "Good, let me tell you about the incentive program we have in ce for all enlisted Masters¡­"


    He patiently exined to her all the things that she could earn for herself if she chose to partake in the war and contributed significantly.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2289 Different Kind of Peril

    Chapter 2289 Different Kind of Peril


    "Ok, now I''m definitelying." She grew deeply enthusiastic once she heard everything she could earn from her merits in the war.


    The one that interested her most was, of course, the Sage Realm. She grew deeply shocked at the revtion that a fifth rank existed above the fourth one. It turned out that there was far more to her journey as a Martial Artist than she had expected.


    It was the biggest card the Kandrian Empire had to offer to a Master who didn''t know anything about civilization on the main ind.


    The thing that interested her was the opportunity to upgrade her body with potions and the Divine Doctor.


    After all, the Squire evolution process of the G''ak''arkan Tribe was primitivepared to the highly sophisticated esoteric technology that the Kandrian Empire utilized, especially since the Kandrian Empire had gained the contributions of both Rui and the Divine Doctor, making its Squire evolution process the greatest in all of humanity. N?velDrama.Org (C) content.


    She was also interested in fighting other Masters.


    Ever since she broke through to the Master Realm, she had yet to fight a single Master and gain even an iota of experience as a Master on the battlefield.


    Rui knew that she would definitely be among the weaker Masters on the battlefield, but that was fine as was. Not every Master needed to have a high grade in order to make a meaningful contribution.


    Regardless, it appeared that she was quite receptive to his invitation.


    Even if he had rejected her before, she could have made an advance on him and used her gratitude to try to pressure her into the war.


    "Who are we fighting against?" She asked out of curiosity.


    "Other Sage-level powerhouses," Rui replied. "Nations as powerful or that used to be as powerful as the Kandrian Empire. I can assure you the war will be of a scale that you could hardly begin to imagine."


    "¡­You said earlier was too weak to contribute. Doesn''t that mean that the third and second rank are entirely meaningless in the war?" She keenly realized.


    "Correct." Rui nodded appreciatively. "Seniors are limited to support roles and can only have significance when Masters overpush and exhaust their stamina; we recently had the fortune of witnessing such an event where the most powerful Seniors of our nation were able to make major contributions to the war. But these are quite rare. Only Masters and mainly Sages will decide the oue of the war."


    She heaved a sigh. "It''s a muchrger world than I had ever expected. To think that strength we used to be so proud of meant nothing in the face of the titans of human civilization."


    Rui stirred. "I suppose that''s true."


    "In hindsight, you lot must''veughed at our pride and arrogance despite merely being of the thirdrank."


    "Well,ugh is a strong word, but yes, I suppose in hindsight, being as arrogant as the tribes of the ind used to be wasughable. I especially feel this way, having reached the fourth rank."


    At the time, he respected them due to the fact that he was of the Squire Realm and thus weaker, but now, he could only shake his head at their embarrassing arrogance.


    He was just d that despite breaking through to the Master Realm and gaining enormous power that far exceeded what she possessed in the past, she didn''t seem to develop an ego, even if she developed some degree of psychopathy.


    Considering that she had been told that the Senior Realm was the limit, that was quite the miracle. "If I die, do you promise to take care of the G''ak''arkan Tribe and make sure that they continue down the path that I have set them upon?"


    Rui turned to her with a serious expression. "That''s a rather pessimistic request."


    "It''s not unrealistic. It is a simple conclusion to infer that I''m deficientpared to Martial Artists of the fourth rank from the continent like you. If all of them are like you, then I''m certainly at high risk of dying."


    "Well, I wouldn''t say that they are all like me," he coughed. "I''m different. Like very different."


    "Hm, then I will have to judge how I am rtive to my peers in person and through experience."


    "Still, I will adhere to your request," Rui replied. "I''m curious to see the long-term effects of the education system that you''ve set up on the Martial Artists and the children."


    She cocked her head in surprise. "You mean to say that you don''t inculcate thought into your children despite knowing full well that it is fundamental to reach the fourth rank?"


    Rui stirred at her words. "Well, I''ve never inquired into the education policies of the Martial Academy, but the prevailing school of thought used to be that there was no need to inculcate thought so early into their development since it was only relevant after they became Seniors. However, in more recent times, thought has been inculcated into Martial Artists at a much earlier phase than ever before."


    He referred, of course, to the voidlet techniques that had been propagated to all of the Lower Realms of Martial Artists in the Kandrian Empire and had begun having a major impact on the rate of breakthroughs into the Master Realm. "Ok, let''s put all those matters aside for now," she abruptly remarked. "I want to experience my first battle against a Master. I have waited far too long to be denied this. Let''s fight."


    Rui stared at her, amused. "Alright, I''ll humor you. I am curious to see how strong you are.Be warned that your instincts of a Master''sbat power cannot be trusted. Let us see what you have done with my Pathfinder technique over twenty years."


    She smiled with a strange light in her eyes. "Let''s go to a different ind; we cannot affordto hurt the people here with our Martial Embodiments."


    Rui felt a kind of peril from her, yet it wasn''t the usual kind.


    -


    He was just d that despite breaking through to the Master Realm and gaining enormous power that far exceeded what she possessed in the past, she didn''t seem to develop an ego, even if she developed some degree of psychopathy.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2290 Environmental Energy Redirection

    Chapter 2290 Environmental Energy Redirection


    Now that Rui thought about it, he had never seen her fight, even back then. He had never seen any of the warriors of the G''ak''arkan Tribe fight against their peers or their enemies.


    Of course, he knew that they were all specialized in long-rangebat. Thus, he already knew what her Martial Path was going to be about,rgely speaking. He was interested in whether she would show him something new.


    STEP


    The two of them arrived at a distant yetrge and uninhabited ind that was out of the field of vision of Vilun Ind. They didn''t want to identally kill everybody if their Martial Embodiments were somehow visible even that great distance away, unlikely as it was.


    Rui''s, in particr, would kill Martial Artists as well, not just civilians.


    BADUMP!


    Their Martial Hearts burst into power as they activated it, followed shortly by their Martial Minds.


    That was when she saw his Embodiment.


    Her eyes widened with pure shock as a tsunami of endless darkness flooded the entirety of the world. N?velDrama.Org (C) content.


    It subsumed all of heaven and earth, consuming them outright.


    A flood of information greater than any other she had ever been hit with crashed into her mind as she felt a burden weighing down on her mind.


    It wasn''t light, but it was far from enough to paralyze her.


    "Not bad." Rui smiled. There have been those who have been unable to do even what you have."


    She narrowed her eyes. "Don''t patronize me!"


    WHOOSH!


    She surged forward as her very existence seemed to transform in Rui''s eyes.


    She became the sharp winds of the chilly north, ones that could almost cut everything that they touched.


    WHOOSH!!


    She breathed in deeply, manipting the heavens to her beck and call.


    Rui simply waited.


    They both knew that she was the challenger.


    Of course, Rui also knew that Masters could not be judged by intuition alone. However, even then, he was almost certain that he was stronger than her.


    If she wanted to be treated like an equal, she would have to earn it.


    What followed, however, surprised him.


    WHOOOOOSH!!


    His eyes widened as she unleashed a remarkable wind st that soared towards him at lightning-fast speeds, threatening to wipe him away with a single attack.


    BOOOOOM!!


    Rui narrowed his eyes as he endured the tremendous wind sts, dispersing its power with Flux Earther.


    Yet, he frowned. "How did you¡­?"


    How did she release an attack that was twice as powerful as the energy that her body generated?


    That was what he wanted to ask.


    Unfortunately, he didn''t have the chance.


    WHOOOSH WHOOOSH WHOOOSH!


    Before he knew it, several sts of wind converged upon him at remarkable speeds.


    BAM BAM BAM!!!


    He swerved through the air, evading them by an inch.


    Wind sts tended to be slower than sound attacks, but they also tended to be much wider than sound attacks, making them even harder to avoid.


    Yet, despite having avoided them, he couldn''t help but frown.


    "Why am I having trouble predicting her attacks¡­?"


    WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH!


    He sensed her manipting heaven and earth ahead of time, yet he was unable to foresee the five attacks that converged upon them.


    BOOOOOOM!!


    "Tsk, how is he avoiding my heavenly wrath sts!?" She grumbled as she continued to attack with attack after attack.


    Rui, on the other hand, was pleasantly surprised to see her demonstrating that he had indeed never seen before.


    He studied her like a hawk, observing her passive patterns such as the shifting of her body weight, her breathing, and her muscle tension and twitches.


    He foresaw a great exertion in power in about two microseconds, yet¡ª


    WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH!


    His eyes widened as he failed to foresee the three wind sts that converged upon him from outside of the Tempestuous Feel.


    BAM BAM BAM!


    He met them with three Might Roar sh sts, dispelling them with effortless ease.


    "Hah! You''ve gotten really good at that technique!" She grinned, recognizing them on the spot.


    The G''ak''arkan Tribe had been the one to teach that technique to him in the first ce, after all. Rui had taken the liberty to show off how smooth his proficiency with the technique had grown in the past twenty years.


    "Hah, let''s go; we''re just getting started," Her hands and legs began swaying as she activated yet another breathing technique. Her movements generated even greater wind currents by virtue of the sheer power that underlied them.


    Yet, it wasn''t as though power was directly being flung at Rui, no. Instead, she created pressure and temperature gradients that harnessed the ambient kic energy of the winds and the air over an enormous amount of volume and amplified with her own heaven-bending before directing it towards Rui in a remarkably short timeframe.


    A single gust of wind with enormous power.


    BOOOOOM!!


    "Got him!" She eximed with a grin.


    Unfortunately, she only realized that her rejoice was misced.


    "I see. So, that is how you utilized my Pathfinder technique. It''s impressive, really."


    She froze as Rui''s calm voice emerged from the cloud of dust.


    "You utilized the Pathfinder''s extraption of local atmospheric change to increase the range of your atmospheric energy redirection."


    In other words, her Martial was centered around long-range environmental energy redirection, and Pathfinder was the perfect tool to increase the range and scope of her energy redirection.


    In other words, as long as she was able to understand the specifics of how the atmosphere was going to change, she could drain the atmosphere''s energy over huge radii and redirect it to empower her attacks.


    She would have undoubtedly needed to modify the Pathfinder technique to increase its scope from one dimension to three dimensions.


    It sounded simple, but it was actually extremely difficult.


    STEP


    Rui emerged from the dust cloud unharmed. "No wonder you took an entire decade after that; it''s actually quite impressive."


    "Tsk," she tutted as she fired several attacks at him.


    THWOOM THWOOM THWOOM!


    Yet, just as they were about to hit him¡ª


    WHOOSH¡­


    They dispelled out of nowhere, seemingly disappearing into thin air.


    "Unfortunately, I have already adaptively evolved to them."


    He had no intention of exining how.


    WHOOSH!


    In the blink of an eye, he arrived before her as a powerful Yin-Yang Spear surged towards her.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2291: Indulged

    Chapter 2291: Indulged


    ?


    His attack came close.


    Yet, it wasn''t close enough.


    WHOOSH!


    In the final moment, K''M was just barely able to move out of the way, avoiding the extraordinary attack. She barely managed to activate a breathing technique that shifted the heavens along with her.


    A wasteful technique that squandered most of its energy but instead offered a quick getaway in times when she couldn''t afford to wait too long.


    This had been one of those times.


    "Huff...Huff..." She panted, drenched with sweat, as she stared at Rui with an aghast expression.


    Just then, she felt it.


    The immense peril of his attack.


    She had just avoided death.


    "I had a feeling that you wouldn''t be done in that easily," he lightlymented. "That''s good. The battlefield is chaotic, you know? You need to be quick on your feet if you want to survive it."


    She red at him. "Don''t patronize me. I''ve been fighting in wars far longer than you have!" The heavens stirred as she harnessed their power, guiding and amplifying it with her own.


    The heavens converged upon Rui.


    Yet, he had already adaptively evolved to her.


    "You''re constrained by the energy dynamics of the atmosphere," Rui remarked, activation technique. "As long as I know that, it is easy to predict what you''ll do. And what I can foresee, I can also ovee."


    WHOOSH!


    She grew stunned as a resistive force impeded her ability to harness the heavens.


    Yet, Rui was hardly done.


    While he activated his breathing techniques to generate currents and pressure gradients, they impeded her efforts to redirect the power of the heavens against him. This was a sub- technique application of the Muspelheim and the Niflheim that allowed him to manipte the heavens with great control and precision.


    Of course, that also meant that he himself couldn''t manipte the heavens when resisting her efforts.


    However, he didn''t need to.


    WHOOSH!


    He arrived before her in the blink of an eye.


    "Let''s see how good you are in close quarters inbat."


    BAM BAM BAM!!!


    "Rrrgh!" She grimaced as she threw together a guard that barely allowed her to withstand his offense without losing consciousness then and there. She was not a close-quarters specialist as a long-range Martial Artist. Yet, she knew that he wouldn''t go too easy on her just because of that.


    She was grateful that he hadn''t used that extraordinary attack earlier.


    His power was so great that he could kill her with a single blow.


    This was especially because the differences in their Martial Bodies were too great. It was why he was impressed with her performance despite how poor it was.


    She would be much stronger once she consumed some augmentation potions to improve her physicality and had the Divine Doctor improve her primitive Martial Body.


    POW POW POW!!


    He adopted a hybrid infighting-outfighting boxing style, pummeling her with a series of short but swift blows as she struggled to keep up with them.


    He was regting his strength to ensure that he pushed her to her very limits and not an inch beyond.


    Yet, the fact that he was holding back to such a degree only frustrated her even more. Just twenty years ago, she had been a Senior while he had been a Squire.


    Since then, he has not only managed to close the gap between them but also skyrocketed far past her in the Master Realm.


    She could tell that he was only using a minute fraction of his full,pletebat power, so much so that she hadn''t the faintest idea just how strong he was. He did say that he was worried, but now she wondered if she was entirely outmatched by the Masters of the main continent.


    "Let''s see how good you are when ites to grappling."


    CLASP


    He charged at her abdomen, going for a takedown that she was entirely toote to react to. BOOOOOM!!!


    The takedown caused a crater wider than a city, at the center of which were the grappling Masters.


    Rui could tell that she was entirely inexperienced. She struggled awkwardly as she wrestled in his grasp, trying to break free.


    Unfortunately, while Rui was no grappling specialist, he was more than proficient enough to outmaneuver a novice in that regard. Since the G''ak'' arkan Tribe did not have foundational Martial Stages as the Martial Academies did, she did not have even a decent foundation in the


    field.


    CLASP


    His arm coiled around her neck, strangling her and restricting her blood flow.


    Chokeholds were finishers in most cases.


    This was one of those cases.


    TAP TAP


    Rui released his grip on her upon feeling her tapping out.


    The two of themid them, trying to catch their breath.


    K''M more than Rui, of course.


    "You''re stronger than I could have imagined."


    Her voice was filled with admiration and bitterness.Content is ? by N?velDrama.Org.


    Yet, Rui could sense more.


    "Well, thanks."


    She turned around, facing him head-on.


    Complicated emotions and sensations lit up in her eyes and her mind.


    "How are you so strong?" She demanded to know.


    Rui shrugged. "Talented, I guess."


    She stared at him in disbelief. "Is it even possible to be that talented? I was considered to be extremely talented in the G''ak''arkan Tribe, but I have never seen so much grow so strong so quickly. Tell me, how did you get so strong?"


    He heaved a sigh. "I have circumstances that have worked in my favor that you might as well consider talent. So, ultimately, I am simply gifted in ways that you cannot even begin to


    imagine."


    "...It''s not fair." Sheined bitterly. "If I was born on the main continent, I would have been much stronger than I am now."


    Rui couldn''t argue with that. It was simply true that even if she was born in a weak nation, she could have immigrated to a stronger nation that would have allowed her to be much stronger


    than she is now.


    Her hands ran across his body in her envy.


    She could have had such a powerful Martial Body if she had been born in the Kandrian Empire, too. She would have been able to live to her maximum potential with the efficient Martial culture and resources of the Martial Union.


    Rui could sense the envy and jealousy she had for his Body.


    And her arousal.


    Her hands ran up his body as his deep gaze met her suggestive eyes. She could feel his heavy


    heartbeat ringing against hers as she leaned in, drawing closer. Their lips met, pressing into each other as their hands ran across each other''s body, unclothing each other.


    Their stay on the deserted indsted far longer than the duel did.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2292: Rare Event

    Chapter 2292: Rare Event


    ?


    Rui knew that he probably shouldn''t have indulged his urges and lust, especially in those circumstances. He was the formal ambassador of the Martial Union and the Kandrian Empire. It reflected poorly on both those organizations if he engaged in illicit activities while representing them.


    Yet, it was precisely because of these circumstances that he felt deeply aroused.


    Back in the Kandrian Empire, his status had reached unprecedented levels for any Martial Master, achieving a realm of political and Martial power that was extraordinarily high even by the standards of Martial Sages.


    If he desired women, he could have himself an ocean of them.


    Yet, all of them sought him for status as a Master, his status as the informal crown prince, his status as the diamond boy of the Martial Union. Without them, they would be gone, which turned him off. The effort it took to find a partner that wasn''t primarily driven by such greed was too much.Text content ? N?velDrama.Org.


    K''M, however, had no idea that he was the prince of the Kandrian Empire. She didn''t know that he was an extremely important person in the Martial Union. Of course, she was well aware of his Martial power, and that was primarily why she lusted after him.


    Still...


    It felt more personal than any advance he had ever received from most other women after returning to the Kandrian Empire. It deeply turned him on for the first time in years as he proceeded to fully indulge in his lust in abandon.


    An entire day passed by the time they were done.


    "Huff...huff...huff..."


    The twoy on the ground as they panted heavily, exhausted.


    "I... ept your offer." She remarked, resting her head on his chest. "I look forward to seeing what the world has to offer. That ind is too small for me now that I have reached the fourth rank."


    "You probably shouldn''t be limited that you can effortlessly destroy with a single attack. The Kandrian Empire has training resources that could fully contain the might of the Master in a small region. You can train and fight to your heart''s content while you''re there."


    She ran her fingers through his abdomen with an excited smile.


    "We even have thought techniques that have gotten even more popr after I became Master; it''s still not toote for you to explore the full depth of your capacity for thought.


    That you make her more enthusiastic about epting his offer.


    She looked forward to making the most of her potential.


    She looked forward to learning about the power of a Higher Realm.


    There was a lot that she looked forward to.


    As for her tribe.


    "Hmph." Her eyes red with cold resentment. "I''m done with those ungrateful fools. I tried to educate them, to show them a life beyond meaningless daily violence. But, they only resent me for it. Why should I sacrifice myself for people who don''t appreciate the future that I''m trying to lead them to? I will miss the children, but there is a limit to how much I can do as well."


    In other words, she was abandoning the G''ak''arkan Tribe.


    It was not a light decision.


    Normally, the G''ak''arkan Tribe punished all those who abandoned the tribe with a public execution.


    In this case, however, the G''ak''arkan Tribe was sorelycking in power to enforce that norm. Rui was sure that N''Kulu and K''Ahru would be extremely happy to hear about her decision to leave the Tribe. It was in line with the goal that they had originally requested of Rui, but he fulfilled it in a way that benefited all parties involved.


    "I''m sure that the Martial Union will be happy to amodate you."


    Getting new Masters was always a good thing.


    "Fighting you, however, has taught me that I''m sorelycking in awareness of how battles between Masters are fought on the maind are fought." She frowned.


    This was not a small problem.


    Still, it was far from insurmountable.


    "It can be solved; we can get you arge amount of training in a short amount of time," Rui reassured her.


    "Mmm...I look forward to that," she replied drowsily, slowly falling asleep in his arms.


    The exhaustion and strain from the Mind took over as they fell asleep for quite some time. Until, of course, they woke up.


    When Rui opened his eyes, he jolted upward with a shock as his senses spread around, inspecting their surroundings for any threats.


    "Stupid, should have gotten back to the ind first." He massaged his forehead, cursing himself.


    He was lucky to be alive, considering how many people wanted to kill him.


    He nced at her sleeping peacefully as he realized that he was more impulsive than he had realized. Just the fact that he learned more about himself was worth the risks he had


    undertaken.


    After that, he woke K''M up as they swiftly headed back to Vilun Ind and the vige.


    "There you are..." Master Ceeran peered suspiciously. "I was wondering if I should raise the


    rm back home."


    "Did you?" Rui''s eyes widened.


    "No, but what were you doing all this time?" He raised an eyebrow.


    "Sparring, of course," Rui replied in a perfectly nonchnt voice. "What did you think we were doing?"


    He raised an eyebrow, throwing a dubious expression at Master Ceeran.


    Unfortunately, while he was well-trained in controlling his bodynguage, the same could not be said about K''M, who could not help but recall everything that they had gone and done in the heat of the moment.


    "Sparring... was it?" Master Ceeran peered suspiciously at her.


    Whether he had merely suspicions or had figured out the truth, he didn''t interrogate them any further, much to Rui''s relief.


    That day, K''M made her announcement to the G''ak''arakan Tribe regarding her decision to step down as the chieftain and to leave the G''ak''arkan Tribe.


    Her announcement was met with positivity, which only made her more determined to leave.


    "Mission aplished," Rui told Master Ceeran. "Told you it would only take a day."


    "Yes, I''m sure your ''unconventional methods'' were highly useful in winning over her heart," Master Ceeran snorted.


    Rui smiled wryly at his words. "I suppose they were."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2293: Urgent Matters

    Chapter 2293: Urgent Matters


    ?


    Soon enough, it was time to leave.


    The G''ak''arkan Tribe had no formal system of governance and power; thus, the transfer of power from daughter to father was effortless and instantaneous.


    Rui and K''M departed from the ind after bidding Ceeran goodbye, who chose to spend more time studying some of the unusual techniques of the tribe in detail.


    "What kind of ce is the Kandrian Empire like?" She wondered.


    "...Big," Rui muttered. "It''s hard to describe to a person who has lived on an ind her entire life. But, the Kandrian Empire is absolutely enormous."


    "Bigger than Vilun Ind?" She asked with a sh of curiosity.


    Rui snorted at her question. "A billion timesrger. Let''s go, I''ll show you."


    BADUMP! BADUMP!


    They activated their Hearts and Minds as they surged towards the Kandrian Empire at top speed. With the speed of a Martial Master, they were able to cover an enormous amount of distance in a short amount of time.


    When she beheld the east coast of the Kandrian Empire, she could not help but gasp at the sheer scale of civilization that she witnessed.


    An enormous spread of buildings and harbors spread across the entirety of the coast of the Port Town of Farund, stretching beyond where the eye could see. She marveled at the infrastructure of the buildings that littered the enormous town and beyond.


    She could not help but gasp at the sheer number of ships that came to and left from the harbors across the entire port town.


    It was beyond anything she had imagined possible.


    "Incredible..."


    She could feel the bustling energy of the people working in the town brimming with energy, one unlike anything she had ever seen in Vilun Ind.


    "The Kandrian Empire''s maritime industries have increased astronomically in the past three years thanks to the efforts of my father and half-sister," Rui informed her. "Since then, we have connected with the entire world through the Great Nam Ocean, strengthening our position in human civilization even as our enemies try to harm our connections to the world." He smiled as he enjoyed her unadulterated reaction to the Kandrian Empire.


    Although he was nationalistic or patriotic, he did take pride in the Kandrian Empire. It was far from perfect, but considering how the other powerhouses turned out to be, he was definitely proud of the way that the Kandrian Empire turned out to be as a nation.


    It also put into perspective the things that everybody took for granted.


    The wonders of human civilization were miracles in and of themselves to people like K''M, who came from a small ind with nothing. This was especially true for the Kandrian Empire, which was trending to be a powerhouse among powerhouses.


    For the first time in his life, gazing at the Kandrian Empire, he truly felt like he was a prince.


    It was a truth that never fully sunk in, at least not in his feelings.


    Yet, looking at the visible awe, admiration, and amazement on her face, he felt proud of the Kandrian Empire as its crown prince, as someone with the birthright to rule over the Kandrian Empire.


    Of course, he still wanted nothing to do with actually ruling the Empire.


    Yet, nothing fell off about the strange contradiction.


    He shrugged as the two of them headed deeper into the Kandrian Empire, traveling slowly as they took in more sights and ces.


    Mundane things that Rui had seen perhaps a million times were able to sprout a variety of emotions in K''M.


    "What''s that?!"


    "A bridge."


    "And that?!"


    "A carriage."


    "And this?!"


    "A canal."


    They arrived at their destination, and Rui gently indulged her curiosity all the way through.


    "And... what''s this?" She whispered with awe.Content is ? by N?velDrama.Org.


    "This..." Rui slowly descended. "...Is the headquarters of the Martial Union."


    K''M had never seen an establishment so absurdly enormous.


    The headquarters of the Martial Union wasrge enough to be considered its own town, even if very small. Within it, all major decisions impacted not just the entire town or even region but the entire nation and all of East Panama.


    It was difficult for K''M to fathom that it was possible to even create something thisrge.


    "Go," Rui instructed. "I have informed the Martial Union of your decision. A team of assistants and managers who have been trained in the Vilun Dialect is waiting for you. Thus, you have nothing to worry about. They''ll aid you with everything you need and need to do to join the Martial Union and partake in the war. They are even authorized to give a briefing on human civilization."


    She turned to him.


    "You won''t being?"


    He shook his head. "I have pressing matters to attend to."


    She hesitated for a moment before nodding. "Alright, then, can we meet again?"


    "When you''re done with the most important matters, I suppose. That can take some time. As I said, I have important matters to attend to. But, we''ll be seeing each other soon enough."


    She nodded. "Until then."


    Rui heaved a brief sigh as he watched her enter the Martial Union headquarters.


    He was not good at regting rtionships. However, it didn''t appear that she was too interested in pursuing a deep romantic rtionship with him.


    That was good.


    While he indulged himself with her, he was not willing to pursue a rtionship yet. He was quite certain about that. He had too much to do, to work on before he could even seriously


    consider it.


    His eyes narrowed as he grew more serious.


    He had had his fun on the ind.


    More than he should''ve.


    But now that he was back, he couldn''t afford to waste more time.


    Two particr matters of import came to mind.


    One of them was the matter regarding his sect.


    He wasn''t enthused about it and reluctantly epted it as a prudent measure if he ever hit the


    bottleneck.


    Now, however, he wanted to establish another tool that could help him reach the Sage Realm.


    The second matter was actually more urgent consideration.


    "I need to decide where I will be deploying myself in the war for allies."


    His significance in the war was so high that wherever he chose, it would definitely impact the


    situation.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2294 Sect Considerations

    Chapter 2294 Sect Considerations


    Rui intended to begin immediately working on his sect and ensure that it was at least underway before he left the nation to win over and reinforce allies of the Kandrian Empire. As much as he wanted to leave immediately and partake in a Master-level battleground, he needed to ensure that he did whatever he needed to get done with setting up the seed of his sect so that it may bear him fruit when he needed it.


    He didn''t know how long he would be away from the Kandrian Empire.


    Wars were rarely resolved in a matter of months, after all.


    It was entirely possible that he would spend years away from the Kandrian Empire.


    Thus, he ought to ensure that he handle all the tasks in the Kandrian Empire before heading out to partake in a historic war that would define the future of East Panama.


    "My goal with creating my sect, the Water Sect, is to have as many Martial Artists with Martial Paths that are centered around the concept of Adaptive Evolution practicing and pursuing Adaptive Evolution," he reminded himself, closing his eyes. "The more such Martial Artists there are, the better."


    That was the objective of the Sect Project.


    "What are the conditions necessary to achieve this objective?"


    He began breaking down the goal and the requirements that he would have to fulfill to achieve his objective.


    "Well, for one, the sect needs to be created."


    That was a pretty basic no-brainer.


    Yet, creating a sect was not a simple or easy matter.


    For one, it was an organization that was created by like-minded Martial Artists when it came to Martial Paths with the goal of spreading the underlying field that characterized their Martial Path to increase the number of Martial Artists so that their field could progress and grow stronger, ensuring they grew stronger.


    The most prominent way that they did this was by levying their numbers in the Annual Martial Fiscal Committee meeting, where they allocated, through votes, how two allocate capital to Martial Art.


    The way they grew their field with Martial Artists was to incentivize and attract Apprentices, Squires, and often even Seniors to join their sect with various schemes such as training and growth resources, as well as the guidance and tutge of Martial Artists of higher Realms, techniques not avable in the Martial Union, among other things.


    Rui recalled being scouted by the major sects, among others, from the time he was an Apprentice. He had lost track of the number of sects that had tried to recruit him, especially after he returned as the youngest Senior in history.


    While Rui never epted these offers due to not wanting topromise the bnce in his Martial Art, many Martial Artists did ept their offers in hopes of getting perks to improve their Martial Art progression. They joined the sect that matched their sect the closest while contributing their techniques to the sect, as mandated per their contract, while using the sect''s resources and offers to progress as far as possible.


    Thus, sects were able to grow their field by attracting Martial Artists, which increased their progress, and the number of Masters they had, which also increased their progress.


    "This is how a sect functions, but what are the elements thatprise a sect?" He mentally jotted down the things that he needed to found and maintain a functioning sect.


    There were many elements thatprised a sect.


    Sects as organizations wereprised of the actual non-profit entity registered on paper in the records of the Ministry of Corporate Affairs. This would be the technical entity under which thend, inventory, and treasury of the sect would be registered as recognized by the government.


    In other words, Rui needed to create an organization on paper with the Ministry of Corporate Affairs before purchasing enormous swathes ofnd upon which he would build his headquarters. This in and of itself could be an annoyingly long task that couldn''t be finished soon. He would definitely need to contract with one of the mega-constructionpanies in the nation to undertake a project of this magnitude. "Also, it would need to be maintained smoothly in a manner that ensures that it is able to fulfill its purpose."


    He would need a dedicated administrative team to care for all these matters; he could do it himself if he wanted to, but there was absolutely no way in hell that he would be willing to take such time-consuming matters into his own hands.


    "Fortunately, I still have Micha and the rest of my faction administrative staff on retainer."


    He didn''t just fire all of them after his faction dissolved. He kept them on standby while paying them high sries to ensure that they didn''t need to go elsewhere, giving them minimal work around matters surrounding him.


    After all, it would be a waste to get rid of a team that had been vetted as much as they had been. Given that there had been no major information leaks during his time as apetitor for the throne, they had proven that they were trustworthy enough.


    Thus, he had kept them all this time. And, now, he had the perfect job to put them to.


    He could have them serve as the administrative staff of his sect; they could handle all logistics, management, and oversight on the development of the sect. Of course, they could only handle the technical minutiae; there were things that only he could handle. N?velDrama.Org (C) content.


    For example¨C What were the incentives, benefits, and gains that would attract Martial Artists to his sect?


    Yet he was extremely popr in the Martial Community; however, that alone would not make his sect popr. He needed to offer something that would make Martial Artists join his sect instead of other sects.


    That wasn''t going to be easy since other sects had plenty of Martial Artists and tons of resources and techniques to offer.


    The question was, how was he going to match that?


    A smile emerged on his face as a flood of ideas came to him. "This will be fun."


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2295 Partnering Agreements

    Chapter 2295 Partnering Agreements


    "So, if I''m getting this correct, sir, your goal is to create a Martial sect, and you wish to manageand oversee itscreation and management after its creation?"


    "Correct." Rui nodded at Mikha. "For now, I just need the minutiae of the nning of the sect to be taken care of. Only once that''s done can we actually create a sect. Until then, we have to set up things. I hope to delegate the management and oversight of this project to you guys. What do you say? Interested in getting hired by the Water Sect?"


    She smiled at him. "I would be honored, sir."


    "Good. I''ll create the organization on paper soon and register the former administrative staff of my faction as employees of the new sect. Spread the world and create an administrative structure fitting for the sect."


    "Understood, sir. I''ll get to it right away."


    "Also, prepare a governmental registration form and oversee the creation of a bank ount in the National Kandrian Bank in the name of the Water Sect."


    "Will do, sir."


    His former factional administrative dove right into the nning of the technical aspects of the sect while he sat back and thought about his vision of the sect.


    It was fine to the most spectacr sect pavilion, headquarters, banner, and name and whatnot. However, without incentives to attract Martial Artists to join his sect, he would never be able to grow his sect to the size that was needed to ensure that it would be of use when he truly needed it. "What can I offer to Martial Artists that will get them to choose my sect over others?"


    He had thought long and hard about these questions and hade up with several solutions that could potentially be enough to handle the problem and ensure that it did not impede his goal with the sect.


    "Breakthroughs."


    It was the first thing toe to mind.


    This was especially viable now that his ability had already been leaked as a result of his saving Kane. Since people already knew about it, there was no issue with publicizing it and using it to fuel the demand to enter his sect.


    "I suppose I''ll have to stop doing free breakthroughs," Rui muttered. "Tsk, if not for the war that might destroy the Kandrian Empire, I would have never done them for free in the first ce."


    Who in the world would offer breakthroughs free of cost as Rui had been doing so? Even his father knew that the only reason he could even make that request was that three Sage-level powerhouses were doing everything in their power to harm the Kandrian Empire.


    "Now, however, I can reduce the number of free breakthroughs and reserve them for those who enter my sect. I can still continue doing the same number of breakthroughs while I am here so that the Kandrian Empire benefits the same overall, except within the Kandrian Empire, the benefits go to the Water Sect. This is ideal."


    This way, he could benefit from his ownbor.


    "Breakthroughs are great, but they''re not enough for my goals."


    He didn''t want Martial Artists to enter his sect with the sole goal of breakthroughs. He wanted them to also join the sect for pursuing Adaptive Evolution. This meant that his sect needed to be able to facilitate and aid their growth in the field of Adaptive Evolution. Otherwise, there was no point in even having a sect. His goal wasn''t just to have a big organization; he wanted as many people as possible to make advancements and developments.


    "I need to provide resources necessary to help them make progress with adaptive evolution."


    Such as specialized training resources that would aid with progress in the field and the techniques to learn. N?velDrama.Org owns all ? content.


    "¡­Looks like I might have to contract with the Martial Union formally to borrow their existing proprietary technology and contract with some esoteric tech developers to add a little something extra on top of that."


    He knew that his father had Charles DiViliers working for him on retainer for essentially free of cost in exchange for a royal pardon. He would need tomission him in order to get the high-quality training and growth resources that he sought.


    All sects reserved techniques and resources for their respective fields that not even the Martial Union had, all for the sake of drawing in those Martial Artists who only cared about their Martial power.


    He would need to do the same with the Water Sect.


    These were extraordinarily difficult for most people to achieve in the short run, and the Martial Union seldom gave out its proprietary technology for any amount of money. On top of that, the top esoteric technology developers didn''t just signrge agreements with just about anybody.


    Thankfully, it was at moments like these that his status came to be of use.


    Just his status as a powerful and the most prodigious Master was enough to earn the attention of the tycoons of the esoteric development industry. His other identities made it so that they could not ignore his approaches without consequences.


    "Once I get their services and help, it should be enough to foster growth in the Water Sect when ites to Adaptive Evolution."


    This was enough of an initiative for the start of the sect as long as he fleshed it out and ensured that it was in the best interests of his goal of creating the sect in the first ce. Once the sect''s growth teaued, he could work on adding more incentives.


    "Breakthroughs, resources, and techniques¡­" He murmured to himself. "The former requires no preparation on my part, and the second requires long-term partnership agreements with esoteric developers, but it is still straightforward. The techniques, however¡­"


    He scratched his head. "That won''t be so simple."


    What technique was he to offer to attract Martial Artists to his sect?


    "I suppose I''ll have to offer diluted and less mentally intensive forms of the various systems in my Martial Art. Still, that will take time¡­"


    Adapting and converting his Martial Art into Adaptive Evolution techniques that could be used by others was a time-consuming affair, which was normally a no-go, thanks to the war. "I have the manifold, though," Rui smirked. "Time to grind in there and get these done."


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2296: An Old Acquaintance

    Chapter 2296: An Old Acquaintance


    ?


    "It has truly been a long time, Your Highness," Charles Diviliers smiled as he shook hands with Rui. "Thest time we met, you were just an Apprentice of some note. Now however..."


    His pleasant smile deepened, "you have be one of the most important and significant figures of the entire nation. Never in my wildest dreams did I expect you to rise to the levels that you have."


    Rui narrowed his eyes as he peered into the man''s eyes and into his mind.


    He could only sense sincerity.


    "I see you haven''t changed one bit despite your fall from grace, Chairman Diviliers," his tone was frosty.


    He recalled how he used to partake in the Martial Games hosted by the man a long time ago; he had run into the now-deceased Prince Rajak back then, which tipped him to the fact that the man was associated with the Underworld.


    "Ah, call me Charles," the man offered a humble smile. "I have, as you pertinently pointed out, from grace. I am no longer a powerhouse in the development industry, merely an appointee to my ownpany after it was absorbed by the government. Someone of your status need not pay me any regard."


    The Royal Acquisition Act passed by his father allowed him to absorbpanies found to be exceeding a certain threshold of crime with the intent of salvaging the parts of thepany that were of too much value to the nation to be dissolved.


    The once mighty Diviliers Industries that dominated the Martial tech developmentndscape as an oligarch had been cut down to size and absorbed into the Ministry of Commerce and Industry as a governmental program.


    "Well then, Charles, you seem to be doing well, almost too well, in fact," Rui remarked as he sized the man.


    His glorious long hair and beard were still immactely groomed as he wore custom- tailored business suits that fit him like a glove, his left eye adorned a silver-gold monocle over it while he carried a cane with him by his side.


    His words had been humble, yet his presence had not diminished by any means.


    "I have been doing well," he readily admitted. "We live in an exciting age in changing times. I look forward to witnessing and contributing to the growth of the Kandrian Empire as the first nation to ovee The Great Limit."


    He smiled at Rui. "I have a feeling that I can do so even more if I heed you. That was why I hastily epted your appointment when I had the chance. I''m deeply curious about what the vaunted Dawnbringer wishes to do with a mere governmental servant like me."


    Rui disliked people like him. Just listening to him speak irked him as the manner of his conduct wasden with deception.


    Unfortunately, he was the best developer for Martial resources in the Kandrian Empire by far.


    "I''m starting a sect around Adaptive Evolution."


    Charles'' eyes widened with surprise as his smile deepened. "You have my undivided attention and interest."


    "My Martial Path is not the simplest to train. It isn''t as simple as that of the Fire Sect or the Earth Sect," he began. "Thus, the resources needed to train them are also not so straightforward. I need the aid of an aplished developer to create the training resources needed to train Adaptive Evolution efficiently."Content is ? by N?velDrama.Org.


    The man fell into thought as his eyes shed with interest and curiosity. "Indeed, Adaptive Evolution is not that simple as a concept, proficiency in it will be much more difficult to measurepared to other Martial Paths."


    "On top of that, it is not mutually exclusive with other fields. In fact, it may very well be that to adapt to everything, one must master everything. Thus, you will need to create training resources for different parameters that I will go into at ater date."


    "In other words, you need resources that can test and train Adaptive Evolution as an emergent field born from multiple other fields."


    Rui nodded. "This is why I cannot go to the average Martial resource developmentpany and make a demand like this. They simplyck thepetence to get what I need to be done."


    Charles nodded, still immersed in thought. "You were right toe to me. I can assure you that of the few people who are even qualified to undertake such projects, none of them arepetitive with me. Share with me some of the details of what your vision is for Adaptive Evolution. Training resources are objective-oriented, which means that your vision for Adaptive Evolution is highly important."


    Rui paused for a moment as he fell into thought.


    His vision for Adaptive Evolution might sound like a simple question; however, in reality, it was extremelyplicated.


    "I...envision Adaptive Evolution as the application of one''s self to maximize the probability of victory," Rui began. "In practice, that involves employing mind and body in a fashion that is most effective against any given opponent. It also ends with possessing the means to take them down while also being able to avoid or defend against their means of offense. It requires making the most optimal choices at any given moment. It tends to entail having bnced bodies. Thus, if I were to train Adaptive Evolution, it would be by subjecting myself to a variety of external forces and evaluating how I Adaptively Evolve and then mitigating any shoring with training."


    "Hm, that was a clear and well-defined exnation of your Martial Path," he noted. "I''m ustomed to receiving many vague and unclear exnations from Martial Artists. It makes my job a lot easier. It means that the training resources need to be dynamic and able to subject the user to different kinds of forces and pressures that would force them to Adaptively Evolve in response, and their sess rate can serve as some form of objective evaluation of their capacity to evolve adaptively. Repeated use will serve as training as they grow ustomed to growing adaptively evolving Martial fluently."


    Rui nodded. "That is a good point to note."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2297: Foreign Forces

    Chapter 2297: Foreign Forces


    ?


    Rui had no intention of finalizing or fleshing everything out in the very first meeting with Charles Diviliers. With the first meeting, he simply wanted to confirm the prospects of a partnership and ensure that Charles understood what the Water Sect needed.


    The two of them spent nearly two hours talking about the project as they simply sketched out the most basic details so that both parties had a shared understanding of the services and goods being transacted.


    "Well, technically, you''re forming a deal with the government." He smiled. "I do not own Diviliers Industries anymore; the Ministry of Commerce and Industry does. I''m just a government employee who runs it."


    Rui snorted. "Yes, but I know you have full discretion over Diviliers Industries as long as you adhere to the broad orders from my father."


    He smiled. "I most certainly do. However, my budget has already been allocated to dealing with the shortage of Martial esoteric resources caused by the influx of new Martial Artists. I can make formal requests for additional budgetary allocations, but that is all. However, with the current budget, the room for the development of the Martial resources you seek does not exist."


    "...Then I''ll take over the costs," Rui replied. "You handle the development, but, in return, the Water Sect gets the patent for all the proprietary Adaptive Evolution training resources."


    Charles chuckled at his words. "I suppose I can arrange for that. Of course, I''ll need approval from the Minister of Commerce and Industry, but considering that it is you. I''m sure she''ll approve it in a heartbeat."


    Rui was just unstoppable within the Kandrian Empire. Only his father or the Sage Council could put him in check, and neither did he have any need or desire to do so. If anything, the sess of the Water Sect was a favorable oue if it meant the production of powerful Martial Artists.


    Ideally, they were hoping that his ability to break Martial Artists through could be born in other Martial Artists so that they didn''t have to rely solely on Rui for the breakthroughs. A single major point failure was quite risky.


    Especially when the point of failure was to subject himself to dangers and risks.


    Regardless, Rui wasn''t worried about any resistance.


    Normally, when Martial Artists tried to create a sect, they would receive resistance and suppression from existing sects.


    After all, the more sects there were, the morepetition there was, and the greater the difficulty of progressing in their own field.


    Oftentimes, new sects needed to start in extremely humble viges in the Kandrian Empire before upgrading to provinces and districts, before finally heading to the minor and major towns. Otherwise, they would get bullied economically, socially, and sometimes even financially.


    However, Rui was certain that no one would dare dream of trying that with him.


    He was simply too powerful.


    He had no time to waste with any nonsense like that; he didn''t mind crushing any sect that dared to pick a fight with him.


    Actually, if they had given him the opportunity to fight Masters seriously, he wouldn''t have minded them picking a fight with him.


    It simply meant more experience with him.


    "However, even if you streamline the process and elerate it. It will take at least a year for the design process." Charles mentioned, drawing his attention back.


    Rui shrugged. "That''s a non-issue with the manifold."


    "The manifold is highly in demand, I''m afraid. It''s primarily reserved for Martial Artists, making it almost impossible for non-Martial Artists to reserve a slot."


    Rui shrugged. "I own a third of the manifold. I''ll arrange for space for your design team." Charles stared at him with an admiring smile. "You have risen so far so fast. Had I known that this was your destiny, I would have put much more effort into having you on retainer."


    When Rui was merely an apprentice, he had been scouted by Charles Diviliers. The man had offered Rui generous terms in exchange for simply being on retainer with him.


    Rui had refused, of course.


    "I shouldn''t have let you," he pondered aloud. "History would be very different had I got my hands on you. The throne war, these magical resources, mass breakthroughs. Instead, I got that loser of a prince, Rajak."


    He spat the name out.


    It appeared he held a grudge against thete Underworld Prince.


    "It wouldn''t have happened."


    He turned to Rui with a strange expression. "Not as you are now, no. But no Apprentice can resist everything that I have to offer."


    Rui shook his head. "I would have."


    The man stared at Rui, heaving a sigh. "Perhaps that is why you have managed to grow at the shocking speeds that you have."


    Rui shrugged, getting up. "Anyway, that brings us to an end with everything that I discussed. I have to speak with the Minister and whip up a contract with her for some things that we discussed that are outside your authority. After that, we will flesh out and finalize our ns."


    Charles simply smiled. "That sounds good to me."


    Rui nodded, heading to leave.


    "Ah, one thing." Charles drew his attention.


    Rui paused, turning around.


    "You may have no impediments within the Kandrian Empire, but you will experience greater impediments from foreign powers than any other sect ever has. After all, your Martial Path has produced the ability to trigger breakthroughs; it has be even more valued than the Martial Paths of the Ss n. You''re smart enough to understand what that means, are you


    not?"N?velDrama.Org owns all ? content.


    Rui narrowed his eyes at his words, nodding lightly, before taking off.


    Charles Villiers found himself chuckling with amusement.


    He had a feeling that he was going to enjoy what was toe very much. Furthermore, he could even participate in it with the authorization and protection of the government. It was even more convenient than when he was an individual yer in the political sphere.


    "Being a government official has its perks; perhaps I should have done this from the start."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2298: Spying Interests

    Chapter 2298: Spying Interests


    ?


    "...And there we go," Rui muttered as he signed off on the final page of arge set of registration forms. "Finally, I guess that makes it official?"


    The Minister of Corporate Affairs smiled at him, nodding as he pulled out a certificate and ced it in front of Rui. "Congrattions, you have now created your own sect. I think I speak on behalf of the entire Kandrian Empire that this is an event to be celebrated."


    Rui''s eyes fell on the official government-issued license ced before him.


    [Water Sect]


    It was the document that was necessary to begin all other ventures formally. Only now could he set into motion all the ns that he had had in mind. With this, the Water Sect actually existed, even if only on paper.


    "I look forward to creating a sect that is celebrated by the entire nation," Rui replied. "I suppose with this, my sect can no longer be hidden from the rest of the world."


    Aplicated expression appeared on the minister''s face. "...I''m afraid that is the case. We have tried our best to increase our information security. But it is impossible to hide everything at all levels, I''m afraid, especially for something as mundane as a newly non- profit Martial organization."


    Rui nodded. "I understand. I''m prepared for the consequences."


    He knew that there was no way that his Martial Sect would go unignored. The political sphere


    of East Panama was already of the outlook that his Martial Art was connected to the


    breakthroughs.


    Thus, any sect that promoted his Martial Path was undoubtedly bound to be of extreme interest to them.


    Even if they were cognizant enough to know that the sect would not be selling the secrets of the breakthroughs, they would still be deeply interested in infiltrating the sect to get their hands on anything that might lead them to the secret of the breakthrough.


    And their hopes were not necessarily misced.


    Rui had no idea what kind of advancements that his newly-created Water Sect would end up giving birth to. It was entirely possible that the sect would foster a hypnotic-oriented Path of Adaptive Evolution that could recreate Rui''s ability to trigger breakthroughs through the same or even a different principle of breakthroughs.


    If that were the case, then he would lose his oligopoly in the newly created industry of triggered breakthroughs.


    Of course, he didn''t give a damn about that.


    He was not a Martial businessman or anything of the sort.


    On top of that, it would take some pressure off of him.


    "Regardless, it doesn''t change what I do; anybody is wee to join my sect as long as they are willing to dedicate themselves to Adaptive Evolution."


    It was not pragmatic to prevent a single spy from entering the sect, so he needed to ensure that the consequences of this happening were insignificant. In other words, he needed to do his best when he did want to leave the sect.


    "Regardless, thank you for your cooperation, Minister ussen. I don''t think this would have been able to progress as fast as it has without your help," Rui stood up, smiling as he shook hands with the man.


    "Not at all. I am honored to be of service. You are one of the protectors of Kandria. As a civil servant, I do not dare do anything less than my best to aid you in your ventures," the man graciously insisted.


    Even before Rui could fully leave the ministry, word of his sect had already begun spreading through the Kandrian Empire. All it took was one person to catch a glimpse of Rui speaking with the minister after thetter personally took the time to prepare and streamline the process of creating a non-profit Martial organization.


    It didn''t take a genius to figure out what was happening.


    By the end of the day, news had spread to several circles in the Martial Community and the political sphere in the Kandrian Empire.


    "The Void Prince has created a sect."


    A piece of intel that drew undivided attention from all sectors of the nation. Ordinarily, A Master creating a sect was hardly newsworthy for the upper echelons of the nation. Many obscure sects centered around some obscure field existed. Most of them were not noteworthy at the highest levels of the nation.


    Their impact was insignificant.


    Yet, the same was most certainly not true for the Void Prince.


    This was despite the fact that his Martial Art had been among the most obscure before the voidlet techniques were introduced many years ago.Text content ? N?velDrama.Org.


    Not a single person dared to underestimate the significance of this new sect.


    Even before the fact that he was responsible for the breakthroughs was disseminated through the Martial and political worlds, a sect dedicated to his Martial Path would have drawn a lot of


    interest.


    Now that they knew that fact, however, it had evolved from what would have been a deep interest to almost obsession.


    There wasn''t a single person among them who wasn''t interested in gaining their hands on the secrets of the breakthrough!


    Instantly, many factions, interest groups, and power blocs began looking into the prospects of recruiting Apprentices with the intention of training them to be spies so that they could enter the Water Sect and try to crack the secret of the breakthroughs.


    Of course, to ensure that the spy sessfully got into the sect, they would need to find one with a Martial Art that was strongly linked to Adaptive Evolution so that the spy could be more involved with the sect than others.


    Thankfully, there had been a flood of new Apprentices thanks to the Void Prince himself, giving them plenty of young and vulnerable potential spies to choose from.


    It didn''t matter if they got caught; there was no real way to tie it back to the people who put the spies to work, thanks to the covert and discreet methods that they were ustomed to


    using.


    Regardless, none of them intended to give it a shot, even if the chances of gathering any clues to breakthrough methods were slim.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2299: Potential Utility

    Chapter 2299: Potential Utility


    ?


    Once the news of the creation of the Water Sect spread through, the upper echelons of society began maintaining a hawk''s eye on any activity that involved the newly created sect.


    And they found plenty of it.


    A huge chunk ofnd purchased in the name of the Water Sect.


    A bank ount opened in the name of the Water Sect.


    These were activities that could not be missed even if one wanted to.


    "Looks like he''s finally getting around to making his sect." Rael skimmed through a few reports that detailed his son''s activities.


    Admittedly, he was surprised that his son decided to go through with it at this point in time.


    They were in the middle of a war with the East Panamic Alliance.


    "Then, again, I suppose there is no real reason he can''t do it, as long as he can tolerate the pressure that he will experience."


    The war for allies was going to be a slow, gruelingpetition that would take its time. Alliances were seldom forged in mere months.


    The East Panamic Treaty Alliance was an extreme exception and even it had been in the making for quite some time.


    The Kandrian Empire and the other three Sage-level powerhouses were going to spend their days making offers to hesitant potential allies, especially Sage-level nations andrge Master-level nations. The highest bidder and the one who could inspire the greatest confidence in their victory was going to be the winner of any battle over any given ally.


    Considering that, Rui''s decision to endeavor in something asplicated as creating one''s own sect in the middle of war was not particrly bad.


    "If anything, it could be used to inspire greater hope in the Kandrian Empire''s future."


    A sect was a like-minded group of Martial Artists with simr Martial Art. Thus, Rui''s sect painted high hopes that other Martial Artists could have capabilities simr to his own.


    Rael was particrly eager to utilize the creation of the Water Sect to speed up his progress, although he didn''t mind if the war took longer.


    After all, all the Kandrian Empire needed to reach a higher realm of power was time.


    The more time the Kandrian Empire had, the better things worked out for him anyway. The number of Martial Masters would increase, allowing them to gain an advantage in the long


    run.


    Furthermore, with much of the Sekigahara Confederate''s Masters dead, it was possible for the Kandrian Empire to outpace the rate at which it got new Martial Sages, especially with the manifold at its disposal.


    In other words, he simply needed to wait.


    He put aside the reports detailing his son''s sect.


    Interesting as it was, he had more important things to take care of. His attention returned to a report filed by the Sage Lauren of the Royal Army.


    [No traces of any crystal ore of any sort at the location of the Mellow within a thousand- kilometer radius.]


    He was a man of few words.


    Emperor Rael heaved a sigh. "That''s a shame. I was hoping that we would be able to find the rest of the Transcendent esoteric substance. But, I suppose that was hoping for too much." Ever since he learned of the ability of the alien specimen to produce a manifold, he had been curious about the underlying esoteric substance responsible for such a phenomenon. Both Rui and the Divine Doctor had informed him that the crystal shard was most likely a fragment of a muchrger crystal that was possibly buried extraordinarily deep somewhere in the Beast Domain.


    One of Rael''s hopes had been that it would be in the same ce that the shard in their possession was found.


    In the Mellow.


    However, even thorough searches by Martial Sages seemed to be yielding nothing.


    Not even the Elder Tree was able to detect the existence of such arge crystal boulder anywhere.


    "Ah well, I was getting too greedy."


    He knew that that was the case, but he couldn''t help it. If they were able to find and utilize such a priceless resource, it was game over then and there. It wouldn''t matter what the East Panamic Alliance did; they would never stand a chance.


    But s, he had to y with the cards he was dealt, which were still extremely good, of course, but still challenging.


    He gazed at a map of East Panama that highlighted the locations of the four Sage-level powerhouses as well as those of the Sage-level nations and powerful Master-level nations. On top of that, his eyes fell onto the Kingdom of Meitia, which was some distance west of the Kandrian Empire on a map.


    It was the ally of the East Panamic Treaty Alliance that was closest to the Kandrian Empire. As such, the alliance currently intended for it to serve as a military and Martial base from which they could mount the eventual second assault on the Kandrian Empire after the war for allies


    was over.


    It was far too tedious for the Martial Artists of the three powerhouses to mount a charge from their nations to the Kandrian Empire and hope that they converged at exactly the same time. While the Sekigahara Confederate was crude and crazy enough to do so, Prime Minister Edward was far too refined in his military strategy to resort to such a travesty. Thus, the East Panamic Treaty Alliance sought to have its own military base as close as possible to the Kandrian Empire.


    Naturally, Emperor Rael had no intention of tolerating that.Text content ? N?velDrama.Org.


    And thus, it served as one of the many zones of Martial conflict between the Kandrian Empire and its enemy alliance. A war that had begun as a direct frontal assault upon the Kandrian Empire was now spreading across the entirety of East Panama as Emperor Rael protected his allies from the promised attacks of their enemies while impeding his enemies from forming bases near the Kandrian Empire or from winning the war.


    The war for allies was still in its earliest stages, having remained in a steady deadlock, having yet to reach the zenith of its intensity.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2300 Rocked Worldview

    Chapter 2300 Rocked Worldview


    K''M tried her best to expect what was toe after she had made the life-changing decision to leave Vilun Ind and join the Kandrian Empire.


    She failed.


    The Kandrian Empire exceeded her expectations.


    No, it was more urate to say that human civilization was beyond her expectations.


    The scale and scope were beyond her wildest imagination.


    Viges that stretched beyond what the eyes could see, continuing seemingly endlessly. Giant buildings, ships, and innumerable other products of human creativity and ingenuity seemed to be made in enormous numbers.


    Esoteric technology blew her mind away the most.


    To her, it was downright magic.


    A defiance of the natural order.


    Yet, it was everywhere, aiding the daily lives of the people of the Kandrian Empire.


    Of course, Rui had informed her that the Kandrian Empire was far more advanced than most of human civilization, but it still beggared the imagination.


    The moment she arrived at the headquarters of the Martial Union, she felt lost in the sheer scale of the premises.


    It was farrger than the entirety of the G''ak''arkan Tribe''s vige!


    Inside, a team of managers and assistants bowed to her upon her arrival.


    "Master K''M, formerly of the G''ak''arkan Tribe, we are honored to inform you that we are the staff dedicated to taking care of you in the Kandrian Empire for all matters that you may need assistance with. We will strive to ensure that you don''t find uscking in any way whatsoever," an elderly woman at the head of the team spoke with perfect fluency in the Vilun Dialect.


    "¡­Ah, thank you." She was taken aback.


    "Then, allow us to guide you to the luxury suite that His Highness has personally arranged for you if you are so inclined."


    She stared at the woman with a mystified expression. They spoke the samenguage, yet K''M was unable to understand what she was saying. N?velDrama.Org (C) content.


    "''His Highness?''" She tilted her head. "What is that? Is that the name of a person?"


    The head of staff smiled. "It is a manner of referring to Prince Rui Quarrier Ss Kandria, the greatest prince of the Kandrian Empire."


    She frowned. "I do not follow."


    "Rest assured that we have prepared a briefing to bring you up to speed on human civilization and the Kandrian Empire, as instructed by His Highness. You may take it right away if you are so inclined."


    She was too curious to wait for long, as soon as she recouped her Martial Mind with some sleep, she immediately opted for the briefing so that she could enhance her understanding of human civilization and the Kandrian Empire.


    And what she learned blew her mind.


    The scale of human civilization.


    The scale of the Panama Continent.


    The Vilun Ind was so astronomically tiny that it didn''t even show up on a map of the Panama Continent!


    She learned about the existence of not one but two ranks of Martial Art above her own, a fact that stunned her. She learned about the Age of Martial Art and the powers of human civilization. She learned that the Kandrian Empire stood at the very top of all of them. She learned that Rui was the son of the leader of this powerhouse of a nation and was once in line to be the leader himself.


    He wielded an unfathomable amount of power and influence within the Kandrian Empire and over East Panama. It left her in a state of shock.


    He had the power to bully her and her n into submission.


    He possessed such an enormous amount of power that she couldn''t help but wonder why he had reciprocated her advances as passionately as he did.


    She was aware that she possessed very little of the feminine charm that the non-warrior women of her tribe possessed. She was certain that she held no candle to the countless women that someone of his power and status could attract with even the slightest bit of effort.


    The revtion that she had slept with one of the most influential figures of East Panama left her thoroughly stunned.


    "His Highness has gone to great lengths to ensure that you wouldn''t regret your decision to leave your home and live in an entirely different nation with different cultures, civilizations, andnguages. We will thoroughly help you adjust during your time in the Kandrian Empire and ensure that you feelfortable, as per His Highness'' will, Your Mastery."


    She couldn''t help but feel butterflies in her stomach at the woman''s words, a rather peculiar sensation that she hadn''t experienced ever before. "It won''t be easy to adjust to everything, but we will do our best to help you get used to everything. There are many things that you will need to learn if you are to reside in the Kandrian Empire. You will need to grow ustomed to our norms andws if you are to continue residing here for the rest of the war." She nodded with a determined expression. "I will learn."


    "Of course, this doesn''t take priority over your Martial Art, by any means, Your Mastery. After all, we require your assistance to protect our great empire from those who seek to destroy it."


    "I will train and fight," she confirmed. "I will also learn. I will do all of it beyond satisfactorily."


    Much to the surprise of her staff, she didn''t turn out to be exaggerating. She absorbed knowledge like a sponge, learning everything that they taught her and more. She didn''t just learn, she assimted, inferred, and applied all her knowledge as well.


    She was cognitively gifted, far more so than most Masters. She had managed to follow the strict math and science sses that Rui imparted to her. She was determined to not waste the opportunity that Rui had given her, gaining knowledge that she would never have gotten on Vilun Ind. By the time she was done, she ensured that she would not serve as a point of shame to Rui.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2301 Imparting Adaptive Evolution

    Chapter 2301 Imparting Adaptive Evolution


    Once Rui created the sect and set up its most fundamental parts, he left Mikha and the rest of his administrative staff in charge of overseeing its development. Of course, he only handed them the reins after ensuring that they hadprehended his broader priorities and objectives for the development of the sect.


    They were more thanpetent enough to handle the details.


    The major construction corporations of the Kandrian Empire all desperately leaped at the announcement that the Water Sect was looking to construct a headquarters in the enormous plot purchased in the heart of the Town of Hajin, not too far away from the Martial Academy.


    It was an opportunity to forge a rtionship with the Void Prince of the Kandrian Empire, after all. They would be fools to miss out on this opportunity. At the end of the day, Derian Infrastructures, the leading construction corporation of the Kandrian Empire, emerged victorious, securing a construction contract with the Water Sect.


    "We look forward to working with you, Chairman Derian." Mikha smiled, shaking his head after all the paperwork was signed and the deal was official.


    "We are honored that the Water Sect has chosen us to aid in its development," the man graciously replied. "I hoped that I would be able to convey my gratitude and conviction to deliver nothing but absolute perfection to His Highness in person, but it appears that it will have to wait for another time." Mikha smiled knowingly. "His Highness is unfortunately extremely busy with several important matters, including but not limited to the sect and the war. I''m sure that I don''t need to tell you about the severity of thetter and the importance of His Highness in that regard."


    "Of course not. His Highness is among the chief forces among Masters that are doing the most to protect the Kandrian Empire from our enemies," the man praised. "I think I can speak for everyone in the civil construction industry that we are truly grateful to His Highness for his contributions to the security of the Kandrian Empire. We would suffer incalcble losses if something were to happen to the Kandrian Empire, god forbid."


    That part certainly was true.


    Although powerful andrgepanies possessed the capital to shift countries and start anew elsewhere, they would suffer immensely doing so by cutting away years of progress in the process.


    While the man sang praises of Rui in the outside world, Rui had secluded himself in the manifold as he began preparing a set of techniques derived from the systems of the Flowing Void Style.


    He needed to prepare a set of techniques that was exclusive to the Water Sect to add to the incentives that those with Martial Art rted to Adaptive Evolution would be attracted to. "I can''t just give them individual techniques."


    He frowned as he tried working through the problem to see how he ought to create techniques from his Martial Art to impart the Adaptive Evolution that he had already created into something that was more general and flexible so that it could be adapted by those who wanted to incorporate it into their Martial Art.


    "The easiest to pass on is probably to Hypnomatrix."


    It was a lot simpler, and the techniques were unusual but not unheard of. Imparting it was a lot simpler than imparting other parts of his Martial Art. N?velDrama.Org (C) content.


    This was especially true for the Yggdrasil System.


    "My current utilization of the Yggdrasil System makes use of three grade-nine techniques and two grade-ten techniques." He winced when he thought about how difficult it would be to pass them on. "Not to mention, it also has the Tree of Life as a part of it."


    The Tree of Life was impossible to pass on.


    It was born out of applying the VOID algorithm to the enormous ocean of information on the biosphere of the Panama Continent that he had received from the Elder Tree. It was absolutely impossible for him to pass it on to others, considering the extreme circumstances under which he himself had gotten the system of thought.


    The only other person that he knew of who had also gained enlightenment in the Tree of Life was the Divine Doctor, but his circumstances were probably even more extreme than Rui''s.


    "Forget it, I don''t need to impart it or the two temperature domains either." He shook his head. "Imparting simple versions of the first three domain techniques should be enough for a start."


    While theplete Yggdrasil System was the most exotic and one of the most difficult systems of Adaptive Evolution in his Martial Art, one of the trickiest and messiest systems of Adaptive Evolution was something like the Metabody System.


    It was one of the crudestsystems of his Martial Art. He had cobbled up the technique system with the intention of being able to adaptively evolve his physical configuration to be best suited for defeating his opponent.


    But they made use of strange principles and external elements that were highly unconventional; they also weren''t united by any single element aside from being powered by stamina and the Hungry Pain technique. He considered it to be a learning process for creating more refined systems of Adaptive Evolution in the future. "Should I even pass on this system as it is? I''m sure there are more refined approaches that are simply easier to master than this one." For example, he recalled the set of breathing techniques that Ian Nepomniatchi had used against him decades ago, which allowed him to alter the output of his effective output configuration to achieve a less extreme version of the Metabody System.


    "Hm, I should contact Master Vericita about that," he mused. "Also, I''m sure that Sir Armstrong and Master Zentra can offer input in this regard that would be extremely useful, given their specialties."


    Thetter owed him more than one favor, so it wasn''t a big deal to ask him for help for this matter.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2302: Expert Consultation

    Chapter 2302: Expert Consultation


    ?


    "...and that''s why I hoped to get your opinion on the matter. I was hoping you could help me out with a set of techniques that allow for the maniption of the body or some other manner of changing the physical configuration of one''sbat."


    Rui stood before a meditating Gatekeeper.


    He knew that the man was in the manifold using to his full advantage to get hisbat power to speed with his training Martial Mind. His power was truly amazing and awe-inspiring as a Senior, but it was almostughable for a Master; there was no doubt that, for the moment, he was the weakest Master in existence.


    Rui knew that in theory, yet he couldn''t help but break into a cold sweat when he sensed the sheer amount of power that was contained in the man''s body.


    It was beyond anything Rui had ever sensed from any Martial Body.N?velDrama.Org (C) content.


    His Martial Body put even to shame how strong it had been during Operation Clean-Up, having grown multiple times stronger in the span of fourteen months in the manifold.


    BADUMP


    RUMBLE...


    Rui''s gaze shifted to the tremoring earth below him with disbelief as he witnessed the man''s heartbeat generating seismic radiation with the sheer force it beat. His raw physicality had reached such an immense degree that he felt like he was looking at a Master-level monster in human guise rather than a Martial Artist!


    While Martial Artists were qualitatively far superior asbatants to monsters, this was despite having weaker Martial Bodies. In the case of the Gatekeeper, however, Rui was starting to suspect that when he grew stronger than such beasts, it was because of his physicality rather than despite it.


    In just one month of real-world time, his Martial Body had grown far stronger than it used to be.


    His methods were clearly working extremely well. From what he could tell, it wouldn''t be too long before he achieved the power of a Martial Master.


    He was undoubtedly the most unique Martial Master in existence.


    "Hm, your concerns pose an interesting hurdle." His eyes opened as he thought aloud. "I am familiar with your body alteration techniques, having faced them in our duel. Nary a man can master them as well as you have, for they are your brainchild, and they do not possess the knowledge that is needed to regte the dangerous external elements that you have integrated into your Body. I know how difficult and dangerous it is to integrate more powerful substances into your body in hopes of empowering your Body. The fact that you have seeded in doing so without a Martial Mind like mine speaks volumes to your cognitive prowess, but you cannot pass on that feat to others."


    Rui''s eyes widened as the Gatekeeper revealed a hint behind the secret of his Martial Mind. "You''re telling me that your training systems of thought allow you to mitigate the risk and difficulty of integrating powerful substances into your Body?!"


    It wasn''t impossible to do this without a Martial Mind or anything like that. The issue is that the more foreign substances that one integrated into one''s body, the greater the risk of lethalbination, the greater the risk of a case of esoteric poisoning, and there also was the initial difficulty of conditioning one''s Body to the integrated substances. The more powerful they were, the exponentially greater the difficulty of integrating them into his Body.


    It was one of the reasons that Primordial Seed was an extremely high-hanging fruit; even a microgram of such a powerful exotic substance in his body was probably beyond merely lethal. This was the limit that ultimately forced Rui to stop relying on esoteric substances to pursue greater power in the Senior Realm.


    It was also why it wasn''t an established way of getting stronger.


    However, from what the Gatekeeper had told him, he had managed to ovee this great limit!


    Sir Armstrong nodded. "It is one of many reasons that my Martial Body has grown far than it used to be, among many other causes. The secrets of biochemistrybined with my five centuries of experience and mastery of conditioning techniques have allowed me to condition my body to an extremely high degree, allowing me to gain the power of esoteric reality."


    Rui stared at him with amazement and admiration.


    He was truly worthy of the respect that he received within the Kandrian Empire. Rui looked forward to finding out how strong the man would eventually be after he had umted enough physical master over the span of several more years in the manifold. "What do you rmend then?"


    He had a point that Rui had been extremely careful and applied his knowledge of human physiology to ensure that he didn''t cross a line when it came to integrating esoteric substances into his physiology.


    He would need to hold their hands during the training or have them study and understand what they were getting into.


    It was more hassle than it was worth for most people.


    "I would rmend a less extreme manner of the alteration of physical configuration than what you are utilizing," the Gatekeeper remarked. "You should be familiar with it; after all, I demonstrated in our duel."


    Rui''s eyes lit up. "You mean your Martial Heart control? That was extremely powerful. There is no way that just anybody can use it."


    The Gatekeeper shook his head. "Do not mistake my extreme mastery of the technique for the power of the technique itself. How long do you think I have been training with that technique? Longer than you have been alive. In other words, it is not innately at the level that you have seen me using. After having achieved preliminary mastery of the technique, they will not be able to instantaneously alter the configuration the way I was. But they will be able to do it over some amount of time, allowing them to continuously adaptively evolve as you seek to have them do."


    Rui''s eyes lit up at Sir Armstrong''s words. "That''s perfect!"


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2303 Blood Vessel Manipulation

    Chapter 2303 Blood Vessel Maniption


    Rui most certainly recalled the Martial Heart maniption technique that the Gatekeeper had deployed in their battle. The man had exquisite control over his Martial Heart, which allowed him to use it in extremely flexible and efficient manners. Rui hadn''t even considered the technique because he assumed that it was extremely difficult, making it utterly non-viable for standard Martial Artists.


    However, ording to the Gatekeeper, it was something that powerful because of his mastery of the technique rather than the technique itself. It also meant that the technique difficulty was lower, making it viable for Rui to have it serve as a method of bodily Adaptive Evolution for those who joined the Water Sect in hopes of mastering it to a greater degree.


    Of course, that also meant that the technique was not going to be as impressive as Rui remembered it in their duel, but he was fine with that. He didn''t need to provide his sect members with grade-ten techniques when it came to giving them the basics of Adaptive Evolution.


    On top of that, above the Apprentice Realm, stuffing them with too many pre-existing techniques was not good. Martial Squires were supposed to be creating techniques that would allow them to squeeze out the hidden potential of their Body and eventually awaken the Martial Heart.


    Individuality was needed, for individuality was the only way to ensure that their techniques were perfectlypatible with and synergetic with them. Thus, Rui had no intention of spoiling them with arge number of techniques in each domain. It would be better if he simply gave them a technique in each broader field and had it serve as their entry point into the field that they could explore and progress in. "Thank you for your aid." Rui smiled at the man. "I did expect that your knowledge and expertise would be useful, but I didn''t think that you would have the perfect solution."


    The elderly Master shook his head.


    "I am deeply ingratiated to you."


    He gazed at Rui. "Without your grace, I would still be in aa. I most certainly would not have broken through to the Master Realm. Inparison to that, this is merely a tiny sliver of the debt that I must pay back to you. Now, then, let me impart the technique to you. It will take some time before I have transcribed the principles and the training regime."


    He exined the technique thoroughly to Rui as he began writing it down in a small procured booklet.


    "Blood vessel maniption?" Rui''s eyes lit up with interest.


    The Gatekeeper nodded. "Forsooth, that is the secret of the technique. It maniptes blood vessels to allocate blood flow. The more blood a particr region of the body receives, the better it is able to function. The breath that we imbue in blood contains the necessary ingredients for the fire of life to be stoked and deliver even greater power. Parts of the body deprived of blood will be temporarily weakened in turn. Thus it effectively functions as the reallocation of resources as per your will."


    Rui grew fascinated by the technique principle. It waspletely different from what hehad expected. "That means that I was mistaken in my evaluation that this technique only applied to the Martial Heart. It applies to the Martial Body in general."


    "Correct, it is not an umon misunderstanding of the technique, however. After all, the technique visually appears to be manipting the Martial Heart. Thus, it is a misunderstanding that even Sages have harbored. However, as I have exined, the technique is not nearly as extravagant as one would think. What matters most is how well one masters it and how well one applies it."


    Rui nodded. "That only makes the technique more valuable if you ask me. Are there any catches or risks that I should be made aware of before I spread the technique?"


    "¡­If misapplied, there is a minute possibility of a heart attack or blood vessel rupture. But aside from that, I cannot think of anything else. It is a rtively benign technique that grows more powerful the better it is applied," Sir Armstrong continued as he documented the training method. "After all, the mechanism by which the blood vessel maniption urs is through altering internal pressure. You apply pressure on some parts of the circtory system while lowering pressure on other parts of the circtory system, thereby changing the flow of blood."


    "¡­Fascinating."


    As the Gatekeeper continued exining the technique to Rui, Rui couldn''t help but gain even greater excitement at spreading the technique as the basis of an entirely new field of bodily Adaptive Evolution.


    With this technique and perhaps one or two other foundational techniques at the basis of the physical Adaptive Evolution in the Water Sect, he could create an incredible new endeavor that would improve the way that Martial Artists applied their physicalities inbat.


    With this, he didn''t need to be worried about a high failure rate or wed physical evolution. Although this method would lead to less powerful physical evolution than his Metabody System, it was worth it as it reduced the barrier of entry and was highly flexible and general. In other words, there were plenty of directions to build upon with their own individuality from there, whereas the Metabody System was less forgiving and less flexible, offering them much less room for individuality.


    It was perfect for his needs.


    "I am done," the Gatekeeper remarked after some time. "It is not detailed, but that is hardly an impediment for the likes of you." Content is ? by N?velDrama.Org.


    Rui grinned as he epted the little booklet with care. "Thank you. I''ll be sure to put it to good use."


    Rui bade him goodbye and good luck before heading out. He immediately secluded himself back in his isted chamber in the manifold as he fell into thought about the foundational techniques to be offered to future recruits of the Water Sect. Thanks to the Gatekeeper, he had made great progress with establishing a flexible and general foundation in physical evolution that could be used as the basis for all progress in the field in the future.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2304 Philosophical Foundation

    Chapter 2304 Philosophical Foundation


    His considerations regarding the Gatekeeper''s blood flow maniption technique helped him flesh out exactly what standards he wanted to hold the rest of the Water Sect''s offered techniques to.


    It also helped him flesh out exactly the kind framework that he was working with and how all of it fit into the big picture of his new sect.


    There was the sect''s field of focus, which was Adaptive Evolution. Then, there were sub-fields within Adaptive Evolution, which were fields that Rui had created in his time as a Martial Artist pursuing Adaptive Evolution. N?velDrama.Org (C) content.


    And within those sub-fields, there were the core foundational principles or techniques upon which Martial Artists could build their individualized techniques and Martial Art on.


    The Gatekeeper''s heart maniption technique showed him that he had to ensure that there was a low barrier of entry to those very core foundational techniques in each sub-field. It needed to have not just a low barrier of entry but also high potential. The more potential it had, the more it could be individualized by Martial Artists who sought to build upon it.


    "I''ll need to do the same for the other technique systems in my Martial Art," he mused to himself. The Hypnomatrix, the Yggdrasil System, the Pathfinder, and his systems of thought.


    With the Hypnomatrix, the techniques were the most standard and mainstream in principle, but in reality, some of his techniques were based on John''s memories with asthma, such as the Breathing Crucifix.


    These were more difficult, but not impossible, as long as any given Martial Artist had the perseverance to suffer through induced breathing impediments over extended periods of time, they would be able to learn his Breathing Crucifix to a lesser degree.


    "The issue is that this is still an extremely narrow path into hypnosis."


    The reason that he had chosen these techniques was because they were suited for his purposes as an all-rounder. However, it wasn''t the only way. "Hypnosis is versatile and diverse. Do I really want to funnel members of the Water Sect into these three narrow paths?"


    Ideally, no.


    Hypnosis was something that, ideally, would be explored by each Martial Artist for themselves as they developed something truly individualistic that would be trulypatible and synergetic with their Martial Art, Path, and who they were as people. For example, several of his hypnotic techniques were imagination-intensive. They required a powerful imagination and thus could be highly unsuited for Martial Artists who weren''t gifted with high imaginative capabilities.


    Everyone had their strengths and weaknesses.


    The more Rui thought about it, the more he felt dissatisfied with the prospects of forcing people into narrow paradigms. Not just because it was unfair to those who were unsuited for those particr paradigms but also because the goal of the Water Sect was to serve as the solution for a potential bottleneck and as a tool to aid his ascent to the Sage Realm.


    "I need to think broader. I need to allow them to explore hypnosis in its entirety while also doing so from the perspective and objective of pursuing Adaptive Evolution within the field of hypnosis."


    This was much harder than it sounded.


    The reason that Rui was able to jump into brand-new fields and apply them adaptive-evolutionarily without any hitch was because he possessed an extremely deep understanding of Adaptive Evolution as a concept and philosophy.


    That was why, even if he dived into an unknown field, he was able to wind his way into creating brilliant applications in that field for Adaptive Evolution. "This is what they need in order to ensure that they apply hypnosis optimally for Adaptive Evolution in a manner that is highlypatible and synergistic with them," Rui realized. "I need to instill in them a philosophical foundation surrounding Adaptive Evolution as a Martial Path."


    So long as he did that, they would be able to apply any new field to Adaptive Evolution without losing sight of thetter.


    If he had just introduced them to hypnosis without this philosophical foundation, then they would have been lost and ended up creating techniques that had very little to do with Adaptive Evolution and more to do with hypnosis.


    Thus, a philosophical foundation that would allow them to evaluate how to apply fields to Adaptive Evolution in a manner that they were mostpatible with and synergetic with was necessary. "I''ll need to start working on that immediately."


    It was actually more important than the individual technique systems that he had been working on prior. He looked forward to imparting the philosophy of water that Bruce Lee had created to these Martial Artists.


    He had no qualms about spreading the ideals of his idol from another world.


    "I''ll also have to take the first sses myself to ensure that I pass on a proper canon for the philosophy," he murmured. "Hell, I should just write a book. I''ll call it ''Be Water.''"


    It was a good way of paying homage to the man.


    Ordinarily, this would be almost impossible to do during wartime, but he had the manifold, and he could get away with it.


    "Fourteen months, that''s enough time to achieve everything I have set out to do."


    It wasn''t going to be an issue as long as he put his mind to it. "In addition to a philosophical foundation, there are things that I can impart to them," he realized. "If I''m going to teach them philosophy, I might as well impart other methodologies."


    There was a lot that he had to offer. He could teach them the systematic method of technique development.


    He could teach them how to approach systems of thought systematically.


    Thetter was something that he was seriously considering. If the voidlet techniques could have made an impact on the propensity for thought in the Master Realm, then he couldn''t help but grow quite excited about what kind of impact he would make if he imparted something that was aimed at a fundamental improvement when it came to creating systems of thought. He was excited to deep dive into all of it.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2305: Stuck In A Muck

    Chapter 2305: Stuck In A Muck


    ?


    Time passed in the manifold as Rui got to work, dedicating himself to securing the prosperity of the Water Sect while the war for allies slowly intensified.


    Aggressive negotiations had broken out between the Sage-level and Master-level nations in East Panama, with the two sides fighting to earn their support and alliance. It put the nations in a position of privilege as well as a position of deep pressure.


    If they chose to ally with the Kandrian Empire, then they were bound to suffer attacks from the East Panamic Treaty Alliance that had dered war on all Kandrian Allies in East Panama.


    On top of that, they ran the risk of facing the wrath of the alliance after the war if the Kandrian Empire lost.


    However, if they sided with the alliance, then they would forever forsake extremely juicy offers that only the Kandrian Empire could provide. Resources and breakthroughs were extremely difficult for anybody to resist, and Emperor Rael had promised even more after the Kandrian Empire won the war and overcame the Great Limit.


    Normally, such promises meant nothing in the political sphere as promises could be and were often broken. However, the Emperor of Harmony had spent three centuries cultivating an image of reliability and trustworthiness as a man of his word.


    If he promised something, he kept his word orpensated people so generously that they forgot about any grievances they ever had. Having done that over and over again with almost religious fervor paid off in the war as every nation took his promises extremely seriously.


    The promise of highly generous benefits, rewards, and capital from a nation that was all but bound to be a Transcendent nation should it survive the war was something that they were unable to overlook under these circumstances.


    Each and every one of them was put in between a rock and a hard ce.


    The alliance, led by Prime Minister Edward, utilized a brutal and ruthless strategy of focusing on the stick, while the Emperor of Harmony focused on using even more alluring carrots.


    Never had there been a worse time to be the leader of a nation. The sheer amount of pressure that each and every one of them experienced was life-shortening. Each nation had received two diplomatic convoys upon the inception of the war for allies. One from the alliance and one from the Kandrian Empire.


    Every day, each leader would be pressured by each of the diplomatic teams who urged them to take their offer.


    One such man was the guildmaster of the Shionel Confederation.


    This was the first time in his life that Guildmaster Bradt had experienced pressure on this scale. The Shionel Confederation had two Martial Sages on retainer, thus, it had experienced particrly high pressure from each side.


    "Huff..." he heaved a sigh, resting his head in his hands.


    Never before had he been faced with such a mind-bogglingly difficult choice in his entire life.


    For him, in particr, this choice was impossible to make.


    It was because of the circumstances of his business.


    The Bradt Distribution Service was a delivery and transporter service of goods, services, and information. It was a highly efficient, effective, and robustpany with reasonable prices and greater market permeation than any otherpany in the industry in East Panama, allowing it to develop an unshakeable oligopoly in the sector.


    However, by the very nature of his sector, he needed to be connected.


    He needed to be connected to the entire world.


    The more enemies he had outside of the Shionel Confederation, the fewer ces he could extend his services to and through. The less reliable his services would be, the smaller market share he would have.


    If he joined the Kandrian Empire, he would be making an enemy of three Sage-level powerhouses and, consequently, their allies. This represented an immense portion of his market share that he would lose the second he allied with the Kandrian Empire.


    It was a devastating loss that meant sacrificing most of his life''s work.N?velDrama.Org (C) content.


    Under this consideration, under ordinary circumstances, he would have sided with the alliance without a doubt. Ideally, he would love to be neutral as he normally would have been able to as a merchant, but this war was clearly very different from all those that came before. The stakes were astronomically higher and one side was trying to annihte the other as a matter of its true goal. The alliance, in particr, would not tolerate neutrality.


    In these circumstances, he still would have chosen the alliance bitterly. It was painful to lose ess to the Kandrian domain of influence as a market, but it was less painful than losing the markets under the influence of the three other Sage-level powerhouses.


    However, he found himself paralyzed when he thought about bing the enemy of the Kandrian Empire. The tantalizing miracles they offered made even him pause, frozen in shock.


    On top of that, he had an extremely high opinion of the strategic and tactical genius of the Emperor of Harmony and his son. Together, the two of them inspired a lot of confidence in others.


    "However, their opponent is none other than Prime Minister Edward himself..." Guildmaster Bradt''s tone was severe. "On top of that, he has managed to gain strategic control of the entire alliance by brilliantly leveraging their weaknesses and vulnerabilities that he had been waiting for."


    He was not a man one picked a fight with.


    Another variable thatplicated his considerations even more was the fact that he still had


    a favor to im from Rui. Learning that Rui could trigger breakthroughs was the ultimate validation of his sharp instinct to not im his favor from him too early. He could now leverage that favor to break some of his Seniors to the Master Realm.


    However, if he became their enemy, he was not sure that he could do it, at the very least, he doubted that Rui would fulfill his promise when the time came.


    Thus, he was stuck in a muck of considerations.


    Something needed to change for him to finally make up his mind.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2306 Adaptive Evolution Chamber

    Chapter 2306 Adaptive Evolution Chamber


    Time passed as Rui immersed himself in the projects rting to the Water Sect in the manifold. Simultaneously, he kept Charles Diviliers in the loop and ensured that the training resources that he had begun the design process on were in line with his intentions.


    He had used his authority over the manifold to arrange a suitable working space for the design teams that Charles decided to personally lead. Diviliers Industries, under the authorization of the Minister of Commerce and Industry, shifted arge number of design terminal artifacts into the manifold, creating a makeshiftb where they could work in peace.


    Rui grew rather fascinated by how these design teams used two-dimensional projections on a t surface that could track their motion and their actions and respond to them. The technology resembledputer-aided design from Earth in many ways.


    The team had immediately begun working on a preliminary iteration of the projects after Rui had given them a more fleshed out framework of training regimes that his sect needed to provide.


    Much to Rui''s surprise, Charles himself led the projects after he heard Rui''s descriptions and began rapidly conjuring draft after draft for different kinds of training resources.


    "This is not going to be easy," Charles admitted. "Creating training resources that can measure the amount of adaptive evolution in things like hypnosis and domain bending is¡­ tricky, to say the least."


    Rui winced, nodding. "I think the easiest way to create training resources will be for physical adaptive evolution, so let''s start with that. My idea is rather simple: I want to create a training environment that will continuously and alternatingly pressure the user in a variety of different ways, challenging different physical parameters. The user will have to endure and resist being knocked out without using any active techniques and will only be able to rely on physical adaptive evolution to adaptively evolve to their environments at that given moment time. The kind of pressure will keep changing, requiring them to correctly recognize what is the best way to alter their body and do so in time."


    Charles fell into thought. "When you say pressures, you mean artificial circumstances that are best solved by either strength, speed, or durability, correct?"


    Rui nodded. "For example, you can have them chased by fast beasts or monsters that have great speed and agility and exceed their ability to endure. Therefore, the best option is speed. Or perhaps cause changes in the atmosphere that require them to use more force to survive. Alternatively, you can increase the amount of atmospheric pressure pushing down on them, thereby requiring them to enhance their durability. You can even have circumstances that require abination of these at higher levels."


    In other words, Martial Artists of the Water Sect who mastered the Gatekeeper''s blood flow maniption technique could train their Adaptive Evolution with it through raw experience. By learning how to best alter their Body under different circumstances, they would be able to inculcate a powerful intuition that would allow them to make the correct choices under different circumstances.


    "Hm¡­" Charles Diviliers whipped up his first preliminary draft on the matter. "Something like this?"


    He showed Rui arge colosseum-like structure that waspletely closed off, with vast amounts of empty sections marked for broad esoteric technological systems. At the center of the colosseum-like structure was a figure representing a Martial Artist training.


    Below the designs were several graphs that outlined varying speed, strength, and durability challenges over time. The constant change in the most optimal parameters would serve as a great challenge for Martial Artists training in the Gatekeeper''s techniques.


    On top of that, Charles highlighted the different sub-categories within the challenges. It wasn''t enough to have just one way to pressure different parameters of any given Martial Artist; if there wasn''t diversity in the challenges that the training environment threw at the Martial Artist, then they would get used to the simplicity of the task very early.


    Thus, the end oue needed to be a massive, highlyplex, and sophisticated training environment that would be able to deliver an enormous amount of pressure and diversity for it to truly serve as a way of training physical Adaptive Evolution. And from the looks of the vast amount of empty space in the preliminary design drafts, it was clearly shaping up to be a monster of a project.


    It was a deeply ambitious undertaking.


    "It''s perfect¡­!" Rui grinned. "This is exactly the kind of training resource that I envisioned when I came up with this technique project."


    It essentially functioned as an enormous training domain that was the technological equivalent of his own Yggdrasil System in some ways. Yet, unlike Rui''s mastery of the Yggdrasil System, which cost no capital whatsoever, this training resource was going to cost him billions of gold coins.


    It also reminded him of the enormous advantages that Martial Arts had over esoteric technology. What thetter required immense resources to do, the former could do with negligible expenses.


    Yet, in this case, Rui would still most certainly opt for the technological solution since he couldn''t afford to waste time serving as a training tool in the Water Sect forever. He needed the members of the sect to be able to train while he was away fighting the war for allies in different countries.


    "Let''s move on to the other drafts," Rui suggested. "We need to get past the design phase of the projects as soon as possible."


    One by one, Rui and Charles explored the different types of training that Rui sought to inculcate in his Water Sect. Thetter deftly produced preliminary drafts that manifested Rui''s visions for the training resources he sought. N?velDrama.Org (C) content.


    It wasn''t long before many different projects had been put in ce, targeted to bepleted in the span of fourteen months, which was one month in the real world outside the manifold.


    Rui did not want to dy his departure from the Kandrian Empire for too much longer than that. -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2307 Dynamics of the War\

    Chapter 2307 Dynamics of the War


    A month passed in the real world. N?velDrama.Org owns all ? content.


    Unsurprisingly, not a lot happened during that time. The war for allies steadily continued to escte as a few of the nations in question began signaling their intentions to favor one side over the other. Of course, these happened to be nations that were too deep in the domain of influence of one side to realistically side with the other. It was just too difficult for either side to be able to convince the enemy''s neighbors to join them. Thus, the biggest focus was on the majority of nations that weren''t so deeply connected with either side that they would be forced to go with that side regardless of what they wanted. While negotiations with undecided nations continued aggressively, the East Panamic Treaty Alliance continued to wage war on the allies of the Kandrian Empire.


    Meanwhile, the Kandrian Empire rose to protect them. The only point of assault that the Kandrian Empire mounted was the joint military and Martial base in the closest enemy kingdom allied with the alliance. Unlike the alliance, the Kandrian Empire couldn''t afford an extravagant strategy of attacking all its enemies'' allies.


    Nheless, the war escted.


    It had yet to escte to the intensity of an all-out war, with both sides deploying all their Martial Sages. However, with each passing month, it intensified as one side or the other deployed more Martial capital thanst time. And yet it was not a surprise that the East Panamic Treaty Alliance was unwilling to escte the war to a full-blown Sage-level war. After all, the point of the war for allies was to borrow as much possible Martial capital from as many different forces as possible so that the gap between the alliance and the Kandrian Empire would only continue rising to the point where they could destroy the Kandrian Empire without suffering too many losses.


    Until the alliance gained the ability to take down the Kandrian Empire without a pyrrhic victory, they could not afford a full-blown war in the war for allies.


    This was an advantage that worked in the Kandrian Empire''s favor, as Emperor Rael would rather not even give them the opportunity to wait until they gained all the power. Another advantage that he held was that the Kandrian Empire didn''t need to win more allies than the alliance.


    Just winning as many would be enough.


    After all, the Kandrian Empire''s goal in this war was merely tost without suffering too much damage in the long run. Thus, as long as they could gain as many allies as the alliance, they could ensure that the alliance would not be able to gain as many allies as they needed to overwhelm the Kandrian Empire without a devastating pyrrhic victory.


    On the other hand, the alliance had the advantage of being on the offensive and utilizing the stick to deter potential allies from joining the Kandrian Empire. While the Emperor of Harmony had counteracted this move with immense benefits in the form of resources and breakthroughs, ultimately, there was too much at stake for nations to be easily moved by the carrot when an enormous stick threatened to annihte them. Another advantage that the alliance had was the fact that they were just more often than not the favorite to win.


    While nations were certainly moved by the carrot and the stick, they also looked at the prospects of victory for each side that they could potentially ally with. And more often than not, most people would give the edge to the alliance.


    They just had more Martial Artists than the Kandrian Empire in total in almost all Realms. On top of that, though the Kandrian Empire soundly beat back the Sekigahara Confederate despite the pressure that they sustained, many people were just inherently inclined towards themonly held wisdom that one powerhouse could not fight three powerhouses ande away victorious.


    And when it became increasingly clear that the Esocline Federation was not an active participant in the war like the four main participants were, the Kandrian Empire seemed less secure in the eyes of many people. Of course, the only reason that it was a contest at all was that the Kandrian Empire did prove its superiority to the Sekigahara Confederate without even tiniest shred of a doubt.


    Of course, both the Emperor of Harmony and the Britannian Prime Minister had long foreseen these dynamics and yed their hand ordingly.


    They each had prepared trump cards that were designed to push the long and grueling war in their favor. They had each prepared solutions for the deadlocks that urred when it came to undecided Sage-level nations that seemed to have a particrly hard time choosing between the alliance and the Kandrian Empire.


    One of them was the Shionel Confederation.


    This was one of thergest chess pieces on the table, with a whopping two Martial Sages on retainer. Both the alliance and the Kandrian Empire were determined to im this potential ally for themselves, and whoever seeded would be much closer to achieving their goals than before.


    Unbeknownst to others, however, Emperor Rael was quite confident that he could nail the Shionel Confederation as an ally. He just needed to be patient; he needed to be patient for Rui to be done with creating the foundations of his new sect.


    He understood enough about the circumstances of his son''s progress as a Martial Artist to know that the sect was also a means to help him progress to the Sage Realm. Only after his son hadpleted all his work would he be avable. His progression to the Sage Realm was more important to him than anything else in the world. He would resent his father if he dared to force him to abandon his work for the sake of the Kandrian Empire after everything that he had already done.


    Emperor Rael did not pressure him into finishing his work any sooner than he needed to. There was no point in doing so when they had the manifold. "¡­I just need to wait." Emperor Rael closed his eyes.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2308: Exciting Possibilties

    Chapter 2308: Exciting Possibilties


    ?


    In the past fourteen months in the manifold, Ruipleted everything that he had set out toplete. He created a course that would thoroughly expose Martial Artists of the Water Sect to the concept of Adaptive Evolution.


    A philosophical foundation would allow them to utilize other fields and apply them to adaptive evolution.


    He actually considered it one of the most important things that he could impart to them if their goal was to pursue Adaptive Evolution.


    He also created guidelines and rules of thumb that, when mastered, would allow Martial Artists to take a systematic approach to the development of new techniques. Starting fromying out the desired objective with extreme rity and establishing the conditions that needed to be fulfilled to achieve said objective.


    He sought to impart to them the methodology of how to conduct research into unknown territory and how to make progress, teaching them the Martial equivalent of the scientific method.


    Once they mastered this, their ability to modify and create their own techniques would increase, and they would be able to imbue individuality in their Martial Art much more easily than before.


    It wasn''t easy creating foundations for the various sub-fields of Adaptive Evolution that he had already created for his Martial Art.


    However, he managed to do so.


    He began by creating highly flexible and general introductions to the core principles of fields like hypnosis and domains. With the philosophical foundation that he would have imparted them with, they were more than qualified to explore the fields themselves and slowly learn to apply them for the sake of Adaptive Evolution in a manner that waspatible with their strengths and Martial Art.


    He even came up with a more general introduction to thought techniques like the voidlet techniques for Martial Artists who were inclined to thought and were capable of greater cognitive burdens.Content is ? by N?velDrama.Org.


    He was sure that he would get some Martial Artists like K''M, who had simply needed a single push to get her to break through to the Master Realm ten yearster. Looking at her, he couldn''t help but wonder how many Martial Artists were out there with untapped potential when it came to thought techniques.


    Considering that Adaptive Evolution was one of the core elements of Martial Minds, he would be deeply foolish to not offer a good foundation in this regard. He even created material that would allow Martial Artists to learn and practically apply statistics to Martial Art.


    These were all good enough to serve as preliminary foundational materials that the Water Sect would offer to its Martial Artists. The Diviliers team kept up with his very desires, ensuring that the designs of the various training resources that he hadmissioned met his expectations.


    However much to his surprise, it wasn''t the thought techniques that interested him the most.


    No.


    In his case, the sub-field that interested him the most was actually physical Adaptive Evolution.


    The Gatekeeper''s technique was absolutely perfect for his needs.


    The man had shrewdly understood exactly what Rui required and why he hade to him in particr and had given him exactly what he needed.


    So much so that Rui''s fascination for the technique grew beyond just its role in the Water Sect.


    The technique adjusted the physical configuration of the Body by supplying more blood to some parts of the Body while supplying less blood to other parts. The parts of the Body that received more blood performed better due to ess to more oxygen and nutrients, while the parts that received less blood performed worse.


    It did this by applying higher internal pressure through the muscr system of the Body. If more pressure was applied to the arteries and veins on one side of the Body than the other, then by the very nature of fluid dynamics, the side with lower pressure would receive more blood.


    It was a fascinating mechanism that allowed the technique to serve as a lesser version of the Metabody System, and more importantly, it showed Rui possibilities that he had never considered before.


    "Can I increase the performance of my brain using this technique?"


    It was an almost insane question.


    Yet, Rui was unable to dismiss it.


    The idea he had arrived at in his mind was rather simple.


    More blood meant more oxygen, more nutrients, and a quicker waste disposal system, which in turn meant much better performance. Then surely, the same thing could also be applied to the brain.


    He would need to find a way to reduce the pressure on his brain while increasing the pressure on the arteries and veins in the rest of his Body. But if he could do that, he could find a way to increase the amount of blood flow to his brain, thereby increasing the performance of his mind and Martial Mind.


    Of course, that understated the risks of the matter. He would need to be exceedingly cautious.


    It was his brain, after all.


    There wasn''t a more fragile and delicate organ.


    Certainly, no other organ is more important.


    "I''ll need to consult the Divine Doctor on the matter."


    It was too risky for Rui to get into matters rting to the brain without adequate safety. Even the slightest mistake could get him killed or turn him into a vegetable.


    Ordinarily, these risks were too high.


    However, the prospect of enhancing his greatest asset, his brain, was something that he was unable to resist. It was a deeply tantalizing possibility that he felt the urge to immediately jump in.


    His raw talent for Martial Art, the kind that Kane and Ieyasu had, was average. It was his mind that made him special; the memories he had inherited and the second cognitive boom of an adult mind were the reasons that he was one of the most extraordinary Martial Artists that the Age of Martial Art had ever seen.


    What would he be capable of if he could enhance his greatest asset?


    What would he be capable of if he created a Mind Metabody?


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2309: Adaptively Evolving to War

    Chapter 2309: Adaptively Evolving to War


    ?


    Once the idea was nted into his head, it was impossible to get rid of. It bloomed into a full- blown n that refused to allow him to focus his attention in any other direction. It


    demanded his full attention.


    He could not do anything else until he got to the bottom of this idea.


    Suddenly, all his determination to rush to a battlefield melted away as an even stronger desire took the initiative.


    "Thank god for the manifold."


    Without it, he wouldn''t have been able to have his cake and eat it.


    It was now possible for him to train a new technique before he headed out to the battlefield to reinforce an ally.


    Warssted years. An additional month of waiting was not going to deprive him of the most important parts of the war, nor was it going to make a major difference in the experience that he would be gaining from the battle against the alliance.


    "I have time for an additional technique project in the manifold," he realized.


    He was confident that he could achieve the goal in the span of fourteen months, especially when he could consult people who were experts in the field in which he was going to create his new Metabody technique.


    The Gatekeeper had created the technique, of course. Thus, his input on the matter was vital. Another person that Rui was resolved to get input from was the Divine Doctor. Perhaps he could have the man''s medical supervision when testing out the most risky and dangerous parts of the training exercises.


    The addition of a new Metabody technique represented an improvement to the system. While he had made it more powerful after he broke through to the Master Realm, that was more due to the fact that he upgraded his stamina in general.


    This, however, represented an expansion of the system rather than a fundamental general improvement.


    There were many benefits to additional brain function beyond just improving his greatest asset. For one, this Metabody System was most useful when he was in the circumstances with an overload of information.


    He had recently been in such a circumstance.


    War.


    One-on-one, Rui had absolutely no problem abusing the VOID algorithm, the SOUL System, the Angel of Lace, the Tree of Life, and the ODA System, as well as all of his hypnosis simultaneously without even the slightest shred of mental strain.


    However, what if he faced two opponents?


    Or three?


    Or a whole group?


    It became difficult to run these highly data-intensive systems of thought for many Masters at the same time.


    Rui recalled how he had almost died on the battlefield just due to the fact that his mind was flooded with information. He desired the ability to be able to better process such circumstances more than anything. Although he had done a good job with diversifying the technique systems in his Martial Art, his strong suit was still thought.


    It was about time that he was able to empower his capacity for thought significantly. He had been operating at base-level capacity for quite some time, and although his Martial Mind was powerful, it was not enough in highly mentally intensive circumstances.


    "And since I know that I''m going to be subjecting myself to highly mentally intensive situations, then..." his eyes narrowed, "it''s worth it to be able to mitigate that burden."Text content ? N?velDrama.Org.


    This was especially the case when he knew that his enemies wanted to kill him at all costs. He needed to be able to react quicker and better in times of distress, or he would end up getting himself killed. There was no better way to adaptively evolve to the chaos of war than to gain the mental power to see through it all.


    He immediately began piecing together a technique framework around his newest idea for a technique. Thankfully, despite being a rather novel idea, both the technique principle and end goal were already decided.


    By regting internal pressures in different parts of his body, he could redirect blood flow to any specific part of his body-in this case, the brain-and improve its performance. In this case, almost the entirety of the technique framework already existed, requiring very little input.


    This was perhaps not the most individualistic project that he had set out on, but considering the sheer number of techniques that he was prone to creating from scratch, it was not that big a deal. He hadn''t forgotten that modification was one of the moremon forms of imbuing one''s Martial Art-it wasn''t bad for him to indulge in it every once in a while.


    Every once in a while, there was a technique that was truly suitable for him even though he hadn''t created it himself. All they required was basic funing for his needs.


    "In this case, though, it requires more than just basic work." He frowned.


    The biggest challenge of this technique project was technique safety.


    If he could guarantee that it was as good as a sess.


    In turn, it meant that the safety hurdle was truly hard to ovee. If anything was even minutely off-track, it could mean permanent brain injuries.


    The brain was the hardest part of the body to heal; neuron tissue was the most difficult because neuron tissue did not possess inherent regeneration capabilities. On top of that, even if tissue could be regenerated, the underlying information it had couldn''t be. It was one thing if they were in a controlled procedure like the Squire evolution process, but if he was just using a technique in battle, then any mistake could be damning.


    He needed to ensure that he mitigated every ounce of risk before he began using it. If he were to rely on himself, he was sure that he could figure something out in the long run that would allow him to ovee these risks.


    However, he didn''t need to figure it out by himself, not when he had people he could rely on to help him solve this hurdle.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2310: Two Options

    Chapter 2310: Two Options


    ?


    "Increasing the performance of your brain through increased local blood flow to the organ, hm?" the Divine Doctor remarked as he studied a tissue sample of the alien lifeform. "Not a bad n, not if you ignore the risks of a blood vessel rupture."


    Rui nodded. "That is precisely why I came to consult you on the matter."


    It was actually surprisingly difficult to get in touch with the Divine Doctor, who was thoroughly immersed in his research. The man was unwilling to meet with anybody.


    Or, almost anybody.


    "Well, I suppose I can''t afford to have my stethoscope suffer brain damage." He heaved the slightest of sighs as his clinical gaze fixed on Rui. "Your idea has merit, however, it has risks that you have already surmised. What you need to do is ensure that the additional blood pressure is not high enough to strain the blood-brain barrier. That is the key."


    Rui fell into thought at the doctor''s words.


    The blood-brain barrier was a membrane that existed between the blood and the interstitium of the brain. It essentially prevented blood froming into direct contact with the neurons of the brain, thus ensuring that there was always separation between the two.


    It went without saying that any damage the barrier suffered could very easily mean brain damage.


    "So, do I regte my blood pressure and ensure that it doesn''t strain the blood-brain barrier?" Rui raised an eyebrow. "Or do I somehow increase the durability of the blood-brain barrier?"


    The Divine Doctor simply shrugged nonchntly. "That''s up to you. Both options have their drawbacks. The former is safer at the cost of power. While thetter is far more difficult and risky to actually achieve, it will produce much greater results if you seed."


    Rui stared at the man as he considered his words.


    Ideally, he would love to increase the durability of his blood-brain barrier to ensure that the membrane could handle the full force of his Mind Metabody. However, he had no idea how he would even go about it.


    "Would a sort of conditioning technique even work?" Rui frowned. "If I subjected the membrane to strain and then consumed healing potions to ensure that it healed from the strain, it would heal stronger, right?"


    Interest glinted in the Divine Doctor''s eyes. "You are considering rather dangerous lines of reasoning."


    "...But it would work, right?"


    "Theoretically, yes. The blood-brain barrier isprised of tissue that is able to naturally regenerate, making it viable for conditioning," the Divine Doctor casuallymented. "If you seek to condition your blood-brain barrier, then you have to speak to a conditioning expert. While I am indeed the greatest doctor and biotechnologist in this world, it does not mean that I am the greatest expert on applied Martial sciences. The greatest experts in those tend to be Martial Artists. In this case, it is the same Martial Artist from whom you got the technique in the first ce."


    Rui felt the same way as well. "Sir Armstrong."Content is ? by N?velDrama.Org.


    The Divine Doctor nodded. "When ites to applying knowledge to train one''s body, there may very well be no one in this world who is able to rival him as he is now. I suspect that he will tell you the exact same thing that I did. Perhaps he has a method to engage in such niche conditioning."


    Rui was inclined to agree. "I do intend to consult him on the matter. However, I presume I will have your medical services when the timees. I''m not saying that something will happen, but if it does, then you are pretty much the only hope that I have."


    "I''m willing to be present. But be warned, there are limits to even what I can do when ites to grave injuries rting to the brain."


    Rui nodded. "I have no intention of letting that happen."


    Of course, his intentions were never the issue. If anything did go wrong, it would be despite his intentions and best efforts.


    He knew that.


    Thus, he intended to take every precaution he could before embarking on this dangerous training regime. In terms of pure risk, it likely exceeded anything that he had ever taken in his entire life. Not even the inheritance from the Elder Tree posed as much of a risk to Rui.


    And the Divine Doctor had a point when it came to the injuries he suffered. The man was a brilliant genius who had figured out the cure to pretty much every disease and had gained an unprecedented understanding of life, but that didn''t mean that he could guarantee a fix for permanent brain damage caused by extremely risky training.


    "I don''t mind if the safer path of simply regting blood pressure and reducing the extent to which I redirect blood to the brain is the only way to make this work," Rui confirmed. "However, if there is a way to minimize the risk of conditioning my blood-brain barrier, then I would like to go for it."


    He wondered if the Gatekeeper did indeed have some way to do it. Previously, Rui would have said no, but considering that in the span of ten years, the Gatekeeper had been able to create a powerful system of thought that allowed him to hyper-elerate his Body development, it might be worth asking him If there was one who was equipped to advise on how to ensure his idea of a Mind Metabody was minimal of risk, it was the Gatekeeper


    Rui would normally feel pretty mixed about relying on him a second time. However, it was a good thing that the Gatekeeper felt deeply indebted to him. There was no better person to have owed one a big favor than the Gatekeeper. As the man was right now, he was probably the most useful and valuable Master in the Kandrian Empire after Rui for his revolutionary prowess in physical evolution.


    He had no qualms with making use of the man''s specialty to enhance his own. After all, the man had done the same, and it was about time that Rui made use of his knowledge.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2311: Revolutionary Developments

    Chapter 2311: Revolutionary Developments


    ?


    The Gatekeeper breathed deeply as he focused his mind on his inner body. His Martial Mind did not give him exterior senses inbat the way that other Martial Minds typically did for Masters.


    Instead, it gave him the ability to sense his own body at a depth he thought impossible. It allowed him to engage in targeted training on the sub-cellr level in almost any part of his Body in almost any fashion.


    It was entirely useless inbat but was nothing short of a massive trump card in his training. Just these senses alone would have been enough to revolutionize his training. Yet, the processing power of the Martial Mind allowed him to go even further beyond.


    Even as he sat engaged in extremely high-level training, he could feel his Body growing stronger by the second, even if by a very minute amount.


    It wouldn''t be too long before his Martial Body''s normal power woulde to match that of the Martial Heart, allowing him to thoroughly defeat Seniors without a Martial Heart at all.


    In turn, his Martial Heart alone would be enough to allow him to fight Martial Masters head-


    on.


    He was grateful for the manifold''s existence at times like these.


    There was no Martial Artist in existence who was more suited for the treasure than he was.Content is ? by N?velDrama.Org.


    His Martial Mind needed time more than anything else. Time was his greatest constraint, and it would have prevented him from matching with his peers under ordinary circumstances. However, thanks to this treasure that the Void Prince had found in the Beast Domain, he was able to ovee one of his greatest shorings rtive to others. Of course, he was also aware that the manifold merely elerated what was toe; it did not allow him to reach greater heights than he would have otherwise; it just allowed him to sooner reach what he would always reach, and no more.


    On top of that, it aged him far faster. Thus, he felt a deep pressure to make the best use of the time so that he didn''t waste his own lifespan. Even with the recent influx of longevity potions that he too had consumed, it would be truly difficult to prolong his life centuries longer.


    The only way he could merit more was by contributions to Martial Art or by reaching the Sage Realm.


    Both of these inevitably meant more power.


    That was precisely what he was doing at the moment.


    He was endeavoring on what might be one of the greatest techniques of his life. A technique that radically altered his digestion system with conditioning to make it able to absorb foreign esoteric substances, automatically condition the Body to their toxicity and reactions with other substances, and then integrate them into the Body in the most effective manner possible.


    He called it Body Cultivation.


    It was something that would revolutionize not just his own Body, but also all of Martial Art if he seeded.


    Another technique that he had been working on developing in the long term was what he called Evolutionary Conditioning.


    Ordinary conditioning relied on principles like Wolffe''s Law, which stated that bones would adapt by growing thicker and denser when subjected to force and pressure. A simr principle was true for the entire body, allowing for essentially everything to be conditioned.


    However, he was approaching the limits of ordinary conditioning, which was why he relied on the power of esoteric materia to further his power and propel him to Master-levelbat.


    "Yet, it is not my limit." His eyes opened, ring with ambition. "I seek the power of true physical evolution."


    He sought the kind of qualitative change that his body underwent in the Squire Evolution process.


    Gic Evolution.


    To be able to achieve evolution simr to the Squire evolution process without its radiation limits.


    He had engaged in lesser versions when he applied the principle of ''survival of the fittest'' to his own cells.


    But this had its limits.


    Without the ck box that was the element of radiation that served as the stimulus for gic change-for change in the very fundamental blueprint of who one was-it was impossible to achieve the radical evolution that Squire Evolution gave an Apprentice.


    He had already consulted the Divine Doctor, who confirmed that it wasn''t impossible to achieve radical gic change without radiation.


    "No other method I know is as powerful as radiation, and they are all far more dangerous and lethal; I estimate the probability of survival to be less than one percent," the doctor had nonchntly told the Gatekeeper. "You can try them if you want tomit suicide creatively, I suppose."


    Still, he hadn''t given up. The Divine Doctor was undoubtedly the greatest medical humanity, but that didn''t mean he knew everything that was possible. There was a vast variety of untapped esoteric material science and other sciences that could potentially help him ovee this incredibly difficult challenge. There were potentially Martial solutions in the higher Realms that could help him with what he needed. He had consulted a variety of people on the matter in search of a potential solution, though none of them were able to help him with what he needed.


    "Come to think of it..." His eyes narrowed.


    There was one person he had yet to consult.


    One who was perhaps the most promising of them all.


    He hesitated because he was already extremely indebted to the man and didn''t want to ask for a favor before he repaid the rest of his debt. Although the Void Prince was not the kind of man who cared about such things, it was a principle that the Gatekeeper adhered to deeply.


    CLACK


    The door opened, drawing his attention.


    Out of pure coincidence, the man he was thinking about popped his head in.


    "Sorry to disturb you," Rui apologized. "I want to consult you about something. Actually, it''s rted to what I consulted you about a year ago. Could you indulge me a bit?"


    An uncharacteristic smile cracked at the edge of Sir Armstrong''s mouth. "I would be relieved


    to."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2312 Unavailable Solutions

    Chapter 2312 Unavable Solutions


    "¡­And so, I came back to you to consult you on whether the risks can be minimized."


    The Gatekeeper listened to Rui''s objectives, circumstances, and predicament with patience. It wasn''t until Rui was done with his borate exnations of the matter that he offered his initial thoughts on the matter.


    "A fascinating application of my technique that I have neither considered nor am interested in considering for my own personal usage," Sir Armstrong remarked. "However, I can understand why you would be deeply interested in this application thereof. The risks associated with conditioning the blood-brain barrier can be mitigated if the resolution of your senses is deep enough. This would allow you to witness exactly when the precise point of no-return is."


    Rui frowned. "That''s a sub-cellr level of microscopic resolution. Masters can discern individual cells to varying degrees depending on our senses, but that''s not enough in this case. The membrane is porous enough to allow for the smooth exchange of gases and other organic molecules. In order to be able to detect the point of no return just before it''s toote, I would need an even deeper sense. I would need to be able to perceive the very gaps through which the exchange of molecules urs. That''s not really a viable suggestion for me."


    "¡­I suppose that''s true. It is a level of resolution that I''m able to witness within my own Body, but I see now that it is indeed not a solution essible to you." Sir Armstrong fell into thought. "Unfortunately, I am unable to speak thereto from my own personal experience because of how different my Martial Mind is. It is challenging for me toe up with a solution that is suited to the circumstances of the average Martial Master."


    "Wait¡­" Rui frowned. "You can study your own Body at sub-cellr level?"


    "And deeper," the Gatekeeper replied lightly, still immersed in thought about the predicament that Rui was consulting him about. "I have been able to build upon the foundation of anatomy, physiology, and cytology that I gained from the Divine Doctor with my own personal insights that have aided my body cultivation, conditioning, and evolution."


    "That''s incredible¡­" Rui faintly murmured. "No wonder you are progressing so quickly. Your Martial Body is far, far stronger than it was thest time we spoke. It makes sense that your senses and processing are also geared towards aiding you in training, which results in such ridiculous oues."


    "Forsooth, but it is of no avail when ites to passing on my developments to others such as yourself."


    Rui considered his words. "If it''s just about powerful senses, then I could get a Martial Sage to aid me with my training. Their senses are surely more powerful than yours in all regards by an enormous margin. Thus, they should be able to detect the point of no-return that you mentioned."


    The Gatekeeper''s stirred at Rui''s suggestion with a knowing gaze. "That is indeed a resourceful solution, however¡­"


    "Yeah, I know." Rui heaved a sigh. "The Martial Sages are too busy to babysit my training for a month or two."


    Perhaps he had enough power and influence in the Kandrian Empire to make this request to one of them under other circumstances. However, there was absolutely no way that he could get away with a request like this in the middle of a war. And frankly, nor would he want to.


    Martial Sages yed the most important role in this war by far. All of Rui''s treasures in the world didn''t matter if the Kandrian Empire didn''t possess the power to protect them and themselves from the storm of upheavals they would cause.


    Diverting the precious time that Martial Sage spent protecting the Kandrian Empire and its allies to helping Rui train a new technique that wasn''t going to significantly impact the war was the height of foolishness.


    He doubted that any of them would agree to waste their time on this matter. While he certainly possessed the political power of a Martial Sage, in times like this, their significance to the nation far exceeded derivative power such as political power.


    "Anything else?" Rui asked with a hopeful glint in his eyes.


    "¡­Solutions exist, but I am unable to pass almost any of them on to you for one reason or another," Sir Armstrong replied with a heavy tone. "As I said, my Martial Mind is too unique for it. However, one potential solution thates to mind is the power of esoteric substances. Specifically, anything that will continuously heal or regenerate your blood-brain barrier instantaneously so that you don''t have to worry about timing the conditioning right. As long as you ensure that the rate of healing matches the rate of conditioning, you will have achieved what you want."


    Rui mulled over the man''s words. "I''m assuming that healing potions don''t work more due to practical constraints. It would take an absurd amount of healing potions, more than I can justify, continuously pumped into me to ensure that I don''t have to care about timing."


    The Gatekeeper nodded. "Additionally, you can''t consume them when exhaling them, leading to all sorts of problems."


    Rui considered his words. "When you say continuously heal or regenerate me instantly, you mean something like the Tree of Healings?"


    Rui hadn''t forgotten that one of the reasons that the Sage assault had failed was that the Sekigaharan Sages had consumed fruits from the Tree of Healings, allowing them to heal from the critical wounds that had been inflicted on them. It was a remarkably powerful resource when in the hands of Martial Sages.


    "The Tree of Healings is indeed one such resource."


    However, neither saw the need to mention the obvious.


    There was absolutely no way that Rui could get his hands on one of the fruits from the Tree of Healings because it was the treasure of a Sage-level powerhouse that hated his guts more than anyone except his father. There was no way that anyone in the nation would be willing to help him out.


    "Damn, I wish I had someone in the Sekigahara Confederate who could get their hands on the fruit."


    -


    This chapter upload first at  Content is ? by N?velDrama.Org.

 Chapter 2313 Possible Avenues of Acquisition

    Chapter 2313 Possible Avenues of Acquisition


    When it became clear that the Gatekeeper had no easy solutions as to how Rui could mitigate the risks, Rui had to make a choice.


    Was he to go on and take the risks anyway, or would he go for the safer option?


    It wasn''t an easy choice, not at all.


    He truly wanted to gain the power of a Mind Metabody. Not even he could imagine just how powerful it would be due to its enormouspatibility. It had the potential to be for him what Fulminata Godspeed was to Kane¡ªa technique that amplified his greatest strengths.


    He truly wanted to explore it to its greatest limits without needing to worry about rupturing his blood-brain barrier.


    However¡­


    "The risks are too high."


    Indeed, more brainpower was highly attractive, but his Martial Path was not Enhanced Cognition. It was Adaptive Evolution. While he was indeed highlypatible and synergetic with it, he was not going to risk everything for the sake of greater brainpower. There was no point in achieving greater brainpower if it meant losing his brain.


    In other words, he was willing to settle for a lowered version of the technique.


    For now, at least.


    "There are ways to get a fruit from the Tree of Healings in the future," Rui fell into thought about the matter. "Once we make it through the war, it will be highly feasible and practical to get my hands on a fruit from the Tree of Healings."


    The Kandrian Empire would enjoy extreme sess if it managed to weather the alliance''s war to destroy it. Once it overcame the Great Limit, or even before that, it would have the power to bully the Sekigahara Confederate into submission all by itself. Then, getting his hands on the fruit would be much easier.


    Additionally, now that his identity as the one responsible for the breakthroughs had been revealed, he could potentially leverage it to make a deal with the Sekigahara Confederate and get a fruit in return.


    There was no doubt that the Sekigahara Confederate was deeply hurting and desperate for more Masters after Kane wiped out almost all of the retreating Masters. There was a decent chance that they would be willing to give him a fruit in exchange for breaking some of their Seniors to the Master Realm.


    Of course, they hated him too much at the moment and weren''t exactly the most sane folks around. So Rui wasn''t entirely sure if they woulde around.


    "On top of that, who knows? I might get my hands on something simr from the loot we get from the Beast Domain."


    Multiple times a day, the Kandrian Empire received Martial adventurers who returned home with major sesses from the Beast Domain. Thus, there existed the possibility that he would run into something that would solve his problem.


    "Unlikely," Sir Armstrong calmly replied. "The Tree of Healings of the Sekigahara Confederate is not something that you will be able to find a recement for easily. It is a deeply powerful esoteric treasure that makes fighting against their top fighters a true hassle."


    Rui shrugged. "Perhaps, but the possibility exists. Regardless, I''m not inclined to take risks with my brain unless the reason to do so is truly forcing, and in this case, it just isn''t."


    Rui had weighed the pros and the cons heavily and had firmly decided it was not worth the risk.


    "Do not assume that the less risky path of the two choices is without risks," Sir Armstrong warned him. "Or that it is without power. It may be more limited, but it will still have a significant impact on your cognition."


    Rui smiled. "That makes me more excited. Tell me what all the risks are and what way is best to ovee them?"


    "Hm, the greatest riskes from impacts of higher blood pressure on your circtory system and your heart," the Gatekeeper exined. "While Martial Bodies like ours can handle an immense amount of pressure, you will still need some mild conditioning to ensure that the risk of anything going wrong is minimal."


    Rui nodded as the two of them continued exchanging ideas on how he ought to go about the matter. The Gatekeeper''s many insights into the kind of training that was most optimal for the goal that Rui had set out to achieve were deeply useful.


    He had already begun constructing a dedicated training regime for his new Mind Metabody technique, ensuring that it fulfilled the many conditions that such a technique would need to be safe.


    He would need to ensure that he conditioned some of the more fragile organs that had a lower threshold of tolerance for high blood pressure. He would especially need to condition his heart to ensure that it was able to push back against the high blood pressure of the technique and continue pumping without a problem.


    Of course, this was not without risk, butpared to anything rted to the brain, it wasn''t very risky.


    "In addition, you need to understand that this technique will inevitably increase the strain on your brain," Sir Armstrong cautioned. "It will amount to lower stamina and even more sleep needed to recuperate from the effects of the Martial Mind due to the additional strain. And considering the stunt you pulled off during Operation Clean-Up, grateful as I am, I am worried you will push yourself past your limits once more. With this technique in the equation, however, you will not be able to get away with merely a month of sleep."


    Rui winced, nodding. "Valid, I''ll keep that in mind. Thanks for all your valuable inputs into the matter. There was a much higher chance that something would go wrong without your aid, so I''m grateful."


    The elderly Master shook his head. "I have told you before, this is just a drop in the massive debt that I must repay you. If anything, it is I who is grateful. Now, good luck in your Martial endeavors."


    -Text ? owned by N?velDrama.Org.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2314 Commenced Training

    Chapter 2314 Commenced Training


    Rui immediately dove into Project Megamind after he finished his consultation with the Gatekeeper. That was the name that he designated for his current idea that he was determined to see through to the end.


    The Gatekeeper had allowed Rui to get a much better idea of his constraints and risks. While the Divine Doctor possessed astronomically more knowledge, Sir Armstrong was able to leverage five centuries of experience to understand the practical hurdles and challenges that Rui would be able to ovee in Martial Art training.


    This allowed Rui to skip a lot of redundant testing phases that he would have otherwise needed to learn what he got from the man.


    Project Megamind involved two phases. N?velDrama.Org owns ? this.


    The first phase was general conditioning for several parts of his body, including but not limited to the circtory system, some of his internal organs, and, most importantly, his heart.


    He nned to go beyond ordinary conditioning and apply regenerative conditioning that relied on healing potions for a more powerful effect. It would ensure that absolutely nothing could go wrong on the battlefield when he used the technique against his enemies.


    The second phase involved applying the breathing and muscle techniques that the Gatekeeper had developed to redirect blood to any body part. Once that was done, he would havepleted the technique and would only need to gain somebat experience with it. "Man, it sure is convenient modifying techniques to suit your needs."


    Had he tried creating the technique from scratch, it would have taken much longer than it was shaping up to. When creating techniques from square one, he needed to create literally every part of the technique from the very beginning to the end, all by himself. Of course, there were massive benefits to doing so.


    He often ended up with extraordinary and revolutionary grade-ten techniques that leveraged high principles and were deeply synergetic with him or his Martial Path. However, that didn''t mean that it was the only way to obtain such techniques.


    He knew that when it came to techniques, he was the exception rather than the rule. Most Martial Artists relied on modification rather than on creating new techniques from nothing because it was just easier. Most of them found it difficult to create techniques from scratch and considered it highly impractical, if not impossible, to develop one''s Martial Art that way. And he couldn''t me them.


    Modifying pre-existing techniques to suit them was far more convenient. They could use pre-existing foundations, saving them the difficulty and effort of creating new ones each time.


    Modifying pre-existing techniques to suit them was far more convenient. They could use pre-existing foundations, saving them the difficulty and effort of creating new ones each time.


    Furthermore, considering that Martial Art had be the dominant force in the world with thousands of Masters, hundreds of Sages, and thirteen Transcendents, it was hard to say that this approach was wed.


    Still, Rui preferred creating his own technique from scratch a majority of the time. He had ess to high principles that the rest of the world simply did not, and it helped him satisfy the individuality conditions needed to break through to higher Realms much quicker.


    It was one of the reasons that he broke through to the Senior and Master Realm as quickly as he had. He had imbued his Martial Art with a monstrous amount of individuality with each grade-ten technique he created all by himself.


    In this case, however, he didn''t feel the need to try and create a different principle to empower his brain cognition. It was just pointless to do so. In the first ce, he had gotten the idea to apply the principle to his brain, so the objective fundamentally included the technique that the Gatekeeper imparted to him. "In this case, I''m far more interested in the oue. I can''t wait to master and apply this technique in the war."


    He immediately began with the first phase of the technique.


    He inhaled deeply as he tightened a variety of muscles while rxing the rest, causing a major pressure imbnce across his Body.


    Instantly, he could feel the heaviness that one felt with high blood pressure in certain parts of his Body as his circtory system tightened, experiencing greater pressure from both inside and outside.


    The initial parts of phase one would be slow but would ensure that he gained a strong foundation in handling and resisting the blood pressure increases from the blood flow maniption technique that the Gatekeeper gave him. A few months would go into just that. Only after he built some measure of normal conditioning resistance to the blood pressure could he go with higher forms of conditioning.


    "Fuuu¡­"


    He heaved a deep breath as he could sense the blood in him relocating to different parts of his Body. The parts of his Body that received a massive influx of blood experienced a burning-like sensation.


    As well as a surge of power.


    If not for the fact that the former was to be expected ording to the technique booklet that the Gatekeeper gave him, he would have been concerned.


    He felt his left arm weakening with difort while his right arm felt more alive than ever, allowing him. "Amazing¡­" Rui murmured as he studied the effects. "I''m just doing the basics, but it''s already so good. How good will it get once I master blood flow maniption?"


    He couldn''t know. Yet, the possibilities excited him. It was possible that his cognitive power would soar so much in his Mind Metabody that he could amodate even more systems of thought than before. Perhaps he could even return to creating new systems of thought that were exclusive to his Mind Metabody.


    The possibilities were endless.


    Even without the super risky and extreme version of the Mind Metabody that he was determined to get in the future, he could still experience a truly tremendous surge in the cognitive power of his newest Martial venture.


    All other thoughts and matters disappeared from his mind as he immersed himself in the training regime, havingpletely forgotten about both his sect and the war that continued to rage on in the outside world.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2315 Dangerous Man

    Chapter 2315 Dangerous Man


    "I am honored that the Emperor of Harmony has taken the time to personally negotiate with me," Guildmaster Bradt spoke with calm candor. "I will take the time to review and thoroughly consider the offers that you have made to me today with my advisors and formte a decision in due time after taking into ount the interests of our stakeholders."


    Emperor Rael stared at him with a piercing gaze, heaving a soft sigh. "Let us dispense with meaningless fluff. What about this alliance is insufficient for you?"


    The guildmaster paused for a moment as Emperor Rael tossed all the niceties aside with a question that got straight to the heart of the matter.


    "¡­The stick hurts more than the carrot nourishes, Emperor Rael." Guildmaster Bradt closed his eyes. "While I would rather this war didn''t happen at all, now that it has, I must act in my interests. Resources of the Beast Domain and the mass breakthroughs are indeed very attractive; however, I do not strictly require them to seed in my sector. What I need are the foundations of my business, which would be deeply undermined if I made an enemy of the greatest power blocs of East Panama."


    He stared at Emperor Rael with an ambivalent expression. "¡­It is a huge risk for great but ultimately unnecessary rewards."


    Emperor Rael had anticipated this. "The Kandrian Empire''s maritime and seafare industry has quadrupled in size in the nearly four years since I returned to the throne. We are able to amodate your high flux of transport and delivery through our naval industry. I recall that this proposition was the reason that you supported my daughter Ranea during the Kandrian Throne War, was it not?"


    "It indeed was," Guildmaster Bradt replied. "However, the risks were quite low for me during the Kandrian Throne War. It was only a matter of money being lost. Of course, a lot of money was painfully lost. But money can be earned back. What cannot be easily gotten back is the foundation of my business. The decades'' worth of connections with polities all over East Panama sustains my transport and distribution service. I cannot let it go."


    Emperor Rael narrowed his eyes. "¡­You are unable to part with what you have built over a lifetime. But there''s more. You object to relinquishing control and ownership of your channels of distribution to a singr third party like the Kandrian Empire."


    Guildmaster Bradt directed a careful nce at the Emperor of Harmony. He had boldly chosen to broach a sensitive subject that wasn''t the most pleasant to bring attention to. N?velDrama.Org owns ? this.


    "¡­Since you have chosen to speak the unspoken, then yes," Guildmaster Bradt confirmed. "The maritime and seafaring industries of the Kandrian Empire are indeed quite impressive and desirable. However, the biggest issue with having them serve as my primary means ofdistribution after I make an enemy of the alliance is that I have surrendered all control of my only means of distribution to you. You would be able to cripple my business with ease at any point if you truly wanted to."


    In fact, the only reason that he was even considering allying with the Kandrian Empire at all was that the Emperor of Harmony had created an impable and spotless reputation for being reliable and trustworthy.


    Emperor Rael had already cleverly leveraged this with powerful rewards in the future when the Kandrian Empire sessfully broke past the Great Limit and reached unprecedented power and prosperity. This had earned him decent progress in the war for allies and even the serious considerations of the guildmaster.


    Had it been anybody else, the guildmaster would have snorted and sided with the alliance in a heartbeat.


    Yet, trust alone wasn''t enough.


    "¡­We have spoken a lot today. Why don''t we consider this another time?" Emperor Rael heaved a soft sigh. "Then, I look forward to it." The Guildmaster nodded.


    Emperor Rael fell into deep thought as he considered the conversation that had ensued.


    A small smile cracked at the edge of his mouth.


    "This is going better than I thought."


    He reclined back on his chair as his smile widened. He had always known that getting the guildmaster on board was going to be a hard sell. However, the fact that the guildmaster had yet to join the alliance and was still willing to speak candidly with him was a good sign. It meant that while he had yet to ept the Kandrian Empire''s offers, he wasn''t inclined to join the alliance, either.


    All Emperor Rael needed was a push either way, and the guildmaster would make up his mind once and for all. As long as Emperor Rael could bag the Shionel Confederation, he was fairly confident that he would have prevented the alliance from being able to gain the power they needed to annihte the Kandrian Empire without devastating losses themselves.


    There were only so many Sage-level nations, after all. A quarter of them had already made up their mind due to their close proximity to either side, giving them no real choice in the matter. It was the nations that were closer to the center that mattered the most and would be most impactful.


    As long as everything went ording to n.


    CLACK


    Emperor Rael''s gaze shifted to the immensely powerful presence that had just entered the room.


    "¡­Mothe¡ª"


    "Don''t call me that." Matriarch Nephi scowled at him. He smiled. "Well, to what do I owe the pleasure?"


    "I have been scrying the Britannian Prime Minister''s future since the war began, as you have requested," she answered. "I don''t foresee any trouble."


    Emperor Rael''s eyes narrowed.


    That wasn''t right.


    Something was off.


    "You don''t foresee anything that he is nning for or has in mind? No strategy, tactic, gambit, or anything of significance?"


    "None at all," she remarked. "You have had me divining this man''s future more than any other enemy Sage. However, I do not see the point of that. Is this man truly worth all this cautionpared to the enemy Sages?"


    Emperor Rael''s eyes narrowed. "I can assure you that this man is the most dangerous enemy that the Kandrian Empire has."


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2316 Less Easy

    Chapter 2316 Less Easy


    Matriarch Nephi raised an eyebrow with a dubious glint in her eyes.


    "¡­I can understand your skepticism." Emperor Rael shook his head. "However, you weren''t here during the first and second war. We came close to loss each time, but especially the first time. This is not a man to be trifled with. He has undoubtedly honed his statesmanship and military strategy with experience in the time that I have spent dying and looking for a cure to my condition."


    He narrowed his eyes as he fell into thought. "The fact that you don''t foresee anything is more concerning than if you foresaw something enormous. Thetter would at least be in my prediction."


    His gaze shifted to the matriarch. "And you''re sure that there is no way around your foresight, correct?"


    She snorted. "Nothing in this world is absolute. But no lesser being should be able to deceive my foresight. It would take severe and grave measures for this to even be possible. And even then, I would almost certainly detect traces of it nheless. Anybody who could pull it off, and pull it off without me even realizing, would have to be extraordinarily capable."


    Funnily enough, that didn''t reassure Emperor Rael like she had expected it to. He had a higher opinion of Prime Minister Edward than anybody else.


    His gaze fell back onto a detailed map of East Panama marked with the details of the war before him as he scrupulously analyzed his current circumstances.


    The war for allies was not deprived of its own fair share of battles, with many battlefronts unfolding across the entirety of the vast expanse of East Panama. Each time the Kandrian Empire gained an ally, it also gained a new target to protect from the onught of the alliance.


    The alliance possessed greater absolute numbers, allowing it to adopt a fruitful strategy of pressuring the allies of the Kandrian Empire with waves of attack every few days. While he wasn''t indifferent to the oue, he knew that just the fact that these attacks were conducted at all hurt the Kandrian Empire''s allure to the nations who were beingpeted and fought for. The alliance didn''t spare a single ally of the Kandrian Empire in East Panama; even if the ally was right next to the Kandrian Empire territorially, they still boldly sent Martial Artists deep into the Kandrian Empire''s domain of influence.


    It was a statement.


    A challenge.


    Emperor Rael could almost hear the Prime Minister''s voice.


    "Join the Kandrian Empire if you dare."


    "Tsk." A sh of displeasure and grudging respect appeared in Emperor Rael''s eyes. It was a brutally simple yet also the best strategy that the Prime Minister could have used against the Kandrian Empire.


    If for no other reason than evolutionary psychology.


    Human beings possessed greater sensitivity to negative emotion than positivity. This was especially true for fear.


    They feared the alliance more than they hoped for the Kandrian Empire.


    And it had paid off.


    It had been three months since the battle with the Sekigahara Confederate had ended, and the war for allies had begun, and one thing had be clear to all participants in the war.


    The alliance had gained an edge in the war for allies.


    They had secured more allies to their cause than the Kandrian Empire did over the same timeframe. This had worked against the Kandrian Empire as it partially reinforced the invincibility of the East Panamic Treaty Alliance.


    Of course, it was far from the doom of the Kandrian Empire. From the very get-go, Emperor Rael had no intention of oupeting his enemies, just doing well enough to the point that they couldn''t defeat the Kandrian Empire without horrific and devastating losses.


    His conditions for victory were much easier than those of Prime Minister Edward.


    Thetter was burdened with the herculean task of gathering enough liquidated war potential that could be rapidly leveraged into a single frontal assault that would be enough to destroy the Kandrian Empire through and through.


    The keyword being liquidated.


    In absolute numbers, the alliance was already powerful enough to wipe the Kandrian Empire off the map; however, two of its constituents were essentially crippled by half by the ingenious political and military strategies of the Emperor of Harmony.


    Still, Emperor Rael had no intention of letting the bad feedback loop continue. What he needed was a big win that could break the momentum of the enemy alliance and further reduce their chance of obtaining the power that they needed to destroy the Kandrian Empire. He needed to break the pattern before people became convinced that it was the norm and the inevitable oue of the war. If people truly started believing that the Kandrian Empire was doomed in the war of allies, then it would be a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy and manifest itself as reality as no one would be willing to ally with the Kandrian Empire.


    In order to ensure that that didn''t happen, he needed to find a single massive victory.


    His thoughts returned to the conversation that he was having with the Shionel Guildmaster.


    "¡­When will he return?" he pondered aloud. N?velDrama.Org owns ? this.


    It had been two months since Rui entered the manifold, having spent about twenty-eight months in it in total.


    He had initially gone in to create a foundation for his sect that could help the future members of his sect to learn and progress with Adaptive Evolution, but had, for some reason, spent an additional fourteen months in the manifold out of nowhere.


    ording to reports, Rui had gotten absorbed in the creation of a new technique concept and had embarked on a new technique project spontaneously.


    "Typical." Emperor Rael snorted.


    "¡­His future has be less easy to scry." Matriarch Nephi closed her eyes."Much less easy."


    Emperor Rael''s eyes shed with concern. "What does that mean for him exactly? Is that bad?"


    Her eyes turned to him.


    "The stronger a Martial Artist is, the harder it is to foresee their future."


    His eyes lit up with realization.


    "¡­Oh."


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2317: Converging Gazes

    Chapter 2317: Converging Gazes


    ?


    It hadn''t been easy for Rui to train through the first and second phases of the Megamind Project, but he pushed through nheless. Conditioning his body to be able to withstand the lopsided pressure wasn''t easy, yet, he gritted his teeth and persevered.


    He had underestimated the difficulty of using the technique just because it was the less risky and powerful version of the two possible paths that he had had at his disposal. Each time he empowered a part of his body with additional blood, it burned like someone was setting his cells on fire.


    And in a way, he was.


    The additional influx of oxygen allowed for greaterbustion, which generated more energy for the body. Not only did it feel like the empowered body part was burning, but it also felt like it was about to explode from the inside out due to the additional pressure that mounted inside.


    BOOOM!!!


    His fist inflicted a devastating impact with relevant muscles empowered by the technique. "Woah..." Rui muttered. "This is not much weaker than Hypertrophic Surge. Too bad it isn''t something I can stack on top of my Metabody System."


    His Metabody System altered the fundamental configuration of the Body, and blood flow was undoubtedly included in that; after all, he wouldn''t be able to sustain a meta body if each part of the body didn''t get the blood it needed, which was different for different Metabody techniques.


    "However, it''s perfect for my needs." He grinned.


    He wasn''t interested in fundamentally amplifying the Metabody System this time around; he had already done that not too long ago when he consumed the Sandflower Nectar Potion.


    However, it was the best and most essible way to empower his brainpower and capacity for thought.


    He couldn''t wait.


    "Time to embark on the next phase."


    He had spent the past seven months in the manifold conditioning his body appropriately so that it could tolerate the stresses that he put on it. Now, it was time to move to the next stage of the training program.


    "I must master the breathing and muscle movements needed to redirect blood flow to my brain."


    And more importantly, he needed to ascertain the limit and ensure that he never crossed it.


    It wasn''t the riskiest thing he could do, but it was not exactly risk-free either. He closed his eyes as he sat down, meditating.


    The absolute solitude and silence around him aided him in entering a state of absolute and deep focus.


    A state ofplete concentration.


    At that moment, nothing consumed his mind.


    All thoughts in the background when dark.


    It was silence.


    No one could enter the flow state like Rui could.


    He entered this state only when it was truly necessary.


    And, in this case, he deemed it to be truly worth it.


    "Fuuu..." He exhaled deeply before activating a breathing technique.


    Simultaneously, the muscles across his Body contracted or expanded, exerting pressure on or lifting pressure off some parts of the Body.


    Naturally, as the veins and arteries across most of his Body contracted, the blood pressure increased substantially.


    Blood, being the fluid that it was, responded to pressure, shifting to the one ce where they didn''t experience that pressure.


    The blood vessels in his brain expanded as a flood of blood coursed through them, pushing against the blood-brain barrier that restricted them froming into direct contact with the brain.


    A flush of oxygen surged into his brain, far greater than normal.


    The countless neurons in his brain shook with power as their metabolic activity spiked to immense degrees. The neural activity of his brain soared to far greater heights, reaching levels that one could only achieve with the Martial Heart.


    In that moment, he couldn''t help but wonder what would happen if hebined the two?


    He knew that it was premature.


    He knew that it was too early.


    He knew that it wasn''t wise.


    Yet...


    BADUMP!!!


    His Martial Heart burst forth in all its glory as a surge of metabolic power washed over the entire Body.


    He shook as his brain experienced an extraordinary explosion of thought. The sum totality of his mind seemed to expand endlessly. His cognition spiked to a new realm, experiencing a quantum surge in processing power second only to that of the Martial Mind.


    And that immediately begged the question.


    What would happen if he activated his Martial Mind on top of this?


    His instincts warned him of the potential risks of progressing too quickly.


    Yet, they also showed him the potential greatness that was to follow if he did.


    The prudent decision would have been to wait.


    It would have been to take it slowly and instill the muscle memory of getting just the right amount of blood flow so that he could get away with what he needed without damaging his blood-brain barrier.N?velDrama.Org owns all ? content.


    Yet, it appeared that Rui''s prudence had been burned up when he chose to go with the less risky of the two options.


    And thus, he activated his Martial Mind.


    From the depths of his mind, an infinite void expanded beyond the confines of his mind, threatening to erode away the minds of anybody who saw him.


    RUMBLE


    The world shook under the weight of the catastrophic fusion of his Martial Mind and the Mind Metabody. Like matter and antimatter, their convergence led to the birth of a mind of


    ephemeral power, the likes of which Gaia had never seen.


    Every individual neuron of his brain began glowing like individual stars.


    Together, they formed a gxy of thought.


    They became singrities of information, reaching the existential limits imposed by the very


    universe itself.


    The very weight of his logos rose to realms unknown as his consciousness seemed to ascend


    to a higher state of awareness.


    RUMBLE


    Heaven and earth seemed to warp under the weight of his existence.


    It was as though the very fabric of space and time was unable to contain the weight of his


    Martial Embodiment.


    The rmed denizens of the manifold had already noticed the anomaly.


    Yet, they weren''t the only ones.


    At that moment, thirteen beings around the continent nced in the same direction.


    Their gazes converged upon him.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2318 Soon

    Chapter 2318 Soon


    Their gazes converged on him even as he reached uncharted territories of raw conscious cognition. He had earned their intrigue.


    A privilege of the highest order.


    They peered at him from across the depths of human civilization.


    No force could halt their gaze.


    Not even the four-dimensional space-time manifold could impede their awareness.


    It might as well have been transparent. N?velDrama.Org owns all ? content.


    Yet, among the thirteen that nced in his direction, one held deeper interest than the rest.


    In the frosty depths of the cold Imperial Pce of the Britannian Empire sat a man.


    An emperor.


    A Transcendent.


    A being of unfathomable power.


    Not even the universe, in all its infinite glory, could contain the entire weight of his being.


    He gazed at Rui with a knowing look before closing his eyes.


    A single whisper escaped him.


    "S???????????????????o?????????????????o?????????????????n?????????????????????????."


    His voice reverberated beyond the shackles of three dimensions, stretching into the past and the future.


    It reverberated beyond the realm of materia.


    Beyond the shackles of causality.


    Blissfully ignorant of his earned attention, Ruipleted the convergence of his Martial Mind with the Mind Metabody.


    His brain had be a violent vortex of information, allowing him to gain an extraordinary level of cognition unparalleled by anything he had ever achieved. His eyes opened as his pupils glowed blood red with power.


    "This¡­" A faint murmur escaped him as he nced at his fist. "This is beyond my wildest expectations."


    The ovep of his Martial Mind with his Mind Metabody was extraordinarily synergetic, allowing him to think at a speed he didn''t even know was possible.


    Time slowed down to a crawl as nothing could seem to keep up with his capacity for thought. Even his own movements were too slow for his liking, yet unlike with the tachypsychia of the Neo Godspeed, it wasn''t his perception of the world that slowed down, but merely his cognition soaring to a point where he could think an extraordinary amount before anything around him could even begin to happen.


    With this, he was certain that not even a chaotic battlefield could overwhelm his mind; he would be able to process everything that happened on a battlefield or against opponents who had an immense amount of information to process.


    With this, he could support many more systems of thought than normal. There were going to be opponents who weren''t information-intensive but were still extremely difficult to defeat. In such cases, it was best to have a way to elerate his thought-driven Adaptive Evolution. Now that he was in this state, he experienced an intense flood of ideas that far surpassed what he would normally be capable of otherwise. He grew even more excited about the prospects of gaining the full Mind Metabody after conditioning his blood-brain barrier. He couldn''t even imagine how strong he would be when he managed to get his hands on theplete technique. He would reach an even greater degree of thought capacity.


    "I must find a way to get my hands on a fruit of the Tree of Healings."


    He had no idea how it would even be possible. It was an extremely ambitious goal.


    There was no doubt that the legacy treasure of the Sekigahara Confederate was extremely well-protected. It was entirely impossible for someone of his power to be able to wring one by force.


    "Do I really have to trade one of my breakthroughs?" He narrowed his eyes. "It would just make our job harder in this war."


    Even if the Sekigahara Confederate managed to put aside their hatred for him and recognize the benefits of trading with him, giving them more Martial Masters was not doing himself or the Kandrian Empire any favors. These same Martial Artists would be used against them in the war.


    "On top of that, considering that these fruits can drastically improve Sages as well, albeit temporarily, their value far exceeds that of a single Martial Master."


    There was a good chance that he would be needed to provide many breakthroughs for a single fruit.


    "Tsk, forget it. I''ll have to wait until the Kandrian Empire has won the war and grown strong enough to dominate the Sekigahara Confederate."


    This was his original resolution, though, admittedly, he had grown even more impatient than before. He looked forward to testing out the many things he was undoubtedly capable of now that he hade to gain the lesser version of the Mind Metabody. It could be a truly integral tool of his Martial Art.


    "But¡­" He winced. "It''s extremely stamina-intensive."


    Rui could almost feel his energy reserves draining by the second. The fusion of his Martial Mind with his Mind Metabody was so great that it yielded great results in exchange for consuming great energy. After all, the brain was the most energy-intensive organ in the body, ounting for twenty percent of the total energy expenditure while only ounting for two percent of the body''s mass. That ratio only increased enormously when he utilized the Mind Metabody. As powerful as the technique was, it had deep energy requirements that far exceeded any of his other Metabodies, including Neo Godspeed.


    In other words, this was not something that he could abuse with no care in the world. He ought to limit its execution to circumstances where he truly needed it and where it was most suited to be used. It had no ce in attrition battles, and it certainly had little ce in battles where he was confident of his victory without it. It only belonged in more extreme circumstances. It belonged in circumstances where the stamina drain was merely a small price to pay. "In order to gain a better understanding of when, where, and how I must use this technique, I must put it to the test."


    What better way than to test it in the original circumstance that he had designed the Mind Metabody in? "Time to round up all the Masters in the manifold and have them test the limits of this newfound power."


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2319 Begin

    Chapter 2319 Begin


    That day was a special day. The denizens of the manifold had experienced pressure.


    An immensely deep mental pressure.


    It had borne down on them, spreading great concern across the entire manifold. Many had momentarily thought that the manifold hade under attack by the East Panamic Treaty Alliance.


    Their fear turned to curiosity when they learned that the Void Prince had caused the anomaly that pressured the entirety of the manifold with the weight of his mind. Not even the Martial Sages who had been training in the manifold could contain their curiosity into the matter.


    Yet, the request he made immediately after was even more bizarre.


    "I would like a battle simultaneously against as many Masters willing to help me test out my new technique as possible."


    Very few Martial Masters had the capital to make such demands. In the first ce, there were very few Masters who could make that demand and note under bacsh for the disrespect. There were even fewer Masters who could make that demand ande away without making a fool of themselves for undertaking a challenge that was clearly too much for them. One was Master Sera, the Harbinger.


    And the other was Master Rui, Void Prince of the Kandrian Empire.


    STEP


    The Masters stiffened when he arrived upon the Master-level battle arena within the manifold. He had changed.


    An even greater weight seemed to apany his every movement.


    A gravitas so deep he might as well have developed his own gravitational field.


    As well as a peril that prickled at their nerves.


    "¡­Remarkable," Master Sera remarked with an expression of delight as she watched from the spectator stands. "He''s grown even stronger."


    "Forsooth, that is to be expected," the Gatekeeper calmly replied, standing beside her. "If my suspicions are correct, he has made an immensely powerful breakthrough to obtaining an even greater capacity of thought."


    The two of them had taken time out of their schedule to witness the fruits of Rui''sbor that had caused the little anomaly within the manifold.


    Yet, they weren''t alone.


    "What do you think, Your Sagehood?" Master Sera nced to her side. "What do you foresee?"


    Matriarch Nephi snorted. "I do not exercise my power lightly. What is toe wille."


    "Boo."


    "Rui will win, you guys," Kane promised with a wide grin. "Trust me, I have seen this exact scene a hundred times before. It happens every time he makes a major breakthrough. He reaches a whole other level than before."


    Out of all of them there, Kane knew Rui better than anyone. He hade to recognize so many patterns in the way that his best friend progressed that he could almost form his own predictive model on the way that Rui evolved as a Martial Artist.


    "I, too, foresee aplete victory." The Divine Doctor smiled mirthlessly. "The mental pressure that I momentarily experienced that day was indicative of a massive breakthrough inbat power."


    His words drew the attention of the other five of them. "Why are you even here?" Master Sera raised an eyebrow. "I didn''t take the Divine Doctor to be a fan of Martial Art."


    "Oh, I''m not. I assure you I couldn''t care less about it," he replied nonchntly. "I''m just curious about the progress my stethoscope has made, you see."


    All five but Kane found his words to be confounding. He was the only one who had been privy to the agreement that Rui had formed with the Divine Doctor in the Beast Domain. He knew why the man cared so much about how strong Rui was.


    "It''s about to start." Kane''s gaze returned to the battle arena with an excited smile. "I''m so hyped to see what he''s cooked this time."


    Rui found himself standing in the middle of a group of more than a dozen Martial Artists. They adopted their various stances, facing him while he simply stood.


    It appeared that he didn''t feel the need to take a stance of his own.


    Despite cornering him, the Martial Masters couldn''t help but feel like they were the ones who were cornered.


    They were each high-grade.


    Yet, that didn''t stop them from breaking into a cold sweat.


    "Thank you all for agreeing to partake in this," Rui calmly addressed them. "I appreciate it." Text ? owned by N?velDrama.Org.


    They simply nodded lightly.


    "Now then¡­" Rui continued. "Let us begin."


    BADUMP!!!


    A variety of Martial Hearts burst into power as they surged forth, empowering their Martial Minds.


    Including Rui''s.


    They stiffened as an endless wave of darkness eclipsed their Martial Embodiments, consuming them whole.


    An infinite Void.


    They had grown ustomed to it, yet the sheer power of his Martial Embodiment never failed to earn their admiration and envy.


    Yet, it was what followed that truly shocked them.


    The weight of his mind and Embodiment did not stop rising.


    It only elerated.


    The glowing blood vessels that stretched across the entirety of his Martial Body grew dimmer and weaker as their physical output decreased. Their power was being redirected to his brain.


    The blood vessels in his skull consequently began shining, resembling streams of boilingva on aridnd.


    His eyes glowed blood red as they red with power.


    RUMBLE


    An unfathomable amount of mental pressure weighed down on the other Martial Artists, almost shackling them where they stood. The infinite void resurged as a shocking force seemed to apany the devastating Martial Embodiment. It was as though the Embodiment had gained material substance, threatening to erode their minds away with a vengeance.


    It was as though his mind could impact materia with the sheer elevation of its cognition.


    "What are you waiting for?" His voice had remained unchanged, yet they could have sworn that it was heavier than before.


    Those words that jolted them out of their stupor.


    He was right.


    What were they waiting for?


    Sure, he was stronger than them, but that did not mean he was invincible.


    They also had a huge numeric advantage.


    On top of that, Masters were naturally highly observant.


    While his mind had grown more powerful, they did not fail to miss that his Body had grown weaker.


    It didn''t take a genius to figure out the basics of what he was doing.


    "Attack!" They leaped all at once, ignorant of what was toe. -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2320: Youll have to do better than that

    Chapter 2320: You''ll have to do better than that


    ?


    Rui''s eyes shed with power as his Martial Mind surged, activating the Angel of Lace.


    Ordinarily, applying the deeply data-intensive system of thought to more than a dozen Martial Masters at once was too much.


    However, with the power of his Mind-Metabody, it was already over.


    In the blink of an eye, he created predictive models for all of them. His gaze shifted to the Master charging at him with an iing blow.


    He shifted ever so slightly at precisely the right moment.


    WHOOSH


    The fist missed him a hair''s length.


    Yet, four more attacks converged on him from four different Masters.


    All it took was the slightest shifts across his entire body-


    WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH


    Much to the shock of the four Masters, he slipped past all of their attacks with buttery smoothness.


    He made it look easy.


    His heightened cognition allowed him to do a much better job with picking the right moment and degree of evasion to minimize energy consumption. Without the cognition thanks to the fusion of Martial Mind and the Mind-Metabody, he wouldn''t have been able to exercise such an incredible level of precision and uracy. He was in an extremely energy-intensive state at the moment; he couldn''t afford to consume too much energy.


    Techniques like the Yin-Yang Spear were out of the question.


    He simply sought to ustom himself to his current circumstances as best as possible so that the discovery period of fighting with the Mind-Metabody waspleted in training rather than in realbat.


    WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH!


    The onlookers grew stunned as Rui began evading attacks better and better with each passing second. He realized that the additional cognition helped him in more ways than just one. It didn''t just increase his capacity; it allowed him to do more with less.


    This had always been the case, when he thought about it.


    It was why Apprentices were able to perform superhuman feats despite having human bodies. Their cognition enabled them to maximize efficiency to superhuman levels, allowing them to produce an output that greatly surpassed the limits of human power.


    While the boost in cognition from the lesser version of the Mind-Metabody was most certainly notparable to the proportional boost that the Apprentice Realm provided, it was still immensely powerful, allowing him to unearth even greater potential in his power that had remained untapped before this.


    Yet, that wasn''t all it was able to do.


    WHOOSH


    Rui evaded a powerful and swift blow as he surged forward with a balled fist.


    "I can see your SOUL."


    His power had indeed reduced, yet what had increased was how well he used it.


    The right attack at the right point in space and time.N?velDrama.Org owns ? this.


    It was a quintessential cornerstone of Adaptive Evolution.


    BOOOM!!!


    The knuckle on Rui''s fist found itself buried in his opponent''s sr plexus, inflicting immense damage on the man''s gut, knocking him down, and leaving him gasping for air.


    The other Masters stared at Rui in shock as he effortlessly downed a high-grade Martial Master with ease.


    He didn''t even use any powerful, shy striking technique either.


    No, he had simply exploited the narrowest of gaps in space and timing to produce incredibly significant oues that could only otherwise happen if one got lucky.


    "If you don''t go all out, you''ll lose."


    Rui''s words struck them hard.


    His gaze swept across all of them.


    "I am not weak enough that I can be defeated by anything less than your absolute best."


    There was just one problem.


    One Master scratched his head.


    "But we aren''t holding back."


    Rui heaved a sigh. "Then, so be it."


    WHOOSH!


    He rushed at them with the limited speed that he was constrained to, employing Parallel Walk, Gale Force Breathing, and Outer Convergence.


    BAM BAM BAM!!!


    Rui pummeled one Master blow after blow, exploiting the weaknesses in his guard to st him with attack after attack while evading every other counter that was sent his way. Yet, the other Masters were hardly willing to sit still and watch him bully their teammate where he


    stood.


    On top of that, they realized that his perfect evasion wouldn''t matter if they used a wider attack that swept across the entire battlefield. A strategy that would negate the benefits of his greatly enhanced maneuvering.


    Additionally, they had also taken to establishing a kind of formation amongst themselves where defensive Martial Masters served as active shields while maneuvering Masters buzzed around him with the intention of merely skirmishing with him around the edges. The close- range Masters worked with the defensive Martial Artists with the goal of trying tond as many blows while he was engaged with the former two.


    Meanwhile, long-range Martial Masters reserved themselves to remain at a distance where theyunched wide-scale attacks to negate his evasion and cut away at his stamina and condition. While the attacks were certainly weaker, they were good enough to hurt him due to his lowered durability caused by the redirection of the Martial Heart to the brain. For the same reason, friendly fire was not a big deal either. It didn''t matter whether or not it hit teammates because it would require far more effort from Rui''s end to defend against the attack, which served as a great advantage.


    It was a level of spontaneous strategic and tactical coordination that Martial Artist of the Lower Realms would be absolutely incapable of doing at all. Yet, Martial Masters were different beasts that were fully capable of engaging and executing strategic thought.


    A small smile cracked at the edge of Rui''s mouth as he was blown away by yet another wide-


    scale attack. "Impressive. But..."


    His eyes red with peril.


    "...Temporal Disharmony."


    The two Masters surging in for a strike stiffened as time sped up so much that they couldn''t even keep up with the world around them!


    The Mind-Metabody didn''t just amplify thought and efficiency, it also very directly magnified the potency of Rui''s hypnosis, which was already extremely powerful.


    BAM BAM!


    Two swift blows to the jaw knocked them out.


    A smile emerged on Rui''s face as his red eyes glowed with deep power.


    "You''ll have to do better than that if you want to beat me."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2321: Consequences

    Chapter 2321: Consequences


    ?


    What followed next was a thorough dismantling of his opponents one after another. He didn''t need to use any of his most powerful techniques in particr, nor did he want to. He simply wanted to test what fighting with the technique was like at its fundamentals. Once he got that down, it was easier to figure out what came next.


    He couldn''t easily use particrly powerful techniques like Yin-Yang Spear or some of his strongest domain techniques, for they were too draining for him in his current state. However, he found that he didn''t need to. He was just too powerful as he was now. In this state, his hypnosis had be so powerful that not even particrly powerful Martial Artists found it easy to handle.


    It had always been extremely powerful, for his mind had always been extremely powerful, but even then, the boost to hypnosis provided by the Martial Mind was beyond his expectations, reaching truly extraordinary levels.


    "He''s strong." Master Sera''s smile grew wider. "Stronger than I would have imagined. This new technique is overwhelming and overwhelmingly synergetic with his greatest strengths." Sir Armstrong nodded with a knowing gaze. "No man would experience such an enormous leap in power with that technique as he has. I speak from experience."


    "Damn, it''s not going to be easy to catch up to him this time." Kane grinned. "That technique looks like a new addition to his Metabody System. About damn time if you ask me."


    "An upgrade in processing power of this magnitude..." The Divine Doctor fell into thought. "It does seem remarkably useful."


    Matriarch Nephi, on the other hand, simply gazed at his performance from start to finish without uttering so much as a word.


    By the time Rui was done, all of the Martial Masters were knocked out or lying on the ground, groaning in pain.


    "Thank you for participating in this little sparring match. You have my gratitude," Rui remarked, deactivating the Mind Metabody as he gazed at his hand.


    He was quite exhausted already.


    It lined up with the suspicion he had that this technique could onlyst so long. Its sole weakness was its stamina. It was far more energy-intensive than the other Metabody techniques.


    "If not for the Sandflower Nectar Potion, it wouldn''t evenst this long." He winced. "It certainlyes with a drawback that bnces out the power it provides."


    Thankfully, like the other Metabody techniques, its output could be regted. He didn''t need to use it at a hundred percent each time. He could limit himself to half or even a quarter if he truly wished to conserve his stamina.


    It was the ideal solution to an otherwise serious problem.


    He couldn''t afford to run out of gas in the middle of a battle while surrounded by enemies who would love nothing more than to kill him where he stood.


    STEP


    He arrived at the spectator stands.


    "So, what do you think?" he asked all five of them who watched his battle from start to finish. "You rocked, man. That technique is crazy." Kane flicked him a thumbs up.


    "As foreseen, you have an immensepatibility with the technique," the Gatekeeper calmly answered. "You have done well to adapt my technique to your needs and strengths."


    Master Sera smiled with an eerie glint in her eyes. "You have amassed an extraordinary amount of power at a young age. I find it a shame that I cannot engage in friendly duels. I would love to fight you. I''m curious which one of us woulde out on top."


    Rui directed a wary gaze at her.


    She was one of the few opponents that he was more reluctant to fight against.


    He had absolutely no idea how he was supposed to adaptively evolve against vicious Martial bullying. On top of that, herbat power outside of that was quite impressive, even if unidimensional.


    Perhaps one day, when he had shored up his emotional vulnerabilities.


    "Do you intend to head to war immediately?"


    Rui nodded at his grandmother. "I have gained even more power and have experience and training as a diplomat. I can do much for our predicament if I personally head out for the Kandrian Empire."


    He already had a destination in mind that he was willing to head out to immediately.


    "What about your sect?" Matriarch Nephi asked.


    "The design phase of the training resources that Imissioned has already beenpleted," Rui replied. "I have alsopleted the nning phase of the Martial foundation of my sect. The manifold has allowed me toplete a process that would take more than a year in just one month. Unfortunately, there are things that cannot be done inside the manifold. For example, the manufacturing of the resources that Imissioned and the construction of my sect headquarters. There is no point in me waiting around for these mundane processes to finish. I have a trusted and qualified staff working on it."


    Once that was done, he intended to officially found the Water Sect right away.


    Until then, he would much rather grow involved with matters that were more central to his interests and goals and required his attention. He knew that once the sect officiallymenced, it was not going to be a simple and light event. It would ignite a bit of a storm within the Martial Community that he would need to be careful about.


    The potency and power of his Martial Art were already well known in the Martial World In addition, the ability to break Martial Artists through was a deeply revolutionary ability that, if disseminated, would shake the Martial World to its very roots.


    The world was muchrger than just East Panama.


    While other Sage-level powerhouses on other sides of the continent did not bother intervening much due to the sheer distance between them, that did not mean that they were unaware of what was happening in East Panama.


    News of Rui''s ability had undoubtedly reached all echelons of human civilization, and he was sure that he would face the consequences of that at some point.


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 Chapter 2322: Preferred Destination

    Chapter 2322: Preferred Destination


    ?


    Soon enough, he departed from the manifold after having spent over two years in its depths. Yet, a mere two months had passed in the outside world.


    The war had not progressed too much in that time span. At most nations that were far too close to one side had inevitably chosen to ally with said side. However, there were plenty of nations that were not geographicallypromised and hadn''t yet made the ultimate choice.


    A choice that would undoubtedly shape all of human civilization forever.


    They were distinctly aware that the wrong choice was beyond merely a blunder, considering the stakes at hand and the powers that were involved.


    None of them wanted to end up being the person who historians of the future would look back at and me everything upon.


    "Poor leaders. I must help them make the right decision." Rui heaved a dramatic sigh. "It will be a shame to let them blunder by siding with the alliance when I can show them the light."


    His gaze turned forward to the man sitting on the opposite side of the table in the Royal Office. "Wouldn''t you agree, father?"


    Emperor Rael gazed at Rui with mirth. "I suppose that''s one way of putting it."


    Upon exiting the manifold, he had immediately gone to visit his father, who had been relieved to finally have his presence.


    "More importantly, how has your training experience been?" Emperor Rael asked with pointed interest.


    Rui shrugged. "Pretty good, I have grown much stronger now and have even fewer weaknesses. I have particrly grown more able to fight in the war."


    "That''s good to hear." His father nodded lightly. "Because the very second you set foot outside the Kandrian Empire, you can expect to run into Martial Masters and perhaps even Sages, depending on how desperate and hateful our enemies are. However, I do not foresee them deploying Martial Sages very easily against you."


    Rui gave him a knowing look. "Because my short-term strategic impact is not as significant as that of a Martial Sage."


    "Precisely."


    While the long-term strategic impact of Rui''s mass-triggered breakthroughs was revolutionary, the same could not be said for the short term impact. Martial Masters ounted for about ten percent of the end oue of the war, while the remaining ny percent of the oue was going to be decided by the Martial Sages.


    In other words, Rui breaking Seniors to the Master Realm was not going to have devastating impacts on the war, especially when the enemies still had more Martial Masters.


    "The only ce where that might not be true will be the war for allies rather than the main war," Emperor Rael remarked. "If Prime Minister Edward feels that your breakthrough ability is bringing us too many allies, then he may try to kill you with Martial Sages."


    It was too difficult to call the details. However, the gist was that Rui''s life was going to be targeted heavily due to his impact on the long-term strategic outlook of the Kandrian Empire and the strategic outlook on the Kandrian Empire''s prospects of winning allies.


    "If I remember correctly, you told me that you had contingencies if they sent Sages, which could deter them," Rui remarked thoughtfully.


    Emperor Rael nodded. "An artifact crafted from an extremely rare esoteric substance that can allow you to instantaneously be transported back to the Kandrian Empire in the blink of an eye. As long as we publicize your possession of such an artifact, Prime Minister Edward won''t bother wasting time sending Sages to try to kill you."


    "Because it would be futile to try and kill me while I possess the artifact, especially when we have my grandmother," Rui mused. "But, that won''t stop them from sending Masters, especially when they have undoubtedly figured out that I am still willing to fight my peers. On top of that, there are enough Masters that it isn''t a waste to send them to attack me."


    A smile arose on his face. "Which means that I will mostly be fighting Masters thanks to this n."


    "Correct again. As long as you are willing to take that risk, that is."


    "Willing?" Rui scoffed. "I want nothing more."


    He could barely contain his excitement at the prospect of using his Mind-Metabody against the Masters who sought to kill him.


    Considering that he would surely be jumped by many powerful Masters, there was no doubt that it was exactly the kind of circumstance that he had had in mind when creating his Megamind technique.


    It would also be good to test how the technique fared against genuinely hostile opponents that were doing their best to kill him. After all, that was the true standard to which all Martial Artists were held.


    "...And where best are my services utilized?" Rui asked straightforwardly.


    He didn''t have the patience to read through progress reports of the war for allies to try and determine what the best ce for him to go was.


    "There are many ces that you could go to that could use your help for convincing and protecting allies, but the one ce where you will be most effective is this ce..."


    Emperor Rael ced a file before him with a title on the cover.


    [Shionel Confederation]


    Rui smiled, amused. "I suppose that makes sense. I do have a pretty good rtionship with Guildmaster Bradt. Though, I don''t know if that''s changed ever since you returned to the throne. After all, he invested heavily in me as a candidate for the throne, and I didn''t even give him any returns when you returned. I only gave returns to domestic investors and patrons of my faction in the Kandrian Empire. And, I didn''t even give him a face-to-face apology, just issued a broad public announcement."


    Emperor Rael shook his head. "Returning donations, patronage, and investment is an unreasonable standard that nobody would hold you to. This is the peril of political investment that someone as experienced as Bradt is hardly unaware of. He made a gamble, and he lost due to bad luck."


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 Chapter 2323: Earning War

    Chapter 2323: Earning War


    ?


    Rui stirred at his father''s words with an amused expression. "Well, that''s a very generous definition of ''bad luck.'' He lost because I sabotaged my own campaign from the very start. If I hadn''t, I would be sitting in your ce right now."


    Rui personally was very satisfied with the choice that he had made more than eight years ago. Not going for the throne, in hindsight, was a no-brainer, and it was a wonder that he even gave it any regard whatsoever. Of course, this was a typical twenty-twenty hindsight moment; he hadn''t forgotten the immense amount of pressure he had felt after his father had revealed his identity as a royal prince to the entire world.N?velDrama.Org owns all ? content.


    Still, his decision to pretend to fight for the throne and instead search the Beast Domain for the Divine Doctor was one that amounted to the greatest political scandal of all time.


    If it came out, the consequences would not be light. Especially considering the circumstances that they were in where they needed to win over the support and trust of new and old allies. "There is no way that Guildmaster Bradt can know or find out," his father reassured him. "In other words, your rtionship with him should still be overwhelmingly positive for the most part. Bradt would not have reached the status and power that he has obtained as a businessman and head of state if he was the type to me others for his own shorings, I can assure you."


    Rui shrugged. "I suppose that''s fair. I do agree that I can do more if I''m assigned to the Shionel Confederation due to my familiarity and rapport with him. However, that isn''t the only reason you''re assigning me to an undecided polity instead of a decided ally, isn''t it?"


    His father smiled knowingly. "You would have made a good emperor."


    Rui snorted. "I made a better one by choosing not to."


    "Well, regardless, you''re correct. There is another reason that I''m inclined to send you to an undecided ally like the Shionel Confederation," his father confirmed. "It is also to protect you the best from the aggression of the alliance."


    Rui snorted again. "If the alliance attacks me while I''m in the Shionel Confederation, then they will lose any chance of convincing the Shionel Confederation to take their side."


    "It is one thing to attack allies of an enemy, but it is entirely another to attack a neutral and undecided polity that is a potential ally," his father added. "Especially when the polity is as powerful as the Shionel Confederation. It would be a diplomatic disaster to conduct an attack on you when you are a guest of the Shionel Confederation."


    It didn''t matter if the attack was technically not aimed at the Shionel Confederation and only at Rui, such distinctions would not justify the tant vition and disregard of the sovereignty of the Shionel Confederation.


    "Edward will not be that rash and foolish, I can assure you."


    "...So that means I will not experience an actual war once I get to the Shionel Confederation?" Rui frowned.


    This was not what he had in mind.


    He had expected to immediately be thrown into a battlefield upon dispatch where he could begin fighting at once.


    "If you want to fight, then..." A smirk cracked at his father''s mouth, "you will need to win over the Shionel Confederation as an ally of the Kandrian Empire."


    Rui snorted as he recognized his father''s scheme. "Nice try, but what if I just choose to go to an ally instead?"


    His father shrugged. "You won''t have the opportunity to fight the strongest of Masters and the very best of what our enemies have to offer."


    Rui narrowed his eyes.


    "Prime Minister Edward will not divert too much to kill you if he finds out you have the artifact that can send you to safety at any time," his father exined. "So yes, the enemy Masters assigned to whichever one of our allies will indeed do their best to kill you, but they won''t be the best that the enemy alliance has to offer as far as Masters go. Those will be assigned to the most important allied nations. If you are interested in fighting Masters who are weaker than you, then feel free to go ahead."


    "So the artifact, which is protecting me from Sages, is also preventing me from running into the strongest of Masters that I''d like to fight?" Rui frowned. "That''s annoying."


    "The only solution is to be in a ce where our enemies would undoubtedly assign their strongest Martial Artists," his father confirmed. "With the current power that you possess, I highly doubt that anything other than the strongest of Masters is worth fighting. What''s the point in fighting weaklings who are useless to you?"


    Rui stirred at his father''s words.


    They made sense.


    He was not interested in fighting anyone weaker than grade twenty-eight. However, these were among the strongest of Masters, even among all high-grade Masters. Consequently, they were only assigned to important Kandrian allies to attack. That meant that he needed to be in a ce where they would be.


    An important ally of the Kandrian Empire, for example.


    If Rui managed to convince Bradt to ally with the Kandrian Empire, then the Shionel Confederation would undoubtedly be one of the most important targets of the enemy alliance.


    Then, and only then, would Rui be able to fight the cream of the crop of the Master Realm. With each Realm that passed, it seemed to grow increasingly difficult to get his hands on the strongest of the Realm when he became strong enough to fight them. After all, with each passing Realm, the strongest Martial Artists grew increasingly important and significant politically.


    The strongest Apprentice and Squire weren''t all that relevant politically, but the strongest Senior, who Sir Armstrong and Rui himself were at one point, was of political significance.


    The same was even more true for the strongest Martial Masters.


    There were only two grade-thirty Masters left.


    It meant that it wasn''t going to be easy to fight the strongest this time around.


    "Fine." Rui made up his mind, narrowing his eyes. "I''ll win over the Shionel Confederation and then fight with the strongest Masters who attack it after as a reward."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2324 Extreme Concessions

    Chapter 2324 Extreme Concessions


    Once the decision was made, Rui needed to devise a strategy for winning over Guildmaster Bradt.


    Even if they had a good rtionship, it wasn''t something that could single-handedly win over the guildmaster to their side. At most, the man would be more pleasant to Rui than to the alliance. That was all Rui had going for him. He needed to figure out the rest for himself.


    "His greatest predicament must be the fact that he loses everything to the alliance if he picks a fight with them," Rui quickly discerned the man''s circumstances. "In which case, it will be very difficult to convince him otherwise."


    "That is indeed what has been holding up our talks," Emperor Rael calmly replied. "I do not necessarily me him. He would be a fool to throw away the foundation of his business that easily."


    "But it is that sense of self-preservation that is holding him back from allying with us."


    "Correct, I wasn''t able to make too much progress. He is indeed a tough nut to crack," Emperor Rael remarked. "I haven''t hit the limit on the offers that I am able and willing to make, but I decided that I shall entrust them to you. It is best that you personally make the offer to Guildmaster Bradt as a sign of our sincerity."


    "I thought you already sent a diplomatic team to negotiate with him, like with all other nations." Rui raised an eyebrow. "I suppose that for Sage-level nations, youmunicate with them more directly?"


    "You get what you give," his father calmly uttered. "Diplomatic teams are met with diplomatic teams; they do not directly negotiate with the leaders of the Sage-level nations themselves, and instead, most of their time goes into corresponding with the head official of foreign affairs of the state."


    Rui nodded knowingly. "And the official, in turn,municates with the head of state. It''s an indirect, cumbersome, and slow process that is much less efficient or effective than directlymunicating with the head of state himself."


    "Correct. However, only an equally important dignitary from our nation can earn that right. I would never speak directly to a random ambassador from any Sage-level powerhouse, for they do not have authority or a mandate for authority that is worth my time."


    "So, the goal is to increase the likelihood of the sess of the negotiations with the Shionel Confederation by sending me, a royal prince, so that I can negotiate extensively with Guildmaster Bradt directly and leverage my good rtionship with him," Rui mused. "Well, it''s a good n, but ultimately, Bradt is not a fool. We will need to make offers that he cannot refuse or else me going there is going to be meaningless."


    "I am aware of that." Emperor Rael pulled out a thick folder from his table. "These are the concessions that I am willing to make in order to secure the cooperation of the Shionel Confederation."


    Rui raised an eyebrow with interest as he opened the folder and skimmed through the first few pages.


    What he read shook him where he sat. N?velDrama.Org owns ? this.


    "You''re willing to sell him one of our port towns?!" Rui''s eyes lit up with surprise. "That''s extreme."


    His gaze shifted to his father. "Our maritime and seafaring sector is extraordinarily sessful and lucrative. The sheer amount of bandwidth of connection that we get with the rest of the continent is extreme, not to mention the revenue and the importance of the harbor to local businesses and trade."


    Emperor Rael shook his head. "Towns can be built. Once we win the war, our power and prestige will reach unprecedented heights. With the treasures that we have thanks to you, we will be the most powerful military and Martial force in the entire continent by far. We will be able to break past the Great Limit and achieve unparalleled prosperity. Inparison to that¡­"


    He firmly met Rui''s gaze. "One or even two port towns are nothing. The Kandrian Empire shares an absolutely enormous border with the Great Nam Ocean. After we win the war andplete our rise, we will easily be able to build many more port towns along our eastern coast and proceed with no problem whatsoever."


    Rui mulled over that.


    This is not new information, of course. In theory, even Rui knew that there wasn''t any limit to what could be sacrificed to win the war as long as they still had their treasures. Even then, selling off a hefty piece of one''s territory was a taboo that one did not do too easily. However, it appeared that his father was entirely willing to make the sacrifice.


    "I mean, you could have just offered him a lot of breakthroughs instead," Rui muttered with a hint of dissatisfaction. "It''s more valuable thannd, and it doesn''t take anything away from us except for a bit of my time."


    Emperor Rael shook his head. "You don''t understand Bradt entirely if you think that. Do you think I haven''t offered him breakthroughs? It was the first thing that I offered him. Yet, he refused, as I had predicted. The foundation of his business is something that he has spent more than forty years creating. He is deeply unwilling to let it go, not even for breakthroughs and not even for longevity potions. In a sense, hispany is his only offspring. His desire to preserve the oligarchic dominance of hispany exceeds his desire for power and even self-preservation."


    Rui stirred at his father''s words as he understood the reasoning behind his choices. "¡­So that is why you are willing to offer him a port town. A port town will directly benefit the foundation of his business, right? Thus, even if he loses the connections or his distribution and transport routes and chains, he will still be able to preserve the enormous market share that his nation has."


    "Correct." His father nodded. "That is why all the things that I''m willing to offer are in some way or another rted to empowering and enriching the core of his business."


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2325 Replacement Proposal

    Chapter 2325 Recement Proposal


    Rui understood the choices that his father had made when it came to the things that he was willing to make when it came to persuading the Shionel Guildmaster to their side.


    "Port towns, ship yards, ships, harbors¡­" Rui winced. "These are all huge concessions. You''re basically offering to give him a foundation in seafaring on a silver tter."


    "It is the price that needs to be paid if we are to get him to abandon his foundation innd faring," his father replied, sifting through some other documents. "Or, at least, his foundation innd faring in East Panama. For example, this is a map featuring all the distribution and transportation routes that the Bradt Distribution Service will lose if he joins the Kandrian Empire and makes an enemy of the alliance."


    He ced a map of East Panama on the table that featured each distribution and transport route that the Bradt Distribution used across all of East Panama. Each route connected the Bradt Distribution Service centers and branches to unique ces that couldn''t be essed otherwise.


    In other words, each route was indispensable to Guildmaster Bradt''s business and market capture.


    The ones that he would lose by allying with the Kandrian Empire were featured in red; these were routes that involved going through or near the Britannian Empire, the Republic of Gorteau, and the Sekigahara Confederate.


    Nearly seventy percent of the routes were red.


    "And this¡­" Emperor Rael ced another map on the table. "¡­Is my proposed seafaring recements for the lost routes."


    The map featured a thick band of routes that flowed into the Kandrian Empire and then emerged from the eastern side into the sea before spreading across the entire continent. It cleanly demonstrated how each and every single lost route would be reced by a sea-faring route.


    "However, each route is longer." Rui frowned. "The cost of his services will increase. That does not seem particrly lucrative to me."


    "The distance traveled increases. However, the sheer amount of goods that ships are able to transport en masse is absolutely enormouspared to that of storage carriages," his father exined. "It''s ten times more expensive but also twenty times more productive. Thus, the per-unit price of his services actually reduces. On top of that, hisnd routes require paying tariffs to the polities he passes through, although he has negotiated some pretty low prices for himself. The Great Nam Ocean, on the other hand, does not charge tariffs for traversing its waters."


    Rui nodded as he appreciated the benefits and allure of seafaring distribution as an alternative. "However, there is still the issue of leverage that we will have over him. Even if you sell him the town, it is ultimately still well within our control and our territory. We could take it back any time we want and cripple his business. As a result, he would be absolutely powerless to stop it in such a circumstance. He is surrendering a lot of trust to us."


    "Thankfully, that is where the reputation of trust and credibility I have cultivated over three centuries as the ruler of the Kandrian Empirees into y," his father replied. "And, it is paying its dues. Many of the allies we have already made are formed on promises that I made to them. Yet, despite them being merely promises, even if written on a contract, they still eagerly formed an alliance with us. Do you think that they would have done that if not for the impable reputation, trustworthiness, and credibility that I have cultivated over the span of three hundred years?"


    Rui shook his head. "There''s no way I would make an enemy of three Sage-level powerhouses over flowery promises."


    "Exactly. As long as you operate with sincerity and good faith consistently, people will tally that to have a more favorable opinion of you. Your reputation and credibility is extremely important in the world of politics and business. Unlike us, the rest of the world does not have the Ss n to foresee the future. Thus, they evaluate whether they should impart trust and how much based on reputation and credibility."


    His father leveraged his reputation extensively over the war to win them advantages that he would not have been able to win otherwise. This included the deal with Esocline Federation that allowed him to earn its support in crippling the Sekigahara Confederate.


    "So, the moral of the story is to make proposals that empower the foundation of his business and proposals that leverage our reputation," Rui summarized. "And that,bined with the fact that we have a good rtionship with him, and we should be able to reel him to our side."


    "Precisely, I have prepared an information package that you can read up on while you prepare for your diplomatic dispatch to the Shionel Confederation," his father remarked. "Once you have thoroughly absorbed it, you are ready for the operation. We don''t have much time, so let''s get started."


    He ced arge stack of documents on the table before Rui with a nod.


    Rui heaved a sigh of reluctance. He didn''t want to if he could avoid it. But the stakes were too high. Not to mention, it would be difficult for him to fight the Masters otherwise.


    He also needed to ensure that he got his facts right, or else he would just be like a fool before Guildmaster Bradt. He had negotiated agreements with the guildmaster before, and he knew that the man was extremely shrewd. If he did not do his absolute best in this regard, he would not be able to inspire confidence and trust in the guildmaster. At this juncture, he needed to not onlypel the guildmaster''s deep protectiveness in his business but also to instill confidence in the man that they would indeed win and did indeed have their act together. Text ? owned by N?velDrama.Org.


    "I''ll get right on it immediately, it shouldn''t take me too long to familiarize myself with all the details of this mission."


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2326: A Heavy Favor

    Chapter 2326: A Heavy Favor


    ?


    Rui began absorbing the relevant data that his father had prepared for him after departing from the Royal Pce. His father knew exactly the kind of information that he would need in order to ensure that he would be able to finish his mission without a hitch.


    As he familiarized himself with data surrounding the Shionel Confederation''s socioeconomic parameters as well as numbers on the Bradt Distribution Services'' operations and businesses, he gained a much better understanding of the man''s circumstances.


    "The Shionel Dungeon has truly served as the breakthrough that propelled his business to even greater statuses in this sector, allowing him to be the sole oligarch of distribution and transportation," Rui muttered. "Tsk, this fellow has truly benefited from me."


    It was no wonder that he had been willing to invest heavily in Rui''s political campaign for the throne.


    On top of that, he still had one Martial Sage on retainer that was entirely answerable to him as per their contract. This was in exchange for turning one of the floors of the dungeon into a Virodhabhasa Church Town.


    It was none other than Sage Sariawar.Text content ? N?velDrama.Org.


    Rui''s eyes narrowed as the darkness in his eyes stirred ominously.


    He hadn''t forgotten what Master Uma had told him.


    Master Deivon, one of his greatest beneficiaries in a time when he was at his most vulnerable, was dead.


    He had sensed that she was telling the truth thanks to his vastly superior Martial Mind. It also meant that the official story about the man was a lie.


    The official story was that he was in isted training with Sage Sariawar herself.


    In that case, there was a good chance that this Sage was responsible for what had happened. She was undoubtedly aware of the fact that Master Deivon was dead.


    That wasn''t the only piece of evidence that Rui had.


    He recalled how eighteen years ago, when he had been attending the banquet after winning the Virodhabhasa Martial Contest, Senior Frinjschia had warned him about the fact that there were powerful beings in the Theocracy that had had their eyes on him. She had warned him to pick a Sage-level nation to hide in.


    At the time, he had no idea who she was referring to.


    Now, however, he had a faint suspicion.


    Whether Sage Sariawar was merely covering up what Master Uma had done or involved to a much more sinister degree than he could have expected, he wasn''t sure.


    Regardless, he looked forward to speaking with her directly. At the very least, he could try to see if he could confirm whether she had something to do with the death of Master Deivon.


    And if she had...


    Bloodlust erupted from the depths of his eyes.


    "I''ll kill her myself."


    Of course, it would need to wait until he reached the Sage Realm. Rui was nowhere near the level where he could extract personal revenge for the unjust death of Master Deivon at the hands of those who sought to impose their designs on him.


    But he was willing to be patient in this regard.


    There was no doubt that Guildmaster Bradt had benefited greatly from her services; just the fact that hispany could deploy the services of a Martial Sage on retainer was truly incredible and almost unprecedented in the business world.


    "That might also be a reason that he isn''t too moved by breakthrough offers, although he undoubtedly regards them as precious."


    There was another variable that came into y when it came to the dynamics between himself and the guildmaster.


    "I still owe him a solid favor," Rui groaned.


    It had been twenty-one years since then, yet, that favor was something that both of them remembered very well. It was not a light favor either; Rui or his family might have ended up dead if it had not been for that.


    Still, as Rui grew stronger and stronger, the favor grew increasingly burdensome. It had been most burdening when his identity as a prince was revealed, for it meant that the man could extract significant returns. However, even then, he had waited for Rui to be Emperor before cashing in the favor.


    "And now that that didn''t work out, he''s going to want something else."


    It all depended on what the man wanted.


    Frankly, Rui had so many things that everybody wanted that he was unsure of what the man would ask for.


    Would he ask for something that leveraged Rui''s status as prince? Or perhaps his outsized influence within the Martial Union? Or maybe he would request for Rui to grant him the services of the Ss n?


    It wasn''t entirely clear.


    Regardless, Rui knew that it wasn''t going to be easy predicting how their negotiations would go with this little variable that could potentially change the entire equation. He had no intention of dishonoring his word. He was truly grateful for everything that the man had done more than two decades ago.


    On top of that, he also felt a hint of guilt at having scammed the man out of massive donations and investments for his Royal Campaign.


    And perhaps, most importantly, if he refused to repay the favor, then it would be no different from telling the guildmaster that he couldn''t be trusted to keep his promises. In which case, why would Guildmster Bradt believe the extravagant promises that he made on behalf of the Kandrian Empire when he could not repay a simple favor?


    Rui would have to be extremely careful in how he approached this meeting, and he could not be too dismissive of the guildmaster''s promises. He also could not make massive concessions that would undermine the offers that they were nning to give him in exchange for his


    allyship.


    It was a problem that required finesse.


    Thankfully, Rui had received both training and experience as a diplomat. Thus, he was not out of hisfort zone when faced with this delicate hurdle.


    He immediately dove into chalking up his diplomatic strategy for maximizing his sess in obtaining the objectives that he had set out to reach.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2327 Future Considerations

    Chapter 2327 Future Considerations


    As much as Rui would have loved to bury himself in the matter regarding the Shionel Confederation so that he could fight to his heart''s content, he had other matters to think about.


    For one, there was the construction of his sect.


    While he had left the details and the managing of the process to his staff and administration, he needed to be involved with the big picture. It had only been two months since the construction of the sect headquarters began. At that time, Derian Infrastructures had made major strides already, showing that they were investing one hundred percent into the project that he hadmissioned for himself.


    He wasn''t surprised that things were going smoothly.


    Normally, purchasingnd closer to the heart of Hajin was extremely difficult due to how expensive and cumbersome the process was. On top of that, getting a manufacturingpany to even begin taking one''s construction projects seriously was a nightmare in and of itself.


    It was a process that should have taken years.


    Yet, it was at times like this that Rui came to appreciate the benefits of being a political powerhouse. His team needed to merely ask fornd, and they got it. They merely mentioned looking for a constructionpany, and they got the best one in the country, desperately trying to please them.


    "How long do you estimate the construction process will take?" Rui asked with a calm expression as he studied the scaffolding that had alreadye to be erected in his sect. "It is my deepest honor and pleasure to inform you that we hope toplete the process in six months, Your Highness." Chairman Derian smiled at Rui.


    His expression wasposed, but he couldn''t hide his nervous energy. Rui frowned as he raised an eyebrow. "Six months? That''s far too fast for a project of this magnitude, is it not?"


    "Under ordinary circumstances, yes, but we have decided to dedicate the entirety of all our teams and resources to this project, Your Highness," he remarked with excessive courtesy, afraid that even the slightest rudeness might ruin the potential rtionship with a man who possessed the political power of a Martial Sage. Rui frowned even deeper. "Thergest construction corporation in the world undoubtedly has a lot of ongoing projects; how did you manage to focus all your teams and resources on this project in particr?"


    The man''s smile grew a tad bit sheepish. "We have terminated all other ongoing contracts and agreements in order to focus on this one. I would not dare be derelict in serving the prince of our country and leading figure of the Martial Union. Furthermore, I can assure you that people in my circles and echelons of society are more informed than ordinary citizens. I am aware of the¡­ gifts of your Martial Art. It only makes me more invested in aiding the development of your Martial Sect that will undoubtedly spread the seed of your greatness to the rest of the empire."


    Rui stared at him with a strange expression. "¡­Uh huh. Well, as long as you are motivated. Given that you are so invested in this project, are you willing to consider bing our exclusive constructing contractor and dedicate yourself to the development and expansion of the Water Sect?"


    The man bowed before Rui. "I would be honored, Your Highness."


    That was easy.


    Of course, Rui was aware that this wasn''t just some blind show of unconditional loyalty. The man was a businessman; unconditional loyalty was not something that existed in his vocabry.


    "Of course, exclusivity is expensive, and we hope that you will be willing to show us¡­ consideration if and when we require your services and power."


    There it was.


    Rui scoffed inwardly.


    The man was kissing his ass so that he could bag Rui as a contact and use his influence indirectly to further his business.


    "¡­Don''t go too crazy," Rui replied softly. "If I find my name on something that I disapprove of, there will be consequences. Keep that in mind, and you can do whatever as long as the Water Sect''s projects gain priority over all other projects you have in the nation and beyond, got it?"


    "Understood, Your Highness. Your grace is truly encouraging."


    The man showed excessive deference once more, bowing his head deeply.


    It was not something that Rui could get ustomed to, no matter how many years had passed since the revtion of his princehood. Yet, it was yet another reminder of his political reminder within the Kandrian Empire.


    Convenient as it was, it was stifling and suffocating. It was almost impossible for him to have genuine human interactions with those who weren''t already his friends, family, or peers.


    As he departed from the developing headquarters of the Water Sect, he realized that this was the norm for pretty much how the entirety of the Kandrian Empire was. It was forever impossible for him to live a normal life in the empire or anything even resembling it as long as he didn''t iste himself.


    He was deeply unwilling to be surrounded by sycophants for the rest of his life.


    "Perhaps I should leave the Kandrian Empire in the future."


    It was a spontaneous thought that shed in his mind. N?velDrama.Org owns ? this.


    In the first ce, because his Martial Art was reactive, he needed to subject himself to different forces to adaptively evolve to them. It also meant that he couldn''t lead a monotonous life in the long run; thus, leaving the Kandrian Empire was a given, but he always assumed that he would return home at the end of the day.


    "I do also have the Divine Doctor''smission."


    He hadn''t forgotten about the man''s mission to heal Gaia from the ailment that he was allegedly suffering from.


    "There is the Quarrier Orphanage, too," he muttered. "And soon enough of the Water Sect as well. So, I suppose I won''t be leaving any time soon."


    He shrugged. "Oh well, I''ll figure it out in the future."


    He certainly had no intention of going anywhere so long as the war was ongoing.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2328 Desire to Join

    Chapter 2328 Desire to Join


    He took his time on some of the matters he needed to focus on, and the sect was just one of them, and it was not the only thing that he intended to look into. He hadn''t forgotten that there was a person over whom he had some responsibility.


    "So, how is the Kandrian Empire?" Rui nonchntly asked as he turned to K''M. She looked a lot different than she did before.


    She didn''t stick out like a sore thumb, for one.


    Her attire and garbs seemed to be a fusion of some of the ethnic attire of the G''ak''arkan Tribe and Kandrian attire, which still made her stand out, but it wasn''t too eye-drawing.


    "The Empire¡­this world exceeded my greatest expectations," she murmured, deep in thought. "I didn''t know how small my home was. I didn''t know how limited my understanding of this world was."


    Rui smiled. "I see. I can only imagine how that feels. To one day learn that the world was muchrger than you had ever fathomed it to be."


    She didn''t reply, still deep in thought.


    "¡­Did the G''ak''arkan Tribe never explore the world beyond the ind?" He raised an eyebrow. "Even after the Kandrian Empire made contact with it?"


    She shook her head. "In the distant past, those who left the ind to explore the world never returned. Thus, our ancestors forbade leaving the ind to explore the outside world. Even after a century passed and we reached the Senior Realm, we never vited the sacrosanctws of our ancestors."


    Her expression grew contemptuous. "Now, however, I realize that that blind fear has crippled our destiny. Or at least the destiny of the tribe that I have left behind. I now realize that my decision to leave the Tribe may very well be the greatest decision of my life."


    She turned to him with gratitude in her eyes.


    As well as something more.


    "Well, I''m d you feel that way." He broke eye contact as he turned away. "I had been worried that you would not be able to adjust to the Kandrian Empire due to how radically different it is to the G''ak''arkan Tribe."


    "¡­It was shocking at first. I had trouble sleeping because of how soft the beds were. Still, once I got used to them, I knew I wouldn''t be able to go back," she murmured. "In the past two months, I have been slowly learning thenguage so that I no longer need a teamof caretakers like I''m some child who can''t take of herself."


    It would appear that the way she was being treated, while extremely well, rankled her pride.


    "I have also been learning more about this world," she remarked. "It''s history and geography, about the Age of Martial Art, the ages before and the Empty Age, the Panama Continent and the nations that rule itsnds and the Beast Domain at its center."


    Rui nodded. "It''s a fascinating world, isn''t it?"


    "It is magical," she whispered. "But what shocked me the most was the Martial Art. I didn''t know how weak we were back when I was in the G''ak''arkan Tribe. I thought the Kandrian Empire was surely more powerful than our tribe, but I had thought it would be a good fight if both sides came to fight a war. Now I realize that we were children, infants who were being humored by the adults."


    She was clearly embarrassed by the delusions she held when she was in the G''ak''arkan Tribe regarding its strengths rtive to the Kandrian Empire.


    At the moment, the Kandrian Empire had two thousand Martial Seniors in total and was only getting more with immigrating Seniors that had bet on the Kandrian Empire and hoped to gain ess to the miracles that the Empire seemed to hold, as well as all the breakthroughs that Rui routinely conducted.


    That was a number that had shocked K''M to her very core.


    At the moment, the G''ak''arkan Tribe only had four Martial Seniors.


    That meant that just with Seniors alone, the Kandrian Empire was more than five hundred times as powerful as the G''ak''arkan Tribe. That didn''t include Martial Masters, and it didn''t include the military; it didn''t include the catastrophic esoteric siege technology that the Kandrian Empire harbored.


    And it certainly didn''t include the powerhouses that were Martial Sages.


    The first time she happened upon a Martial Sage, Matriarch Nephi, she had harbored the delusions that she had reached the pinnacle of Martial Art.


    She was humbled upon feeling the endless might that lingered within each of these forces. She couldn''t even imagine how strong the so-called Transcendents were. Considering how strong she had already be, they may as well have been gods in human form.


    "I have already begun working on knowing who I am," she heaved a sigh. "However, Idon''t know if I will reach the Sage Realm, considering how few of us seed."


    He shook his head. "It is not easy, that is for sure. But you must get stronger if you want it. Thankfully, your work is cut out for you. After all, you have ess to a wealth of techniques and resources to help you grow stronger that you never had ess to before."


    Her eyes sharpened with determination. "I do intend to make the best of them."


    She turned to him. "What do you intend to do?"


    "I just exited a training session, so I won''t be training. I have been assigned a mission for the war, and I will be leaving the empire for it," Rui proceeded to exin his mission to her. "I want toe," she remarked with determination. Rui frowned. "What for? It''s a diplomatic mission, at first at least."


    "I want to be there as well."


    "What happened to making the best of the Kandrian Empire right here?"


    "I changed my mind. Now I want toe as well."


    He stared at her with a dubious expression before relenting.


    "Fine, but not right away. Only after the fighting starts."


    "¡­Deal."


    -


    This chapter upload first at  Text ? owned by N?velDrama.Org.

 Chapter 2329: Desire To Ally

    Chapter 2329: Desire To Ally


    ?


    Days passed as Rui thoroughly immersed himself in studying the Shionel Confederation, Bradt Distribution Services, and Guildmaster Bradt himself.


    The internal politics of the Shionel Confederation was messy.


    The legitive body of the corporatocratic nation, the Shionel Merchant Guild, was split in the middle regarding which side to ally with. While the ultimate decisiony with the head of state, the guildmaster, they were still able to exert tremendous pressure on him with their political and economic power.


    Half of them wanted to ally with the East Panamic Treaty Alliance, while the other half sought to ally with the Kandrian Empire.


    It was aplicated mess of a partisan political tug-of-war.


    The pro-alliance faction wasprised of merchants simr to Guildmaster Bradt, who had too much business in association with the three powerhouses that aimed to destroy the Kandrian Empire.


    They were alsoprised of merchants who hadpeted against Rui in the Shionel Dungeon more than two decades ago and had been thoroughly dominated by him in the dungeon as he sabotaged their once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to rise to be powerhouses with the opportunities that the dungeon offered.


    Twenty years had passed, but they still held a grudge against the man who waster revealed to be the prince of the Kandrian Empire. Thus, their grudge extended to the Kandrian Empire as well.


    The pro-Kandria faction, on the other hand, was deeply interested in the services that the Kandrian Empire could offer them.


    More specifically, they were interested in the triggered mass breakthrough ability that Rui was now known to have.


    These were merchants of industries that were highly relevant to Martial Arts, such as Martial Contractors, Martial Mercenary Groups, and Martial Insurancepanies that relied on employing Martial Artists fundamentally to thrive.


    The more Martial Artists there were in existence, the more these merchants benefited from the increased supply, reducing the cost of production, thereby increasing their profit margins. Thus, not only did they despise the alliance for wanting to destroy the Kandrian Empire and kill the Void Prince, but they also wanted to ally with the Kandrian Empire to gain ess to these breakthroughs in return.


    They had already allied with the two sides as individuals, but that was much less than the Shionel Confederation.


    If the Shionel Confederation allied with either side as a polity, the Martial Masters of the state, as well as the two Sages in the state, woulde into power.


    One of them was Sage Khane of the Shionel National Guard, a Sage who pursued his Martial Path driven by a lust for money. He became a Sage with the sole intention of bing as rich as possible!


    And he did; he was able to sign extremely lucrative deals with the Shionel Confederation after breaking through to the Sage Realm in exchange for protecting the nation with his power.


    He was far from the strongest Martial Sage, but his presence alone gave Shionel Confederation the status of a Sage-level nation; thus, he was tolerated despite his unsightly hedonism.


    The second Sage was not actually contracted with the Shionel Confederation but was instead contracted with the Bradt Distribution Service in exchange for one of the dungeon floors, which he monopolized thanks to the map that Rui gave him, where the Virodhabhasa Theocracy could spread its religion.


    Thus, Guildmaster Bradt held full power in deciding which side the resources of the Shionel Confederation would go to.Text ? owned by N?velDrama.Org.


    He experienced immense pressure from not only the alliance and the Kandrian Empire but also the merchants of the Shionel Merchant Guild and the entire nation.


    "It''s rare to see him stuck with so much indecision," Rui remarked to himself as he studied up on the information in the information package that his father had prepared for him. "He wants to believe in supporting the Kandrian Empire, but he''s too much of a pragmatist to do so without sound and solid reasoning."


    If that was the case, then Rui simply had to offer him enough to convince him of the merits of doing so, and that would be enough.


    Just the fact that he didn''t already side with the alliance proves that he had a bias that was leaning towards the Kandrian Empire.


    Of course, there was also the fact that working with the Kandrian Empire was always a pleasure, while one needed to be wary of getting attacked by the Sekigahara Confederate, being debt-trapped by the Republic of Gorteau, or being colonized by the Britannian Empire. Still, the fact that Guildmaster Bradt hadn''t already jumped to the alliance''s side the moment the war for allies began was telling.


    This could only mean that he wanted to be with the Kandrian Empire, if possible.


    "Most likely, my father also sensed that and managed to figure out exactly what was at the root of this bias." Rui realized.


    It was him.


    Guilmaster Bradt was deeply reluctant to make an enemy out of the Kandrian Empire because of Rui, most likely.


    Of course, it wasn''t due to sentiment.


    Or mostly not sentiment.


    It was the intuition of a businessman.


    In his eyes, a rtionship with Rui was the ultimate investment. He probably expected Rui to shatter the record for the youngest Martial Sage in history, unveil even crazier abilities and feats, and then jump to the Transcendent Realm.


    "If only he knew that this is just a pipe dream as things are right now." Rui smiled bitterly. "Oh well, I have no qualms about exploiting his extreme expectations of me to gain a powerful ally with the Kandrian Empire. At the very least, I can''t have him fall to the other side. That would be disastrous."


    Thankfully, his father had given him the tools needed to give him enough of a rational reason to join the Kandrian Empire, and he intended to put them to good use to ensure that they got the deal that they were looking for.


    Soon enough, Rui hadpleted all his preparations and was ready to depart on a diplomatic convoy to Shionel Confederation.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2330: Averted Death

    Chapter 2330: Averted Death


    ?


    Soon enough, Rui''s preparations hade to an end.


    It didn''t take him too long to absorb the data in the information package that his father had presented to him. With the Mind Pce technique, memorizing it was easy. Fully


    understanding, assimting, and applying that knowledge only took days.


    "I''m d to hear that you''re finally ready," his father remarked from atop his throne. "Are you confident in your ability to fulfill this mission?"


    "I am, father." Rui''s tone was one of certainty. "I will ensure that the Shionel Confederation will ally with the Kandrian Empire."


    "Good," Emperor Rael calmly replied. "Now then, as Emperor, I hereby authorize you to be a Royal Ambassador of the Kandrian Empire."


    As he finished his words, a Royal Maid appeared before him, carrying a gold and silver tray upon which rested an amulet bearing the insignia of the Kandrian Empire.


    "With this, you have the full authority to represent the Kandrian Empire as if you were emperor yourself. Only I have the authority to revoke your words," his father exined. "However, I do not believe that there will evere a need for me to do so. I believe you understand your mission well enough to know what you can or can''t get away with."


    Rui gazed at the beautiful artifact thaty on the tray.


    "I humbly ept."


    He picked up the amulet before a frown appeared on his face. "This..."


    His father smiled. "It appears that you have noticed."


    "I sense some powerful esoteric substances within it." Rui''s eyes lit up with realization. "Ah, I see. This must be what you told me about."


    His father nodded. "It is indeed the instantaneous transportation artifact that I told you about. Destroy the amulet with physical force, and it will transport you to a secure location in the Kandrian Empire."


    Rui nodded as he studied the artifact with curiosity. "I will keep it with me at all times."


    "We have leaked information of this artifact to our enemies, as nned," his father continued. "Now attacking you is useless, as you are able to instantaneously escape. Your grandmother foresees that you will not be attacked by Martial Sages."


    It was at times like this that the Ss n''s power was indispensable.


    The sheer impact on the strategic outlook that they could provide by peering into the future was truly extraordinary.


    Rui smiled. "But she does foresee that I will be attacked by Masters, right?"


    "She does."


    "And what does she foresee of my mission?"


    His father shook his head. "That is not for you to know, only me."


    Rui tutted but didn''t argue.


    His father had strategic considerations that could be disrupted by additionalplications if Rui turned out to know and acted differently than he would have otherwise, causing the future to veer off unpredictably.


    In fact, Rui could make more deductions and inferences from the way that his father spoke about the transportation artifact.


    "...If I had to guess, Grandmother foresaw my death on this mission a few months ago, didn''t she?" Rui narrowed his eyes.


    His father, to his credit, didn''t so much as twitch at Rui''s words.


    "It is odd that you proposed the transportation artifact as your first idea," Rui remarked. "If I had to infer from the information at hand, you consulted her about the oue of the mission, and only after she told you that I would die did youe up with the transportation artifact. You must have gone ahead with the n after she confirmed that the future was altered thanks to the presence of the artifact."


    His father smiled. "Correct. I didn''t think you would catch on that quickly. The transportation artifact, indeed, was not a part of my original n. I had been worried about your safety and consulted her to gain some insights, only to discover that, indeed, you would die. It was only after I added this element to the n that she informed me that death was no longer part of your future."


    In other words, the deterrence of the transportation artifact was indeed the primary reason that he would not die in his mission to make an ally of the Shionel Confederation. "Additionally, Sage Damian, Sage Roschem, and Sage cken will apany you as your bodyguards."


    Rui frowned. "...Seriously?"


    Emperor Rael heaved a sigh. "The Shionel Confederation is the most powerful Sage-level nation among the nations that haven''t decided their affiliation. In other words, if you seed in befriending the Shionel Confederation, our enemies will instantly dispatch extremely powerful Sages to attack the Shionel Confederation. Do you want to be caught off-guard by the consequences of your own sess if you happen to seed?"


    Rui stirred at his father''s words. "...Fine."


    He didn''t strictly mind being protected by Sages. Still, it made him feel less like he was on an adventure.


    However, he understood the rationale.


    It made sense.


    He was an extremely important asset to the Kandrian Empire, and his life was beyond invaluable; he was one of the treasures of the Kandrian Empire that would raise it to greater


    heights.


    "This is great and all, but when the timees, I''m fighting off the Master-level force myself."N?velDrama.Org owns all ? content.


    He refused to be babysat in the battlefield; he would much rather scrap the whole mission if he couldn''t fight against the strongest Masters that the enemy alliance had to offer. Emperor Rael nodded. "That is your prerogative. It is no secret to you that I would rather not have you anywhere near the battlefield, given how important you are to the Kandrian Empire. However, your will is more important. Furthermore, as it was in the battle against the Sekigahara Confederate, containing the Master-level forces will be just as important as containing the Sages. This is especially so because the Shionel Confederation is much smaller than the Kandrian Empire. If a single Master enters the territory, they can wreak havoc within


    it."


    Rui''s demeanor grew serious. "I will make sure that I protect the Shionel Confederation


    should I befriend it."


    "Good, now go. The time hase."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2331: Forgotten Consequences

    Chapter 2331: Forgotten Consequences


    Prime Minister Edward heaved a deep breath as he wiped the sweat off his forehead.


    He hadn''t been doing well the past few months.


    He couldn''t sleep, his appetite was poor, and he had begun developing a series of health problems inexplicably.


    Not even the doctors could find out what was wrong with him despite the developed medicine sector of the Britannian Empire. Nobody could even identify what ailed him. Text ? owned by N?velDrama.Org.


    The worst of it all was that he couldn''t help but feel something was immensely wrong. Not physically, no.


    But mentally.


    "¡­I feel like someone carved away a piece of my brain."


    It was difficult to describe what that felt like and what that even meant.


    He had never had a piece of his brain carved away. How would he know what it felt like?


    Yet, he was certain of what he experienced.


    It felt like he had been lobotomized so much that he couldn''t even remember being lobotomized.


    He felt like a chunk of his mind was missing.


    A chunk of his memories.


    It drove him insane.


    He had begun developing signs of rapid onset mental disorders like ADHD and others of its ilk spontaneously due to what felt like a missing piece of his memories and experience.


    "Is it Rael?" he asked himself, narrowing his eyes. "But why wouldn''t he just kill me if he could do something like this?"


    He didn''t know.


    He didn''t understand, and certainly nobody around him could either.


    He didn''t know what had happened, but he knew that something extreme had been done to him.


    Something that shouldn''t have happened.


    Regardless, he had tried and tried and was unable to find a solution to the problem. Thus, he had decided to just cope with the issue and best discharge his duties despite it. Much to the surprise of everyone around him, he still executed his duties to the T without so much as even the slightest failure despite his condition.


    And today, he was here to prove that. CLACK


    The massive gates before him opened, and he found himself gazing at five figures sitting across a massive table.


    Five forces of nature.


    It was as though the very world warped asunder beneath the weight of their existence.


    It was as though heaven and earth bent around them.


    They were garbed in ostentatious and militaristic Martial attire. On the chests of their attires were embroidered the coat of arms of the Britannian Empire as well as five stars that stood out conspicuously.


    It was a sign that they were of the Sage Realm.


    The Prime Minister bowed his head while he fell to one knee.


    "O exalted venerable Knights of Sage, I, Edward Del Germont, your humble servant, have appeared before you as per your summons."


    They gazed at him wordlessly for a moment.


    "Edward."


    The woman at the center remarked with a cold gaze and even frostier voice.


    "Sage Knight Vermillion, how may I serve you?" His voice was one of deference.


    Her eyes sharpened. "How goes the war?"


    "¡­We have gained an advantage in securing the allies we need to destroy the Kandrian Empire without suffering immense losses," he calmly replied. "Unfortunately, every step of progress is grueling. The only reason we have an advantage is more due to human psychology rather than our Martial superiority. People fear the stick more than they want the carrot. However, the Kandrian Empire is able to match our Martial power when ites to defending its allies and has been doing a brilliant job protecting their allies from our attacks."


    Chills crawled across his skin as he felt the rage of the strongest Martial Sage of the Britannian Empire.


    "¡­We''re losing?"


    He winced at her words. "We have not suffered any losses, Your Sagehood."


    "Do not y word games with me." She glowered at his words. "How many of the Kandrian Empire''s allies have we destroyed?"


    "¡­None so far."


    "So, we have deployed our forces with the intention of attacking their allies and taking them down," she bristled. "And you mean to tell me that not a single one of these operations has even partially seeded?"


    "¡­I''m afraid that''s so, Your Sagehood."


    His words only made her more furious.


    "Our alliance has more Sages, does it not?" She growled.


    "Yes, Knight Vermillion."


    "Our alliance also has more Masters, does it not?"


    "Most certainly, Your Sagehood."


    "Then why are we not able to destroy their allies?" Her expression was distorted with anger.


    Prime Minister Edward heaved a sigh. "They have an absolute strategic advantage over us when ites to intelligence, Your Sagehood."


    Her mouth curled with displeasure. "We have our very own Britannian Intelligence Service, as well as the Gorteau Bureau of Intelligence and the Nindo n of the Sekigahara Confederate."


    Her eyes sharpened to slits.


    "Pray tell, how does the Kandrian Empire have an advantage in this regard?"


    Prime Minister Edward heaved a sigh. "It''s because of the Ss n, Your Sagehood. Thanks to them, we are unable to dominate despite our numerical superiority. They are able to foresee the future. Not perfectly orpletely, of course, but they are able to do it well enough to know what forces we will send where, and then they send Martial Artists that have the bestpatibility against ours."


    Her demeanor only grew icier at his words.


    "They''re adaptively evolving to us on a tactical level," he continued. "By knowing exactly what forces we will send, they can send the perfect set of Martial Artists that can stop our forces due to a massivepatibility advantage. If we deploy a poison-oriented Martial Artist, they send Martial Artists who are extremely immune to poison. If we send long-range Martial Artists, they send even longer ranged Martial Artists. So on and so forth. This is the reason that we have been unable to take down even one of their allies, even after three months of trying."


    He could almost feel the displeasure radiating from them prickle on his skin.


    Of course, he understood how they felt.


    It was deeply frustrating to see the Kandrian Empire possess such overpowered treasures that could allow them to conjure such miracles.


    But it was also precisely why they needed to seed in destroying the Kandrian Empire.


    It wouldn''t be possible to do so in the future.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2332: Personal Intervention\

    Chapter 2332: Personal Intervention


    "However, I foresee that we are tending towards a victory," Prime Minister Edward cated them. "We have been winning over more allies to our side as our threats of destruction to Kandrian allies are too great to be ignored more often than not. At the rate of sess that we are going, I foresee that it is more likely than not that we will end up obtaining the numerical advantage that we require."


    He couldn''t be certain, of course.


    He didn''t have the power of precognition, unlike their enemy.


    "However, their window of opportunity to turn the tide of the war is changing," he continued. "In the past three months since the Kandria-Sekigahara Battle ended, we have picked all the low-hanging fruits among the allies. Allies that, for one reason or another, we had high confidence in being able to sessfully convince to our side. Now, the fewer allies who remain undecided, the fewer opportunities they have to turn the tide around and prevent themselves from going down this route."


    This seemed to cate the Knights of Sage a bit.


    "Do not give them the opportunity to turn the tides around, Edward," a man sitting beside Sage Knight Vermillion ordered. "We must destroy the Kandrian Empire once and for all this time. It cannot be allowed to remain standing, for its limitless potential for evolution makes it an existential to our mighty Britannia."


    "Of course, Your Sagehood," Prime Minister Edward replied. "Rest assured that I, we, will emerge victorious this time. Even if I have to pry victory from them myself."


    Knight Vermillion was not satisfied with empty titudes, however.


    "What do you foresee from the Kandrian Empire?" she asked. "And what is the best way to ensure that it unfolds in our favor?"


    He fell into thought at her pertinent question. Yet, his answer was without hesitation.


    "The Shionel Confederation, Your Sagehood," Prime Minister Edward answered. "It is the most important avenue in the war for allies. It also happens to be the avenue where Rael has the greatest probability of victory. If he is able to obtain a victory in this nation, he will be able to sessfully turn the tides. However, should he fail, he will lose the final chance to turn the tides in the war for allies, and our victory will be all but secured."


    The air tingled under the weight of the man''s words.


    The atmosphere grew heavy. N?velDrama.Org owns ? this.


    Each of them could sense the consequences that were at stake.


    Sage Knight Vermillion was not pleased by some of his revtions.


    "¡­Why do you say that the Kandrian Empire has the greatest chance of sess with this highly important juncture?"


    "It is because the Dawnbringer has a long history of collusion and partnership with Guildmaster Bradt, the current head of state and head of government, Your Sagehood," Prime Minister Edward patiently exined the state of affairs to them. "Thus, it is no wonder that Emperor Rael has sent the Void Prince to serve as an ambassador for the Shionel Confederation, armed with measures that makeunching an attack on him futile."


    He briefly exined the artificial intel leak regarding the transportation device and the three Sages protecting him.


    "¡­Clever," Sage Knight Vermillion muttered with contempt. "It is just like that spineless wimp Rael to do something like that. In other words, not only can we not kill the Void Prince, but we must watch him leverage his great rtionship with the Shionel guildmaster and form an alliance with them?"


    The fury in her voice returned.


    "Rest assured that I will not allow that to happen," Prime Minister Edward dered with steely determination. "How do you intend to stop the Dawnbringer from seeding with the Shionel Confederation then? Not only does he have a great rtionship with the Shionel Confederation, but he is also an excellent diplomat from what I have heard."


    "He is," Prime Minister Edward admitted. "So much so that if we deploy even the best of our diplomats, we will most likely not be able to ovee the Dawnbringer in this diplomatic battle."


    This rmed the five Martial Sages.


    "¡­Are you informing us that we will lose?" Sage Knight Vermillion bristled with fury.


    "No," Prime Minister Edward''s tone grew stronger. "As I told you before, we will win. Even if I have to pry victory out of their hands by myself."


    Their eyes widened as they understood the meaning of his words.


    "I will personally go to the Shionel Confederation." His eyes red with powerful will. "The Dawnbringer is an extraordinarily gifted individual when ites to his immense intellect. However, the fact of the matter is that he is neither his father''s equal nor mine in the domain of politics and diplomacy. The only reason he has a better chance of seeding than the Emperor of Harmony is because of his great working rtionship and history with the guildmaster. However¡­"


    His eyes narrowed. "That won''t be enough to ovee me. I will personally head to the Shionel Confederation as the representative of the East Panamic Treaty Alliance and win over the guildmaster."


    The Sages stared at him with a hint of uncertainty. They had no doubt in his ability to seed.


    There was a reason that the Transcendent Emperor had assigned him as the head of, well, everything.


    "You may sumb to an assassination," Knight Vermillion warned him. "We cannot afford to lose you, certainly not at this point in time."


    A mischievous smile emerged on his face. "Then, we can arrange for the protection of the Knights of Sage on my person. However, I am fairly confident that the Emperor of Harmony will not assassinate me as much as he undoubtedly wants to."


    Knight Vermillion frowned. "I do not understand the source of your confidence."


    His smile simply widened. "Well, let''s just say that I yed my cards right."


    The truth of the matter was that if the Prime Minister died, the alliance would be deprived of powerful and intelligent leadership.


    The Republic of Gorteau was nervous and trigger-happy.


    The Sekigahara Confederate was bloodlusted and furious.


    The Britannian Empire longed to dominate the Kandrian Empire with their numerical advantage.


    The only person holding back these people from running over to the Kandrian Empire and waging an all-out destructive war was Prime Minister Edward himself.


    He was the only person with enough influence in the Britannian Empire and enough dominance in the alliance to pacify them and prevent them from waging a mutually destructive war.


    In other words, if he died, the Kandrian Empire would be hit with a mutually destructive war on its front porch that would destroy everything.


    Emperor Rael did not want that.


    He needed Prime Minister Edward in control so that the war for allies could continue and the Kandrian Empire could potentially obtain victory without losing ny-percent of its Martial Artists. He wanted a bloodless victory.


    Prime Minister Edward knew that; thus, he had created the alliance as a life insurance. The moment the alliance was born, the Emperor of Harmony could no longer kill him. In fact, he was even willing to protect the prime minister, at least until the war was over. In this manner, Prime Minister Edward secured his life against an assassination attempt.


    This was the power of the sole man the Emperor of Harmony acknowledged as his equal.


    -


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 Chapter 2333: Departure

    Chapter 2333: Departure


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    It was time for Rui to depart.


    He exited the Royal Throne Hall, heading out to the convoy that waited for him down below. It wasprised of many identically armored carriages; eachyered with the most powerful and taxing anti-sensory esoteric technology of such immense potency that not even Martial Sages could peer through them. Not even Rui''s Riemannian Echo was able to pry the truth past their unrelenting barriers.


    On the other side were a team of maids, butlers, and assistants who were prepared to serve the charges in any way that was necessary. They immediately bowed their head in protocol once The descended the steps.


    However, what drew his attention were the three Martial Sages who stood down below in wait for him.


    Sage Damian looked miffed that he had been deployed to babysit someone who may as well have been a brat, while the Hugging Hegemon looked bored. Only the shing Flier appeared to be amicable with the current circumstances.


    Regardless, their immensely powerful auras, which seemed to weigh down on the world around them, relieved him of his safety.


    "Your Sagehoods." Rui bowed his head lightly in respect for his superiors. "I am honored to be protected by the Fire Sect and a leader of the Lightning Sect."


    Sage Roschem, the shing Flier, smiled at Rui''s deference. "cken was dispatched on emergency to the Central Martial Consortium, one of the Martial Union''s greatest allies, that hase under attack from the enemy alliance. I will be taking up his duty of protecting you. Rest assured, you are in good hands."


    Rui nodded. "I most certainly am, by the way..."


    He nced at therge convoy of carriages. "...Are so many carriages necessary, or am I correct that these are part of an borate decoy n?"


    "...We had initially decided to take a covert route, but your father was against it," the shing Flier replied. "He said that it would reflect badly on the Kandrian Empire if we had to hide in fear of our enemies when we were trying to convince the world that we were confidently able to win. A more ptable strategy is to have multiple identical carriages, each armed with anti-sensory measures taking vastly different routes to ensure that any hopes of an attack are futile so long as our enemies do not know which carriage we are."


    Rui stirred at his words. "That makes sense. Not as ideal as a covert dispatch, but not bad either."


    The enemy alliance was not going to spend the time and Martial manpower that was needed to identify which carriage contained Rui and which didn''t. It was a waste as they would spread their forces too thin because even if they did find their carriage by doing so, the three powerful Martial Sages would wipe out the diluted forces that sought to kill Rui.


    In other words, as long as they didn''t know ahead of time which carriage he was in, it was a waste to even bother.


    In fact, he knew both his father and the strategic outlook on the war, and he knew that man would have loved it if his enemies had been foolish enough to try and hunt Rui down aggressively.


    It would mean a significant redirection of the Martial manpower away from the war, allowing the Kandrian Empire to consolidate and make more progress in earning new allies.


    "Tsk," Sage Damian tutted impatiently. "Tricks. We should face whatever they throw head- on! I alone am enough to rip all their heads off and shove it up their ass!"N?velDrama.Org owns ? this.


    "Seconded." The Hugging Hegemon expressed her approval of his sentiments.


    "Ignore these two, Master Rui. You will only damage your precious intellect trying to engage with them," he scoffed. "It is time to depart, so let us not dy this any further.


    RUMBLE...


    The three Martial Sages exerted their power as they manipted heaven and earth to hide the convoy of carriages from the world before selecting one at random and sitting inside. Immediately, the servant teams upied the other carriages.


    Soon enough, the convoy was dispatched, taking off in the air.


    Rui squirmed in his seat as he realized that he would be spending a lot of time with the three Martial Sages.


    Given that they were the bodyguard of an extremely important dignitary in the Kandrian Empire, they could not afford to not be by his side or at least close by. On top of that, the carriage was extremely spacious and luxurious, so he didn''t feel particrly stuffy.


    However, he had just realized that each of the Martial Sages was rted to his friends in some way or another.


    The shing Flier was Fiona''s father, and the Hugging Hegemon was Fae''s grandmother. Sage Damian, of course, was Kane''s father.


    He felt rather awkward with the silence knowing this. He wasn''t sure how he was supposed to interact with them, considering that he normally interacted with them very formally. But it was not easy to maintain that outside of formal circumstances.


    "The talks with the Shionel Confederation are extremely important to the future of the Kandrian Empire," the shing Flier began. "From what I understand, having spoken to the Emperor, it is not an exaggeration to say that the oue of these talks will affect the future of the war extremely significantly."


    Rui nodded, growing more serious. "That is indeed the case, Your Sagehood."


    "I''m not doubting your well-demonstratedpetence; however, I hope that you will do your best to secure the best oue for the Kandrian Empire."


    "I most certainly will, Your Sagehood."


    He waved his hand dismissively. "Dispense with the formalities. You are my daughter''s childhood friend, after all. You may as well be family."


    Rui had to suppress a wince. "I am indeed friends with Fiona, sir. We''ve known each other since the Martial Contest that I participated in. It is unfortunate that neither of us has been able to spend too much time with each other outside of infrequent get-togethers. But s, such is life."


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 Chapter 2334: Parenting Conflicts

    Chapter 2334: Parenting Conflicts


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    His words evoked an introspective mood in his rtionship with his friends. He hadn''t had the time to speak to them recently outside Kane. He was swamped with so many important matters that he didn''t have time to maintain rtionships.


    It was hard enough to make sure he spent several hours a week in the Quarrier Orphanage; it was even harder to muster the time to do so with his friends. This was especially true since the world learned of his identity as a Royal Prince. It was even truer ever since he actively began contributing his mass-triggered breakthroughs ability to the Kandrian Empire.


    On top of that, in addition to not having time, there were other liabilities that came with maintaining a friendship with Rui.


    Any friend of his was in danger of being targeted by his enemies.


    And he had plenty of his enemies.


    Kane was strong and was driven by his friendship with Rui. Thus, Rui didn''t think of putting distance between them. On top of that, he was aware of the risks and was willing to undertake them.


    As a decently strong Master, he could handle the risks associated with being Rui''s friend.


    The same could not be said for the rest of his friends. Especially more normal friends like Dalen and Milliana, who were ordinary Martial Artists of the Lower Realms leading a normal married life with their young daughter in a remote vige.


    They were entirely under-equipped to be able to handle a rtionship with him and everything that came with it. While Nel and Hever weren''t weak, they were still of the Lower Realms and also did not have the backing to maintain a friendship with him safely.


    This was especially the case ever since his breakthrough ability had been leaked to the entire world.


    He had not even the faintest doubt in his mind that there were countless parties watching him like a hawk from all over the Panama Continent who sought his mass-triggered ability. There were also countless forces that wanted him dead for the same reason: he had already run into several assassins in the past.


    All of that would spill over to friends he knew.


    He couldn''t allow that to happen.


    The only reason the same reasoning wasn''t applied to his family was that he paid for their protection and had even gotten his grandmother, a Martial Sage, to protect them.


    "Fiona speaks very highly of you," the shing Flier smiled. "She has followed all your feats and aplishments. She beams when she speaks of you, you see. Seeing your prodigious progress, she has gotten more motivated to ensure that she, too, keeps progressing. She has recently hit the peak of the Squire Realm and may very well be one of the next batches of Squire you break through to the Senior Realm. I''m quite proud of her as a father, you see." Before Rui could even respond, Damian snorted heavily with contempt and derision.


    "Your soft, weak fathering stifled the potential of the greatest prodigious genius the Empire has seen in decades!" He sneered. "If not for your wishy-washy guidance, she would have been in the Master Realm by now. Instead, she is an unremarkable Squire after all these years. How she still respects you as a father is beyond me."


    A flicker of rage shed in the eyes of the shing Flier as he red at the Devil with a warning gaze. "Watch your words, Damian."


    "Or what, you little shit?" Damian spat. "Did I lie? Every word I uttered is true, is it not? She was gifted beyond even my son was. Yet, my son is a Master while yours is still in the Squire Realm. That is all the proof that one needs that you''re a failure of a father."


    "Kane is a Master, yes, a Master who disowned his own father for being a wretched imbecile who tormented his own son from birth into hating him in some sort of twisted tough love to drive him for more power," Sage Roschem snorted with contempt. "A man who traumatized his own son in hopes of making him stronger is in no position to condemn my parenting."


    "Hah, you were dealt the best cards, and you still couldn''t win. Shut up and ept you were wrong!"


    "I didn''t look at my children as some sort of weapon, you twisted demon!" The shing Flier roared. "If I was disowned by my daughter, I would never show my face in public, let alone boast about being a better father!"


    "HAH! What good does owned or disowned matter when my son would wipe your daughter out with a blink of his eye!" He bellowed at the shing Flier with disdain. "What''s the point in making them soft and weak when we live in a carnivorous world where the soft and weak get eaten?! Any father who doesn''t make his children strong, no matter what, is the true devil if you ask me!"


    "No one asked you, so why don''t you shut up and stay put?" the co-leader of the Lightning Sect struggled to contain his rage.


    "MAKE ME SHUT UP!"


    RUMBLE...!


    Their enormous power, sealed within the depths of their being, began leaking out.


    Rui, who had been watching the two Martial Sages duke it out in the field of parenting philosophy with morbid excitement, grew worried as he realized that unleashing this much power could potentially reveal this carriage as the one containing the Sages and thus Rui to any potential surveilling hostile forces.


    "Your Sagehoods, you must stop-"Text ? owned by N?velDrama.Org.


    Before he could even finish his sentence, the Hugging Hegemon unleashed her power, except she used it to shackle the power that the two Sages were unleashing to ensure that none of it left the carriage, absorbing it through high principles that not even Rui was able to discern easily.


    "You two are losers," she grinned. "I am the best mother because my child is a Master and also loves me, so I have defeated both of you."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2335: Preoccupied

    Chapter 2335: Preupied


    Once Sage Duhan sessfully dunked on both of them when it came to the matter of whose parenting philosophy, the shing Flier and the Devil shut up and remained silent for the rest of the trip, much to Rui''s relief.


    Yet, he couldn''t help but think about their words.


    It was indeed true that Fiona had had a really good life her entire life with a warm, loving family and father. She had always been a positive person filled with energy, curiosity, and excitement.


    Kane, on the other hand, had had a miserable childhood and used to be a lot darker and serious when he was younger.


    However, it was indeed true that he was more driven and made much more progress down his Martial Path, thanks to that. His drive was certainly why he was the second youngest Master in history.


    Still, even if he wound up ending up fine, it didn''t change the fact that he had suffered a lot to reach the point he had reached, having been deprived of a happy childhood.


    Rui would much rather have a father like Sage Roschem than one like Sage Damian.


    He didn''t need suffering in order to build drive.


    He already had a very powerful drive.


    Regardless, he was d that they finally shut up; he could finally focus on the mission instead of the drama. He spent most of the day revising and refining his diplomatic approach with the Shionel Confederation. It appeared that while their particr route to the Shionel Confederation was not the shortest, it wasn''t the longest either.


    As expected, they didn''t run into any attacks either.


    Not only was it too difficult to figure out which carriage they were targeting, but the sheer amount of power it would take to overwhelm three Sages, including the Devil of all people, was too high.


    The reports from the Kandria-Sekigahara Battle indicated that Sage Damian was much stronger than previously known to be, ording to Sage Shinken of the Sekigahara Confederate. The reason it didn''t make a difference in their fight was that Sage Shinken had consumed fruit from the Tree of Healings, temporarily giving him extraordinary healing. Text content ? N?velDrama.Org.


    Thus, as Rui had predicted and hoped, they had avoided being attacked or ambushed the entire journey.


    Soon enough, they arrived at the Shionel Confederation.


    THUD¡­


    The flying carriagended on the ground and rolled up before an ostentatious official port of entry was constructed specifically to allow the Shionel Confederation to wee important guests of the nations and other distinguished dignitaries.


    "We have arrived, Your Highness," a butler opened the door, allowing Rui to step out upon an ostentatious red carpet.


    Outside were a series of dignitaries that had been waiting upon the arrival of the Dawnbringer. They were garbed in extravagant attire, stiffening up while also relieved that the true carriage of the Void Prince had finally arrived. The air grew jubnt as they beheld one of the most powerful men in East Panama, growing more electric as the three Martial Sages stood protectively behind him. "Wee to the Shionel Confederation, Prince Rui Quarrier Ss Kandria of the Kandrian Empire," a man with Senior bodyguards shook Rui''s hand vigorously. "I am the Secretary of State, Mein Lamport. I am honored to receive the famed Dawnbringer in person and look forward to speaking to you in person."


    Rui smiled perfunctorily. "It is a pleasure to meet you. I am grateful and pleased by your warm wee. I look forward to my stay in the Shionel Confederation."


    "We hope that youe to enjoy your time in our fine nation. Come, Your Highness, let us speak more inside. It would be remiss of us to keep you waiting outside."


    "Why, certainly."


    The two exchanged courteous words as they made their way inside the extravagant buildingplex meant to wee important dignitaries.


    None of the Martial Sages minded being acknowledged despite the fact that they possessed political power that was simr to that of Rui himself. There was a golden rule in diplomatic etiquette that said that bodyguards were invisible.


    They were not a part of the conversation, and their personal identity was not relevant unless specifically mentioned by the charge they were guarding. They were also exempt from all etiquette and protocol. They were to be treated as background objects with no bearing on the discussion that was taking ce between the two of them. This was because all these things got in the way of their duty of protecting their charge. They needed to stay alert and maintain broad environmental awareness. They could not afford to be consumed by important political matters due to this.


    Thus, as prickling as stressful as their extraordinary and heavy presence was, they were promptly ignored.


    The hapless Senior bodyguards of the other side who found themselves face-to-face with the Sages had regretted their decision to be bodyguards. It took every ounce of willpower not to urinate their extravagant Martial attire and humiliate their entire nation in one of the most important diplomatic ventures in recent history!


    "The Shionel Confederation is grateful and honored by the consideration shown by the Emperor of Harmony in the many offers that His Majesty has made to us," the secretary of state remarked once they settled down opposite each other in a fancy and posh conference room. "We have been extremely enthused by the prospects of allying with the Kandrian Empire. I hope that the Empire does not mistake our dy for dissatisfaction. It is not that we do not value our rtionship with the Empire deeply. It is just that we have found ourselves in extenuating circumstances that haveplicated our considerations in this matter."


    Rui smiled at the man knowingly. "Let us dispense with the diplomatic talk, Secretary Mein. I am well aware of the considerations of the Shionel Confederation under the circumstances in which it finds itself. I am here because I am confident that I can chart a future where the Shionel Confederation and the Kandrian Empire. I wish to speak with Guildmaster Bradt Patrick as soon as possible."


    The secretary of state hesitated before heaving a sigh. "I''m afraid that the guildmaster is speaking with Prime Minister Edward in person in his office at the moment. He is unable to speak with you at the moment."


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2336 Weaker Card

    Chapter 2336 Weaker Card


    Rui stared at the man with a calm andposed expression even as the man dropped a bombshell on him. It took all the self-control Ruihad on him not to react in a manner that conveyed his shock.


    And shocked he was. He had heard nothing about the prime minister of the Britannian Empire himselfing to the Shionel Confederation in order to broker an alliance with the nation and with Guildmaster Bradt alone.


    The fact that the leader of the enemy alliance hade in person was nothing short of stunning.


    Rui didn''t know too much about the prime minister outside of the fact that he was extremely capable andpetent as the strategic leader of the enemy alliance and had done a good job responding to his father''s grand n with his own political and military strategy. Text ? owned by N?velDrama.Org.


    He knew that his father held the man in high regard and viewed him as one of the biggest stumbling blocks on his way to achieving his greatest ambition of turning the Kandrian Empire into the most powerful and prosperous nation to have ever existed.


    If such a man hade himself personally, it meant that he regarded the Shionel Confederation just as importantly as a potential ally as the Kandrian Empire did.


    ''This timing is suspicious.'' Rui fell into thought. ''It is unlikely to be a coincidence. There''s no doubt he chose toe himself because I wasing to meet the guildmaster myself."


    He wouldn''t havee if he had had confidence that the Britannian Empire would be able to win over the Shionel Confederation without him. "Your Highness¡­?" the Secretary of State broke him out of his thoughtful state.


    "Ah, pardon me," Rui smiled. "I understand. I look forward to speaking with the guildmaster when he is able to."


    "We thank you for your understanding, Your Highness. In the meantime, our staff can guide you to the luxury suite that we have prepared just for you and your convoy. Please get some rest. I''m sure the journey here has been tiring."


    Rui fell back into thought as he was escorted to arge array of luxury suites that awaited him and his bodyguards and assistants.


    "We hope that you find it to your liking."


    The first thing that Rui did when he had the chance was iste the room with some esoteric anti-espionage artifacts and then contact his father with a specialmunication artifact.


    "Rui," his father''s expression was severe, "I heard."


    It appeared his father had juste to learn the truth of the fact that the prime minister had personallye to speak to the guildmaster of the Shionel Confederation.


    "¡­I was taken aback by surprise when the secretary of state informed me of the truth." Rui heaved a sigh. "I''m not sure how this affects my n exactly, but there''s no doubt that it makes it harder. I have half a mind to kill him myself."


    "Do not." Emperor Rael shook his head. "You are in no position to conduct an assassination, and even if you could get away with it, I require the Prime Minister to be alive for my n to work. You absolutely cannot kill him."


    Rui frowned. He wasn''t entirely sure why his father needed the man alive, though he could make educated guesses. "Besides, you need to be careful about your life rather than worry about taking his," his father reminded him. "I have been informed that he is apanied by three Sage Knights. This means that he is extremely well-protected and has the power to threaten your life potentially. Make sure that you are never away from the Martial Sages."


    "Understood." Rui nodded. "I have no doubt that he will increase the difficulty of convincing the guildmaster to ally with us. Any rmendations?"


    His father fell into thought. "Considering that the biggest reason for anybody to join the East Panamic Treaty Alliance is the fact that while they will be attacked by the alliance if they don''t, he actually has a weaker card to y if you can convince the guildmaster that he has no reason to fear the attacks."


    Rui''s eyes lit up with understanding. "Ah, because while we have not been winning the war for allies, we have sessfully protected our allies that are under attack, thanks to the Ss n."


    His father nodded. "Why do people fear being attacked? It is because of the consequences of being attacked. Loss, death, suffering. If you can convince him that the Kandrian Empire can prevent any of those from happening, then you can invalidate the Prime Minister''s trump card."


    Rui considered his words. "That''s a good idea. Do you really think that the Prime Minister is here to merely threaten him in person?"


    "Yes," his father confirmed. "There is no point in trying toy out some carrots to try and serve as incentives. Those incentives will be utterly pathetic in front of the incentives that we are offering. Instead, doubling down on his threat and intimidating the guildmaster in person will be the most effective strategy. He is most likely ironing out the details of the consequences of siding with the Kandrian Empire to make the guildmaster even more reluctant to join us in fear of what is toe. But as I said¡­"


    His father smiled. "They are merely empty words if no other ally of the Kandrian Empire has suffered what he is promising him. Theyck credibility. Had he sessfully razed even one of our allies, things would have been different. But since he hasn''t yet done that, it is a weakness that you can exploit."


    Rui nodded. "Additionally, I can also leverage in human nature. Nobody wants to ally with a person who threatens to destroy them in person without relenting. All I need to do is give Bradt a rational basis to make the decision to side with us."


    "You have it figured out." His father nodded. "Good luck. It won''t be easy, and you will be hit with curveballs when dealing with someone of Edward''s caliber, but I have confidence that you cane out victorious."


    -


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 Chapter 2337: Changing Nation

    Chapter 2337: Changing Nation


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    His meeting with his father ended soon enough as he felt more rxed aboutpeting with the enemy leader himself for the alliance with the Shionel Confederation. Certainly, it was much harder than if the alliance had sent an ordinary ambassador.


    Rui was confident he could oupete any ordinary diplomat.


    Prime Minister Edward himself taking the initiative to convince the guildmaster to join the East Panamic Treaty Alliance made things harder, but still within a tolerable degree.


    Rui immediately headed to sleep as dusk came, not wanting to enter the meeting with Guildmaster Bradt at anything less than his optimal condition.


    Soon enough, the next day came along.


    It wasn''t too long before Ruipleted all the preparations.


    "Come, Your Highness. The guildmaster awaits you at the capital of the nation. We have prepared appropriate travel arrangements for you and your bodyguards."


    He hadn''t forgotten that they were only in the luxuryplex right near the port of entry at the border of the nation. They immediately boarded a carriage that took off in the air, heading to the capital of the Shionel Confederation.


    Rui peered through the window as he got a good view of the port town stretching out as far as the eye could see.Text content ? N?velDrama.Org.


    "Business has been good, from the looks of it."


    Down below, the town was bustling with a dense poption as the densemercialization had people running into shops and stores of all kinds across the entire town. As a


    corporatocracy,merce was the most important and significant part of the Shionel Confederation. It was a nation that began as a consortium of merchants who banded together with the mutual interest of wanting to have greater collective bargaining power.


    Nobody in the nation was under the illusion that it was anything other than a trade hub for the merchants.


    The Shionel Confederation was probably the only polity that was doing better rather than worse ever since the war hadmenced. While many other ces experienced economic downturns or even recessions as a consequence of the war, the Shionel Confederation experienced economic growth despite these setbacks. It spoke to the sheermercial entrenchment that the nation had managed to create in the economy of East Panama over the centuries.


    "Business has been going extremely well for the past twenty years, Your Highness." The Secretary of State smiled. "But I''m sure that you know all about that, don''t you?"


    Rui threw a knowing gaze at the man.


    It was public knowledge in this day and age that the Void Prince was the true identity of the Voider that dominated the Shionel Dungeon more than twenty years ago. Back then, he partnered with the guildmaster and overcame Chairman Deacon, who was the guildmaster''s greatest rival and opponent.


    It was a historic event that shaped the future of the Shionel Confederation and made the guildmaster the unofficial emperor of the polity.


    Even before, he had been nigh unstoppable, but after he fully capitalized on the bounties of the Shionel Dungeon and his only opponent died, his grip over the Shionel Confederation became absolute and unchallengeable.


    The guildmaster elections that were held every few years had be little more than a meaningless formality where he swept the votes unhindered. The Shionel Confederation had gone from a democratic confederation to an autocracy where the leader simply could not be challenged unless a truly extreme event happened.


    Unfortunately for him, the Third Great East Panamic War was one of them.


    If he made the wrong choice, he could potentially lose the invincibility that he had cultivated within the nation.


    "We have arrived, Your Highness."


    Rui nced out the window as he beheld the Shionel Dungeon for the first time in more than two decades.


    "It''s changed so much that I hardly recognize it." Rui smiled nostalgically.


    Gone was the dangerous underground dungeon filled with monsters and bounties.


    In its ce was a metropolitan underground estate sector that made full use of the vast empty swathes ofnd in the entire dungeon that collectively constituted a small nation.


    The tunnels leading in and out of the ground were filled with specially designed bogeys that could transport people and goods from the underground cities and storage towns that had been built since the dungeon had been long cleared.


    Rui could see the logo of the Bradt Distribution Service on all of them, which showed that the guildmaster was sessfully relying on the map that Rui had created and exchanged to gain a special advantage and dominate the dungeon wars.


    Rui felt nostalgic as he recalled the eighteen months he had spent in the dungeon, clearing floors of it together with Kane as they raked in more floors at a remarkable pace. He also recalled how they had fled the nation when his identity had been discovered by Chairman Deacon, setting them on a long journey that only ended eight yearster when Rui killed the Chairman with his own two hands.


    It was surreal visiting the nation after all this time.


    His eyes narrowed as he saw a section of the underground transport system featuring people and goods bearing the emblem that he had be all too familiar with.


    The Virodhabhasa Faith.


    "Tsk," he tutted with displeasure.


    He hadn''t forgotten that they had managed to set up a church town inside the former dungeon to spread their influence east. While it was not the reason that he hade to the nation, it wasn''t one that he could ignore entirely.


    Soon enough, the carriage began lowering until it finallynded before slowing down right in the carriage trackway in the Shionel Merchant Guild headquarters.


    STEP


    "Let''s go." Rui grew more serious, exiting the carriage with his bodyguards.


    "Right this way, Your Highness. The Guildmaster has justpleted an important meeting and looks forward to speaking with you immediately."


    The four of them, led personally by the Secretary of State, hurriedly walked over in the direction of the Guildmaster''s Office.


    Rui could only narrow his eyes gravely as he watched the Britannian Prime Minister walk out of the office with three Sage Knights behind him.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2338: Later Realization

    Chapter 2338: Later Realization


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    Rui''s eyes sharpened while the Britannian Prime Minister smiled at him.


    RUMBLE...


    Tremors spread through the ground as the six Martial Sages red at their counterparts with fiery eyes.


    Yet, none of them made a move.


    They were bodyguards and only bodyguards on this particr asion.


    They absolutely could not afford to pick a fight with each other under these circumstances. Whichever nation sparked a fight of this magnitude would forever destroy their rtionship with the Shionel Confederation unterally.


    On top of that, the safety of their charges was the most important to both sides. Prime Minister Edward was the man who bore the will of the Transcendent Emperor and had been chosen by him to manage the entire nation. He was an extremely important asset to the Britannian Empire that they could not afford to lose.


    Rui upied a position of even greater significance in the Kandrian Empire; the Sages assigned to him would not allow any harm toe to him, no matter what.


    The air tingled with peril.


    The atmosphere grew electric as the six Martial Sages had a silent face-off.


    "Well well well," Prime Minister Edward began, smiling as he stopped right before Rui. "What do we have here? If it isn''t the great Dawnbringer of Kandria. The golden boy of the Martial Union. Heir to the throne."


    Rui met his gaze with steely eyes. "Prime Minister Edward. It is a pleasure to meet the man who runs that bumbling alliance of fools and idiots. It must be difficult being their leader. You have my deepest sympathies."


    The provocation merely evoked a mirthful chuckle from the man. "You are an interesting one. It is a profound shame that you did not have the opportunity to ascend the throne. I would have loved to spar with you and show you the ropes. But s, it was not meant to be. So, I suppose that..."


    His smile grew deeper, "...that I will have to be content with crushing you in the war for allies."


    His tone was strong.


    It left no room for doubt.


    "Ah yes, if you can''t beat him, pick a fight with his son," Rui''s voice was filled with mockery. "The only thing more pathetic than that would be losing to the son as well. And you know how the saying goes."


    A smile emerged on his face. "Like father, like son."


    While Rui''s barbs were witty, they weren''t enough to give him a rhetorical victory or faze the man.Text content ? N?velDrama.Org.


    "Like father, like son, hm?" Amusement flickered in Prime Minister Edward''s eyes. "Consider what that means when your father killed his father."


    Rui bit his tongue as he just barely managed to suppress the urge to admit that he had absolutely no desire for the throne.


    It was a trap.


    One that Rui had almost fallen for.


    If he admitted he didn''t want the throne, then it would cast even greater suspicion on the mysterious recovery of his father coinciding with his breakthrough to the Master Realm. It would put his entire campaign to ascend the throne under scrutiny, which could potentially lead to some devastating consequences.


    Prime Minister Edward smiled as he expertly cold-read Rui on the spot.


    "You are indeed your father''s son."


    STEP


    He walked past Rui with an air of certainty.


    "But you are not ready, and that will be your downfall."


    He walked away with his bodyguards, uncaring for whatever Rui would retort with.


    Rui watched his retreating figure with narrowed eyes.


    "W-We deeply apologize for that, Your Highness. We will ensure that that unfortunate encounter doesn''t ur once more."


    Rui''s sharp gaze shifted to meet the Secretary of State''s eyes, causing the man to wince under the pressure. "...Let''s go."


    Rui narrowed his eyes as he followed the Secretary of State to the Guildmaster''s office.


    The man was lying.


    They just so happened to arrive at exactly the right moment that allowed Rui to run into Prime Minister Edward while he exited his meeting with the guildmaster?


    That was far too much of a coincidence.


    It was most likely done on purpose.


    In fact, judging by the man''s mental state, Rui could deduce that he was merely in charge of executing the n.


    He most certainly was not its author.


    As for who it was, Rui already knew.


    "Guildmaster Bradt, it is a pleasure to gain the opportunity to speak with you after so many years," Rui greeted him with a courteous smile. "Ie here as the representative of the Kandrian Empire in hopes of gaining your favor and your alliance. I hope that the Shionel Confederation wille to appreciate the sincerity of our good faith and the various offers we have prepared for you."


    Inside the office stood Bradt Patrick, d in ostentatious merchant attire, peering at Rui with a knowing look.


    Just one nce at him was enough to confirm the truth.


    He had timed that little run-in with Prime Minister Edward as a test.


    A test was conducted to judge who had rtive confidence and certainty as well as diplomatic capability. It was a litmus test that would help him make his decision.


    Rui also realized that Prime Minister Edward had deduced this truth on the spot and had put on a performance with just that in mind, while Rui only made the connection after the fact.


    Time slowed down in his eyes as he felt a sh of displeasure in his eyes.


    This was how the game was yed at the highest echelons of politics.


    Had his father been there, he would have understood not only the truth on the spot but also exactly what to say to bring out the best oue.


    Of course, it wasn''t that big a deal since Rui was not a career diplomat.


    He was a Martial Artist.


    Still, he understood that he wasn''t acting optimally in this highly important juncture in the war for alliespared to veterans like his father, the Britannian Prime Minister, and even


    Guildmaster Bradt.


    "As the leader of this nation, I wee you to the Shionel Confederation," the guildmaster began, offering a perfunctory smile. "We are graced by the Kandrian Empire''s sincerity and goodwill and hope that we are able toe to an agreement in this historic meeting."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2339: Quelling Concessions

    Chapter 2339: Quelling Concessions


    ?


    Text ? owned by N?velDrama.Org.


    Rui met his gaze with studying eyes.


    The man had grown older since Ruist saw him and certainly since Rui first saw him.


    Evidently, he had been unable to procure a longevity potion yet.


    Rui had no doubt that that was one of the things that his father had offered him, yet he was able to resist the allure of living longer. It meant that his father''s analysis of the man treating his ownpany like it was his actual child was not too much of an exaggeration. He was willing to die much sooner if it meant protecting the foundation of thepany that he had founded when he was still a young fledgling merchant entering the business.


    He was more sentimental than he let on.


    What caught his attention was his bodyguard.


    It was her.


    Sage Sariawar.


    Rui needed to resist the urge to steal a nce at her even though he could perfectly study with his senses.


    She didn''t so much as acknowledge him, as a bodyguard was supposed to not.


    Yet, he couldn''t help but feel that her attention was fixed on him.


    "Come, Prince Rui, let us have a seat," Guilmaster Bradt drew his attention as he lightly gestured to the conference table in his spacious office. "I do look forward to speaking with you in your capacity as the representative of the Kandrian Empire. I am honored that the Kandrian Empire deems it fit to send a dignitary of your power and significance to our negotiations. It certainly does inspire confidence that the Kandrian Empire is truly sincere in its expressed desire to form an ally."


    Rui smiled as he sat down opposite the guildmaster. "Let us speak without restraint, guildmaster. I believe that you are a man who prefers to get down to business rather than beat around the bush."


    Guildmaster Bradt''s expression grew mildly amused. "I suppose that is true. I''m especially not eager to speak so formally and diplomatically to you, of all people."


    Rui smiled. "I feel the same way. Though, I''m still here as a representative of the Kandrian Empire rather than your personal acquaintance and former business partner. Both of us havee a long way since then."


    "I would say that statement is especially true for you, Your Highness," Guildmaster Bradt remarked knowingly. "I have indeede to some ways since then, but you have skyrocketed from a nameless Squire to the youngest Master in the history of Martial Art and the crown prince of the Kandrian Empire. You would have been Emperor if not for the fact that you were denied your destiny. To say that your growth trajectory is shocking is an understatement."


    Rui smiled. "Well, I appreciate your kind words. However, I didn''te here to talk to you about the past. Instead..."


    Rui leaned forward with a pointed look. "I came here to talk to you about the future." Guildmaster Bradt simply stared at him knowingly. "You havee to offer me ports and seafaring to rece mynd bases andnd faring."


    "That is precisely the case, Guildmaster."


    "And just why would I ept it when I rejected the same offer from the Emperor himself?" Guildmaster raised an eyebrow. "Surely you did not think thating here in person would get me to ept an offer that I had already rejected. I simply cannot afford to have the transportation foundation of mypany under the control and within the territory of a single other nation. Even if it is the Kandrian Empire and its spotless reputation."


    Rui smiled. "Oh, rest assured, I am not here to parrot the exact same offer that you have already received. This time, we won''t be offering Kandrian territory. We''ll be selling the territory to you."


    Rui offered a folder to the man, who simply epted it with interest in his eyes. Yet, the guildmaster didn''t even bother hiding his surprise at the offer that Rui had made him.


    "...The Kandrian Empire is willing to part with its territory and sell off a piece of its coast to a foreign power?" Guildmaster''s eyes rose as his gaze returned to Rui.


    Rui shrugged. "It solves the problem of having the territory under the control of the Kandrian Empire. This way, the territory is no longer under the control of the Kandrian Empire. It will be its own sovereign territory under the ownership of the Bradt Distribution Service."


    "...That is a deeper concession than I was anticipating."


    Rui smiled. "Think about it. Yourpany will have its own country as its base of operations. You can connect with all of the human civilization through the waters without having to pay tariffs or answer to other nations through which your distribution and transportation routes run. It will unshackle you from being constrained by considerations of these various nations." Guildmaster Bradt would be lying if he said that he wasn''t deeply attracted to the idea. Having a separate coastal nation where he had a supermassive base of operations that connected him to the entire continent through the Great Nam Ocean was an extremely alluring idea that exceeded his expectations.


    "ording to our estimations, seafaring is able to easilypensate for everything that yournd faring is able to," Rui ced logistical maps of the Panama Continent on the table. "Of course, they are not identical, and you will have to make a few changes to your modus operandi. For example, bulk supplies and transportation are the most profitable for seafaring, and they aren''t able to rece short-distance transport. However, these shouldn''t be a problem for someone of your business acumen and experience."


    Guildmaster Bradt silently redirected his attention from the maps atop the table to Rui.


    "Need I remind you that before you joined my faction in the Kandrian Throne War, you supported Princess Ranea, who is in charge of the naval and maritime development of the chunk of our coastal territory. You joined the Kandrian Throne War because you understand how extremely powerful seafaring can be in your line of business."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2340: Incentives

    Chapter 2340: Incentives


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    Guildmaster Bradt simply listened to Rui continue with his offer until he was done. He had fallen into thought at how far the Kandrian Empire was willing to go to assuage his concerns.


    His only problem with Emperor Rael''s previous offers was that they required him to surrender far too much power to the Kandrian Empire, leaving him beholden to the nation. It didn''t matter how trustworthy the Kandrian Empire was; he simply couldn''t offer such a high level of trust.


    This new offer cleanly circumvented that problem by simply offering to sell their coastal territory and surrender it to his full control.


    Of course, that didn''t mean that it was absolutely safe from the Kandrian Empire after it would still be on their border, having once been inside the border. However, even he understood that the Kandrian Empire meddling with it after surrendering all rights to it was an extremely unlikely event.


    It would essentially be an invasion of one nation to another, and the Kandrian Empire simply had no history of imperialism or colonialism in the past three centuries. It was absolutely unheard of, and no amount of paranoia could make him take its threat seriously.


    This was all to make Bradt feelfortable enough to take the offer and be an ally of the Kandrian Empire.


    It was extremely extravagant treatment from a Sage-level powerhouse.


    He could understand why they were willing to go this far to get his alliance.


    It didn''t matter what territory they had if they were destroyed due to being too unwilling to part with it. The Kandrian Empire was an extremelyrge nation with enormous territory; it wasn''t as though they were going to even notice it.N?velDrama.Org owns ? this.


    In that case, it was better to bleed it if it was able to secure his aid.


    "I have heard your offer," the guildmaster began. "However, this just means that the liability of allying with you is taken care of. Ack of liabilities is not enough. There needs to be


    incentives to ally with you. Simply recingnd-faring with sea-faring to dodge the oppression of the alliance is not enough."


    Rui smiled. "Of course, we were merely focused on addressing the biggest issue you had with a potential alliance with the Kandrian Empire. Once those issues are solved, we can get right to the good stuff. You are hardly unaware of the extraordinary circumstances that the Kandrian Empire finds itself in. We have ess to extraordinary resources, intel on untapped resources in the Beast Domain, and the medical services of the Divine Doctor. We also offer breakthroughs. Intel on the future. Longevity potions. You name it, we got it."


    Guildmaster Bradt''s eyes deepened with interest. These were all deeply alluring, and he would have been lying through his teeth if he had said otherwise. These offers had always been extremely alluring from the very start. The only reason that the guildmaster resisted them before was that he didn''t think it was a good idea to rece hisnd-faring with sea- faring if thetter was in the control of Kandrian territory, yet that problem had just been solved with an extreme concession.


    "Guildmaster Bradt, you have nothing to lose."


    Rui''s voice drew his attention once more. "In the first ce, thanks to the Ss n, the Kandrian Empire has been able to protect each and every single one of our allies from meaningful harm from the alliance. We have met every attack and repelled every attack. We have foiled assassinations, staged coups, and triggered rebellions and other covert sabotage and disruption measures that the alliance has taken in order to harm our allies, thanks to this extraordinary source of intelligence. We are able to do the same for you."


    This was yet another strong point in favor of the Kandrian Empire.


    If half the countries allying with the Kandrian Empire were destroyed by now, then they wouldn''t have been even remotely trustworthy or reliable when it came to protecting potential allies from the wrath of the Kandrian Empire.


    However, the guildmaster was a tough nut to crack.


    "Protecting the Shionel Confederation is an entirely different beastpared to other nations, Prince Rui," he replied with a firm tone. "This nation is essentially arge consortium of merchants, a consortium that happens to ownnd that is the Shionel Confederation. We have businesses across all of East Panama. Centers, bases, branches, offices, headquarters, and other kinds of real estate assets that are even more important to us than Shionel territory. I alone have two hundred and seventy-six centers and bases across East Panama that are vital to my distribution and transportation business. There is no doubt that they will be targeted if I pronounce my alliance with the Kandrian Empire. Will you be able to protect me, us, and all our real estate resources?"


    Rui stared at the man for a moment.


    He could, of course, give a passionate speech about how they would be able to protect them at all costs no matter what and that they were willing to do anything to protect their allies. But Guildmaster Bradt was far too pragmatic a man to be moved by that.


    "Well, firstly, the Shionel Confederation is not a united polity, nor is it a uniform polity, Rui began. "I am well aware of the fact that there are two factions when ites to which side to support. The faction that has lobbied for support for the Kandrian Empire has already been targeted by the alliance, and they have already decided that it is worth the price of gaining the Kandrian Empire''s favor and alliance. In other words, they are not relevant in this discussion. The only thing that is relevant to this discussion is the Shionel Confederation''s territory and national security. Of which we are able to guarantee the security and protection of without any shadow of a doubt."


    Guildmaster Bradt smiled uncharacteristically. "I suppose you are right. However, what if I don''t want to ally with the Kandrian Empire and still want all those benefits you mentioned?"


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2341: Opposing Carrots

    Chapter 2341: Opposing Carrots


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    Rui scoffed at his words. "Yes, why don''t I just crown you Emperor of Kandria while I''m at it?" Sarcasm was not the rmended route when in a vital diplomatic negotiation with an important ally, yet he figured their rtionship was good enough for just a bit.


    "Have you forgotten that you owe me a favor?" Guildmaster Bradt raised an eyebrow. "Are you going to go back on your word? You would be dead if not for me showing you grace that day."


    He was not lying.


    Chairman Deacon would undoubtedly have found have, and he would have suffered death or worse. It was not possible to escape him in his primary domain of influence without the guildmaster''s power.


    It was indeed true that Rui owed him one. And Rui had certainly anticipated that he would use that to get some of the things that they were offering for free.


    "I do indeed owe you, and I do not have any intention of bailing on my debt," Rui replied. "However, even then, one must not forget a sense of proportionality. Even if I were to exert myself to the same degree that you did, your demands are too excessive. On top of that, you utilized your power to do me a favor, not your nation''s. Thus, I will fulfill my debt to you with my power, not my nation''s. It is I who owes you a debt, not the Kandrian Empire. Most of the things that I mentioned areing from the Empire, so I cannot give them to you for free."


    His words were sensible to the point where the guildmaster could not object. Still, he wasn''t pleased by Rui''s rejection.


    "Then what about the things that you can provide for me?" He leaned forward with interest.


    Rui shrugged. "I am more than willing to fulfill my debt with them. In fact, I''m looking forward to it. This burden has grown weary, and I would rather get it over with sooner thanter."


    "Well, I do not know if you believe that, Prince Rui," Guildmaster Bradt retorted. "I recall asking you for the Squire Evolution upgrade that you pioneered when we met at Her Highness'' event, but you refused me."


    Rui narrowed his eyes. "I did, but that was because you were asking for an incongruent favor. I am more inclined to give you a one-time favor in exchange for the one-time favor that you gave me. An exercise of my service is fair in exchange for the exercise of your service."


    The guildmaster simply stared at him with a poker face.


    Rui couldn''t read his mind with his mind sense due to the impediment of Sage Sariawar behind him, but he could tell that the man wasn''t pleased by Rui''s continuous rejection. "It seems to me that you intend to rationalize your way out of paying your debts."


    "Not particrly. It''s just that I do not intend to disenfranchise myself," Rui replied. "You expressed interest in breakthroughs, did you not? I can provide as many breakthroughs as I am able to muster across all three Realms at any given point in time. A one-time service of my power in exchange for exactly that."


    That interested the guildmaster.


    Although he wasn''t in the Martial industry, Martial capital was still extremely vital and useful to hispany.


    His distribution and transportation dispatches and convoys required security and protection from spontaneous threats like bandits and robbers, as well as beasts and animals, as well as protection from third-party sabotage, which were extremely expensive. If Rui could give him Martial Masters, Seniors, and more Apprentices, it would have been more than worth saving his life all those years ago when he was just a weak Squire.


    "So you are willing to give me many breakthroughs this time free of cost without any strings attached?" Guildmaster Bradt raised an eyebrow.


    Rui shrugged. "We can start right now if you want. I will pay back my debt. I have no intention of dishonoring it."


    A hint of appreciation flickered in the guildmaster''s eyes as he fell into thought.


    Rui had passed his little trustworthiness test.


    The Kandrian Empire was more credible in his eyes than before to be able to give away its greatest trump card for free.


    However, things weren''t so simple.


    "What did the Britannian Prime Ministere to tell you?"


    Rui''s words were sharp.


    "As far as I can tell, this deal should satisfy your every requirement, issue, and interest. We have gone above and beyond to satisfy you, yet you have not even signaled your willingness to proceed into negotiations," Rui keenly noted. "I''m quite confident that it''s not from our side. So, I can only presume that it must be why you chose to have a meeting with the Britannian Prime Minister before me today."


    The guildmaster regarded Rui with appreciation.


    It was this insight that had convinced the guildmaster to ept his partnership offer twenty years ago.


    "He has a big stick, Your Highness," Guildmaster Bradt remarked. "Your carrots are tasty, but I''m just wondering if it''s worth getting hit by the stick to have them."


    Rui narrowed his eyes. "...No."


    "No?"


    "No," Rui repeated himself. "I don''t think so. He always had a big stick. And we have proven without a shadow of a doubt that our shield can protect our allies from their sticks. I don''t think that you are such an indecisive man that you will let information that is half a year old impede you this much. There must be something else. A new variable must havee in-" Rui paused as realization dawned on him. "...I see they made you an offer."


    The guildmaster didn''t respond to that.


    But his silence was telling.N?velDrama.Org owns ? this.


    Rui simply stared at him as he processed the current circumstances.


    For the first time in a war for allies, the alliance had resorted to not just threats but also offers.


    They came to rely on not just the stick but also the carrot.


    That did not bode well for the Kandrian Empire.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2342 Free Trade

    Chapter 2342 Free Trade


    He should have expected it, considering how important the Shionel Confederation was. However, it was more than just a bit shameless, considering that the alliance was also threatening to destroy the nation if it didn''t agree with their terms.


    Unfortunately, they could get away with it.


    Power was threatening to destroy your host and still be treated like a guest despite the hostility. All content is ? N0velDrama.Org.


    "What did he offer you?" Rui raised an eyebrow. "Must have been something special. I highly doubt that just an offering of financialpensation could have moved you."


    The guildmaster stared at Rui with an inscrutable expression.


    "However, it''s not like they''re in the best position themselves," Rui mused. "The Sekigahara Confederate sure as hell did not put up anything taxing. The Republic of Gorteau is not in the best ce either. And while the Britannian Empire is fine, they probably offered you something that involved all of them as an alliance. No one partner would ever foot the bill of their peers. So¡­"


    His eyes narrowed. "¡­They must have offered you something that wasn''t resource or capital-intensive in the first ce. Probably something involving their authority and influence."


    A mild smile cracked at the edge of the guildmaster''s mouth. "They offered an exclusive free-trade agreement treaty between myself and all members of the East Panama Treaty Alliance."


    Rui''s eyes sharpened gravely. "¡­With you as the guildmaster of this nation or you as the chairman of yourpany?"


    "As the chairman of mypany," Guildmaster Bradt replied lightly. "It is exclusive to mypany alone. And I''m sure I do not need to tell you the advantages of this agreement."


    He didn''t.


    His business inevitably required his delivery and transport convoys to pass through many countries and nations, each of which charged an import tariff. The further away the destination, the more he needed to pay en route.


    However, an exclusive free-trade agreement treaty with all the members of the East Panamic Treaty Alliance would allow him to skip out on taxes that all others would have to pay, allowing him to cut down on his expenses significantly below any otherpetitor.


    He was already an oligarch in East Panama.


    With this agreement, he could go on to be the sole oligarch of distribution and delivery across the rest of human civilization. Every other nation andpany would have no choice but to rely on him because all hispetition would be dead due to this unfair free-trade agreement with the many countries in the enemy alliance.


    It was no wonder that not even the juiciest of offers that Rui made were not instantly earning his agreement. What the prime minister was offering him was a straightforward elevation in his existing path.


    Rui was offering a different path than the one he was walking on now and promised him that it would lead to greater ces as long as he trusted the Kandrian Empire.


    He understood why the former was more appealing on purely a surface-level.


    However, that didn''t mean it wasn''t without its grave cons.


    "That offer gives them immense power over you." Rui''s tone grew stronger. "Do you think a contract or treaty is absolute? You think that they can''t and won''t revoke it after they no longer need your power? Youined about cing too much trust in the Kandrian Empire, but you''re considering this deal? A deal that gives all the power to people who are threatening to destroy your nation if you don''t do as they say?"


    The guildmaster snorted. "There''s a reason I have not epted the offer. However, the circumstances are not identical. I cannot trust any one nation too much. This isn''t one nation. And this deal gives me as much leverage over them as they do have over me."


    Rui stared at him as he understood his point. "You n to destroypetition the moment the treaty is signed and then entrench yourpany deep in their nations to the point that they will experience a recession without you."


    "If theye to rely on me to supply them food, energy, material resources, then my absence would be devastating to the nation''s stability. That gives me power. It gives me leverage. It helps that my nation is already an established oligarch in this sector in East Panama."


    Rui stared at him as he understood why the man was considering it.


    While he did indeed give the East Panamic Treaty Alliance too much power, he could also gain an equal amount of leverage if he yed his cards immactely.


    However, a single mistake or unexpected oue could cause this entire n toe crashing down like a house of cards.


    It was high-risk and high-reward.


    "Inparison, our proposal is low-risk and high-reward," Rui remarked. "I don''t see how the two ns areparable. We are offering to give yourpany a nation for a base. A whole coastal nation with a highly developed sea-faring foundation that can more than rece yournd-faring foundation and get rid of most tariffs, which is what they are offering. Our offer has that and more."


    The guildmaster gazed at Rui with an unimpressed expression. "Only one n involves the Shionel Confederation and mypany getting attacked, Your Highness. This offer alone does not match yours, but I have not forgotten that I would be going to war with the East Panamic Treaty Alliance should I ept yours. As a businessman, I do not enjoy doing things that make me a lot of enemies. Especially in my sector."


    Rui simply stared at him. "Yes, but having more enemies is not the same as having more risk. The Kandrian Empire has proven its ability to protect its allies. We have fewer Martial Artists, but we have an extraordinary advantage in tactical intel."


    The guildmaster heaved a sigh. "That is why I''m seriously considering your offer. I''m afraid that it is deeply difficult for me to choose. However, I cannot dy this decision for too much longer. And so, I havee to a conclusion."


    He closed his eyes. "I will make my decision after a joint conference with both the representatives of the Britannian Empire and Kandrian Empire."


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2343 Joint Conference

    Chapter 2343 Joint Conference


    Rui''s eyes widened with surprise. "A joint meeting¡­?"


    Guildmaster Bradt nodded. "I will have both of you make your offers to me in each other''s presence and give each of you the opportunity to poke holes in the other''s strategies."


    Rui stared at him, stunned. "Our offer involves confidential intelligence."


    The guildmaster shrugged. "Don''t mention it."


    Rui narrowed his eyes. "Then we will be at a disadvantage."


    "That is not my problem." The guildmaster''s tone was decisive. "I will make my decision based on this final joint meeting."


    "What if we refuse to participate in it due to the disadvantage?" "Then you will lose, Your Highness," the guildmaster calmly replied. "I will sign the treaty with the East Panamic Treaty Alliance then and there."


    Rui stared at him with a powerful gaze. Yet, the man was entirely unperturbed.


    Unfortunately for Rui, he was too shrewd to forget the fact that he was highly desired by both nations at an extremely important moment. He could get away with acting out of line because both nations deeply needed him to win the war. The Kandrian Empire needed to stop the momentum that was leading to a loss, and the Britannian Empire wanted to ensure that it continued.


    The Shionel Confederation was extremely necessary for that.


    That was why the guildmaster knew that he could get away with stringing both sides to y by his rules.


    However, that wasn''t all. "You''re trying to set up an auction to maximize your yield," Rui grumbled.


    The guildmaster smirked uncharacteristically. "I am a merchant, Rui. It is what I do. If you do not wish to participate, then you may as well leave, for I will not hesitate to ally with your enemies in that event."


    Rui heaved a sigh. "I will participate."


    The guildmaster nodded. "I appreciate that. I will have the meeting tomorrow. I do not wish to waste the time of either side as both dignitaries are highly important and powerful people."


    And thus, Rui found himself dragged into an auction for the most powerful potential ally in the market against his enemies. He would need to buckle up because he would be facing Prime Minister Edward himself.


    If he didn''t y this right, he would make more concessions than he needed to. However, he had a pre-existing rtionship, trust, and a history of partnership with Guildmaster Bradt. Thus he did have some advantage. It was the whole reason his father entrusted him with the mission.


    Unfortunately, he didn''t have much time either.


    He just needed to hope that he was good enough to earn the Kandrian Empire a win in direct opposition to the Britannian Prime Minister.


    "Well then," Guildmaster Bradt remarked, drawing his attention. "I suppose this meeting hase to an end, officially."


    Rui smiled wryly. "I suppose it has." Text content ? N?velDrama.Org.


    Guildmaster Bradt leaned forward. "I heard two months ago that you''re starting your own Martial Sect. The Water Sect."


    Rui shrugged. "I am a Master. I have the right to start my own sect, and it was worth it in the long run for my progression."


    He nced at the merchant with some mirth. "Why, interested in bing a disciple?"


    The man stared at him dubiously for a second. "I am interested in getting the piece of the pie."


    "What pie?" Rui snorted. "It''s a non-profit organization. There''s no money to be made by investing."


    "I wasn''t talking about revenue," Guildmaster Bradt insisted. "I was talking about the piece of the pie that is your Martial Art and Path. Considering all the revolutionary feats and possibilities that lie in your Martial Art, I have no doubt that you will change Martial Art forever once your techniques spread far and wide. Perhaps it will be even more important and significant to the Martial World than breathing techniques did when they were introduced by Her Transcendence the Breathless Beauty."


    The Breathless Beauty had been the first Martial Artist to turn breathing from merely a process needed to sustain life to the basis of a technique that could be employed in Martial Artist Art in a variety of ways. It had gone from being a niche principle to bing one of the most popr Martial principles in all of Martial Art. She was part of the first generation of Martial Artists and her Martial Path had gone on to be a universal path that almost all Martial Artists dabbled in to some extent.


    "I appreciate that you hold me in such high regard, but she''s a Martial Transcendent," Rui reminded him. "I am nothingpared to a Martial Transcendent. I don''t think I can make as big an impact on Martial Art as she did."


    "Maybe, maybe not," the guildmaster replied ambivalently. "However, even if you have one-tenth of an impact, it is still a massive aplishment and feat. One that is worth bing a part of."


    Rui knitted his eyebrows. "What are you suggesting, Bradt? I''m not giving you a stake in my sect, if that''s what you''re wondering."


    "Not at all." The guildmaster shook his head. "What I''m proposing is a partnership agreement that is simr to our previous partnership."


    Rui raised an eyebrow in surprise. "You want to partner with me?"


    "We dominated the market thest time we partnered more than twenty years ago," Guildmaster Bradt reminded him. "I don''t see why we can''t do it again."


    Rui stared at him with a hint of amusement as he recalled their old partnership.


    Rui had been able to dominate the dungeons thanks to an overpowered strategy, but he had had no means of selling it without getting caught. Hell, even without getting caught, conducting wide-scalemerce had beenextremely difficult and basically impossible in his circumstances.


    Thus, Rui had proposed a partnership where the man handled logistics andmerce while he dug out the high-demand resources with ease, monopolizing the entire market.


    He had to admit, it had been a rather exciting part of his life before he messed up and got caught by Chairman Deacon.


    "What exactly," Rui asked, "do you have in mind?" -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2344 Profitable Partnerships

    Chapter 2344 Profitable Partnerships


    "As I said, it''s a proposal for a partnership simr to our old one," Guildmaster Bradt replied with interest in his eyes. "Except this time, instead of esoteric ore resources mined from within the dungeon, we will be selling your Martial Art. After all, it is your Martial Art that is in high demand."


    Rui stared at him with an intrigued expression. "Go on."


    "I''m proposing amercial endeavor centered around selling your Martial Art and training resources associated with it," Guildmaster Bradt continued eagerly. "What I''m proposing is that we sign a partnership where you hand me a license for the distribution of your copyrighted Martial Art techniques and the patents of your Martial training resources. We set up training centers around the entire continent, not unlike the headquarters that you have currently in construction, and we set up a business model that involves paying for the learning of those techniques and the utility of their resources in a pay-per-use model, or a monthly subscription model, or, ideally, a governmental contract where we get annual payments for free use from the Martial Artists of that nation. Considering how high the demand for your Martial Art is, we stand to make a fortune."


    Rui stared at him in disbelief.


    What the guildmaster was saying was so out of anything Rui had ever thought of that he was rendered silent in shock as he stared at the man like he was speaking an aliennguage.


    "You want tomercialize and contract all of human civilization to gain my Martial Art with marypensation by leveraging the demand born from me being able to break Martial Artists through?" Rui repeated everything he had said. "Seriously?"


    "Do I look like I''m joking?" The man''s eyes were steely. "We stand to make a killing the likes of which has never urred in the Martial World."


    "No," Rui retorted reflexively. "I don''t care for money."


    "Everybody cares for money."


    "I am the crown prince of the most powerful nation in the world," Rui reminded him. "I do not care for money."


    Guildmaster Bradt leaned back as he pondered over the matter. "Then do it for the same reason you created a sect in the first ce."


    Rui fell into thought at his words.


    Unfortunately, they made sense.


    The more people who mastered some kind of adaptive evolution, the greater the base from which he could borrow inspiration from. And that meant the likelier that he would be able to break through any potential bottlenecks when he eventually teaued in his growth.


    He was not arrogant enough to believe that he would be able to maintain astronomical growth forever.


    Everybody had limits.


    Eventually, he would just hit a teau, and whenever he did, he would be grateful if he had a massive base from which he could borrow from. While he did have a powerful mind, he would not be able to beat the creativity of countless Martial Artists dabbling in adaptive evolution, and that was a good thing because it meant that he was bound to find something that, for all his brilliance, he had simply never thought of. That could help him find a way through the bottleneck.


    After all, he wasn''t the one who thought of this particr idea, either.


    He nced at the eager guildmaster.


    The man was a thorough businessman and a particrly shrewd and keen one. His thoughts and perspective were eternally nted towards discerning profits and potential profits. Text ? owned by N?velDrama.Org.


    Rui, on the other hand, had never¡ªnot even once¡ªever harbored such a perspective and that was precisely why he didn''te up with this idea.


    Such a thing could happen even in Martial Art, where his perspective was skewed by his biases, identity, and experiences.


    A smile emerged on his face.


    It was funny that the very suggestion of the idea also happened to serve as proof that the idea was good.


    "What if you decide to go with the alliance tomorrow?" Rui raised an eyebrow. "Then, we will be enemies."


    Guildmaster Bradt was entirely unperturbed by that. "It is a product of the circumstances. However, that is that, and this is this. Business is business. Money is money. I didn''t turn in the man who killed my mother. Instead, I leveraged it to ckmail him into signing a lucrative partnership with me that went on to be the foundation of my business and dominance. Whatever my personal enmity with him was, it was irrelevant. Business is business. Money is money."


    Rui stared at him, speechless.


    He had forgotten where he was. He was in the Shionel Confederation.


    It was a group of merchants with a nation rather than a nation with a group of merchants. It was a cutthroat and ruthless world of business and money that could even make the Martial World look tame.


    Still, it was because they were so cutthroat and ruthless that they were predictable. One could understand which direction they were going as long as one understood what direction the money was flowing and what direction it was about to flow.


    He recalled how Chairman Decker hade to befriend Rui after he had killed the man''s father with his own two hands.


    Guildmaster Bradt was actually extremely transparent and predictable in that regard; he made this request because he wanted the money.


    Rui heaved a heavy sigh. "I''m open to the idea. However, for it to be worth it for me, money cannot be the only eptable form of payment."


    Guildmaster Bradt raised an eyebrow. "A flexible payment system? Wise. I think stocks, equity, bonds, and other financial assets should be allowed, but I didn''t think you would be that open-minded."


    "I''m not." Rui scoffed. "I want Martial contributions to be a valid payment method. Specifically, adaptive evolution contributions."


    The man narrowed his eyes. "Adaptive evolution does not pay the bills. Our profits will be diminished if we do that."


    "Martial profit is the only profit I care about." Rui shrugged with a smile. "You will get your financialpensation as well, of course. Just much less. Think about it."


    "¡­"


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2345: Settled Debt

    Chapter 2345: Settled Debt


    ?


    The guildmaster stared at Rui with a pointed gaze. "Then, let us ensure that half of the payment is in money, which I will keep, and the other half is in Martial contributions, which you are entitled to."


    Rui shrugged. "That''s fine by me as long as I get what I need. Will you still be able to make a profit if only half the payments are mary?"


    "Of course. Have you any idea how many powers out there havee to lust for your Martial Art?" Guildmaster Bradt raised an eyebrow. "Even before it was revealed that you were responsible for the mass-triggered breakthroughs, your Martial Art had been highly desirable. However, after people came to learn that the secret to more frequent breakthroughs was hidden in the depths of Martial Art, demand for it has skyrocketed. In fact..."


    He leaned forward. "If not for the fact that you are an extremely powerful Martial Master and are the prince of the most powerful Sage-level powerhouse in East Panama, you would be hunted alive for it by now. Why do you think the Ss n went into hiding?"


    Rui knew that his circumstances protected him from the worst of the consequences of his abilities being leaked. He was quite fortunate not to be on the run for the rest of his life. His Martial Art was so desired that only bing a Martial Sage could possibly protect him from the consequences.


    "Well, just to be clear, I''m not selling the mass-triggered breakthrough ability." Rui''s tone was firm.


    "You would be a fool to," Guildmaster Bradt retorted. "Now, however, you need to ensure that you capitalize on the desire of people to be able to do the things that you can."


    "People should know that they won''t be able to do the things that I do just because they master my techniques," Rui mused. "I''m not special because of my techniques; my techniques are special because of me."


    Guildmaster Bradt shrugged. "Those who are aware of that would still be inclined to invest in them due to that being the best option, and those who aren''t aware would invest even more in it in hopes of bing the next you."


    "That would be incredibly foolish," Rui scoffed. "Surely the Martial Institutions around human civilization would not allow such a thing to happen."


    The man shook his head. "You think every nation has robust and powerful Martial Institutions like the Martial Union? You are mistaken."


    Rui fell into thought, considering his words. "...Alright, you have convinced me of the business potential."


    "Brilliant." The man got up. "I shall draft the contract temtes and we can proceed from there."


    "Woah, slow down." Rui frowned. "You may befortable dealing with an enemy, but I''m not. Tomorrow''s oue will affect how I view this agreement and what measures I deem necessary. If you side against the Kandrian Empire, then I will be more cautious in how I deal with you. If you be an ally, however, you get free reign and mary support from the Kandrian Empire. It all depends on your choice."


    The guildmaster directed a pointed look at Rui.


    He knew exactly what Rui was trying to do.


    Rui was trying to add another incentive to the bnce to try and tilt it to his side. He was trying to add to the list of reasons that the merchant ought to side with the Kandrian Empire.


    "...I suppose we shall see then," the guildmaster replied with an ambivalent tone. "Until then, I will have youplete the favor you owe me, once and for all. I trust you have no issue with doing so before the joint meeting?"


    Rui shrugged. "None at all. It''s not like I can prepare much in the span of a single day, so I might as well get rid of a twenty-one-year-long debt that has been sitting on my shoulder. I have no intention of letting itst any longer."


    He was actually truly shocked at how the man''s patience turned a simple favor from a weak Squire into a repayment of mass-triggered breakthroughs that would supply him with brand- new Apprentices, Seniors, and Masters. Such was the ability of a merchant to extract the most amount of value from even the smallest of things.Text content ? N?velDrama.Org.


    "Then, this meeting hase to an end." Guildmaster Bradt extended a hand out, which Rui promptly shook. "I look forward to what you have to say in the joint meeting."


    And thus, the first meeting with the guildmaster wasplete.


    Rui headed back to the prepared suite, heaving a sigh. "What do you think?"


    "Hah, you were too nice to that sneaky merchant!" Sage Damian snorted, evidently fed up by the guildmaster''s antics. "You should have told him that we would beat him up if he joined our enemies."


    "I think you handled the negotiations very well," the shing Flier remarked. "However, the oue is hardly set; you will need to be very careful."


    Rui nodded. "For now, I need to break through as many Apprentices, Seniors, and Masters as possible."


    Sage Roschem raised an eyebrow. "Do you truly intend to? It is an extremely precious service that you are just giving away to repay the favor you received when thetter is astronomically smaller in value."


    "I cannot go back on my word," Rui replied. "Not only because I''m truly grateful to the man for helping me when he had no reason to, but also because it would undermine our credibility and trust if we didn''t."


    And sure enough, Rui fulfilled his favor to the guildmaster, breaking through Apprentices, Seniors, and Masters of his choice.


    Considering that Rui wanted to finish it before the joint meeting, he worked for more than an hour, breaking through arge group of Apprentices, a few dozen Seniors, and four Masters.


    An overwhelming majority of them were associated with the Bradt Distribution Service, while the remaining were associated with the Shionel government as a whole. While such a number was insignificant in the Kandrian Empire, they were a lot more valued in the Shionel Confederation.


    And thus, after twenty-one years, his debt to the guildmaster was finally settled.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2346: Diplomatic Preparations

    Chapter 2346: Diplomatic Preparations


    ?


    Text ? owned by N?velDrama.Org.


    Rui felt a weight wearing down on his shoulders.


    He knew the stake of the meeting.


    The Kandrian Empire needed to secure the Shionel Confederation at any cost.


    Not that defeat was absolutely written in stone with no recourse if they didn''t, of course. However, it would mean that the Kandrian Empire could potentially fall into a losing spiral as the enemy alliance would gain more momentum toward their goal of securing the Martial capital needed to avoid a pyrrhic victory.


    He needed to seed, no matter what.


    He had spent the previous day thinking about what he could say that could undermine the Britannian prime minister''s case to the guildmaster. However, it wasn''t easy to predict a man as able as him. If anything, he wasn''t sure whether the man was predicting his strategy and tactics instead. The prime minister certainly had far more experience in this domain than Rui did, and it was possible that he could estimate exactly where Rui was going to go with this approach.


    This made Rui a little paranoid on whether he should go with what seemed like the best option to him if it was indeed predictable by the Britannian prime minister.


    "Calm down; don''t let the importance of the meeting impede yourposure," Emperor Rael remarked from the screen of them artifact. "You did quite well in the first meeting, from the looks of it. You have hammered in several reasons to ally with us. In fact, if not for the fact that the prime minister had significantly improved his offer, you most likely would have been able to secure an alliance."


    Rui nodded. "It is rather unexpected that he added upon his offer thiste into the negotiations. Itplicates things, but it still ultimately falls into our favor. I don''t think a free-trade agreement alone is enough to beat out all the incentives that we have set out."


    His father was not surprised when he heard about the incentives that the Britannian prime minister had presented. "I knew that sooner orter, he would need to y ball and make offers instead of merely making threats. I suspect that the trigger for the decision this time was my decision to make you the ambassador of the Kandrian Empire."


    "Any advice for the joint meeting?" Rui turned to him with a raised eyebrow. "I''m not as familiar with him as you are."


    "Focus on Bradt, not the prime minister," his father calmly told him. "You may face the prime minister and even direct your words at him, but remember, what he thinks does not matter. The only person whose opinion matters is the guildmaster. Show him what he needs to see in order to believe that the Kandrian Empire''s future is prosperous. You have already earned his trust with your past partnership and your willingness to keep your word and do him a precious favor as a repayment of your debt."


    Rui nodded. "Our strengths are the trust and credibility that we have built, which make our juicy incentives even more alluring. Meanwhile, the only thing the prime minister has going for him is fear, which I can dismantle with our track record. His only incentive is shitpared to ours."


    Emperor Rael nodded. "Naturally, but do not dismiss the power of fear. Merchants like Bradt especially hate getting into conflict if they can avoid it. However, he is experienced and pragmatic enough to understand that it cannot always be avoided. The whole purpose of the joint meeting is to evaluate which side''s offers are able to hold up to hostile scrutiny better. He isn''t expecting new information since both sides have already yed all their cards. Now he wants to see how those cards fair when pitted against each other in the same room, and that will be the final bit of information he needs to finalize his decision."


    "... What if Prime Minister Edward makes new offers?" Rui asked as his eyes wandered around, lost in thought. "That could potentially derail the entire game n I have set."


    Emperor Rael shook his head. "He cannot make more offers than he already has. A free-trade agreement works because it is rtively simple. However, he does not have the credibility to make more sophisticated and powerful offers that will excite the guildmaster the way our incentives do. Remember this, Rui. The more credibility you have, the more you can offer and be taken seriously. The prime minister cannot make more offers because he has already reached the end of the trust that the guildmaster has in him. He has also run out of threats to make."


    Rui understood his father''s broader message. "He has nothing left to offer, and he has nothing left to threaten with."


    The prime minister had already threatened total destruction or imperial dominance at best.


    What more could he say to threaten the guildmaster?


    If that didn''t work, then the alliance was in deep trouble.


    "He will instead focus on tearing your position down," Emperor Rael exined astutely. "You need to ensure that you don''t allow him to do that. You cannot allow him to make the entire conversation about the ws of our position. You cannot allow yourself to be on the defensive. If he attacks our position, then defend by attacking his position. The shorings and ws of his position must not be allowed to escape the spotlight."


    Emperor Rael gave him several more tips on how to handle the conversation.


    "Be open-minded," Emperor Rael advised. "I cannot instruct you on what to say and do in each and every situation, so you will need to remember that the end oue is to secure the Shionel Confederation''s alliance. Nothing else matters; it doesn''t matter what you have to say as long as it helps in the direction of that oue. You can rest assured that Edward is of this mindset as well."


    Rui nodded. "Understood. I will keep that in mind."


    Rui prepped for the discussion as well as he could as he solidified his diplomatic approach to the joint meeting.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2347: Explosive Start

    Chapter 2347: Explosive Start


    Soon enough, the next day arrived, and the joint meeting followed suit, arriving with it. The meeting that would decide whether the Shionel Confederation was ally or enemy to the Kandrian Empire was tomence.


    Rui narrowed his eyes as he walked towards the conference room prepared for the joint meeting.


    The air was electric.


    It tingled.


    He felt a burden weighing down on his shoulders.


    He had reached a nexus point from which two broad possible sets of futures branched off. One where the Kandrian Empire gained a new ally, securing the power needed to deny the enemy alliance of the strength it needed to destroy the empire with dominance.


    And the other was where the Kandrian Empire gained a new enemy. N?velDrama.Org owns ? this.


    One that would serve as the trigger sendingdominoes falling until they led to the destruction of the Kandrian Empire.


    Rui tugged at it, trying to pull it in the direction of the former, but on the other side was a powerful foe that tugged just as hard.


    STEP


    He arrived at the door guarded by Masters on either side, pausing as his gaze swept across the conference room. It just so happened tond on the figure seated at the ostentatious table in the center of the room.


    There he was, protected by the three Sage knights standing behind him. The Britannian Prime Minister regarded Rui with a smile, gesturing to the opposite side of the table.


    An invitation.


    One that Rui intended to oblige from the very start.


    "You don''t look very well, Prime Minister Edward," Rui remarked with a sharp tone as he sat opposite the man. "You should take care of your health."


    His gaze intensified. "We wouldn''t want anything happening to the leader of our enemies now, would we?"


    A thinly-veiled threat.


    Yet, it merely earned a smirk of amusement. "If you care so much about my health, then send the Divine Doctor to the Britannian Empire."


    "Tempting, but I''ll pass." Rui shrugged. "Your father wouldn''t," Prime Minister Edward snapped back. "He understands, you see. In fact¡­"


    His smile grew deeper.


    "He probably explicitly instructed you not to kill me, didn''t he?"


    Rui narrowed his eyes. "¡­An enemy wanting to keep you alive isn''t something to brag about. Only idiots and traitors experience that treatment."


    Yet, the prime minister chuckled at his words as he directed a knowing look at him. "There is more to the art of provocation than merely witty snapbacks, young Master."


    Rui tutted inwardly as his attempts to rile up his opponent fell t. Yet, the prime minister chuckled at his words as he directed a knowing look at him. "There is more to the art of provocation than merely witty snapbacks, young Master."


    Rui tutted inwardly as his attempts to rile up his opponent fell t. He wasn''t surprised.


    The man was far too experienced and proficient at diplomacy to be thrown off his tracks with such ease.


    However, Rui was certain that he was unwell, despite the prime minister''s attempt to hide it. He wasn''t sure what was afflicting him given that the Britannian Empire, with all its resources, could not cure or alleviate, yet it was clearly something.


    "Ambassadors," Guildmaster Bradt''s voice drew their attention as he walked into the room, followed by Sage Sariawar. He took a seat at the head of the table. "You have my apologies for the dy. Without further ado, let us begin."


    He cleared his throat. "I have given the positions and proposals from both sides an ample amount of thought and am confident that I will be able toe to a final decision by the end of the meeting. Let usmence the final round of negotiations. The Kandrian Empire was the first approach to me since the inception of the war for allies. Thus, I shall give them the first word, while thest word will go to Prime Minister Edward."


    Rui''s gaze shifted from the guildmaster, meeting the intense eyes of the prime minister.


    It was time. "On one hand, you have an alliance whose only strategy is relying on the innate fear of death to intimidate our allies," he began with a calm tone. "On the other, you have an empire that has sessfully protected every single ally in all of East Panama from the shallow tactics of the alliance. An empire with a perfect track record of absolute credibility and truststing three centuries. We promise prosperity and power to the Shionel Confederation, and we will deliver. The alliance has promised death and destruction to all Kandrian allies, and they have yet to deliver any results. The contrast could not be any sharper."


    His opening statement was brief and focused. He didn''t care to focus on the details.


    Instead, he zoomed out, focusing on the big picture.


    Yet, his words merely earned a smile from his opponent.


    "Well, I''d hate to correct you, but technically, we did not promise death and destruction." He chuckled. "We only promised war. Because war was enough of a disincentive. However¡­"


    His gaze fixed on the guildmaster. "¡­The reason that I have personallye all the way to the Shionel Confederation is not to promise war, but to promise death and destruction. We will not merely wage war against the Shionel Confederation. No¡­"


    His tone grew malevolent as his bloodlusted vision turned to the guildmaster. "We will annihte you, yourpany, and your country. We will annihte everything you have ever built in your entire life. It will be catastrophe, not conflict, that you will experience. We do not need to win a war in order to destroy everything. Human civilization and the socioeconomic human constructs are fragile. Very fragile. You, of all people, know this."


    Rui''s eyes widened with shock as the prime minister abandoned all civility and openly threatened to destroy the Shionel Confederation to the guildmaster''s face!


    The guildmaster''s eyes grew grave and severe.


    "Bradt, do you really think that thebined bloodlust of three Sage-level powerhouses is something that the Kandrian Empire can protect you from?" Prime Minister Edward nonchntly asked him. "Do you really think that bribing and external deterrents will cripple the Republic of Gorteau and the Sekigahara Confederate forever? Do you really think that a business centered around connectivity can survive when an entire section of human civilization seeks to destroy it? Do you really think¡­"


    He turned to face Rui with a calm smile, "¡­this kid can protect you from our wrath?"


    He leaned back with a confident demeanor as hepleted his opening statement, waiting for Rui''s rebuttal.


    The joint negotiations were off to an explosive start.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2348 Battle of Rhetoric

    Chapter 2348 Battle of Rhetoric


    Rui could hardly believe the sheer audacity of the Britannian Prime Minister. The man had the nerve to travel all the way to the Shionel Confederation as a guest, seeking to make an ally of the nation, and then threaten to destroy everything Guildmaster Bradt had ever built.


    He was brazen enough to not even be implicit with his threats as one often was in these circumstances. Instead, he very openly detailed what he would do to the Shionel Confederation if they chose to ally with the Kandrian Empire.


    Unfortunately, he could get away with it.


    This was what it meant to be the strategic leader of the East Panamic Treaty Alliance. The sheer amount of power and influence that he wielded was second to none. He could get away with acting unscrupulously, even to those that he needed to ally with to achieve his desired victory against the Kandrian Empire. And, as audacious as it was, it was a genuinely impactful opening statement. It shook the atmosphere and made a deep impression on the guildmaster.


    Even now, the guildmaster''s expression was grave as he considered the sheer gravity of the Britannian Prime Minister''s words. Rui narrowed his eyes.


    This was not good.


    He could not surrender the flow of the conversation this easily.


    "Threats do not change the facts of the matter." Rui''s tone was strong. "You can threaten death and destruction all you want, but the fact of the matter is that you simply do not have the ability to fulfill your lofty threats. Not only are our Martial Artists superior to yours, we also have the power to foresee the future, which is an enormous tactical advantage that has already nullified your numeric advantage. We have extraordinary treasures that can empower our war potential."


    He peered straight into the eyes of the prime minister. "If you were capable of doing what you im, then you would have won this war long ago. After all¡­"


    A small smile cracked at the edge of his mouth. "Isn''t that why you haven''t attacked Kandria yet? You don''t have the power to destroy Kandria, which is why you need allies in the first ce."


    Guildmaster Bradt was aware of this fact, falling into thought as he considered Rui''s argument.


    The prime minister merely directed an appreciative look towards Rui. "Correct. However, the difference is that the Kandrian Empire is not amercial trading hub with a massive amount of trade flux. Flux that may as well be the lifeblood of this nation. We do not need to inflict direct damage on this nation itself to fulfill my threat. Just turning the outskirts of the country into a warzone will be enough to doom the Shionel Confederation and all its merchants."


    Guildmaster Bradt directed a severe look towards the Britannian Prime Minister.


    He was right.


    The Emperor of Harmony had achieved resource-independence before the war even began, thereby getting rid of any liabilities that would hurt in times of war.


    The same could not be said for the Shionel Confederation.


    As a merchant nation, it required the trade flux to sustain its very foundations as a nation. Trade flux that would bepletely disrupted if the East Panamic Treaty Alliance mounted a full-scale war against the Shionel Confederation.


    In other words, the prime minister didn''t need to directly inflict death and destruction. He just needed to choke and suffocate the nation with war, and death and destruction would follow.


    It was a ruthless tactic.


    Yet, not ineffective.


    The guildmaster was highly inclined not to watch hispany and nation suffer death by suffocation. N?velDrama.Org owns ? this.


    "Except, the only reason you want allies in the first ce is because you cannot aplish anything other than a devastating pyrrhic victory," Rui snorted. "And now I''m supposed to believe that you are willing to wage the all-out war that you have been avoiding all this time? Give me a break. If you were willing to do that, you would have attacked the Kandrian Empire by now."


    "It does not need to be an all-out war." The prime minister shrugged. "All it needs to do is be just devastating enough to send a message to the other neutral Sage-level nations. After all¡­"


    A smile emerged on his face. "It''s not as though you have deep rtionships with each and every leader in East Panama as you do with the good guildmaster here, do you?"


    Rui maintained aposed expression that did not reveal so much as a hint of what was happening.


    But inwardly, he understood the weight of the situation.


    Even if it was not profitable in the short term, the prime minister intentionally did his best to ensure the Shionel Confederation would suffer, even if he had to suffer himself.


    Doing this would leave an extremely deep impression on the others who were undecided.


    It would serve as a powerful deterrent for those who were especially stubborn or those who hade to believe in the Kandrian Empire''s ability to protect them.


    When they saw the East Panamic Treaty Alliance smothering the Shionel Confederation to death, they would lose all hope in the Kandrian Empire''s ability to defend them.


    "Shionel Confederation, the Kandrian Empire is not winning the war for allies." Prime Minister Edward''s voice was ominous. "Even if you win the Shionel Confederation to your side, it won''t be enough. And what we do to this nation will ensure that not a single other nation will join the Kandrian Empire."


    "You underestimate us," Rui growled. "You may try to spin your failures thus far anyway you want. But the fact of the matter remains. You attacked our allies and failed to aplish anything other than highlight our tactical and strategic dominance. You deployed force after force to do their worst against our allies. And we beat them back every time."


    Rui''s gaze sharpened. "Every. Single. Time."


    The Britannian Prime Minister could not deny this fact.


    Rui''s decision to highlight the pure facts made the prime minister''s rationalizations seem like excuses to deflect them from the truth of the matter. However, that wasn''t all that he needed to do. He needed to find a way to be as rhetorically effective as the prime minister.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2349 Manipulating Fear

    Chapter 2349 Manipting Fear


    From the start of the meeting, the prime minister had been tapping into the guildmaster''s fears. He didn''t make an excessively logic-driven argument or take a data-driven approach to try and convince the guildmaster that siding with them was objectively the best decision.


    No.


    He simply asked questions that focused on the guildmaster''s fear of three Sage-level nations.


    He asked him whether he thought that the Kandrian Empire could protect him from the alliance. Text ? owned by N?velDrama.Org.


    He asked him whether he thought Rui could protect him from the alliance.


    He simply asked whether it was truly a decision he wouldn''te to regret.


    These were questions with absolutely no rational foundation and were simply designed to ce the guildmaster in a negative state of mind.


    Of course, the guildmaster was cognizant of the prime minister''s machinations. However, it did not stop them from working due to the fact that they were based in some truth.


    Could the Kandrian Empire, a single powerhouse, protect him from the wrath of the alliance?


    Was it worth putting his trust in Rui?


    Was it worth taking the risk?


    Rui''s expression grew grave as he fully understood this dynamic and the fact that he couldn''t allow it to continue.


    He also understood that vainly hammering their credibility over and over again like a broken record was not an effective diplomatic strategy. The guildmaster was very well aware that the Kandrian Empire had sessfully beaten back the alliance''s attacks on all its allies in East Panama. There was no point in reiterating it any more than he already had.


    On top of that, there was no point in offering any more benefits and offers than the Kandrian Empire already had. Their offers were already extremely generous, and adding anything on top of everything that they had already promised would only have diminishing returns.


    All the riches and treasures in the world didn''t matter if the Bradt Distribution Service and the Shionel Confederation were too dead to enjoy them.


    Rui needed something new.


    He recalled his father''s words.


    "Be open-minded," Emperor Rael had told him. "It doesn''t matter what you say as long as the Shionel Confederation bes an ally."


    An idea popped into Rui''s head as he understood what he needed to say.


    "The Kandrian Empire may not be as blood-thirsty as the alliance, but¡­" His voice grew ominous. "Rest assured that we will not show mercy to those who ally with enemies that seek to destroy us."


    The two men stirred at his words with a hint of surprise.


    Rui''s words were a threat.


    Of course, he wasn''t as audacious as the prime minister. He took the standard diplomatic way of trying to make threats withouting off as actively hostile. More importantly, they realized that the Kandrian Empire had decided that it was no longer enough to work with incentives and benefits.


    The Kandrian Empire, for the first time in the war for allies, had decided to use the stick.


    A smile emerged on the prime minister''s face while the guildmaster directed a pointed gaze to him. "It is no secret that we Kandrians do not enjoy conflict," Rui continued with a calm yet sharp tone. "It is no secret that we have a dovish foreign policy that prioritizes harmony. However, do not mistake it for dogma. We very much prefer harmony, but if it is not possible, then rest assured¡­"


    The darkness in his eyes stirred menacingly. "We have no issue setting the world aze."


    Guildmaster Bradt''s eyes sharpened with severity while the prime minister expressed a hint of grudging respect.


    "Did you really think that we would just sit back and watch if you dared to support enemies that fight to destroy us?" Rui raised an eyebrow. "Do you think the alliance will be able to protect you from us?"


    His gaze shifted back to the prime minister. "What do you think is more important to the alliance, guildmaster? Protecting you or destroying the Kandrian Empire?"


    Guildmaster Bradt turned his eyes to the prime minister.


    "The Britannian Empire will protect you Martially while the Republic of Gorteau will support you economically," the prime minister reassured him. "We do not simply abandon allies in war."


    "And what credibility do you have?" Rui retorted. "Why should he believe you? The Kandrian Empire has proven that it will fight to protect its allies by actually doing just that for the past three months. We have fought many times to protect them, and there is no question about that. However, what proof is there that the alliance will do the same?"


    "History," Prime Minister Edward replied nonchntly. "We have protected our colonies in the event of an attack throughout the Age of Martial Art."


    "Colonies?" Rui smiled. "Is that what the Shionel Confederation is to you? A colony and not an ally?"


    The prime minister''s eyes narrowed. "We have not colonized our allies."


    "But you don''t have precedence of protecting them, either," Rui pointed out, gaining momentum. "After all, you have only protected colonies, which does not mean that you will protect allies. Unless, of course, you think that your allies are your colonies."


    Rui continued to try and rhetorically hammer in the point that the Britannian Empire looked at its allies as mere entities to colonize. If he could drive that point home, then he would be able to ensure that the guildmaster would not want to cooperate with the alliance. After all, nobody wanted to ally with a person who looked at them as though they were ves.


    Unfortunately, Prime Minister Edward was far too shrewd to be outmaneuvered so easily.


    "Do you know why we don''t have precedence?" He smiled. "It''s because nobody dares to attack our allies. We are not soft like you Kandrians. We do not tolerate affronts. That is why you are the ones under attack. Trying to flex that like it is something to be proud of is simply proof that you are not worth allying with. Any powerhouse that cannot deter others from attacking their allies is not worth allying with."


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2350 Commencing Command

    Chapter 2350 Commencing Command


    "Well, I just promised that we would attack the Shionel Confederation if the nation allies with those that aim to destroy us," Rui replied calmly. "I suppose that deterrence of yours is not doing you that much good, huh?"


    The prime minister stared at him for a second before smiling. "¡­I don''t think so."


    Rui eyed him back intensely. "I think you''re bluffing." The prime minister grinned. "I don''t think you were authorized to make threats in this meeting."


    "I''m sure that the guildmaster will love to hear that when we deploy our prophetic resources to inflict as much damage with as few people as possible." Rui shrugged. "Calling real threats a bluff is a good way to get yourself killed."


    The two sides continued sparring with each other verbally, trying to undermine the other side''s position and credibility while opting to garner as much optical and rhetorical dominance as they could.


    Meanwhile, the guildmaster fell into thought, considering everything that he had been hearing.


    Admittedly, he didn''t expect Rui to rely on threats. Thankfully, they were ptable.


    No one would me the Kandrian Empire for targeting nations that were contributing to its destruction.


    If anything, it was the norm for such action to be taken.


    Nations were fragile, and defense involved taking the enemies out before the battle began. In the case of the Kandrian Empire, they had the Ss n, which allowed them to execute tactical missions that involved the assassinations of just a few people, including himself. This would ensure that the next guildmaster was firmly pro-Kandria, allowing the Kandrian Empire to gain a new ally.


    Of course, with a powerful Martial Sage protecting him it was anything but easy. However, it was still very well within the capabilities of the Kandrian Empire, especially with all the power that it possessed now. In other words, the guildmaster would face danger and hostility no matter which side he picked. The Britannian Empire''s stick was bigger, of course, but the Kandrian Empire had a bigger shield.


    On top of that, he hadn''t forgotten the benefits and incentives that the Kandrian Empire had promised. If he was going to be attacked anyway, he would much rather go with the side that promised him greater riches and treasures in exchange for his support and alliance.


    Yet, he also hadn''t forgotten the free-trade agreement that the alliance very straightforwardly offered.


    Both sides had sticks, shields, and carrots of varying sizes that ultimately summed up to be equal enough that any difference was entirely negligible.


    In that case¡­


    "I have made my decision."


    The two sides, who had been battling each other verbally, paused as their expressions grew serious. Neither one of them was sure which way the guildmaster was going to favor based on his expressions. The man''s poker face was beyond immacte.


    Silence echoed in the room for several seconds.


    Neither side said a word as they waited.


    The atmosphere was wrung taut while the air grew electric. All content is ? N0velDrama.Org.


    "I have evaluated the positions of both sides scrupulously for quite some time now. I have pored over every detail of every statement that either side has uttered in this meeting and prior meetings, as well as what has been said by other delegates to convey the position of the Shionel Confederation," he began. "Both sides have offered a lot, promised a lot, and have even threatened a lot. One side has more powerful threats, while the other side has more powerful promises. I have tried weighing them against each other in hopes that I would be able to detect which is heavier than the other, But I''m unable to decide which is heavier."


    Both sides sharpened their eyes with bated breaths.


    He said he was unable to decide which was heavier.


    Yet, he had made a decision?


    "Despite this mise, I have indeed arrived at a final decision." His tone grew more certain. "The answer came to me not from any external factor but from within me."


    A serene smile cracked at the edge of his mouth. "I just remembered who I was. Who l am."


    Rui''s eyes widened with shock at those words.


    Yet, the guildmaster was not done.


    His eyes grew more certain. "I am a businessman. My greatest strengths have always been identifying potential where others see none and then milking it for the maximum yield. And that is what I have decided to do in this particr circumstance."


    He closed his eyes. "In this case, one side has more potential than the other. One side has limitless potential, while the other side has reached its limit. One side has the potential to be the most powerful human force to have ever existed, while the other desperately clings to its stagnating influence while doing everything in its power to oppress the potential of the other in fear of being outshined."


    An ecstatic grin erupted on Rui''s face while the prime minister''s face crumpled with grave reckoning.


    The atmosphere boiled as their emotions ran high.


    "Guildmaster¡­" Edward''s voice rang with deep peril. Malevolent bloodlust flickered in the depths of his green eyes. "Consider your next words very carefully¡ª"


    "With the authority vested in me as guildmaster of the Shionel Confederation, I hereby dere my allyship with the Kandrian Empire." His voice boomed as he cut the Britannian leader off. His intense gaze fixed itself on the vengeful fury that lingered in Edward''s eyes. "My decision is final. I appreciate your offer and detest your disrespectful conduct and audacity to threaten me so brazenly and unapologetically while I harbor you as a guest in this nation."


    His gaze shifted to the beaming Rui. "I have decided to bet on your potential. Kandria''s potential. Do not let me regret it."


    Rui''s grin widened. "I won''t. You can rest assured of that."


    The air boiled with jubnce for the briefest of moments.


    Until it was swept away by a wave of danger and peril.


    "He may not let you regret it¡­" A whisper escaped the prime minister. "But I will."


    Rui froze, breaking into a cold sweat.


    His heart started beating harder.


    His nerves began tingling, prickled by the sharp atmosphere.


    His instincts warned of impending danger.


    "What¡­" Rui''s eyes widened at the Britannian Prime Minister. "What have you done?"


    Edward smiled, opening eyes filled with bloodlust and malice.


    He pulled out amunication artifact, activating it.


    A singlemand escaped him.


    "Commence the attack."


    RUMBLE!!


    The prime minister smiled while Rui and Guildmaster Bradt froze with shock as the very world around them began tremoring with fear.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2351 Whats It Going To Be?

    Chapter 2351 What''s It Going To Be?


    Prime Minister Edward hadn''t expected to lose.


    However, he was far too careful not to have prepared for it. Even before he departed for the Shionel Confederation, he had very carefully prepared an operation that would only be executed if he somehow happened to lose. And while he was surprised that he had failed to bring the guildmaster over to his side, he did not let it stop him from doing what he needed to.


    "Commence the attack."


    At that moment, the Martial assault forces that had been waiting immediately erupted from their temporary hidden locations, surging towards the Shionel Confederation. Sages, Masters, and even Seniors surged from a hidden spot in the geographic vicinity of the Shionel Confederation, converging upon it at rapid speeds.


    On a map, they resembled sharks converging on their prey.


    It was a matter of minutes before they would arrive at the Shionel Confederation.


    The sheer power that they possessed radiated through heaven and earth.


    RUMBLE!


    Rui''s expression darkened with grave realization. "You¡­"


    "I told you¡­" the prime minister spoke to the guildmaster while his eyes remained fixed on Rui. "I would make you regret it."


    Guildmaster Bradt red at him as his fists clenched. "You dare¡­"


    The prime minister''s bloodshot green eyes shifted to meet the guildmaster''s severe gaze. "Did you think I was jesting? Tell me, Bradt¡­"


    He stood up, leaning towards him as a piercing gaze pinned the guildmaster frozen. "¡­Did you really think I was not going to do exactly as I said?"


    His voice oozed with malice and peril. "Do I look like a man who will not keep his word?"


    The guildmaster''s expression darkened.


    A hint of regret flickered in his eyes.


    One that was not missed by the piercing eyes of the prime minister.


    "Ah¡­" A faint murmur escaped Edward. "¡­There it is."


    A flicker of glee lit up in his eyes. "The consequences of your foolish decision."


    RUMBLE!


    The tremoring of the ground grew even more intense.


    "Your Highness," Sage cken remarked with sharp concern. "We should leave. We should leave as soon as possible."


    "Speak for yourself." A wide grin emerged on Damian''s face.


    He earned a warning look from Sage Roschem. "¡­We are bodyguards, Damian. Do not forget your duty."


    Damian merely snorted with contempt.


    Yet, he didn''t retort.


    He was many things, but he was not someone who didn''t value his word.


    "Your Highness," Sage Roschem urged. "Your safety is paramount. We must leave immediately. We do not have much more time."


    RUMBLE!


    The tremoring intensified even further.


    "Going to run, little prince?" Prime Minister Edward smiled at Rui. "To think you would not even n for an attack immediately after the victory that you sought to achieve, the moment when this nation and alliance were at their weakest¡­"


    He tutted with disapproval and disappointment. "You should have stayed in yourne."


    Rui gritted his teeth as he clenched his fists, ring at the prime minister.


    He understood what the man was trying to do. He was trying to provoke Rui into choosing to remain here.


    He wanted to ensure that the Void Prince not only chose not to retreat but was baited into a fight where he could finally be killed. So long as Rui was surrounded by the Sages and had the damn instant transportation artifact, Prime Minister Edward couldn''t kill him.


    And the worst part of the ploy was that even though Rui knew that he was merely getting baited, it was difficult not to fall for it. The second he departed from the conference hall, the guildmaster''s life was as good as forfeit unless he chose to undo his decision and ally with the alliance. Even then, the Britannian Prime Minister would definitely make him pay the price for not having chosen the alliance initially. In the worst-case scenario, the Shionel Confederation would be a colony of the Britannian Empire.


    This was how the Britannian Empire operated. This was how Prime Minister Edward operated.


    Unlike the warm and mutually beneficial harmony that the Kandrian Empire tended to engage in, the Britannian Empire was cold and domineering. It forced its lessers to kneel with their heads to the ground under its boots. Unlike the Sekigahara Confederate, which left only ruins behind, or the Republic of Gorteau, which only sought to squeeze capital from its victims, the Britannian Empire looked down on everybody and everything else.


    "Make up your mind, boy." Edward''s cold sneer broke Rui out of his stupor. "What''s it going to be? Live to fight another day and abandon the Shionel Confederation, or use the power that you have now to risk your life to protect the Shionel Confederation for as long as you can until reinforcements from the Kandrian Empiree along?"


    RUMBLE!


    The intensifying tremors reminded everyone of the haste of the matter.


    "Your Highness?" Prime Minister Edward smiled. "What''s the matter? You were so lively just a minute ago."


    Rui red at him with deep bloodlust.


    Yet, the prime minister merely relished in it with glee.


    "When you inevitably choose to run away with your tail tucked between your legs¡­" Edward''s tone was sharp. "I want you to look the guildmaster in the eye and tell him that you betrayed him."


    Rui''s rage heightened while Prime Minister Edward''s cruel smile widened. "I want you to look the guildmaster in the eyes and tell him that you''re abandoning him."


    The Prime Minister''s piercing gaze bore into Rui''s eyes.


    In their depths stirred an endless darkness. Text ? owned by N?velDrama.Org.


    A void.


    Awoken by the emotions that boiled deep within.


    Edward''s smile widened as he walked over to Rui, never once breaking eye contact. His bodyguards stiffened, yet they didn''t follow him.


    The closer he got, the more he was at risk.


    Yet, not even the slightest hint of fear could be seen in his eyes.


    He arrived by Rui''s side, entirely at the mercy of Rui and the Kandrian Sages.


    "Three minutes left." His piercing gaze bore into Rui''s dark eyes. "Time''s running out, little prince."


    His cruel smile widened.


    "So, what''s it going to be?"


    RUMBLE!


    The tremoring intensified by the second.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2352: Grave Choices

    Chapter 2352: Grave Choices


    ?


    Rui closed his eyes and fell into thought.


    Whatever choice he made, he needed to make it soon.


    If he chose to stay, then they were at risk of dying to an excess of Martial Sages. Including his own bodyguards as well as the two Martial Sages of the Shionel Confederation, their side only had five Martial Sages.


    It was very likely that Prime Minister Edward had sent more than five Sages in this little assault.


    On top of that, his own bodyguards, the formidable Sage Knights of the Britannian Empire, were also part of the equation. Together, they undoubtedly possessed Martial Sages in excess of the protection that the Shionel Confederation possessed.


    If Rui chose to fight, there was a good chance he would die at the hands of a Sage.


    Under ordinary circumstances, that was.


    His father had informed him that he was not going to die at the hands of a Martial Sage via prophecy.


    However, it was possible that that was because Rui chose to evacuate in the foreseen future. That future might change if Rui, having heard the prophecy, chose to stay and fight.


    On top of that, it didn''t mean that the three Martial Sages who were participating as his bodyguards wouldn''t die. Strong as Damian was, he wasn''t invincible and could still be overwhelmed by numbers.


    Thest thing that Rui wanted to do was make a decision that could lead to the death of one of the Sages of the Kandrian Empire. The death of any one of them was more than the Kandrian Empire was able to tolerate, especially in these grave circumstances.


    Still, was he going to abandon the nation and the man who had just decided to ce his trust in him?


    If he abandoned the Shionel Confederation at this altar, then not only was the nation doomed, but the Kandrian Empire would suffer a heavy blow that it would be unable to recover from. RUMBLE!


    The tremors intensified once more, snapping him out of his thoughts.


    "Your Highness..." Sage Roschem''s tone was urgent. "We need to-"


    "I have decided."


    Rui''s powerful voice seemed to cleave past the Sage''s words.


    His eyes opened.


    In their depth stirred endless darkness.


    "We will fight." Rui''s expression grew severe.


    Sage Damian''s grin widened at Rui''s words. "Hah, I knew I was right about you!"


    Sage Roschem, on the other hand, was not so pleased by the fact that they were not retreating. "Your Highness..."


    "I will handle the iing Masters," Rui replied. "You guys handle the iing Sages. We stall for as long as possible."


    Sage Roschem stared at him with a grave expression. "Your Highness, that is deeply unwise. The reinforcements from the Kandrian Empire will not be able to make it in time if the forces of the enemy alliance are too great."


    "We have to try." Rui narrowed his eyes. "Kandria will suffer much greater losses if the world learns that we ran away instead of protecting allies that we swore to protect from the threats of the alliance. Now quick! We don''t have much time left."


    Relief emerged on the guildmaster''s face as he was reassured of aid from the Kandrian Empire.


    Prime Minister Edward''s smile, however, only grew more sinister.


    This was exactly what he wanted.


    He was afraid that the prince would make the sensible decision of retreating from the Shionel Confederation, leaving the nation to fend for itself against the wrath of the enemy alliance.


    He had purposely tailored his words to make it impossible for the Void Prince to leave without destroying his rtionship with the Shionel Confederation and the guildmaster, effectively shackling the Dawnbringer to protect the nation on the Master-level front.


    This was the only way to kill him.


    With the protection of the Martial Sages at his disposal, it was almost impossible to assassinate him, and with the artifact that allowed for instantaneous transportation back home, there was no way that they could rely on overwhelming military power to break past his defenses.


    He needed the prince to volunteer to fight in a situation where he was bound to die. "It is a shame that I will be unable to witness the despair born from helplessness in your eyes." Prime Minister Edward smiled as his bodyguards manipted heaven and earth to elevate him away. "I want you to remember the desperation you feel today."


    BOOM!


    They sted out of his office before disappearing in a single sh.


    RUMBLE!


    The tremoring intensified.


    Rui estimated that they had no more than a minute left.


    "I just received an intelligence report from the surveince corp." Guildmaster Bradt''s tone grew urgent. "The forces are approaching from the West. We must intercept them before they can reach the border!"


    Rui got up, narrowing his eyes. "Let''s go."


    WHOOSH!


    The four of them leaped into action, activating their Realms of power as they surged across the Shionel Confederation at extraordinary speeds. Normally, it was the norm to not use temporary reserves of power for travel, but in this case, the situation was too urgent. Rui didn''t expect a fight this quickly, but he wasn''t necessarilyining. He knew that he was going to be outnumbered heavily, without any shadow of a doubt. The Shionel Confederation only had fifteen Martial Masters, even after Rui broke some of them through. Meanwhile, he had no doubt that the enemy Martial Masters were going to be packingrge numbers.


    The strategic outlook was terrible.


    Any ordinary Martial Master would undoubtedly be despairing at the terrible odds that they


    were facing.


    No Martial Master was pleased to have to deal with the fact that they would be fighting multiple Masters at once.


    Yet, despite the immense pressure that had mounted on Rui, he was unable to suppress the


    smile that cracked at the edge of his mouth.


    He was unable to suppress the rising battle lust that erupted from deep within him.


    He was unable to suppress the euphoria that had consumed him from within.N?velDrama.Org owns ? this.


    A battle that would push him to his limits and beyond.


    He looked forward to it.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2353: Sole Defender

    Chapter 2353: Sole Defender


    ?


    The Martial Assault Force that surged in the direction of the Shionel Confederation at high speeds had two goals.


    Destruction.


    And Death.


    Specifically, the death of one person.All content is ? N0velDrama.Org.


    The Void Prince.


    The Prime Minister had personally assured the Master-level force that they would get the opportunity to fight the Void Prince with a massive numeric advantage if he did authorize the attack. Although they weren''t sure whether he had seeded, they would still fulfill their mission to the best of their abilities.


    Destruction was all but too easy for Martial Artists of the higher Realms.


    BOOOOOM BOOOOOM BOOOOOM!!!


    As they surged toward the Shionel Confederation, they unleashed their power, wrecking theplexwork of roads and transportation infrastructure that the Shionel Confederation and especially Guildmaster Bradt relied on.


    It didn''t matter who won the battle.


    The Shionel Confederation had already begun to pay the price for antagonizing the alliance. The world would understand the consequences of defying the three Sage-level powerhouses. This was the message that Prime Minister Edward was intent on spreading to all of East Panama. He wanted all future allies to remember what would happen if they chose to ally with the Kandrian Empire. He especially wanted the other undecided Sage-level powerhouses to take a good look at the events that were unfolding and remember the consequences of siding with the Kandrian Empire.


    BOOOOOM BOOOOOM BOOOOOM!!!


    Years'' and even decades'' worth of umted infrastructure that had been built to amodate high-speed carriages were destroyed in the shortest of split seconds. The only inhibition that attackers had was ensuring that they didn''t go too far and minimize casualties, lest they wind up getting targeted by the Panamic Martial Federation for their Martial Crimes.


    BOOOOOM BOOOOOM BOOOOOM!!!


    They carpet-bombed everything of even remotely great value that they could find as they shot toward the Shionel Confederation unimpeded.


    Until, of course, they were impeded.


    BOOOOOOOOOM!!!


    The enemy Martial Sages stiffened as they blocked a devastating attacknding on them from afar, halting their entire force where they stood.


    "Hahaha! Looks like you maggots aren''t too weak after all!" Sage Damian grinned. His bloodlust heightened as he sensed the strength of his enemies from a distance. "It wouldn''t be fun if that alone was enough to take all of you out!"


    His grin widened as his Martial Heart, Mind, and Soul zed with power, reaching


    extraordinary heights.


    From within the depths of his being, his Martial Embodiment bloomed in all its ephemeral glory.


    The world beheld his destruction.


    Every ounce of power he had ever umted in his entire life was for the sake of destroying his opponents.


    He had mastered every form of offensive field Martial Art known to the Martial World and had reached a realm of destruction that very few beings in the world had evere to reach.


    It was his Martial Path and his Martial Embodiment.


    Destruction itself.


    Yet, destruction held different meanings to different people.


    Some people saw an endless inferno that reduced everything to ash.


    Others saw a cataclysmic meteorite that wiped out all life in the entire world.


    A few saw catastrophic earthquakes leveling everything everywhere.


    No two people beheld the same form of destruction.


    Yet, they all saw destruction when they looked at him, nheless.


    "He hase," the Martial Sage leading the Martial Assault Force remarked with a sharp expression as he drew an enormous greatsword from his scabbard. "This ce will be a devastating battlefield. Masters, circle around and continue the operation at the Shionel Confederation. You must kill the Void Prince as soon as possible."


    The many Martial Masters simply issued a brief curt nod before disappearing in the blink of an eye, leaving the ten Martial Sages behind.


    "Here theye," the leader of the Sage-level force, Sage Shaia,mented with a calm andposed expression. "We outnumber them two to one. I will handle Damian myself, and the rest of you will kill the remaining Sages quickly. Then, we will head over and kill the Void Prince if he isn''t already dead. After that..."


    His eyes narrowed. "We capture the Shionel Confederation. No more. No less. We will do exactly what we were paid to do."


    The strongest Martial Sage of the Republic of Gorteau had no intention of lifting even a single finger beyond executing the contract that he signed with Prime Minister Edward.


    He didn''t care about the war.


    He only cared about how lucrative hismissions would be due to how heavily needed his services were.


    The Martial Sages from the Britannian Empire and the Sekigahara Confederate frowned with disdain and disapproval towards him, yet they didn''t have a choice.


    He was the leader of the operation.


    BOOOOOM BOOOOOM BOOOOOM!!!


    A volley of devastatingly powerful attacks converged on them before they could even


    respond.


    SLASH!!!


    In a single smooth stroke, Sage Shaia''s greatsword cleaved through all of Damian''s attacks with effortless ease. His eyes shifted as he swept his gaze over to the five Martial Sages that shot towards them at high speeds.


    "You are brave to fight us all head-on, Damian," Sage Shaia remarked with a cold voice. "Unfortunately, bravado will not be enough for you or your friends to survive the battle." Damian''s grin widened even further while the bloodlust in his eyes spread even deeper. "Hah, we''ll see about that!"


    BO00000000OM!!!


    A devastating explosion erupted as the Martial Sages shed against each other.


    Heaven and earth mourned as fifteen forces of nature in human form unleashed their cmitous power against each other, fighting desperately to cull their opponents and win the


    battle.


    The defending Sages were of a dark disposition.


    They would have to fight more than one Martial Sage at once.


    And while none of them were weak, such lopsided numbers were merely a recipe for disaster.


    It would be a miracle if all of them came out of this alive.


    RUMBLE!!!


    While the Sages began their devastating battle, the Martial Masters surged towards the Shionel Confederation, only to find a lone Martial Master waiting on the battlefield.


    A hungering darkness stirred in the depths of his eyes, waiting for them.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2354: Convergence

    Chapter 2354: Convergence


    ?


    They didn''t expect him to fight them all by himself.


    Yet, there he was.


    All by himself.


    Dozens of Masters against one.


    They should have felt triumphant.


    They should have felt certain.


    They should have felt confident.


    Yet, when they beheld the maelstrom of peril that emanated within the depths of his dark


    eyes...


    They only felt fear.


    It was hard to describe.


    It was hard toprehend.


    His Heart and Mind were dormant, yet somehow, he made them feel... insignificant.


    Everything about him, from how he stood to how his dark eyes seemed to pierce into them, made their instincts scream with peril.


    "He''s just one man." A powerful masculine voice dispelled the angst that had been building up in the air. "We are dozens strong. He is but one. Our victory is all but assured. Additionally..."


    The air around him boiled with unfathomable power.


    "...You have me." His eyes sparkled with raw might.


    In an instant, a surge of confidence and jubtion shot through the Masters as their gait grew stronger while their eyes turned more fierce.


    Of course, their victory was guaranteed.


    How could it not be?


    After all, they had none other than Master Knight Stephen Laurenbourg, the mighty Convergence and the final grade-thirty Martial Master of East Panama, to lead them to victory.


    The old man fashioned a militaristic Martial attire that bore the coat of arms of the Britannian Empire proudly. He was one of the most authoritative and influential members of the Britannian Empire, second only to the Sages and Prime Minister Edward himself. He was a proud Martial Master with a long history of serving the Britannian Empire since before the Age of Martial Art.


    Normally, he considered himself above participating in such a lowly assault force.


    Normally, he would not have epted the mission that Prime Minister Edward had prepared.


    That was, of course, until Edward had informed him that he might have had the opportunity to kill the Void Prince.


    It was an offer that he couldn''t refuse.


    "I suppose I owe that crafty fox one." A faint murmur escaped him as menacing bloodlust erupted from him. Shivers crawled down the spines of the surrounding Masters while a gruesome smile appeared on his face.


    He uttered a singlemand as they reached their sole target.


    "Attack."


    RUMBLE


    Dozens of Martial Hearts erupted in full power as they drew their very best from the get-go. Heaven and earth shook as their Minds shined with immense vigor.


    Yet, that wasn''t all.


    The very world came undone, swallowed whole by the tsunami of Martial Embodiments erupting from the depths of their minds. Their very existences seemed to transcend mortal limitations as their Embodiments wove together a profound tapestry.


    A culmination of centuries of cultivated thought.


    "Your death is all but written." Visceral bloodlust quaked in the Convergence''s voice as his glorious Martial Embodiment bloomed in all its power.


    A whirlpool.


    One that subsumed all of heaven and earth.


    A Martial Mind that had been refined for two centuries was not to be underestimated. It was a beacon of thought, the likes of which were seldom seen. It was one of his greatest sources of pride as one of the most prestigious Martial Masters in East Panama.


    That was why what followed shook him to his very core.


    BADUMP


    Rui''s Martial Heart zed into power as the microcosm of his Martial Mind erupted with extraordinary force.


    From the depths of his mind surged forth an endless darkness.


    An infinite void.


    One moment, the maelstrom of Martial Embodiments towering over the lone Dawnbringer stood tall and proud.


    The very next?


    It was gone.


    Consumed.


    Consumed by the supernova of information that eroded their paltry Martial Embodiments away into nothingness.


    Horror lit up in the eyes of the enemy Masters as they felt the devastating weight of Rui''s thought.


    They gritted their teeth as they beheld a realm of cognition beyond their wildest dreams. They clenched their fists as they struggled to fathom the microcosm within the depths of his mind.


    It was the reaction of every single Martial Master that ever gained the privilege of witnessing the full depth of Rui''s mental power.


    Even Master Stephen''s expression steeled with grim severity as he realized that not only were the tales of the Dawnbringer''s mental prowess entirely true, but they even, in fact, understated the truth.


    "Such an existence cannot be tolerated." His eyes sharpened, sparkling with power. "Such power... must not be. I will not allow it. I shan''t."


    His expression grew ugly as he witnessed the awe on the faces of the Martial Masters around him at the power of Rui''s Martial Mind.


    Not even a minute of real time had passed since they had run into him and each and every single one of them was gazing at him with awe.


    The very sight of it made his blood boil.


    How dare they admire another Martial Master while he stood on the same battlefield as them?


    "How dare you...?" His rage heightened.


    How dare an upstart whelp who hadn''t even lived half a century steal away the glory and prestige he had worked his entire life for?


    "ATTACK!" he bellowed at his team. "ATTACK HIM IN THE NAME OF TRANSCENDENT


    EMPEROR!"


    The Britannian Martial Masters broke out of their daze as they leaped at Ruiwith fierceText content ? N?velDrama.Org.


    bloodlust.


    Dozens of Martial Artists converged upon him.


    Yet, Rui didn''t so much as budge.


    His body was rxed.


    His expression was calm.


    Serene.


    Yet, he couldn''t suppress a smile cracking at the edge of his mouth.


    Time slowed down in his eyes as he closed them.


    His internal pressure began shifting and alternating, constricting blood flow across his entire


    body while loosening up intracranial cerebral pressure.


    Blood surged from across his entire body to his brain, elevating his neurological activity to extraordinary levels. The entirety of his brain lit up like an inferno as his mind reached unfathomable levels of activity.


    His eyes shed blood-red when he opened them as an even deeper avnche of information flooded the feeble minds of his enemies even as they surged forward to attack him.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2355: Unrealized Hatred

    Chapter 2355: Unrealized Hatred


    ?


    They froze.


    It didn''t matter what they were doing.


    It didn''t matter how close their attacks were.


    It didn''t matter what their Martial Art or Path was.


    They simply froze.


    As though someone just tossed a mountain on their shoulders, forcing them to bear the burden, pushing down on them, and refusing to let them move.


    That was exactly what Rui did.


    The smile on his face widened as the eerie blood-red glow in his eyes brightened.


    "I must say..." A faint whisper of glee escaped him as he inspected his work. "The results have exceeded my expectations."


    His eyes lit up with ecstasy.


    "Over half of you are paralyzed..." he mused as he inspected his handiwork. "The other half are partially incapacitated. And..."


    His gaze shifted to the furious Convergence, who red at him with deep hatred. "...Only one of you is entirely unfazed."


    It was at that moment that the Martial Masters understood a deep truth that would go on to stay with them for the rest of their lives.


    They were no match for Rui.


    He was in a realm of his own.


    Master Stephen''s expression contorted with rage.


    RUMBLE!!


    Chills ran across the skin of the Martial Masters as thends shook with the weight of the Convergence''s fury.


    Yet, where the others felt fear, Rui could only feel a single emotion.


    Ecstasy.


    Gazing at the supremely powerful Martial Master, surrounded by enemy Martial Masters, made his blood boil.


    He felt more alive than he had in the past two months.


    It was unshackling.


    Cathartic.


    "This..." A single whisper escaped him as he ced his hand on his roaring heart. "This is why I came here."


    He lived for this.


    He lived to push the limits of his Adaptive Evolution.


    "Those of you who can move..." The Convergence''s faint voice quivered with rage. "... Continue forth with the mission in the Shionel Confederation. Spread destruction to the very limits that you are able to get away with. Show the world the price of antagonizing the Britannian Empire."


    More than a dozen high-grade Masters gritted their teeth as they pushed forward with sheer willpower despite the mental strain that those very actions caused them.


    Rui didn''t bother stopping them.


    There were reasons why he had instructed the Shionel Masters to stay behind.


    One was because many were too mentally weak to fight in his presence and the other was so that they could intercept the Masters that managed to withstand his greatly increased flood of information.


    This was the n that Rui had cooked up and implemented on the spot before he headed to the battlefield.


    He simply met the Convergence''s vengeful gaze with intense bloodlust as the able Masters moved past him unimpeded.


    He couldn''t afford to finish them off.


    He couldn''t afford to waste his energy dealing with them.


    If he wasted any of his precious stamina trying to kill them off...


    "...I''d lose against you," he concluded as he stared at the Convergence. "You''re not weak enough for me to fight in anything less than my absolute strongest."


    His words seemed to evoke even more rage from the enemy.


    "Boy."


    RUMBLE...


    He possessed such tremendous power that the sheer weight of his words sent shudders across heaven and earth.


    "Your defeat at my hands is destined." The Convergence''s eyes red with raw force. "When I''m done with you, no one will ever dare impeach my prestige as the greatest Martial Master of all of Martial kind!"


    The bloody darkness in Rui''s red eyes stirred at his words.


    A single question escaped him.


    "Is that why I sense boundless hatred towards me from deep within your mind?"


    It was a question that didn''t belong in the middle of a battlefield.


    In the middle of a war.


    Yet, it struck the Convergence with a heavy impact.


    "...Hatred?" The storm of emotions cleared in his eyes as a hint of rity bloomed in them.


    "My Martial Mind is much superior to yours," Rui replied with a profound tone. "Your hatred towards me is pure and unadulterated. Yet, it is hidden deep within your mind. The kind of hatred that has entrenched itself deep in your heart, festering for long but surely."


    A pining curiosity lit up in Rui''s eyes.


    "Tell me, why do you hate me?"


    The Convergence gazed at his hands as realization dawned on him.


    "I see..." the old man whispered.


    For the first time in many years, he took another step to the Sage Realm.


    It was closer than it had ever been before.N?velDrama.Org owns ? this.


    "You have my gratitude." His voice softened. "I shall make your death painless, rest


    assured."


    "I mean, I would rather you didn''t kill me."


    "No, your death must happen," the Convergence dered. "I cannot allow a Master with even


    greater prestige than myself to exist in this world."


    Rui''s eyebrow rose as he frowned. "That''s it?"


    The Convergence stared at him with a hateful re. "I have spent more than five hundred years cultivating the prestige, glory, and renown that I have today. I''m one of the only two grade-thirty Martial Masters in all of East Panama! I am the most influential Master Knight in the entirety of the Britannian Empire! I was the undisputed greatest Master in our domain for centuries!"


    Rui understood why he sensed profound hatred for him in the man''s mind. "You were the greatest Master in East Panama... until I broke through to the Master Realm at half the age of the previous record."


    "It was the beginning of the copse of everything that I had ever built across my entire life." The Convergence''s voice grew scathing as his eyes red with rage. "Bit by bit, you stole everything that was once mine. Youngest Master. Crown Prince of the Kandrian Empire. Golden boy of the Martial Union. Dawnbringer. Rui the Ruinous. Jewel of the Master Realm.


    And, of course..."


    His eyes grew bloodshot. "The Bestower of Apotheosis was the final straw. Nobody even speaks of me when they talk about the greatest Martial Master. Nobody even thinks of me when they think of the Master Realm."


    The air grew perilous as his power boiled to extraordinary levels.


    "But now..." His voice quaked with bloodlust. "I have a chance. A chance to take it all back. Come dusk, the only thing people will remember of you... is that you died at my hands!"


    RUMBLE!!


    All hell broke loose as the two titans of the Master Realm erupted in battle.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2356: Unfazed

    Chapter 2356 Unfazed


    The Convergence leaped towards Rui at extraordinary speeds. Speeds that far exceeded Rui''s movements. Far exceeding his raw ability to evade.


    And yet¡ª


    WHOOSH


    He had dodged the attack before it even began. The Convergence''s attack crashed into empty air as Rui gently tilted his head at precisely the right angle, at precisely the right moment.


    The faintest of whispers escaped him. "I can see your SOUL."


    Rui hadn''t cared all too much about why the man hated him. He had just wanted to stall the man long enough so that he could create a SOUL model before the battle began. He had no true interest in the man''s pathetic sob story about being outshined.


    Equipped with the SOUL model as well as the predictive model, courtesy of the Angel of Lace, he was ready to deal with the powerful peak Master at his absolute strongest.


    "Your evasion is impressive, but it cannot protect you forever," Master Stephen growled.


    One moment, he was merely stationary a few meters away.


    Then he disappeared from Rui''s gaze, appearing before him less than a microsecondter. A tremendous blow with astronomical momentum surged forward at blinding speeds, threatening to st Rui''s head into smithereens.


    Rui''s reactions had been rendered useless,pletely surpassed by his opponent''s shocking speed.


    WHOOSH


    Yet, he evaded it once more.


    In his weakened physical condition, he might as well have been moving in slow motionpared to the devastating speeds of the Convergence. Yet, he could foresee each attack from miles away. All it took was one moment, a single moment that existed before the inception of the attack and the decision of the attack. He needed to evade each attack before they began, yet after it was toote to change it.


    A feat that required extraordinary precision and even greater foresight.


    Yet¡ª


    WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH!


    Attack after attack, he evaded the Convergence''s extraordinary blows one after another. The Convergence snarled with a hint of frustration as his enormous leg rose straight up before plummeting down at extraordinary speeds in a devastating drop kick that threatened to crush anything that it touched.


    Rui barely managed to evade it with a hair''s length.


    Yet, he wasn''t able to evade what followed.


    BOOOOOOOOM!!!


    "Rgh!" Rui grimaced as a devastating shockwave struck him, expanding omnidirectionally.


    The titanic attack broke heaven and earth itself asunder as a crater spanning nearly a hundred kilometers in diameter emerged from under his foot. In an instant, the topography around them had changed forever, altering in the blink of an eye.


    Rui gazed at him with shock as he struggled toprehend the sheer amount of destruction the man could produce with a single attack.


    He didn''t understand.


    He didn''t understand how the man was able to produce such catastrophic output.


    That wasn''t to say that he was weak.


    Certainly not. Text ? owned by N?velDrama.Org.


    His Martial Heart shined far and bright, illuminating everything around them. His Martial Mind was very powerful, undoubtedly refined, and had been expanding over the years. Yet, the sheer output this man seemed able to effortlessly produce was greater than almost anything Rui had ever seen in the Master Realm. WHOOSH


    The man emerged from the dust cloud, surging at Rui with blinding speeds as a multitude of blows flew towards him with extraordinary vigor. WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH!


    Rui''s eyes sharpened as he evaded every single one of them long before the dawn of each attack. He grew morefortable dodging each attack one after another in rapid session.


    His movements grew smoother.


    They began flowing.


    Like water.


    Maneuvers lost their distinction.


    One could no longer tell where one maneuver ended and where the next began. A singr graceful dance that wove together in a flowing tapestry.


    One that painted a picture of an ephemeral star.


    An ephemeral star that one could almost grasp, yet remained forever beyond reach.


    It was a sight that infuriated the Convergence, who tossed aside his reservations and exerted himself to the fullest with the sole goal ofnding a single blow on Rui to take him out.


    All he needed was a single attack.


    He could feel it.


    A single attack was enough to cripple or even kill his opponent.


    For whatever reason, Rui''s body seemed to be especially weak. Most likely, it was the drawback of the extraordinary technique that seemed to inte his mind to the proportions that it was at now. Given that Ruiwas dedicating everything to evasion, Master Stephen could surmise that his goal was to stall his inevitable loss and wait for reinforcements.


    "I won''t let you evade the oue of this match."


    RUMBLE


    An even greater surge of power erupted from deep within the man''s body. Not even Rui was able to fully understand where it came from, yet Master Stephen lunged forward with an extraordinarily aggressive offensive initiative.


    He diverted all his power and focus towards maximal power and speed, dedicating everything to the sole purpose of attacking Rui and nothing else. There was no point in being defensive against a man who was dedicating all his power to evasive stalling.


    And that was a mistake.


    One that Rui had been waiting for. In the blink of an eye, the light of ferocity entered Rui''s eyes as Master Stephen''s extraordinary attack surged toward his head at astronomical speeds.


    Only for it to crash into an empty image.


    A feint.


    WHOOSH


    By the time Master Stephen realized his mistakes, it was toote to avoid the swift finger jab that shot forward at his eyes, propelled by Outer Convergence, Wind Breathing, and a potent Yin-Yang Spear.


    This was what Rui had been waiting for from the very start of the fight.


    He knew that in his Megamind state, his power was greatly diminished. There was no point in bombarding his opponent''s powerful body with weakened attacks. What he needed was one decisive opening with one decisive attack that wouldnd a decisive wound.


    Rui had lulled his opponent into dropping his guard by manipting him into believing that he had no intention ofnding an attack and was merely stalling for reinforcements from the Kandrian Empire.


    He had executed the little strategy perfectly as the entire battle culminated into a powerful finger jab crashing into the man''s eyes.


    SPLAT!


    It was game over.


    Or at least, it should have been.


    What followed happened so fast that Rui would have died on the spot had he not had both his predictive and SOUL models. He leaped away as fast as he could as he detected an iing blow more powerful and faster than any other before.


    Unfortunately, he wasn''t fast enough.


    CRACK CRACK CRACK!


    The attack merely grazed his arm as he leaped away.


    Yet, that was enough to shatter his bones into pieces, mangling his arm into a misshapen mound of flesh.


    "¡­I underestimated you."


    The Convergence opened his eyes.


    They were intact, much to Rui''s greatest shock.


    There wasn''t a single scratch or drop of blood despite the fact that he had struck them with a Yin-Yang Spear.


    Pure power and peril radiated from the depths of the Convergence''s body.


    "Come," his voice shook with force. "Let us continue, Dawnbringer. Let me show you why you are no match for me."


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2357 Deduced Truth

    Chapter 2357 Deduced Truth


    Rui found it difficult to reconcile what was happening even as he reduced his Megamind technique and partially activated Weaving Blood.


    His Yin-Yang Spear had undoubtedly crashed into the man''s eyes. He felt the impact.


    Yet somehow, the man''s eyeballs had withstood the powerful attack directly.


    He stared at the peak Master with shock.


    He didn''t even know it was possible for anybody in the Master Realm to withstand his most potent attack in a ce as vulnerable as the eyes. Such a level of durability was something he would only ever expect from Martial Sages.


    "Did you really think your paltry offensive could hurt me?" He stared at Rui with dark eyes. "I will show you that you were foolish to have ever challenged me alone."


    His voice was fierce.


    Yet, Rui had no intention of losing his cool. Text ? owned by N?velDrama.Org.


    His thought was his greatest power, and losing his rationality at this juncture would undermine all the benefits of the Megamind technique.


    Time slowed down in his eyes as he fell into thought.


    There was no way Master Stephen''s Martial Body was strong enough to tank a Yin-Yang Spear, weakened or not, to his eyeball without so much as a scratch. The Gatekeeper''s Body and Heart were astronomically more powerful than his, and Rui highly doubted that even he would be capable of that. It was not raw durability.


    The Convergence was not famed for his extraordinary physique or conditioning. He was famed for the seemingly endless raw energy that he was conjuring up out of seemingly nowhere.


    In fact, from the looks of it, Rui was unable to detect any signs of conditioning whatsoever.It further reinforced Rui''s conclusion that he had withstood the attack not through innate durability or toughness but rather some kind of active technique that allowed him to mitigate the damage.


    Rui''s eyes lit up as a thought entered his mind.


    ''Could it be that he dispersed the impact into the environment?''


    If he had employed some kind of technique like Flux Earther, then Rui could understand how he managed to withstand the attack in theory. Although, in practice, it was still an absurd feat to aplish, especially when he had been caught off-guard and especially when the impact was on his eyeballs.


    Yet, there was only one problem with his hypothesis.


    ''I didn''t sense any energy discharge into heaven and earth,'' he frowned. ''Could it be that he somehow managed to disperse that energy into the environment without me noticing¡­? No, that''s impossible, especially when I''m using the Megamind technique.''


    With how powerful his senses were in this state, not even Master Reina would be able to sneak anything past him. Then, it begged the question.


    ''Where did the energy of my attack go?''


    Rui''s eyes widened as a grim possibility entered his mind. He nced at his healed arm as he recollected the attack that broke it. Despite it being a wild, abrupt haymaker, it was somehow stronger and faster than even the charged and weighted attacks that heunched before. Where did that surge in powere from?


    Rui''s eyes widened with shock. ''Did he absorb the energy of attack and then use it for his own attack?''


    The Convergence was one of the strongest Martial Masters ever, feared for his seemingly endless reservoir of energy that never ran out and attacks that only seemed to grow stronger and stronger.


    "Focus, boy."


    WHOOSH!


    He arrived before Rui at astronomical speeds, threatening to destroy with a single attack.


    WHOOSH!


    Rui barely avoided it, leaping back as his expression grew even more grim than before. The Convergence, however, refused to give him even the slightest bit of reprieve,unching a maelstrom of attacks at Rui.


    WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH!


    Rui bobbed and weaved through all of them as his reflexes sharpened.


    Yet, the Convergence was only getting started. His fighting style shifted as he forewent slower and longer attacks at the cost of greater speed and greater frequency at the cost of power.


    It was a wise decision.


    Rui''s condition was so weak that he didn''t even need his full power to ravage his body with a single strike. His attacks grew increasingly difficult to evade as his power and speed only rose. He almost certainly would have gotten hit if not for the astronomical foresight that his Megamind technique gave him, allowing him to foresee each attack long before it came, having extrapted it from his patterns and read his intent at its inception.


    "You seem to have figured out my secret."


    Rui''s eyes widened as he sharply ducked, evading a kick that threatened to knock his head off. He summersaulted away as he evaded a dropkick that struck the ground.


    BOOOOOOOOM!!!


    A devastating impact sundered thend around them, yet the Convergence had already reached him,unching a barrage of destructive jabs that threatened to reduce Rui into a battered mound of flesh.


    WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH!!!


    Rui bounced about his strikes, evading his jabs one after another with sharp evasive maneuvers.


    "Is dodging all you can do, boy?" the Convergence growled as he ferociously leaped after Rui, threatening to tear him apart with his bare hands. "Is this all the great Rui Quarrier is able to do?!"


    WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH!!!


    The slightest shifts across his entire body barely allowed Rui to narrowly avoid some of the fastest attacks he had ever been attacked with. He couldn''t even see the man move, yet, he knew where his attacks were.


    He knew where they would be. WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH!!!


    Rui leaped away, having evaded yet another furious barrage of attacks. Their exchanges had grown so intense, sharp, and pressuring that Rui found it difficult to even haveplete thoughts about his strategic approach to the battle despite his Megamind technique.


    ''I cannot attack him conventionally,'' Rui''s eyes narrowed. ''He''ll just absorb my attacks and turn it into his power. It would be foolish to attack him with ordinary collision-based damage principles.''


    That didn''t leave him with too many options, unfortunately.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2358 Not Holding Back

    Chapter 2358 Not Holding Back


    It was in moments like these that Rui mourned not having had greater offensive diversity. If an impact-driven offensive were ineffective against his opponent, then most of his arsenal would be rendered useless against the Convergence.


    Rui''s expression grew grave as he continued evading the man''s powerful and relentless offensive by a hair''s edge, as he pushed himself toe up with a winning strategy that would allow him to not only survive but also win.


    WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH!!


    ''Think.'' He evaded three more blows. ''No impacts and no collisions, nothing that gives him the opportunity to steal the energy of my attacks. What does that leave me?''


    Not much, but it wasn''t as though he was toothless without his collisions.


    He had hypnosis, for one. Rui highly doubted whether the man could absorb hypnosis the way he absorbed normal attacks. After all, hypnosis did not transfer energy from the user to the target.


    There were several domain techniques that were still useful because they didn''t rely on kic energy to hurt his opponent. He was sure that even if the man could absorb the heat of Muspelheim, he couldn''t absorb the cold of Niflheim or the drag force of the Speed Void technique.


    WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH!


    He pirouetted out of the way of several devastatingly powerful wind projectiles that threatened to blow holes in his body.


    "Little rat!" Master Stephen snarled with frustration. What Rui was most uncertain about was grappling. However, he doubted that the man was defenseless against such a primary form ofbat. On top of that, strength and power gaps were the most decisive variables in grappling, and this was an area where he was significantly inferior to his opponent. This was especially true when considering his physically weakened state.


    Thus, he ruled it out for the time being.


    He had a few more techniques here and there that were devoid of any elements of impact and collision-driven damage-dealing elements. However, none of them were particrly able to fix his problem of their own merit.


    ''If I am to do this¡­'' Rui''s expression grew more intense. ''I will need to use all of them in a manner that maximizes their contributions to my victory in the most effective manner possible.''


    In actuality, the Megamind technique was not the most effective Metabody technique against the Convergence. The fact of the matter was that he had already significantly crossed the threshold of necessary brainpower against the Convergence. The remaining excess, while certainly still effective and useful, was not the most optimal configuration with which he could have fought.


    Ideally, he would have liked a fifty percent Neo Godspeed and fifty percent Megamind mix in this particr circumstance; it was the most effective strategy and was the best way to adaptively evolve against this particr opponent.


    Unfortunately, it was not a strategy that he could go for.


    His gaze shifted to the incapacitated Masters.


    If he lowered his Megamind Metabody, even more Martial Masters would be free to go to pursue their second mission regarding the Shionel confederation. He couldn''t allow that. The whole reason that he was even fighting in the first ce was to protect the Shionel Confederation. He couldn''t allow them to go, and the already burdened Masters of the nation were undoubtedly having difficulty.


    "You dare to look away from me?"


    SPLAT!


    A cut appeared on his neck as he barely managed to evade being decapitated by a simple elbow jab.


    Yet, the sheer speed and power of his strikes were so high that his elbow was able to cleave his flesh apart like it was paper.


    When it came to raw power and speed, this man was in a dimension above Rui.


    If Rui wanted to defeat him, he would need to use every ounce of information that he had collected and figure out the best way to kill him using the tools he had.


    It was at moments like these that the Megamind was most useful.


    Time slowed down to a crawl in his blood-red eyes as his mind surged with thought. Countless possible ns involving the viable elements of his Martial Art in countless different ways surged in his mind as he tried thinking of ways that he could kill his opponent.


    Almost all of them were failures.


    It couldn''t be helped. Text ? owned by N?velDrama.Org.


    Almost all of them ended in his death because his opponent was just too strong in too many different ways. Hisbat parameters far surpassed Rui''s, allowing him to simply ovee almost anything that Rui could possibly do. The keyword being ''almost.''


    There was one possible circumstance where he ended up securing victory.


    A single chance of victory.


    To anybody else, that knowledge would bring despair.


    To Rui, however, that knowledge brought him hope.


    It was his greatest strength.


    For as long as he was a Martial Artist, it was his greatest strength.


    Time and time again, he turned a one in a hundred, one in a thousand, one in a million into actuality by active intervention.


    His foresight had always far exceeded that of his opponents, and to this day, he had yet to find someone who could match him in that regard.


    Even as he continued evading his opponent''s frenzied attacks, an electric smile cracked at the edge of his mouth.


    ''I might die.''


    He could feel it.


    Yet, it didn''t inspire fear.


    No.


    It only brought him ecstasy.


    A powerful opponent who could push him to his adaptive evolution to the very limit.


    WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH!


    Rui evaded three more attacks with vigor, leaping away. His posture was sharp as he expected to foresee the Convergence chasing after him doggedly.


    Yet, for once, the man did not, much to Rui''s surprise.


    The elder Martial Master heaved a sigh.


    "Your insights and foresight into your opponent are unlike anything I''ve ever seen in my entire life." His voice was calm, much to Rui''s chagrin. "You are indeed impressive. As much as I detest you for stealing everything that I''ve ever worked for in my life. You are indeed worthy of the prestige and renown that you have gained. That is why¡­"


    His eyes red with power.


    Chills went down Rui''s spine as more power than anything he had ever felt from a Martial Master began unfurling from deep within his body.


    "¡­That is why I''ve decided to stop holding back." RUMBLE!!


    Rui''s eyes widened as what felt like a second Martial Heart erupted from deep within his body.


    "Allow me to show you my single greatest technique¡­" His body shook with force. "One that allows me to not only absorb energy from my opponents but also store it as mechanical potential energy in my body, waiting to be used as a second reservoir of power."


    Rui''s eyes widened with shock at that exnation.


    "My greatest aplishment¡­" his tone was chilling. "¡­My magnum opus. Yet, nobody knows it exists. Because everyone who has ever seen it¡­"


    His eyes sharpened with bloodlust. "¡­is dead."


    BOOOOOOOM!!!


    He sted forward at mind-numbing velocities as a destructive attack of unparalleled lethality shot forward, threatening to erase Rui from existence.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2359 Out Of Control

    Chapter 2359 Out Of Control


    Had Rui not employed Temporal Disharmony moments before the man moved, he would have undoubtedly been dead.


    WHOOSH!


    Rui barely evaded the coursing iing blow with the powerful hypnotic impediment. His hypnosis had always been extremely potent, far more so than the norm, but especially so when he was in his Megamind state.


    Time sped up to a blinding blur in the Convergence''s eyes.


    He lost sight of Rui.


    He lost sight of the world.


    He lost sight of his own body.


    The technique worked.


    Yet, the consequences of its sess were more grave than he had expected.


    BOOOOOOOOOMMMMM!!!


    The devastating power of a Martial Master erupted out of his control of his Martial Mind.


    Each step shattered heaven and earth asunder, leaving a vast valley in his wake. Each movement the Convergence made set the entire atmosphere for a hundred kilometers aze due to the sheer friction his movements had with the world around him. RUMBLE!!!


    A truly mind-boggling amount of seismic and sonic radiation exploded from his being as a result of every movement he made.


    Every twitch produced an unfathomable amount of energy output, sinking into the radiation.


    All because the Convergence''s Martial Mind was extraordinarilygging behind his Body.


    Ordinarily, each Master possessed the power to bring the world around them to ruin with the simplest of gestures.


    Even a sneeze could ravage a town.


    Yet, this seldom happened.


    All because Martial Masters possessed an extraordinary level of control of power over their power thanks to their heightened cognition, allowing them to ensure that not an iota of power went to waste in the environment as a result of their efficiency. N?velDrama.Org owns ? this.


    That was why Masters were known as Masters.


    They were masters of their own power.


    Yet, Rui''s hypnosis in this state of mind was so potent that it crippled his mind, causing the fine control it had over his Body to disappear.


    Yet, that wasn''t all. In the case of Master Stephen, not only did his mind fall far behind, but his special technique caused his body to surge quite ahead of his mind, leading to a particrly devastating imbnce and power that went out of control.


    And out of control, it went indeed.


    One moment, he was a dignified Martial Master with grace in his control.


    The very next, he became an abominable Master who unleashed an unfathomable amount of power with each movement he made.


    Normally, that would have worked in his favor.


    But unfortunately, the power he outputted was so great that he couldn''t even step near the man without being ravaged.


    "WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO ME?!" The Martial Master roared as the force of his voice shook the very world around him. "I WILL KILL YOU! YOU HEAR ME?! I WILL KILL YOU IF IT''S THE LAST THING I DO!"


    His fury had reached a whole new echelon of intensity.


    It bubbled into his mind, eroding away his rationality as his decisions became increasingly driven by emotion instead of thought.


    He was beyond applying the systems of thought of his Martial Mind.


    Of course, all his systems of thought were centered around his energy absorption and application, which he simply didn''t get to do because Rui had only struck him a single time. And Rui didn''t intend to give him an opportunity to change that.


    He didn''t expect this to happen, but he didn''tin. His mind raced into thought as it incorporated the new variables that came into action as a result of the stunning anti-synergeticbination of the man''s energy storage and Rui''s Temporal Disharmony.


    "I SAID I''LL KILL YOU!!!" BOOOOOM!!!


    He shot at Rui''s direction with blinding speed, threatening to reduce him to dust with a single blow. An attack of unrivaled lethality.


    WHOOSH!!!


    Rui leaped back at the most optimal moment, avoiding absolute death by millimeters.


    What he couldn''t avoid, however, was the powerful energy output that came with each blow. BOOOM!!


    The devastating shockwave struck him, threatening to shatter his weakened constitution.


    Unfortunately for the bloodlusted Convergence, Rui had foreseen iting.


    It wasn''t easy applying the Flux Earther to high-pressure waves of sound, which was why he couldn''t do it as well, but nheless, he not only pulled the technique off but even took a page from his opponent''s ybook.


    He channeled his opponent''s energy for his own attacks.


    "Niflheim." A single whisper escaped him while the very world around them began freezing over. It froze over as the realm of frost descended upon heaven and earth.


    In an instant, it began snowing as the humidity in the air began condensing spontaneously. Thend around them froze for a while, and the temperature even lowered. Within moments, drops of oxygen and nitrogen began depositing in the world around them. Yet, it was unable to cool down the rage that burned in the depths of the Convergence''s eyes.


    He couldn''t absorb the cold.


    "YOUR WORTHLESS DOMAIN CANNOT HURT ME, BOY!" A guttural roar escaped him as he desperately leashed out against Rui with a barrage of wild attacks that threatened to tten Rui should they havended.


    Yet, they didn''t.


    WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH!


    Blow after blow, Rui sidestepped everything that was thrown at him.


    The attacks were blindingly fast, reduced to indistinct blurs that left ruinous destruction that spread out around them unhampered.


    "HYRAGH!" His kick cleaved through the atmosphere with such force that it left an inferno behind as it surged towards him.


    WHOOSH!


    Rui ducked sharply before summersaulting away at the nick of the moment.


    BOOOOOOM!!!


    A powerful drop-kick ravaged the world asunder at the very spot he was less than a microsecond prior.


    "AAAAARRRGHH!!!" the Convergence snarled with deep frustration as he unleashed a furious onught of attacks that threatened to crush Rui where he stood. Yet, despite that, not only did none of them touch him, but Rui strengthened his domain more and more with each wave of destructive power that the man unleashed.


    A poetic scene of profound contrast unfolded before the few who could even witness the ongoing battle.


    A Master with unparalleled energy and power over which he was losing control, fighting against one with far less power but extraordinary control over what little power he had.


    A battle that would y a bigger role in the future of East Panama raged outside the Shionel Confederation.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2360 Gruelling Deadlock

    Chapter 2360 Gruelling Deadlock


    The Convergence spiraled out of control more than he could have ever imagined when the battlemenced. The only other time he had lost this much control was when he fought against the Harbinger.


    Unfortunately, he was unable to bring himself back from the brink of madness.


    It hadn''t been Rui''s intention to drive him crazy with emotion.Nheless, Rui exploited his irrational mental state to the best of his abilities, meticulously and carefully peeling away his rationality and refusing to give it back.


    If the man had retained even the slightest shred of critical thinking through his rage, he would have known not to use histest technique, as it simply increased the gap between his Body and his Mind.


    It was not worth it to have this much power over which he had such little control.


    Yet, he was too one-track-minded in his desire to destroy Rui that he couldn''t even think to hold back rather than go all out. His frustration with his opponent only grew with each attack that Rui magically seemed to avoid.


    Up until that day, the Convergence hadn''t known it was even possible to be able to punch so far above one''s speed ss. He didn''t entirely understand how Rui prevented him fromnding another strike, leaving him feeling so helpless. Throughout the entire battle, he had only sessfullynded a single strike on his opponent, and that too when he had been caught off-guard by his own failed finisher attempt.


    And now, they had found themselves in a brutal and desperate battle for victory. WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH!


    Rui pushed his systems of thought to the maximum as he found himself teetering on the edge of defeat and death. The man''s attacks were powerful in and of themselves, yet they were avoidable.


    What wasn''t avoidable was the energy output that sted into the environment around him.


    Rui needed to use Flux Earther to not only keep his Body from being battered beyond a tolerable threshold but also to fuel his domain with the man''s power. It was a sight that drove the Convergence even more insane.


    "Hyargh!" The man unleashed an onught of attacks towards Rui with palpable desperation.


    Not a single one of them struck Rui.


    WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH!


    He evaded his opponent''s attacks in a single arc, before activating Flux Earther to absorb the iing omnidirectional shockwaves that expanded and threatened to crush his Body with sheer force.


    He needed to position his Body in precisely the right position to ensure that the collision was stic such that the impact''s energy could be converted into kic energy, which could then be used to fuel the cooling elements of his Niflheim domain.


    WHOOSH!


    The Niflheim domain grew stronger and stronger with each attack.


    It grew colder and colder.


    The cold was functioned by different principles of damage than the heat. While the Muspelheim domain needed to erode away his opponent''s defenses, the Niflheim domain didn''t need to go through the trouble of oveing one''s durability.


    It could bypass that by freezing critical biological systems inside the Body. It also lowered the sticity of the things that it froze, making them more brittle than ever before.


    It reduced the difficulty of inflicting damage on an opponent''s Body.


    On top of that, it couldn''t be resisted unless his opponent could generate as much heat as Rui took away from him.


    In this case, the difference was narrow. All content is ? N0velDrama.Org.


    His opponent was not a heat specialist. He could only generate heat caused by his own inefficiency.


    On the other hand, he was generating a lot of power that was going out of control.


    CRACK¡­


    Rui could see frost building up on the man''s face and hair.


    ''I just need to hold out long enough.'' His eyes narrowed. ''As long as I can hold out long enough,I can potentially hamper him with freezing long enough for me to take him down with one final finisher!"


    It helped that Rui was continuously fueling his domain with his opponent''s power from the very get-go. The more power the man outputted, the stronger the domain became. Eventually, as time passed, Rui was certain that he could win.


    The question was whether it would happen before his stamina ran out or after. After all, he was using the Metabody technique, as well as powerful hypnosis and a domain, draining his stamina by the second.


    It was a race.


    If Rui couldst long enough for the domain to harm his berserk opponent sufficiently for Rui to take him down, he could win. But, if his domain didn''tst long enough, if he didn''tst long enough, then his defeat was set in stone.


    The two titans of the Master Realm struggled with all their might as they put their all into defeating their opponent.


    Had the Convergence maintained his calm mindset, he would have been able to adjust his output in a way that ensured that he could negate Rui''s efforts with his superior power. However, he hadn''t.


    Frost began building up on his Body as the extreme cool of the Niflheim domain sucked away heat from it at an extraordinary rate. His Body temperature cooled faster than it could heat itself, leading him down a dangerous trajectory.


    Unfortunately, Rui was in no condition to continue any longer either.


    Flux Earther was originally designed to defend against strikes, not shockwaves. The drastic difference between them was why he could only absorb half of thetter.


    The other half struck his nerfed Body unhindered, inflicting immense damage with each wave.


    BOOOM BOOOM BOOOM!


    CRACK!


    Rui gritted his teeth as each wave sted against his Body, cracking bones with each st. He activated Final Breathing, increasing his tolerance and endurance as he relentlessly pushed the battle in the direction.


    RUMBLE¡­!


    The two Masters fought in a fierce stalemate.


    A brutal and perilous battle beyond any of the other Masters'' ability to intervene or even participate. Yet, it was not tost too long.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2361: Reckoning Losses

    Chapter 2361: Reckoning Losses


    ?


    Guildmaster Bradt''s expression grew macabre as he continued receiving a seemingly never- ending flood of reports about the damage that had been inflicted on the Shionel


    Confederation. An incalcble amount of damage to infrastructure had already been wrecked upon the nation''s outskirts.


    That alone was bad enough to cost the Shionel Confederation immensely.


    Perhaps the only silver lining to the entire matter was that not a single Master or Sage had yet to enter the nation.


    Based on the reports of the estimated enemy Martial Assault Force, that meant that the defense was doing a great job protecting the Shionel Confederation. He had gotten reports that only a part of the Master-level team had made it past Rui despite the fact that his opponent was a famed peak-grade Master.


    That meant that Rui was not only fighting many Masters at once, but he was also fighting one of the strongest Masters in all of East Panama evenly enough to stall all of them away from the Shionel Confederation.


    It was a truly incredible feat that would solidify his status as one of the strongest Masters in all of East Panama.


    Yet, it was no cause for joy, as far as Bradt was concerned.This content ? N?v/elDr(a)m/a.Org.


    His position had alreadye under deep jeopardy.


    After all, it was his decision to ally with the Kandrian Empire that had caused harm to all merchants in the Shionel Confederation. He would be held responsible for the consequences of this decision, and there would be no way that he could avoid them.


    The only positive development would be that the Kandrian Empire did live up to its promises of doing its best to protect them from the wrath of the enemy alliance.


    The fact that they chose to remain and participate in highly risky battles was something that couldn''t be denied. This was unusual in most military alliances. Normally, allies provided each other with as few resources as they could get away with in times of need.


    However, that didn''t change the fact that allying with the Kandrian Empire thus far had caused more harm than good. Of course, he believed that would change with the powerful and lucrative offers that the Kandrian Empire had promised them. But for now, he would undoubtedly be under lots of me and pressure for everything that had happened.


    "I underestimated how determined Prime Minister Edward was to live up to his promises." A hint of regret shed in his eyes. "Now, I must ensure that I make the most of this."


    He could only hope that the defense line could hold the Martial Assault Force up. If even a single Master among them reached the Shionel Confederation, they would be able to inflict untold damage on the nation without necessarily crossing lines set by the Panamic Martial Federation.


    It could potentially mean the destruction of the Shionel Confederation as countless merchants would lose everything, needing to leave the nation as they would no longer be able to remain in the highlypetitive environment of the Shionel Confederation.


    Fortunately, Bradt would be able to use this as a way to negotiate even more with the Kandrian Empire. If the Kandrian Empire dared not topensate the Shionel Confederation for the damages that had been inflicted on the entire nation, word of this would get around to prospective allies.


    When those nations learned that the Kandrian Empire dared to refuse topensate for the consequences that an alliance with it brought, they would instantly refuse to ally with the Kandrian Empire and instead ally with the alliance.


    That was why Bradt knew that he could squeeze plenty ofpensatory aid out of Emperor Rael.


    RUMBLE...


    The ground tremored with uncertainty as the radiating energy of the warring Martial Artists in the distance reached even Guildmaster Bradt as he sorted through all the reports that came flooding in. He needed to coordinate and oversee many different affairs simultaneously.


    "Ensure that the citizens are evacuated from the border."


    "Contact the Panamic Martial Federation and request to file an urgent request for emergency protection for as many usible Martial war crimes you can think of. It probably won''t work, but it is still worth the effort."


    "Contact the Kandrian Empire and send urgent requests for reinforcements as soon as possible; they are too far to be able to make it in time from the Kandrian Empire; however, if there are any Kandrian Masters and Sages that are out of the nation, they might be able to make it in time."


    "Contact fellow Kandrian allies in the geographic vicinity. We might be able to convince them to send in some reinforcements."


    "Send an open contract for mercenarymission with a hundred billion gold coins to avable and close-by Masters and Sages. We might be able to catch some that are willing to fight for us."


    "Deploy our Master-level potion-enhanced military corps to reinforce the Master-level battles. The consequences will be severe, but we have no choice."


    Guildmaster Bradt proved to be an effective leader even in times of crisis, allowing him to do his best with what he had, no matter how bad things became.


    However, even he had limits.


    "Sir!" one intelligence officer cried out. "We have just received confirmation...! Sage Lauren The... he has passed away in battle!"


    "No!" Guildmaster''s expression crumpled with despair as his eyes grew grave.


    The native Martial Sage of the Shionel Confederation had perished in battle, not only reducing the power of the Shionel Confederation significantly but also leaving the Sage-level battlefield in dire straits.


    It had been foolhardy to expect five Martial Sages to hold back ten.


    He had been praying for a miracle of sorts. Seeing that Rui had managed to hold back so many Martial Artists, he had hoped that Sages would also be able to pull off the same feat on their respective battlefields.


    However, it seemed as though he had been delusional in ever hoping that things could have gone any differently.


    The air boiled with peril as the Shionel Confederation reckoned with the losses that it


    suffered.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2362: Converging

    Chapter 2362: Converging


    The grew chiller and chiller as the Rui relied on acoustic cooling to lower the temperatures of the domain further and further, fueled by his enemy''s attacks.


    WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH!


    Master Stephen turned into a powerful berserking beast that unleashed destruction with each swing.


    Yet, despite the countless attacks that he threw at Rui, not a single one of them had yet to touch him.


    A monotonous dance had unfolded between them.


    One where the Convergence struggled tond even a single powerful blow on his opponent while Rui did everything in his power to incapacitate him with the cold. However, something had to give.


    And something did.


    Master Stephen''s body began shivering as the cold crossed a preliminary threshold of tolerance. His body staggered unsteadily as he grew colder and colder. The liquified drops of atmospheric gases that had settled in his body caused his skin and flesh to burn with frost.


    "DAMN YOU¡­!" he cursed. Rui wasn''t doing too much better himself.


    "Cough¡­" He spat a bout of blood from within his lungs. The two took a moment of reprieve as they recuperated from the exertion that they had been subjecting themselves to over the course of the battle.


    Rui was hardly in a better condition.


    His body was battered by the destruction that his opponent had unleashed upon him. The man truly seemed to have endless energy reserves in the depths of his Body. It was no wonder that he had managed to be a peak-grade Master. It was hard to imagine how he could even be defeated in conventional battles. He had the power to simply overpower everything with raw might. Rui wasn''t sure how the man wasn''t a Sage yet with the power that he had rued. It most likely meant that his mind had a deep issue that prevented him from gaining an understanding of who he truly was. "Enough¡­" Master Stephen''s panting voice quivered with exhaustion. "I''ve had enough."


    Rui frowned even as he gasped for air.


    He wasn''t sure what came over the man.


    But he wasn''tining.


    He desperately needed a few moments to stop his wounds from bleeding.


    "Huff¡­" the opponent Master exhaled a long, deep breath as his rage disappeared.


    Strangely enough, it wasn''t as though the man''s control over himself had managed to pacify his extreme emotions.


    It was pure and sheer exhaustion that brought him back from the brink of madness.


    For the first time in centuries, Master Stephen felt hollow.


    He had vented every ounce of emotional energy that he had bottled up deep within him for years. Emotions born from his desire for prestige and renown. Emotions that had festered deep within like a toxic swamp that swallowed him up, blinding him.


    Now, all of it was gone.


    Throughout the course of the battle, he exorcized all of the toxic rage, frustration, shame, jealousy, and bloodlust from within his mind, resembling nothing short of a demon of destruction.


    It was cathartic.


    Therapeutic.


    Those emotions, and the desires at the root of those emotions¡­ they were gone.


    They were all gone.


    His eyes were empty.


    His expression was nk as his eyebrows unfurled from their indignant knot for the first time in a century.


    His very face changed as his expression rxed from the exhaustion that swept his entire body and mind.


    He looked like a different person.


    For the first time in a century, Master Stephen was able to think.


    He was able to see.


    And what he saw was a profusely bleeding young man before him.


    His enemy.


    "My¡­ enemy?" A whisper escaped him.


    He beheld Rui for what felt like the first time.


    He saw Rui for who he was.


    Not through the shades and filters of dark emotions.


    But as the young Master was as a being.


    Where he once saw an impertinent brat who stole everything he had worked for his entire life, he saw a star that shined brighter than any other he had ever seen.


    It certainly shined far brighter than his own. Despite essentially being adolescent as far as Masters went, Rui was able to fight equally against one of the strongest Masters in all of human civilization. Despite being astronomically weaker in his physical power, he was able to squeeze water out of rock and wove together a battle where he could not only equal the Convergence but fight to win.


    In that moment, a single emotion consumed the Convergence to the very depths of his being.


    Pure, raw admiration.


    "Magnificent¡­" A whisper escaped him as he beheld the bloody darkness in Rui''s eyes.


    Why did he want to kill him again?


    Because the boy was stealing his prestige and renown?


    "No¡­" A whisper escaped him as he gazed deep into the depths of dark blood in Rui''s pupils. He could sense the ferocity of Rui''s Martial Drive. Its inevitability.


    He could sense the grandeur of his ambition.


    It made him feel small.


    "Why¡­" A tired whisper escaped him. "Why do I care about prestige and renown again?" Text ? owned by N?velDrama.Org.


    Understanding dawned on him as he truly looked at himself with clear eyes and a clear mind for the first time in his life.


    He introspected himself unimpeded by the many emotions that swamped in the depths of his mind, poisoning his thoughts and obscuring rity.


    It was a simple question.


    Why did he care about prestige and renown?


    Why were they so important to him?


    Why?


    "Ah¡­" The softest and most tender of whispers escaped him. "¡­I see."


    A serene smile lit up on his face as his eyes shined with peace and harmony.


    "They never truly mattered in the first ce."


    Enlightenment.


    RUMBLE


    Rui''s eyes widened with shock as he felt a profound singrity of power erupting from deep within the Convergence''s being. A power that far exceeded the limits of the Master Realm.


    The power of a higher Realm.


    He beheld the Convergence with an unholy fusion of horror and wonder. His Martial Mind witnessed the ephemeral divide between Mind and Soul erode away as the inner and outer halves of self converged upon each other.


    They be a single whole.


    A celestial union of harmony and peace.


    RUMBLE!!!


    Heaven and earth mourned as Gaia weed the birth of a new Martial Sage.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2363 Materia-W?fer Harmony

    Chapter 2363 Materia-W?fer Harmony


    BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!!! N?velDrama.Org owns ? this.


    A devastating catastrophic explosion erupted many thousands of kilometers away from the Shionel Confederation, flinging away multiple Martial Sages with the sheer concussive force of the st wave.


    "COME ON!!!" Sage Damian roared with a maniacal grin. "IS THAT THE BEST YOU CAN DO?! MY SON HITS HARDER THAN YOU, MAGGOTS!"


    The nine Martial Sages of the enemy alliance grew grim as they red at him with spite.


    Yet, they didn''t seem so eager to go anywhere near him. Despite that, they were in far better condition than the Martial Sage and the two others who stood behind him. They had a vast numeric advantage that guaranteed them a victory.


    The only problem was¡­


    "What''s the matter with you pussies, huh?" A hint of madness lingered in the depths of his eyes. "FIGHT! I LOST AN ARM, YOU WORTHLESS SHITHEADS. THERE''S TWICE AS MANY OF YOU, AND YOU''RE STILL SCARED!"


    The problem was that Sage Damian was an absolute demon who would be fully capable of killing several of them despite his severe wound.


    DRIP DRIP DRIP¡­


    Blood leaked from the arm that Sage Shia had severed with his greatsword before Damian tore his head off in battle.


    Sage Roschem and Sage Sariawar were bruised and wounded, standing behind the Devil in support.


    They would have been dead if not for Damian being an incredible deterrent with both hisbat prowess and notorious insanity.


    They could defeat him with the nine of them, there was no doubt.


    But, whoever went first was undoubtedly going to die a painful death.


    In fact, it was not unlikely that multiple Sages among them would die painful deaths before they could take him down.


    None of them wanted that to happen.


    That was why they had settled for a strategic group battle where each Sage chips in simultaneously to ensure that no one or two Sages solely bore the burden of fighting Sage Damian.


    It took longer in order to prevent sacrifices from urring.


    But slowly and surely, they were on the winning side.


    "I''ll lead the charge," Sage L, interim leader of the Sage-level force who had assumed control after Sage Shia died, remarked. "I''ll engage him, make sure you engage the other two and pressure him so that he can''t direct all his power at me."


    BOOOOOOOOM!


    She surged forward at extraordinary speeds that very few could ever hope to reach.


    Unfortunately for her, Damian was one of them. Her eyes widened as she found his fist flying straight to her face.


    "Die." Damian''s grin widened.


    Except, she didn''t.


    WHOOSH!


    The attack crashed into an empty image.


    A feint.


    BOOOOOOOOOM!!!


    A powerful blow crashed into his head.


    Yet, it didn''t seem to do anything other than rile his bloodlust.


    "DIE!!!" he roared as he exhaled heavily, activating a powerful breathing technique that raised the temperature of his breath to such extraordinary degrees that the very shackles of the atom broke away, unleashing the full might of the boundless energy that was hidden within.


    Nuclear Fission.


    One of the most fundamental forms of destruction that Damian had ever harnessed.


    BOOOOOOOOOM!!!


    A titanic nuclear explosion of unparalleled might erupted inside his mouth, only to be channeled against his opponent with destructive ferocity.


    Yet again, the attack crashed into an empty image.


    A feint.


    ''No.'' Damian realized. ''That was not a feint.''


    He was able to sense her Body, Heart, Mind, and Soul in the image.


    Feints could recreate a person''s presence. They simply exploited one''s innate predictions to misdirect one''s attention.


    What she was doing was something that merely resembled feints but was far superior.


    BOOOM BOOOM BOOOM!!!


    He tore apart at concentrated beams of light, heat, and sound that crashed onto his body, distracting him away from his opponent while she surged in from another direction.


    WHOOOSH!!


    She surged in, threatening tond yet another lethal blow to his head with her supreme swiftness.


    "BURN!" he roared, unleashing his nuclear breath on her.


    WHOOSH!


    Yet again, she merely disappeared when the attack struck her, appearing elsewhere.


    "I am here, yet, I am everywhere," her voice reached his ears. "You cannot hurt me. Not while you''re distracted and wounded."


    BOOOOOOM BOOOOOOM BOOOOOOM!!!


    Before Damian could even respond, a massive st of sma and light struck him, threatening to burn him if he didn''t defend against them. He barely had time to react when Sage L surged at him again with, preparing her disappearing technique.


    This time, however, Damian was prepared.


    "If you''re everywhere," his grin widened. "Then I''ll just destroy everywhere!"


    Her eyes widened as an omnidirectional st of pure light scorched all of heaven and earth as far as even they could see.


    BOOOOOOOM!!!


    "Rrrggh!!" she grimaced as her body struck even after it initially disappeared and reappeared.


    "Hahaha!" Damian''s grin grew gleeful. "That technique of yours. It''s based on the high principle of Materia-W?fer Harmony, isn''t it?"


    Her expression grew grim at his words.


    He had nailed it.


    The principle of Materia-W?fer Harmony referred to an extremely high principle of nature that was discovered after the Advent of the Sage Realm, discovered by none other than the first Martial Sage, the Martial Primordial.


    A high principle that stated all things behaved like waves and particles and thus possessed the properties of both waves and particles.


    Had Rui heard the description, he would have recognized the principle from his background in physics.


    Harnessing this high principle in Martial Art was almost absolutely impossible. Yet, the few that seeded ended up bing high-grade Sages just from the sheer power that they gained from the miraculous, seemingly reality-defying high principle. In this case, the ability to upgrade feints from merely optical illusions caused by fooled predictions into the actual rewriting of the space-time position of her body by traveling as a wave and attacking as a particle.


    To be here, yet everywhere.


    Materia-Waefer Harmony was an extraordinarily powerful principle that gave birth to entire schools of thought on martial philosophy and questioned what it meant to be anywhere.


    Yet, as proud of her Celestial Duality Step technique as she was, it was not enough to defeat the Devil himself.


    Not by itself, at least.


    "Your technique is meaningless if I just destroy everything everywhere," Sage Damian grinned as he evoked a horrifying amount of materia prima from the root of his existence.


    And that was when it happened.


    RUMBLE!!!


    All the Martial Sages froze as they detected the faint but unmistakable emergence of a new Martial Sage.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2364: Soulful Observations

    Chapter 2364: Soulful Observations


    ?


    Had Rui foreseen this particr oue unfolding ahead of time, he wouldn''t have done it in the first ce.


    Yet he didn''t.


    His expression grew grave even as wonder and awe sparkled in his eyes as he beheld a live breakthrough to the Sage Realm. The man''s presence grew extraordinarily heavy as his mental activity ceased to register in Rui''s Martial Mind.


    Time slowed down to a crawl in his eyes as his deep curiosity for all matters rted to Martial Art overtook his sense of self-preservation.


    Rui studied the breakthrough carefully in multiple activities.


    He studied the man''s body with his senses, but he also studied him through his systems of thought.


    The VOID algorithm didn''t read any difference.


    Neither did the Tree of Life.


    Yet, that alone told him much.


    The antithetical adaptively evolved environment for the species his Martial Body was hadn''t changed.


    From that, Rui could deduce that the breakthrough to the Sage Realm neither impeded his evaluation of lifeforms on the Tree of Life nor did it fundamentally alter the Body on a gic or phenotypical level.


    Of course, that was something that he had suspected from the very get-go, given the... philosophical nature of the breakthrough to the Sage Realm appeared to be. Still, it was good to get confirmation of what happened and didn''t happen during the breakthrough to the Sage Realm.


    The fact that the VOID algorithm didn''t detect any changes revealed some interesting insights into how far the breakthrough to the Sage Realm changed the mind of a person.


    It told him that Martial Sages most likely didn''t shed the muscle memory or patterns that were essentially a manifestation of who they were. He didn''t know if the concept of the subconscious mind even existed separately from the conscious mind for Martial Sages, but it certainly meant that Martial Sages retained and even employed everything that the subconscious minds used to do.


    What he was most interested in was the SOUL System.


    Yet, unlike the other two systems of thought, the SOUL System was not particrly useful here as Rui couldn''t sense their mind through his Martial Mind.


    This was not new, as he had long discovered that he couldn''t sense the minds of Sages when he broke through to the Master Realm.


    RUMBLE...


    The newly ascended Martial Sage opened his eyes.


    Rui felt a tremendous amount of pressure pushing down on him as the powerful gaze of the Martial Sage threatened to crush him where he stood.


    Yet, much to Rui''s surprise, aside from the surplus of power that threatened to erupt from the root of his being, the man seemed the same as he was shortly before the breaking through. His subconscious bodynguage and demeanor seemed almost entirely unaltered.


    Yet, Rui could feel profound self-enlightenment lingering deep in the depths of his eyes upon which the rest of his existence as a being.All content is ? N0velDrama.Org.


    A deep sense of self-understanding was entrenched in the root of his gaze.


    One thing about Martial Sages that confused him was that they never acted any different from other Martial Artists. In other words, Rui was unable to detect anymonality in their behavioral traits that could point to the so-called Martial Soul.


    Yet, now that he had a proper before and after of the Convergence, he could feel that the man truly had remained exactly the same yet waspletely different.


    He wasn''t able to make sense of his own intuitions.


    "You didn''t even try to run away." The Sage''s voice was calm.


    Rui shrugged. "There was no point in running away."


    The Martial Sage smiled at Rui. "I suppose that''s true."


    The two stared at each other for a moment.


    "You have my gratitude." The Sage''s voice was sincere. "I must admit, I had almost lost all hope of reaching the Sage Realm. But thanks to you, I have finally achieved enlightenment of self."


    Rui shook his head. "I didn''t break you through. Please don''t go around insisting that I did. Not even my status as Martial Master will be able to keep me safe from that kind of storm."


    "You may not have broken me through, but you''re the one who created circumstances that allowed me to break through to the Sage Realm," Sage Stephen remarked. "As for your fear... I''m afraid it won''t matter what I tell people because you''ll be too dead for the consequences to matter. Your prestige will skyrocket."


    The Martial Sage inly confirmed that he intended to kill Rui.


    Yet, that wasn''t what struck Rui the most.


    "Prestige...?" Rui''s eyes narrowed. "You still care about that crap?"


    The Martial Sage Smiled. "I do... and I don''t."


    Rui frowned. "What?"


    "Martial Sages are not devoid of desires," he continued. "Our emotions. Our desires. Our thought. They are part of us. They are part of who we are. They are a culmination of our lives and our rtionship with the infinite universe. I now understand where theye. I now understand exactly who I am in the grand equation of reality. I understand my role in the flow of causality. And I shall fulfill my role. Which is why prestige..."


    His eyes softened. "It matters not. Yet, it means the world to me."


    Rui stared at him with a dubious expression.


    He didn''t understand.


    Yet, he wasn''t surprised.


    His grandmother had long told him that the Sage Realm was an ephemeral qualia. An experience beyond what words could convey.


    How would one convey to a blind man what the experience of the color red was?


    It was impossible.


    Sage Stephen found it simrly impossible to tell Rui his state of mind either.


    "I just threatened your life, and you''re still more interested in the details of the Sage Realm," the Martial Sage chuckled. "I suppose that''s just who you are. I would truly love to spare you. However, I''m honor-bound to my home nation to eliminate you. Forgive me for repaying your deeds with death. I shall make it as painless as possible."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2365 Death

    Chapter 2365 Death


    The Sage''s words reminded him of his grandmother''s prophecy that his father had passed on to him.


    He wasn''t supposed to die at the hands of a Martial Sage.


    It was possible that simply hearing that prophecy changed the future in a way that caused the prophecy to be true.


    Rui didn''t know.


    And he didn''t care.


    He had no intention of just epting his death passively.


    If he was going to die, he would much rather die fighting and die adaptively evolving to his very limit. His n was simple.


    All metabody techniques at once, including the Megamind technique.


    Simultaneously, use the Yin-Yang Spear to supercharge the Niflheim Domain like he did with the Muspelheim technique against Master Uma.


    Together, he may very well be able to obtain the power of a Martial Sage for a single moment.


    And then he would cease to exist.


    One of the forbidden techniques was absolutely deadly on its own.


    Together, they would erase him. "Anyst words?" the Sage patiently asked. "If you want. I can convey them to your familyor to your father."


    "I''m good," Rui''s eyes red with blood.


    "Very well, then¡­" the Martial Sage remarked.


    RUMBLE!!!


    The world shook as Sage Stephen essed the power of a Martial Sage for the very first time. Time slowed down in Rui''s eyes as he activated all Metabody techniques at once. His Yin-Yang Spear roared with power as the realm of frost descended upon the world.


    It was time.


    A maelstrom of emotions and thoughts whirled in his head as he prepared for his final act of Adaptive Evolution.


    He thought about the Quarrier Orphanage.


    He thought about Kane.


    He thought about his father.


    Yet, it was his mother who his emotions and thoughts lingered on about.


    She wouldn''t have wanted him here.


    She wouldn''t want him to die.


    Neither did he.


    Yet, one did not always get what one wanted.


    RUMBLE!!!


    Rui''s techniques came to merge in one final grand disy of power.


    The sum totality of his Martial Art.


    "Goodbye," Sage Stephen''s tone contained a hint of regret. "You will be remembere¡ª" All content is ? N0velDrama.Org.


    SPLAT!!


    Both Rui and Sage Stephen froze as a spout of blood gushed from the enormous hole in his chest. "¡­Eh?" he nced down, only to find himself looking at his own heart in the hand of an arm that had impaled his chest from behind.


    He weakly nced behind him as his eyes widened with confusion.


    "¡­Who are you?"


    SPLAT!!!


    Sage Sayfeel''s expression grew more ferocious as he ripped the man''s heart out, causing a flood of blood to gush out from the massive orifice in his chest.


    Not even Sages could survive without a heart.


    The newborn Sage''s lifeless body copsed to the ground.


    Rui stared at Sage Sayfeel with shock. Words couldn''t describe the emotional whish that he had just undergone.


    "¡­You''re not supposed to reveal your existence."


    "His Majesty disagrees," Sage Sayfeel calmly remarked. "I am here on hismand. The time hase for me to reveal my existence and show to the world that we are even stronger than they ever thought. One of the things that is most valuable to us is our perceived reliability. Hiding a powerful high-grade Martial Sage from the entire world goes a long way in establishing that. It is an otherwise impossible feat that has been attempted many times but has never seeded."


    "¡­I see." Rui calmed down as his mind understood his father''s rationale.


    A high-grade Martial Sage was a deeply precious asset in this war, especially one as powerful as Sage Sayfeel. He knew that he was much stronger than even his grandmother, who had ranked fourth in Martial Union.


    He may not be equal to Sage Damian, but he certainly was a powerful contender for being the second or third most powerful Martial Sage in all of the Kandrian Empire. The revtion of an additional asset of Sage Sayfeel''s caliber was something that would inspire greater confidence in the Kandrian Empire''s war potential against the enemy alliance.


    "This is the second time that you have saved my life." Rui realized. A smile cracked at the edge of the Sage''s mouth. "I suppose it is. You have grown much since then. More than I could have ever fathomed. To stand your ground against a Martial Sage and be resolved to die fighting them head-on is something that most Martial Masters are incapable of. Most Martial Masters would simply freeze under the overwhelming pressure of Sage''s bloodlust."


    He could detect genuine pride in the Sage''s voice.


    "Wait, how did you get here so quickly?" He frowned. "It''s been fifteen minutes since offense began. There''s no way that you got here so quickly from the Kandrian Empire even if you ran at top speed."


    "Your father prepared a force not too far from the Shionel Confederation ahead of time to move in and reinforce it when the attack began," Sage Sayfeel exined. "He relied on me so that the Britannian Prime Minister would be less likely to detect the absence of too many Martial Sages from where they were supposed to be. He needed to bnce out the risk of being detected with the risk of being toote just precisely and judging by the results¡­"


    Sage Sayfeel nced at the dead body of Sage Stephen.


    "¡­It appears that he was absolutely perfect when it came to timing how long you wouldst."


    "So, there''s reinforcements for the Sage-level assault line as well?" Rui grew relieved.


    "Yes, and I shall join them soon enough. However, His Majesty instructed me to prioritize your safety if it ever came to it," Sage Sayfeel replied. "Unfortunately¡­"


    His expression. "We weren''t able to make it in time to prevent all losses for the Martial Sages."


    Rui''s expression grew grave. "You''re telling me¡­we''ve lost a Martial Sage?"


    "I''m afraid we have lost more than one," Sage Sayfeel calmly informed Rui. "Not only has Sage Lauren of the Shionel Confederation passed away, but¡­"


    Rui''s eyes sharpened. "Who did the Kandrian Empire lose?"


    "¡­The Hugging Hegemon," Sage Sayfeel informed him with a hint of finality. "Sage Lamira Duhan of the Kandrian Empire is no more."


    His grave words bore down the atmosphere.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2366 The Good And The Bad

    Chapter 2366 The Good And The Bad


    N?velDrama.Org owns ? this.


    Rui''s expression only grew more severe when Sage Sayfeel mentioned that the Hugging Hegemon had passed away. Unfortunately, he wasn''t truly surprised.


    There had been five Martial Sages up against ten.


    It would be rather strange if no casualties had urred in such a lopsided match-up.


    Still, that didn''t change the fact that the Kandrian Empire had lost a Martial Sage. Not just any Martial Sage, but one of the originals that founded the Martial Union and the Fire Sect.


    Not to mention, she was the grandmother of one of his childhood friends.


    Each Martial Sage was a national treasure whose very presence produced countless benefits to the nation or organization that they settled in and fought for. And while the Kandrian Empire had many Sages, they needed every single one to win this war.


    It was an absolute catastrophe without a shadow of a doubt.


    "Damn¡­" He gritted his teeth. "Sage Lauren of the Shionel Confederation is gone too. Our ally has already paid the price for siding with us."


    This was not good.


    It was actually really bad.


    Up until now, the Kandrian Empire managed to push back against the routine attacks on its allies by relying on the prophecy of the Ss n to foresee the attacks and adaptively evolve to them tactically.


    The fact that the Kandrian Empire had such a, frankly speaking, stunning record of sessfully protecting its allies was a great asset inpelling potential allies to form an alliance with it. The Empire''s history reassured them that it would be able to protect it from the wrath of the alliance.


    Now, however, there were cracks in that argument.


    In fact, as far as potential allies were concerned, that defense was dead. The plight of the Shionel Confederation woulde to mind when making a deal with the Kandrian Empire. "Not all news is bad, Your Highness," Sage Sayfeel added. "Your actions to protect the Shionel Confederation have ensured that not a single Martial Master reached the Shionel maind. While the Shionel Confederation has indeed suffered losses amounting to hundreds of billions of gold coins in travel, transport, and supply infrastructure, all of it is in extra-territorial assets. The citizens and territory of the Shionel Confederation have not suffered any harm."


    "Good." Rui heaved a sigh of relief. "As bad as this is, it would have been ten times worse if the Shionel territory had been harmed. If we had failed to prevent that, then we would have suffered a much heavier blow in terms of how attractive our offers in the war for allies would be."


    External infrastructure was much, much harder to protect than an actual national territory, after all. Nobody would necessarily fault the Kandrian Empire for not being able to protect every inch of it.


    "Another positive oue is that the Devil has managed to defeat the peak Sage of the Republic of Gorteau, Sage Shaia the Banede, having lost an arm in the process. With one less peak Martial Sage than before, our enemies have suffered too much for them to parade this operation around as a victory."


    Rui''s eyes lit up with joy. "Brilliant. I''m not surprised. Sage Damian is truly a monster, especially after making use of not just the Divine Doctor''s augments but the manifold as well."


    With those advantages, if the other peak Sages had been Sage Damian''s equal before, they certainly were no longer his equals after those boosts. It was not an exaggeration to say that Kane''s father was the most powerful Sage in all of East Panama.


    This was also a point in favor of the Kandrian Empire and offsetted the numeric disparity to a certain extent.


    The Kandrian Empire, in this battle and previous battles, had proved that its Martial Artists were the strongest no matter what the Sekigahara Confederate insisted. A single Master fought not only a peak Master to a stalemate but also incapacitated his squadron. As far as other nations were concerned, such feats were quite indicative of Martial superiority.


    Rui had no intention of clearing any misunderstandings on their part.


    "The fact that you are able to incapacitate suchrge numbers of Masters while simultaneously fighting a peak Master already increases your strategic power in this war more than any other Master out there," Sage Sayfeel remarked calmly. "It goes to show that the Kandrian Empire is absolutely secure when ites to the Master-level strategic outlook."


    The addition of Sage Sayfeel to the public roster of Martial Sages in turn boosted the Sage-level outlook.


    Thus, it wasn''t all bad. There were certainly tragedies that hade of this battle, but that didn''t mean that there were no optimistic upsides either. Both sides had won some and lost some.


    "The Sage-level battle has already stabilized with the reinforcements of the Flickering Elder, the Sword Demon, the Master of the Inferno Fist, the Sloth Sage, the Drunk Dame, and the Tempestuous Fortress, but I shall aid them nheless, considering that there are highly injured and exhausted parties. We would not want any further tragedies."


    WHOOSH


    Just like that, Sage Sayfeel was gone.


    Rui heaved a sigh as he sat on the ground, taking stock of his environment.


    Of course, he highly doubted that Sage Sayfeel had failed to detect a threat and Rui was strong enough to survive most threats. The Martial Masters incapacitated by his Martial Mind were gone.


    They must have escaped while Rui turned off the Megamind technique or perhaps when the fight between the two peak Masters moved outside the range where he could incapacitate them. "Tsk, I should have killed them when I had the chance."


    However, he didn''t regret turning his full attention to thete Sage Stephen and observing his breakthrough carefully. Regardless, it was not something that he could undo now.


    "Besides, I''ll get other chances." Rui snorted. "That bastard is not going to stop this easily."


    Every single ally of the Kandrian Empire had been subjected to attacks from the alliance since the dawn of the war for allies.


    He highly doubted that Prime Minister Edward was kind enough to stop after all this time.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2367: Unrelenting Vengeance

    Chapter 2367: Unrelenting Vengeance


    ?


    BOOOM BOOOM BOOOM!!!


    The ten Sages defending the Kandrian Empire pushed back against the Sage-level assault team of the enemy alliance with greater numbers and less exhausted Sages. Thebat was so intense that not even the appearance of a brand-new Martial Sage, whom literally nobody had ever seen before, could derail the battle long enough.


    Sage Sayfeel proudly wore attire that featured the coat of arms and the banner of the Kandrian Empire. He merely showed the Kandrian Sages a Royal Seal bestowed upon him by the Emperor of Harmony for everybody to understand that Rael had something to do with this and that they could fight alongside this stranger and neer.


    The rest didn''t matter; they were more than happy to push back the annoying enemy Sages, who very quickly understood that this operation was dead the second reinforcements arrived. The only reason that they hadn''t retreated yet was due to standard modern Martial protocol for nested Martial attacks featuring Martial Artists from multiple Realms. The Sages needed to wait until they got the green light from the retreating Masters.


    If they didn''t give their Martial Masters enough time to retreat as far as possible, then the enemy Martial Sages could potentially head straight to the retreating Masters and hunt them alive. Most nations with a well-organized and sensible military and Martial system had such protocols.


    Exceptions, however, included the Sekigahara Confederate.


    The price that it paid for having sloppy retreat-securing protocols led to the deaths of almost all their retreating Martial Artists.


    It was a good reminder to everybody in the Martial world why such protocols mattered. Prime Minister Edward had established amonw protocol that all Martial Artists of the alliance had to adhere to in order to ensure that everybody was on the same page regarding how to operate in missions and what to do in what circumstances.


    The Martial Sages were absolutely not allowed to retreat until the green light signaling the safety of the Martial Masters came.


    And soon enough, that message came.


    BZZT BZZT


    Sage L nced at herms artifact, confirming that the Masters had gotten far away enough.


    "Retreat," she ordered.


    The other Martial Sages were more than happy to adhere to thatmand.


    Despite losing an arm, it was impossible to fight the Devil even when they were essentially just running away from him, no longer able to handle him without a numeric advantage.


    WHOOSH


    And just like that, they were gone.


    "COME BACK YOU FUCKING PUSSIES!" the Devil snarled, glowering at the retreating maggots. "I FOUGHT YOU SEVEN-TO-ONE AND YOU RUN AWAY WHEN IT''S EVEN? FUCK THAT!"


    "Damian, don''t!" Sage Roschem pulled at the man''s shoulders. "Stop!"


    "LET ME GO. I WILL TEAR THEM APART!" Sage Damian roared. "I WILL EAT THEM ALIVE!"


    "Enough. The battle is over." The Flickering Elder stood before him with a warning tone. "Your condition is critical. We need to preserve and reattach your arm as soon as possible. With the Divine Doctor, it should be as good as new if not better."


    "I don''t give a fuck about my arm." His eyes burned with rage. "I''m supposed to let them go after what happened?!"N?velDrama.Org owns ? this.


    Sorrow lit up in the eyes of the Flickering Elder. "...Damian, I miss her too."


    He stared at her with a fiery expression.


    "But she wouldn''t want you to get yourself killed in order to get revenge for her. You know that. Instead, she would rather you get revenge sessfully." The Flickering Elder''s voice was soft but firm. "Heal, grow stronger, and then kill them all by your own hand when you grow strong enough."


    Her words seem to take effect.


    He lowered his fists, unfurling them as he heaved a deep breath.


    "Fine," he growled. "I will destroy them when the timees."


    WHOOSH


    In just the blink of an eye, he was gone.


    Silence overtook the atmosphere upon Damian''s departure as the Sages caught their breaths, heaving tired sighs.


    WHOOSH


    Sage Sariawar also took off, heading back to the Shionel Confederation to report to Guildmaster Bradt.


    The rest of the Kandrian Sages weren''t so eager to leave just yet.


    ...Who are you?" Sage Roschem raised an eyebrow as he carefully studied the new Martial Sage. "I know every Sage in all of East Panama. I have no idea who you are."


    The shing Flier could sense the immense formidability of the Martial Sage, which-even when ounting for inuracy and margins of errors-meant that, at the very least, he was strong, very strong. Sage Roschem didn''t get the feeling that the stranger was a peak Sage. But he did get the sense that the man was particrly strong.


    Stronger than most Martial Sages in the Kandrian Empire.


    It only increased his curiosity.


    He was positive that he had never heard of any Martial Sage that was even remotely like him.


    The world of Martial Sages was much smaller than all previous Realms. Not only that, but each Martial Sage was extremely distinct and highly individualistic. The only thing that they had inmon was that they had Bodies, Hearts, Minds, and Souls. Everything else was extremely different, meaning that it was impossible to mistake one for another. "...Direct any questions you have to His Majesty," Sage Sayfeel calmly replied before taking off.


    The other Kandrian Sages frowned with confusion as it became increasingly clear from the way the Sage referred to the Emperor of Harmony that he regarded thetter with deep deference. It was unlikely that someone new to the Empire could harbor such loyalty to the


    Emperor of Harmony.


    It got them wondering.


    Was this new Martial Sage truly new?


    They weren''t entirely sure.


    It made them curious about the story that the Emperor of Harmony would be telling them when they got back home. They had a feeling that there was more to this than met the eye.


    Regardless, it was time to go home now that the battle had ended.


    And return, they did.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2368: Grave Aftermath

    Chapter 2368: Grave Aftermath


    Once the battle ended and the Martial Artist filed their reports, the aftermath began.


    And the aftermath was grave.


    The death of Sage Lauren, the native protector of the Shionel Confederation, was a deep and by far the worst blow to the nation.


    Their geopolitical power had instantly halved.


    Instantly, it became harder to bargain with nations and organizations alike.


    Instantly, it became harder to deter their enemies.


    Instantly, the difficulty of conducting business for all Shionel merchants had risen significantly.


    It didn''t matter if the Martial Sage was not directly involved in the businesses of Shionel merchants. His death caused grave harm to the entire nation.


    After all, raising capital became much harder.


    Private investors and venture capital firms were less certain about the security of their businesses and organizations. Public shareholders dumped shares in the market, losing faith in their security and longevity, causing the Shionel Stock Exchange to experience a sharp plummet. Demand for both private and public equity fell, reducing not only the capital influx, but also the evaluations of theirpany, which in-turn cut off a lot of their international credit lines.


    The sharp absence of credit was already being felt as the merchants urgently needed funds for the expenditure of repairs and securing of alternative supply lines and logistical infrastructure while the repairs were ongoing.


    These were merely the acute consequences that had already begun.


    The long-term consequences were no less horrific.


    As a deeplymercial trade hub that imported and exported across all of East Panama and even all of the Panama Continent, the falling demand for their business, plummeting evaluations, lowering capital influx, and drying credit lines meant that they would be unable to earn the money to maintain the imports that were needed to sustain not just their businesses but also their entire nation.


    If they couldn''t maintain their economic power, then they wouldn''t be able to stop all their Martial Artists from leaving for betternds.


    The short-term and long-term consequences of the death of the sole native Martial Sage of the Shionel Confederation were terrible enough to cause the geopolitical and economic death of the entire nation.


    If not for the fact that the nation still had one Martial Sage, there would be much greater panic and mass hysteria on the streets of the Shionel Confederation.


    However, while Shionel citizens were grateful for the presence of at least one Martial Sage, the high-level merchants knew better.


    Sage Sariawar was not answerable to the Shionel Merchant Guild.


    She was answerable to Chairman Bradt Patrick.


    In other words, the guildmaster was the only reason that the nation had not gone to the dogs yet.


    Or one of two reasons, rather.


    There was one more reason that, while they mourned for the death of Sage Lauren, they were still hopeful for the future.


    Their newfound alliance with the Kandrian Empire.


    Inside a highly secure conference hall in the Shionel Confederation sat the guildmaster of the nation, staring at a three-dimensional projection of the Emperor of Harmony.


    "We have just suffered horrific losses¡­" Guildmaster Bradt began with an intense tone. "So forgive me for skipping all formal etiquette and cutting right to the point."


    His eyes narrowed sharply. "We require the Kandrian Empire''s unreserved aid and support during these trying times. Mary, logistical, Martial, political, and developmental aid. We hope that the Kandrian Empire will, in the spirit of our unofficial alliance, agree to give us the aid we seek."


    His expression did not betray the fear he felt inside at the possibility of the Kandrian Empire turning its back on him. They hadn''t signed a single agreement.


    They hadn''t closed a single agreement.


    Nothing was official yet.


    As a businessman, he knew that handshakes and verbal agreements were meaningless.


    Until a contract was signed and the first payment or transaction had urred, the agreement could not be trusted.


    Thus, it was not particrly unlikely for a nation to back out of an unofficial agreement like the one that they had had.


    Of course, on a logical level, he knew it would not happen. The Britannian Empire, despite being part of the alliance, would be more than happy to wee the Shionel Confederation to their ranks despite having partaken in this attack.


    Most importantly, the Kandrian Empire had an extremely good track record with credibility, reliability, and trustworthiness.


    Guildmaster Bradt could not think of a single time when the Emperor of Harmony had operated in bad faith.


    Thus, he was extremely certain that the Kandrian Empire would enthusiastically go above and beyond to do more than what was ever expected of it in order to keep the Shionel Confederation a happy and satisfied ally.


    And he was right.


    "As the third emperor of the Kandrian Empire, I, Rael Di Kandria, hereby swear upon the great name of Kandria, to fulfill every single need of the Shionel Confederation in these trying times." His tone was solemn. "If you need capital, you will have as much as you want. Resources? More than you can store. Martial power? More than you''ll know what to do with. Logistical aid and other services will be fully taken care of by us and our allies. I will evenmission the search for an avable Sage who is willing to sign decade-long protectionmissions with the Shionel Confederation to return things to how they were before. I will propose deep partnership agreements that will benefit not just the Shionel Confederation but also the Kandrian Empire." N?velDrama.Org owns ? this.


    It was still only words thus far, but the guildmaster grew satisfied with the attitude of the Kandrian Emperor. He didn''t use the weakened position to try and squeeze as much out of them in the short term.


    He understood that building unbreakable bonds between the two nations and empowering the Shionel Confederation as an absolute ally would benefit the Kandrian Empire immensely in the long run. It was why nations were even giving the Kandrian Empire a serious chance despite the fact that they were up against three powerhouses.


    "I look forward to all of this, Emperor Rael." Guildmaster Bradt smiled.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2369: Geopolitical Ramifications

    Chapter 2369: Geopolitical Ramifications


    While the Shionel Confederation scrambled to mitigate the devastating shockwaves that had resulted from the death of Sage Lauren, the rest of the political sphere came up to speed with the situation and everything that had unfolded.


    It was beyond shocking to learn that the East Panamic Treaty Alliance had gone so far with the Shionel Confederation to prove a point to all nations that had been seriously considering allying with the Kandrian Empire.


    They had dispelled the notion that they were unable to inflict consequences on those that allied with the Kandrian Empire against them. Now, as Rui had feared, nations that had been receptive to the Kandrian Empire''s offers started second-guessing themselves and reconsidering their inclinations.


    Nheless, the news of the Kandrian Empire''s protection and performance in the war also disseminated throughout East Panama rather swiftly as entire divisions and departments, created for the sole purpose of gathering intelligence on the state of the war, followed up on the battle that had urred on the outskirts of Shionel territory.


    If not for the fact that the Kandrian Empire managed to push back the enemies and staked their own Martial Artists in the battle, the war for allies would have been over then and there. Nobody would have wanted to ally with the Kandrian Empire if something like that had happened.


    More importantly, in addition to having protected the Shionel maind sessfully, people paid attention to the oues of the battles.


    Two dead Sages on both sides.


    One side lost two powerful Sages, while the other side lost a peak Sage and a newly ascended Martial Sage. The Kandrian Empire had managed toe out on top simply thanks to the Devil living up to his name and sessfully killing one of his counterparts.


    This,bined with the fact that Sage Damian had managed to fight another one of his peers¡ªwho had been augmented by the healing fruits of the Tree of Healings¡ªto a draw, was even more proof that the Kandrian Empire boasted the strongest Martial Sage in East Panama.


    The only untested battle was Sage Vermillion of the Britannian Empire, yet few believed that she would be able to prevail against the Kandrian Devil.


    That wasn''t the only shocking detail that truly left everybody stunned.


    The fact that Rui fought a peak Master and many other Masters simultaneously was just absurd.


    It was a feat that no other Master that they were aware of would be capable of. While they had garnered some misunderstandings of exactly how Rui faced off against all those Masters and the Convergence simultaneously, it still spoke volumes of his tactical value in battle.


    The Kandrian Empire harboring yet another Sage on retainer was also surprising.


    Failing to protect external infrastructure and letting a Shionel Sage die was a bad look for the Kandrian Empire, but the aplishments and revtions that came from it also bnced out much of the bacsh.


    It was not easy to weigh who came out of the war worse.


    The geopolitical air in the eastern section of the Panama Continent grew even more electric as many leaders and powers sensed that the war had reached a particrly important milestone.


    The Shionel Confederation had been one of thergest truly neutral nations. When it had ultimately chosen to side with the Kandrian Empire, it marked something that sort of resembled a halfway point in terms of the total military and Martial capital that was up for grabs in the war for allies.


    The war had already been going on for the better part of a year now, and had elerated at a pace that was extremely quick by the standards of wars of this scale. Both sides had aggressively prioritized the war at all costs since its inception, leading to things heating up much faster than they otherwise would have. This content ? N?v/elDr(a)m/a.Org.


    The biggest point for a massive fast-forwarding of the war had been the defeat of the Sekigahara Confederate, which led to an immediate jump into the war for allies as the East Panamic Treaty Alliance realized that the only thing that it could achieve without allies was a horrific pyrrhic defeat.


    And they were right; the assault on the Shionel Confederation revealed that these battles were bound to get extremely bloody, resulting in massive losses on both sides, ultimately leading to a lose-lose situation.


    Regardless, the assault on the Shionel Confederation shocked all the undecided potential allies out of the lull that had begun forming in the air during the war for allies. It was very easy for it to have done so when there were no big, shy battles for the most part, just arge amount of indistinct battles and shes happening at all Kandrian allies'' borders.


    This, however, was the firstrgest battle since the Kandria-Sekigahara battle. It shook the geopoliticalndscape thoroughly. Its consequences could be felt across the entirety of East Panama.


    For one, the Shionel Confederation supplied an absolutely enormous amount of goods and services to the entirety of East Panama; thus, the consequences of anything happening to it could be felt everywhere.


    It rattled the remaining undecided potential allies in East Panama as they realized that the alliance was very serious about inflicting real consequences for siding with the Kandrian Empire but also for not choosing.


    It only increased the amount of pressure that each nation experienced.


    The geopolitical state fell into flux once more as what could be the most important phase of the war had begun.


    Yet, many political analysts and other experts and pundits foresaw that while it would be the most important, it would not necessarilyst very long.


    There was simply too much pressure and turmoil for this phase of the war tost long. The tenser a situation was, the quicker it was resolved. And this was easily the tensest moment in the history of East Panama due to the sheer scale of the powers involved.


    Human civilization watched with bated breaths as the war raged on. -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2370: Confrontations

    Chapter 2370: Confrontations


    ?


    "...So, you''re telling me that you have had a secret hidden Martial Artist at your side for more than three centuries?" The Martial Sages stared at Emperor Rael with pure shock. "A hidden Martial Sage in the Kandrian Empire for more than three hundred years?"


    The Martial Sages confronted Emperor Rael at the first opportunity that they got after the battle.


    To say that they were shocked was an understatement.


    It was one of the greatest revtions that they hade to learn.


    It made all of them look at their shared past with new lenses.


    Kandria had never had the smoothest of histories, with many significant events involving all of them that now required them to revisit and re-evaluate.


    Just how much of the oues of everything that they had gone through were a product of this new Martial Sage intervening secretly in the shadows?


    They had no clue.


    "That''s correct," the three-dimensional projection of Emperor Rael replied. "He had been one of my greatest trump cards since even before I became emperor."


    "Is that why things always seem to go your way?" Sage Roschem muttered with a stunned expression.


    "...I cannot lose a game of Chess if I have pieces that my opponent does not even know of," Emperor Rael answered. "Such is the power of this trump card."


    "...How did you ever pull it off?" The Flickering Elder stared at him with a shocked expression.


    Emperor Rael smiled. "It was difficult, very difficult, but once you understand the flow of information, you are able to manipte it to your own advantage and evade it at remarkably high sess. I simply fooled the world and ensured that the truth never came to light."


    "...And then it went on to be one of your greatest advantages in pretty much all future circumstances," Rui added with a mused expression.


    Rui had known this before, but keeping a Martial Sage hidden for this long was nothing short of a truly impressive feat. It was something that would be otherwise considered impossible. "Correct," his father replied. "Sayfeel has contributed more to the Kandrian Empire than any of you will ever know. Treat him with the respect and trust that he deserves."


    "...If he was such a great secret trump card, then why did you choose to reveal him?" Sage cken raised an eyebrow. "It does not make sense to devalue the strategic power of a secret Sage by revealing him to the world for everyone to know about."


    His father shook his head. "I no longer require a hidden trump card. What I need is open deterrence. The two are different and are differently suited to different circumstances. In this particr circumstance, an existential war that impedes our ascent to unrivaled power and prosperity, I need open deterrence."


    Rui understood the dynamics of this particr decision much better than the Sages did. "He needs people to trust in the Kandrian Empire to protect them. And more firepower is the best way to do that."


    His father nodded. "Just so. Now, I know that all of you have countless questions regarding Sage Sayfeel, however, I cannot humor them at the moment. After all..."


    His expression instantly darkened. "We have lost an oldrade, friend, and family. We need to mourn for her and honor her memory in a manner that is worthy of her. Sage Lamira fought for the nation and gave up her life for the Kandrian Empire. She is a hero among heroes, and she will be remembered as such."


    Instantly, the brief reprieve from the awareness of her death was gone.


    The matter regarding Sage Sayfeel had been so shocking that they truly could not put it off, even under these circumstances.


    Yet, the death of arade that they had known for the overwhelming majority of their lives still hung in the air.


    It was a deep pain that they were unable to get over.Text ? owned by N?velDrama.Org.


    "We must win the war no matter what." Sage Roschem''s eyes red with intensity. "If we lose, then her sacrifice was for nothing."


    Emperor Rael''s eyes zed with willpower. "I have no intention of losing. I am confident that we will emerge victorious in this war. The sess of pulling over the Shionel Confederation is merely the beginning."


    While there were definitely pretty difficult impediments that his rival put up, the fact of the matter was that the Kandrian Empire won over the Shionel Confederation as a firm ally. It gave them ess to not only their Martial power but also the economic power that the Kandrian Empire was working to restore at the moment.


    These were tremendous assets in war.


    Now, all allies had to consider that joining the East Panamic Treaty Alliance would mean bing an enemy of the Shionel Confederation and many of the merchants that sold important goods and services.


    It would mean that they were cutting themselves off from much of the market since everybody depended on them to some degree in some way or the other. Emperor Rael intended to leverage that to the maximum.


    "Prime Minister Edward knows that and thus he will not let up on the Shionel Confederation that easily," Emperor Rael warned. "Thus, I don''t intend to call most of you back to the Kandrian Empire. We must provide enough security to ensure that the Shionel Confederation is safe. That goes for you, too, Rui."


    Rui stared at his father knowingly. "Well, I''m not too surprised. This was part of the n from the very start. I make the Shionel Confederation an ally; in return, I get to fight as many Masters as I wish."


    This was the personal motivation behind the decision to go to the Shionel Confederation in the first ce.


    "Unfortunately..." Rui scratched his head. "The only enemy peak Master left in East Panama is


    dead."


    Rui was not satisfied with the Master''s breakthrough to the Sage Realm, which interrupted


    their battle.


    He truly believed he would have won.


    But, unfortunately, he was not satisfied with merely personal conviction; he hoped to prove it


    without any shadow of a doubt that he was to win by actually winning.


    It was truly unfortunate that the man gained enlightenment of self.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2371: Lost Child

    Chapter 2371: Lost Child


    While Emperor Rael discussed the immediate future with the Sages and his son, the enemy alliance had plenty of considerations of their own in regard to the oue of the Battle against the Shionel Confederation.


    The deaths of Sage Shaia and Sage Stephen were extremely painful for the Republic of Gorteau and the Britannian Empire.


    "WE LOST A PEAK SAGE!" President Raymond screeched at the top of his voice as his face was red with rage. "A. PEAK. SAGE. DO YOU HAVE ANY UNDERSTANDING OF HOW MUCH WE HAVE¡ª"


    "President Raymond." The soft yet chillingly perilous voice of Prime Minister Edward cleaved through the emotional tantrum of the Gorteau President with ease.


    The Prime Minister was not in a good mood. He had no patience to deal with the President''s nonsense.


    "You were the one who insisted that he was not only Sage Damian''s equal but his superior." A hint of cold fury apanied his tone. "Did you forget your own words, and will you cease acting in a manner unbing of a head of state?"


    President Raymond gritted his teeth. He wanted to bite back, but so long as he was helpless in bribing the Democratic Socialists of his nation, he would always contribute less than half of what the Britannian Empire contributed, giving him a lower voice in their alliance.


    On top of that, Prime Minister Edward intimidated him a lot deep down.


    He would never admit it, of course.


    But everything from the way Prime Minister Edward was dressed and groomed to his conduct and bodynguage to his manner and speaking, all of it projected power.


    Domineering power that sharply contrasted with the nervous energy of the president of the Republic of Gorteau. He simply didn''t have the capital push back against the prime minister in this avenue.


    Of course, at the same time, he couldn''t just let the death of a peak Sage slide. However, simplyining about it would not get him anywhere.


    Prime Minister Edward was not in the best of moods.


    While the mission certainly wasn''t a failure, he could not consider it aplete sess. One of the things that he hadn''t expected was the death of Sage Shaia at the hands of the Devil. The Kandrian Empire''s peak sage had truly grown stronger if he could down a foe that quickly.


    He was deeply shocked at the revtion that Emperor Rael had been hiding a Martial Sage all this time. It grated on him that his opponent had managed to pull a fast one over him. Edward had no doubt that his opponent had put this secret Martial Sage to good use over the many years and decades that the two of them sparred with each other.


    He couldn''t help but look back at the wars that they had fought over the many years and wonder where this secret hidden Martial Sage had been deployed. It was easier to figure it out in hindsight.


    He shook his head lightly, heaving a dark sigh.


    Not a sess, but not a failure.


    They had caused great harm to the Shionel Confederation with the damages in infrastructure and the death of their native Martial Sage. Every undecided potential ally was undoubtedly chilled by this oue and would heavily consider it when thinking about allying with the Kandrian Empire. However, he knew that it would not be enough to win the war in and of itself due to all the things that the Kandrian Empire had gained as a result of this whole debacle.


    A powerful ally.


    The glory of prestige of the battle record. The Sage-level aplishments were truly shocking, but what especially shocked observers was what the Dawnbringer had aplished in battle by single-handedly holding off a peak Master and many other Masters as well. It was truly absurd to think that one Master could be strong enough to aplish something like this all by himself. "The Void Prince¡­" Prime Minister Edward narrowed his eyes. "Is a problem. Based on his performance in this battle, I can see him single-handedly closing the quantitative gap between us and the Kandrian Empire as far as Master-levelbat is concerned."


    This was not good.


    Unless they found someone to neutralize the Void Prince inbat, it would be truly difficult to harm Kandrian allies in battle, as the Master-level force ended up being the actual strike force that attacked the nation.


    His eyes turned to the n leaders of the Sekigahara Confederate with a piercing gaze.


    "Where is he?"


    The n leaders smiled knowingly. "We are still searching."


    The Britannian Prime Minister narrowed his eyes. "¡­Searching?"


    "¡­We are retracing his steps over the many years," they replied. "We are also consorting with the Beggar''s Sect and the Shadow Guild."


    "¡­And you think he is able to take on the Void Prince?"


    Their smiles deepened. "Absolutely."


    Prime Minister Edward could feel their certainty and confidence.


    It was rock solid.


    The Sekigahara Confederate had grown more passive since their devastating defeat at the hands of the Kandrian Empire. Yet, when it came to this particr topic, they seemed to regain their ferocious confidence.


    Their tales, however, seemed so utterly absurd that he almost waved them off as fiction.


    A Martial Artist said to be born with infinite talent and endless potential.


    A Martial Artist said to be born with the power to be anything.


    An ungodlybination of boundless genius and one the most potent Martial Art that the Sekigahara Confederate had ever seen. From the moment he had beguntraversing down his Martial Path, he shot through what would take others years and even decades to reach. The youngest Apprentice and Squire in the history of the Age of Martial Art.


    The chosen Martial Artist.


    "The Lost Child is beyond all other Martial Artists in the history of the Age of Martial Art. He is beyond the very concept of talent." Their tones grew profoundly ominous. "A convergence of countless extraordinary gifts within a single boy in a cosmic miracle."


    "¡­If he was that extraordinary, then why in the world did you let him go?" Prime Minister Edward''s gaze sharpened as his tone intensified. Text ? owned by N?velDrama.Org.


    Their expressions grew severe. "We let him go because¡­ the Sekigahara Confederate was not worthy of nurturing his talent. He is beyond our ability. We let him go because only the entirety of Gaia herself was worthy of nurturing his infinite potential."


    Prime Minister Edward had heard enough. "Then find him as soon as possible. If anybody will be capable of matching the Void Prince, it will be an equally absurd Martial Artist."


    The n leaders smiled mysteriously. What the prime minister didn''t know was that not only did they intend to have the Lost Child kill the Void Prince, but they also intended to have him copy his Martial Art so that they, too, could gain the power of breakthroughs and recuperate their lost Masters.


    With that, they would be able toplete their own ascension to power after the defeat of the Kandrian Empire!


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2372: Funeral

    Chapter 2372: Funeral


    ?


    "Fae..." Rui''s expression grew sorrowful. "I''m sorry for your loss. I''m sorry that you have to lose your grandmother. I can''t imagine what you and your family must be feeling right now."


    She gazed at him with swollen red eyes.


    Her long silver hair was let down unadorned and untied.


    She had donned ck Martial Attire just like the rest of her Martial Family, who was busy hosting the cremation ceremony of thete Sage Lamira Duhan.


    Outwardly, she disyed reserved sorrow.


    She also projected strength.


    As the daughter of the new patriarch of the Duhan Family, she was burdened with the duty of ensuring that the Duhan Family was not perceived as weak and vulnerable.


    Especially because they were weak and vulnerable.


    Yet, before one of her childhood friends, she was unable to maintain her facade.This content ? N?v/elDr(a)m/a.Org.


    "Rui..." A faint whisper escaped her. "Thank you foring. It means the world to me that you would put aside all your responsibilities and burdens just to make time for me."


    Her grateful tone also made him feel more guilty.


    "I''m sorry that I couldn''t be there sooner." Rui''s tone was forlorn. "I know that I''m not as... close to everybody as I was before. But I will never fail to be there for my friends when they need me. That, I swear on everything that I hold precious."


    The determination in his tone was unmistakable.


    A bittersweet smile emerged on her face amidst her grief as she leaned in for a light hug. He could feel more of her pain through the gesture than he could through his Martial Mind. Yet, she immediately collected herself, mindful of the eyes on her.


    Rui got a good look at her for the first time in years.


    While Rui still retained a youthful physicality and mindset, she had grown to appear and feel more mature than he did as a result of having broken through to the Senior Realm in herter thirties.


    It was a highly optimistic growth rate by most standards.


    She undoubtedly experienced the weight of expectations as being one of the future pirs of the Duhan Family.


    This was especially the case when she was ying a role in a funeral that was filled with bigshots of the Kandrian Empire, including the Emperor of Harmony and the original ten Martial Sages of the Sage Council who had known the Hugging Hegemon the best. None of them would dare to miss the funeral.


    She had yed her role perfectly, projecting power and a bright future for the Duhan Family even as she spoke to the most powerful figures of the Kandrian Empire. She truly was the model heir to the Duhan Family, poised to seed as matriarch perhaps centuries in the future after her father either passed away or stepped down. The entire funeral went without a hitch


    "Can we speak privately?" She hesitated. "I have something important that I wish to consult you about, if I may."


    "...Of course."


    Soon enough, they found themselves in an isted courtyard.


    The air grew heavy in the silent atmosphere.


    "...I''m sure that you already know why I have called you here," she began softly.


    Rui simply stared at her back as she gazed at the full moon.


    "I... I need power."


    He wasn''t surprised.


    Of course she needed power.


    The Duhan Family had just lost a Martial Sage.


    That was a tremendous plummet in power.


    Of course, the other Martial Sages had too much affection and respect for thete Hugging Hegemon to ever press the falling Martial Family, but that did not mean that their descendants and their own families would not use it to disce the power and influence that the Martial Family had rued.


    Rui understood these dynamics well, and it was why he had steered clear of the Martialmunity of the Kandrian Empire. It was a cesspool that he had no desire to set foot in. The horror stories that Kane, Fiona, and Fae herself had told him made him feel very grateful that he had grown up in the loving Quarrier Orphanage.


    He had received countless marriage proposals from the most prominent families formed by the Sages and the powerful Martial Masters and he pretended like they didn''t even exist. His staff dealt with them diplomatically enough so that he wouldn''t get in trouble.


    "...I hate to break it to you Fae..." Rui replied. "But if you want power, you will have to earn every ounce of it by cultivating it yourself. There are no shortcuts to power."


    She turned to him with a sharp gaze. "...Except there are."


    Rui''s expression crumpled as he realized that she understood what he was capable of. "Fae..." "You helped Prince Raijun reach the Squire Realm by refining his Martial Art for him," she continued with even greater intensity. "I want you to do the same for me."


    He wasn''t surprised that she had found out, considering that her family had been part of the Raijun Faction for a long time.


    "I need power, Rui." Her tone was urgent. "My Family, my sect, they have grown weak after my grandmother''s noble sacrifice. The Martial World is cruel. My grandmother''s deeds benefit everyone, yet that won''t stop everyone from chipping away at our dwindling power and influence."


    "Fae..."


    "There''s a limit to how much my parents can do." A hint of desperation appeared in her tone. "We need as many Martial Masters as possible."


    "Listen..."


    "I need to break through sooner thanter," she urged. "I need to inspire people''s faith in my potential. I need them to look at me and just know that I will reach great heights. The way they look at you and Kane."


    A hint of envy crept into her tone.


    It was more than just envy.


    He could bitterness in her mind.


    And even a hint of resentment deep down.


    It wasn''t pleasant, yet, he didn''t hold it against her.


    There used to be a time when she had been regarded just as well as Rui and Kane had been,


    more than two decades ago in the academy.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2373: Unable and Unwilling

    Chapter 2373: Unable and Unwilling


    ?


    Now, however, they were two of the youngest Martial Masters in history with dazzling achievements to their names while she was still a rtively unimportant Senior.


    She was highly driven and talented, too. Yet, the gulf between herself and Kane had only grownrger.


    They lived free lives while she was shackled by the burdens of responsibilities of her Martial Family.


    It would be rather incredible if she didn''t feel negative about it.


    Ultimately, she was only human.


    "Fae..." Rui continued as his eyes grew sorrowful. "I''m sorry, but I''m unable to give you what you ask for."


    She simply stared at him. "...Unable or unwilling?"


    He looked back at her.


    "I... am not trying to emotionally ckmail you. I won''t hold it against you if you refuse me. I just want to know the truth." Her voice was reduced to a faint whisper.


    "...Both," Rui admitted. "I know, looking in from the outside, it must seem like I just walked in and elerated Raijun''s Martial progress just like that. You probably harbor hopes that I will be able to do the same for a Senior now that I have broken through to the Master Realm." The expression on her face showed that he was exactly right.


    "Unfortunately, it doesn''t work like that. I can''t just elerate people''s progress," Rui exined patiently. "With Prince Raijun, I was refining his individuality that had been left unrefined due to an absoluteck of real experience. In other words, he has already done all the work, I just helped make it mean something. In your case, you are not some princess with no field experience. You... are simply not ready yet."


    He could clearly sense that her nascent Martial Mind had not reached anywhere near saturation.


    She was far from bing a Martial Master.


    There was a reason that it took decades and even a century to hit the Master Realm.


    It was deeply difficult to form it and was highly atypical to the paths that one took to get there.


    "...I see." Her expression fell. "Hearing the truth makes me more ashamed of myself."


    Rui shook his head. "Don''t be. I understand doing everything in your power to grow stronger. I''m sorry that I can''t help you elerate your Martial progress directly."N?velDrama.Org owns ? this.


    "...You said you wouldn''t."


    "I wouldn''t," Rui confirmed without a hint of shame. "If I were to somehow fulfill your individuality requirements for you, it would cripple you forever."


    She frowned. "...Cripple me?"


    Rui nodded. "There are some things that must be done by ourselves, no matter how easy it might be to let someone else do it. The very process of imbuing individuality in your Martial Art increases your ability to do so better. You get better and better at doing it. You learn more about yourself. Yet, what if someone else does it for you? Then, none of that happens, and you''re unable to move forward due to the progressively higher demands for individuality." She understood the meaning of his words. "Breaking out of cocoons gives butterflies the wings they need to fly."


    "Just so." Rui nodded. "Even if I could elerate your progress for you, I wouldn''t because it would be no different from crippling you; you would not be able to handle the increasingly greater demands for individuality to make the same progress as you did before."


    Her expression grew sullen as she heaved a deep sigh. "...I understand. I should have never thought about a shortcut in the first ce."


    "I don''t think you were necessarily wrong to consider it. You just need to know what line not to cross so as to not cause major consequences for yourself," Ruiforted her. "Besides, I may not be able to help you directly, but I can help you be more sessful in your Martial progress thanks to one of my more recent projects."


    She raised an eyebrow as a rueful smile appeared on her face. "My, you always have some sort of trump card up your sleeves, don''t you? It reminds me of the time that you gave us the Hungry Pain technique."


    Rui recollected that with a wry smile.


    He had given them that technique so that he would have proof that the technique worked when he did give it to the Martial Unionter on.


    "I''ll have my staff send it to you." Rui smiled. "It was originally something that I had created for my Water Sect, but I''m willing to share it with you as long as you promise not to share it with anybody else."


    "I promise. I''m not ungrateful enough to screw over one of my greatest benefactors." "Good to know." Rui nodded. "What I''m offering is a solution to Martial Seniors who are having a hard time creating their Martial Minds. One that, I believe, will increase their prospects of breaking through to the Master Realm significantly."


    It was something that he had cooked up for training thought in his sect in the long run, which was why he believed that Fae could really achieve something with it.


    "I''d love to teach it to you myself, but unfortunately, I''ll be returning to the Shionel Confederation today," Rui continued with a smile. "You will have to figure it all out yourself, but as long as you seed, you will be able to massively elerate your growth rate." "...Thank you." Her tone grew grateful. "I wasn''t sure if you could help me. But I appreciate that you are able and willing to help me gain more power on my own."


    Rui smiled. "Don''t worry about it. When you''re ready, I''ll break you through to the Master Realm as well."


    Rui was d she hade to him for help. They had known each other since the age of twelve, and he didn''t want to refuse her when she needed his help the most. He could only hope that she would be able to use it to elerate her progress as a Senior and eventually


    Master.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2374: Once More

    Chapter 2374: Once More


    ?


    A week passed after the funeral of the Hugging Hegemon.


    The Shionel Confederation and the Kandrian Empire swiftly signed an allyship pact that signified the official inception of their alliance with each other. Neither side wanted to dy the process, thus they had very quicklye to agree on the terms and conditions of their partnership.


    The Shionel Confederation was most keenly interested in aid and support for reconstruction and restoration from the damages done to the nation by the attack of the East Panamic Treaty Alliance. In addition to that, they were also anxious about future attacks from the alliance that threatened to go even further.


    After all, the Shionel Confederation had officially be an ally to the Kandrian Empire, which made it fall on the list of nations that the enemy alliance needed to attack regrly to deter as many undecided nations from allying with the Kandrian Empire.


    In return, the Shionel Confederation vowed to fight to protect the Kandrian maind with all its power in its time of need. Additionally, it also terminated all trade with the East Panamic Treaty Alliance and all its allies.


    Thetter would cause many nations to be more inclined to ally with the Kandrian Empire than before, as too many of them relied on the Shionel Confederation for some of their most essential goods and services.


    These two reasons were why the Kandrian Empire had sought to ally with the Shionel Confederation in the first ce, and now it had gotten what it wanted. In turn, the Kandrian Empire fullymenced the construction of a sovereign seaside territory for the Bradt Distribution Services, allowing the man to build the maritime and seafaring trade base of his dreams while employing the full extent of the Kandrian Empire''s resources and services toplete its creation.


    The man was no doubt extraordinarily busy, considering everything that had happened.


    However, he still made time to speak with Rui.


    "And so, I have returned to the Shionel Confederation and will personally remain to protect the nation as part of the defensive guard," Rui calmly informed him.


    The guildmaster regarded Rui''s words with an ambivalent reaction. "If not for your impressive Martial power, I would say that you attract more aggression than you''re worth." Rui didn''t like it, but it was true.


    If not for the absurd Martial power that he brought to the table as far as Master levelbat went, he would have been a liability to the Shionel Confederation.


    "After all, the Britannian Empire would love nothing more than to see you dead," the guildmaster added with a knowing expression. "Aside from your father, I suppose. Still, if you fall, then much of the Kandrian Empire''s value proposition also falls. After all, without you, the Kandrian Empire cannot break Martial Artists through. In fact, I''m surprised that His Majesty tolerates you partaking in battle at all. If you were to die in battle, the Kandrian Empire would be devastated."


    Rui shrugged. "I don''t really care. My father would rather I stay in the Kandrian Empire, but he knows that he can''t possibly convince me not to. I don''t mind helping, but I''m notpromising my ambitions and way of life for the Kandrian Empire. I have already done more than enough for my home nation, trust me."


    It was an understatement.


    The treasures that he had brought home were the reason that this war was happening.


    "Still, it would behoove you to be careful." The guildmaster chose his words carefully. "All it takes is for one Master tond a single hit on you at the right moment, and you will lose your life just like that."


    "I appreciate your concern," Rui calmly replied. "However, you''re preaching to the choir. Every Martial Artist is very well aware of this. We have to be. None of us step into this field without being cognizant of the fact that despite all that power, because of all that power, Martial Artists have the highest mortality rate. We die in battle, we die outside of battle, we die in dangerous environments, and so on and so forth. It is part and parcel of being a Martial Artist. Not a single one of us is unaware of the risks associated with our paths."


    Guildmaster Bradt was unable to understand such a mindset.


    What was the point of having power if it increased the probability of you dying?


    Still, he wasn''t interested in having a philosophical discussion with Rui on this matter as long as he was aware of the particrly high risks that he would have to face.


    "The agreement that I signed with your father specifies a regr stream of breakthroughs as long as we heavily enforce economic sanctions on every power that dares to ally with the East Panamic Treaty Alliance. I''m sure you are aware of that."


    Rui was not fond of what his father had promised the guildmaster, but he understood why and agreed with the rationale.


    They needed to show absolute sincerity in their dealings with the Shionel Confederation after the catastrophe that it had suffered, or else they would spook undecided potential allies.


    "I''m willing," Rui remarked. "Knowing you, you probably already found a way to mize it and increase your earnings."


    The guildmaster shed a faint yet calcting smile. "I''m nning to draw more Martial Artists to the Shionel Confederation using it as bait. We need to empower ourselves now that the absence of a Sage will undoubtedly lead to a rise in the number of skirmishes and attacks on our business than ever before."


    Rui stirred at his words. "It is simr to what the Kandrian Empire is doing at the moment. We have received a flood of Martial Artists in the Lower Realms. Unfortunately, not too many Masters have immigrated, and not a single Sage has joined the Kandrian Empire of their own volition without being invited to our nation. At their Realm, they are not easily moved by too many offers."


    "I am aware," Guildmaster Bradt snorted as his tone grew mncholic and bittersweet. "Lauren was a greedy, money-grubbing bastard who squeezed us hard for our money. He would always say that even then, he would never die for this country. And to think he ended up doing just that..."


    For once, he was unable to maintain his poker face.


    Rui gazed at the hint of sorrow in the man''s eyes. "...I''m sorry for your los-"


    BZZT BZZT BZZT!


    The guildmaster''sm artifact began ringing wildly.


    His expression grew grave upon the message.


    "We are under attack."


    His tone wasn''t one of surprise; it was bitter.


    This was their new reality.


    Attacks after attacks.


    It was depressing, but he had prepared himself for it from the very moment that he had


    decided to ally with the Kandrian Empire.


    Yet, the news evoked an enthusiastic smile from Rui.


    BADUMP!


    His Martial Heart and Mind zed into power.N?velDrama.Org owns ? this.


    "I can''t wait to test my limits once more."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2375: Yearning for Death

    Chapter 2375: Yearning for Death


    ?


    Fighting other Masters that the other three Sage-level powerhouses had to offer was half the reason that Rui was interested in the war in the first ce. He looked forward to testing his personal might against all of them or as many of them as he could.


    His previous fight with the Convergence had ended up being inconclusive, much to his chagrin. This time, he was determined to see the battle through to the very end.


    RUMBLE...


    The tremors from Martial Artists afar had already reached the Shionel Confederation. Thankfully, the Shionel Confederation was better prepared than it had beenst time.


    The previous time had caught each and everybody off-guard due to Prime Minister Edward''s well-prepared ambush.


    This time, however, everybody had already anticipated an attack simply by virtue of having formally entered an alliance with the Kandrian Empire.


    And the alliance didn''t disappoint.


    "Execute Emergency Initiative A-12," Guildmaster Bradt gravely ordered. "We must protect our reconstruction and restoration projects from the wrath of the enemies. Ensure the Sage- level dispatch intercepts them several thousands of kilometers further away this time. The same for the Master-level dispatch."


    He turned to Rui who was all but ready to shoot towards the battlefield immediately. "Please ensure that not a single Master is able to get past you, Master Rui."


    "Will do." He nodded with an electric smile cracking at the edge of his mouth. "I can promise that not a single Master willy so much as a scratch to the Shionel Confederation. Inform the Shionel Masters to remain as a vanguard back-up to ensure that they intercept any that might get past me. I do not require their assistance in the battle."


    Guildmaster Bradt frowned at his words.


    "As far as I''m aware, not a single Kandrian Master has reached the Shionel Confederation. Which means that without the Shionel Masters, you will be fighting the iing Master- level force all by yourself."


    Rui''s smirk widened. "Music to my ears."


    The guildmaster stared at Rui like he was absolutely insane. "Have you lost your mind? You are the second-most sought-after target by the alliance after your father. The fact that you are participating in this battle is bad enough. The fact that they know that is even worse. But the fact that you want to do it alone is the worst n I''ve ever heard."


    Rui shook his head.


    He had no intention of exining himself, least of all to the guildmaster, of all people. The man was a businessman and could not even begin to fathom what Rui was feeling in the first ce.


    "Goodbye, I''m heading off to the battlefield."


    WHOOSH


    In the blink of an eye, he was gone before the guildmaster could call out the foolhardy intentions that the young Master harbored.


    Rui didn''t even bother learning about the numbers or the identities of the Masters who had been deployed to take him out. It was as though he had woken up that day and sought to make life as hard as possible for himself.


    And, in fact, that was exactly what had happened.


    He recalled his conversations with Master Ceeran two months ago before they had headed to Vilun Ind to pick K''M up.


    Dying to get to the Sage Realm.


    The closer one tended to death, the more they learned about who they truly were.


    Specifically, they learned the true weight of their convictions, determination, and drive when weighed against the force of self-preservation.


    It was all but easy to say, ''I''m willing to die for X'' or ''Y is more important to me than my own life.''


    Yet, that didn''t make it the truth.


    Even if one truly believed those words with all their heart, they were simply wrong in most


    cases.


    They didn''t understand themselves as well as they thought.


    They overestimated how self-sacrificing they were.


    They overestimated how driven and determined they were.


    They underestimated how strong their desire for self-preservation was.


    And oftentimes, it was only on the verge of death that they truly understood what kind of person they were.


    Oftentimes, they came away realizing that they were far more cowardly, or unsightly, or life- loving than they would have ever thought of themselves.


    In that vein, the sense of self-preservation was the ultimate counterweight. Simr to how objects were weighed against weights on a bnce to determine their mass, dying and approaching the brink of death did the same thing with all of a person''s convictions, drive, beliefs, and desires, weighing them against the fear of death and sense of self-preservation.


    Rui had concluded that if he wanted to learn who he was without needing lifetimes to reach the Sage Realm, then he needed to end up dying to the Sage Realm.


    Not actually be dead.


    But reach its brink.


    Master Ceeran had already shot down any hopes of making gains through a controlled procedure such as bringing him close to death with the Divine Doctor and ensuring that he never actually died.


    It needed to be a genuine state where he was approaching the brink of death.


    "I can''t do that if I have plenty of powerful Masters supporting me," he snorted as he shot through the air, hoping to reach the enemy Master-level force. "Already, there aren''t too many options at my disposal. Almost no enemy Master can truly push me to my limits. So, an overwhelming numeric advantage will have to do."


    He was dissatisfied.


    What he truly yearned for was an equal.


    Someone who could push him to his very limit and beyond.


    Someone who he didn''t need to hold back against and someone who could help him reach the


    Sage Realm.


    "Oh well, I will just have to hope that they have sent enough powerful Masters to push me to


    my limits."Text ? owned by N?velDrama.Org.


    He didn''t even care if they sent a hundred Martial Masters. He would take them all on if he had


    to.


    All in the pursuit of learning who he was.


    He also wasn''t worried about the Shionel Confederation''s safety.


    He knew that between destroying the Shionel Confederation and killing Rui, the Masters


    would undoubtedly focus all their energy on thetter.


    Compared to killing Rui, the Shionel Confederation was irrelevant as a goal.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2376: True Objective

    Chapter 2376: True Objective


    ?


    "Remember our ultimate objective." Master Brigsby of the Britannian Empire smoldered as he led a Master-level assault force of a hundred Martial Masters toward the Shionel


    Confederation. "If the Void Prince stands in the way of our objective, then he is our objective. We must eliminate him no matter what!"


    One hundred Masters grew more determined as they marched towards the Shionel Confederation with a remarkable speed.


    In truth, none of them gave a single solitary damn about the Shionel Confederation.


    They didn''t give a damn about the fact that they needed to adhere to the alliance''s promise of attacking all allies of the Kandrian Empire in East Panam.


    They had but one goal.


    "Kill the Void Prince," Master Brigsby growled with fierce eyes. "Kill him no matter what!"


    It was the sole reason that he, of all people, had been deployed on this particr mission. Born before the Age of Martial Art, Master Brigsby was a powerful grade-twenty-nine Master who was valued almost as much as a grade-thirty Master was.


    With the deaths of both grade-thirty Masters of the alliance, he was the one who had been personally entrusted with the mission of killing the Void Prince.


    WHOOSH!


    They shed through the air at high speeds, anxious to put as much of a gap between them and the Sages that had already been intercepted by their peers protecting the Shionel Confederation.


    And that was when they saw him.


    And what they saw shocked them.


    "He..." Master Brigsby''s eyes widened with shock. "He dares toe alone?!"


    Every Master in the Master-level assault team stared at the lone figure in the great distance, approaching them as he even took the liberty of consuming a rejuvenation potion to ensure that he was in nothing short of peak condition when facing the enemy Master-level force all by himself.


    It was a decision that was nothing short of madness.


    Master Brigsby''s face contorted with seething bloodlust. "Damn snot-nosed arrogant brat. I will make him pay for this insult."


    He had mixed feelings on the matter.


    On the one hand, he was d that his mission was bound to be a sess with nobody to protect the lone Dawnbringer. On the other, he felt insulted by the fact that the young Master essentially looked down on his opponents by daring toe to the war all by himself.


    Then he remembered what had happened in the previous battle.


    His powerful Martial Mind had somehow suppressed and paralyzed far too many among their ranks and was one of the reasons that he had been able to fight the Convergence while simultaneously crippling half their assault force.


    "This time, however, we havee prepared." Master Brigsby grinned with malevolence. He nced at the hundred-strong Masters that were following him.


    They wereprised of five grade twenty-nine Masters, including himself, and ten grade twenty-eight Masters.


    All of them had extremely powerful Martial Minds that had been refined over the centuries. On top of that, Master Brigsby had personally handpicked the remaining eighty-five to be able to withstand the Martial Embodiment of the Void Prince as well as possible, allowing them to not be entirely pressed by it.


    Even if he could somehow fight off the powerhouses among the Masters, he would eventually lose his stamina, and the rest would be free from the overbearing weight and pressure of his Martial Mind.


    His death was guaranteed.


    There were no two ways about it.


    Yet, when they beheld his form in the distance surging towards them at top speed, they couldn''t help but have doubts.


    He stared at them wide-eyed as the ephemeral darkness in his eyes stirred.


    They roared with lust.


    Lust for battle.


    Despite the distance between them, they clearly felt the weight of his piercing stare pushing down on them.


    They felt his hunger.


    It sent chills across their skin.


    Before they knew it, they had already reached a long-range distance away from him.


    "ATTACK!" Master Brigsby pulled back as he activated his Realms of power.


    In an instant, many Martial Embodiments bloomed as the world ceased to be as it had been, instead bathed in the manifestations of Martial Minds of many Martial Masters that pulled out all stops.


    Their Martial Minds painted a tapestry over the canvas of heaven and earth, coloring reality itself with their dye.


    A magnificent sight.


    Until, of course, Rui activated his Martial Mind.


    RUMBLE...


    The enemy Martial Masters froze as an endless tsunami of darkness emerged from the depths


    of his mind.


    An infinite void.


    One that seemed to consume everything everywhere.


    Not all of the Masters present had seen it before.This content ? N?v/elDr(a)m/a.Org.


    For a moment, none of them moved.


    For a moment, they had forgotten why they were here.


    Immersed in awe and horror at the sheer weight of Dawnbringer''s Martial Mind.


    "I SAID ATTACK!" Master Brigsby gritted his teeth. "ATTACK! KILL HIM BEFORE HE CAN USE THAT INFERNAL TECHNIQUE!"


    The force of his voice broke them out of their reverie. They each gritted their teeth as they surged forward at Rui, determined to kill him before it was toote.


    Unfortunately, it was toote.


    Shivers crawled down their spine as a smile emerged on his face.


    "Megamind."


    Internal pressures in his body were adjusted as they exerted even greater pressure on the blood vessels almost everywhere in his body, causing them to constrict and lessen their blood


    flow.


    Almost everywhere except the skull.


    A surge of blood rushed to his head and to his brain.


    The supply of oxygen, nutrients, and otherpounds increased the metabolism of each


    neuron in his brain, while the increased blood flow allowed for the much quicker and more frequent disposal of waste substances.


    The neurons in his head lit up with power, turning from simple nexuses into singrities of


    information flux.


    His mind, consciousness, and Ego lit up, elevating to even greater heights.


    His eyes opened, glowing with dark blood.


    Time slowed down in his eyes as his power increased multi-fold.


    And with it, so did the weight of his Martial Embodiment.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2377: Explosive Start

    Chapter 2377: Explosive Start


    They had heard tales of what they were about to experience.


    The Convergence was the sole Martial Master to have died in the previous battle. The rest had managed to make it out alive thanks to the Sage-level assault team stalling the Martial Sages, allowing them to escape without being hunted alive en route.


    Thus, word of the monster that was Prince Rui had already spread around amongst Masters in the alliance.


    They had even been briefed about it before this particr operationmenced.


    On top of that, many of the Masters among their ranks were the same as the previous team that had gathered once more due to their prior experience with the special mind-empowering Metabody that the prince had disyed.


    And yet, nothing could have prepared them to withstand its brunt once more. The infinite void intensified greatly as the burdens on their minds shot up at a proportional rate. The sheer amount of information that Rui''s Martial Mind projected straight into their subconscious caused them to freeze where they stood.


    "What is this¡­?" Master Brigsby''s eyes widened as he felt a tremendous burden weigh down on his mind. "Just¡­ Just how powerful is his mind?!"


    He gritted his teeth as he saw that an overwhelming majority of his Master-level assault force was almost entirely or partially paralyzed by the weight of Rui''s Martial Mind. There weren''t too many who were still in a fighting condition.


    However, that didn''t mean that the battle was lost. N?velDrama.Org owns ? this.


    The Master''s eyes flooded with rage. "It''s only just beginning. Those of you who can move unhindered, I have but onemand¡­"


    His fists clenched as his teeth gritted. "Kill him. Kill him today and now before he bes an even greater menace to all of us in the future."


    They didn''t need to be told a third time. WHOOSH In an instant, fifteen Martial Masters converged on Rui, ready to kill him at the very first opportunity they got. Any other Master would have undoubtedly felt deeply pressured at the sight of so many Masters lunging for their death.


    Not Rui.


    A chilling smile cracked at the edge of his mouth as the dark blood in his pupils stirred. He had already created predictive models on them with the Angel of Lace.


    He was ready.


    WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH!


    Rui somersaulted as a flurry of attacks converged upon him. Yet, his opponents were far too determined to kill him to let him go that easily.


    POW POW POW!


    A speed-oriented Master sted Rui with countless short and swift blows of immense speed and agility. Each blow was blindingly fast, soaring forward at supreme speeds so high that Rui might as well have been a statue.


    The speedster activated her Martial Mind, altering the form of her hand from a fist to a chop, finger strikes, and knuckle strikes one after another. Each form was optimized to do maximal damage to the targeted region of the Martial Body.


    After all, neither the human body nor the Martial Body was uniform. Thus, on a purely theoretical level, simply striking with a fist and nothing but a fist was inefficient and suboptimal.


    And that was why Master Lana created a Martial Mind that allowed her to adaptively evolve her striking form to her opponent''s body. Each blow she delivered produced the maximal possible amount of impact with the power she possessed.


    It allowed her to obtain the offensive prowess of an offensive Master without having to sacrifice any of her speed. The deadlybination of the two allowed her to take down an overwhelming majority of Masters in a rather short amount of time. Unfortunately for her, Rui was not an overwhelming majority of Masters.


    The tiniest of shifts at the absolute perfect timing and cement.


    That was all it took.


    That was all it took for Rui to disperse each and every blow she threw at him. He shifted his body along with each strike, the same way that a baseball yer would shift their hands along with a ball when catching it, converting it to kic energy that he would then disperse to thend.


    Not in vain, of course.


    "Muspelheim." A faint whisper escaped him. The Tree of Life showed him that, on average, the Martial Bodies of the Masters that he was facing were more vulnerable to heat than they were to the cold. Of course, that didn''t take into ount their Martial Art, but it was the best that he could do with the information he had. And considering that Martial Bodies were designed to bepatible with their Martial Art, it was a decent rule of thumb to do as his system of thought told him.


    And thus, the mighty Muspelheim roared as it descended upon heaven and earth. The realm of fire melted rock intova and the air into sma and lightning, making it inhospitable to almost all lifeforms in the world.


    Yet, Martial Masters had already ascended into a higher state of life, able to ess the full potential of their brain and obtain nigh absolute mechanical efficiency. They quickly adapted to the new environment with their own solutions, manipting heaven and earth themselves to reduce the integrity of the domain.


    They weren''t content with just that, however.


    WHOOSH WHOOSH


    Two Martial Masters appeared behind him, swinging tremendously powerful blows at him even as he blocked Master Lana''s attacks one after another. WHOOSH!


    They crashed into an empty image.


    A feint.


    "Temporal Disharmony."


    The two offensive grade-twenty-nine Masters froze where they stood while time sped up to a blinding blur in their visions. Their brains almost underwent a seizure with how much information flooded them.


    Rui surged in as fast he could, hoping to knock them out where they stood.


    But s, the other Martial Masters in the battle were not simply scarecrows. They fired powerful long-range attacks, one after another, that intercepted Rui before he couldnd his attacks, forcing him to leap away, lest his weakened constitution be struck with attacks.


    The battle of Masters had started off explosively and was only poised to get more and more intense.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2378: Surprising Attacks

    Chapter 2378: Surprising Attacks


    The high-grade Masters instantly understood how Rui had handled the previous battles all by himself. His ability to cope with multiple high-grade opponents was truly impressive. He dodged powerful attacks while blocking swift attacks, choosing the most optimal defensive strategy for each attack that he faced.


    That, along with his unnaturally powerful domain and his astronomically powerful hypnosis, he could handle himself no matter what mob he found himself having to deal with. Yet, they were determined not to lose.


    The philosophy of this particr battle was identical to their previous approach. Confronting the Void Prince with powerfulbatants and a numerical advantage was the best way to deal with this. Last time, the only reason that the Convergence lost was because an unknown Martial Sage had intercepted them out of nowhere.


    They were convinced that this modus operandi was the way to defeat the Void Prince and kill him once and for all. BOOM BOOM BOOM!


    Rui leaped away lightly as he evaded powerful attacks one after another. The able Martial Artists who were fighting him had already taken different positions and formations across the battlefield in what was clearly a coordinated effort. This development drew Rui''s attention more than anything. Unusual as it was for Masters to engage in such a level of coordination, he wasn''t able to spend his time studying their formations unhindered.


    WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH!!!


    He dodged each attack one after another with immacte timing, ensuring that he only exerted the bare minimum amount of energy to deal with each of them. Yet, while he was able to deal with long-range Martial Artists easily enough, it was the short and mid-range Masters that gave him the most trouble.


    RUMBLE!!


    Rui''s eyes widened as he saw something that he never expected to see.


    A tsunami of actual water!


    It rumbled as it surged towards the battle field at an extraordinary speed, guided by a Martial Master who stood atop the wave..


    A single whisper escaped her. "Aquarequiem.."


    BOOOOOOMMM!


    The enormous and powerful wall of water crashed into his fiery domain, submerging it and him in what he discovered was genuinely actual water.


    WHOOOOOOSH!!!


    Instantly, a st of steam and sma was spread across the entire battlefield, singing not just Rui but also all Martial Artists who were present within a hundred kilometers of the inception of the battlefield. In turn, the heat of the Muspelheim Domain was dispersed in the consumed enthalpy of vaporization and ionization,pletely snuffing his domain at record speed.


    "Huff¡­ huff¡­" Rui panted for air with a stunned expression. To say that he was shocked was an understatement.


    One moment, he was fighting with his Muspelheim Domain, employing his opponents'' energy to charge the domain topensate for his weakened physical state. The very next moment, he sees arge flood of water crash into his domain and snuff it out. Where did all that watere from?


    Rui was certain that there was not a singlerge reservoir of water anywhere within a hundred kilometers. So, it begged the question of where all of it originated from. Yet, when he saw the wary expression of the female Martial Master who stared at him like a hawk, who not only did not attack but did not make a single move in the first ce, he understood why she was here.


    ''They''re afraid of my Sun," Rui realized. ''They think that if I get pushed too hard, I will unleash the Sun upon them and kill everybody in a suicide attack to take them all down with me.'' None of them wanted to die along with Rui.


    If possible, they would very much like to live.


    That was why there was a sole Martial Master whose Martial Art was dedicated to snuffing out any hint of heat from Rui as soon as possible to ensure that he didn''t have the opportunity to take everybody with his forbidden Sun technique.


    Rui wasn''t sure how to even feel about that. On the one hand, he was ttered that they thought so highly of him as a threat that they needed to go through such measures to take him out without dying. On the other, he was not fond of the fact that they thought they could push him that far in the first ce. Also, this solution simply didn''t take into ount the possibility of him supercharging the Niflheim Domain instead of the Muspelheim Domain, but they didn''t need to know that. Unfortunately, before he could even ponder the mechanics of exactly how the woman summoned such as massive amount of water, several figure emerged from steam, surging towards him in hopes of killing him off-guard.


    s, their hopes were squashed when Rui effortlessly dodged and blocked all their attempts.


    WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH!


    He weaved through their attacks one after another, preparing for the right moment to take them down swiftly. This content ? N?v/elDr(a)m/a.Org.


    He didn''t have to prepare for too long.


    WHOOSH!


    Master L''s eyes widened as Rui disappeared in the face of her attack, yet before she could even move away from the inevitably ensuing attack, she choked where she stood.


    "Breathing Crucifix."


    Rui surged as a Yin-Yang Spear flew at her throat, looking to kill her where she stood.


    He froze before leaping away as fast as he could. Unfortunately, he wasn''t fast enough. VMMM!!!


    SPLAT!


    His eyes widened as a powerful beam of light sted a hole through the side of his shoulder, where his heart had been a moment ago. He had barely managed to evade death.


    VMMM!!!


    Theser burrowed into the ground in the distance, sting a hole that stretched deeper than even Rui''s vast senses could detect.


    His gaze shifted in the direction that the attack had emerged from.


    Master Brigsby grumbled at the missed shot, cursing Rui''s powerful senses as he disappeared from the spot.


    He could not remain in the same spot as before.


    After all, his Martial Path was Long-Range Tactical Support.


    An extremely rare supplementary Martial Path that allowed him to focus all his power on synergetically aiding other Martial Artists to defeat their enemy. He was usually brought in when they were facing an enemy that was extremely difficult to take down.


    The enemy alliance had pulled out all stops in order to kill Rui.


    Most other Martial Artist would have been petrified at that knowledge.


    not Rui.


    It merely brought a smile to his face.


    He looked forward to the rest of the fight.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2379: New Idea

    Chapter 2379: New Idea


    ?


    As much as Rui would have loved to heal his shoulder in peace, his enemies had no intentions of letting him.


    WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH


    He narrowly evaded a flurry of heavy blows that aimed at debilitating him, only to find himself fighting against Master L once more. Determined to exploit his injury, she sted him with arge onught of blows designed to force him to use his arm as much as possible.Text ? owned by N?velDrama.Org.


    Unfortunately for her, that wasn''t enough to push him to his limits.


    WHOOSH


    Her knuckle punch crashed into an empty image.


    A feint.


    She instantly turned around to find his jab speedily surging at her head, threatening to knock her out.


    VMMM!!!


    A beam of light pierced through him from the side.


    WHOOSH...


    Only for everybody to discover that Rui was gone.


    Disappeared.


    A moment of silence erupted on the battlefield as they frantically searched for him with their


    senses.


    They couldn''t find him.


    Until, of course, he sted one of them with a powerful blow to the head.


    BOOM!


    A powerful Yin-Yang Spear shook one of the offensive Master''s heads, causing him to copse where he stood.


    The others stiffened as they leaped away from the spot with shock.


    They had only barely sensed Rui the moment the attack had beenunched andnded.


    In order to skirt evasion and avoid the long-range sniper that had fixated on him, Rui had applied Greater Void Phantomind.


    The technique was no longer as powerful due to the fact that the misdirection factor of the technique was Master Uma''s and she had not been as powerfulpared to the other Masters in the field.


    If not for the powerful misdirection power that he possessed due to his Megamind state, he would have never been able to misdirect so many powerful Masters. However, as long as it worked one way or another, he was satisfied using it.


    The downside was that while he used the technique, he couldn''t use his systems of thought due to the fact that the technique was no longer as effective as it used to be in the Senior Realm. Thus, in order tond a powerful Yin-Yang Spear, he needed to undo the technique. Yet, due to this requirement, it also left him open to counters.


    Just as he surged with another Yin-Yang Spear, ready to knock another of his enemies out, he switched to his systems of thought at thest moment.


    Unfortunately for him, Master Brigsby had been waiting for that.


    VMMM!!!


    Rui barely evaded death yet again as he somersaulted away with an irritated expression, ring in the direction that the beams came from.


    If not for his instincts and intuitions, he would have been dead already.


    This was why it had been worth it to train his instincts and intuitions with experience for a few years inside the manifold.


    There were some things that thought simply could never do that only experience could.


    Just the tiniest shift in heaven and earth, the mildest moments before the attack wasunched, was enough to tip Rui off and allow him to leap away moments before theser was shot.


    Whoever was responsible for the beams of light was extremely able and powerful and was really the only person who hade close to killing Rui.


    That didn''t mean that the other Masters were ipetent, certainly not.


    BOOOM BOOOM BOOOM!


    The moment they were able to sense him again once his Greater Phantomind Void had been stripped away by his instinctive and reflexive dodge, they surged in, ready to demolish him.


    The quickest, of course, was Master L, who arrived at him in the blink of an eye, unloading a barrage of targeted attacks one after another.


    "Temporal Disharmony."


    She froze,pletely paralyzed by the overwhelming hypnosis cast by Rui''s extraordinary mind. Yet, even as he surged in to kill her as she stood, he knew that he wouldn''t be able to.


    And he was right.


    VMMM!!!


    His expression darkened as he managed to evade his opponent''s speedy light snipe once more, and his eyes turned in the direction the beams came from.


    He was unable to detect his opponent despite his extraordinary sense, which proved that his opponent was a highly effective stealth master.


    However, despite that, he was gaining a better understanding of what kind of Martial Artist this person was.


    This was a man who sought to aid a battle by operating effectively in critical moments. If there was a critical moment where his side was going to lose due to the death of one of hisrades, then he would intervene and prevent an undesirable oue from happening. Or if there was a crucial moment that could give his team victory, he would intervene at that moment and ensure that it happened.


    Hisbat style philosophy was high-impact singr interventions, as opposed to continuous attack spam, as most super-long-range offensive Martial Artists did. Just based on these inferences and the timing of his attacks Rui could further deduce exactly what kind of Martial Mind the man had.


    Most likely, the man inputted various empirical parameters into a system of thought that outputted two things: A level of significance and cruciality of a given circumstance and which side the projected oue benefited.


    If the former crossed a certain threshold, then he would act.


    And what his action would be was dependent on thetter.


    Thus, based on his actions, Rui was able to reverse engineer his Martial Mind. And once Rui understood it, he could adaptively evolve to it.


    He froze as an epiphany struck him.


    "What if I create a system of thought that allows me to reverse engineer Martial Minds and adaptively evolve against them in the most effective manner possible?"


    Despite being actively involved in a deadly battle against many powerful Martial Masters, his mind was consumed with an exciting idea that he wished he could have immediately jumped


    into!


    s, reality was not so kind.


    BOOOM BOOOM BOOOM!


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2380: A Third Way

    Chapter 2380: A Third Way


    ?


    His opponents rushed in, ready to st him with more attacks.


    Meanwhile, Rui simply leaped away, maintaining his distance as his powerful mind scrutinized his circumstances at extraordinary speed.


    Time slowed down in his eyes.


    ''They''re strong. But I would have won by now...''


    He would have won by now if not for the invisible Master constantly saving them from the brink of death or knockout.


    There had been six moments up until now where he was on the verge of eliminating one of them, only to be intercepted by a deadly beam of light. This allowed them to remain in the battle for longer than they would otherwise have been able to.


    He had tried ending it with Greater Phantomind Void, yet the skills of the marksman had exceeded his expectations. This invisible opponent had not only been able to apply his Martial Mind in the brief second that Rui appeared but had also been able to aim and shoot urately in that same timeframe.


    Rui had failed to adaptively evolve against his opponent in this particr attempt.


    "Oh well, I''ll seed next time."


    BOOOM BOOOM BOOOM!


    Rui leaped away as he evaded long-range attacks with ease. With the VOID algorithm and the SOUL System at y, the probability that the enemy Masters would be able tond a clean attack on him was almost nil.


    BAM BAM BAM!!!


    He blocked the powerful attack from the speedster, Master L, while evading thundering blows from Master Silik, who threw powerful overhead axe blows and dropkicks as though he wanted to bury him where he stood. The other close-range and mid-range Masters continued attacking him.


    Yet, none of them could even hurt him.


    Rui carefully chose the right response to each attack, evading some and blocking others after conducting a thorough cost-benefit analysis with the VOID algorithm and some of its lesser systems.


    Evading fast attacks took too much speed and energy. It also required high agility, which he simply didn''t possess, especially not in his current nerfed state. On top of that, these attacks were usually not that powerful and thus were ones that he could afford to take, especially when he could disperse the impact into the ground below him with Flux Earther.


    WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH!


    Against stronger attacks, though, he needed to dodge. They were starting to exceed his capability to tolerate. And although Flux Earther had grown stronger thanks to the Megamind, his body grew much weaker than that, limiting his blocking ability. Thus, he couldn''t take them head on.


    Dealing with each of these individually was effortless, but dealing with more than a dozen simultaneously was challenging for him.


    With the predictive and SOUL models on each of his enemies, he could foresee the future. Now he needed to rely on his experience and intellect to chart out a future where he didn''t die. Each decision needed to be the right decision.


    A single mistake would trigger a series of events that would get him killed.


    Anybody else in his position would falter and fall.


    Unfortunately for his opponents, however, he was not just anybody else.


    WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH


    He pirouetted through a barrage of heavy blows while his guard flew together to block the iing barrage of speedy attacks from Master L.


    POW POW POW!


    He flipped sideways, evading yet another powerful wind st all while still blocking each and every single attack that his agile opponent dealt him.


    His opponents'' frustrations only grew as time passed and they failed tond a single critical blow on him despite going all out to take him out. Forget even seeding, they had yet to find a single opening that they could exploit to gain a critical opportunity.


    He had no intention of giving it to them, for he knew that the moment he did, he would have to deal with the lethal sniper who was waiting for such critical moments where he could turn the tide in their favor.


    Rui wasn''t particrly happy with this particr strategy.


    It was purely defensive.


    It couldn''t win him the battle.


    In the long run, he would run out of stamina before his opponents.


    He needed to fulfill his n of adaptively evolving to the sniper''s Martial Mind before he could move to the offense.


    ''I need to deal with the light beams somehow. I can''t keep relying on my instincts to dodge them. It''s too dangerous,'' he realized.


    It was possible that he could rely on his systems of thought to predict when the light beams woulde so as to avoid them and sessfully kill his opponents, but the issue was that he only had a predictive model on the man from the passive pattern he had gained from the Angel of Lace at the start of the battle.This content ? N?v/elDr(a)m/a.Org.


    On top of that, for a predictive model to work, he needed to perceive his opponent. Without doing so, he could not rely on pattern recognition to predict the next move after analyzing a sequence of moves in a given pattern.


    And since he couldn''t perceive the man, the idea was bust.


    Which meant that he needed to scrap evasion as a solution to the light beams. If they had been sound projectiles, he would still have been willing to rely on evasion because they could be avoided even after they wereunched.


    But not light.


    The speed of light was the absolute highest in the entire universe. If he didn''t entirely get out


    of the way before the beam of light wasunched, then he would get hit.


    Thus, Rui decided against dealing with the beams of light through evasion.


    BOOM BOOM BOOM!


    Rui dodged a series of attacks with ease as he fell into thought about how he could deal with


    the beams of light.


    ''Could I tank them with Nemean Blossom?'' Rui narrowed his eyes.


    He could... but the issue was that he would have to undo Megamind entirely. And that left him vulnerable to the chaos of so much information that he could only deal with if he had the


    Megamind.


    Thetter was more suited to adaptively evolving to his current circumstances.


    Thus, he couldn''t evade and he couldn''t block.


    He needed to find a third way to deal with beams of light.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2381: Prove Your Worth

    Chapter 2381: Prove Your Worth


    ?


    "RARGH!" A heavyweight Master snarled as he threw a powerful blow against Rui.


    WHOOSH!


    Only for it to miss.


    "Urgh! Just die!"


    Rui grinned as he evaded several more blows, yet he braced himself when Master L surged towards him for yet another time, throwing a huge flurry of blows one after another to take him down.


    POW POW POW!


    She gritted her teeth with frustration as her blows, once again, seemed to melt away when they struck his body. The impact was absorbed and then redirected into the environment. Unfortunately, her emotions impeded her reactions.


    WHOOSH!N?velDrama.Org owns ? this.


    Her eyes widened as her blow crashed into yet another feint.


    VMMM!!!


    Rui tutted as he expectedly dodged the beam of light that stopped him from killing his opponent once and for all. He nced at the direction from which it hade with a pensive expression.


    He had already ruled out evasion and blocking.


    Now, he needed to get himself a new way to deal with the light.


    "Light..." A faint murmur escaped him as he fell into thought.


    He revisited the contents of his physics background as he recalled the properties andws governing light, methodically and systematically searching for a way to deal withsers. Thankfully, light was a well-understood concept.


    Unfortunately, it was well outside his field of expertise; thus, he only possessed a foundational understanding of it.


    And luckily, that was enough for him to hone in on a single possibility.


    ''...Wait, what if I redirect light instead of trying to evade or withstand it?'' A promising realization dawned on him.


    Redirecting light might sound difficult to ayman, but it was actually very much possible and very well-understood in the form of refraction. When light shifted from one medium to another, both its speed and its direction changed to varying degrees based on the optical density of the medium.


    It was this very principle by which spectacle lenses and magnifying lenses functioned.


    The rtionship between optical density and its impact on light was codified in aw of physics known as Snell''s Law.


    Normally, this wouldn''t be of much help, considering that he couldn''t spontaneously create a light-redirecting technique based on Snell''s Law. However, he didn''t need to since he had already created one in the past.


    Rui didn''t expect that the telescopic technique that he had created for Master Guren many years ago woulde to be handy in this battle, but he was d that he had created the technique nheless.


    All he needed to do was apply it inbat so that he could use it to negate his opponent''s light beam to the best of his abilities and finally kill his opponents unhindered.


    A wild grin appeared on his face as he began preparations, solving a few simple equations in his head to gain a rough but highly certain estimate for how much he needed to alter the refractive index and optical density of the air around him for it to then redirect the beam of light surging towards him.


    He breathed heavily, activating a breathing technique that manipted heaven within a ten- meter radius, altering density, pressure, and temperature to appropriate degrees. It wasn''t easy to leverage what little experience he had with the telescopic technique that he had created for Master Guren to know exactly how to get the desired optical density.


    Thankfully, he didn''t need to redirect the beams of light too much. Even a ten-percent deviation would be more than enough for them to miss his entire body without any issue.


    His heart started beating faster as the excitement in his face grew increasingly palpable the closer he got to finishing his preparations.


    And soon enough, the moment arrived.


    Master L surged in for a flurry of strikes for the umpteenth time, hoping to finally get a lucky critical hit.


    s, it was not to be.


    "Temporal Disharmony."


    This was the third time that she had been hit with that technique, and she had grown to feel secure in Master Brigsby''s intervention.


    WHOOSH


    Rui surged forward at what was a blindingly fast speed from her point of view, well beyond her ability to react to.


    And then it came.


    VMMM!!!


    This time Rui didn''t evade or block, he continued with the attack as intended as his Yin-Yang Spear surged towards her temple, threatening to kill her where she stood.


    What ensued shook Master Brigsby to his very core.


    WHOOOSH!!


    His eyes widened as he watched his beam of light suddenly change directions about ten meters away from Rui, just enough topletely miss him altogether!


    Simultaneously, Rui''s Yin-Yang Spear surged forward at high speeds, sting Master L''s skull with tremendous force.


    BOOOM!


    Never before had Rui felt such satisfaction in sting open a person''s head as he did in this instance.


    CRACK!


    The sheer force of the attack not only cracked her skull but busted open her flesh, causing a spurt of blood and intracranial fluid to stter over him.


    THUD


    Her corpse fell where it stood.


    Rui''s head slowly turned towards the remaining Masters eerily as a wave of pure bloodlust erupted from the very depths of his bloody eyes.


    Chills crawled across their skin as they realized that they had lost the protective specter of Master Brigsby tactical support, which happened to be the only thing that shielded them from death at the hands of the monster they were facing.


    A single remark escaped Rui.


    "Struggle as hard as you can."


    The bloody darkness in his eyes rumbled.


    "If you don''t push yourselves to your limits, you will never be able to push me to my limits."


    Shivers crawled down their spines as they felt themselves drowning in his Martial


    Embodiment.


    "And if you can''t push me to my limits..." A faint murmur escaped him. "Then what''s the


    point of keeping you alive?"


    They leaped away from him with terror in their eyes as the air boiled with peril.


    "Come..." Rui walked towards them, consumed by his battle lust. "I will help you guys prove


    your worth or have you die trying."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2382: Jaws of Death

    Chapter 2382: Jaws of Death


    ?


    The second that Rui found a way to adaptively evolve to Master Brigsby''s pesky tactical support, the other Masters experienced a deep terror in their bones.


    They felt a blood-curdling peril emerge from Rui that made them swallow.


    Nothing about him had changed before.


    Neither his power level nor his effectivebat strength.


    What changed was their own evaluation of him, which generated immense fear from the depths of their heart.


    The barrier of protection that was protecting them from defeat, Master Brigsby''s powerful tactical support, had now been stripped away, leaving them to deal with the monster before them unaided.


    It was like how humans could rx in the zoo with the knowledge that the reinforced ss was very much able to protect them from the powerful animals caged within.


    But god forbid that the lion ever managed to break the ss and step outside to confront the humans directly. They would experience a shackled fear emerge deep within them. The fear of dealing with the lion without protection was paralyzing and suffocating.


    Of course, the gap between Rui and his opponents was not asrge, and thus, they were not nearly as debilitated.


    Still, over the course of the battle, they gained a good understanding of why the Void Prince had gained as much notoriety as he did. He was truly a monster when it came to his ability to adaptively evolve against his opponents.


    Most of them were far superior to him physically, especially so in his weakened state, but he somehow was able to block their attacks despite the great disparity in power and evade their attacks despite the massive disparity in speed. On top of that, there was the overwhelmingly powerful hypnosis that allowed him to almost entirely cripple them in a single go.


    How were they supposed to deal with that without Master Brigsby''s immensely lethal and fast light attacks?


    WHOOSH!


    Rui raced towards them, startling them where they stood.


    Despite hisck of movement speed, following him was hard as he applied Phantom Step to the maximum, throwing them off with feints and fakes as well as misdirection that allowed him to close the gap with them without being able to avoid them.


    He was now on the offense.


    "Get away!" An offensive Master desperately eximed as heunched a flurry of blows in Rui''s direction, threatening to knock him out.


    Unfortunately for him, Rui didn''t slow down by even a beat.


    All it took were the slightest adjustments well ahead of time, and he was able to evade each blow like butter.


    The man may as well have tried to stop a ghost.


    WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH


    Rui surged in with a Yin-Yang Spear that flew towards his opponent''s torso.


    At the same time, a beam of light flew towards him, ready to bore a hole in his head.


    Unfortunately, it didn''t matter anymore.


    It might as well have been a cheap LEDser.


    It curved unnaturally as it entered his quasi-electromaic-redirection domain, deviating enough that by the time it reached him, it cleanly missed him.


    His own attack, however, hit straight and true.


    BOOOM!


    The powerful attack struck his sr plexus, which Rui had aimed for, making up for his weakened power.


    Suddenly, the man''s diaphragm was paralyzed in the attack, but things got worse.


    "Phantom Pain."


    BAM BAM BAM!!!


    Pain, unlike anything he had experienced.


    "AAAARGARHARA!!!" An agonious howl escaped him even as Rui battered him with tremendous blows one after another.


    The best part of Phantom Pain was that the overwhelming painpletely sabotaged any active techniques from being activated due to extraordinary pain that sent the brain into a scramble.


    There were simply too many openings for Rui to ignore.


    BOOOM!


    The man''s head rocked violently, causing the blunt force trauma to exceed a critical


    threshold.


    THUD


    He fell unconscious.


    Rui shifted as he directed his dark gaze to the rest of the Masters.


    VMMM VMMM VMMM!!!


    A smile cracked at the edge of his mouth as numerous light beams flew around him, unable to reach him.


    He could feel the frustration and desperation that Master Brigsby was demonstrating.


    Each beam was more than powerful enough to st a clean hole through him unimpeded in his current state. Their light-speed travel allowed the elder Master to ensure that dodging after the attack wasunched was impossible.


    It was no wonder that this man came to be a grade-twenty-nine Master.


    All it took him was a single moment, and he could down a Master where they stood pretty


    easily.


    Unfortunately for him, his opponent was none other than Rui Quarrier himself.


    He had bet that Rui wouldn''t be able to adaptively evolve to him, and it turned out that he had


    bet wrong.


    VMMM VMMM VMMM!


    Rui''s smile turned into a smug chuckle as theser attacks grew more frequent than they did before, yet they missed him further and further away than before.


    He was d that the Master appeared to be tilting to the highest degree. Instead of rationally epting that his greatest weapon had been defeated, he allowed himself to be thrown off his


    game by denial.


    That worked in Rui''s favor.


    "Time to hunt the rest of you buggers down, and then I''lle for you myself," Rui remarked as he chased after the remaining Masters all by himself.


    They grouped up, hoping thatbining their numbers would be able to throw the Void


    Prince off his delicate but powerful offense.


    Unfortunately for them, he had developed the Megamind technique precisely for these


    reasons.


    BOOOOM!!!All content is ? N0velDrama.Org.


    His eyes narrowed as he saw a scene that was familiar to him.


    Yet another tsunami of water surged towards him as the aquatic Master activated technique


    once more.


    Her goal was clear; she wanted to engage Rui for long enough to give the other Masters an opportunity to attack him off-guard.


    "Aquarequie-!"


    "Niflheim." Rui''s tone was calm as he summoned the realm of frost faster than the enormous


    wave of water surged toward him.


    FSSS...


    The distinct but unmistakable sign of water freezing rapidly hissed through the air.


    The iing Masters'' expressions grew dumbfounded as they realized that they weren''t


    going to catch him off-guard due to the water.


    They had wound up jumping straight into the jaws of death!


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2383: Met His Match

    Chapter 2383: Met His Match


    ?


    Master Brigsby would be lying if he said he wasn''t extremely agitated by the counter that Rui hade up with to negate his light beams.


    His light beams were an extremely powerful and lethal offense that was normally limited to the Sage Realm. He was perhaps the only Master who had harnessed light at all, let alone to such a degree. With that out of the way, he was essentially left toothless due to how much he had invested in these attacks.


    They were extraordinarily fast and could not be dodged after they wereunched. This principle had allowed him tond his attacks with an unprecedented level of sess. On top of that, by continuously refining the intensity of his light attacks, he could turn them into an instant-kill technique that killed any Master any time where they stood.


    He also normally distanced himself from his opponents, making it impossible to detect his attacks ahead of time.


    Yet, somehow, Rui''s senses in his strange state were powerful enough to detect the impending attacks ahead of time, allowing him to evade them before they were fired.


    However, despite the fact that he could evade them, what was actually even more shocking was that he could somehow manipte heaven and earth to redirect the trajectories of the light beams away from him.


    He did it through means that Master Brigsby didn''t even understand. Somehow, none of them could evene close to hitting him.


    Rui had somehow negated a technique and a paradigm of Master Brigsby''s offense that had served him well for almost a century.


    He tried adjusting angles, intensity, frequency, areaa but unfortunately, none of it yielded any valuable insights. Somehow, his greater weapon has been cleanly negated.


    This same extremely lethal and effective means ofbat had been what earned Master Brigsby his high grade and was what had allowed him to kill the fourth peak Master who had belonged to the Republic of Gorteau.


    He specialized in hunting monsters. Martial monsters.


    Unfortunately for him, he had met his match for the first time.


    VMMM!!! VMMM!!! VMMM!!!


    Heunched his zingly fast beams one after another with gritted teeth and bloodshot eyes, desperately trying to see if he couldnd a powerful hit on Rui. Yet, he not only didn''t


    seed, he also had no choice but to watch Rui run around taking down enemy Martial Masters one after another.Text ? owned by N?velDrama.Org.


    FSSS...


    The enormous tsunami that the enemy had thrown towards Rui had been frozen stiff into an enormous iceberg.


    Rui stared at the aquatic Master with an intrigued expression. "I see, so that''s how the technique works. You use the principles of physical chemistry."


    His keen senses had finally been able to discern from where exactly she was summoning such massive amounts of water. What she was doing was condensing massive amounts of moisture in the atmosphere by manipting heaven. She would recharge the atmosphere by transferring the dry air to distant water bodies from where it could extract even more water. She essentially set up a powerful and swift circting air current that extracted and delivered massive amounts of water that she could then use how she wanted.


    "Fascinating technique, but unfortunately..." A smile appeared on his face. "All but too easy to adaptively evolve to."


    She leaped away with a grave expression, hoping that Rui''s physical impediments would allow her to get away from him. Unfortunately, Rui had no intention of letting any of them escape.


    "I don''t need this as much anymore." He reduced Megamind to a third of its full power while simultaneously activating Hypertrophic Surge and Neo Godspeed at fifty percent.


    In an instant, his body mass reduced while his muscle mass increased, raising his strength and speed significantly. With the quasi-domain erected around him to redirect light, he didn''t need the senses of the Megamind technique to locate the inception of the light beams.


    He didn''t need to adaptively evolve to the group of Masters, because their threat had been crippled after he had formed predictive and SOUL models. All he needed to do was ensure that he defeated them.


    BOOOM BOOOM BOOOM!


    He evaded an onught of wind attacks that had suddenly been thrown at him by an enemy Master.


    "...That domain is the reason that Master Brigsby''s light beams are missing," one Master finally realized. "If we tear it apart, we might still be able to win. We have greater stamina than him collectively!"


    Instantly, hope lit up in the eyes of the enemy Masters as they activated breathing techniques andunched sound and wind attacks in hopes of dispelling his domain.


    "It''s toote."


    WHOOSH!


    Rui appeared before them at incredibly high speeds.


    BOOOM BOOOM BOOOM!


    One defensive Master grimaced with pain as Rui sted him with Yin-Yang Spears, one after another. It was actually impressive that he was able to withstand Yin-Yang Spears enhanced by Hypertrophic Surge to this degree, but grade-twenty-nine Masters were cut from a different cloth.


    Unfortunately, the cloth was not special enough.


    BOOOOOM!


    A thundering roundhouse kick slipped past his active defense, crashing into his jaw.


    CRACK!


    The sheer impact broke the lower half of his face.


    With the two models aiding Rui''s timing, he just needed to find the right moment and cement to achieve a result that he would not have been able to otherwise.


    BOOOM BOOOM BOOOM!!


    The other Masters never relented on air-based attacks, hoping to take him down after they restored Master Brigsby''s effectiveness.


    Unfortunately for them, they simply weren''t fast or strong enough.


    "Breathing Crucifix."


    Suddenly, they felt as though someone was choking them where they stood, instantly halting


    their attacks.


    BAM BAM!!!


    In a single smooth motion, Rui''s foot sted two Masters where they stood while they were choking under the effects of the hypnosis.


    "DIE!" An aggressive Master appeared behind him with a powerful dropkick, threatening to


    split his head open.


    WHOOSH!


    The attack crashed into an empty image, much to his surprise.


    BOOOM BOOOM BOOOM!


    Rui peppered him with blow after blow that ravaged his body. Even defensive Masters found


    it impossible to resist Rui for long after he adaptively evolved to them. An offensive Master


    had no hope of defending himself.


    THUD


    His unconscious body fell as Rui directed his gaze to the remaining Masters who had already begun retreating from the battlefield.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2384: Do Your Worst

    Chapter 2384: Do Your Worst


    ?


    What followed was a one-sided chase.


    One after another, each Master fell as they scrambled off in different directions. They weren''t able to get very far after they were reduced to asthmatic patients by his Breathing Crucifix, allowing them to be picked off one after another.


    By the time he was done, there were corpses littered everywhere on the battlefield.


    The battle had ended.


    "Tsk, that sneaky bastard is gone," Rui tutted with displeasure, panting with exhaustion. "Next time, I''ll kill him first. I wonder if he''ll show up with a counter to my counter of his light beams."


    Rui could think of a few.


    He wasn''t kind enough to pass them on.


    "Now then," Rui murmured as he returned his Megamind to a hundred percent and rose high up in the air. "What to do with those who weren''t able to escape?"


    In the brief time that he had reduced Megamind, half of the Masters had been freed by his grip and had escaped back to the alliance.


    The rest of them had barely managed to move or get out of the way, struggling like they were physically crippled.


    Their expressions grew grave when Ruinded in front of them.


    "...Twenty eight left," Rui calmly remarked. "Oh well, this is the price I pay for reducing my Megamind."


    His cold gaze swept across the Masters who struggled to move under the weight of his Martial Embodiment.


    VMMM!!!


    He activated his Yin-Yang Spear with a distasteful expression. "It''s a shame you guys were too weak to even make me adaptively evolve. Now I can''t even enjoy a satisfying victory."


    BOOOM BOOOM BOOOM!


    CRACK CRACK CRACK!


    With well-ced attacks, each Master died very quickly. While he had absolutely no sympathy for people who would kill him in cold blood if they could, he wasn''t sadistic by heart.


    Once the job was done, he heaved a sigh, deactivating the Metabody System.


    "I need to get back immediately."


    He had thoroughly exhausted his reserves during the battle. He needed to get back, lest he exhausted his Realms of power and was reduced to a Martial Squire.


    WHOOSH!


    He shot back to the Shionel Confederation as fast as he could as his thoughts fell back to the battle he had just participated in.


    He had been the sole participant from the Shionel Confederation and had single-handedly achieved a victory against a hundred Masters. While much of it had been due to a niche mechanism that perhaps only he could exploit in the whole wide world, he knew that he had just broken the Martial World with both his previous battles.


    A Master was not supposed to be able to defeat a hundred Masters. But because he had obtained abination of a cheat code and a supeputer, he could hack into the game and obtain victories that were supposed to be impossible even for grade-thirties.


    He knew that the impact of this battle would be great.


    On a political level, he had just proven that the Kandrian Empire had the power to beat back its opponents. The impact of the devastating losses that the Shionel Confederation had suffered in the previous battle was now minimized as the Kandrian Empire demonstrated that it was still in the game.


    Master-level battles mattered because Masters were the vanguard that focused on doing as much damage to their enemies as possible. Thus, when they were much weaker than the enemy Masters or, in this case, Master, it was like using a spear with a tip made out of ss against a shield made of reinforced steel.


    It didn''t matter what the spear''s body was made out of if the tip was too weak to puncture the enemy.


    In other words, Rui had demonstrated that he was an absolute menace not just strategically thanks to the breakthroughs that he provided, but also because he could solo Master-level battles all by himself.


    This was so significant that not only did it make up for the gap in numbers of Masters from both sides, it also ovepensated, firmly putting the Kandrian Empire as superior on the Master-level battlefield.


    On top of that, for Martial Art, it represented the breaching of a new territory of power within the Master Realm. The fact that he could aplish the feats that he did at his age and youth in the Master Realm was something that the Martial World would not be able to ignore to any


    degree.


    Of course, it was not the first time he had done this. He had done this in the past with each Realm that he had entered.


    However, it was an entirely different matter to aplish extraordinary feats as a Master than as a Senior. Masters were extremely powerful and influentialbatants in the world, second only to Sages.


    Thus, when one aplished the impossible as a Master, the entire world paid attention. This was especially so when he was the same person who could trigger mass breakthroughs.


    He was too bright for the world to overlook.


    Rui wasn''t sure what the consequences would be like but, at this point, the alliance would probably send a squad of Martial Sages purely for the sake of killing him.All content is ? N0velDrama.Org.


    If they could just kill him, they would be able to win the war in their perspective. So long as they didn''t have enough Sages to win an all out war without a pyrrhic victory, they would need to fight Master-level battles.


    And so long as they could kill Rui Quarrier Ss Kandria, they would be able to win Master- level battles.


    On top of that, as long as they could kill him, the breakthroughs would disappear, depriving the Kandrian Empire of a powerful carrot.


    Thus, Rui returned back to safety knowing that, from that day on, he was the most important


    target to kill.


    The alliance would do absolutely everything they could to bring harm to him.


    He had be the most wanted man in all of East Panama by his enemies. He knew that they


    would throw everything they could to kill him.


    Yet, the thought simply brought a smile to his face.


    "Do your worst."


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2385: Turning Tables

    Chapter 2385: Turning Tables


    ?


    The world had paid close attention to the Shionel Confederation in anticipation of the attack from the enemy alliance.


    Now that it had be an ally to the Kandrian Empire, there was no doubt that it would be attacked continuously. Many nations in and outside of East Panama had sent scouts and redirected long-range surveince to the battles that would undoubtedly ensue. Many private organizations, intelligence and others alike, had also made sure to keep an eye on the battle from afar.


    The intel that they had gained from the battle served as data to further analyze the war with even greater uracy, allowing affected parties to make better decisions regarding the war.


    In hindsight, every single party that had taken the effort to collect some intelligence of the Shionel-EPTA Battle II was absolutely d that they had.


    The oue was almost difficult to parse.


    The Shionel Confederation had deployed a single Master this time as well.


    The East Panamic Treaty Alliance had deployed one hundred.


    And yet, somehow, by means that not a single person understood, the Dawnbringer not also sessfully held off the hundred Masters of the alliance, but had managed to cull their numbers significantly and pushed back the rest.


    Inparison, the Sage-level battle had gone rather mundanely with a shsting some time before the alliance Sages had eventually retreated after learning of the shocking defeat of their own Masters at the hands of a single Master.


    The highest echelons of human civilization were thoroughly shocked by the oue of the Master-level battle.


    It was as though the Kandrian Empire had just gained an additional hundred Masters in its roster.


    Everybody was already aware that the Void Prince was a special Martial Artist, but none of them were able to parse or understand just how a single Martial Master could fight a hundred of his peers in battle and emerge victorious.


    Never before had the peak of a Realm appeared this much superior to those below!


    It sent ripples across the entire Martial World. While Rui''s mass breakthrough triggering ability was most impactful in the political sphere, his feat of oveing a hundred Masters shocked other Martial Artists in the higher Realms.


    Each and every one of them sought to know exactly how he had done it.


    Some spected that he used the forbidden technique that had gotten him exiled from the Panamic Martial Federation.


    Others said that he had received help.This content ? N?v/elDr(a)m/a.Org.


    However, the truth was that Martial Masters seemed to freeze in his vicinity inexplicably. Many organizations and nations spected that he had mastered some kind of poison technique that allowed him to paralyze his enemies easily and effortlessly.


    Regardless of how he had done it, what mattered most was that he had achieved it.


    This oue single-handedly changed the considerations that many undecided potential allies had when considering which side they ought to ally with.


    If the Void Prince alone was enough to reinforce the Shionel Confederation as far as the Master Realm went despite the best efforts of the East Panamic Treaty Alliance, then the Kandrian Empire could redirect their nearly two hundred Martial Masters elsewhere. That would allow them to hold back the deep strike enemy Masters from reaching anywhere near the hearnd of their respective empires.


    Nobody had been worried that the East Panamic Treaty Alliance would send all its Martial Sages in order to overwhelm Masters-that would simply escte the conflict into an all out Sage-level war that the alliance didn''t have the numbers to win without bleeding to death themselves.


    "...Unbelievable." Guildmaster Bradt read through the reports that his own Masters had supplied him with. "To think that he was this strong."


    The guildmaster was aware that Rui was strong, but he hadn''t had a clue that Rui''s intentions hadn''t been to merely stall, but to domineeringly win. Not so much as a single brick belonging to the Shionel Confederation had been harmed this time around.


    The previous results that Rui had achieved were tainted by the intervention of a brand-new Sage, but this battle was something aplished by Rui alone.


    He understood the political ramifications more than anybody. If there were a few undecided potential allies that had been leaning towards the Kandrian Empire, they might very well have chosen to go with the Kandrian Empire after the results of this battle.


    "The Emperor of Harmony has increased his credibility when ites to his promises of protection," Guildmaster Bradt realized. "His promises of protecting other nations is extremely realistic given that he has a quasi-Sage level asset protecting nations from Masters who are the ones that actually cause harm to targets."


    In other words, the credibility, trust, and reliability of the Kandrian Empire to be able to protect its allies had more or less bounced back after the fiasco of the previous battle. On top of that, considering that the Kandrian Empire was extremely generous and good-faith in its support and aid to the Shionel Confederation, not a single nation had any doubts that the Kandrian Empire would live up to its words.


    "Now these nations just need to grow the balls and ovee the instinctual fear and terror they have of making an enemy of three Sage-level powerhouses," Guildmaster Bradt mused to himself. "As long as the Void Prince does not die in battle, there is almost no chance that this will change. As long as he lives and continues performing as he has, and continues providing breakthroughs as he has... the Kandrian Empire might start winning this war." He didn''t see too many options for the enemy alliance despite the powerful stick that it wielded to bully the enemy allies with. The offer of protection and the credibility and trustworthiness of the promises of carrots were starting to snowball into a great advantage after the Kandrian Empire had sessfully bagged the Shionel Confederation as an ally.


    "Ah... I suppose there is one possibility that could lead to the defeat of the Kandrian Empire," the guildmaster shrewdly noted. "If their credibility and trust are undermined, then they will lose this war without a doubt, but..."


    He shook his head. "One would need something astronomical to undermine trust and credibility in the Kandrian Empire considering the track record of the Emperor of Harmony. I was silly for even considering this possibility."


    He blissfully marked it off as impossible before continuing to read about the aftermath of the battle.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2386 You Are The One

    2386 You Are The One


    "What¡­" A faint, chilling whisper escaped the Britannian Prime Minister. "What did you just say?"


    Master Brigsby''s lowered head didn''t seem to protect him from the wrath of the Britannian Prime Minister. Under ordinary circumstances, the former outranked thetter in a Martialocracy like the Britannian Empire, but the stresses of war had revealed the truth of the value heirarchy of Britannian Empire.


    The Britannian Empire needed the Prime Minister if it had any hope of winning the war against the Kandrian Empire. It needed him far more than it needed someone like Master Brigbsby.


    On top of that, while the Martial Supremacist in Master Brigsby hated being treated with scorn and contempt by a mere human, he was principled enough to ept that he deserved the me that the Britannian Prime Minister was throwing at him.


    "¡­I failed, prime minister," he met the cold fury in the prime minister''s eyes head-on. "I led one hundred Masters with the primary purpose of taking down the Void Prince. And I was forced to retreat after the mission had failed. That failure led to the death of twenty-eight Martial Masters."


    Prime Minister had been having a bad day.


    His migraines and other disorders had been getting worse recently.


    Yet, the news of the devastating fiasco of the most recent operation to kill the Void Prince made him feel worse.


    "How did you fail with one hundred as many Masters?" Prime Minister Edward growled.


    The edge in his voice was painful to the Master but more than understandable. "¡­He was extraordinary," Master Brigsby admitted with a grimace. "I don''t understand how he did it, but he increased the weight of his Martial Embodiment to the point that most Martial Masters can''t handle it. Ordinarily, Martial Embodiments are far too weak to affect Masters, such that even some of the strongest Martial Embodiments were entirely harmless. However¡­" All content is ? N0velDrama.Org.


    "I know," Prime Minister Edward''s scorn towards the Master reduced when he understood the situation that he was in. "The Void Prince''s Martial Mind is well known by now to be extremely powerful and burdening on the mind. I hear that lesser beings like myself are not even qualified to behold it without going brain-dead due to the sheer amount of information it releases that threatens to flood the brain with."


    That piece of information chaffed at his pride.


    He held great pride in his mind and his intellect.


    Out of all the humans in the Britannian Empire, he alone had earned the full trust and acknowledgment of Transcendent Emperor Arthur, gaining implicitly unparalleled authority in the oversight of the Britannian Empire.


    Yet, despite that, it was apparently not enough to withstand even simply ncing at the Void Prince.


    He shook his head, heaving a sigh.


    He was not fighting the Dawnbringer directly, it was irrational to be upset at not being able the personally match up up to him. "Master Brigsby¡­" Prime Minister Edward''s sharp gaze returned to him. "If I were to give you some time to strategize and train before redeploying you against him a second time. Would you be able to take him down?"


    The elder Master grimaced. "¡­Most likely not."


    It was painful to admit, but he didn''t want to be dishonest just because the truth hurt his pride.


    "¡­Is he truly that strong? Such that even you, who killed a grade thirty Master, is giving up?" Prime Minister Edward''s eyes widened with a hint of surprise. "¡­Had it been anybody else, I would have been confident that I would have been able to adaptively evolve faster and better, given time, but against him, that''s a losing battle." Master Brigsby shook his head. "His capacity to improvise and identify the absolute best choices to make in a given circumstance is unlike anything I have ever seen. He tried solutions against my light beams, discarded the ones that didn''t work, and then formed hisbat approach on the ones that did and took them down, denying me any ability to intervene."


    It was clear that while the Master deeply begrudged Rui, he had alsoe to gain a lot of respect for him. "You may leave." Prime Minister Edward closed his eyes, heaving a deep sigh.


    Soon enough, he was alone.


    His expression crumpled with rage and frustration at the most recent turn of events. He had been winning the war for allies for the first two months until half of all allies made their choice. It was also when they began dueling for the Shionel Confederation that things started going wrong.


    He truly didn''t expect the guildmaster to side with the Kandrian Empire. He had underestimated the man''s respect and regard for the Void Prince. On top of that, he had not expected the attack on the Shionel Confederation to not be aplete sess. And finally, he certainly hadn''t expected that the Dawnbringer would be able to emerge victorious against a hundred Martial Masters.


    He couldn''t help but feel that his rival, the Emperor of Harmony, had been blessed with superior chess pieces that were just far more potent than his own. For all his military and Martial strategic prowess, he had no clue what he was supposed to do to take down a Master who overcame a hundred of the strongest Masters that he had. If he chose to escte to sending only Martial Sages to fight him, then it would escte to the very peak very quickly.


    He would certainly win a battle of Martial Sages, but he would lose ny percent of the Sages of the alliance in battle in a horrific pyrrhic victory. Avoiding that was why the war for allies was even happening in the first ce. It left him with no obvious moves to y.


    If only he had some kind of trump card that could turn the war for allies back in his favor.


    BZZZT!


    He nced at the message on hisms artifact.


    His eyes lit up as he happened upon a single message from the n leaders of the Sekigahara Confederate.


    [we found him.]


    Far, far away on the ominous waters of the Great Nam Ocean stood a Martial Master.


    She was wounded and tired, panting heavily.


    The unconscious bodies of herrades floated about in rocky waters.


    Yet, she never once paid them any heed.


    No.


    Her eyes were fixed on a single being.


    A single man.


    She beheld the entire world in the profound depths of his ck eyes. His ck hair fluttered in the sea breeze while his dark, cold gaze pierced through her where she stood. She felt transparent.


    Naked.


    He could see everything.


    And everything he saw was his. She felt insignificantpared to the sheer weight of his being.


    She had only ever felt this helpless against one other Martial Master.


    "You¡­" A weak murmur escaped her. "You are the one."


    Her voice grew more certain and exhrating.


    "You are the only one."


    Her eyes lit up with ecstasy.


    "You must."


    Her voice grew delirious.


    "You must fight him."


    Thest of her strength escaped her as her vision blurred and her body buckled.


    A final whisper escaped her. "¡­A battle unlike anything the world has ever seen."


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2387 Holy Seed

    2387 Holy Seed


    In the halls of an enormous Virodabhasa Cathedral, several Cardinal Sages had gathered around a single round table.


    Normally, they would be out and about in the world, fulfilling their duties to the Theocracy. However, for once, almost all of them had gathered together to discuss an important matter that they had perhaps been avoiding.


    "Where is Sariawar?" a burly, masculine Sage among them asked with a stern expression. "I have no doubt that all Cardinal Sages received the message to partake in the meeting."


    The air grew a little perilous.


    "She said that she was unable to make time for it," a woman calmly informed him. "Unable to make time¡­?" he growled. "For a meeting as important as this? What is she doing?"


    "Currently, she is on retainer in the Shionel Confederation. There is a contract, I believe. In exchange for a floor in a dungeon in the nation, she remains on retainer in the Shionel Confederation and fights to protect it," another Cardinal Sage replied.


    "Shionel Confederation¡­?" The man frowned. "What the hell is she doing way over on the other side of the continent?"


    "Promulgating the ideas of the Virodabhasa Faith, of course."


    "¡­Still, it''s rather strange that she went all the way over to East Panama just for that." His eyes narrowed with suspicion. "Is there something in East Panama that we don''t know about?"


    The others stirred at his words.


    "Coincidentally, our intelligence reports show that the nation that she is residing in is the same nation harboring the agenda of this meeting."


    The air in the room grew a bit colder.


    "The Void Prince." The man closed his eyes. "To think that we''d be gathering for a mere Master."


    His words drew the disapproval of the others. "If you think that he''s merely a Master, you''re a fool, Melwin."


    Cardinal Sage Melwin snorted. "I don''t care that he''s the youngest Master in history. Someone was bound to break the record due to how much Martial Art has progressed since it was set."


    "Your ignorancees from the fact that you''ve spent the past five years in the Beast Domain," another Cardinal Sage remarked. "Let me give you a brief breakdown."


    As stubborn and hard-headed as Cardinal Sage Melwin was, not even he could maintain hisposure when they informed him about the truth. N?velDrama.Org owns ? this.


    "Triggering mass breakthroughs?" His eyes widened with shock. "And you''re telling me that he actually defeated a hundred Masters in battle?"


    "We have confirmed these pieces of information very thoroughly. I wouldn''t have called for this meeting if I hadn''t been absolutely certain that this was the truth," another woman calmly replied. "And that brings us to the agenda of this meeting."


    "¡­Senthil, you think¡­ he might be the one?" Sage Melwin''s eyes grew severe. "Out of all the seeds that we have been able to follow thus far, he is undoubtedly the mostpelling possibility," Cardinal Sage Senthil answered him with a measured tone. "Remember what the scriptures say. Lord Virodabhasa is a being with the power to raise and raze Martial Paths."


    "I see. His mass breakthrough-triggering ability does indeed satisfy the prior condition," one Cardinal Sage calmly analyzed. "However, what about razing Martial Paths?"


    "We haven''t been able to confirm this, but there is some intelligence in the past suggesting that the Void Prince has the ability to cripple Martial Artists through esoteric means that we have not been able to dissect," Cardinal Sage Senthil replied. "Additionally, he''s one of the strongest Masters in the Master Realm. Probably the strongest in East Panama. He reached that level of power rather rapidly after breaking through to the Master Realm rtive to how long it normally takes for Masters to reach the peak of their Realm. Of course, in his case, he started off at an extremely high level in the Master Realm to begin with, which reduced his path to the peak of the Realm significantly."


    One Cardinal Sage gasped. "To think¡­ to think that we may have found Lord Virodabhasa. After all these centuries!"


    The other Cardinal Sages stirred at her words.


    They felt the same way. Many promising seeds had shown up in the past, riling their hopes up.


    Yet, almost all of them had turned out to be duds.


    After getting their hopes up only to be crushed so many times over the centuries, the Cardinal Sages had learned to temper their expectations.


    They learned not to get their hopes up easily.


    They learned to maintain strict skepticism.


    This wasn''t the first time they had ever conducted a meeting on a promising seed, but it certainly was the first time that they had felt their hope rising in a century. They hade across a seed that was truly promising in every sense of the word.


    He was revolutionary.


    "Not only that, but he is also unfortunately a member of the Ss n. It is a shame that he''s subject to the heresy of those prophetants, but it also means that he bears faint blood ties with the Transcendent Prophet."


    That only increased the likelihood that he was the Antithesis that they were looking for.


    "Do not get carried away, De." Cardinal Sage Melwin shook his head with disapproval at the sight of some Sages treating the Void Prince as if he were already the Antithesis. "Remember our mission. Our mission is to find the Antithesis, which also entails knowing with certainty that he is the Antithesis. As of right now, based on the information you have given me, we do not know for certain whether he is the Antithesis. He has met a few conditions, admittedly. But to be the Antithesis is an almost impossibly demanding task. It remains to be seen whether he truly is the Antithesis or not."


    The others nodded, tempering their religious fervor.


    It was too early for any of them to be certain of whether they had finallye across the Antithesis fledgling.


    All they could do was keep watching and hope that he was. Each of them truly felt like they had waited long enough for the emergence of Lord Virodabhasa.


    "Our role is to simply spread our faith."


    They were not there to judge the Antithesis if he truly was the Antithesis. Mere Sages were not qualified to judge Lord Virodabhasa.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2388 A Bit Too Strong

    Chapter 2388 A Bit Too Strong


    "Isn''t his Highness a bit too strong these days?"


    In abat arena inside the training manifold in the Kandrian Empire, several Masters exited together upon thepletion of a long and extensive sparring session. Despite their exhaustion, their eyes were lit up with a wave of fresh news that had just reached their ears that very day. "I mean, don''t get me wrong," Master Ceeran continued. "He was always strong. But one hundred Masters?"


    It was truly shocking news to almost every Master who heard it. Master Ceeran had just returned from the G''ak''arkan Tribe in time to learn about the news upon the very day of his arrival.


    "It isn''t nearly as surprising as it is shocking," Master Zentra calmly remarked. "His Highness'' new technique was something truly special. Just based on the demonstration and testing that he conducted here, I knew that when he first debuted it on the battlefield, it would send ripples across East Panama."


    Several others nodded along in agreement.


    It was a truly shocking feat.


    Yet, they weren''t surprised that it was the young Master who had aplished it.


    "It''s a damn shame I wasn''t there to see it." Kane grinned with excitement. "I bet those alliance Masters didn''t even know what hit them. They must have been struggling to know how to deal with him in the first ce."


    "They have lost their two peak Masters. Thus, they no longer have any means of containing him inbat," Master Zentra pointed out. "Their hands are tied when ites to harming the Shionel Confederation unless they decide to rely on Sages, but that will lead to losses that neither side is able to tolerate."


    Things were looking up for the Kandrian Empire for the first time in months.


    If not for the blemish of the immense harm that the Kandrian Empire had been unable to protect the Shionel Confederation from, things would have been absolutely perfect.


    "Until they find a way to deal with the massive mental burden of his empowered Martial Mind, they will never be able to handle him," Master Vericital remarked knowingly. "They will essentially need to start treating him like a natural cmity and avoid him altogether."


    They would need to essentially create a battalion of Masters who were solely specialized for keeping Rui upied while having Masters who couldn''t handle his Martial Embodiment focus on assaulting the Shionel Confederation.


    However, none of them had failed to understand that this was exactly how Sages were treated in most battles.


    The biggest impediment to attacking a Sage-level nation was, of course, the Martial Sage. Conventional tactical schools of thought involved deploying a Sage to neutralize that Sage and simply keep them busy while Masters then attacked the nation. Rui was reaching a level of tactical dominance such that his enemies would need to treat him the same way they treated Sages. He was an extraordinary impediment that could only be curtailed by an equally extraordinary Martial Artist.


    "They can''t deploy Sages against him due to esction and Sage intervention, and any Martial Master they deploy cannot defeat him or even stall him for too long," Headmaster Aronianmented with aposed tone. "However, what worries me is that the alliance is too determined to kill him. On top of that, Rui is too nonchnt about the risks. In his pursuit of the Sage Realm and knowing who he is, he will push himself to the brink of death if it brings him closer to his goals. I only worry that he will go too far and push himself over the edge."


    Paternal care could be heard in his tone as he worried about a Master he had overseen since thetter was twelve years old.


    "Don''t worry, Rui is strong. On top of that, the Ss Matriarch will foresee any disaster like that ahead of time," Master Ceeran reassured him.


    "You''re expecting too much of her," Master Sera disapproved. "She is already at her limit as far as her prophetic work goes. She is indeed a Martial Sage, but she is already using her predictive power for the battles being fought across all of East Panama. On top of that, she is keeping tabs on the Britannian Empire''s prime minister as well as the enemy Sages. She cannot afford to spend every second looking after Rui. I have heard that the Emperor is making use of truly powerful Sage-level resources to increase her productivity in exchange for more longevity potions for her n."


    In other words, the Celestial Seer could not be counted on to do more than she already was doing; she was an overworked resource.


    In addition, the Eye of Prophecy was primarily abat-oriented technique; using it for things outside ofbat increased the consumption of energy and the liabilities. "I''m not concerned about enemy Sages getting their hands on Rui," Master Zentra replied. "We have entire coordinated departments whose sole purpose is to track enemy Martial Sages. Even without the Ss Matriarch, it should be impossible for a Martial Sage to kill Rui without us ever foreseeing it. What I''m concerned about is if the alliance gets their hands on a Master who is able to kill him. His Highness is acting carelessly and excessively riskily at the moment in hopes of elerating his enlightenment of self."


    That was a more grounded concern. N?velDrama.Org owns ? this.


    However, it was difficult to imagine any Master in East Panama possessing the power to kill Rui.


    "His Martial Path and Art are too potent," Maser Ceeran reassured them. "They''re probably the highest grade that any Path has ever been. I don''t think even the Ss n''s specialty is a match for his Martial Art. In fact, now that I think of it, has there ever been any Martial Artist who could rival him when he reached the peak of a Realm?"


    It was a pertinent argument, one that all of the others found quite convincing.


    Only one person seemed to have a different thought in mind.


    "I can think of one." Kane''s surprising words drew their attention.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2389 Distressed Soul

    Chapter 2389 Distressed Soul


    Property ? N?velDrama.Org.


    Emperor Rael had been having a good day. In fact, it was not an exaggeration to say that this was the best day that he had had in the past two months. In contrast to his normally serious demeanor, his expression lit up with an uncharacteristic smug smirk when he read the real-time reports he got from multiple intelligence sources. "I did not expect you to be able to neutralize so many Martial Masters by yourself." His otherwiseposed tone betrayed a hint of pride. "Revolutionary is an understatement. The Martial Union and the Panamic Martial Federation may very well have to redefine the tiering system just to amodate the power that you havee to gain. Perhaps all grade-thirty Martial Masters will need to be able to aplish such a feat."


    The projection of Rui sitting across from him shrugged. "It''s really not that big a deal. It actually feels like cheating to a certain extent. If it hadn''t been for the information overload, I wouldn''t have been able to beat so many Martial Masters by myself."


    Emperor Rael shook his head. "Neither the political sphere nor the Martial World cares about such technicalities. Results are results, and power is power. Your power is giving the Kandrian Empire a lot of breathing room and has made my job of earning the trust of potential undecided allies easier. Now, I just need to point out that we are effectively no longer at a numeric disadvantage."


    "Good to know," Rui replied with an uninterested tone. "That being said, not going through the avable intel before jumping into battle was a deeply irresponsible and dangerous thing to do." Emperor Rael narrowed his eyes. "You could have died."


    "I was looking forward to approaching just one step away from it, so close enough."


    "I''m aware of what you''re trying to do." Emperor Rael gazed at him knowingly. "I don''t know who told you about it, but you are trying to reach the Sage Realm through an extremely risky and dangerous route that is known to increase the probability of a breakthrough eventually."


    "Well, you said it yourself," Rui replied calmly. "It increases the probability of breaking through."


    "Yes, but it exponentially increases the probability of death." The voice of the Emperor of Harmony was stern. "There is no need to¡ª"


    "Yes, there is." Rui''s tone grew stronger as he sharpened his eyes. "If I don''t do this, I will die before I reach the Sage Realm. If I don''t put my life on the line with everything I have, then I will never learn who I am. I don''t wish to spend my life as a lost coward who was too afraid to do what it took to gain enlightenment of self."


    There was an edge to his voice that he was unable to hide.


    Emperor Rael carefully studied the projection of his son, analyzing his bodynguage and demeanor to ascertain what was wrong.


    He sensed a deep and deste desperation.


    The same desperation he had sensed when he had spoken to Rui for the first time since waking up after the Divine Doctor had healed him.


    He didn''t understand.


    Most people did not harbor such emotion for the philosophical question of who they were. Even Masters aspiring to reach the Sage Realm simply regarded it as a criterion that they needed to fulfill. Many of them were desperate to achieve enlightenment of self because they were desperate to reach the Sage Realm.


    However, it was almost the reverse for his son.


    Rui appeared to be desperate to reach the Sage Realm in order to learn who he was. Of course, Emperor Rael knew that his son harbored great Martial ambition, Project Water, for which he yearned for the Sage Realm more than anything. Yet when he looked at Rui, he could sense a buried hint of distress at the criteria of knowing who he was. Just what had happened to him in the Beast Domain for the young man to be so desperate to find the answer to a question that nobody else innately cared about?


    Emperor Rael didn''t know. To that day, Rui refused to confide in him the truth about what had happened in his voyage to find the Beast Domain. He heaved a sigh. "I''m not scolding you. I''m just saying that you shouldn''t take risks that are unnecessary. You could have read up on the intelligence and then entered the fight; you would have still been undergoing the same dangers in battle."


    Rui shook his head. "It would reduce the probability that I would be pushed to my limits. I am already finding it difficult to feel threatened; being prepared ahead of time will make it impossible for me to be challenged."


    Normally, such a statement would almost certainly be out of arrogance, but in Rui''s case, it was entirely true. He became capable of even greater things when prepared ahead of time.


    "¡­Alright, if you are aware of all the risks and still choose to go down this path, then I won''t stop you." Emperor Rael heaved an exasperated sigh. "I suppose I will have to form even greater contingencies for Kandria in this war if you happen to die due to your recklessness."


    Rui smiled wryly. "I know you well enough to know that you have already made those ns from the very start. Hell, I wouldn''t be surprised if you assumed I was always going to die at some point."


    His father didn''t deny his usations.


    "How long is the war going tost?" Rui asked with a hint of interest. "I need to know how much longer I have before the ease of fighting Masters drops."


    "Only forty percent of the undecided potential allies remain," his father calmly informed him. "We are in the final stretch. Up till this point, the alliance has failed to acquire the necessary Martial Sages needed to defeat us. On top of that, we have gained a resurgence, making our outlook more optimistic."


    "Forty percent¡­" Rui muttered. "That''s still enough for the war to go either way."


    "Yes, I cannot heave a sigh of relief and rx now." Emperor Rael nodded. "However, I believe that we will win. I do not foresee our defeat unless something absolutely massive happens that throws all my ns for a toss. But¡­"


    He shook his head. "With your grandmother keeping tabs on the sole person capable of doing something like that, it is highly unlikely."


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2390 Just Who?

    Chapter 2390 Just Who?


    The ripples of Rui''s feat of dominance spread beyond just East Panama.


    It spread to all corners of human civilization.


    In some sense, it was the straw that broke the camel''s back.


    This, along with the revtion of his ability to trigger mass breakthroughs, raised his profile to a level that had perhaps never been reached by any Martial Master in history. In fact, there were even Sages that had yet to breach the level of fame and notoriety that Rui had reached. All content is ? N0velDrama.Org.


    Countless parties, nations, organizations, and individuals were deeply interested in the young Master''s Martial Art that allowed for miracles.


    They wanted it.


    They wanted it at all costs.


    The sheer amount of power across human civilization shifted in order to obtain the miracles that the Void Prince had disyed, which was far beyond what any Master in the world could resist.


    If not for the powerful and formidable protection of the Kandrian Empire, Rui would have undoubtedly been kidnapped by now. However, the protection of twenty-four Sages, two hundred Martial Masters, and hundreds of apocalypse-ss was undoubtedly very powerful. No matter how greedy the world was for Rui''s power, nobody wanted to face the vengeance of the Kandrian Empire as it was now. "It is only a matter of time before Edward weaponizes this," Emperor Rael narrowed his eyes.


    The most effective way to do this was promising to capture Rui alive, extracting the secret of triggering mass breakthroughs, the secret of crippling many powerful Masters all at once, the secret of defeating a hundred Masters, the secret of the Hungry Pain upgrade to the Martial Body and whatever other secret that the Void Prince was hiding.


    Over the years, many reasons for lusting for Dawnbringer''s martial art had umted.


    If Prime Minister Edward was able to harness these and turn them into Martial capital support, then things could be even tougher for the Kandrian Empire.


    However, it was unlikely because everybody knew without a doubt that the Prime Minister wasn''t interested in capturing the Void Prince.


    He wanted to kill him.


    "His greatest w has always been setting the most difficult andplete victories and sesses as his objective."


    When he sought to destroy the Kandrian Empire, he truly meant it. He wasn''t satisfied with crippling it or even dominating it; he wanted to wipe out the polity as an entity from existence.


    It didn''t help that he was unable to maintain the most rational outlook on it due to his history with Emperor Rael.


    He wanted aplete and absolute victory.


    "Then it begs the question, how will he try to kill my son?"


    It was a question that Emperor Rael found himself asking a lot ever since the secret of the origin of the breakthrough ability was disclosed to the world.


    Ever since that day, there had been a target on Rui''s back, which the prime minister was most certainly very eager to sessfully get a shot on. One thing that the Emperor of Harmony had been doing was looking for Rui''s safety ever since then, especially since he seemed unwilling to look out for his own safety.


    Ever since that day, there had been a target on Rui''s back, which the prime minister was most certainly very eager to sessfully get a shot on. One thing that the Emperor of Harmony had been doing was looking for Rui''s safety ever since then, especially since he seemed unwilling to look out for his own safety.


    However, as far as he could tell, there weren''t too many ways that the Prime Minister could hurt his son.


    For one, he could go for the good old brute force route where he simply upped the bounty on his Rui''s head by an even greater margin, a bounty that was absolutely unprecedented for any Martial Master.


    This way, he could draw out Master-level and perhaps even some truly legendary Sage-level assassins and hope that one of them could seed.


    The sheer amount of money needed to get one of them to make an eternal enemy of the Kandrian Empire just by epting themission was going to be extremely expensive for even the East Panamic Treaty Alliance. But as long as they were willing to pay the price, they could make it work, even if it would most certainly take more time than it would otherwise.


    "There are other ways as well," Emperor Rael skimmed through some reports that detailed the rising demand for Rui''s gifts in many powerful circles around the Panama Continent. "If Edward was willing to make heavy concessions, he might be able to gather immense support for his war effort against the Kandrian Empire and against Rui in exchange for capturing him alive and then extracting his secrets."


    This was another possibility that Emperor Rael needed to guard against.


    "The most crude method would be trying to kill Rui with his own Sages, but Edward is too smart not to know that such a strategy is bound to fail against in general, but also against me in general."


    Not only did the Kandrian Empire devote an immense amount of resources to tracking the general locations and preupations of all their Martial Sages ahead of time, but he also had the Ss n.


    "In other words, he needs something that doesn''t consume too much time and resources, time, and isn''t too unlikely to ever pan out."


    All the aforementioned methods werecking one or the other. "¡­The only alternative is to find a Master with the power to kill my son, but that is the least likely." Emperor Rael was keeping track of all active Martial Masters that Prime Minister Edward could possibly find through any and all channels that he could think about. There certainly were plenty of grade-thirty Masters outside East Panama. However, it was very unlikely that they woulde all the way to East Panama to ept amission against Rui inbat.


    Grade-thirty Masters had the highest likelihood of breaking through to the Sage Realm. If they died at the hands of an extraordinarily powerful Master, more than just a Master died. A Sage candidate died with them.


    This was especially the case when the news about Rui''s absurdly powerful forbidden technique that was undoubtedly powerful enough to kill any Master if he did to activate it on the verge of death to take his opponent down with him. No known peak Master would ever take the risk.


    Thus, the question remained.


    "Who could possibly defeat Rui?"


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2391: A New Ally

    Chapter 2391: A New Ally


    ?


    "I look forward to this alliance, Emperor Rael," said an elderly man garbed in an ostentatious aristocratic robe and wearing a crown. "I look forward with great anticipation to the mutual prosperity of the nation of Selizantar and the Kandrian Empire for many years toe. May the great Almighty bless both ournds and our people."


    Opposite to him was a projection of a smiling Emperor Rael.


    "I share your sentiment, King Aramon. I, too, believe in the immense potential of this powerful and far-reaching alliance. I am certain that the future for both our nations is bright."


    On the table were two stacks of sheets-copies of the treaty between both nations, each bearing the signatures of the two rulers. One for the Kandrian Empire and one for its most recent ally, the Selizantar Kingdom, a Sage-level nation and highly coveted agricultural powerhouse.


    "And now that we have formally entered into an arrangement with the Kandrian Empire..." King Aramon began with a pointed tone. "I presume that we can expect reinforcements very soon? Our treaty specifies a certain brief timeframe after the signing of the contract within which they need to be here to protect our nation from the wrath of the enemy alliance." Emperor Rael smiled. "They have just arrived, ording to my reports. Three Martial Sages and twenty-five Martial Masters, including the one and only Harbinger, one of the most powerful Masters that the Kandrian Empire possesses."


    "Hohoho, to think that you sent them ahead of time to arrive at Selizantar just in time for the formal signing of our treaties." King Aramonughed with relief. "Your diligence is reassuring."


    "Rest assured that the nation of Selizantar is in good protection," Emperor Rael informed him. "Once the war is over, we will begin the roll-out of all our promises andmitments, as the contract specifies. As much as I''d love to do it amidst the war, doing so would actually cause a deprivation of resources that could lead to our defeat. Thus, I hope you understand and will be patient."


    Specifically, Rui wouldn''t be able to participate in the war if he had to run around East Panama, nation after nation, triggering breakthroughs. It also opened him up to attacks en route.


    Thus, the fulfillment of the promise of breakthroughs was something that had to wait.


    King Aramon directed a knowing look at Emperor Rael. "If not for the fact that you have an extraordinary track record of credibility and trustworthiness, I would have never agreed to an agreement so rife with opportunities to exploit us. I hope that you will do well with us once the war is over."


    Emperor Rael''s expression grew serious. "I swear on the great name of Kandria that I will do right by not just the nation of Selizantar but all our allies. That is my blood oath and pact."


    King Aramon nodded, apparently satisfied. "I look forward to our eventual victory against the East Panamic Treaty Alliance."


    "It is all but inevitable, King Aramon." Emperor Rael''s tone was confident and certain.


    Soon enough, the call ended, leaving King Aramon in his thoughts.


    He didn''t distrust the Kandrian Empire, but he wasn''t entirelyfortable with an agreement that was as one-sided as the one that he had just signed with the Kandrian Empire. Until the Kandrian Empire won the war, the nation of Selizantar was obligated to provide military aid to protect the Kandrian Empire whenever the Emperor of Harmony asked for it. Only afterplete victory was achieved would the Kandrian Empire finally focus all its efforts on fulfilling its many tall promises.


    It was truly absurd when one zoomed out and looked at not only how one-sided the agreements were but also how many nations had agreed to them, giving the Kandrian Empire so much potential to exploit and deceive their new allies.


    "...However, the Emperor of Harmony will not destroy the immacte track record and reputation that he has built over three centuries." King Aramon shook his head. "Thus, unless we are given some reason to disregard that, such as a deep blemish on that track record, there is no doubt whatsoever that the Emperor of Harmony will adhere to the treaty that we have signed right down to the very T. Just as he did by sending reinforcements with perfect timing."


    He nced at hisms device that detailed a brief report on the carriages belonging to both the Kandrian Empire and the Martial Union. He immediately departed the King''s Citadel, escorted by four Masters.


    It wasn''t too long before he found himself before the Martial reinforcements from the Martial Union.


    "As the King of Selizantar, I wee you to our nation," he began with a courteous smile. "I am relieved and grateful for your aid to Selizantar. We truly need all the Martial power we can get to protect ourselves from the wrath of the East Panamic Treaty Alliance."


    "It is our obligation and duty, Your Majesty." The Flickering Elder smiled adorably. "We will work hard to protect this beautiful nation of yours."


    King Aramon was momentarily taken aback by the sight of the small girl who stood between two other Sages.


    She couldn''t be more than eight years old.


    Yet, he could sense a power that could belong to a Martial Sage.


    This was the famed Flickering Elder, the co-leader and co-founder of the Lightning Sect. Beside her was a lethargic man who looked like he wanted nothing more than to catch some sleep and a drunk woman who reeked of alcohol.


    He was not exactly sure what to make of these... interesting Sages.


    Behind them were twenty-five more conventional Martial Masters, led by a short-haired woman with a devious smile and a dark heart.


    The Harbinger.


    The sight of her reassured King Aramon.This content ? N?v/elDr(a)m/a.Org.


    The Sage-level battles were not absolutely deadly serious. The enemy Sages mostly focused on drawing the defending Sages away from the home nation. Of course, they also fought to kill them after they were drawn away, but the main goal was to draw them away. It was the Masters who would actually protect the borders of the nation from the enemy Masters that tried to sneak in.


    Thus, the presence of one of the strongest Masters in all of East Panama meant that his nation was certainly safe.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2392 Incoming

    Chapter 2392 Iing


    "I''m quite relieved to have your presence, esteemed Master Sera," King Aramon said as he regarded her with respect. "You, along with Your Sagehoods, certainly allow me to sleep easily, knowing that my nation is well-protected."


    "As Her Sagehood said, Your Majesty, we are simply doing our duty to an ally that helped us when we needed it the most. I can speak on behalf of the entire Martial Union when I say that we will do right by you," Master Sera replied graciously. This content ? N?v/elDr(a)m/a.Org.


    King Aramon nodded, pleased. "Allow me to introduce you to our very own native Martial Sage, Sage Ne Belmenta, as well as themander of our Master-level battalion, Master Sinkol."


    A female Sage and male Master stepped forward from behind him, greeting the Kandrian Martial Artists with the standard Martial greeting, the joining of a fist into a palm.


    The Kandrian Martial Artists returned the greeting as both sides sized each other up. It became very clear very quickly that the Kandrian Martial Artists were simply cut from a different cloth.


    For one, their Martial Bodies were simply much superior.


    The Divine Doctor had long worked his magic on every single Martial Artist of the Upper Realms, giving them the strongest Martial Bodies of any Sage-level nation in all of human civilization.


    Additionally, the bounties of the Beast Domain had greatly increased the supply of potions. These potions had further empowered their Martial Bodies.


    This was the power of Sage-level powerhouses. It was a level of wealth and ess to opportunities to grow talents that not even Sage-level nations couldpare to. This was especially true in the Kandrian Empire.


    On the one hand, the Selizantaran Martial Artists were jealous and envious of their Kandrian counterparts. On the other hand, they were d the Kandrian Martial Artists lived up to their lofty reputation, for it meant that the likelihood that they would repel attacks was much greater.


    "Now then, why don''t we go inside¡ª" King Aramon paused as hisms artifact began aggressively beeping.


    His expression grew somber. "¡­Our intelligence force has just picked up a dispatch of Martial Artists moving from the Sekigahara Confederate straightforwardly in the direction of the Selizantar Kingdom. Estimated time for arrival is a few hours. We¡­ will soon be under attack."


    The air tingled with a hint of tension and severity as the Selizantar Kingdom was due to experience war for the first time in more than a century.


    Clearly, the enemy alliance under the leadership of the Britannian Prime Minister had a phenomenal intelligencework that allowed them to learn of an alliance between their enemies the very moment that it urred or perhaps even before considering how quickly the attackmenced.


    King Aramon heaved a deep sigh as he prepared himself psychologically. He was not a ruler ustomed to war. Even the Selizantaran Martial Artists were tense.


    The Kandrian Martial Artists, on the other hand, didn''t so much as flinch at the news of an impending attack.


    Over the past three to four months since the Sekigahara-Kandria Battle, the Kandrian Martial Artists had thoroughly gotten ustomed to routinerge-scale battles and protecting Kandria''s allies from the attacks of the enemy alliance.


    "That is indeed unfortunate, even if very expected, news to hear, Your Majesty," the Flickering Elder remarked. "Please transmit all intel you have on the uing attack and let us directly coordinate with your Martial Artists and take the matter regarding security into our own hands. You will only slow us down and produce a lesser result if you try managing matters yourself."


    "That is indeed unfortunate, even if very expected, news to hear, Your Majesty," the Flickering Elder remarked. "Please transmit all intel you have on the uing attack and let us directly coordinate with your Martial Artists and take the matter regarding security into our own hands. You will only slow us down and produce a lesser result if you try managing matters yourself."


    King Aramon closed his eyes as his expression grew severe. "¡­Fine. Protect our nation and our people from the barbarians of the enemy alliance. Meanwhile, I will initiate an emergency evacuation."


    "You have our word, Your Majesty."


    Soon enough, the Kandrian and SelizantaranMasters got together, forming a simple and cohesive interception and defense n that was based on a temte that the Emperor of Harmony himself, using his deep military strategy background and foundation, had created for precisely these circumstances.


    This was because he couldn''t be personally involved in every single fight.


    He had created a system of thought that would allow Kandrian Martial Artists to make the most optimal military strategy after taking into ount variables such as border integrity, extra-territorial infrastructure, and domestic structural integrity to ensure that they were able to estimate the most optimal distance from the Selizantar Kingdom to have the battle.


    "The Selizantar Kingdom is an agricultural-rich country, but that also makes it extremely sensitive to environmental disruptions, Your Sagehoods," a Kandrian tactician informed the Sages and Masters. "Thus, you need to adjust your estimations and intercept the enemy Martial Sages even further away from the kingdom than you otherwise would."


    "So we would need to intercept them several thousand kilometers even further away from the Selizantar Kingdom?" the Sloth Sagezily asked. "Hm, that sounds tiring."


    "Not just Your Sagehoods but also Your Masteries." The tactician turned to Master Sera. "You cannot intercept them merely a thousand kilometers away. Only if it''s further away will we be able to perfectly protect the Selizantar Kingdom."


    A lot of thought went into the battle and military strategy as more and more intelligence updates came into the picture, allowing them to refine their strategy. The Selizantar and Kandrian Martial Artists were able toe up with a n that ensured that there wouldn''t be any friction between the two sides due to unfamiliarity. In the first ce, most Martial battles did not involve a lot of coordination with each other. Thus, there wasn''t much room for error.


    The one question that all of them were wondering was who the enemy alliance was going to send to match the Harbinger. She had already killed a peak-grade Master in the war previously and, with the death of the Convergence, the enemy alliance didn''t have any more known peak-grade Masters to deploy.


    If she wasn''t contained, she would cause the enemies to suffer grave losses with her lethal Martial Art.


    Thus, each of them couldn''t help but be curious about who could possibly be strong enough to fight her. "This should be interesting." Master Sera smiled precociously.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2393 For Her

    Chapter 2393 For Her


    Meanwhile, the entirety of the Kingdom of Selizantar had already entered a state of emergency. The farmers of the nation fell into shock and panic as the very concept of evacuating for an iing attack was foreign to them. As one of thergest traders of agricultural products, they were ustomed to an entirely peaceful life. It had taken King Aramon quite some time to gather everybody and have them get to the shelters willingly. There were even riots and mass hysteria that had urred as a result of the iing attacks. However, that was a problem for the king and Martial Artists of the Lower Realms; the Masters and Sages were far too busy dealing with the preparations for the attack.


    The tacticians of both nations didn''t have much time to refine their strategy. Thus, they ensured that the strategicplexity of the battle was as simplified as possible. Meanwhile, the intelligence wing of the Selizantar Kingdom tried to ascertain the identities of the various Martial Artists that the enemy had deployed to destroy the Selizantar Kingdom. Property ? N?velDrama.Org.


    "We are able to identify the Martial Sages rather easily," the chief of intelligence informed the preparing Martial Artists. "They are led by Sage Senpu of the Sekigahara Confederate andprised of some of the lesser Sages of the Britannian Empire and the Republic of Gorteau."


    The Flickering Elder snorted. "That is the bastard that Kole fought off. I don''t think I will have any problem dealing with him at all. I''m d that we''re not dealing with a peak Sage."


    The Selizantaran intel chief nodded. "We have coordinated with the Kandrian Empire''s joint intelligence division in order to identify the iing Martial Masters, but we have not been entirely sessful."


    There were many more Martial Masters than Sages, and thus it was hard to keep track of each individual Masterpared to keeping track of Sages. Only by keeping track of each Sage to the best of their ability could they possibly know which Sages were being deployed against them.


    "We are unable to identify any known grade-twenty-nine Martial Master among the Masters that we are certain are in the iing Martial force."


    Master Sera frowned at his words.


    There wasn''t a single known grade twenty-nine in the iing Master-level force.


    "Not just that," the chief of intelligence continued. "Coordinating with the joint Kandrian intelligence wing reveals that all of the grade-twenty-nine Martial Masters are confirmed to be present elsewhere. Thus, we can confidently say that there are no known grade-twenty-nine Masters in the iing Martial force."


    This was even more strange to everybody.


    It wasn''t as though the Kandrian Empire had worked particrly hard to hide where Master Sera was being deployed. Then why in the world didn''t they send somebody who could at least tangle with her for limited periods of time?


    What was the point of sending a Master-level force without someone powerful enough to fight one led by the Harbinger?


    None of them were able to understand.


    Without at least two grade-twenty-nine Masters, Master Sera would mop up the enemy Martial Masters, having half of themmit suicide while killing the rest with her own two hands.


    Yet, as bizarre as this revtion was, the fact of the matter was that a battle was iing very soon, and they didn''t have all the time in the world. They needed to get ready and make sure that they were fully equipped to deal with the iing enemy battalion. As the attack drew closer and closer, the Kandrian and Selizantaran Martial Artists made the final preparations. They donned their Martial attires and consumed rejuvenation potions to ensure that they were at their peak.


    The air tingled.


    It tingled with tension as the Martial Artists silently prepared themselves for a grueling battle.


    And soon enough, the moment came.


    "It''s time," the Flickering Elder dered. "We need to head out immediately to make sure that we intercept them far away from the boundary where our battle would harm the nation in one way or another. Let''s go!"


    WHOOSH!


    In the blink of an eye, four Martial Sages and thirty-five Martial Masters led by the Harbinger shot out of the Selizantar Kingdom at remarkably high speeds.


    In the blink of an eye, the Sages left the Masters in the dust, shooting forward at blinding speeds. The Masters focused on preserving their stamina.


    There was no point in traveling at max speed only to be gasping for air by the time the enemy arrived.


    RUMBLE¡­


    The tension in the air grew as they felt the energy released by the Sage-level battle. It meant that the enemy Master-level force had already split off from enemy Sages and was rapidly heading towards them.


    Their nerves prickled as the air grew heavier.


    With each passing second, the wait grew tenser and tenser.


    Time seemed to slow down in their senses.


    And then, they arrived.


    "There they are," Master Sera dered as she spotted a group of Masters surging towards them. "It''s time."


    Her eyes sharpened fiercely. "Let''s show them our power."


    BADUMP!!!


    In the blink of an eye, seventy-five Hearts and Minds bloomed on the battlefield.


    That very instant, many Martial Embodiments erupted in full power, painting themselves across heaven and earth. The very world seemed to serve as a nk canvas for the collective tapestry that their Martial Minds painted.


    And that was when it appeared.


    A tremendous Martial Embodiment more powerful than almost any other surged forth.


    A Martial Embodiment that subsumed all others.


    "¡­A ck mirror?" Her eyes widened. "No¡­"


    Not just any mirror.


    A fractal mirror.


    One with depths that not even their Martial Minds could fathom.


    The dark fractal mirror consumed all other Martial Embodiments around it and assimted them into a terrifying kaleidoscopic image.


    Every single Master on the battlefield felt chills across their skin.


    They felt shivers crawling down their spines as they watched their Martial Embodiments get assimted into a single chimera Martial Embodiment that evolved with all their powerbined.


    And its center was a man.


    One that she had never seen before. His eyes were so ck that Master Sera could see herself in them past the cold gaze that fixed itself on her. Her eyes grew ferocious as realization dawned on her. He hade for her.


    He hade for her and nobody else.


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2394: Icebreaker

    Chapter 2394: Icebreaker


    ?


    The realization put her on edge.


    Time slowed down in her eyes as she studied him and his eerie Martial Embodiment.


    A Martial Embodiment that consumed other Martial Embodiments and then assimted them symmetrically, causing it to resemble a disturbing kaleidoscope. Considering that none of these Martial Embodiments actually manifested into reality and were simply the manifestations of one''s subjective interpretation of the passive hypnosis caused by the utilization of one''s Martial Mind, what did that say about his Martial Mind?


    The implications were chilling.


    She had never seen something this bizarre before.


    Just what kind of Martial Artist did it take for their individuality to give birth to this abomination of a Martial Mind?


    The terrifying of what it all meant gave chills to all Martial Artists.


    Not Master Sera.


    "I''ll have you crying tears cker than your eyes when I''m done with you."


    Her tone was one of malice


    WHOOSH!


    In the blink of an eye, she appeared before him.


    A blinding fast palm jab surged towards his throat, threatening to kill him then and there. CLASP!


    Her palm stopped inches away from his throat.


    It was made to stop.


    His powerful hand coiled around her wrist, refusing to let it budge an inch.


    WHOOSH!


    He ducked sharply, evading a powerful, blindingly fast kick that threatened to break his jaw. Yet, the very next moment, a powerful barrage of short and swift blows shed toward him in a fraction of a millisecond.


    BAM BAM BAM!!!


    He blocked all of them without so much as budging where he stood.


    Yet, even he needed to exert himself to block the spinning roundhouse kick that furiously struck him with a heavy blow.


    BOOOM!!


    The thundering impact sted his body where he stood.


    A blow that, by all rights, should haveunched off his feet.


    Instead, a powerful force emerged deep from within his body as Yin and Yang converged into a single force.


    A singr shield.


    BOOOM!!


    The impact blew her away, only for her to elegantly somersault away,nding on her two feet with the grace of a ballerina. The technique''s sheer defensive power would have discouraged any ordinary Master from pursuing offense.


    Unfortunately for her opponent, she was anything but ordinary.


    WHOOSH!


    In the blink of an eye, she had returned before him as her thin, dainty hands sharpened, converging into a single point.


    The sum totality of her power focused through a singr point as her jab sted into his guard.


    BOOOOOM!!


    His dark eyes stirred with a hint of surprise as her attack shattered the shield.


    It shattered more than just the technique.


    CRACK


    He skidded away as his ck eyes shifted to his broken ulna bone.


    "You don''t have the leeway to look away," her whisper tickled his ear behind him.


    WHOOSH!


    He leaped away in time, evading an extraordinarily swift and powerful elbow that sought to decapitate him where he stood. Yet, she relentlessly chased after her opponent, throwing lethally devastating attacks, each capable of killing even sturdy defensive Masters with a single blow.


    Each Martial Body had a unique critical threshold of speed and power where even blunt surfaces and curves on their bodies were effectively no different from razor-sharp knives. Master Sera was one of the few people who was permanently above that threshold.


    Most Masters feared her for her nasty Martial Path.


    It was the most notorious thing that she was feared and hated for.


    However, because of how widely her Path was feared and hated, Masters made the mistake of thinking that it was the only aspect of her as her Martial Artist that to be feared.


    What nobody realized was that her most notorious Martial Mind was just half of why she was one of the most lethal Martial Artists in the Master Realm.


    Even without it, she was easily the strongest grade-twenty-nine Master around.


    BOOOM BOOOM BOOOM!!


    Tremendous blows sted against her opponent''s guard. Her offensive formidability beggared the mind when one considered how incongruent her Body configuration was with the kind of lethality that she seemed to be capable of. Any ordinary high-grade Master would have long sumbed to the devastation she unleashed.


    Unfortunately for her, her opponent was the furthest thing away from ordinary.


    CLASP


    Her eyes widened as he caught her strike inches away from his face.


    A specialized defensive finger lock.


    Simultaneously, his Martial Embodiment shifted from a kaleidoscopic fractal mirror into something else.


    A swamp.


    Master Sera''s eyes narrowed.


    She knew of only one other Martial Artist who was so dynamically powerful that even his Martial Embodiment changed and altered across the battle.


    Yet, his Martial Embodiment wasn''t the only thing that changed. His stance and aura shifted into that of a counter-offensive Master as his finger lock tightened with an iron grip that only


    drew in closer.


    Just as she had hoped.


    "Got you." A bloodlustden smile emerged on her face.


    It was toote by the time he realized the blunder he had made.


    WHOOSH


    His ck eyes widened as the world disappeared.


    It had disappeared entirely.


    One moment, he was staring the Harbinger in the eyes point nk, standing on the


    battlefield, surrounded by heaven and earth.All content is property ? N?velDrama.Org.


    The very moment, it was all gone.


    He was surrounded by darkness.


    He could feel, smell, touch, and taste nothing.


    Even his powerful Martial senses were of no avail.


    The only thing he could see was a broken mirror before him.


    In it, he saw a young boy with ck hair and ck eyes.


    A single emotion lingered in the depths of his eyes.


    Fear.


    Raw, primal fear.


    An undying fear.


    As the tender boy in the mirror reflection gradually grew older with the passing of time,


    another emotion emerged in his eyes, burying his fear deep, deep under it.


    Greed.


    An intense greed for all the power in the world.


    Any power that could be used against him had to be his.


    Any force in the world that could turn against him must be his.


    He wanted all of it.


    He needed all of it.


    One day, he would obtain all of it.


    Perhaps then, the fear buried deep in his heart would finally disappear.


    "If you''re so afraid of everything, then why don''t you just kill yourself?"


    Her tone was as warm and affectionate as her words were evil, bringing him back to reality


    only to see pure innocence in her eyes.


    A horrifying contrast.


    His heart shook as his pupils dted.


    For the first time in his life, the ice that covered Tokugawa Ieyasu''s face cracked.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2395: A Broken Mirror

    Chapter 2395: A Broken Mirror


    ?


    For a moment, he was frozen.


    Unfortunately for him, Master Sera was not kind enough to let the opportunity slide.


    BOOOM!!


    He barely managed to scramble together a guard before the powerful attack crashed into it.


    "Imagine never outgrowing childhood fears," Master Sera sneered. "Does East Panamic Treaty Alliance cover the cost of all the diapers you wear to each fight?"


    His eyes sharpened at his words.


    BAM BAM BAM!!!


    She sted him with an onught of attacks, one after another.


    "So tell me, why are you afraid?"


    She sounded just like any other concerned and warm clinical psychologist.


    It almost made one want to truly open up to her.


    "Too powerless to save the people who loved you?"


    POW POW POW!!


    He barely managed to deal with iing powerful jabs that threatened to break his nose.


    A delightful smile emerged on her face. "Ah... I see."


    BAM BAM BAM!!!


    His guard shook with the devastating impacts that she peppered him.


    "You were never loved in the first ce, were you?"


    He froze where he stood.


    That was a mistake.


    BOOOOM!!!


    CRACK


    A thunderingly swift kick cleanly crashed into his ribs,unching him away with broken ribs. On the outside, Master Sera''s expression was rxed and confident.


    Inwardly, however, her mind was furiously engaging in thought. Despite already being under the influence of her pheromones and passive hypnosis, he was not losing control of himself like most Masters did.


    ''He has extremely disciplined self-control over himself,'' she mused. ''This kind of Martial Artist does not lose his temper and go off on a rampage. In which case...''Property ? N?velDrama.Org.


    She would need to break him with despair.


    Hardly something new to her.


    However, what was new to her was how passive her opponent was. Normally, right about now, her opponents would be trying their best to kill her. She found their desperate attempts to kill her before she could continue speaking to be quite thrilling. She fed off their desperation.


    Yet, even though she clearly had a significant effect on him, he had not retaliated even once. In fact, he had not attacked her a single time since the battle began.


    That only made her suspicious.


    What was his objective?


    She knew that he hade for her.


    Yet, he didn''t fight to attack her.


    ''Is this a part of his Martial Path, or is he simply stalling for something to happen?'' her eyes narrowed. ''...Or both?''


    Unfortunately, she didn''t even know what his Martial Art even was to make that judgment. Regardless, she was certain that he was holding back for some reason.


    However, she didn''t know or care about the reason.


    "If you''re too afraid to kill yourself, I can do it for you."


    BAM BAM BAM!!!


    She peppered his Body with swift jabs, targeting his vitals with each attack. If not for his remarkably swift, active defense, he wouldn''t have been able to deal with his offense. Yet, the intensity in his dark eyes continued rising.


    Not even his deep poison immunity could prevent her pheromones from affecting her. The substances that she released werepounds that were already present in one''s body. Thus, the body epted them without any problems and without feeling the need to release antibodies.


    This way, her Martial Art was effective even on poison-oriented Martial Artists and even those who had gained immense immunity to poisons.


    "You still haven''t answered my question."


    POW POW POW!!


    "Why are you so afraid?"


    BAM BAM BAM!!!


    "An unloved child with ck hair and ck eyes."


    His expression darkened.


    "Ah..." she realized the truth. "I see."


    A gleeful grin emerged on her face as she startedughing uncontrobly.


    "The Curse of Asmodeus must have made your childhood even more shit than it already was, huh?" she smirked. "But if those eyes bothered you so much, then why didn''t you just tear them out of your skull? I mean, a blind orphan gets a lot of sympathy points, you know? Pfft!"


    The air around him grew more perilous as his eyes grew


    "Hey, on the bright side, at least you didn''t get diddled."


    BAM BAM BAM!!!


    "After all," she sneered. "It''s so disgusting that not even the most deviant of perverts wants anything to do with you."


    BOOM BOOM BOOM!!!


    He skidded away as he defended against her fearsome, unrelenting barrages, only to find himself face-to-face with an onught of wind sts.


    WHOOSH


    He blew white-hot fire, using the immense temperature to dispel the wind.


    "Nobody loves you."


    BAM BAM BAM!!!


    "Nobody wants you."


    POW POW POW!!!


    "I feel bad for your mother."


    BOOOM!!


    A powerful charging impact fueled by winds and soundunched him away.


    "If I knew that my unborn child would grow up to be a pathetic coward afraid of everything, I would abort you with my own fists."


    He stiffened with each word she uttered, leaving several split seconds of openings where he


    was unprotected by any active technique.


    SPLAT SPLAT SPLAT!


    Her elbow tore away at his flesh, leaving light gashed across his entire body as they shed in blinding arcs of blood. As she continued speaking, she could feel her provocations working bit by bit. His slip-ups grew more and more frequent, allowing her tond even more attacks and inflict more significant damage with each attack.


    But there was no doubt that she had gained a self-reinforcing hold on her opponent. With the way things were tending, it wouldn''t be too long before she could kill herself.


    She found his truly extraordinary discipline to be a shame; she was a glutton for easy targets. She would have loved to watch themmit suicide in front of everyone she would be able to use to get a head start on manipting all the other Martial Masters in the battle tomit


    suicide as well.


    "Oh well," A cruel smile emerged on her face. "Time to cure your fear."


    In the blink of an eye, she appeared before him with a jab surging towards his neck in a


    moment of weakness, ready to kill him then and there.


    What followed exceeded her fathoming.


    WHOOSH


    The world disappeared.


    In its ce, a familiar broken mirror appeared before her.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2396: Her Fear

    Chapter 2396: Her Fear


    ?


    She saw herself in its broken and distorted image.


    In the reflection, she saw herself standing on a path.


    Her path.


    Just a few steps away ahead of her was a gate.


    An enormous and grand gate.


    It was waiting for her.


    It was waiting for her arrival.


    In her eyes, there was longing.


    She longed to walk over to it and cross it.


    Yet, there was an even greater emotion that held her back.


    "Fear."


    Ieyasu''s voice brought her back from the real world.


    Only to be confronted by a powerful blow surging towards her. His powerful hands sharpened as they converged into a single point. The sum totality of his power passed through the


    singrity as his body moved with such great speed and power that his entire body had be a de.


    His first attack of the battle.


    It was more powerful than any attack she had ever thrown.


    BOOOOOM!!!


    CRACK!


    The sheer impact of the attack broke her arm cleanly before flinging her away with a devastating impact.


    Yet, she didn''t feel pain.


    No.


    The only emotion she experienced was the horror that clenched her heart.


    That Martial Embodiment. That attack.


    She recognized both of them.


    "That is my Martial Art..." A shocked whisper escaped her.


    At that moment, she finally understood what his Martial Embodiment meant. She finally understood what his desire to make everything had done for him.


    "A Martial Art that allows him to copy all other Martial Art."


    She had never heard of such an absurd Martial Art ever before.


    Yet, she could not deny the reality that had presented itself before her.


    She gazed at him with unrestrained shock.


    "Tell me..." His tone was stoic and frosty. "Why do you fear the Sage Realm?"


    Chills crawled across her skin as her expression grew murderous.


    Pure bloodlust emerged from the depths of her eyes.


    She understood what was happening.


    Yet, it was precisely because she understood what was happening that she understood that she didn''t have the power to stop it.


    "Every Master is afraid of Martial Sages..." he continued with a cold gaze. "...But no Master Is afraid of reaching the Sage Realm."


    The darkness in his eyes stirred.


    "...No Master except you."


    She red at him with unreserved hatred.


    Yet, she refused to answer his question.


    "This Martial Art of yours..." He gazed at his hands with a calm expression. "...would normally not be suited for me as a person."


    His eerie ck eyes turned towards her.


    "I can copy it."


    He began walking towards her.


    "I can assimte it."


    His gait was calm andposed.


    "I can even evolve it."


    STEP


    He arrived before her.


    "But the fact of the matter is that this Martial Art is best suited for a Martial Artist who is just as nasty as the Martial Art."


    The user of her Martial Art needed to be a sadistic and cruel person who enjoyed the suffering


    of others. It was precisely that sadistic cruelty that allowed her to say horrible things that hurt the very souls of her targets.All content is property ? N?velDrama.Org.


    He could not copy her sadistic cruelty.


    He certainly could not evolve it.


    He would need to reach the Sage Realm to perform such a feat.


    She took her stance as a smirk appeared on her face. "Why, you tter me."


    Unfortunately for her, he could see right through her.


    "You fear the Sage Realm because you fear that your Martial Art will be rendered obsolete against Martial Sages."


    Her body shook at his words as he effortlessly unraveled the horror that she hid in the depths of her heart. Her pupils shivered with shock as he ruthlessly exposed the shameful depths of


    her emotions.


    It was as though he could read her mind.


    For a moment, she cked out of the battle as her mind struggled to regain herposure. Unfortunately, he was not kind enough to let that opportunity go.


    BOOOOM!!!


    A devastatingly powerful blow surged forward as hebined assimted Fulminata Godspeed into the technique he copied from her while improving her offensive with principles based on collision mechanics and friction.


    Simultaneously, he improved her psychological disruption techniques with Master Zeamer''s hypnosis techniques. He also improved her pheromone principles with another technique from another Martial Art that allowed him to increase the production of certain hormones


    that her technique made use of.


    Additionally, he added an assimted domain technique from an assimted poison Martial Art that was centered around forcing his opponent to breathe in anything he wanted by creating a pressure differential that forced his opponent to breathe in the poison or, in this


    case, pheromones.


    This was one of his systems of thought, Assimtive Convergence.


    Before, his evolution was limited to being better and more talented than his opponents, and his copying was limited to using the foundations of other fields. His greatest limitation was that he could only ever use one copied Martial Art at a time.


    Now, he couldpletely use many Martial Art simultaneously and assimte them into his opponent''s copied Martial Art, creating a superior hybrid. Master Sera''s expression grew grave as she understood better than anybody else just how superior his chimera hybrid evolution of her Martial Art was.


    "It must hurt to see all your effort plundered so effortlessly."


    Her body shook at his words as rage red in her eyes.


    WHOOSH!


    He appeared before her in the blink of an eye.


    "It must hurt knowing that your Martial Art was a dead-end."


    A blindingly fast blow surged towards her, threatening to end her where she stood.


    WHOOSH!


    His eyes widened as she cleanly evaded it.


    "You suck at provocations, boy."


    BAM BAM BAM!!


    Pure fury emerged on her face as she sted with blow after blow.


    Unfortunately, thebination of the Yin-Yang Shield technique with another technique that allowed him to absorb seismic and sonic radiation from heaven and earth allowed him to


    improve the already powerful grade-ten technique even further.


    "Heavenly Yin-Yang Earth Shield."


    BOOOM!!


    The ferociously powerful technique sted all her attacks away.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2397: ...

    Chapter 2397: ...


    ?


    She rolled with the impact, letting itunch her away in the hopes of gaining a momentary reprieve from her formidable opponent.Property ? N?velDrama.Org.


    Unfortunately for her, he refused to give her even a second to breathe.


    "You say I''m afraid, yet you''re the one running away."


    WHOOSH


    In a moment, he arrived before her in a sh.


    Master Sera''s expression grew grave as the two sted forth an onught of powerful and swift blows.


    BAM BAM BAM!!!


    Blows shed as the two Martial Artists engaged in a furious brawl in abandon. Their attacks surged forth, creating a vortex of shes and impacts that not even each of them could follow.


    Yet, one side was gaining the edge over the other.


    SPLAT SPLAT SPLAT!


    Master Sera''s expression only grew increasingly grave and more severe as she suffered wound after wound.


    The gap between them only grew wider and wider.


    She was extremely strong in close-quartersbat, yet she had run into an opponent who outssed her in this regard. Normally, she would have relied on her psychological sabotage and trauma induction to not only close the gap but ovee it.


    Unfortunately for her, she was perhaps outmatched even in this regard for the first time.


    "Imagine having Martial Art that bes obsolete in the Sage Realm," Ieyasu''s calm voice reached her. "I would kill myself."


    Her expression crumpled with murderous bloodlust as she gritted her teeth.


    It was bad enough that he copied her Martial Art.


    But what infuriated her was the fact that he had the gall to copy her words as well.


    The emotional turmoil that she experienced came not just from the shock of having her


    martial art copied but also evolved right before her very eyes, as well as the truth in his words.


    The ugly truth that he aired before the entire world.


    She got a taste of her own medicine for the very first time in her life.


    Try as she might, she couldn''t retort with wit and humor.


    Not only was he able to seemingly read her like a book, but the fact of the matter was that she couldn''t deny the truth.


    She was indeed afraid.


    She was terrified of the possibility that her Martial Art was obsolete in the Sage Realm.


    It was a horrifying fear that kept her up at night.


    A terror that confronted her in nightmares.


    Martial Sages possessed absolute self-understanding.


    That was what the Enlightenment of Self was.


    How was she supposed to psychologically sabotage a being whose mind and soul were in harmony?


    How was she supposed to traumatize a being who had ovee the barriers between their inner and outer self to be a whole being, gaining ess to the full power that the Martial being had to offer?


    She wasn''t absolutely certain, but she had extremely strong suspicions that it was impossible.


    She had consulted many Martial Sages before, but they had also universally told her that the only way to know the truth was to find out herself.


    She would need to be a Martial Sage in order to discover the truth.


    "But you''re too afraid."


    Ieyasu''s voice made her freeze.


    That was a mistake.


    BAM!!!


    A thundering blow cracked her ribs where she stood.


    Yet, her expression only grew more fierce.


    She abandoned all defense, focusing all of her power on offense.


    "Too afraid to take the next step." A faint whisper escaped him even as he intensified his assault on her. "Too afraid to go from being the strongest Master to a useless Sage."


    She gritted her teeth as her eyes grew bloodshot.


    She pushed herself to the very limit.


    Her muscles burned with effort.


    Her joints creaked with strain.


    Her flesh tore upon contact with the evolved copies of her attacks.


    With each passing second, new wounds opened up on her body.


    Blood leaked out of them at rming rates.


    A single truth became evident to her with each passing moment.


    ''I''m going to die today.''


    Her eyes red with murderous bloodlust. "But you''reing with me."


    As though her wounds didn''t exist, she pushed forward with maddening bloodlust, determined to kill him at all costs.


    POW POW POW!!


    Their blows shed back and forth with blinding speed as their eyes sharpened.


    "I don''t want to hear about fear from a pathetic coward too afraid to grow up."


    The darkness in his eyes stirred at her words.


    "I may be afraid of the Sage Realm, but you''re afraid of everything."


    She could feel his body stiffening for a moment.


    "Most of all," Her voice grew immersed with malevolence. "You''re afraid of death."


    A malevolent grin of blood and madness emerged on her face.


    "So much fear that you''re probably impotent because your balls haven''t dropped."


    He froze almost instinctively as her pheromones and passive hypnosis amplified the rage that


    boiled in his mind.


    It left her the briefest of moments worth of an opening.


    One that she didn''t intend to let go.


    SPLAT!!!


    His pupils dted as her arm impaled his gut.


    A demonic smile appeared on her face as her murderous eyes bore itself into him. "No better way to piss a male off than by emascting his manhood. Works every single time."


    SPLAT!


    Blood poured out of his wound as she pulled her arm out of his wound with a violent twist.


    DRIP DRIP DRIP...!


    Blood poured out of his wound at rming rates.


    He didn''t even bother covering the wound.


    Almost as if he had epted his death.


    She wasn''t surprised.


    She had more wounds than she could count, more broken bones than she could count, and


    certainly more bruises than she could count.


    But none of them were life-threatening.


    A big gaping hole in the abdomen, on the other hand, was extremely life-threatening.


    Hisplexion worsened by the second.


    His vision grew blurry.


    His body grew weak.


    One after another, his Realms of power shut down.


    "At least now, you can rest in peace." Her words were uncharacteristically soft. "You no


    longer have to live with fear and the greed it gave birth to."


    Tokugawa Ieyasu gazed at her silently for a moment.


    "I... may have lived with fear, but it drove me forward," his ck eyes saw right through her.


    "Your fear is holding you back."


    Her expression fell at his words.


    "You will obtain unfathomable power should you ever... unshackle... yourself..."


    His eyes lost their light as his body copsed.


    THUD


    A pool of blood formed around his body as she clearly sensed the final wisps of life leaving his


    body.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2398 Hes Actually Dead

    Chapter 2398 He''s Actually Dead


    Victory.


    She panted heavily as she beheld his corpse.


    She didn''t know who he was. She didn''t know where he came from. All she knew was that she had fought what was the most significant and important battle of her life. That was saying something.


    While she wasn''t the oldest of Martial Artists, she certainly was quite old despite retaining her youthful beauty. She had fought countless battles across centuries.


    From her childhood days of being raised in the Underworld, where she had gained her foul tongue, to the many, many battles she had fought as a Martial Artist.


    Yet, she instinctively felt that none of those battles were as important as the one from which she had just emerged victorious. My fear drove me forward. Your fear holds you back. You will obtain unfathomable power should you ever unshackle yourself.


    Ironically enough, despite the fact that he had been fueled by her own Martial Art, it was these words that struck her the most out of all the other words that he had uttered to her across the battle.


    Those words caused her to reconsider her entire perspective on her predicament.


    She was indeed terrified of being reduced to a joke of a Sage who couldn''t even kill another Sage. She cared about how she was perceived by others more than she would ever admit.


    Yet, she also fought for power.


    And there was absolutely no way around the fact that she would be exponentially stronger as a Martial Sage than she could ever hope to be as a Master.


    You will obtain unfathomable power should you ever unshackle yourself.


    She felt a deep desire to unlock the power hidden within her, waiting to be unleashed.


    "¡­But what if?" A whisper escaped her. What if all her life''s work went to waste in the Sage Realm?


    It wasn''t just a matter of bing theughingstock of the Sage Realm¡ªthat was bad enough by itself¡ªbut she loved the Martial Art that she had cultivated so far. All content is ? N0velDrama.Org.


    She loved breaking people. It was the same kind of joy that a child might have from toppling over a tower of blocks.


    She knew that deriving as much enjoyment from other people''s suffering did not make her a good person, yet she loved it nheless.


    She loved insulting and roasting people.


    She loved instigating people''s emotions.


    She especially loved using it to win a losing battle.


    It gave her a rush of excitement and euphoria that nothing else could even begin topare to. It was not an exaggeration to say that the yearning to experience the thrill and the high that she had experienced from this battle was half the reason that she had even fought at all.


    If her Martial Art happened to be irrelevant to the Sage Realm, then she would never be able to experience the joy and ecstasy that she gained from wrecking Martial Artists again.


    What was the point of entering the Sage Realm if she lost one of her few joys?


    She could apply it to Masters even as a Sage, of course.


    But¡­ that was just boring.


    She wasn''t interested in bullying ants with a magnifying ss.


    If she truly strove to rise to the Sage Realm, then her only ymates had to be Sages and no one else. Those she would be able to apply her Martial Art to would be too weak for her to enjoy herself. Those strong enough for her to be able to have fun could very well be immune to her Martial Art.


    Her heart sank as her thoughts seemed to lead her back to her decision not to pursue the Sage Realm in fear of the consequences.


    She gazed at his corpse onest time, heaving a sigh before turning away and heading back. That was a mistake.


    SPLAT!


    Her eyes widened as a horrifying wave of pain shed through her body, from her back to her torso.


    DRIP DRIP DRIP¡­


    An expression of horror appeared on her face as she saw a hand sticking out from the new wound in her torso.


    The hand of a dead man.


    "You shouldn''t have let your guard down."


    Theposure and calm in his voice gave her chills as she slowly turned to catch a glimpse of him.


    The colors of his face were returning while his eyes had regained their light.


    "Impossible¡­!" A faint whisper escaped her as she felt her own strength fading. Not only did her strength fade, but she also felt a powerful paralysis oveing her entire Body, refusing to allow her to move.


    "Nothing is impossible." His tone was certain. "You shouldn''t trust your senses nearly as much as you do. I once copied a hypnosis technique that allows me to fake death in my Body along with a Body technique that reduces my metabolism to the point of appearing death-like."


    She felt sharp shes of pain across her entire Body even as her paralysis grew stronger.


    It was then that it urred to her that he was doing more than just impaling her Body.


    "What¡­ are you doing?" She barely managed to squeeze out that question amidst all the extraordinary pain and paralysis that flooded through her own Body.


    "I am assimting your Body."


    Shivers crawled down her spine. "What¡­?!"


    Yet, his hand dug into her Body deeper and deeper.


    "My wounds are severe." His voice was as stoic as ever. "I judged that even if I escaped here, I would not survive the wound even with a healing potion because it hit too many vital organ systems."


    His tone grew more energetic. "My solution is simple. I will absorb your tissue, break it down, and have it serve as the basis for my healing and regeneration."


    She shook as a wave of shock rocked her entire Body. "You¡­ what?"


    "I call it¡­" A whisper escaped him. "¡­the Assimtive Metabody."


    It was a technique that was born from thebination of the principles of Weaving Blood that he had copied in his duel against Rui twenty years ago and several other Martial Art that he had assimted to upgrade the technique. -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2399 Two Doors

    Chapter 2399 Two Doors


    The sheer tenacity and perseverance that he disyed were unparalleled.


    Arge hole in his Body with damaged lungs, heart, and spine.


    Even if he had copied some healing techniques, he was not able to heal lethal wounds fast enough before the blood loss knocked him out and then killed him. On top of that, even if it was fast enough, it didn''t have the fuel to heal his Body. Regeneratingrge amounts of tissue needed an equal amount of nutrients, organic matter, and otherpounds.


    This sort of wound was a death sentence.


    Any other Master would have epted death and simply died.


    Not Ieyasu.


    He saw a source of all the nutrients andpounds that he would need to regenerate and heal his wound right before him: the Harbinger herself.


    The issue was that he was too weak to fight her with such a lethal wound. There was no way that she would allow him to assimte her Body to heal his wounds.


    The only other option left was catching her off-guard.


    Thus, he faked his death.


    He offered well-meaning advice to her with a sense of finality to truly make it seem like his death was inevitable.


    Thebination of hypnosis and slowing down his metabolism was the perfect solution. Thetter even slowed down his rate of dying exponentially.


    The moment she turned her back, immersed in thought, his opportunity had provided itself. "Arghrr!" The Harbinger gritted her teeth as the pain from her wound spread across her Body.


    She could almost feel him eating her Body from within!


    Yet, she was powerless to resist due to thebination of poison and an electric current.


    Simultaneously, the clotted wound in his torso started closing as his eyes grew more vigorous, while hisplexion only continued improving. He hadbined the assimted Martial Art of a vampire Martial Artist who consumed the flesh of other Martial Artists to empower herself in fights along with another Martial Art that allowed him to consume his target''s blood and flesh without needing to rely on conventional digestion.


    He assimted these two techniques into Weaving Blood, which then healed his body with the assimted flesh and blood of his opponent.


    This was the technique that he came up with for himself.


    An Assimtive Metabody.


    With each passing moment, Weaving Blood healed his wound.


    With each passing moment, she could feel him reaching into the depths of her Body, taking what he needed.


    THUD


    Her body slowly toppled over as he extricated his arm from the depths of her flesh.


    The wound in his chest was gone.


    The Harbinger''s Body, on the other hand, was dying.


    After having had arge chunk of her Body painfully and gruesomely consumed inside-out, her heart rate began slowing down while her breathing grew more shallow. Herplexion grew paler and paler by the second.


    She felt it in her heart.


    She was going to die very soon.


    It appeared that her original premonition of her impending death was true after all. "It doesn''t have to be." His tone was uncharacteristically soft.


    "I avoided consuming your vitals."


    Her eyes weakly shifted over to him. "Your death would be unconducive to my objectives."


    She was too weak to express her confusion.


    "However," his tone grew stoic, "I do not save enemies that fought to kill me."


    He turned away from her, walking off.


    "My words to you before were not deceitful."


    Her pupils dted as a hint of life returned to them. My fear drove me forward. Your fear holds you back. You will obtain unfathomable power should you ever unshackle yourself.


    "You have two doors before you. One leads you to death. The other leads you to the Sage Realm." He gazed at her from the edge of his dark eyes one final time before turning away. "The choice is yours."


    Her eyes widened at his words.


    His attention turned away from her as he pulled out a Sekigaharanms artifact. "Retreat."


    Putting the device away, he leaped away as she lost consciousness due to blood loss.


    Yet, when she closed her eyes, she found herself standing on a path.


    A path that she had traversed her entire life. Her Path.


    Before her were two doors.


    One door led to¡­ emptiness.


    Nothingness.


    Death.


    Should she walk through the door, she would undoubtedly die.


    The other door was the gate that she had been staring at for decades now, always in admiration and yearning for the unfathomable power thaty behind it.


    Yet, too afraid to take the final few steps towards it.


    Now she had to choose.


    Had anyone else been presented with the choice to break through to the Sage Realm or die, they would have leaped for the former in a heartbeat!


    Yet, even in the face of such a no-brainer multiple-choice question, the Harbinger found herself gued with fear.


    Insecurities of her obsoletion in the Sage Realm.


    Fear of never being able to enjoy a fight ever again.


    The paranoia of being turned into theughingstock of the Martial Community.


    These were fears that had marinated and grown stronger and stronger over the years, bing thick, iron-d chains that did not listen to reason. Even now, on the brink of death, she was not entirely willing to let these fearse to fruition. Even if her fears were misguided, even if her fears were entirely wrong, she still didn''t want to risk it on the off chance that they might be true.


    She did not want to die.


    Even now, her sense of self-preservation urged her to take the other path.


    Her desperation not to die.


    Her desperation to live.


    Her desperation to return to the Kandrian Empire and be there to witness and experience its glorious future.


    A tremendous amount of desires tugged on her to break through to the Sage Realm for the sake of living.


    And despite all of that, she didn''t move.


    Despite the fear of death. Despite the desire to live. Despite all of it¡­


    On the brink of death, she discovered that her fear of obsoletion was even greater than her fear of death and desire to live.


    She learned that her fear was the strongest force in her being.


    She discovered that it was far stronger than she had ever imagined.


    She understood that it was part of who she was as a sovereign being.


    "So, this¡­ is who I am." A whisper escaped her. "I¡­ would rather die than be a Martial Sage."


    And in that moment, she gained Enlightenment of Self.


    -All content is property ? N?velDrama.Org.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2400: Teetering On The Edge

    Chapter 2400: Teetering On The Edge


    ?


    It didn''t matter if she would rather have chosen to go through the doors of death than the gates of the Sage Realm.


    It didn''t matter if she did not want to break through to the Sage Realm.


    It didn''t matter if she didn''t want to be a Martial Sage.


    Unlike the breakthroughs to the Senior and Master Realms, the breakthrough to the Sage Realm was not driven by desire.


    It was driven by understanding.


    It was driven by cognizance.


    By enlightenment.


    Her desire to remain a Martial Master was strong, but once she understood exactly how much it defined her, the final piece of the puzzle of who she was fell into ce. The moment she understood that her fear of obsoletion was thework of emotions, memories, desire, and a myriad of other forces that came together to make her who she was, she gained the Enlightenment of Self.


    In that moment, she gained endless rity.


    And with it, endless peace and harmony with who she was.


    She was a sadist.


    She was cruel.


    She loved breaking people.


    She loved breaking them with words.


    Yet now, she understood why she was the way she was. A childhood in the Underworld, a gifted intuition when it came to understanding people, and high verbal intelligence were the primary elements of causality that had given rise to her Martial Path.


    If even one of those elements had been missing, she would have had a different Martial Path.


    She was able to see herself as an oue of the universe itself.


    An oue and a cause.


    An agent and a spectator.


    In her mind, she was still afraid.


    At the depths of her soul, however, she was at peace, enlightened by truth.


    She was who she was.


    RUMBLE...


    Mind and soul converged upon each other as the ephemeral barrier between them withered away upon the Enlightenment of Self. Her consciousness was elevated to a higher realm of awareness as her Martial Soul bloomed in all its glory.


    All heaven and earth prostrated before the birth of a new Martial Sage.


    An unwilling, fearful, yet peaceful and dying Martial Sage.


    But a Martial Sage nheless.


    Suddenly, what appeared to be the brink of death to her as a Martial Master was actually some decent ways away from death as a Martial Sage.


    If given a choice between breaking through to the Sage Realm and dying, she knew that she would have rather died.


    But now that she had already broken through, there was no point in dying.


    Her fears mattered, yet they didn''t matter.


    They were everything, yet nothing.


    Every Martial Sage was a living contradiction, yet their soul and mind were in a harmonious union.


    Time slowed down as seconds prolonged to what felt like years.


    Having harnessed her Martial Soul, she gained unprecedented control of her being. As a physical entity in the material world, the conscious mind had only a fraction of control over the body.


    It was the soul, however, that made the heart beat.


    It was the soul that made the lungs breathe even when one was asleep.


    It was the soul that sustained thebustion of the engine of life across her entire material being.


    And now, her soul and mind were one.


    Subconsciously, she redirected what little healing capital she had to the wound in her torso while simultaneously elerating the clotting of her wounds by adjusting her endocrinological system.


    It was no different from flexing a muscle.


    At the same time, her conscious mind recalled the principles of Rui''s Hungry Pain.


    Lesser Martial Artists were incapable of benefiting from the technique after their Martial Bodies were set, but a Martial Sage was not nearly as limited. Mind and soul worked together to apply the principle of autophagy to prolong her flickering life.


    Her bleeding stopped as she managed to clot the wound.


    She redirected as much healing and regenerative capital to the most vital organs that had been harmed, ensuring that the loss of vital functions to her Body was minimal and did not escte any further.


    Simultaneously, she caused an inmmation around her blood vessels, forcing them to constrict and increase her blood pressure that was dangerously low due to all the blood loss. The restoration of the blood pressure restored the functionality of the circtory system as the diffusion of oxygen and infusion of carbon dioxide finally resumed, giving her Body, and especially the brain, much-needed oxygen, theck of which was on the very verge of causing brain death.


    Then and only then did her condition stabilize, and she slowly moved away from teetering on the brink of death.


    Unfortunately, she wasn''t able to do much more.


    Unfortunately, she wasn''t Master Zentra.


    She was unable to do more with her newfound control because her understanding of the high principles of biology, human physiology, and anatomy was too low.


    She was like someone who had just found herself in the cockpit of a ne but had no understanding of how any of it worked. Meanwhile, people like Master Zentra were experts in piloting the ne even without gaining precious ess to the cockpit.


    But it was fine.


    She might not be able to heal herself entirely with the knowledge she had, but she didn''t need


    to.


    All she needed to do was survive.


    She was not alone.


    "We found her!" A Kandrian Master arrived beside her with a grave and severe expression.Property ? N?velDrama.Org.


    "She''s alive but in critical condition!"


    "This aura...!" Another gasped with shock and awe. "It was true, after all. She broke through


    to the Sage Realm! We have gained a new Martial Sage!"


    "That must have been why those bastards retreated so suddenly!"


    "YOU IDIOTS!" another Master bellowed. "STOP GAPING AND FEED HER A DAMN HEALING


    AND REJUVENATION POTION!"


    The Masters scrambled as they quickly put a potion breather to her nose, releasing the


    precious healing stimnt into her Body.


    She took a deep breath.


    Very soon, the healing stimnt diffused into her blood, which she first redirected to the


    most critical wounds and her vital organs, leaving flesh and skin for thest. Soon after, they fed her a dense healing supplement that contained much of the nutrients andpounds needed to sustain tissue regeneration.


    A few tense minutester, she finally opened her eyes.


    "...Alive." A faint whisper escaped her.


    The Masters broke into jubtion and relief as they finally confirmed her survival.


    The Kandrian Empire had received a new Martial Sage.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2401 Could Ruin Everything

    Chapter 2401 Could Ruin Everything


    To say the Masters were shocked was an understatement.


    They were absolutely dumbfounded by the Harbinger''s sudden breakthrough on the battlefield while on the verge of death.


    However, upon a second look, it wasn''t entirely shocking.


    It was already known that Martial Masters had a higher chance of breaking through while on the verge of death. On top of that, the Harbinger had been one of the absolute strongest Martial Masters in all of East Panama. This meant that she had undoubtedly crossed the threshold of rtive power, where her power had allowed her to learn more about herself. On top of that, she had lost consciousness. If there was a chance that herst thoughts when losing consciousness had been about who she was, then there was a possibility that she had also utilized the dream technique to learn more about herself when unconscious.


    Thus, in that regard, it wasn''t too shocking that she had managed to break through. However, the revtion still shook the Masters where they stood as they helped the Harbinger by feeding her physical rejuvenation and nutrition-dense food pills.


    RUMBLE¡­


    The Masters felt the domineering weight of the four Martial Sages who descended before them.


    The three Kandrian Sages were particrly pleased by the sight of Sage Sera.


    "You''ve finally gained Enlightenment of Self." The Flickering Elder smiled at her. "I used to fear that at this rate, you were going to shut yourself off forever."


    Sage Sera slowly got up after finally having healed her wound entirely. "¡­It wasn''t by choice. If not for him¡­ I wouldn''t have broken through."


    The three frowned at her words. "Him?"


    "¡­The Master who defeated me."


    Their eyes widened with surprise at her words.


    With the Harbinger participating in the battle, the Martial Sages had already written off the Master-level battle as a victory. In a one-on-one battle, she was an absurdly powerful force who was almost unbeatable by any of her peers. Her victories against other peak Masters had proven that she was the very best of the best, and she had only grown stronger thanks to the resources of the Kandrian Empire.


    To hear that she was defeated in a head-on battle by a single enemy Master was beyond surprising.


    "¡­Well, I''m just d that it wasn''t an enemy Master who broke through," the Sloth Sage remarked. "I know that this isn''t what you wanted, but it is still a matter of celebration."


    "Hehehe, now that you have broken through, we can have lots of fun," the Drunk Dame grinned at Sage Sera as she pulled out a bottle of what was clearly alcohol.


    Despite the kind words of the Martial Sages, Sage Sera remained consumed in her thoughts. Not about herself.


    But about him. Her eyes narrowed as she recalled his words.


    Your death would be unconducive to my objectives.


    She didn''t understand.


    Wasn''t he supposed to be the enemy?


    He even led an enemy toon of Masters into battle. That was a remarkably high level of authority within the ranks of the Joint Alliance military. Yet, for some reason, he had felt the need to let her live when he could have easily killed her.


    He had indeed spared her vitals when assimting her Body. Had he chosen to consume her heart, then she would have died even as a Martial Sage. This was more than just simply letting her live; he had gone so far as to ensure that he minimized the harm she suffered.


    She didn''t understand what his agenda was.


    All she knew was that this had been beyond mere pity for her or some strange spontaneous sense of kinship with her after their battle had ended.


    He had made a calcted decision.


    "¡­I need to speak with the three of you and the Emperor about an important matter immediately." Sage Sera nced at them. The three Sages of Kandria felt the weight of her words, immediately acquiescing.


    The atmosphere was positive nheless.


    After all, the Kandrian Empire had gained a new Sage.


    The gap between the Kandrian Empire and the enemy alliance was reduced by yet another step. Now, the enemy alliance only had eight Martial Sages more than the Kandrian Empire. Of course, eight Martial Sages still represented an enormous amount of Martial power, but it was still not enough to achieve anything better than a devastating pyrrhic victory. The Kandrian Empire''s goal was to ensure that the enemy alliance was unable to widen the gap enough and now they had taken one more step in that direction.


    It was also good news for the Selizantar Kingdom, which was now protected by an additional Sage.


    All in all, they had gained much. It wasn''t long before the Martial Artists collected the bodies of the Martial Masters who had unfortunately perished in battle and returned to the Selizantar Empire. Once the most immediate matters were dealt with, the Harbinger finally got the private audience she desired.


    "Before you begin¡­" The projection of Emperor Rael smiled. "Congrattions on breaking through to the Sage Realm. I am aware that you have faced your challenges and perhaps have your misgivings over what has happened, but this is a truly wonderful development for me as well as the Martial Union. It is our sincere hope that you will be able to ovee the challenges you might encounter in the Sage Realm."


    She smiled back at Emperor Rael ruefully. "Thank you. But more importantly. I need to tell you about him. I must tell you about the man who defeated me."


    Emperor Rael and the three Sages of the Kandrian Empire calmly listened to her talk, wondering what had gotten her so worked up about a single Master.


    Then, she told them about his Martial Embodiment and their expressions stiffened. Property ? N?velDrama.Org.


    Then, she told them about his Martial Art and their eyes widened with shock.


    They listened with rapt attention as she described with great detail how he had not only copied her Martial Art and Martial Embodiment but also improved and evolved it with other Martial Arts.


    And by the time she was finished, the air grew silent.


    "A Martial Art that can copy other Martial Arts¡­" Emperor Rael''s expression grew grave. "It could ruin everything."


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2402 No Solutions

    Chapter 2402 No Solutions


    It wasn''t a statement that one would expect from the leader of a Sage-level nation.


    A Master ruining everything for someone of his power?


    Yet, Emperor Rael understood all too well how such an incredibly powerful Martial Art could ruin everything from him. "If he copies Rui''s Martial Art¡­" He grew immersed in thought. "Then we might lose this war outright."


    He didn''t need to inform them of why this possibility was so devastating.


    The promises that he made to all of his allies involved Rui''s breakthroughs.


    The Flickering Elder grimaced at his words. "We must warn the young Master before it''s toote. If he ends up fighting this copycat without knowing about his ability, then we are done for."


    "No¡­" Azy smirk of amusement appeared on the Sloth Sage''s face. "Informing His Highness will only make things worse."


    "We can''t hide this information from him," the little girl hissed at him.


    "No, he''s right." Sage Sera smiled wryly. "The Void Prince will want to fight him at all costs. I found it rather eerie that they have the same eye color and hair. It is strange, to say the least. There were times when their domineering power reminded me of each other. Once His Highness gets his hands on my report, we won''t be able to stop him from fighting this copycat."


    "We definitely must not allow them to fight with each other. In fact, we need to keep them as far away from each other as possible," the Flickering Elder dered. "Hah!" the Drunk Dame snorted, ring at the diminutive leader of the Lightning Sect. "Do not think you can control people however you want to! If the Void Prince wants to fight him, then he should be allowed to fight him, as far as I''m concerned." All content is ? N0velDrama.Org.


    "If his Martial Art gets copied, then it might ruin everything we have worked hard for," the Flickering Elder reminded her. "Do you know how many Masters we have lost? Why did they die? Just so we can squander their sacrifices by indulging the young Master''s battle lust?"


    "They certainly didn''t die so that you can use their sacrifices to emotionally manipte us!"


    RUMBLE¡­


    "I''m not manipting anyone." The Flickering Elder''s being distorted with speed. "Do not dare repeat those words, or else¡ª"


    "Or what?" the Drunk Dame snorted as her tone grew dangerous. "Just what are you going to do?"


    "You don''t want to find out." The Flickering Elder red at her. "But I will not tolerate someone ndering me."


    "Hah, you ain''t gonna do shit, you bitc¡ª"


    "Enough."


    Emperor Rael''s powerful voice cleaved through the Drunk Dame''s pettiness.


    His stern eyes shed back and forth between the two Martial Sages. "I expect leaders of the Martial Union to behave with more dignity and control."


    The two of them huffed silently but relented.


    "¡­Still," the Sloth Sagemented with a hint of disappointment at the loss of his entertainment. "It is a problem."


    "Not an insurmountable one," the Emperor of Harmony spoke confidently. "However, it will ruin everything if it isn''t targeted appropriately. To do that, we need to reckon with the facts of the matter."


    He raised a finger. "First, I''m sure everyone has surmised that this is Edward''s solution to deal with the Rui problem that has been undoubtedly guing them."


    Dealing with Rui''s tactical dominance on the battlefield and the strategic benefits of his one-man-army power, as well as the golden goose of breakthroughs that he was, was one of the enemy alliance''srgest agendas.


    Without those two, the Kandrian Empire would be much weaker on the Master-level battlefield and far weaker in the battle for allies.


    Emperor Rael had wondered how his enemy and rival would deal with Rui, but now his solution had be evidently clear.


    "This copycat is his solution without a doubt," the Emperor of Harmony continued. "He intends to have this copycat fight Rui, copy his Martial Art, and then kill him. If this is aplished, it will be no different from the Britannian Empire stealing a trump card that used to be ours and making it their own."


    The grim light in their eyes made it clear that none of the Martial Sages were pleased by this possibility.


    "Naturally, we cannot allow this to happen," Emperor of Harmony spoke with a calm tone. "The issue is that we have no easy solutions."


    He heaved a sigh. "I''m afraid that hiding this information from Rui is not only impossible but foolish as well."


    The Flickering Elder. "But why? If he learns about it, his personality will drive him to lust for that battle. I do not know who this copycat is, but it is clear that his Martial Art is at the same level of absurdity as that of the Void Prince."


    "It is impossible because Rui has intelligence sources that will inform him of this development even if we hide it from him," the Emperor began. "On top of that, if we hide it from him, then he will just be caught off-guard rather than prepared. That is even worse and will increase the probability that he will die."


    "¡­Then why not have him stop participating in the war with some excuse? If the two don''t meet, then this entire thing will be solved."


    "If it were that simple, then I wouldn''t care at all." The Emperor of Harmony heaved a sigh. "But Rui will not tolerate being forced to sit out. The whole reason he went to the Shionel Confederation a week ago as its ambassador was precisely because he wanted to fight in the war. And I gave him my word. I cannot take it back now."


    His expression grew grave. "Had I known that this would have happened, I wouldn''t have done that, but s, even my analytical prediction and prophecy have limits. Especially when we abuse thetter on a daily basis as much as we do. I think my mother-inw might kill me and then kill herself if I put one more duty on her shoulders."


    -


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2403: Converging Nexus

    Chapter 2403: Converging Nexus


    ?


    The atmosphere in the meeting was tense.


    The enemy had yed their hand, and they were blessed with aces.


    The threat of Rui''s defeat and death and the copying of his Martial Art spelled extremely bad news for the Kandrian Empire.


    "Is it possible that we can kill the copycat Master with a hidden Sage waiting in an ambush?" Sage Sera wondered.


    Emperor Rael simply shook his head. "It would be possible if the existence of Sage Sayfeel was still a secret, but with all our Sages known, Prime Minister Edward is far toopetent and careful with intelligence to give us any room."


    The Sages offered some more possibilities, but each of them was firmly shot down by the erudite analysis of the Emperor of Harmony.


    Much of it boiled down to Rui''s unwillingness to leave the frontlines.


    If not for that, this problem would have had a very simple fix.


    "But Rui will definitely wind up fighting him," Emperor Rael said as he calmly came to terms with this reality. "There is only one thing to do in that case."


    His eyes narrowed. "He must win."


    The Flickering Elder looked like she wanted to protest, but she was unable to say anything that was worth saying.


    Rael had already ironed out the inevitability of this fight beyond any shadow of a doubt.


    And if the battle was inevitable, then nobody was in disagreement with the statement that they better win.


    "There is too much at stake for any other oue."


    If Rui lost the battle, he would die after having his Martial Art copied.


    They would lose one hundred Masters. This meant that their ability to protect their allies would be down by thirty to forty percent.


    That was crippling.


    Once they could no longer protect their allies, they would lose their security credibility. Once they lost that, they would not only fail to gain the allyship of the many remaining Sage-level nations, but they would lose existing allies as well!


    On top of that, the enemy alliance would be able to sell breakthroughs to gain allies the way that the Kandrian Empire had been doing this entire time, while thetter would have lost that ability.


    It didn''t take a genius to figure out how horrific this oue was for the Kandrian Empire. "...It will mean our total andplete annihtion." Emperor Rael''s voice was macabre and somber. "He will destroy everything that I have ever built. He will destroy everything we have ever built."


    For the first time in their lives, the Martial Sages sensed a hint of fear from the Emperor of Harmony.


    The atmosphere tingled with peril and horror.


    The air boiled with reckoning.


    A grim and choking silence took over the entire room.


    It wrapped its dark hands around their necks, suffocating them.


    They felt helpless.


    They were the Sages and the Emperor of the most powerful nation in the world.


    Yet, they were powerless to have a say in their own fate.


    They almost felt the urge to prevent this battle by nabbing Rui and forcefully keeping him at home. Yet, even if they abandoned all their principles and honor and stooped to incredibly low heights, they wouldn''t be able to seed.


    Unfortunately, he had too much power.


    Not too much Martial power, no, but he possessed too much leverage.


    Unbeknownst to their enemies, Rui had influence over the Divine Doctor and that was the only reason that the man was sharing his medical services and knowledge with the Kandrian Empire. He also possessed ownership over the manifold that was vital to the Kandrian Empire''s future and even the present.


    And then there was his breakthrough ability.


    It was not an exaggeration to say that he was the third most powerful individual in the Kandrian Empire. Only Emperor Rael and Sage Damian possessed greater political clout than Rui did the former by virtue of the three centuries of political power that he had cultivated and regained and thetter because he was the most powerful non-Transcendent Martial Artist in all of East Panama.This content ? N?v/elDr(a)m/a.Org.


    After that, Rui was essentially unrivaled within the Kandrian Empire.


    Perhaps if the Emperor of Harmony and the Devil worked together to pressure him from doing what he was going to do, they might be able to get him to reluctantly acquiesce, but Emperor Rael knew that the Devil would never take his side on this particr matter. The man was the most martial Martial Artist the world had ever seen. He would never restrict another Martial Artist from fighting their peers.


    Emperor Rael''s sharp mind furiously processed every single possibility, one after another, as he desperately tried to think of a way to prevent this battle, but it was entirely futile.


    He couldn''t think of a single way.


    No solution existed anyway.


    "Well yed, Edward." A whisper escaped Emperor Rael.


    He could imagine his old rival''s face beaming with a smug smile.


    "This battle is determined to happen."


    Rui could not be stopped.


    If he said that he wanted to fight the copycat, nobody could stop him.


    And it was because each of them hade to know him well enough that they knew they


    could not dissuade him.


    It was deeply frustrating, but they had no power over an event that appeared to be


    unstoppable.


    They had no power over its oue.


    They had no power over its future.


    They would have to entrust the future of the Kandrian Empire, the future of East Panama, to


    Rui and his destined opponent.


    "I need to speak with the Ss Matriarch and foresee the oue of the battle ahead of time and convey that information to Rui so that he can use it to win."


    However, he highly doubted that he would be able to get Rui to listen to reason here either. He knew that Rui would risk death if it meant reaching the Sage Realm.


    "He must win this battle. He must win at all costs."


    The war rapidly converged into a nexus that would define the future of East Panama.


    This chapter upload first at

 Chapter 2404 Three Days

    Chapter 2404 Three Days


    To say that Prime Minister Edward was upset was an understatement.


    He was furious.


    He had sent the new wonder Master that the Sekigaharans had spoken so highly of with the hopes that he would kill the Harbinger¡ªridding them of one of theirrgest thorns¡ªand prove himself worthy of taking on the ultimate challenge.


    In turn, all he got was the birth of a new enemy Sage.


    He truly felt like losing his temper at the thought of it. Once again, he couldn''t help but feel that it was his rival and enemy, Rael, who had been dealt a much better hand than he had been. "So let me get this straight." He leaned forward on the table. "You''re telling me that you defeated the Harbinger, were on the verge of killing her, and then she broke through to the Sage Realm, causing you to retreat?"


    Opposite to him sat a man.


    A Master.


    His ck eyes calmly met the cold fury in the Prime Minister''s eyes.


    "Yes."


    Prime Minister Edward''s eyes shed with anger. "And there''s nothing you could have done to prevent it?"


    "Yes."


    "Could you have killed her sooner?"


    "Yes."


    "¡­Why didn''t you?"


    "I was copying her Martial Art. I had informed you of my intentions of doing so before the fight. Her Martial Art wasplicated and highly non-standard so it took me more time to copy it and then refine my use of it."


    The Master didn''t seem bothered in the slightest despite being interrogated by the strategic leader of the East Panamic Treaty Alliance.


    "So you held back for the sake of obtaining her power?"


    "Yes."


    "Couldn''t you have killed her after you copied her?"


    "The best way to master a Martial Artist''s power is by refining it against them. Thus, I sought to kill her with her own power. But my personality and temperament were minimallypatible with her Martial Art. Thus, I wasn''t able to use it as well as she herself could, in certain regards."


    "And you wrote that the only reason that the Sage was unable to kill you was because her condition was too severe to pursue you?"


    "Yes." This content ? N?v/elDr(a)m/a.Org.


    The Britannian Prime Minister eyed him with a hint of suspicion.


    So far, his story added up.


    Prime Minister Edward had managed to get his hands on the report filed by one of the Kandrian Martial Masters. They had indeed reported how the Harbinger had been unconscious in a pool of her own blood, on the brink of death.


    It would add up to the Master''s own story without any real contradictions.


    Prime Minister Edward didn''t have any proof, but his intuition told him something was a little off about the story.


    Unfortunately, he didn''t have too much power over the strange young Master. Their signed agreements merely required thetter to kill Rui Quarrier Ss Kandria and provide them with breakthroughs after copying his Martial Art.


    He didn''t swear loyalty to the alliance.


    It was at moments like these that the Britannian Prime Minister cursed the Sekigahara Confederate and their absurd Martial culture. They had screwed up raising this Martial Artist, allowing him to be someone who couldn''t be controlled.


    He had almost attempted murder when he had read through the dessified records on Tokugawa Ieyasu.


    The boy had broken through to the Apprentice Realm at the age of eight.


    And to the Squire Realm at the age of twelve.


    His Martial Art was magical and his talent was truly extraordinary.


    The Sekigaharans regarded him as the chosen one.


    A great debate had unfolded among the Sages of the Sekigahara Confederate.


    Some had believed that they ought to turn him into a loyal servant of the Sekigahara Confederate, yet others had believed that even forcing him to remain in the polity would crush his endless potential.


    They had believed that the only way for the Sekigahara Confederate to obtain someone destined to be the strongest Martial Artist in history was to allow the young Martial Artist to absorb and evolve everything that the world had to offer.


    Thus, they had allowed him to leave the Sekigahara Confederate and had told him to return when he had taken everything that the world had to offer.


    The fools obsessed with Martial Art seemed more interested in witnessing the birth of the strongest Martial Artist than they were in actually controlling him or instilling loyalty.


    Just reading those records almost made the prime minister want to wage war against the Sekigaharans instead of the Kandrians.


    "Your operation has caused far more harm to us than it has benefited us."


    "I am aware. But I am also aware that your confidence in my ability to aplish my end of our agreement has increased." The Master''s tone was stoic and calm. "As long as I kill him and take his Martial Art, it will all have been worth it for you, will it not have?"


    He demonstrated that he had a clear understanding of his circumstances and his strategic importance. He was indeed correct.


    If the battle with the Harbinger would allow him to kill the Void Prince, letting the Harbinger break through to the Sage Realm would be more than worth it.


    "As long as you are able to kill him, that is." Prime Minister Edward''s eyes narrowed. "Until then, your only contributions to the East Panamic Treaty Alliance have been liabilities. How confident are you in defeating him?"


    Tokugawa Ieyasu fell silent at his words.


    He seemed to enter an introspective mood.


    "¡­I''ll know when I see him."


    "That doesn''t sound like absolute confidence."


    "Absolute confidence is a liability against him." His tone was asposed as ever. "He is not someone against whom anybody can have absolute confidence. His power is beyond measure¡ªever-changing and endlessly malleable. It changes with the environment. It changes with his opponent. Almost like¡­"


    His ck eyes narrowed. "¡­water."


    "That sounds like a rather intimate understanding of his power." Prime Minister Edward frowned. "Almost as though you have fought him before."


    Tokugawa Ieyasu remained silent as he looked back on their past.


    A single question escaped him.


    "When¡­?" His dark eyes shifted back to the prime minister. "When is our battle?"


    "¡­In three days." Prime Minister Edward peered into those ck eyes as he tried to get a handle on the strange Master sitting before him. "Then, the battle to decide the fate of the war willmence."


    -


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 Chapter 2405 Fit of Madness

    Chapter 2405 Fit of Madness


    The birth of a new Sage sent ripples across East Panama.


    It was an event that themon citizen was not familiar with yet was not too shocked by. It didn''t happen frequently enough to be dismissed, but it wasn''t too shocking at the same time.


    It happened every few years over the past century and a half.


    The average person regarded the news with a hint of curiosity and intrigue before moving on with their day. The political sphere of East Panama, however, regarded the news with deep seriousness.


    Every Sage mattered.


    Every Sage altered the strategic outlook.


    The birth of a new Sage meant that the Kandrian Empire was that much more secure.


    However, they also heard news about the circumstances of her breakthrough.


    She hadn''t broken through in battle.


    She had broken through after defeat.


    This was almost more significant.


    It meant that the East Panamic Treaty Alliance most likely had obtained a Martial Artist who was at the very peak of the Master Realm.


    So long as Masters remained the spearheads of operations instead of Sages, this was extremely important. It meant that the East Panamic Treaty Alliance had gained a way to fight the monster that was the Void Prince without needing to sacrifice lots of Masters.


    That mattered.


    The political sphere of East Panama didn''t entirely understand why the Kandrian Empire did something as foolish as deploying the Void Prince to the front lines. If they were the Kandrian Empire, they would keep him safe in the nation. All content is ? N0velDrama.Org.


    However, given that he was on the front lines, they had no choice but to wait for the oue of the battle between these peak Masters before making their decisions.


    "Rui, I need you to listen to me."


    In a conference hall in the Shionel Confederation assigned to Rui exclusively, Rui faced a projection of his father.


    "You must return to the Kandrian Empire."


    Rui snorted. "No."


    His father gazed at him with a knowing expression. "For the sake of the Kandrian Empire."


    "I have done more than enough for the Kandrian Empire." Rui red at his father. "Don''t even."


    "I know better than anybody else how much you have done for our nation, but this time we are risking absolute annihtion."


    "Quit beating around the bush and tell me who beat Sera." Rui''s tone was sharp. "I''m not a fool. The defeat of the Harbinger. Then you suddenly call me and tell me that we are risking annihtion if I don''tply? Do you think I''m a fool?"


    The Emperor of Harmony heaved a sigh.


    He knew his son well enough to know that he would have already figured out exactly why his father would want him to return by deducing the truth from the circumstantial evidence.


    "I''m not going anywhere."


    Rui''s dark eyes grew more intense.


    "Rui¡­"


    "Answer my question," Rui cut him off. "Who defeated Sera? Just the name and the bare minimum of his or her Martial Art. I know that you came here to tell me to back off because you''re afraid of this new Master that appeared out of nowhere."


    An excited smile cracked at the edge of his mouth.


    It bloomed past his restraint.


    He couldn''t contain himself.


    The more he saw the worry and concern in his father''s eyes, the more excited he became.


    Not even the Convergence had made his father this worried.


    "Quick! Say his or her name!" he almost hissed at his father.


    His father could only heave a resigned sigh.


    Emperor Rael knew that it was futile to try and reason with his son, but he still tried at least once to get him to listen to sense. "We don''t know his name." Reluctance could be heard in Emperor Rael''s rich voice. "Prime Minister Edward has been keeping this close to his chest. He is clearly paranoid about anyone learning his name. Going so far as to give him a codename in all documents that we managed to get our hands on."


    His eyes sharpened. "The Sekigaharans call him the Chosen One."


    "Sekigaharans¡­? Wait." Rui''s eyes widened with realization. "Tell me about his Martial Art."


    Emperor Rael heaved a deep breath. "What I''m about to tell you might sound like a joke. But it isn''t. I can assure you that all of it is factual."


    The weight of his words wore down on the atmosphere.


    The air tingled.


    It pricked at the nerves with faint tension.


    "ording to Sage Sera, the Martial Artist she fought possessed the power to copy and assimte her Martial Art and make it his own."


    "¡­"


    "Not just that¡­" The Emperor''s eyes grew severe as his expression grew more macabre. "ording to her, he managed to evolve it beyond what she was capable of, making it more powerful."


    "¡­"


    "His Martial Embodiment was said to be a fractal mirror that reflected and assimted all others in a kaleidoscopic and chimeric hybrid Embodiment that contained all others. We suspect that he must have copied countless other Martial Arts."


    "¡­."


    "He is powerful, Rui." His father''s tone hardened. "More importantly, if he manages to copy your Martial Art, then our enemies will obtain the power to break Martial Artists through."


    "¡­"


    "He ising for you, without a doubt."


    "¡­"


    "He will fight you as many times as is needed to kill you."


    "¡­"


    "Should the battle go south, then you might die."


    "¡­"


    "Rui, are you listening to me?"


    He was greeted by silence.


    The world went quiet.


    It was almost as though heaven and earth held their breath.


    "Rui¡­?" Emperor Rael widened his eyes as he peered into his son''s eyes.


    He saw a single emotion linger in the depths of his eyes.


    Ecstasy.


    Pure and raw ecstasy.


    "Hah¡­ haha¡­" Rui''s eerieughter gave Emperor Rael goosebumps. "Hahaha! HAHAHA! HAHAHAHAAAAA!!"


    Emperor Rael jerked back with an expression of bewilderment as his son broke into a burst of maniacalughter. Unadulterated tion could be heard in hisughter of madness.


    The emperor simply watched with a mix of apprehension and shock as his own son seemed to have finally snapped and lost his sanity!


    -


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